The Early Modern Commons

Celebrity Beyond, photo by Didier Duforest This particular Georgian Gent has just got back from doing three consecutive cruises on board the Celebrity Beyond – a very modern state-of-the-art vessel which was launched last year. The stage in the theatre...

Image courtesy of David Cohen, Unsplash To mark the fact that the clocks changed last night, a look at one of the ideas which triggered the whole question of daylight saving – a letter to the editor of The Journal of Paris dated 1784, from no less...

My ancestor Richard Hall loved collecting what might be called ‘factoids’ – snippets of information presented as scientific facts, but often rather lacking in accuracy. One of his factoids, stored in his little notebook, reads: ‘Onions...

We are used to all sorts of indices measuring inflation – retail prices being just one. I always like the Mars Bar Inflation Index, looking at the fluctuating cost of a simple piece of confectionery, after factoring in all the variables such as...

Image of the King visiting St Paul’s, shown courtesy of the British Museum For four months towards the end of 1788 George III was incapacitated by illness – racked with pain and mental instability, the King’s conduct led to the first...

This is the concluding part of my various blogs re-visiting some of my Irish-themed posts – a repeat of a post made seven years ago when I paid a visit to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin: As a young boy at boarding school (yes, thanks for reminding...

Fake Or Fortune? Philip Mould and Fiona Bruce with the painting ‘Peniston Lamb II’, originally valued at £8,000 (Photo: Ben Fitzpatrick/BBC/PA Wire)   Last night the BBC aired the latest episode of ‘Fake or Fortune?’,...

In 1758 Richard Hall was living in the area of Southwark called the Bridgefoot when London Corporation decided “to do something” about London Bridge. Until 1749 it had been the only structure linking the North and South banks of the River...

Richard Hall rarely mentioned party politics in his diaries – I suspect that he simply wasn’t that interested. But he did mention politics and current events if he felt that they represented a threat to stable government and the rule of law....

Richard Hall’s diaries for 1780-85 I last kept a diary when I was at school, rather a lot of years ago, but I remember one thing about the diaries – Letts made them – and that was that they always showed the phases of the moon. Which...

To mark the end of the year, a snippet repeated from Richard’s diary for 1790: I have not come across a record of the disaster – although the century seems to have been marked by a number of catastrophic drownings in the canals around Amsterdam,...

Following on from high-lighting some of Richard’s lists, here is a repeat of an earlier blog about the entire list of household contents at One London Bridge, at the time when Richard’s son William was in residence: When Richard and ...

Richard filled book after book with distances between towns which he visited, sometimes combined with the turnpike fees paid along the way. Here his list gives  the distances by road when travelling from Bath to Bristol, from Gloucester to Bath and...

My ancestor Richard Hall loved lists – even lists of lists. Quite why some of these lists have survived the centuries is a bit of a mystery. OK, it has helped that the males in my family have all been inveterate hoarders, but I still find it strange...

My idea of packing for a few days away is to put a few things in a suitcase and hope that I have remembered something waterproof. My Dear Lady’s Wife has a rather different approach: she sits down and makes a list. (Boring!) She would therefore...

I am always amazed at how much it cost to travel in the Georgian era – at least, if you wanted to do it in style rather than in the back of a hay waggon. In 1784 Richard Hall and his wife set off for Bourton on the Water from London – a two-day...

Sometimes the diaries of my ancestor are interesting because of what he does not say – and in a way his diary from May 1767 is a case in point: basically, he only remembers to talk about two things, health and the weather. Two hundred and fifty...

In an earlier  post I mentioned about Richard worrying about events around him – none more so than the British weather. Here is a page reviewing the weather trends in 1794/5:The page opens with the comment  that January 1794 saw considerable...

My ancestor was a real worrier – and the older he got the more he worried – and the more he filled his diaries with notes about what concerned him. Those concerns spilled out into his collection of day books and informal jottings –...

The diary entry of my ancestor Richard Hall, for March 1800, reads: “The Queen Charlotte Man of War took fire and blew up – it is feared not less than 700 lives are lost.” It was typical of many such diary entries of my ancestor, who...