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The products of a medieval tile kiln at Bawsey, King's Lynn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2011

Elizabeth Eames
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Extract

In 1843 Daniel Gurney, Esq., F.S.A., discovered the site of a medieval kiln at Bawsey, near King's Lynn in Norfolk. It is known that local tradition had preserved the memory of such a kiln, because the Rev. J. H. Bloom, writing a history of Castle Acre, which was published in 1843 before he knew of the discovery of the site, remarked that tradition said that the priory of Castle Acre possessed a kiln at Bawsey near Lynn. John Gough Nichols, writing two years later in 1845, describes the discovery as follows: ‘Near Lynn in Norfolk was a manufactory of tiles which occur at various places in that neighbourhood. They are of the ordinary form but small, about 4½ inches square, and generally embossed in relief, no second material being inserted to restore a smooth surface.… A considerable quantity of these tiles, together with the kiln in which they were made, has been found at Bawsey near Lynn, and many of them have been placed over the fireplace of the inhabited room at Rising Castle, to which they were presented by Daniel Gurney, Esq., F.S.A. of North Runcton.’ The tiles at Castle Rising are still there, others recovered at the same time are in King's Lynn Museum, and still others found their way to the British Museum in 1855 as the gift of Sir Henry Ellis.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 35 , Issue 3-4 , October 1955 , pp. 162 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1955

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References

page 162 note 1 Bloom, J. H., The Castle and Priory at Castleacre (1843), p. 213.Google Scholar

page 162 note 2 Nichols, J. G., Examples of Encaustic Tiles (1845), p. iii.Google Scholar

page 162 note 3 Hobson, R. L., Catalogue of the Collection of English Pottery … in the British Museum (1903), A 17–23.Google Scholar

page 162 note 4 The results of the work undertaken at that time have not yet been published, and unfortunately have not been available to me for study.

page 163 note 1 British Museum, Dept. of British and Medieval Antiquities, reg. no. 1950, 2–3.

page 163 note 2 Hobson, op. cit. A 6–16, 24, and 25.

page 163 note 3 Rutland Collection B 8, 349, 350, 354–65.

page 164 note 1 Perkins, J. B. Ward, op. cit., p. 136.Google Scholar

page 164 note 2 Ibid., p. 132.

page 164 note 3 Bloom, J. H., op. cit., p. 215.Google Scholar

page 165 note 1 Hobson, R. L., op. cit., p. 4.Google Scholar

page 165 note 2 Perkins, J. B. Ward, op. cit., p. 132.Google Scholar

page 165 note 3 The Rev. Warner, J. Lee, Notes, Norfolk Archaeology, i (1847), 373–4.Google Scholar

page 165 note 4 Now in the District Probate Registry at Norwich. Published by British Record Society, Wills proved in the Consistory Court of Norwich, 1370–1550, Heyd, 135.

page 165 note 5 British Museum Additional MSS., 33, 393, P. 555

page 165 note 6 Designs XVI and II.

page 165 note 7 Barwick, Beachamwell, North Creake, the kiln site.

page 168 note 1 A French example of this device on an inlaid tile is illustrated by Amé, , Carrelages Émailles du Moyen-âge, Paris, 1859, p. 113. The earliest known English example is in Westminster Abbey Chapter House and is illustrated: Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: London: Westminster Abbey (1924), pl. 16.Google Scholar

page 169 note 1 Norfolk Archaeology, xxiii (1927), 391.Google Scholar

page 170 note 1 Bloom, , op. cit., p. 214.Google Scholar

page 171 note 1 Ibid., p. 156.

page 171 note 2 Ibid., p. 139.

page 171 note 3 Ibid., plate facing p. 214.

page 172 note 1 Loyd Haberly advanced, as a theory to explain the wide dissemination of tiles bearing a design appropriate only to one particular site, that enough tiles to fill a kiln had to be made regardless of the number required, and that the surplus tiles were sold.

page 172 note 2 I am indebted for this information to Mr. F. J. Watson of Watson's Potteries, Wattisfield, Suffolk.

page 173 note 1 Blomefield, F., Norfolk, viii, 340.Google Scholar

page 174 note 1 The designs illustrated or described may be identified as: VII, XII, XIV, XVIII, XXI, XXII, and XL.

page 174 note 2 These tiles are the same as designs: VII, XII, XIV, XXI, XXVI, XXVIII, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XL, XLV, and LVI.

page 174 note 3 I have been able to identify designs: VII, XII, XVIII, XXI, XXVI, and XXXVIII.

page 174 note 4 The following designs by blockmaker I have been found at Castle Acre: XIII, XIX, XXXIX, XLVII, LIII, LVII.

page 175 note 1 This was the case at Great Malvern Priory where a block had to.be patched and then replaced during the production of the wall tiles.