The History Blog

The Great Kitchen tour of Windsor Castle was previously only available to pre-booked groups, but in the new year individuals are going to be able to visit the only kitchen in England that has been in continuous operation for over 650 years.

The kitchen dates to the reign of Edward III (1327-1377) who was himself born in Windsor Castle. Restoration work after the 1992 fire exposed the medieval structure in the kitchen. Restorers took the opportunity to update some of the kitchen amenities — like add more lifts so the poor servants don’t have to carry hundreds of dishes up flights of stairs to St George’s Hall for state dinners — but substantially the kitchen is as it has been for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Even the accessories are almost 200 years old. The large collection of traditional copper pots date to the reign of George IV (1820-30), as do the tables, workbenches, and shelves. George IV was quite the gourmand (read: glutton). He even gave guests tours of the kitchen himself.

Tickets will be available on select dates during the year. You can see a calendar of available dates and book tickets online here. It looks like the Great Kitchen tours will be open the last week in January, the first two of February, all but the first of August, all of September, and the first three days of October.

The original Santa Claus, the third century Saint Nicholas, was born and died in what is now Demre, Turkey. In his day it was the Hellenistic Lycian city of Myra and he was its bishop. He was known for leaving gifts for the needy, like gold coins in shoes left outside people’s doors, even climbing down a chimney once to leave a gift.

He was buried in Myra, as per his request, and there he remained for centuries. In 1087, sailors from the Italian city of Bari took advantage of the chaos from invading Seljuk Turks to abscond with St. Nicholas’ bones, over the vociferous objections of the Orthodox monks caring for them. They claimed they had a vision from St. Nick himself, to preserve his remains from the Muslim invader; others claimed they were just thieving pirates.

The bones were re-interred in a church in Bari, where they’ve been ever since. Now Turkey is considering asking for them back. Turkey is primarily Muslim so they don’t worship him as a saint, but they certainly appreciate his tourism value.

Prof Nevzat Cevik, head of archaeological research in Demre, says Saint Nicholas had made it clear during his life that he wanted to be buried in his home town.

Even without the bones, the town of Demre has not been shy about cashing in on its most famous native son – today visitors to the Byzantine church there are greeted by a large, plastic Santa statue, complete with beard and red snow-suit.

Classy. I can see how they might want something a little more upmarket, especially since St. Nicholas’ remains are said to exude a rose watery myrrh kind of substance called manna which is collected every year on December 6th, his saint day, and sold at the church gift shop.

The bones have been scientifically examined only once, in the 1950s. They found a largely intact skeleton of a small man — about 5 feet tall, short even back then — with a broken nose. No explanation of the manna thing, but Bari is a seaside town and he is buried in a crypt below sea level, so there could be various causes of moisture.

His Tremendousness Prince Giorgio I of Seborga has left this mortal coil, and it is very much the poorer for his absence. Born a mimosa flower farmer, son of a mimosa flower farmer, in the tiny Italian Riviera cliffside town of Seborga, Prince Giorgio singlehandedly convinced the locals to elect him prince in 1963.

Seborga had been independent principality a thousand years before, you see, when the Holy Roman Emperor granted the abbots of the Cistercian monastery the fiefdom and title. It remained independent until it was sold to the House of Savoy in 1729 and absorbed into its kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont.

There was a hitch, however. Giorgio Carbone researched assiduously and found that the purchase of Seborga was never officially registered, nor was the principality mentioned in subsequent territorial treaties like the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 which restored the nearby Republic of Genoa, or the 1815 Congress of Vienna which apportioned the spoils after Napoleon’s defeat. It didn’t make the act of unification of Italy in 1861, or even a mere footnote in the formation of the Italian republic after the abdication of the last Savoy king, Victor Emanuel II, in 1946.

Armed with all this absence of evidence/evidence of absence, Giorgo took it to the people, all 308 of them.

After convincing his Seborgan neighbors of their true significance, Giorgio Carbone was elected prince in 1963. He gracefully accepted the informal title of His Tremendousness, and was elected prince for life in 1995 by a vote of 304 to 4. Voters then ratified Seborga’s independence, which, by the prince’s interpretation, it already had.

Prince Giorgio established a palace, wrote a Constitution, and set up a cabinet and a parliament. He chose a coat of arms, minted money (with his picture), issued stamps (with his picture) and license plates, selected a national anthem and mobilized a standing army, consisting of Lt. Antonello Lacala. He adopted a motto: Sub umbra sede (Sit in the shade).

