A Pagan Grove and Norman Church in Iffley, England

As regular readers of this blog know, we spend our Easters and summers in Oxford. one of our favorite local places to visit is just a couple of miles south of town. Heading downstream on the Isis (the local name for the Thames), and past a nice riverside pub of the same name, is the little village of Iffley.

Its main claim to fame is a fine Norman church built in the late 11th century that's is almost perfectly preserved. Early on, it changed hands from the local lord to an estate further away, and while the absentee owners paid for its upkeep, they didn't do much to change it, making it one of the most pristine Norman churches in the country.

The front is very Romanesque, and the door is decorated with the zodiac. There's also an atmospheric old cemetery and a 1,500 year-old yew tree. The local priest thinks it was part of a sacred pagan grove and that under the church there's probably an old Saxon church from the 5th or 6th century. Since early church builders liked to build in sacred groves, I'm thinking the Saxons cut down the center tree of the grove, which was probably as old then as this one is now, and built the church on top of it. You see this sort of behavior with mosques, churches, and synagogues in the Middle East depending on who won the latest war.

The surviving tree was probably little more than a sapling then, young when its religion was old, and escaped the notice of the Christians. Perhaps cutting down the central, most sacred tree in the grove was all that needed to be done to destroy it as a place of religious significance. I remember reading in some early Christian accounts where they destroyed sacred groves, and they usually only destroyed the main tree. The sole surviving sacred yew can be seen on the righthand side of both the photos of the church here.

Book Review: Cotswold Privies

Cotswold Privies by Mollie Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I saw this in the Oxford Central Library and being a fan of obscure history I couldn't resist. This little book was written in 1984 when outhouses were still in use in some of the smaller English villages.

Full of fun anecdotes and humor, as well as lots of photos and a fair amount of architectural information, it will tell you far more than you ever needed to know about English toilet habits in the early 20th century. For example, some privies were "two holers" so family members could go together. Isn't that nice? You even get little ditties like this one:

In days of old
When knights were bold
And paper wasn't invented
They used blades of grass
To wipe their arse
And went away contented.

At the end of the book is a list of slang terms for privies, such as The Widdlehouse, The Long Drop, and my favorite--The Thunderbox.

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Researching and writing in Oxford

As I mentioned in my last post, my family and I are in Oxford, England, for our usual working summer vacation. So what does a Civil War/Wild West historian do with himself in Oxford? Luckily, quite a lot!

Oxford University's Bodelian Library is a copyright library, meaning they have a copy of every book ever published in the UK. Since many American books have UK editions, I have acess to them. There's also a special library building specifically dedicated to American studies.

Right now I'm working on the second edition to my Outlaw Tales of Missouri. This includes two new chapters, one on the famous shootout in Springfield involving Wild Bill Hickok and the other about Francis Tumblety, a quack doctor in St. Louis who was a prime suspect for being Jack the Ripper.

I'm also working on an article about the Civil War experiences of several key figures in the O.K. Corral shootout and Arizona War. For more UK-centered research I'm also doing a behind-the-scenes article on the British Museum. Of course I'm busy with fiction too, both the sequal to A Fine Likeness and the novel I stated in Tangier.

All this writing won't keep me from enjoying a sunny British summer and some pints of real ale!

What are your writing plans for this summer?

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Book Review: Legendary Beasts of Britain

Legendary Beasts of Britain by Julia Cresswell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Shire Books are short, heavily illustrated introductions to a variety of British subjects. Considering how many they've published, including one on spoons, I'm surprised they haven't done one on legendary creatures. Well, good things come to those who wait. This is a fascinating look at the origins and development of unicorns, dragons, wyverns, griffins, and more.

Despite its small size, the author manages to pack in a lot of information. By the time you finish this you'll know the difference between your mermaids and your selkies, your unicorns and your yales. You'll also learn several old legends and tall tales from times past.

Creswell digs up some interesting images beyond the usual ones we often see. For example, there are several photos of misericords, those little benches they put in churches to lean against while you're standing. They were often carved with mythical beasties and make for an interesting study in unusual church art.

Since this is an examination of traditional beasts, newer appearances such as aliens and globsters don't make the cut, but you'll still find Alien Big Cats (which go back further than I thought) and everyone's beloved lake monster, Nessie.

I recommend this for anyone looking for a primer on the folklore of Great Britain. It makes for good fodder for writers too!

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Did Jack the Ripper help assassinate Abraham Lincoln?

Is this blogger using a provocative title to draw in readers?

It's not completely off-base. Bear with me.

When John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, police arrested a circle of his fellow conspirators. They didn't stop there, of course, and went on to arrest or question hundreds of people who knew the conspirators. When a president is killed, the police throw their net pretty wide.

