Richard III rides out from the towne of Leicester to defend his crown!

This weekend 16th and 17th August 2014 sees the re-enactment of the Battle of Bosworth, and my cousin will be one of several hundreds of re-enactors! On the morning of 21st August 1485 the town worthies and people of Leicester turned out to fete their king, Richard III. Richard set out from the Blue Boar Inn to join battle with the usurper to the English throne - Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Richard’s supporters, estimated at 12,000 already billeted in and around Leicester and had massed outside that Inn on High Cross Street to follow him over Bow Bridge, out of the town and towards Bosworth Field some miles distant.

City of Leicester informations boards document Richard III's route out of the medieval towne

Photo: Dot Roberts

A seasoned military strategist at age 32 and confident of victory, he rode out behind his personal badge - a white boar. He and the assembled Yorkist army were to spend the eve of battle under canvas, before engaging with the Lancastrian forces.

Photo:Dot Roberts

Less than 48 hours later those same town worthies and populace were to turn out once more, this time to pay politically expedient homage to their new monarch Henry Tudor, now Henry VII. And inadvertently to witness the wretched treatment of the body of their former king, the last ever English monarch to be killed leading his army in the field. Henry had returned to Leicester on the evening of 22nd August by the same route, wearing the captured crown. He had Richard’s body displayed for two days before the Greyfriars could retrieve it and hastily bury it in the choir of their church, facing the high altar.

A plaque in the Newarke commemorating the visit of two Kings to Leicester within 48 hours. Note the opposing heraldic emblems Yorkist on the left and Lancastrian on the right.

The plaque on the wall of the Judges’ Lodgings in Castle View Leicester reads as follows:

"This is to commemorate the occasions five hundred years ago when the people of Leicester greeted and honoured two kings of England within two days. RICHARD III on his solemn departure from the town on the 21 of August 1485 to do battle for his kingdom and HENRY VII on his arrival in the evening of the 22 of August 1485 from his victorious field near Market Bosworth bringing in his train the body of the vanquished Richard III."

 The Greyfriars priory church was demolished at the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII and folklore had it that Richard’s disinterred body was thrown into the River Soar. Of course the archeaological excavations by the University of Leicester in 2012 showed this to be nothing more than Tudor propaganda.

Photo: Dot Roberts

How old are these beams?

The Blue Boar does not still survive today. It was demolished in 1836 and a new inn of the same name built 200 yards away on Southgate Street. Contemporary engravings of the original do exist but recently the University of Leicester discovered amazingly detailed technical drawings which have allowed an accurate 3D model of the Blue Boar’s timber frame to be made. The site of the original building is now suitably enough a Travelodge. More immediately the basement of the adjacent hairdressers "Danique's" is believed by some to have been part of the inn! See what you think - my sister Dot just happened to have her hair cut there and managed, in a cramped space, to take these photographs!

Photo: Dot Roberts

The impressive Blue Boar was perhaps an “odd” choice for Richard to stay because Leicester Castle would have provided suitable accommodation for the king and his immediate entourage. He had stayed at the Castle just two years previously. One thought that occurs to me is that perhaps it was already overcrowded with billeted troops waiting for Richard to arrive from Nottingham Castle, from where incidentally - as was common practice - the baggage carts brought his personal four poster bed.

Amongst those City worthies seeing off their king would have been one William Wyggeston, son of the Mayor and aged 18. Female and younger members of the important Wyggeston family probably stood at the stained glass windows of William’s uncle Roger Wygston’s house which directly overlooked the route Richard took from Highcross Street to Bow Bridge, spanning the River Soar nearby. Today’s city worthies have commissioned landscaping of a large square in front of Wygston's House meaning that soon visitors to the Richard III walking trail will be able imagine standing in the shoes of those ancient town worthies, guildsmen and common peasants lining his well documented and fateful route out of Leicester that morning.

