Exchanging Medieval Material Culture Studies on archaeology and ...

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George Haggarty & Derek Hall
3.6 Stirling: Castle/Palace (fig. 5)
Th is stove tile fragment (ID no.1748), comprising two conjoining
pieces, was recovered from excavations on the Lady’s
Lookout, immediately to the west of the Palace, constructed c.
1539-42. Both came from Trench 21, the fi rst from a midden
layer (context 21033, Phase 10), dated by clay pipes and other
fi nds to c. 1660/70. Th e second came from an overlying layer
(context 21019, Phase 11). Th e 17th-century midden also contained
huge amounts of domestic garbage, building materials
etc., apparently used as make up over the bedrock of the Lady’s
Lookout, and might relate to a major palace refurbishment.
Dated to the early/mid 16th century by David Gaimster it is
possible that it was part of the original Palace interior, c. 1540.
However, it could equally have come from any one of a number
of other buildings nearby, including the old Chapel, the King’s
Old Building, etc. It is interesting that Henry VIII had a stove
installed at Whitehall around the same time20.
Fig. 4 Fragment of a stove tile from Perth.
20 Gaimster & Nenk 1997. 21 Gaimster et al. 1990, 10.
4 Discussion and conclusions
Th e icp-ms chemical analysis on the stove tiles found in
Scotland (see Appendix) was carried out as part of a very large
research program, funded by Historic Scotland, on Scottish
medieval and later redware pottery. Th e results of the icp-ms
data show conclusively that none of the stove tile sherds recovered
from Scotland matches our local redwares. Th is is important,
as in some countries, local potters, lacking the necessary
skills to cut their own moulds, are known to have produced
stove tiles using traded moulds21. As part of our redware program
we have compared the results of the analysis of the
Scottish samples with icp-ms data from sherds from three kiln
sites in the Low Countries, Utrecht, Haarlem and Dordrecht
(see below). Th e authors hope that these initial results from
Scotland can be used in any similar future analysis of stove tiles
from other sites across Europe.
Acknowledgments
Our thanks to Dr. Nick Walsh at Royal Holloway who carried
out the icp-ms analysis and Dr. Simon Chenery at bgs for the
analysis of the results.
—
Fig. 5 Fragment of a stove tile from Stirling.