Evidence for Christianity in Roman York is sparse, but an object thought to be Christian in sentiment is an openwork bone plaque from a burial dated to the fourth century. Study of the inscription suggests it was carefully composed to create a series of patterns in the number of words and letters. These patterns may be interpreted in terms of aspects of the Christian faith. They are similar to those found in the inscriptions on funerary monuments in York and in post-Roman Christian inscriptions from 'Celtic' regions of Britain. The status of the burial as that of a Christian is also considered.
The Grassington hoard is a group of four metal vessels found in 1975 and reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme in 2010. The vessels include two late Roman Irchester-type bowls and a Westlandkessel, a form of late Roman or early medieval cauldron.
The south Yorkshire coalfield, located between Barnsley to the north and Sheffield on the south, was not fully exploited until its opening up to new markets by the expanding railway network from the early 1850s. The Wharncliffe Silkstone Coal Company was established in 1853 as a partnership to exploit these newly-viable coal seams and was one of the first of its size in this newly-enlarged coalfield. The partnership was converted into a limited liability company in 1879. Uniquely for a colliery business in this coalfield there are partnership minutes and accounts which cover most of these early years of the coalfield. The colliery was established as a result of the railway schemes in which Robert Baxter, one of the partners and the solicitor to the Great Northern Railway Co., was a major influence. The unforeseen geological problems of the mine and the indifferent quality of the much of the coal created difficulties for the partners in achieving the potential profitability they would have expected.
Perforated spoons manufactured from animal bone have been recognised and discussed since the mid-nineteenth century. Geographically they are mainly found in Yorkshire and surrounding counties. Fifty percent of known finds come from caves in the Settle area occupied in the Roman period. Chronologically they appear to have been used principally from the late first to second centuries AD. They are a varied group of objects linked by their spoon-shaped, perforated bowl end. They remain an enigmatic group for which no clear function is apparent. Unfortunately, very few of the known finds derive from meaningful archaeological contexts. This paper assembles all the available knowledge on this object type and, for the first time, applies scientific techniques of analysis to determine species type and to consider evidence for use-micro wear.
The decades following the Harrying of the North, particularly in Yorkshire, present some quite specific issues for all historians. There is, in common with other parts of the country, a lack of written evidence. Though contemporary chroniclers report widespread destruction, there is little evidence to chart the process of recovery. However, the considerable drop in the value of estates in the region between 1066 and 1086, as recorded in the Domesday survey, provides clear evidence of widespread impoverishment. The aim here is to determine if the material evidence of stone fonts can provide any means to enable a clearer understanding of the chronology of the process of recovery in Yorkshire.
The correspondence of the renowned bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu provides an exceptional insight into the management of an estate in the north Yorkshire township of Eryholme during the eighteenth century. In letters written between 1746 and 1778, Elizabeth and her husband Edward reveal in unusual detail their attitudes to their estate, their different approaches to its management, their relationships with their tenants, and their shared commitment to agricultural improvement. The article first establishes the structure and character of the estate inherited by Edward Montagu in 1735, explores the attachment of both Edward and Elizabeth to it, and assesses its financial value to them. It identifies and provides information about the tenant farmers, before exploring in greater detail their relationship, ultimately fraught, with Edward Montagu before his death in 1775; and thereafter the close and amicable relationship between the principal tenant family, the Laxes, and Elizabeth.
An archaeological investigation was carried out by On-Site Archaeology Ltd at Harmby Road, Leyburn during October 2014 to January 2015. Radiocarbon dating revealed that at least one phase of early settlement was from the middle Iron Age 535-395 cal. BC. The prehistoric activity comprised a small number of roundhouses, four-post structures, enclosure ditches and pits, and post holes. A later post-Roman and early Anglo-Saxon phase was represented by interment of two inhumations radiocarbon dated cal. AD 399-544 and cal. AD 640-680. This phase was followed by a two-celled rectangular stone built structure. The structure was interpreted as an Anglo-Saxon church comprising a nave which was later extended by the addition of a chancel. The church was potentially enclosed by an apparent defensive palisade ditch. An infant burial found within the church structure is likely to have been interred after the church went out of use during the mid thirteenth to fourteenth centuries.
Taking most of her examples from Yorkshire and East Anglia, and drawing her evidence largely from the dissolution commissioners reports, Sybil Jack wrote an innovatory article in 1983 explaining how religious houses with annual incomes below 150 pound were contriving to exist financially in the early sixteenth century. This paper, which concentrates solely on the Yorkshire nunneries and is based on episcopal injunctions, court cases, wills and other records, as well as the dissolution reports, takes her findings somewhat further, and suggests that while a small minority of houses were undoubtedly in economic difficulties, by harbouring their endowments, cultivating the support of the more substantial members of local society, and exploiting opportunities for raising money, which included bringing up children and granting corrodies to the elderly, the majority were more or less solvent in the decades before the dissolution.
Court records have identified a previously unnoticed survey of the manor of Gilling, near Richmond in North Yorkshire, as the work of Christopher Saxton (c. 1540 - c. 1610). This new finding adds to the corpus of known maps and surveys made by Saxton, a pre-eminent figure in the new profession of estate surveying.
