by the Hadleigh Society
Although the presemt building dates back to 1449, the Hadleigh Society have traced the site back to the previous century and the functions of the neighbouring properties, as this article explains. We visited the Guildhall about fifteen years ago with John, along with a search for things related to Archdeacon Pykenham and Rowland Tayler.
If, like me, you’re puzzled by this unusual, rather stark old building (which doesn’t look real or even English!) then this article explains:
“….Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge is a Grade II* listed building that has been saved as a museum. This old timber-framed and plastered building is a unique example of a Tudor ‘grand stand’. The sport-loving sovereign and associates could climb to the top floor to watch a drive past of the Forest deer….”
(The idiot in me promptly imagined deer casually giving the royal wave as they swooshed past in Rolls Royces….)
The hunting lodge is now linked to the first Queen Elizabeth, but actually started its life in the 12th century with Henry II. The building that is there now wasn’t Elizabeth’s either, but was commissioned by her father, Henry VIII.
Its unusual design is due to the need…
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Reblogged from a Medieval Potpourri @ sparkypus.com
The Last Stand of Martin Schwartz and his German Mercenaries at the Battle of Stoke Field 16th June 1487. Unknown artist Cassell’s Century Edition History of England c.1901.
The battle of Stoke Field fought on the 16th June 1487 has been discussed elsewhere extensively so there is no need for me to go into it here. I would recommend for those who have not already done so, to read Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke by Michael Bennett and Stoke Field The Last Battle of the Wars of the Roses by David Baldwin should they wish to delve more into the story. I want instead to focus on the aftermath of that awful day with its tragic outcome – the final fall of the House of York and the destruction of its last leaders – but mostly the lost burial place…
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It seems that a Hull pub stands on a historically important site because many centuries ago, the building on the corner of Lowgate and Alfred Gelder Street in the city centre replaced a certain Suffolk Palace, which once belonged to King Henry VIII.
However, of much more interest to us than the Tudor monarch is the site’s original connection to the de la Pole family. This is going back some 700 years, when William de la Pole was the first mayor of Hull. He was so wealthy he could lend vast amounts of money to pay for England’s various wars. His statue stands on the Pier. As we know, his descendants became the Earls and Dukes of Suffolk. And the eldest son of one of the dukes, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, became the believed…
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Much has been written about Cromwell’s life including his descent from Thomas Cromwell‘s sister, his childhood, his
rise and service as Lord Protector, after Charles I‘s execution, whilst refusing the crown. Here, as part of his afterlife, Allan Barton, on YouTube, discusses the fate of his corpse. This includes his beheading, alongside the other deceased regicides, such that his head now resides at (his alma mater) Sidney Sussex College and his body in a burial pit in London.
Barton also discusses the movement of the head over the years, almost like that of Eva Peron, together with the cumulative evidence of the head’s identity: the age, sex, facial hair and warts, similar to that in the case of Richard III’s remains.
Sir Tony Robinson, pictured in 2005, is recording at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk (Image: Newsquest)
Now here is some exciting news. Time Team, formerly a Channel Four programme to 2014 but now digital, will be following up their 2015 visit to the Sutton Hoo mounds soon, on a digital platform. We don’t have a transmission date as yet …
On Friday, I was in St. Lawrence’s Church, now a cafe, in the town centre when the meeting I was at was punctuated by the ringing of bells just above the front door. We assumed at the time that this was practice for the for the forthcoming coronation. However, as this article shows, it was to mark the approximate 550th birthday of Thomas Wolsey, who was born a short walk away in St. Peter’s Street, where his statue now sits. There will even be a brief film showing repeatedly in the former Edinburgh Woollen Mill which, like the church and his birthplace, may well have been on the site of Wolsey College, had he not fallen.
The present Priory House at Earls Colne (judged Best Village in Essex in 2015) may be early 19th-century but has a great history because it’s “….built on the site of a Benedictine priory founded by the de Vere family, Earls of Oxford, in the early 12th century, the remains of which lie buried under lawn in the grounds of Colne Priory and are designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument….” The priory became the earls’ principal burial place.
One famous in incident occurred in 1392 on the death of Richard II’s hated, forcibly exiled favourite, Robert de Vere, the 9th Earl of Oxford (and at one time Marquess of Dublin and Duke of Ireland). Robert had fled into exile after the débâcle (for him) of the Battle of Radcot Bridge. Now…
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Anyone who watched the brilliant BBC series The Detectorists will know what to hope of a home in Hoxne, Suffolk. The village is the location of The Hoxne Hoard, the largest collection of late-Roman gold and silver ever found in Britain, today worth almost £4 million. And now the Old Vicarage in Hoxne is for sale, and what a beautiful old house it is. See here for yet another exquisite article from Country Life.
One can but wish to own such a home set in such delightful surroundings, with views over the Waveney Valley. I’d love to live there….but there’s only one problem. I have to run the piggybank to ground and he’s getting wilier every day. I want his pennies but he’s determined to hang on to them!
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Last Monday, BBC repeated Sir Diarmaid MacCullogh‘s excellent documentary Henry VIII’s Enforcer: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Cromwell, from 2013. Please watch it soon as you can it is only available until mid-January. 
Actually, excellent is rather an understatement as it is better than others you may see.
In telling Cromwell‘s story from “the sort of pub you don’t go to twice” in Putney to his sudden arrest and beheading, possibly bodged, eighteen days later, McCullogh visited many of the (mostly) East Anglian sites associated with his life: Wolsey‘s statue in Ipswich, Ipswich School (which he helped Wolsey to establish), what is now Wolsey’s Gate, Christ Church College in Oxford (originally Cardinal College), Thetford Priory (which he dissolved, having the late Mowbray and early Howard Dukes of Norfolk disinterred) and St. Michael’s Framlingham (where they were reburied). His insight, as the son of the Rector…
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Mid Anglia Group, Richard III Society 