* You Tube video of the commemoration service for Catherine of Aragon at Peterborough Cathedral. I never got around to posting about this year’s event, but here is a link to a past post about it.

* Rosary from the Mary Rose featured at the BBC’s A History of the World

* Reconstructed face from the Mary Rose goes on display (BBC article). This is the reconstruction that I linked to an article about last March. Additional articles from the Times Online and The Telegraph

* Stirling Castle carvings will be on display at the castle until Feb. 21 (BBC article). This is a continuation of the project that I’ve blogged about a few times (most recently here). The carvings will soon be painted and put in place as part of the project to reconstruct the renaissance royal palace inside the castle. You can learn more at the official Stirling Castle website

* Snack food of Shakespearean theater-goers (Discovery News article). I’m not a fan of seafood but the nuts and dried fruit sounds good. I’ll probably stick with popcorn and Junior Mints though.

* Help Romeo collect flowers for Juliet (appropriate for Valentine’s Day!) in the Shakespeare Game from Shakespeare Country Tourism

* Alison Weir, Arguing the Case for Anne Boleyn – Interview and book excerpt at NPR

* The British Library’s new Timelines: Sources from History – Neat timelines with document images, and the few that I looked at included links where you could print or download a PDF of the documents.

* Middle Temple Hall launched a new website with some cool virtual tours. The Hall is one of the Inns of Court and was constructed between 1563 and 1572. It was also the site of the first performance of Twelfth Night in 1602.

Solihull National Trust property added to Google street view

It was a case of try before you buy but now you can see before going.

Baddesley Clinton, near Solihull, is one of the newest National Trust properties which has been added to Google Street View, available through Google Maps.

The atmospheric house dates from 15th century and visitors can discover the priest’s holes used to hide persecuted Jesuit priests in the 1590s, as well as view the Elizabethan interiors.

Those thinking of spending a Sunday afternoon there can go a specially created online tour or view some of the other 19 locations including Berrington Hall in Herefordshire, Lyme Park in Cheshire and Stonehenge in Wiltshire, which have been added.

The images were taken last summer using the Google Trike, a three wheeled bike fitted with a Street View camera.

Full article (with a link to the maps page for Baddesley Clinton at the bottom)

And here’s the link to the page with links to all the National Trust properties available.

The new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London opened last week. Here’s a video and article from the Guardian.

And here’s a link to the page for the new galleries at the V&A website.

From the BBC:

Henry VIII’s love nest for sale

A property where newlywed Henry VIII stayed with his second wife Anne Boleyn has gone on the market after being rebuilt from a state of near collapse

The gatehouse on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent is all that remains of Shurland Hall, the Tudor palace owned by a courtier of the King, Thomas Cheyney.

It was probably built especially for Henry and Anne’s visit, when the King spent three days hunting.

The Spitalfields Trust has restored it and put it up for sale for £2m.

Full article

There is a video at the link worth checking out.

I was planning to blog about this yesterday before I got side-tracked and was going to include a rant about fact-checking and tell you all to fire up the keyboards for some more correction emails… but they beat me to it and fixed the article before I posted. In the original, they had the date of Henry and Anne’s marriage as 1530 and the date of her execution as 1533. oops!

Here’s an excerpt from an article in the Surrey Comet about the exhibition:

Oatlands Underfoot: Stones and Stories From a Forgotten Palace, was opened on September 26 by the mayor of Elmbridge, Councillor James Vickers.

It reveals the story of Oatlands Palace, which was built by Henry VIII and once stood near the centre of Weybridge.

Coun Vickers said: “Oatlands Underfoot is a wonderful insight into King Henry VIII’s passion for architectural opulence.

“Although very little remains today, the exhibition brings the walls back to life and offers visitors the unique opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the great monarch’s influence on the local history through the fascinating pieces which were excavated from the Oatlands site.”

Full article

From The Telegraph:

For hundreds of years history followers have visited Ambion Hill in Leicestershire, believing it to be the site of the Battle of Bosworth, which marked the end of the War of the Roses and the beginning of the reign of the Tudors.

… Richard Knox, curator of Bosworth Battlefield, said it was now likely that the proper site was on low-lying ground between the villages of Shenton, Stoke Golding and Dadlington, first proposed by the historian Peter Foss in 1990.

