Dictionary publishers like to end the year by announcing the new words that that they have added to the lexicon based on the frequency with which they have appeared in print during the preceding 12 months. Not all of these words are new, and this year’s crop consists mainly of familiar words that have undergone shifts in meaning.
The first major archaeological investigations of the moated house of St John’s Jerusalem in Sutton-at Hone, Kent – once home to a Knights Hospitaller Commandery – have revealed some of the site’s medieval origins, as well as its evolution during…
The Knights Hospitaller were forged in the fury of the Crusades, providing protection, hospitality, and medical care for travellers in the Holy Land, and building fundraising communities back in Britain. Few of these sites have been excavated in detail, but Time Team have been investigating a Shropshire example. Carly Hilts spoke to Stewart Ainsworth.
Last month, Warwick Rodwell guided us through recent research in Canterbury Cathedral, focusing on the virtuosic mosaic that once lay before the shrine of Thomas Becket. As a sequel, he now reveals what was learned about the shrine itself, and the chapel in which it stood before the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
Packed tightly between Smithfield meat market and the Barbican’s brutalist towers, St Bartholomew the Great (or Great St Bart’s, as it is often called) is London’s oldest surviving parish church, and also one of its most atmospheric. Founded by Henry…
Home-improvements and gardening have been on the rise under lockdown in the UK, and, in a few cases, work in the garden has led to archaeological discoveries. One household in the New Forest area in southern England uncovered a Tudor…
Between March and June of last year, many of us found ourselves spending a lot more time at home – and, if you are lucky enough to have outdoor space, in the garden. The British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme has since announced a flurry of archaeological discoveries made by members of the public digging at home, some of which were described in their latest annual report. Current Archaeology's Carly Hilts explores some of the highlights.
The Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s was one of the most-important religious, political, and social events ever to unfold in England and Wales. This act, and the associated (but separate) Reformation of the Church, brought about fundamental change…
In 2012, an extensive excavation was carried out in the Stoke Quay area of Ipswich by Oxford Archaeology and Pre-Construct Archaeology. Covering an area of 1.2ha, the project was a major undertaking and made finds spanning the early medieval period…
What was it like to be a child growing up within the turbulence and destruction of Reformation England? Drawing on his research of over 4,500 skeletons, Bennjamin Penny-Mason reveals an untold story.
Apart from his red hair, beard, giant girth and his equally gargantuan appetite for wives, the one thing we all associate with Henry VIII is the event that the authors of 1066 and All That called, with an eye for a memorable spelling mistake, ‘the Disillusion of the Monasteries’.