RSS 1.0History and Archaeology
The History and Archaeology Department is based in a modern purpose-built building at the heart of the University's main Chester Campus. The Department of History and Archaeology has very good links with heritage, museum and archive agencies within the city of Chester, from which students are able to benefit during the course of their studies. The Department is also one of the leading research units within the University. The research interests and specialisms of the Department are diverse, ranging over the medieval, early modern and modern periods, and over local, British, European, American and international history.
This collection is licenced under a Creative Commons licence. Copyright belongs to the authors. The collection may be reproduced for non-commerical use and without modification, providing that copyright is acknowledged.
Recent Submissions
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The Liberty of Whitby Strand: The Origins and Significance of a Jurisdictional ImmunityThe medieval abbey at Whitby, North Yorkshire, controlled a jurisdictional immunity from royal administration, which was territorial and was known as the Liberty of Whitby Strand. Since Frederick William Maitland, historians have analysed such jurisdictional immunities as an index of royal authority and power. However, the surviving documentation for jurisdictional immunities means that it is often difficult to establish precisely when they were created or what franchises they included. Whitby Abbey claimed that the Liberty of Whitby Strand originated in a grant of King William I and this was accepted by the Victoria County History at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since then, the Liberty has been almost completely ignored. This article revisits the evidence, suggesting that it is possible to pinpoint its origins with rare precision. It argues that the Whitby monks forged a series of charters to persuade King Richard I and King John to transform a narrower portfolio of franchises into the wider territorial Liberty. This article further considers the politics surrounding its creation under Richard and John, and its implications for our understanding of royal authority and power.
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Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World WarsPerhaps surprisingly, local people embraced these graves, often caring for them with considerable tenderness. Tim Grady explores the history of this curious aspect of postwar community.
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Archaeo-media: breaking the binary and building agency in archaeological news reportingThe role of news media in the dissemination of archaeological research isbeginning to receive some attention, but this is inadequate when consideringthe scale of the news media as a tool for public archaeology and mass-distribution of archaeological research in digital news sites. Archaeologyneeds to urgently address this oversight and begin to construct appropriateand sustainable working relationships with the news media, founded ona critical evaluation of current strategies, to regulate the information that isdisseminated through this medium. This paper takes a British perspective,though the themes and necessary improvements have global significance.I suggest that we begin to appreciate the role of the archaeologist in theconstruction of knowledge through the mass media by embracing ‘archaeo-media’- a neologism here proposed to explore the intersections and interac-tions between archaeology and news media.
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Book Review: Étienne Anheim, Laurent Feller, Madeleine Jeay and Giuliano Milani (eds), Le Pouvoir des Listes au Moyen Âge – II. Listes d’objets/ listes de personnes. Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020. Pp. 320. EURO 22A book review of Étienne Anheim, Laurent Feller, Madeleine Jeay and Giuliano Milani (eds), Le Pouvoir des Listes au Moyen Âge – II. Listes d’objets/ listes de personnes. Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne, 2020. Pp. 320. EURO 22.
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A Tale of Two Risings: Was the second civil war in England and Wales pro-royalist or anti-parliamentarian?This chapter reconsiders the origins, nature and leadership of the two main risings during the so-called civil war in Wales, namely the rising which began in Kent and which spread to Essex, ending in the siege of Colchester, and the rising which began in Pembrokeshire before spreading to other parts of South Wales, ending in the siege of Pembroke. It highlights the complexities in branding either pro-royalist or anti-parliamentarian in tone.
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A Tale of Two Cities: garrisons, strongholds, fortifications and sieges in the English civil warThis chapter explores the nature and role of garrisons and garrison warfare in the English civil war, focusing on the role of defended towns, refortified castles, fortified mansions and other strongholds. It goes on to compare and contrast Chester and Gloucester as strongholds and their role in the civil war.
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The triumphs and tribulations of Sir Thomas Myddelton, summer and autumn 1644Via a series of his often lengthy and quite detailed letters of the time - the full texts of which are transcribed and reproduced within the paper - this article explores Sir Thomas Myddelton's military campaigns and activities along the borders of Shropshire and Montgomeryshire during the late summer and early autumn of 1644, a period when he achieved some significant victories but also found himself frustrated and unable to make major advances into Wales, for reasons which are explored here.
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The nursery of the king's infantry? Reassessing the civil war in Wales, 1642-46This article reassesses the nature of the civil war in Wales and in particular the apparent support for the king found in most of the Principality. It explores royalist allegiance afresh, questioning the depth and strength of that allegiance, finding evidence for strained and waning support for the king's cause from quite early in the civil war and assessing both how and why parliament was able to secure most of Wales very quickly and without a fight in the latter stages of the war.
