The following piece was produced for the Bader College course HIST 402: Sex & Death in the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, an insidious aspect of communal identity reared its ugly head as a result of religious groupthink. Why is it that every historical epoch believes that it has reached the apex of development?…
Category: Student Research
Studying Reproductive Isolation in E. calamaris for Coral Reef Conservation
Sea urchins should not only be viewed as venomous terrors of the sea. These spikey seabed dwellers are critical to maintaining the health of coral reefs. Unfortunately dead long-spined sea urchins of the species Diadema antillarum are reported to be ‘rolling like tumbleweeds’ across the Caribbean sea floor in a catastrophic die-off of an unknown…
Making Moonshine! A Radio Play
Dr Claire Kennan, Bader College Research Coordinator. In March 2023, a group of students came together to record some scenes from the play Making Moonshine! written by local resident Verily Anderson in 1957-8. Now kept safely in our archive, the play is set in ‘Swirling Castle’, a clear fictionalisation of Herstmonceux Castle. The play features…
Making Moonshine! How an Archived Document was Brought Back to Life
Grace Ewart Our story begins with the tale of Verily Anderson. A young girl whose family made frequent visits to Herstmonceux Castle throughout the 1920’s, as her father was the Rector of a Herstmonceux’s All Saints’ Church. In her memoir, Castellans of Herstmonceux, Anderson detailed life in the castle during the Roaring 20’s through the…
The Trotula Uncovered: Changing the View of Women’s Medicine Forever
Tecoya Warner Medicine: the healer, remedy, cure, treatment…the therapeutic heavenly relief of pain. In whatever way the term is coined, medicine is rooted in the central concept of an ease of ailment. Throughout centuries of human existence, medicine took many forms that are more evident now than ever before through the plethora of practices that…
The Trotula: On the Conditions of Women
Cassi Lawson. Gynaecological conditions do not warrant sympathy; after all, women are inferior to men. Shouldn’t they get what they deserve? Women are frigid and humid, whereas men have been gifted the stronger qualities – heat and dryness. The blame for women’s conditions should be placed on themselves, not on an external force. Since women…
An Ode to Women in Medicine: Celebrating Trota of Salerno
Tecoya Warner The advancements of the medical field we know today seem a bit futuristic when we put ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors. From the creation of vaccines to the wonders of bioimaging and the overall expansion of scientific research, society has made great strides by building on some of the groundwork of…
Clean in Ancient Rome, Dirty in Modern England?
An Ancient Bathhouse in East Sussex Beauport Park is the site of an Ancient Roman Bathhouse located in East Sussex, England. Roman bathhouses were a common feature across the Empire and could be found in most cities; they were used for bathing but also for relaxing and socializing. Generally, the bathhouses were accessible to all…
Jubilation at the Jubilee?
What does jubilee mean? The Oxford Dictionary describes a jubilee as ‘a special anniversary of an event, especially one celebrating twenty-five or fifty years of a reign or activity’.[1] For the British monarchy specifically, the jubilee is an important celebration of the reign of the current monarch. This year, 2022, Queen Elizabeth II is celebrating…
Dendroclimatology on the Herstmonceux Estate
Dendroclimatology is the study of tree rings and tree growth and can be used to study the present climate and to reconstruct climates from the past. The rings on a tree are more telling about the climate and how the environment looked hundreds of years ago than just the age of a tree. The size,…