Percy Manning

Home , Headington Quarry, Museum of Oxford, Osney Abbey, Wolvercote Cemetery

Percy Manning

The Man Who Collected Oxfordshire Access

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edited by Michael Heaney

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Archaeological Lives

ISBN 978 1 78491 528 5 ISBN 978 1 78491 529 2 (e-Pdf) Access

Back Cover: Percy Manning at the Devil’s Quoits, Stanton Harcourt. Ashmolean Museum Archive 1648/MANN/1/MS/253/26.

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List of Figures ��iii

Acknowledgements and Sources ��vii

Abbreviations ��x

Preface ��xi

Contributors ��xii

Introduction ��xv

1: Percy Manning – A Life ��1 Michael Heaney 2: Bibliography of Works by Percy Manning �� 49 Michael Heaney Access 3: Percy Manning’s Archaeological Survey of Oxfordshire �� 53 Alison Roberts 4: The Lost Undercroft at Duckington’s Inn and other Oxford Tavern-undercrofts in Context ��Open 83 David Clark 5: Percy Manning: A Collector of Medieval Earthenware Paving Tiles �� 111 Maureen Mellor 6: Percy Manning’s Picture Collection �� 123 Julian Munby 7: Percy Manning, Thomas Carter and the Revival of Morris Dancing �� 145 Michael HeaneyArchaeopress 8: Manning’s Mummers’ Plays �� 173 Peter Millington 9: ‘Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen’: Songs, Music and Musical Instruments in the Percy Manning Collection �� 221 Alice Little 10: Percy Manning Contextualized: How Manning’s Collection of Lighting in the Pitt Rivers Museum Tells Us More about the Man, his Collection and its Context �� 257 Faye Belsey and Madeleine Ding 11: Manning’s Curiosity Projected into the 21st Century �� 289 Brian Durham Index �� 311

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Figure 1.1: Weetwood House, Headingley. �� 3 Figure 1.2: Percy Manning at 18. �� 4 Figure 1.3: The dig at Alchester, 1892. �� 6 Figure 1.4: Advertisement for the Randolph Exhibition. �� 11 Figure 1:5: Contributions to the Randolph loan exhibition. �� 12 Figure 1.6: OAHS excursion to Goring 12 May 1894. �� 23 Figure 1.7: Manning at North Leigh, 13 July 1910. �� 29 Figure 1.8: A View of the Conduit, part of Carfax Church, the piazza called the Butter Market, the Town Hall, the West Front of Christ Church College, &c. -- John Donowell, 1755. �� 32 Figure 1.9: Manning in uniform. �� 38 Figure 1.10: Manning’s grave at Wolvercote Cemetery. �� 39 Figure 1.11: Books in the Manning collection ��Access 44

Figure 3.1: Excavations at the Roman site of Alchester in March 1892. �� 56 Figure 3.2: OAHS excavations at the Clarendon Quadrangle in September 1899. �� 57 Figure 3.3: Manning’s record of the find of an iron Openspearhead at Dorchester. �� 63 Figure 3.4: Manning’s annotated copy of James Park Harrison’s ‘Index of British and Roman- British Finds in Oxford’. �� 66 Figure 3.5: Manning’s record of archaeological finds from Kingston Road, Oxford. �� 67 Figure 3.6: Edward Thurlow Leeds (1877-1955) in June 1936 �� 70 Figure 3.7: Handwritten list sent by Edmund Craster to Leeds recording the volumes of Percy Manning papers transferred to the Ashmolean by the Bodleian. �� 72 Figure 3.8: Percy Manning’s Archaeological Survey of Oxfordshire OS Map Sheet XXIII West. �� 75 Figure 3.9: ReceiptArchaeopress for the purchase of Percy Manning’s object collections from Cecil John Manning. �� 80

Figure 4.1: Extract from Loggan’s view of Oxford (1675). �� 85 Figure 4.2: St Aldate’s looking south in 1879. �� 86 Figure 4.3: St Aldate’s looking south in 2016. �� 86 Figure 4.4 Extract from 1876 1st edition Ordnance Survey map. �� 87 Figure 4.5: Undercroft floor plan. �� 88 Figure 4.6: Undercroft sections. �� 89 Figure 4.7: ‘Old Crypt’. �� 90 Figure 4.8: Tile fragments from Post Office site. �� 91 Figure 4.9: AM Tile 1970-1164. �� 92

iii © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Figure 4.10: AM Tile 1970-1170. �� 93 Figure 4.11: ‘Part of window once site of Post Office.’ �� 94 Figure 4.12: ‘Cornice – from the Post Office, Oxford. �� 94 Figure 4.13: ‘Cornice ornament site of post office preserved by Mr Hussey’ �� 95 Figure 4.14: A view of arches under the Town Hall c. 1751. �� 97 Figure 4.15: ‘Sectional Interior of Domus Conversorum.’ �� 97 Figure 4.16: Cellar at Carfax. Mr Sotham’s cellar. �� 98 Figure 4.17: Cellar at Carfax. �� 98 Figure 4.18: Early arch under Sotham’s office. �� 99 Figure 4.19: Vault of Old Crown Inn. �� 100 Figure 4.20: Plan of cellars under Falkner’s. �� 101 Figure 4.21: The passage to the Sun wine vaults exposed 1896. �� 101 Figure 4.22: Undercrofts at the Crown, Rochester. �� 104 Figure 4.23: Undercroft at 20 High Street, Chipping Norton. ��Access 106 Figure 4.24: ‘Gluttony’ from a 14th-century Italian manuscript. �� 107

Figure 5.1: Watercolour of probable chimera, illustratingOpen the hands of both Manning and Mrs Hore. � 113 Figure 5.2: Reconstruction of four-tile design from Osney Abbey. �� 114 Figure 5.3: Small-scale ‘etchings’ from paving tiles from Osney Abbey. �� 115 Figure 5.4: ‘Stabbed Wessex’ style paving tile, recovered in 1879. �� 116

Figure.6 1: Joseph Fisher: Interior of the University Galleries, c. 1850. �� 131 Figure 6.2: Joseph Fisher: Magdalen College School (interior), c. 1850.. �� 132 Figure 6.3: J.-B. Malchair: Mud house at Binsey near Oxford, July 16, 1784. �� 133 Figure 6.4: J.-B. Malchair:Archaeopress View from Oriel College, June 30, 1790. �� 134 Figure 6.5: Miss Ann Hornsby: landscape dated February 1800. �� 135 Figure 6.6: J.C. Nattes: New College & part of the Town Wall, 1804. �� 136 Figure 6.7: J.C. Nattes: View of the inner part of the Castle at Oxford, 1804. �� 137 Figure 6.8: Hugh O’Neill: Old House at N end of Folly Bridge. �� 138 Figure 6.9: William Turner: Old Houses on site of New Schools, William Turner 1825. �� 139 Figure 6.10: William Varley: Nos 79-83 St Aldates drawn and signed by Wm Varley, 1813 �� 141 Figure 6.11: [J. Bonnemer]: St Nicholas School Hythe Bridge St. c.1860. �� 143 Figure 6.12: Francis Grose: Minster Lovell Priory [sic], Francis Grose, 1775. �� 144

© Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Figure 7.1: Radband/Wells/Tanner family tree. �� 146 Figure 7.2: Carter’s notes on Ascot-under-Wychwood morris. �� 152 Figure 7.3: Manning’s picture of the Headington Quarry Morris Dancers. �� 157 Figure 7.4: Drawings of Headington Quarry Morris Dancers at the 1899 concert. �� 161 Figure 7.5: Headington Quarry Morris Dancers 26 June 1899. �� 163 Figure 7.6: Headington Quarry bell pad from 1902. �� 166

Figure 8.1: Headington Quarry Mummers, December 1901. �� 175 Figure 8.2: Locations in Oxfordshire and Berkshire where Manning, Binney and relevant third parties collected. �� 178 Figure 8.3: Locations relevant to Manning’s Seven Champions chapbook. �� 193 Figure 8.4: ‘Culham’ mummers’ group. �� 195 Figure 8.5: ‘Culham’ Father Christmas & Doctor. �� 195 Figure 8.6: Headington Quarry Mummers, December 1901. ��Access 196 Figure 8.7: Islip Duke of Cumberland and King George. �� 197 Figure 8.8: Islip mummers general group. �� 198 Figure 8.9: Mummers at Cherry Orchard, Holton, c. 1893.Open �� 199 Figure 8.10: Mummers at Dorchester, 1898, drawing a tooth on the end of a shoelace. �� 200 Figure 8.11: The ‘Culham’ Doctor pulls a tooth from King George. �� 200 Figure 8.12: The Islip Doctor pulls a tooth from Molly, assisted by the rest of the team. �� 200 Figure 8.13: Islip texts compared by line. �� 201 Figure 8.14: Islip texts compared by motif. �� 201

