Sir George Buc (1560-1622), one of the careful antiquarian scholars of the English Renaissance, is famous in literary history as Master of Revels under King James I, a position in which he was responsible for censorship of Shakespeare’s later plays. His own work has never received the attention and assessment it merits. In 1619 Sir George wrote The History of King Richard the Third, a study of Richard’s life and reign and a defence of his historical reputation against the Tudor chroniclers’ slanders. Sane, objective, and carefully documented, this work has taken over 350 years to reach us in the form the author intended.   In the late 1960s-early 1970s Arthur Kincaid embarked on creating the first authentic edition of Sir George Buc’s History from the badly fire-damaged manuscript draft, now in the British Library. Thus, he uncovered Sir George Buc’s original scholarly work, which for centuries had suffered the infamy of having been plagiarized and distorted by his great-nephew, whose name was, coincidentally, George Buck.   This book presents George Buc’s History, painstakingly reconstructed from the original text. In this edition Kincaid has thoroughly updated and revised his introduction, discussing Sir George’s position in the literary and scholarly world of his day, and tracing the mystery of the text’s transmission. Extensive notes document the facts of Richard’s reign and controversies surrounding them.

Throughout history rivers have been a hub for human settlement and have long been a key part of local livelihoods, history and culture, as well as still playing a present-day role in providing services and leisure to people who live around them. It is no coincidence that all four of the earliest human civilisations were formed on great rivers: the Nile, Euphrates, Indus and Yellow rivers all saw great human aggregation along them. The most ancient and vital architectural structures linked to the use of rivers are bridges.   There are a wide range of medieval bridge structures, some very simple in their construction, to amazing triumphs of design and engineering comparable with the great churches of the period. They stand today as proof of the great importance of transport networks in the Middle Ages and of the size and sophistication of the medieval economy. These bridges were built in some of the most difficult places, across broad flood plains, deep tidal waters, and steep upland valleys, and they withstood all but the most catastrophic floods. Yet their beauty, from simplistic to ornate, remains for us to appreciate.   Medieval Bridges of Southern England has been organised geographically into tours, and covers the governmental regions of Southwest England, London, and Southeast England. There are exactly 100 bridges included. There is an introduction and background information about the medieval period of English history at the beginning and there are beautiful full colour photographs throughout the book.

Bosworth stands alongside Naseby and Hastings as one of the three most iconic battles ever fought on English soil. The action on 22 August 1485 brought to an end the dynastic struggle known as the Wars of the Roses and heralded the dawn of the Tudor dynasty. However, Bosworth was also the most famous lost battlefield in England. Between 2005 and 2010, the techniques of battlefield archaeology were used in a major research programme to locate the site. Bosworth 1485: A Battlefield Rediscovered is the result. Using data from historical documents, landscape archaeology, metal detecting survey, ballistics and scientific analysis, the volume explores each aspect of the investigation – from the size of the armies, their weaponry, and the battlefield terrain to exciting new evidence of the early use of artillery – in order to identify where and how the fighting took place. Bosworth 1485 provides a fascinating and intricately researched new perspective on the event which, perhaps more than any other, marked the transition between medieval and early modern England.

The latest volume of the British Historic Towns Atlas series covers the internationally-renowned city of Oxford. Famed for its university and its many outstanding historic buildings, the volume presents in mapped form the history of its topographical development. From its prehistoric setting, through its contentious Anglo-Saxon foundation, the medieval establishment of its university, and its sporadic growth after that, the Atlas charts how it became a nineteenth-century city dominated by colleges, churches, university buildings, and its associated publishing industry.   The Atlas is presented as a large-format portfolio containing a series of maps showing the city at key points in its history, many illustrations of its buildings and streets, maps to show its setting, and reproduction early maps of the city. A readable text introduces and explains the maps, giving the reader a thorough grounding in how and why Oxford developed, and an explanation of its changing fortunes. A supplementary chapter brings the situation up to date.   Whilst many histories of the university have been written, the Atlas concentrates on the topographic development of Oxford as a settlement, and explains it in mapped form. A comprehensive gazetteer lists every building and street shown on the maps, with a short history and references for further reading.

