2012 – Page 6 – The History Blog

Incredible Blitz map, or, how is there still a London?

December 6, 2012

The UK’s National Archives has compiled an astonishing interactive map detailing the locations and dates of all the bombs that fell on London and environs during the Blitz. The Bomb Sight project has taken the original bomb census maps which documented the Blitz as it happened between October 7th, 1940, and June 6th, 1941, and uploaded the data onto web map. The bomb census maps used to only be available to visitors who went in person to the Reading Room of The National Archive, so this is an incredible resource now at the public’s fingertips for the first time.

You can type in a zip code to pull up a map of all the bombs in the area, or you can just browse the maps by zooming in and out as you please. You can click on each bomb for details, then click a “read more” link to see period photographs from the Imperial War Museum and the BBC’s People’s War archive of the devastated area. They’ve also collected memories of the bombings from people who lived in the area, so when you zoom in on one bomb you can read first person accounts of the experience from survivors. The sheer density of information is mind-boggling.

The website is having timeout errors right now because it’s so amazing, but don’t give up. You get a whole new understanding of the Blitz by seeing it mapped out. Here are the bombs that fell on London on September 7th, 1940, the first night of bombing:

Here are the bombs that fell on London during the second week of October:

Here are the total bombs that fell on London at night from October 1940 to June 1941:

In. Sane. It’s hard to believe a city could survive that with any structures left standing at all. The statistics — 20,000 civilians dead, a million plus homes destroyed, 57 consecutive nights of bombing — as horrific as they are can’t convey the scale of destruction. An interactive map is worth a million stats, to coin a new cliche.

Bomb Sight is also working on an Android App with Augmented Reality, which uses GPS data so people walking around in London can find out if a bomb hit anywhere near them. People not in London will also be able to explore the city with this app.

Rare late Iron Age helmet found near Canterbury

December 5, 2012

Ancient, Treasures

A metal detectorist scanning farmland near Canterbury in Kent, southeast England, has unearthed a bronze helmet from the late Iron Age. Although seemingly modest compared to gold coin hoards and elaborately decorated ceremonial cavalry helmets, this is a find a major national importance. Only a few intact or near-intact Iron Age helmets have ever been discovered anywhere, only three of them in Britain (including this badass horned one fished out of the Thames in the 19th century) and only one of them, this one, of this particular design. It’s also one of the only helmets whose archaeological context was preserved and examined by professionals, thanks to the responsible actions of the finder (who wishes to remain anonymous). This turned out to be enormously important because the excavation revealed that the helmet is one of a kind in another way too.

Our anonymous metal detecting friend has some familiarity with archaeological practices because he had been a volunteer for the Canterbury Archaeological Trust. The Trust’s Finds Manager, Andrew Richardson, was previously the Finds Liaison Officer (the expert to whom members of the public bring historical finds to record them for the Portable Antiquities Scheme which is a necessary first step in the process of declaring a find treasure according to the UK’s Treasure Act) for Kent. Richardson knew the finder personally from his days as the Kent FLO, so when in October of this year he got a phone call from the finder claiming to have made “significant discovery” of a “Celtic bronze helmet,” Richardson agreed to go check out it. He was doubtful that it could really be an Iron Age helmet — no such helmets have ever been found in Kent before — but when he went to the finder’s house the next day, he indeed found a 1st century B.C. bronze helmet, a brooch from the same period, a bronze spike that was probably mounted on top of the helmet so a plume could be attached to it and a charred bone fragment.

The bone fragment suggested the helmet might have accompanied a burial, perhaps of a warrior or military leader. Richardson, the finder and the various authorities to whom they reported the discovery as possible treasure, agreed the find site should be promptly excavated. The finder had wisely marked the spot, placing a bag of lead fishing weights in the hole left by the helmet before backfilling it. This made the place easy to find and kept the archaeological context of the discovery intact.

What they found was not a glamorous burial with military regalia, but a shallow oval pit cut into the chalk landscape. A green impression left by the copper alloy of the helmet during its 2000 years in the ground marked the burial spot within the pit. Fragments of the metal sheeting were still attached to the soil and you can clearly see a dense area in the middle which is what’s left of the rounded top of the helmet, which corroded over time leaving behind a hole.

Archaeologists found a number of charred bone fragments as well, all within the helmet impression. That means the human remains were not buried with the helmet, but rather inside of it. The helmet was turned upside down and used an urn, basically. Judging from the location of the brooch above the bone fragments, the cremains were probably placed in a leather or fabric bag, now long decayed away, which was closed at the top with the brooch. The bag was placed inside the helmet either right before or right after it was buried in the eastern half of the oval pit. There’s no evidence of a grave marker and no evidence of any other burials nearby. Either this is a cemetery with widely spaced out plots or this was the sole grave.

