Ye Olde Caves of Nottingham

In my middle-grade/young adult time travel book, The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis, my feisty group of adolescent characters’ first mission lands then in England in 1214 where they must find a young Robin Hood and his merry band of teens. Legend has it that one of Robin Hood’s haunts (besides the famous Sherwood Forest) was the village of Nottingham. When I undertook the meticulous research needed to craft my novel, I came across an interesting fact about Nottingham I had never known: beneath the houses, shops, and offices of Nottingham are hundreds of caves. My eyes bugged and imagination went into overdrive, while I gathered fact after fact about the Nottingham caves. In truth, it was a little like panning for gold nuggets.

The end result of the information I gleaned is woven into my story, but I’d like to share some other interesting facts about these not-so-famous caves:

·         The earliest written record of Nottingham’s caves comes from a Welsh monk called Asser who when writing about Nottingham in 868 referred to the town as Tig Guocobauc, meaning house or place of caves in British. 

·         Nottingham has more man-made caves than anywhere else in Britain.

·         The exposed cliff of the sandstone outcrop made this an obvious place for the early citizens of Nottingham to make their home. The occupants of these cave houses were generally poor and the caves were known as pauper holes.   

·         Each cave is unique and created for a specific purpose; some even have elaborate carvings, pillars and staircases.  

·         The softness of Nottingham’s sandstone makes it easy to excavate with hand tools, and the structural stability means that excavated caves are safe to use, even with buildings above them.

·         Throughout the medieval period Nottingham continued to grow and prosper becoming a centre for trades such as wool manufacture, tanning, malting, alabaster carving and pottery production.  A number of these activities were undertaken in Nottingham’s caves.

·         Sandstone caves maintain a constant temperature of around 14 degrees Celsius/ 57.2 Fahrenheit and therefore made excellent cellars for the storage of ale.  

·         At the start of the Second World War new caves were excavated and old ones reused to act as Air Raid shelters. 

Believe it or not, few people in Nottingham are aware of this labyrinth, and fewer still have visited them. Unfortunately, in these modern times, a significant number of caves have been filled in with cement or bricked up, with others disappearing through natural collapse. There’s a special project underway called the Nottingham Caves Survey which hopes to survey and document all the caves under Nottingham, and bring awareness to this unique historical resource. I invite you to take a virtual tour if you dare: http://nottinghamcavessurvey.org.uk/

And don’t forget to enter for a chance to win all of the fabulous prizes mentioned in the Rafflecopter below…
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5 Places I'd love to visit if I could time travel

One of the interview questions I ask other middle-grade/young adult authors on my blog is, If you could time travel anywhere into Earth’s past, where would you go and why? I’ve gotten so many answers, many of them unique and original. I’ve even posed this question to elementary students when I’ve done an author visit. And you know what? Most kids say that they’d travel back to the time period to when their parents were their age so they can meet them.

Didn’t see that one coming!

The kids’ response got me thinking. Where would I like to go, if given the opportunity to time travel into the past? My answers both surprised and delighted me. Here are my top five picks:

1.      Atlantis – I know, go figure, but I believe it was a real place and not a myth. I’ve done too much research to know this. My gut tells me Atlantis existed. However, I wouldn’t want to go back there when things, let’s say got little shaky and wet, for the Atlanteans!

 

2.      Ancient Egypt – this timeline is very hard to pinpoint. I’ve just done a bucket load of research in this era for the prequel to my time travel series, The Legend of the Timekeepers. Egypt, it seems, was rumored as a place where many Atlantean refugees settled after the destruction of Atlantis. So if there’s any truth to these myths, I’d love to go back and see what the Atlanteans did with their clean slate.

 

3.      Mayan Civilization (Central America) – I’d love to go during their Classic period (250 C.E. to 900 C.E.) because it seems the Mayans reached their peak in this era with advanced science, art, and architecture. It makes me wonder what the Spanish Conquistadors destroyed and stole from this advance civilization. Oh yeah, and believe it or not, the Mayan pyramids are older than the Egyptian pyramids.

