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.
David Asquith at Claremont with copies of Medieval Yorkshire
If you are wondering what our Honorary Joint Editor is smiling about, it’s the opportunity to acquire back-copies of the section journal Medieval Yorkshire for free. Yes all those obscure back numbers of the journal that you’ve been scouring second hand book shops, Amazon and ABE in search of, you may find being given away at the next section AGM on Saturday April 11th at 2pm.
Last Saturday at our most recent committee committee meeting we considered what to do with previous issues of Medieval Yorkshire and other section publications such as Medieval Dairying. This is in response to the main society asking the sections to think about what needed to kept and what could be disposed of when Claremont is eventually sold and the society moves into new premises.
Now that electronic publishing is a viable option we can provide researchers with a pdf in return for a payment on PayPal without having to maintain a large stock. We already have four issues scanned and with Axel Muller’s assistance we are working on scanning the rest. We shall of course keep a couple of issues of each volume for future reference but it does mean we can be a bit more economical space-wise.
Back copies of Medieval Yorkshire
If you’d like back copies of Medieval Yorkshire we’ll be giving them to members at the next AGM so do come along, to take part in the meeting, at which some new faces will be presenting themselves for election, and you can also enjoy the next presentation in our lecture programme by Richard Thomason about ‘Hospitality in a Cistercian Abbey: the Case of Kirkstall in the Later Middle Ages’. So do come along.
Sadly we had some hiccups with the latest mailing of the new look Medieval Yorkshire (New Series). Due to circumstances beyond our control we only have enough to distribute to fully-subscribed members and a few extra copies for review. It looks unlikely that we shall have many to sell to non-members. Of course, a pdf download copy of Medieval Yorkshire can be provided for the more modest sum of £5.50.
For little more than £10 extra you can subscribe to the section and enjoy up to eight top quality lectures about different aspects of Medieval Yorkshire and elsewhere. That’s just £1.25 per lecture, though I noticed recently that people who are not members of the section have been taking liberties and attending the lectures as prospective members repeatedly. Without wanting to be too officious about this the committee thinks it is perfectly acceptable to come to one or two lecture meetings to see if it is ‘for you’ but after that someone who comes along should really make a contribution to the cost of organising the lecture. At least £2. Otherwise those members who have paid their subscriptions are effectively subsidising prospective members and that simply isn’t fair. We would always wish to make joining the Medieval Section by payment of the annual subscription (£16) the most cost effective option for people. And don’t forget that in addition to the lectures paid-up members also receive the section journal Medieval Yorkshire. I can’t think of many societies where you would receive all these benefits for such a modest subscription.
The Vesper Gate at Kirkstall Abbey, Leeds, West Yorkshire
The Vesper gate is the name given to a stone structure that stands on the north-western perimeter of Kirkstall Abbey monastic precinct to the north west of Leeds city centre. In contrast to the rest of the abbey, relatively little is known about the Vesper Gate. It seems to have served as a convenient gateway that gave access to the Cistercian abbey’s western properties. In the mid-1990s when the writer was first appointed as Curator of Archaeology at Leeds Museums and Galleries, the condition of the Vesper Gate was generating some concern in local newspapers and community
Plan of Kirkstall Abbey precinct. The Vesper Gate is at the top on the northern boiundary of the abbey precinct. From Hope and Bilson’s 1907 Architectural Description of Kirkstall Abbey.
newsletters (Kirkstall Matters 62, p.19; 64, p.15 and Yorkshire Evening Post 17.6.1996).
At the time it was claimed that no less than 1.5 meters of stonework had been stolen from the Vesper Gate over a five year period. This seemed to be excessive even for local vandals and so I made a search of local archives for historic photographs of the Vesper Gate. Some were housed at Abbey House Museum where the writer was based but other sources included Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Thoresby Society and Leeds Libraries.
The Vesper Gate in 1882 (courtesy of the Thoresby Society, the Leeds Historical Society).
In 1873 only the portals were recorded as still standing by Leeds historian and antiquary James Wardell (1813-1873). A 3” x 3” glass slide in the Thoresby Society collection shows the ruins from the south-east in 1888. A similar photograph appears in a guide to the public parks of Leeds. In both photographs two stone piers can be seen, one on either side of Vesper Lane, the narrow road that runs across the top of what was the mill pond dam for the abbey (see photo below).
During the first half of the 20th century major changes took place. At some point during the 1920s or early 1930s Vesper Lane was widened. The 1921 and 1934 Ordnance Survey maps show this clearly. In Leeds Museums and Galleries collections there is another 3” x 3” glass slide showing Vesper Gate before the road widening. Unfortunately it is undated but Alan Garlick (former Assistant Curator of Social History, Abbey House Museum) dated it tentatively to the 1920s based on the clothing of a woman standing in front of the southern pier. The width of the Vesper Lane at this time must have been about 10-12 feet. In 1934 the Ordnance Survey map shows the Vesper Lane had been widened. A 1947 photograph in Leeds Local History Library shows only one of the portals still standing. So the widening of Vesper Lane in the 1920s or early 1930s had been achieved at the expense of the southern pier of the Vesper Gate. It may be that the loss is perhaps less tragic than it seems because St John Hope and Bilson, in their authoritative Architectural Description of Kirkstall Abbey (1907), refer to earlier road widening, so perhaps only a rebuilt stone pier was destroyed rather than intact and in situ Medieval stonework.
The Vesper Gate in 1996 with Kirkstall Abbey church tower in the distance. The road (Vepser Lane) runs over what was originally the Mill Pond dam.
These photographs enabled me to make a comparison between photos showing the Vesper Gate as it survived in 1996 and its condition some 60 years earlier. It rapidly became clear that whilst some stone had certainly been removed from the Vesper Gate, only one course of stonework had been taken off the top. One of the missing stones still remained at the foot of the portal, and, after consultation with English Heritage, it was replaced (it can be seen in the 1996 photo above, slightly to the right of the foot of the portal on the edge of Vesper Lane).
The Vesper Gate (14th September 2014). Note the replaced top stone.
To state, therefore, as was reported at the time that the Vesper Gate had been reduced to a stump of stone was misleading. That is not to say that no stone had been removed, simply that the degree of damage had been exaggerated. During the previous one hundred years the Vesper Gate had suffered its greatest damage during the 1920s and 1930s when Vesper Lane had been widened.
At the time, when I wrote a note for Kirkstall Matters, the local community newsletter, I couldn’t resist teasing the contributors to the Leeds newspaper article that had started this particular hare running. They claimed to remember when the Vesper Gate had an arch over its two portals but the archive photographs showed clearly it hadn’t had an arch since before 1873 at the very latest. I wrote that either the Vesper Gate had had some sort of temporary arch for a commemorative event of some sort (which seemed very unlikely), or else the contributors were a bit older than they were letting on… What laughs we had! However, maybe the last laugh is on me because there was another peripheral building at the abbey – the park keeper’s lodge – built in neo-Gothic style, which certainly did have an arch and it disappeared during the 1950s. Could that have been the building arch the local residents remembered?
More about this blast from the past in a future blog. This will be discussed in the rejuvenated section journal Medieval Yorkshire, the second volume of which, I’m delighted to say, is taking shape under David Asquith’s editorial hand.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 