The stained glass from Wygston's House is now in the Jewry Wall museum. Photo: Dot Roberts 

Not so very many years later William himself was several times Mayor of Leicester and Calais, a British possession in France and key to England’s  lucrative wool and other trades with Europe. Wyggeston’s will of 1536 led to the founding of a Free Grammar School in St Peter’s church. A purpose built school followed in 1574 on High Cross Street opposite the Blue Boar Inn and still stands to this day, one of Leicester’s finest and most ancient buildings, now used as a restaurant.

The frontage of Wyggeston's Free Grammar School, built 1574. Photos:Dot Roberts

 

Later benefactors to Wyggeston's school included Queen Elizabeth I

Now it happens that my father and three uncles earned county scholarships between the 1920s to 1940s to study at a school still bearing this wealthy medieval merchant’s name. But first, a further re-incarnation as Wyggeston Hospitals Boys' Schools in 1877, before Wyggeston Grammar School was built on an out of town in 1921 - the school attended by my father! 

My father's science prize, 1935

Wyggeston School crest

William Wyggeston's benevolence accorded with medieval church belief that such acts of charity would speed the departed soul's progress through purgatory onward to heaven. Whatever truth lies in that Wyggeston's pious act had an indirect impact on my family’s education! Even now, William’s name is still carried by Wyggeston & Queen Elizabeth I College for boys. And my one remaining uncle alive today has recently set up a mathematics bursary for boys of that very college jointly in his and his three brothers' names (Thornton). There is a lovely symmetry to all of this isn't there?

But what might you have eaten on the eve of battle in the Yorkist (Plantagenet) or the Lancastrian (Tudor) military camp? Well it would have been quite easy for the camp kitchen to carry small (or even  large) spits which would be placed around the campfire.  And pigs are so fertile that there could have been little problem in sourcing young piglets or “shoats” for the spit, just like this medieval/Tudor dollhouse miniature food modelled at one inch scale by MedievalMorsels. 

12th scale dolls house food: camp spit roast pig and cauldron of pease pottage 

Medieval fare: one inch dolls house food - pease pottage with bacon 

And certainly there could have been a pot of meat stew or a rich pottage for the noble elite. But more likely pottage based on plenty of peas or beans and cereal but little meat for the massed army of commoners- pikesmen, longbow men and the like, paid to fight for their noble Lords’ cause whether Plantagenet or Tudor.

Good medieval eating

A Leicester historian Jill Bourne has looked at Leicester Borough Records to understand what food was eaten by the well off medieval merchant class and town burghers in the 15th century. This research was undertaken as part of her research for a book about the Leicester worthy William Wyggeston, several times Mayor of Leicester and also Calais, an important English possession in France and gateway for the lucrative English wool and other trade with Europe.

Beef  12th scale dolls house medieval food

I’d like to share her findings because, family interest in Wyggeston aside, MedievalMorsels is all about medieval foodstuffs, albeit modelled at one inch dolls house scale! Jill found that beef was most commonly mentioned followed by pork and mutton, then venison, kid, veal and rabbit.

Rabbit one inch miniature medieval food

Medieval miniatures - Pork at twelfth scale 

 

Venison - one inch scale dollhouse food 

As for poultry hens, capons (neutered male birds) and geese are frequently mentioned and then swan, partridge, pheasant, woodcock, pigeon, heron, fieldfare and snipe. MedievalMorsels obviously need to add a few more birds to add to its present medieval and Tudor poultry range! 

One inch scale medieval food roast goose

12th scale Capon (fattened neutered cock bird)

As well as fresh water fish, fresh sea fish was transported to Leicester, even though it is far inland. Eels and herring were the most popular medieval fishy fare. Whoop! MedievalMorsels models both of these, and more fish besides! 

12th scale eels - medieval miniature eating

Pickled white herring medieval dolls house style

Red herring medieval dollhouse food

Jill has also found that vegetables mentioned in the Records are beans, onions, garlic, leeks - all good pottage material! Whereas for fruits apples and pears were most frequently documented, with imported figs, grapes and raisins and one reference to pomegranates.

Obviously if you had spare income, and the aspiring merchant classes could became very rich from English and European trade, you could eat very well in the medieval towne of Leicester!

