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Tintern 'secret' medieval tunnel system found by accident
- lostlogin 6y agoWow at that popover to prevent reading with an adblocker installed. You can load the page then go to airplane mode.
- retrac98 6y agoInterestingly the site is completely ad free within the UK as it’s funded by the public.
- kwhitefoot 6y agoAd-free for me too in Norway. Probably due to UBlock Origin rather than the location though.
- shiftpgdn 6y agoUblock origin seems to block it successfully.
- moron4hire 6y agoDid anyone else read the subject line and think of a particular blonde journalist, his puppy, and his alcoholic, sea-faring friend?
- jareklupinski 6y agomaybe if it was discovered by a "Snerwy" :P
- moron4hire 6y agoI 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 6y agoHaddock'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 6y agoI did misunderstand the title but I thought of Trove[1] primitive collections instead. [1] http://trove4j.sourceforge.net/javadocs/gnu/trove/map/TIntIntMap.html http://trove4j.sourceforge.net/javadocs/gnu/trove/map/TIntIn...
- dhosek 6y agoI was an English major in college. I immediately thought of Wordsworth's “Lines on Tintern Abbey.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45527/lines-composed-a-few-miles-above-tintern-abbey-on-revisiting-the-banks-of-the-wye-during-a-tour-july-13-1798 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45527/lines-composed-...
- Bluestein 6y agoImmediately. :)
- badJack 6y agoisn't this the premise of reign of fire?
- dmix 6y agoYou 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.
- dcminter 6y agoYou'd probably enjoy "St Andrew by the Wardrobe" then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe
- robin_reala 6y agoWhat’s weird about that?
- dmix 6y agoWell 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 6y agoI don't see how "King's Rocks" (Tintern) is more weird than, say, "Gathering Place By The Water" (Milwaukee)...
- dmix 6y agoI 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...
- astrea 6y agoSeems like the technicians' work is already done for them. What a win!
- DavidAdams 6y agoIt'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.
- XiJInPaddington 6y agoIt's extremely rad that you can trace your ancestry back 1000 years. I guess I don't have much else to add besides that, but I'm someone whose knowledge of their ancestry stops 2 generations up so I'm kind of in awe by that fact. 1000 years!
- DavidAdams 6y agoThe trick is that we all have thousands of ancestors, and if you luck upon one thread that connects you to the aristocracy, their genealogical records are more complete than common people. That's why, after a few generations, people only know the really fancy people they're descended from.
- BerislavLopac 6y agoI 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintern_Abbey [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlewood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlewood
- bigfudge 6y agoMe too. It's on one of my favourite bike rides too... the road up to Monmouth is a great day out from Bristol.
- grumblepeet 6y agoAgreed. 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.
- hcrisp 6y agoNice to learn I wasn't the only one to be suddenly surprised by the appearance of the Abbey out of the gloomy mist. See my comment elsewhere about my trip to Oxford where I came across it quite by accident. The other impression that stuck with me is how rural the area is which contrasts quite sharply with the size, intricacy and complexity of the Abbey's construction.
- DavidAdams 6y agoThat was by design: From the wikipedia page: The monks that built it were "considered the strictest of the monastic orders, they laid down requirements for the construction of their abbeys, stipulating that "none of our houses is to be built in cities, in castles or villages; but in places remote from the conversation of men."
- gorgoiler 6y agoMind boggling that something can stay hidden for so long in a part of the world that is so well trodden.
- Uhhrrr 6y agoThe article doesn't say how they know it's medieval.
- aaron695 6y agoI looks more recent. Especially the long beams on the roof. Like a sewer. I guess an aqueduct makes the most sense.
- kitd 6y agoThere's a site of ancient iron works up the valley. It may be related to that, taking excess water away or something.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agoYes, it looked like a culvert, I thought the mention of a nearby parallel water stream was trying to intimate a relationship. Perhaps someone built a culvert but it got blocked and the stream diverted away?
- olivermarks 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdstall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdstall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogou Pretty fascinating the sheer number of different types of mediaeval tunnels across Europe and their presumed uses
- Sophistifunk 6y agoThat poor property "owner", whatever work they needed done will be delayed by the state for years now.
- p1mrx 6y agoWow, what a useless video at the top. You get to watch an ad, and then slowly read excerpts from the article.
- meibo 6y agoThey're auto-generated on every article, and are a guaranteed ad impression - basically no downsides. People seem to enjoy getting their info spoonfed in slow videos nowadays(not like I'm any better, kept watching till the end as well.) If you look around modern news sites, you'll notice that everyone does it now.
- rogerdickey 6y agoThese tunnels were actually used by leprechauns circa 1300 to secretly move gold from town to town
- jpm_sd 6y agoThose suspiciously plain, blank rectangular tunnels have a real Ultima look to them!
- musikele 6y agoThe electric company has to stop the work for years until they fully study the discovery... Welcome to Italy where this stuff happens all the time
- pja 6y agoNah, they’ll just put the pole somewhere else. This isn’t like central London with thousands of years of archaeology piled up on top of each other.