Lost and Forgotten - Things Big and Little that Disappeared for Centuries

It is Hard to Believe What People can Lose

I rarely lose my car keys (not that the latest iteration has a ‘key’ as such) because I always put them in the same place. Not so my glasses or my glasses' case, these two objects seemingly wander round at will and very rarely together; and Lynne occasionally uses the landline to hunt down her errant mobile. These are commonplace experiences.

Of course our glasses, phones and that pen you put down a minute ago which now seems to have dived into the Bermuda pentangle are not really lost, merely mislaid. Lost means you never see them again, like the carved and painted wooden witch that disappeared on one of our moves.

The Staffordshire Hoard

Visted in Birmingham May 2017 and twice subsequently
Visited Stoke-on-Trent February 2020

Lost and Forgotten is the next notch up in the hierarchy of the vanished. Sometime in the 7th century someone buried a hoard of precious objects in a field near Lichfield. Perhaps the burier came back but could not find them, perhaps they perished in the emergency that prompted the burial, we shall never know. They lay lost and forgotten for well over a thousand years, until July 2009 when Terry Herbert came along with his metal detector. Metal detectorist and landowner shared £3.3m and the Birmingham and Potteries Museums now share the hoard. It is worth seeing if you are in the area, but no rush, it won’t get lost again - not in the foreseeable future, anyway.

Gold sword hilt with cloisssoné garnet inlay, still with Staffordshire soil attached
Photo, Daniel Buxton, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, part of the Portableantiquites project

The hoard may well have been loot, most of it is high status weaponry and armour, that had been broken up before burial.

Gold cheek piece from a helmet
Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent

Reconstruction of the helmet
Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent

During conservation many of the pieces were digitally fitted back together in an elaborate 3D golden jigsaw, enabling the construction of replicas of several of the artefacts as they would have been in their prime.

Fishbourne Roman Palace, West Sussex

Visited September 2008

Houses cannot be mislayed, but they can be lost and forgotten. Fishbourne Roman Palace was built around 75 CE only 32 years after the conquest of Britain started and 12 years before its completion. It was not just a Roman villa, it really was a palace, the size of Nero’s Golden House in Rome and the largest known Roman residence north of the Alps.

Fishbourne Roman Palace - Model from the Fishbourne Museum
Photo by Immanuel Giel who has helpfully placed it in the Public Domain

It may have been built for King Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus of the local Atrebates tribe who were among the first to spot the benefits of sucking up to the Romans – and of adopting Roman names. Grand as his palace may have been his successors made it grander, replacing the black and white mosaics with coloured tiles. The palace burnt down in 275 and was abandoned and eventually forgotten.

Underfloor heating - one of the benefits of being nice to the Romans, Fishbourne Roman Palace

It was rediscovered in 1960 when Aubrey Barrett was digging a ditch for a new water main. Unearthing a massive foundation wall, he reported his find to local archaeologists, and after eight years of painstaking excavations Fishbourne opened to the public.

The walls and ceilings may have gone, the garden might be a modern planting….

The 'Roman Garden', Fishbourne

…but the original mosaics look almost as fresh now as they did nearly 2000 years ago.

Boy riding a dolphin, one of several mosaics, in fine condition and in situ, Fishbourne Roman Palace

Houei Tomo (or Houaytomo), Laos

Visted November 2015

Wat Phou has never been lost; originally a Hindu Khmer temple complex of unknown antiquity, it converted to Buddhism, along with the rest of the Khmer Empire in the late 12th century, became a centre for Theravada Buddhism, and remains so today. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it lies in the remote corner of Southern Laos that is on the west side of the Mekong.

Houei Tomo is a few kilometres north of Si Phan Dong, a short walk from a side road off Route 13. It is a day’s travel from Wat Phou by foot and ferry and its temple, known as Oup (or Oum) Mong (or Muang or Muong) is thought to have been a 10th century pilgrims’ rest house. It fell into disuse with the demise of the Khmer Empire in the 14th century and was reclaimed by the jungle.

