Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes 9781407311715, 9781407322667

Citation preview

BAR 586 2013 HENIG & PAINE (Eds) PRESERVING AND PRESENTING THE PAST IN OXFORDSHIRE AND BEYOND

B A R

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Edited by

Martin Henig Crispin Paine

BAR British Series 586 2013

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Edited by

Martin Henig Crispin Paine

BAR British Series 586 2013

ISBN 9781407311715 paperback ISBN 9781407322667 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407311715 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011

This wood engraving of sloes by Ani Colville celebrates John’s love not only of making sloe gin, but of the countryside in general

CONTENTS Introduction...............................................................................................................................................ii List of contributors...................................................................................................................................iii Oxfordshire.............................................................................................................................................. 1 Christopher Young: Must ancient industry remain invisible? The example of the Oxfordshire Roman pottery industry..........................................................................3 James Bond: The endowments and estates of Dorchester Abbey..............................................................9 Malcolm Airs & George Speake: The visit of artist John Harper to Dorchester on Thames in 1832........................................................................................................... 19 John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage...........................................................................................................27 Arthur MacGregor: ‘The first great show’: the English Agricultural Society at Oxford in 1839.................................................................................................................................... 45 Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row................................................................................................. 53 Don Benson: In the beginning: memories of the first ten years in the Field Department at Oxford City & County Museum.............................................................................71 Sarah Gray: Research, recording and creativity: Oxfordshire Museums Service exhibitions and publications................................................................................................................... 75 Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldrey, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance................................85 Beyond..................................................................................................................................................103 Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured.................................................................................................................105 Jill Greenaway: Modelling Calleva in Reading Museum’s Silchester Gallery: combining fact and imagination........................................................................................................... 125 Maureen Mellor: Drink, women and song: exploring ale-wives and related folklore.......................... 135 Christine Bloxham: The potential for using miniature models in museums......................................... 147 Martyn Brown: Baler twine and old rope: museums of agriculture and rural life...............................157 Val Bott: Returning home: revitalising a historic house through past occupants’ lives.......................165 Brian Durham: A democratising of heritage service over four decades: the people of ‘Anyplace’ and their visitors........................................................................................... 171 James Ayres: Empirical design as a product of the logic of craftsmanship.......................................... 179 Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladimir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’.............. 189 Crispin Paine: Crumpets and clocks: how do we respect an object?.................................................... 205 In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011.............................................................................. 211 Bibliography of John Rhodes............................................................................................................... 230

i

Introduction This volume comprises a collection of essays in memory of the late John Rhodes by some of his many friends and colleagues. They salute a remarkable individual of wide tastes and interests. His achievements in the conservation, study and recording of the past from the Roman period to the present day, both in museums and in the field, were prodigious. The aim of the book is follow the tradition of English antiquarian scholarship by taking three approaches: the study of individual monuments and objects, the investigation of the manner in which that study is reflected in their present-day care and interpretation, and the study of the wider implications of such approaches. Thus for the Roman period Christopher Young investigates how the Oxford pottery industry has been presented to the public since he largely discovered it forty years ago, Jill Greenaway describes the Silchester displays at Reading Museum, while Martin Henig adventurously examines the political structure and ethnic identity of England before, during and after the ‘Roman’ period in Britain. These three approaches are carried forward by the other contributors, some focussing on Oxfordshire, others looking well beyond the county. In Oxford City, Nancy Hood examines the colourful waterside community of the 19th century and Arthur MacGregor the first great Agricultural Exhibition. In the wider county, James Bond looks at the wealth of medieval Dorchester Abbey, and John Steane at a long-established Wantage business in the more recent past, while Malcolm Airs and George Speake explore a little-known example of Oxfordshire antiquarianism, the artist John Harper in Dorchester. Lauren Gilmour writes of another artist, the Abingonian, Oswald Couldrey, and his work and influence in South India in the first half of the 20th century. Some of the early achievements of the Oxfordshire County Museum Service are discussed by Don Benson and Sarah Gray. Beyond Oxfordshire, Maureen Mellor celebrates the medieval ale-wife, while Brian Durham and Martyn Brown examine the success or otherwise of our museums, and Crispin Paine looks at an odd demand made of curators. Christine Bloxham and Val Bott respectively argue for two other ways of bringing history to the public: the use of models and the interpretation of the past inhabitants of historic houses. Looking even further afield, Peter Paine notes how past ideologies, like historic buildings or objects, can be exploited for current political purposes, while James Ayres discusses the relationship between the developing technology of the artisan and the development of the arts and crafts. The range and scholarship of these contributions would, we believe, have delighted John Rhodes, in whose honour they are presented - particularly since they are offered by friends. We are glad to include in this volume a tribute to John’s life comprised of notes and reminiscences from friends and family. As this book in general and that section in particular show, John Rhodes was someone in whose presence one felt at ease: kind, learned, a real gentleman and deeply loved. His funeral service in St Mary Magdalen’s Church in Oxford, which his own undergraduate room in Balliol had overlooked, was packed to capacity, a tribute to a scholar antiquary in the great tradition of John Aubrey, William Stukeley and our heroes Alderman William Fletcher and Charles Roach Smith.

Martin Henig and Crispin Paine, Easter 2013.

ii

List of Contributors MALCOLM AIRS first met John Rhodes over a wall painting at 34 Upper High Street, Thame. He was then Conservation Officer at South Oxfordshire District Council. He subsequently became Professor of Conservation and the Historic Environment at the University of Oxford, until his retirement in 2006. JAMES AYRES was for over thirty-five years the Director of the John Judkyn Memorial (since absorbed into the American Museum at Bath). In this capacity he circulated exhibitions on American themes, some of which were shown by John Rhodes at Woodstock. DON BENSON was the Oxford City and County Museum’s first Field Officer, spending ten years at the Museum before his appointment as the first Director of one of the newly-established Welsh Archaeological Trusts, Dyfed. CHRISTINE BLOXHAM specialised in folk life studies and was for nine years Assistant Keeper of Antiquities at the Oxfordshire County Museum, working with John Rhodes. She has since worked as a writer, lecturer, broadcaster and craft teacher. She has written or co-written nine books on local history and folk lore and is currently co-writing one on Bicester shops. She has combined her passion for family history with her love of dolls’ houses in creating Edward Wood’s house. VAL BOTT is a freelance curator and historian, advising museums and other heritage bodies. She chairs the William Hogarth Trust and runs a garden history blog at nurserygardeners.com. MARTYN BROWN followed John Rhodes as Keeper of Antiquities in Oxfordshire in 1988; previously he was the first curator of the Somerset Rural Life Museum (1974-1983), Director of Museums in Jersey (1983-86), and a freelance consultant (1986-88). In 1989 he was appointed County Museums and Heritage Officer for Oxfordshire, and subsequently County Heritage and Arts Officer. He left Oxfordshire in 2011 and is currently a Monument Fellow at the Somerset Rural Life Museum. JAMES BOND was born in Oxford, trained as an historical geographer at the University of Birmingham, and worked as Archaeological Officer at Worcestershire County Museum for five years before taking up the post of Assistant Keeper of the Field Section of Oxfordshire Museums Service, which he held from 1974 to 1986. Now based in North Somerset, he works freelance as a lecturer and writer on landscape history, with particular research interests in medieval monastic estates. BRIAN DURHAM worked at Oxford City and County Museum until 1970 when he started a 38-year career in field archaeology, concentrating on the City of Oxford.  This culminated in his appointment as Oxford City Council’s first Archaeologist. In retirement he pursues long-standing interests in the terrestrial and atmospheric carbon cycles, lending him a scientific perspective on many aspects of heritage service. LAUREN GILMOUR trained as a classical archaeologist and worked as a medieval archaeologist in Lincolnshire before joining the Oxfordshire Museum Service to curate the Museum of Oxford, the County’s archaeological collections and Abingdon Museum, providing an opportunity to research and publish unusual donations. SARAH GRAY read history and Anglo-Saxon archaeology at Durham University 1969-1973, and took a Diploma in Museum Studies at Leicester in 1974-75, after a year on excavations and selling Wedgwood china in their Regent Street shop. Then a Home Counties museum career: Banbury Museum, as part of the Oxfordshire Service 1975-1987, Director of Hertford Museum 1987-1991, and Buckinghamshire County Museum, first managing the collections, and since 2001 Manager and Curator. JILL GREENAWAY is a museum archaeologist and is currently Collection Care Curator at Reading Museum. Her particular interests range from rural settlement in the civitas of the Atrebates to the reappraisal of the medieval leper hospital of Reading Abbey to the history of the Yattendon copper and brass industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Having no artistic ability herself she has profound admiration of those who with a few strokes of a pen can bring the past before our eyes. MARTIN HENIG is Hon. Visiting Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, and an Assistant Priest in the Osney benefice, Oxford. He was formerly Hon. Editor of the British Archaeological Association for 23 years. Martin is the author of a range of books on Roman art and religion including Religion in Roman Britain, Classical Gems in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Art of Roman Britain and The Heirs of King Verica.

iii

NANCY HOOD worked for Oxfordshire County Museums Service, at first as museum assistant for John Rhodes, then as curator of the Vale and Downland Museum, Wantage, Abingdon Museum, the Museum of Oxford, and as Head of Resources in Cultural Services. She has written a number of books on the towns and landscape of Oxfordshire. ARTHUR MacGREGOR, formerly a curator at the Ashmolean Museum, edits the Journal of the History of Collections. A regular contributor to other publications, his own books include, most recently, Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One. MAUREEN MELLOR is a part-time tutor at Oxford University Department of Continuing Education and a specialist in post-Roman ceramics.  She was the first John D. Rassweiler Curator of Medieval Collections at the British Museum and has worked for the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, creating an online resource in medieval ceramics. JULIAN MUNBY, with interests in historic buildings and landscapes, is Head of Buildings Archaeology at Oxford Archaeology and worked with John Rhodes on a series of Conservation Plans. CRISPIN PAINE has been Keeper of Branch Museums for Oxfordshire County Museums Service, Director of the Area Museums Service for South Eastern England and a museums and heritage consultant. He is an editor of Material Religion: the Journal of Objects, Art and Religion, and recently the author of Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties. PETER PAINE read Politics and International Relations at Reading University, and is now studying for an MSc in Russian and East European Studies at Oxford. GEORGE SPEAKE is an Honorary Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford, where as a student he first met John Rhodes. He was formerly Head of Fine Art and History of Art, Oxfordshire School of Art and Design. JOHN STEANE was County Archaeologist for Oxfordshire, 1976-1990. His most recent book, co-authored with James Ayres, is Traditional Buildings in the Oxford Region c. 1300-1840. CHRISTOPHER YOUNG was born and brought up in Oxford. He published his monograph on the Roman Pottery Industry of the Oxford Region in 1977.  He has worked for many years for English Heritage in various roles and is now Head of International Advice, covering international heritage issues, including the World Heritage Convention, and advising on the management of World Heritage Sites.

iv

Oxfordshire

Must ancient industry remain invisible? The example of the Oxfordshire Roman Pottery industry Christopher Young Ancient industry remains largely invisible in the public eye. Using the case study of the Oxfordshire Roman Pottery industry, this paper explores the reasons for this, and also the factors that can lead to greater awareness. It is suggested that traditional museum displays are essential to display the evidence, since few early industrial archaeological sites survive in a state which could be displayed, but such display needs to be supplemented by active engagement, for example through community projects and the use of new technologies.

with working machinery. As such they can often engage the interest of the public and attract bodies of volunteers to support them.

The presentation of ancient industry and everyday life has not always been a priority for museums and archaeologists, though increasingly there is emphasis on the need to present a broad and inclusive picture of society. During the 1970s, John Rhodes and his colleagues at the Oxfordshire County Museums Service were in the forefront of this movement to widen awareness of the past beyond elite activities to society as a whole. One of the beneficiaries of this approach was the Roman pottery industry of the Oxford region (see e.g. Rhodes 1980, 14). One of the foremost of such industries in Roman Britain, it was previously virtually invisible to the public, as well as to most archaeologists working in the field.

Public awareness of earlier industry is much lower, and often non-existent. This is perhaps not surprising since by and large it does not leave visible and spectacular remains scattered around the rural and urban landscape. It is also true that industrial activity was less in a predominantly agricultural society. It was nonetheless important right back to the Neolithic period, as evidenced by the Langdale axe factories in the Lake District. Ever since then crafts and industries have provided people with what they could not grow in their fields. After stone tools came metal ones, requiring mining and processing of ores, and manufacture of tools. Once building began in materials other than wood, there was a need for quarries for building stone and roofing slate, and later for clay for tiles and bricks. Pottery was in use for a wide range of purposes from the Neolithic onwards. Through time, the scale of production has varied, sometimes as smallscale craft production in the interstices of the agricultural cycle, sometimes as more defined industries of greater or lesser scale, and of various modes of production (cf Peacock 1982). Except for archaeologists and historians, this industrial background to all societies tends to be little known, partly because it generally does not leave substantial remains except for very rare exceptions such as the World Heritage Roman gold mining of Las Médulas in Spain, which devastated entire mountainsides. In many cases, particularly of extractive industries, later industrialisation has destroyed the early evidence.

Industrial archaeology as a discipline has been recognised only in the last half-century, but some aspects of it have caught the public imagination and interest. The whole of the Ironbridge Gorge, the so-called ‘birthplace’ of the industrial revolution, is a World Heritage site, as are other places such as the salt works of Salins-les-Bains and Arc-et-Senans, and the Canal du Midi, all in France, and the Engelsberg Ironworks in Sweden. In the UK, World Heritage sites also include the textile production centres of the Derwent Valley, New Lanark and Saltaire, the iron, coal and steel valley of Blaenavon, the deep metal mining industry of Cornwall and Devon, and the Pontcysyllte Canal and Aqueduct. Numerous remains of industrial plants are conserved as museums. Openair museums such as Blists Hill at Ironbridge try to convey some sense of industrial life in the Victorian period. Various installations, such as the pumping station at the Kew Bridge Steam Museum, are maintained in working order by enthusiastic groups of volunteers. Others, like the Queen Street Mill in Burnley, are maintained by local authorities as working museums where visitors can experience something of the noise and smells of a working factory.

In Britain, it was probably during the Roman occupation from the 1st to 4th centuries AD that production on an industrial scale first occurred, including pottery manufacture. For much of that time, there was a major Roman pottery industry along and just to the west of the Roman road that ran between the small towns of Alchester and Dorchester in Oxfordshire. The biggest known concentration of this industry lies under modern East Oxford, in what are now the suburbs of Headington, Cowley, Blackbird Leys, Littlemore and Rose Hill. Thus the industrial story of east Oxford, still carried on by the

However, virtually all of these places date from the 18th century or later and are preserved as evidence of industrialisation and urbanisation, transforming processes underpinning the development of modern society. In terms of display, they have the inestimable advantage that they leave large and spectacular structural remains, often

3

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes BMW Mini car factory, goes back about a thousand years before the foundation of the University in the medieval walled town to the west, which is now Oxford’s main claim to fame.

the country, could be made, and arranged together, we should then be enabled to localise them at a glance (Jewitt 1851, 59). In one short paragraph this summarises the notions of typology and distribution of pottery which are two of the starting points of modern archaeological studies.

There were clearly potters active in the Upper Thames Valley during the first century AD, but around AD 100 there was a step change in production. Kiln sites were established in the Littlemore/Cowley area to produce specialised wares such as mortaria and flagons. Quite possibly the potters who started these sites moved to the area from the Verulamium region (Tyers 1996, 63). These specialist wares were traded further down the Thames and also over the Cotswolds into the Severn valley (Young 2000, Fig. 14).

Despite this flying start, and subsequent discoveries of more production sites, Oxfordshire wares then passed largely unnoticed for over a century, in sharp contrast to other industries such as Castor and the New Forest, the latter made famous by the work and drawings of Heyward Sumner (Sumner 1927; see also Collingwood and Myres 1937, 236-7). The next major publication of an Oxfordshire production site was in 1922 of the site at Sandford, excavated over 40 years previously (May 1922). Around the same time the possible wide distribution of Oxford wares was noted in the Richborough excavation reports (Bushe-Fox 1926, 89-90). In the 1930s there were excavations of kiln sites at Rose Hill and Dorchester, leading to recognition of the potential significance of the industry in the Victoria County History:

From around the mid-3rd century, the range of wares increased with the addition of red colour coated table wares, imitating, at some distance, the shiny red samian ware which had earlier been the preferred tableware, and so-called parchment wares, white smooth-surfaced bowls with red-painted decorations. From around that time, the production area expanded into Headington and probably further north, and south towards Dorchester-on-Thames;, where there may also have been an early production centre. By the late fourth century, distribution of Oxford wares extended right across southern Britain as well as into Wales, the Midlands and East Anglia (Young 2000, Figs 17, 25, 45). By this stage, the Oxford industry was one of the three or four major Roman pottery industries in Roman Britain.

As yet no student has undertaken the research necessary to show how far the pottery made in these kilns was traded and peddled; the evidence exists: we know what wares were made at Sandford, Rose Hill, and Dorchester, and it only remains for some one to work over the finds of pottery on Roman sites in neighbouring counties in order to trace the extent of the trade (Harden 1939, 303).

The first published evidence of the Oxford industry comes from the mid-nineteenth century, a time when awareness of Roman Britain and of some of its less monumental aspects, such as pottery production, was growing. The first publication of Castor Ware (now known as Nene Valley wares) had come a little earlier and firmly established this pottery in the awareness of scholars (Artis 1828, Smith 1846). In contrast, and despite its prominence in late Roman Britain, awareness of the Oxfordshire industry over the past 150 years has been very chequered, even among archaeologists and antiquarians.

Even as late as 1971 it was possible for the excavator of the Latimer villa in Buckinghamshire to look as far away as North Yorkshire for the nearest parallels to the Oxfordshire parchment wares he found there, despite the publication in local journals of further kiln excavations (Branigan 1971, 130), and references in general works to the likely significance of the Oxfordshire industry (Frere 1967, 292). Two linked events in the early 1970s did much to remedy this position. Firstly the present writer was funded from 1969 to prepare a DPhil thesis on the Oxfordshire pottery industry, much of the material for which was held by the Ashmolean Museum. Coincidentally the threat of development of the Churchill Hospital led to the excavation on behalf of the Oxford Archaeological Excavation Committee (now Oxford Archaeology) over three summer seasons (1971-1973) of around a half hectare of the known production site. This area excavation produced not just some well-preserved kilns and more than two tonnes of pottery, but also evidence of the organisation of four successive workshops from the mid third century to the late fourth century (see Young 2000, 23-9, 46-50, 243-5). Even now, such evidence of organisation and planning is rare for Romano-British pottery production sites because the resources and time for such large-scale excavations are seldom forthcoming.

The first person to recognise the area east of Oxford as a pottery production area was Llewellyn Jewitt, who in 1851 published a report on the enigmatic site of Headington Wick (Jewitt 1851). Not investigated since then, this appears to combine pottery production with substantial stone buildings and is unique in that respect in the Oxford region. In his publication Jewitt was probably the first archaeologist in Britain to publish comparative cross sections of pottery types (see Jewitt 1851, Plate v and also Tyers 1996, 6-7). Jewitt also recognised many of the possibilities of pottery to support archaeological inference: Comparison of specimens from various locations may assist us in appropriating the varieties to the potteries where they were manufactured. ….If a collection of the rims themselves, from all parts of 4

Christopher Young: Must ancient industry remain invisible? The excavation involved numerous volunteers from local schools and was generously supported by the Churchill Hospital, among others. Subsequently volunteers helped to process the pottery at an extramural class organised by the (now) Oxford University Department of Continuing Education at Rewley House. This work aroused some public interest, with local press reports; it was also the subject of reports on the newly-established and pioneering Radio Oxford. The quality and quantity of material led to the Oxfordshire Museum Service deciding not just to accept the pottery and other finds from the excavations, but also to lift the two best preserved kilns for eventual display as museum objects.

sherds of Roman pottery to represent one of the most important episodes of the history of the eastern half of the city. The most comprehensive display of the industry is now in the Ashmolean, which holds most pottery recovered before c.1970. The Ashmolean also has an excellent page on the industry on its website (Walker 2011). Re-establishing a more prominent presence in both the City and Woodstock Museums, and perhaps eventually in a new museum in East Oxford, seems essential, since this is the only way in which the public at large can see and appreciate the evidence for the industry. Unlike later industries or elite structures of the Roman period such as villas and urban sites, there is nothing that can be displayed in situ, though it would be possible in some cases to mark the location of production sites as a means of raising awareness.

John Rhodes, then Keeper of Antiquities for the Museums Service, was much involved in this process and then in establishing the display at Fletcher’s House in Woodstock. His enthusiasm and interest in making public aspects of the area’s history and archaeology not at that time normally very available was instrumental in this achievement. The display at Woodstock opened in 1976 and was focused on one of the kilns, with its stokehole outlined on the carpet to give a full impression of its size

However, in a time when available media and means of accessing information and entertainment are continually expanding, it may be that simple museum display is not the only way in which people can become aware of important aspects of their history. The East Oxford Project, a community archaeology project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the John Fell Fund of the University of Oxford, is providing the opportunity for those living in or interested in East Oxford to learn more about the past of the area and to increase knowledge of it through fieldwork. It now has some 600 active participants involved in a wide range of activities (Archaeox 2012).

At the same time, plans were in hand to establish a Museum of Oxford in the old public library and its basement in the Town Hall. A second kiln was displayed there as the centrepiece of the Roman display when the museum opened in 1975. In both cases, the kilns were supplemented by selections of pottery, maps and interpretive labels. Both displays benefited from the close links with the then County Sites and Monuments Record and from the involvement of the archaeologists who had worked on the site at the Churchill. The characterisation and analysis of the industry provided the necessary conceptual framework for the displays and their interpretation (Young 1977, 2000). Before this, there had been a small display of pottery in the Ashmolean with very little interpretation.

Apart from fieldwork such as geophysical survey or test-pitting to locate pottery production sites and so forth, projects such as this have the opportunity to raise awareness through web sites and events. Given the right circumstances, such activity could make many people more aware of the remains of the industry among which they live, and this has indeed happened. Such projects also provide opportunities of engaging schools and children in their local history and archaeology.

The mid-1970s were in some sense a high-water mark in the public availability of the Oxfordshire pottery industry. In 1977, the present writer’s Roman Pottery Industry of the Oxford Region was published (Young 1977, 2000) providing the basic information required by professional archaeologists for their work. As a consequence of all this activity, awareness of the Oxfordshire industry and its significance remains very well established among those working in the field. Public awareness of it has been rather less.

Long term curation of the industry, both of selected production sites and of the material from sites that have been excavated, is essential. The first should be assured through designation and the spatial planning system, the second is assured by the County Museum Service. This preserves the basic resource so that it is available in the future for further study and research. Maintaining awareness of the industry is essential both for the purposes of learning and enjoyment of the past, and because awareness among the public will help the future curation of the industry. Traditionally, this has been achieved through publications, museum displays and teaching, for example by the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education which also supports the East Oxford Project. Achieving adequate museum displays is clearly important. It will also be important to develop in the future other means of raising awareness through digital media, fieldwork and events. Apart from

The museum presence of the industry has declined in recent years. Fletcher’s House in Woodstock has been redisplayed and less prominence is now given to the industry, with the kiln no longer on display. The City Council, in what they describe in something approaching Orwellian Newspeak on their website as an ‘exciting project to relocate the Museum of Oxford in new galleries within the Town Hall’ have downsized the permanent displays of the museum to two rooms only (Oxford City Council 2012). In this display, there are now only five 5

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography

the suggestions above, there are also possibilities for guided trails using smartphone apps giving information on what has been discovered at the various sites.

Archeox 2012. Archeox: the East Oxford Archaeology and History Project. Available at https://www.archeox.net/ (accessed 3 March, 2013). Artis E T, 1828. The Durobrivae of Antoninus Identified and Illustrated. London. Branigan K., 1971. Latimer Belgic, Roman, Dark Age and Early Modern Farm. Bristol: Chess Valley Archaeological and Historical Society. Bushe-Fox J. P., 1926. First Report on the Excavation of the Roman Report at Richborough, Kent. London: Society of Antiquaries Research Reports. Collingwood R. G. and Myres J. N. L., 1937. Roman Britain and the English Settlements, (2nd ed). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frere S. S., 1967. Britannia. (1st ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Harden D.B. 1939. ‘Industries’ in Harden D.B., Sutherland C.H.V., Taylor, M.V., ‘Romano-British Remains’ in L.F. Salzman (ed) The Victoria County History of Oxford Volume 1, 303 - 6. Jewitt L., 1851. ‘On Roman Remains, recently discovered at Headington, near Oxford’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association vi, 52 - 67. May T., 1922. ‘On the Pottery from the Waste Heap of the Roman Potters’ Kilns discovered at Sandford, near Littlemore, Oxon., in 1879’, Archaeologia lxxii, 225242. Oxford City Council, 2012. Visiting the Museum of Oxford. Available at: http://www.oxford.gov.uk/PageRender/ decM/VisitingtheMuseumofOxford.htm (accessed 3 March 2013). Peacock D.P.S., 1982. Pottery in the Roman World: an ethnoarchaeological approach. London: Longman. Rhodes J.G., 1980. Oxfordshire: A County and its People. Woodstock: Oxfordshire County Museum Service. Smith C. R., 1846. ‘On Roman Potters’ Kilns and Pottery, discovered, by Mr E. T. Artis, in the County of Northampton’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association i, 1-9. Sumner H., 1927, New Forest Roman Potteries. London. Tyers P., 1996. Roman Pottery in Britain. London: Batsford. Walker S., 2011. The Oxford Potteries. Available at: http:// britisharchaeology.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/roman-oxon/ oxon-pottery.html (accessed 3 March, 2013). Young C., 1977. The Roman Pottery Industry of the Oxford Region. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports 43. Young C., 2000. The Roman Pottery Industry of the Oxford Region. (with new introduction and updated bibliography) Oxford, British Archaeological Reports 43

The issues raised by this discussion of the Oxford industry have wider implications. Generally, it seems that industry before the industrial revolution remains by and large invisible. This is not surprising, since the remains are ephemeral and often fragmentary; they lack the immediacy and presence of the remains of the industrial revolution, or of earlier elite buildings such as castles and churches. At a time when approaches to the past are becoming more holistic and inclusive, this is regrettable. Industry before industrialisation may have been a lesser component of society than subsequently but it was still an essential part of economic and social structures. Awareness of this aspect of society and how it meshed with everything else is important if we are to improve our understanding of the past. The history of the Oxford industry in modern times shows that it is possible to raise awareness and interest, but more difficult to maintain it. In the 1970s a particular combination of archaeological research, excavation, public involvement and enlightened museum practice led to a fair degree of recognition which has subsequently faded. The use of community involvement and modern technology provides exciting opportunities to raise awareness and interest in early industry. It still needs to be linked to more traditional museum displays, since only in this way can people see and appreciate the authentic evidence of past societies and industries, as was achieved by John Rhodes and his colleagues almost 40 years ago. Done well, this could make the Oxford Roman pottery industry known to, and valued by much greater numbers of people than has been the case hitherto. There is a need to develop such new approaches using the new methods now available. As John Rhodes and his colleagues in the County Museums Service forty years ago took bold decisions to give great prominence to the industry in not one, but two museums, so now we need to look for ways to raise and maintain awareness of it, particularly in those places where it flourished nearly 2,000 years ago. In doing so, we need to build on existing initiatives such as the East Oxford Project, making the fullest use possible of new technology as well as through more traditional museum displays.

6

Christopher Young: Must ancient industry remain invisible?

Fig. 1. Roman settlement in the Oxford region (Map: after Young 1977, Fig. 2).

7

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig. 2. A standard late Roman mortarium from an Oxford kiln (Photo: Christopher Young).

Fig. 3. Oxfordshire kiln from the Churchill Hospital excavations, formerly on display in the Museum of Oxford (Photo: Oxfordshire Museums Service)

8

The Endowments and Estates of Dorchester Abbey James Bond

Compared with the extensive literature on large Benedictine and Cistercian estates, relatively few investigations of the properties of Augustinian houses of modest rank have been undertaken.   Dorchester, a pre-Conquest cathedral, was reformed as a house of regular canons under Augustinian rule in about 1140, but its resources remained relatively limited.   This paper summarises the evidence for the abbey’s dependent churches (which provided an unusually high proportion of its income), for its acquisition and management of its landed estates and for its few urban properties. 

John Rhodes devoted his career to museums. In a collection of essays in his memory, a contribution on the estates of a medieval religious house might, therefore, seem anomalous. However, from its opening in 1966, the Oxford City and County Museum at Woodstock had never confined its attentions to collections and displays. Its first director, Jean Cook, had taken the innovative step of appointing a Field Officer to the staff. The first incumbent of that post, Don Benson, established there the Sites and Monuments Record, prototype of the Historic Environment Records now established in every county.

myself, was devoted to the medieval abbey. Wishing to indulge a personal interest by including a lengthy discussion of the abbey’s estates, I had suggested that space could be made for this by expurgating all references to portable antiquities. John was more sympathetic than I deserved, allowing me 800 words! Indeed, after his move to Reading, he invited me to assist him in a study of the landed properties of the great Benedictine abbey there. Sadly that project never came to fruition. However, as a tribute to a greatly-admired and much-missed friend and colleague, it seems appropriate here to expand upon the topic which I could only summarise briefly in 1985.

In 1974 Woodstock became the headquarters of Oxfordshire County Council’s Department of Museum Services, and I joined the staff as Don Benson’s assistant. John was already in place as Keeper of Antiquities, and I still remember with gratitude the warmth of his welcome. Our careers there overlapped for twelve years, and our complementary interests produced a particularly happy working relationship. As a landscape historian I always affected a disdain for artefacts, dismissing them as ‘knicknack archaeology’, and pretending to be unable to distinguish samian ware from willow pattern. John always took this gentle ribbing with great good humour, and gave as good as he got, professing a similar abhorrence of maps, at a time when there was an admittedly overworked fashion for employing maps on book covers, in subdued colours overprinted with titles. While his own responsibilities were primarily concerned with museum collections, he remained keenly aware of the importance of context and the significance of the landscape beyond the museum walls, and was a stalwart supporter of the stilldeveloping Sites and Monuments Record. The breadth of his interests was reflected in the projects undertaken by the Oxfordshire Museums Research Committee under his chairmanship, with their associated temporary displays and publications.

The Origins of Dorchester Abbey According to Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the first church at Dorchester-on-Thames was founded in AD 635 by the missionary bishop Birinus. This minster was briefly the centre of a West Saxon see, losing its pre-eminence to Winchester in 662. By 888 Dorchester had been revived as a see for south-eastern Mercia. As King Alfred’s successors regained control over lands conquered by the Danes, Dorchester’s diocese expanded over the extinguished sees of Leicester and Lindsey, ultimately extending from the Thames to the Humber. The first Norman bishop, Remigius, removed his see from Dorchester to Lincoln in 1072. Despite its marginalisation, however, the church at Dorchester continued to be served by a residual community of secular canons. Around 1140 Alexander, third Norman bishop of Lincoln, reorganised the Dorchester canons along stricter lines, following the rule drawn up in the early fifth century by Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia. Initially Dorchester was attached to a congregation headed by the abbey of Arrouaise on the borders of Artois and Picardy, a group of regular canons with some distinctive customs, partly influenced by the Cistercian monastic reform. However, the authority of the mother-house over its English family waned during the 13th century, and the former Arrouaisian houses became indistinguishable from those which had followed an unmodified version of the Augustinian rule. Dorchester remained a house of Augustinian canons until its dissolution in 1536 (Dyson 1975; Cook and Rowley 1985, 34-43; Tiller 2005, 24-38; Rodwell 2009, 25-40).

John’s design skills and publication experience were often called upon by other organisations. In 1985, when Oxford University’s Department for External Studies published a synthesis of the archaeology and history of Dorchester-onThames (Cook and Rowley 1985), he contributed to the text and was responsible for the overall design. One chapter, co-authored by John, Nicholas Doggett, Julian Munby and

9

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes The Endowments of the Abbey (Fig.1)

Where the abbey held the advowson, it could increase its income by appropriating parochial revenues from tithes and glebe lands. Pishill and Shirburn churches were appropriated before 1220, Bix Brand in 1275 (VCH, ii, 878; Rot.Gravesend, 227-8). The abbey retained the great tithes (one-tenth of the value of harvested corn, hay and wood), allocating the small tithes (one-tenth of the value of new-born calves and Iambs, poultry, milk and eggs) to the support of a vicar. At Shirburn the vicar received 2s annually until the abbot could provide a suitable residence (Rot.Welles, i, 177; ii, 6; Rot.Grosseteste, 468). Presentments of vicars to Warpsgrove church are also recorded, in 1245 and 1272-3 (Rot.Grosseteste, 484; Rot.Gravesend, 224). The appropriation of Bix Brand in 1275 was conditional upon the establishment of a vicarage ‘when it seems desirable’ (Rot.Gravesend, 2278). However, in 1302 Bishop Dalderby gave licence for the churches of Bix, Pishill and Nettlebed to be served by chaplains instead of vicars, because of their poverty (Reg.Sutton, v, 134; VCH xvi, 224); probably this simply endorsed established practice, since no institutions had been recorded in them. At Pishill the abbey seems to have neglected this duty, and in 1356 its lord and parishioners took their case before the episcopal court, hoping to secure a resident chaplain funded by the canons, as was their due (VCH ii, 88). Dissatisfaction with the abbot’s support may also lie behind a dispute over presentation rights to Nettlebed church in 1394, which resulted in his temporary expulsion, though the court subsequently reinstated all his former rights there (CPR 1391-1396, 365).

Religious institutions depended upon endowments of various kinds, both for their foundation and for their continuing support. Wealth in the Middle Ages was largely based upon income from land. However, wholesale grants of entire manors, which had established the wealth of older Benedictine abbeys such as Abingdon, generally eluded the Arrouaisian canons, because they did not arrive in England until the 1130s. Instead their landed properties were usually accumulated by piecemeal gifts and purchases, which might be increased in value by agricultural improvement. Their possession of churches also provided significant income: on the eve of the Dissolution some 36 per cent of the entire wealth of the Augustinian order in Britain came from spiritualities. i) Income from churches Dorchester Abbey’s foundation charter does not survive, but early papal confirmations indicate the nature of its original holdings. In 1146 Pope Eugenius III confirmed its possession of chapels at Chislehampton, Clifton Hampden, Drayton St Leonard, Stadhampton and Toot Baldon, which lay within the cathedral’s ancient estates, and had formerly been served by prebendaries. The ecclesiastical revenues of Dorchester itself, probably including the chapels of Overy and Burcot, also went to the abbey, though no vicarage was endowed, and the canons were responsible for ensuring that the pastoral needs of the parish were served (Reg.Antiq., i, 246-7, no.286).

Records of the tax on ecclesiastical and monastic income authorised by Pope Nicholas IV (circa 1291) show £58 18s 4d coming to Dorchester Abbey from spiritualities. £41 6s 8d came from Dorchester itself with its former prebendaries’ chapels, smaller amounts coming from the churches of Shirburn (£10 13s 4d), Bix Brand (£6 13s 4d) and Nuffield (where Dorchester’s portion yielded only 5s, twice that amount going to the prior of Wallingford) (Tax. Eccl., 30).

The first known addition to this core endowment was the church of the ancient royal manor of Benson with its tithes and appurtenances, granted by the Empress Matilda, probably in 1141, and confirmed to Abbot Eustace in 1205 (Rot.Chart., 1.i, 142b). The churches of Nettlebed and Warborough, originally chapels of Benson, were probably included in Matilda’s grant. Dorchester’s five original chapels, with Benson and its two chapels, formed the nucleus of a peculiar which remained outside the jurisdiction of the archdeacon (Val.Eccl., ii, 510).

Although regular canons were equipped to take direct charge of churches in their possession, they generally preferred to appoint secular clergy instead. Unusually, a lingering tradition, probably derived from Dorchester’s ancient minster role, resulted in some of its churches continuing to be served, at least intermittently, by the abbey’s own canons; the 1445 visitation record notes up to half a dozen canons absent in outlying villages for this purpose. It was, however, difficult for even the most conscientious of canons to undertake effectively all the duties of pastoral care within his parish while at the same time fulfilling his responsibilities towards the communal life of his abbey. Moreover, the temptation for the abbot to remove a disruptive individual by sending the offending canon out to one of the peripheral churches must have been considerable: in 1445 Brother Ralph Carnelle complained bitterly of being sent to administer the sacraments at Stadhampton, where the church had previously been served by a secular chaplain; he claimed that the abbot

A papal bull of 1163 confirmed the abbey’s previous endowments and added the churches of Pishill, Shirburn and Marsh Baldon and the chapel of Fifield by Benson (Salter 1909, 12-13). Pishill, possession of which was confirmed in 1205 (Rot.Chart., 1,i, 150b; Mon.Angl., vi, 324) was incorporated into Dorchester’s peculiar, but Shirburn was not; and the churches of Bix Brand and Warpsgrove, which had also come into the abbey’s possession before 1300, also remained under ordinary archdiaconal jurisdiction (VCH ii, 87; VCH vii, 53). Marsh Baldon church soon slipped from the abbey’s grasp into the hands of the secular lords of that manor, though Dorchester reserved from it an annual pension of 1lb of frankincense (Rot.Welles, i, 1023; Rot.Grosseteste, 469, 470; Rot.Gravesend, 213). An attempt to claim the advowson of Bix Gibwen in 1278-9 was unsuccessful (Rot.Gravesend, 234).

10

James Bond: The endowments and estates of Dorchester Abbey

Fig. 1. Dorchester Abbey:

location of churches and landed properties providing income.

11

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes hated him because he had voted against his election and had inflicted violence upon his person, while the abbot accused Carnelle of disobedience, taking the younger canons out drinking in the town at night, giving the prior a clout leaving him deaf in one ear and incontinency with a Stadhampton woman (Linc.Epis.Vis., ii, 80-81).

court; buildings within the wall and certain land beyond the wall, including the bishop’s granges and the croft beyond them; the bishop’s garden and the furlong beyond it, extending from the ditch to Queenford Mill, comprising some 100 acres; a meadow bordering the river nearby, and a meadow called Suiftlac on the other side; and the mill called Cudicah with the fishery and land belonging to it. Not all the locations named can now be identified, but mention of an apparently substantial wall and ditch may imply that the Roman defences remained partly extant in the 12th century (Reg.Antiq., i, 286; Salter 1909, 12).

The abbey’s income from its churches and chapels, as detailed in 1535, totalled £134 0s 6d. From Dorchester itself the glebe yielded £10, offerings to the shrine of St Birinus £5 and the profits of the peculiar jurisdiction 10s. Warborough, producing £24 per annum, was the most profitable of the abbey’s churches, followed by Benson (£22), Stadhampton and Chislehampton (£18 6s 8d), Drayton St Leonard (£11) and Clifton Hampden (£9). The parsonage of Shirburn produced £12, that of Baldon £7, that of Pishill and Nettlebed £6 13s 4d, that of Burcot £4 13s 4d and that of Overy £3 6s 8d. The abbot of Rewley paid 8s to Dorchester for tithes at Nettlebed, and there was a pension of 2s 6d from Nuffield (Val.Eccl., ii, 170).

The buildings of the abbey’s home farm occupied an area north and north-east of the claustral buildings. One of its barns was burned by malefactors in 1277 (CPR 1272-81, 240). Other medieval agricultural structures survived into the 19th century and beyond, including a part-aisled and part base-cruck-framed barn sketched by John Chessels Buckler and a probable granary and dovecote (Cook and Rowley 1985, 47; Tiller 2005, 38; Rodwell 2009, 60-63). A single fishpond survives by the river.

Several churches and chapels formerly held by Dorchester Abbey no longer survive. Warpsgrove still had a rector in 1453, though the village was by then depopulated; five years later the abbey sold the advowson, and the church was pulled down soon after (VCH ii, 88). The hamlet of Fifield in Benson had dwindled to a single manor farm by 1638, its chapel then disused, though still standing (Tiller 1999, 59, 73, 171). The church of Bix Brand, similarly left isolated by local depopulation, was finally abandoned in 1875, remaining as a ruin (Morley 1931; Lamborn 1936; Kirk 1954; VCH xvi, 229). Chislehampton’s medieval chapel alongside the old manor-house by the River Thame is shown on an estate map of 1628; reported as ‘ruinous and decayed’ in 1763, this was replaced by a Georgian church some 330 yards to the west (VCH vii, 5-6, 15). Pishill’s small, plain Norman church was totally rebuilt in 1854 (VCH viii, 137). A licence for a chapel at Huntercombe acquired in 1332 was not renewed (VCH ii, 15).

From an early date the abbey held scattered properties outside Dorchester. Along with Empress Matilda’s grant of Benson church went a virgate of land. Other early acquisitions included a house with meadow and pasture at North Moreton; a hide of land at Cumba (the nucleus of the later Huntercombe estate near Nuffield); 20 acres at Little Milton; and the mill at Shirburn (Salter 1909, 13). In 1205 King John confirmed a gift to the abbey of one carucate of land and pasture at Pishill, which accompanied the grant of the church (Rot.Chart., 1, i, 150b; Mon.Angl., vi, 324). A survey of the episcopal estate made soon after 1225 shows the abbot holding 1½ virgates and one of the two mills in Stadhampton for a rent of 20s, with the right to pasture eight cows and a bull alongside the bishop’s livestock (VCH vii, 85). Not all of the lands or rents acquired were retained by the abbey. Around 1270 Laurence, lord of Chislehampton, granted a house and 2 carucates of land there to the abbey. At that time he was heavily in debt to the Jews, and the king ordered that no distraint should be made on this land, though the sums owed could be levied on Laurence’s other properties. The canons rapidly handed this property on to Geoffrey de Lewknor, and retained no further interest in it (CPR 1266-72, 522-3). A confirmation of charters in favour of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Cowley dated 1324 recorded that William Rofford, abbot of Dorchester (d.1298) had given to the hospital an annual rent of 40p from a meadow called Bishopshey in Walton Manor outside Oxford which had previously been granted to the abbey by Philip the Miller, burgess of Oxford (CChR 1300-26, 466).

ii) Income from lands Even compared with other Augustinian houses, Dorchester Abbey’s landed property was limited. What lands it did acquire were, characteristically, scattered across two regions of complementary land use: arable lands and meadows in the Thames and Thame valleys, pasture and woodland on the Chilterns. Although the bishops of Lincoln retained the principal manor of Dorchester, Remigius must have reserved some land there for the support of the secular canons who remained when he removed his see to Lincoln. Bishop Alexander transferred this to the Arrouaisian canons at the abbey’s foundation. This included land once held by Hunfredus the priest (later called Humfreys Mead) and a curtilage and croft; a place called Brademura with its meadow and pasture (probably near Broadmoor Field, north-west of Drayton St Leonard); the former bishop’s

The next significant assessment of the abbey’s possessions occurs in the Hundred Rolls of 1279. Unfortunately the record of the abbey’s property in Dorchester itself is missing; but surviving portions of the document show the abbot holding as under-tenant four virgates and two 12

James Bond: The endowments and estates of Dorchester Abbey yardlands in Holcombe, a house with three virgates at Clifton Hampden, two virgates in Drayton St Leonard, a virgate of arable land in Warborough, 9 acres of land in Benson, and 3 acres of meadow in Woodford Meadow, which lay across the Thame from Drayton St Leonard (until the 19th century this was intercommoned between half a dozen neighbouring parishes) (Rot.Hundr. ii, 7489). The Hundred Rolls also provide details of a property in Thomley, further up the Thame valley, confirmed to the abbey seven years earlier: this consisted of eight messuages, four yardlands, 2 acres of meadow and 2s in annual rents (Rot.Hundr., ii, 714; Holden 1985, 218). In 1316 the lordship of Thomley was divided between a lay owner and the abbots of Osney and Dorchester (Feudal Aids, iv, 168; Holden 1985, 219).

of 26s 2d (CPR 1327-30, 493, 504; CChR. 1327-41, 169). A similar licence acquired in November 1331, permitting further acquisitions to the value of £10, was followed in February 1339 by a further grant from Henry le Veysin of Warborough, of a carucate of land, 8 acres of wood and 4s of rent in Nettlebed and Nuffield worth 25s annually (CPR 1330-34, 216; 1338-40, 210). In 1392 a further licence was conveyed for William, vicar of Stratfield Mortimer and Richard Mason of Enstone to grant to the abbey four houses, one toft, 54½ acres of arable land and 6 acres of meadow in Dorchester, Warborough, Drayton, Burcot and Clifton Hampden (CPR 1391-96, 100). The 1331 licence was finally surrendered in June 1393, once the value permitted had been reached (CPR 1330-34, 216). Some properties also came to the abbey by exchange. In 1316 John de Stonor granted two messuages, 100 acres of land and 20 acres of wood in Bix Brand, in exchange for houses, land and wood of similar value in Pyrton and Assendon (CPR 1313-17, 569; VCH viii, 158-9). The following year John de Stonor initiated a further transaction, alienating to the abbey one messuage, one carucate and 16 acres of land, with 40 acres of wood in Nettlebed and Warborough, all held in chief, together with one and a half virgates and 20 acres of wood in Bix Brand and Bix Gibwen held by others, in exchange for one messuage, one carucate and one virgate of land, 40 acres of wood and 40s in rent in Pyrton (CPR 1313-17, 663). Eight acres of the abbey’s Nettlebed woodland was said to be worth only 4s a year in 1338 because there was no underwood; the implication is that it contained only timber standards (Preece 1990, 70).

Temporalities assessed in the taxation of Pope Nicholas IV in about 1291 produced only £26 1s 4d, of which £15 8s 4½d came from lands and rents in Dorchester itself, smaller sums being derived from lands in Pyrton (£2 17s 0d) and Bix Brand (1s 8d) (Tax.Eccl., 43-5). Concerns about the amount of land falling into ecclesiastical and monastic hands had prompted Edward I to enact the Statute of Mortmain in 1279, the aim of which was, ostensibly, to restrict unauthorised donations of further land to the church. In reality this benefitted the crown, through sales of special licences to religious houses permitting them to acquire land contrary to the statute. Several such licences were issued to Dorchester. By such means in 1316 Nicholas de Marlborough granted to the abbey two messuages, 50 acres of land, 10 acres of wood and rents amounting to 5s 2d in Dorchester, Pirton, Bix Gibwen and Clifton (CPR 1313-17, 465). In May 1324 Elias Bacon of Little Wittenham and William Creek were permitted on payment of a fine of 100s to grant 5 houses, 100 acres of land, 9 acres of meadow and 4s of rent in Dorchester, Drayton St Leonard, Benson, Rotherfield and Burcot to Dorchester Abbey to support a chaplain to celebrate daily divine service to pray for their souls and the souls of their ancestors, the king and his ancestors (CPR 1321-4, 416). In December of the following year this gift was enlarged when Bacon, Creek and John le Veysin were permitted, on payment of 2 marks, to give the abbey two more houses, 80 acres of land, 4 acres of meadow and 2 acres of wood in Warborough and Nettlebed along with 60 acres of land and 30s of rent in Henley and Clifton Hampden; the latter licence was confirmed by Edward III in 1328 (CPR 1324-7, 196-7; 1327-30, 263).

The abbey continued to augment some of its smaller properties. At Burcot, it had rights over four virgates of land in 1279 and acquired further lands there during the fourteenth century (Rot.Hundr., ii, 748-9; CPR 13214, 416; 1391-6, 100). By 1346 the abbot had become a principal tenant of the Bishop of Lincoln at Drayton, Burcot, Holcombe and Clifton Hampden (Feudal Aids, iv, 182). Holcombe was retained into the 16th century as the only demesne land outside Dorchester; Drayton and Clifton were by then leased out but remained among the abbey’s more valuable properties (Val.Eccl., ii, 170-1; Mon.Angl., vi, 324). In 1397 the abbey paid 100s for a licence for the bishop, dean and chapter of Lincoln to grant it further property within Dorchester, namely 4 acres of land called ‘le Conynggere’, 24 acres of pasture called ‘le Hurst’ and the bishop’s fisheries in the Thames and Thame, together with the rabbits and all other profits arising from the pasture and fishery. In exchange they were to pay 53s 4d to the bishop, or to the dean and chapter when the see was vacant (CPR 1396-99, 73).

In 1329 the abbey acquired a licence from Edward III to acquire in mortmain lands and rents to the annual value of 10 marks, so long as they were not held in chief (i.e. directly from the king himself) (CPR 1327-30, 464). Under this licence Abbot John of Caversham acquired for the abbey the entire manor of Huntercombe in the Chilterns; Nicholas of Huntercombe granted the greater part of the property, with an annual value of £4 4s 9d, while Elias of Pishill and Henry le Veysin granted the remaining carucate of land worth 20s and an annual rent

In the tangle of feudal tenancies there was much scope for confusion, and the abbey’s rights to property were occasionally challenged. In 1359 the abbot petitioned the Black Prince’s council for restitution of lands at 13

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes the fourteenth century, and by 1535 Dorchester Abbey, along with Oseney Abbey and St Frideswide’s Priory which also had significant holdings there, had gone some way towards consolidating its lands. The final blow to Thomley, however, was inflicted by Sir John Brome of Albury, who acquired the Dorchester lands there soon after the Dissolution, having already enclosed some 200 acres of pasture rented from Oseney Abbey (Allison et al.1965, 44; Holden, 1985).

Brookhampton, seized by Richard Stratton, one of the prince’s agents, on grounds that the abbey had acquired them since the Statute of Mortmain without the prince’s licence. The abbot claimed that the lands concerned had been granted to the abbey by one John Broud before the Statute, and that the abbey had held them ever since, until they were ousted. The Black Prince ordered the return of the lands, and the profits which had accrued from them since their seizure, to the abbey, pending the result of an enquiry to determine their status and whether they lay in Brookhampton or Holcombe (RBP 1351-65, 297, 343, 351).

The abbey’s demesne lands just before the Dissolution are listed in 1535. They included seven and a half yardlands in Dorchester’s open fields, 21 acres in the communal meadow of Dorchester and Drayton, various other pieces of meadow (13 acres in ‘Heyhurst’ and ‘Lawhurst’, 5 acres in ‘Swyselake’, 4 acres in ‘Umfreys’, 4 acres in ‘the Hocke’, 3 acres in ‘Priestmore’, 1.5 acres in ‘Maisters’, and half an acre in ‘Don Mede’), several enclosed pastures (21 acres in ‘the Grete Mayns’, 4 acres in ‘Little Mayns’, and 1.5 acres in ‘the Connyger’), an 8-acre close sown with corn called ‘Water Mayns’, several smaller parcels of ground including 2 acres called ‘Twigutt’ and 1 acre called ‘Forege Garden’. Grass and fruit from the orchards and grass from the churchyards also produced a small income. The most valuable single component of the home estate was Overy Mill, which yielded an annual rent of £5. The abbey’s property in Dorchester as a whole was valued at £15 15s 9d. Holcombe was also still held in demesne, the pasture and meadow on the abbot’s grange having an annual value of £7 8s 8d. The commissioners estimated the total value of Dorchester Abbey’s demesne lands at £23 4s 5d (Val.Eccl., ii, 170).

The abbey was not always left to exploit its lands in peace. Outbreaks of disaffection during the later 14th century often targeted monastic property. In October 1375 it was reported that numerous evildoers and armed men had forcibly entered the abbot’s manor at Huntercombe, consuming and wasting his goods there, and threatening to kill the abbot and all his men and servants if they dared to return. The king required the sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire with 14 other men to organise a posse and go to Huntercombe to arrest any malefactors they found there, and deliver them to the constable of the Tower of London (CPR 1374-77, 220). During the early 14th century declining crop yields and reduced markets made arable farming on the heavy claylands of the Thame valley less profitable. After 1350 many settlements, already severely reduced by the Black Death, dwindled further through peasant tenants abandoning their holdings to seek an easier living elsewhere. Monastic and secular lords alike, finding themselves unable to maintain profitable arable demesnes through lack of labour, turned instead to leasing and to pastoral farming. Conversion of open-field land to enclosed pasture was sometimes accompanied by evictions of any remaining villagers. Between 1350 and 1550 at least 30 or 40 settlements disappeared from the Oxfordshire landscape, or were greatly reduced. Among them were Thomley and Holcombe, two hamlets in which Dorchester Abbey held significant land. National concerns about depopulation in the countryside prompted Cardinal Wolsey to set up a commission of inquiry in 1517, before which accusations of enclosures and evictions were brought against over 40 monastic lords. The abbot of Dorchester escaped censure, and there is no evidence that he played an active part in the depopulation of either Holcombe or Thomley, though he certainly took advantage of their decline. By 1535 the abbot’s grange at Holcombe included 160 acres of enclosed sheep pasture which, along with 9 acres of riverside meadow in Woodford Mead and another of 5 acres called ‘Bower mede’, was valued at £7 8s 8d a year. Part of the pasture, probably the actual settlement site, was said to be overgrown with thorns and furze (Val.Eccl., ii, 170). Remains of the hamlet were perhaps still visible in 1537, when a pasture at Holcombe ‘with rocks and hills therein’ was leased by the crown to Thomas Warde of Wingfield (L. & P.Hen.VIII, XII.i, 251, no.539). Thomley’s population had declined during

In addition the abbey received annual rents from tenants: £12 1s 5d from Warborough, £10 12s 8d from Dorchester, £10 3s from customary tenants in Huntercombe and Soundess in Nettlebed, £6 17s 8d from Clifton Hampden, £4 6s 8d from Drayton St Leonard, £3 6s 8d from the manor of Huntercombe, which was let to farm to Thomas Speyre, £2 2s from Little Milton, £2 from Thomley, and smaller amounts from Overy, Brookhampton, Benson and Roke, Britwell and Burcot. An unidentified area called ‘Harris Londs’ yielded 6s 8d, and there were also a few urban properties (see below). Wood sales produced £1 a year and perquisites of courts 10s. The total annual income from rents was estimated at just over £60 (Val. Eccl., ii, 170). iii) Urban properties Many monastic houses supplemented their profits from agricultural land by various forms of income from towns. This might amount to no more than rents from individual urban tenements. Dorchester Abbey certainly held one house in Wallingford as early as 1163, and in 1291 its property in the parish of St Mary the More in that town was taxed at a tithe of its total annual value of 3s (Tax.Eccl., 191). It acquired interests in at least three properties in Oxford, the most important of which was Brid Hall, which stood on the north side of Broad Street on part of the New 14

James Bond: The endowments and estates of Dorchester Abbey

Fig. 2. Medieval Dorchester:

the abbey site and the village.

15

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bodleian Library site. The abbey received 6s, a portion of the rent from this tenement, in 1279, and later acquired outright ownership (Salter 1969, 184). Before 1240 Dorchester had received a rent of 8s from a property called White Hall, on the south side of Ship Street, which it then granted to Oseney Abbey (Salter 1960, 34). It also seems to have had interests in a further property on the north side of Brazenose Lane (Salter 1960, 57). In 1291 rents in Oxford yielded 4s (Tax.Eccl., 43). By 1535 the abbey was receiving rents from tenants in Watlington amounting to £1 6s 9d, along with 8s 8d in rents from holdings in Wallingford and North Moreton and 6s 8d from rents in Henley, while a decayed and vacant tenement in Oxford, probably Brid Hall, yielded 7s (Val.Eccl., ii. 170).

into wedge-shaped open spaces, resembling the marketplaces outside abbey precincts at Abingdon, Eynsham and many other places (Cook and Rowley 1985, 48-9; Bond 2010, 271-4). Rodwell (2009, 28, 52) has subsequently proposed a more radical interpretation of the plan, to include a larger market square around the junction of High Street and Queen Street (fig.2). The lack of documentation probably implies an early origin and early demise for the market. If commercial promotion took place after the Norman Conquest, the bishops, as holders of the principal manor, are more likely to have been the prime movers than the abbots of Dorchester. The most promising candidate of all might be Bishop Alexander who, elsewhere in Oxfordshire, played a significant part in the urban development of both Banbury and Thame. Since Alexander was also responsible for the refoundation of the abbey, he may at the same time have wished to assist the canons by offering them part of the market profits. The fact that the postulated market space appears as two distinct portions suggests that the intention might have been for the bishop and the abbot to hold their own markets in separate areas - a tempting hypothesis, entirely compatible with the topographical evidence, but unproveable unless further documentation comes to light.

Opportunities for much greater profits arose if an abbey managed either to acquire total control of an existing town (as occurred at Cirencester), or founded an entirely new town, thereby receiving all income from borough rents, market and fair tolls and fines and amercements from courts. At least a dozen boroughs in England were held partly or wholly by Augustinian houses, and at Royston (Cambridgeshire) and Keynsham (Somerset) the canons had played an active part in the town’s development. Augustinian houses also received income from markets in at least fifty places in England (Bond 2010, 268, 2778).

In a region where even small market towns were generally 5 - 10 miles apart in the Middle Ages, Dorchester would have been competing with two larger centres, both with pre-Conquest markets: Abingdon, 5 miles away, and Wallingford, 3½ miles away. Despite Dorchester’s even more ancient pedigree as a Roman town and Anglo-Saxon see, any attempt to develop market functions there as late as the 12th century was probably doomed to failure.

There is no shred of documentary evidence that either the Arrouaisian canons or the bishops of Dorchester or Lincoln ever attempted to promote Dorchester to the status of a market town or borough. Nevertheless, the village plan contains clear indications, both north-west and south of the abbey churchyard, that the main street once broadened

16

James Bond: The endowments and estates of Dorchester Abbey Bibliography

Secondary References Allison, K.J., Beresford, M.W. and Hurst, J.G. (1965), The Deserted Villages of Oxfordshire (University of Leicester Department of English Local History, Occasional Papers 17). Bond, James (2010), Monastic Landscapes (revised edn, The History Press, Stroud). Cook, Jean and Rowley, Trevor (eds, 1985), Dorchester through the Ages (Oxford University Department for External Studies). Dyson, A.G. (1975), ‘The monastic patronage of Bishop Alexander of Lincoln’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol.26.i, 1-24. Holden, Bronaċ (1985), ‘The deserted medieval village of Thomley, Oxfordshire’, Oxoniensia, 50, 215-238. Kirk, J.R. (1954), ‘The church of St James, Bix Brand’, Oxoniensia, 19, 121. Lamborn, E.A.Greening (1936), ‘The churches of Bix’, Oxoniensia, 1, 129-139. Morley, H.T. (1932), ‘Old ruined church at Bixbrand, Oxfordshire’, Reports of Oxfordshire Archaeological Society, 76, 365-6. Preece, P. (1990), ‘Mediaeval woods in the Oxfordshire Chilterns’, Oxoniensia, 55, 55-72. Rodwell, Warwick (2009), Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire: the Archaeology and Architecture of a Cathedral, Monastery and Parish Church (Oxbow Books, Oxford and Oakville). Salter, H.E. (1909), ‘A charter of Dorchester Abbey, AD 1163’, Reports of Oxfordshire Archaeological Society, 55, 11-16. Salter, H.E. (1960, 1969), Survey of Oxford, 2 volumes, ed.Pantin, W.A. (Oxford Historical Society, new series Vols 14, 20). Tiller, Kate (ed., 1999), Benson: a Village through its History (Bensington Society). Tiller, Kate (ed., 2005), Dorchester Abbey: Church and People, 635-2005 (Stonesfield Press, for Dorchester Abbey Preservation Trust). VCH: A History of the County of Oxford, Vols ii (1907), vii (1962), viii (1964), xvi (2011) (The Victoria History of the Counties of England).

Printed Sources CChR: Calendar of the Charter Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (HMSO, 1903-27). CPR: Calendar of the Patent Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office (HMSO, 1891-1986). Feudal Aids: Inquisitions and Assessments relating to Feudal Aids preserved in the Public Record Office (HMSO, 1899-1920). L.& P.Henry VIII: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII (HMSO, 18641932). Linc.Epis.Vis.: Visitations of Religious Houses in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1420-1449, ed. Thompson, A.Hamilton (Lincoln Record Society, Vols.7, 14, 21, 1914-29). Mon.Angl.: Dugdale, W. (1655-73), Monasticon Anglicanum, ed.Caley, J., Ellis, H. and Bandinel, B., (6 volumes in 8, London, 1817-30). RBP: Register of Edward the Black Prince preserved in the Public Record Office (HMSO, 1930-33). Reg.Antiq.: The Registrum Antiquissum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, ed. Foster, C.W. and Major, K., (Lincoln Record Society Vols.27-9, 32, 34, 41-2, 45, 51, 62, 67-8, 1931-73). Reg.Sutton : The Rolls and Register of Bishop Oliver Sutton, 1280-1290 , ed.Hill, R.M.T., (Lincoln Record Soc. Vols 39, 43, 48, 52, 60, 65, 69, 76, 1948-86). Rot.Chart.: Rotuli Chartarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, Vol.1, ed. Hardy, T.D. (Record Commissioners, London, 1837). Rot.Hundr.: Rotuli Hundredorum temp.Hen.III & Edw.I, ed. Illingworth, R. (Record Commissioners, London, 1812-18). Rot.Gravesend: Rotuli Ricardi Gravesend, Diocesis Lincolniensis, 1258-79, ed. Davis, F.N. (Lincoln Record Society Vol.20, 1925). Rot.Grosseteste: Rotuli Roberti Grosseteste, Episcope Lincolniensis, 1235-53, ed.Davis, F.N. (Lincoln Record Soc. Vol.11, 1914). Rot.Welles: Rotuli Hugonis de Welles Episcope Lincolniensis, 1209-35, ed.Phillimore, W.P.W. (Lincoln Record Society Vols.3,6,9, 1912-14). Tax.Eccl.: Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae auctoritate P.Nicholai IV circa AD 1291, ed. Astle, T., Ayscough, S. and Caley, J. (Record Commissioners, London, 1802). Val.Eccl.: Valor Ecclesiasticus temp.Henr.VIII auctoritate Regia institutis, ed. Caley, J. and Hunter, J. ( 6 volumes, Record Commissioners, London, 1810-1834).

17

The visit of artist John Harper to Dorchester on Thames in 1832 Malcolm Airs and George Speake

Two pencil sketches by John Harper of York, drawn in Dorchester on Thames in June 1832, are discussed, together with a brief outline of Harper’s tragically short artistic career. The drawing detailing part of the old Crown Inn provides the opportunity to consider the former prevalence of oriel windows in the other historic inns of Dorchester.

contracted malaria whilst on a study trip to Italy. In that final decade of his life, Harper established a growing reputation for both his architectural projects and for his drawing abilities, whose ‘sketches of scenery, antiquity and architecture were admired by his contemporaries’ (Harper, John, ODNB). Having worked under the tutelage of the Wyatts, on the preparation of designs for additions to Apsley House, Hyde Park Corner, York House and the Duke of York’s Column, Harper left London and set up his own architectural practice in York. He was clearly ambitious. In 1835 he submitted a design for the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament, paying particular attention to the acoustics and ventilation of the two chambers, but he was unsuccessful (Colvin 1995, 483). Clients for his York practice included the Duke of Devonshire at Bolton Abbey, Lord Londesborough and others. At Bolton Abbey, it has been surmised (Leach and Pevsner, 2009, p. 137) that ‘the Tea House, the stump of an aisled barn turned into a picturesque 19th century cottage (one kingpost truss inside), and beside it a row of nineteenth century cottages with diagonally set chimney stacks’ was the work of John Harper in the 1830s. In spite of his training under the Wyatts, much of Harper’s work in his York practice, were buildings in the Gothic style, many of which were churches. It is tempting to see the formative influences evident in the choice of subjects he sketched when he visited Dorchester in 1832.

It was as a young trainee architect and artist that a twentythree year old John Harper visited Dorchester on Thames on 15 June 1832. On that day he executed at least two pencil sketches; one of the south porch doorway of Dorchester Abbey and the other of the former Crown Inn on the High Street. Whether John Harper stayed at the Crown Inn is uncertain, but he has left us an accurate record of the south elevation of the north range, which now survives as ‘Crown Cottage’, 52 High Street, a structure which is remarkably little changed since Harper’s visit (Fig. 1). The two pencil sketches, which have come from a dismembered sketch-book, were noticed by GS in a sale of drawings and prints at Abbot and Holder, Museum Street, London, in October 2011. Because of their Oxfordshire subject matter, and sensitive, fluent skill, they were purchased and form the basis of this collaborative paper. It is a small tribute to John Rhodes’s involvement in the history and archaeology of Oxfordshire and his particular interest in church and vernacular architecture. John Harper’s sketch-book was made up of creamcoloured Whatman laid paper, manufactured at Springfield Mill, Maidstone, Kent by Balston and Co. The sheet with the drawing of the south porch doorway has part of a watermark --TMAN with the numeral --1 below the T, which would signify the year of its manufacture, either 1821 or 1831, the latter date being more probable. The sheet size is 234 x 165mm. There are slight traces of brown foxing on the lower and right hand edge of each sheet; otherwise they are in good condition. Both sketches confirm Harper’s questing, artistic eye and an able facility in analysing architectural detail, which in his short professional life ranged between the neo-classical and the Gothic style. In 1832, when he visited Dorchester, he was still serving his architectural apprenticeship in London, as a pupil of Benjamin and Philip Wyatt, but the Dorchester sketches would suggest that Harper’s empathy was clearly more towards the Gothic.

Harper’s artistic circle included the painters David Roberts and Clarkson Stansfield, but his closest friend was the painter William Etty, who painted a fine expressive portrait of him in 1841, when he spent most of his summer staying at Harper’s house in St Leonard’s Place, York (Fig. 2). Etty’s biographer, Gilchrist, records the close friendship the painter shared with Harper who was ‘amiable, modest, gifted, enthusiastic and admiring; warmly devoted to art and to Etty, being his ‘confidential friend’, ‘sympathiser’ and ‘bosom companion’ (Gilchrist, vol. 2, p. 140). On hearing the news of Harper’s death Etty lamented: ‘to say he is an irreparable loss to dear York, is saying too little, I think the loss of John Harper is a National loss’ (Ibid. p. 141).

Between his birth and his early death at the age of 33, we can only piece together fragments of his short, professional career. We know that John Harper was born on the 11th November 1809, at Dunkenhalgh Hall, near Blackburn, Lancashire, where his father was the land agent. He died unmarried, on October 18, 1842, in Naples, having

Unfortunately no diary exists which records the extent of Harper’s travels in 1832, or of the projects on which he was working when he visited Dorchester. We do know June 15

19

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes The second sketch, captioned ‘Part of an old Inn’ is a vigorous, well-observed, coded study of the south elevation of the north range of what was The Crown Inn, now a private house known as Crown Cottage (Fig. 4). The pigeon or dove-boxes and the pump have gone, but the present appearance is remarkably unchanged from the drawing-- only the glazing pattern of the leaded lights has been altered to a rectangular form and an additional window has been inserted in the position of the pump. Otherwise it is a faithful rendering of the building down to the unequal line of the eaves on either side of the oriel window and the composition of the infill panels identified as plaster (P) or brick (B). If Harper stayed at The Crown Inn during his visit, it seems likely that the room he stayed in was that with the oriel window. From here he would have had access to be able to draw the section profiles of the moulded timbers of the gable (B) and the vertical bars of the oriel window (A), recorded in the upper right hand corner of the sheet.

was a Friday and we can assume that it was a fine summer day. The fact that his drawing of the south porch has ‘No 7’ above the caption on the lower left of the sheet, might suggest that he had done other sketches of architectural features of the Abbey and that his trip was not just a day excursion. We also know that the antiquarian charm of Dorchester Abbey fitted the philosophy of the ‘picturesque’ and was a magnet for many artists and illustrators in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Rodwell has commented that ‘the number of surviving antiquarian illustrations of the Abbey and its contents is remarkable for a parish church: over 400 have so far been located, but scarcely more than a handful of these has ever been published’ (Rodwell 2009, 6-7). Harper was evidently following on a well-trodden path. Amongst his predecessors was the prolific output of the architect and artist John Carter, who made numerous studies in 1792 and 1793, to be followed by John Buckler in 1802-3, 1812-13 and 1821 (Ibid). Harper’s drawing records the south porch prior to its alteration in the later 19th century (Fig. 3). It shows the porch with a steeply pitched roof, which obscured part of the south aisle window and which replaced a shallow pitched structure. (The current porch now has the original low-angled gable). Addington’s illustration of 1845 shows a south-west view of the complete porch as Harper would have seen it (Rodwell, 2009, Fig. 74). The focus and purpose of Harper’s sketch, however, is a section through the porch, showing the simple boarded doorway leading to the south aisle, above which is a square-sectioned ridge with chamfered lower edges. The rafters are shown with chamfered lower edges and coved endings at the eaves. The ridge rests on a cambered and chamfered tie-beam which is supported by vertical posts with moulded jowls. A single dowel peg anchoring the jowl to the post is indicated. The supporting stone sides are shown in broader hatching, with the bolection profile drawn on its western side. Within the porch, the inner faces show the slumped stone bench-seating. The external features of the porch are not recorded and the pitch of the post-medieval roof structure is only tentatively indicated, in lighter pencil. Measurements for the height of the doorway from ground level to the cusp of the arch, are recorded as being 8 feet 8 inches and the height of the capital from ground level is given as 5 feet 5 inches. The vertical dimension of the open oak-framed side openings is noted as being 4 feet 4 inches. In spite of these recorded measurements, Harper’s sketch is not quite accurate. The door opening should be slightly wider and Harper omits the band of moulding with florets around the arch. To the top left of the sheet, however, Harper has carefully outlined a shaded profile of the door capital. External to the porch, on the right side of the sheet Harper has hastily indicated part of an external buttress to the south wall. We can surmise from the location and quantity of the shading to the east of the porch and the shading adjacent to the inner bench seating, only on the west side of the porch, that Harper drew this sketch in the late afternoon of 15 June 1832.

When John Harper visited Dorchester he would have found a predominantly agricultural community, which was struggling to cope with the pressures of rural England in the era after the Napoleonic war. The precarious state of the village economy is outlined in the chapters to which John Rhodes contributed in Dorchester Through the Ages (Cook and Rowley, 1985, 40-50). Despite the advanced farming methods practised in the locality and the presence of a variety of trades, unemployment and pauperism were rife. The fabric of the Abbey was in an advanced state of decay and nonconformity was an attractive force in the religious life of many of the villagers. In 1819 Dorchester was described in Brewer’s Topographical and Historical Description of the County of Oxfordshire as ‘now humble in buildings and depending chiefly for its precarious resources on the traffic of the high road on which it is situated’. But it was precisely those humble buildings, reminiscent of a glorious historical past, which appealed to Harper’s artistic eye and it is a great pity that his sketch book has been broken up and the full contents dispersed so we no longer know how long he stayed or what else he recorded. Judging by the number on his Abbey porch drawing, he occupied his time productively and his other surviving drawing shows that he was taken by the architectural details of the secular buildings in the village. Although he could not have known it, the oriel window on the rear range of the Crown, which particularly caught his eye, was once a characteristic decorative element of three of the most prestigious hostelries in Dorchester. By 1832, the coaching trade was beginning to decline in the face of competition from other forms of transport but its importance to the village as indicated by Brewer was still reflected in the inns which lined its High Street. The road from Henley to Abingdon had been turnpiked as early as 1736 and the magnificent new bridge across the Thame had been completed as recently as 1815. Dorchester was an important staging post on the route and there was great rivalry between the four principal establishments in the village: the George and the Bull on the west side of the 20

Malcolm Airs and George Speake: The visit of artist John Harper to Dorchester on Thames in 1832 There was no door on the street elevation, access being provided from the yard at the rear into a vanished staircase tower which rose through the full height of the building and gave onto a small landing at each floor.

street and the White Hart and the Crown on the east. All four are essentially of fifteenth or sixteenth century date and thus pre-date the turnpike age by a considerable margin. They are testimony to the continued strategic importance of the road through Dorchester in the late medieval period and presumably they were built in response to the need to provide hospitality for the pilgrims attracted to the cult of St Birinus which grew up around the Abbey.

