Rosemary’s Baby: Adventures and Insights from Contributing to the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture in England
Paul Everson, Keele University
Tom Pickles, Chair of Chester Archaeological Society, introducing Paul Everson
On Saturday 4th May, in the last in-person Chester Archaeological Society lecture of the 2023/24 spring season in the Grosvenor Museum’s elegant lecture theatre, archaeologist and landscape historian Paul Everson introduced members and guests to the “Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (CASSS)” project inaugurated in 1977 by Professor Dame Rosemary Cramp (https://corpus.awh.durham.ac.uk/). With his long-time collaborator David Stocker, Mr Everson has published three volumes of the CASSS, and in this lecture explained how the decades-long project has not only provided us with a definitive catalogue of decorated stonework of the period but also stimulated new avenues of thought.
Professor Dame Rosemary Cramp’s name is synonymous with Early Medieval sculpture, combining her expertise in Old and Middle English with archaeological research, beginning her own excavations at Monkwearmouth in 1957. Having identified an opportunity to create a corpus of early stone sculpture after working on examples in Durham Cathedral and the Wearmouth and Jarrow monastic sites, she developed a standardized format for the publication of the CASSS, and a “grammar” of Anglo-Saxon ornament (also used for knitting!). This enables each volume of the corpus to be used in the same way and, where required, directly compared, making the series invaluable as a cohesive research tool. The first volume to be published was County Durham and Northumberland in 1984, and the last two, currently being compiled, are volumes 15, Leicester, Notrh Rutland and Soke Peterborough and volume 16, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Some examples of the types of Anglo-Saxon sculpture included in the Corpus (slide from Paul Everson’s presentation)
The corpus of Anglo-Saxon carvings, dating from the 7th to the 11th centuries and much of it previously unpublished, includes crosses, grave markers and grave covers, architectural detailing and inscriptions, both in original locations and in relocated positions. The compilation of the Corpus required the establishment of procedures for locating and recording both known and previously unidentified carvings. A mixture of archaeological, field survey and historical approaches are employed. All churches in a Corpus volume area are inspected, inside and out. Sketches, photographs, measurements and notes ensure that full details were recorded. Lost items have been rediscovered by tracing records in publications produced by antiquarian and early scholars. Antiquarian and early scholarship are always described and credited in the first chapter of each volume, reflecting their value.
As with most archaeological data, Anglo-Saxon sculptures often exist only in fragments and this requires virtual reconstruction work so that these too can be understood as whole pieces and included in the corpus. It was interesting to note that, like Roman tombstones, the ornament was picked out in bright paints, exemplified by a replica from Neston which has been rendered in full colour, shown on the above slide.
Bringing to together substantial data across each area has led to an exploration distribution patterns, with some specific types distributed widely across a county and others being more localized, leading to a search for explanations An example is Raunds Furnells where a small cluster of 10th century stone monuments may help to explain similar finds in east England, perhaps representing the founding families of churches, which in turn may represent the first stages of the development of the parochial system. “Exceptional collections” also occur, where large numbers of sculptural stones are found in a particular location, and it has been found that these tend to be near river sites where markets were held, and where merchant communities with disposable incomes concentrated, such as Chester where an impressive collection is retained at St John’s Church, and at Neston on the Wirral.
The Hedda Stone, Peterborough Abbey
A surprising finding was that there may have been very little pre-Viking quarrying of new stone. Instead, earlier stone masonry in church architecture and graves was often recycled and has become a much-debated topic. Some of these re-uses are pragmatic and practical, making use of usefully shaped pieces. The re-use of Roman masonry could explain, for example, some puzzling holes in the famous early Medieval Hedda Stone at Peterborough Cathedral. Another form of recycling is described as “iconic,” where earlier scenes are appropriated and re-positioned in a new cultural context. Interpretation of specific instances of recycling differ, and the resulting debates, although usually amicable, may be very animated! Discourse provided by differing perspectives, specialisms and sub-disciplines and by a new generation of researchers ensure that research into Anglo-Saxon sculpture continues to be a lively field.
At the other end of the chronological scale, studies of post-Conquest sculpture have helped to elucidate the continuity of earlier medieval traditions, and this too is an important research vector for understanding the period when Saxon and Norman interests vied for supremacy.
Making use of database technologies, an important leg of future work will include the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded “Worked in Stone” project which will re-digitize all the volumes to make them into a fully searchable database, an important new initiative that will be hosted by the Archaeological Data Service (ADS) and will be free to access.).
The challenges of interpreting different syncretic and iconic schemes. (slide from Paul Everson’s presentation)
An enthusiastic round of applause marked the end of the lecture. There was the opportunity for questions, and the audience took full advantage. The topic of recycled Roman stonework lead to some discussion about how identity and meaning may have been syncretized or replaced. Another question concerned how future discoveries might be incorporated into the corpus, and although nothing formal yet exists, the topic is obviously on the minds of those looking to the future of this research area. At the end of the questions the audience again applauded loudly in appreciation.
By the end of the lecture, it had become clear that the loss of Dame Rosemary last year at the age of 93, and the publication of the final two volumes of CASSS will not draw any sort of line under the research into Anglo-Saxon sculpture. The Corpus continues to be provide an invaluable resource. The digitization of the corpus will make it readily available to support a new generation of researchers as they develop new ideas and perspectives and explore new directions. It is clear that in spite of her passing away last year, this project remains very much “Rosemary’s Baby.”
The first twelve volumes of the CASSS are available online at https://corpus.awh.durham.ac.uk/. For Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture in Cheshire see volume IX. For a paper produced as an offshoot of the corpus work, see the study of the social background of the St John’s (Chester) crosses in the Members Area of the CAS website (https://chesterarchaeolsoc.org.uk/members-area/): P Everson & D Stocker. Transactions on the Dee: the ‘exceptional’ collection of early sculpture from St John’s, Chester
In: Cambridge, E & Hawkes, J eds. Crossing boundaries: interdisciplinary approaches to the art, material culture, language and literature of the early medieval world. Essays presented to Professor Emeritus Richard N. Bailey, OBE, in honour of his eightieth birthday. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017, 160–78.
Finally, the international ‘Worked in Stone: Early Medieval Sculpture in its International Context’ conference takes place next year in Durham (https://corpus.awh.durham.ac.uk/wis.php).
Many thanks to Paul Everson for such am engaging and enlightening lecture.
Paul Everson in the Grosvenor Museum lecture theatre
Creature wheeling two women in a barrow towards a hellmouth. All Saints’s Gresford
Apologies that it has taken a couple of weeks for part 3 to appear. The subject is so massive and it seems impossible to do it justice in a blog post) but eventually that big, accusing Publish button just has to be clicked 🙂
Part 1 introduced misericords and described some of the themes captured in the choir of St Werburgh’s Abbey (Chester Cathedral). Part 2 described the misericords at Gresford, Malpas and Bebington. This 3rd and final part addresses who might have been responsible for the themes chosen, who may have paid for the misericords, why they were contained within the most sacred part of the church and how they might be understood. Finally I have added some visiting details for the cathedral and the three churchs, plus a list of references for all three parts.
Selecting the misericords
How were the topics selected and by whom; who carved them; and who paid for them?
Each misericord showed a different subject matter, and whether there were 48 (as at Chester) or 14 (as at Gresford) there could be great diversity in the themes selected. The patron saint of an abbey or church might dictate the subject matter in a single misericord, like the miracle of St Werburgh at Chester, but this accounts for only one misericord of any one corpus. Some themes are commonly found throughout misericord collections and are evidently part of a popular repertoire or corpus of themes. As Anderson says in his survey of gothic art, “The subjects of misericords did not have to be consistent, so any good design, from whatever source it came from, could be used on them,” but particular themes and ideas were probably favoured in each different establishment, leading to a different character and ambience from one set to another. The enthusiasm for certain themes will have changed over time, reflecting both popular and intellectual fashions, but all were chosen from similar types of source material.
Folio 49v from the Smithfield Decretal showing a fox, with mitre and crozier, preaching to a flock of birds. Source: British Library
Manuscripts were an obvious source of ideas. Bestiaries such as the beautiful MS Bodley 764, referred to in parts 1 and 2, provided a wealth of ideas, as did travelogues. Both Old and New Testaments, missals and hagiographies (biographies of saints, often at least partly fictional) were also alternative sources. The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine in the 13th century was a particularly popular account of the lives of saints, which even today is a good read. The marginal scenes shown on various religious illuminated manuscripts including psalters (books of psalms) and books have hours (personal books for private worship) probably supplied others, which included so-called drolleries and grotesques. The Luttrel Psalter and the Smithfield Decretals are good examples. Contemporary chivalric romances, popular narratives and collections of stories like the 14th century French Cy Nous Dit (which contained versions of the tales of Tristan and Isolde, Alexander carried over the edge and the exploitsof the knight Yvain – all of which are at Chester) were good sources of stories with a moral thread. Towards the end of the Middle Ages it has been demonstrated that some themes were inspired by woodcut images that were circulating in Europe following the success of the printing press in the mid-15th century.
Image and supporters copied from earlier examples. The model for the central image was first carved at Lincoln in the 1370s (top), then reproduced with much more gusto and exuberance at St Werburgh’s Chester in the 1380s (middle) and finally, with much less energy than either, at St Mary’s Nantwich in the 1390s (bottom). All sourced from Christina Grössinger, The World Upside-Down, p.47 (see Sources at end)
Carvers almost certainly brought ideas with them from other abbeys, cathedrals and churches, which they could share with their new employers. Some topics are clearly copied from one ecclesiastical establishment to another, probably introduced by carvers who moved to new building projects as they became available. Sixteen designs in Chester were based on those from Lincoln, and six in the the impressive parish of St Mary’s church in Nantwich, were copied from Chester. The herons on a misericord in St Werburgh’s, for example, were very nearly clones of a misericord at Lincoln Cathedral, although the supporters are different. An even more striking example is a crowned head with wild hair and beard, flanked by two heads in profile. This appears first in Lincoln Cathedral, then at St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester.
Although St Werburgh’s may have been expected, by virtue of its proximity, to have provided the inspiration and basic model for the later examples at Gresford, Malpas and Bebington, none of the misericords are copies of surviving Chester examples. There are indeed shared themes, but there are no attempts at replication. This suggests that in each case the choices made drew on other sources for their ideas, perhaps reflecting the time gap between the Chester and later misericords, or otherwise reflecting local choices or preferences.
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Who would have been involved in the choice of themes?
Abbot with staff and book. MS. Ludwig IX 6 (83.ML.102), fol. 222v. Source: Getty Museum
It is not known exactly how the topics depicted on individual misericords were chosen, but there are a number of possibilities. At an abbey or independent priory, the superior (abbot or prior) and the senior personnel may have dominated the decisions, but individual monks from the larger monastic community may have contributed to the selection process too. External patrons, whose financial input would have been necessary for a project on the scale of the Chester quire are likely to have wanted to contribute to their own favoured themes. In a parish church both the senior clergy and the bishop would probably have dominated the decision process, but external, private financial contributors such as local landowners may also have had a vested interest in the selection of themes. Multiple sources of finance, each perhaps buying a vote in the selection process, would help to explain the diversity of the subject matters chosen both within a single choir, and the differences from one church to another.
It is sometimes suggested that misericords were the brainchildren of the craftsmen who carved them, indulging themselves with creative and sometimes (to the Victorian mind) off-colour designs without any direct input from the clergy. Being confined to the choir in the most sacred part of the church, however, it seems unlikely that anything could have been selected and installed without the permission of a head cleric, such as the abbot in the abbey, or a parish priest (or his bishop) in a church. It also seems implausible that an abbot or bishop would sit back and allow expenditure to be used unchecked on fantastic frivolities that would have to be accounted for to both superiors and inferiors alike. Although carvers probably suggested certain popular themes based on their own experience, the misericords and their themes must have been sanctioned at the highest levels.
Who carved the misericords?
Stained glass portrait, thought to be Master Carpenter Hugh Herland. Source: Upchurch Matters
Remarkably little is known about the wood carvers who created these remarkable vignettes. For prestigious projects carvers seem to have moved from building to building. Christina Grössinger identifies a single London workshop as having been responsible not only for the Chester and Lincoln wood-carvings, but also for those that at St Katherine’s in Stepney (London) and the former Carmelite friary in Coventry. John Harvey had formerly identified the hand of famous Master Carpenter Hugh Herland, who worked on a number of royal and prestigious college projects in the 14th century, at Lincoln and particularly Chester, but Grössinger rejects this suggestion, and a quick look at Herland’s list of responsibilities for the decades in which the Lincoln and Chester misericords were made (1370s and 1380s respectively), suggests that he was probably far too busy on prestigious works elsewhere to oversee these two projects as well. Present in Chester between 1377 and 1411, however, was William Newell the king’s chief carpenter who was probably involved with the work on the choir, at the very least in an advisory capacity. For a Benedictine monastery like St Werburgh’s it was important not merely to raise the status of the individual abbey, but to contribute to the prestige of the Benedictine order as a whole, particularly in a period when monastic orders were becoming much less influential in society and politics. Whoever was responsible for overseeing the project, many carpenters will have contributed to the misericords and canopies, and both the designs and the work are certainly exquisite.
St Andrew’s, Bebington
The preference for the most prestigious carvers available in the country suggests that where prestige was important and the finance available, only the best carvers would do and could be hired from places at considerable distance from the institution concerned. The impressive churches of Malpas, Gresford and Bebington would not have had the same scale of financial resources, nor the same ambitions for national prestige reached for by the abbot Chester abbey, but quality was still important. Carvers were more likely to have been sourced closer to home, but even so the skills required may still have required importing specialists to oversee and ensure high quality. In his paper on the carvers of the Oxford colleges, Gee says that during the 14th century the pay for a Master Carpenter, was around 4d monthly. For a nationally recognized and prestigious Master Carpenter of whom the above-mentioned Herland is an example, this rose to around 1s. There was therefore a wide scale of pay for different levels of skill and creativity. work.
Who paid for them?
Canopies above the choir stalls in Chester Cathedral
Elaborate choir stalls with misericords were luxury items for a church, raising the prestige of the incumbent clergy and the establishment as a whole either nationally for an abbey or cathedral, or regionally for a collegiate or parish church. They were, in functional terms, unnecessary but for some monasteries and churches, the investment may have been important for institutional and social reasons, reinforcing the position of the church in the wider community at a time when ecclesiastical influence was in decline. Status and vanity projects always come with a substantial bottom line, and the funds would have been acquired from a number of different income streams and one-off sources.
A monastic establishment like St Werburgh’s might have any number of income streams. The Benedictines, the longest established monastic order of the Catholic tradition in Britain, had been endowed with enormous estates and resources. Monasteries were amongst Britain’s greatest landowners, owning huge swathes of the rural landscape. This level of royal and significant magnate investment had trailed off by the early 1300s, so monastic establishments were forced to make the most of the property they already owned and attempt to secure smaller but still significant bequests and investments, and one-off donations for special projects. Ongoing sources of funding included tithes (funds appropriated from churches that it adopted), the often impressive output of produce sold from a network of monastic farms, private bequests in wills, and contributions by living benefactors. Appropriating churches, and securing their income, was increasingly important throughout the later medieval period. Chantries were also an excellent source of income for urban monasteries. These were financial foundations set up by individuals to pay for an ordained monk, or several monks, to recite multiple prayers for himself/herself after death, as well as for his or her family and ancestors; These were invaluable income-generators for monasteries. Pilgrim shrines could also be very lucrative for monasteries with appropriate relics, particularly if they were reputed to perform miracles.
Probable burial places of some of the medieval abbots in the cloister at St Werburgh’s, Chester
The abbot and monks themselves, might contribute to prestigious projects. Although the earliest Benedictine monastic orders had been based on vows of poverty, and the reforming orders of the late 11th and early 12th centuries renewed these vows and intentions, by the late 14th century the Benedictine monks had lost their ambition for poverty, and were rarely self-effacing. Although it was a particular thorn in the side of Henry V in the early 15th century, abbots and their monks might well be considerably wealthy in their own right. This was in spite of St Benedict’s proscription against the ownership of private property in the Rule on which the Benedictines were supposed to base their monastic lives. An abbot’s subordinates too might have access to personal wealth. To ensure his own personal legacy an abbot of an important urban monastery might invest in a prestigious project that, in the case of St Werburgh’s included not only the choir stalls but the elaborate and intricate canopies above. The abbot would probably be able to secure contributions from his community of brethren as well, and would certainly attempt to secure donations from beyond the cloister. For those both within the community and those outside it, there was the hope that by contributing their mite to the glorification of God, they might serve less time paying for their sins in purgatory. Even where in-house monastic funding was available, the gifts of patronage might be important to elaborate monastic improvement, and for a project as immense as the St Werburgh’s quire, significant investment would have been welcome.
In an urban environment although there might be additional opportunities for securing funds, there might be competition with other establishments. For example, St Werburgh’s charged for burials within its cemetery, and was in competition with other ecclesiastical establishments in Chester to secure those payments. However, there was a particular prestige to being buried in a monastic context, and more importantly the possibility of being as close as possible to the divine. Any wealthy Chester resident who wanted to be buried within the of the abbey precinct, and particularly the abbey church itself, would have to pay a very steep price for the privilege.
Elaborate and costly wood carving on the screen at the entrance to the choir at All Saints’ Gresford.
Perhaps more intriguing are the sources of the investment for the three parish churches. These might also include tithes, which were a type of tax due from every household to fund the parish church (in the form of produce for much of the Middle Ages), if there was any surplus remaining after the clergy had been paid and church costs defrayed. Another form of income were chantries that were set up in parish churches as well as monasteries, particularly the more prestigious parish churches. These too might provide an income from which a surplus could be saved for special projects. A more promising source of sufficient funds for a was likely to be bequests and donations made by a number of particularly wealthy benefactors and patrons, either individuals, families or organizations. For parish, collegiate and cathedral churches crowd-funding by the congregation might have been a possibility. Although most of the congregation was excluded from the chancel, (within which the choir was located), Nicholas Orme makes it clear that wealthy and influential parishioners, as well as choristers, might be given access. These more privileged members of the congregation would have access to any work within the chancel to which they contributed either large one-off gifts or piecemeal funding, even if they were not primary benefactors or members of founding families. It is also possible that access to the chancel was an incentive for anyone who had the money to invest in ecclesiastical projects. Access to the chancel, and burial within its confines, were highly desirable as this was the closest that most people would come to the divine prior to death. If the parish priest was independently wealthy, he too much contribute to the costs, as might the bishop.