For the first time seasonality is placed at the centre of the study of rural settlement. Using a Europe-wide approach, it provides a primer of examples, of techniques and of ideas for the identification and understanding of seasonal settlement. As such, it marks an important new step in the interpretation of the use of the countryside by historic communities linked to the annual passage of the year. The particular studies are introduced by an opening essay which draws wider conclusions about the study of seasonal settlement, followed by 31 papers by authors from all parts of Europe and beyond. By its very nature ephemeral, seasonal settlement in the medieval and early modern periods is less well researched than permanent settlement. It is often presumed that seasonal settlement is the result of transhumance, but it was only one facet of seasonal settlement. It was also necessitated by other forms of economic activity, such as fishing, charcoal-burning, or iron-smelting, including settlements of pastoralists such as nomads, drovers, herders as well as labourers’ huts within the farming context. The season a settlement was occupied varied from one activity to another and from one place to another - summer is good for grazing in many mountainous areas, but winter proved best for some industrial processes. While upland and mountainous settlements built of stone are easily recognised, those that use wood and more perishable materials are less obvious. Despite this, the settlements of nomadic pastoralists in both tundra and desert or of fishermen in the Baltic region are nonetheless identifiable. Yet for all that definitive recognition of seasonal settlement is rarely possible on archaeological grounds alone. Although material remains can be of particular importance, generally it is the combination of documentary information, ethnography, geographical context and palaeo-environmental data that provide frameworks for interpreting seasonal settlements.

London Bridge lined with houses from end to end was one of the most extraordinary structures ever seen in London. It was home to over 500 people, perched above the rushing waters of the Thames, and was one of the city’s main shopping streets. It is among the most familiar images of London in the past, but little has previously been known about the houses and the people who lived and worked in them. This book uses plentiful newly-discovered evidence, including detailed descriptions of nearly every house, to tell the story of the bridge and its houses and inhabitants.   With the new information it is possible to reconstruct the plan of the bridge and houses in the seventeenth century, to trace the history of each house back through rentals and a survey to 1358, revealing the original layout, to date most of the houses which appear in later views, and to show how the houses and their occupants changed during five and half centuries. The book describes what stopped the houses falling into the river, how the houses were gradually enlarged, what their layout was inside, what goods were sold on the bridge and how these changed over time, the extensive rebuilding in 1477-1548 and 1683-96, and the removal of the houses around 1760. There are many new discoveries - about the structure of the bridge, the width of the roadway, the original layout of the houses, how the houses were supported, the size and internal planning of the houses, the quality of their architecture, and the trades practised on the bridge. The book includes five newly-commissioned reconstruction drawings showing what we now know about the bridge and its houses.

This innovative study examines and analyses the wealth of evidence provided by the monumental effigies of Yorkshire, from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, including some of very high sculptural merit. More than 200 examples survive from the historic county in varying states of preservation. Together, they present a picture of the people able to afford them, at a time when the county was frequently at the forefront of national politics and administration, during the Scottish wars.      Many monuments display remarkable realism, depicting people as they themselves wished to be remembered, and are accompanied by a great volume of contemporary sculptural and architectural detail. Stylistic analysis of the effigies themselves has been employed, better to understand how they relate to one another and give a firmer basis for their dating and production patterns. They are considered in relation to the history and material culture of the area at the time they were produced. A more soundly based appreciation of the sculptor's intentions and the aspirations of patrons is sought through close attention to the full extent of the visible evidence afforded by the monuments and their surroundings.     The corpus is of sufficient size to permit meaningful analysis to shed light on aspects such as personal aspiration, social networks, patterns of supply and production, piety and wealth. It demonstrates the value of funerary monuments to the wider understanding of medieval society.   The text will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue, making available a substantial body of research for the first time. The study considers the relationship between the monuments and related sculpture, architecture, painting, glass etc, together  with  contemporary documentary evidence, where it is available. This material and the underlying methodology are now available to illuminate monuments of the medieval period across the whole country. Its methods and messages extend understanding of all monuments, broadening its potential audience from the purely local to everyone concerned with medieval sculpture and church archaeology.

