Share this page!

Dr Francis Young Profile picture
Twitter logo
31 Dec 20, 5 tweets, 2 min read
Of all England's megaliths, these are some of the strangest (in terms of why they are there). In the Middle Ages, a boat carrying them across Whittlesea Mere from Barnack capsized - for centuries they were visible lying in the mere (seen here in 1786)
Whittlesea Mere - the largest mere in the Fens - was finally drained in the 1850s (the last part of the Fens to be drained) but the stones are still there. We can only guess which church they were intended for; the quarry at Barnack supplied stone for many East Anglian churches
Are there any megaliths in the English landscape that are only there because someone accidentally dropped them from a boat and then drained the body of water? I'd be surprised if there were!
Naturally, I like to think they were on their way to Bury St Edmunds...
Of course, for all I know there may be archaeologists who argue the stones were a deliberate ritual deposit... 😂

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Dr Francis Young

Dr Francis Young Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @DrFrancisYoung

Dr Francis Young Profile picture
31 Dec 20
Let's celebrate #BonniePrince300 with Burns' Ode written for Charles's last birthday, 31 December 1787:

Afar the illustrious Exile roams,
Whom kingdoms on this day should hail;
An inmate in the casual shed,
On transient pity's bounty fed,
Haunted by busy memory's bitter tale!
Beasts of the forest have their savage homes,
But He, who should imperial purple wear,
Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head!
His wretched refuge, dark despair,
While ravening wrongs and woes pursue,
And distant far the faithful few
Who would his sorrows share.
False flatterer, Hope, away!
Nor think to lure us as in days of yore:
We solemnize this sorrowing natal day,
To prove our loyal truth-we can no more,
And owning Heaven's mysterious sway,
Submissive, low adore.
Read 11 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
29 Dec 20
On the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, a short thread on the lost church of St Thomas of Canterbury at Westley near Bury St Edmunds. The house I grew up in was close to the ancient parish boundary between @StMarysBSE and Westley (although my parents' house is on the town side)
The present-day church at Westley dates from 1835 (and is famous for being one of the earliest c19th churches to make extensive use of concrete), while the old church and churchyard of St Thomas are abandoned, hidden and overgrown with trees
Much of western Bury St Edmunds was originally in the parish of Westley - the parish boundary (which was also the boundary of the ancient Banleuca established in 945) ran along West Road until the 1930s, when All Saints parish absorbed parts of the parishes of St Mary and Westley
Read 9 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
28 Dec 20
Interesting. I taught Religious Education for 14 years, and over that time I noticed children became less reflexively anti-religious; they weren't any more *interested* in religion, but they were less likely to have an instinctive negative reaction to it in 2015 than in 2005
That's purely my anecdotal experience, of course, but I suspect it's to do with receding parental pressure. Children kick against their parents, so as parents become less religious, so children are less likely to aggressively reject religion
The other phenomenon I noticed in my teaching career was that, by the time I gave up teaching in 2016, Christianity had become a more or less acceptable alternative way for teenagers to define themselves as eccentric
Read 5 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
27 Dec 20
One of the weirder subgenres of nonfiction is what I call the 'pastiche monograph': a book written by someone who doesn't really know how to write an academic monograph, and isn't really trying to do so, but wants the book to *look and feel* like they think a monograph should
(And yes, I know lots of really good monographs are written by people without formal academic qualifications - I'm not talking about those here, because their intent is more than just cosmetic)
(I'm also not talking about 'monograph-lite' trade books by academics and well-informed non-academics, which have some monograph-like features but aren't actually trying to be monographs)
Read 8 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
24 Dec 20
Without getting into the ins and outs of the ‘Is Christmas pagan?’ debate, it’s worth dealing with some faulty assumptions people often make about the ‘Christianisation’ of pre-Christian traditions (buckle up for the thread…)
First of all, language people use in this area can be quite emotive, e.g. talk of Christians ‘usurping’ or ‘sanitising’ a pre-existing pagan festival. There’s a tendency to ascribe a collective agency that never existed to ‘the Church’ or ‘Christians’ when it comes to Midwinter
That wasn’t how it worked; there was no centralised programme of reforming popular festivities. The Church introduced liturgical celebration of Christmas to northern pagan cultures; how those Christianised cultures then dealt with Midwinter festivities as a whole varied widely
Read 16 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
23 Dec 20
If I had no academic ethics, the documentary source I would fake would be an account by Thomas Netter of his mission to Lithuania in 1419, in which the Carmelite tells of how he used skills honed in his battle with the Lollards to convert the Samogitians...
Of course, now I've told you I'd do this, I can't do it...
I reckon I could do a better job than the Hitler Diaries, tho. Of course it wouldn't be the original ms; it would be a fortuitously discovered typed transcription of an original destroyed in a fire in an obscure uncatalogued archive, where the scholar who typed it died a recluse
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @DrFrancisYoung has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @DrFrancisYoung!

Read all threads by @DrFrancisYoung