Little of the abbey church survives at Basingwerk
A different possibility is the purchase, wholesale or piecemeal, of the misericords from another building. If an abbey or priory church went out of use, a set of choir-stalls might become available for purchase at a fraction of the price of commissioning a new set from scratch. A parish church with wealth of its own, or with patrons who wished to make a mark, might benefit from the unexpected windfall. The Dissolution of the Monasteries under the reign of Henry VIII from 1535 to around 1540 liberated many church furnishings for purchase by less exalted establishments. In Lancashire, for example, choir stalls from Whalley Abbey found their way into a local parish church, whilst in Lancaster itself the misericords may have come from a nearby Premonstratensian establishment. There has been a suggestion that the Gresford misericords might have been sourced from Basingwerk Abbey at Holywell following its 1535/1536 dissolution. However, the impressive Monastic Wales research portal states that the choir stalls from Basingwerk actually went to St Mary’s on the Hill in Chester, presumably complete with misericords, a claim echoed in the ChesterWiki page for the church (but unsupported by any citation) as part of a general refurbishment. I have not seen the original sources and their arguments for either proposal. If the stalls were once at St Mary’s on the Hill they are not there now. Gresford All Saints’ seems, anyway, to have had both the ambition and the funds if it wished to comission its own choir stalls during the 15th century when the church was substantially remodelled. ———
The role of misericords
A sense of meaning
All Saints’, Gresford
In spite of the genuinely fascinating and academically impressive work carried out on the subject, there are no definitive answers about how a corpus of misericords is best understood. There is so much variety and as Gombrich observes, for some of these images “[t]here are no names in our language, or categories in our thought, to come to grips with this elusive dream-imagery in which ‘all things are mixed’. . . It outrages both our ‘sense of order’ and our search for meaning.” The overtly religious themes on some misericords are accompanied by far less obviously appropriate scenes including on the one hand horror, myth, fantasy and the monstrous and, on the other hand, humour, farce, ribaldry, Colish’s “red thread” of satire and, perhaps, some very early forerunners of schadenfreude and even burlesque. Misericords are one of the few ecclesiastical contexts in which the lower echelons of society can be observed. The acrobats at Gresford have already been mentioned in Part 2, and entertainers and sports of various sorts are common.
St Werburgh’s Abbey, Chester
In spite of the difficulties it is irresistible to try to address some of the questions. For example, why was highly irreligious imagery, some of it very funny, included in the most sacred of ecclesiastical spaces? Why were naked human private parts, women beating men, foxes lecturing geese, upright cats, writhing dragons, strange beasts, wildmen and ugly monsters shown side by side with, on the one hand, lowly peasants and jesters and, on the other hand, saints, angels, kings and heraldic symbols of the nobility?
Whilst parts 1 and 2 demonstrated how individual misericords can successfully communicate certain stories and convey specific ideas, an entire corpus of misericords is rather more interesting as a sum of the various parts, presumably containing somewhere within it the religious, ideological and cultural motivations, the very heart of why these carvings existed in the first place.
A framework for living
Alchemic approach to four humours in relation to the four elements and zodiacal signs. Book illustration in “Quinta Essentia” by Leonhart Thurneisser zum Thurn (gen. Leonhard Thurneysser). Source: Wikipedia
From today’s perspective, the world of the Middle Ages encompassed a very different set of experiences, and this has to be factored into any attempt to understand medieval imagery. These many challenges of the Middle Ages were understood within a descriptive and explanatory framework that helped to give a sense of order. As well as the overarching structure provided by Christianity, there was a framework for neatly organizing existence into manageable chunks. The natural world was divided into four primary elements: air, fire, earth and water, with air opposite earth and water opposite fire. The human body was divided into four “humours,” and the human condition was divided into four “states.” All were characterized in terms of heat and moisture, and were influenced by both the four seasons and the 12 astrological points of the zodiac. In Christian terms, the presence of the devil and his demons, the reality of purgatory and hell, and even the performance of saintly miracles were all aspects of a world that for most people, were a reality in which the supernatural was entwined with the everyday. Structuring the world in this complex way formed a model for understanding it and operating within it.
There were also less structured but equally useful mechanisms for coping with a life in which more nebulous anxieties and worries did not fit neatly within the conventional framework. The supernatural had its own role, which did not always dovetail smoothly with other explanatory models. Superstition, the rumblings of magic and divination and the presence of evil in the dark corners of the supernatural all had a role to play.
The realities of medieval life
The central theme of this misericord is a two-bodied monster with a single head. The supporters are also monsters, their tails connecting them to the misericord.
Everyday life in the later Middle Ages, and the 14th century in particular (the century in which the Chester misericords were carved) was hard. The 14th century was not merely a matter of political change and social unrest, but incorporated the Great Famine of 1315-17 the arrival of the terrible Black Death of 1348-1350, and the recurrence of plague outbreaks in 1361-2, 1369, 1374-9 and 1390-3 during which thousands of people died and entire villages were permanently abandoned, and following which economic challenges inevitably occurred. Other notable events included the relocation of papal power from Rome to Avignon in 1309; the Ordinances of 1311, which imposed limits on Edward II’s power; Robert de Bruce’s defeat of Edward II at Bannockburn in 1314; a period of political and military turmoil followed by Edward II’s forced abdication and probable murder in 1327; Scottish independence in 1328; the beginning of the 100 Years War in 1337 under Edward III, which brought with it periods of purveyance and heavy taxation; the 1341 parliamentary crisis; the 1351 Statue of Labourers (Edward III’s attempt at wage-fixing); the death of Edward III in 1377; the Papal Schism of 1378; John Wycliffe’s anti-Catholic writing (inspiring his Lollard followers) and his vernacular English editions of the Bible in the mid to late 14th century; the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381; and the removal of Richard II from the throne in 1399. For Cheshire and northeast Wales, the appointment of Edward III’s son the Black Prince as Earl of Chester in 1333 and Prince of Wales in 1343 were also particularly relevant. A great many more dates could be added to this brief and selective list, but this is probably sufficient to highlight the social and political turbulence of these decades. The late 14th century misericords in British monasteries and churches, with their often threatening and subversive themes may say as much about social anxiety as spiritual fervour.
Lion fighting a dragon flanked on each side by a wildman (wodehouse), one riding a wyvern and the other killing some form of dragon-like creature. St Werburgh’s Abbey, Chester
Writing about the monsters, hybrids, wildmen and grotesques populating the margins of the Luttrell Psalter (dating to the 1320s-30s), Michelle P. Brown could also be commenting on the 14th century misericords when she says: “They reflect the neuroses of a society in flux, one rightly concerned in the face of political corruption, international warfare, civil war, famine and demographic decline.” Some of these anxieties and concerns are translated into analogous images on the misericords, which became vehicles for representing the extreme aspects of both familiar realities and potential realities that link life as it is lived and the “other.” Here the familiar meets the unfamiliar in the liminal, teetering right on the edge of the unknown beyond where mermaids, dragons, wyverns, unicorns, strange humanoid beings and the unknown lurked. These territories on the edges and margins of observable reality are places of high risk, where strange beings and actions are not only possible but plausible.
This was obviously not a simple matter of juxtaposing conventionally opposing ideas like saints-and-angels versus devils-and-demons. In the medieval period the there was a recognition of the border spaces between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the domestic, a blameless life and a misspent one, good and evil, life and death, death and rebirth. This in-between existence is space that is neither hell nor purgatory and might act as a reminder that between this world and that occupied by the divine, there was significant uncertainty.
Bearded man at St Andrew’s, Bebington. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
Although the unusual, the mythical and the allegorical stand out, ordinary people may also be represented. They do not feature prominently at either St Werburgh’s or Gresford’s St Oswalds, where most of the original misericords are present, but ordinary people occur on misericords outside the Chester area. The obviously religious themes interlock with scenes of everyday life, some allegorical, some empirical, some scurrilous. Michael Camille suggests that misericords are like the Mystery plays in that they allow “anecdotal details and the depiction of social manners” including folk stories and fables and scenes of domesticity and seasonal activities. The inclusion of peasants engaged in hard work, such as those shown in the Labours of the Months, (the most complete example of which is at a church in Ripple, Worcestershire, shifted there from Whalley Abbey after the Dissolution) may represent a dependence on the annual cycle, but may equally capture the nature of the social order itself, with saints at the top and serfs at the bottom, all equally important at least in God’s eyes.
Woman as a tornado of anger with cowering man, flanked by two very cross characters. Chester St Werburgh’s
As Grössinger says, however, most of the everyday people shown on misericords are engaged not in the domestic realm or in serious pursuits, but in “a subversive view of everyday events that can both entertain and teach.” These depictions include acrobats, contortionists, hunting, wrestling, feasting, brawling, bear-baiting and music making. When ordinary people begin to behave in a challenging way, there may have been a great deal of unease about the reality of God’s creations humans being less than perfect specimens who were unable or unwilling to use free will for good. Misericords depicting women beating men, foxes preaching to geese, gymnasts displaying their private parts, may well represent the use of derision and humour to mediate the uncomfortable realities of everyday social discord, another aspect of the subversion of an idealized view of life. This was perhaps just as true of medieval creative thinking as it is of today’s, and ties in with an explanatory framework in which both monsters and monstrous behaviours were part of God’s creation, and should be included in any understanding of reality as it is perceived and the liminal areas beyond our immediate vision or geographic location.
The lovers Tristan and Isolde. St Werburgh’s, Chester
Heroic, chivalric and romantic tales bear testimony to the rewards of idealized behaviour in the face of such challenges, but clearly comment too on the risks confronted by good people who encounter evil, temptation and other dangers. These narratives offer approaches to handling danger and mechanisms for defeating fear and the fearsome.
Interestingly, the misericords do not tend to focus on the image of death itself and only rarely give death a voice, unless it is to remind the onlooker of Christ’s sacrifice for humanity. Demons, hell and people being delivered to the hellmouth are certainly represented, but these are more a threat to the living, teetering on the edge of the abyss, than a characterization of death itself. Depictions of skeletons, the personifications of death, fairly unusual, even in the 15th century when the Danse Macabre (and John Lydgate’s derivative Dance of Death) and cadaver monuments, and in particular transi tombs, became popular.
Fox preaching to cockerel and geese. All Saints’, Gresford
Finally, there is always the matter of tradition. Whilst the 14th century misericords at places like Lincoln, Chester and Nantwich may have been a response to the difficulties of the times, it is quite likely that much later misericords were seen more in the light of a connection with the historical integrity of the church, the honouring of an ecclesiastical tradition and a form of validation of more modern works, as well as a resistance to ecclesiastical change, by reference to the past.
Why were carved misericords incorporated into sacred spaces?
View of the choir from steps to the central altar, Gresford All Saints’. The carved screen divides the sacred space of the choir, the choir-stalls and the misericords from the public nave beyond.
In a church the choir is divided from the long nave, where the congregation gather, by a screen. Perhaps the dangerous and threatening was best contained and restricted within the choir, where religious rituals were concentrated, and where the clergy and monks could contemplate and learn from the disruptive and unsettling scenes before (and under) them. It must have been accepted at some point that the inclusion of irreverence and crudity sitting alongside religious themes had a useful role and would not, most importantly, be offensive to God. If the themes were essentially a coping strategy consisting of fashionable morality tales and derisive warnings against bad behaviour, such forms of expression probably needed to be safely contained, segregated from those who might misinterpret them and retained for the benefit of those who could contemplate them and understand their role. Acknowledging risk and conceptualizing it in the form of margins and misericords was a way of bringing a wit and energy to the unknown world of the “other” that sat beyond the edges of medieval life, but it was not suitable for everyday consumption.
One of the Victorian replacements at Chester St Werburgh’s showing one of Aesop’s fables, the fox and the stork.
It is worth remembering that at least in the context of monastic establishments and collegiate churches, and probably in the greater majority of the parish chancels, the choir was the domain of men alone. It is all too likely that the more risqué of these themes were considered far too warm and witty for delicate female sensibilities and, in the majority of cases, for their inferior intellects too. Confining such scenes to the choir would normally guarantee an exclusively male audience.
Context: Themes that reflect the misericords in other forms
Delightfully grotesque creature, one of many clinging to the walls of All Saint’s, Gresford. Its beautifully chosen red sandstone skin against the pale yellow masonry makes it particularly ghastly!
Very briefly, where misericords are found, it is worth having a look around to see what other types of similar imagery may exist both within the church and on the exterior. The subject of architectural gargoyles and related grotesques has already arisen on this blog in connection with Gresford All Saints’ church, where the twisted, deformed, ugly and bizarre look down on gathering congregations and passers by, marching in sequence along the string-course, spewing out water, or apparently poised to pounce from window corbels and string courses. There was no limit to medieval imagination, and the exteriors of many medieval churches display some of the most extraordinary and creative monsters anywhere in the late medieval world.
Pilgrim and bench end, St Werburgh’s Abbey, Chester
Interior imagery includes choir-stall arm rests, bench-ends and bench-end carvings and sculptural components such as corbel supports. In some big ecclesiastical establishments the ceiling bosses and vaulted arch corbels are also used to capture the mythological, the fantastic and the entertaining. Camber bream ceilings may be accessorized with sculptural components in wood or stone where the ceiling beams meet the walls. Baptismal fonts sometimes display elaborate imagery, and where original medieval floor tiles remain, these too often display images and symbols. Medieval stained glass, where it survives, although better known for its display of the great and the good sometimes captures subjects from the margins. These may or may not be contemporary with misericords, but add to the story that successive generations of clergy and congregations could read in their place of worship.
Together, all these carved forms, whether in wood or stone, formed a complex ecclesiastical world in which miracles, judgement, purgatory and the apocalypse were the stuff of fact, and in which saintly shrines channelled divine power, and where the unregulated performance of domestic solutions were probably manifestations of harmful superstition and demonic magic inspired by the devil. The messages of risk and uncertainty, coped with by following Christ’s example and ameliorated by belief in the love of God, were carried throughout the church, inside and out. xxxxxxx
Final Comments
Over the three posts in this small series I have barely touched the surface of what misericords meant to churches and their clergy and why they merited their cost. That is partly because the topic is so rich and the corpus in Britain alone so massive. There have been many attempts to get to the root of what the misericords, in each corpus, are intended to do, what role they are designed to perform. It is possible in each place to pick out key themes in misericords, including religious and miraculous scenes; domestic, seasonal and everyday activities; kingly and knightly pursuits and adventures, many of them referencing popular chivalric romance and courtly love; the fantastic, monstrous, mythical and legendary; and the seriously crude and scatological. The medieval interest in the “other” is very conspicuous.
All Saints’, Gresford
Misericords did not shy away from even the most bawdy elements of human existence, challenging the binary, recognizing the complexities of Christian lives. Rather than simple black and white contrasts of good versus evil, the misericord vignettes capture an entire kaleidoscope of social and cultural perception and commentary. It does not matter in which order the overall message is read, but it does matter that it incorporates a deeply felt form of reality beyond the immediately observable, which may offer both opportunity and risk. Whether amusing, tender or shocking, misericords have the ability to tell a moral tale, carrying real impact in their didactic role, encouraging introspection and self-awareness.
Arm rest. St Andrew’s, Bebington
Between life as it was lived every day, the the supernatural as it was imagined, and those strange foreign lands and invisible realities with with strange monstrous beings, there was plenty to worry medieval people. These are sources of potential anxiety and stress that paid no respect to social standing. Misericords represent the diversity and unending variability of living things and their experiences, both natural and supernatural along the entire continuum of human and divine life. Although sometime based on stories captured in manuscripts, and sometimes loose copies of paintings and prints from northwest Europe, the misericords have a voice of their own. Approaching them as embodiments of layered meaning can add depth and richness to each individual piece, but they are equally appealing for their visual splendour, and can be appreciated simply for their beauty, mischief, boldness and charm.
Visiting (as of December 2023)
The layout of the choir stalls and description of their misericords. Source: Stephen Smalley 1996 (see “Sources” at end)
On my multiple visits to Chester Cathedral in 2022 and 2023 the misericords have usually been available to view. Although they are sometimes roped off, particularly when an event is upcoming, you can usually go between the lower choir benches to lean over and see some of the misericords, and there are usually cathedral staff around to ask if you can get a little closer. On my visits to Gresford and Malpas, the misericords were accessible to view when the church was open to visitors and not being used for services and events. St Andrew’s in Bebington can only be visited by appointment (see below) but again the three misericords are on unrestricted display.
None of the locations have obligatory entry fees, but Chester always has someone at its reception requesting a voluntary donation into a big perspex box (or by swiping a debit/credit card). There is also a gift shop and very good café in the former abbey refectory, which is a wonderful space in its own right.
Swordplay. St Oswald’s, Malpas
Gresford, Malpas and Bebington do not have reception staff, but as village churches they are even more in need of voluntary donations. Given how beautifully these churches are maintained, it is well worth giving them support.
Gresford All Saints’ and Malpas St Oswald’s are still open for services, weddings and funerals, as well as community activities, but are generally also open daily for visitors. You can park outside All Saints’ on the road. At St Oswald’s it is better to find the car park, just five minutes away, and walk.
Bebington St Andrew’s is only open for Sunday services and other formal events, and visiting is by appointment only. My thanks to the office for making arrangements for me to visit. I’ll be writing up the entire church on another occasion. There is plenty of parking on the road when the church is not in use for services, weddings etc.
I have included the What3Words location for those with the app installed (it works beautifully with the free Google satnav). Check the individual websites for services, opening times and other details:
Bebington St Andrew’s. The church’s main website is here, but does not have a heritage section. Instead, the church’s own heritage pages at can be found here, but are not working properly at the time of writing (December 2023)
My thanks again to Dominic Strange and his World of Misericords website for allowing me to use so many of his images. He is an absolute star, and his website is a fabulous resource, one of the best examples of how websites can really contribute to research projects.
Each of the three posts in this short series was originally a lot longer, and some of the references below relate to those chunks that I cut out, but in case the full bibliography is of interest, I’ve left it unaltered. I have not managed to track down all the references that I might have found of use, so there are gaps. If you are looking into misericords and want the references that I have noted down for future reference but have not used here, just let me know and I will email them over.
Books, booklets and papers
Anderson, M.D. 1954. Misericords. Medieval Life in English Woodcarving. Penguin
Anderson, M.D. 1971. History and Imagery in British Churches. John Murray.
Asma, Steven T. 2009. On Monsters. An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Oxford University Press
Avilés, Alejandro García 2019. The Visual Culture of Magic in the Middle Ages. In (eds.) Sophie Page and Catherine Rider. The Routledge History of Medieval Magic. Routledge, p.402-431
Barber, Richard. 1992. Bestiary. MS Bodley 64. The Boydell Press
Beal, Timothy K. 2002. Religion and Monsters. Routledge
Bennett, Carol. 2015. Lincoln Cathedral Misericords and Stalls in St Hugh’s Choir. Lincoln Cathedral.
Bildhauer, Bettina. 2003. Blood, Jews and Monsters in Medieval Culture. In Bildhauer, Bettina and Mills, Robert (eds.), The Monstrous Middle Ages. University of Wales Press.
Bildhauer, Bettina and Mills, Robert. 2003. Introduction: Conceptualizing the Monstrous. In Bildhauer, Bettina and Mills, Robert (eds.), The Monstrous Middle Ages. University of Wales Press
Broughton, Lynne. 1996. Interpreting Lincoln Cathedral: The Medieval Imagery. Lincoln Cathedral Publications
Brown, Michelle, P. 2006. The World of the Luttrell Psalter. The British Library
Burne, R.V.H. 1962. The Monks of Chester. The History of St Werburgh’s Abbey. SPCK.
Camille, Michael. 1992. Image on the Edge. The Margins of Medieval Art. Reaktion Books
Clifton-Taylor, Alec. 1974. English Parish Churches as Works of Art. B.T. Batsford Ltd.
Colish, Marcia L. 1997. Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition 400-1400. Yale University Press
Davies, Owen. 2012. Magic. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press
Dickinson, John. 2008. Misericords of North West England. Their Nature and Significance. Centre for North-West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster.
