Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, No. 60 EARLY INCISED SLABS AND BRASSES FROM THE LONDON MARBLERS This book is published with the generous assistance of The Francis Coales Charitable Trust. EARLY INCISED SLABS AND BRASSES FROM THE LONDON MARBLERS Sally Badham and Malcolm Norris The Society of Antiquaries of London First published 1999 Dedication by In memory of Frank Allen Greenhill MA, FSA, The Society of Antiquaries of London FSA (Scot) (1896 to 1983) Burlington House Piccadilly In carrying out our study of the incised slabs and London WlV OHS related brasses from the thirteenth- and fourteenth- century London marblers' workshops, we have © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1999 drawn very heavily on Greenhill's records. His rubbings of incised slabs, mostly made in the 1920s All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, and 1930s, often show them better preserved than no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval they are now and his unpublished notes provide system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, much invaluable background information. Without transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, access to his material, our study would have been less without the prior permission of the copyright owner. complete. For this reason, we wish to dedicate this volume to Greenhill's memory. ISBN 0 854312722 ISSN 0953-7163 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Designed and laid out by Chuck Goodwin, London W2 5DA Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wiltshire Contents Foreword Vl Acknowledgements viii PART 1 THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDUSTRY 1 1 Introduction and methodology 3 2 Common sources of brasses and incised slabs 10 3 The development of effigial incised slabs to 1400 in England and Wales 14 4 The Purbeck marble industry 23 5 The dating of pre-Black Death London brasses 28 6 Evidence linking London brasses and incised slabs 35 PART2 THE MONUMENTS 43 7 The Camoys style 44 8 The Septvans style 68 9 The Seymour style 75 10 Post-Seymour-style brasses and incised slabs 85 11 Unclassified fourteenth-century Purbeck marble incised slabs 91 12 Basyng-style incised slabs 101 13 Ashford-style incised slabs 118 14 Other Ashford-style monuments 143 Appendix A A summary list of incised slabs from the London workshops 157 AppendixB A summary list of brasses, indents and relief effigies attributed to the London workshops 159 Notes 162 Bibliography 169 Index 175 Foreword This work is dedicated, rightly, to the memory of Frank Allen Greenhill. Sixty years of his leisure time was spent in researching and recording incised slabs. This he did in his meticulous and indefatigable manner and he would not be deflected from his path. Apart from two or three nineteenth-century publications, here was a field of research wide open and just waiting to be tackled by a medievalist. He was born in 1896 and before the First World War had already become an avid brass rubber. Early on, in two separate churches, he espied fine incised slabs and at once realized that here was something to which he could devote his life. In Rouen, during the 1914-18 war, he observed the vast quantities of slabs remaining in the cathedral and other churches of that city; this spurred him on even more. Greenhill appointed Malcolm Norris, one of the co-authors of this monograph, together with myself and one other friend, to be his executors. As Malcolm died unexpectedly in 1995, it now falls to me to write this note. Fortunately, Greenhill's profession took him to various parts of England and also to Scotland, enabling much work recording incised slabs. His first work, The Incised Slabs of Leicestershire and Rutland, was published in 1958; this dealt with each effigial slab in considerable detail, as regards both costume and life of the deceased person commemorated. About this time he retired. Thereafter he spent much time on the Continent researching in national archives as well as making rubbings in important churches; during this work he encountered foreign antiquaries, many of whom became personal friends. His research reached its apogee with the publication on his eightieth birthday of Incised Effigial Slabs: a Study of Engraved Stone Memorials in Latin Christendom, c 1100 to c 1700, in two volumes, one of text and the other of illustrations and lists arranged by country. VI But apart from incised slabs, various scholars were studying the well-known early brasses, notably knights, especially those of the d' Abernon family at Stoke d' Abernon, Surrey; the Trumpington family at Trumpington, Cambridgeshire; the de Bures family at Acton, Suffolk, and the Septvans family at Chartham, Kent. In 1965 J C Ward published a paper on the life of de Bures, showing that he died in 1331 instead of the previously accepted