Openwork decoration from Whitby (courtesy of Christane Kroebel)
Hild was the first abbess of the Streoneshalh/Whitby monastery from 657 AD until her death in 680 AD. Within a few years, it rose to prominence as a centre for learning and for hosting the Synod of Whitby to decide the dating of Easter. Although few literary and documentary references to Hild and to Whitby are extant, the monastery continued to play an important part in the political life of Northumbria during the next three to four decades and is likely to have been an economic force afterwards. By the second half of the ninth century, all activity ceased and did not resume until after the Norman Conquest, when a Benedictine monastery was founded dedicated to St. Peter and St. Hild. This talk will trace Hild’s role and importance in the seventh century and her appeal throughout the Middle Ages and into the 21st century.
Small find from Whitby Abbey
Our speaker, Christiane Kroebel, is an independent researcher based in Whitby, North Yorkshire. She is hon. editor of Forum: the Journal of Council for British Archaeology Yorkshire, Whitby Museum curator for the abbey collection (volunteer) and was formerly hon. librarian and archivist of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society (2000-13). She studied at Durham University (History MA, 2003) and the Catholic University of America, Washington DC (Library and Information Science MSc, 1983). Her research interest is Anglo-Saxon history but more recently she has broadened her scope into medieval and early modern Whitby and vicinity.
This will take place at 2pm at Swarthmore Leeds on Saturday 10th February. Non-members are welcome but a donation to the cost of running the section would be appreciated.
I must confess I had an ulterior motive in inviting our December speaker, Dr Bart Lambert of the University of York, to give a talk about late Medieval migration. Migration has been one of the topics of Manchester Museum’s thematic collecting project for the last 18 months, which culminated for me in a visit to the Greek island of Lesvos to collect a refugee’s life jacket just over a year ago. As part of the project I’ve looked at Roman inscriptions from Mancunium or Manchester in the museum collection but the medieval period posed more of a challenge. Everyone’s familiar with the Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans but Dr Lambert’s talk opened up a whole new chapter about the movement of people during the later Middle Ages.
Statue of the Black Prince in Leeds
We are certainly no stranger to late Medieval migration in Leeds. One of the city’s prominent landmarks in City Square opposite the railway station is a statue of the Black Prince created by sculptor Thomas Brock (1847-1922). It was set up thanks to the generosity and civic-mindedness of Colonel Thomas William Harding who sought a suitably distinguished subject to be the focus of the Italianate piazza he had created. That there was no direct link with the history of city mattered little and the bronze scroll around the base of the statue reads like a roll-call of the Ladybird book of well-to-do, respectable and famous people during the reign of Edward III: Sir John Chandos, Sir Walter Nanny, William of Wykeham, John Wycliff, Chaucer, Froissart, van Arteveldt and du Guesclin. Not to mention bronze panels depicting the battles of Crecy and Sluys and a plaque honouring the Black Prince himself, ‘Edward, Prince of Wales, surnamed the Black Prince. The Hero of Crecy and Poitiers. The Flower of England’s chivalry…’
Van Arteveldt’s name in the scroll around the plinth of the statue
Of these, van Arteveldt is credited with encouraging Edward III to bring Flemish weavers and dyers to England, which Colonel Harding may have believed helped to lay the foundations of the West Yorkshire textile industry. As our speaker explained it is more likely that van Arteveldt was finding a home overseas where political exiles from Flanders wouldn’t pose a threat.
If civic statuary inspired by Victorian medievalism is a rather dubious source of information about late Medieval migration, Dr Lambert presented data of far more reliable kind: the records of the country’s alien population that were created for taxation purposes during the reign of Henry VI in order to help fund the war in France. The tax operated between 1440 and 1447. Juries were appointed in each community to identify who was an alien. Returns from the alien subsidy highlights the presence of French people, many of whom must have been refugees fleeing parts of France which had been occupied by the English but were being recaptured by the French monarchy. There were also labourers and servants from the Low Countries who realised that they could earn more money on the other side of the Channel. Similarly, there were Scottish People on the borders and Irish people in the West Country who at that time would have been classified as aliens because they came from a different kingdom of the British Isles.
