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4 Jan, 5 tweets, 1 min read
I get so excited about Epiphany. I know for many people it's just another day, but for me there's something so... well, MAGICAL about a feast that celebrates the vision quest of a fellowship of mysterious wizards
Epiphany was big in the household where I grew up because it's my sister's birthday, so we had our own traditions; my parents made three enormous cardboard kings (which had to be periodically replaced...) and put my sister's presents under them (with a token present for me!)
Coming down to the Three Kings on Epiphany morning was almost as exciting as waking up with stockings in the bed on Christmas morning, tbh
Epiphany is a wonderful time for the Church to focus on celebrating science and scientists; because it was, after all, not revelation but wisdom that led the Magi to Christ. Epiphany is the culmination in Christ of all science and wisdom, of every age and culture
And this is particularly poignant for me this year, because my sister, born at Epiphany, was one of the researchers who helped bring about the Oxford vaccine against Covid-19

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Dr Francis Young Profile picture
4 Jan
This is the 'Epiphany Crown' (a new one made in 2012, originally made in the early 1520s for Henry VIII), which bears figures of Edmund, Edward the Confessor and Henry VI as the Three Kings. Incredibly, the figure of Henry VI was recently discovered
The same parallelism with the Three Kings is going on in the Wilton Diptych - except here it is Edmund, Edward the Confessor and Richard II (the 'Epiphany King', born 6 January 1367) who are the Three Kings worshipping the Christ Child and his Mother en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilton_Di…
Epiphany was a time of immense importance in English royal ceremonial. Not only was it the culmination of Christmas festivities, it was a celebration of kingship - and one of the most common times for monarchs from Edward III to Anne to administer their miraculous touch
Read 4 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
3 Jan
Today is the Feast of St Genevieve. The lost village of Fornham St Genevieve, Suffolk is marked only by the ruined church tower (a man shooting jackdaws in the tower set the building alight in 1775). The village has an interesting history as a refuge for Catholics
The village was part of the estate of the Catholic Kytson (and later Gage) family in the 17th century, and in the early c18th the Lancashire recusant John Tyldesley settled there and married Catherine Stafford, daughter of John Stafford, Catholic mayor of Bury under James II
The church originally contained some monuments to the Tyldesley family, one of whom became a Franciscan friar; the Catholic Stafford and Short families also held land in the village and there were Short memorials in the church, but the parish registers were destroyed in 1775
Read 7 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
2 Jan
Arthur Machen's story 'N' (1934) is about Stoke Newington, and at one point Machen makes dismissive mention of 'blocks of flats of wicked red brick', which I
think can only be Ormond, Lordship and Clissold Houses, built in 1933 @HistoryOfStokey
This is very personal to me, because my grandparents lived in one of these buildings and my mother and her sisters were brought up there. For Machen, that great observer of London, these buildings were 'grossly modern' and 'as if Mr H.G. Wells's bad dreams had come true'
I like the story - and Machen is my favourite modern writer - but this casual dismissal of flats built as pre-War slum clearance really grates. Machen evidently didn't know or care how people like my grandparents lived before they got the chance to live in purpose-built flats
Read 6 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
1 Jan
I agree with this, to the extent that witchcraft panics have not gone away - I discussed the 5G panic as a modern-day witchcraft panic back in June (). But I doubt the old community accusations will return in our present society because community is weaker
'Witchcraft'-type accusations in modern Britain express themselves differently, through the medium of conspiracist thinking accusing shadowy classes or groups of people of malefice rather than specific individuals. It's about the bewitchment rather than the witch
Having said that, the Satanic Panic of the 80s provided a counterexample - but it's interesting that the Satanic Panic in the UK was focussed on the Hebrides, one of the few areas where traditional rural community survived
Read 5 tweets
Dr Francis Young Profile picture
31 Dec 20
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!
Read 5 tweets
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

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