I attended yesterday’s AGM at which a report was made about the proposed dramatic but probably inevitable changes: the transfer to University of Leeds Brotherton Library of the society’s archive and library and the closing of Claremont prior to sale.
The reason for these changes is the society’s difficult financial situation. Money raised from subscriptions has gone down and the society is no longer able to afford the upkeep of the Claremont building and other expenses. Indeed it is only thanks to the generosity of members and an exceptional level of donations and legacies that the society has been able keep itself in the black over the last few years. Brian Barber, the Treasurer, is confident that the society can support itself over the next year but the deficit is unsustainable.
The result for members of the society and section members is that in future we will have to go to the Brotherton Library to access the library. This is very sad because one of the great benefits of membership has been the privilege of browsing the bookshelves at Claremont. The transfer agreement allows YAS members to access the University of Leeds’ collection, so, as one wag described it on Saturday, it could be seen as an extension of the library… Society members will be treated as external readers.
The University will not accept duplicates of books it already has on its shelves and one consequence of this is that the Medieval Section will be asked to identify books which the section has bought in the past specially for the library. If you can think of books we have bought as a section please would you let me know so that Kirsty can mark them up on the shelves in the library as requiring special treatment. An appeal was made for volunteers to help Kirsty with preparing for the move. If you might be able to help please contact the library in advance so that this can be planned. There will be discussion with all the sections about what happens to section books. It was stressed that this work is at an early stage but we do need to identify books affected by the move on which we would have a claim as a section.
At yesterday’s AGM a proposal was made to transfer the Wakefield Court Rolls to West Yorkshire Records Office which now has support for a new premises. The Management Board was not in favour of such a transfer and after discussion a vote was taken and the proposal was turned down by a substantial majority.
Meetings will be held elsewhere at a venue still to be decided. For those Medieval Section members who attend the monthly lectures this will mean a change of venue but all I can do is keep you informed via the Section blog and by post if necessary. The Medieval Section Committee will continue to organise lectures but I cannot tell you yet where they’ll be held. Sylvia Thomas appealed at the following Council meeting in the afternoon for members to let her know what facilities they’d like to see at a new Society venue. There will have to be meeting room with AV facilities. I have requested that the new venue also has a kitchen a space for consumption of buffet type food because of the Section’s popular Xmas tea. The Society will keep runs of its publications for reference at the new site. It is not clear whether it will buy or rent new premises at the present time.
The library at Claremont will be open until the end of the year but after January there will be restricted opening: open as normal on a Saturday but open only by appointment Tuesday to Thursday.
New volume of the Wakefield Court Rolls
One last bit of news: the next volume of the Wakefield Court Rolls has been published. The price is £9 for members.
Excavations at Pontefract Friary in 2011 (courtesy of Simon Tomson)
St Richard’s Dominican Friary in Pontefract was one of 56 Dominican friaries in England by 1300, but, as our speaker told the audience, it was not known precisely where it was until very recently. The opportunity to locate the missing friary arose when the A & E department of the local hospital was demolished. Pontefract Castle dates from the 1080s and Pontefract was laid out as a planned town by the de Lacys in front of the castle along an east west ridge. The present town centre overlies the medieval suburb. A number of place names clues suggest that the friary had once been nearby: Friar Wood and Friar Wood Lane. Pontefract Friary Action Group (PFAG) gathered 2000 signatures in just a fortnight to press for the site to be explored archaeologically. The hospital authorities planned to reduce the ground surface by a metre. WYAS conducted a desktop assessment which showed there was a high likelihood of there being archaeology beneath the hospital estate. Balfour Beatty Heathcoe provided £10,000 to fund the excavation.
Friaries came late (from the 1250s) on the medieval monastic scene and, having to set up where they could, tend to be extra-mural and Simon showed a map of medieval Bristol for comparison. The friaries were outside the town on the flood plain. Beverley Friary set up over the town sewer! In Pontefract Eric Holder and Pontefract and District Archaeology society excavated pits at the bottom of the hill where it was thought the friary might lie. Joining up dots from the exploratory trenches enabled the excavators to tentatively mark out the plan of the cloister. Drought marks in a garden suggested a possible guesthouse on the west side of the cloister. It appears the friary garderobe flowed into a duck pond.
