Tag: Coventry

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meet ups

A friendly meeting with long term Facebook friends…

I have just got home from a dinner at the Old Mill in Baginton where I met a long term Facebook friend from Sardinia. Massimiliano Schirru and I have been friend on Facebook for over ten years and the other day I thought I would give him a call to have a chat. It turns out that his English is far better than my Italian and we talked about his Roman Fort and upcoming visit to the UK. Obviously I invited him to Coventry.

Our guest is in the enviable position of owning his own Roman Fort which took up most of the conversation. We discussed the Lunt Roman Fort and the challenges facing the heritage industry. Max is well connected in the heritage industry and I learned a lot about German and Polish Roman Forts which operate in the same way as his own and Lunt. At eight I waved him off wishing him a happy time in Britain taking in our Roman inheritance.

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church crawling

The Old Cathedral of St Michaels, Coventry

Coventry is blessed with cathedrals (Cathedra?) in that it has three of them. Of the first only a few ruins remain and of the third it stands but the third remains a ruin in memory of the Coventry Blitz of November 1940.

St Michaels was built in the between the 14th and 15th centuries in impressive red sandstone. The spire is the third highest in England and the choir sat on meisercords showing the famous Dance of Death. Nothing remains of these carvings beyond an account held by the city archives. It was an impressive Gothic church covered in carvings with wonderful stained glass windows. It was raised to Cathedral status in 1918 and served in that capacity till its destruction in the 1940s.

In 1940 it was destroyed during the Coventry Blitz by incendiary bombs. In an act of defiance against the Nazi hate Provest Richard Howard had the words “Father Forgive” inscribed behind the alter and used his Christmas address (Christmas Underfire), broadcast which was recorded in the bombed out ruins, to the world, to call for peace and reconciliation.

Housed in the ruins are the Coventry Blitz museum which I regard as one of the two second best museums in Coventry. A wonderful collection in an intimate space, well worth a visit.

The ruins of the Cathedral are a meditative and reflective space remaining holy ground and a national monument not to war or reprisal but to reconciliation and peace. If you’re visiting Coventry the Cathedral ruins are well worth a trip.

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The Phil Silvers Archival Museum, Coventry

One of the best museums in Coventry is the Phil Silvers Archival Museum situated in Fargo Village. Fargo is home to a number of great shows, a fantastic barber shop and one of the smallest museums in the world. Size really has very little to do with the success of a museum. I have been to some huge, famous and well funded museums that have left me cold. The Phil Silvers museum is clearly a labour of love that rewards a visit and return visits.

If you are anything like me you grew up watching Bilko on the tv or remember Silvers from his appearance in Carry on “Follow that Camel”. He was a fantastic comic actor whose Phil Silvers show ran for a record breaking forty nine years. Modern admirers include Mark Hamill, Phil Jupiters and many others.

The collection itself is donated largely by the Silvers family and contains personal and professional objects associated with Silvers. These are lovingly displayed in a professional but not cold modern style allowing the visitor to discover them personally making visiting an intimate experience. It’s this personal, intimate and authentic experience that makes the display so effective putting it on a par with the Blitz museum and maybe even the Lunt.

Opening hours are 11am to 5pm Wednesday to Sunday.

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church crawling

Doom Painting, Holy Trinity Coventry

Inside Holy Trinity church in the city centre of Coventry is an impressive Medieval Doom painting. Now, I think that Coventry first should be embarrassed by the amount and quality of Medieval remains there are so many and they are so impressive! The city is crawling with Green Men, wood woses and blood curdling gargoyles but Holy Trinity stands out as a church with everything.

The Doom painting is probably about three hundred years old and was ironically preserved by reformers who painted over it in white wash. It was rediscovered in the Victorian era and restored in the 1990s by specialist restorers who have made this wonderful example of Medieval art accessible for us today. It is moments like this that I live for. I love seeing things that people throughout the past have seen. This links us back to our ancestors who came to this church to practice their religion and be awed by the structure. Imagine living in a one story house outside Coventry in one of the villages. On market day coming into the city, trading, being entertained and then entering Holy Trinity. It is a huge structure made of stone and in the Medieval period reverberating to sung masses. The walls would not be bare but painted and like me, I imagine them staring at the dramatic Doom painting.

The Holy Trinity Doom painting is one of sixty known to exist in the country. It is an allegory of the last day known as Dooms day. This painting shows Christ front and centre, surrounded by the Apostles, raising his pierced hands in judgment, note the book of evidence and the orb symbolising Christs kingship over the world and over the living and the dead. The dead are being raised from their tombs in the left hand corner from which like the living they will have to give an account for their lives. Featured are two scrolls which issue an invitation to the righteous “Come you blessed of my Father” and a command to the damned “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into eternal fire!” Leading the redeemed into heaven is the Pope who enters by the door beside St Peter and Christ whilst Mary the virgin mother of Christ presents a scroll and bears her breast in intercession for the damned. These damned can be seen on the right hand side in chains being led to hells mouth. Some are already there, being licked by flames whilst a group of wealthy women carrying ale jugs are wandering oblivious to the danger hand in hand with the devils to hell.

