The Cotswolds and Verulamium

On Sunday, I went to the Cotswold. I have decided that if I'm every a millionaire or billionaire I want to have a flat in London and a house in the Cotswolds. You can see pics I took on my facebook page and I am sure you will agree it is breathtaking.

Some facts I learned from our guide:
• meaning of name -- Cots: sheep's pen; wold: hill ; so Cotswolds means sheep's pen hills
• Beginning of villages: 11th century William the Conqueror gave land to the church and built lots of monasteries in the cotswolds
•  The villagers main source of income was from sheep: Boys cared for the sheep, men sheared the sheep, women graded the wool, and girls spun the wool  (also, the wool was treated with stale urine :/)
• 1500s Henry VIII -during the Reformation he took over the monasteries and sold them to private citizens that converted them into homes.
•  1600s Charles I - Oliver Cromwell - the final battles of civil war are in cotswolds
• 1700s industrial revolution - no coal in cotswold so cloth industry moves out - they take sheep as well - no industry in cotswolds

We passed through several villages on the coach and walked through several villages. Best walk ever! I had seen one in Oxford, but there was loads more in the Cotswolds- kissing gates. It's a gate that only one person can pass through at a time. It's supposedly to keep animals from going through gates cos they can't figure how to maneuver around the gate. It's called a kissing gate because boys would trap their dates in the gate and wouldn't let them go without a kiss.

On Monday, I went to St. Albans and more specifically the site of Verulamium which was a Roman Britain colony. It blows my mind that it existed 2000 years ago.

Facts I learned from guide:
• St. Alban was the first Christian martyr in England. A young man came to his house asking for refuge, and it turned out that the young was a Christian priest. He converted St. Alban and St. Alban helped him escape Verulamium. When St. Alban was asked to make a sacrifice to the Roman gods, he refused, was tried, and executed.
• St. Albans was founded during Medieval times
• Cardinal Wosley (The Tudors!) was an abbot in the Abbey in St. Albans
• Verulamium was the 3rd most important town in England during Roman times
• Verulamium is at the bottom of the hill and over the centuries they moved it to the top of the hill which is now St. Albans
• Golf fact: Samuel Ryder of the Ryder Cup lived in St. Albans and started seed packeting business
• Henry VIII sold monastery to Bacon family (Francis Bacon)
• Pudding Stone: gravel stuck on some other stone-- unique to St. Albans -- called "witches' or devils' stone because you can never get rid of it. People who live there have to keep clearing it out of their gardens over and over again. also, St. Albans doesn't have any stone natural to area to use to build.
• St. Albans is site of proto-Thames - during evolution the river changed course
• Roman emperor Claudius - 43 AD ish - wasn't respected very much and thought of as not very intelligent. Decided to conquer England to have a conquest to his name.
• Michael's Lodge right outside Verulamium - made in a Victorian style out of flint.
• Roman theatre was used a place of worship. Probably the spot was already a place of worship in pre Roman (Celts) time. Celts used water in their worship
• Theatre linked with religions festivals and probably to goddess Minerva
• Time of theatre is around 140 - 160 AD
• The men used brown masks and the men playing women used white masks (sad masks were bad guys, smiling masks were good guys)
• Romans would have real death scenes- they used criminals
• After 313AD theatre considered pagan by Christianity (eventually filled with rubbish)


My favorite part of this tour was the mosaic that was discovered and left in same place. It's fascinating to see how the Romans lived-- they even had central heating!