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Salon: Issue 336
16 February 2015
Next issue: 2 March 2015
The Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter (Salon) is a fortnightly digest of news from the heritage sector. It focuses on the activities of the Society and the contribution that the Society's Fellows make to public life. Like the intellectual salons of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it aims to amuse and to stimulate debate as well as to inform. A copy of Salon’s editorial policy can be found on the Society’s website. News and feedback for publication in Salon should be addressed to the Editor, Christopher Catling.
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Inside this issue
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Forthcoming ordinary meetings
Unless stated otherwise, tea is served from 4.15pm and meetings start at 5pm. Guests are welcome if accompanied by a Fellow. Details of all forthcoming meetings up to June 2015 can be seen on the 'Events' page of the Society's website.
19 February 2015: ‘Archaeology, community and university: the East Oxford Project’, by David Griffiths, FSA
This lecture will focus on the ‘Archeox: Archaeology of East Oxford’ project, which Dr Griffiths has been directing since 2010 and that engages the community of East Oxford in researching their own history and archaeology, in combination with Oxford University departments and museums. A leper hospital and a nunnery have been excavated, along with a cluster of prehistoric pits. The project, which was Highly Commended at the 2012 British Archaeological Awards in the ‘Best Community Engagement Project’ category, has contributed to methodologies for researching built-up residential areas, engaged a range of communities and groups in archaeology and furthered the university’s outreach mission in less-advantaged areas of its own city.
26 February 2015: ‘The Syon Abbey Herbal: the last monastic herbal in England’, by John Adams, FSA, and Stuart Forbes
In the 124 years between its founding and its dissolution, Syon Abbey gained a reputation for preaching, teaching and publishing in English. Thomas Betson, Abbey Librarian from 1481 until his death in 1516, was a major figure in that process, best known as the author–compiler of A Ryght Profytable Treatyse ... to Dyspose Men to be Vertuously Occupyed in Theys Myndes and Prayers, a devotional miscellany printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1500. Betson was also the author of the last monastic herbal to be compiled in England, with entries for some 700 plant and 425 remedies, many for female ailments. Fellow John Adams and palaeographer Stuart Forbes will describe the herbal (Cambridge, St John’s College, MS 109) and explain what was involved in transcribing and editing it for publication.
 5 March 2015: ‘The Splendid Maya Murals of Bonampak, Mexico’, by Mary Miller
Painted in the last decade of the eighth century in the tropical rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico, and brought to modern attention in 1946, the wall paintings of Bonampak reveal the ancient Maya at the end of their splendour. Using the most complex and luxurious palette of pigments known from pre-Hispanic Mexico, a small group of trained artists rendered the rituals of court, from the receipt of foreign dignitaries to human sacrifice. Who saw these remarkable paintings? Who sat in the architectural spaces the paintings adorned? With both newly commissioned and newly rediscovered photographs as well as recently completed reconstructions, this talk will bring these ancient works to life, with particular attention being paid to the performance and pageantry of the murals.
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Forthcoming public meetings
Public meetings are from 1pm to 2pm on Tuesdays. These meetings are very popular, so advance booking is advised to be sure of a place. Details of all forthcoming meetings up to June 2015 can be seen on the 'Events' page of the Society's website.
10 March 2015: ‘“Stitches in Timeâ€: recreating Captain Cook’s waistcoat’, by Alison Liz Larkin
With the help of the Society’s Janet Arnold Award, Alison has travelled to Australia to examine a waistcoat and other objects belonging to Captain Cook at the Australian National Maritime Museum. Based on her research there, Alison has been able to create a facsimile, to be displayed by the Captain Cook Memorial Museum Whitby in 2015. Alison will talk about her research project and its significance.
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Ballot results: 5 February 2015
The Society welcomes the following new Fellows, who were elected at the ballot held on 5 February 2015:
- Amanda Feather, Head of Capacity Building, English Heritage
- Rachel Eleanor Edwards, archaeological and heritage management consultant
- Michael Charles Bishop, archaeological consultant, publisher and international authority on the Roman army and especially Roman military equipment
- Alexander Kader, Head of European Sculpture and Works of Art, Sotheby’s, London
- Spike Bucklow, Senior Research Scientist, Hamilton Kerr Institute, Cambridge, author of The Riddle of the Image: the secret science of medieval art (2014)
- Philippe Malgouyres, Senior Curator, Musée du Louvre, world authority on sculpture and decorative arts in the European Renaissance and the baroque
- Philip Kiernan, Lecturer, Dept of Classics, University of Buffalo, NY, specialist in numismatics and Roman miniature artefacts
- Andrew James Hopkins, Associate Professor, University of L’Aquila, architectural historian and expert on early modern Italian architecture
- Gail Boyle, museum curator, archaeology specialist for Bristol Museums, Chair of the Society for Museum Archaeology
- Charles Withers, Ogilvie Professor of Geography, University of Edinburgh, specialising in the historical geography of language and identity and the history of geographical knowledge.
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Ballot results: 12 February 2015
The Society welcomes the following new Fellows, who were elected at the ballot held on 12 February 2015:
- Mark Lake, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, University College London, specialising in quantitative and computational methods for studying the past
- Kristian Kaminski, Deputy Manager, Design and Conservation, London Borough of Islington, with 4,500 listed buildings and numerous conservation areas in his care
- Valerie Johnson, Head of Research, National Archives, Kew, responsible for research strategy, policy and co-ordination
- Diana Dethloff, Academic Administrator, Dept of History of Art, University College London, an expert on the paintings and drawings of Peter Lely
- Susan Sloman, art historian, curator and writer, an expert on eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British art, especially that of Gainsborough
- Ian Mortimer, independent scholar, author of the Time Traveller’s Guides to Medieval and Elizabethan England; member of Lord Chancellor’s Forum on Historical Manuscripts
- D’Maris Coffman, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University College London, and Director, Centre for Financial History, Newnham College, Cambridge
- Alison Bonner, postdoctoral Fellow, Dept of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford, specialising in the theologian Pelagius
- John Considine, Dept of English, University of Alberta, author of major works on lexicography and the historian of learned texts
- Louise Jane Rayner, Assistant Director, Archaeology South-East, specialising in the prehistoric and Roman pottery of London and the south east.
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Our Fellow Duncan Wilson is appointed Chief Executive of Historic England
 Fellow Duncan Wilson OBE is to be the first Chief Executive of Historic England, the new government service championing England’s heritage that will come into being on 1 April 2015.
Duncan has led a series of significant heritage projects in London. In 1997, he became the first Director of the Somerset House Trust, now transformed from government offices and a bleak car park to an attractive heritage destination. Later Duncan joined the Greenwich Foundation and managed the transformation of the Old Royal Naval College from an ex-MoD establishment to a successful visitor attraction. Four years ago, he moved to Alexandra Palace where he has led the development of a plan to realise the potential of the historic Victorian theatre and television studios. Earlier in his career Duncan worked in senior positions at DCMS and at English Heritage.
