Roman Exeter ... Isca Dumnoniorum ... on the edge of an empire

We've come to Devon for the half-term holidays, and it's all looking very autumnal down here. The weather's been pretty balmy for the time of year so most of the trees are still wearing a full compliment of leaves, but with the new-season's colours coming to the fore. And happily Hurricane Gonzalo has blown through without doing us any damage.

It was very atmospheric being tucked up in bed listening to him howling outside. There's something especially delicious about being able to snuggle under the duvet, and let the weather do its worst. Normally, in my work-a-day existence, I'd have been out there, coated and booted, battling through the worst of it.

Emi has been given a half-term assignment on the Roman conquest of Britain, which has taken us into Exeter, or Isca Dumnoniorum, as those wily old centurions would have known it, to search them out in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

Exeter was on the very edge of the Roman empire. It was their most South Westerly garrison in mainland Britain. The city walls, of which about three quarters survive today, were originally built by the Romans. They enclose an area of roughly 42 acres and give us the outline of the old Roman city that was established in 55 AD. Of course, over the years, there have been fix-ups and repairs with the result that a lot of the stones on top are medieval.

Here's a shot of the city walls.  Ah, if only those old bricks could talk, what a tale they'd have to tell us.

Here's another one, taken on the way back to the car park, with Emi standing in front for perspective.

They believe that the Second Augustan Legion was garrisoned here from 55 to 75 AD. The Second Augustans had been part of the original invasion force, arriving during the Claudian landings back in 43 AD, when England had first been invaded by Rome. They were commanded, here in the West Country, by the future Emperor Vespasian. They've excavated their barracks (under the Guildhall Shopping Centre) and their massive stone-built bathhouse, which stood on Cathedral Green.

Here's Emi busy taking photos in Cathedral Green so that he can write about where the Roman baths used to be.

Apparently the baths were huge. They were supplied by a local spring, piped in using an aqueduct, and could have accommodated several hundred guys at the same time. They were supposed to have been more advanced in design than many of those back in Italy, and were certainly way ahead of anything in either Pompeii or Herculaneum. The archeologists reckon that this is one of the most important Roman sites in the country and are pretty enthusiastic about digging it all up again. The only problem is that the baths are literally at the front door of the Cathedral. The Dean and Chapter and the City Council are putting their heads together to see what, if anything, can be done. I don't envy them their task. It's going to be a tough one excavating and showing off the Roman baths without destroying the appearance of the magnificent Cathedral.

Back in the museum we found some touching bits and pieces. One of my favourites was this broken cup, which still shows its owner's name.

OK, so it's not the most exquisite piece of porcelaine ever to see the light of day, but it's kind of thrilling to read this guy's name, Lucius Julius Hipponicus, scratched down the side. They reckon that he was a soldier, who lived here in 55 to 65 AD. Whatever the way of it Lucius Julius Hipponicus is one of the earliest residents of Exeter whose name is still known today.

Some of the soldiers died during their time in the city and their cremated remains have also been unearthed, together with an assortment of personal effects and food and wine with which they were buried. It seems to have been the practice to provide a little bit of sustenance to get the deceased started in the afterlife.

The amazing German glass jar in the photo below was included in one such burial. It must have been one of the dead soldier's most prized possessions. I was amazed by how well it's survived for the better part of two millennia, and I was also slightly humbled to behold someone's favourite thing from all that time ago.

Emi was impressed with this lovely carrot amphora in which a soldier had been sent some exotic fruit. It's a nice touch to see how the Roman soldiers enjoyed care packages courtesy of their Roman mums and wives back at home. Emi thought that it would have made a very fine receptacle for an obscene amount of jelly beans, but we wont' go there ... .

Then we had a go at laying some mosaic flooring, which was a bit like doing a jigsaw.

But, as luck would have it, there was one that someone else had made earlier - about two millennia earlier.

And we got to lark around in the museum dressing-up box. How scary is this fierce centurion? He certainly thought he was the business with his mohawk helmet. 

But after a while we went a bit off-piste with a Greek helmet and lyre. Although I must say I think it's a winning combo ... the singing Spartan anyone?