Fry, Nick. 2009. Chester Cathedral. Scala
Fudgé, Thomas. 2016. Medieval Religion and its Anxieties. History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan
Gombrich, E.H. 1979, 1984. The Sense of Order. A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. Phaidon Press Ltd.
Green, Richard Lancelyn (revised by Roberts, Alan) 2018. St Andrew’s Bebington. St Andrew’s Heritage Committee
Greene, J.Patrick. 1992. Medieval Monasteries. Leicester University Press
Grössinger, Christa. 2007. The World Upside-Down. English Misericords. Harvey Miller Publishers
Hardwick, Paul. 2011. English Medieval Misericords. The Margins of Meaning. The Boydell Press, Woodbridge
Hardwick, Paul. 2017. Chaucer’s Friar John and the Place of the Cat. The Chaucer Review, 52(2), p. 237-252
Harte, Jeremy 2003. Hell on Earth: Encountering Devils in the Medieval Landscape. In Bildhauer, Bettina and Mills, Robert (eds.), The Monstrous Middle Ages. University of Wales Press
Harvey, John. 1947. Gothic England. A Survey of National Culture 1300-1550. B.T. Batsford
Hiatt, C. 1898. The Cathedral Church of Chester. A Description of the Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See. George Bell and Sons. Available on the Internet Archive
Jones, Bethan. 1997. All Saints Church Gresford. ‘The Finest Parish Church in Wales’. The Friends of the Parish Church of All Saints Gresford.
Jones, Malcolm Haydn. 1991. The Misericords of Beverley Minster: A Corpus of Folkloric Imagery and its Cultural Milieu, with Special Reference to the Influence of Northern European Iconography on Late Medieval and Early Modern English Woodwork. Unpublished PhD thesis. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/29816745.pdf
Laird, Marshall. 1996. English Misericords. John Murray
Luxford, Julian. 2005. The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300-1540. A Patronage History. Studies in the History of medieval Religion Volume XXV. The Boydell Press
Orme, Nicholas. 2021. Going to Church in Medieval England. Yale University Press
Page, Sophie. 2017. Medieval Magic. In: Davies, O, (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, Oxford University Press, p.29-64
Riches, Samantha J.E. 2003. Encountering the Monstrous. Saints and Dragons in Medieval Thought. In Bildhauer, Bettina and Mills, Robert (eds.), The Monstrous Middle Ages. University of Wales Press.
Rider, Catherine. 2012. Magic and Religion in Medieval England. Reaktion Books.
Roberts, Alan. 2018. St Andrew’s Bebington. Church and Churchyard Tours. St Andrew’s Heritage Committee
Ryands, T.M. (no date). An Illustrated History of St Oswald’s Malpas.
Smalley, S. (with additional research, Fry, S.) 1996. Chester Cathedral Quire Misericords. The Pitkin Guide. Chester Cathedral
White, Carolinne. 2008. The Rule of Benedict. Penguin.
Williams, David. 1996. Deformed Discourse. The Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature. Liverpool University Press.
Woodcock, Alex. 2018 (2nd edition). Of Sirens and Centaurs. Medieval Sculpture at Exeter Cathedral. Impress Books
San Francisco State University Ywain and Gawain. (Editors: George W. Tuma, Professor Emeritus of English, and Dinah Hazell, Independent Scholar, hosted by the English Department, San Francisco State University) https://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/romances/ywain_gawain_rev.html
In Part 1 of this 3-part series, the subject of misericords in choir stalls was introduced, the four churches covered in this three-parter were identified, and the St Werburgh’s Abbey (Chester Cathedral) misericords were discussed. Part 2 takes a look at the misericords in the smaller churches of Gresford All Saints’, Malpas St Oswald’s and Bebington St Andrew’s. References for all three parts can be found at the end of Part 3.
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Chester, Gresford, Malpas and Bebington (continued)
Basic data about the misericords at the four churches
The misericords carved for St Werburgh’s Abbey (Chester Cathedral) were discussed in Part 1. All Saints’ church in Gresford, St Oswald’s at Malpas and St Andrew’s in Bebington were considerably more modest in scale than St Werburgh’s Abbey, but all were impressive when measured against other parish churches in the region, and obviously had access to relatively substantial funding. The table above was also posted in part 1 and provides some of the vital statistics of all four sets of misericords.
All Saints’, Gresford
All Saints’ Church in Gresford
All Saints’ Church in Gresford is unexpectedly big for such a small and unimposing village. The stone church was founded in the 13th century and underwent a major revamp in the 15th century, and is still busy today. I have written about All Saints’ on two previous posts, one about the history of the church in general, and the other about the 15th century gargoyles and grotesques that inhabit its exterior. It has been suggested that the misericords were sourced from Basingwerk Abbey at Holywell in north Wales and added to All Saints’s after the abbey was dissolved in the early 1500s, but although this remains a possibility, it is also probable that All Saints’ was sufficiently well provided for to pay for its own misericord carvings.
Choir stalls at Gresford All Saints’
Neither the All Saints’ guidebook nor the CPAT survey suggest a date for the misericords, and the church’s web page does not mention them. Based on the presence of a preaching fox, a theme thought to represent mendicant friars who were only present from the 14th century, they must have carved after the late 14th century. It is also very probable that they post-date those at St Werburgh’s (1390) as there was nothing else nearby to provide a model. Although the Gresford misericords could plausibly have been associated with the major rebuild of the church in the 15th century, when two new aisles were added and many other changes were made, Dominic Strange’s misericord timeline places the misericords in the late 15th or early 16th century, over 100 years after the Chester misericords. If correct, it demonstrates the durability of themes that were popular in earlier periods.
Sketch plan of the Gresford misericords.
The choir stalls provide a good example of a three-sided arrangement in a squared U-shape. In total there were originally fourteen misericords, four on the north, four on the south and two lots of three on the west. The latter flanked the entrance from the nave to the choir. Today two are blank, either because they were never completed, or because they were removed due to inappropriate content or severe damage (I can find nothing to help determine which). Some are quite badly damaged, but the entire group indicate great skill and include some varied topics.
The choir, Gresford All Saints’
The misericords are separated by arm rests that curl up the sides of the chairs and along the backs, each one featuring a small human figure at the front of the arm rest. Exceptions are at the corners between the north and west rows and the west and south rows, which feature fantastic beasts.
As in St Werburgh’s, a fox is dressed as a friar but this time he is in a pulpit preaching to chickens and geese, demonstrating that this theme was of interest not merely to monastic establishments but to churches as well. The allegedly venal of some elements of the mendicant cause may be the theme here. The earliest mendicant friars were poor and itinerant, begging for alms. By the later middle ages they were comfortably established in friaries of their own, the recipients of patronage, gifts and wills. The apparent hypocrisy was a source of grievance for the clergy beyond the seclusion of the cloister. The parish priest may also have felt threatened by the powerful public sermons and the more evocative style of engagement with the general public delivered by the friars. In the parish church, as well as in the heart of the monastery, friars might be seen as a threat to the role of the conventional clergy, to be satirized, derided and, if possible, undermined.
One of the more puzzling themes that occasionally appears on misericords (but is missing from Chester, possibly due to removal in the Victorian period) is the revealing of male nether regions. At Gresford this is given a context. The misericord shows an acrobat hanging over a pole held by two men, ostentatiously exposing his undercarriage, apparently during a performance, possibly a form of slap-stick entertainment. Quite what these were doing on misericords is uncertain, although there is a lot of speculation on the subject. Whilst there may have been a warning against lewdness and impurity, it is difficult to deny that at least some of these depictions were intended to include a degree of crude humour.
A badly damaged misericord shows two cats, both standing on their hind legs in front of something that is now missing but appears to show a mouse hole at the base, with a tiny mouse with pointed ears to its right. The cats are holding hands, with one apparently leading the other. The leading cat seems to have been holding something in its outstretched paw. Perhaps the upright stance reflects the cat’s commanding, self-possessed and often self-satisfied view of its position within its own universe. An alternative interpretation is that when animals are shown adopting human behaviour, it is a reminder of human failings. Similarly standing on their hind legs are the cats in MS. Bodley 764 (folio 50r), which also shows cats on the hunt.
Wheelbarrows feature quite frequently in misericords, and one of the Gresford misericords shows two women seated side by side in a wheelbarrow being pushed towards the open jaws of a monster’s head by a creature with staring eyes and a forked tail. The cavalcade is followed by a man. All the participants in the scene stare out at the onlooker. The open jaws of the monster represent the gateway to hell. This is a much simpler version of a well-known example at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, which shows two monks being wheeled towards the hellmouth by either a demon or the devil himself, leading to the suggestion that the two wimpled women on the Gresford misericord may be nuns (but bearing in mind that wimples were not exclusive to nuns). The supporters appear to be small rodents, but it is difficult to see how they might relate to the central narrative.
A splendid winged griffin, facing left, is positioned between two delicate unicorns, one of which is missing its head. The griffin has the head and wings of an eagle, the body of a Lion and is four-legged. Like the lion, which can exert its power for either good or evil, depending on the context. When Alexander the Great encounters the enclave of griffins in his voyage to the end of the world, the creature is a true monster, ugly, frightening and vicious. On the other hand it is a pair of griffins that carried Alexander over the edge of the world. The griffin is often used to represent rival ideas and can, in different contexts, represent such opposing individuals as Satan and Christ. The griffin also represents the combination of the opposing elemental forces of air (eagle) and earth (lion). It is difficult to know what, in this context, the griffin is intended to convey. The presence of unicorns, which are often associated with Christ, may either be supportive companions, opposing forces, or hapless victims, and there is nothing to help determine which. The supporters are decorative flowers.
Another misericord, also quite unlike its companions, seems to refer to the gargoyles and grotesques so strongly featured on the exterior of the building. It may have had no specific symbolic meaning. It is a monster’s face with vaulting emanating from its head. The vaulting may be intended to evoke the magnificent screen that separates choir from nave at All Saints’, although the flowers at the intersections on the misericord are not present on the screen. Perhaps it is intended to bring indoors the collective message that the gargoyles and grotesques were communicating from the exterior of the church (discussed briefly in an earlier post).
Some of the All Saints’ misericords are very badly damaged, leaving the core subject matter very difficult to identify. A particularly frustrating example is the misericord whose central subject matter is completely missing. Flanking it there is a wonderful winged angel on the left and, on the right, a lady in an elaborate dress kneeling before a personal altar with the soft folds of her dress flowing behind her on the floor. Perhaps this was either the Annunciation or the Coronation of the Virgin, particularly as there are no other overtly religious stories included in the All Saints’ corpus.
Another badly damaged misericord shows a woman on a four-legged animal, the head of which is missing and is therefore unidentifiable. It is short, has particularly bandy legs and ill-defined feet, none of which suggest a horse. Two carvings, one in front of the woman and animal, and one behind, are lost. The one behind is almost certainly another figure in a long garment, but the one in front may or may not be.
Some of the misericords contain no narrative or obviously symbolic component. One misericord has no central subject matter and no obvious sign of damage, with just two images as supporters, right on the edge of the underside of the seat. These are two three-quarter partial heads, almost sketches, looking towards one another. The meaning of this, if there was any, is lost. If there was a central carving, there is not even a shape left to suggest a subject matter. It is possible that it was carved at a much later date to replace one of the original misericords that might have been damaged or whose subject matter was considered inappropriate. These lost stories are very frustrating.
St Oswald’s Church in Malpas. Photograph by Alan Marsh. Source: Historic England
St Oswald’s Church in the village of Malpas was founded in the late 1300s. The church underwent a similar modernization in the 15th century to that at Gresford, including a similar camber beam roof. It has a great many features that continue to impress, particularly the spectacular tomb effigies of the 15th and early 16th centuries, but its remaining misericords are disappointingly confined to three choir stalls.
There is a set of three choir stalls with three misericords, in a single row, still displayed in the choir area in St Oswald’s. The visitor guide to the church says that there were “at least twelve” 15th century choir stalls with misericords, with only nine surviving and six “much restored.” Given that there are only three on display, it is something of a puzzle as to what happened to the remaining six of the nine surviving. There are no descriptions of any of the misericords, and nor does the booklet say where the surviving misericords (other than the three still in the choir at Malpas) are located today.
The remaining row of choir stalls at St Oswald’s with the misericords hidden beneath the seats.
The choir stalls have carved armrests, although they less elaborate than those at Gresford, and have no carved bench ends. This may suggest that carved choir stalls were never a very important component of the chancel at St Oswald’s, or that the funds required for a more ambitious project were not available. All three remaining misericords are described here, with the disclaimer that they represent only a very small sample of the original corpus. Two of the three are damaged.
I particularly like the mermaid. Mermaids appear on many misericords in Britain. Mermaids resembled Greek sirens, representing both the temptation and lust that men might find hard to resist on the one hand, and the dangers represented by the deformation of the human image in the form of a hybrid creature on the other. They were usually shown, as at Malpas, with bared breasts, with a comb in one hand and a mirror in the other, warnings not merely of seduction but of the vice of vanity. The Malpas mermaid looks down and seems to be moving gently to her right. Her tail has been lightly carved to suggest fish scales. Her bare chest is distinctly flat and smooth, unlike most misericord mermaids, perhaps to avoid encouraging carnal thoughts amongst the Malpas choristers. She holds the comb in her left hand, which rests on her thigh (separated from her upper arm by breakage), and the mirror in the other, overlapping one of the supporters. Both supporters are three-lobed leaves.
A winged monster has one head, shown facing outward, but two bodies that are shown in profile either side of the head. This is probably the simplest and least worked of all three, with minimal details carved into the image, although there are shallow markings to suggest the scaled nature of the wings, and clawed feet. The face is shown in more detail, with three protrusions from the head, which may or may not depict serpents. It is clearly a monster with affinities like the wings, tails and claws that are shared with dragons. Dragons, wyverns and related monsters may represent paganism, power, uncontrolled violence or lust, the Devil himself and unspecified evil and sin that must be confronted and neutralized, or at the very least rationalized. As such creatures are usually associated with remote, often hostile landscapes, they may also represent fear of the unknown. It may also offer a shifting geographical component, so that the dragon may be feared in the remote landscape but is only confronted when it threatens human habitation and safety. The three-lobed leaf supporters are nicely done, with clearly defined edges. A much more elaborate version of a single-headed and double-bodied monster is shown in the Luttrell Psalter (folio 195v), but is evidently part of the same family of images familiar and available to medieval illuminators, carvers and sculptors.
Single-headed two-bodied monster from the Luttrell Psalter (Add MS 42130 f.195.v). Source: Groteskology
Finally, two knights are shown engaged in an athletic, almost balletic fight with swords. Of the three this is by far the most complex, compositionally. At first glance it is very difficult to see exactly what is going on, and whose limbs belong to whom, vividly capturing movement. The pointed shoes, generally confined to the well-to-do, emphasize the mobility and athleticism of the figures. Perhaps it refers to a scene from a chivalric romance, such a the Chester examples that show scenes from stories of Yvain and Tristan and Isolde. Again, the supporters are foliage.
St Andrew’s, Bebington
St Andrew’s, Bebington
As I was just about ready to hit the Publish button on this post I had a whizz through Dominic Strange’s Timeline and Gazetteer, which revealed that St Andrew’s in Bebington on the Wirral possesses misericords in three choir stalls, plus two that have survived being separated from their choir stalls, now serving as corbels. Although the church is not open except for Sunday services, weddings etc., Karen from the church office very kindly arranged for me to visit when volunteers were working there.
Choir stalls in St Andrew’s, Bebington
It is particularly nice to have found these misericords because, as with St Oswald’s in Malpas, the misericords at St Andrew’s rarely appears in books about misericords, always overshadowed by Chester Cathedral and Gresford All Saints’. It is clear that they should be included here not only because they are local and under-sung but because they show some themes that are not shown in the misericords at the other locations discussed in these posts.
The pelican in her piety
Dominic Strange places all five misericords in the 15th century. The guidebook to the church, by Richard Lancelyn Green, says that there were originally twelve of them, with six surviving until 1847 when they were split up due to damp and dry rot. Presumably the other six were discarded. Initially, in 1871, they were split into pairs and then, in 1897, three of them were reassembled into the row that survives today in the chancel, just to the side of the main altar. Two of them have been removed from their original choir stalls and are deployed as corbels but there is no mention of the sixth 1847 survivor.
At the far left of the choir stall is the pelican in her piety plucking her breast (shown above), already described in connection with Chester in part 1, but flanked here with foliage.
The head of a man with beard and hat or other form of head covering may or may not be a portrait. Many misericords show human faces, some characterized by particular expressions or actions, but many contain no clues about the significance. The supporters feature pomegranates. Pomegranates are associated with numerous ideas from antiquity onwards. The symbolism attached to them ranges from fertility, regeneration and good luck to representing the shedding of the blood of Christ and as a symbol of the church and its congregation. Without knowing quite what the man’s head represents it is difficult to interpret the entire message of the misericord.
The third in the row is a splendid dolphin flanked by equally splendid seahorses, presumably designed by someone who had seen neither dolphin or seahorse. The dolphin is a rather terrifying looking creature, but there seem to be no negative narratives associated with it. The bestiary in MS Bodley 764 includes the dolphin, but attaches no special meaning to it, stating that “they follow men’s voices, or gather in shoals when music is played . . . if they go in front of the ship, leaping in the waves, they appear to foretell bad weather.” The only other misericord dolphins that I’ve seen in my online travels are at Norwich Cathedral and St Laurence’s Church in Ludlow.
The remaining two misericords, now used as corbels, show what may be a bull’s head, and a sow with a litter. You can see them on the World of Misericords website. The sow with a litter is a theme also featured on one of the St Werburgh misericords. MS Bodley 764 is quite clear on the negative connotations: “The sow that was washed and returns to her wallowing in the mire is filthier than before; and he who weeps for his admitted sins, but does not desist from them, earns a graver punishment, condemned by his own misdeeds which he could have prevented by repentance; and he descends as if into murky waters because he removes the cleanness of his life by such tears, which are tainted before the eyes of God.” Sows represent unclean spirits and are often associated with gluttony and, more disturbingly, heresy. And in the medieval mind, where heresy lurks, paganism may be lurking nearby.
Contributors to knowledge
Even in such small numbers, the churches at Malpas and Bebington contribute to the body of information about Medieval misericords, helping to build up a database of knowledge about the themes that were of interest to those who commissioned them for the most sacred parts of their monasteries and parish churches. Unless an early report describing or illustrating some of the other misericords emerges, the legacy of those who commissioned, funded and carved the misericords at Malpas and Bebington are confined to just these three and five examples respectively. Although the themes were represented elsewhere, none of the topics shown replicate any of those surviving at St Werburgh’s.
Other churches in the region with misericords
Grapevine misericord at Nantwich St Mary’s. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
The above are the only churches with misericords in the Wrexham-Chester area, but there are others in the general region. For example, there is a set of fourteen dating to the late 14th century in St Mary’s Nantwich to the east, in the town centre. There are 20 dating to the late 15th century in St Asaph’s Cathedral to the west in north Wales. Another set of sixteen dating to the late 15th century can be found in St Bartholemew’s in the village of Tong to the southeast (where the A41 meets the M54). Finally, there are two fine sets of 15th century misericords (the first of sixteen in 1425 the second of twelve in 1447) in St Laurence’s church in Ludlow.