Portugal's national dish - dried, salted cod!

My daughter has  just returned returned from a beginner’s surfing holiday in Portugal. She and her friend both managed to stand up on the board by the end of day one, so that was promising! She had a whale of a time apparently. But because she was particularly taken with eating it on holiday, I want to blog about Portugal's fish and not marine mammals!

Dried and salted cod - bacalhau - is the national dish of Portugal. It has a long pedigree. The Portuguese adore it and it’s said that they know 365 different ways to cook it…one for each day of the year.

Reay Tannahill in her book “Food in History” remarks that Portugal, along with Spain and Scandinavia, were the “fishiest” societies that any European traveller in the Dark Ages, Middle Ages /Medieval or Renaissance/Tudor times would be likely to encounter.

Woodcut dating from 1555 with large ocean going vessels.

A large fishing fleet was encouraged in Medieval times because it provided employment, food resources as well as ocean going ships and trained seamen both called upon for a nation’s navy in times of war. Portugal was a maritime force to be reckoned with in those days.

Normally cod - a deep sea fish - would be beheaded, gutted and salted on board for the long voyage back from the cod fishing grounds in the North Atlantic. Even in the Dark Ages, preceding the Middle Ages and later Tudor times, fishing fleets from all parts of Europe would have sailed to Iceland in pursuit of Atlantic cod.  Shortly after Columbus discovered America about 500 years ago, the Portuguese were fishing for cod as far away as Greenland and Newfoundland. They were the first Europeans to do so.

The fish, already partially dried by salting on the voyage, landed in Portugal or Spain would be hung on wooden drying racks in the sun and heat. In Norway the cool, crisp, breezy climate would provide fish drying power of a different sort.  It keeps for many months, even years this way without refrigeration. And then it requires being soaked for 24 hours in changes of water before being used to prepare a dish. The soaking reconstitutes the fish and gets rid of the excessive salt.

In England it was the commercially produced Norwegian  "stokkfisk" or stockfish that became the Medieval staple food reserve par excellence, traded amongst the Hanseatic League of Guildsmen operating from ports on the shores of the North and Baltic Seas. My hometown of King’s Lynn was a Hanseatic port on the east coast of England facing the North Sea and within easy reach of Norway.

12th scale dollhouse food - fresh cod in a basket

Here is MedievalMorsels take on fresh cod which was a rare luxury in Medieval times. A one inch scale miniature dolls house food - cod in a basket -  for a historic diorama or a more contemporary fishmonger’s stall!

Puddings and sausages in their skins

With apologies to all vegetarians, I am going to wax lyrical about sausages! My family has always been fond of proper butcher’s sausages, it was a food my mother often cooked but always in the oven, never fried or grilled! Like me I think she hated the smell of cooking getting all over the house - this was before cooker extractor hoods had been invented remember!

As youngsters, my sister or I would either be sent “over the road” to Durrant’s the butchers to get a pound and a half of linked sausages, or when Mr Durrant retired we’d need to get some at a town butcher’s in King’s Lynn on Saturday morning before coming home on the bus with them.
I was actually once a member of the British Sausage Appreciation Society and here is my pin badge to prove it. I think it was a once and for all membership I purchased in the late 70’s for about a  £1.50 postal and the price of a couple of stamps! I wonder if technically I am still a member today?

Lets consider some prehistory here...the oldest type of pudding is one that is boiled in the stomach, small or large intestine of an animal. For as long as man has been carnivorous, the intestinal tract of meat animals has been used for pudding and sausage casings - not to mention a variety of other uses as well.

Since ancient times, continuing into Medieval, Tudor and later periods blood, chopped offal and fat were used to make black or blood puddings when pigs were slaughtered in autumn. When these ingredients were Incorporated with oats and spices a nutritious, tasty food product would result. Such puddings, and other sausages as we now commonly call them, are known to be one of the oldest and most enduring forms of processed meat. In some respects, they may even be considered the world's very first "convenience food"!

