The expansion of Stansted Airport provided an opportunity to investigate a large area of clay plateau, typical of the north-west Essex landscape. The area was a focus for hunter-gatherer activity as early as the Palaeolithic period, and was first settled by small farming communities in the Middle Bronze Age. From the Middle Iron Age onwards, increasing settlement and population density led to the enclosure of the landscape. Farming and settlement concentrated on the more fertile river valleys and the slopes of the heavily wooded plateau. The Romano-British period saw a decline in the rural population, whilst increasing agricultural intensification led to the first systematic farming of the clay plateau. Woodland regeneration in the post-Romano-British period is clearly demonstrated in documentary sources. Indeed, much of the history of the Saxon and medieval settlement of the area concerns the relationship between agricultural expansion and the surrounding woodland, whilst deer parks such as Stansted Park allowed landowners to demonstrate their mastery of the landscape and its wildlife. This book, along with its accompanying CD-ROM, presents the results of these excavations, allowing the reader to explore both broader historical themes and the minutiae of individual sites, features and finds. The results of earlier work in the area are integrated, providing a coherent historical narrative of human inhabitation.

From Hunter-Gatherers to Huntsmen: A History of the Stansted Landscape (Framework Archaeology Monograph, 2)

History

Brown, Fraser

Cooke, Nicholas

Phillpotts, Christopher

Framework Archaeology

Europe

Wessex Archaeology

Archaeological rescue excavations in Southwark between 1983 and 1990 uncovered parts of the London house of the medieval bishops of Winchester. The archaeological evidence, mainly from the east part of the site, is supplemented by detailed documentary evidence. The property developed from the mid 12th century into a palatial residence, based around an inner and an outer courtyard, and enclosed by a boundary wall. In the 14th-century palace, a great hall, service rooms and kitchens occupied the north range, household and servants were accommodated around the other sides of the inner courtyard, while the bishop had his own apartments, chapel and garden. A passage below the hall gave access from the inner courtyard north to the wharves and river. Storerooms, workshops and stables lined the east boundary wall, with gardens in the west half of the enclosure. A parliamentary survey of 1647 describes the layout of the bishop's palace, which was sketched c.1644 by Hollar for his Long View of London . The site remained in the bishops' ownership until the 1640s and it was returned to them after the Civil War, but a multiplicity of tenants and subtenants occupies the palace; by 1720 it was 'disused and very ruinous'. The medieval bishop's palace became tenements and small industrial storage units; in the 19th century large warehouses were built. Fire in 1814 revealed the surviving medieval masonry of the hall and service range, and the hall's west gable wall with its rose window remains a prominent landmark today.

Winchester Palace: Excavations at the Southwark Residence of the Bishops of Winchester (MoLA Monograph)

Samuel, Mark

Seeley, Derek

MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)

The Royal Navy victualling yard was excavated in 1983-8 as part of the Royal Mint site. Founded in 1560, on the site of a Black Death cemetery and the suppressed Cistercian abbey of St Mary Graces, it was the first large-scale naval food supply base in Britain and remained the principal one until the 18th century. The yard closed in 1785, having proved inadequate for the needs of the expanding Georgian navy. A substantial part of the ground plan of the yard was recorded, including salt houses and pickling sheds, slaughterhouses and yards, bakeries, coopers workshops, storehouses, and the offices and dwellings of yard personnel. The evidence suggests that food processing was increasingly industrialised from the late 17th century onwards. The excavated remains are compared to the substantial documentary evidence available, particularly two detailed plans of 1635 and 1776. The success and ultimate failure of the yard as a supply depot is assessed, including the extent to which former abbey buildings were reused by the navy and the deleterious effect this had. The work reported on here represents the most extensive excavation and post-excavation analysis of an early post-medieval naval victualling establishment in this country.

Royal Navy Victualling Yard, East Smithfield, London (MoLA Monograph)

Grainger, Ian

The abbey of St Mary Graces in East Smithfield, London, was excavated in 1983-8 as part of the Royal Mint site. Founded in 1350 by Edward III and suppressed in 1539, it was the only new Cistercian house in the 14th century and the last founded in England before the Dissolution. It was also the only Cistercian abbey established in an urban setting and was built in the immediate aftermath of the Black Death of 1348-50 on the site of one of two emergency burial grounds created in London to cope with that epidemic. The excavations recorded approximately three-quarters of the abbey ground plan. Elements of the church were uncovered, including much of the presbytery, part of the nave and several chapels, together with 131 burials of both laity and ecclesiastics. Also recorded were parts of the chapter house, cloisters, refectory, infirmary and kitchen, as well as two external cemeteries. While the ground plan included elements that are paralleled in earlier Cistercian houses, overall, the abbey's layout was far closer to that of contemporary 14th-century houses, particularly those of the friars. The work reported here represents the large-scale excavation and post-excavation analysis of a singular, relatively short-lived, later medieval Cistercian house and is of considerable importance to medieval archaeology and specifically to Cistercian studies.

The Cistercian abbey of St Mary Graces, East Smithfield, London (MoLA Monograph)

London's Spitalfields Market was the location of one of the city's largest archaeological excavations, carried out by MOLA between 1991 and 2007. This book presents the archaeological and documentary evidence for medieval activity here, on the north-eastern fringe of the historic city, and the site of the Augustinian priory and hospital of St Mary without Bishopsgate, later known as St Mary Spital. Large areas of the medieval precinct have been explored, making this by far the most intensively investigated medieval hospital, and one of the most extensively investigated monastic establishments, in Britain. Founded in 1197, rebuilt on a larger scale and refounded in 1235, the hospital catered primarily for London's sick poor. A pre-existing extramural and extraparochial cemetery became the priory's principal cemetery. As the priory continued to attract patrons and wealth, it expanded its precinct and carried out major building programmes. By the 15th century the small hospital had become one of the largest Augustinian priories in southern England. Medical treatment in the 14th century is illustrated by remarkable evidence from the canons' infirmary with its attached pharmacy; a trend towards secularisation in the 14th and 15th centuries is shown by the hamlet of timber houses and workshops that grew around the cemetery. An exceptional survival was the charnel crypt of the 14th-century cemetery chapel, which is preserved today under Bishops Square.

The medieval priory and hospital of St Mary Spital and the Bishopsgate suburb: Excavations at Spitalfields Market, London E1, 1991-2007 (MoLA Monograph)

Thomas,Christopher

Holder, Nick

Harward, Chiz

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