mike’s “Street Antiquity”

When this month’s theme of “Street Antiquity” was first announced I was well pleased. “Easy” I thought. An old street, or something old on a street (other than me). “How hard can it be?”
For I’d confused “antiquity” with “antique” and I’d always been led to believe that “antique” could refer to something 100 years or more old.

But then I paused to reflect. A fatal mistake, as I’ve learned so many times in the past. Which is why I tend to opt for the “jump in feet first and worry about it afterwards” approach.
For pausing to reflect apparently exercises the power over me to render me virtually incapable of achieving anything constructive whatsoever.

Or other, equally demoralising, effects.

But, I paused to reflect. And such reflecting started to run something along the lines of “Hang on a mo’… does antiquity actually mean the same as antique? What precisely is antiquity?”

So I hauled out the dictionary.

Bugger!

For apparently “antiquity” refers to “Ancientness; old times, especially time before middle ages”. Never could remember when all those Ages stopped and started so time to resort to my dictionary of history terms to discover that the “Middle Ages” is generally used to refer to the period between 500-1500 AD.

Bugger again!

It was starting to look as though this month’s theme was going to be a real head-scratcher.
Clearly a bit of pondering was in order.

After a ponder or two I recollected that Darren and I were due to pay a visit (to expand our collections of photographs) to the offices of Albion Archaeology in Bedford.
“Aha, maybe I’ll spot something there that’ll do the job.”

Pause for reflection. What if I didn’t? Where could I go in the general vicinity that’s both really old and is likely to offer the possibility of snapping something useful?
The answer was in fact almost on my doorstep (well, ok, maybe a few miles away, but not impossibly distant). The village of Elstow! Birthplace of John Bunyan (he of “Pilgrim’s Progress” fame and other stuff… think he even got banged up in Bedford nick at one time for some heretical nonsense or other). And I knew for a fact that there were some really old buildings in the village.

Apparently Darren had been thinking along similar lines and we ended up trekking out there together with all the requisite kit.

Well, for me at least, Elstow turned up trumps. (Dunno how matey’s getting on yet.) Trumps that is in the context of my having been a bit liberal with the theme interpretation and extended “Antiquity” to include the Middle Ages.

The result then…

The Photo

I started off with a shot of some timber-framed houses along Elstow’s High Street. Although they date mainly from the 16th century, so right on the very edge of the specified time window, they do include work from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Should be ok there then, and being a pic of houses on a street they must surely satisfy the term Street Antiquity.

Just to reinforce the Antiquity part however I then overlaid a shot of part of the ruins of Hillersden Mansion. This was rebuilt as a Mansion about 1625 (a bit late for our purposes) but “from the previous west range of the 14th century Abbey cloister”… so we’re actually ok there too.

And here it is…