* New Battle of Bosworth trail reveals the true location of the historic English battlefield
* BBC History Magazine’s August 2011 Tudor Special
* BBC – Your Paintings – From the “About” page: Your Paintings is a website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings, the stories behind the paintings, and where to see them for real. It is made up of paintings from thousands of museums and other public institutions around the country.
Stained glass of John Knox at the John Knox House in Edinburgh, Scotland. Photo May 2000.
Although the place is known as “John Knox House”, he probably never even visited the house. It is a late-15th century mansion along the Royal Mile in Edinburgh and in the 16th century it was owned by goldsmiths who refashioned the Scottish crown for James V. Sadly, I didn’t take any other photos inside the house since it was pretty dark and I was shooting on film (I can’t wait to get back to a bunch of these places now that I use a DSLR!), but some of the interiors are amazing. I have a thing for uneven wood plank floors and wood-panelled rooms and it was full of them!
Some of you may recall the calendar photo contest by The Anne Boleyn Files from earlier this year (my brief mention of it was here) and now the winners and calendar have been revealed! The image that won and graces the cover (above) is stunning. I especially love it since it is the polar opposite of all my photos from a rainy, gray day at Leeds Castle.
The calendar includes photos of the places listed below and the births and deaths of the Tudor kings and queens, plus the dates of important battles during the Tudor period.
Lord Leycester’s Hospital, Warwick, Warwickshire
Blickling Hall, Aylsham, Norfolk
Old Palace, Hatfield, Hertfordshire
Ludlow Castle, Ludlow, Shropshire
Hever Castle, Hever, Kent
Hampton Court Palace, Richmond, London
Haughmond Abbey, Shrewsbury, Shropshire
Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire
Leeds Castle, Maidstone, Kent
Glastonbury Abbey, Glastonbury, Somerset
Coughton Court, Coughton, Warwickshire
Pembroke Castle, Pembroke, Pembrokeshire
Also, $1.50/
I’m sure most of you have seen this already since half the Tudor blogosphere beat me to it (bad combination of my time zone and a busy morning at work), but the Mary Seymour article that I mentioned in the Sunday Short Takes a couple of days ago has now been posted at the History Today website. I was so pleased that this turned out to be one of the articles that they posted the full text of so everyone would get a chance to read it!
What became of the baby daughter of Henry VIII’s widow Katherine Parr and her disgraced fourth husband Thomas Seymour after their deaths? Linda Porter unravels a Tudor mystery.
On August 30th, 1548 Katherine Parr, widow of Henry VIII and then wife of Thomas Seymour, Lord Sudeley, gave birth to a daughter at her fourth husband
* Tombs in Suffolk studied with aid of space-age science and Here come the Tudors… in 3D – In a follow-up to a story that I had in some news round-ups back in December 2010 and January 2011, researchers have revealed results of their laser scanning of the tombs of Henry Fitzroy and Thomas Howard.
* In the July Issue of History Today – A small but intriguing mention of an article in the upcoming issue about the fate of Katherine Parr’s daughter. What happened to Mary Seymour is in the top 5 of the most frequently asked Tudor history questions I’ve seen.
* Stirling Castle – A Glimpse of Magnificence – I know you’re all probably sick of me linking to things about the Stirling Castle renovations, but as you’ve probably guessed, I’ve found the whole project quite interesting. Here’s a video overview of the project now that it is open to the public.
Front of Hever Castle. Photo May 1998.
After musing about maypole-induced deaths in the article I linked to on Sunday, I found out through this article from the BBC that the truth was even stranger than I had imagined:
Maypole injuries were not only caused by careering into another country dancer. Thomas Alsopp of Coventry was standing in the former cemetery of the Coventry Greyfriars under a stone wall on 26 April 1558 when a maypole fell over.
It hit the city wall and knocked a stone out of the top of it, which hit him on the left part of his head and penetrated his brain, killing him instantly.
And the bears I alluded to in the title:
Bears were part of the Tudor entertainment scene. There were performing bears and there were bears kept for the bloodthirsty attraction of bear-baiting. […] But sometimes they escaped. A widow called Agnes Rapte was killed by Lord Bergavenny’s bear when it broke loose at his house at Birling, Kent in 1563. Another victim, Agnes Owen from Herefordshire, was killed in her bed by a runaway bear.
Read the full article for more stories of bizarre Tudor-era deaths.
* Tudor coroners’ records give clue to ‘real Ophelia’ for Shakespeare – I saw a lot of articles going around last week on this discovery by Dr. Steven Gunn, but I liked the discussion in this one of safety in the period in general. I’m particularly intrigued by the fatal maypole accidents…
* Mary Arden’s Farm blog – If you’re interested in Tudor and Elizabethan daily life topics, check out this new blog from the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
* English Heritage Free Sites Audio Tours – English Heritage has put up mp3 versions of audio tours for their free sites that you can download. Be sure to check out some of the other goodies in their multimedia library!
* Damon Albarn and the Elizabethan magical mystery man and The Mystical Artefacts Of John Dee At The British Museum – I don’t get a whole lot of hits on my “John Dee” news alert, so it was particularly surprising to get two in one week (even though they are related, prompted by a new opera)
* Gunpowder Plot documents among millions of papers put online by National Archives and Fourth and final part of State Papers Online – I’ve linked to related stories on this topic in the past and it’s nice to see that it is finally complete. Unfortunately there still doesn’t appear to be a way for individuals to access it without an institutional affiliation (which I’m lucky to have through work!).
