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Anglo-Saxon Studies
in Archaeology and History
15
Edited by
Sally Crawford and Helena Hamerow
Oxford University School of Archaeology
Published by the Oxford University School of Archaeology
Institute of Archaeology
Beaumont Street
Oxford
Distributed by
Oxbow Books
10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford, OX1 2EW, UK
Tel: 01865 241249 Fax: 01865 794449
Distributed in North America by
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www.oxbowbooks.com
© Oxford University School of Archaeology and individual authors, 2008
ISBN 978 1 905905 10 2
ISSN 0264 5254
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover image: Belt buckle from Updown, Eastry, Kent. Courtesy of Martin Welch.
Typeset by Oxbow Books
Printed in Great Britain by
The Short Run Press, Exeter
Foreword
Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History is an annual series concerned with the archaeology and
history of England and its neighbours during the Anglo-Saxon period.
ASSAH offers researchers an opportunity to publish new work in an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary forum which allows for a diversity of approaches and subject matter. Contributions which place
Anglo-Saxon England in its international context are as warmly welcomed as those which focus on England
itself.
Papers submitted to ASSAH must be comprehensible to non-specialist readers. They must, furthermore,
conform to the journal’s house style. A copy of the style-sheet is available on-line, at: http://web.arch.ox.ac.
uk/assah. A hard copy can be obtained from the Editors. All papers are peer-reviewed.
The Editors are grateful to the contributors to this volume for their prompt and eficient responses, and to
those peer reviewers who have taken the time to read and comment upon the papers in this volume. Thanks
also go to the Marc Fitch Fund and to SLR Consulting for generous subventions towards the costs of the
publication of this volume of ASSAH.
All papers for consideration for future volumes should be sent to the Editors:
Dr. Helena Hamerow and Dr. Sally Crawford
(Helena.hamerow@arch.ox.ac.uk, Sally.crawford@arch.ox.ac.uk)
ASSAH Series Editors
Institute of Archaeology
34–6 Beaumont Street
Oxford
OX1 2PG
Contents
List of Contributors
Martin Welch
Report on Excavations of the Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Updown, Eastry, Kent
vii
1
Laurence Hayes and Timothy Malim
The Date and Nature of Wat’s Dyke: a Reassessment in the Light of Recent
Investigations at Gobowen, Shropshire
147
Steven Bassett
The Middle and Late Anglo-Saxon Defences of Western Mercian Towns
180
Simon Draper
The Signiicance of Old English Burh in Anglo-Saxon England
240
Jane Kershaw
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England:
Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
254
D. M. Hadley
Warriors, Heroes and Companions: Negotiating Masculinity in Viking-Age England
270
Contributors
Steven Bassett
Department of Medieval History, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT
Simon Draper
The Victoria County History for Gloucestershire, Gloucestershire Archives, Clarence Row, Alvin Street,
Gloucester GL1 3DW
Dawn Hadley
Department of Archaeology and Prehistory, University of Shefield, Northgate House, West Street,
Shefield S1 4ET
Laurence Hayes
SLR Consulting, Mytton Mill, Forton Heath, Montford Bridge, Shrewsbury SY4 1HA
Jane Kershaw
Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 34–36 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2PG
Timothy Malim
SLR Consulting, Mytton Mill, Forton Heath, Montford Bridge, Shrewsbury SY4 1HA
Martin Welch
Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY
Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 15, 2008
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style
in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds
from the Danelaw
Jane F. Kershaw
The ‘Winchester’ style captures the foliate and zoomorphic motifs characteristic of English art from the mid-tenth to
eleventh centuries. Traditionally, the style has been seen as a southern English phenomenon, closely tied to the reformed
monastic communities in which it was thought the style originated. New inds of metalwork, largely recovered through
metal-detecting, encourage a re-evaluation of the style’s distribution and signiicance. Discoveries of strap-ends and
other dress items in the ‘Winchester’ style show that the style permeated much further north and east than was thought.
These items demonstrate that the style was applied to an array of secular artefacts, of varying quality. This paper outlines
the appearance of the style on common dress items and ittings, revealing the widespread distribution of ‘Winchester’
style metalwork within the Danelaw. It presents evidence for the production of the style within the Scandinavian area
of settlement and relates its appearance and use to broader questions of social and cultural identity.
Introduction
The ‘Winchester’ style refers to the art produced under
the inluence of monastic reform in Anglo-Saxon England
from the mid-tenth to eleventh centuries. Although chiely
used to describe a distinct type of illuminated manuscript,
the term can also refer to ornamentation adorning
contemporary stone and ivory carvings and metalwork.
Traditionally, the Winchester style has been viewed as a
southern English phenomenon, predominantly produced
within an ecclesiastical milieu. It is the argument of this
paper that new inds of metalwork, uncovered through
recent excavation and metal-detecting and recorded by
the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), signiicantly
alter this picture. It is now apparent that the Winchester
school crossed the Danelaw boundary and appeared
on secular dress accessories, most notably strap-ends.
This has implications for our understanding of both
the Winchester style and its context and distribution,
and social and cultural interaction within the Danelaw.
In particular, a study of Winchester-style metalwork
contributes to the increasing scholarly interest in how
the form, decoration and distribution of material culture
was used by inhabitants of the Danelaw to construct and
express social identity.1
Traditional Approaches to the Winchester
Style
Illuminated manuscripts in the Winchester style are
distinguished by a number of stylistic and technical
features, many, but not all, of which derive from Continental
traditions. Most recognizable is the appearance of heavy
borders illed with lorid Carolingian-derived acanthus
leaves, which frame expertly drawn, colourful igures.2 The
igures themselves are also Continental in origin, inspired
by models from Rheims and Metz, with luttering drapery
and occasionally enlarged hands.3 Outline drawing is a
further feature of this school, alongside elaborate initials
decorated with foliage, interlacing stems and biting animal
heads, a motif familiar in Anglo-Saxon art of the ninth
century.4 Classic Winchester-style ornamentation is seen
in a number of tenth-century manuscripts, but it is in the
Benedictional of St Æthelwold, produced in Winchester
itself around 971–984, with its acanthus-illed gold bar
frames and vividly coloured igures, that the culmination
of the style is best seen.5
There has been some debate about whether the term
‘Winchester School’ is a misnomer for a style with a
much broader southern inspiration and spread. This
is particularly the case concerning the provenance of
Winchester-decorated manuscripts, which have been
linked to monastic houses in the south, south-west and
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
east of England, including Canterbury, Ely, Bury St
Edmunds and Glastonbury.6 More recently the provenance
of other media in the style has also come under scrutiny,
particularly by Hinton, who has called into doubt evidence
that has traditionally ascribed textiles, paintings and
metalwork to the monastic see.7 Few scholars, however,
including Hinton, deny the overall inluence of Winchester
on artistic developments in tenth- and eleventh-century
English art and many have conirmed the West Saxon
capital as the true home and focal point of the style.8
Winchester-style ornamentation has been identiied not
just on illuminated manuscripts but on a wide variety of
other media, some of which is only gradually coming to
light. Zarnecki has drawn attention to the acanthus motifs
typical of the School used to decorate church capitals
and bases, as in the chancel arch of St Mary’s Church in
Bibury, Gloucestershire, highlighting rare examples of
manuscript-inspired stone carving.9 Figural carvings in
ivory have received the most scholarly attention. As early
as 1924, Brøndsted recognized an early eleventh-century
walrus crozier handle found at Alcester, Warwickshire, as
displaying relief-carved acanthus leaf and animal igures
characteristic of the School.10 A number of miniature
walrus ivory carvings have also been demonstrated to
be in the Winchester style.11 Perhaps the most famous of
these, a triangular panel depicting two addorsed angels
with enlarged hands and luttering drapery, has igures
which are closely paralleled in the Charter of the New
Minster, from Winchester.12
From this brief description of some of the more
traditional objects displaying Winchester ornamentation, it
is clear that they share two of the key characteristics of the
illuminated manuscripts: they have a southern distribution,
arguably relecting a Winchester focus, and come from
a predominantly ecclesiastical milieu, hardly surprising
since the art was intimately associated with Benedictineinspired monastic reform. The southern provenance of
the Winchester style and its role in bringing a new spirit
to English monasticism has, on the whole, set the tone
for scholars’ understanding and interpretation of the art
form. It is this understanding which, I argue, needs to be
revised in light of recent inds of metalwork.