The key to the mystery is likely to be finding the former marshland that Henry is said to have used to his advantage to attack the vastly larger army of his enemy from the flanks.

Investigations there have found ancient names given to the area such as Fenn Hole and Fenn Meadow, and a team is currently scouring the area with metal detectors.

Mr Knox said: “We feel that Peter Foss’s argument is the most likely site.
“We have found ridges and furrows where there could have been a marsh.”
He said tests had ruled out that the battle had taken place on Ambion Hill itself, and also that the stone memorial erected to Richard III half a mile away, on the spot he supposedly fell, is situated on the wrong spot.

He added: “We won’t move it because it has become a landmark in its own right. But when we do decide on the correct spot we can put up another memorial provided it is practical and has public access.”
…
The official results of the survey will be announced early next year.

Full article

* Leanda deLisle has an article in the September issue The New Criterion entitled Faking Jane about the Spinola letter which purported to have an eyewitness description of Lady Jane Grey. Some of you might be able to access it through libraries, but you can also buy the individual article for $3. There has also been some discussion of the article over on the Q&A blog.

* Dame Judi Dench is looking to recreate The Rose theater in the north of England with the set from Shakespeare in Love. I think I had a news article about her saving the set back in the pre-blog days, but it apparently didn’t make it over when I switched from the old “News and Events” page to the blog.

* A rare Elizabethan hammerbeam roof in a barn at Westenhanger Castle has been restored by English Hertiage.

* And finally – a neat story from The Telegraph about How two Tudor lion statues came home to Hampton Court. Many years ago someone sent me some photos of some similar statues that they were looking for more information on and unfortunately now I can’t find the email or photos. I had to go through and clear out a lot of that stuff at one point so I might have deleted them. But it makes me wonder how many other things like this are still out there waiting to be found!

** Henry VIII talks from the Historic Royal Palaces (podcasts)

** Mary Rose 500 – a final fundraising appeal from the Mary Rose Trust and info on how you can “join the crew” by helping to raise money for the new museum

** From The Surrey Comet:
Elmbridge Museum holds exhibition on Oatlands Palace

Elmbridge Museum is holding an exhibition starting next month on the now destroyed Oatlands Palace in Weybridge.

The museum, which is based in Church Street, Weybridge, is holding the exhibition called Oatlands Underfoot: Stones and Stories from a Forgotten Palace, which will attempt to bring to life one of Henry VIII’s lesser-known palaces.

** From The Yorkshire Post:
Henry saw resort as northern stronghold, historic map reveals

SCARBOROUGH played a key part in Henry VIII’s defence against invasion, a recently unearthed map reveals.

A town plan, drawn around 1539, has been found among thousands of documents in British Library archives

** From The Daily Mail:
Saved for the nation: The oak trees that shaded Henry VIII and his bride-to-be Jane

Their towering trunks and gnarled boughs once bore silent witness to the courtship of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour.

Little wonder, then, that the oaks and beeches have been identified as some of Britain’s most historic trees, so that they can be protected for future generations.

In the biggest project of its kind, experts have painstakingly identified and mapped 4,500 of the oldest trees in the royal hunting forest of Savernake.

Great project – I love gnarly old trees!

St Paul’s and St Peter’s are famed for their spectacular domes, and Florence Cathedral is regarded as a wonder of Renaissance architecture.

At Westminster Abbey, though, where kings and queens are crowned, poets are buried and martyrs commemorated, only a “stubby little tower” marks its centuries of glory.

Now the Dean and Chapter of the abbey are hoping to build a £10 million “crowning feature”. The new corona is likely to be the most dramatic addition to the London skyline since the Swiss Re building, known as the Gherkin, opened in 2004.

The corona is part of a £23 million development plan that will involve a huge fundraising campaign if it wins approval from several regulatory bodies. The public will be consulted on the design of the corona, which will replace the lantern, a small, plain concrete, pyramid roof above the crossing that stands in front of the high altar where every monarch has been crowned for the past thousand years.

Full article

Before seeing this article, I don’t think I had ever really thought about the lack of a large spire or tower above the crossing at Westminster, like you see at pretty much every other great cathedral in England. I’m curious to see the plans for the new addition.

Here’s a quick screen shot of Westminster Abbey from Google Maps, with an arrow pointing to the area they are talking about making the addition.

Update: Here’s a link to the press release from the Abbey, which includes some more information and a link to the exhibition page.