Category Archives: medieval

Monday Book: The Valley of Ravens, Barbara Erskine

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Time-slip fiction combining history, the supernatural and romance at its best that also includes a character from the iconic Lady of Hay. Atmospheric story telling and richly observed characterisation meeting with obsessions from the past and the present. Like her other novels it’s immersive and the pace builds. Set in the Welsh marches readers encounter Llywelyn the Last Prince of Wales and the fraught politics and wars of the thirteenth century. Meticulous research about his daughter Gwenllian who was born a few months before his death and her fate when Edward I captured Llywelyn’s brother David and his family draw attention to women without power its consequences for their lives – a factor at play in the story of Alys, a healer, whose story is at the heart of Erskine’s novel. The history of the period casts its shadow across the novel and the life of Erskine’s modern character, Eve – who faces a different kind of persecution while at the same time living in a place where the weight of the past pushes through into the present. Couldn’t put it down!

And as it happens I have recently revisited the fate of Gwenllian of Wales while exploring the life of Eleanor of Castile. An infant at the time of her father’s death, Gwenllian was his only legitimate heir. She was captured, when she was 18-months-old, along with her uncle, Dafydd, and his family on 21 June 1283 at Nanhysglain in Snowdonia. For Dafydid, a brutal execution at Shrewsbury followed. He had, after all, shifted his allegiance one too many times so far as Edward I was concerned.

Gwenllian was separated from her cousins. Daffyd’s legitimate daughter and Gwenllian, with a claim to the crown of Wales, were sent to nunneries to prevent them from marrying and their families contesting Edward’s claim to Wales. Also sent to England for a lifetime of contemplation were Daffyd’s other six, or possibly seven, daughters. Gwenllian, who was twice over a cousin of Edward I due to her descent from King John’s daughter, Joan and the fact that her mother Eleanor was Edward’s cousin, was sent to Sempringham, a Gilbertine priory in Lincolnshire. Dafydd’s own daughter, Gwladys, was sent to Sixhills, another Gilbertine priory in Lincolnshire. Their fate was kinder than the one which befell Dafydd’s sons who were incarcerated in Bristol Castle for the rest of their lives.

Edward I wrote to the prioress that as an ‘innocent’ Gwenllian should be treated with pity given her age and sex. It seemed that while he wanted her removed from the Welsh line of succession he did not want her badly treated or harmed. Four years later, Edward sent an administrator to Lincolnshire to report on the way that Gwenllian and her cousins were being treated and cared for. He also arranged for a pension of £20 a year to be paid to the priory for her care.

The monastery accommodated around 120 nuns and 60 monks – the Gilbertines running double, segregated, houses. Gwenllian, veiled as an infant, spent the rest of her 54 years in Lincolnshire – dying 1337. The Gilbertines took vows of chastity, poverty and obedience but in 1327 when Gwenllian petitioned Edward II she described herself as Prince of Wales – reminding the king ( who would be dead by September) that his father had promised land and rent for the house at Sempringham to fund the pension. It was Edward III who granted her a pension of £20 a year for life.

In April 1328 Edward III visited Sempringham and granted the priory a charter that April.

If you want to know more about Gwenllian and her mother – Sharon Bennett Connolly’s book Ladies of the Magna Carta: Women and Influence in Thirteenth Century England is an excellent starting point.

A plaque commemorating the princess, who was abducted from her homeland, was raised in 1993 at Sempringham at St Andrew’s Church – which contains all that remains of the priory Her grave was lost during the dissolution of the monasteries.

‘Houses of the Gilbertine order: The priory of Sempringham’, in A History of the County of Lincoln: Volume 2, ed. William Page (London, 1906), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lincs/vol2/pp179-187 [accessed 8 June 2026].

Alexander of Abingdon

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Side views of Eleanor of Castile, medieval statues from Waltham Cross, held by the V & A (photo J. Brod) accessed from https://www.abingdon.gov.uk/abingdon_people/alexander-of-abingdon)

Logically Alexander came from Abingdon – which during the thirteenth century gained a reputation for masonry. Alexander became a court sculptor associated with a group of masons that worked at Westminster. He’s even identified in Eleanor of Castile’s accounts (well the executors of her estates) as an image maker. Inevitably little is known about Alexander other than his role at court as an image maker and that it is likely that he received his training during the building of Abingdon Abbey.

