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Ode to a Cretan Urn
It is Cretan
Won’t be beaten
Can’t be sat on
Cos there is no seat on
Possibly vegan
As there is no meat on
My beautiful Cretan urn
It’s not Attic
This ceramic
Still dynamic
Though it’s static
Love has grown on
My Minoan
Beautiful Cretan urn
I create a small treatise to treat on
A Greek delight
So I can bleat on
Aesthetically
It turns the heat on
If it were my wife
I wouldn’t cheat on
My beautiful Cretan urn
Matt Szul, Shoreham-by-Sea
Transliteration troubles
Love your magazine; however, I was befuddled by the exhibition review in CA 409, because the Chinese characters there – 凝时聚珍 – do not correspond to the pinyin: zimingzhong. The exhibit is using them, and the pinyin, but what they actually say is ‘collecting time, amassing treasure’ (ning shi ju zhen), not ‘bells that ring themselves’ which is, in pinyin, zimingzhong.
Minor point, no doubt, but just kind of irritating for anyone who reads Chinese.
Anne Holmes 候安维 Hou Anwei, Maine, USA
More insights on Workhouses
Regarding your reference to the Union Workhouse in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in the feature in CA 406 and the letter in CA 410, this workhouse was built in 1824, therefore it is 200 years old this year – and is indeed considered the best-preserved example of the hundreds of workhouses built across the country.
The system in Southwell was developed by the Reverend John Becher and George Nicholls, and their ideas helped shape the way in which the poor were treated during the 19th century. John Thomas Becher, a clergyman and a magistrate, was known as a social and prison reformer. The workhouse’s purpose was to be a place of last resort for the destitute, and its architecture was influenced by prison design of the time; its harsh regime become a model for workhouses throughout the country. Becher and his associates devised the ‘workhouse test’, which decreed that no relief would be granted to able-bodied people if they didn’t enter the workhouse, as only the truly destitute would be willing to submit to the harsh regime.
Becher’s plan was that the parishes in the area would combine the funds used to supply their poor with clothing, food, and fuel, and that these funds instead be used to support the building of the workhouse. Once completed, up to 158 inmates were accommodated from the 62 contributing parishes.
It was a harsh environment. Inmates were strictly segregated, with adults divided into those unable to work – ‘the blameless’ – and those capable of work but unemployed – ‘the idle and profligate able-bodied’ – then further subdivided into men, women, and children. Each group lived in different areas, meaning families couldn’t meet. Inmates were fed, clothed, and housed – many were required to undertake work such as oakum-shredding, stone-breaking, or digging in the vegetable gardens. The children did receive a basic education which, it was hoped, provided for a better future.
With the advent of the modern welfare system in 1948, the building’s use changed, but it still provided temporary homeless accommodation until 1976.
Southwell’s Workhouse now belongs to the National Trust, and is a popular place to visit, along with our wonderful Southwell Minster, where Becher is commemorated.
Barbara Cast, Bleasby, Nottinghamshire
Continuing The Cerne Abbas debate
Michael Allen’s edited monograph about recent work on the Cerne Abbas ‘giant’ is not yet published, but he is surely right to take issue in CA 410 with Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos, whose article in the open-access journal Speculum cited interim reports about the hill-figure’s dating, using the very broad ‘700-1100’ bracket derived from low in its chalk infilling to suggest a 9th-century creation. Their hypothesis that a figure of Hercules was subsequently reinterpreted as a Christian saint is not impossible – a few sculptures of Roman deities built into medieval churches may have been transmogrified in that way – but it does not explain why the figure was not adapted to turn the club more obviously into a flowering plant, their suggested reinterpretation, or to add a halo and to cover the exposed body. Allen’s suggestion that the figure was created in the 10th or 11th century as an image of St Eadwold welcoming visitors to the abbey below with his outstretched left hand also leaves unexplained the club in his right hand – a different sort of welcome? As a martyr, St Eadwold (if he ever existed) would have been entitled to hold a palm, always depicted in manuscripts as a frond; and as a warrior he would have brandished a sword – I know of no images of English soldiers with clubs, nor of saints in a state of total undress.
It is to be hoped that the monograph will show exactly what is being dated. If it is quartz, where did that come from if it is not found within the chalk in the immediate area? Could it have been carted up from demolished buildings (such as surplus rubble from the abbey after its dissolution), in which case was it the original construction that exposed the crystals to the light? Where did all the soil come from that seems to have built up between the trench-digging episodes? The downland in the area does not look denuded, and photographs show well-defined earthworks surviving on other local slopes. The discovery in the 1960s of the 6th- or 7th-century Finglesham Buckle, with its image of a naked (but for a belt) man holding two spears seemed to justify claims for an early date for England’s other humanoid hill-figure, the Long Man of Wilmington, holding two poles or agricultural implements, but work by Rodney Castleden (CA 378) and by Martin Bell on sediments at the bottom of the hill there indicated a Tudor origin. Have the deposits at the bottom of the Cerne slope been analysed for comparison? A case for post-medieval construction of the Cerne figure might yet be made.
David A Hinton, Southampton
Edible Archaeology
It could be argued that edible archaeology has already been done to death, but Dr Lucy Coleman Talbot recently gave us a talk about her research into the Crossbones Graveyard at Southwark and was dead chuffed by this wonderful artistic representation of the graveyard made by Pauline Hedges to commemorate the evening. Pauline diligently ensures we are appropriately refreshed with edible archaeology after every talk – however challenging the topic might be!
Ginny Pringle, Basingstoke Archaeological & Historical Society
Gilkicker in Gosport
I have just received my copy of CA 410, and there is an article in the news section regarding Fort Gilkicker. It is on western approaches to the Solent but it is not in Portsmouth. It is on the west side of Portsmouth Harbour in Gosport. I went for a walk near it this morning with a friend, and work is taking place there.
Thelma Morgan, Gosport, Hampshire
Correction:
In CA 410, we said that Fort Gilkicker was in Portsmouth, when in fact it is in Gosport. We do send all of our news stories and features back to their sources for comments and corrections, but in this case an error slipped through the net – thank you to those who wrote in to highlight the mistake.
CA ONLINE: What you shared with us this month
Carol Sagrott @carol_sagrott
When you make it into @CurrentArchaeo before your archaeologist son @archaeostef
Dr Francis Young @DrFrancisYoung
Great stuff in March’s @CurrentArchaeo about Sarmatians in Cambridgeshire. Surely, this is adequate grounds for people from Cambridgeshire to start dressing up as Sarmatians?#MakeSarmatismGreatAgain
Dr Mattew Bennet @Matthew74665872
Looking forward to seeing examples of head-binding in the local population, too.
Write to us at: CA Letters, Current Publishing, Office 120, 295 Chiswick High Road, London, W4 4HH, or by email to: letters@archaeology.co.uk For publication: 300 words max; letters may be edited.
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