The Tŷ Mawr Country Park, just ten minutes south of Ruabon (LL14 3PE / What3Words///disprove.dart.isolated) in the Vale of Llangollen, consists of walks through fenced fields, woodland tracks and views over the river Dee and the surrounding countryside. Most spectacularly, its starting point lies almost underneath the monumental stone-built Cefn railway viaduct, from where a circular walk begins, whilst a less formal there-and-back branch off a circular walk takes in the iron-built Pontcysyllte aqueduct.
Map on the outside of the visitor centre showing all the route options (click to enlarge). At far left is the Cefn viaduct and at far right is the Pontcysyllte aqueduct.
The circular walk begins and ends at the Tŷ Mawr car park (pay and display, but only £1.00 for the day at time of writing, and with two power points for electric cars), visitor centre and café (both closed when I visited yesterday, Wednesday 6th September), and toilets (which were open).
Behind the visitor centre there is a picnic area with excellent views over the countryside and the Cefn viaduct. There is also a small children’s farm with chickens, goats and other farmyard animals, and a children’s play area. The circular walk is a metalled pathway through small fields and woodland, which takes in the river Dee, with a small picnic area near a tiny “beach” and has a number of picnic areas. I haven’t found an online PDF of the map above, but youcan download my photograph of it as a PDF here (sorry that the text is not particularly clear).
You can go either way around the walk, but the recommended route on the map fixed to the outside of the visitor centre is anticlockwise, which finishes at the Cefn viaduct and the memorial dovecot. Although there are some inclines, I would suggest that it is entirely suitable for those with unwilling legs. It was certainly okay for a group of women with pushchairs. It probably takes no more than half an hour to 40 minutes to walk, with stops to admire the river and the viaduct. There are occasional benches, a picnic area by the Dee and further picnic areas with lovely views at the top of the walk behind the visitor centre.
The real star of the circular walk, missing off the leg to Pontcysyllte, is the Grade II listed Cefn viaduct, which can be seen around much of the circular walk. The walk goes right up to and along the base of the viaduct, which really is an awesome sight as you approach it and begin to get a sense of its scale. The Cefn viaduct was designed by civil engineer Henry Robertson, who had purchased the Brymbo Ironworks, and was built in yellow Cefn sandstone and red brick by contractor Thomas Brassey (to whom there is a chapel dedicated in Chester Cathedral). It was built surprisingly quickly over a two year period to carry the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway over the Dee valley. It opened in 1848, 43 years after the opening of Pontcysyllte, at a cost of £72,346. It has twenty one arches, nineteen of which are 60ft (18m) wide, and two of which, one at either end, are 30ft (9m) wide. If you approach the country park from the Ruabon direction, you will pass under one of the two narrow ones. The arches span 1508ft (466m) and at their most dizzying tower 147ft (45m) above the level of the river.
The additional leg of the walk to the Pontcysyllte aqueduct along the path of the Dee is not suitable for anyone who cannot handle steps, as there is a flight down from the circular walk to near the level of the river, with no handrail. There is a signpost and small Pontcysyllte-themed bench indicating where you have to turn off the path down the stairs to a more informal section towards the aqueduct.
I enjoyed this more informal section, which after a wending track following the path of the Dee through woodland and open field leads to steps at the other end that take the walker to the level of the aqueduct and the Trevor Basin, with fully open visitor centre and other facilities (including boat trips across the aqueduct). The section along the river to Pontcysyllte will be highly seasonal, with different vegetation allowing or blocking views to the river, offering seasonally variable wildlife. Yesterday it was very attractive, with glimpses of the river through the tall plant life, and occasional tracks through the vegetation to get down to admire the river itself, much-used by dog walkers whose canine friends were doing a lot of swimming. The dominant floral element was Himalayan balsam, with orchid-like flowers in pinks and pinkish whites, which is terminally invasive, a complete monster which, given half a chance, takes over its entire environment, but is endlessly pretty and no bother at all in the massive acreage of the park.
Viewing point for the Pontcysyllte aqueduct
The narrow track follow a well sign-posted route, although there are only a few places where choices are required. When you reach the aqueduct viewing-point that is marked by a metal sculpture of a camera (which acts as a frame for taking photographs of Pontcysyllte) there is a choice to go straight on to the main steps, or turn right to approach the aqueduct from a different angle. If you are not interested in going up to the canal and aqueduct level but are happy to enjoy some terrific views of the remarkable structure from below, by the side of the river, go straight on. You can still change your mind and walk up to canal aqueduct level, but be warned that it’s a fairly long and steep flight. You can always drive back via the Trevor Basin, at the beginning of the aqueduct, where you can park up at the level of the aqueduct. A better option when you reach the “camera” is to turn right to go up a much shorter and less strenuous flight of steps, which brings you out onto a wooded path that both includes a viewing point and then delivers you to the canal, Trevor Basin and the aqueduct. You can then then return to Tŷ Mawr via the steeper staircase which is a lot easier going down than up, turning this final section into a circular walk.
The glorious aqueduct, built by Thomas Telford and opened in 1805, is always a joy. I have written up a summary of Pontcysyllte’s history and visitor information on a previous post. It is worth going on a bright, cloud-free day, because the views from the aqueduct down to the Dee valley are enhanced by the sun glinting off the water, and by the brightness of the green fields and trees that flank the river. The towpath along the aqueduct trough is quite narrow, but wide enough for people to pass one another. The iron railings are high to prevent accidental falls, but not so high that you cannot see over them. This really is one of the highlights of the area for visitors.
Once done with the aqueduct and Trevor Basin and the visitor centre, going down the longer set of steps to return back to Tŷ Mawr is a great option, walking down the side of the aqueduct and getting a real sense of its scale. The Dee is particularly delectable here too, bubbling over shallows and glistening in the sun. A great place to plonk down on the river bank and enjoy an ice cream.
Having retraced your steps, and once back on the more formal circular walk, the star of the show is the Cefn viaduct that looms every close. There is an option to stop at a picnic area where a small beach is a great spot for admiring the river. There are tracks that let you walk just a little bit further along the river before heading back to the circular walk, or you can simply pause on the path, admire the view, and keep going up the slope towards the base of the viaduct. The viaduct is amazing. You can see it for most of the circular walk. At first just a few arches appear, and then gradually the entire 19-arch run of the stunning structure is revealed until you arrive at the top of the slope and at the foot of one of its enormous columns. Look up. Wow! At the very top of the arch at the top of the yellow stone-faced columns, the underside of the arches are formed of red brick-built, providing a contrast with the yellow Cefn sandstone.
There is a bench where you reach the viaduct, and a signpost. The left option continues the circular walk along the foot of the viaduct, which you will have to do anyway to return to the car park. The right option requires you to cross a stile, and allows you to walk just a few metres in order to see down to the feet of some of the arches in the river, albeit through the vegetation, and to stand right under one of the arches and get up close and personal with the stone work.
When you return to the last stretch of the circular walk, following the viaduct along its base, you eventually reach the attractive dovecot. This looks much older older than it is, rather like the 18th century example at Erddig, but it is modern, built in 1993 as a memorial.
It’s a short and largely undemanding but seriously enjoyable walk. Including the walk to Pontcysyllte, the walk only took about two hours to and from Tŷ Mawr car park, with lots of stops for photos and 10 minutes sitting overlooking the river at the foot of the aqueduct with a much-appreciated ice cream. Apart from the steps, it’s an easy walk, and there is much to see. I arrived at Tŷ Mawr at 11 and left shortly after 1pm, so it’s not a day-eater. A great place for a stroll, rather than a hike. Up-to-date visitor information is available on the Wrexham County Borough Council website.
The name Tŷ Mawr translates as “big house” or “great house.” There’s no sign of a house, and no mention of one on any of the websites that talk about the country park. Many old houses have been lost, but I can find no mention of one associated with the country park. Does anyone know if there was once a property associated with the site?
A previous post took a quick chronological hike through All Saints’ church in Gresford, which dates mainly from the 15th century but includes features dating back to the 13th century. As with many gothic churches, the exterior may be architecturally consistent with what is going on inside, but often has a rather different character that seems scarcely in keeping with the sacred, the holy and the peaceful ideas associated with a monument to the divine. The photographs on this page are a small selection from All Saints’ Church, dating to the 1400s or later, shown at random. If you want to visit the church, maps and visiting details are on the previous post.
There is a lot of writing about gargoyles and grotesques, much of it descriptive, and there are some terrific books of photographs to show what these creatures looked like, but there are no definitive answers about what these external features were actually doing there. So far, a job description remains elusive.
Gargoyles and grotesques each has a slightly different definition. Both are usually made of stone, and are high up on on or under the rooflines of church, cathedral and abbey, or clustered around windows and door openings. Some may be highly sculptural and elaborate, and others are less complex, but all make up a landscape of the unknown. They are all carved into fantastic forms, some fearsome, some weird, occasionally crude, and every now and again borderline pornographic. Gargoyles are usually grotesques, but not all grotesques are gargoyles. A gargoyle is a carving that draws water away from the building, spewing rainwater out through its mouth or rather more unusually its rear end via a water spout. A grotesque is any ecclesiastical carving that merits the term, something from another world, a creature from an alternative reality or a reality just out of sight, something of nightmares and fears. Some may be monsters of the imagination, some grotesquely distorted human faces, some composites of recognizably human and animal features, others simply odd.
Grotesques and gargoyles occupy liminal spaces, between heaven and earth at the top of buildings, and at boundaries between interior and exterior at windows and doors. Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is famous for its gargoyles and grotesques, and vividly demonstrates how in the bigger ecclesiastical constructions, many of these features are invisible from ground level and always would have been. This may imply that some of these creatures were intended not only for human audiences, but for supernatural observers too.
One evocative piece of contemporary writing on the subject survives. The vigorous Cistercian monk, abbot and mystic Bernard of Clairvaux was unimpressed by gargoyles in the following oft-quoted 12th century piece, but what is interesting is that he seems to have been just as ignorant of their actual symbolic purpose as researchers today:
What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters under the very eyes of the brothers as they read? What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, strange savage lions and monsters? To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half beast, half man? I see several bodies with one head and several heads with one body. Here is a quadruped with a serpent’s head, there a fish with a quadruped’s head, then again an animal half horse, half goat … Surely if we do not blush for such absurdities we should at least regret what we have spent on them.
Although different types have been identified and named, creating a terminology to enable discussion of the different forms that appear, this is a matter of categorization rather than comprehension. Identification of recurring themes such as hunky punks, chimeras, and sheela na gigs help to navigate the landscape of the grotesques, but do not explain what they are doing there. A number of explanatory approaches have been attempted, but these simply serve to underscore that there is no consensus on the role of grotesques and how they should be understood. Here are a few examples, in no particular order:
Depictions of demons or heretics as a warning against sin and depravity , and as an aid to church teachings, to reinforce the campaign against sin
Demons vanquished and expelled by the Church
Illustrations of specific Christian texts
A vivid contrast to the divine and the angelic: “The gargoyle is all body and no soul – a pure projector of filth, the opposite of the angel whose body is weightless and orifice-less” (Michael Camille).
Representations of paganism
Warnings to intruders not to violate the holy space within
Figments of the imagination
Critiques of human monstrosity, reflections of imperfections in humanity and the individual
Devices to reinforce religious hierarchy: “These glimpses of the impossible, in their absurdity, work to safeguard the established order and whatever is promoted as normal and morally right” (Alex Woodcock)
Copies of earlier forms that have lost their meaning over time
Alex Woodcock comments: “If there is no definitive answer to the question fo why they are there, then it is because the carvings themselves are too full of possible meanings, and paradoxical ones at that, to be comfortably explained – and perhaps that is the point. In his book Medieval Religion and Its Anxieties, which looks at “the other Middle Ages”, Thomas Fudgé suggests, apart from St Bernard, we have no real way of reaching what people in the Middle Ages saw and thought they looked on grotesques: “It seems clear that viewing medieval art through modern yes is fatal and that creating artificial categories with the use of terms such as marginal, official, high, low, and so on when referring to art is a form of hegemony by posterity on the past.”
Yet although they may not be marginal, in the pejorative sense of the word, the grotesque and the peculiar often do occupy the margins, not only in architecture, where they occupy distant spaces and boundaries, but also in illuminated manuscripts, rather like subversive or thought-provoking comments on the main message. This idea of the strange and inexplicable occupying the margins is explored by Michael Camille, in his book Image on the Edge. Here the margins are an active component of the core text, be that text an illuminated manuscript or an architectural narrative, or indeed a social situation.
