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The Typology of Early Medieval Shrines—A Previously Misidentified ‘Tomb-Shrine’ Panel from Winchester Cathedral

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

John Crook
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Summary

After a short, general review of medieval shrine types, a particular category is defined and examined: ‘tomb-shrines’: which were a form of shrine-base with round, window-like openings, constructed over the pre-existing grave of a saint. The archaeological and documentary evidence (including evidence from drawings and painted glass) for tomb-shrines is examined, and the few extant structures are described and discussed. In the light of these findings an important fragment of thirteenth-century Purbeck work from Winchester Cathedral is reassessed: it is argued that it derived from the tomb-of St Swithun. This stood on the site of the saint's original grave until the Reformation, and was a focus of veneration that was as important as the main reliquary behind the high altar within the cathedral itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 49 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1990

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References

Notes

1 Letter from Thomas Wriothesley to Thomas Cromwell, dated 21 September 1538, summarized in Gairdner, J. (ed.), Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (London, 1893), 13.ii, 155.Google Scholar

2 For a discussion of medieval attitudes to saintly relics, see Biddle, M., ‘Archaeology, architecture, and the cult of saints in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Butler, L. A. S. and Morris, R. K. (eds.) The Anglo-Saxon Church: Papers on History, Architecture and Archaeology in Honour of Dr H. M. Taylor, CBA Res. Rep. 60 (London, 1986), 1–3.Google Scholar

3 Glare, P. G. W. (ed.), Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1976).Google Scholar

4 However, in Lantfred's account of the hunchbacked cleric cured by St Swithun the term scrinium is used in the sense of a money-chest. Sauvage, E. P. (ed.), ‘Sancti Swithuni Wintoniensi episcopi Translatio et miracula auctore Lantfredo monacho Wintoniensi’, in Smedt, C. de, Hooff, G. van and Backer, J. de (eds.), Analecta Bollan-diana, iv (Paris, 1885), 367–410Google Scholar . A new critical edition of this text is in preparation; Lapidge, M., The Cult of St Swithun (Winchester Studies, 4.U, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

5 Notably by Wilson, Christopher, The Shrines of St William of York (Yorkshire Museum, 1977)Google Scholar , and Coldstream, Nicola, ‘English Decorated shrine bases’, J. Brit. Archaeol. Ass., 129 (1976), 15–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar . The overview by Wall, J. C. (Shrines of British Saints (London, 1905)Google Scholar ) is anecdotal and makes no attempt at distinguishing between types of shrines. Another promising title, Sox, D., Relics and Shrines (London, 1985)Google Scholar , is an assessment of holy places and relics (such as the Turin shroud) but scarcely mentions shrines in the sense used in the present paper.

6 Wilson, , op. cit. (note 5), 5 and 22 (note 8).Google Scholar

7 Wilson, D. M., The Bayeux Tapestry (London, 1985), pls. 25-6Google Scholar ; discussion, 180 and 218. A base similar to the solid altar-like structure is depicted in University College Oxford MS CXLV, reproduced in Fowler, J.T., ‘On the St Cuthber t window in York Minster’, Yorkshire Archaeol. Topogr. J., 4 (1877), 341Google Scholar.

8 Though the inscription on the tapestry clearly states that the oath took place at Bayeux, William of Poitiers places this event at Bonneville-sur-Touques ( Giles, I. A. (ed.), Scriptores Rerum Gestarum Willeltni Conquestoris, Caxton Society, 3 (London, 1845), 108)Google Scholar.

9 Wilson, D. M., op. cit. (note 7), 218 concursGoogle Scholar : ‘The reliquaries on which Harold swears his oath can hardly be regarded as accurate renderings of the actual shrines available at Bayeux.’ On the question of workmanship, Professor Dodwell, Christopher comments, ‘… we can feel certain that the tapestry was made by Anglo-Saxon embroideresses.’ (English Romanesque Art 1066-1200 (Catalogue, Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1984), 391)Google Scholar.

