Comments on: At The Boar’s Head Playhouse

By: Paul Loften

Paul Loften — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 12:40:05 +0000

The black broken beer mug is surely evidence of the bawdy goings on at the site. One can only imagine how it got there. Perhaps thrown full of ale across the theater during a lewd 16 th c performance and landing in forever hidden corner ? I once read in a science magazine that a university was researching if it was possible to recover the sounds that could trapped in broken pieces of ancient pottery . Far fetched perhaps but would you not like to hear the riotous laughter and screams of long ago ? On second thoughts perhaps not. It may be a bit scary for some of us

By: Lynne Perrella

Lynne Perrella — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 11:46:09 +0000

I love to see relics, as part of your various posts. Mud-larking, excavations, etc. I love it when the earth “coughs up” these tenuous/tenacious bits. Here in the New York, when the World Trade Center Towers were being constructed, my soon-to-be husband and I would meet in a nearby churchyard for outdoor lunches. Workmen had appropriated a discarded rolling hot dog cart, and turned it into a VERY unofficial installation of found relics from the excavation. Complete with a cardboard hand-lettered sign…….”m u s e u m”……..We always looked forward to seeing what was added. I always wondered if anyone ever gathered up that bunch of stuff, and put it in a more (ahem) official place. As you can imagine, the array of unearthed stuff from the earliest settlements in Lower Manhattan might have deserved a grander backdrop than the motley cart. But we loved the serendipity involved, and always referred to it as The Cabinet of Curiosities. We’ve now been married over 51 years, the Towers are gone, but I still think of the artifacts.

By: Pauline Taylor

Pauline Taylor — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 11:24:53 +0000

I bet that I can tell you the names of some of those who attended performances here as I am sure it would have appealed to them more than ‘romances’ south of the river. If a list still existed with a record of those who had bought tickets I have no doubt that William Tearoe and John Summersell would be there. William would have been taking an evening off from his duties as one of the Archbishop’s watermen and I can just imagine him rowing himself and his brother in law, John, across the river from Lambeth, and even more I can imagine them rowing back after an evening which probably ended with a bit of carousing in the Boar’s Head. I can just picture it all and this is what history in London is all about for me, and why I think I am so fortunate to have so many family connections with the City. From William Tearoe to John Beard, who sang at Covent Garden. John West, money scrivenor to Samuel Pepys who lived in a house where the Mansion House now stands and later Frederick Greenwood, the first editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, friend of Thackeray, Dickens and almost all the well known Victorian authors who was also responsible for Disraeli buying the shares in the Suez Canal for this country. Thank you GA for all that you do to bring all this to life for me, today’s piece being a case in point, London is full of such fascinating stories and we are so lucky to have you to write about so much of it for us. Thank you again.

By: Mathilde Grange

Mathilde Grange — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 08:43:21 +0000

Very interesting. Thank you.

By: aubrey

aubrey — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 08:41:03 +0000

It’s obvious that much research is the basis of this article. Fascinating.

By: Ian Silverton

Ian Silverton — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 07:41:36 +0000

Thought that MOLA had enough old relics stored at Eagle Wharfe M Wheelers House to last a life time,my guide last time we went told me she had 5 years of old bones and pots to go through on her own,at the time more was arriving as we spoke,enough time spent in London on this,and that’s from somebody who in the 1950s dug up around the Mithras Temple in the City of London,now housed in the new Bloomberg Building same site same spot,go visit.