Sir Laurie Magnus, Chairman of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, said: ‘As English Heritage divides into two distinct organisations, it is vital that we have someone who has wide and practical experience of heritage to lead Historic England forward. Duncan has a tremendous blend of skills which will command the respect of staff and of our partners and stakeholders. He will inherit a body in fine heart, but facing some significant challenges. The Commission looks forward to working with him to meet these challenges over the next few years.’
Duncan Wilson said: ‘I am delighted to be given the extraordinary opportunity of leading Historic England at such a critical time for our national heritage. England’s heritage is one of our greatest national assets and as its guardian Historic England must make sure that it is not only passed on to future generations in the best possible state, but also that we make best use of it, and that more and more people share our passion for it.’
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Anglo-Saxon coin hoard on show at launch of the 2012 Treasure Annual Report
In launching the 2012 Treasure Annual Report on 10 February 2015, the British Museum said that the discovery of a hoard of 5,200 coins in the village of Lenborough, Buckinghamshire, ‘highlights the ongoing importance of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and Treasure Act in ensuring that the most important finds are secured for the nation’. The hoard, the largest Anglo-Saxon coin hoard to be found in recent years, was wrapped in a lead sheet before burial, with the result that the coins are very well preserved. The hoard contains the coins of Æthelred II (r. 978—1016) and Cnut (r. 1016—35), from more than forty different mints around England, and provides a rare source of information on the circulation of coinage at the time the hoard was buried — towards the end of Cnut’s reign.
 The Anglo-Saxon Coin hoard from Lenborough, Buckinghamshire (2014 T973; BUC-7FE6F2), consists of around 5,200 Anglo-Saxon silver pennies, and two cut half pennies, of kings Æthelred II (r. 978—1016) and Cnut (r. 1016—35). It was discovered during a metal-detecting rally, and recovered under the guidance of the local Finds Liaison Officer. One of the silver Cnut pennies from the hoard is shown above.
Of the 990 finds reported as Treasure in 2012, 368 were acquired by a hundred local museums for display close to where the items were discovered. These include the Bedale, North Yorkshire Hoard of Viking jewellery, weaponry and ingots (2012 T373; YORYM-CEE620), acquired by York Museums Trust, and a Roman silver bracelet from the Dalton area, Cumbria (2012 T627; PAS-A7DC11), acquired by the Dock Museum. Increasingly, said the British Museum, finders and landowners have waived their right to a reward, enabling museums to acquire Treasure at reduced or no cost. In 2012, 137 parties waived their right to a reward in ninety-three cases; more than double the number of cases five years ago.
Ed Vaizey, Minister of State for Culture and the Digital Economy, said at the launch: ‘I’d especially like to thank the finders and landowners who have graciously waived their right to a reward so that local museums can acquire Treasure. It is an initiative that the Government has been keen to support, and it demonstrates that metal-detectorists have a genuine interest in the past, and are not just interested in archaeology for personal gain.’
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Campaign news
Fellow Janet Owen, supported by Fellows Clive Gamble, Tim Murray and several other Fellows, has written recently to councillors at the London Borough of Bromley expressing her concern at the proposal to close Bromley Museum at Orpington Priory and to make the professional museum staff redundant, rather than go ahead with an HLF bid for the museum’s redevelopment.
Bromley Museum is home to the nationally significant Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) collection, containing archaeological and ethnographic objects from across the world. Also of great significance is the series of nineteen watercolours reconstructing prehistoric life that Lubbock commissioned from Victorian artist Ernest Griset and that were such a talking point at last year’s English Heritage exhibition at Wellington Arch in London on the origins of monument protection.
Janet argues that the collection is of international importance because of Lubbock’s central role in the development of prehistoric archaeology as a scientific discipline, and his close association with Charles Darwin and the theory of natural selection. ‘It has attracted the attention of academic researchers from across the globe, and has the potential to promote Bromley as the cradle of discovery for a world-famous idea that led to a seismic shift in scientific thinking’, she says. Janet recognises that Bromley’s councillors are faced with tough decisions, but she asks them to give consideration to retaining ‘at the very least a professionally qualified museum curator and an advisory group set up with local community engagement and international researcher input to look at innovative long-term solutions for the Avebury Collection in Bromley’.
Meanwhile in Shropshire, thousands of people tuned out on St Valentine’s Day to show their love of heritage by joining in a ‘Hillfort Hug’ at Old Oswestry. The aim was to highlight the plight of heritage threatened by misplaced development. Archaeological illustrator and cartoonist, John Swogger, based near Oswestry, created a poster capturing the community’s protective instincts for the 3,000-year-old Iron Age site and to help the campaign group HOOOH (Hands Off Old Oswestry Hillfort) raise awareness of the housing threat to the ancient landscape. In support of the campaign, the Council for British Archaeology is encouraging people to tweet selfies showing their favourite heritage to #hugyourheritage.
Fellow Mike Heyworth, Director of the CBA, said: ‘Oswestry hillfort is of national archaeological importance and much loved by its local community. Any development which impacts on the setting of the monument would be totally inappropriate and goes against national planning policy. The CBA fully supports the strong local campaign and calls on the County Council to seek alternative sites for their housing proposals.’
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LIBOR fines to benefit the heritage
Some of the money paid in fines by banks involved in the manipulation of LIBOR (inter-bank lending) interest rates is being used to benefit heritage causes. The Chancellor announced at the end of January 2015 that at least £500,000 will be allocated to the National Museum of the Royal Navy to help restore a Second World War tank-landing craft, known as LCT 7074. The 60-m long vessel, designed to carry ten tanks, took part in Operation Neptune and is the last survivor of more than 800 such craft.
Our Fellow Dominic Tweddle, the museum’s director, said: ‘as far as we can tell, LCT 7074 is the last of these vital workhorses known to have participated in D-Day, ferrying tanks, equipment and personnel across to France. Operation Neptune was the naval dimension of Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious operation in history, in which more than 7,000 ships and craft of all sizes landed more than 160,000 soldiers on the beaches of Normandy.’
Another sum has been allocated to a website described by the Department of Culture as a ‘one-stop shop detailing the history of all UK war memorials with advice on where to go for funding’. The website is being developed in partnership between English Heritage, Civic Voice, Imperial War Museums and War Memorials Trust. The aim is to deliver some £4.5m in funding to help local communities repair and conserve their war memorials, to provide practical conservation training, and to encourage people to research the people whose names are recorded on the monuments. The website is focused on First World War memorials but will eventually cover memorials commemorating all modern conflicts up to and including Afghanistan.
