This edited article about Somerset originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

The Battle of Sedgemoor by Ron Embleton

Somerset, as the old song says, is where the cider apples grow. It is also a county of rolling hills, famous towns, great men, romantic legends and vital developments in our island story.

You can go back a long, long way in British history, in fact, and still find that men were busy in Somerset. Years before Julius Caesar made his inquisitive expedition to our hostile shores in Kent, the early Celts had developed a high level of culture, centred upon Glastonbury. In that same town, centuries later, Dunstan, probably the first of Britain’s chief ministers, founded the Abbey, the ruins of which still stand today.

Glastonbury, too, is one of the places where King Arthur was said to have been buried, and in the reign of Richard I, an excavating team claimed to have discovered his bones there.

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This edited article about Powis Castle originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 699 published on 7 June 1975.

Powis Castle

Powis Castle, commonly called the Castle Coch or “Red Castle” owes its name to the lofty ridge of red limestone upon which it is built. It has remained continuously occupied since the time of Edward I, although over the years It has been altered and adapted to the needs of its many owners.

Because of their adherence to the cause of James I, the Powis family were sent into exile. Tenancy of the castle was granted to William III’s cousin, the Earl of Rochford who was responsible for the design and laying out of the superb terraced gardens.

The Powis family returned in 1722 and have since added to and elaborated their family home. The castle is situated on a crest overhanging the upper reaches of the River Severn.

It contains much notable furniture, tapestries, fine plasterwork, murals and paintings. It is notable for many interesting relics of “Clive of India” (1725-74), to whose son the castle and title passed. The castle was bequeathed to the National Trust by the late Earl of Powis in 1952.

This edited article about Warwickshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 698 published on 31 May 1975.

A picture history of Kenilworth Castle, one of the great historic buildings of Warwickshire, by C L Doughty

“Up school! Up school!” “Come on, Headmaster’s House!”

Supporters of both teams stood in groups round the football pitch, loudly urging their schoolfellows on to one last effort. The match was nearly over, the players muddy and tired. And still there was no score.

The scene was Rugby School, Warwickshire’s famous public school. On the football field that day in 1823 one boy was to make sporting history. His name was William Webb Ellis.

A dozen boys crowded round the ball. A deft flick of the foot, and the ball sailed towards Ellis. “Come on Ellis, now’s your chance!” roared the boys on the side-lines. A straight kick, and the match would be won.

But William Ellis did not kick the ball. At the side of the pitch, spectators gasped in astonishment as he gathered the ball in his hands, and ran, twisting and weaving, towards the goal.

Astonishment turned quickly to anger. “Foul! Foul! Drop the ball, Ellis! Shame!” yelled the watching boys, as Ellis, the ball tucked firmly under his arm, crossed the goal line and triumphantly touched down the ball there.

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This edited article about Richard III originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 683 published on 15 February 1975.

Elizabeth Woodville is persuaded to give up her son, Prince Richard, to her brother-in-law, Richard of Gloucester, later Richard III, by Clive Uptton

The following notice appeared in the memorial column of the “New York Times” one recent August. It read: “Plantagenet – Richard, of York, Duke of Gloucester, King of England, who died 478 years ago today, the 22nd day of August in 1485, in battle at Bosworth Field, betrayed, slandered, his memory destroyed by the Tudors as was his body, a victim of malicious propaganda horrendously immortalized forever by W. Shakespeare . . .”

Stop! Wait!

These are strong words, indeed, to use about the memory of an English king. Strong – because the blunt facts about Richard III in the history books are quite clear. They tell us that he ruthlessly murdered the two sons of his brother, King Edward IV: Edward, Prince of Wales, and Richard, Duke of York. Then, having seized the throne, he was killed fighting on Bosworth Field by the troops of Henry Tudor, afterwards Henry VII.

It was a fitting end, you might say, for a brutal and vicious child-murderer.

The city records of York, however, would disagree with you and the history books. On learning of Richard’s defeat at Bosworth, the Mayor and Aldermen authorized this entry to be made in the records:

“This day was our good King Richard piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city.”