If any of this echoes recent events you might not be surprised to learn that the immigrants brought with them new skills in making fine and fancy goods including clothing, footwear and jewellery that native crafts people found difficult to compete with. This caused tensions that resulted in appalling acts of violence against the newcomers, and even threats to mutilate immigrant workers so that they could not compete with English (in practice London) crafts people.
The tax came to an end in 1487 because it had ceased to gather significant sums of money. Bart suggested that by this time people on local juries had formed relationships with the immigrants and had less reason to report them to the authorities for taxation. So what begins as a rather unpleasant story about penalising vulnerable people in medieval society develops into something more heartening, a story of solidarity not marginalisation of the other.
Someone once said there’s nothing new under the sun except perhaps the cigarette. In this lecture the echoes of Brexit were all too loud. Many thanks to Bart for making us think as much about the present as about the past.
The Medieval Section’s December lecture on migration to English during the later Middle Ages will be given by Dr Bart Lambert, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of York. Dr Lambert has kindly provided the following details about his talk:
Historians studying migration to the British Isles traditionally concentrate on the successive comings of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans, before moving rapidly forward to the arrival of minority religious and ethnic groups, both as refugees and as forced migrants, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Yet in 2015, the AHRC-funded England’s Immigrants-project revealed that during the later Middle Ages, between 1 and 5 per cent of the English population was born abroad. These first-generation immigrants made essential contributions to the country’s commercial, agricultural and manufacturing economies and left a lasting cultural legacy. Their presence prompted the government to develop new legal frameworks, parts of which are still in place today. This paper will explore the lives of late medieval England’s immigrant population and establish its wider significance in light of the longer-term history of migration to the British Isles.
The lecture meeting will take place in the Swarthmore Education Institute at 2pm on Saturday 9th December and will be followed by the Medieval Section’s traditional Christmas afternoon tea.
The Whixley cartulary, showing pages from the extent of Whixley manor, early 15th century.
Sylvia Thomas, our speaker for the October lecture, kindly sent the following notes about her talk at Swarthmore Education Centre this Saturday:
Since its foundation in 1863 the Society has accumulated significant archive collections from all over Yorkshire, many of them records of major families, some of which date back as far as the thirteenth century. Highlights are the enormous series of surviving court rolls of the manor of Wakefield (1274 – 1925), the fifteenth-century stock book and sixteenth-century lease book of Fountains Abbey, the secular cartulary of Whixley, North Yorkshire (1430), numerous early Yorkshire charters, and much more.
Initial from the Fountains Abbey stock book (late 15th century).
In 2015 all these collections were deposited by the Society for safe-keeping in the University of Leeds, Brotherton Library Special Collections, where they are again available for use by the public.
Sylvia Thomas is the former archivist and a past president of the YAHS, and a retired County Archivist of West Yorkshire. She is Joint Editor of the West Riding and Derbyshire volumes of Records of Early English Drama.
Edited shortened version of lecture given to the Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society about the St Bees Knight, by Chris Robson of St Bees Historical Society. Filmed at the Swarthmore Education Centre on 12th December 2015, and edited by Bryan Sitch, Honorary Secretary of the Medieval Section. Posted 15th June 2016.
Medieval jug from Africa in Leeds Museums collection
Talk Title: A Yorkshire link to an English Medieval ewer recovered from the Asante capital, Ghana, in 1896.
Since 1984 Leeds Museums and Galleries have had on loan a wonderful survival from Medieval England: a bronze ewer, recovered by the Prince of Wales’s own Regiment of Yorkshire from what is now Ghana in 1896. Antonia tells me that the regimental museum in York recently had a major revamp and may well take back the loan later this year, so this may be a timely opportunity to make acquaintance with this fantastic medieval vessel before it returns to the lenders.
Antonia’s talk will situate the ewer in the context of its 1896 retrieval by the British army during an Asante campaign, and explore the routes that this jug, and three others from the same period, may have taken to reach Africa during the 500 or so years following their original manufacture. Clearly the Asante court treasury had a key role in the survival of these jugs and it is interesting to consider what meanings the jugs had for the Asante themselves, as well as their original manufacture and use.
This is not the first time that West Africa has been the focus of interest for us as medievalists. Some time ago we posted on this blog information about a temporary exhibition of ceramic figurines from Komaland in Ghana.