One person caught in that net was Francis Tumblety of St. Louis, a quack doctor who may or may not have known conspirator David Herold. Tumblety was soon released after police found no evidence that he was involved in the assassination.

This wasn't Tumblety's first or last run-in with the law. The eccentric "doctor" made a good living selling bogus medicines such as "Tumblety's Pimple Destroyer" and "Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills", and dressed flamoyantly in military-style clothing. This got him into trouble during the Civil War because it was illegal for civilians to wear anything that looked like a uniform. He was also charged with manslaughter in Canada over the death of one of his patients.

Tumblety spent a fair amount of time in London, living in Whitechapel. He gained a reputation for his hatred of women, claiming he had fallen in love with and been jilted by a prostitute. He kept a collection of uteri in his home that he showed male guests in order to "prove" the inferiority of the female sex.

Tumblety was arrested in London for four counts of having homosexual encounters, something that was illegal until quite recently. He was also suspected in 1888 of being Jack the Ripper. He had an all-consuming hatred of women, some medical knowledge as the murderer was supposed to have had, and was in the neighborhood during the murders. When he fled the country under an assumed name, the murders stopped.

Of course he might have fled the country because of the crimes for which he was charged, but the London police were suspicious enough to have him followed once he got back to the United States. Modern Ripperologists consider him a top suspect, and while it seems unlikely that he had any part in Lincoln's killing, it's intriguing that the most famous assassination and the most famous serial killer of the nineteenth century could have been linked.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

My travel writing for Gadling in September

I had a busy month at Gadling in September. For military historians, check out my posts on the thousands of World War Two pillboxes in the UK countryside and an exhibition on Civil War New York.

The biggest archaeology news is that the tomb of Richard III may have been discovered, the National Museum of Afghanistan is rebuilding, and that Egypt is reopening ancient tombs at Saqqara. That comes with a cool video. Another cool video is a nostalgic look at Times Square in the 1980s.

For retro film buffs, see my post on old science fiction films that theorized what transatlantic flights would be like. Horror fans will like my retrospective of the Lake Conway Monster of the 1970s.

Other posts cover Ferris wheels in Iran, Irish castles for sale, bookstores around the world, a giant Roman mosaic discovered in Turkey, and a beautiful gallery on award-winning astronomy photos.

It wouldn't be summer at Gadling without a long-distance hike by Sean, so here's one about hiking a Roman road in England.

Oh, and you really shouldn't miss the story about a man trying to board an airplane with a primate in his pants!

Whew!

As I mentioned earlier, I've been stretched thin finishing up the artist's references for my book on the Arizona War. I finished those on Thursday, and rewarded myself yesterday with a walk along the remains of a Roman road here in Oxfordshire. I have a few more days to double check my work before handing it in.

It's nice to have that done. I'll be getting back into more blogging, both here and on Gadling, as well as some research I need to finish up in Oxford. Once I'm back in Spain, I'll be getting back to some serious work on the sequal to my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness.

See you tomorrow!

O is for Oxford

As I mentioned in my "E" post, my family and I spend every Easter and summer in England, or more precisely Oxford. We just got back home to Spain from our latest trip. It went well. We saw most of the people we wanted to see and I had a meeting with one of my publishers, Osprey Publishing, to discuss my future titles. While I can't say anything until plans are finalized, it looks like I'll have some good news and some interesting trips pretty soon!

When my wife is working in the astronomy department and my son is at camp, I work in the Bodleian Library. It's one of the largest libraries in the English-speaking world and a treasure trove for any writer. It also has some fine architecture, as you can see from the photo.

Part of the Bodleian is being refurbished and they're put up barriers decorated with their own A to Z, based on their collections!

For more on Oxford, check out my posts about it on Gadling, Midlist Writer, and Grizzled Old Traveler. Two of the most popular articles are about a pagan grove and Norman church and one on the Pitt-Rivers, which is the coolest museum in the world.

E is for England

While I love adventure travel, one of my favorite places to go is England, where I am right now. My wife, son, and I spend every Easter and summer in Oxford. It's a nice change from Spain and a good way to keep the kid bilingual. These are working vacations for us. My wife has collaborators at the university's astronomy department and I research my books at the Bodleian Library, one of the largest English-language libraries in the world. This shot is of Queen's Lane, part of my way to work.

Oxford has been a university town since the Middle Ages and is rich with history and tradition, like the Eights Week boat race. There are lots of historic sights nearby. Iffley village on the outskirts of Oxford has a Norman church and a pagan grove. My kid used to go to school right down the street from it when we lived there a couple of years ago.

For more about the sights in and around Oxford, check out my Gadling posts about travel in Oxfordshire.