Search This Blog

History Shorts: snippets of local history

Exploring local and landscape history with photos and maps - a blog

Home

More…

Posts

Showing posts with the label royal cipher

Show All

No results found

Powered by Blogger

HistoryShorts: I have a particular interest in local history, landscape and genealogy. My blog is mainly for sharing history-related photos and I'm also on Twitter: @HistoryShorts. Thanks for your interest!

Visit profile

Pages

Home
History

Labels

1093
11/11/11
12th century
15th
15th RIR
1914
19th century
36th Ulster Division
abandoned
Abingdon

advertising
aldwych
Alfred the Great
Anglo-Saxons
Antrim
April 8
archaeology
architecture
Art Deco
bathing
battlefield
Belfast
Bessbrook
Bible
British Museum
British Newspaper Archive
Brompton Road
buildings
Bury St Edmunds
carving
castle
cathedral
Causeway Coastal Route
ceiling
centenary
Christian
church
churches
cinema
citizen history
Civil War
Clan MacDonnell
classifieds
climate
climate change
Cold War
Commons
conduit
copse
crowd sourcing
Crumlin Road
Cuddesdon
Deserted Village
detective agencies
detectives
disused
door
dorset
Duke of York
Dunluce Castle
Eisenhower
England
family history
Farset
FitzHarris
Fitzharrys
Flanders
flickr
flood zone
France
Game of Thrones
gaol
genealogy
ghost
ghost village
GIS
google earth
Great War
Green Man
Greenwich
hidden
hidden hydrology
history
History Shorts
house
hydrology
industry
Ireland
Joan Bloxam
Kilburn
landscape
LiDAR
Lives of WWI
local history
London
London Standard
london transport museum
lulworth
maps
medieval
Messines
military
mill
motte
mound
Narnia
newspapers
Norman
Northern Ireland
Northumbria
Nuneham Courtenay
On This Day
Oxford
Oxfordshire
pagan
park
photographs
photography
place name
placenames
post boxes
postbox
priory
prison
railway
religion
remnant
research
Rifles
RIR
river
road
rocket testing
roof
royal cipher
Royal Irish Rifles
Royal Mail
ruins
Scottish-Irish
secret
secret London
sign
Somme
Sorley Boy
space hazards
Stert
strand
sunlight
Sunningwell
swimming
Thames
Titanic
tourism
tube
tunnel
tyneham
underground
urban
Victorian
vintage
visualisation
VR
Wales
wall
war
water
Wilfrid
Winchester
woodland
World War I
WWI

Show more Show less

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

June 13, 2019

"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

Many urban rivers are hidden underground – 'daylighting' them would bring nature back to cities

January 31, 2020

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

Victorian post boxes

February 29, 2020

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: