Tag Archives: medieval

Earthworks – deserted medieval villages (DMV)

By Isobel Curwen, Trainee Heritage Research Supervisor

Here in the Heritage Research team we’ve had a few sites recently which we’ve been getting very excited about, because they are located in areas with extensive earthworks and cropmarks. Earthwork remains usually means there are earthen banks, ditches, low walls and perhaps building platforms. These can either be upstanding archaeological remains or show up as features beneath the surface often visible because of variations in crop growth – commonly referred to as cropmarks.

Remains of a deserted medieval village in rural Lincolnshire

Remains of deserted medieval villages in rural Lincolnshire

Some of the earliest cropmarks we see date to the prehistoric period (think hill forts, barrows and henges) but some are much later and tell us about the medieval landscape in the form of ridge and furrow, mottes and deserted medieval villages (DMV). In previous blog posts we have looked at ridge and furrow and we’re now going to explore their counterpart, the deserted medieval village.

Many medieval settlements in midland Britain were first established in the 9^th and 10^th centuries. They often contained burgage plots, set back from the main road with a back lane linking them and a church and a manor house contained within larger plots at the end of the village (Stamper 2011). In the Middle Ages some settlements were abandoned because of the Black Death (1348-49), warfare and famine but also due to clearance to provide space to graze more profitable sheep. Some were abandoned due to the deliberate actions of their lords (White 2012), and the natural progression of the settlements saw that they contracted, expanded and gradually shifted, following regional and local trends of change and continuity (Stamper 2011).

Today, the remains of these medieval settlements can be recognised from the patterns of roughly rectangular tofts, sometimes with building platforms which are raised and enclose banks and ditches, and by holloways – worn down tracks that pass between the house platforms.

So with the summer fast approaching keep your eyes peeled for any unusual looking lumps and bumps in the landscape and you may find yourself walking within what used to be a medieval village!

Stamper. P, 2011, Medieval Settlements, Historic England Introduction to Heritage Assets

White. G. J, 2011, The landscape of rural settlement, In The Medieval English Landscape (1000-1540, London: Bloomsbury, 55-99

Preaching to the choir

By Harvey Tesseyman, Heritage Research Supervisor

We’re lucky enough to get to visit churches fairly often, whether it’s for building recording, heritage statements/ impact assessments, or just while we’re in the area after work. Quite often churches are the oldest building around, with surviving examples of Anglo-Saxon or Norman stonework visible all over the country but the form of churches differ greatly. Anglo-Saxon examples tend to be built along a simple ‘tower-nave’ design with a squat tower and a nave jutting out, but after that all bets are off with additions and subtractions enacted with wanton abandon (or as close to wanton abandon as one can get in church). What makes churches so interesting is the way bits get added here and there. A 13th century window might sit encased in brickwork installed during the Victorian Restoration – it’s a very Victorian attitude to look at a building that’s stood for hundreds of years and think, ‘you know what this needs? A complete redesign, by me!’, but that’s often exactly what happened. With that in mind, here are some of our favourites.

St Andrew’s, Calceby

This is the lovely Grade II Listed ruin of St. Andrew’s Church, Calceby, Lincolnshire (1063635, Grade II). Originally a Norman church, the only parts now surviving are sections of the chalk tower and nave, along with some herringbone-style masonry which is often thought of as a much older style of building, making the most of poor quality stone. It presides over the remains of a deserted medieval village on the Lincolnshire Wolds, and is believed to have been pillaged to build other structures in the local area.

St Leonard’s, South Ormsby

One of those structures is St. Leonard’s church at South Ormsby, Lincolnshire (1168707, Grade I), with at least parts of a Norman door from St. Andrews being incorporated into this (slightly) younger church down the road from Calceby. The oldest surviving fabric is mostly of 13th–15th century origin, with a significant amount of Victorian restoration (1871–1872). Inside this small church is an elegant wooden ceiling, with beautiful multi-coloured stonework on the arches.

Further afield (we do leave Lincolnshire!) is Chichester Cathedral, in Sussex (1354261, Grade I). The cathedral was consecrated in the 12th century, built to replace the Anglo-Saxon Selsey Abbey. Inside are the remains of a lovely Roman mosaic set beneath the church floor, and inscriptions dating back to at least the 17th century.

Chichester Cathedral, the mosaic and inscriptions

Also in Sussex is the 14th century Church of St Nicholas (1027914, Grade I). St Nicholas seems recent compared with the examples above, however inside are the remains of wall paintings. The survival of wall paintings is quite rare, due in part to the Reformation, and in part to the Victorian Restoration when many paintings were whitewashed, so it was a real thrill to see. Church wall paintings of this style date back to a time before literacy was widespread, and the pictures allowed church-goers access to biblical stories and imagery without having to read. Definitely not an everyday sight, unless you happen to be a local parishioner…

Wall paintings at St Nicolas

To find out more about the churches we’ve visited here, you can read their listing details using the links below:

The Woolly Spires of Lincolnshire

By Isobel Curwen (Heritage Research Supervisor)

A few weekends ago, whilst wandering round the small market town of Louth, I stumbled across these rather unusual knitted churches which are currently on display at St James’ Church. Originally commissioned by The Collection, Lincoln, these knitted masterpieces form part of a countrywide project entitled the ‘Woolly Spires’ project, managed by artsNK.

During the medieval period, Lincolnshire prospered as a wool producing county using wool from the iconic breed of sheep, the Lincoln Longwool (see our previous blog post for more details about the Lincolnshire wool trade!). The profits from this trade went mainly to a few wool merchants and wealthy landowners who in turn founded many of Lincolnshire’s churches (Vince 2003).

In order to reflect both the founding of many of Lincolnshire’s churches as a result of the wool trade, and their rural nature, residents and community groups were gathered from the six rural districts of Lincolnshire to created knitted versions of their churches using wool exclusively from the Lincoln Longwool breed. The churches created include St Deny’s Church, Sleaford, St Mary and St Nicholas’ Church, Spalding, St Botolph’s Church, Boston, St James’ Church, Louth, St Wulfram’s Church, Grantham, and St Mary’s Church (Stow Minster), Stow.

The knitted churches on display at St James’ Church, Louth

St Mary and St Nicolas, Spalding

Many of Lincolnshire’s churches can be found in rural settings which can be divided into distinct geographical areas (Jenkins 1999). The churches to south of the county, in the area around the Fens and The Wash, have their origins in the monastic houses of Norman England. St Botolph’s Church, Boston is a particularly nice example with its famous ‘Boston Stump’. To the west lie the coastal marshes and the Wolds, with St James’ Church steeple providing a focal point to the open landscape. Inland Lincolnshire is represented by both the Humber and Trent valleys with St Deny’s church, Sleaford providing a fine example of stained glass windows and the tower of St Wulfram’s Church, Grantham providing a visual masterpiece of early Gothic architecture.

The churches of Lincolnshire, and their associated land and settlements, are a fundamental component of the county’s history and as result play a key part in the work undertaken here at AAL whether this be as part of research for a desk-based assessment or as part of a building recording survey.

We think these woolly churches are great and they are currently doing a tour throughout Lincolnshire so do keep a lookout for them coming to a church near you!

Jenkins. S., 1999, ‘Lincolnshire’, In: England’s Thousand Best Churches (pp 363-400), Penguin Group, London

Vince. A., 2003, ‘The new town: Lincoln in the High Medieval Era (c.850-c.1350), in: Stocker. D. (ed) The City by the Pool (pp 159-249), Oxbow Books, Oxford

‘The ploughman feeds us all’ – January is over

By Harvey Tesseyman, Heritage Research Supervisor

January is finally over, a month with five Mondays to kick the year off. Since we’ve spent January out in the field excavating, geophys-ing, and undertaking earthwork surveys, we’ve been thinking about what people in the medieval period would have been doing out in their fields this month.

The Julius Work Calendar was a twelve page book measuring just 200mm by 130mm and produced in c.1020 in Canterbury Cathedral. It was divided into the calendar year we recognise today, each page showing a zodiac sign, the holy days of that month, and an illustration of a particular task http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Julius_A_VI. This ‘Work Calendar’ was a religious text, likely produced to help young monks with their learning (Robert and Danziger 2003). It was rescued from destruction following the Dissolution of the Monasteries by a 17th century Member of Parliament, antiquarian, and book collector, Robert Cotton, from whose shelves the calendar gets its name: each of Cotton’s bookcases in Westminster library was topped with the bust of a notable figure of the classical world; Augustus, Caligula, Claudius, Cleopatra, Domotian, Faustina, Galba, Nero, Otho, Tiberius, Vespasian, Vitellius and, of course, Julius.

The calendar suggests that January’s task was ploughing. The ploughing season began in earnest on Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth Night. Plough Monday may have had associations with rites surrounding fertility, whereby local young men would wear special badges and engage in ploughing competitions (Gilchrist 2012). We decline to pass comment on this aspect.

