Bannockburn and Canterbury, the Ups and Downs

It's up and down the British Isles for this one. In May 2023 work took me to Stirling in Scotland where I stayed in accomodation at the University.

The site of the Battle of Bannockburn was less than two miles away so on the evening of my arrival I nipped down the road to have a look. The photo shows the flagpole in the centre of the Bannockburn Monument - not quite surrounded by a circular wall as it has two sections of wall facing each other with the two other quarters of the circle left open.

The battle was fought over two days, 23-24 June 1314 following the two opposing sides, Scottish under King Robert the Bruce and English under King Edward II having camped on either side of what would become the battlefield. The photo shows a 1964 statue of Robert the Bruce in armour and mounted on a war horse. His skull, re-discovered at Dunfermline Abbey in 1818, was used in modelling the head.

On day one of the battle King Robert, not yet fully armed but dressed for reconnaisance and armed only with an axe, was spotted by Sir Henry de Bohun, the nephew of the Earl of Hereford, who had charge of one of King Edward's cavalry divisions. De Bohun, in full armour and armed with a lance, charged King Robert but being on a lighter horse, Robert dodged the lance and on passing, swung his axe at de Bohun's head, killing him.

A view of Stirling Castle - the white building in the distance - from the battlefield. At the end of the first day of battle the English had retreated across the line of the Bannockburn stream and unknown to them their position and weakness of morale were reported to King Robert by Sir Alexander Seton, a Scottish knight who had been in the service of King Edward II.

On day two the English were surprised to see Scottish pikemen advancing in formation towards them. The Earl of Gloucester tried to persuade Edward to postpone the battle but was accused of cowardice by the king. Outraged he advanced towards the enemy, was surrounded and killed. The Scots drove the English back and the English and Welsh longbows were ordered to stop firing as their own comrades were being killed by their arrows. An attempt to flank the Scots was thwarted by King Robert's cavalry. King Edward was forcibly led away from the field by his bodyguard including Giles d'Argentan, who once having Edward clear of danger insisted on returning to the field as "...never yet have I fled from battle..." He charged back at the Scots and was killed.

Robert the Bruce won a decisive victory. Perhaps of 16,000 troops under King Edward some 11,000 were killed either at the battle or during their retreat. Since my visit the Visitor Centre was rebuilt in 2014. Since then the view of historians has been that it was in the wrong place anyway and that the most likely place for the battle is a mile and a half away to the east... Sorry for wasting your time with these photos...!

We jump to June 2003 and I found myself in Canterbury in Kent at the University. Why, I'm not sure - for some reason I made no note as to whether this was for a conference, an event specifically for the university, or to present a training course for the Regional Support Centre for the South East region. I could spot the towers of Canterbury Cathedral from the university and decided to walk - I'll just repeat that for dramatic effect - WALK there AND BACK! all the way down into the city.

I have to report that going down was easier than walking back uphill...

Work Index

Durham and the Battle of Neville's Cross

Tuesday 24 June 2003. I was staying in Durham for the night to speak at a conference on the following day.

It turned out that it was Durham University's Graduation Day and so the usual hotels I would use were all fully booked and I stayed at the Brown's Three Tuns Hotel on New Elvet, a road running alongside the line of the River Wear. Apparently it is now student accomodation apartments.

I had recently read a book that featured the Battle of Neville's Cross which took place on 17 October 1346. It was the second Scottish War of Independence and also fell within the 100 Years War that England was embroiled in with France. The site of the battle was only half a mile away so I set off to walk to it, not knowing whether or not there was anything to see in the way of memorials, significant street names etc.

This tree is all I found. Planted by the Neville's Cross Over 60s Club on the 650th anniversary of the battle.

I perhaps should have done a bit more research, but I knew the bare bones of the battle - King Edward III was in France with 15,000 troops and the French King Philip VI begged the Scottish King David II (son of Robert the Bruce) to invade northern England in order that Edward might withdraw troops from France, whilst thinking that the bulk of the English army was in France.

The Scottish invaded but the English still mustered an army of between 6,000-7,000 men as those in France were all from towns south of the River Humber. Men from Lancashire, Yorkshire and Northumbria had been spared the call to arms to keep the border with Scotland safe.

The English longbowmen played a valiant part in the battle. Although for many it would have been their first battle, the Lancastrian bowmen (yay!) were outstanding and after the battle were each awarded £10 (ten pounds stirling being the equivalent of £9,990 in 2023 value). As I walked back, I found this long street called Archery Rise.

