I Never Knew That About the English

by Desconhecido

  English Class

  Amongst the most profound effects of the Norman Conquest was the creation of the English class system, which, with a few modifications along the way, has shaped English history ever since. In those days power came from owning land, and so William declared that all land, and hence power, belonged to the Crown. He then handed out parcels of that land to his supporters in return for their loyalty.

  The class system that developed was therefore based on the ownership of land. Most of those who owned the land, the upper classes, were French-speaking Normans, while those who worked the land, the working classes, were dispossessed, English-speaking Anglo-Saxons.

  This divide was reflected in both accents and vocabularies. While Royalty and the ruling classes used rounded Norman vowel sounds, as in ‘barth’, the working classes used short flat vowel sounds, as in ‘baath’. English words used to describe culture and lifestyle, food, fashion, furniture and titles tend to be French based, while English words of Anglo-Saxon origin are much more direct and earthy and are used for the basics.

  For instance, the fact that the working class handled the live animal while the ruling class ate it, is reflected in words used for food, with Saxon words describing the uncooked and Norman words the cooked.

  Anglo-Saxon French

  Cow, Ox Beef

  Sheep, Lamb Mutton

  Pig, Swine, Ham Pork, Bacon

  Calf Veal

  Deer Venison

  (Deer entrails, which were left for the servants, were called ‘umbles’ – hence to ‘eat humble pie’.)

  Domesday Book

  In order to find out how much land he did in fact now own, William the Conqueror ordered his officials to travel the length and breadth of England and make an inventory of every landholding and settlement in the country, along with its produce and worth. This survey, completed in two years from 1085 to 1086, is known as the ‘DOMESDAY BOOK’ and is THE EARLIEST PUBLIC RECORD OF ENGLAND THAT EXISTS.

  Although the Domesday Book was a remarkable achievement, the project was rendered a great deal easier by the fact that the Anglo-Saxons left William a kingdom already efficiently divided into a network of shires that would survive, pretty much unchanged, until the clumsy reorganisation of county boundaries in 1974.

  The English Country House

  ‘England’s most characteristic

  contribution to European culture’

  CHRISTOPHER HUSSEY

  The power that was endowed by the ownership of land came largely from the tenants and rents that went with it. Rent was often paid by working and fighting for the landowner as well as through farming, and the estate required a headquarters from where it could be both administered and defended, in other words, a castle.

  In more peaceful Elizabethan times, it was no longer necessary to build fortified houses, and the rich merchants began to build vast palaces that visibly proclaimed their wealth and status. Ownership of a country house was a symbol of the fact that you had arrived, and it became the ambitious Englishman’s most desired possession – as it still is.

  In its heyday, English country house living was possibly the most perfect form of existence invented by man – it provided employment, living accommodation, food, and beauty in architecture and landscape that was limited only by the owner’s pocket and his architect’s imagination.

  Bosham

  While the first Norman King of England went on in glory to shape the land of his conquest, the fate of the last Saxon King of England is less clear. Waltham Abbey in Essex has long claimed King Harold’s body, but there is evidence to suggest that he may never have left Sussex, the kingdom of the South Saxons where he met his doom.

  In the far west of Sussex is BOSHAM, a large and outstandingly pretty village overlooking Chichester Harbour, where gardens and mossy lawns are lapped by the muddy green sea, and artists, sailors and wildfowl are lured by the bracing air. Bosham was one of the few settlements to appear in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles, and therefore must have been a place of some importance in those times. St Wilfred of York was known to have established a small monastery at Bosham in the 7th century on the site of an even earlier cell. The fabric of the ancient church contains Roman fragments, Saxon arches and Norman pillars.

  KING CANUTE had a palace at Bosham, and it was here that he went down to the water’s edge and commanded the tide to turn back, knowing that it would not, so that he could prove to his fawning courtiers that he was not all-powerful. Canute also met with tragedy in Bosham, for in 1020 his young daughter drowned in the mill stream and was buried beneath the stone church floor.

