Heart of Albion
Publishing frighteningly good books since 1989
please note new address and phone number (March 2021):
Heart of Albion, 8 Hedgefield Road, Barrowby, Grantham, NG32 1TA
telephone 01476 565174
forthcoming
Shuckland – Weird tales, ghosts, folklore and legends from East Anglia's Waveney valley
Charles Christian
The Waveney valley is full of history. Along with the ruined castles, soaring church towers and attractive market towns there are many legends and much folklore – some ancient, some relatively modern – as to give the place an air of intriguing weirdness.
forthcoming
Sapcote – some snapshots in time
Keith Hextall
These 'snapshots' include old maps and photographs which reveal the history of the growth of Sapcote, especially the buildings – many of which have since been demolished or greatly modified.
recent
People and Places of the Wolds
edited by Bob Trubshaw
There is much to discover about the villages of Burton on the Wolds, Cotes, Hoton, Prestwold, Walton on the Wolds and Wymeswold. This collection of essays and biographies starts with pagan Anglo-Saxon settlers and continues to within living memory. Or least living memory for the contributors, if not everyone living in the Wolds now.
- Those interested in the Leicestershire Wolds will find several free-to-download PDFs on the Wolds Historical Organisation's web site.
Ironstone Quarries of Leicestershire
Bob Trubshaw
Not a book but a 40 minute YouTube video from Heart of Albion Productions: Ironstone Quarries of Leicestershire.
These once-extensive quarries were active between the 1870s and 1970s but few traces survive. In this video Bob Trubshaw summarises and updates the detailed research Eric Tonks published in the 1990s, shortly before his death.
Links to six other YouTube videos about aspects of Leicstershire and Rutland history can be found on Bob Trubshaw's YouTube Channel.
Saints and Sinners in Dark Age England
Charles Christian
There are already a number of quite dense PDF booklets about Anglo-Saxon England to download for free from the Heart of Albion website. This is not another one. Well it's a PDF booklet about Anglo-Saxon England to download for free. But it's not 'dense'. Indeed, the Introduction claims to 'put the sex back into Wessex'. Allow the author to describe:
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Although I've always enjoyed history (even the dull, dry stuff – and some of it can be drier than an Egyptian mummy's wrappings) what really intrigues me are those weird, almost surreal moments that leave you shaking your head in disbelief wondering "Whatever were they thinking?"
For this brief publication, I have collected five tales taking us from misty years following the collapse of Roman rule in England – a time when it is hard to distinguish between history, myth and legend – through until the arrival of the Normans when, after over 600 years of almost constant instability, some kind of normality returned to English life.
So climb on board as we set off to explore five of the more weird, obscure and WTF corners of English history.
Saints and Sinners in Dark Age England can be downloaded for free.
Published jointly by Urban Fantasist and Heart of Albion.
Sir Julien Kahn at Stanford Hall and
a View from the Co-operative College
David Lazell
Another of Heart of Albion's earliest booklets is now available as a free PDF. When this was first published in 1993 Stanford Hall (the one on the Leicestershire-Nottinghamshire border, not the one on the Leicestershire-Northamptonshire border!) was still in use as the International Co-operative College. And Sir Julien Kahn's impressive 'makeover' had been merely fifty years before. Now, after a £300 million transformation Stanford Hall has become the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre.
Sir Julien Kahn at Stanford Hall and a View from the Co-operative College can be downloaded for free.
Several of David Lazell's other booklets have also been republished as PDFs, including Spectacular at Stanford Hall, a precursor to Sir Julien Kahn at Stanford Hall and a View from the Co-operative College which contains some recollections not in the later publication.
Download Spectacular at Stanford Hall for FREE (3 megabyte PDF)
Download Sound of the Shawm – Recollections of East Leake and other kindly places nearby for FREE (6 megabyte PDF). (The link to the 1986 film about Charlie Firth is here www.macearchive.org/films/central-news-east-11081986-mini-museum.)
Download The Fairy Gift and other ways to find Lost Laughter – Faith in Fairies and other discoveries of green spirituality for FREE (6 megabyte PDF)
Download Rose Fyleman: Nottingham's ambassador from Fairyland– A salute to her verse and stories about fairies and remarkable circumstances for FREE (3.5 megabyte PDF)
Tales from the Railway
The life and times of the Whittlecreek and
Eaton St Torpid Heritage Railway and the Queen Alexandra Arts Centre
something somewhat contrary to usual Heart of Albion fare
Welcome to the tales from an imaginary heritage railway in the top left-hand corner of Norfolk with rolling stock inspired by Rowland Emett's cartoons of the 1940s and 50s.
