This week, to celebrate the publication of my first local history book, Bishop’s Stortford Through Time, I am very excited to be doing tour around various blogs talking about various aspects of my book: not just the subject matter, but also about writing and researching “history”.

One post a day – so 7 posts in total – spread across a wide and diverse mix of history-related blogs.

Today, day 3, you can read me on Ross Mountney’s Notebook talking about Home educating and history. Please click on the link or picture below to read my post.

My blog tour
You can catch me on the following dates and blogs discussing “all things history”, along with explaining about my recent book, on the following dates and sites.

• Saturday 18 October – Worldwide Genealogy Blog: The process of writing a local history book.
• Sunday 19 October – Essex Voices Past: Q&A session with Amberley Publishing on “how to get a publisher interested in your history book”.
• Monday 20 October – Ross Mountney’s Notebook: Home education and teaching history to children.
• Tuesday 21 October – Family History Across The Sea: Correlation between local and family history.
• Wednesday 22 October – Anglers Rest: Using vintage postcards to add to family and local history research.
• Thursday 23 October – Bishop’s Stortford Museum’s Blog: Oral history.
• Friday 24 October – Essex Voices Past: Bishop’s Stortford’s postcards which got away.

About me
I have a MSt in Local and Regional History (Cantab); a BA History (Open University) and an Advanced Diploma in Local History (Oxon) – all gained as a mature student. Having been a business technologist in the City of London for the last 30 years, I am currently taking time away from my City career to write. My first history book, Bishop’s Stortford Through Time, was published by Amberley Publishing in September 2014. I have been commissioned to write a further three history books for them:-

• Sudbury, Lavenham and Long Melford Through Time (due to be published summer 2015);
• Saffron Walden Through Time (due to be published summer 2015); and
• Postcards from the Front: Britain 1914-1919 (due to be published summer 2016).

Please do click on the image below to buy my book.

© Essex Voices Past 2014.

If you watched the recent BBC drama, The White Queen, and its bloody climax – the Battle of Bosworth Field – you would be forgiven for thinking that the battle took place during late autumn or even during early winter. For, according to the Beeb, a thick covering of fallen leaves lay on the battlefield floor and light snow covered the bridleways.

But the battle didn’t take place during winter.  It took place during the high summer of 1485 – on Monday, 22^nd August, to be precise.  On the 7^th August, Henry Tudor, soon to be crowned on a battlefield as King Henry VII, landed off the Welsh coast at Milford Haven. By late August, he was seven miles west of Leicester, near the village (or, in those days, the hamlet) of Market Bosworth.  Margaret Beaufort (born 1443, died 1509), the mother of Henry VII, recorded these momentous events in her Book of Hours.

‘August’ from The Beaufort/Beauchamp Hours (England, S. E. (London), c. 1430,
before 1443) shelfmark Royal 2 A XVIII f. 31v. (We do not know if this is her hand or if a scribe wrote the entries for her.)

The first left margin note in black reads

The day landed king harry the vijth at milford have[n] the yere of o[u]r lord vijth cccc lxxxv [1485]

The second left margin note reads

The day king harri the vijth won[n] the feeld [field] wher was slayn ki[n]g Richard the third Ao Do[m] 1485

The day before the battle, on the 21^st August, King Richard III, along with an army of 12,000, rode out from his temporary accommodation at the White Boar Inn in the city of Leicester and set up his overnight camp in a field on Ambion Hill.

Early 20^th Century etching of the Blue Boar Inn, Leicester. King Richard III spent the night of the 20^th August 1485 in the Inn. It is alleged that he left his bed behind in the inn – perhaps he thought that he’d be coming back to the inn after he had dispatched his enemy, Henry Tudor. A white boar was the personal emblem of Richard III.  Legend has it that the inn was originally called the ‘White Boar’ but after the battle and the death of Richard, the inn-keeper hastily changed the inn’s name to the Blue Boar.

By the end of that fateful day, 22^nd August 1485, King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets, lay dead on the battlefield.  And the Tudor dynasty began with King Henry VII crowned on Crown Hill in the nearby village of Stoke Golding by the treacherous Lord Thomas Stanley, the new king’s step-father.

King Richard III holds a council of war before the battle.

King Richard III’s trusty advisers.

The general area of the Battle of Bosworth Field.  These photos were taken in the early summer of 2013. In August 1485, it is likely that these fields had the remains of that year’s crops still in the ground.

The general area of the battle.  By the end of the battle, it is thought that approximately 1,000 men on Richard’s side lay dead on the field, along with 100 men from Henry Tudor’s forces.

Overlooking the general area of the battle-site.  The spire in the distance is the (post-medieval) church spire of Stoke Golding, near to which the first Tudor King of England was crowned.

1813 Monument to Richard III.  During the battle, the King drunk from the well that was located here.

The Fellowship of the White Boar’s plaque.

