Walton Hall water pump

Water pump uncovered in the grounds of Walton Gardens
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered a water pump – possibly unique – in the grounds of  Walton Gardens.
Members of  Priestley Field Archaeology Group (PFAG) carried out a three-year excavation on behalf of Warrington Borough Council, which owns the land.
This was after a gardener discovered the chamber in 2000 while digging a flowerbed, which caused a large hole to appear that gave way to an underground room containing a large cast iron wheel and a cylindrical tank.
The council wanted to know what the machinery was used for and if it could provide any information about Walton Hall and its estate, which was built in the mid 1830s for the Greenall brewing family.
PFAG, who worked on the site from 2003 to 2005, found a space that was 18 feet by nine feet and blocked by mud and rubble.
After painstakingly clearing some 20 tons of soil they found the iron wheel resting on a plinth, next to a smaller wheel and came to the conclusion that it was a water pump.
The group believe the pump, which could only have operated with a supply of gas, used to serve Walton Hall and its estate, which was home to prize livestock.
This was after PFAG discovered a bill, passed in 1899, “to make further provision to the water supply of the borough of Warrington” because of its expanding population.
In addition to these proposals it stated: “Provisions for the benefit of Sir Gilbert Greenall of the Walton Hall Estate.
“The corporation shall supply to Walton Hall House such amount of water for domestic purposes as the owner may require and sufficient watering places for cattle.”
Dave Hesketh, a PFAG member who spent five years researching the pump, likely to have been in use from 1892 to 1903, before producing a booklet about it, said: “This is a significant industrial find and it is helpful in terms of social history. It was a good engineering solution for a big estate and we’ve never found any record of anything else like this.

“The world’s my oyster”

Fancy oysters with your Shakespeare?
Today’s theatre audiences tend to sustain themselves by craftily tucking into goodies during the performance or quaffing pre-ordered drinks at the bar during the interval.
But archaeologists have found that the British habit of snacking while watching the latest play began hundreds of years ago – although back then the fare was somewhat different.
The preferred snacks for Tudor theatre-goers appear to have been oysters, crabs, cockles, mussels, periwinkles and whelks, as well as walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins, plums, cherries, dried figs and peaches.
Some clues even suggest that 16th-century fans of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe also ploughed through vast quantities of elderberry and blackberry pie – and some may even have snacked on sturgeon steaks.
The evidence has emerged from the most detailed study ever carried out on a Tudor or early Stuart playhouse. Archaeologists have been analysing the thousands of seeds, pips, stones, nutshell fragments, shellfish remains and fish and animal bones found on the site of the Rose Playhouse on London’s South Bank.
Museum of London Archaeology has just published the findings in The Rose and The Globe: Playhouses of Shakespeare’s Bankside, written by archaeologists Julian Bowsher and Pat Miller.
Their research also suggests that there was a class divide in the consumption of fast food. The discoveries show that wealthier members of the audience (seated in the galleries, rather than standing in the yard) could afford imported foods such as raisins, dried figs and peaches.
The research also revealed that some theatre-goers may have indulged in pipe-smoking. Tobacco, originally from the New World, had only been introduced to England a few years earlier, but was already being cultivated along the banks of the Thames. The archaeologists also identified seeds from marrows or pumpkins, which came from the Americas.
Thousands of hazelnut shells were used as absorbent floor aggregate on which poorer spectators could stand.
The Rose was built in 1587 by the impresario and brothel owner Philip Henslowe and a grocer called John Cholmley. An outbreak of bubonic plague kept it shut between June 1592 and May 1594, and it finally closed in 1605, when the lease ran out.
The second half of the 1590s was the playhouse’s heyday. It hosted a company called the Admiral’s Men and specialised in works by Christopher Marlowe, such as Dr Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Tamburlaine. Other plays performed there almost certainly included Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy and now-lost anonymous works like The Ranger’s Comedy, Cutback and, most popular of all, The Wise Man of Westchester.
London playhouses were very popular with the youth of the capital (especially young apprentices) but were frowned upon by many.

