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Out and About in Medieval Toulouse
Historian article
David Pearse takes us to the historic heart of France’s fourth-largest city.
Looking at the street plan
Bordering the River Garonne, medieval Toulouse extends as far as the Basilica of St Sernin but is concentrated in an area bounded approximately by the Jacobins’ Church to the north, St Etienne Cathedral...
Out and About in Medieval Toulouse
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Out and About in Paestum
Historian feature
Trevor James introduces the extraordinary archaeological remains from Greek and Roman occupation to be found at Paestum.
Paestum is the more recent name of a location originally known as Poseidonia, named in honour of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. Poseidonia was a Greek settlement or colony on the west...
Out and About in Paestum
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Out and about in the East Yorkshire Wolds
Historian feature
East Yorkshire is a somewhat neglected area for touring. Yet, the villages in the chalk Wolds possess much charm and a lot of surprising history to reward those who would explore them. In my youth, I toured these villages many times both on foot and by bicycle. This route is...
Out and about in the East Yorkshire Wolds
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My Favourite History Place: Tivoli Theatre
Historian feature
The Tivoli Theatre opened on 24 August 1936 with Jean Adrienne in Father O’Flynn and Shirley Temple in Kid in Hollywood, with film star Jean Adrienne appearing in person. It was designed by Bournemouth-based architect E. de Wilde Holding. The front of the building was an existing Georgian-style building named Borough House. Inside the auditorium there...
My Favourite History Place: Tivoli Theatre
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Out and About in Upper Weardale
Historian feature
Tony Fox introduces us to two battlefields and the work of the Battlefields Trust.
Stanhope takes its name from the ‘stony valley’ in which it sits. It is the most significant town in beautiful Upper Weardale. Like many towns in this area Stanhope’s growth accelerated in the nineteenth century as...
Out and About in Upper Weardale
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My Favourite History Place: Queen Square, Bath
Historian feature
Some years ago, on the shore of Loch Lomond, I met a Scotsman. As we started to converse he asked me where I was from. When I replied ‘Bath’, his response was ‘Ah, the most beautiful city in Britain,’ adding, out of patriotism or good judgement, ‘Edinburgh is second.’
The Roman...
My Favourite History Place: Queen Square, Bath
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Out and about in Nottingham
Historian feature
There were people living in Nottinghamshire as far back as 40,000 BC, as excavations in the limestone caves at Cresswell Crags (near Worksop) have proved. Much later, when the Romans came, they drove two roads through parts of the county – the Fosse Way to the South, with associated developments...
Out and about in Nottingham
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Out and about in Glasgow
Historian feature
Glasgow's George Square statues -‘Through the looking glass'
History is often illumined by writers of genius but Glasgow did not produce a Zola, a Balzac, a Dickens or even an Arnold Bennet. We are, therefore, thrown back on looking at other manifestations of a powerful and wealthy city to augment...
Out and about in Glasgow
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Dickens' Kent
Article
Although he was not born in Kent, Charles Dickens spent the happiest and most settled part of his childhood in Chatham and chose to return to the same area when, as an established author, he could afford to buy the house1 he had admired as a boy. It is said...
Dickens' Kent
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Out and About 124 - Pedalling after Alfred
Historian feature
Alfred in Wantage - Dave Martin takes to his bike to explore statues of Alfred the Great.
Alfred the Great, the name speaks for itself, was a hero to the Victorians so it is no surprise to find that there are three statues commemorating him. The earliest one was erected...
Out and About 124 - Pedalling after Alfred
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Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
Historian feature
Dave Martin follows Charles Darwin’s journey from university back to his birthplace, Shrewsbury.
Cambridge
The bronze statue of Darwin as a young man perches elegantly on the arm of a garden bench in the grounds of Christ’s College, Cambridge where he was a student from 1829 to 1831. Of this...
Out and About: Charles Darwin, a voyage of discovery
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My Favourite History Place - Weimar
Historian feature
Neil Taylor explores the changing face and mixed fortunes of Weimar in the twentieth century.
Weimar is a town to which many famous people came, but from which few then left. It is not hard to see why. The locals summarise its appeal in one sentence Weimar ist nur eine...
My Favourite History Place - Weimar
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My Favourite History Place - All Saint's Church, Harewood
Historian feature
Harewood House, a few miles north of Leeds, attracts many historically-minded visitors to enjoy the work of Adam, Chippendale and Capability Brown but to my mind the real treasures of Harewood lie elsewhere. After negotiating the payment booths take the path immediately on your right, leading to the redundant church...
