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Inventing History : forgery: a great British tradition (British History)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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If its recorded function was a mounting block. Why is it not a mounting block?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mounting_block

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/whitby-horse-mounting-blocks

Just asking.
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Mick Harper
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Yes, I got this wrong too. If a stone has been outside for a thousand years 1) everyone would be able to read the inscription every day of the week and 2) it wouldn't last a thousand years. I shouldn't think the stone would last a thousand years! And yet every time we are given an Anglo-Saxon inscribed stone it is part of a bridge or part of a wall or was 'found on a farm'. Any damned thing except what it was designed for.

"Scuse I, verger, but can I 'ave that gravestone with the Latin inscription?"
"What on earth for."
"Mounting block for the pub."
"Can't you use an ordinary block of stone?"
"Never thought of that, verger. Still while I's 'ere..."
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Mick Harper
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Since both Ogham and Runes are only known about via inscriptions on ancient stones, it surely follows that people knew about them ever since they were made. At some point in history somebody will have mentioned these ogham/runic inscriptions on some writing vehicle and in some language that has 'come down to us'. Therefore a) ogham and b) runes have a terminus ante quem (or the opposite, I can never get it straight in my head).

If that date is before 1500 they are probably what they seem to be. If it is 1500 - 1750 they might be what they seem to be. If it is post 1750 they probably won't be what they seem to be. But here's what interests me: careful ignoral. I bet it will be fiendishly difficult finding out what those two dates are.
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Hatty
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Wiki says

In Lebor Ogaim ("The Book of Ogams"), also known as the Ogam Tract, is an Old Irish treatise on the ogham alphabet. It is preserved in R.I.A. MS 23 P 12 308–314 (AD 1390), T.C.D. H.3.18, 26.1–35.28 (AD 1511) and National Library of Ireland MS G53 1–22 (17th century), and fragments in British Library Add. 4783.

The provenance for the Royal Irish Academy's MS 23 P12, aka The Book of Ballymote, is given as "Ballymote (Co. Sligo)". That's it.

There's not much point in digging any deeper because it is based on Leabhar Gearr Uí Cheallaig [lost] though Trinity College Dublin has a copy dated 1728 partly transcribed by an Irish scholar/antiquarian called Richard Tipper, or Tupper.

Trinity College's manuscript, H3. 18, is listed as 'fifteenth and sixteenth centuries' and a "composite" manuscript. Provenance is the celebrated Edward Lhuyd (d. 1709), second Keeper of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum

On the first leaf, now little more than a fragment, there is a note by Lhuyd (Edward) saying that he bought the manuscript from Ó Gnímh (Agnew, i.e. bard belonging to the O'Neill of Clannaboy) and that it numbers 218 folios.


Dublin's Royal Irish Academy has a book 'of the early Irish Church', the Stowe Missal, in which the scribe apparently signed himself in 'ancient ogham' (as the un-Irish SONID). The provenance of the Stowe Missal, despite being revered as ‘the earliest substantial prose tract in Irish’ and ‘the earliest extant manuscript book of the Irish church’, is even iffier, and later

The old story was that the manuscript and shrine left Ireland after about 1375, as they were collected on the Continent in the 18th century, but this appears to be incorrect, and they were found inside a stone wall at Lackeen Castle near Lorrha in the 18th century.

Ogham came into existence in the seventeenth century according to the, admittedly meagre, manuscript records
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Mick Harper
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A lot of our current wranglings with the True Believers is over the age of stone (and the inscriptions on them). There is a discussion about the problem here https://www.stolenhistory.org/threads/1123-sandstone-versus-1869-sandstone.2426/ which may not be terribly helpful but demonstrates We Are Not Alone.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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I notice Rory Naismith has a book out about Saxon London. Citadel of the Saxons. Wiley reckons this must be a very slim volume, given that despite London being extensively excavated since the late 1960s, there is really very little idea what Roman era London looked like, let alone any Citadel of the Saxons. For example orthodoxy simply does not know if London started with a Roman military settlement, or not. There is very little "Roman history" on London other than a few lines in Tacitus. Of course this gives plenty of scope for those with imagination and the gift of the gab to tell a remarkable story, but as far as Wiley is aware, Ludenwic is simply an area, where the few morsels of archaeology would defy scientific explanation from any research programme either ortho or radical.
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Mick Harper
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Even the Danes get better bragging rights if Clement Danes is anything to go by. Rory Naismith, for younger members, is the Anglo-Saxon coin expert who when asked the innocent (sounding) question: Do you know of any coins with Anglo-Saxon writing on them? came up with "Careful ignoral" but only after some furious exchanges involving seemingly wilful refusal to understand what Anglo-Saxon writing was. Offa Rex, for example, didn't count.