Fudgé traces a chronological trend within grotesques, describing 13th century gargoyles as terrifying, whilst in the 14th century “they took on comedic dimensions that by the fifteenth century gave way to amusement.” As Camille says, “The medieval image-world was, like medieval life itself, rigidly structured and hierarchical. For this reason, resisting, ridiculing, overturning and inverting it was not only possible. It was limitless.” During the process, fear was replaced by fun, and monstrous elements of human nature and activity became the targets of satire. Grotesques disappear during the Renaissance, when their role was apparently no longer relevant.
The gargoyles and grotesques on the exterior at All Saints’ in Gresford are carved a mix of forms and sizes, and date to when the church was re-designed and given two new side aisles in the 1400s. Some of the grotesques look down from the roof and tower, a lot are arranged in a line above a string course just beneath the roof of the side aisles, whilst others sit on finial bases or above window corbels, much nearer to the observer, and perhaps most threatening, although as the photo to the left shows, not all of the carvings were fearsome monsters; some were unalarming representations of human faces. I have photographed all those that can be seen from ground level, some rather more successfully than others, and as a corpus it is quite a remarkable collection of images. Only a small selection are shown here. They are delightful to the modern eye, perhaps rather less so to the late Medieval church-goer. ——– —–
There are more photographs, high quality images taken at the level of the gargoyles and grotesques, on the Images tab of the All Saints’s page on the Coflein website, together with images of statues amongst the pinnacles. See more too on the Archives page. Some of them provide an excellent overview of the imagery that exists at roof level.
Sources:
Camille, Michael 2019 (2nd edition). Image on the Edge. The Margins of Medieval Art. Reaktion Books.
Fudgé, Thomas, 2016. Medieval Religion and its Anxieties. History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan
Woodcock, Alex, 2011. Gargoyles and Grotesques. Shire Publications
All Saints’ Church in Gresford is such a short hop from my parents’ home in Rossett that I should have visited years ago, but somehow never got around to it. I tried a couple of times earlier this summer, but the church was busy in its role as a community resource, which was good to see. The church is big. Although it is difficult to imagine when driving along the Chester-Wrexham road, Gresford was originally a small village, noted in the Domesday survey as part of Duddestan in the Cheshire Hundred. A sense of village life still remains in the buildings that surround the churchyard, together with the charming village pond just down the road, complete with lazy ducks sunbathing on warm summer days. All Saints’, reaching most of its present extent in the 15th century, was an imposing presence, and must have been a source of considerable local pride.
The location of the Church of All Saints in Gresford. Source: streetmap.co.uk
For a detailed account of the church’s history, see the history page on the Gresford All Saints’ website. This post provides a short overview of some of the key features, with photographs. First, a note on the name. Most churches in the area are named after particular saints, but All Saints refers, as it name suggests, to all Christian saints. The saints represented by “all,” however, include not only those who are known but those who remain unrecognized. All Saints’ Day is celebrated in Catholic and some Protestant churches on 1st November annually. The owner of the Church of England Saint Dedications web page calculates that it is the second most popular church dedication in England, after St Mary. Although Gresford is in Wales, just over the border, it switched hands between England and Wales throughout its earlier history.
The Grade 1 listed All Saints’ is unexpectedly impressive for its understated setting. Much bigger for example, than Worthenbury’s St Deiniol’s, with which it shares a sense both of ambition and commitment. Today both are clearly much-loved by their communities, and both vie for the title of the finest parish church in north Wales. The significant difference between the two is that whereas St Deiniol’s was built between 1736-9 by Richard Trubshaw with real Georgian panache, All Saints’ is thought to have been founded in the 13th century and was in almost continuous use from at least the 14th century. The 11th century Domesday survey mentions a church and priest, but this church was apparently replaced by the establishment of the Gresford church, either in the same or slightly different location. All surviving walls are made of local high-quality Cefn yellow sandstone, which is used for many of the municipal buildings in Wrexham. A separate post about the exterior gargoyles and grotesques has been posted on the blog here.
The late 13th and 14th centuries were a period of energetic church building in England and Wales. It is thought that the remarkable gothic architectural projects carried out at two notable sites created a tidal wave of enthusiasm for architectural projects in religious establishments. One was the new and remarkable shrine created for Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, murdered on 29th December 1170, who was canonized only three years later and therefore required a shrine worthy of his status, into which his remains were transferred (translated) in 1220. The other was the ambitious shrine built by Henry III for St Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey, completed in 1269.
When All Saints’ Church was built in the 13th century, prestigious contemporary religious buildings included, for example, St John the Baptist Church in Chester founded in 1075, St Werburgh’s Abbey, founded in 1093 and Basingwerk Abbey founded 1132.
Subsequently All Saints’ underwent many alterations and embellishments in the centuries that followed, including the 14th century addition of the tower to a lower level than today, together with a south aisle. There was an almost total rebuild in the 15th century and the upward extension of the tower in the 16th century. The dominant style, following the 15th century rebuild, is known as Late Gothic Perpendicular, a peculiarly English style that emphasized the tall and thin aspects of the Gothic, mainly exhibited in the stone tracery of the stained glass windows, which make up an enormous part of the interface between interior and exterior.
The only clue to the original appearance of the church lies in a 16th century document that claims that it had been “strangely and beautifully made erect,” which is intriguing but not particularly helpful. The church is rectangular in plan with a tower protruding at the west end and two porches.
All Saints’ sits within a churchyard. The earliest grave marker dates to 1696, and there are some from the 18th century. Most date to the 19th century. There is a good mixture of chest tombs and gravestones of different designs and styles of engraving. The churchyard’s oldest occupant is in fact a lovely yew tree (Taxus baccata), estimated to be 1600 years old. The other yew trees were planted in 1726. Often associated with churchyards, yews have a mixed reputation, seen both as symbols of immortality and indicators of impending disaster, the latter association perhaps because of its toxicity. In this context, it seems clear that the yews are intended to represent life everlasting.
The exterior features of the church include crenulations, and follows the gothic tradition of adding gargoyles, which draw water away from the roof, and decorative sculptural elements, including small beasts, real and imaginary, and tortured faces, usually referred to as grotesques, as well as floral themes. Some of these sit on the stringcourse, a few of which are positioned under hood-moulds (projecting reliefs to protect the underlying features from rainwater). They are worth a post in their own right, if only to capture some of them with a telephoto lens so that they can bee seen much more easily than with the eye, which I will do in the next month or so.
Internally, the church is divided into traditional sections. The nave (the main body of the church where the public sit in pews) is flanked by two side aisles at ground floor level, marked by two 7-bay arcades. A clerestory (row of windows above the level of the aisle) provides the nave with much more light than the stained glass alone. A screen, erected in the 15th century, divides the nave from the sacred end of the church, the chancel with the choir and high altar. The chancel is flanked by two chapels, which can be reached from the aisles. The north aisle, shown above, used to run directly into one of the two chapels that flank the choir and altar, but is now partially interrupted by a 19th century organ.
The church has seen continuous use since the 13th century. The main surviving feature of the 13th century is the crypt, closed to the public but accessed via the north chapel. The 14th century is represented by a number of key internal features. In the south aisle, the effigy of Madog ap Llywelyn ap Griffith, who died in 1330, lies in a niche, shown in full armour with a lion rampant on his shield. The inscription reads HIC IACET (here lies) MADOC AP LLYWELYN AP GRIFFI
Almost opposite, and dating to the same period, is another niche, this time showing the beautifully engraved gravestone of Goronwy ap Iowerth.
HIC:IACET:GRONW:F’:IORWERTH:F’:dd’.CVI’:AIE:DS’:/ABSO/LWAT Here lies Goronwy son of Iorwerth son of David, whose soul may God absolve.
The raised 14th century sanctuary with the high altar, approached via a flight of steps, sits over the 13th century crypt.
From the 15th century are the fabulous misericords (carved scenes on the undersides of seating in the choir) and one of the church’s real treasures, the gorgeous wainscoted screens (the central panel of which was vaulted, photograph further down the page), and a very fine stained-glass window behind the high altar donated by Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby and step-father of Henry VII. The font, at the west end, with its eight panels that include depictions of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus, the lion of St Mark, and possibly St Leonard, also dates to the 15th century.
Don’t forget to look up. The ceiling is a particularly fine camberbeam structure, crossed with rafters, with painted panels and bosses. At the ends of the rafters are carved wooden angels.
So why was the medieval church so popular that it could afford a new tower in the 14th century and a major rebuild to include new aisles and new features in the 15th century? In her booklet about All Saints’, Bethan Jones suggests that the gifts showered on the church, including furnishings, might suggest that it had acquired a relic and had become a pilgrim destination. Relics generated considerable incomes for cathedral, monastery and church alike. In Chester, the Rood of St John’s Church was a popular pilgrim destination, and in the 14th century the shrine of St Werburgh in the Chester abbey had become popular. To the west, the shrine of St Winefrede at Holywell and the church at St Asaph were also on the pilgrim circuit. No record survives of such a relic at Gresford, but it is difficult to account for the size of the church in any other way, other than a major investment by a donor who wished to make his mark on the church during the period of the Reformation, but neither is there any record, documentary or material, of such a benefactor.
16th century features include the fine stained glass windows in east and north walls of the Lady Chapel, reached via the north aisle. In the Trevor Chapel there is a superb painted 1589 memorial to John Trevor (Sion Trefor), lying as though still alive, with his head propped thoughtfully on one hand. His coat of arms is above and a winged skull beneath. An inscription conceals the central portion of his body.
The church continued to be well used throughout its history. Dating to the 17th century, the Trevor Chapel a charming memorial to John Trevor’s daughter-in-law with her daughters dates to 1602, and another, rather more monumental piece, shows her with her husband (shown further down this post) and dates to 1638. Other memorials in the church also date to the 1600s.
In the 18th century, a number of additions were made. The two chandeliers in the nave date to the mid and late 18th century. The south porch (the main entrance to the church today) had stained glass panels added in the 18th century to commemorate local deaths during the First World War. The first mention of the bells is in 1775, when three of the bells were mentioned I the parish register having been returned after being recast at Gloucester, meaning that there were at least three bells in the tower at that date, the tenor, third and treble bells, although in 1873 six bells are listed so it is possible that there were six bells in 1775.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries a number of alterations and additions were made, mostly sympathetic to the original structure. The 15th century east window was restored during the 19th century, using additional glass, but has remained true to the original. In St Catherine’s Chapel, better known as the Trevor Chapel, there are two hatchments for George Boscawen (who died in 1833) and Thomas Griffith (who died in 1856), both shown immediately below. The Hill and Son organ was installed in 1912. The addition of the north porch in 1921 to serve as a war memorial included old fragments of glass. A painting in the Trevor Chapel commemorates the Gresford Colliery Disaster of 1934 and serves as a memorial to the 266 men who died. This is shown at the very end of the post, following the list of sources.
An intriguing object in the church is a short square column, made of stone and carved with a figure holding a pair of shears. It may date to the Roman occupation, and it is possible that one face represents Atropos, one of the three Moirai or Fates, responsible for cutting the “thread of life” (the metaphor for a human lifespan). It was found during excavations at the east end of the church.
Final Comments
There is too much to say about Gresford All Saints’ on a single post, and I will revisit the church on future posts to look specifically at the choir and misericords, the gargoyles and grotesques that accessorize the exterior of the church, and the churchyard itself. Apologies for the highly granular photographs of the interior, including some which are slightly blurred around the edges, both of which were caused by having to photograph in very low light. I hope that the images are good enough to give a sense of the magnificence of the church and some of its features.
Here are a few more photos, in completely random order, and please see Visitor Information below them.
Visitor Information
The church is open daily, but is a living church and may not always be available for visitors. It has services on a Sunday and on Thursday mornings, marriages and funerals during the week and on Saturdays, and may be used as a community resource for events such as the annual craft fair. Check the church website for it’s opening times and events. It took me three attempts to find it free of activities, which is great news for the church and its future, and no bother for me as I live locally, but check the website for information, and it may be worth emailing the contact address on the website if you are coming from further away.
There are plenty of information boards throughout to explain the key features, but not so many or so big that they intrude on the atmosphere of the church. If you are interested in the history, the colour booklet by Bethan Jones provides a tour of all of the key features. It can be purchased (cash only) at the church, where there are a number of leaflets and postcards available on the shelves to the right as you enter, including one devoted to the bells.