I was intending to visit Durham Cathedral, but by the time I got back there it was closed. University students, dressed in their graduation robes were congregating with their parents in tow and celebrations went on into the night - as I heard from the street outside my bedroom window!

Work Index

Culloden Battlefield and a Folk Museum

It's Friday morning, 23 June 2023 and we set off for a two-hour drive from our hotel at Loch Tummel almost to Inverness to visit the battle site of Culloden. "Who was fighting?" asked someone who should have paid more attention in her History classes. "I think it was the French..." came a reply. Steve the driver was too busy driving (or laughing) to reply so I chirrupped up. "It was the Scots and the English, the French had sent a few to fight on the Scottish side and England won. It was the end of the 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie rebellion..." (a few murmers of recollection at that point) "...and it was the last big battle to be fought on English soil." (a burst of laughter at that!) "I mean British soil!" I hastily amended. Just testing you...

Sadly this is the only one of my photos of the visit as we spent most of the time looking around the excellent museum which had a surround movie showing on all four walls and a large ginger-haired Scotsman demonstrating how the Scots charged with swords and shields and just a few firearms against the massed cannon and Brown Bess muskets of the English.

This was the last battle on 16 April 1746 of the Jacobite Rebellions - Jacobite because the English had invited the Protestant William of Orange to be King William III, deposing the catholic King James II, whose name in Latin would be Jacoba. This was an event some 57 years in the past by the time of Culloden. During that time King William III had ruled together with Queen Mary II and subsequently on his own, then came Queen Anne, then George I and at time of battle King George II was on the throne. (It was early morning, after all...)

Consequently the English had had time to form a counter-action to the Scots' habit of knocking aside a musket and bayonet with their small round shields, known as targes with a backhand motion, to plunge a sword forward to kill their foe. At Culloden instead of trying to kill the enemy in front of them the English thrust their bayonets at the enemy attacking the soldier to the right.

The battlefield has been preserved almost exactly as it was in 1746, the only difference being the long grass, which would have been grazed by cattle and goats in 1746. To combat this some Shetland cattle and British primitive goats have been introduced to help return the site to a short-cropped surface. Red flags denote the English lines whilst blue ones (vaguely visible to the left and further to the left of the red flag - at least the poles are) denote the Jacobite lines which included some French regiments and Irish picquets. Charles Edward Stuart - Bonnie Prince Charlie - was behind the Jacobite line.

I've zoomed in a bit here and added pointy fingers to show the flagpoles of the Scottish line. The battle started with artillery fire at long range. The cannon fired round shot but at extreme range they were unlikely to kill or wound more than one person per shot. As the Scottish charge got closer the English turned to firing canister - literally a can filled with musket balls that, when fired, spread the balls out like a shotgun effect. This caused devastation amongst the Scottish army. The battle lasted just one hour and resulted in around 50 deaths and 200 wounded English whilst the Scots and their allies suffered 1500-2000 killed or wounded. The hunting down of men as an aftermath of the battle in an attempt to destroy the clan system earned the English commander, the Duke of Cumberland (King George II's younger son) the nickname of 'Butcher' Cumberland.

In years past, I would have loved to walk the battlefield. Sadly I'm no longer as sprightly as I used to be. Cairns mark the dead of the various clans, French batallion and English. The battlefield is a designated war grave. In recent years there have been instances of people climbing on, even picnicking on the cairns and leaving litter. If you visit, please don't be such a prat. Though I suspect few such prats read this blog...

From Culloden we go to Aviemore for lunch. This ski resort has become very fashionable but mainly only since the chair lift was installed in 1961. As such it has the aspect of a modern town despite having been occupied since the Bronze Age. There are stone circles nearby but we didn't see them. I had only pottered about the museum and then gone around the corner to take the photo of the battle site, but it was enough to tire me out for a while. So we were mainly only interested in having some lunch and ended up in a Costa just a few yards from the coach. A couple of women were seen by other passengers heading into a cafe to order a meal with only 15 minutes to go and with a 10 minute walk back to the coach. The other passengers reminded them of this fact. "Oh it won't matter," one said. Steve had to go and drag them out. I mean - who would think themselves so important that they would be willing to deliberately make 40 other people wait for them?

After Aviemore we go to the Highland Folk Museum at Newtonmore. They have Highland cattle, reindeer and a collection of old buildings that have been carefully catalogued, demolished and transported here for rebuilding. (Er, that's the buildings, not the animals...) As can be imagined, there wasn't too much daylight getting into this building which required waddling with stooped head to get in and out.