Legend has it that the dead king’s body was brought back to Leicester that same evening.  Stripped naked and devoid of any dignity or kingly regalia, his body was put on display for several days in Leicester.  His enemies (and, of course, his followers) could see for themselves that he really was dead and their new king was Henry VII. Shortly afterwards, he was buried quietly, without ceremony, in the church of the Greyfriars – a Franciscan monastic order.

Modern-day statue of Richard III in a park in Leicester.

Of course, over 520 years later, we now know this legend to be true.  King Richard III was indeed buried by the Franciscans in their monastery, where he lay undisturbed until his discovery in 2012.  I, like many other people around the world, was riveted to the television during the live press release by Leicester University in February 2013, when they confirmed to the waiting world that the body that they had found was indeed that of the last of the Plantagenets. As the Tudor kings of England had so rightly said, Richard III really did lyth buryed in Leicester.

Richard ye was sonne to Richard Duwke of yorke & brother un to kyng Edward ye iiijth Was kyng after hys brother & raynyd ij yeres & lyth buryed at leator [Leicester].  From Biblical and genealogical chronicle from Adam and Eve to Edward VI (England, S. E. (London or Westminster), c. 1511 with additions before 1553) shelfmark King’s 395 ff.32v-33

Watching the astonishing live press release – showing the perfect synergy of archaeology, genealogy, forensic science, and DNA science – was my small home educated son.  He was entranced by the news.  So, keen to capture his excitement, a few months later we headed north to Leicester for our most spine tingling School Trip Friday for academically challenged.

If Leicester’s one-way system had been in existence in 1485, then Richard III would never have made it out of the city and into the nearby villages and fields to meet his nemesis.  In the 21^st Century, guided by my trusty SatNav (who told me several times to ‘please take the 7^th exit’ as I repeatedly circled the city), I eventually managed to navigate my way into Leicester, ready for a weekend of finding Richard.  Trying to be as authentic as possible, I decided to stay in the exact location where Richard III had spent his second-to-last night on earth – the Blue Boar Inn.  Except, of course, the Blue Boar Inn has long been demolished and swept away, but in its place is another hostelry with ‘blue’ as its insignia.  Yes, my son and I stayed in the Travelodge – a modern 21^st Century inn built on the exact site of its predecessor, the Blue Boar Inn.

The Blue Boar Inn 2013 (aka Travelodge).  The area is continuing its medieval drunken past by being, in the 21st century, the weekend home of countless hen and stag parties. The location is now part of Leicester’s multi-lane one way system, and so my son and I spent two nights sleeping more-or-less on a massive roundabout, with the steady stream of all-night cars noisely whizzing around the city. 

As well as visiting the site of the Battle of Bosworth (and the wonderful Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre), we, of course, made our way into the centre of the city to find Richard at the temporary exhibition within the medieval guildhall.

My son comes face to face with a medieval king.

The spire of Leicester Cathedral, overlooking the medieval guildhall.

Leicester Cathedral and the Guildhall.

Looking in one direction: the precinct of the Cathedral. To take this photograph, I had to stand directly in the middle of the small road shown in the next photograph.

Looking in the opposite direction: the location of the Greyfriars monastery. Behind the building on the left, halfway down is the entrance to the council car park containing the mortal remains of King Richard III.  The distance between Richard’s original resting place for over 500 years is a mere stone’s throw from his proposed next resting place. Should he be moved a mere few hundred yards into Leicester cathedral? Or should he be moved a hundred miles to be reburied in York?

Inside The Car Park. The forbidding green gates, with their modern-day graffeti and barbed-wire tops, .

The car park is tiny – a lot smaller then it appears on the television.  Georgian and Victorian buildings surround the space.  With five centuries of urban building-work, it truly is a miracle that the exact location of Richard III’s was left, in the main, undisturbed.  At some point during the Victorian period, builders managed to sever the king’s feet as they were not recovered with the remains of the rest of his body in 2012.

A temporary marque protects the grave of the five-hundred years dead king.  The building in the background is Alderman Newton’s grammar school, which will eventually become part of the new Richard III Visitors’ Centre.  If this building had been built even 50 yards further forward, then we would have lost Richard’s grave forever.

The grave of King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets.  The only king of England to die in battle, since Harold died in a hale of arrows in 1066. Stripped naked and buried without a shroud, with his hands tied after death, Richard was stuffed into a shallow grave which was too short for him.

Seeing Richard’s grave was spine-tingling – we so nearly lost him forever to urban development.  Eventually the site of his original grave will become part of a beautiful garden next to the new Visitors’ Centre.  However, seeing the grave in the setting of a stark and bare council car park was an experience I will never forget.

The quiet serenity and beauty of Leicester Cathedral. Will this be Richard’s final resting place?

Richard, Duke of Gloucester.  Born 2^nd October 1452 at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire; died 22^nd August 1485, Bosworth Field, Leicester.
King of England 1483-1485.  Buried 1485 to 2012 in Greyfriars monastery, Leicester.
His current location is known only by the University of Leicester.

