tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87441129939737719382024-03-12T18:51:38.103-07:00Matt SalusburyFreelance journalist specialising in reporting on education and journalism about journalism.
All words and pictures © copyright Matt Salusbury unless otherwise stated.
Contact: mattsal@gn.apc.org
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.comBlogger301125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-72314574964778892032023-10-31T15:10:00.001-07:002023-10-31T15:10:27.133-07:00Mystery Animals of Suffolk and bigcatsofsuffolk.com
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I am pleased to announce the publication of my book <i>Mystery Animals of Suffolk - including an account of over 150 mystery big cat sightings</i>, published by Slack-jawed Amazement Productions and printed in Suffolk by Leiston Press.<br><br><br>
It's available from its distributors <a href="https://bitternbooks.co.uk/product/mystery-animals-of-suffolk/" target="_blank">Bittern Books</a> and yes, it's on <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mystery-Animals-Suffolk-Matt-Salusbury/dp/1915721091/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3SRIMXOHWY77O&keywords=mystery+animals+of+suffolk&qid=1698789072&sprefix=Mystery+animals+%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Amazon UK </a>too. If you're in East Anglia, you can buy it at Dunwich Museum, Aldeburgh Bookshop, The Halesworth Bookshop, The Chocolate Box, Bungay and the Arts and Craft Centre, Old Hunstanton. <br><br><br>
So far I have been interviewed about <i>Mystery Animals of Suffolk</i> by BBC Radio Suffolk twice (<a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/interview-on-louise-hullands-bbc-radio-suffolk-norfolk-cambs-show-19-10-23/" target="_blank">most recently here</a>) and on <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/radio-interview-with-genx-radio-suffolk-now-online/" target="_blank">Gen-X Suffolk Radio</a>, also by <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/big-cat-investigator-says-suffolk-sightings-are-credible-east-anglian-daily-times/" target="_blank"><i>East Anglian Daily Times</i></a> and <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/dunwich-author-pens-book-mystery-animals-of-suffolk-suffolk-news-07-10-23/" target="_blank">Suffolk News</a> website.<br><br><br>
It's all on my website <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/" target="_blank">bigcatsofsuffolk.com</a>, which has <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/category/news/" target="_blank">updates</a> on <i>Mystery Animals of Suffolk</i> and <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/category/events/" target="_blank">events</a> around it. It also has a "report a big cat sighting" form - I'm getting about one report a week now.
The website also has <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/gallery/" target="_blank">footage</a> of what looks like a black leopard in Wortham from 2010 and a <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/gallery/" target="_blank">video</a> showing a very strange animal just over the Norfolk border on the edge of Thetford Forest.
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDx-JWDVwXK7e_dwm0n5NwDnpGXdIf1puZj3xwGTpRsW96_ByCyblB8bFH9j9sXxWDRM55e1SnDXvOlGRAUsp2ZZU64AFyLgfsbXOEvQjG68Vc2RSf2OAYfI6QMxhSz3LeE5P8WGDN0bfz2KX9E2n7BRULHS6Iz6QhWkm8TEel-AwYU_BS8l2w9t7793DD/s2562/0F7CE6BA-B058-4682-81BB-BEE45936B6F1.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="977" data-original-width="2562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDx-JWDVwXK7e_dwm0n5NwDnpGXdIf1puZj3xwGTpRsW96_ByCyblB8bFH9j9sXxWDRM55e1SnDXvOlGRAUsp2ZZU64AFyLgfsbXOEvQjG68Vc2RSf2OAYfI6QMxhSz3LeE5P8WGDN0bfz2KX9E2n7BRULHS6Iz6QhWkm8TEel-AwYU_BS8l2w9t7793DD/s400/0F7CE6BA-B058-4682-81BB-BEE45936B6F1.jpeg"/></a></div>Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-66276854468731936092023-10-31T10:22:00.017-07:002023-10-31T13:49:05.084-07:00Big cats around Bournemouth <b> This book review first appeared in <i>Fortean Times</i> magazine.</b><br> <br> <br>
<i>The British Big Cat Phenomenon – Differing Theories, Eye Witness Reports, and the Predators Diet</i>, Jonathan McGowan, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022, 190 pages <br> <br>
<i>The British Big Cat Phenomenon -Searching for Evidence and Territorial Marks</i>, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022 191 pages<br> <br>
<i>The British Big Cat phenomenon – Sightings, field signs and bones</i>, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022, 183 pages <br> <br>
<i>The British Big Cat Phenomenon - Environmental impact, politics, cover ups, and revelations</i>, Hangar 1 Publishing, North Haven, 2022, 153 pages<br>
<b>Black and white photos, no index or bibliography</b>
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Jonathan McGowan's achievement in gathering so much evidence for big cats in Britain over a lifetime is extraordinary.<br>
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<i>The British Big Cat Phenomenon</i> comprises four slim volumes. It's unclear what order they're in, but I'm guessing <i>Differing Theories</i> comes first, followed by <i>Searching</i>, then <i>Sightings</i> and then <i>Environmental</i> as the final in the series.
<i>Differing</i> opens as an evocative natural history memoir, describing McGowan's first sightings of big cats as a teenager in the 1980s. After an abusive childhood with periods in foster care, the young McGowan sought solace in watching wildlife, badgers in particular. It was through nocturnal badger watching that McGowan had his first big cat encounter - with a Dorset puma apparently stalking badgers.<br><br>
McGowan's experience as a "field naturalist" frequently leads him to big cat sightings - the warning calls of birds alert him to a big cat in the area. He has received multiple reports of a British "running cat" observed while it's on sustained, long-distance chases after deer. This is different behaviour from leopards and pumas – ambush predators that can only manage short sprints. <br><br>
<i>Searching for Evidence</i> dives straight into the evidence accumulated from McGowan's decades of experience in his "study area" around Bournemouth and Poole. Evidence includes scats (big cat poo) and scent sprayed on bushes and posts. There partial deer skeletons that have fallen out of trees after storms. There's much detail on scent markings and "scrapes" - claw marks in the ground made by big cats scent-marking, on big cat footprints and on how to distinguish them from dog tracks, as well as scratch marks on trees made by climbing leopards.<br><br>
There are even urban big cats - their scats show up on Poole's parks, golf courses and streets. They travel along Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole green corridors and leave scratches on garden gates and they feast on rats, foxes and domestic cats. <br>
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People report hearing the low guttural growls and coughs of Dorset leopards. Puma screams are more cat-like or human-like. Police have been called out when a puma scream was mistaken for a human's.<br><br>
On camera traps and why they produce so few big cat images, McGowan describes the phenomena of bait suddenly disappearing from them. "Something very strange is going on." I'd have appreciated sources for McGowan's assertion in <i>Sightings</i>, the next(?) volume, that cats can avoid the infra-red of camera traps by sensing electromagnetism through their whiskers.<br><br>
Where is the big cat road kill? In some thinly-populated parts of the USA, a third of all young pumas are killed on remote roads. But given the UK's road traffic density British big cats would, McGowan believes, already be acclimatised to constantly passing cars and better at be dodging them. Big cats would probably survive most collisions anyway – just as many domestic cats somehow manage to crawl home after a road collision.<br><br>
McGowan and others have seen big cat roadkill on busy dual carriageways where it's too dangerous to slow down to investigate. Returning a few hours later there’s nothing left, the remains squashed so flat as to be unrecognisable. He found the Blackwater Junction Black Cat – "totally pancaked out", its skin had melted to the tarmac and its bones were all crushed.<br><br>
<i>Sightings</i> includes 69 photos of big cat field signs and kill signs. Included are many photos of big cat paw prints with McGowan's boot for size comparison, together with images of big cat feeding places littered with bones and grisly images of kills including dead swans and a half-eaten fox. <br><br>
Stomach-churning detail describes how big cats kill their prey. Leopards clamp their jaws round the muzzle of a deer in a full-face hold to suffocate them, pumas often bite deers' noses off. Kills by dogs and foxes are much messier than those of a big cat. <br><br>
Why are there so few photos of the big cats themselves? "This is a valid point," admits McGowan. There are a few in <i>Sightings</i> - a blurry photo of a "blonde puma" and a clearer trail cam image of a big cat sharpening its claws on a tree.<br><br>
<i>Environmental</i> includes a guide to British big cat scats, with 22 monochrome photos of long thin twisted spiralled scats of leopards, lynx, puma and jungle cats. Some big cat scats McGowan's found contain bones and deer hooves.<br><br>
There is no bibliography, index or referencing. Nor is McGowan's mostly compelling thesis helped by ranty digressions on how results of DNA tests are "covered up by the authorities". He asserts that the population is "brainwashed" into big cat scepticism, and so on. He's let down by his editors too, with basic typos too numerous to mention. <br><br>
McGowan concludes <i>Environmental</i> by convincingly asserting that "the evidence for large cats living in Britain is overwhelming." Issues with the format and structure notwithstanding, the content of the four volumes of <i>The British Big Cat Phenomenon</i> make it essential reading for any serious British big cat investigator.
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<b>VERDICT: 4 stars ****</b> <br><br><br>
<b>© Matt Salusbury 2023</b><br><br><br>
<b><a href="http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com/2013/06/big-cats-in-dorset-london.html" target="_blank">Big cats in Dorset - expedition with Jonathan McGowan</a> (June 2013) </b><br><br>
<b><a href="http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com/2012/10/jonathan-mcgowans-big-cat-large-cat.html" target="_blank">Jonathan McGowan's large cat update </a>(October 2012)</b> <br><br><br>
<b><a href="http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com/2007/08/britains-secret-wildlife-two-new.html" target="_blank">Britain's secret wildlife</a> - lizards and big cats with Jonathan McGowan</b> <br><br><br>
<b><a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com/" target="_blank">Big cats of Suffolk</a> website</b> <br><br><br>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-43870801464221121642023-02-22T12:26:00.003-08:002024-01-08T09:33:46.528-08:00Goat riders in the sky - the bokkenrijders<b>This article firsr appeared in <i>Fortean Times</i> 428, February 2023. </b>
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FOR MOST OF the eighteenth century, border provinces of what's now the Netherlands and Belgium were gripped by a reign of terror. Mysterious gangs of armed robbers carried out nocturnal raids and blackmailed the population with <i>brandbrieven</i> (arson letters), leaving demands for money or their houses would be burnt down. </br></br>
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These <i>bendes</i> (gangs) carried out arson attacks and robberies with great violence. Victims were tortured, raped and killed during their operations, with children among those murdered. Gang leader Joseph Kerckhoffs allegedly gave the order during one robbery "in the event of resistance to shoot dead or strike down everyone." ("Derselven chirugijen [Kerckhoffs] ordner hadde gegeven ingevalle van resistentie alles doot te scheiten of te slaan." Rijksarchief Limburg Maastricht LVO inv.no 8172, quoted in <i>De Bokkenrijders in Nederlands and Belgisch Limburg 17726-1794</i>, Tom Oversteegen, eigenboekuitgeven 2014.) Preferred targets were church estates, priests' homes, farmhouses (preferably isolated ones), inns, monasteries and castles. The gangs had an apparently supernatural ability to cover distances at speed and to melt away before law enforcement could mobilise. The gangs became known as the <i>bokkenrijders</i> - the billy goat riders, or buck riders. </br></br>
Defendants testified in court that gang members used witchcraft - they flew through the air riding on the backs of billy goats. They were said to have sworn "ungodly oaths" in which they renounced God and pledged themselves to the Devil. Courts heard how they used in their robberies "hands of glory", dried and pickled severed human hands, in magic to prevent their victims raising the alarm. They were alleged to have gangs of 50 to 100 or more at their disposal, or even small armies. </br></br>
An estimated 600 <i>bokkenrijders</i> were tried and convicted in three waves of persecution over a 75-year period. At least 350 – nearly all men - were executed. But did the <i>bokkenrijders</i> gangs even exist?</br></br>
The provinces where the <i>bokkenrijders</i> committed "robbery in the Devil's name" are now roughly Nederlands-Limburg - a province in southern corner of the Netherlands - and Belgian-Limburg, a border province of Belgium. Some operated in Herzogenrath, now a corner of the federal state of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany.</br></br>
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Back in the days of the <i>bokkenrijders</i>, the region was the <i>Land van Overmaas</i> - the Land over the River Meuse (<i>Maas</i> in Dutch, hence the city of Maastricht). An earlier peace treaty had divvied up in this territory between the Republic of the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands and the Spanish Hapsburg Empire. </br></br>
The Spanish territories were seceded to Austria from 1714, so in the time of the <i>bokkenrijders</i> there was two versions of the Land over the Meuse. There was the <i>"Staats"</i> version of Overmaas - Dutch territory. The States General, the Parliament of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, was officially very Protestant. It didn't trust its Catholic provinces of the South. So the very Catholic Dutch Overmaas was under direct rule by a States General-appointed Guardian. </br></br>
Nextdoor was another version of the Overmaas, ruled by a Councillor of State on behalf of the Austrian Empire, with the Empress Maria Theresa as its sovereign for much of the <i>bokkenrijders</i> period. (It's now part of Belgium.) The Overmaas included the Land of Hertogenrath - nominally part of the Austrian Empire in whose name a steward of a local abbey ruled, but effectively an autonomous dukedom where a dialect of German was spoken. There were "neutral" roads connected scattered bits of Austrian or Dutch territory with each other. Within the Overmaas were territories of <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/519250/lieges-eight-century-ecclesial-state" target="_blank">prince bishoprics</a> and monasteries that were also local lords, with their own courts, ensuring a chaotic administration of justice.</br></br>
Being the border between empires, the Land over the Meuse bore the scars of several recent wars. Both versions of the Overmaas remained backwaters of their respective states, but as border provinces they were sorely taxed and compelled to billet troops. Some saw the modus operandi of the <i>bokkenrijder</i> gangs as inspired by the armies that passed through the region, plundering and living off the land.</br></br>
The earliest documented robbery by a <i>bokkenrijder</i> gang was in August 1726, silverware was looted from the castle as Huis Oost near the Dutch city of Valkenburg. The robbers tried to fence the loot through pawnbroker Levi Jacobs in the town of Sittard. When he asked how they came by it, they threatened to shoot Jacobs dead, forcing him to accept 1440 guilders-worth of silver. The robbers showed up at Huis Oost again in 1738. </br></br>
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<b>Bokkenrijder images generated by AI website Dall-E by the author, in the reasonable belief that copyright rests with them, although in the knowledge that this is about to be <a href="http://www.londonfreelance.org/fl/2302robo.html" target="_blank">tested in multiple court cases</a>.</b></br> </br>
The <i>bokkenrijders</i> covered their faces with scarves and wore wigs during robberies to disguise themselves. One Michel Hendrix was sentenced to death as a <i>bokkenrijder</i> after a search of his house uncovered a quantity of wigs that he couldn't explain. Witnesses occasionally described masked-up women in men's clothes among the <i>bokkenrijders</i> keeping watch during robberies. </br></br>
In the West-Herck region of the Austrian Netherlands, one Francis van Leuwe in 1753 led a local <i>bokkenrijders</i> gang known as the <i>zwartmakers</i> ("those who made themselves black"). This was a revival of an old name. The original <i>zwartmakers</i>, who had already passed into folklore by the 1750s, were a gang operating further north, in the Dutch provinces of North Brabant and Gelderland, in the 1690s.</br></br>
Jacobus van der Schlossen led the original <i>zwartmakers</i> - ex-soldiers who hid in the forests of Slabroek. They blacked up for their night raids to disguise their faces. They would batter down the doors of houses with thick poles and lock the residents in their cellar while they robbed them. Van der Schlossen was eventually hanged in Ravenstein Castle in 1695, in front of 20,000 spectators. Other <i>Zwartmakers</i> gangs operated from the heath at Teteringen near Breda and in Gelderland at around the same time.</br></br>
Supernatural elements attached themselves to the <i>zwartmaker</i> stories, as they later did to the <i>bokkenrijders</i>. Anna Dirks, hanged in 1707 in Rhenen along with her mother and her aunt, was said to have brought to robberies a severed child's hand that she burned to bewitch the residents of houses so they didn't wake up. Van der Schlossen was said to have once avoided capture by jumping into a marsh and transforming into a bullrush, while the corpses of the hanged <i>zwartmakers</i> were said to roam the sites of their execution in Gelderland.</br></br>
The peaks of <i>bokkenrijder</i> robbery came in 1726-1743, 1749-1750 and 1751-1774. While <i>bokkenrijder</i> crimes within the Dutch Republic were predominantly robberies, in the Austrian Netherlands they were also blackmailers, extorting money through their <i>brandbrieven</i> letters threatening arson. Many such "arson letters" survive in the Limburg historical archives, usually demanding the addressee leaves money in a particular place - under a stone, in a hole in the ground, by a wayside cross or shrine. One such letter, from Arnold de Wal to the innkeeper at Gerlingen warned "I will set fire to the four corners of your house" in the event of non-payment. </br></br>
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<b>More <i>bokkenrijder</i> images generated by the author using Dall-E.</b><br>
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In the rural municipality of Wellen in the Austrian Netherlands there were between 20 and 30 such threatening letters received in less than a year in 1773. It was in one of these arson letters received in Wellen that the term <i>bokkenrijder</i> first appears. Its author wrote that "the Devil hunts us, now you shall know how the bokkenrijders live... through the Devil's intervention we rule..." The name <i>bokkenrijder</i> started to appear in local court documents. Previously there had just been "gangs", "rbbery gangs", "ungodly thieves" or "the Overmaas gangs." By 1790, <i>bokkenrijder</i> was a term in common use, with interrogators in Bree (now in Belgium) asking suspects if they were "with the gang of Overmaas or Valkenburg or the so-called <i>bokkenrijders</i>."</br></br>
<a href="https://twitter.com/MaeneSigne/status/1542064716197122051"target="_blank">According to Belgian folklorist Signe Maene</a>,riderless flying goats were already a phenomenon in Belgian skies before the bokkenrijders made their <i>bokkenvluchten</i> flights on the backs of billy goats. Some were afraid to go out at night because of "ghost goats" that "screeched eerily" as they flew overhead. Less fearful folk would gather to watch their flights. </br></br>
At the time, a day's ride on good roads in daylight was 51km, a day's walk was 40km. <i>Bokkenrijder</i> "goat flights" seem to have shaved at least an hour or too off usual travel time, with travel by horse at night next to impossible anyway. At least six written testimonies of nocturnal "billy goat flights" from the Netherlands and four from Belgium survive. </br></br>
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Mathijs Smeets told how in September 1773, after an oath ceremony in the Saint Rosa Chapel in Sittard, he was led him to a crossroads out of town where a "long-bodied, black thing appeared, standing no more than a few feet from the ground." His description is vague, "we were so amazed we couldn't tell what it looked like," it resembled some enormous dachshund-type goat. All 42 <i>bokkenrijders</i> present could climb up onto its back, with the gang's "major" and the "captain" both "sitting at the head of it." On this beast they were whisked through the air from Venlo to Roermond in the space of four hours, less than it would take to walk it in daylight. There they carried out a robbery. The supernatural long-bodied black goat thing brought them all back to Sittard "in no time" by early next morning.</br></br>
Reiner Sijban, detained in a Dutch prison, recalled flying from Klimmen to Maastricht with two other men on the back of a "bok", a flying billy goat, on night in 1774. There they found "a number of perpetrators" who'd also arrived on goats. They all did a burglary, then flew back to Klimmen.</br></br>
Arnold Gielen, held in an Austrian prison in Wellen in the same year, told how following a meeting on the heath outside Abswellen, there appeared "nine or ten beasts in the form of a billy goat, slightly bigger and longer." Gielen's "captain" assembled the men to "fly over the treetops" on goats to rob a tenancy farm on the other side of Maastricht, leaving their goats "standing there" before returning to their Abswellen assembly point within two hours. (It's a four-hour walk in daylight.) A cross-border goat flight from Abswellen to Meersen in the Dutch Republic featured in testimony by Peter Willem Stassen. He recalled being in a group of about 30 gang members, each "sitting on a billy goat the greatness of a horse."</br></br>
Some "eight or nine hundred people," including "three or four parties from Wellen," made a cross-border billy goat flight in 1770 from a point on the Meuse between Liege and Maastricht, according to Mattijs Goffins, "with three or four men on a billy goat". The flight took in the Linen Tree Inn along the river, the town of Tongeren and a castle where "hundreds" stood on guard while <i>bokkenrijders</i> climbed in through a window. Another account by a <i>bokkenrijder</i> named Gerits had the Devil himself transport "accomplices" from the Our White Lady convent outside Maastricht into the town. The Devil, summoned by chanting the <i>bokkenrijder</i> oath, appeared "in the shape of a great billy goat with horns and the rear of a horse." In other testimony the Devil appeared as several large billy goats to transport <i>bokkenrijders</i> to robberies. </br></br>
"I forswear God and pledge myself to the Devil!" That was the <i>bokkenrijder's</i> oath. Both Dutch and Austrian authorities regarded such oaths as a threat to the social and spiritual order - it was these "ungodly oaths" that earned many <i>bokkenrijders</i> the death penalty.</br></br>
Gang members were inducted in blasphemous oath ceremonies, often ending with tips or "change" - coins being pressed into their hands. Ledgers with membership lists were produced, some showing members' military "ranks". Ceremonies featured stolen holy wafers -participants spat these out - a green drink that "drove men mad" (probably absinthe) and a red-coloured, bitter oil sprinkled on food. Sometimes they held their ceremonies in chapels, with participants crawling in on their hands and knees, some oaths were administered in the woods. Sometimes a drawing of the Devil or a goat's head was displayed, or a dried pickled "hand of glory" was on show. Arnoldus Zander testified to being at an inn in Hertogenrath where alleged <i>bokkenrijder</i> Joseph Kerckshoff was administering oaths and had with him a "death's head" - a severed human head. </br></br>
The oaths included terrible punishments for those who betrayed their comrades, one read, "so the Devil break my neck." Some <i>bokkenrijders</i> described having to take the oath several times over. In some accounts, a hooded figure walked among the congregation, said to be the Devil or at least to represent him. Once a year, <i>bokkenrijders</i> were said to visit their master, the Devil, on the Mookerheide, a wasteland near the River Waal, north of Overmaas. Such details suspiciously resemble those in dodgy 15th-century witchfinder's manual <i>Males Meleficarum</i> </br></br>
Joseph Kerckhoffs, a former officer in the Austrian army and the respectable town surgeon of Hertogenrade, was fingered as the leader of the <i>bokkenrijders</i>. But multiple testimonies described a supreme <i>bokkenrijder</i> commander for both the Dutch and the Austrian Netherlands, above Kerckhoffs. There were sightings of a tall, fat man of military bearing, wearing a fine pale blue officer's tailcoat with silver trim and silver trim on his hat too. He spoke High German and French, and was seen giving orders over a fifteen-year period up to 1775. He was named as Baron Joachim Reihold van Gleasnap (<i>aka</i> Hean). He is believed he died of natural causes.</br></br>
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This "robbery in the Devil's name" brought surprisingly little loot to individual <i>bokkenrijders</i>. Mattijs Goffins testified that an almost thousand-strong raid at a castle netted a total of only 20 shillings, while other bemused <i>bokkenrijders</i> said they earned as much in their "tips" after oaths as they did in shares of booty. Some <i>bokkenrijder</i> captains seemed overly keen on recruitment - court testimony regularly stated than ridiculously large gangs - 100 or 200-strong - turned up to (unspecified) robberies to "stand watch." Willem de Kamp stated of one 1756 robbery he was part of that "the portion was not great because the band was so strong" in numbers. </br></br>
Jabobus Offermans claimed he had "heard say" that there was a plan "to make themselves masters of town and city and to ravage everything." The City Council of Maastricht in March 1770 got wind a vague conspiracy by some 500 persons who threatened the lives of the city government's officials. They took this seriously enough to post a reward of 100 gold ducats for "discovery of conspirators" - assumed to be <i>bokkenrijders</i>.</br></br>
It's likely that these <i>bokkenrijder</i> numbers, along with their billy goat flights and their ungodly oaths, were exaggerated or planted under torture. The three biggest waves of bokkenrijder persecution came in 1743-1775 (with an estimated 200 people tried), from 1750-1751 (35 people tried) and 1771-1777 (400 tried). Some were on trial for crimes committed 12 years earlier.</br></br>
In Dutch Limburg, the aldermen's courts tried <i>bokkenrijders</i> in <i>"extra-ordinaire"</i> trials. Prosecutions included a "first interrogation" within 24 hours of arrest. Then followed the <i>streng verhoor</i> the "strict interrogation" under torture - always in the presence of two magistrates, a secretary and a surgeon. Joseph Kerckhoffs, said to be a <i>bokkenrijder</i> "general", was tortured for months, including one torture session after he'd been sentenced to death. But he never confessed to anything, telling judges, "Gentlemen, you can tear my body to pieces, but I have nothing to say."</br></br>
During prosecutions, courts would usually order the suspect's property confiscated to pay for the costs of the trial. In 1773, The States General in The Hague, while vigorously pursuing <i>bokkenrijder</i> gangs within the Dutch Republic, expressed alarm at the expense of <i>bokkenrijder</i> prosecutions. States General resolutions from this period request detailed breakdowns of the cost of prosecutions, remuneration for the executioners, secretaries and surgeons, how much was paid to informers, bills from carpenters who built gallows and so on. The States General imposed fixed fees for officers of the court trying and sentencing <i>bokkenrijders</i> and established systems for the speedy liquidation of their confiscated property.</br></br>
Particularly in the Austrian Empire, <i>bokkenrijders</i> and thieves generally were executed on "the breaking wheel" or the "Catherine Wheel". They were tied down in a prone position while the rim of a heavy cartwheel was dropped onto them, starting with their legs and working their way up, dropping the wheel on their chest was usually enough to kill them outright. Hanging or garrotting was more common in Dutch jurisdiction. On one busy day for an executioner in the Dutch town of Heerlen, seven convicted <i>bokkenrijders</i> were hanged. </br></br>
The first written account of the <i>bokkenrijders</i> was <i>Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery of an Ungodly, Sworn Band of Night Thieves and Assailants within the Lands of Overmaas and Adjacent Regions</i> written in 1790 by "S.J.P. Slienada", an anagram of A. Daniels, a Dutch priest who knew some of the <i>bokkenrijders</i> personally. Daniels wrote of the <i>bokkenrijders</i>' pacts with the Devil, and how "the common people" told stories of their nocturnal billy goat flights. His book includes a spell used to achieve goat flights - "Over houses, over gardens, over stakes, even to Cologne and into the wine cellar!"("Over huis, over tuin, over staak, en dat tot Keulen in de wijnkelder!")</br></br>
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<b>Frontispiece from <i>Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery of an Ungodly, Sworn Band of Night Thieves and Assailants within the Lands of Overmaas and Adjacent Regions</i>, the first published account of the <i>bokkenrijders</i> from 1790.</b></br></br></br>
The <i>bokkenrijders</i> may have been an exaggeration or invention to cover up the weakness of the authorities of the Dutch Republic and the Austrian Netherlands, and their inability to deal with what was probably just lots of small gangs operating at the same time, mostly with impunity. </br></br>
Records of bokkenrijder prosecutions are less frequent from the late 1780s onwards. 1789 saw a brief uprising in the Austrian Netherlands. A subsequent military campaign against revolutionary France ended badly for the Austrian Empire, with the Austrian Netherlands annexed to the Republic of France in 1795. The Dutch Republic became the pro-French Batavian Republic in the same year. Maastricht and environs was ceded to France, with all of the Netherlands eventually annexed to Napoleon's empire in 1811. The <i>bokkenrijders</i> disappeared, international criminal networks emerged operating across the Netherlands and into Germany, benefitting from the upheaval of regime change. The haphazard feudal courts were abolished, their revolutionary successors had no room for superstitious conspiracy theories. The Kingdom of the United Netherlands that emerged in 1814 after Napoleon's fall retained its secular courts. These were no longer inclined to hear testimony of suspects flying through the air on goats.</br></br>
Having an ancestor who was tried as a <i>bokkenrijder</i> is now a badge of honour in both Dutch and Belgian Limburg. Today they have a reputation as Robin Hood-type anti-authority figures, celebrated in monuments and guided walks. There is a Bokkenrijders Festival in the Dutch town of Klimmen every August, and a Bokkenrijders Week every October in Valkenburg. Some municipalities in Belgian Limburg mark 11 May - the day Joseph Kerckhoffs was sentenced to death – as International Bokkenrijders Day.</br></br>
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<b>Witches - mostly female - riding on billy goats was already a thing in European demonology long before the <i>bokkenrijders</i>. Shown here are details from engravings of the witches' sabbaths on the Blockberg in the Harz Mountains of Germany, 1688 or earlier and all out of copyright.</b><br>
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<b>Further Reading in English</b></br>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobus_van_der_Schlossen">Jacobus van der Schlossen - Wikipedia</a></br>
<a href="https://dutch-folklore.fandom.com/wiki/Zwartmakers">Zwartmakers gang</a> - Dutch Folklore</br>
<a href="https://youtu.be/He2xxrrixJU">Joseph Kerckhoffs of Herzogenade</a> (video) </br>
<a href="https://www.bokkenrijders.com/english-site">The Buck Riders' Fellowship</a> (English pages) </br></br>
<a href="https://www.twitter.com/P_Bokkenrijders">Project Bokkenrijders</a> have an <a href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/5aBR0Qw8vPATKkhCnupqGF?si=5a25cb18d2b94873&nd=1">English-language podcast series</a>. They have an online transcription of Slienada's <i>Origin, Causes, Proof and Discovery</i> into modern Dutch, with an online English translation appearing soon. Thanks to Project Bokkenrijders for suggested translations of <i>bokkenrijder</i> terminology for this article.