The most striking feature of the front elevation was the glazing pattern of two projecting oriel windows on both ground and first floor, framed into the underside of the jetties and each flanked by two smaller windows in the plane of the wall. Only the central bay where it abutted the chimney was left blank. (Fig. 5 ) This was a remarkable display of ostentatious glazing which must have put the White Hart quite in the shade. Whether the Crown responded in kind we can only surmise because the later brick façade has obliterated all evidence of its street appearance in the 17th century. The sketch that Harper took of the rear wing makes it a distinct possibility. The relict oriel that he recorded so carefully was originally flanked by two smaller windows, although the eastern one had been replaced with a brick panel by 1832. Its ovolomoulded mullions suggest an early seventeenth century date and place it in the same family as the windows which once adorned the Bull and the White Hart. It differed only by virtue of its single row of lights, its canted sides and its over sailing gable which was necessary to roof it in the absence of a jetty.

The Bull, the White Hart and the George all had galleried accommodation for travellers, of which the latter is still clearly visible today. Three of them were courtyard inns accessed through coach entrances leading off the High Street with stabling and other service facilities in the rear ranges. The sole exception is the Bull where the principal buildings were ranged along the street. This is an impressive number of fully serviced inns all competing for the same trade in a relatively small community and they were not the only options available to passing travellers in the village. They were simply the grandest establishments and at least six other inns were documented in Quarter Session records during the eighteenth century (Cook and Rowley, 1985, 52). All of them were fully timber-framed, dating from the period when this was the primary building material in Dorchester. When first built they would have advertised their presence by the quality and the decorative patterns of their exposed framework. The George, in its prime position opposite the entrance to the Abbey precinct, had two massive double-jettied gables supported on decorative brackets on its street elevation flanked by two smaller jetties over the entrance range with a finely moulded architrave around the coach entrance. Both the White Hart and the north range of the Bull had jettied upper storeys with symmetrically arranged fenestration. The original street front of the Crown is now obscured by a later brick façade. This radical remodelling of the public face of the Crown reflects the constant pressure for modernisation that the proprietors of these establishments must have felt as they sought to compete for trade. In the early 17th century the White Hart installed a row of three shallow projecting oriel windows at first floor level directly glazed into the existing framework. The array of costly window glass was clearly an investment designed to demonstrate the modernity of the inn. It seems to have invoked an instant response from the owners of the Bull because in 1610 (dated by inscription) they built a whole new accommodation block extending along the street to the south of the existing premises. This is the most magnificent surviving timber-framed building in Dorchester. As built it rose through three storeys with two jetties on the street front supported by carved scrolled brackets decorated with acanthus leaves, rosettes and miniature Ionic capitals and with a carved fascia board attached to the bottom rail of each jetty. Its elevation was perfectly symmetrical around a centrally placed chimney-stack articulated by four diamond placed shafts to advertise the heated chambers within. These were arranged on either side, two to each floor with two further unheated rooms in the attic storey.

Such lavish displays of glazing were a short-lived fashion. They must have made the rooms behind over lit in summer and cold in the winter. By 1691 the oriels at the White Hart had been removed in a face-lift which replaced them with smaller vertically-proportioned windows set within herring bone patterned brick panels inscribed with the date in darker headers and with additional accommodation provided in a triple-gabled roof extension. By that date, brick had become the building material of choice in Dorchester and the established timber-framed tradition was seen as distinctly old-fashioned. Shortly afterwards the other inns attempted to disguise their ancient fabric, the George and the Bull by rendering over their timber frames and inserting modern windows and the Crown by a whole new façade in modern brick. The oriel window, which had once been the distinguishing feature of the best inns, had vanished from the streets of Dorchester. The sole surviving example was hidden away from public view in the rear range of the Crown where John Harper recorded it so evocatively. There remains a tantalising coda to this account of Harper’s visit. During a recent local history project when residents were invited to bring Dorchester documents and photographs for scanning, a photocopy of a pencil drawing showing the High Street looking north came to light. A scan of the photocopied sketch is now deposited in the archive of the Dorchester Abbey Museum (Fig 6). Prominent in the view is a building which encroaches on the west side of the street with a tall chimney stack and a pointed window in the gable end. The drawing is not dated but it must have been made before 1846 because this distinctive building had completely disappeared by the date of the Tithe award 21

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography

of that year. The building materials are annotated in just the same way that Harper used in his drawing of the Crown and the handwriting is similar. The drawing is numbered 17 and is clearly part of a series. It is just possible that it is another page from Harper’s sketchbook but unfortunately it has so far proved impossible to locate the original in order to check the watermark or the dimensions of the sheet. It is believed that it used to hang in the White Hart but it now seems to have vanished from public view. Without a secure provenance it is impossible to be certain and so many topographical artists were attracted to Dorchester at that time, but it does provide the only record of another relic of the coaching era in the prominent inn sign of the White Hart which straddles the full width of the street. John Rhodes would have relished the challenge of unravelling the mystery which surrounds this drawing.

Colvin, H., 2008 (1954), A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cook, J., and Rowley, T., 1985, Dorchester Through the Ages, Oxford University Department for External Studies. Gilchrist, A., 1855, Life of William Etty, RA. ODNB, 2004, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. Leach, P. and Pevsner, N., 2009, Yorkshire West Riding, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Redgrave, S. 1878, Dictionary of Artists of the English School. Rodwell, W., 2009, Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire: the archaeology and architecture of a cathedral, monastery and parish church, Oxford. Acknowledgements MA is deeply in debt to Mike Thrift for his reconstruction drawing of the original appearance of the Bull Inn, and to Connie Green for her permission to reproduce the photocopy of the High Street drawing. Dorchester Abbey Museum kindly provided a scan of the photocopy.

22

Malcolm Airs and George Speake: The visit of artist John Harper to Dorchester on Thames in 1832

Fig. 1. The Crown Inn, north range. Pencil drawing by John Harper. (Photo: George Speake)

Fig 2. John Harper by William Etty 1841. Oil on canvas, 49.5cm x 39.4cm (Photo: York Museums Trust)

23

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 3. Dorchester Abbey, south porch doorway. Pencil drawing by John Harper. (Photo: George Speake)

24

Malcolm Airs and George Speake: The visit of artist John Harper to Dorchester on Thames in 1832

Fig 4. East range of Crown Cottage in 2013 (Photo: Malcolm Airs)

Fig 5. The reconstructed street elevation of the new range of the Bull Inn (Drawing by Mike Thrift) 25

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 6. Photocopy of a lost drawing of Dorchester High Street looking north (Image thanks to Connie Green)

26

Arbery’s of Wantage John Steane

Arbery’s is a 16th century timber framed town house, with an 18th century brick frontage and a well-preserved Victorian shop complete with furniture and fittings. The draper’s shop was run by three generations of the same family between 1894 and 1995. Extensive business research enables a detailed reconstruction of the shop’s services to the town.

John Rhodes worked for Oxfordshire County Council’s Department of Museum Services (as it was then called) for ten years as the Keeper of Antiquities. He was interested in buildings as well as artefacts, and was particularly delighted to be involved in a project which included a large number of furniture and fittings in a significant architectural context.

Georgian frontage. There are two ranges of four windows at first and second floor levels. These have gauged brick segmental arches with decorative and slightly projecting keystones. Mid 19th century horned sashes have replaced the 18th century multiple-paned windows. The walling is of grey vitrified headers, while the jambs and quoins are emphasized in red/orange brick. A moulded cornice projects at eaves level. The east-west roof is hipped at both ends and is covered on the front with Welsh slate. A second parallel roof behind this one is covered with Stonesfield-type slates hanging on riven oak battens.

What follows is based on a report made by John Steane and John Rhodes in 1998 for the Arbery Building Preservation Trust, which commissioned the study on the building and its possible future uses. The Arbery family, which had lived in and run the shop in the building, had finally decided to close it after three generations of service to the town. The study was funded jointly by the Architectural Heritage Fund and the Joint Environmental Trust for Wantage.

The shop front dated c.1890-1900 (by the Listing Building description) has barley sugar-like twisted wooden columns ending in acanthus leaf capitals and acanthus leaf consoles. Above is a moulded cornice. Entrance is through two double-leaf doors with frosted glass decorated with foliated and chequer patterns. The windows at first floor level have painted notices as follows: CORSET, MILLINERY, COSTUMES, MANTLES, SHOWROOMS.

We first describe the building, making reference to the architectural features which enabled us to analyse its evolution. This is followed by a brief discussion in which the various phases are disentangled. Next an historical note refers to the building’s connection with the firm of drapers, Arbery and Sons, who had worked here over the last one hundred years. Finally a section written by John Rhodes himself will highlight his interest in the most important items of furniture and fittings from the late Victorian and Edwardian shop.

The side facing west is of three bays. Again the windows are segmental-headed but without the projecting keystones which feature in the front. They are sashed and the brickwork is similar but less neatly coursed; the lower part has irregularities suggesting a previous timber lintelled entrance blocked by the present doorway. The moulded cornice and pilasters appear to be of the same building campaign as the shop front, late 19th century. The three first floor windows have the following lettering painted on them in similar style to those on the front: BOOT AND SHOE, DRESSMAKING DEPARTMENTS, MILLINERY AND COSTUMES.

Architectural description The building known as Arbery’s occupies a prominent position on the south side of the Market Place in Wantage (Fig. 1). The north side directly confronts the street, and the west side and annexe over the passage face onto an area of cobbling in front of the neighbouring Victoria Cross Gallery. The long rectangular plot on which the shop and residence below it stand stretches southwards to Church Street. The property division is likely to date back to the middle ages and may have originated as a subdivision of a large-scale encroachment on a formerly rectangular market place (Rodwell 1975, 163).

The buildings at the rear are in two ranges, both probably timber-framed with walling which may be of lath and plaster or perhaps brick nogging, but are now obscured by pebble dash. The windows are all 19th century replacements. The interior confirms the view that the building originated with a much earlier timber-framed structure. Starting with the basement, we were told by Mr John Arbery that there were formerly cellars under the front (north side). These, likely medieval in date, related to a predecessor of the present building and were filled up when the shop was

The external north elevation (Fig. 2), dating from the early 18th century, is of three storeys and four bays. It is a refronting of an earlier - possibly 16th century - timber framed building, the carcase of which lies behind the bland

27

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes It is evident that the foot of the stairs has been cut about and re-jigged. At present it goes round quarter turns. The balusters and newels of the lower stretch are late Victorian in design. We are reminded that this part of the building was timber framed and of the 17th century by reason of the portion of the north-south wall showing stud panels with lath and plaster above the passage at the end of the hall.

refurbished c.1890-1900. The present basement comprised first of all the main kitchen of the house as used in the time of John Arbery’s mother. It was equipped with an iron range and gas stove, now both removed. The ceramic sink with pipe work adjoining was still to be seen. No trace remains of a well or cistern. The ‘basement hall’ (so called) was partly stone-flagged, has shelves on brackets and has been used as a food store. The ‘old larder’ had a west wall of stone (either chalk block or greensand), and houses the chimney base while the floor above is sustained by a chamfered spine beam; the joists are alternately chamfered and stopped. Plain traces of a staircase in the northwest corner can be seen which connected the basement to the ground floor.

The ‘Dining Room’ - maybe parlour (G.04) - has early 18th century pine panelling, above and below a dado rail. Here the fireplace is of slate, painted to simulate exotic woods (c.1890/1900). Twentieth century French windows lead into the conservatory. The hall has a dado of soft wood boarding with three doors leading off, one with leaded panels of stained glass in the upper part (late 19th century). The second one has green/white glass and is rounded in the upper part. That leading to the shop is plain in design. The principal points of interest of room G.07 are the spine beam of the 17th century timber extension, and the proportions which suggest an early date: they contrast with the loftier rooms in the 18th century parallel range to the east.

Above these cellars is the ground floor retail area, difficult to interpret owing to radical changes necessitated by upgrading spaciously shop displays and by the introduction of changing rooms. The older 16th century framework has been cut about and hidden. This is evident in the form of a number of (mostly) boxed-in principal posts holding a series of transverse and axial beams (Fig. 4). The transverse beam at A shows a plain shield-shaped stop which is likely to be 16th century in date (Hall 2005, 162). The posts B & C are in position and indicate that it is probable that there were two 16th century houses on the site separated by a division running along this line. Transverse beams at D, E and F have survived but we found it difficult to know whether the posts that went with them were in situ behind shop fittings. They are marked G, H and I, but there is a question mark as to whether they survive. What has remained is an extensive area of decoratively painted joists supporting the first floor in the front range (Fig. 4). Such survivals of domestic painted decoration are now rare (Davies 2008). Parallels have come to light at Ewelme (the Schoolmasters’ house) and at Trinity College Oxford (South Midlands Archaeology 1987).

When we climb to the first floor, we notice that the timber framing suggests that this area (F.01) was formerly two unequal spaces perhaps belonging to two unequally sized properties. A patched assemblage of panelling on the east wall includes a triple arrangement of plank and muntin above the dado-height rail and a section of 16th century oak panelling with twelve fielded panels, rails hand-moulded after assembly (Fig. 7) to the top and sides of each panel: in addition there is a full width decorative frieze, a quatrefoil arrangement between panels of vertical fluting. The most interesting part of the building is deep in the interior of the first floor. This is the cash office (F.02) which, when we saw it, was a fascinating example complete with furniture and fittings (see John Rhodes’s description below and Figs. 8 and 9), together with much interesting portable and small scale material: letter racks, inks etc. Our view then was that every effort should be made to preserve the room as it stood, with all such equipment and contents.

When the shop was extended cast iron columns were inserted instead of timber posts at J, K, L, M, N and O. I will leave until later, when John Rhodes’ description takes over, a full consideration of the furniture and fittings which are of considerable interest in rooms G.01 and G.02 (see plan) and the rooms above, F.01 and F.02.

Other rooms on the first floor include the landing. Here the walling is seen on the west side to be timber framed with studs, diagonal strut and wall plate supported at the corners of each bay by jowled posts. These in turn carry tie beams on which rest the principal rafters. The walling material on both east and west is timber-framed with brick nogging. The other significant space on this floor is the bedroom (F.05) which is lined with a full set of early 18th century panelling, pine, tall narrow panels above dado rail, matching panels below, doors to full height, cupboards to left and right of fireplace. The fireplace has a marble fire surround of the 19th century with a cast iron grate with flanking tile panels (Fig. 10).

An elegant staircase connects the two floors together and must date to the 1890-1900 period (that of Mr John Arbery’s grandfather) when the shop front was added (Fig. 5). As the Listed Building description puts it: ‘Late 19th century dog leg stairs with iron balusters adjoining Lamson pneumatic tube’. This latter was a cash tube unit connecting the ground floor shop (where most of the cash transactions were made) with the first floor cash office (Fig. 6). In addition there was a speaking tube unit for communication between the shop and the office. The so-called ‘upper hall’ (G.02 - see Fig. 3b), has another good staircase, early 18th century in date; it has a hardwood handrail and moulded balusters. The open string brackets have parallels in other places of c.1730 (Hall 2006, 106).

The second floor is of comparatively little interest and contains nine out of the fifteen bedrooms of the house. When, however, we reached the roof, we found the least 28

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage Cripps and Mrs Green, were employed after 1945 in making loose covers, curtains and dresses. Finally there was a tack/ saddle room with a small Dixie stove used to dry damp leather harness, over a stable with weather boarded walls (horses need good draught free quarters) and a floor of tough horse-hoof resistant material including firebrick setts. All three house standings originally had mangers fed from the haylofts above by chutes, but these had been removed.

accessible but architecturally most revealing part of the building. This is because there has never apparently been a serious fire and the roof covering has been sufficiently well maintained over the years to prevent rot. It consists of three phases. The two front ranges, running parallel east-west, hipped at both ends, consist of two three-bay roofs with the trusses made up of principal rafters, tie beams, slightly cambered collar beams and single ranges of purlins butt-jointed into the principals (Fig. 11). The timbers are massive, indicating their comparatively early date. The tie beams are 12½ ins (32 cm) square, the principal rafters facing the outside of the building are kneed, that is to say, the timbers have been chosen or shaped to ensure that the lower two feet are vertical, then there is a sharp angle taking the rafter to the apex (Fig. 11). This, of course, is found with cruck structures and it may be that at Arbery’s we have a transitional form from cruck to A frame. The carpenters’ marks are scribed, not cut with the chisel, again an early feature. The common rafters are mortised or trenched into the backs of the purlins and pegged; they are halved and pegged at the apex, and most seem to be of the same date as the principals. One further noteworthy feature is that the chimney in the south-eastern part of the front range has been inserted by cutting through the wall plate. This part of the roof has subsequently been strengthened by the addition of an iron strap which has been wrapped round the end of the tie beam fastening it to the wall plate (see Fig. 11). The eastern wing roof (not drawn on the diagram) consists of four bays of A frame trusses with cambered collars and two ranges of purlins butt-jointed into the principals. The portion of substantial stud, lath and plaster partitions and dormer gable end windows tells us that all these attic spaces have been used for access. One bay is at the head of the main staircase, for residence or storage. We were unable to inspect the upper parts of this roof space but the type of roof was current in Oxfordshire until the middle of the 18th century.

Phasing In sum the archaeology tells us that the present building may have been constructed in the mid 16th century over cellars dug along this market street frontage in the late middle ages. It was L-shaped in plan, with its long side parallel with the street. Here it shares a site similar to that occupied by Nos 9/10 Marlet Place where there is also a timber-framed, probably 17th century building, now clad in Georgian brickwork (see Steane and Ayres forthcoming 2013). The framework of this 16th century house (and probably shop) can largely be reconstructed from timber remnants in the lower storeys and the almost complete roof. A wing was added to the L-shaped building in the 17th century with a central stack (subsequently the chimney was truncated). The eastern wing was extended in the 18th century by a range containing a well-designed staircase and lofty rooms at ground and first floor levels. History during the last 100 years Arbery’s of Wantage is significant in business history in that the records of the last hundred years are particularly full, and they have been deposited in the County Record Office (accession No. 4080). From them we learn that John Nicholas Arbery established his family’s drapery shop in November 1894. The shop’s history goes back to the 1690s when it was occupied by mercers and cloth merchants. The business was taken over by John’s son, Howard Farnham Arbery in 1920. He died after the firm became a limited company in 1951. At this point his wife, son and daughter became directors. We met Mr John Arbery in 1998 when he was considering selling up, and he was able to answer many questions concerning the buildings and the retailing activities which had gone on during three generations of his family. He confirmed that the business ceased trading and the shop closed on 28 October 1995.

One last observation on the roof is that visible through the timbers on the section of the front roof facing east is the gable end of an earlier building, perhaps 15th century in date, consisting of weathered timbers, principal rafters, a collar and a range of studs, all with wattle and daub panels forming the walling. Here, in fact, was a late medieval building next door whose western wall was sandwiched between Arbery’s and the adjoining property.

Arbery’s offered its customers a wide variety of services which are summarized in the painted notices on the upstairs windows (see above). They were drapers, milliners (fancy wares and articles of apparel), costumiers; in addition they were dressmakers, tailors and had a boot factory; finally they were carpet men and provided floor coverings like linoleum. All these services are listed on their bills.

The rest of the property which stretches down to Church Street has various ancillary buildings all connected to the firm’s manifold activities. These include a long brick building constructed in 1908 (from bricks made at the Childrey brickworks) amply lit by three light frosted glass windows, which served as the carpet room. In the lower storey the carpets and linoleums were stored and cut out before World War II, and where mattresses and bedding were kept. At the south end is a well-lit large room used for dressmaking. Here the blackout curtains were made in World War II. Three members of staff, Mrs Clark, Mrs

They also served a varied and widely scattered clientele; their business stretched over central-southern England. There were customers in Swindon, Croydon, Reading and Northampton, as well as more local places like Letcombe 29

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Regis, Sparsholt, Kingston Lisle and Farnborough. The sheer variety of materials available is seen in the stock book (B/7/F12/2) where there are lists of garments, materials and their value and price. They included printed patterns, Ritza, Horrockses, Dress spun, Dress check, Dress linens, Ehibo linen, Bunting, crepe, sateens, summer cottons, shirtings, calicoes, sheeting, cretonnes, taffeta, tapestry and patterns.

life of the town. He provided detailed information on the shop front and entrance door, the major internal elements of the drapers’ shop, the surviving early partitions, the rear shop stairs, the pneumatic cash tube unit (see Fig. 5), the safes, and the first floor cash office. This will be described in more detail below. In addition John Rhodes marked out for protection the 18th century staircase, the 18th century panelling in rooms G.04 and F.05, panelling of mixed date in room F.01, all the gas lighting and early electric fittings and fire surrounds.

One of the firm’s difficulties was to get their customers to pay! A yellowing bundle of correspondence dating from the 1920s illustrates the reasons for delay or non-payment for goods and services already supplied. They ran from influenza, late payment of dividends, a sad tale of the loss of a baby and a farmer who could not sell his produce, had lost thousands and wished to postpone payment until after harvest. Every so often the firm lost patience and threatened the offender with the County Court. A bill for altering a dress, 16s-6d, dating back to December 22, 1923 and silk £1-1-1 ½ (January 28, 1924), still had not been paid by July 16, 1925. So the shop had been waiting to be paid for a year and a half and finally patience snapped.

To give an example of the thoroughness and expertise with which he approached the task we end with his description of F.02, the cash office: Ceiling plastered. Walls, vertical deal boarded, varnished, except for s. wall which below a dado rail has oak panelling identical with that of 16th century date in F.01. East wall: Floor with single piece fitted cork sheet. Window, single sash to east. Doorway from corridor a hall door with lifting counter flap. Fixtures, cupboards, desk, fixed sloping desk top of pine below window with a second desk surface inserted at a lower level. Desk is flanked by pigeonhole shelves. South sloping ? footrest. Wall shelves on west wall. On south wall the upper end of the Lamson Pneumatic Tube System, connected to unit in shop area G.02 mounted on wall adjacent is speaking tube unit for communication with shop. Wall mounted clock (Rollin, Paris, ?1920s) above. Electric light pendant fitting, blue enamel shade. Flue connection into central stack survives, gas fire removed (electric radiator heater was used latterly). Much interesting portable and small scale material here – letter racks, inks etc. Every effort should be made to preserve this room as it stands, with all such equipment and contents.

Arbery’s supplied institutions as well as individuals. We read in the Home Day Book (B17/F6/1) on May 31, 1926, that the Guardians of the Union are invoiced for 50 sheeting (£8-12-11), 60 cotton dress (£4-6-3), 150 house flannels (£7-3-9), 3lbs worsted (11s-3), 6 jackets (£7-7-0), 6 vests (£2-17-0) and 12 trousers (£7-15-0). A year later St Mary’s School, Wantage, was billed for Holt Miss F, Dress £1-3-11; Miles c. 2 dresses (21-11) £2-3-10; 2 knickers 5/11, 11s 10d. Adkin of the Priory bought a brassiere for 2-9d. Occasionally a job is mentioned in some detail, e.g. June 30, 1926 Arbery, Mrs H, Altering frock 2-6d; material and making frock £2-1-1; making frock 9-0; totalling £212-7. An important part of our report was written by John Rhodes, who conducted a minute examination in which he inventoried the smaller-scale features, fixtures and fittings (May 1998). He was particularly interested in protecting those elements which threw light on the architectural development of the building, the domestic life of the house in the past, and the place held by Arbery’s for the last century as a valued part of the social and commercial

The inventory goes on, room by room, and includes the washrooms at the back facing onto the yard. We here see John Rhodes at work minutely examining, recognising the significance and in some cases the rarity of the material he is recording and every so often making a resounding plea for its retention under the new dispensation.

30

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage Bibliography References MS Sources Oxfordshire County Record Office: B17/C/1 Letters regarding payment of bills B/17/F/2 Cash Books. 1894-1895 B17/F/3 Ready Money Sales Books B17/F/4 Sales Ledgers. 1914-1920 B17/F/6 Purchase Ledgers B17/F/6/1 Home Day Book May 1925 - Nov 1928 B17/F/8 Sales Day Books B17/F/9 Purchases Day Books Secondary Works Davies, K., 2008. Artisan Art: vernacular wall painting in the Welsh Marches, 1530-1640. Little Logaston: Logaston Press. Hall, L., 2006. Period House Fixtures and Fittings 13001900. Newbury. Quiney, A., 2003. Town Houses of Medieval Britain. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Rodwell, K., 1995. Historic Towns in Oxfordshire. Oxford:Oxford Archaeological Unit. Steane, J., 1987. Trinity College, Oxford, “Painted Room”. South Midlands Archaeology, 17, 62-3. Steane, J. and Ayres, J., 2013. Traditional Buildings in the Oxford Region. Oxbow, Oxford.

31

Fig 1. Extract from 25ins to 1 mile Ordnance Survey Map. Berkshire sheet 14.14, 1st edition. This shows the likely former extension of the early market place and the later encroachments on it including Arbery’s, enlarged detail (© Crown Copyright Ordnance Survey Map).

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

32

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage

Fig 2. The Market Square frontage of Arbery’s. Note the early 18th century ranges of windows in the upper part

of the walls, the use of vitrified headers, and the gauged red/orange brick work round the windows and the quoins,

19th century shop front (all images by the author).

and the

33

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 3a. Plan of basement showing position of filled-in cellarage under front of shop. Fig 3b. Plan of Ground Floor. Note principal posts transverse and axial beams. Fig 3c. Plan of First Floor locating further evidence for timber framing.

34

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage

Fig 4. Remains of painted decoration between joists of floor above ground floor retail area.

Fig 5. Mr John Arbery demonstrates the working of the Lamson pneumatic tube.

35

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 6. The elegant staircase (late Victorian) connecting the ground floor retail area with the first floor.

36

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage

Fig 7. Portion of 16th century panelling in room F.01.

37

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 8. The Cash Office. Fixed sloping desk top of pine below window.

38

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage

Fig 9. The Cash Office. Much of the furniture and fittings date back to the 1900-1920 period.

39

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 10. Fireplace in Bedroom (F.05) c.1900 in date.

40

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage

Fig 11. Sketch perspective of larger part of roof.

41

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 12. Section of roof of front range, showing ‘kneed’ principal rafter and common rafters trenched into the back of butt-jointed purlins. Note machine-sawn battens and slates.

Fig 13. A Singer sewing machine and corner of large table in Dress making room. 42

John Steane: Arbery’s of Wantage

Fig 14. Mannequins.

43

‘The first great show’: the English Agricultural Society at Oxford in 1839 Arthur MacGregor

In the history of the promotion of 19th century practical and rational entertainment the role of the English Agricultural Society’s firstever show, held in Oxford in 1839, has received less attention than perhaps it deserves. While London’s Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace of twelve years later is credited with introducing the nation to show-going on a massive scale, the Oxford venture - centred on agriculture rather than manufactures - formed a provincial forerunner that met with almost equal success within its own more limited terms.

implements used by the farmer during the fifty or sixty years from 1760 onwards . . . there was not one which was not either introduced or improved in consequence of the Society’s exertions and influence’.4

The precocious place of Oxford’s museums in the promotion of recreation and instruction is already well established,1 but less attention has been paid to a display of a different nature but of comparable importance in marking the arrival of a new form of practical demonstration and rational entertainment that would retain its popularity over the following century and a half, namely ‘the first great show’ (as it was termed at the time) of the English Agricultural Society, staged in the city in 1839.2

Diffusion of these new ideas from adherents of the London-based learned society to the rural farming communities remained a slow matter.5 A number of progressive landowners from this era are remembered for the roles they played in promoting innovatory ideas: the annual sheep-shearings organized by Thomas Coke at Holkham Hall until the 1820s and by successive dukes of Bedford were gradually expanded to include associated events such as ploughing matches that engaged farmers from the region, while up and down the country it became customary to stage similar competitions on a more modest scale, doubtless building on the seasonal fairs that had already existed for centuries. Local farmers’ clubs began to be formed during the 1700s – it has been calculated that by 1820 there were well over fifty of them in existence (Goddard 1989, p. 375) – and it was at the annual dinner in 1837 of the most prestigious of these, the Smithfield Club, that the Earl Spencer formally proposed the formation of a national organization, the English Agricultural Society.6

The realization of this, the earliest national event of its kind, represented the culmination of almost a century of deliberate effort aimed at bringing to the practice of agriculture the benefits of Enlightenment scientific method. There were several contributory strands to this process. For example, among the stated concerns of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Sciences, founded in 1754, had been the advancement of agriculture as one of the country’s major industries.3 Prominent among the strategies developed for enticing new ideas from the Society’s members was the award of premiums for all manner of innovations: a range of agricultural machines received prizes from the Society, they (or working models of them) subsequently being placed on display in the Society’s ‘Repository’ or museum so that they could be pored over by the public. They included implements for use both in the farmyard – for slicing root-crops, threshing grain, chopping straw – and in the field: ploughs were a major concern here, as were seed-drills and horse-hoes for promoting the ‘new husbandry’ as advocated earlier by Jethro Tull and gradually espoused by a majority of the Society’s members. It has been claimed that ‘of all the

A report from the Society’s first annual general meeting, held in its offices at Cavendish Square in London, conveniently sets out its objects:7 to promote improvements in agriculture in every possible way, by circulation of books, &c. the granting of rewards and prizes for discoveries of new implements of husbandry or modes of cultivation, and also to promote the welfare, the comfort, and

 The whole spectrum of museums established in the city at various times has recently been examined in an essay by Julian Munby, ‘A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present’, that would have pleased John Rhodes as it did me as its dedicatee: see Munby 2013. 2 The quotation is taken from the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture 10 (1839-40), p. 294, which provides a useful description of the event. The other principal source used here is the account of the show given in the Farmer’s Magazine new ser. 3 (1839), pp. 114-34, as well as other newspaper accounts, as individually referenced. 3  Earlier a number of individual fellows of the Royal Society had turned their attentions to agricultural matters, but it had never been a primary concern of that Society which, by the middle of the eighteenth century, had come to concern itself largely with pure science. For the involvement of the Society of Arts in agriculture see Hudson and Luckhurst 1954, especially chapter 4. 1

Ibid., p. 80. In a thoughtful analysis of the practice of husbandry at this period, Harriet Ritvo (1987, pp. 45-81) has observed that the rank-and-file farmers showed a marked reluctance to change their customary practice, whatever advances might be advocated in print or in theoretical discussions by the wealthier landowners, who made up by far the majority of the membership of the agricultural societies. 6 To some degree, the establishment at just this time of local antiquarian societies, and of new national bodies with a deliberately provincial (rather than a London-based) constituency – the Archaeological Institute and the British Archaeological Association – may be said to parallel these developments in agriculture. 7  Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 25 May 1839. 4 5

45

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes education of those who depend on the cultivation of the soil for their support.

Monday and Tuesday preceding the show. For the same reason, food was obliged to be given to the stock in the pens, and large tubs of water were placed on the ground to supply water for them. The pens were arranged in a double form under the roof, the inside ones being the largest, were appropriated principally to the cattle and horses, and the outside, as far as was requisite, to the sheep and the swine. Sheds of the same materials were erected on the ground for some of the implements; and marquees were also pitched for the display of seeds and roots, and the competition of different varieties of grain.

A library was about to be formed, and recognizing that ‘a knowledge of geology [is] evidently of great importance in agriculture’, the Society was soon to embark on a geological survey of ‘a large tract of land in Kent’. It had already attracted 1,100 subscribers, and within a decade the membership would stand at nearly 7,000. While the new body evidently drew the bulk of its support from the practical farming community, much of its effort – like the Society of Arts before it – was directed to the advancement of husbandry and to the application of science to the improvement of agriculture. These somewhat rigorous concerns were tempered by the introduction of a series of prize essays in which working farmers were encourage to communicate to the membership at large the benefits of good practice in various fields,8 but a new and influential chapter in the English Agricultural Society’s history was opened with a decision to institute annual meetings centered around a show at which progress in animal crop and husbandry could be demonstrated on the ground and at which outstanding achievements in all areas of the Society’s interests would be rewarded with premiums presented before the assembled membership. The first such show was to take place in Oxford, on Wednesday, 17 July 1839.

Exhibitors began converging on the ground in some numbers during the days preceding the show.10 ‘During the whole of Sunday and Monday the roads in the neighbourhood of Oxford were in a state of unusual bustle from the number of vans and other vehicles conveying the cattle, &c. to the place of exhibition.’11 Stock was admitted to the enclosure between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on the Monday and between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. the following day; from this point the animals were to remain in the Society’s care until 7 p.m. following closure of the show on Wednesday. By the appointed hour on Tuesday morning, all the pens were occupied. Roots and seeds were delivered to their respective marquees on the Monday and all the implements were similarly in place on that day. Entries in every category being confidently expected from all quarters of the country, the president of the Society, the Earl Spencer, took steps to ensure that the judges were drawn from an equally wide geographical range so as to ensure that they were free of regional prejudices – and would be seen to be so by exhibitors – although their identities were to remain secret.

Preparing the ground A local committee met in Oxford on 20 April, when a report was received from those appointed to review the possible sites that had been suggested for the show:9 . . . having viewed the several places, they were of the opinion that Mr Pinfold’s pasture ground, situate at the back of Holywell Gardens, and containing about 13 acres, was the most eligible spot for the exhibition, possessing all general requisites, being dry, near to water, and other accommodations.

On the evening prior to the show a dinner was laid on for ‘upwards of 360, embracing most of the leading nobility and gentry’ who had travelled to Oxford, accommodated in ‘the large room at the Star Hotel’. Numerous toasts and lengthy speeches followed. Interestingly, one of these came from William Buckland, the University’s first professor of geology, who had just enrolled as a member of the Society. Buckland’s ‘long and eloquent speech’, sought to demonstrate ‘the close connection between Geology and Agriculture, and what advantages were derivable from a study of the former’; he also proposed the formation of a joint committee with the Geological Society, for the purpose of cooperating in the improvement of agriculture. Buckland drew cheers from the audience by calling attention to the presence at the dinner of William ‘Strata’ Smith, compiler of the country’s first map of its surface geology, ‘shewing to every farmer how, at his own door, he may find the materials with which he may permanently improve the nature of the soil from which he draws his subsistence.’12 The future of the Society’s engagement with science must have seemed in good hands.

In the few weeks leading up to the show, Mr Pinfold’s ground was transformed. An arena comprising about five acres was created, . . . enclosed with broad deals of wood, some set up on end, some on edge, and some diagonally, to the height of 12 feet. The pens appropriated to the accommodation and security of the stock, were placed all around the internal circumference, but at a little distance from the enclosure; they were protected from rain or heat by a roof of wooden rafters covered with canvas. A covered roof over the stock was rendered necessary from the circumstances of the stock being obliged to be placed in their respective places on the

  The regulations for the show are reproduced in Farmer’s Magazine new ser. 3 (1839), p. 56. 11  Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 20 July 1839. 12 Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 20 July 1839. Incidentally, William Smith’s nephew, John Phillips, keeper of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society’s 10

On the difficulties experienced in forwarding the widespread adoption of these advances, see note 4 (above). 9   Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 27 April 1839. 8

46

Arthur MacGregor: ‘The first great show’: the English Agricultural Society at Oxford in 1839 although this, the author asserted, was only to be expected. ‘One of the advantages to be derived from an exhibition of this nature’, he continued,

Show day The organizing committee had decided on two levels of entry to the showground, with a charge of 2s. 6d. for every ticket of admission being levied before mid-day: within fifteen minutes of the gates being opened at 7 o’clock, 500 people were estimated to have flooded in, the number rising to over 10,000 by 11 o’clock. At noon the charge for admission was reduced to 1s., at which point the crowd increased further, being judged ‘perhaps greater than has ever been known on any similar public occasion’. The number of tickets printed proved wholly inadequate, both before and after noon, so that ultimately visitors had to be admitted without tickets being issued: nearly £1,200 in entrance money was collected.

. . . is, to show to farmers and breeders of livestock the perfections in shape and quality at which they ought to aim; and it should, therefore, be no disappointment . . . that they were at present very deficient in this knowledge . . . if a foreigner had come to Oxford, expecting to see the best show of breeding-stock which England could produce, he would have been led to form a very inadequate idea of the merits of the different sorts of live-stock bred in this country. Apart from the shorthorns mentioned above, Herefords formed the only breed with a class of their own, but there were premiums too for any other breed or cross (won by a longhorn bull), for dairy cattle, and for oxen. Horses (described as ‘few in number’) formed a class of their own, with prizes awarded for ‘best Cart Stallion’ and ‘best Cart Mare and Foal’. A third premium, for ‘best Stallion for breeding Hunters, Carriage-horses, or Roadsters’ was ‘not adjudged’ – clearly it had not been a great equine event. The sheep ‘were in general good, and proved a pretty extensive show’. There were three classes, for Leicesters, ‘South Down or other Short-woolled Sheep’, and ‘Long-woolled’ sheep, the latter dominated by animals of the Oxfordshire and Cotswold breeds. Amongst the pigs (judged ‘neither numerous nor good’), one of the few exotic animals noticed makes its appearance, with Richard Smallbones of Hordley, near Woodstock, awarded third premium for his ‘Three 19 weeks old Chinese and Oxfordshire Pigs’.15

All admired the internal arrangements that had been made: the enclosure and its stalls were found to allow ‘an inspection of the animals from each side, without much interference or confusion amongst the crowded company’ (Fig. 1). The judges had duly done their work the previous day, so that by the time the gates opened, explanatory tickets and ‘the awards of premiums, were attached to each lot’.13 Undoubtedly the most successful breeder represented at the show was Thomas Bates of Kirkleavington, near Yarm (Yorkshire) who won the first four of the five premiums in Class I (shorthorns), for a three-year-old bull, a four-year-old cow, a two-year old in-calf heifer and a yearling heifer respectively, all ‘bred by himself’; his combined prize money amounted to 70 sovereigns. Bates’s success has been represented by some authors as all the more remarkable for his animals having made the journey from Yorkshire on foot, but in fact they and their master had made a scarcely less gruelling journey from Middlesborough to London by steamship, by narrowboat to Aylesbury via the Grand Junction Canal, and thence to Oxford by road. Bates would later accompany his prize beasts on the return journey, but on landing at Middlesborough declared that he would never go to sea again.14

Smaller premiums were awarded under a miscellaneous category, ‘Extra Stock, &c’, the first of which went to John Pinfold – owner of the site of the showground – for his five-year-old Herefordshire ox. The Farmer’s Magazine recorded that ‘Mr Davies, of Chelsea, animal painter to Queen Adelaide, attended at Oxford, to take portraits of the best animals’ on behalf of the proprietors of the magazine.

Among the eleven other classes of livestock, prizes were more evenly spread, although the Devon cattle of Mr Paull of Compton Pauncefoot (Somerset) attracted special admiration. General reaction to the quality of the exhibits was qualified, with the Society’s own journal reporting that while there were, in most of the classes, ‘as many superior animals as have often been exhibited together before’, there were also ‘several of a very inferior description’,

Elsewhere within the showground two marquees had been erected: one of these was devoted to an exhibition of different varieties of wheat while the other housed ‘a show of seeds and grain from Messrs Cormack, of New Cross; specimens of soils, minerals and manures, from Mr Lance; and some finely cultivated Swede turnips from Mr. Skirving, of Walton, near Liverpool’.

museum in York since 1826, would come to Oxford in 1853 as deputy reader in geology and as keeper both of the Ashmolean and of the newly established Natural Science Museum (today the University Museum of Natural History). 13 The judges had been required to report to the president and committee at 7 a.m. on the Tuesday, but the continuing arrival of animals throughout the morning had repeatedly frustrated attempts to start the judging; it was suggested that at future meetings animals should all be in their places before the day preceding the opening of the show so that judging could proceed uninterrupted. 14  I mistakenly repeated this misapprehension in MacGregor 2012, p. 438. A more accurate account is given by Bell 1871, p. 253; see also Sanders 1900, pp. 93-4, and Trow-Smith 1951, p. 178.

The exhibition of cereals must be counted among the less successful events of the show. Things had started well enough, with the judges choosing two samples of white wheat and two of red wheat ‘of great beauty and purity’ as of special merit, ‘all of the harvest of 1838, and  Oriental pigs had been cross-bred with English stock since the eighteenth century, producing great improvements: see MacGregor 2012, p. 479. Trow-Smith (1951, p. 178) notes also the presence at the Oxford show of a Nogore cow from Delhi. 15

47

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes grown respectively by the parties themselves’. These duly attracted a great deal of detailed attention from visitors, but ‘in consequence . . . of the extent to which the intermixture of the seed in the different sacks was carried by the public in their examination of the samples, the object of the Society in reference to the contemplated trial of their individual merits was entirely defeated, and the wheats were returned to their several owners with a complimentary premium of Twenty Pounds each’. Lessons were learned immediately by the organizers, the report on proceedings asserting that ‘Precautionary measures will be taken in future to prevent a recurrence of this circumstance’. A separate exhibit by Thomas Gibbs & Co. of London included ‘a large collections of dried plants of the natural grasses best adapted to forming permanent pastures’ as well as an extensive assortment of cereal and root crops.

There remained some scope for personal enterprise, however, as witnessed by a plough shown by John Le Boutillier of Jersey for raising potatoes and separating them from the soil by means of a succession of paddles spinning at right angles to the mould-board. This implement and several others had been set to work on the Tuesday forenoon before the show, ‘in the presence of a large concourse of people’ in a field adjoining the show-ground, although the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture regretted that the ground had ‘not been sufficiently prepared to show the respective action of the implements’. Other private exhibitors showed a variety of ploughs, harrows, horse-hoes, rollers, drills, carts and wagons, as well as machines for cutting turnips, threshing mills, etc. Further attractions on the day included a number of sweepstakes organized by the Society, while by way of side-shows visitors could also admire (in a separate exhibition in an adjoining ground) a variety of curiosities, including ‘a large American ox, weighing 4,000 lbs.’ and ‘the largest horse in the world’ – reputedly standing 20 hands high.

The machinery occupying the centre of the arena also attracted much attention and was judged ‘extremely well arranged’. The display was considered of particular value since ‘it afforded a favourable opportunity of contrasting the implements of different parts of the country; and, to many, there was novelty even in those which had in distant districts been in constant use’. Bringing together the results of regional adaptations was seen here as potentially valuable, although in other matters the benefits of an interchange of ideas at the show, by ‘bringing farmers into better acquaintance with each other’s wants and wishes’ was seen primarily as useful ‘in the removal of those local prejudices which have for so long a period retarded the progress of agricultural improvement in this Country’.

Elsewhere in town, meanwhile, the reading of a number of essays awarded prizes by the Society took place at the Town Hall, generating so much interest that ‘for a considerable time previous to the opening of the doors a large number of persons had assembled, all eager to obtain admission.18 At two o’clock the Hall was opened, and in a few minutes all the most advantageous seats were occupied.’ Thereafter the assembled company heard essays ‘on the most approved varieties of wheat introduced into England, and the best modes of procuring them’; ‘on the comparative advantages of wheel and swing ploughs’; ‘on the advantages of drawing turnips from the land, and consuming them in houses or yards’; and ‘on the advantages of shed feeding for sheep’. The author of the first of these, Colonel Le Couteur of Jersey, detailed the precautions he had taken in preparing his samples of wheat in terms that would have gladdened the hearts of those promoting scientific methodology: it had been submitted to ‘many washings, for the purpose of drawing off any of the fungus tribe that might be attached to it, and having steeped it in brine of such gravity as would float an egg or a potato, it was submitted to another washing in lime’; equal rigour had been applied to the preparation of the land for the respective crops, which ultimately were subjected to the closest measurement and analysis. (The straw from one variety was said to be ‘firm and very useful for bonnet-making’). The experiments were made ‘with all the nicety that circumstances would allow’ and the Colonel clearly embodied exactly the spirit that the Society sought to promote, as did his successor, Mr Handley, MP, who gave a detailed account of his comparisons of various types of regional ploughs in which estimates of their respective

On the subject of implements, it was at precisely this period that a great development was taking place in the mechanization of agriculture in response to a rise in the population and an increased demand for foodstuffs, which led to farmers beginning to experience a degree of prosperity after a lean period in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars.16 Central to this progress was a great increase in the use of iron – particularly cast iron – as the basic construction material, permitting mass-production of many components. By far the most successful promoters of this new technology were Messrs Ransome’s of Ipswich, whose ploughs, threshing machines, harrows, and other devices dominated the Oxford arena. The company had already begun to penetrate markets in the South Midlands by this time, and with the arrival in Oxford of the railway, five years later, its influence would rise further. For the show Ransome’s ‘sent up their waggons laden with more than six tons of machinery and implements, the superior manufacture and variety of which commanded universal approbation’ – so much so that the company was awarded a gold medal.17 So rapidly did this movement progress that at the Great Exhibition of 1851 agricultural implements would form one of the largest categories of exhibit: see Brown 1989, p. 19. 17 The Society’s show at Cambridge in 1840 is said to have seen ‘the real beginning of the great machinery section’ (Trow-Smith 1951, p. 178); by the time of the Gloucester show in 1853, 2,000 implements were exhibited (Emle 1919, p. 369). 16

 Goddard (1989, p. 373) judges that the prize essay system was one of the principal ways in which the Society forwarded the quest for agricultural knowledge, but that it was the annual show that successfully brought it to public attention. 18

48

Arthur MacGregor: ‘The first great show’: the English Agricultural Society at Oxford in 1839 capacities to produce precise furrows were complemented by measurements of the draught exerted in pulling each of them, measured every few yards with the aid of a dynamometer. A great deal of the advantage perceived in the national constituency attracted to the show lay in the opportunities it provided for the communication of any advantages that might have been established at a regional level – ‘the concentration of the experience of practical men in all parts of England’, as one of the speakers at that evening’s dinner would put it.

giving such an impetus to the future exertions of the Society as would tend to produce the greatest benefit’. It must have seemed like the most fitting conclusion to the Society’s meeting at Oxford. The morning after On the Thursday immediately following the show, Messrs Mallam’s held an auction of such livestock and other exhibits as were to be disposed of by their owners. Fine as the weather had been on show day, the aftermath was wild in the extreme: the reporter for the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture was of the opinion that had the Wednesday been as stormy as the succeeding day, ‘it is more than probable that the shaking of the canvass on the roof would have produced serious consequences to some of the stock’.

The dinner On the Wednesday afternoon a grand dinner duly took place in the quadrangle of Queen’s College, let to the Society at no charge by the College and suitably roofed-over and furnished for the occasion (Fig. 2); catering was in the hands of Mr Griffith of the Star and Angel hotels. The doors opened at 3 o’clock, when ‘a tremendous struggle to obtain entrance was kept up for an hour’. By the time the chairman entered an hour later to take his seat, an estimated 2,500 were seated within the quadrangle and its surrounding arcades. At this moment, it was reported, ‘the building presented a most imposing and interesting sight, the seats rising one above the other, giving it the appearance of a vast amphitheatre’. The diners included ‘eminent cultivators of the soil, breeders of stock, or friends generally to the advance of husbandry in this kingdom . . . from every part of the country’, while the windows around the quadrangle ‘were occupied by ladies, whose presence and whose looks gave additional interest and brilliancy to the scene’. Grace having been said, ‘the company commenced operations on the various joints, &c. that covered the tables, and the rattling of the knives and forks afforded considerable amusement.’ Innumerable toasts were drunk to the Society, the Mayor and Corporation of the City of Oxford, the Chancellor of the University (the Duke of Wellington, who earlier had declined the Society’s presidency, pleading that he knew nothing of farming matters), the Provost and Fellows of Queen’s, and many others, including ‘the Labouring Classes of this country’.19 Frequently the toasts were reinforced with ‘three times three’ cheers. ‘Tremendous cheering’ also met the announcement by the Vice-Chancellor that in two years’ time the University would be establishing a Professorship of Agriculture, a move that the Marquis of Downshire in his address to the audience judged would ‘have the effect of

While farmers and their animals began to fan out from the city on their homeward journeys, a poignant vignette could have been observed on the site of the previous evening’s celebrations: In the afternoon of Thursday the fragments of the dinner were given by Mr. and Mrs. Griffith to the poor of Oxford and some hundreds of needy families were enabled to participate in the advantages of this great meeting. For several hours the front of the Angel Hotel was quite beset by a vast assemblage of individuals, whose destitute appearance testified how welcome the fragments of the dinner were to them. The show itself was generally judged ‘highly creditable to the English Agricultural Society, and it fully indicates that, if they are capable of such exercise in infancy, what will they not be able to accomplish in maturer years?’ On this wave of euphoria, few can have caviled when a few months later, on 26 March 1840, Queen Victoria issued the Society a Royal Charter incorporating it as the Royal Agricultural Society of England. Thenceforth the annual Royal Show formed the principal event on the farming calendar until its suspension in 2009, when declining numbers attending the national showground led to a return to regionally organized events. Today the Norfolk, Cornwall and Yorkshire agricultural shows each attracts up to 200,000 visitors every year – a far cry from Oxford’s modest beginnings but a creditable legacy of the enterprise shown there by the English Agricultural Society.

There were, in fact, a number of expressions of goodwill towards the agricultural labourers and support for the principle that good ones should be rewarded as they deserved; the example of the Sussex meeting, at which the most meritorious were invited to dine with the landlords and landholders, was held up as an example that might be emulated by the Society. Any feelings that these expressions sound almost too good to be true find confirmation in what Harriet Ritvo (1987, pp. 49-51) calls ‘the dichotomy between the rhetoric of service and the less explicit but more persuasive rhetoric of self-assertion and display’ embodied in the Smithfield Cub which was ostensibly, like the English Agricultural Society, ‘dedicated to blazing trails for small farmers to follow, but neither the animals they showed nor their economic philosophy suggested much commonality of purpose with such cultivators.’ 19

49

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography Bell, Thomas, 1871. The History of the Improved ShortHorn or Durham Cattle and of the Kirkleavington Herd, from the notes of the late Thomas Bates. Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Brown, Jonathan, 1989. Farm Machinery 1750-1945. London. Ernle, Lord, 1919. English Farming Past and Present. London. Goddard, Nicholas, 1989. ‘Agricultural literature and societies’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. vi: 1750-1850, ed. Joan Thirsk. Cambridge, pp. 361-83. Hudson, Derek, and Luckhurst, Kenneth W., 1954. The Royal Society of Arts 1754-1954. London. MacGregor, Arthur, 2012. Animal Encounters: Human and Animal Interaction in Britain from the Norman Conquest to World War One. London. Munby, Julian, 2013. A rare collection: Oxford museums past and present’, in Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor, Wiegel, H. and Vickers, M. (eds), BAR International Series 2512 Oxford, pp 75-85. Ritvo, Harriet, 1987. The Animal Estate. The English and other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Cambridge, Mass. and London. Sanders, Alvin H., 1900. Short-Horn Cattle. A Series of Historical Sketches, Memoirs and Records. Chicago. Trow-Smith, Robert, 1951.bEnglish Husbandry from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. London.

50

Arthur MacGregor: ‘The first great show’: the English Agricultural Society at Oxford in 1839

Fig. 1. The English Agricultural Society’s showground at Oxford, 17 July 1839. (Lithograph by George Scharf, after a drawing by W. A. Delamotte. © Rothamsted Research Ltd.)

Fig. 2. The English Agricultural Society’s dinner in Queen’s College quadrangle, Oxford, 17 July 1839. (Lithograph by George Scharf, after a drawing by W. A. Delamotte. © Rothamsted Research Ltd.) 51

The Battles of Fisher Row Nancy Hood

Fishermen, bargemen and boatmen once lived in the crowded cottages of Lower, Middle and Upper Fisher Row along the Castle Mill Stream in central Oxford. Their story begins with Saxon fishermen near the Mill on the Wareham Bank, now Lower Fisher Row. The relationships between the families of the Rows and the changes in their trades from fishermen to bargemen, watermen, canal boatmen, and finally, some to operators of pleasure craft on the river, have been thoroughly researched by Dr Mary Prior in her PhD thesis and book Fisher Row: fishermen, bargemen, and canal boatmen in Oxford 1500-1900 (Oxford University Press, 1982), and this study draws on it freely. Fisher Row’s families saw not only battles for the survival of their trades, but also battles between themselves, a long running soap opera.

Fishermen, bargemen and boatmen once lived in the crowded cottages of Lower, Middle and Upper Fisher Row along the Castle Mill Stream in central Oxford. Their story begins with Saxon fishermen on the lowest part of the Wareham Bank, now Lower Fisher Row, near Alfgar’s Mill, which was recorded in the Domesday Book. Oseney Abbey, the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church and the City of Oxford furnished a succession of landlords who oversaw gradual enlargements of the tenements along the Castle Mill Stream, and a growing community. Middle and Upper Fisher Row’s tenements date from the 1620s, when a dispute between Christ Church and the City over the boundary of their properties was finally settled. The relationships between the families of the Rows and the changes in their trades from fishermen to bargemen, canal boatmen, back to fishing, and finally some of them to operating pleasure craft on the river, was thoroughly researched by Dr Mary Prior in her PhD thesis and book Fisher Row: fishermen, bargemen, and canal boatmen in Oxford 1500-1900 (Oxford University Press, 1982) and this study draws on it freely. One theme that emerges early on is that the once picturesque cottages along the Mill Stream saw not only battles for the survival of their trades, but also battles amongst the families - a long-running soap opera. Here we can look at Fisher Row through time, in its changing environment.

Edmund Robynson, Denys Hyck and Thomas Towseys of the parish of St. Nicholas (St Thomas) and divers other misruled persons to the number of eight or nine persons, came in a riotous manner with pikes and staves’ to punish James Atwood at the fulling mill at Oseney, who was diverting water from the Castle Mill Stream. This would have affected the fishermen’s traps in the Mill Stream. Piers, the Miller of the Castle Mill, had already cut off the water to Oseney at Rewley Lock, an incident described in Christ Church’s records (Quoted in Prior 1982, p. 52-3). When the dispute between the City and Christ Church was settled in 1621, two Christ Church leases accounted for Middle Fisher Row between what is now Pacey’s Bridge near the Lock and Hythe Bridge. The City held four leases of Upper Fisher Row from Hythe Bridge to the Lasher. Two boatmen who had already been living near the Castle Mill Stream secured the leases: William Pemerton at Middle Fisher Row and Thomas Pemerton from Oseney at Upper Fisher Row. Boatmen were building a trade using the Wharf at Hythe Bridge on the Mill Stream at Upper Fisher Row for goods, especially coal, coming into Oxford from the Midlands via the River Thames. Timber, corn and stone made up the bulk of the rest of the trade. Goods leaving Oxford from the Wharf for London had to be transferred to heavy river barges at Folly Bridge Wharf, reached via the main Thames navigation channel, which was, until 1790, the Bullstake Stream, far to the west of Oseney. As the river trade opened up above and below Oxford, bargemen made a good living, and there was plenty of work for sons and for the women family members too. The Bullstake Stream however was often too shallow, either from drought or from the mills diverting too much of the flow of water, and in flood the bridge was too low for the barges to pass under it. Fatal accidents occurred, and finally, in 1721, one provoked a riot of the bargemen, which was described by Thomas Hearne: ‘At this Place [Bulstock Bridge] several Persons have been crush’d to death (by reason of the Lowness of the Arch) at Floud times.’ There followed a dispute between the bargemen, supported by the Vice-Chancellor of the University, who wanted the bridge pulled down and raised by a yard, and other locals who would have had their access across the

A lock operated just above the mill between the Mill Stream and a back stream, dividing the Wareham Bank into two long narrow banks; the northern bank was to become Middle and Upper Fisher Row. Another sluice known as The Lasher operated at the north end; together these sluices controlled the level of water from the Mill Stream to the Mill. The locks and weirs attracted fishermen because of the favoured location to set traps and nets, and the positions next to them were jealously guarded. In addition, disputes arose between the millers and the fishermen over the flow of water through the sluices for their different purposes. The mosaic of leaseholders and tenants along the Mill Stream increased the competition for the water flowing down the Thames in its braided channels. One dispute turned to violence in 1552 when fishermen, some of whom were of the Wareham Bank, ‘Walter Pytts, Harry Target, 53

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Stream impeded for a time; ‘Notwithstanding which, on Monday Octob 16, ‘twas pull’d down by some Bargemen & others, and now ‘tis actually rebuilding, the Arch being to be a Yard higher than before’. A ferry was established, at a charge of ‘a half-Penny a Man, & a penny a Man & horse’ which of course incensed the locals who had crossed the bridge for nothing (Quoted in Prior 1982, p. 158).

interests in common and intermarriage eventually led to boatmen from the Midland canals settling in Fisher Row and changing the makeup of the local community. The Parish Registers of St Thomas parish give occupations of the fathers of baptised children. In the crucial years after the canal opened and before the detailed Census of 1841, ‘bargemen’ who worked the river locally, and ‘boatmen’, who worked the length of the canal, were about equal in number until 1818, but after that the bargemen dwindled to only 1 in 1823 against 10 boatmen. A bargeman might change his occupation to ‘fisherman’, as did John Bossom in 1813. This might indicate that his work on barges had dried up and that he had retreated to the traditional job of trapping eels and netting fish. William Beesley, a bargemaster, became the landlord of The Fishes, later The Nag’s Head pub, by the canal on Hythe Bridge Street. Three of his daughters married boatmen from the Midlands. One can imagine the opportunities for finding a local girl for a wife or attracting an established boatman for a husband, as a boatman’s life centred around the local pub when his boat was in the wharf, and he had to stable his horse, find company and spend his wages. Across Hythe Bridge from The Fishes was The Running Horses pub, held for a time by one of William Beesley’s granddaughters and her husband Christopher Collier. Another pub, The Navigation End, occupied the north side of Park End Street, by Pacey’s Bridge, next to the Park End Coal Wharf and opposite Middle Fisher Row.

The rioters were arrested, taken before the City Quarter Sessions and fined 6s. 4d. Their names provide a list of the most active bargemen in the community of the Rows at the time: John Roberts, Edward Tawney, Charles Pemerton, Thomas and George Howse, Edward Price, John Clark, William Robinson and Thomas Gardner, many related by marriage among the families of the Row. Two families in particular, the Tawneys and the Gardners, had begun their barging trade in the previous century on Upper Fisher Row and were to become holders of numerous tenements. The Gardner women married into the Crawford family, also boatmen and bargemen who were clustered in Middle Fisher Row. The Tawney daughters also married into the community. The river supported these large, colourful families and their relatives with trade upriver to Lechlade and downriver to Abingdon. The Tawneys then moved from Upper to Lower Fisher Row, so completing the bargemaster domination of the Rows. Life on the Rows changed with the opening of the Thames and Severn Canal in 1789 and the Oxford Canal in 1790. The Thames and Severn Canal, wide enough for river barges, joined the River Thames 32 miles north of Oxford, and a re-routed Thames navigation channel was opened at Oseney Mill to provide a more reliable way through to Folly Bridge and London, by-passing the central Oxford wharves. Oseney Lock was cheaply built by prisoners from Oxford Castle.

Let’s look at the inhabitants of the Rows in 1841, when the first detailed Census recorded the households door to door. Twenty-three households were packed into Lower Fisher Row, a total of 68 people aged 2 to 75. Five young men were boatmen, as was Thomas Powell, aged 40. William Bossom, at 60, was still a fisherman. Labourers, a cooper, a painter and a printer were the other occupations. James Pacey the Coal Merchant and his family lived near the bridge at Park End Street. Fifteen households occupied the shorter terrace of Middle Fisher Row, crammed with 82 souls. They included the Beesley and Bossom families who came to dominate the boating business up and down the river, and seven other boatman families. The Bossoms were also established at Medley on the Thames as fishermen, and Bossom’s Boatyard still operates there. Fifteen households with 85 members lived on Upper Fisher Row, including more Bossoms and Beesleys. Benjamen Bossom, boatbuilder, and his family of six children lived in the first house beyond Hythe Bridge. Samuel Beesley, a bargeman of 70 years, lived in the house of the Spindlers, his daughter and son in law. Four more Beesley families plied river trades: Abel Beesley, fisherman (and later champion punter on the river); Thomas Beesley, boatman; Thomas Beesley, (aged 45) fisherman; and Thomas Beesley, (aged 70) fisherman, with his wife Anna and boatman son Adam. John Howkins and James Watson headed boatman families with four and five children apiece. Thus, in one way or another, nine of the fifteen households were in the boating business. Altogether the Rows had a population of 235 in the growing St Thomas’s parish.

The Oxford Canal, which began in Coventry, was suitable for light river barges and narrow boats of 72’ by only 6’10” wide. It penetrated all the way into the centre of the city at Hythe Bridge alongside the old barge route on the Mill Stream, where It finished at a canal basin, with a new coal wharf nudging right up to the edge of the Castle’s former bailey. Industrial goods, stone, tiles and coal could be brought south via the Birmingham Canal and the Trent and Mersey Canal, thence on to the Oxford Canal, thus avoiding the perils of the river’s flood and drought. How was Fisher Row’s close-knit society affected by the arrival of narrow canal boats into its heart? Strangers came into the area, men already established in canal boating life in the Midlands since the 1770s. Running canal boats was a different operation from running river barges. Trips were likely to be longer as the communicating canals and trade routes were extended. Canal folk could live on their boats, which were adapted economically between space for their load and for their family. A single horse, led by a boy or the wife, could pull the boat along the currentless canal, whereas a barge from Fisher Row needed up to six men and a boy, and many horses to tow upstream. Nevertheless, 54

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row The family ties were long-lasting because of the close knit community of the Row. The Gardners and Crawfords, who had been so numerous in Upper and Middle Fisher Row in the 18th century, conjoined with the Beesleys and the Bossoms through marriage of their daughters. John Beesley, a cordwainer, by marrying Elizabeth Gardner in 1750 sired eleven children. His son William was at first a fisherman, with two tenements on Middle Fisher Row, then he was the publican of The Fishes, a wharfinger and bargemaster. He worked mainly from the Wharf, transporting goods to barges for London. One of his sons became bargeman, and as mentioned above his three daughters married boatmen, bringing new names into the Row: Fisher, Edwards, and Lewis. In successive generations the Beesleys were inseparable from the boating trade, supplemented by keeping public houses and dealing in coal. William’s brothers Thomas and Samuel followed the barging trade too, but Thomas was a ‘costbearer’, transporting goods from wharf to barge for the Thames and Severn Canal Company.

in his tenement near the Lasher at the top of Upper Fisher Row, was able to mix fishing with barging on the river as long as the trade held up, but his business came to grief. His 13 children born on the Row became fishermen and stayed with barges rather than canal boats. Thomas’s son, also Thomas, still held the tenement at the Lasher, although it was subdivided. An even more serious battle was fought between the Beesley and Bossom camps in 1822, the case fully described in Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 19 Feb.,1825. The Beesley tenement at the top of Upper Fisher Row led onto a piece of waste ground commonly used by fishermen to pull up boats or to dry nets. As it bordered the Beesley tenement, it had been subject to encroachment by them, and had been planted with vegetables, even trees. It was invaded by the Bossoms, who cut down 200(!) trees and trampled the vegetables, and the next night burned the crops. The law found for the Beesleys, and thereafter they paid a quit rent for the land. Bossom was given leave by the City to encroach on another parcel of land opposite Middle Fisher Row, no doubt in hopes that would be the end of the matter.

John Crawford and Margaret Gardner, who married in 1729, had a daughter Christian who married Thomas Bossom, bargemaster, in 1774. So the families of the Rows through kinship both attracted new blood and kept the bonds of the community secure, right up to the middle of the 19th century.

By 1829 three Bossom families lived in Lower Fisher Row just below the Lock, and several of them were fishermen. With the fisherman branch of the Beesleys ensconced at the Lasher on Upper Fisher Row, the scene was set for confrontation over water levels and fishing rights. Both families were Freemen of the City, given rights to fish in City Free Waters. It is likely that a downturn in barging led them to return to fishing.

1830 was the most prosperous year for the Oxford Canal Company. Barging on the river continued to provide some employment, and the profitable trade in coal from the Midlands kept canal boats busy. In the Census of 1851 there were still 21 boatmen on Middle and Upper Fisher Row, and 7 elsewhere in the parish, plus two bargemen, but in 1861 there were only ten on the Rows, and in 1871 merely two, but eight living elsewhere – Oseney, Jericho and Medley. By then the threads of the fabric of the community had unravelled.

One of Thomas Bossoms’ twelve sons, George (17961869) was appointed to the new post of water-bailiff, and later became a policeman and Governor of the City Goal. George became involved in disputes over fishing rights, and indeed he prosecuted both John Bossom and Sarah Beesley for infringements; Sarah had been caught selling her catch out of season.

It should not be supposed that the family groups on the Rows lived in absolute harmony. The Oxford Canal had been only recently opened when antagonism between the two largest families on the Rows broke out and two champions, probably John Bossom and Thomas Beesley, both in their 20s, fought it out. The Beesley was victorious, having fractured the rib of his opponent. The fracas was serious enough to be reported in Jackson’s Oxford Journal on 30 January, 1790.

Quarrels and the occasional skirmish were not limited to the Fisher Row families. The whole Free Waters of the City could see disputes over common rights, boundaries and family loyalties, especially when the fiery Beesleys took on a grievance. A local difficulty arose when young Thomas Beesley, son of Samuel, and some others were seen shunting the cattle, ducks and geese belonging to the men of Wolvercote, of north Port Meadow by the canal, roughly around Port Meadow. The Wolvercote men turned out for a fight, which the Beesley side got the better of, chasing the men back to Wolvercote, escalating the challenge into a pitched battle, then driving them into The Plough pub, where Thomas Beesley took hold of a bludgeon and fatally smashed one of the young men on the head. The story is told in all its theatrical detail in Jackson’s Oxford Journal for 11 July, 1829, followed by an offer of a reward, which appeared on 18 July, for bringing to justice the two major culprits, who had escaped over the river to Berkshire. To

The two Beesley brothers, William and Thomas, had a quarrel over the business of ‘cost-bearing’, when William claimed a monopoly on transferring goods at the Oxford Wharf to barges, refusing to let his brother Thomas unload on behalf of the Thames and Severn Canal, and adding an extra cost to his trip. Violence ensued more than once between William and Thomas and another brother, Samuel, who took Thomas’s part. The dispute separated the two branches of the family into fishermen/barging (river) and boatmen (canal) dynasties for nearly a century. William and his 8 children ran with the canal, whereas Thomas, 55

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes illustrate the characters to be apprehended, this description of Thomas Beesley appeared in the Journal:

at Rewley Road’s junction with the end of Park End Street was equipped with a coal depot. The mainstay of the trade by barge and canal was on the verge of collapse, even with a 20 percent reduction in tolls by the Thames Commissioners in 1844, especially to compete with the Great Western Railway.

…about 30 years of age, about 5 feet 7 inches in height, middle-sized, light complexion, rather freckled face, rather dark hair, whiskers a little sandy, has the appearance of a boatman or bargeman, had on a pair of fustian trowsers, red plush waistcoat, with brown fustian sleeves, and a pair of half boots, a black leather cap bound around with fur; walks rather stiffly with one leg.

In the Census of 1851, counting in occupants of Hythe Bridge Wharf as well as the Rows, there were still 4 boat builders, 22 boatmen, 2 bargemen, 5 boatman wives, and 4 fishermen. Other trades though were filling in the Rows: brewers, college servants, coal labourers, laundresses and dressmakers, tailors, even agricultural labourers. In 1861 and 1871 malting and brewing were dominant employers – brewers, maltsters, draymen, harness makers, their labourers and apprentices or servants. A dairy had become established on Lower Fisher Row, and journeymen bakers headed two families. Except for Thomas Bossom, still a boatman, and his family of four children, Lower Fisher Row had turned its back on the river and the canal. A few railway labourers and coal carriers had infiltrated the tenancies. The remaining three boatmen in 1871 were from Middle Fisher Row, or clustered around Hythe Bridge Wharf.

He was brought to justice, tried in March 1830, was acquitted of murder, found guilty of manslaughter, and apparently served only seven years of a fourteen-year sentence to transportation (Prior 1982, p. 274). The fishermen of the Rows felt threatened by the City authorities as they sought to regulate Port Meadow and the fisheries through the office of water-bailiff. In 1838 John Bossom, waterman, was new to the post, and his very name was enough to provoke a Beesley, even though back in 1829 he had been one of the crowd who aided Thomas Beesley in his escape to Berkshire. Joseph Beesley was had up for assault on John Bossom (Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 15 Sept, 1838), but Bossom himself, although the water- bailiff, was also an habitual offender, and was soon after charged with using illegal nets for eels at Medley (Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 Nov, 1838). As a living from the Free Waters became more precarious, so the temptation to take risks beckoned. More often it was a Beesley who resorted to illegal fishing and a Bossom who acted for the Sheriff, exacerbating the feud between the families. The Beesleys were becoming part of the problem of the decline of the fisheries as well as one of its victims. Thomas Beesley was unrepentant over the right to ‘draw the waters’ with his nets saying ‘he had, and should continue to do so; it was his birthright’ (Jackson’s Oxford Journal 25 Nov, 1848).

Upper Fisher Row was the domain of the Beesleys Samuel, Abel, Adam, Jacob, James, Thomas and their families, all still striving to make a living from the river. They continued to fish according to their ancient rights, ignoring the Conservancy’s authority over the fisheries and the new Byelaws, which restricted the months for fishing and the size of nets, and gave powers to the water bailiffs to enter boats and seize nets. Their obstinacy resulted in numerous appearances before the City Magistrates, headed by their long-standing adversary in the Town Clerk, G. P. Hester, who had an interest in the newly formed Angling Society, as President and Treasurer! (Prior, 1982, p. 289) Things came to a head in 1870 when an officer of the Conservancy confronted the six Beesleys on the Port Meadow Stream and attempted to measure their nets. Predictably rebuffed, he returned, reinforced with the Sheriff, the Inspector of Police, four constables, the Mayor’s Sergeant and the Water Bailiff with a punt to seize the nets. Perhaps they were too heavy for the punt; perhaps they misjudged how to stand up in a punt; no doubt there was a scuffle and when the punt capsized the Beesleys laid into them with punt poles. Inevitably they were convicted of assault and fined; James Beesley was sentenced to 3 months hard labour. And they faced a further charge of illegal fishing (Jackson’s Oxford Journal 24 and 30 Sept, 1870; 8 Oct and 12 Nov. 1870). The Beesleys may have taken some comfort from the support of the crowd as they cheered these renegade and unrepentant fishermen, their fellow Freemen, but the incident seems to have marked the end of the Beesley’s war against the Conservancy and the end of freemen’s rights of fishing in Oxford’s free waters. By now there were barely 20 fishermen on the river and over 400 anglers registered to fish in Conservancy waters.

Three further factors worked against the Freemen who were fishermen: the establishment of the Thames Conservancy in 1857 to manage the navigation and to control the fisheries of the river; the growth of angling as a sport for those who did not have to live by it; and in 1844 the Oxford’s connection by railway to London’s markets for fresh fish from the sea. This ushered in a new era for Fisher Row. Bargemen travelling slowly upriver with their loads from London to Oxford would see several trains of the Great Western Railway pass them along the Thames valley. There would be goods trains outrunning the water transport to arrive at Grandpont, a station very near Folly Bridge, at the heart of the barging trade. All the markets of London would be accessible to the colleges and houses of Oxford for fish from the sea and fruit and vegetables from Covent Garden. The branch to Oxford from Didcot on the Great Western line came in 1844, at first (until 1872) to the Grandpont Station, then to its present location on Botley Road. The London and North Western Railway’s terminus 56

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row piece-work for the women and girls from April through the summer. With the favoured tenancy on a plot at the top of the Row, by the Lasher, Jacob had built two houses and, as we have seen, made use of the meadow there for growing vegetables and keeping domestic stock, as well as the osier works.

