February’s lecture meeting of the Medieval Section proved to be rather popular and brought out members in larger numbers than we have seen for some time. We are most grateful to Stuart Wrathmell, Director of West Yorkshire Archaeology Advisory, Ecology and Archive Services, who spoke to us about new approaches to Anglo-Saxon settlement and place-names: the Vale of Pickering and the northern Wolds. Stuart is no stranger to members of the Medieval Section because of his work on the Wharram Percy project. Stuart directed the post-excavation programme for the Wharram Percy excavations, and oversaw the publication of the final six volumes of reports between 2000 and 2012. The talk he gave on Saturday was based on research he carried out as part of the preparation of the final Wharram volume.There will be a more detailed lecture summary in the fullness of time but (for those who weren’t there) Stuart looked at where the township boundaries were on OS maps of the mid-19th century and began to work out how they changed over time, sometimes being carved up to create new townships.
Stuart started by looking at the distribution of place-names ending in ‘by’ in North Lincolnshire and argued that the supposed correlation between Scandinavian settlements and relatively poorer land was misleading. The pattern of settlements with access to mixed farming resources including arable at the interface between chalk and clay and grazing on the wolds and in the wetter valley bottoms was one that could also be seen on the Yorkshire Wolds. Stuart illustrated his talk with maps and topographical diagrams that showed how in some cases the township boundaries followed routeways that also attracted (at a much earlier date) prehistoric burials. Unfortunately there wasn’t time to explore Viking place-names on the Wolds. As a section we look forward to finding out more about Stuart’s work on West Yorkshire OS maps.
Afterwards Janet senior talked about some events of potential interest to Medieval Section members that she is organising for the main society. I’ll post details in the Blog once I have the information from Janet. Watch this space!
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 