Category: History

Image of the day – 69

I don’t know the age of this house, but it is clearly a timber-framed structure and some of those main timbers have adjusted comprehensively to the action of gravity over several centuries.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Click to enlarge

Here’s Cirencester’s wonkiest house – well, one of them. Until the 18th century, many buildings would have been constructed of timber, and we all know that timber is prone to warp even after seasoning, and it also responds to pressure and stress by slowly changing its shape.

Modern engineered wooden products generally avoid these issues. For example, plywood is in layers with the grain running in different directions from layer to layer. A thin sheet of wood is weak along the line of the grain, in that direction it will split easily when bent. But it will resist bending and splitting if rotated 90°. So multiple sheets glued together can be strong in all directions.

A timber-framed house

I don’t know the age of this house in Dollar Street, but it is clearly a timber-framed structure and some of those main timbers have adjusted comprehensively to the action of gravity over several centuries. Look at the glazing in the windows, for example, compare the windows with their fellows, side-by-side and up and down. See what I mean? At some point a layer of render was added to hide and protect the timbers so these are no longer visible.

The building is unoccupied at present, but I imagine it’s safe enough. Imagine how the new owners in due course will struggle to make right-angled furniture fit into walls and floors at odd angles

What about us?

Are we sometimes a little bit like this house? Do the pressures of life, sustained over years, even decades, cause us to be a little distorted? Is it difficult for other people with their right-angled opinions and requirements to fit into our expectations given our out-of-true alignments? Is the truth about us sometimes plastered over and hidden from view?

Or might it be the other way around? Am I, are you, straight and true and the fault lies with everyone else?

Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

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Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

The Wayback Machine

So let’s look at some examples… But do bear in mind that the retrieval process may be quite slow. Time travel takes time.

Time travel would be interesting, but we can be pretty sure it can’t be done. However, history lets us visit the past in a sense. And when it comes to the web, there’s always the amazing Wayback Machine.

The Wayback Machine archives websites and stores them for future use, and anyone can use it to see past versions of sites, or visit sites that are no longer available. Also, anyone can enter a web address and ask for it to be archived.

The Wayback Machine has had a torrid time with DDoS attacks and data theft over the last few weeks, but it’s all fixed and working again as of 14th October (though in read-only mode for the time being).

So let’s look at some examples. Click the links below to check them out, but do bear in mind that the retrieval process may be quite slow. Time travel takes time:

Why not explore some old websites for yourself? Just visit web.archive.org and search for a website you like or one that no longer exists.

What serious uses does it have?

The Wayback Machine (or Web Archive) serves a number of useful purposes beyond viewing old versions of websites for fun.

  • Historical research
  • For checking accountability
  • Verification
  • As legal evidence
  • Viewing websites that no longer exist

For further details, read the Wikipedia article on the Wayback Machine.

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 64

Living in Cirencester always gives me a sense of history and the slow but unstoppable passing of the years and centuries. Will the hare mosaic still be available to see 1700 years from now?

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Click to enlarge

This is the same hare that we looked at in the previous Image of the Day, but this time it’s a modern interpretation of the Roman original, installed in a public space between Brewery Arts and Waterstones bookshop.

It’s great to have the hare mosaic out in the open for visitors to the town to discover as they explore; perhaps it will encourage some of them to visit the Corinium Museum to view the original as well. But I wonder what the owners of the town house where the mosaic was found would have thought about public display some 1700 years in their future!

Living in Cirencester always gives me a sense of history and the slow but unstoppable passing of the years and centuries. Will the hare mosaic still be available to see 1700 years from now, in the year 3724? Will the town even exist in 3724? What language will be spoken here in 3724? Certainly not 21st century English! Will we have cities on the Moon, Mars, and beyond by then? Deep time, both backwards and forwards, a fascinating topic to ponder!

See also:
Cirencester

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:

A417 roadworks, Advent Market, Bishops Walk, Baunton, Canal 1, 2, Castle Street, Christmas lights 1, 2, Church 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Churn flood, Countryside, Fallen tree, Fleece, Gasworks, Gloucester Street, Hare 1, 2, Hospital, Market Place 1, Phoenix Fest, Riverside Walk, Stone plaque, Stratton Meadow, Tank traps, View, Wonky 1, 2, Yellow Iris

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Managing old family photos

Images fade, especially if exposed to light, they are susceptible to damage by fire, water, mechanical action and so forth.

