Historytalker
Legendary Stones: OS Grid Reference – NO 36312 09667 Getting Here Travelling South along the A916 just past Craigrothie, turn right down to Chance Inn, and turn left at the T junction. and follow the road on to just past the left hand bend when Waltonhill Farm will be seen on the right. The Stones […]
via Samson’s Stones, Waltonhill Farm, Craigrothie, Fife — The Northern Antiquarian
Greek and Roman antiquities – Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York City All photos by Heather Bean.
Discover Caludon Castle Ruins in Coventry, England: This ruin in a suburban park may be the place where Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was first performed. — Read on http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/caludon-castle-ruins
via Caludon Castle Ruins – Coventry, England – Atlas Obscura — John Barleycorn
In the past writers have described the Goonhilly Downs on the Lizard peninsula as a bleak, remote and wild. It was once said to be the haunt of notorious highway men and travellers often complained of disorientating drifts of fog. But the day I visited the downs were beautiful. The only drifts were of pink…
via The Dry Tree Menhir – the Goonhilly Downs standing stone — The Cornish Bird
You might say that this post is a little bit overdue. When I visited the stone circles in The Gambia, West Africa however, back in 2007, I didn’t have this outlet to describe and share what I had seen. Wassu Stone Circles: Credit Richard Williams The stones circles of the Gambia and Senegal are a…
via The Stone circles of The Gambia, West Africa — The Cornish Bird
The narrow lane to Boleigh fogou takes you by surprise. Tucked away on a bend, just after the turning to Lamorna Cove, the entrance is narrow and one side lined with large granite boulders. Up until yesterday I had never been here before. The fact that you must pre-arrange a time to come and see…
The artistic community in Cornwall is thriving. Drawn to the county by the dramatic coastal scenery, the strong creative atmosphere and the famous clarity of the light, there are more artists here than in any other area of the country outside of London. And that pull has been felt for more than 200 years. Here…
via Turner in Cornwall – Follow in the artist’s footsteps — The Cornish Bird
This beutiful image I stole from the British Museum Pin Interest page. I think it is facinating.
I showed it to a nurse who specialises in teaching breast feeding who told me that it was really well observed. Although the, and here words fail me I dont know what to call a baby centaur fowl? baby? Bawl?, is in the wrong position to feed the centaur herself is holding her breast in the correct way. So the breast position is correct and well observed. Its obvious that the artist has seen successful breast feeding and I suggest that this shows that breast feeding in the Medieval period was far more normalised than in the modern period.
My second observation is that this is a very beutiful centaur, far more actractive than the Greek ones I saw in the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge. I note that her foreleg is held high as if she were doing dressage. A beutiful horse and a beutiful angel like face.
The first thing to know about the Herbert undercroft is that it is not an undercroft. An undercroft is a ‘warehouse’ or storeroom, sometimes underground. The example of at the Herbert is underground but was not initially intended as a storeroom.
What we are looking at is a room that can be divided easily into a shop and workshop. It has a beautiful vaulted ceiling and two doors. The first comes in off the street and the second goes into the property so the owner of the shop can access the living quarters. I would expect that any apprentices would live downstairs in the shop.
On the south side wall is a huge window. It is now bricked up but once would have been paned with horn. There is another small window outside in the corridor.
In the 15th century, Coventry was a very important city. I can not stress how important it was. The court was held here and so a lot of money was spent on consumer goods. These had to come from somewhere and the Herbert undercroft was a workshop and shop selling belts. The owner of the shop worked downstairs at street level and lived with his family on the second floor.
At the time it was above ground. In the last five hundred years, the street level in that part of Coventry has risen by a good eighteen feet. As it did so the windows were bricked up and the shop enclosed. It was now useless as a shop or a workshop so was used as a cellar and in the Victorian period a coal cellar.
During the Second World War, it probably was used as a shelter. It is sobering to realize that the houses above the undercroft were destroyed in the Coventry Blitz but the cellar remained.
Historytalker 