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surreymedieval.bsky.social
@surreymedieval.bsky.social
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surreymedieval.bsky.social
Happy to see a short article I wrote for @surreyarch.bsky.social Surrey’s Past out. Explores two medieval Surrey references to throwing a ‘bill’ to set boundaries, and why some “ritually deposited” objects may have come to be where they were found for more practical reasons than assumed #MedievalSky
October 14, 2026 at 1:25 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
It’s Michaelmas, 29th September! Hurry, today’s the day to drive your pigs into the Weald or other not-so-local detached wood pastures to gorge themselves on acorns and beech mast for the next few weeks www.academia.edu/28324736/Tes... #MedievalSky
Testing transhumance: Anglo-Saxon swine pastures and seasonal grazing in the Surrey Weald
It is commonly stated that the main pre-Norman Conquest use of the Weald was for transhumance – the grazing of certain pastures, to and from which livestock were moved over substantial distances at th...
www.academia.edu
September 29, 2026 at 4:41 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
A write up of some thoughts on Surrey’s place in the so-called Tribal Hidage, a text by and large I avoided for years because a lot of the scholarship about it that I did read had the air of, in the words of Alan Everitt, historians ‘playing with moonbeams’ www.academia.edu/171900718/Su...
Surrey and the Tribal Hidage
This essay is derived from an extended blog post that was itself the reworking of a section of a draft chapter which strayed too far from the broader topic in hand-and envisaged word-count-to be capab...
www.academia.edu
August 25, 2026 at 6:11 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Basilica di San Saturnino in Cagliari. Hefty 5th/6th century church with 11th-century additions, built on a Roman extramural cemetery. Porphyry columns + other Roman spolia, Arabic inscriptions, sensitive contemporary additions. Mediterranean early basilicas are the best type of church bar none imo.
August 24, 2026 at 3:05 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Wrote something recently featuring an etymological analysis of the name Updown Wood in Surrey.

It’s not such an easy name to gets to grips with. And this makes me want to write an article about it with a title like ‘The Ups and Downs of place-name investigation’.

How about it @snsbi.bsky.social? 😉
Neat piles of wooden hurdles stacked in front of an oak tree bare of leaves Sign titled Coppicing in Norbury Park, mounted on a stick driven into the ground in front of the trunk of a beech tree Large information board about Woodland Management beside a path, with deciduous woodland behind Large earth bank forming the boundary of Updown Wood, with a large beech tree growing on top of it. Lots more trees stand in the background
June 1, 2026 at 12:47 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Of all the things that have happened in the past few weeks, I didn’t expect the one that caused me to hop back on here would be Surrey’s first reported button brooch, but here we are. It is quite exciting in its own small (very small) way, got me smiling like ☺️ finds.org.uk/database/art...
Front, back and side colour photographs of an early medieval copper-alloy button brooch. Below and to the left side of the photos are scales divided into centimetres and millimetres
May 19, 2026 at 2:09 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Excuse the LinkedIn-ish vocab but I am genuinely overjoyed to find Richard Henry’s new book, Fractured Britannia, is out and available #OpenAccess. Going to enjoy learning how he assesses so much PAS data alongside other data sources and recent scholarship www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress...
Archaeopress
Archaeopress Publications
www.archaeopress.com
April 15, 2026 at 1:06 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
I for one would welcome seeing more signage with macrons indicating long vowels. Very good.