10 Braun, J., Der Christliche Altar, 2 vols. (Munich, 1924), 125–244Google Scholar . Braun, comments that ‘Tischaltäre mit mehr als fünfstützen gibt es aus dem ersten Jahrtausend nicht.’Google Scholar

11 Fowler, J. T. (ed.), The Rites of Durham (Surtees Society, 107, 1903), 44, 103–4.Google Scholar

12 Wilson, Christopher (op. cit. (note 5), 23, n. 10) suggests that a shrine of the ‘table’ type seems to be described by Ælred of Rievaulx in his account of the saints of Hexham (Google ScholarRaine, J. (ed.), The Priory of Hexham (Surtees Society, 44, 1864), 1,200)Google Scholar : ‘Erec-taque secus altare tabula, tribus innexa columpnis, sculpturis et picturis decentissime variata, statuerunt in medio scrinio maius, quod quatuo r episcoporumsacrapignoracontinebat…’

13 The translation is recorded in Bollandus, J.et al. (eds.), Acta Sanctorum: Martii (Paris, 1865), III, 141Google Scholar : ‘Loculus incorrupti corporis sublimius post altare elevandus erat super lapidem, quern gratia tanti oneris sustentandi diligenter manu artificium praeparatum, novem pro sui magnitudine altius a terra sustinerat columnae.’ The later high shrine is described in the Rites of Durham ( Fowler, J. T. (ed.) op. cit. (note 11) 3–4Google Scholar ), as ‘the goodly monument of Saint Cuthbert … having four seates or places convenient under the shrine for the pilgrims or laymen [lame men] sittinge on theire knees to leane and rest on …’

14 Riley, H. T. (ed.), Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani (Rolls Series, 28, 1867), 1, 189. ‘… et loco suo eminentiori, scilicet, supra maius altare, contra frontem celebrantis allocavit [Abbatus Simon], ut in facie et in corde habeat quilibet celebrans Missam super idem altare Martyris memoriam…Google Scholar‘The slab with foliate cresting forming the top of the reconstructed shrine is thought to derive from the twelfth-century shrine built by Abbot Simon. J. T. Micklethwaite (The shrine of St Alban’, Archaeol. J. 31 (1872), 204Google Scholar ) noted that ‘this top-most member is not part of the recent find, but has been lying in the church for some years, and is said at one time to have formed part of the pavement.’

15 MS Trinity College Dublin, E.i.40, published by Lowe, W.R.L. and Jacob, E. F. (eds.), Illustrations to the Life of St Alban (with nous by M.R. James) (Oxford, 1924), 50 (fol. 61)Google Scholar . M. R. James comments (p. 35), ‘It is probable enoug h that the form of the shrine in this picture was copied from the actual shrine in the Abbey church …’

16 O'Neilly, J. G. and Tanner, L. E., ‘The shrine of St Edward the Confessor’, Archaeologia 100 (1966), 129–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar . The name ‘Odericus’ was inscribed on the pavement in 1268, and the name ‘Petrus Romanus’ (taken by these authors to have been his son) was formerly visible in an inscription set on the actual shrine-base two years later (ibid., 146 ; Pevsner, N. and Metcalf, P., The Cathedrals of England: Southern England (Harmondsworth, 1985), 178Google Scholar ).

17 Luard, H. R. (ed.), Annales Monastici ivGoogle Scholar , ‘The Chronicle of Thomas Wykes’ (Rolls Series, 36, 1869), 226Google Scholar : ‘Dominus Rex Anglorum Henricus piae devotionis instinctu, non patiens ulterius venerabiles reliquia s beatissimi regis Edwardi Confessoris … locello quoda m humili recubare, ut lucerna tam fulgida diutiu s tecta sub modio lateret, sed ut Celsius erecta super candelabrum ingredientibus et egredientibus spiritale lumen copiosus erogaret…’

18 , St Edmund's shrine is finely illustrated in Lydgate's metrical ‘Life of St Edmund’, (BL, MS Harley 2278), discussed inGoogle ScholarColdstream, , op cit. (note 5), 25Google Scholar.