It's fair to say that there's not a lot of Roman Exeter on display, but with a bit of imagination, some colouring pencils and a spot of googling Emil will hopefully have enough material for his assignment.

All the best for now,

Bonny x

As shared on Friday Finds

Autumn 2014

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. ~ Albert Camus

I've moaned a lot recently about how I don't want to let summer go, but the other day I took a walk through woodlands that were starting to show their autumn colours against a clear, blue sky. It was … well, it was simply sublime, and I started to appreciate exactly what Albert Camus had been on about.

Down in Devon there are ploughed fields aplenty as the farmers plant their winter crops. The wonderful, red soil looks as though it were designed that way to showcase the glorious reds and ochres of the season.

Emi and I are feasting on hazel nuts foraged from the hedgerows.  He’s very keen, and it’s carries a resonance from my own childhood, out roaming around in nature’s larder. 

I’ve been making chutney and jam, and I’ve even started knitting a scarf for Emi. 

There’s something about the evenings drawing in, and the mellow light of September that always gets me back to my knitting. Maybe it’s another resonance from my childhood; a precious memory of sitting round the open fireside in the evenings with my mum, my grandma and their friends as everyone told stories and worked with their needles. 

My grandma’s stories were always the best; she had an endless store of tales. She claimed that every one of them was true, but I've long suspected that she was accomplished in the art of fiction. Although, to be fair, whenever we'd ask her to tell us the story about whatever-it-was again, she always managed to re-tell it exactly the same each time. 

I miss her now she's gone, and as the year moves through another season it underlines how nothing ever stays the same. We too have seasons in our lives, and with every passing summer I can't help but pause and consider how the sands of time are moving in my own mortal plain. 

And, on a less maudlin note, it's a year to the day since a certain fluffy, little fellow joined our family circle.

And this morning, in a fit of glee, he celebrated his anniversary by digging up all my daffodil bulbs! 

All the best, 

Bonny x

Legends of Dartmoor

Dartmoor is one of my favourite places down here in the sunny South West of England. I love its wildness, its romance and its legends. I love the Dartmoor ponies who've been up here since forever and just carry on with what they're doing regardless of whether you're around or not.

Dartmoor ponies

I love the rocky tors sitting in the midst of the rolling uplands, surrounded by bracken and wild heather.

Haytor, Dartmoor

This is Haytor. They've cut steps into the rock face all the way to the top so, when you climb it, it's a bit like going up the stairs at home, although the view is a great deal more impressive. Even though the ascent is all a bit easy-peasy pedestrian you still get an irrational feeling of achievement when you reach the top and look out across the untamed wilderness of the moor.

Haytor, Dartmoor

And then, on the way down, you can admire the lovely Dartmoor heather, which is looking very pink and rosy round about now.

This bleak and wonderful place (photographed below), just around the corner from Haytor is Hound Tor, which according to the legend is all that remains of a bothersome pack of hounds who were cursed by a local witch and turned to stone. 

Hound Tor, Dartmoor

It's said to have been the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles.

And if you follow down the avenue of stones, and over the brow of the hill into the valley on the other side you'll come across the abandoned village of Hundatora. It consists of four thirteenth century Dartmoor long houses with a number of barns and smaller shelters. 

Hundatora, Dartmoor

History doesn't record exactly when it was abandoned or, perhaps more intriguingly, why everyone scampered. When it was excavated the archeologists found a single coin from the reign of Henry III (1216 to 1272). They believe that the people had gone by 1350. Perhaps they were wiped out by the Black Death when it reached England in 1348, or maybe they simply migrated to find a more profitable living elsewhere in the aftermath of the plague. It was a time of great social upheaval:labour was scarce, wages rose and those who survived were able to move around and command a decent day's pay.

Hundatora, Dartmoor

It's an eery place that I wouldn't care to linger in on my own late at night. We stopped by one day last week when the thunder from a summer storm was rumbling around the hills in the distance. Fearing the rain everyone else had (sensibly) vanished off the moor, and we were left totally alone with the wind and the bracken and the menace of the storm clouds overhead.

Dartmoor

If you return to the road and wander on in the direction of Moretonhampstead, to a cross roads where the main road intersects a moorland track, you'll find the grave of Kitty Jay.

