Inside the Museum of London

In 2008, The Tower Theatre Company stood examining a plot of land in Shoreditch, wondering whether it would provide suitable accommodation for their troupe. Little did they realize another theatre company had stood there four hundred and sixteen years earlier thinking exactly the same thing, amongst them James Burbage and William Shakespeare.

Both companies decided the site was ideal. The Tower Theatre Company called in MoLA (Museum of London Archaeology) to conduct the necessary works to establish what lay beneath the lighting warehouse that had occupied the site since WWII. Almost immediately, the team discovered what appeared to be the corner of a polygonal structure in the western corner of the dig, the kind of structure that would indicate a Tudor theatre.

The idea of finding a Tudor theatre in Shoreditch was hugely exciting; for years archaeologists and historians had been trying to pin down the site of ‘The Theatre’, James Burbage’s purpose-built playhouse, erected on a corner of the site of the old Holywell Priory. Tudor London was incredibly densely populated, challenged only by Edo (old Tokyo) in terms of people per dwelling. The space for entertainments was limited, both physically and legally, with strict controls on where and when plays could be performed.

In 1575, the City fathers banned plays for the public within the City walls. Troupes could still perform for the wealthy within private houses, but cheap theatre for the masses had to find a new home. James Burbage was a carpenter-turned-actor, leading a group of actors under the patronage of the fabled Robin Dudley, Earl of Leicester. In 1576, disgruntled with the lack of a popular playhouse (and the revenue playing to the masses brought in), Burbage began to eye up potential sites for a theatre; Shoreditch was perfect. Just outside the City walls, Shoreditch was ideal for a walk to the theatre, and was outside the City regulations so things such as drinking and prostitution could operate unhindered by the authorities.

The Theatre was an instant success. People crowded to see the productions; Jonson, Marlowe, and Thomas Kydd’s Revengers’ Tragedy were performed regularly. Theatre-goers walked up a narrow stone path and dropped their entrance fee in to earthenware boxes which were broken open after the performance (and kept in a small, safe room which soon became known as ‘the box office’). Once inside the theatre, much like the modern Globe, the groundlings stood in the open whilst those who had paid for seats sat in tiers around the polygon. The actors, protected by a roofed stage, performed in the open.

So popular was The Theatre, others soon followed suit, with The Curtain opening only 200m to the south. At the height of The Theatre’s popularity, a new young playwright appeared: William Shakespeare. After being befriended by Burbage, Shakespeare’s work began to appear on stage at The Theatre from 1594, including the first ever showing of Romeo and Juliet, as well as a Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The Shoreditch site has produced many surprises, partly due to the nature of it being built on and occupying some of the Priory outhouses. Burbage didn’t choose an open piece of ground for his theatre, and the paved pathway to it (discovered at the very end of the dig) led between other buildings. Further evidence of the presence of the theatre was discovered in the form of pieces of seven pottery ‘money boxes’, the disposable, sealed earthenware vessels used to collect the entrance fees. These were stored in the small room that rapidly became the ‘box office’ and smashed open at the end of the evening so the takings could be counted.

In 1594, James Burbage died and his sons inherited their father’s chaotic, speculative legacy. He had been involved in too many deals, and the lease on The Theatre’s plot was rapidly running out. In 1597, time was up and the owner of the land refused to renew. The brothers made a plan and took a 31 year lease on a plot in Southwark.

On the 28th of December, 1598 in the middle of a snowstorm James Burbage’s widow, his two sons, a builder and a dozen labourers arrived at The Theatre. They took it down, numbering each timber and carted it to the frozen Thames, where it was dragged across that night. In the summer of 1599, the timbers had been reassembled and a new theatre was ready to open: The Globe.

The Shoreditch site was taken over by tenements and warehouses. A thousand human dramas have since played out in the plot occupied by Burbage’s playhouse. Those stories are lost, but evidence of the players in them remains in the finds the Museum of London archaeologists made: pottery, money and blackened hearths. In what was a garden behind one of the small houses that would have stood there in the 18th century, was found the skeleton of a dog, interred with his bowl as if merely asleep.

The Tower Theatre Company’s serendipitous choice of a new location has resulted in the discovery of a missing piece in the story of early theatre in London. This summer, just before the dig closed, I was lucky enough to be part of the last audience of The Theatre, when Paul McGann and Susannah Harker, both supporters of the Tower Theatre Company, read from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, recreating the atmosphere of Shakespeare’s first playhouse. The discovery of The Theatre has been referred to as ‘the holy grail of English Theatre’, but I think that small performance amongst scaffolding and duckboards, glasses in hand was as close to the original spirit of Shakespeare’s time as we are likely now to come: entertainment with just a little bit of magic.

My words here are just an overview of the huge amount of work done on the dig. The team working on site created a brilliant and very detailed blog on their work. Do click to have a read: http://bit.ly/cNCdp2

Echoes…

Places and people often leave behind traces of themselves in the memory of a landscape.  In the countryside archaeological remains can often survive as ‘lumps and bumps’ on the ground or as marks in fields of growing crops, both, given the correct conditions and time of year, are often clearly visible from the air.  An urban landscape does not lend itself to such aerial surveys, buildings and roads smother any archaeology often by many metres.  However, echoes do survive.

