Whether you are isolating or just want the chance to do some trivia, here’s a new easy to evil quiz for you. The rules are the same as ones I have done in the past. You get the question, then a photo and the answer will be below the photo. There are four categories Easy, Medium, Hard and Evil. This quiz is a general history theme, without a specific era focus. The vast majority of answers have been mentioned somewhere on Historical Ragbag before. All the photos are mine. Keep track of your score and see how you go at the end. Good luck!!
Easy
Established in 1835 what is the capital of Victoria Australia?
Answer: Melbourne
2. Where Was Picnic At Hanging Rock set?
Answer: Hanging Rock (no it wasn’t a trick question)
3. From what castle did the current English royal family take their name?
Answer: Windsor Castle.
4. What is the nickname of the great bell of the clock tower in the houses of parliament in London
Answer: Big Ben
Medium
Where would you find the White Tower, built by William the Conquerer?
Answer: The Tower of London
2. Which king was found buried under a carpark in Leicester?
Answer: Richard III
3. What is the name for Viking boats used for long distance travel and trade?
Answer: Longships
4. Who were sent to Port Arthur in Tasmania? (looking for a general answer)
Answer: Convicts.
Hard
Where in Australia would you find the Big Lobster which was constructed in 1979
Answer: Kingston, South Australia
2. What is the name of the rock 13 km off the coast of Ireland that houses a 6th century monastery
Answer: Skellig Michael
3. Who helped found the State Library of Victoria and was the judge at Ned Kelly’s trial?
Answer: Redmond Barry
4. Where was Matilda of Flanders (the wife of William the Conquerer) buried?
Answer: Abbaye aux Dames in Caen
Evil
What date did Matthew Flinders die?
Answer: 1814
2. When was the domed La Trobe reading room in the State Library of Victoria opened?
Answer: 1913
3. Who caused Hook Lighthouse to be built?
Answer: William Marshal
4. Glendalough was founded by whom?
Answer: St Kevin
And that’s the lot of them. How did you go?
1-4: Ok you know some stuff
5-9: Impressive, nearly half way there
10-15: Stupendous well done, you might actually have read a lot of this blog.
This is actually going to be a little different to some of my other post. It’s more of a snippet of the past and doesn’t involve a lot of photos. I still thought it was an interesting history worthy of discussion- especially in current circumstances. The library sign you can see in the above photo is a ghost sign, as in the library no longer exists and is now a cafe.
So, hygienic libraries. What were they?
The concept arose when it was discovered in the late 1800s that disease could be passed on by bacteria, and books were seen to be one of the main items that would carry the bacteria. This is the era of subscription libraries like mechanics institutes, which you can find out more about in this post. So hygiene of books became a selling point for some of these libraries. Some advertised specifically as hygienic libraries as in the photo, but others were general subscription libraries with ‘hygienic’ facilities. An example of this second sort was the Boulder Public Library in Western Australia which in 1937 guaranteed the hygiene of their books by installing a fumigator. The fumigator used formalin and permanganate of potash to treat books over a 12 hour period. This particular fumigator was built of Queensland hoop pine and was seen as an attractive addition to the library furniture.
The concept certainly was in vogue, with some libraries like the Rockhampton School of Arts opting to fumigate all the shelves every year. Other hygienic libraries in the 30s, like one in Parramatta, opted to prepare the books with a material that allowed them to be disinfected when they came back into the library.
The movement died off with the wane of subscription libraries, in the face of council public libraries, and as the risk of infectious diseases like smallpox and scarlet fever also declined.
But we are still left with the signs of their existence. I haven’t been able to find anymore information about Girdwood’s Hygienic Library in the photo other than they may have used formaldehyde to wipe down the books (the sign is in Flemington in Melbourne) but if anyone out there knows more, feel free to email me (historicalragbag@gmail.com) and I’ll add it into the post.
Addendum: 21/08/20 The Age has written an article about the Girdwood Hygienic Library
In times like these, I think it is important to have beautiful things to read about. So I thought I’d put together a post on Ely cathedral. I’m not religious, but it is a truly beautiful building with a fascinating history. I have written about it before in my tour round medieval cathedrals post a couple of years ago, but I decided it deserved its own post.
