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This lovely little article originates from our Winter 1999 newsletter:

Bells are part of our culture, and references abound:- ‘Ding-dong bell, Pussy’s in the well’, ‘Great Tom is cast…’, ‘…for whom the bell tolls’, ‘the sunken bells of lost Atlantis ring’, to name but a few.

The sound of bells was more common in medieval England than today; calling people to services, to work or play, to wake or sleep, or put out their fires in their thatched homes at curfew (couvre-feu, ‘cover the fire’) in the evening. Bells were rung at baptisms, weddings, funerals and festivals; for joy, sorrow and emergencies. People believed clanging bells drove away the evil spirits of storms, and Spalding Church records show ringers were paid three pence for ‘ringing when the tempest was’.

At Claughton, Lancs., a bell survives bearing the date 1296, and even older ones remain; the earliest were long and narrow in shape. In the 17th century, improvements in hanging and tuning bells to a musical scale led to change-ringing (unknown outside England).

Molten bell-metal, an alloy of copper and tin, was poured into moulds lined with cow or horse manure (still used today) at the foundry. The bells often carry beautiful lettering, inscriptions, names, foundry marks; things of great interest and beauty but rarely seen. The great frames on which bells were hung in the bell-tower were designed and constructed by expert carpenters using massive oak timbers, hand-sawn, split, adzed and joined together with mortice and tenon joints secured by one inch oak pegs.

At the dawn of the 21st century, belling ringing was given a tremendous boost by the prospect of ringing in the millennium. All over England, foundries were casting new bells, bell-hangers were improving existing bells and hung new ones, and new recruits were trained in the art of bell ringing. There are 5000 churches in England with 5 or more bells, and Southwell Minster has 13! But let us not forget the little villages; at Headon-cum-Upton there is just one bell, although two were recorded in 1740. The inscription should read ‘CUM VOCO VENITE’ (‘come when I call’) but the last word is spelt ‘VENITI’ and some of the Gothic capital letters are placed sideways or upside down. The bell is thought to be late 16th century, but the magnificent two-bay frame may be earlier.

This articles comes from our Winter 1998 newsletter:

Imagine being dressed in your smartest regalia, out for a stroll after a large Sunday roast, surveying your fine territory and gardens, when, oops, looking out across the well-cut lawns, you stumble, lose your footing and fall flat, while your friends and family around you have a good giggle at your expense. This could be the fate for anyone walking along in a garden ever since the turn of the eighteenth century, and the wicked culprit – the ha-ha.

The first ha-has were seen in England during the late seventeenth century and regarded as a way of seeing the garden landscape as well as the wilderness beyond it, where landscape architecture was becoming a rising feature of the well-to-do and their gardens. Whereas garden walls would restrict the prospect of what a person could see across the land, the ha-ha was viewed as something which wouldn’t limit what the eye could see and gave an awakening to sensations and curiosity where, according to the inventors of the ha-ha, Bridgman and Eyres – Royal Gardeners of Chiswick Park, variety and concealment were the pre-requisites of the art of landscape.

‘The destruction of walls for boundaries and the invention of fosses – an attempt then deemed so astonishing that the common people called them Ha! Has! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk’ – Horace Walpole, ‘The History of the Modern Taste on Gardening’.

In reality, the sunken ditch of the ha-ha was used to separate the lawns from the working meadows and fields, though leaving the view of the entire countryside to the eye, while keeping the animals, i.e. the deer and the stock including the cows, out of the gardens. Normally the garden side of the ditch was vertical, faced with brick or stone, while the outer side of the ditch sloped up gently to the normal level of the ground, leaving the view of the countryside beyond free and unhindered.

Nottinghamshire has many examples of ha-has, some date from the early eighteenth century through to the late nineteenth century that have listed building status. They range from 150m long at Shireoaks Hall to over 800m long at Wollaton Hall;1m high at Brackenhurst Hall to up to 3m tall at Kelham Hall; made of bricks at Norwood Park to stone at Stanford Hall; and often incorporating other features of landscape architecture, such as fountains at Hardwick Terrace to gates at Scofton Church.

November is absolutely full of exciting and educational heritage events. If you're looking for something to do this autumn, check out our list below for some inspiration!

Friday 1st: 'Do you have any questions about what conservators do? Or about how the Nottinghamshire Archives care for the archive? The Nottinghamshire Archive conservators will be available to answer your questions online via Instagram on Friday 1st November between 10am and 3pm.’ To find out how to submit your questions, visit the event page here.

Saturday 2nd: Head to the Bassetlaw Museum ‘for a poignant presentation that delves into the life of Kveta Lefkovicova, a 16-year old girl, who escaped from Prague a year after the start of World War II. Kveta was one of the few who survived. Tragically, her entire family perished in Majdanek, a Nazi German concentration camp in occupied Poland. Kveta’s story will be brought to life by her daughter Gillian, who will bring some of her mother’s treasured keepsakes, such as two rings and a jewellery box made out of scrap metal in the prison camp'. Entry is free but booking is required. Book your place here.