Part 3 wraps up the series, looking at who was involved in the creation of misericords, how they were paid for, and why they featured so frequently in the most sacred part of a church, often hidden from view but containing a mixture of messages that in each case contributed to the sense of a church’s identity. Visitor details and references are also added at the end of part 3.
I first encountered the fabulously inventive misericords, an integral part of some church choir stalls, in Chester Cathedral, founded as St Werburgh’s Abbey. At the abbey they were installed in the late 14th century, and in all cases, from the late 12th to the early 16th century the choir stalls were located in the holiest section of a church, where sacred liturgies and rituals were performed.
Two choir stalls from St Andrew’s Bebington. On the left the hinged seat is in the down position, hiding the misericord beneath. On the right, the seat is tipped up, leaning on the seat back, and reveals the carved misericord on the underside of the seat (my photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Misericords are hinged wooden seats set into the choir stalls. When folded down to provide seating, the seat has a plain, flat surface, but when folded up to rest against the seat back, a small platform on the underside of the seat allows the standing chorister to rest his rear end. The word misericord derives from the Latin misericordia (mercy or pity) and for the tired or aged monk or chorister looking for some respite for weary and arthritic legs, it probably was mercifully welcome.
The central theme of this misericord is a two-bodied monster with a single head. The supporters are also rather wonderful monsters, the one on the right also a double-bodied creature, the one on the left possibly a wyvern (my photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
In some cases, these misericords were decorated with elaborate carvings. They are flamboyant, skilfully carved and conceptually clever, covering a variety of themes, with individual scenes capturing a seemingly bottomless pit of information about medieval ideas, anxieties, beliefs and even humour. They consist of a central scene and two “supporters.” The central scene is the main subject matter, and the supporters may relate to it, but may simply perform the job of ornamental complements. Although many western European countries also display misericords, the supporters are a British feature. The earliest misericords known in Britain date to the 13th century, with the most complete examples being at Exeter and Salisbury.
The themes of misericords may be religious, mythological, fantastical, domestic, seasonal, humorous, crude and even scatological. Unlike gargoyles, and the figures on arm rests and bench ends, which are individual sculptures, the misericords often make up quite complex scenes, and may be have a narrative component. Particularly skilled carvers produced sophisticated forms and structures which not only engage the viewer but stand out as works of art in their own right. Whilst some were evidently intended to amuse or surprise, others were layered with meaning, creating galleries of real character and adventure.
Misericords, just one component of the choir stalls, are usually accompanied by carved arm rests and often magnificent bench-ends, and in the wealthier establishments sit beneath elaborate canopies, as at Chester Cathedral, making up a fascinating ensemble of images, ideas and aesthetics. Arm rests sit between each of the choir stalls, often running partially up the side of the stall too, creating the sense that each choir stall was an individual unit, and are often carved, usually into human, animal and imaginary figures. Bench ends are panels at the ends of each row of choir stalls, and desks, in front of choir stalls, for holding books and music were also decorated. Panels were carved with scenes and they were topped with little carved sculptural elements called finials. Other sculptural features complemented and supported them.
The bigger, most prosperous establishments could afford more ambitious creations, in terms of both the quantity and quality of the misericords, but smaller establishments with suitably generous patrons often have some excellent and surprising examples to offer. One of the features of British misericords that is not often seen in Europe is the addition of secondary carvings called supporters. These are sometimes purely decorative, and sometimes contribute to the central subject matter.
The u-shaped choir at All Saints’ Gresford with choir stalls and misericords at north, south and, with a gap to allow access from the nave, the west (my sketch Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Rows of choir stalls with misericords, each with a row of narrow desks in front of them for holding music and manuscripts, face one another across the choir, as at Chester Cathedral. In some cases there may be a third set of choir stalls at the west end, up against the screen that separates choir from nave to form a squared U-shaped choir, as at All Saints’ in Gresford.
Inevitably some establishments had misericords which have now been lost. Peterborough Cathedral retains only three of what must have been an impressive collection of misericords rivalling other great ecclesiastical establishments.
Part 1 introduces misericords and explains what they are. Examples from Chester Cathedral are discussed. Part 2 looks at the examples from Gresford All Saints’, Malpas St Oswald’s and Bebington St Andrew’s. Part 3 looks at who chose the themes on misericords, where the ideas came from, who paid for them, and why some often profane images were housed in such sacred places. Also in part 3, some final comments are followed by visitor details and a full list of the references used for all three parts.
All three parts are already written. Part 2 has now been posted on the blog and Part 3 will be posted shortly. If you would like to see the list of references before part 3 is posted, please get in touch and I will email them.
On these posts, some of the photographs are mine, but others, particularly for Chester Cathedral where I didn’t use flash, have been taken from Dominic Strange’s remarkable World of Misericords website, with Dominic’s permission and my sincere thanks. His copyright statement is here. Please see the captions for the correct attributions. I have included some images from all the churches discussed, but to see the complete medieval corpus of each, do visit Dominic’s site, which has complete images from all the churches mentioned in this post, plus a great many other monastic churches, cathedrals and churches in Britain and Europe. This is the type of ever-growing online resource that makes the most of the web as a platform for building shared resources from which both professionals and enthusiasts can benefit and to which they can contribute. xxxxxxxxxxxx
Chester, Gresford, Malpas and Bebington
St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester was the first of these four medieval churches to have misericords installed along with their choir stalls. Chester, being an abbey with massive financial resources, had 48 misericords of which 43 survive. All Saints’ in Gresford had 14, St Oswald’s in Malpas 12, and it is unknown how many there were at St Andrew’s in Bebington. A summary of the vital statistics is shown below.
Basic data about the misericords at the four churches
Chester
Chester Cathedral. (my photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Chester Cathedral was founded as St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey by Hugh Lupus in c.1092 but the choir stalls and their misericords were not installed until the 14th century, in about 1380. The delicately crafted choir (or quire) was the exclusive domain of the monks and their daily rituals, visited only rarely perhaps by the most generous of the abbey’s patrons. The monks were called to the choir seven times a day and once at night. The object of the exercise was to honour and worship the glory of God. This makes the choir the spiritual heart of a monastery. And yet it is here that profane and irreverent images of many misericords were also resident, as fully integrated components of the monks’ devotional and liturgical lives.
The timing of the new choir stalls is particularly interesting as it follows a period of enormous national hardship, beginning with crop failure and famine, and climaxing with the Black Death. The abbey clearly had funds at its disposal, even during such a difficult period, because the choir represents an enormous investment. With its choir stalls, desks, benches and elaborate canopies, all carved in oak, the choir’s components were not merely functional. Today the choir and its many flourishes are valued not only for the considerable skill demonstrated by its carvers and for its considerable aesthetic merit, but for the symbolic character of many of its representational carvings.
The layout of the choir stalls and description of their misericords. Source: Stephen Smalley 1996 (see “Sources” at end). Click to enlarge.
Although Chester Cathedral appears at first glance to have a complete set of medieval misericords, 5 out of the 48 were, as mentioned above, replaced by Victorian restorers either to replace damaged ones or to replace those that were considered to have inappropriate themes, such as nudity or poor taste. It is not known what happened to the missing misericords, but they were probably destroyed at the time. Given that the Puritan soldiers of the English Civil War defaced many features of Chester Cathedral in 1645 it is astonishing that the 48 survived so long.
The St Werburgh’s Abbey examples are justifiably famous, very similar to the examples at Lincoln Cathedral, built a decade earlier, which probably provided some templates for Chester, and with which they may have shared a workforce. Shown to the right is the layout of the misericords and the topic of each one, copied from a small and invaluable booklet that used to be sold in the cathedral shop. It is now presumably out of print and has become very difficult to source (thanks for the loan Katie!). Note that those misericords shown in italics are Victorian replacements.
The themes present at Chester’s St Werburgh Abbey are a phenomenal mix, so only a few can be picked out to represent some of the ideas on show.
Obviously religious themes and personalities are often in a minority on misericords, but where a monastery or church is named for a particular saint, a misericord may be dedicated to that saint. The Anglo-Saxon saint Werburgh was an 8th century nun and abbess from the Midlands. One of the misericords focuses on St Werburgh’s miracle. There are various versions of the story but all agree that geese were damaging the convent fields. Werburgh ordered them to be gathered up before commanding them to leave. The convent steward, Hugh, was angry with the geese for devastating his field of corn. One version says that whilst Werburgh was away Hugh captured and cooked one of the geese, and when she returned the remaining geese had refused to leave, forming a delegation to inform her of the event and ask for her help. Werbugh ordered that the bones and feathers of the carcass should be gathered up, and the missing goose was reborn. The supporter to the left shows Hugh and Werburgh rounding up the geese. In the centre Werburgh resurrects the goose, which flies away with its companions. On the right supporter Hugh is on his knees, repentant, and is forgiven by Werburgh.
The infrequency of religious topics is perhaps due to a general feeling that it as unsuitable to a) hide them away and b) sit on them. However they do occur and at Chester another obviously religious topic that requires no interpretation is the Coronation of the Virgin. The Chester example is not the carved equivalent of a delicate Fra Angelico, being a rather chunky rendition, but it has real charm and the supporters, cittern-playing winged angels, are lovely. The Virgin and Child is the subject of another misericord. St George and the Dragon is another popular religious topic for misericords, an action scene that shows an uncompromising approach to demonic danger, but the one at Chester is Victorian.
The rear end of Yvain’s horse captured in the portcullis. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
Popular romance stories provide the theme for some misericords, such as the 12th century Arthurian story “The Knight of the Lion” by Chrétien de Troyes about Sir Yvain. A snapshot from the story is captured on a really entertaining vignette. The central scene shows a walled town with its entrance arch flanked by two slender towers. Look closely, and you see that the rear end of a horse faces you. As Yvain chased his opponent into the gatehouse, the portcullis was activated by a secret device as Yvain’s horse stepped on it. The portcullis dropped, narrowly missing Yvain and chopped the horse in two. The portcullis at the other end of the gatehouse also dropped, trapping Yvain. All of this, and the rest of the story, would have been immediately recognizable, without showing Yvain himself, from the image of the half-horse on the outer side of the portcullis. The horse’s arse approach to a story that had plenty of other events from which to select probably raised many smiles as well as evoking the rest of the story. The supporters show another aspect of the tale involving two men-at-arms.
Alexander in Flight. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Alexander the Great, very small part history and a much greater part legend and fiction, was a very popular character in the Middle Ages. At Chester a misericord captures the notorious “flight” of Alexander. The great leader, having reached the edge of the world, wished to explore the unknown beyond, rising both to the heights and to the depths. Perched on what looks like a piece of wood in this misericord is his throne, supported on ropes held by two griffins. Fully equipped to take flight, he was carried over the edge of the known world to explore the unknown.
Alexander in Flight shown in the mid-15th century Talbot Shrewsbury Book, officially known as Royal MS 15 E VI (folio 20v). Source: British Library.
Having acquainted himself with the unknown world, and finding nothing left for him to conquer, Alexander returned to the known world. Alexander’s flight to the unknown may be more favourite story than morality tale, although it can also be taken to represent the folly of all-encompassing ambition. Alexander goes on to conquer Babylon and build himself a massive golden throne. In Babylon, he dies. As David Williams says “Alexander is both the force that battles the monsters as he attempts to extend civilization to the ends of the earth, and he is the monster itself, demolisher of cities, reviser of history.” The misericord’s supporters also show griffins. Griffins are discussed further with reference to a splendid example at Gresford in Part 2.
Angry woman berating a cowering man. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
Scenes of domestic life on British misericords include some startling vignettes of women attacking men, presumably their husbands. The marvellous example at Chester involves a woman with a dress resembling a tornado, sweeping her much smaller, cowering husband aside with a wooden implement, apparently in a garden or rural setting. The Chester Cathedral Quire Misericords booklet describes this as “fighting couple,” which seems like something of an understatement for a scene showing a whirlwind of fury breaking loose. Some of these many British and European woman-abusing-man misericords have been interpreted as depicting the physical, carnal and uncontrolled aspect of women. It has also been suggested that some of them may represent male anxiety in the face of increasing female emancipation. Perhaps, in the male-only environment of the choir, a humorous subtext was that the monastery is a much safer place for a man than a marital home. The supporters, which appear at first glance to be floral, have angry faces at their centres, reinforcing the message of conflict and hostility.
A page from the 13th century MS Bodley 764, showing the tigress with the mirror at the top (see below). Source: Bodleian Library, Oxford
Real world animals, fish and birds shown on misericords, either local or exotic, are frequently very beautiful, but often have symbolic roles as well. “Bestiaries” were encyclopaedia type books produced in the middle ages that not only produced information about animals (some of them mythological or imaginary) but also put them into religious context. An example is the fascinating bestiary now known as manuscript MS Bodley 764 available to view on the Bodleian Library website or available in print, translated by Richard Barber (see Sources at the end of Part 3). This describes characteristics of familiar, exotic and mythological animals, many of which appear on misericords. There is also the splendid Medieval Bestiary website, an excellent resource that lists animals (again, real, exotic and mythological) and examines medieval perspectives on each, including their symbolic value.
The bestiary says that a familiar British bird, the heron, symbolizes “the soul of saints or the elect, who, scorning the turbulence of this world, lest they should become ensnared in the traps of the devil, raise their minds above things to the serenity of heaven where they could see God face to face.” A Chester misericord shows two fabulous herons, their necks sinuously curved and their heads facing upwards as though feeding off the underside of the misericord. They are flanked by supporters that are less easy to interpret, but possibly representing demonic influences: a winged dragon with claws on one side, and on the other side a man-headed dragon with beard and an elaborate hat, scaled body and hooves.
The knight stealing a cub and deceiving the tigress with a mirror. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
An exotic animal displayed on a misericord was the tiger, something impossible for most people to experience, much like a unicorn, but known to be the living product of distant lands. In this particular narrative it is at the heart of a morality tale, which is described in the bestiary. A knight lies flat on his horse’s back, holding a stolen tiger cub in his left hand. From this apparently perilous position he reaches to the ground and drops a mirror in the path of the tigress that pursues her stolen cub. The tigress stops when she sees the mirror, believing that her own reflection is the stolen cub. Together, the knight and the mirror represent demonic trickery and deceit, whilst the inclusion of the tiger provides an exotic flavour to the scene. Admittedly the tiger doesn’t look like a tiger (no stripes either on the misericord or on the blue creature in the bestiary, shown in MS Bodley 764 above) but this was a well known scene that would have been familiar to educated medieval onlookers.
Some animals have specifically religious associations. The “Pelican in her Piety” is a recurring theme and is shown on one of the misericords at Chester, as well as one of the associated carvings, representing the sacrifice of Christ to redeem humanity. The pelican, attacked by her hungry children (representing ungrateful humanity), retaliates and accidentally kills them. Remorsefully, she pecks her own breast until she bleeds, and this revives her chicks (representing Christ’s sacrifice for humanity).
The unicorn, his head cradled in the lap of a virgin whilst killed by a knight. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Mythological animals on the Chester misericords also often have specific ideas associated with them, which may sometimes be an odd blending of imaginary animals with Christian ideas. For example, there is a carving of a really lovely unicorn with a curly mane, its head in the lap of a woman (above). Even as it lies there it is attacked and killed by a man in armour with a sword. The woman is a virgin, and the voluntary submission of the unicorn symbolizes its respect for her pure condition, like the Virgin Mary, whilst the killing of the unicorn represents Christ’s sacrifice and the martyrdom of the innocent. The supporters show a wyvern with scaled wings, and one with bat wings, probably demonic characters representing the eternal threat of evil. This scene is a popular one, not confined to misericords. Below it is an illustration in a manuscript, showing exactly the same components.
The 13th century Rochester Bestiary: British Library, Royal 12f. XIII, fol.10v. Source: Wikpedia
Animals mimicking human actions normally incorporate a particular comment on the human world, often derisive or satirical. In St Werburgh’s Abbey, the wily fox in a friar’s habit, preaching to a woman, possibly a nun, probably represented the new mendicant friars preaching to the gullible general public. The orders of friars in Chester were Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites. These were the new kids on the block in the 13th century who, unlike the established Benedictine monks, were preaching in the streets, and mingling with people where they lived and worked, diverting donations to their own establishments and raising questions about the value of monks who were hidden away. These scenes at several churches demonstrate Benedictine contempt for the mendicants, putting a clever and often amusing spin on their activities (the friar-foxes are often shown preaching to geese and cockerels), but almost certainly demonstrate a certain amount of anxiety about how their popularity would impact the conventional, secluded monks in their cloisters. Another, closely related interpretation is that the fox represents the anti-establishment Lollards, deeply troubling to the church in the 14th century.
Mythological people also have a place on misericords. Wildmen are a popular subject, of which there are three examples at Chester, each dealing with a slightly different theme. A Wildman (or wodehouse) is distinguished from other men by being covered from head to foot with a curly or shaggy pelt. Only the bearded upper face, hands and feet are fur-free. Wildmen were nearer to nature than to civilization, and accordingly had powers over the natural world. One of the examples, known from a number of sites, shows a lion (often God) fighting a dragon (often Satan) with the supporters showing Wildmen riding, and thereby controlling, dragons. A second example, shown here, shows a Wildman (with head damaged) riding a lion, holding its chain in one hand. The pair are flanked by two different types of dragon or monster. Wildmen riding dragons and lions represent nature tamed, but may also suggest the taming of passions like love and lust.
Scene from the romance of Tristan and Isolde. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Finally, some churches have scenes that are unique or found only rarely. Chester has a misericord showing a scene from the early 13th century Arthurian romance of Tristan and Isolde (or Iseult), which it shares only with Lincoln Cathedral. The misericord at Chester shows the lovers in front of a tree with a dog at their feet. In or behind the tree is Isolde’s justifiably suspicious husband King Mark, spying on the lovers. Tristan’s dog at the feet of the lovers represents loyalty and love in most versions of the tale, but in one version of the story it is revealed that blind loyalty can be dangerous, when the dog betrays the disguised Tristan by recognizing him. One of the difficulties of deciphering a scene like this is that there may be several versions of a popular story that include the same lead characters and supporting roles, but with different narrative twists and outcomes.
Sow and piglets. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
The misericords at Chester help to demonstrate the variety of themes and ideas that were in play in the Middle Ages, and successfully demonstrate the imagination, creativity and skill that went into the misericords in a prestigious religious institution. They do not capture the complete range of typical subject matters that might be found on misericords throughout Britain. Five of them are, of course, missing, either because of damage or, perhaps more likely, because the Victorian restorers considered them to be inappropriate. Even so, the massive variety of misericord subjects chosen across the many ecclesiastical institutions in Britain point to different interests and ideas in the many places in which they appear.
Emulating their more prestigious cousins much smaller churches could also follow ecclesiastical fashion and demonstrate, on a more modest scale, their ability to produce fine misericords and other sculptural elements of their own. In Part 2the twelve of fourteen misericords at Gresford, and the remaining examples at Malpas (three of twelve) and Bebington (five of twelve) are discussed.
By Andie Byrnes and Helen Anderson, August 4th 2023
The discovery in 1991
The Holt inscribed fragment, now in the Grosvenor Museum. Photograph by Dr Roger Tomlin, University of Oxford, with many thanks for allowing Helen to use it.