Figure 9.1: Cuddesdon May Day 1901. �� 225 Figure 9.2: Named Archaeopressinformants. �� 230 Figure 9.3: Breakdown of seasonal songs. �� 233 Figure 9.4: Spelsbury May song. �� 238 Figure 9.5a: Morris songs, tunes, and notation: Tanner set ��244-245 Figure 9.5b: Morris songs, tunes, and notation: Trafford set ��246-247 Figure 9.6: Titles in Manning’s notes. �� 248 Figure 9.7: Kidson’s ‘The Maid of the Mill’. �� 251 Figure 9.8: Whit-horns. �� 253

v © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Figure 10.1: Group portrait of the Diploma in Anthropology Class of 1910. �� 259 Figure 10.2: Labels in Manning’s manuscripts for the objects in the PRM collection. �� 263 Figure 10.3: Henry Balfour, the first Curator of the PRM, circa 1926. �� 264 Figure 10.4: Henry Balfour working in the Upper Gallery of the Museum circa 1890-1895. �� 267 Figure 10.5: PRM Acquisitions for 1911. �� 272 Figure 10.6: Donation by Manning in July 1911 �� 278 Figure 10.7: Tinder box �� 284 Figure 10.8: Page 174 of PRM Accession Book VI showing tinder box 1911.29.35. �� 286 Figure 10.9: Section from Fire Making Accession Book showing tinder box 1911.29.35. �� 287 Figure 10.10: Label associated with 1911.29.35. �� 287

Figure 11.1: Particle-size analysis of loam-capping from two terraces �� 292 Figure 11.2: LiDAR model of Alchester environs. �� 294 Figure 11.3: Percy Manning at North Leigh Roman villa, 13 July 1910.Access �� 296 Figure 11.4: Leopold Arms, Cornmarket Street 1906. �� 298 Figure 11.5: Provisional layout of primary burh and proto-castle overlaid on contours of gravel-Loess interface (GLI). ��Open 301 Figure 11.6: Thames-Cherwell confluence inferred as two alluvial fans pushing the Thames to west side of valley floor. �� 305 Figure 11.7: Options for reconstructing the western route into Oxford. �� 306

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All Ashmolean Museum (AM) images © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. All Bodleian Libraries (Bodl.) images courtesy of Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. All Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) images© Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.

Figure 1.1: Betty Longbottom. Geograph.org.uk image 470860. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. Figure 1.2: Clifton College: Wiseman’s House 1871-1888 Album. Photograph courtesy of Clifton College. Figure 1.3: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/102/28. Figure 1.4: OAHS, Bodl. Dep. c.586. Figure 1.6: Bodl. G.A. Oxon a.77, f.27v. Figure 1.7: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/236/3. Figure 1.8: Bodl. G.A. Oxon a.64, picture 322a (p.98) Figure 1.9: Oxford Journal Illustrated 21 March 1917. Figure 1.10: Michael Heaney. Figure 1.11: Michael Heaney. Access Figure 3.1: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/102/29. Figure 3.2: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/246/126. Figure 3.3: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/159/86. Figure 3.4: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/246/3. Figure 3.5: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/246/64.Open Figure 3.6: AM Negative number P7. Figure 3.7: AM Archives 1648/MANN/2/1/3. Figure 3.8: AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MAP/41. Scan by Bodleian Libraries Map Room. Figure 3.9: AM Archives Administrative Records, Cash Vouchers Box 2 ‘1913-1925/6’.

Figure 4.1: David Loggan, Oxonia Illustrata (1675) (extract). Figure 4.2: Oxfordshire County Council photographic archive, HT1696. Figure 4.3: David Clark. Figure 4.4: Ordnance Survey is The City and Liberty of Oxford sheet XXXIII.15.17, surveyed in 1876. Figure 4.5: Bodl. MSArchaeopress Top. Oxon. a.24, f. 55. Figure 4.6: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon. a.24, f. 139. Figure 4.7: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon. a.24, f. 138. Figure 4.8: AM O71, http://tileweb.ashmolean.org/parker-hore/enlargements/o071.html. ©Worcestershire Archaeological Society. Figure 4.9: AM Tile 1970.1164. Figure 4.10: AM Tile 1970.1170. Figure 4.11: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 27a. Figure 4.12: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 27b. Figure 4.13: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 28. Figure 4.14: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.313, f.122. Figure 4.15: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.313, f. 122v. Figure 4.16: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 33a. Figure 4.17: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 33b. Figure 4.18: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 35. Figure 4.19: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 39.

vii © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Figure 4.20: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 42. Figure 4.21: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 225. Figure 4.22: Gentleman’s Magazine 59 Supplement (December 1789): Plate 1, Figure 1 to p. 1185. Figure 4.23: David Clark Figure 4.24: British Library Add 27695 f.14 reproduced with permission from the British Library’s on-line digital image collection at https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&IllID=24291.

Figure 5.1: AM H014, http://tileweb.ashmolean.org/parker-hore/enlargements/h014.html. ©Worcestershire Archaeological Society. Figure 5.2: AM O175, http://tileweb.ashmolean.org/parker-hore/enlargements/o175.html. ©Worcestershire Archaeological Society. Figure 5.3: AM O174, http://tileweb.ashmolean.org/parker-hore/enlargements/o174.html. ©Worcestershire Archaeological Society. Figure 5.4: AM Tile AN1970.1160.

Figure 6.1: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.89, no. 14. Figure 6.2: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.89, no. 81. Figure 6.3: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.93, no. 9. Figure 6.4: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.93, no. 24. Access Figure 6.5: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.93, no. 29. Figure 6.6: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.93, no. 43. Figure 6.7: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.93, no. 57. Figure 6.8: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.91, no. 222. Open Figure 6.9: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.91, no. 199. Figure 6.10: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.91, no. 219. Figure 6.11: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.91, no. 161. Figure 6.12: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon b.90, no. 3.

Figure 7.1: Reproduced with permission from Keith Chandler, Morris Dancing at Bampton until 1914 (Eynsham: [The author], 1983). Figure 7.2: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.200, f. 133. Figure 7.3: Oxfordshire County Council photographic archive, OCL: 4848. Figure 7.4: Jackson’s Oxford Journal 18 March 1899. Figure 7.5: OxfordshireArchaeopress County Council photographic archive, OCL: 88/156. Figure 7.6: PRM Accession Number 2008.59.1.1. Image copyright PRM, University of Oxford.

Figure 8.1: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon. d. 199, fol. 360. Figure 8.2: Peter Millington. Map data © Google. Figure 8.3: Peter Millington. Map data © Google. Figure 8.4: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 354. Figure 8.5: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 356 (detail). Figure 8.6: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 358. Figure 8.7: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 361. Figure 8.8: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 363. Figure 8.9: © Holton Park Archive. Figure 8.10: R.H.Cocks, ”’Mumming’: A Primitive Christmas Custom”, The Sketch 21 December 1898, p. 342.

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© Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Figure 8.11: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 355 (detail). Figure 8.12: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 362. Figure 8.13: Peter Millington. Figure 8.14: Peter Millington.

Figure 9.1: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 194. Figure 9.2: Alice Little. Figure 9.3: Alice Little. Figure 9.4: Bodl.MS Top. Oxon d.199, f. 179 Figure 9.5: Alice Little. Figure 9.6: Alice Little. Figure 9.7: Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.200, f. 105. Figure 9.8: Percy Manning, “Some Oxfordshire Seasonal Festivals: With Notes on Morris- Dancing in Oxfordshire”, Folklore 8.4 (1897), plate VI, facing p. 320.

Figure 10.1: PRM Accession Number 1998.271.11. Figure 10.2 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.192, ff. 173-176. Figure 10.3: PRM Accession Number 1998.356.17.1 Figure 10.4: PRM Accession Number 1998.267.94.5 Figure 10.5: Faye Belsey and Madeleine Ding. Access Figure 10.6: Faye Belsey and Madeleine Ding. Figure 10.7: PRM Accession Number 1911.29.35. Figure 10.8: PRM Accession Book VI, p. 274. Figure 10.9: PRM Fire Making Accession Book 1911.29.35.Open Figure 10.10: Label associated with 1911.29.35.

