Phoebe
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Cemeteries
We previously looked at the earliest known death rituals of the first settled communities at the end of the last glacial period in areas such as the Levant, Catalhoyuk and so on. We are also fully aware of the astonishing impact of the Egyptian Pyramids and surrounding tombs. Britain’s earliest known cemeteries were arguably Bronze Age and Iron Age Barrows, stone built cairns, and cists, fragmentary burials in famous sites such as Stone Henge, and sacrificial “bog-bodies”. In the 18th Century, allegedly there was found the oldest British example of a dedicated cemetery in a narrow gorge in Somerset, locally known as Aveline’s Hole, where up to 100 neatly aligned…
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Andrew Jackson, Nathan Forrest and statues…
So today’s effort is a bit of a mixed bag, expect some meandering of thought. Jump on, enjoy the ride. You may have heard in the news over the last few days that the Statue of Andrew Jackson in New Orleans in Jackson Square, is under threat from protesters calling themselves ‘Tear ‘Em Down New Orleans’, a group working in conjunction with Black Lives Matter, in a roundabout way, to push through action on votes that passed motion to reposition four statues of controversial historical figures who are in a modern context associated with some degree of white supremacy. Now we have an invisible set of boundaries here at Naked…
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Battle of Branxton (Flodden) – 1513
It was early summer 1513, and the 22-year-old King of England, Henry VIII, had travelled with the bulk of his Southern armies to France, in defence of Italy and the Pope, in the siege of Therouanne, part of the War of the League of Cambrai; he fought alongside Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I, against the French King Louis XII. Leaving his Queen, Catherine of Aragon to act as Regent in his absence, he subsequently received a herald with a message that King James IV of Scotland was formally announcing attack (as per the chivalric code of battle) at some point in the near future, as part of his treaty with…
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Oh Brother – Phoebe’s Guide to Monks (Part One)
Now I don’t know about you, but sometimes all this talk of monks and friars and abbeys and canons can sometimes get a little confusing, and that’s BEFORE people start firing… so I have put together a little something to outline the basic differences between them in order to help you distinguish your Blackfriars from your Greyfriars. There have been bodies of monks since around the third to fourth century, originally founded within the Eastern Orthodox Church by Saint Pachomius under the inspiration of Saint Anthony the Great in Egypt. To begin with these monks spread through Palestine, Judea, Syria and North Africa. St Basil of Caesarea solidified their orders…
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Henry Moseley – Periodic Table
Henry Gwyn Jeffries Moseley was born in Dorset in November 1887. His parents were Anabel Gwyn Jeffreys, daughter of biologist John Gwyn Jeffreys, and Henry Nottidge Moseley, biologist, anatomist and physiologist who was part of the Challenger expedition of the 1870s, which circumnavigated the world and discovered thousands of previously unknown marine species. After spending his early years at Summer Field School, Henry (known as Harry to his friends) was offered a scholarship to Eton, where he went on to win Chemistry and Physics prizes in 1906 before successfully gaining entry to Oxford later that year. Sadly, as a result of a severe bout of hayfever, he did not perform…
