News of the past

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.