If London was an Anglo-Saxon citadel, Rory will be telling the world what they used for currency and why that currency wasn't a citadel proclaiming the Anglo-Saxon way of doing business.
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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It sounds (to me) more like a screenwriter's bid for a NetFlix series.

With a past as deep and sinewy as the famous River Thames that twists like an eel around the jutting peninsula of Mudchute and the Isle of Dogs, London is one of the world's greatest and most resilient cities. Born beside the sludge and the silt of the meandering waterway that has always been its lifeblood, it has weathered invasion, flood, abandonment, fire and bombing. The modern story of London is well known. Much has been written about the later history of this megalopolis which, like a seductive dark star, has drawn incomers perpetually into its orbit. Yet, as Rory Naismith reveals – in his zesty evocation of the nascent medieval city – much less has been said about how close it came to earlier obliteration.


OK, that's enough about the scene-setting and the geography, where's the high-status elite stuff?

Following the collapse of Roman civilization in fifth-century Britannia, darkness fell over the former province. Villas crumbled to ruin; vital commodities became scarce; cities decayed; and Londinium, the capital, was all but abandoned.


Good to see "Dark Ages" is still a useful ploy as a space-filler, and a post-Brexit (410 AD) apocalyptic disaster (evidence is optional).

Yet despite its demise as a living city, memories of its greatness endured like the moss and bindweed which now ensnared its toppled columns and pilasters. By the 600s a new settlement, Lundenwic, was established on the banks of the River Thames by enterprising traders who braved the North Sea in their precarious small boats.


Plucky Brits in precarious small boats (pre-Dunkirk), despite precarious small boats being no use for traders.

The history of the city's phoenix-like resurrection, as it was transformed from an empty shell into a court of kings – and favoured setting for church councils from across the land – is still virtually unknown. The author here vividly evokes the forgotten Lundenwic and the later fortress on the Thames – Lundenburgh – of desperate Anglo-Saxon defenders who retreated inside their Roman walls to stand fast against menacing Viking incursions.


A nod towards Game of Thrones perhaps? If it's "still virtually unknown", one might conclude that "vividly evokes" = good imagination.

Recalling the lost cities which laid the foundations of today's great capital, this book tells the stirring story of how dead Londinium was reborn, against the odds, as a bulwark against the Danes and a pivotal English citadel. It recounts how Anglo-Saxon London survived to become the most important town in England – and a vital stronghold in later campaigns against the Normans in 1066. Revealing the remarkable extent to which London was at the centre of things, from the very beginning, this volume at last gives the vibrant early medieval city its due.


Lost and Found Department?

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/citadel-of-the-saxons-9781788312226/
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Mick Harper
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Coo, Borry, nobody need read the book. "Bring in B. Eades annual assessment form, would you, Miss Moneypenny?" "Ms Moneypenny, how many more times. He hasn't got one, he's a part-timer."

Coupla points arising. Using your seaman's knowledge (but ask the wife to be on the safe side) what's it like sailing up the primitive Thames? The reason I ask is that towns often get built at the lowest bridging point of a river; towns often get built at the highest navigable point of a river; London is pretty unusual in being both.

Next. We treat it as unworthy of comment that the Romans used London as their capital; we treat is as unworthy of comment that the Normans treated London as their capital; we don't treat it as worth a comment that the Anglo-Saxons ignored London in between. Nor do we ask how unusual it is that a town of great antiquity (as it would be for the Normans) and tacitly ignored for six hundred years, should require a bleedin' great castle in it. It's as though the Normans sort of, you know, followed on from the Romans. But clearly the Anglo-Saxons had repented their careful ignoral because

It recounts how Anglo-Saxon London survived to become the most important town in England – and a vital stronghold in later campaigns against the Normans in 1066.

