16 objects rediscovered during the 5th LAARC Volunteer Inclusion Project were narrowed down to 4 during the first rounds of voting and we can now reveal he winner is…

The Roman Finger Ring Key!

This key was rediscovered by volunteer Nuri and would have probably opened a casket or small box. Originally it was found by archaeologists in 1975 during excavations at St Magnus, New Fresh Wharf, (SM75)

And that’s that for VIP6. We started VIP 2 years ago and have seen over 150 volunteers participate in the programme. During September we shall be revealing details about our 7th VIP project (Oct-Dec) and how YOU can get involved.

But for now, we’re taking a little break. Toodle Pip

So, as I love nothing more than a good story and live next to a place simply spilling over with them, it seemed like the sensible thing for us to put our collective heads together and bring some of the Museum’s, and hence London’s people and objects to you on a regular basis.

There can be few greater statements of the Museum’s commitment and respect for London than the 17,000 skeletons of Londoners from pre-history to 1850 carefully interred in its brick rotunda, forming the Western edge of London Wall, the ancient boundary of the City.  The innovative new Modern Galleries reflect this commitment to bring the people of London’s past – the artisans, street performers, tourists, the pleasure garden and theatre-goers into the experience of today’s museum visitor.  As blogger for the Museum (the first ‘in residence’ for any museum in the world), it will be my aim to bring out the tales within the Museum and its huge collections.  I hope to spark debate on objects and their purpose, people, buildings and on how London has, and continues to grow and change.  Blogging is interactive and organic: involvement and comment is encouraged.  It is hoped the blog will create another way for visitors to enhance their enjoyment of the Museum of London and promote an awareness of its holdings and work outside the London Wall site.

One little known aspect of the Museum’s work is the Archaeology Department’s involvement on every earthworks within the City of London.  The quiet, industrious MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) is responsible for discovering and preserving the history hidden beneath the high-rises.  The blog will be bringing more of this fascinating and extensive work to light, which recently involved uncovering the theatre in Shoreditch where Romeo and Juliet was first performed, and whose timbers when dismantled were rowed across an icy Thames to build the original Globe.

And blogging for the Museum doesn’t mean I’ll just be sitting behind a screen: I’ll be donning everything from white coats to waders, looking at bones and boxes of treasure, and also taking photos and making podcasts.  The blog will be a chance to see behind the walls of this very special, very lively museum.  I hope you’ll join me – I think it’s going to be amazing.

I can finally show you my all time favourite photograph of Gertie Millar. As you can see, she is sitting on what is probably a flower stand in a fancy, striped playsuit acessorised by striped socks, lovely white shoes and a Struwwelpeter wig. The actress is surrounded by soft toys (what kind of animal is hanging next to her head?) as the photo alludes to Toy Town, a musical number from the revue Bric-à-Brac, which premiered at the Palace Theatre (the one where Priscilla Queen of the Desert has replaced Les Misérables) on 18 September 1915, roughly a year after the outbreak of World War I.

Revues were a new musical genre, which became increasingly popular just before the war. As we have seen, the plots of musical comedies usually demanded complete suspension of disbelief from their audience, but there was at least some sort of narrative thread linking the musical numbers. Bric-à-Brac was different. According to Ken Reeves, a connoisseur of musical theatre, who very kindly dropped off a copy of his book Gertie Millar and the Edwardesian Legacy at the museum last week, the revue

‘was in reality the chief and penultimate item in a bill of entertainment of six or seven items which was presented under the Bric-à-Brac title. [...] The entire programme of revue and non-revue items began with the instrumental playing of a march and it typically continued with an act by a comedienne who was followed variously by acrobats, a singer, a cartoonist or some other variety artiste or artistes, and these performers were succeeded by the Palace orchestra’s playing a selection of musical pieces prior to the playing of Bric-à-Brac. [...] The Palace’s programme of entertainment was brought to an end by the showing of a moving picture programme which was called The Events of an Hour.’

The actual revue consisted of seven scenes, with an interval between scenes three and four. Gertie Millar, as Polly Myrtle, sang Chalk Farm to Camberwell Green in scene one, appeared under various guises in scenes three and four, rendered Neville was a Devil (what a brilliant title!) in scene six and ended the revue with the duet I’m Simply Crazy over You.

The highlight of the evening was a number in scene seven, in which Gertie donned her Jumping Jack outfit to sing Toy Town, accompanied by 16 similarly clad chorus girls, all sporting ‘flam-coloured tousled wigs’ (The Stage). The theatre historian W. J. MacQueen Pope (1888-1960) was enraptured by the Palace Girls calling them ‘the finest dancing troupe of their kind the stage ever saw’ (Ghost and Greasepaint, 1951).

The Jumping Jack number reminded J.T. Grein of the Sunday Times of the ‘pit-a-pat of nursery days, long behind us, to which the mind turns back so willingly.’ According to the Tatler (29 September 1915) Toy Town was ‘the most beautiful scene of all … so exquisite as to make a success of the revue without anything else. When the curtain rises you hear a sigh of rapture go all around the hose.’

No doubt this sigh was also provoked by the set, not a nursery, as you might expect, but an Italian Garden, described by Grein as ‘amethyst merging into chalcedony, behind black cypresses that grew beside the balustrade of a marble walk’. This seemingly incongruous design was the brainchild of no other than the British Egyptologist Arthur Weigall (1888-1934), who had returned from Egypt a few years earlier. In 1905, the 25-year old Weigall had replaced Howard Carter as Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt at Luxor and, as journalist, he would later cover the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun. In between, this Renaissance man successfully designed for the stage and moving pictures and penned film reviews for the Daily Mail.

You have to thank The Gramophone Company that it is still possible to hear Gertie singing Toy Town. According to an advertisement published in The Times on 15 November 1915:

‘The other day half-a-dozen motor cars pulled into the little village of Hayes Middlesex. The passengers in these cars were some of the most highly paid revue artistes of the world, consisting of the principals from the Palace Theatre who had come to “His Master’s Voice” Laboratories and Recording Rooms to re-enact the record Revue “Bric-a-Brac” [sic, contemporary accounts usually omit the accent].’

The wonderful facilities in this ‘laboratory’ meant that prospective buyers would ‘not only hear the voice of Miss Gertie Millar singing her hits, but you seem to catch the exclusive spirit of originality and individuality which characterizes all of Miss Millar’s work.’

This was good news for people outside London as ‘no matter how remote your home may be from the metropolis of the world, you can produce within the confines of your home, the record Revue of this year, “Bric-a-Brac”, in all its original purity and charm.’

Never mind the record, what about the dog, I hear you asking. The website of the National Portrait Gallery features a considerable number of photographs taken by Rita Martin. One of them is enticingly listed as ‘Gertie Millar as Jumping Jack with her dog “Chum” in “On The Tiles” a sketch from “Bric-à-Brac”‘. There is no accompanying image, but the description seems to refer to a photo from the sequence shown here.

Judging from Gertie and Chum’s interaction and the fact the our album contains the above photo of Gertie, this time in fashionable dress, I would not be surprised if the dog was hers, rather than a living studio prop. Gertie’s love of dogs was well known. James Jupp, stage door-keeper at the Gaiety for more than 30 years, recalled:

‘Miss Gertie Millar is an example of what talent and personality will do on the stage. There was a time when police had to marshal the crowds that gathered round the theatre to catch even a fleeting glimpse of her, as with her Pekingese, she darted from stage-door to motor-car’ (The Gaiety Stage Door, 1923, p. 55).

In 1934, no other than P.G. Wodehouse, then Gertie’s neighbor in Le Touquet in France, mentioned in a letter that he had been asked to ‘exercise her spotted carriage dog occasionally’.

I will give Gertie, her Pekingese, Mastiff and Dalmatian a well-deserved break now. I am hoping to get an appointment at the National Portrait Gallery and will report on Rita Martin once I’ve been there. For now, I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I do.

* Information about Weigall and his involvement in Bric-à-Brac is from Julia Hankey’s book A Passion for Egypt: Arthur Weigall, Tutankhamun and the ‘Curse of the Pharaos (Tauris 2007).

This week we wrapped things up as we completed the 6th project within our Volunteer Inclusion Programme at the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive.

The final week of all our projects is really a final half week as it was only the mornings spent working through the collections at LAARC. Both Monday & Friday’s teams completed their experience by working with Glynn on the final boxes of animal bone from the 1974 site at the Triangle of Billingsgate Buildings (TR74). Lots of boxes of lovely animal bone have now been placed into good sturdy new bags with legible labels and most importantly, organised into numerical order, using their context numbers (numbers relating to the layer in the ground in which the objects were found). With this site now complete we moved on to completing another site, 8 Union Street (8US74) and even worked through boxes of a third site, Baynard House, (UT74).

So, after an early lunch, we boarded the bus and then the DLR and journeyed to Museum of London Docklands! Our afternoon was spent enjoying some fantastic tours led by the excellent folks at our Canary Wharf site.

First of all we started with a tour of another of the museum’s archives. Or indeed, two, as we got to have a peak behind the scenes at the Port of London Authority & the Sainsbury Archive stores. Some great objects and historical documents were brought out for our perusal, whilst archivists Claire, Clare & Jayne explained how their archives operate.

Following this is was down to the recently opened exhibition about Girl Guides. Curator Jim Gledhill led us round the space, highlighting aspects of the exhibition, showing us special objects selected for the cases and providing us with information about the history of Girl Guides (who are celebrating their centenary).

We ended our day with a brilliant tour around Sailortown – the reconstructed streets of the 19th Century. Visitor hosts, Dave & Sue took us round the ins and outs of the dark narrowed streets and buildings as we were absorbed by the sights, sounds & smells(!) of 1850’s Wapping.

Wednesday’s Capital A team were also down at Docklands, only they had the comfort of the Museum’s Wilberforce Theatre to complete their experience. Having spent the past 9 weeks building up a portfolio of photos and video and using these to create short films, we finally got the chance to relax and watch the final results. 6 really good films were made, all with real character. A diverse, fun range of shorts, they all told a story, each with a different experience of volunteering at LAARC.

And that’s it for another project. In fact, that could well be the last project based at LAARC… In the meantime if you would like to have a say in deciding the best object from VIP6 you can still vote until next Wed at noon.

Thanks To all VIP6 Volunteers!

The seventh and final VIP project commences in October. More will be revealed during September, but all we can say at the moment is that this project is going to be bigger, bolder and be as inclusive as can be. And EVERYONE, including YOU can get involved. wAtch thIs spAce…

The penultimate week of this project saw volunteers tackle a tricky site – Merton Priory, dug over several years and consequently archived under several codes: MPY76, MPY77, MPY83, MPY86 & MPY88. As can be expected with monastic sites, many medieval floor tiles were found during the excavations. Whilst most of the material had been packed to the archive standards, many objects due to one thing or another were kept in different parts of the building. The VIP6 project is the first time we’ve had the chance to amalgamate all the tiles from all the years, finally bringing the archive together.

Nearly 1000 floor tiles have been audited this week! Phew!

In addition, most of the glass was also completed by volunteers which means the vast majority of the non metals from the site have now been sorted. We have almost reached our target for this project and have certainly reduced the number of boxes these archives are occupying. Over the next month, we’ll be finishing off the reboxing and will find out just how many.

Over on General finds, more success. Monday’s volunteers worked through the remainder of the animal bone from 1974’s excavation at the Triangle of Billingsgate Buildings (TR74) and most of that site has now been sorted out. On Friday, Glynn too was busy reboxing some of the previous sites we’ve repacked and things are starting to look ship shape as boxes are relocated onto their shelves.

Wednesday’s teams were back at the Museum of London for their second week in the Clore Learning Centre with E-Learning Officer Paul Clifford. Using software such as photostory for windows and windows movie maker, the Capital A volunteers completed their films about their LAARC VIP6 experience. Some truely excellent stuff was produced. This is even more impressive when you take into consideration that most of the volunteers had rarely used computers in the past, let alone made films.

In the afternoon it was the Young Archaeologist Families’ turn to make their films and comics. Again some of the best work ever seen in the e-learning studio was produced, with our young volunteers using photos, video, voice recordings and music. One volunteer pushed the technology to its limits, creating a comic with one package, animating the comic with another and then using the animated comic as part of her final movie. Absolutely brilliant.

To top the week off, we had a very special workshop as we welcomed our lovely LAARC colleagues based at the Museum – oesteologists, Jelena & Becky. With a human skeleton laid out to examine, volunteers were shown how the body’s bones articulate before viewing signs of pathology which are evident in changes in the bone. A fascinating workshop.

Finally a quick reminder that the object of VIP6 competition has now reached its Grand Final stage and you can vote for your favourite object by visiting the blog below. Voting closes on Wed 25th August at noon.

OBJECT OF VIP6! THE GRAND FINAL!

Monday’s winner was this super Saxon “Bird” Pin. Audited by Friday volunteer Claire during Week 8’s session, this is a rare example of a late Saxon (C11^th – C12^th) ivory ‘hipped’ pin’. It was found during excavations at Merton Priory. (MPY88) The pin could be interpreted as representing a bird with feathered wings, eye and the shaft as an elongated beak. The presence of this late pin (as well as waste from antler and ivory working) on the site indicates affluence and perhaps a settlement nearby, maybe of a monastic nature.

The second winner was repacked during week 5 and was a joint effort by Monday’s volunteers Emma & Lucy. Found in 1974 at “The Triangle” (TR74), this is a very rare example of a woven Roman basket. A leather thong would have connected with the leather tag at the top to close the basket. Preserved by the waterlogged conditions of the waterfront, the site was originally a Roman quay. The material deposited in the quay may have come from a warehouse clearance and perhaps the basket was used by a Roman constructing the quay in the first half of the 2^nd Century AD and then lost or disposed of.

Wednesday’s winner was repacked by Monday volunteer Deborah during Week 3. This  fine medieval sheath from Billingsgate excavations (BWB83) dates to around the mid 14th Century. The engraved/embossed decoration features a number of anonymous animals. Due to the zoomorphic decoration the blades are usually interpreted as ‘hunting’ knives, although knives were commonplace and multipurpose tools in the medieval period.

The final winner of the week was audited by Friday volunteer Nuri during Week 4. This metallic object comes from another large excavation near the archaeological waterfront of the Thames – St Magnus, New Fresh Wharf (SM75). This very well preserved Roman finger ring had a very practical purpose for the security minded Roman. It would probably have opened a small box or casket containing valuables such as jewellery. To date we still haven’t discovered a matching key and lock…

Tough choices but there can only be one winner. And it’s up to you to decide. This time however, you’ve got plenty of time to make a decision as the competition is open for a over a week and voting closes on Wed 25th August at noon.

To cast your vote and have your say click here:

VOTE

Thanks to everyone who has voted over the past week and has supported our VIP6 project. We hope you’ve enjoyed it.

If you have any thoughts you’d like to share about the competition or our project please leave a comment below.

]]> http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/object-of-vip6-grand-final/feed/ 0 http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/object-of-vip6-grand-final/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MuseumOfLondon/~3/Lj-vhETdH5w/ http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/object-of-laarc-vip6-round-4/#comments Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:06:50 +0000 Adam Corsini http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/?p=2358 Welcome back blog readers for the fourth & final round of the competition before tomorrow’s Grand Final.

Yesterday’s winner was…

THE LEATHER SHEATH!

Congratulations to Deborah whose object joins Monday’s winner Claire’s Saxon Bird Pin and Tuesday’s winners Emma & Lucy’s Roman Basket

Your final four await:

Candidate #1 is a handsome little vessel all the way from Cologne (though excavated in 1975 at Newgate Street (GPO75)). Dating from the mid 16th Century, it bears a bearded face which is commonly interpreted  as mocking Cardinal Bellarmine, an unpopular figure of the time. The jug is decorated with an inscription, which loosely translates as: ‘What God wants, he gets’, as well as six portrait heads. It was packed during Week 2 by Monday volunteer Michael

Your second choice was packed by Friday volunteer Miriam during Week 6. Originally found at the site of the former City of London Boys School (BOY86), this is part of a far larger medieval, woven textile (probably wool). The preservation of this rare find is once again due to the archaeological conditions of the Thames waterfront – specifically a reclamation dump supporting the riverside wall. The weave type is described as ‘tabby’ and the original colour of the wool was probably much different, maybe even coloured!

Third up is one for the leather enthusiasts out there. Another from Week 6, Friday volunteer James audited this fragile find which is a fine example of a post-medieval (1485-1714) shoe heel. The layers of leather are fixed together by metal pins from the base. On top can be seen holes for the heel’s attachment to the shoe’s sole, providing detailed evidence of how these shoes were constructed. It was excavated in 1986 at Carter Lane (CAT86)

Your final choice is a spectacular Roman artefact. Audited by Friday volunteer Nuri during Week 4, this metallic object comes from another large excavation near the archaeological waterfront of the Thames – St Magnus, New Fresh Wharf (SM75). This very well preserved Roman finger ring had a very practical purpose for the security minded Roman. It would probably have opened a small box or casket containing valuables such as jewellery. To date we still haven’t discovered a matching key and lock…

Which one do you want to see join the others in tomorrow’s Grand Final?

To vote click here: VOTE

Thanks to everyone who has voted over the past four days. We’ve hoped you’ve enjoyed playing and viewing just a selection of the fine artefacts within LAARC’s walls.

For more info about excavations the objects come from or what went on during the VIP week’s that they were rediscovered click on any of the highlighted text above.

See you for the Grand Final

The second object going into Friday’s Grand Final is…

THE ROMAN BASKET!

Well done to Lucy & Emma who join Monday’s winner Claire’s object, the Saxon Bird Pin

Ready for Round 3…

The first contestant today was repacked by Monday volunteer Deborah during Week 3. This  fine medieval sheath from Billingsgate excavations (BWB83) dates to around the mid 14th Century. The engraved/embossed decoration features a number of anonymous animals. Due to the zoomorphic decoration the blades are usually interpreted as ‘hunting’ knives, although knives were commonplace and multipurpose tools in the medieval period.

