Crannogs, Priest Holes and D H Lawrence!

Some weeks I hardly seem to learn anything, other times I'm learning and discovering so much that I can't possibly document it all, so I will have to stick to the things that are most interesting to me. Today I'm going to focus on three little snippets, all originating from different sources.

Crannogs - I read about this in the June 2007 issue of BBC History magazine. In prehistoric and early historic times, people sought to protect their homes from attack by invaders, rival tribes and other nasties - the most common example of this is the castle. However in Scotland, many people instead constructed a crannog. This was essentially a small building which was built in the middle of a loch, raised up out of the water on tall stakes buried into the loch bed. These homes were connected to land by gangways that were easily defended, often including a drawbridge that could be pulled up to disconnect them from the mainland. None have survived as they were made of wood, which has rotted in the thousands of years since. The evidence for these constructions - including some of the timbers and other artifacts - can sometimes be found buried in the peat underneath lochs. On Loch Tay in Perthshire (a Loch which evidence suggests had at least 30 crannogs at one time), one has been faithfully recreated using only original crafts and materials.

Priest Holes - I came across priest holes last night while watching 'How we made Britain' with David Dimbleby on BBC1 (a great programme, the 2nd of 6 episodes - I missed the first due to being on holiday). Starting in Elizabethan times and following the reformation under Henry VIII, Catholicism was outlawed, and many priests and ordinary catholics were put to death. Catholics had to practise their faith in secret, and priests were often smuggled from one home to another, trying to stay ahead of the priest-finders. Priest holes were built into many Catholic houses at the time - hidey holes artfully concealed in the home. Nicholas Owen was one of the most famous builder of priest holes, going from home to home building the priest holes, each one unique. He would never reveal the secret of the priest holes to anyone else. Sometimes the authorities would spend weeks searching a suspect house looking for these priest holes (with the priest starving and struggling for air inside), pulling up floor boards and panels but often never finding them. Nicholas Owen was executed on the rack following the gunpowder plot.

Interesting parallels can be drawn between this, and hideouts on the 'underground railroad' in America, smuggling slaves to safety before and during the US civil war. I know next to nothing about the underground railroad, something I imagine I will correct as I continue my reading about American history. However I read about it in a David Baldacci novel of all things, where one of the characters discovers a hideout in an old civil war era ranch, used to hide slaves as they were smuggled to the safety of the northern states.

D H Lawrence - I listened to another of Alistair Cooke's 'Letter from America' broadcasts this evening. It was an early broadcast describing Cooke's first meeting with an American Indian in Sante Fe in 1933. I've only ever come across D H Lawrence for his controvertial book 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' however it seems he was very interested in native American Indians, and later in his life he went to live with them and effectly became a native. He wrote many essays and possibly some stories/novels about the American Indians. Apparently he is better known in America for being an artist too. I may read more about him soon, he sounds a rather interesting man.

That's all for now, more soon.

Lots new knowledge

OK it's several weeks since my last post, partly due to being on holiday in Crete. I'm not going to be able to cover all of what I've learnt in a single post, but they include the following:

• Visit to Knossos, site of the largest city of the Minoan civilisation, 4000+ years ago, home to the fabled labyrinth. Learnt an overview of Minoan civilisation.


• More modern history of Crete, when it was occupied by Venetions and later the Turks.


• Cretan resistance to German occupation during WWII (having read an excellent first person account, 'The Cretan Runner' by George Psychoundakis while on holiday).


• Spinalonga - the island off Crete, Venetian fortress turned leper colony.


• Various stuff on the Tudors (from my course).


• Historical techniques from my course.


• Local history of Lancaster.


• Greek alphabet.

There's more but that's what sticks out. Hope to cover some of this soon. Firstly a couple of other items.

How to convert farenheit to celsius

While on holiday, I kept seeing temperature in farenheit. Since I only work in celsius I never know what it means. I vaguely remembered that there was an easy way to convert between the two, so decided to look it up. Apparently the formula is:

C=(F-32) x 5/9

Crikey and I was hoping for something I could easily do in my head! To convert celsius to farenheit by the way, you do: F=(9/5 x C) + 32. As a useful check, zero degrees celsius is 32 degrees farenheit, and human body temperature is 37 degrees celsius or 98.6 degrees farenheit.

Alistair Cooke and his 'Letters from America'

I've recently been reading Alistair Cooke's landmark history book, 'America'. I've been vaguely aware that he was most famous for his 'Letter from America' broadcast, every week for 58 years between 1946 and 2004. Being relatively young (though admittedly 24 when the last broadcast happened), I had never heard or read any of the 2800+ broadcasts (15 minutes each). Having a fascination with America and its history myself, this is something I thought I should really look at. There's 3 volumes of the 'best of' on CD, a total of a paltry 36 episodes. There's several extracts and highlights on the bbc's official website. Also on the website, you can listen to the last 5 years of broadcasts, 1999-2004. I've now listened to the very first broadcast, originally broadcast in 1946, but rebroadcast in 1996. What struck me is that Mr Cooke's voice is very easy and enjoyable to listen to. The first broadcast was about GI brides going to America, rationing and black market profiteering of butter etc. I'm really looking forward to listening to more soon.