Kitty Jay's grave, Dartmoor

Kitty had been abandoned as a baby in the 1790s and brought up in the poor house at Newton Abbot. When she was taken in the authorities had given her the name Mary Jay, but somehow, for reasons that are lost to history, she became known as Kitty Jay. Kitty endured a hard and loveless life in the poor house, and when she was in her early teens she was sent out as an apprentice to a farmer and his wife at Canna Farm, near Manaton. Now in those days in that part of the world an apprentice was really a polite name for a skivvy, or a maid-of-all-work, who was in reality a badly paid dogsbody.

Kitty Jay's grave, Dartmoor

By this time young Kitty had, however, grown into a pretty girl, and before long she caught the eye of the farmer's son. He seduced her and left her in the  family way. And then, being a bounder, he refused to do the honourable thing. Poor Kitty was thrown out by the farmer and his wife who roundly blamed her, rather than their precious son, for her condition. The name Jay, which she'd been given as a baby in the poor house was, after all, a slang name in those parts for a prostitute. Kitty desperately didn't want to return in disgrace to the joyless existence of the poor house, but she realised that as a fallen woman no other respectable family would take her in and give her employment. Seeing no way out of her predicament she hung herself in one of the barns at Canna.

Back in Kitty's day it was regarded as a serious sin to take your own life, and the folk thereabouts feared the restless soul of the suicide. It was forbidden by Church law to bury her body in consecrated ground, so it is understood that they buried her at the cross-roads in the dead of night, believing that her tormented soul would be disorientated should it return to haunt the living. Oftentimes they also drove a stake through the suicide's heart at the time of burial to hold them in their grave for good measure.

It was said that the pixies attended to Kitty's grave, looking after her final resting place through all eternity by way of some small compensation for the miserable life she'd led. For many years fresh flowers appeared mysteriously every day on the grave. I have to say that every time I've visited there have only been plastic flowers, but before my time there appears to have been a mystery mourner who tended her grave.

On moonlit nights travellers have reported seeing a cloaked figure kneeling over the grave with its face buried in its hands. Given its great hooded cloak no one could tell for certain whether it was male or female, but the rumour grew that it was the spirit of the feckless boy who'd betrayed Kitty's trust and been sent to stand vigil at her grave by way of penance for how he'd wronged her.

Years ago someone opened the grave and found human remains, which were duly reinterred. Given the site of the burial it seems overwhelmingly likely that the deceased was indeed a suicide. Admittedly no one can say for sure whether the remains were really those of Kitty Jay, but if they were I hope that she's resting in peace and that she has some sense in the afterlife of how her story has touched so many people who come to pay their respects at her grave. Kitty's no longer an unloved nobody: these days she's a proper Dartmoor legend.

All the best,

Bonny x

As shared on the Alphabet Project

The Mid Devon Show

Last Saturday morning we all piled into the jeep and set off for the Mid Devon Show. Now I have to confess that I love county shows; I guess deep down I'm still a country girl at heart. There were three generations of us on board: my husband and me, Emi, and my parents and we were all pretty excited about our big day out.

In country circles the local show is one of the high points of the year. I have happy memories of my grandma and my mum entering their Victoria Sandwich Cakes, jams and flower arrangements at our own local Clogher Valley Show back in Ulster. One of my father's cousins still goes along with her best Aberdeen Angus cows every year.

And the Mid Devon Show certainly didn't disappoint. It was brilliant. The sun shone, the cider flowed and everyone had a ball.

The boys made a beeline for the tractors. We're not in the market for a new tractor, but they just like to tyre-kick. I can't say I blame them; some of the modern tractors are such leviathans. Just look how tall the small front wheel of this monster is: Emi could fit comfortably under the mudguard.

But then I guess they've always been keen on bigging up the horsepower for work around the farm.  Just look at this fine chap, all decked out and ready for action:

It must have taken a day and a half to get him brushed and cleaned and into his finery. And I'd really rather not have the job of polishing all his horse brasses.

My father remembers having a gentle giant like this on my grandfather's farm. Back in Ulster each small-holder would have kept a dray horse, and then at ploughing time they did a horse-share with their neighbour, bringing their horse to the neighbour's farm to make up a pair to pull the plough.