The Theatre was London’s first purpose built playhouse and lasted for 21 years and the year after it opened a second, The Curtain, was built in Shoreditch some 200m to the south; its exact location is not yet known archaeologically, but it lasted until at least 1627 when it disappeared from the records.  It has, however, left a mark on London’s streetscape.

Running from Worship Street in the south, crossing Great Eastern Street to Old Street in the north is Curtain Road, so named for the eponymous theatre that once stood nearby; a blue plaque marks an approximate location just off Curtain Road on Hewitt Street.

The Curtain was used by Shakespeare’s company, The Lord Chamberlains Men, after the closure of The Theatre, until their new venue, The Globe, was completed in 1599.

Also on the west side of Curtain Road, a stone’s throw from our site, lies another shade from Shoreditch’s past – a 20th century building named in remembrance of the family intrinsically linked with the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s day, Burbage House.  James Burbage built The Theatre and his son, Richard, was one of the most famous actors of his day playing the lead in many of Shakespeare and other writers’ plays.

To the observant, any walk or bus ride through London is replete with such echoes in the landscape; for even in a city that is constantly consuming and rebuilding itself yards and passages, streets and roads are named in memento mori for long defunct pubs and inns, markets, factories, docks, wharfs and theatres.

“The world must be peopled…” (Much Ado About Nothing, II, iii, 262)

We have previously mentioned in passing various people from the time of The Theatre, so some facts from the lives of these dramatis personae will be interspersed throughout this and the following post to repopulate the past.

Dramatis personae:  James Burbage: 1531-1597

• A joiner skilled in carpentry, possibly from Stratford
• Succumbed to the lure of the stage and became an actor with the Earl of Leicester’s Men then entrepreneur and impresario of the Elizabethan London theatre scene, being the first Englishman to obtain a theatrical licence in 1574
• On land leased from Giles Allen he built The Theatrein 1576, borrowing £666 13s 4d from his brother-in-law John Brayne (Burbage was married to Ellen, John’s sister) to do so.  An earlier Brayne theatrical enterprise at the Red Lion Inn, Mile End had failed, but the experience was not wasted.  This experience combined with Burbage’s building and business skills to make the new joint venture, The Theatre, was a success
• Burbage’s The Earl of Leicester’s Men were probably the first troupe associated with The Theatre
• Burbage also established an indoor playhouse at Blackfriars
• He was buried in St Leonard’s church, Shoreditch, the “actor’s” church

Medieval mayhem…

Our recent hard work has been paying handsome dividends; we have started to find evidence for much more intensive medieval activity than the historical records had suggested.  Up until now the evidence we had for the medieval Priory buildings had conformed to the, albeit conjectural, map of the priory featured in our previous post showing the brew and bake house range running down the western edge of the Priory Great Court but with no buildings behind, to the west.

Dave' sketch plan of hte new medieval features

We have now uncovered a series of walls, floors, ovens and a possible water-course in this area to the west of the brew house and bake house range.  Dave’s interpretive sketch plan shows The Theatreremains (real and conjectural in pink), the brew house (to the east and highlighted in yellow) with the new walls, floors and ovens arranged below (to the west); some have been found in our trenches underneath The Theatreitself, so even when Burbage came to build his playhouse on Allen’s open ground behind the brew house it is clear that this was not always the case and that it had previously been very built up.

The new discoveries are adding layers of detail and complexity to this site and to the 400 year history of the Priory – as many years as separate us now from The Theatre – and we hope to bring you more details of these new discoveries as they emerge.

In archaeology, we know that no matter how much and how detailed the historical research done, our sites almost always turn up something exciting and we always have to expect the unexpected.  In this way, archaeology informs history and visa versa, the two combining to create a fuller picture of the past.

But history, the written record, is incomplete, it has many voids: not all events were recorded, records were not retained, were lost or destroyed and history itself for Britain really only begins with the Romans who first wrote of Britain in the first century BC, before that is Pre-history.  There is now new evidence that suggests our ancestors walked this green and pleasant land as far back as 800,000 years ago (follow this link for more information: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2010/july/ancient-britons-were-earliest-northern-europeans72335.html) and it is in the absence of history that archaeology is the onlysource of evidence for some 798,000 years of human and proto-human activity.

Preservation by Record

In the field, we often use little interpretative sketches, such as Dave’s shown here, to help us keep a handle on various features as they are being excavated, but there is much more to recording an excavation than that.

We use what is known as the “single context system” to record and plan all the features we find during our excavations.  A context is the smallest recordable archaeological unit, for example, if we find a pit, the cut (the edge/surface) of the pit is recorded as one context and what it contains as another or others if there is more than one clearly distinguishable fill.  Deposited layers, ditches, post holes, floors, walls and other structures are all broken down into individual contexts.

Each context is given an individual number (context number) and separately described and recorded on specially designed sheets.  Each context is allocated a position in a stratigraphic matrix according to its stratigraphic relationship (or age, relative to the other contexts) to other contexts.  We use the “law of superimposition” to work out the contexts’ position in the matrix as we excavate them; for example if layer A is on top of layer B then layer B has to be older than layer A according to how they were laid down.  If a pit, with cut C and filled with D, is dug through our layers we would end up with the sequence (from newest to oldest) D-C-A-B.  Just as with Flinders Petrie’s relative chronology for his pottery (featured in our third post), we can build up a relative chronology for the site using this method.  Later, when the finds and samples have been examined by our specialists we can use them to date contexts within the stratigraphic matrix which allows us to create a dating framework for the site as a whole.