The only standing builing in Houei Tomo

Rediscovered in the early 20th century by a French explorer, it is has yet to be thoroughly investigated, but above ground there is not much to see; one recognisable building and a few walls and foundations….

Walls and foundations, Houei Tomo

…and a lot of moss-covered stones.

Moss covered stones which once must have had a purpose, Houei Tomo

We had the place to ourselves; quiet, tranquil and just a little mysterious.

Stepwell, Patan, Gujarat, India

Visited March 2019

Stepwells can be found in various parts of India, but the finest and most elaborate are in Gujarat, and the finest in Gujarat is the Ran Ki Vav (The Queen’s Stepwell) in the town of Patan.

Ran Ki Vav, Patan

The concept is simple, instead of dropping a bucket on a chain into a well, a much larger excavation is made and Jack and Jill go down the steps to fetch their pail of water.

Descending the Ran Ki Vav, Patan

The largest stepwells (Ran Ki Vav is 27m deep and 64m long) are elaborate, the descent passing through a series of richly decorated storeys, each supported by elaborately carved stone pillars. This is not just a well, it is a place for celebrations and religious observances; Ran Ki Vav has been described as a ‘inverted temple’.

Carvings in the Ran Ki Vav, Patan

Ancient texts suggest Ran Ki Vav was built between 1063 and 1083 on the orders of Queen Udyamati, widow of the Chaulukya King Bhima I. But small kingdoms and their dynasties came and went in medieval India. The Gujarat Chaulukyas ran out of time in 1244, a new dynasty means a new capital and Patan and its stepwell declined in importance. Regular flooding of the nearby Saraswati River deposited more and more silt, eventually filling the stepwell, so despite its size it was lost and forgotten by the end of the middle ages.

Carvings of female figures, Ran Ki Vav, Patan

The well was rediscovered in 1940 and was the subject of a major excavation and restoration by the Indian Archaeological Survey in the 1980s.

Ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil at Dur-Untash, Khuzestan Province, Iran

Visited July 2000

Heading for Ahvaz and the tip of the Persian Gulf, we lunched in Shush – a chicken sausage fried on a griddle and chucked in a bun - before taking a thirty-kilometre detour to Chogha Zanbil. We followed a straight road that apparently arrowed deep into the desert, but as we topped the rise before the village, we saw green, wooded land to the east along the banks of the Dez River.

Shush, Khuzestan, Iran

The mighty ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil now standing alone in the desert, was once the centrepiece of the Elamite religious city of Dur Untash. Migrating from the mountains of the north the Elamites adapted well to life on the plains, but their gods were less happy. Deities must be made to feel at home or they stop sending the rain and making the crops grow, so around 1300 BCE (± 50 years) King Untash-Napirisha constructed them an artificial mountain. The ziggurat was originally some 53m high but was lowered from five storeys to three when Dur-Untash was sacked by the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal in 640 BCE.

The Ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil, Khuzestan, Iran

It is hard to believe this huge edifice could disappear beneath the sand, but it was lost and forgotten for 2,000 years. It was rediscovered in 1935 during an Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later BP, now BP-Amoco) aerial survey searching for oil bearing rock formations. My father worked for Anglo-Iranian from 1945 to 51, which accounts for me being born in Abadan beside the Persian Gulf in 1950, so I feel personally responsible for this one.

Lynne and I at the Ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil, Khuezestan, Iran

I might also add, this was the hottest place we have ever been, and having survived a summer in Khartoum, and visited Death Valley in July (with no air-con in car or tent) I know whereof I speak. Even N, our driver/guide, a native of Tehran where an average July day reaches 34° said: “If I knew your telephone number before you came and you say you want to come here, I would have called you and asked you why. This is not hot, this is fire.” The Iranian dress code made the situation worse for Lynne, for all must heed the wise words of the late Ayatollah Khomenei. On the other hand, arriving in the hottest month of the year at the hottest time of day guarantees 1) that the ticket seller will question your sanity and 2) you will have the place to yourself.