My Favourite History Place - All Saint's Church, Harewood
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Ruins in the woods: A case study of three historical ruins 'hidden' in the woodland of Derbyshire
Historian article
Ruined buildings shrouded in trees, masonry crumbling into the undergrowth. It sounds like the backdrop for an Indiana Jones movie, the sort of thing people trek across Central America or the wilds of Cambodia to find. But Britain has its own share of enigmatic relics. Three very different such historical...
Ruins in the woods: A case study of three historical ruins 'hidden' in the woodland of Derbyshire
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My Favourite History Place - Nuneaton's Old Grammar School
Historian article
Near the centre of the largest town in Warwickshire, an oasis of calm encompasses the area of Nuneaton parish church, vicarage and Old Grammar School. Of the three buildings, the Old Grammar School may be the least impressive but its history is just as eventful. Nuneaton’s Boys’ Free Grammar School,...
My Favourite History Place - Nuneaton's Old Grammar School
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My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
Historian feature
The Tenement Museum is not remotely like any museum I had previously visited. It is an old tenement building where generations of New York migrants lived and loved, worked and had families before moving both on and out. The Tenement Museum tells the story of the Lower East Side through the...
My Favourite History Place: The Tenement Museum, New York
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Out and About on Uzbekistan’s Silk Road
Historian feature
“For lust of knowing what should not be known— We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.”
So wrote poet James Elroy Flecker in 1913, who had perhaps an unduly romantic view of what motivated many of Uzbekistan’s earlier visitors. A more realistic explanation was proffered in the thirteenth century by the Persian...
Out and About on Uzbekistan’s Silk Road
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Out and About: the central Marches of Wales and the Mortimer family of Wigmore
Historian feature
Paul Dryburgh and Philip Hume enable us to see the interaction of one prominent family with the area that they dominated.
The central Marches span the English/Welsh border in an area that encompasses the picturesque landscapes and market towns of north-west Herefordshire, south-west Shropshire, and Radnorshire which has also the rugged...
Out and About: the central Marches of Wales and the Mortimer family of Wigmore
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Out and About in Cairo
Historian feature
Nicolas Kinloch guides us round the fascinating city of Cairo.
Cairo has always been a traveller’s destination. That indefatigable explorer, ibn Battuta, arrived there in 1326, and declared that it was ‘boundless in its multitude of buildings, peerless in beauty and splendour...extending a friendly welcome to strangers’. Most of this is...
Out and About in Cairo
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My Favourite History Place: Mandala House
Historian feature
Many myths surround David Livingstone and in this part of the world more myths about the man abound than perhaps anywhere else. We can only speculate on whether he fought off lions with his bare hands, shamed slave-traders into letting their slaves go with just a few words from the scriptures...
My Favourite History Place: Mandala House
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Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
Historian feature
The Somerset town of Taunton featured prominently in the highly significant political and religious conflicts of the seventeenth century. Isabella Peach examines Taunton’s role in these events and the impact they had on the town. Her article is based on her winning entry in the 2023 Young Historian Post-16 Local...
Out and About in ‘The most Loyal and Ancient City of Taunton’
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Out and About in Washington DC
Historian feature
Not everyone loves the capital of the United States. To Ulysses S Grant, it was a ‘pestilential swamp’; to novelist Gore Vidal, a ‘city of the dead’. It is true that Washington still has its problems. The District of Columbia has the highest crime rate in the United States, and the...
Out and About in Washington DC
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My Favourite History Place: Berwick-upon-Tweed railway station
Historian feature
Glimpsed from the window of a speeding train, as it hurtles north across the Royal Border Bridge and towards Edinburgh, the modest station at Berwick-upon-Tweed would seem an unlikely spot for one of the most momentous episodes in British history; but step off the train, walk up the stairs, and allow...
My Favourite History Place: Berwick-upon-Tweed railway station
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Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
Historian feature
Sylvia Usher explores a hidden gem in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Wenceslaus Hollar’s map of seventeenth century Hull can be a street guide for the Old Town even today. Modern Hull sprawls along the Humber estuary with residential areas fanning out for three miles or more. Hull as it was...
Out and About in Hull’s Old Town
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Out and About in Madagascar
Historian feature
Madagascar is one of the world’s more intriguing destinations. If it is famous for anything – apart from sharing a name with a truly terrible film franchise – it is probably for its wildlife, much of which is found nowhere else. But whereas most people have at least an idea of...
Out and About in Madagascar
