Wednesday 21 February 2024
Exploring the Past like a History Detective by Kimberlie Hamilton
Wednesday 7 February 2024
The History of Valentine's Day
Wednesday 31 January 2024
Local Legend Edith Nesbitt, with Time Tunneller Matthew Wainwright
My children love Edith Nesbit’s books. I love them too! I remember reading them when I was younger, and now my children listen to them in the car on the way home from school.
You’ve probably heard of some of her books, even if you haven’t read them: The Railway Children is probably her most famous, but she also wrote Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Story of the Amulet, and The Enchanted Castle (as well as many, many others!)
At the time Edith was writing, over 100 years ago, she was just as famous as any best-selling children’s author today. Children awaited each new book eagerly–and with good reason.
Edith had a ferocious imagination, writing stories full of magic, adventure and drama, and she understood how children think: what they love, fear and desire.
Her depiction of sibling relationships is note-perfect, capturing the little jokes and quarrels that exist between brothers and sisters, as well as the fierce loyalty that can turn in an instant to bitter hostility, then back again in the next second!
You may be wondering why I am writing about Edith Nesbitt. Well, as it turns out she lived for a while not very far from where I live now – in Eltham in south-east London!
Her home was a place called Well Hall, an 18th century manor house which was built on the remains of a much earlier, medieval manor house of the same name.
Interestingly, there were two manor houses recorded in Eltham in 1100: East Horne and Well Hall. Neither manor is still standing (unfortunately) but their names remain.
Well Hall gives its name to Well Hall Road and Well Hall Pleasaunce – a sort of small park or garden – and East Horne manor lives on in the neighbourhood of Horn Park, which is in fact where I live!
As I said, the original medieval Well Hall manor was pulled down and rebuilt in the 18th century, but the barn that was built next door in the Tudor era remains, and is home to the Tudor Barn restaurant today.
Edith Nesbit lived in Well Hall from 1899 to around 1920. During this time she wrote many of her most famous novels, including the ‘Psammead Series’ (Five Children and It; The Phoenix and the Carpet; The Story of the Amulet), The Railway Children and The Enchanted Castle.
If you visit Well Hall Pleasaunce today (as I did) you’ll find some lovely wood carvings of the Psammead (the sand fairy from Five Children and It), the Phoenix (the magical fire bird from The Phoenix and the Carpet) and a dragon in honour of the many magical creatures Edith Nesbit wrote about.
I had a great time walking in Edith’s footsteps (you can see my outing in the video that goes with this blog post). It was wonderful to walk where she would have walked, and to think what she might have seen and smelled and heard when she lived there.
The place would have been a lot quieter, with no main road, much fewer shops, and the whole place consisting of a small village in the countryside rather than a busy London suburb.
Despite these differences, however, it was very moving to have that connection to someone who was so influential in children’s writing.
Later in the day I visited Railway Children Walk in nearby Grove Park. It’s not much – just a narrow footpath behind some houses, leading to a bridge over a railway line – but as I walked down I had the sensation of walking away from the bustle of London and into a quiet place all by itself.
It was as if I was walking back in time to that period when there were fewer cars and no planes, no mobile phones and no internet. Back, in fact, to the era of The Railway Children, when trains ran on steam and the two World Wars hadn’t happened yet.
It reminded me that history isn’t confined to the past: it’s all around us. Sometimes it’s hidden, and you have to go digging for it; but sometimes you’ll come across it quite suddenly and unexpectedly.
It’ll be there in a place name, a street sign, a plaque on a wall or a rise in the ground. If you don’t know what it is you’ll probably miss it – but if you go out in your local area with an idea of what to look for you’ll find the past rushing up to meet you.
With that in mind, here’s this week’s Writing Challenge. In fact it’s not so much a challenge as an adventure!
Your challenge is to find out about a person who lived in your local area a long time ago, and see if you can find anything of them left behind, and record it on the sheet. They don't have to be very famous, but it would be good to know if they did something important or helpful.
You might not find much. It might just be a street name; it might be a house where they lived; it might be a path they used to walk along. Whatever it is, see if you can find it, and either draw it or take a picture.
Then write a description of the place as it might have looked when that person was alive. If it was long enough ago it might have changed a lot – or it might not have changed at all! Either way, it’s fascinating to think about how the past relates to the present. Include the person in your scene if you can.