Second up was only repacked by Monday volunteer Maria last week during Session 8. Originally excavated at Sir John Cass School (CASS72), this is a somewhat deceptive 19th Century bottle. Its ‘marbled’ colouration is actually a result of the glass degrading and would originally have been coloured brown. It reads: ‘By The Kings Patent True Cephalick Snuff’ and as such would have been used to treat aliments of the head. The snuff may not have been tobacco based, but rather a reference to how the medicine was administered.

Your third choice was excavated at Newgate Street in 1975 (GPO75) but rediscovered during VIP6 by Monday volunteer Miranda during Week 4. This Roman copper lamp would have been more costly than the more common ceramic lamps (which are sometimes dusted with mica in an effort to imitate their metallic counterparts). The lamp has lost part of its crescent shaped handle but has survived fairly well considering! It would originally have been suspended by a chain from the wall or ceiling, attached to the side and back ringlets, but would emit very little light.

Today’s final candidate was audited during week 7 by Friday volunteer Simona. Excavated in 1976 at Milk Street (MLK76), this oyster shell of the late 12th Century has been reused as a paint palette. Oysters were a popular delicacy in the medieval period, and there is a long tradition of them being reused as palettes. The traces of red are probably vermillion – an expensive product for its time which could have been used in wall paintings of churches or for the illumination of manuscripts.

Four great objects but which is your favourite? To vote click here: VOTE (voting has now closed but you can still vote in round 4)

Voting closes at noon tomorrow (Thurs 12th Aug).

Join us then to find out the result of today’s competition and choose your final winner before Friday’s Grand Final.

For more info about excavations, what we did each week or for larger photos, click on any highlighted word in the text or image.

Wednesday August 11th
Today was bright and sunny, unlike last week’s overcast skies and heavy rain. A good day for visiting the bees. There was a lot of activity at the front of the hive, more than previous weeks, very promising! The bees had been busy, some previously empty frames now contain honey. Six frames now contain brood, pupae, larvae and eggs. So the queen is still laying, although it is late in the season. We set up the refillable feeder. This is a box with a compartment that bees can climb into from the hive. The sugar solution in this compartment is refilled from a reservoir, which can easily be topped up. The gap between the two is too small to allow bees (lured by the sugar) to slip through and drown. Brian also placed some twigs in the feeder compartment for the bees to stand on. Although this compartment contains  only a small volume, the plastic sides do not allow a bee’s feet to grip easily and sometimes they fall in and drown. A little bit of advice, if you want to avoid being stung near a beehive, don’t wear velvet. Velvet tangles their little feet and they hate it. It makes them very angry! The new feeder only holds about two and a half litres of sugar solution. I will be checking on the bees on Friday, to see if they need a top up. Homework for this week is to make more bee food.

I plan to keep you up to date with what is going on in the beehive for the remainder of the summer and into the winter when things quieten down. To make this easier I have been added as an author for the museum’s blog pages. Look up for updates from me personally from next week.

Places and people often leave behind traces of themselves in the memory of a landscape.  In the countryside archaeological remains can often survive as ‘lumps and bumps’ on the ground or as marks in fields of growing crops, both, given the correct conditions and time of year, are often clearly visible from the air.  An urban landscape does not lend itself to such aerial surveys, buildings and roads smother any archaeology often by many metres.  However, echoes do survive.

The Theatre was London’s first purpose built playhouse and lasted for 21 years and the year after it opened a second, The Curtain, was built in Shoreditch some 200m to the south; its exact location is not yet known archaeologically, but it lasted until at least 1627 when it disappeared from the records.  It has, however, left a mark on London’s streetscape.

Running from Worship Street in the south, crossing Great Eastern Street to Old Street in the north is Curtain Road, so named for the eponymous theatre that once stood nearby; a blue plaque marks an approximate location just off Curtain Road on Hewitt Street.

The Curtain was used by Shakespeare’s company, The Lord Chamberlains Men, after the closure of The Theatre, until their new venue, The Globe, was completed in 1599.

Also on the west side of Curtain Road, a stone’s throw from our site, lies another shade from Shoreditch’s past – a 20th century building named in remembrance of the family intrinsically linked with the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s day, Burbage House.  James Burbage built The Theatre and his son, Richard, was one of the most famous actors of his day playing the lead in many of Shakespeare and other writers’ plays.

To the observant, any walk or bus ride through London is replete with such echoes in the landscape; for even in a city that is constantly consuming and rebuilding itself yards and passages, streets and roads are named in memento mori for long defunct pubs and inns, markets, factories, docks, wharfs and theatres.

“The world must be peopled…” (Much Ado About Nothing, II, iii, 262)

We have previously mentioned in passing various people from the time of The Theatre, so some facts from the lives of these dramatis personae will be interspersed throughout this and the following post to repopulate the past.

Dramatis personae:  James Burbage: 1531-1597

• A joiner skilled in carpentry, possibly from Stratford
• Succumbed to the lure of the stage and became an actor with the Earl of Leicester’s Men then entrepreneur and impresario of the Elizabethan London theatre scene, being the first Englishman to obtain a theatrical licence in 1574
• On land leased from Giles Allen he built The Theatrein 1576, borrowing £666 13s 4d from his brother-in-law John Brayne (Burbage was married to Ellen, John’s sister) to do so.  An earlier Brayne theatrical enterprise at the Red Lion Inn, Mile End had failed, but the experience was not wasted.  This experience combined with Burbage’s building and business skills to make the new joint venture, The Theatre, was a success
• Burbage’s The Earl of Leicester’s Men were probably the first troupe associated with The Theatre
• Burbage also established an indoor playhouse at Blackfriars
• He was buried in St Leonard’s church, Shoreditch, the “actor’s” church

Medieval mayhem…

Our recent hard work has been paying handsome dividends; we have started to find evidence for much more intensive medieval activity than the historical records had suggested.  Up until now the evidence we had for the medieval Priory buildings had conformed to the, albeit conjectural, map of the priory featured in our previous post showing the brew and bake house range running down the western edge of the Priory Great Court but with no buildings behind, to the west.

Dave' sketch plan of hte new medieval features

We have now uncovered a series of walls, floors, ovens and a possible water-course in this area to the west of the brew house and bake house range.  Dave’s interpretive sketch plan shows The Theatreremains (real and conjectural in pink), the brew house (to the east and highlighted in yellow) with the new walls, floors and ovens arranged below (to the west); some have been found in our trenches underneath The Theatreitself, so even when Burbage came to build his playhouse on Allen’s open ground behind the brew house it is clear that this was not always the case and that it had previously been very built up.

The new discoveries are adding layers of detail and complexity to this site and to the 400 year history of the Priory – as many years as separate us now from The Theatre – and we hope to bring you more details of these new discoveries as they emerge.

In archaeology, we know that no matter how much and how detailed the historical research done, our sites almost always turn up something exciting and we always have to expect the unexpected.  In this way, archaeology informs history and visa versa, the two combining to create a fuller picture of the past.

But history, the written record, is incomplete, it has many voids: not all events were recorded, records were not retained, were lost or destroyed and history itself for Britain really only begins with the Romans who first wrote of Britain in the first century BC, before that is Pre-history.  There is now new evidence that suggests our ancestors walked this green and pleasant land as far back as 800,000 years ago (follow this link for more information: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2010/july/ancient-britons-were-earliest-northern-europeans72335.html) and it is in the absence of history that archaeology is the onlysource of evidence for some 798,000 years of human and proto-human activity.

Preservation by Record

In the field, we often use little interpretative sketches, such as Dave’s shown here, to help us keep a handle on various features as they are being excavated, but there is much more to recording an excavation than that.

We use what is known as the “single context system” to record and plan all the features we find during our excavations.  A context is the smallest recordable archaeological unit, for example, if we find a pit, the cut (the edge/surface) of the pit is recorded as one context and what it contains as another or others if there is more than one clearly distinguishable fill.  Deposited layers, ditches, post holes, floors, walls and other structures are all broken down into individual contexts.

Each context is given an individual number (context number) and separately described and recorded on specially designed sheets.  Each context is allocated a position in a stratigraphic matrix according to its stratigraphic relationship (or age, relative to the other contexts) to other contexts.  We use the “law of superimposition” to work out the contexts’ position in the matrix as we excavate them; for example if layer A is on top of layer B then layer B has to be older than layer A according to how they were laid down.  If a pit, with cut C and filled with D, is dug through our layers we would end up with the sequence (from newest to oldest) D-C-A-B.  Just as with Flinders Petrie’s relative chronology for his pottery (featured in our third post), we can build up a relative chronology for the site using this method.  Later, when the finds and samples have been examined by our specialists we can use them to date contexts within the stratigraphic matrix which allows us to create a dating framework for the site as a whole.