Further reading

Knutson, R.L., 1984,  Play Identifications : ” The Wise Man of West Chester ” and ” John a Kent ant John a Cumber “| ” Longshanks ” and ” Edward I “, The Huntington Library Quarterly , Volume 47(1): 1-11

Prehistoric amputee

Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery

Scientists unearthed evidence of the surgery during work on an Early Neolithic tomb [4900-4700 BC] discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles (65km) south of Paris. They found that a remarkable degree of medical knowledge had been used to remove the left forearm of an elderly man about 6,900 years ago.
The patient seems to have been anaesthetised, the conditions were aseptic, the cut was clean and the wound was treated, according to the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap).
The revelation could force a reassessment of the history of surgery, especially because researchers have recently reported signs of two other Neolithic amputations in Germany [Sondershausen in eastern Germany] and the Czech Republic [Vedrovice, in Moravia]. It was known that Stone Age doctors performed trephinations, cutting through the skull, but not amputations. “The first European farmers were therefore capable of quite sophisticated surgical acts,” Inrap said. The discovery was made by Cécile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun, both archaeologists, and Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist*.
It followed research on the tomb of an elderly man who lived in the Linearbandkeramik period, when European hunter-gatherers settled down to agriculture, stock-breeding and pottery. The patient was important: his grave was 2m (6.5ft) long — bigger than most — and contained a schist axe, a flint pick and the remains of a young animal, which are evidence of high status.
The most intriguing aspect, however, was the absence of forearm and hand bones. A battery of biological, radiological and other tests showed that the humerus bone had been cut above the trochlea indent at the end “in an intentional and successful amputation”.  Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that the patient, who is likely to have been a warrior, might have damaged his arm in a fall, animal attack or battle.
“I don’t think you could say that those who carried out the operation were doctors in the modern sense that they did only that, but they obviously had medical knowledge,” she said.
A flintstone almost certainly served as a scalpel. Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that pain-killing plants were likely to have been used, perhaps the hallucinogenic Datura. “We don’t know for sure, but they would have had to find some way of keeping him still during the operation,” she said.
Other plants, possibly sage, were probably used to clean the wound. “The macroscopic examination has not revealed any infection in contact with this amputation, suggesting that it was conducted in relatively aseptic conditions,” said the scientists in an article for the journal Antiquity.
The patient survived the operation and, although he suffered from osteoarthritis, he lived for months, perhaps years, afterwards, tests revealed. Despite the loss of his forearm, the contents of his grave showed that he remained part of the community. “His disability did not exclude him from the group,” the researchers said.
The discovery demonstrates that advanced medical knowledge and complex social rules were present in Europe in about 4900BC, and that major surgery was likely to have been more common than we realised, Mrs Buquet-Marcon said.

*Buquet-Marcon, Cecile, Philippe, Charlier, and Anaick, Samzun. The oldest amputation on a Neolithic human skeleton in France. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2007.1278.1> (2007)

Princess Eadgyth?

From my roving reporter:

Tomb of the Saxon Queen:  Discovered, Alfred’s granddaughter (link includes pics of the tomb)

The crumbling remains of Alfred the Great’s granddaughter – a Saxon princess who married one of the most powerful men in Europe – have been unearthed more than 1,000 years after her death.
The almost intact bones of Queen Eadgyth – the early English form of Edith – were discovered wrapped in silk, inside a lead coffin in a German cathedral.
Eadgyth – one of the oldest members of the English royal family – was given in marriage to the influential Holy Roman Emperor Otto I and lived in Germany until her death in 946AD, aged 36.
Yesterday, British archaeologists involved in the find hailed it as ‘one of the most exciting historical discoveries in recent years’.
The bones have now been brought back to Eadgyth’s native Wessex for scientific tests to fully confirm her identity.
Queen Eadgyth lived at the dawn of the English nation.
Her grandfather Alfred the Great was the first monarch to style himself King of the Anglo Saxons, while her step-brother Athelstan was the first King of the English.
Her bones were unearthed at Madgeburg Cathedral in Germany. The preliminary findings will be announced at a conference at the University of Bristol today.
Professor Mark Horton of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at Bristol said it was ‘very likely’ to be the Queen.
He went on: ‘If we can prove this truly is Eadgyth, this will be one of the most exciting historical discoveries in recent years.’
Eadgyth was aged 19 when she was sent to Germany with her sister Adiva in an attempt to build political bridges.
The German ruler Otto I was asked to choose between the sisters – and opted to marry Eadgyth.
His queen bore two children: a girl Liutgarde, who married Conrad the Red; and a boy Liudolf, the Duke of Swabia.
Eadgyth lived in Saxony, Germany, until her death when she was buried in a monastery in Madgeburg.
Although her tomb is marked in the city’s Cathedral by an elaborate 16th century monument, historians long believed her remains were lost centuries ago and that the tomb was empty.
But in 2008, when the lid was removed for the first time in centuries, archaeologists discovered a lead coffin inside, bearing Queen Eadgyth’s name and accurately recording the transfer of her remains in 1510.
Inside the coffin was found a nearly complete female skeleton aged between 30 and 40, wrapped in silk.
Professor Harald Meller of the Landesmuseum fur Vorgeschichte in Halle, who led the project, said: ‘We still are not completely certain that this is Eadgyth although all the scientific evidence points to this interpretation.
‘In the Middle Ages bones were often moved around, and this makes definitive identification difficult.’
Some of the bones are being analysed at the University of Bristol.
Researchers hope to trace chemical signatures or isotopes in the bones with identical traces in the rocks around Wessex where she is likely to have grown up.
Prof Horton added: ‘We know that Saxon royalty moved around quite a lot, and we hope to match the isotope results with known locations around Wessex and Mercia, where she could have spent her childhood.’
Her brother, King Athelstan is generally considered to have been the first King of England after he unified the Saxon and Celtic kingdoms following the battle of Brunanburgh in 937.
His tomb survives in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, but is thought to be empty.
Otto I – also known as Otto the Great – became Holy Roman Emperor in 929.  He oversaw a renaissance in German art and architecture, and his empire eventually sprawled across Europe.
The direct descendants of Eadgyth and Otto ruled Germany until 1254, and formed many of the royal families of Europe.

