Whether or not you have been to the Kederminster Library at Langley Marish (now in the suburbs of Slough), do share this one abd consider visiting. It’s utterly spectacular and worth a long journey. langleymarish.com/stmary/keder... - hats off for them for seeing that is open to be visited.

Memorial stone in Sherborne Abbey. (The ‘Abbey-garden and Green’ refers to the churchyard.) The winter of 1708/9 had been extraordinarily cold and was the coldest European winter during the past 500 years. It seems the extreme weather continued into May.

Shame the article does not have a picture of the jewel, which fully torpedoes its news value

Many thanks

Many thanks for helping out when words failed me

Does anyone know the artist of this Victorian painting of two artists and a woman painting? It's a subject that defies my best efforts with google

Metal detectorist finds original design prototype for custard cream.

Northumberland: castles and the borderlands of power Podcast Episode · The English Heritage Podcast · 16 April · 50min

The first of two new episodes here on medieval Northumberland. V grateful to one of my former PhD supervisors Prof Oram (Stirling) for joining this convo avout the odd things of England’s medieval far north! podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

A note of my mother’s cabinets, 1644 When Mary, Countess of Home, died in London in March 1644, her body was shipped to Dunglass for burial and £300 sterling was allocated for her monument, according to her will. Settling the will was…

A good quantity of ambergris and civet and other sweet things: cabinets and boxes in an Aldersgate house in 1644

vanishedcomforts.org/2026/04/17/a...

Hey #skystorians, @barrytorch.bsky.social and I are co-editing a special edition of the Journal of Epistolary Studies!!
See Barry's post for the full details of the #CFP but also feel free to DM me for details or with any questions.

A front cover of a book; the background image is a 16th-century painting of a beached whale

Happy publication day to Ryan Gregg for his new book

Beached Whale Images in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp
Symbols of Humanity’s Dominion over the Earth
www.routledge.com/Beached-Whal...

Controverted Elections, Electoral Controversy and the Scottish Privy Council, 1689–1708* Both the privy council and elections in early modern Scotland are understudied. The council itself has largely been described as a tool for crown management of elections. But it was fundamentally a c....

Since we are in the midst of a Scottish Parliament election campaign I thought I'd repost my #OpenAccess article in @parlhistjournal.bsky.social from 2024 which investigates the Scottish Privy Council's role in elections between 1689 & 1708

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Text, 'To cherrishe Apple trees', A booke of the arte and maner how to plant and graffe all sortes of trees (London: John Wight, 1575), p. 75. https://archive.org/details/bookeofartemaner00masc/page/n5/mode/2up

The tree book is interesting too, this from a later edition

Yes, I understood that.

Three 1783 documents mentioning the "cleynen beygaerde", "petits Begards", and "Pettit Beygards" respectively.

Might any #C18 scholars familiar with Belgium be able to identify the beguinage mentioned in these 1783 documents? The beguinage was either in or close to Brussels. The only other clue I have is that the confessor is identified variously as "Herdies", "Herdy", and "Herdie". Thank you kindly!

Looks like, Petit-Bigard, or, Klein Bijgaarden, as the name of the place

'Item I leves my hairt and service to my lord regentis /g/ and my sone Johne [John Stewart of Baldynnis] under his protection to remane eyther with him or the kingis majestie as he thinks metest', (National Records of Scotland, CC8/8/2 p. 184)

Lord Innermeath bequeaths his heart, service, and younger son John to remain with Regent Moray or James VI, "as he thinks meetest", January 1569

'Astride horses, accompanied by retainers and hounds, the two youths pose as propertied huntsmen, ready at any moment to depart for the conquest of their prey. Cuyp’s skill as a landscape painter is in tension with the relative awkwardness of the figures.'

Aelbert Cuyp, The van Meerdervoort brothers with their tutor and servant, c1650, The Met. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

How about Philip Sidney aged 7 and companion, studio of Daniël Mijtens, much liking the hunting accident theory, very Barry Lyndon

I've studied so many concentration camps through history that held vulnerable people in just this kind of crowded squalor. You demonize people, you demand more arrests, this is what you get. It already has its own budget and its own momentum, and is on track to go much further, unless we stop it.

just what DC needed: a half-assed Mussolini Wedding Cake

this is 100% the thing a bad sci-fi movie superimposes onto DC to let you know that the government is now evil

A comprehensive introduction to working with 17th-century family archives in Scotland

vanishedcomforts.org/2025/01/17/h...

Surpringly on internet archive (need to register), archive.org/details/disc...

Mor that old pill stuff of Mineralls is not to be be taken, the reason because that without correctives mineralls ar poysone and in tym correctives will decay Ergo then not to be taken befoir it be maid anew by being beaten upe with new correctives (Moray Papers)

Moray Papers 5:16, with attribution to Leonard Poe

Early modern 'pill stuff of minerals' was compounded with 'correctives' to reduce the risk of poisoning, and because the power of the correctives would decay, older medicines had to be made anew

Anacreous Pigeon was the kind of music an uncle liked in the 70s

handwritten text "Ethel Dugdale, Sezincote"

Sezincote House, Gloucestershire

Treated myself to the 'Fugger News-Letters' (1924), an unusual kind of calendar with a forward by H. Gordon Selfridge, author of 'The Romance of Commerce'. Clearly a country house regular, this copy belonged to John Betjeman's college friend's mother at Sezincote

It is nice that the red flowers are paired with the same in gold hatching, which may be a feature of Elizabethan fabric design

how to make water for the eyes Take eye bright white hunnisukles woodbine leaves fenell desies plantane white roses honslick each of thes a handfull and a brance or tuo or wormwood chop all thes small and sprinkell them with the urine of a man chyld then distill it and use it as you list (Moray Papers 5:16)

How to make water for the eyes: honey suckle, woodbine leaves, fennel, daisies etc., this recipe markedly betrays its early promise

Just catching up now with Brexit 10 party time, some tracking messages today setting the mood;

"A Government Agency is conducting a document inspection. We'll notify the receiver or sender if information is needed",

"UPS is in the process of returning this package to the sender"