(Mighty fine oat lattes available inside as well)
Round-cornered rectangular sign for the cafe named Hōm in Dalston, London
April 9, 2026 at 1:37 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
A new Substack post, in which I figure out what “a large brass coin of Justinus, A.D. 537” found in 1881 most probably was, and how it links to the story of post-Roman Southwark and north-east Surrey open.substack.com/pub/surreyab... (It gets better after the opening sentence I promise)
A large coin and a little research win
To state the obvious, there’s a lot of research involved in the writing of a fact-heavy book.
open.substack.com
April 8, 2026 at 8:26 AM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Completing my series on early medieval metalwork from the ex-Surrey Thames foreshore, here’s my fave + most shockingly small one IRL; an 8thC drinking horn terminal from Lambeth. A fiend to photograph so 3rd image from its ?only published outing, in a John Naylor chapter ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid...
Early medieval metal drinking horn terminal mounted for display in a museum exhibit Piece of an early medieval carved drinking horn mounted to the left and slightly above the metal terminal Montage of two colour photographs of different sides of an archaeological artefact above the following label; Fig. 8: An 8th-century zoomorphic drinking horn terminal found on the Thames foreshore at Lambeth. PAS LON-EFCF31. Image: K Sumnall (PAS).
April 7, 2026 at 9:33 AM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
With my usual alacrity, a post looking back at last weekend’s @snsbi.bsky.social spring conference in Bury St Edmunds.

Featuring names, a rental flat with the best backstory, books, more names, pubs, churches, and even more names. Plus my paper on 5th-6thC archaeology, history, names and languages.
Presentation title slide; A long overdue catch-up? Recent work in archaeology and history concerning the fifth and sixth centuries CE in lowland Britain and its implications for English place-name studies. Presenter’s name and conference details also given. Professor Mark Bailey giving the Friday night keynote lecture, stood pointing at an image on a projector screen in front of a seated audience Bury St Edmunds’ 12th century abbey gateway and cathedral behind Framed text stating: The Secret Bunker During the early 1960's Cold War period, the residents of Thingoe Hill were intrigued as their Danish neighbour at Viking's Forge began digging a huge rectangular hole in his back yard. Although hidden behind a 2 metre high fence, over the following months a nuclear bunker emerged. This construction was prompted by Russia's targeting of the two United States Air Force bases nearby. Once the bunker was completed the present day house was built on top. A subsequent owner turned the space into an illegal, underwater themed, 'gentlemen's' club. The walls were blue and decorated with fish, (a small section is retained behind the pillar next to the desk). Also the seashells seen on the beams to this day. There was also a bar, and photographer's darkroom! It was closed down by the police, in full riot gear, despite their initial struggles to locate it! The present owners removed the nuclear filtration system and the massive blast door. To add light and ventilation they reduced the soil level on one side and added three small windows, not a simple task due to the reinforced concrete construction.
April 2, 2026 at 1:27 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Maps of #Roman period Surrey and Southwark, from William Page & Edith Keate’s chapter in Volume 4 of @vch-home.bsky.social of Surrey, published 1912. Safe to say both long since superseded — Southwark especially feels like the setting for an almost constant stream of new discoveries from the period.
Foldout printed map of Romano-British Surrey, with sites of settlements, buildings and find-spots marked in red and all other features in black Map titled Roman Discoveries in Southwark, printed on almost a full page of an open book. Sites of Roman buildings and other discoveries are marked using red symbols
March 24, 2026 at 7:35 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Back to @londonmuseum.bsky.social and another historic Surrey Thames-side find; a knife blade with inset silver plates, one inscribed OSMHND = Osmund, an Old English dithematic personal name.

Dated 10th—early 11th century by John Clark in a 1980 note, pp348-49 of www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Iron knife blade with an inlaid plate bearing the legend OSMHND. Knife tip points to the left and long tang to the right. Mounted for display on a thin wire, with a yellow label bearing the number 2 below and to the left
March 22, 2026 at 8:25 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Absolutely fascinating insights into 21st century place-naming here. Family names as uncompounded place-names. No new generics only ones that have been in use for centuries. A hideous adaptation of a surname from a locative byname. All that and some “stan” sounds close enough to -ston” reasoning!
politicsuk.com Politics UK @politicsuk.com · Mar 20
🚨 NEW: The proposed names the Government is considering calling its new towns

- Elizabethtown (after the Queen)
- Pankhurst (after suffragette Emmeline)
- Attleeton (after ex-PM)
- Athelstan (first King of England)
- Seacole (after nurse Mary)

[@thetimes]
March 21, 2026 at 4:01 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Saw a trio of early medieval finds from the historic Surrey foreshore
a couple of weeks ago @londonmuseum.bsky.social. All tiny, this runic pinhead found in the Rotherhithe area the least surprisingly so.