In contrast to the distinctive igural styles of the
ivories and manuscripts, metalwork in the Winchester
style is principally identiied through the display of
Carolingian-derived foliage, which, on more elaborate
examples, is inhabited with confronted pairs of naturalistic
birds or quadrupeds.13 The repertoire of Winchesterstyle metalwork can encompass a variety of motifs, but
characteristic of the School is symmetrically-arranged
foliage executed in openwork and high relief with
open, bifurcating tendrils ending in lobed volutes and
a central stem which springs from an inverse animal
mask.14 Inhabited foliage motifs contain animals or birds
with long necks, backward-turned heads and biting or
gaping jaws.15 Recent inds of metalwork of Carolingian
date from Germany suggest that the treatment of these
255
motifs, including the inhabited vine scroll and bird
motifs, may have developed from Continental rather
than Insular sources and irmly root the cultural origins
of the Winchester style, as it appeared on metalwork, in
Carolingian traditions.16
Metal objects in the Winchester style have yet to
receive the attention commanded by manuscripts and
ivories. Indeed, twenty years ago, the tenth and eleventh
centuries were thought to represent a ‘massive lacunae’
in surviving metalwork.17 Before the advent of metaldetecting, metalwork that had survived in England
had come predominantly from urban or church-based
excavations, and had been overwhelmingly ecclesiastical
in nature. In 1964, David Wilson was able to identify
only a handful of metal objects that displayed acanthus
motifs in the late tenth-century Winchester style, most of
which were liturgical items with a Continental provenance.
Among these items were mounts from a crozier at Cologne
Cathedral, with classic Carolingian-derived foliates, and
the frame of a portable alter, now in the Musée de Cluny,
with igures close in style to the igures of St Peter and
St Michael in the New Minster Liber Vitae, produced at
Winchester around 1031.18 A cruet, or small jug, with
panels depicting pairs of birds with biting, upward-turned
beaks, irst discussed by Kendrick, and three copper-alloy
censer covers, now in the British Museum, were also
included in Wilson’s small corpus.19
Examples of secular metalwork in the Winchester
style have, until recently, been much rarer. A small
group of secular, utilitarian items with Winchester-style
ornamentation was identiied by Kendrick over sixty
years ago. Three strap-ends and a mount shared common
decorative motifs typical of the style which, Kendrick
argued, irmly placed them in a tenth-century tradition. 20
Other objects now assigned to the Winchester style include
a small number of artefacts which are entirely without
zoomorphic elements, but which retain the typical acanthus
design. A strap-end from a burial at Bowcombe Down on
the Isle of White, originally identiied erroneously as a
late-Roman artefact, belongs to this category, as does
a quadrangular bronze mount from Southampton.21 A
copper-alloy strap-end displaying uninhabited foliage from
Meols in Cheshire offers a further antiquarian example
of this category.22
More recent inds from excavations have slightly
expanded this small catalogue. An oval copper-alloy
mount recovered from Shakenoak villa in Oxfordshire,
originally published as Romano-British, is now thought
to date to the tenth or eleventh century on account of its
symmetrically-placed bipeds and foliage.23 An elaborate
series of relief-decorated strap-ends with Winchesterstyle decoration have been uncovered from the extensive
excavations at Winchester itself.24 These strap-ends display
both inhabited and uninhabited foliage but among the
group is an item from a mid-tenth century grave believed
to be the inest example of all strap-ends decorated in the
style.25 It displays very inely executed pierced openwork
256
Jane F. Kershaw
with stylized foliage and paired, symmetrical biting birds,
which can be compared to the creatures and foliage in the
border of the dedication page in a copy of Bede’s Lives
of Cuthbert, produced in the south-west of England in the
930’s.26 Two other strap-ends from Winchester, both with
uninhabited symmetrical plant patterns, and a buckle with
roughly applied paired birds, relect simpliied versions
of the Winchester style and post-date the examples with
inhabited foliage.27
Three out of the four objects in Kendrick’s corpus
come from eastern England: the mount from Thetford,
and the Ixworth and Wilbury Hill strap-ends, from Suffolk
and Hertfordshire respectively.28 By and large, however,
the Winchester style as depicted on known items of
metalwork appears to have a southern distribution, with
the inest examples of the style coming from Winchester
itself.29 It is perhaps not surprising then that scholars have
characterized ornamental Winchester-style objects as, like
the manuscripts, a purely southern English phenomenon.
Wilson saw the motifs on objects produced by the
Winchester School as ‘a style of south-east England in
the irst half of the tenth century’ with metalwork from
this period virtually absent in the north and sculpture at
northern ecclesiastical centres such as Durham displaying
little in the way of tenth-century ornament.30
The boundary with the area of Scandinavian settlement
in England, the Danelaw, was thought to mark the most
northern and easterly limits of the Winchester style.
In spite of his own evidence for the presence of the
Winchester style in the east of England, Kendrick argued
that the Viking presence actively stiled the development
of ‘Christian’ art which had lourished ‘in the victorious
West Saxon districts of England from which the Danes had
been expelled’. There was no doubt in Kendrick’s mind
that, had there not been such a settlement, ‘the acanthus
would have lourished…and there would have been a
Northumbrian ‘Winchester’ style. It was the Vikings who
put back the clock’.31
Recent Discoveries of Winchester-style
Metalwork from the Danelaw
Such views are now increasingly undermined by new
inds of metalwork from regions which were once part
of the Danelaw. These stray inds, recovered by metaldetecting and recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme,
require that we re-examine earlier assumptions about
the Winchester style. Small, utilitarian, secular items
of metalwork, predominantly strap-ends but also single
examples of a mount and hooked-tag, reveal a northern
and easterly rural distribution within the Danelaw. They
bear testimony to the versatility and widespread popularity
of the Winchester style in late Saxon England and are
suggestive of the broad qualitative range of artefacts to
which the style was applied.
