In Lia Leendertz’ lovely ‘The Almanac – A Seasonal Guide to 2022’ she lists the following as in season for foraging:
Crab Apples and sweet chestnuts Roots: Dandelion, horseradish, Jerusalem Artichokes, and wild garlic Wild Greens: chickweed, dandelion, and wintercress Game: Hare, rabbit, pheasant, and venison
Sweet Chestnuts were introduced by the Romans and have long been a feature of Christmas. They can be ‘baked, roasted, boiled or microwaved’. You need to prepare them by scoring a cross in them; otherwise they will explode when cooked. They are often sold by street vendors (there is often a seller on the Millennium Bridge on the way to Tate Modern in London) and, in my family, are always a part of the stuffing for the Turkey. They can also be candied, puréed or stored in syrup. (The Woodland Trust Foraging in November and December).
John Evelyn, the 17th Century Diarist and author of a book on trees (Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber) wrote that the nuts were:
‘delicacies for princes and a lusty and masculine food for rusticks, and able to make women well-complexioned’
He complained that in England they are chiefly given to pigs to eat.
Chestnut meal was also used for whitening linen and for making starch. Marones, imported from Italy, France, Switzerland, and S. Germany contain 15% sugar and so were used to make a thick syrup and a ‘very usable’ sugar, from which Marons Glacés are made.
The wood of the chestnut is very useful and is/was used for building, pit props, furniture, poles for hops etc. but is nowhere near as long-lasting as oak.
Medically, they were used for treating convulsive coughs such as whooping-cough, where the leaves were infused in a pint of boiling water. (A Modern Herbal by Mrs M Grieve)
First Published on 3rd December 2022, Revised and republished in December 2023
Starlings begin to roost in September but their numbers increase as November passes. The RSPB says:
They mainly choose to roost in places which are sheltered from harsh weather and predators, such as woodlands, but reed beds, cliffs, buildings and industrial structures are also used. During the day however, they form daytime roosts at exposed places such as treetops, where the birds have good all-round visibility.
Early evening, up to 100,000 birds will rise above their roosts wheeling and turning in tight formations. Starling numbers have been declining because of ‘loss of permanent pasture, increased use of farm chemicals and a shortage of food and nesting sites in many parts of the UK.’2022 was a particularly bad year but, a count in Brighton in March 2023, suggests numbers were considerable up on 2022. (Starling Numbers Up)
See the above RSPB website for more information which also contains video.
Sacred Birds
Starlings were sacred to the Celts and were used for divination by the Romans – their augurs scrutinised the geometric patterns made by the murmurations to interpret the will of the Gods. In the Welsh Mabinogian a starling appears in the story of Bran, God-King of prehistoric Britain and his sister, Branwen, who was married to the King of Ireland.
To cut a long story short, (a version of which you can read on my February 18th’s blog post here), Branwen was banished to the scullery. So she trained a starling to send a message to her brother. He took an army over the Irish Sea to restore her to her rightful state, but Bran was mortally wounded in the battle that followed. He told his companions to cut off his head and take it back to the White Hill, London. His head was as good a companion on the way back as it was on the way out, but the journey home took 90 years. At last they got to London and his head was buried on the White Hill, near the Tower of London, and as long as it were there Britain was safe from invasion. This was one of the Three Fortunate Concealments and is found in ‘the Triads of the Island of Britain.’
I am giving a Walk on the Myths, legends, and Archaeology of London, for London Walks on 4th February.
Shakespeare and Starlings
Shakespeare in Henry IV Part 1 has Hotspur, annoyed with Bolinbroke say:
I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but ‘ Mortimer,’ and give it him
Now if you think the idea of a talking starling is nonsense have a look at this video.
I was interested in this site because it was one of the many palaces owned by Henry VIII, and it began as a moated manor house before a transition into a small red brick courtyarded Palace, as seen above. Henry had, if my memory serves me well, approximately 57 Palaces and Manor Houses. 16 in the London area and 11 along the River Thames
But what I really liked when I visited the website was the charm of this lovely video by the Enfield Archaeology Society. Now those who know the wonderful TV Sitcom called the ‘Detectorists’ starring Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook, Diana Rigg and others, will recognise the styling of the amateur archaeologists – all looking like rumpled would be Indiana Jones’s! Very English.