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Warburg Institute announces ‘binding agreement on the future management’
Without going into detail at this stage, the Warburg Institute has announced a satisfactory resolution to long-running concerns about its future. The Institute made the following announcement on 6 February 2015: ‘following the court’s ruling on the interpretation of the 1944 Trust Deed, the University of London and the Advisory Council of the Warburg Institute are pleased to announce that they have, through mediation, reached a binding agreement on the future management of the Warburg Institute. We are very pleased that this outcome means that we can now draw a line under past disagreement and look to the future.’
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The mystery bookplate
The challenge that Ortrun Peyn, the Society’s Head of Library Cataloguing, set Fellows in the last issue of Salon of identifying a bookplate pasted in to an early sixteenth-century book on Magna Carta, resulted in a large number of responses, all agreeing that the arms on the eared-shield armorial bookplate are those of a Bruce.
Fellow Alastair Maxwell-Irving says: ‘these are the undifferenced arms of the chief of the Bruce family, the Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, and have been for some 800 years. The motto “Fuimus†is also his motto, though it is commonly used by other members of the Bruce and Bruce-Brudenell families. However, the crest is not that of the Earl, and the only members of the Bruce family I can find who used a “spiked clubâ€, or similar implement, are one or two Bruce-Brudenells. The plain saltire and chief have also been widely used by other families who, in the early Middle Ages, were vassals of the Bruces in Annandale, such as the Johnstons, Jardines and Kirkpatricks, but always with a change of colour and/or added “devicesâ€.’
Alastair goes on to point out that, under Scots law, nobody may lawfully use the arms of another man, except with ‘suitable differencing’ approved by the Lord Lyon. Hence it is not possible in Scotland for any two people lawfully to have the same arms (shield) at the same time. ‘This means that the arms on the bookplate, as on many tombstones in Scotland, must be illegal, a DIY effort. That would make it almost impossible to trace the owner, unless one can find the same bookplate in another book together with the owner’s name.
Fellow Christopher Whittick agrees that identifying an individual is difficult because this is a very simple version of this particular ordinary, lacking extra elements for difference. Fellow Paul Latcham estimates the date of the plate to be around 1780 to 1810 and he suggests that the British Museum Franks collection or indeed the Society’s own Hall Crouch collection might have a version of the plate with the owner’s name. He says: ‘the plate is not in the Henderson Smith Collection at Edinburgh, which is very strong in Scottish plates. Enquiries in London have not been positive either. In truth is it is a pretty ordinary eared-shield plate and I wonder if it could have been cut from an armorial and used as a bookplate?’
Fellow Duncan Harrington says that ‘Fuimus’ has been used by various branches of the Bruce family. Referring to a Dictionary of Mottoes in England and Wales, by our Fellow Michael Siddons (Harl Soc, new ser, 20, 2014, p 90), he suggests Robert Bruce, cr. Earl of Ailesbury 1664, d. 1685. He adds that there is also a possible solution in Fairbairn’s Book of Crests, which gives Lewis Knight Bruce, JP BA (Oxon), of Roehampton Priory (1820—1906), a cubit arm in armour in bend grasping a sceptre all proper; though — also citing Fairbairn’s Crests — Fellow Jon Bayliss suggests Bruce of Kennet, Clackmannan. Another possible candidate, according to Fellow Curtis Runnels, is the Baron of Balfour; Curtis has a similar bookplate in his own collection and ‘the arm sinister with Fuimus is combined in the Balfour arms, though, unfortunately, it is probably not the only one where this combination is found.’
With a number of suggestions and leads for Ortrun to follow up, it will be interesting to see whether any of these people had connections with our Society.
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Feedback
Fellow Henry Woudhuysen, Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, suggests ‘a small but quite important correction to Salon’s report on the Castle Mill development in Oxford. Salon said that “Option 3 involves lowering the height of the buildings by removing the top storey. This would cost the university £12 million.†However, Option 3 has been costed at around £30 million; £12 million is the sum estimated for the cost of Option 2. The University’s view of the subject can be found here.’
In the event, the motion proposed by Fellow Diarmaid MacCulloch, calling on the University to implement Option 3, was defeated in Congregation after more than two-and-a-half hours of discussion, with 210 in favour and 536 against — this despite the witty clerihew penned, according to Fellow Alison McHardy, by her friend and our Fellow David Cram, Fellow of Jesus College:
It has to be
Option three.
The buy-line
Is the skyline.
End of Storey.
And just as we thought that the subject of swans had run its course, Fellow Michael Riordan, Archivist at St John’s and Queen’s Colleges, Oxford, writes to say that: ‘I am currently reading Stephens’s edition of the letters of E A Freeman (the nineteenth-century historian of the Norman Conquest, though probably better known amongst the Fellowship as an architectural historian) and I found the following in a letter to Edith Thompson of 8 April 1875 (ii, 89—90) about a swan he had acquired: “The swan — poor dear — found her way out into the mill-stream, where she was pitifully murthered of certain brutes with stones and a rake. ... ‘Twas a horrid shame from every point of view. She is [for] stuffing, along with the old peacock who died of disease of the heart — I believe that to be the most worshipful way of dealing with a dead bird.’
The BBC (and even Radio 3) occasionally nods (or at least its web editors do), as Fellow Nicola Coldstream points out. The last issue of Salon drew attention to Nicola’s contribution to ‘The Essay’ series on castles on Radio 3 and followed the Radio 3 website in saying that Master Hugh of Chester was one of two medieval masons who played a major role in the construction of Edward I’s castles in Wales. Nicola points out that it was Richard of Chester, not Hugh, and that ‘his career was first properly evaluated by our Fellow Rick Turner’.
Finally, Fellow Lorraine Mepham, Senior Post-Excavation Manager with Wessex Archaeology, has responded in detail to the concerns expressed by Fellow Niall Brady in the last issue of Salon regarding the ‘Protocol for archaeological discoveries: offshore renewable projects’. Lorraine writes: ‘The guidance document to which Niall Brady refers was prepared by Wessex Archaeology for the Crown Estate, and is one of a number of similar documents which we have prepared for the marine aggregates industry, offshore renewables, fishing and capital dredging. We would like to take the opportunity to reassure Mr Brady and others, who may be labouring under the misapprehension that the Offshore Renewables Protocol allows developers to dispense with the need to have archaeologists on-site. This is simply not true. A careful study of the document will show that there is no presumption to replace traditional archaeological intervention. The document is at pains to explain that the “Protocol is a supplement to, rather than an alternative to, the conventional regulatory mechanisms employed in the earlier stages of the development process to consider and address impacts upon the historic environment. As a ‘safety-net’, the use of the Protocol should in no way be seen as a devolution of normal responsibilities toward the historic environmentâ€.