Also, our sites are divided into a five metre grid set out by our surveyors and the contexts are individually drawn on almost indestructible waterproof paper called “permatrace” using this grid.  Back at the office, these individual plans are then digitised (mapped onto a computer) as layers, which allows us to separate or group contexts in a number of different ways to help with our post excavation analysis: to best understand the sequences of construction, usage and destruction.  The plan of The Theatre remains (shown in our second posting) was derived from such an analysis; we can use real and conjectural layers to attain the best interpretation from the evidence excavated.

All these records, paper, digital and physical (in the form of any finds recovered) form the site archivewhich will be accessible to future generations of researchers to study.  One the post-excavation analysis is complete and a report written, the archive will reside in the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre, the LAARC (for more information on the LAARC, follow this link: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/ArchiveResearch/).

“O Rare Ben Jonson” (epitaph)

Dramatis personae: Ben Jonson: 1572-1637

• Jonson did not attend university, but had a good education at the Westminster School, prided himself as being a scholar and was later awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University
• Started as a bricklayers apprentice
• His first professional theatrical engagement was at The Theatre
• He wrote many plays, mostly comedies and satires, including: The Case is Altered, Every Man in His Humour (in which Shakespeare is thought to have played as an actor), Eastward Ho, Valpone and the Alchemist
• A contemporary, rival and friend of Shakespeare
• He killed the actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a duel and only narrowly escapes the gallows
• After Shakespeare’s death, he wrote many words in his praise, including: “While I confess thy writings to be such, As neither man, nor muse, can praise to much”, “he was not of an age, but for all time” and also “Sweet Swan of Avon”
• Jonson have edited Shakespeare’s posthumous First Folio
• His portrait bares an uncanny likeness to the actor Tom Baker
• he is buried in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey under a slab inscribed “O Rare Ben Jonson”

“when I am king, as king I will be, there shall be no money…” (Henry VI, Part 2.  IV, ii, 73).

Or will there?…

Much like theatres today, the better the seat, the more you pay.  Takings for the entertainments provided at The Theatre, were collected by a team of people called the gatherers in little pottery boxes, like piggy banks.  The gatherers would have stood at the main entrance and at the foot of the stairs leading to the three levels of galleries.  We know from historical records the names of two of these gatherers: Henry Johnson, a cloth worker or silk weaver, who may also have been a costumer for The Theatre,and was in post for the first 10 years; also Margaret Brayne, the widow of Burbage’s erstwhile partner and father-in-law and who succeeded Johnson.

Playgoers paid one penny to enter which would have allowed them to stand in the theatre yard as groundlings.  If they wished for a better view and a seat, they passed another gatherer at the entrance to the gallery stairs and paid another penny.

These entrances were described by a foreign visitor to the later Swantheatre called Johennes De Witt.  He called them ingresses (singular: ingresus), as he named the parts of the theatre using classical references from the Roman writer Vitruvius, the English it seems, more prosaically named them dores.

The better the seat, the more ‘dores’ and gatherers were passed and the more pennies paid.  The best seats in the house were the Lord’s Seats which would have cost up to six pence.  The exact position of the Lord’s Seats within the theatre is still debated, but it was there that the wealthy and privileged would have sat in their finery as much on show themselves as to watch the show.

The term box office seems to have originated in Tudor London’s Theatreland and derives from the small backstage room where the gatherers brought their (hopefully) full money boxes once the performance had begun.  Here the boxes were broken open and the takings emptied into the ‘Common Boxe’for the counting and later division of the monies; a room for boxes, hence box office.  James Burbage was once accused by his partner of stealing from the common box by means of a counterfeit key, just one of the many legal wrangle he became embroiled in during his business life, records of many of these cases still survive and it may be that Shakespeare’s line “the first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers” (Henry VI, Part 2, VI, ii, 73) was possibly inspired by their over involvement in the lives of his theatre folk!

During the last few weeks we have discovered the remains of the gatherers’ pottery money boxes and some errant pennies.

The economy of Elizabethan England was not in the healthiest of states (history has the habit of repeating itself!) and the official mints only produced silver and gold coinage.  So if you needed small change you had to resort to other means.  Typically in the period, German tokens or jettons were used as small change.  These were not strictly legal tender, but markets and providers of services being what they are were prepared to allocate a value to these jettons and they passed for pennies in London and beyond.

Between The Theatre’s inner and outer walls, underneath where the galleries would have been, Charlotte found such a jetton.  Should such an item been dropped by a groundling on the theatre yard it would not have gone un-noticed for long, but our find must have slipped between the floorboards and come to rest in the dust and detritus below to wait the 400 years for us.

Our Shakespearean Theatre expert, Julian Bowsher, has identified it as being made by one of the three master token makers named Hans Schultes (I–III) from Nuremberg (you should be able to just make out the NS and SCHUL of his name in the picture).  Julian suspects that it is a jetton of Hans Schultes II (a token master from 1586 until his death in 1603).  These dates fit well with the second decade of The Theatre and we will able to confirm this when has been cleaned, conserved and examined by our numismatists(coin experts).  You can see more about these jettons at http://www.mernick.org.uk/Bexley/article3.htm.

The money boxes themselves were cheaply produced, of various shapes and sizes but typically 10-15cm tall and round, were usually glazed in brown or green, had a penny sized slot cut into them and a characteristic ‘knob’ moulded on top.

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/object.asp?obj_id=114755

We have now found seven of the ‘knobs’ and a handful of body sherds.  The excavation at The Rose and The Globe theatres produced 162, so we have a little way to catch up in the week remaining of the dig!  The picture of the whole money box (above) is from the Museum of London’s online collections which can be found at http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/ .

Money box from below

Money box top in profile

You can see in the photo of one of our moneyboxes (left), where the glaze has bled from outside to inside (see red arrow), this marks the top of the coin slot, through which some of Hans Schultes’s jettons may have passed, perhaps for a performance of Romeo and Juliet, with Richard Burbage in the lead.

Examples have been found at other sites in London but they are particularly associated with the theatres and it is at those sites that the bulk of them have been unearthed; The Theatre is the prototype, the first of the purpose built playhouses and it is here that these little pottery money box tops are providing hard physical evidence for what has only been mentioned before in documents, London’s first purpose built theatrical box office.

As for the room itself?  That lies under an adjacent building, waiting.

The box office for the Tower Theatre Company’s new theatre (see the plans on: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm) will be, as modern convention dictates, at the front of the building.  The pottery money boxes and gatherers have been replaced by credit card-reading machines and internet advanced booking to ensure that those bums on seats have paid their pennies.

“a fellow of infinite jest…” (Hamlet, V, i, 201)

Dramatis personae:  Richard Tarlton: 1530-1588

• Also known as Snuff, he was a Clown, singer, musician, fencing master and writer
• Plays were not the only entertainments provided by the playhouses.  Displays of fencing were common as was clowning and Tarlton was the best known of these clowns.  He would perform his skits at the end of the play often engaging heavily with the audience
• Sometimes people would come to the theatre just to see Tarlton and not the plays which lead to some occasional arguments with the players
• He was called the “writing clown” with many pamphlets, ballads, poems and at least one, sadly lost play The Seven Deadly Sins, to his name
• In one pamphlet he wrote a description of the Great Earthquake of April 6th1580 which shook The Theatre and The Curtain such that the audience were “not a little dismayed”.  An event that Shakespeare later recalls in Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet’s nurse tells:

’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

And she was wean’d – I never shall forget it

• Tarlton wa talented at improvisation (modern stand up comedians take note) often from suggestions provided by the audience and he was a master at the putting down of hecklers
• The description of Yoric given by Hamlet (V. i. 201), was said to have been written in memory of Tarlton
• He was Elizabeth I favourite clown
• Tarlton’s Jests, written posthumously, contained many of his jokes and many that weren’t as unscrupulous publishers tried to cash in on his fame
• He is buried in St Leonard’s church, Shoreditch, his epitaph was: “he of clowns to learn still sought/ But now they learn of him they taught.”
• Follow http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/583614/Richard-Tarlton for a woodcut depicting Tarlton

Next Time:

• All good things come to an end – the last week of excavation
• Round up of discoveries
• So what did you think of it all? – some thoughts from those involved
• Further information

Links:

• Tower Theatre Company: http://www.towertheatre.org.uk/
• Tower Theatre Company, the new theatre: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm
• Footage of the 2009 evaluation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savcpQFVu8w
• MOTCO UK directory and image database, antique maps, prints and books:
• http://www.motco.com/default-Markou.asp
• Museum of London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/english
• Museum of London online collections: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources
• Museum of London Archaeology: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/
• Ben Crystal: http://www.shakespeareontoast.com/
• London Archaeologist: http://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/
• Britannica Tarlton article: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/583614/Richard-Tarlton
• Natural History Museum article on the Ancient Britons Were the Earliest North Europeans: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2010/july/ancient-britons-were-earliest-northern-europeans72335.html
• London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/ArchiveResearch/

THE SAXON BONE BIRD PIN!