This second volume presenting the research carried out through the Exeter: A Place in Time project presents a series of specialist contributions that underpin the general overview published in the first volume. Chapter 2 provides summaries of the excavations carried out within the city of Exeter between 1812 and 2019, while Chapter 3 draws together the evidence for the plan of the legionary fortress and the streets and buildings of the Roman town. Chapter 4 presents the medieval documentary evidence relating to the excavations at three sites in central Exeter (High Street, Trichay Street and Goldsmith Street), with the excavation reports being in Chapter 5-7. Chapter 8 reports on the excavations and documentary research at Rack Street in the south-east quarter of the city. There follows a series of papers covering recent research into the archaeometallurgical debris, dendrochronology, Roman pottery, Roman ceramic building material, Roman querns and millstones, Claudian coins, an overview of the Roman coins from Exeter and Devon, medieval pottery, and the human remains found in a series of medieval cemeteries.

The British countryside is on the brink of change. With the withdrawal of EU subsidies, threats of US-style factory farming and the promotion of ‘rewilding’ initiatives, never before has so much uncertainty and opportunity surrounded our landscape. How we shape our prospective environment can be informed by bygone practice, as well as through engagement with livestock and landscapes long since vanished. This study examines aspects of pastoralism that occurred in part of medieval England. It suggests how we learn from forgotten management regimes to inform, shape and develop our future countryside.   This book focuses on a region of southern England the pastoral identity of which has long been synonymous with the economy of sheep pasture and the medieval right of swine pannage. These aspects of medieval pastoralism, made famous by iconic images of the South Downs and the evidence presented by Domesday, mask a pastoral heritage in which a signifi cant part was played by cattle. This aspect of medieval pastoralism is traceable in the region’s historic landscape, documentary evidence and excavated archaeological remains. Past scholars of the South-East have been so concerned with the importance of medieval sheep, and to a slightly lesser extent pigs, that no systematic examination of the cattle economy has ever been undertaken. This book therefore represents a deep, multi-disciplinary study of the cattle economy over the longue durée of the Middle Ages, especially its importance within the evolution of medieval society, settlement and landscape.   Nationally, medieval cattle have been one of the most important and neglected aspects of the agriculture of the medieval period. This book shows us how, as part of both a mixed and specialised farming economy, they have helped shapethe countryside we know today.

This first volume, presenting research carried out through the Exeter: A Place in Time project, provides a synthesis of the development of Exeter within its local, regional, national and international hinterlands. Exeter began life in c. AD 55 as one of the most important legionary bases within early Roman Britain, and for two brief periods in the early and late 60s AD, Exeter was a critical centre of Roman power within the new province. When the legion moved to Wales the fortress was converted into the civitas capital for the Dumnonii. Its development as a town was, however, relatively slow, reflecting the gradual pace at which the region as a whole adapted to being part of the Roman world. The only evidence we have for occupation within Exeter between the 5th and 8th centuries is for a church in what was later to become the Cathedral Close. In the late 9th century, however, Exeter became a defended burh, and this was followed by the revival of urban life. Exeter’s wealth was in part derived from its central role in the south-west’s tin industry, and by the late 10th century Exeter was the fifth most productive mint in England. Exeter’s importance continued to grow as it became an episcopal and royal centre, and excavations within Exeter have revealed important material culture assemblages that reflect its role as an international port.

The crannog on Llangorse Lake near Brecon in mid Wales was discovered in 1867 and first excavated in 1869 by two local antiquaries, Edgar and Henry Dumbleton, who published their findings over the next four years. In 1988 dendrochronological dates from submerged palisade planks established its construction in the ninth century, and a combined off- and on-shore investigation of the site was started as a joint project between Cardiff University and Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales. The subsequent surveys and excavation (1989-1994, 2004) resulted in the recovery of a remarkable time capsule of life in the late ninth and tenth century, on the only crannog yet identified in Wales.   This publication re-examines the early investigations, describes in detail the anatomy of the crannog mound and its construction, and the material culture found. The crannog’s treasures include early medieval secular and religious metalwork, evidence for manufacture, the largest depository of early medieval carpentry in Wales and a remarkable richly embroidered silk and linen textile which is fully analysed and placed in context. The crannog’s place in Welsh history is explored, as a royal llys (‘court’) within the kingdom of Brycheiniog, as well as its subsequent significance of the crannog in local traditions and its post-medieval occupation during a riotous dispute in the reign Elizabeth I. The cultural affinities of the crannog and its material culture is assessed, as are their relationship to origin myths for the kingdom, and to probable links with early medieval Ireland. The folk tales associated with the lake are explored, in a book that brings together archaeology, history, myths and legends, underwater and terrestrial archaeology.

