So there we are, I have finally opened, perused, binned,
sorted, stacked and understood the great volume of correspondence that has
built up since my enforced departure. I am now ready and willing to communicate
with the outside world once again.
Clearly all of the greatest events in Cambridge in the last
year have taken place between the Middle Bronze Age and about 700AD. I refer of
course, to the astounding discoveries of the archaeologists who have been
digging up Clay Farm and Trumpington Meadows. All else, from the elevation of
Dame Mary Archer, whose odour of sanctity wafts disconcertingly through my open
window as I write, to the opening of the Guided Bus system, must pale into
insignificance compared with the discovery of the Trumpington Cross, the
unearthing of a skull and crossbones cult behind the Green Man and the
astounding revelation that a first century Roman memorial garden will underly,
forever, the soggy foundations of what
we must now call (if only we knew how to pronounce it) Great Kneighton.
Much of this may be discovered in the breathless video of
the endearing
Richard Mortimer of
Oxford Archaeology East which may be found here
“What?” I hear you ask “Have we no Cantabs available that we need to import
such folk from the Thames Valley?” To which I can only reply that Mr Mortimer
has more enthusiasm for the past beneath his dirt-encrusted fingernails than
most of our fellow citizens do in their abstracted minds.
Clearly the young lady who owned the cross must have been
closely related to King Seighbert, the original founder of the University of
Cambridge as John Caius noted in his excellent and accurate history of that
institution, since the workmanship is identical to that of the other items from
his family collection, including the Allington Hill medallion buried with him when he fell at the Battle of Fleam Dyke.
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