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 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.
Our speaker at this Saturday’s lecture meeting at Claremont is Samantha Sportun. Sam has 18 years’ experience in Museums and currently manages the collection care team (Conservation/Workshop technicians) at Manchester Museum. Before taking up this post she ran the Sculpture Conservation workshop at National Museums Liverpool looking after their wide and varied sculpture collection as well as taking on the conservation of some of the iconic monuments in the North–West.
She is currently a part-time PhD student researching digital touch in Museum, exploring ways of using 3D technology to share objects stories through handling and touch. The interest in this area of research started at the time that St Christopher was conserved by the team in the Conservation Centre.
St Christopher is the largest stone sculpture that survives from the medieval period. Art historians have generally dated it to a period of around 1380 – 1400 on stylistic grounds. Come along to what promises to be a fascinating lecture to close our annual programme.
I’ve received an enquiry from someone who lives near Armitstead and who has read a copy of Medieval Yorkshire vol.34. He is interested in finding out about any research on the area around Settle, Giggleswick, Stainforth and Malham. The enquirer wants to know who to contact if he has questions. The gentleman asks whether Paley Green have been a settlement or a single farmstead. Would all the mentioned have had links with the monasteries? Can one of our members help?
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.
Plan of Monk Bretton in the light of recent excavations (courtesy of Dr Hugh Willmott).
The speaker at April’s lecture meeting is interested in the end of the monasteries, and, as Monk Bretton is close to Sheffield and has an interesting Post-Dissolution history; it was the perfect site for fieldwork. But why bother? Don’t we know it all anyway? There are a lot of historical records, including suppression records, with which to map the process of destruction and rebirth that takes place on such sites. However, archaeologists have generally been more interested in the story of how the abbeys were founded, and how the architectural styles changed over time, rather than what happened after their Dissolution. The fact that the majority have a Post-Dissolution life that may be longer than the duration of the monastic occupation is often ignored. Simon Thurley in his 2007 Gresham Lecture ‘The Fabrication of Medieval History’ referred to the policy of the Office or Ministry of Works (M.O.W.) under the guidance of Sir Charles Reed Peers (1868-1952), which was summarised as “Our job is to throw up the distinctive character and individuality of the medieval constructor”. So it was that Monk Bretton was turned into a lovely ruin with a beautifully manicured lawn during the consolidation work carried out there from the 1930s to 1950s. In keeping with the M.O.W.’s policy the Post-Dissolution phases were seen as an inconvenience and swept away during the tidying up of the site. During the recent archaeological work, which the speaker directed, the aim was to explain how the functioning farmhouse created out of the monastic buildings was turned into a picturesque ruin. It is easy to blame people in the past, however, and there is still today the feeling that the Middle Ages are the ‘real’ or ‘pure’ past and that all the other interventions are to be regarded as unfortunate. This leaves us with a rather black-and-white picture of the dedicated religious in their abbeys and priories and the unprincipled secular determined to exploit the situation at the Dissolution. In advertising its annual conference, the Society of Church Archaeology has stated “In Yorkshire the avarice and greed of those who sought to benefit from the Dissolution came into stark conflict with the piety of those who aimed to retain vestiges of the Old Religion” (2010) but this is a simplification of a relationship that was more complex, as our speaker aimed to show in his presentation.
Founded in 1153, Monk Bretton was a Cluniac house under the jurisdiction of Pontefract. In 1281 it became an independent Benedictine house (although there was bloodshed over this when an armed group led by the Prior from Pontefract disputed control of its wealth!). It was dissolved on 39th November 1538. Its estate was valued at £246 19s 4d. It was granted to William Blithman, one of the assessors. He grew up locally and was one of Cromwell’s key agents in Yorkshire, which would explain Blithman’s interest in Monk Bretton. The priory was purchased at the suggestion of Bess of Hardwick for her stepson Henry Talbot in 1580. It left the possession of the Talbot family during the early 17th century and then slipped into historical obscurity. The site was cleared by land owner John Horne during the 1920s and taken into guardianship by the Office of Works in 1937 and turned into a public monument. The last owner, John Horne, corresponded with the President of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Dr Walker. Literature published about the site explains Monk Bretton was a Talbot residence. The residence was in the west range, where a stair case and gateway represented the core of the Tudor mansion but there is little that is Tudor in the present predominantly medieval range. Other Talbot mansions are known. The Earl of Shrewsbury was one of the richest noblemen in the country and the Talbot family owned Rufford Abbey (Nottinghamshire, 1540) where the main range was turned into a fancy house; a new build at New Hall Pontefract (1591), which was demolished to make way for the M62 motorway; and Worksop Manor (1590s).
