Martin Biddle – författare

Among topics covered in this volume, two important authorship questions are settled; the discovery of a major Northumbrian settlement is reported; the conceptions of Old English literature which have prevailed during the last three hundred years are paraded for critical inspection and substantial contributions are made to our knowledge of subjects as diverse as a monastic library of the first rank, eighth-century Latin poetic activity, metrical technique and literary convention in our greatest surviving vernacular poem; the family basis of political power in the tenth century; late Anglo-Saxon legal concepts; and scientific exposition in the early eleventh century. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book (with a separate section onomastic section). There is also an index to volumes 6 - 10, complementing the index found in volume 5.

The ancient cathedral of Old Minster and the abbey church of New Minster once stood at the heart of Anglo-Saxon Winchester. Buildings of the first importance, honoured by Anglo-Saxon and Norman kings, these great churches were later demolished and their locations lost. Through an extensive programme of archaeological excavation begun in 1961, and as a result of years of research, the story of these lost minsters can now be revealed. Written by Martin Biddle, Director of the Winchester Excavations Committee and Research Unit, and marvellously illustrated by Simon Hayfield, The Search for Winchester’s Anglo-Saxon Minsters traces the history of these excavations from 1961 to 1970 and shows how they led to the discovery of the Old and New Minsters, bringing back to life the history, archaeology and architecture of Winchester’s greatest Anglo-Saxon buildings.

The volume is co-published by the Winchester Excavations Committee and forms Volume 11 of the Winchester Studies series.  Following the success of volumes IV (Windsor and Eton) and V (York) in the series of Historic Towns Atlases, the new volume maps and explains the history of Winchester – a city which has played such an important part in English history from Roman times onwards. Combining many full-colour maps with an authoritative but very readable text, the atlas shows how the Roman city of Venta Belgarum became the second-most important city in England for several centuries: a walled town, the seat of kings and an ecclesiastical centre almost unparalleled in the country, before gently declining into a judicial centre and county town. The Atlas is centred on a detailed map of the city at the scale of 1:2500, showing Winchester's historic buildings and structures on a map of the city as it was in 1800. A series of maps show how Winchester was at key points in its history, charting its development and changing shape. The Atlas includes an early OS map, modern maps and historic aerial photographs, as well as colour illustrations, many of which have never been published before. The introduction offers a full history of how and why Winchester developed from prehistoric times onwards, in a series of chapters written by historians but aimed at the general reader. It also includes a comprehensive reference gazetteer listing every place shown on the maps, with a map location, a brief history, and further reading for those interested in finding out more. Like its companion volumes, the maps, text, gazetteer and illustrations are presented in an A3 stiff card binder, and the format allows for maps of different date to be compared side-by-side.

Edited by Martin Biddle with a catalogue of the known coins of the mint by Yvonne Harvey, this volume records and illustrates the minting of silver pennies in Winchester between the reigns of Alfred the Great and Henry III, a period of three and a half centuries. At the Mint, which was situated in the area of the High Street to the east of where the city’s cross now stands, at least 24 million silver pennies (possibly as many as 50 million) were struck. Five and a half thousand survive in museums and collections all over the world. These have been sought out and photographed (some 3200 coins in 6400 images detailing both sides), and minutely catalogued by Yvonne Harvey for this volume.During the period from late in the reign of Alfred to the time of Henry III, dies for striking the coins were produced centrally under royal authority in the most sophisticated system of monetary control at the time in the western world. In this first account of a major English mint to have been made in forty years, a team of leading authorities have studied and analysed the use the Winchester moneyers made of the dies, and together with the size, weight, and the surviving number of coins from each pair of dies, have produced a detailed account of the varying fortunes of the mint over this period. Their results are critical for the economic history of England and the changing status of Winchester over this long period, and provide the richest available source for the history of the name of the city and the personal names of its citizens in the later Anglo-Saxon period.

