The new programme starts in September and up to Christmas, we have:
13/09/2025 Mary Garrison Alcuin’s World through his Letters and Verse
11/10/2025 Julia Hickey Border reivers, Tudor period?
08/11/2025 Marta Cobb Margery Kempe in Yorkshire
13/12/2025 Graham Mitchell Richard, the Northern King
In January, we continue with lectures on charcoal burning research, black death skeletons and, hopefully, the 1st crusade. We also have a meeting with a curator from the Victoria & Albert Museum on the Wakefield Cross, see below:The 12th-Century Ivory Carving (The Deposition from the Cross)
What it is: A rare and valuable 12th-century ivory carving depicting Joseph of Arimathea lifting Christ’s body from the cross.
Discovery: Rediscovered in 1769, hidden in a house on Northgate, Wakefield, since the Reformation.
Current Location/Significance: Recently made headlines when its owners sought to sell it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for £2 million, leading to a UK export ban and a national effort to raise the funds to keep it in Britain, with the Victoria and Albert Museum eventually acquiring it.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 