Medieval Jousting at Eltham Palace

The 'Grand Medieval Joust' at Eltham Palace has been splendid this weekend. We visited on Saturday 15 June and, in addition to the central event of the actual joust, were able to enjoy some of the stalls of medieval artifacts and life from that period generally. 

There was an very realistic medieval camp 'enactment' where my husband wasn't sure whether he was walking into some of the 'medieval actors' private lunchtime or whether they were acting out a medieval dinner party, complete with drunken nobleman. Turned out it was the latter! The archery expert at his stall was excellent - I now know more about bows than I could ever imagine (there are ideally made of Mediterranean yew, don't you know...). He referred very knowledgeably to the various historical sources used for evidence eg. the Luttrell Psalter (''...a celebrated manuscript, commissioned by a wealthy landowner in the first half of the 14th century, is one of the most striking to survive from the Middle Ages. Painted in rich colours embellished with gold and silver, with vitality and sometimes bizarre inventiveness of decoration, this manuscript is unlike virtually any other...' British Library).

My son took part in the 'Children's Battle' where they are trained in expert fighting with foam swords and in tricky moves which need to be accompanied by periodic cries of 'Choppy, choppy' or 'Stabby, stabby'. Elsewhere a display of Medieval Falconry was taking place. We stayed in our seats in the event field for the Grand Medieval Joust at 12pm where four knights, resplendent in armour, and heraldry, arrived with great pomp on their horses. The crowd were encouraged to support either the blue, gold, green or red knight and wave their flags. The microphoned scoring was professionally done with explanations given before the start. The excellent jester (who we have seen at other English Heritage events) wandered about echoing the scores to the crowd with hand gestures - his gesture for '1' was erm...interesting.

Unfortunately the heavens opened half way through the Joust, despite the compere imploring us that the English should not be so concerned by a bit of precipitation, after all we are not French! Nevertheless, we English rather wimpily scarpered to under the shelter of the nearby big tree, pushchairs, rugs and sandwiches all gathered up and bundled away. Later, we ended up in the obligatory gift tent, where actually there are some rather good things for children - this archer on a horse has taken pride of place on my son's shelf.

Our English Heritage membership was well worthwhile again - our family of four gaining entry for £5.50 instead of the £31 for non-members. We look forward to the next event.

Some excellent photos here of the day:
http://forum.greenwich.co.uk/threads/eltham-palace-medieval-joust.116/

Join the Wrens!

Random photo time...

Join the Wrens
We still need you

As a loose connection to International Women's Day, a poster from our trip to HMS Belfast last November (which also contains an in-joke for family...)

Don't mention the war

Co-incidently, following on from my last post on Blitz archaeology in Eltham, this piece appeared in yesterday's Telegraph about a woman who:

"... lived in Sydenham – an area of south-east London severely damaged by Hitler's V1 and V2 rockets. Bombs had exploded around her childhood home. Many a long and terrifying night had been spent in the air-raid shelter."

It's a touching story by a son about how his mother came to terms with a nation which she had for so long perceived as the enemy.

Blitz archaeology in Eltham

A local twitterer has written about attending this Eltham event - @Lee SE12 tweeted yesterday:

"Pics from brill bit of local history, Blitz archaeology walk in Eltham Green, shame @BBCLondon949 for poor plug not giving the details, only 3 other people were at the 3pm tour. Starts opposite Macdonalds, follows detail road plan from recently unearthed records in the Greenwich Heritage Centre."

The event in question was an Archaeological survey (9.30am) and a walk (3pm) on the Page Estate in Eltham Green described as follows:

"We are launching a self guide map and fact sheet, put together with the support of the team at BBC Hands on History, on the ARP Service on the Page Estate. We will be carrying out a formal archaeological survey of the items on the map, recording and photographing those which are still there and looking for other evidence of the Blitz. We hope to the work will also lead to us meeting more local people with information about the period and people named in the map."  The BBC also put together this Hands on History guide. (extract right)

More photos by @Lee SE12 from the Blitz walk in Eltham Green this afternoon can be seen at twitpic.com/6tix5f   twitpic.com/6tiq1n  twitpic.com/6tit6u

This is certainly an event in which local schools might be interested - last year my daughter's primary school class was 'evacuated' via Eltham station for a couple of nights to a centre (in Herts) where they experienced the wartime life of evacuated children (all done in an age-appropriate way, of course!).

UPDATE:  I spoke too soon  - the organisers DO do work with local schools and had apparently done so that day - fab. And more: the item was plugged on BBC London in the morning with a reporter even talking to organisers onsite in Eltham, however they didn't have a chance to give all the details and also said Erith by accident. The 11am/1pm walks were well attended apparently (thanks for info @Lee SE12). It sounds a good project and it is great to have our local area's history mapped in this way, so well done.

