Elizabeth New - Böcker

Shropshire: Art, Architecture and Archaeology from Roman Wroxeter to the Sixteenth Century considers the shift in the regional administrative centre from Wroxeter to Shrewsbury, the powerful evidence for investment in the material fabric of the middle Welsh March, particularly between the late 11th and 13th centuries, and Shropshire’s great monastic hinterland.Chapters cover Shropshire from many different angles, encompassing wide-ranging case studies that address architecture, figure-sculpture, and stained glass, as well as questions of liturgy, religion, and castle life. Topics include reappraisals of the 19th- and 20th-century excavations of Wroxeter, Laurence of Ludlow’s involvement in the building of Stokesay Castle, and Shrewsbury Castle, as well as a study of anchorite cells attached to Shropshire parish churches. There is new evidence for the deployment of water features and gardens around late medieval castles; evaluations of Haughmond Abbey, Wenlock Priory, and the abbot’s lodging at Buildwas; and a reconstruction of the late medieval glazing scheme at St Bartholomew’s, Tong. Also investigated are the recently recovered 15th-century seal matrix of Shrewsbury, Romanesque sculptural workshop practice, and the enigmatic alabaster panels at St Mary’s, Shrewsbury.Shropshire: Art, Architecture and Archaeology from Roman Wroxeter to the Sixteenth Century updates and enlarges our knowledge of the middle Welsh March and will be of interest to all medieval archaeologists and historians.

Shropshire: Art, Architecture and Archaeology from Roman Wroxeter to the Sixteenth Century considers the shift in the regional administrative centre from Wroxeter to Shrewsbury, the powerful evidence for investment in the material fabric of the middle Welsh March, particularly between the late 11th and 13th centuries, and Shropshire’s great monastic hinterland.Chapters cover Shropshire from many different angles, encompassing wide-ranging case studies that address architecture, figure-sculpture, and stained glass, as well as questions of liturgy, religion, and castle life. Topics include reappraisals of the 19th- and 20th-century excavations of Wroxeter, Laurence of Ludlow’s involvement in the building of Stokesay Castle, and Shrewsbury Castle, as well as a study of anchorite cells attached to Shropshire parish churches. There is new evidence for the deployment of water features and gardens around late medieval castles; evaluations of Haughmond Abbey, Wenlock Priory, and the abbot’s lodging at Buildwas; and a reconstruction of the late medieval glazing scheme at St Bartholomew’s, Tong. Also investigated are the recently recovered 15th-century seal matrix of Shrewsbury, Romanesque sculptural workshop practice, and the enigmatic alabaster panels at St Mary’s, Shrewsbury.Shropshire: Art, Architecture and Archaeology from Roman Wroxeter to the Sixteenth Century updates and enlarges our knowledge of the middle Welsh March and will be of interest to all medieval archaeologists and historians.

Seals and Society arises from a major project investigating seals and their use in medieval Wales, the Welsh March and neighbouring counties in England. The first major study of seals in the context of one part of medieval Western European society, the volume also offers a new perspective on the history of medieval Wales and its periphery by addressing a variety of themes in terms of the insight that seals can offer the historian. Though the present study suggests important regional distinctions in the take-up of seals in medieval Wales, it is also clear that seal usage increased from the later twelfth century and spread widely in Welsh society, especially in those parts of Wales neighbouring England or where there had been an early English incursion. Through a series of chapters, the authors examine the ways in which seals can shed light on the legal, administrative, social and economic history of the period in Wales and its border region. Seals provide unique insights into the choices individuals, men and women, made in representing themselves to the wider world, and this issue is examined closely. Supported by almost 100 images gathered by the project team, the volume is of great interest to those working on seals, their motifs, their use and developments in their usage over the high and later Middle Ages.