Link: For a more academic appraisal of the politics behind Eadgyth and Otto’s marriage.

Further Reading concerning Wessex and their royal women:

Stafford, P., 1981, ‘The King’s wife in Wessex 800-1066′, Past & Present 91(1): 3-27

Sittingbourne Anglo-Saxons

Following a comment on The Attic from Anglo-Saxon CSI’s blog, I thought that a fuller post, with links, would be appreciated by those who wish to know more, and even get involved:

Hundreds of Saxon graves unearthed on new pub site

A perfectly preserved pair of glass drinking cups was found when the grave of an Anglo-Saxon warrior was unearthed during building work on a new pub.

The burial place was one of more than 200 uncovered at a site in Sittingbourne, known as The Meads.

Other findings included swords, spears, shields, decorative beads and other jewellery, as well as fragments of clothing.

In all 2,500 objects were unearthed and they are now being cleaned and catalogued.

But instead of the work taking place in the bowels of the British Museum it is being carried out in shop fronts in Sittingbourne town centre – next door to the burial site itself.

“This is really unique,” said Andrew Richardson of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, who supervised the excavations.

“Instead of the work being carried out behind closed doors it is being done in a place where visitors are welcome to come and see what is taking place.

“The cleaning work is being done by volunteers who are working under expert supervision.”

As well as cleaning soil and debris from the objects they will be scanned by an X-ray machine similar to that used by airport security officers to reveal hidden details.

A total of 229 Saxon graves were discovered along with four burial sites dating from the Bronze Age.

They were of men, women and children with a number having swords, spears and shields buried with them.

Several of the burial places were of high-ranking members of the Saxon ruling class, judging by the objects discovered with them.

Mr Richardson said: “The graves date from the 6th or 7th centuries when Kent was a kingdom, one of the wealthiest and most sophisticated in England.

“The king and his royal court would have travelled from place to place with Canterbury and Faversham both important centres.

“There have also been some other Saxon cemeteries uncovered in the Sittingbourne area, but these were found in the 19th century so this is the first of recent times.”

The site the graves were uncovered as is known as The Meads – which is also set to be the name of the pub being built by Marston’s Inns and Taverns.

KCC county archaeologist Lis Dyson said: “This gives us a fascinating insight into what life was like in this part of Kent 1,400 years ago.

“The presence of some very rich graves suggests that the area was important at the time the kingdom of Kent was emerging.”

Sittingbourne Heritage Museum recruited the team of 30 conservation volunteers who are carrying out the conservation work

The site was being cleared for a housing development and the pub when the accidental discovery was made last May. Work was stopped to allow for the archaeology dig.

Canterbury Archaeological Trust carried out the excavation and is supervising the community science investigation with the help of expert conservator Dana Goodburn-Brown, from nearby Teynham, who has worked on Channel 4’s Time Team.

Sittingbourne Museum

Come to the Forum shopping centre, next to Sittingbourne rail station, to see the discoveries and how they are being conserved by specialists and a team of local volunteers.
We will be there until January 2010,
Monday to Saturday 10am to 5.30pm.
FREE ENTRY

Canterbury Archaeological Trust Gallery

Ironclad

Ironclad (2010)

It is the year 1215 and the rebel barons of England have forced their despised King John to put his royal seal to the Magna Carta, a noble, seminal document that upheld the rights of free-men. Yet within months of pledging himself to the great charter, the King reneged on his word and assembled a mercenary army on the south coast of England with the intention of bringing the barons and the country back under his tyrannical rule. Barring his way stood the mighty Rochester castle, a place that would become the symbol of the rebel’s momentous struggle for justice and freedom.