Figure 11.1: Brian Durham. Figure 11.2: LiDAR mapping © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015. All rights reserved. Figure 11.3 AM Archives 1648/MANN/1/MS/236/5. Figure 11.4: Lower: Site drawing, Bodl. MS Top. Oxon a.24, f. 7; upper: coloured fair copy, Bodl. MS Top. Oxon a.24, f. 6, overlaid on 1772 plan of Northgate from Salter, “A survey of Oxford in 1772”. Figure 11. 5: Brian Durham. Figure 11.6: Base planArchaeopress from Newell, Morphology and Quaternary Geology of the Thames floodplain around Oxford, 2007, Figure 9. Contains British Geological Survey materials © NERC 2016. Figure 11.7: Contains British Geological Survey materials © NERC 2016.

ix © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Abbreviations

Abbreviations

AM Ashmolean Museum BL British Library BM British Museum Bodl. Bodleian Libraries OAHS Oxford Architectural and Historical Society OHC Oxfordshire History Centre PRM Pitt Rivers Museum

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Any published work relies on the good will and support of innumerable people and organizations. My task as editor of this volume was made easier by the fact that, time and again, when people become aware of the remarkable talents of Percy Manning they have been keen to contribute towards celebrating his life and achievements. My first debt, of course, is to my fellow authors, all of whom have fitted the work on their respective chapters into already busy and demanding schedules. Several of them are also working on other aspects of Manning’s centenary: on exhibition displays and events, on the creation of digital resources, on lectures and workshops. Those people and institutions who have provided illustrations are listed formally in the Acknowledgements and Sources which follow this Preface, and my thanks are due also to them. In this regard I am pleased to acknowledge with gratitude the financial and in-kind support given by the Ashmolean Museum, the Bodleian Libraries, the Greening Lamborn Trust,1 the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society, the Oxfordshire History Centre and the Pitt Rivers Museum.

The staff at the Bodleian Library in particular have had toAccess cope over the past couple of years with unprecedented demand from me and my fellow authors for the dozens of volumes of Manning material in the Library, with the same volumes often being requested many times over as research progressed and facts were checked. The staff at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Institute forOpen Archaeology, Pitt Rivers Museum, New College, Oxfordshire History Centre, Sackler Library and Vaughan Williams Memorial Library have been equally assiduous and helpful.

Michael Heaney

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1 The Greening Lamborn Trust’s objective is to promote public interest in the history, architecture, old photographs and heritage of Oxford and its neighbourhood by supporting publications and other media that create access to them.

xi © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Contributors

Faye Belsey is a curatorial assistant at the Pitt Rivers Museum. She has worked at the Museum since 2008 and during this time has contributed to the documentation of objects from all over the globe. She has a keen interest in researching the histories of objects in Museum collections and a new-found enthusiasm for Percy Manning and local traditions and customs.

David Clark is a freelance architectural historian with a particular interest in vernacular buildings. His publications include articles on medieval shops, post-medieval roof structures in Oxfordshire farm buildings, and on timber framing in Berkshire (for the revised Buildings of England volume). In 2008 he co-wrote (with Antonia Catchpole and Robert Peberdy) Burford: Buildings and People in a Cotswold Town. Elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2008, he is also an active member of the Vernacular Architecture Group and was its President from 2011 to 2014.Access He is also active in the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society and the Oxfordshire Buildings Record.

Madeleine Ding is currently Curatorial Assistant and Volunteers Officer at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and she has worked in the Object OpenCollections Department of the museum since 2008. She has a keen interest in all aspects of world cultures.

Brian Durham trained as a biologist before a 40-year career as a field archaeologist, investigating UK deposits from Neolithic to industrial, but concentrating on post-Roman towns. He retired in 2008 as Archaeologist to Oxford City Council, since when he has continued investigating the planetary carbon cycle, both terrestrial and atmospheric. His recent publications include wetland conservation, heritage presentation and the structure of water. He has enjoyed the privilege of draping his personal curiosity about early Oxford and its county over the figure of an accomplished predecessor in Percy Manning. Archaeopress

Michael Heaney is a well-known researcher into folk music and folklore who has published widely on the subject. He combines this with extensive knowledge of the collections in the Bodleian Library where he spent his professional career. He is a past Editor of Folk Music Journal (and continues on its board) and acts as adviser to and a Trustee of the country’s leading research library in the field, the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. He contributed the entries on Manning and several other folk music luminaries, including Cecil Sharp, Headington Quarry musician and dancer William Kimber and Bampton morris fiddler William Wells to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Alice Little has a BA in Modern History and an MSc in Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography from the University of Oxford, as part of which she studied ethnomusicology and the history of collecting, specializing in collections of English

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© Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. musical instruments. She has worked as Assistant Curator of Musical Instruments at the Horniman Museum in London, as well as at the British Museum and at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments. She returned to Oxford in 2015 to begin her DPhil, this time in the Music Faculty, focusing on collections of English ‘national music’ from the late eighteenth century.

Maureen Mellor is an archaeologist with a special interest in the material culture of interiors and in medieval diet. She has over thirty years’ experience, working with the products of English and European clay industries in field archaeology and in museums. She has recently written an overview on ‘commerce and industry’ for The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Late Medieval Archaeology in Britain and acts as Reader for Historic England. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London and sits on the court of the Worshipful Company of Arts Scholars, linking the art world and collections to scholarship.

Peter Millington is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, where he gained his PhD on ‘The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays’ in 2002. He has been researching mumming and guising plays for overAccess 45 years, with particular interests in historical evidence and textual analysis. He runs the Master Mummers website (www.mastermummers.org), and inaugurated the Folk Play Research website (www.folkplay.info). More recently, he has been researching the customs and traditions of the remote South Atlantic island of Tristan Openda Cunha, and is actively involved in the Tristan da Cunha Association.

Julian Munby works for Oxford Archaeology and has a long-standing interest in the buildings and topography of Oxford, and especially in the work of artists who have recorded its vanished streets and buildings. He has used drawings by Buckler and others to reconstruct lost buildings and has published papers on these in Oxoniensia. He worked with Colin Harrison on the Ashmolean exhibition on John Malchair in 1998, and occasionally collects topographical drawings. Alison Roberts is AssistantArchaeopress Keeper for European and Early Prehistory at the Ashmolean Museum and is also responsible for the manuscript archives held by the Department of Antiquities. She specialises in early Prehistory, lithic technology and the history of archaeology and antiquarian collecting. Her particular research interests include British Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic material culture, the early prehistory of Oxfordshire, and the antiquarian work of Sir John Evans (1823-1908).

xiii © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. Access

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David Clark

Introduction

Percy Manning was nine years old in 1879 when a large house at 103 St Aldate’s was demolished to allow Oxford’s new General Post Office to be built. Since he did not come to Oxford until 1888, it is not clear how Manning obtained a collection of floor tiles from the site and a set of drawings of this hitherto unpublished Oxford undercroft.1 The purpose of this chapter is to assess the significance of Manning’s evidence for the history of this undercroft and to set it in the context of the other known undercrofts of the city and elsewhere. In particular the evidence for its useAccess as a tavern is considered.

Taverns existed in Oxford from before 1313, when university scholars were banned from drinking in them.2 Although ‘ale-taverns’ are mentioned in the literature, by the mid 14th century the usual role of the tavernOpen was to supply wine (and in some cases food) to a better-off clientele than those who frequented alehouses. Julian Munby has studied and published material on most of the medieval inns and taverns in Oxford, building on earlier work by Salter and Pantin.3 Many of the Oxford taverns were located in undercrofts – vaulted semi-subterranean rooms, with an entry directly from the street. As they were situated in the commercial centres of towns, tavern-undercrofts were generally beneath commercial buildings such as inns or shops. Thus the five- bay undercroft below Tackley’s Inn (106-107 High Street) built c. 1320, was recorded as operating as a tavern in 1363, but above it was a row of shops along the street frontage.4 To the rear was the hall and accommodation for the scholars that the parson of Tackley hoped to attract, Archaeopressfor this part of the building was a functioning academic hall, despite being called an inn.5

1 AM Accessions Register 1970.1160-70; AN 1879.41 and Bodl. MS Top. Oxon a.24 ff. 55, 138, 139. 2 Julian Munby et al. ‘Zacharias’s: a 14th-century Oxford New Inn and the Origins of the Medieval Urban Inn’, Oxoniensia 57 (1992): 245-310 (p. 302). 3 Julian Munby, ‘J.C. Buckler, Tackley’s Inn and Three Medieval Houses in Oxford’, Oxoniensia 43 (1978): 123- 169; Munby ‘Zacharias’s’; H.E. Salter, Survey of Oxford, ed. by W.A. Pantin for Oxford Historical Society. 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960); W.A. Pantin, ‘Tackley’s Inn, Oxford’, Oxoniensia 7 (1942): 80-92; W.A. Pantin, ‘The Development of Domestic Architecture in Oxford’ Antiquaries Journal 27 (1947): 120-150; W.A. Pantin, ‘Medieval Inns’, in E.M. Jope (ed), Studies in Building History: Essays in Recognition of the Work of B.H.St.J. O’Neil, pp. 166-191 (London: Odhams, 1961). 4 Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England (RCHME), An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the City of Oxford (London: HMSO, 1939), entry (69), p.164; Pantin, ‘Tackley’s Inn’, p. 81; Munby, ‘J.C. Buckler’; P.A. Faulkner, ‘Medieval Undercrofts and Town Houses’, Archaeological Journal 123 (1966): 120-135. 5 An inn need not be a lodging for travellers: Lincoln’s Inn in London was the town-house of the bishop of Lincoln.

