Chatsworth House

Our first stop of the day was to Chatsworth House, a 16^th century manor house that belonged to the Cavendish family. It’s been the seat of the Duke of Devenshire since that time. The House is now a museum, but this day our group came to talk about Chatsworth of a symbol of the power of nobility. Not only were the manor lands themselves set aside for hunting (deer, mostly), but the mere fact that so much prime farmland could be set aside for non-agricultural pursuits was itself a symbol of just how much wealth the Cavendish family had.

In addition, most of the local farmers were eventually moved to the planned post-medieval village of Edensor, just over the rise from Chatsworth. This village was attached to the manor and provided an area for post-medieval farming and was eventually safe from the later large-scale enclosures that occurred across England.

Interestingly enough, the eldest Kennedy sister, Kathleen Kennedy, married the heir to the Devenshire dukedom and was buried at the church in Edensor among the rest of the Cavendish family. The House itself has been in numerous films, including 2005's Pride and Prejudice and 2008’s The Duchess.

Archaeological Landscapes in the High Peak

Last Thursday, as part of “Fresher’s Week,” the Department of Archaeology organized a day-long fieldtrip to various archaeological sites in Derbyshire’s nearby Peak District for the new MA students. I don’t know why one would turn such a trip down, but as it’s optional, we MSc students had the chance a few months ago to sign up for vacant slots. And thus I and our Irish roommate Killian found ourselves outside of the main Archaeology building in downtown Sheffield at 8:30 Thursday morning, meeting a stream of other new Masters students as we waited for the vans and professors.

Our guides were two professors from the Department, an Irishman who heads the Landscape Archaeology programme and an older professor who runs the plain-old MA Archaeology programme. Landscape archaeology is a lovely new(ish) direction in the discipline that seeks to look beyond isolated “sites” here and there and get a sense of the larger prehistoric landscape as its earlier inhabitants would have culturally perceived it. As most of our stops in the High Peak were related to various sources of control over regional landscapes, Prof. Johnson had some great insights.

Now, the Peak District in Britain’s oldest national park (set aside in the 1950s, I believe) and comprises England’s best climbing, caving, and ‘walking,’ as the British rather understatedly call hiking. The area butts right up to Sheffield – in fact, there is a lovely wall of gritstone cliffs that drops off just a few miles over the heath from the City Centre. Driving through the small picturesque and quintessentially country-side English villages and hamlets, one would be forgiven for believing that we had traveled decades back in time and not just mere kilometers. In between the small villages huddled against 14^th century country churches fed by calm brooks nestled in deep, shaded valleys, we would get fleeting views of harsh cliffs or a wide horizon of brilliant red heather. Twice I caught sight of truly alien vistas - sandy hill tops crowned with sharp crags that would seem to be at home on New Zealand’s Central Plateau. The entire geology of the region underlies the soil with either limestone or gritstone – each having a marked effect on the vegetation of the region. The gritstone supports acidic heather and doesn’t produce suitable soils for farming. The limestone, however, is where all the farming and the legendarily thick and soft vibrantly green British fields flourish.

In the end, we visited a 16^th century aristocratic manor and parkland, a Neolithic henge and long barrow, a 14^th century church, an 11th century castle, a Roman fort, and a Late Bronze Age and Iron Age hill fort. In the next day or two, I’ll endeavor to post a separate entry for each of the sites we visited, each with accompanying photographs. If I had a scanner, I could include a map with our locations marked, but perhaps I’ll attempt something similar digitally.

Incidentally – I was woefully out of the loop on the fantastically huge Anglo-Saxon gold horde reported last week. If you’d like to read more about that (and other interesting archaeology and anthropology articles I find interesting), don’t forget to check Ashley’s and my links section to the right of the page.

A Few Shots of the House

The front and back of the house, as well as the kitchen and our room.

Part II of our Travels to Sheffield

Part II of our Travels to Sheffield: Please start by reading the posts below this!

