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
This building dating back to the 1890s, and the adjacent structures on the west side, began as houses of the kind lived in by diggers and traders in the early mining days. The two houses, built of clay bricks, had pitched roofs of corrugated iron. Both structures had verandahs facing onto Pritchard Street, offering opportunities for house-dwellers to observe and interact with passers-by.