What do you think about the search and discovery of Richard III?
Where should his final resting place be?
Please do leave your thoughts in the Comments box below.

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Notes
Images from the British Library’s collection of Medieval Manuscripts are marked as being Public Domain Images and therefore free of all copyright restrictions in accordance with the British Library’s Reuse Guidance Notes for the Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts.

You may also be interested in the following posts
– Richard III – ‘I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not’
– School Trip Friday – Of cabbages and kings
– Shakespeare’s version of King Richard III
– Richard III lyth buryed at Leicester
– Elizabeth of York

© Essex Voices Past 2012-2013.

After a gap in my blogging, I don’t normally say why I haven’t been around; I’d just start re-blogging again. However, I have received several concerned emails from cyber-friends to ask ‘am I ok’. Yes, I’m perfectly fine but over the last few months, the effort of getting my small child back into a school has overtaken my entire life. You may recall that I wrote about some of my battle in my posts on our School Trip Friday for the Academically Challenged. This week, after an 18 month legal battle and with my son out of school for exactly one year, I finally faced Essex County Council in a court of law in front of a judge. I have no idea yet what the judgement will be, but whatever it is, I know I have done absolutely the best for my child and he will be returning to school in September.

Sadly in amongst the fight for my child, I have neglected blogging and my writing skills – linked totally to my emotional well-being – have been repressed. I am hoping that my writing abilities will return. In amongst the fight for my son, we have still continued our School Trip Fridays, but I haven’t written up any stories yet. I also hope to shortly be able to return to the local history of Tudor England and, in particular, Great Dunmow.

But for the moment, here is a picture of my child, who I have fought so long and so hard for, during one of our most spine-tingling School Trip Fridays for the Academically Challenged

Here’s looking at you, kid

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Walk in our shoes
– School Trip Friday – St Michael’s Mount and the Tudor Pretender, Perkin Warbeck
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall
– School Trip Friday – Messages from England’s Roman Past
– School Trip Friday – What did the Roman’s ever do for us?

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

Today in my post, I would like your understanding and for you to spend a couple of minutes humouring me …

Read the original document below – it is from Great Dunmow’s churchwardens’ accounts of 1530 so is the financial records of a church. Read it aloud, without stopping (don’t bother with the Roman numerals for the shillings and pence at the end of each line). Don’t make notes but just read it in straight through in one attempt. If you stumble, just carry onto the next line. Everything you are reading is an English word or person’s name still in use today and all lines should make absolute perfect sense as you read it.

How did you get on? Could you read it? If you could, did you understand exactly what you are reading? Now you’ve finished, can you remember what you read and précis it to someone else? What if you were under pressure reading this in a roomful of your peers who found it easy-peasy? Would it make you break-out in a cold sweat of inadequacy and failure?

Unless you are very experienced in reading Tudor hand writing or you are a palaeography expert, then I suggest you found it very difficult – if not impossible. Not just reading it, but also understanding and remembering it. Did some of the words come in and out of focus – not just literal focus – blurry one minute but clear the next – but also mental focus? One minute you understood something but the next minute you couldn’t and its meaning simply vanished into the deepest depths of your mind?

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*

Thank you for humouring me and walking in my severely dyslexic child’s shoes. The difficulty you had in reading this 500 year old document is exactly the same experience my child has every day of his life reading modern English whether in a book, on a favourite iPad game, or written by hand.

Dyslexia is horrible. Not only do dyslexics have to cope with the difficulties you have just experienced but suffers are called “lazy”, “stupid”, “academically challenged” and “thick”. And to top it all, many dyslexic children, such as my child(ren), are denied a proper education suitable for their needs.

I should know. I am dyslexic too. And as a dyslexic, I had absolutely no trouble in reading the extract above because I have no pre-conceived ideas about the English language and ‘spelling rules’.  Much like our Tudor accountant who most certainly didn’t know about modern-English spelling – just how many ways can anyone spell ‘church’! I spotted three different spellings just within that one little sample.  Also, just look at the last word on second line (before the shillings & pence) and look at our Tudor scribe’s spelling of ‘house’ – ‘hawys’!  And our Tudor accountant didn’t know that correct modern grammar meant he should have written ‘from’ or ‘for’ instead of ‘of’!

My child would certainly not make a good Tudor accountant. He’d be able to add up everything in his head without the need of a paper abacus because he’s a whiz at maths, but won’t be able to write it down in any comprehensible way.  Oh, and if you think I was mean in displaying the extract in a strange black & white visual, then you may be surprised to know that many dyslexics also suffer from visual perception problems too. My son does. His is called Irlens Syndrome – black ink on bright white paper causes his eyes considerable stress. Not a good syndrome to have when you are also severely dyslexic.