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<b> Bokbier ("bock beer") is a special beer - usually dark in colour and on sale in the autumn, when Northern Europe starts to drink less outdoors in cafe terraces and starts to move indoors to drink. The label, pump art and beer mats for bok bier usually feature a billy goat. (Young stags and male rats as well as billy goats are also "bucks" in English.) Above is an out-of-copyright late 19th century ad for a "Bock" beer and a selection of images of 21st-century bok beers from Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands or the USA.</b>
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<b>The craft beer themed Bok Bar in Leece Street, Liverpool, complete with billy goat's head logo.</b><br/></br>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-60335863460333478522022-12-11T04:22:00.028-08:002022-12-11T06:31:59.386-08:00Fortean Traveller – Ros Beiaard, Dendermonde, Belgium
The mostly unremarkable Flemish city of <a href="https://www.visitflanders.com/en/flemish-destinations/dendermonde">Dendermonde</a>, half way between Brussels and Antwerp, is one tourists normally wouldn't bother with. But every ten years (Covid permitting), over 80,000 descend on Dendermonde for the Ros Beiaard parade, named after its centrepiece, the red horse Beyard. This gloriously bonkers and very Belgian phenomenon involves a gigantic horse cavorting through the city, escorted by a considerable retinue including dancing giants. Occasionally the huge horse rears up, the four boys dressed as knights riding it raise their swords in the air, the crowd goes wild.</br></br>
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<b>The Ros Beiaard on its "rounds" through Dendermonde, April 2022</b>
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The Ros Beiaard originates in the chivalric romance. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/49408101/Bayard_Legend_of_the_Giant_Horse_and_The_Four_Sons_of_Aymon"><i>The Four Sons of Aymon</i></a>, a French-language work sung by the earliest of the proto-troubadours, was first written down around 1300. <i>The Four Sons of Aymon</i>was an international bestseller in manuscript form before the age of printing in French, Dutch, German, English and Italian versions. A printed Dutch translation - <a href="https://www.dbnl.org/arch/_his003hist01_01/pag/_his003hist01_01.pdf"><i>Historie van den Vier Heemskinderen</i></a> - appeared in 1508. William Caxton, who started England's first printing press, produced several English editions of <a href="https://archive.org/details/rightplesauntno4400caxtuoft/page/xxx/mode/2up"><i>The Right Plesaunt and Goodly Historie of the Foure Sons of Aymon</i></a>, but the story never seems to have caught on here. </br></br>
Most of the action of the story takes place around Dordogne and the Ardennes. Aymon of Dordogne is a loyal vassal of a fantasy version of the Emperor Charlemagne. Each of Aymon's sons - Ritsaert, Writsaert, Adelaert, and Reinout - receives a horse from him. Reinout is the strongest - so strong he accidentally kills one horse and maims another just by riding them. So Aymon takes Reinout to a castle where the much feared reddish-brown coloured stallion Beyard, who had "never had a master", was kept. Reinout faces Beyard, who rears up and kicks him over, he gets up again and "after a heroic battle" tames Beyard. (In other versions, Charlemagne gifts Reinout the horse.) Beyard was strong enough to carry all four sons on his back. </br></br>
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The sons of Aymon appear at Charlemagne's court, where in a brawl over a chess game, Reinout kills Charlemagne's son Louis in self-defence. The four sons are declared outlaw and flee to the castle of <a href="https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Gasco%C3%B1a-9">King Loup of Gascogne</a>, escaping again on the huge horse after Loup betrays them. </br></br>
There follow many adventures of the four sons and the horse Beyard, involving stays in and then escapes from castles. They hide out in the Ardennes forest and escape imprisonment by the wizard Maugis. Finally cornered by Charlemagne's forces in <a href=https://www.britannica.com/place/Aquitaine>Aquitaine</a>, a siege follows after which a deal is reached - the four sons surrender and are rehabilitated, Reinout gives up the horse Beyard, who has a stone tied to him and is thrown in a river and drowned. This event occurs where the <a href=https://www.britannica.com/place/Schelde-River>River Schelde</a> meets its tributary the <a href=https://canalplan.uk/waterway/fzco>River Dender</a>hence the city of Dendermonde’s involvement. (Dendermonde means "the mouth of the Dender." The Ros Beiaard first appears as an entry in that city’s accounts for 1461. </br></br>
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<b>The Ros Beiaard, with a stone tied to it, in his desperate death throes after being thrown into the River Dender.</b></br></br>
Many of these elements of the story - knights fighting in the street, the proclamation of the Four Sons as outlaws, the escape from the wizard Maugis, a huge statue of a desperate, wide-eyed drowning horse flailing in a river – featured in spectacular carnival floats in the 2022 Ros Beiaard parade. There was even a battering ram pushed through the streets by medieval re-enactors and a gigantic open book in which a troubadour sat against an illuminated page of <i>The History of the Horse Beyard and the Four Sons of Aymon</i>, strumming his lute and declaiming from its verses. </br></br>
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<b>A troubadour declaims verses from <i>The Four Sons of Aymon</i> from among its illuminated pages</b>
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The Ros Beiaard's normally a once-in-a-decade event, but Covid meant we'd had to wait "twelve long years" for the 2022 edition. Tickets for the 18,000 seats along the route sell out within hours. So the only way to see the "apotheosis" - the climax of the event in the Big Market square when Renaissance musketeers open fire on the gigantic horse - was to get press accreditation. Even then, I only got to see the "general rehearsal" night before the main event - there's no press allowed in the Big Market on the day of the Ros Beiaard itself. The police in their <i>Thunderbirds</i>-style forage caps arrived and banished most of the press pack to a platform in the corner of the square with a less good view. </br></br>
When I signed up for my press accreditation, I agreed "not to startle the animals with brusque movements or flash photography". Little did I know at the time that the animals included over 150 heavy horses pulling the carnival floats, as well as a flock of geese trained to walk in single file and two Belgian mastiffs trained to pull little dog carts. </br></br>
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<b>Belgian mastiffs pull carts in the Ros Beiaard, as they pulled ammunition carts in World War One</b>
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<b>A flock of trained geese walk in formation past social housing in the back streets of Dendermonde. They and their trainers are celebrities who tour the festivals of Europe</b>
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While out and about in the streets in my "PERS" (press) bib, I was collared by a resident of the city, a Dendermondaar. He told me with great passion that as an outsider I couldn’t understand the fervour that Dendemondenaars had for "our horse," their Ros Beiaard. He told how townspeople in their seventies would turn up aware it may be their last chance to see the gigantic horse come by. There were many ancient local ladies with Zimmer frames or in wheelchairs, wrapped in emergency rain ponchos, who had already taken their seats along the route by early morning. </br></br>
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<b>The author in their official Ros Beiaard Association "Press" waistcoat, in the Press Centre</b>
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<b>My colleagues in the Press Pack, shortly before the police banished them to a platform at the edge of the Big Market Square.</b><br>
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On my way to the press centre before the parade, I suddenly saw ahead of me, silently emerging from a side street, the Ros Beiaard himself! The massive wooden horse was making his way to his parade starting point. He's tall enough that his dark brown head, carved from oak in the 16th century and decked with a plume in the red and white colours of the city, can touch spectators watching from first floor balconies. He wears a long equestrian coat that goes down to the ground. Under this coat you can just see twelve pairs of white trainers walking in short steps in unison, like a millipede. </br></br>
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<b>The Ros Beiaard escorted through the streets by a band and an entourage of halberdiers. On the left is Kalleke Step, the jester, who leads the horse. The Fiddler (centre) sets the tempo for the march of the horse.</b>
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<b>The strong men of the Pijnders guild escorting the horse</b>
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The Ros Beiaard is carried by twelve very strong men from the <a href="https://www.rosbeiaard.be/product/2240/de-pijnders">Pijnders Guild</a>. Back in the day, these used to be market porters and pull boats into the their berths in the harbour on ropes. The Pijnders are selected five years ahead of the parade in <a href="https://www.rosbeiaard.be/product/3090/wildemanloop">The Wildmen Run</a>, in which candidates strip to their underpants and glue feathers to themselves so they look like hairy wildmen and perform feats of strength. The big horse with four riders on it weighs almost a metric tonne, so his 12 bearers lift around 85kg each. </br></br>
There are a total of 60 Pijnders, with the reserve shifts walking behind the horse. There's also a Pijnder pulling a handcart full of fortifying strong drinks. There are frequent shift changes in which the huge horse is raised on little trestle stools while one crew free themselves and another take their place. </br></br>
Round the corner in one of the backstreets, the <i>reuzen</i>, the Guild Giants, stood waiting. They were slightly taller than the huge horse. </br></br>
There are over 1500 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processional_giants_and_dragons_in_Belgium_and_France#Belgium">giants in Belgium</a>, with Dendermonde’s three "Guild Giants" among the best known. The oldest is Goliath, David's antagonist from the Old Testament. He wears a 16th century floppy hat and sports a villain’s moustache. Then there's Mars, the Roman god of war and The Indian, the latter sporting a peacock-feather headdress and carrying a bow and arrows. He's a 17th century take on fantastic tales of "Red Indians" emerging from the New World when it was still brand new. Both Goliath and Mars have swords with ornate handles hanging from their belts. </br></br>
I followed the huge horse and its gigantic escort to <a href="https://www.toerismedendermonde.be/product/745/bezoek-de-onze-lieve-vrouwekerk">Our Dear Lady Church</a>, with the giants occasionally dancing, whirling like dervishes with their tunics billowing and their arms flopping by their sides. It being Sunday, there was a service in progress, which the Pijnders joined after parking the massive horse at the door. Passing local families lined up, holding up their babies and small dogs, to have their photos taken with the Ros Beiaard. A priest came out and blessed the Ros Beiaard and the Pijnders with quick sprinkle of holy water, declaring that the parade represented "solidarity".</br></br>
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<b>Cavorting Guild Giants - Mars and Goliath</b>
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<b>The Indian, Mars and Goliath</b>
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Then it was on to a cordoned-off road on the edge of town, where the Ros Beiaard, giants and all were again parked awaiting the considerable number of horse-drawn carnival floats and trained animals, marching bands and - in a rare nod to the 21st century - an interpretive dance troupe re-enacting in the streets Reinout's chess game with Louis. People pushed along their accompanying sound system in a vast wheeled box. There were more townsfolk on horseback in Medieval attire than you could shake a stick at. Each float was followed by a suitably costumed volunteer pulling a small trailer and carrying a shovel to scoop up the horse poop. </br></br>
Endless marching bands played over and over <i>The Ros Beiaard Song</i>. The crowd frequently sang along, as did some of the regional press photographers while at work. In local dialect as spoken in 1754, the song describes how the "beautiful horse" and the boys sitting on it is the most beautiful sight in the world, and - more importantly, how the citizens of the rival city of <a href="https://www.visit-aalst.be/en">Aalst</a> further down the river Dender, "are so angry/Because the Ros Beiaard is going past…"
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Showing contempt for people from Aalst is an important element of Dendenmondenaar identity. Turning ancient insults from Aalstenaars into badges of honour is a Dendermonde thing. "Shipdraggers" was one such taunt, as was <i>kopvleeseters</i> - "head meat eaters", cheapskates who ate the meat from animal’s heads. This resulted in a surreal float in which costumed <i>kopvleeseters</i> prepared the local cold meat delicacy and served it up to the audience as canapes. </br></br>
The mayor put in an appearance as "Kalleke Step", the jester, showed up. Costumed in the city's red and white colours, the jester pulled the horse along by long ribbons while throwing various capers, handstands being his speciality. With him was the fiddler, walking to the left of the Ros Beiaard, playing <i>The Ros Beiaard Song</i> all afternoon. An honour guard of halberdiers formed up the rear. </br></br>
Finally, the <i>Heemskinderen</i>, the Four Sons of Aymon, arrived after being made ready in the doctor's surgery over the road. Tradition dictates they must be four brothers, with no sisters in between. Dendermonde has ten years to find such a family, even today they somehow still manage it. Clad in spray-painted plastic and zinc armour and plumed helmets, one by one the four helped by the chief of the Pijnders, ascended a ladder to climb onto the back of the huge horse - in the rain, with the youngest in front. </br></br>
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<b>Assisted by the chief of the Pijnders, one of the Heemskinderen takes his place on the back of the "beautiful horse"</b>
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And then we were off! It's hard to describe just how bizarre the parade was - I often felt I'd stumbled into a deleted scene from <a href="https://youtu.be/urRkGvhXc8wi"></i>Monty Python and the Holy Grail</i></a> that had been cut because it was too weird. (Especially the bit with the stilt-walking knights!) There were floats celebrating footnotes in Dendermonde's history - the opening of its law courts, the building of its city walls, a local farmer's daughter becoming Duchess of Burgundy and so on. Town criers are big in Belgium (they'd borrowed some from as far away as Ghent,) some of these went ahead of each float declaiming in rhyming couplets what these represented. </br></br>
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<b>Stilt-walking knights!</b>
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Occasionally the huge horse on its "rounds" through the city would turn and tilt forward, as if rearing up towards the crowd. The <i>Heemskinderen</i> would raise their swords, the crowd would go wild. At one point I felt a tap on my shoulder and it was the random Dendemondenaar who'd collared my earlier, he said, "It was worth it, wasn't it?" </br></br>
You could tell the giants and the huge horse were approaching when a posse of strange armless brown furry figures appeared, with vaguely wolf-like heads with clacking jaws. They ran amongst the crowd threatening them with their teeth - snap, snap, snap! These carnival velociraptors are the <i>knaptanden</i>, the "snapping teeth". Not even police officers are immune from their harassment. </br></br>
They're actually teenage boys looking through the necks of the costumes, operating a spring-loaded jaw mechanism built on top. Cryptozoology enthusiasts will be interested to note they're inspired by a very big fish seen in the local river in the 16th century. Their name is believed to be another ancient insult thrown at the townsfolk by the people of Aalst. </br></br>
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<b>The <i>knaptanden</i> harrass spectators</b>
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Ticket-holders only were allowed into the Big Market Square for the "apotheosis" of the Ros Beiaard, but I'd got to see its dress rehearsal the previous night, from a very long way off. With the ancient Town Hall decked with the flags of Burgundy, medieval England and the Hapsburg Empire, the apotheosis involved the jester and the fiddler leading the gigantic horse into the square. </br></br>
There the horse reared up in front of a phalanx of the <i>Schuttersgilden</i> - the shooter's guilds - Dendermonde's Renaissance citizen's militia, a bit like Rembrandt's <i>Night Watch</i>, only even older. Now they're all off-duty firemen. At the climax of the parade, the <i>Schuttersgilden</i> lined up and fired from shotguns three volleys-worth of gunpowder only into the air, aiming at the Red Horse Beyard. (Earplugs were provided at the press centre.) Three times they opened fire on the Ros Beiaard and prevented him from leaving, until they eventually gave way, allowing him to break through their cordon to escape from the Big Market. Each time the enormous horse reared up, the crowd went wild. </br></br>
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<b>The apotheosis of the Ros Beiaard, from the dress rehearshal at night</b>
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The parade finally ended at the massive old brick former army barracks on Barrack Street. I waited there for the ceremony in which the Ros Beiaard, the giants and all the floats were put back into storage for the next decade. Before long, the marching bands, the snapping-jawed <i>knaptanden</i>, the whirling dervish giants and the huge horse itself showed up. As the huge horse came down the street, it stopped and reared up, the crowd went absolutely wild.</br></br>
The big horse then began to move through the huge arched doorway of the barracks. The crowd booed - as this meant it would all be over soon. The huge horse hesitated, moved back and forth as if unsettled, then marched out of the barracks, and up and down as if at speed, as if cantering, occasionally rearing up, with the Heems Children waving their swords in the air, at which point the crowd went wild again.</br></br>
Then the giants, starting with The Indian, danced, walked toward the big horse. He reared at them, the crowd went wild, the giant walked past the horse and into the barracks. There followed half an hour of the big horse teasing the crowd by trotting up and down in front of the barracks. He appeared to go into the arch a couple of times, to booing, then he came out again, charged up and down, reared (the crowd went wild and sang <i>The Ros Beiaard Song</i>), before he finally backed into the huge arch, the <i>Schuttersgilden</i> launched a final couple of loud volleys at him above their heads. To boos, Dendermonde's "beautiful horse" finally disappeared form view and the doors finally closed. </br></br>
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<b>The Ros Beiaard's swan song outside the Old Barracks before he put into storage for another decade</b>
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The next <a href="https://www.rosbeiaard.be"> Ros Beiaard</a> is in May 2030. </br></br>
Dendermonde has <a href="https://www.rosbeiaard.be/product/2486/the-traditional-giants-parade-katuit">The Katuit</a>, a shorter parade featuring just the Guild Giants and the <i>knaptanden</i> every year - the next is in August 2023. </br></br>
The next <a href="https://www.rosbeiaard.be/product/3090/wildemanloop">Wildemannenloop</a> (Wildmen Run), with feats of strength to select the Pijnders, is planned for - provisionally - August 2025.
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There is a permanent display of giant blown-up photos of elements from the Ros Beiaard on the walls of the old barracks in <a href="https://streets.openalfa.be/streets/kazernestraat-dendermonde-dendermonde-dendermonde">Kazernestraat,</a>, Dendermonde. There is a permanent exhibition of Ros Beiaard artefacts in the <a href="https://www.toerismedendermonde.be/product/874/the-butchers-hall">Vleeshuismuseum</a> (Butchers' Hall), Grote Markt, Dendermonde. </br></br>
© Words and photos Matt Salusbury 2022
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<b>Flag wavers throw the official Ros Beiaard flag on the air</b><br>
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<b>The escape of the Heemskinderen from the castle of the wizard Mauigis, complete with revolving astrolabe, immortalised in a horse-drawn float in the 2022 Ros Beiaard</b>
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<b>The <i>Knaptenden</i> again</b>
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<b>Medieval equestrianism in the streets of Dendermonde</b>
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<b>A medieval battering ram dragged through the streets, referencing Charlemagne's siege of the castle where the Four Sons of Aymon sought shelter in Aquitaine.</b>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-78132102048802493402022-08-13T16:33:00.002-07:002022-08-14T13:05:17.534-07:00The Talking Cross<b>
(This article first appeared in <i>Fortean Times</i></b>)
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<b>The flag of the Cruzob, the Mayan state founded by the followers of the Talking Cross</b>
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Around 1841 the <i>Yucutecos</i>, the Creole population of the Yucatan peninsula, broke with Mexico. The Mayan population of Yucatan soon rose up against their Creole overlords, beginning a fifty-year conflict. The Mayans quickly drove the Creoles back to the north of the peninsula before abandoning their siege when the corn-planting season started. <i>Yucuteco</i> reinforcements pushed the Mayans into the jungles of the south and east of the peninsula. <br />
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A band of Mayan insurgents took refuge around a small spring at Chan Santa Cruz, ("the Little Sacred Cross"), where a mahogany tree grew at the edge of a cave. The tree’s trunk bore several carved cross shapes a few inches high. At least one of these carved crosses appeared to produce sounds. The Cult of the Talking Cross was born, which inspired the Mayans to at least 50 years of resistance against first the Yucutecos and then the United Mexican States. The bizarre Talking Cross faith survived at least three incidents of capture or destruction of its talking crosses and possibly up to three exposures of ventriloquist fraud. And the Talking Cross whistled!<br />
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Juan de la Cruz Puc first heard the cross talk, although others could hear it forming sounds. Puc shared with his neighbour Manuel Nahuat what the cross had told him. Nahuat, who was a ventriloquist, projected his voice so that everyone could hear the words from the Talking Cross. Proclamations by letter also appeared, signed "San Juan de la Cruz", St John of the Cross. The Proclamation of St John of 1850 founded the rebel Mayan regime known as the Cruzob with Chan Santa Cruz as its capital.