I think we can all agree Prince Giorgio I was the coolest prince ever. Oh sure, Italy didn’t exactly recognize Seborgan sovereignty, nor did any other stable nation, and sure, Prince Giorgio’s subjects still paid Italian taxes and elected an Italian mayor, but if anything that only makes His Tremendousness more tremendous.

In 2006, one Princess Yasmine von Hohenstaufen Anjou Plantagenet, self-styled heir of the Holy Roman Emperors, tried to claim the throne of Seborga in order to return it to Italy, but nobody cared. Even a combined Disney-German-French-English princess just couldn’t compete with the awesomeness of Prince Giorgio.

He passed away at home on November 25th of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Since dedication to his people kept him from taking a wife — as he told People magazine in 1993, he loved all his female subjects equally — the succession is now in question. Can they find another prince so awesome? I doubt it. The standing army, Lt. Antonello Lacala, might have to institute some sort of coup.

Behold His Tremendousness surveying his wee domain in this story from a few years ago:

Here’s a lovely panorama of Seborga with the sea and the for real real Principality of Monaco in the distance:

The York Archaeological Trust is excavating a medieval dump in the Hungate area. They’ve opened the dig to volunteers, and one lucky railway controller struck 14th century gold.

The coin, known as a Quarter Noble was found two weeks ago and is estimated to be worth about £200, but back in the reign of Edward III, it’s loss would have been a bitter blow to its owner.

Jon Kenny, community archaeologist at York Archaeological Trust, said: “It would be fair to say that it’s the sort of thing that, if you weren’t that wealthy, it could have been your life savings.

“Whoever lost it would have really regretted it.”

The Quarter Noble is from what is know as the Fourth Coinage (1351-1377). You can tell because there’s a fleur de lis in the middle of the cross on the tails side. Here’s the only picture I could find of the coin from the dig:

Here’s a more detailed version of a Quarter Noble from a coin sale site:

It’s valued at £550 – 600, three times the estimate of the York coin. It looks much shinier, so I suppose it’s worth more money because it’s in better condition.

The York one is cooler anyway because this is the first time anybody on the dig has found any gold at all. Precious metals didn’t get tossed on the trash pile much in the Middle Ages. (Or now for that matter.)

Richard Daniel, the finder, has been volunteering on the dig for 18 months. He used to press his face against the glass during a previous York dig but never imagined he’d get the chance to join in the fun.

Find out all about the Hungate dig on its website.

In 1998 raging fire devastated the interior of thousand-year-old Saxon church St. Brandon’s in Brancepeth, England. Temperatures reached 1200° Celsius at the height of the conflagration, melting the lead from the roof and virtually vaporizing the beautifully carved wooden interior.

The massive oak beams from the roof were the only remaining wood, and they too were so charred they may or not be datable via dendrochronology (tree ring dating).

Amidst the tragic loss, something wonderful was found: more than a thousand medieval gravestones stored in the walls of the church hundreds of years ago.

Cross slabs are the size of a coffin lid and are engraved with full-size crosses as well as designs indicating the profession or status of the deceased. A housewife is represented by shears, for instance, a priest by a chalice, a knight by a sword, a scholar by a book. Several of St. Brandon’s cross slabs include symbols not found anywhere else, like an intricate 5-point cross.

It was common practice at the time to reuse old stone from elsewhere in the church to reinforce the walls, so many of these cross slabs were used as internal lintels for the clerestory windows.

They weigh up to half a ton each and they date from between 1100 and 1300 A.D. A local historian thinks they might have been intentionally secreted in the clerestory to keep them safe from Puritan reformers.

Jim Merrington, of the Brancepeth History and Archive Group, explained: “After the roof burned off we discovered a ring of cross slabs high up around the perimeter of the clerestory which was built in 1638 by Rector John Cosin, who later became Bishop of Durham. All were neatly placed facing skywards. It is possible that Cosin had them gathered up from the churchyard and secreted them away on the very top course of the building safe from vandals and reformists. It was obviously quite a task to get them up there for no real structural purpose.”

Archaeologist Peter Ryder said the collection of cross slabs was the biggest in the North, and possibly the second largest in the country after a collection at Bakewell, Derbyshire.

Twenty of the cross slabs are now on display on the church walls. Another 40 will be exhibited at nearby Brancepeth Castle.