The Trevor Chapel on the south of the church (right as you look towards the altar) is used for private prayer, but is accessible to visitors when it is not in use. The crypt, with an entrance from the Lady Chapel, is closed to the public.
For those with unwilling legs, it’s an easy to access church, with no steps needed to negotiate the entrance via the porch on the north side. The nave, the choir and the chapels can all be accessed without using steps. Being an active church, there are plenty of pews in the nave on which to sit down and absorb the atmosphere.
Sources
Books and booklets
Bethan Jones, 1997. All Saints Church Gresford. ‘The Finest Parish Church in Wales’. The Friends of the Parish Church of All Saints Gresford.
Hubbard, E. 1986. The Buildings of Wales: Clwyd (Denbighshire and Flintshire). Penguin Books
Roberts, F.H. 2013. All Saints’ Gresford. Tower and Bells. All Saints Church, Gresford
Wooding, J.M. and Yates, N. (eds.) 2011. A Guide to the Churches and Chapels of Wales. University of Wales Press
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 persuaded her that it should be on loan to the museum rather than donated. Her children are now grown up with families of their own, and she has since donated it outright, 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
The Grade 2 listed Stretton Water Mill is recorded from the 14th century, and was in almost continuous use until 1959. It was restored by Cheshire Council in 1975 and became a museum in 1977. It is located not far from Farndon and Holt, in Cheshire, very near to the villages of Stretton and Tilston. Today it is a museum, with working water wheel, gears and related machinery, looking like an enormous clockwork toy, but powered wholly by water. The mill still produces flour, but this cannot be purchased because the methods used, which are entirely authentic, contravene modern health and safety regulations. However, flour from Walk Mill, near Chester, is sold in the shop.
This tiny vernacular cottage-type building, part red sandstone, part weather-board, is approached down a single track road (lots of passing places) and sits in an attractive rural setting. It lies to the east of the well-manicured village of Stretton and its rural environs.
As well as the mill building, the two water wheels and the mill machinery, there is a big millpond, a picnic area, a car park (in a small field), and access via both external steps and disabled-friendly slopes between the two floors. There is more visitor information at the end of this post.
Stretton Mill is is a splendid remnant of rural architecture and at the same time tells a story about the industrial importance of water power in the lives of rural areas from the Middle Ages into the 20th Century, working around the clock during the Second World War.
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Getting your bearings: The waterworks
If you find that the tour is already in progress when you arrive (the tour is obligatory due to health and safety considerations) it would be a good use of the waiting time to get your bearings. If you go straight into the tour, don’t forget to have a look around afterwards. Simply walk up the short footpath from the car park towards the first storey of the mill, and look at the large, motionless expanse of water behind the building. This is the millpond, which is fed by the Carden brook. The brook is out of sight, but can be seen running under the road just a little further up the road towards Carden from the mill.
Sluice from the millpond into the by-wash
The job of the millpond is to feed the two water wheels. The mill pond’s level can be controlled by a sluice into a wide by-wash,which drains the water into a tail-race or escape channel that eventually meets up with the main stream. On the other side of the mill is a short flight of steps leading up to the other side of the mill, with some picnic tables. Sluice equipment also controls the volume of water reaching the wheels from the millpond by raising or lowering the paddles (rectangular pieces of wood that can be dropped to stop water flow or raised to allow it). When the wheels are out of use, for example when the mill is closed to visitors or to permit repairs to be carried out, the paddles can be dropped to stop the water entirely.
A typical watercourse layout. Source: Traditional Corn Milling Windmills by Nigel S. Harris, drawings by John Brandrick, fig. 12, p.9
Harvested grains of wheat and barley are rock solid on the outside, and there is very little that one could imagine doing with them for nutritional purposes, except perhaps soaking and fermenting them. The prehistoric solution, and one that was followed by subsequent millers, was to break them up and reduce them to powder by grinding them between stones, by hand. By the Roman period, water wheels had been invented, and in the Medieval period, when Stretton Mill was built, these had been turned into both an industry and an art form, using vast carved stone wheels driven by water and a series of gears in an end to end process that introduced grain at one end and produced flour at the other.
Medieval mills
The mill at Stretton dates at least to 1350. Water-powered mills were the dominant industrial mechanism during the Middle Ages, and were widespread, rescuing householders from the time-consuming, back-breaking and tedious task of grinding corn by hand.
A mill with an overshot wheel like the one at Stretton, and mill race. Further up the stream there areeel traps, shown in the 14th century Luttrell Psalter (Add MS 42130, British Library). Source: Wikipedia
The millstones in a watermill, one set over the top of the other, were coarse. They were carefully and skilfully carved with a set of precise grooves called furrows that helped not only to grind the grain but to move it from the centre of the millstone to the exterior. The coarse stone cracks open the seed grains to allow the release of the kernel, and the grooves allow it to escape down a chute to be collected in bags below.
Millstones were sourced both from within Britain and beyond, with imports of millstones made from particularly desirable stone areas overseas recorded at ports around the coast. The cost of the millstone itself could be considerable, and the additional expenses of transportation and fitting meant that these were high value items that were carefully maintained.
Millstones, laid in pairs, one over the top of the other, contain a complex series of grooves, called furrows, that grind the grain and move it towards the edge. This is one of a former pair on display at Stretton.
Some mills with twin wheels would operate different milling activities simultaneously, such as corn processing and wool processing (known as fulling). A mill was built by the lord of the manor (the term manor referring to the estate rather than just the house), who charged tolls called soke rights for its use. Initially this was in form of a share of the corn and later was on a cash basis. Corn mills were used for reducing grains into products suitable for human and livestock consumption. The term “corn,” which is generally used in conjunction with mills, refers not to the New World corn but was used as a generic term for wheat, barley, oats and rye. The soke rights paid for the initial capital outlay and maintenance costs, and provided an income for the manor. The use of the mill by manor tenants was not optional. Manual milling at home was banned and anyone owning private milling equipment could be fined. It is estimated that estates could extract as much as 5% of the estate’s total income from watermills.
Run-off channel (tail race) from the overshot wheel
In the mid 14th century after a period of severe famine, the Black Death arrived and obliterated around 25% of the population. Once recovery was underway with a much smaller population, there was competition for labour and a rise of wages. Instead of operating mills themselves, lords of manors often leased out their mills to private tenants such as the minor gentry, merchants and specialist millers and craftsmen who found themselves in a world of expanding opportunity. At the same time, the abrupt decline in population meant that many other mills were abandoned, and fell into disrepair before either being revived at a later date or being allowed to decay. In the case of Stretton it is not known precisely what happened, but subsequent records indicate that enough of the local population survived to either maintain or restore that the mill after the traumas of the 14th century. Indeed, the use of the mill to save on manual flour processing during a population crisis would probably have assisted economic recovery. ———
Stretton Mill
The Medieval and Early Tudor Mill
Carden Brook, which supplies the water for the millpond and waterwheels
From 1281 the manor (estate) of Stretton was owned by the Warren family, who held it until the 15th century. The mill at Stretton dates at least to 1350, when it is first recorded in a transfer deed, meaning that it was built before this date. Given that the Black Death was sweeping through Britain in 1348, it was probably built before that date. It is not known exactly what the mill would have looked like before the 17th century. The mechanism in the mid 14th century would have been very much the same as the one still working today, with the waterwheel operating via gears to turn the millstones. There was only one waterwheel until the 18th century, positioned to the left as you face the mill, and this would have been on the outside, and was not incorporated into the interior of the building until the 19th century.
Stretton was dedicated to the processing of grain, mainly barley, oats and rye with some wheat. Wheat bread was the most expensive, and used only for bread for the better off. Barley could be used for an inferior bread, oats could be used to make porridge and oat cakes and rye was used bread and beer. Barley, oats and rye could all be used for animal fodder too.
In the 1500s, Stretton Mill was purchased by the Leche family of Carden Hall.
Stretton Mill 1600-1900
Stretton Mill as it would have looked in the 1600s. Source: Author Uncredited – West Cheshire Museums
The oldest part of the mill dates to 1630. In the 17th century the building is thought to have been made of a timber framework, filled with wattle and daub. Wattle and daub is a mixture of thin wooden strips woven like basketry to form into a lattice, which provides a base to which a material can be added to create panels that form the walls of the building between the timber frames. The mill was almost certainly thatched, the materials for which were easy to source in a rural agricultural location. The fixtures that attached the wattle and daub to the frame can still be seen at the mill, and an example was pointed out on the guided tour. The windows, vital not only for visibility but to allow the flour-filled air to clear, would have been provided with shutters. The water wheel was known as a breast-shot, and was located on the east end of the mill, to the left as you face it from the road.
There are four main categories of water wheel, the undershot, pitchback, overshot, and breast-shot. The main difference between them is how water is fed to the wheel, how the wheel uses this water to turn, and what sort of power this delivers to the machinery. Each has benefits depending on a number of factors. The overshot wheel is fed from an overhead channel, requiring a water source that is at least as high as the top of the wheel, runs counter clockwise and is the most efficient when plenty of water is available. It is also an expensive solution, requiring extensive installation work. The undershot is powered by a low level water source that works by capturing the water between the wheel and the wheel pit, and is the least efficient.
The breast-shot wheel when it was under repair
The breast-shot design sits between the overshot and undershot, receiving water from a higher level than the undershot but a lower level than an overshot. The main advantage of the breast-shot over the overshot is that it can use lower levels of water, allowing a mill to continue output even during periods of drought.
The breast-shot wheel at Stretton is unusual in that the sluice controlling access of water to the wheel has three paddles, each of which can be operated to let water into the waterwheel’s buckets at different levels. This makes it very flexible when the water level of the millpond changes.
The water for the breast-shot wheel vanishes under the east wall of the building’s extension, into the wheel-housing, shown to the right. Look out for this feature when you are outside at the level of the millpond’s surface.
The oldest local extant contemporary buildings in the area are Stretton Lower Hall, which was built in 1660 on a site that had been apparently been moated, and Stretton Old Hall, built in the 17th century and extended in the 19th century.
By the 18th century, Stretton was one of a great many watermills and several windmills dotted throughout Cheshire and the Wirral. As the map below shows, water power dominated in Cheshire whereas on the Wirral wind power was source of power for milling. As the Industrial Revolution began to gain momentum, mechanization, mainly dependent on a water source, spread rapidly.
Map of water mills and wind mills in the 1770s. Source: Phillips and Phillips 2002, p.67
At Stretton there is an inscription commemorating major structural changes to the mill in 1770. Improvements included a sandstone base, topped with weatherboard and finished off with a slate roof, still with a new overshot wheel added to the west end, together with a window overlooking it, on the right as you face the mill. The breast-shot wheel at the east end was still on the outside.
Stretton Mill in 1770. Source: Author Uncredited – West Cheshire Museums
The addition of the overshot wheel was an important one. The breast-shot wheel has been explained above. The overshot wheel, which delivered water directly to the top of the wheel via a trough, was far more efficient when the millpond was full. There is considerable drop from the millpond to the trough in which the overshot wheel sits. This drop is known as the head. The higher the head, the more powerful the potential of the waterwheel.
The water is taken away from the mill after passing through the wheels. Each has a tailrace that takes the spent water under the road, and if you cross the road you can see it leaving via small natural-looking channels that wend through the fields to re-join the Carden Brook.
The overshot wheel
The combination of the two wheels gave the mill the ability to function at maximum efficiency when rainfall provided a healthy supply of water, allowing both wheels to be operated, with the overshot wheel being particularly productive. At the same time, when drought lowered the level of the millpond, putting the overshot wheel out of action, the breast-shot would still be viable. The combination of two wheels was a very good risk-management strategy.
Contemporary with the mill at this period is Stretton Hall, brick-built in 1763 for John Leche (1704 – 1765) of Carden. There were actually nineteen men at the head of the Leche family named John, and this was the fourteenth of them.
In the early 19th century the building was extended to the east to incorporate the breast-shot wheel, which could be inspected from the small arched window shown in the illustration below, and which survives today.
Stretton Mill in 1819. Source: Author Uncredited – West Cheshire Museums
The extension was built of red sandstone, but the weather-board was retained on the older section of the mill. This is very like the mill building that survives today, albeit with less red sandstone and more weatherboard than today’s building. As well as the original wooden shutters, glass was probably fitted into the windows at this time.
The 1940s
The watermill was in 24 hour use during the Second World War, milling grains for both bread and animal feeds. It was in continuous use until 1959, when its last miller died, and it fell into disrepair.