19 Wilson, , op. cit. (note 5), 19.Google Scholar

20 An analysis of the translation of St Swithun's remains in 1476 will be published in Crook, J., ‘The architectural background of the cult of St Swithun in Winchester Cathedral, 1093-1538’ in Biddle, M. and Kjølbye-Biddle, B., The Anglo-Saxon Minsters of Winchester (Winchester Studies 4.1, forthcoming).Google Scholar

21 Blair, J., ‘St Frideswide's monastery: problems and possibilities’, Oxoniensia 53 (1988), 251Google Scholar . The feretrum may have been started as early as 1269, but the translation took place in 1289.

22 Coldstream, , op. cit. (note 5), p18Google Scholar , citing Morris, R. K., ‘The remodelling of the Hereford aisles’, J. Brit. Archaeol. Ass. 37 (1974), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Coldstream, , op. cit. (note 5), 19Google Scholar , citing Stone, L., Sculpture in Britain: The Middle Ages, 2nd edn. (Harmondsworth, 1972), 134, pl. 110Google Scholar ; Lamborn, E. A. Greening, ‘The shrine of St Edburga’, Oxford Archaeol. Soc. Rep. 80 (1934), 19Google Scholar.

24 Coldstream, N., ‘Base of the shrine of St Werburgh, Chester Cathedral’, in Alexander, J. and Binski, P. (eds.), Age of Chivalry. Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 (London, 1987), 208.Google Scholar

25 Previous researchers have followed medieval Latin practice in referring to tomb-shrines simply as ‘tombs’, as in several examples cited in this paper.

26 This part of our research took place within the context of the Gresham Jerusalem Project; an archaeological survey of the Holy Sepulchre (1989-90).

27 Quoted in English translation in Wilkinson, John, Jerusalem Pilgrimage, 1099-1185 (Hakluyt Society, London, 1988), 128.Google Scholar

28 If the panel is pre-Crusader, it must have been a feature introduced by the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Monomachos when the Edicule containing the tomb of Christ was rebuilt 1023-48 following its destruction by the mad Fatimid Caliph Hakim in 1009. All earlier descriptions of the tomb indicate that the bare rock was still visible: in around 685, for example, Arculf, Bishop of Gaul, told Adamnan (or Adomnan), Bishop of Iona, that ‘to this day there is not a trace of ornament inside this small building forming the Lord's Tomb, and over its whole surface where it has been hollowed out you can see the marks of tools which the masons and stoneworkers use d when they formed it’ (quoted in Wilkinson, J., Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), 96Google Scholar ). Two hundred years later, c. 870-7, Photius described the rock shelf and made no mention of the marble facing in his account of ‘the additions made for the sake of decoration-or rather, piety’ (ibid., 146) . Wilkinson, John (op. cit. (note 27), 9)Google Scholar does not rule out the possibility that the tomb had been altered between 1099 and Abbot Daniel's visit. For Willis, Robert (The Architectural History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (London, 1849), 55) it was ‘impossible to say whether the Crusaders were the first so to fit up its interior with a marble lining’. It should be noted tha t Willis believed Abbot Daniel's pilgrimage to have taken place in 1125. The similar slab over the rock-shelf at the Tomb of the Virgin (see below) is undoubtedly of twelfth-century date; so possibly the covering of both monuments should be attributed to the CrusadersGoogle Scholar.

29 Koninklijke Bibliotheek MS 76 F 5, fol. 1, reproduced in Nebenzahl, K., Maps of the Bible Lands (London, 1986), 11Google Scholar.

30 Wilkinson, , op. cit. (note 27), 279Google Scholar . The slab with three holes was also noted by Willibrandus ab Oldenburgh in 1211, Symeon Symeonis in 1322 and Rudolph von Suchem in 1336 ( Willis, , op. cit. (note 28), 54–5, notes 2 and 3)Google Scholar.

31 Bagatti, P. B. (ed.), Fra Niccolò da Poggibonsi: Il Libro d'Oltramare, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 2 (Jerusalem, 1945), 18Google Scholar : ‘… dinanzi da quelle tavole del marmo delle sepolchro, si a tre finestre tonde, per le quali puoi meglio vedere lo santo sepulchro che da niuna parte toccare non puoi.’