A great change had taken place on the Rows by the Census of 1881. A single boatbuilder, Richard Allen, and a single Boatman, Joseph Beauchamp, lived on Middle Fisher Row, and young Abel Beesley described himself as a ‘University waterman’. On Upper Fisher Row, George Bossom, the only one of the family left on the Rows, was now a ‘White Smith’. Of the Beesleys, young James Beesley was listed as a waterman, as was old Abel Beesley. Old James Beesley, now 70, described himself as ‘Osier Merchant’, as did Jacob Beesley. Old Abel’s claim to be a ‘waterman’ may have been purely nostalgic, as in the 1875 Shrimpton’s Directory Abel was listed as a net and wheel maker, James was a rod merchant and Samuel was a net maker. In the 1880 Walters P.O. Directory, Jacob had joined them as a rod merchant, so all the Beesley men were in the osier business. Fishermen had always exploited the shrub willows growing along the river, cutting the osier shoots for their baskets and traps – now they developed the craft so that they could sell to the trade. Abel Beesley collected rushes and the osiers and brought them by widebellied punt to his wharf outside his house on 28 Middle Fisher Row, where he advertised his trade. In a yard at the top of Upper Fisher Row, on the waste ground known as the Lam, which the Beesleys had colonized years earlier, they were soaked and peeled ready for weaving into hurdles, lobster pots, hampers or baskets. Willow had many other uses - tool handles, poles and cricket bats.

But work on the Canal had ceased to be a living for the Rows. Any ‘waterman’s work’ or fishing would have to be supplemented by running a pub, carrying for the coal merchants or the railways, or in the breweries. Recollections from the last residents were gathered in the 1970s as a result of articles in the Oxford Mail asking for memories of life on the Rows for Mary Prior’s thesis on Fisher Row. The enthusiastic response gives a picture of relentless struggles to make a living day-by-day, and yet a nostalgia for the old neighbourhood life. Children could earn coppers by carrying messages, washing doorsteps, cleaning shops or chopping oranges for the nearby Coopers Marmalade factory. A few coppers could make the difference in having bread and jam for lunch. Since the Great War, the Oxford Canal Company had been struggling to survive. In 1936 the Canal Company sold off the wharves and canal basin at Oxford to the Morris Motor Car manufacturer William Morris, later Lord Nuffield. It was a symbolic trade off, although it was not until after World War II that work began on Nuffield College. Coal still came down by canal boat, but to the wharf at Juxon Street in Jericho, where the boatmen then congregated. Without the boatmen, The Running Horses pub lost its license in1938, and in 1939 The Nag’s Head was pulled down, to be rebuilt without stabling for the boatmen’s horses and to face the road, not the canal.

Changes had taken place on the River Thames too. With the decline of commercial river traffic, leisure boating filled the gap. Pleasure boats for hire, regattas, punting and rowing called for a different style of waterman. In Oxford, many bargemen made a living running cruisers from Folly Bridge, and watermen at first could enter rowing matches along with the growing undergraduate participation in the sport.

The motorcar exacted further changes to the detriment of life in the Rows. In 1922 Pacey’s Bridge was widened and lowered, with the result that boats could not pass under it, and no footpath underneath was provided. Lower Fisher Row was isolated from the other Rows. Castle Mill was destroyed to widen the unlovely Paradise Street (1929) so that only the foundation for the water wheel and sluice remains. By 1949 Lower Fisher Row and Middle Fisher Row were nearly deserted. A former resident described No. 28 Middle Fisher Row, the house she was born in it had been Abel Beesley’s old house, where he brought the osiers in to the wharf. The door to the ‘front room’ opened from the Mill Stream path, and a door opposite led to the kitchen. Behind the kitchen the back yard gave onto the ‘Back Stream’ and there was a toilet annex. They kept a goat in the back. One bedroom was on the first floor, with a staircase leading to another in the attic. Her two sisters and her brother were born in No. 22, so families moved around on the Rows, and intermarried; she still knew the names of all those in the neighbouring houses (Mary Prior, pers. com.). Lower and Middle Fisher Row were demolished in 1954, the same year that saw the Canal Basin finally filled in. The houses on Upper Fisher Row had been rebuilt, some around 1909, and some in the 1930s. They were more substantial, and the upper row

But upriver, the Fisher Row bargemen, fishermen and boatmen were drawn to a different sport – punting. Punt races became a feature of Oxford City’s Regatta, established in 1841, and punt races for watermen were started the next year. Here the Beesleys excelled, with their fearless cunning and skill in boating. Two Beesleys won the purse at the first year of the races and remained champions. The ordinary races staged at Medley and around Port Meadow saw the Beesleys race against the Bossoms, perpetuating the family feud, but no doubt giving much amusement to the crowds with their fouling and cheating. Sampson and Abel Beesley could not be beaten, and regularly carried off the prize purses, anywhere between £10 and £100. Abel became professional champion of England at the Maidenhead event for six years, until he retired unbeaten to train further champions. He continued to live and fish at No 4 Upper Fisher Row until he died in the early 1920s. The 20th Century was a catalogue of endings. Only in Upper Fisher Row do we find family names which had belonged to boatmen or bargemen: Corby, Howkins, and the Beesleys. The Beesleys still did well with their osier trade, buying from other local suppliers and providing 57

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes was protected from the incessant flooding as it was raised higher than the lower banks nearer the Mill.

an Inspector Morse episode and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, where the boat-dwelling Gyptians lived. The creator of the Gyptians and Lyra of Oxford said at the inquiry:

Interviewing former residents of the Rows rehoused in their new council flats and houses, Mary Prior found that the families were better off – and that this was the result of employment at the Morris Motor works – regular, not seasonal, and for a decent wage. But of Fisher Row she wrote in 1982:

The boatyard and its work is part of a complex human ecology that sustains all kinds of life: economic life, artistic life, social life, environmental life, cultural life in the widest possible sense. It’s part of what has made Oxford the incomparably fertile place it is, a place where the imagination can take root and flourish. It takes centuries to build up this rich soil (Philip Pullman quoted in The Guardian, 10 October, 2008).

The Castle Mill Stream flows gently past the Row, its surface filmed with scum, the Lock choked with leaves, polythene bags, and old sandwiches; bottles bob at the dead end of the canal by Hythe Bridge. The tramps and winos who have a refuge down near the site of Oseney, sun themselves on the towpath. These remain – the transient stream of the parish population has outlasted the stable community.

But this revival of interest and community spirit had come much too late to save Fisher Row. The 17th-century terraced houses of Lower and Middle Fisher Row had been low-lying and flooded frequently. Once the work on the river had gone, the families died out, drifted off, or were rehoused, and no new set of occupants could be found. Whether improvements in river management and flood control could have saved them, so that restored, they could have become tidy bijoux dwellings we will never know. Middle Fisher Row, still liable to flood, is a small park. The whole area from the former Hythe Bridge Wharf to the Castle Mill has been taken in as part of a river walk amenity, with a surfaced path along the Mill Stream; open spaces, cleared of undergrowth and dank overhanging branches, provide pleasant sitting out places, and a Castle Mill Stream Walk continues to the River near Folly Bridge. Lower Fisher Row’s 16 tenements from No. 5 – 20 are now a grassy park by the Mill Stream, overlooked by The Stream Edge, 36 apartments built on their back gardens in 2005. Conversion of Morrell’s Lion Brewery to flats, and restoration or rebuilding of many of the old courts on St Thomas High Street have added new residents to the mix of pubs and workshops. The development at Oxford Castle, the former Prison, to a hotel and restaurant complex has opened up an area seldom before frequented by families and walkers. Some residents hope for a reinstatement of the canal basin and a marina on the Worcester Street car park site…if only!

The Row lived by exploiting the river, and now its trade is ended. The mill is pulled down, the fishermen have gone; the wharves are empty, the boatmen are dead and their children dispersed. The river remains, unused, unkempt, superseded (Prior 1982, p. 346). I do not like to end on such a melancholy note. The canal from Wolvercote to Hythe Bridge is now full of colourful narrow boats used for both holidays and homes, and boatyards are thriving at Medley and Oseney Lock. However, in a controversial decision in 2005 to realize the value of city centre property, the Waterways Board closed off the wharf and Castle Mill Boatyard at Jericho and sold it for housing or development. Local residents and some of the 120 strong families living on narrow boats on the moorings protested and occupied the boatyard. A long stand-off in the tradition of a Beesley family confrontation with the water- bailiffs resulted in the forcible removal of the boats, even those under repair, from the yard onto the canal and the site was humiliatingly cordoned off with large round orange floats, boarding and barbed wire (Reported in the Oxford Mail 1 June, 2006). The rustic boatyard on the edge of trendy Jericho with its Italianate church as a backdrop had become a character in itself, the setting for

58

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row Bibliography and References

Reports of the Guardians of the Poor, The Poor of Fisher Row, 1873-1915, Oxfordshire Family History Society, 2007, Oxfordshire electronic resources. St Thomas Parish Records, Oxfordshire History Centre , microfilm. Salter, H.E., 1926. Oxford City of Properties; Clarendon Press, Oxford. Salter, H.E., 1936. Medieval Oxford, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Squires, W. T., 1928. In West Oxford, A.R. Mowbray, Oxford. Sturdy, David, 1964-5. ‘Fisher Row’, Oxoniensia, xxix/ xxx. Tyack, G., 1998. Oxford, An Architectural Guide, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Thacker, Fred S, 1914. The Thames Highway, David and Charles, Newton Abbot. Victoria County History of England: Oxfordshire vol. IV; The City of Oxford, Ed. A. Crossley, University of London Institute of Historical Research, London, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979.

Census returns: 1841; 1851; 1861; 1871; 1881; 1891; 1901. Compton, Hugh, 1976. The Oxford Canal, David and Charles, Newton Abbot. Cooper, Janet, 1972. ‘The Hundred Rolls for the Parish of St Thomas, Oxford’, Oxoniensia xxxvii, 37. Davies, Mark and Robinson, Catherine, 2001. A Towpath Walk in Oxford, The Towpath Press, Oxford. Directories: Shrimptons, 1875; Walters P.O. Directory, 1880, 1890; Kelly’s Directory, 1896-7, 1899, 1900, 1905; P.O. Directory 1847. Domesday Book 1089 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1828, Part II, 489. The Guardian, ‘ Pullman wins battle of Jericho boatyard’, 10 October, 2008. Hadfield, Charles, 1969. Canals of South and Southeast England, David and Charles, Newton Abbot. Hood, Nancy, 2011. Fisher Row and the Watery Margins of Oxford through Time. Amberley Press, Stroud, Glos. Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 30 January 1790; 19 February 1825; 16 April 1825; 19 August 1826; 14 February 1829; 14 April 1827; 14 February 1829. Oxford Mail, ‘ Bailiffs evict boatyard squatters’, 1 June, 2006. Oxfordshire Archives, MS Wills Oxon. Palmer, Nicholas, 1976. Oxford: The Hamel, CBA Group 9 Newsletter, No. 6. Palmer, Nicholas, 1980. A Beaker Burial and Medieval Tenements in The Hamel, Oxford, Oxoniensia 45, 135144. Pantin, W A, 1960. ‘Fisher Row, Oxford’, Oxoniensia xxv, 25. Pevsner, N. and Sherwood, J., 1974. Oxfordshire, Penguin, Middlesex, England. Pressnell, L.S., 1956. Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Prior Mary, 1982. Fisher Row: Fishermen, Bargemen, and Canal Boatmen in Oxford 1500-1900; Oxford University Press, Oxford. [And some information by personal communication.]

Maps consulted Agas, 1578 Christ Church, 1613 Loggan, 1675 1789: Wm Faden, London, Plan of the City of Oxford 1773: Longmate, New Map of the City of Oxford 1768: Jeffries, Plan of the University and City of Oxford 1750: J Taylor 1733: Henry Hyde 1729: Pieter van der Aa 1817: R. Pearson, Walks in Oxford, a New Map of the University and City of Oxford 1844: Le Keux, Plan of City and University of Oxford 1850: R.S. Hoggar 1844: Le Keux, Plan of City and University of Oxford O.S. 25 inches to the mile, 1876; 1900; 1921, 1939.

59

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Map 1. 1675 Map by David Loggan. This classic view shows St Thomas High Street leading west from the Castle to St Thomas’s Church; Lower, Middle and Upper Fisher Row are shown along the Mill Stream leading north (which is towards the bottom of the map), with what is now Pacey’s Bridge, Hythe Bridge and the Lasher forming their boundaries. The Back Stream (the Wareham Stream) behind the Castle Mill Stream forms the islands that make up the Rows. (Image: Oxfordshire History Centre).

60

Map 2. The O.S. Map of 1921 shows the density of housing along the Rows, and the route of the Oxford Canal with its towpath alongside the Mill Stream, towards its wharves at the basin and by the Castle Mound. The Canal business was already in decline by this time, and this layout was not to last much longer.

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row

61

Fig 1. Lower Fisher Row from Quaking Bridge looking north towards Pacey’s Bridge. The first three cottages on the Row were pulled down in 1799 by Edward Tawney to build an elegant double-fronted -red brick town house and to endow the almshouses next door for 12 men and women, seen here on the left. (Watercolour by R. Murdoch Wright, 1909, Private collection).

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

62

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row

Fig 2. Beside the Lock which controlled the flow of water between the Mill Stream and the Back Stream was Row – it can be seen on the post card view in the gap in the row of cottages. (Private collection). This view is from Pacey’s Bridge looking south towards St George’s Tower.

the best position for fishermen on the

Fig 3. Lower Fisher Row, a populous, close knit community until the 1880s, declined to a stretch of deserted, ruinous 1954. Medieval floors were discovered beneath the ruins in the middle of the Row, and fine timbers and four-centred arched stone fireplaces can be seen in the shells of the cottages. (Images and Voices, Oxfordshire County Council)

shambles, liable to flood, condemned and pulled down in

63

Fig 4. Middle Fisher Row from Hythe Bridge looking south towards Pacey’s Bridge. (Watercolour by R. Murdoch Wright, 1909, private collection). This watercolour, and its companions of Lower and Upper Fisher Row, once hung in the The Nags Head on the corner of Hythe Bridge. The pub, rebuilt in 1939, was formerly The Fishes, Navigation House and Antiquity Hall, where the antiquarian and diarist Thomas Hearne (1678-1735) met with his fellow academicians. It is now the ‘Oxford Retreat’.

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

64

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row

Fig 5. Abel Beesley was a colourful character from a boatman and fisherman family whose forbear John had married into the Gardner family on the Rows in 1750. John’s son William ran The Fishes, later the Nags Head, and fathered 8 children. Throughout the 19th century they were bargemasters, boatmen, fishermen, and wharfmasters. By the end of the century Abel took to the osier trade – collecting the rushes from the various waters in his punt and landing them on his wharf at No. 28 Middle Fisher Row, seen here around 1900. (Images and Voices, Oxfordshire County Council).

65

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 6. Frequent floods contributed to the deterioration of these low-lying cottages on the Rows. In the 1901 Census no fishermen or watermen lived here, but a railway labourer, carter, housekeeper, a tram driver, labourers, domestics, brewer’s labourer, coal porter, and the innkeeper of the Nag’s Head. (Postcard, private collection).

66

Fig 7. Upper Fisher Row viewed from the Lasher, as the sluice in the foreground was known, towards Hythe Bridge (watercolour, by R. Murdoch Wright, 1909, private collection). Upper Fisher Row was slightly higher than the two lower rows; the houses seem more substantial. Note the treeless verges of the stream and towpath to enable towing by horses.

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row

67

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 8. The tenement at the top of Upper Fisher Row led onto a piece of waste ground commonly used to pull up boats or dry nets. The Beesleys ran their osier workshop there. Here the osiers are being stripped ready for weaving into baskets, fish traps and hampers, c 1901. (Images and Voices, Oxfordshire County Council).

68

Nancy Hood: The battles of Fisher Row

Fig 9. The Canal basin and wharf lay between Hythe Bridge and Pacey’s Bridge, and the long coal wharf lay a little to the south, along New Road, nudging right up to the edge of the Castle’s former bailey. Richard Tawney, the canal engineer, built for the manager a new severely classical Canal House with a Greek Doric portico overlooking the basin, 1827-9, seen on the right, now the Master’s Lodgings of St Peter’s College. (Images and Voices, Oxfordshire County Council). The wharves between here and the Castle Mound are now Worcester Street Car Park and part of Nuffield College.

69

In the beginning: memories of the first ten years in the field department at Oxford City & County Museum Don Benson This essay describes the first ten years’ work of the Field Officer of the Oxford City and County Museum, 1965-1975. The role and achievements of the Museum in field archaeology during this decade, and its organisation in the Oxford region, are examined and described.

The establishment of the Oxford City and County Museum at Woodstock was a milestone, not only for the Oxford Region but because it was the first museum in the country to share its government and finances on an equal basis between two separate City and County local authorities. Uniqueness and innovation was its keynote from the very beginning.

Meanwhile, my own concerns were primarily the needs of archaeology. There were major threats from development in the historic centre of Oxford and also to sites within the City’s boundaries; in the County the widespread destruction of sites in the Thames valley by gravel quarrying was all too familiar to me from a year working in the Welland Valley. Over many years there had been many interventions by Oxford academics, principally successive Keepers and other curatorial staff of the Ashmolean Museum, within both the City and the Upper Thames Valley. Mostly these were emergency excavations, and despite these efforts, there was no adequate framework to deal with the rising tide of destruction.

This was also reflected in its first professional appointments. As one of the first three staff appointed in 1965, my post as Field Officer was unique in museums at that time. A brief to collect material for the then nonexistent museum collections and conduct archaeological excavation and fieldwork, without any curatorial duties, was for me a dream come true.

There was also an element of ‘them versus us’ as far as the Oxford archaeologists were concerned, and a substantial lack of appreciation and knowledge by archaeologists, planning officers and developers of each others’ tasks and constraints. My own knowledge of the planning process was then virtually non-existent, but I realized that if we were to secure the necessary co-operation and support from the local authorities and their planning officers, it would be necessary to acquire a thorough knowledge of the workings of the planning system. The first target was Oxford City, and thus as well as researching the archaeological potential of the area a good deal of my time was spent in familiarizing myself with planning legislation and the minutiae of the City’s Development Plans. The result was City of Oxford Redevelopment: Archaeological Implications, the first publication of its kind and which over the next ten years sparked a national genre of archaeological implications surveys.

The two other appointments were the Conservation Officer - Brian Arthur from Bristol Museum who became a lifelong friend - and later in the year the Schools Service Officer, Geoffrey MacCabe from Newport Museum. We three constituted the professional staff under the direction of Jean Cook, with the secretarial support of Meg PenningRowsell. For the first six months or so, my own duties were focussed on grasping the archaeological requirements of the area, whilst also securing items reflecting the later social, agricultural and craft industries of the City and County, none of which were reflected in existing Oxford museums. Jean Cook insisted that I keep a diary of all my activities during the first year. This became the Field Officer’s Day Book, formerly kept in the Sites and Monuments Record prior to its removal to Westgate, Oxford, where I hope it is still preserved as an invaluable detailed record of those early days.

Since there was no way that the new museum could itself sustain a full-time professional excavation unit for Oxford City or anywhere else in the County, the agenda behind the publication was the creation of an independent archaeological unit to deal with Oxford itself. This was achieved in 1967 with the establishment of the Oxford Archaeological Excavation Committee, followed by the appointment of a full-time Director, Tom Hassall, and the creation of the Oxford Archaeological Unit.

Following up donations certainly enabled me to acquire a knowledge of the area. Amongst all the memorable items I collected during this period was the total contents of a retired blacksmith’s forge at Weston-on-the Green, which was reconstructed as a major display in the museum. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the timbers of the tin-roofed shed which housed the forge were constructed from the frame of a WW1 aeroplane flown from a nearby airfield, I think a Sopwith Camel! I understand that many years later these were identified and recovered before the building was demolished.

In 1965 the Field Officer was called out to salvage what he could from a Roman villa at Beaconsfield Farm, Great Tew, threatened by a barn extension. This unscheduled site had a very sad history, being subject to two earlier 71

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes salvage operations conducted by Ashmolean Museum staff - both responding to earlier barn extensions. To an archaeologist used mainly to recording two dimensional features on the Welland gravels, this 1965 situation was a salutary experience, and the sight of painted plaster walls standing 1½ metres high, only partly recorded before their obliteration by a bulldozer, remains fully etched into my memory. The experience highlighted the deficiencies of the then Ancient Monuments legislation, and focussed my future interest in arrangements for monument protection and investigation.

Margaret Gray, assisted by Heather Barnie (later, James), who subsequently became Assistant Director of the Dyfed Archaeological Trust, following my own appointment as its first Director in 1975.

Shortly afterwards, I was called out to investigate a possible artificial mound, which proved to be a long barrow affected by a proposed road-widening scheme at Ascott-Under-Wychwood. Its total excavation on a seasonal basis between 1966 and 1969 was the most complete excavation of any cotswold long barrow and was the largest excavation project ever undertaken by the Museum and was used to develop some pioneering techniques in photogrammetric recording, finds recording and the recording of masses of disarticulated human burials. With the whole-hearted support of the Museum’s Director, the Conservation Officer was seconded to the excavation each season and set up an on-site Conservation Laboratory to process the many finds and to create an onsite photographic processing unit.

Back in Woodstock, in 1967 the top floor of the Museum, which had previously provided living quarters for the Museum Director, became available for office and other uses. All three original staff members were anxious for help, and eventually became designated Departmental Heads with increased staff. The Field Department, originally accommodated in one room in the former stable block of Fletcher’s House, moved into more commodious premises on the top floor of the main building. Shortly afterwards a Trainee Field Officer, Christine Sibbitt, with experience as a social historian, was appointed to concentrate on the more recent social, industrial, and agricultural history of the region. She was responsible for compiling the first in the series of Oxford City and County Museum’s publications (Sibbit 1968).

The Ascott post-excavation work proved to be a major problem and at times created serious difficulties for the Field Department. The work was carried over to Dyfed after I left the museum in 1975 and it was 40 years after the excavation than the project came to fruition (Benson and Whittle 2007). Overall the project also consumed a vast time of the author’s life, probably the equivalent of 10-15 years!

Following her resignation in 1968 to take up a teaching post, there followed a succession of Assistant Field Officers: Susanna Everett, 1968-69 (she left to marry Peter Wade-Martins, Director of the Norfolk Archaeological Unit); Mick Aston, 1970-74 (thence appointed Somerset County Archaeologist and subsequently, Staff Tutor in Archaeology at Bristol University); James Bond 19741986. All made a significant contribution to the work of the Field Department. All were concerned with survey and historic landscapes rather than excavation, and all acquired national reputations in their specialist fields. A further post of Clerical Assistant was created. In 1972, following the departure of Mrs Gillian Scales, her post was redesignated Field Department Record Officer (essentially, Sites and Monuments Record Officer), a post filled by Ival Hornbrook, a long standing volunteer at Ascott and a Charlbury glove cutter by profession, with a remarkable and unusual intellect, who was faithfully to serve the Department and museum for many years.

Nevertheless, the policy of multiplying the number of organizations in the region which could submit separate grant applications to DoE had the effect of significantly increasing the region’s overall funding, and this was later continued by the establishment of excavation committees for Abingdon and Wallingford.

Beaconsfield Farm was the first time the Museum appealed for local volunteers. The response was encouraging and the practice was massively expanded at Ascott, supported by a number of residential training courses organised through London University Extra Mural Department and also Westminster College, Oxford. In the rest of the County, the main problem was the continued destruction of cropmarked sites on the gravel terraces. In 1966 under the Chairmanship of Professor Christopher Hawkes, the Council for British Archaeology’s Group 9 Field Archaeology Panel established an Upper Thames Archaeological Committee (UTAC) to deal with rescue archaeological problems; I served as its Secretary until 1970. This was also my first introduction to the Oxford Institute of Archaeology (see Current Archaeology, Issue 265 April 2012, Letters). The original intention of UTAC was to conduct excavations well in advance of destruction, but this foundered on the reluctance of owners to release land in good time before quarrying. The intention to form a full-time excavation team also foundered, and excavations reverted to rescue work organised through the OCCM and employing a contracted-out excavation Director,

The move to the main building made possible another major innovation, for which the Field Department and Museum becae well-known – the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) (for the methodology employed see Benson 1971 and Benson 1972). Originally established to help to establish priorities, particularly for excavations, the SMR developed into an invaluable archive to service a whole range of functions. It assumed an ever-increasing significance in liaison with planning authorities, to the extent that it was adopted by all County and many District Authorities throughout England and all regional Trusts

72

Don Benson: In the beginning in Wales, although now re-titled Historic Environment Records.

Not all was sweetness and roses. The Schools Officer Geoffrey MacCabe was hugely successful in developing the Museum’s Educational services, which justifiably earned the Museum a considerable reputation. This did, though, create a certain feeling that the tail was wagging the dog; it was after all seven years after the establishment of the museum that the first Department and Curator of Antiquities, John Rhodes, was appointed.

The establishment of the Oxfordshire SMR was greatly assisted by Field Department volunteers organised as a ‘Study Group’, meeting weekly in the Museum (Benson 1971). Some members were encouraged to use the record to pursue their own interests and I remember one outstanding success story; Frank Woodward, a postman who developed a particular interest in landscaped parks, became an authority on Oxfordshire Parks, eventually resulting in a definitive publication: Oxfordshire Parks. Other members of the study groups were encouraged into field survey work. To assist, the Museum produced a little known publication: Notes for Use in Detailed Field Recording, for use with SMR primary and Detailed Record Cards. The recording guides contained therein covered the whole range of field monuments and were based on a modified and extended version of ‘Tally Cards’ developed by Collin Bowen, Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England). Under Mick Aston’s tutelage a special Study Group was founded to deal specifically with Mills. Members of this group went on to achieve the restoration of the beam engine at Combe Mill. Mick himself was responsible for recording a substantial number of Deserted Medieval Villages and other medieval earthworks (many, though scheduled as Ancient Monuments, had never been planned) using a rapid sketch survey technique developed by himself and his colleague, James Bond (Aston and Bond 1973). Many of these sites were photographed by Mick, Trevor Rowley and myself during air reconnaissances of the neglected area of north Oxfordshire. Mick was also responsible for the detailed study of the Stonesfield Slate industry; for the study of the locally famous post-mediaeval Leafield Pottery (publication later incorporated in Stebbing et. al. 1980); and also for the production of two popular motor trails, through the Wychwood area and the villages of the Cherwell Valley; and for a long-running radio series on Radio Oxford.

Jean Cook resigned in 1970 and after an interregnum managed by the Deputy Director, Bryan Blake (who had been appointed in 1968 as Information Officer, tasked with sorting out the cataloguing of the Museum’s growing collections), Richard Foster was installed as Museum Director. He had more interest in historic buildings than in archaeology, which inevitably created some tensions. By this stage Brian Arthur had departed to pursue a prestigious career in Canada and Geoffrey MacCabe had left to become a Museum Director in Shropshire. In the meantime there were significant changes in the organisation of archaeology in the region. Whilst the multiplication of excavation committees had significantly enhanced funding, these were basically managed by the same group of people and there was correspondingly duplication of effort and resources of manpower and equipment. Thus it made sense to amalgamate the existing Committees in 1973 into a single Oxfordshire Excavation Committee and establish a single executive Unit, the Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit (Cunliffe et. al., 1974). In 1969 the Museum’s Field Department and the Upper Thames Archaeological Committee had begun work on the compilation of a gazetteer of cropmarked sites in the Upper Thames. Following the formation of the Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit, the scope of this study was substantially enlarged, resulting in a significant publication (Benson and Miles, 1974). I remember we wrote this in rapid time, I think a fortnight, with much burning of midnight oil and clerical support! The publication was very well received and widely regarded as a model of its kind well outside the region.

Nationally, much of the success and effort put into ‘rescue archaeology’ in this period throughout the country was due to the efforts of the limited number of Extra-mural Tutors in Archaeology. As a firm believer in linking voluntary effort to adult education, the lack of a Staff Tutor in Archaeology in the Oxford Delegacy for Extra-mural Studies seemed a gaping hole in the region’s archaeological arrangements. So in 1969 I produced a memorandum for the Museum Director to take forward to the Delegacy, arguing the need to appoint a staff Tutor in Archaeology. This case was accepted and a Staff Tutor in Archaeology and Local Studies was appointed – Trevor Rowley. This appointment made a very significant difference to the burden and workload carried by the Field Department, and several of the supporting roles to existing organizations were taken over by the Extra-mural Department. At the same time many co-operative projects were developed, including a joint Training School at Middleton Stoney.

The establishment of the Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit left the Field Department in something of a vacuum, but it allowed it to concentrate its resources on the Sites and Monuments Record and its enhancement through survey and recording, and with a greater emphasis on the conservation and protection of the historic environment. Nationally, this was manifested by the creation of archaeological posts within Local Authority Planning Departments and the formation of the Association of County Archaeologists. In Oxfordshire, the Field Department had already begun work with the County Planning Department on the County Structure Plan. Some original thinking on how to develop methods and criteria for evaluating and ranking the historic environment (Benson and Bond 1975) did not attract much attention at the time but pressaged considerable attention given to Sites and Monuments Record data and evaluation

73

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography

by the Directorate of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings in the 1980’s.

Anon, 1969. Notes for Use in Detailed Field Recording. Woodstock: Oxford City and County Museum Field Department. Association of County Archaeological Officers 1978. A Guide to the Establishment of Sites and Monuments Records Aston, Mick and Bond, James, 1973. Sketch Planning: an Introduction. Newsletter 3. Council for British Archaeology Group 9. Aston, M.A., 1974. Stonesfield Slate. OCMS Publication No. 5. Woodstock: Oxfordshire County Council Department of Museum Services. Benson and Cook, 1966. City of Oxford Redevelopment: Archaeological Implications. Woodstock: Oxford City and County Museum. Benson, Don, 1971. ‘A Museum Oxfordshire’ in E. Fowler (ed) Field Survey in British Archaeology, 1621. London: Council for British Archaeology. Benson, Don, 1972. A Sites and Monuments Record For The Oxford Region. Oxoniensia XXXVII. Benson, Don and Miles, David, 1974. The Upper Thames Valley: An Archaeological Survey of the River Gravels. Oxford Archaeological Unit Survey No. 2. Benson, D. and Bond, J., 1975. ‘Problems and Methods of Evaluation’ in T. Rowley and M. Breakell (eds), Planning and the Historic Environment: papers presented to a conference in Oxford, 95 - 103. Oxford: Oxford University Department for External Studies and Oxford Polytechnic Department of Town Planning. Benson, D. G. and Jefferies, J. S., 1980. ‘Microprocessors And Archaeological Records’ in jennifer D. Stewart (ed) Microcomputers in Archaeology, MDA Occasional Paper No. 4 5-12 Benson, Don and Whittle, Alisdair (eds.), 2007. Building Memories: the Neolithic Cotswold Long Barrow at Ascott-Under-Wychwood, Oxfordshire. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Cunliffe B.W. et. al., 1974. The Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit, Antiquity XLVIII, 93-98. Sibbit, Christine, 1968. Bells, Blankets, Baskets and Boats. OCCM Publication No. 1. Woodstock: Oxford City and County Museum. Stebbing N., Rhodes J. and Mellor M., 1980. The Clay Industries of Oxfordshire: Oxfordshire Potters. OCMS Publication No14. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Service. Woodward, Frank, 1982. Oxfordshire Parks. OCMS Publication No. 5. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services.

Much discussion had also taken place over the computerisation of the Record using the Council’s computer system. These exploratory plans did not make much progress. To my mind the Record’s information retrieval system based on optical co-incidence cards had long outlived its usefulness, though I had a hard time persuading many of my colleagues in the Association of County Archaeologists to give up this by-now cherished manual system (Association of County Archaeologists 1978). In 1974 Geoff Wainwright, then head of the Department of the Environment’s Central Excavation Unit, dispatched one of his staff, Joe Jefferies, to Woodstock to examine the Sites and Monuments Record system. At that time Joe was working on developing bespoke software for use in excavation recording, and it soon became evident that this could be applied to Sites and Monuments Records. The test development involved downloading vast amounts of SMR data onto punch cards - at no small cost - and sending it by phone overnight for timeshare processing and catalogue production by Honeywell’s mainframe computers in Ohio, USA. These were worrying times, since any glitches in the software would result in the loss of expensive data. Fortunately I think we got through this without any serious mishaps. Joe and I carried on this work when I moved to Wales in 1975, where we developed the first fully computerised Sites and Monuments Record in Britain, utilising Microcomputers produced by RML Research Machines, Oxford. Unfortunately, at Woodstock, the initiative begun there was not continued and the Oxfordshire SMR remained a manual system for some years. This first decade at Woodstock was a period of significant change in Archaeology in Britain, with the Walsh Report into the Protection of Field Monuments, draft antiquities legislation, a new Town and Country Planning Act, the formation of Rescue, the establishment of the Association of County Archaeologists, Department of the Environment plans for Regional Archaeology, and the formation of Regional Advisory Committees. It was a privilege to have the opportunity to work in field archaeology during this period and hopefully to help the Museum make a useful contribution to the development of archaeology in the region and beyond. It is also a privilege to contribute this account as a tribute to the memory of the Museum’s first Keeper of Antiquities, John Rhodes.

74

Research, Recording and Creativity: Oxfordshire Museums Service Exhibitions and Publications 1974-1985 Sarah Gray This contribution discusses the work of the Oxfordshire Museum Service - Antiquities, Field, Branch and Education Sections - in research, recording, publication and display of material evidence of the New Oxfordshire, which came into being as a consequence of joining the historic county with the Vale of White Horse area of north Berkshire in 1974

From its inception in 1964, the distinctive personality and character of the Oxford City and County Museum (OCCM), jointly funded by the City and County Councils and led by the curator, archaeologist and educator Jean Cook FMA, FSA, set the style for the second ten years of work by the Oxfordshire Museums Service (OMS) which is discussed here.

Museums, however, are also concerned with collections. Given the enviable opportunity of starting with a ‘clean slate’ and no chaotic backlog, what was to be the OCCM’s approach to collecting Oxford and Oxfordshire? It was, and remained, integrated with the research and recording approach of the Field Section. Alongside the threats to archaeology, the Field Section’s priority was to preserve the evidence for trades, crafts and industries within the county, all subject to rapid change, an area which the University’s museums had neglected to record or collect. In his foreword to the first OCCM publication, Bells, blankets, baskets and boats: a survey of crafts and industries in Oxfordshire, the Chairman of the Museum Committee expressed the intention ‘to make available the results of the Museum Officers’ work where this may provide a contribution to knowledge of the area… the Museum is concerned not only with the material in its collections, but of the whole history of the people and area which it serves.’

In his 2001 obituary of Jean Cook for the Society of Antiquaries, Tom Hassall expressed the excitement and challenge of forming OCCM from scratch: Oxford University’s Ashmolean Museum had effectively fulfilled the function of the local museum, but the need for a specifically locally focused museum had long been recognized. She set about the task of establishing a model museum with energy and enthusiasm: collecting representative objects for display and establishing an excellently equipped conservation laboratory… capable of handling not only delicate archaeological objects but also farm machinery… She was a strong advocate of the need for the museum to become accessible to schoolchildren…a Schools’ Loan Service was quickly established.

So, in theory, a firm research programme was established, both informed and purposeful, whose object was to collect but that also had the ambition to record instead of or as well as collecting. But museum collections can grow like Topsy, especially when it comes to rescuing the relics of farming, trades and craft workshops, and none of the team had a curatorial brief. Early large-scale collections - a blacksmith’s shop, a beautifully restored Woodstock wagon and a long barrow - could be displayed at Fletcher’s House in Woodstock. Much of value was collected and linked to Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) recording and museum publications, for example on gloving (4.) or Stonesfield Slate (5.). Brian Blake joined as OCCM Information Officer in 1968 and collected with enthusiasm but less apparent documentation.

At the core of OCCM’s work was the establishment of the Field Department under its first Field Officer, Don Benson, and the creation of the County Sites and Monuments Record (SMR), a first for any English county, a mapbased and accessible record of its archaeology on optical coincidence cards. Archaeology was under threat from development and from gravel extraction in the Thames Valley; the report by Don Benson and Jean Cook, City of Oxford Redevelopment: Archaeological Implications, in 1966 was another pioneering work. Jean Cook’s original intention that OCCM should have its own professional excavation unit proved unsustainable, especially after the demands of the rescue excavation of the Ascottunder-Wychwood long barrow, 1966-69. Don Benson has described in his own essay in this volume how the field archaeologists of Oxford united to form an independent organisational framework which later became the Oxford Archaeological Unit. The pioneering SMR, its research, recording and volunteers, remained within OCCM as an invaluable archive to bolster archaeological protection through planning and development control.

By 1970, when she left the Museum, Jean Cook already had plans for some big developments – an Oxford City Museum, a museum of farming and the countryside which the new director, Richard Foster took forward, transforming OCCM into a wider County service. Great changes were afoot in both local government and in museums in the early 1970s, and the new OCCM team laid plans and worked towards the transformation which came about after 1974. Richard Foster, historian and architecture specialist, appointed John Rhodes as first Keeper of

75

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Antiquities in 1972. John’s background combined history and archaeology at Oxford, with experience of the rich and systematic collections of the University’s Pitt Rivers Museum. Crispin Paine, with a background in history, joined OCCM in 1973 as first Keeper of the projected Museum of Oxford. After Mick Aston moved on in 1974, James Bond arrived in the key post of Assistant Field Officer.

Museum of Oxford opened in 1975, and OMS published (6.) The Story of Oxford by Margaret Bunyard. Crispin Paine moved to become Keeper of Branch Museums and the author (then Sarah Gosling) and Nancy Stebbing (Nancy Hood), with funding from the Area Museums Service, joined as Museum Officers for the rather different Branch Museums in Banbury, Abingdon and Wantage, but both based in the county service at Woodstock. OMS wished and needed to make a rapid impact in these newlyincluded towns and communities in order to demonstrate the benefits of the county service in new local displays, collections and publications. The brief was wide but the Museums Officers were always linked not only to collections but to the Field Section and the SMR.

In the early 1970s, OCCM’s work focused on the new Museum of Oxford and on negotiating acquisition of Manor Farm, Cogges, which was achieved in 1974. John Rhodes set about the sorting, rationalisation and decent care of the collections, so that they would become a record and research resource of equivalent quality and value linked to the SMR. This was much needed as the County reflected in those collections changed and grew.

There was considerable strain on the exhibition design and installation capacity of OMS. John Rhodes was working on complete new County galleries at Woodstock: Oxfordshire: a County and its People. It opened in two phases in 1975 and 1978 and initiated a change of approach, chronological, landscape and people-based, in bringing together history and archaeology with its beautifullypresented contextualised collections, enhanced by images and colour. Nancy Stebbing and I set about researching new displays on the same pattern (albeit less ambitious) for our museums in Banbury, Wantage and Abingdon not mini-OCMs but designed to show the distinctiveness of the very different areas. New galleries opened in 1976 and 1977, with the accompanying A5 format booklets A Changing Landscape: Banbury and the Cherwell Valley (8.) and The Vale of White Horse: Land and People (9.).

The local government review which came about in 1974, created a consistent structure of County, District, Town and Parish authorities out of the previous mixture of Urban District Councils, Rural District Councils, Parishes and Counties. Change in Oxfordshire was foreseeable several years in advance, so museum planning for the new County could be linked to national museum developments. The Wright Report of 1973 was the first of many subsequent ones in recognising resourcing pressures on provincial museums with their valuable collections and services, and it proposed an increase in government funding. In the event almost no funds came out of the Wright report but it established the Area Museum Councils with the aim of supporting and channelling limited funding into the regions, based on the County as the core structure for museum services. In Oxfordshire, the shape of the County served by the Museum changed greatly. There were now five Districts: Oxford City, West Oxfordshire, South Oxfordshire and Cherwell, with the addition of the Vale of White Horse ‘liberated’ from Berkshire, and including the historic county town of Abingdon.

The first collaborative research focus for the new service was the Cogges Research Committee which worked from 1975-1980 and brought together eight people from the Museum team, across Education (David Eddershaw, Maggie Herdman, John Campbell), Antiquities (John Rhodes, Chris Page and Christine Bloxham) and the Field Section (John Steane and James Bond), together with the expertise of John Blair on Cogges Priory. Cogges Manor Farm Museum opened in 1979, with buildings and displays of high quality, and the booklet Cogges: a museum of farming in the Oxfordshire countryside (11.) came out in 1980.

The new Oxfordshire Museums Service (OMS) reformed the partnership to include Oxford, Cherwell, Vale of White Horse District Councils and Abingdon Town Council, bringing in long-established town museums in Banbury and Abingdon and the new museum at Wantage. The

Rich illustration: drawings by John Steane and John Rhodes 76

Sarah Gray: Research, recording and creativity The OMS Research committee, formed in 1977 with Crispin Paine in the Chair, undertook its first project on the workers’ housing of the county. There were two main motives, to produce new displays and publications, and to enrich both collecting and the SMR with focused ‘bursts’ of research on specific topics. The projects were to form the basis for a series of touring exhibitions visiting each branch museum, every two years or so. For a dispersed and busy service, there was great value in working together on a co-operative programme in order to make best use of all the skills and knowledge within the OMS and to invite others, from the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford Archaeology Unit (OAU) or the University’s Extra-mural department, to fill gaps in our expertise. The exhibition, with distinctive house-shaped panels, toured in 1978 and The Worker’s Home (10.) was published in 1979, while the broader in-depth research and recording was published in Oxoniensia in 1978. This booklet, the first in square 2/3 A4 format with its greater design and illustration possibilities, was the first to be designed by John Rhodes and set the style for OMS publications 11-19 through to 1985. All the records, plans and photographs of the project were deposited in the SMR, although no great opportunities for collecting arose.

The task, in which all had worked to a common list of sources and recording techniques, produced an ephemeral exhibition but also two booklets of lasting value which are still cited in county surveys and atlases: Oxfordshire Potters (13.) and Oxfordshire Brickmakers (14.)

When Crispin Paine moved on to run the Area Museums Service in 1979, I became Chair of the research group, working closely with Maureen Mellor from OAU, and together we led a worthwhile and rewarding two-year project on Clay Industries – Bricks and Pots since 1550. This had clear aims and achieved them: •

to establish the distribution of clay industry sites over the post 1974 county

•

in depth study of selected brick works and all potteries

•

to record important early brick buildings

•

to compile lists of potters’ names and a catalogue of pottery forms

Besides the main authors and the core museum team of Christine Bloxham, James Bond, Dan Chadwick, Sarah Gosling, John Rhodes, John Steane and Nancy Stebbing (plus the essential Maureen from OAU), contributions and help were again acknowledged from a wide range of sources, site owners and researchers. All detailed records were deposited in the SMR and a coherent selection of equipment, bricks and pots were added to the OMS collections. It was sometimes hard to get everyone in this cheerful group to ‘do their homework’ but all agreed it was well worth it.

77

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes The square three-column publication format came into its own with John’s delightful range of page layouts making the most of drawings, photos and transcripts.

Perhaps the best of John’s booklet layouts came with the publication of Oxfordshire: a County and its People (12.), also in 1980. Presented as a guide to the displays at OCM, it is in fact much more, a permanent expression of all the research and expertise that came together in the gallery. It tells the story of the new (post 1974) Oxfordshire and its people from the earliest times to the present day. Its text, drawings and photographs were laid out as beautifully as a graphic panel and their significance is thereby enhanced. Between 1977 and 1981, OMS also published nineteen illustrated A4 Information Sheets, equally well-researched but briefer summaries which are today much harder to track down than the booklet series. The IS series brought to print the work of a wider range of OMS staff but also of individual researchers working with OMS, often with the Field Section Study Group, demonstrating again the collaborative approach of the booklet publication series. Christine Bloxham of OMS, for example, wrote seven titles; Birth, death and marriage: Oxfordshire folklore, Lacemaking in Oxfordshire, Farmhouse cooking, Kitchen utensils, Cleaning and laundry work, Oxfordshire smocks and Domestic service, topics linking to the newly opened museum at Cogges. John Campbell wrote three on the County’s geology and Quaternary Ice Age. Keith Lawrence, volunteer in the Field Section Study Group wrote up four transport topics: Tollhouses, Milestones, Turnpike Roads and Drove Roads of Oxfordshire and Margaret Markham the Medieval Hospitals of the County.

78

Sarah Gray: Research, recording and creativity

In 1982, OMS brought to publication Oxfordshire Parks (16.), the work of a long-standing Field Section Study Group volunteer and postman, Frank Woodward. James Bond edited the text and John Rhodes designed the booklet, adding extra and gorgeous illustrations to enhance the work.

John was especially pleased with the foreword to the booklet by Peter Matthias, Chichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, Oxford and author of an authoritative history of brewing. He referred to ‘This excellent publication – at once entertaining, wide-ranging, scholarly and, in effect, a history of the English brewing industry in little... a local microcosm of a national story… So much of the history of brewing is alive and well in Oxfordshire. This book records it for all citizens, exactly as a county museums service ought to do.’

Research to the same high standard on brewing and malting continued through into 1981-82, and resulted in a touring exhibition The Oxfordshire Brewery and, in 1985, the booklet The Oxfordshire Brewer (19.) Contributions by many outside bodies and individuals are acknowledged, including ‘members of the Adderbury Local History Class 1980-81’. Several of the OMS team, including John Rhodes and the author, led Parish Survey classes for the University External Studies Department (OUDES now OUDCE) in Faringdon, Swalcliffe and Adderbury, fieldwalking, recording graveyard memorials and, in this case, transcribing the 17th century wills and probate inventories of Adderbury brewers and maltsters. Through the SMR, exhibition and publication, OMS provided a research framework for and a record of the Adderbury Group’s work.

In 1985, David Viner, then of the Corinium Museum, reviewed the publication programme of OCCM and OMS in the Museums Journal (Viner, 1985) and I am grateful to him both for a copy of the article and for the thorough lists which form the basis of those in this essay. The review commended the quality of the OMS programme overall but raised questions of resourcing, costs and sales strategy which I cannot recall as predominant concerns at the time. Resources were found and typeset copy went regularly off to Abbey Press in Abingdon. Nearly thirty years on, there is a feeling not so much of a Golden Age but that the teams that came together in OCCM and OMS in those productive years were fortunate in the opportunity to frame the Museum Service’s work in this way despite all the multiple pressures on our time. Much good, innovative and creative work was done by OMS in the 1970s and 1980s but, and this was of its time, it was assumed that we knew, without asking them, what our public and funders expected the museum service to do. Now, in 2013, with local authority funding for culture and heritage severely reduced, museums must and should rethink and reprioritise what they do, to make the case for scarce public resources. The pattern of county and other local authority museums established in 1974, and then in the Local Government review of the mid-1990s, looks likely to change radically and rapidly in the next few years, a generational change. The Museums Association (MA) is leading on the national Museums 2020 strategic review and

79

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography

consulting widely. The MA has (March 2013) published, with funding support from Arts Council England, a report by Britain Thinks, Public perceptions of – and attitudes to – the purposes of museums in society. Which brings us back to OCCM and OMS as the three core and essential purposes of museums are currently perceived by the public as:

Britain Thinks for Museums Association, 2013. Public Perceptions of – and attitudes to – the purposes of museums in society. [online] Available at . Viner, David, 1985. Bells, blankets, baskets and boats: a review of the publications programme of Oxfordshire Museum Services, Museums Journal, vol. 85 no.2, September 1985, 105-107

1. Care and preservation of heritage 2. Holding collections and mounting displays 3. Creating knowledge for, and about, society (for all ages, children and adults, and for everyone equally) The terminology has changed – knowledge creation was not in the conversation 30 years ago – but in essence, these were the core purposes of Oxfordshire Museums.

80

Sarah Gray: Research, recording and creativity Publications

Projects, displays, exhibitions

Oxford City and County Museum 1964-1974 1966 City of Oxford Redevelopment: Archaeological Implications, Don Benson and Jean Cook 1968 1. Bells, blankets, baskets and boats: a survey of crafts and industries in Oxfordshire, Christine Sibbit ISBN 0901036005 1969- 2. Five information sheets City and County in the 19th 1972 Century 1973 3. F. Cape & Co of St Ebbes St Oxford, Richard Foster, ISBN 0901036013

1964 Jean Cook first Director of OCCM 1965 Don Benson first Field Officer Displays at Oxon County Museum (OCM) opened 1966 – crafts,trades, blacksmith’s forge, thatching, Stonesfield Slate, motor industry, Woodstock waggon, domestic life 1967 Sites & Monuments Record 1970 Mick Aston Assistant Field Officer 1970 Richard Foster appointed Director 1972 John Rhodes appointed Keeper of Antiquities 1973 Crispin Paine Keeper of Museum of Oxford

1974

4. Glovemaking in West Oxfordshire, Nora Leighton and Joe 1974 James Bond Assistant Field Officer Troughton, ISBN 0901036021 1974 OCC acquires Manor Farm, Cogges Plans to redisplay galleries at OCM on a landscape history theme, incorporating fieldwork finds and structures, Ascott barrow, Churchill Roman kiln

5. Stonesfield Slate, Mick Aston, ISBN 090103603X Oxon County Council, Dept of Museum Services 1974-1985 1975 6. The Story of Oxford

1975 The Story of Oxford displays, Museum of Oxford 1975 First phase of Oxfordshire: a County & its People galleries open at OCM 1975 John Steane Field Officer 1975 Crispin Paine Keeper of Branch Museums, Nancy Stebbing and Sarah Gosling Museum Officers in Abingdon, Wantage and Banbury Museums for new Oxon Museum Service (OMS).

7. The Birds of Blenheim Park, JW Brucker and John 1975-1980 Cogges Research Committee Campbell

81

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes 1976- 8. A Changing Landscape: Banbury and the Cherwell 1976-1977 Redisplayed galleries in branch 1978 Valley, Sarah Gosling museums: Banbury (A Changing Landscape) and Wantage (Land and People) 1977 OMS Research Committee formed, first project, workers’ housing 1978 Phase 2 of Oxfordshire: a County & its People galleries open at OCM 1978 OMS touring exhibition The Worker’s Home 1978 Richard Foster moves to direct Merseyside Museums; James Bateman appointed Director 9. The Vale of White Horse: Land and People, Nancy OMS Stebbing

1979

1980

10. The Worker’s Home: Small Houses in Oxfordshire 1979 Cogges Manor Farm Museum opens through three centuries, eds Crispin Paine and John Rhodes, 1979 Crispin Paine moves to direct Area designed by John Rhodes Museums Service for SE England 1979-1980 OMS Research project on clay industries, bricks and pots 11. Cogges: a museum of farming in the Oxfordshire 1980-1981 OMS touring exhibition on bricks and pots (title unknown) Countryside, ed John Steane, ISBN 0901036064 12. Oxfordshire: a County and its People, John Rhodes, 1981 Banbury Museum re-opens in new premises and with new displays Banburyshire. designed by John Rhodes ISBN 0901036056 13. Oxfordshire Potters, Nancy Stebbing, John Rhodes, Maureen Mellor, designed by John Rhodes ISBN 0901036080 14. Oxfordshire Brickmakers, James Bond, Sarah Gosling, John Rhodes, designed by John Rhodes ISBN 0901036072

1981-1982 OMS Research project on brewing and malting

82

Sarah Gray: Research, recording and creativity 1981- 15. Cogges Farmhouse Kitchen, Christine Bloxham, 1982 OMS touring exhibition The Oxfordshire 1982 illustrated Mollie Picken ISBN 0901036129 Brewery

16. Oxfordshire Parks, Frank Woodward, ed James Bond, designed by John Rhodes ISBN 0901036137 1983- 17. Artist Potters Now, exhibition catalogue ISBN 1983 Piper’s 1984 0901036145 exhibition

Oxfordshire:

OMS

touring

18. William Turner of Oxford (1789-1862), Timothy Wilcox, 1983-1984 The First Museums, designed by John Christopher Titterington and Susie O’Reilly, exhibition Rhodes, touring exhibition at the Ashmolean catalogue ISBN 0901036153 Museum and OCM 1985

19. The Oxfordshire Brewer, James Bond and John Rhodes, 1984 Artist Potters Now: OMS touring exhibition of contemporary ceramics designed by John Rhodes ISBN 0901036161 1984-1985 William Turner of Oxford (17891862): touring exhibition County Museum and Bolton Museum

83

Oswald Couldrey, Abingdon Artist, and the Indian Renaissance Lauren Gilmour

The Internet publication of issues of an early 20th-century Indian cultural journal has thrown new light on the activities of Abingdon artist Oswald Couldrey who lived and worked in Rajahmundry, South India from 1909 to 1919. Couldrey emerges as a driving force in the Indian art Renaissance of this period, and the album published here of his Indian pictures, now on display at Abingdon County Hall Museum, documents the tours he led to show young Indian artists their heritage.

In 2011 curators in England and India were working in complete ignorance of each other, preparing works by the same artist for exciting new permanent displays in regional museums in Abingdon and Hyderabad. Simultaneously the fulfilment of a major long-term project to digitise and make available via the Internet eighty years of articles published in the Hyderabad-based cultural journal Triveni between 1928 and 2008 now enabled two halves of a story to be fitted together. I would like to thank Abingdon County Hall Museum and the Oxfordshire Museum Service for their assistance and kind permission to publish images from the collections.

theme. (The Mistaken Fury and Other Lapses published in 1914 is a collection of mostly mythological short stories set in ancient Greece.) Passing the stiff examinations for entry to the Indian Civil Service in 1909, he travelled to South India where he was attached to education establishments initially in Tanjore in Tamil Nadu, then in Rajahmundry in Andhra (the future state of Andhra Pradesh), where he became Principal of Rajahmundry College and so remained until illness forced him to return to England. His time in India is described in his book South Indian Hours, published just after his return in 1924 but including material written throughout his time there.

Both new museum projects included important work by Abingdon artist Oswald Couldrey, who lived and worked in India from 1909 to about 1919, while the Triveni material now made accessible shows that this English artist is considered to have been a significant force in the early 20th-century Indian artistic and cultural movement known there as the Indian Renaissance. Couldrey’s role in this Renaissance (as well as the formative influence of his Indian period on the post-World War I pictures of Abingdon for which he became famous) is documented by the album of his Indian pictures, which became a permanent display at the Abingdon Museum when the museum re-opened to the public in 2012.

The India Couldrey found upon arrival in 1909 was almost forty years away from independence, and as he described in his writings and paintings, in many respects still an ancient culture, economy and society. On the intellectual level however it was in the early and as yet very idealistic throes of rediscovering its identity preparatory to throwing off the British yoke (for example, K. Ramakotiswara in 1929: ‘India has through the ages been famous for her achievements in the fine arts, and though foreign domination has caused a temporary set-back, there are signs all around us of a great awakening’). This period, called there the Indian Renaissance, was driven by a new generation of Indian artists and intellectuals who were English-language educated and increasingly aware of western cultural models. The movement is generally agreed to have begun in Bengal to the northeast, but quickly spread to Andhra, home of the ancient Telugu language and literature. According to K. Ramakotiswara, ‘the impact of the nationalist movement of 1905 and with it, the influence of Bengali literature was felt much earlier by the Telugus than by the other peoples of South India. The first great classic in Telugu was composed a thousand years ago...the modern age in Telugu literature (had) begun in the same place (on the banks of the Godavery) in the eighties of the last century. The young men who were at college during the first world war produced their best work between 1912 and 1932’ (K Ramakotiswara).

Couldrey (1882-1958) was one of a number of intellectually able local Abingdonians to attend Abingdon School at the turn of the last century, and to gain one of the school’s reserved scholarships to attend the sister institution at Oxford University, Pembroke College. He studied the Classics, the recommended subject in those days for young Englishmen of good ability and family requiring acceptable employment, specifically an administrative role in the British imperial service. The School’s records show that Couldrey was a strong all-rounder who must have revelled in his time there, rowing for the school, taking part in dramatic productions and especially writing for, illustrating and editing the school literary magazine. Bright and sensitive, he was absorbed by his Edwardian classical education which included Greek and Roman art, as well as by English literature, the English countryside, painting in watercolours and writing (and from 1914, publishing) poetry and short stories often on a classical

His circumstances having prompted Couldrey’s decision to leave England for India, the first few years there seemed like an exile to him (‘the wounds of exile from home were still fresh…of the pains of exile I have felt them as keenly

85

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes as any…here nothing is as we have known it’; ‘during the first year of my exile I frankly loathed the Indian sunlight’, South Indian Hours 13-14; 23). But in Rajahmundry on the banks of the Godavery River not far from the Bay of Bengal, he found a world he could relate to. Alongside the resurgence of the ancient Telugu language, Rajahmundry was the scene of the launching of the regional social reform movement (K Kasipati). There the college threw him into contact with a group of young men in some ways comparable to those he had found compatible at school and college, and the beliefs and practices of the rural world around him brought his classical education vividly to life (‘Ancient Egypt is suggested with special vividness and frequency…I think Hesiod would recognise our agricultural methods and the very fashion of our wooden ploughs. With us the shepherd’s pipe is no literary convention…Greek art illustrates our Indian world’, 19-20). Historians writing in India take up the story. Immersing himself in the local landscape and society, Couldrey soon began to spot the creativity and talent in his students, and nurtured and guided it, encouraging them to return for inspiration to the sources of art in Indian religion, philosophy and ancient literature on the one hand, but to reject the slavish copying of classical Indian art models (universal in India then as now) in favour of a new approach to subject matter, composition and medium. As a result Couldrey became famous in India as the teacher mentor of some of the most famous names in Indian art of this generation. Ramakotiswara again: ‘Adivi Bapiraju, painter, poet and song-writer (in Telugu), who has latterly won distinction, was influenced not by (Indian authors) but by Oswald Couldrey, Principal of the Government College at Rajahmundry. The companionship of this cultured Englishman who himself painted and wrote verses and short story (sic), was a beneficent influence on the lives of Bapiraju…Damerla Rama the artist, and others.’ He took under his wing the poet Kavikondala Venkata, dubbing him ‘the Andhra Wordsworth’ and encouraging him to write songs in Telugu. His contribution has now been celebrated and displayed in a new gallery of Andhra art, Telugu Chitrakala Vaijayanthi Gallery within the State Gallery of Fine Arts at the Telugu University, Hyderabad, including his sensitive sketch of his pupil Damerla Rama, ‘the greatest landscape painter of his time’ (Serish Nanisetti, ‘A Walk in Art History’, The Hindu 18 March 2011) (Fig. 1).

Anglo-Indian with a long career spanning Ceylon, England and Boston whose insistence upon the identity of crafts and fine art was based upon an early appreciation of William Morris (Dasgupta 1981, vii-ix); this was an attitude of the Indian Renaissance to which Couldrey clearly adhered. Rabindranath Tagore dominated Indian thought and culture throughout the early 20th century and has been described as a national figure side by side with Gandhi, although he only came to western attention in 1913, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (Monk and Robinson 1986, 21 ff). Tagore’s beautifully illustrated Gitanjali and Fruit-Gathering published in 1909, the year of Couldrey’s arrival in India and so similar to South Indian Hours in presentation, reflective atmosphere and the tying-in of art, society and nature, may well have influenced Couldrey when he came to publish his diaries of the same period, although unlike Tagore, Couldrey was able to illustrate his volume himself (notice that only the illustrations by Abanindranath Tagore opposite pages 30, 126 and 128 can compare with Couldrey’s in their capturing of the atmosphere of India without over-reliance on the conventions of classical Indian art) (Tagore 1919). Abanindranath Tagore was another slightly earlier contemporary of Couldrey, Vice Principal at the Government School of Art at Calcutta under Havell (Basu 1956, 7-8). Nandalal Bose, a slightly younger contemporary of Couldrey and an important Indian artist suggested by Indian critics as having been influenced by him, attended the government college at Calcutta under Havell and Tagore. His Album demonstrates an initial tendency to design watercolours in the classical Indian manner, with a central symbolic or expressive figure; but two watercolours of 1915 and 1917, ‘Over the Padma in Winter’ and ‘RainSwept Konarak’, remind us of Couldrey, as do many of his later drawings especially ‘Artists’ Camp, Faizpur’ and ‘Fishermen’ (Basu 1956, 15, 17 and Pls passim). The Indian album now at Abingdon County Hall Museum was in the ownership of Couldrey’s family until 2007, and was always kindly lent when the collection of Couldrey’s paintings in the care of the Oxfordshire Museum Service was drawn upon for exhibition (the Oxfordshire collection comprises forty-two pictures on loan from the artist’s cousin Mr RF Couldrey, painted in Abingdon, Cornwall, Devon Hastings, Japan, India, Oxford and other locations in the UK). In 2007 Mr Couldrey very generously made a permanent gift of the album to the museum, Shortly thereafter in another act of generosity all fifty-nine pictures in the album were professionally photographed by a former Abingdon printing firm. Museum volunteer Chris Gale catalogued the album, scanning and individually colourbalancing each picture, and Dr Martin Henig painstakingly transcribed the artist’s handwritten notes appearing on each page.

A brief review of the contributions of several of Couldrey’s close contemporaries in India allows us to assess his artistic activities there in the context of the wider Indian Renaissance, universally acknowledged to have been centred on Calcutta. Pride of place must be given to Ernest Binfield Havell, a slightly older English contemporary of Couldrey whose career in the Indian Civil Service as Principal at the Government School of Art in Calcutta was seminal in dismantling the existing western (and educated Indian) idea of Indian art as second-rate and derivative; possibly Havell’s example encouraged Couldrey in choosing the career path that brought him to India (Basu 1956, 7). Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877-1947) was an

The album was probably made in India. Front and backboard of thick card are covered in faded blue fabric 86

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance edged along the bindings with thin blue leather strips. Twelve quires each of four double-width sheets of a mid-brown thick paper or soft card are bound with white cotton twine. Inscribed by hand on the cover are the words ‘INDIAN MEMORIES’, and on the first page inside, ‘INDIAN MEMORIES painted by Oswald Couldrey’ with drawings of the Indian goddess of knowledge, music and art, Saraswati, playing the veena, and a sketch map of South India showing Bombay, Calcutta, the Ganges and the Godavery rivers, Madras, Rajahmundry, Waltair, Tanjore, Madura, the Nilgiri Hills, Chidambaram and Vijayanagar. Fifty-nine watercolour (or crayon) pictures on differently sized papers have been pasted onto the front of each sheet. Titles usually including a location and sometimes a date (mostly between 1909 and 1912) are handwritten on each opposite page in brown ink and are not easily distinguishable from the background mounts.

review of the Indian Art exhibition at the Burlington Galleries in London his praises include, ‘wonderfully fresh and original both in drawing and colour’, a ‘subdued and subtle system of lighting in combination with a decisive linear style’, ‘beauty of drawing and perfection of colour and rhythm’, ‘a fresh and sober truth and sweetness of colour’; interestingly he felt a number of works would have been ‘more effective on a smaller scale’). He was certainly influenced by the concept of art in India which is not strictly comparable to that of modern art historians in the west. Fundamental themes for Indian art are the relationship to the divine, the (semi-divine) status of creators and the consequent enhanced status of teachers and mentors: far removed from our quip ‘if you can’t do it, teach it’, in India highly respected teachers could be elevated to guru status, as appears to have happened in Couldrey’s case.

It was Couldrey’s practice to take his students on painting tours, and the pictures divide naturally into three sequences perhaps relating to three or more such tours. An initial group moves from the artist’s own garden and neighbouring houses and yards down local roads to the town of Rajahmundry and its southern suburb Dowleishwaram, then onto the banks of the Godavery River (1 – 31). A second sequence depicts beauty spots and architectural highlights to the north of Rajahmundry, from Pattisam to Simhalacham and Waltair about 100 miles away (32 – 41). Nos 42 – 53 follow a much longer route to the southwest, to Madras (Chennai) and Madura in Tamil Nadu, ending at a hill station in the Ghats on the borders of Kerala. 54 – 59 were painted in Kashmir and the Sind Valley in northern India, the artist’s resort, he says, before he was able to appreciate the beauty of his own surroundings in South India. (Note that numbers refer to the final digits of the museum number, the full versions of which are OXCMS : 2007.81.1-59.)

The Abingdon views of the 1930s and 1940s draw heavily on a palette reminiscent of an Indian winter’s morning, and the compositions are unusual and striking (for example a watercolour of the baroque County Hall from the east, seen through its arch). People are not so much personalities as features of the landscape compassionately viewed, rather like the buffalo-minders and boat-builders of South India (the small boy getting up to no good amusing himself in the street; the excited child dragging her shuffling pensioner grandmother away from the almshouse for a walk of an afternoon; farm workers creating mayhem driving their pigs to the town market; anxious children hastening to school and whispering in the school yard). It is intriguing to speculate what this brilliant and sensitive man might have produced had he not been obliged to pursue a career in the Indian Civil Service. Possibly he would have gone on to produce further studied, refined Edwardian compositions drawing heavily on the classics, for which the audience before the war would already have been limited to people of his own background and education, and after the war (had he survived it) probably non-existent (although he managed to publish a number of his pre-India short stories in the American journal Atlantic Monthly in the late 1920s). But as he himself explains in South Indian Hours, he was given an opportunity completely to rethink his preconceptions, returning from India with the ability and compassion to portray the scenes and lives of ordinary people in a way to which everyone can relate – a ‘sympathetic interpretation of common men and women, and their gentle humour’ as noted by Kamakotiswara in the written work of his Indian contemporaries.

Twenty-one of the album’s fifty-nine pictures, all from the three South Indian sequences mentioned above, have been selected for illustration. These are accompanied in the Colour Illustrations by quotes from South Indian Hours (London 1924) for which page references are given. Spellings in these captions are the artist’s own. The material newly republished in India makes clear Couldrey’s influence on the development of South Indian art and poetry in the years during and after his time there. The review by Serish Nanisetti of the new permanent gallery of south Indian painting at Telugu University in Hyderabad venerates the art of this period and acknowledges Couldrey’s seminal role. But before now little interest has been taken in the artistic influence of his Indian experience on the artist himself, specifically on the well-known series of paintings of Abingdon and Oxfordshire produced in the inter-war years. Couldrey’s passionate review of an exhibition of Indian paintings held in London in the 1930s lifts a veil on what he thought watercolour painting could and should involve by revealing the more carefully considered artistic objectives of his maturity (in a 1934 87

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography

Nanisetti, Serish ‘A Walk in Art History’, ‘Friday Review Hyderabad’, in The Hindu 18 March 2011 K Ramakotiswara ‘The Art Revival in Andhra’, Triveni November/December 1929 K Ramakotiswara ‘Telugu Literature’, Triveni 1948 Singam, S Durai Raja (ed) Ananda Coomaraswamy. A Bibliographical Record, arranged chronologically. All his publications from 1895 to 1982 (Parts I and II) (Kuala Lumpur 1982 and 1984) Tagore, Rabindranath Gitanjali and fruit-gathering. Illustrated by Nandalal Bose, Surendranath Kar, Abanindranath Tagore and Nobindranath Tagore (London, Macmillan 1919) Tagore, Rabindranath The Language of Pictures. Exhibition of Paintings by Rabindranath Tagore (New York 1930) Monk, Ray and Robinson, Andrew (eds) Rabindranth Tagore. A Celebration of His Life and Work (Rabindranath Festival Committee and Oxford Museum of Modern Art 1986)

Basu, Nandalala An Album of Nandalal Bose (Calcutta, 1956) Dasgupta, Kalyan Kumar (ed) Ananda Coomaraswamy. A Centenary Volume (Calcutta 1981) Couldrey, Oswald The Mistaken Fury and Other Lapses (Oxford BH Blackwell 1914) Couldrey, Oswald South Indian Hours (London Hurst & Blackett Ltd 1924) Couldrey, Oswald ‘A Story of Conversion’, in Atlantic Monthly Vol 139 no 2 (February 1927, Boston Mass) Couldrey, Oswald ‘The Phantom Waterfall and Other Illusions’, in Atlantic Monthly Volume 139 no 3 (March 1927, Boston Mass) Couldrey, Oswald ‘The Noisy Slinger. A Story’, in Atlantic Monthly June 1931 (Boston, Mass) Havell, Ernest Binfield Indian Sculpture and Painting (London 1908)

88

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance

Colour Illustrations

The first number is the publication Plate number; there follow the final digit(s) of the museum number* (add OXCMS : 2007.81. in front), then the image number, then the number and title in the album often including further text, and finally a quote from South Indian Hours for which the page reference is given in brackets. (*In several cases the title and image have been mistakenly entered in two consecutive museum entries and in these cases both museum numbers are given.)

Fig 1. 1(001) 1. Bucolic. March morning looking E. Mango tree 40 yds. E. of the S.E. corner of my front garden. ‘My house is built upon the bank of a long-disused canal, by which at one time sugar-cane was brought in boats to a neighbouring factory, now dismantled’ (67).

89

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 2. 5(004) 5. My Neighbour’s House. 30 yds. S. of 1, looking N.E. on R., trees at my garden’s end. Here lived a ‘small’ cultivator, a Reddi by caste, a sort of Sudra. The big house seen on the left was built, I believe, by and for the proprietor of the sugar factory (as mine, and three others near, for his assistants). It was generally empty, as being too big (and too far from the Club, which was near the Bridge, 2 miles N.).

Fig 3. 6(005) 6. A Well in a Garden, that of the big house last mentioned, which is seen behind, 250 yds. W. of 1. Morning. See South Indian Hours, p. 122, plate. Of local wells: ‘The heart of the garden is the well, where two pairs of oxen, working on a slope, haul up in huge leathern buckets the silver life-blood of the plants, and pour it into conduits’ (110) 90

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance

Fig 4. 29 or 30(024)

27. The

like (morning on

Godavery),

Railway Bridge. September. ‘The Godavery, at the point where that ancient river is crossed by the railway line from Calcutta to Madras…we can go southward to Madras in a night, and northward to Calcutta in a day and a night; and are, say, thirty miles from the sea’ (41). ‘The roar of trains upon the bridge, when the wind is favourable, carries far into the northern jungles. I listen to that voice exactly as I used to do, in boyhood, for that of the Black Bridge in Newnham, Oxfordshire’ (46). looking

N.

to the

neighbourhood of a large up-country town situated on the banks of sea-blue

Fig 5. 11(009) 11. Rajahmundry bazaar, November evening. ‘Indigenous industries other than agriculture are fast disappearing. The bazaar that appears at first like an avenue into the Thousand Nights will be found upon inspection to be chiefly stacked from Brummagem’ (40). ‘It is generally considered the worst bazaar in Asia because it is narrow, though lying on the main road, and very difficult to penetrate by reason of…slow-moving ox-carts, impeding goats, and the Town Bull, huge as a hill and almost as adverse to locomotion’ (50).

91

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 6. 12(010) 12. Behind the Screen at the Shadow Play. Street scene at Rajahmundry at the Sri-Rama-Navami festival in April. ‘Sri-Rama-Navami at Rajahmundry is mainly a night festival. The Tolu Bommalu, the Skin Pictures, was something between a Punch-and-Judy show and a magic lantern. A sheet is hung before a booth with a row of lamps behind it, and upon this luminous tract are seen the fantastic shapes probably of an episode in the immortal story of Rama and the war in Lanka. The figures are cut with jointed limbs upon a light frame…what struck me most was the wonderful range of expression which the manipulator behind the sheet achieved’ (139-40).

Fig 7. 25(020) 22. Potters at Dowleishwaram. Aug. morning. 1917. ‘The potter, that inveterate live parable, spins his wheel; between his delicate and oozy fingers the wet clod grows like a magic flower: his hobbled fighting-cock looks on’ (103). 92

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance

Fig 8. 20(016) 19. Ploughing by the Bund (Floodbank). Seen from the road outside Dowleishwaram (the trees in front are those mentioned on the preceding page). Looking W. Beyond the Buna, the riverside pastures. A fine day – in the Rainy Season – July-Sept. ‘In the dry lands the three rainy months, July, August and September, are preeminently the months of ploughing and sowing. Our husbandmen plough with oxen, after the ancient fashion, yoking a pair to a plough’ (59).

Fig 9. 27(22)

24. Rice-cultivation near Razole, a village 2 m. E. of Docolm. July morning, looking S. On r., women ‘The Delta is a world apart. Much of the country consists of what is known as ‘wet’ lands. In such the staple crop is rice, or as it is more precisely styled in the growing stage, paddy, which requires to be planted and partly grown in standing water. This is derived from the canals, and retained upon the fields by means of a frame-work of small banks or ‘bunds’, an intricate and rectangular clay geometry which covers the whole face of the land’ (43). transplanting paddy shoots; l. men adjusting the water-passages.