For some years now I’ve been transferring family photos, videos and documents to digital storage in an attempt to preserve the information. There are pros and cons to both physical storage and digital storage and we’ll discuss those in this article.

But first, lets take a look at an example photo.

An old photo from my collection – May 1969

The image above is from a 35 mm transparency. It shows my fellow students on the Bath University Horticulture degree course the year before we graduated. We were visiting a commercial horticultural business and there’s a TV personality in the image as well. (One of our lecturers, Peter Thoday, later became well known as the narrator in the TV series, The Victorian Kitchen Garden. He’s at the back of the group on the right in the photo, tall and with very dark hair.)

Details of the photos and how I manage them

Quite a few of the old photos I have are colour transparencies; these come in different sizes depending on the type of camera and film that were used. The majority are on 35 mm film stock, with sprocket holes along two sides; these engage with the film transport mechanism in the camera. After the film was processed and dried it was cut into individual frames and mounted in card or plastic frames. My film scanner can handle mounted and unmounted slides and saves them as digital image files.

Once I have the images in digital format I remove slides from their frames and check the frame numbers exposed on the film when it was manufactured. This makes it easy to get the slides into correct sequence as they may have been reordered accidentally or even deliberately when they were projected in the past. Having confidence that the photos are correctly in sequence makes it much more likely that I can eventually arrange the films into longer sequences based on events, people and places in the images. This is a work of reconstruction, sometimes easy, sometimes very difficult. I keep notes of what I have done and why, for my own reference and for anyone else who might find the information useful later. I’ve got better at doing this with experience.

Advantages and disadvantages of physical storage

The original negatives and transparencies contain more information than digital copies. For one thing, the dynamic range is greater and the resolution is always going to be a little higher. Scanning processes are very good indeed these days, but they’ll never be absolutely perfect.

On the other hand, originals deteriorate over long time periods. Images fade, especially if exposed to light, they are susceptible to damage by fire, water, mechanical action and so forth. And as each image is unique, if it’s lost or damaged there is no way to recover it.

And two final points – storing negatives, transparencies and prints takes a lot of space, more and more as the numbers increase. And viewing them becomes an issue, only a few people can view them at a time.

Advantages and disadvantages of digital storage

Digital copies of the images can be almost as good as the originals for most purposes, and digital processing can improve colours and remove blemishes when the originals are faded, scratched or have dust that is strongly attached to the surface. In these cases, the digital copy may be more acceptable than the original.

Digital storage is increasingly cheap and capacious, so a very large collection of photos can be stored on a cheap, tiny SD card. This in turn makes it possible to have multiple copies in multiple locations, providing security far beyond anything possible with the originals. Remote storage on Dropbox or similar facilities takes this a step further. Multiple copies and remote storage both make it possible for many people to be able to view the images independently and from wherever they happen to be.

Perhaps the biggest downside of digital storage is the need to constantly move images from old storage media to newer technology. How many of us have devices to read data from a floppy disk or an old CD? Remote storage helps again because the company offering the service takes on the task of managing data storage and retrieval and moving to newer technologies whenever necessary.

And there’s a hidden factor here too, the images need to be stored in a file format that is still readable on current devices. JPG and PNG are widely used and may be readable by future devices for a very long time, but nothing is certain and it may become necessary to re-save the images in a different file format in future. This would be a major task for a large image collection.

My approach to all this

I’ve thought about this a lot. Currently, everything is stored in high quality JPG format. Yes, I know there are very slight compression artefacts in JPG, but unless the images are repeatedly edited and re-saved this is not an issue in practical terms. I use an Epson Perfection V600 Photo scanner which for me is a good compromise between quality and price. The images are stored initially on my laptop and automatically to Dropbox, and I back up my laptop on an external hard drive at intervals. Other members of the family have their own copies of some of the data, though keeping this refreshed has been a problem.

Something I have not yet fully resolved is what happens when I’m no longer able to manage all this data. Of course, at that point the future of the images will no longer be of personal interest. Nonetheless, I’d like to have some kind of plan in place, perhaps handing on access to my Dropbox account would be a good way forward.

See also

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

About Patrick

My name is Patricius, I’m a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers; I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius, a deacon.

Patrick, or Saint Patrick as we normally think of him, had an interesting background and history. Of course, we know very little about him, but far more than we know about most other people who lived at that time.

