Stokesay Castle. A manor house with military pretension more like.
Still. One of the best.
Bibury. So distractingly beautiful it makes you forget the Brexit clustastrophe
Ludlow Castle. An over mighty fortress for the over mighty Mortimers.
A medieval gate at Ludlow. Which manages, gloriously, to incorporate a pub. This pub was established the same year that George Washington first went west to kick the French out of the Ohio Country.
This bizarre building is Lodge Park and it's the only surviving 17th Century grandstand. It was built for spectators to watch a giant deer coursing event. It was later renovated into a house.
An almost untouched 1940s utility room.
A national treasure in Ludlow.
It is possible that the expression "up sticks and move" comes from the era of timber framed houses. Owners could dismantle them, pack up the frames and move on.
But it's also possible that like most things, it was made up in the 19th Century.
Can some very clever architectural historian show us all the different centuries of building in this frame?
I think Ive got 15th, 16th, 18th, 19th, 20th- looking forward to being corrected.
I show the kids the probable site of the Brunanburh battlefield, where Athelstan's spear-hordes slew a flock of kings and princes and where I once blew the horn of battle.
New Years sun on the Dee estuary. Close to one of Britain’s earliest identified Stone Age settlements, four millennia before Stonehenge was begun.
Chepstow Castle, one of the earliest surviving stone castles in Britain. Begun in 1067 by one of the Conqueror's relatives. Perched on cliffs towering over the River Wye, built on the land claimed by the princes of Glamorgan- this was an act of aggression.
Visited in a downpour. This was the driest shot. Kids required major post war reparations.
Also- this is the oldest part of the castle. There are recycled Roman tiles embedded in the structure.
Tintern Abbey. Thread stealer.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Around a quarter of Nelson's fleet at Trafalgar were born outside Britain.
A witness reports in 1702: 'London is a world by itself. We daily discover in it more new countries, & surprising singularities....There are among the Londoners so many nations differing in manners, customs & religion, that the inhabitants themselves dorft know a quarter of them'
Cromwell invited Jews into Britain to, among other reasons, boost the financial and trading sectors. William III built on this and Sephardic Jewish communities moving from Amsterdam to London helped to make the latter the centre of finance in NW Europe.
A Bomber Command recording which we believe to be unique. Steve Stevens DFC made an audio recording of a raid over Essen in 1943. 75 yrs later I listened to it with him for the podcast.
I'll never forget him showing me the prayer book that he used to carry with him on operations. With the prayer he wrote out, memorised and would quietly say as he revved up the engines for take off.
Today in 793 Vikings raided Lindisfarne:
"Never before has such terror appeared...as we have now suffered from a pagan race...The church of St Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God, stripped of all its furnishing, exposed to the plundering of pagans."
Alcuin
Nothing survives from the time of the raid, this carving known as the Domesday Stone, was part of the rebuild and depicts the End of Days with a horde of men wielding Viking weapons...
One monastery where there is evidence of a Viking raid is Portmahomack, Tarbat Peninsula, Scotland. It was wiped out by Vikings in 800. With no evidence left at Lindisfarne it is the only archaeological evidence for a violent Viking raid in the UK. Smashed skills & masonry
I'm on a VIKING ROAD TRIP!
The legend @CatJarman is guiding me across England on the trail of the Great Heathen Army from East Anglia where they martyred King Edmund to the edge of Salisbury Plain where Alfred won his greatest victory.
Very excited to be back in one of the most remarkable and important Anglo-Saxon/Viking sites in the country. St Wystan's church in Repton was a royal & religious centre of the kingdom of Mercia. The 8thC crypt was the final resting place of several Mercian kings.
The monastery was looted & smashed by the Great Heathen Army in 873. Only the crypt survives. The Vikings buried their own outside the church including the famous 'Repton Viking' who was hacked to pieces but buried with a Thor's Hammer around his neck, a sword by his side....
100 years ago today London witnessed a revolution.
An unknown soldier, in a coffin of Hampton Court oak, with a crusader sword from the Royal Collection, was buried among the monarchs in Westminster Abbey.
A century before the dead of Waterloo had been robbed, tipped into mass graves, then exhumed for fertiliser & dentures!
Now in the eyes of many, including the Prime Minister David Lloyd George who grew up in a cobblers cottage, a soldier was a fellow citizen, a voter, an equal.
So at least four soldiers were exhumed, and one was chosen at random. He was awarded the Legion d'honnneur, accompanied by Marshal Foch and a division of troops, placed aboard HMS Verdun and arrived in the UK to a Field Marshal's salute.