Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Beach has sometimes in the past celebrated burning libraries, books (and for the multimedia age films) which we know once existed but that have long since disappeared into the dusty maws of time. An impressive burning library author to add to the growing file is Apion Plistonices, impressive because Apion managed to lose not a […]

This is a ghost story that appeared in a nineteenth-century British newspaper (SDE) for 18 Aug 1888. I dare say you heard the old of St. Andrew’s in the Kingdom Fife, N.B.? A charmingly interesting place for lovers of history. However, l am not going to enter into a thorough description here, intention being merely to […]

A happy epiphany to all. Six year old little Miss B (her picture) has just announced that she thinks that ‘adults’ might be behind the Santa Claus lark and this seems, then, like an excellent time to give Beach’s fifth epiphany gift. This is Minor White Latham’s Elizabethan Fairies published back in 1930. In Beach’s […]

More train disasters

Yes this is Audrey Hepburn’s pet deer.

Here is a place and a name that is hard to account for. On the 1850 Ordinance Survey map for Lancashire (79) there is a peculiar rock formation with the words Fairy Battery by the side. This is on Lowe Hill to the north of Turton and Entwistle Resevoir (already built in 1850). There follows […]

McCartney, Lennon and Harrison play at a wedding in early pre fame days.

A weird experience six week ago that, while in no sense historical, might interest some poor folks out there who have to go through the same ordeal. Beach was born in the shires of England. As such English is his mothertongue and lacking any particular linguistic proficiency he knows English well and lots of other […]

The ‘chime child’ was born at a magic time of the night (the times varied but involved bells). She or he had psychic abilities; think of it as a temporal version of the seventh son or the caul. The idea of chime children has become an increasingly popular one in recent years. Beach typed in […]

Sniffing glue in Cumbria in the late 1970s

***Dedicated to Chris who sent this one in*** The year is 1805, the month December and the location Harewood House, a delightful stately house near Leeds, Yorkshire. The cellar records have a special note for this meal as something extraordinary happened there. The Lascelles family, who had built and owned Harewood, ordered up eight bottles […]

Dear Reader, Anarchy rages in the Beachcombing house with newborns and shifting nannies, then, this morning snow arrived on the beach. Thanks, as always, to the multiple linkers: Amanda, Chris, Chris S, Joan, Ricardo, Wade and others. I’ve put the very best contributions below to the posts from this month. Thanks to all emails too. […]