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The Talking Cross – now freestanding, much bigger and made of wood – was moved to a large church built to house it, the Balam Na (the "House of the Jaguar" or “House of the Priest”). In the darkened interior of the Balam Na, the booming voice of the Talking Cross issued pronouncements to a prostrate congregation. It’s unclear how much of the current church on the site is from the original.<br /><br />
The Talking Cross's earliest verbal pronouncement, in December 1850, said “The Whites will never win... These people of the Cross who will win". It ordered an attack on the nearest Yucuteco garrison at Kampochche. It was a disaster. A promised immunity to bullets didn’t materialise, the Mayans were driven off with heavy losses. The <i>Yucutecos</i> attacked Chan Santa Cruz in March 1851, seizing the Talking Crosses (there were now two of these) and killing Nahuat. <br />
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But the Yucutecos lacked the forces to occupy the Cruzob capital. A new Talking Cross and two other crosses immediately appeared at the shrine by the spring. Puc now claimed the Talking Cross spoke via "three mysterious personages" with himself as interpreter or secretary, and that the Yucutecos "will be severely punished." Bankrupt and facing the prospect of endless war with the Maya, the Yucutecos eventually accepted Mexican sovereignty in 1853, so it was Mexico that the Cruzob now fought. English visitors and Mexican prisoners described the Talking Cross being taken into battle by the Cruzob armies.<br />
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The Cruzob’s survival was assisted by the neighbouring little colony of British Honduras (now Belize). With their tiny garrison, the British realised they stood a better change of survival against the much bigger Mexico if a Mayan state prevailed. So the British for a time supplied arms to Chan Santa Cruz. In a letter to the "magistrates of Belize", a Cruzob leader wrote, "the Holy Cross begs you to give them powder and shot and all the implements of war."<br /><br /><br />
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<b>The Balam Na today. Adam Jones Phd, Wikimedia Commons</b>
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While the Latinos had for centuries refused to ordain Mayans as priests, Mayans now served as priests to their own congregations, but their version of worship became only loosely based on mainstream Catholicism. In Cruzob cosmology, there were several versions of God, there were angels and other lesser gods, elementals such as the jaguar and also the "Beautiful Grandmother" – equivalent to the Virgin of Guadeloupe. <br />
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Venancio Puc emerged as the new "interpreter" of the Cross and <i>tatich</i> (Pope). The Talking Cross now spoke to Venancio Puc and occasionally to his generals, with his son Atanacio Puc performing ventriloquism via a barrel-shaped device in a hidden space near the Talking Cross. The cross spoke sometimes in words, sometimes in a sharp, whistling voice – a "fine, thin whistle" according to one witness. <br />
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Lieutenant Plumridge of the British Army described being made to wait all day and much of the night until “God came”, when a "rather weak voice... which seemed to originate in the midst of the air" told them "If the English want a fight, let them come... and I will dispose of (them) at once." A escaped Mexican army prisoner described being led to the Cross, which ordered him to repay the 28 pesos he’d won playing cards with his guards and to receive 25 lashes. <br /><br />
In 1867 the <i>tatich</i> was a mezito, Gerardo de Castillo, who admitted to the superintendent of Belize that "Divine Providence"had caused himself and colleagues to seize power from Venancio Puc and kill him. De Castillo admitted that the voice had been produced by Puc’s son, and explained that "the use of ventriloquism to make the cross speak was the work of evil men and a thing of the past". While the tatich still maintained the holiness of the Talking Cross, his admission had lost the cult much of its power. San Juan still communicated his proclamations by letter. <br /><br />
Cruzob authority was now fragmenting. Travellers to Tulum – an ancient pyramid and fortress complex on the coast North of Chan Santa Cruz – described in 1866 seeing there another church shrouded in darkness where the high priest and his wife were patrons of the cross, which talked in a whistling voice to a kneeling congregation. There were by then other Mayan statelets where the "parents" of the Speaking Cross kept it in their houses. By 1872 a third rival centre of Talking Cross worship appeared at San Antonio Muyil. In the 1890s there were at least four such competing Talking Cross centres. The Mayan community at Ixchanha rejected the Cruzob’s break with traditional Catholicism, preferring to accept nominal recognition of the Mexican state. The Cruzob made war on all of these Talking Cross variants. By 1895 Chan Santa Cruz was all but abandoned, still guarded for visits by Cruzob officials, who had reportedly relocated their base somewhere to the northwest. <br /><br /><br />
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<b>A contemporary map of Yacutan.</b>
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In 1901, a Mexican army under General Ignacio Bravo finally occupied Chan Santa Cruz for good, its troops bringing measles and smallpox which devastated the local population. Bravo's army reported discovering the hiding place near the Talking Cross where a ventriloquist could have hidden, their voice amplified by the barrel-type device. Maya guerrilla warfare against Mexico persisted, ending only with a formal peace treaty in 1935.<br /><br />
In 2002, the Mexican Government finally recognised the Church of the Talking Cross as a legitimate religion. A more moderate version of the Cult of the Talking Cross still exists. The <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sanctuary_of_the_Talking_Cross_-_Felipe_Carrillo_Puerto_(Former_Chan_Santa_Cruz)_-_Quintana_Roo_-_Mexico_-_01.jpg">spring where the Talking Cross first manifested</a>is a hangout for students, in a town now with the more secular name Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Some claim the cross at the spring continues to talk to this day.<br />
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It turns out the symbol of the cross long predated Christianity in the Yucatan anyway. Mayan cosmology features the <i>yaxche</i> (mahogany tree), the Tree of Life, the navel of the world, a straight tree vaguely in the form of the cross. In some representations of the <i>yaxche</i>, the cross shape is formed by a double-headed serpent spread out in its branches and by a bird perching atop the tree. The <i>yaxche</i> anchored the various parts of the universe in their place and spread from the earth into the heavens and reached with its roots down into the underworld. Amen!<br /><br /><br />
Copyright Matt Salusbury 2022<br /><br /><br />
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<b>Tulum, the ancient pre-Columbian Mayan temple and fortress complex on the coast where Mayan insurgents took refuge. Wikimedia Commons.</b>
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Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-59083155949185049942022-07-19T12:36:00.006-07:002022-07-19T12:41:54.503-07:00Headless phantom coach horses<br />
<b>This article first appeared in <i>Fortean Times</i></b>.
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There are a remarkable numbers of traditions from around the British Isles featuring phantom coaches. These phantom coaches are often driven by headless coachmen, sometimes with even the horses pulling the coach being headless too.
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The village of Olney, Buckinghamshire, is allegedly the home of a phantom coach pulled by headless horses and with a decapitated driver. Kingston Russell House in Long Bredy, Dorset, is said to be haunted by a coach with a headless coachman, a headless footman and four headless passengers, pulled by a team of four headless horses. Headless horses driven by a headless coachman were said to emerge at midnight from a hole at Rowlands Hill in Wimborne, Dorset. Another phantom coach, with a headless lady passenger as well as a headless coachman driving headless horses, was alleged to ride around the site of a former court building in Stackpole Elidor, Dyfed. To look upon the phantom coach said to appear on Christmas Eve with a headless horses and a headless coachman at the reins, at Penrhyn, Cornwall, causes death, and so on.
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Toby's Walk in Blythburgh, Suffolk is haunted by "Black Toby", <a href="http://www.invisibleworks.co.uk/black-dog-tales-toby-gill/">Toby Gill</a>, a Jamaican drummer of the 4th Dragoons regiment lynched by locals around 1750. In most versions of the story he walks the heath on foot, in some he drives a hearse to Hell, pulled by headless horses. Research by Joan Forman, local author of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3296926-haunted-east-anglia"><i>Haunted East Anglia</i></a>, concluded that the coach with the headless horses is a later – 19th century – story that became conflated with Toby Gill.
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<b>A British dragoon roughly contemporary with Toby Gill, athough as a drummer he would have had a more colourful uniform. Out of copyright.</b>
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<b>Toby's Walks beauty spot and picnic area, near Blythburgh, near the scene of where Toby Gill was lynched. It was closed in recent years by Suffolk Coastal District, citing frequent incidents of "dogging". Locals told me that there were one or two dogging incidents, and that the cash-strapped Council had used these an excuse to close the site to save money. Photo: Matt Salusbury</b>
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<b>In one version of the "Black Toby" legend, Toby in his dragoon drummer's uniform drives a hearse (or a mail coach) to Hell, via Beccles. In other versions he is walking the heath in the civilian clothes he was found in.</b>
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There's a veritable cluster of phantom coach traditions around Bungay, Beccles and Oulton on the Suffolk-Norfolk border, each with a version in which the horses and sometimes the coachmen are headless, associated with local aristocrats and their stately homes.
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The phantom coach with a headless coachman (no details on the headlessness of its horses) at Bungay and Geldeston is associated with the Bigod family. The phantom coach at Nursery Corner on the Beccles to Bungay Road is linked to the Blennerhassetts of Barsham Hall (now a ruin) and bears that family’s crest. In some versions it headless horses pull it all the way to <a href="http://www.blennerhassettfamilytree.com/Hassett%27s-Hall%2C-Norfolk.php">Hassett's Tower</a> in Norwich. The coach emerging from Roos Hall near Beccles, Suffolk, on Christmas Eve also has headless horses and sometimes headless coachmen.
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<b>The drive of Roos Hall, in Barsham near Beccles, from where a phantom coach linked to the local Blennerhassett family is said to emerge on Christmas Eve. In some versions of the story, the coach horses as well as the coachman are headless. Photo: Matt Salusbury.</b>
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Boulge Hall, near Woodbridge, Suffolk (not far from Sutton Hoo, with its Saxon horse burial, see <a href="https://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com/2020/03/sutton-hoo-fortean-traveller.html">here</a>) has a tradition of a coach pulled by headless horses, said to convey either the temperamental "Queen of Hell" Mrs Short or Mr Fitzgerald, both former owners of the Hall – now a farm.
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While headless ghosts sort of make sense as the souls of those executed by beheading, comparatively few coachmen were actually beheaded. Beheadings were usually reserved for high-profile figures. These were anyway out of fashion in the golden age of coachmen in the 18th and 19th centuries, with England’s last beheading happening in 1747. Headless coach horses, though, don’t make sense at all – horses weren't beheaded.
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<b>Site of the excavated Mound among the Anglo-Saxon burial mounds at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk. This mound contained a horse burial with a young warrior and a horse buried in full harness.</b>
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The recent <a href="https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/news/further-chariot-burial-discovered-at-pocklington.htm">discovery of an Iron Age chariot burial in Pocklington</a>, East Yorkshire, (<b>FT 295;14-15</b>), may help explain some headless coach traditions. Archaeology at the The Iron Age burial site at Pocklington has already uncovered over 200 burials. These included the first Iron Age chariot burial discovered in England – unearthed in 2017, this included a young man with grave goods buried in a two-wheeled chariot and the complete skeletons of two horses in full harness, found buried as if pulling a chariot.
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The following year, an excavation at a different part of the Pocklington site uncovered a barrow containing another Iron Age chariot burial, from around 100 BCE. In this burial, a "high-status" man in his forties or older was found crouched inside the chariot. The chariot itself, with its team of two horses, was buried as if the horses were <a href="www.rt.com/uk/446132-chariot-yorkshire-horses-spear/">leaping up out of the ground</a>. Paula Ware of MAP Archaeological Practice told the <i>Yorkshire Post</i> their heads may have even protruded from the earth and been above ground.
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The heads of the horses were at the point in the burial that was nearest the ground. It's likely they had been destroyed through centuries of ploughing, leaving behind the skeletons of two headless horses. Ploughing, along with natural erosion, is known to have destroyed or damaged many ancient barrows and tombs over the years – the antiquarians of the 18th century were already recording traditions of local "giant’s graves" that had disappeared. Any chariot burials that farmers stumbled across while ploughing may well have remained unrecorded. The grave goods of "high status" Iron Age warriors buried with their chariots would have been made of precious metals, it would have been tempting to walk off with the loot and cover up evidence of the burial.
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Could superstitious folk of the 18th century have uncovered one such unrecorded chariot burial, with horses in full harness buried upright but with no heads, and interpreted it as headless horses pulling a coach? The counties associated with headless coach horse traditions listed above are also rich in Iron Age archaeology.
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<b>Thanks to Paranormal Database (<a href="http://www.paranormaldatabase.com">www.paranormaldatabase.com</>), <a href="https://www/twitter.com/manukenken">@manukenken</a> and <a href="https://www/twitter.com/hilaryrsparkles">@HilaryRSparkles</a> for headless horse intelligence.</b>
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<br /><b>Update: (19/07/22) I have since had accounts of a phantom coach journeying between Harrow Hill and Long Compton, Warwickshire, report that both driver and horses are headless. The coach is most active in winter or after heavy rain. From Brazil comes the bizarre Mula-Sem-Cabeca, the phantom <a href="http://folklore.usc.edu/the-headless-mule-brazilian-folklore/">Headless Mule</a>. This is said to be the ghost of a women who killed herself after having an illicit relationship with a priest. For some reason, the stump of the head of this dark-coloured headless mule is on fire.</b>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-52001687688213472802022-05-18T03:03:00.028-07:002023-01-01T10:02:02.387-08:00Pallisy the potter<b>This feature first appeared in <i>Fortean Times</i></b>
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<P>In the beginning, the Earth spontaneously generated forms in rock, some of which resembled living organisms. Stone forms grew within stones. Just as living organisms above ground gave birth to living young, so the Earth itself produced subterranean stone simulacra of living organisms. As above, so below. That was how they came about – mostly.</P>
<P>Some fossil seashells on the tops of mountains were said to be formed by the stars. Swiss physician, zoologist and botanist Conrad Gesner (1516-1565) wrote that gems were earthly reminders of the jewelled heavenly City of God. Influential Persian philosopher <a href="https://www.famousscientists.org/avicenna/">Avicenna</a> (Ibn Sina, 980-1037) stated that fossils were produced by vapours and exhalations in the depths of the earth, like gallstones and pearls.</P>
<P>Some fossils were assumed to be generated through astrological influences, or were "sports of nature", put there by a playful Mother Nature or by a time-travelling Satan <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/flat-earth-theory_uk_5f68b199c5b6b9795b143d8d" target="_blank">to test men's faith</a>. Other fossils were the bodies of the many people and animals that were collateral damage from and evidence for Biblical Flood, including the shells of sea creatures found at the summits of mountains.</P>
<P>Or fossils were just artefacts left by supernatural beings – such as the lethal darts and arrows of the fairy folk. Or fossil finds were "thunderstones" that fell from the sky, or the curled ram's horns adorning the brows of the god Amun, or the chakras from the centre of the hand of Vishnu. Some were the bones of human giants, as documented in Genesis - "There were giants in the earth in those days." <i>In</i> the earth, so presumably underground.</P>
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<b>Jupiter Ammon (above), the Romanised version of the Egyptian god Amun, sporting the "Horns of Amun," probably based on ammonites. World Museum, Liverpool.</b><br>
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<b>The horns of Amun, (below,) this time on the god Amun appearing as a ram protecting one of the kings of Egypt - British Museum, London.</b>
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<b>Ammonites (top two rows) in the Horniman Museum, London. We now understand that ammonites are shelled marine invertebrates similar to the present-day nautilus.</b>
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<P>Where fossils did look like the bones of animals that bore little resemblance to animals still alive, it was deduced that such animals were still extant, just awaiting discovery in a part of the world yet to be explored. The <a href="https://cassinssparrow.org/2019/11/04/exhumation-of-the-mastodon/">American Incognitium</a>, whose fossilised bones were discovered in the Ohio River in 1740, displayed similarities to an elephant but with teeth suggesting a carnivorous diet. The backers of the Lewis and Clark transcontinental expedition that set out in 1805 were confident the <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/blog/hips-dont-lie-american-incognitum"><i>Incognitium</i></a> (later known as the mastodon) would be found alive and well by the explorers in the vast prairies of the American West.</P>
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<b>Illustration showing Palissy, from a 19th-century Methodist hagiography published in London. Artist unknown, out of copyright.</b>
<P>There couldn't anyway have been much time for the animals still alive at the time of the fossil bones' discovery to have changed over the generations from something originally very different. There hadn’t been all that many generations in which to pass on characteristics in a universe in which most of human and natural history were packed into the four millennia between the Creation (on 4th October 4004 BC, as helpfully calculated by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ussher" target="_blank">Bishop Ussher of Armagh</a>) and the birth of Christ.</P>
<P>There wasn't even the expectation that fossils were once anything alive. The word "fossil" comes from the Latin <i>fossilus</i>, literally something dug up. Interesting-looking minerals, worked flints used by early humans and meteorites (FT 265) were all lumped together with what we today would define as fossils.</P>
<P>The idea that fossils were the petrified bones of long-dead animals, was quite the least fashionable explanation. The baggage of fossil folklore about fairy darts, fairy loaves, "tongue stones" and "thunder stones" didn't help - such old wives’ tales made natural philosophers wary of approaching the subject.</P>
<P>The great Aristotle, who had dominated the "natural philosophy" curriculum for centuries, could still do no wrong. Aristotle had dealt with the issue of fossils definitively in<a href="http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/gp006.pdf"><i>On Generation and Corruption</i></a>. Here he concluded that the starfish found turned to stone in the mountains had spontaneously formed and had come to life when the mountains "hardened", there followed much discourse about wetness and dryness and life and death. Aristotle’s idea of two extremes of "wet and dry" dominating the world were themselves informed by the pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon, who lived from around 570BCE to 478BCE and whose works survive in commentaries by Hippolytus. Xenophanes argued that fluctuating extremes of wetness and dryness would result in the extinction of humankind, and later bring it back to life.</P>
<P>As evidence, Xenophanes cited fossilised fish and seaweed in Syracusian quarries, a bay leaf found in marble and impressions of “all kinds of marine life” far inland on Malta. He concluded that water must once have covered the Earth’s surface. Albertus Magnus in <a href="https://archive.org/details/308059821ALBERTUSMAGNUSTheBookOfMinerals/mode/1up"><i>The Book of Minerals</i></a>, the first major work on mineralogy, developed Aristotle's ideas. Magnus was convinced all stones are formed where they are found through "some force of the configuration of heaven," that in “regions of the Pyrenees” rainwater turns to stone, that "reliable reports" mention a spring in Sweden that turns everything dipped in it to stone, and that "sigils" - signs on stones showing the markings of leaves – indicate that those stones have medicinal properties. Other natural philosophers attributed fossils to a vague "lapidifying virtue", a “plastick virtue" or "moulding force", an inherent Aristotelian characteristic of the Earth.</P>
<P>At a time of very limited knowledge of skeletons and anatomy, the principle of comparative anatomy was not as obvious at it seems today, with so little collected physical evidence to go on. A tooth of St Christopher venerated in Italy turned out to be a mammoth molar.The long-venerated bones of the founding fathers of Christianity on the island of Cyprus turned out to be those of pygmy hippos.</P>
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<b>A 1538 illustration from a work by Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner, a contemporary of Palissy, notes the similarity between "tongue stones" and the teeth of living sharks. We know understand these "tongue stones" to be fossil sharks' teeth.</b>
<P>Invertebrate fossils were even harder to interpret – their soft tissue is rarely preserved, only the hard shells survive, often less recognisable. The numerous internal cast fossils of the innards of the fossil shrimp Branchiopoda, preserved in abundance in strata in Michigan after its shell had rotted away, were easily mistaken by European settlers as the petrified trackway of ancient deer. The spines of sea urchins seldom survive fossilisation, so what remains is their inner shell. When these were dug up inland they were taken to be “fairy loaves” because of their resemblance to a roundish loaf of bread.</P>
<P>German philosopher, scientist and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Von Leibniz (1646-1716) reconstructed mammoth bones as a unicorn. As late as 1850, fossil mammals were still being interpreted as mythical beasts. It’s noteworthy that the serious investigation of fossils and their origins really took after the invention of printing, which made comparison of specimens much easier.</P>
<P>That the most obvious explanation is probably the best one was an alien concept in the days when scholarship was the preserve of a very narrow elite, their thinking dominated by the study of Aristotle and the fathers of natural philosophy.</P>
<P>Into this world of stone simulacra spontaneously generated by the Aristotelian “wetness” or “dryness” stepped a proto-fortean outsider, heretic, polymath, dissident and genius Bernard Palissy, who by accident stumbled across the truth about what fossils were. He was not the first and certainly not the last in a long line of thinkers who played a part on the gradual process of figuring out fossils and who did their bit in overturning the prevailing fashionable scientific Establishment paradigm.</P>
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<b>Palissy breaks up his furniture to feed the furnace of his kiln, an illustration by Tasei Ijenden from <i>Lives of the Great People of the Occident</i>, Tokyo, 1870, out of copyright.</b>
<P>Palissy was a surveyor (his most profitable side-hustle), a worker in stained glass, a potter and a builder of aqueducts who hadn’t even learned Greek or Latin but whose programme of public lectures would later inspire the foundation of the Academie Francaise. Despite enjoying the patronage and protection of the Queen Mother of France, Pallisy became a martyr to his beliefs, refusing to recant when facing life imprisonment in old age in the Bastille. Although it wasn’t for any scientific heresy about fossils that Pallisy was condemned, but for his Protestantism.</P>
<P>He was some 40 years ahead of his time in setting up a Parisian "Little Academy 'at which he gave paid-for lectures on a variety of subjects. One of the regular attendees was a young English University of Paris student named Francis Bacon, who was greatly influenced by Palissy’s ideas, in particular Palissy’s assertion that "Practice is the source of theory... By experiment I prove in several places that the theory of several philosophers is false, even of the most renowned and the most ancient."</P>
<P>Bernard Palissy was born into a French family of modest means around 1510. Speculation places his birth at either the town of <a href="https://www.francethisway.com/places/saintes.php">Saintes</a>, in the Charente region of Aquitaine (Western France) and not far from the Protestant stronghold of <a href="https://frenchmoments.eu/la-rochelle-history/">La Rochelle</a>, or possible la Chapelle-Biron, near Agen or in the nearby glassworkers' settlement in the woods in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Agenais">Agenois</a>.</P>
<P>He certainly spent much of his early life around Saintes. His father was poor, but of "noble birth" and Bernard inherited his father's profession of painter in stained glass and a manufacturer of roof tiles. This was at a time when fashions in church decoration meant that the demand for stained glass was falling, with plain glass becoming more fashionable, so Bernard struggled to make a living. His education in literature and maths was of a high standard for the time, later landing him surveying work.</P>
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<b>Contemporary illustration of Palissy, artist unknown, out of copyright.</b>
<P>It was as a semi-itinerant stained glass painter that the young Palissy wandered across France for at least five years starting from 1525, a voyage that took in Nimes, the southwest, the Paris region, through the and the Pyrenees and onward to Antwerp and Brest, possibly even into the Netherlands and into Germany.</P>
<P>It was while travelling to find work that he came across whole strata of the petrified shells of sea creatures. He later noted that the flood from Genesis would have left just a layer of dead seashells at the tops of mountains as the waters receded after 40 days – but here in the mountains was layer upon layer of seashells – if you hacked into that bed of seashells there were just more and more of them underneath. Bernard eventually settled in Saintes in 1535 as a glazier and painter in stained glass. He married in 1539 at the age of 29 and went on to have six children.</P>
<P>One day in Saintes, so the probably embellished story goes, Palissy was shown a small cup made of enamelled pottery, which had probably come from Italy or possibly have been <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majolica">majolica earthenware</a> from Spain, via Italy. In any event, such techniques were unknown at the time in France. He was transfixed, he found the cup “enamelled with so much beauty the from that time I entered into controversy with my own thoughts... I began to think that if I should discover how to make enamels I could make earthen vessels and other things very prettily.” He vowed to his make it his life’s mission to recreate that enamel glaze on pottery, becoming "Pallisy the potter".</P>
<P>He built a kiln near his home and threw all his resources into experimenting with exotic and expensive glazes at high temperatures for the next six years. Palissy later described this as a time of being "wonderfully” poor" and "despised... as one little better than a madman." He recalled smashing up and burning the "tables and floorboards of my house" to fuel the kiln, although this story is probably an invention.</P>
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<b><i>Palissy's Final Experiment</i>, unknown, 19th century, out of copyright</b>
<P>In 1543 King Francois ordered a new - much-hated - salt tax, whose orderly administration required a survey of the salt marshes around Saintonge, near Saintes. Palissy spent most of the next year carrying out the survey, the fee for which allowed him to renew his efforts into finding that perfect white enamel, using higher temperature glass blowing kilns with more success.</P>
<P>Palissy "began to look for enamels as a man gropes in the dark." In his ten-year search (or sixteen years according to some versions), he in his own words “blundered many times at a great expense... pounding and grinding new materials and constructing new furnaces, which cost much money and consumed my wood and my time... I fooled away several years with sorrow and sighs.” Eventually, out of the glass furnace he pulled a shard with "a suitably beautiful white enamel."</P>
<P>There followed seven months in secret learning to work clay. In his third furnace he discovered the earthenware came out encrusted with jagged bits, the local clay being so flinty. Clay from other regions of France solved that problem.</P>
<P>It's not clear whether Palissy had actually cracked his quest for the perfect enamel, although he claimed to have. At around this time, though, he began to produce rustiques figurlines (“rusticware”, later known as Palissyware). This caught the eye of the Constable (later Duke of) <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Montmorency">Montmorency</a>, who was in the area on a punitive expedition against a salt tax rebellion. Montmorency had seen some fine examples of Palissy’s “rusticware” in local manor houses and on the strength of these commissioned Palissy to build retreats on his estates.</P>
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<b>"Rusticware" attributed to Pallisy, although the attribution of many Pallisyware pieces is uncertain. This one is in the Wallace Collection. Photo: Matt Salusbury</b>
<P>The striking Palissyware took the form of sumptuous dishes and bowls in natural colours, with mouldings and reliefs in the shape of a cornucopia of creatures - usually frogs, snakes, snails, small fish, plants, bugs, tortoises, crustaceans and seashells from the local <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saintonge">Santoigne</a> marshes, painted in a smooth glossy glaze that resembled their glossy skin. He used coloured lead glazes, lead silicates with added oxides of copper, cobalt, manganese or iron with tin added.</P>
<P>The animals depicted on Palissyware were extraordinarily realistic – because they were actually cast from moulds made from dead animals. These included impressions taken from fossils of the shells of long-extinct Tertiary gastropods from the Paris basin. He took his secret of how he cast these creatures "from life", with no signs of harm, to the grave.</P>
<P>Through making moulds for his pottery using the real bodies of recently dead animals, Palissy quickly grasped that a similar process was at work in nature – sediments formed around the remains of plants and animals and over time these solidified into rock-hard fossils – particularly the hard shells of invertebrates. There were no stones forming within stones, nor was some sort of Aristotelian natural mechanism at work that threw up spontaneous forms or through “wetness” or “dryness” petrified still living animals or brought them back to life again. The great philosophers were wrong.</P>
<P>It was around the time that his Palissyware began to take off that he converted to Protestantism and became one of the founders of the Reformed Church of Saintes, after holding meetings in his studio.</P>
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<b>Another "rusticware" piece attributed to Palissy in the Wallace Collection, photo: Matt Salusbury</b>
<P>After 16 years mostly in poverty, Palissy suddenly found rich patrons. As well as Montmerency, the Count of Maulevrier, the Montpensiers and the Valois family all employed him to decorate their palaces, grottos and gardens. Palissy spent a while working on tiles for Montmorenci’s new palace, <a href="https://www.visitparisregion.com/en/musee-national-de-la-renaissance-chateau-d-ecouen">Chateau d’Ecouen</a>. He came to the attention of the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, the powerful regent of France during the minority of her son Charles IX. Catherine’s accounts for 1570 include, "To Bernard, Nicholas and Mathurin Palissys, sculptors in earth, the sum of 2600 livres for all the baked and enamelled work which were required for the completion of the four bridges which lead to the grotto commenced for the queen, in her palace near the Louvre".</P>
<P>The laying out of royal gardens at Tuileries in Paris, a project originally for the Constable of Paris, was quickly taken over by Catherine, who employed Palissy on it. He became "Bernard of the Tuileries". His work on landscape planning became important in the development of forestry conservation.</P>
<P>Palissy's aristocratic clients issued him safe conducts to complete his work. But his openly expressed views identified him as a Protestant. His enemies broke into his pottery studio at a time when they knew that Palissy’s client Sire de Pons, the king’s lieutenant in Saintogne, would be away. They destroyed the studio and arrested Palissy for Calvinism. He was imprisoned first in Saintes and then in Bordeaux. His protectors managed to have him moved from Bordeaux - away from the vindictive <a href="http://lemap-bordeaux.com/map-listing/place-du-parlement/">Bordeaux Parliament</a> - and to prison in Paris. There he wrote his first book, <i>Recepte véritable par laquelle tous les hommes de la France pourront apprendre à multiplier et augmenter leurs trésors</i> (True recipe by which all the men of France will be able to learn to multiply and increase their treasures), published shortly after his release in 1563.</P>
<P>In <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbctos.2017gen32868/?st=gallery"><i>Recepte véritable</i></a>, Palissy recalled how walking among rocks around the town of Saintes, he came across "stones which are made in the manner of a sheep's horn, not so long nor so curved, but commonly are arched" are about half a foot long. Years later a citizen of Saintes gifted him "one of the said stones, which was half open, and had certain indentations, which joined admirably one in the other." From then on, Palissy “knew that the said stone had been at other times a fish shell, of which we no longer see any. And we must estimate and believe that this kind of fish has frequented other times in the sea of Saintogne: because there are a great number of said stones, but the kind of fish has been lost" - through over-fishing, he speculated.</P>
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<b><i>Palissy the Potter</i>, artist unknown, 19th century, London, out of copyright.</b>
<P>Palissy commented “how ignorant people assert that nature or the sky created [the fossils] by celestial influences”. He posed the question, "Why do we find so many fragments of shells between two layers of stones, if not because these shells already deposited on the beach were covered with a land thrown back by the sea, which land then came." He argued that minerals, dissolving into water to form “congelative water,” would precipitate and thereby petrify once living organisms in order to create fossils. He even observed that a recently dead sea urchin was beginning to shed its spines, making it more closely resemble the "fairy loaves" of its fossil form.</P>
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<b>A "fairy loaf", once popularly believed to be the petrified bread of the fairies. We now know these are fossil sea urchins. This one's in the collection of <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk">Dunwich Museum</a>. Photo by the author.</b>
<P>Montmorenci persuaded Catherine to declare Palissy a "royal servant", which shielded Palissy from the 1572 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Massacre-of-Saint-Bartholomews-Day">St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre</a>, after which he laid low in Sedan, returning to Paris two years later. It was there that he started the Little Academy, lecturing on subjects as diverse as fountains, drinking water, alchemy, metallurgy, the causes of earthquakes and volcanos and fossils. These were a great success and continued to 1584.</P>
<P>The Little Academy included a cabinet of curiosities – fossils, shells and natural history illustration. He describes spoil form roadworks in La Rochelle containing chunks of rock so crowded with shells he couldn'g put a knife between them. He employed "a score of women and children" to hunt fossil shellfish him.</P>
<P>During his Little Academy period, Palissy wrote his second book, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbctos.2017gen32868/?st=gallery"><i>Discours admirables de la Nature des Eaux et Fontaines tant naturelles qu'artificielles des métaux, des sels et salines, des pierres, des terres, du feu et des émaux</i></a> (Admirable Discourse on the Nature of Waters and Fountains, both Natural and Artificial, Metals, Salts and Salines, Stones, Earths, Fire and Enamels), a collections of his lectures which appeared in 1580. The Admirable Discourse described in detail his theories on fossils, along with rants about “immodest” contemporary fashion and condemnations of doctors prescribing gold dust to patients.</P>
<P>The Biblical deluge, felt Palissy, had been of too short a duration to explain seashells on mountain tops. He’d heard of a cliff high in the Apennine Mountains where shells are hacked out of the bottom, the beginning and the middle of a deep fossil bed. He asked, “By what door the sea entered to place the said shells in the middle of the hardest rock".</P>
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<b>Bernard Pallisy in later life, artist unknown, out of copyright.</b>
<P>Arrested again in 1586, Palissy was banished to Sedan in 1587. He breached the terms of his exile and returned to Paris the following year, where he was arrested yet again and condemned to death. One of his admirers, the Duke of Mayenne, tried to obstruct and delay his trial for the next four years. His friends succeeded in having Palissy’s death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. King <a href="https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/henry-iii-of-france-37735.php">Henry III</a> visited Palissy, then aged 79, in the Bastille, where it is said Palissy rejected the King's offer of a pardon if he converted to Catholicism. Palissy also gave help and comfort to younger Protestant prisoners, at great personal risk. He died of "hunger, cold and poor treatment" in the Bastille in around 1589.</P>
<P>Palissy's lack of Greek or Latin meant he didn't enjoy an international audience. But some 30 years after the young <a href="https://www.fbrt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bacon_Brothers_and_France.pdf">Francis Bacon had attended Palissy's Little Academy</a>, Bacon’s <i>Novum Organum</i> (1620) became the basis for what's now known as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Baconian-method">Baconian Method</A> for scientific investigation, partly inspired by Palissy. Another attendee at Palissy's little academy had been Pierre de la Priumaudaye, the presumed author of the book series <i>Academie Francaise</i> - an attempt at an encyclopaedic work begun in 1618, including a "notable description of the whole world". Naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges-Louis_Leclerc,_Comte_de_Buffon">Comte de Buffon</a> (1707-1788), author of the groundbreaking 36-volume <i>Histoire Naturelle</i> also read and was influenced by Palissy's works.</P>
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<b>A statue of Palissy by Louis-Ernest Barras at the National Museum of Ceramics, Sevres, France. Note the ammonite by his left foot.</b>
<P>© Matt Salusbury 2021</P>
<B>Further reading:</B>
<P><a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbctos.2017gen32868/?st=gallery"><i>Oeuvres de Bernard Palissy</i></a>, Rualt, Paris, 1777, </P>
<P><a href="http://www.ouest-paleo.net/nos-articles/les-naturalistes-locaux/bernard-palissy/">"Bernard Palissy : artiste, savant, écrivain et naturaliste de la Renaissance"</a>, Aurélien Morhain, Ouest Paleo, </P>
<P><i>Prehistoric Mammals and Fossils</i>, Micheal Smith, Ladybird, Loughborough, 1974</P>
<P><a href="https://archive.org/details/308059821ALBERTUSMAGNUSTheBookOfMinerals/mode/1up"><i>The Book of Minerals</i></a>, Albertus Magnus</P>
<P><i>The Revolution in Geology from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment</i>, Gary D. Rosenberg (ed.), Geological Society of America Memoir, Boulder, Colorado, 2009</P>
<P><a href="http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/gp006.pdf"><i>On Generation and Corruption</i></a>, Aristotle, </P>
<P><a href="https://www.fbrt.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bacon_Brothers_and_France.pdf">"The Bacon brothers in France"</a>, Peter Dawkins, Francis Bacon Research Trust 2020. </P>
<P><i>The Rise of the Mammals</i>, Dr Michael Benton, The Apple Press/Quarto Pubs, 1991</P>
<P><i>Bernard Palissy the Huguenot Potter</i>, Annie E Keeling, Wesleyan Conference Office, London 1881</P>
<P><i>Palissy the Potter</i>, Henry Morley, Chapman and Hall, London, 1885</P>
<P><i>The Story of Palissy the Potter (Lessons from Noble Lives)</i>, T. Nelson and Sons, London, 1875
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<b>Three more "rusticware" pieces attributed to Palissy, or possibly "school of Palissy", at the Wallace Museum. Photos: Matt Salusbury</b>
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Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-4218164043585078552022-01-21T17:11:00.002-08:002022-05-11T12:50:56.775-07:00Celebrating Saturnalia<P>This first appeared in <A HREF="http://www.forteantimes.com"><i>Fortean Times</i></A>, <b>FT ; </b>, December 2021. <A HREF="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/did-romans-invent-christmas">A similiar article</A> first appeared in <i>History Today</i>.