Late Roman Britain
(Wikimedia)

What does the name, Patrick, mean? It comes from the Latin patricius, meaning “nobleman”, “of noble origin” or “patrician”. Patricians were the noble families in ancient Rome, a ruling class, and Patrick can be viewed as a Roman or perhaps a Romanised Briton. By 409 CE when all remaining Roman forces in Britannia were recalled to protect the Western empire against uncontrolled immigration across the Rhine, the distinction between Roman and Romano-Briton had pretty much vanished. Archaeological evidence makes it clear that Roman life continued well after the troops left, particularly in the west of Britain.

Patrick’s life

Patrick’s family lived in Roman style somewhere near the west coast in what is now northern England or southern Scotland (also possibly Wales). They would have been little affected by Angle and Saxon incursions into the far eastern regions of the British Isles, but raids from Ireland and northern Scotland were sometimes a problem. Farming life and indeed villa life and Roman town life would have carried on; no longer governed by the empire, but governed locally like a Roman province. Patrick was born around the time the Roman forces departed.

When he was sixteen he was captured by Irish pirates raiding the area where his parents lived. And he was sold in Ireland as a slave and had a hard life, outside in all weathers, herding sheep or pigs. He had been exposed to Christian ways as a child but had not believed in Jesus or made any attempt to follow him, but during his time in captivity he developed a faith. Spending times of great hardship as a herdsman slave, and living in the open air in all seasons, he must often have been wet and very cold. But spiritually it was a time of great growth and depth for him. He prayed incessantly and felt very close to his heavenly Father.

He made a dash for freedom when the opportunity arose, hearing a voice in his sleep telling him that a ship was waiting to return him home. He was recaptured, but escaped again and made it home successfully.

Later, sensing that his responsibility was to return to Ireland to share his faith with the pagan people there, he travelled back and began to share everything he knew of Jesus. People listened to what he told them and he started many local communities of believers. Later again, Patrick travelled back to northern Britain and spread his teaching about Jesus to the Irish and Welsh speaking Britons and also to the Saxons in the areas he visited. The Celtic church in Ireland and in Great Britain spread far and wide, even back into northern Europe. Celtic Christian monks journeyed singly or in small groups, spreading the good news and founding further communities and groups of believers.

His writings

At some point in his later life, Patrick authored books and letters, two have survived, and one of these is autobiographical in nature, telling the story of who he was and the events of his life. And that book (The Confessio) is why we know as much as we do about Patrick and the world he lived in. Here are his opening words:

My name is Patrick. I am a sinner, a simple country person, and the least of all believers. I am looked down upon by many. My father was Calpornius. He was a deacon; his father was Potitus, a priest, who lived at Bannavem Taburniae. His home was near there, and that is where I was taken prisoner. I was about sixteen at the time. At that time, I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity in Ireland, along with thousands of others. We deserved this, because we had gone away from God, and did not keep his commandments. We would not listen to our priests, who advised us about how we could be saved. The Lord brought his strong anger upon us, and scattered us among many nations even to the ends of the earth. It was among foreigners that it was seen how little I was.

The Wikipedia article on Patrick provides a lot of good information.

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 53

The crosses are usually carved with traditional Celtic patterns, but often they have panels containing carved pictures that illustrate a story.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every two days (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Stone high cross at Monasterboice

Irish monasteries had a number of features not found (or rarely found) in other parts of the British Isles. The round towers are one example, there are one or two in Scotland and the Isle of Man, but nowhere else outside Ireland. Stone high crosses are another example. These are found throughout the British Isles and parts of France. The ruined monastery of Monasterboice has a round tower similar to the one at Glendalough, but is particularly noted for several outstanding high crosses, one of these features in my photo.

The crosses are usually carved with traditional Celtic patterns, but often they have panels containing carved pictures that illustrate a story, perhaps a Bible story. They were clearly important to the people and communities that took so much care and effort to create them, and they are one of many strong reminders of the Celtic, and particularly the Irish Christian traditions that were significantly different in many ways from the later, Catholic traditions coming into south-eastern England in Saxon times.

The Catholic Church brought initially to Kent from the Continent introduced a hierarchical style, with church officials under the Pope, and fixed orders of service. The Celtic church that had developed from early, pre-Catholic traditions in Roman Britain, was based more on travelling teachers (often missionary monks) who were more flexible in style, without strict rules. They often took little with them but their learning, and depended on the people they taught to support them on their journeys.

