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The story of medieval Cambridge – like the landscape of the modern city’s historic centre – is dominated by the university and its colleges. This perspective comes with the advantage of hindsight, however – an account written by the academic ‘victors’ – as Cambridge was thriving as a successful market town and inland port for several centuries before the university was founded c.1209. For much of the 12th to 15th centuries, moreover, Cambridge was home to a diverse range of Christian institutions, which played just as important a role in the town as the colleges – arguably more so.
The 13th century saw many of the mendicant orders (groups of friars who emphasised an itinerant lifestyle funded by begging, and who were based in urban environments rather than rural monasteries) establishing houses in Cambridge. Among them were the Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, Friars of St Mary, and the evocatively named Friars of the Sack (so-called because of their especially humble robes). The Augustinian friars were the last such order to set up a community in Cambridge, and, when they arrived in the 1280s, they initially struggled to find a space, thanks to a papal bull of Clement IV that (to reduce competition between communities) stipulated a minimum distance of 140 canne (about 245m) between friaries.
Once the Augustinians had managed to secure a suitable spot, however, their community thrived. There were 36 friars in residence by 1297, and from 1316 the friary hosted three national meetings of the order, suggesting that it was already one of the most important Augustinian centres in the country. By 1318, its academic standing was such that it was declared an international study house, and in 1326/1327 its population had reached 70. Despite this success, in 1538 the friary suffered the same fate as so many of its contemporaries during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Its religious community was disbanded, and its buildings passed into private hands.
Ultimately the land was acquired by the university which, in the late 19th and early 20th century, redeveloped it into its New Museums Site. These works brought relics of the religious complex to light once more, with construction in 1908-1909 revealing structural and human remains associated with the friary. Happily, these were relatively well recorded by the standards of the time – and, over a century later, between 2016 and 2019, Cambridge Archaeological Unit had the opportunity to add to this picture as the university embarked on another programme of large-scale redevelopment on the site.
Opportunities for evaluation in advance of demolition were extremely limited, and it was uncertain if any remains had survived the earlier building works. Thankfully, it soon became apparent that although the archaeology had been removed in some areas, other parts of the friary were well preserved. From these, we can reconstruct two main phases of religious activity: in the late 13th century and 14th century there was a cemetery located south of the friary church, and this was followed in the mid-14th to early 15th centuries by the construction of the cloisters. The best-preserved portion of this latter area was the chapter house, which contained several more burials – and, serendipitously, the discovery of all these graves overlapped with the then ongoing research project ‘After the Plague: health and history in medieval Cambridge’, which examined human remains from burial grounds in and around the city (see ‘Further information’ below). Based at the University of Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, this initiative has enabled us to apply an arsenal of scientific techniques to the friary skeletons since their excavation, including aDNA and stable isotope analysis, as well as geometric morphometrics, on a scale unparalleled in later medieval archaeology.
Finding the friary
The remains of the friary church had been largely destroyed by 19th- and 20th-century basements, although we did find a few surviving stone footings right at the very northern limit of the investigated area. Much better preserved, however, was its associated cemetery. This would have been created in 1290, after the friary obtained burial rights for members of their order (from 1302 they were also permitted to bury laypeople), and remained in use until the early 15th century, after which it was partly covered by the eastern range of the cloister.
Although our excavations only uncovered a portion of the burial ground, we were able to recover the complete or partial remains of at least 34 individuals. The simple, earth-cut graves had been laid out in relatively regular rows, with their occupants arranged according to Christian tradition, stretched out on their back with their head to the west, unaccompanied by grave goods. Rather less usual, though, was the fact that a significant proportion of these individuals had a belt buckle located over their pelvis, indicating that they had been buried clothed. Typically, only 2-3% of later medieval burials have dress accessories, but at the friary site 16 out of the 22 skeletons where the pelvis had survived – almost three quarters – had a buckle.
All of these showed signs of wear (and some of repairs), indicating that the buckles had been used in life, and they followed a narrow range of designs, mainly made of copper-alloy or iron. This fairly uniform pattern led us to interpret these individuals as Augustinian friars who had been buried in their habits. Our interpretation was strengthened by the fact that all of the individuals with buckles were male, and all were aged 14 or over (the minimum age that boys could become novices). The people without buckles, by contrast, are thought to represent laypeople.
Most of the buckles had oval or D-shaped frames, but there were also crescent and double-crescent mounts – a rare design, although a few have been reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. The only other site in England where they appear to be common is at another Augustinian friary at Hull, perhaps suggesting a specific association between such buckles and this order (significantly, St Augustine himself referred to the crescent moon as a symbol for the Church).
The metal buckles could have been easily and cheaply mass-produced, but there were two examples that had been handcrafted from animal bone and ivory. The latter buckle is likely to have been made in Paris, which was a major production centre for ivory objects. Several English Augustinian friars are known to have studied at Paris in the early 14th century, and the ivory buckle – which was found with a young man aged 18-25 who had died c.1320-1349 – might be a souvenir of one such journey. The bone example was probably made in England, and both buckles would have been eye-catching accessories, standing out in stark white against their owner’s black habit. While the standardisation of friars’ clothing was intended to create visual uniformity, it is clear that it was still possible for some individuals to stand out.