In 1991 artist and archaeology enthusiast Helen Anderson was driving over the Farndon-Holt bridge, about 11 miles (c.18km) south of Chester, when she noticed some activity and bare soil surfaces in the normally grassy nearby field associated with the Roman tile-works and its ancillary buildings overlooking the Dee. She had recently started to focus on Roman archaeology and to visit Roman sites, and although she had spent her childhood locally in Churton, she had only recently been reading about the Holt tileworks site for the first time. She had been intending to go and look at the site but hadn’t yet done so, and thought this might be an interesting opportunity to go and see it. She received permission from the landowner to walk over the newly-stripped surface of the field.
On the recently exposed soil surface that day, as well as sundry fragments of imbrex and tegula (roofing tiles), two of which were marked with cat and dog paw-prints and one with a finger print, she found the wonderful piece of inscribed brick shown in the photograph above right. Here is Helen talking about discovering the piece:
As I was walking through the field, which had been stripped for turf that was still being rolled and loaded, I saw a large piece of orange tile lying on the muddy surface, picked it up, turned it over and found what appeared to be writing on the underside. I could hardly believe my eyes – it was an extraordinary and quite eerie moment! My immediate thought was who I should tell about it. Later, gently cleaning it in the kitchen sink, the excitement of the incised letters appearing clearly as the soil washed out of them was something I will never forget. It felt a bit like time travel.
Aerial view of the farmland at Holt next to the River Dee where the tile-works were located
The piece was clearly broken, with a bit of the inscription missing. Helen returned to Holt a few days later, to show it the to the farmer and to see if the rest of the fragment was lying about in the field, but by then it had all been rotovated – if she hadn’t picked up the brick it probably would have been further damaged. She reckons the gods must have been with her that day!
This was six years before the establishment of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, so after after showing the find to the landowner, who gave Helen permission to keep the object, Helen sent photographs to the British Museum. The resulting correspondence offers a terrific insight into how an understanding of the significance of the object was reached. It emerged that the fragment of Helen’s brick on which the inscription was made was re-used as a form of notepad to make a quick record. At first it was thought that the fragment was a tile, but it is more likely to be a piece of lydion or sesquipedalis; these look rather like tiles because they are very thin compared with modern brickwork. Some of the letters have been sliced off at the far right, but what we are looking at is part of a coherent piece of text, a list with signatures. It was a small-sized record, containing only a few details. It measures 32cms, by 30cms, and is around 6mm thick.
Helen hard at work at the Rossett Roman Villa excavation in 2021. Photograph courtesy of Dr Caroline Pudney, University of Chester
The inscription is now recorded in various books and papers contributing to knowledge about Roman activities and everyday life in the Chester area. Although Holt is just over the Welsh border, the tiles and bricks were created for the Roman occupation in Chester.
Following very fine lunches at Pant Yr Ochain near Gresford and the White Horse in Churton, where we pored over both the artefacts and documents that Helen has assembled, including her original correspondence with Catherine John and Roger Tomlin, we decided to write a post about the inscribed fragment. Helen has now been investigating the Romans in the Chester area for three decades, and as her knowledge has grown she has excavated as a volunteer at Chester amphitheatre, the Heronbridge Roman settlement, and most recently the Rossett villa. All the documentation cited here has been provided by Helen.
First, a quick look at the Holt tile-works, which produced the inscribed brick.
The early 20th century discovery of the Holt Tile-works
The Holt brick and tile works site was recognized in the early 1600s when landowner Thomas Crue of Holt Hill suffered repeated damage to his plough and was forced to investigate. He discovered that his plough was encountering a series of fifty 2ft-tall posts, and his finding found its way into the book Roman Cheshire by W. Thompson Watkins (1886). This was noted by retired chemist and keen amateur historian Alfred Neobard Palmer who, in 1905, decided to hunt for the remains that Crue had found, accompanied by local vicar Jenkyn Jones, having sought permission from the landowner. A series of field-walking expeditions followed, uncovering plentiful fragments of Roman brick, roof tile and pottery over an area of some 20 acres.
Fold-out plan of the kilns at Holt, published by Grimes in 1930. (Scanned from my copy of “Holt, Denbighshire”)
Palmer was not an archaeologist, and the task of excavating the site was taken on by Wrexham solicitor and amateur archaeologist Arthur Acton. Work began in 1907 and continued until 1915. Although he delivered numerous lectures about the site, Acton never published his work. Fortunately a portion of his records survived, and he sold the excavation finds to the National Museum of Wales, where William F. Grimes used the data to compile a comprehensive report, complete with site plans, photographs and object illustrations. Work did not stop there, and during the 1970s Geoffrey Bevan conducted both field walking activities and an excavation, finding Roman material that filled dozens of boxes, which were donated, this time, to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester. Helen’s field-walking in 1991 added the inscription to the list of important finds, and in 2018 Holt Local History Society commissioned Archaeological Survey West to carry out a geophysical survey of the site, to fix the positions of the known buildings and, with luck, to identify any unexcavated and previously unknown structures. This demonstrated that the Holt complex was even bigger and more complex than Grimes, via Acton, had been able to determine. There is, of course, the potential for future field research, and recent work in Farndon, summarized on local historian Mike Royden’s website is beginning to expand the story over to the other side of the Dee.
What was the Holt tile-works like?
Site plan of the Roman tile and pottery work displayed in the Hidden Holt exhibition. Also in the excellent booklet accompanying the exhibition, full details in Sources below. The features shown in blue are unrecorded / unexcavated. Those in dark brown are the building locations fixed in 2018, and those in paler brown those estimated by Grimes based on Acton’s work. Click to see a bigger version with fully legible text. Source: Wrexham Heritage Service, 2021
The 20th Legion, Valeria Victrix, of the Roman army, was stationed at Chester, Roman Deva, from AD87, and the Holt works appears to have been established shortly afterwards to supply the fort and settlement at the legionary fortress. Holt’s industrial activities reaching their peak output at around AD135, and began falling out of use in the mid 3rd Century. The site was clearly a fully integrated operation combining industrial, public and domestic components.
A senior manager had his own house, complete with hypocaust (under-floor central heating), there was a public bath house, a series of kilns for the manufacture of tiles, bricks and pottery, and a barracks that may have housed workers, or alternatively a detachment of the Roman army based at Chester at this time.
The hypocaust below the drying shed. Source: National Museum of Wales
The main kiln plant at Holt, published by William Grimes in 1930.
The kilns formed two main units, a larger (139ft / 52m long, consisting of a row of six kilns) and smaller twin-kiln built on the natural bed-rock. Each kiln was rectangular and tile-lined with an arched stoke-hole for access. A round pottery kiln was also located on the edge of the main kiln complex. The oven floor consisted of a raised floor of tiles plastered with clay that were pierced with holes that acted as vents. The drying shed was provided with a hypocaust, of the same sort used in villas and bath houses. These, like the kilns, were stoked and kept hot to ensure that the tiles, pottery and bricks were dried through after firing.
Map marked by Helen to show the approximate findspot of the inscribed fragment
All of the output manufactured at the works was sent by boat downriver to Chester on the river Dee. It provided direct access to Chester, 12 miles / 19km away, passing the civic settlement at Heronbridge. The generally flat environment meant that building of roads, where needed, was not exceptionally laborious. —–
Helen wrote to the British Museum in April 1991 describing how she had found the fragment, and enclosing a high resolution photo in which the inscription could be seen clearly. The first person to reply to Helen’s letter to the British Museum was Catherine Johns F.S.A., at the time Curator of Roman Britain in the Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities in the British Museum in London. In a letter dated 18th June 1991, Catherine Johns begins “Thank you for your letter and the excellent photographs and drawing of the inscribed tile from Holt in your possession. This is an interesting and important find.” She goes on to explain that the inscription is in cursive Latin, “that it is to say, it is handwriting rather than formal lettering.” She was unable to translate the text, which is a specialist task, and sent it to Dr Roger Tomlin of Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She warned Helen that the fragmentary nature of the text might impede translation. She finished by suggesting that Helen might consider presenting the piece to the National Museum of Wales, where most of the Holt material excavated in the early 20th century is held.
Helen then received a letter dated 25th June 1991, only a week after the letter written by Catherine Johns, from Dr Roger Tomlin. Dr Tomlin explained that it was by no means straightforward to decipher and transcribe the fragment, partly because of the several examples of handwriting inscribed, and the fact that it was clearly incomplete. He suggested that this was a record of expenses, with the star symbol indicating the unit of payment in denarii, and that several individuals were involved. He referred to the inscribed brick as “a welcome addition” to the corpus of Roman inscriptions in Britain. In a later letter, dated 1st July 1991, he thanked Helen for offering to take the the object to him in Oxford, for translation, whilst on a family break, and expressed the hope to meet up with Helen to discuss it. He suggested that the fragment was probably part of a lydion (or sesquipedalis), rather than a tile, a brick used for bonding-courses. When Helen met Dr Tomlin for coffee, he departed on his bicycle, in typical Oxford style, with the inscription propped up in the bicycle’s basket. ———
The inscription
The same photo of the inscribed tile found by Helen Anderson in Holt in 1996 as above, shown again so that you can review the cursive text Copyright Helen Anderson
The brick was inscribed in the still-soft surface of the wet clay before firing. The translation of the inscription by Dr Tomlin is a great example of the sort of scholarship and academic detective work that go into understanding a single object. The inscription was abbreviated, typical for this sort of note, where space was limited and standardized abbreviations were recognizable to all. As already noted, the slab was broken, possibly by ploughing, so parts of the inscription are missing, but this apparently presented few problems for Dr Roger Tomlin.
Just by looking at it, you can see that there is more than one person’s handwriting, and that’s because each person wrote his own signature. All three were men, named 1) Junius, 2) Maternus and 3) Bellettus. The final s is missing in each case due to the break. In the official transcription below, Tomlin has completed words where he knows them. The slab is a record of expenses they had incurred, but does not say how they were incurred. Junius was paid at least 4 denarii, probably more, but the break carried the other details away.
Notes about the inscription on the left, on the back of the photo above, followed ultimately by the publication of the inscription in Tomlin 2018, p.290
Front cover of Tomlin’s 2018 “Britannia Romana. Roman Inscriptions and Roman Britain.” Oxbow Books (see Sources below)
Dr Tomlin wrote about the inscription in the journal Britannia, vol.26, 1995, p.387, where it is numbered no.28 (and Helen’s role in the discovery is referenced in the footnotes). It was later included in Tomlin’s comprehensive Britannia Romana, published in 2018, which lists over 400 epigraphic inscriptions from Roman Britain. The inscription is listed on page 290 as number 11.14. Dr Tomlin observed that the three men listed were probably legionaries (although he does not rule out in the 1995 publication that they may have been auxiliaries). He says that two of the three names were commonplace Roman names, and the third, Bellettus, may have been a variant on the name Bellicus, which he describes as “popular in Celtic-speaking provinces.” All three signed their own names, meaning that they were literate.
Tomlin is particularly interested in the word sumtuaria, which is missing its p, and is the plural of the noun sumptuarium. The word is very rare, with the only example known by Tomlin appearing on a legionary pay-sheet in Masada, Israel, where it refers to food expenses. Tomlin speculates that this was a record of expenses that were to be reimbursed by headquarters at a later date, but he does question how this was supposed to work when the record took the form of a brick (which, after all, could not be divided between the three men!)
Roman soldier’s payslip from Masada, Israel. Source: Arkeonews.net
This find, recording something of the lives of three men who lived in Roman Holt, has something of the air of the Vindolanda tablets. The thin leaves of wood used at Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall recorded many aspects of everyday life, also written in cursive. A selection of them are on display in London’s British Museum. One of them had a similar content to the Holt example, showing a list of people who owe money. Although it is incomplete and undated, it was possible to identify Vitalis the balniator or bath house keeper and Tagomas, one of a number of cavalrymen from northern Spain who appear on the list (also mentioning the latter’s contubernalis, or unofficial wife).
Text from vindolanda showing a list of people who owe money. Source: Vindolanda.com
————–
Publications mentioning the brick
The inscription became something of an emblem of local Roman social history, being referred to not only in academic publication, but also heritage newsletters and leaflets in Chester. Dr Tomlin suggested that it be included on the Roman Inscriptions of Britain website, and it has very recently been added to the site here, where it has been given the identifier Brit.26.28.
Here are two examples of publications aimed at the general public, collected by Helen, that mention the find and give a good idea of how it was regarded:
Source: Revealing Cheshire’s Past series: From Farms to Fortress leaflet, page 6 Industrial Activity. Cheshire County Council
Connecting with the past
The inscribed brick in the Grosvenor Museum, Chester. Copyright Helen Anderson
You can see the inscribed fragment today in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, where it is on display in the ground floor Newstead Roman gallery, thanks to Helen requesting that it be displayed locally rather than in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. Not only would it have been difficult for local people to visit it easily in Cardiff, but the tile-works were directly connected with the legionary fortress in Chester, so this seemed like the perfect home for the inscription. Generations of local schoolchildren can have their imaginations fired by seeing the handwriting of several different Romans who lived here nearly 2000 years ago.
Helen explains that her own children were so excited and proud of her discovery of this piece of heritage that they somehow persuaded her that it should be on loan to the museum rather than donated, but she has since donated it outright, rightly deciding that it’s a piece of history that belongs to everyone.
If anyone wants to chat with Helen about the find, you can contact her via Twitter: @Helenus_. You can also contact Andie on the Contacts Page, via Twitter @BasedInChurton, or leave a comment (the Leave a Reply link is immediately under the title of the post).
Other posts on this blog about Roman Chester and Holt can be found here. ———-
Final Comments
The object that Helen found in a field in Holt, during a short window between when turf was removed and new grass sown, has multiple identities. Archaeologically and historically, it is one of a number of records of Roman Britain that together provide insights into Roman settlement and industry and particularly contribute to the narrative about the Holt tile-works. At another level it is both a clue about record keeping in Roman Holt, and an ephemeral glimpse into the everyday life of three literate Roman men who were working at the tile-works and were claiming expenses. Today, as well being a significant part of the Roman display in the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, it has made a claim for a position in Helen’s own family history. Not a bad set of achievements for one inscribed object found lost in a field. One wonders if the three soldiers ever did receive their expenses?———————
Sources:
Letters (in the private archive of Helen Anderson)
From Catherine Johns, Curator, Department of Prehistoric and Romano-British Antiquities, British Museum. To Helen Anderson, dated 18th June 1991
From Dr Roger Tomlin, Wolfson College, University of Oxford. To Helen Anderson, dated 25th June 1991
From Dr Roger Tomlin, Wolfson College, University of Oxford. To Helen Anderson, dated 10th July 1991
Books and papers:
Grimes, W.F. 1930. Holt, Denbighshire: Twentieth Legion at Castle Lyons. Y Cymmrodor. Society of Cymmrodorion.
Tomlin, R.S.O. 1995. 11.14 Holt (? Bovium), in (eds.) B. C. Burnham, L. J. F. Keppie, A. S. Esmonde Cleary, M. W. C. Hassall, and R. S. O. Tomlin Roman Britain in 1994. Britannia, Vol. 26 (1995), p. 325-390
Tomlin, R.S.O. 2018. Britannia Romana. Roman Inscriptions and Roman Britain. Oxbow Books (Chapter 11, no.14, p.290-1)
The Thomas Becket ceiling boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral. Photograph by Andie Byrnes
Introduction
Who was Thomas Becket?
The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel of St Werburgh’s Abbey
Final Comments
Sources
Introduction
Chester Cathedral plan (annotated). Source: Wikipedia
In the 13th century, Abbot Simon de Whitchurch (1265-1291) began the construction of Lady Chapel in St Werburgh’s Abbey (which is today Chester Cathedral, and about which I have posted here, with visiting information including accessibility). It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the ceiling, where the vaulting ribs meet, three round ceiling bosses high above the floor show religious themes. One shows the Holy Trinity and the second shows the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. The third, shown above, shows shows the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, by four knights loyal to Henry II on 29th December 1170 in Christ Church Cathedral in Canterbury. It is one of only two Becket ceiling bosses known to survive in Britain; the other is at Exeter Cathedral (shown below left).
What these two busy little scenes in Chester and Exeter depict was a brutal and savage act of great violence. The murder of Becket was a violation one of England’s holiest precincts, a modern martyrdom, and an affront not only to the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England but to the papacy itself. All eyes turned towards Henry II. This was not the sort of attention that Henry wanted, and he spent the rest of his reign attempting to distance himself from the event.
The news of the murder spread swiftly and was deeply shocking to 12th century English and European society. The terrible events were captured by eye witness accounts, not least that of the clerk Edward Grim who attempted to intervene and protect Becket. Almost immediately miracles were attributed to Becket, and only three years later he was canonized by the pope, becoming St Thomas. His story was told in biographies of the saint, and his scenes of his life, martyrdom and miracles were rendered in wood, stone and paint, whilst relics were assiduously collected and displayed. In a world where martyrs and their deeds were factual events but remote, the real-time martyrdom of the head of the English church by representatives of the king was religious persecution in action, fresh and alarming in a way that past events might not be. It was unthinkable.
Document dating to around 1180, around a decade after the event, showing the murder of Becket, from an eye-witness account by John of Salisbury (Cotton MS Claudius BII f.341r). Source: British Library.
From the moment of his murder, people were attracted to Christ Church cathedral to commemorate Becket. His canonization made Christ Church Cathedral a formal and very desirable pilgrim destination. The shrine itself, completed 50 years after Becket’s death, became one of Europe’s top pilgrim sites.
The saint was still attracting pilgrims in the 16th century when Henry VIII, identifying the cult of Becket as a challenge to his absolute control over religious as well as secular matters, ordered that every image of the martyr should be destroyed. The systematic annihilation of Becket shrines and images contributed to the demise of Becket’s legacy, which was reinforced by further systematic defacements of Catholic artistic and architectural themes during the Reformation, including various monuments in Chester Cathedral, including the St Werburgh shrine.
Thomas Becket was the son of a Norman merchant who moved from Normandy (northwest France) to take up opportunities in London following the invasion of William I in 1066. Gilbert and his wife Matilda lived in commercial area of London called Cheapside. Gilbert rose to the position of sheriff, climbing several rungs on the social and political ladder. It is thought that Thomas Becket was born around 1118-1120.
Becket was was born into the period of civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda (mother of Henry II). He received a good formal education, first at Merton Priory (now in southwest London), and later at a school in London. In his late teenage years he went to Paris to study, in a Parisian heyday of scholarship and artistic endeavour. His studies included some of the most popular scholastic topics, including grammar, rhetoric and canon (church) law, which were essential tools for anyone wanting to make their mark on the world, but did not include any formal religious education. He returned to England in the early 1140s under the reign of Henry II, who was crowned as monarch on the death of Stephen in December 1154.
Seals of Archbishop Theobald and of Christ Church, Canterbury. Source: “Theobald. Archbishop of Canterbury” by Avrom Saltman via the Internet Archive
In the mid 1140s Becket was recommended to the Archbishop of Canterbury Theobold of Bec (c.1090-1116) and obtained a role as a clerk in the cathedral, a mainly administrative position which, however, offered opportunities for advancement. A cathedral is both the principal church of the diocese and the seat of the bishop and, as at Christ Church, often included a monastic establishment. Becket’s Paris education was probably attractive to Theobold, who had a number of similarly educated young men in his employ. Like most incumbents of the Canterbury archbishopric, Theobold was both a cleric and a diplomat, closely involved in crown matters, but had twice been exiled by King Stephen due to his intervention in political matters. He sent Becket to Auxerre in France and Bologna in Italy to study law. Law, divided into Church (canon) law and state law, was rapidly becoming an important topic in Medieval England.
