Wooden vessels were in widespread use in British households after the tenth century. Most were turned, both inside and out, and bear witness to highly developed lathe techniques. This paper considers the preceding period with a view to finding links with woodworking techniques developed either in antiquity or in the early medieval period. The quest is hampered by the limited quantity of material, as wood does not normally survive in the archaeological record. On the other hand, by taking the largest possible sample (in this case from the whole of western Europe), a scenario for the origin of medieval vessel turning can be proposed.

This paper demonstrates that the five Irish early medieval church types have markedly differential distributions. In particular, most of those with antae are in the east, while most of those without antae are in the west. It is shown that this regionalism cannot be interpreted as a deliberate strategy of material differentiation on the part of particular politico-cultural groups. A reconsideration of the chronology suggests that many of the antae-less churches are relatively late, and so the division is primarily indicative of differences in the period and rate of mortared church construction, something that is influenced by both environmental and cultural factors. It is suggested that differences in church dimensions between east and west are indicative of subtle economic differences; and a range of archaeological evidence is used to sketch other economic and cultural variations. These patterns highlight the importance of exploring regionality, even when studying relatively cohesive entities such as early medieval Ireland.

This paper provides a new interpretation of the date, form, meanings and theological sources of the former painted cycle on the vaults of Salisbury Cathedral. As the cycle is now known predominantly from antiquarian evidence, we begin with a discussion of the nature and significance of that evidence, namely the series of sketches, drawings and notes produced by Jacob Schnebbelie in the late eighteenth century before the whitewashing of the medieval paintings. Through consideration of the archaeological and stylistic evidence, we propose a date for the cycle between c 1235 and 1245, thus contemporary with the new building campaign begun in 1220. Two connected interpretations of the cycle are offered: first, we argue that the painted cycle was designed to function as a map of the major liturgical sites of the eastern arm; second, we suggest that the imagery was designed to structure an allegory of religious experience and personal salvation in accord with reform-minded thinking in the post-Lateran period.

The Jesus Chapel was located beneath the New Work at the east end of St Paul's Cathedral, and was remembered by that name long after the parish of St Faith had taken control of the space following the dissolution of the Fraternity of the Holy Name, the previous occupants of the Jesus Chapel. Although the chapel disappeared along with the rest of the medieval building following the cataclysm of 1666, archaeological investigations, pre-Fire illustrations and, most importantly, documentary evidence from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provide invaluable evidence for the appearance of the chapel. This paper utilizes a range of evidence to suggest how the Jesus Chapel may have appeared on the eve of the Reformation; particular attention will be paid to the furnishings and fittings of the building, and to the use (and occasional abuse) of this remarkable place of worship.

The exchange of gifts at the New Year was a very significant social, political and financial event at the court of Henry VIII, just as it would have been at the courts of his English predecessors and European contemporaries. The process of gift exchange, including who made, received and gave gifts, was recorded each year in the gift roll. This article presents a detailed analysis of the 1539 gift roll, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, in the context of the other extant rolls for 1528, 1532 and 1534. Areas for discussion include a consideration of the range and significance of the gifts given and received by Henry and the role of the goldsmiths who made the king's gifts, including the weight, style and shape of the pieces commissioned. The article is supported by a full transcript of the 1539 gift roll, which is accompanied by extensive references comparing this gift roll to the other surviving gift rolls.

The palace at Mirepoix (Ariege), erected by Bishop Philippe de Lévis in the 1520s, still stands today at the west end of the cathedral, its two-storey chapel and offices intact. With its original room layout still easily discernible, it is a unique survivor for its period, offering more information about the domestic arrangements of a bishop than can be deduced from the palaces at either Rouen or AIM. This paper proposes that a set of carved panelling, which for the past 150 years has found shelter in a Scottish baronial mansion, was almost certainly made for the gallery of the Mirepoix palace. A closely reasoned physical argument for this claim is adduced. The work is analysed and discussed in terms of its subject matter, function and style. An attempt is made to put it into the context of early Renaissance art in south-west France, the Loire valley and northern Italy. Its unique significance for the study of the early French Renaissance will become apparent. Finally, the monument's intriguing post-Revolutionary afterlife contributes important new information about the mechanisms of European and British nineteenth-century antiquarianism.