The recent work began with an intensive resistivity survey of the core of the monastic site. It proved to be surprisingly empty of archaeological features, apart from a collapsed mine shaft that runs underneath the site. Apart from patches of debris showing where buildings were cleared by the M.O.W. there was little to be seen. However, an anomaly beyond the church seemed to show a set of walls. Test pits were dug in Easter 2010. A test pit dug north of the North Transept revealed walls and a piece of early to mid-16th century German stoneware was found, as well as an area of puddled clay in which there were lots of broken edges of window glass. These were the trimmings (never leaded) or offcuts from creating windows. They were not monastic but were 16th or 17th century in date.
This work was followed by further documentary research and the digging of a larger trench. When the old M.O.W. files were inspected a piece of graph paper dated 31st May 1950 was found on which there was a sketch plan of a building that was recorded near the North Transept wall. It had been recorded accurately but in rudimentary fashion before being back-filled because it didn’t fit the prevailing contemporary interpretative narrative that focused on the monastic rather than the Post-Dissolution archaeology. Further excavations in July 2010 dug up an area of the lawn and the area where window glass had been found. The latter revealed a boundary wall with puddled clay on one side and medieval garden soils beneath. It was not the intention to excavate a medieval garden and the trench was closed.
The trench north of the Transept was more complex because it revealed lots of walls and features. Here was evidence of Tudor building and Post-Medieval material culture but the more the excavators dug the less it seemed to make sense! The chief obstacle was the M.O.W.’s excavation technique which consisted of following walls to create a plan of the buildings on the site. Unfortunately this divorced the walls and buildings from their archaeological contexts and associated dating evidence, leaving them ‘floating’. However some nice pieces of a carved stone syncopated arcade from the Cloister were found.
The garderobe at Monk Bretton (photo courtesy of Dr Hugh Willmott)
Later building work appears to have respected an earlier feature that had been left in situ. This was interpreted as a ‘furnace’ during the 1950s but it turned out to be a closed-shaft garderobe built against a wall, complete with an exit chute. The M.O.W. excavators found pottery here and this was traced and turned out to be an almost complete urinal. Urinals are often found down reredorter drains. This suggests whatever was going on in the area was of a domestic nature but just north of the North Transept seemed like a strange place for a substantial building of this kind. However, Castle Acre Priory had a similar building running away from the North Transept.
Medieval urinal found in garderobe at Monk Bretton (courtesy of Dr Hugh Willmott).
The recent excavations also revealed late medieval coarse wares amongst the 1950s back-fill. The most interesting pieces turned out to be industrial wares. A 14th or 15th century drinking jug was badly corroded. Perhaps it had been used for boiling something acidic as part of a metal-working. A pot with greenish-blue deposit proved to be unexpectedly dangerous because the analysis revealed it contained copper arsenate! It had probably been used as a dye pigment. Similar vessels were discovered at Pontefract Priory. Clearly some interesting activity was going on at the Priory in the 15th century. However, the finds also reveal high status activity too. The current excavations uncovered a Germanic drinking glass or beaker as well as window glass, decorated with grisaille and lead canes. Nice windows and imported glass may suggest this was the early guesthouse.
Most of the walls related to the mid-16th century phase before the site came into the possession of the Talbot family. A lot of medieval stone was reused making dating the activity difficult. A large fireplace was reused and incorporated pieces from different fireplaces to create two water tanks. The edges of the tanks were chipped. The timber frame building resting on stone sleeper walls appears to have been a smithy and there is evidence of burning. Lots of good ceramics were recovered from the drain including so-called Cistercian wares and Blackwares as well as a decorative stone crocket (a decorative architectural element probably from a pinicle on the monastic church). Another metalwork sample proved to copper alloy containing significant traces of zinc and tin. This is the composition of bell metal and it is interesting that five bells are mentioned in the Suppression document. There was a lot of lead work too that had been cut off and twisted ready for melting down and recycling.
In the final phase dating to the late 16th century, much was demolished and filled-in. This is about the time when the site was acquired by the Talbot family. In addition to the construction of the smithy there had been some reconstruction at Monk Bretton under Blithman’s ownership elsewhere on the site. Parts of the Church Nave were demolished. Part of the North Aisle went to Wentworth where it was built into the Parish Church. Our speaker pointed out that one of the first things that Post-Dissolution owners did was to slight the church to ensure that the monks did not return. This was only prudent at a time when the political wind was blowing both ways. The eastern end of the church that was left appears to have been retained as a barn.
