“Straight into the gutter again, Dr Baker?”

The New Year seems like a good time for a first-ever blog, so here goes, and a very Happy New Year to all my reader.

2017 – old books and a new discovery

The past year began firmly indoors with the final stages of two books that have been in progress for upwards of five years each – the Bristol Archaeological Assessment volume (co-editing, with Bob Jones, the late John Brett’s book) and the Houses of Hereford 1200-1700, edited and written with Pat Hughes and Richard K Morriss. Both are now at Oxbow and the best part of any book production cycle begins – knowing there’s absolutely nothing more to be done by you, looking forward to the arrival of the finished product and to drinks, canapés and congratulations at the launch. Though – given there’s no such thing as a free launch – there’s also the ‘how long will it take to spot the first typo’ competition to look forward to…and then the reviewers. Has anyone ever greeted the publication of a book they’ve worked on with unalloyed satisfaction or without some feeling of anti-climax?

The summer of 2017 saw your correspondent spending more time excavating than at any time since the 70s, for community projects in Herefordshire (Longtown Castle and the Bartonsham Row Ditch outside Hereford). And also, along with Anwen J Baker, excavating an evaluation trench on the suspected site of Meole Brace Castle – surely the most obscure castle in Shropshire – in Shrewsbury’s southern suburbs.

The trench hit the corner of a cellared building, made of early (Tudor?) brick and re-used medieval stonework, that was probably a cross-wing to the medieval fortified manor house (occasionally dignified by the name ‘castle’) that burnt down in 1669. Its remains were glimpsed once, in the early 19^th century. You occasionally get asked, particularly on building sites, ‘what’s the best discovery you’ve ever made?’ My standard answer used to be ‘a medieval bridge’ (the Old Tern Bridge in Attingham Park). Now it’s ‘a lost castle’. Or, better still, tell a local resident who knows Meole Brace (a roundabout, Sainsbury’s, council estate), that you’ve found Meole Brace Castle – and enjoy that jaw dropping.

2018 – offensive street-names and the medieval mindset of Donald Trump

The first working week of the New Year opens with an enquiry from a TV production company wanting an opinion on a current news story regarding the residents of Bell End Lane in Rowley Regis pressing their local authority to change the street name. My response: if it’s historical, keep it; if it’s recently named after, say, a Councillor Belle End, by all means change it.

My identity as the go-to-guy for offensive street names dates back to 2001 and the paper ‘Towards a geography of sexual encounter’ co-written with friend and historical colleague Richard Holt, on the Gropecunt Lane street-names of medieval England. Many or even most towns had one, adjacent to the main market place or public quay, in a way that suggests they were patronised more by incomers than by local residents, and that they represented just one more dimension, albeit of the most desperate character, of what would now be called the contemporary ‘commercial offer’. Only Shrewsbury now retains a ‘Grope Lane’. The full, medieval, version of the street name is heard for the last time in Shrewsbury in a property deed in 1561, Newcastle’s in 1588. After that, even ‘Grope Lane’ was too much for most places, like York, where Grope Lane became Grape, or Wells, Somerset, where Grope became Grove. The point is, absolutely nowhere did the old offensive usage survive the 16^th century, and it was probably regarded as luridly obsolete even then: it was consigned to the medieval past, a relic of a sensibility and a set of attitudes that civic pride had expunged.

But not, of course, defeated. So here we are in 2018, watching the antics of the Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief, while simultaneously processing last year’s ‘MeToo’ revelations. At least the market-traders, farmers and sailors of medieval England knew they had to pay: they didn’t assume a right to sexual assault as a perk of office-holding or power over other people. Perhaps someone should start a petition to de-modernise (or re-modernise?) Shrewsbury town-centre’s Grope Lane and rename it Pussy-Grab Lane? Come on Shropshire Council – you could invite the U.S. President to open it when he’s over here on his state visit. Hands (little ones) Across the Sea and all that. Expect a surge in local sales of pink wool.