Saturday, February 7, 2009







I've just learned from the remarkable new teaching tool, tele-vision, that, when armies overran castles, they often dug under the walls, causing them to cave in and tumble down. This was called"slighting", or sometimes more prosaically, "under mining". One of England best preserved castle built by Edward the first was, in fact never finished and so no one ever bothered to destroy it. He was a great castle innovator and builder, having just returned from the crusades, on which trip he saw many new designs for these edifices. And that will suffice for today's lesson.

7 comments:

Rosaria Williams said...

Great lesson to pass on. Thanks.

Natalie said...

Excellent!, loved that post. I like interesting tidbits very much. Thanks. :D

Liza B. Gonzalez said...

Great history of the origin of the phrases. It's good to see television used for good.

virginia said...

undermining, so that's where the term originated.

cool castle, which i've visited, below:

http://les-andelys.com/chateau-gaillard/

French Fancy... said...

I love stuff like this

French Fancy... said...

Returned to tell you of my coincidence of the day. Have been sitting studying and it turns out that some of the stones at Stonehenge collapsed in 1780 due to *undermining by rabbits*.

That's what it said.

marc aurel said...

My parents took me there when I was a child. I recognised the views on the internet site.