Antonia Lovelace is curator of World Culture at Leeds Museums and Galleries, and author of a paper on the Prince of Wales’s regimental loan to Leeds in the Journal of Museum Ethnography (no. 12, 2000). She curated the ‘Out of Africa’ displays in the World View Galley at Leeds City Museum (2008-2013) and now looks after the ‘Voices of Asia’ gallery in the same space (launched in 2014).
Antonia will refer to a key article by Martin Bailey, 1993 ‘Two kings, their armies and some jugs. The Ashanti ewer’, Apollo (December: 387-390), and to the British Museum Occasional paper 115, by John Cherry and Neil Stratford (1995) ‘Westminster Kings and the medieval Palace of Westminster’, and look at more recent mentions of these English medieval jugs found in Africa.
I recently received word that the second volume of the Medieval Section journal Medieval Yorkshire has been printed and is available for distribution to paid up members. The new publication features a paper on Yorkshire’s medieval boroughs by Brian Barber; on Plough pebbles from Holderness, and on the Kirkstall Abbey Gatekeeper’s Lodge and Vesper Gate by your humble servant the Hon.Secretary; on A Stamford Ware pottery kiln in Pontefract by Ian Roberts; and on Malton Museum by Ann Clark. There are a number of lecture summaries from the 2014-15 programme, and, sad as it is to report, short obituaries for section members, the late Lawrence Butler and Brian Donaghey, who did so much to promote Medieval architecture and literature respectively.
The contents were kindly seen to press by our Hon. Editor David Asquith, ably assisted by Sue Alexander and all thanks to them and the contributors for their hard work.
We will be distributing copies by post shortly but in order to save money on postage we will take copies to this Saturday’s lecture about the Gilbertines at the Swarthmore Education Centre. Please come along to enjoy the lecture and pick up your copy of Medieval Yorkshire at the same time. Remember your subscription needs to be current.
Edited shortened version of lecture given to the Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society about the Medieval wall paintings in the parish church at Pickering, North Yorkshire, by Dr Kate Giles, Senior Lecturer at the University of York. Filmed at the Swarthmore Education Centre on 10th October 2015, and edited by Bryan Sitch, Honorary Secretary of the Medieval Section. Posted New Year’s Eve 2015.
Group photo showing objects in the West Yorkshire Hoard (copyright Leeds Museums and Galleries – photographer Norman Taylor)
The Medieval Section is endebted to Kat Baxter, Curator of Archaeology and Numismatics at Leeds Museums and Galleries, for speaking to us in November and for providing photographs of some of the very handsome Medieval treasure objects from the West Yorkshire hoard. Kat began her talk by giving an overview of Leeds Museums and Galleries and by telling us about the development of Treasure legislation. The success of the Treasure law can be seen in the fact that before 1997 26 finds per year were found to be treasure but in 2011 970 cases were reported as treasure – 95% of them found by metal-detectorists.
The West Yorkshire hoard (drawings copyright of Leeds Museums and Galleries and Archaeological Services WYAS – drawings by Jon Prudhoe)
The story of the West Yorkshire hoard began when the Finds Liaison Officer for West Yorkshire sent Kat some photographs in 2008 asking if she might be interested in the objects. At this point five objects had been discovered. A rescue excavation was organised to see if there were any other pieces from the hoard still in the ground. A further two items were recovered by the metal-detectorist on a return visit to the site. The objects included a very fine 10th century gold and garnet ring, a 9th century niello ring, two filigree rings, a fragment of a 7th century cloisonne brooch, a piece of gold ingot or hack gold, and a lead spindle whorl.
Gold and garnet ring (copyright Leeds Museums and Galleries – photographer Norman Taylor)
The 10th century gold and garnet ring is particularly fine and has not suffered any wear. It has an enlarged stepped bezel and is decorated with granulations of gold beads. The garnet looks too small for its dog tooth setting – either this garnet is a replacement or it has sunk as its mount has degraded.The gold content of the ring is very high. The back of the ring has a twisted hoop of gold wire with decorative terminals. It is so fine it may have belonged to a bishop. It certainly belonged to someone of high status.
Drawing of gold and niello ring (drawing copyright Leeds Museums and Galleries and Archaeological Services WYAS drawing by Jon Prudhoe)
The 9th century niello ring is a different kind of ring. It may have been worn over the gloves. It has four large oval panels decorated with leaf or zoomorphic motifs picked out in niello (a black mixture of copper, silver, and lead sulphides used as an inlay). It has suffered a lot of wear.
