Author Archives: Andie

St Werburgh, Queen Æthelflæd, pilgrim badges and the shrine in Chester Cathedral

St Werburgh and her family

Werburgh was born a Mercian princess in around AD650. Her father was Wulfhere, king of Mercia and her mother Ermengild, who became a nun on the death of Wulfhere, first at Minster-in-Sheppey and then at Ely, where she succeeded her mother Seaxburgh as abbess. Werburgh was educated at home by Chad, who became Bishop of Lichfield. Although St Werburgh is depicted in a couple of the stained glass windows in the cathedral, these are modern, romanticized visualizations. There are no contemporary depictions, and apart from having an idea of what she may have worn, her appearance is unknown. Medieval accounts of her life probably incorporate older material, and almost certainly include quite a bit of myth and conjecture.

Saint Æthelreda of Ely from the 10th century Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, illuminated manuscript in the British Library. Source: Wikipedia

On the death of her father, Werburgh went as a nun to the convent of Ely founded by her great aunt Æthereda (also known as Æthelthryth), who became its abbess. St Æthelreda was the daughter of Anna, king of East Anglia, sister of Seaxburgh and the virgin wife of Egfrith, the king of Northumbria. Werburgh’s father was succeeded by his brother Æthelred, Werburgh’s uncle, who eventually asked Werburgh to take charge of and organize nunneries in the Midlands, including Weedon in Northamptonshire, Hanbury in Staffordshire and Threckingham in Lincolnshire (or alternatively Trentham in Staffordshire). She was so pure and good that she could hang her veil on a sunbeam. She died at Threckingham / Trentham in around 700, and was buried at Hanbury, at her own request. Unfortunately, the nuns at Threckingham were unwilling to release the remains, and a delegation was sent from Hanbury to retrieve her.

Saints were not canonized by the papacy until the 12th century, but had to be verified by bishops. The miracle that caused Werburgh to be recognized as a saint was an unusual one. Although there are a number of versions of the story, the differences are minor. One version says that St Werburgh had enjoyed watching a visiting flock of geese in a neighbouring meadow of the convent in which she was staying. One of them was particularly large and had a black ring of feathers around his neck. She became fond of him and called him Grayking. The convent steward, Hugh, had also noticed Grayking but his interest had little to do with aesthetically pleasing plumage. Angry with the geese for devastating his field of corn, Hugh soon had Grayking in the pot. One version says that Werburgh was away when this happened, and when she returned the remaining geese formed a delegation to inform her of the event and ask for her help. Werbugh acted immediately, ordering that the bones and feathers of the carcass should be gathered up. When she commanded the bones of the dead goose to rise again, they assembled themselves and Grayking was reborn.

Late 14th century misericord in Chester Cathedral showing St Werburgh performing miracles. Photo by Stephen Hamilton. Source: Wikipedia

Dr Thomas Pickles (Senior Lecturer, Medieval History) recounts a slightly different version of the story in the video at the end of the post. He goes on to discuss why other similar stories in across Europe may have developed in response to sacrifices at the time of harvests, which may have became Christianized via labourers who worked the land belonging to religious organizations, giving the St Werburgh miracle story wider relevance.

Nine years after her burial, St Werburgh’s nephew Coelred, now King of Mercia, decided to move the saint to a less modest tomb in Hanbury. When she was removed from her coffin she was found to be “in whole and perfect form,” a certain mark of sainthood.

St Werburgh’s posthumous arrival in Chester

A 13th century imaginative representation of Æthelflæd. Source: Medieval Manuscripts blog

St Werburgh never visited Chester during her lifetime, and her arrival in the Anglo-Saxon burh (fortified settlement) in around 907, over 200 years after her death, requires another thread of history that starts, for the practical purposes of this post, with Alfred the Great, King of Wessex (848 – 899AD). Alfred’s daughter was the princess Æthelflæd who, at the age of around 15, was married for political reasons to Æthelred, king of Mercia. Æthelflæd grew up in a time of disruption and war, during the Viking incursions, and the associated competition for territory. She was also familiar with the arts of diplomacy and negotiation. She was well suited for the role of queen of Mercia. Although subordinate to her husband, with duties and responsibilities, she also had rights, privileges and a position of respect that she clearly built on, being recognized as partner to her husband in many of their joint enterprises, including the establishment of new burghs at Worcester and Gloucester, whilst improving existing towns such as Hereford and Winchcombe.

Æthelflæd’s father, Alfred the Great, died on 26th October 899, and was succeeded as King of Wessex by his eldest son, Edward the Elder, brother of Æthelflæd. Edward was forced to fight off a counter claim from his cousin Æthelwold. He was triumphant but was forced to address the situation again in 902 when Æthelwold unsuccessfully mounted another campaign against Edward. In the same year Æthelflæd’s mother died, probably in St Mary’s Abbey in Winchester, which she had founded, and a threat was made to the northwestern territory of Mercia at Chester. It was only now, when the vulnerability of the old town threatened the security of the kingdom of Mercia that it drew attention from Æthelred and his Æthelflæd. In the last decade of his life Æthelred suffered a recurring illness, and he had succumbed to a bout of this affliction when Chester came under threat. Æthelflæd assumed authority during the crisis.

Kingdoms in England in AD878, by Hel-hama. Source: Wikipedia

In the 890s Chester was described in the Anglo-Saxon Charters as “a deserted city in Wirral.” It still had much of its Roman walls, but the interior was in ruins. Mercia had been a much larger and more powerful kingdom in its past, but the Viking (Scandinavian) invasions had taken control of the eastern reaches of the former kingdom. In the south, Wessex was the most powerful kingdom, whilst in the northeast the king of Northumbria still held land on the east half of the island, extending well into present-day Scotland. The Dane-controlled land ran down much of the east coast south of Northumbria, and there was a significant Scandinavian presence in Ireland.

It was from Ireland that the threat to Chester emerged. In 902 the Irish kings formed an alliance to rid themselves of the Vikings, capturing Norse Dublin and forcing many to leave as groups of refugees in need of new lands to colonize. One of these refugees was Ingimund, who lead one of these ousted groups onto Anglesey. Forcibly ejected by the Welsh, they followed the Dee inland towards Chester. According to one source, they requested a meeting with the Mercian royalty. With Æthelred still sick, Æthelflæd met with Ingimund who proposed a peaceful solution to the dilemma. Æthelflæd was pragmatically willing to negotiate a home for them on the north of the Wirral peninsula, perhaps believing that they might provide a protective buffer against other Viking interests seeking to find new territory to colonize. Here they could have lived in peace by farming and trading via the sea routes, but they had been settled for only a few years when Ingimund broke faith with Æthelflæd and began to amass troops. Hearing of the threat, Æthelflæd assembled forces of her ow within the Chester walls. The town was besieged but the Mercians emerged triumphant.

Æthelflaed’s name (spelled Æþelflæd), in the B-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Cotton MS Tiberius A VI, f. 30r. Source: Medieval Manuscripts Blog

In 907 the Anglo-Saxon Charter says that Chester was “restored,” the work usually credited to Æthelflæd. With Æthelred temporarily restored to health, they couple established Chester as a new burgh within the 5m (16ft) tall walls encompassing an area of 26 hectares (65 acres). It was far bigger than their previous burhs, and represented a significant investment in the border town. At the same time, Æthelflæd took the decision to move the relics of St Werburgh from Hanbury to Chester. The timing was probably driven by the threat to the relics of St Werburgh at Hanbury by advancing Danish forces. This echoes Æthelflæd’s decision to move the relics of St Oswald from lands under Danish occupation, which took place under similar circumstances. The decision to move St Werburgh to Chester may have been motivated by the need to give Chester an authentic, stabilizing Christian focus with links back to a noble Mercian past. The creation of a prominent settlement in a vulnerable borderline position needed to attract people with the same features familiar from other towns.

According to St Weburgh monk Henry Bradshaw, writing in c.1513, but probably referencing much earlier sources, when the saint was removed to Chester, her body was found to be ‘resolued unto powder’, which was seen not in terms of decay or corruption of the remains, but as a divine miracle performed to protect the saint’s holy remains:

Lest the cruell gentils / and wiked myscreantes
With pollute handes full of corrupcion
Shulde touche her body / by indignation

Excerpt from Henry Bradshaw’s “The Life of St Wereburge of Chester,” originally 1513, re-edited and published 1887

Although there is no incontrovertible data to support the presence of a church on the site of St Werburgh’s Abbey, there is a tradition that a wooden church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul had been founded there by Æthelflæd’s father Wulfhere, King of Mercia, which would have housed her remains. This church would have been rededicated to St Werburgh when the saint became resident. Archaeological excavations produced pre-Norman building materials, but it is not possible to assign an early 10th century date to them. Wherever the church was located, the patronage of the queen ensured the initial success, and it received additional grants throughout the 10th century, including one from King Edgar in 958. In the 1086 Domesday survey records the monastery and its possessions, indicating that the Anglo-Saxon St Werburgh’s was upgraded from church to monastery sometime before that date.

In 911 Æthelred died of unknown causes probably related to his recurring illness. He was buried in Gloucester. Many previous royal widows of the period had retired to a convent to live out the rest of their lives. There was plenty of precedent in Æthelflæd’s own family for monastic service. One great aunt was the founder of Ely Abbey, another was the founder of Minster-in Sheppey abbey, and Æthelflæd’s own mother had retired on the death of Wulfhere to a nunnery, eventually becoming abbess of Ely. Æthelflæd, however, took the reigns of the Mercian government into her own hands, ruling as myrcna hlæfdige, Lady of the Mercians. The church-monastery of St Werburgh continued to house the saint’s remains, and seems to have survived the military action that took place in and around Chester following the Conquest.

St Werburgh in the Benedictine monastery of 1093

Coat of arms of Hugh d’Avranche. Source: Wikipedia

In 1093, only 27 years after the Norman Conquest, the abbey was refounded as an Anglo-Norman Benedictine abbey by the notorious knight and magnate Hugh d’Avranches, also known as Hugh Lupus. Hugh and been granted Chester as Earl by William I, and was one of the most powerful men in England. His appointment followed William I’s vengeful retaliation against Chester for two rebellions, which had left the city in disarray. Hugh’s task was to ensure that the city remained docile after William departed, serving the crown as the northenmost marcher town, a buffer zone between Wales and England, and an increasingly important commercial port.

There were many possible reasons for landowners to found monastic establishments, including convention (it was often seen as the duty of the nobility to promote religious houses), political maneovering, simple piety, and fear of the ever-approaching perils of the afterlife. Hugh’s decision to refound the abbey was probably two-fold. Whilst making a conspicuous contribution to a deeply resentful city for which he was now responsible, and in which he needed to maintain the peace, he was also looking after his own spiritual interests. He managed to secure one of the most high status bishops in the country, Anselm to come and supervise the project, and Anselm left his clerk Richard to become the first abbot. Hugh endowed his shiny new monastery with rich and prosperous lands to ensure its self-sufficiency. These were not merely charitable acts. Hugh Lupus, for example, was heading perilously towards the end of a far from virtuous life. John Hicklin, writing in 1852, gives an evocative summary of the situation:

Hugh Lupus, following the example of most of his predecessors, lived a life of the wildest luxury and rapine. At length, falling sick from the consequence of his excesses, and age and disease coming on, the old hardened soldier was struck with remorse; and—an expiation common enough in those days—the great Hugh Lupus took the cowl, retired in the last state of disease into the monastery, and in three days was no more.

By founding a monastery and committing himself to a brief period as a monk at the last possible moment, Hugh attempted to provide himself with some after-life insurance. The logic of this is somewhat difficult to compute today.

The curvilinear Romanesque remains of the abbey financed by Hugh Lupus, seen through a later gothic arch.

Monks were considered to be closer to Heaven than any other human on earth, and their prayers were thought to be heard with undiluted clarity by God. The idea of pleasing God by founding a monastery, and then reaching closer to Heaven by being buried within the monastic cloister seems suspiciously like inducement today, and one would have thought that God would have been wise to such manoeuvring. Given the sheer number of wealthy men and women founding abbeys and priories, however, this aspect of the matter does not appear to have occurred to them. Matters had became much more contractual during the 11th, when the idea of purgatory was taught in the church. This intermediate area between heaven and hell allowed redeemable sinners to suffer a hell-like experience to work off their crimes against Christianity before eventually entering Heaven. From this time onward, substantial efforts were made to negotiate for reduced time spent in purgatory, including the buying of “indulgences,” and gifts from the lower echelons to monasteries.

After the original endowment, the abbey continued to receive many properties over the centuries from wealthy local landowners, and smaller gifts in the wills of those who were not quite as well positioned, all attempting to win the good will of the monks, and through them, the divine. Those with less purchasing power would not anticipate having the same negotiating power, but every contribution might help. In the process of all this human fear and negotiations to minimize the inevitable punishments after death, monasteries became substantially wealthy, some of the richest landowners in the kingdom. Land was not, however, their only form of income. Not all monasteries were lucky enough to secure the bones, blood or hair of a saint that might attract pilgrims, but the abbey of St Werburgh still retained the bones of St Werburgh after its rebuild in 1093.

The miracles of St Werburgh at the abbey in Chester

Neither Goscelin de St-Bertin writing in the late 11th century, nor William of Malmesbury, writing in the 12th century were able to provide many details about the earlier miracles that St Werburgh was supposed to have performed at Chester, but William of Malmesbury has the following to say: “The merits of this virgin are proclaimed at Chester and her miracles extolled. Although she is promptly favourable to the petitions of all, she is especially quick to give heed to the prayers of women and children.” Her girdle, held by the abbey, was apparently particularly popular with pregnant women.

Basingwerk Abbey today

In 1500 a monk at St Werburgh’s Abbey wrote a life of St Werburgh in which he credits her with a miracle on behalf of Richard, Earl of Chester in around 1120. Richard made a pilgrimage to St Winifrede’s Well at Holywell in around 1120 but attacked by hostile Welsh men, he was forced to shelter at nearby Basingwerk Abbey. Before William, Constable of Chester, set forth to search for the earl, he prayed to St Werburgh, who parted the river Dee because no boat was available, permitting William and his men to walk across the river bed and rescue the earl. In another story, St Werburgh intervened during an unexpected Welsh attack on Chester. She blinded the attackers, forcing them to retreat. This military aspect to the saint is underlined by the tradition of taking the shrine on procession around the city when it was considered to be under threat, setting her down briefly on parts of the city walls.