Droeshout Portrait of Shakespeare from the First Folio
Four Hundred and One Years ago, on 8th November in 1623, the First Folio was registered at Stationer’s Hall near the publishing district around St Pauls Cathedral in London. It was actually called:
Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies
It was put together by his actor friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell seven years after his death, and they wanted to replace all the corrupt editions of his plays and poems that had been
“stol’n and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by frauds and stealths of injurious impostors”.
The true texts of his plays and poems “are now offer’d to your view cured, and perfect of their limbes; and all the rest, absolute in their numbers as he conceived them.” Wikipedia
In fact, the plays were ready early as they entered in to the catalogues for the Frankfurt Book festival to appear between April and October 1622,- and how amazing is it that, that festival is still the dream of any aspirant writer?
The First Folio offers plenty of proof that Shakespeare was the author of the plays. He left gold rings of remembrance to Heminge and Condell in his Will. They were part of his Players Company, and had worked together on many of the plays. The Folio has forewords by people extolling the virtues of the writer. Enough proof for any reasonable person.
Heminge and Condell are commemorated in the Garden of St Mary Aldermary behind the Guildhall, where they were Churchwardens, and not far from where Shakespeare was living in 1611. True friends.
St Mary Aldermany monument to Shakespeare, Heminge and Condell and the First Folio.
There was a wonderful BBC festival of Shakespeare on in 2023/24 to celebrate. Here:
Electric Mountain Dinorwig Power Station, Llyn Peris (photo: K Flude)
I have revised the post on All Souls’ Day. If you follow the link you will read about ‘Souling’, Purgatory, and English, Mexican and Polish Customs for 2nd November.
But this post is prompted by an interesting article in the Guardian about the Dinorwig Power Station in North Wales. It’s a place I visit regularly. The photograph is from a Medieval Welsh Castle, Dobaldarn Castle, near the National Slate Museum in the new Unesco World Heritage Site of the Slate Landscape of North West Wales. The photo above gives an idea of the majesty of the destructive power of quarrying for slate.
Dobaldarn Castle, North Wales (photo by K Flude)
The Power Station is remarkable. It is a huge cavern in the mountain. When the National Grid has a lot of cheap energy, water is pumped to the top, and when electricity is in short supply, the water runs turbines to provide extra power. It is, in effect, a giant battery, and what makes it even more worthy of a part in a James Bond film is that it has the capability of initiating a Black Start to the Grid. If some cosmic catastrophe turns off the entire grid, Dinorwig can restart the Grid.
The article in the Guardian has some great pictures of it and the text is very interesting. You might want to start reading a third of the way down the article which has a long preamble.
I have just given a guided walk and a virtual tour of London in the prehistoric period. I rashly promised, as follow-up, a booklist. I have many books that I have found pivotal in shaping my own opinions, but I find myself very reluctant to recommend them in the light of the remarkable new, and recent, DNA discoveries.
The cause of this ‘revolution’ is the Petrous Bone – a small bone in/near the ear from which scientists can extract, without too much damage to ancient skeletons, a reliable source of ancient DNA. Previous studies were done on modern DNA and extrapolating backwards. Now, archaeologists can, relatively cheaply, investigate (and often debunk) archaeological theories about the spread of human cultures.
It is a salutary story. Early archaeologists had, what you might call, a colonial, diffusionist model of the past. So when a new culture was identified, normally on the back of the arrival of a new form of pottery. It was interpreted as being spread by diffusion, normally from the ‘civilised’ fertile crescent to barbaric pre-literate Europe. Hence, Stonehenge was thought to be built by a prince from Mycenae, on the basis of the Lion Gate in Mycenae having vague similarities with the Trilithons at Stonehenge (and other diffused cultural markers). And with a viewpoint, that the uncivilised Britons would not be able to build something so amazing!
Archaeologists in the 1970s rejected this imperialist model and preferred to think that cultures need not depend on advances from their betters, nor should ‘invasion’ be allowed to be the main means of technical and cultural advancement. The advent of Radio Carbon Dating profoundly affected how the past was dated, and showed that diffusionist chronologies, often, did not stand up. And thus Stonehenge was freed from cultural imperialism, and we Brits could take all the credit. And Prehistory lost a whole host of ‘invasions’ and ‘migrations’, and a start was also made on diminishing the centrality of the ‘invasions’ at the core of the Anglo/Saxon/Viking migrations into Briton.