32 Brother Felix might have been misled by th e marks of the first-century masons ‘tools, mentioned by Arculf (note 28, above). Quoted by Willis, Robert, op. cit. (note 28), 58–9, who erroneously refers to Brother Felix as ‘Felix Fabri’, an error perpetuated by subsequent scholars. The title of the account by Faber (alias Schmidt) is Evagatorium Fratris Felicis Faber, in which the author's name appears in the genitive. I am indebted to Dr Greville Freeman-Grenville for pointing this outGoogle Scholar.

33 Willis, , op. cit. (note 28), 64.Google Scholar

34 Bagatti, , op. cit. (note 31), 51Google Scholar : ‘Dinanzi alia sepoltura si a tre buche intagliate, tonde, donde si puote toccare la sepoltura propria …’

35 Bagatti, B., Piccirillo, M. and Prodomo, A., New Discoveries at the Tomb of Virgin Mary in Gethsemane, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 17 (Jerusalem, 1975), 42–3Google Scholar . Another, post-medieval, Jerusalem example of a three-holed formula is the shrine of St James the Great in th e Armenian cathedral dedicated to that saint.

36 Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (eds.), Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (London, 1969), 346.Google Scholar

37 Sauvage, , op. cit. (note 4), 383Google Scholar . Lantfred employs the term in its primary sense of a ‘hut’ in the account of the miraculous cure of the hunchbacked cleri c (ibid., 379). But in an ecclesiastical context the word could be used to indicate a small structure built over a tomb: two ninth-century copies of the plans of the Holy Sepulchre give n to Adamnan by Arculf call the edicule containing the Tomb of Christ a tugurium rotundum (reproduced in Wilkinson, , op. cit. (note 28), facing 196Google Scholar ; and in Nebenzahl, , op. cit. (note 29), 9 (fig. 2))Google Scholar.

38 Campbell, A. (ed.), Frithegodi monachi breviloquium vitae beati Wilfredi et Wulfstani Cantoris narratio metrica de Sancto Swithuno (Zurich 1950, Thesaurus Mundi), 94 (1.254)Google Scholar . The word sacellum denotes a small shrine or chapel in classical Latin; and Wulfstan's use in conjunction with the medieval adjective tumularis seems a suitable Latin version of our term ‘tomb-shrine’.

39 Sauvage, , op. cit. (note 4), 379Google Scholar ; Campbell, , op. cit. (note 38), 88 (lines 57-8), 90-1 (lines 128-33)Google Scholar.

40 Kjølbye-Biddle, Birthe, pers. comm.Google Scholar

41 The domuncula east of the [high] altar at Pe'ronne (Somme), France, into which the body of the Irish monk St Fursey was translated in the mid-seventh century may have been of this type: it could, however, have been merely a gabled sarcophagus standing on the pavement of the church, as in the other examples discussed by Radford, C. A. Ralegh in ‘Two Scottish shrines: Jedburg h and St Andrews’, Archaeol. J. 112 (1955), 55–7.Google Scholar

42 Robertson, J. C. (ed.), Materials for the History of Thomas Becket (Rolls Series, 67, 1876), 11, 81.Google Scholar

43 The Trinity Chapel windows date from the period 1213-20. Wilson, Christopher (op. cit. (note 5), 23, n. 13)Google Scholar comments with reference to the portrayal of these windows of the high shrine of 1220 that it ‘proves no more than that the glaziers were familiar with the established pattern for shrines’. This may well be true, but the depiction of th e tomb-shrine, in existence when the glass was made, seems accurate.