date of 1302; this was followed by S D T Spittle in 1970 with a similar analysis of the Trumpington brass, dating it to c 1326 as opposed to the standard date of 1289. As a result, others took up the cudgel. For their centenary in 1987 the Monumental Brass Society published a volume entitled The Earliest English Brasses, in which Nicholas Rogers, Paul Binski and John Blair presented their researches, throwing established dating to the winds. This present work, Early Incised Slabs and Brasses from the London Marblers by Sally Badham and Malcolm Norris, combines the stylistic analysis adopted in The Earliest English Brasses with incised slabs - a line of research not previously attempted. Yet again we have a new aspect. Words are inadequate to express the gratitude that Greenhill would have felt that part of his researches proved of value and were used and appreciated by scholars of a later generation. Greenhill wrote in Incised Effigial Slabs that he had but scratched the surface of the subject. Everybody disagreed - but he was, as always, correct. During one week alone in France in 1995 the best part of fifty incised slabs quite unknown to Greenhill were found. So the task goes on. It will never be complete. JOHN COALES August 1998 Vll Acknowledgements In carrying out this study we have received considerable help both from colleagues in the Monumental Brass Society and from other friends. Our greatest debt is, of course, to the late Frank Greenhill, to whom this mono- graph is dedicated. Father Jerome Bertram FSA, Dr John Blair FSA, Brian Gittos and Moira Gittos and, above all, John Coales FSA have offered generous help, advice and information. They, together with Jon Bayliss, Nicholas Rogers, Professor Nigel Saul FSA and Tim Sutton, have all read this monograph in draft and contributed many useful suggestions for improvements. Bernard Nurse and Adrian James of the Society of Antiquaries have been unfailingly patient and helpful in response to our many demands throughout. We are also grateful to Portia Askew, Claude Blair FSA, Derrick Chivers, Paul Cockerham FSA, John Goodall FSA, Jane Houghton, Philip Lankester, Dr Nigel Ramsey FSA, Frank Robson, Les Smith and Martin Stuchfield for help given. Additionally, we owe a debt of gratitude for their co- operation and assistance to the incumbents of the many churches in which we have examined monuments. In May 1995, Malcolm Norris, one of the authors of this monograph, died unexpectedly. The manuscript was in an advanced state of completion, but not final- ized. Sally Badham would like to express her very warm appreciation to Malcolm's widow, Laurie, for all her help, at a very difficult time, in making it possible for all the material relating to this work to be brought together, thus ensuring that publication of this final contribution to Malcolm Norris's distinguished record of scholarship was not delayed by his untimely death. viii PART 1 THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDUSTRY CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY Although the objective of the Monumental Brass Society is to promote the study both of monumental brasses and of incised slabs, research on the two media has proceeded along separate and largely independent lines. As the volumes of the Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society attest, attention has focused mainly upon brasses; they have been widely studied in the context of various disciplines and copiously illustrated. In contrast, were it not for the work of Creeny in the last century and, above all, Greenhill in this, there would be little in print on incised slabs, other than a handful of county studies. Greenhill's pioneering work, in particular, has provided the opportunity for others to discover the volume and quality of slabs both in this country and on the Continent. Too often, however, English incised slabs have wrongly been dismissed as an inferior art form. Like brasses, incised slabs are susceptible to stylistic analysis to identify workshop groupings and it is therefore surprising that so little typological work has been carried out on slabs, even on the early London products. As long ago as 1958, Greenhill suggested that the makers of early marble tombs may have produced both incised slabs and brasses. 1 This may be seen as a logical conclusion: there is ample evidence (set out in Chapter 2) that in other work- shops, both in this country and on the Continent, the same men made both brasses and incised slabs. Some other writers have touched upon this point in relation to the London workshops, but hitherto no attempt has been made to follow this up systematically. We have sought to remedy this omission by identifying existing and recorded Purbeck marble incised slabs from the pre-Black Death London workshops and comparing their designs with those of contemporary brasses.