A big thank-you to Anne Ridgway for sharing her Classics story – and congratulations on all her achievements!

I recently attended my graduation ceremony at the Glasshouse Gateshead and Cora Beth, my tutor at the OU, suggested I write a blog entry about my journey to encourage others.

When I retired from the NHS after a long and interesting career I embarked on a degree intending to study Art History – but once I had taken Introduction to the Classics I was hooked! I got my degree in 2017, and then in 2020 started my MA in Classics. Covid was of course a factor because I was not able to meet friends, or generally make trips and visits. My other obsession is gardening but there are those long winter nights!

I had no focal Classics interests when I started, but had stayed interested after my degree. Of course Covid meant no tutorials – but the forum where everyone else seemed to know what they were going to do for their dissertation was scary. I hadn’t a clue!

The MA is spread over two years: the first has various assignments; the second year is preparation for and submission of the thesis. I found the first year a bit of a challenge at the time. There were questions on identity that I felt I did not have the appropriate contemporary language to answer without giving offence or otherwise tripping up. In retrospect a number of the TMAs were incredibly useful in opening up my thinking, and perception of the Roman world in particular.

Thinking about my dissertation the advice was ‘read more’ – so I did. I reread Tacitus, the Odyssey, some Pliny and more of Euripides’ plays. All this confirmed what I was interested in – women and women’s lives in Greek and Roman times. I was increasingly interested in Hadrian’s Wall (located about 30 miles from where I live). I visited the wall, stayed nearby and went to several of the museums near to the wall. I also read books on the wall by Mattingly, Guy de la Bédoyère, Breeze and Hingley (almost all devoid of references to women). I became interested in more recent excavations and specifically ‘small finds’ – much of this work was pioneered by Lindsay Allason-Jones. 

‘Small finds’ means things like hairpins, needles, beads and what became crucial for me – spindle whorls. A lot of reading and thinking followed. I joined the library at Durham University, but did not find that terribly useful, possibly because I never mastered their online system. A lot of what I did find was on the martial history of the wall and its archaeology. 

On visits to Vindolanda I had seen small pieces of Roman cloth, and reading the accounts by John Wild led me to my hypothesis. Local women were doing the spinning and there were a lot of them. I created a simple mathematical model to estimate the amount of time it would take just to spin the thread for the cloth needed for soldiers’ cloaks (a lot!) and started writing! I was not confident but I was very interested, and Cora Beth was very supportive.

What I would say to everyone choosing their dissertation topic is follow your interests, read and read, and keep thinking!

And there is more! A friend sent me a link to a conference entitled Towards a New Economic History: Women and Antiquity, saying this sounds like the sort of thing you did on your dissertation. She was right! I sent in a 100 word abstract for a paper (which was accepted!) and a few weeks ago presented my paper in Seville in Spain! Truly amazing and something I never could have imagined when I set out on my Classics journey! 

I am in my 70s and this whole process has been so life affirming! Do you know the poem that starts When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me...? It’s essentially about not adopting stereotypical ‘old person’ behaviour.

This was a real purple-and-red-hat episode!

Anne Ridgway, MA