The speaker at the Medieval Section December lecture, Dr Robert Richards, talked about about recent archaeological work at All Saints Church on North Street in York. The church was altered in the Victorian period when the chancel was knocked down in order to widen it, although it was rebuilt on or close to the Medieval footings. A watercolour from about the turn of the 18th century shows Victorian bricks encasing the original medieval buttresses and plaster coming off the gable tops. Claims that the screen was the work of York based antiquary, artist and architect Edwin Ridsdale Tate (1862–1922) are incorrect.
A pillar in the nave has a statue of what is often said to be St William of York. However, it is not clear it is St William. If the statue does represent an archbishop, he is not wearing an archbishop’s mitre but that would have been made separately. The statue is thought to be an example of 15th century English carving. It stands on a corbel cut from a single block of stone on one of a pair of Romanesque round columns in the nave that experts have described as ‘looking squiffy’. They have nail head decoration but this is thought to be a later decorative addition to the pillar.Though now dwarfed by the huge industrial conurbations of the West Riding, York was the centre of northern England in the Roman and Medieval periods and so some degree of elevated architectural style is to be expected.
Slightly more controversially, the church also has a resurrection alabaster. This is probably from the first half of the 15th century. However, it is badly in need of conservation, having (Victorian?) iron screws holding it in its frame, and much of the remaining colour obscured by what appears to be the grease from hundreds of human fingers touching it, but may only be centuries of dirt!
Adjacent to All Saints are some attractive church cottages.Thought to be of late 15th century date, they are now known on the evidence of tree ring analysis to have been built after 1396. About half of the timbers in the church have been dated to the late 12th century. An exact match was was made with timbers from Lincoln and Ely cathedrals. The wood came from Sherwood Forest. It must have been part of a job lot sold cheaply and sent around the country. It’s puzzling why the timbers are so massive. One of the timbers came from a tree that was 250 years old so it must have started growing about 900. This raises some interesting chronological questions. For instance it is sometimes said that the Green Man had gone out of fashion by the 15th century but there are two in the chancel ceiling where the timbers have been tree-ring dated to 1477. The Green Man designs are resurrection symbols. Representations of Medieval musical instruments in the church have also attracted a lot of interest from specialists.
All Saints is best known for having some of the most photogenic Medieval glass in the country. The right central panel depicting St Anne teaching her daughter the Virgin Mary to read is particularly famous. Sadly the names of the original sponsors were knocked out at a later date. The End of the World and the Prick of Conscience depicting the last 15 days of the world are some of the most prolific of secular manuscripts. They gave the penitent a preview of the approaching end of the world and prompted them to seek the intercession of the Virgin Mary.
This tradition is particularly influential and it is still possible to see Emma Raughton’s cell where anchorites lived. Emma was an anchoress attached to All Saints church in the first half of the fifteenth century. Although little is known about her, she was definitely there in 1421 and she was still there in 1436 because she is mentioned in a will. The reconstructed cell is in roughly the same position as its Medieval counterpart, but Emma’s cell was probably a larger two storey building. Built about 1910, this is one of the first examples of the use of shuttered concrete in a domestic building. One of the anchoresses Adeline Cashmore gave spiritual guidance to Mary Breckinridge (1881-1965) who created the Frontier Nursing Service in America, which did so much to bring down rates of infant mortality in that part of the world.
Given the historical significance of All Saints it is understandable that when there was an opportunity to investigate the archaeology of the church the churchwardens did not hesitate. A tombstone was removed, exposing floor voids and an altar top weighing 2.5 tons. Three oyster shells containing blue, red and yellow pigments, were found, which was the original colour scheme of the chapel. The altar top stone was rebated so that coffins could be slid from the side into the vault space beneath. The brick wall inside the vault was rendered with lime mortar to make it look like stone. Three male burials lay on top of one another. The first coffin had decayed and had been shoved to one end. The legs of the top skeleton were found higher up in the fill of the tomb. The fill of the vault contained lots of clay tobacco pipes.
The remains of 76 people were found and initially it was thought University of York Department of Chemistry might be interested to analyse soil samples from the soil to study the trace elements. The skeleton of a woman was found with the skeleton of a foetus, which had been in her abdomen, and was still in situ. Early 13th century grave markers set in the wall had compass inscribed apotropaic symbols to ward off evil. A bronze buckle was found in one of the graves, suggesting this might have been the burial of a wealthy merchant or a cleric.
The archaeologists were limited in the scope of their excavations and much of the work was ‘keyhole archaeology’, providing tantalizing glimpses of earlier periods in York’s history. Some burnt mutton bones may represent an Anglo-Saxon or an Anglo-Scandinavian picnic. A piece of a Hambledon Ware lobed jug, two die, a glass ring, a rim-sherd from a Roman greyware ‘doggy dish’ marked with a cross, a sherd from a Bellarmine jar and a piece of a Medieval chafing dish, which may have been used for burning incense in front of the statue in the chapel.
A tiny fragment of what appears to be plain mosaic tile came from the chapel. Discoveries like this enabled the churchwardens to recreate the original tile floor design. Our speaker commented that this must be the first Medieval style pavement to be laid in an English church in one hundred years.
Our speaker ended his talk by saying that they had permission for ‘a single season of excavation lasting no longer than two years’, so it is to be hoped that further work will prove to be just as exciting as the first year’s discoveries. Hopefully this is something we can return to in the future.
N.B. This lecture summary has been released without comment by the speaker. Any faults or omissions are entirely the responsibility of the Hon.Secretary of the Medieval Section.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 