Our visit to the International Medieval Congress at Leeds was both fun and immensely useful. Maddy Gray gave a paper on the evidence of Welsh poetry for tombs and other aspects of the material culture of death and burial. This was based on the research which David Hale outlined at the Brecon study day a couple of years ago, and David has an article with more detail in a forthcoming Church Monuments. His Ph D thesis is now online and can be downloaded from https://pure.southwales.ac.uk/en/studentthesis/death-and-commemoration-in-late-medieval-wales(7d14b42e-a69b-4968-9398-aad3b96748e0).html.
At the Societies’ Fair, we met friends old and new (including people we had known online for years but never met), made some valuable contacts and signed up several new members.
We were particularly interested in what we were told by Church Explorers, who are (to quote from their web site) ‘a network of people who are working to promote the architectural and archaeological importance of church buildings in Yorkshire’. They have recently been experimenting with photogrammetry surveying of carvings in some Yorkshire churches including a 3-D reconstruction of the effigy of an unknown knight in Leeds Minster. You can see what they have been up to here https://sketchfab.com/YATFieldwork and there is a more detailed discussion of techniques here
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c62d8bb809d8e27588adcc0/t/5d08b8bc77d42b00011ae1db/1560852691417/Insight-report-Corbels-at-DIG.pdf
and here
https://www.yorkarchaeology.co.uk/resilience-year-2/2019/6/18/the-corbels-at-dig
They plan to do more in future including the female effigy from St Helen, Bilton in Ainsty. They brought with them a little model of the Leeds effigy which they had made using a 3-D printer. All very exciting!
They have a number of forthcoming events listed on their web site at https://www.churchexplorers.co.uk/:
21.7.19 at Holy Redeemer, York
31.7.2019 at Selby Abbey
3.8.2019 at Barley Hall, York
12.9.2019 a DIG (St Saviour’s Church), York
We also met Challe Hudson, whose work on the costume of female effigies 1450-1558 is going to be immensely useful with a lot of projects.
And there were many more. Too many to mention.
So: welcome to all our new members; welcome to those who took leaflets and are still thinking about it; welcome to all the new visitors to the web site; and we hope to see you all again soon.
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