These are  just the problems a dyslexic faces when reading.  There are equally severe problems with writing, which, for my child, is not helped by his dysprexia which makes pen control very difficult.

But for now, until his needs are properly met, there’s the misery of the school years for him to stagger and lurch through.

Thank you for walking in my son’s shoes

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he can’t read:
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows he can really

Chorus: Wah! Wah! Wah

I speak severely to my boy,
I beat him when he can’t read:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
Reading when he pleases!

Chorus: Wah! Wah! Wah

(Written with tongue firmly in cheek and apologies to
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
but dedicated to everyone everywhere who doesn’t ‘believe in dyslexia’
or thinks that dyslexic children are lazy or ‘aren’t trying’.)

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – St Michael’s Mount and the Tudor Pretender, Perkin Warbeck
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall
– School Trip Friday – Messages from England’s Roman Past
– School Trip Friday – What did the Roman’s ever do for us?

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

Many people use the word ‘journey’ to describe something very personal to them which has been life changing (and possibly life-enhancing). Maybe a ‘spiritual journey’ or an ‘emotional journey’ on their way to the top as a world-class Olympic champion? My own journey has far less lofty aspirations: mine is to provide my vulnerable child, who has severe learning difficulties, the correct education he so desperately needs. A year ago this month, I decided that we had to do ‘something’ to stop the downward emotional and mental spiral of our small child who was struggling, and failing spectacularly, in mainstream education. So we withdrew him from school and, after failing to convince our local education authority as to the extent of his needs, took to the Courts to get them to provide protection for his educational needs. Sadly, having won the legal battle to convince my local education authority that he requires a Statement of Special Educational Needs, the war continues with the grown-ups still fighting through the courts for the precise education he so desperately needs. In the meantime, my son continues to be ‘home educated’ and so continues the massive spiritual, emotional and physical ‘journey’ for him and me. (It is totally beyond my understanding why I have to go to the law of this land to get the education that my child so desperately needs – isn’t that a basic human right in our so-called progressive country?)

My own ‘journey’ is to be my child’s legal advocate, educational tutor and mentor. Me? Someone with nearly 30 years of experience of the hustle and bustle of the corporate IT world but zero experience of teaching children. Me: now tasked with organising the legal battle, along with personally tutoring one small vulnerable child, and, more importantly, arranging much more competent specialist tutoring than myself.  But there are some considerable pluses to this ‘journey’. Now, my eyes and ears are more alert and more receptive to the sights and sounds of life. Mine are the ears and eyes which are the conduit to teach my child about life and the universe: anything and everything.

In the first week of March, during a beautiful balmy English Spring-time, my ‘journey’ became one that is physical as we once more headed for the hills and arrived in Cornwall for a week of rest, relaxation and tuition. Last term, our quest was to search out Romans at Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. This term, our quest is to search out the dark ages and then onto medieval kings and queens. Our appetite was already wetted with watching every single programme on the recent discovery of the mortal remains of Richard III.  We came to Cornwall expecting to find the far distant voices of King Arthur at Tintagel but didn’t expect the echoes of Richard III and Henry VII in the furthest tips of Cornwall.

Our journey across this, one of the most beautiful counties of England, included early-modern stories of smugglers, Revenue Men, and Wreckers, along with modern-day stories of the sacrifice of the heroic lifeboat men of Penlee and Mousehole. It therefore seemed appropriate that we spent Tuesday 5th March 2013, St Piran’s Day, the patron Saint of Cornwall, walking through that most iconic of Cornish lands, St Michael’s Mount.

5 March 2013, the Cornish flag on St Piran’s Day, St Michael’s Mount

What can be more enticing to a small child who can barely read and write then the legends and stories of this magical isle? Tales of seven foot giant skeletons found buried under the church’s staircase… The legend of Jack the giant killer: the giant whose heart still vigorously beats in the chests of today’s young children who pause for a moment to tread on his  heart which is buried within the very pathway to the top of the Mount…

And there on the foreshore of St Michael’s Mount and the causeway to the island was lurking the Tudor story of Perkin Warbeck.  The second of the Tudor Pretenders.

Perkin Warbeck, the second Tudor Pretender, born circa 1474, executed 1499

Perkin Warkbeck who pretended to be one of the Princes in the Tower.  The long-dead brother of the long-since murdered Edward V, in 1490 Perkin Warbeck proclaimed himself to be Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York: the Yorkist king of England, Richard IV.  A claim that was championed by no less than Margaret of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV and Richard III, and, therefore, aunt to the real Princes in the Tower: Edward V and Richard.  After much adventuring and political championing throughout the Continent, Perkin Warbeck finally landed by sea in Cornwall in September 1497 and took occupation of St Michael’s Mount. After refortifying the Mount’s castle, he left his beautiful wife, Lady Catherine Gordon, on the Mount for safety. From St Michael’s Mount, he and his army of west-country rebels marched through Cornwall and the south-west of England in his attempt to seize the English throne: an attempt which ended in failure and his capture at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire. Henry VII reached Taunton on 4 October 1497 when the Cornish rebels and Perkins’army surrendered. Perkin Warbeck finally met his maker and an unceremonious end on 23 November 1499 at the end of a rope on the gallows of Tyburn, London.

