Now, more than ever, we can see the mistakes of the past being repeated by those who don’t know any better. So it’s good to see faint signs of history becoming more important in education. Here I am, for example, talking about my book to a full Assembly of some 80 children aged roughly 9 to 11 at a south-west London school, followed by separate sessions on the Bronze and Iron Age periods and Roman Britain. The next day I spoke to around 100 local u3a members which generated considerable interest, even among those who had not found history that interesting before. Encouragingly, others who have read the book are already asking me about the follow-up. We need never stop learning.
Equally fascinating is what we value or worship. Below, for example, is a Wikipedia image of the famous White Horse at Uffington on what used to be the Wessex Downs near Wantage. It’s a figure that has fascinated people over the ages and is touched on at page 55 in my book. Long associated with King Alfred and Christianity in Britain, many were shocked when new technology indicated that it had originated in ‘pagan times’ in the early Iron Age – perhaps 1,000 to 800 BCE. Since then more work has been done and more theories evolved as to its purpose and message.
By the late British Bronze Age (c. 1200 to 800 BCE) horses had been reintroduced into Britain and had acquired a semi-spiritual character, associated with pulling the sun’s chariot across the sky and, later, with kingship. It’s also now been noted that the horse is exactly at a point where it would be bisected by the first rays of sunshine at the winter solstice when seen from an early (since lost) settlement in the valley below. This might help explain both the location of the figure at the top of the hill and its ‘divine’ connection with the turn of the solar year on which life has always depended.
A visit to see granddaughter Emma at Bristol last weekend was another reminder of how and why cities developed as they did. Close to the city centre, linked by this glorious footbridge, Castle Hill serves as a reminder that the Normans were here nearly 1,000 years ago – though their old motte and bailey castle is now more a collection of slopes and hilltops. The city became a major port, and at one stage the second most important town in England. Its hills and valleys shaped the main waterways, and it continues with what seems like a frenetic pace of construction.