Lynne and the wise words of the Ayatollah, Tomb of Daniel, Shush

The City of Sumharam, Oman

Visited November 2018

Sand is good at swallowing things, a giant ziggurat is easy, so why not a whole city.

Sumharam from the edge of the inland plateau

Southern Oman produces most of the world’s frankincense, the sap of the Boswellia tree that oozes through cuts in the bark and dries in the sun. In antiquity, it was much sought-after and extremely expensive, the sort of gift you would give to kings, princes or a son of God.

Lynne and a frankincense tree, the edge of the plateau north of Salalah

In the 1st century BCE the Kingdom of Hadhramaut, which ruled what is now eastern Yemen and south western Oman, identified a large natural harbour to the east of their territory….

Sumharam harbour - though there is now a sand bar across the mouth

…and beside it built the port of Sumharam to control the international frankincense trade.

The defensive zig-zag entrance to Sumharam

The city thrived for several centuries but nothing lasts for ever, Sumharam eventually declined, was deserted and buried by the sands. It was rediscovered in the 1890s by British explorer and archaeologist James Theodore Bent. American excavations in the 1950s and those of the Italian Mission to Oman more recently have established the ground plan of the settlement and found evidence for contacts with the Ḥaḑramite homeland to the west, India and the Mediterranean.

Among the old stones, Sumharam

One of the larger buildings became known early on as The Queen of Sheba’s palace - every archaeological site in and around Yemen has been associated with her at some time or another. The Queen of Sheba is a problematic figure, but if she did exist, she would have met the equally problematic King Solomon several centuries before Sumharam was founded.

Two of the world’s major tourist attractions also come into the ‘lost and found’ category. Well known as they may be a I cannot omit them entirely.

Angkor, Cambodia

Visited February 2014

Angkor Wat is well known, but it is only the centrepiece of Angkor, a vast medieval site and possibly the biggest city in the world in its day. Angkor is immensely important to Cambodians, who see their history as having three periods pre-Angkorian, Angkorian and post-Angkorian.

Angkor Wat on the Cambodian Flag

In 802 CE a local king called Jayavarman II conquered the whole of what is now Cambodia. He moved his court to Angkor, built the first temple and set about creating the Khmer Empire. Suryavarman II (1113 - 1150), the builder of Angkor Wat, kicked off the golden period which ended in 1219 with the death of Jayavarman VII. He had been a prolific builder but after his reign no further stone temples were built; perhaps the switch from Hinduism to Buddhism discouraged temple building or maybe local resources were exhausted.

Angkor Wat

Angkor was sacked by the Thais in 1431 and a down-sized Khmer Empire moved its capital south. They re-inhabited Angkor from 1570 to 1594, but then left it to the jungle and forgot about it. Jungles hide things differently from sand, but equally effectively; Angkor was re-discovered by French missionary Charles-Emille Bouillevaux in 1858.

Ta Prohm was built in 1186 by Jayavarman VII. Once a Buddhist monastery, it is a vast rambling complex and makes the point about jungle encroachment quite spectacularly.

Ta Prohm, Angkor

It is known as the ‘Jungle Temple’ and featured in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider…

To Prohm, Angkor

…though the lizard men and tyrannosaurus rexs (tyrannosauri reges?) that apparently populate the jungle in the game Lara Croft: Relic Run were notable for their absence.

Ta Prohm, Angkor

and finally,

The Terra Cotta Warriors, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China

Visited July 2004

Ying Zheng became King of Qin, one of seven warring Chinese States in 247 BCE aged 13. Before he was 40, he had united the seven states and declared himself Qin Shi Huang (First Emperor of Qin). He founded the city of Chang’an (now Xi’an), built the first Great Wall of China and ruled his vast empire until his death in 210.

He started building his mausoleum when he came to the throne of Qin – a strange occupation for a 13-year-old – and was buried under a mound at the foot of Mount Li. According to historian Sima Qian the tomb included replicas of palaces and scenic towers, rare utensils and wonderful objects, 100 rivers made with mercury, representations of the heavenly bodies and crossbows rigged to shoot anyone who tried to break in. Sima Qian’s probably fanciful account was written over a century after the event – and mentioned no terracotta warriors.