<p>A public holiday celebrated around 25th December in the family home - a time for the exchange of gifts, feasting and decorating trees. Christmas? No, this was Saturnalia, the pagan Roman winter solstice festival. But did the Christian festival of Christmas really have its origins in pagan Saturnalia?</p>
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<b>The 2013 Saturnalia parade in Chester, England, Photo: Donald Judge, Creative Commons Licence</b>
<p>Roman poet <A HREF="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gaius-valerius-catullus">Gaius Valerius Catullus</A> described Saturnalia as "the best of times": small gifts were exchanged, dress codes were relaxed, social roles were inverted. Masters and slaves were expected to swap clothes, the wealthy to pay the month’s rent for those who couldn't afford it. Households rolled dice to choose a temporary Saturnalian monarch, who wore a pilleus – a pointy hat. in Lucian of Samosata's first century AD poem <A HREF="http://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki/doku.php?id=home:texts_and_library:dialogues:saturnalia"><i>Saturnalia</i></A>, the god <A HREF="https://study.com/learn/lesson/cronos-the-god-mythology-overview.html">Cronos</A> (Saturn) says: "During my week the serious is barred: no business allowed. Drinking and being drunk, noise and games of dice, appointing of kings and feasting of slaves, singing naked, clapping... an occasional ducking of corked faces in icy water..."</p>
<p>Saturnalia was very ancient, beginning as a farmer's festival to mark the end of the autumn planting season in honour of Saturn (<i>satus</i> means sowing). Holly was one of several evergreen plants associated with Saturn. The foundation stone of the first <A HREF="https://www.worldhistory.org/article/636/temple-of-saturn-rome/">temple of Saturn</A> at the edge of Rome's forum was laid when Rome was still a kingdom, around 495 BC, and completed as Rome became a Republic. Numerous archaeological sites from the coastal province of <A HREF="https://www.lonelyplanet.com/algeria/constantine">Constantine, now in Algeria</A>, demonstrate that the cult of Saturn survived there until the third century AD.</p>
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<b><i>View of the Temple of Concord and the Temple of Saturn</i>, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Rome, 1760-1778</b>
<p>Saturnalia grew in duration and moved to progressively later dates during the Roman period. In the reign of the <A HREF="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/augustus.shtml">Emperor Augustus</A> (63 BC-AD 14), it was a two-day affair starting on 17th December, heralded by sacrifices at the Temple of Saturn and shouts of "Io Saturnalia!" By the time Lucian described the festivities it had become a seven-day event.</p>
<p>From as early as 217 BC, and probably much earlier, there were public Saturnalia banquets. Rome cancelled executions and refrained from declaring war during the festival. Pagan Roman authorities tried to curtail Saturnalia; <A HREF="https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/caligula.shtml">Emperor Caligula</A> (AD 12-41) tried - with little success - to restrict it to five days.</p>
<p>The popularity of Saturnalia is shown by an incident in AD 43 during the disembarkation of legions of the Emperor Claudius to invade of Britain. Mutiny was brewing on the Gaulish coast - legionnaires refused to leave the known world for uncharted territory. Up stepped <A HREF="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Narcissus-Roman-official">Tiberius Claudius Narcissus</A>, freedman (former slave) of the Emperor and the most influential figure in his court, urging the legions to board the ships. Seeing a freedman taking charge reminded them of a fun festival, they broke into a chant of "Io Saturnalia!" This lightened the mood and the legionaries agreed to set sail.</p>
<p>It may have been the <A HREF="https://www.worldhistory.org/domitian/">Emperor Domitian</A> (AD 51-96) who moved Saturnalia to 25th December, in an attempt to assert his authority. He curbed Saturnalia's subversive tendencies by marking it with lavish events under his control. The poet Statius (AD 45-95), in his <A HREF="https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/StatiusSilvaeBkI.php"><i>Silvae</i></A> describes the entertainments Domitian presided over. Games opened with fruit, nuts and sweets showered on the crowd and featured flights of flamingos released over Rome. These were Rome's first ever illuminated night-time shows, with female gladiators and fighting dwarves.</p>
<p>The <A HREF="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Constantine-I-Roman-emperor">Emperor Constantine's</A> conversion to Christianity in AD 312 started imperial patronage of Christian churches, but Christianity didn’t become the Roman Empire’s official religion overnight. Dr David Gwynn, reader in ancient history at Royal Holloway, University of London, told me "Saturnalia continued to be celebrated in the century afterward". The poet <A HREF="http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/garland/deweever/M/macrobeu.htm">Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius</A> wrote another <i>Saturnalia</i>, describing a banquet of pagan literary celebrities in Rome. Dated to between AD 383 and 430, it describes a Saturnalia alive and well under Christian emperors. The <A HREF="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polemius_Silvius">calendar of Polemius Silvus</A> from around AD 449 mentions Saturnalia "used to honour the god Saturn," so by then it had become just another popular carnival.</p>
<p>There's a rival contender for Saturnalia as the inspiration for Christmas, though - the festival of dies natalis solis invicti, "birthday of the unconquered sun", a Roman public holiday on 25th December. Originating in the monotheistic cult of Mithras, sol invicta was introduced in AD 274 by Emperor Aurelian, who effectively made it a state religion. Sol invicta flourished because it was able to assimilate aspects of Jupiter and other deities into its figure of the Sun King. But in spite of efforts by later pagan emperors to control Saturnalia and absorb the winter festival into an official cult, the sol invicta civil holiday ended up closely resembling the ancient Saturnalia.</p>
<p>Constantine was brought up in the sol invicta cult, in what was already a predominantly monotheistic empire: "It is therefore possible," says Dr Gwynn, "that Christmas was intended to replace this festival (sol invicta) rather than Saturnalia."</p>
<p><b>© Matt Salusbury 2009, 2021</b></p>
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Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-14267218639757241452021-12-23T11:58:00.003-08:002021-12-23T11:59:49.127-08:00Sandie Sheals finds fossils on the sea shore<B>This appeared in <i>Discover Dunwich</i>, the historical and archaeological journal of <a href="https://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/">Dunwich Museum</a>, <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/assets/Discover-Dunwich/discover-dunwich-3-full-colour-july-2021-final.pdf">Issue 3, Summer/Autumn 2021</a>.</B>
<P><B>MANY OF the fossils in Dunwich Museum's collection have been kindly donated by Sandie Sheals. She has a good eye for unusual objects among the shingle.</B></P>
<P><B>What makes these many finds extraordinary is that Sandie's usually in Dunwich for just one week a year. How does she do it? What's her secret?</B></P>
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<p><b>Sheals finds in the collection – top left: whale vertebra; top right: fragment of a mammoth or elephant's tooth; bottom left: fragment of a fossil deer antler; bottom right: a piece of prehistoric mammal bone. Photos: Dunwich Museum.</b></p>
<P>I've always loved finding things. As a child I was one of those kids who walked looking down at the small things rather than the taking in the big views. I'd find lots of things, from a small weed to an interesting stone, a fossil, bit of glass or something that's been lost by someone recently or thousands of years ago.</P>
<P>When I was about eight I found a bit of Fool's Gold (the mineral iron pyrites) in a piece of flint in a pile of builder's rubble, It made me wonder what else I would find.</P>
<P>I lived in Suffolk as a child and often visited the Suffolk coast. I still visit with my family and my own grown-up children. Every year we stay for a week or two and we do the odd day trips as well. We always seem find something interesting.</P>
<P> We love beachcombing, and the great walk between the mysterious Dunwich and Walberswick.This is where I find most of the treasures I take to Dunwich Museum. I think it's because this is where we spend most of our time, relaxing, playing, watching the wildlife and the sea.
<P>Between Dunwich and Walberswick we've found treasures including fossils, worked flint, semi-precious stones, seed pods from thousands of miles away, bits of coral reef, bits of ancient petrified wood, bricks, pottery and glass. Also bits of ancient leather shoes including very small children’s shoes, fragments of human bone, a World War Two mine and much else that would need identifying.</P>
<P>I've also found things nearby at Southwold and Covehithe and Minsmere beaches too.</P>
<P>I have little knowledge of fossils so I gratefully rely on the Dunwich Museum to look and let me know what my finds are.</P>
<P>Visiting local museums like Dunwich helped me imagine what I might find.</P>
<P>I don't go out to look for fossils or anything in particular. I walk along, zigzagging across the beach looking for anything that has an interesting shape or colour or just looks out of place among the shingle. The dark brown colours and shapes of bone fossils stand out against the pebbles.</P>
<P>Advice? Go out to enjoy the walk.You will find something.</P>
<P><b>Sandie Sheals</b></P>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-50170756269765998722021-12-21T14:35:00.008-08:002021-12-21T15:15:42.459-08:00"My dad saw Shuck in the Seventies!"<b><P>This article first appeared in <a href="http://www.forteantimes.com"><i>Fortean Times</i></a> magazine, issue FT412;58-59, December 2021.</P></b>
<P>I investigate reports of <a href="https://bigcatsofsuffolk.com">big cats in Suffolk</a>, I've received over a hundred of these over the past seven years. But while seeking testimony on Suffolk big cat sightings, a surprising number of unsolicited accounts of encounters with the phantom East Anglian hellhound Black Shuck seem to come my way. Shuck can't possibly exist, of course. Nonetheless, I still receive testimony of his antics in the country of Suffolk. An interesting and surprisingly consistent pattern in this handful of Shuck reports is that most of them describe encounters from 40 years ago, usually reported by sons keen to tell me how "my dad saw Shuck in the Seventies."</P>
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<P><b>Detail of the coat of arms of Bungay on the "Welcome to Bungay, a fine old town" sign. Bungay is the epicentre of Black Dog culture in Suffolk.</b></P>
<P>During Shuck's long history, the two peaks in reported East Anglian Shuck activity occurred in the 1920s and in the groovy, cool, fab era that was the 1970s. The ancient horror that was East Anglia's Black Shuck was at large scaring the residents of Seventies Suffolk as never before.</P>
<P>Ivan A.W. Bunn's excellent contemporary analysis East of England Shuck traditions, <a href="https://www.hiddenea.com/shuckland/analysing1.htm">"Shuckland: Analyzing the Hell out of the Beast"</a> remains unequalled to this day.</P>
<P>Among the many 1970s Shuck experiences that came to Bunn's attention was one via a letter from 1973, in which Lincolnshire man with no previous knowledge of East Anglian black dog traditions told how he was laying drainage pipes across the marshes behind the massive <a href="http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/Blythburgh.htm">Holy Trinity Church at Blythburgh</a> (so huge it's known as "the Cathedral of the Marshes"). Suddenly, he heard a dog loudly panting behind him. He turned round and there was... nothing. It was only when he told some locals in the pub that they produced a book of local Shuck stories.</P>
<P>Although Bunn's researches were turning up "hitherto unrecorded characteristics" in Seventies Shuck sightings, he observed at the time that 1970s reports don't mention the more spectacular aspects that Shuck displayed in earlier times. Seventies Shuck tended not to be headless, not to have one eye in the centre of its head, not to have horns, not to wear chains, nor to resemble a calf or grow in size or shape-shift or foretell deaths or explode. He didn't even seem to walk in step with witnesses that much.</P>
<P>Even Shuck's red eyes were seldom mentioned anymore. He was increasingly just a strange, rather big dog that appeared out of nowhere. He still did his vanishing act, although witnesses just reported not being able to work out where he could have gone. Modern Shuck witnesses were left wondering whether they’d in fact seen a huge, black but otherwise ordinary dog.</P>
<P>They came thick and fast, the Seventies Shuck sightings, particularly around Lowestoft, Suffolk's next biggest town after Ipswich, where Shuck chronicler Ivan Bunn is still based. A woman spotted Black Shuck in the bushes at Lowestoft's Belle Vue Park in 1975, although her husband saw nothing. Folklorist <a href="https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/69c51481-d323-3fcd-8419-5c4cf6026991">Theodora Brown</a> claims to have had an encounter of her own with the Black Dog in the churchyard of <a href="http://www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/bungaysm.htm">St Mary's Bungay</a> in the 1970s. A Mrs Whitehead saw a death-portent Shuck in the streets of Bungay at the moment her mother died, while Police Constable Jenkins had several seventies Shuck experiences around the A12 road at Blythburgh. Peter Jennings's <a href="https://www.waterstones.com/book/haunted-suffolk/pete-jennings/9780752438443"><i>Haunted Suffolk</i></a> records an early Seventies sighting of a large white dog seen by a woman walking in Beccles cemetery. The dog faded away as she approached. Keith Flory contacted Ivan Bunn's Hidden East Anglia team to tell them about the night in 1973 when, motorbiking home from Woodbridge, he was followed by a Great Dane-sized Black Shuck who bounded after his motorcycle all the way down the town's Old Barrack Road - effortlessly keeping up with him all the way until Flory finally lost his pursuer in Seckford Hall Road.</P>
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<P><b>Old Barrack Rood, Woodbrige, scene of a Seventies motorcycle chase featuring Black Shuck</b></P>
<P>Some 40 years later, a few of my Suffolk Shuck informants said they'd never before communicated to anybody else what their fathers had related to them in the Shuck department, one informant felt they could only tell me because their father had since passed away. Some informants expressed regret at not having pressed their dear departed dads for more on their Shuck sightings. It's as if there's a complicated Shuck-experience dynamic in father-and-son relationships in the county of Suffolk.</P>
<P>The other pattern emerging in these testimonies of Seventies Suffolk Shuck sightings is more the absence of a pattern - they are all very, very different. While the magical powers of Shuck seem to have been gradually shaved away over time, the sheer variety of shuck encounters has if anything increased.</P>
<P>A man from Rattlesden told me his father, back in the 1970s, was driving on the A140 from Ipswich to Stowmarket one night when he collided with Black Shuck in the dark. He got out of the car to take a look and found... nothing. The next day there was a strange deposit on the bonnet of his car, "like eggshells." Another bizarre encounter narrative came from a man identifying himself as "Major Pickle" on Twit'er. He disclosed how his father (eventually) told him that on 5th August 1973, he (Major Pickle's father) and a friend were driving from the small, mostly agricultural village of Henstead, west of the A12 to the coast at Bawdsey to go canoeing.</P>
<P>Coming round a corner on the road near Henstead, the canoeists saw a huge black dog with something like a mane, standing in the road just looking at them. It "seemed to be there and was just gone" according to Pickle's account. When his dad got out of the car for a look, there was nothing to see except (then) open fields. It was what happened next that made those two 1970s canoe enthusiasts think they'd had a brush with a beast of ill omen. The friend with whom my informant's dad went canoeing always mapped and researched their canoeing routes. They'd regularly been canoeing off the coast at Bawdsey before, but "they never encountered anything like this". Their canoe went into a "freak tidal whirlpool", they capsized and were almost drowned. They were washed up on the Ministry of Defence's Bawdsey Island Radar Station, "an interesting experience during the Cold War". Their inadvertent trespassing in a then restricted Cold War-era defence installation meant they kept quiet about the events of that day.</P>
<P>Major Pickle said of his dad's encounter, "To the day he died he was convinced it was Shuck and the story never changed in any way." Could it have been a big cat? Dad insisted it was a really big dog.</P>
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<P><b>Folklorist Theo Brown claims to have had an encounter with Black Shuck in the churchyard of St. Mary's, Bungay, in the 1970s.</b></P>
<P>Jim Bradley, a Norfolk birdwatcher, contacted me to tell me how "my friend's father who I would say is now in his 60s" encountered the Black Dog himself "in Orford in the late 70s... He and a friend were out walking and a black dog, calf-sized, wandered onto the track and stared at them. It eventually lumbered off into the scrub. They followed its path but the beast had seemingly disappeared, no trace whatsoever."</P>
<P>This wave of Seventies Suffolk Shuck sightings may have been Shuck's last hurrah, after that reports of Shuck encounters tailed off. The few Shucks that have manifested in Suffolk since then seem to have lost many of their supernatural powers. Christopher Reeve, co-author of <a href=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8728184-shock-the-black-dog-of-bungay""><i>Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay</i></a>, told me that by 2014 he couldn't find any adults who would give him new accounts of Shuck experiences. Small children still seem to see Shuck locally, or at least have no inhibitions about relating other people's sightings.</P>
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<P><b>Bungay's football team is the Bungay Town FC, known as the Black Dogs, although its training ground is just a couple of hundred metres over the Norfolk border in Ditchingham.</b></P>
<P>While "my dad (or my dad's best mate) saw Shuck in the seventies" accounts emerging over 40 years later are still surprisingly common, accounts of more recent Suffolk shuck experiences are rare. From Rendlesham Forest comes a 1980s story of an encounter by Paul and Jane Jennings “on a cold winter’s afternoon in 1983”, as related by ufologist Nick Redfern in his article <a href="http://monsterusa.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/weirdness-in-the-woods.html">"Weirdness in the woods"</a>. The Jenningses encountered a big black dog on the forest path. Jane said the beast's head "was clearly canine in appearance… much larger than that of any normal dog. Yet... its body seemed to exhibit characteristics that were distinctly feline". It had an "eerily mournful expression upon its face... Suddenly, the beast began to 'flicker on and off for four or five times', then finally vanished” leaving a strange metallic smell.</P>
<P>A <a href="http://forteanzoology.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/max-blake-gurt-dog-returns.html">post on the Centre for Fortean Zoology's blog</a> from "Woody" related his how he and his dog Max had a 1994 Shuck encounter on one of their regular runs around "Martlesham Creek... by the river Deben, that runs to nearby Woodbridge." It was there that Woody became "aware of being watched, checking behind me about 50 yards back stood a huge black dog, my own wouldn’t take his eyes off it. It stood stock still, watching us ... (I) put my dog on a lead” and walked out of sight of it." Max turned again and growled. "There stood the big black dog again... I began to worry a bit." There followed three or four more sightings of the same black dog, always the same distance away, always with the same stance, and "with me very nervously looking over my shoulder until we got level with Martlesham Church, when Max turned, growled and practically broke the lead in his eagerness for a fight only... there was nothing there!" Woody and Max then "ran like hell the remaining mile... home and locked the doors." Woody admitted "the dog I saw may just have been someone's... be it a bloody big one."</P>
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<P><b>This dog from the coat of arms of the Gooch family watches over the Benacre Estate on the North Suffolk coast.</b></P>
<P>One of my unsolicited Shuck informants told me a story of "a guy" out near Coddenham, north of Ipswich, who in the early 2010s took his dog for a walk on a windy, rainy day and they were apparently chased by a big dog, as soon as it got nearer to them it would vanish and the process started again."</P>
<P>Twenty-first century Shuck witnesses often concede it could have been an ordinary dog they saw. When a "shaken driver" reported his encounter with "<a href="https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/pic-is-a-wolf-prowling-suffolk-1977002">a white wolf stalking the back roads of Suffolk</a>" in 2009, he believed he’d seen an escaped exotic animal rather than a Suffolk Shuck phantom. Nigel Stebbing, who was able to photograph the "white wolf" from his van at Kersey, near Hadleigh. didn't think he'd seen a phantom hellhound. (There's a tradition of a White Shuck around Woodbridge and a ghostly "White Dawg" in Lowestoft, though.) By 1998, a couple from Bungay visiting Suffolk's Dunwich Forest who heard panting or growling no longer assumed - as did our pipe-laying Lincolnshire man back in the 1970s - that it was Black Shuck. They were instead convinced they'd heard an Alien Big Cat.</P>
© Matt Salusbury 2021
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<b>A talbot, a white dog, on the coat of arms of the South Suffolk town of Sudbury. There are white Shucks as well as Black Shuck in Suffolk too. Woodbridge has a White Shuck and Lowestoft has a ghostly "White Dawg."</b></P>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-52079823342567880142021-11-17T01:40:00.007-08:002021-11-17T12:35:16.042-08:00Wreck’s identity remains an enigma
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<P><b>Some think that this ship's chest on display in Dunwich Museum, believed to be 15th- or 16th-century from Belgium or the Netherlands, could have been recovered from the Dunwich Bank Wreck. The elaborate locking mechanism certainly resembles Spanish Armada ship's chests recovered from Armada wrecks off the coast of Northern Ireland and now in the <a href="https://www.nmni.com/story/la-trinidad-valencera-an-armada-ship">Castle Museum, Derry</a>.</b></P>
<P><b>Graham Scott gives an update on the mysterious Dunwich Bank Wreck</b></P>
<P><b>This article first appeared in <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/"><i>Discover Dunwich</i></a>, issue 3, summer/autumn 2021</b></P>
<P>THE DUNWICH Bank Wreck is 700 metres out to sea off <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/dunwich-heath-and-beach">Dunwich Heath</a>, roughly level with the Coastguard Cottages there. It was discovered by <a href="https://vimeo.com/134511265">Stuart Bacon</a> in the 1990s, Stuart hauled up the magnificent bronze cannon that greets you as you come in through the front door of Dunwich Museum. (<a href="https://tinyurl.com/44wxs3m4">See here</a> for more on the Dunwich Dives and the Dunwich Bank Wreck cannon.) </P>
<P>Following in the footsteps of Stuart is <a href="https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/people/graham-scott">Graham Scott</a>, Senior Marine Archaeologist with <a href="https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/de-risking-dunwich-bank-wreck">Wessex Archaeology</a>, who has been on several dives on the Dunwich Bank Wreck. He gave an update on the most recent (2020) dive on the Wreck to volunteers of <A HREF="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk">Dunwich Museum</A> at a talk via Zoom in March. </P>
<P>The Wreck is one of the most challenging marine archaeology environments in UK waters, "extremely difficult to investigate," says Graham. His team found the wreck wrapped in recently abandoned fishing nets, which they had to cut free before they could proceed. <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427361-800-dunwich-uk/">Visibility is poor to non-existent</a>, with peat and sediment emptying into the sea from nearby rivers, constantly swirling around in a strong current. It seems the Wreck is gradually being buried by silt. Sometimes the divers could only work for an hour a day on the wreck, so gruelling were conditions there. </P>
<P>Little remains of the actual ship. What Stuart Bacon's team - working in poor visibility – took to be ship's timbers now appear to be natural wood that's been washed out to sea.</P>
<P>The Wreck may be scattered over a larger area than first thought. It’s difficult to date the wreck with certainty. Some ships from both the Dutch and English fleets were lost at the inconclusive <a href="https://www.southwoldmuseum.org/war_battleofsolebay.htm">Battle of Sole Bay</a> (1672), several miles out to sea from Southwold, there are contemporary accounts of the masts of sunken fire ships visible above the waves south east of Aldeburgh soon after the battle. It's more likely the Wreck <a href="https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/dunwich-museum-cannon-spanish-armada-suffolk-underwater-studies-stuart-bacon-2427960">was a Spanish Armada ship</a>, or possibly even a cargo ship transporting artillery for the army or navy of England's King Henry VIII (1509-1547) - he <a href="https://firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/barrel-making-early-barrel-making-in.html">ordered many bronze cannons</a> from Belgium and Germany.</P>