And the fate of Warbeck’s wife, Lady Catherine Gordon?  She suffered a very lenient fate at the hands of Henry VII.  She was the daughter of the Scottish George Gordon, 2nd Earl of Huntly.  For political reasons, it had suited the Scottish king, James IV, to believe that Warbeck was indeed Richard, Duke of York.  Therefore Warbeck was encouraged to marry the daughter of a Scottish nobleman.  Warbeck and Lady Catherine had a grand and lavish wedding in Edinburgh.  Calling herself the ‘Duchess of York’, Lady Catherine was finally captured by Henry VII’s forces at St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall in September or October 1497.  She was brought back to London. Surprisingly Henry VII treated her very kindly and she became a much favoured (and favourite) lady-in-waiting to his wife, Elizabeth of York.  Henry VII arranged for Lady Catherine to have a pension, paid for by him, and he also settled her expenses for her clothes.  The favours continued when Lady Catherine attended her Scottish king, James IV’s, 1503 marriage to Henry VII’s daughter, Margaret and the same year, she was the Chief Mourner at Elizabeth of York’s funeral.  Lady Catherine’s fate at the hands of Henry VII was remarkably kind and generous, especially considering that if Warbeck really had been Richard, Duke of York, then Elizabeth of York would have been her sister-in-law.  Perhaps Henry VII decided that it was better to keep your (innocent) enemies close to you rather then have them holed up on a far-distant Cornish island? Lady Catherine went on to marry a further three husbands and died a peaceful death in 1537 – many many years after her adventures with the Tudor Pretender, Perkin Warbeck.

Was Warbeck Richard, Duke of York?…  Who knows!  But who-ever he was, my husband, child and I thoroughly enjoyed our trip to St Michael’s Mount on St Piran’s Day.

The Castle on St Michael’s Mount

The perilous staircase up to the castle on St Michael’s Mount.
Whenever the castle was besieged throughout the centuries,
the poor troops had to run up these stairs to storm the castle!

The view from the top of St Michael’s Mount’s castle

One of the early-modern canons, now (strangely!)
trained on the amphibious boat used to transport modern-day
residents and visitors to the island

Looking down the canon into the bay

The canons on St Michael’s Mount

The ancient causeway totally under the water of high-tide
but visible from the top of St Michael’s Mount

Medieval stained glass windows from Bruges in the
Chevy Chase room, St Michael’s Mount

The medieval church of St Michael’s Mount

Medieval stained glass in the church of St Michael’s Mount

A medieval religious object within the church of St Michael’s Mount

Re-enacting Perkin Warbeck leaving St Michael’s Mount?
Or King Canute trying to drive back the waves?

Postscript
Home educating a year on, it is somewhat strange that I have ended up teaching my special educational needs child about life and the universe in the very area where the controversial councillor, Collin Brewer, proclaimed that special educational needs children need ‘putting down’. Mr Brewer, if you are reading this, come spend a day (or two) with me and my child whilst I home educate him, and tell my child to his face that he needs putting down. Or alternatively, do some good by showing my child (and me) that you lofty councillors do care about some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Mr Brewer, come listen to the story of my child and my fight for him to have a basic human right: a school education. I promise you, our story will make you weep.

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall
– School Trip Friday – Messages from England’s Roman Past
– School Trip Friday – What did the Roman’s ever do for us?

© Essex Voices Past 2013.

According to Monty Python’s view of the Romans, they didn’t do an awful lot for anyone – except, of course:
– Aquaducts
– Sanitation
– Roads
– Irrigation
– Medicine
– Education
– Wine
– Public Baths
– Safe to walk in the streets at night
– Keeping order
– Brought Peace

Whilst our School Trip Friday to Hadrian’s Wall and its surrounding forts didn’t let us confirm or disprove all of Monty Python’s suggestions listed above, we were able to consider some.  So here are our final batch of photos from our trip to Hadrian’s Wall which we visited as part of my son’s programme of home education.  And here is our view of What did the Romans ever do for us?

Sanitation and latrines

Housesteads Roman Fort latrines in 2012

The latrines in use by the Roman soldiers.  Wooden boards with holes in them were placed over the gullies.  In the centre were stone water-troughs and sponges for the soldiers to use to clean themselves.  This looks to be very much a communal manly event!

Roman Baths

The bath-house at Chesters Roman Fort

The Romans placed their bath-house well-away from the main fort because it had to have furnaces capable of producing the high temperatures required for the baths, saunas and hot rooms.   Therefore the risk of fire was great and so the bath-house was built separate from the fort.

