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  • The Lamps Are Going Out, But Where? December 3, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    The Lamps Are Going Out, But Where?

    Lord Grey’s famous quotation that ‘the lamps are going out all over Europe’ came eventually to encapsulate the horror of 1914. Grey, then Britain foreign secretary and an exquisitely cultured and civilised individual, spoke the words on 3 August 1914 just before the great powers collectively committed suicide. He recorded the statement in his autobiography […]

    Summoned by Bells December 2, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Summoned by Bells

    The following bell story cannot lay claim to being bizarre history in the normal sense of the phrase. But it is enjoyable. It comes from the memoirs of James Lee-Milne (obit 1997) and describes Mrs Hartwell’s most dangerous day. [Mrs] Hartwell was an aged widow who gallantly brought up an orphaned brood of undisciplined grandchildren. […]

    Beachcombed 30 December 1, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Beachcombed
    Beachcombed 30

    Dear Reader Dec 1 and sorry for the lateness of this post but all busy here. Above Beach’s head the workmen are smashing his roof to pieces. Below the kids are dismantling his living room. And Mrs B is threatening to dismantle Beach’s head should he not hurry up and finish. So without further ado: […]

    A Fairy Cup? November 30, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    A Fairy Cup?

    Another of these almost forgotten fairy stories recorded in the early fourteenth century. Fairy clues include the mound (fairies live in hills or is this a grave?), the benevolent fairy and the human attempt to steal a prize from fairyland. Rather you than me. Here is another thing, no less wonderful and quite widely known, […]

    Alwyn Ruddock: Enemy of History? November 28, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Alwyn Ruddock: Enemy of History?

    You have worked your entire life researching a given area of history. However, you have published barely anything waiting to write your ‘big book’, the one that you will be remembered by. The years pass and the book does not materialise and then comes your final illness… What will you do with the seventy odd […]

    William Bottrell and the Strangest Funeral Procession in the World November 28, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    William Bottrell and the Strangest Funeral Procession in the World

    The year is 1881 and Willam Bottrell has just passed away after a horrific final illness: he lay paralysed in bed for the last year, his mind as fine as ever, his body drying up. Bottrell, for those many who don’t know, was a hero perhaps the hero of Cornish folklore studies because despite having […]

    Modesty and Killing November 27, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Modesty and Killing

    When Benito Mussolini was ‘executed’ (jolted out of a car by some communist partisans and shot in the chest in a ditch) he did not die alone. By his side was his lover and perhaps the most significant woman in his life, Clara Petacci. CP was gunned down a moment before Mussolini himself. The corpses […]

    Wynne’s Madonna at Ely: Love Goddess 2# November 26, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite
    Wynne's Madonna at Ely: Love Goddess 2#

    Ely Cathedral is one of the great works of English civilisation. Approached by car or on foot over the flatlands of East Anglia it surges above the landscape. In fact, ‘the ship of the Fens’ is one of the few churches that can be enjoyed from a distance: so often we are reduced to glancing […]

    Witches, Confessions and the Truth November 25, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
    Witches, Confessions and the Truth

    Scholars of witchcraft in the burning years have an overwhelming problem. As rationalists they do not believe in the sabbat, devil sex or flying broomsticks. And yet, and yet… Women who were investigated often come up with the most extraordinary stories about the Satanic things that they have done. The problem for historians is why does […]

    Late Pixy Accounts from Devon November 24, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    Late Pixy Accounts from Devon

    Here is some late pixylore from a collection written in 1982. The author is the very fine Theo Brown, an outstanding folklorist. We’ve tried here to quarry experiences of those known by TB rather than the normal Devon folklore fodder, which can be found in ‘all’ the books. 1) Pixies present a difficult problem. What […]

    More Kopenicks November 23, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    More Kopenicks

    Was it only a couple of week’s ago that Beach described the immortal achievement of Wihelm Vogit in Kopenick? A confidence trickster essentially took a German town hostage by putting on a captain’s uniform. At the time Beach noted the way that the British particularly were insufferable in blaming Prussia’s blind obedience to authority. Since […]

    Families and the Durability of Memory November 22, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary, Modern
    Families and the Durability of Memory

    How long can memories remain in a family? We have played these games before, of course. Just a couple of weeks ago Beach was imagining his daughter telling his great great grandchildren about the time their great, great, great, great grandfather survived an Italian attack in the Mediterranean, a hundred and fifty years after the […]

    Oldest Still Used Clothes November 21, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    Oldest Still Used Clothes

    Strange History announces a search for the oldest clothes in the world. Or rather the oldest still worn clothes. This is the best we’ve come up with so far. A British soldier has escaped from an Italian prisoner of War camp, 1943, and he has run to the mountains where he has fallen ill. Luckily […]

    The Inventio Fortunata: A Lost Medieval Journey to the Arctic North November 20, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
    The Inventio Fortunata: A Lost Medieval Journey to the Arctic North

    The Inventio Fortunata sometimes written the Inventio Fortunae (likely a mistaken amendment by an over anxious sixteenth-century author) is one of the most extraordinary documents NOT to come down to us from posterity. It was written in the fourteenth century, either at sea or in England, by a friar for the King of England, Edward […]

    Crowds #6: Bully Crowds November 19, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Crowds #6: Bully Crowds

    We have so far shown numerous posts on crowd photographs: crowd art, crowd speeches, August 1914 crowds, POWs in crowds and religious crowds. Here is by far the most unpleasant of the series – you have been warned! – bullying crowds. A group of people with power, perhaps newly acquired power, decides to revenge itself […]