UK Trip - Advice

[Shockley]

Hey guys,

I'm going to be studying in London for a semester next year, and I plan on taking every opportunity I get to indulge in my passions (that is, the history of Germanic peoples and literature). That said, I need some help. Since I know a lot of you live in the UK, been to the UK, etc. I was just wondering if any of you could point me in the direction of some things.

I don't need to know the big things or anything that I would find in tour books, but little things. What I'm looking for:

- Any rune stones, big or small.
- Burial mounds/cairns
- County (shire?) museums
- Battlefields
- Roman forts/villas/walls

I'm already planning on visiting Hastings, most of the sites in Kent, Lindisfarne if I'm lucky and I'll definitely be hanging out at the British Museum for the Sutton Hoo treasure.

Any help on this would be appreciated.

 

[Butterfly]

Do you want specifically London sites or sites for the rest of GB?

coz if you're willing to travel about a hundred miles for a daytrip, you really should go and see the Roman baths in Bath... Roman Baths website

 

[PaulineMRoss]

What I'm looking for:
- Any rune stones, big or small.
- Burial mounds/cairns
- County (shire?) museums
- Battlefields
- Roman forts/villas/walls

I know zip about Germanic history, so can't help with that, and your list is very, very broad, but here are some thoughts.

Prehistoric stuff (stone circles, burial mounds, cairns): these tend to be preserved in the least useful agricultural areas, generally moorland and hills to the north and west - the West Country, parts of Wales, the Lake District, the far west and north of Scotland. You should definitely try to get to the big ones - Stonehenge and Avebury. Scotland (my stamping ground) has some amazing stuff if you don't mind the travelling - recumbent stone circles in Grampian, the Callanish circles on the Outer Hebrides, and Orkney is prehistory to die for - Maes Howe, Skara Brae and a whole raft of stone circles. Then there are brochs (cute tower thingies) and crannogs (roundhouses on stilts in lakes - one has been rebuilt on Loch Tay). There are cairns and bronze age forts all over.

Roman stuff - the two walls are both up north, Hadrian's and the Antonine one. Any town/city with 'chester' 'or 'caster' or similar in the name was a Roman fort, and worth investigating. The best remains are up north again, I think, or Bath (as someone else mentioned).

Battlefields - yeah, we have a few of those. Look up the War of the Roses (medieval) and the Civil War (a bit later), covering large parts of England. Scotland has a depressingly large number of places labelled on maps as 'The X Massacre' (the clan wars were brutal). Then there was the Jacobite Rebellion (18th century).

You don't mention castles, but you should definitely look up a few of those. My favourites are the Welsh ones (like Carnarvon) and some of the cute Scottish ones, but there are castles all over. The Tower of London is a good one to start with.

Museums - lots of good ones. Apart from the British Museum, there's a London Museum which is very good. Almost every town of any size has a local one, often staffed by enthusiastic volunteers.

One thing to beware of - many of the touristy places only open from Easter to Sept/Oct, so check before making a special trip. The really big places in London are open all year.

Good luck, and I hope you have a great time in Blighty.

 

[CupofJoe]

Buy an OS [Ordinance Survey] Explorer map for any area you want to visit. They have mounds and “sites of antiquity” marked on them [and the rights of way so you know if you can get to them...].
I would recommend the specialist maps “Ancient Britain (Historical Map and Guide)” and “Roman Britain (Historical Map and Guide)”; I have both and they are great for just showing you what is where...

The British Museum is a must. On the right days they have exhibits you can touch and it is something wonderful to hold a 3000 yo Etruscan vase...
The same goes for Museum of London.
If it has a interesting show on, the V&A [Victoria and Albert] Museum is often very interesting for historical reasons.
In southern England I would add Avebury and Silchester to your list.
Avebury and it's ring is the centre of a network of barrows, avenues, stones and walks that are a wonder. I've been there a dozen times and not explored it all. If you can get there at an equinox or solstice [you'd probably have to stay overnight...] you can usually join in a pagan ceremony at dawn...
Oddly I would not suggest going to Stonehenge. It is amazing to see but there are lots of visitors and really crappy facilities — it is a let down as an experience if you are being jostled by 2-300 people taking pictures and complaining about the smelly toilets and that there is no decent coffee.
Silchester is an abandoned Roman city and you can walk around the city walls — there is even an amphitheatre so you can have your own Gladiator moment [and yes I have done that...]. during the summer there is an archaeological dig that has open days - that's where I got my Hypocaust tile from...

If you do get to Lindisfarne, then go that bit further as Hadrian's Wall is a must and there are some great Roman museums to visit as well.

Just about every county and major town will have a local museum and some of these are world class.
For a nice day out from London... Chichester [a nice country town anyway] has a Roman wall you can walk around and the villa site of Fishborne is just a few miles away...

 

[Chilari]

Joe is correct: the British Museum cannot be missed. It is such a wonderful place. I could live there, if it weren't for the fact I'd then have to live in London (which I can handle for a day or two but soon miss the countryside). The Natural History Museum is great too, while you're in London. There's a statue of Darwin, a first edition On the Origin of Species, a moon rock and a dodo skelteon, among other cool things.

As for Roman sites, Wroxeter is great. It's not inhabited any more (well, the village south of the excavated site is, but that doesn't count, though it has got reused Roman masonry in the church) and it has a wall standing from the old bath house. There's a great audio tour and a reconstructed villa that featured on a Channel 4 show and which I helped build (for 3 days anyway). If you decide to go there, I would be delighted to take you there myself. Also nearby is the Wrekin, an iron age hill fort (though little of that remains) which if nothing else is a great hike with some utterly stunning views of Shropshire.

