King Alfred – The Word Wenches

Atmosphere and Memory

June 27, 2023November 28, 2022 by Nicola Cornick

Nicola here, pulling up a Wench classic blog from a few years ago as I’m travelling at the moment, far from my laptop!

Today I’m musing about the atmosphere of particular places. I’m taking us back a long way in English history, beyond the Regency, beyond those ubiquitous Tudors, to a time before the Norman Conquest when England was split into the Anglo Saxon seven kingdoms. The village where I live has a recorded history that goes back to this distant time – there are actual documents from the era relating to events that happened in this very place over a thousand years ago and I find that mind-blowing. As I walk along the footpaths and over the hills I frequently imagine how it might have looked in that time and try to see all the way back through the mists of history to think myself back there. I can be pretty successful at this; when it’s quiet and I’m standing on the Ravens’ Fort and all I can hear are the birds singing and I feel the breeze on my face I can persuade myself, for a split second anyway, that I have travelled in time. Then an aeroplane flies over and I think perhaps not after all.

Certain places have a very strong sense of atmosphere. I’ve been to battlefields such as Flodden and Culloden where the whole landscape feels as though it is steeped in the bloodshed and suffering of the men who died there. I’ve visited historic houses that feel imbued with the personalities of the people who lived there, and I’ve wandered happily through gardens that feel peaceful or visited buildings that have a joyous atmosphere. How much of this is down to the emotional memory of the place and how much is down to my imagination, I cannot say. As writers and readers of historical fiction I think we all step into that other world. One of my books looks at “stone tape theory” which was an idea popular in the 19^th century and later in the 1970s that places retain emotional memories in their very fabric. This is one theory said to account for ghostly sightings. It’s an intriguing idea around which to build a timeslip novel.

A Sense of Memory

June 27, 2023January 7, 2019 by Nicola Cornick

Nicola here, musing about the atmosphere of particular places. Today I’m taking us back a long way in English history, beyond the Regency, beyond those ubiquitous Tudors, to a time before the Norman Conquest when England was split into the Anglo Saxon seven kingdoms. The village where I live has a recorded history that goes back to this distant time – there are actual documents from the era relating to events that happened in this very place over a thousand years ago and I find that mind-blowing. As I walk along the footpaths and over the hills I frequently imagine how it might have looked in that time and try to see all the way back through the mists of history to think myself back there. I can be pretty successful at this; when it’s quiet and I’m standing on the Ravens’ Fort and all I can hear are the birds singing and I feel the breeze on my face I can persuade myself, for a split second anyway, that I have travelled in time. Then an aeroplane flies over and I think perhaps not after all.

The Oldest White Horse on the Hill

June 28, 2023December 5, 2014 by Joanne Bourne

Joanna here, talking about a British hill figure, the White Horse of Uffington.

This is Nicola’s neighborhood, as you see here. I will nonetheless forge on bravely into her bailiwick.

Okay. Let’s say you’re a Regency miss visiting friends in Oxfordshire in the parish of Uffington. Even though the White Horse can be seen twenty miles away, your carriage arrived in the Vale of the White Horse at night. You had to pull yourself out of bed at dawn to creep out in the garden and finally see it.

A skimped, hurried breakfast and you’re off. This is Midsummer’s Day. You drive through throngs in the morning to get to the White Horse. You’re not surprised there’s a fair and foodstalls, jugs of beer, and sports. Midsummer’s Day is always a big event. You have a village fair back home in Yorkshire. But this is huge. Beyond anything. There must be thousands of people here.

You’re in time to see the festivities start. The young men gather in a troop, up spade, shovel, mattocks, and hoe, and head up hill for the “scouring of the White Horse.” All the nearby towns, you’ll be told, claim a role in the scouring and restoration of the White Horse by ancient custom.

Now I will break into your Regency scene here and say that I have been to the White Horse of Uffington myself. It’s impressive. There it is, carved into the endless green, 374 feet long, 227 feet high. Designed to be in proportion when viewed from below. It’s . . . big.

The figure is on the side of that sloping hill, just a lazy walk from the road below. It was clear and quiet when I was there. The figure feels very old. The artistic convention of it is sophisticated, but alien. And it’s beautiful.

There’s a superstition that if you stand in the ‘eye’ of the horse and make a wish, it’ll come true. So I did that. And it pretty much did.