The Staffordshire hoard was thought at first glance to be worth at least a million pounds. Now that experts have had a chance to examine the treasure closely, the valuation has skyrocketed to an astonishing 3.3 million pounds ($5.5 million).

The reward will be shared evenly between Terry Herbert, the luckiest metal detectorist of all time, and Fred Johnson, the farmer who owns the land on which the hoard was discovered.

Johnson was magnificently underwhelmed by his good fortune this morning. “Right now I’m just trying to get over the flu, and money is the last thing on my mind. I hope it’ll not make any difference to me. I won’t be putting in a swimming pool anyway, this country is wet enough already.

“I’ve been a millionaire for years anyway,” he chuckled wheezily, “isn’t that what they always say about farmers?”

Friends have told him that if it were sold privately it would be worth tens of millions, but he doesn’t care. He wouldn’t even want that kind of responsibility, he says. He’s just awed by the beauty and workmanship of the pieces. He bought his first suit and went on his first trip to the British Museum to see them on display there.

The panel of experts were just as dazzled by the wonders before them.

Professor Norman Palmer, chair of the treasure valuation committee, whose members pored over 1,800 gold, silver and jewelled objects in a day-long session at the British Museum, said: “It was breathtaking – we all agreed that it was not only a challenge but a privilege to be dealing with material of such quantity, quality and beauty. It was hard to stop our imaginations running away with us.”

Now Staffordshire museums are scrambling to find the money to ensure the hoard stays in the county where it was found. If they can’t raise the full sum, another big money museum certainly will.

The British Museum has quickly published a book about the hoard, written by written by Kevin Leahy, the archaeologist who cataloged the pieces as they came in to the Birmingham museum, and Roger Bland, head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme. One pound from every sale goes to defray the cost of purchase to keep the hoard where it was found.

It would make a great Christmas present for the history lover in your life.

Beginning in January 2010, BBC’s Radio Four in conjunction with the British Museum will air 100 15-minute episodes each detailing the history of one object from the British Museum collection. The aim is to cover a vast stretch of history from 1.4 million years ago to modern times, and all over the globe, not just European history.

[Radio 4 controller, Mark] Damazer said each episode would feature a description of the object but most of it would focus on “areas where radio excels as a medium – on how the object was made, its political, economic and cultural significance, how the object came to be in the collection, and so on. I have heard those that have been made so far and they are wonderful.”

[British Museum director Neil ] MacGregor said he would look at each object in roughly chronological order, “spinning the globe so we can see what’s going on in the world at various moments”.

Each week will be focused around a particular theme, such as “after the Ice Age” and “meeting the gods”, with contributors including Bob Geldof, Wole Soyinka, Grayson Perry, Madhur Jaffrey and Seamus Heaney.

Some of the artifacts covered are a 1.4 million year-old hand axe from the Olduvai Gorge, a Chinese Zhou ritual bowl from 1000 B.C., the Croesus Coin (550 B.C.0 from what is today Turkey, thought the be the first modern form of currency, a bust of Roman Emperor Augustus (27-25 B.C.) and the Nef Galleon, a beautiful mechanical toy ship from 1500AD.

This project has been in the works for 3 years. It took MacGregor and a team of curators 2 years just to pick 99 artifacts from the 8 million pieces in the British Museum collection. The last object has yet to be chosen. They’ll wait until later next year to select it since it might not even exist yet.

There will be a companion website which is set to go live in January (it’s just a placeholder now). More information about all of the artifacts will be on the site, as will listeners’ submissions.

For those of us across the pond, every episode will be available on the site in podcast format. In an unprecedented move for the BBC, the podcasts will remain online for 2 years, so no need to rush over to the site to make sure you don’t miss one.

Unlike the Vasari scheme, this one was even consensual! A little known codicil in the UK tax code allows inheritors of major estates with the attendant major tax bill to give the government assets of historical value in lieu of 40% of payment.

The heirs of Penrhyn Castle in Gwynedd, Wales, were therefore able to donate the castle archives, that’s complete records dating back more than 700 years, from 13th century Latin parchments to 20th typed ledgers.

The earliest item in the Penrhyn archive is from 1288 and details the sale of the township of Karnechan, along with all its goods and people!

There are more than 120 similar legal documents dating from the 14th and 15th Centuries, written in Latin on parchment.

They provide a vital understanding of the Griffiths of Penrhyn, vassals to the princes of Gwynedd and key allies in attempts to form a single Welsh principality. [...]

In the 17th Century, the castle passed into the hands of the Pennant family.