Having not slept well, Ashley and I awake at 8:00 AM GMT (3:00 AM at home) and drag ourselves down to the basement of the B&B for a lovely full English breakfast in a small kitchen with the owners and the other guests. It’s only a two hour train ride to Sheffield from St. Pancras station in London and we’d like to be in Sheffield by 4 or 5. So, we find the wireless password from the front desk, send quick emails to our parents, and head over to St. Pancras (the international train station that connects to France through the Chunnel) to buy tickets for a train to Sheffield. Also while in the station, we are drawn to a bookstore and spend far too much time in there. Without buying anything more than batteries, too! With trains heading out every hour, and our tickets good for the day, we exile our luggage to the hallway again and check out of the B&B. Taking our (now substantially lighter) packs with us but thankfully leaving the cursed red bag, we decide to wonder down the street

And what happens to be right next to St. Pancras?!? That’s right: THE BRITISH LIBRARY! Ashley and I, being the nerds we are, have found our morning’s entertainment. Wandering in, we note all the interesting exhibitions (though most have just ended, as September is apparently international exhibit change-over month). However, the Sir John Ritblat Gallery is permanent, and houses some of the Library’s most brilliant treasures. For instance, neither of us thought we’d be seeing Magna Carta that morning! Or tons of other great objects, such as the Gutenberg Bible, the Lindisfarne Gospels, Lewis Carrol’s original Alice in Wonderland manuscript, original handwritten lyrics for The Beatle’s “Yesterday” and “Help!” and (something I more enjoyed), some great early star charts. In addition, the Library had wonderful interactives that allowed you to turn digital pages of book as well as have access to a host of other cool features all throughout the exhibit.

Leaving the Library after a too-brief stay, we find a pub called O’Neil’s and stop in for cider and Guinness Red (interesting) and some hummus before we head for our train to Sheffield that leaves at 1:55 PM. Once again it’s with the entire luggage (and the red bag), down to the busy roads, through St. Pancras, up a lift with a crazy old British lady mumbling something (we think positive) about Obama, and then over to our train. And also once again, it’s through the turnstiles with all of our heavy bags and hurrying down the platform and trying to toss all of our bags into a car before it leaves. Once we’re moving, I don’t last long before I pass out and sleep through most of the open countryside before we make a few stops, mostly at Derby and Chesterfield before pulling into Sheffield at about 4:00ish.

Here we call our new house’s landline and get our roommate Killian, an Irishman also starting a Master’s program in the Department of Archaeology. He plans to meet us outside of the station in a few minutes, and so we make for the lift to get out. But alas! The lift is broken! Of course! What then takes places is something akin to a sad punishment that one might see in a circle of Dante’s Inferno, as we attempt to time our access up stairs with two large 50 lbs. suitcases apiece, the Red Devil suitcase, and heavy backpacks against a strong counter stream of busy Brits attempting to move down the stairs to catch their trains. 10 minutes and many disapproving faces later, we’re up and realize that we have a staircase waiting for us to descend now. However, this time the lift works! Fortune smiles on us once again! Now it’s time to wait in the biting wind for our roommate to arrive.

Once Killian shows, we start our ascent up a steep hill through the Museum Sheffield, the Winter Gardens, the City Centre, and Fargate to get to the bus stop that will escort us to our door. Many of the first words muttered in Sheffield were very sharp and insulting things aimed at the red carry-on from Hell. Apparently, my hostile vibes directed towards the red bag were heard as it tried to commit luggage-suicide after coming unsnapped from my larger bag at the top of an escalator, tumbling all the way down. Luckily, the escalator was empty and the bag landed so that we just had to wait for it to eventually work its way up to us. However, the bus was nice and Ashley, Killian, and I talked Irish and American archaeology as we headed through campus and the city, and up the hill to Crookes – our neighborhood. Incidentally, after four days walking observation, we’re convinced that Crookes is situated at the highest point to the west of Sheffield, as it’s literally all downhill from here. As physics are pesky and the reverse tends to be true, we’re rethinking our plans about getting bicycles.