* And finally, Mullions XP – Operating System For The Tudor Times, a fun video sent to me by Stephanie through twitter. Enjoy!
The keep of Dover Castle. Photo May 2003.
Yes, the Sunday news round-up is back! Sorry it’s been quiet around here, I’ve been working on a few projects and taking some time off but now I should be back on a regular schedule until I take some more time off in August.
* I’ve mentioned this project many times over the past few years, and now the restored royal apartmetns at Stirling Castle are open! The video in the link to the STV story has some neat views and a snippet of the weavers still working on the reproduction tapestries for the castle. STV – Stirling Castle apartments reopen after makeover (with video) and BBC – Doors open after
Along the walls of Pembroke Castle. Photo May 2003.
The cloisters of Canterbury Cathedral. Photo May 2003.
This is the view of the other direction from the spot as this photo, posted last year.
The Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula at The Tower of London. Photo May 2003.
I kept putting off posting this story until the shuttle actually launched and after several delays it finally has!
I first heard about the possibility of a piece of The Mary Rose flying on the space shuttle when the crew of a different shuttle flight visited the Historic Portsmouth Dockyard last summer. They took the artifact with the hope that it would be flown on a future flight, which is indeed what happened. Here are some of the article links I collected about it, back when Endeavour was originally supposed to launch back in April:
From nasa.gov: Robonaut Hand, Ship Bearing Head to Space
From The Telegraph: Mary Rose artefact to be sent into space on Endeavour
From The BBC: Mary Rose artefact on space shuttle Endeavour
I posted a neat news video a few weeks ago on the Sunday Short Takes about the Royal School of Needlework and they got a lot more attention recently when it was revealed that they worked on Catherine Middleton’s wedding dress. There is a press release at the RSN website with some of the details of their work.
I know my fellow needleworkers would like some more details and up close pictures, but they seem to be hard to come by! At least there are plans for the dress to go on public display. So here are some links I collected, including some pictures and interviews with the embroiderers who worked on the dress.
Royal wedding: Dress embroiderers were kept in the dark
Revealed: Kate’s ‘secret meetings’ with dress designer in Henry VIII’s favourite palace
Royal wedding: the team of women who worked in secret to create Kate Middleton’s dress and Related images
Update: The announcement has now been made about the dress going on display this summer at Buckingham Palace. You can read more at the Royal Collection website.
St. Mary’s Church at Sudeley Castle. Photo May 1998.
LOTS of links this week! And I have two other draft posts on some other topics that I will be posting in the next few days.
* 1536 Act of Union is displayed for the first time ever – From 5 May 2011 to 27 July 2011, the 1536
Statue of Henry VIII at outside the Mary Rose Museum at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. Photo June 2000.
If you’re reading this blog through the RSS feed and haven’t looked at the actual site in a while you probably won’t have any idea of what I’m talking about but I finally found a blog banner that I’m happy with after several months of experimentation. When I updated everything back at the start of the year to fix some issues, I updated to a new theme that had a big picture banner up at the top. I knew that I should take advantage of all that space to do something neat, so I broke out the Photoshop and starting cutting things out of portraits and mashing things together and was totally disappointed in how everything I tried turned out. Then I had a brainwave and started playing around with paintings of *places* (especially since they had good horizontal lines) and finally hit on something that I like! I know that somewhere along the way I saw a site with a similar style banner and it lodged in my head as a neat design idea. (I wish I could remember something more specific to give proper credit!)
I’ve put four new banners together (so far) but I’ll leave the other three as future surprises and switch them out every few months.
So, a little information about the first new picture banner:
Click on the image for a larger version
London from Southwark Anglo-Dutch School c. 1630
Oil on panel (Baltic Oak) 57.7 cm x 85.7 cm (22 3/4 in x 33 3/4 in)
This version is the one at the Museum of London, which you can order a print of here. (There is a similar version at Chatsworth in the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire.) This is the earliest surviving oil painting with London as the sole subject and it shows a panorama from Whitehall on the left to past the Tower of London at the right.
I’ve added some labels to the picture above with identifications below:
1. Old St. Paul’s Cathedral. The spire was destroyed by fire in 1561 and was not re-built before the Cathedral itself was destroyed by the Great Fire in 1666
2. St. Mary Overie, re-named St. Saviour’s after the Dissolution and Southwark Cathedral since 1905.
3. Old London Bridge
4. Heads on spikes at the end of London Bridge
5. The Tower of London.
6. Four theaters (see below)
7. Whitehall and Westminster (sadly I don’t have a high-enough resolution version to pick out the exact details)
Trying to sort out which of the theaters was which on the south bank has been a challenge but they probably include some combination of The Swan, The Globe, The Hope, The Rose, or The Bear Garden (for bull and bear baiting). Part of the problem is that the painting’s date isn’t firm, and it probably drew on earlier drawings and etchings. The theaters changed several times from the late Elizabethan times through the first half of the 17th century so figuring out which ones are portrayed in this painting is hard (assuming that it even represents an accurate image of the city at the time). The one at the far left is almost certainly The Swan, and I’m thinking that the one at the far right is The Globe. The one tucked behind it might be The Rose, but I can’t be sure. If anyone finds more concrete identifications, please leave a note in the comments!
Outside Henry VII’s Chapel of Westminster Abbey. Photo May 2003.