Gabor Thomas’ doctoral thesis irst drew attention to the
easterly spread of his Class E, category 1 Winchester type
strap-ends, dated on stylistic grounds to the tenth-century.32
He noted seventeen examples of this tongue-shaped type,
which displayed either pure Winchester acanthus foliage,
inhabited foliates or devolved, stylised scroll, found north
of the Danelaw, a concentration greater than that from
the ‘traditional heartland’ of the style.33 In addition to
providing evidence that the Winchester style circulated
in the Danelaw, Thomas has raised the possibility that it
was also manufactured there.34 The following discussion of
inds now recorded on the PAS database largely conirms
Thomas’ indings and offers an interpretation of their
importance in the context of Scandinavian settlement in
the Danelaw.
It is, of course, important to highlight the problems
inherent in interpreting metal-detected inds. Different
land-use patterns between eastern and western England
have resulted in a wealth of inds being recorded from
the eastern counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire,
where most land is arable and metal-detecting widespread,
but signiicantly fewer from central and western England,
where pastoral farming is the norm. As we shall see,
Winchester-style objects within the Danelaw reveal very
clearly this eastern bias. Further, metal-detected items
are stray inds recovered from the topsoil (or ploughsoil)
and thus lack an archaeological context and associated
stratigraphy possessed by items uncovered in urban or
rural settlement excavations. In some cases, their indspots are not precisely recorded, and make reference only
to a ind locale of one square kilometer. Nonetheless,
as chance inds, metal-detected items also beneit the
overall archaeological record, balancing out the bias
towards traditional areas of focus: burials, settlements
and hoards.35
In addition to the strap-ends recorded by Thomas in
2000, sixty-ive further items decorated in the Winchester
School style have been found in the Danelaw territories
from metal-detecting activity alone: twenty-seven from
Norfolk, sixteen from Lincolnshire, nine from Suffolk,
three inds from both Cambridgeshire and Nottinghamshire,
two from Leicestershire and Northamptonshire and single
inds from Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Derbyshire
(Fig. 1). The vast majority of these inds, sixty-three,
are strap-ends, with one hooked-tag and one mount.
The corpus is substantially expanded when antiquarian
discoveries, artefacts in Historic Environment Records
(HERs) – formerly known as Sites and Monuments Records
(SMRs) – and inds from excavations are taken into account.
An antiquarian ind of a bone strap-end from Leicester and
excavated strap-ends from Middle Harling and Thetford
in Norfolk and the Lloyd’s Bank and Coppergate areas of
York, together with a brooch also excavated at Thetford,
clearly display the Carolingian-inspired Winchester style
but have not been considered here.36 A number of strap-ends
appear on regional HERs, some of which are also published
in county archaeological journals.37
This essay is, however, concerned predominantly with
stray inds recently recorded by the Portable Antiquities
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
257
Strap-end
◆
Hooked-tag
▲
Mount
County Border
Danelaw Boundary
0
25
50 kms
N LINCS
NORTH
SEA
NOTTS
LINCOLNSHIRE
◆
NORFOLK
NORTHANTS
CAMBRIDGESHIRE
▲
SUFFOLK
Figure 1. Map showing the distribution of Winchester-style metalwork within the Danelaw
Scheme. The items are displayed and illustrated on the
Scheme’s database (available at www.inds.org.uk) and
are referred to here by their PAS ‘Find-ID’. Where good
quality illustrations or digital photographs of the objects
exist, they have been included although, regrettably, many
images displayed on the PAS database are not suitable
for publication. It should also be emphasized that objects
recorded by the Scheme are not necessarily representative
of the wider corpus of Danelaw inds and that the total
number of such items is much larger than current PAS
records suggest.
The Danelaw inds make up a diverse group and display
the full repertoire of Winchester-style motifs. Finds can
have double- or single-sided decoration, be cast in copperor lead-alloys, executed in both openwork and high-relief
and can have plain or embellished surfaces. Although
many items are now worn or corroded, it is clear that they
display varying levels of artistic skill and craftsmanship. A
small number of inds are artistically accomplished, with
masterful examples of Winchester-style acanthus foliates,
occasionally inhabited by naturalistic birds or animals.
Most examples, however, lack the zoomorphic element
and display only a heavily debased and schematic tree
scroll pattern. There are also a number of rare and ‘one
off’ inds, discussed further below.
A small group of strap-ends from the Danelaw comprise
inds with reined and skillful Winchester-style ornament,
although none can be said to parallel the high caliber
of decoration found in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts in the
manner of the inest strap-end from the Winchester group.
The most complicated Winchester-style inhabited-foliage
design in the Danelaw corpus appears on an incomplete
copper-alloy strap-end from Tunstall, Suffolk (SF4115,
Fig. 2). On both the front and back of this object, back-toback birds with backwards-angled wings lanking a central
rosette sit on branches stemming from a central trunk.
Below them, two lower branches run around the back of
a quadruped, probably a lion, depicted in proile with its
head turned backwards and its tail in its mouth. While
the top arrangement on this strap-end is typical of the
Winchester School, the proiled lion may be Romanesque
in inspiration. If this were the case, the Tunstall ind could
be one of the latest strap-ends in the Winchester series and
only the second artefact of its type to show Romanesque
inluence; the other example, also with a proiled lion-like
creature, comes from Hindolveston in Norfolk.38
Jane F. Kershaw
258
0
1
2
3
4
5 cms
Figure 2. Strap-end from Tunstall, Suffolk (drawing by Donna Wreathall, copyright Suffolk County Council)
Another strap-end with inhabited foliage comes from
Hinckley in Leicestershire (LEIC-0C2B81, Fig. 3). This
object has scalloped edges, a central stem issuing from
a basal bulb and a spherical protrusion at the terminal.
Bifurcating tendrils of leshy acanthus leaves emanate
from both ends. Positioned in the middle is a pair of
confronted animal heads, with rounded ears, small bored
eyes and triangular-shaped faces. These cat-like masks
are addorsed in typical Winchester-style fashion and
their treatment can be paralleled on a number of other
Winchester-style pieces, including one of the liturgical
bronze censer covers, from London Bridge, and an
unprovenanced bone comb, both discussed in detail
by Wilson.39 The animal heads are also paralleled by
those on another Leicestershire object, a bone strap-end
from Highcross Street in Leicester. This object depicts
four full-face animal masks, two with contorted bodies
emanating from a central inverted mask and the others with
deeply drilled eyes and issuing tendrils.40 The Hinckley
strap-end demonstrates that Danelaw inds depict motifs
which it well into the known repertoire of Winchesterstyle ornament, and suggests that some elements of the
style could be common to both ecclesiastical and secular
metalworking traditions.
Other strap-ends with inhabited foliage include a number
of cast lead examples. The terminal end of a fragmentary
lead strap-end from Hibaldstow in Lincolnshire depicts
a pair of confronted birds with conjoined beaks (NLM-
Figure 3. Strap-end from Hinckley, Leicestershire (photo
courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme) Actual
length 40mm.
