Britain & Ireland

In this section you can be transported to a world when Britain was part of mainland Europe or to prehistory Bristol or travel from 3000BC to 60BC across Britain and Ireland. The content explores the society and culture of the people that populated the British Isles in the early days, what the evidence is for knowing about them and what marks they have left for us to see today. Read more

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  • 'Veni, Vidi, Vici!'

    Article

    A personal reflection on Julius Caesar and the conquest of Britain Julius Caesar always brings to mind the famous dictum of Winston Churchill, ‘History will be kind to me, for I shall write it!' In his writings Julius Caesar provides a vivid and detailed account of his invasions of Britain in...

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  • Hidden histories: landscape spotting – a brief guide

    Article

    The art of landscape spotting – identifying and interpreting visible archaeological features in the countryside – is an accessible, enlightening and fun way to explore our past. By finding these clues in the fields, roads, hedges and hills around us, we can start to piece together the biography of a...

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  • Lecture: Life at the edge of the Roman Empire

    Article

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  • Michael Wood, Hadrian and the Making of Early England

    Article

    Michael Wood opened the summer lecture series for the HA virtual Branch on the Making of Early England. In it he introduced key characters and texts that help to establish the cultural past of that time and also reveal to us what we know of it. These people included overlooked...

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  • My Favourite History Place: A Short History of Brill

    Article

    In this article Josephine Glover discusses the long history of her ‘favourite history place’, the Buckinghamshire village of Brill. She explains how there has been a human settlement there since Mesolithic times. Using various fragments of evidence, she pieces together the extent to which the village was important to early...

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  • My Favourite History Place: Hadrian’s Wall

    Article

    Choosing Hadrian’s Wall as one of my favourite places is a bit of a cheat, really, as it is a 73-mile-long (80 Roman miles) wall punctuated with a whole range of 20 individual sites each worth a visit; from mile castles and forts to desolate sections with fabulous views or...

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  • My Favourite History Place: Maiden Castle

    Article

    In the six years I have been on the editorial board of The Historian I have enjoyed reading about many historians’ favourite places so it is fitting that I write my last contribution about mine. Maiden Castle  is the largest Celtic hill fort in southern Europe. I forget when I first...

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  • Out and About in Chester

    Article

    This ‘aide memoire’ to Chester’s local history has been prepared to enable 2019 Annual Conference delegates – and other visitors – to gain a ‘flavour’ of what Chester has to offer.  A visitor to Chester encounters the bustle and excitement of a busy cathedral city but behind this façade lies...

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  • Podcast Series: Ancient British and Irish Pagan Religion

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol looks at Ancient British and Irish Pagan Religion.

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  • Podcast Series: From the Stone Age to the Romans

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Professor Richard Bradley of the University of Reading looks at Britain and Ireland from their prehistoric beginnings to the arrival of the Romans.

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  • Podcast: Roman Britain

    Multipage Article

    An HA Podcasted History of Roman Britain featuring Guy de la Bédoyère.

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  • Prehistoric Bristol

    Article

    This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...

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  • Prehistoric Scotland

    Article

    Prehistory is an attempt to reconstruct the story of human societies inhabiting a given region before the full historical record opens there. Its data, furnished by archaeology, are the constructions members of such societies erected and the durable objects they made. The events which should form its subject matter naturally...

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  • Roman Britain

    Article

    This classic pamphlet provides an introduction to Roman Britain, examines the political history, the institutions of Roman Britain, the economic background and the end of Roman Britain. IntroductionThe Roman conquest and occupation of Britain has long been taken as the conventional starting point of English History, and there is a conventional...

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  • Sacred waters: Bath in the Roman Empire

    Article

    Eleri Cousins explores the dynamics of Romano-British religion at the sanctuary at Bath. What do you think of when you think of Roman Bath?  Most of us probably think of, well, the Baths – in particular the iconic image of the Great Bath, with its Roman swimming basin and its...

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  • The Undergrowth of History

    Article

    We can do all kinds of things with the past - examine it analytically, or question whether it ever existed, or churn it up inside ourselves until it turns into personal experience. We can dream it as we lounge amidst a heap of ruins, or petrify it into a museum;...

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