The intestines or animal casings were turned inside out and washed or “scoured” many times. I hope this was done in clean running stream water! The mixed ingredients were forced into the animal casings and twisted or tied off in “boudin” or sausage shapes, or for a larger pudding filled the animal’s stomach. Cooked immediately because a blood sausage’s keeping properties were very limited after this initial cooking, slices could be fried or boiled again shortly afterwards. But essentially the blood sausage was eaten “fresh” in England and in countries with similar climates. In hot or cold, dry and windy climates such as mountain areas of Spain or Scandinavia respectively, the same blood puddings were cured by air drying, thus prolonging their keeping properties.

In Medieval, Tudor and later times sweet “white puddings” were also favourites on the high class menu and based on rice, oatmeal, almonds, bread, eggs and cream with spices. Or alternatively unctious “marrow puddings” often eaten for breakfast. Often parboiled and then cooled and kept, they were gently toasted to brown them off before eating.

Tudor sausages: blood puddings, rice pudding and marrow puddings 

Here are the results of MedievalMorsels’  research and modelling of 12th scale miniature Medieval/Tudor food - puddings in skins. Or, as Ivan Day the social food historian, expert consultant on Medieval food, blogger and experimental chef less delicately puts it - “puddings in scoured guts”! Take a look at his real recreated puddings with authentic ingredients at http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/ryce-puddings-in-scoured-guts.html
And below is some contemporary 12th scale dollhouse charcuterie. Pork, beef (a Scottish favourite) and venison sausages, plus some thinner chipolatas, modelled for “a basket of…” for sale at UK dolls house fairs. 

12th scale dolls house food: contemporary beef, pork and venison sausages 

Lets leave blood pudding aside but stick with the savoury theme. As well as pork meat, other types of sausage filling were popular in Medieval times. Porpoise, then common sea and a mammal not unlike a dolphin, with pepper and ginger fillings were enjoyed by nobles during Lent. Classified as a fish, porpoise could be eaten all year long! The same exception applied to the flesh of very young rabbits. Other white meat charcuterie based on (real) fish and cheese was popular - all complying with the medieval church’s strict “laws” on abstinence from meat for many days of the year.

Black puddings still feature in a full English breakfast today. And Haggis - pinhead oatmeal, finely minced sheep heart, liver and lungs and finely tuned spices including white pepper - cooked in the sheep's stomach is of course the national dish of Scotland. Very tasty with "neeps and tatties" on Burns Night (January 25th) it is too!!

National rice pudding day is August 14th, which is easy for me to remember as it just happens to have been my parents’ wedding anniversary. My dad was very fond of the skin from a conventional rice pudding, as well as the pudding itself, so it was generally reserved for him - however burnt it might be! My mum would usually make a rice pudding when the oven was on for a Sunday roast, especially if no Bramley apples were available from our tree for the usual alternative - apple pie and custard!

Pease Pottage on the eve of the Medieval Battle of Tewkesbury?

Tewkesbury Abbey

A commemoration of the Battle of Tewkesbury of 1471 took place a few weekends ago in outlying fields of that same town, on 13-14 July. I recall that my cousin, who has been an historical re-enactor for very many years, mentioned that his Lord’s “levy” of foot soldiers always attended this particular medieval re-enactment. The success of the festival is such that participants in both the Medieval Fair and the battle re-enactment travel to Tewkesbury from all over the world. A significant date in the calendar of 'living history' events by any criteria.

Now Tewkesbury is not so far from where I live. And just one week previously I had signed up for a free six week FutureLearn online course run by the University of Leicester entitled “England in the time of Richard III”. A silly thing to do at the start of the summer holidays but there you are!  

Banners festoon Tewkesbury's buildings

That very week on my course I had learned about the long lived, on/off political and military feud between the Yorkists and Lancastrians - to decide which branch of the royal Plantagenet family would rule Britain. Since 1337, the start of the feud, England had been plunged into a sustained period of Civil War. It came to be known later as the “Wars of the Roses” - on account of the Yorkists’ white rose badge and the opposing red rose of the Lancastrians.