83 © Archaeopress and the authors, 2016. 4: The Lost Undercroft at Duckington’s Inn

84 Percy Manning: The Man Who Collected Oxfordshire

Other surviving medieval tavern-undercrofts in Oxford are Knap Hall (later the Falcon and now the city’s plate room under the Town Hall)6 and the vaulted undercroft of the Mitre (Bicester’s Inn) which dates from the late thirteenth century and also probably functioned as a tavern.7 Munby has also noted the following lost taverns identified in Salter’s Survey: Bartholomew’s (1 High Street), an Oriel college tavern at 143 High Street, two cellars under the Gild Hall (demolished 1751), the Swindlestock tavern at the south-west corner of Carfax, which was operational in 1279, and Ducklington’s Inn – the subject of this paper. Salter also recorded a somewhat obscure tavern – the Oldyeldhall – just around the corner in Queen Street, but this may have been an extension of the Swindlestock.8 Stimulated by research into Manning’s material, further evidence has emerged for cellars under the Crown in Cornmarket, which may also have operated as a tavern.

The evidence for the tavern-undercroft at Ducklington’s Inn was recorded in some detail by a Mr Hobban in 1879 before demolition of the house on the site for the building of the new post office. Apart from some floor tiles which Manning also acquired, and some drawings of stonework details by Herbert Hurst, an Oxford antiquary, Hobban’s drawings, 9 which Manning somehow obtained, seem to be the only survivingAccess record of it. The Site and its History

The history of the Post Office site is reasonably well known:10 documented from ca.1230, John of Ducklington, fishmonger and eleven timesOpen mayor of Oxford between 1287 and 1327 acquired it c. 1300, and since he founded a chantry in 1335 at St Aldate’s church, Salter deduced that its later owners were those named as presenting to the chantry.11 One of these (in 1357) was John Gibbes, a vintner who was later to initiate the building of the New Inn and its row of street-front shops at 26-28 Cornmarket Street.12 The Gibbes family continued to own it until 1427. Although there is a deed of 1404 in the archives of Magdalen College, it does not seem to have become a college property until 1426, when Thomas Gybbes was renting it for twelve shillings.13 By 1478 it was known as the Swan and John Goylyn held it until 1482.14 The Magdalen tenant from 1484 to 1507 was William Capelonde, but thereafter the college ceased to record the tenants by name until 1554 when Thomas Warren was still paying twelve shillingsArchaeopress for the domum cum cellariis .15 By 1519 it was referred to as the ‘Old Swan’, so perhaps it had ceased to be an inn by this date. In 1556 the cottage next door was gifted to the college, who merged the tenancies and charged Mr Lant a rent of £3 for them, although the two elements were separately identified at £2 13s 4d and 6s 8d. As neither of

6 RCHME, An Inventory … Oxford, entry (148), p. 174. 7 RCHME, An Inventory … Oxford, entry (54), p. 162. 8 Salter, Survey of Oxford, ii, p.108 (SW137). 9 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon a.24, ff. 55, 138, 139. One of the drawings has an indistinct pencilled annotation, ‘Plan by Mr Hobban’. The plans for the GPO in the national archives do not include these drawings and the author has been unable to find out who Mr Hobban was. 10 Salter, Survey of Oxford, ii, p. 95 (SW123). 11 For more on John of Ducklington see www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/mayors. Ducklington built the south aisle at St Aldate’s (ca.1320-30) – see RCHME, An Inventory … Oxford, p. 127. 12 Munby et al. ‘Zacharias’s’, p. 261. 13 Salter, Survey of Oxford, ii, p. 95; H.E. Salter (ed.), A Cartulary of the Hospital of St John the Baptist, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Oxford Historical Society, 1914-17), II p. 181 (deed 676 of 1 October 1404) and III p.259. 14 Salter , A Cartulary, III pp.269-275 15 Salter , A Cartulary, III pp.282, 291, 309.

these amounts was the usual 12s for the domum cum cellariis, the undercroft may have been a separate tenure.16 In 1591 and 1615 Thomas Fulzey was the tenant, paying £3 perhaps for a rebuilt single house.17 This may be the double-fronted gabled house shown in David Loggan’s view of 1675 (Figure 4.1). The tenant in 1649 was identified by Wood as Dr Thomas Clayton, of Merton, the ‘King’s Professor of Phisick’.18 The last recorded entry in the Magdalen rental is for a Mr Heron in 1680.

By the nineteenth century there was an elegant three-storey, five-bay Georgian style house on the site (Figure 4.2; Figure 4.3 shows the same scene in 2016). Henry Taunt’s photograph from 1879 shows that it had a central doorway and tall first floor sash windows with iron balconies to the piano nobile. The contemporary Ordnance Survey map (Figure 4.4) shows that it had a west wing at the north – probably for services – and a garden with trees, grass and paths to the rear.

The occupier in 1841 was Charles Parker, a surgeon, with his family and servants.19 Thereafter, medical men continued to Access occupy it, including James Hester (1851) and Edward Hussey (1861) – perhaps having adapted part as a surgery.20 By 1871 it Open had become a teacher-training college for ladies run by Susanna Miller, from Walkingham, Notts, supported by Harriet Bragg from London as Matron. There were 15 trainees living on the premises on census night. Eight years later, Magdalen leased the property to the Postmaster General for a 99-yearArchaeopress term. The house was then demolished and the new Post Office was built. Magdalen sold the property in Figure 4.1: Extract from Loggan’s view of Oxford (1675) 1963 to the Postmaster General 21 showing the northern part of St Aldate’s from the north. for £125,000. The gabled house with the garden behind must be Ducklington’s Inn. 16 Salter , A Cartulary, III p.309 17 Salter , A Cartulary, III pp.316, 320. 18 Salter , A Cartulary, III p.324; Anthony à Wood, Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Oxford Historical Society, 1889-99) I, p.292. Clayton’s father, another Thomas (d.1647), was Master of Pembroke college. 19 1841 census HO107/891/1/35, p. 34. Charles Lewes Parker was the son of Joseph Parker, bookseller (see http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/doctors/surgeons/parker_charles.html). Manning was to become friendly with other members of the Parker family, descendants of John Henry Parker, Joseph’s nephew. 20 1851 census HO107/1728/165, p. 3; 1861 census RG09/893/31, p. 2. Edward Hussey was one of the principal mourners at J. H. Parker’s funeral in 1884 (Jackson’s Oxford Journal 9 February 1884). 21 Magdalen College Archives, Box 181, bundle 4.

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Figure 4.2: St Aldate’s looking south in 1879: Ducklington’s Inn/ Post Office on the right. Open

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Figure 4.3: The same view in 2016.

Figure 4.4 Extract from 1876 1st edition Ordnance Survey map Accessoriginally published at 1:500.

The Post Office building was designed by Edward G. Rivers, of Her Majesty’s Office of Works, and the builders were Symm and Company of Oxford.22 The foundation stone was laid on the morning of 25 June 1879 by ThomasOpen Arnall, the Oxford Post Master.23 Despite local opposition, the undercroft of Ducklington’s Inn was completely destroyed for the new basement, which the architect insisted was necessary in order to contain the clerks’ retiring room and kitchen, as well as the boiler and fuel store for the heating system.24 Hurst records that ‘the beautiful panelling and stone cornices perished’.25

Evidence from the Manning Collections

There are three pages of drawings of the undercroft in the Bodleian in the portfolio MS Top. Oxon. a.24.Archaeopress All are on fragile tracing paper; a floor plan (f. 55, Figure 4.5), two sections (on one sheet, f. 139, Figure 4.6) and an axonometric view (f. 138, Figure 4.7). The first two are pasted into a guard book, but the last is loose and damaged. There seem to have been three further drawings, of the sections through CD, EF and GH on the plan but these do not survive in the collection. In addition, Manning obtained a number of fragments of floor tiles from the Post Office site, and these are now in the Ashmolean. The three drawings and the tiles provide a considerable amount of information about Ducklington’s Inn and its undercroft. Maureen Mellor discusses the tiles in Chapter 5, while here an attempt is made to synthesise the evidence and to suggest how it contributes to the wider picture of undercrofts in Oxford and elsewhere.