It was Alexander who was given the task of carving the stone chest upon which Eleanor’s effigy rests in Westminster Abbey, at Lincoln Cathedral, and the wax models for the metal images of Eleanor at Blackfriars where her heart was buried – lost at the Reformation.

He also created the images of Eleanor that appear on the Eleanor Crosses (the V and A holds the medieval images of Eleanor from the cross at Waltham). We know that Alexander charged 5 marks each for the seven deportations of Eleanor on the cross at Charing.

A statue of the Virgin and Child, held by the Metropolitan Museum in New York is attributed to Alexander because of its style – he was good at folds and draperies – and of course, its worth mentioning that the images he created of Eleanor took their form from the saints and statues of the Virgin Mary that he carved – religious iconography was part and parcel of medieval life. During my reading I also discovered that his work marks the move from the Gothic to the Decorated style.

Virgin and Child, attributed to Alexander of Abingdon. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, Edward J. Gallagher Jr. Bequest, in memory of his father, Edward Joseph Gallagher, his mother, Ann Hay Gallagher, and his son, Edward Joseph Gallagher III; and Caroline Howard Hyman Gift, 2003

He was still at work in 1316 (in a document that associates him with Michael of Canterbury) and while it is difficult to be certain it is thought that he sculpted the figures on the tombs of Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster at Westminster Abbey and Bishop de Luda at Ely. It’s also thought that a shrine (to St Edburg) at Stanton Harcourt that was originally in Bicester Abbey (we’re back to the Dissolution of the Abbeys) and an effigy at Aldworth near Abingdon (Joan, Lady De la Beche) were also created by Alexander but it is difficult to be certain. Evidentially it is only the sculptures associated with Eleanor that historians can be certain about.

Joan, Lady de La Beche, Aldworth, St Mary’s Church attributed to Alexander of Abingdon.

Hourihane, Colum. The Grove Encyclopaedia of Medieval Art and Architecture. (2012)

Alexander of Abingdon
Alexander of Abingdon

Deserted villages

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There’re a variety of reasons why villages and settlements might have been deserted in the past. The obvious reason relates to the Black Death of 1348. Other reasons include landlords deciding to use an area for a new purpose. For instance, at Nether Haddon in the Peak District, the settlement was moved so that a new deer park could be created, Other settlements were relocated or abandoned due to an increase in wool production, enclosure and even the end of the monasteries which saw former monastic land end up in the hands of private landowners.

Climate change has its own story to tell – and at places like Hungry Bentley – also in Derbyshire which can’t have been particularly prosperous in the first place given its name – a couple of bad years would be enough to see a village deserted. Of course, living close to the coast could bring its own problems. Dunwich was once a thriving port but now its a ruin thanks to storms and coastal erosion.

In all there are about 3,000 deserted or vanished settlements in England – from across the centuries. The number of deserted medieval settlements in 1968 stood at 2,263 which was updated in 1977. Derbyshire had gained five lost settlements by that time rising from 33 to 37; the West Riding held steady at 75 settlements while Nottinghamshire had actually lost a settlement dropping from 67 to 66. The county with the biggest number of lost settlements is the North Riding of Yorkshire with 176 missing settlements. The University of Hull maintains a database of more than 2,200 sites.

Once upon a time Conksbury, which is on private property and not accessible, was part of the royal manor of Bakewell which William the Conqueror granted to William Peverel. He in turn granted land near Conksbury to Lenton Priory which he founded in Nottinghamshire while Conksbury was later given to St Mary de Pratis Abbey, Leicester by William Avenal – where it remained until the dissolution of the monasteries.

Henry VI hung on to it for a while as did the later Tudors but by 1610 it was part of the Cavendish family land holdings and as such remains part of the Devonshire estate. Magna Britannia states that Meadow Place Grange was given to Sir William Cavendish in 1552. The packhorse bridge at Conksbury was rebuilt in the 18th century to carry traffic and there were tolls for its upkeep from 1758 onwards.

John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey – the problem of his wife.

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Sandal Castle

Last week I posted that Surrey was married twice. Except Surrey only had one wife – Alice de Lusigan. May thanks goes to Sharon Bennett Connolly who kindly explained that the theory of a second wife comes from the suggestion that Isabella, Surrey’s daughter, was only a girl when she married John Balliol but that was a mistake made by a chronicler who wrote the account. The same chronicler also said Balliol was a mere boy at the time of the marriage, which he wasn’t – all of which scuppers the evidence of a second wife. There no mention of another anywhere in the primary sources – which is inconvenient to put it mildly. Once upon a time I might well have panicked but now I think it just goes to demonstrate what a tricky business it can be identifying wives and daughters!

