Welsh Border Castles

 

Motte and bailey design The Welsh border with England was the most heavily fortified frontier in Europe during the Middle Ages. Between 1066 and 1200, hundreds of castles were built there, at least 250 in Herefordshire and Shropshire alone.. The first of these castles were motte and baileys. The motte, an earthen mound with a tower on it that was the home of the local lord, was surrounded by a bailey, an enclosed area that usually had the stables, areas for storage, a chapel, and a well. The walls and buildings were made of wood initially.. After William successfully led the Normans in the 1066 invasion, he had to work quickly to secure his borders, and building with wood was the quickest was to build a fortification. ​The Normans struggled to maintain their grip against sporadic Welsh raids along the border. Their kings granted great powers to the border lordships so they would act as a buffer zone. Powerful feudal families, such as the Mortimers, dug in, building bigger and stronger castles such as the one at Ludlow.  By the end of the 12th century, these border lords began replacing their wooden structures with more permanent stone ones. Stone keeps, some with bed chambers that had fireplaces and windows with dramatic views, replaced the wooden towers. Wooden palisades were replaced with stone curtain walls, which often had stone towers in their corners to improve their defenses.  But this transformation was expensive, and where it was not needed, it was not pursued. By the end of the 13th century, Edward I had subdued the Welsh and the need for fortified castles declined.  Many of the early motte and baileys were abandoned. Their timber defenses rotted away, leaving only the earthwork mounds. The remaining castles became more comfortable homes with the addition of pleasure gardens and larger doorways and windows on the lower floors.  Jennifer Bohnhoff is a middle school history teacher and author who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. She has written one book set in Medieval Europe. You can read more about On Fledgling Wings here.

A Tribute to Philip, Warrior Prince

 

 

Prince Philip was born into war. When Princess Alice of Battenberg gave birth to him on the Greek island of Corfu on June 10, 1921, the Greco-Turkish War had already been raging for two years. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece, commanded a Greek Army division and his uncle, King Constantine I, was the high commander of the Greek expeditionary force.  The only son and fifth child, Philip’s parents had him baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church. As a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, he was in line of succession to both the Greek and the Danish thrones.

But the war was going badly, and when Philip was just 18 months old, Greeks revolted against their King. Constantine was forced to abdicate, and Prince Andrew, his wife, four daughters, and infant son were banished. The family escaped on the British naval vessel HMS Calypso, where the infant Philip slept in a cot made from a fruit box. In Paris, an aunt took them in.

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The HMS Wallace. It had the nickname "One round Wallace", as the very first shot it fired in the war brought down a German airplane

The family spiraled down after that. Philip was shuffled from school to school, beginning in Paris, then moved first to a British school, then a German one. As the Nazi party grew, his school moved to Scotland, and from there he moved to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. As he shuffled from school to school, his four sisters married German princes and joined the Nazi party, his mother was committed to an asylum for schizophrenia, and his father moved to Monte Carlo. The young prince was left in the care of his uncle and guardian, Lord Milford Haven. When Haven died of cancer, his brother Louis Mountbatten, took over Philip’s guardianship, and Philip took the name Mountbatten as his own.
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While he was at Dartmouth, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited, and Philip was asked to escort the King's two daughters, who were his third cousins through Queen Victoria. The king’s older daughter, Elizabeth, who was only 13, began exchanging letter with Philip soon after that.

In 1940, Philip graduated from Dartmouth as the best cadet in his class. He was appointed as a midshipman and served in the Indian Ocean aboard the battleship HMS Ramillies,the HMS Kent, and the HMS Shropshire. After Italy invaded Greece in October, he transferred to the battleship HMS Valiant, which was sailing in the Mediterranean. He fought in the Battle of Crete, and the March, 1941 Battle of Cape Matapan, where the 19-year-old sub-lieutenant was in charge of manning the searchlights used to spot enemy ships. He found two different targets, which his battleship was able to sink, earning himself the Greek War Cross. 

By July 1943, Philip was a first lieutenant serving on the destroyer HMS Wallace. During the Allied Invasion of Sicily, the Wallace was targeted by a Luftwaffe bomber who repeatedly attacked. Philip came up with the idea of assembling a wooden raft, which they loaded with smoke pots and launched. Apparently, the German pilot mistook the smoking, flaming raft for the Wallace, which was able to slip away in the dark of night. 

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The 1945 picture of Philip that Elizabeth kept on her dressing table throughout the last year of the war.

