Welcome to the official website for author Richard Blackburn,
author of the Gatekeeper trilogy.
My stories are set mainly in Medieval England. I've studied that
period of history for years so that the setting is historically
correct. They are the story of Jenny, a nineteen year old girl who
travels to Stonehenge for the solstice.
Stonehenge was a mess in early Victorian times and was renovated
significantly in the late nineteenth century. There is a strong
theory they got it all wrong. So Jenny doesn't realize, she's
standing on the real site of the ancient altar and when the sun
strikes the ruins, she falls through a time-warp into the year
1347.
"These are dreadful times, with England at war with France and
the Pope in Avignon, not Rome. Edward III is bankrupting the
country with his warfare and the people to suffer most are the
common folk. Jenny finds herself first in a peasant community but
she stands out. She is taller than all of them. She has colour in
her clothes - the Sumptuary Law didn't allow peasants to
wear colour in their clothes. She's single at nineteen - at
fourteen a girl had to start paying a tax if she wanted to stay
single. So it looks as though she must have money and she's all
alone with nobody to protect her. The situation looks dangerous but
then the tax collector comes to the village. Jenny is the only one
with any education. She exposes him as a fraud, then things start
going seriously wrong. That's when the story really starts!"