Today’s competition then:

First up, an object from Week 7. Audited by Monday volunteer Laura, this cool 10^th Century comb used to be on display in the Museum of London’s old Saxon gallery! Combs are one of the most common artefacts from early medieval London and obviously an important accessory. The comb’s teeth are made from a sheet of horn and the ‘side-plates’ from cattle ribs which are riveted together. In the later medieval period horn is replaced by wood as a more common material for combs, although ivory is also popular throughout. This one came from excavations at Milk Street during 1976 (MLK76)

The second object trying to win your support comes from New Fresh Wharf excavations (SM75) but was rediscovered during week 5 by Wednesday volunteer Gillian. This amphora neck bears painted graffiti which translates as ‘the best fish sauce’. This storage vessel would have therefore contained the commodity garum (which we could call ‘Roman ketchup’!). The form of the amphora may be a Dressel 28, produced in the Guadalquivir valley of Baetica (Roman Spain) and imported to London.

The third candidate was also repacked during week 5 and this time it’s a joint effort by Monday’s volunteer’s Emma & Lucy. Found in 1974 at “The Triangle” (TR74), this is a very rare example of a woven Roman basket. A leather thong would have connected with the leather tag at the top to close the basket. Preserved by the waterlogged conditions of the waterfront, the site was originally a Roman quay. The material deposited in the quay may have come from a warehouse clearance and perhaps the basket was used by a Roman constructing the quay in the first half of the 2^nd CenturyAD and then lost or disposed of.

The final object today was the very first object to be packed during this project. Saturday volunteer Paul packed this aftefact from the General Post Office at Newgate Street (GPO75) during week1. This piece of human skull exhibits sharp force trauma to the right frontal side, above the eye socket. The polished edge and style of wound suggest this could have been inflicted by a sword. Although this may not have been the fatal blow, it would certainly have caused trauma and swelling to the brain!

To vote for your favourite object from today’s selection, click here: VOTE (Voting has now closed, but you can vote in round 4)

Voting closes tomorrow afternoon (Wed 11th Aug) at 13.00.

Thanks for playing and don’t forget there’ll be another competition tomorrow with four more objects to choose from. Click on the “RSS” icon towards the top right of the page to keep updated with all the competitions this week.

Gertie Millar played Mary Gibbs, a girl from Yorkshire, like the actress herself, who works as a shop assistant selling sweets at the extremely thinly disguised Garrods department store. As you would expect, Miss Gibbs has many admirers, an entire chorus of ‘dudes’. Now more commonly associated with The Big Lebowski, the term dude had been popular since the 1870s and was used to describe well-dressed gentlemen and/or men who had no experience of life outside a big city, as is supported by the lyrics of the dudes’ song:

‘A fashionable band of brothers / Are we, You see!
Whatever one has done the others / Must do It too!
Our clothes and hats are made to match, / They show it! They show it!
We have one bill for all the batch, / And owe it, and owe it!’

The main dude is Lord Eynsford, the son of the millionaire Earl of St. Ives, who pretends to be a humble bank clerk so as not to frighten off Mary. When she finds out the truth she decides to leave London, but not before making a last visit to White City. The Great White City had been erected the previous year to the north of Shepherds Bush as the venue for the 1908 Olympics and to house an exhibition to celebrate French-British relations. The ground’s name derived from the cladding of its temporary structures, which was made of gleaming white marble.

To make the farcical plot even more complicated, during a visit to Garrods the bag of Mary’s cousin Timothy had been mixed up with that of Hughie Pierrepoint, an ‘amateur criminal’. Timothy finds himself in the possession of the Ascot Gold Cup, which Hughie happens to have stolen from the country house of no other than Lord St. Ives. Timothy also makes his way to White City where he disguises himself as a marathon runner, ends up the first to enter the stadium and is hailed as the winner of the race. Needles to say, in the end, somehow, all turns out well and Mary gets to marry her Lord.

As Joel H. Kaplan and Sheila Stowell show in their book Theatre & Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes (Cambridge University Press 1994), in the Edwardian age female consumption and the stage were closely connected (foreshadowing the role of Hollywood a little later). Setting a play in a department store provided many opportunities for product placement and one New York critic noted ‘Of course, an audience let loose in a dress-making establishment doesn’t care much about plot so it is not surprising that the gowns surpass the narrative in prominence’ (quoted in Richard Traubner, Operetta: a theatrical history, Routledge 2003).

Our Miss Gibbs was not the first play to use this ploy (sorry, couldn’t help it). One of the Gaiety’s earlier successes had been The Shop Girl (1894) partly set in the ‘Mantle Department at the Royal Stores’. In 1906 The Girl Behind the Counter was performed at the Wyndham’s Theatre in which ‘Winnie Willoughby’ masquerades as a shop assistant at the Maison Duval where customers and chorus sing that ‘They’ve been shopping till they’re dropping …’.

While The Times critic bemoaned the improbability of the plot of Our Miss Gibbs (as if musical comedies ever had probable story lines), he noted nevertheless that ‘the work of the shop itself is being carried on very much as it would be in a real shop’. This verisimilitude must have been aided by the fact that Messrs. Harrods Ltd., never missing an advertising opportunity, provided the dresses for Act 1.

It was in the second act, in the Court of Honour of the Franco-British Exhibition, that Gertie finally donned her dark blue Pierrot costume and performed one of her most famous numbers, Moonstruck, written by her husband Lionel Monckton:

‘I’m such a silly when the moon comes out; / I hardly seem to know what I’m about;
Skipping, hopping, never never stopping, / I can’t keep still, although I try.
I’m all a-quiver when the moonbeams glance; / That is the moment when I long to dance.
I can never close a sleepy eye / When the moon comes creeping up the sky!’

Thankfully a recording of Gertie has survived and you can sing your own version with the help of this fabulous website (it is song no. 20).

Gertie was supported by a chorus of no less than eight similarly clad chorus girls. Following the publication of the Belgian writer Albert Giraud’s cycle of poems Pierrot lunaire: Rondels bergamasque in 1884, Pierrots’ moon-madness was often depicted, although I’m not sure Giraud’s poems were in the forefront of Lionel Monckton’s mind.

It would be wonderful to know who exactly was responsible for the outfits for the Moonstruck scene. As was customary, the programme for Our Miss Gibbs provides a full list of the designers and costumiers involved in the production. Overall responsibility lay with the prolific Attilio Comelli (1858-1925), who not only had been the house designer for the Royal Opera House since the 1880s but also found time to design costumes for Christmas pantomimes in Australia where many of his beautiful drawings are still preserved.

Comelli is at the head of a long list of illustrious names, but I don’t know (yet) how exactly they would have worked with Comelli. Not much is known these days about the French designer Jeanne Margaine-Lacroix, but according to The New York Times (24 March 1912) she ‘created the Sheath, and the Slashed Skirts’. Madame Lucile, one of the most famous dressmakers of the time, often provided dresses for the stage and Gertie was also one of her private clients.

There is also a ‘Miss Fisher’, probably ‘Mary E. Fisher Ltd, Costumiers, 26 Bedford Street, Covent Garden WC’, who advertised as provider of ‘Historical and Fancy Dresses of every description specially designed for Hire or Purchase’ in The Play Pictorial in 1914. ‘Madame Herbert’ might be Madame Pauline Herbert of 8 Orchard Street, who was praised for her ‘charming work’ in the same publication.

The costumiers B.J. Simmons & Co, founded in 1857, worked on many productions in the West End and had a workshop in Covent Garden until 1964. And of course the company now simply known as ‘Angels’, but in 1909 still named after its founder ‘Morris Angel & Son’ was also involved.

I have not yet tracked down Burkinshaw & Knights, or Johns & Bonham, but I suspect they might have been responsible for the suits of the dapper dudes. And if you know more about Conwyn (???) Garden, I’d like to hear from you.

I would have loved to have seen this no doubt super-lavish production and I am sure would have been enthralled by the Moonstruck scene. However, Gertie’s Pierrot costume is, in my view, surpassed by an outfit she wore in the 1915 production of Bric-à-Brac, which will be the subject of my next, and probably last, Gertie installment, as well as the mysterious photo album the images in this post are taken from.

For now, have a quick look at Gertie playing Pied Piper to a troupe of 12 child pierrots, who seem to be sleepwalking, one of the most bizarre images I have seen in a long time (if the link doesn’t work, or you cannot enlarge the image, click here and search for ‘Gertie Millar Pierrot’.

OBJECT OF VIP6!

Jacob Sam-La Rose poet and director of the London Teenage Poetry Slam, Camden Youth SLAM, Metaroar and the Foundry project will be compere on the night. But before then he will be selecting the best 7 slam performers.

To apply to perform at the slam please send an audio file featuring yourself performing one of your own poems, which can be about anything, along with written transcription by Wednesday 25 August. You will hear from us in early September.

Please send your entries to lsawyer@museumoflondon.org.uk

At the Gladiatorial poetry slam in September poets will have 3 minutes to perform an original poem inspired by the theme ‘Londinium.’ Hopefully you have guessed by now we have a bit of a Roman theme going on. Judges will include poet Ross Sutherland (featured in the Times’s list of Top Ten Literary Stars of 2008 and winner of many slams) and our Senior Curator of Roman Collections.

