Martyn Barber
LightNews LightNews
banner
martynjb.bsky.social
Martyn Barber
@martynjb.bsky.social
410 followers 340 following 450 posts
Aerial archaeology, history of archaeology, misc spookery; ex-RCHME, Historic England etc.

Stuff at independent.academia.edu/MartynBarber
Posts Replies Media Videos
martynjb.bsky.social
Can think of others...

I quite like their use of the phrase "yawning pits", which seems somewhere between Lovecraft and Guy N Smith.
November 27, 2025 at 2:28 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
I believe it was her grandparents on her mother's side who commissioned the architect.
November 26, 2025 at 1:32 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
It could be done - there must be some no-longer-wanted tunnelling equipment available.
November 26, 2025 at 12:21 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
When we went, we took the stairs.
A colour photo looking down the rampart of Thetford Castle while standing next to the very shiny steps provided for visitors to climb up and down.
November 26, 2025 at 11:35 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
It seems bigger on the inside too. And the TARDIS.
November 23, 2025 at 5:54 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Love a bargain
A photo of a price label on a bottle of beer. It says 'reduced. Was two pounds and ten pence, not two pounds and nine pence'.
November 21, 2025 at 11:24 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
The villagers barely noticed it...
A colour photo taken among the reconstructed Neolithic houses at the Stonehenge Visitor Centre, with several people in brightly coloured clothing ambling around. In the distance, partly obscured by trees, is the inflatable bouncy Stonehenge.
November 17, 2025 at 9:58 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
The real section tells a slightly different story...
A photo showing a Stonehenge cake after a slice has been made through it, clearly showing the below-ground section to comprise layers of sponge, jam and cream.
November 16, 2025 at 8:08 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Do you know the story of his first film role, The Black Legend, filmed at Combe Gibbet and directed by his university pal John Schlesinger?

www.hungerfordvirtualmuseum.co.uk?view=article...
Black Legend
The website for all of Hungerford's heritage and history.
www.hungerfordvirtualmuseum.co.uk
November 15, 2025 at 11:57 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
I'm trying to find info on what the Holzminden library contained. I'm guessing the entire works of AC Benson were there.
November 12, 2025 at 10:47 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
But in the end, it was Cambridge that offered him the honorary doctorate...
November 11, 2025 at 2:34 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
...an article by Crawford that is a tad out of keeping with those other contributions. Essentially Crawford was a little angry with Cambridge dons in general and A. C. Benson in particular. I've found no other mention by Crawford of Benson ever, and this piece never appeared anywhere else. Enjoy.
The first of four images covering the whole of Crawford's article. Part 1 reads as follows: The Writings of Mr. A. C. Benson. Some years ago, when Tariff Reform was a common topic of conversation, a lady who was asked her opinion of it, said “I don’t of course understand it, but I feel very strongly about it.” That story very well describes Mr. A. C. Benson’s attitude towards the world; only his feelings can hardly be called strong. He is a typical don – kindly and well-meaning, full of a kind of sentimental sympathy, but without a spark of real insight or critical power. The don is a child who has never grown up. To him the world of nature and of men is like a fairy kingdom, full of strange beings whom he can not make out. His eyes grow round with wonder at their simplest actions. What, however, is natural and engaging in a child is out of place and even repellent in a grown-up man. It becomes a pathological symptom – a form of arrested development. The tears shed by a little girl over her broken doll are normal and healthy tears; The article continues: but these [tears] which fill the puzzled eyes of Mr. Benson as he regards the mysterious things around him are unnatural. For “men must work and women must weep.” Mr. Benson tells us that he takes more pleasure in writing than in anything else in the world. He thereby lays claim to be considered as a literary artist. In one of his essays – The Thread of Gold, page 63 – he says: “It is impossible not to feel, when one is brought into contact with an artistic temperament, that the basis of it is a kind of hardness, a fanaticism of spirit.” That is very true and very well put, but does one find any “hardiness or fanaticism” in Mr. Benson, as revealed in his writing? I trow not. On the contrary one finds there a certain flabbiness and lack of purpose which seems inseparable from the academic character. Literature is one of the greatest among the arts, but good writing need not be good literature and it is not always good art; good writing is meaningless if it is not rooted in reality. Mr. Benson’s essays have no roots; they are like the cowslip-balls of children, an ingenious exercise in stringing words melodiously together. The game may give pleasure to the player, just as there is a kind of pleasure to be derived from constructing Latin Verse. But it is a silly game. The books of an author should be like a lens through which we look at the world, or like the colour-screen which cuts out the haze in a landscape and casts a clear image on the plate. The writings of Mr. Benson are a mirror in which we see only the pale reflection of his won rather bloodless emotions. Continues: Mr. Benson is a great overgrown baby peering at a callous world through his college window. But he lacks the healthy savagery and red blood of youth. It is significant that the one solitary essay in “The Thread of Gold” in which he touches the discoveries of modern science should refer to an extinct reptile of gigantic proportions. Like all children he is attracted by strange beasts. And that is all that the head of a Cambridge college can find in science. Ye Gods! Can he indeed be deaf to the multitudinous tramp of Darwin’s mighty army, and to the rhythmical blows of Huxley’s oratory breaking on the muddy sands of orthodoxy? Can it be that all that is vital in modern thought eludes him and his like? The article concludes: Unfortunately one knows from personal experience that it does, and that of all those dons and tutors only a very few have any idea of what is being said and done in the busy world outside. It has been said that the mind of a British Philistine is impervious to ideas; if that is so, then Mr. Benson and his fellow dons are typical Philistines for whom there is but little hope. A whisper will arouse a sleeping dog, but not all the shouting in the world can disturb the peaceful slumber of a jelly-fish.
November 11, 2025 at 1:54 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Whale in any of his surviving notes or correspondence. Shortly before WW1 ended, some of the inmates at Holzminden managed to print what would be the only ever issue of "The Occasional Review". Among the contributions, which were mainly rooted in camp life and associated matters, was...
A photo of the front cover of 'The Occasional Review". There is considerable wear and tear to the edges of the cover, which is a lightish brown in colour. At the top, in black letters, is the title. Towards the bottom, in a small font, is says Number 1 and 28th August 1918. This copy is in the British Library.
November 11, 2025 at 1:54 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Been scanning old slides again - this is 1998. No idea who that leg belongs to - maybe they're still there?
A scan of a colour slide image showing part of one of the underground galleries at the Neolithic flint mine site of Gtime's Graves, Norfolk. Metal posts can be seen supporting the chalk roof. Just above centre, a little distance into the galery, is a large flint nodule. To the right, mosltly out of shout, is someone crouching in the gallery - their right leg and right arm can be seen in the top right corner of the photo - black shoe, blue jeans and some sort of stripey affair on top. No idea who it is/was, but almost certainly someone alive rather than a Neolithic spook.
November 10, 2025 at 9:21 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Thanks - Not sure if I can make it, but I shall try...
November 8, 2025 at 10:36 PM
martynjb.bsky.social
Is Richard the Third here referring to the monarch or...
November 8, 2025 at 10:43 AM
martynjb.bsky.social
Don't want to know about your gross fashion fails
October 31, 2025 at 3:28 PM