Tagged: English Heritage
Step into Castle Acre
![1952 [1970]](https://ucsheritage.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/castle_acre_mpbw.jpeg)
1952 [1970]
![1952 [1979]](https://ucsheritage.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/castle_acre_doe.jpeg)
1952 [1979]
![2008 [2013]](https://ucsheritage.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/castle_acre_eh.jpeg)
2008 [2013]
Guides to Framlingham Castle
1959 (3rd impression 1965)
Framlingham Castle came into state guardianship in 1913. The castle still retains some of the original Ministry of Works signs. My oldest blue guide is by Frederick J.E. Raby, Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Works (history), and Paul K. Baillie Reynolds, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments (description). My 1965 MPBW edition is the third impression of the 1959 guide consisting of 32 pages, including black and white photographs and a plan. The text is divided into a History (pp. 8-14, plan p. 15), and a Description (pp. 16-31), with a glossary (p. 32). The cover is decorated with the arms of the Howard Dukes of Norfolk that stands above the main entrance gate of the castle.
1977 (9th impression)
I also have a ninth impression (1977) issued by the Department of the Environment at 50p. The guidebook notes revisions based on published excavations by J.G. Coad (1971) and Derek Renn (1975). The plan has moved to the start of the guide (p. 4) although the handwritten caption has been replaced by a more standard typographic font. The guidebook follows the earlier one with Summary (pp. 5-7), History (pp. 8-16), Description (pp. 17-37) and glossary (p. 38). Pictures have been placed in text rather than in a single block.
Guide to Framlingham Castle
Alongside this is a small card guide to the castle, c. 1977.
2009 (revised reprint 2011)
The present English Heritage fully illustrated guide by Nicola Stacey was published in 2009 (revised reprint 2011). This consists of 40 pages with foldout plans inside the covers. It consists of a tour (pp. 4-21) and the history (pp. 22-40). The Howard coast of arms (see covers above) features in an early 20th century black and white photograph (p. 6).
The guide also includes information about the Howard Tombs in the adjacent church of St Michael, and a discussion of the ‘Flodden Helm’.
Heritage Hospitality: Chesters Roman Fort
Chesters Roman Fort tea room © David Gill
What enhances the visit to a heritage site? High up on the list will be the tea room. And the experience will be judged by the range of cakes, choice of blend, and (most significantly at the moment) the option to have an extra jug of water. (Am I alone in thinking that most tea outlets only expect you to drink one cup of tea?)
And what else makes the visit memorable? Probably the name of the tea room.
Here is a memorable name for the (former) establishment at Chesters Roman Fort now replaced (so I am reliably informed) by an English Heritage outlet.
Numbered towers at Framlingham Castle
© David Gill
The impressive castle walls at Framlingham Castle, Suffolk date to Roger Bigod II, second earl of Norfolk (c. 1143-1221). The walls are dominated by a series of thirteen towers. Each contains a small Ministry of Works sign giving the appropriate number. These can be seen both from the ground level and the impressive wall-walk that gives views over the Suffolk countryside.
© David Gill
Framlingham Castle was placed in state guardianship in 1913.
For the Department of Enviornment short guide see here.
Framlingham Castle looking north from the gatehouse. © David Gill
Deal and Walmer Castles
(1963)
Deal, Walmer and Sandown Castles were constructed by Henry VIII to protect The Downs off the coast of Kent. The guidebook to Deal and Walmer Castles was prepared by A.D. Saunders in 1963 for the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works. (See earlier post on Deal Castle.) This guide has a section discussing the castles, and then separate descriptions of the two.
This is one of the new types of illustrated guidebooks emerging from the late 1950s to replace the older ‘blue’ guides. Other examples include: Stonehenge and Avebury (1959), Beaumaris Castle (1961), Monasteries in North Yorkshire (1962), Caernarfon Castle (1963), Grimes Graves (1963), Lullingstone Roman Villa (1963).
The Department of the Environment later produced an illustrated guidebook on Henry’s forts.
Rievaulx Abbey
Rievaulx Abbey © David Gill
The ruined Cisertcian abbey at Rievaulx came under State Guardianship in 1917 on the death of (Lt. Col.) Lord Feversham on the Western Front in September 1916 [CWGC]. Its acquisition was welcomed by Sir Charles Peers. During the 1920s he removed some 90,000 tonnes of debris from the site. Following Peers’ retirement some reconstruction work was conducted.