‘As archaeologists, we would all like to think that an experienced archaeologist, carrying out a watching brief, should be present during all construction activities that may lead to an unexpected discovery. However, in reality these offshore schemes are of such a large scale that having an archaeologist on board every vessel undertaking for example benthic survey, geotechnical assessment, pre-lay grapnel runs, boulder clearance, etc, may be logistically challenging. The document therefore recognises that there will be times when an archaeologist will not be present, or where further archaeological investigation is not proposed. In these instances, if an unexpected find is made, then without a Protocol in place, such archaeological finds would otherwise simply be lost, destroyed or just go unrecognised.
‘So far, since late 2010, the Offshore Renewables Protocol has recorded over 450 archaeological finds. These range from items of low significance, to those of high potential importance, such as palaeo-environmental material from Dogger Bank, attesting to the pre-submergence landscape of the North Sea. Other finds have included material from Second World War aircraft crash sites and a number of previously unknown potential wreck sites. Several of these sites have subsequently been subjected to intensive archaeological investigations, but even the less important finds are helping to characterise the archaeological potential of the areas in which they are found.’
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Lives remembered: Ivan Roots, FSA
The Society has been informed of the recent death of Professor Emeritus Ivan Roots, of Exeter, who was elected a Fellow on 6 March 1975. Ivan was a former head of the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Exeter, and a former President of the (Oliver) Cromwell Association.
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Lives remembered: Eddie Price, FSA
Fellow Eddie (Edward Godwin) Price, born 6 October 1923, died on 23 January 2015 at the age of ninety-one. The following obituary is an edited version of the one that appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 6 February 2015.
Eddie Price was born near Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, and his family moved to Frocester Court as tenant farmers of 250 acres when he was twelve. He took over the running of the farm in 1950 and in 1969 he bought the property, later purchasing an additional 50 acres. During the Second World War, when he was ordered by the local Agricultural Executive Committee to plough an ancient ridge and furrow field called Big Stanborough, he found that his plough was turning up pottery and masonry. Some years later, in 1960, when our Fellow Captain H S Gracie was excavating a site nearby, Eddie invited him to dig an exploratory trench in Big Stanborough. ‘He dropped straight down on to a mosaic pavement’, Price recalled. ‘By the end of the next day I had excavated the remains of a burnt basket of wheat.’
Price and Gracie then collaborated on further investigations of the site, and it soon became evident that Frocester Court’s Roman predecessor was a substantial villa, 200ft long and several storeys tall. Over many summer excavation seasons, led by Gracie until his death in 1979 and by Price until as recently as 2009, the history of human settlement at Frocester was slowly uncovered, from the first Middle Bronze Age boundary ditch of c 1500 BC to the tithe barn and buildings surviving above ground from medieval and modern Frocester Court. His two-volume report was published in 2000.
Eddie’s archaeological interests were not confined to excavation: the great tithe barn at Frocester, built in 1287, the largest medieval tithe barn still standing in Gloucestershire, needed re-roofing and when he was quoted a price for the work that was double what he had just paid for the farm, he set about doing the work himself, a task that took him eight years to complete. He went on to re-roof and conserve all the other buildings at Frocester Court, which has thirteen listed buildings on site, including the main house, part of which dates back to the mid-1450s.
Appropriately, Eddie Price’s ashes are to be interred at Frocester Court in an earthenware urn fired in a reconstructed Roman-kiln that he built himself.
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Lives remembered: John Bradley
John Bradley, incorrectly described as a Fellow in this Irish Times obituary, was nevertheless well known to many Fellows and his passing deserves to be noted in Salon. John will be remembered especially for transforming our understanding of medieval towns in Ireland through the topographical development studies he undertook for the National Monuments service from 1982 to 1990, the culmination of which was his invaluable Irish Historic Towns Atlas series, consisting of a number of fascicles, or folders, one per town, containing a series of maps complemented by analytical text, the most recent of which (Irish Historic Towns Atlas No. 26: Dublin part III, 1756 to 1847, by Rob Goodbody) was launched by the author Roddy Doyle at the Royal Irish Academy last November.
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Monuments to Fellows
 This photograph supplied by Fellow Jon Bayliss shows the monument to William Stevenson, FSA (c 1750—1821), publisher and author. John Chambers’s A General History of the County of Norfolk (1829) informs us that Stevenson trained as an artist in the neighbourhood of London, and afterwards became a student at the Royal Academy during the presidency of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ‘through whose encouraging suggestion he was induced to embrace the profession of miniature painting, and, leaving the metropolis for this purpose, resided between the years 1774 and 1782 at Bury St Edmund’s.
'Among the respectable families in that town and its vicinity, with which he had the happiness of being acquainted, was that of John Spink, Esq, banker, the friend and patron of Ignatius Sancho, to whom he was introduced by Mr Spink. With this extraordinarily talented, and self-educated negro, he contracted an intimacy natural to minds of kindred worth. Of the collection of “Sancho’s Letters†edited by the late Joseph Jekyll, Esq, MP, seventeen are addressed to the subject of this sketch, and an excellent portrait of his African correspondent, painted by Gainsborough, used to hang in his library, and is now in the hall of his son in Surrey street.
‘Mr S, in 1783, coming to reside in Norwich, married Catherine, eldest daughter of Mr William Chase, then proprietor of the Norwich Mercury ... on his first arrival in Norwich Mr S taught drawing ... About 1785 he entered into partnership with the late Mr Crouse, and thus became a co-proprietor of the Norfolk Chronicle, of which newspaper and printing establishment he remained a member to the time of his death.
‘Mr Stevenson, says his venerable friend, the late John Nichols Esq, FSA, was an able and industrious antiquary, and at all times desirous of promoting the objects of that society which had done him the honour of electing him one of its members.’
Chambers goes on to say that Stevenson produced a new edition in 1812 of a History of the Cathedral Church of Ely, originally published in 1771 by James Bentham, FSA, adding a substantial supplement of his own in 1817. He also edited John Campbell’s Lives of the British Admirals, contributed frequently to the Gentleman’s Magazine and Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, and he helped Elizabeth Bentley (1767—1839), the self-taught Norwich poet, to publish her first work.
The entry ends by recording that Stevenson served the office of sheriff of the city in 1799 and died at his house in Surrey Street on 13 May 1821, aged seventy-one. ‘His remains were interred in the parochial church, where a mural monument, executed in statuary marble, by De Carle, after a chaste design of Mr Arthur Browne, architect, of this city, has been placed as a tribute of filial regard, inscribed with the following appropriate and characteristic epitaph from the pen of his friend Thomas Amyot, Esq, FSA:
Cheerful, animated, and intelligent,
His vigorous and discriminating mind
Not less eminently displayed itself
In his correct taste in the Fine Arts,
Than in his accurate and extensive knowledge
Of the Antiquities of his native Country;
Yet ardently as he loved the occupations of Literature,
He ever held them subordinate
To the just and active performance of his duties
As a sincere and devout Christian,
As a warm Patron of modest worth and talent,
As a Son, a Brother, a Husband,
A Father, and a Friend.’
