HOLIDAYS AT HOME

This week’s Holidays At Home goes back to must-have 1960s homeware, a celebration of Bristol’s archeology and visits a small town packed with history and quirky tales, and which also has a place where you can wander around naked (if that’s your thing). A

1960s style, a feast of arcehology and naturism in the West’s cleverest town

MALMESBURY. It’s like you take all the best bits of Wells and the best bits of Thornbury and pack them into a much smaller town where everything’s within easy walking distance. It’s less than an hour’s drive from Bristol and it’s crammed with history. It’s got some lovely pubs, or, if a pasty in the car park is more your style, there are some fabulous bakers, too.

Malmesbury is only little, with a population of maybe 6,000 souls, but it punches well above its weight when it comes to Important History. And completely Unimportant History, too.

First then, Malmesbury Abbey, the whole reason the town exists in the first place. There was a religious establishment here as early as the seventh century when an Irish monk named Maeldubh set up a hermitage and taught local children.

The Abbey itself dates back to around 675 when the wonderful scholar, poet and entertainer Saint Aldhelm founded it. Aldhelm was your original ton-up vicar, who thought nothing of singing rather coarse songs to attract a crowd who he’d then instruct in the Gospels. By the 11th century it was a religious and intellectual powerhouse, with one of the largest libraries in Europe.

But never mind any of that. It was also home to Eilmer the Flying Monk. Eilmer of Malmesbury is famous for predicting the Norman invasion in 1066 and for attempting to fly. As a young monk he made wings which he attached to his hands and feet and jumped from the Abbey tower. All went well until it didn’t, and he ended up with two broken legs. Could have been worse, mind.

He afterwards said his failure was because he should have given himself a tail.

Nowadays the Abbey is a great visit for any church-fancier. Among the many treasures on display are a number of medieval books - beautiful illuminated manuscripts made by monks. To plan a visit, see www. malmesburyabbey.com.

The churchyard is the burial place of a number of local luminaries, but none more celebrated than Hannah Twynnoy, a barmaid who was mauled to death by a tiger in 1703. Details are sparse, but it’s thought that the tiger part of a menagerie/ circus visiting the town and she became fond of teasing it until one day its patience snapped and the tiger got busy with the claws and teeth. Whatever, Hannah is generally thought to be the first person ever killed by a tiger in England. If you can’t spot the gravestone, just ask one of the locals to point it out.

Malmesbury grew up around the Abbey but soon became a thriving market town in its own right. Close by the Abbey at the top of the High Street is a medieval market cross, an elaborate structure by the standards of the time (late 1400s) which the antiquarian John Leland described on a visit in 1542:

There is a right fair and costeley peace of worke in the market place made all of stone and curiusly voultid for poore market folkes to stande dry when rayne cummith.

The High Street itself is worth a wander, with lots of independent local shops.

Aside from the Abbey, the other headline attraction in Malmesbury is the Abbey House Gardens. The Abbey House itself has a complicated history and isn’t open to the public, but the five acres of gardens are well worth the admission price.

The gardens were developed by Ian and Barbara Pollard from the mid-1990s, and have featured extensively on TV and radio, not just because they are very pleasant in themselves, but also because the Pollards were enthusiastic naturists and from the early 2000s started hosting regular days on which wearing clothes in the gardens was optional. On such days, half or more of the visitors will admire the flowers, shrubbery and fishponds in their birthday suits.

Sadly, Ian Pollard died in 2019 and last year the gardens were sold. The new owners are continuing the tradition of “clothes optional” days. To plan your visit, whether for a clothes optional day, or in order to avoid a clothes optional day at all costs, see www.abbeyhousegardens.

co.uk

For a broad history of Malmesbury itself, the Athelstan Museum is a small town museum with free (but donations welcome) admission and very friendly staff. They’re very proud of a recently acquired watercolour of the Abbey by JMW Turner. For more, see www.athelstanmuseum.org.uk

Bristol’s Brilliant Archaeology

THIS week sees the start of the Council for British Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology, a nationwide programme of walks, talks, tours, demonstrations, craft workshops and more.

This annual event will see hundreds of events up and down the country delivered by everyone from commercial companies to university departments and community groups. The Council reckons that well over half a million people get involved, all finding out more about the stories and history of the places where they live.

To find out about events outside of Bristol, see festival.archaeologyuk.org - though the list might not be comprehensive as when we looked it hadn’t yet included any of the events in Bristol.

There’s an impressive programme of events in and around Bristol, but in keeping with the times many of them will be online.

These come to us courtesy of Blaise Museum and lots of local societies, heritage organisations, re-enactors and field archaeologists, with 16 days’ worth of teatime talks, archaeological walks and family-friendly festival fun sessions.

You’ll be able to look at archaeological sites on social media platforms (along with 360-degree virtual tours of some places that aren’t usually open) and lots more besides.

Many of the Bristol events are child-friendly, so if there’s a budding archaeologist in the family, make sure they know all about what’s on offer.

Highlights, in no particular order, include an archaeological walk of the Blaise Estate (real, not virtual, that is) – free of charge, but donations requested – on July 21. The same applies to a tour of the deeply spooky Stanton Drew Stone Circles on July 29.

Cotswold Archaeology are delivering an online “webinar” looking at the Medieval discoveries that have been made in the Redcliffe area, which in the last couple of decades had proved a very rich source of information and artefacts.

The tea-time talks programme also looks great. Surely everyone wants to log in for “A case of ritual cannibalism in Iron Age Gloucestershire?” There are also talks about “Egypt on Avon” (all about how Ancient Egyptian culture influenced the Bristol/Bath area); Bristol Castle, and Roman Sea Mills.

For details and booking for these events and more, see tinyurl. com/6m56a945

Left: Hannah Twnynnoy’s gravestone. Right: Moses leading the Israelites in one of the illustrations in some of the medieval books on show at Malmesbury Abbey.

The Abbey House Gardens, where you can take your clothes off. But only on certain days. Photo: Eugene Byrne

Much of “Bristol’s Brilliant Archaeology” will be of interest to many youngsters, though the main reason we pulled out this 1948 photo is to scare the living daylights out of modern-day archaeologists. This was from the famous discovery, when the Lawrence Weston estate was being built, of the Roman Villa on the site, and which was excavated through 1948 by a small army of volunteers, many of them schoolkids. Yes, that is indeed a small boy holding a pickaxe next to a priceless Roman-era mosaic!

Part of the frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes’ philosophical blockbuster, Leviathan. The Leviathan, or monster, was the state, composed of men who consent to be governed for the sake of safety and good order