Smaller gold filigree ring (drawing copyright Leeds Museums and Galleries and Archaeological Services WYAS drawing by Jon Prudhow)
The filigree ring is smaller and thinner and of lower gold content. It is decorated with filigree and granulation. It is not symmetrical and though a beautiful piece of jewellery it is not of the same quality as the piece described earlier.
Gold cloisonne brooch fragment (copyright Leeds Museums and Galleries – photographer Norman Taylor).
The cloisonne brooch or pendant fragment is the earliest item in the hoard and dates from the 7th century. It has cells for inlays such as garnets but these have been hacked on one side and torn or bent out of shape. It would have been a stunning high class object when complete.
Large filigree ring (copyright Leeds Museums and Galleries – photographer Norman Taylor)
The second set of objects from the hoard consist of a another high quality ring with a high gold content with granular decoration. The ring appears to have a hollow bezzle and although it rattles when shaken nothing shows up on x-rays. the ring may have been an ecclesiastical ring owned by someone of high status. Like the earlier ring it shows no wear and appears to be brand new.
The last object is a lead spindle whorl and at present it is not clear why this was included in the hoard of gold objects. Two of the rings are of the highest quality known from Anglo-Saxon England. However, the rings cover a considerable period of time (the brooch has been dated to the 7th century, the rings are later, perhaps between the 9th and 11th centuries). It has been suggested they may have been part of a thief’s stash and that the hoard was consumed little by little, the individual pieces hacked up and semi-precious stones chiselled out. It is interesting that another fine ring was found between Aberford and Sherburn in 1870. It is clear that in the 10th century there were some affluent individuals living in the vicinity of Leeds. It may be that some of the rings have ecclesiastical associations. It is unusual not to find any coins with the hoard. The hoard is important because it is the only Anglo-Saxon hoard found of this quality in the area. As such it is an important addition to local history. Certainly it raises more questions than it answers; why do the rings range so much in date, and why were they buried in a field?
The hoard took three years to go through the Treasure process and after being valued at just under £172,000 four months were allowed to raise the money needed to reimburse the finder, as is usual in cases of Treasure. The National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund made generous grants. The Headley Trust usually only makes a contribution if a Victoria and Albert Museum grant has been made but the latter had already been exhausted and the Headley Trust kindly made a grant award regardless. Further sums of money were given by Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, the Friends of Leeds Museums and Galleries, and the Goldsmiths’ Company. The remaining money was raised by a public appeal and the hoard was secured for Leeds. The objects went straight on display in the Leeds City Museum, and a brand new display about the hoard, partly funded by the Art Fund, will be going up this Spring.
The speaker at the Medieval Section December lecture, Dr Robert Richards, talked about about recent archaeological work at All Saints Church on North Street in York. The church was altered in the Victorian period when the chancel was knocked down in order to widen it, although it was rebuilt on or close to the Medieval footings. A watercolour from about the turn of the 18th century shows Victorian bricks encasing the original medieval buttresses and plaster coming off the gable tops. Claims that the screen was the work of York based antiquary, artist and architect Edwin Ridsdale Tate (1862–1922) are incorrect.
A pillar in the nave has a statue of what is often said to be St William of York. However, it is not clear it is St William. If the statue does represent an archbishop, he is not wearing an archbishop’s mitre but that would have been made separately. The statue is thought to be an example of 15th century English carving. It stands on a corbel cut from a single block of stone on one of a pair of Romanesque round columns in the nave that experts have described as ‘looking squiffy’. They have nail head decoration but this is thought to be a later decorative addition to the pillar.Though now dwarfed by the huge industrial conurbations of the West Riding, York was the centre of northern England in the Roman and Medieval periods and so some degree of elevated architectural style is to be expected.
Resurrection alabaster in All Saints Church, York (photo: Dr Robert Richards)
Slightly more controversially, the church also has a resurrection alabaster. This is probably from the first half of the 15th century. However, it is badly in need of conservation, having (Victorian?) iron screws holding it in its frame, and much of the remaining colour obscured by what appears to be the grease from hundreds of human fingers touching it, but may only be centuries of dirt!
