900th Anniversary - Sunday Stamps

For the commemorative theme this week I went looking for oldest anniversary issue I could find. I came up with two 900th anniversary stamps

Westminster Abbey

This was issued on 28 February 1966, one of two commemorative stamps. The other which I have never seen other than as a facsimile was for 2 shillings and six pence.

My second stamp was one of a set of eight issued on 14 October 1966; again I only have the one.

Battle of Hastings 1066

Six of the set had 4d denominations and there was one at 6d and one at 1s 3d.

As regular visitors to my Sunday Stamps will know I have a pet market stall holder. This week I thought I had struck gold when I found a set of postcards.

Four postcards were attached to this commemorating events  by boat, plane, tram and train in 1938.

The Mallard - New World Record 126mph

 

The reverse carried a date stamp of 6 July 1938 at a place called Essendine - a station on the Mallard's route and a place near to my boyhood home.

Add caption

It wasn't until I had carried my 'treasure' home that I realised this stamp and those on the other cards were not real. They were all prints of Great Britain Europa stamps issued in 1988!

Nevertheless I did not feel I'd been robbed as the whole lot cost me 50p.

For other real commemoratives I suggest you visit other posts at Viridian's Sunday-stamps-98

Anniversary of an Execution

350 years ago on 30 January 1661 Oliver Cromwell was executed; 2 years after his death.

Cromwell died on 3^rd September 1658. His body was embalmed and lay in state from 18^th October to 10^th November before being interred in Westminster Abbey. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Parliament decreed that men who had cheated the executioner in life were not to cheat him in death.

Cromwell’s body was exhumed and transported to the Red Lion inn at Holborn. Tradition has it that Oliver’s ghost haunts the spot.

Early next morning the body was carried on a hurdle from Holborn to Tyburn where, clad in green cloth, it was gibbeted until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. When the body was taken down its head was hacked off; the executioner took eight blows to sever the neck. The trunk was consigned to a deep pit below the Tyburn gallows.

The head, stuck up on an iron-tipped oak pole, was exhibited until 1684 on the roof of Westminster Hall. Towards the end of the reign of King James II, it was blown down in a gale. The head passed from hand to hand before coming into the possession of Josiah Wilkinson and then a Canon Wilkinson.

Wilkinson left it to Cromwell’s own college, Sidney Sussex at Cambridge University.

Eventually the head received a proper burial at Sidney Sussex where a plaque proclaims:

The actual location is a closely guarded secret.

Twelve years prior to Cromwell's execution  on 30 January 1689, King Charles I was executed.