The society had to meet a number of health and safety requirements in order to dig but within 10 days of coming back off holiday, the Chairman supported by the society had mobilised 30 volunteers and were ready to start digging. They sank a number of 2m square sondage pits but they only revealed an undifferentiated five feet thick grey garden soil which had been turned over repeatedly. It had been the dumping ground for the contents of privies mixed with ash and contained lots of clay pipe fragments and broken pottery. Black and white photographs of the site showed how it had been used to grow liquorice, which requires deep well-drained soils, during the early modern period.
Liquorice from Manchester Museum Botany collection (courtesy of Claire Miles)
The grey layer rested on top of the local coal measure sandstone. The surface of the sandstone contained one burial: that of a man who had been hanged. The radiocarbon date suggested he’d lived between 1283 and 1394. Simon speculated he might be a veteran of the Battle of Boroughbridge (1322) in which Thomas of Lancaster, who had risen in rebellion against King Edward II, was defeated. Afterwards the Earl was brought back to Pontefract, tried and executed.
The site where the skeleton was found lay against an 8 metre vertical sandstone cliff face which had been quarried extensively for the stone from which the friary had been constructed. A rock-cut foundation trench was found providing the footing for the North wall of the friary church. The friary was extensively robbed when Pontefract was being rebuilt after three destructive sieges during the English Civil War. However, the excavators found a major east-west wall with three buttresses and an impressive but unfinished broken grave cover incorporated into a buttress. It had been damaged by the stonemason during manufacture and had been re-used. Against the wall a line of whitewash could be seen. Black and white floor tiles had butted up against the wall. On the inside of the east wall was found what was believed to be part of the base of the altar. The dating of the tiles suggests they were made prior to the founding of the friary and may have been used and re-used several times before being given to the friary.
Head niche of Purbeck marble (courtesy of Simon Tomson)
The head niche of a sarcophagus of Purbeck marble was found near a rebate in one side of the chancel. This sarcophagus would have been expensive and shows that the person buried there was of high status. Unfortunately most of the sarcophagus appears to have been made into lime for mortar after the Dissolution in 1536. Several brass letters dating from the early to mid-15th century were also found. Nevertheless there are a couple of candidates, whose last resting place this might have been. The battle of Wakefield took place in 1460. Richard Duke of York and his son Edmund Earl of Rutland both lost their lives. There is historical evidence that they were buried at Pontefract Friary. In 1476 Edward IV and Richard Duke of Gloucester arranged a funeral cortege to take their father’s remains for re-burial at Fotheringhay. Pieces of window tracery dating from about 1375 were found. There is also historical evidence that John of Gaunt provided wood for rebuilding the friary roof after 1365.
To the north lay the cemetery. The society sampled one of the skeletons. Simon thought the radiocarbon date obtained for the skeleton (1283-1394) was suspiciously close to that of the skeleton of the hanged man. He suspected that radon gas seeping up out of the coal measures might be blurring the precision of the results. The partial plan revealed by the excavation enabled Simon to overlay onto it a plan of a surviving friary, such as that of Norwich to give an impression of the complete plan of Pontefract Friary. This enabled him to predict the line of the south wall and he tested the theory by digging in a narrow piece of land between the children’s ward and the public road. The south wall of the church was found and it was the buttress was only half a metre out! Simon showed a photo of the Blackfriars Theatre in Boston which gives an idea of how the building next to the cloister might have looked.
Simon Tomson is Excavation Field Director, Pontefract and District Archaeological Society. Our sincerest thanks to Simon for giving his lecture and providing images for use in this blog post.
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.
