Searching Thoughts

Having just watched a stunning documentary on the night the Germans tried to bomb St Pauls & wipe out London it made me think.

Why do I find myself drawn to particular times in history? I also feel sort of "at home" in them, strange or what?

I take a great interest in John of Gaunt & have read a lot about the family & time period.

I love Tudor history, again read a lot about it all.

WW 2 which was still before my time & like many people really heard nothing from parents, but since then have learnt so much from reading & searching.

Is anyone drawn to certain periods?

I am.

I have had a love of early Celt myth history and in Roman Britain since childhood, but the transition to post Roman fascinated me most (I think we have a lot to learn about how the Britons declined when they lost their sources of luxury goods and skilled craftsfolk as the Legions left, the cities emptied and the Saxons swept across the land).

I have also a love of the 13thC, but that is mainly family history.

I too like Celtic history & the change to Roman, and if I remember correctly they are finding some really intricate treasures that show that pre roman finds can be among the most intricate & fine to be had.

I just wish that the old original druid religion had not been destryed so completely by the Romans.

Your love for the 13th is well understood by me especially, but the great passions in that time were so deep & intense & loyalties so complicated & so often paid for that it it must be some of the most interesting times.

Celtic lover here, too!

Also the late 18th C, when the industrial revolution was really starting

but then, I an an engineer and have always had a deep interest in archaeology and history so maybe that is not so surprising....

from a more personal front am always deeply engrossed in Plantagenet period and wars of the Roses ere..so full of interest and detail!....

As a lover of Social History, I am also interested in many time periods as to the whys & wheres.

It is the particular pull to certain events & time periods that I was wondering about. I have been interested in the John of Gaunt time since I was about 10, when I was about 50 I learned that it is to do with my Family History. Spooky or what.

We've been involved with a Wars of the Roses re-enactment group for a while - the yearly re-enactment of the Battle of Tewkesbury is fantastic, because of the detail which people go to with their costumes, armour etc. OH and DS had helmets made by an armourer at Eastnor - but I think only the rich would have had made to measure armour at the time. To hear someone walk past in full armour is a very evocative sound. (My job is driving the Nissan to get them there - not very authentic!) The battle takes place partly because various people would like to build on the battle ground (called Bloody Meadow) and if the battle is commemmorated annually this is less likely.

I am interested in times of change and what made the society shift or accept different ways. I believe in reincarnation and that I tend to be around at the times! Ending of the native American Lakota way of living, English end of rural living, Greek, Egypian...I've been drowned and hung but not burnt.

Reincarnation or not when I was about 10 I read a book about Anne Askew who was burned at the stake as a heritic, interested me no end.
When we got the computer I looked her up & darn me if she isn`t something to do with my family line as well.
Like I said certain events & certain places call in a peculiar way.

When we lived in Windsor, we lived in a Victorian two-up, two-down cottage, in a complex of victorian streets. Once a year, the regiment which was stationed in the town would enter a team of horses and gun carriages into the horse show. I don't go in for military parades, but quite late at night the team of horses pulling their carriages, would rumble past the end of our road, with the soldiers in 19th century uniforms, and we would go out to watch. It was the most extraordinary thing, because you could believe you had gone back 150 years - there were no traffic sounds, just the noise of hooves and the rumble of the carriages in the dark. I'm not one for reincarnation, but I do love to imagine what it would have been like to have lived in a particular time - it's great to block out the 21st century sometimes!

What a fascinating thread. I have a degree in archeology and my main interests lie in pre-historic archaeology, but also Dark Ages and The Picts. The skill and craftsmanship of Celtic artwork was never even matched until Victorian times (though it was machinework then) and even then it wasn't ever surpassed to my mind. The recent discovery of the Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon hoard shows that such craftsmanship was encouraged and skilled craftsmen sought out and these men (or women?) were employed to produce very high-status jewellery and weapons. Not the "Dark Ages" at all.

I have long been drawn to the Tudor/Elizabethan periods and in the last twenty five years or so, very much to the Victorian period, and the social history involved (this through my family history research).

I am very much drawn to Scottish history too, and when we were up in Pitlochry on holiday when the children were younger, I can remember there was a small Highland games being held and several braw young men in Highland regalia from pre-Jacobite rebellion times and they looked completely right in my eye - it was the modern trappings around us that were out of place. So I would like to think I have had several previous incarnations!

Irish history is also very fascinating & I wonder how many people are aware of when the "Irish problem" really began.

My father was in one of the Highland Regiments who was posted to Ireland at a very troubled time. I think to do with the Black & Tans & Roker Park. Like all Irish things it is so difficult to find out anything. My family has Irish blood & again I have been drawn to the history.

Scotland is also a place I am drawn to, but I am sort of waiting for some sort of "attraction" to a time period. It is certainly not an easy place as the history is so diverse.

polgara wrote:
My father was in one of the Highland Regiments who was posted to Ireland at a very troubled time. I think to do with the Black & Tans & Roker Park.

Roker Park? I though that was Sunderland's football ground.

I have a great interest in various stages of history - Darks Ages , early Mediaeval (12th/13thC) particularly the Cathar heresy, 100 years war, Regency, Victorian, the World Wars etc etc.

I don't think I lived through any of them though.

You are so right Billy, shall we try Croke park? Brain on walkabout this morning.

OOh I like the Cathars as well leads to all sorts of interesting happenings.

OH has just run upstairs to find some information about the Cathars for me. So much quicker than Google!

I'm sad to say that one of my ancestors was one of those responsible for the massacre of the Cathars

Hmmm, I'd never have guessed from your geneology.
The coiner of the phrase "Kill them all, God will know his own", (much paraphrased since) as well, at the sack of Beziers.

Beziers has been a bit of a stain.

I did once consider adopting Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius as my motto instead of Quod Deus Vole Volo - my dad got a bit sarcastic...

Funny you should say that Badger, just going through some info on something else & there it was. If I read other things correctly it is probable that my lot were there as well.

One line of my tree has the motto "You want 'ere I want" which we naively thought was connected with a trade. Hmmm, turns out they were Border Reivers . . .

OH has border reivers in his family tree,. I would really look into that if it was mine, but can not complain as my own bits are thrilling in themselves.

polgara wrote: can not complain as my own bits are thrilling in themselves.

fnarr fnarr

My family bits are thrilling Billy.

Leave me personal bits out of it as they are definately getting old & worn out.

No comment!

:biglaugh:

Those of you interested in the transition from Roman to Post-Roman Britian have some good books recently published to read: Britiain After Rome, by Robin Fleming; UnRoman Britian, by Miles and Laycock; Brittania, the failed State, by Laycock. I have been reading these recently. When I was a kid I was fed the rubbish that the Britons all disappeared or were driven to Wales by Saxon invaders, so that the English are basically Germanic. I intuitively felt that this was untrue, so I have been fascinated by the transition from Roman to Anglo-Saxon Britain. I know now that recent thinking has vindicated those of us who felt that the Britons had survived to be the ancestors of the modern English.