copyright Francis Barker 2020
copyright Francis Barker 2020
The car parked marked with an R, as if your spirit had hovered for half a millenium to mark the deconsecrated spot. A few inches either side and you may have been lost forever, though there was little chance of that, so precisely did you engage with the living, the aggrieved who wished to dig up your true reputation with those poignant bones. The sight of that curved spine, it touched our hearts, wincing at the thought of you holding a sword and swinging it, yet swing it you did to save your country, your soul. The wounds so clear, graphically revealed the ignominy of your passing, the blood lust and hate of those thrusting at the legally occupied throne. History is just a story, after all, to which most of us consent, but I think of you often, Richard, the bloody white rose cut too soon on a dark August day.
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Place names, particularly English place names can be pretty strange sometimes, testimony to all the tribes who have invaded this fair isle over the millennia.
Take Lincoln, capital city of Lincolnshire in eastern England, for example. The name that has come down us is composed of two elements, one Celtic or Ancient British, the other Roman.
Lyn or Lindum means a settlement near a pool, in this case what we now call the Brayford Pool, where the university is situated. King’s Lynn in Norfolk probably refers to a pool also.
Then the last element, coln… what is that? It’s a condensed version of the Roman word Colonia, which were settlements dotted throughout the empire where retired soldiers would go to live – Lincoln being one them. So the full Roman or latin name would have been Lindum Colonia. In later times the name got shortened to its present form.
There are other examples too, of course, the most famous one being Koln in Germany, usually referred to as Cologne in English and French.
Very often a place name can tell you quite a lot about the origin of the settlement and can make travelling and map reading so fascinating.
copyright Francis Barker 2020
I sometimes think we do suffer from being ‘in-betweenies’, that is neither northern or southern. Well, the simple answer to that is that we are East Midlanders, of course.
I certainly don’t mind being called a ‘yellowbelly’ and, in all honesty, my part of the county in the south is admittedly extremely flat.
That said, I am very fond of the north of Lincolnshire; the Wolds are gorgeous, reaching as high as 500 feet around Normanby le Wold, and the coast has some of the finest beaches you will ever see.
But perhaps one of the greatest glories of Lincolnshire as a whole, is the quality and diversity of our ecclesiastical heritage. The range of churches is stunning and the county town of Lincoln has, in my opinion, the best cathedral in the whole of England.
copyright Francis Barker 2019
Ciscography 