Yesterday’s Medieval Section AGM was one of the best-attended and longest-lasting AGMs that I can remember in all the years that I have been a member. Twenty-one people were present. Unfortunately Axel Muller (Chairman), Jo Heron (Treasurer) and Steve Moorhouse (Hon. Editor) could not come so I read their respective reports to the gathering. Janet Senior kindly stepped in to chair the meeting which meant I was not talking all of the time.
Basically we are in much better shape than we were a year ago.The twin strategy of reviving the Saturday afternoon monthly lectures and creating a section blog has stimulated interest so that once again members are offering themselves for election to committee. Craig Fletcher has joined the committee and replaces Marta Cobb who has stepped down. Thanks to them both for serving. It was the absence of volunteers willing to stand for committee that prompted last year’s proposal that the section be wound up. The membership is about the same at 130, although there are still subscriptions outstanding.
The main point of discussion was the Section journal Medieval Yorkshire. David Asquith kindly offered to facilitate the production of the journal. Whilst David has not said he will become Hon. Editor this is a most welcome step that hopefully will enable us to resume publication of Medieval Yorkshire. Sadly due to the ill-health of Stephen Moorhouse there has not been any progress with the catch-up volumes 38 and 39/40.
Dr Hugh Willmott addressing the section about Monk Bretton Priory.
The AGM was followed by Dr Hugh Willmott (University of Sheffield) who talked to us about recent work at Monk Bretton Priory. I’ll put a summary of this talk on the blog in due course.
Since coming close to being wound up at its AGM in April 2013, the Medieval Section has, with the appointment of new officers and new committee members, been more active over the last year. The section has offered eight lectures and an excursion to see the ‘lost’ 1066 battlefield of Fulford with Chas Jones (September 2013).
Arms and armour of the time of Fulford
It is invidious to single out any of our speakers but one of the much-anticipated highlights of the lecture programme was the talk about the discovery of Richard III’s remains given by Bob Woosnam-Savage from the Royal Armouries in Leeds. This was followed by the traditional Medieval Section Christmas buffet.
Bob Woosnam-Savage’s lecture about Richard III’s remains
Attendance at the monthly lectures, which lapsed several years ago, has been slowly growing. In October Pam Judkins talked to the section about the commemoration of the funeral procession for Richard Duke of York organised by Wakefield Historical Society. November’s talk on ‘Aethelfrith of Northumbria’s lost battlefield?’ by Bryan Sitch presented the results of a recent study of human remains in the Manchester Museum collection that appear to be casualties of the Battle of Chester, described in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. In January Simon Tomson of Pontefract Archaeological Society gave a talk about ‘Finding Pontefract ‘s Black Friars’; and in February Stuart Wrathmell discussed ‘New approaches to Anglo-Saxon settlement and place-names: the Vale of Pickering and the northern Wolds’. In March Rebecca Griffiths from the Portable Antiquities Scheme presented recent Medieval discoveries from Yorkshire. We have just had our first AGM under the new committee (April 2014) after which Dr Hugh Willmott (University of Sheffield spoke about Monk Bretton Priory). Lecture meetings are something of a social occasion too because we usually retire to the Claremont kitchen for tea and a chat with the speaker. Summaries of each of the lectures will be posted on the blog for the benefit of members who could not attend. The officers and committee are grateful to each of the speakers for kindly giving up their time to help the section at a challenging time.
Speaker Rbecca Griffiths and Section Member David Harpin at the recent lecture about the P.A.S.
With some new members joining but a few resignations and the sad loss of long-standing members who have passed away over the last year, including Anna Slowikowski, Prof Jennings, Mrs Pickles and Mr Rushton, membership has remained about the same at about 120. However, with funds firmly in the black, a new programme of lectures being planned and proposals for a visit to see places of medieval interest in Manchester and for a day-school on the ‘lost kingdom’ of Elmet, the section can look forward to consolidating and building on its year of recovery.