Chesters’ bath-house is on the river-bank alongside the River Tyne.  Hadrian’s Wall continues to snake through the countryside on the other-side of the river.  There was a Roman bridge across the river, but this was washed away during the Roman times and not rebuilt.

The waiting/relaxing area in the baths.  Statues of various Roman gods and godesses were probably in each of the alcoves.

How many sandalled Roman soldiers walked on this step into the next room whilst relaxing and enjoying their baths?  Although they were naked in the baths, it is very likely that they had wear sandals because of the heat and high temperatures pouring from the floors.

What else did the Romans do for us?
I could show you many more photos from our time at Hadrian’s Wall and the Roman Forts – including all the underfloor heating systems, the large stores built to hold all the grain in the fort, and the Roman town of Corbridge.  However, so I don’t bore you, instead I’ll show you what else we learnt during our trip.  Now, strictly speaking the Romans didn’t do this for us, but during our trip we had a maths lesson and so learnt the complex calculations needed for flying a kite.  Easy-peasy, you may think, but flying a kite is very mathematical with factors such as wind speed, length of the kite’s tail, thickness of the material and weight of the kite.  At the end of our kite-flying session, we wrote a report about our experiences.

Birdoswald Roman Fort – Hadrian’s Wall is the stone-work on the right side of the photo

Flying high!

Our second kite – this one was too small and too light.  This was the highest we got it.

Once we got home, our learning about the Romans continued by making a Roman mosaic.  We cheated and didn’t do it the good old-fashioned Roman way of individually cutting each piece but, instead, bought a kit from Vindolanda’s wonderful gift-shop.

Mosaic half finished.  This is more difficult than it looks!  The tiles were already pre-cut into small squares but then we had to trim them into shape.  Not easy for a child with severe developmental coordination disorder!  Because of the risk of him losing fingers, the task of cutting and shaping the tiles fell to me.  This is still work-in-progress and will hopefully be completed over Christmas.

We also bought a (modern-day) Roman dice game ‘Quinquereme‘ – an ideal introduction into the complexities of calculating with Roman numerals.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our School Trip Friday to Hadrian’s Wall
and here is a photo of your guides,
taken when we were at Housesteads Roman Fort.
Venimus Vidimus Vicimus

All photos are © Essex Voices Past 2012 and
may not be reproduced without permission.

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall
– School Trip Friday – Messages from England’s Roman Past

Last week’s School Trip Friday post told the story of our visit to Hadrian’s Wall – a trip to help my son, who has special educational needs, learn about the Romans.  This week’s School Trip Friday post continues that story and tells of our visits to the multitude of Roman remains which are nearby the Hexham section of the Wall.

This large boulder is by Hadrian’s Wall on the Steel Rigg to Sycamore Gap section.  The boulder has a perfectly smooth Roman-bottom shaped indentation. How many poor frozen Roman soldiers stole a few minutes rest on this stone?

Vindolanda Roman Fort
Vindolanda pre-dates Hadrian’s Wall by  a few years – the first wooden fort was built at Vinolanda in c.85 AD, whereas the Wall was built c.122 AD.  The fort was an auxiliary frontier fort built to guard Stanegate, the Roman road from the River Tyne in the east to the Solway Firth in the west.  It was occupied for some three hundred years and was inhabited by various units of soldiers (known as cohorts).

The view of Vindolanda Roman Fort from the nearby hilltops. The fortification is a modern-day reconstruction of one of Hadrian’s Wall milecastles.

Modern-day memorial to the various cohorts of Roman soldiers who lived, fought and died at Vindolanda between 85AD and 400AD.  The S.P.Q.R. means Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (“The Senate and People of Rome”).

From exploring this fort, my son (and I!) learnt that the soldiers lived in barracks – all built in strict straight lines with typical Roman efficiency.  The site’s archaeologist told us how on one of the excavations, they found under the Roman floor level in one of the barracks , the remains of a female thought to be about 10 years old.  We can only guess at the horrors of why and how her life ended and her body then concealed.

Vindolanda’s modern day reconstructions of a milecastle and fortification from Hadrian’s Wall.  The building on the left is wooden, whilst the one of the right is stone.  Archaeologists are using these reconstructions to help them analyse and understand how environmental factors influenced the longevity and durability of the various structures built in this area during Roman times.

The view from the top of the stone reconstructed fort.  The mid-day sun casting the shadow of the wooden fort across the landscape of Vindolanda. Our visit took place the weekend before all the November storms that have recently lashed across Britain – we were lucky and had bright sunshine with no rain at all during the entire weekend.

Vindolanda and their messages from the past
The museum at Vindolanda is a treasure trove of the Romans’ time on our shores with exhibits of some incredible ‘finds’ dug up from the site. Most remarkable of all are the ‘Vindolanda Tablets’, written nearly two thousand years ago in the years 100-105 AD by the fort’s occupants and found by archaeologists in the 1970s and 1980s.  Written in ink on wafer-thin postcard-sized pieces of alder and birch, these tablets give a remarkable peek into the life of Romans within the fort.   Most of these tablets are now in the British Museum, but some have now been returned home to Vindolanda and are displayed in the site’s museum.