In 1944, Prince Philip was transferred to the Pacific, where he served aboard the HMS Whelp. Two rescued British airmen whose bomber was shot down by the Japanese over the ocean discovered who he was only after they saw Princess Elizabeth's photo in his cabin, where he had left them as he collected hot food and dry clothes for them. Elizabeth had a picture of the bearded lieutenant on her dressing table, but no down pilots sat on her bed while awaiting supplies.

After the war ended, Philip asked the King for his daughter's hand in marriage. The King asked that a formal engagement be delayed until Elizabeth's 21st birthday, in April of 1947.

​Philip had to relinquish his Greek and Danish royal titles, but he did not give up his position in the Navy. After his marriage on November 20, 1947, he continued to serve, first at the Admiralty, and then at the Navel Staff College in Greenwich. He eventually was promoted to commander, and commanded the frigate HMS Magpie. In 1952, Elizabeth’s father, King George VI died and Elizabeth ascended the throne. Philip then gave up his military career to support his wife, but he continued to  hold many honorary titles in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. He also received pilot training with the RAF, and continued flying until the late 1990s. He remained a warrior at heart throughout his life. 

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Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and writer who lives far from the sea, in the mountains of central New Mexico. When she was a young girl attending Oxford University in the late 1970s, it was rumored that Philip might just become her father in law. You can read more about that here.  For more about her books, visit her blog. 

Fimbulwinter and The Promise of Spring

 

 

Spring is so full of promise. The emergence of the first, green shoots and the twitter of nesting birds inspires hope in our hearts. But what if, one spring, that didn't happen? How would it affect us? 

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In Children of Ash and Elm, Neil Price suggests that the Viking's concept of Ragnarok, the cataclysmic final battle at the end of the world, might have been formed when volcanic eruptions threw so much ash into the atmosphere that spring seemed not to come. In 536, 539, and 547, major volcanic eruptions, probably in El Salvador at what is now Lake Ilopango, caused world wide ecological consequences that are documented in written sources as far divergent as China, India, the Mediterranean, and the Goths of central Europe.

Fimbulwinter, or Mighty Winter of Scandinavian lore may have been inspired by this. Snorri, in his Edda, says that when Fimbulwinter comes, "there will be great frosts and keen winds. The sun will do no good. There will be three of these winters together, and no summer between."

​Dendrochronological records from this period show that trees withered, their growth rings stunted. The failed harvests created riots and famine. In Scandinavia, tens of thousands starved to death, and the population suffered losses of an estimated 50%. Price says that this devastation led to a dissolution of  the sociopolitical structures in Scandinavia, and the beginning of what is called the Viking age. What they feared to be the end of civilization proved to be the beginning of a new era.

The Vikings were in no way responsible for the destruction of the ecology in the 6th century. Those volcanic eruptions were a natural occurrence. And while natural disasters continue to happen, it seems that many others are not natural at all, but human made. ​

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In her 1962 book Silent Spring, biologist Rachel Carson warned that the heightened use of DDT and other pesticides after World War II was going to lead to a human-created Fimbulwinter.  In our attempt to choose what species were to live and what were to die because we had deemed them pests, humans were going to destroy the food chain, leading to the death of far more species than we intended. As birds' shells became thinner, their chicks would die. The springtime sound of birds would be no more. Fortunately for us, politicians listened and the crisis was averted. Out of her warnings, a new ecological consciousness developed and a new era of environmentalism was born. 

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The jury is still out on whether COVID-19 was a man made or natural disaster. We still don't know whether this virus developed on its own or in a lab. But for many, the year-long quarantine has felt like fimbulwinter. Once again, society has had to react to imminent disaster. It will be interesting to see how this, too, will lead to a new era. 

Bird Nest Cookies

Celebrate the promise of spring with these not too sweet cookies. 

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup softened butter
2 eggs, separated (you will need 2 yolks and 1 egg white for this recipe)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/3 cup finely chopped pecans
candy coated chocolate eggs or small jelly beans

Heat oven to 350. Line cookie sheets with parchment. 

In large bowl, beat brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Add egg yoks and vanilla and blend well. 
Add flour and salt and blend well. 

Shape dough into 1 inch balls.

In small bowl, slightly beat 1 egg white (use the other egg white for another purpose)

In another small bowl, mix coconut and pecans. 

Dip the tops of cookie dough balls into the egg white, then into the coconut and nut mixture. Set on the parchment-lined cookie sheet, coconut side up, 1" apart. 
Use your thumb to make an indentation in the center of each cookie. 

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes, or until lightly browned. As soon as they are out of the oven press a chocolate egg or jelly bean into the dent in the dent in the middle of each cookie before moving to a cooling rack.