In order to better understand what happened at Monk Bretton in the late 16th and 17th centuries and before the M.O.W. tidied up the site, Ordnance Survey maps were consulted. One edition of 1931 was published just before the M.O.W. acquired the site. Another of 1906 shows a west range. Part of the farmhouse and medieval masonry were incorporated to create a long gallery. Photographs in Barnsley Archives Office show this as a long gallery with a timber-framed top hall, and with Tudor chimneys coming off it. People reused the stone from this Post-Dissolution building. The Tudor House seems to have had an inserted stairwell and a long gallery. In a letter from the last owner Mr Horne to Dr Walker of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, a series of investigations are described: ‘In the centre refectory wall is a circular structure which may have been a fireplace. There is a wall going through the centre of the building put in at the time of the 16th century…’ The circular structure must have been a bread oven. Another building described as the ‘administration building’ has been dated to the 13th century on the basis of some rather fine columns but archival research shows that the M.O.W. made extensive changes to this structure in the 1930s and ‘medievalised’ what probably started out as a stable or coach house in the Post-Medieval phase of Monk Bretton. During the 1930s Monk Bretton was ‘fossilised’ as a medieval monument even though by this time it had been transformed into a working farm.
The lecture showed that life at Monk Bretton went on long after the closure of the priory in 1538 and indeed the Post-Dissolution phase lasted as long as the duration of the monastic occupation. The recent archaeological work showed what happened to a site at the Dissolution and what was involved in the transition from an ecclesiastical estate to a secular one. Life went on the and to the peasant working the land there would not have been much, if any, difference. Sadly this continuity is often overlooked in the traditional narrative of the Dissolution being about the destruction of the monasteries and the expulsion of the monks. In this Monk Bretton is not on its own. There must have been hundreds of Monk Brettons in the landscape after the Dissolution. About one third of religious sites were destroyed; between a third and a half were converted into a house or farm; and about a fifth remained in parochial religious use. The situation is slightly different in Wales and very different in Scotland.
The Section is very grateful to Dr Willmott for kindly commenting on the text (though any mistakes that remain are the Hon.Secretary’s responsibility) and for providing photographs. Dr Willmott was planning to publish the more detailed report on the 2010 excavations in the YAJ, but is currently finalising the ‘grey’ report for English Heritage.Dr Willmott has also offered to speak to the Section about his work at Thornton Abbey in North Lincolnshire at a date to be confirmed.
Since the AGM on 27th April the members of the new committee have been busy on your behalf organising a programme for the coming year. Lecture meetings will be held at the Yorkshire Archaeological Society at Claremont on the second Saturday of every month at 2-3pm.
I thought I’d give you some advance details of what we’re planning so that you can reserve dates in the diary. Some of the details are still provisional as the speakers have yet to confirm wording of titles but there is already a strong Yorkshire medieval battlefield flavour to the autumn programme.
Viking reenactment enthusiasts
As the battlefield of Fulford is very much in the news at the moment we could organise an excursion to walk the site with Chas Jones. Whilst we would normally meet on 14th September, the 21st September works better for Chas. We could have a quick look at Riccall, have a talk and battlefield walk about Fulford and then see Stamford Bridge but Chas tells me it would be a very full afternoon! Please let me know what you’d like to do and we could organise a coach. We might have to leave at 1pm if not earlier. Maximum of 30 people.
On 12th October Pam Judkins of Wakefield Historical Society will talk to us about ‘Retracing of the 100-mile Route of the Funeral Procession of Richard, Duke of York’.
On 9th November in ‘Aethelfrith of Northumbria’s lost battlefield?’ I’ll talk about the study of human remains in the Manchester Museum collection that appear to be evidence of the Battle of Chester, described in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
Our Christmas meeting on 14th December will be addressed by Bob Woosnam Savage, Curator of European Edged Weapons, Royal Armouries, Leeds, who will talk to us about ‘Richard III the violent death of a king’.
Do let me know if you’d like us to hold the traditional section high tea that afternoon and we’ll make plans. The very least that Janet will let us get away with is mince pies and mulled wine!
If you intend to come to this lecture please let me know in advance as a large audience is expected because we can only seat 50 – the maximum for Health and Safety reasons. Do let me know if you’d be willing to bring along some nibbles.
On 8th March I’m hoping to invite a speaker from the Portable Antiquities Scheme to tell us about recent finds from Yorkshire. However, if because of maternity leave this proves to be impossible, Alison Leonard of the Department of Archaeology, King’s Manor at the University of York, has kindly agreed to talk to us about why it is that Yorkshire presents such a frustrating problem for Scandinavian studies compared to other parts of the country.
On 12th April Dr Hugh Willmott, Senior Lecturer in European Historical Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Sheffield, will talk about ‘Recent work at Monk Bretton Priory‘. This talk would have to double up as our AGM too now that the accounts are completed in the spring.
Finally on 10th May, Professor Joyce Hill of the University of Leeds, will talk to us about work on an Anglo-Saxon hoard from the Vale of York.
Do let me know if this line-up is of interest, whether you’d like to go and see the battlefield of Fulford and whether the prospect of a traditional section high tea at Xmas appeals. We’ll distribute a programme once everything has been confirmed.
Thanks to Sue Alexander there is now a dedicated email if you’d like to contact me: yas.medievalsec@gmail.com
Do take a minute or two to send me an email so I can contact you in future. Email is much easier and cheaper to use – though we’ll still contact members by post if they prefer.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 