Historical re-enactor Colin Mutty

Over the years the fortunes of each side had often changed but finally the Yorkists gained the upper hand. Yorkist Edward Plantagenet had removed King Henry VI from the throne and was crowned King Edward IV in his place. Deposed (and many said mad) Henry VI was imprisoned but his wife, Margaret of Anjou, and son Edward of Westminster (Lancaster) - the Prince of Wales - continued their struggle for power from their base in France. However their Lancastrian army of 1471 raised from France, England and Wales was to suffer a resounding defeat at Tewkesbury. And their figurehead, Prince Edward, in whom their hopes of regaining the crown rested, was killed. Thus ending the Battle of Tewkesbury and leading to a “routing” of the Lancastrians, with no mercy shown to them. Edward IV’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester (and later to become King Richard III) was 19. He was an effective and loyal military campaigner on behalf of his brother the King during these troubled times and at Tewkesbury commanded the western flank of the victorious Yorkist army.

Days later Margaret of Anjou was paraded next to victorious King Edward through London before being imprisoned, and that same night King Henry VI mysteriously died in the Tower of London. Thus bringing to a conclusion that phase of the War of the Roses. 

Historical re-enactor's cooking set-up with cauldron and portable charcoal fire bowl

MedievalMorsels makes miniature medieval dollhouse food - pease pottage

I had a glorious time, meeting my cousin, enjoying the re-enactment and looking at as many medieval cooking set-ups as I could. Here’s one and my guess would be that a nutritious pottage with some bacon would have served as a filling and fitting last supper for some of those poor Lancastrians. Just like MedievalMorsels one inch scale medieval dolls house food - pease pottage - also pictured!

Hemlock, Quails and Medieval Morsels

The quail is Europe's smallest game bird, much smaller than its cousins - the partridge, pigeon or pheasant. And, as is often surprisingly the case, I happened to have such a pair in my fridge - courtesy of a well-known British supermarket. Here are the quail before cooking, and how tiny they are!

Plump quail.

Did you know that collective noun for many several quail is a "bevy" and this term can be used for beauties, ladies, maidens as well as larks and doves? The explosion of collective nouns in the English language is just amazing - you need only explore  http://en.wiktionary.org/

In Medieval times quails may have been popular eating with noble ladies at dinner, but they would have hardly provided more than a mouthful or two of meat for a hungry prince, or a growing squire, or an aspiring knight in training. Quails were rare, reserved for aristocratic dining.

And here's why. They first arrived on the medieval menu in England via France - netted and shipped live to British shores in little cages complete, it is recorded, with grain and water for their journey. Given all this effort, they must have commanded a very high price and be bound for some of the richest households in the kingdom.

MedievalMorsels' range of one inch scale dollhouse miniature foods now includes it namesake "morsel" if you will, the brazier, spit or oven roasted quail! The daintiest 12th scale poultry I need ever model for a Medieval or Tudor dolls house setting because I am not about to  recreate the song bird repertoire eaten in Medieval times!

MedievalMorsels poorly plucked quail, delicate 12th scale dolls house food 

Despite its small size, the European Quail is a migratory bird capable of flying phenomenal distances.  It could be netted at known feeding points en route, or where it fell exhausted to the ground after literally making landfall (fall - get it?) after a long sea passage.

Quail's migration is mentioned in Exodus: "And it came to pass at even(ing), the quails came up and covered the camp." But therein lies a surprise, read on below.

The well known Mediterranean food writer and presenter Claudia Roden recalls annual picnics at the Dunes of Agami near Alexandria, Egypt. Here quail, having fallen from the sky, were cleaned and gutted, marinaded with spices and then cooked over small fires on the beach. I doubt if this picnic practice would have been much different in Medieval and even earlier times. Now it is lucky there were no fatalities associated with Ms Roden's family picnics...