93

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 10. 22(018) 20a. Janaki Ramayya, youngest son of a neighbouring farmer (ryot), a Reddi by caste. He helped to keep his father’s buffaloes on the lanka pastures. ‘One of the figures most familiar to our fields is the youthful piping neat-herd, slight ruler of grisly buffaloes and monumental oxen’ (20).

Fig 11. 35(026b) 31. Passing Pattisam Temple. April forenoon; 16 miles above Rajahmundry: looking east. ‘The tiara-tower of the Pattisam temple stands, a noble sea-mark, upon a sand-stepped rock in the middle of the water-way, sixteen miles above Rajahmundry’ (133) 94

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance

Fig 12. 36(027) 32. A Garner in a Garden (Seringapatnam). V South Indian Hours, p. 112. ‘The most peaceful, inglorious and out-of-the-way village imaginable. I was the guest of an old student of mine, so far as a foreigner can be the guest of a Brahmin; that is, I pitched my tent in his mango-orchard, and he made arrangements for my provisioning from the village’(106). ‘On the other side of the sandy lane that ran past my mango-orchard was a fruitgarden, the memory of which is one of the most fragrant.’ (110). ‘In the heart of our rustic garden also there was a garden-house, but before it rose only a circular garner of clay set upon wooden trestles…under the wide eaves was heaped or hung a most curious and choice collection of country furniture…(112)

Fig 13. 39 or 40(031)

35. Return of the Catamarans, Waltair. 100 m. N.E. of Rajahy. S. Indian Hrs., ch. V. ‘The The South Indian word means a ‘tied tree’. Three logs, each hewed into a rough semblance of the third part of a canoe, are lashed together. The result is urged through the surf with paddles. As soon as the returning vessel makes the sand, the partnership of the logs is again dissolved’ (88). catamaran fleet resembles nothing so much as a timber-yard.

95

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 14. 39 or 40(030)

A Fish Sale

Fig 15. 41(032) 36. Simhachalam Temple Stair, 6 m. inland from Waltair. The perennial rill descends on the r. S. Indian Hrs., ch. IV. Climbing up to the temple at Simhachalam ‘we came upon a marvellous wide prospect wherein appeared, small as in a picture, brilliant and pale as in a vision, Waltair and the Vizag estuary, and the silver outline of the coast’ (80). 96

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance

Fig 16. 42(033) 37. A river in Chingleput. District immediately S. of Madras. After sunset. Feb. 1909. My Indian painting made during a tour of remote villages with the Inspector of Schools.

Fig 17. 44(034)

39. A Brahmin’s house, Triplicane (Madras) (in crayon)

97

first

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 18. 46(036) 41. Madras Beach. ‘No vast capital can be represented by the ownership of the beam of a catamaran. Yet there is a sort of fishers who are too poor even for this; whose only stock-in-trade is a rush basket and a long bell-shaped drag-net with a rope at the throat, armed with which they wander up and down the shore, picking what livelihood they may from the lips and edges of the sea’ (89).

Fig 19. 48(037) 43. Festival days at Chidambaram. December morning (a temple city of the South. ‘Every morning the five gods went in procession through the streets nearest the temple, wreathed and almost hidden in garlands of yellow flowers. The god’s two elephants walked before, caparisoned in crimson, and there were curious flags, and a music of old-world instruments, and chanting choirs’ (187)

98

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance

Fig 20. 49(038) 44. Shrine of the Bull Nandi in the Temple of Sundareswara, Madura. South Indian Hrs., ch. XII. ‘Opposite the portal of the sanctuary is planted the stambham or standard of the god, a jointed pillar plated with gold; and immediately behind it the bull-god sits beneath an exquisite stone canopy, guarded by colossal columns’ (173).

Fig 21. 51(040) 46. Ruined Temple of Krishna, Vijayanagar (derelict Hindu capital of the South, destroyed 1565). ‘Its first notable adorner and greatest king, Krishna Deva Raya (1509-1530) inaugurated a silver age. Old Telugu tales generally begin with the phrase, ‘In the city of Vijayanagar’. Only thirty-five years after his death his magnificent city was destroyed…The desolate city remains today very much as the Muhammadans left it’ (280-1).

99

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Black and White Illustrations

Fig. 1 Sketch portrait of Couldrey’s most famous pupil, the artist Damerla Rama, who tragically died at the age of 28. Now on permanent display in the Telugu Chitrakala Vaijayanthi Gallery, Telugu University, Hyderabad. Taken from The Hindu, on-line edition dated Fri. Mar. 18, 2011: ‘A Walk in Art History’. www.hindu.com/fr/2011/03/18/stories.

100

Lauren Gilmour: Oswald Couldry, Abingdon artist, and the Indian Renaissance

Fig 2

Map of places in South India mentioned in the text. Extract from Great Indian Peninsulary Railway map c 1930. In F A Talbot, Cassell’s Railways of the World (Cassell & Company Limited, London) 73.

Fig 3 Couldrey in England. Photograph probably taken by a relative c 1933. Copy given to Abingdon County Hall Museum by Pauline Bagg. Courtesy of Abingdon County Hall Museum. 101

Beyond

Archaeology, History and Museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured Martin Henig

The history of Britain in the early 1st millennium AD is generally portrayed in rather simplistic terms both in books and in museums and the media. In fact the ethnicity and language structure of the Province may be far more complex than previously thought, demanding new and challenging interpretation. Moreover, as the culture of Britain was and remained largely of local origin (though with exotic features) we are to see a continuum between the Iron Age and the early Middle Ages based on the continuing tribal structures of the Island. The new model proposed might be the basis for a lively exhibition.

The Roman archaeologist, interested in the material culture of the past, stands between the object in the museum case and the historical text. Objects in themselves are mute, while texts only tell us what their writers know about or want to tell us. We do not have the luxury that their contemporaries may often have had of sifting alternative sources. Thus there is the temptation to treat a passage in Tacitus’ Annals or his encomium of his father in law, Cn Iulius Agricola, as objective history, or to extrapolate a whole series of events from passing remarks in Dio, Suetonius, Ammianus Marcellinus or even Bede. The same goes for inscriptions, which were inevitably all set up for a specific purpose of public or personal propaganda and can tell us so much, while at the same time leaving so many things we would like to know unsaid. We all have to make do with such inadequate sources, (compared to what is available for medieval or later history), but when we interpret caution is always necessary. Historical conclusions will always be in the nature of hypotheses, ever liable to modification and change. Sensitive interpretation of a source, combining it with whatever can be gleaned from archaeology, can help to suggest the course of events, but we have to be aware of the limitations of material evidence which may tell us more about social life (diet, drinking habits, living conditions) than we could get from a historian. Moreover it is here that a first-rate museum display truly comes into its own. John Rhodes in his splendid displays, pre-eminently the galleries in Reading Museum which reveal life in Roman Silchester, allowed the material evidence - figurines, potsherds, pottery and jewellery - to speak for itself (see Jill Greenaway, this voume). Historical, that is textual and epigraphic evidence, merely gives us the name of the place as Calleva, and reveals its connection with the Atrebates (Rivet and Smith 1979: 291-2). With a fine sensitivity John’s display allows us, his audience, to wander through the streets of a provincial Roman city and recover multiple stories of life in Roman Britain. If, after spending an hour or two in Calleva, the visitor begins to feel at home, that is because a great tradition of scholarship lies behind the display, principally the important book on Silchester by the late George Boon (Boon 1974), but also because John took care that scholars were consulted. This was principally the

curator Jill Greenaway, but amongst others I was called in to advise on a few matters too, and so I thought my theme here, of as it were awakening the subject of Roman Britain to new life, would have been one that would have delighted our friend. Experiencing Roman Britain in Museums Of course there are many displays concerned with Roman Britain. Those in southern England are very frequently in museums in cities which themselves have a Roman origin, including cantonal capitals (Verulamium, Winchester, Cirencester and Leicester for example), coloniae (Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln and York) and of course the capital of the province itself, London (Museum of London). In some instances these cities had a military origin, and at York there was also a fortress. Roman Britain is inevitably dealt with rather differently here, or at Caerleon or Chester, and in northern England and southern Scotland. In the north, apart from Carlisle which can be regarded as urban as much as military, the stress is naturally on the army and its dependents; here a historical narrative can be constructed employing the rather more numerous inscriptions. Whether in the south or in the north, rural life is on the whole presented as an adjunct to the urban or military story. There are few museums centred on rural sites, largely because most of these places are not in urban centres with the visitor numbers necessary to found a museum - the rather special cases of Fishbourne and Chedworth being exceptions. One special site, Bath (now admittedly a town), manages to display a fascinating museum of artefacts in the context of the remains of a spectacular sanctuary which are of international significance. Museums on the whole maintain a high standard of presentation, though the standard of labelling varies depending on the target audience. Often I feel that the section of the museum-going public which would like to be challenged is not well catered for. I have been thinking about this since working with Elizabeth Hartley on an exhibition held in the Yorkshire Museum, which was supported by a catalogue on the theme of the Emperor Constantine who was proclaimed in York in the year 306 105

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes (Hartley, Hawkes, Henig and Mee 2006). Both the show and the book were of international importance; how often is that the case with exhibitions in ‘provincial’ galleries? A particular feature of this exhibition was the focus given to Roman provincial art which is too often neglected in museums, and has not had an exhibition in Britain since 1962 (Toynbee 1962; and see Toynbee 1964) while I was still an undergraduate. As I have devoted much of my career in one way or another to the study of Roman art, especially the art of Roman Britain (Henig 1995), I am conscious of much that has been missing in the presentation of this heritage. In the paper which follows I have interrupted the text in the first part with a very few photos of objects, in part simply as a reminder of the very valuable part artobjects can play in historical, museum narrative, and in part in tribute to John’s generosity to others, in that they were all taken by the late Robert Wilkins FSA (19372012), photographer to the Institute of Archaeology., and whose kindness in taking photos for me so greatly assisted me to flourish as a scholar. Displaying Roman Art to the public Sometimes the problem is one of size and visibility. I have been working on Roman signet rings all my life. They were very important to their wearers as a mark of identity but very few museums have discovered a way of displaying them well. At Cirencester for example there is a nicolo (blue onyx) intaglio figuring the goddess Roma, a powerful image of Roman involvement in Britain and so well employed as a cover picture in my book on Religion in Roman Britain (Henig 1984), but it is not very well lit and, in any case, is currently situated far too low in the display for adults to see it. But intaglios are almost impossible to appreciate properly in most museums, amongst them Gloucester, York, Winchester, Verulamium and the Museum of London, so this is quite a general criticism, though, admittedly, the museum authorities have done rather better at Bath and Caerleon. They could, if better displayed, provide a dazzling entrée into Roman art, life and history. If, like me, you had spent a lifetime publishing them and demonstrating their centrality to Roman daily life (Henig 1974), you would find the situation, to say the least, depressing. Gems are admittedly very small and a significant problem for the designer but, in view of their importance to their ancient owners, this is a challenge which has to be met. To demonstrate all these points I illustrate four intaglios photographed by Robert Wilkins whose special skill was in recording these tiny objects. The first (Henig 1974, no.533; Fig.1a) is a nicolo from Verulamium dating to around the time of the Claudian intervention, depicting an eagle standing on a galley between a legionary standard and a trophy. The second (Henig in Sauer 2000,61-2; Fig 1b) is of moulded glass, dated to the same period and excavated at Alchester; it figures the head of a horse set within a Roman military trumpet (cornu), and was presumably the seal of a cornicen. A third (Henig 1974, no.588; Fig.1c) is a green jasper intaglio from a later 1st century cache of

gems from the main drain of the baths at Bath, and shows two horses standing before a column from which water - or wine - is doubtless flowing, indicative of prosperity, the good things of life. Finally, the fourth (Henig in Wilmott 1997, 284-5 no.87; Fig.1d) is a red jasper intaglio of the early 3rd century from Birdoswald on Hadrian’s Wall, and depicts the head of a youth in profile, almost certainly a portrait of Geta who was present in the province with his father Septimius Severus and his brother Caracalla, during the military campaigns of AD 208-11. I also have at admit to a somewhat proprietary interest in sculpture, having published the volume of the Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani dealing with Gloucestershire (Henig 1993) and the North West Midlands (2004a) while a third (by Penny Coombe, Francis Grew and Kevin Hayward as well as myself) which catalogues all the Roman sculpture from London and south-east England is currently in press. Here although there may be selectivity in what is displayed, the problem does not lie in invisibility, but in the fact that the stylistic qualities of what is distinctive in the regional style of sculpture, both with regard to execution and subject matter, is still too seldom addressed in museums. Thus at Cirencester one of the finest sculptures from Roman Britain, the Corinthian style capital inhabited by the god Bacchus and his companions, which used to be viewed at eye level - albeit on a rather ugly but serviceable base - is elevated high in the air upon a convincing mock-up of a Jupiter column simulating the one on which it would once have been set, so that it can only be seen from a distance, and only one side of it at that. Choices have to be made, and at nearby Stroud, altars from Bisley Park, Chalford (Henig 1993, 20 no. 54; see Fig.2) display both the idiosyncrasies of local style and something of the nature of regional cult where a Classical image may conceal the identity of a local god. Both aspects can be discerned in a relief from Aldsworth in the same county (Fig.3) purportedly depicting Minerva with Mercury (Henig, Cleary and Purser 2000), though it is more than likely that both deities had different regional identities. The best display of a sculpture in Britain is the pediment of the great Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath (Fig.4). It has been traditionally been seen in terms as a wild native deity conflated with Minerva’s Medusa. I have suggested a more nuanced series of interpretations (Henig 1999 and 2000) in the light of the sophistication of the iconography than that at present set out on the labels, but the restraint of the designer in letting the image largely speak for itself is admirable. Virtually all museums with Roman collections exhibit a profusion of metalwork, often including figural items. In most cases these have simple labels, perhaps giving the name of the god or goddess. However the distinctiveness of so much of this insular metalwork, which on occasions rises to the level of high art, is seldom (if ever) mentioned. Like larger sculptures, small scale figures (Henig 2007) relate to religious beliefs and the patterns of thought and culture of people living in Britain between the Iron Age and the so-called Anglo-Saxon period. Take the helmeted 106

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured head, probably the terminal of a priest’s sceptre from Kirmington, Lincolnshire (Henig 1995, 38-9; Fig.5). This is very similar to two sceptre heads from a priest’s grave excavated at Brough-on-Humber; although all are Roman in date we could look back to the heads on the bucket escutcheons from Aylesford, Kent, dated to the late Iron Age to find similar helmeted heads. Comparison may be made with a knife-handle in the form of a figure of Minerva found on the North York moors (Henig 1997), where the goddess displays the same simplified physiognomy (Fig.6). A sceptre terminating at both ends with human heads, but dating to the 7th century, one of the treasures from the Sutton Hoo ship burial (Webster and Backhouse 1991,33-4 no.17) preserves the idea of such anthropoid sceptres, but the Sutton Hoo sceptre is topped by a copper alloy stag which suggests continuity with the animal art of other Roman figurines. More distantly the boar atop the Benty Grange helmet of similar date (Webster and Backhouse 1991,59-60 no.46) preserves a reminiscence of earlier Roman period animals, just as the helmet itself, like the helmet from Sutton Hoo, echoes a Roman tradition of armour. Mosaics can fare even worse than sculpture and figural bronzes. Thus at Cirencester one of the finest 2nd century figural mosaics in Roman Britain is employed as the floor of a Roman living room; it is half covered in furniture and as the lights speedily light up and dim, hard to contemplate for more than an instant. Surely it would not have been so cluttered in Antiquity? But that is by no means unique. The worst case I know is that the British Museum only displays a very small part of the impressive early Christian Mosaic from Hinton St. Mary which it bought on discovery so that it could be properly preserved and shown to the public. Can one imagine a leading art gallery daring to treat a painting or a collection of master drawings in this way? In the case of an ‘old master painting’ would we not be expected to explore techniques, means of production and stylistic affinities with care? At least the all too few mosaics still displayed in situ, or, as we now know in the case of a pavement from the North Leigh villa in Oxfordshire, slightly reconstructed (Fig.7), still allow us to ask the questions which should be asked about workmanship, style and indeed meaning to those who trod upon them in Antiquity. It is especially sad that it is so difficult to appreciate the quite impressive array of figural mosaics dating to the 4th century which once existed and which clearly demonstrate the intellectual priorities of villa-owners. Taunton Museum with its famous Virgil mosaic taken from books 2 and 4 of the Aeneid from the villa bath-house at Low Ham, Somerset and the sites at Lullingstone, Kent, Bignor, Sussex and Brading on the Isle of Wight with their fine mythological pavements are, alas, all rather widely separated for the average tourist to fully appreciate the brilliance of this cultural episode in Late Roman Britain. How people became Roman and yet maintained their identities is a central question to put to the public and one well worth asking in every museum. Only in a few instances is the evidence from inscriptions powerful

enough to provide a major emphasis (as at Bath) but local artefacts and especially works of art deserve proper display and elucidation. It is telling how different an art gallery, sometimes (as at Norwich) in the same building as a display of Antiquities, is from a museum of antiquities. In most art galleries, the pictures are well supported by scholarly labels about the artist, the work and the historical context. Art galleries are aimed at educated adults and children who care about history. Roman (including Romano-British) art, as I have maintained for decades, is as deserving of such treatment as the works of Van Dyke or Constable. I suppose the illustrations I assembled both in The Art of Roman Britain (1995) and The Heirs of King Verica (2002/2010) provide an imaginary gallery of artefacts as well as ideas about how they might be interpreted, ideas which since then have continued of course to evolve. However, no museum in Britain possesses the full range of material to allow such an expansive approach (apart from the British Museum with, after all, by far the richest collection from Roman Britain) or has taken seriously the remit to make accessible a full range of artefacts in order to illustrate the story of the province in objects, with a minimum of intrusive interpretation. What follows is, then, to some degree a journey through a Musée Imaginaire, although it could provide the basis for a stimulating exhibition on the subject, mindful of the shocking fact that there has been no general exhibition on Roman Britain as such for over 50 years. Some museums could take suggestions from the sequence proposed in this paper to reinvigorate their own displays, for example Chichester, Fishbourne and perhaps Verulamium and Reading are well placed to explore the early history of Southern Britain, and its development, while Cirencester, Dorchester and Taunton are well placed to explore and reveal the later developments of a distinctive regional culture within what would became the province of Britannia Prima. The Origins of Britannia Roman Britain did not emerge out of a void. The traditional view is that its history commenced when the emperor Claudius ordered the invasion of an island, apparently exclusively inhabited by Celtic-speaking tribes, in AD 43. On this assumption he was motivated by his personal need for military prestige and above all in order to enrich the Empire. This is the story which has been taught in almost all the traditional books including those of Collingwood and Frere and most recently that by David Mattingly (2006). In fact the situation was, in all likelihood, very much more complex. First, the intervention was the culmination of a century of contact, diplomacy and trade. Secondly Britain was not a single entity, but a conglomeration of distinct, often warring, tribes. It was very likely inhabited by Celtic speakers on its Western littoral (see Cunliffe and Koch 2010) but in the East, as Yeates (2012) reminds us, Caesar describes the Belgic tribes of Britain as distinct from the indigenous inhabitants (Bellum Gallicum, V.12) and combines this 107

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes with a remark in Tacitus’ Germania (45) that the Aestii on the Baltic, whose customs were akin to those of the Suebi, spoke a language akin to one spoken in Britain; there is a possibility that the ethnicity and language of the Belgic tribes was not Celtic but Germanic, so that in other words a proto-English was spoken here. This is also the conclusion of Dr Nash Briggs (2011) after her study of the abbreviated inscriptions on Iron Age coinage, so is it not highly plausible that Queen Boudicca, far from speaking Welsh may have spoken a Belgic dialect, Anglian, a proto-English! This would account for the paucity of surviving ‘Celtic’ names in Eastern England: they were never there. Furthermore we should observe that La Tène, the quintessential ‘Celtic’ art style from the 5th century BC onwards, is in fact most at home in what are now, and probably were from Antiquity, German speaking lands and as far as England is concerned by far the majority of finds are from the eastern side of the island. We may have to rethink this key aspect of culture, too (see below). What implications will that have for our museum displays? John Creighton (2000) and I (Henig 2002) moreover have both hinted at a highly complex political situation which lies behind the Atrebatic king Verica inviting Claudius to intervene against his enemies (Trinovantes and some parts of the Catuvellauni). A great deal of ink has been spilt on determining the actual primary site of the invasion, whether the Chichester region of Sussex or at Richborough in Kent (Manley 2002 for a judicious assessment). The question is not really of long-term importance as both were used by Roman forces within a year of AD 43; note the very early establishment of a fortress at Alchester north of Oxford as a base for Legio II Augusta and perhaps a cavalry unit (Fig.1b); it has been dated by the tree felling date for the gateway posts of the annexe, as early as AD 44 (Sauer 2000). This, together with other evidence from Fishbourne and vicinity leads me to favour the primacy of the Magnus Portus on the Solent. Undoubtedly an immediate consequence of Roman intervention and the capture of the enemy capital of Camulodunum presented Claudius with a propaganda victory, it rewarded his allies and, above all, occupied a section of the potentially volatile Imperial Army. The result, as far as many of the peoples of southern Britain were concerned, would in many cases have been welcomed as ushering in liberation and peace. Political and economic power was in fact never exercised simply to fill Roman coffers; it essentially sustained the ruling echelons of indigenous society. This is well demonstrated not only by the development of Togidubnus’ putative palace at Fishbourne but by other comparably wellappointed though much smaller buildings including Pulborough, Angmering and Southwick as putative villas for his followers (Rudling 1998,42-6). Of course there were events which disrupted the process of acculturation, notably the Boudiccan revolt in East Anglia. This is at present displayed at Norwich as a ‘Celtic’ nationalistic uprising against Rome. What difference

does it make to our perceptions that the torques found at Snettisham and Ipswich and the ‘great gold torque’ worn by Boudicca (Dio Cassius LXII,2) are aspects of a ‘Belgic’ rather than a ‘Celtic’ identity? Boudicca’s revolt perhaps sprang as much from indebtedness and a chance as she thought to expand her territories at the expense of rival tribes as of hostility to Rome. Was there also a religious aspect? We know Suetonius Paullinus was campaigning in the region of the Deceangli of Flintshire and in Anglesey (the Island of the Angli?). Was this region likewise Anglian (as the name strongly suggests)? Did so much of the spectacular East Anglian goldwork originate in this region of North Wales or beyond it in Ireland? The revolt has rather too often been described in terms of Rome versus freedom-loving ‘Celts’, but this presupposes a great deal. Perhaps the thinking behind the sensitive response of Nero’s government in the restoration of order largely through appointing as Procurator a high ranking Treveran (that is a Belgic) nobleman, C. Iulius Alpinus Classicianus, husband of Iulius Indus’ daughter Iulia Pacata, was to defuse further ethnic tensions, which might have been exacerbated by continued suppression. The authorities would have been aware that other tribes, the Atrebates, Catuvellauni and their allies, who sided with Rome were likewise Belgae. Certainly they were rewarded and became the major beneficiaries of the Boudiccan revolt. Indeed, I believe King Togidubnus was a major actor alongside Classicianus in securing the compliance of the southern part of the province in supporting Rome’s continued hegemony. The archaeological sites which best demonstrate the precocious acculturation of the area in the 1st century, together with the Chichester-Fishbourne region, are Silchester (in the northern Atrebatic area) and the spring and temple of the goddess Sulis Minerva at Bath (Fig.4), perhaps on the western boundary of Togidubnus’s realm (Henig 1999). Verulamium, which also seems to have welcomed the advent of Rome and was a self-governing municipium and which was sacked by Boudicca, likewise participated in precocious development. These sites all have museums (though Silchester’s is split between John Rhodes’s imaginative display in Reading and Basingstoke). Romano-British Cultures The study of Roman Britain has historically concentrated rather too much on Imperial conquest and troop movements in Northern Britain and Wales. In part this is because of the nature of surviving literary sources, especially the work of Tacitus, the Annals and Histories and particularly his Agricola, an encomium on his father-in-law Cn. Iulius Agricola. However in terms of material remains, the rugged terrain and ready availability of building stone and relative lack of later urban and agricultural development has rendered the military archaeology of the ‘Highland zone’ of Britain accessible in a way that the deeply buried and robbed remains of many of the towns and villas in the south are not. The legionary fortresses of Caerleon and Chester and their associated museums especially envision Rome’s presence in terms of their military garrisons. Even more important in popular imagination has been Hadrian’s Wall; indeed forts 108

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured along the Wall together with the Wall itself are today the most visited landmarks of Roman Britain. The museums of Chesters, Housesteads and south of the Wall, South Shields and Vindolanda, together with what are probably both forts and ultimately tribal capitals at Carlisle (Luguvalium) and Corbridge (Coria), with the Grosvenor Museum at Chester and the Legionary Museum at Caerleon provide a very particular and partial view of Romanitas. Popularly, indeed, what is presented to the public is a traditional, highly militarised view of the Province which the Roman displays in towns such as those mentioned, but also for example the museums in the capital London (in the Museum of London), the Coloniae (Colchester, Gloucester, Lincoln and even York) or even most of the civitas capitals such Cirencester or Leicester, are able to do little to dispel. Thus Romans are so often equated with soldiers, as opposed to say Anglo-Saxons who are peasants or Normans who are either knights or monks! And, yes, the images portrayed are largely male, though Lindsay Allason-Jones (1989) has provided a splendidly spirited corrective! The emphasis in too many accounts, however, is still centred on conquest and control rather than on selfgovernment, which on the alternative view was central to the running of any province, whether Gaul (Woolf 1998) or Britain (Henig 2002) What are we leaving out? What is an essential component to any culture is its intellectual achievements, its literature and its artistic culture. I believe Britain was a land of multiple languages, but for over four centuries the language of culture and communications remained Latin, a language that in elite society continued well beyond any supposed end of Roman Britain. Greek may have been widely known amongst the most educated; the beautiful third century gold ring set with a sapphire from Stonham Aspall in Suffolk is inscribed in Greek with a wish that Olympis would enjoy long life (Henig 1995, 72-3; Fig.8) and it does not stand alone (Henig 2001, 122). Simply because our own 21st century educational system in England (though not in Continental Europe) is currently deficient in language teaching, that is no reason why museums should not make more rather effort to use their Latin documents and inscriptions as aids to Classics teaching. The major limitations here are simply those of survival as only a few very late works, by Pelagius and Patrick, attest the evidently high quality of education obtainable, at least by the few, in Britain itself. However, we can gauge the nature of the Classical works read, by depictions of myth in various works of art (especially mosaics), which lead us back to Ovid, Virgil and other Roman writers, or even to Greeks such as Euripides, judging from the find of a relief, probably from Sussex, showing scenes from the Iphigenia in Tauris (Black, Edgar, Hayward and Henig 2012). Roman Britain shared a common culture with the rest of the world; visitors to Solunto near Palermo in Sicily are proudly shown a mid 1st century mosaic figuring an armillary sphere (Greco 2005, 32-3 fig.31); the careful representation of such a sphere on the Bath pediment only a decade or two later (Fig 9) reveals that elite culture was similarly advanced in its astronomical/ astrological knowledge.

For other periods of British history art has been taken much more seriously, and plays a significant if not a dominating part in displays. The writer of this paper has waited in vain throughout his career for a worthy display of Roman civilization in Britain centred squarely on artistic style and production and, as stated above, the only attempt made to stage such an exhibition was that held 50 years ago in the Goldsmiths Hall, London (Toynbee 1962). In fact art is of crucial importance in evaluating culture as a whole. In the Iron Age the 5th century BC had seen the inception of La Tene art in Europe, especially in Bohemia, Austria, Germany and Northern France, areas where, as mentioned above, it is likely that Germanic dialects were spoken. From there it was introduced into Britain and (most significantly) mainly into eastern England, where a distinctive Insular style developed, exemplified by such masterpieces as the Battersea and River Witham shields, the Snettisham and Ipswich torques and the Desborough mirror. We need not think all such art was produced in the Belgic area or by speakers of Germanic dialects, however. Art, after all, does not obey racial or linguistic boundaries. With the commencement of the Roman period in Britain, equally refined art continued to be produced in bronze, gold and other metals (see Henig 1995; Johns 1996) but Roman influence from the Mediterranean resulted in the introduction of new ‘major’ arts of architecture and sculpture, painting and mosaic, every one of which developed distinctive features, the result of their production in a native milieu, and there were other minor arts - amongst them that of gem-cutting. In the case of metalwork jewellery there was remarkable interaction with Mediterranean elements - discussed by Johns in her remarkably complete survey (1996), though for reasons stated above the local traditions she explores may not be ‘Celtic’ at all, certainly in the case of jewellery produced in the east such as the Snettisham Roman jeweller’s hoard (Johns 1997). Apart from jewellery and the continuing project of publishing all the sculpture from Roman Britain in the Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani, the mosaics of Roman Britain have recently received sumptuous publication (Neal and Cosh 2002-2010). In their varied styles, they are deserving both of admiration as art and study for what they can tell us about cultural life in Roman Britain and they require much more attention in our museums (Henig 1985). Moreover the arts of the sculptor and mosaicist were not unitary phenomena. Not only did they develop over time, but they spawned a diversity of regional styles. Religion too should be explored at a more profound level in museums than it generally is, and that is true of all the faiths of the Empire. The spiritual experiences of (Roman) Britons are worthy of respect for their intrinsic spiritual values, as indeed I argued thirty years ago (Henig 1984). They tell us a great deal about the thought, behaviour, psychology and moral sense of those who invoked divine aid. Every image and altar should tell us something of how the peoples of the province negotiated with the divine powers. I would suggest that sensitive comparisons can be 109

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes made with our own more modern religious experiences. Indeed in the 4th century there is not inconsiderable evidence for Christian practice in Britain which can be very moving and is worthy the engagement of theologians (Cronin 2006), though I believe it to be the case that wherever we have the possibility of pondering the dedications of altars, analysing the various votive offerings and supplementing what we have with literary evidence from elsewhere we can feel a real spiritual empathy with our dead ancestors. While in detail there are of course corrections I would wish to make to my 1984 book, I stand by its spirit. And of course literacy, art and religion were all very much part of daily life. All provide evidence for similarities with and differences from our own expectations. One case in point is the discovery of several enamelled votive trullas employed in the pouring of libations, some of them inscribed with the names of forts at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall (Henig 2010/2011) . They appear to be of Hadrianic date and suggest that Hadrian’s claim that he had built the Wall ‘by decree of the gods’ may be true; it was a symbolic marker of the northern limit of empire, where pilgrims could visit a temple (presumably at or near Carlisle) to pay their respects to Jupiter and maybe other protective gods, albeit the real frontier may have been further north. Even here on the Limes, the provincial story may have been less battling against the barbarians than the more prosaic problems of government, administration and maintenance of the law so that on the whole the varied inhabitants of Roman Britain felt they had a stake in Imperial rule. And one other factor to bear constantly in mind was the large measure of continuity between the Iron Age and Roman period. Silchester, Verulamium and other civitas capitals replace earlier oppida, sometimes as here, on the same sites; Roman ‘villas’ overlie Iron Age farms; and even just outside sophisticated Roman cities like Cirencester there were still settlements of round huts. Above all the tribes continued to exist, and, if Yeates and others are right, ethnic and linguistic divisions remained and these factors would continue to be palpable in the centuries ahead (Pryor 2004; Laycock 2008; Yeates 2012) Endings: AD 410 and all that.1 The 4th century is rightly seen as the Golden Age of Roman Britain (de la Bédoyère 1999), as reflected in its villa-culture, and the wealth represented by its mosaics and frescoes, jewellery and silver (see Henig 1995, chapter 7). It should however be pointed out that there is considerable evidence for discontent and revolt in Britain even from members of the governing, curial, class from at least the middle of the 3rd century onwards. Not only were the Gallic Emperors welcomed in the mid 4th century, but more significantly, after seizing north-west Gaul and Britain in 286, another ruler, Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Carausius, a Menapian from   A version of this section was originally presented at an international conference held at the British Museum in 2010 to mark the sixteenth hundred anniversary of the supposed ending of Roman Britain!

1

what is now Belgium, made his headquarters in London where he was probably very much welcomed as virtually a local, speaking the same Belgic language alongside formal Latin (see Casey 1994). His henchman Allectus who supplanted him in a coup in 293 most probably had a similar north-west European origin. There was almost certainly considerable local resentment when the central Government of the Empire intervened in 296 and overthrew Allectus , thus essentially staging a conquest of Britain. There is no reason to think that Constantius, his son Constantine and Constantine’s own sons were welcome or ever widely popular outside the military camp. Constantine is attested on Adventus coins as returning to Britain twice in his reign (Casey 1978), while Ammianus tells us that Constans made a hurried trip to Britain in winter to deal with some crisis, and that Britain was an epicentre of the revolt of Magnentius leading Constantius II to send a special agent called Paulus nicknamed catena (‘the chain’) to deal with those amongst the curiales who had supported the rebellion. Britain like Gaul seems to have backed Julian’s bid for power in 360 but after his death in 367 there would seem to have been discontent which came to a head in the so-called Barbarian Conspiracy of 367, which, as a careful reading of Ammianus suggests, most likely conceals widespread internal dissentions in the province as much as any external threat. By the time of the revolt of Constantine III in the early 5th century, the Roman state was itself seriously weakened at its centre by war and rebellion elsewhere. Britain, abandoned by the central power and suffering what amounted to a catastrophic economic collapse, started to fragment into tribal groupings, many of them long established. This is the essential background to the crisis of the 5th century and the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ invasion myth. Some ‘Anglo-Saxon’ scholars have been querying the traditional accounts of the coming of the English, the Adventus Saxonicum, for some time and none more cogently than Catherine Hills (2003). However such subtle questioning has not entered popular consciousness: Bede’s account of the ‘three keels’ is enshrined in the mythology (or should I say myth) of the Anglo-Saxon invasions (Henig 2002; see now Yeates 2012). This invasion myth has well and truly invaded museum displays, and the Ashmolean Museum is by no means alone in covering a wall with a map of Europe figuring the course of the invasion, which looks rather like the opening sequence in Dad’s Army, as the barbarian hordes are shown sweeping towards the eastern coasts of England while equally ferocious fleets of Irishmen attack from the West. When, in conversation, I presented rather tongue in cheek the ‘invasions’ as expounded by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the Adventus Saxonicum , my great friend and colleague Helen Molesworth laughed and remarked that it very much reminded her of J.K. Jerome’s ‘Three Men in a Boat’, that is it sounded more like a picnic-party than a real invasion. In fact Bede wanted to provide a parallel to the conquest of Canaan, the Promised Land, by the Israelites (no less mythical in fact). As Yeates (2012) has so convincingly demonstrated, we should rather envisage 110

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured a porous channel frontier between Eastern Britain and Continental Europe throughout the first millennium A D. While there may well have been newcomers in the 4th-6th century, many of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were locals. East Anglia and Kent have provided a great deal of rich evidence for the material culture of this period, both Late Roman and Migration period. There is plenty of evidence for continuity in jewellery design and in technology of manufacture, as is illustrated by comparing the style of jewellery from the late 4th or early 5th century Thetford and Hoxne treasures (Johns and Potter 1983; Johns 2010) with finds from Anglian and Jutish cemeteries of the succeeding century and a half. It has been questioned through the study of onomastics and coin legends whether Celtic (Brythonic) was ever the only or even the major language in Eastern England (Goormachtigh and Durham 2009; Nash Briggs 2011 and see Nash Briggs 2012). Very probably the situation was far more complex than has previously been considered. Kent was understandably better known in the wider Roman world than some more distant parts of Britain in the late Roman period, as is attested both by archaeology and by documentary sources even where they are less than historical. The 6th-century Byzantine writer Procopius could not resist using what is in fact the English name of Thanet to tell his outrageously amusing tall story concerning the transport of souls from northern Gaul to the abode of the dead (Thanatos) in Britain (De Bello Goth VIII,xx,42-58). No doubt there were many temples to pagan gods in Eastern Britain; although some of them may have had Brythonic names others probably had Belgic ones, possibly including those primary figures of the invasion myth Hengist and Horsa, who are best interpreted as rider-gods like the Alci in Jutland attested by Tacitus, or the Dioscuri who appear in various forms throughout the Roman world. One wellknown Germanic deity in Eastern Britain was Teutates, invoked in the Roman period, especially by the Corieltauvi, for numerous rings with the letters ToT or variants come from Lincolnshire and neighbouring regions inhabited by that tribe (Yeates 2012, 72-6). Paganism persisted in the region and doubtless in the West too, down at least to the seventh century as Bede attests. In all his books Yeates has made it clear that the names of topographical features in the landscape retain traces of a pre-Christian divine landscape. In any case there is no reason to assume the temples to which Bede makes reference and their cults were simply those of recently invading Saxons; they remain remarkably elusive, probably because we are looking for religious buildings distinct from the very wellknown Romano-Celtic type! Alongside the pagan deities, the Christian Church survived and by reason of its very rootedness in the written word Christianity retained a stronger stamp of official Romanitas. Augustine’s embarrassing realization of the persistence of British bishops in the region with their Judaic learning extending to the Levitical purity laws, gives the lie to the real reason for this highly political ‘mission’ having been for the conversion of benighted heathens. This process was certainly effected as much

by British Christians as by the Roman missionaries. The great pilgrimage site at St Albans visited by St Germanus in AD 429 and the cemetery churches of St Martin-in-theFields at London and St. Martin’s, Canterbury evidently continued to function, and other such churches may have been built, including the well-known church at Silchester whose plan looks more 6th-century than 4th. Further graphic testimony of this can be seen in the recently discovered 5th6th century baptistery at a villa above Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire (Bowes 2008, 176-8). Pope Gregory’s concern was that the link between British Christianity and metropolitan Rome was not firm enough; indeed Augustine was following in the footsteps of St Germanus a century and a half earlier when British Pelagians seemed to represent too independent a version of the faith. If we are expecting 3rd , 4th or 5th century Britain to resemble the Britain of the Julio-Claudian, Flavian or Antonine periods we will be disappointed. Indeed, the economic dislocation consequent on the removal of troops and civil servants in the first decade of the fifth century as a result of Roman political changes was marked, but that did not in any way prevent cultural continuities in what people thought about or read, in what people wore and how they feasted, or ultimately in what people made and traded. The survival of the Roman way of life can be shown by the long life of certain villas. A 6th century bead lying on the floor of the Bellerophon Mosaic at Rowler Manor, Croughton, Northamptonshire (Dawson 2008,547) and the wear and patching evident in the Bellerophon Mosaic at Hinton St Mary, Dorset and at Lopen, Somerset are suggestive of this, though at Bradford-on-Avon the room containing mosaics changed function from domestic to ecclesiastical use. The wearing of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ or British jewellery and use of some Roman-style dining equipment was surely a matter of taste, not necessarily of ethnicity at all. So many of the hanging bowls with enameled escutcheons have been found in Eastern Britain, that it is tempting to guess they were made locally and, despite or even because of their La Tene décor, by people who may have spoken a local ‘Anglo-Saxon’ dialect. Indeed the production of hanging bowls (probably employed for ablutions) now appears to have commenced in the Roman period proper; one of the earliest, a very plain example, coming from a late Roman deposit in London, although through time they become far more lavish. Other objects too serve to demonstrate continuity in dining habits, such as enameled toothpicks of late Roman form. Jewellery ranging from quoit-brooches, buckles and rings, to pennanular brooches and hand-pins and the spectacular garnet inlaid jewellery of the 6th-8th century need to be seen with brightly coloured textiles as elements in a style of costume which continues to reveal a sophisticated Late Antique aesthetic (Henig 2004b). In western Britain Brythonic culture had taken root in the late Roman province of Britannia Prima. Christian 111

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes inscriptions were set up here from the 5th century, apart from a few milestones the earliest epigraphic material from the region (Redknap and Lewis 2007; Edwards 2007). This is the age of Patrick in the 5th century and especially Gildas in the 6th century, whose combined expertise in Latinity with ability to contextualize Britain as the Israel of Jeremiah, duly punished for the moral shortcoming of its kings, provided a fiction whose brilliance was such that it has been read and believed as history ever since. If towns gave way to monasteries the learning of a school such as St Illtud at Llantwit Major in South Glamorgan pursued Roman educational values with vigour. Here as in the east of the island, year by year the land was tilled and the harvests reaped as they had been during the earlier centuries of Roman rule. The sun sparkled on the seas untroubled save by the occasional ship bringing wine, oil and other products from distant Mediterranean lands in exchange for cargos of tin or fleeces. Across the western sea lay Hibernia, Rome’s last province, but adapted to Romanitas by culture and the Church not by arms. Here was an island much of whose population probably originally spoke a non Indo-European tongue, although a variety of Celtic language had been imported, maybe from Northern Britain into Ulster at some time in the late Iron Age where it is also attested by some examples of vigorous La Tene art (Raftery 1994). Literacy (in Latin) arrived directly both from the Mediterranean world and from nearby Britannia, with whom trade contacts, which sometimes inevitably included slave raiding, was close. St Patrick was one of those taken to Ireland from his home either on the Severn Estuary (? Caerwent) or from the Solway area (? Carlisle/Birdoswald). Brilliant missionary and accomplished Latin stylist as he was he was not alone in spreading culture and the faith. Some Christians garrisoned remote islands and headlands on the west coast, a frontier like Hadrian’s Wall in former times, principally against the demons who assailed Britannia, the province on the edge of the world in days gone by; others took their faith back to convert pagans in Britain. Here even more than in England an art-style blended of native elements and Roman and Christian influences illustrated the new confidence of the Insular cultures in an ‘age of migrating ideas’ (Youngs 1989; Spearman and Higgitt 1993). In the north of Britannia, Britons and Caledonians (Picts), whose language is mysterious but who may have spoken a Germanic (Scandinavian) tongue, faced each other across a frontier which remained as open as ever it had been. Soon there would be an Irish element added to the mixture of peoples. The treasure from Traprain Law contains dress equipment worn by a 5th-century Goth, and indeed that treasure, like other Hacksilber hoards, probably represents bullion payments of some sort, representing a continuity of ‘Roman’ military practice in the North. Hadrian’s ancient Wall guarded by forts which had become farms, a frontier bristling with watchtowers set up against the infinite bands of an enemy that never tried to breach this line because it too was a myth (as Hadrian himself had realized). The real

frontier was further north, more or less along the line of the Antonine Wall facing Pictland, as Yeates indeed suggests. The Roman infrastructure of Luguvalium, Carlisle, was still to be noted as a remaining feature of the town in the early Middle Ages despite the uncouth language of its inhabitants (Henig 2004c). The city, capital of the Carvetii, had celebrated the lack of central control by expanding its territory to the north and perhaps to the south as well, demonstrating that what was to become the proud kingdom of Rheged was also Roman in spirit. In Northumbria, Romanitas would (re-)assert itself with boldness within a century or so in illuminated manuscripts, amongst them the vastly expensive Codex Amiatinus and the Lindisfarne Gospels. Doubtless there was a transfusion of ideas from the south, from Augustine’s missionaries, but much of the impulse artistic and intellectual was insular. Of course there was inter-tribal and inter-communal conflict as there had in truth always been, even in what are so often imagined to be the palmy days of the early Empire, when brigandage had likewise flourished. Sometimes this was between Britons in the West and the ‘Saxons’- probably the Belgic speaking tribes - in the East, or between Britons and Irish, and sometimes internally between British groups or Teutonic (‘Saxon’) groups. Northumbrians fought Caledonians or the people of Mercia or Cumbria, the Gewissae disputed the frontier with Mercia and the ancient tribe of the Hwicce. By the 8th century victory crosses set with gems, like the cross described in the Anglo-Saxon poem, The Dream of the Rood, were being carried into battle by the Northumbrians like the standards of the old Roman regiments, and they erected stone crosses too, sometimes carved with biblical scenes in the manner of Roman monumental columns, marking the victory of the new faith over the pagan religions. The Dream reminds us of the complex nature of the culture of our period. Virgilian echoes are everywhere, in the 5th century cult of Faunus at Thetford and in the Low Ham Mosaic figuring the ill-fated love of Dido and Aeneas, and also in the probably 5th century insular illuminated manuscript now in the Vatican, the Vergilius Romanus. In Ireland The Tain draws on folk stories and local myth but also on the Iliad. In Beowulf, greatest of all the poetic works of Anglo-Saxon literature, the dragon-fights of northern myth elide with similar heroic encounters in Classical mythology, notably Bellerophon’s battle with the Chimaera (depicted on no less than four mosaics in Britain). Such encounters recall the Psalmist’s statement: Thou shalt go upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet (Ps. 91: 13). Viewed as the destruction of evil, these trysts with dragons epitomize the culture of active good works which nurtured our home-bred heresiarch Pelagius, against whom St Germanus mounted his mission (Rees 1988:108-23). And The Ruin far from signaling the end of Rome translates the elegiac poetry of Horace on the fall of cities into another idiom. 112

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured Strongest of all influences on insular culture from the 5th to the 8th century was the influence of the Bible. Before accepting with confidence the tales we are told of barbarian invasions we should be aware of the theological backgrounds of Bede and Gildas. For Bede, the Anglo-Saxons in Eastern Britain up to Northumbria, are the Children of Israel coming to the Promised Land, a popular theme reflected in the poem Exodus in which the Ancient Israelites are transformed into a Teutonic War Band. Further, with regard to the Church, the AngloSaxons, the Angli, thought of themselves as representing the pure Roman heritage; they were the Angeli of Gregory the Great! Moreover Bede accepted the nuances of the updated Christianity imported with the Augustinian Mission which attempted to suppress the evidence that ‘British’ Christianity was alive and well. For Gildas it is the Britons who are to be seen as representing the Israelites, but here they are subject to God’s punishment for their moral shortcomings and especially those of their venal rulers. If we read history here it is that of the looming Babylonish captivity of the 6th century BC to the east of the Mediterranean more than any actual events in Western Britain!. Some years ago when I wrote The Heirs of King Verica (Henig 2002, see above) I demonstrated to my own satisfaction that the original involvement of Rome in Britain was very much more complex, with far more diplomatic nuances in the relationship between the Roman state and the tribes, than had often been realized. It now seems to me, especially in the light of Yeates’s revolutionary new history, to have been even more complicated, with additional ethnic factors I had not then considered. So the end of Roman Britain turns out to be no sort of end at all. If we focus on central southern Britain, on Silchester which continued from the Iron Age to the sixth century when the famous ‘Silchester church’ may have been built judging from its complex plan, or Dorchester on Thames whose history stretches down to our own day, the events of 410, a date derived from a rescript from Honorius actually addressed to the people of Bruttium amongst other places to look to their defences, (as the historian R.V. Lennard realized over 50 years ago2) or even the withdrawal of official administration and with it the import of coins to pay the army and civil service does not provide an ending. 410 was simply another year of the agricultural round for the peasantry in Late Antique Britain. As both historian and priest I have especial concern for the little church with its holy well dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch at Binsey, south of the Thames just west of Oxford. Here in the 8th century Frideswide, daughter of a Gewissian sub-king, probably presided over her first monastery. I suppose one might see her as part of a fairly newly arrived ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ruling class, but it may be more accurate   R.W. Chambers and M. Cary, England Before the Norman Conquest (London, 1928) [Univ  Lond Intermediate Source Books of History No. VII], at p.75 (Zosimus), R.V.Lennard’s pencilled note reads: ‘But this occurs in a different context - so different that it seems likely the cities of the Bruttii in South Italy were meant’ [information from Julian Munby who owns the copy]. 2

to envisage her as a descendant of one of the rulers of the (Belgic) Atrebatic tribe, which doubtless had local centres of power at Abingdon and Dorchester. In any case this needs to be thought about and debated, not simply in the study but in the museum too. Doubtless the great Alexandrian poet Constantinis Cavafy was not thinking of Britain in his poem, Waiting for the Barbarians, but one can see that for archaeologists and ‘historians’ of the so-called ‘Migration period’ invading barbarians are, in the poet’s words ‘some sort of solution’, even if the conquering hordes are reduced to one or two leaky boats buried under grave mounds in East Anglia at Snape or at Sutton Hoo, and even though the boats contained objects of material culture, such as a gem-set signet ring, scepters, bronze hanging bowls and spectacular silver plate that are redolent of Late Antiquity both local and Mediterranean. Really it is so much easier to read history as a ‘Boys Own’ comic strip than to deal with the intricate complexities of shifting human beliefs and manners developing over time: sadly the new AngloSaxon display in the Ashmolean does just that, and, by so doing, runs in the face of some of the more subtle scholarship of recent times as indicated, amongst others by Catherine Hills (2003), Francis Pryor (2004), David Howlett (2007) and Stephen Yeates (2012). Of course there are so many details for us and for scholars of the future to fill in. It is apparent that for me Roman civilization is not to be measured by the survival of drains or mass-produced pottery, though in fact both may have survived longer than we think. It was certainly not represented by an army, as irrelevant now as it had been before. Nor was Britain a ‘failed state’ as is suggested by the title of Stuart Laycock’s otherwise quite splendid book (Laycock 2008), a modern concept if ever there was one, simply because it had never really been a unit. Two factors which mark it out are its varied culture, and linguistic and artistic diversity on the one hand, and the growth and spread of the new Christian religion. Until 400, the islands are silent save for inscriptions, some of which are nevertheless quite revealing, and a few graffiti. Afterwards Patrick, the Pelagian writers, Faustus of Riez and Gildas all brilliantly attest Romanitas . Even in the vernacular texts, the Dream of the Rood, Beowulf, the Goddodin, there lurks a powerful Roman sensibility. In the field of art, we should think of the hanging bowls, the Armargh and Derrynflan chalices, the Derrynflan patten, the Kentish circular brooches inlaid with garnets and elaborate enameled Western pennanular brooches and so much else that sit alongside Byzantine imports of pottery at Tintagel and elsewhere, and bronze vessels, predominantly imported into Eastern Britain. In this most fertile ‘Age of Migrating Ideas’, it was ideas much more than people which invaded all parts of the British Isles. Roman culture at last came of age in this north-western corner of the Roman world. Far from being the beginning of the Dark Ages this was indeed the Age in which Britain truly came into the light.

113

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes In Lough Lene in Co. Westmeath part of the hull of a Roman carvel-built boat has been recovered (Raftery 1994,2089, fig.133). Boats such as this, or the boat discovered on the north bank of the Severn at Magor (Nayling and McGrail 2004), have a particular relevance to our story, for they connect us with the mighty but mythical invasion with which we began. What are we to make of Hengist and Horsa (most probably twin deities as mentioned above), of Aelle, Port (named surely from the Magnus Portus) and other shadowy-mythical-invaders? It is never possible to date the remains of such vessels as mentioned above, or the famous Utrecht boat in the Netherlands, with complete precision but just maybe one such craft did reach Britain in that fateful year AD 410 or a decade or two later, and just maybe its crew - just maybe - regarded their landfall at, let us surmise, Bognor, as an historic moment! But, somehow…I doubt it. How on earth are we going to display this period in a new age? I have let the narrative run on because the material culture alone makes it absolutely obvious that no simple unitary treatment of Roman Britain is either possible or desirable. Certainly it cannot be defined by an army which changed over time and was barely recognizable by the end of the 4th century; nor can it be defined by buildings of evolving form, or by sculpture, mosaics, metalwork or pottery all of which differed over space or time. Perhaps if there is a linking theme until the end of the 4th century it was the monetary economy, and it was the collapse of this that precipitated changes and makes the period after 400 harder for us to date. With regard to material culture, buildings after 400 tend to be made of wood rather than stone and are represented simply by post holes and depressions in the ground. And yet the fields were still farmed as they had been since the Iron Age, and while towns declined from their Roman grandeur, eventually many English towns are in the same places, suggesting that they did survive in some way if only as centres of power. More demonstrably, technology (especially of weapons and jewellery) exhibits strong connections with what went before in the Roman period, combined, of course, with stylistic developments and modifications. These could be explored much more fully in museum displays. When other crafts emerge, such as sculpture and manuscript production, we can see an infusion of new ideas from the Mediterranean, sometimes of course mediated through Frankish Gaul, and from Ireland. How great were the differences? We surely underestimate change in Roman society between the 1st century and the onset of Late Antiquity. Much had changed beneath an apparent veneer of sameness, and by presenting Roman Britain as a single period in books and in museums we obscure this. Conversely, was the Anglo-Saxon warrior with his sword and belt, his shoulder square-headed brooch (developed from the Roman cross-bow) so different in appearance from a late Roman soldier? Indeed did he think he was a Late Roman gentleman (Filmer-Sankey 1996)? And the elite Anglo-Saxon woman certainly would have looked passably like a Roman domina in her flashy garnet-

inlaid jewellery. There is a very exciting story to explore, and it requires not only a willingness to change one’s mind and accept new findings but a preparedness to make these available to the public, in museums as well as in books. Conclusions If one visits a specialist library or bookshop there is an almost depressingly large number of works on every aspect of Roman Britain. How can anyone read all of them? When I began my study of the subject at school very little was published in any one year and one could even expect to purchase every monograph and excavation report and read it. Nowadays it is hard to navigate a way between the writings of excavators, finds and pottery specialists in archaeological Units, ancient historians in universities and synthesisers, both academic and popular. Often the accepted viewpoint, as expounded by English Heritage and on television and relayed to the interested public belongs to the loudest voice or the most captivating personality. Because we all have a view - hence a multiplicity of views - about our own times, the BBC and quality newspapers, read by the people who make up the bulk of the museum visiting audience, expound contemporary politics and economics with a level of sophistication that allow us to make choices and value judgements the whole time. Museums and site displays might do well to take leaves out of the political journalist’s book and treat their audiences as responsible citizens able to engage with the past with the same intelligence as they do with the present, evaluating evidence which may be contradictory or in conflict with what we thought we knew. Why don’t we present all the evidence, in the form of a debate? Hence we would show the objects in our care and ask our audience to choose for themselves between various theories: the old-style invasion hypothesis (which envisages a Roman takeover, Imperial exploitation, the collapse of Roman Britain and an Anglo-Saxon incursion with its concomitant change of ethnicities) and the new model of essential continuities but displaying constant adaption and change. And what are we to make of our Ancient World, our familiar Roman Britain, which preceded it? Was it really in a steady state or did it conceal a world of almost infinite complexity, very much like our own, as it transformed itself into the world of Late Antiquity ? I have made it clear where my own inclinations lie. I also recognise the practical difficulties, ours not theirs, if children are required to take exams based on one version of the facts, and the responsibility of museums and their education departments to meet these demands. It would doubtless be easier if we did not have such a weight of accepted fact (and vested interests in them!) to contend with. It is instructive to compare the case of Britain in the first millennium with Aksum and its environs in Ethiopia. A superficial knowledge of Aksumite architecture, use of coins, and religion (Christianity) and perhaps what ancient 114

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured sources there are too, might lead one to imagine its culture was derived from the Roman Empire to the North and from Arabia, but as David Phillipson (2012) demonstrates most convincingly, its culture was very largely indigenous with just a few borrowings. If Britain was largely within the Roman Empire that Empire was for the most part diverse and power and influence lay to a surprising degree with local elites who were responsible for the production of art and much else. As in all historical contexts there were startling developments through time, from the Iron Age to the early Roman intervention, and from the Julio-Claudian period to Late Antiquity and beyond, occasioned by shifting balances of power, cultural and religious change and above all by economics. Is there a warning here for all of us, living in the uncertain 21st century world? In conclusion I could only wish that I could have worked with John Rhodes to present this model of the development of culture in England in the first six or seven hundred years of the first millennium AD. He would have done it brilliantly and with great charm and good humour. And

where might such an exhibition be held if by some amazing act of generosity adequate funding was to be provided to stage such a show? Perhaps we could not do better than hold it at Devizes - the Devizes home of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. Contributing to a volume in honour of another great museum man, Ken Annable, I was struck (Henig 2001) by the amazing diversity of the objects of Roman and Anglo-Saxon date displayed in the museum from this one county alone. The medieval and modern town is just about on the border, the division (and maybe that is what its name originally implied), between the Brythonic culture of the West and lands of Belgic or Saxon or English identity in the East. In the oral and then written cultures of early medieval Welsh and the early medieval English there were stories aplenty to create myths of origin, of battles won and lost, of descent from gods and heroes, and in the constantly changing narratives or parts of narratives, in objects discarded in graves or in hoards or simply lost we have to find a kind of truth which we can display and inspire others to use their own imaginations and join us in our search.

115

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography Allason-Jones, L., 1989. Women in Roman Britain. London. Bird, J., Chapman, H. and Clark, J., 1978. Collectanea Londiniensia. Studies in London archaeology and history presented to Ralph Merrifield. London: London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. Black, E., Edgar, J., Hayward, K.M.J. and Henig, M., 2012. ‘A new sculpture of Iphigenia in Tauris’, Britannia 43, 243-70. Bowes, K., 2008. Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity. Cambridge. Casey, P.J., 1978. ‘Constantine the Great in Britain – theEvidence of the Coinage of the London Mint, A.D. 312-314’ in Bird, Chapman and Clark 1978, 180-93. Casey, P.J., 1994. Carausius and Allectus: the British Usurpers. London. Collins, R. and Gerrard, J. (eds), 2004. Debating Late Antiquity in Britain AD300-700. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, British Series 365. Creighton, J., 2000. Coins and Power in Late Iron Age Britain. Cambridge. Creighton, J., 2006. Britannia. The Creation of a Roman Province. London and New York. Cronin, N., 2006. ‘Sumus novi dei: approaches to a renewed understanding of the Romano-British church,’ in Henig 2006, 127-40. Cunliffe B.W., and Koch, J.T. (eds), 2010. Celtic from the West: Alternative Perspectives from Archaeology, Genetics, Language and Literature. Oxford. Davies, J.A. 2011. The Iron Age in Northern East Anglia. New Work in the Land of the Iceni. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, British Series 549. de la Bédoyère, G., 1999. The Golden Age of Roman Britain. Stroud. Dawson, M., 2008. Excavation of the Roman villa and mosaic at Rowler Manor, Croughton, Northamptonshire Archaeology 35, 45-93. Edwards, N., 2007. A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales II South-West Wales. Cardiff. Ellis, P. (ed), 2001. Roman Wiltshire and after. Papers in honour of Ken Annable. Devizes: Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. Filmer-Sankey 1996 Filmer-Sankey, W., 1996. The ‘Roman Emperor’ in the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 149, 1-9. Gilmour, L. (ed), 2007. Pagans and Christians: from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Papers in honour of Martin Henig, presented on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1610. Goormachtigh, M. and Durham, A., 2009. Kentish placenames – were they ever Celtic? Archaeologia Cantiana 129, 279-94. Greco, C., 2005. Solunto: a Brief Guide. Palermo. Hartley, E, Hawkes, J., Henig, M. and Mee, F. (eds), 2006. Constantine the Great: York’s Roman Emperor. York.

Henig, M., 1974 (2nd and 3rd edns. 1978 and 2007). A Corpus of Roman Engraved Gemstones from British Sites. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, British Series 8. Henig, M. 1984. Religion in Roman Britain. London. Henig, M., 1985. Graeco-Roman art and Romano-British imagination. Journal of the British Archaeological Association 138, 1-22. Henig, M., 1993. Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani. Great Britain. I.7. Roman Sculpture from the Cotswold region. Oxford: British Academy. Henig, M., 1995. The Art of Roman Britain. London. Henig, M., 1997. The handle of a toilet-knife in the form of a bust of Minerva from the North York moors’, Britannia 28, 353. Henig, M., 1999. A new star shining over Bath. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 18, 419-25. Henig, M., 2000. ‘From Classical Greece to Roman Britain: Some Hellenic themes in provincial art and glyptics’, in Tsetskhladze, Prag and Snodgrass 2000,124-35. Henig, M., 2001. ‘Art in Roman Wiltshire’, in Ellis 2001, 107-26. Henig, M., 2002 and 2010. The Heirs of King Verica: Culture and Politics in Roman Britain. Stroud. Henig, M., 2004a. Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani. Great Britain. I.9. Roman sculpture from the North West Midlands. Oxford: British Academy. Henig, M., 2004b. ’Remaining Roman in Britain AD300700: the evidence of Portable art’, in Collins and Gerrard 2004, 13-23. Henig, M., 2004c. ‘Murum civitatis, et fontem in ea a Romanis mire olim constructum. The arts of Rome in Carlisle and the Civitas of the Carvetii and their influence’, in McCarthy and Weston 2004,11-28. Henig, M., (ed), 2006. Roman Art, Religion and Society. New studies from the Roman Art seminar, Oxford 2005. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1577. Henig, M., 2007. Statuettes and figurines in Roman Britain, ARA. The Bulletin of the Association for Roman Archaeology 18, 11-17. Henig, M., 2010/2011. Souvenir or Votive? The Ilam pan. ARA The Bulletin of the Association for Roman Archaeology 20, 15-15. Henig, M., Cleary, R.and Purser, P., 2000. A Roman relief of Mercury and Minerva from Aldsworth, Gloucestershire’, Britannia 31, 362-3. Heslop, T.A., Mellings, E., and Thofner, M. (eds). 2012. Art, Faith and Place in East Anglia from Prehistory to the Present. Woodbridge. Hills, C., 2003. Origins of the English. London. Howlett, D., 2007. ‘Continuities from Roman Britain’ in Gilmour 2007, 175-88. Johns, C., 1996. The Jewellery of Roman Britain. Celtic and Classical Traditions. London. Johns, C., 1997. (ed), The Snettisham Roman Jeweller’s Hoard. London: British Museum. Johns, C., 2010. The Hoxne Late Roman Treasure. Gold Jewellery and Silver Plate. London: British Museum.

116

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured Johns, C. and Potter, T. (eds), 1983. The Thetford Treasure: Roman Jewellery and Silver. London: British Museum. Laycock, S., 2008. Britannia, the Failed State: Tribal Conflicts and the End of Roman Britain. Stroud. Manley, J., 2002. AD 43. The Roman Invasion of Britain – a Reassessment. Stroud. Mattingly, D., 2006. An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire. London. McCarthy, M. and Weston, D. (eds), 2004. Carlisle and Cumbria Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology. British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions XXVII. Leeds. Nash Briggs, D., 2011. ‘The language of inscriptions on Icenian coinage’, in J. A. Davies. The Iron Age in Northern East Anglia. New Work in the Land of the Iceni. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, British Series 549, pp.83-102. Nash Briggs, D., 2012. ’Sacred Image and Regional Identity in late Prehistoric Norfolk’, in Heslop, Mellins and Thofner 2012, 30-49. Nayling, N. and McGrail, S., 2004. The Barland’s Farm Romano-Celtic Boat. York: Council for British Archaeology Research Report 138. Neal D. and Cosh, S., 2002-2010. Roman Mosaics of Britain I-IV. London: Society of Antiquaries of London. Phillipson, D.W., 2012. Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the Northern Horn 1000 BC - AD 1300. Woodbridge: James Currey. Pryor, F., 2004. Britain AD: a Quest for Arthur, England and the Anglo-Saxons. London. Raftery, B., 1994. Pagan Celtic Ireland: the Enigma of the Irish Iron Age. London. Redknap, M. and Lewis, J.M., 2007. A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales I. South East Wales. Cardiff.

Rees, B.R., 1988. Pelagius: a Reluctant Heretic. Woodbridge. Rudling, D., 1998. The development of Roman villas in Sussex. Sussex Archaeological Collections 136, 41-65. Sauer, E., 2000. Alchester, a Claudian ‘Vexillation Fortress’ near the Western boundary of the Catuvellauni: new light on the Roman invasion of Britain, Archaeological Journal 157, 1-78. Spearman, R.M.and Higgitt, J. (eds), 1993. The Age of Migrating Ideas. Early Medieval Art in Northern Britain and Ireland. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland. Toynbee, J.M.C., 1962. Art in Roman Britain. London. Toynbee, J.M.C., 1964. Art in Britain under the Romans. Oxford. Tsetskhladze, G.R., Prag, A.J.N.W.and Snodgrass, A.M. (eds), 2000. Periplous. Papers on Classical Art and Archaeology presented to Sir John Boardman. London. Webster, L. and Backhouse, J. (eds), 1991. The Making of England. Anglo-Saxon art and culture (British Museum,London) Wilmott, T., 1997. Birdoswald: Excavations of a Roman Fort on Hadrian’s Wall and its Successor Settlements 1987-92. London: English Heritage. Woolf, G., 1998. Becoming Roman. The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. Cambridge. Yeates, S.J., 2012. Myth and History. Ethnicity and Politics in the First Millennium British Isles. Oxford. Youngs (ed), S., 1989. ‘The Work of Angels’: Masterpieces of Celtic Metalwork 6th-9th Centuries AD. London: British Museum.

117

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig. 1a. Nicolo

intaglio depicting eagle on war galley.

Verulamium, Herts. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School Archaeology, University of Oxford)

of

Fig. 1c. Green jasper intaglio showing two horses. Bath. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

Fig. 1b. Glass (Photo:

intaglio depicting horse-head in cornu.

Alchester, Oxon. Robert Wilkins, copyright School Archaeology, University of Oxford)

the late

Fig. 1d. Red

of

Geta. Birdoswald, Cumbria. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

118

jasper intaglio depicting head of

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured

Fig. 2. Limestone altar depicting Mars. Bisley Common, Gloucestershire. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

119

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig. 3. Limestone relief of ‘Minerva’ and Mercury. Aldsworth, Gloucestershire. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

120

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured

Fig. 4. Limestone pediment, Temple of Sulis Minerva, Bath. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

Fig. 5. Copper alloy sceptre head, Kirmington, Lincs. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

Fig. 6. Copper alloy knife handle, North York Moors. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford) 121

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig. 7. Mosaic (Corinian saltire group). North Leigh Villa, Oxon. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

Fig. 8. Gold ring with Greek inscription. Stonham Aspall, Suffolk. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

122

Martin Henig: Archaeology, history and museum display: Roman Britain reconfigured

Fig. 9 Bath pediment. Detail with armillary globe. (Photo: the late Robert Wilkins, copyright School of Archaeology, University of Oxford)

123

Modelling Calleva in Reading Museum’s Silchester Gallery: combining fact and imagination Jill Greenaway This essay describes how the combination of reconstructions – both two-dimensional and three-dimensional – with actual objects enables today’s visitor to the Silchester Gallery in Reading Museum to visualise life in the town in Roman Calleva. It also examines the process by which the model of the town, the centrepiece of the Gallery, was planned, researched and created.

John Rhodes was Director of Reading Museum from 1988 to 1994 and continued to contribute to work relating to the Silchester Gallery until it reopened in 1995. This was a period when Reading Borough Council was embarking on radical changes to the Museum’s galleries as part of a major project to restore and refurbish the historic Museum and Town Hall building. The Silchester Gallery was completely redesigned. It remained in the same physical space but there was a totally new approach to the display and interpretation of the collection. John was committed to bringing the past alive for visitors and his imaginative approach to this can be seen in the Gallery today. Reading Museum’s Silchester Collection contains most of the finds excavated from the Roman town of Calleva (near Silchester) up to the late 1960s. The bulk of the material is derived from the work undertaken by the Society of Antiquaries from 1890 to 1909, but it also includes objects meticulously excavated and recorded by the Revd J.G. Joyce between 1864 and 1878, as well as material from 20th century targeted research excavations by Molly Cotton, George Boon and Sir Ian Richmond. The Society of Antiquaries uncovered the upper layers and stone footings of almost the total area within the walls and the Society’s plan is the most complete for any town in Roman Britain. Study of the objects in the collection helps us to construct a history of the town, to throw light on its development and to learn something about the people who lived there. The Silchester Gallery has undergone a number of redisplays since the first items from the Society of Antiquaries’ work were deposited on loan at Reading Museum in 1891 by the third Duke of Wellington who then owned the site. Reading Museum had opened to the public in 1883 and in those early days everything was put on display. The 1899 photograph of the Silchester Gallery shows a crowded and eclectic display with objects in wooden framed cases (Fig. 1). By 1977 the Gallery was laid out more typologically with different levels of information on the panels (Fig. 2). John’s display that replaced it is far more atmospheric whilst retaining the layering of information (Fig. 3). The Gallery is thematically arranged – homes; ‘public life’, centred around the Forum and Basilica and Public Baths; working life; shops; religion; and the town’s defences. The atmosphere is achieved not just by showing the excavated

objects but also by putting them in an appropriate setting. The display archive in Reading Museum contains a number of sketches by John to illustrate what he visualised and these were used to create the backdrops and scenesetting architecture. There are examples of this approach throughout the gallery. The items representing the official life of the town are in cases set into a reconstruction of part of the Basilica range of the Forum and Basilica. John’s imaginative sketch of the Basilica (Fig. 4) was the basis for the case design and its three dimensional recreation in the Gallery is visible in Figure 3. A barrel-vaulted ceiling covers the area devoted to the Public Baths and a small section of hypocaust set into the floor shows how the heating system would have worked. John’s instructions to the designer specify how this should be built using actual tiles from the collection (Fig. 5). At the housing end of the gallery, the wall behind the dining case is decorated so as to imitate the interior wall of a Roman house, and its roof rafters jut out above the kitchen and dining cases. The small reconstruction of part of a dining room has a piece of an actual mosaic on the floor but is furnished with a reproduction couch and table. Some other cases in the gallery are roofed with clay tiles or stone slates from the collection, and where the visitor walks between the blacksmith and other crafts the carpet tiles on the gallery floor give way to a concrete street surface. To complete the illusion of being in a Roman street the display describing crafts in Calleva is set into a shop front. A spy hole enables the visitor to peep into the model of a workshop where a carpenter is using the tools on display. A painted section of the town wall towers above the street and the religion case is tucked into this on the other side. The middle of the gallery is dominated by tall reproduction columns with Corinthian capitals which clearly demonstrate the grandeur and scale of the public architecture, of which only a few fragments survive. This combination of imaginative recreations and the actual objects that survive is also employed on the information panels around the gallery. These panels show images of people at work and at leisure derived from tombstones, wall plaster and objects. This helps us to relate to the inhabitants of the town and to see them as real people like us who just happened to have lived a long time ago.

125

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 1. Silchester Gallery 1899.

Fig 2. Silchester Gallery 1977.

126

Jill Greenaway: Modelling Calleva in Reading Museum’s Silchester Gallery

Fig 3. Silchester Gallery 2000.

The plans of buildings as excavated are shown beside contemporary photographs of the excavations and reconstruction drawing of the buildings. The evidence is thus presented alongside the imaginative reconstructions that bring the past to life. The relationship of the panels to the models is often significant and presents a unified interpretation of sometimes difficult concepts in a visual manner easily absorbed by the visitor to the Museum. This visual impact starts at the entrance to the Silchester Gallery with the clear message that archaeological evidence is the foundation for what will be seen in the gallery. The panel has a large picture of the Society of Antiquaries’ workforce in 1899 above an imaginary reconstructed archaeological section (Fig. 6). John’s sketch for this (Fig. 7) shows his attention to detail in the way in which he has worked out how to make the maximum impact on the visitor entering the gallery and how to deliver a clear message without the need for lengthy textual explanations. The panel describing how the Baths were heated (Fig. 8) is above the hypocaust section described earlier. The two excavation photographs on the panel reveal the complexity

of the remains uncovered whilst the reconstruction drawing indicates theoretically how a heating system would have worked. Set into the wall to the right is a line of flue tiles rising from the hypocaust below. Evidence, actual objects and a fictional reconstruction combine to explain a complex system. On the ‘houses’ panel (Fig. 9) a complicated house plan from the excavation of insula xiv is shown above a suggested reconstruction of the actual house, which takes the process a stage further – basing the reconstruction on actual foundations but adding details like colonnades, gateways and windows which are not shown on the plan, as well as employing artistic licence to add trees. Such an approach was relatively simple when dealing with a drawing of a single house. But to tackle recreating the town as a whole was a much larger undertaking. The model of the Roman town of Calleva as it would have appeared after the town wall was built was one of the last items to be installed in the Gallery. It was made for the Museum in 1995 by Modelscape, and I worked with John when he was preparing the brief for the model-maker. This was a fascinating experience – both for being part of the planning process for the model and for the need to respond quickly to John’s meticulous attention to detail.

