Story of the illustrations     History is..      Walking to Waltham Abbey    History in stitches

Home
The design process
Power of pictures
Review
Books
History is
Reconstructing
Our Tapestry
1066 Timetable
Walking to Waltham Abbey
about us

 

History is.....

Keeping your eyes open....

When walking in the fields, about 10 miles from Stonehenge, I found an interesting piece of flint. It had been raining hard so the surface of the field was covered with pieces of white, washed flint.When I picked it up, it seemed to fit my hand so well.

But one caught my attention. (right)

 

We found the arrow (left) when looking for the battlefield at Fulford.

I took it to the city archaeologist as they need to be aware of everything that is found. (In fact everything belongs to the landowner).

It was a knapped flint used as a cutting knife or scraper.

Doing some experiments....

People wondered if it was possible for some of Harold's army to walk down to Hastings in time. There was only one way to find out, and that was to try and do it.

So I made a monks outfit and set off down the ancient road south, sleeping in the woods along the way. And the figures worked out perfectly. And I now know that you can be snug and warm with just a few layers of linen and wool, in the worst, wet, windy weather.   Read more...

We needed to check if the Vikings could have made charcoal in the few days available between the battle at Fulford and the destruction of the invaders 5 days later. So we did an experiment, and the BBC were there to record it. Read more...

Testing out the routes that could have brought Harald and his army to the battlefield. Read more

Re-enacting

There is more to re-enacting than just getting dresses up and waving an axe about. You can test some theories and get a mush  better idea of what was possible.

This image from the English Heritage re-enactment at Battle each year, shows the archers retiring. Harold's Saxon army is along the ridge. (left)

And you need a lot of water to keep the warriors going. (right)

 

If you have to charge up and down the hill at Senlac, you realise what a hard job the Normans and their allies had to dislodge Harold's army from the ridge.

And discovering what it is like to be on the receiving end of a hail of (rubber tipped) arrows is exciting. The shield is excellent at stopping 95% of the missiles, but the other 5% hurt.

Re-creating

The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the best sources of information we have about the battle of Hastings. What if we tried to copy the style, match the threads and see how long it takes. So the Yorkshire Preface to the Bayeux Tapestry was born.

Maps, old and new, read like a story, if you know the language

Geology, old maps, topographic and models

And reading books.

There is much more writing available now than scholars could find even 20 years ago. The Internet and many projects to translate ancient writing so that we can read them.

Follow-up some other strands from the book...

Is it worth studying history?

If you want to know how and why we get into this mess - and possibly help us avoid making the same mistakes again.

Historians are detectives and need to find evidence. On each page in the book we explain where the evidence came from - Have a look at this page - near the bottom is asks 'How do we know this?'

And what about ordinary people?

History is really the story of the millions and billions of people who have gone before.

so

This story is about a lot of fascinating characters

Interesting links

bullet Battle of Fulford
bullet Battle of Stamford Bridge
bullet Battle of Hastings
bullet English Heritage
bullet Battlefields Trust
bullet Young Archaeologists Club (CAB)
bullet York Archaeological Trust
bullet Regia re-enactors
bullet Viking re-enactors
bulletOnline documents

Events

bullet Riccall Rampage 24 July 2010
bullet Jorvik Festival (there will be another one in 2011!)
bullet Fulford Festival 2010
bullet Festival of archaeology 2010

 

 

 

 

An Illustrated History of 1066
about us
contact
glossary

Site written and maintained by Chas Jones & Amanda Pollard

All material is copyright of the authors -2009. For any permissions contact WritersPrintShop.com

 

read review

last updated 20 Julyy 2010