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'My wife was very unquiet and uncharitable also. God forgive her!'. First person accounts of women's lives during the English civil war.This article explores the lives and lived experiences of some women during the English civil war period through the surviving contemporary first person accounts of those women themselves or of their male fathers/husbands/close family members.
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'That cage of violence and denne of theives': Beeston Castle, CheshireThis paper explores the history, site and layout of Beeston Castle in central Cheshire, through the medieval period. However, it focuses on the role of the castle during the English civil war, during which it served firstly as a parliamentarian outpost and then as a royalist stronghold, blockaded, besieged and eventually retaken by the Cheshire parliamentarians. It draws heavily on contemporary primary sources, as well as on the discoveries made during recent archaeological work, to reconstruct the history of the castle during the civil war.
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Introduction: Death and Fire in Early Medieval North-West EuropeIntroducing this first-ever edited collection drawing together the latest research on the cremation of the dead in early medieval North-West Europe, the chapter identifies, rationalises and contextualises the book’s aims: to rethink the burning of the dead in the context of other dimensions to mortuary practices in the early medieval period and showcasing the significant theoretical, methodological and investigative advances of recent decades. The scope and rationale of the book are outlined, focusing on providing a rich and accessible resource for students and scholars of archaeology and cognate fields. The chapter then explains the distinctive process of the book’s creation: largely by transcribing and editing structured interviews. The nineteen constituent chapters of the book are then reviewed, and key themes and future directions are identified for the investigation of death and fire in the Early Middle Ages.
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Towards Public Viking ResearchThis book is essential reading for those interested in the interdisciplinary study of the Early Middle Ages because our contemporary world is saturated with many different kinds of ‘Vikings’. Exploring our many 21st-century ‘Viking worlds’, spanning real-world, supernatural and digital landscapes, is a key priority for research in heritage studies, public history and public archaeology. The contemporary reception of the Viking Age demands our scholarly cross-disciplinary critical reflection and sustained intervention in profitable and insightful ways because the ‘Vikings’ are a key strand of global interest and debate regarding our human story and pre-modern world as well as contemporary preconceptions of identity, society, economy, politics, history, legend, mythology and religion. Our academic task extends beyond Europe to the globe and includes critically evaluating museum and heritage site interpretations, our public-facing academic outputs, but also a host of other fictional and rhetorical Vikings deployed across media from comic books and video games to commercial heritage tourism ventures and populist political mobilisations. In this chapter I argue that researchers and practitioners must integrate their expertise to tackle this challenge. I propose the specific field of transdisciplinary investigation – Public Viking Research – for these endeavours. Public Viking Research aims to tackle and critique ‘Vikingisms’ but also evaluate the ethical and socio-political responsibilities of our own research in the public realm. In this regard, we can both build critiques of contemporary Viking worlds as well as the impact of our own theories, methods and practice, working with real-world and digital communities and stakeholders to develop new creative and informed stories and visions of the Vikings.
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Glaziers' Hollow, Delamere Forest, Cheshire: investigation and survey of a late medieval glassworking siteIn 2023, a gradiometer survey was conducted over two small areas of a medieval glassworking site known as Glaziers’ Hollow in Delamere Forest primarily to help identify the precise location of excavations conducted there in 1935 and 1947. This survey forms part of a larger project aimed at furthering the understanding of this scheduled monument in response to its current presence on the Historic England Heritage at Risk register. Over two days in June and another two days in November, a small team conducted the gradiometry survey alongside a suite of other non-invasive survey techniques. Results showed a focused cluster of magnetic anomalies that corresponded closely to previously unrecorded earthworks visible on the ground, as well as more modern disturbances and anomalies likely to be the location of the historic excavations. The signature of the readings is somewhat inconclusive as to the specific identification of a glassworking furnace or furnaces, but do suggest glassworking and associated activity close by, although results may be influenced by the amount of disturbance and potential overburden at the site.