More about it: archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/ar... and finds.org.uk/database/art...
Small and battered circular gilded pinhead with a tiny central hole surrounded by a runic inscription. The pinhead is held up atop a very thin piece of metal at the centre of a flat white square on which the same runes are written. Display case containing a large curved iron axe head, part of a carved bone drinking horn, a smaller tanged knife blade, a Thor’s hammer pendant and the runic pinhead. All are archaeological artefacts of early medieval date. Photograph and transcription of the pinhead and its runes, with scale bars, taken from the Portable Antiquities Scheme database entry for the artefact.
March 19, 2026 at 5:15 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
It’s happening again. I’m back talking place-names + archaeology at the @snsbi.bsky.social Spring Conference at the end of March. Wild all the things I’ll cover in 20 minutes. Cooking it down to the tastiest examples of how disciplinary divides might be spanned. Ideal fare for a Saturday 9.30am slot
Detail from a presentation slide with the title ‘A long overdue catch-up? Recent work in archaeology and history concerning the fifth and sixth centuries in lowland Britain and its implications for English place-name studies’ plus the speaker’s name and date, 28 March 2026, when the presentation will be given. Black text on a plain white background. A pile of four books about the late Roman to early medieval period in Britain Scale plan of the excavated series of settlements and cemeteries, dating from the 5th to 7th centuries, at Mucking in Essex. Different dates phases of settlement are denoted by dashed lines, and the cemeteries by dense grey hatching. From Helena Hamerow’s book Rural Settlements & Society in Anglo-Saxon England. The three hardcover printed volumes of the excavation report for the three early medieval cemeteries excavated at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk. The book covers are a dark blue with white writing and also feature images of gold coloured artefacts.
March 18, 2026 at 3:00 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Feeling really rather pleased to see the first half of something I’ve worked on for a number of years out in the wild today — namely my article on the earliest medieval charters relating to Farnham in #Surrey, newly published in the Volume 24 of Surrey History journal @surreyarch.bsky.social
Text of first page of article titled Farnham in Early Charters, Part 1: Seventh to Ninth Centuries Front cover of Surrey History journal, Volume 24 for 2025, with detail of a historic map depicting fields, a village and a river
October 22, 2025 at 5:05 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Yesterday I made it through 22 post-medieval deeds (plus a few others that were too faded to be of use) looking for field-name spellings in under 4 hours. Surely some kind of record? For someone of my middling palaeographical skills anyway.

Here’s a pic of the most fun one from the outside.
Folded deed from the 17th century with original writing, archival stamp and several red wax seals attached to it
October 16, 2025 at 2:16 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
What I’ve read of this so far has been informative and enjoyable. Runes etc. are very much outside of my immediate research interests but relevant to a little big project I’ve had simmering on a low heat for the past couple of years.

Anyone else read it? (I’m only 50 pages in so no spoilers pls)
Book cover of The English Language Before England, by Bernard Mees, partly illuminated by sunlight and lying on a wooden table
August 8, 2025 at 10:12 AM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Few things I love more than a fruitful trip to a research library (in this case @wellcomecollection.bsky.social Library). Found further testimony for a lost placename I’m investigating but can only confirm it is what I think it is by consulting the original manuscript. Bodleian here I come, I guess…
Large hardback book with the title Chartulary of St Thomas’s Hospital and two semifinal crests on its cover. The book sits on a desk in front of a slender reading lamp. Behind are well-stocked bookshelves
July 25, 2025 at 5:01 PM
surreymedieval.bsky.social
Most definitely missed that first wave of positivity on here but…

My name’s Rob and, among other things, I’m writing a book about Surrey in the 4th—12th centuries, meaning I’ll have questions (mostly pdf requests)

And yes I did once go to Samarkand and yes I did cry at the beauty of the Registan
Man standing in public square, head turned away from camera towards the historic Sherdor Madrassa in Samarkand, which is illuminated by electric light at dusk
July 22, 2025 at 3:52 PM