Monastery

A ‘lost’ Anglo-Saxon monastery discovered in Berkshire

During the excavation, the team uncovered some of the layout of the monastery, showing that it was organised into a series of zones that were demarcated by ditched boundaries.

Iona’s archetype? A concrete replica of the Cross of St John speaks

The Isle of Iona, located off the south-western coast of Mull in the Inner Hebrides, has been described by the poet Robert Crawford (b. 1959) as a place where ‘spirit, imagination, and physical exertion mingle’. Iona’s assemblage of early medieval carved stones and grave slabs constitute a special part of the island’s magic, forming a collection of early medieval art for which there are few parallels in the rest of Europe. The importance of one cross in particular – the 8th-century Cross of St John – has only recently been realised, in part because of a study of its concrete replica, as Current Archaeology's Chris Catling reveals.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries in England and Wales

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…

ALL photoS: Canterbury Cathedral /Nathalie Cohen, unless otherwise stated

England in stone: recounting recent research at Canterbury Cathedral

Eight hundred and fifty years after Thomas Becket’s martyrdom within the walls of Canterbury Cathedral, major works have shed vivid light on how the religious building has been used over the centuries. Nathalie Cohen shares some of the highlights.

Left Charterhouse Square is the final resting place of many of London’s plague dead. Walter Manny founded a Carthusian monastery at the site in 1371. above A fragment from Manny’s painted tomb.

The Charterhouse

A recently opened museum at London’s Charterhouse illuminates centuries of life at this former medieval monastery. Lucia Marchini explores some of the highlights.

One of the magnificent six: secrets from the Byzantine city of Shivta

How did cities come to flourish in the Negev Desert? George Nash has gone in search of Shivta’s former glory.

BELOW Lying off the west coast of Scotland, the tiny island of Iona with its 6th century monastery was a beacon of Christian scholarship and creativity during the Medieval period.

Exploring Scotland’s most sacred place

The Scottish island of Iona was one of the most influential Christian centres in Early Medieval Europe. But how much of its first monastery, built in the 6th century, has survived to the present day? As 2013, the 1,450th anniversary of its foundation, approached, it was time to find out, as Peter Yeoman explains.