Thursday, 27 February 2020

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.

Saturday, 21 December 2019

Cannock Chase, Freda's Grave At Last: The (N + 9)th Annual Fish and Chip Walk


Staffordshire
I spent most of last week feeling miserable, depressed by the state of the country, depressed by the state of the world and depressed by the weather. I could write (at length) about my general dissatisfaction and feeling of looming disaster, but I will settle for a moan about the weather – not even climate change, just the weather, which is not quite the same thing. It has been a week of cold and drizzle, and as the winter solstice is approaching, cold and drizzle in the semi-dark. I hate cold and drizzle even in the light, but this was beyond.

And now the shortest day has arrived and we gathered in the Cutting Car Park on a day that was grey but dry and milder than it has been for some time. And there were eight walkers this year, the most for some time, possibly ever, so I decided to cheer up as we clustered round not for the usual semi-formal group photo but a multi-mug selfie on Anne’s phone.

l to r Lee, Anne, Mike, Alison T, Alison C (front), Sue (back), Me, Francis
Pity we only have half the photographer's face - you'll have to bring a selfie stick next year as well, Anne
And then we set off along the top of the cutting, the bottom, as usual this time of year, being unwelcomingly muddy. As I reported in 2014 (one of the two January Chip Walks) the cutting was dug in 1914/15 to provide railway access to the military training camps on the Chase, one of which later became the headquarters of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade. Camps and railway have long since been dismantled.

Eschewing the muddy cutting for the not entirely dry path along the top, Cannock Chase
At the end of the cutting we took the middle of the three paths,

Reaching the end of the cutting, Cannock Chase
….following the Heart of England Way which keeps to the flatter land away from the Sherbrook Valley. The winter sun put in a rare but welcome appearance, low in the south-eastern sky.

The Heart of England Way around Brocton Coppice, Cannock Chase
But neither path nor valley are straight so we inevitably veered towards it, and watched a large group of horse riders cross between us and the valley's edge.

Horses and, beyond, the Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase (photo: Anne)
Staying, roughly, with The Heart of England Way we drifted a little westward, crossing Anson’s Bank and reaching Camp Road by the Springslade Lodge Café. The ladies of the party decided to pop over the road and use the café’s facilities. The gentlemen who, like bears, are content with the woods stood around considering the attraction of coffee and cake. Lee, Francis and I had sought sanctuary in the café during the extraordinarily wet 2012 Chip Walk, but this year it was not raining, indeed it was turning into as good a day as December can manage, even so, cake is attractive…. The ladies returned sooner than expected, the café was closed, they said, preparing for a function.

'The café is closed', Springslade Lodge, Camp Road, Cannock Chase (photo: Anne)
With the decision made for us, we walked a hundred metres or so deeper into the woods to the Katyn Memorial where we stopped for a thermos of coffee – not as good as a proper coffee in a proper café, but such is life.

Coffee break near the Katyn Memorial, Chase
The memorial has been a landmark on several of these walks. I wrote about in 2011, but as there have been some alterations since, it is time for another photograph.

The Katyn Memoral, Cannock Chase
From the memorial we headed down into the Sherbrook Valley, not that there is much down - here it is more of a fold in the land than the real valley it becomes a small distance downstream. Walking from the valley bottom to the memorial after the deluges, 2012 was a splashy ascent against the flow of a stream several centimetres deep.

Down into the Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase
We turned left along the valley bottom.

Along the Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase
We would follow it for some three kilometres during which the group began to split in two, the faster walkers marching off as though they had places to go and things to do. Mike is recovering from an Achilles tear, his physio had sanctioned the walk, but not too fast and very gently up hill. Some held back to keep him company; I would like to say that I did that as some repayment for all the times Mike has dropped back to help me, but in truth there was no way I could keep up with the younger, lighter, fitter people at the front.

The group splits, Sherbrook Valley
The sun came out fully as we strolled along, there was even a feeling of warmth on our backs and I had a, wisely resisted, impulse to remove some outer clothing. I would like to think the faster group failed to observe winter colours on the sunlit side of the valley,…

The sunny side of the Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase  (photo: Anne)
….the different hues on the shadier side….

Ths ashed side of the Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase
….or even the lilttle brook between which dug the valley.

The Sherbrook, Cannock Chase (Photo: Anne)
But I would be wrong as two of the pictures above were taken by Anne, right at the front.

When we reached the silver birches near the stepping stones the leaders were out of sight, but they were waiting round the corner at the start of the path up the valley side.

Through the silver birches to the Stepping Stone
The stepping stones (or if not these, others) appear in every Chip Walk blog, so for once we can do without them. This far down the valley the ascent is longer and steeper than at the top. Mike took it steadily.

Mike and Alison climb out of the Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase
You have to respect a man who goes walking in shorts in December
On the climb, my eye was caught by the sun glinting on droplets of water on a carpet of dead leaves.