44 Robertson, , op. cit. (note 42), 11, 82.Google Scholar

45 Cambridge University Library MS Ee.iii.59. This text was published (with English translation) by Luard, H. R. (ed.), Lives of Edward the Confessor (Rolls Series, 3, 1858)Google Scholar, and in facsimile by James, M. R. (ed.), La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei (Roxburghe Club, Oxford, 1920)Google Scholar . Two of the drawings depicting miracles at the tomb-shrine are illustrated and discussed by Morgan, Nigel in Alexander, and Binski, , op. cit. (note 24), 216–17Google Scholar . Authorities concur that the MS should be attributed to Matthew Paris, though not actually executed by him (e.g. James, , op. cit., 17)Google Scholar . Discussing the much published drawing showing the actual burial (MS p. 54; Alexander, and Binski, , op. cit., 217 (Item 39))Google Scholar . Rickert, Margaret (Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1954), 120)Google Scholar suggests that it was done by an assistant to Matthew Paris, and that it was ‘inspired by Paris's style if not copied from his ow n drawings’. James, M. R. (op. cit., 17)Google Scholar suggests that ‘the MS was made for presentation to Henry III's queen, Eleanor of Provence, soon after the time (1241) when Henry III had made a new and splendid shrin e [i.e. reliquary] for the relics ‘. In the right-hand half of the final illustration (MS, p. 65) Henry appears to be shown kissing the breast of the saint, who is being placed into the new shrine: because this event postdates the subject matter of the text, the illustration has no rubric.

46 Luard, , op. cit. (note 17), 226.Google Scholar

47 Thomas Wykes ( Luard, , op. cit. (note 17, 226) mentions that the relics were first placed in scrinio minus pretioso, the predecessor of the 1269 shrine.Google Scholar

48 Luard, H. R. (ed.), Matthaei Parisiensis Chronica Maiora (Rolls Series, 57, 1880), v, 608.Google Scholar

49 Examination of the lozenge-shaped holes in the end panels of the St Albans shrin e suggests tha t these openings may be an early modification of the original design.

50 L. E. Tanner (in O'Neilly, and Tanner, , op. cit. (note 16), 129Google Scholar ) suggests that the marble shrine-base survived because of its royal associations: ‘St Edward, as Henry [VIII ] was well aware, had been also a greatly venerated king of England, Westminster was peculiarly a royal church, and he may well have hesitated to desecrate the bones of the royal saint’. In the event the shrine was dismantled, but could easily be reassembled and ‘sett up’ again in 1557 by the restored Abbot Feckenham.

51 For Wilson, Christopher (op. cit. (note 5), 23 (n. 13)) tomb-shrines were ‘a simpler type, which seem to have been used for lesser or temporary shrines’: a view that is surely inconsistent with our contention that the tombs of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, Edward the Confessor and Thomas Becket were at one time of this sort. The ‘lesser shrines’ had a better chance of survival, for the reasons stated.Google Scholar

52 Other photographs, showing the tomb-shrine before the removal of a post-medieval protective grille, are found in the National Monuments Record, London.

53 Parallels to this structure are the tomb of Archbishop Meopham in Canterbury Cathedral, and the tomb of St Stephen in the church at Aubazine (Correze), France.

54 The iron stumps are of too small a section to have formed part of a metal canopy, and the way in which they are arranged dismisses this possibility.

55 Illustrated in Royal Commission on Historical Monuments Inventory, Dorset, 1 (West Dorset ) (London, 1952)Google Scholar pl. 210, and dated to the thirteenth century (ibid., 263). It is more fully described in Prideaux, E. K., ‘Illustrated note s on the Church of St Candida and Holy Cross at Whitchurch Canoni-corum, Dorset’, Archaeol. J. 64(1907), 137–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar . The tomb was opened in 1900, as described by the incumbent, the Revd Druitt, C. in the Salisbury Diocesan Gazette, September 1900, 183–6Google Scholar ; and in his communication published in Proc. Soc. Antiq. London, 2nd ser., 18 (1899-1901), 190Google Scholar.

56 Wall, , op. cit. (note 5), 93Google Scholar ; Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments and Constructions in Wales and Monmouthshire Inventory VII (County of Pembroke) (London, 1925), fig. 291 (facing p. 347)Google Scholar . But St John Hop e disagreed with the identification of this structure as the shrine of 1275: ‘I do not think that it is the shrine base at all, but an Easter Sepulchre’ ( Hope, W. St John, ‘Notes on Shrines’, Canterbury Cathedral Chapter Library, MS Add. 83, file23)Google Scholar.