In the 15th century the Welsh poets Maredudd ap Rhys and Guto’r Glyn called there, the one to pray to ease the pains in his legs, which was apparently a successful visit, and the other to pray for the alleviation of the ills of a friend.

The 14th century shrine

The reconstructed shrine of St Werburgh at the west end of the Lady Chapel in St Werburgh’s Cathedral, Chester. It was reassembled in the 19th Century from broken -up parts, and it is impossible to say how closely it resembles the original 14th century shrine. The warm lighting is as it would have been seen by candle-light.

Nearly 250 years after Hugh’s foundation, in around 1340 (just before the Black Death) a new red sandstone shrine was built for the saint, an elaborate gothic affair around 7ft (2.1m) tall, built to look like a chapel. The new shrine, on two levels, contained whatever remained of the relics in the upper layer, whilst the lower half was provided with niches into which pilgrims could fold themselves to get even closer to the spirituality of the saint. The top was decorated with statuettes for former Anglo-Saxon monarchs, most of whom are missing their heads today. Little carved animals formed a line around the middle, images of the natural world that were as much part of God’s creation as people. Today, the only one of these natural world carvings left is a tiny dog, scratching his ear with a hind leg. The shrine was also, in all likelihood, bedecked with elaborate precious stones, its architectural details finished in gold.

Although today it is located in the 13th century Lady Chapel, it was originally located in the easternmost bay of the presbytery, behind the high altar. The relics of the saint were encased very safely within the very top of the shrine, but the spiritual power of the bones themselves emanated from the relics, permeating the stone, so that touching the shrine was equivalent to touching the saint’s essence. This was a powerful concept, and a vibrant presence in the monastery. This substantial monument was a permanent fixture. There would be no carrying the shrine through the town in times of threat or stress.

St Werburgh’s shrine showing the niches, the dog scratching it’s ear and gilded statuettes, some without their heads, of Anglo-Saxon kings. Click to enlarge

Pilgrims to the shrine in the later Middle Ages – a nice little earner

Mid 14th century coins. Source: Medieval Britain

Monks needed to make a living. Monastic communities became more expensive as the centuries rolled forward, as the trappings of seclusion and self-denial fell away towards the 16th century. Guests, who were not expected to pay for their upkeep, were always a drain on popular monastic establishments, and alms to the poor still had to be paid. Expenses too accrued from the management of extensive estates, including wages for bailiffs and labourers, repairs to buildings and boundaries, and the costs involved in agricultural production. Churches appropriated by the monastery for their incomes still involved costs, including the provision of an incumbent priest. St Werburgh’s was often involved in legal disputes with Chester citizens, and this too was costly. After the stricter earlier middle ages, standards began to slip in Benedictine monasteries. Abbots rolled out ambitious extension plans for the monastic church, and required larger and more luxurious quarters, which included spaces where VIP guests could be lavishly entertained, costly vanity projects that formed part of their legacy. Provisions became more luxurious and more expensive. The upkeep of a vast monastic architectural complex could be eye-watering, even without the occasional devastating fire or flood. Balancing the books was a constant headache for monastic establishments.

Cripples collecting healing oil at the shrine of St William of York, York Minster, North Choir Transept. Early 15th century. Source: The Becket Story (© Dean & Chapter York).

By the later middle ages, when imaginative ways of generating income were increasingly critical to monastic wellbeing, pilgrims were a great way of generating income. Pilgrimages were usually journeys of meaning, sometimes deeply spiritual and personal, characterized by any number of aspirations including cures for illnesses and defects, expressions of penitence, a wish to feel the presence of something holy, and the urge to give thanks for a prayer answered; but pilgrimages could also be timed to enjoy feasts, fairs and markets, and as such were not merely pious and spiritual, but could be a sociable and enjoyable liberation from the mundane. When pilgrims visited shrines, tombs and reliquaries to satisfy personal needs, the monastery expected pilgrims to show their gratitude to the saint and to Heaven by gifting a contribution to the monastic coffers in the form of “altarage.” This was usually money, but sometimes it took the form of valuable gifts.

Clusters of shrines were good news for everyone. Pilgrims to a particular shrine would frequently do the rounds of all the other major religious sites and shrines in the immediate area, as well as those further afield in the region, soaking up all the divinity available. In Chester itself, St Werburgh’s shrine was in competition with the miracle-performing Holy Rood (a sculpture of Christ on the cross) in St John’s the Baptist’s Church (next to the amphitheatre), which was reputed to include a piece of the true cross, reputed to have been found by Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. It was installed in around 1250. Although St Werburgh became a secondary attraction after this date, the rood at St John’s was far better known and carried more weight because the power of the crucifix of Christ himself was rather more compelling to pilgrims than an Anglo-Saxon saint. It was to the Holy Rood of St John’s that Edward I took the nobility of Gwynedd men to swear fealty before himself and God.

The glorious 15th century vaulting above the clear water of the inner reservoir of St Winifrede’s Well, Holywell.

Some shrines were more revered than others and had great pulling power, which could generate satisfying levels of income. The ownership of St Winifrede’s Well in Holywell (northeast Wales), for example, alternated between St Werburgh’s Abbey and Basingwerk Abbey just down the hill from the well, depending on whether the English or Welsh were in control of the area, and this represented a useful form of income for whichever abbey was in command of its resources. It is also probable that many of the pilgrims visiting Chester were en route to the Cathedral of St Asaph (Llanelwy), which contained the 6th century relics of the eponymous saint, renowned for his healing miracles, and St Winifrede’s sacred Well, enclosed by some superb gothic architecture. These were located 28 (45km) and 14 miles (22km) away from Chester respectively, and 16 miles (26km) from each other. The east-west pilgrim route between Holywell and St Asaph was well known by the later medieval period, making use of the Deva-Varis-Canovium-Segontium (Chester to Caernarfon) Roman road, which was crossed by Offa’s Dyke and took in the beautifully carved late 10th century Maen Achyfan cross, which still stands today. At St Winefrede’s Well, the nearby Cistercian monks of Basingwerk Abbey provided all the facilities that the pilgrims might need to make the most of the experience. The 7th century saint’s remains had actually been removed to Shrewsbury Abbey in 1138, but Holywell was the site of the miracle in which she died by beheading and was brought back to life, and was imbued with miraculous potency.

A selection of Medieval and post-Medieval pilgrim badges. Source: British Museum

Because pilgrims travelled to specific shrines, it is easy to think of pilgrimages exclusively in terms of destinations, but the act of making a pilgrimage was as much about the journey as the destination, and pilgrim routes could be both sociable experiences shared with like-minded individuals, and essential to the spiritual character of the undertaking. As pilgrim routes became fixed in the religious round, they became special places in the landscape, with identities of their own, and features that singled them out as part of the greater network of pilgrim experience.

Although St Werburgh’s Abbey would undoubtedly have preferred to be the most important of the local shrines, and would have done its best to attract pilgrims, it certainly benefited from the proximity of more fashionable and perhaps more relatable pilgrim destinations nearby, and the network of routes that connected them. The 14th century shrine was almost certainly built to jump on the bandwagon of pilgrim visits to Chester, and to provide a more impressive and inclusive experience for pilgrims, without losing the connection with the Anglo-Saxon past.

St Thomas Becket pilgrim badge. Source: Museum of London

There are no records surviving from St Werburgh’s to indicate what sort of income the monastery derived from pilgrims, but nearby St John the Baptist’s Holy Rood was the second most important source of three primary sources of income for the church, amounting to in excess of £50.00 per annum in the 14th century (the National Archives Currency Convertor equates this, for 1350, to £29,361 in modern money or, for example, 72 horses or 135 cows. This is half the value of the nationally important Ethelreda’s shrine at Ely, which in 1408/9 earned £19 9s 10d, and is a drop in the ocean to what St Thomas Becket’s shrines could attract from both British and western European pilgrims: £120 in 1411 and a staggering £360 in the Jubilee year of 1420, which equates to day to around £231,483, which could have purchased 83 horses or 620 cows. St Winifrede’s Well earned an annual revenue by the time of the Reformation of £157 15s 2d, which probably included the sale of indulgences.

Altarage was also payable on saints feast days by anyone attending the celebration. For St Werburgh, this day was 3rd February. Again, we have no records for St Werburgh, but at Selby Abbey in Yorkshire, which held a shrine of St Germain, the festival of the Burial of St German on the 1st October in 1446-1447 earned the abbey 16s.8d., and the offerings for the festival of the Death of the saint on 31st July earned 6s. The money-box (stipite) of St Germain accumulated £9. 14s 10d for the year. Again, these were useful contributions to an abbey’s financial resources, amounting to £6790 in modern money, which would purchase 14 horses or 27 cows.

St Werburgh’s would have been a long way down the pilgrimage and altarage income scale, but the earnings would still have been valuable.

How pilgrim badges were made, sold, worn and used

St Werburgh’s pilgrim badges being made in stone moulds. Photograph by Colin Torode of Lionheart Replicas, with my thanks to Colin for sending it to me.

Before badges were available, pilgrims might collect earth from around a shrine, or chip of small pieces off the shrine itself. Small vessels could be used to carry holy water or oils. Low-cost badges were a far more satisfying and permanent memento of a pilgrimage successfully undertaken, and first appear during the 12th century. Decorated metal ampullae too, were manufactured to hold liquids, but in smaller numbers. Wealthier pilgrims might order a custom-made item, which might be made of a more expensive material, but the less expensive materials are by far the most frequently represented in museum and personal collections. By the 15th century they might cost as little as a penny for twelve. One of the appealing aspects of the pilgrim badges is that the majority that survive today were clearly made for those who did not have much surplus cash to spend on souvenirs.

A selection of pilgrim badges. Source: The Digital Pilgrim website.

The badges were cast in moulds, which would have required careful crafting. The mould was usually made of stone, preferably limestone. A liquid alloy was poured into it to set, usually comingling lead with either pewter or tin. Lead was locally available, and the other ores were inexpensive and could be imported. Once solidified, the object was removed from its mould, trimmed, polished and was then ready to sell. The photograph above shows one of Colin Torode’s stone moulds, in use for making St Werburgh pilgrim badges for Lionheart Historical Pewter Replicas, which sells many replica pilgrim badges (I have their lovely St Werburgh geese-in-the-basket). See the brief video by the Digital Pilgrims Project at the end of the post to see how some of these objects were made.

The pilgrim badges were sold at the abbey gates, or in stalls in town markets. If purchased before a visit to the shrine, the pilgrim badge could be touched to the shrine, so that it would permeate the badge itself with its spiritual energy. It could then be dipped into a liquid to be swallowed as a health cure or rubbed onto a wound as a salve. Given its portability, it could also be carried back to someone who was unfit to make the pilgrimage so that they could benefit from the power of the shrine.

The pilgrim badges were usually worn with great pride, sewn on to items of outer clothing like hats or coats, or on bags. Over time, as they became familiar and were transferred from old to new clothing, they probably became apotropaic lucky talismans, as well as items of religious meaning. Sometimes they were pinned to walls of homes.

The Dissolution and subsequent events

The opening page of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, the beginning of the Dissolution of the monasteries, showing Henry VIII presiding over the nation’s extaordinary religious shake-up. Source: Wikipedia

Although Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the abbey in 1536, its conversion into a cathedral saved it from wholescale destruction. Although it retained most of its key components, some features fell victim to reformers. Henry VIII’s withdrawal from the Catholic church was only realistically viable because of a movement in Europe that challenged what it saw as the papal hierarchy’s abuse of the core ideals of Christianity. In 1517, nearly 20 years before the Dissolution, Martin Luther at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, disgusted by the financial corruption of the papacy and the clergy, began to promote the emergence of a more honest, less moderated religion in which men and women could worship in their homes as well as in their churches and build a more direct relationship with Christ and God. The existence of Purgatory was rejected, the appeal to saints for their intercession was deemed idolatrous, religious images that had been the focal points of worship were condemned, and the role of the clergy as a bridge between people and God was challenged.

In England the reform movement was politically and socially necessary both to usher in Henry’s new era and to avoid the new religious house being labelled heretical. Using Martin Luther’s reforming as a launch pad, an older, purer version of religion was sought. As part of the process, effigies and saints were to be removed with extreme prejudice. Targets of this reforming zeal included emblems of the later Anglo-Saxon period as well as those of the medieval period. The 14th century shrine of St Werburgh really did not stand a chance. The shrine was dismantled and parts were used to build a tomb for the first bishop. Later, in 1635, elements were incorporated into an episcopal throne.

St Werburgh’s shrine in the 19th century

Sir Arthur William Blomfield at his drawing board. Source: Falklandsbiographies.org

When some pieces of the shrine were rediscovered in the 19th century, Sir Arthur Blomfield attempted a reconstruction, which is what stands in the Lady Chapel today. The small statues of the Saxon kings do survive, but their heads are missing; of the little figures that adorned it, only a dog scratching its ear with a hind leg now survives. It was reassembled in the Lady Chapel.

Although St Werburgh no longer attracts pilgrims, the well of St Winefrede at Holywell, near Basingwerk Abbey on the north Wales coast, still does. Although more usual in Catholic parts of Europe than in Anglican Britain, pilgrimage continues to offer the option of a spiritual journey today, and pilgrim badges continue to be collected by those who make the journey. The gift shop at St Winifrede’s well contains a wide and colourful selection of religious memorabilia. See the Encountering a Pilgrim’s Medal video at the end of the post for comments on a modern pilgrim badge.

From Harry Cureton to the British Museum

There’s one last thread to the story. According to the British Museum’s records, in 1836 it purchased the badge at the top of this post from one Henry (Harry) Osborne Cureton who conducted his trade in London variously as a curiosity dealer, a medallist and coin dealer. In the February 1851 edition of the Athenaeum an advert was placed, announcing that Cureton’s entire stock was being sold off due to his retirement. The British Museum’s web page about Harry Cureton suggests that that after this he may have been employ in some capacity at the Museum. If the British Museum was one of the buyers of the collection advertised in the Athenaeum, Cureton may have been hired to catalogue the objects, of which the St Werburgh pilgrim badge may have been one.

Athenaeum no.1215, February 8th 1851 advert by Messrs S. Leigh Sotheby and John Wilkinson for the sale at auction of Harry Osborn Cureton’s stock of coins, medals and antiquities. Source: Google Books

The badge is not on display at the British Museum, which is a shame but not terribly surprising. As the British Museum’s Fact Sheet explains, it’s collection totals at least 8 million objects, of which roughly roughly 80,000 (1%) are on public display at any one time, the rest remaining in storage.