Also, our sites are divided into a five metre grid set out by our surveyors and the contexts are individually drawn on almost indestructible waterproof paper called “permatrace” using this grid.  Back at the office, these individual plans are then digitised (mapped onto a computer) as layers, which allows us to separate or group contexts in a number of different ways to help with our post excavation analysis: to best understand the sequences of construction, usage and destruction.  The plan of The Theatre remains (shown in our second posting) was derived from such an analysis; we can use real and conjectural layers to attain the best interpretation from the evidence excavated.

All these records, paper, digital and physical (in the form of any finds recovered) form the site archivewhich will be accessible to future generations of researchers to study.  One the post-excavation analysis is complete and a report written, the archive will reside in the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre, the LAARC (for more information on the LAARC, follow this link: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/ArchiveResearch/).

“O Rare Ben Jonson” (epitaph)

Dramatis personae: Ben Jonson: 1572-1637

• Jonson did not attend university, but had a good education at the Westminster School, prided himself as being a scholar and was later awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University
• Started as a bricklayers apprentice
• His first professional theatrical engagement was at The Theatre
• He wrote many plays, mostly comedies and satires, including: The Case is Altered, Every Man in His Humour (in which Shakespeare is thought to have played as an actor), Eastward Ho, Valpone and the Alchemist
• A contemporary, rival and friend of Shakespeare
• He killed the actor, Gabriel Spencer, in a duel and only narrowly escapes the gallows
• After Shakespeare’s death, he wrote many words in his praise, including: “While I confess thy writings to be such, As neither man, nor muse, can praise to much”, “he was not of an age, but for all time” and also “Sweet Swan of Avon”
• Jonson have edited Shakespeare’s posthumous First Folio
• His portrait bares an uncanny likeness to the actor Tom Baker
• he is buried in Poet’s Corner, Westminster Abbey under a slab inscribed “O Rare Ben Jonson”

“when I am king, as king I will be, there shall be no money…” (Henry VI, Part 2.  IV, ii, 73).

Or will there?…

Much like theatres today, the better the seat, the more you pay.  Takings for the entertainments provided at The Theatre, were collected by a team of people called the gatherers in little pottery boxes, like piggy banks.  The gatherers would have stood at the main entrance and at the foot of the stairs leading to the three levels of galleries.  We know from historical records the names of two of these gatherers: Henry Johnson, a cloth worker or silk weaver, who may also have been a costumer for The Theatre,and was in post for the first 10 years; also Margaret Brayne, the widow of Burbage’s erstwhile partner and father-in-law and who succeeded Johnson.

Playgoers paid one penny to enter which would have allowed them to stand in the theatre yard as groundlings.  If they wished for a better view and a seat, they passed another gatherer at the entrance to the gallery stairs and paid another penny.

These entrances were described by a foreign visitor to the later Swantheatre called Johennes De Witt.  He called them ingresses (singular: ingresus), as he named the parts of the theatre using classical references from the Roman writer Vitruvius, the English it seems, more prosaically named them dores.

The better the seat, the more ‘dores’ and gatherers were passed and the more pennies paid.  The best seats in the house were the Lord’s Seats which would have cost up to six pence.  The exact position of the Lord’s Seats within the theatre is still debated, but it was there that the wealthy and privileged would have sat in their finery as much on show themselves as to watch the show.

The term box office seems to have originated in Tudor London’s Theatreland and derives from the small backstage room where the gatherers brought their (hopefully) full money boxes once the performance had begun.  Here the boxes were broken open and the takings emptied into the ‘Common Boxe’for the counting and later division of the monies; a room for boxes, hence box office.  James Burbage was once accused by his partner of stealing from the common box by means of a counterfeit key, just one of the many legal wrangle he became embroiled in during his business life, records of many of these cases still survive and it may be that Shakespeare’s line “the first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers” (Henry VI, Part 2, VI, ii, 73) was possibly inspired by their over involvement in the lives of his theatre folk!

During the last few weeks we have discovered the remains of the gatherers’ pottery money boxes and some errant pennies.

The economy of Elizabethan England was not in the healthiest of states (history has the habit of repeating itself!) and the official mints only produced silver and gold coinage.  So if you needed small change you had to resort to other means.  Typically in the period, German tokens or jettons were used as small change.  These were not strictly legal tender, but markets and providers of services being what they are were prepared to allocate a value to these jettons and they passed for pennies in London and beyond.

Between The Theatre’s inner and outer walls, underneath where the galleries would have been, Charlotte found such a jetton.  Should such an item been dropped by a groundling on the theatre yard it would not have gone un-noticed for long, but our find must have slipped between the floorboards and come to rest in the dust and detritus below to wait the 400 years for us.

Our Shakespearean Theatre expert, Julian Bowsher, has identified it as being made by one of the three master token makers named Hans Schultes (I–III) from Nuremberg (you should be able to just make out the NS and SCHUL of his name in the picture).  Julian suspects that it is a jetton of Hans Schultes II (a token master from 1586 until his death in 1603).  These dates fit well with the second decade of The Theatre and we will able to confirm this when has been cleaned, conserved and examined by our numismatists(coin experts).  You can see more about these jettons at http://www.mernick.org.uk/Bexley/article3.htm.