That would be Hereward the Cockney, would it? The Harrying of the North(ern Line), would it? I've absolutely never heard of this. Blimey, the Norman Edward the Confessor had only checked out a few months before. And then there were the Danes controlling all-England for the fifty years before that... when was it the most important town in England for the Anglo-Saxons? I'll have to read the book.
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Mick Harper
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Some clues to the actualité may be gleaned from the chapter heads of Master Naismith's book

1. Roman London and its End: First to Fifth Centuries AD
Irrelevant

2. Among the Ruins: Post-Roman London
Irrelevant

3. London between Kingdoms: c.600–800
OK, I'm up for it.

4. Lundenwic: 'An Emporium for Many Nations'
Suddenly we've gone all non-chronological. Perhaps this will be any archaeology found in the London area which is vaguely mercantile but isn't obviously Roman, Danish or Norman

5. Alfred the Great and the Vikings
I wasn't aware that he went anywhere near London (Mercian then Danish) but maybe he did. I can never bear to read my Asser (you all know why)

6. London in the Tenth Century: c.900–75
This is the McGuffin. Given the problems of dating and ascription, all sorts of Danish and Norman stuff can be squeezed in

7. Late Anglo-Saxon London
975-1066 presumably. That's just the reign of Aethelred the Unready unless you count Edward the Confessor

8. London in 1066: The Battle of Hastings and After
Irrelevant

We're very familiar with this kind of thing. A dissertation padded out to a book. A padded out dissertation. Never forget that the paucity of Anglo-Saxon material is put down to them not living in towns. If only he had called it A Guide To The Mead Halls of London then he could have included all the Barley Mows and what have you. After all, that's what they have done to the villages of England. They're all Anglo-Saxon on account of them having English names and not Latin ones, or Danish ones, or French ones.
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Mick Harper
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though it was while with his father that he first made his acquaintance with at least one branch of the book trade, through being sent to buy volumes to be used as waste paper in his father’s shop, when he occasionally gave what his father considered an extravagant price for books for his own reading

This is a Wiki quote for some miscreant we are outing as a forger in our new book, and who had to forge his own life story. I pointed out

If young Friedrich had been sent out to get volumes of old newspapers, that would be different, but he wasn’t. Old books are not used as waste paper in grocers’ shops, or any shop. You can laboriously tear out page after page from an old book but all you are left with is some small rectangular pieces of paper with inky writing on them.

Having just written this I sat down to watch Venus Peter, a (very good) slice-of-life film set in a small Scottish fishing village. Anyway the eight-year-old central character goes into the local shop whereupon the shopkeeper starts tearing up an old book to wrap stuff with.

Waste paper is not used in grocers’ shops. The food comes already packed and it is grocers’ central task to re-package it for the customer. Any grocer who offered ‘waste paper’ as part of the deal would get some right funny looks. Maybe packing eggs if the straw had run out but I wouldn’t go back there.

That's right, it was eggs. Though in fairness to me, the protagonist complained that no other shop tears up books.

People don’t go through volumes of old books intended for waste paper in search of reading matter

The young hero fell in love with poetry because the shopkeeper had been ripping up a poetry book. Life, art, forgery, historical revisionism -- it's all a bit of a mish-mash.
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Hatty
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Just came across this post on Facebook

Another stepped cross from Cumbria, this time from Aldingham St Cuthbert, along the coast towards Barrow-in-Furness. Looks like its made of red sandstone, the favoured building material of this area.

to which another member of the group responded

From the depths of my memory, I am sure that I have seen this design in several places, probably around Furness, so I wonder if it is made from a cast artificial stone - there were several around in Victorian times, such as Coade stone or Pulhamite, and they were dyed to resemble local stones.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021019674743873/?multi_permalinks=1482926701886499&notif_id=1592805660215306&notif_t=group_highlights

We here know the designs on Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Viking, or whatever, crosses are considerably later than historians believe but this is the first time, I think, that someone has mentioned a cast. If that's the case, the carvings had to have been made, perhaps routinely, as part of Victorian church restorations/ rebuilding as we keep saying.