If late Iron Age helmets are rare in England, late Iron Age helmet burials are unheard of. This is the first one ever discovered in Britain and the only other helmet burial we know of was found in Poland. If the detectorist had not noticed the bone or not properly marked the site for archaeologists to return to, we would never have known just how unique a find this is.

As it is, it’s nothing short of miraculous that the helmet survived. The archaeological excavation found two deep plough furrows on either side of the helmet impression, a result of years of farming. The rim of the helmet is a little dented and battered, probably from contact with one of the makers of those furrows. Had a plough moved a few inches offset to the right or left, the helmet would have been chewed up and scattered over this large field. Had the finder not found it when he did, there’s a good chance it would have met that fate in the future since the field is still actively farmed.

Initial analysis, including laser scans, of the helmet by experts at the University of Kent and the British Museum indicate that the helmet was probably not locally made. It’s most likely of Gaulish manufacture and given how busy a time the 1st century B.C. was, there are any number of ways that it might have made its way to Britain. British mercenaries went to Gaul to fight on both sides during Caesar’s wars of conquest. Caesar and his troops fought in Britain in 55-54 B.C. They landed on the shores of Kent, in fact, just a few miles from where the helmet was found so perhaps it came with them.

The helmet will remain at the British Museum for further study while the process of determining whether this find qualifies as treasure continues. Unlike the Crosby-Garret helmet which so tragically slipped through a loophole of the Treasure Act, the fact that a brooch was found with this helmet is going to ensure it’s declared treasure because two pieces of ancient base metalwork qualify as treasure whereas just one, no matter how spectacular, does not. Once it’s declared treasure, a market value will be assessed and a local museum, in this case Canterbury Museum, will be given the first chance to purchase it.

120-year-old London Underground carriage restored

December 4, 2012

Modern(ish)

On Saturday, January 10th, 1863, London’s Metropolitan Railway line carried its first public passengers over six kilometers (3.7 miles) and from Paddington through five intermediate stations to Farringdon Street. It was the world’s first subway system and it was an immediate success, transporting 40,000 people that first day and 9.5 million the first year. These early subway cars weren’t like the ones we have today, but rather wooden carriages divided into compartments that were pulled by steam engines. They were literally underground trains.

Next month will be the 150th anniversary of the first passenger voyage of what would become known as the Tube and the London Transport Museum will be celebrating the event by running a series of restored trains along that first route from Paddington to Farringdon, now part of the Circle Line. The trains and cars used in 1863 have not survived, but other beauties from the steam era have. After extensive restoration funded by the museum, the Heritage Lottery Fund and private donations, Metropolitan Steam Locomotive No. 1, built in 1898 and Metropolitan Railway Jubilee Carriage Number 353, built in 1892, will return steam-powered mass transit to the London Underground.

Metropolitan Railway Jubilee Carriage Number 353 is the only survivor of 59 carriages that ran along the Circle Line in the last 15 years of underground steam rail. They were named Jubilee carriages because the model was first introduced in 1887 during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Made out of teak wood with gas lighting and gold leaf accents, these were elegant first class carriages. Less than 20 years after the first carriages were produced, they were rendered obsolete when the Metropolitan Railway switched from steam to electric power in 1905.

When the private Metropolitan Railway and Underground Electric Railways Company of London merged with city tram and bus services to become the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933, the Met Loco 1 steam engine was renumbered, repainted and used sporadically as part of London Transport’s above ground services. It was retired in 1963 after which it was purchased by the Quainton Railway Society (now the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre) and loaned to various museums and for special events over the years. In 2010, its boiler certificate expired which meant it could no longer run without a complete rehaul and re-certification. A complete restoration began in 2011 with the aim of returning Met Loco 1 to full steam running conditions in time for the 150th anniversary.

Jubilee Carriage Number 353 survived in a far more reduced circumstances. In 1940 it was purchased and moved to Knapps dairy farm in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, where it was used as a garden shed. For 34 years it stayed on the farm, open to the elements. A toilet was attached to the end of it at some point. In 1974 the dairy farm was slated for redevelopment and the carriage was in danger of being destroyed. London Transport bought it for its historical value, adding it to its underground relics collection. It was in surprisingly good shape structurally, despite its hard scrabble post-war existence, and several ideas were considered about what to with it, including cutting out a section to put it on display. Thankfully Number 353 was kept whole and safe until 2011, when funds were raised to restore it too so it could be reenlisted into service 150 years after the first carriages ran underground.