 

4.      Greece (336-323 B.C.E.), during the reign of Alexander the Great – this man is a legend. Not only did he create the largest empire in the ancient world, he built new Greek-style cities like Alexandria in Egypt. Scholars came to Alexandria from all over the Greek world to study and discuss new ideas. Would have loved to visit his legendary library!

5.      France in the 1800s, during the time of the French novelists – meeting the Three Musketeers’, Quasimodo’s, and Captain Nemo’s creators would be the icing on the cake for me. Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Jules Verne not only created great literary works, but managed to leave a legacy behind that will live for generations to come. These novelists were true trailblazers in every sense of the word.

There you have it. My top five place picks I’d love to visit if I could travel back in time. So where would you blaze into the past to visit? Love to hear your choices! And don’t forget to enter for a chance to win all of the fabulous prizes mentioned in the Rafflecopter below…

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And the Winner of the Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop are…

I want to thank everyone who celebrated and participated in the Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop this past week. I had a lot of positive feedback, and made some wonderful new friends during this awesome hop. For more information on Children’s Book Week please visit: http://www.bookweekonline.com/

BTW—there’s still time to enter my Goodreads giveway and the 1^st Anniversary Book Release Celebration of The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis Rafflecopter. Both giveaways end May 30^th with the winners being announced here on May 31^st.

Here are the links for both giveaways:

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/51270?auto_login_attempted=true

http://sharonledwith.blogspot.ca/2013/05/welcome-to-first-anniversary-of-my.html

And now on to the announcement—drum roll please…

The winner of a signed limited edition paperback copy of The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis and trading card, and the handcrafted Babel Necklace goes to Jalaine Smothers!

Congrats, Jalaine! And just a reminder to please time travel responsibly. Cheers!

Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop...

Welcome and thank you for stopping by on your tour around the Children’s Book Week Giveaway Hop hosted by KitLitFrenzy, Mymcbooks, and I Am A Reader, Not A Writer.

What is Children’s Book Week?

Established in 1919, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running literacy initiative in the United States. Each year, books for young people and the joy of reading are feted for a full week with author and illustrator appearances, storytelling, parties, and other book-related events at schools, libraries, bookstores, museums, and homes from coast-to-coast.

Now for the party part —I’m giving away a signed limited edition paperback of my novel The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis, the first book in my middle-grade/YA time travel series and a signed trading card, as well as a custom-crafted Babel necklace pictured below.

BTW – this Giveaway is opened internationally, so everyone is included in this hop! It’s just one of the ways I’m celebrating the 1^st Anniversary Book Release of The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis during the month of May!

Here’s the tagline and blurb from my book:

Children are the keys to our future. And now, children are the only hope for our past.

When 13-year-old Amanda Sault and her annoying classmates are caught in a food fight at school, they're given a choice: suspension or yard duty. The decision is a no-brainer. Their two-week crash course in landscaping leads to the discovery of a weathered stone arch in the overgrown back yard. The arch isn't a forgotten lawn ornament but an ancient time portal from the lost continent of Atlantis.

Chosen by an Atlantean Magus to be Timekeepers--legendary time travelers sworn to keep history safe from the evil Belial--Amanda and her classmates are sent on an adventure of a lifetime. Can they find the young Robin Hood and his merry band of teens? If they don't, then history itself may be turned upside down.

Good luck, and don’t forget to visit all the other blogs on the hop and enjoy more giveaway fun!

Terms & Conditions 

 This Blog Hop begins May 13^th and runs until midnight May 19^th, 2013. The winner will be announced May 20^th, 2013 on my blog.

The winner will chosen by Rafflecopter

I will contact the winner via email and give the winner 72 hours to accept his/her prize.

Prizes as stated in—no alternatives will be offered.

ADDED BONUS: Since I’m celebrating the 1^stAnniversary of my Book Release, go to this link and enter for a chance to win more awesome prizes:

http://sharonledwith.blogspot.ca/2013/05/welcome-to-first-anniversary-of-my.html

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Band of Merry Teens

Robin Hood. Maid Marion. Little John. Friar Tuck. Alan a’Dale. Wil Scarlet. Much the Miller’s Son. You’ve seen them immortalized as adults. Now picture them as teens. Come on, you can do it. Can you imagine this band of merry teens? I could. In fact I created these legendary outlaws as adolescents in my debut middle grade/young adult time travel series, The Last Timekeepers andthe Arch of Atlantis. And I had such fun doing it!

