Tracking Down Tudor Graffiti

If I could pin down a point in time when I first became fascinated by historic graffiti it might be the first time I saw the wall carvings in The Beauchamp Tower, in The Tower of London. I remember scanning it for ages. Some well known prisoners and lesser known prisoners were locked up in The Beauchamp Tower for years at a time during the reigns of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I. Of course, the amount of days they had time to pass means some of the graffiti is very detailed.

It was one of those moments that made me stop and think about the individual – the human – who had worked on the image with a knife in their hand carving out every detail for hours, standing or sitting in exactly the same space I was hundreds of years before me. Being a storyteller, my mind immediately leaps to trying to get into their minds. What were they thinking as they worked? How did they feel at the time?

Anyway, ever since then, I hunt for historic graffiti where ever I think it’s likely I’ll see it, and if you’ve followed my blog for a while you will have seen me post about it when I do find it. Cathedrals are great for graffiti, around the choir stalls and in any other areas where people would have stood for some time. On the backs of pillars in the nave and in all sorts of areas outside the central nave. My husband is now as fascinated as I am and we usually try and find the oldest mark as people mostly write the year and their name or initials. You will not find very much on the normal pews though, pews were quite a late addition to churches and cathedrals the nave was originally an open standing space.

Ruins are another great place for historical graffiti, castle ruins, or follies in gardens. This usually dates from the Georgian, Regency or Victorian periods or later. These are places were people would have visited with others and perhaps talked to one another as they carved. These carvings are mostly in soft stone work, like the sandstone used in Georgian buildings, because people did not have years to carve and were tempted by an easy target.

But anyway, this post is really about a particular piece of graffiti my husband spotted in a church porch in a village just down the road from us.

You may remember that a while ago I did a lot research to try and find out how old my house is. You can find those posts on the Index page under the heading ‘The History of a House on an English Village Green’ .One of the owners I discovered, who owned this land and quite a few local manors and their land from 1597, was a clothier called Edward Long. From what I can tell he bought all the manors to own the land to rear sheep. None of the family lived where our house is. Their main place of residence was in a village a short way down the road from us, in Steeple Ashton, it would have been known only as Ashton originally.

So, when we had nothing to do one day recently, I said to my husband, ‘Can we go and look at the church in Steeple Ashton?’ I know the Longs had a lot of money at the time, their names are still used in lots of places near us, in pubs and village names, and I wanted to see if the family graves were in the church. When we walked up to the church I was very surprised to see something very different from an average village church.

Steeple Ashton Church is unlike most churches that are predominantly medieval, it is Tudor. A Tudor church. There is a contemporary record of the church being built in the Tudor period, ‘When Leland visited Steeple Ashton c. 1540 he remarked that ‘it standithe muche by clothiars’ and named two, Robert Long and Walter Lucas, who had assisted in the building of the parish church.‘ At the time the church had a notably tall steeple but the steeple fell when it was hit by lightning not long after it was first built.

Another difference was that churches rarely contain graffiti. Perhaps because they’ve been continually used by local people who want to keep their church smart, they would have removed graffiti at the time, as we’d remove it today. Or perhaps because churches are smaller people can’t hide for long enough to carve. But anyway, here is where Steeple Ashton Church is different again, because I started noticing some graffiti in the church porch, and then… My husband spotted one of the oldest pieces of graffiti we have seen. 1579. Certainly the oldest piece we’ve come across by accident.

Graffiti in Steeple Ashton Church Porch

In 1579, when Antoni wrote his name on this wall, Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne, and still relatively young. Shakespeare was alive and writing his plays. Raleigh was sailing around the world discovering other lands and plants previously unknown in Britain.

Interestingly, in my heading images, is another piece of graffiti we spotted dated to the 1500s. This was in Canterbury Cathedral. It’s interesting that both 7s and 9s are carved with long tails which must have been the style of writing then.

Graffiti in Canterbury Cathedral

So we have found an earlier carving by eighteen years. Fascinating.

If I can find out anything about Antonio Passhant, I will tell you more one day. But I am just so excited that after all these years of searching historic graffiti, the oldest, well with a date anyway, is about fifteeen minutes away from where I live!

Steeple Ashton Tudor Church

Curious Collections

The Tradescants ~ The Ashmolean Museum

The first time I came across the sort of collection I am writing about today was in a Phillipa Gregory Novel, one of the earlier ones, a trilogy about John Tradescant and his son, also a John, beginning with Earthly Joys. The two men were gardeners employed by the Earl of Salisbury. They travelled the world to discover plants that would be new to English people. Discovering the unknown and unseen was something to be admired in British Isles then. A way to make a name for yourself, so you would be remembered. The Earl of Salisbury was not particularly remembered for his plant collection. But John and his son John, collected all sorts of things on their trips too and returned home with their botanical gifts for the Earl, but also with geological, zoological and man-made items. They gathered so many curious items they opened a museum called ‘The Ark’ in their home in Lambeth in London in 1634, and charged the public to view their collection. Their collection contained wonderful and curious objects like a stuffed Dodo, a cloak claimed to be that of the American Indian Pocahontas’s father (which it was not, it was a wall hanging), and the hawking glove, hawk’s hood and stirrups belonging to King Henry VIII.

