Posted on 08/18/2020 6:37:36 PM PDT by marshmallow
Among the finds are manuscripts possibly used to perform illegal Catholic masses, silk fragments and handwritten music
While most of England was on lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic, archaeologist Matt Champion was working solo at Oxburgh Hall, a moated Tudor mansion in Norfolk.
As part of the site’s £6 million (roughly $7.8 million USD) roof restoration project, workers had lifted the floorboards in the estate’s attic for the first time in centuries. Probing the recesses beneath the boards with gloved fingertips, Champion expected to find dirt, coins, bits of newspapers and detritus that had fallen through the cracks. Instead, he discovered a veritable treasure trove of more than 2,000 items dating as far back as the 15th century.
The cache is one of the most remarkable “underfloor” archaeological finds ever made at a National Trust property, the British heritage organization says in a statement. Together, the objects offer a rich social history of the manor’s former residents.
Among the discoveries are the nests of two long-gone rats that built their homes out of scraps of Tudor and Georgian silks, wools, leather, velvet, satin and embroidered fabrics, reports Mark Bridge for the Times.
The critters also repurposed roughly 450-year-old fragments of handwritten music and parts of a book. A builder recently found the rest of the volume—a relatively intact 1568 copy of Catholic martyr John Fisher’s The Kynge’s Psalmes—in a hole in the attic.
Another worker discovered a rare item in the rubble underneath one of the attic’s eaves. Per the statement, the team collaborated with James Freeman, a medieval manuscripts specialist at Cambridge University Library, to identify the 600-year-old parchment fragment, still glimmering with gold leaf and bright blue ink, as part of the Latin Vulgate’s Psalm 39.
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
For later
Rattatouie in the attic...
Man, to be a fly on the wall during those finds ;-)
I wonder what the overdue book fines would be for the copy of the Kyng’s Psalmes?
Ping
L
Edifying article.
Thanks for posting.
YEP!!!!
Could you imagine being there when they found this!!
Beyond cool.
My idea of heaven is the ability to be the fly on the wall for everything.
(Want to see Jesus grow up, want to see Lincoln and Washington too)
Thanks Lurker.
“I wonder what the overdue book fines would be for the copy of the Kyng’s Psalmes?”
A kyng’s ransom.
Where’s the priest hole?
Fascinating and extraordinarily researched, Eamon Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars delves into the Catholic persecution at that time. Highly recommended
Did they find a tudor sedan chair?
>>manuscripts possibly used to perform illegal Catholic masses
everything old is new again
What I don't get is, most of these houses have at least three doors.
Tudor mansion, in and out
Two of them were for the Tudor version of Chrystyne Blasey Forde.
Consider Thailand, an entire country and culture dedicated to men's neckware.
"I did this thing on the Ottoman Empire..."
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