Hundreds of documents relate to the family’s estates in Jamaica and their controversial involvement in the trade of slaves, sugar and rum, the profits from which financed the expansion of Penrhyn slate quarry into the biggest such operation in the world.

In fact it was the slaves-and-slate lucre that funded the building of the current Norman revival castle in 1820. The medieval structure — a crenelated manor house — had already been knocked down and rebuilt in the 1780s.

The documents are currently conserved and cared for at Bangor University’s library. Part of the deal made with Internal Revenue stipulates that the archive remain where it is. Curator Einion Wynn-Thomas is relieved that the long-term future of this collection is now secure.

It’s a completely unique record of medieval Wales, and an uninterrupted perspective on local business development, like the link between the slate trade and the slave trade. Without the swap system, these invaluable primary sources would most likely have been split up and sold to the highest bidder.

The assets-in-lieu scheme has been on the books since 1901, but until World War II, the government pretty much picked the cash every time. The heavy death duties meant the collections and contents of great estates often had to be sold by the heirs just so they could pay off the tax bill, never mind finding the cash to sustain the historical property going forward.

After the war, a special fund was set up to pay off the exchequer the value of the historical asset, but it only kicked in with very high ticket items. Gordon Brown in 1998 created a Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs acquisitions, exports and loans unit specifically to investigate assets-in-lieu possibilities without focusing solely on market value as the bottom line. Now historical and cultural value are part of the calculation as well, and that saves all kinds of beautiful and precious things which may not necessarily sell big.

Stained glass windows in Canterbury Cathedral overlooking the 14th century tomb of Edward, the Black Prince, were destroyed by Cromwell’s puritan hordes in the 1640’s. Over the years clear glass was put in the place of the original stained glass, but that doesn’t filter damaging UV rays the way stained glass does.

The sun is damaging paintwork on the canopy surrounding the Black Prince’s effigy, so much so that conservators have installed a first-of-its-kind system of blinds and humidity control.

Leonie Seliger, the head of stained glass at the cathedral, said: “As far as we know this is the first time in the world that such preventative measures have been adopted.

“The information from the sensors is relayed onto a computer within the cathedral precincts 24 hours a day, and then the results are sent off for analysis.

“Just a few degrees of temperature change can drastically affect the humidity levels so we are constantly on watch so that light levels can be adjusted via the blinds and temperatures controlled.”

Hopefully it’s not too late. The colors are fading rapidly, and the red pigment is turning black.

Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Edward III, was known as the Black Prince because of the characteristic color of his armor, or because of an ornate cuirass he was given after the Battle of Crécy. Or else it’s a phrase of 16th century coinage and he wasn’t known as the Black Prince at all in life.

He died a year before his father, so he never did get to be the Black King.

The multi-year study funded by the Leicestershire County Council and the battlefield Trust has born surprisingly leaden fruit. The Battle of Bosworth was neither on Albion Hill, nor between the villages of Shenton, Stoke Golding and Dadlington, nor miles away in Atherton.

It’s two miles away from the fancy new visitor’s center, near Sutton Cheney. It turned out to be the last place they looked. No srsly. Battlefield archaeologist Glenn Foard picked one last spot, frustrated and defeated, to look for signs of the late 15th century battlefield which saw the demise of the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, and the ascendancy of the Tudor line.

An hour later one of his diggers brought him a lead roundshot and he knew he’d hit proverbial paydirt. Not only is it good evidence that the Platangenets’ last stand, took place there, it’s also majorly new information about late medieval battlefield technology.

Abandoned cannonballs and bullets are a gift to battlefield archaeologists because they decay far less quickly than iron and steel handweapons and because, if they are made of lead like the ones at Bosworth, their condition shows what happened to them, from the pressure they were fired under to what they hit when they landed.

The Bosworth discoveries range in size from musket balls up to a 7.2kg cannonball. They are distributed in two clusters and may have been fired by both sides.

Excavators ended up finding 22 pieces of lead cannon and musket shot, more than the total from every other 15th and 16th century battlefield in Europe combined.

The Battle of Bosworth took place August 22, 1485. Before now, the earliest known evidence of moving artillery on the battlefield was 10 years later, during the French invasion of Italy from 1494-95. Finding such a huge cache of lead shot so early rewrites military history books.

The also found period coins, swords, buckles,

The exact location is being kept secret for now to keep the looters from tearing it up. The next step for the Trust and County Council are to raise the funds for further in situ study.