History

"History never looks like history when you are living through it." John W Gardner, a United States Education secretary.


My blog aims to shares little slices of unnoticed local and landscape history.



"I knew when I had looked for a long time that I had hardly begun to see." Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain.


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What's in a name? Blake's Oak near Abingdon

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"One Blake hung upon an oak in the way to Abingdon, beyond the half-way gate. This traitor betrayed three Christian kings, and would have betrayed the fourth ; upon which he was hanged, within two days after his design was discovered, upon the said oak, which is still called 'Blake's Oak.'  The wood was formerly a haunt of robbers, and here St. Edward of Abingdon was once attacked by them, but his protestations of poverty being found to be true, he was allowed to proceed unharmed."  A Handbook for Travellers in Berks, Bucks, and Oxfordshire , London: J. Murray, 1860 A very small copse named Blake's Oak exists on land north of Abingdon near to where a proposed large housing development will be built. It lies relatively close to the slightly bigger Sugnell Copse and is adjacent to the main Oxford to Abingdon road. The OS Six Inch map (1888-1913) shows what is still effectively the modern extent of both copses (though I wonder if both copses were once join
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Many urban rivers are hidden underground – 'daylighting' them would bring nature back to cities

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The hidden rivers of London, such as the Fleet, the Tyburn and the Walbrook, are pretty famous, but they aren't examples of a rare phenomenon - as my fascination with the Farset in Belfast and the Stert in Abingdon can testify. We have been burying and managing waterways in numerous places for as long as we have needed to live in places.  Read on for an illuminating article by David N Lerner, Emeritus Professor of Environmental Engineering at the University of Sheffield. The article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article , published in December 2019. Two small rivers meet in the ‘Cathedral’ under Bradford city centre. Martyn Sutcliffe , Author provided David N Lerner , University of Sheffield Ever noticed how few rivers you can see in most city centres? It’s easy enough to spot the big, usually tamed, main river such as the Thames in London, the Seine in Paris, the Aire in Leeds or the Don in Sheffield. But you
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Victorian post boxes

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Familiar, but not mundane They are among our most familiar items of street furniture; indeed there are more than 115,000 throughout the UK. Yet how many of us walk past a post box without considering how long it might have been there? Pillar boxes have been a feature of our streets since the 1850s, when demand for postal services grew following the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840. The novelist Anthony Trollope is remembered as the Post Office official responsible for recommending the introduction of pillar boxes to allow easier posting of private letters. These were first installed on the Channel Islands in 1852, though were introduced to the mainland the following year. Early boxes were green, but red had become the standard colour by 1879. Here are a selection of boxes bearing the VR cipher of Queen Victoria, a little slice of everyday Victorian history. Abingdon (Conduit Road): Abingdon (St Helen's Wharf): Appleton: Bangor (Wales): Great Yarmouth:
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