Another personal insight came from the way in which some of the buckles were positioned. The vast majority pointed towards their wearer’s right side, but one faced to the left. After scanning the bone structure of the arms of all these individuals we were able to spot signs of asymmetry which indicate which arm had been used more. Fourteen friars appear to have favoured their right arm, and two their left. Tellingly, the skeleton with the greatest left-directional asymmetry was the same individual whose buckle pointed to the left. From this we might infer that he had been left-handed, fastening his belt in the opposite direction to his brothers.
Individual experiences
All of the individuals excavated within the cemetery were male and aged 14 or older – with one exception. We also uncovered the remains of a younger child, aged c.7-12, who was revealed by DNA analysis to be female. The girl had been placed in a grave that was much larger than was required for her small body, and disarticulated bone within its fill indicates that an earlier burial containing an adult male had been disturbed to make room for her. Why was she there? Telling clues came from DNA analysis of her remains, and of those of an adult friar in the next grave: it appears that they are second- or third-degree relatives. Given their relative ages and differing maternal DNA, it is most likely that the friar was the girl’s paternal uncle, the brother of her father. While a friar’s primary loyalty was to his order, biological kinship was not entirely forgotten, and family relationships were maintained. We do not know why the girl died (although she had intestinal worms and signs of possible anaemia, which may have been contributing factors), but a likely scenario is that she did so sometime after the friar had died, and there was a strong family desire to bury her next to her uncle, given that it was necessary to disturb an existing burial.
DNA helped to reveal the fate of another man, too, whose skeleton preserved no outward sign of what had killed him. A sample taken from his tooth tested positive for Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague – and not just any plague: further analysis indicated that the strain was that associated with the Black Death itself, and that the man had died in 1349, at the peak of this notorious pandemic. Without these results, there was nothing to suggest that his grave was any different to its neighbours – but while the inclusion of a plague victim in a regular cemetery might seem surprising, given widely held stereotypes of chaotic mass burials in purpose-dug pits, work by the ‘After the Plague’ project has indicated that responses to the Black Death were very different. Although we have found evidence for mass burial in Cambridgeshire, in the nearby cemetery of St Bene’t’s Church, analysis of a range of sites across the county has revealed that people who died from plague often received normal individual burial in religious institutions and parish cemeteries.
Although scientific analysis was required to tease out some causes of death within the friary cemetery, in other cases it was immediately obvious what had happened. One particularly clear example was a young friar whose skeleton testified to dramatic injuries with no signs of healing, indicating they had occurred at or near the time of death. He had suffered bilateral leg fractures caused by a high-impact trauma, with force directed from behind and to the right, and there was damage to his neck from associated whiplash. The likeliest explanation is perhaps being hit by a runaway cart, and the unfortunate individual probably died almost immediately from severe blood loss and haemorrhagic shock.
As well as indicating how some of the friars had died, their remains provided insights into their daily lives. Analysis of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes showed a distinct and almost uniform positive shift between samples taken from their teeth (which form during childhood) and ribs (which represent adult values), suggesting that their diets had changed dramatically as adults. The rib values have a much smaller range, and are comparatively higher than those from other contemporary Cambridge cemeteries. This suggests a relatively uniform shared institutional diet, with more marine fish – something that would be in keeping with medieval rules around fasting, which permitted fish even when meat was off the menu. Oxygen and nitrogen stable isotopes, meanwhile, revealed where these individuals had grown up. As the Cambridge friary functioned as a teaching institution for members of the order from across England and most of western Europe, it would be tempting to view it as an exotic melting pot. Our results, however, were compatible with the friars being of local origin, and DNA analysis did not reveal any individuals with obviously unusual genetic ancestry.
Other insights specific to life within a religious community included the abnormal bony growths that we observed on the knee caps of a number of individuals – while their cause is uncertain, extended periods of kneeling in prayer may have been a contributory factor. We also noticed that several individuals had clear signs of inflammation and sclerosis on specific areas of their skulls. Augustinian friars were required to have the hair from the crown of their head tonsured 18-20 times a year, and if this had been done with an unclean blade it could have led to inflammatory bacterial infections such as folliculitis.
The chapter house
Turning to the structural remains, as mentioned above, although the friary was founded in the 1280s, construction of its cloisters did not begin until the mid-14th century – partly because it took a considerable period to acquire all the land required. Construction then occurred in stages over several decades, not finishing until the early 15th century.
One of the most important elements of the cloister was the chapter house, where daily meetings of the friars would have been held. Given its key role, it is therefore unsurprising that this building appears to have been one of the earliest elements, created between 1330 and 1350. The chapter house was c.6.7m wide and probably 13-15m long, and the foundations of the stone benches on which the friars sat have survived, too – from these we can see that they had been widened at some point, and could have accommodated 60-80 friars.
The chapter house was the only building in a friary, other than the church, where burials occurred. Such interments were quite prestigious, and they seem to have been a rare occurrence at the Cambridge friary, as only six or seven people were buried within the chapter house over the two centuries or so that it was in use. Indeed, this window of burial was probably even smaller as only two of the graves that we identified occurred before the later bench-widening took place.
