Mid Anglia Group, Richard III Society
Archive for the category “photos”
BBC Sunday Worship from St. Mary-le-Tower
Last week, this programme featured Choral Matins from St. Mary-le-Tower in Ipswich, which the Group has visited at least twice …
The Dutch Quarter
We visited this part of Colchester on a Sunday afternoon with John about twelve years ago. It is just downhill from the Town Hall and its statues, along West Stockwell Street. One of the highlights is St. Helen’s Church, named for Constantine’s mother who may have been British by birth. It is now a Russian Orthodox church.
Here is the rest of the notice board.
How would Thetford Priory have looked?
Thetford Priory was, of course, a Cluniac Priory. Whilst some walls stand away from the entrance, in other areas only the foundations remain and the Mowbray tomb locations are no longer marked, although those of the Howards, moved to Framlingham, remain.
If only, I hear you say, some kind of restoration could take place. That would be extremely expensive but there is a comparable building, although it suffered less dilapidation in the first place. Paisley Abbey was also a Cluniac priory and constructed in the twelfth century, although it had to be rebuilt in 1307 after an Edward I visit. Just nine years after that, on March 2nd, Marjorie Bruce, the king’s daughter married to Walter the Steward, fell off her horse nearby, whilst heavily pregnant. Although she died, her son was born alive and survived to 74, eventually succeeding his uncle as Robert II, the first Stewart King and progenitor of the Scottish nobility.
Paisley Abbey, arguably the Strathclyde region’s greatest historic attraction, is known as the “Cradle of the Royal House of Stewart” – literally, in fact. It is now a Church of Scotland church and has appeared on Songs of Praise in recent years, whilst the restoration continues. Robert II is among those buried there, with many of his family.
The Inspirational Borders and Lothians
After a very smooth journey, I started with a hotel overlooking the Tweed, on the site of a 1526 rebellion that even I hadn’t heard of.
Then I added a legendary rugby club ten minutes’ walk away, fitting an all-weather pitch for Kelso’s visit that Saturday, and an Abbey, formerly the home of Robert I’s heart just five more minutes away. A new station, (Tweedbank, which links to Waverley) is just half a mile in the opposite direction to the town.
Indeed, on the very day that I visited the Abbey, a repeat of Oliver’s ‘A History of Scotland’ showed him there. I did miss out on a vist to Peebles.
The first full day featured a morning in Leith, the birthplace of Ronald Balfour Corbett (whose middle name was NOT Goliath, as he often claimed), and an afternoon in Edinburgh’s city centre. The Leith coast features a modern shopping centre called Ocean Terminal, with everything you would expect, save that the second floor includes a walkway to the Royal Yacht Britannia, which was decommissioned without replacement in 1997. Four levels of this are accessible with the royal quarters, officers’ rooms and ratings’ bunks, catering, engineering, communication and medical facilities.
In the afternoon, at the northern extremity of Richard III’s world, I didn’t have time for St. Giles’ Cathedral and Holyrood Palace but I passed the (Sir Walter) Scott Memorial, the (David) Hume statue and Waverley Station (on North Bridge from Princes Street) and headed up the cobbles of the Royal Mile to Edinburgh Castle.
Here, I chose to spend my time visiting the guns (accidents didn’t only happen in 1460), the Crown Jewels (the Honours of Scotland, where photography is heavily restricted) and St Margaret’s Chapel, named after the exiled Princess of Wessex, who became Queen of Scotland to Malcolm III and ancestress of every Scottish monarch since 1093 save one (Donald Bain) and every English monarch since 1154 thanks to her daughter’s marriage to Henry I. Sadly, someone was taken ill in the Chapel just before I arrived so it was closed for a while.
Floors Castle, near Kelso, the home of the (Innes-Ker) Dukes of Roxburghe, has the foundations of Roxburgh Castle and the James II Holly (ilex aquiflorum), marking his place of death at the siege, in its grounds. It has fascinated me for forty years and I have planned to visit it for ten but the untimely death of the 10th Duke floored my plans. We officially visited Thirlstane Castle, home of the (Maitland) Earls of Lauderdale on the third morning and it was fascinating in its own way, with some Jacobite genealogy on the walls in both text and pictorial form.
The lower storeys are open to the public as the family – Captain Maitland-Carew at present – live in a wing but the towers are inaccessible.
