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'Glory be to God for dappled things' -- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Sandstone in the south quire aisle of @durhamcathedral.
#ThursdayThoughts #PiedBeauty
We've just discovered the #DoorToTheWeekend hashtag from @welovehistory. Great idea!
Here's our contribution. The 'Dark Entry' at @durhamcathedral. Escape into the light!
Who else has a #DoorToTheWeekend to share?
#FridayFeeling
Today we celebrate the feast of St Cuthbert, our great northern saint, who died #OnThisDay in 687 & is buried in @durhamcathedral.
So here’s a thread on St Cuthbert & some of the treasures in our collections. #OTD #medievaltwitter #Cuthbertstide
@natlibscot The light at the end of this tunnel leads to our library.
(Er, well, also a world famous Cathedral. But mostly the library.)
In 995 the monks came to Durham. (Here’s the bishop and the cow part of the #DurhamGospels story!)
Bishop Aldhun had a vision of St Cuthbert, instructing that his body should be taken to 'Dunholme' (hill island), but no one knew where it was...
#ShareAStory #WorldBookDay
Day 17 #LibraryChristmasCountdown
The familiar tradition of decking the halls with boughs of holly for winter festivals pre-dates Christmas. Today is the Roman festival of Saturnalia, when Romans would decorate their houses with holly & exchange gifts.
#OnThisDay #OTD #rarebooks
Day 11 #LibraryChristmasCountdown
A #reindeer & Sami family, from a 1674 English translation of 'The history of Lapland', by Swedish humanist Johannes Schefferus. Did you know the Sami are the northernmost indigenous people of Europe?
#rarebooks #speccoll #twitterstorians
Day 10 #LibraryChristmasCountdown
Will you be eating figgy pudding this Christmas? A tradition dating back to C16th, when fig trees became commonplace in English gardens. This hand-coloured #botanicalillustration by Johann Muller (or John Miller) dates from 1777. #rarebooks
Day 6 #LibraryChristmasCountdown
A little robin from Eleazer Albin's 'A Natural History of #Birds' (1738-40). With over 300 hand-coloured engravings by Albin & his daughter Elizabeth, this was the first British work of #ornithology to feature hand-coloured plates. #rarebooks