Just as one expects pilgrims to travel, one expects pilgrim badges to travel. Margery Kempe, early 14th century wife, mother of fourteen children, visionary and pilgrim, managed to fit in pilgrimages to the Holy Land via Italy, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and to Danzig in Prussia. We have no idea where the owner of the St Werburgh badge might have worn it on his or her travels, but it is not at all surprising to find that it ended its travels in London.

Final Comments

1916 window in St Werburgh’s in the refectory, showing an imaginative, romantic view of the saint. Photograph by Wolfgang Sauber. Source: Wikipedia

This post started with an image of geese in a basket, an emblem of St Werburgh that was cast and sold to pilgrims as a totem of their enterprising pilgrimage to the shrine of a Mercian princess, St Werburgh, within the abbey at Chester. By exploring the connection between a 7th century saint who was buried in Staffordshire and a 10th century Mercian queen who translated (transferred) the remains of the saint to Chester, we encounter the Viking colonisation of Britain. The new shrine containing the saint’s relics in Chester was a powerful new emblem of Christian faith, using affinity to the earlier Anglo-Saxon past to provide meaning and reassurance in the very turbulent present.

In 1093, when Hugh Lupus, first Earl of Chester decided to put his stamp on Chester and, at the same time, pave his way to a comfortable afterlife by founding an impressive Benedictine monastery, the saint was provided with a new home, echoing Æthelflæd’s own intentions. St Werburgh’s original Anglo-Saxon shrine was built to evoke both the past and the present, using history to provide a sense of continuity and stability as Chester entered a new era. Some of this sense of the present being reinforced by the past was carried forward into the 14th century shrine as well. St Werburgh went on to generate income for the monastery throughout the middle ages.

Pilgrims on the road to Canterbury. John Lydgate’s Prologue of the Siege of Thebes c. 1457–1460: Royal MS 18 D II, f. 148r.Few pilgrimages would have been so comfortably and elegantly undertaken. Source: British Library

A pilgrim badge, even if it was mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, was an attractive symbol, and one to wear with pride, but was not merely an inanimate souvenir. By touching it to the shrine, it became a conduit of spirituality, transmitting the essence, goodness and potentially curative powers of the saint within. In an era in which Christ was universally accepted as being embedded in the Eucharist via transubstantiation, a Church-given reality, the idea of objects like pilgrim badges as agents of transformation was not a theoretical matter but another everyday Christian reality. Intrinsically the badge had an active, multi-functional role as a medium of the shrine’s essence, and as a symbol of hope, piety, charity, perseverance and / or status. The medieval period offered pilgrims a fluid, multi-layered religious existence in which, if they were deserving, the secular and spiritual could mingle in certain places under certain conditions. In a sense, whilst the shrine cannot be divided and shared, the pilgrim badge, the emblem of the shrine and sometimes the vessel holding the essence of the shrine, is a way of dividing the shrine infinitely amongst those who invested it with their beliefs and hopes.

Detail of St Werburgh’s shrine

The static 14th century shrine and the multiple, travelling pilgrim badges were firmly linked. The shrine, unmoving, connected to a long-lost Anglo-Saxon past, was rooted to its particular spot. The pilgrim badges, by contrast, were all about the here and now, both for the craftsmen who made them and for the visiting pilgrims who purchased them. The shrine would have existed without the pilgrim badges, but the badges were dependent on both the shrine and the pilgrims. Whilst the memory was alive, the badge containing the memory remained a connected to the shrine via the pilgrim. The shrine, acting as the anchor for such experiences, stayed firmly put, but its tendrils extended into the secular world via the tales told by the pilgrims who had visited, encouraging others to replicate the experience.

At some point, the pilgrim badge was parted from the pilgrim. Perhaps the pilgrim died and it was inherited by one of his or her children. Later in its history it encountered another point of departure and re-entered into the world of commercial transactions. Eventually, it found its way into the ownership of a dealer in portable objects, like medals and coins, and in the 1860s was accessioned into the collection of the British Museum, where it is now buried in storage. Perhaps one day it will emerge to perform a role as a piece of valued heritage, but for the time being, it is divorced from any of the realities that it once served.

St Werburgh’s replica pilgrim badge made by Lionheart Historical Pewter Replicas (photograph from their website)

Quite apart from looking great on my favourite black coat, my own replica St Werburgh’s badge (shown right) can be seen as an aspect of the St Werburgh shrine’s new identity. Today the shrine finds itself as part of the discussion about modern contexts, including conservation, tourism, academic research and local history, where current perspectives reinvent churches, cathedrals and shrines in many different, novel ways, and contribute to ongoing narratives. My newly purchased badge has become part of that ongoing story. It’s a nice thought. The reassembled shrine in the Lady Chapel does not contain St Werburgh’s relics, but the saint remains irrefutably embedded into the fabric of the cathedral and is central to its identity.

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Videos:

Why did St Werburgh of Chester Resurrect a Goose?

By Dr Thomas Pickles, University of Chester

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Video: Metal Casting – Pilgrim Badge

By the Digital Pilgrims Project

Video modern pilgrim token from Pilgrim Flask page

Piers Baker-Bates of the Open University talks about the value of his own pilgrimage memento

Click to play. Source: Open University

Staffordshire Moments: St Werburgh’s story

A tongue-in-cheek but remarkably effective version of St Werburgh’s story.

Sources:

Books and papers

Blair, J. 2005. The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society. Oxford University Press

Bond, J. 2010. Monastic Landscapes. The History Press

Bradshaw, H. 1513 (edited and republished by Horstmann, C. 1887). The Life of St Werberge of Chester. The Early English Text Society
https://ia800208.us.archive.org/23/items/lifeofsaintwerbu00braduoft/lifeofsaintwerbu00braduoft.pdf

Burne, R.V.H. 1962. The Monks of Chester. The History of St Werburgh’s Abbey. SPCK

Clarke, C. 2011. Remembering Anglo-Saxon Mercia in late medieval and early modern Chester. In Clarke, C. (ed.) Mapping Medieval Chester: place and identity in an English borderland city c.1200-1500, p.201-218

Varnam, L. 2013. Sanctity and the City. Sacred Space in Henry Bradshaw,’s Life of St Werburge. In Clarke, C. (ed.) Mapping Medieval Chester: place and identity in an English borderland city c.1200-1500, p.114-130

Claassen, C. 2011. Waning pilgrimage paths and modern roadscapes: moving through landscape in northern Guerrero, Mexico. World Archaeology, vol.43, iss.3, p.493-504

Clarkson, T. 2018. Æthelflæd. The Lady of the Mercians. John Donald

Hahn, H.P. and Weiss, H. 2013. Introduction: Biographies, travels and itineraries of things. In Hahn, H.P and Weiss, H. (eds.) Mobility, Meaning and Transformations of Things. Shifting contexts of material culture through time and space. Oxbow Books

Hicklin, J. 1852. A History of Chester Cathedral with biographical notices of the Bishops and Deans. George Prichard

Jones, D. 1957. The Church in Chester 1300-1540. Chetham Society

Garland, L.M. 2005. Aspects of Welsh Saints’ Cults and Pilgrimage c.1066-1530. Unpublished PhD, Kings College London

Gilchrist, R. 2013. The materiality of medieval heirlooms: From biographical to sacred objects. In Hahn, H.P and Weiss, H. (eds.) Mobility, Meaning and Transformations of Things. Shifting contexts of material culture through time and space. Oxbow Books

Goscelin de St-Bertin 1974 (N. J. Munday, translator). The Life of St. Werburg by Goscelin. Friends of Chester Cathedral

Kempe, M. (translated with introduction by Windeatt, B. 1985) The Book of Margery Kempe. Penguin Classics

Locker, M.D. 2015. Landscapes of Pilgrimage in Medieval Britain. Archaeopress

Lynch, J.H. 1992. The Medieval Church. A Brief History. Longman.

Mason, D. 2007. Chester AD400-1066. From Roman Fortress to English Town. Tempus

Moreland, J. 2010. Archaeology, Theory and the Middle Ages. Understanding the Early Medieval Past. Duckworth.

Schmoelz, M. 2017. Pilgrimage in medieval East Anglia. A regional survey of the shrines and pilgrimages of Norfolk and Suffolk. Unpublished PhD, University of East Anglia

Tillotson, J.H. 1988. Monastery and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Selected Account Rolls from Selby Abbey, Yorkshire 1398-1537. The Boydell Press

Turner Camp, C. 2011. Inventing the Past in Henry Bradshaw’s ‘Life of St Werburge’, Exemplaria, vol.23, iss.3, p244-267

Webb, D. 2000. Pilgrimage in Medieval England. Hambledon and London

Whitehead, A. 2020. Mercia. The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom. Amberley

Websites

The Becket Story
Medieval pilgrimage
https://thebecketstory.org.uk/

British Library – Medieval Manuscripts Blog
Pilgrimages: Medieval Summer Holidays? By Chantry Westwell 29th July 2018
https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/07/pilgrimages-medieval-summer-holidays.html

British Museum
St Werburgh Pilgrim Badge 1836,061.73
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1836-0610-73
Fact Sheet: British Museum Collection
https://www.britishmuseum.org/sites/default/files/2019-10/fact_sheet_bm_collection.pdf
Harry Osborn Cureton
https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG67986

The Electronic Sawyer
Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters
https://esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/about/index.html

Kemble – The Anglo-Saxon Charters Website
Chester
http://dk.robinson.cam.ac.uk/node/25

Mapping Medieval Chester
Henry Bradshaw, Life of St Werburge by Catherine Clarke 2008
https://www.medievalchester.ac.uk/texts/introbradshaw.html

Medieval London
Pilgrim Badge
https://medievallondon.ace.fordham.edu/collections/show/28

Museum of London
Medieval pilgrim souvenirs
https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/group/19998.html

Paul Mellon Centre
The Digital Pilgrim Project
https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/digital-pilgrim-project
and sketchfab.com/britishmuseum/collections/digital-pilgrim

The Pilgrims Guide
Thomas Becket Badges: Developments and Interpretations of His Cult since the Twelfth Century
thepilgrimsguide.com/projects/thomas-becket-badges-developments-and-interpretations-of-his-cult-since-the-twelfth-century/

University of London. Department of History of Art
The Digital Pilgrim Project
https://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/research/past-projects/the-digital-pilgrim-project

Objects from my Garden #12: Maker’s mark on a piece of flow blue ware by S.W. Dean, Burslem

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Both sides of the broken sherd

For anyone new to this occasional series on objects extracted from my garden during everyday gardening activities, see the History in Garden Finds page. These are not objects used in the garden, but objects, usually fragments, lost or disposed of in the garden and found during digging, troweling and planting.

This maker’s mark, crossing all three sherds, was a happy find for me, because although we have dug up tons of broken china from the garden (which is in Churton, a few miles south of Chester), all of it interesting in its own way, few of the manufacturers can be identified. This piece, with a company trademark on one side and part of the pattern on the other, contains the name both of the manufacturer and the design.

Re-assembled, the original sherd is 9cm long and 3.5cm wide. The potter’s mark is split over three broken pieces. The clean breaks and pure what fabric that divided the sherd into three means that it was broken when one of us found it whilst gardening, with spade or pick-axe, straight through the middle. Fitting the three pieces together to form a single piece leaves the much grubbier original break around the former edges. The spidery cracks in the glaze, called crazing, have also allowed the garden earth to seep into the fabric.

Flip it over, and there are parts of the floral pattern on the reverse, a deliberately blurred design referred to as “flow blue,” about which more below. Interestingly, the other images I have seen of this particular design, “Forget Me Not,” are not in flow, but are very clearly delineated, as shown in the example further below, where the design is in green.

What are we looking at in the manufacturer’s mark? Starting at the top is a crown sitting over the top of a Staffordshire Knot. This knot is a traditional symbol of Staffordshire and the town of Stafford, first used by the Stafford family in the 15th century. The words within the circle read “England’s S.W. Dean Burslem,” which encircle a seated greyhound, part of the company’s trademark, and damaged with dark scratches in this piece. In the banner (or swag) below this, and illegible here, this clearly reads on other examples “Royal Semi China” and beneath that is the design name “FORGET-ME-NOT” and the manufacturer’s registration number: RºNº350600. This mark is much clearer in the example shown below, which shows the same design applied using a different technique.

Green version of the S.W. Dean Forget-Me-Not pattern and trademark. Photos by Letsgoexplorin64 Source: Etsy.

S.W. Dean of the Newport Pottery, Burslem, in Staffordshire was the manufacturer. Samuel Webster Dean had been the chairman of ceramics manufacturer in Edge, Malkin & Co., which started life as Cork and Edge in Burslem, making teapots and operated from 1846 to 60) before going through various changes in partnership. When it closed in 1906, Dean declared an interest, and eventually took over the company in 1909, renaming it S.W. Dean. The greyhound at the heart of the maker’s mark was carried over from Edge & Malkin & Co, which had used it between 1873 and 1903. The new company still operated out of Burselm at the Newport Works, and its products were probably sold in a number of retail outlets. The company also appointed agents to sell its products at sales events in hotels in major cities, probably for bulk sales into retail and export. In the advert below an event at the Holborn Viaduct Hotel in London as announced. There are examples of the type of products that the company produced on the A-Z of Stoke on Trent Potters website. S.W. Dean ran into financial problems very quickly, and Samuel Dean was declared bankrupt in June 1910. Although the advert below mentions an export market, it seems unlikely that there was sufficient time for this to get fully underway before the company closed.

Advert from the Pottery Gazette of October 1908. Source: A-Z of Stoke On Trent Potters

Later in 1910, S.W. Dean was in turn purchased, and a new company was registered by J.D. Kerr. Kerr clearly thought that the Dean name had enough brand recognition amongst potential purchasers of the ceramics to retain the name, because the new company became Deans (1910) Ltd. A greyhound was retained in the log, but was on all fours, instead of seated, and was shown standing on an open crown.

The pattern side, showing the Forget-Me-Not design

The style and technique used on this pottery is called flow blue, and is a form of transferware. Transferware is a very swift way of transferring a design to the surface of an object. A copperplate engraved with the required design was inked, in this case with deep blue cobalt oxide, and pressed on to paper that, while still wet, was in turn pressed on to a ceramic surface. The design left on the piece of pottery is the transfer. With a complete object, the overlap between the transfers is usually visible as a seam, but this piece is too small to show this. The process speeded up the process of decorating ceramics, making them much less expensive to produce than hand-painted wares, permitting mass production, and creating cost-savings that were passed on to the customer.