Sun on fallen leaves, Sherbrook Valley, Cannock Chase
We regrouped at the top and then re-fractured into new groups as we chose different routes round the square of paths at the Coppice Hill Car Park, where we all crossed our earlier path. I walked with Francis past the bird feeding station and we were rewarded with the sight of a nuthatch – not that I would have known that. The picture below is poor, but the best I could do; it is a small bird, I had to keep my distance and had no tripod, so under the circumstances it is worth including - just.

It's a nuthatch. This one will not make earn me the wildlife Photographer of the Year title, but it is what it is
Reunited, we passed Freda’s Grave on our way to the Oldacre Valley. I have blogged ten chip walks and spent numerous other days on the Chase, I have seen the Glacial Boulder, the German Military Cemetery, The Commonwealth War Cemetery, the Shooting Butts, the Iron Age Castle Ring and pretty well everything else worth mentioning but I had never before seen Freda’s Grave. In 2015 I recorded that we walked within 50m but could not be bothered to make the detour, but today it lay on our route. Freda, a Dalmatian and the mascot of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade stationed here in the First World War, died in 1918. She is buried here; too many of the New Zealand Rifles are in the cemetery 3km to the south, mostly victims of the 1918/19 influenza pandemic.

Freda's Grave, Cannock Chase
The Oldacre Valley is a strange place. Crossing 800m of undulating woodland and brush to reach Camp Road should be easy, but never is. There are paths on the map and there are paths on the ground, but they bear little relationship to each other. Lee took a compass bearing and marched purposefully forward at the head of the column. Unfortunately, no path ever matched the bearing, and the closest always found a way of twisting in the wrong direction. After some zigging and zagging we finally followed a deer path going in roughly the right direction. That led to the Staffordshire Way, the only path on both map and ground, which took us to the road.

Following Sue through the Christmas tress, Oldacre Valley
The tedious drag along Camp Road spread us into a long, thin straggle, but once the A34 was reached it was only a short step to the Chetwynd Arms. This is the Chetwynd Arms, Brocton, not to be confused with the Chetwynd Arms, Upper Longden, our venue for the last two years. Entirely independent of each other, they were named for the Chetwynd family, the Viscounts Chetwynd of Ingestre Hall once being major local landowners, though a junior branch, the Chetwynd Baronets of Brocton Hall, is maybe more relevant to this particular pub.

Straggling down Camp Road
One by one we wandered in to join Lynne, who was already there and waiting. Fish and chips were ordered by all, except those who have no respect for tradition (you know who you are!).

Lunch at the Brocton Arms
Given the large party Francis had booked a table, and on this busy Saturday the earliest available slot had been 2 o’clock. He had thus lengthened the morning route which inevitably became a little convoluted, crossing itself at Coppice Hill. According to Lee and Anne’s fitbits we had taken between 21 and 22 thousand paces, which my map measurement made  13.5km. The late lunch (the picture above was taken at 3.05) and early sunset (3.50 on the shortest day of the year) meant no afternoon walk was planned.

All that remained was for Lynne to take the drivers back to the Cutting Car Park while the two Alisons, Lee and I sat drinking more beer (well two us did) until their return.

Which only leaves some thank yous. Thanks to Francis for his organisation, thanks to Anne for the photos, proving once again that in the right conditions and in the right hands phone cameras can produce some remarkable pictures, thanks to Lee for so clearly explaining the current workings of the Teacher’s Pension system (I’m so glad it does not affect me!), and thanks to Lynne for driving me (and others) around and, as always, for just being there, and finally a very big thank you to everybody for your company. It cheered me enormously to be part of a large group of good people. The feeling will probably last through the festive season, then I shall be forced back to contemplating the actions of a certain tousle-haired congenital liar.


The Annual Fish and Chip Walks

The Nth: Cannock Chase in Snow and Ice (Dec 2010)
The (N + 1)th: Cannock Chase a Little Warmer (Dec 2011)
The (N + 2)th: Cannock Chase in Torrential Rain (Dec 2012)
The (N + 3)th: Cannock Chase in Winter Sunshine (Jan 2014)
The (N + 4)th: Cannock Chase Through Fresh Eyes (Dec 2014)
The (N + 5)th: Cannock Case, Dismal, Dismal, Dismal (Dec 2015)
The (N + 6)th: Cannock Chase Mild and Dry - So Much Better (Dec 2016)
The (N + 7)th: Cannock Chase, Venturing Further East (Jan 2018)
The (N + 8)th: Cannock Chase, Wind and Rain (Dec 2018)
The (N + 9)th: Cannock Chase, Freda's Grave at Last (Dec 2019)
The (N + 10)th: Cannock Chase in the Time of Covid (Dec 2020)
The (N + 11)th: Cannock Chase, Tussocks(Dec 2021)
Dec 2020 - no walk
The (N + 12)th: Cannock Chase, Shifting Tectonic Plates (Dec 2023)