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<P><b>Stuart Bacon's Dunwich Dives recovered these cannon balls, which were probably stacked in the hold at one point. These ones - on display at our special exhibition on the Dunwich Dives, are too small for the Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon. There are smaller some iron swivels cannons for use in close-quarter combat still in the Wreck, these cannonballs could have been for them.</b></P>
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<P><b>Dunwich Museum's magnificent bronze Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon. Strong, swirling currents bringing with it silt and sand than empty into the sea from nearby rivers has sandblasted away most of the detail and decoration after 400 years on the seabed.</b></P>
<P>At least two bronze cannons rest on the seabed around the Wreck. On a rare day with some visibility in the Dunwich Dives the word "Remigy" could be read, engraved on one of these. ("Gun 3" - which was <a href="https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/divers-steal-a-bronze-gun-from-at-risk-shipwreck-site-2290576">subsequently stolen</a> from the seabed sometime around 2012.) This led to the identification of Dunwich Museum's cannon as one made by Belgium-based German gunfounder Remigy de Halut.</P>
<P>However, gun experts <a href="http://www.3hconsulting.com/techniques/TechRecordingCannon.html">Ruth Brown and Kay Smith</a> note that the squared-off ring on the breach of the Dunwich Museum cannon, its "breach dolphin" (a dolphin shaped handle or knob on the end of the breach) and the "bearded man's head" decoration round its muzzle are signatures of Gregor Löffler, another Hapsburg Empire gunfounder based in Augsburg in Germany. </P>
<P>Then there's a 1684 Royal Ordnance Office report of a Mr Lincoln being dispatched to Knodishall (not far from Dunwich) to buy a "brass" (bronze) cannon. Had it been recovered from the Dunwich Bank Wreck?</P>
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<P><b>The "bearded man" decoration on the Dunwich Bank Wreck cannon's muzzle is now only just visible.</b></P>
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<P><b>The word "Remigy" visible on the muzzle of another cannon, this one cast by him is outside the Town Hall in Enkhuizen, Netherlands. The cannon on which the name "Remigy" was briefly seen amid the Dunwich Bank Wreck was later stolen.</b></P>
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<P><b>While a pair of dolphin handles on bronze cannons was almost standard throughout Europe at the time, a "breach dolphin" like this one on the Dunwich Bank Wreck cannon in Dunwich Museum is thought to be a signature of gunfounder Gregor Gregor Löffler. The dolphin comes out of a circular ring which is slightly squared off (not very visible anymore in the worn-away features of this cannon), also a feature of cannons cast by Löffler.</b></P>
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<P><b>Another Gregor Löffler cannon, this one's a smaller piece from when he still worked in Innsbruck, Austria. It shows the characteristic Gregor Löffler "beared head ornament" more clearly. By kind permission of <A HREF="https://www.peterfiner.com/artworks/item/3418">Peter Finer</A> antique arms and armour dealers.</b></P>
<P><b>Words and photos © Matt Salusbury</b></P>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-25972123004154863212021-11-16T03:25:00.002-08:002024-01-08T08:34:16.406-08:00The Light Ages (book review)<P><b>This review first appeared in <i><a href="http://www.forteantimes.com" target="_blank">Fortean Times</a></i> magazine.</b></P>
<P><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/312/312122/the-light-ages/9780241374252.html" target="_blank"><i>The Light Ages - a Medieval journey of discovery</i></a></P>
<P>Seb Falk, Penguin/Allen Lane, 2020</P>
<P>£10.99 paperback, 416 pages, bibliography, index</P>
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<b>Front cover image for the purposes of criticism or review, fair dealing under the Copyright Act 1988</b>
<P>The myth of the "darkness of the Middle Ages" descending after the fall of Rome is dispelled in <i>The Light Ages</i>. Here historian, science historian and broadcaster Seb Falk demonstrates that "medieval science" is no contradiction in terms, while religion and science weren't antagonists in the medieval world. Falk illustrates this through a fascinating biography of John Westwyk, a thirteenth-century Benedictine monk based at St Albans abbey who wrote important treatises on astronomy, accidentally rediscovered in the 1950s.</P>
<P>The astrolabe was a flattened, portable model of the solar system made from brass discs slotted on top of each other, through which you could measure the "ascensions" of moving celestial bodies.</P>
<P>Functioning regardless of whether the universe was geocentric or heliocentric, astrolabes calculated how many daylight hours in each day, reckoned the dates of Easter, predicted when the heavens were moving into zodiacal "houses" whose influence may affect us, forewarned of planting seasons heralded by the appearance of certain stars visible just before dawn. Such calculations may have been a form of meditation for monks. Physicians' astrolabes chose auspicious times to administer bleedings. Previous inmates at St Albans had produced new discs to add to the astrolabe "for all altitudes.: Westwyk added a guide to these, demystifying earlier manuals and correcting their errors.</P>
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<b>A copper-alloy astrolabe from the British Museum's collection. Dating from 1326, this example is believed to be the earliest surviving one made in England. It was on show at the BM's recent Thomas Beckett exhibition. Photo: Matt Salusbury</b>
<P>Astrolabes dominate <i>The Light Age</i>, and while the astrolabe was a "simplified" instrument compared to its predecessors, after a 39-page digression on astrolabes I was struggling with the azimuth and the obliquity of the elliptic. Aaargh!</P>
<P>This was an exciting time for astronomy. A standardised 24-hour day with 60-minute hours was proliferating, along with clocks. The long transition to Arabic numerals was apace. There was a flood of philosophical works emerging in Arabic, Greek and Hebrew - pagan sciences could now become "the handmaiden of religion".</P>
<P>My favourite section of <i>The Light Age</i> describes the rise of the universities. In 1336 the Pope called on monastic orders to send one in 20 monks to university. Today's Worcester College, Oxford began life as a Benedictine institution. As a graduate returning to the monastery, Westwyks' privileges included being excused midday Mass. The new universities were particularly awestruck by the recent rediscovery of Aristotle, his works quickly dominated the curriculum. Periodic ecclesiastical bans on the study of Aristotle were largely ignored.</P>
<P>Around 1370 Westwyk left for the bleak cliff-top subsidiary monastery at Tynemouth, taking with him some astronomy works to copy. Tynemouth was three degrees further north than Classical philosophers had ever been, so Westwyk wrote a treatise with instructions on engraving an astrolabe dial for "ascensions" at a new latitude, 55 degrees North.</P>
<P>Like many clerics, Westwyk joined the debacle that was the 1382 Bishop's Crusade (better known as Despenser's Crusade after Henry de Despenser, Bishop of Norwich). This Crusade fought not in the Holy Land, but in Belgium. Led by an incompetent warrior Bishop of Norwich, the crusaders -n outnumbered by Franco-Flemish forces loyal to anti-pope Clement - fought with extraordinary courage, the clerics in particular. They withdrew to England in disgrace within six months. Westwyk kept his head down for the next decade.</P>
<P>Westwyk next pops up at London's Benedictine inn, where he wrote a manual - in English, daring and innovative at the time - with instructions for building an enormous astrolabe six feet in diameter. This manual, <i>Equatorie</i>, is a computer and equation solver. Its 140 pages of tables allow the user to calculate the motion of the planets back to the birth of Christ and to any point in the future, adjusting for leap years, aided by charts for roots and "sexagesimal ninths". Nothing equalled the <i>Equatorie</i> until the first printed astronomy textbooks appeared nearly a century later.</P>
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<br /><br /><br /><br><br /><br /><br /><br>
<b>An astrolabe of 1221 vintage, inscribed with Arabic letters, in London's Science Museum.</b>
<br /><br /><br /><br>
<P><b>VERDICT: Joyous celebration of Medieval science - although a bit astrolabe-heavy!
**** (four stars)</b></P>
© Matt Salusbury 2021
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-32293133731708511492021-09-13T04:48:00.002-07:002021-09-13T05:46:57.578-07:00Vote for Matt Salusbury for a London seat on the NUJ’s National Executive Council (NEC)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UuZ2do7cHTY/YT86YscHZuI/AAAAAAAACgY/OzhreZYw8UouYESXJDGeuwpYp2SIaQjVACLcBGAsYHQ/s1417/16581143-E676-4124-A305-71819F80EB9F.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1417" data-original-width="938" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UuZ2do7cHTY/YT86YscHZuI/AAAAAAAACgY/OzhreZYw8UouYESXJDGeuwpYp2SIaQjVACLcBGAsYHQ/s600/16581143-E676-4124-A305-71819F80EB9F.jpeg"/></a></div>
<P><b>Photo: © Hazel Dunlop</b></P>
<P>As <B>Chair of <A HREF="http://www.londonfreelance.org"/>NUJ London Freelance Branch</B></A> (LFB), the Union's biggest and most active Branch, I have been providing leadership and pastoral care to members throughout the pandemic, chairing lively online Branch meetings where there are often over 70 members present.</P>
<P>I have been <B>deputy editor of the <i><A HREF="http://www.londonfreelance.org/flindex.html">Freelance</A></i></B>, the online and print newsletter and resource for the NUJ's freelances, since 2006, re-elected annually. For the <i>Freelance</i>, I have covered developments in the Union and throughout our industry in detail for many years. This has given me a unique insight into the workings of the NUJ and the issues that affect and engage our members. The role has involved working together with members, officials and staff across the Union.</P>
<P>I also worked part-time as a staff journalist for many years, as a commissioning editor for a business-to-business magazine, so I understand issues that affect staffers as well as freelances - I have in the past called on the services of one of our excellent NUJ Organisers when I was myself facing redundancy.</P>
<P>I am also a former NUJ representative on the <B>Writers' Organisations Advisory Group</B> and a former Freelance Industrial Council representative on the <A HREF="https://www.nuj.org.uk/about-us/union-structure/councils.html"><B>Newspapers and Agencies Industrial Council</B></A>. I currently sit on the <A HREF="https://www.nuj.org.uk/about-us/union-structure/committees-and-boards.html"><B><i>Journalist</i> Editorial Advisory Board</B></A>.</P>
<P>I have served on the <A HREF="http://www.londonfreelance.org/fic/"><B>Freelance Industrial Council</B></A> representing our London members in the sector since the late noughties. COVID and changes in the industry are now leading to increasing numbers of London's staff journalists being made redundant and many are moving to the freelance sector. This will mean the sector will need more representation within the Union.</P>
<P>However, I feel that with my background, experience and insights I can conscientiously represent all of London's NUJ members on the <A HREF="https://www.nuj.org.uk/about-us/union-structure/councils.html">National Executive Council</A>, whether staff or freelance, whatever their employment status.</P>
<P>Please give me your first vote and also give your second vote to London Freelance Branch's Deborah Hobson.</P>
<P><i>"I can't think of a better candidate for the NEC than Matt Salusbury.</i></P>
<P><i>I've known Matt for a great many years – having sat with him on London Freelance Branch Committee and seen him chair meetings over the last year in very difficult circumstances. In the past, I have sat with him on the Freelance Industrial Council, and know well the depth and breadth of his experience across the media – both nationally and internationally – and his commitment to the NUJ and trade unionism.</i></P>
<P><i>I've seen first-hand how his work on the </i>Freelance<i> has given him a detailed insight into and understanding of issues that affect freelances, and his experience as a staff member broadens that understanding. As co-editor of the </i>Freelance<i> he has become an invaluable source of information for members about our industry and extremely knowledgeable about the Union in general.</i></P>
<P><i>He is never afraid to question and challenge the status quo, while always grasping the complexities of issues as they arise. He is an excellent communicator, always ready to take the time to explain the mysteries of the NUJ to lay members and to give support to colleagues.</i></P>
<P><i>The freelance sector is growing throughout the union. Matt's understanding of the sector and how this fits in with and impinges on other sectors will be an invaluable contribution to the executive, while his firm grip on the basics of trade unionism and understanding of how the union as a whole works will mean he can be relied upon to work hard for all sectors and regions."</i></P>
<P><i><b>Jenny Vaughan – Treasurer, NUJ London Freelance Branch, NUJ Gold Badge owner</b></i></P>
<P><i>"For years Matt has been working hard and unshowily for LFB, FIC and the NUJ generally. Lately he's chaired the Branch with great care for firm-fairness in all ways, while sustaining an affable, relaxed atmosphere. Co-editing with Mike Holderness, he's ensured that the </i>Freelance<i> newssheet is always cogent - and there on time. He's a wholly decent, good man."</i></P>
<P><i><b>Phil Sutcliffe, NUJ Member of Honour, LFB membership secretary, ex-NEC/FIC, etc.</b></i></P>
<b>See also:
<A HREF="http://www.londonfreelance.org/fl/2109elec.html">http://www.londonfreelance.org/fl/2109elec.html</A></b>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-1346698650410707882021-08-31T10:20:00.012-07:002021-09-22T05:22:47.157-07:00Dunwich and climate change
<P><b><i>David Sear</i>, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Southampton and a Trustee of <a href="https://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/" target="_blank">Dunwich Museum</a>, talked to <i>Discover Dunwich</i> editor <i>Matt Salusbury</i> about the impact of climate change on Dunwich throughout its history.</P>
<P>A much shorter version of this article (450 words) appears on <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/assets/Discover-Dunwich/discover-dunwich-3-full-colour-july-2021-final.pdf" target="blank">issue 3 of <i>Discover Dunwich</i></a>, Dunwich Museum's newsletter for visitors, volunteers and supporters.</b></P>
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<P><b>All Saint's Church, Dunwich, not long before it went over the cliff in 1919. From Dunwich Museum's Nicholson Collection of postcards, out of copyright</b></P>
<P><i>MS: I always believed that the erosion and storms that gradually destroyed Dunwich was just weather – that the events like the big storms weren't anything to do with climate change. Or were they? Were the big storms like the 1286 one and the two that followed later anything to do with climate change? Or are there other factors involved?</i></P>
<p>DS: This reminds me of the old adage "Weather is what you get, climate is what you expect" - Climate is the average state of the weather over time – so climate change is an alteration in that mean state.</p>
<P>So for example, right now we are in a world where the mean global temperatures are rising rapidly – so it's referred to as climate change. Back in the 13th century the northern hemisphere was in a period sometimes called the "medieval warm period", when average northern hemisphere temperatures were warmer. Later in the 16th through to the mid half of the 19th century average northern hemisphere temperatures were cooler – this period is the one referred to as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age" target="blank">"Little Ice Age".</a></P>
<P>When the mean state of the climate changes, this results in changes in the larger scale climate systems such as the pattern, strength and extent of high or low pressure systems, the extent of sea ice, and temperature of the North Atlantic. Together these alter the path and strength of storms tracking across the UK.</P>
<P>We have seen this recently with the increased frequency of flooding in Cumbria, for example <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zgvjxsg/revision/4">in 2009</a> and <a href="https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/pdf/weather/learn-about/uk-past-events/interesting/2015/flooding-in-cumbria-december-2015---met-office.pdf" target="blank">2015</a>. Individually these were storms (weather), but collectively we see the last two decades as a storm rich period for the UK and Northwest England in particular.</P>
<P>To go back to Dunwich, the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-35549952" target="blank">storms of 1250, 1286/7</a> (beginning on New Year's Eve 1286 and lasting for several days) come during a period of increased storminess in the North sea, when Atlantic pressure systems favoured intense North sea storms with larger waves from the north east. Sediment transport (the movement of sediment caused by the action of the waves) would there have been south along the coastline at Dunwich, and based on what we now know about the conditions that lead to rapid cliff erosion at Dunwich, we can conclude that there was probably no protecting beach for the cliffed sections and that the land on which the town was built towards the northern areas, was probably lower, leading to inundation of the town in those areas.</P>
<P>Was this climate change? Well, by the definition of "change in mean state" of the climate, yes it was. But the difference to today is that 800 years ago, this was the result of natural variability – possibly driven by increased volcanic eruption activity (<a href="https://www.livescience.com/41170-ancient-volcanic-eruption-discovered.html" target="blank">1258 was the largest eruption</a> in the last 8000 years) and increasing solar activity. Similarly, the Little Ice Age period of increased storminess particularly around the late 17th into early 18th century was a period of natural climatic variability in which storm frequency at Dunwich increased, and cliff erosion rates accelerated resulting in the loss of <a href="http://www.dunwich.org.uk/results/st_peters_church/" target="blank">St Peter's church</a>and the town goal and market place.</P>
<P>Current climate change is different, and is driven by increased warming resulting from the cumulative build up of carbon emissions in our atmosphere. The difference now is that the rate of change and the magnitude of change are now far faster and larger than those that drive the storminess of the 13th and 17th century - we are if you like in uncharted skies.</P>
<P>What we do know is that such change must alter the strength, path and frequency of storms tracking across the UK, and we must therefore expect changes in wave climate and shingle transport along the coast. What we cannot do with certainty is predict how all these processes will interact at Dunwich on a specific day or year. What past tells us though is that the current period of cliff stability will change at some point, and we do know the signs to look for. This means that there is a really important role for statutory bodies like the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/topic/environmental-management/flooding-coastal-change" target="blank">Environment Agency</a>, <a href="https://www.eastsuffolk.gov.uk/environment/coastal-management/">East Suffolk Council</a> and local residents to work together, to identify signs of change in the beaches and cliffs in Sole Bay, and to see things a bit more widely than just the beach and cliffs at Dunwich, because in the end Dunwich is one part of a vast connected system where climate, winds, waves and shingle movement interact with humans to change our exposure to risk. After all, if there was no Dunwich, would we be talking about cliff and beach erosion at all?</P>
<P><i>MS: I recall there there was a Little Ice Age in Britain’s history, when the port of Aberdeen was iced in and there were regular Frost Fairs on the Thames. Do we know what effect this Little Ice Age had on Dunwich, did it have any effect on the coastline at Dunwich?</i></P>
<P>During the Little Ice Age (c. 1450-1850) - a period of cooler average northern hemisphere temperatures, there were indeed frost fairs on the Thames. During this period intense storm activity resulted in major cliff erosion at Dunwich – with the loss of St John's church 1540s, St Peter's in 1695-1702, <a href="https://heritage.suffolk.gov.uk/Monument/MSF1985" target="blank">Cock and Hen Hills</a> (the great storm of 1740). Within this period there were also quieter phases when cliff erosion rates were lower, and Dunwich still <a href="https://snr.org.uk/dunwich-iceland-shipsdunwich-east-anglian-ports-reported-sent-fishing-fleets-icelandic-waters-least-since-14th-century-documentary-evidence-middle/" target="blank">sent ships to fish the waters of Iceland</a>. There would almost certainly have been impacts on fishing and other parts of the economy due to cooler winters and stormier conditions – in fact a project might be for historians to look through the records for the area during these times to see how the regional and local economy responded.</P>
<P><i>MS: I frequently show visitors to the Museum the series of photos of All Saints going over the cliff in the space of about 20 years, ending with just that last buttress left in 1919. And the extract from the <a href="https://opendomesday.org/place/TM4770/dunwich/">Domesday Book</a> in the Museum tells how some landowners has lost half their land in the time since "Kind Edward" (the Confessor) so in the space of less than 20 years between the end of Edward's reign and the Domesday survey. This compares to today, when there is much less erosion of the beach and cliffs at Dunwich. Do we know what factors have slowed down erosion in recent times?</i></P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5mkpI9hGsVQ/YS5ttkNcfnI/AAAAAAAACgA/8ZxZO3-uIJ48ufUdOZyMZyK1CAQgMN97ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/0F1A8B39-135A-49F1-9E23-EE1D536D2C2C.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5mkpI9hGsVQ/YS5ttkNcfnI/AAAAAAAACgA/8ZxZO3-uIJ48ufUdOZyMZyK1CAQgMN97ACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/0F1A8B39-135A-49F1-9E23-EE1D536D2C2C.jpeg"/></a></div>
<P><b>Bits of stonework from Dunwich churches hauled up during the Dunwich Dives. These are thought be be fragments of St Peter's Church, All Saints and the Templar Church. Photo: Matt Salusbury</b></P>
<P>The slow down in erosion has been marked in the last 20 years but is part of a pattern of slowing down that started around the 1920s, and may be related to the growth of the off shore Dunwich banks. Wave energy and direction at a coast is largely driven by wind strength and fetch – the distance over which the wind can interact with the sea surface to create waves. As waves approach the coastline, shallowing depths increase the friction on the water and this slows down the movement of the water, causing the waves to increase in steepness until unable to support themselves, they break, releasing the energy stored in the wave and driving sand and shingle transport (movement of sand and shingle due to the action of the waves). Off shore bars do the same although not always to the point of wave breaking.</P>
<P>The <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1000073">Dunwich bank</a> (formerly two banks), grew and coalesced into a single bank sometime between 1867 and 1922. At the same time the depth over the banks shallowed by two meters. Wave modelling has demonstrated that the energy of wavs at the coastline at Dunwich is reduced by the Dunwich bank so one part of the story must relate to this natural protection. In the last 20 years the bar depths have deepened from a peak in 1980s as the Dunwich bank has flattened and migrated towards the coastline.</P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZTrkT_T6q9k/YS5qKm6b5vI/AAAAAAAACf4/IaCoTIe_1P82iH_ILXquP7k746FZPwqSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/2F5BEE3C-70EF-4CB1-978A-77F9BCFBE047.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1331" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZTrkT_T6q9k/YS5qKm6b5vI/AAAAAAAACf4/IaCoTIe_1P82iH_ILXquP7k746FZPwqSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/2F5BEE3C-70EF-4CB1-978A-77F9BCFBE047.jpeg"/></a></div>
<P><b>Dunwich cliffs and beach with the remains of All Saints Church still visible, at the turn of the 20th century. Dunwich Museum's Nicholson Collection of postcards, out of copyright.</b></P>
<P>The other main cause of slow down in cliff erosion is the sustained presence of <a href="https://twitter.com/DiscoverDunwich/status/1410868594397925378">a protecting beach</a>. To get this you need a supply of sediment to offset the removal of beach shingle by wave action. The slow down since the 1920’s may in part be a result of the period of high rates of cliff erosion, coupled with a reducing wave energy that tipped the balance in favour of net accumulation of sediment at the tow of the cliffs at Dunwich. Subsequently, revegetation of the cliff face, and continual sediment supply from updrift areas has maintained a buffer between the sea and the tow of the cliffs. Recent growth of sea cabbage onto the single at the back of the beach at Dunwich points to the stability of the beach in this area. Cliff erosion over the last 10 years has been mainly caused by saturation and flows resulting from long periods of wet weather and intense rainstorms, coupled with animal burrowing and tree fall. Since these processes are very localised, so too is the cliff collapse.</P>
