Welcome to JDM's History Explorer

This week I am relaunching four of my blogs (strictly speaking three - a new one joins the family tomorrow). If you are a former reader of JDM's History Explorer - welcome back. If this is your first visit - a very warm welcome.

History has always interested me. As a child living in the English West Midlands, two of the delights of visiting my grandparents in South Wales were to stop at Raglan Castle on the way down, and Carreg Cennen Castle when we arrived. Local history always attracted - so I read a lot about the places I have lived in: Aldridge; Sheffield; Northampton; Rugby and now Milton Keynes.

A few weeks after we arrived in Britain's newest city, an American friend visited - and told me that while they were thrilled that we clearly enjoyed the delights of MK, for an American it was a disappointment. Old English towns and cities were great, but "Milton Keynes has no history". It was like a red rag to a bull - and in the last seven years I've spent a lot of my spare time finding out about the history of the area covered by MK. One of the advantages of a new-build city is that the archaeologists went in first - and excavated the areas before the builders moved in. As a result there is a wealth of information about the city's ancient past. I live only yards from an iron age settlement - and the Roman Watling Street runs at the eastern end of Furzton, the estate in which I live.

In my spare time, I love to visit historic sites - last week I visited both Waddesdon Manor (near Aylesbury) and the Tower of London. Reading about people, places and events in history is a delight for me.

JDM's History Explorer will share that with you. I will regularly include hyperlinks to web sites about the topics being discussed (just click on the highlighted words). I have also been building up a library of photos and information. My aim is to entertain and inform you.

Do send your comments and suggestions to jdavidmorgan@googlemail.com

Are you ready?

JDM's History Explorer has seen the occasional post in the past - (do scroll through and see what has already been published)

but it is about to undergo a revival and professional overhaul!

Do return to this blog on Tuesday 26th April


See you soon

David

New Years Day

The Celts apparently celebrated 1st November as the start of their year. One website I found states:-
“November 1 is the Celtic feast of Samhain. Samhain, Gaelic for “summer’s end,” was the most important of the ancient Celtic feasts.

The Celts honored the opposing balance of intertwining forces of existence: darkness and light, night and day, cold and heat, death and life. The Celtic year was divided into two seasons: the light and the dark, celebrating the light at Beltane on May 1st and the dark at Samhain on November 1st.

Therefore, the Feast of Samhain marks one of the two great doorways of the Celtic year. Some believe that Samhain was the more important festival, since it marked the beginning of a new dark-light cycle. The Celts observed time as proceeding from darkness to light because they understood that in dark silence comes whisperings of new beginnings, the stirring of the seed below the ground. Therefore, the Celtic year began with the season of An Geamhradh, the dark Celtic winter, and ended with Am Foghar, the Celtic harvest.”

If this was the case, then there would have been plenty of celebrations in the so-called "New City" of Milton Keynes on this day a couple of thousand years ago. When our new city was being built, archaeologists were given a great opportunity to discover our ancient history. There were a number of iron age sites – including a settlement in the centre of Furzton (where I live); and close to the site of the Roman Villa in Bancroft.

The map below (from Croft and Mycroft’s excellent “The Changing Landscape of Milton Keynes” [copies available for loan from the libraries at Bletchley; Stony Stratford; Wolverton; and Woburn Sands – and at the MK Local Studies Library in the Central Library]) show the main sites. You may be able to enlarge the picture by clicking on it.

Charles Bradlaugh

 

Charles Bradlaugh provoked many controversies, and many myths have grown around him. Last night, Deborah Lavin demolished the myths, and presented an absorbing story of a persistent man, who attracted some very powerful enemies. The talk (which will be repeated at 11.00am and 2pm on Sunday 25th October - as part of the Bloomsbury Festival - and I would thoroughly recommend attending) covered the life of the MP for Northampton. I had always understood it to be case that Bradlaugh was kept from taking his seat by the parliamentary manoeuvres of the Tories, who seized an opportunity to embarrass the incoming Liberal Government of Gladstone. But Lavin made a persuasive case for Gladstone himself being the culprit, eager to be rid of a "supporter" he detested.

It was an ugly fight. As an atheist, he sought to affirm rather than take the oath on a Bible. That had been allowed in courts as a result of legislation - which  Bradlaugh had used as a Solicitor's clerk, prior to the change in law he had complied with the requirement to take an oath. He made it clear that he was prepared to take the oath in Parliament if required, but his enemies denied him that, on the grounds of his atheism. He was sued for voting before he had taken such an oath, in an attempt to disqualify him from parliament - by bankrupting him (the fine was £500 for each vote). His seat was declared vacant a number of times, but he succeeded in winning re-election each time. But as a result of one attempt to enter the chamber he was imprisoned in the Clock Tower beneath the bell of Big Ben. It was Tory pressure that led to his release.