Along comes the petrous bone and the development of the study of Ancient DNA, and we discover, in the last couple of years, that:
Farming was indeed introduced from the Continent, around 4000BC and the DNA of the UK was largely (but not completely) replaced by incomers. So it was not the Mesolithic hunter gathers who adopted farming but the ‘Western Neolithic’ people who settled bringing in sheep, cows, goats, pigs, wheat, oats, rye, barley, polished axes and pottery.
The Beaker Folk, DNA now tells us, came from abroad around 2,500 BC. Originally from the Steppes via the Netherlands, and their DNA replaced all but 10% of the Western Neolithic DNA. This happened at about the same time as Stonehenge was remodelled with the giant Trilithons.
So we now have at least 3 major population replacements before the coming of the Romans, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Very annoying to find that those old-fashioned imperial archaeologists of the early 20th Century had it more correct than the enlightened archaeologists of the Late 20th Century.
View of London from the SE as it might have looked before the Roman Invasion
So to my book list. Firstly, you will have noted above that I have linked the stories to reliable websites, so you can get further information. Here are a few other important websites:
As to books, I suggest the best start is to read Mike Parker Pearson’s ‘Stonehenge A Brief History, Bloomsbury Academic 2023’ because it is up-to-date and Pearson has considered the DNA studies noted above.
For similar reasons and for a more general introduction to Britain in the Prehistoric period, you could try:
Roberts, Alice ‘Ancestors: A Prehistory Of Britain In Seven Burials ‘ Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd 2022
which has good reviews, but I have not yet read it.
I know that neither is about London, but the only ‘book’ on Prehistoric London I have is:
Merriman, N ‘Prehistoric London’ Museum Of London, 1991
And this is more of a booklet than a full academic book. There is another book, but then it was published in 1914:
Prehistoric London : its mounds and circles / by E.O. Gordon ; with appendices by John Griffith. Volume c.1 1914
For the period just before the Roman Invasion, I would highly recommend reading Julius Caesar’s opinions on Prehistoric Britain.
Caesar, Julius (ed Anne & Peter Wiseman). ‘The Battle For Gaul’ Chatto And Windus Ltd, London 1989
Peter Wiseman was my Professor at University, and it is an excellent introduction, still available new but also cheaply second hand at Abebooks.
You will find some interesting, relevant passages in my book:
Flude, Kevin ‘In Their Own Words – A Literary Companion To The Origins Of London’ D A Horizons, 2009
You can buy a hardback copy from me for £5 plus postage (email me, kpflude@chr.org.uk) or from Amazon in a Kindle version.
I published the following post about Hardy’s Tree on 28th December 2022. Here, follows the original post and an update which suggests the tree and the gravestones were not erected by Thomas Hardy.
This is the day that Herod ordered the slaughter of the Innocents, or Childermas, and I am glad to see that my Grandson is now older than Herod’s prescription.
Hardy’s Tree in St Pancras Church, Camden, London has fallen down. Hardy was an architect and worked in London for a while, where one of his jobs was to supervise the clearance of the graveyard. Several poems of Hardy refer to the removal of graves from their original positions and in this case, the gravestones were set around an Ash tree that inspires many, including my Central St Martin’s students who used it in a project recently. So, I was shocked to read a Guardian article (since deleted) which noted the sad demise of the Tree.
Extracts from one of several Hardy Poems about moving graves and gravestones follow, but I need to update the post about the connection to Hardy. The Guardian has now got an article which suggests the connection with Hardy is a more recent one than previously thought (Guardian article).
I (and I think the Guardian) were alerted to this by the work of Lester Hillman, who wrote a Churchyard Guide and a recent pamphlet about the Tree, which is reported in ‘Context ISSN 1462-7574’. This is the Journal of the City of London Archaeological Society. Evidence proves that the Ash Tree dates to the 1930s, and that the mound of gravestones is from burials relocated from St Giles in the Fields, and therefore unlikely to have been in St Pancras at the time Hardy was responsible for clearing it.