So much has been written about these historical figures, whether they were real or imagined, and so many movies and books have translated the tales of this famous band of thieves. The stories themselves have been romanticized to a point where, when we picture Robin Hood, he’s wearing green clothing, tights, pointy shoes, and a cap with a feather in it. Nice. So me, being me, changed a few facts around, played with different ideas, toyed with names, got my hands calloused and dirty, then took aim and fired off an original Robin Hood story toward my adolescent target audience. Bull’s eye. At least, I hope so.

Book Excerpt:

Amanda Sault silently studied the words she just scrawled: May 1st, 1214—Games and songs and revelry, act as the cloak of devilry. So that an English legend may give to the poor, we must travel to Nottingham to even the score.

She frowned. She was the Scribe. Amanda knew that meant she was supposed to understand what this riddle meant. But she didn’t have a clue. All she knew was that she, her four annoying classmates, and two offbeat adults were standing in what was left of the lost continent of Atlantis and they were supposed to be the Timekeepers, the legendary time travelers handpicked by destiny to keep Earth’s history safe from evil. But no one had told them how they were supposed to do it.

Their problem: no matter what happened—good or bad—they weren’t supposed to mess with the past. Period. Dot. End of story. Amanda felt hot liquid build in her throat. Her thumb traced the words of the arcane riddle. Their first Timekeeper mission. Amanda knew this wasn’t the end of the story.

This was just the beginning.

And don’t forget to enter for a chance to win all of the fabulous prizes mentioned in the Rafflecopter below…

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Time Travel 101

Legends. We love them. We can’t get enough of them. In fact we NEED them. Legends connect humanity in ways we can’t fathom. A legend, by definition is a story handed down for generations among a people and popularly believed to have a historical basis, although not verifiable. In book one of my time travel series, The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis, Amanda Sault, her four classmates, and two tag-along adults are whisked through an arch they find buried in an overgrown garden, and transported to the mythical continent of Atlantis. They’ve been summoned to become Timekeepers—legendary time travelers sworn to keep history safe from an evil force known only as Belial. Oh, BTW—they’re not just any Timekeepers—they’re the Last Timekeepers. No pressure, right? Well, maybe a smidgen.

The Timekeepers first mission involves going back to 1214 England, actually Nottingham to be precise. There, Amanda and her time traveling cohorts meet an adolescent Robin Hood, although he is known as Robyn Hodekin to the people of Nottingham. So here’s the rub—in The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis, what’s myth and what’s made-up? That’s when it’s up to the reader to seek the truth and dispel the lies.

Here’s a little help:

Robin Hood—if he did exist—was known by many names. Robyn Hode, Robert Earl of Huntingdon, Robert Fitz Ooth, and Robert fitz Odo to name a few. The first written references to our hero are brief. The earliest comes in the poem Piers Plowman, written in 1377 by the London cleric William Langland. One of his characters, an idle priest, says in passing, “I know the rhymes of Robin Hood,” but that is all. The oldest surviving substantial account of Robin Hood in his wider setting was printed in 1510, and is called A Geste of Robin Hood, the word Geste probably meaning a tale of heroic exploits. BTW—“Robin Hood in Sherwood stood” was one verse found preserved in a scrap of manuscript from Lincoln Cathedral, and was dated around 1410.

Mortimer’s Hole—The Mortimer and his hole in my story is fictional. The real Mortimer’s Hole is a 98 metre long man-made tunnel that takes you from the foot of castle rock up to the Upper Bailey in the castle grounds. It is named after Roger Mortimer. On the night of 19th October 1330 one of the most dramatic events in the history of the castle took place when the supporters of 15 year old King Edward III entered the castle through a secret passage —now named Mortimer's Hole. They captured Queen Isabella and her lover, Roger Mortimer, who had usurped the young King and were ruling England in his place. Mortimer was taken to London where he was executed. Mortimer's Hole was probably used as a food chute in medieval times.