We have prepared some information to give performers inspiration:

The Romans founded London in around 43 AD. The town that grew up was called Londinium and remained part of the Roman Empire for the next four hundred years.

• More about Londinium
• An archaeological perspective of the ongoing discovery of Roman London
• An overview of the history of Londinium
• Find our more about life in London during the Roman period.

Visits:
You can discover more about life if Roman London in our galleries here at the Museum of London, where we chart the history of Londoners from prehistoric times to today. Find us at 150 London Wall, nearest tubes St Pauls or Barbican.

The Guildhall Art Gallery houses the remains of London’s Roman amphitheatre, a fascinating insight into the tastes and leisure time of Roman Londoners.

There are a number of Roman sites in London where evidence can be seen above ground.
Books:
Roman London –by Jenny Hall (our very own Senior Curator of Roman Collections)
Londinium, London in the Roman Empire –by John Morris

Love poetry but writing rather than speaking more your thing? No problem, we also have a written poetry competition – read our previous blog entry to find out more about it.  Loads of great prizes! Deadline is also 25th August.

This is part of our Stories of the World, one of the major projects at the heart of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. The slam event will be recorded and poems from the event may feature in our exhibition in 2012.

Another successful week in the archive as we cracked on with getting archives from the 1970’s up to scratch.

Monday’s team successfully completed the repacking of the Sir John Cass School archive (CASS72). In the morning with some of the objects in need of a registered finds number, it was up to the volunteers to issue them with a unique number, fill in new labels, a registered finds card and pack the object with a piece of jiffy foam. Included amongst these finds was one of the objects of the week; a cool glass bottle used as a container for snuff. In the afternoon it was more glass to pack, this time from the 1976 London Docks site (LD76), as well as some medieval floor tiles from the various Merton Prior sites (MPY76-88)

Friday’s team started with the Merton site (MPY76-88) sorting out the general glass & tobacco pipes and auditing bone, wood and stone finds, before moving on the the general finds project’s next site, The Triangle of Billingsgate Buildings (TR74)

The focus on glass this week was linked in to our workshop, led by non other than archive manager, Francis Grew. Starting with some images and video of glass blowing, we then spent time in the ceramic & glass store studying 10 excellent examples of 18th & 19th century vessels.

Wednesday’s teams have completed their time with finds and started to second phase of their project – creating films, slideshows and comics using the photos and videos they’ve taken over the past 7 weeks. Under the guidance of the museum’s e-learning officer, Paul Clifford, the volunteers let their creativity run wild. A second session next week will see them finish their pieces showing different aspects of LAARC and their experience of VIP6.

Over the past eight weeks we’ve processed loads of boxes of material, not only improving 100’s of boxes but reducing sites by several boxes too. Along the way, we’ve rediscovered lots of cool stuff. 16 objects have stood out though and it’s now time for them to fight it out. Prepare yourselves folks. Bookmark this blog. Because starting on Monday next week my friends, it’s time for…

OBJECT OF VIP6 – BATTLE OF THE FINDS!

Click on the above highlighted text for more info or simply scroll down to the blog below.

For more photos visit our Flickr account and for more info on any of the sites we’ve worked on, click on the highlighted sitecode in the text.

The Winner of Object of VIP5

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, whether you’re regular readers of these pages or brand new visitors, I’d like to bring to your attention, our new competition which shall hit these pages next week.

Some of you may well be aware that at the museum’s archaeological archive we run a Volunteer Inclusion Project, where a wide range of volunteers help us out by packing, sorting and checking our finds from the 1970’s. Each week we rediscover an amazing array of finds that deserve some attention and each week we select two artefacts that stand out among the rest.

We’ve now got 16 star objects (a sample are above) which we’ve been admiring over the past 8 weeks in our display case outside our archive. But as not everyone has the chance to visit our tip top store, we’d like to share the fun with you all, right here on the blog pages, wanting your votes to decide on a winner.

So, there’s only one thing we can do…

LET THE FINDS FIGHT IT  OUT!

It’s time for…

OBJECT OF VIP6 COMPETITION!

Each day next week, 4 objects will be put up in a DAILY CONTEST competing against each other trying to win your favour.

Because of this, be sure to check these pages each day, to see which objects will be strutting their stuff. There will be four different objects to choose from each lunchtime, Monday -Thursday, with each daily victor competing in the grand final on Friday. And the best way to make sure you don’t miss a thing is by clicking on the “RSS” icon on the top right of this page.

So get those fingers ready and get set for a bit of lunchtime fun each day.

Lynne intends to post diary entries on a regular basis so check back here (and on Facebook and twitter) for more updates soon.

Wednesday 14 July
Today I met with Brian and saw inside the hive for the first time. The first thing I noticed when the lid was removed, was the distinctive smell, a combination of resin and honey (very pleasant). Brian removed some of the frames. The two on the outside had some of their cells filled with honey, which had been capped with yellow wax. These are for feeding the bees. The five inner frames  had a mixture of cells containing honey, cells containing pollen and cells containing the brood. The outside frames contained mainly eggs (which looked like grains of rice) and larvae (which looked like prawns). The most mature were in the centre and least mature were in the periphery. The most central frames contained the most mature brood, capped with brown wax and including pupae. I was able to see the queen (she is larger than the workers with a long slim abdomen and long yellow legs) who is labelled with a blue spot. There were also a few drones, these are longer and chunkier than workers, with large eyes, like a pair of large tinted goggles. Brian was pleased with the way the brood had progressed since he last visited 2 weeks ago. The colony is not a strong one because the original queen had to be replaced. The new queen is doing well, and the workers were busy collecting pollen (protein for the brood) but the late start will mean that it is unlikely that there will be honey to harvest this summer.
Wednesday 21 July
Bee activity at the front of the hive was a little quieter than last week. Inside the hive there was some progress. However, the frames that Brian had turned around (in the hope that they would be filled with honey) remain untouched. Nevertheless, there was evidence of brood production. The queen was moving over one frame, with her abdomen poised as if to lay. She was being attended by a group of workers who were licking her! Brian is concerned that our urban bees may never find enough food in the city. He has suggested that we feed them to give them a bit of a boost. My homework is to make some bee food. Basically, I need to dissolve 4kg of cane sugar in a roughly equal volume of water. Sounds like fun!
Wednesday 28 July
Last night I made bee food in my kitchen. The work surfaces are now a little sticky!  This morning I sat on the 8.05 to Cannon street armed with 4 mineral water bottles full of sugar solution. Next job of the morning was to produce some signage for the garden terrace (which is now open). “The garden terrace is temporarily closed because of increased honey bee activity”. Brian and I looked inside the hive. Again, there had been some progress, but not as much as hoped for. We transferred the bee food into a feeding box. This is a 4 litre plastic container with a grid in the lid. The box is inverted over  a hole in the lid that covers the occupied frames. The bees are then able to food through the grid. Torla came down to take some photographs (see me in action below)  from the safety ( we thought) of the garden. Unfortunately, she was not far enough away to escape being stung. Not once, but twice! My next task was to ask security to lock the doors to the garden terrace to prevent the public from wandering out !

We wanted to keep a slight air of mystery around the project whilst we were still consulting audiences because we wanted the people who we were consulting not to have any preconceived ideas. Now that the consultation’s finished I can now tell you a bit more about the project that this was leading to.

Martin, ‘the man on the mezzanine’, was carrying out some audience consultation with us as part of a project we’re working on to redevelop two important aspects of our website – our factpacks and our picturebank for schools.

About factpacks and picturebank

There are various ways to find our existing factpacks, but one way is to go to : the factpacks page within the Kids section. Our factpacks are basically short introductions to an area of London’s history.  You can use them to find out, for example, about:

• Children in Victorian London
• What life was like in Medieval London
• Suffragettes

And lots of other topics too. We think our factpacks are really interesting, but some of them are quite old now, and some of them are buried quite deep within our site. We’re taking this opportunity to refresh them and to add new ones as well.

The picturebank is a resource that’s mainly for schools and you can find it at: www.museumoflondon.org.uk/picturebank. It’s a collection of images divided up by topic that we think school teachers and pupils might find interesting.  Again, it’s got some great material in it, but we think it needs a bit of a new look so we’re refreshing it.

About the audience consultation

On top of the consultation with families, Martin also conducted a focus group with teachers and we’re delighted that over 200 people completed our online survey recently about how they use online resources!  If you were one of these people, thank you very much – your information has been very useful.

I wanted to make sure as much as possible that people answered the questionnaire and attended the focus groups with an open mind, without knowing what we were working towards.  As such, this consultation was quite general, and was about finding out how you use the web, what kinds of material you look for, where you look for it, what you like/dislike about it, how you look at it (online/printed off etc).

What we found out

Rather pleasingly we didn’t really discover much we hadn’t anticipated! Even so it was very useful for us to talk to different audiences and get a real picture of how they behaved online, and then get a judgement on what they thought of our existing resources.