One potential burial was only represented by a rather larger than normal, empty, grave-shaped cut. There was no skeleton, and we suggest that someone – probably a friar – had been initially buried in the chapter house but was dug up at a later date and his remains ‘translated’ for reburial in an even more prestigious location, such as the friary church. As for the graves that still contained skeletons, they are a varied and intriguing group of people.
Of the five individuals who were buried after the widening of the benches, three had buckles that allow us to identify them friars. While all the buckles were similar, with symmetrical double-oval frames, they represent a different style to any seen in the earlier graves of the cemetery, indicating that the favoured form had changed over time. One of the friars was a mature man who had been over 46 years old when he died; he had been suffering from tuberculosis, but also preserved evidence of a healed ‘parry’ fracture of the left ulna, which might indicate a violent episode earlier in his life (there is considerable documentary evidence for violence against friars).
Another friar was rather younger, having died at the age of 18-25, and his DNA tested positive for Yersinia pestis, indicating that he had succumbed to plague – as had the third individual with a buckle. This latter figure was a surprising find, as he was younger still, dying between the age of 6 and 12. As mentioned before, novices were supposed to be aged at least 14 to join the order, but after the Black Death this was lowered to 12, and later 11, to help make up numbers – something that attracted some contemporary criticism, with accusations of ‘stealing’ children. The boy’s skeleton was marked with extraordinarily large lesions affecting his skull, left arm, right collar bone, left tibia, and right femur. Several potential causes exist, including a serious endocrine disorder, but the presence of Yersinia pestis DNA indicates that the boy had ultimately died of plague rather than his pre-existing condition (although it may have been a contributory factor).
There was one other plague victim present: a young boy aged 5-12 years old. He had no accompanying buckle, so does not appear to have been a novice, and again DNA analysis identified the presence of Yersinia pestis. This means that of the six individuals buried in the chapter house, half had died of plague. After the Black Death, intermittent outbreaks of plague continued to affect England until the mid-17th century, during a period known as the Second Plague Pandemic. Over the course of this period, Yersinia pestis evolved, with new strains emerging, and ongoing research into this evolution has the potential to make this an extremely useful dating method for burials where the bacterium is found. Sure enough, DNA analysis indicates that the chapter house trio died from a later strain or strains than the friar from the cemetery who had died during the Black Death. Instead, they must have died in one or more of the frequent plague outbreaks of the 15th and 16th centuries. Burial within a building is a complicated and laborious process compared to burial in a cemetery, and the fact that three individuals who died during plague outbreaks were interred in the chapter house demonstrates that a great deal of effort and care was still being taken over individual burials, even during such traumatic periods.
Enigmatic evidence
The final individual buried in the chapter house was without a buckle, too, but for obvious reasons: she was a woman. Although possible female burials have been reported from other friary chapter houses, none have been conclusively osteologically identified, whereas here we were able to use DNA to confirm her biological sex. Women regularly attended church services in the nave of the friary church, and were allowed into the church choir and cloister on special occasions. They were not, however, permitted to enter the chapter house, so this woman had been laid to rest somewhere that she was excluded from during her life.
Burial in such a prestigious place might be taken as a sign of high social status, but analysis of the woman’s skeleton indicates that she had led an active life involving a considerable amount of physical labour. Aged over 60 at the time of her death, there is also evidence that she suffered from a serious long-term health condition, with bone formation affecting both her lower legs, plus signs on her upper and lower arms, and her femurs. The extent of these widespread changes suggests a long-term systemic infection – and chronic illness might explain the presence, by her lower right tibia, of a copper-alloy jetton. As the grave fills were relatively clean, this is unlikely to be an incidental inclusion and we wonder if it might represent some form of popular folk magic or medicine linked to her condition.
The skeletons of the people buried at the Cambridge Augustinian friary have proved to contain a great deal of information about their lives and deaths, insights which only became clearer as post-excavation analysis began after our work on the site concluded in 2019. As we moved into 2020, studying the archaeological remains of the Second Plague Pandemic during the COVID-19 pandemic proved both a challenging and inspirational experience.
Source: Craig Cessford is a senior project officer with the Cambridge Archaeological Unit.
Further information:
The excavations have been published in a series of open access articles, which can be
downloaded for free from Medieval Archaeology (https://doi.org/10.1080/00766097.
2022.2065066), The Archaeological Journal (https://doi.org/10.1080/00665983.2022.
2090675), and The Antiquaries Journal (https://doi.org/10.1017/S000358152300001X).
Publication of the ‘After the Plague’ project is ongoing, and further details can be found on its website: http://www.aftertheplague.org.
Some of the friary finds are included in the exhibition Beneath our Feet: archaeology of the Cambridge region, which is running at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge until the end of September (see CA 403 and https://maa.cam.ac.uk/whats_on/exhibitions/beneath-our-feet-archaeology-cambridge-region).
All images: Cambridge Archaeological Unit, unless otherwise stated
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