22 OHC, City Engineer’s plans Old Series 334, plans dated 7–21 October 1878. 23 Jackson’s Oxford Journal 28 June 1879, p.8e, courtesy of Stephanie Jenkins (www.oxfordhistory.org.uk). 24 The drawings show a slightly different configuration, with two kitchens, a large one for the letter carriers and a smaller one for the clerks, a battery room, coal cellar, store room and a space for a boiler. 25 Herbert Hurst, Oxford Topography: An Essay (Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Oxford Historical Society, 1899), p. 49.

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Figure 4.5: Undercroft floor plan.

The floor plan (FigureArchaeopress 4.5) shows that the undercroft was in two distinct parts, both at right angles to the street and with quadripartite vaulting; a northern section of three bays and a smaller southern part of two bays, the latter truncated by an impinging structure to the south-west. It is not possible to say whether the two parts are contemporary, but the plan gives the impression that they were originally constructed separately and then linked at a later date. It may be significant that the medieval documents refer to the cellars in the plural, and the 12s rent for them goes back to 1424, so they may have been linked by then.

As will be discussed later, the access to a cellar is important in understanding its function. The northern part had a ‘modern’ northern access to the building above, but this contained two stone steps from a medieval newel staircase that had been re- used, presumably from an earlier staircase to the cellar. There also seems to have been a (blocked) entrance to St Aldate’s to the east, with an adjacent narrow window. The southern part seems to have had a central doorway to the street and windows to either

side. There was a two-centred arched doorway between the two vaults – shown in Figure 4.6 – and from the position of the rebate it would seem that this had a door that could be closed from within the southern vault. The southern part also had a long, narrow extension to the west which may have been a ramp – lacking the relevant section it is not possible to be sure.

There was clearly an inserted partition between the bays of the southern part forming a secure space in the eastern bay in which the recorder noted that there were ‘bins for modern wine cellar’.

The axonometric drawing (Figure 4.7) is probably of the northern cellar, looking east, although the features illustrated in the wall facing the viewer do not relate exactly to those drawn on the floor plan. If this drawing is accurate, however, it seems that there was a staircase entry to the undercroft from St Aldate’s. There are also somewhat ambiguous annotations on the eastern ends of the sections (Figure 4.6) to the effect that

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Figure 4.6: Undercroft sections.

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Figure 4.7: ‘Old Crypt’ (axonometric drawing).

the dotted lines thereArchaeopress show a ‘section of arch’ tilting over towards the east. These may relate to the eastern entry or to an earlier vault, referred to in a further annotation.

The undercroft appears to be made of stone, and the vaulting is typical of the early fifteenth century – and is similar to that at Knap Hall. However, the dotted outline of an earlier vault shown on the section (Figure 4.6) has a somewhat flatter profile – as at Tackley’s Inn, and may be fourteenth-century in date. The ribs have deep chamfers and there are broach stops where they spring from the supporting columns. The sections also indicate that sub-surface investigations were carried out and revealed the presence of an earlier floor level and the bases of the columns.

These observations suggest that the axonometric drawing (Figure 4.7) is a reconstruction of what the undercroft probably looked like, and not a representation of what was in fact visible in 1879.

The Floor Tiles

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Figure 4.8: Tile fragments from Post Office site.

Percy Manning also obtained some floor tiles from the site and these form part of the Ashmolean collection.26 Also in the collection are watercolour drawings by Irene Hore

26 The tiles are AM Accessions Register AN1970.1160-1170; AN 1879.41. Some of the tiles have a paper label

and her grandmother, Francis Mary Parker, wife of John Henry Parker, bookseller and antiquary. Mrs Hore had written ‘PM Tiles and Tracings’ on some of these indicating that they were part of the Manning collection (Figure 4.8).27 There are also some other items in the collection that may also have come from the site, including a key and a spur.28

The tiles are the subject of a separate study by Maureen Mellor (see Chapter 5) which considers issues related to their provenance. In summary, there appear to be broadly two main series of tiles, one dating from the late thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries (Figure 4.9), and the second from the late fourteenth/early fifteenth centuries (Figure 4.10). All are relatively local in origin, but normally associated with high-status buildings, ecclesiastical in the case of the former, and with colleges in the latter. There is good preservation of the design detail, and in one case (AN.1970-1170) the glaze is almost pristine.

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Figure 4.9: Tile 1970-1164.

glued to the rear which states, ‘Found in excavating at the New Post Office, St Aldate’s 1879’. Others have a painted inscription, ‘Post Office Oxford 1899’. 27 AM O.69-71: http://tileweb.ashmolean.org/parker-hore/enlargements/o069.html; http://tileweb.ashmolean.org/ parker-hore/enlargements/o070.html; http://tileweb.ashmolean.org/parker-hore/enlargements/o071.html. 28 AM Accessions Register AN1883.196, AN1911.474.

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Open Figure 4.10: Tile 1970-1170.

Lacking any records as to where exactly the tiles were found it is difficult to say more with certainty. Although the paper labels on some of them refer to ‘excavations’, it cannot be assumed that the tiles came from the undercroft, rather than the building above. The tiles may, however, relate to two distinct phases of building in these broad periods – the former perhaps c. 1300, soon after Ducklington acquired the property, the second at some date after the Gibbes family took it on in 1357. The high status of the tiles suggests they were set in a floor in the house above, as the undercrofts were likely to have had utilitarianArchaeopress uses. Taken with the fragments of stonework found on the site, it seems clear that the Georgian façade of Ducklington’s Inn obscured some very high status medieval fabric, but the good state of preservation of some of the tiles suggests they were not subjected to five centuries of continual use, so perhaps they had fallen down into the undercroft at some stage.

Other Material from the Post Office Site

Another antiquary who collected material from the Post Office site was Herbert Hurst. He referred to the house as ‘grand’ and the cellar as ‘perfect’, and recorded some decorated stonework (Figures 4.11-13) which suggest that Ducklington’s Inn was a stone building of remarkable sophistication before it was given its eighteenth-century façade.29 Although the note accompanying the Bodleian drawing suggests that the

29 Hurst, Oxford Topography, p. 49.

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Figure 4.11: ‘Part of window once site of Figure 4.12: ‘Cornice – from the Post Office, Oxford. Post Office.’ H H del. Now in Ashmolean Museum.’

cornice is in the Ashmolean Museum, the staff there have been unable to find a record of it. However, Hurst also wrote that the stone cornices were destroyed but that ‘two stones only remain in a basement under the public library’.30

The naturalistic carvingsArchaeopress of the leaves in the cornice suggest a date in the late thirteenth century – similar work can be seen in the remains of the shrine of St Frideswide of ca.1270 in Christ Church Cathedral. The ‘part of a window’ is unusual, however, having the superficial appearance of ballflower decoration, but more likely to be fifteenth- century in date.31

Finally, another insight into the ‘architectural salvage’ operation at the site in 1879 is a report that seventeenth-century panelling from a room in the house was ‘rescued’ by

30 Hurst, Oxford Topography, p. 49. In 1893 the public library at the then Town Hall moved into temporary accommodation while the present building was under construction. When this opened in 1897 a new library was incorporated to the south. After this moved to the Westgate in 1972, part of the basement became the Museum of Oxford in 1975. The stones were part of an architectural museum, but were thrown away in the 1960s – see Julian Munby, ‘A Rare Collection: Oxford Museums Past and Present’, in Hildegard Wiegel and Michael Vickers (eds), Excalibur: Essays on Antiquity and the History of Collecting in Honour of Arthur MacGregor, pp. 75-86 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2013). 31 Nicola Coldstream, personal communication.

Figure 4.13: ‘Cornice ornament site of post office preserved by Mr Hussey’32

Robert Godfrey-Faussett, Treasurer of Christ Church, who had started to convert the Wolsey almshouses opposite the college into a house for himself.Access333233

Thus one may conjecture that the first cellar was dug by John of Ducklington, perhaps as a cool store for his fish – St Aldate‘s was of course called Fish Street at this time – in the early fourteenth century, and the secondOpen by a Gibbes some years later when it became a tavern and that they were probably linked together. From this point on, it would seem likely that the Swan inn used the cellars for the storage and sale of wine.

