Blog #9, January 2023: Condition Survey of Retrochoir Tiles
Credit: Tony Hisgett
From the end of January, work will begin on the most comprehensive condition survey of the Cathedral’s medieval encaustic tiles to date.
The Retrochoir tile pavement at Winchester Cathedral is among the most significant collections of in-situ medieval tiles in Europe. Dating largely from the 13th century, the pavement includes important examples of ‘Wessex’ designs and is recognised as being of exceptional national and international value.
Previous conservation work helped to preserve and stabilise the tiles in the short to medium-term. Yet the condition of many tiles has declined rapidly in recent decades. Tiles have become worn and broken over time – an inevitable consequence of maintaining footfall and public access to the area.
Now, in a survey covering much of the Retrochoir, our Cathedral Archaeologist, Chiz Harward, will use a series of attributes to assess the condition of each tile. This assessment will allow us to develop a detailed understanding of the tiles in their current state and the extent of any damage to them.
The last major comparable survey of the tiles was completed in the 1990s, as part of a wider programme of conservation. In analysing data we have from this time, we can evaluate rates of deterioration across the past 30 years. However, the 1990s survey covered the southern aisle only and did not extend to the central and northern areas of the Retrochoir. Our present survey will go further, incorporating areas which may not have been studied since the mid-20th century.
With the findings from the survey, the Cathedral will be better-placed to make decisions about interventive measures which could be applied to conserve the tiles and protect them for future generations.
Written by Eleanor Swire, Curator and Librarian
Blog #8, December 2022: Nativity Woodcuts
To mark the period of Advent, this month we have chosen two woodcut illustrations, taken from one of the earliest printed books in the Cathedral’s collections: an edition of the Missale Saresberiense, printed in Paris by Johannes Higman and Wolfgang Hopyl in 1500.
These illustrations, which depict scenes from the Nativity, offer a lovely example of woodcut technology and its use in the production of printed books at the turn of late 15th and early 16th centuries.
In the first woodcut, Mary kneels before the baby Jesus, surrounded by animals in the stable. In the second, she is visited by the Magi, who bear gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Woodcuts are a form of relief printing. They are created where an image is cut into a woodblock and the non-printed parts are removed. The carved woodblock is then covered with ink and leaves an impression of the image when imprinted on the page.
The practice of creating woodcut images far predates the creation of movable type in Europe during the mid-15th century. Block printing – that is, the use of carved wooden blocks to imprint an image on a flat surface – first originated in China. As European printing presses developed and the market for printed books expanded, woodcuts offered a cheap and easy method to reproduce illustrations at scale.
Over time, the carved woodblock could become worn through overuse. In our examples, the woodcut of the Magi appears sharper, while the woodcut of Mary and the animals has lost some of its initial clarity. The illustrations have been used to decorate the initial letter of a new section of text – this is called an ‘historiated initial’, meaning it contains a picture.
The Cathedral’s copy of Higman’s Missale is one of only two complete copies to have survived, the other being held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Written by Eleanor Swire, Curator and Librarian
Blog#6, November 2022: Mitre of Bishop Mews
A ‘mitre’ is a type of ceremonial headdress, generally worn by bishops in certain traditions of Christianity.
This seventeenth-century funerary mitre belonged to Peter Mews, Bishop of Winchester from 1684 to 1706. Made of iron, there is little which remains today.
Bishop Mews was born in 1619 and educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, London, and St. John’s College, Oxford. At the beginning of the English Civil War in 1642, he joined the Royalist forces and fought on behalf of King Charles I. In 1645, he was captured and taken prisoner at the battle of Naseby.
After the war, during the Commonwealth years of 1653-1660, Mews lived as an exile in Europe. Yet with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was able at last to return to England and subsequently acquired a number of important appointments, including Dean of Rochester from 1670, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, 1669-1673, and, following the death of his predecessor, George Morley, in 1684, Bishop of Winchester.
Mews served as Bishop of Winchester for many years, and yet he wasn’t universally admired. In a petition submitted to Queen Anne after his death, Mews was criticised as “entirely careless of discharging the duty of his function”. The petition continued with an entreaty to the Queen that, with the passing of one bishop, a better successor to Mews were now selected.
Following his death, Mews was buried at Winchester Cathedral. Up until the late 20th century, his mitre was displayed, together with his crozier, above the memorial to him on the north wall of the Guardian Angels Chapel – this memorial is still visible to visitors today.
Written by Eleanor Swire, Curator and Librarian
Blog #5, October 2022: Black History Month
October is Black History Month and since 1987, people across the UK have come together during this time to celebrate the lives, achievements and contributions of Black people both in Britain and across the world.
While Black history is not and should not be limited to one month of the year, Black History Month is important precisely because it offers a time for reflection and a challenge to conventional perspectives on the past.