The chronicle in question was written by Thomas Wykes who thought that Balliol was Edward I’s ward and then he described Isabella de Warenne as a young girl – though as a daughter of Alice de Lusigan she would have been considerably older. And voila – the mystery of the two wives is solved – it all rests on the age of Isabella when she married.

Happily while I was digging around I came across the fact that the de Warennes owned Wakefield Manor from about 1100 onwards and there was an enquiry in 1280/1281 about Surrey’s ownership of lands in and around Halifax. Surrey claimed hunting rights and free warren among his possessions there – a charter dating from Henry III confirmed his rights.

Surrey’s grandson, also named John, inherited the title but had no lawful issue, thanks to a life time of trying to get out of his marriage to Joan of Bar. His mistress, Maud of Nerford, did have children and John later married to Isabel Holland (Joan was still inconveniently very much alive if I’ve got my dates right.) The 7th earl surrendered his estates to Edward III in 1316 in return for a land settlement made to his sons by Maud.

When Isabel Holland died Wakefield Manor reverted to the crown – and Edward III gave it to his son the Earl of Cambridge. For those of you, who like me enjoy making connections, Cambridge’s son, Edward, Earl of Rutland was killed at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. He was, in turn, succeeded by his nephew – Richard Duke of York – who of course ‘gave battle in vain’ and was killed at the Battle of Wakefield in 1460. When his son, Edward, ascended the throne as Edward IV, the manor was once again Crown land.

If you wish to know more about the de Warenne Earls of Surrey I recommend Sharon’s blog History – the interesting bits – they are and it is! Her new book is just out as well – Princesses of the Early Middle Ages: Royal Daughters of the Conquest.

Turner, Joseph Horsfall, The History of Brighouse, Rastrick, and Hpperholm: With Manorial Notes on Coley, Lightcliffe, Northowram, Shelf, Fixby, Clifton and Kirklees. (1893) – which is freely available via Google books.

Medieval Gascony – a quick Look at 12th and 13th century geopolitics.

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map showing Angevin Empire

As many of you are aware I prefer to keep my feet firmly on this side of the Channel when it comes to writing about history. However, I do, on occasion, talk about the Angevin empire and King John’s loss of most of his father’s territories in 1204. So it’s probably more than time to take a closer look at Gascony.

Aquitaine and Gascony passed into the hands of Henry, Duke of Normandy when he married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. Gascony had been controlled by the dukes of Aquitaine since the eleventh century. It meant that Eleanor’s new husband became the most powerful vassal of her first husband – Louis VII of France. Two years later Henry ascended England’s throne by right of his mother, Empress Matilda, as King Henry II.

Henry and Eleanor’s youngest son, John, managed to lose most of his father’s empire while his mother, who was Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, continued to rule there and in Gascony – owing her feudal allegiance to the French rather than her son. When she died in 1204 most of Aquitaine fell into French hands because the region’s nobility preferred to offer their allegiance to Philip II of France rather than John.

Gascony – which was ruled by the dukes of Aquitaine and effectively the southern part of the duchy by that time- held out for the English under the command of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Elias de Malemort or Elie de Malmort depending on the source. All that remained of northern Aquitaine were parts of the Poitou region – including La Rochelle but the whole Poitou region was contested and by 1224 had fallen into French hands.

Territory that remained under English control, and which was managed from Bordeaux, became known as the Duchy of Guyenne – and by 1300 Gascony, south of the River Garonne, was all that remained of the formerly extensive territory.

The person appointed by the duke/king to govern Gascony had extensive powers as the ruling representative but becoming Seneshal was no sinecure. There was the difficulty of owing fealty to the Plantagenets who in turn were vassals of the French Crown. It meant that the inhabitants of Gascony often appealed to Paris if they disagreed with English policy or any of the seneschal’s decisions with regard to the administration and taxes levied in the region. There was also the fact that any British garrison was going to feel somewhat isolated – the territory was effectively surrounded by the French. In addition to invasion there was also the potential to cut off supply lines.

Gascony. Map by Goran tek-en / Wikimedia Commons

It should be added that the Gascons do appear to have liked a brawl with one another, the English and anyone else they encountered. At the time, kings of England were troubled by relations with their own barons – think First Barons’ War and Second Barons’ War. The best known of the seneschals, Simon de Montfort (who was Henry III’s brother-in-law and leader of the Second Barons War), was sent by King Henry III to sort out a local rebellion but found himself short of cash and supplies and beset by local politics – his response to the situation led to accusations of brutality, open rebellion against his rule and a threatened trial at Westminster in 1252. None of which helped his relationship with Henry III and did much to contribute to his own rebellion against the Crown.

