I don’t know exactly when the realisation dawned upon me, but for most of its history, London was really, just the “square mile”, the City of London. That City is a Roman creation, and still is very much Roman. The present boundary of it mirrors the Roman town, Londinium. But I am thinking of this […]
Read More London is a Roman CreationThe last thing I was expecting our lockdown to bring was a serene and eerie atmosphere. It is something I am not used to, and it leaves me unsettled. I could not put my finger on it, until I realised it was a lack of modern noise that was unnerving. It is the thing science […]
Read More The Silence and the NoiseA 1772 list of East India Company ships, from the Jerusalem Coffee House.
Read More The Coffee House Ships ListCesaer Picton. Slave, servant, gentleman.
Read More Cesar PictonMinerva and the Water God. I thought There was nothing between Minerva and the Water God. But I was wrong…
Read More Minerva and the Water GodMy very first archaeological dig was on a massive Roman farm estate, located right in the centre of the wheat production area of Roman Britain. It was a huge excavation and I spent a wonderful summer living in a tent. The Roman owner of this estate would have been a business “magnate”, as opposed to […]
Read More Water GodThe Metorpolitan Commission of Sewers, surveryors report, Soho, 1855 Thinking of my previous article on dirty books and manuscripts, I once worked on a book that was covered in very different kind of grime, and a very different context. This could be some archaeology I discovered in the archives? One area of history I have […]
Read More Another dirty bookAs soon as you walk into an archive store, you can smell the dust. 100,000s of books and documents dating back hundreds of years, all carry dust and dirt they picked up along the way. They are encrusted with it. As you open a book or the lid of an archive box, it hits you […]
Read More Dusty and Dirty BooksMany years ago, I found a box in the attic of my auntie’s house. She had just passed away and I was clearing the place. It was odd, as the whole of the attic was empty apart from this one box in the centre of it. The box was full of postcards, photographs, a piece […]
Read More Postcards, Woolwich Arsenal, 1917Kalendarium Hortense; OR THE Gard’ner’s Almanac, Directing what he is to do MONTHLY throughout The YEAR. AND what FRUITS and FLOWERS ARE IN PRIME. By John Evelyn. Esq; Fellow of the Royal Society Evelyn’s Kelendarium Hortense for May. It is very hot this weekend, so time to move your Orange trees from the Conservatory. […]
Read More The Gard’ners Almanac cont’d; Orange Trees