3 January 2024

Stephen Croad Prize 2023

Some photos from Historic Buildings and Places’ annual lecture at the Alan Baxter Gallery in Farringdon, where I was delighted to be awarded the Stephen Croad Essay Prize for my paper on Balthazar Gerbier and Hamstead Marshall.

Receiving the Stephen Croad Essay Prize from Giles Quarme FRIBA.

After receiving my certificate, I gave a short talk on why the topic is of interest to me and my key findings. The essay will be published in Historic Buildings and Places’ journal next year.


Speaking about my essay on Balthazar Gerbier and Hamstead Marshall.

Gerbier is perhaps best know to 17th century historians as a Dutch courtier who helped the Duke of Buckingham develop his art collection, but Gerbier also designed buildings. The drawings for one of these, Hamstead Marshall, survive in the Bodleian Library.

The house was somewhat unusual for its time (construction began in 1662), and my article fills in some gaps about its construction, discusses some possible problems encountered, and suggests what Gerbier was ultimately trying to achieve by building what I call a 'proto-Baroque' house for his patron, the 1st Earl of Craven.    

21 July 2023

Guest blog: Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635-50) (Mary McVicker, writer)

The Five Eldest Children of Charles I  (1637) by Van Dyck (Princess Elizabeth Stuart second-right).

I knew that a couple of Charles I's children (Henry and Elizabeth) had shared a heart-breaking few minutes with their father prior to his execution, but as both died young, their stories have rather been lost.

In this guest article, writer Mary McVicker reflects on the short life of Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635-50), revealing a dramatic existence governed by the tides of war ...

9 May 2023

Colchester Siege Spectacular (19-20 August, Castle Park, Colchester)

My article and interactive map on the Siege of Colchester (1648) still get a lot of traffic - it appears there's still great interest in the siege, so it's great to see that the city's holding a weekend-long event over August Bank Holiday - see video preview above.

8 February 2022

Website changes: englishcivilwar.org

 


A quick update on some changes I've had to make to englishcivilwar.org:

Due to the weight of other commitments, I've been unable to update the Events section as regularly as I'd like, so I've now closed this page - I will however continue to post events on the englishcivilwar.org Facebook page, so if you do have events you want to promote, please send them on and I'll try to post/repost as time allows. For the same reason I've also closed the Forum (again, the quickest way to get answers via a knowledgable community of 17th century buffs is via the Facebook page).

Thanks to everyone who has contributed ECW/17th century-related events and queries via these two sections over the past decade.