Excavating the CA archive: Monasteries of the high medieval period

This article is from Current Archaeology issue 439

Subscribe now for full access and no adverts

One of the joys of the Current Archaeology archive is its ‘tales of the unexpected’. After last month’s column on early medieval monasteries, this and next month’s columns will be companion pieces exploring . The sites named, however, will not just be the famous ones like Furness and Fountains, Tintern and Rievaulx, but a richer and more diverse array of locations excavated across the last 60 years up and down the country. They tell the story of both monasticism in the past and archaeology in the present, and they reflect the diversity of the monastic experience in the Middle Ages.

Cheshire Monasteries

One of the first medieval monasteries visited by the magazine was Norton Priory, near Runcorn in Cheshire, an Augustinian community founded in AD 1115. CA initially reported on work there in issue 31 (March 1972) and has returned regularly since then; this makes Norton one of the most-visited monasteries in the entire CA archive. Back in 1972, the emphasis was not on understanding the site per se, but rather on uncovering it with the intention of turning it into what it is today a highly successful visitor attraction. As the magazine explained at the time, the Runcorn Development Corporation (established in 1964) was in the process of building a new town, and the decision was made to excavate fully and open the site as part of the cultural offering for residents. CA 31 explained that process; CA 43 (August 1974) provided readers with an update; and CA 70 (January 1980) returned with a cover story on the whole process of excavation, consolidation, and display, including the remarkable find of fragments of a mould used to cast a bell, which were complete enough to create a replica that remains on display to this day. The magazine paid further visits across the decades, including in CA 84 (October 1982), when the museum officially opened; in CA 235 (October 2009), when a replica kiln was constructed; in CA 303 (June 2015), when a portable quadruple mass spectrometer (used for rapid radiocarbon dating) was tested there; in CA 324 (March 2017), when the museum was refurbished and extended; and, most recently, in CA 353 (August 2019), when burials from Norton were examined for traces of Paget’s disease, a chronic disorder characterised by abnormal bone remodelling. Overall, this is a wonderful story of a site that might so easily have been overlooked, but which instead has stood the test of time as a much-valued venue.

Norton Priory made the cover of CA 70 with a feature recounting the full story of its excavation, conservation, and display.

Poulton is 20 miles (30km) south-west of Norton, just south of Chester. It is home to an enigmatic monastic site of the same name, a Cistercian house founded between 1153 and 1158 that moved in 1214 to a site near Leek, Staffordshire, where it became Dieulacres Abbey. Fieldwork at Poulton since the mid-1990s has sought to identify the main monastic compound to no avail, but in the process has revealed extensive Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman settlements. Current Archaeology has reported repeatedly on this fieldwork, commencing in issue 180 (July 2002), which told the complex history of the site as understood at that time. CA 213 (December 2007) returned with major discoveries of prehistoric material, alongside an attempt by Time Team to discover the abbey precincts; CA 352 (July 2019) then reported on the excavation of the burial ground of the monastic grange (the farming community that supported the abbey); and, most recently, CA 366 (September 2020) explored and interpreted the Iron Age communities discovered there. Poulton is a much-loved community project, and it continues to inspire and perplex in equal measure – when the monastery is finally discovered, it will be a worthy tale to tell in a future issue.

The search for the Cistercian Abbey at Poulton was first documented in CA 180. Despite decades of excavation and the discovery of extensive Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman inhabitation, the abbey has yet to be found.

London Monasteries

Norton and Poulton fit the bill for most people’s preconceptions about life as a monk in the Middle Ages – situated in rural, often isolated and marginal landscapes, where great houses were built over the centuries on the proceeds of the wool trade, supporting contemplative communities deliberately removed from mainstream society. But this is only one side of the monastic coin in this era: in the second part of this column, I will head to London. The urban monasteries there played a significant part in the history and development of the city, and have always been part of that city, coming from different monastic traditions that, while sharing some characteristics with the more rural Augustinian and Cistercian orders, such as vows of poverty and chastity, also emphasised a life of devotion to wider society, usually focused on preaching and/or related activities, such as the care of the poor and the sick. These sites have been examined in the main during rescue excavations undertaken in advance of development – again, quite the contrast from Norton and Poulton’s more leisurely pace of discovery.

CA 124 sets the scene of medieval monasticism in London with a feature that explores several sites in modern-day Greater London, including Merton Priory and Barking Abbey.

CA 124 (May 1991) set the scene for our understanding of such sites at this time, exploring locations across both the ‘city’ proper and what became modern-day Greater London, including Merton Priory in the south (more of which below) and Barking Abbey in the east (see CA 149, September 1996), which tells the story of one of the oldest, most distinguished, and, at one time, richest monastic houses in Britain. CA 162 (April 1999) followed this with an update on another decade’s digging, especially on sites in and around Clerkenwell in central London, many associated with the Knights Hospitaller, the descendants of whom – the Order of St John – maintain a museum in the historic buildings there. CA 336 (March 2018) reported from a neighbouring site, the Charterhouse, which was first built (and took its name from) a Carthusian priory founded in 1371. A full review of these and many other London sites then came in CA 338 (May 2018), which dived into Nick Holder’s book The Friaries of Medieval London: from foundation to dissolution.

Elsewhere in London, CA 270 (September 2012), CA 310 (January 2016), and CA 363 (June 2020) visited Spitalfields in east London, reporting on work undertaken there between 1991 and 2007 in one of the capital’s largest-ever excavations. These visits explored the history of a site that, at least in monastic terms, began in 1197 with the foundation of an Augustinian Priory, which was dissolved in 1539 before developing into the complex urban community it is today, albeit one with a name – Spitalfields – that attests not only to its origins as St Mary Spital, but also to its use as a hospital that far outlived the monastic foundations. In more recent times, it became better-known as a centre of trade and exchange, immigration, and innovation. Another famous London site, this time one that continues to survive, in part, as a hospital, is that of St Bartholomew the Great in nearby Smithfield, which featured in CA 396 (March 2023), the church of which has its origins as an Augustinian Priory founded in 1123.

Chris Catling then took CA readers on a deeper dive into London’s medieval friaries with his feature in CA 338 that explored Nick Holder’s book *The Friaries of Medieval London: from foundation to dissolution*.

Another Augustinian Priory – now in Greater London but for many years it was part of rural and subsequently suburban Surrey – is Merton Priory, founded in 1114. CA first visited this site in issues 124 (May 1991) and 162 (April 1999); it features several upstanding remains (most notably the Chapter House, reported on in CA 269, August 2012). As noted above, these issues explored a series of development-led excavations undertaken there across the 1970s and 1980s, not least those on land beneath the large Sainsbury’s supermarket that now dominates the location. In a fit of cosmic irony, given concerns these days about unhealthy diets and supermarket-promoted junk food, CA 198 (July 2005) also reported on skeletal analyses of monastic diets and health, including from Merton. A comprehensive report on all this fieldwork and post-excavation analyses then came in CA 225 (December 2008), which is well worth a read for anyone interested in the details of a truly great London monastery.

Most of the sites in this column are open to the public: see http://www.nortonpriory.org, https://poultonresearchproject.co.uk, https://museumstjohn.org.uk, https://thecharterhouse.org, http://www.greatstbarts.com, and http://www.mertonpriory.org.

Discover old issues: Read a selection of the articles discussed by Joe for free online at www.archaeology.co.uk/archive439. They will be available for one month from 3 September.

Print subscribers can add digital access to the entire back catalogue of CA for just £12 a year – simply email us at subs@currentpublishing.com and quote ‘DIGI439’.