The modern era
Millstone leaning against a wall in the stone room of Stretton Mill
The mill was acquired in 1975 by Cheshire County Council and was renovated in 1977 and given Grade 1 listing. Stretton Mill as it stands today is part red sandstone, part weatherboard, and has a brick-built extension. The fact that it incorporates earlier features of the mill building is a particularly attractive aspect of the mill that helps its history to be recreated, and apart from repairs it has changed very little since the 19th Century. It is still fully functional, and produces flour which, unfortunately, does not conform to modern health and safety standards so cannot be purchased from the shop. —–
What you see today
The exterior
Much of what can be seen of the building’s exterior today has been described above, but there are two notable exceptions. One is the red sandstone-built chimney at far right, which connects to the hearth on the ground floor of the mill. The hearth is a particular mystery given the risk of fire in an environment in which dry goods were being milled and could fill the atmosphere with combustible material. The other is the brick-built extension in the middle of the three photographs above. The dates of both are unknown. The use of brick does indicate a date after the mid 1700s, but is likely to be much later.
The water wheels
You can see both the overshot wheel on the outside, at the west end, and the breastshot wheel on the inside at the opposite end. Of the two water wheels, only the overshot water wheel was working in late summer 2022, and was doing a great job. The other was under repair but in June 2023, when I drove past, was not operating although the mill was open at the time, although the overshot wheel was trundling away.
The machinery
Stretton’s purpose was to grind grain. The internal gearing translated the power of the big water wheel, via a series of interconnected wheels to turn the millstones.
The ground floor (meal floor)
If you look at the wall opposite the doorway, you will see that it is damp. This is because the millpond is on the other side, and in the ground floor room you are well below the surface of the pond, as you can see when you walk up to the first floor level.
Spurwheel drive for two pairs of millstones. The vertically mounted pitwheel is connected to the waterwheel outside, and translates the power of the waterwheel to the smaller horizontal wallower above, and the large horizontal spurwheel above that.
The ground floor contains the drive machinery for both wheels, and on the tour the machinery for the overshot wheel is clearly visible. When you enter the ground floor, you can see how the water wheels connect to the rest of the machinery that drives the mill via a series of toothed wheels, which interlock with one another to send power to the millstones above. The Stretton arrangement is known as an underdriven spurwheel arrangement, where the water wheel links to a much smaller vertical pitwheel wheel that is fitted on the same axis and turns at the same rate. This has teeth that interlock with a small horizontal wallower wheel, above which is the spur wheel, all of which can be seen in the above photograph.
This is also the room into which the processed grain falls from the stone room, so it both begins the process and ends it.
The top (bin room) and middle (stone room) floors
We were able to visit two floors, but originally three floors were in use, which is the usual arrangement for a watermill. The top floor, the bin floor, is inaccessible to visitors, located in the eaves of the roof, and reached by a stepladder. This is where grain was stored before being tipped into a grain bin that released the grain into a chute that entered the hoppers of the stone room below.
Source: Medieval Technology and American History
The stone floor, which is at the level of the mill pond surface houses the machinery and devices for funnelling grain. It feels rather like being inside an enormous clockwork toy, with interlocking cogs and gears controlling the turning of the millstones and the grinding of grain, as well as the lowering and raising of the top millstone (the runner) and the raising and lowering of sacks. With hindsight it seems extraordinary that so much equipment could be fitted into such a small space.
The meal floor gearing enters the stone floor and interlocks with two pinions called stone nuts, which turn the millstones. There are two pairs of millstones at Stretton, each pair driven by its own wheel. The stones are contained within wooden containers called tuns. There is a small gap between the upper millstone, the runner, millstone and the lower millstone, bedstone. This gap is called the nip. The nip was adjusted by the miller in response to the type of grain being processed and the fineness required. According to the West Cheshire Museums Booklet about the mill, the breas-tshot stones are currently French burr stone from the Paris Basin and the overshot stones are millstone grit from the Peak District.
The millstones are contained within the octagonal tun. Above it, the square-mouthed hopper sits on a frame and feeds grain into the millstones
The grain falls from the bin floor, into a large wooden funnel on the stone floor called a hopper, which sits on a horizontal wooden frame called a horse. It is funnelled down a chute called a meal ark into the millstones where it is ground before being forced down the to the edge of the millstones where it is funnelled down a meal spout into a meal bin or ark on the meal floor.
Visiting details
It is a short drive from Farndon and is shown on brown heritage signs from the main roads in the vicinity. If you are relying on the brown signs, look out for them carefully, as some of those closest to the mill are often partly concealed behind foliage. The postcode for satnav systems is SY14 7JA. The road to the mill, from either direction, is single track but has plenty of passing places.
Do check out the opening times on the Chester and Cheshire West web page for Stretton Mill before visiting because the mill is only open in afternoons and only on certain days of the week. There is a small entrance fee, £3.70 at the time of writing. Please note that it is cash-only. Here’s the web address: https://strettonwatermill.westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/visit-us/
The by-wash
The site is partially suitable for those with mobility issues. There is a footpath that winds very gently up the slope that leads to the upper level of the mill, avoiding stairs, but this would probably be a struggle for wheelchair users during or after wet weather. There are seats at all key points for those who are mobile but need to rest legs.
Because of very valid health and safety issues, you will need to be accompanied around the interior of the building on a guided tour (see below). You can walk around the exterior without a chaperon, and there is step-free access, as well as some nicely located picnic areas for those who wish to linger and enjoy the view over the mill pond. It is a really lovely location. There is a gift shop, selling postcards, books, posters, and flour (milled at Walk Mill, not far from Chester because Stretton Mill is not a commercial milling enterprise and falls below rigorous modern health and safety standards).
Walking further along the road in the opposite direction from Stretton village, approaching Carden, the rural scene gives way to golf, as you find yourself around the back of the Carden Park Hotel and its immense golf course, which spans both sides of the road.
The guided tour
Steplader leading to the top, bin floor
The guide on the day provided us with a creative version of the birth of agriculture in the Near East. If you want to prime yourself beforehand with the basics of the spread of agriculture from the Near East through Europe to and throughout Britain see the Britannica’s Origins of Agriculture web pages, if you can put up with the adverts.
At the end of this talk our guide gave us some hard wheat grainsto hold and examine. The inner kernel is contained within a hard husk that protects it, and the husks demonstrate unambiguously why processing is so necessary. They are extremely tough. We were then taken on a fascinating tour of the building, starting with the water wheels. Only the overshot wheel was working when we visited, due to repairs on the breast-shot wheel. Next, we proceeded to the first floor “stone room” to look at where the milling happens. There is a long curving ramp that enables those who cannot manage steps to reach the top floor. We then returned downstairs to look at where the external overshot wheel meets the internal gears, and to see where the milled flour was collected.
The tour of the mill equipment was very informative and extremely useful. Unless you are familiar with how all the pieces fit together, it is helpful to have an explanation of the entire process as it would have happened in real time.
Final Comments
The video below was taken during our first visit in summer 2022. I drove past in June 2023 and had a look to see if the breast-shot wheel, which had been under repair in 2022, was running again, but it was not. The overshot wheel, however, is terrific, issuing a rhythmic rumbling noise that it is difficult to describe, but can be heard in the video.
It was an absolute treat to see a working watermill, and this one is a particularly engaging example in a lovely location.
Sources:
Books, booklets and papers
The by-wash, which can be used to lower the level of the millpond
Author uncredited. Historical Background to Stretton Watermill and the Milling Process. West Cheshire Museums.
Dyer, C. 2005. An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford University Press
Harris, N.S. Traditional Corn Milling Watermills, with drawings by John Brandrick. Written and published by Nigel Harris
Phillips, A.D.M. and Phillips, C.B. 2002. A New Historical Atlas of Cheshire. Cheshire County Council and Cheshire Community Council Publications Trust
Singleton, William, A. 1952. The Traditional House-Types in Rural Lancashire and Cheshire, off-print from The Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Volume 104, p. 75-91.
Watts, M. 2000. Water and Wind Power. Shire Publications
In Part 1 of this four-part series, two Late Neolithic – Early Bronze Age burial sites were introduced: Bryn y Ffynon (the grave of the so-called Brymbo Man), and Bryn yr Ellyllon (the grave in which the Mold gold cape was found). A map of their locations was shown, the circumstances of their discovery was described, and the two graves were set in the context of similar sites in northeast Wales.
This post looks more closely at the Bryn y Ffynon, best known as the grave of Brymbo Man, one of the star exhibits in the Wrexham County Borough Museum. Part 3 looks at Bryn yr Ellyllon, the grave that produced the Mold Cape. I the fourth and final part, the various strands will be brought together in a conclusion, together with visiting notes. The bibliography for all four parts can be found at present at the end of part .
Brymbo Man was buried in a stone-built grave called Bryn y Ffynon (Well on the Hill) on the north side of Ruabon Mountain, now the site of a housing estate in Brymbo to the northwest of Wrexham. No burial mound, either of earth or stone, has survived, and it is not known if there ever was one. In the northeast of England there were cemeteries of flat graves, so a burial mound might not have been essential everywhere, but in northeast Wales mounds of earth (barrows) or stone (cairns) were usual, even though not all of them remain. Some mounds were built in complex layers using different materials, and importantly could contain secondary burials, usually cremation burials, that were added to the mound, sometimes involving the extension of the mound. The loss of a burial mound often equates to the loss of valuable data. Stone cairns in particular were often robbed for their stone for much later building material, sometimes leaving a hidden cist unsuspected beneath the surface. Given the upland location of the site, if the grave was covered, it probably lay under a cairn.
The cist (burial chamber) itself was made of roughly hewn slabs of local stone lining the walls and floor of the grave, and measured 96 x 79cm (38 x 31 inches). The cist was aligned north-south. A very large and uneven slab of stone, called a capstone, was placed over the top of the cist, sealing the burial before any burial mound was built over the top, itself measuring 5ft 6ins (167cm) long, 3ft 3ins wide (c.1m) and 9ins (23cm) thick.
The Grave Goods
There were only two items found in the grave with Brymbo Man, which are on display with the skeleton. One is a ceramic vessel known as a Beaker and the other is a flint tool. This is fairly typical of Early Bronze Age graves. Without access to the excavation report (unpublished) one assumes that the relationship between the objects and the skeleton in the cist was recorded, and that this is what has been reproduced by the museum, with a flint knife placed not far behind the skull and the Beaker placed towards at the base of what remains of the skeleton.
The Beaker
On the left: The Bryn y Ffynnon Beaker. Source: Rebecca Van Der Putt (with congratulations, because I couldn’t get any sort of angle on it). Source: The Modern Antiquarian. On the right: Savory’s photograph of the Bryn y Ffynnon Beaker. Source: Savory, H. N. 1959.
Brymbo Man was accompanied in his grave by a very distinctive ceramic form known as a “Beaker,” more precisely a short-necked Beaker. The Beaker tradition was an import from Europe, marking one of the changes in the centuries at the end of the Neolithic and beginning of the Early Bronze Age. Where a Beaker is buried with the individual, it may be accompanied by a variety of other goods, but is often the only object found. This suggests that the beaker itself was pivotal in establishing the identity and purpose of the grave and its owner. Skeletons in Beaker graves were flexed / crouched, (with their knees bent and their legs pulled up to their chests).
The process by which Beaker burial traditions arrived in Britain is still poorly understood. Options are that the tradition was imported by visitors or immigrants; or that it was brought back from the continent by British (using the term loosely) travellers who found certain affinities with the funerary practises that they observed. The idea of foreign people being buried with the new Beaker style burial is given some credence by beaker burials from the Stonehenge region, and in particular the Amesbury Archer, who was buried with a range of goods traditionally associated with beakers, and was subjected to isotope analysis that indicated his origins were probably in the Alps. In addition, a multi-disciplinary DNA analysis research project in 2017 proposed that a significant percentage of the indigenous population of Britain was, by the Middle Bronze Age, replaced by those who brought the Beaker tradition with them at the end of the Neolithic: “the genetic evidence points to a substantial amount of migration into Britain from the European mainland beginning around 2400 BCE.” (Olalde et al). As is so often the case with this sort of DNA research, as highlighted in the study itself, there are questions remaining about the extent to which it is possible to extrapolate from the data used, including sampling issues (statistical, geographical and relating to the quality of the material).
