[HN Gopher] Tintern 'secret' medieval tunnel system found by acc...
___________________________________________________________________
Tintern 'secret' medieval tunnel system found by accident
Author : goodcanadian
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-03-04 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| Uhhrrr wrote:
| The article doesn't say how they know it's medieval.
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| I love Tintern Abbey [0]... When you're peacefully driving down
| the Wye Valley (say, after visiting Puzzlewood [1]), enjoying the
| green scenery and cosy little villages along the river, the last
| thing you expect are the colossal ruins of a medieval church...
| <3
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintern_Abbey
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlewood
| bigfudge wrote:
| Me too. It's on one of my favourite bike rides too... the road
| up to Monmouth is a great day out from Bristol.
| grumblepeet wrote:
| Agreed. I used to drop my son up to Hereford from Bristol and
| often took this scenic route. It's an absolutely beautiful
| road with great scenery. When you come around the corner and
| get hit by the sight and sheer size of the ruined church
| especially when there's a bit of mist with the sun streaming
| through it it's almost a mystical experience.
|
| Favourite place name near here? Nempnett Thrubwell. Or Chew
| Magna. Great names.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Wow at that popover to prevent reading with an adblocker
| installed.
|
| You can load the page then go to airplane mode.
| retrac98 wrote:
| Interestingly the site is completely ad free within the UK as
| it's funded by the public.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Ad-free for me too in Norway. Probably due to UBlock Origin
| rather than the location though.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It says adblocker detected, then tells you how to
| reconfigure your blocker to allow their adverts. Ublock
| Origin instructions are included.
| dmix wrote:
| ublock seems to bypass that as well... as others have
| noted.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Ublock origin seems to block it successfully.
| olivermarks wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdstall
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogou
|
| Pretty fascinating the sheer number of different types of
| mediaeval tunnels across Europe and their presumed uses
| dmix wrote:
| You have to love the s/weird/unusual [1] names of places in the
| UK (and it looks like a beautiful area from the small picture):
|
| > Tintern, in the Wye Valley, Monmouthshire
|
| There's also plenty of "upon the"s and "x-in-y" (ie: Henly-in-
| Arden). Not just the England but seems just as common in
| Scotland, or even more common.
|
| I can imagine the early computer systems of the postal
| organization having to deal with these quirks.
|
| [1] apparently "weird" is being taken as bad or something. I like
| weird.
| samizdis wrote:
| Tintern is a beautiful place, and Tintern Abbey is particularly
| so - plus it has an amazingly rich history.
|
| See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintern_Abbey
|
| Edited to add - Nice set of photos at the bottom of this page:
|
| https://medievalheritage.eu/en/main-page/heritage/wales/tint...
| hcrisp wrote:
| A friend and I visited Wales during college and ran across
| Tintern Abbey quite by accident. We rented a car in London,
| and embarked on a drive from there to Oxford. We found a
| place to stay somewhere between Oxford and Tintern (not sure
| exactly where). Early the next day we got back on the road,
| and suddenly we beheld emerging out of the gloomy mist a
| majestic but decrepit building obviously of centuries-old
| origin. We inquired and learned its name: Tintern Abbey. The
| pictures at the bottom of the medievalheritage.eu link are
| what I remember seeing.
| adonovan wrote:
| Treat yourself to this map, you've earned it:
| https://marvellousmaps.com/stgs-great-british-place-names-ma...
| kungito wrote:
| I don't understand why this is a problem. It's a simple multi
| tier naming scheme. Don't Americans have Springfields
| everywhere?
| dmix wrote:
| No one said it was a problem, yikes. I regret bringing this
| up.
| robin_reala wrote:
| What's weird about that?
| dmix wrote:
| Well for one thing it didn't seem to transfer over to North
| America when the Brits (and French, etc) were naming towns
| and cities here in Canada, and the US...where I grew up. It's
| like a legacy thing.
|
| It seems they were more likely to stick to singular words
| here in NA when naming regions. So it's interesting to me? Is
| that taboo or something?
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| I don't see how "King's Rocks" (Tintern) is more weird
| than, say, "Gathering Place By The Water" (Milwaukee)...
| dmix wrote:
| I think you guys are taking "weird" a bit too literally,
| I don't mean it in a negative way.
|
| If it was common here in Canada then I wouldn't find it
| 'weird' or unusual would I? And I can assure you it's not
| very common. Even if there are exceptions.
|
| Regardless that was not what the Brits (or whichever Euro
| empire) chose to eventually name Milwaukee, they chose
| Milwaukee. So that's a poor counterpoint...
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| I chose that example precisely because both of them are
| in the language of the former natives, now barely spoken
| in the area, and not in the language of the empire that
| conquered it. ;)
| DanBC wrote:
| The place is called Tintern.
|
| It's being described as "in the Wye Valley", but that's not
| part of the name.
| mbg721 wrote:
| In the US, specifying the state seems to serve the same
| purpose of avoiding confusion. "Springfield, MA" and
| "Springfield, IL", as opposed to "Springfield-upon-
| Connecticut" and "Springfield-on-the-Lake".