Medieval Rochester in Wales

Rochester Castle from the 13th Century has been remade nearly 200 miles from its Kent home at a film set in south Wales for a new movie called Ironclad.
Dragon Studios at Llanilid near Llanharan in Rhondda Cynon Taf has been transformed for the feature length movie, filmed entirely in Wales.
It has been billed as a medieval Magnificent Seven and stars Derek Jacobi, Brian Cox and Mackenzie Crook.

Film recreates Rochester castle siege – in Wales

The gut-wrenching violence used in the open scene of Saving Private Ryan is being transferred to another movie – about the siege of Rochester castle.

And instead of Nazi machine guns cutting down hapless US infantrymen, this is steel on steel up close and personal.

Ironclad is being shot not in Rochester where the castle actually stands, but in the wilds of Wales.

The imposing walls and battlements have been recreated on a Welsh coal tip for the filming of the medieval action movie.

Rochester is a tad too modern for the filmmakers now with a thriving city grown up around it, making the area a little different than the time when it came under siege in 1215.

And the set designers and builders have done a pretty good job with the wood, metal and plastic looking completely authentic – from a distance.

The producer said he wanted to make the film as historically accurate as possible, designed to recreate the siege and make the viewer experience a medieval battle in action.

With a budget of £12 million, it is set to become the most expensive independent movie shot in the UK.

The amazing cast includes Kate Mara as Lady Isabel, Brian Cox, Paul Giamatti as King John, James Purefoy as Marshall, Derek Jacobi as Cornhill, Jason Flemyng as Beckett, plus Mackenzie Crook as Marks along with Rhys Parry Jones and Jamie Foreman.

Bob Hoskins, Robert Carlyle and Richard Attenborough are also tipped to make appearances, but are not confirmed yet.

Producer Rick Benattar made the frenzied bullet-laden Shoot ‘Em Up with Giamatti, who stole the show, and was able to get him on board Ironclad.

Benattar said: “There is a gritty script based on one of the bloodiest battles in world history. We hope to bring a sense of kinetic energy, which will make the viewer feel as if they are right in the thick of it, to the screen and with our amazing cast feel that the film will truly be spectacular.”

Ironclad will hit the screens next year.

This may be a good film.  There’s a good cast line-up, but that’s no guarantee – the budget can go on their fees. I did see a bit of joke-shop weaponry in the footage of the filming. We’ll see.

The Book of Durrow

Analysis of The Book of Durrow and other manuscripts

The focus of the study is on identifying the pigments used for decoration and inks, using non-destructive techniques available through the Preservation and Conservation Department of the Library.

The researchers aim to look at similarity in the materials used in the production of the manuscripts and will seek to address questions around the sources of supply and to re-address questions around features which distinguish Irish-produced manuscripts. The results of the analyses will provide considerable new information on the materials used during the Dark Ages.

The first phase of the analysis will begin in October 2009

The Book of Durrow dated to the latter half of  seventh century, is considered to be the earliest example of an Hiberno-Saxon Insular illuminated manuscript.

Viking helmet?

Iron helmet ‘from Battle of Stamford Bridge’ found in Midlands antique shop
A rusty iron helmet that may be the only surviving relic of one of the most decisive battles in English history has been found in an antiques shop.
A label on the helmet suggests it was fished out of the River Derwent at Stamford Bridge, where King Harold Godwinson defeated Viking invaders in 1066 before he was beaten by William the Conqueror at Hastings.
Historians speculate that Harold, England’s last Anglo-Saxon king, may have halted the Norman Conquest had he not had to fight at Stamford Bridge, near York. He not only had to beat the 10,000-strong Vikings, but march to Yorkshire and back at a punishing pace.
The Vikings had invaded in pursuit of the English throne, but Duke William of Normandy also claimed it, on the grounds that Harold Godwinson, his cousin, had sworn him an oath of fealty and thus should surrender England to him. The Viking force, estimated at 10,000 men, was ready first and had already landed and defeated the northern earls at Fulford in Yorkshire. Harold marched his army 180 miles to Stamford Bridge in four days to take the Vikings by surprise. In a fierce hand-to-hand fight at the bridge over the Derwent, Harald Hardrada was killed, his army shattered, and hardly a tenth of the Viking ships made their way back to Norway.
It was believed that no relics of the battle had survived. Nicholas Reeves, an Egyptologist, found the conical four-plate helmet by chance at a Midlands dealer’s. “The label says ‘Viking Helmet found in the River Derwent at Stamford Bridge by D R Lancaster, May 21, 1950’,” he said. “The possible significance of this was quite unrecognized by the seller, and even the helmet itself appeared to him to be of only moderate interest, presumably because of its condition.”
Alan Williams, a medieval armour metallurgist at the Wallace Collection in London, concluded that the metal is a low-carbon iron typical of early artefacts from Celtic times to before the Industrial Revolution. “It could be 11th century, or Roman, or Civil War,” Dr Williams said. “The shape suggests an early medieval date, and the 10th-11th century helmet attributed to Saint Wenceslas is also a low-carbon steel so it could be 11th century, but we cannot say positively.”
The mystery over the helmet’s origin is likely to persist unless someone is able to identify the label’s writer. For the moment it remains in secure storage, but Dr Reeves said: “If it’s what I suspect, then it belongs in a museum.”