Quite inadvertently this quail (Coturnix coturnix) has a more sinister side. The Romans, very clever in almost all things, had "cottoned on" to the dangers of the migratory quail. They considered the birds unwholesome because they ate poisonous plants, notably hemlock seeds, so their flesh was known to be capable of poisoning people. Their meat acted as a proxy agent for the potentially fatal hemlock toxins. Something today medically known, after the Latin name for the quail, as "coturnism".

First described in the Bible (Numbers, 11 v31) this acute and often fatal poisoning has been observed in the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. The true incidence of coturnism is unknown, many cases  are not undiagnosed. Modern cases, not necessarily fatal if recognised in time, are occasionally written up in the medical literature. This helps to remind practising physicians that such an obscure condition really does exist. 

I cannot say if coturnism was ever the featured as the mysterious, life threatening medical condition in an episode of the "forensic" medical drama "House, MD" - once the most widely watched TV series in the world. It might have required a convoluted storyline, so as not to confuse American viewers with the unrelated Californian Quail!

Bath's gem of a bridge!

Bath's fascinating Pulteney Bridge straddles the River Avon and sits upstream of an unusually shaped weir. And why so fascinating you may ask? Old stone bridges are happily still commonplace in the British Isles, so nothing unique there. A testament to the "civil engineering" of the past, although the exceptional flooding of recent winters and summers has put some old bridges under unprecedented structural stress.

Pulteney Bridge, designed by the foremost architect of the (UK's) Georgian period Robert Adam, was completed in 1774. But it shares something in common with the much older, now "lost" medieval London Bridge. And with the surviving medieval Ponte Vecchio spanning the River Arno, in Italy's Florence.

You've probably guessed it. Bath's bridge, built for one George Pulteney, has shops lining its entire span on both sides! I find this incredibly exciting. Its simply not what I expect from a bridge at all, let alone in England! Adam had seen the Ponte Vecchio. He visited Venice as well, home to the Rialto Bridge built in Renaissance times. He obviously did not fail to notice that both were lined with buildings!

Bath's Pulteney Bridge designed by Georgian architect Robert Adam

I walked over and back on either side of Pulteney Bridge. All the time straining to peer through each narrow bridge-built establishment to glimpse, through their rear picture windows, the river beyond. I was not particularly interested in the contents of the shops you see! And it was okay for me to be enthralled. Because Bath's magnificent monument is in fact only one of four shop-lined bridges in the world.

Someone can let me know which is the fourth such bridge if they like...I don't use Wikipedia much, preferring more old-fashioned reference sources. A shelf full of Encyclopedia Britannica anyone?!

A Georgian spa town, Bath allowed high society to satisfy its "penchant" for "taking the waters". Thus following in the footsteps of the Romans who built baths and temples at these natural hot springs, dedicating them to the goddess Sulis Minerva. Bath, known in Roman times as Aquae Sulis was one of the most sought-after retirement places in Roman Britain!

The aforementioned Pulteney wanted to link his Bathtown estate on the opposite side of the Avon to Bath itself. So he had need of a bridge. Bathtown was home to certain Jane Austen when she moved there with her retired father and her mother. The novelist included Bath in some of her novels, bringing it yet more fame. Its unique Georgian crescent is much beloved of British television costume dramas and, yes, there is a Jane Austen tea shoppe!

Originally founded as Bath General Hospital by Dr William Oliver

I haven't the space here or photos to post about the Roman spa history of Bath, but mention of tea shoppes reminds me that Bath's other claim to fame is the Bath Bun, whose origin dates back to 1761. And the Bath Oliver biscuit of the same period - both invented by a Dr Oliver who founded what became the spa treatment based Royal Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases. MedievalMorsels one inch dollhouse food equivalent to the Bath Oliver is the barley bannock - both names have a nice ring to them don't they?

MedievalMorsels' dollshouse miniature 12th scale individual barley flatbreads

All this babble about the bridge....and buns. Bath's scenic weir has a claim to fame as well. It was used in the film version of Les Miserables for the character Javert's suicide, as played by Russell Crowe with his valiant shouty singing live on set and on location.