Professor Hedgehog's Journal

Bourns

Posted on 18/08/2016 by carolinemmurray

The word ‘bourn’ has two main meanings: it is either a brook (cf. northern and Scots ‘burn’) or it is a destination, limit, or boundary (as in ‘… That undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns’). As a consequence, it forms part of hundreds of place-names all over Britain: Eastbourne, Westbourne, Southbourne, Bournemouth, Fishbourne (both the Sussex and the Isle of Wight varieties), Bournville, all the Winterbournes in Dorset, the two Nutbournes in West Sussex, the completely artificial Cambourne in Cambridgeshire (the Camborne in Cornwall has a different etymology altogether), Bourne in Lincolnshire, Melbourn, Cambs. (without an ‘e’, as opposed to all the places in Australia named after Queen Victoria’s beloved Lord M., whose title came from Melbourne in Derbyshire), and of course Selborne in Hampshire … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, Cambridge, History | Tagged Bourn, Bourn church, Bourn Hall, Cambridge Past Present and Future, De La Warr family | 2 Comments

Plant of the Month: August

Posted on 11/08/2016 by carolinemmurray

When everything else is looking a bit tired and dusty, there are some plants which you can rely on to go on and on. They are mostly ‘daisies’, Asteraceae, and mostly introductions from hotter climates, and my favourite is Cosmos. There are apparently 36 separate species, of which the best known in Europe are Cosmos bipinnatus and C. atrosanguineus (the so-called ‘chocolate cosmos’). Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Gardens, History, Natural history | Tagged botany, Cosmos, plants, W.J. Hooker | 1 Comment

Lammas

Posted on 08/08/2016 by carolinemmurray

… is about now, sort of. It is an ancient festival, but seems to have meant different things to different people, and to have been celebrated at different times in different circumstance. It is not an official moveable feast of the Church, like those based on the date of Easter, but, because it depends on the time of the beginning of the cereal harvest, it inevitably shifts around a bit. Add to this pagan origins, old-style versus new-style dates, and various false/folk/hindsight-driven etymologies, and there is quite a lot to untangle. Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Cambridge, History, Natural history | Tagged August, feasts of the church, Lammas, pagan feasts, wheat harvest | Leave a comment

Plant of the Month: July

Posted on 31/07/2016 by carolinemmurray

Though it’s difficult to select a subject in July (too much choice!), I decided to write about pinks – as opposed to carnations, sweet Williams, or any others of the Dianthus tribe – but the most superficial investigation shows that this isn’t easy, simply because there are no strictly maintained borders between the various groups, certainly not in common parlance. So for the avoidance of doubt (as we lawyers like to say), what I mean is the old-fashioned, low-growing, scented plants with the grey-green leaves and relatively simple flowers, rather than the tall Dianthus caryophyllus, which used to adorn wedding buttonholes, or the hairy Dianthus barbartus (or Stinking Billy, if your political inclinations go that way). Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Botany, Cambridge, Gardens, Natural history, Venice | Tagged carnations, Dianthus family, pinks, plant of the month | 4 Comments

Object of the Month: July

Posted on 29/07/2016 by carolinemmurray

I was planning to follow up on some thoughts generated by a recent interesting talk at the Fitzwilliam Museum about portraits of men with their secretaries/assistants/friends, but I got diverted quite early on to a rather different topic. The Museum currently has on loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum a portrait by Van Dyck of Thomas Wentworth (1593–1641), earl of Strafford, and his secretary, Sir Philip Mainwaring (1589–1661). The former was famously beheaded before the outbreak of the Civil War (offered by Charles I as a sacrifice to Parliament); the latter, mostly by keeping his head down, survived another twenty years. (He inevitably lost his estate, and was imprisoned during 1650-1, but did not fare as badly as many royalists during the Protectorate.) Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, Cambridge, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged Fitzwilliam Museum, Joshua Reynolds, Mary Palmer, portrait miniatures, Van Dyck | 1 Comment

Bemerton

Posted on 21/07/2016 by carolinemmurray

head statue Our school hymnbook was Songs of Praise (without music). I still have my copy, and I honestly can’t remember whether it was mine to keep or whether I stole it (the latter by inadvertence, because I was far too Goody-Two-Shoes to have done so deliberately). As with some many things that one learns by rote in childhood, I can recite many of those hymns in full and without hesitation, while I have great difficulty in remembering my current car registration number. Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Cambridge, History, Literature, Natural history | Tagged Bemerton, George Herbert, Salisbury, The Temple | 4 Comments

Toadstone

Posted on 14/07/2016 by carolinemmurray

grumpy toad This all started when I was looking for frogs in art (another story…). A search engine, clearly unable to tell its Batrachia from its Bufones, came up with the three-legged toad of Liu-Hai, of which, as it happens, there are two beautiful examples – a statue carved from amethyst, and another from jade – in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Needless to say, the reasons why Liu-Hai stands on a three-legged toad are complicated … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Cambridge, History, Museums and Galleries, Natural history | Tagged folklore, jewellery, Liu Hai, poison, three-legged toad, toadstone | 1 Comment

Summer of the Slug

Posted on 07/07/2016 by carolinemmurray

Has there ever been a ‘summer’ (and that’s another problem, of course…) like this for slugs? I suppose it’s the combination of a mild winter (only one day on which the car windscreen was frosted, and no snow at all) and a wet spring and early summer that has caused the little nuisances to survive, and to multiply unchecked. I’m disgusted at the failure of the birds I so lovingly feed to make any effort to help with the problem, and am thinking of putting myself on a waiting list for rehoming a rescue hedgehog (too differently abled to be released back into the wild). A friend has a blind one in her garden, and you should see her untouched hostas … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Gardens, Natural history | Tagged Arion ssp., hedgehogs, slug damage, slug treatment, Slugoff, slugs, Slugwatch | 8 Comments

Hazelnuts

Posted on 04/07/2016 by carolinemmurray

To the Curtain Theatre at Shoreditch, where we watched the play, Every Man in His Humour, by Mr Ben Jonson, with Mr William Shakespeare among the actors. Well, we almost did, the only minor problem being that we visited the playhouse in 2016 rather than 1598. However, we were treated, on this site open day, to a clear and well illustrated talk about the site and the excavations, and a tour of the exposed remains. Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, History, Literature, London | Tagged Bankside, Curtain Theatre, Globe Theatre, hazelnuts, Rose Theatre, Shoreditch | 3 Comments

Object of the Month: June

Posted on 26/06/2016 by carolinemmurray

I don’t like, and have never liked, pottery and porcelain figures. I admire the superb craftsmanship that went into making them, but it seems to me a terrible waste of skill and effort to produce these coy and simpering results. (It might have something to do with the coy and simpering examples of the genre in my grandmother’s house, which I found most sinister and threatening when I was very small.) Continue reading →

Posted in Art, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged Fitzwilliam Museum, flint mills, Josiah Wedgwood, pew group, Salisbury Museum, Staffordshire pottery | 9 Comments