Becket’s rise to power
The 12th-century Topographica Hiberniae (Topology of Ireland) by Gerald of Wales shows a rare contemporary image of the king. Source: Wikipedia
In 1154 Becket was promoted to the role of Archdeacon of Canterbury. As well as the financial rewards that enabled him to satisfy his love of luxury, his new position was sufficiently prestigious for Theobold to recommend Becket to the 21-year old Henry II as the new royal chancellor. Henry’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, following the death of Stephen, had taken place in the same year. Their professional relationship evolved into a friendship over a period of eight years as Becket flourished in a position of enormous responsibility. It was a mark of Becket’s success in this role that on the death of Theobold in 1161 Henry moved to appoint him Archbishop of Canterbury, to hold both positions simultaneously. Becket had no religious ambitions, had received no clerical training and consequently had never been ordained into the priesthood. In spite of these drawbacks, Becket was elected to the role by the monks of Canterbury and the bishops of southern England. Ordination was rushed through, and Becket was consecrated as Archbishop on 3rd June 1162. His appointment was confirmed by Pope, who sent him a pallium, a vestment that symbolized his new office and status.
Needless to say, the appointment was not universally celebrated. Quite apart from the fact that Becket had made enemies on his rise to power, decisions such as the appointment of an archbishop was one of the areas of conflict between Crown and Church. The Church thought that it should have complete autonomy over its own affairs, answerable only to the papacy and to God; but the Crown, conscious of the power and wealth wielded by the ecclesiastical institutions, wanted to exercise its own authority over the activities of the most important institutions, including Canterbury. The right to appoint the most senior ecclesiastical personnel, was only one bone of contention. The right of the Church to operate under its own canon law was another.
King Henry II and Thomas Becket arguing. Peter of Langtoft’s Chronicle, Royal 20 A II, f.7v. Source: British Library
There was no reason to think that Thomas Becket would not continue to remain completely committed and loyal to the Crown. It was therefore a very unpleasant surprise to Henry II when Becket began to take his new role seriously, resigning his position as chancellor to focus on promoting the rights of the Church and representing the authority of the papacy. From this point forward, Becket and Henry had opposing interests. Becket’s training in law put him in an excellent position for arguing that the Church, rather than the Crown, should be in charge of ecclesiastical justice, in which Church clerics who committed even violent crime would be judged not by secular courts but by the far more lenient ecclesiastical courts. There were many other disputes between the two, when Becket took a stand not only where ecclesiastical interests were involved, but in matters of state as well. Henry attempted to resolve the situation by imposing a set of “customs,” or rules adhered to in the era of Henry I, Henry II’s grandfather, assembled in the Constitutions of Clarendon to which he commanded that Becket and all the bishops defer. Although Becket at first refused to ratify the document, he and the bishops eventually submitted to pressure and signed. However, Henry was seriously annoyed and began to investigate Becket, finding grounds for ordering him to court to address a number of charges. When Becket refused first to accept the charges against him and then to reject the resulting sentence, he made the decision to flee to France.
The Abbey Church of the monastery of Pontigny. Photo by Mediocrity. Source: Wikipedia
Becket lived in exile at the Cistercian monastery of Pontigny in France from November 1164 until 1170. In exile he attempted to drum up support, but alienated Henry still further by excommunicating a number of his advisers. Pope Alexander sent papal legates to try to resolve the dispute instructing Becket to refrain from taking any more actions against the king and his court, but in April 1169 Becket excommunicated another ten royal officials. In 1170 Henry’s son Henry was crowned as the Young King, in a secondary role to Henry II order to settle any potential succession disputes. The coronation was presided over by the Archbishop of York, Roger de Pont L’Évêque. It was the right of the Archbishop of Canterbury to preside over coronations, and Becket responded to this insult by laying an interdict on England, with the pope’s permission. This forced Henry back to the negotiating table, and he came to terms with Becket on 22nd July 1170. Becket returned to England in the December of that year. One might have thought that Becket would count his blessings, but before he arrived he could not resist excommunicating the three individuals most closely associated with the coronation of the Young King, one of whom was the Archbishop of York. The three appealed to the king, who was in his Normandy territory, and it was at this point that Henry, in a rage, expressed his frustrations about Becket’s latest act of rebellion. What Henry II actually said is not recorded, but it spurred four of his knights to set off for Canterbury from Normandy. ———-
Murder in the cathedral
One of the earliest known representations of the murder of Becket (c.1175–1225). British Library Harley MS 5102, f.32. Source: Wikipedia
The knights rode from London to Canterbury. They left their armour and weapons outside the cathedral precinct, intending to arrest Becket and return him to London for trial. Becket was having none of it. Eye-witness accounts state unambiguously that Becket’s behaviour was that of a very angry man under serious threat, confronting the knights on the steps of the cathedral. Goaded by Becket’s verbal retaliation and refusal to back down, they retreated to put on their armour and retrieve their weapons, returning to slaughter the unarmed archbishop in rage. Blows of the sword to his head killed him relatively swiftly, producing an alarming amount of gore that spilled onto the floor around him. One of the swords struck him so powerfully that the sheer momentum carried it to the ground, snapping the end off the blade. Edward Grim, who attempted to intervene, was badly injured.
His murderers were Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Richard Brito (or le Breton) and Hugh de Morville. FitzUrse, whose name means “son of bear,” is often marked out on images of the murder with the image of a bear’s head on his shield. He is shown on both the Chester and Exeter bosses. Having committed the crime, the knights headed for Yorkshire where they remained for a year. Curiously, Henry made no move against them, but in 1171 Pope Alexander III excommunicated them, and 1172 they headed for Rome to seek absolution from the pope. It is thought that they were probably sent on crusade, and either died on their way, or in battle, although there are a number of unsubstantiated traditions about their ultimate fates.
The Christ Church was closed for nearly a year so that Pope Alexander III could be consulted on how to proceed so that the cathedral could be re-consecrated and returned to normal use, rejuvenated as a destination for pilgrims.
Miracles and legacy
Detail of the Canterbury Christ Church Cathedral miracle window, which shows some of Becket’s miracles. Source: Reverend Mark R Collins blog
Until his death, Becket had been a political creature, and a representative of ecclesiastical interests. He did not position himself as a man of the people, but as a newly inspired champion of the rights of the Church. This did not prevent the place of his death becoming a destination for pilgrims of all social scales, even before he was officially canonized. Curiously, Becket was not merely an emblem of devotion to the Church and a promoter of its rights in the face of opposition from the Crown, but a saint who produced miracles for the everyday person, becoming an unlikely saint to act on behalf of the general populace.
A reconstruction of the Thomas Becket shrine in Canterbury Cathedral. Source: Smithsonian Magazine
The first miracles reported following the death of Becket took place at his tomb. Hundreds of others soon followed, 703 being reported within the first 10 years, many recorded by Benedict of Peterborough. Within twenty years of the murder, no less than twenty biographies had been written about the saint including contemporary accounts including, for example, those by John of Salisbury, Edward Grim and Benedict of Peterborough, the latter listing many of his miracles. Images of him in various media appeared all over Europe, and his relics spread just as far. As the Oxford History of Saints comments laconically, “His faults were forgotten and he was hailed as a martyr for the cause of Christ and the liberty of the Church.” In short, Becket and the miracles associated with him went viral.
Fifty years after his death, a new shrine was opened with great ceremony, and St Thomas was moved into a new tomb within the shrine. It was a spectacle of gold and precious gems, and was surrounded by stained glass windows telling the story of his life and miraculous works. At the height of its popularity, it attracted over 100,000 pilgrims a year. In the Jubilee year of 1420 the shrine earned £360 for Canterbury Cathedral, which equates today to around £231,483, which could have purchased 83 horses or 620 cows (data from the National Archive’s Currency Convertor) or could have been used to build a new section of cathedral. Images and symbols of St Thomas were moulded into ampullae and badges for the hundreds of pilgrims who visited his Canterbury shrine. The shrine no longer survives; it was destroyed in 1538 under the orders of Henry VIII. ——–
The Becket boss at St Werburgh’s Abbey
The Lady Chapel
The Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral
St Werburgh’s Abbey featured many architectural-sculptural elements which embellish the core structure of the building, providing focal points, colour and a hint of glamour. The Lady Chapel was built under Abbot Simon de Whitchurch (1265-1291). In Burne’s words, “He was evidently an outstanding character and under him the abbey flourished exceedingly.” It was a period of great prosperity for the abbey, with an income derived from, amongst other things, church pensions (a sort of tax), appropriated church tithes, gifts of houses and lands, and possibly pilgrimage to the reliquary-shrine of St Werburgh, although the new shrine to the saint was not built until the 14th century, and it is unclear how important it was as a pilgrim destination before then.
Although the earliest known Lady Chapel predates the Norman invasion, the Lady Chapel became particularly important in the 13th century when the Virgin Mary was undergoing a resurgence of devotion. The elegant, vaulted Lady Chapel St Werburgh’s was built in the 13th century. Like most Lady Chapels it was built to the east of the High Altar, projecting from the main building. Here clerics performed daily services to the Virgin Mary. It is easy to forget that most architectural elements would have been brightly painted, but the Lady Chapel in Chester Cathedral, restored to a typical colour scheme of green, blue, red and gold in the 1960s, provides an excellent example of how these components would have looked. The lancet windows at the end of the chapel date to 1869, when Gilbert Scott removed the later Perpendicular window to be more faithful to the 13th century vision.
The Holy Trinity, with God holding the arms of the crucifix in his hands
Some Lady Chapels are large and ornate, but in some cases they form smaller, more private and tranquil spaces than other chapels within a monastery or cathedral. The Chester example is delectable, its small footprint and relative height giving a sense of both intimacy and space. The reconstructed shrine of St Werburgh, a victim of the Reformation’s hostility to reliquaries and idolatry, is located at its east end, but according to Jessica Hodge was probably originally at the east end of the quire.
The ceiling bosses form a row across the centre of the chapel, from east to west. The east end was symbolically the most sacred, and it is at the east end of the chapel that the ceiling boss showing the Holy Trinity is located. In the centre is, the Virgin Mary is depicted, and at the west end is the Becket boss. The chapel was created during a period of great religious significance during the reign of Henry III, who had been crowned for the second time in 1220, the same year in which Becket’s remains were moved to a custom-built shrine on July 7th 1220, reinvigorating the already vibrant cult. The spectacular event was used by both the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, and the king to help to heal the ongoing rift between the Church and the king. In 1225 Henry ratified the Magna Carta, granting the freedom of the Church. This was a momentous decade in the Church’s history and religious houses throughout Medieval England rode the crest of this remarkable period during the rest of the century with new architectural projects, rebuilding, expanding and celebrating. By 1260-1280 when the Chester Lady Chapel was built, it was the centenary of Becket’s death. It is possible that the Becket boss was installed to commemorate this event following an ecclesiastically bright start to the century.
The St Thomas ceiling boss
Ceiling bosses are both architectural and sculptural elements, usually circular or sub-circular, positioned in the ceiling where the vaulting ribs that form arches meets, either to hide the join, or acting as keystones to add structural integrity to the complex set of tensions and stresses. There can be much more to them than first glance suggests, and behind the decorated end, an undecorated portion of the boss may be inserted into the join. Examples on the floor of the cloisters provide a good idea of this, showing the decorated section that would face down, and the plain stump that would be inserted into the join.
Three relatively large stone vaulting bosses were provided at the point where seven or eight stone ribs of the slender vaulting meets, each carved and painted with a different aspect of Christian iconography. Smaller bosses were also added to at vault joins, where three or four ribs meet, sculpted into beautiful foliage, and gilded. Corbels, where the vaulting ribs begin, are also decorated with foliage. These carved stone features would all have been carved and painted prior to installation. The white painted ceiling and walls between the brightly coloured features are the perfect foil for them, providing them with reflected light and emphasizing the rich colours.
The Becket scene offers a sanitized version of the traumatic event on 29th December 1170, recycling a scene that bears only a passing resemblance to the terrible violence of reality, one version of a standardized formula for representing this event, an overstuffed and static little scene that looks rather like a posed portrait, with all of the protagonists shown full face, as though looking towards a camera. The composition is curious. Three knights dominate the scene. Sir Reginald FitzUrse is identifiable, as he is in the Exeter ceiling boss of this scene, by the bear’s head on his shield. One knight at the front strikes at Becket’s head. At the back of the group is clerk Edward Grim holding a cross and appears to preside over the scene. Becket is squashed into the lower right hand section of the scene, kneeling behind an altar, his hands held, palms outwards, in front of him. Behind him, even more squashed and barely visible, is the fourth knight, striking at Becket’s head, his sword converging with the sword of the knight in the foreground. In spite of all four swords, the most dynamic element of the scene is the way in which Becket’s hands are raised in front of him, either in prayer, supplication or in a gesture of surrender.
By contrast, the Exeter ceiling boss, which Burne says is about a century later, makes rather more compositional sense, placing Becket at the centre of the scene, looking out at the viewer with his hands raised, whilst the knights crowd in on him, intent on their deadly purpose while Grim does his best to ward them off. It has far more dramatic impact, and is easier to understand as a narrative. Both bosses share the same formulaic approach to the event.
When the chapel was built between c.1260 and 1280, over a century had passed since the martyrdom of Becket, and the detail of the real event had become less important than its symbolism and the theological narrative built around it. Becket shown praying in front of an altar conveyed the sense of Becket’s purity and holiness far more efficiently than the actual scene of anger, shouting and resistance that preceded the murder. Similarly, theGrim was not a cross-bearerclerk. However, there is an obvious dramatic advantage to showing him holding the cross as he confronted the knights in support of Becket. It remains a peculiarity of the scene that the knights and Grim are the central characters, whilst Becket is squeezed to the side.
Who was the intended audience?
Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral
In the 13th century the eastern end of the abbey church was the exclusive domain of the abbey monks, and it is unlikely that the Lady Chapel was seen by anyone else. By the 14th century, the pilgrim status of Chester, with the miraculous holy rood in St John’s, and nearby pilgrim destinations at Holywell and St Asaph, lead to a reinvigorated interest in the Anglo-Saxon St Werburgh. A new shrine to St Werburgh was built in the 1300s and according to Jessica Hodge, was situated at the east end of the quire, presumably accessed via the nave and the north aisle. Pilgrims to the shrine would therefore have been granted access to the usually private east end, and they may have been shown the neighbouring Lady Chapel and the Becket boss as part of their pilgrimage. Some of them may have included a visit to the Nunnery of St Mary in their travels, which possessed a relic in the form of the girdle of Thomas Becket.
Lady Chapel corbel
When they were new, the monks would have been well aware of the subject matter of the ceiling bosses. As time went by they may have been repainted and repaired, but there will have been periods when they receded into the background. Even today, people don’t always look up, and even when they do, they are not always sure what they are looking at. Even if access had been generally available, the ceiling bosses are so high up that it is difficult to see the detail without either a telephoto lens or a ladder. When I was last there, I pointed the Becket boss out to a lady who asked what I was photographing, and the only way that she could make it out, even with her distance glasses on, was to see the enlarged image on the screen of my digital camera. Similarly, I only really got to grips with the subject matter on the other two bosses by photographing them and bringing them up on my computer screen later.
If one factors in the available lighting in the Middle Ages, which was confined to any light that passed through the stained glass windows, supplemented by candles, it is unlikely that these bosses were generally very visible from the ground. Compare them with those in the enclosed walkway (cloister), which are much closer to the ground and therefore much easier to appreciate.
Why were images of Becket purged during the 16th century?
The Becket boss prior to restoration. Source: Godfrey W. Matthews, The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral
Chester became a cathedral after the Benedictine monastery of St Werburgh was dissolved by Henry VIII. In spite of this lucky escape, it is possible that the ceiling boss was deliberately defaced at this time. Godfrey W Matthews, writing in 1934, described it as follows: “It is very badly worn, which is curious, as the two bosses to the east of it are in a good state of reservation. It is possible that some attempt had been made to deface it, for the figures suggest chipping.” Henry VIII imposed a policy of extreme prejudice against Becket, ordering all images of him to be destroyed. The tomb and pilgrim shrine in Canterbury were removed in 1538 and Becket’s mortal remains disposed of. Images throughout the country were removed.
Chester Cathedral also came under fairly savage review during the Reformation, when various architectural features and monuments were maimed or destroyed to remove overtly Catholic themes. Most of the survivors are in high places that were difficult to reach.
Are ceiling bosses works of art, or mere architectural flourishes?
Stonemason, artist and researcher Alex Woodcock, whose PhD focuses on Exeter stone sculptures, highlights how the bright colours and dark shadows at Exeter were contrasted to give reveal a sense of depth and to emphasise the three dimensional character of the bosses and corbels. This can be seen at Chester as well, where the depth of the three dimensional aspect of the sculpted forms provides a sense of theatre and allows simple shapes to be very skilfully highlighted. Woodcock points out that architectural sculpture “is often assumed to be secondary to free-standing sculpture, possibly because of its very architectural function” and that because the boss would have been there anyway, the images are seen less as art than mere decoration. As he points out, however, “in terms of the hours needed to complete the carving using hand tools, their production would appear almost prohibitive in terms of expense today.” Not all ceiling bosses and corbels are good art, but many of them are tremendous and well worth the time taken to appreciate them as stand-alone works.
Final Comments
The Lady Chapel in the 1870s. Source: Blomfield 1879
Most of us learned a version of the “turbulent priest” story at school. This was a man who stirred up hornets’ nests in his role as Archbishop of Canterbury, both within the royal court and within the cathedral. He divided opinion in his own lifetime, finding friends and making enemies. His immediate legacy was to generate a healthy income for Canterbury Cathedral, as pilgrims flocked to share in the wonders of the miracle-worker. Politically, he became an ongoing reminder of the conflict between royalty and the Church, a symbol not merely of spiritual martyrdom, but carried with him a morality tale about the dangers of the crown having absolute power over both the church and the people.
On a vaulting boss in Chester Cathedral, accompanied by the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity, Becket and his murderers look down on the visitor. Representing a scene of appalling violence, Becket, Grim and the errant knights are a reminder that throughout the early Middle Ages, the Church and the King were equally powerful, and serious conflicts ran the risk of monstrous outcomes.
After nearly 400 years of popularity, Becket and his legacy were terminally undermined by Henry VIII and the Reformation, destroying his images in cathedral, church, monastery and private residence. Queen Mary briefly restored both Catholicism and Becket’s status, but Elizabeth I followed her father’s lead. Although Becket is remembered today, the split from the papacy and the tidal wave of the Reformation swept away his significance and his popularity in Britain. Having said that, the lady I was chatting to in the Lady Chapel in Chester Cathedral told me that in the congregation of her Liverpool Anglo-Catholic church they follow the missal, and continue to commemorate the date of Becket’s murder. Although he survives mainly as a historical figure, Thomas Becket has not vanished from view.
Sources:
Books and papers
Bartlett, R. 2013. Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation. Princeton University Press
de Beer, Lloyd, and Speakman, Naomi 2021. Thomas Becket, Murder and the Making of a Saint. The Trustees of the British Museum
Burne, R.V.H. 1962. The Monks of Chester. The History of St Werburgh’s Abbey. SPCK.
