As several readers may know, my day job is looking after Chedworth Roman Villa in the Cotswolds. Chedworth sits comfortably within a region that supported some of the most prosperous rural estates in Britannia. Yet the world that sustained and shaped the villa extended far beyond the Coln valley.
BOOK REVIEWS
Stephen Coan’s The Buried Man can only be described as magisterial. It is the culmination of decades of patient, methodical, and deeply informed scholarship. Coan has lived with, traced, and tracked H. Rider Haggard for much of his adult life, and this monumental volume represents the distillation of that long engagement. It is unlikely to be surpassed for a very long time.
BLUE PLAQUES
Stamp Mills were used to crush gold bearing rock in the early days of mining. This 10-stamp battery went into operation at the Robinson Mine in Langlaagte in 1886, making it one of the earliest stamp mills on the Witwatersrand. In 1912 mine owner Sir Joseph Robinson ordered the officials to bury the stamp mill in a slimes dump. Following Sir Joseph’s death in 1929, the stamp was salvaged after a long search.