London and Winchester were not described in the Domesday Book, but the royal properties in Winchester were surveyed for Henry I about 1110 and the whole city was surveyed for Bishop Henry of Blois in 1148. These two surveys survive in a single manuscript, known as the Winton Domesday, and constitute the earliest and by far the most detailed description of an English or European town of the early Middle Ages. In the period covered Winchester probably achieved the peak of its medieval prosperity. From the reign of Alfred to that of Henry II it was a town of the first rank, initially centre of Wessex, then the principal royal city of the Old English state, and finally `capital’ in some sense, but not the largest city, of the Norman Kingdom. This volume provides a full edition, translation, and analyses of the surveys and of the city they depict, drawing on the evidence derived from archaeological excavation and historical research in the city since 1961, on personal- and place-name evidence, and on the recent advances in Anglo-Saxon numismatics.

This wide-ranging study uses historical and archaeological evidence to consider humanity's interactions with the environment, fashioning agricultural, gardening and horticultural regimes over a millennium and a half. The discussions of archaeological finds of seeds from discarded rubbish including animal fodder and bedding show the wide range of wild species present, as well as cultivated and gathered plants in the diet of inhabitants and livestock. Pollen analyses, and studies of wood, mosses, and beetles, alongside a look at the local natural environment, and comparison with medieval written records give us a tantalizing picture of early Winchester. The earliest record is by Ælfric of Eynsham in his 11th-century Nomina Herbarum. From medieval records come hints of gardens within the city walls, and considerable detail about agriculture and horticulture, and produce brought into the city. Wild fruit and nuts were also being gathered from the countryside for the town’s markets and mills. At St Giles’ Fair exotic imported spices and fruits were also sold. All these sources of evidence are brought together to reveal more fully the roles of agriculture and the environment in the development of Winchester.

This is a detailed study of the archaeology of Roman Winchester—Venta Belgarum, a major town in the south of the province of Britannia— and its development from the regional (civitas) capital of the Iron Age people, the Belgae, who inhabited much of what is now central and southern Hampshire. The archaeology of the Winchester area in prehistory is considered, and so too is the later evidence from the town, between the end of organized Roman life shortly after 400 and the foundation, c.650, of the church later known as Old Minster. At the heart of this account is the publication of the relevant phases of the sites excavated in 1961–71 by the Winchester Excavations Committee, and of the finds recovered from these excavations.Volume 1 (Excavations) outlines previous work of relevance, and describes the WEC excavations and the post-excavation analysis of the discoveries, including full reports on the prehistoric, Roman, and post-Roman (to c.650) phases of the 14 sites excavated in 1961–71, with gazetteers for Roman Winchester, listing and describing all significant observations of the defences, and the streets and buildings within the walls.Volume 2 (Finds) presents about 4000 of the finds from the excavations of 1961–71, with additional significant objects from earlier excavations in Winchester or other Winchester collections. Finds are described and discussed by era and type, with coins and selected pottery followed by objects grouped by industry or purpose. Concordances list these finds by site and phase or by material.

St Albans Abbey is one of the greatest of medieval England. The origins of the medieval abbey lie much further in the past, in the time of Roman Verulamium, and the early history of the abbey is that of the martyrdom of Alban, whose burial is associated with the area of the abbey itself. The creation of memorial churches over the graves of saints outside the walls of Roman cities is commonplace in the world of late antiquity. One has only to think of St Peter’s or St Paul’s without the Walls in Rome, but in Britain no single case is yet known, other than St Albans. This book is about the excavation in 1978 of the site of the medieval chapter house of St Albans Abbey, a building second in importance only to the abbey church itself. The excavation took place in response to the impending construction of a new chapter house, on the exact site of its medieval predecessor, demolished following the suppression of the abbey in the sixteenth century. Enigmatic finds had long revealed that this early Christian site on the hill, now dominated by the great mass of the Norman abbey church, is one of the most important for the study of the history of early England. In just four short months, excavations uncovered fragments of the decorated floor of the Anglo-Saxon abbey and associated burials, along with the magnificent floor of relief-decorated tiles of the medieval chapter house, and the graves of sixteen known figures of the late eleventh-to fifteenth-century abbey, including eleven abbots.