Thousands of Rare Artifacts Discovered Beneath Tudor Manor's Attic Floorboards
While most of England was on lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic, archaeologist Matt Champion was working solo at Oxburgh Hall, a moated Tudor mansion in Norfolk. As part of the site’s £6 million (roughly $7.8 million USD) roof restoration project, workers had lifted the floorboards in the estate’s attic for the first time in centuries. Probing the recesses beneath the boards with gloved fingertips, Champion expected to find dirt, coins, bits of newspapers and detritus that had fallen through the cracks. Instead, he discovered a veritable treasure trove of more than 2,000 items dating as far back as the 15th century.
The cache is one of the most remarkable “underfloor” archaeological finds ever made at a National Trust property, the British heritage organization says in a statement. Together, the objects offer a rich social history of the manor’s former residents.
Among the discoveries are the nests of two long-gone rats that built their homes out of scraps of Tudor and Georgian silks, wools, leather, velvet, satin and embroidered fabrics, reports Mark Bridge for the Times. The critters also repurposed roughly 450-year-old fragments of handwritten music and parts of a book. A builder recently found the rest of the volume—a relatively intact 1568 copy of Catholic martyr John Fisher’s The Kynge’s Psalmes—in a hole in the attic.
British nobleman Sir Edmund Bedingfeld built the manor house in 1482, reports BBC News. His descendants live in the home to this day. As devout Catholics, the Bedingfelds were ostracized for their faith, particularly after Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne in 1558. The year after the Protestant queen’s ascension, Sir Henry Bedingfeld refused to sign the Act of Uniformity, which outlawed Catholic mass, according to the statement. During the Elizabethan period, many Catholic clergy were imprisoned, tortured and killed. The Bedingfelds hid men of the cloth in a secret “priest hole” at their home and participated in secret masses, per the Times. The religious artifacts discovered in the attic may have been used in these illegal services.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/thousands-rare-artifacts-discovered-underneath-attic-floorboards-tudor-manor-180975578/
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