Sublime

Tudor bows are fashioned from a single piece of wood, carefully selected for its straight grain and cut to include both heartwood and sapwood from the tree. The heartwood is older and denser and lies towards the centre of the living tree. It is strong in compression. The sapwood lying close under the bark is much newer wood, more supple and springy

Henry VIII, determined to stop the rot, demanded, by Act of Parliament, that all men under the age of sixty, with the exception of clergymen and judges, should ‘use and exercise shooting in longbows’. His laws set out the stipulation that boys between seven and seventeen years of age were to have a minimum of two arrows as well as a bow provided fo

To my eternal delight, the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship, preserved its firewood deep in its hull for the marine archaeologists to find and bring to the surface in the late 1970s. What was found matched almost exactly the wish list of a Tudor cook and the regulations governing the sale of firewood. Over 600 logs were found, comprisi

provided. 8Send me also cedar, cypress, and algum timber from Lebanon, for I know that your servants are skilled in cutting Lebanon timber.