127

Figure 4 Preparatory sketch for the Basilica case.

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

128

Jill Greenaway: Modelling Calleva in Reading Museum’s Silchester Gallery

Fig 5. Preparatory sketch for the model of a hypocaust.

129

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 6. The workmen 1899 with a reconstructed archaeological section below. This was the third time I had collaborated with a creative artist in order to contribute to his vision of Calleva reconstructed. Each experience was very different but involved similar problems. In 1972-3 I had advised Alan Sorrell when he was working on his commission from the Department of the Environment to produce two paintings – one of the supposed 4th century Christian Church at Calleva, and the other of the whole town. That had involved sketches on tracing paper going back and fore between us with comments and questions on the drawings, letters being exchanged containing additional queries and information, and the occasional phone call or meeting to discuss individual issues. Over time the reconstructions evolved and it was fascinating to watch the creative process reach its final fulfilment. My second foray into recreating the past occurred in the 1980s when Stanley Ford offered

to make a model of the Roman Church building for the small site museum at Silchester. This site museum has since closed and the model is now in Reading Museum. Stan was a perfectionist and wanted the building to be as accurate as possible in all details. The interior walls were painted, the mosaic set on the floor, and a chip carved table positioned just inside the door. And this in spite of the fact that Stan knew that once the roof was in place none of the details would be visible. I visited him frequently as the construction took shape in his living room and learnt a great deal about the right kind of cereal packet to cut and shape into the individual roof tiles, and the best loo paper to wrap round wire, soak in glues and carve into small figures once it had hardened. It was a gradual process which entailed a lot of discussion and revisions as the model took shape. 130

Jill Greenaway: Modelling Calleva in Reading Museum’s Silchester Gallery

Fig 7. Preparatory sketch for figure 6 panel and reconstruction.

Working with John on the brief for the model of the Roman town drew on elements from both these experiences. We were dealing with the whole town, as was the case with one of the Alan Sorrell paintings, but representing it three dimensionally as with Stan’s model. We were providing a brief for a model maker who would then build the model, and we did not have the luxury of being able to suggest major revisions at every stage of construction. A 3-D bird’s eye view, visible from above and from all sides, is unforgiving, with no chance of being able to hide any inconsistencies. Whilst a model of the town would have been simpler and on a smaller scale than Stan’s model of the Church, we still needed to get the detail right. We decided that in order to be as authentic as possible we would use the town plan as then known, without adding any buildings or completing areas that had been incompletely excavated. In that way, every building which appeared on the model would be based on the excavated evidence. However, Calleva was inhabited for well over 500 years and during that time buildings were altered, walls demolished and others built in their place. Therefore the plan recording all excavated walls included some that could not have existed contemporaneously. Abetted by John I took a bottle of tippex and erased all foundations lying too close together to have carried walls at the same time. Next we removed all walls that were incomplete. We

agreed that many would have formed parts of buildings and only terminated on the plan because they had disappeared under spoil heaps or were at the edge of the excavation area allocated for the season. Nevertheless the houses of which they formed part had not been recorded so we removed them. We knew we would have to apply our imaginations and make informed guesses about the appearance of the known houses, but we thought it was not acceptable to insert any new ones. That left us with an authentic plan of the town – albeit less densely occupied than it would have been. And that is when the really demanding questions began. John intended to send the model-maker reconstruction drawings of the main buildings and of typical houses to act as templates for what would appear on the model. So he needed detailed information on many aspects of their appearance – where were the doors and windows, how many storeys did the houses have, how were they roofed, what materials were used in the walls, how were they finished, what colours were used? There were also wider questions to consider – what plants were grown, where were the footpaths across the insulae? Of course many of these questions were impossible to answer, but we studied the objects in the collection and combed through the excavation reports looking for the evidence to enable us to make the most likely informed guesses. Sometimes the evidence was 131

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Figure 8 Baths panel.

forthcoming – such as in the published plant and seed lists and in the surviving building materials and wall plaster. Frequently it wasn’t and we had to apply common sense to the issues.

500 years. So we surmised that some early houses could have survived through the centuries and allowed ourselves the liberty of putting thatch roofs on some of the simple houses, including a few at an angle to the street system.

The process of deciding on the roofs of individual buildings was typical of how we reached our conclusions. The Silchester Collection contains many examples of Stonesfield roof slates and of the typical clay tiles used at Calleva – both tegulae and imbrices. However insufficient survive to have roofed all the houses, and in the excavation reports roofing materials were rarely specifically identified. Therefore we felt free to allocate roofing materials as we thought fit. We roofed more buildings with tiles than with Stonesfield slates because it was more likely that tiles made locally would have been used in quantity. But we then considered towns and villages today. Many contain surviving Tudor houses with timber framed walls and thatched roofs. It is over 450 years since Elizabeth Tudor ascended the throne and Calleva was inhabited for over

Primed with all the evidence we could glean from the collection and from published reports, John then drew the reconstructions of the buildings. He used the factual evidence from the finds from the site and from the excavation reports, but combined this with informed guesswork to create recognisable buildings with a social purpose. His recreation of the inn at Calleva with its attached bathhouse is one example of these delightful drawings (Fig. 10). These were sent to the model-maker who constructed three dimensional miniatures. The inn, based on John’s drawing, is clear, and the house in insula xiv whose reconstruction appears on the on the ‘houses’ panel (figure 9) can also be identified in the model (Fig. 11).

132

Jill Greenaway: Modelling Calleva in Reading Museum’s Silchester Gallery

Fig 9. Houses panel.

Fig 10. Reconstruction drawing of the Inn (Image: John Rhodes 1995)

133

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 11. Model of Calleva.

Planning the model was John’s final contribution to the Silchester Gallery. It is the focus in the centre of the gallery and is the reference point for all the information about different aspects of the town presented in the surrounding cases. It is the ultimate example of modelling Roman Calleva which can also be seen in the scenesetting in the gallery, on the information panels and in the other three-dimensional models, large and small, which combine factual evidence and imagination. Thanks to John’s rigorously intellectual approach the imaginative elements are surmise based on the best evidence available and not pure unsubstantiated fantasy. Thanks to John’s artistic talent and vision the town is brought to life in a people-focussed way which enables the modern visitor to relate to the inhabitants of Calleva as human beings not very different from us.

Copyright Figs. 1-9 and Fig. 11 Copyright Reading Museum (Reading Borough Council) All rights reserved.

134

Drink, women and song: exploring ale-wives and related folklore: Seeing the medieval ale-wife: evidence from household and craft Maureen Mellor John Rhodes’ 1985 collaboration with James Bond on `The Oxfordshire Brewer’ provides a background to a sector of the historic economy which, for the late medieval period, was gender-specific - the `ale-wife’. The role begins with a housewife using surplus grain to turn questionable water into a palatable and safe drink for her family. If successful she might turn her skill into a trade, and with others it might become a local industry. An industry might then become attractive to the male entrepreneur, thereby diminishing the return to the traditional ale-wife, who might therefore need to supplement her service with other more `personal’ attentions to her customer, hence risking her `brand’. The historical record can be made to support that trend, but is there any corroboration from the archaeological or landscape record? This essay builds on Bond and Rhodes’ research to review the distribution of material evidence across the historic landscape, identifying possible avenues for verification.

Introduction This essay reviews the evidence for the contribution made by the medieval ale-wife to the labour force and economy within the context of the domestic household, the household industry and the commercialised brewing industry. It reviews our understanding of the craft environment, identifying tasks that would be within the skill and capacity of an ale-wife, and exploring evidence for a range of competences that might also be a clue to the involvement of a wide age range of ancillary craft workers and labourers and elucidate why the majority of ale-wives abandoned their craft by the early modern period. Recent scholarship in the field of women’s history has done much to illuminate the roles and experiences of the ale-wife (McIntosh 2005, Bennett 1996 and, in literature, Hanna 1996; Skeleton 1624); while evidence for ale making is visible in the archaeological record, ale-wives have not been a focus of archaeological enquiry. This essay is an interdisciplinary endeavour focussing on the medieval ale-wife’s working environment, asking `why is history so unkind to the ale-wife’? The medieval ale industry

play was performed by cooks and innkeepers who would have been in competition with her for trade, a time when the city was placing severe restrictions on women’s ability to sell ale and beer. Misogyny had long been traditional in the mystery plays, biting satire of women, misericords and wall paintings, such as the Doom painting at Holy Trinity, Coventry, followed the spirit of the time (Fig. 1; Grossinger 1997; Bennett 1991, 172; www.holytrinitycoventry.org. uk). The word ‘wife’ may be seen as the German Weib, meaning simply a woman, irrespective of marital status. Literary references to the ale wife – Piers Plowman and Elynour Rummyng Ale-wives were also drawing attention to themselves from misogynist playwrights. William Langland writing in the 15th century describes a character Rose the Regrater who offends in five ways: •

She mixes together two types of cheap ale to serve to the poor, in violation of rules designed to ensure the quality of various types of ale,

•

she mingles the poor’s normal fare (penny ale) with the dregs of the brewing process (pudding ale), thereby ensuring that the poor received an ale of exceeding poor quality; in violation of standards that sought to ensure a good, but cheap ale for the poor,

•

she hides her best ale out of the way and sells it only to preferred customers, in violation of ordinances against private sales and secret sales,

•

she charges an exorbitant price of 4d, in violation of proclamations that usually allowed Id or at most 2d to be charged for a gallon of ale,

•

And she sells her best ale in nonstandard cup measures, in violation of orders that sought to limit ale measures to the standard of quart, pottle and gallon (Bennett 1996, xv).

Visual depiction of the alewife – misericords, gargoyles and wall paintings The `ale-wife’ is a familiar figure in medieval iconography. Visits to European churches reveal stone carvings, misericords and occasionally wall paintings depicting a woman holding a vessel, either a pot or a jug. She is often portrayed in an unflattering light, carted off to hell by a devil, nude apart from her horned head-dress indicating her disreputable life, and clutching the drinking vessel that she has used to give short measure. There is a link between symbolism of misericords and mystery plays. In the Chester Cycle she has the distinction of being the last person left when Christ clears out Hell, when she sings a sad tale `a gentle gossippe and a tapster … deceavinge manye a creature’. Satan welcomes her, one devil promises to marry her. It may not be coincidence that the Chester

135

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Langland not only attacked ale-wives but also advised king and commons to enforce vigorously laws against victuallers. To punish on pillories and punishment stools brewers and bakers, butchers and cooks, For these are this world’s men that work the most harm to the poor people that must buy piece-meal (Bennett 1991,175). A century or so later John Skelton (c. 1460?-1529, printed c. 1674), the poet laureate to King Henry VIII satirised the ale-wife in his tale of Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng, almost certainly to amuse courtiers, but the poem may have reflected concern of food shortages and the victualling trade in particular. At the time of his writing the ale-wife is no longer so evident in ale industry, but local authorities were becoming increasingly concerned about law and order (McIntosh 2005, 171-3; Clarke et al 2010, 142) and there may be an element of folklore as to the skills of an ale-wife. The poem is very derogatory about her trading practices but implies that her customers used cups and pots, not the required measures of quart, pottle and gallon. These ought to be visible in the archaeological record. Male victuallers were attacked in popular culture, but less often (Bennett 1991, 196). Historical references: the 13th century to 16th century Ale is well represented in the historical record, enjoyed by all levels of the medieval society, although the rural poor may not have drunk ale on a regular basis (Stone 2006, 18). Several grades of ale were brewed, and the calorific content of fermented drinks was particularly valuable to the less well off because yeast cells are nutritious. People’s liquid intake may have been higher in the medieval period in order to compensate for meat and other foodstuffs preserved by salting (Hagen 2000,150), but ale had a short shelf life of only seven to fourteen days and new batches were required frequently (Woolgar 2004, privately circulated paper). Population pressure was building through the 12th and 13th centuries, and the burden of taxes and lack of alternative work may have forced women of all levels of society (Bennett 1996, 30) to supplement their household income and expand their craft of home brewing to generate a surplus and sell small batches to neighbours and others. By the mid 13th century the royal government formalised these activities and an `Assize of Bread and Ale’ was introduced to validate existing practices of quality and size of these items and to levy `fines’ on the production and sale of ale (Mayhew, 1996, 18). In the small town of Wallingford, Oxfordshire several women were `amerced for ale’ in 1233 (Bond and Rhodes 1985, 11). Many practitioners of the baking trade in towns also brewed ale in their homes using domestic equipment (Clarke et al 2010, 63). Male ale-tasters were appointed in every community and presented details of `fines’ of every brewer to the local court. Weekly markets were better regulated, for example, in 1260-1295 sixty- seventy brewers/ale sellers of ale in Redgrave Suffolk were fined each year and sold directly

to their customers (McIntosh 2005, 146). The majority of women brewing were married, but in some towns such as Lincoln, ale-wives were often heads of households and probably widows, while in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, a few widows were running small alehouses with a need for more regular supplies of ale, with very few ale sellers at work, indicating considerable variety across England. Wholesale ale production was in the hands of men. Documents reveal that brewing was more visible in some parishes than others, for example, in towns such as Exeter or in the countryside at Brigstock Northamptonshire which returned many ale-wives (Bennett 1996, 18-20, 256, 28-9; Bennett 1987). Women continued to take prime responsibility for brewing ale in the first half of the 14th century, some operating within a household, often brewing on an occasional basis, others brewed on a more moderate scale. Oxford was unusual in that almost half of the households were involved in commercial brewing. Here the trade was regulated with particular severity from an early date, and brewing quickly became a trade of men (Bennett 1996, 111-4). As harvests failed and famine ensued (c.1320), towns such as Tamworth in the west Midlands reported many more unmarried ale-wives, which decreased in 1340s but rose to about ninety five percent at the time of the Black Death c.1350 (McIntosh 2005,154). Following the Black Death, the food and drink trades were still dominated by women but in towns there were now more sellers needed to distribute ale, than producers, and more ale-wives brewed for profit generating regular supplies. Ales were consumed in quantities at markets and fairs. At the Lenten Fair, Nottingham in 1375, one ale-wife who borrowed alemaking equipment was subsequently sued for breaking a `mashing tun’ (McIntosh 2005, 151). As commercialisation increased, hiring of specialised vessels and malt may have become more commonplace. Evidence from several towns suggests that many alewives pursued other activities which generated income (Havering/Romford, Minehead, Nottingham, Ramsey and Tamworth), some combining brewing with baking to sell in their alehouse. Some widows, for instance in Sandwich, were involved in exporting wheat, ale and malt (Clarke et al 2010, 66). Others were married to substantial local officers, and sold from their homes where they worked in their trade for decades, often employing female servants (Chester, Colchester, Exeter and York). Although not the main breadwinner these wives probably made a real contribution to their household (McIntosh 2005, 155). Others were married to tavern keepers as at Nottingham, where taverns were their homes, as well as a social centre, where men and women drank or bought ale to drink at home. In London in 1422, women were fined for selling ale in their house, using illegally small or unauthorized measures (McIntosh 2005, 157), the manor court at Carshalton,

136

Maureen Mellor: Drink, women and song: exploring ale-wives and related folklore Surrey explicitly regulated the selling of ale. Ale could only be sold from the home, in measured containers, not in cups and bowls, an ale wand had to be put up outside the dwelling when the brew was ready for tasting (Hanawalt 1986, 132), then the ale tasters would write the price onto the wand, which was sometimes tampered with by the alewife, as in Aberdeen (Gemmill 2001, 11). All social levels of society were subject to `fines’ for violating standards of quality or price suggesting that there was no real stigma associated with a `fine’ (McIntosh 2005, 147; Mayhew 1996, 16-21), and could be considered a household violation rather than a personal one (Hanna 1996, 5). In the early 15th century in London a frequent occupation of the ale-wife’s husband was a malt man (Bennett 1996, 67), and bigger profits began to attract men in larger cities to take up the brewing trade, though often assisted by women. More ready brewed ale was purchased and small scale retailing of drink and food increased, but yielded little profit (Dyer 1989, 57, 133). Less successful alewives ran ale-houses in some towns and ports which were deemed to be disorderly establishments with immoral leisure pursuits (Chester, Sandwich). The first Dutch brewer of `beer’ was admitted to the Freedom of the City in 1402-3 at York. Thereafter, brewers, both ale and beer were carefully distinguished in the Register (Bennett 1991, 184), London and Norwich followed close behind. In the 1450s local men were making beer (Colchester, Edinburgh), but some towns still imported beer. This new beverage would eventually replace ale in popularity, its improved keeping qualities permitting the growth of larger breweries serving a wider area, with men taking charge and women acting in the role of retailer. Beer-brewing spread from English ports where it had been introduced from the Low Countries and Germany into communities of all sizes. Hops used in the beer brewing process had more flavour; beer lasted for a much longer period of time since hops acted as a preservative, it could be kegged or barrelled and transported without affecting its quality. The process of brewing beer was more elaborate than that for ale requiring more expensive equipment and encouraging a larger scale of production and the brewer-entrepreneur began to emerge (Clarke et al 2010, 236). The transition from ale to beer, as the dominant drink, had a major impact upon ale-wives and the pattern of work began to change (McIntosh 2005, 165). Marjorie McIntosh has argued that in five towns (Minehead, Northallerton, Ramsey, Romford and Tamworth), the transition from female to male names among drink workers occurred from 1480-1530s, existing drink workers disappeared at the beginning of the transition period opening up niches to be filled by men (McIntosh 2005, 173-7). She suggests a number of triggers: disease, the disadvantaged, `strangers’ and servants drawn to lesser alehouses or disorderly inns, playing illegal betting games, resulting in deep concern amongst local leaders for order and good behaviour (McIntosh 2005,158-60; Clarke et al 2010, 142).

Brewers’ guilds were still rare in many towns in the early 16th century. The formation of guilds in some towns supported those who worked full time and imposed further regulations, some excluded women, others set up guilds exclusively for women (Chester). The guild list of those selling false measures includes more women than men (Bennett, 1996, 62-3). Those working part-time may not have able to afford the dues, but in Cambridge the dues were levied in quarters of malt, a value of 4s to 6s was placed on a quarter and it was lent to members for brewing. The member borrowing malt returned its value plus 1s 2d to 1s 4d at the end of the year. The guild made over twenty five percent on its investment and a member could make and sell beer without a large capital outlay for malt (Hanawalt 1986, 264). In Aberdeen ale-wives were still in control in the 16th century and were expected to have stamped pint measures. Burgh authorities imposed a uniform system of weights and measures in the 15th and 16th centuries, from 1448 hucksters (small scale retailers) and regraters (those who bought ale, in order to sell for profit) were more regulated (Gemmill 2001, 8-9). By 1600 women in England rarely functioned as independent brewers or proprietors of drinking houses. Landscape visibility During the Anglo-Norman period temporary residences at royal hunting lodges would have demanded quantities of ale from the surrounding countryside. Such lodges are known at Brigstock, Northamptonshire and Beckley, Oxfordshire (Foard 2001, 49, 59; Bennett 1987, 106; Lobel 1957 online). More generally, supplies of ale would be needed by the lord to supply his boon workers, particularly at harvest and at seasonal feasts for village communities and agricultural workers. Late medieval parish gilds always held a banquet to celebrate their saint’s days. Here it may be speculated that the tenants would develop skills to service the peripatetic lord and his retainers on the occasions they visited the hunting lodges – large amounts of food and drink would be consumed. This in turn, may have stimulated the growth of medieval pottery production with containers for foodstuffs and as vessels for liquid refreshment, as has been postulated at Laverstock, Wiltshire with the royal palace and hunting lodge at Clarendon and the emerging new town of Salisbury nearby (Platt 1978, 119). Archaeological investigations in the countryside, of ecclesiastical estates, such as Castle Ace Priory, Norfolk and in more modest deserted medieval hamlets, as at West Cotton, Northamptonshire reveal investment in grain processing complexes with granaries, malt houses, brew houses and kilns used in the production of roasting flavoured malt and ale. It was estimated that the brewhouse at the priory at Castle Acre was capable of making seven hundred gallons of ale at each brewing.

137

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes At the more modest West Cotton, malting began with an oven, a sunken sub-rectangular chamber and a linear flue, the probable super structure was of fired clay. This was followed by a stone-built malting oven within a standing building, but developed into three malt houses attached to tenements by the mid 13th century, indicting a significant malting industry which confirmed documentary evidence for large scale malting in the manors of Raunds for the sale in London and elsewhere (Foard 1991, 20). The exceptional thickness of the oven walls provided both heat insulation and support for the superstructure, burnt, blackened hearth stones were evident and threshing waste was used as fuel in the earlier oven, the choice of fuel is particularly important as the malt takes on the flavour of the fuel used. Considerable quantities of earthenware vessels were also present (Stone 2006, 15-6, 23; Chapman 2010, 225-9). In north east Northamptonshire, another brewing complex was revealed beneath a late medieval pottery kiln at Glapthorne, near Oundle (Johnson et al 1997), hinting at possible interaction in the forest between craft workers with differing skills. Archaeobotanical evidence from excavations suggests that two species of wheat, two species of oats as well as at least two recognisable types of barley were available; charred grain may be indicative of roasting of germinated cereal to make various grades of malt and medieval settlements show that barley, wheat, oats and sometimes rye were used in malting. Ale brewed from malted oats is more common in the north and south-west of England and in Scotland. Although barley was considered to have made the best malt, many of the great landowners malted a mixture of grains (Moffett 2006, 52-3; Stone 2006,13; Mayhew 1996,18). Material evidence of brewing – the archaeological, ethnographic and anthropological resource Brew-related vessel forms: the 12th – 16th century This section speculates on what might survive to confirm brewing activity within the landscape framework set out above. In the 12th century pitchers with a much larger capacity than in the 11th century were adopted over much of southern Britain including the West Midlands (Worcester, Hereford). These tripod pitchers with their tubular spouts were designed to stand on flat surfaces, to decant liquid into smaller vessels and may have been used for other beverages beyond ale: mead, cider and perry. Earthenware jars are likely to have been used for storage of grain, boiling water, fermenting grains and decanting the different strengths of ales, while some bowls may have been used as measures (Blinkhorn 1998-9, 44-5). Vessels used in fermentation processes may present evidence of `pitting’ on the interior of the vessel (Perry 2011, 10, 16). By the mid 13th century brightly coloured glazed earthenware jugs were part of the English drinking culture (Mellor 2005, 151, 157), evidence of conspicuous consumption that appears to have been enjoyed by households of different social levels,

particularly in towns, although ale may have been more affordable in the countryside (Woolgar et al 2006, 274). Some jugs were designed for drinking games – the puzzle jug often showed great artistry by the potter, and may have been specially commissioned (Mainman and Jenner 2013, 1203-26; Mellor 1994, Fig. 57, no.1, 121 Pl. 8). By the late 13th – early 14th centuries grain was exported from ports, such as King’s Lynn, glazed jugs with distinctive bearded face masks, made at the nearby hamlet of Grimston, piggy-backed on the stronger commodity, to Denmark, Norway and Sweden, where wooden vessels predominated (Fig. 2; Leah 1994, 91,122). Small wooden bowls were the commonest drinking vessel for much of the Middle Ages, pottery bowls of this size are rare (McCarthy and Brooks 1988, 113). The highly decorated pottery jugs of the previous century gave way to plainer, serviceable jugs, suggesting that local communities were under stress in the early fourteenth century. Monastic institutions, however continued to buy batches of pottery; for example, in 1336 the bursar of Durham Cathedral Priory bought eighty clay pitchers for the feast of St Cuthbert (Le Patourel 1968, 102); in 1337 the monastery purchased twelve earthenpots for ale at 3s 9d and twelve earthenpots for wine, costing 6s. – the difference in price suggests different shapes, sizes or quality were in use for different beverages. In Cambridgeshire, St Radegund’s bought four earthen pots as containers for ale for the lord’s hall in 1449/50 (Moorhouse 1993, 127). Imported Rhenish stoneware drinking jugs from Langerwehe, Siegburg and Raeren, were known in some parts of the country from at least the early 14th century, some locally made unglazed or sparsely glazed drinking jugs were probably influenced by these stonewares, for example in the region covered by the Humber ware tradition (McCarthy and Brooks, 1988, 113; Mainman and Jenner 2013,1172, Fig. 524, 1258-62). Vessels similar to the Humber ware drinking jugs, but without handles, have been recognised in London where they are considered to be measures with a capacity that conforms to the weights and measures of the time (Pearce et al 1985, 41, Figs. 64-66, 90-92). The Humber ware tradition also included a new innovation: the cistern – a large handled jar with a bung hole to decant ale - designed with a bung hole set several centimetres above the base, ensued that the sediment lay undisturbed when the tap was opened and a clear liquid dispensed (Mainman and Jenner 2013, Fig 526, 4424, 1261, Fig 543-4, 4497, 1279-80). The bung is very distinctive and does not easily degrade in the archaeological record. Archaeological excavations suggest that prior to the Black Death country potters throughout the south Midlands also introduced the cistern to their repertoire (Fig. 3; Farley and Leach 1988, Fig. 25, 12-3, 77, 79; Blinkhorn 2007, 109-10; Slowikowski 2012, 26, 28-9, Fig. 26, 40). The cistern was rapidly adopted across England and by the early 16th century deposits attributed to the fire of 1507 at Norwich included pottery cisterns with substantial internal traces of sediment in almost every pottery group. The same site revealed samples of 138

Maureen Mellor: Drink, women and song: exploring ale-wives and related folklore germinating barley and hop fruit, suggesting that here the cisterns were in use for beer (Evans and Carter, 1985, 84; McCarthy and Brooks 1988, 112-3). The later 15th and early 16th centuries saw the development of more specialised drinking wares in Tudor Green, a whiteware from the Surrey/Hampshire border (Pearce 2007, 64 - 72), Cistercian ware (Boyle 2006), alongside imported stoneware mugs from Raeren, Germany (Gaimster 1997, 224-7). Cups and mugs, such as these, may have been similar to those deemed unsuitable at Carshalton and may also have been in use by consumers at poorer alehouses or by hawkers retailing drink in the streets, thus raising concern amongst local authorities about their lack of control and loss of revenue, resulting in repeated stipulations that ale should only be sold in `authorised measures’. The use of whitewares at the Inns of Court, London (Jarrett 2005, 76, Fig. 73, 1- 4, 69 - 78) is documented in 1482, when the steward, John Wyllks, ordered cups, `beer pottes’ and goddarts from a Surrey/ Hampshire pottery workshop and a further order for whitewares was placed in 1559-60, for the use of Middle Temple students and lawyers. In search of brew-sites: domestic, household industry; nucleated industry; estate brewing By combining evidence from the historical, archaeological, ethnographic and anthropological approaches, we can begin to categorise sites that may indicate the workplace of the medieval ale-wife. Domestic brewing may be family-centric (nuclear family) or (kin-extensive), it may be minimally structured, or there may be more formal training (Greenfield 2000, 75-85). An important archaeological approach to craft production, drawing extensively on ethnographic evidence, was Peacock’s (1982) study of Roman potteries. He devised a hierarchy of eight production models, contrasting the social organisation and social relations of each, and suggesting the extent to which contrasting forms of organisation are likely to be archaeologically detectable. For instance, where the mode of production is at the level of a simple household, practised by a female member of a family, working occasionally, and located in an isolated area with poor agricultural value, then the pattern of production is likely to be archaeologically invisible. In contrast, where there are household industries (byindustry (Bennett 1996, 10)), with skilled female but part-time production to supplement family income, or individual workshops, still working part-time or nucleated workshops, working full-time commercially with equipment, co-operating with others and distributing ale through middlemen or estate production, then the pattern is more likely to be archaeologically visible (Peacock 1982, 9, 31). At such `visible’ production sites the standards of production are reasonably constant. It is apparent, thus, from the analysis undertaken by Peacock, that this theoretical framework could be adapted for other

craft environments across a wide chronological spectrum –for instance for observing the technology of traditional brewing and social relations within the work place of craft production (Mellor 2013 forthcoming). The technologies employed at the brew house were more complex, and further models (`Manufactory’ and `Factory’) might be adapted for brewing after c.1550 (Rhodes 2010, 122-123; Townley 2009, 68-69, 116-17). As Jane Grenville (2004, 29) has noted the archaeological visibility of the workspace in Britain is variable, and craft workshops have not been a central focus of enquiry. Craft tenements varied in scale, mirroring demographic changes, but the success of a particular enterprise depends on the human agency and management of the production cycle. Structures of malting kilns, ovens, buildings, workshops, scatters of material culture: pottery scatters, metal utensils hint at many grain processing/brewing sites across England, but understanding of the physical nature of production is hampered by the lack of fully excavated sites. Ale-making took place all year round and it was a multistage process. Distance threshold theory, as used by anthropologists in the field, suggest that craftsmen would only travel a few kilometres to collect their main raw materials (Arnold 1988, 32 - 37), so the prerequisites of ale-making: grain, water, a container or two and fuel, would need to be easily accessible to the ale-wife’s place of brewing. By adapting Peacock’s models for brewing, we might expect that an ale-wife brewing in simple `household production’ would require: an ample supply of water, grain, a few containers of either wood or earthenware that were reserved solely for brewing, a straining cloth and ladle for drawing off the water or to turn the fermented grain and an ample supply of fuel such as brushwood to roast the grain. Another outlay would be the grinding/milling of the grain. Home brewing would not be an undertaking adopted by the very poor. The containers reserved for fermented products or decanting different strengths of ale might be larger than the everyday one-pot meal, and might be decorated to highlight their function (Binkhorn 1998-9, 39). An open bowl for measuring grain prior to the fermentation process might also be helpful. Water could be obtained from a local well or stream in a leather or wood bucket (pictorial and archaeological evidence suggest earthenware pots were often used (Graves 2002, Fig 1.16, 20)), and is a task that might reliably be delegated to a child as young as seven or members of the family. Hanawalt (1986, 181) cites a number of casualties of women and children in the transporting of water. The housewife’s skill at the hearth with preparing and boiling pottage, baking bread on a bakestone and keeping the hearth embers alight, would have been transferable to the ale-wife’s skills of brewing - boiling water, tending the soaking grains of the fermenting grain and brewing. She could adjust the amount of time she could give to the task, by brewing occasionally. 139

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Turning to the more developed `household industry’ –(byindustry): the ale-wife’s tasks would be the same as in the domestic production but scaled up, she might borrow some specialist equipment, if successful she might invest in metal cauldrons for the heating necessary to dissolve the wort, larger containers/vats or tools: mash tuns for mashing the malt and troughs for fermentation, shovels and forks for turning the fermenting grain and a few wooden barrels of large capacity (Mayhew 1996, 17). Some ale-wives might purchase malt from the market or from the manorial demesne, while others may have begun by malting their grain and would thus need access to a mill to grind grain and malt and access to a kiln (Dyer 1989, 57-8, 114-5), here some of the vessels may be of metal. Documented evidence from the towns, show how such an industry might employ others to help with the more mundane chores, as did William Barbour in 1354 who contracted with Robert le Waterleder of Nottingham that his wife, would carry water by the bushel for William’s brewing (McIntosh 2005, 147). Alice Skelton, probably a widow set herself up in business in Nottingham in 1371 investing in two gallon pots, two quart pots and four smaller pots from Martin tankardmaker, enough equipment to allow her to sell ale at home on a small scale (McIntosh 2005, 157). In the last decades of the 14th century, Denise Marlere ran a successful enterprise in her home in Bridgwater, Somerset, and bequeathed the bulk of her business to Rose, her servant: half a tenement, all her brewing vessels with a furnace (kiln), three sacks full of malt, a cup, a brass pot, a pan, a goblet bound with silver, a chafing dish, two silver spoons and some other carefully specified goods. She left brewing utensils to other heirs, giving a leaden vat each to her parish church, her parish priest and two local monasteries and leaving to her daughter, Isabel, two more leaden vats, a brass three gallon pot, a pan, a mortar and pestle, and the proceeds of one brewing. Denise clearly enjoyed a comfortable standard of living thanks to her commercial brewing. She brewed for more than twenty years, and invested in her equipment and supplies. She sold ale only in the town of Bridgwater. When her husband was alive her brewing added to her household income, as both a wife and as a widow (Bennett 1996, 14-5). Moving up-scale again to `workshops’, individual or nucleated, the processing of grain, fetching and boiling water would be the same as above, but more organisation was required (Dyer 1989, 57-8). More investment, entailed more and larger vats, leads and containers, but earthenware jars and jugs may still have been used for carrying liquid and for storage: water and various strengths of ale. A `middleman’ may be engaged in securing grain and fuel in bulk, to ensure a constant supply, organising the ale-sellers (hucksters), marketing, building and maintaining a communal kiln, this would benefit those working in nucleated settlements: hamlets and villages.

An ecclesiastical or manorial estate will have enjoyed the benefit of more permanent structures: malt houses and kilns, while initially providing for it own needs and then progressing to selling the surplus to outsiders. Case study: Northamptonshire: West Cotton, Lyveden, Stanion and Brigstock The place of medieval ale-wives in the hierarchical context of a deserted medieval settlement is illustrated by an almost totally excavated site at West Cotton, part of the Raunds project in Northamptonshire, close to the town of Higham Ferrers (Chapman 2010; Blinkhorn 1998-9) and a cluster of villages and hamlets: Brigstock, Lyveden and Stanion in the north east of the county. West Cotton was a planned late Saxon settlement, developing into a 12th century stone manor but during the 13th century it saw a relocation of the manor and a change to a peasant hamlet with three stone malt houses (see earlier), suggesting that the scale of the operation resulted in sufficient malt to provide for both local consumption and a cash crop at market (Chapman 2010, 229). The tenements and associated yards and middens where much pottery was deposited were the subject of research by Blinkhorn (1998-9) who was able to relate individual assemblages to each tenement. Relevant to this essay are the three different types of glazed jug in use during this period, with different roles to play within the context of `liquid containment’. Potterspury jugs: wheel thrown, large globular pitchers, from a production centre in Whittlewood forest some 50 km. to the south west, the hand-made dumpy wide-based jugs from Lyveden/ Stanion in the Rockingham forest, some 25 km.to the north of the site appear to have been used for transporting liquids from the kitchen to the hall, where the contents may have been decanted into more visually pleasuring, but smaller capacity wheel thrown Brill/Boarstall jugs, made some 60 km. to the south west of the site. The comparatively high occurrence of Potterspury jugs in the two kitchen middens, suggest the tenement also serviced the malthouse and that the primary function at West Cotton for these jugs was the transportation of water, while the Lyveden/Stanion jugs were used for another liquid, perhaps ale. Here the functional efficiency of medieval pottery was of primary concern and not the technical competence of the potter. Lyveden/Stanion wares were widely marketed locally, often in competition with the Potterspury wares and the highly decorated jugs from Buckinghamshire (Brill/Boarstall) and Norfolk (Grimston). Blinkhorn argues that as transportation vessels Lyveden/Stanion wares had a special role than the more elegant tablewares could not carry out so efficiently. The settlements of Lyveden, Stanion and Brigstock were carved out of the forest of Rockingham and reveal the diversity of the craft worker’s environment: all were involved with small scale iron working, which necessitated vast quantities of charcoal to fuel the bloomeries. `The best evidence for the range and character of the medieval 140

Maureen Mellor: Drink, women and song: exploring ale-wives and related folklore bloomer sites in the forest is provided from excavations at Potters Lyveden, where ironworking preceded pottery production with well- preserved evidence from the period 1050-1150’ (Foard, 2001, 73-5). Archaeology indicates that pottery production was centred on Potters Lyveden and place name evidence indicates that in 1285 the hamlet was known as `Lyveden Pottere’ and by 1312 as `Potteres Liveden’, signalling a specialisation in earthenware products, where the technical competence of the part-time potters ranged from good to very poor, indicating a range of abilities. Some villagers had individual workshops set up for potting, with the kiln at the back of the croft, suggesting a regulated community with a coherent layout (Jones and Page 2006, 196). These were clearly small-scale concerns in which the family was the basic economic unit for working the land. Once established these `nucleated rural industries’ might last several generations (Foard 1991,13). To the west of Potters Lyveden, lay the village of Stanion, where evidence from the northern part of the settlement within Upper Hall manor included a large area of woodland and at least six medieval pottery kilns were situated along the main street of the village (Foard 1991, 16). Upper Hall manor is believed to be independent of the neighbouring manor of Brigstock by the mid 12th century, but Stanion was ecclesiastically dependent on the important royal estate at Brigstock. Bennett’s research (1989) at the 14th century manor reveals a relationship between ale-wives, production, space and social organisation. Some brewed occasionally while others brewed more regularly (`household’, `household industry’ or possibly `nucleated workshop’). Jones and Page citing citing Williamson (2006, 12-3) that `in nucleated villages, the sense of cohesion and cooperation which communal farming engendered was likely to have promoted the formation of open fields in which land was divided among the villagers’, this cooperation, both economically and socially will have extended here in the forest communities of Lyveden, Stanion and Brigstock, where the energies of the head of the household were engaged with agriculture, forestry, iron smelting, charcoal burning and possibly potting (though this may have been carried out by women), leaving the ale-wives of Brigstock to

specialise in brewing. Blinkhorn postulated at West Cotton that the Lyveden/Stanion jugs may be associated with transporting ale (Fig. 4) and it is reasonable to assume that the ale-wives of Brigstock recognised the potential of these vessels for their ale, thus Stanion/Lyveden jugs became synonymous with ale, which led to their distribution over a wide swathe of the south east Midlands, East Anglia and via grain exports from the port of King’s Lynn to Bergen and Trondheim in Norway. Conclusion Why is history so unkind to the ale-wife? The answer is complex. Women’s participation in economic activities in the food and drink trade propelled them into public view which fuelled the broader cultural anxiety concerning food and drink, then as now. This anxiety appears to increase throughout the 15th century and while the introduction of wine and sweet wines provided opportunities in the towns for some women in the more respectable vintners trade, for the poor selling ale with little profit, set them up to ridicule. The introduction of the licensing act in 1552 eventually excluded all, but the most financially robust (Clarke et al 2010, 236-7). Much work on great households has been undertaken, with some work on towns, but the countryside still begs for attention. Brewing for ale amongst the peasant community went on everywhere (Dyer 1989, 132). The link between ale-wife returns and the ceramic industry postulated for Brigstock/Stanion/Lyveden is persuasive, but will only be conclusive if it can be demonstrated elsewhere. Bennett’s work on ale-wives in Iver, Buckinghamshire (1987), shows similar returns with an adjoining parish, Denham where excavations revealed pottery kilns with products that included cisterns (Farley and Leech 1988), this would repay further research. Of the three Oxfordshire foci of Beckley – Chalgrove - Watlington- identified by James Bond and John Rhodes’ (Bond and Rhodes, 4) to have considerable numbers of `fines’ for ale-wives in 1296-7, may also provide a starting point for future local studies in rural ale-wives in Oxfordshire.

141

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography Arnold, D. (1985). Ceramic theory and Cultural Process. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Bennett, J. M. (1996). Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England Women’s Work in a Changing World 1300-1600. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Bennett, J. M (1991). `Misogyny, Popular culture, and Women’s Work’. History Workshop Journal:166-88. Bennett, J. M. (1987). Women in the medieval English countryside: gender and household in Brigstock before the plague. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Bennett, J. M. (1986). ‘The village ale-wife: women and brewing in 14th-century England’, in Hanawalt, B. A. (ed). Women’s Work in Preindustrial Europe. Indiana University Press: 20-36. Blinkhorn, P. (1998-9). The trials of being a utensil: pottery function, at the medieval hamlet of West Cotton, Northamptonshire. Medieval Ceramics 22-23: 37-46. Blinkhorn, P. (2007) ‘Pottery’ in Hardy, A. Mair Charles, B. and Williams, R. J. Death and Taxes: The Archaeology of a middle Saxon estate centre at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, Oxford Archaeology Monograph, 4: 6-9. Bond, J. and Rhodes, J. (1985). The Oxfordshire Brewer. Woodstock. Oxfordshire Museums Service. Boyle, A. 2006. Cistercian ware pottery in Yorkshire and the east Midlands, unpublished thesis. Nottingham. University of Nottingham. Chapman, A. (2010). West Cotton, Raunds: a study of medieval settlement dynamic AD 450-1450 Excavation of a deserted medieval manor in Northamptonshire 1985-9. Oxford. Oxbow Books. Clarke, H. Pearson, S. Mate M. and Parfitt, K. (2010). Sandwich the `completest medieval town in England’. Oxford. Oxbow Books. Dyer, C. (1989). Standards of living in the later Middle Ages. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Evans, D. H. and Carter, A. (1985). Excavations on 3151 Pottergate (Site 149N), in Atkin, M. Carter, A. and Evans, D. H. Excavations in Norwich 1971-1978’, East Anglian Archaeology. 26: 9-84. Farley, M. and Leach, H. (1988). Medieval Pottery Production Areas near Rush Green, Denham. Buckinghamshire, Records of Buckinghamshire. 30:53-102. Foard, G. (2001). `Medieval Woodland, Agriculture and Industry in Rockingham Forest, Northamptonshire’. Medieval Archaeology 45:41-95. Foard, G. (1991). `The Medieval Pottery Industry of Rockinghamshire Forest, Northamptonshire’. Medieval Ceramics 15:13-20. Gaimster, D. (1997). German Stoneware 1200-1900: Archaeology and Cultural History. London. British Museum Press. Gemmill, E. (2001), `Signs and symbols in Medieval Scottish Trade’ Review of Scottish Culture. 13:7-16. Greenfield, P. (2000). `Children, material culture and weaving: historical change and developmental change’

in Sofaer Derevenski, J. (ed), Children and Material Culture. New York. Routledge. Grenville, J. (2004). `The archaeology of the late and post-medieval workshop – a review and proposal for a research agenda’, in Barnwell, P. Palmer, M. and Airs, M. (eds). The Vernacular Workshop: from craft to industry, 1400-1900. Council for British Research Reports 140. York. Council for British Archaeology: 28-37. Grossinger, C. (1997). The World Upside-Down: English misericords. London. Harvey Miller. Hagen, A. (re-printed 2000). A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food Processing and Consumption. Pinner. AngloSaxons Books. Hanna, R. (1996). `Brewing trouble On Literature and History- and ale-wives’, in Hanawalt, B. A. and Wallace, D. (eds). Bodies and disciplines: Intersection of literature and history in fifteenth century England. Minnesota University Press: 1-17. Hanawalt, B. A. (1986). The Ties that Bound: peasant families in medieval England. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Hanawalt, B. A. (1993). Growing up in medieval London: the experience of childhood in history. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Jarrett, C. J. (2005). `A Pottery Assemblage from Hare Court’, in Butler, J. Saxons, Templars & Lawyers in the Inner Temple; archaeological excavations in Church Court & Hare Court. The Dorset Press. Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd: 69-78. Johnson, G. Foster, P. J. and Bellamy, B. (1997). `The Excavation of two Late Medieval Kilns with Associated Buildings at Glapthorne, near Oundle, Northamptonshire’. Medieval Ceramics 21:13-42. Jones, R. and Page, M. (2006). Medieval Villages in an English Landscape: beginnings and ends. Macclesfield. Windgather Press. Le Patourel, H. E. J. (1968). `Documentary evidence and the medieval industry’. Medieval Archaeology 12, 10122. Leah, M. (1994). The Late Saxon and Medieval Pottery Industry of Grimston Norfolk: excavations 196292. Dereham. Field Archaeology Division Norfolk Museums Service. Lobel, M. (ed). (1957). The Victoria History of the County of Oxfordshire, Vol. V. Last accessed online 03/02/2013. Mainman, A. and Jenner, A. (2013). Medieval Pottery from York. The Archaeology of York. Vol.16: The Pottery. York Archaeological Trust. Council for British Archaeology. Mayhew, N. J. (1996). ‘The status of women and the brewing of ale in medieval Aberdeen’. Review of Scottish Culture 10: 16-21. McCarthy, M. and Brooks, M. (1988). Medieval Pottery in Britain AD900-1600. Leicester. Leicester University Press.

142

Maureen Mellor: Drink, women and song: exploring ale-wives and related folklore McIntosh, M. K. (2005). Working Women in English Society 1300-1620. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Midgley, L. M. (ed). (1942-5). Ministers’ Accounts of the Earldom of Cornwall, 1296-1297. Camden Society, third series, vols. 66, 68. London. Royal Historical Society. Mellor, M. (1994). A synthesis of Middle and late Saxon, Medieval and Early post-medieval pottery in the Oxford region. Oxoniensia 59: 17-217. Mellor, M. (2005). `Making and Using Pottery in Town and Country’, in Giles, K. and Dyer, C. Town and Country in the Middle Ages: contrasts, contacts and interconnections, 1100-1500. Leeds. Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph12: 149-64. Mellor, M. (2013). `Seeing the medieval child: evidence from household and craft’, in Hadley, D. M. and Hamer, K. A. Medieval Childhood: archaeological approaches. The Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past. Monograph 3. Oxford. Oxbow. Moffett, L. (2006). `The Archaeology of Medieval Plants’, in Woolgar, C. M. Serjeantson, D. and Waldron, T. (2006). (eds.). Food in Medieval England. Oxford. Oxford University Press: 41–55. Moorhouse, S. (1993). `Pottery and glass in the medieval monastery’ in Gilchrist, R. and Mytum, H. (eds.). Advances in Monastic Archaeology. British Archaeological Reports. British Series 227: 127-148. Peacock, D. P. S. (1982). Pottery in the Roman World: an Ethnoarchaeological Approach. London. Longman. Pearce, J. (2007). Pots and Potters in Tudor Hampshire: excavations at Farnborough Hill convent, 1968-72. Guildford. Guildford Museum and Guildford Borough Council.

Pearce, J., Vince, A.G. & Jenner, M.A. (1985). A Dated Type-series of London Medieval Pottery Part 2: London-type Ware, London Middlesex Archaeological Society. Special Paper 6. Perry, G. (2011). `Beer, butter and burial: The pre-burial origins of cremation urns from the early Anglo-Saxon cemetery of Cleatham, North Lincolnshire’. Medieval Ceramics 32:9-21. Platt, C. (1978). Medieval England: a Social History and Archaeology from the Conquest to A. D. 1600. London. Routledge and Kegan. Skelton, J. (1624). The Tunning of Elynour Rummyng. London. [electronic resource accessed January 2013]. Rhodes, J. (2010). `Brewing and Malting’, in Tiller, K. and Darkes, G. An Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire. Oxfordshire Record Society 67:122-3. Slowikowski, A. (2011). Genius in a Cracked Pot Late Medieval Reduced Ware: a Regional Synthesis. Medieval Pottery Research Group Occasional Paper 4. Dorchester. The Dorset Press. Stone, D J. (2006). `The consumption of field Crops in Late Medieval England’, in Woolgar, C. M. Serjeantson, D. and Waldron, T. (eds). Food in Medieval England. Oxford. Oxford University Press:11–26. Townley, S. (2009). Henley-on-Thames: town, trade and river. London. Phillimore. Acknowledgements With grateful thanks to Adrienne Rosen, James Bond, Michael Farley and Simon Townley, who shared their knowledge with me.

143

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig. 1 The Doom painting c 1430s of the City’s ale-

wives, with their elaborate head dresses, clasping their ale pots.

Holy Trinity church, Coventry (Sketch: Maureen Mellor).

Fig. 2 Bearded face on a glazed jug, made at Grimston, Norfolk, found in Bergen, Norway. Grain was exported via the port of King’s Lynn, Norfolk and this jug may have formed part of a cargo

(Photo: Maureen Mellor).

Fig.3 A kiln assemblage from Combe, Oxfordshire, with strong connections with drinking: a small cistern, a detached bunghole (centre), jugs and a cup (in the foreground) (Photo: John Ashdown).

144

Maureen Mellor: Drink, women and song: exploring ale-wives and related folklore

Fig.4

Pottery

jug

decorated with applied strips and grid stamps, green glaze, made at

Northamptonshire (© Trustees of the British Museum).

145

Lyveden/Stanion,

The Potential for Using Miniature Models in Museums Christine Bloxham

This essay show how one twelfth scale models can be used in a variety of ways to enhance interpretation in museums, historic houses and heritage sites. Examples cited are Mulvany and Rogers’ model of Hampton Court Palace, the Guthrie Collection of Miniatures at Hever Castle, Edward Wood’s House and a dolls’ house illustrating different phases in the life of a house, complete with automata, in the Cardiff Story Museum.

One of the problems faced by English Heritage, the National Trust, owners of private stately homes and museums is how to interpret in an easily understandable way the development, use and changing appearance of the buildings and contents. Few museums have the option of the Geffrye Museum which can furnish rooms of different periods in full scale. The full scale reconstructions of the state rooms at Dover Castle are magnificent, but they encapsulate a brief period in the castle’s history, and it would be interesting to see ideas of how the rooms might have looked at other periods. Currently historic houses tend to be displayed as far as possible in the period in which they were built, or as they are lived in now, with a mélange of objects collected by the family, with little attempt to illustrate the development of the house and the way of life of its occupants in any depth, although this adds another fascinating dimension. Often only a small part of the house is open to the public, usually state rooms, so the ‘downstairs’ aspect, which appeals to the public, is ignored. Even if it is not possible to open the servants’ quarters, it is possible to indicate aspects of their lives with a display of ‘miniatures’. In the Netherlands and Germany from the late 16th until the 18th century it was fashionable for upper class and wealthy middle class women to create baby houses, which represented their lives in miniature. Several of these have survived almost intact and they give us graphic views of contemporary life, forming time capsules which contain many mundane items which have seldom survived on a larger scale, such as brushes and cleaning utensils and even regional costumes. They illustrate the daily round, from the lady entertaining guests, to the husband showing off his cabinet of curiosities, the cook at work, and the nursemaid with the children. They are evocative of the character of such establishments. Queen Mary’s Dolls’ house, built after the First World War, was built on the same theme, designed to show the life of a magnificent country house of the early 20th century. These can be used as inspiration for contemporary displays, although there can be difficulties in trying to recreate the past accurately. The idea of employing models is nothing new. For example John Rhodes used them to great effect in displays at the Oxfordshire County Museum in the 1970s to illustrate

archaeological sites including Iron Age and Roman houses, and CADW and English Heritage created similar displays to illustrate the history of castles and other sites, but these were often very small scale in scale and lacking in detail. With castles in particular it is often impossible to interpret the smaller buildings within the site and gain any real impression of how the establishment worked as a living space. This problem might potentially be solved by the use of larger scale models, such as one-twelfth scale, and even using the models as a basis for an introductory film, thus adding emphasis to some of the items in them and providing an oral commentary to augment the visual impact, while making it possible for a larger number of people to view the models at one time. These models would then take the form of a complete property, or of ‘room boxes’ to illustrate individual areas. Several sites have used models in differing ways to good effect. Hever Castle Hever Castle in Kent houses the Guthrie collection, a series of miniatures commissioned from John J. Hodgson in 1989 which are displayed in a building adjacent to the house. Although not illustrating the history of Hever itself, they show the changing pattern of interior decoration of country houses. The great hall of Penshurst Place, Kent, is set in the Tudor era, when the hall was the heart of the house, showing the central hearth, the high table for the lord and his chief guests on the dais, covered with a fine tablecloth and groaning with dishes of food and fine pewter, with other tables laden with food ‘below the salt’. A servant is bringing in more food, and the whole is lit by candelabra, chandeliers and torches. The cooks are seen spit roasting, baking bread and preparing food in the kitchen, which is separated from the hall by a screens passage. The lord stands in his solar or Great Chamber, a pewter mug in his hand, while his lady sits at her embroidery. They have a table laid with refreshments in the window, and a carpet, a great luxury at the time, more often found on a table or cupboard, but here, on the floor, demonstrating their 147

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes wealth. The tester bed in the bedroom has a fine quilt while a linenfold panelled coffer stands at the base of the bed and a cupboard nearby. The room demonstrates wealth, but also shows that furniture was much sparser in the Tudor period. The late Elizabethan brick-built Burton Agnes Hall, Lincolnshire, illustrates the Stuart period, and is set in May 1640. The new architectural style reflects a new way of life where houses were not built for defence, but to indicate wealth and status and the growing requirement for more privacy. Small dining rooms and withdrawing rooms lead off the hall. A room off the long gallery was designed specifically for the playing of shovel-board, in which a coin or disc is pushed as far as possible down the table with a blow from the palm of the hand. The Long Gallery has become an important room for entertaining, as well as for exercise in the winter, and is consequently magnificently panelled, with a grand strapwork ceiling and furniture made from oak. The room has been brought to life with figures, including a girl with a cup and ball toy fondling her King Charles spaniel. The grand staircase is being decorated with garlands of flowers for May morning. A special feature of this model is the garden, with gravel walks, parterres, pond and fountain (so important that they were widely featured in embroideries), vines and trellises, illustrating the new plants being imported from all over the world in the 17th century. The Restoration drawing room shows the elaboration which developed when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, after the austerity of the Puritan Commonwealth, with Grinling Gibbons style carving, swagged curtains, comfortable upholstered furniture. Huguenot influence is seen in marquetry furniture, and Chinese lacquer illustrates contact with the wider world. The 18th century is represented by the classical Georgian Sledmere House in Yorkshire which shows the influence of the Grand Tour in the classical symmetry of its Palladian architecture. The dining room with its marbled Corinthian columns has fine mahogany furniture, the dining table set with monogrammed Wedgwood style bone china, Meissen, Imari and Ming porcelain, silver cutlery and lead crystal glasses. The gilded side tables display porcelain, including the prized and expensive imported Chinese blue and white porcelain. By this time the library has become an established feature to show the education of the owners. The bedroom is elegant, with a four-poster bed with silk hangings. The gentleman’s wig is stored on a chest and the lady has a dressing table with silver brush and comb set. Clothes were stored in the tallboy. The drawing room has Chippendale furniture and the walls are decorated with gilt-framed pictures. The lady is seated at a harpsichord, and there are tables, chairs and bookcases. Outside is a formal ornamental garden with a lake and Chinese style bridge. The Victorian house is full of colour, opulent furnishing and objects as an antidote to the soot and grime of

industrialisation. It was a time of inventions such as photography, gas lighting and electricity. The drawing room is decorated for a musical afternoon at Christmas. Servants in the kitchen are preparing the evening meal and baking mince pies. The younger children are in the nursery, which is much more sparsely furnished. The ensemble of houses gives a good impression of how life has changed for wealthier families over the centuries, and puts antiques that can be seen in Hever Castle into a historical context. Hampton Court Palace Kevin Mulvany and Susie Rogers are architects who now specialise in making exquisite miniatures of elaborate and intricate buildings such as Hampton Court Palace and Versailles. Much of their work is found in museums around the world, providing an opportunity for people to get an impression of real buildings which may be thousands of miles away. As well as interpreting what can be seen today, they reconstruct interiors which have now disappeared, such as King Henry VIII’s bedroom at Hampton Court Palace, which is shown with a magnificent bed made by David Hurley, one of the best woodworkers making miniatures today. They achieve an amazing degree of accuracy in their portrayal of the buildings. They write in their book Magnificent Miniatures that building this model of Hampton Court gave them the opportunity to reinstate previous decoration and furniture. The real Delft tulipiėres which still exist are too fragile to hold flowers, but in the models by Carol Lodder they can be shown in their full glory. Sometimes, due to the size of the original buildings, there has to be a compromise, and half open doorways hint that there are further rooms not shown. Edward Wood’s House Reconstructions can be effective on a more modest scale, such as Edward Wood’s house, my personal project. Edward, my ancestor, was a tailor and haberdasher and silk merchant in Macclesfield, Cheshire. He died in 1676, probably in early middle age, as his younger daughter was only three. He married twice, having a son, Samuel, with his first wife Ann Barnard, and two daughters, Rachel and Sarah, with his second wife Martha Moore. He was an aspirational man who was Mayor of Macclesfield twice and a leading member of the local community; his son Samuel went on to become a wealthy silk merchant. Edward probably died suddenly as he left no will, but a detailed inventory was made of the contents of his shop and his house. This gives an insight as to how a middle class family lived and is the basis for reconstructing them as accurately as possible in miniature. The research for the project has proved fascinating, as it is a period seldom recreated in miniature. The house is set in the early 1670s, when England had settled down

148

Christine Bloxham: The potential for using miniature models in museums after the Restoration of 1660. With Charles II returning to the throne of England fashions lost the austerity of the Commonwealth period and frills and furbelows were permitted again. It was assumed that the premises would not have been brand new, so the buildings are Tudor. As Macclesfield was largely rebuilt in the 18th century when it was made rich by silk manufacture, leaving no halftimbering in the town a regional vernacular style has been followed. The house and shop would probably originally have been built on a burgage tenement type plot with the shop on the narrow frontage and the house stretching behind on the long thin plot, but this had to be adapted due to the limitations of the display area available. The shop, a bedroom above and the dry laundry in the attic are in one building and the main house, comprising kitchen, cross passage, hall, parlour, chamber and attic space are in another. Further rooms and staircases are suggested by doorways, as most dolls’ houses are only one room deep, and there was no room for the stable and outbuildings mentioned in the inventory. Much research has preceded each stage of furnishing. A file has been built up of contemporary illustrations. Tudor and civil war re-enactments at Kentwell Hall, Suffolk, and Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire, were visited (Stuart Press publish an extremely useful series of Living History booklets designed for re-enactors which give detailed information on costume, recipes and the way of life.) Reconstruction rooms such as those at the Geffrye Museum, houses such as Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, Sulgrave Manor, Northamptonshire, the Shakespeare houses at Stratford-on-Avon, St Fagan’s museum and Llancaiach Fawr, a 17th century manor near Cardiff, have given ideas, and books and museum collections have been consulted. The 17th century Dutch baby houses show domestic details, and the Great Bed of Ware provided the inspiration for the bed furnishings in the main bedroom: a bottom mattress filled with wool, then one with feathers, with a top one filled with down, bolster stuffed with feathers and pillows with down. Sheets and blankets were made using two strips of fabric as fabrics were not woven wide enough then, and a quilt and coverlet go on top. Cushions were inspired by those from Hardwick Hall, but embroidered on a less grand scale! Every attempt has been made to re-create the interiors as accurately as possible, and in the style of a reasonably affluent middle class family. An attempt has been made to add as many personal touches as possible. In the shop the contents of the inventory have been used in a tiny account book displayed on the counter. The samplers in the parlour have the names of Edward’s wives embroidered on them, and the linen cupboard in the attic has the names of Edward Wood and Martha Moore and the date of their marriage carved on it. The shop has been a fascinating room to reconstruct. The inventory listed a wide variety of fabrics such as camlet, serge, silk barratine, worsted crape, shalloones, mohair, Persian silk, Indian silk, satin, ticking , buckram and calico.

There were laces and ribbons, silver and gold cords, gimp and boot cord, garterings, leather, hawking gear, gloves, ‘bodies’ (corsets), silver buttons and buckles. An unusual item was the vizards used to protect ladies’ faces from the sun (illustrated in Hollar engravings). There were items of clothing such as gowns, silk hoods and men and women’s hose and sundries such as whalebone, presumably for use in making corsets. There were also stay busks used for stiffening the front of corsets. More unexpected were tobacco and ‘lickorish’, spices and herbs such as ginger and coriander and alum and oak galls for dyeing. The contents of the shop were worth £589 5s 11½d. The shop sign is a unicorn, one of several designs used by haberdashers, as many of their clients were illiterate. There is a dearth of information about how shops were furnished in this period. Many were just stalls, but the value of the goods here suggested a more secure shop, and the inventory mentioned a grille for protection. The shop has been given a counter, a side table and main table, and a spice cupboard with small drawers, which have been labelled in 17th century handwriting which was miniaturised on the computer. In the style of the Dutch dolls’ houses a small office has been built in the back corner, with ledgers, writing materials and a few creature comforts such as pewter mugs. An ell rule (base on one illustrated in Treen by Edward Pinto) has been made to measure fabrics, and the fabrics have been tied in bundles as that is the system shown in early 18th century drawings. Ribbon wrapped round tiny cardboard tubes is displayed on shelves. The whole project will take many years to complete and is very much a work in progress. The Cardiff Story The Cardiff Story Museum opened in 2010 to display the history of the city. One of its most popular exhibits is a miniature house with a difference, designed by the Fourteen Balls Toy Company, which combines the idea of a dolls’ house with the use of delightful automata. The house is displayed on a rotating table so that all faҫades are visible. It has been designed to display a different period in the life of a house in Cathedral Road, Cardiff on each faҫade, together with ideas for finding out more about each period. It is ingeniously arranged to show a small selection of rooms for each period with moving figures in each one. The first period is the 1890s, when the docks and the railways were bringing wealth to the town, and large houses were built on Cathedral Road for shipbuilders and industrialists, who would have employed several servants. A servant is shown ironing her uniform in her attic bedroom, which is furnished with a brass bed and washstand. Her employers are sitting at their dining table, with a butler whose arm moves up and down to pour wine. The dining room has burgundy painted walls and a beautifully tiled fireplace and is furnished with the table and chairs

149

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes and a dresser. In the kitchen the cook makes pastry while two boys impatiently wait for their meal. The next façade illustrates the 1930s, when the docks were in decline and the commercial sector was growing. Cathedral Road became home to the middle classes and several houses were converted into flats. Sale cards illustrate the types of houses and numbers of rooms they had. The first floor shows an art deco bedroom with stone fireplace and double bed, and the mother plays with her children while her husband wallows in a bath.

Bibliography Mulvany, Kevin and Rogers, Susie, 2008. Magnificent Miniatures: Inspiration and Technique for Grand Houses on a Small Scale. London: Batsford. Pinto, Edward H., 1968. Treen and Other Wooden Bygones. London: Collins. For further reading see also the Living History Reference Series published by Stuart Press, Bristol.

The next period is the 1970s, illustrating how many people now lived alone, as there were more opportunities for women to work, young people tended to move away from home before marriage and divorce had become more acceptable. Building plans show how alterations are made to houses. The house has been divided into flats, and the ground floor is illustrated. In the left hand bedsit a woman is shown hoovering the room, while her TV flickers in the background. The walls are painted lilac, the single bed has a floral cover and cushions, there is a comfortable armchair, tile-topped table, 1970s sideboard and cactus plants. The second room has a white mirrored wardrobe, a single bed with orange and brown floral cover and cushion. A girl is hula-hooping while she listens to a record on her gramophone. The fourth façade illustrates 2010. Cathedral Road has once again become a desirable and expensive place to live and most houses have been converted into flats which are popular with young professionals. Business adverts give a flavour of the occupations in the street, showing many hotels and guesthouses and medical practices. The first floor apartment is open plan with cream and brown décor, incorporating some original features such as a tiled fireplace. The wife is busy at her laptop while her husband is cooking. Figures in each room move, which delights adults and children alike, and the house, although a little sparsely furnished, gives an easily assimilated impression of how the way of life and furnishings have changed over the decades. These varied examples show how effective one-twelfth scale miniatures can be in the interpretation of aspects of the past, and they have proved extremely popular with visitors. This is a so far largely untapped potential tool which is worth further consideration.

150

Christine Bloxham: The potential for using miniature models in museums

Fig 1. The Guthrie Collection at Hever Castle. The medieval hall of Penshurst Place can be seen in the foreground and the Stuart House in the centre (© Hever Castle Ltd.).

Fig 2. Mulvany and Rogers’ miniature of the King’s Presence Chamber in their Hampton Court Palace made in 1994. This room would have been used as a receiving room and displays the red canopy of estate with a throne beneath it, set on a dais to symbolise the superior status of the monarch, flanked by magnificent blue and white porcelain tulipières filled with the parrot tulips which were then the height of fashion

(© Mulvany and Rogers). 151

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 3. The shop in Edward Wood’s house, made by Tony Knott. Above the shop are the master bedroom and a dry laundry. The shop has a tiny office in the back left hand corner, half-concealed by the curtain. The drawers on the left are labelled in 17th century hand with items mentioned in the inventory such as buttons, buckles, tobacco and licorice. A vizard is shown on a stand on top of the shelf unit and corset bones in the basket on the floor. (Photograph by Christine Bloxham).

Fig 4. Overall view of Edward Wood’s house, made by Tony Knott, based on a foamboard model made by Norman Blanks. The kitchen is designed as a town kitchen. The jars are filled with ‘Fimo’ preserves in resin to look like syrup and each one is labelled in a 17th century hand. The open hearth has a bread oven. Game hangs by the door leading to the yard. A cross passage separates the kitchen from the hall, which has a helmet and swords to represent the fact that the civil war had only recently ended. The parlour above was the most ornate room in the house, used for entertaining. The virginals were mentioned in the original inventory. There are two samplers on the table, one with the name of Anne Barnard, Edward’s first wife and the other Martha Moore, his second wife. Over the mantel is a miniature replica of a Thomas Toft plate. The children’s bedroom contains a priest hole behind the settle on the far wall. The attic range will contain a servant’s bedroom and additional storage for the shop. (Photograph by Christine Bloxham). 152

Christine Bloxham: The potential for using miniature models in museums

Fig 5. The master bedroom in Edward Wood’s house. The bed and table were made by Tony Knott. The bed has been furnished in the same way as the Great Bed of Ware. It has a straw mat over the bed boards, a wool mattress, one filled with feathers and the top one filled with down. The sheets and blankets are made in two strips as fabric was not woven wide enough for them. The bolster is filled with feathers and the pillows have down. There is an eiderdown and a quilted coverlet. The Florentine-embroidered bed hangings were embroidered in silk on muslin, and furnishing the bed took about six months. On the right is a dressing table with pots and jars and a mirror above. There is a chamber pot under the bed. Lavender perfumes the room. Embroidered nightclothes are shown on the bed. (Photograph by Christine Bloxham).

Fig 6. The Kitchen in Edward Wood’s house. The hearth has a bread oven in the side and a smoke jack. Candle wax has been used to represent the fat in the drip tray underneath the roasting pork. The larder contains items one would expect in a town kitchen. Each jar contains miniature ‘Fimo’ fruit and vegetables in resin to look like syrup. The labels are in 17th century handwriting. Game hangs from the rack and there is a flitch of bacon hidden in corner behind the hearth. The door at the back suggests an entrance into a courtyard with service buildings and stables. (Photograph by Christine Bloxham) 153

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 7. The dry laundry of Edward Wood’s house. This is inspired by those in 17th century Dutch baby houses. Washing would have been done once a month or every six weeks, so in between washes the ironing would have been done here. A wooden mangle bat and roller, used for cleaning the clothes, can be seen in the left foreground. An ironing blanket has been placed on the trestle table. Sheets and tablecloths would have been placed in the linen press (this one was made by Barbara Moore of Pear Tree Miniatures) and contemporary pictures show that tablecloths were placed on the table with their folds from the press visible. As there is no hearth, irons would have been heated on the iron sheet which was heated on the brazier. The pottery jug is for starch, and the glass ‘mushroom’ was rubbed over starched clothes to give them a glaze. Baskets were used for storing clothes, and the built in rack was used for airing. (Photograph by Christine Bloxham).

Fig 8. The Cathedral Road house in the Cardiff Story Museum, showing the 1970s faҫade, with the bedsits. In one a woman is hoovering and in the other a girl is hula-hooping to her gramophone music. The furniture is whitewood with simple lines. (© Redman Design, Cardiff Story Museum).

154

Christine Bloxham: The potential for using miniature models in museums

Fig 9. The

kitchen of the

1890s

house.

The

automata are the cook rolling pastry, the maid stirring and the boys

banging their cutlery on the table as they wait impatiently for their food. Although there is a sink there is no running water and the furniture is simple. (Cardiff Story Museum. Photograph by Christine Bloxham).

Fig 10. The 1930s bedroom with typical art deco fireplace and simple wooden furniture. The automata are the girl jumping up and down on the bed, the boy waving the flags and the train going round. (Cardiff Story Museum. Photograph by Christine Bloxham).

155

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 11. The father is seen in the austere black and white 1930s bathroom with art deco mirrors. Water is now plumbed into the house and there is a comfortable inside lavatory with proper toilet paper. The automata make him scrub his back while the rubber duck swims round in a circle. (Cardiff Story Museum. Photograph by Christine Bloxham).

156

Baler twine and old rope Martyn Brown

The 1960s and ‘70s saw a burgeoning of museums of rural life across the UK, spurred on by their concordance with the zeitgeist of the moment. Using Cogges Manor Farm as a case study, this contribution illustrates how some are facing change and trying to adapt to face contemporary political and financial realities as well as very different public concerns about farming and the environment, and different expectations of the role of museums.