  King Harold’s father, Earl Godwin, made Bosham his home, and Harold later inherited the palace. The Saxon chancel we see in Bosham’s church today is much as Harold would remember it, and appears in the Bayeux Tapestry, where Harold is shown at prayer before embarking on the sea voyage that was to seal his fate. His ship was wrecked on the coast of Normandy and he was taken to Duke William in Rouen, where it is believed he made an agreement to support William’s claim to the throne of England on the death of Edward the Confessor. When Harold returned and claimed the throne for himself, William felt cheated and came to take his due by force.

  After the Battle of Hastings some records state that the bodies of Harold and his father were brought back to their home at Bosham. In the 1950s a tomb was found under the floor of the church containing a corpse with the head, right leg and left hand missing – which corresponds to the injuries that Harold had sustained at his death, according to accounts by the Bishop of Amiens.

  Could sleepy, seaside Bosham be the last resting-place of the Saxon English?

  Well, I never knew this

  about

  SUSSEX FOLK

  ‘Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’

  ‘But that’s another story . . .’

  ‘For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.’

  The quotes above are from the work of RUDYARD KIPLING, THE FIRST ENGLISHMAN AND THE YOUNGEST PERSON EVER TO WIN THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE, who made Sussex his home from 1897 until his death in 1936. From 1902 he lived at Bateman’s, a beautiful 17th-century ironmaster’s house in the village of Burwash, but his first Sussex home was a house called The Elms by the village pond in ROTTINGDEAN, near Brighton, where his aunt Georgina Burne-Jones had a holiday home. She was married to the Pre-Raphaelite painter SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, who is buried in the churchyard at Rottingdean. The church itself can boast a set of stained-glass windows made by William Morris to the design of Burne-Jones, considered to be amongst their finest work.

  Rudyard Kipling

  A frequent visitor to The Elms was Kipling’s friend the society portrait painter SIR WILLIAM NICHOLSON, who eventually came to live in The Grange in 1912. He made a woodcut of Rottingdean windmill up on the downs, which was used by the publishers Heinemann as their logo.

  Daddy Long Legs

  For a few glorious years at the end of the 19th century Rottingdean was linked to Brighton by an imaginative railway dreamed up by Brighton-born MAGNUS VOLK, the BRIGHTON AND ROTTINGDEAN SEASHORE ELECTRIC RAILWAY, affectionately known as ‘Daddy Long Legs’. From a pier at Rottingdean, a tramcar perched on high stilts moved along on rails running under the sea some 100 yards (90 m) offshore, and met up with Volks’s land-based railway on the sea-front at Brighton, opened in 1883 as the world’s first publicly operated electric railway. The Brighton railway is still in action today, but the Daddy Long Legs had to close in 1901, after a slightly precarious career, when Brighton council wanted to build groynes out into the water for sea defence. Lengths of the track bed can still be seen at low tide, along with the stumps of some of the posts that carried the power lines high above the water. Magnus Volk is buried in the churchyard of St Wulfstan’s, Ovingdean, tucked into the hills behind Rottingdean.

  Looking down imperiously from the cliffs between Rottingdean and Brighton is ROEDEAN, perhaps the most famous private school for y
oung English ‘gals’ after St Trinian’s. Roedean was founded at 25 Lewes Crescent, Brighton, in 1885 by the Misses Dorothy, Millicent and Penelope Lawrence to provide ‘young ladies’ with an all-round education. The school moved to its present, purpose-built site in 1899. Old girls include the actress Sarah Miles and Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of The Hospice Movement.

  RICHARD D’OYLY CARTE (1844–1901), Gilbert and Sullivan’s patron and impresario, is buried in the church at FAIRLIGHT.

  PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792–1822), poet, was born in HORSHAM.

  Writers and Artists Buried in Sussex

  EDWARD GIBBON (1737–94), historian and author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is buried in FLETCHING.

  E.F. BENSON (1867–1940), author of the Mapp and Lucia books, is buried in RYE, where his novels are set.

  VANESSA BELL (1879–1961), Bloomsbury Group artist and interior designer, is buried in FIRLE.

  VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882–1941), Bloomsbury Group novelist, is buried in RODMELL.

