It has hitherto been argued that Edward the Confessor's Chapel at Westminster Abbey, built by Henry III in 1246–59, was established as the royal mausoleum only from the 1290s. In 2005 a ground penetrating radar survey of the chapel floor revealed many anomalies, some of which can be interpreted as grave cists. A re-examination of the written and physical evidence for subfloor burials in the chapel suggests that, among other early burials, at least five of Edward I's children were interred here in the period 1264–84. It thus appears that the chapel was used as a family mausoleum before 1290 and was not originally exclusively reserved for the monarchs and their consorts. New light is also thrown on the vexed question of the date of the Cosmatesque floor in the shrine chapel, which is here redated to the 1290s.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

It has long been assumed that the Black Death totally devastated the brass engraving industry in England, but no previous study has focused specifically on this period. Stylistic analysis, particularly of the inscriptions, shows that there was continuity of production in the London A workshop right through the period of recurrent plague and that a second workshop, London B, was established towards the end of the 1350s. The workshops appear to have responded to a reduced supply of skilled labour by limiting their product range. The brasses of the plague years are modest in comparison with earlier brasses, though those commemorated were not of lower social status. No large figure brasses date from this decade, though significant numbers of minor compositions were produced. This temporary inability to supply elaborate, high-quality figure brasses enabled the Tournai ateliers to expand exports to England.