It's All About Sleeves

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1897: Many ladies of Peterborough would have given careful attention to a small piece in this week's Advertiser.

FASHIONS IN SLEEVES: we learn from Myra's Journal (of dress and fashion) that the Spring sleeves promise to be very pretty. The new sleeves are tight, with a slight fullness or a small drapery at the shoulder. The best dressmakers try as much as possible to cut drapery and sleeve together, as the effect is always better. Ruffled sleeves remain fashionable, and tucked sleeve is daily becoming more prevalent. There is little doubt that the tucks will play an important part in Spring modes, just as they are doing with Winter evening dresses.

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

DYK about the Vikings in Britain?

793-1066

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The Vikings traded with the British Isles before they started raiding them. An early attack was in 793AD when they destroyed Lindisfarne abbey. Up until the mid 800s AD Viking raiders continued to attack easy targets - communities and abbeys around the British coast.

As Anglo Saxon England was made up of several kingdoms, it was easy for Viking armies to attack and conquer them one by one. In 866AD they captured York and made it their capital. By 878AD they had conquered most of England, apart from Wessex. King Alfred of Wessex (‘Alfred the Great’) led a fight back against the Danes, forcing them back into an area that became known as the Danelaw.

Throughout the ninth and tenth centuries the Vikings made colonies on the Hebrides, Shetland and Orkney Islands, the Isle of Man, parts of Scotland and Dublin in Ireland.

By 954AD the Danelaw had been recaptured by the Saxons. There continued to be occasional Viking raids until 1013, when a Danish army invaded under King Sven of Denmark. The following year his son Canute became King of England, the only Viking to do so.

The last Viking invasion was in 1066, when the Norwegian Harald Hardrada was defeated at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Though it can be argued that William the Conqueror of Normandy, who won at the Battle of Hastings, also in 1066, was himself a Viking, so the Vikings DID actually succeed in conquering England.

You can still see the legacy of the Vikings in some of our British place names. Names ending in ‘Wick’ were markets and names ending in ‘by’ were villages, ‘Ness’ is a headland and ‘haven’ means harbour.

References:

Peterborough Museum Exhibition

The Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price, Allen Lane, 2020

Vikings life and legend Edited by Williams, Gareth, Pentz, Peter, Wemhoff, Matthias. The British Museum Press, 2014

Image:

Viking Ship Lofotr licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Map shows a modern version of England-878ad.jpg made using Inkscape. Source: England and Wales at the time of the Treaty of Chippenham (AD 878). From the Atlas of European History, Earle W Dowe (d. 1946), G Bell and Sons, London, 1910. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.