Which of these two styles do you think followed the teachings of Jesus most closely?


Images from our Irish holiday 2024

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:

28th Jul – Welsh Botanic Garden, Robin, Fishguard
29th Jul – Wicklow Mts, Glendalough, Powerscourt, Rose, Greystones
30th Jul – Liffey, Temple Bar, St Patrick’s Cathedral
31st Jul – Newgrange, Battle of the Boyne
1st Aug – Monasterboice, Mourne, Thrift, Window
2nd Aug – Spelga Dam, Hydrangea, Pipework, Lough Neagh
3rd Aug – Coagh, Springhill, Portrush
4th Aug – Beach at Portrush
5th Aug – Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede, Portrush

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 52

Unfortunately evil, lies and cruelty are often employed as levers and instruments of war (as in the current Russia/Ukraine conflict).

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

Battle of the Boyne

The old cannon in today’s photo dates to the time of the Battle of the Boyne (1690), near the Irish town of Drogheda on the east coast north of Dublin. The battle took place between James II, the final Stuart King of England who was attempting to win back his throne from George III, the first Hanoverian King. But it was a battle of huge significance across the whole of Europe, because both the Catholic Stuarts and the Protestant Hanoverians were backed by various European powers. There were troops from many European states on the battlefield.

George III won the battle and remained the King of England. But the consequences were multinational in nature.

We see the same sorts of thing in the Ukraine/Russia war, it’s not just two national armies pitted against one another. Russia is supported to a greater or lesser degree by China, India, Iran, North Korea, Mongolia, Belarus, and others. Ukraine is supported by most European nations, by the EU, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others. All of these other countries, to a greater or lesser degree, will be affected by the eventual outcome.

Sometimes it seems the world is incapable of living peacefully. The never-ending struggles between good and evil, for example, or truth and lies, or kindness and cruelty, run far deeper than clashes over which king will rule a particular country. Unfortunately evil, lies and cruelty are often employed as levers and instruments of war (as in the current Russia/Ukraine conflict).

I’ll predict one thing, either Russia or Ukraine will lose this war. I fervently hope and pray that the loser will be the nation that has deployed the most evil, lies and cruelty. We can do with less of those things (though realistically they’ll always be present at some level in human societies).


Images from our Irish holiday 2024

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:

28th Jul – Welsh Botanic Garden, Robin, Fishguard
29th Jul – Wicklow Mts, Glendalough, Powerscourt, Rose, Greystones
30th Jul – Liffey, Temple Bar, St Patrick’s Cathedral
31st Jul – Newgrange, Battle of the Boyne
1st Aug – Monasterboice, Mourne, Thrift, Window
2nd Aug – Spelga Dam, Hydrangea, Pipework, Lough Neagh
3rd Aug – Coagh, Springhill, Portrush
4th Aug – Beach at Portrush
5th Aug – Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede, Portrush

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 51

We can imagine the people travelling here for celebrations and for remembering previous generations.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

The entrance to Newgrange

This is the entrance to the passage grave at Newgrange near Drogheda, north of Dublin. Some of what you see here is Neolithic; all of the larger stones are ancient, but there has been some recent reconstruction using smaller, fallen stones. The reconstruction has been somewhat controversial. The decorative, spiral carvings are original and are quite typical of Neolithic art in general.

Whatever your opinion about reconstruction, the tomb is most impressive and the nearby museum provides an excellent overview of the site, the construction and purpose of the monument, and its place in the landscape. There are many other Neolithic structures nearby, the entire area seems to have been a special place for the Neolithic people who lived in Ireland at the time it was in use.

We can only speculate, but we can imagine the people travelling here for celebrations and for remembering previous generations. It must have been a busy place during times of festival and ceremony. You know what that’s like; visitors need food and drink, and they may want to take home objects to remind them of their visit. Just as the visitor centre has a restaurant and gift shop as well as a museum, so 3½ thousand years ago, there would have been the same kinds of activity for exactly the same reasons. Food for sale in some shape or form, objects available to take home, as well as explanations about the deep history and purpose of the extraordinary structures in the area. Stories to be told, myths and legends as well as shared and handed-down memories to be recited.

Deep history indeed!


