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.

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.

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.

Finding a Wild West rarity in Oxford

If you've been following me on Gadling, you know I'm in Oxford at the moment. I'm busy working on my next book for Osprey Publishing, which is about the fateful raid on Northfield, Minnesota, by Jesse James and his gang in 1876.

You'd think I'd be feeling a bit out of touch with the Wild West here among the dreaming spires, and you'd be right except that I've found an extremely rare book on the Northfield robbery at Oxford University's Bodleian Library. Titled The Northfield Tragedy, it's the first account written about the robbery, penned by a journalist who arrived on the scene hours after the smoke cleared. He was among the first to interview the citizens who fought off the robbers, and he followed along with the posses as they hunted down the James-Younger gang.

This book is almost impossible to find in the United States. Only four copies are known to exist, none of which are in Missouri, where I'm based when I'm in the country. Most modern books about the James-Younger gang don't cite this important source. The reason the Bodleian has a copy is because it was reprinted by the English Westerners Society. The Bodleian being a copyright library, they had a copy. I would have never heard of it if I hadn't been browsing Jesse James books in the Bodleian. So here I am reading a Wild West rarity in the most English of cities!