For example, one of the core purposes of Black History Month has always been to draw attention to stories and individuals otherwise ‘hidden’ or missing from traditional mainstream history. This means thinking critically about what we see and think we know. It means recognising the particular context and circumstances in which our sources of information have been created, and the extent to which the lives of Black people have often been overlooked or excluded from historical accounts.
Yet absence is a form of story in itself, in so much as what it reveals to us, and applies as much to physical spaces and objects as it does written texts. When we walk around Winchester Cathedral and study its statues and memorials, the stories and inscriptions we find carved in marble monuments are of those with the prestige and means to set them in stone. So, it is worth asking the question, ‘who is not represented here and which stories are not being told?’
This doesn’t mean the stories of these privileged individuals and their family members are invalid or ‘wrong’ – they are a significant part of the Cathedral’s history too.
But perhaps Black History Month invites us to ask a different set of questions, to try to understand what we see within the broader view of what is currently absent. It is only when we ask “why and “how” an object is, rather than simply “what” it is, that we can begin to form new and more thoughtful ways of making sense of the Cathedral’s visible heritage. We can identify different histories and varied interpretations. And our experience of the Cathedral will surely be all the richer for it.
Written by Eleanor Swire, Curator and Librarian
Blog #4, September 2022: Hegesippus
While the Winchester Bible, which visitors to the Cathedral will find on permanent display in the Kings & Scribes exhibition, is by far the best-known medieval manuscript in our collection, we are also fortunate here at Winchester to have in our possession a small, but significant number of other manuscripts.
Among these is MS.20: a beautifully-bound 12th-century copy of a work by the anonymous historian and translator known as Pseudo-Hegesippus, who was active in the 4th century AD.
The binding of MS.20 is special for two reasons. First, because it has survived intact, without any major loss or damage, and second, because it is believed to be contemporaneous with the manuscript itself.
That the binding of any manuscript endures is a happy consequence of chance. While many instances of medieval bindings have survived to the present day, an equal number have been lost and replaced with newer bindings over time, especially where the old binding becomes worn and tired through overuse.
Today, we may replace the binding of medieval manuscripts for conservation purposes, such as can be seen with the Winchester Bible, which has been rebound several times during its long history, most recently in 2014.
Where original medieval bindings do exist, such as we see in the case of MS.20, we can learn much about the history of manuscript production during this period. The Hegesippus manuscript, for instance, offers a wonderful and rare example of a style of bookbinding known as English Romanesque, which is characterised by the large number and variety of stamps used to decorate the binding.
The manuscript was given to Winchester Cathedral by C.W. Dyson Perrins in 1947. Prior to Dyson Perrins, it passed through the ownership of several notable individuals, including the well-known English writer and interior designer, William Morris, who acquired the manuscript in 1896, only to sell it several years later, in 1898, to H. Yates Thompson.
Written by Eleanor Swire, Curator and Librarian
Blog #3, August 2022: Highlights preview
In this month’s Curious about Collections blog post, we are excited to share with you a special preview of our new digital Highlights Gallery, which will be available to all via the Winchester Cathedral website from spring 2023.
Over the next few months, our team will work with web developers to create a bespoke online gallery, which will bring some of the most fascinating and impressive objects from our collections to a wider audience.
The online gallery will use high-resolution imagery to showcase the beauty and originality of items. Viewers will have the option to zoom in and explore objects up close. The gallery will also include text to help you to make sense of our collections and recommendations for where to go if you would like to find out more.
Most importantly, the Highlights Gallery will feature a variety of objects – this includes items already on public display in our permanent Kings & Scribes exhibition, but also pieces which are not currently available to view in person. In this way, the online gallery will give viewers an opportunity to access and experience unseen objects, and to set them in context alongside familiar pieces from the Kings & Scribes exhibition.
This week, we worked with Jordan Pettitt, Senior Photographer at Solent News, to produce the first tranche of images for the Highlights Gallery. Special thanks to Jordan, who was able to capture stunning pictures in challenging, limited conditions, including this spectacular image of a queen’s head. This life-sized sculpture was reconstructed from fragments during the 19th century and again in 1987. It is believed the head may have been originally displayed in the chantry chapel of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester 1367-1404.
Eleanor Swire (Curator & Librarian)
Blog #2, July 2022: Richard III Groat
This groat, issued between 1483 and 1485, is among a group of medieval coins in the Cathedral’s collection.
We use the term ‘groat’ to describe any medieval coin produced between the years of 1351 and 1662.
The front of this groat (pictured above) features the crowned bust of Richard III within a treasure of nine arcs. Look carefully and you may be able to just about make out the mint mark of a boar’s head above the crown.
The reverse (pictured below) shows the standard long cross seen on many groat coins issued under Richard III, with three pellets in each central quarter of the coin.