A grocery shop with a tiny Post Office built onto the side as a lean-to. We indulged in a quarter of chocolate raisins from a huge collection of sweetie jars... We know how to live dangerously!

A Highland coo. The gent is Andrew who, along with his wife, occupied both the seats opposite us on the coach behind the driver and at our dining table for breakfast and evening meals. The coo acted like most horned animals do when I am anywhere in the vicinity and made for me, trying to appear nonchalant until the last moment when it reached the fencing and tried to stretch over wanting me to interact. What the heck do you do with a Highland coo anyway? Those horns could do damage and the nose was far too slobbery to stroke...

Another dark cottage, though this one did have some windows to allow a bit of light to get in. There just wasn't all that much light to get in at this point and in fact not long after this we headed for the coach as it began to rain. We headed back to the Loch Tummel Hotel. Memories of the deranged BT Open Reach van driver of the other night were re-invoked going down the winding road, but this time it was a very heavily-laden wagon and trailer of tree trunks from the Scottish logging industry that nearly wiped us out.

Many thanks to Steve, our driver and David, the manager of the hotel and all those who made the holiday such a pleasant one. We had been the first ones on the coach on the first morning and we were the last ones to leave it once we got back home. I had gone on the microphone - yes little shy me, who would have thought... - to give a vote of thanks to Steve before we released our first fellow travellers back into the wild at Penrith. Until the next time...

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Lincoln, Castle and City

Wednesday 26 October 2022. The third and final article on our short stay in Lincoln.

If you have been reading these articles in order, you will know that we spent Wednesday morning inside the cathedral. We came out of the cathedral through the main west entrance overlooking the rear of Exchequer Gate.

Walking through the archways leads us to Exchquer Gate - the area in front of the archway with Steep Hill on the left and Castle Hill directly in front of us.

A cup of tea was what was needed. A small cafe looked inviting and was nicely decorated, but then the drinks came served in cardboard cups. Oh dear... Looking back from Castle Hill to Exchequer Gate and the Cathedral.

The castle grounds were free to enter and walk round. There was a charge of £15 each to go round the buildings and walk on the walls. I wasn't at all sure I was up for climbing up and down spiral staircases so we just had our free entry's worth!

As with so many city castles, Lincoln had retained its use over the centuries as a jail and court. At the opposite end to the main gate through which we had come was today's Crown Courts.

In one corner of the wall a dragon has forced its way into the wall and emerged on the opposite side of the tower known as Cobb Hall. This was a place of execution which saw the deaths by hanging of prisoners take place on the roof.

The castle saw a major battle on 2 February 1141 when during the Anarchy - the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda (aka Maud) - King Stephen's besieging forces were attacked from behind by a force loyal to Maud, led by her half-brother, Robert, the first Earl of Gloucester. They were eventually successful, after a fierce battle at both the castle and in the city streets, King Stephen was captured and taken to Bristol to be imprisoned. Maud assumed the throne for a few months until Stephen was exchanged for Robert of Gloucester who was captured in the Rout of Winchester the following September.

The next battle came in 1217 during the first Barons' War. Prince Louis of France had invaded and proclaimed himself King. Many of England's barons, whose power was diminished due to King John's Magna Carta, supported him until John's death in 1216 when his nine-year-old son, Henry III became king, guided by Sir William Marshall as Regent. In May 1217 Prince Louis had taken the city of Lincoln and was besieging the castle which was held firm for King Henry by a female castellan, Nichola de la Haye. Marshall marched from Stow to the north and gained the north gate of the castle whilst his crossbow men took high positions on the roofs of houses. They rained bolts on the besieging army who were then charged by Sir William's knights and footsoldiers and routed. As it was held that the city had supported Prince Louis by housing his army, the city was sacked and pillaged, this later being cynically referred to as the "Lincoln Fair".

We left this scene of death and destruction and walked (in my case, very gingerly) down Steep Hill. The photo shows the point at which it approaches its steepest point, the posts of its railings can be seen between the groups of people and I walked very slowly holding on with my left hand to the railings and right hand to my walking stick, trying to ignore my back which was saying "What the hell are you doing???" We found a model shop down this stretch and they had a good stock of Hornby and other makes of OO guage model railway locos, rolling stock and accessories.

And so we found ourselves back on High Street, having walked through the Stonebow.