The money boxes themselves were cheaply produced, of various shapes and sizes but typically 10-15cm tall and round, were usually glazed in brown or green, had a penny sized slot cut into them and a characteristic ‘knob’ moulded on top.

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/object.asp?obj_id=114755

We have now found seven of the ‘knobs’ and a handful of body sherds.  The excavation at The Rose and The Globe theatres produced 162, so we have a little way to catch up in the week remaining of the dig!  The picture of the whole money box (above) is from the Museum of London’s online collections which can be found at http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/ .

Money box from below

Money box top in profile

You can see in the photo of one of our moneyboxes (left), where the glaze has bled from outside to inside (see red arrow), this marks the top of the coin slot, through which some of Hans Schultes’s jettons may have passed, perhaps for a performance of Romeo and Juliet, with Richard Burbage in the lead.

Examples have been found at other sites in London but they are particularly associated with the theatres and it is at those sites that the bulk of them have been unearthed; The Theatre is the prototype, the first of the purpose built playhouses and it is here that these little pottery money box tops are providing hard physical evidence for what has only been mentioned before in documents, London’s first purpose built theatrical box office.

As for the room itself?  That lies under an adjacent building, waiting.

The box office for the Tower Theatre Company’s new theatre (see the plans on: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm) will be, as modern convention dictates, at the front of the building.  The pottery money boxes and gatherers have been replaced by credit card-reading machines and internet advanced booking to ensure that those bums on seats have paid their pennies.

“a fellow of infinite jest…” (Hamlet, V, i, 201)

Dramatis personae:  Richard Tarlton: 1530-1588

• Also known as Snuff, he was a Clown, singer, musician, fencing master and writer
• Plays were not the only entertainments provided by the playhouses.  Displays of fencing were common as was clowning and Tarlton was the best known of these clowns.  He would perform his skits at the end of the play often engaging heavily with the audience
• Sometimes people would come to the theatre just to see Tarlton and not the plays which lead to some occasional arguments with the players
• He was called the “writing clown” with many pamphlets, ballads, poems and at least one, sadly lost play The Seven Deadly Sins, to his name
• In one pamphlet he wrote a description of the Great Earthquake of April 6th1580 which shook The Theatre and The Curtain such that the audience were “not a little dismayed”.  An event that Shakespeare later recalls in Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet’s nurse tells:

’Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

And she was wean’d – I never shall forget it

• Tarlton wa talented at improvisation (modern stand up comedians take note) often from suggestions provided by the audience and he was a master at the putting down of hecklers
• The description of Yoric given by Hamlet (V. i. 201), was said to have been written in memory of Tarlton
• He was Elizabeth I favourite clown
• Tarlton’s Jests, written posthumously, contained many of his jokes and many that weren’t as unscrupulous publishers tried to cash in on his fame
• He is buried in St Leonard’s church, Shoreditch, his epitaph was: “he of clowns to learn still sought/ But now they learn of him they taught.”
• Follow http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/583614/Richard-Tarlton for a woodcut depicting Tarlton

Next Time:

• All good things come to an end – the last week of excavation
• Round up of discoveries
• So what did you think of it all? – some thoughts from those involved
• Further information

Links:

• Tower Theatre Company: http://www.towertheatre.org.uk/
• Tower Theatre Company, the new theatre: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm
• Footage of the 2009 evaluation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savcpQFVu8w
• MOTCO UK directory and image database, antique maps, prints and books:
• http://www.motco.com/default-Markou.asp
• Museum of London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/english
• Museum of London online collections: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources
• Museum of London Archaeology: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/
• Ben Crystal: http://www.shakespeareontoast.com/
• London Archaeologist: http://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/
• Britannica Tarlton article: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/583614/Richard-Tarlton
• Natural History Museum article on the Ancient Britons Were the Earliest North Europeans: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2010/july/ancient-britons-were-earliest-northern-europeans72335.html
• London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/ArchiveResearch/

Welcome back…

Work continues a pace as we approach the final three weeks of the excavation period,  So do our minutes hasten… (Sonnet 60).

Last week we welcomed a new member to the team, Dave Saxby, whose insights and vast experience will be invaluable to our understanding of the site.

Of nuns and beer – a brief history from the holy to the profane…

Up until the mid 12^th century, the area of the site here would have been just fields.  Previous archaeological excavations in the area immediately surrounding The Theatre have found no substantial evidence for Pre-historic, Roman and Saxon occupation.

This all changed in the 1150s with the founding of the St John the Baptist Priory.  Our colleague, Hana Lewis excavated the Priory Church as a part of the nearby East London Line excavations in 2007.  An article about that dig appeared in the latest issue of London Archaeologist (the periodical covering history, heritage and archaeology in London, follow this link for more information: http://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/). 

In its four hundred year history the Priory was the ninth richest in Britain and held sizable tracts of land and like other religious establishments of its type, it was mostly self sufficient.  Britain’s Priories were usually equipped with barns for storing crops raised on their lands, mills to grind the corn, cellars, dairies orchards and sometime vineyards.  Our site lies entirely within the precinct walls of Holywell Priory and directly over some of the buildings west of the main complex that would have provided the nuns with their daily bread and beer. 

Map of Holywell Priory

On this map of the Priory, created in the nineteenth century from historical records, the buildings that would have occupied our site are listed as a bake house and a brew house on the left (west) side of the Great Court and above (north) of the pond.