Here’s a quick summary of our findings:

• People mostly use Google as a starting point to find images or information about a historical period (no great surprises there)
• People like to be able to click around and explore a topic and choose their own path through it
• Some people like to print things off, in which case they like it to look nice (i.e. not just a printout of a webpage that doesn’t print very well) when they print it
• Text needs to broken up into sections and broken up with images
• Teachers particularly would ideally like to be able to edit any resources that we provide to make them relevant and suitable for their particular students. This means if they’re downloading documents, they want Word format rather than PDFs
• Teachers will generally make their own resources out of what we provide so we should provide easy-to-find images and information that they can cut and paste
• The BBC History website and BBC Bitesize are particularly popular places to look for historical information, particularly for children
• There are a few websites that come up time and time again as good sources of material for schools – particularly Woodlands Junior school
• Quite a few people hadn’t considered that a Museum website might have information about historical events or historical images
• The families we spoke to didn’t tend to think of using a museum website to prepare for a visit other than to look at opening times, how to get here etc
• The most common place to look at these resources seems to be on a home computer

So the next task is to write all of this up in detail and work out how we’re going to proceed.  We’ve got some pretty good ideas of what we’ll do.  It’s likely that we’ll rename the factpacks ‘Pocket Histories’. What do you think of the name? We’ve decided what topics we’d like to do first and we’re starting to get things moving.

What can you do to help?

• Keep an eye out in the first few months of 2011 for these new resources
• Let us know what you think of them in another online questionnaire at the end of the project
• Let us know what website you like to use to find historical information or historical images
• Leave a comment below if you’d be interested in taking part in any future website consultations like the one I’ve outlined above
• Let us know what aspects of London’s history you’d be interested in finding out more about
• Remember – Museum websites are a treasure trove of information – not just information about opening times. Next time you visit us, take a look around our website first to find out a bit more about what you can see.

A culinary delight of ingredients provided the setting for week 7’s recipe of fun.

On the general finds side of the project, two sites were improved this week; Monday & Friday’s teams ploughed on through the material from St John Cass School, (CASS72), admiring the numerous amounts of pottery and steadily reducing the number of boxes these pots are stored in, by effective repacking and ordering. Wednesday’s groups tackled animal bone from the Triangle site (TR74), the final type of material they’ll be getting their hands on as next week it’s over to the Museum of London for them as they start to put together the photos they’ve been taking throughout to produce their video diaries.

Over with Registered finds, we started a new site, Milk Street (MLk76) which produced our first object of the week – a saxon bone comb which used to be on display in the old medieval gallery. A few bits of leather remaining from last week was also completed and Friday’s team completed all the glass, wood and started a box of pigment samples which produced our second object of the week – an oyster shell paint palette.

This week’s workshop was something quite different to the usual ones as we welcomed archaeological conservator, Luisa Duarte to LAARC to guide us through “Eggscavation”. Quite possibly my favourite workshop so far, Eggscavation, is all about how conservators lift delicate artefacts on site and a great practical way of learning the techniques behind it.

On entering our common room, volunteers were confronted with a seed tray full of compost, with an egg buried in the centre. Not knowing whether the egg was whole, hard boiled or indeed covering something else, the task was to careful lift the object, before carefully excavating it further.

Wrapping the visible shell with wet tissue first, then ten created a barrier to surround the egg, using laminated card. Once fenced in, volunteers mixed some plaster of paris and poured this into the fenced off space, covering the tissued egg.

Whilst waiting for the plaster to set, Luisa showed us some brilliant pieces of leather and wood and explained the process of freeze drying in relation to these organic finds.

Then it was back to the egg, the next stage being to put a fish slice beneath the barrier of card and flipping the whole thing over, plaster side down. Finally, with a small stick and brushes, they removed the remaining soil, until the egg and the contents inside were exposed.

I’m pleased to report that not one egg cracked!

To view more photos from the week, visit our Flickr site by clicking here: Flickr

To find out more about the excavations we’re currently working on or any other associated information click on the highlighted links in the text.

I think I was hoping for a complete transformation of these standard issue coats – into what exactly, I don’t know. I am aware that lab coats are mainly meant to be useful, but couldn’t they also be a little bit exciting? That they are not, is probably the reason why we only tend to wear them to protect ourselves from objects (you might think this kind of object does not exist in a dress store, welcome to the freezer room).

Occasionally – very occasionally, I swear – Hilary and I discuss our dream work wear and we have found it to be a tricky business. It is not easy to find something that combines utility with beauty and with the need to preserve (or acquire?) authority. Hilary came upon this beautiful Vogue pattern, which has the added advantage that it is ’straight from Paris’ (via America, mind). It would make a lovely lab coat, but I’m not so sure about the authority situation, and it would need serious customisation to be super-practical.

I always thought my favourite uniform would be a jumpsuit-type-thing. At my last workplace I was known to don my Tyvek suit at the slightest provocation (I kept it in my desk drawer, just in case …). I loved my boiler suit, but even I have to admit that it wasn’t very flattering (white does nothing for me), it didn’t have any pockets and, true to its name, there were microclimate issues.

Having always been an admirer of Constructivist art and design, I thought Rodchenko’s overall might be it (scroll down a bit on this page), but now that I have looked at it again, I’m not so keen on the leather trim. A friend recommended Ernesto Thayaht’s TuTa, which I really, really like, particularly as I have just realised I have a detailed pattern in a book at home. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy also looked very good in his ‘Arbeitsanzug‘.

Maybe a flying suit like the ones popular in the 1980s could work? Here is a beautiful example from our collection:

This one was bought from Austin Reed, oh yes, and worn over a T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves with the suit’s legs tucked into thick, white, woolly ankle socks. The look was completed with Dunlop plimsols, also preserved at the Museum. And this was six years before Top Gun!

I could have suits in different colours, one for each day of the week (or for particular moods) with a lamé number for special occasions. I could even have my name embroidered in a suitable spot, a non-negotiable requirement for the kind of work outfit I’m after.

Or maybe a smock, like the one below, apparently worn by a milkman as a bit of an advertising gimmick around 1900? But who would do the smocking?

Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you do? If you have found the perfect solution, want to share a fabulous customisation job or provide the address of a supplier of practical, yet stylish, work wear, we would love to hear from you! And you don’t have to be a girl.

PS: Gertie Millar’s story will be resumed next week.

I have really enjoyed working in Burgess Park.  We have uncovered some interesting details about the history of the park and met some interesting local residents who kindly shared their research and memories of the area.  Some 400 local school children have helped explore the archaeology and we’ve trained 31 adults in the techniques and principles of archaeological excavation. 

We may have finished excavating but this is not the end of our work on the site.  The next stage is done back at the office and we need to pull together our research, photos, maps and finds, consult with specialists and write up the results.  These results will be published and available to anyone who is interested.  The records and finds from the site will be archived with the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC) in due course, and again these will accessible by appointment to anyone who would like to see them.  After all that the process starts again.  Where shall we excavate next summer…?

Thanks to all the staff and volunteers who helped run the excavation; thanks to everyone who took part; thanks to all the local people who shared their knowledge and memories; thanks to Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Excavation Committee for their funding and finally thanks to Southwark Council for allowing us to excavate in Burgess Park.

Kate Sumnall, Community Archaeologist, Museum of London

Maps from 1746 show the area of the excavations was used for market gardening. Vegetables needs fertiliser, – so every night a great supply arrived from London in the form of human waste matter, politely known as ‘night soil’. Other debris was also thrown in to this mixture, including the sherds of Roman pottery which have been found. Other historical periods are represented by finds such as a medieval roof tile complete with peg hole and a 17^th century clay tobacco pipe with a small bowl. The size of the pipe bowl is the clue to the period in which it was produced – tobacco at this time was rare and very expensive.

Trench 1 revealed pottery which was decorated and of good quality and some fine cut glass-ware was found indicating a respectable residential area. As London expanded and became more prosperous, the fields of vegetables had evolved to become a desirable mid-Victorian residential area. Evidence of this can found in the house uncovered in trench 1. The streets around the site also reflect the popularity of Lord Nelson after the battle of Trafalgar e.g. Nile Street and the Lord Nelson pub on Trafalgar Avenue. The houses were three-storey with a sub-basement.

The nearby Surrey Canal with its easy access to the port of London ensured that, later, the growth of major industry would move to the area. At this point, the residents of the mid-Victorian houses such as that exposed in trench 1 moved away and the houses were occupied by the families of those who worked in the increasing number of factories, for example, the R.Whites lemonade factory. The house revealed in trench 2 relates to this period.

London was attacked by the world’s first ballistic missile, the V-2 rocket (in German Vergeltungswaffe 2 which means Vengeance weapon 2) in 1944. The devastation from the 13 tonne rocket, which impacted at over 3000 miles an hour without warning, was catastrophic. There was no warning because it travelled faster than the speed of sound. Survivors only heard the sonic boom after the blast. At 10am on St Valentine’s Day 1945 our site at Burgess Park was hit by a V2 bomb. The area had been targeted because of the industry located here and the canal which was used by German bombers as a landmark leading to the city of London.

