THE LICORICIA OF WINCHESTER APPEAL

October 2023 newsletter

Highlights of the last nine months:

Information Board.  We have been working with Hampshire County Council and Hampshire Cultural Trust for some time to erect an information board by the statue, and this was finally achieved in September.  The board briefly and simply covers Licoricia’s history, Winchester’s medieval Jewish history, and our messages, and will increase our impact on visitors.   A QR code provides more information. 

Book:  Our fascinating book (Licoricia of Winchester:  Power and Prejudice in Medieval England) is selling very well and we may have to reprint in a year or so.  Sales at the end of September were over 1000 copies.  It is wonderful to have sold around half of our stock in the first year.  The book is sold at all Winchester’s major tourist sites as well as being available through Amazon.  If you haven’t purchased one it is worth the read!

Lessons for children.  We haveagreed with Hampshire County Council that our five ground-breaking Key Stage 3 lessons developed with HIAS (the Council’s educational Inspectorate and Advisory Service) will be available shortly for free download nationwide from their site (they are already available from our website http://www.licoricia.org).  These lessons are a unique way to explore issues of prejudice, diversity, and female agency within the context of medieval England.  HIAS can be contacted on 01962 874802 or via history.centre@hants.gov.uk. 

We have also started work with HIAS on primary school lessons, aimed at children of 11 years of age.  These lessons will introduce the middle ages (which students will study later at secondary school) through the Plantagenets’ Angevin Empire and Henry III –  institutions, politics and religion – and weave into them an understanding of the lives of the Jews of the time.  We hope that these lessons will be a unique way to help pupils cross over from the Anglo-Saxons into the world studied at secondary level.

Statue:  In early 2023 agreement was reached with Hampshire County Council for us to donate the statue to them.  They have undertaken to maintain it. 

We were very touched recently to find that a bunch of red roses had been left by Licoricia, a sign of hope in difficult times.

Leaflets.  We have given away over 10,000 leaflets in Winchester since the statue was unveiled.  When this is added to the 35,000 hits on our website, and the impact of the talks and podcasts on Licoricia, our impact continues to be considerable. 

Partnerships.  We are engaged with the Holocaust Educational Trust and Winchester University on a project regarding the teaching of prejudice in schools.

Talks and podcasts.  The Historical Association held a series of highly successful talks online about medieval Jews, to UK history teachers, in association with the Jewish Historical Society of England.  The Historical Association also included Licoricia in their One Big History Department blog.  There have been numerous podcasts made, by Hampshire HistoryBites, Apple, History Extra, Footnoting History, the Campaign against Antisemitism, BBC History Extra, the Jewish Historical Society of England and Medieval Jewish Studies. 

The trustees have continued to give talks to groups such as synagogues and local history societies.

King Charles III Coronation Celebration Service at Winchester Cathedral.  Rather wonderfully, a banner of Licoricia was present at the altar of Winchester Cathedral during the thanksgiving service for His Majesty King Charles III’s coronation.

Future plans.  There is no doubt that our impact would be increased by video resources, for example a talking head accessible by QR code from the Information Board, and short clips that could be shown to teachers of our lesssons as a teaser to students.  We intend to investigate these options and raise funds for them as necessary.

We will also be publicising our lessons further now that they are available free, with a view to making them part of mainstream history teaching in the UK.  They also are valuable as part of migration, diversity and female achievement studies, as well as in teaching the origins of anti-Semitic prejudice in this country.    We hope that they will be utilised by charities involved in teaching children.  Amongst the Jewish Community, many do not realise the antiquity or importance of Licoricia’s medieval history, and we hope to provide these lessons to synagogues and Jewish schools.

We have not given up the possibility of further research into Winchester’s medieval Jewish community.  Our initial enquiries have not proved fruitful but we will continue to investigate this area.

In summary, we have made exciting progress and that there remains a lot of good work to do.  Thank you for your continued support.