Mitre Square stove tiles (CQU04)

Clients: CgMs Consulting

Author: Roy Stephenson

During excavations at a site in Mitre Square (City of London), fragments from at least eight panel-type stove tiles were found along with one crest tile and five vertical, T-sectioned separator tiles. All but one of the fragments is in a dark red, earthenware fabric with a thick white slip on the exterior surface under a dark green glaze. The one exception is a separator tile in a pale buff earthenware, made in the same mould as the redware examples from the site, and with traces of polychrome glazing. The redware body suggests an origin just outside the Cologne area, somewhere in the lower or middle Rhineland, in the 1560s to 1570s.

The stove tiles all appear to come from the allegorical tile series of the ‘Seven liberal arts’, produced in Cologne and neighbouring centres in the Rhineland during the 1560s and 1570s. The original series of engravings on which these were based was produced by Hans Sebald Beham in 1539. The Renaissance architectural arch supported by herms, within which the allegorical figures are set, was based on a series of woodcut engravings by Hans Holbein, published between 1535 and 1543.

The vertical separator tiles (Leistenkacheln) all come from the same mould, with a figure representing Atlas, his arms folded, supporting an ionic capital and standing on a fluted column base The one whiteware separator tile was probably made in Cologne c 1570—80 and the redware examples in the same general area at a similar date. They would have covered the vertical seams between the rectangular panel-type stove tiles. Not enough of the redware crest tile (Bekrönungskachel) has survived for the main, central design to be identified.

Imported 16th-century stove tiles have been found on a number of sites in London, with several examples already known from Holy Trinity Priory Aldgate. All share the same designs as the recent finds from Mitre Square (which lies within the former precinct of Holy Trinity Priory), with panel-type stove tiles from the ‘Seven liberal arts’ series, including Logic and Hope, and Atlas and caryatid separator tiles. These can again be paralleled by a large assemblage of stove tiles from the Cologne area found at the end of the 19th century off Fleet Street, probably close to the Inns of Court.

During the 15th and early 16th centuries, the smokeless ceramic stove, imported from the Continent, was the exclusive preserve of monastic sites in England (for example, Fountains Abbey). By the mid 16th century, the social context in which ceramic stoves are found had begun to broaden. Following the Dissolution, the dispersal of former religious houses to the wealthy classes saw the increasing appearance of Continental tile stoves in large town houses, such as Duke's Place, on the site of the former Holy Trinity Priory. They are also found on palace sites, such as Arundel House and, in the case of the Fleet Street finds, in the residences of the wealthy middle classes. The finds from Mitre Square add considerably to the number of stove-tile fragments already known from Holy Trinity Priory. They may have come from the same stove, or from one of several of the same design built during the 1560s or 1570s in the town residence of the Duke of Norfolk, which had been established in the monastic complex by 1554.

This site report is extracted from MoLAS 2004: annual review