A Summer of History
In this newsletter
Hello
Sutton Hoo
Latest Blog Post(s)
All the History
Hello
Happy August lovely readers! The weather has been very inconsistent here, from heatwaves to grey, rainy weeks, but one thing that has been consistent is me being surrounded by lots of history. This month I’ve gone to a multitude of historic sites, written and researched lots of blog posts, and have been beavering away at my Richard II book too. Let’s get tucked in.
Sutton Hoo
Just over a week ago I had the pleasure of going to visit Sutton Hoo for the first time. I’ve wanted to see this site for years, and like thousands of others I very much enjoyed watching the film The Dig during the Covid lockdown. I thought the entire site had clearly been extremely well thought out and planned. There was a lovely shop and restaurant section, a little second-hand book shop, and a statue representing the famous ship from the burial, which was really great to get an appreciation of scale.
The historical site was split into three sections which each worked really well. By the entrance was a museum-type building which had a handful of items, some replicas of artefacts, and a little side room with some information about the film and some of the costumes and props from it. There was lots here to engage children or people who like more hands-on history, with a dress-up station and a short film of a few minutes which was a fictionalised portrayal of preparing the king for his burial, slipping in references to the historic change at the time like the introduction of Christianity. There were also several stands where people could touch replicas, play games, and otherwise get involved with the physicality of the history.
Further into the site was the house where Edith Pretty lived, and this was a fantastic set of rooms. The house was nicely preserved, but rather than being a historic house style set up, the rooms were set up as exhibition rooms. There were cases with artefacts related to Edith and the dig, with a really nice amount of information about Edith herself, who is so central to the story. Then side rooms had projections of original film footage from the excavation, as well as loads of the photographs taken, which was really fantastic to see. It made it come to life so well.
Finally, furthest away were the mounds themselves. One of the mounds had been reconstructed to its full size, which was really great to see just how significant they originally were, but the other mounds were still fairly visible. You could walk around the outside of the mounds, but most people gravitated to the viewing tower which had been constructed next to it and gave you a significant eagle-eyed view of the mounds. This really helped to put the scale of the site in context, and made it easier to see all of the mounds together. The only thing which seemed a shame was that there was no lift in the tower, and it was quite a few steps (I can’t remember the exact number but it was perhaps in the 70s) - this meant it was very clearly inaccessible to people with buggies/young children, or any accessibility needs, which I felt was quite an oversight.
Overall it was a fantastic trip, and I was so happy to visit. I would definitely go back again, and recommend it to others!
Latest Blog Post(s)
In the last newsletter, I promised you that this month I would be publishing a blog post about Pontefract Castle, after my trip to the site. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog (if not, don’t worry we’ll go into it in a moment!) then you’ll have noticed I’ve published a post this month which is not Pontefract Castle. Well, worry not! I have had more time recently to write some blog posts, so I decided that this month I would treat you all to a double post. The post about Pontefract Castle will be up in two days time, so make sure you go and find it.
Meanwhile, earlier this month we had a great guest post from jeweller Samuel Mee, who took us through a whistle-stop tour of famous pieces of jewellery from history. He explored key artefacts that changed fashions, like Tutankhamun’s funerary mask, the power of various royal artefacts, and how jewellery could be used to champion social change. If you missed it, make sure to catch up on it here.
All the History
This past month I have felt like I’ve been absolutely swimming in history. That describes most of my months, to be fair, working in the heritage industry, running Just History Posts and writing my books. But August has brought a bit more quiet and so I’ve had more time than usual to focus on my blog and book work. As mentioned, I’ve been able to treat you to two blog posts this month, instead of our aimed-for one, and I’ve got my research done for next month’s post which is just awaiting writing. I’ve also been able to dedicate more time to doing more in-depth research for the blog posts, which hopefully means you get higher-quality posts with much more academic research to them.
Book research has been chugging along in the background, and the next few months are going to be intense as the January deadline looms ever closer. I’m hoping to get the last few blog posts of the year sorted within the next few weeks so that I know that we’re all covered on that end and I can just focus on the book.
I’ve also been able to visit quite a few historic sites this month - alongside the Sutton Hoo visit, I’ve also been to the British Museum and to Windsor, seeing the outside of the castle and having a wander round the historic town. I’m also going to two conferences across the next two weeks, which will be a great opportunity to connect with heritage professionals and historians and find out latest best practice and research. It feels great to be so immersed in history in so many facets of my life!
Thank you as usual for reading, and I look forwards to seeing you next month.
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