The King's High Table at the Palace of Westminster (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Late-14th-Century Reconstruction of Westminster Hall
Westminster II. The Art, Architecture and Archaeology of the Royal Palace. BAA Conference Transactions XXXIX, eds W. Rodwell and T Tatton-Brown , 2015
The rebuilding of Westminster Hall by Richard II in the last years of his reign is the supreme expression of his kingship and resulted in one of the most spectacular creations of the medieval offi ce of works-to be seen alongside the Wilton Diptych as a measure of the artistic refinement of the age. As the king's great hall in the Palace of Westminster, it performed major functions in every sphere of national life and was the backdrop for key events and for long the home of the central courts of justice. The paper discusses the design and technology of the roof carpentry.
Archaeological Journal, 2017
The concept of the first-floor hall was introduced in 1935, but Blair’s paper of 1993 cast doubt on many of those buildings which had been identified as such. Following the recognition of Scolland’s Hall, Richmond Castle as an example of a hall at first-floor level, the evidence for buildings of this type is reviewed (excluding town houses and halls in the great towers of castles, where other issues apply). While undoubtedly a number of buildings have been mistakenly identified as halls, there is a significant group of structures for which there are very strong grounds to classify as first-floor halls. The growth of masonry architecture in elite secular buildings, particularly after the Norman Conquest, allowed halls to be constructed on the first floor. The key features of these are identified and the reasons for constructing the hall at this level – prestige and security – are recognized. The study of these buildings allows two further modifications to the Blair thesis: in some houses, halls and chambers were integrated in a single block at an early date, and the basic idea of the medieval domestic plan was already present by the late eleventh century.
Journal of Historic Buildings and Places, 2022
New Thoughts on Henry VII Chapel High Altar Canopy The high altar in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey was made originally by Pietro Torrigiano, an Italian Renaissance artist and sculptor, at the start of the sixteenth century. Torrigiano’s work reflected his Italian heritage and the altar has been framed as ‘a major masterpiece of the early Tudor Renaissance […] surpassing even Torrigiani’s [sic] royal tombs’. The altar succumbed to the wrath of Puritan thought and it was dismantled a century-and-a-half after its erection. Various written and visual documents survive from the period to help understand the altar’s original appearance and ‘specification’. During the nineteenth century, fragments associated with the altar were discovered, and these, in turn, were used to construct a replacement; this was also taken down and another, commonly held to be an accurate recreation of Torrigiano’s original, was installed subsequently in its place courtesy of the Order of the Bath’s munificence. This essay explores certain irregularities in the altar’s twentieth-century reconstruction that vary from the original. It also presents and assesses the influence that an only recently rediscovered remnant from the time of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York—their marriage bed—had upon curious elements incorporated into Torrigiano’s altar. As such, it advances a new, English source influencing at least part of the altar’s design.
The King Lucius tabula in St Peter Upon Cornhill church, London
A brass plate hanging in the Wren church of St Peter Upon Cornhill in the City of London claims that the church was founded as a cathedral by King Lucius, the first Christian king of Britain, in AD 179. Although the existing brass plate must post-date the Great Fire of 1666, it echoes the text of a panel or 'tabula' that hung in the medieval church. This paper argues that the original panel probably dated to the period around 1400, when rectors of St Peter's were claiming precedence over other parish priests because of the antiquity of their church, but that the belief that the church was founded by King Lucius can probably be traced much earlier.
Seats, relics, and the rationale of images in Westminster Abbey, Henry III to Edward II
Westminster: The Art, Architecture, and Archaeology of the Royal Abbey and Palace, 2015
(Co-authored with Paul Binski) The aim of this paper is to illuminate the wall and panel paintings in the sanctuary and south transept ofWestminster Abbey by considering their relationship to the ways these spaces were furnished and used. The study of liturgy, inferring behaviour from texts, tends to idealization and does not always take into account human contingencies, that is, what actually happened. In cases such asWestminster’s, the well-documented unruliness of courts reminds us of brute reality. The sedilia in the sanctuary were made in a context that witnessed conditions of actual riot during court ritual. The south transept paintings adorned a complex space used or viewed by monks and layfolk. The murals amplified the relic cults of the church and were part of a viewing situation whose agency depended in part upon access routes and seating of uncertain nature. We take these cases in turn, beginning with seating and images in the south transept. Our contributions are initialled separately. For the full chapter, see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Westminster-Architecture-Archaeology-British-Archaeological/dp/1910887242
CAREFUL examination ofthe horizontal beams above the arches framing the arcades if the i zth-century great hall ofthe bishop's palace at Hereford hasbrought to light additional structural evidence shewing that the hall, as originally built, had a clerestory and separate pentroofs over the aisles. The proposed reconstruction is discussed with reference to surviving but incomplete examples of the same date at Leicester and Farnham, where the evidence .for the architectural form is inconclusive. It is compared with earlier illustrations, including those in the Bayeux Tapestry. The evidence of the churches of late totli and t ith-cenuuy date with transverse (diaphragm) arches is also adduced.
Post-Medieval Archaeology, 2006
Saxon pits and 17th-and 18th-century construction phases. The latter sequence comprised the remains of two builds of cellars associated with tenements at Duke's Court, a former street on the northern side of the Royal Mews. An exceptional collection of glassware and tin-glazed plates was recovered from these cellars. It must have come from prosperous households and documents an early and significant stage in the development of English glass manufacture. The paper examines the glass and associated finds from the post-medieval features. in the Westminster area have uncovered Iron-Age pits, ditches and timber revetments dated to c. 540 BC. Roman evidence is also fairly sporadic, but includes the discovery of a sarcophagus and, more recently, a tile kiln below the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields church. This and other sites at the National Gallery and in the immediate area have produced evidence of Middle-Saxon settlement. The main evidence is for activities such as quarrying and refuse disposal, possibly indicating an area on the periphery of the town. The full extent of Middle-Saxon Lundenwic is not yet clear, but the western boundary was probably in the area of Charing Cross Road and Trafalgar Square. To the north, traces of a semirural farmstead were discovered; all aspects of the archaeological evidence suggest activity away from the more intensely occupied areas around Covent Garden. In the medieval period, the site was to the north of the Royal Mews, first mentioned in the reign of Edward I. It lay within a walled enclosure, possibly around stables (Fig. 2). By 1746, the area
Stone tables of the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom reconsidered
2013
The article presents a particular group of objects – stone offering tables – uncovered in the mastaba AS 54 at Abusir South (Egypt) during the excavations of the Czech Institute of Egyptology, and on the basis of their classification reconsiders the so far published material of the same kind. Among the group of stone tables which represent common types that are to be found in publications of previous excavations, a peculiar piece was reconstructed from the fragments that were brought to light in the spring season, 2010. The unusual features clearly visible on the lower part can be regarded as a kind of support for a stand that has not been considered for stone tables so far. Such a hypothesis was supported by another piece of a stone table that was documented a year later and bore the same feature. Moreover, another piece of an offering table found at the royal necropolis of Abusir seems to bear traces of a similar depression. Based on the new material, the author presents the available types of stone offering tables, interprets their construction possibilities and further historical development implications. The results of the analysis point to a well organised system of stone table production and general knowledge of the craftsmen who created them.