419320). Another lead object, from Hatcliffe in North East
Lincolnshire, displays a pair of addorsed birds perched
either side of a veined central stem (NLM5373). Little
detail survives on the birds’ heads or bodies but it appears
as if foliage springs from their wings to scale the sides of
the front panel and terminates at the attachment-end, itself
decorated by a row on punched-dots. Another strap-end
belonging to this group is a complete item from Lissington,
another Lincolnshire ind (LIN-D17C35, Fig. 4). The
Lissington strap-end, although somewhat crudely executed,
displays classic Winchester-style inhabited foliage, namely
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
a pair of confronted lizard-like creatures positioned within
symmetrically-arranged bifurcating acanthus foliates,
which emanate from a central spine.
Other strap-ends depict well-executed Winchester-style
foliates without the zoomorphic element. Characteristic
of the ornament on this group of inds is a clearly deined
central stem springing from an inverse animal mask or plain
trefoil feature and off-shooting tendrils ending in scrolled
terminals, most features of which are seen on strap-end 1060
from Winchester.41 An incomplete copper-alloy item from
Barton-le-Clay in Bedfordshire is perhaps the most elegant
of such inds in the Danelaw corpus (BH-7E3CD7, Fig. 5).
It has scalloped edges and double-sided moulded decoration
consisting of an inverse animal mask protruding from the
terminal, central spine and open tendrils. Although no
animals or birds inhabit the foliage, a zoomorphic inluence
in the pattern of the tendrils, emphasized by a complex
openwork pattern, is discernable. A further Danelaw
ind decorated with ine Winchester-style foliates comes
from Hindringham in Norfolk (NMS-F7A7C1). Although
Figure 4. Strap-end from Lissington, Lincolnshire (photo
courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme)
259
worn, this item has double-sided counter-relief decoration
consisting of two sets of pendant cinqefoils with elongated
foliates and is, unusually, gilded.
Far more numerous among Danelaw inds are strapends with classic Winchester-style features in devolved or
simplistic forms. The ornament on this group of artefacts
is a simpliied version of plant scroll decoration and lacks
zoomorphic features. It is identiiable chiely through
a symmetrical and regular openwork pattern, a good
example of which is seen on an elongated strap-end from
Silk Willoughby, Lincolnshire (NLM 4546, Fig. 6). The
animal-head masks on these objects are often missing, or,
in some instances, substituted by plain, raised triangular
features (for instance, SWYOR-7DF7B5). Typically, the
central stem is only subtly, if at all, deined. The acanthus
scrolls are also debased, the ends appearing simply as a
series of opposed sub-rectangular bosses running parallel
along the edge of the strap-end, good examples of which
can be seen on terminal fragments from Honnington
in Lincolnshire and Croxton Kerrial in Leicestershire
(NLM4781; NLM6142).
On some examples, however, the foliate motifs are
more developed. On a strap-end from Nottinghamshire, for
instance, these appear as bifurcating tendrils which emanate
from two bulbs along the central spine (LEIC-15A500).
On other inds foliate motifs are given extra emphasis by
leaf- or crescent-shaped openwork perforations, as on an
example from Pitsford, Northamptonshire (NARC2638,
Fig. 7). Although these are clearly devolved items, the
more elaborate examples have double-sided moulded
decoration and were clearly meant to be seen on both
sides. Plant decoration and engraving in a symmetrical
layout is present on both sides of a now-broken strap-end
from Burnham Market, Norfolk, and an example from
Seething, also in Norfolk (NMS97; NMS-1D99B4).
Artefacts from this group could also be embellished and
examples of gilded strap-ends are discussed further below.
Figure 5. Strap-end from Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire (photo courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme)
Jane F. Kershaw
260
0
5 cms
Figure 7. Strap-end from Pitsford, Northamptonshire
(drawing by Mark Roughley, courtesy of the Portable
Antiquities Scheme)
0
1
2 cms
Figure 6. Strap-end from Silk Willoughby, Lincolnshire
(drawing by Marina Elwes, courtesy of the Portable
Antiquities Scheme)
It should be apparent, therefore, that while this group of
inds display only stylised and debased motifs, they were
not necessarily ‘low quality’ pieces.
The worn nature of these stray inds can make it dificult
to judge just how competently a strap-end was originally
rendered. On an item from Suffolk, for instance, a series of
piercings in imitation of an openwork design are irregularly
spaced, though this may be because they were set around
a now-indiscernible motif (SF-F83BF8). However, a small
number of Danelaw inds do seem to display a further level
of debased ornament. The Winchester style as it appears on
these items is entirely schematic; it is recognizable chiely
through crude circular openwork patterns, sometimes only
roughly symmetrical in layout, and occasionally by the
remains of raised bosses representing tendril ends, as on a
strap-end from Mautby in Norfolk (NMS-70301, Fig. 8).
On a rectangular fragment of a strap-end from Gunthorpe
in Norfolk the raised bosses have been subject to a further
Figure 8. Strap-end from Mautby, Norfolk (photo courtesy
of the Portable Antiquities Scheme)
debasement and appear simply as notches around the edge
of the decorated panel and attachment end (NMS-89DD25).
The openwork pattern on this item is crudely cast, consisting
of three roughly oval-shaped perforations. On the face of
the strap-end, punched ring designs appear at random in
between the openwork apertures, a common feature on
strap-ends with schematic renderings of the Winchester
style.
Strap-ends with embellished surfaces
With six strap-ends cast in lead and the remaining artefacts
in copper-alloy, Winchester-style strap-ends from the
Danelaw belong to the large category of ‘base-metal’ dress
items thought to be widespread in tenth- and eleventhcentury England.42 Some examples, however, show traces
of gilding, a technique which re-gained some popularity
in the tenth-century, perhaps because of the inlux and
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
261
common late Saxon dress attachments, including strap-ends
and hooked-tags, were undecorated.47
The hooked-tag and mount
Figure 9. Hooked-tag from Whissonsett, Norfolk. Copyright
The Trustees of the British Museum.
Figure 10. Mount from Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire.
Image courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme
inluence of gilded Carolingian strap-ends around this
time.43 Of the ifty-seven copper-alloy strap-ends recorded
by the PAS, three show traces of gilding, although many
inds are now so corroded that evidence of original gilding
is unlikely to survive (NMS-F7A7C1; NMS657; LEIC0C2B81, Fig. 3).
Further examples of embellished strap-ends not recorded
by the PAS include a strap-end from Shipdam in Norfolk,
recorded on the county’s HER, and one of the strap-ends
included in Kendrick’s catalogue.44 The latter object, from
Ixworth, originally had silver inlay in its surface ornament,
in the bird’s wings and plant decoration, although now
only slight traces are visible.45 Several of the known
Winchester-style objects with liturgical signiicance also
bear traces of silver gilding or plating and, in the tradition
of later ninth-century Anglo-Saxon metalwork, niello
inlay.46 The evidence provided by the newly discovered
strap-ends indicates that such embellishment was not
limited to ecclesiastical items, but was also employed on
personal dress accessories. This is of note given that inds
from excavations have largely given the impression that
A hooked-tag and mount are the only two other artefact
types with Winchester-style decoration to have been
uncovered by metal-detecting from the Danelaw and
recorded by the PAS, although a brooch with Winchesterstyle birds, discussed below, was found during the
Thetford excavations. While there are other parallels
for the mount, the recently-discovered hooked-tag from
Whissonsett in Norfolk is notable not only for being the
only known example of a hooked tag with Winchesterstyle decoration, but also for being the only cast silver
item in the style from the Danelaw (PAS-E897A3, Fig.9).