Jon adds that the Norfolk Chronicle has proved to be a useful source for his study of Norfolk sculptors; and he notes that the monument’s designer, Arthur Browne, and its sculptor, Robert de Carle, junior, were both subscribers to Stevenson’s Ely volume.
Finally, from Fellow Julian Litten, Salon’s editor learns of something known as ‘the Big List’. Julian explains that ‘about twenty years ago the Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery decided to compile a list of known individuals buried at Kensal Green. This task was undertaken under the editorship of Henry Vivian-Neal (Secretary of the Friends) aided by Bob Moulder and the late Sam Bull. The fruits of their labours were published in an enormous tome with the title Paths of Glory. It was a great success and so a decision was made to extend the work, the majority of this being done by Bob Moulder, who produced that which we at Kensal Green know as ‘the Big List’.
'Paths of Glory is about to be re-issued, extended to contain the majority of names in Bob Moulder’s addendum, but at present the Big List remains a working document. I am sure that there are similar lists for the burials at Highgate, Norwood, Nunhead, Brompton and Abney Park and the City of London Cemetery, all of which, together with Kensal Green, are known collectively as “The Magnificent Sevenâ€, and all of which have dedicated and hard-working Friends groups.’
From ‘the Big List’, Julian has extracted the names of no less than fifty-four Fellows who are buried at Kensal Green, which Julian rather diplomatically describes as a ‘Court of Fellows’ (though other collective nouns might well occur to readers with inventive minds). That is enough names to keep the next Salon editor, whoever she or he may be, busily writing for a year’s worth of issues, but here is a taster of what might be to come.
Among those Fellows buried at Kensal Green are John Rose Butlin (1829—65), whose gravestone records that he spoke fourteen languages; Sir James Chell Chalk (1803—78), who began his life as a strolling player (!) and was knighted at Osborne in 1871; Isaac Saunders Leadham (1848—1913), HM Inspector of Schools 1875—6, whose published works include the Political History of England 1702—60 (1909) and a life of Sir Robert Walpole for the Dictionary of National Biography; William Pinkerton (1809—71), author of Romany and Europe: a complete history of gypsies (1866) as well as works on fishing, including Etymology of Bait and Entomology of Mayflies and Some Flies: Fishing Gossip (1866); and Michael Bland (1776—1851), partner in the brewers Whitbread & Co and a Fellow of the Linnaean, Horticultural and Geological Societies as well as of our own Society. All proof that antiquaries have always been anything but conventional.
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Events
23 February 2015, ‘British collectors and Neapolitan ancient marbles in the eighteenth century’, by Eloisa Dodero, Curator Archaeologist, Sovrintendenza Capitolina, Rome, at 5.30pm in the Wallace Collection Lecture Theatre. In spite of the apparently inexhaustible supply of marble sculptures in the aristocratic collections of Rome and the archaeological excavations undertaken with papal licences, British collectors and their agents also showed some interest in an alternative antiquities market, that of Naples. Given the rarity of large collections of antiquities and the strict control exercised by the Bourbon court over unofficial excavation and the export of artistic and archaeological assets, it becomes even more intriguing to understand the motives that led dealers such as Thomas Jenkins and Gavin Hamilton and collectors such as Charles Townley and Richard Worsley to purchase marble sculptures in Naples.
After describing the panorama of private collections of antiquities in Naples during the eighteenth century, the paper will investigate the dispersal of ancient marble sculptures from the city and the ways in which they were acquired by British collectors. Subsequently attention will turn to the particular value attached to marble sculptures purchased in Naples.
Admission is free and booking is not required; further information and details of future Seminars in the History of Collecting can be found here.
28 February 2015: The London Medieval Society is hosting its first colloquium on the topic of ‘Magic and miracles in the Middle Ages’ at Lock Keeper’s College, Queen Mary University London. Non-members are welcome to attend and the small fee (students £5, non-members £10) includes tea and biscuits and the wine reception following the talks. Further details can be found here.
12 March 2015: The St Pancras Old Church Appeal’s Third Annual Lecture Series includes TV producer Danny Nissim talking about ‘Filmed in Camden’ on 12 March; Professor Carole Levin, author of The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the politics of sex and power, talking about Elizabeth I, on 18 April; Dan Cruickshank talking about ‘Rebuilding lost monuments’ on 15 May; and Dr Julian Harrison on ‘Magna Carta: a cause for celebration?’ on 4 June. Lectures usually start at 7pm; doors and bar open from 6.30pm. Tickets £10 via the SOS St Pancras website or at the door.
 26 and 27 March 2015: ‘Aliens, foreigners and strangers in medieval England, c AD 500—1500’, a conference at the British Academy, Carlton House Terrace, London, which aims to address the issue of how, and how profoundly, the movement of people into and within England helped to shape English society and culture over the ‘medieval millennium’. The conference will explore issues concerning how we study the nature and extent of migration, the continuing diasporic relationship with migrants’ homelands, and frameworks that were set up to structure newcomers’ presence. It will examine the way we study the impact that this mobility has left on the identities of people living in England, on the development of local economies and official regulation, and on its cultural and biological DNA. Further information can be obtained from the conference website.
There will be a public lecture and discussion on 26 March 2015, from 6pm to 7.30pm, given by our Fellow Robin Fleming (Boston College), on ‘Medieval migrants: on the move in Britain after Rome’s fall’. The lecture is free but places are limited so registration is required.
9 May 2015: ‘The Tudor and Early Stuart Country House in Sussex c 1500—1640, King’s Church, Lewes’. This Sussex Archaeological Society conference will be opened by our Fellow Maurice Howard, who sets the scene. He is followed by Fellow Paula Henderson on the Tudor country house setting, Susan Bracken on furnishing the Tudor and early Stuart country house and Alden Gregory on how such houses were run. During the afternoon, Caroline Adams talks about preparing a country house for a royal visit, Tom Dommett on new views about the early history of Petworth, David Martin on three recently re-assessed houses and then Janet Pennington uses Wiston and the Sherley family to discuss the vital issue of paying for these vast houses. A brochure with full information can be downloaded from the Sussex Archaeological Society’s website.
Through to May 2015: the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education has published its prospectus of courses in the historic environment for the remainder of the academic year. Coming up soon are courses on sources and approaches for researching places and buildings, heritage values and the assessment of significance, radiocarbon dating and Bayesian analysis, community archaeology and the history, significance and use of church buildings. For further information, see the OUDCE website.
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BIAA Funding Opportunities 2015/16
The British Institute at Ankara, one of the foreign schools and institutes supported by the British Academy, invites funding applications for project grants (up to £5,000 per year for up to three years) and for study grants (up to £2,000 per year), to be carried out in 2015/16. The BIAA has primary experience and resources as an archaeological and historical research centre and priority is given to research projects with a historical dimension. In line with the mission of the BIAA as a centre of excellence for archaeological research, substantial funds will be set aside for selected field projects running over a number of years. Currently three or four projects of this type are supported.
