Post-Medieval & Industrial

‘Cathedrals of commerce’ : A guide through the Golden Age of the British High Street

In her new book about High Street heritage, Kathryn Morrison takes us on a trip down memory lane and reminds us that design quality was once a proud part of a retailer’s branding and public appeal, shaping our shopping experiences and the appearance of our historic town centres. Some claim that the High Street is in decline, but the best shops from the past provide a legacy on which to build a bright future, as Chris Catling reports.

The UK’s first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp

Most of us associate prisoner-of-war camps with 20th-century conflicts, but an archaeological evaluation undertaken in July 2009 by Channel 4’s Time Team revealed that the first specially constructed camp dates to the late 18th century, when it was used for incarcerating thousands of enemy prisoners taken during the Napoleonic Wars of 1793-1815.

CA Letters 426 – August

Counting Quaker Meeting Houses I enjoyed the article on the Quaker Meeting Houses in CA 422. I have searched for the Meeting Houses associated with 250 years of my Quaker ancestors, via train, bus, and foot, and found seven extant,…

The UK’s first crematorium

Sherds was intrigued to encounter two interesting items recently that have to do with the treatment of human remains. (Anyone who is grieving or has suffered a recent bereavement might like to skip over these reports.)

CA Letters 425 – July

Finding lost farmsteads I was intrigued by the article on South Yorkshire (‘Fields and farmsteads’, CA 424) and the reference to the absence of evidence of farming and occupation of the area between the late 10th century and the 16th/17th centuries…

UK news in brief

Napoleonic war camp saved for the nation The first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp in the world – dating from the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars – has been saved for future generations through its recent purchase by Nene Park Trust, with…

Uncovering Moira Castle

A community excavation within Moira Demesne – a public park in Northern Ireland – has revealed finds spanning from prehistory through to the 18th century. Once the location of a fine country house called Moira Castle, the excavation is being…

Holst Victorian House

Gustavus Theodore von Holst was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, just over 150 years ago, on 21 September 1874. (He changed his name to plain Gustav Holst because of anti-German feeling during the First World War.) His birthplace is now a…

Subterranean Skye: Exploring the enduring significance of High Pasture Cave

Discovered in 1972 and excavated between 2004 and 2010, High Pasture Cave on the island of Skye has proven to have been an enduring hub of ritual activity for 900 years, from the Bronze Age to the late Iron Age. Few cave sites in Europe have produced evidence for recurrent use over such a long period of time. As Chris Catling explains, the newly published excavation report raises questions about what this site can tell us about the meaning and use of caves, and underground spaces in general, during later prehistory.

Ruperra Castle Preservation Trust

Ruperra Castle (Castell Rhiw’r Perrai; ‘pear-tree hill’) is garlanded with heritage designations, being a Grade II*-listed building and a Scheduled Monument, set within a Grade II Registered Park. Sadly, it is also on the Heritage at Risk Register for Wales,…

The last warrior monarch

Graham Goodlad reviews the military career of a ruler who gained the British throne in a bloodless coup but had to fight to retain it and then analyses in detail his part in the battle against French domination of the Low Countries.

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Military History Matters 145

• The making of Russia: Peter the Great & the Battle of Poltava

• American apocalypse: how the Civil War was finally won

• Endgame WWII: the fall of Berlin, 80 years on

• Master and commander: Admiral Anson

• Kamikaze: fire from the sky

From gasholders to chic apartments: Tracing the history of the most prominent landmarks in the gasworks industry

The system whereby coal was heated and the resulting gases purified, stored, and distributed to factories, street lamps, public buildings, and, in due course, to every home was developed in the UK in the first decade of the 19th century and exported around the world. Today the 600 remaining gasholders, once familiar industrial structures in every city and town, are being recorded by Historic England prior to being dismantled or converted to other uses, as Chris Catling reports.

CA Letters 423 – May

World’s oldest waterworks? Chris Catling, in his excellent piece on those temples of engineering, the waterworks (CA 421), refers to a Boulton and Watt beam engine at Kew dated 1820 as being the oldest working beam engine in the world.…

Fortress Study Group

Formed in 1975 (and thus celebrating its first half-century this year), the Fortress Study Group (FSG) is devoted to the study and preservation of artillery fortifications. While early examples of these structures are found in Norwich and Southampton, it was…

Quakers and their meeting houses: Building a picture of a religious group through its architecture

Of the many new religious groups that emerged from the ferment of ideas that characterised the Civil War and Commonwealth era (1630s to 1666), the Quakers proved to be one of the best organised and most influential. They have also gone further than other dissenting congregations in abandoning the architectural form that has been used for worship since the earliest days of Christianity by inventing a new kind of worship space – the meeting house. Chris Catling reports on a study of this distinctive Quaker building and its 17th-century origins.

CA Letters 422 – April

A delectable drink from Derby Derby’s profusion of malthouses (CA 420) included an early 18th-century example which had the distinction of being converted, in 1773 (by the architect Joseph Pickford for the Irish impresario James Whiteley), into Derby’s Theatre Royal,…

The Carriage Foundation

Almost every TV costume drama begins with the sound of horses’ hooves and the rumble of carriage wheels as members of the cast arrive at some stately home or other, ready for the story to unfold. And no royal or…