Coins were important in medieval society, not only for economic reasons. They also functioned as a tool of social and political influence, as they could be spread easily across different levels of society. The depiction of the monarch on coins – a practice which continues in countries around the world today – is a powerful statement of authority. When Richard ascended the throne in 1483, coins such as this one allowed him to spread and instill his assertion that he was the legitimate king of England, with a rightful claim to the crown.
Richard’s reputation suffered significantly after his death in 1485, not least as a result of his unsympathetic characterisation in Shakespeare’s play, Richard III (c.1592-94). However, the traditional view of Richard as a tyrant and villain has been reassessed in recent years, not least prompted by the extraordinary discovery of his remains beneath a Leicester car park in 2012.
Written by Emilie Kirton (Volunteer)
Blog #1, June 2022: Sir Henry Hughes Wilson
On 22nd June 1922, Field-Marshall Sir Henry Hughes Wilson walked through the streets of Belgravia in full military uniform, having just unveiled the Great Eastern Railway War Memorial at Liverpool Street Station. When he reached 36 Eaton Place, he was fatally shot by two members of the Irish Republican Army. The death of Wilson, who had been one of the most senior British army officers of the First World War, and who at the time of his assassination was MP for North Down in Northern Ireland, caused widespread horror and dismay across the United Kingdom. A full state funeral was held at St Paul’s Cathedral on the 26th June. In Winchester, where Wilson’s regiment (the Rifle Brigade) had been based during the war, a memorial was erected in the Cathedral, where it remains today.
Born in County Longford, Ireland, in 1864, Wilson attended Marlborough College before pursuing his aspiration to join the British Army. He rose through the ranks, being given the command of the Staff College at Camberley, then, in 1910, the appointment of Director of Military Operations at the British War Office.
When war began in 1914, Wilson took responsibility for the dispatch of the British Expeditionary Force to France. During 1915, Wilson briefly saw active military service when he was given command of the 4th corps based around Bethune, but his reputation suffered when the enemy captured a substantial portion of his line. In 1916, Wilson was selected to be the British military representative on what turned out to be a futile Anglo-French mission to Russia. When Lloyd George became Prime Minister in 1916, Wilson’s star was again in the ascendant. Gaining the ear of the Prime Minister, Wilson found himself at the centre of British military and strategic policy making, attending cabinet meetings almost daily. Pressing Lloyd George to improve the co-ordination of policy making between the Allied powers saw Wilson’s appointment as the British Permanent Military Representative on the Supreme War Council at Versailles.
Wilson’s reputation throughout his military career was mixed, as some colleagues saw him as an underhand politician rather than a soldier. His repute among his colleagues in the British Army was, in particular, affected by his keen political interests in Ireland, driven by his passionate commitment to maintaining the union of the United Kingdom. Wilson was sympathetic to armed resistance towards those who threatened home rule in Ireland, and moreover, played a central role in the ‘Curragh incident’ of 20th March 1914. Despite the fact Parliament was then in the motion of passing Asquith’s Irish Home Rule Bill, Wilson privately encouraged a number of officers based at the Currah Camp (the British Army’s main base in Ireland) to resign or accept dismissal rather than follow orders to conduct military operations against the Ulster unionists. For historian, Keith Jeffrey, these activities earned Wilson a ‘reputation for intrigue which blackened him in the eyes of Liberal politicians and some army colleagues’.
The incident also made Wilson a target for the Irish Republican Party, as did the continuation of his efforts to maintain union throughout the war and afterwards. Wilson was disgusted with Lloyd George’s efforts to negotiate with the Irish nationalist leaders, and effectively conspired against the Prime Minister’s political stance towards Ireland during the Irish War of Independence between 1917-21. Wilson criticised the government’s deployment of paramilitary police, maintaining that ordinary troops should be sent over and martial law be declared, and he opposed the truce of 1921. With the partition of Ireland enacted on 3rd May 1921, Wilson became a military advisor to the new Northern Ireland government in 1922 and was elected as MP for North Down. He put forward policies including the formation of an Ulster army to overturn partition. Although Wilson disapproved of the killing of many Catholic non-combatants by the Ulster Special Constabulary, in the eyes of the Irish Republican Army he was complicit and responsible, which sealed his fate.
The murder of Wilson on 22nd June 1922 had a profound impact, inadvertently contributing to the outbreak of the Irish Civil War just six days later. The cabinet ministers who worriedly gathered at 10 Downing Street after news of his assassination broke suspected it was the Anti-Treaty forces (a subdivision of the original Irish Republican Army) who were responsible. Although this would prove not to be the case, their suspicion confirmed the growing opinion that firmer action needed to be taken.
Written by Clemmie Beresford (Volunteer)