After 15 months of painstaking work by Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railway, specialists in heritage railway carriage restorations, Metropolitan Railway Jubilee Carriage Number 353 is back to her former splendor. A team of masters and apprentices did the work, the apprentices a condition of the Heritage Lottery Fund grant to ensure that these skills are passed down to the next generation. Number 353 has been rail tested and runs like a charm. She is now officially the oldest operational subway carriage still known to survive.

Met Loco 1 and Carriage 353 will be recreating the first underground journey on Sunday, January 13th, 2013. For more pictures of the restoration of Number 353, see the museum’s Flickr set. There’s a smaller but still cool set documenting the overhaul of Met Loco 1 here. If you’d like some delicious and nutritious information along with those picture sets, the museum’s blog has a nice entry about the underground testing of the locomotive and lots of entries about the carriage as it was being restored.

Here’s video of the carriage during the 15 months of restoration:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nbAUqii6wM&w=430]

Museum buys Napoleon coded letter on blowing up the Kremlin

December 3, 2012

Modern(ish), Museums

A letter written in a numerical code on October 20, 1812, detailing Napoleon’s plan to blow up the Kremlin on his retreat from Russia was purchased at auction on Sunday by the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts in Paris. The coded letter was sold along with its original transcription made in Paris three or four days later, a very rare pairing and a fortunate one since without the period transcription it’s unlikely we’d know the major historical significance of the letter’s contents. Perhaps spurred on by the bids of Russian plutocrats, the lot sold for €187,500 ($243,500), more ten times its pre-sale estimate of €15,000 ($19,500). It’s impressive that a museum won in the end.

Sent from Napoleon to Hugues-Bernard Maret, the Minister of Foreign Affairs (who would later be appointed Prime Minister of France under King Louis Philippe I for exactly eight days in November 1834) who was then in Vilnius, the letter baldly states “Je fais sauter le Kremlin le 22 à trois heures du matin” (“I am going to have the Kremlin blown up at three o’clock in the morning on the 22nd”). The letter then goes on to detail the route of his retreat and orders with unusually emotive urgency that more horses be sent to meet him at Smolensk: “Ma cavalerie est démontée et il meurt beaucoup de chevaux; ordonnez et prenez sur vous que l’on ne perde pas de temps à en acheter” (“My cavalry is in pieces and many horses are dying; order and ensure yourself that no time is wasted in purchasing [more horses]”). The letter is signed with a simple “Nap.”

After a tactical victory at the bloody Battle of Borodino on September 7th, 1812, Napoleon’s path to Moscow was unobstructed. He entered the city on September 14th expecting to find the city leaders greeting him at the door with a key to the city. That was the way things usually worked when an invading army reached an undefended city, but instead he found Moscow evacuated and stripped of supplies. His desperate soldiers and animals would not be housed and fed by a cowed population. They would have to fend for themselves as they’d had to do since their supply lines became hopelessly stretched and their attempts to live off the land thwarted by the impossible logistics of an eastward invasion of Russia’s wide-open sparsely populated and thinly cultivated spaces.

Napoleon had expected Tsar Alexander I to surrender when Moscow fell to the French, but the Russians just regrouped and waited him out. Frustrated that his victories on the field had won his Grande Armée little but huge casualty rates, starvation, frostbite, typhus and mass desertion, Napoleon finally left Moscow on October 19th, the day before he sent the coded letter. He left the city in the hands of Marshal Edouard Mortier, Duke of Treviso. It was Mortier who would follow Napoleon’s orders to blow up the Kremlin. He packed the entire complex with explosives and set them off, but yet again Mother Russia’s Mother Nature interfered with French plans. Rain fell, soaking the fuses and impeding the full destruction of the Kremlin. The arsenal, the wall and a number of towers were destroyed by explosions. Subsequent fires damaged the 15th century Palace of the Facets and several of the churches.

Most of the complex was restored over the next 20 years, although some parts, like the Vodovzvodnaya Tower, were either completely destroyed or so damaged they had to be demolished. The Kremlin Arsenal was restored in neoclassical style and turned into a museum celebrating Russia’s great victory over Napoleon. The walls of the arsenal are decorated with 875 cannons captured by the Grande Armée during its disastrous retreat.