57 As noted also by Druitt, , op. cit. (note 55), 184.Google Scholar

58 Couteur, J. D. Le and Carter, J. H. M., ‘Notes on the Shrine of St Swithun formerly in Winchester Cathedral’, Antiq. J. 4 (1924), 360–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

59 The other elements were: (i) A sexfoil panel (discussed later in this paper), (ii) Two capitals (one complete and one fragmentary) from the corner of a structure. These were recessed to accommodate cable-moulded shafts, (iii) Five pieces of four-stranded cable-shaft fitting the complete capital. (iv) Two pieces of three-stranded cable-shaft, (v) A sculptured head, erroneously included as it derived in fact from a thirteenth-century screen, discussed in Tudor-Craig, P. and Keen, L., ‘A recently discovered Purbeck marble sculptured screen of the thirteenth century and the Shrine of St Swithun’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Winchester Cathedral, Brit. Archaeol. Ass. Conference Transactions, 6 (1983), 63–72Google Scholar ; and in Crook, J., ‘The thirteenth-century shrine and screen of St Swithun at Winchester’, J. Brit. Archaeol. Ass. 138 (1985), 125–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 In 1644 this monument was located in the Lady chapel, where it was described by the Royalist officer, Richard Symonds ( Stroud, D., ‘The cult and tombs of St Osmund at Salisbury’, Wiltshire Archaeol. Natur. Hist. Mag. 78 (1984), 54Google Scholar ). It was moved to its present position by Wyatt in 1789-92 (ibid., 54). There are few datable features. For Pevsner ( Pevsner, N. and Metcalf, P., The Cathedrals of England (London, 1985), 283) the monument is certainly ‘part of the shrine, probably C13 ‘. Although Osmund had been regarded as a saint since his death in 1099 he was not canonized until 1457Google Scholar.

61 Couteur, Le and Carter, , op. cit. (note 58), 361. The panel is visible in a postcard of the crypt dating from the early year s of this century.Google Scholar

62 Dr John Blair has kindly pointed out to me that St Frideswide's shrine in Oxford has a canopy in yellow-grey freshwater limestone but shafts, bases and plinth in Purbeck marble.

63 ‘FeretrumSanctiSwythunifraction est flabello de turri cadente’. Luard, H. R. (ed.), Annales Monastici 11, Winchester and Waverley (Rolls Series, 36, 1865), 88Google Scholar . It should be noted that the object damaged was a reliquary: the passage cannot therefore be taken as evidenc e for the existence of a ‘high shrine’ at this date.

64 Couteur, Le and Carter, , op. cit. (note 58), 370. Clapham's dating of the whole shrine was based on the corner capitals, which he thought later than the mid-century.Google Scholar

65 , Tudor-Craig and Keen, , op. cit. (note 59). 70–1.Google Scholar

66 Stratford, N., Tudor-Craig, P. and Muthesius, A. M., ‘Archbishop Walter's tomb and its furnishings’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Canterbury before 1220, Brit. Archaeol. Ass. Transactions, 5 (1982), 75.Google Scholar

67 The architectural development of this area is discussed in Crook, J., op. cit. (note 20)Google Scholar , forthcoming. The Feretory was described c. 1858 as ‘a place for the deposit of fragments of sculpture … which are the wreck of the iconoclasm at the Reformation’ ( Woodward, B. B., A History and Description of Winchester (Winchester, 1858), 62)Google Scholar . But Robert Willis did not comment on the fragments fifteen years earlier ( Willis, R., ‘The Architectural History of Winchester Cathedral’, Proceedings of the Royal Archaeological Institute. Winchester 1845 (London, 1846))Google Scholar.

68 Winchester City Museums, ref. PWCM 11500.

69 A number of boundary walls were demolished in 1842 and 1856. See Crook, J., ‘The “Gumble Affair” and the house of Thomas Ken’, Winchester Cathedral Record 52 (1983), 14–15Google Scholar ; Crook, J. (ed.), The Wainscot Book of Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire Record Series, 6 (Hampshire County Council, 1984), 33, 107Google Scholar.