Bread has always been a staple and before modern piped water infrastructure, drinking beer was safer than drinking water (the brewing process effectively sterilises the drink), this was especially true in built up environments like the rapidly expanding Tudor London, where ground water and wells could easily become contaminated.  The beer in question wasn’t always the strongest of ales as we may know them today.  More frequently consumed was small beer, which was weaker and made from a second fermentation of malt that had already produced the more intoxicating first brew.

When the Priory was dissolved in 1539, its lands and remaining buildings were split up and sold and by 1576 the area including our site was in the possession of one Giles Allen who sold a 21 year lease to James Burbage and his business partner and brother in law John Brayne to build and operate The Theatre.  As Burbage (and more of him anon) appears to have been a canny business man, he would clearly have seen the advantage of some on site catering to extract a few more pennies from his punters.  The later Bankside theatres such as The Globe and The Rose were known to have dedicated tap houses for their catering needs and just as The Theatre served as the prototype for the playhouses it is not inconceivable that our brew house served as a pragmatic re-use of an existing build for the prototype tap house.

Would I were in an alehouse in London!  I would give all my fame for a pot of ale… (Henry V. III. i. 13)

Black glazed red ware pottery

Historically we know that the brew house and bake house complex survived the dissolution and were rented out at least in part as tenements, but it is also likely that they continued their original purpose.  We have evidence, in the form of black glazed red ware pottery, in a form that is traditionally associated with brewing and beer drinking.  This pottery is contemporary with The Theatre, likewise the pottery fragment with the bearded gentleman design mentioned in our first blog posting; he was found crushed into the theatre yard – home to the groundlings!  What would be more natural than to share a pint or two with ones friends when one comes to see a show. 

Photograph of brew house wall

We have now found the back wall of the medieval brew house building and on initial inspection it seems we now have hard evidence for its survival through the dissolution.  It seems that the later Tudor builders were not averse to a little recycling as demonstrated by the discovery of a remnant of an inserted stone floor made of a green sandstone called Reigate stone.  This was probably taken from one of the Priory buildings as they were being demolished. 

Dave Saxby cleaning the re-used stone floor

The photo of Dave shows him cleaning this re-used stone floor; the stone just below his left knee has a rounded moulding carved around its edge and an oval groove cut into one side.  These carved elements indicate that the stone was formerly used as a decorative architectural feature, probably the top of a small column or pair of columns.  The find resembles some of those found by Hana in the Holywell Priory church. 

Hana visits our site to see the Priory stonework

We are currently analysing the finds from this area and hope to update you as soon as we know if they back up our current ideas, or whether we will have to form an alternative hypothesis.  In this game you are only as good as your last hypothesis and if the evidence doesn’t support it, you have to re-don the thinking cap, formulate another and rigorously test it against new data.

O! there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly…(Hamlet III. ii. 1)

As a part of the Tower Theatre Company’s fund raising campaign (http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm), last week the actors Paul McGann and Susannah Harker performed scenes from Midsummer Night Dream and Romeo and Juliet upon the very ground where four hundred years ago, the same words were enacted before an equally rapt audience.  

Suzannah Harker and Paul McGann on site

From historical records we know that Romeo and Juliet was premiered here at The Theatre and with James Burbage’s son Richard in the lead role.

There seems to be more than just a little serendipity surrounding this place and as archaeologists we feel a sense of privilege to be a part of this project that completes the circle from stage to stage.

Next time…

• Some of the characters who once populated this space
• Echoes in the landscape
• Exciting new developments, the latest finds and their implications

Links:

London Archaeologist: http://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/

Tower Theatre Company: http://www.towertheatre.org.uk/

Tower Theatre Company, the new theatre: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm

Footage of the 2009 evaluation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savcpQFVu8w

MOTCO UK directory and image database, antique maps, prints and books: http://www.motco.com/default-Markou.asp

Museum of London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/english

Museum of London Archaeology: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/

Ben Crystal: http://www.shakespeareontoast.com/

There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip…

This beautiful item was found in a trench placed just outside of The Theatre, and once again, our pottery expert Jacqui Pearce has been able to throw some light upon it:

The goblet is more properly called a beaker (the more ordinary connotations of this term are better suited to it as well). It is made in Surrey-Hampshire border ware, probably in the mid 16th century (could go into later 16th, but not much beyond). It could well have been made at Farnborough, the late 16th century hub of the industry. The form was often used alongside small drinking jugs and loads have been found at the Inns of Court, where they were bought in bulk. It marks the large scale transition from drinking from wooden bowls to using ceramic vessels, which took place in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The beaker would have been used to drink wine or sack, which is a Tudor type of sherry, a fortified wine and it is not inconceivable to speculate that it may have a close association with The Theatre. 

So why do archaeologists love pottery so much?

Pottery is one of the most useful things an archaeologist can find.  Pottery designs, styles, types of material, developments in ceramic and kiln technologies change with time.  Also, specific types and styles of pottery can be associated with specific groups of people and activities.  Perhaps most importantly, even if it is not complete, pottery sherds are almost indestructible and therefore can survive for long periods of time, buried in the earth to be discovered by archaeologists and shed light onto the past. 

