This headdress or crown was found on the head of a warrior buried with his sword and shield. It is made from two sheets of bronze held together with rivets. The bronze band which went around the head is decorated with La Tène-style patterns. The metal was worn directly on the head and not padded or strengthened with leather; when found impressions of human hair were left in the corrosion on the inner surface.
Also found in the grave were: an iron sword with bronze scabbard fittings and suspension rings for holding the sword on a belt; bronze parts from a wooden shield, and a bronze brooch decorated with applied coral studs.
Tyson will attack you if you come within a two-mile stretch of the Grand Union Canal in Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire. Joe Davies learned this the hard way and capsized.
Shieldmaidens are not a myth! A recent archaeological discovery has shattered the stereotype of exclusively male Viking warriors sailing out to war while their long-suffering wives wait at home with baby Vikings. (We knew it! We always knew it.) Plus, some other findings are challenging that whole “rape and pillage†thing, too.
Researchers at the University of Western Australia decided to revamp the way they studied Viking remains. Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. (Female remains were identified by their oval brooches, and not much else.) By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons.
[T]he study looked at 14 Viking burials from the era, definable by the Norse grave goods found with them and isotopes found in their bones that reveal their birthplace. The bones were sorted for telltale osteological signs of which gender they belonged to, rather than assuming that burial with a sword or knife denoted a male burial.
Overall, McLeod reports that six of the 14 burials were of women, seven were men, and one was indeterminable. Warlike grave goods may have misled earlier researchers about the gender of Viking invaders, the study suggests. At a mass burial site called Repton Woods, “(d)espite the remains of three swords being recovered from the site, all three burials that could be sexed osteologically were thought to be female, including one with a sword and shield,” says the study.
Various types of evidence have been used in the search for Norse migrants to eastern England in the latter ninth century. Most of the data gives the impression that Norse females were far outnumbered by males. But using burials that are most certainly Norse and that have also been sexed osteologically provides very different results for the ratio of male to female Norse migrants. Indeed, it suggests that female migration may have been as significant as male, and that Norse women were in England from the earliest stages of the migration, including during the campaigning period from 865.
The Local Government Association recently released to the press a list it compiled of the most unusual Freedom of Information (FoI) requests by borough councils throughout England.
The winner was:
What plans are in place to protect the town from a dragon attack? (Wigan Council)
I’ll come clean, Prior, when we measured up that copy of the eastern transept at Fountains Abbey for you, we didn’t take into account that your church is kind of a completely different width.
Is this going to be a problem?
Well when we put the vault on there might be a teensy teensy mistake.
Is anyone going to notice?
We’ll carve a ring of really nice angels to cover it up.
Clive Aslet, in the Telegraph, reports that today Queen Elizabeth II will be presiding over ceremonies linking today’s Britain with the chivalrous traditions of the Middle Ages.
Foreign tourists in the vicinity of Westminster Abbey today, may be in luck. They’ll glimpse Her Majesty the Queen participating in a ceremony that only enters her diary once every eight years: the Installation of the Order of the Bath.
Like the Woolsack, hunting with hounds and the last of the hereditary peers, it’s a piece of traditional pageantry that escaped the reforming zeal of New Labour – perhaps because it is so arcane that they failed to notice it. Certainly most Britons, were they to see the parade of Knights Grand Cross or Knights Commander (Dames too, now), in their gorgeous crimson satin mantles, freighted with stars and tassels, would be as flummoxed as visitors from overseas.
What’s going on? Can there be any earthly point in such flummery, as the nation – otherwise dressing down on Fridays – struggles with the challenges of modern life?
Scrape beneath the surface and the ritual turns out to be more interesting than one might suspect. As a body of knights, one couldn’t expect them to do much practical defending of the faith. It is one of the few occasions in the year when Her Majesty can be sure of being in the company of distinguished people who make her seem, in comparison with their years, positively youthful.
But the ceremony is also an instance of the British ability to preserve and reinvent tradition. You would have to be a firebrand Roundhead to object to something so abstruse, so harmlessly picturesque as the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. And yet it also serves, however obliquely, as a reminder of the chivalric values that – whether or not doors are still held open for ladies – underpin our sense of public virtue. Does honour mean anything, in these fallen days of cash for questions and parliamentary expenses scandals? It does here.
Republicans might object that today’s ceremony, held in Henry VII’s chapel at Westminster Abbey, where the Sovereign and the most senior Knights and Dames Grand Cross will occupy stalls in the choir, is an anachronism. Of course it is. That is – and always has been – the point about chivalry. Even in the Middle Ages, it was a romantic throwback to a supposed golden age. Washing ceremonies – yes, the Order of the Bath really is to do with bathing, not a place in Somerset – appear at William I’s coronation, but the touchstone of chivalry was located in an era that far predated him.
Our hunting friend from the British Lakeland Fells, Ron Black, forwarded this delightful video of several sessions of pub singing back in 2000 of hunting and humorous songs, doubtless featuring friends and neighbors of his own from the North of England.