Well! What really happened?

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This edited article about Northamptonshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 681 published on 1 February 1975.

The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, at her execution in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle

Beautiful and clever, Mary, Queen of Scots, was the centre of intrigue until the day she was executed at Northamptonshire’s Fotheringhay Castle

An old labourer was clearing away the rubble from the ruins of Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, one day in 1820, when among the stones he found a small, mud-caked ring with initials and a lovers’ knot.

It was the gold engagement ring of Mary, Queen of Scots, given her by her second husband, Henry Darnley, whom she had married secretly.

The ring must have fallen from her finger on the day nearly two hundred and fifty years before, when she met her death on the block in the castle’s great banqueting hall.

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This edited article about Warwick originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 656 published on 10 August 1974.

The death of the Duke of Clarence in a butt of wine, by C L Doughty

Warwick’s castle and its earls dominate the story of a country town where kings were made, plots were hatched and the axeman chopped off the heads of the unfortunate perpetrators with monotonous regularity

They towered, smouldering with rage, above their captive, their armour clanking in unison with their volcanic fury, dragging and jostling the prisoner this way and that until they came to the castle drawbridge. The keeper of the castle, peering from the barbican into the half-light, ordered the man at the windlass to raise the portcullis at once, for he recognised them even in twilit silhouette; there was his iron-hard master, the Earl of Warwick, and about him his peers, the imperious, arrogant nobles of England.

The prisoner, thinly clad and frail, with a slim, boyish figure, he did not recognise. But he would have known his name. The man whom the earls and barons of England were rough-handling into Warwick Castle was Piers Gaveston, one of the greatest royal favourites who had ever sat himself at a king’s knee.

And tired of the riches, the gifts, the lands and the luxuries that their bone-headed King Edward the Second had heaped upon this fulsome favourite, and of the impertinence and the conceit that had been born of it, they had taken the law into their own hands – which was something they were always good at doing.

They had dragged the feckless Gaveston from his bed, ransacking his trunks and spilling upon the floor the baubles the king had given him, and driven him to Warwick Castle – that bastion of baronial power in England in the Middle Ages.

Inside the Great Hall, they decided he must die.

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This edited article about Nottingham originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 649 published on 22 June 1974.

Robin Hood by James E McConnell

He could have been the greatest citizen of Nottingham. Certainly he could have been one of the greatest of Englishmen. No one argues about these facts – the argument only starts over the question, did he ever exist?

He, of course, was Robin Hood, the merry outlaw who was supposed to have roamed Nottingham’s Sherwood Forest in the days of the Plantagenet kings.

In that same forest, it is said, Robin once killed one of the king’s deer and perhaps, too, he killed a royal forester who threatened his life. For this, a price was set upon his head and he was forced to flee.

Other men, outlawed like himself, who hated the hard rule of the feudal barons, or who loved the free life of the forest, joined him. So grew that immortal band, which included Little John, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Maid Marian and the other celebrated characters who robbed the rich to give to the poor.

How much truth is there in it? Many scholars say that there must be some true facts based on an actual victim of the ruthless forest laws. But no one can even be absolutely sure that Robin belonged to Nottingham.

Some say that he was a certain Robert, who claimed to be the Earl of Huntingdon; others say that he was merely a yeoman. From the name of Locksley that Sir Walter Scott gives him in his book Ivanhoe, he is supposed to have been born at Loxley in Staffordshire. But it has also been claimed that he was a Yorkshireman who roamed the forest in that county.

Faced with so much uncertainty, Nottingham is content to say that its Sherwood Forest is the traditional home of Robin Hood, and supports that claim with a few exotic street names like Maid Marian Way and a statue of Robin, his bow drawn and all set to shoot, outside the ruined castle walls. A rough green cross on the city’s coat of arms indicates that the city had a royal forest and the municipal motto, “Vivit post funeral virtus” – “Virtue outlives death” – might have been written by Robin himself.

The only certain thing about our great English hero is that his character represents the ideal of the common people in the later Middle Ages, as King Arthur represents the ideal of the upper classes. He stands for liberty and the rights of the people – and no one really believes that his legend belongs anywhere else than in the city of Nottingham, whose Sheriff he used so often to plague in the days of bad Prince John.