  DUNCAN GRANT (1885–1978), Bloomsbury Group painter, is buried in FIRLE.

  ENID BAGNOLD (1889–1981), author of the classic girl’s story National Velvet, is buried in ROTTINGDEAN.

  VITA SACKVILLE-WEST (1892–1962), gardener, poet and novelist, is buried in WITHYHAM.

  Vale of The White Horse

  ENGLAND’S OLDEST HILL FIGURE ∗ DRAGON HILL

  ∗ WAYLAND’S SMITHY ∗ ENGLAND’S OLDEST ROAD

  ∗ FIRST TRUE KING OF ENGLAND ∗ ENGLISH BEGINNINGS

  King Alfred, the first true ‘Great’ King of England.

  WHITE HORSE FOLK

  George Orwell ∗ Agatha Christie ∗ Thomas Hughes ∗ Lester Piggott

  Uffington White Horse

  High up on the Berkshire Downs lies the oldest hill figure in England, the UFFINGTON WHITE HORSE. Roughly 365 ft (111 m) long and 120 ft (37 m) high, it is the largest of all England’s White Horses.

  Over the years there have been many theories about the origin of the White Horse: that it was carved in celebration of King Alfred’s victory over the Danes at the Battle of Ashdown in 871, or cut in the 5th century by the first Saxon invaders Hengist and Horsa, whose emblem was a horse. However, the White Horse has recently been dated to around 1200BC, making it over 3,000 years old. It is now believed that the figure might have had religious significance, as it was created in the late Bronze Age when horses were revered.

  Religious festivities associated with horse worship also probably account for the celebrated ‘SCOURING OF THE WHITE HORSE’, when the trenches are weeded and edged, and crushed chalk is added to keep the shapes true and clearly visible. This has been going on for centuries, although it was not recorded until the 17th century. Without the ‘Scouring’ the horse would have long since been overgrown and disappeared. The festival used to take place every seven years and latterly was accompanied by great celebrations and merrymaking, with feasting and games such as cheese rolling down the steep sides of the Manger, a deep valley scooped out of the hillside beneath the horse.

  Today the Horse is maintained by the National Trust and English Heritage.

  Dragon Hill

  Just below the White Horse is a small, flat-topped hill crowned with a bare patch, devoid of grass. It is known as DRAGON HILL, because it was here, according to local legend, that St George slew the dragon – and where the dragon’s blood fell the grass cannot grow. Some say that the White Horse is not a horse at all, but rather a representation of the dragon slain by St George, and certainly the somewhat abstract styling of the creature lends itself to that interpretation.

  Wayland’s Smithy

  Above the White Horse, on the top of the hill, is UFFINGTON CASTLE, an extensive, Bronze Age hill fort covering 8 acres (3.2 ha). A little further west, along the Ridgeway, is WAYLAND’S SMITHY, a neolithic burial chamber surrounded by beech trees. Wayland was the Saxon god of smiths, who forged armour that gave the wearer the wings of eagles, as well as invincible swords. Indeed, it was Wayland who forged King Arthur’s sword Excalibur.

  Wayland is never seen, but he will shoe a horse if the rider leaves a silver coin on the stones and goes away – on the rider’s return the horse will be found newly shod.

  All these places give the most glorious views over the countryside that takes its name from its sacred landmark – the Vale of the White Horse.

  The Ridgeway

  ENGLAND’S OLDEST ROAD runs for 87 miles (140 km) from near the stone circle at Avebury to Ivinghoe Beacon in the Chilterns. For 4,000 years our ancestors have trod this road, carrying their goods or driving their cattle along the high ground – and not much has changed, for the route of England’s most ancient trade route is in large part mirrored by one of England’s newest highways, the M4. The majority of the mysterious ‘crop circles’ discovered in recent years have occurred in the vicinity of the Ridgeway.

  King Alfred

  THE FIRST TRUE KING OF ENGLAND, ALFRED THE GREAT, was born in the Royal Palace at WANTAGE in AD 849, one of four sons of Ethelwolf, King of Wessex. Although the youngest, Alfred was the most learned, and when their mother promised to give an illustrated book to the first of the brothers who could learn to read, Alfred won.