Crouch, D. 2017. Medieval Britain, c.1000-1500. Cambridge University Press
Farmer, D. 2011 (5th edition). The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University Press
Guy, J. 2013. Thomas Becket. Warrior, Priest, Rebel, Victim. A 900-Year-Old Story Retold. Penguin
de Hamel, C. 2020. The Book in the Cathedral. The Last Relic of Thomas Becket. Allen Lane
Hamilton, B. 2003. Religion in the Medieval West. Arnold.
Hamilton, S. 2021. Responding to Violence: Liturgy, Authority and Sacred Places c.900-c.1150. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 2021, 31 (202), p.23-47.
Hodge, Jessica 2017. Chester Cathedral. Scala Arts and Heritage
Jenkins, J. 2023. Who Put the ‘a’ in ‘Thomas a Becket? The History of a Name from the Angevins to the Victorians, Open Library of Humanities 9(1) https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/9353/
Luxford, Julian 2005. The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300-1540. A Patronage History. The Boydell Press p.21-27
Matthews, G.W. The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester. Historic Society of Lancaster and Cheshire 86, 1934, p.41-46
Orme, N. 2017. The History of England’s Cathedrals. Impress
Schmoelz, M. 2017. Pilgrimage in medieval East Anglia. A regional survey of the shrines and pilgrimages of Norfolk, Suffolk, volume 1. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, June 2017
Webster, P. 2016. Introduction. The Cult of St Thomas Becket: An Historiographical Pilgrimage. In Gelin, M and Webster P. (eds.) The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c.1170-1220. Boydell and Brewer.
Williams, Godfrey W. 1934. The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester. Historic Society of Lancaster and Cheshire 86, 1934, p.41-46
Woodcock, A. 2018 (2nd edition). Of Sirens and Centaurs. Medieval Sculpture at Exeter Cathedral. Impress Books
St Werburgh pilgrim badge, possibly 14th century, cast in lead alloy, purchased by the British Museum from a London dealer in curiosities, medals and coins. British Museum 1836,0610.73
Had you been a pilgrim in the middle ages, undertaking a journey to Chester to visit the miracle-performing shrine of St Werburgh, you might have been tempted to buy yourself a pilgrim’s badge to commemorate a job well done and to communicate your achievement to others. Most importantly, however, you would have had the opportunity to touch that badge to the saint’s shrine in order to absorb some of the saint’s divine power into the badge itself. That’s what you are looking at on the left – a pilgrim’s badge associated with the Abbey of St Werburgh, which would have been sold to pilgrims either as they arrived, or as they left via the gift shop. Badges like this were associated with many of the major shrines and could be added to an existing personal collection, representing the piety implied by many pilgrimages.
When I first came to live in the Chester area, just a couple of years ago, I knew the name St Werburgh and recognized that it was Anglo-Saxon, but it was a surprise to realize that she was a female saint, and that there was a pilgrim shrine dedicated to her in the former abbey (now the cathedral). Nor did I know that the pilgrims who came to visit the abbey might purchase a badge as a token of their visit, a pious badge of honour, sometimes the signal of the many discomforts or difficulties that had been overcome to enable a pilgrimage to be successfully completed.
Chester Cathedral, formerly St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey, from the east. Photograph by Stephen Hamilton.
What I particularly like about pilgrim badges is that there are so many threads to the story. An anonymous pilgrim once owned the above token of his or her journey to the shrine, now in the British Museum (albeit not on display). The British Museum purchased it in 1836 from a dealer in medals and coins called Harry Cureton. The story of this particular badge between the time of its manufacture to its purchase by a dealer before being accessioned into the British Museum’s collections is lost, but its story is embedded in other, much older histories, including the actions of the Anglo-Saxon queen who moved that saint from Staffordshire to Chester in the 10th century, and the subsequent centuries of pilgrim visits to the abbey to experience St Werburgh for themselves.
So who was the Anglo-Saxon saint, where was she from, why did she become central to Benedictine worship in Chester after her death, what is the geese-in-a-basket pilgrim badge all about, and what role did the shrine of St Werburgh play in the economic life of Chester’s abbey?
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 monastery
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
The shrine in the 19th century
From Harry Cureton to the British Museum
Final Comments
Videos
Sources
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
Northwest “garrison” tower at far left, with the big detached southeast “Great” tower in the middle and the northeast “Eagle” tower at far right. Out of sight, opposite the Great Tower, is the southwest “Prison” tower
A visit to Flint Castle is not really a day trip if your starting point is the Chester-Wrexham area because it’s only about half an hour away, but because we started out quite late, and decided to combine it with a visit to Basingwerk Abbey in Holywell (a 10 minute drive from Flint), and had a long, lazy coffee in the sun, it did turn into something of a day trip. If you are into fascinating ruins, I recommend both Flint Castle and Basingwerk, particularly as they are such a short distance from one another and overlap chronologically. Basingwerk Abbey was founded in 1132 and closed in 1535, so its inhabitants would have seen the first construction of Flint Castle. I’ll be talking about Basingwerk on another occasion.
As Edward began his castle building extravaganza, Llywelyn at last paid homage to the king of England, sitting to the left of the king’s throne, with Alexander of Scotland at the king’s right.
I have already posted the background story to Edward I’s castle building programme in northeast Wales, describing how different generations of Llywelyn the Great’s descendants clashed with England and the Marcher lords in a fight for territory and prestige in Wales. I have not repeated any of that here, so if you would like the background information, do have a look at my earlier post.
Flint Castle is right on edge of the river Dee estuary, with beautiful views across to the Wirral, and even though it is on the edge of a busy town with somewhat chaotic traffic, the castle itself is set back from a quiet housing area and stands apart even from that. Although the river has silted up in front of the castle today, when it was built, the river flowed up to the castle itself. It has a sense of isolation and peace about it and is a lovely place to visit, and can be combined with sections of the Wales Coast Path. See my notes about visiting the castle at the end of the post, together with maps.
When Henry III died in 1272, Edward was on his way home from an underwhelming crusade, having narrowly survived an assassination attempt, and he took his time to return to England. He was not crowned until 1274.
Henry III and Edward had been troubled throughout Henry’s reign with rebellions in Wales, masterminded by Llywelyn ap Gruffud, known as Llywelyn the Last. Several treaties had failed to achieve long term peace, and although the Treaty of Montgomery of 1267 looked as though it might hold, Llywelyn ap Gruffud was labelled an outlaw in 1276, and war was declared in 1277. A peace was brokered, but although Edward had every reason to believe that the treaty might secure peace between England and Wales, he began to build a series of castles in northeast Wales, beginning at Flint in 1277 and rolling out along the coastlines throughout the next two decades.
Why here? The location of Flint Castle
Strategic importance of the castle
View down the Dee estuary towards Chester showing Flint Castle in the foreground. The build-up of marshland is a recent phenomenon. In the 13th century, the castle was right on the edge of the river, accessible by boat. Source: Coflein
The unoccupied site for Flint Castle was chosen for its excellent views for miles around, and the slab of bedrock on the edge of the estuary, on which the castle would be built. Although the castle was sited on a floodplain rather than on a more traditional hill, its location on the Dee floodplain still provided clear lines of sight in all directions. It would be impossible to sneak up on Flint Castle unless it was foggy. With tall towers on all four corners, any approach by land or water would be easy to spot, and the town that Edward had planned from the beginning sat on the landward side of the castle, preventing any large-scale onslaught from going unnoticed.
Map of the Welsh Cantrefi showing the location of Flint Castle. Source: Wikipedia.
Although Flint was in English hands in the heart of Llywelyn’s former territory, it was only a day’s march from Chester, one of the great earldoms along the Welsh border. The castle could be supplied with food and other essentials from Chester by boat, and the estuary provided a potential, although not terribly reliable route of escape, should it be needed. In addition, a small garrison was maintained at Ness on the Wirral, opposite the site of Flint Castle. When the tide was out, the river between Flint and Ness could be forded. Most importantly, Flint Castle was a stepping stone into Wales, allowing Edward to build his series of castles one day’s march from one another. This simple linear network, which could be supported by the sea, began to enclose Gwynedd, particularly as Edward and his magnates began to repair or rebuild Welsh castles that they had defeated.
Castles under siege were always at risk from running out of supplies, but the potential of being restocked from the sea was one form of additional security, and the castle had two wells, one in the centre of the inner ward, and one in the detached southeast tower.
Economic potential of the area
Flint Castle northwest corner
Although Flint Castle was a military installation, Edward intended for it to have a town accompanying it, to take advantage of the area’s natural resources. A new town would need to attract inhabitants, and as well as incentives, the land itself would need to be able to support the town.
Although there was no settlement at Flint, which was named by either Edward or one of his entourage, it would be wrong to think of the land along the estuary as deserted when the castle was first thought up in 1277. As far back as the Domseday survey of 1086 the nearby hamlet Atis Cross had a church, a corn mill and a a hide of land, something in the range of 120 acres, belonging to Hugh Lupus of Chester, and there was a lead smelting works here. Nearby Coleshill (Cwynsyllt) was also mentioned in the Domesday book, and Hen Blâs motte and bailey castle at Bagillt, just over a mile away, which lies within the township of Coleshill Fawr, may have served as the llys (court) for the commote of Coleshill. Archaeological excavations in the mid 1950s concluded that the castle was replaced by a fortified manor house in the early 13th century, which was in turn abandoned in the late 14th century. In 1132 the abbey of Basingwerk was built here, and in the 13th century it had water mills and a nearby windmill. This was potentially a prime area for water mills, as water dropped at speed from the hills towards the Dee, ideal for turning water wheels for processing grain or sheep’s wool. The area was also suitable for agrarian development, sharing with Anglesey a lowland, fertile location that could be cleared for fields and farmed.
The designer and the design
1919 plan of the castle grounds that were passed into state care, showing all four towers, the inner keep, the well and the remains of the connecting walls. Only part of the outer keep is preserved. The same area remains under Cadw guardianship today. Source: Coflein
Although much of the castle was deliberately torn down following the civil war in the 16th century to prevent re-use, many of the key features are still visible on the ground. Castle architecture has some basic requirements that are shared by all castles, but Flint itself showed a number of innovations that make it stand out today. Most of Edward I’s castles in Wales were designed primarily by Master James of St George, but Flint Castle was the brainchild of Richard L’Engenour (d.1315), a wealthy resident of Chester, an architect, master mason and military engineer, the owner of three farms in the Chester area, who in 1304 became Mayor of Chester. It is probable that Edward’s input is reflected in features of the castle that resemble the castle of Aigues-Mort from which Edward left on crusade in 1270.
The wide open site placed few constraints on its designers and builders. The castle has a number of notable features, including a double moat and the massive offset donjon, that were innovations in British castle building. Although Flint began with the castle, a town was always part of Edward’s plan for Flint, so the layout of castle and town were conceived of together.
The castle comprised an inner ward (or bailey) and an outer ward, separated by a moat and drawbridge. The outer ward protected the main gate into the castle and acted as an interface between the inner ward and the outside world. It was shaped rather like a funnel, allowing access via a single gatehouse into what was effectively a holding area, narrowing into a path that connected it to a gate into the inner ward, which was overseen by the battlements and by the southwest and southeast towers. It would have had buildings to house and feed troops stationed there, together with stables for horses and a gaol for holding prisoners.
The rectangular inner ward was made up of round towers built into the walls on three corners, and a detached round tower on the south-eastern corner. Sturdy curtain walling connected all four towers, with the detached tower joined to the inner keep by a footbridge. Some foundations remain within the inner ward, plus the all-important well. On the day that I visited in mid June, the water of the well in the inner ward was clearly visible at about 5ft (152cm) below the ground surface. Buildings within the inner keep would have included a bakehouse, brewhouse, kitchen, chapel and a hall. Both wells, the one in the inner ward and the one in the donjon, were fed by the freshwater Swinchiard Brook. Uniquely, the castle had two moats. An inner moat protected the main castle and an outer moat protecting access from the town.
The southwest tower and a stretch of the curtain wall.
Each of the towers was different. Although all had spiral staircases leading to battlements for defence, each had its own function. The southwest tower is, according to Vicky Perfect, recorded in the payroll as the Prison Tower, so may have served as a gaol before a more formal building was added to the outer ward. It originally had three storeys. The basement, where prisoners were presumably held, had no steps, which would certainly have frustrated attempts at escape. The northwest tower, also known as the Garrison Tower, had four points of access, which was useful for deploying troops to the battlements in a hurry, and its basement was probably the store for weaponry. The northeast, Eagle Tower, was three storeys high, with a basement that was accessed via a trapdoor. Guests and servants were housed here, and there was a fireplace on the second floor with a chimney up on to the battlements. A spiral staircase ran up one side. The potentially standalone southeast Great Tower (also known as the castle keep or donjon), is of particular interest. Its isolation from the rest of the castle was an additional form of security against any successful incursion, accessible only via a drawbridge, now replaced by a permanent bridge. Sitting within its own portion of moat, it is unique in Britain. It is a truly massive piece of architecture, about 20ms in diameter, was accessible only on the drawbridge, and contained a central space some 6m diameter. It was several storeys high.
Southeast Great Tower, donjon or keep. In the centre and on the right, images sourced from Coflein
The donjon or southeast Great Tower
On an everyday basis the Great Tower was the home of the Constable, but also housed the king’s chamber, which was completed in 1286. The walls of the keep were 7 meters thick at ground floor level, but were still 5 meters thick at upper levels. To add to its independence from the rest of the castle, and to provide the king with some privacy when he was in residence, it was provided by its own well. Holes in the floors above it allowed water to be drawn rather than carried, and a wooden wheel was fitted to raise and lower the pail. It was also provided with garderobes (toilets) and its own chapel. Its basement, shown right, had a barrel-vaulted ceiling, limewashed to provide reflective light, but also illuminated by torches. At times of siege, livestock could be moved into the tower to provide supplies on the hoof.
A watergate was built into the north wall, with steps down to the river frontage. This was for loading and unloading boats directly into the castle. A smaller watergate was also built into the donjon, again reflecting its design as a standalone unit.
Building the castle
The first stage in the construction of the castle was to clear an overland route to Chester. Although the castle could be supplied by boat, there was no road to Flint from Chester. The tidal character of the river meant that the castle could only be reached at high tides, so an overland route was vital. More immediately Edward was unwilling to run the risk of penetrating the alien countryside where he could be attacked by those with superior local knowledge. The road allowed him to travel with realistic protection to his new castle, and to enable his army advance unhindered along the Welsh coastline. A road was carved out of the densely vegetated coastal landscape. It took 10 days to clear the route to Flint, and from there the castle was linked with routes to Rhuddlan, Degannwy and eventually to Conwy.
The next step was to dig a deep ditch around the chosen site at Flint to protect builders and visitors alike, which took three weeks. The castle was to be built on bedrock, which gave it a solid base on the otherwise soft floodplain.
View from Flint Castle across the estuary and the River Dee to the Wirral
Wood for scaffolding, lifting equipment and for the defences that would surround the planned town was sourced mainly from the Forest of Toxteth (now part of Liverpool). The walls of the castle were built mainly of sandstone, much of which was sourced from Ness on the Wirral, opposite, across the estuary. Ness could be reached over the sands when the tide was out by fording the river, but stone could also be brought in by boat. Edward kept a small garrison at Ness. Other sandstone was available locally, along with other natural resources including lead ore, lime for mortar and white limewash for walls (both lead and lime available from Halkyn Mountain). Both yellow and red sandstones were employed for the outer walls, with the inner space between them filled with rubble, including stones from the beach and broken building materials.
Many of the original payrolls for the construction of the castle have survived, meaning that details of names, home towns, job roles, and salaries of the workers who built the castle have survived. Just as the king could demand that his noble subjects should provide men for his armies, he could assemble workforces of specialist craftsmen from across England, whether they wanted to go or not. The building site and the craftsmen were protected by armed forces. This formula worked so well at Flint that the same model, and many of the same craftsmen, were used at the subsequent castles. Here’s Vicky Perfect’s description of the first weeks of work in the summer of 1277:
The workforces were placed under the control of various knights, and split into groups under their twenty men (foremen). . . . In week one of the the build a total of 1858 men were involved in the first stage of the building of the castle. Most were dykers who were required to help prevent the water from filling in the newly dug foundations. The first order of 10,000 sandstone blocks was placed at the quarry of Ness prior to 25th July 1277. Large numbers of carpenters and wood cutters were employed, some working in the forest s at Toxteth cutting the timber and building the 250 rafts needed to transport the stone across the water. Many others were working on site, constructing the stockade required to keep the men safe and making the lifting machinery to move the sandstone blocks into place. There were also numerous masons, working the stones delivered from Ness Quarry. Smiths were employed to make and mend the metal tools required for the project.
By week two, the workforce had increased dramatically to 2,911, indicating the urgency of making the site safe. More specialist workers were brought to the site, such as Carbonarii (miners) to mine the coal to fuel the smith’s fires. The number of dykers working on the site doubled, including a group from Holland.
The well in the Great Tower.
The rest of that chapter is worth reading in its entirety, providing some fascinating facts and figures including lists of some of the workers, their trade, the number of them employed and how much they were paid. For example, in the first two weeks, the castle employed dykers, smiths, carpenters, masons, woodcutters, miners, cinder carriers, masons and constables, paid from 2d to 8d a day, the latter reserved for the specialist Dutch dykers. Other specialists were brought in as work progressed. John le Blund, for example, was brought from London and paid 19 shillings for dressing stones for the well in the Great Tower.
The castle was not completed until the mid 1280s, by which time it had been painted with white limewash, and the towers, which had been provided with temporary roofs of thatch, were now provided with lead roofing. In 1302, following storm damage, lime was brought to repair the castle walls. In 1304, wood from Ewloe produced 60 boards, 12,000 pieces of wood for tiling, 1000 lathes and four louvres for repairs so kitchen and stabling.
The town
John Speed early 17th century map of Flint. Source: Coflein. Click to enlarge.
An accompanying town, (or “implanted bastide”) was part of Edward’s original plan for the castle. The idea of establishing defended new towns around castles in hostile territory came from Gascony, where Edward had already founded a number of new defended towns. Pioneer settlers were granted considerable commercial privileges as incentives, and were expected to help defend the town should it come under attack. These new towns reinforced the network of castles with economic as well as military foundations, and the enclaves of English commerce also introduced English urban traditions within rural Wales. Flint and Rhuddlan were two of the earliest examples.
Writing in 1924, Patrick Abercrombie commented that “There is no town in this country that is of greater interest to the student of Town Planning than Flint. Laid out by Edward I, in 1277 as an appendage to his mighty castle, it has preserved its mediaeval plan almost intact. Like most artificially planted communities, there was no fundamental human need in this place for a town, which accordingly grown in the past little beyond its original size.” It is a fascinating idea that new towns, built from scratch, arrived with the Normans. According to Francis Pryor, a total of 172 of these towns are known in England and 84 in Wales, and Edward was the “last great instigator” of the new towns. As well as the layout of the towns, functional considerations were also important, and Edward believed that to support markets, good road links were vital. Communications became one of his mantras, vital for a peripatetic king and court, but also for the movement of troops and the commercial viability of new settlements.