I am standing in front of a marker which claims it is the tomb of Qin Shi Huang
In the background is the mound under which he us allegedy buried. That is why I look confused

For centuries, occasional reports mentioned pieces of terracotta figures and fragments of roofing tiles being discovered locally. In March 1974 farmers digging a well near the Emperor's tomb hauled up substantial quantities of terracotta heads. They reported their finds to the authorities and subsequent excavations revealed the Terracotta Army we know today.

Newly pieced together terracotts warriors
Apologies for the poor quality photos. Digital cameras are excellent in low light, but I did not have one in 2004 (few did), flash was strictly forbidden so long hand held exposures were the only option.

The three main pits are believed to contain over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses. Non-military figures - officials, acrobats and strongmen – have been found in separate pits.

The main pit of the terracotta warriors.

The Shaanxi Regional Museum in Xi’an has many examples of grave goods from the period. Men of power and influence regularly took small armies, their houses and servants, even farmyards with strutting cockerels and snuffling pigs, to their graves with them, but they are dolls’ house size. Only Qin Shi Huang had an army of full-sized soldiers, horses and chariots; only Qin Shi Huang had as many soldiers as a real army. What an ego!

Horses and reconstructed terracotta warriors

Having established a ‘ten thousand generation dynasty’, Qin Shi Huang might have been disappointed that his son Qin Er Shi (lit: Second Generation Qin) lasted three years. He was overthrown by Liu Bang who founded the Han dynasty which would survive 400 years.

... but for a final thought: a further category exists; Lost, Forgotten and Never Found. I would struggle to produce a post on them.

Birmingham: Back-to-Backs, Dim Sum and some Random Thoughts on Garlic

[Updates: We have since enjoyed the same day out (with the adition of the viewing the Staffordshire Hoard in the Birmingham museum - which now features in a separate post ) with different visitors]

To Birmingham with Lynne on the last day of September to meet daughter Siân accompanied by grandson David, unquestionably the world’s cutest baby.

Our intention was to visit the National Trust’s back-to-back houses, so first - a little history.

7th century Birmingham was a hamlet beside the River Rea. It had grown into a village worth 20 shillings by the time of the Domesday Book and in 1166 Peter de Birmingham was granted a royal charter to hold a regular market. The Bull Ring is still there, but I doubt Pete de Brum would recognise the recently re-rebuilt shopping mall as being his cattle market.

The City of Birmingham (adopted 2015)

The City of Birmingham, though, is not a market town, it is a product of the industrial revolution. A population of 15,000 in 1700 had became 74,000 a century later and half a million by 1900. It doubled again in the following 50 years.

All those new people had to live somewhere and the answer for Birmingham, as in other growing cities, was back-to-back housing. A square of houses was constructed facing a small courtyard with another square of houses built on the back of them facing outwards to the street. Living in back-to-backs meant you were separated from your neighbours to left, right and behind by just one course of bricks.

Life in the back-to-backs was invariably overcrowded and often squalid, - though there were much more squalid ways of living in nineteenth century cities. The early residents were mainly skilled workers. They arrived with their families from all over the country, and beyond, attracted by the industrial boom that made Birmingham the workshop of the world. The three storey dwellings had a kitchen on the ground floor and a bedroom on each of the floors above. In houses already overcrowded by the large families of the era, space often had to be found for a workbench, as many men worked from home.

As the population continued to grow, those who could afford to moved out, making way for newer and poorer arrivals. As the city prospered, the poor were concentrated in the back-to-backs.

At their peak as many as 80,000 lived in Birmingham’s back-to-back houses, but as time moved on people wanted better accommodation. Clearance started in the 1930s. Second world war bombing cleared more, but those that survived gained an extra lease of life from the post-war housing shortage. The last residents moved out in the 1960s and by the mid 1970s only one block, Court 15 on the corner of Hurst Street and Inge Street survived, providing a home to several small businesses.