Enjoy the activity, and happy time tunnelling!
Thursday 25 January 2024
Lost Legend, Lily Parr by Lindsay Galvin
In
1905 the football legend Lily Parr was born. Some readers will be frowning;
they’ve never heard of Lily Parr, so how can she be a football legend?
Ah, but that’s exactly why Lily’s story is so fascinating!
Lily Parr was the fourth child of a hardworking family, living in the industrial outskirts of the city of Liverpool. The gas-lit, smoggy streets running between rows of back-to-back housing, were where this small girl decided she much preferred a kick about with her brothers to household pastimes. The older boys soon stopped laughing at little Lily when they saw the strength of her kick, speed and skill.
When
World War 1 began in 1914, Lily was nine years old. Britain needed every
available man to defend Europe from invasion by the Germans. Men and boys
signed up to join the army in their thousands, but it wasn’t enough, and soon
it was compulsory for young fit men to go away to fight.
The
normal pattern of life turned on its head.
With huge numbers of men at war, the women and girls now worked in the
factories making the ammunition needed by the army. They played football in
their breaks, and soon began playing matches against other factories.
Crowds flocked to watch matches played for wartime charities, and the quality of the ladies football game grew. With so many men at war, women’s football surged in popularity with matches every weekend.
When the war ended in 1918, the men began to take their factory jobs back from the women, who were expected to return to their roles in the home. But ladies football had become a very popular sport in its own right. Some of the teams had legions of adoring fans.
By 1919, aged just 14, Lily Parr was nearly 6 foot tall, strong and fit. Her football skills had not gone unnoticed. She was playing for a local ladies team, when she was talent spotted by the best team in the country, Dick Kerr Ladies, based at the factory of the same name. Offered a factory job, a family to board with, and a chance to play for money, her concerned parents are forced to agree. Lily loved football and this was her big chance.
In
Lily’s first season with Dick Kerr Ladies, she scored 43 goals. By 1920 her
skills were being noticed by a wider audience and she was considered a star.
Lily Parr Scores! is published by Big Cat for Little Wandle Fluency.
Lindsay Galvin is the author of Darwin's Dragons, My Friend the Octopus and The Call of the Titanic. After working for over 20 years as a teacher, Lindsay is now a full-time writer. To find out more visit lindsaygalvin.com/
Thursday 14 December 2023
Our 100th Video!
A new member of the team …
Hi Robin. To start with, can you tell us what led you to exchange journalism for children's fiction?
So why did you make historical fiction your genre of choice?
Is there an era, event or person you'd really love to cover, but you haven't been able to yet?
And what are you hoping for as a member of the Time Tunnellers?
Thanks so much for answering our questions, Robin. We can’t wait to see where our time tunnelling adventures take us next!
Looking back
Ally Sherrick
Barbara Henderson
Matthew Wainwright
Susan Brownrigg
Competition Time!
Ally Sherrick
Barbara Henderson
Matthew Wainwright
Robin Scott-Elliot
Susan Brownrigg
Wednesday 6 December 2023
A Very Merrie Tudor Christmas! with Time Tunneller Matthew Wainwright
People all over the world celebrate Christmas in different ways. From the enormous Yule Goat constructed of straw in Sweden, to the Pastorelas (Shepherd’s Plays) of Mexico, to a game of Trivial Pursuit alongside a box of Quality Streets in the UK, people have created their own traditions around this major Christian festival.
But what about people in the past? How different were their Christmas celebrations from our own? To find out a little bit about what might have changed, let’s go back five hundred years to Tudor England under the reign of King Henry VIII …
The Twelve Days of Christmas
You’ve probably heard the carol that begins, “On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me …” and ends with the unfortunate recipient of the gifts having their house overrun by poultry and leaping lords.
In Tudor times Christmas really was twelve days long! Starting on December 25th and ending on January 5th, people downed tools and took part in a number of traditions, one for each of the twelve days.
On Christmas Eve (December 24th) people would decorate their spinning wheels with greenery brought in from outside, signifying that work was stopping for the duration of Christmas. Christmas trees came a lot later - in Tudor times people would ‘deck the halls with boughs of holly’, and festoon their houses with ‘the holly and the ivy’.
On Christmas Day itself people would eat! The Tudors knew how to throw a party, and they would have feasted in the best style they could afford.
