Medieval Programme – Page 3 – Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society

Medieval Section February 2016 Lecture: the Gilbertines in Yorkshire

The February 2016 lecture will cover the archaeology of the Order of the Gilbertines, focusing on the layout and function of both double and much overlooked single houses. The lecture will primarily focus on the Yorkshire houses of Watton, Ellerton, Malton and St. Andrews, York. Comparisons of layout will also be drawn with other monastic orders to place the Gilbertines within a wider national context and to help shed light on how they were regarded by their contemporaries. Previous excavation, survey and interpretation will be drawn together and re-evaluated. This will include, for the first time, evaluation of St. John Hope’s nineteenth century excavations at Watton Priory with new a resistivity survey carried out on the site by the speaker in 2014.

Our speaker Peter Townend will draw upon research carried out over the last three years for his PhD thesis on the Monastic Order of the Gilbertines. He intends to submit his thesis for examination by Easter of this year, so we are very grateful to him for speaking when he has weightier matters to think about. Peter has a background in landscape archaeology and completed his Masters in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Sheffield in 2009, following a undergraduate degree in History and Archaeology at the University of Hull. He worked for a number of years at Northamptonshire Archaeology. He is currently collaborating with his supervisor Dr Hugh Willmott on the Thornton Abbey Research Project having previously worked together at Monk Bretton Priory and Humberston Abbey. Publications for all three of these sites are planned for this coming year. Attendees at the monthly lectures and followers of this blog will be familiar with Monk Bretton because Dr Willmott kindly spoke to the Medieval Section in April 2014.

New Year 2016 lecture: David Cockman on the Luttrell Psalter

On Saturday 9th January David Cockman will speak at our New Year meeting on the subject of the Luttrell Psalter, one of the great surviving treasures of the Middle Ages. It was commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell of Irnham in Lincolnshire during the mid-14th century. What distinguishes the Psalter from many others of the same period is the vast number and richness of the images which decorate the Latin text. These provide a graphic insight into medieval peasant life, which can be found virtually nowhere else.

Our speaker will explore the Luttrell psalter as a non-medieval specialist. He is fascinated by unique light it sheds on everyday life on the 14th century. This exploration is much easier now because of the availability of a digital copy of the psalter. He has also spent some time at Irnham to see just how much of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell’s world as described in the psalter can still be identified and this will also form part of the talk.

David is a member of Holmfirth Local History Group and serves on the committee of Huddersfield Archaeology Society. His moment of fame came when he appeared on one of Michael Portillo’s railway programmes talking about the great Holmfirth flood of 1852. For this contribution he was rewarded with a free cup of BBC tea, which he says makes the Medieval Section’s offer of a book token in lieu of fee seem like a win on the Euro Lottery!

The lecture will be at 2-3pm in our new venue at Swarthmore Education Centre at the bottom of Clarendon Road in Leeds. It promises to be a visual treat and just the thing to revive the jaded senses after the over-indulgence of the festive season.

Lecture Summary: The Pickering Medieval Wall Paintings

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.

Medieval Section goes Digital Media

It is now possible to keep track of all the latest news and events from the Medieval Section via Facebook and Twitter. If you are a Facebook user, just search for Medieval Section – Yorkshire Archaeology Society and please like our page. You can find us on Twitter under @MedievalSec. Please follow us and spread the word to your friends!

December Lecture: Chris Robson – The St Bees Man and Woman

St Bees Man Autopsy Team courtesy of Chris Robson

Our Christmas lecture at 2-3pm on Saturday December 12th will be given by Chris Robson of the St Bees Village History Group. Chris will be talking about the St Bees man and woman.

For anyone not familiar with this amazing archaeological discovery from the Middle Ages: in 1981 an archaeological investigation was carried out in a car park (where have we heard that one before? (!) – and even the students involved were from Leicester…), which was once the South Chancel of St Bees Priory Church in Cumbria.

The archaeologists discovered by chance a stone vault that would have at one time been in front of an altar. Inside the vault was a body-shaped lead coffin and the bones of a woman. The lead coffin was opened and to everybody’s surprise inside there was a body wrapped in protective layers of sticky linen.

The wrapped body after opening the lead coffin. Photo: Chris Robson

At a hastily arranged autopsy, the linen cloth was removed to expose a man so well-preserved that it was possible to discover how he died, to look at the state of his heart and liver, to see liquid blood in his lung and to guess what he had eaten for breakfast. The preservation of the body seemed to suggest that the man had been dead for only a few months, yet the building in which he had been buried fell down in 1500.

This lecture, which will be illustrated by some extraordinary pictures (sensitivity alert!), tells the story of the best-preserved medieval body found in modern times, and suggests who the man was and where he met his violent death. The identity of the lady is a key part of this historical puzzle.

This lecture will be held in our new venue at the Swarthmore. This being our December meeting, members will recall that we usually mark the occasion by bringing in mince pieces and savouries and mulled wine. This year I’ve been advised we can still bring in our own food and drink and we may even be able to use one of the hot water boilers to make cups of tea and coffee. If you are willing to bring some food or drink in for the meeting please would you let me know in advance so that we can co-ordinate and not end up with ten boxes of mince pies (!).

Writing a week or so after the event, I am pleased to report it passed off successfully and was enjoyed by all those who came, including the President. Members please be aware that Toby Jones can no longer give the advertised lecture about the Newport ship on 9th January. Instead David Cockman of the Huddersfield and District Archaeological Society has very kindly agreed to step in and speak to us about the Luttrell Psalter. This promises to be a visual treat. Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas and New Year.

Bryan Sitch
Hon.Secretary
Medieval Section
Yorskhire Archaeological Society

History and conservation of the monumental medieval sculpture of St Christopher from Norton Priory

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.

Bryan Sitch
Hon. Secretary
Medieval Section

Medieval Section AGM April 11th 2015

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.

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.

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

Something to look forward to on Valentine's Day

I am delighted to be able to share the news that Booths the printers have informed David Asquith, our Acting Honorary Editor, that they are dispatching the new-look section journal Medieval Yorkshire today. The box is being sent to Claremont and ought to be available for collection in the next week. Better still, why not come along to the lecture by Tony Abramson of Yorkshire Numismatics Society on Northumbrian sceats at 2pm on Saturday 14th February and you can collect your copy (if you are paid up member) and enjoy the presentation.

Bryan Sitch
Hon. Secretary

Medieval Section Xmas Tea on Saturday 13th December 2014

You may be grumbling about seeing premature Xmas advertisements on the TV but we need to plan our December meeting. As many of you will know, it is a long-since well-established custom of the Medieval Section to hold a Xmas tea after the lecture in December. We had planned originally to invite someone from the Newport Ship project to talk on 13th December but, because of the speaker’s changed family circumstances (there has been a new addition to the family), that arrangement has, sadly but understandably, fallen through.

However, I am very pleased to tell you that Robert Richards has kindly agreed to talk to us about All Saints Church in York.

Last year’s meeting was very enjoyable as I’m sure those who attended will testify (see above).