The Beaker on the left is from Balblair in eastern Scotland, is not dissimilar from the Brymbo Beaker. althoug its neck is shorter, the carination less pronounced and the decorative incisions slightly different. Source: Inverness Museum and Art Gallery
The new burial tradition found favour, whatever it represented. The new funerary regime could not have spread so far and and wide throughout Britain and Ireland without people in all those regions being complicit. Whatever the mechanism of transmission, by the end of the Neolithic the continental Beaker and associated objects had become desirable, and were found extensively under round barrows, as well as occasionally in other contexts, in many parts of Britain.
Beakers were hand-made (i.e. not wheel-thrown), built up from a single ball of clay that was hollowed out and shaped before being fired. There is a video at the end that demonstrates how Beakers may have been assembled and decorated. A certain amount of skill went into the construction, which is a very specific shape, and the decoration must have taken considerable patience, but what is most remarkable about it is its faithful reproduction of an idea that had spread through Europe and was now perfectly at home in burials of northeast Wales. The Beaker may have had slightly different ideas associated with it different areas, but it clearly imparted a message either about the deceased, the role or status enacted by the deceased in life, the status conferred upon the deceased after death, the place where the burial was made, as well as ideas and ideologies inherited with the Beaker tradition.
The flint knife
On the left. The plano-convex stone tool found in Bryn y Ffynnon, illustrated in Savory 1959. On the right, a photograph of the same, although note that the photograph appears to have been accidentally inverted (i.e. it is the wrong way round, which sometimes happens when photos are digitized). Source: Wrexham County Borough Museum
A flint tool was found in the grave. It is plano-convex (flat on one side and curved on the other). Flint was the preferred stone for tool manufacture in Britain. In Cheshire, and less frequently in northeast Wales, it could be found locally in river beds and on beaches as pebbles, which are useful for making small tools, but for more ambitious pieces it would be imported from areas where flint was part of the geological fabric. The reason for its popularity is the way in which it responds when it is struck in order to shape it into a tool. The term for it is conchoidal fracturing, which means that the shock-wave of its fracture creates a slightly concave “bulb of percussion” from which concentric lines that ripple out from the point of impact. The waste products left over from tool manufactured, undifferentiated flakes, are usually referred to as “debitage.” Some of these could be further worked into other smaller tools, but others might be abandoned and are useful datasets about tool manufacture in their own right. Some tools are very distinctively shaped, like barbed and tanged arrowheads, but others are far more generic, like the one accompanying Brymbo Man. Stone tools were often hafted in wood to make, for example, arrows, spears and axes.
Terminology used to described features of worked prehistoric tools. Source: Martingell 2001, p.10
Small plano-convex tools were common in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, particularly from the northeast, and often towards the end of the period. When the edges are worked to form a sharp edge, they are usually termed knives, but many, including this one, were probably multi-purpose tools. A particular industry referred to as “plano-convex” tools, formerly “slug knives,” is characterized by tools made with specialized pressure-flaking over one face of the tool, which have a very distinctive appearance and are particularly associated with the northeast and food vessels. Nothing special went into the manufacture of this item, which is a very everyday piece, and although it is technically plano-convex, it is not characteristic of the more elaborate objects that are usually associated with the term. I cannot find an image of the reverse side of the flint, but it looks more like a flake (a piece struck from a core piece of flint without much additional work) than a properly manufactured and shaped tool.
The skeleton as it survives today is incomplete, as shown in the photograph on the left. Even with only a partial skeleton to study it could be determined that the deceased was a male who, at the time of his death, was 5ft 8ins/173cm tall, and was strong and powerful, indicated both by the shape of his skull and by the muscle attachments to both his skull and his leg bones.
Brymbo Man is thought to have been 35 years of age at the time of his death. There are different estimates of life expectancy for this period, but it is probable that 35-40 was a good age. His age was determined both by the degree to which the bones in his skull had fused and by the wear of his teeth. He had once suffered a wound above hairline on his forehead, thought to have been caused by an arrowhead, but this had healed and was not the cause of his death. No cause of death was identified. He could, for example, have died from an injury that left no traces on what remains of his skeleton, or from illness or disease.
Isotope analysis has not been carried out on the Brymbo skeleton. Isotopic ratio analysis has become very popular for an increasingly popular for the study of past human and livestock migrations. The technique was used, for example, on the tooth enamel of a skeleton found near Stonehenge, known as the Amesbury Archer, and indicates that this person spent his childhood in the Alps. It has also been used by the Beaker People Project, which has concluded that dsfsadfsd. It also be used on livestock remains, helping to show patterns of mobility such as transhumance. Like radiocarbon dating, isotopic analysis requires a sample of human material, which is destroyed in the process, and so far Wrexham County Borough Museum has decided not to subject the Brymbo remains to avoid harming the remaining bones. The choice between preservation and knowledge is a difficult one to make.
Funerary Rituals
Rituals for the dead can be important for ensuring that the living transition successfully into an afterlife, but they may also be important for the living, allowing communities to come to terms with the loss of a community member, to create ancestral links with a particular landscape, and to formalize any exchange of role from the dead person to a living replacement. These ideas are familiar from the rituals that we engage in today when we attend a funeral. In prehistory, it is likely that there were other reasons and meanings embedded into the ritual activities accompanying the deposition of the dead. There was certainly an internal logic to the burials contained within the stone chambers during this period, and the Brymbo burial shares many of these features.
The presence of the Beaker puts it within a burial tradition that is quite distinctive. The dead were buried by themselves, usually under a barrow or cairn, in a small chamber (cist) with a Beaker vessel and sometimes other objects. This European tradition was adopted slowly throughout Britain, and Beakers were adapted by local people to conform to their own traditions. There are numerous variants. Quite what this tradition meant to living communities is unknown. It may have indicated some sort of specific role in society for the deceased, and it may even indicate, in this case, that the the deceased was either involved in networks of communication and exchange with other areas, or was not native to the northeast Wales or border area.
Savory’s 1959 illustration of the cist and capstone in the excavation report, showing the objects and skeletal remains in situ.
The skull was laid on its side, with the head to the north, facing east and, if the museum display reflects how the skeleton was found, the rest of the bones were apparently laid to give the impression of a crouched burial. Although there are exceptions, males were usually laid with their heads facing east, females with their heads facing west.
Only 13% of the Bryn y Ffynnon skeleton was interred in the grave. This is not an accident of survival of decay, but a deliberate decision by those who buried the remains. This is not unusual. Analysis of the skeletal remains by osteology specialist Corinne Duhig found that some of the bones bore cut marks that had been made by a sharp tool, which may indicate de-fleshing the bones. The disarticulation of the skeleton, the missing bones, and and the signs of defleshing imply that between death and interment multiple activities took place. None of this was by any means unusual in the period, or indeed from the preceding Early Neolithic. One explanation for this type of activity is that the person died some distance from home and that the body was prepared somewhere else for travel prior to burial; another is that the practices were part of a set of rituals that marked the transition from life to death, possibly including a transition to an afterlife. It is also entirely possible that the body may have been laid to rest elsewhere and moved here at a later date.
Splitting of bodies between multiple places is not as strange as it sounds and has parallels, for example, in Medieval Britain. For example, when Earl Ranulf III of Chester (1170-1232) died away from home, his body was eviscerated (internal organs removed) so that it could buried in three locations. His entrails were buried where he died in Wallingford, his heart was buried at Dieulacrès Abbey in the Midlands and his embalmed body was then returned to Chester for burial in St Werburgh’s Abbey. This was completely consistent with the traditions of the period.
The pre-interment activity at Brymbo does beg the question of how close the association between the dead person and the objects in the grave actually was. If there was a considerable period between death and interment, it may be that the objects had more to do with the living than the dead, and that they were simply conventional contributions in which ideas were embodied in the artefacts about the site itself, rather than statements about the deceased.
Dating
Chronology of ceramics in Britain, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. I have indicated the Beaker type most similar to the one in the Brymbo grave. Source: Parker-Pearson et al 2016
The skeleton has not been subjected to radiocarbon dating, but is thought to date to around 1900BC on the basis of artefacts that accompany the burial. Relative dating of this sort is achieved by comparing the objects in graves with similar graves that have been subjected to radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon dating is a scientific method, known as absolute dating, that measures the amount of atmospheric carbon-14 remaining within organic materials such as bone or wood to obtain a date. A brief but useful explanation can be found Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit website. A sample of organic matter (such as skeletal or plant material) is required for the dating procedure, and this sample is destroyed in the process of obtaining a date. Recent improvements in the technique need much smaller samples, but some curators are reluctant for even small samples to be destroyed. Signage at the Wrexham County Borough Museum explains that the museum has decided, at the time of writing, not to have the Brymbo Man scientifically dated. Instead, the relative (inferred) date given above has been based mainly on the Beaker. Beakers have been studied extensively. They appear from 2500BC, and there are multiple different styles, some of which can be charted over time. The Brymbo Beaker, placed at around the 1900BC mark, is well into the Early Bronze Age and on the edge of the period when this style of pottery was going out of fashion.
What did Brymbo Man look like?
The Brymbo skull was used by facial reconstruction expert Dr Caroline Wilkinson at the Unit of Art in Medicine at Manchester University, to create an estimate of Brymbo Man’s appearance. Although the skull is incomplete, what remained was enough for Dr Wilkinson to use. The skull itself was fragile, but robust enough for a cast to be made. The position and size of the muscle attachments helped to build a sense of the musculature in the face which, along with bone structure and overall body weight, help to determine the shape of the face. The shape and size of all apertures in the face, such as eyes, mouth and nose, and the spatial relationship between them, also contribute to how a face would have looked. Once the underlying structure of the face had been determined, the skin, represented by clay, was added. There are some things that are not determined by the underlying structure, like lips and ears. Once the model head was completed, a make-up artist was responsible for hair and the colour of eyes, complexion and hair. This is not a definitive representation, but it is based on the available data, and it gives an excellent sense that the skeleton was once a living man.
Who was Brymbo Man? Was he important?
Given that 1000s of people during the Bronze Age were not buried (the landscape would have been stuffed full of mounds if they had), we know that a selection process had been implemented, and this selection process put Brymbo Man in this grave. Unfortunately we do not know the selection criteria for those who were deposited in graves.
One might wonder if he was the leader of his community, but he might equally be an elder respected for his experience and knowledge, a ritual specialist responsible for the religious well-being of the community, or a wealthy trader who conferred status on the group without necessarily having a position of hierarchical power. Perhaps it was not his place in society that marked him out, but an action or event in which he took part. Or was his death itself significant in some way? Perhaps he was the first person to die after the establishment of a claim over a new territory. Equally he might be a person or an idea regarded by the community for reasons that we might never imagine, because we can never know how people were categorized or how they related to the ideas of the community and the broader social conventions to which they were connected.
The capstone that sealed the stone grave, 5ft 6ins (167cm) long, 3ft 3ins wide (c.1m) and 9ins (23cm) thick.
Whatever he represented, whether as a valued family member, an important representative of the community, or a symbol of something rather less conceivable, the burial itself was clearly important. Assembling the grave was no light-hearted exercise. Even without a barrow, cutting the stone for the the stone-lined cist, which would then have to be assembled, would have been a significant activity. Even more impressive, the quarrying of the stone for the capstone and moving the capstone into position would have required many hands, probably some lifting technology, and a great deal of incentive and determination.
We know that Brymbo Man had sustained an injury to his skull, which he survived. The nature of the injury suggests that it might have been made by an arrow, which could have been received in a hunting accident, or in conflict. There are numerous reasons why people might resort to violence, including livestock raiding, disputes over territory as well as personal grievances, but there is no matching data from other burials in the area, such as evidence of similar injuries, to indicate wider scale disputes. Although his injuries could have been connected to his role or status, and might have been a criterion by which he was selected for a round barrow burial, we simply have no way of knowing whether or not this was the case.
This photo shows a cairn that is better preserved than many located in exposed positions. Cefn y Gader 1 near Llangollen. Source: Megalithic Portal, photograph by “Postman”
Beyond speculation there is little information that the presence of a burial with a single Beaker and a single stone tool can divulge about who the deceased may have been in life. It is not even clear whether he was important in his own right or whether his burial represented a set of ideas and traditions, quite unlike our own, that led to his burial in this location. As things stand, we cannot form an opinion about whether he was any more important to his contemporaries than the event that placed him in the grave. What can be stated with some confidence is that the grave itself, and the dome of earth or stone that probably encased it, were significant to the people who built it, standing proud on a landscape that was inhabited by people, and to whom it would have communicated messages that we can no longer read.