For further information, including examples of projects that have been awarded grants in the past, see the BIAA’s website. The closing date for all applications is 1 May 2015.
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The Ninth Ancient & Modern Prize for original research
The deadline for entries for the Ninth Ancient & Modern Prize, an award of £1,000 to be given for an original research project to a candidate aged under twenty-six or over sixty, is 30 April 2015. The Godfrey Goodwin Prize of £500, in honour of the distinguished Ottoman architectural historian Godfrey Goodwin (1921—2005), will be awarded to the runner-up.
The Ancient & Modern Prize was established in 2000 to provide support for scholars who miss out on funding because they are either too young or too old. It is easy to apply, with no references needed — simply a statement of age and a brief summary of the project in no more than 500 words. The award can be used for travel, material expenses and sustenance whilst the research is underway. Priority will be given to projects which would not easily find funding and which display originality.
The research project should relate to any of the subject areas covered by the sponsoring journals: HALI and CORNUCOPIA. For further information, see the prize’s website.
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John Singer Sargent at the National Portrait Gallery
 Rarely is there such unanimity among art critics, but so far the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery has garnered nothing but five-star ratings. Tuning into Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’ programme on Thursday 12 February you would have heard our Fellow Richard Ormond, guest curator of the exhibition (and great nephew to Sargent), showing an enthusiastic Sean Rafferty around the show (you can download the podcast here. What Sean and the critics have liked is the freshness, spontaneity and wit in the works on display, and their experimental character, so much at odds with the conventional view of Sargent as a conservative ‘society’ painter, producing flattering portraits of moneyed Edwardians. Here are seventy portraits of Sargent’s friends, painted for love and not to fulfil a commission. Many were artists, writers, actors and musicians — a lively and bohemian crowd that included W B Yeats, the skeletal chain-smoking Robert Louis Stevenson, the fiery Spanish dancer La Carmencita (shown above), Ellen Terry and Gabriel Fauré.
Richard Ormond said that he had aimed to reflect Sargent’s enthusiasm ‘for things new and exciting. He was a fearless advocate of the work of younger artists, and in music his influence on behalf of modern composers and musicians ranged far and wide. The aim of this exhibition is to challenge the conventional view of Sargent. As a painter he is well known; but Sargent the intellectual, the connoisseur of music, the literary polymath, is something new.’
The exhibition is on until 25 May 2015.
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The Medieval Manuscripts at Maynooth
 This catalogue of the medieval manuscripts in the Russell Library, at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, was researched and written by our Fellow Peter Lucas and Angela Lucas, and it describes sixteen mainly Latin manuscripts (and a further twenty-two single-leaf items and fragments) ranging in date from a record of conciliar events in the diocese of Reims written in AD 991 to an illuminated missal of 1529. Starting with almost no information (and in some cases downright misleading information, such as when a fifteenth-century binding declares the contents to be by Alexander of Hales when the true author turns out to be Englebert of Admont), the authors have unearthed an impressive amount of information on the biographies of each work and the collection as a whole.
The authors quite rightly describe research into what they term ‘virgin manuscripts’, those that have never been studied before, as ‘coal-face research’. Their mining of the archives leads them to conclude that several of the manuscripts in the collection were acquired at around the time that The Royal College of St Patrick, Maynooth, was founded in 1795 — which happened to be a period of revolutionary turmoil on the Continent when religious houses were being closed and their libraries sold. Indeed, many of the first teaching staff at Maynooth were refugees from the Continent — either French clerics or French-educated Irish priests, all of whom had occupied important academic or administrative posts in Continental colleges or seminaries. It is very likely that they brought with them cherished works, five of which can be traced back to the abbey of St Jacques at Liège and one of which came from Aix-en-Provence.
In addition to their intrinsic interest, they thus testify to the strong and long-standing links between the Irish Catholic Church and Continental Europe, and the authors hope that by publishing this material scholars from the Continent will once again be encouraged to visit and study the collection (they add that there is a huge amount more to be done to catalogue the library’s archive of legal documents, its large collection of early printed books, and the papers of the Revd Dr Laurence Renehan, President of St Patrick’s College from 1845 to 1847 and an ardent book and manuscript collector.
The Medieval Manuscripts at Maynooth: explorations in the unknown, by Peter J Lucas and Angela M Lucas; ISBN 9781846825347; Four Courts Press, 2014
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Britain’s Medieval Episcopal Thrones
 This newly published book by Fellow Charles Tracy with Andrew Budge describes and analyses five out of the six surviving medieval episcopal thrones in English and Welsh cathedrals: the magnificent timber example that is shown on the cover at Exeter, plus those (also of timber) at St Davids and Hereford, along with the stone chairs at Lincoln, Wells and Durham. The stone chair at Canterbury has been so much studied by others that it features here mainly as one of several comparanda. These also include a number of surviving thrones on the Continent, analysed and illustrated in the first chapter, though the authors make clear that reliquaries also had a strong influence on the design of English and Welsh examples, and that the throne itself could be considered a relic — not just a piece of ecclesiastical furniture but something venerable in its own right and a symbol of continuity and authority, even when, as is the case with these thrones, they were made for and by known individuals.
No throne better illustrates this fact than that at Exeter, about which the authors have gathered together a huge amount of information, including accounts of the selection, cutting and seasoning of the timber, the costs involved, the names of some of the people involved in its design and carving, and the major change of plan that resulted from Bishop Walter de Stapeldon’s growing ambitions for his cathedral and throne, leading to the original design, of no great height, soaring to fifty-three feet by the addition of the crowning filigree spire. All of this is illustrated through the superb drawings of Peter Ferguson, along with photographs of diagnostic details,
Britain’s Medieval Episcopal Thrones: history, archaeology and conservation, by Charles Tracy, with a chapter by Andrew Budge; ISBN 9781782977827; Oxbow Books, (2015)
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Redbrick
 For Fellow William Whyte, university buildings are not just works of architecture: they are expressions too of ideals, and never was idealism more to the fore in the higher education sector than from the start of the twentieth century when Britain’s first civic (ie non-religious) universities were formed (the term ‘redbrick university’, William tells us, was not coined until 1943, with the publication by Faber & Faber of Edgar Allison Peers’ book of the same title, and he used it as a catch-all term for the new universities of Birmingham (founded in 1900), Liverpool (1903), Manchester and Leeds (1904), Sheffield (1905), Bristol (1909) and Reading (1926), as distinct from the long-established stone-built universities of Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh).