Nottingham caves—Totally factual! Beneath the houses, shops and offices of Nottingham lie hundreds of caves. Few people in Nottingham are aware of this labyrinth, which exists underneath the city streets, and fewer still have visited them. Nottingham has more man-made caves than anywhere else in Britain. People have worked and lived in them for over 1,000 years. None of these caves were formed naturally. They were all cut into the sandstone by the city’s inhabitants for use as houses, cellars and place of work. Each cave in unique and created for a specific purpose, some have elaborate carvings, pillars and staircases. Take a virtual tour if you dare: http://nottinghamcavessurvey.org.uk/

Knights Templar— The Knights Templar trace their origin back to shortly after the First Crusade. Around 1119, a French nobleman, Hughes de Payens, collected eight of his knight relatives, and began the Order, their stated mission to protect pilgrims on their journey to visit the Holy Places. Knights of the Order wore white mantles, assigned to the Templars in 1129 at the Council of Troyes and surcoats quartered by a red cross, a symbol of martyrdom, probably added at the start of the Second Crusade in 1147, and were heavily armored knights from the aristocracy with war horses. Knights had to wear their white mantles as all times, even when eating and drinking.

The Rockyard Inn—The name is fictional. Much of the history of the Inn is very poorly recorded. An archaeological dig in 1974 proved conclusively that the location of the original Brewhouse could only be that of the caves of Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem, the Inn that exists there presently. This established that the Castle Brewhouse existed prior to 1189AD but the first dated reference is to be found is in the records of the City Council for the year 1618. The parochial rights to the area now known as the Brewhouse Yard did not in fact belong to the Castle but passed backwards and forward over time between the Priory of Lenton, The Knights Templar and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem.

And please don't forget to enter my Rafflecopter contest for a chance to win some great prizes at the end of this month...

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Welcome to the First Anniversary of my month-long Book Release Celebration…

Happy May Day to everyone! The month of May marks a year since The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis made its debut into the world. Actually the precise release date was May 18^th, but I thought why not celebrate the whole month of May with a Rafflecopter giveaway full of book swag, a Goodreads giveaway featuring a signed paperback and trading card, and participating in the Children’s Book Week Blog Hop taking place from May 13^th to May 19^th, where I’m offering a signed paperback and custom crafted Babel Necklace. Party on!

Coincidently, the Timekeepers’ first mission lands them in England in 1214 where they must complete their mission by May 1^st which is May Day—one of the biggest holidays during the Middle Ages. The May Day festival is the celebration of life and love, of procreation and renewal. May Day is a truly a time of games, song, revelry, and tournaments, with the most popular event having men and women dancing and singing around a decorated pole aptly called a Maypole. Celebrants were green sashes across their bodies or wreaths on their heads. I know that doesn’t sound like much fun now, but hey this was way before Disneyland!

 

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis

by Sharon Ledwith

Giveaway ends May 31, 2013.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Here’s the blurb from The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis:

When 13-year-old Amanda Sault and her annoying classmates are caught in a food fight at school, they're given a choice: suspension or yard duty. The decision is a no-brainer. Their two-week crash course in landscaping leads to the discovery of a weathered stone arch in the overgrown back yard. The arch isn't a forgotten lawn ornament but an ancient time portal from the lost continent of Atlantis.

Chosen by an Atlantean Magus to be Timekeepers--legendary time travelers sworn to keep history safe from the evil Belial--Amanda and her classmates are sent on an adventure of a lifetime. Can they find the young Robin Hood and his merry band of teens? If they don't, then history itself may be turned upside down.

Okay, I’m not going to make you wear a green sash or wreath or dance around a Maypole (unless you want to), but in order to get this May Day party started, here’s what I’m offering one lucky contestant who enters the Rafflecopter below:

·         A signed limited edition paperback copy of The Last Timekeepers and the Arch of Atlantis

·         A custom crafted Babel Necklace (pictured in the sidebar)

·         A blue Ionic Power wrist watch

·         A  few signed trading cards (doubles as book marks too)

·         A couple of wrist bands stamped with ‘The Last Timekeepers’ and ‘We Are One’

The contest will run until May 30^th, and on May 31^st I will announce the lucky winner. BTW—this in an International Contest and is open to EVERYONE. So good luck and let the good times roll, and celebration begin!

a Rafflecopter giveaway