  He was also a great warrior and fought alongside his brothers in numerous battles against the invading Danes. In 871 he led the forces of his brother King Aethelred in a great victory at the Battle of Ashdown on the Berkshire Downs.

  The Danes kept coming, however, and when Aethelred was killed in one of the subsequent battles, Alfred became King. After being defeated at the Battle of Wilton in late 871, he was forced to negotiate a large payment to secure peace, and for a few years the Danes kept to themselves in eastern England.

  In early 878 the Danes, led by King Guthrum, made a surprise attack on Alfred’s palace at Chippenham, in Wiltshire, and the Saxon king and his men were forced to flee into the Somerset marshes. After a few weeks they managed to regroup, and emerging from the wetlands in May 878, routed the Danes at the Battle of Edington.

  The Beginnings of English

  The English language evolved from a mingling of the Old Norse of the east with the Old English of the west, both of which were Germanic in origin. The distinction can be seen in the different kinds of place name found in east and west – names ending in wick (inlet), scar (rock), kirk (church) or thorpe (farm) are Norse, while ham (village), borough (town), bury (fort), hurst (wooded hill) or lee (clearing) indicate Saxon origins.

  At the resulting Treaty of Wedmore, King Guthrum agreed to keep within his own lands in the east of England, behind a line that followed the Roman Watling Street. This area was known as the Danelaw, where Danish rule and customs prevailed. Guthrum also agreed to convert to Christianity, and thus Christianity became the prevailing religion in almost all of England.

  Alfred moved fast to fortify Wessex against further incursions by creating a series of fortified market places, or ‘burghs’, and by founding the English Navy to protect the coastline. In the 18th century, the United States Navy commemorated his achievement by naming its first flagship USS Alfred.

  Alfred introduced new laws based on Christian teachings, and encouraged education and reading, which had almost ceased since the Danes had sacked the monasteries. He translated many important works from Latin into English and instigated the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLES, THE FIRST HISTORY OF ENGLAND WRITTEN IN ENGLISH.

  Alfred also began the division of England into counties and hundreds, using natural features such as rivers and hills as boundaries, divisions that lasted almost unchanged until bureaucratic minds began to ‘tidy them up’ in the 1970s.

  After ten years of peace and progress, Alfred died on 26 October 899 and was buried in his capital, Winchester.

  Alfred excelled as a military leader and a wise ruler. He set in place a code of law and laid the foundations of a united England. The first true King of England is the only one of all our kings and queens to be honoured as ‘the Great’.

  Well, I n
ever knew this

  about

  WHITE HORSE FOLK

  George Orwell

  1903–50

  GEORGE ORWELL, author of two of the greatest political novels ever written, lies in the churchyard at SUTTON COURTNEY, buried under his real name Eric Arthur Blair.

  Born in India, he won a scholarship to Eton and joined the Civil Service in Burma, where his observations of poverty and cruelty turned him against colonialism and his middle-class background. He decided it would do him good to learn about life as a tramp, and he returned to London, where he lived on the streets amongst the poor, recording his experiences in a book, Down and Out in London and Paris.

  Next came The Road to Wigan Pier, written about his time spent amongst the working classes in a northern town suffering from mass unemployment. In 1936 he volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War against General Franco, and his left-wing beliefs were severely shaken when he watched how the Soviet-backed Communists turned on his fellow Trotskyites. Orwell was shot in the throat and almost killed by the Communists, and was invalided back to England, where he wrote Animal Farm, about what happens when revolution is corrupted. The philosophy of the main character in the book, based on Stalin, is ‘All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.’

  To write 1984, his masterpiece, Orwell took himself off to a cottage on the Scottish island of Jura, and he just managed to finish it before collapsing with the tuberculosis from which he died in 1950.

  The title of 1984 is the reverse of the year in which he wrote the book, 1948. The story tells of Winston Smith, who tries in vain to escape from a totalitarian society where people are always watched and made to conform. ‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’