Here are some photos of the journey. Pictures of the house to follow. Also, we’ll have these pictures and more with captions on Facebook as well. That’s all for now – we’ll update everyone on our first few days here soon!

Another Happy Landing, or The Bureaucracy Strikes Back - Part I

What follows is part one of the saga of our eerily smooth journey from Washington-Dulles International to the Steel City (Sheffield) over the course of something like 48 waking hours.

We awoke Tuesday morning after a sleepless night at Mary’s (Ashley’s aunt’s) house five minutes from Dulles and proceeded to quickly gather our four large pieces of luggage, two heavy backpacks, one small rolling hard-sided carry-on, two heavy jackets we plan to carry, and a purse. The night before, in an attempt to allow Ashley more weight in our combined bags, I decided to wear my heavy work boots and multiple layers on the plane. It turns out that United Airlines, the fine air-travel corporation we were fated to fly with, allows each overseas passenger two (2) free (!) bags! However, apparently these bags cannot weigh over 50 lbs., as anything from 51 – 70 lbs. will incur a crushing fee. I’m led to understand that the fee for a bag weighing over 71 lbs. is an astronomical monetary fee as well as a limb and a first-born included. Needless to say, we were continuously weighing ourselves and our bags on bathroom scales during the packing process.

Arriving at Dulles at 7:15 AM, I immediately began my epic duel with the small but heavy red carry-on hard-side. Not 50 metres inside the door we have to use a strap to piggy-back it to the top of one of our larger rolling bags. All is well for now. Little did I know, however, just how that little bag would come back to taunt me. We smoothly checked our bags, which apparently were NOT over 50 lbs. (according to plan) and flashed our new U.K. visas stickered inside our passports to the United women behind the counter. It’s then through the usual security and into a large “passenger lounge” that Dulles uses to dock to the side of the terminal and then launches itself, rather much like an escape pod, and drives across the tarmac to your destination, where it raises itself to the appropriate height and re-attaches with that hatch. Here we wandered for a bit, my back beginning to protest against the heavy weight of my pack. Something I don’t understand, as it only contains a heavy laptop, a second laptop battery, five textbooks, a jacket, and two-dozen pieces of smaller sundry, from iPods to two new packs of my favorite ballpoint pen that I’m convinced I won’t be able to find in England. We change $1000.00 each into British Pounds, which nets us a sad £510,00 each. Thank you, American economy. With little other issues, we board United Flight 922 and pack ourselves into our sardine ca – I mean, seats, and settle in for a 7+ hour flight.

At roughly 5:00 PM Eastern (now 10:00 GMT), we land at Heathrow after a sleepless and unproductive flight across the Atlantic. Unpacking ourselves from our seats and head through to Customs, where we get the first actual test to see if all that work we went through (see below) to acquire our U.K. visas was worth the work. We finally get to the head of the line/queue and, to my surprise, it’s simple and painless for both of us to get through the U.K. Border Agency minions and reach the large wall that is painted with “U.K. BORDER” across the top. We’re in!

We find our way to baggage reclaim, find our bags already off of the belts and on the floor next to one another, grab all four of them, and immediately the little red bag rears its angry Samsonite head again. We attach it to the top of one of the other bags, adding considerable weight, and then head down the long ramp to the Underground station. We get tickets to King’s Cross station and then hop on the Underground for a long slog from Heathrow, through the heart of London itself, and out the other side at King’s Cross. Incidentally, the little red bag does nothing to help when you’re trying to squeeze yourself and two large bags behind you through the handicap/stroller Underground turnstiles and then try to help the other through with theirs. Nothing at all. Except afford a good chuckle from the London cops.