This gem of the Medieval world can be seen in Holy Trinity Church which opens on a Saturday at 11am. Other sights of interest include a fabulous collection of Meisercords, Green Men and Victorian paintings. Well worth a visit and the evening service is sublime.

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An odd old story about the Old Grammar School

As you all know I am a historian. Part of this involves going to archives and researching. Long before the pandemic I was interested in the Black Death in Coventry.

So I went to the Coventry archives to see what documents they held and discovered that others had done the work for me. The documents relating to the Black Death were well known and commented on.

One set really caught my eye. They were legal documents from 1347 detailing two cases. The first was squatters in houses rented by Eleanor of Aquitaine (yes her, she lived in Coventry) who refused to pay their rent. The second related to the Master of the Hospital (yes those Knights) which was housed in the building where the Old Grammar School is now. One day the Master had been bringing supplies into the city when he was accosted by Richard Prior of the Cathedral and certain Council members who assaulted the Master and stole his supplies.

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Collecting Coventry, an Exhibition

Collecting is something that humans like to do. From the Roman Empire we learn that the Emperors collected dinosaur bones, spider webs and books. I myself have an unnaturally large collection of Warhammer 40K models and from this exhibition we learn that the City of Coventry has been collecting for centuries. The cities collection is spread out over the institutions of the city including the Guild Hall and the Council House but is largely concentrated in the Museum.

Open photo

On Wednesday last I attended the Collecting Coventry Exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry. The Herbert is a dear place to me and I regard it as one of the best museums in Coventry. The founding principal of the museum was that it should house the kinds of work that people would want to see and I don’t think that this exhibition disappoints. With the range of exhibits there is something for everyone. Of particular interest to myself was the Ogden stone found in Coventry. A very mysterious object to be found so far from Scotland and Ireland where they are far more common.

Open photo

The exhibition covers two rooms and is fully accessible with a lift and stairs. It runs till the end of the year and is free to access.

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My Roman Fort

My first job in Coventry was working as a guide at the Lunt Roman Fort in Baginton near Coventry. In all honesty it was a mixed bag as all job are. I have some nice stories and some horrible ones but I think it best to dwell on the good and let the bad fade away. The work was mostly with schools but we also had special schools and sometimes adult learners. One of the most fun days was with the Cambridge Classical Association.

A map of all the different periods of archaeology at the Lunt site. Note that the site was not occupied continuously but repeatedly from the first century to the fourth.

The Lunt Roman Fort is one of the most important Roman sites in the country. It is unique in that it is the only reconstruction in situ, actually using Roman post holes, and the gyrus. The gyrus is a circular feature inside the walls which has been interpreted in various ways. I personally do not agree with the accepted interpretation, a horse training ring, but rather think that it was an enclosure for prisoners.

I had the privilege of meeting Brian Hobley at the Boudica conference which was one of the most exciting moments of my career.

I recently bought this on eBay because I love the Fort and like collecting information about it. Its an excellent report and really puts the vision (never realised) forward that the archaeologists intended.

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This current darkness

I was moved today by the front page of the Spectator that showed the NHS as soldiers in trenches fighting a war. I was incredibly moved by one of my friends who is a radiographer who shaved off his beard so that his PPE would work and I was moved to tears by my own sense of worthlessness in this current crisis.

I am a historian with an interest in literature and philosophy. Quite useless at the best of times but in a hospital even worse that useless, a potential menace. What use is a knowledge of Paelolithic fauna or Bronze Age language in a resuscitation? None. Its like that poster of the little girl asking her father what he did in the Great War for civilisation. I know that it is shameless emotional blackmail but what am I doing for civilisation during this six months of lockdown?

I am reminded of a lecture delivered by CS Lewis during the Second World War to humanity students who were wondering if there were any point learning about Anglo-Saxons during wartime. Lewis argued that wartime and peace time were in fact the same. The only difference is that in wartime it is impossible to forget the truth that everyone dies in the end. In peace time you can forget that, you can forget that our society and culture is finite and you can forget the sheer unfairness of the universe. During wartime these truths bear down on us to the exclusion of all else.

My knowledge therefore is equally redundant during a Corona lockdown or during freedom. It is equally valid as well. Peace and war are the same and so should be my attitude to my discipline. Which leads back to my last post, what is the point of history? The point of history is to inform, entertain, educate and see the world through different eyes. To liberate the individual from the pressure of the now and take a wider perspective. My house built in the 1930s was bombed in the war, stands on a deer park owned by the Black Prince and is in striking distance of a Roman Fort built after the Boudican revolt. The purpose of history is to show a bigger and wider world and get in some of the sap that human life is built on.

When my friend shaved his beard I did the same. I now go shopping for my elderly neighbours and enjoy my daily walk around the Quint. Now I feel a bit less useless in that I can see a role for my discipline in the current darkness and I will leave you with a quote from one of my favourite Anglo-Saxon poets (credited with Beowulf by Tolkien, maybe with a smile) “..this too will pass.”