The tag, a British Museum Treasure, comprises a circular
plate and perforated projection lug, although its hook is
missing.48 The plate has an incised border ring which
surrounds a central domed stud and four radiating arms
with expanded ends forming a cross-like motif. Each arm
contains a semi-circular basal bulb and leshy, bifurcating
acanthus leaves, accentuated by the use of niello inlay. The
motif is a simpliied version of the Winchester-style scroll
and irmly places the tag in the tenth century. The tag,
probably used as a dress fastener, is a remarkable piece for
demonstrating that the Winchester style adorned artefacts
of precious metals in the Danelaw at a time when personal
dress items in silver and gold were extremely rare.
A mount from Great Shelford in Cambridgeshire,
perhaps from a stirrup-strap, survives only as a fragment
but may have originally been rectangular or square in
form, as indicated by a surviving rivet in the upper right
corner (CAM-D45F73, Fig. 10). The upper surface of
the Great Shelford fragment depicts in moulded relief
a trefoil feature, central stem and foliates. Only two
complete openwork perforations remain, around which
the decoration is somewhat dificult to decipher. It is
clear, however, that the fragment depicts stylised foliates
characteristic of the Winchester School. The mount from
Thetford noted by Kendrick is a reminder that this item is
not unique among Danelaw inds.49 Other mounts bearing
Winchester-style decoration are also known south of the
Danelaw. Mounts from Shakenoak and Southampton have
already been mentioned, although a more recent detector
ind from the Winchester area with pairs of back-to-back
interlacing creatures set within a bifurcating plant with
scrolled tendril ends portrays the most complex design.50
These mounts would have had varying functions; they
could have been attached to dress straps, pieces of
equestrian equipment or even items of furniture. Such
items, together with the hooked-tag, suggest that the
Winchester Style was applied to a broad range of artefact
types and hint at the versatility and appeal of the style.
262
Jane F. Kershaw
Production and Distribution
The distribution of these artefacts clearly shows a
concentration in the most easterly counties, with only a
few inds recorded from the more westerly Hertfordshire,
Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire (Fig. 1).
The entirely rural distribution of these inds is also marked;
there is no evidence of clustering around urban centres in
Norfolk or Lincolnshire, where inds are most numerous
and where evidence of such clustering is most likely to
be revealed. However, given that excavated inds indicate
that the Winchester style was known in urban locations,
this pattern is probably the result of low levels of recovery
and recording of metal-detected inds from modern built-up
areas, and does not suggest that the Winchester style was
conined to the rural Danelaw.
Gabor Thomas’s research on ninth- and tenth-century
Anglo-Scandinavian strap-ends from the Danelaw has
shown that inds from the eastern Danelaw display a
much wider variety of cultural and artistic inluences
compared to inds from the rest of the Scandinavian
settlement area.51 Thomas has identified an eclectic
range of strap-ends circulating in the eastern Danelaw,
including Scandinavian examples with Borre-style ringknot designs, Anglo-Scandinavian hybrids with Insular
versions of a Borre-style motif and examples paralleled by
inds from the Irish Sea region, all of which have a clearly
eastern distribution with few or no inds coming from
areas such as West or South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire,
Staffordshire and Leicestershire.52
While we must question the extent to which the current
distribution pattern relects accurately the contemporary
spread of Winchester-style artefacts within the Danelaw,
it may also be that York served as the epicenter for AngloScandinavian cultural interaction within the region. While
there is evidence in York and its immediate hinterland
for the presence and manufacture of Hiberno-Norse-type
strap-ends with incised roundels and panels of interlace,
very few of these items have been found between the
Irish Sea coast and the Yorkshire region, although metaldetected inds from this area overall are less frequent than
inds from other eastern counties.53 Nonetheless, neither
excavations of rural settlements nor metal-detecting
activity has located a signiicant number of items with
hybrid cultural inluences in this upper Midland band.
Few artefacts have been uncovered at Wharram Percy in
east Yorkshire where Mid-Saxon occupation is believed
to have given way to Scandinavian settlement, or at what
may be a Scandinavian farmstead at Simy Folds, Upper
Teesdale, although this is fairly typical for the acidic
soils of upland sites.54 The presence of two Norse bells
at another upland, potentially Scandinavian, farmstead at
Cottam in the Yorkshire Wolds is a very rare indication of
cultural and trading links between the western and eastern
Scandinavian communities not focused at York, although
the close proximity of Cottam to York may suggest
trade via the Scandinavian capital.55 It should, perhaps,
be expected that York acted as the catalyst for cultural
integration given similar evidence for long-distance
trade and artistic assimilation in other Viking-Age urban
settlements, such as Dublin.56 This impression is conirmed
when we take into account evidence for the manufacture
of Winchester-style ornament within the Danelaw.
Evidence for the production of Winchester-style objects
in late Saxon England is sparse. No moulds for strapends decorated in the Winchester style survive.57 The
discovery in recent years of a small number of undecorated
strap-ends in copper- and lead-alloys, including an item
from Coddenham in Suffolk, may attest to the general
production of strap-ends in rural locales (SF-3D3311).
This piece has a single rivet hole and a plain tag tapering
towards the end, and may well be a model or uninished
strap-end. There is, however, nothing to suggest that
such an item could have been used in the manufacture of
Winchester-style items in particular. Indeed, Winchesterstyle strap-ends display integrally cast openwork designs
or designs in high relief, probably executed during the
initial stages of production.
It is conventional to cite decorated strap-ends and
jewellery in lead or lead alloys such as pewter as
archaeological evidence for manufacturing. These items
are often interpreted as trial pieces or models, used in
the serial production of artefacts in copper-alloys.58 Such
interpretations seem reasonable given that the bulk of the
inds, including items from Hibalstow in Lincolnshire and
Congham in Norfolk, are fragmented artefacts bereft of the
attachment appendages required for use (NLM-419320;
NMS168). This assumption is, however, more dificult
to sustain in the light of complete inds with surviving
and functioning attachment ends. Two lead strap-ends
mentioned above, from Hatcliffe and Lissington in
Lincolnshire, retain attachment panels with the remains of
pierced rivet holes which would have enabled each object
to be attached to a belt (NLM5373; LIN-D17C35, Fig.
4). Such ittings indicate that that these objects were not
casting models, but were meant to be worn and used.