Another hoard!

From another one of my roving reporters.

From Scotland this time – dated between 300-50BC:

£1m golden hoard rewrites history of ancient Scotland

An enthusiast with a metal detector has unearthed a £1 million hoard of Iron Age gold necklaces from a field near Stirling in a discovery that is set to revolutionise the way that historians view some of Scotland’s ancient inhabitants.
According to experts at the National Museums of Scotland (NMS), the four beautifully worked “torcs” represent the most significant find of Iron Age metalwork in the country. One of the Stirling necklaces is a ribbon torc made from twisted Irish or Scottish sheet gold. Another is encrusted with circles of gold wire and beads of gold that look like pearls.
In financial terms, the anonymous finder has struck gold in every sense. A single, similar item — the Newark torc — was sold for £350,000 in 2006, suggesting that treasure trove of well in excess of £1 million will soon be paid by the Crown.
A spokesman for NMS, whose experts are studying the find, said that a value would be determined by the independent Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel early next year. “The finder is normally rewarded with the current market value,” he added.
For archaeologists, monetary matters pale against the historical significance of the torcs, which probably date from between the 1st and 3rd centuries BC. Intriguingly, the Stirling find appears to reveal links between local tribes — traditionally seen as isolated — and other Iron Age people in Europe. Goldwork of roughly equivalent design has been discovered near Toulouse, in the South of France, a connection suggesting that both ideas and technology travelled over surprisingly large distances.
Ian Ralston, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, pointed out that the latest find comes eight years after an Iron Age cart burial was unearthed at Newbridge in West Lothian. This high-status burial — probably a chieftain and his chariot — was the first of its type to have been found in Scotland, though similar interments took place from the Atlantic coast of France to Hungary. “These two finds suggest tribes in what we think of as ‘Scotland’ had rather wider links than archaeologists a generation ago would have expected,” Professor Ralston said. “They knew what was going on elsewhere, valued similar things and emulated practice in burials or votives.
“If you had said to me in 2000, what are the chances of a cart burial turning up in Scotland, I would have said about zilch. If you had asked the same question about a hoard of torcs near Stirling, I would have said about zilch. Then these discoveries turn up and very quickly change perceptions of the past.”
He added that the find was the most significant in Scotland since 1857, when two gold torcs were found on farmland in Morayshire.
Archaeologists divide over the reasons for the burial of hoards. One school of thought believes that precious of objects would be hidden in time of war, to be reclaimed later. However, Professor Ralston leans towards the theory that the hoards were votives, offerings to the gods. Others hoards — such as 20 torcs discovered together at Snettisham, Norfolk — suggested many people acting in concert and burying items together.
“The implication is that this stuff is consigned to the ground for higher purposes. In Scottish terms this is a hugely significant deposit, but even in European terms, four torcs together is very unusual,” he said.
The jewellery probably belonged to members of a Celtic-speaking tribe, Professor Ralston added. The same tribes would bind together to face Roman invaders and would be called Caledonii by Tacitus, the historian, in the 1st century AD.
In July a hoard of more than 1,000 golden Anglo Saxon items were unearthed from a field in Staffordshire.

Scots metal detector man finds 2000-year-old lost treasure trove worth £1m [link has video pics]

WW2 coastal defense research – website

Under the threat of German invasion in the summer of 1940, the creation of a defensive ‘coastal crust’ represented one of the largest construction projects in British history. Hundreds of miles of beaches were closed off to the public and fortifiied with barbed wire, minefields and gun emplacements. The traces of this defence landscape are now only visible archaeologically and it is sometimes difficult to visualise the impact of these defence works on the British coastline. The small village of Walberswick, Suffolk, is a historically important landscape containing a wealth of historical information on World War II defences that allows us to recreate the military environment of 1940.

Online