<P>The challenge in all this is that while the cliffs at Dunwich (by which I mean from <a href="https://www.floratearoomsdunwich.co.uk/"> the Flora Tearooms</a> behind the beach to the end of <a href="http://www.dunwichgreyfriars.org.uk/">Greyfriars monastery</a> wall) are relatively stable now, the accumulation of beach material inevitably means a lack of material to beaches down drift unless there is sufficient supply and transport to supply them. What will be interesting to look out for is a change in the activity of the cliffs from Greyfriars to <a href="https://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/minsmere/">Minsmere</a> naoture reserve, and to see how the beach elevations change along this section.</P>
<P><i>MS: At the recent Dunwich Museum talk by Graham Scott of Wessex Archaeology on the <a href="https://www.wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/de-risking-dunwich-bank-wreck">Dunwich Bank Wreck</a> earlier this year, he said the wreck was being buried, with a lot of it buried since its discovery in the 1990s by Stuart Bacon. You said in the chat during the talk that there was the prospect of the wreck being uncovered again by some natural processes. (Did I get that right?) Can you explain that?</i></P>
<P>DS: One thing we know from <a href="https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/dunwich-museum-cannon-spanish-armada-suffolk-underwater-studies-stuart-bacon-2427960">Stuart Bacon's</a> descriptions of diving at Dunwich is that the sea bed – by which I mean the sand banks, are highly changeable. He writes of ruins visible in one dive, being no longer there by the next time he dived. Overlaying historic bathymetric charts of the sea bed confirms this dynamism over the last 200 years (See Fig 43, pg 106 Sear et al <a href="http://www.dunwich.org.uk/resources/documents/dunwich_12_report.pdf"><i>2012 Report to English Heritage</i></a>) – documenting the movement of millions of tons of sand and shingle by tides, storms and waves. Over the time since I worked on the Dunwich surveys starting in 2008, the Dunwich bank has moved closer towards and coast and flattened, partly burying the sites of <a href="http://www.dunwich.org.uk/results/st_peters_church/">St Peter's church</a>, <a href="http://www.dunwich.org.uk/results/st_nicholas_church/">St Nicholas's church</a> and St Katharine's chapel. At the same time, reducing sand depths in the eastern part of the site may reveal some of the ruins of earlier churches like St John's and St Martin's.</P>
<P>Similarly, shifting sand bank around the Dunwich bank will bury and re-expose the site many times. Since we do not monitor these changes very often – it is only when divers or surveyors work on them that we discover what the conditions are – I've often though it would be fun to have a small buoy anchored over the ruins of St Peter's church, the largest area of ruins so far discovered, measuring the turbidity (the cloudiness or haziness) of the water and taking webcam images during periods when the water was clear during daytime. These could be relayed by an internet link into a screen in the Museum.</P>
<P><i>MS: Do we know whether the story of Dunwich being lost to the sea is one of constant erosion, or were there periods in history when the erosion reduced or stopped, or even the coastline recovering?</i></P>
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<P><b>The cruel North Sea has claimed the city of Dunwich over the years. Photo: Matt Salusbury</b></P>
<P>DS: We do indeed, thanks to extensive research and analysis published in Sear et al. (2012) <i>Dunwich Project Report 5883: Mapping and assessing the inundated medieval town</i> – free to access on the <a href="www.dunwich.org.uk/resources/documents/dunwich_12report.pdf">Dunwich - the Search for Britian's Atlantis</a> website or from Historic England <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/dunwich-mapping-assessing-inundated-medieval-town/">Historic England</a>.</P>
<P>Cliff erosion at Dunwich and indeed the whole Suffolk coastline is driven by two processes; the presence or absence of a protective beach at the toe of a cliff which significantly influences the rate of erosion and the height and frequency of large waves relative to beach height. Cliff erosion by the sea can only happen if the toe of the cliff is reached by waves of sufficient power to remove cliff materials. Conversely, the height of a beach is the result of the balance between the volume of sediment being supplied to the beach and the rate at which that sediment is being transported away from that point. Thus, the dynamics of the Suffolk coastline are strongly linked to the processes that generate cliff erosion and the transport of sediment.</P>
<P>Over the last one thousand years, the principal influence on these processes has been storm surges and storm waves, whereas the rise in relative sea level has had less effect locally. (Burningham and French 2017, 84; Sear et al. 2008; 2012, 14; Hamilton et al. 2019, 155; Shennan et al., 2018, 150.) This is because the direction and the magnitude of waves — their power and height — is the main influence on the volume and direction of sediment transport along this coast. The passage of very low pressure systems into the North Sea drives storm surges and creates high sea levels independent of wave height which flood low lying areas, breach shingle barriers, and erode beaches and cliffs: such <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2013/jan/31/devastation-east-anglia-1953-flood-in-pictures">as occurred in 1953</a> or the more recent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-25255181">2013 event</a>.</P>
<P>Intervening periods of lower wave energy tend to reconstruct breaches in barriers and to elevate beaches after normal winter storms. Another feature that can also influence the transport of sediment is the presence or absence, and the growth and decline, of off shore banks, because these alter the amount and direction of wave energy at a given point along the coastline. For example, the northern extension of an off shore bank at Dunwich during the early twentieth century appears to have reduced wave energy at Dunwich cliffs, contributing to the rebuilding of the beach and the reduction in the speed of cliff erosion.</P>
<P>The direction and size of waves, and the elevation and direction of storm surges, are ultimately controlled by the strength and direction of storm tracks from the north Atlantic Ocean. Storms that track over the north of England and Scotland are formed of low pressure systems, which create storm surges that travel south down the North Sea, and which are then followed by gales from the south and south east as the low pressure system heads east. These gales generate large waves from the south east that transport sediment north along the Suffolk coast.</P>
<P>Conversely, storm tracks passing along the English Channel or from the south create large storm waves from the northeast, driving drift south along the coast. The dominance of northerly or southerly storm tracks over the British Isles is caused by variations in the jet stream position over the north Atlantic, and by the spatial patterns and magnitudes of northern Atlantic ocean temperatures. In combination, these create low pressure systems that determine their route of travel over Britain. A measure of the pressure gradients in the North Atlantic, and by extension a measure of whether northern or southern storm tracks are dominant in the North Sea, is the <a href="https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/atmosphere/north-atlantic-oscillation">North Atlantic Oscillation</a> or NAO. During periods of positive NAO, the dominant storm tracks are generally from the north and followed by south to south easterly gales, which transport shingle north along the Suffolk coast. During negative NAO, storm tracks from the south generate north easterly gales with large waves, which transport shingle south along the Suffolk coast.</P>
<P>In addition to these natural forces, human interventions also alter the process of sediment transport and the patterns of drift and accretion along the coastline. Attempts to protect beaches and prevent cliff erosion by constructing <a href="http://geography-site.com/groynes/">groynes</a> to alter the rate of longshore drift are well known.</P>
<P>So to answer your question directly, during the late 19th century into the early 20th century, beach levels at Dunwich cliffs were very low, and so it did not take large wave heights to reach the tow of the cliff. The frequency of erosion was higher which, coupled to a period of positive NAO and large storms combined to increase cliff erosion rates to their highest in the last 150 years – for the period 1894 – 1906 cliff retreat at Dunwich average 8.8m per year. Between 1930 and 1970 this fell to less than 0.5 metres a year, before rising to 2.8 m per year in the early to mid 1990’s before again falling to less than 1m a year since 2007. Rates of cliff retreat between 1695 – 1765 when the Church of St Peter’s was lost, were around 2-3m per year.</P>
<P>If we look at these periods of high cliff erosion, we see that they coincide with periods of high storm frequency and severity along the East coast and southern North sea basin, with positive winter NAO, and where we have evidence, these also coincide with periods when beach height were lower. In short, the cliffs at Dunwich are both a source of sediment to down drift beaches, but also a part of w wider natural system involving off shore bar growth and climate that together result in periods of stability and erosion.</P>
<P><i>MS: I remember being told when my family moved to Dunwich at around the turn of the century that <a href="http://www.dunwichgreyfriars.org.uk/">Greyfriars</a> had about 40-50 years left before it was lost to the sea. Do we have any estimate or projection of how long what's left of Dunwich will remain before we lose it to the sea?</i></P>
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<P><b>Greyfriars monastery has an estimated 50-80 years before it's lost to the sea. Photo: Matt Salusbury</b></P>
<P>DS: Yes, in the Sear et al (2012) report, Fig 49, pg 114 there is a map showing the projected cliff line in 2050 and 2100. The good news is that based on extrapolations over the past century of cliff retreat, Greyfriars ruins will still be standing in the main although closer to the cliff top of course. The <a href="https://heritage.suffolk.gov.uk/Monument/MSF10881">Pales Dyke</a> and south east perimeter wall is likely to disappear over the cliff in the next 50-80 years. There is considerable uncertainty in these predictions and as past analysis shows, there are times when cliff retreat is much more rapid (the later 19th century for example – see above) – it is therefore highly dependent on two connected processes – rate of sediment movement from the beach in front of the cliffs and frequency and magnitude of storms. Currently the beach level if relatively stable at the toe of the cliff and cliff retreat is slow and largely determined by rainfall and slope processes.</P>
<P>Loss of the beach however will expose the toe of the cliff to much more frequent erosion by the sea during storms, and like the Francis Frith photos of the aftermath of the October storm 1911, drastic removal of the beach can expose the cliffs to erosion at high tides. For now, we can be reasonably relaxed about the future of Greyfriars, but residents can help by keeping a careful watch on changes in the beach and cliffs, which alongside regular surveys by the Environment Agency will provide the best early warning that the system is changing.</P>
<P><i>MS: Are there any questions I’ve forgotten to ask, or anything else you'd like to add?</i></P>
<P>DS: Enough I think, although a controversial question is the role of local coastal defences like the mesh bags of shingle – the evidence is that the cliffs and beach are stabilised naturally, so the effectiveness of the coastal protection works is uncertain. What they will do – <i>if</i> they are working is reduce the supply of shingle to <a href="http://www.coastalwiki.org/wiki/Downdrift"> downdrift</a> areas, which means that these may get starved of sediment and the balance could tip towards beach loss in those areas. If this results in beach lowering then the larger storm waves might start to access the toe of the cliffs in those down drift areas, creating the condition for cliff erosion. In other words – local interference with the natural system has implications elsewhere and knowing that helps people make better informed decisions, one of which might be to accept it, but perhaps do local monitoring to check the health not just of Dunwich cliff beaches where they are protected but also downdrift.</P>
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<P><b>The top a mesh bag containing shingle protrudes from Dunwich Beach - it's not clear whether these coastal defences have had any effect in stabilising the cliffs. Photo: Matt Salusbury</b></P>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-87797602521268458542021-07-28T11:26:00.004-07:002021-07-28T11:52:35.818-07:00West Suffolk bobcat escaped while being transferred to a zoo, FIOA disclosure reveals<P>Big cat investigators spend a lot of time out in the wild with trail cameras and the like, but we can get a fairly good idea of what's happening by way of British big cat activity via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, to the <A HREF="https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/map-shows-every-big-cat-sighting-in-norfolk-over-the-911038-">police</A> and to <A HREF="http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/wild-boar-lynxes-and-wild-african-cats-among-dangerous-animals-2269530">local councils</A>, for example. This FOIA disclosure involves a escaped male bobcat shot and injured in Suffolk, after he was apparently rescued by the RSPCA who passed him on to a rescue centre where he was rehomed.</P>
<P>FOIA disclosures in response to my requests have uncovered the circumstances of the escape. They also hint at a former owner of multiple big cats somewhere in West Suffolk transferring a large number of "Dangerous Wild Animals" out of their ownership in the course of 2020.</P>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bdc0uyFBwoc/YQGcJUzuYFI/AAAAAAAACec/qLLFCZYE-hor_S8zzDIHPstUNlOwyZByACLcBGAsYHQ/s1282/EC618410-73C3-4EEA-AFBB-F8C8D970BC32.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="1282" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bdc0uyFBwoc/YQGcJUzuYFI/AAAAAAAACec/qLLFCZYE-hor_S8zzDIHPstUNlOwyZByACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/EC618410-73C3-4EEA-AFBB-F8C8D970BC32.jpeg"/></a></div>
<B>Bobcat in Fort Worth Zoo by Wikimedia user "Malcolm", Wikimedia Commons Licence</B>
<P>Bobcats (<i>Lynx rufus</i>) are North American wildcats, similar in appearance to Canadian lynxes to which they are closely related (there are known <A HREF="http://messybeast.com/genetics/hyb-lynx-bobcat.htm">lynx-bobcat hybrids</A>). Bobcats are smaller than lynxes – bobcats can be up to 125cm (49.2 inches) long . They share the lynx’s characteristic of having distinctive tufts on the end of their ears and short tails – the name “bobcat” comes from its short tail, the short tails of rabbits being "bob-tails" in American English.</P>
<P>A <A HREF="https://www.gov.uk/licence-wild-animal">Dangerous Wild Animals (DWA) Licence</A> is needed to keep bobcats in the UK – they need an enclosure built to a standard specified in the Act, subject to inspection, which needs to be monitored with CCTV cameras. The owner also needs public liability insurance against damage caused by the animal. Animals have to be microchipped as well.</P>
<P>DWA licences are issued by local authorities, who are also responsible for enforcement of the Dangerous Wild Animals Act is down to local councils. In the case of West Suffolk it’s done through their licensing department. West Suffolk is a recent merger of the two Districts of West Suffolk, which are in turn devolved administrations – Forest Heath and St Edmundsbury – that fall within the boundaries of the county of Suffolk.</P>
<P>Those who keep big cats (in the UK it seems to be overwhelmingly men) are aware that in the UK’s current austerity regime, the ability of cash-strapped local authorities to actually carry out any enforcement. As we will see, West Suffolk took action to seize that bobcat once they’d identified its owner – probably through its microchip which would be linked to his owner’s DWA licence – but once it became clear that the owner was selling or giving away all their big cats (see below), West Suffolk probably decided to let it go, they probably didn’t feel like going through the expense of prosecuting the owner for negligence or for failing to report an escape.</P>
<P>As someone who investigates big cats in Suffolk, I was alerted by one of my many sources to the fact that an injured bobcat had turned up at a vet’s "near Bury" (Bury St Edmunds, West Suffolk). The bobcat had been shot in March 2020 (during full-on Lockdown 1.0) by a farmer who’d lost a lot of chickens to <I>something</i>. They had apparently sought the advice of police, who advised him that the was within his rights to shoot at it to scare it away. I was shown photos of the injured bobcat in his huge pet carrier at the vet’s, also an X-ray showing pellets lodged in his front legs and one of his eyes. (I was shown the photos on the understanding that they were not for publication.)</P>
<P>I was also told that the vet’s assistant had by chance done their internship on a conservation project with Iberian lynxes in Spain, so treating a closely-related bobcat for its injuries was relatively straightforward for the team there. I cannot reveal the identity of the vet, other than to say there are so many vets "near Bury", Suffolk being a very agricultural county, that I can safely use the phrase "vet near Bury" without risk of identifying it.</P>
The story broke shortly after, in an exclusive story in <i>The Sun</i>. This red-top daily is actually getting surprisingly good at covering big cat stories. Under the headline "Big Cat Rampage: Bobcat goes berserk and savages farmer's chickens after escaping owner before being shot and captured", <i>The Sun</i> of 24 March 2020, the story is <A HREF="www.thesun.co.uk/news/11248424/bobcat-captured-savaging-farmers-chickens/">online here</A>. It revealed that West Suffolk Council had started in an investigation into the circumstances of the bobcat’s escape. On the basis of this information, I made a FOIA request to West Suffolk.</P>
<P>West Suffolk’s unnamed FOIA Coordinator was kind enough to pass on to me a series of emails, with the names and email addresses redacted in accordance with data protection regulations. Fortunately for me, they’d been a big slack at redacting the job title on some of these emails, a quick look at the RSPCA’s website confirmed that <A HREF="https://www.careers-gateway.co.uk/Careers/Career.aspx?Career=664&Search=R">Animal Collection Officer</A> is a job title from within the RSPCA. The injured bobcat had apparently come into the care of the RSPCA who took it to the vet and passed him on to an (unnamed) refuge centre where he was rehomed.</P>
<P>Here is West Suffolk’s correspondence with the RSPCA about the bobcat:</P>
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<B>Correspondence between West Suffolk's licensing division and the RSPCA about rehoming a rescued, injured bobcat.</B>
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<B>West Suffolk advises the bobcat's owner that they have seized it under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act</B>
<P>If I have understood the correspondence and the <i>Sun</i> story correctly, while waiting to find out if the bobcat would be claimed, either the RSPCA or the vet seems to have called up their contact who they would ring whenever there was a lynx or bobcat that needed fostering.</P>
<P>That’s right, if my information is correct, the RSPCA in West Suffolk has a number for a lynx fosterer that they regularly ring – suggesting that it’s a common enough occurrence that they have a lynx fosterer on standby. Ownership of lynxes and bobcats in West Suffolk – whether licensed or not – may be much more common than anybody thought.</P>
<P>West Suffolk’s Service Manager (Environmental Health) wrote to the bobcat’s owner. They advised the owner that the Council that as of 20 March 2020, they "have today seized... an injured bobcat belonging to you and kept under licence by you." The bobcat’s owner soon replied with an apology regarding this "unfortunate escape". (The disclosure confirmed it was the only DWA escape West Suffolk had on record.)</P>
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<B>The bobcat's owner apologises for not having reported the escape earlier and admits that the animal had escaped while being transferred into a vehicle to be rehomed to a zoo.</B>
<P>The owner replied with a rather peremptory apology and the briefest of admissions that they had made an “error of judgement” in not reporting the escape of a bobcat. (As well as an error of judgement, it’s also a breach of the law, owners have a duty to report escapes and local authorities have a duty to record these. West Suffolk confirmed to me the bobcat on the loose was the only recorded DWA escape in their jurisdiction to date.</P>
<P>The owner explained, in a scene reminiscent of <A HREF="https://youtu.be/qz5JmgLQEzs">the opening of the original 1993 <i>Jurassic Park</i></A> film, that “the bobcat was being homed to a zoo when the escape happened, on loading the cat, he lurched forward with force and the carrier fell, hit the floor releasing the door, in which he then escaped.” The owner went on the say that "we have been rehoming all DWAL animals and will not be renewing our licence this year."</P>
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<B>West Suffolk requests from bobcat's owner details of how many Dangerous Wild Animals Act notifiable animals they still have.</B>
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<B>West Suffolk requests from the bobcat's owner an update on the wildcats that were in their possession.</B>
<P>There’s also correspondence between West Suffolk and another entity – possibly the bobcat’s owner – asking for data on their DWAs. From this it seems that whoever it was whose bobcat escaped near Bury was winding down their big cat keeping operation. They confirmed to West Suffolk that in the year up to May 2020 they’d offloaded two caracals, two bobcats, (plus the one that West Suffolk seized and the RSPCA rehomed), one serval and two jungle cats to at least one third party.)</P>
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<B>Bobcat's owner provides information on the fate of their wildcats (including the injured bobcat), destinations of these are redacted.</B>
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<B>West Suffolk asks the bobcat's owner if the jungle cats have gone to... (redacted).</B>
<P>By June 2020 the owner had confirmed that "all bobcats have been rehomed" (the Council had a list of four bobcats licenced to that individual.) The final email in the FOIA disclosure has the owner anticipating a visit from "licensing" to check that there were no longer being kept on the premises any DWAL animals for which a licence would be needed.</P>
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<B>Former owner confirms all bobcats have been rehomed, and confirms that jungle cats have indeed gone to... (redacted).</B>
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<B>Former owner confirms they will not be renewing their Dangerous Wild Animals Act licence</B>
<P>I am reminded of other evidence of there being more lynxes and bobcats than anyone realised in West Suffolk. I have heard accounts of strange screams coming from Thetford Forest, as well lynx sightings in West Suffolk, including one in Red Lodge. Around 2005, people regularly heard such screams around Santon Downham, and there was said to be a "lynx man" locally who "everybody knew" kept lynxes. There are legitimate lynx re-introduction programmes in progress in Europe at the moment – parts of Germany and the Czech Republic are re-introducing lynxes. While a plan for the <A HREF="https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/scheme-to-reintroduce-lynx-to-thetford-forest-is-dropped-870430">re-introduction of lynxes into an enclosed area of Thetford Forest</A> (Norfolk-Suffolk border) was rejected, a proposed <A HREF="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-31800432">lynx re-introduction in Aberdeenshire</A> is going ahead. The "lynx man", if he existed, could have been breeding lynxes as part of such a programme, he would obviously want to keep such activities very low-key.</P>
<P>The <A HREF="http://www.eadt.co.uk/news/wild-boar-lynxes-and-wild-african-cats-among-dangerous-animals-2269530">Press Association’s investigation from 2016</A> showed that at the time there were Dangerous Wild Animals Act licences for seven lynxes and two bobcats in West Suffolk. These two bobcats would now seem to have been accounted for, one male rehomed by the RSPCA, the female rehomed to (redacted).</P>
<P>An RSPCA official has confirmed to me that "this is one of our jobs and the photos are ours" (the photos of the injured bobcats at the vet’s, as seen in the <A HREF="www.thesun.co.uk/news/11248424/bobcat-captured-savaging-farmers-chickens/"><i>Sun</i> story</A>. I am in negotiations with the RSPCA about the possibility of getting permission to reproduce the photos.</P>
<P>My source in East Anglian animal rescue told me there are a lot of owners of exotic animals (monkeys, exotic reptiles and big cats in particular) who keep them under the radar and don't bother getting a licence for their animals, so unrecorded big cat ownership and escapes in the country may be more common than official data suggests.