The particular characteristic of flow blue is the appearance of blurred edges, giving them a soft and blousy look, quite unlike the precision of the green example of the same design above. When the pot was ready for a second firing, after the transfer design had been fixed into place, a flow-powder was added to the kiln. A typical mixture was 22% salt, 40% white lead, 30% calcium carbonate, and 8% borax, but there were variants. This gave off a chlorine gas which caused the cobalt in the transfer to diffuse into the glaze, creating the flow effect and the intense blue glow.

The Newport Works in Burslem, Staffordshire, where S.W. Dean’s pottery production was based. Source: A-Z of Stoke On Trent Potters

Flow blue appears from about 1830. Whether the effect was originally accidental or deliberate, it soon became very popular, first in the U.S., exported from Staffordshire factories, and later in Britain’s own households. During the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-15, the U.S. had become Britain’s most important export market until the onset of the American Civil War in 1860. The Registration of Design Act of 1842, which prevented factories from copying each others patterns without permission, resulted in new patterns, and sometimes specialization in particular types of design. By the mid 1800s British manufacturers were producing a variety of different genres, including more traditionally Victorian rural, garden and specifically floral designs, many of them very romanticized. The forget-me-not is a good example of a flower chosen because of its popularity in Victorian gardens and poems.

Flow blue from the garden, with the forget-me-not sherd both centre bottom on the plate, and on its own on the right

A lot of flow blue has come out of the garden, but nearly all of it in very small pieces. A sort through them has only found one piece that is consistent with the Forget-Me-Knot design, a very thin rim piece, much thinner than the pieces shown above. It may or may not come from the same item, perhaps thinning towards the edge, but it could also be a sherd from a different part of the same set. Some of the other pieces of flow blue display a characteristic feathering along the rims of ceramics, none of these gilded, although many feathered edges were. Those shown here are a selection of the bits pulled out of the garden, including the Forget-Me-Not rim piece.

Other object histories from my garden can be found
on the History in Garden Objects page

Sources:

Books and papers

Neale, G. 2005. Encyclopedia of British Transfer-Printed Pottery Patterns 1790-1930. Miller’s

Websites

The A-Z of Stoke On Trent Potteries
S.W. Dean
http://www.thepotteries.org/allpotters/347a.htm

The Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities
The Rough Guide to Pottery Pt.5 – Blue and White Bits.
https://glossopcuriosities.wordpress.com/2022/09/15/the-rough-guide-to-pottery-pt-5-blue-and-white-bits/

HobbyLark
Flow Blue: History and Value of Blue-and-White Antique China, by Dolores Monet, December 23rd 2022
https://hobbylark.com/collecting/FlowBlueHowtoIDandValuetheCollectibleBlueandWhiteAntiqueChina

House of Brinson
Transferware and Flow Blue
https://houseofbrinson.com/2021/04/28/thoughts-on-transferware-and-flow-blue/#:~:text=If%20you%20see%20a%20blue,were%20widely%20sold%20in%20America.

Mike Royden’s history of the White Horse pub in Churton

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The White Horse public house in Churton, some 20 minutes south of Chester and a few minutes north of Farndon and Holt has been closed since the pandemic, but has been the source of some heavy-duty activity over the last few months, thanks to the efforts of its new owner Gary Usher and his crowd-funding business model.

Mike Royden, whose massive and seriously impressive website about Farndon and its environs, Royden History, is one of the best of the region’s history resources, has added a history of the White Horse to his site, with terrific images and explanatory text, tracing not just the history of the building but its various incumbents too. Buildings are far easier to trace than the people associated with them, and this really is a great piece of work using primary sources. Marvellous detective work and a very good read. Whether you are interested in Churton’s history or just the White Horse itself, Mike’s history of the White Horse can be found at the following page:

http://www.roydenhistory.co.uk/farndon/buildings/pubs/whitehorse_churton/whitehorse_churton.htm

It was a real eye-opener to see the 1895 photo of the pub’s thatched predecessor, as well as the completely bizarre photograph of the Red Lion, a former Churton pub, in one of its previous incarnations. Thank you Mike!

I took the pics below in February 2022, when the future of the White Horse was very much up in the air. It is great to see it all looking so trim and tidy.

White Horse images from February 2022

The latest chapter in the pub’s history begins when it opens on 3rd March 2023, and I am very much looking forward to taking it for a test drive. Here’s a copy of their sample menu (also snaffled, with sincere thanks, from Mike’s page above).

For more details about the White Horse and its menu, the website is at thewhitehorsechurton.co.uk, which also has links to their Instagram, Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) accounts.

A super visit to Blue Planet Aquarium on the Wirral

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This was a completely off-the-cuff visit, as we were planning to go somewhere else but found that it was temporarily closed. I am so glad that we were forced to change our plans, because we absolutely loved the aquarium. Located in the Ellesmere Port area, it was opened in 1998, but it has been so well cared for that it looks brand new.

The fish are fabulous – everything from sharks bigger than me to tiny fast-moving flashes of spectacular colour and light. the myriad of shapes, sizes, colours and types of movement is a massive eye-opener. Nature went to town on the aquatic spectrum of possibilities. There are also timeless tortoises, sinuous snakes, iridescent frogs and a remarkable chameleon, whose projecting, rotating eyes are an evolutionary marvel. One of the most attractive features of the aquarium is the profusion of richly flourishing plant life. Oh that my indoor plants would look like that!

The underwater tunnel, which passes through the aquarium, is a sensational experience, with an incredible array of fish, including sharks and stingrays, flowing around you and overhead and conger eels peering out at you from rocky enclaves. It is the nearest that any non-divers are ever going to get to a first-hand sense of experiencing the enchantment of the aquatic universe. Rather than carrying on with the superlatives, here are the rest of the pics. Visiting details (including disabled access) are at the end, as usual.

Where else could you possibly find yourself looking up into the intimidatingly toothy mouth of a shark overhead, or glory in the soft, pure-white underbelly of a stingray, elegance on the wing, as it glides effortlessly just inches from your eyes? Magic.

Visiting

Blue Planet was easy to find, clearly signposted with brown signs from the M53. When you reach it, you find yourself confronted with a series of car dealerships, and cars parked all along the approach road, but the aquarium is the big silver building on the left at the end of the approach road, with its own big car park, including disabled parking. For SatNav users, the postcode is CH65 9LF. Bus and other transport info is on the website’s Getting Her page.

See the website for the opening times and entry and parking charges. We visited on a Wednesday at around midday, and although there were other people there, it was very quiet, and ideal for us. A couple of school trips were in progress, but were easy to avoid as the kids were well managed and herded together.

For those with leg issues and for wheelchair users (both were there having a great time) there is a disabled lift (just ask if you cannot find it). The aquarium ranges over two floors, and each is on the flat. Some of the rooms are quite dark, and that may be a problem for people with balance problems. You can find more on the disability page on the website. There are plenty of places to sit down.

Outside, on the other side of the shop, there is the pelican enclosure (with real, live pelicans), a picnic area, a kid’s play area, and a small wildlife reserve. There are daily talks and events, and you can book special visits, all details available on the website.

The shop is stocked with loads of truly fun soft toys, aquatically themed. I managed not to buy a giant fluffy stingray or octopus, but it was touch and go (had I been alone it might have been a different story 🙂 ). There is a large café. We didn’t try it, but it was well used.

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A 6th-7th Century Egyptian Pilgrim Flask found at Meols, Wirral

Introduction to the Meols pilgrim flask

The Meols Pilgrim Flask, now in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester (GM 43. M.56). Source of photograph: Pilgrims and Posies blog

Flipping through Peter Carrington’s book Chester when it arrived on my doorstep a year or so ago, I was surprised to see a black and white photograph of something both very familiar and exceedingly unexpected: an Egyptian pilgrim flask originally from the shrine of the Coptic Christian St Menas in Egypt. Only 98mm tall, it was manufactured during the 6th-7th century in northern Egypt. It was almost certainly purchased at the desert shrine of St Mena, 45km to the southwest of Alexandria.

It was found on the Wirral at Meols (pronounced mells) by a local man digging for lugworms in 1955, in a peat layer 61cm (2ft) below the sand 274m (300 yards) off Dove Point. For those unfamiliar with the local geography, there’s a map at the end of the post. The flask was donated to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester. Although the location site consists of nothing but sand dunes today, it was formerly inhabited. Griffiths and his colleagues, in their 2007 monograph on Meols, describe the 19th century investigations of this strip of land:

The eroding sand-dunes not only produced an enormous body of small finds, but also
traces of buildings (the records of which are now unfortunately lost) and stumps of trees from the old ground surface. The numerous artefacts include, as well as many mundane objects, exotic pieces of high quality.

Today, the same team interpret early Meols (from the Norse meaning sand-hills) as a possible “beach market or port.”

Unsurprisingly, given the time that the pilgrim flask must have spent in the sand, the surface of the flask it is badly abraded and is slightly damaged. In the photograph on the left it looks as though it has a handle and spout, but in fact the “spout” was a twin handle, by which the vessel could be held in two hands, or threaded through a belt or chord for carrying. There is also some slight damage to the body of the vessel itself. It was not the most skilfully manufactured item, and was probably one of the less expensive examples on offer to the purchaser, but given its find-site is remarkably well preserved.

Although difficult to make out, the front of the vessel shows a scene consisting of the Roman-Egyptian St Menas flanked by two camels, about which more in a moment. There are photos of better preserved versions of the same scene below. I haven’t found a diagram or photograph of the reverse of the flask, but Griffiths et al describe it as follows: “The righthand part of the circular field has short radiating spokes from the frame. The design is very abraded and unclear, but appears to have a long curving design.”

Thompson’s figure 3, showing a sketch of the Meols flask at the time of its discovery. Source: Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, volume 53, 1956

Material of the same period (6th-7th century AD) is found in the general area, confined to a short stretch at the top of the Wirral peninsula, producing over 100 artefacts, from both Roman and post-Roman objects, including Late Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian material. Following its discovery in 1955 the find was reported very briefly by F.H. Thompson in the Miscellanea section of the Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society in 1956, accompanied by a sketch, and a description of the context in which it was found:

Although the coastal site of Meols, near Hoylake, is not now so prolific of antiquities as in the days when the Rev. A. Hume could devote a whole book to cataloguing the Romano-British, Saxon and mediaeval finds made there, single specimens are occasionally recovered.

The pilgrim flask is a well known form of vessel, and examples are found all over Egypt, and in Nubia. Fewer numbers have been found outside Egypt, most of them in the eastern Mediterranean. They are characterized by a lentoid (lens-shaped) body, narrow neck and twin handles, connecting the neck of the vessel to the main body. They seem to have been fitted with stoppers made from mud and other materials. The Meols example is 98mm high from lip to base. The body is 65mm wide, and the neck 35mmwide. The thickness of the pottery never exceeds 18mm. The neck and arms were added to the body after the manufacture of the vessel’s body, and there was not a great deal of skill demonstrated in its production. Much finer examples survive.

St Menas pilgrim flask from Preston on the Hill, Cheshire, now in Norton Priory Museum. Source: Griffiths et al 2007

The Meols pilgrim flask is not unique in England. Norton Priory Museum, near Warrington, has a collection of pilgrim tokens, one of which is a pilgrim flask from the shrine of St Menas, which was found in the Norton Priory area at Preston-on-the-Hill, shown left. It is missing its handles and neck. When the neck and handles are added on afterwards, the joints are a common point of failure. The Preston-on-the-Hill flask has a much clearer image of Menas and the camels and is framed with text, which is a blessing of St Menas. It was found during construction work for a new housing estate, and it is by no means clear how it got there. Other examples with a comparable date have been found elsewhere in England, including Durham, York, Derby, Baldock in Hertfordshire, Faversham and Canterbury. Although they are not unique, they are certainly not common. None, for example, have yet been found in Wales, Ireland or Scotland, although other contemporary Mediterranean objects have.

Who was St Menas?

St Menas was an early Christian saint dating to the Roman period who died in around the year 300AD. Christianity was introduced into Egypt, traditionally by St Mark, and became well established during the 2nd and early 3rd centuries in the multi-ethnic city of Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast. During the 541 Council of Chalcedon differences about theological understanding of the nature of Christ caused the Coptic Church of Egypt to split from Rome, and to establish its own clerical administration with its own pope, which it retains today. St Menas is part o the Coptic Christian tradition.

Pilgrim flask of St Menas at the British Museum, findspot unknown. BM1875,1012.16. Source: British Museum

There are a number of versions of the story of St Menas, and it is likely that the stories of St Menas and St Gordius were conflated into a single story. Probably the most popular version is that Menas was martyred in Phrygia, possibly during the reign of Diocletian in the 3rd Century for wishing to give up service in the Roman army to become a hermit in the service of God. Egypt had a tradition of eremitical worship in the desert, most famously represented by St Paul of Thebes (died c.345) and his follower St Antony (died c.356). The soldiers who killed Menas tried to burn his body but it remained unharmed. Pope Athanasius of Alexandria was visited by an angel who told him to take Menas into the desert for burial. Menas was carried on either one or two camels, and when the camel/s suddenly stopped and refused to go further, it was taken as a sign that he should be buried at the spot. A spring erupted into life where he was buried. The grave was forgotten until the 4th century. The story is that it was rediscovered by a shepherd when a wounded sheep submerged itself in the spring and was cured. As the shepherd continued to heal his sheep in the spring, the story began to spread. According to the legend Constantine the Great sent his daughter, afflicted with leprosy, to be cured. Her recovery endowed the site with even greater acclaim. Not long afterwards the saint’s grave was discovered, and a church was erected at the site in the Mareotis area, now known as Abu Mena, located around 45km southwest of Alexandria. The saint’s remains were transferred to the crypt. It soon became a place of pilgrimage with a settlement around it catering to the expanding number pilgrims from both inside Egypt and beyond as news of the shrine continued to spread. The site became renowned for its responsiveness to prayers, including the delivery of miraculous cures, becoming the largest pilgrimage destination in the eastern Mediterranean, and was considered to be a patron of desert caravans and merchants.

The Arab-Muslim Conquest of Egypt between 639-646AD caused considerable difficulty for the Coptic religion, and the site seems to have been destroyed at this time. It was partially restored in the 8th century but underwent various reversals and seems to have gone out of fashion after the 10th century. Excavations in the early 20th century, and then from the 1960s have uncovered the foundations of the church and the associated monastery.

