Sussex, Society, and the Seaside: A Blog About Brighton

Time to go ancient!  After spending this past month in an archive reading nineteenth century primary sources, I spent this weekend learning about an entirely different era of history.  This blog post details my journey back in time some 5,000 years as I experienced Stonehenge and Bath! Our University of Sussex student group arrived at Stonehenge around 10:30 in the morning on Saturday amidst a brief flurry of snow.  I joked with a few of my friends about the "Snowhenge" that we were all about to witness, but fortunately the flurry was short-lived.  It certainly was blustery outside, though.  As we circumnavigated Stonehenge, just a few visitors and a flock of snow-covered sheep out on a hill in the English countryside, I tried to imagine ancient visitors experiencing the site under comparable conditions.   The landscape in which Stonehenge was situated was probably my favorite part about the monument.  In addition to the sheep, a series of ancient, grass-c

Whew!   It’s been a fast two weeks!   Despite the continuation of strike action here on campus, I’m still chugging along – trying to use this time to get some quality archival research done while also working on my mid-term assessment essays!   My colleagues and I had to contend with some snow last week, but I’m happy to say that we’ve now returned to the rainy, mid-40s conditions that I’ve grown to know and love here! Snowy day on campus! Awesome sunset earlier this week -- the old West Pier is visible out in the Channel. As far as my research, I found some really interesting medical and sanitation reports this week that will be crucial to the urban studies portion of my project.   I’m currently working to map out (and juxtapose) the poorest and the wealthiest regions of Brighton as they developed in the nineteenth century, in the hopes that I might then be able to look for evidence of interactions and or altercations across social class boundaries in the town.