Tudortastic » History News

Westminster Abbey’s junk room has the best view in Europe

happyhelen — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:29:43 +0000

From the Telegraph:

You may remember the wedding we had here in April,” says the Very Rev Dr John Hall, Dean of Westminster, standing on a gallery 70ft above the Abbey floor. “Well, this is where the cameras were.”

Two bland bars of scaffolding mark the spot from where images of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were broadcast to two billion viewers worldwide. Someone has chalked up the word “pulpit”, with a helpful arrow. Follow it downwards and the vertiginous view of the Abbey is still, as Sir John Betjeman recognised, the best in Europe. Yet turn around, and you’re standing in a dusty old junk room of rusty ladders and hidden treasures – and very few people have seen either these or the view for themselves.

Dr Hall wants that to change. He is currently spearheading an ambitious £12 million project to turn the triforium, as this first-floor space above the nave is known, into a public museum by 2016. On Monday the project received a boost when the Prince of Wales became patron of the fund-raising appeal.

There’s still rather a lot of work to do. Architects will have to start by designing an external lift – access to the triforium is currently via a shabby, private door in Poets’ Corner in the south of the Abbey, under the bust of Ben Jonson. Seventy-six windy stone steps, punctuated by intriguing signs such as “To library roof”, bring you panting to the top. Once there, you’re met by a not-entirely-welcome blast of hot air from the Victorian heating pipes.

You’d run up those stairs a dozen times, though, as the triforium actually offers several of the best views in Europe. There’s the classic BBC one, of course, straight back down the aisle towards the west door. But there’s also a unique perspective immediately below on the beautiful Cosmati Pavement, fashioned from Purbeck marble in the 13th century and restored last May. Move 30 paces north on the spacious balcony and you’re offered a stunning angle on Wilberforce, Gladstone and both Pitts. Or turn your gaze east, out of a window filtering dappled Autumn sunshine, and you can look the Palace of Westminster in the eye.
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BBC History magazine August issue

happyhelen — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 19:52:19 +0000

BBC History Magazine’s August issue is all about TUDORS!!

“In our Tudor special, Professor Eric Ives considers the lasting appeal of England’s most celebrated Royal household, while Tudor historians Anna Whitelock, GW Bernard,Susan Doran, Steven Gunn and Ralph Houlbrooke explain why they believe their choice of king or queen left the greatest legacy.

John K Walton takes a look at Britain’s love affair with the seaside holiday and reveals how growing prosperity and the birth of the railways brought the delights of the coast within the reach of the masses.

Clare Makepeace examines the role of prostitutes and brothels for soldiers during the First World War.

Mike Esbester investigates changes in health and safety messages over the 20th century.

Dr John-Paul Ghobrial looks at early modern British attitudes to Islam and perceptions of Turks during the 17th century.

Jon Stobart describes how bills and account books can reveal fascinating insights about Georgian mansions – from fashionable furniture to expensive soap.

Marc Morris examines eight places linked with Edward I’s brutally thorough subjugation of the Welsh.”

Check out the podcast page for their latest Tudor podcasts!

Tudor coroners’ records give clue to ‘real Ophelia’ for Shakespeare

happyhelen — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 19:09:40 +0000

How coool…

From BBC:

“Dr Steven Gunn has found a coroner’s report into the drowning of a Jane Shaxspere in 1569.

The girl, possibly a young cousin of William Shakespeare, had been picking flowers when she fell into a millpond near Stratford upon Avon.

Dr Gunn says there are “tantalising” links to Ophelia’s drowning in Hamlet.

A four-year research project, carried out by Oxford University academics, has been searching through 16th century coroners’ reports.

These have revealed a treasure trove of information about accidental deaths in Tudor England. The coroners’ reports revealed the story of Jane Shaxspere. But Dr Gunn says they were taken aback to find an account of the death of a girl who might have been a young cousin of her contemporary, William Shakespeare.

“It was quite a surprise to find Jane Shaxspere’s entry in the coroners’ reports – it might just be a coincidence, but the links to Ophelia are certainly tantalising,” he said.

The coroners’ report, originally written in Latin, describes the death of two-and-half-year-old Jane Shaxspere, who drowned picking marigolds in a stream beside a millpond.

The translation of the report records the cause, time and place.

“By reason of collecting and holding out certain flowers called ‘yellow boddles’ growing on the bank of a certain small channel at Upton aforesaid called Upton millpond – the same Jane Shaxspere the said sixteenth day of June about the eighth hour after noon of the same day suddenly and by misfortune fell into the same small channel and was drowned in the aforesaid small channel; and then and there she instantly died.

