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I became obsessed with visiting museums about 1960 when I was six years old. Thanks to my parents for taking me to so many in subsequent years. 'Museology' has changed greatly since the 1960s. Mostly I failed to keep up... This video was inspired by 'What is magic?' by The Forest Jar ruclips.net/video/PqSNj0OWbkY/видео.html All the voices (except mine) came from ttsmaker.com The music is an exc...

In this video I discuss the sunken-featured buildings where Anglo-Saxons wove flax into linen. And rather often buried young children under the floor. Does this mean they were akin to the 'pit houses' known to ethnographers? And were they, like some of the pit houses, women-only spaces? If you can add relevant information please email me: bobtrubs@indigogroup.co.uk UPDATE: In _Buile Suibhne_ (o...

As with all areas of Britain there are certain wells in Leicestershire and Rutland known as 'holy wells' and several dedicated to saints. Almost invariably such holy wells have reputations for clean water and for never running dry. Leicestershire and Rutland once had over thirty documented wells called 'holy well' or dedicated to saints. But few survive. In addition there are some wells that we...

The earliest churches in England came about because of trade with the Continent. The churches were imported as part of a close-knit package of trade, arable farming, nucleated settlements and Christianity with its attendant literacy. Eighteenth century colonialism did something very similar in the Third World and the New World. sources Blair, John, 2005, _The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society_, Oxf...

Mercia, the central part of Anglo-Saxon England, quickly became Christian after the death of Penda in 655. So he is deemed to have been the last pagan king of England - although in reality the Isle of Wight and parts of Sussex weren’t converted until the 680s. But looking at things a different way, Penda was also the last of the Defenders of the ‘Old Ways’. And most likely had sworn an oath to ...

Literature as diverse as Old English, medieval Welsh and Irish poetry and the tales of Scottish Travellers use the first-person to give a voice, and personality, to a diverse range of non-human beings and even artefacts. Using this device for the metaphysical relocation of self, the author’s identity may become conflated with a deity. Which is perhaps how it all started… For a much longer versi...

This video is about the earliest churches in Nottinghamshire - the ones founded in the seventh or eighth centuries, long before the majority of what we now call parish churches were even constructed. Many of them are at places where waterborne transport could have most easily landed. This is the same at other inland counties such as Leicestershire and Wiltshire. What surprised me is that nearly...

Over the centuries a few journeys have become mythic. Some may have started out in reality but morphed over time in legends. Some were once integral to the life styles of the culture. They are the inspiration for ‘road trips’ as a movie trope and for a ubiquitous RUclips meme. In essence legendary journeys are journeys which are long enough that the route has not been committed to memory - unli...

English agriculture evolved steadily during the Anglo-Saxon period allowing the population to grow significantly. Agrarian practices of the eleventh century became the basis for subsequent generations of husbandry. Some changes - such as the need for nucleated settlements and routes between - had major implications as they are, by and large, the villages and roads which we know today. Sources P...

A widespread human myth is of the 'good old days', a never-quite-specified time approximately contemporary with one's grandparents when everything was better than it is today. Rural England has long been the venue for such myths. A longer version of the script for this video can be found in the opening chapter of _Sacred Places: prehistory and popular imagination_ which can be downloaded as a f...

This video is about Leicester’s best-known bogey person, Black Annis. It is a based on a much longer article: 'The making of a legend: Black Annis and her Bower', _Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society_, Vol. 80 (2006) p95-111 which can be downloaded for free from www.le.ac.uk/lahs/downloads/2006/2006 (80) 43-60 Trubshaw.pdf Note that my indications of the app...

This video is about why I speak the way I do. It’s a slippy un as, for a start off, ‘Yer comin round our arse afters?’ dun’t mean wot yer fust think. Do yer no nowt about it? Then shall yuh come? sources My research on Leicestershire dialects was done in 2002 and 2003. A longer version of the script for this video forms the opening chapter of _Leicestershire Legends retold by Black Annis_. This...

This video is about why a Roman road along a nationally-significant watershed became the biggest cultural boundary in England. Which is why West Midlands folk talk differently to those in Leicestershire. Sources Clive Upton, Stewart Sanderson and John Widdowson ‘Word Maps: A dialect atlas of England’ (Croom Helm 1987) Sorry, I never kept a note of who researched the parish registers and I’ve ne...

Why did medieval market towns need bypasses? I’ll answer that question by looking at some examples in Leicestershire and one just over the county boundary in Lincolnshire. Have a look at old maps and minor place-names and see if you can work out how medieval market towns near you would have been bypassed. If you can then please email me: bobtrubs@indigogroup.co.uk

Why Melton Mowbray needed to be called ‘middle town’

Salt ways in Leicestershire

Roman roads in north-east Leicestershire

Anglo-Saxon Leicestershire - the exceptional available evidence

Ironstone quarries of Leicestershire revisited

How Anglo-Saxons survived without satnavs

The evidence for an Anglo-Saxon horse cult

When U-bends were sacred. And the dragons who dwelt there.

Asking Curious Questions

Anglo-Saxon Avebury

Charnwood slate gravestones and eighteenth century trade routes

Early churches and waterborne trade

The significances of square headdresses

Beside not above: before the supernatural was invented

King Dick cops it!