February 2015 – Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society

Medieval Yorkshire (New Series) Volume Available

Jo Heron has informed me that the first volume of Medieval Yorkshire (New Series) has been sent out. Despite our best efforts over the last year we still can’t always be sure who has paid and who hasn’t so if you have not received your copy by 4th March and you think you’re entitled to one please contact me, or our Honorary Treasurer, Jo Heron, either by email or through Claremont. If you are not a member and you’d like to buy a copy we intend to sell the small surplus stock but only after we’ve made sure paid-up members have their copies. At just £16 for annual membership I hope you’ll agree it’s not a bad deal.

Another way to obtain a copy of this publication is to follow this direct link to Medieval Yorkshire 2014 in the shop, where it is available for just £5.50.

To be entitled to a copy your subscription needs to be up-to-date, and by that I mean ideally paid in early January. The reason for stressing this is because we ask the office at Claremont for a list of addresses of members to send out a mailing and if your subscription hasn’t been received by Claremont before we do the mailing it is likely that your details won’t be on the list and you may not receive a copy of the publication. If you pay subscription later in the year we may no longer have copies to send out to you because we have a limited print run so we’re not left with excess back-catalogue stock.

Subscriptions aside, the more observant among you will have noticed that this is a new-look journal, more compact at A5 format size and less likely to sag in the middle on your bookshelves at home. It is also a New Series publication so as to leave the way clear for any follow-on volumes of the old journal. The new series volume 1 includes original research and contributions in the field of Yorkshire Medieval history and archaeology, and has summaries of many of the lectures and other meetings that have been held over the last 18 months. For this we are deeply endebted to David Asquith who fearlessly took on the challenge of editing and bringing the journal to press, ably assisted, I hasten to add, by Sue Alexander, who took responsibility for the lay-out and technical matters.

Eighteen months ago some questioned whether the Medieval Section had a future but this publication is the third leg of a recovery strategy that also includes an annual lecture series and this Blog. We currently have a total of something like 50,000 ‘hits’ annually.It is gratifying to know that something like a third of the visits are made by people outside the United Kingdom. Naturally we’d be delighted to hear from readers abroad if you have comments or suggestions. If section members who read this would like to explore other options such as visits to places of Medieval interest, exploring museums with Medieval collections or taking part in fieldwork then do please let me know. We thrive as a society only in so far as our members are engaged in our activities and making suggestions.

Bryan Sitch
Honorary Secretary
Medieval Section

25th February 2015

Tolkien, the Early Middle Ages and Leeds

Tom Holland in The Times (3/1/2015) made a topical link with the theft of treasure story in Beowulf and J.R.R.Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The great inventor of dungeons and dragons and patron saint of nerds and geeks the world over enjoyed a respectable academic reputation writing about Beowulf, though whether he would have approved of the final part – no, make that any part – of Peter Jackson’s interminable cinematic interpretation of The Hobbit is another question.

In 1920 Tolkien was appointed to the post of Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds. In 1925 he was appointed to the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford. Tolkien’s time in Leeds is the subject of an article in the Guardian by Leeds-based journalist Martin Hickes. Tolkien didn’t write The Hobbit whilst he was living in Headingley. Maybe this takes the Medieval Section into a new area of Yorkshire-focused Medieval studies, in which the county and its Medieval history serve as inspiration for works of fiction.

Northumbrian Sceats

The speaker at this month’s Medieval Section lecture will be Tony Abramson. Tony has studied early Anglo-Saxon coinage since the early 1990s. He has written a number of books on the topic, the most recent of which reclassified the silver proto-pennies or ‘sceats’ issued from the 670s to the 750s south of the Humber and well in to the ninth-century in kingdom of Northumbria. There are more than 630 varieties of these tiny coins, rich in the iconography of the Conversion Period. Tony initiated the biennial symposia in early medieval coinage and is editor of the resultant publications.

Tony qualified as a chartered accountant after graduating in economics from the University of Lancaster in 1970. He spent the last 25 years of his career launching technology start-up companies but has recently retired to take a PhD in numismatics at the Department of Archaeology, University of York.

His illustrated talk will trace the evolution of the coinage of Northumbria from the élite gold of the seventh-century, through the mercantile silver sceats of the eighth, to Northumbria’s unique brass widow’s mite or ‘styca’ issued in huge numbers before the fall of York to the Vikings in 866/7.

Building Bolton Abbey Lecture on 22nd March

The second annual St Cuthbert Lecture, ‘Building Bolton’, will take place in Bolton Abbey Priory church on Sunday 22nd March at 3pm. This year’s lecturer is Professor Richard Morris. An invitation has been extended to members of the Medieval Section to attend this lecture.

As both an archaeologist and historian, Richard has an unrivalled knowledge of the Yorkshire Dales and the historical secrets that lie hidden within its landscape and ancient churches.

Richard writes: ‘In my Lecture I set out to answer four linked questions: Who built Bolton Priory? Why does it stand where it does? In the eyes of its benefactors what was it for? Why were parts of it altered?’ During the talk Richard will set Bolton in the context of other medieval religious houses in and around the Yorkshire Dales, and examine the contemporary ideas that brought them into being.

Thanks are due to John Cruse who kindly relayed the invitation.

Syon Priory Herbal

A colleague has kindly drawn my attention to the very recent publication of the late Medieval Herbal from Syon Abbey (edited by John Adams and Stuart Forbes). A thick handsome volume, from a Yorkshire perspective it includes a short ‘case study in love’ (pp.61-63) about the relationship between James Grenehalgh of Sheen Priory and Joanna Sewell of Syon who had met before the latter’s novitiate. Grenehalgh gave Sewell a number of books that he had copied out by hand ornamented with their entwined initials. This came to the notice of Grenehalgh’s superiors who removed him to Coventry in 1507 or 1508 and thence to Kingston-upon-Hull Charterhouse. He died about 1530. Joanna Sewell died in 1532.