Category Archives: Women’s history

Peterborough Cathedral: Prominent women, tragic women

May 27, 2006 – 3:17 pm

Off on Thursday to Peteborough, for reasons to be described elsewhere. But had enough time to check out the truly spectacular cathedral, the majority of which was built between 1118 and 1238, although there’s been a church here since 655AD.It had a rough first half-millennium – destroyed by the Danes in 870, burned down by accident in 1116 . Then it had a disasterous fire in 2001, which means the inside has a very “newly restored” feel.

But you can’t beat the view above, across the lovely grassed square at the front of the cathedral.Its second glory is the painted ceiling pictured below, dating back to about 1230. This must have been a truly important place then – perhaps a growing wool economy? – althought the important was helped by an enthusiastic abbott, Aelfsey (abbott from 1005-1055 – he must have started young).

A chronicler described him as “a laborious bee”, and gullible is another word that might have been applied. He collected “part of Aaron’s rod, piece of Our Lord’s swaddling cloth, a shoulder blade of one of the Holy Innocents [the babies killed by Herod] and a piece of bread from the feeding of the 5,000″. Although it was his successor who got “St Oswald’s arm“, which was to be the monastery’s most important relic until the Dissolution.

A really battered memorial, perhaps fairly really, of John Chambers, the last abbott, who became the first bishop of the diocese of Peterborough (so quite happy to change sides) marks that.

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Early modern history Women's history

The last will and testament of Dame Helen Branch (1593)

May 26, 2006 – 7:22 pm

It has taken me far too long, and I really can’t complain about the writing, but I have now finally completed the transcription of the will of my amazing dame, who died the year following the making of this will, at the age of 90.

I’ve put the full transcript below the fold, since in detail it isn’t exactly gripping reading. Any of my early modernist readers who feel like taking a shot at the italicised words (which I can’t identify fully) would be most welcome to do so; also I’d greatly welcome any general thoughts on the contents.

I think Dame Helen broadly fits into the “godly” mould – in fact an expert was telling me her second husband certainly did, but the will seems to me quite light on that sort of rhetoric. (Although of course that might in part be the influence of the scribe.)

Generally the form is pretty standard, but there are a couple of places where I think the words and character of Dame Branch come through – in the preamble when she humbly gives god thanks for being in “perfecte memory” (at the age of 89!) and in the careful listing of all of the jails and hospitals to which money was to go. Also perhaps the way it rambles a little – an old lady just thinking her thoughts out loud, rather than starting at the biggest bequest and working her way down the list.

Her executor is her brother’s son Robert Nicholson (which I already knew), although I didn’t know the brother Beniamyne (possibly Robert’s father – got to chase that) was still alive. He presumably must be also a pretty significant age – some good genes in there, although the fact that Robert got all the work suggests he’s fully “retired”. (All the father gets is a black gown, presumably to attend the funeral.)

One thing that strikes me about the will is how broad Dame Helen’s social circle still is, even at her great age. There are godchildren being left gold rings, lots of neighbours and widows (presumably friends) – although unfortunately many of them have common names, which is going to make them hard to track down.

Interesting too that she wants to be buried as near as possible to her first husband (Mynors), not her second – and that neither husband’s family has an obvious role in her life (although no way of knowing at the moment if there are female relatives from them along the line – at present I know nothing at the Wismans/Wisemans, or the Hide/Hydes or which side cosen Thomas Smyth comes from. Why did he have to have such a common name?!)

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Women's history

Trip to Reading on the cards

May 26, 2006 – 10:54 am

From next Tuesday at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading, Berkshire: Action Women: The Real Story Behind the Women’s Institutes.

“A main thrust is to show the range of activities that the WI and its members have undertaken over the years,” says Fiona Moorhead, of the Women’s Library, which is curating the exhibition. “It will be arranged along themes ranging from how, in the early years, the WI helped rural women who were isolated, to recent campaigns such as chemicals in food. The exhibition is about getting across how dynamic these women are.”