Tuesday 5th: Join Professor Mark Pearce of the University of Nottingham for a talk that ‘will explore the reasons why more than 200 Bronze Age metal objects were deposited in the River Trent, and what these weapons – many of which are clearly of high status – can tell us about the warrior chiefs and their bands who lived along the river in the second and early first millennium BC’. Booking is required, prices vary from free to £3. Book your place here.

Thursday 7th: ‘Celebrate the dark and learn about the dangers of the night in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’. The National Civil War Centre in Newark, will be hosting ‘Evening Talk: Female Highwaymen’ in which you will ‘find out more about the real renegade women who might have robbed you of your purse’! Tickets cost £10 and booking is required. Book your place here.

Friday 8th: Head to the National Civil War Centre in Newark for a comedy performance of Professor Von Goosechaser’s Halloween lecture about the strange beliefs of the seventeenth century. Tickets cost £10 and booking is required. Book your place here.

Sunday 17th: ‘Join Byron expert Geoffrey Bond at Southwell Minster as he explores the life and times of Nottinghamshire’s most famous poet. The Newstead Abbey Singers will also perform songs, setting some of his poems to music’. The event is free, and booking is not required. For more information about the event, visit the event page here.

Monday 18th: ‘To coincide with the new exhibition at Creswell Crags’, their curators will be hosting the online talk ‘The Science of the Ice Age’ which will answer questions such as: How do we know how cold and how warm it was? What can be used to reconstruct past vegetation? How do we know when things happened? And what can we understand about the animals that survived the Ice Age? Tickets are free but booking is required. Book your free place here.

Above: Pit pony working in the mines. (By Heinrich Börner (1864 – 1943) - Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

Tuesday 19th: A talk by Nottinghamshire County Council's wonderful Historic Buildings Officer Janine Buckley at the Mansfield Central Library 'celebrates the tremendous efforts of the county’s pit ponies’. ‘With first-hand accounts from former pony drivers and freshly discovered documentary and photographic evidence, this talk delves deeply into the lives of a workforce that gave all they had. Learn how their working conditions changed over time, and how they are remembered by their former handlers’. Tickets cost £3 and booking is required. You will also receive a copy of Janine's new book 'Colliery Stables and the Nottinghamshire Pit Pony'Book your place here.

Wednesday 20th: ‘Join former miner and mining historian, Phil Whitehead, at Worksop Library to hear tales of engineering, endeavour and enterprise from the area’s earliest colliery’, Shireoaks Colliery. ‘It existed for 137 years and touched the lives of thousands of local people – perhaps more than any employer in the locality’. Tickets cost £3 and booking is required. Book your place here.

Wednesday 20th: Our Historic Buildings Officer Janine Buckley will also be hosting a ‘talk celebrating the pre-eminence of the horse on Nottinghamshire’s country estates’ at Beeston Library. In the event, you will be able to ‘explore our legacy of highly architectural stables and discover how horses experienced these spaces’. Tickets cost £3 and booking is required. You will also receive a copy of Janine's new book 'Country House Stables of Nottinghamshire'.Book your place here.

Friday 22nd: At Bassetlaw Museum, ‘local author and historian Adrian Gray will give an illustrated and entertaining introduction to his new book, ‘The Scandalous Lives of the Sherwood Forest Nobility’. Featuring ‘Clumber, Rufford, Thoresby, Welbeck, Newstead and perhaps the less well known Bestwood and Worksop Manor. Adrian will cover a range of scandals including lustful affairs, disastrous marriages, vast sums lost in gambling and even some political corruption’. This event is free but booking is required. Book your place here.

Friday 22nd: At the National Civil War Centre in Newark, ‘join costume historian Meredith Towne find out how to blend in in the seventeenth century. Delve into our dressing up box and make sure you know your doublet from your mantua!’ Tickets cost £10 and booking is required. Book your place here.

Thursday 28th: Aimed at home-educated Key Stage 2 children, Mansfield Museum will be hosting ‘a fun and interactive workshop exploring the incredible story of how humans evolved’. Student will ‘explore important steps in our evolution, like tool-making, language, and culture, along with the genetic changes that make us unique’. Tickets cost £7.50 per child (accompanying adults are free) and booking is required. Book your place here.

Saturday 30th: ‘Meet the National Civil War Centre curators Glyn and Kevin and kick off the festive season with a delicious Christmas cream tea in their café. Join them on a special tour of the galleries; open display cases, handle objects from their collection and find out what’s involved in looking after their treasures’. Tickets cost £25 which includes the cream tea and gallery tour. Booking is required. Book your place here.

This wonderful articles comes from our Spring 2001 newsletter:

It was the ‘gret myte water flodes’ which in 1495 were recorded to have destroyed Newark Castle Bridge. Similarly, in recent times, we have experienced many destructive floods in the county. Media hype tends to portray floods as freak events when in reality they are a quite usual, albeit devasting, occurrence.

