www.thehistoryblog.com
Grave slab from medieval shipwreck on display
A gravestone slab recovered from a 13th century shipwreck off the coast of Dorset has gone on display for the first time in the newly refurbished Poole Museum.
The Mortar Wreck is the only known wreck from the 11th-14th centuries in English waters. It was discovered in 2019 by divers from Bournemouth University and was granted official protection in 2022.
The ship was carrying 30 tons of Purbeck stone, some unworked stone, and a half dozen mortars, also made of Purbeck stone, with large stones used as pestles, which gave the wreck its name. and gravestone slabs carved with a cross on the lids, but not finished with details and inscriptions. The gravestone slabs were raised last year and underwent a desalination program to stabilize them. One of them is broken in two pieces while the other is complete.
The new shipwreck gallery is housed in the Town Cellars, a medieval port warehouse with thick masonry walls and wood beam ceiling. It’s the perfect setting for displaying objects in the museum’s collection recovered from three protected shipwrecks: the Studland Bay Wreck, an armed cargo vessel originating from Spain that sank around 1520, the Swash Channel Wreck, an early 17th century merchant vessel believed to be of Dutch origin, and now the Mortar Wreck.
Joe Raine, Collections Officer at Poole Museum said: “We’re really lucky to have a great collaboration with Bournemouth University here at Poole Museum in that we are the receiver for a lot of the artefacts that they bring up from the wrecks they find. When we first heard about the discovery of the Mortar Wreck we were just so excited to play our part in the whole story which is to put the items on display to members of the public who may know nothing about the trade in Purbeck stone, or medieval seafaring, and we can tell that story.”
Members of the public can now learn more about how trading of Purbeck stone took place in the mid 1200s and the vessel itself. This is known as a ‘clinker’ ship, which is made from overlapping planks of wood. Several of the planks have been sent for testing where tree ring analysis indicates that the timbers used to construct the hull are from Irish oak trees, felled between 1242-1265.
New Posts (Home)
ChatBox
Popular Posts 
Game Zone
Top PodCasts