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History Women's history

The women farmers of 18th-century London

May 24, 2006 – 10:01 am

Not a good story, but interesting that there seem to have been so many women running farms as they were hit by the rinderpest plague that reached its height in 1745. In Marylebone Park (now Regent’s Park), two widows who ran its farms, Jane Francis on the main farm and Mary Hall on the smaller, both saw their businesses fail as a result, as did many other farmers, despite the government paying 40 shillings compensation for each dead beast.

Anne Berry, who farmed on what is now Portman Square “suffered great losses by the death of cows”. She, like a number of farm labourers, was excused from paying parish rates.

These farms must have been primarily dairies, but the park also had another business, haymaking. A Swedish botanist, Pehr Kalm, reported in 1748 that grassland stretched as far as Hampstead and beyond. The fields were cut and the hay stacked in May, again in July, and then in September if the season was good. He reported that this was all for London’s horse population:

As these is an unknown number of horses kept in the stables, it is not wonderful that hay is very dear there, especially at some times of the year, of which these farmers situated near to London are well able and know how to avail themselves.”

(from Regent’s Park: A Study of the Development of the Area from 1086 to the Present Day by Ann Saunders (Ann Cox-Johnson), David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1969, pp. 51-52)

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Books Women's history

A chronicler for Zenobia

May 22, 2006 – 8:32 pm

Zenobia, who from her desert stronghold in Palmyra challenged and held out against the might of the Roman empire, is one of the great queens of history. Yet the fact that she was on the side of â€œEastâ€ rather than â€œWestâ€, that she was female, that her â€œcountryâ€ no longer exists means sheâ€™s not received the attention she deserved.

It was Antonia Fraser in The Warrior Queens who first brought her to attention of English-speaking readers, but surprisingly little has been written on her since then. A search of Amazon reveals no more than half a dozen significant factual and fictional treatments. So, having visited Palmyra and soaked up its glorious atmosphere, I was delighted to sit down with Judith Weingartenâ€™s The Rebel Queen, billed as Volume One of â€œThe Chronicle of Zenobiaâ€.

The author is a veteran archaeologist, with many professional publications to her credit, and the depth of her knowledge is clear from the early pages of the book, as we meet its central character, Simon, a Jewish boy who will grow up to serve the young king Odenathus, who married the young Zenobia in the multicultural city. Odenathus was bred to rule in the caravan city that is part of the Roman empire, but not subject to it, bred to be a warrior in an unstable border region facing the threat of the Persians.

Weingarten writes as one intimately familiar with the cities of the eastern empire that she’s describing:

The little town of Nazala … had an ornate caravanserai with a fine facing of polished stone, and its entrance blocks were carved with whorls of plant tendreal… A busy market with shops and stalls ran around all four sides … Covered booths sold rolls of gaily-dyed cloths and embroidered belts, or tiny glass bottles filled with magic waves of coloured liquids that never mixed .. We stayed that night … stuffing ourselves on pickled fish flavoured with sesame oil and harlic, skewered goat’s meat and a special smoked dumpling that was only made in Nazala.”

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Women's history

Violette Szabo: Hero

May 22, 2006 – 9:09 am

Deserving its own post from the visit to the Brookwood Cemetery was the story of one outstanding women: Violette Szabo, a Second World War British agent and recipient of the George Cross. (Which was received by her four-year-old daughter from the King after the war.) Violette was captured and tortured by the Germans (but didn’t betray her comrades), and finally killed in a concentration camp as Allied troops approached. Consequently there is no grave here, but her name is recorded on the memorial for those without graves, pictured left, under the entry below, for the “Women’s Transport Service”.

Her story was told in the 1958 movie Carve Her Name With Pride, there’s a museum devoted to her in Herefordshire and a walking trail.She had been a hairdresser’s assistant in Woolworths, so the Special Operations Executive had problems taking her seriously when she volunteered for duty in France (being half-French herself) after her husband was killed at El Alamein. Class AND gender issues there.

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