mantle – Rumwoldstow

A Trewhiddle-style brooch from Marbury, Cheshire

You remember the COVID-19 lockdowns in the UK, back in 2020 – 2021? No? I guess you’re too young…well I won’t bore you with oldster ramblings about pulling together or wartime spirit or any of that rubbish and anyway by the time you read this sadly there will be new and worse crises. But honestly at the time it was rather a big deal and ONE of my challenges was to try to help people buy starter re-enactment kit when everything was closed. There were lots of good online shops and retailers doing mail order, but there seemed to be few offerings of good Anglo-Saxon jewellery, especially from the later, Christian period. Everyone wants to be a Viking. There were a few nice little disc brooches available but the selection was seriously limited, compared with reproductions of Viking finds.

Now scroll forward a couple of years…and there are some exciting new options available. I recently bought myself a super brooch about 5 cm across, based on a find acquired by the British Museum in 2020. The brooch is part of a hoard registered as 2020,8004.1-6 (BEP). The hoard was found at Marbury in Cheshire by Martin Tobitt and includes parts of a similar but slightly larger brooch.

The original disc brooch is made of cast openwork silver, inlaid with niello, and with five riveted bosses as extra decoration. The openwork design with stylised creatures is in the late Anglo-Saxon ‘Trewhiddle’ style and is dated to 9th or early 10 century CE.

Front of original brooch, British Museum object 2020,8004.1

Back of original brooch, British Museum object 2020,8004.1

I include extracts from the curator’s comments below:

…part of an expanding group of 9th century early-medieval brooches that are broadly characterised by their openwork, cross based form, often decorated with Trewhiddle-style decoration enhanced with the use of niello.

There are currently 15 examples known to the author, 12 of which are silver, the remaining being gilt copper-alloy. Most take the form of an expanded-armed cross with second cross set at 45 degrees; the three brooches described here are the first examples where the crosses are instead formed of concave-sided lozenges.

This brooch hoard fits with the pattern of deposition seen in the corpus of Type 16 brooches. For example other hoards with multiple brooches of this type include the Galloway Hoard (National Museum Scotland), the South Norfolk Hoard (Norwich Castle Museum), and the Beeston Tor hoard (British Museum). These brooches are usually found in the east of England. However, these three, and an example from Nannerch, Wales (PAS LVPL-30A793), and the Galloway hoard further north, now create an interesting North West group, perhaps suggestive Viking activity.

Non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis of the surface of brooch 1 and one the fragments, indicated silver contents of approximately 94-97%, the rest being mostly copper, with traces of other elements.

I find the curator’s comment about the items being usually found in the East of England confusing, as the style is named for a hoard from Trewhiddle in Cornwall which is as West as it gets in the UK!

I bought my replica from the wonderful Northern Traders in Spain. Their website includes a link to the original find – bless them! So I can add the brooch to my early 10th century outfit with confidence. Trewhiddle-style items have been found in a number of places including Abingdon, Cornwall (the eponymous Trewhiddle) and Norfolk (Pentney), so I’m happy that my abbess near the borders of Mercia and Wessex could have a fancy piece in this style.

These disc brooches generally have a fairly light-weight pin, as do the equal armed brooches, and I am not sure how good they would be at fastening a shoulder-slung rectangular cloak of heavy material; I think that penanular brooches are better for this purpose. However, the disc brooch is ideal for fastening a circular or semi-circular mantle, as worn by Anglo-Saxon women.

My replica is of copper alloy (bronze) and the five “bosses” have been glued or soldered on, not riveted. The bosses are lightly silver plated so the brooch closely resembles the current appearance of the original brooch; if I wanted to be super authentic I could silver plate the whole thing? But I like it fine as is, and it’s great to see a wider variety of Anglo-Saxon replicas for sale, most especially as this is a recent find with a recorded location!

Replica of the Marbury brooch, made by Northern Traders (front)

A Tale of Two Mantles

The mantle is one of the most characteristic and yet mysterious of early mediaeval garments, one that seems to be a woman’s garment. You can read the beginning of my adventures with the mantle in earlier posts:

Mantlepieces
Pin the mantle on the nun

We have no archaeological evidence for the mantle, only literary references and manuscript illustrations such as the picture below showing Saint Æthelthryth.

Saint Æthelthryth of Ely from the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, illuminated manuscript in the British Library
Source: By monk – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32907989

I’ve now completed two versions of the mantle – one for every day, and one for high days and holidays.

The plain mantle

My plain mantle is a semicircle of grey wool, hemmed around the curved edge, and using the selvedge of the fabric along the straight edge. This is the same shape as an ecclesiastical cope.

The wool is a little scratchy and I very naughtily sewed a strip of nice smooth linen along the inside of the cloak where it touches my neck. A real nun would leave the wool plain and accept the discomfort. Honest.