Roast meats featured prominently (including Turkeys, which were a new delicacy and could be seen being driven in huge flocks from London to Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire) as well as pies that contained two or three different kinds of bird meat alongside fruit and spices.
Mince pies were originally filled with actual minced meat, spiced and mixed with fruit - until later the meat was taken out, and all that remained was the spiced fruit with the rather confusing name of ‘mincemeat’!
One famous tradition is that of the Boar’s Head, commemorated in the Boar’s Head Carol. In a spectacle echoing back to ancient pagan origins, a boar’s head would be cooked and garlanded with fruits and herbs, and brought into the feasting hall on a magnificent platter. The Boar’s Head Feast is still celebrated in Oxford University’s Queen’s College to this day!
The Feast of St. Stephen was on what we now call Boxing Day. It was a day for charity and giving to the poor, and it’s immortalised in the carol ‘Good King Wenceslas’ who looked out on the Feast of Stephen to see a poor man struggling through the snow, and was moved to bring him ‘flesh and wine’.
Child Bishops were appointed in churches from 6th December until Childermas on 28th December. A young boy, usually a member of the choir, would be adorned with all the regalia of a bishop for this time, and would take services and preach sermons!
O sisters too, how may we do For to preserve this day This poor youngling for whom we sing, “Bye bye, lully, lullay?”
New Year’s Day was the traditional day for giving gifts. People gave gifts to show their appreciation to those in authority over them, and those at court were expected to give presents to the king.
Tudor Christmas presents could be expensive - but they were an excellent way to make sure you stayed in favour in the coming year! Just think about that next time you’re doing your Christmas shopping …
Father Christmas
One of the most endearing and bizarre Tudor Christmas traditions was the appointment of a Lord of Misrule to preside over the twelve days of festivities.
Revived by Henry VII, the post of Lord of Misrule was a way to upset the normal order of things. Someone would be chosen to direct all the Christmas celebrations, and would preside over them in a mock court, receiving mock homage from the revellers.
In Scotland, the same position was held by the Abbot of Unreason - although with the progression of the Reformation across Britain these traditions slowly faded away.
The idea of a Lord of Misrule does persist today, however, in the unlikely form of Father Christmas! Lords of Misrule were sometimes given names like ‘Captain Christmas’, ‘The Christmas Lord’ or ‘Prince Christmas’.
In 1616, the playwright Ben Johnson put on a Christmas play featuring an old man called ‘Christmas’ or ‘Old Gregorie Christmas’. He had sons and daughters called ‘Mince Pie’, ‘Misrule’, ‘Carol’ and others, and he had a long beard.
So the idea continued through the 1600s, the character appearing in numerous Christmas plays. He always personified Christmas parties and games, however, and had less to do with the idea of bringing presents. And as you can see in the picture above, he sometimes rode a goat!
Another tradition had been around in Europe for a long time - that of St. Nicholas, based on the real-life figure of a Bishop from Turkey. On St. Nicholas’ day (6th December) children were given presents to commemorate his gold-giving exploits.
According to tradition, St. Nicholas (or ‘Sinterklaas’) would deliver presents by passing through locked doors or descending chimneys. In Dutch markets, Sinterklaas impersonators could be found wearing his distinctive red and white robes …
It’s possible that the legend of Sinterklaas crossed the Atlantic to the North American Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which later became New York.
However it happened, Santa Claus born, and eventually immortalised in Clement Clark Moore’s poem, ‘The Night Before Christmas’, where we find many of the features of our familiar Santa, including a huge belly, red costume and reindeer.
For a while Santa Claus and Father Christmas existed side-by-side, even appearing together in an 1864 story by Susanna Warner. But eventually the two merged, although in the UK the character has traditionally kept the name Father Christmas, harking back to the Lord of Misrule and providing us with a fascinating link to the Tudors!
And Christmas traditions are still evolving, with Elf on the Shelf and other festive celebrations taking their place in the hearts and lives of British people.
Writing challenge
About the author
Sources
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/A-Tudor-Christmas/
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/members-area/kids/kids-tudors/twelve-days-of-christmas/
https://kriii.com/news/2022/medieval-christmas-the-boar-s-head-festival/
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/occasions/christmas/coventry-carol-lyrics-meaning-history/
https://www.britannica.com/art/Lord-of-Misrule-English-medieval-official
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/christmas/the-history-of-father-christmas/
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