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-20871609146751621592020-10-27T14:38:00.014-07:002024-02-25T13:53:52.831-08:00The Body of a Mighty giant
<P><b>by Matt Salusbury and Tim-Holt Wilson</b></P>
<P><b>This article first appeared in UKGE's <A HREF="https://depositsmag.com/2020/06/05/body-of-a-mighty-giant"><i>Deposits</i> magazine of June 2020</A> It was updated on 11 07 21 to include new images that do not appear in the article in <i>Deposits</i>.</b></P>
<P><i>The Wonder of Our Times: Being the True and Exactly Relation of the Body of a Mighty giant dig'd up at Brockford Bridge neer Ipswich in the county of Suffolk.</i> That's the title of a printed pamphlet from 1651, now in the Thomason Collection of the British Library (Ref 1). It was written in the form of a letter from "I.G." to his brother in London, updating him on "the town of his nativity" (Ipswich).</P>
<P>It describes a skeleton found by workmen digging in the "gravelly way". Brockford is a hamlet in the parish of Wetheringsett, located on the A140 road (grid reference TM117669) about 15 miles north of Ipswich (Figs. 1 and 2). It is not exactly "neer" (near) the town in seventeenth century terms – in those days it would have been the best part of half a day's ride on horseback. It’s unlikely that "I.G." travelled all the way from Ipswich to Brockford to see what the pamphlet called "The Wonder of the Age" for himself; he probably relied on descriptions he received in letters. The pamphlet refers to a John Vice as having found the bones, so the account is second-hand, at least.</P>
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<P><b>Fig. 1. The Brockford area shown on Hodskinson's map of Suffolk, 1783. It is crossed in a north-south direction by a turnpike (the modern A140) and diagonally by a lane between Mendlesham and Thorndon. (Image by kind permission of David Yaxley – <i>Hodsksinson’s Map of Suffolk in 1783</i>; Lark’s Press, East Dereham, 2003).</b></P>
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<P><b>Fig. 2. Brockford Bridge as it is today. (Image: T Holt-Wilson.)</b></P>
<P>The pamphlet gives us a fairly detailed description of the bones of the "Mighty giant". Records of local palaeontological finds from the nineteenth century onwards point to similar remains being occasionally found in the area, and allow us to speculate about the likely identification of the "giant". Following a recent geological field trip to Brockford, we attempt to identify the likely geological context of the find, and we attempt to identify the "gravelly way" from which the "Mighty giant" was unearthed.</P>
<P>It's unclear from the text whether the "gravelly way" was an already existing road made from gravel or a feature from which people dug gravel, and there isn't any "Gravelly Way" marked on modern maps. But Brockford Bridge is sited in a shallow valley in the headwaters of the River Dove – a tributary of the River Waveney – and gravels are locally abundant (Fig. 3). They date from the Pleistocene epoch (2.5 million to 11,700 years ago), flooring the valleys and outcropping in patches within glacial deposits.</P>
<P>Climate during the Pleistocene oscillated between warm and cold periods. During warm interglacial periods, the local landscape would have been forested, with swampy valley bottoms. During cold glacial periods, the landscape would have lacked vegetation and bare ground would have gradually slumped into valley bottoms, due to periglacial freeze/thaw processes active in the subsoil. Mammal bones can be deposited in both environments, either stratified in valley muds or incorporated into valley gravels.</P>
<P>At Brockford, the British Geological Survey map represents much of the area's geology as an ocean of pale blue (Ref 2), representing the Lowestoft Formation, a cold-phase till (boulder clay) deposit of the Anglian glaciation, about 440,000 years ago. It forms the gently undulating plateau of High Suffolk, and borehole records show that it underlies the area to a depth of some 21m (70ft) at Brockford (Ref 3) and 11m (36ft) a short distance away down the valley at Wetheringsett (Ref 4).</P>
<P>Overlying this, the valley is floored with a shallow layer of alluvium (silt, sand, clay and patches of peat), dating from the last 11,000 years or so. Any gravels encountered in the "gravelly way" are likely to be scourings from the local clayland plateau, mobilised in periglacial conditions during the last cold period known as the Devensian, which ended some 11,700 years ago. The alluvium then formed a veneer on top and the seventeenth century diggers would have cut through this alluvial layer to reach the useful gravels beneath.</P>
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<P><b>Fig. 3. The River Dove near Brockford, showing coarse gravel in the stream bed and clay-rich loam along its banks. (Image: T Holt-Wilson.)</b></P>
<P>Gigantic bones have played an important role in the cultural history of humankind. They provoke the imagination, and stretch the reason to provide an explanation for their unfamiliar shapes and uncouth dimensions. There’s even a whole area of study known as cultural palaeontology or ethnopaleontology, which looks at intangible palaeontological heritage, the non-scientific influences that certain fossils have exerted on culture.</P>
<P>The Classical Greek and Roman authors are a particularly rich source of information, allowing us plausibly to match stories of "monsters" and "prodigies" with the remains of known fossil animals. The folklorist Adrienne Mayor has taken an extensive look at stories of bones of monstrous and mythical dimensions recorded by Classical authors, particularly Greek (Ref 5). Several temples had tables displaying what, from their description, are clearly fragmentary fossil mammals, particularly elephants, mammoths and giraffids – smaller prehistoric relatives of the modern giraffe. (See Fig. 11 below.)</P>
<P>The Cyclopses (one-eyed giants) were thought to have been inspired by the skulls of the smaller species of prehistoric elephant that populated the Mediterranean islands in Pleistocene times: the nasal aperture in the centre of the frontal bone suggested a single eye socket (Fig. 4). Mayor notes that many of the animals encountered by Hercules in his twelve labours are identified by the name of the region they came from – the Nemean Lion and the Erymanthian Boar, for example. Mayor discovered that these locations in modern Greece turn out to have fossil-bearing strata, usually yielding Pleistocene megafauna.</P>
<P>Griffins, as described by Herodotus – the "father of history" – were said to live in what's now Central Asia. They were described as having a lion's body with the head and claws of an eagle, having nests where they laid eggs and guarded gold (Ref 6). Mayor believes this is a description of the ceratopsian beaked dinosaur, <i>Protoceratops</i>, whose nests with fossilised eggs have been found in modern times, in strata which are also gold-bearing. (We note – in passing – that there used to be an inn at Brockford named The Griffin.)</P>
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<P><b>Fig. 4. The skull of an African forest elephant, <i>Loxodonta africana cyclotis</i>, in the UCL Grant Zoology Museum, London. (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
<P>The Greek historian Solinus, writing 1,800 years ago, described how the hero demi-god Hercules – he of the twelve labours – had destroyed a tribe of rogue giants at now long- vanished Greek town of Pellene, now just a village. This was dismissed as credulous folklore until a heavy rainstorm on the site in 1994, after which a local villager found a gigantic tooth. Pellene became a palaeontological dig that uncovered the remains of several mastodons.</P>
<P>Devotees of the Egyptian god, Set (<i>aka</i> Sutekh and Satan), are recorded as bringing large quantities of blackened bone fragments to his shrines at Matmur and Qua, black being a colour associated with the dark, sometimes malevolent character of this god. These have been preserved and unearthed in the shrine – they turn out to be mostly fragments of horned giraffids and fossil relatives of horses. While most Egyptian gods are humanoid or depicted with the heads of known animals, Set's head is that of an unknown animal, with strange, squared-off ears. There is speculation that his head, as shown in Egyptian art, is inspired by the skull of a fossil or more recent, but now locally extinct, animal – possibly a prehistoric aardvark (Ref 7).</P>
<P>Mayor has also turned her attention to fossil finds recorded in the oral traditions of Native Americans, which she examines in <i>Fossil Legends of the First Americans</i> (Ref 8). These traditions include the "Thunder Horse", a legend that fossil hunter Edward Drinker Cope heard from the people of the Lakota Sioux Nation in South Dakota and Nebraska in the 1870s. They described how, after heavy thunderstorms, sometimes a Thunder Horse – an enormous horse, a magical being that lived in the clouds – would be killed during the storm (possibly by lightning, it wasn’t clear) and its bones would fall to the Earth.</P>
<P>While many Americans of European descent derided such Native American traditions as "superstition" at the time, Cope had a hunch there might be something to this legend. He asked the Lakota people to lead him to the remains of a Thunder Horse after a storm. There, he found the fossil bones of the odd-toed ungulate now known as <i>Megacerops</i> – looking like a rhinoceros, but actually more closely related to horses. The Lakota were right about the link between the Thunder Horse and storms – the heavy rains had washed away the banks of sediment that concealed the bones. <i>Megacerops</i> was originally known as <i>Brontotherium</i>, which translates as Thunder Horse, while the family to which the species belongs is still known as the <i>Brontotheriidae</i>. (See Fig. 12 below.)</P>
<P>The Siwalik Hills in India, setting for the epic battle of gods, heroes and monsters in the ancient Indian Sanskrit epic poem – the <i>Mahabharata</i> – are littered with evidence for Plio-Pleistocene fossil animals, including fossil bones, skulls, jaws, and tusks of hippopotamuses (<i>Hexaprotodon</i>), proboscideans (<i>Stegodon, Archidiskodon</i>), four-horned giraffes (<i>Sivatherium, Giraffokeryx</i>), giant tortoises (<i>Geochelone</i>), sabre toothed cats (<i>Paramachairodus</i>) and camels (<i>Camelus</i>). Their role in generating mythic inspiration for the writers of the poem has been explored in an interesting article (Ref 9).</P>
<P>As far as we are aware, there's been no systematic survey yet of "wonders" and "prodigies" from Britain whose identity points to fossil fauna. The chronicler, Ralph of Coggeshall, abbot of the monastery at Coggeshall in Essex, wrote <i>Chronicon Anglicanum</i> (Chronicle of the English) in the early thirteenth century. This has a chapter entitled "On Giant’s Teeth" (Ref 10). This records how Ralph himself had handled two enormous teeth that were found on the Essex seashore at Foulness and taken to his abbey. Ralph took these as evidence of giants, which he claims had been seen alive in Wales, with one such Welsh giant being "a young man of immense stature, whose height was five cubits [7ft 6 inches or 2.3m]". From his description, the teeth were almost certainly those of a proboscidean – a prehistoric elephant or mammoth.</P>
<P>To return to Brockford, the pamphlet describing the discovery of the "Mighty giant" recounted how some people thought the partial skeleton was that of a "Dane" or of "King Arthur", the locals imagining that the Vikings and the legendary Romano-British warlord had been literally larger-than-life heroes or anti-heroes, towering over most men. To illustrate the pamphlet, the publisher used stock woodcuts of Greek heroes and giants dressed in the romanticised costume of the Native Americans, as they were then imagined (Fig. 5). As explained by Adrienne Mayor, the ancient Greeks had a similar view: they believed too that the likes of Achilles and Ajax from Homer's <i>Iliad</i> were heroic giants among men from a bygone "golden age", since when men had "degenerated" in height.</P>
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<P><b>Fig. 5. The frontispiece of the 1651 pamphlet, <i>The Wonder of Our Times: Being a true and exact relation of a Mighty giant dig'd up at Brockford Bridge...</i> R Austin for W. Ley, London, 1651. (Out of copyright, fair dealing under the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1986 – front cover image for the purposes of a critique or review.)</b></P>
<P>We think the story of the <i>Mighty giant dig'd up</i> is another instance of an historic palaeontological find, and the account is clear enough to allow us to make a tentative identification. There's quite a detailed description of the "giant" in the pamphlet. The body had a skull that was "half a bushel" in size – half a bushel is a measurement of grain, about four gallons (just over 18 litres). Eleven "huge teeth" were found. The leg bone (presumably a thigh) was "about the width of a middling woman's waist" and when the skeleton was laid out it was ten feet (3m) long.</P>
<P>From the description, it seems the workmen who found the skeleton had laid it out on the ground as you might a human skeleton. They assumed whatever they had found was a biped, and laid out the bones with the arms as if they were hanging from the shoulders in life position, with the legs descending from the pelvis and the skull rising from the neck. The enormous size of the bones and teeth suggests to us that they were dealing with proboscidean remains. If we accept this identification, what kind of beast might they have found.</P>
<P>The order Proboscidea includes elephants, mastodons and mammoths, and the remains of at least three different proboscidean genera have been found in Suffolk. Over two million years ago in the early Pleistocene, we find evidence of southern elephant, <i>Mammuthus meridionalis</i>, and mastodon, <i>Anancus arvernensis</i>. About half a million years ago, in the middle Pleistocene, we find the steppe mammoth, <i>Mammuthus trogontherii</i>, which later evolved into the woolly mammoth. The straight-tusked elephant, <i>Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) antiquus,</i> (Fig. 6), is typical of warm phases in the later Pleistocene, while the woolly mammoth, <i>Mammuthus primigenius</i>, is typical of cold phases.</P>
<P>Fossil evidence for Suffolk's Proboscidea typically turns up in gravel quarries, along the eroding coastline and sometimes in river beds. For example, in 1995, a woolly mammoth jawbone was found in the bed of the River Glem at Hawkedon, presumably derived from cold-phase sands and gravels exposed in the river bank (Ref 11).</P>
<P>Elephants and mammoths are well represented in the county of Suffolk's museum displays. Ipswich Museum has a life-size woolly mammoth reconstruction near the entrance and some impressive mammoth remains including a femur of the straight-tusked elephant on display in its excellent geology gallery. West Stow Museum's tiny palaeontology display includes a fragment of mammoth tusk and a piece of elephant's shoulder blade. Halesworth Museum likewise has a tusk fragment. Southwold Museum has a whole chest of drawers of proboscidean bits from local cliffs and beaches, many of them from the Crag strata at Easton Bavents. Another significant collection is housed at the <A HREF="https://www.ukge.com/"> UKGE headquarters</A> at nearby Reydon.</P>
<P>A lucky dachshund dog named Daisy <A HREF="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-485477/Daisy-dog-finds-meal-dreams--mammoth-bone.html">made the national newspapers</A> a few years back after it found a mammoth femur on the beach at Dunwich Heath, and fragments of proboscidean teeth and bones are occasionally handed in at Dunwich Museum by holidaymakers. Suffolk's beachcombing community tell us that if you go to Felixstowe Beach after a heavy storm, you’ve a good chance of finding fragmentary mammoth teeth.</P>
<P>Brockford lies in the valley of the River Dove and there are several records of proboscidean remains found within its catchment. The most famous site is at Hoxne, some 7 miles (11.4km) away, where the brick-pits have yielded fossil mammal remains since the late eighteenth century, including straight-tusked elephant (Ref 12). This site is worth a whole article in itself, but the interesting thing from our point of view is that these finds have been dated to a warm interglacial period about 400,000 years ago, known as the Hoxnian. Other local sites of Hoxnian age have been identified in tributary valleys at Athelington and St Cross, in both cases, from borehole evidence taken from deposits several metres down.</P>
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<P><b>Fig. 6. A straight-tusked elephant skeleton in the Natural History Museum, Rome. (Image courtesy Dr Georgios Lyras.)</b></P>
<P>Thorndon lies two and a half miles (4km) downstream from Brockford. There is an old record of a section of elephant tusk 27 inches (68cm) long recovered from river gravel at a depth of 8ft (2.4m) (Ref 13). Harold Spencer wrote that:
<i>"Incomplete bones and elephant and other large animals from an unrecorded site at Thorndon are, to judge from the elevation, and the position in the Dove valley system, in all probability of Hoxnian age"</i>(Ref 14).</P>
<P>There is an unverified report of an elephant tooth found by a farmer in this parish, probably in the 1970s (Ref 15). A short distance away, Claud Ticehurst records a straight-tusked elephant tusk <i>"from glacial gravel close to Braiseworth church"</i> (Ref 16) – he is most likely referring to the old St Mary's church. Hoxnian sites in the Waveney catchment are typically developed in former lakes or hollows in the Lowestoft Till plateau. Down-cutting by river erosion over the past 430,000 years or so has since isolated them at heights of between 16ft and 33ft (5m to 10m) above valley floors (Ref 17).</P>
<P>We note that at Braiseworth, St Mary's is located on the valley side near the site of an old gravel pit, lying at about 118 ft (36m) above sea level. The adjacent valley floor lies at about 95ft (29m), so the difference in height between them is no more than 23ft (7m). Ticehurst's site is thus plausibly a Hoxnian one.</P>
<P>Remains of straight-tusked elephant are also known from a later interglacial period known as the Ipswichian, about 120,000 years ago. Bones have been recovered from Ipswichian deposits beneath the Waveney valley side at Wortwell (Ref 18), some 15 miles (24km) away. They were found at roughly the same height above sea level as the present river floodplain (Ref 17).</P>
<P>Remains of woolly mammoth have not so far been recorded from the River Dove catchment, but bones and teeth have been found in gravel pits in the Waveney valley at sites, such as Weybread and Homersfield. Here, they are typically found in the cold-phase river gravels of post-Hoxnian age that fill the valley floor or outcropin isolated terrace remnants along the valley sides (Ref 17).</P>
<P>Although we cannot determine whether the bones of the "Mighty giant" were those of a warm-period interglacial, straight-tusked elephant or a cold-period glacial woolly mammoth, the geology of the Brockford site suggests we are dealing with cold-phase valley gravels, most likely of Devensian age.</P>
<P>The landscape situation, on the valley floor in the shallow headwaters of a Waveney tributary rather than on the valley sides, suggests we are dealing with post-Hoxnian remains. The fact that a range of skeletal elements were found lying together provides some useful taphonomic detail – we may infer that the bones come from a carcass, which is unlikely to have been moved far from its place of first deposition, otherwise the bones would have been scattered. However, this scenario might fit either species: a straight-tusked elephant from the Ipswichian buried beneath Devensian gravels on the valley floor; or a woolly mammoth buried within Devensian gravels.</P>
<P>The gravel diggers evidently struggled to comprehend what they had found. We found a reference in the <i>Ipswich Journal</i> to a "stupendous elephant" in a menagerie of “foreign animals” visiting Ipswich in 1800, which claims to be first live elephant ever exhibited in the County Town. So, it's unlikely anyone locally would have actually seen an elephant or even recognised its skeleton, in 1651.</P>
<P>To the Brockford diggers, the skull with its big, domed cranium might have looked like a giant human's, particularly if it had its tusks detached and, while living elephants' feet are pillars of flesh designed to support several tonnes, the actual bones end in long, thin toes. The forearms could have been mistaken for a human arm ending in fingers, while the shoulder blades and ribs might have reminded them of a human's. (See Fig. 13 below.) The tusk sockets might resemble nostrils to someone with little knowledge of human anatomy.</P>
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<P><b>Fig. 7. A plastic mammoth skeleton configured as a "biped". (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
<P>Taking a scale model of a mammoth skeleton, we can arrange its elements as if it were a biped (Fig. 7). According to the seventeenth century pamphlet, the “shin bones” were partly damaged or missing, so they have been partly left out of our reconstruction. It also says the teeth in the upper jaw were missing, so the tusks presumably would have been too (the tusks being incisor teeth from the upper jaw). Minus its tusks, doesn’t it look a bit like a human skeleton? As to the fate of the Brockford bones, the pamphlet says the locals “broke up” the skeleton – everyone wanted a piece of it, it seems.</P>
<P>A final point. We can only speculate where the “Mighty giant” was dug up. It may have been from gravels in the valley floor near Brockford Bridge over which the busy A140 passes. Alternatively – and more attractively – we have discovered a nearby “gravelly way” in the form of footpath immediately to the northeast of Brockford Bridge. It is the ancient lane from Mendlesham to Thorndon (Fig. 8).</P>
<P>It is certainly very gravelly, no doubt made up with locally sourced material (Fig. 9), although we could find no evidence of a nearby gravel pit of any depth. It flanks the River Dove, which is a feeble trickle compared to what it would have been in late Devensian times, with seasonal snow-melt streaming off land in the headwaters of the river catchment, sweeping sand and gravel with it – and perhaps the carcass of a mammoth.</P>
<P><b>Update (11 07 21, from Matt Salusbury):</b> Since this article appeared in <i>Deposits</i>, I discovered an account of a similar phenomenon 54 years later, from turn-of-the-18th-century America. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) was a Massachusetts Puritan preacher and a prolific author, influential in the Salem witch trials.</P>
<P>Mather was shown bones and teeth that had been found in Claverack near Albany, New York in 1705. He identified them as the bones of the Nephilim, the race of giants and "fallen angels" who interbred with humans and who were destroyed in Noah's flood, described in The Old Testament's Book of Genesis and in more detail in the <A HREF="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Enoch">Book of Enoch</A>. Centuries later the bones examined by Mather were identified as the bones of a mastodon (elephant or mastodon in some accounts.</P>
<P><b>Update (25 02 24, from Matt Salusbury): </b> A sign at the Geological Society's exhibit for the 200th anniversary of the scientific description of the first identified dinosaur <i>Megalosaurus</i> told how fragments of bones and teeth of <i>Megalosaurus</i> had been discovered in Oxfordshire in 1676 and tenatively identified these as the remains of a giant human.</P>
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<P><b>Fig. 8. The old road to Thorndon as it is today, northeast of Brockford Street. (Image: T Holt-Wilson.)</b></P>
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<P><b>Fig. 9. Gravel in the floor of the old lane at Brockford. (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
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<P><b>Fig. 10. A leg bone of a local specimen of a straight-tusked elephant <i>Elephas antiquus</i>, aka <i>Paleoloxodon antiquus</i>, found in Ipswich, Suffolk, on display in Ipswich Museum. (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
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<P><b>Fig. 11. Skull of <i>Samotherium</i>, from the island of Samos in Greece, a Miocene giraffid at the Natural History Museum, London. Descriptions from Classical Greek sources indicate prehistoric giraffid remains were in the collections of "monsters" and "prodigies" in temples. Giraffid remains were also among the fossil fragments given as offerings to the god Set in ancient Egyptian shrines. (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
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<P><b>Fig. 12: Skull and front foot of a Brontothere, a family of prehistoric odd-toed ungulates that take their name from the "Thunder Horse" tradition of the Lakota Sioux Nation of the American West. This specimen's in the Natural History Museum, London. (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
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<b>Fig 13: These toes and front legs on the skeleton of a mammoth could be mistaken for the fingers and arms of a giant human, to an observer in 1651 with little knowledge of anatomy. This mammoth is in the Geological Museum of the Polish Geological Institute, Warsaw. (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
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<P><b>Fig 14: The more pointy-headed skull of a mammoth looks less like a giant human skull than the more domed skull of a prehistoric elephant, although it could still fool an observer from 1651 who didn't know their anatomy, especially with its tusks missing. This one's from the Geological Museum of the Polish Geological Institute, Warsaw. (Image: M Salusbury.)</b></P>
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<P><b>Acknowledgements</b></P>
<P>Thanks to Richard Muirhead for his librarianship skills in pointing us in the direction of <i>The Body of a Mighty giant</i> pamphlet. This article is adapted from a chapter on Suffolk giants from Matt Salusbury's forthcoming book <A HREF="https://www.twitter.com/mysteryanimals"><i>Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Suffolk</i></A> (CFZ Press, in production).</P>
<P>Any other examples of accounts of prodigies, wonders, marvels and monsters from British or Irish chronicles, pamphlets or broadsheets that apparently describe fossils finds would be greatly appreciated, via <A
HREF="mailto:mysteryanimalsofsuffolk@gn.apc.org?Subject=*The Body of a Mighty giant">mysteryanimalsofsuffolk@gn.apc.org</A>.</P>
<P><b>About the authors</b></P>
<P><b>Matt Salusbury</b> is a freelance journalist and editor, author of <i>Pygmy Elephants</i> (CFZ Press, Wolfardisworthy, 2013) and Chair of the National Union of Journalists <A HREF="http://www.londonfreelance.org">London Freelance Branch</A>. He is a regular contributor on zoology, archaeology and the history of science to <A HREF=”http://www.forteantimes.com”><i>Fortean Times</i> magazine</A> and chair of the trustees and volunteer of <A HREF=”http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk”>Dunwich Museum</A>, Suffolk, as well as editor of its newsletter, <A HREF="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/assets/Discover-Dunwich/discover-dunwich-2-reopening-08-2020.pdf">Discover Dunwich</A></P>
<P><b>Tim Holt-Wilson</b> is active in geoconservation in East Anglia: a member of the Geological Society of Norfolk (President, 2015) and Quaternary Research Association; and a founder member of the GeoSuffolk Group; a former Co-ordinator of Geo-East. He is author of <i>Norfolk’s Earth Heritage</i> (2010) and <i>Tides of Change - Two million years on the Suffolk Coast</i> (2014), and a past contributor to <i>Deposits</i>.</P>
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<P><b>References</b></P>
<P><b>1.</b>I.G. <i>The Wonder of Our Times: Being a True and Exact Relation of the Body of a Mighty Giant dig’d up at Brockford Bridge near Ipswich in Suffolk</i>, Printed by R. Austin for W. Ley at Paul's Chain, London, 1651. British Library digital resources catalogue: Thomason Collection E.646(3). Most of the text online on the <A HREF="http://www.foxearth.org.uk/blog/2005/01/brockford-giant.html">Foxearth and District Historical Society blog</A>. [Accessed April 2020]</P>
<P><b>2.</b> British Geological Survey. <i>Eye. England and Wales Sheet 190. Solid and drift Geology</i>, 1:50,000 Provisional Series. Keyworth, Nottingham, 1995. Online <A HREF=”http://www.largeimages.bgs.ac.uk/iip/mapsportal.html?id=1001685”>here</A>. [Accessed March 2020]</P>
<P><b>3.</b> British Geological Survey, undated 1. <i>BGS Borehole Report TM16NW23 — Brockford Engineering Co.</i>, Thwaite. Online <A HREF=”http://scans.bgs.ac.uk/sobi_scans/boreholes/562876/images/12176271.html”>here</A>. [Accessed March 2020]</P>
<P><b>4.</b> British Geological Survey, undated 2. <i>BGS Borehole Report TM16NW2 — Wetheringsett (Anglian Water Authority)</i>, Online <A HREF=”http://scans.bgs.ac.uk/sobi_scans/boreholes/562855/images/14928689.html”>here</A>. [Accessed March 2020]</P>
<P><b>5.</b> Mayor, Adrienne. <i>The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times</i>. Princeton University Press, 2011.</P>
<P><b>6.</b> Herodotus. <i>The Histories</i>. Penguin Books, 1972. Book 3.113.</P>
<P><b>7.</b> Mayor, Adrienne, undated. <i>Ancient Egyptians Collected Fossils</i>. Online at Wonders and Marvels website – http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2016/09/ancient-egyptians-collected-fossils.html. [Accessed March 2020]</P>
<P><b>8.</b> Mayor, Adrienne, <i>Fossil Legends of the First Americans</i>, Princeton University Press, 2005.</P>
<P><b>9.</b> Van der Geer, A., Dermitzakis, M., & De Vos, J., <A HREF=”https://www.scribd.com/document/327026389/Fossil-Folklore-from-India-The-Siwalik-Hills-and-the-Mahabharata”>”Fossil Folklore from India: The Siwalik Hills and the Mahabharata”</A>. Folklore 119, April 2008, pp.71–92. [Accessed March 2020]</P>
<P><b>10.</b> Ralph of Coggeshall, <A HREF=”https://archive.org/details/ChroniconAnglicanum/page/n161/mode/2up”><i>Chronicon Anglicorum</i>, Folio 89</A>, with <A HREF=”https://archive.org/stream/annalscoggeshal00dalegoog/annalscoggeshal00dalegoog_djvu.txt”>English translation</A>. [Accessed March 2020]</P>
<P>"In the time of King Richard there were found, at a village called Edolfuesnesse [Foulness], on the sea shore in Essex, two teeth of a certain giant, of such a size, that two hundred teeth which men now have might be cut out of them. These teeth we saw at Coggeshall, and we handled them with plenty of admiration. A rib of this giant was also discovered in the same place, of astonishing size and breadth."</P>
<P><b>11.</b> Latham, J. <i>Discovery of Mammoth remains from a river bed in Eastern Suffolk</i>, Quaternary Research Association Newsletter No. 83, Oct. 1997. [NB the Hawkedon site is in West Suffolk.]</P>
<P><b>12.</b> Singer, Ronald, Gladfelter, Bruce, and Wymer, John. <i>The Lower Palaeolithic Site at Hoxne, England</i>. University of Chicago Press, 1993.</P>
<P><b>13.</b> [Harris, Rev. H.A.]. "Finds", <i>Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology</i>, vol.18, part 3, 1924.</P>
<P><b>14.</b> Spencer, Harold. <i>A Contribution to the Geological History of Suffolk</i>, Suffolk Naturalists’ Society, 1972, p.89.</P>
<P><b>15.</b> Wymer, John. <i>Palaeolithic Sites of East Anglia</i>, Geobooks, Norwich, 1985.</P>
<P><b>16.</b> Ticehurst, Claud. <i>The Mammals of Suffolk</i>, Transactions of the Suffolk Naturalists' Society, vol.2, 1932.</P>
<P><b>17.</b> Coxon, P. Pleistocene <i>Environmental History in Central East Anglia</i>, PhD Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1979.</P>
<P><b>18.</b> Sparks, B.W. and West, R.G. <i>Interglacial Deposits at Wortwell, Norfolk</i>, Geological Magazine, 105, 196</P>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-4957720931549548462020-09-24T14:44:00.007-07:002020-09-24T15:05:57.753-07:00The bells! The bells!<P><b>MATT SALUSBURY listens out for the sounds of underwater tintinnabulation as he goes in search of Britain's sunken bell legends...</b></P>
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<P><b>Fragments of Dunwich churches - All Saints, St Peter's and (probably) the Templar Church, mostly hauled up from the North Sea in the Dunwich Dives, throughout the 1970s and 1980s</b></P>
