If you have been watching the BBC TV programme Wolf Hall
telling the story of Henry VIII and his chief minster Thomas Cromwell
c1485-1540. Cromwell would become one of the most important people in ensuring
that the English Reformation happened when the church broke from Rome.
But I want to talk about something else that was happening
at the same time. I am talking about the weather. It was very cold.
The clothes that were worn by the rich people were very warm
they were expensive, as they were entirely handmade and made from natural
fibres, they would also take a long time to make. and as there were no cameras
in those days, we must rely on paintings that were produced at that time. Poor
people wore simple clothes made from woollen cloth.
Another reason that rich people are seen wearing these warm
clothes is that there was no central heating in the buildings at this time and
if you moved away from the fire which was the source of heat in a house it
became very cold.
Why were the buildings so cold, they were big had high
ceilings and insulation would not have been up to modern day standards. In
addition the this the fact that the weather was simply very cold, I know that
today we often talk about climate change and global warming. In the past there
have been cool periods.
From around the year 1300 until around 1750 the Earth
experienced what scientist call a ‘Little Ice Age’ It was much colder then than
it is today. Temperatures did fluctuate a bit but it was either colder than
today or much colder than today. Rivers in Europe regularly froze over.
Everyone likes going to a fair, but during this little ice age it was so cold
that the rivers froze. The ice on the rivers were so thick that ice fairs could
be held on rivers. We would be talking
about ice many feet thick.
I don’t think we will see this in Wolf Hall but in 1536 King
Henry VIII travelled from central London to Greenwich by Sleigh. A little later
in 1564 Queen Elizabeth I took part in archery while standing on the river
Thames.
There were many ideas put forward by people at the time, one
idea was that it was all caused by witches. Today we can suggest other reasons.
The Sun was a major contributing factor. We know that when there are very few
sunspots to be seen on the Sun for a period of time then the temperature on the
earth appears to drop. The surface of the Sun is about 5,800 degrees while the
sunspots are cooler at around 4,500 degrees. As they are cooler, they appear
darker. They are also areas of intense magnetic activity. There appeared to be
fewer sunspots during the so-called little ice age.
Today we know that the Sun has a sunspot cycle which lasts
11 years. In other words, every 11 years we see lots of sunspots then the
number falls away until the next cycle peaks. The sunspots can produce flares
which fly into space and as they magnetically charged and crash into the
earth’s magnetic field one by product, they produce are the Aurora Borealis or
Northern Lights. We have seen a lot recently as the Sun is approaching sunspot
maximum activity.
It is not just visual
observations of the sunspots that scientists observe, but also, they can study
ice cores which can show how active or not the Sun at a particular point in
time, which is why astronomers and scientists believe we experienced the little
ice age.
So, when you next watch Wolf Hall you can admire all the
splendid clothes that people would have worn, but also remember, it was not
just for prestige, but also to keep the cold out. This was because of the period of time they
were living in which today we know as the little ice age.
www.theramblingastronomer.co.uk