Stanley Baldwin claimed in 1924 that historians of the future would come to regard the creation of these universities as a ‘Renaissance ... as genuine and as pregnant in its possibilities as the Renaissance of the fifteenth century’. William Whyte sets out to test this assertion, exploring first ideas of what a university should be that were being debated ‘from Canada to India’ from the end of the eighteenth century, and carrying the analysis through to the creation of the new universities and polytechnics of the 1950s and 1960s. Just like a university, this is a book brimming with ideas: it addresses such questions as whether there is a distinctive redbrick culture, the extent to which redbrick universities were radical, or whether they reproduced existing social structures, and the relationship between universities and the rest of society. It also looks at the vexed question of our own age — the degree to which Government interferes in academia and the growth of the professional university administrator.
As if this were not ambitious enough, William then weaves in a further strand of investigation: the degree to which the built environment of the new universities played a part in the creation of redbrick culture. He quotes Pevsner’s derogatory comments on Liverpool University (‘not a whole, but a zoo, with species after species represented’) and shows this to be unfair (indeed, it is a criticism that could just as easily be levelled at the mad jumble of architectural styles represented by Oxford or Cambridge), but above all he shows that through studying the master plans for campus layouts, the debates and the changes of mind, the fashions and the beliefs of the time, architecture offers a remarkably rewarding way into the study of university identity and ideals.
All good books stimulate questions in your mind as you read: this reader wanted to know (and found answers to) such questions as whether the impact of ‘place’ has its strongest effect on the academics who inhabit the university, rather than the students who spend a moment of fleeting time there; if so, how different is the experience of an academic who stays in one place from one who moves from one university to another, in search of better remuneration or research facilities; has the rapid rise of alumni associations in the last twenty years impacted on people’s feelings about the universities they once attended; and what about those people who study at virtual universities (the Open University; online universities; commuter universities on railway trains; extra-mural / continuing education departments) — is their experience the less rich for the lack of a built environment in which to study? And do students who go to universities with ugly or ill-designed buildings suffer as a consequence? And is there a difference between the experience of scientists, who are much more dependent on a physical laboratory space in which to carry out their research, and a humanities scholar, free today more than ever before from the need to occupy any particular space.
Indeed, it is interesting to ask whether this book has been written at a moment of transition in time from the physical to the virtual university, thanks to the internet and the astonishingly generous degree to which institutions are making digital data available free to anyone who wants to use it. But then walking round the streets of Bloomsbury, where every university building seems to be enshrouded in scaffolding and undergoing extension, refurbishment or repair, one realises that the story of the physical university is not over yet.
Redbrick: a social and architectural history of Britain’s civic universities, by William Whyte; ISBN 9780198716129; Oxford University Press, 2015
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Discovering the Historic Houses of Snowdonia
 This eye-opening book introduces to the wider world a house type that many people, including no doubt many students of vernacular architecture, do not know existed as a distinctive regional type: the Snowdonian house, which developed in the first half of the sixteenth century and rapidly came to dominate the landscape of north-west Wales. The Snowdonian house differs from the sub-medieval three-unit house type, which preserved the open hall and dais; instead, it is a two-unit house, ‘in its own right rather than a cut-down version of a three-unit house’, with the fireplace occupying the dais as the principal focus of the main downstairs room.
It was also fully storeyed, the first-floor chambers being important components, not simply lofts. It differs from the longhouse that is common elsewhere in Wales in not having an attached byre, and it often has high-status accoutrements, such as substantial and well-made decorative roof trusses, wall paintings, panelling, elaborate fireplaces ornamented with displays of heraldry, plaster friezes and carved door cases. These are, in other words, the houses of a status-conscious gentleman and freeholder, proclaiming in architectural form the social difference between gentry and peasant.
The book is also pioneering in the systematic application of dendrochronology to the study of this house type, so that conclusions about origins, influence and chronology are based on the rock of scientific certainty rather than the inspired creativity of typological deduction. We can thus trace the development of the type from the earliest dated example (Dogoed, Penmachno, built from timber felled in 1516/17, much earlier than the later sixteenth-century date traditionally ascribed to such houses) to the regional dominance of the type in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The authors — our Fellows Richard Suggett and Margaret Dunn — argue that the development of the house type is inseparable from the reform of the system for inheriting, buying, selling and renting land that occurred in the Principality of North Wales in 1507, anticipating the abolition of partible inheritance that was introduced by the Act of Union of 1536 by some three decades. Further momentum came from the Dissolution and the introduction to the land market of former monastic estates, and by trends in dowry settlements that increasingly favoured cattle and sheep over cash or chattels. In other words, it was the profits from pastoral farming that paid for the houses that are presented in this splendidly illustrated volume, which is reported to be selling very strongly (and deservedly so) thanks to local pride and interest and the fact that the book reflects the voluntary work of the 200-plus members of the Dating Old Welsh Houses Group.
Discovering the Historic Houses of Snowdonia, by Richard Suggett and Margaret Dunn; ISBN 9781871184532; RCAHMW, 2014
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World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum
 In the previous issue of Salon we were informed that Glasgow was pioneering a new cross-disciplinary approach to the study of its university museum collections, and this book edited by Fellow Dan Hicks and Alice Stevenson is very much in the same vein, being a very welcome assessment of the research potential and significance of the various parts of the Pitt Rivers collections. Dan argues in his introduction that in giving primary focus to the artefacts, and in regarding museum collections as a research resource (or, as he says, ‘an archaeological site ... a place for new kinds of excavation’) he is battling against the current tide in museology, which emphasises the primarily social role of museums as places of adventure and experience — responding to the needs and expectations of visitors.
Perhaps there is room for both, but the trend has been to neglect museum-based research. The twenty-nine essays in this book present a powerful corrective. Each assesses the significance of a part of the Pitt Rivers collection, classified by geographical region and by period. Each is written by an expert or a group of experts in the relevant field. Accepting that such collections rarely have the same value for archaeologists as systematically excavated assemblages, and that many lack vital contextual information, they draw balanced conclusions about what kind of a resource this is. It is one capable of throwing light on the development of archaeological practice; on collecting practice; on the history of archaeological fakes.
There are many individual objects that have the potential to yield new information because they have been little studied since they were found; equally, there are many that would now yield new information if subjected to scientific tests — carbon dating, diffraction, collagen, isotope, DNA and lipid analysis. There is a lot of material that could and should be taken into distribution maps and used to study patterns in technology and trade, hoarding and ritual deposition. There are astonishing individual artefacts that were invisible to us until this volume was published and thus have not been taken into account as comparanda: one example is a stone from Onnens, in Switzerland, carved with a crescent moon and a cluster of stars filled with yellow ochre. Looks familiar? Yes, it bears a strong resemblance to the Nebra sky disk.