‘A new pride my ego taught me, and this I teach men: no longer to bury one’s head in the sand of heavenly things, but to bear it freely, an earthly head, which creates a meaning for the earth’ (Nietzsche 1968, 144). ‘But future generations need to understand the importance of our landscape and to enjoy being in it, if they are not to turn their backs on it through fear and ignorance’ (Titchmarsh 2012, 5). Susie Fisher’s 2006 report, ‘Towards a new territory’, based on the responses of focus groups, reported that ‘rural museums are perceived as worthy but dull’ (Fisher 2006, 14). It has not always been thus. In the late 1960s and 1970s there was an explosion of new museums of rural life across the country: Buckinghamshire, Durham (Beamish), Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Wiltshire, Yorkshire - at that time these new organisations were in tune with the mood music of the age and they were at the forefront of the radical modernisation that was about to impact on museums across the world. Since then, inevitably, the world has changed and rural museums have struggled to respond and to remain relevant; the Rural Life Museums Action Group was set up in 2001, (renamed Rural Museums Network, abbreviated RMN, in 2005) in part to pool ideas in order to improve them and to seek sustainable models for the future. Fisher’s report identifies, quite simply, where the relevance of these places lies: ‘food, animals and nature, contrasts then and now’. The irony is that there has never been greater interest in ‘food’ than there is today – food programmes dominate TV channels at peak viewing times, books on food bloat the best seller lists, chefs have become celebrities, and restaurants appear to be packed with customers. And, as Fisher states : ‘everyone feels there is a part of themselves which responds to the land, a birthright akin to spirituality’. Can rural museums respond, banish their ‘dull’ image, and rise to meet these opportunities? The late 19th century enthusiasm for creating museums in the UK, and other parts of the world, focused on collections of fine art, antiquities, ethnography and natural history; collections of vernacular interest (to initiate a Foucauldian genealogy) were generally limited to local specialities – perhaps a country pottery or foundry. Peculiarities from

the locality might be acquired and linked to ethnography collections – for example in the field of ‘folk lore’. One of the earliest collectors to employ a more systematic approach to domestic ethnography, including rural life collections, was General Augustus Pitt Rivers – with examples still to be seen in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (founded in 1884 when the General donated most of his collection to the University of Oxford) , and still exhibited in their classification by type and subject (rather than by geography). One of the first museums to be dedicated, initially, almost entirely to a rural theme, was the Scandinavian Ethnographic Collection (now the Nordiska Museet), in Stockholm, founded by Artur Hazelius in 1873. Early collections included agricultural and craft tools, domestic and folk artefacts from throughout Sweden. Later, in 1891, Hazelius expanded his collecting to include whole buildings - farms , workshops and even factories and town streets - which were reconstructed at Skansen, an extensive open-air site on an island just off the capital city. A great strength of both these museums is the academic research programme that continues to enhance the collections and enrich knowledge; it is no coincidence that folk life studies have been amongst the most popular subjects studied in Swedish universities. Hazelius’s aim was to preserve examples of the regional variations and traditions of Swedish rural life, traditions that he observed being eroded by urbanisation and industrialisation. In Britain similar observations by Dr John Lamplugh Kirk, a medical practitioner in north Yorkshire, led to his initiative to acquire rural and domestic artefacts on his country rounds, and these in due course formed the core of the rich and broad collections at York Castle Museum in the 1930s. Elsewhere, folk museums, in Cambridge, Gloucester and the Highlands, for example, gathered significant rural collections. More typically, in Somerset, the Archaeological and Natural History Society added friendly society brasses and ‘witchcraft’ material (pigs hearts stuck with pins) to its more formal collections of archaeology and natural history specimens. In Europe, in France for example, George Henri Rivière founded the Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires in 1937 – ‘the Louvre of the people’ (Anon. 2012); and in North America the seeds of Colonial Williamsburg were planted by the

157

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Reverend Dr. W.A. R. Goodwin in the 1920s, and sprouted with the support of John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the 1930s; Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts was opened around the same time. Although the Museums Association had put forward ideas for a museum of British history as early as 1909, the first national folk museum in the UK was in Wales at St Fagans near Cardiff, opened in 1948. In the same year the Royal Anthropological Institute set up an exploratory committee ‘to consider means of promoting the ethnographic study of Great Britain’ (Petch 2005); an objective from one of its first meetings was the creation of a museum. However, it was not until 1951 that the first museum dedicated to rural life in England was established. In response to the immense and widespread changes taking place after the Second World War in the English countryside, a lecturer at the University of Reading, John Higgs was alarmed by the discarding of old agricultural machinery, seen as fit only for the scrap heap or the bonfire, and recognised the urgent need actively to collect and preserve this vanishing heritage. ‘With the support of colleagues he submitted a proposal for the University to create a Museum of English Rural Life’ (Anon. 2012). His idea was accepted and the Museum emerged, gathering not only artefacts, but photographs, film, oral archives and documents. This was a time of great social and technological transition, with the shift from horsepower to mechanisation, the decline of the threshing machine, and the rise of the combine harvester. Along with other modern innovations, these developments marked a wholesale and irreversible shift in the agricultural world. Artists and writers, foremost amongst them Eric Ravilious in the 1940s and George Ewart Evans (‘Ask the fellows who cut the hay’ published in 1956) in the ‘50s, echoed this reflection on rural change. Despite the political challenges of the 1970s - the miners’ strikes, high unemployment, and the Cold War - there was a spirit of optimism which followed the radical social revolutions of the ‘60s. Everything seemed possible – and amongst many other initiatives, there was investment in and support for the arts, culture and education, including museums - a new museum, it was said, was opening every week. Amongst these was the countrywide spawn of museums of rural life, many of which were initiated by local authorities, while other rose as independents often backed by core specialist collections. As the pace of change accelerated in all aspects of life, the changes in the countryside noticed by Higgs at Reading University became all the more apparent; in part the desire to conserve was fuelled by a nostalgia for the past; there were memories of traditions and practices which had disappeared; there were older generations who felt threatened and there was an ‘alternative’ society which sought closer links with the land and with hand skills and crafts. E.F. Schumacher queried the drive for technological development (‘Small is beautiful’, 1973) and, with John Seymour (‘The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency’, 1976) informed and encouraged a ‘back to the land’ movement. Museums of rural life could address these issues and in the shires politicians of

all parties would find reasons to support them. At the time there were dangers – a rose-tinted chocolate box image of country life, or obsession with the minutiae of some technology - but generally these museums struck a chord and achieved success with the general public and with schools. In Somerset in 1973 the death of her husband, Robert, prompted Frances Mapstone to offer, as a gift to the people of the county, the magnificent 14th century Abbey Barn in Glastonbury, where the Mapstone family had farmed for the previous 100 years. The County Council accepted the gift and purchased the adjoining Victorian farmhouse, farm buildings and about three acres of land with the aim of establishing a new museum. Local councillors recognised the opportunities for broadening the tourist development of Glastonbury, while others enthused about the preservation of Somerset’s unique rural traditions. The Somerset Rural Life Museum (SRLM) opened to the public in 1976 with temporary exhibitions, leading to the first ‘permanent’ galleries in 1978 which included ‘John Hodges’ – the story of a Somerset farm labourer (Brown, 1978). The greatest strength of the new museum was the early and enthusiastic creation of a Friends group which immediately embedded it in the local community. At about the same time, in Oxfordshire, Richard Foster, then County Museums Officer, initiated a countywide search for a site in which to house an agricultural museum for the county; in part this was driven by an urgent need to display a burgeoning collection of horse drawn equipment and vehicles, but it also reflected his personal motivation to expand the county service with the backing of the local authority. Foster found Cogges Manor Farm, Witney, fortuitously for sale, and the County Council acquired the site with 20 acres in 1975. The decision to purchase was strengthened by the assiduous research by county museum staff – John Steane, John Rhodes and John Campbell, who revealed the tantalisingly rich archaeological, social and natural history of the place (Steane, 1984). Here the first public season, 1978, was acclaimed as a tremendous success with some 80,000 visitors in eight weeks. The downside of such an auspicious start was the long-held expectation by the local authority that Cogges would generate sufficient income to cover its costs. Over the following thirty years that was never achieved. High levels of unemployment in the 1970s, especially amongst young people, led the government to set up Job Creation schemes – museums were eligible for staff and funding through these programmes and many rural museums took full advantage, offering in return opportunities for work experience and learning a host of skills, including curation, conservation, education work, design and display work, farming, crafts, visitor services and more. The first exhibitions in the Somerset Rural Life Museum were created almost entirely with the help of Job Creation staff. A similar scheme in Portugal, the Student Civil Service, enabled the ethnomusicologist, Michel Giacometti, to launch a nationwide project in 158

Martyn Brown: Baler twine and old rope: museums of agriculture and rural life 1975 to collect folk music, folk traditions and artefacts. More than 100 young people were signed up and began to scour the countryside making sound recordings films and photographs as well as acquiring objects. Giacometti’s vision was for a Centre for the Documentation of the Worker-Peasant and a Museum of Work. Eventually this was fulfilled, at least in part, in the 1990s by Setubal City Council in the Museu do Trabalho Michel Giacometti (Anon. 2012), in an innovative conversion of a redundant sardine canning factory. All this activity and such opportunities helped to boost the profile of rural museums way beyond their weight in the wider museum world. Work programmes, Friends groups and volunteers not only enabled further developments but also demonstrated how museums could engage very successfully with a wide public. Museums with extensive sites and opportunities to practice farming – Acton Scott (Shropshire), Shugborough (Staffordshire), Gressenhall (Norfolk) for example – could offer hands-on experiences with animals and with practical farm tasks that could occupy volunteers and provide learning opportunities for school children and therapeutic experiences for people with mental health or physical disabilities. An outstanding contemporary example of this role for rural museums can be seen at The Museum of East Anglian Life (MEAL) in Stowmarket, Suffolk. MEAL commissioned a Social Return on Investment analysis of its work-based learning programme for long-term unemployed people funded by Suffolk County Council’s Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities Fund; under this programme the museum offers supported volunteering opportunities and therapeutic placements for people with disabilities, learning difficulties and mental health problems and for people who have found themselves at a social disadvantage for one reason or another. The report states: Getting involved in volunteering is a great way for people to learn new things, meet new people and have fun! It can help build independence, self confidence and a sense of responsibility. And of course, it contributes to the life of the community... (so positive were the outcomes of this work that) MEAL can claim responsibility for £4.30 of social value for every £1 invested (mb associates 2011, 5). Rural life museum collections have developed from different roots: ethnological, systematic, folkloric, geographic, social, technological. Whatever their origins, the legacy of these collections is a critical issue. The loss and destruction of old agricultural machinery in the 1950s and ‘60s motivated many of these museums to pursue over enthusiastic acquisition policies in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Inadequate storage and limited conservation led to the deterioration of some of these collections; a greater awareness of the cost of collections, recognition of duplication (through the work of the RMN) and acknowledgement of the need to share have prompted selective disposal. As these inherited collections are being managed, the question of what to collect now is

increasingly pertinent. Collecting 20th and 21st century material for rural museums represents an enormous challenge; as the scale of agricultural machinery has grown and the complexity of interrelated issues increased, the resources of these museums have, generally, diminished. Museums are experimenting with new ways of collecting and particularly working to involve the public much more deeply in the process; MEAL, for example, has ‘opened a dialogue with the public’ ‘I Spy the Countryside – Collecting 20th Century Rural Culture’, about collecting objects that represent the East Anglian countryside (Anon. 2012). In an exhibition designed to stimulate debate: Visitors will have the chance to see objects ranging from Britain’s toy tractors and Pop Larkin’s blazer, to locally inspired storybooks about Orlando the Marmalade Cat and a board game of the BBC radio show The Archers. The exhibition explores how the countryside is represented and used throughout the 20th century. Big themes that are explored include inspiration, representation and conflict using objects such as clothing worn by protestors at the Battle of Middle Oak (a focal point for protests against the building of the Newbury Bypass), an original poster from The Railway Children film and a Farmer Palmer mug. A similar process of consultation is being planned for the development of the collections and exhibits at the SRLM; here one of the outstanding achievements by the Friends has been the creation of an oral history archive (started in 1973) of some 700 interviews; building on this and using recording alongside future acquisitions will help to enrich layers of provenance information and interpretation. The current position of rural life museums is mixed – ranging from threats of closure to inspired visions of new ideas and energy. Local authority funding cut backs in recent years have hit many – and the ‘worthy but dull’ image has lost some of the public support; however, and as ever, those with determination and imagination that have responded to change are beginning to reemerge as a new breed (continuing the genealogical analogy). Some of the typical processes of change can be seen through the particular, and sometimes painful, experiences at Cogges. Here the acme of progress was achieved in the 1990s with the completion of the building conservation and renovation programme, with major backing from English Heritage, including the opening of the first floor of the Manor House to the public for the first time. Until this point the mission at Cogges had been to illustrate life on an early Edwardian farm through a living history experience; whilst this theme proved appropriate and successful through the early years, it limited opportunities for a broader perspective. The opening up of the Manor House allowed access to a magnificent 17th century painted ‘chamber’, and revealed a number of architectural and archaeological features that had previously been hidden. Research by Oxford University and the County Museums Service 159

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes (Rowley, 1996) supported interpretive exhibitions, the first, for example, on archaeology, in 1995, curated by David Dawson. Despite these developments and greatly improved marketing, visitor numbers had fallen to 3040,000 per year; the County Council’s hopes of financial self-sufficiency were never achieved and in the stringent cut backs of the late ‘90s the management and funding responsibility of Cogges was transferred to the District Council (incorporating various service agreements with the county museums service). In this new environment of ‘leisure and tourism’ Cogges might have thrived, but financial pressures led the District to hand the site back after only 5 years. By this point, the County Council had little patience for continuing support; Cogges hobbled on uncertainly until the very severe cuts of 2009. A politically led decision at that time led to the determination to seek an independent operator for the site – with a limited cash offer to underpin the operating costs for the first three years. Although there were serious expressions of interest from two ‘commercial’ operators, after a lengthy and difficult period of further uncertainty, it was decided to transfer the site to a new independent charitable trust; one stipulation was that a Community Enterprise Group that had also expressed interest in the site, should be represented on the trust, in part to ensure a strong link to the immediate community. 2011 saw the trust experiment with a number of fresh ideas – farmers’ markets, an ‘artisan bread’ cafe, and artist-led workshops for children and families. In 2012 the dismal summer weather hit visitor numbers and income targets. The future is uncertain but the trust remains inspired by a powerful vision and the encouragement of the community; what emerges may not be much like a ‘traditional’ museum, but here, as at other rural sites of this kind, it is the quality of the site that provides the venue for a whole range of experiences engaging people in rural issues. SRLM, within Somerset County Council’s heritage services, faces similar challenges. The question of whether to transfer the organisation to ‘trust status’ in order to manage the whole group of services is now under

consideration; and meanwhile innovative and energising ideas for development await funding decisions. The Friends and the community maintain their strong support. Museums of rural life now have the opportunity to engage with topics as diverse as green energy, badger culling, planning legislation, factory-scale dairy farms, and food miles whilst reflecting on the farming and daily life practices of the past as illustrated by their collections. Interpretation and curation requires a breadth of knowledge and understanding – and the presentation of multiple viewpoints. The debates are vigorous and exhilarating and the museums will succeed if they can pick up some of these themes and promote informed reflection on them. Clearer links between farming practice, technology and the food we actually eat could help to bridge the gap between a museum visit and day to day life; analysis of the history of food, for example, reveals fascinating details - in 1900, and apparently entirely as a result of diet, ‘boys of 10 – 12 at private schools were on the average five inches taller than those in council schools’ (Drummond, 1959, 405) – how has Jamie Oliver’s campaign for improved school meals over recent years affected children’s physical growth and learning? In the 1970s and ‘80s educators were concerned about the disconnection between children and the countryside; if anything that disconnection has increased and rural museums, together with forest schools, city farms and gardens, can work to improve children’s understanding. Whilst addressing these big and fundamental issues rural museums need to become, as Fisher’s focus groups identified (Fisher, 2006), more fun, brighter and tempting (to get away from their current image as ‘sad’, ‘old’ and ‘brown’); Fisher points to some of the ways to achieve this – by challenging people, piquing their curiosity, surprising them. Some of this, and the opportunities of new media technologies to tailor interpretation to the individual needs and interests of the visitor, applies across the whole museum sector, but rural museums have special opportunities – for example to show the whole story (of sheep to shawl or wheat to bread), to link that with our lives and health, and to reflect on how all of these things affect the countryside, the environment, the world and all our futures.

160

Martyn Brown: Baler twine and old rope: museums of agriculture and rural life Bibliography Anon. 2012, www.wikipedia.org/george henri riviere Anon. 2012, About us. The history of Colonial Williamsburg www.colonialwilliamsburg.com. Anon., 2012 www.imc-ip.pt. Anon. 2012, www.reading.ac.uk/merl. Anon., 2012, www.eastanglianlife.org.uk. Brown, M., and Heeley, A., 1978. John Hodges, Friends of the Abbey Barn, Glastonbury Drummond, J.C., and Wilbraham, A., 1959. The Englishman’s Food, Jonathan Cape, London Fisher, S., 2006. Towards a new territory, Rural Museums Network, Reading mb associates, 2011. Investing in Culture and Community, MEAL, Stowmarket Nietzsche, F., 1968. Thus spake Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman, Viking Press, New York. Petch, A., 2005. www.prm.ox.ac.uk/pittriver. Rowley, T., and Steiner, M., eds, 1996, Cogges Manor Farm, Witney, University of Oxford and Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford. Schumacher, E.F., 1973. Small is beautiful, Blond and Briggs, London. Seymour, J., 1976. The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency, Faber and Faber, London. Steane, John M. (Ed.). 1984. Cogges A guide to the museum and village. Cogges Agricultural Heritage Museum Association Limited. Titchmarsh, A., 2012, Waitrose Weekend, 5 July.

161

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 1. The Garden of Cogges Manor Farm, Witney, about 2000 (Photo: Oxfordshire County Council).

Fig 2. Cogges kitchen, about 2005 (Photo: Oxfordshire County Council). 162

Martyn Brown: Baler twine and old rope: museums of agriculture and rural life

Fig 3. An open day at Cogges, about 2005 (Photo: Oxfordshire County Council).

163

Returning home: revitalising a historic house through past occupants’ lives Val Bott

Inspired in part by working on a project with John Rhodes in 2006, and informed by co-ordinating the refurbishment of Hogarth’s House in 2008-11, this essay considers how visitors make meaning of a historic house. Famous people’s homes often turn their back on all occupants except their celebrity residents, yet biographical, historical and architectural information can feed the imagination to tell the whole story of a historic house.

Introduction In 2006 a team led by the late John Matthews advised the volunteer-run Cowper & Newton Museum in Olney, Buckinghamshire, on planning its future. John Rhodes and Crispin Paine explored and evaluated the buildings and the collections respectively, to write a conservation management plan, while I worked with the museum team, devising new concepts for interpretation. John Matthews examined the tourism and community visitor potential, audience development and business planning. The Museum was expecting to raise a daunting sum to build an extension, but from our work emerged a more nuanced approach. In the event, when the last substantial collection of Cowper papers came onto the market at that time, the Museum applied successfully for an HLF grant for this acquisition instead of an extension. This funding brought them a curator on a fixed-term contract, whose role was to catalogue and interpret the new collection; by chance this made possible the implementation of some of our proposals at a modest cost. A strong vision emerged from the work by John Rhodes and Crispin Paine, based upon the quality and range of the collections, the relative completeness of the buildings and their context in the local town and community. From this I found it easy to enthuse the museum team about providing a new interpretation. The museum occupies two 17th century houses, amalgamated in the early 1700s, overlooking Olney’s market place and a garden. The property had a bigger story to tell than just that of the poet William Cowper and his friend John Newton. Without the local history context there was little sense of their lives there, why the buildings had survived to become a memorial and what the Museum could offer the community in the future. Besides archives, local history and lace, the collections included a remarkable range of objects associated with Cowper in particular, which attested to the affection and regard in which he was held. Contemporaries preserved mementoes, even a window shutter from another house, kept and never repainted because Cowper had written on it. Many items were presented when the museum was created on the centenary of Cowper’s death, with much more added in the century since. The resulting jumble of objects

was confusing rather than revealing - the most memorable exhibit was a taxidermied hare climbing through Cowper’s 18th century equivalent of a cat flap. Making meaning of the past Attempts to re-tell a joke or recount an amusing situation sometimes fail – “you had to be there” is often the narrator’s disappointed response to a listener who has simply not got the joke. Dara Ó Briain, the satirist and comedian, used this concept of “being there” when he re-opened Hogarth’s House in Chiswick in November 2011. He went on to speak knowledgeably about the powerful experience of walking in the steps of a specific person from the past. When a building is effectively an exhibit, being there matters. It was the same sense which emerged from our work at Olney. Today, when the most modest of achievements prompts instant fame, it is easy to forget that the concept of celebrity is an old one, and commemorating heroes and heroines through mementoes has a long tradition. For example, artists have for centuries taken palettes and paint-boxes from the studios of deceased artists. The Royal Academy has a stunning collection to prove it; for example, J. M. W. Turner preserved Hogarth’s palette and presented it to them. Many of us fondly keep objects as reminders of family members. Sometimes this extends to maintaining an entire home, as in the case of Linley Sambourne’s house in Kensington and Emery Walker’s home in Hammersmith, which must at times have been wearying for the devoted descendants who made little mark on such homes, while continuing to live in them. There has been most interest in preserving the homes of writers in Britain, while those of artists and musicians are far fewer. Shakespeare’s birthplace was purchased as a national memorial in 1847 and Milton’s Cottage was acquired by public subscription in 1887. Carlyle’s House followed in 1895, Samuel Johnson’s birthplace in 1901, and his London home in 1911. These homes were seen as symbols of tradition, a source of national pride and a means of celebrating past occupants’ achievements. Preservation was often triggered by the threat of loss, but how we care for, manage and present such houses today requires more than simple memorialising.

165

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes “Saving” Hogarth’s House in 1901 followed this pattern. An energetic group of writers and artists, many of them residents of the newly-built bohemian suburb of Bedford Park, set up a Preservation Committee in 1901 when rapid suburban development all around them fostered fears that the House and garden would be sold as building land. When they raised only £472 of their £1,500 target, it was left to a wealthy local man to buy the House, restore it, acquire a print collection and open it to visitors, all at his own expense. In 1909 he made a charitable gift of it to Middlesex County Council. This story was told in 2004 in a small exhibition marking the centenary of the opening of the House as a museum. The activities which accompanied the exhibition that summer drew in a new audience, and conversations with them explored what would make their visit more enjoyable. The response showed that they longed to make more sense of the House as a home, particularly if they were visiting with children. In addition they were curious about everyone who might have lived there, and not just the Hogarth family. At Home with the Hogarths The Hogarth’s House refurbishment took this title to emphasise the new approach. William Hogarth and his family remained central to the project, but we wanted to tell the stories of as many residents of the House as possible. An accurate history of the building was needed, instead of the much repeated brief account used in successive guide books since the 1950s. Following the Rhodes/Paine approach, detailed research was essential and proved not only informative but also inspiring. The opening up of archival resources through the digitisation of catalogues, and sometimes of the records themselves, has proved a godsend, enabling us rapidly to make connections and tell many new stories - I hope John would have been impressed! Now, instead of concentrating only on the lifetime of the artist, the whole of his household has a place in the story that is told. The Hogarths acquired the House in 1749, and a rise in its rateable value shows that they immediately extended it. After Hogarth died in 1764 his large household of women stayed on: his wife Jane, her mother Dame Judith Thornhill and cousin Mary Lewis, Hogarth’s sister Anne, and a family friend Julian Bere, a wealthy spinster. There were servants (depicted with affection in a portrait in Tate Britain), and Foundling Hospital children stayed in the summer. Perhaps this explains why Hogarth had a painting room over his stable at the bottom of the garden to which he could retreat. By chance we discovered a watercolour sketch of it, by then in use as a hen house, shortly before it fell down in the 1860s. The parish rate books show another increase in value in 1770, when Mrs Hogarth added a single-storey service wing and re-arranged the ground floor to make a single large dining room. Part of this room’s panelling is different from that in other rooms, which suits the 1770s date. On Jane’s death aged 80 in 1789 Mary Lewis inherited the House, remaining there

until she died in 1808. All except Julian Bere are buried in the Hogarth family tomb nearby. Further research explored the residents of 18th century Chiswick, using wills in The National Archives and sources such as the Land Tax and family history records available via ancestry.co.uk. The Hogarth women appear as witnesses and receive bequests in the wills of local people; in one Jane is remembered for her kindness to a child. She also subscribed to the charity school. Julian Bere witnessed the will of an owner of one of Chiswick’s two substantial breweries, and his manager turned out to have lived next door to Hogarth’s House - did these friends inspire Hogarth’s Beer Street print? And we have resolved the question of why the Hogarths chose Chiswick. Not only was the parish fashionably healthy but it was close to London and to the royal court at Kew, easily accessible by the Bath road or the Thames. Many London families had second homes there. Hogarth’s friend Dr Thomas Morell, secretary to the Society of Antiquaries and one of Handel’s librettists, had married a local woman and lived nearby, while Mary Lewis’ brother John lived in the bustling market town of Brentford, the next town upriver. The absence of personal possessions was disappointing until we discovered that Mary Lewis had kept the family mementos. A Victorian granite merchant from Aberdeen by name of William Hogarth was convinced (incorrectly) that he was a descendant. He paid for the restoration of the Chiswick tomb and purchased the family mementos from the family of one of Mary’s nephews. One of his descendants presented them to Aberdeen City Art Gallery, in 1939 and now Mary Lewis’s initialled lapis lazuli snuffbox and her ring in memory of Jane, Hogarth’s small portable chest of colours, a punch bowl, gaming counters, a seat cushion and the stand on which Hogarth’s pug’s drinking bowl stood have returned to the House, on loan, for the first time since 1808. The Mr Ruperti who sold the House to the Hogarths is now known to be the son of a Lutheran minister, previously unrecognised as being significant in the history of the House. The Rev. George Andrew Ruperti came to London from Brunswick in 1707, helped care for an influx of Palatine refugees in 1709, and was made Lutheran minister to the royal family at St James’s in 1717, about the time he became the first owner of the House. His portrait, traced to a modern Lutheran church in Bloomsbury, and the catalogue of his library, sold over 7 days in 1732 in a Covent Garden coffee house round the corner from the young Hogarth’s then home, have been copied for display. Nineteenth century occupants also proved to be of great interest. The Rev. Henry Francis Cary became curate of Chiswick Parish in 1814 and moved in with his family. A poet from childhood, he spent years on a highly regarded translation of Dante’s Inferno, which only became a bestseller after it was promoted by Coleridge and praised 166

Val Bott: Returning home: revitalising a historic house through past occupants’ lives by Ugo Foscolo, not only for the quality of the translation but also for the sensitivity of the verse. Later Assistant Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, he was buried in Westminster Abbey. His son wrote a fine memoir of his father which included a description of the garden and listed the books he read and travels he made. The house was let from the 1840s. The melodramatic actor Newton Treen ‘Brayvo’ Hicks lived there in retirement in the 1860s. Famous enough in his day to be the subject of little prints showing him in character, his plays were issued in edited versions for performances in miniature theatres in early Victorian parlours. He is now represented by a fine model theatre made by Horatio Blood. Census records and street directories have enabled us to name later tenants. When The Graphic bemoaned the treatment of the House in 1874, it included a composite print of Hogarth’s House. We can now name the pigkeeper and dairywoman shown in the print as Mrs Clack, who shared the House with a nurseryman’s family. And two elderly local residents, a brother and sister, contacted us just before the House closed for the refurbishment. They were the children of Albert Diddams, the 1930s caretaker, who sheltered in the cellar of the House when it was damaged by a landmine in 1940 and never went back to live there. They left at the ages of 4 and 6, with memories of their mother’s pies made from what they knew as Hogarth’s mulberry tree, and allowed us to copy family snapshots taken there. This range of past residents offers links to different points in time, and appeals to the varied interests of visitors. How then to present the House and its stories? The rooms are too small to be completely furnished, but have been given as domestic a mood as possible while still offering museum interpretation. Floors of wide oak boards have been uncovered and fireplaces unboarded, 18th century ceramics were purchased to dress the original built-in buffet, replica chairs and tables from 1904 are carefully placed around the rooms, muslin drapes hang at the large oriel window, reducing sunlight and softening the view over the garden, while replicas of Hogarth’s portraits of his sisters hang from velvet ribbons over a fireplace. Beautiful copies of the clothes Hogarth wore in his 1757 self-portrait hang in a closet - only children can try them on as he was less than 5 feet tall. Softly coloured graphic panels float on steel fittings in front of the panelling, honestly modern but not visually intrusive against the grey paint. The stone finials found in the shrubbery have been reinstated on one set of gate piers and replicas of the fine lead urns presented by Garrick have been placed at another. Objects in four showcases are individually labelled, with laminated sheets of large-print labels and information cards offered in every room. The paint analysis report and Ruperti’s book catalogue can be read at the dining room table. Two computers carry rich information, maps and images to explore, along with a digital “walk-through” reconstruction of the House, useful for all but especially

for those unable to make it up the steep stairs. Life-size cut-out images of children from his prints accompany a panel on Hogarth’s love of children, with recorded sound of young voices at play, and baskets of traditional toys to handle nearby. Today’s visitors respond warmly to the refurbishment and the new presentation of the life of the House, with just under 4,800 visitors in the last year before closure and over 11,000 in the first year since re-opening in November 2011. Local people are well represented in this new audience, yet before the closure hardly any of them visited, and they are returning to share the House with their visiting friends and relatives. Occasional workshops for up to 10 adults in the new study room have proved very successful, covering such themes as Hogarth’s Chiswick, understanding an 18th century house, discovering historic clothes from Hogarth’s images and the history of Hogarth’s garden. Hounslow Council has increased the opening hours, is now employing a site manager in succession to the fixed-term contract outreach post funded by HLF, and all is looking well. Presenting other historic homes A number of comparable historic houses have received HLF investment in the last decade or so. To conclude it is worth considering their approach. Handel’s Brook Street, London, home from 1723 until his death in 1759 became a museum in 2001. This house and its neighbour had changed considerably, with businesses in the lower floors. A substantial “scholarly recreation” of the house in the 1720s has seen partitions removed, period fireplaces and new panelling installed, in rooms painted with a lead grey found in paint analysis. The inventory taken at Handel’s death has defined room uses; a grand replica bed stands in one room and a harpsichord in another, but there is no access to the ground floor areas still occupied by commercial tenants. Interpretation is minimal, with little sense of the whole life of the house except that Jimi Hendrix briefly lived next door in the 1960s. A laudable programme of performances brings 18th century music to the House, though when I visited there was no music at all, a curiously impersonal experience. Keats House opened to visitors in 1925 and refurbishment was completed in 2009. The poet lived there during 18181820, when it was two separate houses disguised as a single villa. The rooms house furniture, paintings, prints and personal mementoes from Keats and other residents. His works is represented in manuscripts and printed books, his person in a touching death mask. Paint analysis has successfully inspired paint colours and wallpapers used in the new decor. The cellar kitchens have been carefully dressed. A replica of Fanny Brawne’s clothing hangs on a dummy upstairs. Visitors receive a folded sheet to guide them but there are no display labels - information is offered instead on laminated cards. The shop has books 167

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes on 18th century London, interior design and Keats and his circle. There is more sense of a life here than in Handel’s House, despite the brevity of the Keats connection. The Charles Dickens Museum in Doughty Street, London, occupies the writer’s home of 1837-9. Opened in the 1920s its refurbishment was completed in December 2012, Dickens’ bicentenary year. The presentation assumes visitors are familiar with Dickens’ stories and says little about the whole story of the house. Some rooms have Dickens’ furnishings, but a number of pieces carry brass plaques recording the donor’s name, which reduces the feel of authenticity. Too many approaches to interpretation are used, ranging from a small booklet lent to visitors to carry with them, through additional labels in Victorian typography propped on the furniture. One room has a garish time-line, another has dressing up clothes and a bedroom has walls and bedcover covered in quotations. There is a small cafe and a shop packed with books by and about the writer.

in August 2012. The Morris Family home of 1848-1856 lends itself well to public use, with spacious rooms to which a new exhibition gallery and cafe have been added. This is not a furnished house, but uses its tremendous collections to describe the house and its past occupants, to tell the story of the Morris family, and to celebrate Morris’ achievements in design, in his furnishing business, in book production and politics. There is a new café and a busy shop - Morris’s designs appeal to modern taste. Visiting these houses which commemorate individuals confirms the need for contextual information to enrich the experience. Expecting visitors to have advance knowledge of the subject, whether musician, writer or designer, risks creating a sense of exclusion amongst those who do not know, rather than a welcome to those who want to find out. John Rhodes’ thorough approach to contextualisation offers lessons for everyone.

Walthamstow’s William Morris Gallery opened on the centenary of his birth in 1934; its ambitious makeover, along with works in the adjoining park, were completed

168

Val Bott: Returning home: revitalising a historic house through past occupants’ lives

Fig 1. Hogarth’s “bedroom”, with his replica clothes in the closet. The furniture was made in 1904 and the room is hung with Hogarth’s prints series, The Harlot’s Progress and Marriage a la Mode (Photo: Katri Salonnen).

Fig 2. Amongst

objects preserved by

Mary Lewis

and her relatives was this wooden stool, accompanied by a note

Hogarth’s pug dog’s drinking bowl was placed (Photo: Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums).

stating that it was the stand on

169

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 3. Newton Treen ‘Brayvo’ Hicks was one of the past residents included in the new presentation of the House. A very accurate replica of an early Victorian model theatre was made by Horatio Blood; the figures, scenery and a script all represent a play for which Hicks was famous in his day (Photo: Anna Kunst).

170

A democratising of heritage service over four decades: the people of ‘Anyplace’ and their visitors Brian Durham The past is not what it used to be. The Viking in England, once a ruthless pillager dripping with blood and silver is now portrayed as an economic migrant, coloured in pastel. Richard of York is no longer a monster. How did this happen? This paper looks at changes in UK heritage services over the professional careers of John Rhodes and the author, in search of a trend. Is there a wider message in the demise of the antiques trade, the rise of TV heritage, changes to the treatment of `audience’ in museums, management structures within field heritage services? And if the past is different now, is it better? That judgement will come from the consumer, the inhabitant of `Anyplace’ and his/her visitors.

Introduction: common threads in heritage investigation and presentation If the past is not what it used to be, one might of course reasonably ask if it had ever been totally credible, i.e. would the historical certainty of one’s schooling have been recognised by an eyewitness? True the past that was taught to the author is now slightly longer, by half a century, but more importantly it is now more amenable to constructive criticism – deviate from perceived wisdom then and one was challenged, follow perceived wisdom now and one will be called, well, ‘boring’. So has something happened which means that the perceived story of mankind no longer needs to be choreographed centrally? Did the past come of age? And at the material level, did the exotic gradually cease to be the province of the wealthy collector creating his own market (Galbraith 1990)? And if there was a change, is it sufficiently quantifiable to tell if demystification is progressive or simply cyclical? The general question is addressed here from different perspectives: the purpose of heritage services; their resourcing; and the delivered message. For a memorial volume it is apposite that this study should focus on the professional terrain both of the deceased and of the present writer. John Rhodes, though Leeds born, pursued his academic and professional life mainly within Oxfordshire or just beyond its boundary in Reading, whereas the Buckinghamshire-born, `Estuary’-bred writer began his academic life in Reading before similarly spending most of his professional life in Oxfordshire. Rhodes was a historian, the writer a scientist, a difference to which I will return later, because the theme of this paper, a putative democratising of heritage, possibly conceals a more fundamental change in perception, tending towards a rationalising of personal and global heritage. Oxfordshire is not overly influenced by urban population foci, but it possesses a diversity of museum types, local, academic and specialist, wherein we can look for trends in the understanding of the human story. So what factors might be at play in demystification? Travelling to conferences around 21st-century Europe there is much to suggest that, whether or not UK heritage has got it

right, at least it has got it distinctively different, and often loudly different from the Continent and perhaps much of the western world. In the investigative field the UK is comparatively unconstrained by nationalist dogma, and while in the presentational field we are sometimes outshone by the spacious or the exquisite elsewhere, we may have a feeling for what is important to a community and its story. Our Central England subject area happily ducked the phase of analytical weirdness such as happened in Cambridge, the belief that there was (or was not) a `process’ in human social evolution which was acted out by agents rather than by people (Bailey, Renfrew et al. 2005). Oxfordshire’s heritage servants of the 1970s, when both Rhodes and the writer entered the ring, hovered between the legacy of university-based pioneers like Leeds and Jope (Jope 1956), and the new socialising ministry in the Cook, Benson and Foster era (pers. comm. James Bond). These were unified by a fledgling geographical information system, the Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) held at the Oxford City and County Museum (OCCM), Woodstock, the prototype of systems now found globally (Benson 1972). Within this study area what different signals might be received from a progressive as opposed to cyclical change in the `democratising’ (i.e. making communally accountable) of heritage services, both `investigative’ (i.e. field archaeology) and `presentational’ (i.e. museums)? Signals need to: •

transcend independent democratising processes like the growth of the Internet;

•

transcend discreet patronage from the great and the good;

•

transcend directives from the heritage regulator (HR) of the day, successively Ministry of Works; Department of the Environment; English Heritage;

•

take note of heritage appetite inferred from investment of money in visual media like the History Channel and Time Team (Aston, 2002).

171

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes The following account is framed around these criteria, and asks whether society is getting what it wants and needs? If not, is it getting value for money anyway? Does the customer come back for more, or is heritage a once-for-all service under the law of diminishing returns? Four decades of Oxfordshire heritage delivery: aims, resourcing and presentation John Rhodes held his first professional heritage appointment at Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum in 1969, and moved to be a curator at OCCMS in 1972. By 1972 the writer was an Assistant Field Officer for Oxford Archaeological Excavation Committee, an educational charity which maintained an urban digging team through the year. In the field it was beginning to be recognised not only that significant results were coming, but that there was a lot to be lost. There followed the proposition that field archaeology `units’ would be needed, based on a reorganised local government framework (Cunliffe 1974). By this stage OCCM was eight years old, inevitably more confident than the new Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit

because it was using a museum model that had been around for three centuries (MacGregor 2008) while professional field archaeology was still on a steep learning curve. In Oxfordshire both services were guided by committees of distinguished academics and pillars of the community who, certainly for the field sector, were well able to add the weight of experience. Early days – the 1970s The urban investigative process for Oxford had been guided by a published research framework (Benson and Cook 1967), and progress was reviewed annually (Hassall 1986). At Woodstock Richard Foster (taking over from Jean Cook in 1970) with Don Benson had encouraged new curators to develop displays on social history themes, and handbooks with which to navigate them. (Fig 1). The research vision followed themes developed by W.G. Hoskins for landscape history, a nostalgic agenda railing against the `dismal illiberal life’ of the cities and against landscape changes as the countryside evolved to supply those cities (Hoskins 2005).

Fig 1: Detail from Jon Hall’s evocation of the St Frideswide legend, first displayed 1973 in the Museum of Oxford (Courtesy of Museum of Oxford and Jon Hall). 172

Brian Durham: A democratising of heritage service over four decades From the start of our study period, field investigation was becoming increasingly objectivised, with stratigraphic analysis (Harris 1974) and ceramic fabric analysis (Haldon and Mellor 1977). Extensive and intensive investigations could now be undertaken in a controlled way. But the funding was limited, and by 1978 government attempts to control UK inflation had led to economic collapse and stretched heritage budgets. Nos. 3-5 Luther Terrace, the Oxford office of the county field unit, endured the power cuts of the `winter of discontent’ with a bright yellow tarpaulin over its roof, a flag of distress to its landlord! Government needed to generate new employment, and programmes sponsored by the rejuvenated Manpower Services Commission brought new resources and new talents to the field. Also the Rescue movement and the increasing professionalising of archaeology meant that planning control was already being applied on the ‘polluter pays’ principle (Hunter 1993). This in turn meant that museums needed a new role for the field officer, who was being called upon to use the SMR to arbitrate the importance of the putative heritage asset, which tended to be measured against the HR’s scheduling criteria (DCMS 2010). Taming the beast – the 1980s For museum curatorship, i.e. objects and structures, the mood of the 1980s is well encapsulated in a series of essays (Fleming, Paine et al. 1993). In introducing ten papers on `Interpretation’, Fleming expresses the democratising duty as follows:

Fig 2: A water-filled

Ultimately it is the most successful integrations (of sources) that produce the most effective explanations, providing that the nature and needs of our audiences are given their due primacy: interpretation is only worthwhile if the messages are received. The museum curator as interpreter must always ask the question – for whom? In that time of self examination one extreme of this debate was the British Museum, which unsurprisingly saw its audience as `the international community’, to be served through `sound learning’ (Wilson 1989). In the planning-driven arena, big excavations were increasingly undertaken within public gaze (London, York), though not necessarily the Oxford sites because Oxford’s archaeology was tending already to target select sites based on experience gained in the late 60s and 70s. Henceforward the local sites that were investigated most thoroughly were those that filled an unsentimental gap in understanding how Oxford had developed (Fig 2). For the county there were ever larger commercial and residential sites and gravel operations, and archaeology learnt to interpret the gravels (e.g (Allen and Robinson 1993). This landscape had originally been made cultivable by the arrival of 300mm of windblown material as the ice receded. However settlement sites were subsequently homogenised by further cultivation leaving only those structures that had historically been dug more than 300mm into the ground, a very challenging landscape where outcomes did not always link to real cultural gains.

Oxford’s St Aldates Police Station, Times, 8 January 1988 - the present author protests `Not me, guv!’ (courtesy of Newsquest Oxfordshire).

archaeological trench in the yard of

173

published

Oxford

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes New horizons – the 1990s Moving to the nineties, a new decade of heritage service could not have been more dramatically heralded than by two events. On 16 November in Switzerland BernersLee and Cailliau published a proposal that heralded a freeing up of information globally, coining the term World Wide Web, while five days later in England a new planning instrument was unveiled as PPG16 (BernersLee and Cailliau 1990); (Brenan 1994). This was a heroic period for the HR, PPG16 was the most concise and ironically the most long-lived of its 25 planning guidance siblings, perhaps owing to its simplicity and lack of statutory enforcement, which demanded reasonableness in its application - like la Fontaine’s reed, on doit plie mais ne rompte pas (Wainwright 2000). And it proved immensely robust; no planning decision was overturned on archaeological grounds. Its requirement of `preserving archaeological remains in situ‘ (PARIS) offered a moral benchmark (Gregory and Matthiesen 2012); and its free market-based business model for dealing with any asset considered unworthy of PARIS ensured a revenue stream for the new knights errant, the contractors and consultants. Field investigation results were processed in accordance with the HR’s `Management of Archaeological Projects’ (MAP2), forcing pragmatism upon all concerned, as the merits of preservation were debated (Andrews 1995). A new jargon term,`preservation by record’, offered the necessary safety valve, generating mountains of `grey literature’ holding the message, but it could scarcely be called democratically accessible, and because it used the aged HR criteria as the test of significance it made little concession to the common man. In parallel museums were evolving a new funding stream, the Heritage Lottery Fund, which from 1994 was successor to the National Heritage Memorial Fund. At time of writing it disburses 5.6% of what is spent on National Lottery tickets in UK (HLF 2013). HLF funding committed museums to create community-relevant displays (pers. comm. Sarah Gray); their relevance was driven mainly via the political agenda of the government of the day, rather than by the demands of charitable status or by the needs of the common man (pers. comm. Stephen Johnson). A new millennium, bedding in Thus the formula expressed in the Oxford City Council planning process, protection of the historic environment of the people of Oxford and their visitors, had seen an unchallenged implementation of preservation in situ or by record. Our fourth decade, into the 21st century, saw the appearance of `Power of Place’, the outcome of an industry-wide survey by the HR. One of its recommendations was to: Find out what people value about their historic environment and why, and take this into account in assessing significance. (EnglishHeritage 2000). This represented a step change from the HR’s `criteria’, in that community appetite now counted for

something. A decade of grey literature was starting to be synthesised in monographs and reviews (Hey 2004, Booth, Dodd et al. 2007). Curatorial best practice was set out for the challenging urban sector (Durham, Ayers et al. 2007). A new instrument was appearing, the Conservation Plan, and here we find Rhodes recognising the significance of Oxford Castle to `the pride and identity’ of `the people of the County and City’ (Rhodes 2002). By 2007 the HR published `Valuing our Heritage’, which included the task of `Reaching people’: The heritage sector has made good progress in democratising heritage, broadening audiences and improving the service to the public. The `Taking Part’ survey shows that very high numbers of people visit and enjoy historic places, including amongst priority groups. However there is still a significant gap between the proportion of the overall population engaging with heritage and the proportion of people from priority groups. To maintain momentum and close this gap further there is a need for investment in … (four areas) (EnglishHeritage 2007). Accountable vocabulary is beginning to be employed, but the remit has a flavour of the marketing consultant, and remains way behind the museum sector in asking `whose heritage is it anyway?’. Meantime the global economic crisis of 2007 limited the ability of the planning process to require expensive investigative options. In the museum world by 2012 Ambrose and Paine were able to include a generous and thoroughly democratic section `Museums are for people’. Thus they cautioned: Internationally there is a growing awareness of (the museum’s) historic role in maintaining the cultural values of elite or privileged groups in society…. Museum users are (however) increasingly expecting a greater degree of representation in the work of museums (Ambrose and Paine 2012). The writer retired from Oxford City Council in August 2008, while Rhodes had been working at Oxford Archaeology on the day of his death in August 2011. Discussion: Is `democratisation’ true accountability or simply `dumbing down’? It has been a privilege to interview former colleagues on the evolution of Oxfordshire heritage services over four decades, set in a national and sometimes European perspective. Clearly there are still ambiguities within the term `democratisation’, but its use in both the mature museums sector and the nascent investigative trades may be helpful in identifying basic patterns applicable to both, and in distinguishing the democratising signals from bigger economic and political cycles, and from the effects of global technological changes.

174

Brian Durham: A democratising of heritage service over four decades For museums the wind-change becomes explicit between 1993 and 2012, as if the formal recognition of service to an audience had grown significantly in two decades (Fleming, Paine and Rhodes 1993, Ambrose and Paine 2012). This is placed in a wider context by a perceptive review of some North Italian museums that have gently evolved from 19thcentury patronage to reflect the `muse’ of their respective communities (Cova 2010). Elsewhere pro-active thinking has been used in assessing how to generate new visitor interest in a Spanish industrial heritage asset, where a study concluded that `Identity and community are decisive factors to understand the development of heritage tourism’, in the sense that the material asset is nothing without a community to give it relevance (Ballesteros and Ramırez 2007). Oxfordshire is home to the oldest public museum in the world, the Tradescant collection having been acquired by Elias Ashmole and transferred from Lambeth to a purpose-built Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in 1683. In the subsequent 330 years one should clearly allow for the possibility that duty to audience had been developing as an informal understanding. Thus the Ashmolean’s future is projected as `… being involved in contemporary preoccupations’ (MacGregor 2001), perhaps being the best antidote to institutional `self obsession and fruitless navel-gazing’ (MacGregor 2008), 297). Display as the personal statement of the curator certainly lives on (pers comms Tim Knox, Marion Campbell) - John Rhodes is likewise remembered as possessing real knowledge with humility, but holding his knowledge lightly (pers. comm. S Gray). He took responsibility, and even if there was sometimes `silliness in the

back row’ he was an active part of what we have seen to be a movement towards audience accountability, the democratising of social history. Is a similar trend apparent in field studies? Perhaps it would be optimistic to expect three centuries of museum evolution to be telescoped into four decades of professional archaeology, and initially at least the `rescue’ ethic was masking any need for public involvement in choosing which site to excavate and which not. There was an attempt to `dig’ it all, with no reluctance to exploit prurient interest in burials etc. But by the 1980s Oxfordshire fieldwork was increasingly establishing responsible ground rules for identifying informative accumulations, pristine layering in an urban context, or a rural deposit with `time-depth’ from being sealed by an earthwork. Surely it was no coincidence that Time Team’s lead analyser and arbiter of good practice had cut his teeth at OCCMS (Aston 2002). This then was the sort of momentum that had demanded heroism of the HR in combining the ethics of museum curation and environmental conservation in an entirely pragmatic way. The approach was viewed with dismay by neighbouring nations whose archaeologists felt this was targeted destruction on an industrial scale (pers comm. Nathan Schlanger). UK archaeology had become a `business’, responsible and accountable with its own democratising ethos, a business that worked, as witness the discovery of the Oxford Henge by successive collaboration of a charity, a commercial and a local authority, surviving amongst worked-out 18thcentury gravel pits just as an Oxford college prepared to build over it (Fig 3).

Fig 3: The footprint of the Oxford henge (foreground), supposing it had survived to 1675, overlaid on Loggan’s Map. Might this huge ditched and embanked space have been the traditional meeting place of the Northgate hundred court? Could that explain why the main roads respect it, and the outer Civil War trace seems to enclose it? (montage by present author) 175

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Conclusions: UK heritage service has become significantly `democratised’ We are all storytellers, it is simply our sources that differ. Some tell from the heart, some borrow stories from others and retell them, some delve into written sources, some use the entrails of animals, some the entrails of the Earth. But why? Are we looking for a deeper truth about ourselves, or are we serving a need for understanding amongst those around us? We find that in the four decades of John Rhodes’ professional career, museum practice has moved significantly in the direction of public accountability and of democratisation. This was in part in order to satisfy the aims of successive governments, but there is some suggestion that museums were engaging directly with their communities without central guidance. When set against the 350 years of traditional museum provision in Oxfordshire the paper does not find sufficient quantitative data to determine whether this is a progressive move in the direction of social accountability or simply random cycling between the communal and the elite, and it also allows for the possibility that museums had always been serving their communities soto voce. In parallel, the same four decades have seen virtually the whole life-span of professional field archaeology,

described here as the `investigative’ component of heritage service. As such, the first two decades are seen as a rapid process of professionalization, building to a `heroic’ phase within the arm of national administration which had responsibility for high level regulation. The success of this phase is seen as creating a self-regulating mechanism, meaning that the national body could itself stand back and concentrate on a series of review documents, becoming increasingly a spectator. Meanwhile the centre ground had been occupied by local authority planning-led field archaeology, by TV series, by community archaeology and by a return to the voluntary sector. The term `historic environment’ is used by the national body, but articulated in ever less convincing language, as if the concept of an `environment’ was unfamiliar, especially a relatively complex one like a `historic’ environment. Some of this might be attributed to a classical or historical training amongst the administration, which tended towards the `inward-looking, precious and scholarly’ (pers. comm. Stephen Johnson). Or it might simply be that professionals need practice in articulating the issue that presumably guides everything they do. Either way, on present progress it could be another decade before a truly bottom-up social accountability holds sway. Come that day, presenters and investigators will find themselves united in servicing the `historic environment of the people of [Anyplace] and their visitors’.

176

Brian Durham: A democratising of heritage service over four decades Bibliography: Allen, T. G. and M. Robinson (1993). The Prehistoric Landscape and Iron Age Enclosed Settlement at Mingies Ditch, Hardwick-with-Yelford, Oxon. Oxford, Oxford Archaeological Unit. Ambrose, T. and C. Paine (2012). Museum basics, Routledge. Andrews, G. and Thomas, R., (1995). The management of archaeological projects: theory and practice in the UK. Managing Archaeology. M. C. John Carman, Anthony Firth, David Wheatley. London, Routledge: 184-. Aston, M. (2002). Interpreting the landscape from the air. Stroud, Tempus. Bailey, G., et al. (2005). “Concepts of time.” Archaeology: the key concepts 268: 73. Ballesteros, E. R. and M. H. Ramırez (2007). “Identity and community—Reflections on the development of mining heritage tourism in Southern Spain.” Tourism Management 28: 677-687. Benson, D. (1972). “ A sites and monuments record for the Oxford region.” Oxoniensia 37: 226-237. Benson, D. and J. M. Cook (1967). City of Oxford redevelopment : archaeological implications. Oxford, Oxford City and County Museum. Berners-Lee, T. and R. Cailliau (1990). Proposal for a HyperText project, European Particle Physics Laborator (CERN). Booth, P., et al. (2007). Thames Through Time: The Early Historical Period AD 1-1000 Oxford, Oxford University School of Archaeology. Brenan, J. (1994). “PPG 16 and the restructuring of archaeological practice in Britain.” Planning Practice & Research 9 (4): 395-405. Cova, E. (2010). “Negotiating the past in the present: Italian prehistory, civic museums and cultural practice in Emilia-Romana, Italy.” European Journal of Archaeology 13 (3): 285-312. Cunliffe, B. W., T. Rowley and T. Hassall. (1974). “ The Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit” Antiquity xlvii: 9398. DCMS (2010). “Scheduled Monuments: Identifying, protecting, conserving and investigating nationally important archaeological sites under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.” Retrieved 9 March 2013, 2013, from http://www. english-heritage.org.uk/content/imported-docs/p-t/ scheduled-monuments.pdf. Durham, B., et al. (2007). “ALGAO:UK policy framework for urban places Draft 5.4.” Retrieved 23 February,

2013, from http://www.algao.org.uk/sites/default/files/ ALGAO_Urban_Policy_Framework.pdf. EnglishHeritage (2000). “Power of Place.” Retrieved 23 February, 2013, from http://www.english-heritage.org. uk/publications/power-of-place/. English Heritage (2007). Valuing our heritage. London, English Heritage. Fleming, David, Paine, Crispin and Rhodes, John. (1993). Social history in museums: a handbook for professionals. London, The Stationery Office. Galbraith, J. K. (1990). A Short History of Financial Euphoria. New York, Penguin Books Gregory, D. e. and H. e. Matthiesen (2012). “Preserving Archaeological Remains in Situ : Proceedings of the 4th International Conference.” Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 14 (1-4). Haldon, R. and M. Mellor (1977). “Late Saxon and medieval pottery, in B. Durham, `Archaeological investigations in St Aldates, Oxford’.” Oxoniensia 42: 111-139. Harris, E. C. (1974). “New method of stratigraphic synthesis.” Rescue News 8 (10). Hassall, T. G. (1986). Archaeology of Oxford City. In G. Briggs, J. M. Cook and T. G. Rowley, The archaeology of the Oxford region. Oxford, OUDES: 115-134. Hey, G. (2004). Yarnton: Saxon and Medieval Settlement and Landscape HLF (2013). “Heritage Lottery Fund - our background.” Retrieved 27 February, 2013, from http://www.hlf.org. uk/aboutus/Pages/OurBackground.aspx. Hoskins, W. G. (2005). The Making of the English Landscape. London, Hodder and Stoughton. Hunter, J. R. a. R., I.B.M. (eds), ( 1993). Archaeological Resource Management in the UK. Stroud, Alan Sutton. Jope, E. M. (1956). Dark-age Britain: Studies Presented to ET Leeds. Dark Age Britain. D. B. Harden, Methuen. MacGregor, A. (2001). The Ashmolean Museum: a brief history of the institution and its collections. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. MacGregor, A. (2008). Curiosity and enlightenment: collectors and collections from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. New Haven & London, Yale University Press. Rhodes, J. G. (2002). Oxford Castle: Conservation Plan. Oxford, Oxfordshire County Council. Wainwright, G. (2000). “Time please “ Antiquity 74 (286): 909-943. Wilson, D. M. (1989). The British Museum: purpose and politics. London: British Museum Publications Ltd. Acknowledgements James Bond; Sarah Gray; Stephen Johnson; Maureen Mellor; Adrian Olivier; David Radford; Steve Trow.

177

Empirical design as as a product of the logic of craftsmanship James Ayres

The structural sophistication of a late medieval English cathedral may be contrasted with the rather simple trabeated forms of classicism as interpreted by the Renaissance.1 Perhaps this was why the secular buildings that were constructed following the Reformation persisted with many of the basic values of the medieval tradition. If the influence of the Renaissance appears at all in early Tudor architecture it does so in relatively small details. By the seventeenth century this situation tended to be reversed – particularly after the Restoration of 1660.2 Within these evolving aesthetic beliefs the working craftsman often remained loyal to his one true faith – the tenets of his trade. This short essay aims to sample the persistence of tradition in a given craft and the importance of logistics in relationship to the supply of building materials. “History and art connect in the study of material culture”. From that ostensibly simple assertion Henry Glassie (1999 p.1) went on to add that “material culture records human intrusion in the environment.” 3 That intrusion was, by definition, man-made. It follows that, if we are to understand manual achievement, an understanding of how a given object was created is of primary importance. This is best understood by a hands-on experience of working a given material. In this respect Joseph Moxon’s Mechanic Exercises (1677/1703) was appropriately subtitled the Doctrine of Handy Works. In contradistinction to the many pattern books that were then available to the elite, Moxon’s publication was a craft manual, in the exact meaning of those words.4 In revealing the secrets of a series of trades5 he was taking advantage of legislation that was introduced to encourage the reconstruction of the City following the great Fire of London of 1666. These measures removed the restrictive practices of the Guilds and the confidential nature of a given art and mystery was   This is all rather broad brash but for a similar approach see F. Saxl and R. Wittkower British Art and the Mediterranean Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1940. 2   Despite Inigo Jones, English Palladianism was to be dependent upon a second coming to develop a true faith in this idiom. 3   See also Henry Glassie Pattern in the Material Culture of the Eastern United States, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1968. 4   These trade manuals increased in number in the eighteenth century and were numerous in the following century. 5   This question of secrecy may account for the anonymity of some of the earlier books of this kind – even when translated from Continental manuals. In the preface to Claude Boutet’s Art of Miniature Painting which was “Done from the Original French” by an unknown translator (in 1730) the author was at pains to “guard against any Offence which skillful Painters might be led to take at the Publication of this Assemblage of Instructions ...” 1

gradually lost. In earlier centuries manuscripts describing various trade processes and procedures were in circulation but they were confined to master craftsmen as samizdats.6 Moreover, there is some evidence that these were copied out and distributed across Europe.7 From the eighteenth century the printed trade manual was to become ever more significant. Their highly practical nature is reflected in Robert Dossie’s Handmaid to the Arts (1758) in which the pun is presumably intended. Despite these various written accounts words may only offer an approximation of instruction and were of little value in relationship to a craft training. For an apprentice, example was far more significant than precept. Besides, as Peter Burke has shown “craftsmen ... [are] better at using their hands than using words” (1978/1994 p.80). It therefore follows that the products of a particular craftsman are his means of communication – his form of documentation. So fundamental are the manual crafts that, in examining the things made by human hand, questions of geographical location, period of manufacture or stylistic idiom may be remarkably unimportant.8 For obvious reasons the skills that were deployed in working such materials as wood, stone or bronze are constant. Therefore the hand tools that were used through the centuries are no less enduring. Although Salaman (1974 Intro.) argued that woodworking “tools became increasingly differentiated after 1700” this was generally a matter of the numerous mutations that developed within a given species (e.g. moulding planes). The exploitation of stone and marble was dependent upon considerable social organisation in the development of quarries. For reasons of brevity I shall cite one example. Despite New England’s geological resources the early settlers were dependent for most of their building materials upon the virgin forests they encountered – hence “America’s   Aside from the well known manuals written in manuscript by Cennino Cennini (born c.1370) English examples include John Abbott of Frithelstock (1665) and John Martin of Watford (c.1700). More fragmentary evidence (on painting) from across Europe was collected by Mrs Merrifield (1846) and Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1847). 7   In 1410 Alcherius in Bologna commissioned a copy of “certain receipts lent me by Theodoric of Flanders, an embroiderer”, which Theodoric “had obtained in London in England” on the methods used to produce stained hangings – Eastlake 1847/1960, Vol I, p.95. 8   The water gilding applied to an ancient Egyptian coffin case, a medieval image or a Queen Anne mirror, involved the same basic materials, tools and procedures. 6

179

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Wooden Age” (Multhauf, 1976). This serves to explain how, since Classical Antiquity, various architectural forms were developed in timber and were only later translated into marble.9 Significantly the converse is almost never encountered. So what is the physical evidence to justify this succession of assertions? Numerous examples could be cited but a few specific instances should serve to provide an approximation of an answer. The evolution of the fielded panel in joinery offers a useful case history. In England these panels were generally derived from boards of quartered oak, riven or sawn. This was a method of dividing a log which resulted in boards of great stability but of very limited width. On the other hand their length could be considerable, as in a plank and muntin screen. In a typical scheme of panelling each panel was encompassed by the stiles and rails that were grooved to accommodate it. To ensure that the panel had liberty to move within this framing-up, the panel was bevelled on all four sides to a feather-edge on the back (see fig 1A and 1B). At some point, possibly in the early seventeenth century, this bevel migrated to the front where it evolved to form the familiar fielded panel, a decorative detail of practical origin. One of the earliest examples of this type of work known to the author is the 1638 screen in Sexey’s Hospital, Bruton, Somerset (fig 2). These panels in the almshouses retain the small dimensions of earlier centuries as was conditioned by the use of quarter-sawn timber. In keeping with craft tradition these issues were resolved on the joiner’s bench. From the fifteenth century the increasing availability of paper would10, in the long run, lead inexorably to ideas that sprang from the drawing board rather than the bench. One consequence of this was that large panels were introduced into schemes of wainscot at the behest of designers. Although these could be produced by means of a gluedup rub-joint, it is likely that joiners, brought up in the traditional values of their craft, would have been resistant to such innovations. One of the earliest examples of this trend may be the Haynes Grange Room from Bedfordshire. In this example large panels occupy the spaces between a series of pilasters. This Serlian scheme dates to between 1585 and 1620 and is exceptional in England – even at the latter end of that wide date range.11 Following the Restoration, and the influx of foreign ideas it brought in its train, large fielded panels became common as did their encompassing bolection mouldings.

  A very good example of this was drawn-up by the architect Raymond Erith (1904-1973) to demonstrate the likely timber origins of the Doric Order (Ayres, 1985, fig.16). 10   Arnold Pacey Medieval Architectural Drawing, Tempus, Stroud, 2007, pp.125, 157-8, 212. 11   The Haynes Grange Room, possibly from Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (W1 1929), London. Doors with fielded panels survive in Thorpe Hall (c.1656) near Peterborough – Nathaniel Lloyd, 1931, p.310. 9

Although the bolection moulding fell from favour towards the end of the first quarter of the 18th century the fielded panel long continued in use, especially for doors. The problem of water penetration when these panels were used externally could be considerable. This was a particular problem for the lower panels of external doors. Consequently it was considered best practice for panels at this level to be defined by a quirked bead which was more water resistant. So fundamental was this practical detail that it persisted, or was adapted, irrespective of the prevailing taste – from the Baroque through the Palladian to the Greek Revival and beyond. In that last phase the beads might be triplicated, but some tribute was offered to Antiquity by the placing of patera at the corners. In details such as these the good sense of the workshop trumps the aesthetics of the drawing office. Such values were placed in peril once details like the fielded panel were imitated as surface decoration in masonry (fig 6). Despite such corrupt usage it may be acknowledged that this feature could offer visual interest in locations like the aprons under the windows of a stone elevation. This was certainly the case in Bath and its environs in the opening decades of the eighteenth century. Here the softness of this freestone also saw the lavish use of coved, rather than modillioned, cornices and sash windows rebated behind bolection mouldings. This was, in effect, a new vernacular made possible by the nature of a given material. Such pragmatism was also present in relationship to the supply of building materials and the issues this raised with regard to on-site or off-site working. For example the framing yards enabled carpenters to prepare and assemble the components of a roof, or an entire timberframe building, off site. After temporary assembly in the yard a structure could be demounted, transported and then reassembled at the final destination. This could even extend to Norwegian timber that remained accessible in the winter months when the Baltic ports froze. Recent research has shown that in the seventeenth century Norwegian carpenters prepared pre-fabricated members for a roof, or even entire buildings, for export to Scotland, Iceland and elsewhere (Newland, 2011, p.77). In contrast to timber, stone is likely to be heavier and is certainly more brittle and less resilient. The question of onsite as opposed to off-site working is therefore of greater concern with masonry as compared with carpentry. With stonework off-site working adjacent to or near the head of the quarry, was always cheaper in terms of transport. This though increased the chances of damage to the work when in transit. Consequently high quality work on a building generally involved the transport, at great expense, of large blocks of unworked stone that were then masoned or carved on site or even in situ on the building (fig 4). Another reason for off-site working involved those stones that were so intractable that they were best worked by specialists – invariably local men who had wide experience of the stone in question. Generally speaking this situation concerned a group of glyptic materials that were so hard 180

James Ayres: Empirical design as a product of the logic of craftsmanship and dense that they would take a friction polish so as to resemble marble. Of these the jasper known as Tournai ‘marble’ (also known as Belgian black and touchstone) is an example. Quite apart from the difficulty of cutting this glass-like material its density explains its prodigious weight. For these reasons it is likely that the twelfth century Tournai columns in Iffley Church, Oxfordshire,12 and the well known font at Winchester Cathedral, were imported fully worked to minimise weight and thus the cost of transport. The fashion for this black ‘marble’ at this time may be attributed to the Bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois (d.1171). So important was this patron that in the 1160s the relevant trade guild in Tournai granted its brethren a dispensation to carry on their ‘business’ in Winchester (Crook, 1993, pp.72-79). This raises the question concerning what sort of ‘business’? For the practical reasons outlined above it is likely that their work in England was largely confined to fixing pre-made items in their native ‘marble’ – items such as the Winchester font. With the Plantagenet King John’s loss of territory in France (Jones, 2012, pp.166-169) the decline in the use of Tournai jasper was as inevitable as the burgeoning role of native ‘marbles’ like Purbeck. This hard Dorset limestone is composed of numerous freshwater fossils of shells set in a slightly softer matrix. In working this limestone these fossils may all too easily be ‘plucked’ out, disrupting an intended form or surface. Here again these difficulties were best met by specialists who were trained on this material and worked within the locality of the quarries close to the small town of Corfe. In these circumstances how are we to explain the reference, in the Westminster account of 1292, to masons with surnames like de Corfe (Knoop and Jones, 1933/1967, pp. 12, 68, 69, 132). Once again it is likely that these Dorset men were primarily concerned with fixing pre-worked stone, or they were using grub-saws to cut pre-polished slabs of Purbeck marble for the Cosmati work in the Abbey. Some authorities have argued for the presence of a London school of Purbeck marble sculptors (Stone, 1955, p.161). In support of this thesis reference was made to a series of effigies in Peterborough Cathedral (Prior and Gardner, 1912; and Aaron Andersson 1949). In 1961 it was established that the Peterborough sculptures were carved in conglomerate limestone that was saltwater formed and could not therefore be Purbeck13 (which was formed in freshwater – Ayres, 1961, p.31; Purcell, 1967, pp.71-75). The Peterborough effigies were in fact wrought in a ‘marble’ from the nearby quarries at Alwalton Lynch. Across England those limestones that could take a polish were so fashionable that in different   These columns are wrongly described as being of Purbeck marble in a number of reference books – e.g. Jenifer Sherwood and Nikolaus Pevsner Oxfordshire 2002 and Simon Jenkins England’s Thousand Best Churches, 1999. 13   James Ayres, unpublished thesis 1961, p.31. For this research, and with the support of George Zarnecki of the Courtauld Inst. and the cooperation of the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough Cathedral and their architect George Pace, a small sample of stone was ‘found’ on one of the effigies. This sample was then analysed by R.V. Melville of the Geological Museum, London.

regions alternatives were sought. In the North East the locally available Frosterley ‘marble’ was used in Durham Cathedral. In Sussex the so-called winklestone was close geographically and geologically to Purbeck and was widely used in the west of the county, as at Boxgrove Priory. This raises the possibility that such a fiendishly difficult material was worked by an outpost of the Corfe sculptors and masons. Because of the natural beauty of this range of hard limestones when polished they were left unpainted except for lettered inscriptions done with the brush and some possible parcel gilding14 (Ayres 1961). In effect, by leaving materials such as Alwalton, Frosterley and Purbeck visible, conspicuous consumption played its part, for these limestones were enormously expensive to work. Take, for example, the Purbeck marble shrine in St Michael’s Church, Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. This was almost certainly left unpainted on its completion in c.1305-11. In the later middle ages this shrine was reconstructed and placed on a new freestone plinth. To unify these disparate materials the entire edifice was painted (fig 7). With the increasing use of polychromatic treatment the incentive to select these unyielding ‘marbles’ had gone. At this point the very soft alabaster from the English Midlands came into widespread use. This was a sculptural material that was quick to work and therefore cheap whilst, at the same time, it took polychromy and gilding very well. Although alabaster is soft it possesses a clinging tenacity which imposed a very special technique. The specialist carvers that this necessitated were centred on Nottingham and Chellaston close to the alabaster quarries (Cheetham, 1984). Internal evidence and stylistic comparison suggests that woodcarving tools were used to cut alabaster15 (Stone, 1955, p.188). This circumstance opens up the possibility that a typical alabaster retable and its carved oak frame were, in some cases, the work of one hand. The colourful and flamboyant richness of the work of these midland sculptors, coupled with the relative cheapness of their products, resulted in export orders from across Europe – a classic example of off-site working. The cost of transport in early modern Europe was such that, from a logistical point of view, off-site working was the most cost effective. For this practical and economic reason this approach was to persist. A late sixteenth century example is Shaw House, Newbury, a prodigy house of the Smythson school (Girouard, 1983, pp.66-68). The house is built of brick with Headington and Bath stone dressings. Bath is some fifty miles overland from Newbury. The question of transport, coupled with some unfinished ‘returns’ on various masons’ mitres point to off-site working to minimise costs (Rhodes et al. 1998, 2000).

12

  Painted inscriptions produced entirely by brush were recorded on many of the medieval Purbeck marble tombs in Westminster Abbey (Ayres, 1961). These may not always have been coeval with the monuments on which they are located. 15   Stylistic affinities between English medieval alabaster sculptures and ivory carvings of the same period were identified by Lawrence Stone (1955, p.188). Ivory is carved by the same tools and much the same methods as those used for working wood. 14

181

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes The whole question of the relative benefits and disadvantages of off-site and on-site working was to be examined by the joiner and property developer John Wood the Elder (1704-1754) in his Description of Bath (1742, pp.97-98). In common with others he objected that masoned free stone was “carried, ready wrought, to the several Places where it was to be used in Buildings by which Means the sharp Edges and Corners of the Stones are generally broke”. He clearly favoured on-site working. In doing so Wood was arguing against the interests of his principal patron Ralph Allen. In Allen’s investments in the Stone Quarries on Combe Down he also established a group of banker masons lodges in the valley at Widcombe. From there ‘ready wrought’ stone was dispatched via the River Avon up-stream the short distance to Bath and down-stream to Bristol and beyond (fig 3). Conclusion The ever shifting idioms of architectural taste were both accommodated and resisted by the traditions of a whole series of crafts. In terms of joinery the persistence of the bevelled panel is but one example. These same woodworkers rejected the mitre and, where possible, employed the masons mitre. Furthermore for stone workers the feather edge of the mitre was out of the question. In this we have the explanation for the persistence of the masons mitre in stonework into

the eighteenth century and beyond (fig 5). This shows that not all craft solutions are confined to a single material. Examples outside stone and wood include the fluting of a Georgian silver teapot or a ceramic version of the same. In both cases the fluting offers maximum strength whilst minimising weight. Much the same logic was deployed in an early sixteenth century suit of Maximillian armour or a Victorian corrugated iron roof. Similarly pragmatic solutions were sought in relationship to the transportation of heavy materials like stone or the importation of timber from Norway. In sourcing ‘marbles’ from Purbeck in Dorset or alabaster from the Midlands, geographical location, coupled with the need for particular skills, resulted in specialisation. In general ‘empirical design’ evolved on the bench or banker in relationship to a given environment in an almost Darwinian sense – that which was fittest for purpose. In some ways this could be seen to relate to the principals established by Pitt-Rivers (1827-1900) in the organisation of his collection in Oxford. However his ‘families’ of material culture are identified in terms of function. In contrast the preceding paragraphs have identified a few examples of how ‘things’ were made and yet evolved in obedience to artisan values. So fundamental could this be that, in some cases, the vernacular traditions of craftsmanship eluded the blandishments of the aesthete and the fickle whim of fashion.

182

James Ayres: Empirical design as a product of the logic of craftsmanship Bibliography Abbott, John, manuscript notebook (and sketchbook) 1665; Devon Record Office, Exeter Alcock, N.W. and Hall, L. Fixtures and Fittings in Dated Houses 1567-1763 Council for British Archaeology, York, 1999. Andersson, Aron English Influence in Norwegian and Swedish Figure Sculpture in Wood 1949 Arrol, Andrew Joiners and Joinery Conference Papers (James Ayres ed.) International Council on Monuments & Sites U.K. Bath, October, 1994, pp.31-43 Ayres, James Unpublished thesis Purbeck Marble Inst of Education / Courtauld Inst., London University, 1961 Ayres, James The Artist’s Craft Phaidon, Oxford, 1985 Ayres, James Building the Georgian City Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1998 Ayres, James Domestic Interiors: The British Tradition: 1500-1850 Yale University Press, New Haven & London 2003 Blair, John and Ramsay, Nigel; eds. English Medieval Industries Hambledon Press, London, 1991 Bomford, David, et. al. Art in the Making: Italian Painting Before 1400 National Gallery, London 1989 Burke, Peter Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978) Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1994 Cennini, Cennino d’Andrea (b.1370) Il Libro del ‘Arte translated by Daniel V. Thompson (1933) Dover reprint, New York, n.d. Cheetham, Francis English Medieval Alabasters: With a Catalogue of the Collection in theVictoria and Albert Museum, Oxford, 1984 Chinnery, Victor Oak Furniture: The British Tradition Antique Collectors Club, Woodbridge, 1979 Cummings, Abbott Lowell The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 1625-1725 Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1979 Dossie, Robert The Handmaid to the Arts London, 1758 Drury, G. Dru “The Use of Purbeck Marble in Medieval Times” Proceedings: The Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society Vol.70, Dorchester, 1948 Eastlake, Charles Lock Methods and Materials of Painting (1847) Reprint, Dover N.Y., 1960 2 vols. Gedde, Walter Sundry Draughts, Principally Serving for Glaziers but not Impertinant for Plaisters, Gardners &c 1615/1616 Girouard, Mark Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1983 Glassie, Henry Material Culture Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1999 Goodman, W.L. British Plane Makers from 1700 revised and greatly enlarged by Mark & Jane Rees, Roy Arnold, Needham Market, 1993 Johnson, Thomas “Autobiography of a Woodcarver” (1793) reprinted by Jacob Simon in Furniture History, Vol XXXIX, 2003

Jones, Dan The Plantagenets: The Kings who made England, Harper Press, London, 2012 Knoop, Douglas & Jones, G.P. The Medieval Mason (1933) Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1967 Lloyd, Nathaniel History of the English House, (1931) reprint Architectural Book Publishing Co. Inc. New York, 1976 Martin, John manuscript notebook of c.1700 in the Sir John Soane’s Museum, London McKendrick, Neil; Brewer, John; Plumb, J.H. The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England, Hutchinson, London 1983 Moxon, Joseph Mechanic Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works first issued in parts from 1677, reprint of 1703 edition by Astragal Press, Mendham, N.J., 1994 Multhauf, Robert P. “America’s Wooden Age” in Charles E. Peterson, ed. Building Early America Astragal, Mendham, N.J., 1976 Newland, Kate “The Acquisition and Use of Norwegian Timber in Seventeenth-Century Scotland” Vernacular Architecture, Vol. 42, 2011 Pacey, Arnold Medieval Architectural Drawing, Tempus, Stroud, 2007 Peterson, Charles E, ed. Building Early America, Astragal Press, Mendham, N.J. 1976 see also Multhane, Robert P. Prior, E.S. & Gardner, A. An Account of Medieval Figure Sculpture in England, 1912 Rees, Mark and Jane see Goodman, W.L. Rhodes, John et. al. Shaw House: Conservation Plan, Dec. 1998 the first in a series of unpublished Reports on this house. Rose, Walter The Village Carpenter, (1937) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1946 Salaman, R.A. Dictionary of Woodworking Tools, (1972) Astragal Press, Mendham, N.J. 1974 Sherwood, Jennifer & Pevsner, Nikolaus Oxfordshire, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2002 Simon, Jacob see Johnson, Thomas Steane, John & Ayres, James Traditional Buildings of the Oxford Region c.1300-1840, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2013 Stone, Lawrence Sculpture in Britain in the Middle Ages, Pelican/Penguin London, 1955 Sturt, George The Wheelwright’s Shop, (1923) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993 “Theophilus” On Divers Arts translated by J.G. Hawthorne and C.S. Smith, Dover reprint, New York, 1969 Thomson, Christopher The Autobiography of An Artisan, 1847 Wood, John Towards a Description of Bath, Vol II, 1743

183

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 1a. Oak panel, second quarter 14th century, possibly from a buffet or aumbry. The trefoil is probably a 15th century addition.