Vindolanda Tablet 291: This is a birthday party invitation from Claudia Severa (wife of Aelius Brocchus, commander of an unnamed fort near Vindolanda) to Sulpicia Lepidina (wife of Flavius Cerialis, commander at Vindolanda).  This letter was written partly by a scribe but also includes part of the message written in Claudia’s own hand.  This is the oldest surviving writing of a Roman woman found in Britain (so far!).

The Roman soldiers and their money
Roman soldiers were handsomely paid for their services.  The money was kept (probably in a large chest) within the underground strong room of the fort.  It is likely that the Roman standards were also kept either in the strong room or nearby.  The Roman Standard was an important symbolic part of the Roman forts and towns – if a Standard was lost, then it would mean certain death for the man who carried it (aquilifer).

Strong-room at Vindolanda fort – by the shape of it, this must have been a fairly large underground room.

Strong-room at Chesters Roman Fort.

Strong-room at Corbridge Roman town.

The stairs down into Corbridge’s strong-room.  The width of each tread is only about half my foot’s length – I felt very sorry for the poor sandalled Roman soldiers who had to make their way up and down these dark stairs!

All photos (except the Vindolanda tablet) are
© Essex Voices Past 2012 and
may not be reproduced without permission.

Links which may interest you
– Roman Vindolanda and Roman Army Museum
– Holiday cottage owned by Vindolanda Trust (we stayed here and highly recommend it)
– Vindolanda Tablets Online

And for educational fun
– What have the Romans ever done for us?  Monty Pythons’ take on the Romans

As my child finds reading very difficult and a chore, these audio books and dvds have been an excellent introduction for him into the world of the Romans.
– Rotten Romans – Horrible Histories
– Tony Robinson’s Weird World of Wonders, Romans
– Roman Myths (BBC Audiobook)
– Hadrian’s Wall: A Journey Back in Time DVD by English Heritage

Postscript
Visiting Hadrian’s Wall along with the remarkable remains of long-gone Romans has brought out the forgotten archaeologist in me.  Many years ago, before I ended up with an office-based career in London, I was a very keen amateur archaeologist and spent many a happy summer digging an Iron Age and Neolithic hill-fort at Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire.  Just maybe I didn’t hang up my trowel all those years ago and the lure of literally digging up our past is returning back to haunt me. Don’t be at all surprised if one School Trip Friday is a report about going on an archaeological dig – mother & small son!

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings
– School Trip Friday – Hadrian’s Wall

In a previous School Trip Friday post, I have told the story of how it came about that I am currently home educating my 8 year old son and on a Friday we spend the day searching out our country’s wonderful rich history and geography.  Now we have a few School Trip Fridays under our belt, it was time to adventure a bit further a field.

This School Trip Friday took place last week and turned out to be a School Trip Long Weekend – from Friday to Monday.  We headed out through Great Dunmow and the flat Essex countryside into the Cambridgeshire Fens and then onwards and upwards to the stunning rugged beauty of Northumbria.  Our destination was the iconic stone barrier running between the Solway in the west and the Tyne in the east – now known as Hadrian’s Wall.  Built by the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, in the second century AD, the wall was not so much to keep out the Picts (as is the common myth) but more as a symbol to show that the Romans were here and here to stay.

We saw so much, did so much, and investigated so much that this particular School Trip Friday will have to be split into several posts.  This first post is of a small part of Hadrian’s Wall near Steal Rigg.

Come join us for our School Trip Friday to Hadrian’s Wall.

Map of Hadrians Wall and Antonine Wall (Matthew Paris c1250)

The rugged landscape of Hadrian’s Wall running alongside Crag Lough.

Contemplating the fact that we were down the bottom and had to be up there.  Also time to explore how echoes work and how loud you have to shout to produce a magnificent rebounding sound!

Hadrian’s Wall running off upwards into the distance.  The wall becomes a reasonably modern farmer’s dry stone wall half way up, then continues on as Hadrian’s Wall.

The long and winding road

Hadrian’s Wall and a small fortification to the side of it.
This is not thought to be a milecastle.

The perilous stone stairs to the top are not known as ‘Cat Stair’s for nothing.  These were, in fact some of the better & safer steps on the climb. The stairs seem to be relatively modernish  – I pity the person who had to build them!

The view from the top looking down to where we once had been.
Hadrian’s Wall snaking off into the distance.  The turf on top of the wall was an early (successful) conservation attempt of the Wall by Victorian land owner, antiquarian, and town clerk, John Clayton.
Good solid Roman engineering.  Each stone perfectly shaped by hand and precisely placed into position using the same style that we see in modern-day brickwork.  Built for strength and durability – the Wall has already lasted for nearly 2,000 years. What did the Romans ever do for us?…

Tiny tiny alpine flowers growing all along the wall.