Clive Efford MP questions UK's arms trade

Good to read that our local MP has been questioning our role in the arms trade...from a debate in the House of Commons on Monday 14 March:

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Clive Efford (Eltham, Labour)

The fact that arms that could have been sold by this country and many other western countries are being used against the people fighting for freedom in Libya highlights the unacceptable nature of the arms trade. Were there any discussions at the European Union about the possibility of international agreement about who we should deal with regarding arms in the future, to prevent such circumstances from coming about?

David Cameron (Prime Minister; Witney, Conservative)

There was not that discussion at the European Council on Friday, because we were really talking about the two issues of the immediate situation in Libya and the neighbourhood policy that Europe should have towards north Africa and countries that are yearning for democracy.
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have to consider such issues closely. I do not believe that the arms trade is always and everywhere a bad thing, because small countries have a right to defend themselves. A responsible trade, properly regulated, is acceptable, but although we have some of the toughest rules, we have to ask ourselves, “Are they working, and how can we improve on them?”

Catford prefabs to be demolished

More random South-East London news - this time, from the Guardian today:

"The UK's largest surviving estate of postwar prefab houses, described by conservationists as a unique slice of 20th-century social history, is set to be bulldozed and replaced by modern housing.
Only six of the 187 compact bungalows, erected from factory-built panels by German and Italian prisoners of war in 1945 and 1946, will be saved, after they received Grade-II listing last year. The remainder of the Excalibur estate in Catford, south-east London, will be demolished, along with its tin-roofed prefab church, St Mark's, believed to be one of a kind.

Campaigners say the planned redevelopment, formally approved by Lewisham council in September, will destroy a key piece of history from the aftermath of the second world war. The estate is the biggest surviving remnant of an ambitious project which saw 160,000 prefabs hurriedly erected during an acute housing shortage...."

It's a shame in a way but on the other hand hopefully something usable can be built in their place - people have got to live and work somewhere.

My children's primary school in Eltham also has some listed prefabs in their playground which I believe they are not allowed to demolish (even if they had the money) - the kids have their early morning band practice in them (including my daughter on clarinet, ahem) - what a sound emanates from them!

UPDATE: this situation seems to have caught the national eye even more. A Comment is Free piece by Simon Jenkins here argues very persuasively in favour of saving the estate despite Catford lacking 'pzazz', while the BBC today (15/1/11) features a gallery of wonderfully evocative photographs, giving some touching personal narrative to this story.

The New Shopper reported on this story as early as last August saying that "More than 56 per cent (114 votes) were in favour of the estate's regeneration while 89 people were against the proposals and 21 did not vote at all. "

Remembrance Day in Eltham, 2010

This Sunday 14 November Eltham marks Remembrance Day:

10.45am - Organised by the Eltham & Well Hall Branch of the Royal British Legion, a parade of war veterans, ex-service groups and youth organisations will make their way through Eltham High Street to the Eltham War Memorial at the junction of Eltham Hill and Eltham High Street. A two minute silence will then take place at 11am, followed by a Remembrance Day service inside St John’s Church, Eltham Hill, Eltham, SE9 (photo left).

You might be interested to read about one man's horticultural quest to look after what has become Eltham's local War Memorial at the boundary wall of a historic church in Eltham, St. John's - see Russell Bowes' Project 'Remembrance' site.

I was interested last night to catch part of a BBC documentary on 'Remembrance: The Sikh Story' - a programme "examining why followers of the Sikh religion were marked out as a 'martial race' under the British Empire, and how Sikh soldiers fought for Britain in two world wars". I just wish I could locate round the house somewhere a treasured (but sadly ink stained) sepia photo of my uniformed grandfather (an Indian Sikh) proudly posing with his fellow Allied soldiers in Burma during WW2 (it was why my mother happens to have been born in Rangoon, Burma...)

Other Remembrance Day events in the London Borough of Greenwich here.

More London-wide Remembrance events at Visit London.

Levy's Small Island on the small screen

If you're interested in migration, history, separation and loss then this dramatisation might interest you. I loved reading Andrea Levy's novel, Small Island (2004) a few years ago and shall be glued (if I can get the kids to bed on time!) to this adaptation over two Sunday evenings.

Small Island is Andrea Levy's award-winning story of Jamaicans and Londoners involved in World War Two. Part of the reason she was inspired to write the book was because her own father was on the now-famous SS Empire Windrush in 1948 when it set sail from Jamaica to England.

