Alisander’s Journey and Other Poems
January 15, 2024
This is a guest post by Gail Webb, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections. Alisander’s Journey A species named as Alexanders, known to the ancient Romans, grows green on clifftops, thrusts its way along roads, …
Bloody Flux and the King’s Evil
December 21, 2023
This is a guest post by Jayne Muir, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections. The byways, meadows and cottage gardens of Britain were once a vast larder of ingredients from which oils, ointments, tinctures, pills, …
Marginalia in a Medical Manuscript
October 25, 2023
This is a guest post by Tabitha Gresty, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held here at Manuscripts and Special Collections. Since working on the Early Modern Recipes Research project, I have been constantly amazed by the breadth of …
Say Cheese!
September 13, 2021
We may be approaching the end of picnic season, but we’re not quite ready to abandon buffet style finger foods just yet. We recently tried out an 18th century recipe for cheese rolls from one of the household recipe books in the archive as part of the 2021 Heritage Open Day theme of Edible England. …
Keep calm and Curry on
August 26, 2021
This year’s theme for Heritage Open Day (10-19 September) is Edible England, a subject that I can genuinely get excited about. There are quite a few recipe books and household management guides in the collections, ranging from handwritten books of favourite recipes, to published volumes that went through multiple editions and included advice on cooking for …
Simple Medicine
February 9, 2021
Post by Library Assistant Safiya Williams. There is a great pleasure, and sometimes amusement, in reading through old texts that cover topics of the human body and cures for its many ailments. Books on herbalism and herbal remedies give us an idea of those who came before us – without the support of modern medicine, …
Gingerbread from Elenor Mundy’s Cookery Book
October 14, 2020
This is a guest post from Library Assistant Safiya Williams. We’re only a few days into the beginning of Autumn Term and already I am thinking of falling leaves, woollen knits and of course gingerbread. Traditionally flavoured with ginger, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon – gingerbread is a perfect warming treat as the temperature drops. Upon …
Elenor Mundy’s Cookery Book: Cracknells
September 3, 2020
This is a guest post by Library Assistant Safiya Williams. Like many during these strange and uncertain times I have found comfort in food, faced with shelves empty of my everyday food staples – pasta, rice, yeast – I found myself flipping through cookbooks and notebooks trying to make do with what I have. I …
A spoonful of spermaceti helps the medicine go down
November 21, 2016
It’s that time of year when coughs, colds and flu are doing the rounds. But how did our ancestors cope with ill-health, before the days of ready-prepared pills and potions from the local shop? Manuscripts and Special Collections holds a number of works with useful recipes to be made at home – some possibly more efficacious …
Manuscripts Mysteries: Canada, Cake and Clergymen
October 12, 2015
The stereotypical, romanticized view of archives is one where researchers delve into a box of yellowed, long-forgotten papers to uncover clues and solve a mystery. But what happens when the boxes present more questions than they answer? For the last few months we’ve been turning to social media in an attempt to find out more …
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