Fings ain't where they used to be, or A Kestrel for a King

I was chauffeuring Son the Elder to a roboteering event in Leicestershire yesterday, and as it wasn't far from Coventry where Son the Younger now works, we decided to meet up. I don't know that part of the country at all well, but as it happens my publishers, Ronnie and Dawn of Indigo Dreams, used to live in the next village, and gave me lots of suggestions for places to visit, from which we chose the Bosworth Battlefield trail. First, though, a battle with the car parking meter at Sutton Wharf, which was refusing to issue tickets.

On, then, along the Ashby canal for a short way - just far enough, in fact, to admire a very bold kestrel which passed quite close by us ... 

... and this piece of spalted wood which turned out to be not spalted at all, but faux-crackled with some sort of blackened vegetation ... 

... before turning up through Ambion wood to the Visitor Centre. Inexplicably, Son the Younger decided to rely on my largely fanciful grasp of history instead of the carefully curated exhibition, so after admiring the Earl Shilton stone coffin (Earl Shilton being a place, not a person), which was believed for many years to be that of King Richard III and which has Romano-British tool marks on its side ... 

... and the stocks ... 

... we decided to start the battlefield walk. Now, the problem with history is that it often happened a long time ago, and there's no one alive from 1485 to say with any precision just where Bosworth Field was. And so after more than 220 years of thinking you know exactly where it was, and just when you have got your marker stone set up ...

 

... some bright spark discovers the inconvenient truth that it wasn't there at all, and gets loads of plaudits, while you're left with a massive boulder marking the wrong spot altogether.

It's even worse when you've established the Heritage Centre in a 14th century tithe barn that's handily nearby, and stuck your flagpoles up with your Yorkist and Tudor flags ...

... and hell's teeth, even built your Richard III sundial with commemorative thrones. 

Now, after centuries of mistaken celebration, Ambion Hill has been returned to arable use. 

Down at Shenton Station we saw a diesel train advertising the rather optimistic destination of Scarborough. (It actually goes just a few miles up the track to Shackerstone.) 

We walked back towards Sutton Wharf along Shenton cutting, which is no longer in use.

A short detour past the turning to the canal takes you to what is currently believed to be the site of the battlefield, where, on 22nd August 1485, Henry Tudor's small rebel army defeated the much larger Royal army of King Richard III, with Richard hemmed in by marsh and cut down 'in the thickest press of his foes'. 

I think the historians might have the right location this time, as the reedmace in the far corner looks like spears coming into view.

Marsh marigold

Back at Sutton Wharf, we watched the kestrel which was still hunting and ate lunch outside in the sun. After a bit it started to snow. We vacated the seats by the cafe and watched the driver of a hire boat hurtle into view, scraping the boat along the concrete edge of the tow path. 

By now shift-working son was getting sleepy, so we headed back to robot land, and I read in the car till it was time to set off for home. Another small jaunt in this time of pandemic. I'll take what I can get. 

Walking the Water Meadows and Bloody Meadows of Tewkesbury

Finding myself at a loose end in Gloucester for a few hours the other day, I went on a long-standing pilgrimage to Brockhampton-by-Ross (more about that anon), before making for Tewkesbury. 

I've been to the abbey as recently as 2010 - which isn't recent at all, come to think of it - but I'd never explored the historic centre of the town, so that's what I decided to do. 

It's the confluence of the Rivers Avon and Severn that informs the town, of course, so I headed there, crossing the Mill Avon (a 12th century diversion by monks of part of the Avon to power their mill) onto Severn Ham, an area of water meadow that reminded me very much of the Lammas Lands in Godalming.

Here's a glimpse of the Avon ...

... and here's a man singing where the two rivers meet. Maybe he's serenading the goddess, Hafren/Sabrina.

The Abbey is ever present as you walk around the town.   

It was all very pleasant but I was on a bit of a schedule as far as daylight was concerned, so I headed back for town, crossing the Mill Avon by the mill itself. 

It's here you start to get an idea of how the town floods so easily. How this ... 

... becomes this.

Or indeed this. 

I had another inundation on my mind, though - that of the Yorkist army of Edward IV who in 1471 routed the Lancastrians here, killing Edward, Prince of Wales, while his father, Henry VI, languished in the Tower. 

Henry was (probably) murdered shortly afterwards, and Edward IV re-crowned king.

The battlefield is rather predictably known as Bloody Meadow. I doubt even these magnificent oaks were there then. Just the Abbey and the little River Swilgate lined by the ancestors of the scrubby willows there today.

My route led me through the local cemetery, where the light was spectacular. 

Life casts a long shadow

Then it was back onto the battlefield by another entrance. 

Getting dark now, though, and time to head back to Gloucester. I'll revisit the Abbey next time. 

Creeping Like A Snail Unwillingly To School

The school Shakespeare attended from the age of about seven to fourteen was housed in the town's half-timbered guildhall, which was built by the nediaeval Guild of the Holy Cross about 150 years before Shakespeare was born.  The building still stands and forms part of the King Edward VI School.  As such it is open only rarely to the public ... 

... which is why, when we spotted a trestle table and several slightly morose schoolboy guides hanging about the entrance, we had to go in.  

The downstairs hall, which in1553 had been taken over by the newly formed town council and used for administrative purposes, would orignally have been painted a dull red.  Some traces of figures on the walls remain. 

The bottom left hand corner of this photo shows wattle that forms part of the wall.

Also in 1553, the upper hall had become the schoolroom of Stratford Grammar School.  Only boys were taught there, of course; about 40 altogether.  They sat on wooden benches arranged facing each other along either side of the room, rather than at the ancient (but not ancient enough) and heavily carved desks that fill it now. 

Our guide told us that papers found in the Muniments Room indicated that the school's most illustrious pupil had sat at the front of the class on the left hand side of the room.  

I have a healthy suspicion of papers found in such places, as the Muniments Room at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol was where Thomas Chatterton famously 'forged' his Thomas Rowley poems.  

However, if Will had sat there and if he had been able to turn in his seat and look out of the window without his teacher rapping his knuckles with a ruler, his view would have looked something like this. 

The Elizaethan curriculum consisted mainly of the study of Latin, a little Greek, and mathematics.  At the end of each term, the older boys would have put on performances of plays by the classical Greek and Roman playwrights.  Travelling actors visiting the town would also have put on performances here - and so here are the seeds that found such fertile ground in Shakepeare's imagination.

In the adjoining room, the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York illustrate the town's claim to neutrality during the Wars of the Roses. 

'And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.'

As You Like It