There were lots of other horses on display as well. I was particularly taken with the carriage driving competition.

I especially liked the old London rag and bone wagon with its wonderful prancing horse, and the bucket on behind to pick up the poop to bring home for the roses.

I also admired this very elegant lady in her carriage with a groom on behind to open the gates as she drove along.

Emi and his dad were much more in awe of the stunt motor bike riders. I watched them with bated breath, thinking all the while about how one miscalculation could cost them their lives.

I much preferred the relaxed domesticity of the fowl enclosure. For many a long while I've hankered after a few chooks of my own that I could keep in the back garden, but the thriving London fox population and my gypsy lifestyle have held me back from getting any. Don't you think Mr Rooster and his hen are just about the most handsome couple in the chicken coop?

Or how about a couple of crested ducks? They'd be sure to prettify any duck pond that they graced with their presence.

There were any number of exotic, pristine birds, many of whom were for sale - so very tempting ... .

Then we went to take a look at the cattle enclosure. Now I have to say that I'm a really big fan of the moo cows. Those big bulls are the top animals in any farmyard so far as I'm concerned. Maybe it's my Irish background, and all the old stories from the Táin about Queen Maeve of Connacht's attempt to capture the great Brown Bull of Cooley to match her husband's White Bull of Connacht and her battle with Conchobar mac Nessa, King of Ulster, and his champion warrior Cú Chulainn. Whatever the way of it the bull is my undisputed king of the farmyard for whom I have total respect.

Now who would pick a fight with this majestic Limousin bull? Isn't he amazing?

Or how about this wonderful Angus bull? He seemed to be eye-balling me when I dared to take his photo. He's not a lad to be messed with, that's for sure.

I love the little Dexters who come originally from County Cork. Aren't they the sweetest little fellas?

Or how about the Red Devon? What a beautiful family: Mr and Mrs out for the day with junior in tow.

At the risk of being very boring I could spend all day showing you photos of my favourite cows, but how about those lovely calves that were led out by the children?

This sweet little girl was only 8, and she led her beef calf into the arena like a total pro.

This little girl was a very grown-up 10. You could tell that she'd been doing this for a few years.

And this handsome young farmer-of-the-future was a canny 12.

They were all amazing, and I'm sure their parents were really proud of how well they all performed.

After the amazing cattle Emi decided that he'd have a go on the bucking bronco. Everything went well ... for a while.

He won a rosette, which Maxi wore proudly for the rest of the day.

And then we went to have a look at the WI flower arranging, just to change the tempo and shake things up a bit. And being country ladies they used country props for their arrangements. Check out the bailor:

Inside they had a selection of amazing competition winners. This was the best Victoria Sandwich cake.

And here are the winning entries from the flower arrangement competitions:

Next we took a quick turn in the bunny tent, where lots of very cute noses were twitching nervously at a very excited Maxi,who had never met a rabbit before. We decided not to hang around too long in case he out-stayed his welcome.

We left him outside with the boys who wanted to take another turn around the tractors and went to check out the goats and the pigs.

It was really hot down with the pigs, who were suffering just to stay alive in the heat. But the rather grand dame below looked like she could have been cast as the Empress from Blandings - or, well, she could have been if she'd been a black Berkshire.

The goats, on the other hand, seemed to be coping just fine with the hot weather.

And this little chap actively wanted a chat with us. He came right over and bleated on for several minutes about whatever was on his mind.

Outside Emi had a go at a few rural pursuits. Here he is working hard on a handle for someone's scythe.

There were lots of wonderful country crafts on display from bee-keeping to Honiton lace-making, ironwork and knitting to field work with hunting dogs. Sadly the ferret racing was called off owing to the heat, which was a shame as I was especially looking forward to that one.

As you've probably gathered we had a brilliant time. There was something to entertain all three generations. These shows have a timeless formula, which is a real winner. If you'd like to have a great day out, see the animals and get a window into country living, they're the real deal. There are a raft of them taking place up and down the country over the remainder of the summer. You can find the calendar for forthcoming events here: Country Shows.

All the best for now,


Bonny x