Ezekiel Spanheim

Last December I acquired at auction the last and greatest edition of Spanheim’s Disputationes de usu et præstantia numismatum antiquorum (London and Amsterdam, 1706-17) not realising that the copy I had bought was an extremely large paper printing of the work. As a consequence the two volumes remained on the living room floor until recently as there was just nowhere to put them.

The two books are comprised of thirteen discourses addressed to his friend Ottavio Falconieri, a Roman antiquary, represent the seventeenth century peak of classical numismatics. 

Spanheim meticulously (and not without digressions) records every image and inscription shown on

ancient coins that could be made out.

Each of the volumes is prefaced with a fine engraving of a portrait; one is Spanheim himself, the other is Prince George, later King George I of the United Kingdom but who was then ruler of the Duchy and Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Hanover) in the Holy Roman Empire.

Ezekiel Spanheim was born at Geneva, the eldest son of Friedrich Spanheim the Elder. After 1642 he studied philology and theology at the University of Leyden, and in 1650 returned to Geneva to be Professor of Rhetoric at Geneva.

In 1656 Spanheim became tutor to the son of Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine. Political theory led him into a diplomatic career. The Elector sent him in 1661 to Rome to investigate intrigues of the Roman Catholic Electors. After his return in 1665 the Elector employed him as ambassador at various courts, finally in England where after 1679 he was charged also with the affairs of the Elector of Brandenburg. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1679. [1]

In 1680 he entered the service of electoral Brandenburg as minister of state. As ambassador of the Great Elector he spent nine years at the court of Paris, and subsequently devoted some years to studies in Berlin; but after the Peace of Ryswyk in 1697 he returned as ambassador to France where he remained until 1702.

In 1702 he went on his final diplomatic mission as the first Prussian ambassador to England. He died in London on November 7^th, 1710 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

The Totley Tunnel

 

 The other day I found myself on a train from Sheffield to Grindleford in the Peak District to meet a work colleague for a site visit. The journey is only short, however, after leaving Totley and Dore station the journey is in complete darkness due to passing through the Totley tunnel, 3 miles and 950 yards long. You emerge from the tunnel at Grindleford station.

The tunnel opened officially on 10 August 1893 and it is believed that when it was constructed the two ends of workers were only 4½ inches apart laterally with only 2¼ inches difference in level!

The geological make up of the ground under the route of the tunnel made the boring extremely difficult indeed. A the worst point, 2,250,000 gallons of water A DAY were seeping into the tunnel from the bedrock, forcing the workings to be inspected by boat.

Many labourers were brought in to help with the work. They arrived with their wives and families. Accommodation was provided in huts built around the shafts and many lodged in houses in the area. It was quite common for dozens of people to share a house and living conditions were generally disgusting. Many homes were without water, and raw sewage ran into the gardens.

At Totley the incomers actually outnumbered the local residents. The navvies’ fondness for drink, poaching and gambling - prize-fights and horse races were laid on at Owler Bar - boosted the local crime rate alarmingly, keeping the police and courts very busy. In their defence, it was acknowledged that working conditions were appalling, accidents were a common occurrence and it was difficult to keep enough labourers on the payroll. A working day was one of three 8- hour shifts and in mid-1889 the pay was 3s 2d per week.

Searching the internet there are stories of a large chamber in the tunnel, the purpose of which is unknown. You can tell when you pass it on the train due to the pressure change, it makes you believe you are leaving the tunnel but you are not. It may have been for storage during the construction, although there are more fanciful stories of wartime storage and it even housing a signal box (although that would have been no use whatsoever).

Mauseus sales on the internet

I list coins and antiquities (plus very occasionally books on the subject) for sale on eBAY under the name "mauseus", both as "Buy it Now" and auction format. The link to my eBAY sales is:

eBAY sales

The Heysham hog back stone

Digging into the hog back stone I uncovered this interpretation of the various images of the side that I photographed.

The overall form is as a house with a tiled roof supported by four figures, visible only on the hidden side.

On the side you can see we are on the side of light and life. The central figure is Sigurd in his human shape. There are the “Signs of Sigurd,” a tree with nine branches. “Yggdrasil” and birds two resting below it and two flying towards it. In addition to these birds there are three other animals and a fish. One of the animals is a horse in motion and has a very arched neck, looking rather like an Indian humped ox. It is a saddled horse, Grani, the horse belonging to Sigurd, who bowed his head to his master, as depicted here.