Shrewsbury castle has a regimental museum with uniforms and weapons used by the local regiment from about 1700 to the Second World War, and one room with a reconstruction of the medieval castle. It's a good one, but also costs money (not much though, a few quid, little enough that you don't need to pay by card). Shrewsbury in general is a wonderful place to visit if you like historical architecture. The downstairs of the McDonalds is quite something, surprisingly.

And while I'm on the topic of Shropshire, Ironbridge has its fair share of museums, including a Victorian town (very cool - it even has an authentic pub and a sweet shop), though generally Ironbridge focuses on industrial history since that's what's it's famous for. Worth a visit even if that isn't your main area of interest. Then there's Ludlow, which has a very good medieval castle, a fantastic vegetarian cafe and some great shops besides. Then there's Bridgnorth, which has the remains of a castle leaning at a greater angle than the Tower of Pisa thanks to the Roundheads blowing it up in the civil war, plus a cliff railway and a steam railway - on which you can get to Highley Engine House, which is a steam train museum with some quite cool trains and a cafe overlooking the track. Up in north west Shropshire, there's also Oswestry, which has an old hill fort in the form of Old Oswestry. Not sure what else it has, I've never been.

Chester is well worth a visit too. I went there for two days in April for my birthday and had a great time. Be warned: their main museum is shut at the weekends for some reason, but they've got a Roman experience museum (which costs money) which is aimed at children but is actually really good for adults too, and includes open excavations to show the archaeological side of things. Chester is an old Roman legionary fortress which was expanded in the middle ages - half the extant walls are Roman, half medieval. I could tell you plenty about its Roman history, especially in conjunction with Wroxeter - they were both forts at the same time for a short while, when Agricola was governor of Britain and, it is thought, wanted to make Chester not only the "capital" but also the point from which to launch an invasion of Ireland.

In terms of battlefields, there's Bosworth Field in Leicestershire. Hard to get to because it's quite rural, but there is a museum there. The Battle of Boswroth Field was the deciding battle in the War of the Roses between Richard III and Henry Tudor (later Henry VII). It is the source of the mneumonic Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain for the colours of the rainbow. (Spoiler: he lost and his remains are thought to have been found recently under a carpark in Leicester, which I find very exciting, not least because I've probably walked right across above his grave, and my former dissertation supervisor keeps getting quoted by the press because she's the head of the school of Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Leicester now.)

If there is any more you want to know about Shropshire, or if you'd like to take up my offer regarding Wroxeter, drop me a PM.

 

[Shockley]

I should clarify something that I said in my first post: I do not want major sites - I know about the major sites. It's really important to stress that I'm a European History student, so if you were to roll out a map of England I could point you with little difficulty to the site of this battle, that battle, etc. I can already tell you, for instance, that I will be spending a good majority of the trip in Room 41 of the British Museum.

What I'm looking for is small stuff. Let me use one of my examples, rune stones. If there is a rune stone in your town (and they are all over the region whether you know it or not), I want to come see it. If there's a tomb that everyone attributes to some local figure but it's not a big deal, I want to come see that. As neat as Bosworth Field is, I'd rather trudge through some swamp to find Alfred the Great's winter quarters.

Ya dig?

That said, all of the advice received is greatly welcomed.

Edit: Chilari, I'll probably drop you a PM closer to the date of my arrival, and I do appreciate the offer.

 

[Chilari]

If you're looking for lesser known locations, the Stiperstones is a Shropshire hill surrounded in myth, though without much actual human interaction. Bury Ditches is a well preserved iron age hill fort, and Much Wenlock is a very old but now very small town with some remarkable architecture going back to Saxon times, about which some poetry has been written by A E Houseman, and which is also the birthplace of the modern Olympic Games (founded by William Penny Brookes in the 19th century, the Wenlock Olympian Games, which gave Pierre de Coubertin the idea.)

My mum will know about more obscure locations in Shropshire, I'll ask her when I see her tonight. She will probably be able to suggest some locations elsewhere in England as she has lived all over and always tries to find out about local history.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

Ah, I get it now. You don't want anywhere with a car park, a tea shop and souvenir tea towels. You want the places that involve stout footwear, military level navigation equipment and end in a field of sheep where you walk around for an hour muttering 'I'm sure this is the place, it must be around here somewhere...'. Been there, done that (take a hipflask).

Best bet is ordinance survey maps or else contact a group specialising in such things. Other than that, it's difficult to make suggestions without knowing just how obscure they need to be.

 

[CupofJoe]

The Pagan Federation and similar organisations have local moots all over the country. if anyone knows of hidden runes, standing stones and general secret things it will be those groups...

 

[Chilari]

I have spoken to my mother and she said Woodchester Roman Villa near Stroud is somewhere she excavated as a teenager, but I just lookd on Wikipedia and apparently it's been covered up since then and there's nothing to see any more. She also said she'd have a think for anything else.

 

[Butterfly]

I live near the Gower. There are quite few sites around the area, mostly Celtic or Welsh sites though.

There is a little thing known as Arthur's Stone nearby.

We have a 12C corn mill at the Heritage Centre.

A number of castles around the area, a Salt House in Port Eynon (not much on internet about it I'm, afraid) and a long Cairn at Penmaen.