70 Kitchin, G. W., letter, The Hampshire Chronicle, 2 January 1886, 3Google Scholar , quoted in full in Collier, Canon, ‘Report on the recent discoveries at Winchester Cathedral’, J. Brit. Archaeol. Ass. 42 (1886), 302Google Scholar . Another account of the discoveries is given in ‘Interesting Discoveries’, The Hampshire Chronicle, 2 January 1886, 5Google Scholar . As well as the ‘canopy work’ and the quatrefoil base fragments, the discoveries included ‘fragments of singularly twisted columns of Purbeck stone’ (the cable-shafts of the Le Couteur and Carter reconstruction), the well known head of a pope (or ‘God the Father’), variou s small sculpture d heads and hands, several small bodies of saints, and part of a statue of St Dorothy.

71 Apart from small reliquaries, described in an inventory taken on the eve of the Reformation as being in the sacristy (BL M S Harley 358, fol. 17v).

72 Wharton, H. (ed.), Anglia Sacra sive Collectio Historiarum, 2 vols. (London, 1691), I, 223.Google Scholar

73 Luard, , op. cit. (note 63), 16.Google Scholar

74 Ibid., 54.

75 BL, MS Cotton. Vespasian D.IX, fol. 24. This is a sixteenth-century copy (datable to 1538-48) of the ‘Book of the Foundation’ of c. 1430: a much-copied Winchester chronicle which Willis, (op. cit. (note 67), 1–2)Google Scholar ascribed to th e sixteenth-century monk ‘John of Exeter’. The oldest surviving manuscript of this text appears to be the damaged BL MS Galba A.XV.

76 Atkinson, T. D., ‘Notes on Shrines’, unpublished MSS, Society of Antiquaries of London, MS 783, binder V.Google Scholar

77 St Birinus was commemorated by a shrine at Dorchester-on-Thames, seat of the West Saxon diocese before it was moved to Winchester in the 680s. The relics (disputed with Old Minster) were translated in 1225, and a splendid new shrine was built in 1320. Lobel, M. (ed.), A History of the County of OxfordGoogle Scholar ( Pugh, R. B. (general ed.), The Victoria History of the Counties of England (London, 1962), VII, 60Google Scholar.

78 Luard, , op. cit. (note 63), 44.Google Scholar

79 Draper, P., in ‘The Retrochoir of Winchester Cathedral’, Architect. Hist. 21 (1978), 13, is cautious, stating that ‘it is probable that at one time [the shrine of St Swithun] was placed in the centre of the retrochoir’.Google Scholar

80 Crook, , op. cit. (note 20), forthcoming.Google Scholar

81 The closest parallel is at Durham Cathedral, where the shrine of St Cuthbert was also located on a platform in the apse, east of the high altar. The platform survived the remodelling of the east end and rises well above the pavement level of the Chapel of the Nine Altars.

82 The earliest secure reference to the name ‘The Holy Hole’ occurs in the ‘Book of the Foundation’ (see above, note 75).

83 Wilson, , op. cit. (note 5), passim.Google Scholar

84 Biddle, M., ‘Excavations at Winchester 1966: fifth interim report’, Antiq. J. 47 (1967), 267–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; and, especially, idem ‘Excavations at Winchester 1967: sixth interim report’, Antiq. J. 48 (1968), 278-9, and Biddle, M. and Kjølbye-Biddle, B.op. cit. (note 20), forthcomingGoogle Scholar . The evidence for the latest ‘monument’, now dated to the mid-thirteenth century ( Kjølbye-Biddle, Birthe, pers. comm.)Google Scholar , is described in the following terms: ‘A few fragments of mortar bedding showed the imprint of stones from some rectangular structure which had preserved the exact position and alignment of the earlier monuments and the long-vanished tomb. It is difficult to say what form this structure may have taken, although something like a standing tomb seems likely’. The ‘rectangular structure’ survived the remodelling of the chapel in the fourteenth century and was ‘probably demolished at the reformation’ (M. Biddle, , ‘Excavations at Winchester 1967, sixth interim report’, Antiq. J. 48 (1968), 279)Google Scholar.