Sigurd was famed for his extreme bravery as a consequence of which he had an enormous task to perform. He had to slay the dragon Fafnir , a terrible, awesome scourge. It was only possible to do this at the dragon’s drinking place and in preparation for the deed, Sigurd had to dig a pit in which to hide so that he could thrust his sword into Fafnir as he passed over the top of the pit. The fearsome creature, however, was so huge that one pit would not be sufficient to contain the dragon’s blood and Sigurd would surely be drowned as it submerged him. To avoid this fate he had to dig a series of pits connected by ditches so that the blood could flow away without harming him.

Heysham, Lancashire

Took a couple of days off at the end of last week and on our travels we ended up at a favourite place of mine, Heysham on the Lancashire coast.

The part of Heysham I particularly like is St Patrick’s Chapel, the remains of an early 8^th century church built on a site occupied since the 6^th century.

At the site are a series of rock cut graves with sockets for a grave marker, probably just a simple wooden cross. I also learned something new – the graves feature on the cover of a Black Sabbath album, their Greatest Hits from 2000.

Near to the chapel is the parish church, St Peters, also dating back to Saxon times, there remains the re-errected stump of a Saxon cross in the grounds.

The church itself is home to a number of locally found artefacts. A small fragmentary early mediaeval chalice is mounted in a wall niche.

The church also displays a large Viking hog back stone, a grave cover that has a series of images that depict both the light and dark sides of life.

The Battle of Filey Bay

The occasion of my friends in Filey selling their house on Friday has prompted this post about the Battle of Filey Bay, also known as the Battle of Flamborough Head, a naval engagement that saw Britain lose a battle and then go on to lose the war (as I paraphrased it when setting a quiz question).

The engagement took part during the American War of Independence (or the American Revolution if you prefer). John Paul Jones had been in France buying arms and was given a ship, the Duc de Duras, that he re-named the Bonhomme Richard.


He was sailing up the coast of Britain when he encountered two Royal Navy ships, HMS Countess of Scarborough and HMS Serapis. In the ensuing battle the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis became entangled and finally Jones managed to board the Serapis. The Bonhomme Richard sank and Jones escaped in the British ship. The actual wreck of Jones’ ship has never been located.


The name Bonhomme Richard is still remembered in Filey today as it is the name of a pub just off the sea front.

Leeds VC holders

I was coming back from a meeting in a very wet Leeds today when I came across a memorial I hadn't thought about for a long time. In front of the Art Gallery on the Headrow is a bronze plaque dedicated to the VC winners who were either born in Leeds or were buried in Leeds.


The name are alphabetical but I want to give you the story of the first name on there, Acting Flight Sergeant Arthur Louis Aaron of the RAF. He was the only winner of the medal from Leeds during World War II.


Arthur Louis Aaron – Flight Sergeant, Age 21 - No.218 Squadron, RAF Volunteer Reserve, Turin, Italy - August 12th 1943

Three engines, the windscreen and the elevator controls of his Stirlling bomber were hit by gunfire. This made the aircraft unstable and very difficult to fly. Aaron and other crewmembers were injured. The navigator was killed. Aaron’s jaw was broken, parts of his face torn away, his lung damaged and right hand unusable. The aircraft dived several thousand feet until he managed to level the aircraft at 3,000 ft. His bomb aimer took control of the aircraft whilst Aaron received medical attention and morphine. Too weak to control the aircraft and unable to speak because of his facial injuries he wrote instructions with his left hand. Aaron died nine hours after the bomber belly landed at Bone airfield in Tunisia.

The mission was his 20th. Arthur Aaron was also the holder of the Distinguished Flying Medal. Because of his lowly rank Flight Sergeant Aaron was not eligibe for the Distinguished Flying Cross, a rank divide that was rectified in 1993 when the DFM was withdrawn and the DFC became available to a ranks.

Born and educated in Leeds, Aaron studied to be an architect and, in March 1941, he became one of 23 cadets who formed the Inaugural Flight of Leeds University Air Squadron.

To mark the millennium a statue to Arthur Louis Aaron was sited on the roundabout close to the West Yorkshire Playhouse at the start of the Headrow.