Something interesting about a country that has been inhabited so long by people is that you trip over historic sites no matter where you go. [Native Americans have lived in the U.S. for milennia, but they were the losers when the white folks came. So their history and sites are treated differently than sites here, which are considered part of the collective history of the people who currently live here.] So, during my first visit I saw a random thatched hut where folks lived mixed in with other houses and that's pretty normal. So...I wasn't exactly surprised to find Bede's World located in the warehouse/refinery district.
For those of you not intimately familiar with early English history... the Venerable Bede could be your best friend. After the Romans left (it was just too tough holding this rambunctious outpost called Britannia), there was a lot of in-fighting. The native Britons had really liked all the cool innovations and order that the Romans brought, but the various "barbarians" surrounding them on the British Isles threatened order (for example, the Picts whom the Hadrian's Wall was designed to keep back in Scotland). In any case, the Britons invited their friends in France, Denmark and other nearby countries to come over here and help them beat back the barbarians. Um...yeah...those guys were the Angles and the Saxons, I think precursors of the Vikings. So... when they came to help, they kinda helped themselves to lots of the areas in the east and south of England.
By 600 or so, which is around when Bede lived, the Catholic Church was stepping up as the new factor around which things were organized. A monastery would be the center of learning, trade, culture, etc. Apparently, Newcastle's location on the coast had helped it become kinda big beforehand. In Bede's day, there was a pretty good monastery here. We got to see the remains still standing at the riverside here. The monks here did some amazing Bible illuminations (good enough for someone to happen to swipe the inscription page and put his own signature on to give as a gift to the Pope). Bede was a monk here and took it upon himself to document the history of early England. So he's why I can give you the quick
and dirty history above. His book was one of the most popular in Europe -- tough to be a continent's most popular author when each book copy had to be hand-transcribed. They were busy monks. Bede happened to be the mentor for a number of bishops (some of whom have names similar to local saints, so I'm not sure if they are the saints).So we had fun walking around the abbey ruins, checking out the museum with all its artifacts of life back in the day and exploring the Anglo-Saxon farm. So here are Brent and I trying on monk habits. They were a little tight, so might have been intended for kids. They had some great reconstructed Anglo-Saxon houses behind the museum. When we walked inside, I noticed they
had quite a few structural features in common with the houses at Sunwatch -- wattle and daub walls, wooden decor, thatched roofs (though I doubt they're using Kentucky Bluegrass) and the obvious poor ventilation. I did notice their thatch didn't seem quite as thick as back home in Ohio. Hmmm...There were also some lovely farm animals that were supposed to be breeds common during Anglo-Saxon times. You can almost tell from the rather windswept sheep how truly strong the w
ind was that day. I believe this was the day we had the 75 mph gusts. Unlike us, most of the animals who had shelter were smart enough to stay in it. So we never got a really good look at the pigs and had to walk into the pen for the chickens and ducks. It was cute, though, because each of the animal pens was also a little thatched hut. The wind quickly brought a storm directly overhead, though, and drenched us on our 0.75 mile or so walk back to the Metro. The picture above of the abbey was the last in this sequence, so you can see it went from sunny to overcast and then to pouring pretty quickly.So now you know how the folks for whom the country is named (Angle-land became England) got into the country. And who can be thanked for letting us know how it happened -- the Venerable Bede. Who knew our city was home to so many important events and people!!