What do we know about how Brymbo Man made a living?
We know something about Brymbo man’s vital statistics, and how he was treated after death, but so far we have not had the opportunity to look at how he may have lived his life. In Britain, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age resources potentially included cereal (wheat and barley) and legume crops, as well as livestock, primarily cattle and sheep. In the earlier Neolithic period, after an initial burst of agrarian activity, livestock herding became dominant over cereal cultivation, possibly because of teething problems with the establishment of cereal farming in new territories by inexperienced farmers. Cattle herding increased, and soon sheep also contributed to the subsistence mix, with dairy products rising in importance. Before the end of the Early Bronze Age, cereal farming resumed on floodplains and other suitable land. Although different areas had access to different types of land and both wild and domesticated resources, there is no reason to doubt that the inhabitants of northeast Wales could obtain access to subsistence assets when they required them, choosing the best combination of crops and livestock for the conditions in which they lived. Hunting wild game probably supplemented the diet.
How much of this applies to the Brymbo area? We know that the grave was on a hillside above the River Alyn. The hillside is used used for sheep farming. Given that Brymbo Man was buried in this location, it can be assumed that he lived and worked here for at least a portion of the year, but whether this was a settled or mobile life is unknown.
Topographic map of Brymbo. The meandering blue shows the Alyn valley. Click to show the bigger image. Source: topographic-map.com
The point was made above that Brymbo Man was a sturdy individual with no obvious health defects, that 35 was a respectable age for the period, and that these observations suggest that he was healthy and probably had a nutritious diet. We can state with some confidence is that Brymbo Man was once part of a family, and a larger community, made up of farmers and/or herders, as well as stone and pottery workers who exploited the fertile lowlands and highland pastures of northeast Wales, possibly on a transhumant or otherwise seasonal basis. These were the people who buried him. There would have been many other men, women and children in the area when he was alive and making a living, each with a specific role within the community.
It is possible that some members of the community split away from the rest on a seasonal basis, following a pattern of taking up livestock onto the hills to take advantage of summer pasture, before returning in the autumn to help with the harvest. If the burial on the edge of Ruabon Mountain is an indication of an affiliation with this particular part of the landscape, Brymbo Man was probably involved in sheep or cattle herding, and was in easy reach of the Alyn valley for other agrarian activities. Climatic indicators suggest that the weather was warm and relatively dry, and although lowland areas could be freed up for agriculture by the clearance of often dense woodland before they could be cultivated, upland areas were often used for both cultivation and herding.
Coming back once again to the Beaker, it is as far as one can tell from other excavated sites in the region, something of an unusual object in northeast Wales and the borders. This one in particular seems to have affinities with other areas and it seems unlikely that it was made locally. The presence of the copper mine on the Great Orme indicates that there was significant trading activity from there to other parts of Britain, and that the development of complex overland and seagoing trade routes were established had been established by the Early Bronze Age. It is in not, therefore, far-fetched to suggest that this grave, overlooking the Alyn valley and only a few kilometres from the Dee valley, might have had connections further afield, and that the Beaker may not have been made by native potters, but was an import, either in trade, or in company with Brymbo Man. This is highly speculative and more data is required. Perhaps the beaker itself, and analysis of the clay from which it was made, could add additional data. Isotopic analysis of the skeleton might also well help to clarify some of these distance-related questions. As noted above, however, this would involve inflicting damage on the Brymbo remains.
Final Comments on Part 2
Brymbo Man remains elusive. One grave on its own, even containing a skeleton and grave goods, provides insufficient data for judging what the grave meant to the people that buried a man there, and covered his burial chamber with a giant capstone and, probably, a barrow or cairn. Isotope data could probably get us a little further, but only as far as assessing whether this man was likely to have travelled. All we can say for sure is that he had no obvious signs of ill health, that his physique, height and age suggest that he was well nourished, that he had received an injury apparently inflicted by another human, and that the hilly surroundings of his burial place might imply that he was involved in livestock herding or that this was a route he travelled in the course of another economic activity.
The real value of Brymbo Man, the objects in his grave and his burial mound is as a data source in comparative research to enable the development of a greater understanding of all these burials, the features they shared, and how they were differentiated from one another. Once sufficient data has been accumulated, probably not until decades from now, it may be possible to return to Brymbo Man, better informed, with more knowledge to hand, to ask some of the above questions again.
Next
Bryn yr Ellyllon, the Early Bronze Age burial cairn that produced the Mold Cape, are discussed in a similar vein in Part 3.
From left to right. The Mold Cape and strings of amber beads superimposed on a digital sketch, which could be man or woman (Source: British Museum Partnership Programme); Photograph of the Wrexham County Borough Museum hologram of the reconstructed head of Brymbo Man (my photo); The recreated grave and capstone with original skeleton and grave goods of Brymbo Man in the Wrexham County Borough Museum (my photo).
Bryn y Ffynon (Brymbo) and Bryn yr Ellyllon (Mold) indicated by yellow markers, shown in relation to Chester and Wrexham. courtesy of Google Earth. Click to enlarge.
This is part 1 of a four-part overview of two Early Bronze Age graves and how they contribute to an understanding of the archaeology of the period in northeast Wales and the borders. All four parts have been written, and will be released over the next couple of weeks.
The series has been divided up as follows:
Part 1 (this post) – Introduction to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in northeast Wales:
Introduction
Some Background to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age
The series is based on two burial finds in northeast Wales, Bryn yr Ellyllon, near Mold and Bryn y Ffynnon at Brymbo, Wrexham. These two sites have been chosen 1) because excavated sites are comparatively unusual in northeast Wales, 2) the contents of both sites can be visited in museums, and 3) because of the differences between them, and the opportunity for assessing different types of knowledge about the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age in northeast Wales. In spite of the differences between them, both represent variants of the broader burial tradition, and therefore have the potential to add their own unique voices to the discussion of how this period manifests itself in the region.
The Mold Cape (British Museum 188,0514.1) from Bryn yr Ellyllon near Mold. Source: British Museum
Bryn yr Ellyllon (which translates as Hill of Goblins or Fairies) was discovered by labourers in 1833 a few miles to the east of Mold. It was a round cairn (a mound of stones) that contained a badly decayed skeleton together accompanied by a number of very fine artefacts, one of which is the magnificent gold Mold Cape made of paper-thin gold and embossed with a decorative theme that emulates multiple strings of beads. The other objects included around 300 amber beads (the exact number found remains unknown, and only one survives), other pieces of gold that appear to have belonged to a second cape, and some poorly preserved items of bronze. These are now in the British Museum in London and are discussed further below and in part 3. Even though the objects were pulled from the site as pieces of treasure, the location of the site is known, and the objects form a relatively coherent assemblage. These are valuable details when understanding how objects were chosen to accompany the dead, and where burial sites were located in the landscape.
The partial remains of Brymbo Man and his two grave goods from the Bryn y Ffynnon cist. Source: Peoples Collection Wales
In 1958 a stone-line cist called Bryn y Ffynnon, was found 10 miles to the northwest of Wrexham at Brymbo, containing the well-preserved remains of a partial skeleton, a flint tool and a ceramic vessel known as a Beaker. The name means Hill of the Well or Spring (with many thanks to Reginald Iain de Crawford-Griffin for the translation). It seems to have been named for a small farm of the same name on Brymbo Hill. The site was excavated in 1958, and the results published in an excavation report in 1959. The man to whom the skeleton belonged, now nick-named Brymbo Man, was around 35 years old when he died some 3600 years ago. The burial, including the skeletal remains, is now on display in the Wrexham County Borough Museum, together with a reconstruction of the skeleton’s face. The site is discussed further below, and in detail in part 2.
Each burial offers contrasting insights into the Late Neolithic / Early Bronze Age, and they are worth looking at both individually and together to highlight how different sites may produced different types of knowledge. Every individual site has something to say for itself, and as more sites are investigated, each feeds in turn into our knowledge about the period in which they were constructed, and during which they formed an integral part of the human landscape. It is the understanding of the period as a whole, rather than individual objects, that is important to archaeologists, who work to recreate past societies from the sites and objects that survive.
Some Background to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age
Chronology of ceramics in Britain, Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Source: Parker-Pearson et al 2016
The Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age are usually discussed together. The period lasts from around 2900-1600 BC. The division from the earlier Neolithic lies in transformations visible in the material record, which may in turn reflect revisions of ideology, social organization and/or economic activity. These changes coincide with a period of climatic change.
Riverine connections during British prehistory, showing how the river network links from Wessex, the Thames valley and the Humber estuary. Source: Bradley 2019, p.20
The climate, cooler than in the earlier Neolithic, was still favourable for agriculture, and in particular may have supported agricultural development in hilly areas in the summer months. Astrid Caseldine’s analysis of environmental indicators suggests that this was a period of deforestation in many parts of upland north Wales, probably indicative of agricultural expansion into these upland areas. This is supported both by the notable increase in cereal pollen in these environments, and by the flowering of Late Neolithic – Early Bronze Age monuments across the upland landscape. This expansion could not have lasted indefinitely; the soils were simply not of sufficiently robust quality to sustain long-term agricultural expansion. Valleys were also popular locations for these sites, indicating that communities were adept at making the best of various different environments. The valley of the river Alyn, along which several sites are located including Bryn yr Ellyllon and the Llong, is one example.
Foremost amongst the transformations in material culture, suggesting social as well as economic changes, is a different form of burial practise, suggesting changes in the way that communities defined themselves and related to both others and the landscape. Although there were a number of tomb styles prevalent in the earlier Neolithic, most burial sites contained the remains of multiple individuals, but at the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze age, smaller round barrows and cairns were favoured, usually containing a single burial in a small subterranean chamber at its centre, sometimes with a new form of pottery known as a Beaker. Sometimes additional burials added into the mound itself at a later date. At the same time, settlements became less substantial, more ephemeral, and much less easy to find archaeologically, the sites often consisting of little more than household debris with few, if any, signs of the circular structures that once contained them.
A suggested reconstruction of the 100s of beads found in the cairn at Llong, near Mold. Source: Curious Clwyd
Pottery styles also changed at this time, with the introduction of the new Beaker form from Europe and the replacement of earlier Neolithic styles with new home-grown Grooved Ware, Food Vessels and Collared Urns. As the name Bronze Age suggests, this was also the period during which metal-working began, first copper and gold, and later bronze itself, an alloy of copper and tin. North Wales was well placed as a base for the exploitation of mineral sources, an industry that gained momentum during the Early Bronze Age before becoming an important centre for copper and other resources in the Middle Bronze Age. The earliest copper tools in Wales were flat axes that had been cast in an open mould, a basic technology that improved over time. Decorative items, such as items of jewellery also appear much more frequently. The amber beads in Bryn yr Ellyllon and the jet and shale beads in the necklace found in a cairn at Llong, near Mold, both in the valley of the river Alyn, are both examples from northeast Wales.
Although these are the top-level identifiers of the new Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age material culture, there is considerable regional variation, and even within a region no two graves are identical. Although inhumations (burials) are typical of barrow graves, cremation steadily gained momentum, eventually replacing inhumation as the preferred method for disposing of the dead.
A rich Early Bronze Age heritage in northeast Wales
The Maesmor Estate macehead from near Corwen (near Llangollen). Found in 1840. Source: National Museum of Wales
Northeast Wales was a recipient of these new ideas, perhaps deriving them from earlier versions in south Wales, or perhaps more plausibly from similar manifestations in northern England with which the northern Welsh material appears to have certain affinities. The Bryn y Ffynnon Beaker, for example, bears a close resemblance to examples in northeast England, and stone maceheads from northeast Wales are comparable with those from the north of England, including a remarkable example from the Maesmor Estate at Llangwm near Corwen in the Ceirw river valley, not far from the Dee (shown left). Good quality flint pieces for more mundane stone tools are unavailable in north Wales, and this appears to have been imported from elsewhere. Yorkshire jet appears in northeast Wales during the Late Neolithic, as does amber. The nearest source of amber was the Baltic, but it also washed up on beaches along the Yorkshire coast. Amber was found in Bryn yr Ellyllon with the golden cape; jet (and black stone resembling jet) appears in the necklace, found scattered in a the stones of cairn at Llong, 1.5 miles (2.4km) southeast of Mold, overlying the burial of a crouched female skeleton. Although sea routes had dominated during the earlier Neolithic, the indications are that land and river routes now assumed a new importance, transforming networks of communication.