One officer post still to fill is the position of Honorary Editor because there ‘catch-up’ volumes of the section journal Medieval Yorkshire still to bring to publication. Publication of the section journal sadly lapsed several years ago. One of our existing Committee members has indicated that she would like to step down and this provides an opportunity for someone new to join the committee. As we usually meet before the Saturday afternoon lecture meeting it is not onerous. Do contact me if you’d like to discuss joining the committee – but before the AGM on Saturday 12th April if possible at.yas.medievalsec@gmail.com If you are not a member, the section subscription is £16 per year. If you are a member of Yorkshire Archaeological Society the subscription is just £6. There is a very competitive student subscription too.
One notable addition to the section’s offer to its members has been the creation of this Medieval Section blog. Taking the section into the area of social media has been very much a new undertaking for the section and this at a time when a significant proportion of the membership does not use email. If you have not already sent me you email address, do please let me have it because it saves the section a small fortune in postage. If you do not have computer access we will send you mailings by post. However, the number of visitors and visits to the Medieval Section website has gradually grown over the year. I am very grateful to Sue Alexander for looking after the website and for providing the graph below showing how the number of visitors to the website and blog has steadily grown over the last year. Though I say it myself I think it tells its own story. The blog offers a quick and convenient way of finding out what is happening in medieval history and archaeology in the county and further afield.
Visits to the Medieval Website (including the Blog) over the last year
Bryan Sitch
Hon Secretary
Medieval Section
17th March 2014
Coin of Richard III (kindly sent by Medieval Section member David Harpin)
I am very grateful to Medieval Section member David Harpin who has kindly sent a photo of a silver coin of Richard III. Earlier this week the Daily Telegraph ran a story by Sarah Knapton about the DNA sequencing of the last Plantagenet king’s remains. The development of genetic research and the sequencing of the entire genomes of individuals who lived in the past is revealing new information. Richard III will be one of a relatively small number of people from the past who have been studied in this way. The researchers led by Dr Turi King (University of Leicester) hope to be able to report what colour Richard’s eyes and hair were and whether he would have been susceptible to diseases such as diabetes and Alzheimer’s. The research may reveal evidence of infectious bacteria. It is already known that Richard suffered from roundworm.
In the issue (Wednesday 12th February) Harry Mount, author of How England made the English, was looking forward to finding out the results of the research, which he hoped would shed light on the DNA segments passed down the royal bloodline. He reiterated just how shaky was Henry VII’s claim to the throne in terms of his share of ‘royal’ blood. This line of research will no doubt develop over time but already there are other Medieval characters this could be applied to, such as Alfred, whose remains have been identified. So, as previously mentioned, the next few years are full of exciting potential for Medieval history and archaeology.
Members will remember I’m sure Bob Woosnam Savage’s lecture about the recent research on Richard’s remains. Bob being a consummate professional would not reveal what he knew but intimated to us that further exciting work was taking place. So you could say that you (almost) heard about it at the Yorkshire Archaeological Society Medieval Section lecture first!
Saturday’s meeting at Claremont to discuss the relationship between the main society and the sections reminded me that we ought to do more to highlight and celebrate some of the softer, less tangible benefits of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, namely that we are a community of like-minded individuals who share a passionate interest in the county and we come together every so often to celebrate shared interest in more relaxed ways and settings, such as our Medieval Section Xmas Party. With apologies to anyone I have caught inadvertently mid-munch in the photos attached but it was a great meeting. Firstly Bob Woosnam-Savage from Royal Armouries gave us a wonderfully entertaining talk about the identification of the remains of Richard III. The summary of the lecture should be available on the appropriate part of the section website in due course. Sincerest thanks to all those – too numerous to name individually – who brought in food and drink. I know a great time was had by all. So much so that the ladies working on the digital successor to the Society’s newsletter Update would like to feature some photos of Medieval Section members enjoying themselves. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This, the first lecture in the new-look programme for the Medieval Section for 2013, by Pam Judkins of Wakefield Council Arts Museums and Heritage, gave an account of the remarkable commemorative retracing of the route of the funerary procession from Pontefract to Fotheringhay for Richard Duke of York of July 1476, which was organised by Wakefield Historical Society in July 2010.
