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.
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.
Bird-beaked masks