An archaeologist called Flinders Petrie (most famous for his digs in Egypt and the near east and often regarded as the father of modern systematic archaeology) was the first to developed ceramic typologiesin the nineteenth century.  For these typologies, he grouped his excavated pottery by style and type and produced a sort of evolutionary chart showing how the pottery had developed through time (for more information on Petrie, follow this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flinders_Petrie).  He was then able to use these typologies to create a relative chronology for the pottery and therefore his sites to help to date them in the absence of any historical information and modern absolute dating techniques (methods like Radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology that you may be familiar with from Time Team).

Today, we have the benefit of a great deal of historical and other research which, when combined with absolute dating techniques, has produced very good dating frameworks for understanding a site from its pottery.  Experienced pottery specialists, like Jacqui Pearce can often tell at a glance what a piece of pot may have been used for and what period it dates from.

So what does the beaker tell us?  On its own, a single item of evidence usually cannot tell us much.  We have to look at all the finds as a whole (we call that whole an assemblage), to truly get the best information.  However, this particular beaker does, tantalisingly, offer us some information.  It is a relatively high status item which appears to put it a little out of place for this location.  Shoreditch has traditionally been known as a poor area as suggested in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons, where the bells of Shoreditch say when I am rich, more in hope than expectation.

The presence of such a high status item in this location, which nay date from the time of The Theatre poses a number of interesting if speculative questions:

• Was this the beaker of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Burbage or one of their friends or associates?  Perhaps it was used to toast a successful production?  “I am known to be… one that loves a cup of hot wine…” (Coriolanus. II. i [52])
• Was it discarded by a rich theatre goer?  “We’ll teach you to drink deep ere you depart” (Hamlet. I. ii [175])
• Was it a prop used in one or more the plays?

The answer may never be known to us, but this artefact has the potential to link us directly to Shakespeare and his contemporaries through the simple act of taking a drink and it has been waiting, patiently in the ground, waiting for us for over 400 years.

This beaker will now be examined more closely, restored and eventually put on display.

Archaeology in action:

We have some exciting news from the Museum of London: from the end of the week (17th July), a new exhibition area will be opening entitled Archaeology in Action.  These displays will showcase excavations in London as they are happening and items and information from this site will be among the first to be shown.  Entrance to the Museum of London is free and for details of how to get there, follow this link: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/VisitUs/.

Building the new theatre:

Our evaluation work and the revelation of actual remains of the Shakespearian theatre on this site was greeted with enthusiasm by the Tower Theatre Company, but the discovery also presented them with a design challenge.  How could they build their new theatre without damaging the old?

The project architect and engineers had to produce a layout that both avoided and incorporated The Theatre (for more information on the planned new theatre, follow this link: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/theatre.htm).  The supporting foundations, pile, drains and cabling have to be placed safely away from The Theatre and their proposed locations have to be thoroughly excavated to ensure no archaeological information is lost. 

(copyright Bland, Brown and Cole)

This plan shows where The Theatre remains are in relation to the new stage.

Can you dig it?  Yes we can….

This last week’s work has been excavating the approved trenches where the piles and other foundations will go and with these trenches, we open little windows onto the past.

We are hoping to find more of the structure of The Theatre, in particular, more of the outer wall.  So far we have discovered a brick pad that may be the remains of one of the external wall, foundation piers that would have supported one of the oak upright posts that formed this outer wall.

Finding more of the outer wall will enable us to more accurately determine the full size of The Theatre which we currently estimate to be about 22 metres across.

To give an idea of what The Theatre may have looked like, you can visit the famous reconstruction of The Globeon the Southbank of the Thames, which is a little larger than The Theatre, or you could try building one yourself.  Follow this link and print off a paper do-it-yourself model of The Globe http://papertoys.com/images/globe-color.pdf, we have one in pride of place in our site hut.

One for the record – professional photography on site:

Last Thursday another important member of our team visited the site, our professional photographer Maggie Cox.  Maggie’s job is to take the high quality publication and archive photographs needed for our reports and for the archive.  These photographs together with our written and drawn paperwork help to build a complete picture of our work on the site, ensuring that no detail is overlooked.  We call this preservation by record. 

Maggie Cox recording archaeological features

To prepare for Maggie, we had to thoroughly clean the areas she was to photograph.  We used a rather unusual piece of equipment for an archaeological site – a vacuum cleaner! 

The dry and dusty nature of conditions on site at the moment means that vacuuming is the best way to reveal the detail needed for the photographs. 

In the original Shakespearean:

The actor and Shakespearian writer, Ben Crystal visited the site last Thursday.  One of his aims is to de-mystify Shakespeare and his works to make them more accessible and enjoyable.  Together with his father he has also researched what Shakespeare may have actually sounded like: the accent of Shakespeare and to demonstrate he recited Sonnet 116: 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Ben Crystal reciting Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

It was certainly very different to the received pronunciation of much modern acting and we hope to be able to post a recording of this performance soon.  This was Ben’s second visit to The Theatre and hopefully not the last (follow this link to Ben’s website to find out more: http://www.shakespeareontoast.com/). 

The power of the pen and the power of place

For writers of the time of Shakespeare and Marlowe, the tool of choice was the quill pen, and with their words they oft laid bare the frailties of the human condition.  The power of their words has left an indelible imprint on our language and in our culture.  Their stories still resonate today and have infiltrated many layers of our society.

Our slightly battered 1980 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has 39 pages for the Bible, but a staggering 75 pages for Shakespeare, eight for Hamlet alone!  Poor Kit Marlowe gets but two pages, but more of him anon. 