We had lunch and then Miss Franny indulged herself in a bit of shopping before we emerged from a mall onto the River Witham. We were standing on a small pedestrian bridge over the river when something spooked around a million pigeons that were being fed a few yards away. We were not the only ones to duck...

207 High Street is built on the western edge of a bridge over the River Witham. Narrow gaps between it and the adjoining buildings lead down some steps to the banks of the river.

The riverside path takes you underneath a large bridge, wide enough for the path to be known as Brayford Tunnel. A mural has been painted along the walls and the tunnel is both pleasant and smell-free to walk through.

It brings you to Brayford Pool, with a marina and Lincoln University on the southern side and pubs, restaurants and a cinema complex on the north side.

Looking back to the road bridge/tunnel, as you walk west you read "Where are you going?" and now looking east a similar message reads "Where have you been?" I plonked myself on a bench enjoying the weak sunshine and numbing chill factor of the breeze whilst Miss Franny went back through the tunnel to buy herself a pair of boots. "I came out of a different door and had to get my bearings," she said, flicking at the icicles and frozen pigeon droppings that had unknowingly decorated my appendages whilst she had been away...

Before returning to the hotel, we took a stroll back up Bailgate for another cup of tea and to choose somewhere to eat our evening meal. We arrived once more at the Roman Newport Arch and wandered along the narrow street to its right to view the remains of the Roman city wall. Then a couple of hours in the hotel bar lounge where I looked longingly but ultimately and reluctantly self-denyingly at the Guinness pump tap - I'm not now allowed alcohol by doctor's orders. I left the camera in the room whilst we went out for a last meal and walk and we woke on Thursday morning ready to come home, gleefully uncaring that it was chucking it down with rain!

Return to Lincoln City Break, 2022 Index

Wild Hairy Scots With Big Bent Swords

I spent a day up in Edinburgh this week, doing one of the occasional training session I still do for Jisc infoNet. I travelled up the night before and whilst walking up the Royal Mile I had a sudden flashback to a former life as a longbowman at the Battle of Bannockburn with a huge hairy Scot coming at me, waving a sword!

Then I realised it wasn't June 1314, but the last day of April 2014! I blinked. Again... No, there was definitely a huge hairy Scot waving a sword! Only one thing to do in fact.

Say hello, have a chat, take a selfie! Nice guy! Always gets a seat on the bus...

Hodder Bridge and the Crossing of an Army

August 1983 saw me dashing about the Lancashire countryside, avidly snapping away at anything that was falling down, had already fallen down, or had a story to tell.

At the time I had a series, John Burke's Curious Lancashire running every now and then in the bi-monthly magazine Lancashire Magazine.

This is the River Hodder, a tributary of the Ribble. The bridge has obviously seen better days but fits all of my criteria in that parts of it have fallen down, the rest of it looks (though I'm not sure it is) in imminent danger of falling down, and it most certainly has a story to tell.

Across this bridge marched an army. Not just any old army, but an army on their way to a battle. Not just any old battle, but a battle that would change the course of English history.

The army was led by Oliver Cromwell, a name that even today can divide the country. On that day in 1648 his men were on their way to Preston, where they would win a huge victory upon which hung the fate of the Civil War. Following the battle the Royalist cause collapsed. The Parliamentarians called for the King to be brought to trial and six months later he was beheaded at Westminster on such a low block that he was forced to lie prone on his stomach in humiliation.

Return to Curiosities: Bridges Index

Old Sarum

Monday 27 May 1998. Old Sarum - if you know what it is you're looking at - always looks magnificent as you approach it. The ancient hillfort was chosen for its strategic position and commands a view of the surrounding countryside for many miles.

It was a public holiday and we found that there was a visit by the Roman Army who were drilling and displaying. This had two advantages for us: one, we were able to see some of the display and two, when we took time out to explore the site, everyone else was watching the display!

We have a look at the Romans on the next page. Above, we are already standing within the site of the city and looking across to the inner sanctum, the site of the Norman castle.

To get this far there has been a steep climb and we have negotiated (by means of a modern road) the defensive ditches seen above. Imagine running up and down a couple of these, wearing a helmet and carrying sword, shield etc whilst the locals are pelting you with rocks, slingshot, boiling water or oil and nasty pointy things! Before you get to the top you have been hurt and some of your friends are dead. By the time you've got through that ditch the locals have all gone into the inner sanctum, destroying or removing the bridge, and notching a fresh supply of arrows to their bows. If you slip the likelihood is that you will fall onto one of many sharpened stakes and will not be very happy. If you manage to avoid them you will be struck by an idea for putting cubes of cheese on cocktail sticks...

