Rachel Anderson

Early Modern name of the day: Ezeckiell Cakebread 🙌

This is such a wonderful love letter to the gorgeous archive we have the privilege of caring for at @nenature.bsky.social ✨

Well done @petermitchellnhsn.bsky.social 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Archive Monday: love these ink drawings from MS Tanner 118 in the Bodleian. Skeleton representing death with various scenes of a moralistic nature. Dress suggests late Elizabethan / early Jacobean. Scenes include royal court, hunting, duelling, trade/banking, religious/political persecution.

Bold Encounters with Insects: Thomas John Bold and the Extreme Wet Winter of 1852–53 Digitization volunteer Sandra Bishop explores a fascinating insight into climate, disease and ecology in the early Transactions of the NHSN When I heard the NHSN was seeking volunteers to digitise the...

In 1852, Newcastle was afflicted by "swarms", "multitudes", "masses", "plagues of flies" that "filled both eyes and mouth" and left crops looking as though "saturated by a bloody rain". The cause? Abnormal weather events. Our volunteer Sandra takes up the story: www.nhsn.org.uk/bold-encount...

A trade card for Richard Middleton featuring a black coffin and undertakers.

Trade card of Richard Middleton, coffin maker and undertaker - 19th century.

I’m actually super proud of this little project. The transactions are such a fab resource not just for natural history but for the social and cultural history of the north east! Do have a browse! ✨

Introducing the newly digitised Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumbria!

Today we proudly unveil the digitised Transactions of the Natural History Society of Northumbria, starting with all 19th-century volumes from 1831 to 1899.

Find out more at: www.nhsn.org.uk/transactions...

Would you like to improve your creative writing skills, but need a spark of inspiration?

Join us for a flash fiction workshop where NHSN's unique collections provide the creative fuel. Learn how to craft compelling, concise stories that bring the past to life.

Book here: bit.ly/nhsnflashfic...

🌸🌿 Celebrate Blossom Week with Us! 🌿🌸

Join us during the Festival of Blossom and learn the timeless art of hand-wiring flowers in our Flower Crown workshop led by local expert florist Jules Fleur.

🌷 Limited spaces, book now to reserve your spot at bit.ly/nhsnflowercrown

A book mystery from 1704 in our North East Nature Archive - can any sharp-eyed / bee-informed readers help out?

This is TONIGHT and we've still got loads of tickets left - come and bee informed!

#ArchiveFoodAndDrink Looking for Easter bakes inspiration? Flick through Jane Loraine's 17th century recipe book which contains approx 620 culinary & medicinal recipes, including spice-cake, curd loaf & cheesecakes collectionscaptured.ncl.ac.uk/digital/coll... #Archive30 @arascot.bsky.social

The Lancashire Plague Petitions: Life after the Plague in Early Modern England Abstract. Historians typically explore the resilience of past societies in terms of large-scale outcomes like population levels. In contrast, this paper ex

for anyone who missed it the first time, my AHR article is now open access (yay!)

academic.oup.com/ahr/article/...

Fortune and glory, kid! Very nice to see a book I wrote added to the Decolonial Museum Studies shelf in the @northeastmuseums.bsky.social library:

title page from a Civil War Tract in Special Collections with a hand written not at the bottom of the page, possibly a date.

Can you help?
One of our Bequest students is working with our Civil War Tracts (early published items relating to the English Civil War). She's came across the note at the bottom of page, we think it might be a date (21 Sept 1646), but is it?

Ref. Bradshaw 942.062 LET

📣New on the blog: How Covid impacted our relationship with nature.

As we mark five years since the first lockdown, we reflect on how the natural world helped us cope with the unprecedented uncertainty. Read the full stories here: www.nhsn.org.uk/how-covid-im... 🌳💚

Bread cupboard

C17th century food bank - the bread cupboard provided under the terms of the 1638 will of John Sayer, yeoman, in the porch of St Mary's Church, Woodbridge, Suffolk. Bread was provided into the 1970s; the charity continues to assist poor people.

Thank you! ☺️

Thank you! ✨

Delighted to announce that I passed my viva yesterday with minor corrections! ✨

A big thank you goes to my lovely examiners @SocialHistoryOx and Amanda Herbert for being so kind and giving such thoughtful feedback!

Time for cake! 🍰

Incredible find in the @nenature.bsky.social archive collection: microscopic photos and mounting of fossil fish teeth from Northumberland coal seams, by the pitman naturalist John Simm (1929-1904)

A greyscale map of London with Castle Baynard Ward surrounded in a red square. The base map is Wenceslaus Hollar, Map of London before the Fire of 1666, c. 1667, Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University. Gift of George W. Davison (B.A. Wesleyan 1892). The red square roughly indicates Baynard Castle ward, where John Pooke, the testator of this will resided.

📢 New 'Will of the Month' Post! 📢

For February @lsangha.bsky.social uncovers the fascinating story of a London citizen and former prisoner, who examined his conscience when he made his will in 1607 ⏳📜

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

#history #skystorians #earlymodern @uoearchhist.bsky.social

ff. 18v-19r, MS O.9.39. See thread for links to full digitised manuscript and online transcription.

'Whoso will a gardener be
Here he may both hear and see
Every time of the year and of the moon
And how the craft shall be done…'

For #MichaelhouseMonday, we are highlighting a 15th-century manuscript poem which describes the practice of gardening in the period when Michaelhouse was operating. 🧵

These quotes are drawn from stories shared in a recent workshop as part of 'Nature’s Cure in Time of Need', a Heritage Lottery Funded project capturing how nature supports us in challenging times. Do you have a story about how the natural world has helped you?

Submit yours here: ow.ly/yIr450V5cH8

🙈 noted thank you 😂

Morning all! I'm preparing for my viva in a couple of weeks, would anyone have any advice or tips? Thank you in advance! ✨

The Pitmen Naturalists: Introduction In a new series of blogs, NHSN Archive and Library volunteer Maureen Flisher explores the lives and work of some unsung pioneers of natural history in the North East When I became an NHSN Archive

You've heard of the Pitmen Painters, but what about the Pitmen Naturalists!?

In a new series of blogs, NHSN Archive and Library volunteer Maureen Flisher explores the lives and work of some unsung pioneers of natural history in the North East.

Read the first instalment here: ow.ly/MpFM50V1Xo5

VERY SHORT DEADLINE (Feb. 26) for a FANTASTIC opportunity for a student to do a fully funded PhD with the amazing Elaine Leong on "Translating Monstrosity: Constructions of Difference in Early Modern England and France"
Full details here. Please pass on or repost!
www.lahp.ac.uk/prospective-...