Dr Lesley Milner (91Ó°ÊÓ) – ‘It made my heart thump for I was certain that it was gold.’
James Wilson Marshall’s 1848 discovery of gold in an American river was unexpected; he was actually building a saw mill. Similarly, in academic terms I found pure gold lying in unexpected terrain. Manuscript D&C/A/2/23 f3 in the archives of Lincoln cathedral is a fourteenth-century complaint to the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln cathedral about their property management. In this untranscribed and unpublished legal document is to be found important new evidence not only about the cathedral treasure house and also about the thirteenth-century shrine of St. Hugh.
Lesley Milner trained as an art historian and worked as an associate lecturer for the Open University. She recently completed a part-time PhD at 91Ó°ÊÓ Institute of Art. The title of her thesis is Secret spaces: English sacristies, vestries and treasure rooms, 1066-1300
Dr Jane Spooner (Historic Royal Palaces / 91Ó°ÊÓ of Art) – The Iconography of the Wall Painting Fragments from St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster Palace
A series of fourteenth-century wall-painting fragments from the former Chapel of St Stephen survive in the care of the British Museum. The fragments depict scenes from the Books of Job and Tobit. According to antiquarians’ drawings, the Job and Tobit paintings were located in the bays closest to the altar wall. They were part of a series of small-scale paintings positioned beneath the Chapel’s north and south windows. This paper offers an interpretation of the iconography of the fragments based on their position, the depiction of episodes from the Old Testament Books, and the historical context for the decorative scheme.
Jane Spooner trained as an art historian and as a wall paintings conservator. She is the Curator of Historic Buildings of the Tower of London and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, and works for Historic Royal Palaces. She recently completed a part-time PhD at 91Ó°ÊÓ Institute of Art, on ‘Royal Wall Paintings in England in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century’.