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This edited article about Rochester originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 647 published on 8 June 1974.

Interior of part of the Great Keep at Rochester Castle which was begun by Bishop Gundulf

The monks of the cathedral priory of Rochester were getting very jealous. Every day they had to endure the sight of streams of pilgrims travelling through their city of Rochester on the way to worship at the shrine of St Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, where he had been murdered in 1170 by strong-arm knights of his ex-friend Henry II. Rochester could hardly compete with this dream shrine. No Archbishop of Canterbury was likely to be murdered in their cathedral, but even if they had no star name to attract the crowds, surely something could be arranged?

Something was arranged, or, rather, someone. The monks got hold of the body of a Scottish baker who had had the misfortune to be murdered in their city while on his way to Canterbury. By unscrupulously improving the facts, the clever monks had the, no doubt, excellent baker turned into St William of Perth by the Pope in Rome.

Alas, even this windfall failed to attract more than a small percentage of the Canterbury Pilgrims, but the monks certainly deserve “A” for effort, if not for honesty. Besides, Rochester needs no apologies and never has done. It cannot hope to rival Canterbury as a tourist and religious attraction, but it is a fascinating little city of more than 50,000 people, which adjoins the famous naval town of Chatham, which, in its turn, adjoins the town of Gillingham which is bigger than either of them.

These are the historic Medway Towns, the River Medway being an equally historic tributary of the Thames. Invaders, pilgrims and travellers have passed through them for many centuries and, indeed, until the fine new road bridge was built over the Medway, the bottle-neck of traffic through the three was spectacularly awful, especially at weekends, when thousands of cars headed for the coast, then, after what seemed a few minutes respite to the shaken inhabitants, swarmed back. Even now there is enough local traffic to keep the noise level high.

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This edited article about place names originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 899 published on 14 April 1979.

The North Transept of Hereford Cathedral by Wiliam Wilkins Collins

Do you live at Hereford?

Hereford’s name means “the army ford”, the place where troops could cross a river – in this case, the River Wye.

In the county of which Hereford is the chief town, such a crossing would be of great tactical importance. For this is border country, a hotly-disputed area which has been fought over for hundreds of years. Even today, the most extreme among the Welsh Nationalists would still like to push the border with England back to the River Severn.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Welsh kings rebelled against the Normans and frequently led raids across the border.

During the reign of Edward III, matters got to such a head that this powerful king ordered a series of massive castles to be built along the border.

Hereford’s castle has long since been in ruins, but the town’s magnificent cathedral is still standing. This was built in the 11th century and contains a library of 16th century books chained to the wall.

Hereford is the centre of a thinly-populated agricultural county. Its primary exports are cider and its world-famous red and white Hereford cattle.

This edited article about castles originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 899 published on 14 April 1979.

Carisbrooke Castle – a picture history by Gerry Embleton

Visitors to the Isle of Wight should not miss seeing the castle which stands on the plateau high above the little village of Carisbrooke.

Since Roman times there has been a fort here, but the oldest remaining part of the castle is the Keep, which was built by the Norman baron William Fitz-Osborne. Situated on an artificial mound, the castle, reached by a flight of 71 steps, commands a magnificent view of the bowling green on which Charles I played when he was imprisoned there.

During the Middle Ages various additions were made to the fortress. Then, in 1588, the castle was strengthened to meet the threat of the Spanish Armada. As part of this restoration, the curtain walls were extended to enclose the whole of the 20-acre castle grounds – and this in the incredible space of 245 days. Visitors can walk around these walls.

They can also visit the Well House, a restored 16th-century building which covers a well 98 metres deep. Sunk in 1150, the well has never been known to go dry and has water of an average depth of 36 metres.

Water from the well is drawn to the surface by bucket and a large oak tread-wheel which dates back to 1588. A team of resident donkeys is used to turn the wheel. The donkey on duty steps into the wheel, trots round and stops of its own accord when the full bucket reaches the surface.

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