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Novelty and Amusement? Visiting the Georgian Country House
Article
The best-known country house visit in literature is that to Pemberley of Elizabeth Bennet, accompanied by her uncle and aunt Gardiner. Few events make better costume drama: personal and class unease, historic dress and carriages, grand house and landscape park. But beneath the tension of Elizabeth’s unexpected meeting with Darcy,...
Novelty and Amusement? Visiting the Georgian Country House
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My Favourite History Place: David Pearse explores St Petersburg
Historian feature
If you want to understand Russian history from Peter the Great up to at least the 1917 Revolutions, you have to visit St Petersburg. Like Versailles, St Petersburg was built for an absolute monarch, on an unsuitable site, at the cost of many labourers' lives. Unlike Versailles, it was designed...
My Favourite History Place: David Pearse explores St Petersburg
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My Favourite History Place: Petra
Historian feature
Ghislaine Headland-Vanni visits the ancient city of Petra, in Jordan.
When you hear the word ‘Petra’ what images does the word conjure up for you? Maybe you have visited and know it already; if not, then like me you may not fully comprehend its size. I naively thought I could...
My Favourite History Place: Petra
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My Favourite History Place: Llanelly House and Saint Elli’s Church
Historian feature
There are so many delightful places of historical interest in Wales that it is very difficult to select just one or two as favourites but among contenders must be those visited by the Pontllanfraith Branch of the Gwent Historical Association in August 2018...
My Favourite History Place: Llanelly House and Saint Elli’s Church
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Out and About in Runnymede
Historian feature
The Runnymede area is rich in historical associations. Nigel Saul looks at other places of interest near where King John gave his assent to the Charter in 1215.
The birthplace of our democratic heritage is a broad meadow on the banks of the lower Thames near the meeting-point between Surrey...
Out and About in Runnymede
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Out and About in Upper Weardale
Historian feature
Tony Fox introduces us to two battlefields and the work of the Battlefields Trust.
Stanhope takes its name from the ‘stony valley’ in which it sits. It is the most significant town in beautiful Upper Weardale. Like many towns in this area Stanhope’s growth accelerated in the nineteenth century as...
Out and About in Upper Weardale
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Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
Historian feature
Sylvia Usher explores a hidden gem in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Wenceslaus Hollar’s map of seventeenth century Hull can be a street guide for the Old Town even today. Modern Hull sprawls along the Humber estuary with residential areas fanning out for three miles or more. Hull as it was...
Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
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Presenting Naseby
Historian article
The summer of 2007 saw the completion of new visitor facilities on and near the battlefield of Naseby. The two locations are the first to be created since the Cromwell Monument was finished in 1936 and they stand more than 5km (3 miles) apart, one of them 2km south-east of...
Presenting Naseby
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Out and about in Tamworth
Historian feature
Trevor James introduces the wider context in which Tamworth’s history has developed.
Modern-day visitors to Tamworth immediately observe its very extensive out-of-town shopping areas and industrial estates and then, in stark parallel, notice that the signage is welcoming them to the capital of historic Mercia. Investigating this conundrum is the...
Out and about in Tamworth
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My Favourite History Place - All Saint's Church, Harewood
Historian feature
Harewood House, a few miles north of Leeds, attracts many historically-minded visitors to enjoy the work of Adam, Chippendale and Capability Brown but to my mind the real treasures of Harewood lie elsewhere. After negotiating the payment booths take the path immediately on your right, leading to the redundant church...
My Favourite History Place - All Saint's Church, Harewood
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Out & About in Laxton
Historian feature
Where is Laxton?
The village is in north Nottinghamshire, formerly called Lexington (Lexitune). The village is based around the Church of St Michael and, of course, its hostelry, the Dovecote Inn. Most of the farms are properties which are long and thin and they have "closes" which stretch back from...
Out & About in Laxton
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My Favourite History Place: Tivoli Theatre
Historian feature
The Tivoli Theatre opened on 24 August 1936 with Jean Adrienne in Father O’Flynn and Shirley Temple in Kid in Hollywood, with film star Jean Adrienne appearing in person. It was designed by Bournemouth-based architect E. de Wilde Holding. The front of the building was an existing Georgian-style building named Borough House. Inside the auditorium there...