Distribution of round barrows and cairns in Wales. Source: Burrow 2011, p.106
However they arrived, the Early Neolithic and Early Bronze Age burial practices soon colonized northeast Wales, mainly round barrows (mounds of earth or turf) and cairns (mounds of stone) the majority of which, but by no means all, are thought to have been burial sites. Here there were none of the earlier Neolithic monumental burials such as the so-called portal dolmens found in northwest Wales and on Anglesey. There are 100s of mounds all over Wales, north and south, and there are particular concentrations in the northeast of Wales, and along the Welsh borders. See the map right. There are also a few other types of ceremonial monuments from the period, including stone circles and so-called henges. Sadly, as explained above, there is a severe dearth of settlement sites. Nearly all of the archaeological data available about the period in northeast Wales is derived from these round mounds, built of earth, turf, or stones. Most have not been excavated, and many have become very overgrown over the millennia, making it difficult to differentiate between them. Where they have been investigated, a number of different types have been identified, based on features like kerb stones, berms and ditches. Some round barrows and cairns are completely empty of burials, but may perform a similar function in terms of looking like a burial site and establishing a presence in the landscape.
Source: Prehistoric Funerary and Ritual Monuments in Flintshire and Wrexham, by Frances Lynch 2003
Of the round barrows found in northeast Wales, some have been recorded but are no longer visible. Others are visible, either as monuments or as crop marks in aerial photographs, but have not been examined. Some were excavated before sound archaeological techniques were developed, and just a few have been subject to modern archaeological investigation. In all, it’s a very mixed bag of data, but it all points to a very busy Welsh heritage during the Early Bronze Age period.
When Frances Lynch discussed the survey of Bronze Age monuments in Flintshire and Wrexham in 2003, she included a table that listed 284 monuments, capturing particular concentrations of Early Bronze Age burial activity on Ruabon Mountain and in the Alyn Valley. What is interesting about her list is the sheer number of round barrows when compared to any other type of contemporary monument. A single stone circle and a possible henge (ceremonial monuments) are recorded. Lynch makes the point that sites located side by side may or may not be directly related to one another, but even so, a landscape stuffed full or more or less contemporary monuments is a notable phenomenon.
1991 map showing the distribution of scheduled Bronze Age barrows and major finds spots in Clwyd. Scheduled monuments are those that are under state protection, but there are many more that are not scheduled, so this shows only those sites deemed to be most important. Source: Manley et al 1991, p.66
To understand the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age, other types of site would normally be taken into consideration, a mix of domestic, funerary and ritual sites. These include other ceremonial sites, industrial sites like kilns, quarries and mines, and settlements. A combination of sites helps to create a sense of what the lived area was like. The profusion of round mounds argues that northeast Wales was clearly well populated, but settlement and industrial sites remain very rare, although the copper mine at the Great Orme stands out as a notable and welcome exception. In spite of these gaps, prehistorian Frances Lynch, who specializes in Welsh archaeology, suggests that these prolific barrow builders were far from insular, and that they were part of larger networks of communication
“Although the social character of Wales was perhaps more conservative than that of many parts of Britain, the country was not isolated. The presence of exotic beads made of amber, faience and jet demonstrates that even quite remote communities could obtain luxuries from a distance and that fashions in clothes, as far as we can reconstruct them, changed in step with those elsewhere.” (Lynch 2000 p.138)
I will be talking more about grave distribution and how these two graves fit into the general picture in part 4.
Discovering the graves
The two sites under discussion were found 125 years apart. That 125 years accounts for how differently each site was treated by its finders. Both sites were discovered by workmen. Bryn yr Ellyllon, which contained the Mold Cape, was found in 1833 and Bryn y Ffynnon (Brymbo) was found in 1958. The grave at Bryn yr Ellyllon on the eastern outskirts of Mold, was discovered on the banks of the River Alyn, by accident by workmen in 1833, using stones from the cairn (stone mound) that covered the cist and its contents to fill in a disused gravel pit at the side of a road. Similarly, Bryn y Ffynnon, was found by workmen building a new housing estate. They were laying pipes, for which they were digging a new trench in Cheshire View in the village of Brymbo.
Bryn yr Ellyllon (containing the Mold Cape and accompanying grave goods)
Imaginative reconstruction of the discovery of the Mold Cape at Bryn yr Ellyllon by Tony Daly. It is far more likely that the skeleton was lying on its side, and we know that the cape was in pieces. Still, it is a useful way of visualizing how the site was uncovered. Source: British Museum Partnership Programme
An early 19th century discovery is almost inevitably bad news for a site in terms of excavation techniques, the proper recording of archaeological finds and the finding and preservation of delicate organic remains, such as, for example, very small pieces of human skeletal material, animal bones, plant remains, foodstuffs and any fabrics or bits of basketry. Even so, if the Bryn yr Ellyllon grave had been subjected to any form of contemporary archaeological investigation it would have fared better than it did.
When the labourers at the Bryn yr Ellyllon grave found the treasures that accompanied a decayed skeleton, they simply disposed of the bones and divided the spoils between themselves and the landowner John Longford. No records were made of the skeleton, and any contents that could be expected within the cairn itself, such as any secondary burials or artefacts within its structure, were lost. It is possible that other more pedestrian objects like stone tools may have been in the grave but, like the skeleton, were disposed of at the time. Had it not been for the Reverend Charles Butler Clough, the vicar of Mold, the find might never have come to academic light, and its discovery by a team of labourers would have been the kiss of death. Fortunately, the Reverend Clough heard of the find and took great interest in it, writing a letter to John Gage, in which he described the find, referring to the cape as a corselet:
I regret to say, that the Corselet suffered considerable mutilation. Mr. Langford, upon its discovery, having no idea of its value, threw it into a hedge, and told the workmen to bring it with them when they returned home to dinner. In the mean time several persons broke small pieces off it, and after I saw it, one piece of gold, apparently a shoulder strap, which was entire (or piece passing over the shoulder from the front to the back of the arm) was taken away ; two small pieces, of what I believe to have been (from its similarity to what I had seen) the other shoulder strap, with several small pieces of copper upon which the gold was fixed, are still in Mr. Langford’s possession; several rings and breast pins have been made out of the pieces carried away.
Illustration of the Mold Cape and fragments of a different cape from the same grave, all found in 1833. Source: Gage 1835
Hair-raising stuff. It was common for the clergy to write up this sort of discovery, as they were frequently the most scholarly and informed people around, and often had a profound interest in history. It is because of the Reverend Clough that anything at all is known about the grave beyond the surviving grave goods. His report was published in the journal Archaeologia in 1836, three years after the discovery, and the British Museum picked up on it and went to Mold to see if they could rescue the finds. It took over a century for enough of the pieces of the cape to be assembled for a reconstruction to be made (in the 1960s). Some fragments are still missing presumably those that Clough said had been recycled into rings and pins.
A geophysical survey was carried out in 2013, hoping to find either the site itself or anything associated with it, but its findings were limited to the discovery of the possible original site of the cairn, estimated at 25m in diameter.
The grave contents are now in the British Museum in London and the cape itself was featured in Neil MacGregor’s radio series (and the book that followed) “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” based on objects in the British Museum. In 2013 it was loaned to Wrexham County Borough Museum where it was put on display for five weeks, together with Llong shale and jet necklace, discovered in another burial nearby. It is is decorated with impressed designs, and absolutely remarkable for the skill required to work something so thin.
Bryn y Ffynnon (the grave of “Brymbo Man”)
The 1950s Brymbo housing estate, during the construction of which the Bryn y Ffynnon grave was found. Its rural surroundings are clearly visible. Source: Archwilio
Bryn y Ffynnon was found in 1958, and was very soon the subject of professional excavation. The workmen laying pipes for a new housing estate on the outskirts of Brymbo had stumbled across the corner of a vast slab of stone when they dug down to create a trench, about 30 cm (1ft) below the modern surface. When they investigated further, they found that it was the roughly hewn capstone (lid) of a cist (stone-lined rectangular grave)., which contained a burial and two artefacts: a pot and a flint tool. They removed the long bones and the beaker, for reasons unknown, but left the rest undisturbed.
Even in 1958, archaeology had not come of age in Britain. Radiocarbon dating had been invented but was still giving inaccurate dates, and was not calibrated (corrected) until 1967, after which many further modifications were made. Field techniques had not yet been fully refined, although they were improving all the time. Nor was there the same awareness that there is today of the value of leaving discoveries like this in situ, like a crime scene, so that they objects can be understood in relation to one another as they were deposited, in keeping with the intentions of those who interred the deceased and the grave goods.
The importance of relationships between objects, such as placement of finds near the head, hands or feet, help archaeologists to understand the lost language of ritual practises, just as the positioning of the skeleton itself, including its orientation (e.g. north-south) and the direction in which it was facing (e.g. east or west) help to understand how widespread these traditions and ideas actually were.
It is particularly nice, therefore, that in spite of the fact that the burial was found in the middle of a construction site, the details were passed over to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, who in turn passed the news over to the National Museum of Wales to enable them to send a team and excavate the site as a rescue dig. The aim of rescue archaeology is to recover as much data and material as possible at a site in the allotted time before the halted construction or other activity must resume. Many rescue digs were carried out in the countryside during the 1950s due to the expansion of housing on formerly rural land. Without a cairn or barrow to signal its presence, the cist was only found whilst work was already underway, and work had to stop to allow the site to be excavated.
Plan and elevation by H.N. Savory published in 1959, showing the grave, together with its contents, as it was found in 1958. Source: Transactions of Denbighshire Historical Society
When they arrived on site, the National Museum of Wales archaeologist H.N. Savory and his team were able to replace the bones in their original position and went on to record the entire grave in situ before removing the grave, slabs and all, to enable the pipe-laying to proceed.
The following year Savory published a short but comprehensive excavation report with illustrations in 1959 in the Transactions of Denbighshire Historical Society, not yet digitized but available today in the public library in Wrexham. The plan and elevation of the grave is taken from that publication.
The grave and its contents were initially sent to Cardiff, where they were put on display in the National Museum of Wales, but are now in the Wrexham County Borough Museum. The grave is excellently displayed. The skeleton has been nick-named Brymbo Man. A reconstruction of the head, based on the remains of the skull, gives Brymbo Man a possible face, also on display in the museum.
In Part 2, both Savory’s excavation, together with the later post-excavation work that took place, will be discussed.
Final Comments on Part 1
Northeast Wales is home to 100s of round barrows. There are even two in Wrexham itself, miracle survivors of urban development. Not enough sites have been excavated to be able to talk in terms of a typical site, but both both sites stand out for the quality of their artefacts. Although the Beaker in Bryn yr Ffynon is not a rare piece, it is certainly unusual in this area, at least in the context of our current knowledge, and the Mold cape is acknowledged as a national treasure.
Photograph on display in the Wrexham County Borough Museum of Bryn y Ffynnon being excavated during the construction of a new housing estate.
Neither site was found under ideal circumstances, but Bryn y Ffynnon fared much better than Bryn yr Ellyllon, due almost entirely to the 125 years between the two discovery dates, and the much greater awareness of the value of archaeological sites, and their protection by law. In a field where funding is always an uphill battle, it is often due to accidental findings during construction work that result in excavations. Ironically, given that it signals the destruction of a site, rescue archaeology is enormously helpful in filling out the picture of archaeological periods, but it is relatively rare that such rescue work is required in rural areas. It was only because of the expansion of Brymbo into the surrounding countryside that Bryn y Ffynnon was discovered and rescued. What this means, in practical terms, is that the recovery of the archaeology of northeast Wales will inevitably remain piecemeal, as funding for excavation (and post-excavation analysis) is secured on a case by case basis, or as other rescue opportunities arise.
Each burial and its accompanying objects will be discussed in much greater depth in the next two posts, Bryn yr Ffynon (Brymbo) posted in part 2 and Bryn yr Ellyllon (Mold), posted in part 3. In part 4 all the strands are brought together to talk about how the two sites contribute to what is known of the archaeology of northeast Wales and the borders.
Bradley, R. 2019 (2nd edition). The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press
British Museum Partnership Programme, (no date). The Mold Cape. A Prehistoric Masterpiece from North-East Wales. (Dual language, Welsh and English). National Museum of Wales and Wrexham County Borough Museum.
