Dan Snow, historian and award winning TV presenter takes a few minutes out of his busy schedule to talk to the Medieval Archives. Trained in the hallowed halls of Oxford University, Dan ventured into TV for a WWII Documentary and hasn’t looked back. His past medieval documentaries explored 1066 and The Battle of Hastings, Norman…
Swansea Council has announced the city centre castle will be open to the public this weekend as part of Swansea’s St David’s week celebrations. Tours will take place every half-hour between 10am and 4pm on the Saturday, 25 February and 11am and 3.30pm on the Sunday, 26 February. It’s only the third time in decades…
Considering its importance, I thought it would be bigger. Not that walls 3.5-metres thick and 12-metres high are insubstantial, but I’d expected a castle that had endured five sieges, taken nearly eight years to build and was the last royalist fortification to fall in the English Civil War to have more bulk. The site is…
It is one of the most popular and oft-repeated rhymes in the English language, serving to remind countless generations how many days there are in each month. Now a Welsh author claims he has unearthed the medieval origins of the verse Thirty Days Hath September. The rhyme has been passed down in oral tradition but…
England and Wales are full of beautiful medieval churches. From the famous like Christ Church cathedral to the lesser-known like Dorchester Abbey, they offer breathtaking architecture and decoration, and since many are free, they make good budget travel destinations. Some even preserve fragile paintings from the Middle Ages, like this one photographed by Roger Rosewell,…
It was twice burnt to the ground by rebellious Welsh princes and was “Camelot” for the ancient lords of Gower. Now romantic Oystermouth Castle, set on a commanding hill overlooking Swansea Bay at Mumbles, is to re-open to the public after a £1.7m makeover. Half of the crumbling medieval castle had been closed to the…
I have had several questions about the names and locations of the castles in the Castles of Europe Windows 7 theme. Below are the 21 castles included in the theme as well as there names and locations. The original post: Castle of Europe Windows 7 Theme post. Download the Castles of Europe Windows 7 Theme…
Update: The updated post for the Castles of Europe Theme can be found here –> Castles of Europe Windows 7 Theme, now with pictures. It includes pictures of all 21 castles as well as their names and locations. ~The Archivist This theme contains 21 pictures of castles form across Europe. I have it installed on…
International travelers have selected touring castles in Wales as the most popular of 18 travel experiences that can only be found in Britain. 10,000 people in 20 countries were surveyed by VisitBritain for the 2010 Nation Brands Index. 34% of participants would like to visit castles in Wales, making it the most frequently chosen response….
On the reams of choral chants in this Welsh medieval treasure I spotted a scribble of a man with a big nose. Satire hasn’t changed – and neither have we. It looks like something Jake and Dinos Chapman might do if they turned their hand to the creative defacement of illuminated manuscripts: the Viz-style gargoyle…
Like many other Christian traditions, the Episcopal Church has a custom of remembering “the saints.” And by saints, we simply mean those Christians throughout history whose lives continue to inspire and encourage us. Now, we are a little less likely than other traditions to venerate those saints, but we still believe it is very important…
Abergwyngregyn archaeological dig The open day will take place between 10am-4pm on 30 October Medieval finds thought to be related to the princes of Gwynedd are on show for the last time. Excavations at Abergwyngregyn, near Bangor, unearthed the remains of a medieval hall dating back to the 14th century, the period when Llywelyn the…
In this episode of the Medieval Archives Podcast we discuss “The Anarchy” a nineteen year period of civil war and chaos. The death of King Henry I set off a chain reaction of events that set England on a path of destruction. The Scots in the North, the Welsh in the West and the English…
An assortment of activities, including music, dancing, bagpipes, sheep herding, Celtic presentations and storytelling, will be featured during the 21st annual Chesapeake Celtic Festival at Furnace Town Living Heritage Museum in Snow Hill this weekend. “It’s an intimate festival on 12 acres with non-stop entertainment from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in many venues,” said…
Topics as unique and diverse as medieval Irish magic and the drinking of blood in the ritual context of mourning will be explored at the Seventh Australian Conference of Celtic Studies at the University of Sydney this week. Sydney is the only university in the southern hemisphere that offers Celtic studies, which examines Celtic languages,…