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Carmel-by-the-Sea
| kraftman wrote:
| If you're interested, Wye comes from the name of the river,
| which means either to wander, or crooked hills. Either seem
| relevant given the strange way that the river wye goes from
| wide, slow meandering bends across floodplains into rapids
| through steep crooked valleys (as opposed to most rivers that
| start in mountains and end in floodplains.)
|
| Monmouth is at the mouth of the river Monnow, a tributary of
| the Wye.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Keep unpacking meanings please, this is really interesting.
|
| Where do Monnow and Tintern come from?
| mpclark wrote:
| Oh dear. I lived three years in Tintern and five in
| Monmouth and can't answer either of those!
| Lammy wrote:
| Also a common term for a particular type of railway junction
| that resembles the river:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wye_(rail)
| gumby wrote:
| > There's also plenty of "upon the"s and "x-in-y" (ie: Henly-
| in-Arden).
|
| These are common in many languages.
|
| Even in England: Weston-super-Mare is just latin for "Weston by
| (literally "over") the sea".
|
| And constructs like "Stratford-upon-Avon" (to disambiguate from
| other Stratfords) are pretty common in most places; consider "
| _Frankfurt am Main_ " and " _Frankfurt an der Oder_ " all of
| which specify that their town is the one on _this_ specific
| river.
|
| Also a lot of those European place names (ignoring the
| prepositional affixes) are themselves compounds of other nice
| properties.
|
| I don't know why this construct is uncommon in the USA.
| Taniwha wrote:
| I think it's universal Shanghai translates to "upon the sea"
| bluGill wrote:
| > I don't know why this construct is uncommon in the USA.
|
| In the US we use a comma. Buffalo, NY - as opposed to Buffalo
| in any other state. (MN, TX, and WI each have a city of
| buffalo - perhaps more, that is where I stopped searching).
| States in the US tend to be very careful about not allowing
| duplication of names so this is enough for the most part.
| macintux wrote:
| > States in the US tend to be very careful about not
| allowing duplication of names so this is enough for the
| most part.
|
| True, although if you include unincorporated towns, there
| are a lot of naming conflicts, at least in my home state of
| Indiana.
|
| Marion, for example, is the name of a small city an hour
| from Marion County, the central county that encompasses
| Indianapolis, and also the name of a small unincorporated
| community an hour in a different direction.
|
| Plus Marian University is in Marion County, not Marion the
| city, although unlike Harvard, MA vs Harvard University, I
| doubt that causes much confusion.
| 1986 wrote:
| New York has quite a few on-river names: Annandale-,
| Castleton-, Croton-, Hastings-, and Grand View-on-Hudson -
| maybe a legacy of the era in which the state was colonized.
| smogcutter wrote:
| Those are the stations when they put you on the Wolverine
| up to Annandale. Ain't never going back, though.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| There's Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. There's also a lot of
| "New" versions of older European locations as a way to
| distinguish them from other similarly named places when there
| aren't any rivers nearby, I guess, like New Jersey. Don't
| forget, a lot of places in the US were also already named
| before European settlers arrived.
|
| It might also simply not be needed as a matter of
| practicality. There are many Springfields, but probably not
| very many per state (although I know New Jersey has two) and
| certainly a max of one per zipcode. Sure Springfield, MA
| 12345 isn't as whimsical as Springfield-upon-the-Connecticut
| (or whatever) in terms of distinguishing it from Springfield,
| NJ 08765, but it gets the job done.
| sonofhans wrote:
| In England years ago we would visit Weston-under-Lizard (the
| town of Weston in the shadow of the hill Lizard --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston-under-Lizard). That's my
| favorite name of this type.
| mprev wrote:
| Never thought I'd see my part of the world on here; used to
| drive through Weston under Lizard every day.
|
| Some good place names in Shropshire, too, but Durham has my
| favourite with No Place and Pity Me.
| nickt wrote:
| Don't forget Quaking Houses and Unthank!
| tomxor wrote:
| It also has some great rock climbing along the same part of the
| wye, a mere ~100 meters at most if you go to wintours leap but
| you get some of the most beautiful views. My favorite spot for
| local summer trad climbing.
| dcminter wrote:
| You'd probably enjoy "St Andrew by the Wardrobe" then:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Mind boggling that something can stay hidden for so long in a
| part of the world that is so well trodden.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Did anyone else read the subject line and think of a particular
| blonde journalist, his puppy, and his alcoholic, sea-faring
| friend?
| dhosek wrote:
| I was an English major in college. I immediately thought of
| Wordsworth's "Lines on Tintern Abbey."
|
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45527/lines-composed-...
| jareklupinski wrote:
| maybe if it was discovered by a "Snerwy" :P
| moron4hire wrote:
| I collect TinTin commics in different languages, out of this
| fantasy that attempting to read them is going to teach me
| those languages (I mean, it can't hurt, right?). And I was
| completely blown away that Snowy has a different name in most
| of the different versions (most of the time, it's some
| variation of the translation of "chalky"), but Cpt Haddock is
| always "Haddock".
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Haddock's curses are also great. Mille sabords! That's
| "blistering barnacles" to you anglophones. It actually
| means "a thousand portholes" which would not sound very
| impressive coming from somebody other than Captain Haddock.
| foobarian wrote:
| I did misunderstand the title but I thought of Trove[1]
| primitive collections instead.
|
| [1]
| http://trove4j.sourceforge.net/javadocs/gnu/trove/map/TIntIn...
| badJack wrote:
| isn't this the premise of reign of fire?
| astrea wrote:
| Seems like the technicians' work is already done for them. What a
| win!
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| That poor property "owner", whatever work they needed done will
| be delayed by the state for years now.
| DavidAdams wrote:
| It's funny that this showed up at HN, but I'm personally
| interested because one of my ancestors, Aoife MacMurrough, was
| buried at Tintern Abbey. Her daughter and son-in-law, Isabel de
| Clare and William Marshal, were big time patrons of the abbey. If
| you're ever in Eastern Wales, the ruins are a pretty spot to
| visit.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-03-04 23:00 UTC)