Dr Laura Sangha
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lsangha.bsky.social
Dr Laura Sangha
@lsangha.bsky.social
7.5K followers 630 following 4.4K posts
Associate Prof at Exeter Uni | English history 1480-1700 | CI: Material Culture in English Wills | reformation | angels & ghosts | she/her | brown-ish | 1st gen

Wills Project: https://sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcultureofwills/
Blog: manyheadedmonster.com
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lsangha.bsky.social
i daresay your cat is nice too, but does she venture far and wide to bring you back a broad variety of lovely presents? #BestCat
A small tabby cat looks up at a person hodling a dried wildflower in their hand.
November 28, 2025 at 6:16 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
📢Applying for a PhD?📢

My excellent colleagues are running a Zoom masterclass next Weds 3 December on how to write a successful PhD proposal and how to apply for funding.

Free, register below - choose from:
- 10am: lnkd.in/eUPhAXHc
- 4pm: lnkd.in/e_U79jUt

🗃️ #PhDChat #Humanities
Advert for a Masterclass 'PhD proposal and funding 101: Learn to apply like a Pro: Meet the Experts'.
November 27, 2025 at 7:35 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
also feeling smug because along with my insulated coat I packed my waterproofs for later
November 26, 2025 at 8:12 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
no context screen grab
A screenshot showing a radio button with these words next to it: 'Extension Cable. Move the battery to your trousers. £9.99.'
November 26, 2025 at 7:51 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷🎷

??
A library catalogue entry for the book 'Print and Protesantism' by Ian Green. After the author's name is says 'Saxophonist', for some unknown reason.
November 24, 2025 at 9:45 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
Today is my 'Mega Monday' - five hours teaching with three dashes from the top to the bottom of the campus hill scattered in between. Tudor National Identity, cheap print, and an EEBO workshop.

'Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage...'
Promotional image for the film Henry V. Laurence Olivier in Elizabethan dress stands with his arms spread. He stand in front of a a model of Elizabethan London.
November 24, 2025 at 8:48 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
A classic Devon weekend: Friday talk in ancient stannary town Tavistock to the Devonshire Association; following by an outstanding Saturday gig by Chagford's own Dominie Hooper at the brillant community pub The Drewe Arms. Very special songwriting and absolutely electrifying live.
Photo of Tavistock parish church, grey and handsome. The cover of Dominie Hooper's debut album, In This Body Lives. It shows the artist stanging knee high in bracken, agaisnt a dark sky, with a gauzy light fabric? Smoke? floating above her head.
November 24, 2025 at 8:08 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
on this day in 2013
Sunrise on Exeter canal, dark buildings and shapes of boats are silohetted against a yellow and light blue sky with little fluffy clouds in pink and grey. The colourful sky is reflected in the very still water below.
November 22, 2025 at 7:13 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
cold snap in Devon this time last year as well
A view from a second floor window over Exeter university campus - a light layer of snow covers the ground making it look lovely, some pine trees on the left and right provide dark contrast. View across a valley to a line of trees. It is snowing heavily and the scene looks blurry as a result. A red brick building with horizontal lines of windows in the snow. A road with parked cars covered in snow.
November 21, 2025 at 9:36 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
😆

i did see this parked in John's driveway the other day though
Photo of the DeLorean from 'back the future' - a silver sports car with mods which make in into a time machine.
November 20, 2025 at 3:13 PM
lsangha.bsky.social
always a thrill when your home parish pops up in a 17th-century document
old handwriting that reads 'of Exon, in Saint Thomas parish'.
November 20, 2025 at 1:38 PM
lsangha.bsky.social
The drawing in context: TNA PROB 11 series.
The bottom part of a scan of a page from a 16th-century will register. There is a block of writing with a drawing of the figure of justice at the bottom on the right hand side.
November 20, 2025 at 12:05 PM
lsangha.bsky.social
I AM JUSTICE!

Copying out wills day in, day out must have been quite boring for a legal clerk. A good idea to break up the monotony with an excellent and approripate illustration then!