This was followed by an afternoon in Jedburgh, yet another of the little Borders towns, home of another great Borders Abbey and the Mary Queen of Scots’ House, a slim three-storey building with spiral stairs throughout, serving as a Leicester-style visitors’ centre for her 1566 stay. On our return from Jedburgh, we passed the Haig estate, where the future General was brought up among the whisky distillery, and Scott’s View, overlooking the ubiquitous Tweed and Melrose itself.
The siege of Colchester and its landmarks
The siege of Colchester took place 163 years after the battle of Bosworth ended the Yorkist era, together with the life of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, the local magnate. However, a time travelling visitor in either direction would have noticed surprisingly few differences, some of which were quite subtle:
St. John’s Abbey had mostly been demolished during the Reformation but the land had passed to the Lucas family, of whom Sir Charles was a Royalist leader. The Gatehouse (left) remained, as did the Abbey church, by then a family chapel.
The Siege House (left), now a popular restaurant was right at the edge of the besieged, walled town by Eastgate and still shows some signs of artillery damage.
Lucas’ headquarters were on the west side of Head Street, now in an outbuilding (left) to Ellisons’ solicitors.
St. Botolph’s Priory, as you can see (left), also suffered a lot of damage from Parliamentarian guns.
During the siege, a gunner named “One-eyed Jack” Thomson was reputedly perched on the tower of St. Mary-at-the-Walls (left). He was eventually shot down by a sniper, possibly leading to the “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhyme.
The siege lasted from mid-June to late August 1648. At its conclusion, General Fairfax sentenced to death: Lucas, his colleague Sir George Lisle and Bernard Gascoigne. The latter, being foreign, was reprieved but Lucas and Lisle were shot on 27th August, to the north of the Castle, on a spot (left) where it is said that “the grass never grows”.
Sources:
http://www.englishcivilwar.org/2012/04/tracing-siege-of-colchester.html
Mediaeval Colchester’s Lost Landmarks, John Ashdown-Hill.
The Siege of Colchester 1648, Stephen Lark.
PS Speed’s (accurate, for once) 1610 map of Colchester (left) is also of use.
A Mediaeval Feast in Essex
I stupidly decided to cook a mediaeval feast to celebrate New Year’s Eve with some friends. I say ‘stupidly’ not because it wasn’t a success but because the amount of work and fiddly techniques nearly killed me!
I wanted to do something similar to one of the courses of Richard’s coronation feast, so about 15-20 dishes, mixed sweet and savoury. I had tasted some mediaeval recipes while at Middleham in July and loved the different tastes and rich flavours, so I bought the recipe book the dishes had come from. This was ‘The Medieval Cookbook: Feast for the King, compiled by Patricia Rice-Jones. I also had another book, The Medieval Cookbook by Maggie Black
I chose a variety of recipes and created the following menu: 
Obviously, one person (me) would not be able to cook all this in one day, so I began early and started with the sugared almonds, crystallised ginger and mixed pickles. The recipes were not difficult, but very fiddly and time-consuming as they were all done from scratch. There were often several processes to go through for each dish. Even the sugared almonds required you to painstakingly add a tablespoon of sugared water to the almonds in a pan and jiggle them about over the heat until dry – several times over! The vegetables and apple for the pickle had to be hand peeled and sliced before the process started.
I then made some stocks to freeze for several of the recipes, made from lamb and chicken bones. With the lamb stock, I made the venison stew – I did it in the slow cooker and the smell was fantastic! Not so when I tasted it! The unfamiliar herbs I had used (hyssop and savory) were extremely bitter and the stew tasted horrible. Knowing I could not serve this concoction as it was, I added honey, red wine and cranberries. Phew! It was delicious. I let it cool and froze it. Here is the finished dish, served in bread trenchers with a slice of frumenty.
Venison stew and frumenty
The next cooking session involved pastries. I made figs in coffins and the chicken pasties with ready rolled pastry (I’m not a complete idiot!) and froze them to cook on the day. Then I made the ‘Grete Pye’. This was formed of a layer of minced beef with suet and spices. Then a layer of game meat, a layer of chopped dates and prunes with spices and finally another layer of minced beef. I made a pastry rose design to decorate it (of course!). Here are the figs in coffins and Grete Pye:
Over the next couple of weeks, I cooked various dishes which could be made in advance, such as the wine sauce for the salmon and the chicken (which would later be crowned with eggs). These are the finished dishes:
The day before, I spent most of the day preparing and cooking, in particular the Leche Solace (a sort of blancmange) and the Geli Partied with a Device had to be allowed to set in the fridge and the orange segments were marinated in honey and spices. The pictures here are of the Leche Solace and the baked orange served in the halved peel.