The official position is the church at Aldingham was founded in about 1147 and the architecture is typically Norman. The explanation for the cross sounds weak even by historians' standards

There is no evidence of any earlier Church on the site but a badly worn fragment of a Saxon standing cross is built into the east wall below the window, evidence perhaps of the time when the monks of Lindisfarne would have brought the relics of St. Cuthbert here possibly with a view to taking them to Ireland to escape the Danes.

The cross was 'discovered' in the 1840's
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Mick Harper
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All has been quiet on the Hatty-banning front. Too quiet. There she was on the lively Facebook group Hidden History, Folklore and Mystery of Our Churches laying about her every time somebody had the temerity to claim an Anglo-Saxon origin for something or other. The latest was Ramsbury Church in Wiltshire. Ramsbury Cathedral as was, so they said. Anyway everyone was having a fine old time until this morning when all Hatty's posts were expunged (as was her membership) and all the posts addressing her points, quite well and in commendable detail, went too.

I must say, if I had spent a coupla days beavering away among the records I would be most put out to find the fruits of my efforts blown away like chaff in the wind just because a troll had been unmasked and sent packing. Or would I? Would I regard it as a small price to pay for a return to the bucolic days when Hidden History, Folklore and Mystery of Our Churches was devoted to "Ooh, that's nice". I think I probably would.
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Hatty
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It was quite educational looking up 'Ramsbury'. Not much has been written about the church apart from a brief Wiki entry and Historic England's site describing it as thirteenth century. The most informative article is from the Royal Archaeological Institute

Ramsbury is situated 8 km (5 miles) to the east of Marlborough in eastern Wiltshire. Although today it is only a relatively small village, its chief interest in the historical period lies in its choice, together with Wells and Crediton, as the seat of one of the newly created bishoprics of the West Saxons in A.D 909.

Domesday includes the manor of Ramsbury but no church. There was considerable argy-bargy about this but Domesday really is quite unequivocal

NAME: RAMSBURY, CHURCH OF
This landowner is associated with 0 places before the Conquest; 1 after the Conquest.

Regarding the A.D. 909 record, it turns out the original document is lost (not that this seems to matter to anyone). According to British History Online, Ramsbury's foundation charter is dated 1091 which accounts for its non-appearance in Domesday.

The reason the church /cathedral is assumed to be Anglo-Saxon is because some stone fragments came to light during rebuilding in 1891

The present church is very probably on the site of the Saxon 'cathedral', an assumption strengthened by the finding during alterations in 1891 of fragments of 9th/10th-century carved stone crosses incorporated in the fabric of the church.

https://www.royalarchinst.org/sites/royalarchinst.org/files/documents/SMR_Wiltshire_Ramsbury.pdf

No helpful clues such as names or dates have been inscribed, just carved animals and plants, but stylistically....
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Mick Harper
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The Soviet Union archivists used to have all kinds of problems with the purges. It was easy enough making somebody an unperson but it was the devil's own job making sure that records referring to the unperson were suitably amended. The aptly named Hidden History, Folklore and Mystery of Our Churches archivists have been having similar problems. Yesterday, they removed all Hatty's posts from the Ramsbury thread but then realised it didn't make much sense, so today they removed the entire Ramsbury thread. It never existed.

But then even wiser counsels prevailed when it was pointed out that her absence might be noticed so it has now been ordained that every post Hatty has ever made to Hidden History must be removed too. Since her name has been deleted from the membership who can say she ever actually existed? I can, because they haven't been weeding with enough diligence, leaving spoor like this

Bob Mitchell Harriet Vered I am not sure the cross you refer to is the same, as it is not badly worn. Need to have a look inside to see if there is another cross, did not see anything on the outside. This cross is next to the chancel on the north side. For some reason I can't add a picture to show you!!

Of course no-one will now know what Hatty said to give rise to Bob's comment but, while we're on first name terms, the administrator of the site is an old 'friend' (in internet terms) of Hatty's and they've been getting on famously for many years. But -- and this is fair warning to you all -- an administrator's power is as capricious as it is final.
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