The drama starts tonight on BBC1. Andrea Levy's narrative switches between four protagonists. The first, Queenie, is Gilbert's white landlady; they met during wartime when he came over as an RAF recruit. Returning on the SS Empire Windrush, he looks her up and takes a room in her house. Hortense, the Jamaican girl whom Gilbert married immediately before boarding the boat, arrives later to share his crumbling attic room; and Queenie's long-lost husband, Bernard, finds his way back, a year after his demob, shortly after Hortense has taken up residence. The year is 1948.

Promo clip here:



The BBC site also gives us this useful collection of links:

• British Council, Contemporary Writers: Andrea Levy (www.contemporarywriters.com)
• Wikipedia: Small Island (en.wikipedia.org)
• BBC Interview with David Oyelowo (Gilbert)
• BBC Interview with Ruth Wilson (Queenie)
• BBC Interview with Benedict Cumberbatch (Bernard)
• BBC Interview with Ashley Walters (Michael)
• BBC Q&A with Andrea Levy
• Icons of England: SS Empire Windrush - Andrea Levy (www.icons.org.uk)
  

I do hope the series lives up to the fantastic novel  -  Small Island: Sundays, BBC1, Dec 6th and 12th, 9pm ('watch again' iplayer link)

'BNP hijack Mitcham Remembrance Day'

This is Local London reported yesterday on this politicising of a Remembrance Day event:

"The BNP hijacked Mitcham’s Remembrance Sunday event, parading a party banner in front of the War Memorial and duping residents to appear in a photograph.

The propaganda shot has since appeared on London Patriot - an extreme right-wing website - sparking fury among those in the picture who believed it was a photocall for the local newspaper.

Witnesses to the event, which happened moments after Mitcham’s Remembrance service finished on November 8, said the BNP banner was deceitfully handed to a group of children at the front of the picture and quickly hidden away after the shot was taken.

Daphne Adkins, 64, was looking on the memorial for the name of her grandfather who died in World War One when the photocall was hastily assembled around her. She said: “I thought it was just disgraceful. We were completely oblivious to what was going on and I can’t imagine many of the other people knew either. I just thought this was something for the local paper organised by the British Legion. Remembrance Sunday has nothing to do with these people. It was sneaky and disrespectful.”  You can read the rest of this story here.

As various 'tweeters' have commented, "tricking kids into holding their banner, how low can you get?"

6th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq

I'm a day late in posting my acknowledgement of the 6th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. On 20 March 2003 the bombs started raining down on the people of Iraq in this misguided 'war'. People were fooled by the US coalition, which included the UK, into believing that the war was necessary was because of Saddam's 'weapons of destruction'. In the end, defeated by the 'dodgy dossier' debacle, they settled for 'regime change'. In February 2009, true to his election promises, Obama announced his plan to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by August 2010. Let's hope the Iraqis themselves can work towards filling the various power vacuums.

There's been surprisingly little about this anniversary in the UK press -the BBC has a jaunty piece about the "pigeon fanciers of Baghdad" and "how they have managed to keep up their passionate pursuit through the darkest of times". Interesting, though hardly reflective of the suffering involved and anger about this invasion.

Many tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in this war (the precise number is contested), as well as over 4,000 military personnel - you can read the American Huffington Post's take on this here.

France24 tells us that "Neither the US military nor the Iraqi authorities have announced plans to commemorate the March 20, 2003 invasion that toppled President Saddam Hussein, an anniversary marked only by anti-war protesters and hastened US pullout plans."

Interestingly, France 24 goes on to quote Tariq Ali, a Pakistani-born, British-based author and activist, speaking about the supposed success of the recent surge of US troop:

“I think basically what the US did in Iraq was to buy off the opposition. Large numbers of people who were fighting them, especially from the Sunni section of society, were paid a lot of money and partially given control of their towns,”

Doesn't bode particularly well for the future.

Micheal Moore gives us a piece about veterans reflecting on their service, including one former U.S. marine who, home after a tour in Iraq, has taken to taking cover under the kitchen table every time local fireworks go off.

Before the invasion, I remember in late 2002 to early 2003 the growing anti-Iraq rumblings building up following the terrible 9/11 attacks in New York. When the prospect of government action started looking serious, I remember joining the largest ever number of street-protesters in the UK . This was when hundreds of thousands of people (again, figures contested) took to London's streets for a three and a half mile march to demonstrate their opposition to military action in Iraq. The march was organised by Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Muslim Association of Britain.

The photographs in this post were taken by my husband and I on that bitterly cold day, Saturday 15 February 2003. They show views of the march by Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus' Eros and heading north up Park Lane towards Hyde Park for the rally.

Alas though, our display of 'people power' had no effect at all because just over a month later, in a complete disregard for public opinion, the invasion began.