Bar where Richard of York’s head was displayed
Pam described the historical context for Richard’s death, which occurred near Sandal Castle, in December 1460 during the Wars of the Roses. The Duke’s frustration with the lacklustre rule of Henry VI had led him to press his own slightly stronger claim to the English throne, which directly threatened the right to succession of the son of Henry and his queen, Margaret of Anjou. In the fight at Sandal the Duke appears to have fallen into an ambush and his head, decorated with a paper crown, and that of his son Edmund, Duke of Rutland, were displayed above Micklegate Bar in York. The battle was one of the smaller engagements of the Wars of the Roses. It looked as though the Yorkist cause was dead but another son, Edward, having won a battle of his own in Wales, returned and on Palm Sunday 1461, with the help of his father’s old ally Warwick, defeated the Lancastrians at Towton. This may well be the largest and bloodiest battle ever to have taken place on English soil. Edward became Edward IV.
Once secure on the English throne, Edward made plans to give his father a decent funeral which involved taking the body in a formal procession from Pontefract in West Yorkshire to the favoured residence of the family at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire. It is not clear why it took quite so long -16 years – to bring this about but the unsettled politics of the time and the reglazing of Fotheringhay Chuch may have had something to do with it. The route would take in many towns along the great north road that had been pillaged by Lancastrians after the Battle of Sandal. At each of a number of overnight stops the body lay on a funeral bier in a church. Four hundred poor men were paid to follow the procession. Anyone who turned up to join the procession received a penny and pregnant women received 2d. Richly clothed wooden effigies of the Duke and his son Edmund lay on the coffins. The event was carefully planned and choreographed lest there be any repetition of the unedifying scenes at the funeral of Charles VI of France when clergy and members of his household had squabbled over the funeral pall and clothing.
Having exhumed the bodies of the Duke and his son Edmund at Pontefract, the procession set out from Pontefract on 22nd July, staying in Doncaster on 22nd-23rd July, Blyth on 23rd-24th July, Tuxford on 24th-25th July, Newark on 25th-26th July, Grantham on 26th-27th July, Stamford on 27th-29th July (an extra day was allowed because this was a Sunday), and finally reaching Fotheringhay on 30th July 1476.
Wakefield Historical Society hoped to commemorate the procession but unfortunately an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund failed, and the organizers threw themselves on the mercy of churches and local societies along the route. In hindsight this was not an entirely disastrous outcome because it did result in local people being involved on a more voluntary and ad hoc basis. Wakefield Historical Society decided not to re-enact the procession but to follow the route on the dates when the procession had taken place, staying at the same locations overnight where the body of Richard had rested. They were helped in this by the fact that the Richard III Society had published contemporary accounts of the procession [see Anne F.Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs with P.W.Hammond (1996) ‘The Reburial of Richard Duke of York 21-30 July 1476’ The Ricardian, the Journal of the Richard III Society, vol. X, no.127, December 1994]. Some stretches of the route had long since disappeared because of later development and changes to the modern road lay-out but the participants did walk the route where they could. Our speaker described this as quite an emotional experience and said that being there was important. Due to changes in the road lay-out some places that had been thriving historically were now quiet backwaters. The present day tranquil bridge at Wentbridge, for instance, had been widened three times, reflecting the importance of the river crossing when this was the main north-south road for travellers and a route for herds of animals being taken to London for slaughter. The participants also visited other Medieval places of interest along the route that would have been there in the late 15th century.
At Doncaster the Duke’s body lay overnight in Greyfriars’ Franciscan Friary. What the connection was with the Franciscans was, is not known but Edward’s sister, Margaret of York was also a patron of the order. Much of the Medieval Doncaster has been lost through development so the participants visited the site of an important Medieval shrine to the Virgin Mary, recently revived by the Roman Catholic Church. A Vespers service was held at this and each of the subsequent overnight stops. It is probably no accident that a number of towns along the route had been granted charters by Edward IV in the years before the funeral procession. Perhaps this was in recognition of, and to make amends for, the widespread looting of places along the route by Lancastrians after their victory at Sandal.
