Our landmark Magna Carta Through the Ages exhibition opened three weeks ago; we've had nearly 3,000 visitors so far, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with visitors praising the building, exhibition, interpretation and the staff and volunteers! Come and see it yourself and spread the word! The exhibition is free and open to everyone.
 
Fellows will receive a 20 per cent discount from the exhibition gift shop (applies to in-store purchases only). You can also make purchases through our online shop.

We've hosted several successful private events in the exhibition space as well. If you or someone you know is looking for a unique venue for an evening event, please get in touch with our Executive Assistant.
 

Magna Carta Online

We want Fellows to be the first to know: We just published a digital resource allowing researchers to study compare transcriptions of our three copies of Magna Carta. The tool, developed in collaboration with ITSEE (University of Birmingham), provides three unique ways of studying our copies of the charter, which include the copy of a 1215 draft in the Black Book of Peterborough, the scroll of the 1225 reissue from Halesowen Abbey and the 1225 reissue in the Hart Book of Statutes:

• A Manuscript Viewer, in which the full transcription of copy can be viewed on its own next to a high-resolution image of the manuscript;
• A Synopsis, which allows researchers to study the transcriptions 'chapter' by chapter while comparing all three copies;
• And a Comparison Window, in which the transcriptions of all three copies are presented side by side, so that you can scroll down each to compare different areas.

The resource has gone live on our website just in time to celebrate the 800th Anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta on 15 June!

We are extremely grateful to the following for the hard work, scholarship and creativity expended in making this resource possible: Prof David C. Parker, FSA; Prof Stephen Church, FSA; Dr Michelle Brown, FSA; Dr Courtnay Konshuh; Dr Hugh Houghton; Dr Catherine Smith; and Head of Library and Collections Heather Rowland.

We are also very grateful to organisations that have supported the development of our Magna Carta exhibition and this learning resource: Heritage Lottery Fund, Bank of America, The Headley Trust, The Ruddock Foundation for the Arts and Magna Carta 800th Anniversary Committee.
 

Explore the Digital Resource >

 

 
Librarians, like shepherds,
  Purvey their pastoral care,
And whilst no wolves or leopards
  Their dire intent declare,
 
Through time, and slow detrition,
  The grander glories fade;
Books, borrowed for a mission,
  Are frequently mislaid.
 
They are not dead, but sleeping,
  The books that Fellows hold,
And some improve with keeping;
  Their content turns to gold.
 
Yet underneath the dirt with
  Octavos on those shelves
Which dusters rarely flirt with,
  Stray volumes lose themselves.
 
For ages disregarded
  That library book may be,
Whose absence has retarded
  A pending Ph.D.
 
One journal’s single issue
  That must have been misplaced –
Alas, how much we miss you!
  Your partners go to waste.
 
Our books are seldom weighted
  With marks of ownership;
Not one has yet been fated
  To bear the bar-code’s strip.
 
So seemly is their binding
  You’d take them for your own;
Excuse us for reminding,
  You have a three-month loan.
 
You will discern no class-marks
  Imprinted on the spines;
We deem such things are crass marks,
  Nor do we scourge with fines
 
The Fellow who produces
  A book long overdue;
For volumes have their uses,
  And scholars are but few.
 
Dear Fellows, we importune
  You: bring what books you hoard;
Be ours the glad good fortune
  To see them all restored.
 
Why, then you’ll hear us voicing
  A loud and cheerful sound;
For great is the rejoicing
  When what was lost, is found.

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James Eogan, FSA, sent the following update from Ireland's National Roads Authority:

'The staff of the Archaeological Section of Ireland’s National Roads Authority (NRA) is responsible for commissioning a large number of archaeological excavations each year from private-sector archaeological firms. These services are procured in the context of European Union and national regulations relating to procurement and contract management. Palaeo-environmental services are one key aspect of excavation services procured by the NRA.  It was found necessary for the NRA to develop guidelines to ensure that a standardised approach to palaeo-environmental sampling, analysis and reporting was adopted across all excavation contracts.

The Times published an article this past weekend by Fellow Norman Hammond regarding new evidence for the site of the negotiations at Runnymede – just in time for the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta:

'The National Trust’s Runnymede site, where the American Bar Association’s tholos monument marks the presumed location of the agreement in 1215, “was originally made up of two meadows”, says Tim Tatton-Brown, FSA, former consultant archaeologist to St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. “Unfortunately, it is the western part of the site that has been promoted as the ‘real’ Runnymede for the last half century at least...It seems most likely that Runnymede was farther east, closer to Egham and Staines”.'

'[Tim] suggests that a full survey of the Runnymede site — using geophysical and archaeological equipment, metal detectors, and close-up airborne radar (LiDAR) — would be a good way of commemorating the anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta. A survey, he adds, would show the minutiae of the landscape — “but with luck it may also reveal where all the tents had been pitched for at least three weeks following Monday June 8, when King John issued letters of safe conduct to allow the baronial envoys to come to the ‘meadow of Staines’”.'

Read the full article in The Times.

Michael Bundock, FSA, is the author of the new publication, The Fortunes of Francis Barber. The book tells the extraordinary and little-known story of an unlikely friendship that developed between Dr Samuel Johnson, the distinguished man of letters, and his servant Francis Barber, a former slave.

Congratulations to John Ashdown-Hill, FSA, who has been awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. The citation (announced on Saturday, 13 June) states that the award is ‘for services to the exhumation and identification of Richard III’. Read more from the BBC.

The contents of the Early Modern British Painters database, authored by Fellow Robert Tittler, have been updated. This second edition adds some 70 new entries, bringing the total to 2,578 names in all, and makes substantial additions to earlier content. Find the database at: http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/980096/.

'I was very interested to see Norman Hammond’s photo of the grave of Edward Blore in the last Salon. Blore is an architect of particular interest to me, partly because he was mainly responsible for Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford, not far from my home in the Scottish Borders. The very first time I visited Count Vorontzov’s very ‘English’ palace of Alupka in Crimea, I was immediately struck by the resemblance to Abbotsford, and subsequently discovered that Blore was indeed the architect for Alupka as well. Vorontzov was, of course, a great Anglophile. See C E B Brett, Towers of Crim Tartary. English and Scottish Architects and Craftsmen in the Crimea, 1762-1853 (Donington 2005). Blore was also architect of another palace that was also near to where I grew up: Government House in Sydney.'