Famous Lincolnshire

Did you know I come from a really exciting place in England?? No, I didn't either!! My hometown, Lincoln, is a beautiful place in parts with Roman ruins, a Cathedral with a huge history and a Castle and a Bishop's Palace where some of the richest Bishops in history resided.


The history is amazing but the present is rather dull. There's not much to do and since the University was founded in the 1990s modern buildings which stand out like a sore thumb have popped up everywhere.



So let's get back to the history - because it really is quite exciting (and this is coming from the girl who hates history!!)

Those of you in America may or may not already know this, but Captain John Smith, "The
man who was to become President of Virginia started life as the son of a tenant farmer in a small village on the edge of the Wolds." (The Wolds are in Lincolnshire - the area of England where Lincoln is situated. When Time Team (an archaeological programme in the UK) did a special edition on the founding of Jamestown they found that the houses built by the earliest settlers had a distinct style which is only found in one other place in the world and that is in rural parts of Lincolnshire! Researching deeper into the archives they then traced John Smith and some others from my part of the world... how exciting and how strange that I previously had no idea about this!!


Moving on from that part of history I found out last night that "haute couture" was actually founded by another Lincolnshire man... can you believe it? The Oxford English Dictionary have been asking the British public to help them research the history of certain words so that they can update their entries - where the dictionary had only previously found proof of word usage in the 70s (for example) the public managed to find anti-datings right back to, say, the 30s! There was a tv show about it all and last night was the last in the series, talking about the terms we use in the world of fashion. Apparently, this guy called Charles Worth went to France ans created women's fashion and, as Wikipedia states, "His reputation was such that the French government awarded him the Legion of Honour and when he died, 2,000 people, including the President of the Republic, attended his funeral."

You might be wondering why I'm thinking of this today? Well I met a guy in Cambridge and he's coming to visit this weekend and I get to play the tour guide and tell him how the Cathedral once burnt down in an Earthquake and explain to him the legend of the Lincoln Imp, and walk around the castle walls looking out over Lincoln and seeing the old prison where those to be hanged were locked away... I guess with all this history it's no wonder that there's a well-known British song which begins, "When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire"