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This blog (which is fifteen years old) has been neglected for quite a while, primarily as I have been busy doing lots of other things. It is my intention to leave it that way and no longer continue to blog here. I find the WordPress format increasingly clunky, less than satisfactory, and user-friendly and from […]

Earlier this week someone who had watched one of my church tour videos on YouTube asked me how I am able to go into a church, take one look at an medieval image of a saint and know who that saint is – even when the saint’s name is not present and whether I would […]

I have recently launched a new Youtube site, with videos on all the same things that I write about on this blog. Do pop along and have a look. Share this: Twitter Facebook More LinkedIn Reddit Tumblr Pinterest Pocket Telegram WhatsApp Skype Email Like this: Like Loading… Related

One of my great passions is early printing and bookbinding and in this post I am going to indulge that passion as I digress again into the wonderful world of Renaissance bibliography and take a look at the frontispiece of this splendid early printed book.   Subscribe to get access Read more of this content […]

In my last post I wrote a little about the origin and genius of Caxton’s English translation of the Golden Legend, with its woodcuts by Wynkyn de Worde. The article was illustrated with woodcuts in the copy of this work in the library of the University of Wales Trinity St David in Lampeter. In this […]

William Caxton was a London merchant who in his middle age decided to invest in new technology and diversify his business.  Having lived and worked on the continent in the 1450s and 60s, he had seen first-hand the products that were coming off the newly establishing printing presses and with an entrepreneurs eye he saw […]

The village of Deerhurst on the banks of the river Severn in Gloucestershire is one of the most instructive places to study Anglo-Saxon church architecture. The fabric of the parish church, dedicated to the Mother of God, is in large part that of a Saxon ‘minster’ church built on an important royal vill in the […]

In 1515 Sir Thomas More left England was sent as part of an embassy to the court of the future Emperor Charles V. For over twenty years the tax imposed on English exports to the Spanish Netherlands was growing year on year and the embassy was sent to negotiate a new trade agreement with the […]

The ideology and iconoclasm of the Reformation did a very thorough job of destroying the cult of saints and the shrines and relics associated with them from medieval Britain. There are now only a couple of places in England and Wales where there is an untouched medieval shrine, complete with the relics of the medieval […]

Sitting above the town of Glastonbury and presiding over the Somerset levels, is a large hill of clay and blue Lias called Glastonbury Tor. It is surreal vision to see this hill appearing in the flatlands and it is no surprise that throughout history it has been a place of both real and mythical importance. […]

At the peak of it’s power and prestige the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia stretched from the Humber to the Thames and from the Trent to the border of Wales. The kingdom was converted to Christianity in the second half of the seventh century after King Peada was baptised by Finan of Lindisfarne at Repton, one […]

My son and I have recently been on a week long pilgrimage across Britain to a number shrines and holy places. The purpose of the journey was pretty straightforward. Although ordained as an Anglican priest for over a decade, for much of that time I have suffered periods of ill health as I have tried […]

Incorporating images of donors or patrons into the works of art they had commissioned, was a common occurrence in the late medieval west and one that I’ve written about before. Often these images are shown interacting with other images within a work of art, focusing and portraying a devotion to figures of the saints, or […]

Woodeaton in Oxfordshire has a super little medieval church with lots to delight and catch the interest. The walls have the remains of layer upon layer of medieval wallpaintings, including lots of red ochre lining out on the walls of the nave and a delightful St Christopher facing the main south door, just where you […]

Hainton is one of those rare places, a manor that has been in the possession of a single family for much of its recorded the history.  The church of St Mary stands in the grounds of Hainton Hall, which was and still is the home of the Heneage family.  The chancel and north chapel contain an unparelleled and […]

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js Hillesden church in north Buckinghamshire is an impressive church, a pure, Perpendicular glass house, a coherent whole, all built in a single campaign. //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js We know that in 1493 the previous church was somewhat ruinous and that provides a terminus post quem for the structure, which appears to have been built in stages up […]

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js In the centre of the chancel at Oddington in Otmoor, in eastern Oxfordshire, is a large purbeck marble slab into which is set one of the most unusual monumental brasses from late medieval England.  The brass consists of an effigy, a corpse in a tied shroud, with it’s hands in the attitude of prayer.  […]

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js St Michael’s, Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire, is a treasure house, a fine cruciform church of Norman origin, containing a wonderful array of monuments and important fittings.  The Early English chancel, built around 1250, is a space of breathtaking purity and beauty.  It’s triple lancets are divided by clusters of slender shafts, topped with stiff […]

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js This wonderful panel in a tracery light in the east window of the Church of the Assumption at Beckley church in Oxfordshire, dates from the second quarter of the 14th century.  It forms a pair with another quatrefoil showing the Coronation of the Virgin (see below).  The iconography is interesting, it shows the Assumption […]

The Kidwelly Virgin and Child  //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js Recently I visited Kidwelly in Carmarthenshire, where in the Middle Ages the ancient parish church of St Mary, was shared by a small Benedictine priory, a cell of Sherborne.   High up on a bracket to the south of the high altar, in what was once the monastic quire, […]

I love late medieval wills, they are so full of interesting information that tell us about contemporary attitudes towards death, burial memorialisation, about interpersonal relationships and the duty felt by people to provide for those they left behind.  I’m currently doing a bit of research on gentry display and memorialisation in Derbyshire, which is taking […]

Following on from a post about burying the dead in church buildings in late medieval Britain, I now offer a post about digging up the dead.  As a historian I have long been perplexed by the modern notion that churchyards can be become ‘full’ and that we are running out of burial space for the […]

//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js This fabulous effigy of a fifteenth century priest, is in the north chapel of Blyborough church in north-west Lincolnshire. The inscription around the base of the effigy tells us that it commemorates Sir Robert Conyng, who was rector of Blyborough between 1424 and 1434 and died on the 3rd of May 1434. We know […]

The object illustrated below is in the collection of the British Museum.  It is a wax candle-stock, an artificial candle.   It’s one of a pair and it’s identically decorated fellow, is now in the possession of Jesus College Cambridge.  At fifty four (54) centimetres tall, these stocks when they were first made, would have fitted […]