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Discussion: Hunter-Gatherers in the LandscapeThe work of the Seamer Carr project and the VPRT has created an unparalleled record of the human occupation of a North European, early prehistoric landscape. The test-pitting surveys and open-area excavations have recorded evidence for human activity that ranges in scale from discrete hunting events to the long-term, repeated occupation of particular landscape locations. Added to this, systematic augering of large parts of the basin, accompanied by palaeoenvironmental studies at key sites, has produced a detailed account of the environmental context within which these episodes of human activity took place. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an interpretive summary and synthesis of this data, beginning with an overview of the archaeological record of hunting and gathering/foraging around the shores of the former Lake Flixton and the islands near its centre, and what this can tell us about the changing nature of hunter-gatherer settlement, resource utilisation, logistics and material traditions between the Final Palaeolithic and the Late Mesolithic. The second part of the chapter brings together the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental data to explore the changing relationships between humans and their environment.
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Art on the MarchCommentary
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Rethinking Offa’s Dyke as a Hydraulic Frontier WorkBuilding upon a fresh interpretation of Wat’s Dyke as a component of an early medieval hydraulic frontier zone rather than primarily serving as a symbol of power, a fixed territorial border or a military stop-line (Williams 2021), here, I refine and apply this approach to its longer and better-known neighbour: Offa’s Dyke. This linear earthwork’s placement, alignments and landscape context are evaluated afresh using a simple but original comparative mapping methodology. First, on the local level, I show that Offa’s Dyke was carefully and strategically positioned to connect, overlook and block a range of watercourses and wetlands at key transverse and parallel crossing points, thus observing and choreographing mobility on multiple axes. Second, I address the regional scale, showing how Offa’s Dyke interacted with, and controlled, biaxial movement through and between water catchments parallel and transverse to the monument’s principal alignments. Both these arguments inform how the Dyke might have operated on the supra-regional scale, ‘from sea to sea’ and also ‘across the sea’, by controlling the estuarine and maritime zones of the Dee Estuary in the north and the Wye/Severn confluence to the south. Integrating military, territorial, socio-economic and ideological functionality and significance, Offa’s Dyke, like its shorter neighbour Wat’s Dyke (in an as-yet uncertain relationship), configured mobilities over land and water via its hydraulic dimensions and interactions. Together, the monuments can be reconsidered as elements of a multi-functional hydraulic frontier zone constructed by one or more rulers of the middle Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and operative both in times of peace and conflict.
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Linear Pasts and Presents: Researching Dykes, Frontiers and BorderlandsThis editorial essay introduces the fifth volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ) by presenting a review of the contents, recent related research published elsewhere, and the Offa’s Dyke Collaboratory’s activities during 2022 and early 2023.
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The symbol carving process as a mnemonic manipulator of ‘deep’ genealogy in early medieval ScotlandScotland’s corpus of early medieval carved stone monuments is a rich dataset for explorations of cultural connections, power and ideology. This article explores how meaning and significance might be interpreted from the reuse of prehistoric stone monuments in the Pictish period via close examination of the materiality, landscape and transformation processes of one case study from Nether Corskie, Aberdeenshire. Technologies of transformation of the existing stone are considered and contextualized as evidence of contemporary concerns and manipulations of concepts and memories of genealogy, ancestry and place.
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A Dance with Death: The Imperial War Graves Commission and Nazi GermanyIn the mid-1930s, Fabian Ware and the other leading members of Britain’s Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) sought to strengthen relations with Nazi Germany. Their efforts are generally seen as another example of appeasement, misjudging Hitler in a search for international peace. This article, in contrast, places this relationship into a much longer history of wartime death and post-war remembrance. As was the case elsewhere, the IWGC, to the anger of some relatives of the deceased, chose not to repatriate the war dead buried in Germany, and instead concentrated them into four new British war cemeteries. This decision created a clear division between the treatment of the dead of the victors and those of the defeated. While the British and Empire dead in Germany were made more visible, Germany’s war dead buried in Britain remained in their original wartime graves and faded slowly from sight. When Hitler rose to power, the IWGC was suddenly forced to confront these disparities, particularly as Nazis in both Britain and Germany used the war graves to rally support. This article argues that the IWGC started to negotiate with the Nazi regime not to broker peace but purely to defend the cemeteries that it had placed on German soil. However, with Britain and Germany having competing narratives of war and defeat, these discussions were always doomed to fail.
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Women Suppliers to Medieval Courts: Making Visible Ducal and Royal PowerThis article analyses under-studied women suppliers to medieval courts, with a focus on Burgundian and French courts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Through its archival research it identifies over a hundred women involved in creating, supplying and repairing objects. Starting from the objects supplied, provisioned or repaired by women, the article seeks to understand women suppliers as significant actors in ducal and royal households through the way in which the objects they supplied became visible and meaningful expressions of ducal and royal power.