From 1933 the abbey appeared in LNER railway posters (see here). Visitors were encouraged to travel to nearby Helmsley station.
The abbey had been founded in 1132.
English Heritage Handbook to Ashby de la Zouch Castle
(1984)
English Heritage was launched in April 1984. The new guidebook series appeared with a red masthead and a picture of the site on the cover (see, for example, Corbridge). However the first guides (known as ‘Handbooks’) continued the tradition of the Ministry of Works / MPBW / Department of Environment ‘blue guides’. Take, for example, the guide to Ashby de la Zouch Castle in Leicestershire by T. L. Jones. It was first published as a Department of the Environment blue guide in 1980, and then republished in 1984 for the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England. The title page also included the new English Heritage logo (including the ‘keep’). The Ashby de la Zouch guide has a plan of the site printed inside the rear cover.
Title page (1984)
St Botolph’s Priory
(1964)
Sir Charles Peers, the Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, prepared two Office of Works guidebooks in 1917: Kirby Muxloe Castle in Leicestershire and St Botolph’s Priory in Colchester. (Simon Thurley, Men from the Ministry, p. 156, only notes Kirby Muxloe’s guide.) The guide to the priory was re-issued in 1964 by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works [Worldcat]. The 1964 edition consists of 12 pages divided into two sections: History (pp. 3-6) and The Priory Buildings (pp. 7-12). There are two black and white photographs and a partial plan of the priory as a centre double page spread. Peers makes a reference to the Victoria County History for Essex (1903) for his list of priors.
The guide to St Botolph’s Priory is no longer available, although there is a useful section with plan and reconstruction in Philip Crummy’s City of Victory: the Story of Colchester – Britain’s First Roman Town (1997). However Kirby Muxloe Castle is covered in a joint English Heritage guidebook (by John Goodall) with Ashby de la Zouch Castle.
Roman heritage in London
The Roman Wall at Tower Hill, London (2015). © David Gill
One of the best preserved sections of the Roman wall surrounding Londinium can be found at Tower Hill (just next to Tower Hill underground station). This formed the eastern side of the city near to the Thames (and by the Tower of London, just off the picture to the right). They were probably constructed at the end of the second century AD; the upper section is medieval. The terminus post quem is provided by a coin of 183/4 predating the wall’s construction. The construction appears to have been completed by c. 210, again through numismatic evidence. Overall the wall was approximately 3 km in length. It may have stood as high as 6 m. The wall was constructed from ragstone that was shipped via the river Medway.
The wall is under the guardianship of English Heritage.
The Roman wall at Tower Hill (2015) © David Gill
Guides to Grime’s Graves
DOE Reprint 1975 (1963)
The first Ministry of Works guide to the neolithic mines at Grime’s Graves in Norfolk was replaced by an illustrated guide in 1963. (This copy is the 1975 Department of the Environment reprint.) It was written by Roy Rainbird Clarke (1914-63), the Director of the City of Norwich Museums, and son of one of the founders of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia.
Clarke’s guide has key sections: The Exploration of the Site; The Flint-mining Industry; Mining Technique; The Miners; The Axe Trade; After the Neolithic Period; there is a short description of the site essentially describing Pit 1. There is a fold-out card plan inside the back cover. (Note that the Custodian’s hut was in a slightly different location.)
The guide includes several reconstructions by Alan Sorrell: a ‘section’ through one of the pits showing how flint was quarried (p. 2); ‘How the miners extracted flint’ (pp. 16-17); ‘ritual ceremony among prehistoric flint-miners’ (p. 20); three views of ‘why the flint was mined’ (p. 25). One of them is clearly dated 1963 so presumably they were commissioned for the guide.
The format of the guide makes it contemporary with the illustrated guide to Stonehenge and Avebury, as well as for the Edwardian castles in Wales, and monasteries in Yorkshire.
(2011)
The latest guide is by Peter Topping. The tour includes ‘Setting and landscape’ with an image of a stone curlew that sometimes nest at the site. There is a useful section on ‘Flint and its formation’. Those interested in the post-neolithic use of the site will find discussion (and reconstruction) of Grimshoe Mound dating to the late Saxon period, and foxholes made by the Home Guard in World War 2.
(old site) Heritage Futures 