It’s time for the next disease: get ready to reabsorb your extremities and fit yourself with a set of jingling bells as we discuss the scourge of the Middle Ages. It’s leprosy!
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Let the autumn of disease begin! For the next few episodes, we’ll be exploring some of the sicknesses and ailments of old Cambridgeshire and East Anglia. We begin with marsh fever, aka the ague, aka the Bailiff of the Marshes, a disease that for many years was endemic across the fen regions.
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Step this way for part two of the Overbury Affair. Things are really hotting up now! All the pieces begin to move into place for the scandal of the century. Public accusations of impotence? Check. A suspicious death in the Tower of London? By all means. Great spiders? Yes!
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The Overbury Affair has been described as one of the greatest court scandals of the Jacobean era: a web of intrigue and deception that captivated the nation. Even King James himself was implicated!
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The Great Blow - one of the most spectacular disasters that Norfolk has ever seen! Join us to hear about the events that precipitated this violent catastrophe, including a fateful meeting in a pub, an angry Royalist mob, and some careless use of weaponry.
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It’s time to finish the story of Howard Carter. When we left him at the end of Part 1, Carter had just made the acquaintance of the Earl of Carnarvon: a fateful meeting that was to lead to one of the most astonishing archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
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We’re back! This episode begins the story of the most famous Egyptologist there has ever been. Mr Howard Carter, the discoverer of the glorious tomb of Ancient pharaoh Tutankhamun. In part 1 we cover his childhood and early career. How did this son of an artist from Swaffham, Norfolk, end up in the necropolises of Egypt?
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It’s Christmas Eve and time for the last advent episode - a spooky tale of a remote and isolated farmstead with a murky past. Happy Christmas to all our listeners, see you in 2024!
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It’s time for the third advent episode, and in some ways it’s a cautionary tale about the perils of day drinking. One morning in the village of Doddington, farm workers were surprised to come across a man, naked and bloody among their ploughs. A strange find indeed. But the story that the man had to tell was stranger still…
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It’s Advent Sunday no. 2 and time for one of the titans of East Anglian folklore - Black Shuck himself! The phantom devil hound bounds about the countryside, terrifying all who see him with his slavering jaws and blazing eyes. And what of Shuck’s smaller and more mournful relative, the Shug Monkey? We shall hear about him too.
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The first of our Sunday advent episodes is here! And what better way to count down to Christmas than to hear about a grisly explosion that happened in the middle of the summer. In July 1943, the town of Rayleigh in Essex was shocked when a loud kaboom! broke the peace of the day. At the source of the explosion, all that could be seen was a mangled pile of metal and flesh. What on earth had happened?
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27th October heralded our third live show at the Museum of Cambridge. The topic was a short history of Cambridge Castle, Castle Mound, and the Cambridge gaol that stood on the site for many years. Discussion ranged all over the place: Cromwell, pease pudding, long drop vs short drop hangings, masonry, and much more.
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A ghost that is also a witch? It must be Hallowe’en! October 1944 brought a cluster of strange goings on to the Essex village of Great Leighs. Clocks losing time, rabbits with eggs, and all sorts of troublesome behaviour in the guest bedroom of the St Anne’s Castle pub on Scrapfaggot Green.
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In 1835 the folk of North Norfolk village Burnham Market were shocked by a series of mysterious deaths. Was it cholera, or something more sinister? Spoiler: it wasn’t cholera.
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What happens when a Norfolk doctor of coarse manner and peculiar habits ends up hobnobbing with the society types of 18th century London? Find out in this mini episode as we hear the story of Dr Messenger Monsey.
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It’s part 2 of our smuggling double! Listen up for the story of a most ill-fated smuggling operation involving a muck heap, an incriminating beer bung, and a whole bunch of inns and drunken dragoons.
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How do you enjoy your tea, gin, and tobacco? In 18th century England the answer was simple: smuggled into the country without paying due taxes please!
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The Foyster family are about to arrive at the infamous Borley Rectory and encounter for themselves the disruptions and peculiarities of this creaking old pile. Marianne receives messages from beyond the grave (or does she?), family intrigues abound, and Harry Price continues to investigate.
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It’s time for the most haunted house not just in East Anglia, but in all of England! Welcome to the first of our two part series about Borley Rectory. This creaking old Victorian pile became infamous for multiple ghost sightings, poltergeist activity, and bad plumbing.
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This episode the story begins, as it so often does, with a gruesome East Anglian murder and a sentence of death by hanging. But who will carry out that sentence? Whose shoulders must carry the fullest and harshest weight of the British law? That’s where the Pierrepoints come in. Henry, Thomas, and Albert, executioners all!
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