Articles from 2015
October
St Thomas of Canterbury and his legacy
24 October 2015
In many ways this week the topic that has kept reoccurring is Thomas Becket. However before I get on to St Thomas of Canterbury I thought I would just mention…
Kent History and Archaeology: exciting times
18 October 2015
First some advance notice: Dr Lesley Hardy will be giving a lecture to the Lyminge Historical Society on Tuesday 3 November at The Tayne Centre at 7.30pm. She will be…
Restoring Canterbury Cathedral Library in 1660
9 October 2015
This week saw another surfeit of riches from a historical perspective because last night there were two events going on in Canterbury. For those interested in the early Middle Ages,…
Rescuing ducks and liberating sows – the ‘Kentish Tithe War’
4 October 2015
For those who were at the Centre’s first event of the new academic year, a joint occasion where the Centre was in partnership with the Agricultural Museum, Brook, they experienced…
September
Canterbury pilgrims and beer drinking
23 September 2015
This week I had my first Canterbury boat trip when I went with Jonathan Carey (Eastbridge Hospital), Rupert Austin (Canterbury Archaeological Trust) and Rosie Cummings (Canterbury City Council) to look…
‘Battle of the Ducks’ at Canterbury
18 September 2015
The lead-in to the new academic year is always a busy time, even if you are not teaching much, although it looks like I will pick-up a ‘first’ from my…
Canterbury’s Medieval History and Archaeology
12 September 2015
This week has been busy, what with trying to finish off editing ‘Early Medieval Kent’ and attending the Fifteenth Century conference that this year took place at the University of…
Monarchs at the Medieval Canterbury Weekend
5 September 2015
Jeanette Earl mentioned that she had seen a report in the Independent on Thursday, in which the 60 plus writers of the Historical Writers Association had conducted a poll recently…
August
Medieval Weekend and New Centre Projects
28 August 2015
This week has been quite quiet in terms of matters relating to the Centre, but it is worth recording that the smart new flyer for the Medieval Canterbury Weekend has…
Nightingale Memorial Lecture: Kentish Tithe Wars
18 August 2015
Now that the ‘A’ level results are out and many prospective students know which university they will be heading to in just over a month, I thought I would return…
Medieval Canterbury and Magna Carta
11 August 2015
Still busy editing Early Medieval Kent this week but at least I now think I have the photo for the front cover. Having been on a Kent Archaeological Society visit…
Kent Cricket and a Tudor Mansion
6 August 2015
Being busy trying to edit the last in the Kent History Project series: Early Medieval Kent, 800–1220, which needs to be finished and off to the publisher by the 1…
July
Book Culture and Medieval Sandwich
31 July 2015
Hopefully some of you will have taken the time to look at the Medieval Canterbury Weekend webpages to see the exciting range of speakers and guided tours available next April. For…
Medieval Canterbury Weekend
24 July 2015
Keeping with the same theme as last week for the first part of the blog, my joint enterprise again involves this Centre, the partner organisation being Canterbury Cathedral Archives and…
Tithe Wars and Pilgrim Badges
18 July 2015
As last week I want to let you know about matters involving those attached to the Centre, and in this instance I want to highlight the value of working collaboratively…
Canterbury and Dover through the ages
10 July 2015
This week I thought I would report on a variety of matters linked to the Centre. In terms of the chronology of the events, I’ll start with that relating to…
Canterbury and Hythe in the Middle Ages
2 July 2015
In some ways the summer academic conference season resembles the grouse season, even though the timings are not as precise, in part because the end of the summer term varies…
June
Exploring Christ Church Gate
26 June 2015
Having highlighted Leonie Seliger’s wonderful talk about the Ancestors stained glass windows last week, I thought today I would focus on another of the cathedral’s experts. I first met Heather…
Ancestors Exhibition at Canterbury Cathedral
20 June 2015
Moving between the two universities in Canterbury, but not really being part of either, means that in some ways I cannot help but develop a split personality. However, it was…
Magna Carta and The Play of Adam
13 June 2015
Although I hadn’t actually intended to be in the city to see the Magna Carta parade, I happened to be there and so joined the crowd to see the band,…
Magna Carta and Canterbury
7 June 2015
Yesterday I joined about a hundred people in Old Sessions House at Canterbury Christ Church for the conference organised by Professor Louise Wilkinson, in conjunction with Canterbury Cathedral Archives and…
May
Kent records and artefacts: the future?
