Surrey Medieval is alive and well

I really didn’t mean to leave it so long.

Panoramic pic of a snowy Farnham Castle taken on 16th March, during the SyAS Medieval Studies Forum study day in/about Farnham. If you hadn’t guessed from the snow, taking this while stood atop the remnants of the late 12th-century shell keep was unbelievably cold. Proof if proof were needed of my continued commitment to medieval studies!

Surrey Medieval has been going for several years now, and in that time I’ve seen numerous great (or could-have-been-great-if-only-their-authors-had-stuck-at-it) blogs come and go. I think this is the longest I’ve left it between posts; even if it’s not, a gap in excess of half a year is nothing to be proud of. So, to confirm a few things:

(1) Surrey Medieval is still a thing, it’s not dead – it’s just been sleeping while I did things like get a full-time job and learn how to manage my anxiety and depression.

(2) Actually, it’s not been completely dormant around these parts; I added a brief note under the Puttenham tab just before Christmas about a new history book covering Puttenham church and the three others churches in its united parish.

(3) I have a stack of half-finished draft posts waiting in the wings, covering some really interesting (and in one or two cases, pretty important) topics, so where would the sense be in jacking it all in?

(4) I still think Surrey Medieval serves a purpose for me as an outlet for my research and interests; the number of daily views hasn’t dipped much in the intervening months, which suggests the various posts and pages I’ve produced to date are proving useful to people somewhere…

Writing this post won’t be accompanied by promises to have something else done and published within X number of days or weeks. It’s fair to say I’ve learnt better than to do that. What I will do is break a promise I made last year – to write up the second, more general part of my take on the 2017 Leeds International Medieval Congress. Too much time has passed and too many significant discussions and developments have taken place since July for there to be any practical value in such an endeavour. However, if it’s any consolation, I’m still determined to make good on another suggestion for a future post, summarising the day’s fieldwork in and around Sunningwell in Oxfordshire that informed the case study culmination of my IMC paper. Much better photos to go with it, too.

Back again soon(ish)!