It would have to be said that Simon de Montfort appears to have made a better fist of the task than one of his successors, John de Ferrers, who was seneschal in 1312. He died in office – either due to an accident while crossing a river or from being murdered!

For the Crown the region remained incredibly important not simply because of it was a territory in main land Europe but because its wine trade provided a massive amount of royal income.

Who was Eleanor of Castile related to?

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The idea of consanguinity or shared blood was important in medieval marriage. During the Eleventh century you weren’t supposed to marry anyone within seven degrees of blood relationship but the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 changed it to four degrees – which must have been something of a blessing to assorted royal houses who were all kin to some degree or other. Essentially the method of working out prohibited degrees of consanguinity was to count four generations back up the family tree and if the proposed spouses shared any direct ancestors a papal dispensation was required if the marriage was to go ahead. Obviously the papacy did not hand dispensations out without payment – it was a fairly lucrative pastime. Just look at Eleanor of Castile’s immediate family.

Eleanor of Castile and Edward I are related – by counting straight back up their family trees, within the prohibited degrees of affinity to Eleanor of Aquitaine who was Edward’s great grandmother and Eleanor’s great great granny (think I’ve got that right).

Eleanor’s father was Ferdinand III of Castile but her mother was Jeanne de Dammartin, Countess of Ponthieu. Jeanne’s parents, Eleanor’s maternal grandparents, were Simon de Dammartin and Marie, Countess of Ponthieu (whose mother was Alys of France). Simon’s mother was Marie of France, the daughter of King Louis VII of France and his first wife Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Marie of France was something of a miracle as the saintly French king wasn’t much interested in fulfilling his marital duties. Born in 1145, Marie was only seven years old when her parents’ marriage broke down completely in the aftermath of the Second Crusade. She and her two year old sister, Alice, were declared legitimate but were separated from their mother who returned in the general direction of Aquitaine avoiding fortune hunters en route. She had plans of her own and stopped to marry Henry FitzEmpress at Poitiers. Eleanor and Louis’s divorce had been easy enough to obtain because they were kin within the prohibited degrees. Nor was Eleanor’s case in France helped by the fact that she had only given birth to two daughters and it was unlikely she would provide Louis with an heir – however the French king was not happy that his former wife had married Henry who was Duke of Normandy as well as count of Anjou, Maine and Touraine. Louis didn’t want the young upstart getting his hands on Aquitaine – technically Henry was his vassal but the duke was acquiring an empire of his own.

Marie of France’s son, Simon de Dammartin (Eleanor of Aquitaine’s grandson), married Marie Countess of Ponthieu. Another dispensation was required. The bride and groom were first cousins. Both of them shared a grandparent in the form of King Louis, who married Constance of Castile almost immediately after his marriage to Eleanor was annulled. It should be added that Constance also failed to provide Louis with a male heir. She gave him two more daughters — Alys and Margaret. Alys was Marie’s of Ponthieu’s mother. You might also want to pause to consider that Louis VII named both his younger daughters Alys (although I’ve used the English spelling for the first one in a vain attempt to avoid confusion).

Margaret of France was married off to Eleanor of Aquitaine’s oldest son with Henry Fitzempress who was by then Henry II of England. Now while Margaret and Henry, the Young King, weren’t related by blood there was a degree of affinity. Margaret’s father (Louis) and Henry’s mother (Eleanor) had once been married – affinity did, on occasion, come to an end with the death or other of the people who shared a close relationship but when in doubt a papal dispensation was an essential.

I start the Eleanor of Castile Zoom class on Monday 13th April.

Shire reeves and sheriffs

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Buchel, Charles A.; Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917), as King John in ‘King John’ by William Shakespeare; Theatre Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/herbert-beerbohm-tree-18521917-as-king-john-in-king-john-by-william-shakespeare-30514

By the time of Edward the Confessor the shire reeve was responsible for collecting royal taxes and collecting rents from royal lands across a hundred hides of land. With the passage of time, the reeve, a royal official, found himself taking pledges, or oaths, and keeping the peace for the hundred, or wapentake. They were also responsible, at least since the days of Cnut, for apprehending criminals and trying them in some locations. And just to confuse matters the term sheriff was also used from Cnut. Not all sheriffs, prior to the Conquest, possessed the same powers. It depended upon the aldermen and the earls of a region from whom the shire reeve, or sheriff, derived some of his power, not to mention the relationship that existed between the king, his earl and the shire reeve or sheriff. The latter might find himself working for both the king and the earl and their wishes were not always aligned. If a monarch was weak, then it was the local lord who wielded the power and to whom the sheriff/reeve would defer. Of more interest is that the post of sheriff is the oldest secular office in Crown employment.