The next section of the route to Blyth has been destroyed by extensive mining but the participants called at Conisborough Castle where Richard was born and Roche Abbey, which was close enough to send a party of monks to join the funeral procession. The body rested at Tickhill were there was a Benedictine Priory, a daughter-house of Rouen. There the participants saw a Doom painting which had survived the Reformation. Blyth appears to have been more important historically but now that the route of the A1 has shifted, it is quiet backwater.
Gainsborough Old Hall
On 24th July the party travelled to Tuxford. The participants walked a quiet stretch of what is very likely to have been the main north-south road with a local guide and society. They diverted to Gainsborough Old Hall which was owned by the Yorkist de Burgh family and which was said to have been destroyed by Lancastrians. However, tree-ring dates taken from timbers suggests many of the trees were felled in the 1460s so perhaps the devastation was overstated. The Medieval kitchen is particularly well-preserved there. The party also visited Laxton where strip farming is still practised and where court leet meetings are still held to manage disputes. At Tuxford the party squeezed into the small church for Vespers. Again the presence of large inn betrayed the fact that the town had been far busier in the past.
From Tuxford they travelled to Newark. The body of the Duke lay at St Mary Magdalene in Newark. The money for the church came from wool. Newark retains its open marketplace and a number of buildings around it give a real sense of what it was like in the Middle Ages. The procession may have doubled the size of the population the night that the funerary procession spent there.
From Newark the party went to Grantham, another town that benefited from a charter from Edward IV. Again the body stayed overnight at the Greyfriars even though there was an impressive church there. The facade of a 15th century hotel still survives at Newark.
From Newark the party travelled to Stamford. They saw Elis Manor with its wall paintings dating from about 1500 depicting woodland scenes. Tickencote and Losecote, nearby, was the site of another battle during the Wars of the Roses. The body lay for two nights at Greyfriars in Stamford as the following day was a Sunday. The George Inn at Stamford is an early courtyard inn.
The next day, Monday, the party travelled to Fotheringhay, stopping at Longthorpe Tower near Peterborough to see some 14th century wall-paintings. Apethorpe Hall was built about 1500 and is so close to Fotheringhay it may have been linked to the House of York.
On 29th July the body arrived at Fotheringhay. Little remains of the castle save for a mound and ditch. A procession led by Edward IV came to meet the funerary procession. The body was guarded overnight by men who had served with the Duke. The funeral took place on Tuesday 29th July. Requiem masses were sung by and a sermon preached by the Bishop of Lincoln. A black war horse was ridden into the church. There were 400 lights on the hearse. In 2010 the Deputy Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Gloucester, came for the final event. A plaque was presented to the church as at each of the previous overnight stops. In 1476 some 1500 people were served food and drink in tents but perhaps 5000 may have attended. £311 17s 1d was spent on 8000 gallons of beer, 48 beef, 210 sheep, and large quantities of fish and poultry. Cooks were brought up from London to provide the catering.
Our speaker finished her talk by saying that she felt the Wakefield Historical Society had made a real contribution to making members of the general public more aware of their history, especially in stopping off points along the route of the procession, as well as linking historical events at the local and national level.
Lecture summary by Bryan Sitch, Hon Secretary, Medieval Section. For any errors the writer is responsible.
Given the insanitary conditions of the time and poor hygiene, parasites like roundworm must have been endemic. Archaeological evidence of astringents to clear the gut of such parasites have been found at Soutra hospital near Edinburgh, a medieval hospital that straddled the main highway between England and Scotland. Excavations there yielded the secrets of an extensive pharmacopoeia:- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/prozac-opium-and-myrrh-the-ancient-arts-of-anaesthesia-are-unlocked-1238659.html
Tormentil (Potentilla erecta) – with thanks to Claire Miles and Rachel Webster in Manchester Museum’s Botany Department
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 