Then you reach the inner sanctum. Ditches fill up with time. This is still deep and treacherous enough to require fencing! At the bottom of the ditch will be sharpened wooden stakes. If you fall going down the side you will be caught on one and have to leave the fun of battle to your mates. On the top of this green bank is a high wooden wall or palisade that must be climbed or broken through once the grassy bank has been climbed. The palisade is lined with unfriendly people. You are starting to invent the term "Bugger this for a game of soldiers..."

Here we see the remains of the royal palace inside the inner sanctum. Immensely strong thick walls of dressed stone over rough rubble and mortar. The ground floor rooms have been packed with earth to ceiling level to make the walls even more impregnable. Knocking a few stones off is not going to make the castle fall down.

The tops of the walls and the narrow windows are full of people shooting the remainder of their arrows and pouring out the heated contents of their plumbing. Over each doorway are death holes. These lead vertically down from rooms above the entrance and down the hole heavy objects or boiling liquid can be dropped onto whoever is trying to batter the door down.

If you get this far you are extremely brassed off... Your commander looks for the castle's sewage system and commands you to crawl through it so you can open the gates from inside... Bear in mind that the opening to the sewerage system is likely to be on at least the first storey so you will need a way of climbing the wall to get into it. It will open directly to the seat above so you have to hope no-one has felt the need.

Sounds fairly horrible doesn't it? Yet most castle seiges either ended because of treachery from within, because the food (or more likely water) ran out in the castle, or because someone had to worm through the sewage outlet into the castle. Once inside, they had to think of a way to either fight off all the guards at the gate or capture a hostage important enough to secure the obediance of the guards.

Happily, they let us in simply through buying a ticket...

Sarum was abandoned in the 13th Century and the nearby city of Salisbury was developed in its stead. The once fine buildings were left to decay in the hilltop fortress, but some walls remain, enabling us to form an accurate picture of how the fortress might have looked in its heyday.

In only one or two places are facing stones left. Elsewhere the walls are the rough undressed stone and mortar, giving a somewhat false picture of how the buildings would have looked.

Looking from the inner sanctum to the wider area of the city, the foundations of Sarum's cathedral can be seen. It is extremely rare (if not unknown) for any monument, castle or ruin to be restored in England. Policy seems to dictate that decay is arrested or retarded and any ground is grassed, regardless of whether the appearance of the structure is known or whether the ground was originally paved. I remember as a child wondering how the grass could have grown inside a cathedral, and I remain unconvinced that the present policy is the correct one.

The sound of a horn being blown announces the arrivals of a Roman Legion. We nip off to have a look and will share this with you in the next entry.

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Burscough Priory

The other day I was at Edge Hill University and stayed the night before in Burscough. I remembered a visit way back in 1983 when I went to find the scant remains of Burscough Priory.

More or less all that's left is a couple of stone pillars one of which holds the start of an archway and a few other scattered stones at their feet. Buried somewhere amongst these ruins are the remains of one of the Stanley family, the Earl of Derby who plucked the Crown of England from a hedge where it had fallen from King Richard III's head at the Battle of Bosworth and he placed it on Henry's head, starting the Tudor dynasty that would lead on to Henry VIII who brought about the dissolution and breaking up of the great religious houses and then onto Queen Elizabeth I whose astrologer, John Dee, is said to have performed Black Magic rites here to conjure up spirits.

When I was there in 1983 it was quite easy to find. Now though the ruins are behind a wall and then a very thick hedge and as it's summer (it is???) the hedges were so full of leaves that it was impossible to get a good view through them and the best view was from quite a way away. The priory is now on private grounds and there is a caravan site there. It has grown over the years and it is no longer possible to get as close as I did twenty some years ago. One chap I spoke to said they got lots of people trying to find the ruins "...as they're mentioned in lots of books and local guide books".

By the time I managed to find them and take the photos it was starting to go dark and I didn't hang about as finding my way back across the fields and footpaths over the railway line may have been a trifle difficult in the pitch dark of the countryside. Happily when I got back to the hotel - the Beaufort - I found there was a music night there, it being the first Monday of the month and we had a great night listening to a succession of very talented musicians and singers playing what they called Gypsy Jazz. This included Django Reinhart type stuff and standards such as Caravan.

And finally here's one of the photos from 1983. It looks as though it was taken from the other side of the pillars so perhaps there's a view from the road that runs that way. Another visit may be called for. Perhaps on the first Monday of the month...!

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