Notes from the Burial Bed of the Loftus Princess
Plus the future of Notes from the Margin
How Notes from the Margin is Moving Forward:
It’s almost a year since I began my substack journey, and almost six months since I opened the paid subscriber function and began to paywall some posts.
When I first began to write on substack, it was a continuation of my previous website blog and also a new way to build a writing community. I was careful not to pin myself down in terms of theme or niche or process - I wanted to find out where I naturally fell as a writer. I’ve now had a year to settle in, find out what works and find out what doesn’t and adapt my work, to find out what makes me happiest.
It’s time to change things up a little. Previously I had been posting a free post every Thursday, and a paid post every Friday.
Because I want space to run more online courses, workshops and retreats through substack, I’ve decided to make my Friday posts a place for paid subscriber online course posts only and to post a mix of free and paid on a Thursday.
Thursday - a mix of free and paid essays, prompts, opportunities etc
Friday - courses for paid subscribers.
This means there will only be Friday posts when I am running online courses through substack. But there will still be Thursday posts every week.
I am ready to grow. Here I am:
Hello, I’m author and poet Wendy Pratt. I write about what it means to belong and I help other writers do the same.
Welcome to my newsletter: Notes from the Margin.
Notes from the Margin is an exploration of belonging, and a community of writers finding their own sense of belonging. It is a kind of commonplace book in which small points of connection are gathered. The margin of the title is both the place at the edge of a page where notes are made, and a place of in-betweens, of not quite being identified or categorised. These are places of profundity and revelation for me.
I have a discount on my annual plan right now, until 29th February and a brand new four week creative writing course - What to Look for in Spring - for paid subscribers starting in March. Come join me.
A recreation of the Loftus princess at Kirkleath museum
Notes from the Burial Bed of the Loftus Princess
I recently re-visited the discovery of the Loftus Princess while following an online course - Recovering Lost Medieval Women- written and designed by Janina Ramirez, author of the fantastic Femina. The course has now finished and I’m only just catching up on the video lectures, course materials and recoded Q&A sessions.
I’d read about this fascinating medieval burial before, but to have the burial, the grave goods and the site explained within the context of female roles in history by someone as enthusiastic and knowledgable as Janina was like finding a dozen new threads of knowledge and connection, all converging at the place where the ‘princess’ was laid to rest. It sparked something in me, a need to know more and to find where I fit in her story.
Let me tell you about her, the Loftus princess and the Street House Anglo Saxon Cemetery. The burial site dates to the 7th century. The site was built over, and near earlier sites dating back to the neolithic. There was nothing of her body when they discovered her. The acidic soil had thoroughly composed her remains. What we know of her is from what she was buried with, what her community, her family laid in the grave with her. These acts of comfort and care that her people gave her allow us to see something of her. The jewellery she wore is the jewellery of a high status individual - gold, garnets, a stone carved into the shape of a scallop - symbol of pilgrimage and Christian rebirth.
The burial isn’t alone, its in a cemetery complex, a neatly laid out grid of east-west aligned graves, with the burial mound of the Loftus princess clearly more defined, rising out of the middle. There are signs of at least two buildings nearby, possibly places where people could worship or where bodies were laid out, perhaps mortuary preparation sites. The cemetery itself is on the site of a series of neolithic and later henge structures, a Roman villa and what is suggested as a Neolithic house or village. It’s a place in the landscape - a landscape of arable farming - that has been in use for thousands of years. If I picture this landscape when the princess is being laid into her grave and the mound built around her, I imagine that there are visible remnants of past and ancient lives lived on it, perhaps even signs of ritual or religious behaviour. This is where I feel myself becoming embedded in this story, though it is not my story - this feeling of connection is in the continuity of landscape use reflecting the lives of people, their recognition of something from the ancient past as having meaning, not necessarily a religious or ritual meaning, but the sort of human meaning - recognising a connection between the human species only seen by what is left behind in the landscape. Here I am, at the far end of that connection, seeing myself and recognising my place in the landscape too.
In one of the graves two iron age coins from the Corieltauvi tribe, had been pierced and used at jewellery. These coins, to the 7th century people who found them, would be antiques - 600 years old. Perhaps they found them in the soil, perhaps they had been somehow passed down - antique treasures. This continuity is a form of belonging, I feel. I am reminded of my own treasures found while metal detecting on the fields around my home - a gold sovereign once, ox shoes, a medieval key, a medieval buckle. I keep them as treasures on my bookshelf. i considered making the sovereign into a piece of jewellery. I might still do so.
The thing that moved me most as I read about this burial, and about the way that woman lived in the 7th century, was not the beautiful jewels she was wearing - the cabochons and the scallop set in garnet and gold, but the bed. This woman was buried in a bed.
