The Making of the Southend Werewolf
I spend quite a bit of time searching old newspapers. Usually I'm looking for something quite specific, but every now and then another story appears that sends me off in a completely different direction.
Blog and Field Notes
Not every story becomes a magazine article.
Some begin with a photograph. Others with a book, a landscape, or a question that refuses to go away.
These pages serve as an ongoing notebook, bringing together reflections, discoveries, and the subjects that continue to shape The History Alchemist.
Notes and Observations
Margins of Discovery — Entry Seven The Vertical Plane
This series has gradually drifted, almost without meaning to, from objects pulled out of the ground to things that are harder to pin down. The earlier entries had weight to them. Gold, wood, bone. You could point to them, measure them, argue over them in a practical sense. This one sits a little differently. It still belongs in the margins, but the edge it occupies is closer to the present, and less certain.
The Margins of Discovery Entry Six: The Hexham Heads
In 1971, two small stone heads were uncovered in a garden in Hexham, Northumberland. They were found during routine digging, nothing deliberate. At first glance, they did not appear especially significant. Roughly carved, heavy for their size, with exaggerated features. They were taken indoors.
The Margins of Discovery: Entry Five: Ötzi the Iceman
Ötzi and the Problem of Being Too Well Preserved
The Essex Pyramids — Field Notes from Bartlow Hills
The Margins of Discovery Entry Four: The Mary Rose
On 19 July 1545, the Mary Rose capsized in the Solent during an engagement with the French fleet. She went down quickly, in calm conditions, and within sight of Henry VIII, who was watching from Southsea Castle. Hundreds of men were lost.
Field Notes (WWII): Dragon’s Teeth on Broomfield Road, Chelmsford, Essex
Whilst doing some research over the last couple of days, I came across these World War Two defences still in place in Chelmsford, Essex, and being relatively close, I decided to go and see them for myself.
The Margins of Discovery Entry Three: The Antikythera Mechanism
The Antikythera Mechanism and the Problem of Being Too Early
The Margins of Discovery Entry Two: Tutankhamun
When Howard Carter uncovered the sealed tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, the discovery was immediately recognised as extraordinary. Unlike other royal burials in the Valley of the Kings, this one was largely intact. Objects lay where they had been placed more than three thousand years earlier. The moment carried a sense of intrusion as much as triumph.
The Margins of Discovery Entry One: Sutton Hoo
History is usually written as a chain of evidence. Dates, objects, conclusions.
Field Notes: Execution Dock at Low Tide
I went down to Execution Dock on Sunday morning with my friend Darryl, making the most of a low tide and a clear run of time. We parked near the Captain Kidd pub and stepped down onto the Thames foreshore just as the river had reached its lowest ebb. It felt like a narrow window. Miss it, and the place remains largely inaccessible, separated by water rather than distance.