The Coppergate helmet (York helmet) was found in May 1982 at a site where many Viking Age artifacts had been discovered previously during the archeological excavations. The Anglo-Saxon helmet was right beneath the surface, protected by a brick chimney above. It was created about AD 750-775 but deposited considerably later: the brass decoration was already worn. There is also evidence of using the helmet in battle. Then someone buried it in a wood-lined pit along with a few other objects. It is unclear why such a fine possession was hidden, but it attracted universal attention after it was struck by the claw of a mechanical digger 28 years ago.
After careful excavation and reconstruction the quality craftsmanship of the Coppergate helmet became evident. It was made of iron, with two cheek-plates and a well-preserved mail curtain. Its characteristic feature is a long nose-guard. Both the guard and the edge of eyebrows are richly decorated with brass ornamentation (tests revealed that it contains about 85 percent copper). The framework of the helmet consists of four main elements: a band of iron encircling the head; the brow band to which another band is riveted, running from front to back over the crown; two shorter bands run over the ears. The four spaces between these bands are filled with triangular plates.
The brass strips running from ear to ear and from front to back bear a Latin inscription that reads: IN NOMINE : DNI : NOSTRI : IHV : SCS : SPS : DI : ET : OMNIBVS : DECEMVS : AMEN : OSHERE : XPI. The last segment of the inscription represents the first three letters in XPICTOC, Christ in Greek. Oshere is an Anglo-Saxon personal name. The initial part of the inscription seems clear: In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and God [the Father]. What follows received various interpretations: …And with all we pray. Amen or: …And to all we say Amen or else: …Let us offer up Oshere to all saints. Amen.
The Coppergate helmet is currently on display at the Castle Museum in York.
Also in the December Maine Antiques Digest Letter from London, sold at the 18-19 September last Sale 1186, the Collection of architect and scholar Professor Sir Albert Richardson, P.R.A., a patriotic Georgian Pearlware chamberpot, painted on the exterior with a band of ochre leaves within brown trailing circular branches and bands, and featuring within a bust of Napoleon accompanied by the motto: PEREAT. Let Him Perish!
The item, Lot 271, estimated to bring £400 – £600 ($610 – $900), actually fetched a whopping price of £6,250 ($10,081), despite a (repaired) crack across, a chip, and more than one riveted repair.
Members of the West Midlands Ledbury Hunt conduct a riding “Hen Do” (female-version of a bachelor party) riding over hunt territory in formal hunt attire, recorded by one of the participants wearing a helmet cam. Go, Bertie!
Sampson Strong, Cardinal Wolsey, 1610, Christ Church College, Oxford.
The Telegraph reports that the successful search for Richard III’s remains is prompting the city fathers of Leicester to promote a search for another lost burial, that of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
Wolsey, a great builder, had arranged for himself a magnificent black sarcophagus in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, but his failure to procure Henry VIII the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon led to Wolsey’s downfall, the confiscation of his properties, and finally to his arrest for treason. He was lucky enough to expire in Leicester of natural causes en route to London for his trial and inevitable execution. Wolsey was consequently buried in the same Leicester Abbey as Richard III, without a monument. The grand sarcophagus eventually went to a more worthy occupant: naval hero Lord Nelson.
City councillor Ross Willmott said: “The discovery of Richard III is wonderful news, yet there remains something of a mystery about what happened to Wolsey, who rivaled Henry VIII in wealth and power and was one of the most significant political figures of the era.
“Arguably, he is far more influential than Richard III. To discover his remains would help tell the story of another historic figure linked to the city.”
“There have been digs over the years to try to find him but they have not succeeded. I would like another go.
“It would bring more tourists to the city and further excite the interest in history and archeology that we are now seeing.”
The churchman, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, died at the town’s abbey, the ruins of which can be seen from the city centre, while travelling to London after being accused of treason when he failed to secure the annulment of the king’s marriage to his first wife Catherine of Aragon.
He served as royal chaplain to Henry VII, who seized the throne after Richard was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.
It is likely he was buried with great ceremony at the abbey but historians think his tomb was destroyed later in Henry VIII’s reign, when abbeys were dissolved in the late 1530s after England’s split with the Catholic Church.
Attempt to locate Wolsey’s remains during digs in 1820 and again in the 1930s drew blanks.
However, Leicester Civic Society chairman Stuart Bailey said: “His bones may have been scattered and any remnants destroyed, but for years they said that about Richard III.
“I think it would be marvellous to have another look. It was a great fluke that Richard was found but we know Wolsey was buried in the Lady Chapel of the abbey church, which is not all that big.”
A furniture retail chain, as a promotion for British furniture, set out to find the oldest piece of furniture still in daily domestic use in Britain.
I don’t suppose their search was absolutely exhaustive, but they did find the Berkeley Bed, listed in a 1608 family inventory, used by 15th generations of the Berkeley family, and still being slept in by John Berkeley, 81, and his wife Georgina, 73, in the Great State Bedroom in Berkeley Castle, site of the presumed murder of Edward II in 1327, and the third oldest continuously-occupied castle in England after the royal fortresses of the Tower of London and Windsor Castle), and the oldest to be continuously owned and occupied by the same family.
Lady Georgina Berkeley testified to the Telegraph that: “Despite its great age, it is the most comfortable bed in the castle.”