So it is not ‘the’ Hardy Tree, but then nor was the tree at Sycamore Gap anything to do with Robin Hood. What it was, was a beautiful piece of nature, in a poignant setting. May she rest in peace.
The Levelled Churchyard Thomas Hardy
O Passenger, pray list and catch Our sighs and piteous groans, Half stifled in this jumbled patch Of wrenched memorial stones!
We late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaimed in fear, I know not which I am.
Where we are huddled none can trace, And if our names remain, They pave some path or porch or place Where we have never lain!
Edinburgh from Arthur’s Seat. Castle to the left, St Giles the ’rounded’ spire in the middle, and Salisbury Crags to the right
This is a poem which is ‘printed’ on the side of the Scottish Parliament.
by Hugh MacDiarmid
But Edinburgh is a mad god’s dream Fitful and dark, Unseizable in Leith And wildered by the Forth, But irresistibly at last Cleaving to sombre heights Of passionate imagining Till stonily, From soaring battlements, Earth eyes Eternity
Cotswold Cottage relocated to Dearborn, Michigan, Jan 1931. The Dog is called Rover.
Following my post where I introduced the story of Henry Ford and his visits to Broadway; my subscriber from Paris sent me details that led me to a really comprehensive description of Ford’s activities in the Cotswolds. He loved it so much, as the post from the Henry Ford Museum reveals, that he sent to the US not only a complete Cottage, but also the Barn, Stables and dry stone walling. He then went to stay in the Lygon Arms in Broadway; visited nearby Snowshill, where a dilapidated Blacksmith Shop dating to the 1600s with all its tools was purchased and sent to the Museum in Michigan.
Snowshill Blacksmith shop dating to the 1600s taken to the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan
Here is the post – it has lots of interesting photos.
Screen Shot of the Virtual Tour of the Sir John Soane Museum
The Sir John Soane Museum is my second favourite London Museum. It’s the place I choose to take people who don’t know London. What I like about it is the atmosphere. It’s not a place I go because of the collection, it’s a place I go because I’m just awestruck when I enter the doors.
Architect Soane, made a Museum of his house, filling it with architectural and sculptural pieces but also some stupendous Art, particularly paintings by William Hogarth. But that isn’t my motivation to keep going back. It’s the Picture Room (and the domed ceilings). Soane had a great collection of paintings, but not enough walls. What he did was to design the Paintings Room. When you visit you go in, admire the paintings on the wall, and the attendant comes in, opens a shutter, and behind the great paintings are another wall of great paintings. And then he opens another set of shutters, and there, is another feast for your eyes.
Now, they have made high quality digital images of the rooms, and put them together using photogrammetry into a digital model which you can explore.
So, feast your eyes on it here: (choose Picture Room from the three options).
It’s not quite as user-friendly as it might be. Firstly, when the tour delivers you to the Picture Room, you have to take over control to go in and explore the 360 degree image of the room. Unfortunately, the pictures are not clickable, so you cannot get information about them from here. Also, the ‘hot spots’ which allow you to open the shutters, only reveal themselves, on my computer, if you approach them at a certain angle.
But don’t let this put you off, I’m sure you will find your way around. So go into the Room, look around, move the cursus, and you will see little signs pop up which open and close the shutters. Really, do try it! There are a couple of other rooms to explore too.
Oh, and the Dome Ceilings? Soane was a specialist in buildings that didn’t want windows in normal places. He was the architect of the Bank of England where windows in the walls were a security risk, and also of London’s first purpose built art gallery – the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Windows reduced the space for paintings, so he designed special low domed ceilings, and the Soane Museum is full of his experimentation in the form.
Scara Brae Three D Model
Another delight is the 3D model of Scara Brae which allows you to explore the Neolithic village, and walk around it. There are labels on this one, so you do get information too.
360 Degree Panorama Virtual Tours. My part in their development.
I was an early adopter of this form of virtual reality, setting up virtual tours of the Old Operating Theatre Museum in the 1990’s. I have a draft post of this which I have been awaiting time to finish, which I hope to finish soon….
Thanks to the Museum’s Journal article on Photogrametry of May/June 2022 for the two examples above.