Within The Theatre, these words were enacted and brought to life for the entertainment of the masses.  Because we can now stand in the very place where this first happened this archaeological site is an evocative place and still holds some of the power of those words.

As archaeologists, our tool of choice is the 41/2” pointing trowel.  Our work here will continue to contribute to the sum of our understanding of this place and of the bard, his contemporaries, his times and all the others who have passed through this place; with each scrape of the trowel we come nearer to them and through them, to ourselves.

When the new theatre is opened it is hoped that the remains of the old will be on display, and as the modern actors cross the stage, they will walk with the shades of their predecessors, time travelling from the present to the 16th century and back, “It is an honest ghost, let me tell you” (Hamlet. I. v [138]).

Coming up soon:

• Legal disputes (‘twas it ever thus): battles with brooms, stick and bills, of pistols and hemp seed
• Exciting developments at the Museum of London – “Archaeology in action”
• Exciting event on The stage: press launch and thespians
• Get thee to a nunnery: a little more of the Priory
• Of beer and pies – the brew house bake house – the eternal importance of beer and pies
• Shakespeare beyond this world
• Of earthquakes, clowns and star crossed lovers

Links:

Tower Theatre Company: http://www.towertheatre.org.uk/

Tower Theatre Company’s new theatre and The Theatre: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm

Footage of the 2009 evaluation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savcpQFVu8w

MOTCO UK directory and image database, antique maps, prints and books:

http://www.motco.com/default-Markou.asp

Museum of London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/english

Museum of London Archaeology: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/

Ben Crystal: http://www.shakespeareontoast.com/

Welcome back to The Theatre

Remember the face?  Here it is with the other shards we found to fit:

Our pottery specialist, Jacqui Pearce, says :

The face is outlined in relief, as are the nose, mouth, eyes and beard. The only indication of costume is a deep ruff, which is clearly shown surrounding the neck and giving the head a sharply defined appearance that became popular in the late Elizabethan period. The ruff was a detachable collar that fitted over the shirt and all round the neck. It developed c. 1570 from the increasingly elaborate pleated collar worn by gentlemen from the 1540s onwards. The fashion lasted for about a quarter of a century and in its most extreme form, during the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign, it could span the width of the shoulders. By c. 1610, the end was in sight as turn-down lace or linen collars began to displace the ruff in fashionable costume. Those of lesser rank did not attempt to ape the costume of their betters, so the ruff remained largely the preserve of noblemen and gentlemen. The short pointed beard is also typical of the fashion amongst gentlemen during the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. 

Was the jug directly related in some way to the playhouse? Could it even have been specially commissioned, perhaps as a portrait of a known figure of the time? Whether or not a direct portrait was intended, the Shoreditch bearded man is represented as a fashionable gentleman or nobleman of the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth. The execution of the features falls more in the realm of caricature than of faithful rendition, so we shall probably never know his identity. However, the location of the find, in debris deposited following the demolition of The Theatre, shows that it was in all likelihood used in the immediate vicinity. If so, then it is not too far-fetched to suppose that it was used by those who frequented the venue and attended or were involved in the productions that took place there.

Could this be the face of the  Bard or one of his associates or characters?  Could this jug have once been an example of Tudor marketing and merchandising, Burbage trying to make yet more money from his Theatre goers with some commemerative items?  We shall probably never know for sure, but the argument is compelling and as Jacqui later told us about this unique find “[there are] no parallels of this kind of decoration are known of to date”.

A bit of a recap…

When we first arrived on the site it was a rather unprepossessing 20^th century warehouse with some surviving Victorian walls.

Archaeological investigation is built into the planning process for new developments to prevent important archaeology from being lost, so after doing a Desk Based Assessment (DBA) which is a piece of historical research including checking old maps, other historic documents, the geology of the area and archaeological reports for digs in the local area.  The DBA helps to form an idea of what we might expect to find and we use it to design the first Written Scheme of Investigation (WSI).  A WSI is a document setting out what we will do for each phase of archaeological work.

So armed with DBAs and WSIs, machines mattocks and trowels in 2008-9 we archaeologically evaluated the site.  In an evaluation we dig test pits or trenches to determine if there is anything that may require a more thorough investigation, it corresponds to an archaeological testing of the water.

Fortunately, no basement had ever been built on this site, the result – archaeology!

Some more of the archaeological story so far…

When archaeologists write reports, we have to follow a set format.  When we discuss the site we start by talking about the earliest activity and then work forward to the present.  The language is also a little formal, but it is an official document and will be used by the client in some of their dealings with local planning authorities.

However, here we will talk about the site as it is being dug, from now to then:

Then…

Sealed below the concrete floors was a 19^th century cobbled yard. These cobbles had in turn had sealed layers of demolished 18^th century terraced houses that had once lined the street frontage, with gardens to the rear and can be seen on historical maps.  Some of these historical maps are available to se online via MAPCO’s database:

http://www.motco.com/default-Markou.asp 

Below the 18^th century buildings were found earlier, 17^th century structures which we have interpreted as being a part of the brew house and bakery complex providing the for nuns of Holywell Priory but more of nuns, dissolution, beer and pies anon.

However, it was from under the garden soils that what we had hoped for but dared not expect to find emerged, the jewel in this site’s crown.  Removing the garden soil revealed the curiously polygonal wall of The Theatre and a hard gravel surface, all that seemingly remained following its sudden dismantlement in 1598 (and therein lies a tale of which also, more anon). 