The Lissington and Hatcliffe strap-ends are just
two among several recent inds of Anglo-Saxon and
Anglo-Scandinavian dress items in lead which retain
their attachment lugs and clearly functioned as dress
accessories.59 Several Jelling-style lead disc brooches
retain remains of pin-lugs and catchplates, and, in some
cases, traces of original iron pins, as do a number of late
Saxon disc brooches of English manufacture.60 Kevin
Leahy has recently catalogued a number of lead strapends and brooches from the area of Anglo-Saxon Lindsey
in North Lincolnshire, many of which have the remains
of attachment appendages or pierced rivet holes.61 Given
such examples, we must remain open to the possibility
that some lead artefacts, rather than being tools in a
manufacturing process, were intended to be worn.
Given that we can no longer assume that lead dress
items were mere models, we must turn to other evidence
for the production of Winchester-style pieces. Several
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
263
Figure 11. Die or patrix from Sporle with Palgrave, Norfolk. Scale 2:1. Drawing by Susan White. Copyright Norfolk
County Council
recent finds suggest that the Winchester style both
circulated in the rural Danelaw, and was produced there.
A copper-alloy strap-end from Osleston and Thurvaston in
Derbyshire has symmetrical openwork decoration in the
shape of a plant motif and belongs to the group of strapends with stylised versions of Winchester-style foliage
(WMID-4EF045). However, although it is complete, no
rivet piercings are discernable on its attachment end and
one of its eight openwork perforations is illed in, raising
the possibility that the artefact was uninished when it
was lost or discarded.
More concrete evidence for the production of the motif
in the eastern counties rests on two further inds. The irst
is a rectangular bronze die or patrix, recovered from Sporle
with Palgrave in Norfolk with early Winchester-style
decoration (Fig. 11). The die is decorated in relief with a
central bifurcated stem supported by three basal lobes, a
feature of Carolingian art. Flanking the stem is a pair of
proiled birds with lentoid-shaped eyes, gaping jaws and
pelleted wings. They appear in a circular arrangement;
their heads look down, their wings curve under their
bodies and their clawed feet, continuing this curvature,
come round to touch their beaks. Such an arrangement
hints at an early date and inds parallels in the restricted
pose of ninth-century Trewhiddle-style creatures.62 The
pattern ills the entire decorative surface, indicating that
the die’s margin or border is missing.63
The pattern on this die would have been imprinted onto
the surface of a thin foil, probably of silver, which would
then have been applied to the surface of copper-alloy
artefacts. There is little doubt that it would have been
used to create high quality, inely embellished pieces. The
decorative layout of the die is arranged horizontally and
it therefore would not have been used to create patterns
on strap-ends, which depict perpendicular foliage designs
lowing either upwards or downwards. Nonetheless, the
die, with its lobed features and restricted birds, raises the
possibility that Winchester style circulated in East Anglia
at an early stage, perhaps in the early tenth century, and
may hint at local production around this date.
Further evidence for the manufacture of Winchester-style
metalwork in the Danelaw rests on a single fragmentary
mould for a trefoil brooch found at Blake Street, York,
in the heart of the old Roman fortress (Fig. 12). This
item is exceptional in depicting Winchester-style foliage
and animal masks on a mould for a trefoil brooch, a
brooch-type introduced to England from Scandinavia in
the Viking Age.64 Animal masks of the type seen on the
Canterbury and London Bridge censer covers can be seen
both at the junction of the two surviving arms and in the
centre of each arm below a pair of inward-looking birds,
another Winchester prototype.65 This too may be an early
Winchester piece, as the trefoil brooch was a type which
circulated in the Danelaw in the late ninth and tenth
centuries. Although no brooch from this mould survives, the
mould was found with a crucible, suggesting manufacture
at a site on or near its location spot.
Other artefacts recovered from the city certainly suggest
that dress items in Scandinavian styles were manufactured
in York. A lead-alloy matrix with Borre-style decoration
and a bird-head suspension loop found at Blake Street
could have been used to create pendants similar to Danish
examples found in the Tolstrup hoard.66 Two disc brooches
depicting devolved versions of the Scandinavian Jellingstyle backwards-looking animal are also known from the
city and were probably produced there.67 A clear mixing of
Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon decoration is also evident
on some inds. A copper-alloy tenth-century strap-end
found during the St Mary Bishophill excavations has a
characteristic Anglo-Saxon form but a modiied version
of the Scandinavian Borre-style ring-chain.68 A strikingly
similar ind uncovered from Coppergate suggests these
items were produced locally.69 In light of this evidence,
the production of a Winchester-style trefoil brooch at York
would be just one of a number of culturally hybrid artefact
types manufactured in the heart of the Scandinavian
kingdom.
Chronology and Development
The evidence for both devolved and well crafted
Winchester motifs on strap-ends from the Danelaw gives
264
Jane F. Kershaw
the impression that the Danelaw inds were not simply
southern English examples which strayed north and east,
but a semi-independent group, which was clearly inspired
by Winchester models, but which adapted the Winchester
style in an appropriate manner. Without an associated
stratigraphy, a precise dating of these objects is problematic.
The strap-ends with inhabited foliage from the Winchester
series date to the mid-tenth century by their associations
with graves and house structures, and may therefore be
considered contemporary with the latest phases of the Borre
and Jelling styles as they appeared in England.70 It has been
suggested, however, that the series continued with simple,
uninhabited renderings of the style into the early-mid
eleventh-century, when the later Scandinavian Ringerike
style was current in southern England.71 The ind contexts of
the plainer strap-ends and buckle from Winchester suggest
a chronology consistent with such a time frame.72
If it is the case that the zoomorphic element received
less emphasis as the style evolved, most Danelaw examples,
with plain symmetrical openwork patterns, would date to
the late tenth or early eleventh centuries. None of the metaldetected inds can, however, be dated on anything other than
stylistic grounds. Unfortunately, the few Winchester-style
artefacts recovered from excavations within the Danelaw
come either from only broadly datable contexts or contexts
which have yielded no chronological information.73
The die from Norfolk and the trefoil mould from
York have already been mentioned as potentially early
Winchester-style pieces on account of their associated art
styles and morphological attributes and it is notable that
both display clear zoomorphic elements. It may be possible
to identify further instances of early and late stages of
the Winchester style on the strap-ends themselves. Early
versions of the style, like Carolingian designs, tend to
show lat, dense and leshy acanthus leaves, rather than
the more spindly, open tendrils typical of most of the
Danelaw inds.74
Such renderings are discernable on a rectangular
copper-alloy strap-end from Weeting with Broomhill in
Norfolk with a simple folded metal construction (SF3658).
The ornament on this item is neither moulded nor carved
in openwork, but engraved, and consists of luxuriant
acanthus leaves ending in rounded lobes on either side
of a plain central longitudinal band. Unusually, the strapend also has two centrally positioned rivet holes, which
may suggest its re-use as a mount. At the other end of the
chronological scale, the strap-end from Tunstall already
mentioned (Fig. 2) on which the Winchester style was
paired with Romanesque-inluenced designs may date
to the mid-eleventh century or later on account of its
late artistic afinities. While dating objects on a stylistic
basis alone does not offer a precise chronology, there
seems to be evidence both for the early manufacture of
the Winchester style in the Danelaw and for the style
remaining a popular artistic idiom in the eastern counties
for several generations.