“And thus the aforesaid flowers were the cause of the death of the aforesaid Jane.”

The biographical gaps in William Shakespeare’s life make it impossible to know if this was the death of a cousin or other relation when the playwright was a boy living in Stratford upon Avon.”

Mary Rose artefact on space shuttle Endeavour

happyhelen — Thu, 26 May 2011 13:43:10 +0000

From BBC news:

“Part of the Mary Rose sail mechanism is being taken into space on the final flight of US space shuttle Endeavour.

The 3in (7.5cm) wooden ball from Henry VIII’s flagship, raised from the Solent in 1981, is on board during the 14-day mission.

The artefact was given to a Nasa crew during a visit to Portsmouth in 2010.

The Mary Rose Trust’s John Lippiett said: “We are thrilled that she will be making history once more on the final mission for Endeavour.”

Endeavour is due to blast off for the International Space Station from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 2047 BST.

The wooden ball, known as a “parrel” continues a tradition of astronauts taking commemorative objects into space.

Mr Lippiett said: “The Mary Rose was as revolutionary in technological advances 500 years ago as the space shuttle was in the early 1980s.

“Both have helped pioneer exploration and advance the sciences.”

A new £36m museum complex to house the hull of Mary Rose and display the artefacts found within the wreck is due to open in autumn 2012.”

Bess of Hardwick’s life of letters to go on display

happyhelen — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:02:54 +0000

From BBC:

“More than 200 letters sent and received by a prominent Derbyshire noblewoman are to be revealed to the public.

Bess of Hardwick, who became the Countess of Shrewsbury in 1568, was regarded as one of the most capable and ambitious women of the Elizabethan age.

The 230 letters have been transcribed by a team of experts at the University of Glasgow.

The exhibition at Hardwick Hall near Chesterfield will allow visitors to see their content for the first time.

The letters include exchanges with friends, lovers, royalty and spies.

Bess of Hardwick married four times before becoming the Countess of Shrewsbury.

In that time she helped build and restore many houses and halls, including the Chatsworth estate in Bakewell.

Troubled marriageOne of her letters deals with the preparation of Tutbury Hall for a visit from Mary, Queen of Scots.

Others provide candid detail about Bess’s troubled marriage to her fourth husband, George Talbot.

Nigel Wright, Hardwick Hall’s collections manager, said: “The nice thing about these letters is that they reveal the real lady.

“She may have been a very rich countess but she still had problems with her children and her final marriage ran into trouble.

“These letters help to humanise the people involved.”"

Did Blood Cause Henry VIII’s Madness and Reproductive Woes?

happyhelen — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 03:20:44 +0000

Henry VIII

From the History Channel:

“Why did Henry VIII have so many wives and mistresses yet so few children? What caused the Tudor monarch’s descent into mental instability and physical agony in the second half of his life? A rare blood group and a genetic disorder associated with it may provide clues, a new study suggests. And, if Queen Elizabeth grants the researchers permission to unearth Henry’s body, definitive answers may be on the horizon.

The life of England’s King Henry VIII a royal paradox. A lusty womanizer who married six times and canoodled with countless ladies-in-waiting in an era before reliable birth control, he only fathered four children who survived infancy. Handsome, vigorous and relatively benevolent in the early years of his reign, he ballooned into an ailing 300-pound tyrant whose capriciousness and paranoia sent many heads rolling—including those of two of his wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

A new study chalks these mystifying contradictions up to two related biological factors. Writing in “The Historical Journal,” bioarchaeologist Catrina Banks Whitley and anthropologist Kyra Kramer argue that Henry’s blood group may have doomed the Tudor monarch to a lifetime of desperately seeking—in the arms of one woman after another—a male heir, a pursuit that famously led him to break with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s. A disorder that affects members of his suspected blood group, meanwhile, may explain his midlife physical and psychological deterioration.

The researchers suggest that Henry’s blood carried the rare Kell antigen—a protein that triggers immune responses—while that of his sexual partners did not, making them poor reproductive matches. In a first pregnancy, a Kell-positive man and a Kell-negative woman can have a healthy Kell-positive baby together. In subsequent pregnancies, however, the antibodies the mother produced during the first pregnancy can cross the placenta and attack a Kell-positive fetus, causing a late-term miscarriage, stillbirth or rapid neonatal death.”