Tales from the Railway can be downloaded for free
as can a sequel Tales from the Emporium.
Medieval Carvings in Colour
Although we are accustomed to seeing Romanesque and later medieval carvings as bare stone, this is not how they would have been envisaged by their makers and patrons. Before the nineteenth century Gothic Revival such sculpture would have been painted, often in ways which now might seem rather garish. Medieval Carvings in Colour is a response to requests for information about how Romanesque and later medieval carvings would originally have been painted.
Medieval Carvings in Colour can be downloaded for free.
Thinking About Places
Thinking About Places pivots around Bob Trubshaw's observation that "… because we spend our lives in a variety of different types of places means we are about as oblivious to the nuances of 'theory of place' as a fish is to the water it swims in."
Thinking About Places can be downloaded for free.
Although not a Heart of Albion publication, we are most happy to promote David Lea's detailed study of Swithland Slate headstones. The photographs are, frankly, amazing. Nowt wrong with the background information and discussion either!
The PDF can be downloaded for free: Swithland Slate Headstones but please note it's over 80Mbytes so maybe slow on less-than-ideal web connections.
Around Foxton
One of Heart of Albion's earliest booklets – Around Foxton: Memories of an Edwardian childhood by Sarah Dallaston – is now available as a free PDF. Anyone who knows Foxton Locks in south Leicestershire will be intrigued by this account of life there a century ago.
Not just books and e-books but now videos too!
'HOAP' was once an acronym for 'Heart of Albion Press' – although the 'Press' was dropped around twenty years ago. Now it is an acronym for 'Heart of Albion Productions'.
Three of the videos are based on the book Little-known Leicestershire and Rutland:
- Little-known Leicestershire and Rutland: Part 1 Standing stones
- Little-known Leicestershire and Rutland: Part 2 Ancient crosses
- Little-known Leicestershireand Rutland: Part 3 Holy wells
Three other videos relate to the medieval carvings of Leicestershire and Rutland and Project Gargoyle
- Introduction to the Medieval Carvings of Leicestershire and Rutland
- Understanding Leicestershire and Rutland's Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque Carvings
- Introduction to Project Gargoyle
NEW! Ironstone Quarries of Leicestershire
All these links can also be found on Bob Trubshaw's YouTube Channel
A series of free PDF books shedding new light on the 'Dark Ages'.
Heart of Albion Press was founded in 1989 by Bob Trubshaw to publish Leicestershire and Rutland local history. By the mid-1990s titles had diversified into archaeology and mythology. In September 2002 Heart of Albion launched Explore Books, a series of books providing accessible overviews of the latest academic thinking relating to folklore, mythology and social history. In June 2004 a further imprint, Alternative Albion was launched to promote titles with more overtly counter-culture interest.
Why 'Heart of Albion'?
The term 'Heart of Albion' was apparently first used by Paul Devereux in 1975 in the title of two articles about Leicestershire (a heart-shaped county situated just above the middle of England) written for The Ley Hunter magazine. Back in 1989 when Heart of Albion Press was founded with the intention of publishing titles about Leicestershire local history this metaphor seemed particularly appropriate, especially as Wymeswold (where Heart of Albion was founded) is situated in the 'cleft' of the heart shape.
Why 'Alternative Albion'?
The name 'Alternative Albion' draws upon the use of Albion as an ancient poetic name for pre-Roman Britain. As early as the 1st century AD Pliny wrote: Albion ipsi nomen fuit cum Britanniae vocarentur omnes. This has long been thought to derive from the Latin albus ('white') as a reference to the colour of the chalk cliffs on the south coast. However recent research suggests there was a 'Celtic' (strictly 'British') word stem albio- which meant 'the land, the country'. This survives in the modern Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland, 'Alba'.
Albion became personified as a primaeval giant who roamed Britain. G.K. Chesteron recognised this 'elemental and emblematic giant' in the poetry of Chaucer, 'with our native hills for his bones and our native forests for his beard.… a single figure outlined against the sea and a great face staring at the sky.' Albion also features in the poetry of William Blake, suggesting an English utopia. In Jerusalem he wrote 'All things begin and end in Albion's ancient, Druid rocky shore'.
In 1974 a group of London-based activists created the idea of a network of independent collectives and communities under the name Albion Free State, loosely based on the Dutch 'Orange Free State' movement founded in 1970. George McKay in Senseless Acts of Beauty (Verso 1996) considers that Albion is the alternative Britain to that of industrialism, privilege and over-mighty government; ideas that seem to be increasingly relevant in the early 21st century than they were in the 1970s.
For more Albion-related associations see the Wikipedia entry for 'Albion'.
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Let us know if you have specific interests e.g. local history; folklore; mythology.
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