And just as an aside, In 1066 it was Godric, Sheriff of Berkshire who led the shire levies for the county and who was killed at Hastings and it was Ansgar, Sheriff of London and Middlesex, who negotiated with Duke William (Morris, p27). Ansgar’s father had been London’s Port Reeve – essentially meaning sheriff of the town.

After the conquest the role of sheriff became much more clear cut. Roughly equating to Norman viscount (Morris, pp 41-42) the office evolved from the necessity of the Conqueor to continue the smooth administration of his new realm. William retained the services of the sheriffs and shire reeves who served Edward and Harold unless they had fought against him during the conquest. Ansgar, once one of the most powerful men in England, was dismissed from his post and imprisoned. His ancestry was Danish which made him dangerous and he appears to have spent the rest of his life in custody while his lands were given by William the Conqueror to his own men. Geoffrey de Mandeville became sheriff in his place.

Most sheriffs at the start of their documented existence in Anglo-Saxon England were men of moderate means but now they were often the most important man in the region they administrated. The only matters that they had no say on within their area of office was in Church law. Church land lay outside the jurisdiction of common law. The sheriff became the head of the judicial authority within a shire as well taking oaths such as the giving of the frank pledge, collecting royal taxes and enforcing the king’s will. By the time that Philip Marc became the hated High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire during the reign of King John, shrievalties were much sought after, often semi-inherited positions even though the post came with no pay. Their power, which came from farming taxes, meant that they were able to keep a hefty portion for themselves.

And why you might wonder have I deviated to sheriffs? Well, mainly because several members of the Fairfax family were sheriffs of York during the latter Middle Ages and the Tudor period. By the end of the Tudor period, sheriffs retained their role ensuring law and order but it was the newly appointed Lords Lieutenants who dealt with military matters from 1547 onwards. Even then it was only in 1908 that the latter became more important, administratively, than sheriffs. Sheriffs, who also had the responsibility of returning a county’s two members of Parliament, often served in that office as well as being sheriff.

Morris, William A. The Medieval Sheriff to 1300. (1968)

Sir John Hardyng – soldier, diplomat, map maker, spy

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File:Bodleian Libraries, Central Scotland.jpg
Bodleian Library MS. Arch. Send. B. 10, for. 184r Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hardyng was born in Northumberland and, at the age of 12, was at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 in service to Hotspur. Having survived the battle, he entered service to Sir Robert Umfraville who was closely associated with the Percy family. Hardyng found himself taking part in Anglo-Scottish hostilities as well as the Hundred Years War under the command of Henry V. In between making war on the Scots, Umfraville was also sent north of the border on diplomatic missions. Later, when he wrote his chronicles, Hardny would describe Umfraville as the perfect knight.

In 1418, Henry V sent Hardyng to Scotland to complete a topological survey and to find evidence of English overlordship of Scotland. Hardyng remained there for three and a half years making his map – designed to assist with an English invasion as well as unearthing (writing them himself) documents evidencing English claims to political overlordship of the Scots. Unfortunately he had to wait until the 1440s for his reward due to Henry V’s death. Little wonder that his chronicle makes much of the fact that he personally retrieved, at great personal risk, the all important documents from Scotland. He even claimed that James I of Scotland would have given 1000 marks of gold for the documents. Among the documents to survive is a forged letter granting him safe conduct to enter James I’s presence whenever he was in Scotland and to stay in the country for 40 days with six servants and horses – so no imagining a solitary spy surveying the landscape.

Having been granted the manor of Geddington in Northamptonshire and a pension of £10, Hardyng retired to the Augustinian priory at Kyme in Liincolnshire where he began to write his history of England. This was presented to Henry VI on 1457 together with his map of Scotland and those largely forged documents pertaining to overlordship. Hardying sought to promote political unity within his own country by allying English political factions against the Scots – working on the premise that war across the border would bring about peace at home. His forged documents provided a watertight rationale and he handily provided a map that detailed distances between military objectives, castles and rivers. While not to scale, and the drawings of the fortifications more akin to fantasy than reality, the map was both an itinerary for invasion and a visual encouragement for the English. On this occasion he received an additional annual pension from the Crown of £20.