Figure 12. Trefoil brooch mould from Blake Street, York.
Copyright York Archaeological Trust. Max. l c. 100m
Social and Cultural Implications
The Winchester style can no longer be considered an
ecclesiastical motif present only on items with liturgical
signiicance. Its appearance on strap-ends and other dress
items is testimony to its use on secular and personal
accessories. Nor can it be considered a style only of
southern England, for the distribution of Winchester-style
inds from the Danelaw clearly demonstrates that the style
was not conined to ‘English’ England. What, then, did
the Winchester style mean and communicate? Who wore
it and for what purpose?
Recent interpretations of Viking-Age material culture
have demonstrated ways in which Scandinavian and
Anglo-Scandinavian metalwork from the Danelaw can
inform our views of, for instance, contemporary settlement
patterns, wealth and social status, and cultural and trade
contacts.75 Of increasing interest is the value of metalwork,
speciically its form and decoration, in elucidating aspects
of social identity and cultural interaction.76 Work by
Caroline Paterson in particular has demonstrated how the
appearance of the Scandinavian Borre and Jelling styles on
items of metalwork produced in England may be studied
to reveal processes of cultural exchange and assimilation
in mixed Anglo-Scandinavian communities.77 Paterson’s
analysis is underpinned by modern theoretical approaches
to material culture, which emphasize the role of artefacts
as both embodying and shaping the identity of their makers
and wearers.78 Such approaches see variability in artefact
style as a means of communicating aspects of social identity,
such as gender, age and regional or political afiliations. In
some circumstances, the selective use of objects is thought
to facilitate social and cultural interaction.79
Items with Winchester-style decoration recovered
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
from the Danelaw may help further elucidate the interrelationships between incoming and native populations.
Several objects recorded through excavation suggest that
the Winchester style occurred on items of mixed cultural or
regional forms and styles. A pewter plate brooch recovered
during excavations at Mill Lane, Thetford, demonstrates
that the Winchester style was applied to brooch forms of
Continental origin.80 While the straight-edged, rectangular
shape of the brooch has Carolingian parallels and the
foliage is representative of the true Carolingian acanthus,
the naturalistic bird motifs are later in date and drawn from
the canon of the Winchester School. The pair of proiled
birds, with speckled necks, clearly deined wings and
tail-feathers and raised heads bear a striking resemblance
to the confronted birds on the strap-ends with inhabited
foliage from the Winchester series.81
There is further evidence for the incorporation of
Scandinavian design elements into Winchester-style
objects south of the Danelaw. A gilt silver strap-end and
rectangular decorative plaque from the Old Minster,
Winchester, combine Jelling and Winchester motifs. The
strap-end, in typical Saxon tongue-shaped form, depicts
an animal with Jelling-esque spiral hips but an acanthusshaped tongue.82 On the plaque, the divisions of decorative
panels are Swedish in origin, the contorted creatures
Scandinavian and the foliage classically Winchester
style.83
Ornament on other artefacts is suggestive of the fusion
of the later Scandinavian Ringerike style with Winchester
motifs. This is, to a certain extent, to be expected given
the close similarities between the styles, and there has been
some debate about the relative inluence of the Winchester
School on the development of the Scandinavian style, which
lourished in the south of England under the patronage
of King Cnut and his dynasty from the early eleventh
century.84 Ringerike-style foliates, with their long, drawn
out, clustered tendrils and tightly-curled scrolls, together
with the interlacing snakes typical of the style, are seen in
isolated forms on a variety of media, including sculpture
and metalwork, from the south of England.85
The style could, however, also occur alongside
Winchester-style birds and foliage on individual objects.
Interspersed lourishes of Ringerike animals and tendrils are
seen in a small number of manuscripts in the Winchester
style and both styles appear on decorative panels of an
unprovenanced bone comb.86 The fusion of Winchester and
Ringerike styles also occurs on a small number of items of
metalwork, including some with a Scandinavian provenance
and place of manufacture. Symmetrical acanthus foliage
and bird motifs found in the Winchester repertoire transfuse
with Ringerike tendrils on a pair of gilt bronze stirrup
plates found in a barrow grave in Velds in Denmark and
on an elaborate gilt silver sword guard from Dybäck in
southern Sweden, both of which have been discussed at
some length elsewhere.87 Of course, the socio-political
and regional contexts in which the Ringerike style was
produced in England vary greatly from those in which the
265
Borre and Jelling styles lourished; when Kendrick wrote
of the Viking rejection of the Winchester acanthus he was
speaking not of the Scandinavians in the court of Cnut, but
of the Danish settlers of the late ninth and tenth centuries.88
Nonetheless, the integration of the Ringerike style with
that of the Winchester School is a clear indication that
the Winchester style continued to appear in amalgamated
forms on culturally hybrid items, in both England and the
Scandinavian homelands, into the eleventh century.
The combination of different artistic motifs may simply
relect heightened levels of cultural contact in culturally
and ethnically mixed communities. It may, however,
also suggest that metalwork provided a medium through
which meaningful expressions relating to identity were
made. Inhabitants of the Danelaw may have chosen to
fuse together Winchester motifs with other regional styles
in order to portray mixed cultural or regional identities.
Perhaps the Winchester style was adopted and altered by
Scandinavian settlers in an attempt to integrate with the
existing population, taking on local fashions. Caroline
Paterson’s work has demonstrated that Scandinavian
settlers quickly abandoned dress artefacts of Scandinavian
origin which had long been out of fashion in England,
such as pendants, yet retained types which could be
more easily assimilated into native costume, such as disc
brooches.89 Hybrid forms could also have been created
by the English living under Scandinavian rule, possibly
to gain social or political advantage.
Signiicantly, metalwork displaying other forms of
hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian and Hiberno-Scandinavian
styles largely share with Winchester-style metalwork a
widespread distribution in East Anglia and Lincolnshire.90
A proliic disc brooch series from the region relects
a similar fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian
art. Although their Borre-style knotwork designs are
Scandinavian in inspiration, their lat form and single
attachment lug relect insular production.91 Some strapends depict Scandinavian design elements rendered in
an Insular style. Examples from Walsingham and Blo
Norton in Norfolk, for instance, display a ring-chain
motif surrounding central lozenges, a devolved form
of the Borre-style ring-knot motif.92 The presence in
Lincolnshire, Suffolk, East and North Yorkshire of doublesided strap-ends with interlace decoration and a distinctive
animal-head terminal incorporating rounded eyes further
relects cultural contact, in these instances between the
eastern Danelaw and Scandinavian communities around
the Irish Sea littoral. Although this type derives from
ninth-century Irish models, some examples from the
Danelaw also have Borre-style decoration, revealing an
amalgamation of different art styles.93
Most inds from the Danelaw are, however, purely
Winchester in inspiration. These items encompass a broad
qualitative range, making any assessment of the overall
status of the Danelaw corpus problematic. The silver
hooked tag and Jelling-Winchester-style strap-end from
the Old Minster, and perhaps also items on which the die
266
Jane F. Kershaw
from Norfolk was used, indicate that precious metals could
be adorned with the style on either side of the Danelaw
border. Such items must be considered ‘high-status’. The
appearance of ine, technically-accomplished examples,
some with gilded surfaces, double-sided decoration and
unique combinations of art styles also suggests highlyskilled craftspeople freely incorporated Winchester forms
and motifs into high quality objects in the Danelaw.