Our dig has provided evidence of the evolution of the area now occupied by Burgess Park which was created from the bomb site. The dig has shown that at the time the houses were destroyed by the bomb, both the mid- and late-Victorian houses, as represented by the archaeological remains in trenches 1 and 2, were occupied by people working in the local factories.

 Today Burgess Park is a green and peaceful park enjoyed by the local community who now have a window to the past through the findings from this dig. It was very enjoyable to meet local residents who came down to look at the dig and tell us their stories of the past including the photographs they brought with them. A whole new generation of the local community was also represented by the school children who came to help, some of whom want to become archaeologists.

Sylvia and Jo

For today’s blog, I’m going to get straight to the highlight of the week – our fantastic workshops on archaeological textiles. Curator of Fashion & Decorative Arts, Hilary Davidson headed over to lead the session which separated itself into three parts; medieval textiles found along the river sites, Tudor items found back in the days of the Guildhall Museum & burial garments found during the Spitalfields excavations at Christchurch (CAS84).

I think it fair to say that we were blown away by some of the material that survived in our collections, from decorated silks to knitted wool, from burial bonnets to Tudor socks. And even a medieval hair extension and Tudor codpiece popped up during the talk.

During the sessions, we tried to link things together by checking and auditing the leather & textile fragments from 1983-1986’s excavations. A couple of volunteers got to pack some textiles – one of the trickiest packing techniques there is – whilst others got to add sketches of the textiles to the reverse of the finds cards. Although the majority of objects were no way near as good a condition as those in the workshop, there were still some pretty amazing bits that’s we came across, like the 19th century decorative boot from Mansion House, (SON85), the shoe heel from Carter Lane, (CAT86) and the piece of rope from the former city of London Boy’s School (BOY86)

When not working on organic material it was on to our next big site in the general finds, Sir John Cass school, (CASS72). Monday’s team almost completed the animal bone with Friday’s team rounding it off before moving on to the pottery assemblages. already, several boxes are being saved by this basic repacking of artifacts and the accessibility has improved beyond a doubt.

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Wednesday’s groups tackled building material from the Triangle of Billingsgate Buildings site (TR74), completing it all in the morning, leaving only roman wall plaster for the young archaeologist team to complete. Both groups ended their session by visiting the ceramic & glass store to take photos to supplement their project and view some of the best wall plaster ever excavated.

As a bonus this week, we had the second set of students from the Burgess Park Training Excavation join us. After a thorough tour of all archaeological aspects of the building, they joint in with the VIP project by working on more general pottery from the Triangle (TR74) and Registered Finds from the Modern Foreshore site (MFS76)

For more photos visit our Flickr site by clicking here: FLICKR

And to find out more about any of the excavations we’ve worked on this week click on the highlighted sitecode in the text above.

Work continues a pace as we approach the final three weeks of the excavation period,  So do our minutes hasten… (Sonnet 60).

Last week we welcomed a new member to the team, Dave Saxby, whose insights and vast experience will be invaluable to our understanding of the site.

Of nuns and beer – a brief history from the holy to the profane…

Up until the mid 12^th century, the area of the site here would have been just fields.  Previous archaeological excavations in the area immediately surrounding The Theatre have found no substantial evidence for Pre-historic, Roman and Saxon occupation.

This all changed in the 1150s with the founding of the St John the Baptist Priory.  Our colleague, Hana Lewis excavated the Priory Church as a part of the nearby East London Line excavations in 2007.  An article about that dig appeared in the latest issue of London Archaeologist (the periodical covering history, heritage and archaeology in London, follow this link for more information: http://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/). 

In its four hundred year history the Priory was the ninth richest in Britain and held sizable tracts of land and like other religious establishments of its type, it was mostly self sufficient.  Britain’s Priories were usually equipped with barns for storing crops raised on their lands, mills to grind the corn, cellars, dairies orchards and sometime vineyards.  Our site lies entirely within the precinct walls of Holywell Priory and directly over some of the buildings west of the main complex that would have provided the nuns with their daily bread and beer. 

Map of Holywell Priory

On this map of the Priory, created in the nineteenth century from historical records, the buildings that would have occupied our site are listed as a bake house and a brew house on the left (west) side of the Great Court and above (north) of the pond.

Bread has always been a staple and before modern piped water infrastructure, drinking beer was safer than drinking water (the brewing process effectively sterilises the drink), this was especially true in built up environments like the rapidly expanding Tudor London, where ground water and wells could easily become contaminated.  The beer in question wasn’t always the strongest of ales as we may know them today.  More frequently consumed was small beer, which was weaker and made from a second fermentation of malt that had already produced the more intoxicating first brew.

When the Priory was dissolved in 1539, its lands and remaining buildings were split up and sold and by 1576 the area including our site was in the possession of one Giles Allen who sold a 21 year lease to James Burbage and his business partner and brother in law John Brayne to build and operate The Theatre.  As Burbage (and more of him anon) appears to have been a canny business man, he would clearly have seen the advantage of some on site catering to extract a few more pennies from his punters.  The later Bankside theatres such as The Globe and The Rose were known to have dedicated tap houses for their catering needs and just as The Theatre served as the prototype for the playhouses it is not inconceivable that our brew house served as a pragmatic re-use of an existing build for the prototype tap house.

Would I were in an alehouse in London!  I would give all my fame for a pot of ale… (Henry V. III. i. 13)

Black glazed red ware pottery

Historically we know that the brew house and bake house complex survived the dissolution and were rented out at least in part as tenements, but it is also likely that they continued their original purpose.  We have evidence, in the form of black glazed red ware pottery, in a form that is traditionally associated with brewing and beer drinking.  This pottery is contemporary with The Theatre, likewise the pottery fragment with the bearded gentleman design mentioned in our first blog posting; he was found crushed into the theatre yard – home to the groundlings!  What would be more natural than to share a pint or two with ones friends when one comes to see a show. 

Photograph of brew house wall

We have now found the back wall of the medieval brew house building and on initial inspection it seems we now have hard evidence for its survival through the dissolution.  It seems that the later Tudor builders were not averse to a little recycling as demonstrated by the discovery of a remnant of an inserted stone floor made of a green sandstone called Reigate stone.  This was probably taken from one of the Priory buildings as they were being demolished. 

Dave Saxby cleaning the re-used stone floor

The photo of Dave shows him cleaning this re-used stone floor; the stone just below his left knee has a rounded moulding carved around its edge and an oval groove cut into one side.  These carved elements indicate that the stone was formerly used as a decorative architectural feature, probably the top of a small column or pair of columns.  The find resembles some of those found by Hana in the Holywell Priory church. 

Hana visits our site to see the Priory stonework

We are currently analysing the finds from this area and hope to update you as soon as we know if they back up our current ideas, or whether we will have to form an alternative hypothesis.  In this game you are only as good as your last hypothesis and if the evidence doesn’t support it, you have to re-don the thinking cap, formulate another and rigorously test it against new data.

O! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly…(Hamlet III. ii. 1)

As a part of the Tower Theatre Company’s fund raising campaign (http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm), last week the actors Paul McGann and Susannah Harker performed scenes from Midsummer Night Dream and Romeo and Juliet upon the very ground where four hundred years ago, the same words were enacted before an equally rapt audience.  

Suzannah Harker and Paul McGann on site

From historical records we know that Romeo and Juliet was premiered here at The Theatre and with James Burbage’s son Richard in the lead role.

There seems to be more than just a little serendipity surrounding this place and as archaeologists we feel a sense of privilege to be a part of this project that completes the circle from stage to stage.

Next time…

• Some of the characters who once populated this space
• Echoes in the landscape
• Exciting new developments, the latest finds and their implications

Links:

London Archaeologist: http://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/

Tower Theatre Company: http://www.towertheatre.org.uk/

Tower Theatre Company, the new theatre: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm

Footage of the 2009 evaluation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savcpQFVu8w

MOTCO UK directory and image database, antique maps, prints and books: http://www.motco.com/default-Markou.asp

Museum of London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/english

Museum of London Archaeology: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/

Ben Crystal: http://www.shakespeareontoast.com/

We began the day doing section drawings of trench two. This involved drawing the stratigraphic layers of a 2.5 metre section, and then the difficult task of creating a Harris Matrix of the section. This went well until it began to rain! Later in the day, we learned about environmental sampling, and how it can reveal even the tiniest of archaeological clues about diet and status. We then carried on digging in trench one, with an aim to reveal the boundaries of the construction cut and the walls of a Victorian coal basement. This continued until lunch time, at which point we travelled to the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC) which involved eating our lunch on the bus! We were given a very in-depth tour of the LAARC, viewing archaeological remains ranging from medieval human hair to Roman footwear. Afterwards, we viewed the Museum’s incredibly large and amazing Ceramics and Glass collection, including Samian ware and large marble busts.  We then headed back into the archive where we viewed the rather outdated packaging materials used to store finds in the 1970s, and the questionable labelling of some of these finds. We finished the day repackaging finds in order to create a more up-to date and effective archive.

Wendy and Russell