Church cottages, All Saints Church, York
Adjacent to All Saints are some attractive church cottages.Thought to be of late 15th century date, they are now known on the evidence of tree ring analysis to have been built after 1396. About half of the timbers in the church have been dated to the late 12th century. An exact match was was made with timbers from Lincoln and Ely cathedrals. The wood came from Sherwood Forest. It must have been part of a job lot sold cheaply and sent around the country. It’s puzzling why the timbers are so massive. One of the timbers came from a tree that was 250 years old so it must have started growing about 900. This raises some interesting chronological questions. For instance it is sometimes said that the Green Man had gone out of fashion by the 15th century but there are two in the chancel ceiling where the timbers have been tree-ring dated to 1477. The Green Man designs are resurrection symbols. Representations of Medieval musical instruments in the church have also attracted a lot of interest from specialists.
All Saints is best known for having some of the most photogenic Medieval glass in the country. The right central panel depicting St Anne teaching her daughter the Virgin Mary to read is particularly famous. Sadly the names of the original sponsors were knocked out at a later date. The End of the World and the Prick of Conscience depicting the last 15 days of the world are some of the most prolific of secular manuscripts. They gave the penitent a preview of the approaching end of the world and prompted them to seek the intercession of the Virgin Mary.
This tradition is particularly influential and it is still possible to see Emma Raughton’s cell where anchorites lived. Emma was an anchoress attached to All Saints church in the first half of the fifteenth century. Although little is known about her, she was definitely there in 1421 and she was still there in 1436 because she is mentioned in a will. The reconstructed cell is in roughly the same position as its Medieval counterpart, but Emma’s cell was probably a larger two storey building. Built about 1910, this is one of the first examples of the use of shuttered concrete in a domestic building. One of the anchoresses Adeline Cashmore gave spiritual guidance to Mary Breckinridge (1881-1965) who created the Frontier Nursing Service in America, which did so much to bring down rates of infant mortality in that part of the world.
Given the historical significance of All Saints it is understandable that when there was an opportunity to investigate the archaeology of the church the churchwardens did not hesitate. A tombstone was removed, exposing floor voids and an altar top weighing 2.5 tons. Three oyster shells containing blue, red and yellow pigments, were found, which was the original colour scheme of the chapel. The altar top stone was rebated so that coffins could be slid from the side into the vault space beneath. The brick wall inside the vault was rendered with lime mortar to make it look like stone. Three male burials lay on top of one another. The first coffin had decayed and had been shoved to one end. The legs of the top skeleton were found higher up in the fill of the tomb. The fill of the vault contained lots of clay tobacco pipes.
Clay pipes from the vault at All Saints Church, York
The remains of 76 people were found and initially it was thought University of York Department of Chemistry might be interested to analyse soil samples from the soil to study the trace elements. The skeleton of a woman was found with the skeleton of a foetus, which had been in her abdomen, and was still in situ. Early 13th century grave markers set in the wall had compass inscribed apotropaic symbols to ward off evil. A bronze buckle was found in one of the graves, suggesting this might have been the burial of a wealthy merchant or a cleric.
Bronze buckle from All Saints Church
The archaeologists were limited in the scope of their excavations and much of the work was ‘keyhole archaeology’, providing tantalizing glimpses of earlier periods in York’s history. Some burnt mutton bones may represent an Anglo-Saxon or an Anglo-Scandinavian picnic. A piece of a Hambledon Ware lobed jug, two die, a glass ring, a rim-sherd from a Roman greyware ‘doggy dish’ marked with a cross, a sherd from a Bellarmine jar and a piece of a Medieval chafing dish, which may have been used for burning incense in front of the statue in the chapel.
Piece from a Medieval chafing dish
A tiny fragment of what appears to be plain mosaic tile came from the chapel. Discoveries like this enabled the churchwardens to recreate the original tile floor design. Our speaker commented that this must be the first Medieval style pavement to be laid in an English church in one hundred years.
Mosaic pavement at All Saints Church, North Street, York.
Our speaker ended his talk by saying that they had permission for ‘a single season of excavation lasting no longer than two years’, so it is to be hoped that further work will prove to be just as exciting as the first year’s discoveries. Hopefully this is something we can return to in the future.
N.B. This lecture summary has been released without comment by the speaker. Any faults or omissions are entirely the responsibility of the Hon.Secretary of the Medieval Section.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 