As sil reports, the Gentlemen’s Philosophical Society of Elvet visited York last weekend, visiting the Roman remains and seeking refreshment between academic endeavours. Our achievements included:
- Finding our way there.
- Figuring out what’s what at the Multangular Tower and the bits of wall adjoining said Tower with Multiple Angles*
- Admiring Stuff associated with Constantine the Great (acclaimed Emperor at York) in the Yorkshire Museum.
- Walking the city walls, which although not Roman in the main, are cool.
- Visting the Minster, which has the remains of the Roman army HQ displayed in the undercroft.
- Visting the Roman Bath Inn twice without once looking at the remains of an actual Roman Bath in the basement.**
- Established why the Roman Empire collapsed. David Langford’s 210 reasons are merely the hollow echoes of the rapier wit and logic that we applied to the problem.***
- Discovered that Fanshawe is pronounced Featherstonehaugh.
Some pictures I took which aren’t too blurry and don’t involve me are on Flickr.
* Although some problems still remain as to why a tower with ten angles is not called the Decangular Tower or similar. It is also arguable whether the angles differ in their extent, which might be another explanation. I could look it up.
** Although we did discuss the incident relating to the pub when A dispute between two ‘Roman soldiers’ in a 1st century bath house ended up in court when one man accused his rival of threatening to kill him with a replica helmet
(from The Times).
*** And solved.