Ely is a largely Romanesque Cathedral, which is unusual in the UK. Most UK cathedrals are gothic or later, with the occasional romanesque element remaining. But Ely retains many of its Romanesque features, especially on the exterior. You can see the curved and solid shapes rather than the more common gothic pointed and etherial shapes in the photos above and below. The building you see on the site today is an amalgam of centuries of development, the Romanesque style is largely Norman and in the case of Ely was mainly completed by 1189.
Ely is known as the ‘ship of the fens’ as it dominates what is pretty much the only high point in surrounding areas. In the medieval period it would have been surrounded by fenlands. Even now that a large amount of the fens have been drained you can see how it commands the landscape. The images below are taken from the roof of the cathedral.
Ely’s origins trace back further even than the Normans, back to the 7th century CE when it was founded as a monastery by St Etheldreda. Etheldreda was a Saxon Queen and when she died in c. 680 her shrine at Ely became a pilgrimage site. It was destroyed in 1541, but there is a slate in the cathedral in front of the high altar (I unfortunately don’t have a photo of it) to commemorate where it stood.
This original building was destroyed by the Danes in 870 but was re-founded as a Benedictine monastery in c.970 The buildings you see today were begun in the reign of William the Conquerer under the direction of Abbott Simeon. Ely was partly built as a mark of Norman authority in the aftermath of rebellions in the area such as Hereward the Wake’s against the still reasonably new Norman authority. Originally Ely church was the church for the monastery, but Ely became a cathedral in c.1109 when the Diocese of Ely was carved out of the Diocese of Lincoln. It still retained its place as a Benedictine foundation. You can see some of the remains of the monastic buildings in the photo below.
Ely was dissolved as a monastery in the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid 16th century though it continued as bishopric and ultimately a college of priests was run from the old monastic buildings. Remains of the cathedral’s time as a monastic site still remain in the cathedral itself, such as the prior’s door you can see in the photo below
Although the name is contemporary this intricately decorated door is one of three 12th century doors that led from the monastic buildings and the cloister into the cathedral. The other doors lead into the choir and the south transept (see below).
The prior’s door led straight onto the nave, which was serving as the parish church until the 1360s. The nave itself is one of the most spectacular parts of the cathedral.
One of the key remaining parts of the original Norman church, the nave itself is 75m long and the ceiling is 32m high. The roof is not original. There is a ledge that runs along the top of the Romanesque columns where the original roof would have rested. In 1240 the roof was reconstructed when the cathedral was extended. You can see some the extended areas in the photos below, they are noticeable more gothic than the Norman parts of the cathedral.
The basic interior structure of this secondary roof largely survives today, but it would have been open.
In the 1850s, however, the Dean of the Cathedral Dean Peacock was one of many who thought the open roof detracted from the overall beauty of the cathedral. As part of the restoration of the cathedral by architect Sir George Gilbert Scott he had a boarded ceiling inserted that followed the lines of the open roof. The painting you can see below, was also undertaken at this time.
Henry Styleman Le Strange was the artist. Originally he was painting other smaller areas of the cathedral, but by 1856 he’d agreed to Dean Peacock’s suggestion that he paint the entire ceiling, he began in 1858. The immense work was undertaken by tracing the drawings onto the ceiling. You can see local figures including Dean Peacock and the artist himself in the ceiling panels which depict biblical scenes. Sadly Le Strange was unable to complete his work as he died in 1862 and it was completed by Thomas Parry. To find out more about the ceiling, see the article I’ve listed in the references. Much of stain glass work in the cathedral dates from the Victorian era as well.
Even though the nave is spectacular, the highlight of the cathedral interior is, arguably of course, the octagon
The octagon is not original to the cathedral either, but its construction came about for a very different reason. In 1322 the original Norman crossing tower collapsed. It was said that the noise was so loud that the monks though there had been an earthquake. The sacrist Alan de Walsingham was given the job of rebuilding. He could have rebuilt the tower conventionally, but instead the master mason whose name we don’t know he had an octagonal lantern built of 23 m across. It was a truly mammoth task of engineering, the lantern itself is 12 m high. You can see some of the beams the hold the lantern below.
The view from the lantern down to the cathedral floor is dizzying.
Ely Cathedral has stood as the ‘ship of the fens’ for hundreds of years, and although it is built for the glory of god, I like to look at it as building that is beautiful in its own right regardless of if you believe in God or not. And I think beautiful things are what we need right now.
Historical Ragbag 