In the past, the base-metal composition of new
metalwork inds of late Saxon date has led to interpretations
that the owners of such items were poor or low-status,
able only to afford mass-produced artefacts at the lowerend of the market.94 The worn nature of many of these
inds, interpreted as evidence that such items were in
use for a long time, has added to this view, as has their
predominantly rural distribution.95 Certainly, the crude
execution and simpliied designs of several of the Danelaw
inds suggests that the Winchester style occurred on objects
of more lowly status, as well as on precious metals.
It is, however, well-known that, in this period, dress
accessories in precious metals were increasingly replaced
by those in copper and lead alloys. As Hinton has suggested,
the decline in the quality and elaboration of dress ittings in
the tenth century may relect changing attitudes among the
elite to the display of wealth through personal adornment,
rather than a decline in resources.96 The recovery of
Winchester-style strap-ends from recent urban excavations
together with the rural ind-spots indicated by PAS records,
establishes that the style circulated in both the town and
countryside. While the Danelaw inds clearly belong to
the base-metal repertoire of tenth-century metalwork, they
do not necessarily relect the low social-standing of their
owners and wearers. The Winchester style seems to have
been appropriate on both items worn to ‘mark out’ an elite
group and on those intended for everyday use by rural and
urban populations.
The meaning of the Winchester style, associated neither
with speciic cultural nor social groups, remains enigmatic.
We cannot be certain whether it was adopted by the native
English, by newly arrived Scandinavians, or both, and
no doubt all inhabitants of the Danelaw were familiar
with it. It seems to have been a genuinely popular style,
which enjoyed a widespread circulation in the towns and
countryside of both the Danelaw and Wessex. It was also
adaptable and applied to a wide range of artefact types
with varying degrees of skill and artistry. It was just one of
an assorted range of cultural and regional styles available
to consumers of metal dress items in the Danelaw. The
style’s easterly distribution highlights the eclecticism of
metalwork styles present in the Danelaw in the tenth and
early eleventh centuries; an eclecticism which hints at the
potentially complex social and political circumstances
within which choices relating to expressions of afiliation
and identity were made.
Conclusion
An analysis of Winchester-style metalwork from the
Danelaw poses more questions than it can answer, but
this new corpus of inds clearly demonstrates the need for
a revision of our understanding of the development and
distribution of the style. We can now state with conidence
that, in contrast to traditional characterizations of the
Winchester style as a southern English and ecclesiastical
phenomenon, the art of late Anglo-Saxon England and
of monastic reform, permeated the Scandinavian area
of settlement. It appeared on secular dress ittings right
across rural East Anglia and Lincolnshire, and probably
over the wider Danelaw. Although the precise chronology
of the style is unknown, evidence for both early and
late expressions of the style indicate that it was a longlived and familiar motif in the Danelaw in the tenth and
eleventh centuries. There is, furthermore, sound evidence
for its manufacture both in the rural Danelaw, and in the
capital of the Scandinavian kingdom, arguably the focus
of artistic and cultural interaction.
In attempting to deine the meaning and signiicance of
the Winchester style within the Danelaw we are on shakier
ground. The Winchester style could be expressed with its
full inhabited foliage motifs or in devolved and schematic
designs, and appeared on artefacts in both silver and leadalloys. While most artefacts considered here represent
stylized, debased forms of the style, a number of unusual
and high-status inds hint at the wide-ranging and varied
nature of the Danelaw corpus. The style appears on artefacts
in a ‘pure’ form akin to the examples from Winchester
itself, but it also relects the opportunities available for
cultural exchange, and appears on culturally-hybrid items
alongside motifs of Scandinavian and Carolingian origin.
This study has demonstrated that the Winchester style was
popular, versatile and long-lived, and lourished on secular
dress ittings north of the Danelaw in the tenth and eleventh
centuries.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/
her many useful comments on the original draft of this
paper, and my supervisor, Professor Helena Hamerow,
for her support and encouragement in bringing this paper
to publication.
The Distribution of the ‘Winchester’ Style in Late Saxon England: Metalwork Finds from the Danelaw
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
Hadley and Richards 2000
Backhouse et al. 1984, pl. XV
Wamers 1987, 107; Saunders 1928, 20
Saunders 1928, 19, 25–7; Wormald 1945; 1971
Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 37
Wormald 1945, 131–3; Parkes 1976
Hinton 1990a, 32–3; 1996
Hinton 1996, 216; Saunders 1928, 16; Kendrick 1949, 1; Deshman
1977; Wilson 1984, 160
Zarnecki 1979; see too examples noted by Wilson 1984, 195–
200
Brøndsted 1924, 263 Fig. 187
Wilson 1984, 190–5
Wilson 1984, 190–3 Fig. 241; Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 114
Backhouse et al. 1984, 88
Kendrick 1938, 380–1
Wamers 1987, 107
Wamers 1987
Backhouse et al. 1984, 88
Wilson 1964, 43; Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 76
Kendrick 1938; Wilson 1964, nos. 9, 44, 56, 147
Kendrick 1938, 380–1 pl. LXXIV
Hillier 1855, plate 4 Fig. 2; Wilson 1975, pl. XXIIb
Bu’Lock 1960, 13 Fig. 4f
Hinton 1990b, 495; Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 79
Hinton 1990b, 494–500 igs. 124–125
Wilson 1969
Hinton 1990b, Fig. 124; Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 83
Hinton 1990b, Fig. 125 1060 and 1061, 512 Fig. 129 1101
Kendrick 1938, 380
Hinton 1990b, 498–9 1057 and 1056
Wilson 1984, 160, 200
Kendrick 1941,125, 130–1
Thomas 2000a, 249–50; Thomas 2001, 42
Thomas 2000a, 108–9, 249
Thomas 2000b, 241
Ibid., 238
Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 133; Rogerson and Archibald 1995,
Fig. 41.75; Rogerson and Dallas 1984, Fig. 111.28; MacGregor
1982, Fig. 46; Mainman and Rogers 2000, Fig. 105 10421; Youngs
2004, pl V SF161
See, for instance, Gurney 2002, Fig. 6G; 2003, Fig. 6B; Martin
et al. 2001, 66
Thomas 2004, Fig. 4 no. 32
Wilson 1964, no. 44; 1960, pl. VIIc
Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 133
Hinton 1990b, Fig. 125
Hinton 1975, 176–8
Thomas 2000a, 165
Gurney 2002, 160 Fig. 6G; Kendrick 1938, 380–1 pl. LXXIV
Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 81
Hinton 1975, 203–5; Wilson 1984, 158–60; Backhouse et al. 1984,
nos. 72–3, 75–6
Hinton 1990a, 32
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