Other Oxford Undercrofts

As we have seen, there are three Oxford tavern-undercrofts with surviving vaults. Tackley’s Inn was parallel to High Street with access only from the street – the present access from the office above is relatively recent. It was unheated but had quadripartite vaulting.34 Knap Hall (the Town Hall plate room) was at right angles to St Aldate’s with an original accessArchaeopress from the street – the present internal access was constructed around 1930.35 In 1370 it was also owned by John Gibbes, and thus likely to have been run as a tavern. However, the Royal Commission dated the quadripartite vaulting to the 1430s, suggesting that this was not the first undercroft at this key location, and may have been rebuilt later by Thomas Gibbes.36 The Mitre cellars are now difficult to interpret, but the

32 Perhaps this was Edward Hussey, the surgeon who lived there in 1861. He was aged 44 at that time so only 62 when the house was demolished. 33 A.H. Lawes, unpublished typescript of article on the almshouses. I am grateful to Julian Munby for a copy of this. Hurst, Oxford Topography, p. 49 states that ‘the beautiful panelling…perished’. 34 Salter, Survey of Oxford, i SE24, pp. 183-184; RCHME, An Inventory … Oxford, entry 69, p. 164; Pantin, ‘Tackley’s Inn’; Munby, ‘J.C. Buckler’. 35 Salter, Survey of Oxford, i SE129, pp. 225-226. 36 RCHME, An Inventory, entry 148, p. 174; illustrated in David Sturdy, Historic Oxford (Stroud: Tempus, 2004) p. 75.

late thirteenth-century bay with chamfered ribs springing from round shafts was part of a longer range that ran parallel to Turl Street.37

Of the lost tavern-undercrofts we know of the following:

a. Two cellars under the Gild Hall. Probably dating from the 1280s, these were documented as a tavern in 1323-24.38 They were demolished in 1751 when the new Town Hall was built, but were drawn at the time (Figure 4.14).39 This shows a central column and quadripartite vaulting with chamfered ribs springing from rounded shafts. There is an enigmatic additional drawing of a vaulted undercroft in a building near the Town Hall, probably made during demolition as some ribs are shown as stubs (Figure 4.15).40 Hurst refers to it as a ‘Sectional Interior of Domus Conversorum’, but the drawing is titled ‘West view of the Ruines of the Town Hall, c. 1751’. The confusion may have arisen as the Domus Conversorum is also referred to as the Lower Gild Hall.41 The undercroft had three bays of quadripartite vaulting. Hurst describes it thus: “The groined roof of this cellar was supported by EarlyAccess English shafts, four along each wall, west and east, and clustered shafts of four down the middle. Two ventilating shafts at the rear worked up through the walls, and two aumbries, with stone shelves, formed the only ornament.” Open b. the Swindlestock tavern at the south-west corner of Carfax was documented in 1279. Although the Mermaid inn above was demolished in 1708, the undercroft operated as a wine vault until it closed in the early 20th century.42 Herbert Hurst illustrated the north wall in 1895, and this may yet survive below the modern road surface.43 He recorded it as ‘Mr Sotham’s cellar’; a section drawing (Figure 4.16) on which his published illustration is based shows five bays of steeply pointed arches, probably blocked, and one moulded arch springing from a shaft, suggesting a barrel vault. There was also a two-centred arched doorway, but no indication as to whether it led to a street or internal access.44 Walter Sotham was a wine merchantArchaeopress at 121 St Aldate’s.45 There is in the collection a drawing of a

37 Salter, Survey of Oxford, i NE150, p. 115; RCHME, An Inventory, entry 54, p. 162; Bodl. MS. Top. Oxon. c.312, f. 109 shows ‘cellars 3-4 Turl street’ which Hurst describes as ‘a range of pointed arches like those in the Carfax cellar, if not more primitive’. The ribs of the quadripartite vault spring from capitals at floor level. 38 Salter, Survey of Oxford, i SE130, p. 226. The date is from Thomas Madox, Firma Burgi (London: Printed by William Bowyer, 1726), p. 95 fn col.2. I am grateful to Julian Munby for this reference. Hurst, Oxford Topography, pp. 51-52 records the taverner in 1387-88 as John Brayes alias Merston. 39 Bodl. MS. Top. Oxon c.313, f. 573 ‘A view of arches under the town hall c1751 MS Top Oxon L.14 (in pencil ‘presumably b.14’)’. Probably a copy by Hurst of an original by James Green who recorded other parts of the old town hall in 1751. Green’s version is plate 32a in Sturdy, Historic Oxford, p. 75. 40 Bodl. MS. Top. Oxon c.313, f. 574 ‘Sectional Interior of Domus Conversorum.’ 41 Salter, Survey of Oxford, i SE130, p. 226. 42 Salter, Survey of Oxford, ii SW135, p. 206; Eleanor Chance, Christina Colvin, Janet Cooper, C.J. Day, T.G. Hassall, Mary Jessup and Nesta Selwyn, A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 4, the City of Oxford (London: Victoria County History, 1979), p. 439; Sturdy, Historic Oxford, p. 155; Bodl. MS. Top. Oxon c.312, ff. 33-35. 43 Herbert Hurst, ‘Two Mediaeval Cellars in Oxford’, Archaeologia Oxoniensis 6 (1895): 273-276. 44 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 33. 45 Kelly’s Oxford directory, with Abingdon, Woodstock and neighbourhood, 1895, sv St Aldate’s.

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Figure 4.14: A view of arches under the Town Hall c. 1751. Open

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Figure 4.15: ‘Sectional Interior of Domus Conversorum.’

Figure 4.16: Cellar at Carfax. Mr Sotham’s cellar.

chamfered vault rib apparently Access within a later wall but accompanied by a drawing of a moulding, showing it to have been a structure of some Open quality (Figure 4.17).46

c. There was also a somewhat obscure tavern – Oldyeldehall – documented in 1279 just around the corner from the Swindlestock in Queen Street.47 When Hurst recorded it in the late nineteenth century he noted on aArchaeopress drawing of a tunnel arch (Figure 4.18) that ‘this connects Thomson’s with cellar under Seary’s’.48 Alderman John Seary, tailor, lived at 1 Queen Street, with a shop at nos 2-3.49 Seary’s cellar and Salter’s ‘Oldyeldhall’ tavern are likely to have been western extensions of the Swindlestock. Figure 4.17: Cellar at Carfax.

46 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 33(b). 47 Salter, Survey of Oxford ii (SW137), p. 108 ‘Oldyeldhall’. 48 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 35 ‘Early arch under Sotham’s office’. 49 Kelly’s Oxford directory, 1895, sv Queen Street.

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Figure 4.18: Early arch under Sotham’s office.

Excavations by Oxford Archaeology in 2015-16 found evidence of seventeenth- century bottles from the Mermaid in a stone cess-pit at the site.

d. There was at least one vaulted undercroft under the buildings on the west side of Cornmarket Street near Carfax. Hurst recorded one in 1890 as ‘Early English’ beneath the Old Crown Inn (Figure 4.19).50 He also preserved a plan of the cellars

50 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 39 ‘Old Crown Inn EE springing of cellar vault’.

under ‘Falkner’s shop’ (Figure 4.20).51 This cellar had two bays of quadripartite vaulting and apparently two entrances, one to the street and another internal. Thirdly, there is a drawing showing ‘the passage to the Sun wine vaults exposed 1896’ (Figure 4.21).52 There is a question as to how, if at all, these cellars are related to one another and whether any of them was used as a tavern in the Middle Ages. The properties in question are the present 58-65 Cornmarket. Before the building of Frank East’s new drapery shop (now HSBC bank) no. 65 was a small house with (in 1303-04 and 1329) a cellar called ‘Helle’.53 As this was adjacent to ‘heaven’ in the form of St Martin’s church it may have been used as a tavern or an alehouse. Nos 62-64 – also now the HSBC site – consisted of a number of elements. No. 64 was a shop, with the Sun Inn at no. 63 behind it, but Salter did not find documentary evidence for a medieval tavern there either, although in 1777 it was called the ‘White Horse cellars’. In 1895 it had become the Sun Wine and Spirit Stores and when the corner was redeveloped for East’s drapery shop Access the Sun wine vaults were preserved underneath, with a separate doorway, and it was during these works that Open the drawing of the passage was made. Next door is the present Moss Bros (59-61 Cornmarket). In the 1880s this was Falkner’s shop, and the present cellar is modern, so it seems that the ‘cellar under Falkner’s’ as recorded by Hurst was destroyed.Archaeopress Although Salter does not record the cellar at no. 59 as having been a tavern, the Crown inn, which lay behind at 58- 61 Cornmarket, appears as Spicer’s Inn from 1364 and the vaulting is clearly 54 medieval. But, as we shall Figure 4.19: Vault of Old Crown Inn.

51 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 42. For Falkner’s shop see http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/cornmarket/ west/59_61.html. 52 Bodl. MS Top. Oxon c.312, f. 225. 53 This may have been a common name for a cellar – there was another ‘Helle’ at 41 High Street, Winchester, see Derek Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), I p. 563. 54 Derek Honey, An Encyclopaedia of Oxford Pubs, Inns and Taverns (Usk: Oakwood, 1998), p. 43, but no source is given.

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Figure 4.20: Plan of cellars under Falkner’s. Open

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Figure 4.21: The passage to the Sun wine vaults exposed 1896. see below, the architecture is not always a guide to function, and given the intense mercantile activity in this part of Oxford in the fourteenth century – the tenement known as Drapery Hall that became the Crown was fronted by perhaps as many as seven shops – the original purpose of the cellar may have been for the storage of goods for sale in the shops and selds above.

