Keep Your Powder Dry

The mental images we have of seventeenth century dress are invariably of a dashing cavalier, wearing extravagant clothing and an ostentatious feather in a broad-brimmed hat; or a dour Puritan dressed in black and white. A heavily stylised, but very enduring set of images created by the Victorians. But what was the reality? Some clothing from the time still exists, although this will, by the very nature of things, have belonged to rich owners. It has been suggested too, that due to interest in the civil wars, that these surviving garments have been fancydress-ified by the Victorians to achieve the romantic nature of dashing cavaliers and their ladies. Thanks to rising temperatures the C17th and C18th graveyard at Spitsbergen is giving up its inhabitants - whalers buried in their clothes. Many of these remarkable garments are on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (they also have the fantastic Night Watch painting). If you can't just pop into Amsterdam you can see some high res...

Since I visited both Naseby and Marston Moor it was only a matter of time before I went for the hat-trick and visited Edgehill:  but it is a bit of a trek from deepest darkest Derbyshire. A weekend in London gave me the opportunity to have a detour and a break from driving on the way home. Sadly there is precious little to see as most of the site is occupied by an MoD site and as such is closed to public access. However, good views of the battlefield can be had from the ridgeline above. The best starting place is The Castle at Edgehill pub, where there is a Battlefield's Trust information board located in the beer garden. There have been a number of recorded ghost sightings of armies fighting. This was first reported in January 1643: A Great Wonder in Heaven and The New Year’s Wonder  both recounted the ghostly goings on. Mr Marshall, the minister in Kineton, went to Oxford to report the occurrences to the King. Charles sent six gentlemen to investigate, and th...