As the block was still standing in 1988 it was given listed building status. Restored in the 1990s by the Birmingham Conservation Trust, Court 15, now in the care of the National Trust, was opened to the public in 2004.



A corner of Court 15, looking cheerful in the warm sunshine

We were led through the tunnel from Inge Street by our guide Ann, who was herself born, brought up and started married life in back-to-backs not so very far away.

The courtyard was big enough for a vigorous game of badminton, though I doubt it was ever put to that use. Decorated with half-dry washing and a couple of decaying antique prams to give a flavour of the past, it looked remarkably cheerful in the warm sunshine.

Houses wrapped themselves round three sides while the fourth was occupied by the brewhouse (the communal laundry room, despite its name) and the two privies that served all the residents – up to 60 people. In the early days, the privies consisted of a plank with a hole over a bucket. Full buckets were stored outside until collected by the night-soil men to be used as fertilizer. The yard smells much better now than it must have done in 1840.



Siân & David outside the brewhouse

Gradually there were changes. The bucket privies were replaced by water closets, instead of a single communal tap, water was piped to the individual houses, mains gas was supplied, electricity arrived, but life remained hard. Ann looked back with no illusions, despite enjoying a happy and secure childhood, she was quite clear that nobody would willingly return to living that way.

The National Trust has restored three houses in three different styles.

We first entered the home of the Levy family in the 1830s. Mr Levy made hands for clocks and sold them in the Jewellery Quarter.  The family were members of what was then a large Jewish community – Birmingham has been multi-cultural as long as it has been a city.

In 1861 the house next-door was occupied by Herbert Oldfield, a maker of false eyes, his wife and their eight children. Living conditions seemed to have improved little.

The third house brought us into the early years of the twentieth century with plumbing and gas lighting. A substantial range filled half the tiny kitchen. ‘Cosy’ was one word that was used to describe it. ‘Cramped’ was another.

The fourth property open to the public was once a tailor’s shop owned by George Saunders, who had arrived in Birmingham from the Caribbean in the 1950s. He retired when the restoration programme began and agreed to leave his shop exactly as it was. Now almost 80, he still takes an active interest in the Back-to-Backs project. [We visited again in May 2017 and were sorry to learn that Mr Saunders has recently died].

The tour is an hour and a quarter well spent. A National Trust property devoted entirely to the lives of ordinary people is rare, a wander through the servants’ quarters of a country house is usually the only indication of the lives of the great mass of the population. It is also strange to visit a past that was still alive in my childhood – though it seems almost like another planet. Two more properties on the court have been fully modernised as holiday homes.  It is a great way to stay in the heart of the city while avoiding the anonymity of the major hotels.

Outside, part of Hurst Street has been pedestrianised. The pub opposite was covered in hanging baskets and, like a couple of nearby cafés, had tables lining the street. There were plenty of takers on this unusually warm September day. With the poverty and squalor of the back-to-backs behind us, the city looked relaxed and prosperous.

Birmingham’s ability to attract immigrants did not stop with the industrial revolution. Hurst Street stands on the edge of Birmingham’s Chinese quarter, so we headed for the Chung Ying Garden.

Once past the forbidding – and very Brummie – redbrick exterior, it was almost like being in China: the inevitable small flight of steps to the internal entrance being guarded by the obligatory stone lion. The clientele was overwhelmingly Chinese, too, undoubtedly a good sign.

David instantly charmed the waiter – he does it so effortlessly – and we were quickly brought menus, tea and a high chair.

The restaurant claims the largest variety of dim sum (I am unconvinced by dim sums as a plural) outside Hong Kong. The menu offers 69 choices, but in case that fails to substantiate their claim, a note at the bottom says a full list is available on request.