Once topside again, we look across the street and, with the help of a stranger, get pointed down the road of our B&B. It’s upon the crossing here that Ashley learns that she’s going to have to start looking left first when crossing the streets here. At least in London they’re thoughtful enough to have painted on the road “Look Left” and “Look Right” as appropriate (No such luck in Sheffield, however). We head down Argyle Street and get to the Princess Hotel, where we ring the bell and are let in at roughly midnight local time. We get our key, leave our bags in the hall, and head out again to get food and look around (as we feel it’s only like 7:00 PM or so). Sadly, nothing much is open, aside from a Burger King and a McDonald’s, both of which we vow to avoid at all costs. After walking a bit further and turning down a side street, we find a “Q’s Chicken” which has the same logo as Chase Banks in the States and is run by Pakistanis. There we find amazing chicken kebabs and chicken tikka wraps, fries, real Fanta, and British Coca-Colas. After watching Arabic news for a while, we realize it’s about 2:00 AM locally and the owner likely wants to close, so we head back to the hotel to try to get some sleep. In the dead of night, I quietly (I hope) bring each bag up stairs one-by-one, stacking them around our bed and taking up much of the floor space. We watch a little bit of T.V. and try to fall asleep.

The Ballad of the Visa

As it turns out, untimely approval of a visa application is not the most disastrous prospect upon sending your passport and supporting documentation off to the British Consulate. Having it be lost in the mail, in actuality, is the worst possible scenario. Imagine preparing a visa application over the course of a summer. The stars themselves must align to ensure your success. The biometrics must be dated within two weeks of the Consulate receiving the packet. The visa letter sent from your university needs to be dated at least a month old. The supporting documentation which you painstakingly completed online, printed, and sent should be less than ten days old. In total, your window for success becomes a smaller and smaller sliver of light. You then entrust your hopes upon the postal officer who delivers your precious envelope into the hands of the knowledgeable mail room supervisor at the British Consulate’s office in Chicago. Here your fate will be decided. That is, unless the envelope sits for an ungodly amount of time in the wrong pile within the office’s mail room. This seems unlikely. Oh, but wait…it happened.

About a week after mailing off our visa packets, containing our passports and every vital piece of information about each of us, Kevin received confirmation of his packet’s arrival and verification that he had, indeed, received a visa from the British government. I received nothing. Although seemingly strange we assumed all would be fine in due time. Once due time came and went, I embarked on a mission to talk to an actual human being at the Consulate’s office in Chicago. To this day I still have not actually achieved this goal, but after a few days I did locate an email address and enquired about the status of my visa application. I was told, in sober and straight forward language, that my packet was almost certainly lost in the mail. They kindly suggested that I start the entire process over. Oh, and I needed to get a new passport too.

Suddenly my window’s small sliver of light became non existent and was replaced with the bleak prospect of canceling my passport and taking a night train to Washington, D.C., (the closest place to Georgia where one can apply for a quickie passport), and returning to the cold, nondescript building in Atlanta for another round of biometrics. After 16 emails with the Chicago office (and 16 unanswered pleas to please speak to someone on the phone) I decided to cancel my passport, which was surely being used at that very moment as an alias of an international criminal. Making a noon deadline for myself, I hoped the post office returned my call with news of my found packet. At two minutes to noon I found a new message from the Consulate's Chicago office in my inbox, completely independent from the collection of customer service representatives with whom I had been in contact. The letter informs me that the Consulate received my packet and will be processing it over the course of 10-15 business days.

I am convinced the British government is messing with me. Refusing to believe the message, I email once again the people who had ensured me that my information was lost. After a day and a half they respond. Yes, indeed my packet had “resurfaced” and was being processed. I refuse to celebrate until about 12 business days later when the news arrives that my application has been approved, (this occurs just one day away from me leaving Georgia and just a week and a half before our scheduled flight.) Now if only the Consulate mailed my passport, with its newly imprinted visa, to the correct address. One more hurdle to jump for their entertainment, and I drive to my old house in the suburbs of Athens to collect my entrance ticket into Great Britain.