Fig 1b. Reverse of the quarter-riven panel shown in Fig 1a. This panel is bevelled to a feather edge on all four sides.

Fig 2. Fielded panel in the screen to the council chamber of Sexey’s Hospital, Somerset. These Almshouses date to 1638.

184

p

James Ayres: Empirical design as a product of the logic of craftsmanshi

Fig 3. Ralph Allen’s

masons’ lodges by the River Avon at Widecombe, Bath. From there, fully worked stone was (barges) a short distance upstream to the centre of the Spa or downstream (to the left) to Bristol and beyond. Detail from Samuel and Nathaniel Buck’s Prospect of Bath, 1734.

dispatched by trows

185

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 4. Large blocks of stone being delivered for james Wyatt’s 1788 Library: Oriel College, Oxford (detail from a print of 1791). A clear case of on-site masonry, but then the quarries near Burford were reasonably accessible (Tyack, 1988, 186 also Oakeshott ed. 1975, p.89).

Fig 5. An architrave and its continuation worked in the return of a sill. In such details the principals of the masons’ mitre persisted into the 18th century and beyond.

186

p

James Ayres: Empirical design as a product of the logic of craftsmanshi

Fig 6. Detail of the enterance front of c. 1720-30 of Freshford Manor, near Bath. Note the coved cornice and the sash windows rebated behind bolection mouldings. This architectural phase was more often characterised elsewhere by a modillion cornice (often in wood) and visible sash boxes. Note also the aprons under the windows which are embellished with feilded panels derived from joinery. All these details were easily achieved in soft Bath freestone.

187

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Fig 7. Purbeck marble shrine of c. 1305-11 in St. Michael’s Church, Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. This shrine was rebuilt in the 15th century and placed on a new freestone plinth. These disparate materials were then unified by polychromy.

188

A Lesson From History: Vladimir Putin and the Revival of ‘Official Nationality’ Peter Paine In rejecting Yeltsin’s orientation to the West, President Vladimir Putin took up a Tsarist era ideological framework to help rebuild a broken Russia. This essay describes how the three pillars of the ‘Official Nationality’ - Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality - were revived to serve the new Russia, and considers their impact on Russian society and beyond.

Rees, John. Russia’s revolt against Tsar Putin. http://nextyearcountrynews.blogspot.co.uk. Accessed 18.04.2012 “For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland” (Riasonovsky 1959) Introduction It is not only in the material world that heritage has meaning and importance. Ideas and ideologies have been used and re-used throughout history for political purposes. In honour of my godfather I shall consider here how Vladimir Putin1 turned to a Tsarist era ideological framework to revive and rebuild a broken Russia. This ideological framework was first expounded by Count Sergey Uvarov2 (1786-1855) “In the midst of rapid   The essay focuses on Putin’s time acting as president from December 1999 to leaving office in May 2008. 2  Count Sergey Uvarov was Minister of Education under Tsar Nicholas the First.

collapse... at the time of a general spread of destructive ideas”(Riasonovsky 1959: 74). This is exemplified most readily in the Decembrist rising of 1825, a rising that had been “impelled in particular by examples...observed in the west”.3 Uvarov argued that Russia had developed organically and peacefully, in contrast to the conflict and antagonism central to Western development (Anderson 1967: 179). Russia was unique, and so Western political structures were not suited to be transplanted onto her. The Official Nationality was then necessary to “establish our fatherland on firm foundations upon which is based the well-being, strength, and life of a people” (Riasonovsky 1959: 74).

1

3   Lincoln 1978: 240. Indeed, Pavel Pestel, a prominent Decembrist “Referred to the United States as a model” (Hosking 1997: 144).

189

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Russia, for Putin, retains an echo of this conception; Russia “cannot be a carbon copy of some external example” (Putin 2012). Indeed, as we shall see, a conception of ‘the West’ so idolized in the Yeltsin era, has come to instantiate a danger to the Russian ‘idea’. Whilst the government formally discredits the idea of a ‘state ideology’ (Sakwa 2004: 322), this ‘idea’, understood in consideration of “the traditional values of Russians” (Putin 1999), is essential to an analysis of Putin’s rule. We then consider the extent to which Putin has rejected Yeltsin’s emphasis on the West in favour of an echo of three pillars of tsarist rule. To consider this argument we must lay out the meaning of each pillar. The first pillar of Official Nationality was Orthodoxy. The national anthem of 1812; ‘God save the Tsar’ gives us some idea of its traditional role in legitimizing the autocracy. Further, this anthem portrays the importance of the symphony between executive power and religion in shaping the identity of the nation. In 2000 Russia adopted a new national anthem which describes Russia as “one of a kind, native land protected by God!” This section will consider a general resurgence in Orthodox belief under both Yeltsin and Putin and will argue that Putin has reforged a traditional state-church relationship in order to legitimize and historicize his regime. Autocracy, the second pillar of Uvarov’s thought, was in essence a re-assertion of traditional executive power. The strength of the executive is notable throughout Russian history. From Rurik in the ninth century through Tsardom to the leadership of the Communist Party, the emphasis has almost4 exclusively been on the power of the individual ruler. For the Russian condition, Uvarov argued, strong governance was essential. It is in a single autocratic ruler that we find the ability to protect such a vast land from an “unavoidable struggle of different wills” (Anderson 1967: 175). This section will consider the extent to which Putin, in a consolidation and centralization of power, brings an echo of tsarist autocratic rule and thus works to forcibly stabilise society. Finally Nationality; this pillar should be considered as a composite extolling the virtues of the first two ideas. Uvarov’s apologist Faddei Bulgarin described this unity: “What gravitation is for the planet Orthodoxy and autocracy are for Russia: nothing else could hold the vast nation together” (Hosking 1997: 174). Further though, especially under Nicholas I5, Russia was seen as the ‘Third Rome’ and this understanding combined with the rise of Pan-Slavism in the 19th century (Walsh 1949) saw Russia as the protector of Orthodox Christian and Slavic peoples (Lincoln 1978: 333, Zohrab 2007). This gave Russia a distinct image of itself, a mission in the world, a ‘national idea’. This section will consider the extent to which Putin

  Save perhaps the Provisional Government immediately following the abdication of Nicholas II. 5   In reference to his legitimization of the Ottoman campaigns. Especially illustrated in Lincoln (1978: 333). 4

looks to re-discover this ‘national idea’ and find Russia a new place on the international stage. With Putin having re-taken the presidency this insight into his time as president is of paramount importance to understanding the future direction of the Russian political compass. A Crisis of Identity “The West, a model to be emulated during the early Yeltsin years, has lost its shine among both the people and the policy makers.” (Stuermer 2009: 185) ‘Shock therapy’ under Yeltsin was supposed to turn the country’s economic system from a centrally planned model into a system of free market capitalism. This section will contend that the perceived failures of the transition, especially on the economic front, created the appetite for a ‘strongman’ of Russia, one who would stabilise the country and re-find a powerful Russian national identity. After the break-up of the Soviet Union Yeltsin espoused ‘Western’ values directly and openly; capitalism replaced communism as the stated goal; Western international organisations were brought in to help reconstruct the economic sphere on the understanding that liberal democracy was the political ambition. Indeed Putin himself notes “It seemed that the transition...would be quick, especially since we had models of civilized and mature democracies in the form of the United States and Western Europe readily to hand” (Putin 2012). However, he notes, this was not the case “[the Yeltsin era] poisoned Russia’s transition to democracy and a market economy, making many Russian people wary of these very concepts” (Dinka 2007). Indeed Yeltsin is seen to have opened the doors to Western economic interference6 which played no small part in the chaos of the 1990s ‘transition’. In January 1992 ‘Shock Therapy’ kicked in. This meant sudden mass privatization of state-owned assets, liberalization of foreign and domestic trade, macroeconomic stabilization as well as broad legislative reforms (Danks 2009: 380). During this transition the political and the economic sphere became inextricably linked7, a ‘clan’ system emerged (Kryshtanovshaia 1997) and the rule of law, never as sanctified as in the West, became almost arbitrary for those with money and power. “Crime and corruption   Western advisers to Yeltsin included Jeffrey Sachs (from the IMF), Anders Aslund (now Senior Fellow of the Peterson Institute in Washington) and Richard Layard (adviser to Margaret Thatcher). 7   For example: Viktor Chernomyrdin, who was General Director of Karaganda Metallurgical Plant, was also First Deputy Chairman of the Government of Russian Federation. Vladimir Potanin’s privately owned Oneximbank in 1993 was commissioned to administer federal budgets and then the entire management of funds for rebuilding Chechnya. [Russian Mafia. http://rumafia.com/person.php?id= 94. 2012. Accessed 11.04.2012.] and Danks 2009: 68, respectively. 6

190

Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladamir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’ became endemic, with contract killings almost an everyday occurrence” (BBC 1999). The currency crisis intensified the situation. “By 1998 GDP had fallen over a decade by some 45 percent; the mortality rate had increased by 50 percent; government revenues had nearly halved; the crime rate had doubled” (Anderson 2007); “90 percent of the Russian population suffered a sharp reduction in income while 32 percent began to live on incomes below the poverty threshold” (Shevtsova 2007: 28). In contrast, shock therapy led to the creation of an elite that would come to be considered a new class in Russia. At the end of Yeltsin’s reign this new elite controlled approximately half to one-third of Russia’s GDP (Danks 2009: 64, 68). To further the sense of insecurity and chaos a bloody war in Chechnya had ended in a humiliating military defeat in 1996 (Eke 2007). At the same time extreme decentralisation of the Federation - famously exemplified in Yeltsin telling local regional governments to “Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow” (Stewart 2011, Shevtsova 2007) seemed to jeopardise the nation state itself. Yeltsin combined in the minds of the people an idolization of the political structures of the West and economic, political and social chaos and instability. In fact in 1997 60 percent of Russians rejected the ‘Western capitalist’ model and believed that in the “1990’s Russia had set out on the wrong course” (Danks 2009). In early 1999, 75 percent accepted an opinion that Russia “depends on the West too much”. One year later 57 percent agreed that “Russia should stick to its own specific path” (Diligensky 2000) and by 2006 the number of Russians who thought Yeltsin’s rule was a disaster had reached 70 percent (Stuermer 2009: 185). The impact of this popular perception can be most clearly seen in the results of the State Duma election results of 1995, 1999 and 2003. The Russian Democratic Party Yabloko, seen as the “leading... overtly democratic, liberal reformist party with a strong pro-Western orientation” (White 2006: 2) won 10 percent of total Duma seats in 1995; this dropped to 4.4 in 1999 and 0.9 in 2003 (CSPP 2011). In contrast there was an increasing popularity for nationalist parties; indeed what came to be a known as the red-brown alliance emerged as politically dominant. The Liberal Democratic Party, winners of the 1993 Duma election (CSPP 2011), were characterised by overtly nationalist, xenophobic (Encyclopaedia Britannica 2013), even imperialist (Rupnik 1994) rhetoric. Its leader argued, in ‘The Last Thrust to the South’ (1993), that Russia should be the centre of a great Eurasian empire (Danks 2009: 352). This style was virtually echoed in the Communist parties “soviet state patriotism” in service of “Russia’s nationalstate interests” (Malkin 1999) winning both the 1995 and 1999 elections (CSPP 2011). In the 1996 presidential election the newly created elite, fearful of a rising communism, “ruthlessly and efficiently manipulated voters” (Ostalski 2007) to ensure Yeltsin stayed in power. This is exemplified in a $14 billion no-interest loan from the Alexander Smolensky’s bank

(Danks 2009). However, with fading popularity (approval ratings dropping as low as 2 percent on some polls (Mann 2002)) they were forced to look elsewhere to counter the communist threat and protect their interests. Putin’s rise to power then came in his invitation to the ‘Kremlin family’ who recognised his “grey cardinal” personality and consistent loyalty (Mulvey 2000). This is exemplified in Boris Berezovsky (a key ‘family’ member) funding ‘Unity’ which was to provide Putin with a parliamentary base of support (Moscow Times 2012). Putin then was the candidate of the elite and understood he had to counter the communist and nationalist political threats and restore Russia’s image. Thus chaos, polarization of wealth, de-centralisation of federal power and defeat in Chechnya helped lead to a desire for strong leadership (polled 71 percent in 1999 (Shevtsova 2007: 73)) in contrast to democratic institutions (polled 13 percent in the same year). Nationalism was on the rise and people yearned to re-find a lost international prestige.8 Support from the newly created elite fearful of a communist resurgence gave Putin the ability to use the negativity associated with Yeltsin’s legacy to promote his own contrasting image. This contrasting image would be created through an emphasis on the three pillars of Official Nationality that he would use to promote strong leadership (through regime consolidation and legitimization), stabilization of society and a re-assertion of the national identity. A Resurgent Orthodoxy “We realise that the national rise and development of Russia is impossible without the support of our nation’s historical and spiritual experience.” (Putin 1999) Putin’s relationship with the Orthodox Church must be viewed in context. The apparent resurgence of believers in Russia since the initial curtailing of religious repression under Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet System is indeed impressive. Religious repression characterised much of the early Soviet period.9 Before World War One there were 54,000 parishes, that number fell to approximately 500 by 1940 (Curtis 1996), and in 1937 alone 85,000 Orthodox priests were shot (Johnson 2001). By contrast, under Yeltsin numbers of those who profess belief increased from 34 percent in 1991, to 46 percent in 1993 to 59 percent in 1999 (Johnson et al. 2005). This trend continues under Putin: from 59 percent in 2003 to 71 percent in 2008 (Naletova 2002). This section will consider the extent to which Orthodoxy, under Putin, has taken back its traditional role in serving to legitimize the executive as well as historicising his regime. It will do so first by contextualizing the rebirth of Orthodoxy in the   58% polled wanted the winner of the 2000 presidential elections to re-establish Russia’s superpower status. The Levada Centres statistics quoted in Stuermer (2009: 185). 9   Although it should be noted that such repression was “varied, nuanced, and highly dependent upon broader political circumstances” (Johnson et al. 2005: 2). 8

191

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes political sphere and then by going on to analyse the extent to which, under Putin, the church-state relationship came to echo “The symphonic ideal, whereby the Church has responsibility over the spiritual guidance of the citizenry and the state protects church doctrine and tradition” (Knox 2005: 131). We start by noting that the modern Orthodox resurgence was the result of a newly espoused freedom of religion under Mikhail Gorbachev10 coming with Perestroika in 1986 (Johnson et al. 2005: 15). The result of this new freedom however brought with it an influx of ‘alien’ religious groups.11 As a result Yeltsin, after pressure from the Patriarch himself (Knox 2003: 583), brought in the 1997 law. This law contained a preamble that described the Orthodox Church as an “inalienable part of...Russian historical, spiritual and cultural heritage” (Robinson 2007). Yeltsin then certainly developed a relationship with the church. As well as the legislative arena he approved and largely funded the re-building of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, granted the Church privileged tax status12 and became a convert himself. However, this should all however be seen alongside a comparatively liberal perspective emphasising the need for equality highlighted in the new constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom (President of Russia 1993). Putin was to radically change this relationship. “Mr. Yeltsin had a far more ambivalent relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church than does Mr. Putin, and in the chaos of the times the laws were not always enforced” (Clifford 2008). Putin himself stated that “Orthodoxy has always had a special role in shaping our statehood, our culture, and our morals” (Oleg 2007). Putin’s relationship with Patriarch Alexei II was close, with shared backgrounds in the security service (Keston News Service, 2000) both Alexei and Putin should be considered members of the ‘Silovik’.13 Putin has looked to associate himself with the Patriarch as far as possible. In fact “Orthodox dignitaries have been present at all major state occasions since his [Putin’s] accession” (Knox 2003: 589). Alexei publicly described Putin’s re-positioning as prime minister as a “great blessing for Russia” (Xtimeline, 2007). This position was echoed by his successor Patriarch Kirill describing the ‘Putin era’ as a “miracle” (Achmatova 2012). Kirill goes on to consider that “Western consumer culture was admired by many of Putin’s opponents and was a major   After Gorbachev’s legislation in the mid-1980’s there were 3,000 Orthodox Churches, in 1989 17,000 Orthodox Churches were actively operating. (Curtis 1996). 11   Between 1989 and 1997 missionary groups entering the country rose from 311 to 5,000. Statistics in: Naletova (2002). 12   Exemplified in allowing, under the label of ‘humanitarian aid’ the church to import tobacco accounting for 10 percent of the country’s total cigarette intake (Knox 2003: 588). 13   Those who rose to power through uniformed professions, of which 77 percent fill Russia’s top 1,016 governmental positions (Illarionov 2009). 10

threat to Russia” (Bryanski 2012). Indeed “The present ideological drama... consists in the conflict between the standards of Western liberalism and the need for nations to preserve their cultural and religious identities.... The task of Orthodox Christianity... is to preserve its own vision of life and protect tradition from the imperatives of neoliberalism” (Naletova 2002). This ‘ideological drama,’ is broader than a negation of neo-liberalism. It can be traced back to the Church’s origins. Modelled on the Christianity of the Byzantine Empire rather than that of the West (Figes 2003: 300), the Orthodox Church split from the Western tradition in the great schism of 1054. Here then, we not only have a distinction between religious tradition and a perception of a Western ideological threat, we have a contrasting cultural history protected and defended by the new presidency. This cultural history is key - after Yeltsin 62 percent considered the transformations in Russia in the last decade as a “loss of Russian unique cultural features under sweeping wave of pressure from the West” (Diligensky 2000). In a 2008 state-owned media company production ‘The lesson of Byzantium’ Putin is portrayed as overcoming the Western-induced chaos in order to restore Russian “spiritual greatness” (Linan 2010). So too 2008 school textbooks talk of a failure of the Yeltsin era as the result of “constant kowtowing to Western policies” which “contradicted the Russian state’s traditional centralism” (Linan 2010). In identifying himself as the ‘norm’ of Russian history Putin legitimizes and substantiates his rule. “One of the main objectives of political-propagandistic use of history during Putin’s two presidential terms was to confirm himself as the guarantor of tradition” (Linan 2010) Indeed we see this technique - turning to the church as the bastion of tradition - throughout Russian history. In what became known as the ‘Great Patriotic War’ Stalin turned from religious repression to a revival of that State-Church symphony. The Church would consolidate his power, describing him as a “God chosen leader of our military and cultural forces” (Oxley 2001: 244) as well as re-defining the war in terms of saving the Slavic, Orthodox peoples from the “enemies of Orthodox Christianity” (Andreev 2009). For Putin then, this symphony is highly developed. Patriarch Alexei publicly supported Putin on the Chechen war (Simon n.d.), appealing to conscripts to “defend the Motherland from external, as well as internal, enemies” (Chinyaeva 1996: 17). So too Orthodox clergy are regularly ‘defrocked’ for expressing anti-government views14 and there have even been reports of a senior bishop, in support of the regime, comparing human rights activists to traitors (Blomfield 2008).

  After Sergei Taratukhin described a jailed oligarch as a political prisoner he was ‘defrocked’, only regaining his status after renouncing his statement (Xtimeline, 2007). 14

192

Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladamir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’ In return Putin has gone far further than previous administrations in favouring the Orthodox Church. After an influx of ‘alien’, especially Western faiths15, Putin pulled up the drawbridge. Frequent refusal of visas, expelling ‘foreign’ religious leaders restricting non-Orthodox regional proselytizing (Levy 2008) and denying permission for non-Orthodox church building16 helps create a climate of hostility towards these ‘alien’ faiths. Indeed this demonization, according to a Council of Europe monitoring committee, has resulted in open violence against some religious communities (International Election Observation Mission, 2004). “This close alliance between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church has become a defining characteristic of Mr. Putin’s tenure” (Levy 2008) A new law amended article 14 of Yeltsin’s 1997 law widening the list of offenses for which religious groups can be prosecuted (Freedom House 2012). One of the results of this amendment was to classify the Moscow Branch of the Salvation Army as a “paramilitary organisation”; its members complain of an absence of “factual proof” (International Election Observation Mission, 2004). This extreme promotion of the ‘true faith’ however is at odds with Russian constitutional and Council of Europe commitments; this is a telling sign: an executive above the law. This autocratic style of Putin’s will be explored at length in the next section. It seems that although Putin should not be seen to have singlehandedly re-asserted this traditional symphony, he certainly built it far beyond the previous administration. This section then has considered a resurgent Orthodoxy, one that Putin looks to for a traditional divine legitimacy of his power; further though, he looks to re-enforce a image of himself as “Preserving and upholding the spiritual and cultural values that constitute the Russian civilization’s unique identity” (Panarin 2012). This identity is crucial; we find Putin turning to the church for a basis for the reassertion of traditionalism. Uvarov saw the Byzantine tradition as essential to Russia’s distinct nature; efforts to undermine that nature, to drag Russia into the West, would inevitably fail. It is only through understanding and working in harmony with Russian traditions, culture and history that Russia could be effectively ruled. In turning to the church Putin is turning to the essence of that history; he portrays himself as working with history to further the Russian nation rather than forcing Russia into a new illfitting political and social make up.

  For example in 1992 there were around 510 “Protestant organisations” in Russia, by 2004 there were 4,435. Statistics in: Naletova (2001). 16   They cite ‘violent disruption’ by law enforcement bodies and the burning of Evangelical and Pentecostal Churches in Lyubuchany, Podolsk, Chekhovo, Tula, Lipetsk, Tyumen and Nizhny Tagil, as well as vandalism and bombings (Stetson University, 2005). 15

An Echo of Autocracy “Russia was created as a super-centralized state. That’s practically laid down in its genetic code, its traditions, and the mentality of its people” - Putin, quoted in Abashina (2012). Russia professes to be a democratic state; however the control and ‘management’ of this democracy is clear. This section highlights the extent to which in Putin’s first three presidencies, especially with the re-assertion of the ‘power vertical’, we can see an echo of a style of personal autocratic rule of Tsarist times. This section will argue that Putin used this autocratic style in order to stabilize society as well as to consolidate the regime. In order to understand the personal power of the modern president in Russia we must turn to the 1993 constitution. This constitution was introduced under Yeltsin and was to negate any conception of a ‘separation of powers’ in favour of executive strength.17 This power balance set the tone for Putin’s presidency. Putin’s personal touch can be seen in his leadership in war. Where Yeltsin had failed Putin was determined to succeed; he personally flew to Grozny in a fighter jet, spending his first night as president with the frontline troops (Percy 2012), later expressing his desire to “wipe the bandits out in the toilet” (BBC News 2003). Military success in Chechnya forced stability down the barrel of a gun.18 Indeed the brutality of the war provoked the European Court of Human Rights to pursue justice, holding Russia responsible for over two hundred unlawful deaths (Human Rights Watch 2009). Putin ignores these rulings. Even so, a censorship, far stricter and more dangerous19 than in Yeltsin’s time20, along with widespread anger at Chechen terrorist attacks21 meant that public opinion largely supported operations - 63 percent in September 1999 (14 percent in favour of withdrawal) (Pain 2000). Indeed a survey for ‘Putin’s Performance in Office’ showed a dramatic increase from 3 to 79 percent in the period leading up to the war and found that “a more diplomatic solution seemed to have an adverse effect to Putin’s popularity” (Yambao 2003). Here we have an echo of tsarist imperial might; strict censorship and military muscle meant conflict served to enhance the image of a previously little known executive and forcibly stabilise an unruly region.   For example: It is the president’s responsibility to appoint the prime minister, approve ministerial appointments, appoint the chairman of the Central Bank, appoint military leaders and diplomats and set domestic and foreign policy guidelines, as well as having the power to reject legislation and call a state of emergency. See The Constitution of the Russian Federation (2001). 18   After the 2003 referendum adopting a new constitution Chechnya has ‘gradually stabilized with the establishment of the parliamentary elections and a regional government’ [although attacks still took place]: Osborn (2007). 19   Especially exemplified in the unresolved assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, a critical reporter on the Chechen war in October 06. 20   For example it was made illegal for Russian or foreign journalists to visit camps of the Chechen armed resistance. In contrast, during the first war many Russian journalists spent months in the headquarters of former separatist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev (Pain 2000). 21   Specifically the Russian apartment bombings in Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999, as well as the invasion of Dagestan by a broadly ‘Islamist’ militia. 17

193

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes The Khodorkovsky case further highlights Putin’s approach, incarcerating those oligarchs who challenge his power. After directly criticising the regime, citing corruption within the government (Glasser and Baker 2010), supporting the democratic opposition (Robinson 2010), and undermining new tax legislation22 Khodorkovsky was arrested. Putin thus re-asserts a Tsarist style dependency on the executive. A day before a postponed review trial in Khodorkovsky’s case Putin said “A thief must stay in jail” (Kulikov 2010). It seems that the constitutional promotion of the executive branch over the judicial and legislative under Yeltsin was not enough for Putin. A court clerk described how the presiding judge in the case, was directly handed the verdict, after having written his own (Vasilyeva 2011, Harding 2011). Described as a “system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity” (Guardian 2010) in the leaked U.S. embassy cables, we seem again to have an echo of autocracy in Putin acting, as Nicholas I did, as “prosecutor, judge and jury” (Lincoln 1978: 82). Both this executive power over the judicial branch and a broad control and censorship of media outlets, especially the most important, television23, can be likened to tsarist times under Nicholas I. ‘Under the statute of 1828... no new periodical could be published without permission of the emperor Nicholas I’ (Free Dictionary 2012); Freedom House defines the Putin regime’s media as ‘not free’ (Wangborn 2004). To justify this we turn to the takeover of the three dominant television networks, NTV (a subsidiary of ‘media most’24), Rossiya and Channel One, and the subsequent turnaround on critical reporting (Smith 2006). Indeed The Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations found that “91 percent of political news on Channel One was devoted to Putin and the ‘ruling powers.’ Nearly three quarters of that coverage was positive... none of it critical” (Smith 2006). This centralization and executive control of the judiciary as well as media control and censorship serves to consolidate the regime through positive reporting, to stabilize society through suppression of oligarch power and to portray Putin as a ‘hard-edged, stern leader in a positive contrast to the impotent, feeble Yeltsin’ (Shevtsova 2007). United Russia was set up in 2001; today it is regularly described as “the party of crooks and thieves” (BBC News 2011). The party was formed from a merger of Putin’s ‘Unity’ and Yury Luzhkov’s “Fatherland-All Russia Party’ (Gel’man 2002). Devoid of ideology, its purpose was to ensure a Duma faithful to Putin and it was seen as completely dependent upon his support and popularity.25   The Duma was effectively lobbied by Yokos against a proposed oil tax: the Government backed down (Percy 2012). 23   Television is particularly important in Russia, 74% of the population watching national television channels routinely and 59% routinely watching regional channels, in contrast to relatively low levels of internet and newspaper circulation (Oates and McCormack 2010: 128). 24   Vladimir Gusinsky’s empire Media-Most which opposed both Chechen wars and questioned Putin’s ‘democratic credentials’ was taken over by state owned Gazprom-Media in 2001 after he was arrested. 25   In January 2004, 60 percent of survey participants agreed that United 22

Techniques in manufacturing this ‘popularity’ were varied. In an analysis of the 2004 elections the International Election Observation Mission noted harassment of opposition parties, un-equal registration26, unfair campaign rules and ballot fraud (International Election Observation Mission, 2004). In opposition to this party there is the ‘loyal opposition’ party27 set up to attract the ‘leftistnationalist’ vote, especially that of the KPRF (Communist Party) (Danks 2009: 320). Particularly insightful is Putin’s refusing to campaign for the March 2000 elections. Asked for his programme he replied “I won’t tell”. In fact, there was no need; he won a 53 percent victory over his main rival at 29.2 percent (Shevtsova 2007: 74). It seems that Putin’s regime truly can be likened to the tsarist autocracy. When ‘managed democracy’ is such that there appears little reason to fight elections, success in ‘regime consolidation’ appears an understatement. In his dealings with the regions, Putin (in complete contradiction to Yeltsin) looked first and foremost to shift power to the centre, or indeed - to himself. Through justification by reference to the September 2004 Belsan school massacre, Putin replaced the system of elected governors with presidential appointees.28 The 2003 ‘Law on the General Principles of Local Self-Government in the RF’ ‘formally subordinated local government into the government hierarchy below the federal and republican-regional levels’ (Shevtsova 2007: 201). These pieces of legislation were approved by the now rubberstamp parliament.29 Similarly Putin split the country into seven federal districts each headed by a Plenipotentiary Representative appointed by and solely accountable to himself (Smith 2005). Putin was effectively re-structuring the Russian polity with himself as the autocratic head in order to stabilise and take control of a confused and decentralised legacy.30 Nicholas I, a huge and powerful man ‘came to represent autocracy personified’ (Riasonovsky 1959: 3). Putin, although a good few inches shorter,31 certainly cultivates his image in numerous media-covered activities including wrestling, judo and bare-chested hunting (Telegraph 2012). This personal image is further portrayed in an

Russia’s success could be attributed to the president’s direct support... Only 13 percent believed United Russia’s victory to be attributable to its policy platform (Levada 2004). 26   As well as extremely harsh registration criteria in the first place after the 2004 law. An organisation needed 50,000 members, which branches of at least 500 members in at least 45 regions (Danks 2009: 318). 27   In 2003 this was Rodina (Motherland) and later in 2006 ‘social justice’: Danks 2009: 320. 28   Whilst the regional legislature can veto the choice, the president can disband the legislature after three vetos (Danks 2009). 29   Smith, Mark. Putin’s Nationalist Challenge. https://da.mod.uk/ colleges/arag/document-listings/.../05(20)-MAS.pdf. 2005. Accessed 08.05.2012. 30   Yeltsin’s legacy was an estimated 20,000 unconstitutional laws, as well as bilateral treaties, republican constitutions and regional charters. Shevtsova, Lilia. Ibid. p 186. 31  Riasanovsky, Nicholas. Op Cit. p 1. [six feet] Vladimir Putin height: 5 ft 7 in (170 cm). http://www.celebheights.com/s/Vladimir-Putin-1051. html. 13.04.2012.

194

Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladamir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’ explicit association with the military.32 In defining himself as a bare-chested instantiation of power and might he portrays himself in much the same way as Nicholas I and the tsarist autocracy. As with the re-assertion of the symphonic Church– State relationship, in his executive power too Putin has developed the rulebook laid down by his predecessor. However, unlike Yeltsin, he has been fully able to realise the constitutional power placed in the presidency and more. Whilst Putin is no Tsar,33 his military leadership, dealings with the oligarchy, judicial and media control, centralising of regional control under himself and his obvious contempt for the notion of a contested election does create an echo of Tsarist autocratic rule. After the chaos and weakness of the Yeltsin period Putin personifies the traditional image of strong autocratic rule working to consolidate the regime under himself and thus forcibly stabilise society. Nationality “Russia was and will remain a great power. It is preconditioned by the inseparable characteristics of its geopolitical, economic and cultural existence. They determined the mentality of Russians and the policy of the government throughout the history of Russia and they cannot but do so at present.” - Putin in Slade (2005) After the fall of the USSR there was an ideological vacuum; the principles that legitimized the old regime were gone; communism was no longer just over the horizon. Yeltsin’s attempted mix of authoritarianism with Westernization promoting market democracy - was seen to have failed and Russia was in search of a new identity. ‘Nationality’, the final pillar of the ‘Official Nationality,’ “was at the time and has since remained the most obscure, puzzling, and debatable member of the official trinity” (Riasanovsky 2005: 124). We should firstly see it as emphasising the necessity and harmony between Orthodoxy and autocracy in the traditional state structure. Secondly though, it was a rejection of the ‘alien’ and an emphasis on the unique and great role for the Russian nation on the world stage. This section will consider the latter perspective and argue that Putin looks to re-find this role, especially in antagonism to the alien ‘West’ and by so doing re-assert a uniquely ‘Russian’ national identity. An effective gauge of administrative perspective, as in the Soviet era, can be taken from a state-orchestrated ‘youth’ organisation - Nashi. This was a group created in response in particular to the ‘Orange revolution’ in the Ukraine,34 a revolution that Putin saw as funded and controlled by Western agencies (Green 2006), especially through   This association was first seen in his association with Russian military during the Chechen war in the run up to the elections. 33   Russia has no formal monarchy; in 1991 - 20 percent supported the restoration of the monarch, and by 1995 this was 7 percent (Danks 2009, 100). 34   Remember that this is a country whose capital founded the Russian empire. 32

stirring the youth to revolt (Osborn 2005). ‘Nashi’ or the ‘Youth Democratic Anti-Fascist Movement’ (“Ours”) was created to bring Russia’s new generation on side. A deeply pro-Putin movement (Ash 2005), it is closely bound to the state.35 Its stated aim is to “get 300,000 people on to the streets to defend Russia” from the threats of “external governance, orange revolution and American intrusion” (Osborn 2005). These aims accurately depict Putin’s fears. Regularly accused of violent clashes (even across borders36) Nashi looks for opportunities to raise Russia’s global standing. This group was inspired by the Kremlin ideologue Vladislav Surkov (Myers 2007). Surkov highlights the regime’s attitude towards perceived Western imperialism. “We cannot fail to observe that today we encounter a situation in which the slogans of democracy frequently are used to cover for active intervention in the internal affairs of other states.”37 Indeed this anti-Western sentiment seems to be a key component of the ‘Russian idea’ under Putin. Although willing to work with the West when it suits Russia’s interests,38 relations, especially since the ‘Bill and Boris’ friendship (Stewart 2012), have significantly deteriorated. The expansion of NATO into Russia’s ‘backyard’39 (seen as breaking the ‘two plus four’ agreement of 1990 (Stuermer 2008: 191)) and the proposed missile defence shield40 sparked a Cold-War style of international politics seen throughout Putin’s tenure. Indeed Putin’s extreme reaction to NATO’s Kosovo bombings of 1999 truly echoes a traditional perception of Russia as the unique defender of the Slavic peoples, a view instantiated most vividly in the Pan-Slavism that went to influence Uvarov’s romanticised thought (Shekarloo 2009). At the time Putin emphasised the “Traditional friendship between Russia and Serbia and closeness of Russian and Serbian people” (Xinhua 2012). In 2007 Putin “ordered Russian Military Forces to ‘First Strike’ capability against any NATO aggression ... [in] relief of the Serbs upon the outbreak of war” (Sorcha Faal 2013). This should be seen as an open rebuke for Yeltsin’s inaction in 1999 as well as a real threat to the West.

  Close ties with the Kremlin are shown by financial support and numerous audiences with politicians (Waldermann 2007). 36   This is especially seen in cross-border physical and cyber-attacks in protest at the Estonian government removing a World War Two era statue of a soviet soldier (Matthew and Nemtsova 2007). 37   Sergei Ivanov, quoted in Evans 2008, 15. 38   Including allowing the USA to create a military base in the ‘near abroad’ and working in cooperation in fighting the Taliban, largely in order (as argued by Putin’s advisors) to undermine a stream of Chechen terrorists (Percy 2012). 39   At a conference in the Russian Military Academy in January 2007, the chief of the general staff, Yury Baluyevsky said that Washington’s global expansionism (in the form of NATO) and “its desire to get a foothold in regions where Russia traditionally is present” are the main threats to Russia. 40   Dubbed the ‘son of Star Wars’ the US-orchestrated venture took place soon after US unilateral withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. As could be expected, Putin accused the USA of provoking a return to Cold War politics and threatened to deploy Russian missiles to Kaliningrad in response (Danks 2009). 35

195

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes This ‘national mission’ has been radicalised by the 25 million Russians who are, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, on the ‘wrong’ side of the Russian border. This Russian diaspora, especially in the Baltic States suffer serious discrimination and there are numerous reports of mistreatment (Baczynska 2012). In post-Soviet Latvia for example, the government granted citizenship to only those present before the Soviet invasion of the country (before the great influx of Russian peoples) and has made the ‘naturalisation’ process for these ‘alien’ peoples extremely difficult (RT Question More 2012, Pommereau 2012). Under Yeltsin, ties to the newly defined ‘near abroad’ were limited41, a ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’ was set up recognising the continued necessity of economic links but Yeltsin had his eyes focused on joining western ‘clubs’, joining the Council of Europe in 1996 (Danks 2009: 349), trying to join the G7 (NATO 1997), and even making overtures to NATO.42 After 200143 Putin reversed this trend. In 2003 Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan set up the ‘Organisation of the Agreement on Collective Security’. This was a large military facility located in Kyrgyzstan, thoughtfully positioned next to a large US military base used as a staging post for Afghanistan. Putin looks to develop ties with amenable areas of its ‘near abroad’ to expand and consolidate his grasp on the region in the face of Western influence. We find the results of this grasp in the 2008 war with Georgia44. Officially, this was a war fought to protect Russian citizens45 in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia had since 1996 been receiving military aid and training from the USA (Armed Conflict Database 2009). With NATO accession talks underway and pro-Western President Saakashvili’s re-election in 2008 ties were becoming increasingly strained. These tensions escalated to such a pitch that Georgia launched a large-scale military offensive in August. Russia’s response was brutal, tank divisions rolling deep into Georgian territory (Harding 2011). Human rights violations abound the war provides a harsh lesson in regional power-politics. Turning to the West does not give you immunity from Russian hard power.46

  The Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have never joined. Turkmenistan withdrew in 2005 and is now an associate member. 42   Seen in the ‘Founding Act on Mutual Relations Cooperation and Security between the Russian Federation and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’ (NATO 1997). 43   In 2001 Putin described Russian membership of Nato as a ‘possibility’ (Danks 2009, 365). Bush famously declared “the more I get to know President Putin, the more I get to see his heart and soul, and the more I know we can work together in a positive way” (Bush 2001). 44   Although under Medvedev’s presidency the war, and indeed Medvedev himself, should be seen as carrying on from where Putin left off (Harding 2011). 45   It should be noted that numerous reports cite evidence of Russian citizenship being handed out to those in the disputed territory in order to solidify Russia’s claim to be defending Russian peoples (Roudik 2012). 46   Putin even accused the U.S. of orchestrating the war for electoral gain (BBC 2008). 41

This re-assertion of a national mission to protect Russian citizens comes alongside a newly created ‘energy superpower’ status. For an economy dependent upon natural resources (NBR-Hudson Institute 2008), a massive hike in oil and gas prices right the way through his presidency (Williams 2011) was essential to his impressive popularity47 after the Yeltsin era. Putin looked to control of ‘the commanding heights of the economy, oil and gas, to re-forge Russia’s power on the world stage. Gazprom is the largest extractor of natural gas in the world (Doyle 2011). Since December 2005 it has been put almost entirely under state control (Kramer 2009). This has given Putin an exceptionally powerful political tool. In what became known as the ‘gas wars’ of 2008 Putin showed his ability to turn off the tap. This was not only seen as a bid to pressure Ukraine out of a bid to join NATO but a lesson for a Europe that depends on Russia for around a quarter of its natural gas (Spiegel Online 2008, Jafri 2012). “Putin’s popularity is based in part on what is perceived as his reassertion of Russia’s standing in the world .... After a decade of embarrassment in foreign policy at Yeltsin’s hands, Putin emphasizes Russian pride and importance” (Merritt 2011) As well as re-asserting a powerful new national image on the world stage, Putin’s ideological antagonism to ‘the West’ is vividly portrayed in the domestic arena. As with the forcible expulsion of ‘pro-Western’ religious organisations, the ‘spy rock’ incident (a fake rock used by British secret services in Russia (Collins 2012)) was used to justify a law against foreign funding to non-governmental organisations and human rights groups, it was “adopted to stop foreign powers interfering in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation” (Percy 2012) which “effectively made it impossible... for any group with foreign funding to operate in Russia” (Proyect 2012). This law serves to demonize and expel organizations that undermine Putin’s credibility as well as playing to a broader conception of a threatening Western ‘other’ trying to undermine state sovereignty.48 So too it exemplifies a distinct resentment of yet more Western political lectures. “They tell us about democracy while thinking about our hydrocarbons” Vladimir Surkov (Citizen 2011) Alongside this anti-western sabre-rattling comes a renewed focus on military might. From the fall of the USSR and throughout Yeltsin’s tenure there had been an expanding military crisis.49 Putin has reversed this trend. In 1999 the military budget was 350 billion roubles, this increased steadily to 600 billion in 2002 and 800 billion in 2006 (Taylor 2011: 53). This is a trend that is   As living standards rose so did Putin’s voter turnout, in 2004 he received 71.9 percent. - Many authors have associated this result with the oil based economic performance, for example Colton and Hale (2008). 48   In 2012 this attitude culminates in branding foreign funded NGO’s ‘foreign agents’ (Williams 2012). 49   In 1988 there were 5 million solders, 1992 this dropped to 3.4 million and in 1998 the level was 1.1 million (Laruelle, Marlene. 2010: 219). 47

196

Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladamir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’ seen in practically all security and defence statistics.50 Throughout the tsarist period the power and prestige of the army was crucial to the image of the nation. After the defeat of Nicholas I’s troops by the Western powers (in support of the Ottoman Empire) in the Crimean War riots broke out (Schauss 2003). Nicholas’s image as the ‘gendarme of Europe’ was destroyed. Putin, in defining himself as an ex-KGB ‘strong man’ in opposition to Western powers, knows that his own legitimacy rests upon a perception of national strength. He therefore goes to great lengths to promote the image of military might.51 Indeed, today Russia maintains the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads anywhere in the world (Federation of American Scientists 2011). However along with a promotion of national strength comes a darker trend; the rise in extremist nationalism has been a stain on Putin’s tenure. Whilst attempting to re-assert national pride he fuels this nationalist sentiment. Indeed the leader of the neo-Nazi ‘Freedom Party’, Belyayev, supports Putin arguing that they share the same goals52: “He is for rubbing the Churki [Chechens] out, and for a strong Russia, and so are we” (Zarakhovich 2006). In a 2004 survey 61 percent of those polled approved of the “Russia for Russians” slogan, almost twice the 31 percent level recorded in 1998. The Phoenix Center for New Sociology and the Study of Practical Politics noted that the number of Russian ‘skinheads’ grew from 20,000 in 2001 to 50,000 in 2003 and was projected to reach 80,000 by 2005 (Alexseev 2005). Along with this rise comes an annual 30 percent rise in neo-Nazi attacks: in 2000 there was an average of 30 to 40 assaults per month targeting darker skinned individuals in Moscow alone.53 Through forcibly monopolizing54 oil and gas, Putin was able to take advantage of an exploding demand, turning Russia into an ‘energy superpower’ with his own hand on the taps. Putin’s ‘national idea’ should be seen in continuity with that of Urvov’s understanding, however the traditional image of Russia as the protector of the Slavic/Orthodox peoples has taken on a new and far more serious meaning. With 25 million Russians outside the country’s borders, often less than wholly welcome in their new homes (Pavlenko 2008), Putin has, as we have seen, pursued a far more ‘involved’ policy in ex-Soviet republics than did Yeltsin. Indeed in this re-assertion of a powerful national identity in direct opposition to the West he has turned Russia from obedient poodle to untamed bear.

  For Example security and law enforcement was at 200 billion roubles, in 2006 that is 600 (Taylor 2011: 53). 51   This is particularly seen in the state owned television station ‘Zvezda’ which is a constant barrage of military related and patriotic items (Myers 2005). 52   Indeed in Luke Harding’s ‘Mafia State’ (2011) he cites evidence that claims to show far-right movements that are on the State’s payroll. 53   Moscow Helsinki Group statistics in Alexseev (2005). 54   As seen in the Khodorkovsky affair.

In Conclusion Under Tsar Nicholas I “Many Russians sought an ideology which could serve as a bulwark against the challenge which Western ideas posed to the established order” (Lincoln 1978). Indeed, Bruce Lincoln (2008: 240) argues that this tsarist emphasis was seen as preferable to the chaos of European revolutions. Similarly then, the chaos that was created in the Yeltsin years had a huge impact on public opinion. People were looking for a strong leader (to consolidate and legitimize the regime) who would re-create Russia as a great power and provide stability. In response Putin asserted, far more than Yeltsin did, the three pillars of Official Nationality. In re-emphasising Orthodoxy Putin’s presidency echoes the traditional symphony between Church and State, thus serving to legitimize and historicise state power through reference to a resurgent belief. Putin’s echo of Autocracy would stabilize society through a centralisation of power and further consolidate the regime through a directly ‘managed’ democracy. The final pillar, Nationality would carve out a role for Russia as an ‘energy superpower’, especially defined in opposition to the West, whose mission, in echo of past roles, was to protect and defend Slavic peoples now outside its borders. Patriarch Kirill praises Putin for having “personally played a massive role in correcting this crooked twist [the Yeltsin era] of our history” (Bryanski 2012). In this, Putin is seen playing out a role that has defined the Russian past. Ever since Peter the Great in 1682-1725, or perhaps even since the great schism of 1054, there has been an inherent antagonism between proponents of Western-style reform and those who seek to retain Russian unique purity. Slavophil55 (slavyanofilov) thought in the nineteenth century saw Peter the Great’s “sudden leap in history” (Anderson 1967: 448), so lauded by the Westernizers (zapadnik) of the same period, as a betrayal of ‘historicity’; Russia was unique, not suited to Western political structures. Yeltsin, like Peter, looked to forcibly ‘civilize’ Russia. The attempt was seen to have failed and thus Putin was to draw out the opposing strands of her political culture. Sobornost, an idea central to Slavophilism, looks to the growth of society on the basis of ‘organic development’. So for Putin too “the new Russian idea will come into being as an alloy, an organic compound of...Russian values that have stood the test of time” (Evans 2008: 10). Here we find a vision: creating a new Russia through emphasis on the old. Putin has moulded this new Russia and in so doing showcases an ideology centuries old, preserved and portrayed in the modern political context.

50

  Although the ideas of the Slavophiles were largely developed in reaction to state power they are useful to understanding the approach (and influences on) Uvarov and others in considering the nature of the Russian ‘idea’. 55

197

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Bibliography Abashina, Galina, 2012. Impact of political culture on USRussian relations in the beginning of the 21st century. [online] MA Brandeis University. Available at: http:// bir.brandeis.edu/bitstream/handle/10192/27/M.A.%20 Thes is % 2 0% 28 M erged %2 9. pd f?s eq ue n ce=1. [Accessed 20.04.2012]. Achmatova, Nina, 2012. Kirill and religious leaders “bless” Putin’s candidacy. [online] AsiaNews.it. Available at: http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Kirilland-religious-leaders-bless-Putin%E2%80%99scandidacy-23956.html. [Accessed: 08.03.2012]. Action, Edward, 1979. Alexander Herzen and the role of the intellectual revolutionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Agurasky, Mikhail, 1987. The Third Rome: national Bolshevism in the USSR. London: Westview Press. Aizlewood, Robin, 2000. Revisiting Russian identity in Russian thought: from Chaadaev to the early twentieth century. The Slavonic and East European Review, 78: 1, 20-43. Allensworth, Wayne, 1998. The Russian Question. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Allison, Roy, Light, Margot and White, Stephen, 2006. Putin’s Russia and the enlarged Europe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Alexseev, Mikhail, 2005. Xenophobia in Russia: are the young driving it? [online] PONARS Policy Memo No. 367. Available at: http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/ pm_0367.pdf. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Anderson, Perry, 2007. Russia’s managed democracy. [online] London Review of Books. Available at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n02/perry-anderson/russiasmanaged-democracy. [Accessed 31.01.2011]. Anderson, Thornton, 1967. Russian political thought: an introduction. New York: Cornell University Press. Andreev, Vasily, 2009. “The Patriotic Ministry” or conformism? The Russian Orthodox Church during the Great Patriotic War. [online] Russkiy Mir Foundation. Available at: http://www.russkiymir.ru/russkiymir/ en/publications/articles/article0048.html. [Accessed 18.04.2012]. Armed Conflict Database, 2009. [online] The International Institute for Strategic Studies.Available at: http://acd.iiss. org/armedconflict/MainPages/dsp_ConflictWeapons. asp?ConflictID = 152&YearID = 1373. [Accessed 16.03.2013] Ash, Lucy, 2005. ‘Our People’ stand up for Putin. [online] BBC News. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/europe/4491633.stm. [Accessed 09.04.2012]. Baczynska, Gabriela, 2012. Russia criticizes EU on human rights ahead of summit. [online] NBC News. Available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50086062/ns/ world_news-europe/t/russia-criticizes-eu-humanrights-ahead-summit/#.UQQae2fPSow. [Accessed 26.01.2013]. BBC News, 1999. Yeltsin: flawed founder of Russian democracy. [online]. BBC. Available at: http://news.

bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/585106.stm. [Accessed 20.02.2012]. BBC News, 2003. Putin vows to destroy Chechen rebels. [online] BBC. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/europe/3050806.stm. [Accessed 06.04.2012]. BBC News, 2008. Putin blames US for Georgia role. [online] BBC. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ world/europe/7586605.stm. [Accessed 16.03.2013] BBC News, 2011. Russia election: hundreds rally against Putin in Moscow. [online] BBC. Available at: http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16042797. [Accessed 11.04.2012]. Benn, David, 2008. The teaching of history in Putin’s Russia. International Affairs 82: 2, 365 – 370. Berlin, Isaiah, 2008. Russian thinkers. London: Penguin Classics. Blomfield, Adrian, 2008. Orthodox Church unholy alliance with Putin. [online] Telegraph. Available at: http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1579638/ Orthodox-Church-unholy-alliance-with-Putin.html. [Accessed 04.04.2012]. Blum, Douglas, 1994. Russia’s future: consolidation or disintegration? Oxford: Westview Press. Bociurkiw, Bohdan, 1959. Church and State in the Soviet Union. International Journal 14: 3, 182 - 189. Bowker, Mike and Ross, Cameron, 2000. Russia after the Cold War. Harlow: Pearson Education. Brown, Archie, 2001. Contemporary Russian politics: a reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burrett, Tina, 2011. Television and presidential power in Putin’s Russia. Oxon: Routledge. Bush, George, 2001. President Bush and President Putin talk to Crawford students. [online] White House Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/. [Accessed 10.02.2013]. Bryanski, Gleb, 2012. Russian Patriarch calls Putin era “miracle of God”. [online] Reuters UK edition. Available at: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/02/08/ uk-russia-putin-religion-idUKTRE81722Y20120208. [Accessed 08.03.2012]. Centre for the Study of Public Policy University of Strathclyde. 2011. Russia Votes. [online] CSPP. Available at: http://www.russiavotes.org/duma/duma_ elections_93-03.php. [Accessed: 19.02.2012]. Chinyaeva, Elena, 1996. Russian Orthodox Church forges a new role. Transition 2: 7. Citizen M, 2011. Surkov: the legacy of a maverick. [blog] Amsterdam & Partners. Available at: http:// robertamsterdam.com/2011/12/surkovs-mavericklegacy/. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Collins, Nick, 2012. Russian ‘spy rock’ was genuine, former Chief of Staff admits. [online] Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ worldnews/europe/russia/9022827/Russian-spyrock-was-genuine-former-chief-of-staff-admits.html. [Accessed 12.04.2012]. Colton, Timothy and Hale, Henry, 2008. The Putin vote: the demand side of hybrid regime politics. [online] Higher School of Economics. Available at: http://www.

198

Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladamir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’ hse.ru/data/075/226/1237/paper%20-%20Hale.PDF. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. The constitution of the Russian Federation, 2001. [online] Available at: http://www.constitution.ru/en/1000300001.htm. [Accessed 06.04.2012]. Curtis, Glenn E., (ed) 1996. Russia: a country study. The Russian Orthodox Church. [online] GPO for the Library of Congress. Available at: http://countrystudies.us/ russia/38.htm. [Accessed 12.04.2012]. Dalton, Dennis. 1994.Freedom: The Philosophy of Liberation. The Great Courses Series (Audio). London: The Teaching Company. Danks, Catherine, 2009. Politics Russia. Harlow: Pearson Education. Daughtry, Martin, 2003. Russia’s New Anthem and the Negotiation of National Identity. Ethnomusicology 47: 1, 42–67. Devlin, Judith, 1999. Slavophiles and commissars – enemies of democracy in modern Russia. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Diligensky, Guerman. 2000. ‘The West’ in Russian mentality. [online] Office for Information and Press, Brussels Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Moscow. Available at: http://www.nato. int/acad/fellow/98-00/diliguenski.pdf. [Accessed 22.04.2012]. Dinka, 2007. Russia: Yeltsin & Putin - a portrait in contrasts. HULIQ [blog] Available at: http://www. huliq.com/19521/russia-yeltsin-putin-a-portrait-incontrasts. [Accessed 14.04.2012]. Doyle, Mike, 2011. Russian Gazprom eyes Cyprus gas reserves. [online] Famagusta Gazette. Available at: http://famagusta-gazette.com/russian-gazpromeyes-cyprus-gas-reserves-p13281-69.htm. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Duncan, Peter, 2005. Contemporary Russian Identity between East and West. The Historical Journal 48: 1, 277-294. Eke, Steven, 2007. Yeltsin’s Chechen nightmare. [online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ europe/6588221.stm. [Accessed 19.02.2012]. Evans, Alfred, 2008. Power and ideology: Vladimir Putin and the Russian political system. The Centre for Russian and East European Studies. Federation of American Scientists, 2011. Status of World Nuclear Forces. [online] FAS. Available at: http:// www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclearweapons/ nukestatus.html. [Accessed 21.04.2012]. Felkay, Andrew, 2002. Yeltsin’s Russia and the West. Westport: Greenwood Press. Figes, Orlando, 2003. Natasha’s dance. London: Penguin Books. Free Dictionary, 2012. Censorship. [online] The Free Dictionary. Available at: http://encyclopedia2. thefreedictionary.com/Censorship. [Accessed 13.04.2012]. Freedom House, 2012. Russia: freedom in the world. [online] Freedom House. Available at: http://www.

freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2012/ russia-0. [Accessed 14.04.2012]. Garrard, John and Garrard, Carol, 2008. Russian Orthodoxy resurgent – faith and power in Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gel’man, Vladmir, 2002. United Russia: Ruling Party or Emperor’s New Clothes? [online] George Washington University. Available at: http://www. gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/ponars/pm_0255.pdf. [Accessed 08.04.2012]. Gevorkyan, Nataliya, Timakova, Natalya and Kolesnikov, Andrei, 2008. First person: an astonishingly frank selfportrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. London: Random House. Gill, Graeme and Markwick, Roger, 2000. Russia’s stillborn democracy? from Gorbachev to Yeltsin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glasser, Susan and Baker, Peter, 2010. The billionaire dissident. [online] FP Foreign Policy. Available at: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/04/26/ the_billionaire_dissident?page = 02. [Accessed 07.04.2012]. Green, Niall, 2006. Behind the collapse of Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’. [online] World Socialist Web Site: International Committee of the Fourth International. Available at: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/ apr2006/ukra-a06.shtml. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Griffin, Roger, 1998. Introduction. International Fascism: theories, causes and the new consensus. London: Arnold. Guardian, 2010. US embassy cables: ‘Politically motivated’ Khodorkovsky trial ‘given rule of law gloss’. [online] The Guardian. Available at: http://www.guardian. co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/242087. [Accessed 15.04.2012]. Hahn, Gordon, 2004. Managed democracy? Building stealth authoritarianism in St. Petersburg. Demokratizatsiya 12: 2. Harding, Luke, 2011. Mafia state: how one reporter became an enemy of the brutal new Russia. London: Guardian Books. Audio Format. Herd, Graeme, 2001. Russia and the Politics of ‘Putinism’. Journal of Peace Research 38: 1, 107–112. Hill, Ronald and Cappelli, Ottorino, 2010. Putin and Putinism. Abingdon: Routledge. Hosking, Geoffrey, 1997. Russia: people and empire. Hammersmith: HarperCollins Publishers. Hosking, Geoffrey and Service, Robert, 1998. Russian nationalism past and present. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Human Rights Watch, 2009. Russia: prosecute rights violations in North Caucasus. [online] Human Rights Watch. Available at: http://www.hrw.org/en/ news/2009/06/04/russia-prosecute-rights-violationsnorth-caucasus. [Accessed 31.01.2011]. Huntington, Samuel, 1996. The clash of civilizations. London: Simon & Schuster. Illarionov, Andrei, 2009. Reading Russia. Journal of Democracy, 20: 2. [online] Available at: http://

199

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/gratis/ Illarionov-20-2.pdf [Accessed 10.04.2012]. International Election Observation Mission, 2004. Russian Federation presidential election 14 March 2004 Council of Europe. Available at: http://www.osce.org/ odihr/elections/russia/25533. [Accessed 08.04.2012]. Jafri, Sameer, 2012. Gas and geopolitics: prospects for Russia. [online] Worldpress.org. http://worldpress.org/ Europe/3838.cfm. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Job, Sebastian, 2001. The neoliberal/nationalist twostep and the Russification of the West. Third World Quarterly 22: 6, 931 – 949. Johnson, David. Johnson’s Russia list. 2001. [online] Available at: http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5141. html##2. [Accessed 08.03.2012]. Johnson, Juliet, Stepaniants, Marietta and Forest, Benjamin, 2005. Religion and identity in modern Russia. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kaehne, Axel, 2007. Political and social thought in postCommunist Russia. Abingdon: Routledge. Keston News Service, 2000. Confirmed: Russian Patriarch worked with KGB. [online] CatholicCulture. org. Available at: http://www.catholicculture.org/ news/features/index.cfm?recnum=13868. [Accessed 04.04.2012]. Knox, Zoe, 2003. The symphonic ideal: the Moscow Patriarchate’s post-Soviet leadership. Europe-Asia Studies 55, 4. Knox, Zoe, 2005. Russian society and the Orthodox Church. London: Routledge Curzon. Kramer, Andrew E., 2009. Gazprom. [online] New York Times. Available at: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/ news/business/companies/gazprom/index.html. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Kryshtanovshaia, Olga, 1997. Illegal structures in Russia. Trends in Organised Crime. 3 (1). 60-80. Kulikov, Anton, 2010. Putin: everyone should feel comfortable living in Russia. [online] Pravda. Available at: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/kremlin/1612-2010/116237-putin_question_and_answer-0/. [Accessed 07.04.2012]. Laruelle, Marlene, 2009. Russian nationalism and the national reassertion of Russia. Abingdon: Routledge. Laruelle, Marlene, 2010. In the name of the nation: nationalism and politics in contemporary Russia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lester, Jeremy, 1995. Modern Tsars and princes: the struggle for hegemony in Russia. London: Verso. Lester, Jeremy, 1997. Overdosing on nationalism: Gennadii Zyuganov and the Communist Party of the Russian Federations. New Left Review: 221. Levada, Yuri, 2004. What the polls tell us. Journal of Democracy 15 (3). Levy, Clifford, 2008. At expense of all others, Putin picks a Church. [online] New York Times 24 April 2008. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/24/ world/europe/24church.html?pagewanted=3&_ = = r 1&sq = russia&st= nyt&scp 4. [Accessed 08.02.2012].

Lieven, Anatol, 2005. The Essential Vladimir Putin. Foreign Policy 146, 72–73. Linan, Vazquez, 2010. History as a propaganda tool in Putin’s Russia. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 43 (2), 167-178. Lincoln, Bruce, 1978. Nicholas I Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias. London: Penguin Books. Malfliet, Katlijn and Laenen, Ria, 2007. Elusive Russia. Leuven (Belgium): Leuven University Press. Malkin, Michael, 1999. Red-Brown. [online] Communist Party of Great Britain. Available at: http://www. cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id= 90398. [Accessed 23.04.2012]. Mann, Jonathan, 2002. Insight. [online] CNN transcripts. Available at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/ TRANSCRIPTS/0210/07/i_ins.01.html. 2002. [Accessed 10.04.2012]. Matthew, Owen and Nemtsova, Anna, 2007. Putin’s shock forces. [online] Reedline.com Available at www. reedline.com/LPs/.../E%20-%20Nashi_Putins%20 Strike%20Forces.doc. [Accessed 20.04.2012]. McAuley, Mary, 1984. Politics and the Soviet Union. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. McDaniel, Tim, 1996. The agony of the Russian idea. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Merritt, Martha, 2001. Constructing threat in Russian foreign policy. [online] Wilson Center. Available at: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/231constructing-threat-russian-foreign-policyethnicity-apocalypse-and-baltic-warriors. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Moscow Times, 2012. Boris Berezovsky. [online] The Moscow Times. Available at: http:// www.themoscowtimes.com/mt_profile/borisberezovsky/434236.html. [Accessed 10.02.2012]. Mulvey, Stephen, 2000. Vladimir Putin: spy turned politician. [online] BBC News. Available at: http:// news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/415124.stm. [Accessed 14.02.2013]. Myers, Steven 2005. Russian military TV to beat patriotic drum. [online] New York Times. Available at: http:// www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/world/europe/11ihtmoscow.html?_r=1. [Accessed 21.04.2012]. Myers, Stephen Lee, 2007. Youth groups created by Kremlin serve Putin’s cause. [blog] Doctor Bulldog & Ronin. Available at: http://doctorbulldog.wordpress. com/2007/07/08/putins-ideological-dept-of-nashifights-for-the-hearts-and-minds-of-russias-youth/. [Accessed 15.04.2012]. Naletova, Inna, 2001. Orthodoxy and Gnosticism in Russia. The conflict between the Orthodox Church and American missionary groups in the post-Soviet Russia. Extraordinary Times, IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences 11. [online] Available at: www.iwm.at/ publ-jvc/jc-11-06.pdf. [Accessed 25.02.2013]. Naletova, Inna, 2002. The Orthodox Church in the mirror of public opinion: an analysis of recent polls and surveys. [online] Institute for Human Sciences (IWM).

200

Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladamir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’ Available at: http://www.iwm.at/publ-jvc/jc-12-03.pdf. [Accessed 02.04.2012]. NATO, 1997. Remarks by Russian president Yeltsin. [online] NATO. Available at: http://www.nato.int/docu/ speech/1997/s970527e.htm. [Accessed 22.04.2012]. NBR-Hudson Institute, 2008. Russia political economy: trends and implications. [online] NBR-Hudson Institute. Available at: http://www.nbr.org/Downloads/ pdfs/PSA/Russia_Conf08_Report.pdf. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Oates, Sarah and McCormack, Gillian, 2010. ‘The media and political communication’ in Stephen White, Developments in Russian Politics. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Oleg, Shchedrov, 2007. Putin promises support to Russian Orthodox Church. [online] http://www.reuters. com/article/2007/11/19/us-russia-putin-churchidUSL196077120071119. 2007. 08. 03.2012. Osborn, Andrew, 2005. Putin sets up youth group to stop ‘Orange Revolution. [online] Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/ europe/putin-sets-up-youth-group-to-stop-orangerevolution-6151593.html. [Accessed 16.04.2012]. Osborn, Andrew, 2007. Can Grozny be groovy? [online] Independent. Available at: http://www.independent. co.uk/news/europe/article2331993.ece. [Accessed 07.04.2012]. Ostalski, Andrei, 2011. The Russia that Yeltsin left behind. [online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ hi/6596343.stm. [Accessed 02.02.2011]. Oxley, Peter, 2001. Russia, 1855-1991 from Tsars to Commissars. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pain, Emil, 2000. The second Chechen war. Military Review, July-August 2000. [online] Available at: http:// fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/secchech/ secchech.htm. [Accessed 06.05.2012]. Panarin, Igor, 2012. Putin’s new ideology: developing Russian civilization. [online] RT Question More. Available at: http://rt.com/politics/putin-electionpresident-panarin-955. [Accessed 18.04.2012]. Pares, Bernard, 1962. A History Of Russia. London: Lowe and Brydone. Pavlenko, Aneta, 2008. Russian in post-Soviet countries. [online] Springer Science+Business Media. Available at: http://astro.temple.edu/~apavlenk/pdf/Russian_ Linguistics_2008.pdf. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Percy, Norma, 2012. Putin, Russia and the West. BBC 2 series 19.01.2012 - 09.02.2012. Plamenatz, John, 1975. ‘Two Types of Nationalism’ in Nationalism: The Nature and Evolution of an Idea. Canberra: ANU Press. Pommereau, Isabelle de, 2012. Left behind? Russianspeaking minorities struggle in new Baltics. [online] Christian Science Monitor. Available at: http:// www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2012/1212/ Left-behind-Russian-speaking-minorities-strugglein-new-Baltics?utm_source=feedburner&utm_ medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feeds%2F

world+%28Christian+Science+Monitor+|+World%29. [Accessed 26.01.2013] Politkovskaya, Anna, 2008. A Russian diary. London: Harvill Secker. Polonsky, Rachel, 2010. Molotov’s magic lantern: uncovering Russia’s secret history. London: Faber and Faber. Pospielovsky, Dimitry, 1998. The Orthodox Church in the history of Russia. New York: St Vladimir Seminary Press. Pravda, Alex, 2005. Leading Russia: Putin in perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. President of Russia, 1993. The constitution of Russia: chapter 2, article 28. [online] The President of Russia Official Web Portal. Available at: http://archive. kremlin.ru/eng/articles/ConstMain.shtml. [Accessed 19.02.2012]. Proyect, Louis, 2012. Assessing the Russian and Egyptian crackdown on imperialist NGOs. [blog] Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist. Available at: http:// louisproyect.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/assessingthe-russian-and-egyptian-crackdown-on-imperialistngos/. [Accessed 15.04.2012]. Putin, Vladimir. Russia at the turn of the millennium. 1999. [online] Available at: www.google.com/url?q= http:// www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/ilos/RUS2502/v05/RUS SIA%2520AT%2520THE%2520TURN%2520OF%2 520THE%2520MILLENNIUM.doc&sa=U&ei=Ff5L T9HnOIz64QSm2PjpAw&ved=0CAQQFjAA&client =internal-uds-cse&usg=AFQjCNHpkViJoVkmX1T80 zFRbW7mHz4b-Q. [Accessed 03.02.2012]. Putin, Vladimir, 2012. We must defeat corruption. [online] Diplonews. Available at: http://www.diplonews.com/ feeds/free/9_February_2012_41.php. 2012. [Accessed 08.04.2012] Riasanovsky, Nicholas, 1959. Nicholas 1 and ‘Official Nationality’ in Russia 1825 - 1855. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Riasanovsky, Nikolay, 2005. Russian identities: a historical survey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Robinson, B., 2007. Religious intolerance & oppression in Russia. [online] Available at: http://www. religioustolerance.org/rt_russi1.htm. [Accessed 06.04.2012]. Robinson, Frank S., 2010. Mikhail Khodorkovsky: Human rights hero. [blog] The Rational Optimist. Available at: http://rationaloptimist.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/ mikhail-khodorkovsky-human-rights-hero. [Accessed 07.05.2012]. Robinson, Neil, 2002. Russia: a State of uncertainty. London: Routledge. Rose, Richard and Munro, Niel, 2002. Elections without order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, Richard, Mishler, William and Munro, Neil, 2006. Russia transformed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roudik, Peter, 2012. Russian Federation: legal aspects of war in Georgia. [online] Law Library of Congress.

201

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Available at: http://www.loc.gov/law/help/russiangeorgia-war.php. [Accessed 10.02.2013]. Roxburgh, Angus, 2012. The strongman. London: I. B. Tauris. RT Question More, 2012. Latvian ‘aliens’ initiate referendum on equal rights. [online] Available at: http://rt.com/politics/latvian-initiate-referendumrights-360/. [Accessed 01.26.2013]. Rupnik, Jacques, 1994. Europe’s new frontiers: remapping Europe. After Communism: What? 123: 3. Russia, 2013. Encyclopaedia Britannica. [online] Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/513251/Russia/38565/Collapse-of-the-SovietUnion#toc274471 [Accessed 16.03.2013] Sakwa, Richard, 2004. Putin Russia’s choice. Oxon: Routledge. Schauss, Mark, 2003. Russian rulers: history podcast. [online] Available at: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/ podcast/russian-rulers-history-podcast/id370995272. 2003. [Accessed. 09.09.2011]. Shchedrov, Oleg, 2007. Putin promises support to Russian Orthodox Church. [online] Reuters US edition.Available at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/19/ us-russia-putin-church-idUSL196077120071119. [Accessed 08. 03.2012]. Shekarloo, Pouyan, 2009. Russian nationalism, 18561917. [online] Available at: http://www.grin.com/en/ebook/144891/russian-nationalism-1856-1917#inside. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Shevtsova, Lilia, 2005. Putin’s Russia. Washington: The Brookings Institution Press. Shevtsova, Lilia, 2007. Russia lost in transition: the Yeltsin and Putin legacies. Washington: United Book Press. Simons, Greg, n.d. Media, identity and the Russian Orthodox Church. [online] The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC). Available at: http://www.waccglobal.org/en/20042-citizenshipidentity-media/507-Media-identity-and-the-RussianOrthodox-Church.html. [Accessed 08.03.2012]. Slade, Gavin, 2005. Deconstructing the millennium manifesto: 
 The Yeltsin-Putin Transition and the rebirth of ideology. [online] School of Russian and Asian Studies. Available at: http://www.sras.org/ deconstructing_the_millennium_manifesto. [Accessed 12.04.2012]. Smith, Mark A., 2005. Putin’s nationalist challenge. [online] Conflict Studies Research Centre. Available at: https://da.mod.uk/colleges/arag/documentlistings/.../05(20)-MAS.pdf. [Accessed 08.05.2012]. Smith, Sebastian, 2006. Unreality television. [online] US News. Available at: http://www.usnews.com/ usnews/news/articles/060709/17russia.htm. [Accessed 13.04.2012]. Sorcha Faal, 2013. Putin orders a ‘first strike’ against US Forces over Kosovo. [blog] Fourwinds10.com. Available at: http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_ data/government/war/russia_and_china_china/news. php?q=1197503155. [Accessed 15.04.2012].