By 1497 the tenement was owned by a brewer, and was called The Crown by 1625.55 A University College plan of the Crown Inn about 1840 shows a group of buildings around a courtyard with the stables (the present Crown public house) on the south, and ‘part of Crown Inn’ to the east behind 59-61 Cornmarket.56 There is a barrel-vaulted cellar under the present Crown public house, which may be a remnant of the cellar under Falkner’s shop, or even part of the Sun Wine vault, but investigation was not permitted for ‘health and safety reasons’.

It thus seems that while Manning rescued the drawings of the tavern at Ducklington’s Hall, the search for analogies has also turned up evidence for other undercrofts, some of which may also have been taverns.

Cellars and Undercrofts in Context

In order to place the Oxford undercrofts in context we need to consider examples from elsewhere. Most studies of medieval vaulted undercrofts have concentrated on those surviving in individual towns and cities,57 but there have been two wide-ranging syntheses, one by Roland Harris in 1994 and another tenAccess years later in the Martins’ Winchelsea survey.58 In the former, undercrofts are discussed in the context of town houses operating commercially on two levels, and Harris concludes that the main use of the stone-vaulted undercroft was probably the storage and sale of wine; in the latter the authors show that there is no simple way of determiningOpen their original purpose from the architecture alone. Some cellars represent site-specific responses, such as those in Norwich and Chester, where the undercrofts provide platforms for the buildings above, and while some can be identified as former taverns, others were probably for the storage of goods. And functions can change over time, as in Gloucester when a late twelfth-century undercroft at 19-23 Westgate Street – probably originally a merchant’s store-room – became part of the Fleece around 1500 when the abbey of St Peter built an inn for pilgrims on the site.59

Archaeopress 55 Salter, Survey of Oxford, p. 153. 56 Copy in H.E. Salter, Oxford City Properties (Oxford: Clarendon Press for the Oxford Historical Society, 1926), p. 163. 57 For example, Chester, in Andrew Brown (ed.), The Rows of Chester: The Chester Rows Research Project (London: English Heritage, 1999); London, in John Schofield, Medieval London Houses (New Haven; London: Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1994); Norwich, in Robert Smith and Alan Carter, ‘Function and Site: Aspects of Norwich Buildings before 1700’, Vernacular Architecture 14 (1983): 5-18, Rye, in David and Barbara Martin, Rye Rebuilt: Regeneration and Decline within a Sussex Port Town ([Burgess Hill]: Domtom Publishing on behalf of The Romney Marsh Research Trust, 2009); Southampton, in P.A. Faulkner, ‘Part 1 – the Surviving Medieval Buildings’, in Colin Platt (ed.), Excavations in Medieval Southampton 1953-1969, Vol.1:The Excavation Reports ([Leicester]: Leicester University Press 1975); Stamford, in RCHME, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the Town of Stamford (London: HMSO, 1977); Winchelsea, in David and Barbara Martin, New Winchelsea, Sussex: A Medieval Port Town (King’s Lynn: Heritage Marketing and Publications, 2004), and Winchester, in Derek Keene, Survey of Medieval Winchester (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). 58 Roland Harris, ‘The origins and development of English medieval townhouses operating commercially on two storeys’ (doctoral thesis, University of Oxford, 1994), chapter 4 and Martin and Martin, New Winchelsea. 59 David Verey and Alan Brooks, Gloucestershire 2: The Vale and the Forest of Dean. 3rd ed. (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 479.

Nevertheless there are some fairly clear indications of purpose: in Southampton, an undercroft of c. 1320 in Simnel Street has a dog-leg stair entry, a fireplace, windows to the street and very fine corbels carved with heads from which spring the moulded ribs of the vault, while in the same town at 94 High Street is a very long cellar with a flattish ribbed barrel-vault, entered directly from the street and without much decoration.60 It would seem that in this major wine-importing port the former was intended as a tavern, the latter for cellarage. Similarly in New Winchelsea, another important medieval wine port founded at the end of the thirteenth century where 51 undercrofts survive, despite the difficulty of access to some of the cellars David and Barbara Martin make a convincing case for their main use being wine storage.61 One, however, had a fireplace, and may have served as a tavern. But there may not necessarily have been such a clear distinction – taverns would have needed a wine cellar of some sort and a wine store might have had a ‘tasting room’. Moreover, fourteenth-century tavern regulations required customers to have a clear view of the wine being drawn and so the cellar had to be visible from the tavern itself.62

While there are clearly special circumstances relating to the undercrofts in wine ports, we need also to consider the evidence in the inland townsAccess and cities. Documentation is sparse, but two London contracts survive for the building of a tavern in Paternoster Row in 1342.63 The client was William Marberer, taverner and vintner, who employed a mason Philip Church to dig out an undercroft – on the site of five shops – to a depth of 17 feet and build a vaulted cellar with ragstoneOpen walls 3 feet thick and a freestone vault with chalk infill. The front wall was to extend two feet above pavement level and to have four windows. There were two staircases, one to the street and the other inside to the space above the vault. He was also required to build two fireplaces and a privy pit seven feet square in one corner. The second contract was with Richard Felsted, carpenter, for building a jettied house over this cellar. It is clear from the contract that part of this building was also to be used for tavern purposes.

Recent research on the medieval inns of Kent has identified a tavern-undercroft at the Crown in Rochester that has similar characteristics to some of the Oxford examples.64 Rochester, at the Archaeopresscrossing-point of the Medway, was an important town on the medieval pilgrimage route to Canterbury. In 1424 the Wardens and Commonality of Rochester Bridge acquired the Crown as a means of generating income with which to maintain the bridge. The inn is documented from 1316, but underwent a major rebuilding in 1424. In 1430 a tunnel was built linking two earlier undercrofts, probably fourteenth-century

60 For Simnel Street see’Port Cities – Southampton’, http://www.plimsoll.org/resources/SCCLibraries/1810. asp?view=text; for High Street see Colin Platt, Medieval Southampton: The Port and Trading Community, A.D. 1000- 1600 (London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), plate 10. 61 Martin and Martin, New Winchelsea, pp. 195-127. 62 Schofield, Medieval London Houses, p. 79. 63 L.F. Salzman, Building in England down to 1540 : A Documentary History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), pp.232-234. 64 Mathew Cooper, ‘Medieval Inns Revisited’ (master’s thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015). The author is grateful to Matthew Cooper for permission to quote from his dissertation and for the references to the illustrations of the tavern.

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Figure 4.22: Undercrofts at the Crown, Rochester.

in date. The cellars were recorded by Thomas Fisher and published in 1789 under the 65 pseudonym ‘AntiquitatisArchaeopress Conservator’ (Figure 4.22). The left-hand undercroft was 37 ft long and 14 ft wide and built of Kentish ragstone, with freestone shafts from sprang a sexpartite vault, 13ft high but perhaps originally taller as the column bases were obscured. This seems to have had only a street entry. The other undercroft was 17 ft square and 8 ft high with a central octagonal column 18 ins in diameter supporting an octopartite vault. This was accessible from the street at H and also from the building above where fragments of a newel stair survived at F. Part of the cellar was drawn by John Wykeham Archer in 1849.66

The Crown tavern thus seems very similar to the Swindlestock (and possibly Ducklington’s Inn) in being formed by creating a link between two pre-existing cellars.

65 Antiquitatis Conservator, ‘The Crown Inn at Rochester, and its Curious Cellars’,Gentleman’s Magazine: And Historical Review 59 Supplement (December 1789): 1185. 66 British Museum number 1874,0314.468 and on-line at: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=743659&partId=1.

In these non-port examples there are some architectural details that help to define the purpose of the space. We shall consider two main areas, access and decoration. Access is a key diagnostic factor for the medieval undercroft. We must first identify the entrance – either from the street, the building above, or both. Street-only access – as originally at Tackley’s Inn in Oxford – often denotes the intention to rent out the space separately from the building above. This can be seen with storage cellars in Southampton which were often leased for relatively short periods of time, but storage in Oxford was more likely to be associated with the house and shop above, and so street-only entry is thus more likely to be an indicator of tavern use, particularly given the presence of a sizeable clientele of the appropriate demographic. An entry only from the building above is more likely to indicate mercantile storage, and there are no known examples in Oxford. An access from both street and building – as in the case of the London example – could indicate either use.

The type of entry may also be significant. For example, the storage cellars of Winchelsea and Rye usually have a straight flight of stairs descending from the street. While this may not be ideal for carrying goods, some extend a distance into the underground space to give a gentler descent and it is simpler to negotiateAccess than a dog-leg.