This is the first volume describing the results of the CAUs excavations in Cambridge and it is also the first monograph ever published on the archaeology of the town. At 1.5 hectares the Grand Arcade investigations represent the largest archaeological excavation ever undertaken in Cambridge, significantly enhanced by detailed standing building recording and documentary research.

The Ancient Ways of Wessex tells the story of Wessex’s roads in the early medieval period, at the point at which they first emerge in the historical record. This is the age of the Anglo-Saxons and an era that witnessed the rise of a kingdom that was taken to the very brink of defeat by the Viking invasions of the ninth century. It is a period that goes on to become one within which we can trace the beginnings of the political entity we have come to know today as England. In a series of ten detailed case studies the reader is invited to consider historical and archaeological evidence, alongside topographic information and ancient place-names, in the reconstruction of the networks of routeways and communications that served the people and places of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Whether you were a peasant, pilgrim, drover, trader, warrior, bishop, king or queen, travel would have been fundamental to life in the early middle ages and this book explores the physical means by which the landscape was constituted to facilitate and improve the movement of people, goods and ideas from the seventh through to the eleventh centuries. What emerges is a dynamic web of interconnecting routeways serving multiple functions and one, perhaps, even busier than that in our own working countryside. A narrative of transition, one of both of continuity and change, provides a fresh and alternative window into the everyday workings of an early medieval landscape through the pathways trodden over a millennium ago.  

This study reconstructs twelfth-century sculptural and architectural finds, found during the restoration of the Perpendicular Great Cloister of Christ Church, Canterbury, as architectural screens constructed around 1173. It proposes that the screens provided monastic privacy and controlled pilgrimage to the Altar of the Sword's Point in the Martyrdom, the site of Archbishop Thomas Becket's murder in 1170.     Excavations in the 1990s discovered evidence of a twelfth-century tunnel leading to the Martyrdom under the crossing of the western transept. Construction would have required rebuilding the crossing stairs and the screens flanking the crossing. The roundels, portraying lions, devils, a 'pagan', Jews, and a personification of the synagogue, are reconstructed on the south side of the crossing as a screening wall framing the entrance to this tunnel. The quatrefoils with images of Old Testament prophets are reconstructed as a rood screen on the west side of the crossing. In the Martyrdom, a screen is proposed with perhaps the earliest known sculptural representation of Thomas Becket. The rood screen, located behind the Altar of the Holy Cross, would have provided a visual focus during Mass, monastic processions, and sermons, especially during Christmas and Holy Week. The row of prophets, pointing upwards at the Rood, would have functioned as the visual equivalent of the dialogue of the ‘Ordo prophetarum’ that predicted the Messiah as proof to Jews and other unbelievers of Christian redemption. The roundels, just around the corner on the south screening wall, can be interpreted as representing the unbelieving Other and forces of evil warning pilgrims to seek penance at the altar of the newly canonized St Thomas.       In addition to this new interpretation, a catalog raisonné and an account of the discovery of the finds offers material for future research that has been unavailable to previous studies. All the finds were photographed by the author as the restoration progressed;16 pieces of which have since been lost, making some of the unpublished photographs essential evidence of the archaeological record.

This edited volume explores how (what is today) Scotland can be compared with, contrasted to, or was connected with other parts of Early Medieval Europe. Far from a ‘dark age’, Early Medieval Scotland (AD 300–900) was a crucible of different languages and cultures, the world of the Picts, Scots, Britons and Anglo-Saxons. Though long regarded as somehow peripheral to continental Europe, people in Early Medieval Scotland had mastered complex technologies and were part of sophisticated intellectual networks.This cross-disciplinary volume includes contributions focussing on archaeology, artefacts, art-history and history, and considers themes that connect Scotland with key processes and phenomena happening elsewhere in Europe. Topics explored include the transition from Iron Age to Early Medieval societies and the development of secular power centres, the Early Medieval intervention in prehistoric landscapes, and the management of resources necessary to build kingdoms.