Pillboxes and Anti-Tank Ditch between Purton and Royal Wootton Bassett, Wilts
In May 1940 Germany invaded France. British troops in France retreated to the channel coast and most of the British Army was evacuated from Dunkirk but left most of their equipment behind. France quickly surrendered and there was a real danger that Britain would be the next target for invasion. General Ironside was given the…
Do you really want a heat pump?
Heat Pumps – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly I have had a ground source heat pump for the last 15 years. In 2019 we had an extension built and added an air source heat pump to the system. This article is an objective view of the pros and cons of heat pumps from…
Ringsbury Camp, an Iron Age Hillfort near Purton, Wiltshire
Ringsbury Camp is an Iron Age hillfort near Purton in Wiltshire. As far as I am aware it has never been excavated or surveyed, so we know very little about it. However, it is well preserved, and features not visible to the naked eye are visible on LIDAR images. It sits on a bed of…
Repton Revisited
There is no doubt that Repton was an important place to the Mercians and was also the site where the Viking Great Army overwintered in 873-874. Repton is frequently mentioned as a place where Mercian kings granted charters and the churchyard at Repton contains several graves that are distinctively Scandinavian. The site around the Church…
Were cattle and pigs really moved from Scotland to Wessex in the Neolithic?
Madgwick et al (2019) used strontium (Sr), oxygen (O) and sulphur (S) isotopes to determine how far pigs had been transported before being consumed at Neolithic sites in Wessex. Strontium is the most reliable indicator of geographical location and depends upon underlying geology. Strontium is incorporated into tooth enamel in young animals and is then…
Book Review: The Warrior Queen. The life and legend of Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred the Great
Several typos in the fist few pages made me take an instant dislike to this book. If you are going to write a book on history you have to be accurate. As well as the typographical errors there are other simple errors. For example when she talks about the end of Alfred’s reign she says…
Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide Football
To understand the context of this post please read The Danelaw in Derbyshire. The traditional game of Shrovetide football is played in Ashbourne every Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. There are two sides, uppards and downards; uppards are those born on the north side of the Henmore Brook and downards those born on the south…
Viking Genomics
I have attempted to read the paper ‘Population genomics of the Viking world’ recently published in ‘Nature’ and found it totally incomprehensible. To understand it you need a degree in statistics and/or genetics. This is dangerous because non specialists are not able to critically assess the work to ensure that the conclusions are justified by…
Book Review – ‘Pecsaetna’ by Phil Sidebottom
There are only two historical references to the Pecsaetna. One is in the Tribal Hideage and the other in a charter from 963 that records the transfer of a parcel of land within the bounds of the Pecsaetna (‘in pago Pecset’). So, to produce a 120 page book about the Pecsaetna you need a lot…
Rethinking the Emergence of the English
I recently watched Susan Oosthuizen give an online presentation on Rethinking the Emergence of the English. Professor Oosthuizen reviewed the evidence for a large migration of people from Northern Europe to Britain between 400 and 600AD. Her conclusion is that there is very little evidence to support the widespread belief in a large scale migration. …
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Before 1066 