Perhaps of more significance is the amount of architectural detail. We have noted above the distinction between a plain barrel vault and a ribbed undercroft in Southampton. In some undercrofts the vault was also supportedOpen by a central column. These were recorded at the old Town Hall in Oxford and the Crown in Rochester; there are other Oxfordshire examples at 109 High Street, Burford and under the Checker at Abingdon Abbey of c. 1260. The Burford undercroft had only a street entry and may have been a tavern, but the Abingdon building was altered in the 1320s and its original purpose is not known. Thus although the tavern-undercrofts considered above all have some form of vaulting, usually quadripartite, and date from the early 14th century, it is not the case that all vaulted undercrofts of this period were taverns – as well as the undercroft of the Abingdon Checker, the Congregation house at St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, from the 1320s was purpose-built for university use. Its form, however, would have been recognizable to thoseArchaeopress gathering there as the sort of private discussion space they would have been used to when socializing. Interesting, too, is why in the 1380s at New College a square room with an octopartite vault springing from a central column was built as an afterthought on to the northern side of the new buttery, wrapping round one of the buttresses of the hall. Was it simply a beer storage cellar, or does the architecture suggest use as a sort of private tavern for the fellows?

Also significant is that most of the Winchelsea vaults die back into the walls – only two have decorative corbels, and there are none in Rye. The Oxford examples are also plain, but at Ducklington’s Inn and in the demolished cellars under the old town hall the vaults sprang from engaged columns, often indicative of an earlier, thirteenth- century date.67 The vaults of the George at 35 High Street, Rochester spring from plain

67 See Schofield, Medieval London Houses, p. 76 for a discussion of this in relation to the dates of London undercrofts.

rounded corbels and in Chester, most vaults are fairly plain, but some sculpted corbels from a demolished undercroft in Watergate Street are now in the Grosvenor Museum.68 Sophisticated sculptural details can be seen in a number of the undercrofts in Stamford, in Lincoln at 10 Bailgate and at Simnel Street, Southampton.69

The most decorative surviving undercroft in Oxfordshire is at 20 High Street, Chipping Norton (Figure 4.23). This has recently been recorded by a local group – thus carrying on a recording activity of which Percy Manning would have been proud.

Although the ogee-headed traceried lights suggest a date in the second half of the fourteenth century, there are anomalous details in the window openings and doorway which cast doubt on the original connections with the street. But we are on stronger ground with the octopartite vault and the carved corbels from which it springs – one has a carving of a lady wearing a head-dress with vertical plaits and supporting side pieces, a fashion datable to 1340-1400. There are also some plain wall niches. This is the only undercroft of any architectural pretension in the town, and almost certainly Access

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Figure 4.23: Undercroft at 20 High Street, Chipping Norton.

68 Brown, The Rows of Chester, pp.34-38, 40-41. 69 For Stamford, see RCHME, An Inventory … Stamford, especially plates 60 and 63. For Lincoln, see Stanley Jones, Kathleen Major, Joan Varley and Christopher Johnson, The Survey of Ancient Houses in Lincoln IV: Houses in the Bail (Lincoln: Lincoln Civic Trust, 1996) pp. 74-76. Although the Lincoln undercroft became part of the Antelope Inn by the sixteenth century, earlier owners seem to have been merchants and none of the surviving documents refers to a tavern.

was associated with wine storage, tasting and/or drinking.

Some taverns were heated – the building contract referred to above provided for two fireplaces. None of the surviving or recorded tavern- undercrofts in Oxford shows any sign of fireplaces, however.

Lighting was minimal, but in any case essential after dark. Wrought iron and stone candleholders have been found in some of them and wall recesses could have held lamps, although these might have been more suited to the safe-keeping of personal items.70 No medieval decoration survives in Access any Oxford tavern-undercroft, but that in an Italian illustration (Figure 4.24) shows a room with a vaulted ceiling supported by columns with Open carved capitals, all the surfaces having some form of decoration. The walls are covered with ceramic tiles featuring a knot pattern found in Andalusian contexts. This adds up to a sophisticated milieu for the Figure 4.24: ‘Gluttony’ from a 14th-century Italian discerning client.71 manuscript.

In the case of Ducklington’s Inn, however, it seems unlikely that the tiles collected by Manning wereArchaeopress in the undercrofts themselves, but they are of great importance as evidence for a rare example of the use of such tiles in a domestic context.72

Tavern Owners

Oxford records show that tavern owners were from the upper echelons of civic society. They were often also innkeepers. John Gibbes (c. 1320- c. 1387) of Ducklington’s Inn was a vintner who also appears in the records of the Swindlestock tavern, Knap Hall and the New Inn at the corner of Cornmarket and Ship Street. He was Mayor of Oxford four

70 For London examples see Gordon Home, Medieval London (London: London : E. Benn, 1927) p. 283; in Oxford a 12th-century cresset lamp was found in the 1890s during excavations for the new town hall – it probably lit one of the undercrofts – and is in the Museum of Oxford collection. See Sturdy, Historic Oxford, p. 70. 71 It should be said that other scenes in the same manuscript also feature the same tile design. 72 See Chapter 5; another example is Canynges House, Bristol, see Jane A. Wight, Mediaeval Floor Tiles (London: J. Baker, 1975), pp.144-146 and plate III.

times between 1377 and 1384, and sat as its member of Parliament in 1376 and 1377.73 In London, the 1337 inventory of the goods of a tavern-keeper (who had murdered his wife) amounted to a significant figure: recorded in it were a large quantity (six casks) of wine, a carpet, cushions, and other furnishings including linen table-cloths. In the kitchen were nine brass cooking pots, a spit and a frying pan. He also had a cocoa-nut cup mounted with silver, six spoons and a mazer.74

Tavern Life

In his Surveys and Tokens, Salter published Percy Manning’s account of early sports and pastimes, which included a section on tavern life.75 This refers to the various games played in the seventeenth century but there is no reference to medieval taverns.76 The 14-century tavern scene in Figure 4.24 is from an Italian series illustrating the seven deadly sins and hence involving what we would today consider ‘binge-drinking’. The two central customers are drinking directly from bottles, the one on the right drinking simultaneously from a beaker, while the other is being passed a beaker by the tapster. Another customer confines himself to a single beaker, while a fourth at the far right is very much the worse for wear. Despite the superior social statusAccess of the tavern clientele, one suspects that this sort of behaviour was not untypical of life in a medieval Oxford tavern. Conclusion Open

It was most fortunate that Mr Hobban recorded the undercroft at Ducklington’s Inn before its demolition and that someone also rescued some of the floor tiles from the site. However, it was the recognition by Percy Manning that these were potentially important pieces of evidence for Oxford’s past that led him to acquire the tiles and copies of the drawings and bequeath them to the University, where they can be seen in the collections of the Ashmolean Museum and the Bodleian Library. The documents and tiles collected by Percy Manning, together with the contemporary work of other antiquaries such as Herbert Hurst and Irene Hore, have shed some light on one of Oxford’s ‘lost’ tavern-undercrofts,Archaeopress and the search for collateral material has allowed a wider survey of this building type to be constructed and compared with undercrofts elsewhere.

Although there are difficulties in interpreting the surviving evidence, it is clear that the undercroft in St Aldate’s was in two parts, one perhaps built by John of Ducklington in the early fourteenth century, possibly for the cool storage of fish; the other perhaps

73 ‘Oxford History: Mayors & Lord Mayors’, http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/mayors/. 74 Home, Medieval London, pp.281-284. The wine was valued at 1 mark (13s 4d). Rhenish wine was 8d a gallon, Bordeaux 4d, so the quantity in the cellar was 20-40 gallons. 75 Percy Manning, ‘Sport and pastime in Stuart Oxford,’ in Surveys and Tokens, edited by H.E. Salter (Oxford Historical Society, 75 (1923)), pp. 83-125. 76 Indeed the section on drinking, which Manning included in his first (handwritten) draft (Bodl. MS Top. Oxon d.204) and which he was advised to remove by C.H. Firth, contained only references to the considerable amount of problem drinking in the early seventeenth century and the resulting restrictions imposed by Chancellor Laud on university staff and students.

somewhat later as a tavern related to Gibbes’s inn on the site. The need to join them together was a convenience in linking the storage cellar with the tavern, and also a requirement of the tavern regulations that the drinkers should be able to see the wine being drawn. The tiles Percy Manning obtained from Ducklington’s Inn are also of major significance, since taken with the decorative stonework from the site they are a rare example of the use of such tiles in a high-status domestic context.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Maureen Mellor for her work on the tiles, to Julian Munby for helpful advice on the Oxford taverns in general, to Matthew Cooper for permission to quote from his M.St. dissertation, to Robin Darwall-Smith for access to the Magdalen College papers, to Nicola Coldstream for architectural advice and to Stephanie Jenkins for her highly informative Oxford History website http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/.

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