Pyxis showing St Mena. British Museum 1879,1220.1. Source: British Museum

The saint was often shown on the pilgrim flasks flanked by camels wearing a short long-sleeved tunic, with a wide belt, military cloak, laced boots and raised arms in the “orans” posture, which is a gesture used by the clergy when praying with or on behalf of the congregation. The British Museum has a flask (shown above) that is much less eroded than the Meols example, and depicts the same scene of the saint flanked by two camels. It is more obviously similar to the Preston-on-the-Hill example, but lacks the inscription. Most have a different scene on the reverse side, sometimes another saint, but often a more geometric pattern consisting of motifs, as in the Meols example, .

Just for comparison, the ivory pyxis (cylindrical box) above left, dating to the 6th century, made in Egypt and found in Italy, shows a much clearer and far more elaborate version of the scene. On this side of the box St Menas is shown standing beneath an arch, representing a shrine, with his hands raised, flanked by two recumbent camels, and approached by worshippers. The reverse side shows his martyrdom.

What were the pilgrim flasks used for?

The ruins of the early religious complex at Abu Mena. It included, amongst other things, two churches, a basilica, courts, hostels, baths, a baptistry and colonnades. Photo source: Wikipedia

Above all the Egyptian pilgrim flask was a personal expression of pilgrimage for the purchaser, serving a) as means of carrying a part of the divine with him or her, b) as the memento of a personally important and perhaps very remarkable journey and c) as a mechanism for advertising that the pilgrimage was undertaken.

Pilgrimage is a personal voyage, for reasons known only to the person making the journey. Motivations can vary from an illness or disability afflicting the person making the pilgrimage, or afflicting someone else on whose behalf the pilgrimage is made, to a general need to demonstrate penitence, piety or fulfil another inner need. These little mementos contain more than hope – they contain something precious and beloved, a bridge between a person and his or her God, often via the intercession of a benevolent saint to whom it was perhaps easier to relate. Finds in Alexandria indicate that St Menas had a popular local following, and those further afield attest to his wider importance. A long distance pilgrimage was an investment not only of financial cost, time and energy, but also time away from family, home and the means of making an income, so it involved sacrifice, without which perhaps the pilgrimage was probably much less significant.

The similarity between the flasks, whether poorly- or well made indicates that they were mass-produced. They were not special to the producer, except as a means of making income, but they were immensely special to the pilgrim. Because the flasks were very small, between c.9 and 20cm tall, they were highly portable, and could be carried home even over very long distances without difficulty. Pilgrimage sites today still sell little objects for visitors to take home. Lourdes and Santiago de Compostella are two obvious examples, but at a visit to St Winifred’s well in Holywell, north Wales, I found that it too has a gift shop where you can purchase religiously-themed memorabilia.

Piers Baker-Bates of the Open University talks about the value of his own pilgrimage memento, helping to clarify the personal connection that people have with pilgrimage objects. This is part of the transcript from a short video, which at the time of writing you can find on the OU site here:

This is the pilgrimage medal I had after I went to Santiago [de Compostela] in 1995. It’s just the ordinary cheap, lead model they sell in the tourist shops there, nothing special at all, but it was simply, if you like, my memento mori of the expedition.
It’s a scallop shell. The scallop shell has traditionally been the symbol of St James because it is a native of Galicia, which is the region of Spain where Santiago de Compostela is, and supposedly, according to legend, when his body was found it was surrounded by scallop shells, and this is therefore ever since been the symbol of the saint. So you will not just see the scallop as an individual symbol, but if you look at churches, if you look at hospices, if you look at other buildings connected with St James, they all have somewhere on them the scallop shell because it is the symbol of the saint.

If the chain wasn’t broken I’d still wear it round my neck all the time and it serves to remind me of something I did and I would like to do again eventually. If I was a medieval pilgrim, I’d have worn it in my hat, and you would have seen a wonderful selection of people who’d been to all the major shrines, who had a selection of these in their hats, so you’d have Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, Rome – they all had their own symbols. . .

Even though there are millions of these in the world, it still has meaning because it has meaning for me in particular, because it is particular to me, but also if someone else has one of their own, it will mean something to them. But at the same time, as a symbol, it means something to everyone, so when anyone looks at one of these they will recognise the symbol and understand what it means.

The vessel could contain the holy water of the well, the sand surrounding the shrine or liturgical oils. Some vessels were more elaborate than others. The Meols example, even though highly abraded, was probably never a very sophisticated piece of craftwork, meaning that the pilgrim who bought it probably had little spare money to spend. In Egypt, nearly all the complete examples were found in funerary contexts, indicating that they were sufficiently significant to the living that they wished to meet the afterlife with their pilgrim flasks at their sides.

Precursors of the the pilgrim flask

Clay vessel dating to the New Kingdom, painted with concentric rings, now in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology (UC66492). Source: Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

The Coptic era pilgrim flasks were not an innovative form of pottery. The form emerged in the earlier New Kingdom (1550-1069BC). These were in their turn were based on vessels imported from the Levant in the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295BC). The form was soon taken up and copied by Egyptian potters who produced them for local demand. They were usually manufactured in clay, like the later pilgrim flasks, and sometimes other materials including glass, faience, stone and even metal. The early clay examples were frequently provided with a coloured slip and decoration that emulated the Near Eastern examples with concentric circles on each face. Kilroe suggests that the concentric circles were equivalent to branding, and that they were indicative of the contents of the flasks. They grew in popularity in the 19th Dynasty (1295-1186BC), and became part of the potter’s repertoire from that point forward. Their function was probably somewhat different from the later pilgrim flasks. One suggestion is that they were used for carrying valuable perfumed oils.

New Year flask from Egypt, now in the Walter’s Museum (48.419)

These were followed by so-called New Year’s flasks, which have the same basic shape, but with handles so small that they are merely decorative rather than functional. The New Year’s flasks are often ornate and are usually made of faience, an expensive material exclusive to the elite. New Year was one of the most important dates in the Egyptian calendar, marking the beginning of the Nile flood, which replenished the soil with fertile silts and saturated the land ready for germinating the seeds retained from the previous year’s harvest. Coinciding with the appearance in the night sky of the star Sirius, and closely associated with it, the new agricultural year was celebrated in an annual New Year festival called wep renpet meaning “opening of the year.” During the Saite 26th Dynasty (c.664-535BC) New Year flasks became a particularly popular celebratory item. They are found both in Egypt and abroad and are often decorated with papyrus and lily capitals. The lug handles on the shoulders are often in the form of the deity Thoth, represented as a baboon, responsible for knowledge, wisdom and the calculation of time. Nands of decoration around the body of the vessels and down the sides are also common. Many have hieroglyphs, often mentioning the wep renpet, together with favoured deities.

How did the Meols flask arrive in England?

Coins found in the northwest, including examples from the Wirral. Source: Philpott 2020, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, table V.1, p.53

F.H. Thompson discusses whether the Meols flask had been acquired at the St Menas shrine when it was brought to England or whether it was brought to the area at a much later date. There is no reason to doubt that it was manufactured in the 6th or 7th centuries, and there are arguments in favour of it having been brought to England at that time. As Thompson says, “finds of the late Saxon period from Meols are sufficiently common to suggest that this flask may well be contemporary.” The presence of three mid to late 6th century Byzantine coins in the Meols area are consistent with connections to the southeast Mediterranean at that time. This view is supported by William Anderson who believes that the flask may be associated with other evidence of long-distant contact, “namely amphorae and imported fine wares found at Tintagel in Cornwall, and other sites in Ireland, Wales, England and Scotland,” possibly representing direct trading contacts between the Mediterranean and and the west of Britain. Robert Philpott’s examination of early Byzantine coins from the northwest also supports a Mediterranean connection: “Although we lack diagnostic material to identify the elite with whom Mediterranean trade was conducted, the finds indicate an entry point at the port of Meols.” The Wirral coins, from Leasowe, Moreton,, Seacombe and Landican were issued over a period between 518 – 541 AD.

Susanne Bangert suggests two primary routes by which objects from Alexandria may have reached Britain. The first is an overland route across Europe, along the Rhine corridor or through Italy and via the Alps. Her other proposed route, by ship, would have passed through the Straits of Gibraltar and north up the Atlantic coast, putting into ports along the west cost of Britain, including Cornwall, Wales and perhaps Meols.

Beautiful photograph of Hilbre Island. Source: hilbreisland.info

It is a possibility that the pilgrim flask was connected with early Christian pilgrimage at Hilbre Island, just off the Wirral as part of a global pilgrimage circuit to Christian monasteries and shrines. As unlikely as this sounds, it is not beyond the bounds of probability, as some of the Egyptian pilgrim flasks in England are found in the rough vicinity of former monastic sites (Canterbury, Derby, Durham, Norton, Runcorn and York). Christianity arrived in England during the Roman occupation in the 4th century, after which it existed alongside pagan religions of the Anglo-Saxons until the arrival of Irish Christianity on the one hand, and the arrival of St Augustine’s mission to England from Rome in 597. Monasteries were established in both traditions, but many were destroyed by Viking raids during the 9th century. Only those of the Roman tradition were restored in the 10th century. Pilgrimage was a popular activity in Britain from the early Christian period until the end of the medieval period, and it is possible that the Meols flask was deposited or lost during a pilgrim’s visit to the tidal Hilbre Island. Although a monastic cell was established in the late 11th century by St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey in Chester, there was apparently a much earlier shrine to the obscure St Hildeberga, which the St Werburgh charters appear to confirm.

An example from Baldock, Herts., in the Letchworth Museum, no.7421. Source: Fitzpatrick-Matthews 2010

Another possibility is that although originally purchased at the Menas shrine, the Meols (and other English flask finds) were brought not directly from the site, but during near-contemporary or slightly later periods from Alexandria, locations in the Levant and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, where many more Menas flasks have been found. A generation or two on from the original pilgrims who purchased them, they may have entered local markets as devotional curios, sold by their families to contemporary travellers to raise cash. Then too, at a much later date, it could have been acquired as an antiquity by a collector, or as a travel memento by someone on military service in the Near East, or making the Grand Tour. Philpott, in his analysis of coins from northwest England argues against this: “If the coins were modern losses by tourists or soldiers who served in eastern Europe, the Middle East or north Africa, as has often been asserted, the material recovered by metal detectorists should range more widely through the Byzantine era to embrace, for example, the common anonymous bronze issues of the late tenth to eleventh centuries, as well as other coins of Turkish, north African or Near Eastern origin.”

On balance, the available evidence seems to point a to a connection between the port of Meols and the eastern Mediterranean until the 7th century, and it seems likely that the Meols flask was introduced, along with other objects like the coins described by Philpott, at that time.

Final comments

There are four distinct phases that we know of in the life of the Meols pilgrim flask. The first is its production. Raw material sources were acquired, and the flask was manufactured. The raw material was clay, very easy to source in the Nile Delta, and the manufacturing process was mundane. Hundreds of pilgrim flasks have survived, and this is one of the less elaborate examples, produced quickly and without flourishes. The fact that the Menas pilgrim flask left the site of Abu Menas strongly suggests that it was purchased by a pilgrim, who bought one of the less expensive examples, and was probably not particularly well off.

The site of Abu Mena today. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Next, we find the pilgrim flask in Meols, so we know that it travelled. There are a number of possible explanations for how it left the eastern Mediterranean and arrived in Meols, all of them viable. Found in sand dunes, which cover the site of a small port, with a market, the object could have been hidden in a building that decayed, or may have been lost by its owner in or around the settlement.

The discovery of the flask in 1955, another stepping stone in its history, resulted in it being donated to its next port of call, the Grosvenor Museum, in 1956. The museum deemed it of sufficient curiosity value to have replicas made, which were sold in the museum’s shop.

Subsequently, a number of academic papers were written about it. Peter Carrington published a photograph of it in his book on Chester in 1994 (as mentioned at the beginning of this article, bringing us full circle), and it was described in some detail in a monograph about Meols in 2007. This little object has had quite an interesting life.

Although this is the story of an object, its real value lies in its part of a much bigger story – that of early Christian pilgrimage. When considered in the light of other pilgrim sites, and other objects that have travelled from the eastern Mediterranean to other parts of the world, it becomes much more than an object, and part of a fascinating narrative about people, movements and the way in which Christianity was understood and expressed in the 6th and early 7th centuries. The St Menas pilgrim flasks also offer the chance to explore the relationship between Christianity and Egypt’s pagan past, via the survival of some of PHaraonic Egypt’s ideas and traditions in object form. Finally, the presence of the pilgrim flask at Meols raises questions about the development of trade and transport on the Wirral and in Chester in the post-Roman period.

If anyone has anything to add to the story of the Meols pilgrim flask, do get in touch.

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The Wirral, showing Meols and Chester. Source: Google Maps

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Sources:

Books and papers:

Anderson, W. 2004. An archaeology of late antique pilgrim flasks. Anatolian Studies 54, p.79-93.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3643040

Anderson, W. 2007. Menas flasks in the West: pilgrimage and trade at the end of antiquity. Ancient West and East 6, p.221-43

Bagnall, R.S. 2001. Archaeological Work on Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, 1995–2000. American Journal of Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America, 105 (2), p.227–243

Bangert, S. 2007 Menas ampullae: a case study of long-distance contacts. In A. Harris (ed) Incipient Globalization? Long-distance contacts in the sixth century. British Archaeological Reports International Series 1644 / Reading Medieval Studies 32. p.27-33.
https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/84537/1/RMS-2006-04_S._Bangert,_Menas_ampullae,_a_case_study_of_long-distance_contacts.pdf

Bourriau, J. 2004. The beginning of amphora production in Egypt, in J. Bourriau and J. Phillips (eds.), Invention and Innovation. The Social Context of Technological Change 2. Egypt, the Aegean and the Near East, 1650-1150 BC, Oxford, 78-95

Brooks Hedstrom, D.L. 2019. Archaeology of Early Christianity in Egypt. In Pettegrew, D.K., Caraher, W.R. and Davis, T.D (eds). The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology, Oxford Handbooks, Oxford Academic.

Carrington, P. 1994. Chester. Batsford / English Heritage (flask mentioned on page 54, and shown on page 56, figure 33)

Craggs, J.D. 1982. Hilbre: The Cheshire Island: Its History and Natural History. Liverpool University Press

Farmer, David. 2011 (5th edition, revised). The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University Press.