During the seventeenth century East India Company merchants settled in several cities of western India under the control of the Mughal Empire. The most important of these was Surat in Gujarat, where an English cemetery of impressive brick and stucco tombs was established. The style and nature of these monuments provide an insight into the cultural interactions that took place between the English merchants and the local population, as well as indicating the political aspirations of the East India Company officials. A description of these tombs, the earliest dating to 1649, is followed by a discussion of the origins of the cemetery, the chronology of the tombs and the identity and status of the dead. It is shown how the adoption of Indo-Islamic architectural styles for the earliest tombs was modified during the eighteenth century by the increasing use of Western architectural features, in line with growing British political power in India during this period. Changing architectural styles are paralleled by the changing attitudes of British visitors to the tombs from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries.

William Bell Scott (1811-90) was active as painter, poet, designer, teacher and pundit. His littleknown Antiquarian Gleanings (1851), a wide-ranging anthology of Northern antiquities, with thirty-eight colour plates, is here re-published in its entirety, with a new index, as an appendix to a paper which explores its design and content, and the networks of collectors, many of them associated with the Antiquarian Society of Newcastle, whose treasures Scott illustrated. Scott is presented neither as a great scholar, nor as a pioneering archaeologist, but his book is a distinguished artefact in its own right and his choice of subjects has stood the test of time, as well as presenting a vivid reflection of the interests and activities of provincial antiquaries in the period after the coming of the railways and immediately before the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The purpose of this article is to address a philological point which is of greater complexity than has been assumed by previous writers on the topic, namely the possible emendation of a restored Romano-Celtic name in a famous inscription from Chichester, Sussex (TUB I.91J. This also requires the weighing-up of alternatives for its interpretation and for the emendation and interpretation of apparently related names in other sources. I conclude guardedly, on the balance of probabilities, that the emendation can be shown to be justified, but only if we accept that the name involved is probably not British. Instead, it may be Continental Celtic.

With the exception of papal bullae and royal golden seals, metal seals were very rare in northern Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern period. This paper explores a rare example of the use of lead as a medium into which to impress a seal, something that is not only of considerable interest in the context of medieval sigillography, but which provides an insight into the concerns and motives of an individual who in other circumstances would have remained an anonymous member of the Elizabethan gentry and county bureaucracy.

Three recent finds of keyless letter-combination locks reflect the growth in the need for personal security during the early modern period. Although geographically distant from each other, the fact that the three padlocks in question share many of the same distinguishing characteristics is indicative of their manufacture by a single specialist producer. Alternatively, one manufacturer may have sold blanks to traders who personalized the lock once they found a buyer, in which case the locks are the work of two manufacturers — a maker and a finisher — which implies a widespread network of professional and casual makers within the locksmithing trade.

During recent years a new consensus of opinion seems to have grown up concerning the career of the eighteenth-century antiquary William Stukeley: that his ideas underwent no significant alteration in the course of his adult life, and that Stuart Piggott's famous characterization of Stukeley — that he changed from an objective field archaeologist into a religious crank — was completely wrong. While there is much to commend this revisionist approach, it also presents certain difficulties. It fails to account for the apparent speed and drama of Stukeley's decision to seek ordination as an Anglican minister, or for pronounced differences in emphasis and tone between his earlier and later writings, and it fails to address some important textual difficulties in the dating and interpretation of his manuscript works. This paper is intended to address those problems. It examines the changes in his religious attitudes, and their implications for his scholarship, over the six decades in which he carried out antiquarian researches. In the process, it is intended to make a contribution to the cultural history of the eighteenth century, and also to the early story of the discipline of archaeology.

This short paper is offered as a postscript to ‘Victorian excavation methodology: the Society of Antiquaries at Silchester in 1893’ which reported on the discovery of material discarded by the excavators in 1893. During 2004 further material was found in the form of the remains of a stove, possibly dating from the winter excavations of the mid-1860s.