Illustrations of Medieval Manners,Chivalry, and Costume,from Original Documents

In 1994 investigations comprising geophysical and earthwork surveys, together with evaluation excavations were carried out at Hylton Castle, Sunderland. The results confirmed the former presence of buildings east of the gatehouse tower, and contemporary with it. Some evidence for a hitherto unknown sixteenth- or seventeenth- century successor to the castle was discovered on an artificial terrace overlooking the earthworks of an ornamental garden with associated water features.     

Illustrations of Domestic Architecture,from Popular Medieval Writers

Correlation between features excavated in advance of a gas pipeline, and cropmarks photographed some years previously, led to identification of a Saxon rural settlement, occupied from the sixth or seventh century through to the mid-ninth century. It comprised several interconnected enclosures, adjacent to two main trackways. A narrow strip was excavated through the settlement, and five possible sunken-featured buildings, and numerous ditches and pits, were recorded—most ditches delineated enclosures which had been repeatedly redefined. The pottery assemblage spanned the transition between regional early Saxon and middle Saxon wares. Prehistoric occupation in the vicinity was evidenced by pottery (including beakers), flints and a bronze dagger jragment.     

Illustrations of Domestic Manners During the Reign of Edward I

Abstract

A small ivory head of a tonsured man, expertly carved in relief, was found in 1991 during excavations at the great eighth-eleventh century Lombard monastery at San Vincenzo al Volturno. The head was excavated with other fragments of carved ivory, antler and bone, in the vicinity of the collective workshop of the monastery, and was doubtless carved in this workshop. The head-type is a variant on an early Byzantine formula which was employed in Rome by the sixth century and subsequently, in the eighth century, was adopted by artists working for noble Lombard patrons in northern Italy. The painters responsible for decorating the churches and claustral buildings of San Vincenzo in the first half of the ninth century also used this type, and in details of its carving the new ivory head seems to show the direct influence of painted heads of early ninth-century date from the walls of the monastery. The relief was probably intended for the embellishment of a small casket or the cover of a book. The new head, besides being a significant addition to the tiny corpus of surviving carvings in ivory from early medieval Italy, shows the craftsmen in the monastery's workshop had at their disposal a material which was both rare and prestigious in the period.     

Original Documents.-No. I

St Faith’s chapel is situated beyond the south wall of the south transept of the Gothic abbey church, built by King Henry III (r. 1216–72) at Westminster. The chamber’s paintings, corbel heads and the use of Purbeck marble for wall shafts and corbels, together with 13th-century floor tiles, mark it out as a locus of high status. The paper promotes the claims of St Faith’s chapel to have been the sacristy and vestry of the Benedictine church through an examination of its fittings, sculpture and painted decoration.     

Original DocumentsRoyal Letters and other Documents Amongst the Municipal Records of the City of Exeter

Four-post buildings were found in the Outer Camp on a 1 in 6 slope, facing north-east. They had been rebuilt several times since their foundation c. 900 B.C. and were burnt c. 420 B.C. The village was then reduced to the Inner Camp but within a hundred years the Outer Camp was probably re-occupied. The hillfort was finally abandoned following a fire at about the time of the Roman advance C.A.D. 50.     

Medieval Architecture Illustrated from Illuminated Manuscripts

Abstract

Following examination of a number of post-medieval perceptions of Peak, or Peveril, Castle in Derbyshire, the topographical setting of the castle is discussed. It is suggested that late-12th-century literature can give clues as to the way in those who built and used the castle in the 12th and 13th centuries might have appreciated the site.