Spiegel Online, 2008. NATO expansion: Russia could ‘point warheads’ at Ukraine. [online] Spiegel Online. Available at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/ world/0,1518,534971,00.html. [Accessed 22.04.2012]. Stetson University, 2005. Honouring of obligations and commitments by the Russian Federation (Council of Europe Monitoring Committee). [online] Stetson University. Available at: http://www2.stetson. edu/~psteeves/relnews/pace0506.html. [Accessed 03.04.2012]. Stewart, Gwendolyn, 2011. Russia redux. [online] Available at: http://www.gwendolynstewart.com/ peopleschoice.html. [Accessed 12.01.2012]. Stewart, Gwendolyn, 2012. America’s Russia policy. [online] Available at: http://www.people.fas. harvard.edu/~gestewar/russiahand.html. [Accessed 13.04.2012]. Stein, Howard, 1976. Russian nationalism and the divided soul of the Westernizers and Slavophiles. Ethos 4: 4, 403-438. Stuermer, Michael, 2009. Putin and the rise of Russia. London: Orion Books. Taylor, Brian 2011. State building in Putin’s Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Telegraph, 2012. Hunting, shooting and fishing with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s man of action. [online] The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph. co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/5972503/ Hunting-shooting-and-fishing-with-Vladimir-PutinRussias-man-of-action.html?image = 17. [Accessed 13.04.2012]. Truscott, Peter, 1997. Russia first: breaking with the West. London: L. B. Tauris. Vasilyeva, Natalia, 2011. Broken justice. [blog] O.DRussia. Available at: http://www.opendemocracy. net/od-russia/natalia-vasilyeva/broken-justice-howkhodorkovsky-judge-was-pressured-into-verdict. [Accessed 12.04.2012]. Volkov, Vadim, 2005. Will the Kremlin revive the Russian ‘Idea’? [online] PONARS Policy Memo 370. Available at: http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/ponars/ pm_0370.pdf. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Waldermann, Anslem, 2007. Russian Youth and the Putin Cult. [online] Spiegel Available at http://www.spiegel. de/international/world/0,1518,514891-2,00.html. [Accessed 09.04.2012]. Walsh, Warren. 1949. Pobedonostsev and Panslavism. Russian Review. 8: 4, 316 - 321. Wangborn, Emy, 2004. Russian media and democracy under Putin. [online] School of Russian and Asian Studies. Available at: http://www.sras.org/russian_ media_and_democracy_under_putin. [Accessed 13.04.2012]. Wegren, Stephen and Herspring, Dale, 2010. After Putin’s Russia. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. Whittaker, Cynthia, 1978. The ideology of Sergei Uvarov: an interpretive essay. Russian Review 37: 2, 158-176. White, David, 2006. The Russian Democratic Party Yabloko. Aldershot: Ashgate.

202

Peter Paine: A lesson from history: Vladamir Putin and the revival of ‘Official Nationality’ Williams, Stuart, 2012. Putin signs law branding NGOs ‘foreign agents’. [online] Google News. Available at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ ALeqM5jjFExA575uIIW4Afp5ebMgxLX5NQ?doc Id=CNG.14ee08cd81a96d23327fb33afcb2654e.481. [Accessed 26.01.2013]. Williams, James, 2011. Oil price history and analysis. [online] WTRG Economics. Available at: http://www. wtrg.com/prices.htm. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Wyman, Matthew, 1997. Public opinion in post-Communist Russia. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Xtimeline, 2007. State and Church come together under Putin. [online] Available at: http://www.xtimeline. com/evt/view.aspx?id=55063. [Accessed 08.03.2012]. Yambao, Ryan, 2003. Putin and Chechnya. [online] San Francisco State University. Available at: http://bss. sfsu.edu/tsygankov/RusFSU/747sampleYamboo.htm. [Accessed 06.04.2012].

Xinhua, 2011. Russia, Serbia seek stronger relationship. [online] People’s Daily Online. Available at: http:// english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90853/7330289. html. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Zarakhovich, Yuri, 2006. Inside Russia’s racism problem. [online] Time. Available at: http://www.time.com/time/ nation/article/0,8599,1304096,00.html. [Accessed 19.04.2012]. Zohrab, Krikor. 2007. Russia and Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. [online] Available at: http://www. armeniangenocidedebate.com/what-actuallyhappened-1915-part-ii-russia-and-ottoman-empirebalkans. [Accessed16.04.2012]

203

Crumpets and clocks: how do we respect an object? Crispin Paine

Museum workers are very often asked to treat objects with ‘respect’, while people speak of treating historic buildings with ‘respect’. What does this mean? The question has been surprisingly little discussed among heritage workers, or even by philosophers, who have given a great deal of attention to respect to persons, but very little to respect to objects. This note considers three aspects: respect as behaviour, respect as an attitude of mind, and ‘conservation respect’. In all three aspects we are offering respect not so much to the artefact itself, but to the person, community or culture that produced it, and perhaps to the many ways human beings try to order their lives and understand their world.

The margerine tub in my fridge has on the top the slogan ‘I WILL RESPECT THE CRUMPET.’ I assume I should show my respect by spreading my crumpet (of which there is an encouraging picture) with that particular brand of margerine. But what does it mean to ‘respect’ an object? Museum workers are very often asked to treat objects with ‘respect’. They promise to treat human remains with respect. They promise to behave ‘respectfully’ towards other peoples’ cultural heritage, and to ‘respect the integrity’ of old things and old buildings. But what is this ‘respect’? What does it actually mean? This question very quickly takes one into the world of philosophy, where I am utterly unqualified to tread. I want here merely to raise the question, and to look slightly more closely than I have before (Paine 2013)1 at the different ways in which respect for objects happens in the museum and heritage world. It doesn’t concern merely ‘sacred’ or ‘religious’ objects (though that is how I got interested) but objects of all sorts, because people can invest all sorts of objects with meaning and importance. I shall begin to try to answer the question ‘what does respect for objects mean’ by looking at three aspects that directly affect people working in the heritage sector: respect as behaviour, respect as an attitude of mind, and what I shall call ‘conservation respect’. I shall suggest that in all three we are offering respect not so much to the artefact itself, but to the person, community or culture that produced it, and perhaps even to diverse humanity itself.

the sacred and the mundane is unknown in most cultures2. Ideally they want to see everyone feel respectful towards their objects, and to express that respect in formal patterns of behaviour. But no-one can demand an attitude of mind; what one can demand is respectful behaviour - objects treated in a way that indicates respect. Museums are asked to show respect in an enormous variety of ways, often reflecting only at some distance the practice of the originating communities themselves. The New York-based Association of Art Museum Directors offers some examples: •

Some sacred objects of the native peoples of the western United States should be stored with sage to ensure their spiritual well-being...

•

In some indigenous cultures, special cremonies should be conducted or offerings made for sacred objects. Museums have worked with native peoples to make arrangements for such rituals, balancing religious practices with a museum’s obligations for the conservation of its collections.

•

Other solutions include storing objects such as sacred stone lamps of the Alutiiq people upside down, to keep their spirits from departing, or not housing certain sacred objects in proximity to other works.

•

Museums can also work directly with artists as well as religious leaders of indigenous cultures. In one example, a Tibetan artist was provided an artistin-residency in order to replace a Buddhist altar originally constructed by an American artist. The Tibetan artist worked with museum staff and Tibetan consultants in the design and creation of the new altar, which was consecrated by the 14th Dalai Lama after its completion (AAMD 2006).

Respect as behaviour Over the past generation or so demands for respect have been increasingly heard from the originating communities of ethnographic objects in our museums. Often, demands that museums respect ‘their’ objects are an alternative to demands for restitution or return. They are heard particularly strongly in North America, and especially so in regard to what Western culture calls ‘religious’ or ‘sacred’ objects - though our sharp distinction between

  It might help those coming from a Christian tradition to understand the strength of feeling of some originating communities, if they were to imagine a consecrated Host displayed by strangers in a museum.

2

  I am most grateful to Peter Paine for his helpful criticism and advice.

1

205

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Malaysia’s Islamic Arts Museum has published its own rules for handling the Qur’an and other Muslim art objects (Zekrgoo and Barkeshli 2003, 94). The overall aim is to maintain the boundaries between the sacred and those things regarded as polluting. These include bodily fluids, liquid intoxicants, dogs, pigs and (more problematically) those who do not have faith in God. The Malaysian rules can be summarised very briefly as follows: Muslims should wash their hands according to the wudhu rituals before handling the Qur’an, and non-Muslims should wear gloves. The Qur’an should always be carried, placed or stored in a position that is higher than waist level, and should never touch the floor. Polluting substances must be kept away from the sacred, so for example brushes made of pig bristle or adhesives incorporating pig fat must not be used in the conservation or marking of anything bearing a holy text. Most faith traditions have such rules. Museum workers, asked to give respect to an object, are being asked to follow these rules, or at least to negotiate a version of them. There are a number of problems with this, which there is space here only briefly to mention. First, there is the well-known problem of defining the ‘community’ from which an object comes, and of identifying who might speak on behalf of that community. The unlucky curator, trying to do the right thing, can easily find herself or himself entangled in group politics. With religious objects things can become even more fraught, for even within one broad faith tradition there can be fiercely contested attitudes, and particularly it seems where objects are concerned. Consider, for example, the diverse attiudes to relics just within the Catholic tradition of Christianity. And what about dead religions? Although an internet search will uncover present-day devotees of almost every deity ever imagined, in practice the curator preparing a display on - say - the Ancient Egyptian god Thoth is unlikely to face questions from devotees of Thoth. He or she may, though, be challenged by those to whom all imagined deities are aspects of a godhead, or of the human spirit, and deserving of respect and respectful behaviour as such. Some demands for respectful behaviour may challenge the principles and beliefs of the museum or of its staff. The Musée du Quai Branly in Paris famously exhibits Australian Aboriginal churinga boards , objects of the most intense significance to their communities, both extremely sacred and extremely secret. But as the museums Head of International Relations said ‘We at the Quai Branly, as elsewhere in France, have decided to respect the principle of laïcité. Therefore, we do not take into consideration any claim based on religion or ethnicity…’ (quoted in Price 2007, 122). And again, what happens when we really don’t respect an object? When it symbolises something we really detest? Is there a kind of respect that one could offer a knife used for cliterodectomy, or a Nazi flag, or an Inquisition torture-rack?

Can we really extend the idea of this kind of respect to cover all objects symbolic of humankind’s quest for meaning? Faced with all these complications and difficulties, it would not perhaps be surprising if curators and conservators ignored demands for respect whenever they could get away with it. After all, nobody usually knows what he or she is doing, alone in the museum store or lab. Yet what little, entirely anectdotal, evidence there is, suggests that museum workers do try very hard to follow the ethical guidelines and to treat objects in the ways their originating communities, or those who claim an interest, would wish. Why? Why should a curator or conservator, alone in the store or lab and struggling to maintain conservation standards, still go through the motions of showing a sacred object respect, if in truth they simply think of it as at best just a beautiful or interesting thing, to which foolish people in the past once attributed special meaning? If they do continue to keep the sacred book wrapped in silk, avoid using pig’s hair brushes when cleaning it, or refrain from touching the sacred object while menstruating - they will have to ask themselves why. They may be hard-pressed to find a satisfactory answer; at best they may feel that they promised its devotees that they would, and that it matters that they continue to deserve their trust. Mind, they probably will keep their promise. One of the odder consequences of our post-modern multi-faith world is that we feel we need to respect not just other people’s beliefs, but also the symbols of those beliefs. It is perhaps only those with firmly-held beliefs of their own who feel able to disrespect those of others. Respect as an attitude of mind We discover here a distinction between the respect that I feel in my heart towards your object, and the ways that I show it. There is clearly a difference between following the rules - behaving politely - and feeling real respect. I may shake hands with someone for whom I feel only contempt. So can we tie down the meaning of ‘respect’ more closely? I’ve suggested elsewhere (Paine 2013, 55) that I may still give respect to my grandfather’s favourite clock, even though he is long dead, and I may even ask you to do so too. The phrase often used in this kind of situation is ‘…out of respect for his memory.’ In a sense, therefore, the respect is not actually given to the clock itself, but to my (or your) memory of grandpa and of his relationship with the clock. So perhaps really I’m signifying my respect for myself or for you, and for what we bring to our relationship with the clock. In other words, there is a four-way relationship here: between me, you, grandpa and the clock, and the core of this is my relationship with you - I want you to share my happy memories of grandpa, and to symbolise them through our mutual relationship with the clock. You may go along with this, in order to avoid upsetting me. But if I’ve moved away I shan’t actually know what you do with the clock - you can put it on eBay with impunity. If you

206

Crispin Paine: Crumpets and Clocks; how do we respect an object? don’t, it may be because you know that I trust you, and you want to continue feeling you deserve that trust. Philosophers have discussed respect for at least two centuries; some of the principal arguments are usefully summarised by Dillon (2010). Since Kant kick-started this thread, however, and until quite recently, most thinkers seem to have assumed that respect is something due to people (Dillon 2010, 2), though R. S. Dillon himself suggested that one form of respect might be ‘care respect’, exemplified in an environmentalist’s deep respect for nature: Care respect involves regarding the object as having profound and perhaps unique value and so cherishing it, and perceiving it as fragile or calling for special care and so acting or forbearing to act out of benevolent concern for it (Dillon 2010, 8). This at once asks the question: should things be valued because of their relationship to (perception by) human kind or are they valuable in themselves, as supporters of ‘deep ecology’ claim? Thus moral philosophers have, it seems, begun to move well beyond Kant’s view that only persons are respectworthy, so that some have included animals and other sentient beings, and some extended this to include the whole of nature. Few thinkers (and those mainly in the New Age and neo-Pagan traditions) seem yet to have extended this discussion to objects made by people. A valuable contribution to understanding respect as it is used in the heritage world comes in a stimulating little book published last year by the Harvard philosopher Michael Rosen: Dignity, its History and Meaning. Though most of the book is concerned with the dignity of persons, towards the end Rosen briefly and tantalisingly discusses the respect that is owed to non-humans. In particular, he asks why we should treat the dead with dignity, as almost all human societies, in their very different ways, seek to do. Reassuringly, he confesses that ‘the puzzle of our obligation to treat the dead with dignity is…truly deep and difficult.’ He argues that we have duties, even when there is no beneficiary, and no-one (not even God) is there to observe it. The last person on earth will have a duty to dispose respectfully of the corpse of the second-to-last person on earth. In private correspondance Rosen has suggested that our duty to corpses does indeed extend to objects: ‘The odd (but, I think, correct) idea is that such a duty can’t be owed to a beneficiary but still has something like an expressive or symbolic character.’ We owe that respect (and perhaps reverence, and gratitude) even though it isn’t clear to whom we owe that duty. We must hope that more philosophers will give their attention to respect as we know it in the museum and historic buildings fields. Generally, to respect someone or something must be to admire them or it, and (crucially) to express that admiration though words and actions. In the case of an object it must be what it signifies that attracts

admiration. We are in fact offering respect not so much to the artefact itself, but to the person, community or culture that produced it, and perhaps even ultimately to the very notion of the diversity of humankind, and to the many ways human beings try to order their lives and understand their world. What we are doing when, in the privacy of the museum store, we handle reverently (or, if that word is too strong, with care and courtesy) a statue of Thoth is to remind ourselves how it both carries meaning accorded it by its ancient devotees, and symbolises humanity’s quest for meaning. Conservation respect There is another sense in which the term ‘respect’ is used in the heritage world, and that is to mean something like ‘demonstrating esteem by leaving well alone.’ The distinction between conservation and restoration relies precisely on the idea that conservators should respect the integrity of the historic object. The word is regularly used in this way in codes of conservation ethics. Thus the Institute of Conservation (IIC) says (Article 5): ‘The ConservatorRestorer shall respect the aesthetic, historic and spiritual significance and the physical integrity of the cultural heritage entrusted to her/his care.’ The American Institute for Conservation says (II): ‘All actions of the conservation professional must be governed by an informed respect for the cultural property, its unique character and significance, and the people or person who created it.’ The Burra Charter extends this respect to places: 1.11 Compatible use means a use which respects the cultural significance of a place. Such a use involves no, or minimal, impact on cultural significance. 3.1 Conservation is based on a respect for the existing fabric, use, associations and meanings. It requires a cautious approach of changing as much as necessary but as little as possible. 24.1 Significant associations between people and a place should be respected, retained and not obscured. Opportunities for the interpretation, commemoration and celebration of these associations should be investigated and implemented. Note that these mostly speak of respect for an object’s ‘significance’ or its ‘associations and meaning’. The use of the term in this way seems, though, to be fairly recent. Ruskin used the term rarely in his writings; Morris did not use it at all in his famous 1877 Manifesto for the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Nor did Cesare Brandi, sometimes called the grandfather of modern conservation, use the word in his 1977 Teoria del Restauro. The term seems to have crept into this use over the past couple of generations. In none of the published codes of practice is any attempt made to define the term. The same is largely true of discussions of conservation ethics, both in the objects-conservation and in

207

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes the buildings-conservation fields. By implication, though, its meaning is clear: ensuring the preservation of the original object. But what is ‘the original object’ and what is the ‘integrity’ that IIC wants respected? The definition of both has changed substantially in recent years. As Richmond and Bracker put it (2009, xv) ‘large fluctuations are happening within conservation theory, including the philosophical shift from scientific objective materials-based conservation to the recognition that conservation is a socially-constructed activity with numerous public stakeholders.’ Today ‘respect for the integrity of the cultural property’ (Clavir 1994) includes spiritual, aesthetic, and historical qualities, along with the physical. Dinah Eastop (2006, 518) reminds us that today the ‘true nature’ of an object includes all sorts of intangible qualities and attributes - ‘it is not a fixed state but varies with context, is socially determined and is subject to contestation.’ Stefan Michałski adds that in this ‘conservation’ sense of the word, too, respect refers back ultimately to people: We must realise that to say we have a responsibility to the objects is only a parable. Our responsibility is to our biological inheritance as perceptive, active, emotional beings and our social inheritance as knowledgeable, cultured beings, as influenced by objects (1994, 257).

Conclusion Salman Rushdie has called respect a code-word for fear, and even respect paid to objects may be prompted by nervousness of one kind or another. A worthier motive, though, is simple politeness, courtesy to others, demonstrated by a politeness shown to the objects in which others have encoded their dreams and aspirations. Respect, I have argued, is both an attitude of mind, and a pattern of behaviour that - at its best - genuinely reflects that attitude through the performance of certain set actions. Behind this interim conclusion, though, there must lie many layers of ethical and philosophical consideration. If heritage workers are to respond fully to public demands to respect objects, or are to use the term persuasively in argument against restoration, we need to give a lot more attention to what it means, and we need to ask the aid of philosophers and moralists. Meanwhile, I suggest, when we show respect to an object, whether in our attitudes or in our actions, we are in effect offering and expressing it not so much to the object itself as to those who created it and invested it with their own meaning. Perhaps we are offering and expressing respect, too, to humankind as a whole, and to the multitude of ways in which people have encapsulated their beliefs and dreams in ‘dumb matter’.

208

Crispin Paine: Crumpets and Clocks; how do we respect an object? Bibliography Association of Art Directors 2006. Report on the Stewardship and Acquisition of Sacred Objects. New York: AAMD. Clavir, M. 1994. The conceptual integrity of conservation in museums. Muse, XII (3), 33. Dillon, Robin S., 2010. ‘Respect’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition), Available at http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/fall2010/entries/respect. Accessed 15 January 2013. Eastop, D. 2006. Conservation as material culture. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Kuechler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer, eds. Handbook of Material Culture. London: Sage, 516-533. Michałski, Stefan, 1994. Sharing Responsibility For Conservation Decisions. In W. E. Krumbein, P. Brimblecombe, D. E. Cosgrove and S. Staniforth (eds) Durability and Change: The Science, Responsibility, and Cost of Sustaining Cultural Heritage. London: John Wiley and Sons. Available at http://cci-icc-gc. academia.edu/StefanMichalski/Papers/886772/1994._ Sharing_responsibility_for_conservation_decisions. Paine, Crispin. 2013. Religious Objects in Museums: Private Lives and Public Duties. London: Bloomsbury. Price, Sally. 2007. Paris Primitive: Jacques Chirac’s Museum on the Quai Branly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Richmond, A. and Bracker, A., eds. 2009. Conservation: Principles, Dilemmas and Uncomfortable Truths. Oxford: Elsevier Zekrgoo, Amir H. and Barkeshli, Manada. ‘Collection Management of Islamic Heritage in Accordance with the Worldview and Shari’ah of Islam’ in Stovel et al. Conservation of Living Religious Heritage: Papers from the ICCROM 2003 Forum on Living Religious Heritage, Conserving the Sacred. Rome: ICCROM.

209

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011

John - or JGR as he was known to many colleagues studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, from 1963 to 1966. After a short spell as a schoolmaster in Yarm, Yorkshire, he returned to Oxford where he studied under Professor Christopher Hawkes (1968-9), gaining a starred Diploma in European Archaeology. There followed three years as Museum Assistant to Bernard Fagg at the Pitt Rivers Museum. John could have remained in the university world, or perhaps moved to a National museum, where his exceptional background in history, archaeology and anthropology might have informed enormously valuable scholarship. Instead, in 1972 he was appointed Keeper of Antiquities with Oxford City and County Museum, soon to be the Oxfordshire County Museums Service. This was perfect timing, for local museums in the UK were responding to a surge of public support with imaginative expansion and greatly improved professional standards. Intellectually, Hoskins-style landscape history, ‘peoples’ history’ and industrial archaeology were impacting on social history museums, most of which however didn’t yet know how to integrate their collections - the ‘material turn’ was still to come. Oxfordshire was a leader in all this. John introduced effective and disciplined collecting and collections management, redisplayed the whole of the County Museum at Woodstock (reportedly earning the accolade ‘sub-Marxist crap’ from Councillor John Redwood), and played the lead role in developing Cogges Manor Farm as a rural life museum. Through Richard Foster’s management team John was involved in every aspect of the Service’s work, and his knowledge, charm and obstinacy gave him a key role. In 1988, John was appointed Director of Reading Museum and Art Gallery. Reading’s great Alfred Waterhouse Town Hall of 1875 was being completely refurbished as an important new community venue, and John had the challenge of substantially expanding the museum and launching a major redisplay. He was in his element. He was also working with real quality collections, including the Silchester material, the Leek Embroidery Society’s copy of the Bayeux Tapestry (which he was able to put on display for the first time in very many years) and the wonderful 12th century capitals from Reading Abbey. Jill Greenaway describes above the creation of the Silchester gallery, and John was also responsible for the imaginative Story of Reading (now ‘Reading: People and Place’) gallery, and before he left the museum he had laid the plans for the innovative ‘Box Room’. From 1994 he worked as a consultant specialising in museum development schemes, exhibition planning,

historic building studies and conservation planning. Projects were hugely varied and included a number of museums, but the majority were Conservation Management Plans for historic buildings, and many were done in association with Oxford Archaeology. John’s understanding of historic buildings was married to a sensitivity and alertness to their significance in society both in the past and today. On the afternoon before his death he had completed a report for English Heritage on Osborne House, Isle of Wight. John’s background as historian, anthropologist and archaeologist gave him a very special authority, and it is a shame he never published more speculatively, but the very great deal he had to offer is reflected in the many publications and reports listed in the bibliography below. Colleagues commented on his generosity with his time on such committees as the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society, and his election to a Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries was widely welcomed. John loved language, and delighted in its use - it was the basis of much of his splendid humour. He loved music too, from The Laughing Policeman to Purcell and Handel; when (as often) he burst into song it was likely to be ‘Come, ye Sons of Art’. He constantly surprised with his lightly-worn general knowledge, including a lively interest in international affairs and national politics. His most remarkable skills, though, lay in his design sense and drawing ability. Colleagues calling on him at home might discover him straightening an arrow shaft for the County Museum redisplay, and fastening on the Neolithic arrowhead with dental floss as a proxy for animal sinews (John was well ahead of his time in creating context for objects inside showcases), designing a Victorian walled garden for Cogges, or building ‘17th century’ displays for an exhibition. We are privileged to print below some personal memories of John by family, friends and colleagues. Other contributions have been incorporated into the texts. Pamela Turner John’s paternal family (especially his grandmother) had a great effect on his upbringing. His grandfather was a carpenter and before her marriage his grandmother was a seamstress; forebears hailed from Whitby and included jet-workers and master mariners. This was a typical, large working-class Northern family (74 relatives were regularly encountered). Men would pay regular visits to the social club (alcohol was an ordinary part of everyday life) and women would keep to the home. 211

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Education and reading were important both for themselves and as a means of ‘getting on’, especially for sons who took precedence over daughters; sacrifices would be made to give children better chances in life, such as supporting them at grammar school and providing piano lessons. The family had staunchly Anglican roots and the influence of Leeds Parish Church was pervasive. Our parents broke away from this rather constricted lifestyle, moving to the suburbs, and our father to an office job rather than to the local factory like all his cousins & siblings; at the same time there was a loosening of the church-bound social life. Father’s interests included music and concert-going, visiting castles and churches, walking, reading & using books to learn new things, at home we continued the traditional family pastimes (board games, general knowledge quizzes and serious radio listening). Father was popular - friendships outside the family were important to him (his parents had not rated friendships highly) and had a developed sense of humour; our mother was very much in his shadow, a typical ‘40s housewife. He cared little for what others thought of his actions or dress and was content with his own company. During the Second World War Father (as part of 5 years’ conscripted service) was a pianist in a regimental concert party; this performing life introduced him to another, more exciting, world both musically and socially. As children we enjoyed family walking and site visiting holidays in the UK and especially in Wales and Yorkshire. Even in our parents’ generation sons continued to be valued more highly, and given greater opportunities than daughters. Remaining in one’s station in life and limiting oneself to what others expected of you was still the norm (I believe that John would not have gone to Oxford if our father had lived). Moreover bigotry and prejudice (race, class, lifestyles) remained ingrained, as it had been in earlier generations John, however, grew up non-judgemental and free from censoriousness, and combined this with a stubborn implacability in maintaining what he believed to be right. He consciously rebelled against such bigotries and prejudices. He had exceptional drawing skills, a meticulous attention to detail in whatever he did, and an affinity for DIY-type jobs & hands-on construction. His early belief in ‘beauty’ as an essential aim informed both his domestic and professional spheres throughout his life. Of lifelong importance to John were his affection and respect for his mother, being surrounded by people he loved and liked, and to be lucky enough to earn his living by following his own passionate interests. His love of Yorkshire and the Lake District never failed and required constant replenishment. John’s entire life was marked by consummate loyalty, accessibility and reliability as father, son, brother and friend; he never forgot his roots, and continued to show their best features to the great advantage of us all.

Personal Memories Margherita Pierini I met John whilst I was training to become a nurse at Leeds General Infirmary. During their time at university John and Bill Mills, his lifelong schoolfriend, were hospital porters in the holidays. After graduating from Balliol College, Oxford in 1967, John accepted a post as teacher of History, Latin and - in his words - ‘needlework’, at Yarm Grammar School in North Yorkshire. By the end of the year he came back home, we married in 1968, and decided it would be lovely to start our new life in Oxford. Once settled in Oxford, John embarked on the Diploma in Archaeology, at the Institute of Archaeology, Beaumont Street, Oxford, under Professor Hawkes and Jacquetta Hawkes. During that year we met George and Birgitte Speake, who have been lifelong friends. It was an exciting time as the world was our oyster, and we revelled in Nikolaus Pevsner’s lectures when he came to the Ashmolean or the Playhouse, not to mention a host of other exciting speakers. In 1969 John was appointed junior curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Here he relished the opportunity to bring the vast collection out on display for the public to see. He was keen to have colour, good lighting and clear labelling to bring out the best of the exhibits and to encourage visits and interest to the public. His artistic and practical qualities manifested the results he wished for. John began working at Oxfordshire County Museum at Woodstock, as Keeper of Antiquities, in 1972. Anna was born that year, followed in 1976 by Matt, two very special people in our lives. We lived at Cogges for a year, and envisaged it becoming an important part of Witney’s history and heritage, which is slowly being realised now. In 1977 or thereabouts we moved to Woodstock, where we settled down for a few years until events meant separation and ultimately divorce. We remained friends and he was a loving parent to his children, and subsequently our grandchildren. John had an infinite love and passion for architecture, ancient buildings and archaeological sites, entailing fascinating discussions, which opened up a bigger picture for me. This was equalled by his love for Baroque, Medieval, and classical music. The Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Crafts Movement were seminal, and he had a love of poetry, including Milton, Shelley and Tennyson; Gerard Manley Hopkins had a special place in his heart as a metaphysical poet. If he had not become a historian, John would probably have become an architect. He did consider reading Fine Art at Cambridge and may have turned a place down in favour of coming to Oxford (which he loved) and extending his knowledge of archaeology at the Oxford Institute. Walking was another activity that John loved; it took John to Iceland, 212

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011 and in England to the Pennine Way, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, as favourite places. The children frequently accompanied him youth hostelling in the Lake District, and they too grew to love it there, not to mention their time with John Nicholl and Frances Lincoln and twins. John Steane I first met John in 1976 when I joined the Oxfordshire County Museum Service and found him in post as Keeper of Antiquities. He was at this time a major driving force behind the activities of a flagship museum service galvanised by the charismatic leadership of Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) Foster. John created, it seemed almost single handed, the exhibitions, wrote the handbooks that accompanied them, and catalogued the varied collections. Besides which he wrote the Cogges Master Plan which we all tried to put into practice during the following 10 years. He was a man of vision, of great energy, and gave himself completely to the task in hand. He was excellent company, a humorous colleague and yet with a steely will which got things done. Coming from outside the museum profession I was impressed with his single mindedness, and willingness to make the best use of limited resources. It was a privilege to work beside him, an inspirational museum man and I am saddened now to commemorate his passing. James Bond In my own essay in this volume I recalled with gratitude the warmth of John’s welcome to me when I first came to work for Oxfordshire Museums Services in 1974, and that personal warmth is an enduring memory. He had the rare knack of making all sorts of different people totally at ease in his company. Over the following years that first impression, of someone who might become a good friend, deepened into an abiding personal liking and professional respect. John was an excellent conversationalist and had a particularly rewarding sense of humour; he was really good company both inside and outside the work-place. On our penultimate meeting, I was back in Oxford teaching on a summer school at Christ Church, and together we strolled down the Thames path to have a pint at the Isis opposite Iffley; it was sadly evident then that illness had taken its toll, yet he was still on excellent form and we spent a memorably enjoyable evening sitting in the pub garden in the gathering gloom, just quietly talking and reminiscing. He was a very civilised person, endowed with an almost old-fashioned courtesy, considerate of the feelings of others, and highly articulate. He had a wide range of interests outside his professional field, in particular a love of the northern fells and lakes, an extensive knowledge of literature and a great delight in music, at least up to the time of Wagner, of whom he disapproved! Yet he bore his learning lightly, and, while always willing to instruct and inform, he was never patronising and never affected any sense of superiority over anyone he was talking to.

On professional matters, from my own perspective John always seemed so much more than just Keeper of Antiquities. He was the heart and soul and conscience of the museum, and showed utter dedication to his chosen field; for him it was never just a 9-to-5 job. Although we both found our work immensely rewarding, it was not without its frustrations; in particular, it was often quite difficult to concentrate on anything that mattered during the normal working day because of constant interruptions from telephone calls and from unexpected visitors. Because I lived quite close to the museum at Woodstock it was easy for me to nip back into the office in the evening to catch up on essential routine work, or when there was pressure to complete some urgent task and I’d got behindhand during the day. Quite often John was there too, and I particularly remember him designing the layout of some of the museum’s publications on the big table in the building where the Sites and Monuments Record was then housed - there was rarely room to spread things out there during the day because usually too many other people were trying to work in the same space. When total concentration was needed we both found it easy to work in silence without disturbing each other, but often we were both doing something that we could chat over, and I learned a great deal from John on these evenings. His own standards were high and he expected the same from others; on the very few occasions when I saw him reveal real irritation it was almost invariably because he felt that someone wasn’t making sufficient effort to pull their weight. His work continued to engage him right up to the end. The very last time that I saw him was on a November evening in 2010, at the launch of Kate Tiller and Giles Darkes’s Historical Atlas of Oxfordshire, to which he had contributed the section on brewing and malting; it was comforting to see that even then he was still in good spirits and seemed to have lost none of his old enthusiasm. I had total trust in John as a colleague and greatly appreciated his unobtrusive sympathy, guidance and support on one or two occasions when I was going through rather difficult times myself. Most of all, however, I valued the sheer quality of his friendship. We didn’t actually spend large amounts of time together outside our work, but somehow we never needed to; after I left Oxfordshire for Somerset, a year or two might pass when our paths never crossed; yet, whenever we did meet up again, invariably it seemed just as if we had only last seen each other a few days before. It has been difficult to pinpoint particular moments which encapsulated John’s character and personality, but two memories from a breezy week on Lundy surfaced while I was drafting this note. John had eagerly been anticipating sightings of puffins, for which the island is famous, yet day after day they remained elusive. He would not be contented with gannets, guillemots, kittiwakes or shearwaters, only puffins would do, and his comical expressions of increasing vexation at their continuing absence were wonderful to behold. For a couple of years afterwards friends who had been on that same visit continued to send him postcards depicting puffins from any coastal location they happened 213

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes to visit, with notes on how prolific they were in those other places. John always loved walking, and the island offered wonderful opportunities with exceptional archaeological remains and dramatic scenery; but it had its dangers too, and one evening he found himself brought to a sudden stop teetering on the brink of the Devil’s Limekiln, a natural chasm 250 feet across, dropping almost vertically for 300 feet. Despite his shock he was able to recite from memory, almost word-perfect, a passage from Daniel Defoe’s Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain relating to another chasm in Derbyshire, “called, saving our good manners, The Devil’s A…e in the Peak [though, like Celia Fiennes, who had visited the same place in 1697, John had no inhibitions about filling in the dots]. Now notwithstanding the grossness of the name given it, and that there is nothing of similitude or coherence either in form and figure… between the thing signified and the thing signifying; yet we must search narrowly for any thing in it to make a wonder, or even any thing so strange, or odd, or vulgar, as the name would seem to import.” For a fleeting moment Defoe himself, slightly prudish but very earnest, was with us. Not many of us, at a moment of peril, could have come up with a humorous quote so supremely fitting to the occasion. Richard de Peyer John was my Museums Association Diploma tutor between 1979 and 1981. He was an inspirational tutor and gave generously of his time and access to all aspects of the workings of Oxfordshire County Museum, taking me into the stores there and at Cogges Manor Farm, putting the museum library at my disposal and introducing me to colleagues who explained the inner workings of Museum conservation and of the Sites and Monuments Record. His pride in the wonderful series of thematic booklets on subjects such as Oxfordshire Parks and Bricks and Tiles was palpable, and I remember them making a great impression on me as a young aspirant social history curator. At the time I was working at the Wellcome Institute, and it was a breath of fresh air to meet a real historian doing interesting work feeding into displays and producing beautiful books – I believe he was the designer as well as author of several! In gratitude for his kind attentions I sent him a modest gift of whisky after passing my diploma, and I was touched that he seemed genuinely surprised (as well as appreciative!) that I had remembered him. Sadly our paths hardly crossed after that, but he was a great mentor and a wise and generous man. Anna Rhodes, Matthew Rhodes and William Gray We found the thought of writing this tribute really daunting because it is impossible to convey in words the strength of our Dad’s character; his warmth and his passion. He’s a hard act to follow! After his eloquent and articulate eulogies at family funerals, we joked with him that he would have to write his own, but I’m afraid he never got around to it, so this will have to do.

John was born & raised in Moorallerton, Leeds, the second child of Harry and Doris Rhodes. After primary school he passed his 11+ and was accepted into Roundhay Grammar School. He never lost his connection with or his love for Yorkshire, be it Harewood House, the Dales, Cistercian Abbeys or Brimham Rocks. In later years he and Nana (his mother, our grandmother) enjoyed many happy outings and in particular found Fountains Abbey a place of great beauty and peace. In 1963 he gained a place at Balliol College to study History, after initially intending to study architecture. In his work throughout his life he managed to combine a love of both. Having completed his degree and a diploma in archaeology, Dad started searching for gainful employment. He applied for the post of Museum Assistant at the Pitt Rivers Museum. There were over 120 applicants, so the night before his interview Dad decided to prepare in the pub. The following morning, despite turning up over 2 hours late and looking slightly the worse for wear, he managed to get the job on the strength of his wit, charm, academic prowess and an entirely unbelievable story about being locked out of his house in only his pyjamas. Well, we say unbelievable, but anyone who ever had to help him find his keys may say different! He went on to spend many years as Keeper of Antiquities with the Oxfordshire Museums Service, and then as Director of Reading Museum. Most recently he enjoyed work as a heritage consultant, working on conservation plans for historic buildings. Obviously that’s an incredibly brief synopsis of what was a brilliant and varied career, but we would like to concentrate on the man that was our Dad. Having said that, the work he did was one of Dad’s great passions in life. It is impossible to separate his career from his personal life, as the two were so interwoven. His colleagues became his dearest friends and anyone who was lucky enough to work with Dad will remember (to quote one of his colleagues) “...his warmth, humour and friendship, his encyclopaedic knowledge, his wisdom, and his indomitable spirit for what was right.” Dad felt strongly that knowledge and learning were something to be shared by all, and that was such an integral part of our childhood, whether it was living at Cogges Manor Farm in its pre-museum days, or being a member of the Young Archaeologists’ Club, or being left alone to explore Woodstock museum and the wonders of the Pitt Rivers as Dad worked away in some side office. We all remember being dragged around the historical sites of Britain (and sometimes Europe) and, at the time, complaining and rolling our eyes. On long car journeys the question was often put to us kids, “Right, shall we go the boring short way or the much more interesting, slightly longer, route?” The latter option would usually win if Dad got his way, and would involve a stop at some historical site or other. Yet what Dad gently and passionately instilled in all of us was a love for and appreciation of knowledge and beautiful things. 214

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011 Dad’s creativity was limitless. He was a skilled craftsman and we benefitted from this in so many ways, be it the most exquisitely illustrated birthday cards, costumes for school plays or wooden and painted hand-made gifts and toys. He took so much joy in his grandchildren, and a part of this was being able to continue through them the creative process that he enjoyed so much. He was brilliant at interiors and helped us all in improving our homes, with his advice and flair for good design, and expertise in building beautiful fitted bookshelves! He was also a fabulous, imaginative cook, always trying new and adventurous recipes. An abiding image is Dad pottering around in the kitchen, fully immersed in the creativity of it all and preparing mouth-watering dishes. His cooking was an expression of his generosity of spirit and love of good company (and good wine!).

We just wanted to end by listing just some of the things that meant so much to us and others about John, our dear Dad. Log fires Sloe picking Sloe gin Big navy jumpers Scarves The Holy Grail Brown’s Café

Dad loved travel and there were places that were particularly special to him. Yorkshire and the Dales, as mentioned, the Lake District where we spent many happy, (cold, wet…) holidays together, and Venice to name a few. As a boy Dad was fascinated by Jim Corbett’s books on India, and he recently fulfilled a life-long dream to go. He visited Rajasthan and the Himalayan foothills, and was overjoyed to finally see a wild tiger at Ranthambore National Park. There were also happy times spent exploring Lombardy, Italy. His last holiday was in June 2011, a cruise along the Rhine and Danube, from which he came back laden with presents and enthusiasm. He saw Dürer’s printing press and described a trip to the Residenz at Würzburg as one of the architectural highlights of his life.

Port and chestnuts

Since we have sat down together to share our memories of Dad we’ve been struck by how much laughter there has been. I’m sure you will all remember his sense of humour and fun, which permeated everything he did.

Blackwell’s

He was quick-witted, sharp, self-deprecating and sometimes quite absurd! Every one of you will have your own happy memories of John, and we have far too many to mention, but one incident sums it up for us. We were on holiday in Dorset and needed to check into the local Youth Hostel. Dad strode up to the counter and introduced himself to the nice young man behind the counter who enquired in a strong French accent “ave yoo booked ze room?” Now it was blindingly obvious to his small children that this was a real Frenchman, but Dad assumed he had met a comedic kindred spirit. “But of coorse we ave booked ze room. Are zere any rooms to be ‘ad?” This continued for a few minutes until it slowly dawned on Dad that he had made a huge mistake. The accent slowly drained out of his voice until he meekly enquired in his usual voice “may I pay by cheque?” Dad’s generosity with his time and of himself was infinite. He was at his happiest when surrounded by his family. He was so supportive and involved in all the decisions we made in our lives and made it absolutely clear that he was always there for us.

Barbour jackets Canal boat trips Flashman Drinking other people’s drinks Beautiful books Crumpets and tea-time The Beatles

Eccles cakes Buccaneer Blenheim Park Round the Horne Crab apple jelly… There are so many things we will miss but when we remember Dad it is always with happiness, pride and above all, love. Julian Munby John provided a signal service early in my archaeological career, when some forty years ago in May 1972 I found myself attempting to rescue a large medieval timber window from 126 High Street, Oxford, torn out by the builders and destined for the dump late one afternoon. With no-one to hand (the newly-arrived Conservation Officer, John Ashdown had started work that week but was absent on a conference about saving historic towns), a final desperate call for help to Woodstock produced John 215

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes in Landrover with trailer. Together we took the window apart, stacked it up and drove away, and soon the window was sitting safely reassembled in my front garden. [My task was to engage an irate traffic warden in ‘conversation’ for a few long minutes. I left her (I hope) feeling satisfied: as they drove off, mission accomplished, I said to her “You win!” - MH]. Today the window is happily back in place in High Street, as a memorial to a whole series of events to which it gave rise: Juvat hoc meminisse as Aubrey says, (mis)quoting Virgil. John’s selfless devotion to the task in hand was evidenced until the last day of his life, when after a hard day’s editing we parted as he drove past me on the Botley Road. We had been working together for a decade on a series of Conservation Plans on historic buildings, which in their way set the standard for being wide-ranging and userfriendly without being too unwieldy nor yet too trivial. We had started with Audley End (English Heritage), where the management of information on house, contents, collections and landscapes brought together our (partially overlapping) areas of expertise, and John’s particular knowledge of objects and the whole business of display and visitor enlightenment. John’s association with Oxford Archaeology continued in further plans for Orford and Framlingham castles (English Heritage), involving long drives punctuated by the delights of breakfasts at Scoffers on the A45 and then the Orford smokery (eel and oysters), all resulting in John’s production of the new guidebook based on our discoveries. Further away were Gainsborough Old Hall (Lincs), and Tattershall Castle (National Trust), where in remarkable 15th century houses we encountered lost drawings by Parmigianino, and an unusual archaeological survey commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks amongst Lord Curzon’s correspondence that together we were scanning in the Record Office. Meanwhile John had produced his own Conservation Plans for Oxford Castle, which helped to steer development on the right course, and for Chichester Cathedral (recognised as a ‘model of its kind’ for the easy compression of much study and learning into the modest compass of a single volume). At Shaw House, Newbury (West Berkshire Council), he oversaw the study of a splendid house in transition from school to historic venue, and reported with delight on his swift exit one gloomy winter’s afternoon when an unseen hand seemed to touch his shoulder, while regretting his inability to visit California to study the relevant family archives in the Huntington Library. With such a wide knowledge of history, architecture and artworks, John again provided a huge input to the Conservation Plan for Knole (National Trust) as together we traversed courts, stairs and attics to seek out every corner and report on books, paintings, silver, furniture and tapestries in a magnificent setting. With a diversion west for high Victorian splendour at Tyntesfield (National Trust), we then moved along the south coast to Portchester

Castle, Deal Castle and Dover Castle (English Heritage) with all the variety of military architecture and historical events and personalities. And finally at Osborne House we came to appreciate the warmth and greenery of the gardens in January, explored the Indian servants’ quarters and the storerooms, alongside the extraordinary light and colour of this really rather un-Victorian palace. Again, John’s efforts were put not just into the research and compilation of the extensive gazetteer, but also into the design and layout of the printed reports, which very much reflected his care and expertise in these matters, and indeed his last day was spent putting the final touches to this report. I can only hope he enjoyed our collaboration as much as I did – our cross-country journeys punctuated by Pevsnerian visits to remarkable churches and monuments; shared knowledge and learning of European art and architecture (you MUST, I said, see Tiepolo at Würzburg before you die, and he returned from his river trip with boundless delight at all its wonders); and above all for our shared humour in joyful giggling at discoveries of madness, scandals and absurdities that we seemed to encounter so often. And so in part his monument is truly a stack of ‘unpublished’ Conservation Plans of remarkable character, but above all in the memories of those who worked with him. Sarah Gray And eek from J.G.R. We met in 1975, my first job in Banbury Museum as part of the new wider Oxon service centred on the County Museum in Woodstock. John was key to that creative museum time as the Keeper of Antiquities, if sometimes known to disrespectful colleagues as the Keeper of Knick-knacks and Bygones. A colourful travel poster on his office door proclaimed that ‘Rhodes is always enchanting’. John and I were from different backgrounds, he from Leeds and the wild North and I from leafy commuter Surrey, but we had in common the opening up of horizons and possibilities through the magic of post-war education and the 11-plus: John to Roundhay School, Balliol history, and archaeology at the Institute in Oxford, and I to Wimbledon High and then Durham history and archaeology in the wild North. For John, this new Oxford world was not an escape from Leeds and from his growing up but a glorious addition where it all came together. I never met his father, Harry Rhodes, who died while John was still at school but from what I gathered, many important personality traits and interests were shared, just as I could recognise in him also the warmth and sweetness of his mother, Doris, ‘Nana’ Rhodes, demon card player and baker. As Pamela Turner describes, John shared with his father a personality both sociable and self-sufficient, wit, humour and the raised eyebrow, music and the C of E, forays to castles, churches, Dales and Lakes and a love of books and reading. New interests and learning could be pursued in the wonders of Leeds City Library, Museum and Art Gallery.

216

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011

A Bodleian postcard, scissors and a pen or two.

So many friends, colleagues and family will remember John’s warmth, charm, conversation and quick wit, erudite but sometimes extremely silly. Though still rooted in Leeds and the valuable life lessons as a hospital porter at the infirmary, the world opened up for John in Oxford and in Balliol where his tutor was the Marxist historian, Christopher Hill, who patiently accepted various unbelievable reasons for unfinished essays including a nasty but very temporary attack of gastroenteritis. John also recalled from that time a first brilliant trip to Italy and Greece, four chaps in a Mini with no room for much more than a toothbrush each. Through the years that I knew John/JGR, working and living together and apart and as Mum and Dad to our son, Will, I grew

to understand that beyond the knowledgeable, sociable, funny, loyal, collegiate friend and family man lay also a deep need in John for solitude and independence of experience, thought and his intense reactions to the places, art and music that he loved. For me, time spent with John, whether museuming, conversations, making things, celebrations, trips to the theatre, music or the opera, or travelling here or in Europe, with young people or just us, was sometimes infuriating, always greater fun and a more vivid experience for his company. Here are some of my memories, with pictures as befits John’s graphic skills, just in broad themes. (All photos: Sarah Gray)

217

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Although much remembered as easy-going and sociable, there is also a strand among memories of John, variously expressed as determination or stubborn, resolute perfectionism. His principled spirit for what was right stayed with him throughout life, expressed in an insistence on Cooperative membership and on Building Societies not Banks (he had a point there). He read the Grauniad and subscribed to Private Eye. Once he took against an individual or an organisation, that was it, outer darkness for them, as with Tesco after the days of Shirley Porter or any media associated with the Maxwell or Murdoch empires. He could write a mean, lengthy and expressive letter and was disappointed that he received no reply from Gordon Brown when he wrote one to him, finally resigning from the (New) Labour Party.

Alongside his perfectionist focus, John had a great talent for procrastination and sociable diversion which led to happy times when he set up as a heritage and museums consultant from home in the 1990s. As he worked away at the drawing board, listening to music upstairs, the house was livened up by the regular lunchtime influx of Will’s friends from Cherwell School, playing snooker in the ramshackle basement and raiding the Drawer of Delights for eats and treats.

John’s work focus could also be extraordinary; daily life and work merged seamlessly and sometimes overlapped. While he was at Reading Museum, developing marvellous new displays, we had a holiday trip with Will by Motorail to Milan and northern Italy and John stayed up all night on the train, full of espresso, finishing off some tedious project which we then had to find a handy Italian fax facility to send back to Reading. Another time, when he was recovering in the coronary unit at the John Radcliffe hospital, the consultant and I had to agree to my bringing in the latest project for John to work on or he would have fretted and delayed his recovery. John’s great love of beautifully handmade things and respect for craft skills, especially working in wood, informed his museum work in Oxfordshire, developing high quality collections and working on skilled restoration and construction projects with his friend David Smith in the Workshop. He delighted also in creating and making in wood, ‘fettling’, whether in the museum – the 1980s Cabinet of Curiosities for the First Museums exhibition which formed the centrepiece of his study/library for 25 years – or at home. The trusty Workmate came out to build elegant cupboards and shelves in all his houses and in fitting out the narrow boat moored at Thrupp which chugged up and down the Oxford Canal on many jolly trips. John’s relationship with things mechanical - motorcars, narrow boat bilge pumps, computers - was not always so happy. Early on, he had little luck with Renault 4s, particularly the Yellow Peril. When Will was about to be born in the JRII in Oxford, John drove in from Deddington at crack of doom and the YP broke down on the northern ring road. After a Basil Fawlty moment or two, John charmed a lift from an early morning passing postman and all was well. While in Reading, John sported a museum Van Blanc with no heater which nearly froze Nana Rhodes who had to be thawed out after a trip down for Christmas. The narrow boat was lovely but the dodgy pump no fun in the winter months when John would wake on frozen mornings convinced that the boat had sunk in Thrupp Wide under the weight of ice in the bilges.

John had a vivid way with words, elaborate, slightly formal and delighting in an eclectic English tradition of wordsmiths from Wodehouse to Private Eye, Ronnie Barker and Les Dawson. Round the Horne and I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again (the camp commandant...) tapes played on car journeys and everyday chat was peppered with quotes and phrases, re-applied and reworked. From Wodehouse ‘never... hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine...’, ‘far from being gruntled’ or Sir Watkyn Bassett ‘trousering the fines’. Lots from Round the Horne, like ‘I, Douglas Smith, play the battlefield and my hillocks have been held by each side in turn...’ This was a lot of fun when joined to his flair for drawing and graphics.

218

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011

219

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes More seriously, John’s drawing and design linked in life and work to a topographical passion for both architecture and landscape and a visual sense of Place. One memory which surfaced, of the Oxford man, was expressed for me by Julian Munby in a general note to his 2003 Oxoniensia survey of Post-Medieval Oxfordshire ‘It is a curiosity of Oxford’s intellectual history that a vital and visually aware ‘school’ of antiquarian and artistic endeavour has long existed beside a tradition of historiography (and indeed a history school) whose products have been essentially verbal and non-visual.’ John took pleasure in line, draughtsmanship and formality in drawings, maps, prints and engravings, especially Renaissance and Baroque woodblocks. Dürer’s Four Horsemen, Hollar’s London and Oxford and Venetian vedutisti, Bellotto and Canaletto, were on his walls. With the fortunate exception of the Silchester Gallery, John’s exhibition designs are sadly ephemeral but here are two 17th century examples. This richly textured tercentenary show – black and white floor tiles, cabinet of curiosities, John’s favourite greymushroom paint accented in red, so 1980s – was first at the Ashmolean in 1983 and then travelled to the Oxfordshire County Museum at Woodstock.

John’s designs for the Buckinghamshire in the Civil War exhibition, 2004

220

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011 In 2004, Buckinghamshire County Museum put together a marvellous collection of loaned pictures and rarities to tell the story of Buckinghamshire in the Civil War. John’s design transformed our modern white-box gallery into a glorious and colourful 17th century frame for the van Dycks and Dobsons, with an ambitious architectural centrepiece. We built an eight metre wide replica of the Kederminster Pew in Langley Marish church across the centre of the gallery. John’s two designs (left) show that he really favoured Inigo Jones’s stone Italian gate for Arundel House, but we went for the Bucks example and I still have the 3m central scrolly cartouche, picked out in red and gold. The layout was symmetrical, formal, precise and beautiful. The conjunction of images told the story as much as the graphic panels; Oliver Cromwell stared across the screen at Sir Edmund Verney, doomed Royal Standard Bearer.

We also drove the Renault 4s into France a lot, early on in pursuit of Romanesque churches, and after John moved to Reading Museum also of William the Conqueror (gleefully known as The Bastard) and monastic stuff as background to Reading Abbey. Will and Matt came to Normandy in 1988 and we stayed with a French family near the gorgeous church at Thaon. Will came up with his first French phrase to chat up their little daughter, to approving nods from his Dad and big brother.

Art and topography came together for John in his interest in and admiration for the work of John Betjeman and especially John Piper. Another 1980s Woodstock show, Piper’s Oxfordshire, celebrated 30 years since the publication of the Shell Guide and Piper’s 80th birthday. John had a memorable trip to tea with the Piper family at Fawley Bottom Farm, near Henley. We both collected and shared Piper’s books and (more reasonable) prints. Some of the thoughts expressed in Richard Ingrams’ and John Piper’s Piper’s Places, also 1983, chime closely with what I remember of JGR’s sense of Place and feeling for the English Romantic Artist tradition which Piper wrote about in the 1940s. He liked especially the watercolour views of the Lakes by draughtsman Francis Towne. ‘The basic and unexplainable thing about my paintings’ wrote Piper in 1962 ‘is a feeling for places. Not for “travel”, but just for going somewhere – anywhere, really – and trying to see what hasn’t been seen before.’ Both Johns were rooted in English and Welsh places and architecture, had visited more parish churches, castles, moors and mountains than you could shake a stick at but loved to travel more widely in Europe, keeping vivid notes and sketchbooks. JGR’s line sketches and drawings are also notably short of people but somehow not deserted, with a sense of the ‘pleasing decay’ left by generations gone before. Tewkesbury Abbey was important to him; he was always a Friend and remembered the church in his Will. Travels with JGR were never solemn but there was always a planned purpose and a packed itinerary of interesting destinations along the way. In the 1980s, we had a springtime trip with Will, back to Durham and Northumberland. We stayed in freezing 18th century college rooms by the cathedral and played Pooh sticks on Prebends Bridge. After a lot of striding along the Wall and mock battles, we drove up past Romantic ruined Seaton Delaval to Seahouses and the coast. Finally, on the boat to the Farne Islands, John incredulously spotted a genuine Puffin or two, their stubby wings going like the clappers just above sea level. He nearly fell out of the boat. John always kept the dilapidated stuffed Puffin (sssh) from the School Loans collection at Woodstock.

In Normandy, 1988

Mutiny by the young ‘uns was narrowly averted. They reasonably pointed out that we didn’t have to visit every single church, chapel and cathedral just because we had both volumes of Normandie Romane in the car. So we alternated with cycling trips, picnics, the odd castle, burying Dad up to his neck on the beach and a visit to the Peace Museum, Memorial, which stayed with us all. Although the main point of travel for John was to be there, walk over a landscape or experience buildings and places, he also loved forging along, especially on the sea, rivers or scenic trains. On the overnight ferries to Caen, there he’d be out on deck in all weathers in his battered Barbour. Camping trips in France, to fixed tents with real cookers and beds, were a surprising success. Out in the open, in large parklands, knocking up a leisurely and delicious something for supper, with a large glass of cook’s perks in hand as soon as the sun was over the yardarm at 6pm.

221

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Giving the raised eyebrow to a mechanical mammoth at the Prehistoparc, Le Thot, Dordogne, 1989.

Summer wear with battered Panama, Pula, Istria, 2001 Always content with his own company, John preferred not to be defined by his relationships however close and, especially latterly as his health grew less good, wanted most his own place, decorated in his own style (very important), a base where the wide circles of people he valued could come and which formed a springboard to spend time with family and friends new and old. He found this when he moved to Heyford to look after his friend Bill Mills’s house. And it was within reach of both Oxford and the mid-Oxon countryside that he loved and which was an essential source of both sloes for gin and crab apples for jelly.

In 1998, we blew a small windfall on a grownups’ trip into Umbria and Tuscany, first staying in an Agriturismo near Citta di Castello in pursuit of Piero della Francesca. Marvellous farmhouse food and drink in the hills above the Tiber. But, and this was a bit of a theme, John was not lucky with his frescoes; the church in Arezzo was closed for restoration. Two trips to Rome and he managed to miss the Sistine Chapel. The sketches are from John’s travel notebook for the trip: a shady lunch and a window detail. We went on to Tuscany and to Lucca where John was determined to really look and to draw the churches, inspired by Ruskin’s watercolours. Will has kept and framed up one of the best drawings.

Over those last 4 years, John and I had some lovely trips, carefully planned by then as the essential places to see, but also to avoid steep hills and heavy lifting as we were both occasional old crocks, luckily usually at different times. Venice had long been a treasured place where we would usually set off each day pursuing our separate interests, just wandering, whizzing around on the boat buses and then meeting up for a largish Campari and nibbles around yardarm time. John would be searching out buildings, particularly the graceful Renaissance architecture of Mauro Codussi. His favourite church was Codussi’s Sta. Maria Formosa. In 2008 and 2009, we had four trips to Venice, not only to experience the amazing fireworks and the bridge of boats for the Festa del Redentore in July but the Regata Storica in September. Musical ambitions also achieved; box seats in the Fenice opera house, not Mozart but Puccini, still pretty good, and the Monteverdi Vespers in S. Marco.

222

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011 An apartment in Venice, close to the railway station and the boat stops, is also a great way of exploring all the places within 2 hours train ride from the city. So, an overnight trip to the wonders of Ravenna, saint-spotting in the mosaics and that extraordinary shiver of continuous antiquity. John was most impressed, after a fair old walk out, by Theodoric’s mausoleum and thought the heretic Arian mosaics the best.

High summer, Venice, 2009 and the blue jumper is over the shoulders ‘in case of a sudden cold snap’

Autumn 2008 was the beginning of the exhibitions celebrating 500 years since the birth of Palladio, a bit of a hero and huge interest of John’s. Over the year, he saw the show in Venice and London but, best of all, in Vicenza, where we stayed centrally and wandered those splendid streets on warm evenings. We had a private tour inside Palladio’s Basilica where John patiently explained metopes and triglyphs, yet again. The hotel Campo Marzio had a great line in iced G&Ts with crisps and nuts to be eaten with a teaspoon. These had to be tried out several times. We hopped the bus up to the Villa Rotonda and bought too many books and prints, as usual. John, born in October, always loved autumn, colours and crisp nights for fires. Absolutely tops on that trip was to drive through the Veneto hunting out Palladian villas and finishing in the foothills of the Dolomites at the Villa Barbaro at Maser. Autumn leaves, vineyards, Veronese’s frescoes, a glass of vino and the perfect civilised building to ourselves. If you get up early and hop the train to Cividale del Friuli, after a stiff caffe at the station a local bus takes you to the Roman and early Christian mosaic wonders of Aquileia and then on to the churches and tiny lagoon city of Grado where the locals fled from Attila. Then on to Udine where John tolerated the Tiepolo frescoes (my choice), but I think even he liked the golden glories of the Angel. In 2010, we ventured into the Low Countries by Eurostar and on by train through Antwerp to Holland. This was an eventful trip for two reasons. One great memory is of changing trains in Brussels Central and while we waited, Matt rang through to John’s mobile announcing that gorgeous twins were on the way. A beaming and stunned grandfather raised two fingers to signal the news. As we got into Antwerp station, I slipped on the escalator and set off a tricky week of trips to A&E and doctors as we moved on, determined not to miss a single 17th century marvel in Catholic Antwerp and then into Holland, to Delft, The Hague and Amsterdam. John was just great with the taxis and doctor runs. He liked all the splendid burgher houses of Antwerp, including the Rubenshuis where we went to spot an unlikely picture on loan from Buckinghamshire County Museum. But he went back twice to the maps and prints in the Plantin-Moretus Museum, a combined 17th century furnished house and international printing works.

Mixing with the glitterati at the Venice Film Festival, Lido, 2009

The best and last adventure was to be a two week river cruise from Budapest to Basel in June 2011, billed by Saga (?!) as the Grand European Voyage. And it was grand, a far better solution than dragging suitcases on and off trains and around cities. John had slowed down a lot; walking 223

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

Cold

weather gear: winter overcoat, two jumpers and

checked scarf in the

The printing press in Dürer’s house, Nuremburg, June 2011

Rockox House, Antwerp, March 2010

on the flat was OK but slopes and hills more difficult. The Regina Rheni was our floating hotel and rather good restaurant, forging along through old Europe along the Danube, Main and down the Rhine, each day another city or river valley to explore. Well-thumbed copies of Patrick Leigh-Fermor’s accounts of his walk from London to Constantinople in the 1930s came too, and it was sad to read his obituaries in the papers as we flew back. John loved being up high, at the top of a mountain or city and the coach trips were brilliant, taking us up to the Habsburg castle in Nuremburg or the heights of Bamberg so that we could wander downhill, to Dürer’s house and printing press, to churches, museums or shady bierkeller. Some glories were anticipated – Budapest (John had visited in the 1970s with the British Council) or the Residenz at Würzburg (even the stunningly large Tiepolo ceiling). Surprise delights were the rocky Danube Gorge south of Regensburg (just past the papal coat of arms on the garage of the then Pope’s brother’s modest house) and the monastery/ brewery of Weltenburg where John reached the top of the cliffs. And Passau, where a shuttle bus and careful climb to the craggy castle were rewarded

with a beautifully designed museum of the ‘White Gold’ Danube salt trade, just up John’s street, plus tea and cake. And he had no notion of the Renaissance splendours of Heidelberg. ‘Why did no-one tell me this was here?’ he said plaintively. It was also convivial, free wine flowed at lunch and dinner and we travelled with interesting new people. Many came from up north and from Leeds; one chap had retired from a career in Leeds City Architect’s Department, plenty to talk about as we surged along the vast Danube in bright sunshine to Vienna. Another retired teacher lady had been a pupil, like John, at Talbot Road Primary School - 10 years earlier, as he insisted. At dinner one evening with a couple from Lancashire, just as we sailed past Esztergom, John came out, word and accent perfect, with the whole of Stanley Holloway’s verse monologue ‘Albert and the Lion’: ‘There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool, That’s noted for fresh air and fun where young Albert ‘the brave little feller, not showin’ a morsel of fear, Took ‘is stick with the ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle And stuck it in Wallace’s ear’ and was promptly ‘et. And then we won the music quiz with our team in their ‘80s and ‘90s. A good memory.

224

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011 A homily preached by The Revd Martin Henig at the funeral of John Rhodes in St Mary Magdalen Church, Oxford, 30th August 2011 + In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. John has meant so much to so many of us gathered here to celebrate his life. I knew him as a museum curator, a scholar, an antiquary and above all as a friend who raised my spirits the moment I encountered him, many years before I was ordained. Absolutely central to John’s enormous charm was his pride in, and great love for, all his family. If he had a secret, a talisman which lay behind his vast generosity of spirit that surely was it, and our thoughts and prayers are with them at this time, especially with Margherita, Sarah, Anna, Matt and Will. But his outgoing warmth spilled over in abundance to engage all his friends and acquaintances. His achievements in the public sphere were formidable, arising from a lively interested in the past and engagement with its physical remains. He was fascinated by the history of collecting and collectors from the time of John Bargrave, a 17th-century Canon of Canterbury, onwards and he ensured that the museums he helped to organize, were not only enthralling displays to visit, but models of education and scholarship. They included not only the Oxfordshire Museum at Woodstock and Banbury Museum but Cogges near Witney. Here, assisted by his friend John Steane, he was instrumental in turning a run down farm into an amazing display of rural life which has continued to enchant visitors ever since. At Reading Museum John redisplayed the large collection of Roman artifacts from Silchester in a manner that makes it still the finest local museum in which to understand life in Roman Britain. Here I saw him at work in a professional capacity and marveled at his flair. The list of John’s highly successful conservation projects on buildings is truly prodigious and includes Oxford Castle, Shaw House and Chichester Cathedral and (with Oxford Archaeology where he was working until the very day of his death) Audley End, Orford Castle, Framlingham, Gainsborough Hall, Tattershall Castle, Knowle, Deal Castle and Osborne House. It reads like a role of honour: all English history is there and the work he did will live on to help subsequent generations to understand the past. The beautiful reading from Revelation seems especially apt for John as he made his life one of renewal, renewing old buildings so that they might live again, often more gloriously than before, and I am sure he would have loved to have got his hands on some of Jerusalem’s decaying buildings

particularly the Holy Sepulchre. If anyone could have done so, I feel that John’s warmth and tact might have made some inroads on abating the hostility between the various Christian sects which have footholds in that great church. At a deeper level, however, St John the Divine reminds us of the Christian faith in the renewal of all things. The Death and Resurrection of Jesus points the way, and presents us with an immense paradox. The Lord of All Creation, present from the beginning of time, allowed himself to suffer death as a human being and thereby gave us the firm hope that we will follow him. We can be further encouraged by the Communion of Saints. From a human perspective saints may be figures from the past, whether recorded in historical texts or known only to God, but all are alive to God and we and they are part of that Communion in the light of Christ. We do not, in this formidably intellectual church, invoke or light candles for Our Lady, Mary Magdalene, St Catherine, or any other saint because we are intent on following some arcane ritual. We do so not because we believe in revivified corpses, or still less in disembodied ghosts, but because we are convinced that they - and we - have a vital share in a living and evolving Creation centred on a loving and caring God. Death, which all of us must face, is a part of life, part of our pilgrimage towards salvation. Theological traditions concerning the future state have shifted from time to time. The reading from the Wisdom of Solomon could almost have been written by Plato; while that from Revelation is closer to the standard Christian position as laid down in the Creeds, of a rebirth and renewal of our earthly existences, hence ‘Resurrection of the body’. Of course John will live in the memories of all his family and his immense number of friends, as it will live in his work but that is not what Jesus offered us. He gives us a sure and certain hope of something infinitely more splendid, having anticipated it in his own Resurrection after a cruel death. Nailed to the Cross his loving arms are open to embrace all of us, and thus the Cross of death is transmuted into the Tree of life. And that returns the theme of this homily to John himself who, as an undergraduate, once had a good view of this church and its leafy churchyard from his room in Balliol. He was very fond of this place and, naturally, he would have known that no less an antiquary than the illustrious John Aubrey was buried here in 1697, as ‘a stranger’. The word ‘stranger’ reminds us that we are all, indeed, pilgrims in this transitory life. Let us then pray for John and wish him godspeed - the Spanish shout ‘ultreya’ to each other on the road to the shrine of St James at Compostella - as he and we journey along the road of salvation, the road that surely leads us home to God.

225

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

About 1955, eleven years old (Photo: Rhodes Family Archive).

About fourteen years old, outside childhood home in Moorallerton, Leeds (Photo: Rhodes Family Archive).

Graduation Day, Oxford, 1966 (Photo: Rhodes Family Archive). 226

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011

At Cogges Manor Farm, with David Eddershaw, Keeper of Education, and David Smith, Workshop Manager, about 1975 (Photo: Crispin Paine).

By abandoned charcoal kilns on Appleton Lower Common, about 1983-5 (Photo: James Bond) 227

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes

In a Romano-British ditch at Combe, April 2005 (Photo: Catriona Brodribb)

At the Cowper and Newton Museum, Olney, with Crispin Paine, 2006 (Photo: Val Bott) 228

In Memoriam John Graham Rhodes 1944-2011

At Buckinghamshire County Museum, May 2011 (Photo: Crispin Paine)

229

Bibliography of John Rhodes Airs, M. and Rhodes, J., 1980. Wall-Paintings from a House in Upper High Street, Thame. Oxoniensia XLV. [online] Available at: . Bond, J. and Rhodes, J., eds., 1982. Woodward, F., Oxfordshire Parks. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services Publication number 16. Bond, J. and Rhodes, J., 1985. The Oxfordshire Brewer. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services Publication number 19. Bond, J., Gosling, S. and Rhodes, J., 1980. Oxfordshire Brickmakers: the clay industries of Oxfordshire. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services Publication number 14. Fleming, D., Paine, C. and Rhodes, J., eds., 1993. Social History in Museums: a Handbook for Professionals. London: Museums & Galleries Commission. Paine, C. and Rhodes, J., eds., 1979. The Worker’s Home: small houses in Oxfordshire through three centuries. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services Publication number 10. Paine, C. et al. 1978. ‘Working-class Housing in Oxfordshire’. Oxoniensia XLIII, 188-215. [online] Available at . [Blenheim Cottage, Brighthampton, Standlake, by John Rhodes and Christine Bloxham.] Rhodes, J., 1978. Manor Farm, Cogges: an historical introduction. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services Information sheet number 8. Rhodes, J., 1980. Oxfordshire: a County and its People. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services Publication number 12. Rhodes, J., 1984. The Farmhouse and Garden in Steane, J., ed., Cogges: a guide to the museum and village. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services. Rhodes, J., 1988. Oxford: The University in Old Photographs. Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing. Rhodes, J., 1993. Britain’s Bayeux Tapestry. Reading: Reading Museum Service. Rhodes, J., 1999. Oxford Castle Conservation Plan. Oxford: Oxfordshire County Council. Rhodes, J., 2003. Orford Castle, Suffolk, Guidebook. London: English Heritage. Rhodes, J., 2004. Eton College Rowing Course, Dorney Lake. Site Interpretation Options Report for Eton College. Unpublished but copy available from Bucks County Museum as part of archaeological site archive. Rhodes, J., 2006. Oxfordshire: post-medieval and modern in Solent Thames Historic Environment Framework. [online] Available at: . Rhodes, J. and Paine, C., 2006. Cowper and Newton Museum, Olney, Bucks Conservation Management Plan. Olney: Trustees of the Cowper and Newton Museum.

Rhodes, J. and Munby, J., 2008a. Chichester Cathedral Conservation Plan. Chichester: The Dean and Chapter of Chichester Cathedral. [online] Available at: < http:// www.chichestercathedral.org.uk/about-us/_folder1/ >. Rhodes, J. and Munby, J., 2008b. Castle, Canal &College: Worcester Street Car Park & related areas, Oxford, Conservation Plan. Oxford: Oxford Archaeology. [online] Available at: < http://www.oxfordpreservation. org.uk/docs/Part%201%20WCP%20Text.pdf>. Rhodes, J., Ayres, J., Dix, B., Munby, J. and Steane, J., 1998. Shaw House, Newbury, Conservation Plan. Newbury: West Berkshire District Council. Rhodes, J., Munby, J. and Simons, E., 2003. Gainsborough Old Hall, Lincolnshire, Conservation Plan. Lincoln: Oxford Archaeology for Lincolnshire County Council. [online] Available at: < http://www. lincolnshire.gov.uk/upload/public/attachments/135/ GOHConservationPlan.pdf >. Rhodes, J. and Van der Merwe, P., 1994. The Story of Reading. Reading: Reading Museum Service. Stebbing, N., Rhodes, J. and Mellor, M., 1980. Oxfordshire Potters: the clay industries of Oxfordshire. Woodstock: Oxfordshire Museum Services Publication number 13. Conservation Studies by John Rhodes in association with Oxford Archaeology (Unpublished client reports except as listed above). Audley End, Essex Conservation Plan (2002, for English Heritage) Orford Castle, Suffolk Conservation Plan (March 2003, for English Heritage) Framlingham Castle, Suffolk Conservation Plan (March 2003, for English Heritage) Gainsborough Old Hall Lincolnshire Conservation Plan (November 2004, for Lincolnshire County Council) Tyntesfield: Historic Structures Conservation Plan (March 2006 for The National Trust) Knole Kent Conservation Management Plan (June 2007 for The National Trust) Tattershall Castle Lincolnshire Conservation Plan (December 2008, for The National Trust) Castle, Canal & College: Worcester Street Car Park & related areas, Oxford. Historic Context Study & Conservation Plan (2008, for Nuffield College, Oxfordshire County Council and Oxford Preservation Trust) Portchester Castle, Hampshire Conservation Statement (March 2009, for English Heritage) Deal Castle Kent Conservation Statement (April 2010, for English Heritage) Dover Castle Conservation Statement (The South-West Quarter) (December 2010, for English Heritage Osborne House Isle of Wight Conservation Plan (June 2011, for English Heritage)

230

BAR 586 2013 HENIG & PAINE (Eds) PRESERVING AND PRESENTING THE PAST IN OXFORDSHIRE AND BEYOND

B A R

Preserving and Presenting the Past in Oxfordshire and Beyond: Essays in Memory of John Rhodes Edited by

Martin Henig Crispin Paine

BAR British Series 586 2013