Fitzpatrick-Matthews, K.J. 2016. Defining Fifth-century Ceramics in North Hertfordshire. Internet Archaeology, vol. 41.
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue41/4/toc.html

Griffiths, D. and Bangert, S. 2007. Ceramic: The St Menas Ampulla. In Griffiths, D., Philpott, R.A. and Egan, G. 2007 (see below), p.58-9

Griffiths, D., Philpott, R.A. and Egan, G. 2007. Meols. The Archaeology of the North Wirral Coast. Discoveries and observations in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a catalogue of collections. Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 68, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-966-1/dissemination/pdf/Meols_text_2020_complete-lo.pdf

Grossmann, P. 1998. The Pilgrimage Center of Abû Mînâ. in D. Frankfurter (ed.), Pilgrimage & Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt. Leiden-Boston-Köln, Brill. p.282

Harris, A. 2003 Byzantium, Britain and the West: the archaeology of cultural identity AD 400-650. Tempus.

O’Ferrall, R.S.M. 1951. A Pilgrim’s Flask found in Derby. Journal of Derbyshire Archaeology and Natural History Society 71, p.78-9.

Philpott, R.A. 2020. Early Byzantine Copper Coins from Lowland North-West England. New Finds from Wirral, Cheshire and West Lancashire. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, volume 90, 2020, p.51-70

Richards, J.D., Naylor, J. and Holas-Clark, C. Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy: using portable antiquities to study Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age England. 4.4.5. Meols, Cheshire. Internet Archaeology
https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue25/2/4.4.35.html

Stevenson, A. 2015. The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections. Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, p.35

Thompson F.H. 1956. Pilgrim’s flask from Meols. Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society 43, p.48-9

Wyn Griffiths, D. 1991. Anglo-Saxon England and the Irish Sea Region AD 800 – 1100. An Archaeological Study of the Lower Dee and Mersey as a Border Area. A Thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Department of Archaeology, the University of Durham
http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1488/1/1488.pdf

Websites:

Gallorini, C. Innovating through Interactions: A Tale of Three Flasks.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260495223_Innovation_Through_Interactions_A_Tale_of_Three_’Pilgrim_Flasks’

Kilroe, L. 2014. Biography of an Egyptian Pilgrim Vessel. UCL 28th February 2014
UCL Culture Blog
https://bit.ly/3kBc65O

Medieval London. Ampulla
Fordham University
https://medievallondon.ace.fordham.edu/collections/show/90

St George Orthodox Ministry. The Coptic Pilgrims of the Wirral, 4th November 2020
http://www.stgeorgeministry.com/the-coptic-pilgrims-of-the-wirral/

A visit to St Deiniol’s Parish Church, Worthenbury

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The approach to St Deiniol’s from the road.

Worthenbury, a small village on the border between England and Wales seems an unlikely location for a really superb Grade-1 listed Georgian church built on such an ambitious scale, but the two fit very well together. The village is picturesque, the scenery peaceful and the church stunning. It was built between between 1735 and 1739 by Richard Trubshaw, financed by the local Puleston family of Emral Hall, and the church was consecrated, with all due ceremony, by the Bishop of Chester on Palm Sunday 1739. It is thought to be one of the most impressive Georgian churches in Wales, if not the best. It has been beautifully maintained by its Worthenbury custodians.

The church is dedicated to St Deiniol (pronounced day-nee-ol, the Welsh form of Daniel, died c.584). The saint has a certain local interest, although the details are far from clear. It is generally agreed that he was the son of St Dunawd, who may or may not have been the first abbot of a monastery at Bangor on Dee known today as Bangor Monachorum, meaning “Bangor of the Monks.” The origins of the monastery are buried in a cloud of myth, and it is by no means clear whether a monastery was actually built there. According to the Clwyd and Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) the name Bangor Monachorum actually appears in documents no earlier than 1607. Popular history has it that the current church of St Dunawd was built on its remains but I have seen no documentary or archaeological data to support this, meaning that there either isn’t any, or that it is doing a good job of hiding.

Rather than looking for solid data, here’s a brief version of the usual story of St Deiniol, paraphrased from the lengthy entries in the The Dictionary of Welsh Biography and the Oxford Dictionary of Saints. One version has it that St Dunawd joined forces with his three sons, one of whom was Deiniol, to found a monastery of on the banks of the Dee, at Bangor on Dee, becoming its first abbot. Another version suggests that Deiniol was the first abbot, having first established a parent monastery in Bangor in northwest Wales. Whatever the case, St Deiniol is best known for being a monk and bishop, who is credited by Bede for having established a monastery with over 2000 monks, the most famous in Britain at the time, nearly half of whom were slaughtered by the Anglo-Saxons. It is not entirely clear why he was canonized.

Domesday’s record of Hurdingberie (the Anglo-Saxon name for Worthenbury), highlighted in red. Source: Open Domesday

Worthenbury sits on the Anglo-Welsh border that lies around 10km southeast of Wrexham, and is 3km west of Bangor on Dee. The Worthenbury Brook runs a short distance to the south of the church. The village is surrounded by undulating fields. Probably a small nucleated settlement in the 10th century, it was apparently little bigger by the time of Domesday, when it appears under the name “Hurdingberie,” a name of Anglo-Saxon origin, and came under the tenancy of one “Robert, son of Hugh,” the Norman baron Robert FitzHugh, who held it from the crown, amongst many other properties. At the time of Domesday, 1086, its inhabitants consisted of 3 villagers, 1 slave and 4 “other” (information sourced from the Open Domesday project). Its holdings included 10 ploughlands, 2 lord’s plough teams, 4 men’s plough teams, a meadow of 1 acre and a mill. There are some beautiful medieval ridge-and-furrow fields in the vicinity, shown in the photograph below.

Worthenbury village. The church is at bottom left and ridge-and-furrow fields are at top right. Source: CPAT – photo 04-c-0049

It is thought that the first religious house on the site was a chapel, first mentioned in 1388, perhaps attached to the elusive monastery of Bangor Monachorum. In 1277 century Edward I (ruled 1272-1307), in the throes of his territorial disputes with Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, dispossessed the owner of Emral Hall, Emma Audley, who had married a Welsh prince, and moved her back to her family home in Shropshire. Worthenbury was at that time in Maelor Saesenag, and found itself shifting between English and Welsh ownership, depending on who was in the ascendancy. Edward gave Emral instead Sir Roger Puleston. The Pulestons came from near Newport in Shropshire, where they had settled during the reign of Henry III (ruled 1216-1272). They had Norman roots, had proven themselves in battle, and could be relied upon to stand up against Welsh hostilities in the frontier position in which Worthenbury found itself. Emral Hall remained in the Puleston family for over 700 years. The architect Robert Trubshaw was hired to remodel Emral Hall for the Puleston family, but even afterwards it retained many earlier features.

Richard Trubshaw obviously did a good job for the Puleston family, because he was hired to build today’s church between 1735 and 1739 at a cost of £955.00. It is always difficult to know what a sum of money actually means in the past, but fortunately the National Archives has a currency convertor provides equivalents. In today’s money, £955 equates to £112,897. Alternatively, it was equivalent to the price of 139 horses or 205 head of cattle. The gothic architectural ideal had dominated British architecture for such a long time, that the Georgian aesthetic, when done this well, comes as a breath of fresh air. St Deiniol’s is a superb example of refined Georgian ideas.

Palazzo Thiene, Vicenza, Italy 1542–1558. Source: Wikipedia

Georgian architecture is named for four kings named George who reigned in succession, from the accession of George I in 1714 to 1830, when George IV (“Prinny”) died. Georgian architectural principles, employed for domestic, institutional and ecclesiastical architecture, were typified by attractive symmetry, space and light, the latter requiring many large windows. Georgian architects were greatly influenced by the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), whose governmental palace, Palazzo Thiene, was characterized by vast, symmetrically aligned windows with semi-circular tops and is a clear antecedent of Georgian aesthetics.

The 3-storey church tower, showing the dramatic contrast of the creamy-coloured sandstone and the deep red brick

Trubshaw’s new church was established on the site of at least two pre-existing churches, one of wattle and daub in 544AD and another, in 1557, built of brick and timber, both belonging to the Bangor on Dee parish. Worthenbury only became the centre of its own parish in 1689 when Sir Roger Puleston succeeded in separating it from Bangor. Its rectory, at the opposite end of the village, had been built in 1657 by Judge Puleston for the minister to Worthenbury who was also tutor to the judge’s two sons. Whilst the new church was being built, the congregation worshipped at Emral Hall’s private chapel.

The footprint is that of a traditional church, with an east-west orientation. It includes the usual components of a bell tower, a nave for the public, and a chancel for the clergy with an altar, all beautifully preserved. The Georgian style simply yells a new type of self-confidence and a pride in the here-and-now. The semi-circular chancel, a revival of the Romanesque, is a particularly nice touch, softening the angles and giving the church a real air of distinction.

The brickwork of the church was arranged in header-and-stretcher or Flemish bond (alternating long and short), and it was provided with a slated roof. The sandstone is from the Cefn Mawr quarries in north Wales, which produces yellow sandstone, varying in both colour and quality. The sandstone at St Deiniol’s is a very fine-grained creamy colour that contrasts beautifully with the warm red of the brick. The urn finials on the corners at the top of the tower are replicas of those at the main entrance to Emral Park, which are apparently now at Eccleston Church, on the Duke of Westminster’s estate. They support weather vanes. The finials mid-way along the balustrade are topped with crucifixes. The tower also has arched windows at top and bottom, and circular windows at centre, with radiating keystones. It was also fitted with blue-faced clock with golden numerals, made by Joyce’s of Whitchurch.

Georgian churches, being so much newer than medieval predecessors, stand some hope of surviving changes of fashion and fortunately, the interior of St Deiniol’s church has been infinitely better respected than many of its predecessors. Many medieval churches have been disfigured on the inside, barely reconcilable with the original conception.Later architectural embellishments and the addition of inappropriate funerary monuments may disguise original beautiful lines, and the installation of modern paraphernalia can be ruinous to a church’s interior. Westminster Abbey, for example, retains much of its essential dignity on the exterior, but has been battered into often vulgar submission inside. St Deiniol’s retains its fine lines. It has a fabulous interior, retaining its extraordinary and lovely box-pews, which I have never seen before, each with a family crest painted on the side. These provide a sense of what it must have been like to form one of the congregation, all together in one space, but physically divided by family and status. Rather than the seating being lined up in rows, the boxes give a sense both of intimacy and social division. The box-pews of the Pulestons, the most important family, were those nearest the altar, and were furnished with chairs rather than pews, and hearths. One of these currently contains a small display showing the history of the church. The minister was allocated the pew below the three-tier pulpit. Less important families sat in the boxes behind these positions, and the church wardens were confined to the rear of the church. Some of the pews for the lower orders were not installed until 1810, and were sourced from Gresford parish church.

A gallery was added in 1830 to accommodate musicians and an organ, and displays the royal coat of arms. It is full-width, with tiered seating for the choir. It is supported on slender cast iron columns, and its panelled front displays the royal coat of arms.

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There are four stained glass windows. That in the south of the nave shows St Michael and is in memory of Captain Summers who died in the First World War and lived at Emral. To the south of the chancel is a window given by Catherine Theodosia Puleston, in memory of her parents and sisters. The origin of the east window is a somewhat muddled story. When Emma Corbet married Richard Puleston and moved into Emral, she recorded finding a collection of stained glass fragments and when she died in 1797, her will asked that the pieces should be made up into a new window at Worthenbury. Quite where the glass came from, or why the pieces were kept at Emral, is uncertain, although it is speculated that it may have come from from a 14th century window in Westminster College, or from the demolished Emral Hall chapel. Interestingly, the new window was built inside the original plain window. The small circular window was installed in 1913 in memory of Violet Parry, another connection with the Puleston family.

Don’t forget to look up. The plaster ceiling has been given some really fine baroque – rococo decorative features. As well as some attractive ornamentation it features a gilded dove and sunburst, and small grey clouds. My photograph makes it look rather brash, but from ground level, it looks charming.

Of the smaller fixtures and fittings, the vestry doors and small collecting boxes inscribed with “Remember the Poor” were made from wood that was rescued from the previous church. The font dates to around 1745, and above it is a shelf, which was designed to receive bread for the poor. This tradition survived up until 1939, when soup, cloth and coal were still distributed to those in need. The bells were cast in 1746, and were recast and hung in 1958. The rather battered cross in the chancel is the Emral Cross, formerly in the chapel in Emral Park, which was demolished in 1775. The two-tiered chandelier was installed in 1816, and the single-tiered chandelier was installed in 1898. there are numerous funerary memorials, mainly to members of the Puleston family, but other local families are also represented. Family connections to the church are also preserved in the three Puleston funerary hatchments set up along the west end of the church. Hatchments are diamond-shaped, made of wood, and contain the components of the coat of arms that has been earned by the deceased, and which he is entitled to display. There is modern lighting and heating, but it is very well done.

Large scale repairs were undertaken in 1851, which included re-roofing the building due to damage by deathwatch beetle.

Within the church, the earliest burial known is that of Mrs Anne Puleston, wife of John Puleston, dating to 1742. John Puleston was buried in 1746. The earliest of the churchyard’s graves cluster around the apse, made of yellow sandstone. The inscriptions are badly eroded and many are illegible, but a chest tomb of 1768 is the earliest of those that can be deciphered. There are a number of different styles of grave markers, including chests, table tombs and tablets, and they continue into the 19th century, indicating that people from surrounding villages were also buried there.

Emral Hall was sadly demolished in 1936, although the magnificent Jacobean ceiling of the banqueting hall, together with the mullion windows, were purchased by Sir William Clough-Ellis and installed in the town hall of of Portmeirion, where they remain preserved. Today Emral Park serves as a horse stud, dairy farm and caravan park.

The church no longer holds congregations, but this is of very recent date. It is anticipated that the church will be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Friends of Friendless Churches, who do such an excellent job of caring for churches without owners, amongst whom are those like St Deiniol’s, which are no longer in a position to pay the Anglican authorities for their services, but retain real value as heritage.

My sincere thanks to Catherine Starkey for arranging access during very icy weather, when the church would usually have been closed.
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East window

___

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Visiting:

The church is no longer in active service for congregations, and at the time of writing it is expected that the Friends of Friendless Churches will take it over. This means that its opening times are uncertain at the moment, but these may be forthcoming. Local people have done a great job of keeping it open for visitors, and they very kindly opened it for me (with my sincere thanks) just before Christmas when, although it was usually open during the day, it had been temporarily closed due to the abysmal weather conditions.

It is easy to find. There is one road through Worthenbury, and the church is clearly visible heading north to south, on the right, and if you are heading south to north, it is at left on the right-hand corner past the bridge.