My Favourite History Place: Tivoli Theatre
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Out and about in Nottingham
Historian feature
There were people living in Nottinghamshire as far back as 40,000 BC, as excavations in the limestone caves at Cresswell Crags (near Worksop) have proved. Much later, when the Romans came, they drove two roads through parts of the county – the Fosse Way to the South, with associated developments...
Out and about in Nottingham
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Exploring the Cornish Religious Landscape
Historian article
The Cornish religious landscape shares one particularly significant feature with its Welsh neighbour to the north. The Celtic tendency to dedicate churches to very local saints is very strong in both Cornwall and Wales, with the church dedications frequently being mirrored by the place name. This similarity is, to an...
Exploring the Cornish Religious Landscape
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Durham
Article
Emeritus Professor G. R. Batho a personal perspective on the city of the prince bishops. We all have highly personal impressions of the towns and cities with which we are familiar. Few readers of The Historian are likely to emulate the good lady who hearing that I was leaving the...
Durham
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Out and about in Holderness
Historian feature
East of Hull lies Holderness, a twohundred square mile portion of the former East Riding of Yorkshire, extending from Hornsea in the north to Spurn Head and flanked by the river Humber and the North Sea. It is a very fertile tract of rich agricultural countryside but it is particularly...
Out and about in Holderness
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My Favourite History Place - Sackville College, East Grinstead
Historian feature
Sackville College almshouse in East Grinstead, Sussex, was founded in 1609, by Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset, when he wrote his will. He died 17 days later without seeing one stone laid, yet the College still stands, providing affordable accommodation for local elderly people of limited means. It is...
My Favourite History Place - Sackville College, East Grinstead
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Liverpool's revolutionary Old Dock
Visit
If you want to get up close to history, Liverpool's revolutionary Old Dock – the world's first commercial enclosed wet dock – opened in May 2010 as the city's latest historic attraction, with free ticketed tours for schools and members of the public starting from Merseyside Maritime Museum. For the first time...
Liverpool's revolutionary Old Dock
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Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
Historian feature
The Somerset town of Taunton featured prominently in the highly significant political and religious conflicts of the seventeenth century. Isabella Peach examines Taunton’s role in these events and the impact they had on the town. Her article is based on her winning entry in the 2023 Young Historian Post-16 Local...
Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
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Out and About in Stockholm
Historian feature
When Désirée Clary – wife of French Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte – arrived in Stockholm in 1811, she was appalled. It was true that she would eventually become Queen Desideria of Sweden and Norway, her husband having been elected heir-presumptive to the throne the previous year. But she left her new capital...
Out and About in Stockholm
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Cambridge
Article
Elisabeth Leedham-Green reflects on reality in the famous university town of Cambridge. This is a sharp place, best encountered when, as surprisingly often, the sun is shining and there is frost in the air. Then the stone sparkles and seems to float a few inches above the gleaming grass —...
Cambridge
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My Favourite History Place: The Beguinage at Bruges
Historian feature
Richard Stone introduces us to a quiet neighbourhood in Bruges which has played its part in the development of women’s independence.
Close to the Minnewaterpark, on the fringe of the bustling historic centre of Bruges, with its medieval buildings and atmospheric cobbled streets, the Beguinage is a tranquil haven. Cross the...
My Favourite History Place: The Beguinage at Bruges
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Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
Historian feature
Dave Martin follows Charles Darwin’s journey from university back to his birthplace, Shrewsbury.
Cambridge
The bronze statue of Darwin as a young man perches elegantly on the arm of a garden bench in the grounds of Christ’s College, Cambridge where he was a student from 1829 to 1831. Of this...
Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
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My Favourite History Place - Poperinge
Historian feature
Poperinge is a cheerful place. It is a cheerfulness which defies its location yet resonates with its history. It is a small town just ten kilometres west of Ypres and all around is the debris and memorabilia of slaughter. Yet somehow Poperinge is a cheerful place. It is a community...
My Favourite History Place - Poperinge
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Out and about in the Trent Valley
Historian feature
In the muddy corner of a field fringing Biddulph Moor in North Staffordshire, a small fenced enclosure surrounds Trent Head, ‘official' source of the River Trent (SJ905 579). In truth, any of a handful of springs that rise nearby might serve. Pilgrims are well advised to equip themselves with Wellington...
Out and about in the Trent Valley