It was in 1336, for example, while riding through the fields of Hoveringham on a crippled horse (which would have been a disadvantage at the best of times), that the unfortunate Robert Glover met his untimely death when the ‘waters of the Trent having greatly overflowed, he could not see his way and fell into a certain hole and was drowned’. The flood of 1795 was recorded as ‘the greatest flood ever remembered by the oldest person living’, ‘so awful, so sudden a visitation, worked upon the feelings of all descriptions of people; the rich and the poor, in different places, were all alike involved in the general catastrophe’.

Above: The peak levels of major floods are recorded at Trent Bridge; against this we can see just how high the water rose in November 2000 during a flood.

As these historical accounts suggest, flooding of the Trent has always happened. We also have a growing body of archaeological evidence for these episodes stretching back into the distant past.

When the Trent floods over its banks it leaves silty deposits stranded beyond the river when the water retreats. Layers of this material, called alluvium, have been found at several sites. At Besthorpe quarry, excavations have dated these to suggest a period of flooding in the middle Bronze Age, while at the Roman town of Segelocum at Littleborough, at least two phases of flooding and river deposits have been found interleaved between phases of Roman building.

The Trent also has more severe but less frequent ‘catastrophic’ floods that can be of sufficient force to alter the course of the river. This leaves behind a series of redundant river channels, called palaeochannels, and these have yielded interesting evidence of flooding. At Colwick Hall quarry, a palaeochannel was found to contain numerous large tree trunks which would seem to have been uprooted and deposited in successive huge floods. These have been dated by dendrochronology (tree rings) to the Neolithic period (approx. 5000-2500 BC). At Langford quarry, human remains dating to the late Neolithic have also been found in a palaeochannel. These were either the victims of a flood or the water washed out remains from a burial site.

Archaeological evidence of flooding can also be seen in man’s reaction to these events. One human response to something so devasting is to call upon the mercy of the Gods. It is argued that the sudden increase in deposits of Bronze Age metalwork found in river silts may be evidence of these kind of appeals. A more practical response can be found in the system of major and minor flood defences. These were built to protect towns, villages and farmland and could have a significant impact on the local landscape. Unfortunately, many of these features remain undated.

Archaeological and historical accounts not only help us understand flooding in the past, but can be used to draw useful anecdotes as part of an informed and effective modern-day approach to this phenomenon.

There will be some exciting heritage events this October, here is a list of some of our favourites:

1st October: Join the director of the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, Dr Lindy Crewe, for a fascinating talk ‘Beef and Beer: Working and Feasting on Bronze Age Cyprus’, about the ongoing excavations at Kissonerga-Skalia in western Cyprus. The site ‘a number of pyrotechnical installations and associated finds within a ‘monumental’ complex dating to around 1650 BC’. Located at the Djanogly Theatre, booking is required, and tickets are £3 per person. Book your place here.

3rd October: Opening this Thursday, Lakeside Arts is hosting the ‘Tales from the Caves: Exploring Nottingham’s Underground Stories’ exhibition until March 2025. The exhibition allows you to ‘delve beneath the surface and discover the many-layered history of Nottingham's famous caves and the people who have carved out a life within their walls for over a thousand years’. Booking is not required and entry is free. For more information about the exhibition, visit the event page here.

6th October: The Nottingham Industrial Museum will be hosting a Live Steaming Event this Sunday. During this event, you can watch their ‘extensive collection of working static and portable engines and enjoy the magnificent Basford Beam Engine in steam’. Booking is not required, tickets cost £6 per adult, children under 16 go free. Visit the event page for information here.

9th October: ‘Enjoy a deeper look at the food on the tables of the elite and ordinary people of Stuart England’ with Dr Mark Dawson with his ‘Evening Talk: Food In Seventeenth Century England’, at the National Civil War Centre in Newark. Booking is required and tickets cost £10 per person. Book your place here.

18th October: In another evening talk ‘Newark in the British Civil Wars’ at the National Civil War Centre, ‘meet local historian Stuart Jennings and discover what it was like to live through Newark’s sieges’. Booking is required and tickets cost £10 per person. Book your place here.

18th October: ‘A gin tasting experience with a difference will be on offer’ at D.H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum on October 18th. The Gin and Gaslight event ‘will give guests a taste of Victorian decadence, with a chance to learn about and sample several gins, whilst experiencing this award-winning museum at night. On arrival guests will be greeted by their Victorian hosts with an aperitif, before taking in the magic of the museum and its historic rooms and exhibitions by gas light.’ Booking is required and tickets cost £17.50. Book your place here.

26th October: Southwell’s annual Bramley Apple Festival of Food and Drink returns this October at Southwell Minster. ‘Dozens of stallholders offering all manner of food and drink including pies, chocolates, jams, chutneys, pickles, sausages and much much more’. Booking is not required, suggested entry fee of £3 (donation). For more information, visit the event page here.

26th October: Also celebrating Southwell’s Bramley Apple Day, the Workhouse and Infirmary will be hosting festival activities ‘with the longest apple peel competition. There will be multiple apple themed prizes throughout the day. Apple printing will also be available’. Booking is not required and the activities are free, however the fee for access to the property is still in place. For more event information, visit their event page here.

Above: Bramley apples. (By Red58bill - Own work, CC BY 3.0)