<P><b>This article first appeared in <a href="https://www.forteantimes.com"><i>Fortean Times</i></a>, FT 396, September 2020</b></P>
<P>Is it true about the bells tolling beneath the waves? It's a question frequently asked by visitors to Dunwich Museum. The nocturnal phantom bells at Dunwich, though obvious nonsense, are actually among the more plausible of Britain’s ghost bell traditions. At least churches actually once stood in Dunwich - more than can be said for the locations of many phantom bell legends!</P>
<P>The city of Dunwich on the Suffolk coast, once medieval England's sixth biggest town, was a major port with its own royal shipyard, trading with the Hanseatic League before a millennia's worth of coastal erosion and three really big storms did for the town. It’s now a village of just over a hundred souls. Stonework from several of the sunken city’s dozen churches was hauled up from the bed of the North Sea in dives throughout the 1970s and 1980s.</P>
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<P><b>Late 18th century engraving of All Saint's Church, Dunwich, now lost to the sea. Out of copyright</b></P>
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<P><b>Postcards from the Nicholson Collection in the Dunwich Museum archive, showing All Saints at the turn of the 20th century. The last section of the church fell of the cliff and into the sea in 1919.</b></P>
<P>Rowland Parker, author of the definitive history <i>Men of Dunwich</i>, said he'd "never heard any local talk of bells tolling out to sea" as of 1979. The oldest documentation for the legend dates from 1859, when Master Mariner John Day claimed to have known his position when sailing to Sizewell Bank to the south by the tolling of a submerged bell heard while passing Dunwich.</P>
<P>Perhaps Master Day heard a bell on a wreck or wreck buoy. Some of the churches could have been suddenly inundated, as in the Great Storm of 1286. The antiquarian John Stow visited Dunwich in 1573, describing "remnants of ramparts, downfallen edifices and tottering noble structures" at the water's edge. But could these church bells have still been intact underwater in their derelict belfries, rung by the action of the tides 300 years later? Unlikely. As Nigel Pennick points out in <i>Lost Lands and Sunken Cities</i>, "every church lost to the sea was destroyed by wave action."</P>
<P>Some Dunwich bells are accounted for. Medieval parish records include a receipt for the sale of the bells of Dunwich's St Nicholas Church to build a pier to protect another town church as the sea advanced. Other Dunwich churches were demolished as no longer viable, faced with an encroaching sea.</P>
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<P><b>The last surviving butress of All Saint's Church now stands in the churchyard of the modern St James's Church, Dunwich</b></P>
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<P><b>The last surviving tomb of All Saints burial ground, on the Dunwich Cliff Path. Human bones and teeth from the burial ground regularly fall out of the eroding cliff</b></P>
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<P><b>This slab from a tomb hauled up in the Dunwich Dives is believed to be from the Templar Church.</b></P>
<P>The still standing 19th century church of St James's, Dunwich, has a single automated bell that only tolls the hour. But a recent anonymous entry to Dunwich Museum visitors' book, though, records a local man hearing twice "a peel of six chimes" at about 2am on the "very stormy" night of 29 December 2017.</P>
<p>Some other well-documented sunken churches off Britain's coasts have phantom bell legends attached. St-Annes-on-the-Sea, Lancashire has the sunken remains of a medieval church off the coast, its bells allegedly heard before storms. Also said to warn of storms are phantom bells at Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, whose church - taken by the sea in the 1790s - is now three miles offshore. Shipden near Cromer in Norfolk once had a church, on the submerged remains of whose tower the tug Victoria was wrecked in 1888. And yes, its bells sometimes sound at night.</p>
<p>Not all verifiable lost churches succumbed to the waves. Between Southwell and Oxton in Nottinghamshire there once stood the settlement of Raleigh - flattened by the East Midlands Earthquake of 1185, although not "swallowed up" as legends tell. Local tradition has church bells heard on Christmas Day.</p>
<p>But evidence for an actual church behind phantom bell legends is usually scarce. Some more plausible phantom bell stories come from Cornwall, where bells on sunken ships rather than vanished churches are supposed to ring, such as the bell of the long lost ship <i>Neptune</i>off St Ives.</p>
<p>Welsh phantom bell legends include one from Llangorse Lake, Powys, in which bells of a cathedral that once stood there before it was flooded now sound on "holy days". Since the lake was formed by the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago, this is a credibility-stretcher. A similar legend is attached to Lake Bala, 86 miles due south in the Brecon Beacons.</p>
<p>Numerous Welsh legends feature the Devil or his disguised imps stealing bells then dumping them at sea. They then toll from their new location, warning fishermen as storms approach – as do the bells heard from Whitesand Bay near St David's, Pembrokeshire. The provenance of the phantom bells of Aberdovey, Gwynedd cannot be traced beyond the Victorian music hall song <i>The Bells of Aberdovey</i>.</p>
<p>Phantom bells said to have been stolen and lost in transit are a common motif. A tale from Bosham on the Sussex coast has a bell stolen by Viking raiders then loaded it on to a longship which sailed away. When locals rang the "all clear" from other churches, the stolen bell vibrated in unison, capsizing the vessel. The story's probably a 19th century explanation of why Bosham's church has no tenor bell.</p>
<p>In Llanwonno, Glamorgan, the bell was said to have be stolen by "big-eared men of Taff", who dragged it away on a sledge only to lose it in a river. The story may be an invention explaining odd local place names like Rhyd-y-gloch, ford of the bell.</p>
<p>Divine retribution swallowing up churches whose parishioners blaspheme or "mock God" is a recurring theme. Or bells are lost in transit when a "workman" leading oxen pulling the bells utters a profane oath. One such phantom church bell sounds on Christmas Eve from Bomere Pool in Shrewsbury, although there's no evidence there was ever a church there. Nor is there evidence of a church ever existing at Bell Hole, in marshes at Tunstall, Norfolk, whose phantom bells send up bubbles as the church sinks towards Hell. Bells transported by ship from Forrabury, Cornwall were allegedly sunk by the hand of God after a captain ridiculed a priest who crossed himself, they are now said to ring beneath the waves.</p>
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<P><b>The mighty North Sea at Dunwich has claimed at least 11 of the town's churches and some satellite chapels as well.</b></P>
<p>An especially tenuous church-destroyed-by-God's-wrath tale comes from Coningsby, Lincolnshire, whose bells supposedly peal on the anniversary of its destruction. A natural rock formation there slightly resembles the rubble of a church.</p>
<P>Mermaids also appear in phantom bell traditions. Every Easter Sunday a mermaid rings a bell underwater at Rostherne Mere, Cheshire. A near-identical tale has a mermaid ringing a church bell beneath the River Lugg near Marden, Herefordshire.</P>
<p>Bells sound from an allegedly submerged village church at Kenfig Pool near Bridgend, South Wales. While the sea has claimed a nearby castle, there's no proof there was ever a village there. Nor is there any record of a church having stood at Nigg Bay in the Scottish Highlands, from whose waters a bell is said to gently peal.</p>
<p>Recent research into Very Long Period signals detected underwater with a resonance that can sound like "a large bell" suggests these tales may have something to do with underwater earthquakes, <b>(FT391;17)</b> so a rational explanation may yet be forthcoming.</p>
<p><b>Thanks to Darren Mann of <a href="http://www.paranormaldatabase.com/reports/bells.php">Paranormal Database</a> which has many excellent examples of British phantom bell legends</b></p>
<p><b>A similar article appeared in <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/assets/Discover-Dunwich/discover-dunwich-colour-FINAL-half-term-dates-02-19.pdf"><i>Discover Dunwich</i>, newsletter of Dunwich Museum.</b></p>
<p>SOURCES:</p>
<p><i>Dunwich, Suffolk</i>, Jean and Stewart Bacon, Segment publications, Marks Tey, 1975, 1988</p>
<p><i>Lost Lands and Sunken Cities</i> Nigel Pennick, Fortean Tomes, London 1987</p>
<p><i>The Search for Dunwich: City</i> under the sea, Jan and Stuart Bacon, Segment, 1979, 2008</p>
<p>Shipden <a href="http://www.escapetoexplore.co.uk/pasttimes/pt-shipden.htm">Shipden</a></p>
<p><i>Welsh Folklore and Legends</i>, L.A. Simmonds, James Pike Ltd, St Ives 1975</p>
<p><a href="https://campanologywales.weebly.com/llanwonno.html#">Campanology Wales</a></p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bells_of_Aberdovey_(song)">The bells of Aberdovey</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www/pitt.edu/~dash/ashliman.htm"><i>Sunken Bells – Legends of Christiansen Type 7070</i></a>, ed. D L Ashliman, 2013</p>
<p>Dunwich Museum, Dunwich, Suffolk, was closed due to COVID-19 at the time of writing, but now reopen! Monday-Sunday 11.30-4.30 until the end of October, entry by donation, for opening hours <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk">www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/</a>
Twitter: <a href="https://www/twitter.org.uk/discoverdunwich">@DiscoverDunwich</a></p>
<p><b>Matt Salusbury is a regular contributor to Fortean Times and a Trustee and volunteer of Dunwich Museum</b></p>
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-40931343995139325462020-08-05T15:34:00.001-07:002020-08-05T15:36:15.887-07:00Phantom Dunwich bells in Fortean Times 386, on sale 13 August<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-12h0e90kKs8/XysyB_4eLPI/AAAAAAAACTI/yavcFc2SuN8sOlbL_xPyCty_j4l0ZPwcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/8A5740DA-6343-40FB-A059-BAC0C7EDC490.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-12h0e90kKs8/XysyB_4eLPI/AAAAAAAACTI/yavcFc2SuN8sOlbL_xPyCty_j4l0ZPwcQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/8A5740DA-6343-40FB-A059-BAC0C7EDC490.jpeg" width="160" height="400" data-original-width="640" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
<br />
My survey of phantom bell traditions and unlikely tales of the sound of tolling bells heard beneath the waves - from Dunwich and elsewhere - will feature in <a href="http://www.forteantimes.com"><i>Fortean Times</i></a>, issue <b>FT386</b>, on sale 13 August or hitting your doormat sooner if you are a subscriber. <br />
<br />
A similar article appeared in <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/assets/Discover-Dunwich/discover-dunwich-colour-FINAL-half-term-dates-02-19.pdf">issue 1 of <i>Discover Dunwich</i></a>, newsletter of <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk">Dunwich Museum.</a> <br />
<br />
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-30782965930712896562020-08-05T15:23:00.002-07:002020-08-05T15:23:41.761-07:00My photos appear in the History Channel's Ancient Monster Quest special In Search of Woodwoses... I think!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RhJOagnbOmM/XystL2uzguI/AAAAAAAACS8/0_qsKY2J0xI6hWPmV-oNMMCsAbTJv3s3ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/F55817F5-7C49-4BE9-8A6C-8CB4E0BF0E69.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RhJOagnbOmM/XystL2uzguI/AAAAAAAACS8/0_qsKY2J0xI6hWPmV-oNMMCsAbTJv3s3ACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/F55817F5-7C49-4BE9-8A6C-8CB4E0BF0E69.jpeg" width="300" height="400" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
<b><br />
Woodwose on a font in Barking church, near Wickham Market, Suffolk, one of three possibly used by The History Channel(?) - see below</b>.<br />
<br />
Three of my photos of <a
href="http://mattsalusbury.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-woodwoses-of-suffolk.html">woodwoses</a> (wildmen) appear - or will appear, probably(?) in a documentary by The History Channel, a special episode of their <I>Ancient Monster Quest</I> series, with the working title <I>In Search of Woodwoses</I>. Or at least I think they will - in any event I eventually got paid for a licence to use these, by a production company called First Row Films, that seems to be connected to this programme. <br />
<br />
The whole affair is as mysterious as some of the mystery animals I have been investigating. Despite repeated requests for information on when <I>Ancient Monster Quest - In Search of Woodwoses</I> will be broadcast, I have no idea about when it goes out (or whether it already has), nor any other details of the programme. The whole somewhat puzzling saga is <a href="http://www.londonfreelance.org/fl/2008gong.html">here</a>. <br />
<br />
Should you come across any information on <I>In Search of Woodwoses</I>, do let me know.<br />
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-63570600642296233592020-07-27T13:37:00.000-07:002020-07-27T13:40:51.925-07:00My virtual talk for Dunwich Museum - the Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon - Tuesday 11 August 2020<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V-Ta6JyS9ns/Xx868qufX0I/AAAAAAAACSg/lTcx0GomILsXinNzjPcz2x1eoAJe894bACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_1461.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V-Ta6JyS9ns/Xx868qufX0I/AAAAAAAACSg/lTcx0GomILsXinNzjPcz2x1eoAJe894bACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/IMG_1461.JPG" width="480" height="640" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
Dunwich Museum presents a virtual Museum talk via Zoom<br />
<b>6pm, Tuesday 11 August, 2020</b><br />
<b>The Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon, and its close relatives</b><br />
By Matt Salusbury - Trustee and volunteer at Dunwich Museum, journalist, feature writer for <i>BBC History</i> and <i>History Today</i> magazines. <br />
<br />
You are invited to virtually attend a talk with Q & A, with possible participation by staff from the Royal Armouries and other surprise guests.<br />
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The magnificent bronze Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon, discovered and raised from a Spanish Armada warship by Stuart Bacon in the Dunwich Dives during the 1990s, is now on show in Dunwich Museum. <br />
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The talk will look at its origins, how it came to be lost with the failed invasion of England that was the Spanish Armada (1588) and how it found its way to Dunwich Museum – eventually! <br />
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We will also look at some very similar cannons – still in existence – made by the same Belgian gunfounder, Remigy de Halyut, for the armies and navies of the Hapsburg Empire. Some of these, like the Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon, have quite a backstory too!<br />
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<b>Sign-up </b><br />
Email <b>news@dunwichmuseum.org.uk</b> for details of the login, password and meeting ID for this talk, and for news of possible future talks. Please consider making a small - <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/support-and-shop/">donation to Dunwich Museum</a> if you are attending the virtual talk. (To sign up to the Zoom meetings platform if you haven't already, do so <a href="https://zoom.us">here</a>. It's free)<br />
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<b>Museum Updates </b><br />
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Dunwich Museum is now open Wednesday-Sunday 11.30-16.30, social distancing measures apply. The Dunwich Bank Wreck Cannon is on display there, along with some of its cannonballs. Follow <a href="www.twitter.com/discoverdunwich">@DiscoverDunwich</a> and <a href="http://www.instagram.com/dunwichmuseum">Dunwichmuseum on Instagram</a> for future updates<br />
Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-63265266745694707412020-06-26T07:56:00.000-07:002020-06-26T07:56:00.661-07:00Protest for a fair election at Belarus embassy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C5Cjd6RjrIQ/XvYKfweACyI/AAAAAAAACQo/tqdvzH-NC6wN296mhXGBSgIG4cVTIYQrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_4889.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C5Cjd6RjrIQ/XvYKfweACyI/AAAAAAAACQo/tqdvzH-NC6wN296mhXGBSgIG4cVTIYQrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/IMG_4889.jpg" width="288" height="400" data-original-width="586" data-original-height="813" /></a></div><br />
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Belarusians living in the UK protested outside their Embassy in London yesterday (25 June) at the start of the Presidential election campaign. With the three most likely opposition candidates still in jail, and reports of intimidation of supporters of opposition candidates attempting to sign their paperwork to stand in elections, few are expecting anything like a free and fair election. One demonstrator told me that most opposition leaders over the past 25 years have been jailed, gone into exile or disappeared.<br />
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Candidates need 100,000 signatures to stand in the presidential elections. Supporters were queuing in the streets to add their signatures to their candidacies. One candidate, Sergei Tikhanovski, was detained on 6 May after participating in protests at Belarus's strong ties with Russia. His candidacy was "banned". <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--t6Mu-2l-ZA/XvYLqXJq5BI/AAAAAAAACRU/IYbVeDLROcsHcOk-j2isYhKPTvCe5fs2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_4882.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--t6Mu-2l-ZA/XvYLqXJq5BI/AAAAAAAACRU/IYbVeDLROcsHcOk-j2isYhKPTvCe5fs2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/IMG_4882.JPG" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1200" /></a></div>The current president, Aleksander Lukashenko, has been in power for five terms, starting in 1994. He has been the subject of occasional sanctions by the EU and the US over free and fair elections. <br />
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A demonstrator told me that while Belarus has always been a "very patient country", the Covid-19 crisis, and the Lukashenko regime's attempt to downplay the impact of the virus, has brought people out on the streets. Doctors who became whistleblowers on the full extent of the Covid crisis have been arrested. There were chants (in English) of "Enough is enough" at the Embassy demo.<br />
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There were around 50 demonstrators when I turned up, I heard that after I left numbers went up to 200, with another demo planned for Sunday for those Belarusians living in the UK who couldn't make it into Central London on a workday. There were simultaneous demos at other embassies in Europe. <br />
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Some wore traditional white and red Belarus shirts with the traditional embroidered pattern, others had a printed T-shirt version of the same. Others wore "We are the 97 per cent" T-shirts, a reference to two online polls that put support by voting intention of Lukashenko at just 3 per cent. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dNm9N2id6L0/XvYLEIFO1OI/AAAAAAAACQ8/cqZoh_PnIAcw9XG17Q7u2k9r1y8DYfYzwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_4885.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dNm9N2id6L0/XvYLEIFO1OI/AAAAAAAACQ8/cqZoh_PnIAcw9XG17Q7u2k9r1y8DYfYzwCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/IMG_4885.JPG" width="300" height="400" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>Lukashenko has naturally been gathering signatures for his presidential candidacy, with civil servants reportedly intimidated into signing these. Opinion polls without permission from the Academy of Sciences are now banned in Belarus.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tbkzJzWlYkw/XvYLadmLIjI/AAAAAAAACRM/GNeEcUNkYnY6gD6fiY6Ma9Tzh4GHlj_FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/IMG_4877.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tbkzJzWlYkw/XvYLadmLIjI/AAAAAAAACRM/GNeEcUNkYnY6gD6fiY6Ma9Tzh4GHlj_FgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/IMG_4877.jpg" width="300" height="400" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>Some demonstrators had brought with the the white, red and white striped "independence" flag of Belarus, in use in 1918 and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, until its replacement with the current flag in 1995. The current national flag is basically a modified flag of the old Belarusian Soviet Republic with the red star removed.<br />
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A protester told me there were embassy staff among the protesters, it wasn't clear whether they were there keeping an eye on protesters. The Embassy curtains were in any event drawn. A Mongolian diplomat from the Mongolian Embassy next door was watching from the roof. <br />
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The presidential election is on Sunday 9 August. Expect a strong opposition turn-out at the polling station at the Embassy in London.<br />
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Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-44675836191584607202020-06-21T15:10:00.001-07:002020-06-21T15:10:46.637-07:00Discover Dunwich 2<br />
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I edit <i>Discover Dunwich</i>, newsletter of <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk">Dunwich Museum</a>, of which I am also a trustee and volunteer. Issue 2 is now out, it's a Covid-19 coming out of lockdown special. <br />
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The current issue features Stuart Bacon's recollection of discovering the Dunwich Bank Wreck and the remains of Dunwich churches in the Dunwich Dives all those years ago. There's also an archaeology update - a core sample shows that Dunwich was probably already an important port in Saxon times. There's a look at our newly acquired Board of Trade hydrometer and at the Dunwich Bank Wreck cannon's near identical (but better preserved) sibling.<br />
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You can download <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/assets/Discover-Dunwich/discover-dunwich-2-june-2020-3rd-draft-colour.pdf">Issue 2 as a pdf here</a>. <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/assets/Discover-Dunwich/discover-dunwich-colour-FINAL-half-term-dates-02-19.pdf">Issue 1, from 2019, is here</a>. <br />
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Dunwich Museum is still closed due to Covid-19. The trustees are developing a Risk Assessment aimed at some sort of social distancing re-opening soon (possibly allowing in only one party at a time). We can't give a date yet. Meanwhile, <a href="https://twitter.com/discoverdunwich">@DiscoverDunwich</a> on Twitter showcases the treasures of the Museum online. Watch the <a href="https://twitter.com/discoverdunwich">@DiscoverDunwich</a> account for updates on re-opening.<br />
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The Museum normally earns most of its income from donations from visitors, but there have been none this year. It is short of cash, please consider <a href="http://www.dunwichmuseum.org.uk/support-and-shop/">making a donation</a>.Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-20091969413334819922020-06-21T12:07:00.000-07:002020-06-21T12:17:07.306-07:00The Body of a Mighty Giant from Deposits magazineMy article - co-authored with Tim Holt Wilson – on "The Body of a Mighty Giant" is in the latest issue of <i>Deposits</i> magazine. It tells the story of the bones of a "giant" dug up in 1651 in Brockford Bridge, Suffolk and offers a possible palaeontological explanation. It surveys others palaeontological finds from the area. It's <a href="https://depositsmag.com/2020/06/05/body-of-a-mighty-giant/">here</a>. <a href="https://depositsmag.com/"><i>Deposits</i></a> is produced by <a href="https://www.ukge.com/">UKGE</a>, the UK's largest geology equipment and fossils and minerals supplier in the UK, based in Reydon, Suffolk.<br />
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It's behind a paywall, but I will publish the article here when the First British Serial rights expire and the copyright reverts to Tim and I.<br />
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<b>Skull of an African forest elephant (<i>Loxodonta africana cyclotis</i>) in the Grant Zoology Museum, UCL, London</b><br />
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Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-79086568507712522992020-06-21T11:46:00.001-07:002020-06-21T11:46:24.888-07:00An attempt to get a COVID-19 testI ACCOMPANIED a friend who went to get a COVID-19 test in London, or tried to.<br />
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My friend was a teaching assistant in a school in Enfield, who was teaching children for vulnerable families who still attended school during the lockdown. Except most of them didn't, their parents didn't want them to go to school. He ended up spending most of his workdays on the phone to parents at home, and devising activities for the kids to do at home. A couple of months before, he'd lost his sense of smell, it was only gradually coming back. This being the most obvious symptom of COVID, I persuaded him to get himself checked out before a return to school, just so he was covered if anything happened, he could say, "I told you so."<br />
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We had often gone for lockdown bike rides together along the Regent Canal and the River Lea (keeping 2m apart), and on this occasion my friend announced he'd booked a slot for a COVID test, that was going to be in Lea Valley Park, in Edmonton, not far from the IKEA. The Lea Valley Park is just off the River Lea towpath, so he thought he'd check in for his test after a nice bike ride. I said I'd go too, and wait outside.<br />
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When we got there we found it was - surprise, surprise - a bit of a shambles. Firstly, it was DRIVE-IN only. That's right, in a city where at the last estimate, 30 per cent of households owned a car. Most of these 30 per cent of our vast city are in the suburbs, car ownership (or access to a car, via a car club) is much less in the inner city. This is also a city that has been actively discouraging car ownership and car use for at least the last 20 years. The staff (typically untrained and unprepared) blamed "the company" - another example of government outsourcing to private companies clearly not up to the job. Staff suggested my friend should ring a cab and get the cab to drive them the very short distance through the drive-in. Did they have any numbers for local cab companies? No.<br />
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My friend gave up, and went back to teach not knowing whether he had Covid or not. Properly briefed staff could have told him that an antibody test, rather than a test for whether he still had COVID, was coming soon and would be more appropriate anyway.<br />
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<b>A man on his bike turns up at the coronavirus testing centre at Lea Valley Park, London. Note that the member of staff (in reflective vest) is not wearing a mask.</b><br />
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Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8744112993973771938.post-83676758823199792002020-06-21T11:14:00.000-07:002020-06-21T12:17:29.551-07:00Waiting for CummingsIT TURNS out I live five minutes away from Ockenden Road, home of Dominic Cummings, controversial special adviser to the Prime Minister. I knew he had to live somewhere in Islington, because early on in the controversy around his eye-test road trip to Durham, news footage of him showed a street that had those distinctive Georgian houses you get round here that scream "Islington."<br />
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I stumbled across Cummings's street by accident. Walking to the shops on Essex Road one day, I came across this graffiti scrawled across Tesco's. My first thought was, ah, this must be where Dominic Cummings lives. <br />
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Sure enough, the right turn off Essex Road opposite the graffiti was Ockenden Road, and down the bottom of the street on the right was a house with outside it two of the most polite cops you could imagine. There was a car-load of photographers with their long lens cameras out on the street immediately outside. They were looking bored - it was early afternoon so no one was expecting Cummings for a while. <br />
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I came back in the evening in the forlorn hope I might catch a glimpse of Cummings and the circus around him. I wasn't actually that interested in Cummings himself, more in talking to my photographer colleagues to see how they were getting on. As Chair of <a href="http://www.londonfreelance.org/flindex.html">NUJ London Freelance Branch</a> I was aware that some of them had lost all their work, I wanted to find out from them as they stood around waiting what it like working during Covid for those who were still working. <br />
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There were a half dozen or so photographers around, talking to the very polite cops. They were from Camden nick, a police station whose beat is the boundary of Islington and Camden. They seemed quite media savvy, when I asked them whether there was Section 60 Public Order Act order in force in the street, they said they were "unaware" of any such order and directed me to the Met press website. They seemed used to checking Press Cards courteously. When their colleague strolled up to have a word with them, it was "Evening, gents!" to the press pack. (A colleague had heard a rumour that a Section 60 had been declared in Ockenden Road, which turned out to be baseless.)<br />
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There was a van full of Paddington Green cops that was parked round the corner in Southgate Road. (Ockenden Road is right on the edge of Canonbury, in the "bit of Islington that thinks it's Hackney" in the words of my Islingtonian brother.) A plainclothes cop with a rather obvious radio and a rather more obvious Met Police stab vest on appeared on the corner of Southgate Road. Later, a red Diplomatic Protection Squad van cruised very slowly around Ockenden Road and surrounding streets. It had tinted windows so I had no idea whether it was full of coppers or not.<br />
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Photographers I was with on the Cummings stake-out were mostly from agencies such as Associated Press, or outlets such as Sky News website. One of them said that their sports writers had all been furloughed, while the sports photographers had been transferred to news photography. With nothing coming out of sports or the cultural and showbusiness beat, there was a need for more straight "news" to fill pages. Photographers were getting calls from their sports photographer colleagues at railway stations, asking what the deal was about byelaws on filming or photographing people at stations. They'd never done this sort of work before. Their regular news colleague were happy to help.<br />
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There were a few protesters waiting over the road, some of whom were clearly Cummings's neighbours. From WhatsApp traffic on my local Mutual Aid Group (MAG), it seems that some of the MAG activists live in Ockenden Road. When the Black Lives Matter thing started, people from the MAG were prominent in organising a "die-in" in Ockenden Road around the disproportionate numbers of BAME Covid-19 deaths <br />
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Cummings seemed to be working late at the office that night, I gave up waiting for him to show and went home at about 8.30. Not long after that, from my garden I heard a wail of police sirens coming up Essex Road, and heard a police helicopter overhead. I realised that these were sounds I'd heard every evening for the past few days. Matt Salusburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09622616795878998427noreply@blogger.com0