It is the Tradescants’ collection of artefacts gathered from across the globe in the very early days of colonialism, that became the foundation for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The younger John Tradescant deeded ‘The Ark’ collection to Elias Ashmole after he’d catalogued the items. As a collector of books and manuscripts Elias was keen to preserve the Tradescants’ collection. But John the younger regretted his decision and in his will left the collection for his wife to earn an income from until her death, with a desire that it be gifted to either Cambridge or Oxford University. John’s wife began selling items, so Elias took her to court. After years of legal argument a court eventually found in his favour, and just before her death in 1678, Edith Tradescant handed over the responsibility for the collection. It was Elias Ashmole who then gave the collection to Oxford University.

The foundation stone of the Ashmoleum museum was laid in 1679. I remember thinking when I read Phillipa Gregory’s trilogy years ago that really the museum should have been The Tradescant Museum.

At the time items the university owned were added to the collection and obviously the museum’s collection has grown over the years. But I always remember it began from one collector, John Tradescant the elder, and what I love is that it’s not a collection of one type of item. As I’ve said Elias Ashmole collected books. John Tradescant collected anything he found interesting, unusual or beautiful, and this is the sort of collection I love.

Sir Thomas William Holburne ~ The Holburne Museum

Another museum based on one of these anything I find curious or admire collections is the Holburne Museum in Bath, pictured above (Also known now as, Lady Danbury’s house from the TV Series Bridgerton). Sir Thomas William Holburne lived in Cavendish Crescent in 1830 at the age of 37, with three unmarried sisters. He’d inherited some items of his collection but expanded it considerably, much of it is the sort of item men collected on a coming of age Grand Tour. After his death in 1874, the collection became the property of one of his sisters who when she died in 1882 left the collection to the city of Bath. By this time it consisted of over 4000 items. Her wish was that it became ‘A nucleus of a Museum of Art for the city of Bath.’ Again, many items have been added to the original collection since the museum was opened in 1892. In fact there are pictures of various items from this collection in some of my much older blog posts.

I should say, before I say more, that I am not a hoarder by nature. My parents hang on to too much, and they have to have every gadget there is. So, I have gone the opposite way and if it isn’t used it’s out. But I do have things that they’re only use is I admire them because I look at them and they bring back a memory, of they feel nice to touch, or they’re so interesting I can look at them a hundred times and still be fascinated. This has made me start to appreciate these early collectors more.

William Murray & Elizabeth Murray ~ Ham House

So why have I chosen today to talk about curious collections? Because Ham House, that I wrote about last week, had my favourite collection. William Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart, who King Charles I gifted Ham House too, was also a collector in the 1600s, in the same era as John Tredescant. As I said last week the house is a time capsule, and his collection room is too. The Green Closet was created in 1637, five years before the English Civil War and twelve years before his friend Charles I was beheaded.

As you can see above, the collection is mostly portraits and paintings. William died before Charles II was restored to the throne. But it was noted In 1677, after his death and post the English Civil War, the collection consisted of 57 paintings, including many precious original miniatures. One being of Queen Elizabeth I. There are also two lacquered cabinets from Japan dating to around 1630. I would guess the collection was hidden away during the Civil War and reinstated in the room after this by his daughter, when at the same time his daughter, Elizabeth , had a silver mounted ebony table made, which is decorated with her monogram, incorporating her title Countess of Dysart.

The Murray collection is not eclectic, which is what I love about the others, but it’s the way he created a room for his precious things in the 1600s, to keep the things he valued most (Perhaps the Tradescants ‘The Ark’ room was similar, though, they had nowhere near as much money to make the space pretty and would have needed a larger room). It’s also wonderful that the family have retained that room. But then his daughter, Elizabeth, who reinstated the room and mounted the Japenese cabinets, became a collector too. Of cabinets.

All the cabinets she collected are opened once a year for the public to see just how clever the craftsmanship is and why she must have thought them beautiful and precious.

Beatrix Potter ~ Hill Top

There is just one more collection I would like to share, and that is a very different one. Again I have mentioned in a blog before that Beatrix Potter’s house, Hill Top, in the Lake District, was a holiday home that became her office, never a place where she lived, so in one way the whole house is a collection of things that inspired her writing. However there is one cabinet that draws my eye every time we visit her house, and it is a collection of complete oddities, I would not even say rarities or valuables. Well not valuable in the money sense anyway. The things in the cabinet must have held some emotional value to her. The items, though, are completely random. The most eclectic collection I have ever seen!

And in the future me

So now, guess what? I want to start my own, definitely eclectic, collection. I shall have just one cabinet, and I think it will contain whatever interests me. Modern or old. Artistic or silly. Beautiful or ugly. Tactile or uncomfortable. The only common thing will be that the cabinet will express my personality.

Feel free to tell me about your curious collections in comments 😀