I will relate the procedure to make the Geli to show you how elaborate and intricate some of the processes were. This jelly was made with a bottle of fruity, white wine and a pound of sugar, some cinnamon, nutmeg and fresh ginger. After simmering for about ten minutes, it is cooled for three to four hours, then strained through muslin lined with coarsely-ground almonds. Milk is added and it is then strained several times through muslin until it clears (I gave up after six times – it would have to do!). Gelatin, dissolved in water, is added to the reheated wine mixture and stirred until dissolved. White rose petals were placed in the dish and the mixture poured over and left to set – I had picked the last white rose from my garden in November and frozen it. I had one leaf and I arranged it with some of the petals on the top once it had set. For me it was the most delicious item. Here is a photo of it.
Geli Partied with a Device
On the day, New Year’s Eve, I was still cooking. I reheated the venison stew in the slow cooker, made the frumenty and Lombard slices, roasted the salmon and baked the frozen pastries. The sauce for the salmon had to be reheated and the pears had to be peeled and poached and the oranges baked. I made the dough for the fritters from scratch and left them to rise. Trying to time all of this was an absolute nightmare!
Roasted Salmon
However, the feast was a great success, all except the sautéed lamprey, which was disgusting – we all tried one small piece and gave the rest to the dogs. There was so much food, I didn’t bother to cook the fritters until late in the evening, as no-one had enough room to eat any! The fritters and lamprey are pictured below.
The feast was finished off with a gingerbread ‘subtletie’ of a York Rose with gold leaf centre. I also made Hippocras (spiced wine) and served Lindisfarne mead.
Gingerbread Subtletie
My guests entered into the spirit by dressing up. All in all, it was a great success but I will never voluntarily make a mediaeval feast again, although I may well make some of the individual dishes and I have already used some of the more unusual spices that I don’t normally use.
‘Mediaeval’ Guests
Haunted Essex
Some of the venues in this article are surprising and the nocturnal visits sound very expensive but they include some classic historical venues. In Colchester, the Castle
and (Howard) Red Lion are included, as is the Redoubt
at Harwich, although the Kelvedon Nuclear Bunker and North Weald Station are much newer. In the north of the county, many of the locations are connected to Matthew Hopkins and his anti-witchcraft activities, or earlier victims such as Ursula Kemp (the St. Osyth Cage). In the south, there is also the Valence House, Dagenham.
Good luck ghost-hunting.
Thetford
We know Richard III was first buried (and exhumed many years later) on 25 August and it seems logical, although we don’t know exactly, that John Howard, Duke of Norfolk was interred on the same day. So, it seemed to be the ideal date to visit the 1107 Cluniac Priory, which lies only five minutes from the station. It was a dry day, which is very helpful because Thomas Cromwell’s commissioners were ruthless in implementing the Dissolution and so is the Priory today. The foundations and first foot of the wal
ls remain as well as more at the north end, away from the entrance gate. Norfolk was moved here to join his family a few years after 1485 but before about 1540, when they were taken to St. Michael’s, Framlingham.
The local Wetherspoon, in the market place, bears the Howard heraldic name of the Red Lion and I lunched in there. The walls were festooned with local history – from the Iceni, the Priory building to the Dissolution and the local factories – but I couldn’t photograph these because there were diners in the way. There was a poster about Ayrton Senna, who lived in Attleborough during his Lotus days.
Just round the back was the Dads’ Army Museum, which gave me two ideas about Edward IV. He had a brother with an apparent drink problem and, whilst married, had feelings towards a widow named Grey, both of which apply to Captain Mainwaring.
Discovered in Norwich
Whilst visiting Norwich to see the Whitefriars plaque to Lady Eleanor Talbot, Richard’s sister-in-law, in Tomblands near the Cathedral, I happened to take lunch in a particular hostelry, the Glass House. It is principally named for the city’s stained glass industry and vario
us panels, also commemorate the author Harriet Martineau, the rebel Robert Kett, Cotman and the other “Norwich School” artists.
The panel nearest the main door was this one (left). Sir Thomas, who bore the name of a North Norfolk village, served John of Gaunt, helped to implement Henry IV’s usurpation before joining Henry V as an archery commander at Harfleur and Azincourt, and eventually dying in 1428. The other pictures are of Sir Thomas, Henry IV and the Upper Close at Norwich Cathedral. 
Mid Anglia Group, Richard III Society 