Thinking of it in terms of those with mobility issues, there are two steps leading up from the road through the gate into the churchyard, with a rail on the left as you face the church, and there are a small number of steps in the church itself.

Sources:

Books and papers:

Farmer, David. 2011 (5th edition, revised). The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University Press.

Pamphlets:

Anon, n.d. The Parish Church of St Deiniol, Worthenbury. A Guide for Visitors.

Harrison, Sunter. 1990. Worthenbury Church, Emral Chapel and the Pulestons. Published privately.

Websites:

British Listed Buildings
Parish Church of St Deiniol
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300001705-parish-church-of-st-deiniol-willington-worthenbury#.Y8xxkHbP3IU

Clywd and Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT). Historic Landscape Characterization, Maelor Saesneg. Wrexham County Borough
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2020-09/worthenbury-cons-area-assessment.pdf

Clwyd and Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT). Worthenbury: Historic Settlement Survey. Wrexham County Borough
https://cpat.org.uk/ycom/wrexham/worthenbury.pdf

Coflein
St Deiniol’s Church, Worthenbury
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/307972/

Dictionary of Welsh Biography
Dunawd
https://biography.wales/article/s-DUNA-BWR-0505
Deiniol
https://biography.wales/article/s-DEIN-IOL-0584

Open Domesday: Worthenbury
(by Powell-Smith, Anna)
https://opendomesday.org/place/SJ4246/worthenbury/

Puleston family, Emral, Flintshire
National Library of Wales
https://archives.library.wales/index.php/puleston-family-emral-flintshire

Worthenbury Conservation Area Assessment and Management Plan
Wrexham County Borough Council 2009
https://www.wrexham.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2020-09/worthenbury-cons-area-assessment.pdf

A winter walk through the fields from Churton to Farndon

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The walk through the fields from Churton to Farndon and back again is always enjoyable, taking about an hour for the full circuit, or less if you don’t pause for photos. It always varies enormously by season, but was quite spectacularly distinctive yesterday, glazed in frost under a bright blue sunny sky. Where the tractors had been out, during wet weather the deep tracks along some of the footpaths had filled with rainwater and frozen solid, but the ridges between were ice-free. Literally freezing in the shade, it was actually quite warm in the sun. A splendid walk, all colour and light.

The route taken from Churton to Farndon along official footpaths (in bright pink). The return route takes the pink footpath that starts in Brewery Lane. The red blobs are the approximate locations of two possible prehistoric sites, now ploughed out. Source of map: The Public Map Viewer.

Cold!

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December frost in Churton

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A beautiful day all day yesterday, and it was lovely today too, right up until the skies opened. Fortunately, by that time the chilli con carne was in the slow cooker and the log fire was doing its stuff most effectively.

Just a few snaps from the garden, capturing some of that crisp contrast between the white lace of the frost, with all its snowflake complexity, and the autumnal shades and shapes, framed, captured and transformed.

As soon as the sun crept around the corner of the house, the frost started to melt, its drips capturing a myriad of colours. For the first time since I put them out a couple of weeks ago, the bird feeders were a hub of activity, a reflection of just how hard the ground is.

100 years ago today: Finding Tutankhamen

Biban el-Muluk (“Gates of the Kings”)

Frontpiece of Volume 1 of Description de l’Egypt. Source: Wikipedia

The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 begins with Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. Along with his army, Napoleon sent his extraordinary team of “savants,” some 150 intellectuals and scientists who recorded everything they found about Egypt’s present and past. The books produced by Napoleon’s savants, complete with beautiful illustrations of Egypt’s Pharaonic heritage, were now circulating in western Europe and America and being received with rapture. Jumping on the bandwagon of this enthusiasm, museums started to send representatives to Egypt to secure items for their collections. Some of these agents were little better than treasure hunters. The objective was the discovery of beautiful objects to furnish museums, not the participation in historical research.

Less than a quarter of a century after Napoleon’s arrival in Egypt, the French scholar and polymath Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) used the trilingual text on the Rosetta Stone to crack the translation of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script, unlocking the door to Egyptian religious beliefs, social organization, political dealings and wars. The year was 1822, a full century before the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen. Many more decades of research were required to build up a body of translated texts, from which ancient Egyptian history might begin to be articulated and understood.

Although the man who eventually discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen was Howard Carter (1874-1939), who was a very different proposition from the run-of-the-mill glory hunters who had so often preceded him, it was not Carter but the retired American lawyer Theodore Davis (1838-1915) who had first stab at finding an intact tomb in Biban el-Muluk, Gateway of the Kings, more popularly known today as the Valley of the Kings.

Panorama of the Valley of the Kings. Photograph by Nikola Smolenski. Source: Wikipedia

The Valley of the Kings is located on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor. It had been the burial place of many New Kingdom (c.1550-1099BC) kings of Egypt since about 1490BC when Thutomse I selected it as his burial place. The last king to be buried there was probably Ramesses X in around 1099BC. Between these two burial events, some 390 years apart, around 65 royal and noble individuals were entombed in the Valley, but all of the known royal tombs had been robbed for their treasures, an activity that began during the ancient Egyptian period. In spite of policing of the valley throughout the New Kingdom, and the promise of the death penalty for thieves, tomb robbery was endemic. Although some tombs were robbed via their entrances, other robbers had ignored the front doors, and instead tunnelled in from above or from the side to avoid detection.

Tomb robbery reached such a crisis point that In the 21st Dynasty (1070–945 BC, some 800 years after the death of Tutankhamen) the High Priests of the god Amen gathered together the mummified remains of the kings who had survived the tomb robbers, rewrapped them, provided them with labels and stored them safely in hidden tombs known today as caches. The bodies were, themselves, rarely of little interest to tomb robbers, who were seeking the rich, valuable and easily accessible treasures that accompanied the dead, particularly precious metals that could be melted down and sold on, or jewellery incorporating precious gems, that could be broken up and re-used.

The East Valley. Source: Wikipedia

Robbing tombs was not, unfortunately, confined to antiquity, and as western interest in Egyptian art developed, new objects began to appear in the antiquities markets of Cairo and Alexandria. Sir William Flinders Petrie, one of the pioneers of serious archaeological investigation in Egypt, was amongst those purchasing for research purposes, but others were hoovering up artefacts in much greater numbers to sell to both museums and private collectors. The sudden appearance on the market of all these objects, some of them truly remarkable, raised obvious questions about who was delivering them and where they were coming from. The burial grounds of the kings and nobles were all on the east bank of the Nile at Luxor, and nearby was a sprawling village. It emerged that some local families had become expert at locating tombs, mainly of the nobility, some of which lay beneath their homes, and when there became a demand for ancient Egyptian objects, began to empty tomb contents piece by piece to earn a living from the sales. By trickle-feeding objects into the antiquities market, they hoped to divert suspicion.

The possibility that there might remain an intact tomb was receding all the time. Those royal tombs that had been opened by the early 20th century revealed splendid architectural achievements and stunning decorative schemes, capturing complex religious ideas, but relatively few objects had been found. They hinted at former treasure troves, and that raised hopes in the minds of explorers. This was the specific dream of Theodore Davis when he began his excavations in the Valley of the Kings in 1902. Davis, a retired American lawyer, was granted the concession for the Valley of the Kings, in spite of his lack of archaeological training. A concession is a type of license to excavate, and the system still operates in Egypt today. When it is granted to an individual or institution, no-one else is permitted to excavate within the zone covered by the concession.

Funerary mask of Thuya. Source: Wikipedia

Davis was churning through the Valley of the Kings like a human bulldozer. In 1905, three years after he was awarded the concession, the dream of an intact royal tomb suddenly became a realistic proposition when Davis found the tomb of Yuya and his wife Thuya, numbered KV46 (KV standing for King’s Valley). Yuya and his wife Thuya were non-royal nobles who were allocated a burial space within the Valley of the Kings because they were parents of Tiye. Tiye became the wife of Amenhotep III, mother of Akhenaten and grandmother of Tutankhamen. The burial chamber of KV46 was was stuffed full of fabulous artefacts, an unambiguous but tantalizing indication that an intact royal tomb might yet be discovered. In total, Davis is credited with discovering 30 tombs between 1902 and 1914. He also found three items bearing the name of Tutankhamen, who appeared to be a missing king. One of these was found in 1907 in the unpromisingly named Pit 54, which contained abandoned objects relating directly to the burial of the king, including embalming materials and storage jars.

Howard Carter (1874 –1939). Source: Wikipedia

In the meantime, Howard Carter could merely watch the work in the Valley unfold and keep himself busy elsewhere. Carter was well respected in Egyptology circles both as an archaeologist and as a member of the Antiquities Service. He had gone to Egypt as an illustrator and watercolour painter and excelled at both. As an archaeologist he had trained under the most notable pioneer of archaeological techniques at that time, Sir William Flinders Petrie (1853–1942). He had moved on to become Inspector-General of Monuments of Upper Egypt, as a much-valued member of the Egyptian Antiquities Service from from 1900 to 1904, when he resigned on a point of principal over an argument with a French tourist. Carter remained in Egypt hoping for the right job to come along, hiring himself out in the interim for various projects, nibbling around the edges of ancient Egyptian exploration in Luxor. One of the more useful short-term appointments that he picked up was the recording the objects from the tomb of Yuya and Thuya, which gave him an intimate understanding of both the contents of the tomb, and the potential of the valley.

George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In 1906 Carter began excavating for the Earl of Carnarvon, who was in Luxor for his health, Carnarvon had been digging on an amateur basis but had caught the archaeological bug and wanted to ally himself to a credible archaeologist who could help him to take his new interest on to a more viable and formal footing. Carter and Carnarvon watched the discoveries being made in the Valley of the Kings with envious eyes. After 12 years of excavation and discovery, Davis feared that the valley was exhausted. It was only on his death in 1915 that the concession came up for grabs, and Lord Carnarvon moved fast to secure it for himself and Carter.

The First World War interrupted all archaeological activity in Egypt, and Carter himself was employed as a diplomatic courier. However, by 1917 life had settled down sufficiently for him to resume full time archaeological work in Luxor. By the time that Carnarvon’s Valley of the Kings concession could be acted upon, Carter had a strategy. He suspected that the fugitive references on objects to a king called Tutankhamen found by Davis, were far more important than anyone had yet understood. Although various royal mummies had been identified in the 21st Dynasty caches, Tutankhamen was not amongst them. Carter believed that the objects represented an as yet undiscovered tomb, one that might have escaped the attention of the ancient Egyptian tomb robbers, and he was sure that he could find it by digging down to the bedrock of the valley.

KV62

Isometric diagram showing the tomb of Tutankhamen, by R.F. Morgan. Source: Wikipedia

Carter’s first years of excavation in the valley were profoundly disappointing, both to himself as an archaeologist with hopes of making the ultimate discovery, and to Lord Carnarvon who was footing the bill. Carter was taking no chances, and wherever he started a new excavation, worked down to the bedrock, but the untouched tomb remained elusive. As Nick Reeves writes in The Complete Tutankhamun

Countless boys and men laboured to move thousands upon thousands of tones of limestone rubble by basked and hand-propelled Decauville railway. But finds were few.

In 1922, after five years of fruitless investment in Carter’s hunt for an intact tomb, Lord Carnarvon was wearied of failure but Carter was able to convince him to fund one last season. For Carter, knowing that he was the only person left believing that an intact tomb remained to be found, it was his last chance. Carnarvon did not bother travelling to Egypt for the excavation season, so when Carter found a partially concealed tomb entrance on found 4th November 1922, Carnarvon was at home at Highclere Castle in Hampshire.

Stephen Cross’s water flow diagram showing how flash floods cascaded into the central area where KV62, black dot on the far left, is located. Source: Stephen Cross (reference in Sources)

In the event, the tomb’s doorway had been hidden not by some devious ancient Egyptian method of concealment but by the prosaic deposition of layers of liquid mud carrying loose stone and other debris. Although it rains rarely in Luxor, when it does it, it does it properly, and the loose, dry sand, bits of stone and other surface materials dislodge instantly in the flash floods to become a thick, debris-bearing liquid that cascades down flood channels towards the floodplain below. At the end of the 18th Dynasty (c.1292 BC), a particularly fierce flash flood is thought to have plunged into the central area from different directions to where tombs KV55, KV62 (Tutankhamen) and KV63 are located. Where the channels met, in a less steeply inclined part of the valley, it slowed, depositing some of its muddy load, 1m (3ft) thick, whilst the rest continued downhill, flooding KV7 (Ramesses II) and the enormous KV5 (the sons of Ramesses II). The deposits then baked solid in the heat of the sun and looked very much like the surrounding natural bedrock. Another royal tomb, dating to the 19th Dynasty, had subsequently been excavated over the top of Tutankhamen’s tomb, but had not breached it. Huts dating to a later pharaoh were built over the top of both tombs, keeping the entrance of KV62 safe for centuries.

Carter’s policy of digging down through anything that stood in his way to reach the underlying bedrock was labour-intensive but rewarded him with the entrance to the tomb. The seals that Carter could see on the partially uncovered doorway to the tomb were badly worn and there was nothing on the visible section to identify who the owner might have been. Even though those seals were unbroken, there was absolutely no guarantee that the tomb was intact, because robbers might have tunnelled directly into the chambers. Frustratingly, Carter needed to notify Lord Carnarvon of the discovery, and await his arrival from England. He sent the following telegram to Carnarvon:

At last have made wonderful discovery in Valley; a magnificent tomb with seals intact; re-covered for your arrival; congratulations.

That night Carter wrote prosaically in his diary “Discovered tomb under tomb of Ramsses VI investigated same & found seals intact.” The following day, he began to put in place some basic infrastructure to prepare for the opening of the tomb. It must have been a period of terrible anxiety, but even with the limitations of travel in the early 1900s, Carnarvon and his daughter managed to arrive in Luxor less than three weeks later, on 23rd November 1922. Work resumed immediately.

Once the door was fully cleared, the names framed in cartouches announced that this was the tomb of Tutankhamen, vindication for Carter, who had searched for the king for 5 years. He must have been on Schrödinger-type tenterhooks, full of hope that he was about to make the biggest find in Egyptian archaeological history, but fearing that this was yet another robbed tomb. The passage on the other side of the door had been blocked with rubble by its builders to protect it from potential tomb robbers, and this had to be cleared. Another door was revealed.