Undeterred by the decade’s hostilities, not to mention the change from the House of Lancaster to the House of York on the throne in 1461, Hardying continued to polish his histories, happily explaining Edward IV’s pedigree as a way of winning the new monarch’s approval. The end result was two historical chronicles in rhyming couplets – I am truly thankful I don’t have to blog in rhyme- and a colourful history of a man who as well as being all the things in the title was also something of an antiquarian he was also the first chronicler to detail a quest for the Holy Grail and would provide Sir Thomas Malory with a source for his story about King Arthur.

Armstrong, Jackson, W. England’s Northern Frontier: Conflict and Society in the Fifteenth Century Scottish Marches. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Palgrave, Francis, Sir. Documents and Records illustrating the History of Scotland and the Transactions Between the Crowns of Scotland and England. Volume I (Great Britain Record Commission: London, 1837)

Romsey Abbey

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In 907 Edward the Elder founded a nunnery at Romsey. His daughter, Elfleda, became its first abbess. The nunnery was rebounded some sixty years later after a period of decline by King Edgar who established a group of Benedictine nuns there. Not that it was all plain sailing- the Danes attacked it once in 993 forcing the nuns to seek sanctuary in Winchester. When they returned, the nunnery was rebuilt from stone and the nuns continued to welcome the daughters of kings and nobles so that they might be educated.

By 1086, another Saxon princess was abbess at Romsey. Edward the Exile’s daughter, Christina, who originally went into exile with her sister Margaret to Scotland was at Romsey. Also in residence, receiving a royal education, were her nieces Edith and Mary. Edith would eventually become Henry I’s wife and take the name Matilda. The nuns continued to thrive during the Norman period. Between 1120 and 1140 work began on the current building including the choir, transepts and a Lady Chapel. The nave which was created at this time was extended between 1150 and 1180.

The nunnery was not without its scandals. In 1160, the abbess, Mary (a daughter of King Stephen) left her post to marry a son of the Earl of Flanders by whom she had two daughters before, according to Matthew Paris, returning to the abbey.

In 1349 the Black Death wrought havoc. At the end, only nineteen of the nuns remained. But the end came in the sixteenth century with the dissolution of the monasteries. The abbey church was saved because it became Romsey’s parish church when the town paid Henry VIII’s commissioners £100.

It means that today, despite damage done during the English Civil War, that the church is a beautiful example of Norman architecture with some wonderful Saxon features remaining, including a Saxon rood (cross) inside the church and an even older eleventh century one outside the building. There is also a capital depicting King Alfred’s victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Edington. The sixteenth century reredos screen, that was once on display behind the altar, was removed after 1539 and repurposed, surviving the destruction that occurred in many other churches at the time. Also among the survivals is a fifteenth century cope that was later turned into an altar cloth. It is made from Italian green velvet with hand embroidered stars of silver thread.

A more recent and no less beautiful addition is the Florence Nightingale window which was installed in 2020.

Cartularies – medieval maps and legal documents

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Boarstall Cartulary map – held by the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies.

It’s probably not a surprise that while I’m sorting out my thoughts for the forthcoming block of map Zoom classes that my mind should turn to monastic chartularies. These were portfolios recording monastic landownership. Essentially it was a collection of legal documents which did not always include maps but certainly included charters, deeds, land records and evidence of land transfer, privileges etc. They were usually bound in book form but on occasion the documents were attached together to make a roll. A fifteenth century map belonging to the London Charterhouse, the home of the Carthusians, depicts the monks’ water supply. The pipes crossed fields from springs to the monastery. One of the maps is a convenient 3 metres long. However, thus far it is the only map I can think of.

More famous as a map depicting a village is the chartulary map of Boarstall in Buckinghamshire. The chartulary was produced in 1444 for Edmund Rede of Boarstall but the map is older. In fact the map is the oldest surviving map of an English village and it tells the story of Nigel the Forester of Bernewood, one of Edmund Rede of Boarstall’s ancestors. Apparently a boar was terrorising the vicinity. Nigel killed the boar and presented its head to Edward the Confessor, who hunted in the forest where the boar lived. The map tells part of the story as well as depicting Nigel giving the head to the king and being rewarded and granted the charter of office of the forest of Bernewode.