Street Antiquity

Cutting it close I know but here it is, my photo for December.

tam’s “street antiquity”

Nora Mill, Helen GA. Established in 1876.

Nora Mill has a great website. If you are interested in it’s history, go here.

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…

All roads lead to Rome

Let me tell you……this month’s topic, Street Antiquity, has been very, very difficult. Certainly the whole purpose of this endeavor was, and remains, to stretch ourselves a bit. To try the unfamiliar. To stretch the meaning of the topic. To render it in our own particular vision. But this time I was having no small problem determining how I could stretch my lens, so to speak, around this particular topic.

Certainly the obvious sprung to mind. The notion of shooting old buildings or structures found on, or as our British counterparts prefer, in the street was the most obvious route and not one to be scoffed at either. Of course, our British counterparts have things a bit easier in this regard as their fine island nation is rife with very old and antiquated structures. One need only exit their door, turn left, walk fifteen minutes and voila! There will no doubt be some home or pub built in the mid-sixteen-hundreds just begging to be photographed.

But what was I to do? Certainly I could find some older structures upon some road….there’s a farm house not far from here, which was built in the mid eighteen hundreds, but that hardly feels like antiquity. So I have been giving this particular subject great thought over these weeks of December and had come away with the idea of shooting some older buildings in the downtown Dayton area. As such I took to my vehicle this afternoon and headed down towards the city, but made a minor detour to a certain older neighborhood where I had hoped to grab a few photographs of holiday decorations.

While out of my car and moving around the road looking for the best angles, etc. I happened to notice something rather shiny upon the rain-moistened roadway..

“What’s this?” thought I as I bent down to obtain a closer look. To be frank my first impression was that it was a dime (a 10-penny piece, if you will), but closer examination revealed that it was indeed a coin, but no coin of recent minting. Curious and anxious I snapped a few shots of the coin laying there on the wet bricks before picking it up and returning to my car. Further examination revealed nothing to me…..it was crudely struck, clearly old and tasted of silver. “This could be something valuable!” raced through my mind so I elected to cancel the rest of my journey as planned and instead drove to a local stamp and coin shop.

The proprietor examined my find for a few minutes, referenced a page in some book, placed the coin upon the counter and said to me “Congratulations! You have found a Roman silver denarius.”

“What? Really? Get out of here.” was my knee-jerk retort, but he continued “Yeah, the head is the likeness of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and was no doubt minted some time during his reign, which was…..” he glances back at the page in the book, “….161 to 180 A.D. Where did you find it, if you don’t mind my asking?”

I managed to stammer something about one of our oldest local roads just south of downtown Dayton and mentioned that it was just laying there..upon the remnants of this long-ago-built road. “Amazing,” he replied.

So there you go folks…..clearly this coin of a long forgotten realm was dropped by maybe a Roman Centurion making his way down this road south of Dayton heading to parts unknown. Or maybe it was a merchant on his way back to Rome with fine goods he had purchased and traded for while visiting Dayton. I don’t know…but I do know that you can read more about the denarius (and see a picture that looks remarkably like my coin) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denarius.