Inner coffin of Tutankhamen in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Source: Wikipedia

On 26th November 1922, the second door was breached with a hole large to act as an inspection hatch. Carter was probably expecting to find another corridor on the other side, a long slender pathway with wide shallow steps, sloping gently downwards and possibly flanked by one or two side chambers until it eventually reached a burial chamber. These long, slender passage tombs, often with a dog-leg turn midway, were typical of a number of previous 18th Dynasty tombs. Carter made the small hole in the new door, and pushed his candle through:

At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, “can you see anything?” it was all I could do so get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things.”

Howard Carter with one of his team examining the remains of Tutankhamen. Photograph by Harry Burton. Source: Wikipedia

Electric light was soon installed, a metal gate replaced the wooden grille in front of the door and a small but illustrious team of specialists was assembled to carry out the long, slow work. Carter and his team continued to work in the tomb for six years, supervising the recording of the objects in situ, followed by their removal and accessioning into the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Now that he had found the tomb, Howard Carter was in no hurry. He was organized and conscientious, taking years to empty the tomb, maintaining detailed visual and written records as he proceeded. His diaries, notes and record cards are still available, digitized for online use by the Griffiths Institute. Perhaps the most immediately powerful record of the tomb content was provided by the photographer Harry Burton, who did a sublime job of capturing images of all that was found. His photographs are works of documentary art, forming a superlative record of how the objects in the tomb were deposited. Although the objects in glass cabinets in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo are beautiful, there is nothing like Burton’s photographs for understanding what the tomb looked like when it was found.

The antechamber of KV62 as it was found, photographed by Harry Burton. Source: Wikipedia

The tomb was emptied section by section. It would take Carter another decade before the job of recording, removing and conserving the objects in the tomb was complete. The sheer immensity of the task is hinted at by the photographs, but the simple fact that over 5000 objects had been crammed into that small set of rooms gives a better indication of the task facing Carter and his team. The sheer richness of the just the smaller objects found in the tomb are indicated by this list in the book The Complete Tutankhamun by Nicholas Reeves, on the contents page for Chapter 5:

Guardian Statues; Ritual Figures and Magical Objects; the shabtis; Little Golden Shrine; Wooden Funerary Models; Ritual Couches; Jewellery, amulets and regalia; Clothing and Textiles; Cosmetic Objects; Games and Game Boxes; Musical instruments; Writing materials and equipment; ‘Heirlooms’; Chariots and chariot equipment; weaponry; Sticks, staves and fans; Bends and headrests; Chairs and thrones; Boxes and chests; Tools and lamps; Metal and stone vessels.; Faïence and glass; Wine jars and other pottery; baskets; foodstuffs.

Pectoral with a translucent Libyan Desert Glass scarab at its centre. Source: Archaeology Wiki

Some of the objects were more unexpected than others. An iron dagger made of meteoric material that had presumably been found in the desert was included in the mummy bindings. A huge piece of Libyan Desert Glass, probably created during meteorite impacts on the desert sand, was incorporated into a stunning “pectoral,” a type of elaborate necklace that sat on the chest. These materials are very rare, and clearly had a unique intrinsic value in the 18th Dynasty.

That all of this remained in the tomb, with an awful lot more besides, is very surprising given that the tomb had been robbed twice during the period that the valley remained in use, probably not long after the tomb was first sealed, and certainly before the flash food at the end of the 18th Dynasty. Both incursions left evidence. The first robbery accessed the tomb via the entrance, after which the corridor between the entrance and the first internal door was blocked with rubble and the door re-sealed. The second robbers accessed the tomb via a tunnel excavated through the surrounding rock. Carter’s description of the scene resulting in the Annexe is evocative:

One [tomb robber] – there would probably not have been room for more than one – had crept into the chamber, and had then hastily but systematically ransacked its entire contents, emptying boxes, throwing things aside, piling them one upon another, and occasionally passing objects through the hole to his companions for closer examination in the outer chamber. He had done is work just about as thoroughly as an earthquake.

Carter estimated that some 60% of the jewellery was stolen, based on dockets made by the priests at the time of the burial which, when assembled, made up a form of inventory. It makes sense that the robbers would have focused only on the objects that were both very valuable and most easily portable. Items that could be easily sold on or melted down would have been prioritized. Gold might be chipped off larger objects, but the bigger the object, the more likely it was to be left behind. Still, a lot of small items and gold were left behind, so why did the robbers not return to complete the job? It seems most likely that they were discovered and then dealt with as usual, being subjected to torture before being put to death, both as punishment for desecrating a royal religious site, and as a warning to others. Once the tomb’s entrance was certainly resealed, the act of the muddy flood waters completed the job of disguising the entrance, until Carter came along.

A political time-bomb

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon at the door of the burial chamber. Source: Wikimedia Commons

As the tomb’s fame gathered a momentum all of its own, it also became a ticking bomb. Lord Carnarvon, in a bid to simplify dealings with the media, made the colossal diplomatic error of signing a contract with The Times newspaper to grant them exclusive rights to the news emerging from the tomb, offending both Egyptian and international media outlets. Worse, it endowed the enterprise an unlooked for and very undesirable air of colonialist arrogance that gave the governing Egyptian nationalists all the ammunition they needed to draw attention to unwelcome foreign interference in Egyptian state affairs. To all intents and purposes, Carnarvon and Carter were hijacking access to Egypt’s own heritage. The tension was corrosive, and impacted the relationship between Carnarvon and Carter, who were deeply divided on how to deal with the situation.

When Lord Carnarvon died on 5th April 1923, aged 57, from an infected insect bite, Carter found himself without a buffer zone between himself and the various interested and aggrieved parties. He was no diplomat, and contrived to alienate all the key government and administrative officials whose support he should have been seeking. In a remarkable act of pique, Carter downed tools, stopped work, citing “the impossible restrictions and discourtesies of the Egyptian Public Works Department and its antiquity service.” It was a foolish move that not only infuriated the Egyptian authorities but gave them the leverage they needed to oust him. Carter had infringed the terms of the concession, and was now banned from the tomb. Legal action failed, and Carter left the country, leaving the Egyptian government to declare that it intended to continue the work itself.

Tourists gathered around the entrance of KV62 in 1923, the year after the discovery. Source: Wikipedia

Carter was only permitted to return after a national emergency was triggered by the murder of a British diplomat, followed by the downfall of the nationalist government and the renewal of firmer greater British control over Egypt. A new concession was granted in January 1925, but this time there was to be no exclusive deal with The Times, and there was to be no attempt to remove any of the tomb’s contents from Egypt. Carter died in 1939, only seven years after completing his work on the objects found in the tomb. He had been planning a six-volume publication of the tomb, but it never happened.

Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon had found the tomb of Tutankhamen, and a well-chosen team of specialists examined and emptied it, but there was still considerable research required to learn about the king himself, and to learn more about what the objects in the tomb could impart to researchers about 18th Dynasty Egypt itself. Today, although many individual academic papers have been written by specialists in certain particular fields, like leather or jewellery, and dozens of coffee table books have been written, no single, centralized co-ordinated project based on the tomb has been masterminded. Although Tutankhamen the tourist attraction and work of art are very familiar, Tutankhamen the ultimate resource for primary research has somehow fallen between the gaps.

There are seriously strong arguments for getting to grips with the entire collection as a single co-ordinated project, leveraging worldwide specializations and skills, with research underpinned by a strong theoretical and methodological approach. Storing and exhibiting items is not the same as understanding them, and digging without publishing leads to dead ends. Carter died before he could publish is planned 6-volume treatise, and although subsequent researchers have published piecemeal research papers according to their research interests, no centralized project has been attempted. At the very least, an online relational database of the objects in the Tutankhamen inventory, listing all the existing publications based on it, would be a valuable resource, to complement the Griffith Institute’s excellent online databases of the original records made by Howard Carter, Harry Burton and others.

Final Comments

Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamen, sponsored by Lord Carnarvon, remains a great story, well worth re-telling 100 years later. Carter died before he could publish his 6-part planned treatise on the tomb, which remains a gap that has yet to be filled. Even so, the discovery remains a sensational find, with works of art that even Carter could not have imagined finding, filling gallery after gallery at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Flipping through a book of pictures of the tomb, I continue to be amazed at how it could all have fitted into such a tiny set of spaces. Each piece is magnificent in its own right, and together the collection provides material confirmation of the story of the afterlife told in the hieroglyphic texts on tomb walls, building a vivid impression of the hopes and ambitions of ancient Egyptian royalty and nobility. In so many ways, Carter gave Tutankhamen an afterlife that the young king could never have imagined.

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Note: Tutankhamen versus Tutankhamun

The name of Tutankhamen. Source: pharaoh.se

Up until relatively recently the anglicized name of the king’s name was written as “Tutankhamun,” although Howard Carter spelled the name with an “e” instead of the more familiar “u” in his books about the tomb. Ancient Egyptian script omitted vowels, and a series of conventions were therefore used to make ancient Egyptian words pronounceable today. As standardization has become increasingly desirable, the new system of dealing with the problem of missing vowels is to use the letter “e” where no other clues are available.

To explain a little further for anyone interested in how this works, the process of anglicizing hieroglyphs goes through two steps. The first step, which you can see in the above image from the pharoah.se website, shows a line in italics, and this is called transliteration. A formalized set of characters and symbols are used to capture a writing system that may include elements not used in English (or German, French etc) but are recognizable to anyone studying ancient Egyptian texts. As you can see in the italicized line of transliteration above, as well as familiar alphabet characters there is an apostrophe and an “h” with a curved line under it. For publication and general chat, these are simplified into something that can be expressed using the English alphabet.

Alabaster vase from Gurob showing cartouches (name frames) of Tutankhamen. UC16021. Source: Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

In the case of Tutankhamen this breaks down as follows (keep looking back at the hieroglyphic name shown above, with transliteration and translation).

Tutankhamen’s name is composed of three separate words, which Carter wrote as Tut-Ankh-Amen but are today run together as Tutankhamun (older convention) or Tutankhamen (newer convention). The middle hieroglyph in “Tut” (the little bird) is transliterated as a “w”, and the “a” in ankh is a hieroglyph that has no real equivalent in English and is transliterated with the apostrophe symbol. The third element of his name, which is the name of the great god Amen, is actually transliterated “imn,” the “a” of Amen being a hieroglyph usually transliterated as an “i.” In older books that tradition was to add a “u” between the “m” an “n” to make Amun, which made it easy to pronounce, but an “e” is the new standard. As this one name illustrates, the business of transliterating ancient Egyptian names into modern equivalents has a long way to go before real standardization is achieved.

You may be puzzled because the name Amen is written first. The name of the king is always written in his cartouches in the order Amen-Tut-Ankh. This is because the name of the god always takes precedence over the name of the king. This is termed “honorific transposition.” But his name was Tut-Ankh-Amen. Go figure 🙂

Finally, Tutankhamen was actually born Tutankhaten, and changed his name on the death of his father Akhenaten. But that’s another story.

Sources

This was written for fun, so I wrote most of it off the top of my head. I have, however, checked important details, dates and quotes in the books below. Any errors are of course my own.

Books and papers:

Carter, Howard 1927, republished 2007. The Tomb of Tutankhamen. Max Press (with an introduction by John Romer)
Carter, Howard and Mace, Arthur 1923, republished 2004. The Tomb of Tut Ankh Amen: Volume 1: Search Discovery and the Clearance of the Antechamber. Duckworth Egyptology
Cross, Stephen. W., 2008. The hydrology of the Valley of the Kings. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, 94(1), 303–310.
Frayling, Christopher 1993. Protecting Tutankhamun. Conservation Journal. July 1993, Issue 08
Reeves, Nicholas 1990. The Complete Tutankhamun. The King, the tomb and the royal treasure. Thames and Hudson
Tyldesley, Joyce 2013. Tutankhamen’s Curse: The developing history of an Egyptian king. Profile Books
Tyldesley, Joyce 2022. Tutankhamun. Pharaoh-Icon-Enigma. Headline.

Websites:

Griffith Institute
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk

Harry Burton photographs
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/gallery/

Excavation journals and diaries made by Howard Carter and Arthur Mace
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringtut/journals-and-diaries/season-4/journal.html

Howard Carter watercolours, prior to the discovery of Tutankhamen. Griffith Institute.
http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/Carter_birds.html

Mummy Bandage from Tutankhamun’s Embalming Cache (Pit 54) ca. 1336–1327 B.C.
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/548838

The Amarna Project
https://www.amarnaproject.com/

The Theban Mapping Project
https://thebanmappingproject.com/

The Getty Conservation Institute: Conservation and Management of the Tomb of Tutankhamen (2009–2019)
https://www.getty.edu/conservation/our_projects/field_projects/tut/

Royal Mint Tutankhamun Centenary £5.00 coin
https://www.royalmint.com/shop/limited-editions/discovery-of-tutankhamuns-tomb/the-100th-anniversary-of-the-discovery-of-tutankhamuns-tomb-2022-5-brilliant-uncirculated-coin/

Egyptological
Libyan Desert Glass and the Breast Ornament of Tutankhamen
By Andie Byrnes. Published on Egyptological, September 9th 2011, Magazine Edition 2
http://lancastrian.net/kemet/2011/09/09/libyan-desert-glass-and-the-breast-ornament-of-tutankhamen-4291

St Werburgh and her family

St Werburgh’s posthumous arrival in Chester

St Werburgh in the Benedictine monastery of 1093

The miracles of St Werburgh at the abbey in Chester

The 14th century shrine

Pilgrims to the shrine in the later Middle Ages – a nice little earner

How pilgrim badges were made, sold, worn and used

The Dissolution and subsequent events

St Werburgh’s shrine in the 19th century

From Harry Cureton to the British Museum

Final Comments

Videos:

Why did St Werburgh of Chester Resurrect a Goose?

By Dr Thomas Pickles, University of Chester

—- Video: Metal Casting – Pilgrim Badge

By the Digital Pilgrims Project

Video modern pilgrim token from Pilgrim Flask page

Piers Baker-Bates of the Open University talks about the value of his own pilgrimage memento

Staffordshire Moments: St Werburgh’s story

Sources:

Books and papers

Websites

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Visiting

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Introduction to the Meols pilgrim flask

Who was St Menas?

What were the pilgrim flasks used for?

Precursors of the the pilgrim flask

How did the Meols flask arrive in England?

Final comments

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Biban el-Muluk (“Gates of the Kings”)

KV62

A political time-bomb

Final Comments

Note: Tutankhamen versus Tutankhamun

Sources

Websites:

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Video: Metal Casting – Pilgrim Badge

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