📢NEW POST: a report on Chris Hoban's recent performance of music inspired by our wills at a sold gig for Topsham Folk Club 📢 📜🎶🎻🪗🪕 @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social @uoearchhist.bsky.social @cemsexeter.bsky.social

Couple of pictures to summarise the first week of my trip to London; lots of time spent at the national archives, many hands washed (and rewashed), several museums visited, plenty of cat hangouts, a couple of late nights out, and one very muddy cemetary walk.

🐍 #NationalSerpentDay is dedicated to snake appreciation, understanding their role in ecosystems, and helping to overcome fear or misconceptions about them, such as this one... This #myth was likely based on #oarfish sightings. Learn more: blog.biodiversitylibrary.org/2014/10/the-... #ILoveBHL 📖 🧪

📜Bequest of the day📜 Royalist Sir Nicholas Crispe asks for an autopsy in his 1666 will: 'I would have my body opened that the Phisitiones may see the cause of my soe long shortnes of breath to be helpfull to my Posterity that are troubled with the same Infirmity'. #EarlyModern 🗃️

📢 In Case You Missed It! 📢 January's 'Will of the Month' blog post is now live 📜 Read all about a Yorkshire widow's 'Living Will', as well as her ownership of 'global goods': tea, coffee, china, and a ladle for serving punch (made with sugar & spices) ☕🫖 sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

What a beautiful write up in The Guardian. It's been an honour to be involved in this exhibition and I'm so excited to see it in full when it opens this weekend - if you're in Plymouth it's a must-see!

I wrote a short blog on the Court of Orphans probate inventories held @thelondonarchives.bsky.social A fascinating source for anyone researching early modern social history or material culture 📜 Link below 👇 www.thelondonarchives.org/blog/the-pro...

Today is “Take a Walk Outdoors Day”! So: grab a good book (preferably from De Gruyter) for a sunny bench, wrap up warm, and head out into the fresh air! #brueghel #earlymodern

📣DEADLINE EXTENDED! We are delighted to announce that we're extending the deadline for applications to our 50th anniversary conference! At this busy time, we want as many people as possible to have the chance to apply. Now accepting applications until 23 Jan! socialhistory.org.uk/events/confe...

Its on days like this, wet and windy and wild, that I'm very glad for work that lets me work from a large mound of blankets

Someone’s not looked at a single early modern history book before opening their mouth, clearly. By 1600, over 4,000 immigrants lived in England’s second largest city, Norwich - one in three people in the city had not been born in England.

Everytime I think I've got a handle on the different ways family descriptors were used by people in the 17th century, I come across another funny one; "my neece grace browne daughter of my sonne John"

This year, as a Caird Research Fellow at Royal Museums Greenwich, I developed a new research project on occupational health, disability, and welfare in the British Royal Navy during the French Wars (1793–1815). Read some of my preliminary findings here: www.rmg.co.uk/stories/mari....

The British Library have a searchable interim Archives & Manuscripts Catalogues up & running: searcharchives.bl.uk (posting for all the folks who, like me, had somehow managed to miss this important development)

Started keeping a little folder of screenshots on my laptop called "places I've zoomed from". It's a lot of picnic benches and GWR trains. What can I say I'm an out and about kind of guy

Here from the same fabulous series by George Spratt is "The Connoisseur." (I like this art-lover's monocle and also the smaller picture that she's carrying as a reticule, the strap around her wrist.)

If your choice is between an existential risk to your organisation, vs being a fascist collaborator, and you make the difficult choice to be a collaborator... ...then you are still a collaborator.

Today is World AIDS Day. The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) has 200+ sources on the history of HIV/AIDS. You can also consult BBIH’s free readings lists on LGBTQ+ histories and the histories of infectious diseases to learn more about recent scholarship on this topic buff.ly/OK5HSbu

Looking forward to rocking up at #imc2026 to talk about all the fun (and surprising!) things you can find in the wills of single men across early modern England, alongside other fascinating talks on fatherhood, masculinity, and emotions on the Constructing Masculinities Panel.

Are you a PhD student & interested in using museum collections in your teaching or research? We're running a *free* doctoral training programme for students at any institution to learn about working with collections. Find out more: collections.reading.ac.uk/whats-on/

Have I sailed as close as you are legally allowed to do to have a nose at the SS Montgomery? Of course. Moment I knew she existed, I was out there faster than Jay Hulme when he spots a rickety ladder in a church. Here she is:

Moving... Listening... Reacting... Sampling... You can listen to the #futuresonair recordings on @soundartradio.bsky.social now, to hear me and many other much more eloquent and interesting researchers talking about our research and interests. soundartradio.org.uk/services/fut...

📜WILLS ON THE RADIO!📜 The brilliant Chris Hoban was on local radio talking about the wills project and playing some songs! This one is perhaps my favourite: based on the will of London widow Alice Walter, proved September 1665. TNA PROB 11/317/428. #EarlyModern 🗃️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXwB...

🎆 It's Bonfire Night🎆 To celebrate we're showing our copy of 'The second booke teaching most exactly, the composing of all manner of fire-works for tryumph and recreation' by John Bate, published in 1635 (shelf marl: S PAM 479).