Researchers want to exhume Henry VIII’s body

happyhelen — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:42:44 +0000

From Metro.co.uk:

“The Tudor king married six times and ordered the beheading of two of his spouses – Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

He has long been regarded as a tyrant, but bio-archaeologist Catrina Whitley and anthropologist Kyra Kramer believe his behaviour may have been a symptom of illness rather than simply the result of poor character.

They claim Henry suffered from McLeod’s Syndrome and hope to gain permission to dig up his body to perform DNA tests.

Dr Whitley told the Sunday Express the condition can cause schizophrenic behaviour and usually becomes apparent around the time of the sufferer’s 40th birthday.

‘Henry was 41 when he married Anne Boleyn. The turning point for Henry was around his 40th birthday. I believe the charges he made against Anne were the result of psychosis,’ said Dr Whitley.

The king, who died in 1547 at the age of 55, is buried at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, so the researchers will need the Queen’s permission for an exhumation.”

The truth behind Tudor tombs is out there

happyhelen — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:13:37 +0000

From Physorg.com:

“Dr Steven Gunn of the Faculty of History and academics from the University of Leicester will analyse the great Renaissance monuments of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk (d. 1554) and Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond (d.1536), who was Henry VIII’s illegitimate son.

The interdisciplinary research programme, which also involves Yale and English Heritage, is funded by a grant for £497,000 and three PhD studentships from the Science and Heritage Programme of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The monuments were moved from Thetford Priory in Norfolk to Framlingham Parish Church in Suffolk in the mid-16th century, and researchers believe they were dramatically altered by the relocation. Scientists will apply techniques from space science to the monuments to work out how the statues would originally have looked, without needing to physically touch the monuments.

Dr Gunn, who will provide historical context for the scientists’ findings, said: ‘The Howards are central to our understanding of the artistic development of 16th-century England. They were also right at the heart of religious and political change, the third duke resisting Protestantism, his son the earl of Surrey translating the psalms into English and his grandson the fourth duke executed for trying to marry Mary, Queen of Scots.’

Dr Gunn is supervising a doctoral study funded by the project on tombs and noble identity in England, 1485-1572. The doctoral student, Kirsten Claiden-Yardley, is investigating how noble families used tombs, portraits, family histories and other commissions to project their power. The aim is to put the Howard tombs in context and understand the impression they would have made on contemporaries.

Dr Philip Lindley, an art historian at Leicester who is the project’s principal investigator, said: ‘Key to this programme is the innovative employment of techniques borrowed from space science, principally three-dimensional scanning and non-destructive materials analysis, to solve a complex set of historical, archaeological and art-historical problems.

‘Both monuments seem to have been dramatically altered when they were moved in the middle of the sixteenth century from their original locations in Thetford Priory to Framlingham Parish Church, where they now stand. Puzzlingly, pieces excavated at Thetford in the 1930s seem to have originally belonged to these monuments and this suggests that they used to look very different from what we now see.

‘We shall virtually disassemble the monuments and reconstruct their original forms for the first time in half a millennium, trying to integrate the excavated fragments in our virtual reconstructions. It is as if we have two (or more) three-dimensional jigsaws: we need first to sort the pieces out and then put them back together.’

The project will function as a case study, adapting techniques for analysis, interpretation and display, to make them widely transferable for future research.”

Save the Anne Boleyn portrait!

happyhelen — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:04:55 +0000

These folks have done a nice job creating a Facebook page to help promote the National Portrait Gallery’s efforts to raise money to conserve the famous Anne Boleyn painting.

Go visit the website!!

Mural uncovered of Henry VIII

happyhelen — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:16:45 +0000

This is pretty awesome:

From BBC News:

“A couple doing DIY have uncovered a 20ft (6m) high medieval mural of King Henry VIII on the wall of their home.

The house in Milverton, Somerset, was once home to Thomas Cranmer, Arch Deacon of Taunton in the 16th Century.

Angie Powell said: “When we saw the eyes appear out of the plaster it was a real moment.”

Michael Liversidge, of Bristol University, said the discovery was “enormously significant, stunningly exciting and of national importance”.

But the artist who created the painting of the King on his throne in about 1530 is a mystery.

Mrs Powell and husband Rhodri have lived at the house, once used as the summer palace for the Arch Deacons of Taunton, for about three years.

Mr Liversidge, from the university’s history of art department, said the painting would have been an expression of their loyalty to the king.

Mrs Powell, a children’s author, said they discovered the mural while redecorating.”