First taste of Cha Shao Bao

The bilingual menu appears to have been written in Chinese and translated into English. Some of the translation is a touch brutal; ‘pig’s intestines in satay sauce’ would put off some though, perhaps strangely, it attracts me. The intestines were excellent, mouth-meltingly meaty with a good chilli kick. With Siân’s help, I soon discovered I knew the Chinese for several menu items - though not the Chinese characters - but was unsure of the translations. Jiaozi are not really dumplings, but that is how they are always translated.  I never found the big fluffy pork filled buns I know as Cha Shao Bao on the menu, but we succeeded in ordering some anyway. Spring rolls are more obvious, tofu with shredded duck was not quite written that way, but tasted wonderful. The sweet water chestnut paste was a revelation; looking like Turkish delight, it was a sticky Chinese delight with a fresh water chestnut flavour. Chickens’ feet, of course, translate as ‘Chickens’ feet’ - what else? Not all Europeans share my (and Lynne’s) delight in chickens’ feet - Siân for one – but a billion Chinese cannot be wrong. I have discussed their pleasures before and although I prefer the ginger and chilli treatment we enjoyed in Shanghai, Chung Ying Garden’s version with black bean sauce was undoubtedly a genuine taste of Canton. Indeed the whole meal was full of rich and subtle Cantonese flavours, a contrast to the technicolour palate assault of the average Anglo-Chinese takeaway.



Classic chopstick technique

Not for the first time, I admired Siân’s use of chopsticks. Living in China for eighteen months, she perfected a stylish, classical technique. Lynne and I use chopsticks effectively, but without the same elegance. Young David had to make do with milk and a few slices from the apple Siân had brought with her. He also had a go at his very first piece of Cha Shao Bao – such pleasures there are in store, little fella.



Inelegant but effective chopstick technique

Inevitably, somewhere in our meal, we encountered garlic; it plays a pivotal role in many cuisines. It was important in medieval England too, but somehow, as the industrial revolution separated people from the production of their food, garlic slipped out of use. By the early 20th century, and even in my youth in the 50s and 60s, it was a metaphor for everything that was foreign - indeed everything that was wrong about being foreign.

With the growth of package holidays this slowly began to change. In the early 70s garlic appeared in our local Macfisheries (a now defunct supermarket chain) - sold by the clove. In the early 90s, we were reading the menu outside a restaurant in Portugal when an elderly British couple walked up and started reading over our shoulders. “I might like that,” he said cautiously, indicating an item on the menu. “There’ll probably be garlic in it,” she said threateningly. “We can always ask for it without garlic,” he suggested. She tutted. “Remember you asked for it without garlic in that place and they said ‘no garlic, no garlic,’ but when it came it was swimming in it.” I still occasionally wonder how anything can swim in a vegetable, but the British suspicion of garlic was deep rooted – even if they were not always sure what it was.

But all that has changed. There is scarcely a greengrocer in the country where you cannot buy a bulb of garlic; garlic bread is considered comfort food and is given to children. It should always have been thus; if bananas, pineapples and oranges, which cannot grow in our cool climate, have become integral parts of the national diet, why not the humble garlic. It grows here, after all, though our attempt was less than spectacularly successful.



Our entire garlic crop 2007

Standing on the flagged floor of one of the back-to-backs Ann, the guide, remarked that some of them had earth floors and in wet weather slugs used to come up through the earth. “We didn’t waste them,” she said, “we fried them up with garlic butter.” She told us she had made this crack once and later a teenage member of the group had asked her quietly “Did you really do that with the slugs?” “We didn’t,” she replied, mischievously allowing him to believe that perhaps others had. But, as Ann herself said, back then she had never heard of garlic butter and would have had no idea what to do with it if she had. Such is the change in two generations.

We finished our Birmingham outing with a visit to the indoor market to find a Chinese grocer. The Chinese butcher by the entrance had plenty of pork, including some fine trotters - a dish we have not enjoyed since Xingyi - but, strangely, no chicken’s feet. They were, however, plentiful at the Halal butcher’s next-door.

The market is clean and light. Birmingham’s huge variety of ethnic groups work in harmony to sell food, both exotic and everyday, to a huge variety of shoppers. On a bright sunshiny day, everything in the garden looked rosy.

It rains sometimes, though.