The mantle in illustrations shows no opening, and for this version I sewed the front closed up to about my breastbone, so you put it on over your head. It’s a warm and comfortable garment, very cosy if you are working from home and it’s a bit chilly; it keeps one’s body and legs warm, and you can easily put your hands up under the front hem and I think this gives an appearance in keeping with the manuscript illustrations. The straight edge can be folded over to make a collar and it keeps the back of my neck warm.

Would an artist have drawn the seam down the front? Or would they have just drawn the overall shape, as we see it in illuminations?

For any serious labour, you would want more freedom of movement and I think that’s where the scapular (a tabard-shaped apron) would come into its own both for warmth and to protect your main garments from dirt.

The fancy mantle

I wove a decorative band to go round the neck of my fancy blue wool mantle which Abbess Cyneswithe will wear when there are posh visitors to Rumwoldstow, such as Bishop Godfrid (whether or not he is having an ascetic moment). The design for the tablet weaving is inspired by brocaded tablet-woven edges to the vestments of St Cuthbert (Durham textiles) and embroideries on the Llangorse Fragment, woven in a technique known from Laceby, Lincs and also one of the Durham textiles. Birds, clumsy lions and plants seem to have been familiar high-status motifs.

The band is woven in find wool, which I moistened and ironed to help ease it around the curve.

My blue mantle is a full circle and is open-fronted. I found that a light, ansate brooch is entirely adequate to close it – there is less weight on the pin than there would be with a heavy rectangular cloak. The front edges naturally overlap and are really very stable. And again, the opening is not, I think, very obvious.

This garment is even more snuggly than the plain mantle, being a soft, lightweight wool.

Both the plain and fancy mantles are high status garments as they are made by cutting away fabric and discarding it, to create a half or full circle.

The mantle is often reconstructed as a poncho with rounded corners, but the poncho design (a flat fabric with a hole cut in the middle) doesn’t seem to relate to cloaks from around this time, whereas the semi-circular cloak is known from finds such as Leksand and lived on in the ecclesiastical cope. The poncho could be regarded as a wider scapula with curved edges – it’s a totally valid interpretation – but I went with the half- and full-circles to see what they’d be like.

The circle has the advantage that you don’t have to put it on over your head. The half circle uses less fabric and keeps your neck warmer, also you don’t need a clasp. Both are good, warm, practical garments and I think fit the iconography well enough.

Mantlepieces

For several years, I’ve been planning a mantle to go over my Anglo-Saxon nun outfits (working day and posh) so that I don’t have to wear my Viking shawl with them. As with pretty much all early mediaeval English outfits, we have very little material evidence and manuscript illustrations are a main source. In these, women often appear to be wearing an overgarment which allows them to raise their hands, the folds draping elegantly in front and behind. It appears that the front is shorter than the back.

For an example see the portrait of Saint Æthelthryth of Ely from the Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, an illuminated manuscript in the British Library.

The mantle has been variously reconstructed as a poncho and a cope. The Regia Anglorum kit guide shows a nice comparison of different overgarments as seen in manuscripts, but states definitively that the garment was closed, and cone-shaped like an ecclesiatical cope. I don’t think we can be sure of that, and I recently met with a very lovely lady who showed me her interpretation as a circular cloak with an open edge, which has the superb advantage that you don’t have to put it on or take it off over your head when wearing a wimple. She draped it so that the open edge was not particularly noticeable and its elegance and practicality won me over. A small brooch of classic Anglo-Saxon design will fasten the loose edge.

I had already bought a nice piece of grey wool, but it was not large enough for a circular mantle. So I have repurposed that as a semicircular cloak for my “working nun” outfit, a nice plain wool but to wear a semicircular cloak instead of a plain rectangle is definitely showing off! And I bought some lovely light-weight blue wool fabric recently, this time buying four metres to be sure of having enough for the circle. Some friends helped me measure it and I decided on a 120 cm length, to fall just below the knee, to be constructed of sections in a manner not unlike a planked shield.

Today I settled down to cut it out, with Al helping me to manage the tape measure and scribe the circle. I added 1cm to the length for hemming; really I should have done my maths first! See below.

Fabric folded in half lengthways and marked for as much circle as possible either side

Excellent! Thought I…I can cut two segments from the remainder and match selvedge to selvedge to save hemming. I’ve got lots of cloth!

And…when I pinned the spare cloth to the selvege, I found that I was 2cm short. That 1cm seam allowance was the mischief!

Fortunately the leftover piece from the start of the fabric is just barely big enough to piece in the necessary part, while still using selvedge. Phew, that was close! I have to comfort myself with the knowledge that Anglo-Saxons faced the same problems and used the same solutions. I did it on purpose to be more authentic, honest guv!

Finally, I cut a small neckhole (it’ll expand with hemming) and tore the fabric (to get a straight edge) down to the hemline to make an opening. Hurrah! My pieces are ready to sew, and A Project has been transformed into a simple job.Quite a long job, as the amount of hemming is significant, but straightforward. After that, I’ll design some embroidery for the neckline. Probably. Unless I’m fed up with sewing by then.