Agriculture apart, the first commercial operation in Britain may have been flint knapping. Flint, expertly split, was fashioned into the sharpest tools and weapons available before the discovery of metallurgy. Flint is a form of quartz which forms nodules and masses in chalk and limestone and its use dates back millions of years to the beginning of the Stone Age. Flint was immensely important in the ancient world for…
I have written enthusiastically about my unforgettable experience of holidays in Saint-Pons-la-Calm where we owned a house thirty years ago. As is so often the case though the Languedoc story has a different side. For the Cathars it was a very different side. A very dark side. I know little about the prehistoric inhabitants of Languedoc - although there is an extensive archeological record of occupation dating from 1.5…
Languedoc literally means the tongue of Oc – the ancient romance language of the region which is listed today as endangered. An article I read in a Smithsonian Magazine said: “During the second century BC the region was a no-man’s-land of warring tribes – a vast stretch of untamed territory lying between Rome and its colony of Hispania comprising Spain and Portugal.” The Romans of course could not tolerate…
My great-grandfather Charles Thomas Lucas (CTL 1820-1895) is a pivotal figure in my family’s history. For he was able to make the leap from his modest origins as the son of a small scale London builder, to become one of the leading contractors of his time and a notable country gentleman. A success which was signified by the purchase of a handsome estate in Sussex called Warnham Court, where…