Here are Heather and Val planning The Theatre remains:

Here is a plan of The Theatre remains:

It was hard to suppress the excitement at the finding of these remains; here were Burbage’s very walls (brown on the plan) and the gravel yard surface (biege on the plan), while it may sound like a very mundane feature, was the very surface upon which the groundlings stood to watch the entertainments of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Richard Talton, Will Kemp and a host of others, some of whom will be introduced to in later posts.

The curious case of the dog…

Retuning to the 18^th century gardens mentioned before, for it was while digging through these we had one of those poignant moments that archaeology can so often provide.

We found the remains of a small dog, he was about the size of Cocker spaniel, had been laid out carefully, as if asleep, and tucked in beside him, was his bowl.

This then was the story of a personal or family sorrow, a real human moment encapsulated in the ground, one that only archaeology can connect us with.

This is why archaeology is so important, we are miners of moments, taking glimpses, often so very fleeting, of such human events and with those we can repopulate and personalise the events of the past that history would simply have overlooked.

Pottery, pits, postholes and walls are all grist to mill of archaeology but they are all also connected to the people who created them, people not so unlike us.  Some of them even kept dogs and loved them enough to have performed this touching ritual.

LP Hartley wrote in the Go-between: “the past is foreign country, they do things differently there”.  But we often find that on the human scale this is not always so.

And back to now…          

In later posts we will bring you more stories great and small, human and historic: of earthquakes, dancing, entertainment, legal disputes, beer and pies and of how the Tower Theatre Company is planning to protect The Theatre with a theatre.

There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip…

We leave you now with another exciting find:

Charlotte is holding an almost complete goblet that was found in a deposit just beyond The Theatre’s outside wall, we will learn more from our about this find from our pottery specialist and will update you as soon as we can; it raises some tantalising questions!  But for now I will fumble up a loose adieu!

Useful inks:

Tower Theatre Company: http://www.towertheatre.org.uk/

Tower Theatre Company’s new theatre and The Theatre: http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm

Footage of the 2009 evaluation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savcpQFVu8w

MOTCO UK directory and image database, antique maps, prints and books:

http://www.motco.com/default-Markou.asp

Museum of London: http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/english

Museum of London Archaeology: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/

Welcome!

Welcome to the first post of the weblog that will be covering our work at a most important and exciting site in London’s Shoreditch, that of not just a theatre, but The Theatre, London’s first, purpose built playhouse, The Theatre of James Burbage and, of course, a certain William Shakespeare.

This will be a brief introduction to the site and the people working there.  Over the next few weeks we will be investigating a direct, physical connection with some of the giants of our cultural heritage and we want to show you a little of how archaeology works and to give you insights into what it can tell us about our past.

We will provide you with pictures, plans, videos and will keep you up to date with what we uncover and discover as work progresses.

We will introduce you to some more of the history of this place and the stories of those real people who were a part of that history, and of how the Tower Theatre Company is to revive a tradition of theatre on this site and protect this unique discovery.  It is, perhaps, more than a mere stroke of good fortune that a theatre will once again stand on this spot.

Tower Theatre Company

The Tower Theatre Company has made this work possible by funding the dig as a part of the site development.  You can find more details about them on their website:

http://www.towertheatre.org.uk

You can also find more details of the new and old Theatre at:

http://www.thetheatre.org.uk/index.htm

This site includes pictures, plans, video and details of the fundraising appeal to help pay for this important development.

We’d also like to thank Keltbray, the demolition and civil engineering specialists, who carried out the demolition of the previous building on site and are providing assistance on site over the course of the dig, Sir Robert McAlpine, civil engineers, who are the project management consultants for the project, Hannah Reed Civil and Structural Engineers who are working very closely with us to design the foundations of the new theatre around the remains of the old and the architects Bland, Brown and Cole who have managed to come up with a great outline design for the new theatre, based on the foundations that can be got in around the archaeology!

Dramatis personae

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances….

So, enter then, our humble players (from left to right): Ralph, Charlotte, Heather (in charge on site), Mark and Val.  These are the archaeologists who will be digging the site; they are backed up by a large team at Museum of London Archaeology including photographers, surveyors, finds and environmental specialists and processors and researchers to name but a few, but more of them later.

The story so far…..

Over the last few years we have been building up to this excavation, with geophysical surveys (using technology to “see” into the ground) and with small evaluation trenches.  To see some of the work from last year’s evaluation, follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savcpQFVu8w

and Heather will show what went on.

In the last few weeks the final preparations have been completed: the last of the 19th-century warehouse that stood on the site has been demolished, the modern concrete floor broken up and taken away, the cabins containing the all important kettle are in place, the old evaluation trenches cleared and the digging has begun.

Already, the ground is yielding more of its secrets, 18th and 19th-century buildings, signs of local industries such as glass making, The Theatre and, predating The Theatre, parts of buildings that formed the large Holywell Priory, founded in the 12th-century and once the ninth richest in the country, more of that and the other discoveries in the next few weeks.

Finally, for this post, we leave you with a face:

Does he look familiar?  We’ll explain more in the next post as well as bring you the latest finds, stories from site and the past.

So, the stage is set, the players have their parts, the curtain has risen and more anon!

Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say goodnight, until it is next time……