30 May 2015
Today I attended a presentation by several leading officers of the Smarden Local History Society to members of the Council of Kent Archaeological Society about records and record keeping within…
The Great War in Kent
23 May 2015
I spent today at the Centre’s study day entitled ‘How the Great War changed Kent, 1914–1928’ which took place at Old Sessions House. Even though the number of participants was…
Magna Carta and Canterbury Cathedral
15 May 2015
Today I met members of the group who are putting together an exhibition at The Beaney in Canterbury, from 13 to 28 June, on ‘Our Great Charter’, which represents their…
Magna Carta, Canterbury and Faversham
8 May 2015
Last Saturday it was great to see how many people had come to Christ Church to see Tim Jones’ archive film of various Canterbury places and people from the early…
April
Canterbury’s early film makers
28 April 2015
Last Saturday I attended a screening of archive films of Canterbury presented by Tim Jones, a senior lecturer in film studies at Christ Church, for the Oaten Hill Society. These…
Joan Thirsk’s academic great-grandchildren
22 April 2015
This week I am going to use the blog spot to give you Rob Gainey’s response to the recent ‘New Directions in Kent History’ conference because as a current Christ…
Chaucer and Canterbury’s Royal Pilgrims
18 April 2015
Even though the coming election continues to dominate national and local news, I thought I would look elsewhere for my short topic this week. Yesterday I took two groups of…
St Thomas Pageant and Christ Church Gate
10 April 2015
I thought this week that I would start with a couple of notices. First, the joint lecture organised by the Centre and Brook Agricultural Museum, the Fourth Nightingale Memorial Lecture…
Migration through the centuries
2 April 2015
The issue of migration in the early modern period with regard to Kent was not an explicit theme in the various papers given at the ‘New Developments’ conference last Saturday.…
March
Joan Thirsk’s ‘lost conversations’
29 March 2015
I decided to wait until today because the Centre’s programme of (joint) events hit a real high this week with first Professor Louise Wilkinson’s lecture on Wednesday (with Friends of…
King John: effigy and play
22 March 2015
This week I decided to wait until after I had heard Stuart Palmer at the AGM of the Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society [CHAS] because I knew he would be…
Medieval Crane at Fordwich
14 March 2015
I was fortunate enough this week to attend Richard Eales’ lecture on ‘The English and the French in Norman Kent and Canterbury’ as part of the winter programme run by…
Bell Harry in Canterbury and a Cambridge play
6 March 2015
This week I’m going to start in mid sixteenth-century Cambridge because yesterday I was leading a seminar on a comedy entitled Gammer Gurton’s Needle that was probably performed at Christ’s…
February
A native American in Canterbury
27 February 2015
By and large I’m going to stick to the early modern theme this week, not least because I attended an exceedingly interesting lecture on Wednesday by Dr Catherine Richardson (University…
From Augustine to Becket
20 February 2015
A few days ago I met up with Ian Coulson to discuss the final volume in the History of Kent series: Early Medieval Kent, 800–1220. This series, sponsored by Kent…
From Magna Carta to the Prebendaries’ Plot
13 February 2015
The last week has brought to light some fascinating discoveries. Firstly it was great to hear about the uncovering of Sandwich’s own copy of the Magna Carta that was unearthed…
Canterbury’s medieval literary history
4 February 2015
I think I will start with Professor Peter Brown’s lecture from last night when he gave a masterful account of Canterbury’s literary history between 1340 and 1420, a period that…
January
Spreading the word
28 January 2015
Considering the potential problems that may be on the horizon regarding archives in Kent, it is great to be able to report on something positive. I was at a meeting…
More words and also other artefacts
23 January 2015
Last night I joined more than a hundred other people who had come out to hear Professor Richard Gameson give a lecture at the Canterbury Cathedral Archives for the local…
Exploring written words in the archives
15 January 2015
Last night I attended a fascinating lecture on ‘The Men behind the Pen’ by Imogen Corrigan and I was struck once again by just how vital the preservation of books,…
Road to Runnymede and beyond
8 January 2015
I am sure that, like me, many of you have been listening this week to Radio Four with Melvyn Bragg where amongst others Louise Wilkinson, Nicholas Vincent and David Carpenter…
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