The further away one gets in the collection from the UK and Europe, the less studied the material tends to be: to take one example, the c 667 artefacts from Easter Island (one of which features on the book’s cover), mostly collected by Katherine Routledge and William Routledge during their archaeological expedition of March 1914 to August 1915, have hardly been looked at since, and are poorly described and understood, despite the fact that extensive field notes exist, along with other artefacts from the same expedition, in the British Museum and the Royal Geographic Society collections — just one example of the myriad potential research topics with which this book is packed.
World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum: a characterization, edited by Dan Hick and Alice Stevenson; ISBN 9781905739585; Archaeopress, 2013
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Roman Splendour, English Arcadia
 Fellow Simon Swynfen Jervis has a splendid new book out on the art of pietre dure, furniture decorated with inlaid stone. The book was written with an old National Trust colleague and furniture expert Dudley Dodd, and it takes as its starting point the Roman Cabinet that was brought to Stourhead in 1740 by Henry Hoare ‘the Magnificent’, of the banking dynasty, in 1740. Hoare had bought it in Rome, where it had been made for Pope Sixtus V, the great re-builder, whose papacy, from 1585 to 1590, coincided with the Spanish Armada.
The cabinet’s restoration in 2006—7 prompted a detailed investigation into its history set within the context of the insatiable English taste for Italian pietre dure from the sixteenth century to the twentieth. The book surveys the Roman pietre dure industry, hitherto unjustly neglected by comparison with that of Florence. A description and stylistic analysis of the cabinet itself, with its glittering gilt-bronze mounts, semi-precious stones and elaborate architectural ornament and its 125 more-or-less secret drawers, is followed by an account of the cabinet’s provenance, following a trail of detection that takes it back to Pope Sixtus’s Roman villa, and then explores its tortuous descent through the pope’s family to its sale to Henry Hoare and its installation in a Cabinet Room at Stourhead. Here it stood in splendour, surrounded by Old Masters and with a new pedestal of triumphal arch form, incorporating reliefs of Pope Sixtus and his Roman monuments. Later his great-nephew, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, created a new Cabinet Room, with embellishments by Thomas Chippendale the Younger. Horace Walpole and William Beckford were among the admirers of the Cabinet; you can see why as you turn the heavily illustrated pages of this handsomely produced book, which Simon describes as ‘quite solid, but not stolid’.
Roman Splendour, English Arcadia: the English taste for pietre dure and the Sixtus Cabinet at Stourhead, by Simon Swynfen Jervis and Dudley Dodd; ISBN 9781781300244; Philip Wilson Publishers for The National Trust, 2015
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The Border Towers of Scotland. Vol 2: their evolution and architecture
Fifteen years ago , our Fellow Alastair Maxwell-Irving published his first volume on The Border Towers of Scotland: the West March (2000). Reviewing the book in the Antiquaries Journal (Vol 82, pp 387—8), Fellow Derek Renn said it was a work that ‘stands comparison with any inventory produced by any Royal Commission’, and one whose 'contents are matched by the high quality of the printing and binding'. Following in its footsteps, this second volume covers most of the tower-houses in the Scottish Borders, from the North Sea to the River Cree in Galloway, concentrating principally on the architecture but with passing references to the families who built and lived in them.
As a prelude, there is a short introduction describing how the towers evolved to become the tower-castles that were the stronghold of choice in Scotland from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards. The first half of the book describes the towers in roughly chronological order, dealing first with the great towers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, then the lesser towers of the sixteenth century, together with the urban strongholds, bastle-houses, pele-houses and peles of the latter period. The second half of the book is devoted to detailed descriptions of the many features that went to make up the towers, from the barmkins and gateways, entrance doorways, yetts and basements with their gun-loops and prisons at ground level, to the parapet-walks, turrets, watch-towers, and beacons at the top. In addition, there are sections on ancillary features, such as kitchens, furnishings, outbuildings, masons’ marks, gardens, deer parks and fishponds.
Nearly 200 of these strongholds are described, and there are there are more than 1,650 photographs of towers and architectural details, the majority of which are in colour. Alastair is producing a limited edition of 500 copies and selling them at cost price (£55, plus £10 for postage if required). For an order form, contact the author.
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The Marble Index: Roubiliac and sculptural portraiture in eighteenth-century Britain
 Last year Salon reported on the exhibition at Waddesdon Manor of sculptures by Roubiliac of Alexander Pope, curated by our Fellow Malcolm Baker, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of California, Riverside. Now Yale has published his major work on the portrait bust and the statue as genres, a book that Malcolm says ‘I have been writing for longer than I care to admit (it sets a bad example to my students about procrastination!). The delay is perhaps excused on the grounds that the process of researching and writing has led to a number of spin-off projects — the Pope exhibition, another project using the digital scans taken by computer scientists at Yale to explore questions about eighteenth-century sculptors’ workshop procedures and the third being a book that is now being mapped out about author portraits and changing notions of authorship in the long eighteenth century.’
This book examines the work of the leading sculptor of his day in Britain — Louis Francois Roubiliac (1702—62) — and his portraits of such major figures as Alexander Pope, Isaac Newton and George Frederic Handel. The Marble Index argues that these portraits, remarkable for their technical virtuosity and visual power and made for close and attentive viewing, were intimately linked with Enlightenment notions of perception and selfhood. They challenged the supremacy of the painted portrait, and developed into ambitious forms of representation within a culture in which many of the core concepts of modernity were being formed.
The Marble Index: Roubiliac and sculptural portraiture in eighteenth-century Britain, by Malcolm Baker; ISBN 9780300204346; Yale University Press, 2015
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‘Digging deeper: making manuscripts’
Not a book this time, but rather an online course about medieval manuscripts: this has been instigated and led by our Fellow Elaine Treharne, Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities in the Department of English at Stanford University, who describes it as ‘a new major initiative, an intensive introduction to palaeography, codicology, theory and the practice of making manuscripts in the medieval context’.
‘Digging deeper: making manuscripts’ already has more than 3,000 enrollees, many of whom come from the world of libraries, archives and local history, and a second course is planned for launch in April. Elaine says ‘we’re the first ever course on this subject, and the first to try and bring together the repository context with the potential of digital learning’. The course website is here.
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Vacancy
British Institute at Ankara: Assistant Director
Closing date: 1 May 2015
Details of the position, commencing on 1 September 2015, can be found here.
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Propose a lecture or seminar
Please email Renée LaDue, the Society's Communications Officer if you are interested in giving a lecture at one of the Society's Ordinary Meetings (Thursday evenings at 5pm) or as part of our Public Lecture series (occasional Tuesday afternoons at 1pm).
We welcome papers based on new research on themes related to the Society's field of interest: the study of the material past.
You can view our current lecture programme in the Events section of our website.
Fellows are also encouraged to propose topics or themes for conferences or seminars that bring scholars and professionals from a variety of disciplines together to explain, discuss and debate our material culture. Please email Renée LaDue, the Society's Communications Officer, if you are interested in helping us organise such an event.
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