Clare Painting-Stubbs - Researcher & WRiter

The English county of Kent, where I was born and raised, has more than its fair share of Neolithic megaliths, Bronze Age barrows, Roman ruins and Saxon churches. Given I have come to know the area so well, this is my focus for my contributions to Archaeology Travel.

As a toddler I could usually be found digging around in the back garden, collecting interesting stones and other odd objects for my shoebox museum. On rainy days I was content pouring over books about ancient Egypt,  which were mostly inspired by frequent visits to the mummy on display in the Maidstone Museum. Interestingly I did not much like History at school: the topics in the syllabus didn’t go back far enough for my liking. I did have the chance to study Classical Civilisation at A Level, achieving an A grade. That enabled me to go to Southampton University to read Archaeology, where I was taught by Archaeology Travel’s founder Thomas Dowson. From there I went on to the University of Kent to do a Masters degree in Medieval and Tudor Studies.

During my Bachelor’s and Master’s research I kept coming back to the folklore around Black Dogs, ghostly harbingers of doom that seem to have their roots in collective memories of Viking invasions. My strong desire to find out more about these ‘hell hounds’ blossomed into my PhD, which I did at Royal Holloway, University of London. My thesis focused on a writer from Elizabethan London called Abraham Fleming and his proto-journalist accounts of events in the 1570s and 1580s. Pursuing Fleming took me all over the UK and to the US, as many early English books are now in American libraries. As a result of this research, I gave seminars at the Institute of Historic Research in London, published my findings in several journals and periodicals, including the popular Fortean Times, and was invited to become a contributing editor to the Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Renaissance Literature.

To fund my research and related field trips, I had to have a ‘proper job’. I qualified as a schoolteacher, delivering History and English lessons in secondary schools, a career that lasted 26 years. My passion, however, has always been visiting ancient places and researching prehistory and historical topics.

Recently I left teaching, choosing to work as a free­lance archaeologist, which allows me to search out and write about interesting things to do in Kent for Archaeology Travel. My special interests involve horses, fossils, faunal remains, osteoarchaeology, human evolution, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Preferring to travel off the beaten path, I particularly enjoy researching ancient towns and exploring new site. One trip that stands out had me riding a camel around Jordan in search of places associated with rock art or T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), visiting Petra and sleeping under the stars in Bedouin camps. Another was exploring Mongolia on horseback, finding carved Reindeer Stones and ancient Buddhist monasteries. While I love remote locations, I am happy to visit more populated places too. I found the La Brea Tar Pits fascinating and more recently visited Rome, Pompeii and Herculaneum.

My hobbies include reading, mostly non-fiction historical biographies, and doing art. I am the author of three published children’s picture books, with more titles on the way. I illustrate these myself. l also love hanging out with my cat. I was diagnosed with Autism, a condition I am pleased to have as without it I probably wouldn’t get so engrossed in the in-depth studies of the things that fascinate me.