Producer: "we've seen you explore churches and the theme is 'abandoned spaces' so we were wondering if you had a faith space that fit the..." Me: "I have 𝖆 𝖈𝖆𝖛𝖊" Producer: "you? what?" Me: "Let Me Tell You About 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖛𝖊" Producer: "does it fit our brief for the..." Me: "𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖔𝖋 𝕾𝖙 𝕽𝖔𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖙"

Happy #Halloween 🎃Since this fellow was so popular we are once again sharing spooktacular illustrations of Vampyroteuthis. The 'vampire squid from hell' is neither squid nor vampire, using sticky filaments to feed on marine snow 📖 Reports from the German Deep-Sea Expedition 'Valdivia' 1898-1899

And here we all are, not being at all self-conscious about having our photo taken and enjoying Harry's visualisation of our bequests.

Join us next Thursday (30/10, 5.30 pm) for Dr Emily Vine’s (@emilymayvine.bsky.social) talk on ‘Birth, Death and Domestic Religion in Early Modern London’! You can sign up to join in-person (IHR Wolfson Room, NB02) or online via Zoom here: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

One of our PhD students Jane Tozer recently visited @nationaltrust.org.uk Ham House during their 'Open Cabinets' event while researching 'japanning' - furniture finishes that imitated East Asian lacquerwork. The cabinets are opened only twice a year - Jane captured this beautiful photograph:

📅 Save the Date! 🎉 To mark 50 years of the Social History Society, we’re hosting a Social History Festival with @ihr.bsky.social! 🗓️ Fri 24 April 2026 📍 Senate House, University of London Panels, a keynote + hands-on activities! 💡 Want to contribute? 👉[email protected] More info coming soon!

You'll have to excuse my absence I've been roving around, gadding about, meandering, ambling, bunking off, and generally poking things with sticks.

🐏 New Absolute Units 🐏 Same-sex relationships have always been part of rural England, but they've been underrepresented in our collections. In the first of 2 episodes, @timjerrome.bsky.social shares his work tracing queer rural lives in The MERL archives. merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/abso...

📢ARTIST CALLOUT📢 4-5 week paid placement for creative practitioner to work alongside the Gender and Sexuality Collective at Uni of Exeter. 💡Visual | Digital | Sound | Performing | Design | Lit | Film | Music 💡 Budget: £6,000 🗓️ Deadline: Sun 2 Nov 🔗 www.artsandcultureexeter.co.uk/news/creativ...

🎺ANNOUNCEMENT!🎺 STORIES & SONGS: WILLS AS WINDOWS ONTO PAST LIVES Join Chris Hoban and I at #Exeter Phoenix for a unique performance of history & original music inspired by #Tudor, #Stuart & Georgian wills! 🗃️ FREE! Claim your ticket: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1738865536...

Nothing else like a crisp bright morning!

ICYMI: last week the Wills Project circulated our autumn newsletter, with an update on what we've achieved over the past 6 months or so. #EarlyModern 🗃️ @leverhulme.ac.uk @uniofexeterhass.bsky.social Download the pdf or plain version from our news page: sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

One day I'll learn to make accurate and thorough notes of exactly which reference numbers go with which sources, but until then I'll go swearing scrambling back into the archive chasing an old scribble with no useful identifying information. "George Iron coffin embalm" who are you???

**spoiler** There was a lot to cover but I managed to squeeze in a bit of reflection on the creativity at the heart of the discipline of History too. Enjoy! 👇 sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

📜Call for Papers: Digital Medievalist sponsored sessions International Medieval Congress 2026 (Leeds, UK). We seek proposals on the following themes: - 'Large Language Models and Medieval Texts' - 'Digital Methods and Materiality of Manuscripts' ▶️Full call: tinyurl.com/f82tcrzk 📆21 Sept 2025

Believe it or not, this is a parish register from the seventeenth century that was damaged during a fire! 🔥 Heat causes the collagen fibres in the parchment to denature and shrink and eventually turn to gelatine, which sometimes has a ‘glassy’ appearance. #EarlyModern #Skystorians

Small win for the beginning of Sept, my new years resolution was to read more fiction books - a habit that fell off as my day-to-day work increasingly became about reading academic stuff. Just finished number 14 and it feels great to finally be telling people "I read that book you recommended!"

An absolute masterclass from UK Quakers on how organisations of all kinds can stand up for the rights and safety of trans people, even post Supreme Court ruling and with all of the EHRC's cruelties: www.quaker.org.uk/documents/re...

CfP for maritimebritain.org Maritime Britain Project c.1550-1750 (led by Prof Craig Lambert, University of Southampton) end of project conference is live. See poster below & register your interest on Eventbrite in attending and/or giving a paper: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/maritime-b... #maritimehistory

At every stage I did what the state asked me to, even though it was humiliating, degrading and cruel. And it kept moving the goalposts, and reneging on the agreements it made, whilst continuing to hold me to them even when they are now mutually contradictory. (12/13)

As it's still valid, presumably if I don't keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest. The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. (11/13)

Loughborough 1678 and an unusual request in a will - That my Body be buried in my Garden (and it may have been, as there's no burial in the parish registers)

A triumphant* return to the archives! (*did not miss my stupidly early train to London, did not get lost on the tube, all my requested documents were available!)

Quick pitstop at the ever-lovely Corfe Castle on the way home from Dorset to Devon, and a (surprise!) trip on a beautiful 1930s train - the first park and ride I've ever come across serviced by a historic railway.

The Call for Papers for this year’s ‪@ehswomcom.bsky.social‬ Workshop: Women & Entrepreneurship: Agency, Experience, and Enterprise. Send in your proposals before the 5th of September, and don’t forget to share the CfP. More information can be found in the QR or at: ehs.org.uk/event/womens...

OH NO MY SHEEP OR COW