Meet the Cleves : Anna and her sisters?
on Nov 19, 2009 in Tudor people Anne of Cleves Henry VIII Whilst doing a bit of research for another post I found out a little more about Anne of Cleves. Anne is well known to us because of the famous Holbein portrait, she is also remembered because of Henry VIII’s famously negative reaction to her. A...

Chimneys and fires
on Nov 10, 2009 in Tudor Places Tudor times Tudor Tudor buildings The black and white appearance of housing has become very closely associated with the Tudor period – arguably it is the most widely recognised architectural style – in the world? Perhaps this is why the header image at the top of ‘Tudor Stu...

The death of Queen Elizabeth I
on Nov 3, 2009 in Tudor people history Tudor Elizabeth I death In the spring of 1603, Elizabeth had been Queen for 44 years, and it was clear she would leave no heir. The major event leading up to the death of Queen Elizabeth I was undoubtedly the death of Robert Devereux (1566-1601), Earl of Essex, who was exec...

Autumn
on Oct 26, 2009 in Tudor Places Autumn history John Keats Tudor As I have been driving around the last few weeks I have noticed how fantastic the  autumn colours are this year. I was trying to think of a reason to get a hint of the autumn into a Tudor Stuff post. I had also been trying to thing of a good reaso...

A wild stab in the dark? The death of Christopher Marlowe
on Oct 18, 2009 in Poetry & Music Tudor people Christopher Marlowe Deptford Espionage Francis Walsingham history Ingram Frizer Nicholas Skeres Robert Poley Tudor The Elizabethan period produced many characters whose names live on for their creative genius. One of these was the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe (See these earlier posts about Marlowe here & here) As well as being famous for his writin...

Saxon Gold
on Oct 11, 2009 in Non Tudor history Poetry & Music Anglo Saxon Beowulf Gold Staffordshire Treasure We hope you will forgive us for straying from the Tudor theme of the blog to write about the wonderful discovery of a huge hoard of Anglo Saxon gold near our home city of Birmingham.  The find, the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found, is be...

Tudor breasts exposed again & a tribute to the Clash.
on Oct 4, 2009 in Poetry & Music Tudor people Tudor times breasts fashion history janie jones the clash Tudor In the previous post about Tudor boobs I had wanted to include a photograph I had seen of a short lived fashion trend  from London in the 1960’s. I clearly remember having seen a woman photographed in the street wearing a dress which exposed h...

The Musket – Use in battle & a dreadful injury
on Sep 25, 2009 in Harvington Hall Battle English Civil War history musket Wounds This post continues the Civil war theme of last week with a look at how the musket was used and also what might happen if a person was hit. Maintaining a constant rate of fire. As you can see from the previous post, firing the gun was not an easy pro...

Musket
on Sep 17, 2009 in Harvington Hall history musket   This post has a Civil War theme – one of our occasional excursions away from the normal Tudor period.  Harvington Hall had a living history weekend at the end of August.  The Hall really comes to life during these occasions as there is al...

Thomas Tallis
on Sep 9, 2009 in Poetry & Music Tudor people Catholic history Spike Milligan Thomas Tallis Tudor   My two great musical interests are English folk music, and polyphonic church music from the tudor period – English or otherwise.  William Cornysh, Thomas Tallis and Willaim Byrd are some of the major English composers from this period; Palest...