More technology reveals …

… that Canterbury Cathedral has some of the world’s oldest stained glass. The “windolyser”, which is a new non-destructive technique designed to date windows in situ, has placed some of the  “Canterbury Ancestors” some years before both Becket‘s matyrdom and the fire, four years later, that destroyed the building around them, showing that they were…

Phone app will take Barnard Castle tourists into the past….

This seems a wonderful idea. Don’t we all like looking at old photographs of place and seeing what is still there now? if anything? It’s possibly why the Francis Frith photographs are so popular. We love to look at what has been lost forever, but which some of the more senior of us still remember.…

Collecting tolls on the Ouse at York….

How did the citizens of York collect tolls from vessels on the River Ouse? They had a great big chain across the river, between two guardian towers, the Barker Tower and the Lendal Tower on the opposite bank. Simple, but effective. “This river-side tower was built in the 14th century. It was positioned at the…

This blog is brought to you …

… by a thing called the internet. The internet may only have been invented by (Sir) Tim Berners-Lee (left) during the eighties but it has a much older patron saint – the seventh century Archbishop of Seville, Isidore.   St. Isidore (right), who died in 636, was chosen because he wrote the Etymologiae, an early encyclopedia…

George III revealed

This documentary, presented by Robert Hardman of the Daily Mail, unveils some of our longest-serving King’s secrets, such as a draft abdication letter after American independence was achieved. It also discusses his health issues in greater detail. Until recently, it was thought that he suffered from porphyria, a physical disease that Mary Stuart carried to…