A little piece of green glazed pottery and a trip to the Museum Store
Finding a little piece of green glazed pottery on an archaeological site in or around the Scarborough area can create a little bit of excitement amongst diggers - usually followed by “Could it be Scarborough Ware?”
When SAHS puts on its Mini Digs activities for children, we hope we inject that same excitement, that little spark, whether they’re unearthing a sheep jawbone or a little piece of green glazed pottery. We always have some replica pots on hand to show what the little piece of pottery would have looked like in its entirety. Scarborough has a very rich heritage of medieval pottery production. However, with limited medieval materials on display in the Rotunda, the casual visitor wouldn’t know that.
Eager to discover hidden gems, myself and fellow enthusiast Jane arranged a visit to the Museum Stores in order to access some of the archaeological collection – particularly the medieval pottery of the 12th -14th centuries.
The collections are arranged loosely into broad chronological periods. One box at a time was pulled out. We were eager to see complete or nearly complete pots. However, in the end, boxes containing just fragments turned out to be equally interesting.
The first box, pulled out at random, contained a partly complete, green glazed medieval jug found at 35 Castlegate in 1991. When complete, this jug had what might be described as four pairs of stylised arms and hands, that protruded from the upper part of the body of the jug from below the rim. At first glance I thought it might be from one of the famous “Knight” jugs that Scarborough is known for. But there were no traces of knights nor horses.
Looking through all the pottery identification books I possess, I couldn’t find anything like it. Then just by chance, I was looking through An Introduction to Scarborough Ware and a Re-assessment of Knight Jugs - Peter G. Farmer, 1979, where on page 22 was a jug with similar ornamentation, found in Stamford.
Our next find was equally interesting. Glazed with a more olive-green glaze, it was decorated with applied strips, incised wavy lines with a tubular spout attached to the neck by a bridge (reconstructed)However, in the end what we found more intriguing was trying to decipher the faded antiquarian label attached to the neck. .We think it says: Old jug found… ?digging?… foundation… the Convent. This dates its discovery to the 1880’s when St Mary’s Convent School was built in Queen Street.
A third box contained a partly glazed jug with a rounded base. Quite often unglazed cooking pots for open fires had rounded base, but jugs with a rounded base was puzzling. Perhaps it was a result of a firing mishap in the kiln (it did have firing “blow-outs” too), so was this possibly a waster-a rejected pot?
Although it’s well documented that in the medieval period pots were stacked upside down in the kiln, it was interesting to see first-hand evidence of this on some of the jugs in the museum stores. As the photos clearly show, rim marks from one pot stuck to the base of
another. The photo also shows melted glaze that has run down from the body of one pot onto the base of another, sticking the two together. The potter must have had to sacrifice one pot when separating the two.
Finally, an intriguing discovery was made when examining a box containing fragments of an Anglo - Saxon funerary urn found in gravel pits at Wykeham in 1952. At first glance, the sherds were fairly unremarkable: dark brown and chunky with coarse grits, until it was noticed that the interiors of each sherd were inscribed with a letter ‘T’. According to archaeologist David Wilson (Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 1992), the runic spear symbol ᛏ (a symbol with magical /religious significance) appears on urns. Later Romanised to the letter T, it is associated with the god of battle, Tiw. Tuesday is named after Tiw.
We are thankful for the collections manager, Jim Middleton, for giving us access to the collections and can’t wait for the next visit!
Gillian Hodgson and Jane Peutrell - March 2025
Reference An Introduction to Scarborough Ware and a Re-Assessment of Knight Jugs Page 22