Excavations in 2015 explored what are thought to be part of the town’s defences. Source: BBC News
An indication that the beginnings of the town, which were already established by early in 1278, was a proclamation of a weekly market each Thursday and an annual fair. Edward decreed that the burgesses of Flint should hold a market on Thursday of each week, and an annual week-long fair at the time of the Pentecost (50 days after Easter Sunday). The castle constable was to serve as mayor, one of Edward’s own brothers was installed as chaplain at the castle, and agents were appointed to rent out plots of land to any pioneering English inhabitants who were prepared to chance their luck even though the defences were incomplete. To encourage take-up, in 1282 these agents offered plots in the town free of rental for ten years, followed by a reduced rate in subsequent years, and residents came under English, rather than Welsh jurisdiction. Burgesses (property-owning merchants) were exempt from the payment of tolls. In 1284 the town received its first royal charter, which conferred full English-style free borough privileges. The settlers had their own guild and courts. Conveyances of property suggest that many of the settlers were from Cheshire, who took advantage of the provision of land in the royal demesne and forests. Others probably came from Shropshire. A town mill was constructed, and permission was granted for another, which incurred an annual rate of ten pounds. Even with these benefits, it was obviously an uphill struggle to attract residents at first, in spite of the fact that by 1300 much available land in England was in use and the expansion of population during the 13th century meant that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find land. By 1292, however, the town had taken off and there were 74 burgesses registered for tax in Flint.
The main source of information for the town’s layout is John Speed’s sketch of 1610, shown above. The Norman new towns were built as grids. The maps show that Flint still preserved its Medieval layout, and that it was one of the most symmetrical known, with a very precise underlying geometry. Four parallel roads ran perpendicular to the river, whilst Edward’s coastal road passed through the middle of the town parallel to the river. Whether the dog-leg was original or developed between the 1280s and Speed’s map of 1610 is unknown. One of the four parallel roads, along the route of modern Church Street, connects the entrance to the town with the entrance to the outer ward, passing in front of the Church of St Mary’s and the town square.
Tithe map of Flint area, showing the original Medieval field systems. Flint castle is handily under the left-hand red blotch, and the grid layout of the town is easily seen, as are the neatly arranged fields. Source: People’s Collection Wales
The economy of most of north Wales was based on livestock herding. Nearby Basingwerk Abbey depended for some of its locally derived income on its 53 heads of cattle and its 2000-strong herd sheep. However, some lowland areas could be developed for mixed farming. Anglesey was “the bread basket of Wales,” and the river lowlands at Flint were potentially ideal for agrarian land use. In order for agriculture to underpin the activities of the settlers at Flint, clearance of neighbouring land took place to create new fields, the outlines of which survive, remarkably, on the 1839 tithe map, shown above. This shows Flint town’s four parallel roads immediately in front of the castle, but extended on either side beyond the bissecting coast road. The surrounding land is similarly divided up on a grid pattern of long, thin fields. Although residential, commercial and industrial growth have obliterated much of this, some of it still survives to the south of Flint town.
Access from the outer ward into the inner ward
Writing about the design of Flint Castle’s town, Caroline Shillaber concludes that “Viewed in historical perspective, Edward I appears as the forerunner of British planners who regard the creation of new towns as a function of national government, who locate and plan the towns to serve an overall administrative policy, who lay out the towns in accordance with the needs of the people, and who devise economic conditions conducive to their growth and development.” Some areas were riskier than others, however, as the settlers in Flint discovered in 1294 when renewed hostilities between England and Wales resulted in the town being burned to the ground. Even though residents received compensation and the town was rebuilt, it must have been a daunting thought to stay in a town where its supposed protectors were willing to burn it down if the need presented itself.
A tax assessment of the town had been made in 1293, naming residents like Adam the carter, Benedict the miner, Godfrey the carpenter and Nicholas the smith. The assessment recorded 76 households. Only five of those named were Welsh, like Madog ap Iorwerth and Einion Cragh, indicating that even in an English enfranchisement Welsh people held property. Things changed after the town was burned down after 1294, perhaps due to bad feeling about the devastation of the town thanks to Welsh hostilities. This is reflected in a petition of 1297, written when the town was still being rebuilt. The English burgesses of Flint complained that in an English town, Welsh individuals had “bought land in the town and bake and brew, contrary to their charter and custom,” although there was actually nothing in the 1284 town charter to restrict the nationality of residents.
Matthew Stevens gives an account of an Englishman named Richard Slepe who had been in Flint town from its inception, and had remained after the town had been burned down. His daughter Agnes had married a Welsh man, Adda ap Einion. When Richard died in 1327, Agnes and her husband inherited Richard’s properties, but because Adda was Welsh, they were confiscated by local officials. They appealed the decision but were turned down. Enfranchised Welsh towns, occupied by the English, made no concessions to a mixed-nationality marriage, a situation that continued until the 1536 Act of Union giving Welsh nationals equal rights to English.
The castle under attack during the reign of Edward I
In March 1282 Llywelyn’s brother Daffyd launched a ferocious assault on Hawarden Castle, and this was followed by further attacks on Flint and Rhuddland castles, in which Llywelyn appears to have participated. Attempts by Archbishop Pecham to negotiate a peace failed, and Edward through everything he had at the brothers, as described on my previous post. Llywelyn was killed in battle in December 1282, and Dafydd was captured and put to death the following year. The Flint area, including Basingwerk Abbey, was trampled underfoot, but Basingwerk was given significant compensation and Flint Castle was repaired and construction work completed by 1284.
As mentioned above, in September 1294, those who had been lured to settle in Flint met the dangers of living in the shadow of a strategic military facility head-on when the constable of the castle, William de la Leye, ordered that the town be set on fire to prevent forces led by Madog ap Llywelyn from using it as a protective screen. Madog ap Llywelyn, one of Llywelyn the Last’s more remote cousins, considered himself to be a successor of Llywelyn and made a bid for power, supported by other Welsh landowners. Some of them joined Madog on an opportunistic basis, with territorial claims in mind, but all of those who retaliated at this time acted in response to a massive tax demand, and a culling of Welsh men to supply troops for his activities in Gascony. Attacks were co-ordinated and took place at castles both built and appropriated by Edward, at Aberystwyth, Builth, Castell-y-Bere, Denbigh, Criccieth, Harlech, Caernarfon, Morlais, Flint and Rhuddlan. It was a serious rebellion, and it demanded a serious response. Edward immediately diverted the troops waiting to ship out to Gascony, sending them instead to Wales, where they advanced from three bases. Madog’s revolt was put down after some delay in March 1295, with Madog surrendering in July. Edward compensated seventy five burgesses with £521.00, and the buildings were all re-built, but life next to a strategic outpost of an invading nation cannot have been particularly reassuring.
View along the Dee towards the west from the inner ward
Edward I died in July 1307 at the age of 68 and was succeeded by his son Edward II (April 1284 – September 1327), who had been declared Prince of Wales in 1301. Edward’s reign was colossally unpopular and he was forced to abdicate in January 1327 in favour of his 14-year-old son, Edward III. Following the quashing of the rebellion of Madog, North Wales remained more or less at peace until the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr under the reign of Henry IV in 1400. Flint Castle continued to be strategically important, and retained a garrison. The town, protected by the castle, was a financial and administrative centre during the 14th and 15th centuries, meaning that even in times of peace the castle retained its importance and was accordingly well maintained. Future archaeological excavations may provide information about the original town, both before and after the fire.
In terms of great events after Edward, Flint Castle’s next claim to fame was as the venue for the abdication of Richard II (1367-1400) in favour of Henry Bolingbroke, who became Henry IV. Richard II was the grandson of Edward III, and on the death of his own father, Edward the Black Prince, became heir to the throne, succeeding in 1377 at the age of 10. He was deposed in 1399. Flint Castle itself had had nothing to do with Richard II’s career up until that point. Richard’s regency was managed by a number of councils. One of his most important advisors was his uncle John of Gaunt.
The regency councils saw England through the continuing eruptions of the Hundred Years War and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and Richard himself was forced to deal with a number of substantial disruptions, including the threat of invasion from France. As he came into his own power, Richard’s mistrust for the aristocracy lead him to select both his friends and personal guard with care, causing discontent amongst the powerful aristocracy. When a group of them took control of the government in 1387, refereed to as the Lords Appellant, Richard was able to reinstate himself, but punished the conspirators with exile or execution. One of the exiled was his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, son of his advisor John of Gaunt.
The coronation of Henry IV, from a 15th-century manuscript of Jean Froissart’s Chronicles. Source: Wikipedia
On the death of John of Gaunt, Richard denied Henry Bolingbroke his inheritance, and this was enough to push Henry to open rebellion, landing in Yorkshire in June 1399. Richard II seems to have been very unpopular, and it does not appear to have taken Henry a substantial amount of effort to depose his cousin. While Richard was in Ireland, Henry moved south. Richard landed in Wales in July 1399 and entered negotiations with the Earl of Northumberland before surrendering to Henry on 19th August at Flint Castle. Shakespeare puts these words into Richard’s mouth (Act 3, scene 3):
Cousin, I am too young to be your father,
Though you are old enough to be my heir.
What you will have, I’ll give, and willing too;
For do we must what force will have us do.
Henry Bolingbroke, in Shakespeare’s version, shows all due reverence and offers the king dignity and reverence, but the reality is that Richard was forced to resign in exchange for his life and was forced follow behind Henry to London, where he was incarcerated in the Tower of London.
Owain Glydwr
Northwest tower
In 1400, a wealthy and London-educated Welsh nobleman was the source of the final great rebellion. Owain Glyndŵr was the descendent of Llywelyn the Great and the princes of Powys, Owain Glyndŵr (c.1359–c.1415), and had served as a soldier under Richard II revolted against King Henry IV of England, using guerrilla tactics and his knowledge of the terrain to inflict damage on English forces. As with Madog in 1294, his primary grievances were unfair taxation, land disputes, and systematic neglect by the English government. Owain’s first move was to attack key English castles, including Flint, placing it under siege in 1403. The burgesses retreated into the castle whilst the town was plundered, inflicting damage that again took substantial time to repair. Owain inflicted a number of defeats on the English forces with the aid of foreign assistance, and for a few years controlled most of Wales. He called a parliament in Machynlleth in mid Wales, which was also attended by foreign dignitaries, where he named himself Prince of Wales, presented his plans for an independent Wales, which included building two national universities and the reintroduction of the traditional Welsh legal system. In the long term, however, even with foreign military aid Owain was unable to compete with England’s superior forces and the king began to regain control of Wales. Owain Glyndŵr continued to be a thorn in England’s side until 1412, when he disappeared after escaping a siege at Harlech. He became something of a folk hero and a powerful symbol of Welsh nationalism and heritage.
The English Civil War (1642-1651)
Colonel Roger Mostyn (c.1623-90)
When Charles I acceded to the throne in March 1625, he came into conflict with Parliament from very early in his reign. Like Henry III, he believed that the king ruled by divine right, and this in turn meant that he was answerable only to God, and not to any earthly authority. His marriage to a Catholic did not help his popularity. Constant bickering over religion and funds for Charles’s various projects, none of which Parliament was willing to fund to the king’s satisfaction led to the deterioration of the relationship, and in 1642 the country was torn in two, when civil war broke out.
By this time Flint Castle had been abandoned and was in very poor condition. It was still, however, located in an excellent strategic position and local landowner Roger Mostyn made the decision to repair the castle and install a garrison as a contribution the Royalist cause. A useful store for supplies for Chester, the castle changed hands several times during the conflict. Back under Roger Mostyn, Flint found itself under Parliamentarian siege on 1st June 1646 and held out for nearly three months until all supplies had been exhausted and the garrison under Roger Mostyn surrendered rather than starve. Although the Parliamentarians allowed them to leave unharmed, they were taking no chances regarding the castle, which was immediately slighted (rendered unusable).
The king was defeated at Rowton Heath, south of Chester, on September 24th 1645. John Taylor in A Short Relation of a Long Journey, which he wrote in the summer of 1652, painted a thoroughly gloomy picture:.
Surely war hath made it miserable; the sometimes famous castle… is now almost buried in its own ruins, and the town so spoiled that it may truly be said of it, that they never had any market (in the memory of man). They have no sadler, taylor, weaver, brewer, baker, botcher, or button maker; they have not so much as a signe of an alehouse . . . and this (me thinks) is a pitiful description of a shire town.
Future archaeological excavations may provide information about the original town, both before and after the 1294 fire.
Although it’s life was over as a military installation, Flint Castle joined other nearby ruined castles and abbeys, like Beeston Castle in West Cheshire and Valle Crucis Abbey near Llangollen, as popular tourist destinations, which were also popular with artists. The best known of these was J.W.W. Turner (1775-1851), who painted both of the previously mentioned sites, and created a typically atmospheric view of Flint Castle too. It is fairly typical of Turner’s paintings of this period, produced in the 1830s. It shows the main subject of Turner’s interest in the background, with contemporary activities in the foreground. Rather than place his ruins centre stage, Turner usually placed them where they eye was drawn to them, but in much less detail than the activities taking place in his foregrounds. The man on the right looks towards the castle. The sun rises at the castle’s side. A line of blue-grey along the horizon draws the eye from left to right, tying the composition together. The castle’s silhouette contrasts spectacularly with the yellows, reds, oranges and golds of the rest of the composition. Everything in the painting draws the eye away from the more detailed and busy foreground to the static silhouette of the the castle’s profile. Both beautiful and clever. This was not Turner’s only study of Flint Castle, but it is my favourite.
View of Flint Castle by Richard Reeve 1812. Source:
I also very much like Richard Reeve’s earlier, far more prosaic and much less virtuoso portrait of Flint Castle. Painted in 1801, instead of Turner’s juxtaposition of past and present, it blends the two, showing everyday life in in harmony with the ruins. In Reeve’s view, the castle, the the beached boats drawn up on the shore alongside, the cottages in the foreground and the horse and cart driving away all occupy the same time zone without difficulty. The men pulling in the nets are so accustomed to the castle’s looming presence that it is a mere backdrop to their activities.
Although no-one of Turner’s luminary talent has been drawn to the castle since the 19th Century, probably because of its urban and industrial surroundings, plenty of artists and photographers continue to find inspiration from Flint Castle.
Flint Castle today
Today the castle is a tourist attraction managed by Cadw. It is beautifully maintained and money has been lavished on creating staircases that give safe access to and within the towers. The views from both the inner ward and the towers are superb.
There is not much in the way of explanatory signage. If you want to be informed, it is best to do the reading in advance. There is a Cadw guidebook that takes in Ewloe castle as well, but it is out of print and difficult to get hold of. Former mayor of Flint Vicky Perfect has dedicated a small but excellent book to Flint Castle, which is very well researched and written, and includes photographs, illustrations and maps (details of both books are in Sources at the end).
Visiting
Map showing the location of Flint Castle relative to Chester and Holywell (Basingwerk Abbey, marked as “Abbey” at the top left of this map, on the coast at Holywell, can be combined with Flint Castle for a visit). Source: streetmap.co.uk
You have to watch carefully for the road signs directing you to the castle (little Celtic cross symbols) because they are easy to miss. Alternatively, as we did, check it on the map first to get an idea of the location and then just rely on GPS (I use the free Google Maps app on my iPhone, which works a treat). There is a good car park overlooking the castle and estuary, with picnic benches on the grass below.
Short walk taking in Flint Castle, and suitable for those with mobility issues, although accessing towers within the castle requires the ability to tackle staircases. Even without entering the towers, the sense of the castle from within the inner keep is excellent, and the views from the inner keep across the estuary towards the Wirral are lovely. Source: Flintshire County Council
Flint Castle itself is a bit of a mixed blessing for those with unreliable legs. One of the best things about Flint Castle is that it is possible to walk up staircases (both original stone ones and bright, modern metal ones), some of which are quite steep. Although access is on the flat into the outer and inner wards, and the views from the inner ward are lovely, it is difficult to really experience all the components of the castle unless you tackle some stairs. On the other hand, the walk shown here (from the Flintshire County Council website) shows a walk that includes that castle but could easily be done for those with unwilling legs.
Access to the castle is free, but check the Flint Castle pages on the Cadw website to check if it is closed for certain seasons or specific dates. The car park is also free of charge. There was a mobile café van whilst we were there, but there are no other café type facilities on the site. There is a nice café at Basingwerk Abbey in Holywell if you are combining the two on a single visit to the area.
A section of the Wales Coast, marked with green diamonds, heading west from Flint Castle (marked at left with a white cross on a blue background). Source: Wales Coast Path interactive map
If you like walking, the castle is handily located on the Wales Coast Path, and although the Welsh side of the Dee is characterized by light industry, the views from the Wales Coast Path are across the estuary towards the Wirral. We’ve not yet done any of the Wales Coast Path in that part of Wales, but the views from the castle argues that it has lots of potential, and I am hoping for sea and marsh birds too. I cannot state whether or not it is suitable for those with unwilling legs, but it does seem plausible, because it is all on the flat. asdfasdfa
1726 print of Flint Castle. Source: Coflein
Sources
Books and papers
As usual, the main sources used are shown in bold.
Note: Vicky Perfect’s book on the castle (listed below) is great guide to Flint Castle in one convenient publication, with excellent illustrations. In particular, Chapter 3 “The Building of Flint Castle” makes excellent use of primary sources to provide a fascinating insight into the resources required, the techniques used and the men involved in the construction work (including details of some of their roles and daily pay).
Butlin, R.A. 1978. The Late Middle Ages, c.1350-1500. In Dodgshon, R.A. and Butlin, R.A. (ed.) An Historical Geography of England and Wales. Academic Press, p.119-150
Davies, J. 2007 (3rd edition). A History of Wales. Penguin
Dyer, C. 2002. Making a living in the Middle Ages. The People of Britain 850-1520. Yale University Press
Jack, R.I. 1988. H. Wales and the Marches. In Chapter 4, Farming Techniques in Hallam, H.E. (ed.) The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume II, 1042-1350. Cambridge University Press, p.412-496
Jenkins, G.H. 2007. A Concise History of Wales. Cambridge University Press
Hume, P. 2020. The Welsh Marcher Lordships. I: Central and North. Logaston Press
Morris, M. 2008. A Great and Terrible King. Edward I and the Forging of Britain. Penguin
Perfect, V. 2012. Flint Castle. The story of Edward I’s first Welsh castle. Alyn Books
Pryor, F. 2010. The Making of the British Landscape. How we have transformed the land, from prehistory to today. Allen Lane
Renn, D.F. and Avent, R. 2001 (2nd edition). Flint Castle – Ewloe Castle. Cadw
Rowley, T. 1986. The High Middle Ages, 1200-1500. Routledge and Kegan Paul
Saul, N. 1997. The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England. Oxford University Press
Bringing to together substantial data across each area has led to an exploration distribution patterns, with some specific types distributed widely across a county and others being more localized, leading to a search for explanations An example is Raunds Furnells where a small cluster of 10th century stone monuments may help to explain similar finds in east England, perhaps representing the founding families of churches, which in turn may represent the first stages of the development of the parochial system. “Exceptional collections” also occur, where large numbers of sculptural stones are found in a particular location, and it has been found that these tend to be near river sites where markets were held, and where merchant communities with disposable incomes concentrated, such as Chester where an impressive collection is retained at St John’s Church, and at Neston on the Wirral.
Based in Churton 
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