Images from our Irish holiday 2024

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:

28th Jul – Welsh Botanic Garden, Robin, Fishguard
29th Jul – Wicklow Mts, Glendalough, Powerscourt, Rose, Greystones
30th Jul – Liffey, Temple Bar, St Patrick’s Cathedral
31st Jul – Newgrange, Battle of the Boyne
1st Aug – Monasterboice, Mourne, Thrift, Window
2nd Aug – Spelga Dam, Hydrangea, Pipework, Lough Neagh
3rd Aug – Coagh, Springhill, Portrush
4th Aug – Beach at Portrush
5th Aug – Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede, Portrush

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 50

Jonathan Swift…famously wrote, ‘In Ireland we have enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love’.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin

While we were in Dublin we visited St Patrick’s Cathedral. There are two cathedrals in the city, Christ Church and St Patrick’s. St Patrick’s has an association with the famous author, Jonathan Swift who was Dean and Ordinary here. He famously wrote, ‘In Ireland we have enough religion to make us hate but not enough to make us love’.

The cathedral is beautiful, with much interesting stained glass. It has a long and varied history; astonishingly, Oliver Cromwell used the building to stable his horses. The building has had many ups and downs over the centuries, falling into disrepair and being restored.

The phrase ‘chance your arm’ originated here. In 1492, two feuding families had been in battle and the losing side fled to the cathedral for safety. The winners offered a truce but the losers thought it was trap. A hole was cut in the heavy, wooden door to the building and the leader of the winning side put his arm through to shake hands ‘chancing his arm’ in the process. Everything ended well and the truce was accepted.

Sometimes we might need to do this too – chance our arm. We need to take risks in life in the hope of achieving something useful. ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’ is another way of making the same point. Risk it for a biscuit!


Images from our Irish holiday 2024

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Irish holiday images:

28th Jul – Welsh Botanic Garden, Robin, Fishguard
29th Jul – Wicklow Mts, Glendalough, Powerscourt, Rose, Greystones
30th Jul – Liffey, Temple Bar, St Patrick’s Cathedral
31st Jul – Newgrange, Battle of the Boyne
1st Aug – Monasterboice, Mourne, Thrift, Window
2nd Aug – Spelga Dam, Hydrangea, Pipework, Lough Neagh
3rd Aug – Coagh, Springhill, Portrush
4th Aug – Beach at Portrush
5th Aug – Giant’s Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede, Portrush

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

Image of the day – 48

There is a cooking fire raised to a useful working height, [and] rows of hooks for tidy storage of equipment.

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What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye.

I’m posting an image every day (or as often as I can). A photo, an image from the internet, a diagram or a map. Whatever takes my fancy.

So, what’s cooking?

We’ve seen the dining room with its couches and cushions, ideal for reclining when the meal arrives. But how were meals prepared? In the kitchen, of course! In this photo we see the reconstruction of a villa kitchen where the cook (a slave or a hired servant) would do the work required to serve up a suitable meal for the family, and often no doubt for house guests as well.

Clearly, a Roman kitchen couldn’t boast the modern conveniences we all expect today, but think in terms of the people who lived in Britain before and after the Roman period. Iron age people usually lived in round houses with a hearth in the centre. That was it! There might have been a tripod where a cauldron could be hung over the fire or it could be placed on the hearth stones. And Saxon homes were quite similar; they were rectangular rather than circular but there was no dedicated kitchen for preparing food. In this Roman kitchen there are iron racks to keep the pans away from the fire below while letting the heat through. And notice the very practical handle; wooden handles would have scorched and been too hot to hold, so a short piece of wood was used as a temporary handle – genius!

The Roman kitchen looks familiar to us because it’s a separate space in a well-designed and well-built home. There is a cooking fire raised to a useful working height, rows of hooks for tidy storage of equipment, containers of various kinds and sizes, even a wax tablet, perhaps with recipe details or a list of requirements. There was a walk-in larder, not seen in this image, and an oven for baking bread.

Images of the Roman villa

For convenience, here’s a list of all the Roman villa images:

Ceiling, Desk, Dining room, Exterior1, Exterior2, Garden, Kitchen, Mosaic floor, Office, Sitting room

Themed image collections

The links below will take you to the first post in each collection

Cirencester, Favourites, Irish holiday 2024, Roman villa

< Previous | Index | Next >

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!