Until the end Napoleon insisted that the Russians had never defeated him militarily, that it was solely the Russian winter than could claim victory over him. He reiterates that point, rebutting critics who blamed his failures of supply logistics and planning, in another document that was sold at the same auction of Sunday. Essay on Countryside Fortification is a 310-page manuscript dictated by Napoleon to his faithful aide-de-camp Grand Marshal Betrand and his secretary Louis Marchand while he was in exile on the island of Saint Helena. Written in 1818-19, the illustrated manuscript details Napoleon’s thoughts on fortifications and the art of war in general. It includes a chapter in which he defends the Russian campaign, saying “Elle ne doit pas s’appeler une retraite puisque l’armée était victorieuse” (“It shouldn’t be called a retreat since the army was victorious”).

The museum paid €375,000 euros ($490,000) for Essay on Countryside Fortification which was the last of Napoleon’s manuscripts still in private hands. That means they dropped three quarters of a million dollars on two documents, bless their hearts. For a museum founded only eight years ago not by some philanthropic Getty-style billionaire but by Gerard Lhéritier, owner of a company that buys and sells historic letters and documents, it is remarkably well-endowed. The newest acquisitions will doubtless make outstanding additions to the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts’ Napoleon I exhibit.

Rare Gaulish treasures found in Lorraine

December 2, 2012

Ancient, Treasures

In 2010, archaeologists excavating sites along the route of a new high speed rail line unearthed an exceptional number of Gallic coins and artifacts under communal farmland in the town of Bassing, Lorraine, in northeastern France. The National Institute for Preventive Archaeology (INRAP) announced the find at a press conference in Metz on Thursday, November 29th.

The 3.5 hectare site revealed evidence of continuous occupation from 200 B.C. to 800 A.D., including the remains of a Gallic aristocrat’s home, a villa from the Gallo-Roman period and several early medieval buildings. The earliest structure, an enclosure with a large home and farm within, was built between 150 and 120 B.C. and appears to have been occupied until 14 A.D. The wealth and status of its occupants are testified to by the structures and by the expensive artifacts found, among them a gold ring, bracelets, cobalt blue glass jewelry, Baltic amber and 132 fibulae (ancient safety pins used to close cloaks and garments). Some of the fibulae were imported and others produced locally. The large number suggests the site was a center of trade. This is confirmed by the remains of many Italian amphorae which probably held imported wine, a luxury only the elite of Gaulish society could afford.

Remains of both Gallic and Roman military artifacts suggest the homeowners weren’t just involved in farming and trade. Fragments of chariots, a battle axe, arrowheads, metallic trimmings of uniforms, nails from hobnailed shoes, cavalry harnesses, several mouthpieces from war horns and one Roman legionary dagger were found on the site, but there is no evidence that life on the property was interrupted or debased by war. In all likelihood, the artifacts identify the elites who lived there as members of the Médiomatrique tribe who populated the area and supported the Roman invasion. Much of the Gallic nobility participated in the fight on the Roman side, sending their own warriors to fight alongside Caesar’s.

The vast amount of cash found on the property was also probably destined for military use. A total of 1165 Gaulish coins from the 1st century B.C., 1,111 silver quinarii (small coins valued at half a denarius or five asses, hence “quinarius”), three gold staters and 51 bronze pieces, were unearthed scattered throughout the site. Some of them are Gallic in style and iconography. Others are rough imitations of Gallo-Roman quinarii (notable for Gallic elements like torques added to Roman profiles) of a kind made between 40 and 30 B.C. when Roman money was in short supply, so Gauls made local versions which could be used in the trade between Rome and Gaul. The total value of the Bassing coins could pay a year and a half’s salary for a legionary at the dawn of the empire.

The silver coins come from different areas of Gaul.

74% of the lot come from the East Central Gaul and belongs to Sequani of Besançon, the Lingons Langres, the Aedui Bibracte or Autun. 14% are from the people of the Loire Valley, 7% from the Remi of Reims (Gaul Belgium) and 3% Arverni of Clermont-Ferrand. Finally, a few copies belong to Ségusiaves, people located near Lyon.

This is an exceptional number of coins for a Gallic site. Only 400 coins total have ever been discovered in the major Gaulish town of Alesia, where Julius Caesar famously defeated Vercigetorix in the final battle of the Gallic Wars in 52 B.C., and they were mainly bronze coins and cheaper denominations in regular circulation. Silver was primarily reserved for use by the elite to secure their military power.

Although found scattered, this cache was probably buried in one group between 40 and 20 B.C. and then scattered by ploughs which have been churning the soil since the Middle Ages.