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'Toad Testicles' and 'Boar-Biter': The Nicknames of Winchester, c.1110.
A colourful and shocking set of nicknames in early medieval Winchester leave historians as confused as they are amused; what might they have meant?
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Tristan Alphey
1
Eyes on the Ball(s): Testicle Nicknames in Early Medieval England
We return this week to the endlessly amusing, and often entirely incomprehensible, nicknames of early medieval England
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Tristan Alphey
2
Looking Up: The Faces of Oxford
Taking the time to pause, and look up
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Tristan Alphey
1
Eadwine and Wulfgar - monks behaving badly
I am terribly bored by the history of great people.
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Tristan Alphey
The 'Viking' Settlement of Northumbria in Archaeology
Large and Archaeologically Distinctive, or Invisible?
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Tristan Alphey
Westfield Farm – a High-status ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Female Burial
We hear an awful lot about the large-scale male ‘Princely’ burial of the early seventh century; Sutton Hoo, Snape, and Prittlewell dominate the…
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Tristan Alphey
'Gather his worms to your bosom': the 1094 letter of Anselm to Gunhilda
In the hunt for early medieval nicknames throughout my PhD research, I’m forced to leaf through a number of sources that I’m less familiar with. I’ve…
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Tristan Alphey
Eadric 'the Wild' - post-Conquest rebel and outlaw
Eadric Silvaticus (‘the wild’), who rebelled against king William I in the years after the Norman Conquest of 1066, has become something of a mythical…
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Tristan Alphey
Viking Trade Weights - Danelaw Economics and Power
Explaining Viking Trade Weights 'Viking-Age’ trade weights are a widely attested phenomena in Scandinavia, but equally so in England. Manufactured in a…
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Tristan Alphey
‘Toad Testicles’, ‘Foul-Beard’ and ‘Broad-Arse’: Nicknames Before the Norman Conquest
This article appears in the March edition of HistoryToday, a public history magazine available here https://www.historytoday.com/shop/buy-current-issue.
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Tristan Alphey
1
Thegnly buildings before the Norman Conquest
How was the built environment used to express power and status?
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Tristan Alphey
2
Hereward 'the Wake' and his companions
Alongside Eadric ‘the Wild’, Hereward ‘the Wake’ occupies a semi-mythological status. Rising in rebellion in 1070 against Norman occupation following…
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Tristan Alphey
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