As suddenly as the controversy arose - it died. Lavin asserts that it was because Gladstone now needed Bradlaugh's vote, in a more tightly balanced House of Commons.

An interesting subject - in an engaging presentation. Don't miss it in October! (for more details, and to book - press here.)

Gordon Welchman

I live about a mile from Bletchley Park - and I am both a big fan of the place (and the tremendous work that has been done there to save, then turn it into a first class place to visit (I thought of using the term - 'museum', which it is - but that word has connotations of dry sterile exhibits - and Bletchley Park is warm, alive and engaging)) and a regular visitor. I'm reading through the many books that have been published about BP - some by the key players themselves.

Tomorrow evening (Monday 7th September), BBC2 are broadcasting - "Bletchley Park: Code-Breaking's Forgotten Genius". It's not about Alan Turing - who, we have come to understand in recent years - played a, once over-looked, key role in code-breaking, Mathematics and the development of computing. Instead it is about another of the fascinating characters who were brought together in Bletchley Park - Gordon Welchman.

Welchman too was a mathematician - and in 1950 he wrote a book, "Introduction to Algebraic Geometry". The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (in a piece written by the son of the Head of BP)  recognises that "he made a SIGNIFICANT contribution to the solving of the Enigma machine cipher...he instinctively grasped a whole range of problems, possibilities, and solutions which included two vital mathematical constructs as well as a concept of the total process required, from the intercepted German ciphered traffic to passing on significant intelligence implications to the commanders in the field...the task of converting the original breakthrough into an efficient user of the material was one for which Welchman should receive much of the credit"

While Turing headed up Hut 8 (which dealt with naval codebreaking), Welchman headed up Hut 6 (army and air force codebreaking) .

I'm looking forward to the programme - I hope you do too (and tell your friends)

There are some good books available -

By Welchman himself -


and

My home

I live on the very modern estate of Furzton in Milton Keynes. Much of it was build in the 1980s and 1990s. The lake (which is superb for bird watching; or walking) was built to ensure that flooding down the Loughton Brook was avoided. But, as I've mentioned in earlier posts, it has a heritage going back before the Romans arrived. I live only yards from an iron age settlement - and the major Roman Road we now refer to as Watling Street is the Eastern boundary.

The map below (which if clicked expands), is a hand drawn map of the Furzton area from the 16th Century. In the top left hand corner is the small village of Shenley Brook End. The three streams which flow into today’s Furzton Lake can be seen. The most northerly is the stream which flows through Shenley Brook End, which now flows into the Lake near the car park in Shirwell Crescent. The second, which has the name “Chaldwell” under it – now runs through the northern part of Emerson Valley, meeting the lake at its most westerly point. The third now divides North Furzton from South Furzton. Alford bridge is where Watling Street crossed the main stream. It may be the same Hertford Bridge that Sir Frank Markham writes about as the scene of a robbery in June 1766 that led to the rector of Tingewicke pursuing and fatally shooting the highwayman. He was acquitted of manslaughter.

Did the Romans march from Westminster to Milton Keynes?

As noted in the last post, Watling Street ran from the channel ports to Londinium and up through Milton Keynes to Wroxeter and Chester. But was this the original route?

Londinium was, like Milton Keynes, a new city (although they both had their roots thousands of years beforehand). By 50AD, according to a notice in the Museum of London, the original road was diverted to take in this developing new city. Where did the original route run?

One of the characteristics of Roman roads was that they are remarkably straight. Unlike the later roads which can be notoriously windy, Roman roads joined up points in a straight line. There are of course abrupt changes of direction to avoid some obstacles.

If the road from Dover were continue in a north westerly direction; and the Edgware Road was to follow its path south easterly (rather than abruptly turning eastwards into Oxford Street) they would end up facing each other across the Thames at Westminster.

There has been an oral tradition that the Thames could be crossed by foot at certain times where the Palace of Westminster now stands. Archaeological work (see The royal palace, abbey and town of Westminster on Thorney Island – Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2006) suggests that a sandbank once extended beneath the Palace of Westminster into the then wider & shallower Thames, just to the south of St Stephen’s Chapel (the ‘original’ House of Commons) close to the statue of Richard the Lionheart.

If this thesis is correct we had a direct link to Westminster – via Dunstable; St Albans; the Edgware Road – across Park Lane towards the entrance to Buckingham Palace (the site of Cowford – where the road crossed a branch of the River Tyburn is near to the Victoria Memorial) – across to Tothill Street and along the “ridge” on Thorney Island where Westminster Abbey now stands.