For their first year module, Beliefs, Communities and Conflicts, 1400-1750, UoP history students are asked to do a practical activity and then write a report about it, reflecting reflecting critically about how it relates to the themes explored in the module. This, the first of two posts, looks at what students learned from trying to reconstruct early modern cosmetics. The tutors on this module were Dr Maria Cannon and Dr Fiona McCall. Rosie Wells chose to adapt the recipe for Rose Lip Balm from Italian doctor Giovanni Marinelli’s Gli ornamenti delle donne (The Ornament of Ladies) (1562) a manual on female beauty containing recipes at first purporting to be taken […]
Tag Archives | seventeenth century
Southsea Castle courtyard
By Fiona McCall on May 14, 2026 in Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus, Uncategorized
By Charlie Wilkinson Southsea’s well was built in 1544, abandoned in 1814, covered over during later modifications and then rediscovered in the 1960s. That means it sat unused for over 150 years, during which: the garrison changed, the fort was remodelled, obsolete artillery (including stone shot) was discarded, domestic waste accumulated. This blog discusses three objects that were discovered inside the well at Southsea Castle: a wooden bucket and pulley, stone cannon balls and pottery flask fragments. Object 1: Wooden bucket and pulley system The original well was built against the inside of the Tudor curtain wall and equipped with a simple pulley block, an oak bucket, and a […]
Portsmouth history students launch interactive trails for Southsea Castle
UOP History students studying the second-year Working with the Past module have launched an interactive trail for Southsea Castle, which was built for Henry VIII in the then fashionable trace italienne style of angled star-shaped fort, examples of which you can find all across Europe. Click here to read a post about how the Castle was captured by the parliamentarians at the start of the English Civil War from its drunken royalist commander! The trail follows the launch of a student-written trail for Portsmouth Cathedral last year. Each of the students – Ben Whiteman, Charlie Wilkinson, Madi East and Magdalena Djakovic – worked on a different part of the structure: […]
Do not seek pleasure – guidelines for 17th-century widows
Last year our own Dr Maria Cannon won a fellowship to study at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C. While there she came across a manuscript book, Of the Commendable Estate of Widowehoode, a translation of a 16th century Italian work which advises widows on suitable behaviour, and afterwards wrote this blog piece for the Folger Library blog. Let’s just say that having any kind of fun is out. While its lessons can appear restrictive and depressing to modern tastes, this lengthy guide reveals that women were responsible for negotiating their own behaviour, spirituality and relationship to God. https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/how-to-be-a-true-widow/
The conflicted loyalties of gunmakers during the English Civil Wars and after
English Civil War royalism has often been depicted as the preserve of the elite, but this was not necessarily the case, as MRes student Natalie Lejeune found in her research into the activities of gunmakers during and after the civil wars. Prior royal service often inclined these specialist craftsmen towards the Royalists initially. After the Royalist defeat, they transferred their work to a new Republican Government prepared to tolerate their dubious loyalties in exchange for their much-needed skills. Yet their loyalties remained conflicted, with some, including female-gunmakers as well as men, secretly supplying arms to Royalist conspiracists on the side, a pattern of mixed loyalties which mirrors those in France […]
Guiding the next generation of history students to become their best selves
James Farrar finished his history studies at Portsmouth in 2021. Although James had always been set on a career in teaching, he decided to gain some hands on experience before studying for his PGCert, which he is planning to gain next year, via the more practical School-Centred Initial Teacher Training (SCITT) route. Below he describes some of the highs and lows of his past four years gaining experience as a teaching assistant, student engagement worker, and cover supervisor, an honest and humorous appraisal (there seems to be a lavatorial theme!) which should be invaluable to current students aiming to follow a similar career trajectory. Time flies when you are having […]