Ridge and furrow earthworks visible during an earthwork survey in Lincolnshire

The open field systems that dominated much of the medieval landscape comprised areas of arable land up to c.50ha big, divided into furlongs which in turn comprised a number of narrow, enclosed strips. Generally between two and four of these giant fields served a single settlement, with somewhere between one third and one half of the rural population living in places given over to this system (White 2002). Medieval ploughing was difficult work. Teams of people goaded and sung to their slow-moving oxen to drive them through the fields, whilst the plough was steered to deliver the perfect furrow within which to sow seeds; not too shallow nor too deep. It was a system that worked for hundreds of years before oxen were put out to pasture in favour of smaller teams of horses. A plough team could cover an acre a day, which would have involved walking something like 17.5km (Ochota 2016). Quite a distance even on level ground (our geophysicists walk up to 25km a day and that’s with just a magnetometry rig, not a team of oxen)! Unlike modern ploughs, medieval examples had a single blade, not unlike a spearhead in shape, or an archaeological trowel held at an angle. They were designed to cut a small trench into the earth and push the dislodged soil to one side and this created a characteristic set of linear earthworks, known as ridge and furrow (or furrow and ridge, respectively). Due to the wide turning circle on a team of oxen when compared to a modern tractor, ridge and furrow ploughing has a gentle ‘S’ or reverse ‘S’ curve to it to give the animals enough time to turn around and start another furrow, in an area referred to as headland.

With time, many examples of ridge and furrow ploughing were in turn ploughed out. Where evidence for these medieval field systems survives, often soilmarks showing where the old furrows used to be are the only trace but happily for archaeologists, these soilmarks and remaining earthworks can be quite easy to spot both by eye, and using LiDAR. They’re interesting to dig, and useful to identify during a desk-based assessment or heritage statement as they often indicate further activity nearby.

January was busy, and February is already off to a good start. Luckily for us according to the Julius Work Calendar we’ll be out in February clearing vines…

Ridge and furrow visible on LiDAR near a site in Leicestershire

References:

Gilchrist, R, 2012, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course, Suffolk: Boydell Press

Ochota, M., 2016, Hidden Histories: A Spotter’s Guide to the British Landscape, London: Frances Lincoln Ltd

Robert, L., and Danziger, D., 2003 (3rd ed), The Year 1000: What Life Was Like At The Turn of the First Millenium, London: Abacus

White, G.J., 2002, The Medieval English Landscape 1000–1540, London: Bloomsbury

A Pietá from Lincoln

We have recently seen the return to our offices of a lovely piece of sculpture that we found in uphill Lincoln. This sculpture is a Pietá, a devotional depiction of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ after the crucifixion. The Pietá is one of the three main depictions of the Virgin Mary in art, the other two being Mater Dolorosa (Mother of Sorrows) and Stabat Mater (Standing Mother). This form of artwork originated in 13th Century Germany before spreading to France, Italy and Central Europe. Many early wooden examples emphases the wounds Christ suffered on the Cross, whereas the later stone sculptures carved outside Germany focus more on the purity of the Virgin rather than on their suffering. Probably the most famous Pietá was carved by Michelangelo and now rests in St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. It is the only artwork that he ever signed, allegedly due because he had overhead people attributing it to his competitor Cristoforo Solari.

The Pieta shows signs of having been deliberately damaged during the Reformation

We found this Pietá during the construction of new buildings for Lincoln’s University Technical College (UTC) back in 2014. It is more than half a metre wide and, when complete, would have stood nearly a metre tall. Similarity to other examples from France, suggests that it may have been made in the mid-15th century. It was probably originally placed on the outside of a building, over a portal but had been reused in a retaining wall, the plain parts facing outwards, hiding its true form.

The sculpture is largely intact but the heads and feet of both Christ and Mary are missing (as are their right hands and Christ’s left shoulder and right knee). The missing heads and the reuse of the statue as building material indicate that it was probably defaced during the Reformation of the 16th Century. Icons of Christ and the saints were present in all Catholic churches but the new Protestant faith saw them as worship of false gods. Excavations on the church neighbouring Lincoln Cathedral, St Peter-in-the-Bail, found evidence of iconoclastic destruction from this period. The heads and hands of saints, both in sculpture and in paintings, were the main targets during this religious vandalism. C. Pamela Graves suggests this was done to remove any power from the saints personification and as a test of the idol and its supposed sainthood. For example when a statue of St Katherine was thrown into a fire, it not burn and by it burning it proved the idol was a sham. There is also a tale from the Old Testament about an image of the Assyrian deity Dagon who was struck down by God by having his head and hands cut off. Removing the head and heads of an idol also mirrored the punishment that was inflicted on heretics.

References:

Graves, C P, 2008, ‘From an archaeology of iconoclasm to an anthropology of the body : images, punishment and personhood in England, 1500-1660’, Current Anthropology, 49 (1), 35-57

The Rt Revd Lord Harries, 2015, ‘The Pieta in Art’, [Transcript] https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-pieta-in-art