One of the things that really interests me are the writings on random stones used for buildings in this country. Over the years buildings have fallen down or been demolished and so stones have been reused in out of context from where they were intended to be and this sometimes means that you'll get the odd stone that has decorative carvings or writing on them. I find these really appealing and whenever I see a Church or house that has a word or two randomly placed (often upside down) halfway up a wall the knowledge that it probably came from...

I'm currently (slowly) working through a history degree in my spare time, but I'm also working on a few topics of my own. My latest is an exercise in landscape archaeology. In case you don't know what that is, and if you don't watch Time Team you probably don't get much exposure to it, it's looking at bumps in the ground to see what was there without digging holes. Oh, and maps are involved too, which is the part that I've been working on for the last few days. The subject of my reseach is something called "Odiham Race Course", which...