#EarlyModern 📜 #Manuscripts 🗃️ #Doodles ⚖️👨‍⚖️
A drawing of the figure of justice in a gown, holding a sword with weighing scales hanging from it. The figure holds a hand to their chest and speaks 'Iustuciam ago'.
November 20, 2025 at 11:56 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
📢WEBSITE UPDATE📢

I've created a page on our project website capturing everything that composer, lyricist & performer Chris Hoban & I have been doing with wills.

📜 Reflective essays
📷 Reports on events
🎵 Live footage!

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

#EarlyModern 🗃️ @uoearchhist.bsky.social
Credit: Steven Haywood. Photo of two people sitting at a desk. The one on the right is talking and pointing at a paper on the desk, the one of the left looks on and smiles. Nine people stand on stage, all except one hold instruments - a guitar, violins, cello, recorded, hurdy-gurdy. Credit: Steven Haywood. A man with an accordian strapped to his front plays and sings at the front of a room. Beside him four musicians sit. Credit: Steven Haywood. A person holds up a sheet of paper to reveal a linocut. The design is a ring with a skulls head depicted on it.
November 20, 2025 at 7:25 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
Strangely to us, John's wiffe was called Richard - one of many early modern names now gendered differently.
Lines from a 16th-century will, one reads 'Item, I geve and bequeathe unto Richarde my wiffe'
November 19, 2025 at 4:11 PM
lsangha.bsky.social
p.s.

In 1546 John Williams left money in his will to workman 'for finishing the causye that I have begun at New Bridge upon Tamar'.

That's this 16th-century bridge at Gunnislake, linking Devon and Cornwall - still carrying road traffic to this day.
Photo of a stunning 16th-century bridge over the river Tamar - three supports stand in the riverbed, three arches in between.
November 19, 2025 at 4:10 PM
lsangha.bsky.social
Pevsner reveals that between 1716 and 1720 Saunders actually destroyed most of what remained of the abbey buildings in order to build Abbey House. This was a private dwelling on the site of the former abbey refectory - now the east part of the Bedford Hotel.

4/
Photo of the Bedford Hotel in Tavistock - an impressive if rather dour stone blocky building with crenellated tops.
November 19, 2025 at 3:45 PM
lsangha.bsky.social
lost in A Forest in 2015
A misty scene showing a person walking along a path that disappears among tall pine trees in the distance.
November 19, 2025 at 7:51 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
Spectacular quayside sunrise in 2016
The sun is just rising over Exeter canal basin. The clouds in the sky have bright orange and yellow edges, these colours are reflected in the water below, suffusing everything with light.
November 19, 2025 at 7:49 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
Up Scorhill in 2017
Photo with moor land and lumps of granite in the foreground, a hill with bare trees in the middle distance, and more more land on a ridge in the far distance. It's a very grey day.
November 19, 2025 at 7:47 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
November sunrise in 2019
As dawn breaks over a park, the partly cloudy sky is lit up in lines of bright colour - pink, organge, blue and light purples.
November 19, 2025 at 7:46 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
2022: bit chilly in the Exe Valley Park
A muddy path with green grass either side. It's very misty, shapes of trees loom at each side of the path and two human figures can be seen in the far distance.
November 19, 2025 at 7:43 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
A morning thread of nice things from #otd years past ...

2023: kingfishers on the Grand Western Canal
A kingfisher sits on a reed looking downwards. A kingfisher sits on a branch with leaves and brambles behind it.
November 19, 2025 at 7:41 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
📢November Will of the Month Out Today!📢

This month's featured testator is a widowed clergyman from Pembrokeshire who asked to be buried 'as remote from every other grave as conveniently may be'.

sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult...

#EarlyModern 🗃️ @leverhulme.ac.uk @uoearchhist.bsky.social
A monotone painting of Haverfordwest Castle - a romantic looking building set in rolling hills with some houses clustered around it's foot.
November 18, 2025 at 8:36 AM
lsangha.bsky.social
a dreaded sunny day
so let's go where we're happy
Photo of a graveyard - the ground is absolutely covered in a thick layer of yellow and russet autumn leaves. Two trees, still with green leaves on, poke out of the leaves, as to a number of old fashioned looking grey gravestones.
November 17, 2025 at 5:48 PM