Brück, J. 2004. Material Metaphors. The Relational Construction of Identity in Early Bronze Age Burials in Ireland and Britain. Journal of Social Archaeology, vol.4(3), p.307-333
Brück, J. 2008. The Architecture of Routine Life. In Pollard, J. (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell, p.248-267
Duhig, Corinne. n.d.The Skeleton from Bryn-Y-Ffynon, Brymbo (“Brymbo Man”), Unpublished, Wolfson College, Cambridge. (With many thanks to Rhiannon Pettitt for sending it to me)
Dutton, A., Fasham, P., Jenkins, D., Caseldine, A., & Hamilton-Dyer, S.,1994. Prehistoric Copper Mining on the Great Orme, Llandudno, Gwynedd. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 60(1), p.245-286
Fowler, Chris,2013.The Emergent Past. A Relational Realist Archaeology of Early Bronze Age Mortuary Practices. Oxford University Press
Gage, J. 1835. XXII. A Letter from JOHN GAGE, Esq. F.R.S., Director, to Sir HENRY ELLIS, K.H., F.R.S., Secretary, accompanying a Gold British Corselet exhibited to the Society, and since purchased by the Trustees of the British Museum. Read 17th December, 1835
[includes extracts from Reverend Clough’s and Mr Langford’s letters]
Harris, S. 2019. Chapter 7 – The Challenge of Textiles in Early Bronze Age Burials: Fragments of Magnificence. In: The Textile Revolution in Bronze Age Europe. Production, Specialisation, Consumption, ed. Sabatini S. and Bergerbrant, S. Cambridge University Press, p.154-196.
Hoole, M, Sheridan, A, Boyle, A, Booth, T, Brace, S, Diekmann, Y, Olalde, I, Thomas, M, Barnes, I, Evans, J, Chenery, C, Sloane, H, Morrison, H, Fraser, S, Timpany, S and Hamilton, D 2018 ‘“Ava”: a Beaker-associated woman from a cist at Achavanich, Highland, and the story of her (re-)discovery and subsequent study’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 147:
73-118. http://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/view/10106
Hurcombe, L.M. 2014. Perishable Material Culture in Prehistory. Investigating the Missing Majority. Routledge
Johnson, N. 2017. Early Bronze Age Barrows of the Anglo-Welsh Border. BAR British Series 632
Jones, A. 2008. How The Dead Live: Mortuary Practices, Memory and the Ancestors in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. In Pollard, J. (ed.) Prehistoric Britain. Blackwell, p.177-201
Lanting, J.N. and van der Waals, J.D. 1972. British Beakers as seen from the Continent, Helinium 12, p.20-46
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Lloyd, J.Y.W. 1885. The History of the Princes, the Lords Marcher and the ancient nobility of Powys Fadoc and the Ancient Lords of Arwystli, Cedewen and Merionydd. Whiting and Co, London. https://archive.org/details/historyofprinces05lloy
Lynch, F. 1983. Report on the Excavation of a Bronze Age Barrow at Llong, near Mold. Journal of Flintshire Historical Society, 31, p.13-28
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Lynch, F. 2000. The Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. In. Lynch, F., Aldhouse-Green, S., and Davies, J.L. (eds.) Prehistoric Wales. Sutton Publishing
Lynch, F. 2003. Prehistoric Funerary and Ritual Monuments in Flintshire and Wrexham, Flintshire Historical Society Journal, Vol 36 (2003), p.19-31
MacGregor, N. 2020. A History of the World in 100 Objects. Penguin
Morgan, D.E.M. 1990. Bronze Age Metalwork from Flintshire. North West Archaeological Trust, Report No.4
Morgan, V. and Morgan, P. 2004. Prehistoric Cheshire. Landmark Collections Library
Needham, S. 2012, Putting capes into context: Mold at the heart of a domain. In Britnell, W. J. & Silvester, R. J. (eds.) Reflections on the past: essays in honour of Frances Lynch. Welshpool, Cambrian Archaeological Association, pp. 210-236
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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
For anyone new to this occasional series on objects extracted from my garden during everyday gardening activities, see the History in Garden Finds page. These are not objects used in the garden, but objects, usually fragments, lost or disposed of in the garden and found during digging, troweling and planting.
This maker’s mark, crossing all three sherds, was a happy find for me, because although we have dug up tons of broken china from the garden (which is in Churton, a few miles south of Chester), all of it interesting in its own way, few of the manufacturers can be identified. This piece, with a company trademark on one side and part of the pattern on the other, contains the name both of the manufacturer and the design.
Re-assembled, the original sherd is 9cm long and 3.5cm wide. The potter’s mark is split over three broken pieces. The clean breaks and pure what fabric that divided the sherd into three means that it was broken when one of us found it whilst gardening, with spade or pick-axe, straight through the middle. Fitting the three pieces together to form a single piece leaves the much grubbier original break around the former edges. The spidery cracks in the glaze, called crazing, have also allowed the garden earth to seep into the fabric.
Flip it over, and there are parts of the floral pattern on the reverse, a deliberately blurred design referred to as “flow blue,” about which more below. Interestingly, the other images I have seen of this particular design, “Forget Me Not,” are not in flow, but are very clearly delineated, as shown in the example further below, where the design is in green.
What are we looking at in the manufacturer’s mark? Starting at the top is a crown sitting over the top of a Staffordshire Knot. This knot is a traditional symbol of Staffordshire and the town of Stafford, first used by the Stafford family in the 15th century. The words within the circle read “England’s S.W. Dean Burslem,” which encircle a seated greyhound, part of the company’s trademark, and damaged with dark scratches in this piece. In the banner (or swag) below this, and illegible here, this clearly reads on other examples “Royal Semi China” and beneath that is the design name “FORGET-ME-NOT” and the manufacturer’s registration number: RºNº350600. This mark is much clearer in the example shown below, which shows the same design applied using a different technique.
Green version of the S.W. Dean Forget-Me-Not pattern and trademark. Photos by Letsgoexplorin64 Source: Etsy.
S.W. Dean of the Newport Pottery, Burslem, in Staffordshire was the manufacturer. Samuel Webster Dean had been the chairman of ceramics manufacturer in Edge, Malkin & Co., which started life as Cork and Edge in Burslem, making teapots and operated from 1846 to 60) before going through various changes in partnership. When it closed in 1906, Dean declared an interest, and eventually took over the company in 1909, renaming it S.W. Dean. The greyhound at the heart of the maker’s mark was carried over from Edge & Malkin & Co, which had used it between 1873 and 1903. The new company still operated out of Burselm at the Newport Works, and its products were probably sold in a number of retail outlets. The company also appointed agents to sell its products at sales events in hotels in major cities, probably for bulk sales into retail and export. In the advert below an event at the Holborn Viaduct Hotel in London as announced. There are examples of the type of products that the company produced on the A-Z of Stoke on Trent Potters website. S.W. Dean ran into financial problems very quickly, and Samuel Dean was declared bankrupt in June 1910. Although the advert below mentions an export market, it seems unlikely that there was sufficient time for this to get fully underway before the company closed.
Later in 1910, S.W. Dean was in turn purchased, and a new company was registered by J.D. Kerr. Kerr clearly thought that the Dean name had enough brand recognition amongst potential purchasers of the ceramics to retain the name, because the new company became Deans (1910) Ltd. A greyhound was retained in the log, but was on all fours, instead of seated, and was shown standing on an open crown.
The pattern side, showing the Forget-Me-Not design
The style and technique used on this pottery is called flow blue, and is a form of transferware. Transferware is a very swift way of transferring a design to the surface of an object. A copperplate engraved with the required design was inked, in this case with deep blue cobalt oxide, and pressed on to paper that, while still wet, was in turn pressed on to a ceramic surface. The design left on the piece of pottery is the transfer. With a complete object, the overlap between the transfers is usually visible as a seam, but this piece is too small to show this. The process speeded up the process of decorating ceramics, making them much less expensive to produce than hand-painted wares, permitting mass production, and creating cost-savings that were passed on to the customer.
The particular characteristic of flow blue is the appearance of blurred edges, giving them a soft and blousy look, quite unlike the precision of the green example of the same design above. When the pot was ready for a second firing, after the transfer design had been fixed into place, a flow-powder was added to the kiln. A typical mixture was 22% salt, 40% white lead, 30% calcium carbonate, and 8% borax, but there were variants. This gave off a chlorine gas which caused the cobalt in the transfer to diffuse into the glaze, creating the flow effect and the intense blue glow.
The Newport Works in Burslem, Staffordshire, where S.W. Dean’s pottery production was based. Source: A-Z of Stoke On Trent Potters
Flow blue appears from about 1830. Whether the effect was originally accidental or deliberate, it soon became very popular, first in the U.S., exported from Staffordshire factories, and later in Britain’s own households. During the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-15, the U.S. had become Britain’s most important export market until the onset of the American Civil War in 1860. The Registration of Design Act of 1842, which prevented factories from copying each others patterns without permission, resulted in new patterns, and sometimes specialization in particular types of design. By the mid 1800s British manufacturers were producing a variety of different genres, including more traditionally Victorian rural, garden and specifically floral designs, many of them very romanticized. The forget-me-not is a good example of a flower chosen because of its popularity in Victorian gardens and poems.
Flow blue from the garden, with the forget-me-not sherd both centre bottom on the plate, and on its own on the right
A lot of flow blue has come out of the garden, but nearly all of it in very small pieces. A sort through them has only found one piece that is consistent with the Forget-Me-Knot design, a very thin rim piece, much thinner than the pieces shown above. It may or may not come from the same item, perhaps thinning towards the edge, but it could also be a sherd from a different part of the same set. Some of the other pieces of flow blue display a characteristic feathering along the rims of ceramics, none of these gilded, although many feathered edges were. Those shown here are a selection of the bits pulled out of the garden, including the Forget-Me-Not rim piece.
The real star of the circular walk, missing off the leg to Pontcysyllte, is the Grade II listed Cefn viaduct, which can be seen around much of the circular walk. The walk goes right up to and along the base of the viaduct, which really is an awesome sight as you approach it and begin to get a sense of its scale. The Cefn viaduct was designed by civil engineer Henry Robertson, who had purchased the Brymbo Ironworks, and was built in yellow Cefn sandstone and red brick by contractor Thomas Brassey (to whom there is a chapel dedicated in Chester Cathedral). It was built surprisingly quickly over a two year period to carry the Shrewsbury and Chester Railway over the Dee valley. It opened in 1848, 43 years after the opening of Pontcysyllte, at a cost of £72,346. It has twenty one arches, nineteen of which are 60ft (18m) wide, and two of which, one at either end, are 30ft (9m) wide. If you approach the country park from the Ruabon direction, you will pass under one of the two narrow ones. The arches span 1508ft (466m) and at their most dizzying tower 147ft (45m) above the level of the river. 
The additional leg of the walk to the Pontcysyllte aqueduct along the path of the Dee is not suitable for anyone who cannot handle steps, as there is a flight down from the circular walk to near the level of the river, with no handrail. There is a signpost and small Pontcysyllte-themed bench indicating where you have to turn off the path down the stairs to a more informal section towards the aqueduct.
I enjoyed this more informal section, which after a wending track following the path of the Dee through woodland and open field leads to steps at the other end that take the walker to the level of the aqueduct and the Trevor Basin, with fully open visitor centre and other facilities (including boat trips across the aqueduct). The section along the river to Pontcysyllte will be highly seasonal, with different vegetation allowing or blocking views to the river, offering seasonally variable wildlife. Yesterday it was very attractive, with glimpses of the river through the tall plant life, and occasional tracks through the vegetation to get down to admire the river itself, much-used by dog walkers whose canine friends were doing a lot of swimming. The dominant floral element was Himalayan balsam, with orchid-like flowers in pinks and pinkish whites, which is terminally invasive, a complete monster which, given half a chance, takes over its entire environment, but is endlessly pretty and no bother at all in the massive acreage of the park.
Having retraced your steps, and once back on the more formal circular walk, the star of the show is the Cefn viaduct that looms every close. There is an option to stop at a picnic area where a small beach is a great spot for admiring the river. There are tracks that let you walk just a little bit further along the river before heading back to the circular walk, or you can simply pause on the path, admire the view, and keep going up the slope towards the base of the viaduct. The viaduct is amazing. You can see it for most of the circular walk. At first just a few arches appear, and then gradually the entire 19-arch run of the stunning structure is revealed until you arrive at the top of the slope and at the foot of one of its enormous columns. Look up. Wow! At the very top of the arch at the top of the yellow stone-faced columns, the underside of the arches are formed of red brick-built, providing a contrast with the yellow Cefn sandstone.