Father and son enjoying their home education.

Today’s post is dedicated to the team at SEN Legal – whose tireless work on my son’s educational future means that ultimately he will get the correct education he so desperately needs.

In the meantime…. long live School Trip Fridays!

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford
– School Trip Friday – Of Cabbages and Kings

As the days grow shorter and the nights become longer, our School Trip Fridays sometimes have to be done in the comfort of our home in front of a roaring log fire.  Even though we can’t get out and head for the hills, the computer is still switched off and our own unique style of learning about our country’s great heritage continues.

As an amateur historian, I am a firm advocate of our English heritage.  However, to understand our rich past, I feel that we have to have ‘pegs’ on which we can hang our historical information. For example, if you are looking at a grand half-timbered English building, how can you say ‘this is a beautiful Tudor building’ when you don’t know roughly what period ‘Tudor’ is!  Is Tudor before or after Georgian?  Is Regency 100 years ago or 500 years ago? Where do Victorians’ ‘Morals and Values’ come into all of this?…  Without realising it, we unconsciously use language about our rich past in our daily live. So what better ‘pegs’ are there then the long timeline of English/British monarchs!

However, because of my child’s complex educational needs, it is pointless me ‘teaching’ kings and queens in a traditional (or should I say, old-fashioned!) way.  I can’t quote facts and figures to him, and expect them to be regurgitated back to me parrot style.  For one, his poor memory means he won’t be able to do that with any level of success and for another, what’s the point in him learning meaningless information that has no relevance to him!  Our learning has to be hands-on, interactive and participative for both him and me.

And for a small child who loves collecting Top Trump cards, football cards and what-ever cards the local newsagent currently has in stock, what can be more interactive and hands-on then looking at the beautifully drawn and illustrated postcards and cigarette cards of a hundred years ago.  Our great-grandparents’ equivalent of pre-computer multi-media and Top Trumps game-cards!

So last week’s School Trip Friday was spent looking at images of the kings of England between 1066 and 1485 from the exquisitely illustrated set of postcards made by Tuck in 1902 and the handsome 1935 cigarette cards from Players.  What can be more beguiling and magnetic to a small child who can barely read and write then such fine pictures! (Sadly, our only medieval Empress/Queen Matilda was not acknowledged in either set.)

Raphael Tuck’s Kings and Queens of England postcards (1902) – Normans to Plantagenets

Player’s Kings and Queens of England cigarette cards (1935) – Normans to Plantagenets

History is all about the telling of stories from our past, and the picture below shows all the characters from one of the more murkier tales from English history.  By using these 5 cards, I was able to retell to my child the story of intrigue, treachery, treason and murder – and the last English king to die in battle.  And then bring that narrative right up to date with this summer’s remarkable discovery in a car park in Leicester.   But who was the villain of this story – the first of the Tudors, or the last of the Plantagenets?  Henry or Richard?  I know what we decided… How about you?

I asked my child who was his favourite king from all of the cards of Norman and Plantagenet kings.  My academically challenged child replied ‘whoever invented the longbow’.  Whilst he didn’t invent the longbow, this naturally brought us on to Henry V and Agincourt and watching the battle scenes from the BBC’s recent wonderful production of Shakespeare’s Henry V.  Very naughtily, I also told my child about the legend of the longbow archers and how it came about that the English always stick two-fingers up to their enemies.  History doesn’t have to be dry and dusty, our children can be taught the naughtier bits too – even if it might not be entirely true and more myth then fact!

Is my child academically challenged or a child whose school-teachers totally failed to engage him with traditional teaching methods?

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings.”

The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell
– School Trip Friday – Imperial War Museum Duxford

Today’s school trip Friday was to the remarkable Imperial War Museum at Duxford, Cambridgeshire – home to hundreds of aircraft from both the First and Second World Wars, along with other military vehicles such as tanks, ambulances, and anti-aircraft guns.

Below are planes from the Battle of Britain now kept at Duxford.

Below are planes from the American Air Museum at Duxford

Along with considering the aircraft on display, today’s visit sparked a great deal of conversation from my child about the Second World War.  In particular, our discussions centred around life in Britain on the home front during the Second World War.  To support some of our discussions about life in Britain, we looked at cigarette cards in my collection – Churchman’s Air-Raid Precautions.  The date of these cards is 1938 – a year before the outbreak of war in September 1939.

A garden dug-out

A chain of buckets

Incendiary bomb cooling down

A first aid party

We also considered Second World War propaganda posters – particularly those by the cartoonist Fougasse and his series Careless talk costs lives.

You may also be interested in
– School Trip Friday – Weald and Downland Open Air Museum
– School Trip Friday – Chapel of St Peter’s on the Wall, Bradwell