Kit Barton

📢NEW POST: a report on Chris Hoban's recent performance of music inspired by our wills at a sold gig for Topsham Folk Club 📢

📜🎶🎻🪗🪕

@leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social @cemsexeter.bsky.social

lovely to run into you too!

photo of the outside of the national archives london

photo of coal dust covered hands and the edge of a box of documents

photo of a sleepy cat and a cup of tea

photo of 19th century graves at Kingston cemetary

Couple of pictures to summarise the first week of my trip to London; lots of time spent at the national archives, many hands washed (and rewashed), several museums visited, plenty of cat hangouts, a couple of late nights out, and one very muddy cemetary walk.

An historic illustration of a giant sea serpent dragging a man from a sailing ship.

🐍 #NationalSerpentDay is dedicated to snake appreciation, understanding their role in ecosystems, and helping to overcome fear or misconceptions about them, such as this one... This #myth was likely based on #oarfish sightings. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2014/10/the-... #ILoveBHL 📖 🧪

📜Bequest of the day📜

Royalist Sir Nicholas Crispe asks for an autopsy in his 1666 will:

'I would have my body opened that the Phisitiones may see the cause of my soe long shortnes of breath to be helpfull to my Posterity that are troubled with the same Infirmity'.

#EarlyModern 🗃️

A photograph of an ornate eighteenth-century silver punch ladle. It is positioned at an angle, with the ladle in the bottom left and the handle pointing towards the top right, positioned against a white background. Image caption: Cast, chased and engraved silver punch ladle; London hallmarks for 1738-39, mark of Paul de Lamerie, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2025, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O156415/ladle-lamerie-paul-de/

📢 In Case You Missed It! 📢

January's 'Will of the Month' blog post is now live 📜

Read all about a Yorkshire widow's 'Living Will', as well as her ownership of 'global goods': tea, coffee, china, and a ladle for serving punch (made with sugar & spices) ☕🫖

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

What a beautiful write up in The Guardian. It's been an honour to be involved in this exhibition and I'm so excited to see it in full when it opens this weekend - if you're in Plymouth it's a must-see!

The Probate Inventories of the Court of Orphans Probate Inventories of the Court of Orphans reveal hidden details about lives of Londoners, their businesses and women in the economy of early modern London

I wrote a short blog on the Court of Orphans probate inventories held @thelondonarchives.bsky.social

A fascinating source for anyone researching early modern social history or material culture 📜

Link below 👇

www.thelondonarchives.org/blog/the-pro...

Today is “Take a Walk Outdoors Day”! So: grab a good book (preferably from De Gruyter) for a sunny bench, wrap up warm, and head out into the fresh air!

#brueghel #earlymodern

Conference Visit the post for more.

📣DEADLINE EXTENDED!

We are delighted to announce that we're extending the deadline for applications to our 50th anniversary conference!

At this busy time, we want as many people as possible to have the chance to apply.

Now accepting applications until 23 Jan!

socialhistory.org.uk/events/confe...

Painting of a swaddled baby, c.17th century edited to have a laptop and cup of tea near them

How it feels to hit your writing goals and empty your email inbox whilst remaining luxeriously cosy

Its on days like this, wet and windy and wild, that I'm very glad for work that lets me work from a large mound of blankets

Someone’s not looked at a single early modern history book before opening their mouth, clearly. By 1600, over 4,000 immigrants lived in England’s second largest city, Norwich - one in three people in the city had not been born in England.

Yes I had seen that one about! There's something about it that rings disappointingly for me, so the scrabbling around for an alternative will have continue until I'm forced to concede

I'm also still scratching my head for a good collective neutral noun for neices and nephews that doesn't sound massively naff so please pass on your ideas

Everytime I think I've got a handle on the different ways family descriptors were used by people in the 17th century, I come across another funny one; "my neece grace browne daughter of my sonne John"

Unfit for service: healthcare and welfare in Nelson's Navy Hidden in the seemingly mundane bureaucratic letters of the Royal Navy lie some fascinating insights into the role of the British state in providing healthcare and welfare to ill and injured seamen.

This year, as a Caird Research Fellow at Royal Museums Greenwich, I developed a new research project on occupational health, disability, and welfare in the British Royal Navy during the French Wars (1793–1815). Read some of my preliminary findings here: www.rmg.co.uk/stories/mari....

The British Library have a searchable interim Archives & Manuscripts Catalogues up & running: searcharchives.bl.uk
(posting for all the folks who, like me, had somehow managed to miss this important development)

Started keeping a little folder of screenshots on my laptop called "places I've zoomed from". It's a lot of picnic benches and GWR trains. What can I say I'm an out and about kind of guy

Here from the same fabulous series by George Spratt is "The Connoisseur."
(I like this art-lover's monocle and also the smaller picture that she's carrying as a reticule, the strap around her wrist.)

If your choice is between an existential risk to your organisation, vs being a fascist collaborator, and you make the difficult choice to be a collaborator...

...then you are still a collaborator.

Graphic of a world map with hands reaching up to a red AIDS ribbon

Today is World AIDS Day. The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) has 200+ sources on the history of HIV/AIDS. You can also consult BBIH’s free readings lists on LGBTQ+ histories and the histories of infectious diseases to learn more about recent scholarship on this topic buff.ly/OK5HSbu

Screenshot of the session timeslot information

placard saying "I have been accepted for the Leeds International Medieval Congress 6-9 July 2026"

Looking forward to rocking up at #imc2026 to talk about all the fun (and surprising!) things you can find in the wills of single men across early modern England, alongside other fascinating talks on fatherhood, masculinity, and emotions on the Constructing Masculinities Panel.

Two students look at objects in the reading room at The Museum of English Rural Life.

Are you a PhD student & interested in using museum collections in your teaching or research?

We're running a *free* doctoral training programme for students at any institution to learn about working with collections.

Find out more:

collections.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/

Have I sailed as close as you are legally allowed to do to have a nose at the SS Montgomery?

Of course.

Moment I knew she existed, I was out there faster than Jay Hulme when he spots a rickety ladder in a church.

Here she is:

wouldn't reccomend reading within the grain, farmers tend to get annoyed by researchers unexpectedly camping out in their crop fields

Note: in the clip I said the wills project covered the period 1540-1780. WRONG!! It's actually 1540-1790, we have a whole extra decade to think about, lucky us.

Moving... Listening... Reacting... Sampling...

You can listen to the #futuresonair recordings on @soundartradio.bsky.social now, to hear me and many other much more eloquent and interesting researchers talking about our research and interests.

soundartradio.org.uk/services/fut...

YouTube video by Will Pollard Chris Hoban - Rings On My Fingers (one )

📜WILLS ON THE RADIO!📜

The brilliant Chris Hoban was on local radio talking about the wills project and playing some songs!

This one is perhaps my favourite: based on the will of London widow Alice Walter, proved September 1665. TNA PROB 11/317/428.

#EarlyModern 🗃️

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXwB...

🎆 It's Bonfire Night🎆

To celebrate we're showing our copy of 'The second booke teaching most exactly, the composing of all manner of fire-works for tryumph and recreation' by John Bate, published in 1635 (shelf marl: S PAM 479).