The diamond- or square-shaped panels of glass with ornamental designs which are an important feature of English medieval and early modern stained glass for nearly five centuries are probably found in more diversity of designs in Kent than in almost all other counties. Several, now lost, of the 341 designs preserved in the county's parish churches, country houses and museums, are recorded in 19th-century antiquarian drawings and watercolours. This article lists, documents and discusses both the abundant surviving examples and those lost but recorded in antiquarian sources. In assessing the latter, a survey of antiquarian records of Kent medieval and early modern stained glass is presented, providing an overview of the very important tradition of antiquarian scholarship in the county. The categories of ornamental designs, mainly foliate and floral, but also figure, bird, animal and heraldic badges, are all covered. This is the first attempt at a wide-ranging study of this very significant aspect of English medieval glass since Augustus Wollaston Franks, Ornamental Glazing Quarries (London 1849).
The present study examines a surviving chandelier listed in the post-mortem inventory of Sophia of Wittelsbach (1376-1428), wife of Wenceslas of Luxembourg, king of the Romans (1376-1400) and king of Bohemia (1378-1419). By focusing on its materiality, including amber and walrus ivory, the article aims to uncover the chandelier's multiple intricate purposes and, through these, to gain insights into how high social elites in the late medieval era, such as the Luxembourgs, perceived the natural world, engaged with the physical remains of non-human species and cultivated social and artistic practices to secure and enhance their power and protection.
This article traces the fortunes of the theory that medieval architecture in northern Europe-particularly Durham Cathedral-was inspired by architecture in Islamic lands, especially Islamic Spain (al-Andalus). I briefly review the critical fortunes of Christopher Wren's arguments for the 'Saracenic' origins of Gothic architecture, and then examine how and why these ideas were developed in France in the inter-war period, especially under Henri Focillon and his students. One of those students, Jean Bony, played a key role in popularizing such ideas after the Second World War, but a new generation of scholars has grown increasingly sceptical of them. I then turn to the Middle Ages to consider levels of access to key Islamic monuments and their followers in Spain, arguing that the Aljafer & iacute;a in Saragossa may have played an important role in inspiring a group of buildings with intersecting rib vaults in northern Spain and the French Pyrenees. Medieval and modern means of architectural transmission are explored as a way of reflecting on the practices of architectural history and the forces that shape it.
Representations of architecture constitute an important illuminative programme in the Sherborne Missal (London, British Library, MS Add. 74236), yet they have been largely neglected by previous scholars. This article divides the architectural images in the missal into two types, buildings and microarchitecture, and analyses the visual characteristics and significance of the two groups. All these images of architecture contribute to the liturgical function of the manuscript by shaping sacred narratives and significations. Meanwhile, the images act as intermediaries that connect the sacred, historical, and contemporary worlds: they link the historical prestige of the abbey as an episcopal see to liturgical contexts and indicate the 14th-century Benedictine community's aspirations of spiritual elevation and institutional promotion. This article further investigates how the artistic trends in 14th-century England, particularly the International Gothic style and cross-media expressions of architectural forms, informed the conception and execution of the architectural images in the missal. By integrating visual analyses with historical inquiries, this article highlights the important role of architectural imagery in mediating meanings within the devotional and cultural contexts of the Sherborne Missal.
Previous interpretations of the development of English timber buildings stressed the technological improvements brought about by new methods of roof construction. The present study argues that that does not explain sufficiently the reasons for the developments which took place. Beginning with a consideration of the growing use of decoration in structural timber, it is argued that clients sought to enhance the appearance of the interior of their houses. In particular, they wished to emphasize the height of the hall and to integrate the roof space into the volume of that room. To do so, they needed to raise, reduce or remove tie-beams and to draw the eye upwards into the roof space. The last few decades of the 13th and the whole of the 14th century are identified as a period of change, which laid the basis for yet greater levels of decoration in the domestic interior from the beginning of the 15th century.
The attribution of St Mary's church, Fairford, Gloucestershire, to the 15th-century woolman John Tame and his son Edmund goes back to Leland in the 16th century. It has been essentially unchallenged since then and the account of John Tame's life has been developed and embellished by successive scholars down to this day in a series of illusory truths that have no basis in the surviving records. The article examines the historiography of John Tame to discover what in his life is documented and what has been invented, showing when the inventions entered the narrative and how they were themselves developed further. Stripped clear of illusory truths, a different picture of John Tame emerges that throws light on his building projects in Fairford and suggests an alternative pattern of patronage for the church building.
This paper focuses on the impact of internal war in medieval England, specifically the Barons' Wars of the 1260s and their possible consequences for the political art of the English realm at its very heart, in the king's great chamber in the Palace of Westminster, the murals of which were recorded in the 19th century. By examining the imagery of the king's bed in the chamber and its reference to the bed of King Solomon, it pursues the idea that the Barons' Wars, which dragged on through the 1260s when the chamber was repainted, may have been more important for an assessment of the murals' significance than has previously been thought. By combining Solomonic and Coronation imagery with a Psychomachia, the suggestion is that Henry III, their patron, consciously cultivated an ideology of peaceable kingship, and that the murals in question may in fact have been partly or wholly an innovation of the post-war period. The paper is a contribution both to 'peace studies' and to our understanding of the politics of English court art.
A case exists for revising the dates normally assigned to two late medieval objects which commemorate the origins of St Bartholomew's priory in West Smithfield (founded 1123). It is possible to show that the effigy of Rahere in the priory church is an addition, rather than original, to the founder's tomb on the north side of the choir, and also that the manuscript containing the so-called Book of the Foundation was made considerably later than is usually thought. Doing so entails accounting for the assumptions on which the received dates rest (this is done first). It also involves looking more closely and critically at the objects in question than anyone seems to have done in the recent past.
This short notice considers the possibility that a medieval reference of 1405 provides a missing clue to the existence of a Roman road in east Cheshire. This road, which later marked the western boundary of the Macclesfield Forest, continued southwards via the Staffordshire Way on Congleton Edge to the village of Six Ashes near Wolverhampton, and very probably thence to the Malvern hills and the Severn estuary. Northwards it continued as Staley Street west of the Tame valley on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border, and probably further. It is suggested that in the ad 50s and 60s, the Romans connected the Severn and Humber estuaries by a road to facilitate the swift lateral movement of forces across their front. After the conquest of the Midlands the road had no enduring military value but may subsequently have been exploited as a trade route.