Bed burials are relatively rare - there are bed burials from around this time across Europe - of women, men and children - but in Britain, so far, all the bed burials have been of women. I do not know what the ritual interpretation of a bed burial is. But for me there is something about the act of laying someone to rest in a bed that speaks about the continuation of a relationship, about the comfort we offer the dead.
I am thinking of my dad, and his whicker coffin, the blanket that we tucked him in, the way we made sure that wherever he was going, he was not cold, and how that is not a logical thought process, but an instinctive action by a brain that hasn’t realised there is a cut off, that the person who is dead is really, really gone.
I think about this often; the way that, in acts of grief - acts of comforting the dead - two parts of the brain are working at once; that there is an instinctive, animal part of the brain suddenly uncovered by this event, like pipe works uncovered during road works, or the way a shiny metal wire is uncovered when an electrical cable has the safe plastic covering peeled back. It is animal, and authentic, and truthful. To place someone into a bed for burial is to offer the comfort of sleep, and more - so much of human life happens in the bed, so much of humans comforting and loving each other happens in a bed and I think a casket or a coffin is also a kind of bed.
The etymology of the word bed leads me to a hypothesised proto-indo-european: badja - resting place, plot of ground. I think about how we use the word bed when we talk about gardening - a bed of roses, a flower bed, and I am, again, drawn back to my father in his whicker coffin, not a million miles away from the whicker Moses basket passed down through the family for new babies, and not a million miles away from the vegetable beds, and flower beds where he grew his food, the beds tucking inside each other and into the landscape of our lives, literally, into the ground that feeds us.
This revelation seems to happen to me often. It is a repeated, welcome, moment of belonging, for me. I take it as a gift. I feel I do not really know who I am. I am someone who has never felt they belong anywhere, but my experiences of loss - my daughter, my dad - might have led me to this place, and this recognition of being a part of a continuing circle, a type of belonging. Not just in grief, but in landscape. I find a comfort in being a part of this wider context of human nature.
New Course Klaxon!
What to Look for in Spring
Starting March 6th 2024
What to Look for in Spring: Writing the World Awakening
What can we learn from nature in Spring? How can we write about it? Where do we exist in the natural world and how do we tie that world to our own lived experiences, physical and emotional?
Spring is a time of re-awakening, a time when the skies begin to lighten, the birds begin to sing and the world begins to be reborn. It’s a time to reflect on our own beginnings and rebirths, and how that is reflected in the world around us. In this four week self directed email course we’ll be exploring nature in poetry and prose using natural, historical, archaeological and folklore themes. From the first yellowing of catkins, the first dawn chorus, to easter rituals, feasts and fables you’ll be encouraged to find inspiration through a series of directed activities aimed at connecting you to your environment, and writing prompts based on published works, museum artefacts and film.
How does it work?
If you are a paid subscriber to Notes from the Margin you will receive the course through paywalled posts and you will be able to access the Notes from the Margin Facebook page. I will be popping into the group to moderate and there will be a few extra treats in store for subscribers.
Notes From the Margin with Wendy Pratt is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
If you choose to access the course as a four week self directed email course you’ll receive a notes bundle on Wednesdays and Fridays direct to your email inbox for four weeks. The notes will include resources, writing prompts, directed activities and inspiration as well as notes on published works to help guide the crafting of your own prose and poetry.
Who is this course for?
This course is open to writers of any experience, who want to find new ways to write about themselves, and/or their place in nature.
What sort of writing will I be doing?
In this course we’ll be exploring poetry and creative non fiction, or narrative non fiction.
How many hours a week do I need to set aside?
You’ll need a good hour or two per notes bundle (two to four hours a week) to benefit fully from this course, but don’t despair if you are strapped for time as there is no homework and no marking, this is a course that you can do at your own pace.
Is there a Facebook Group with this Course?
There is a facebook group attached to Notes from the Margin, where paid subscribers can interact, share drafts and receive encouragement.
Who is Wendy Pratt?
Wendy Pratt is an author, poet and editor. She is author of five poetry collections. Her latest collection of poetry, Blackbird Singing at Dusk will be published by Nine Arches in autumn 2024. Her previous collection of poetry, When I Think of My Body as a Horse, won the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet competition in 2020. Her narrative non fiction nature memoir, The Ghost Lake was long listed for the Nan Shepherd prize and will be published by The Borough Press, a division of Harper Collins, in August 2024. She is also the founder and editor in chief of Spelt magazine, a full colour print magazine that aims to celebrate and validate the rural experience.
Discounts and Bursaries
I have one bursary place for this course for writers on low incomes who would not be able to access the course otherwise. I will not ask you to prove this, this system relies on trust. Just email me at wendyprattfreelancewriter@gmail.com
Investment
FREE for paid subscribers to my Notes from the Margin substack community
A Notes from the Margin subscription is just £5 per month, or £50 a year (saving you £10)
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For non subscribers – £25
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