Society of Antiquaries of London

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Society of Antiquaries of London

We support conservation & scholarship related to material culture.
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The Society of Antiquaries of London focuses on the 'encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries'. It supports an elected Fellowship of 3,000 academics, professionals, researchers, scholars and others working with material culture. It also supports conservation and grant programmes, a Public Lecture Series, an academic lecture series for Fellows, and a conference and seminar programme. It manages an important research library and a museum at Burlington House as well as a historic property, Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, that was the former Cotswold retreat for William Morris and his family.

14/10/2026

On this day in 1066 the Battle of Hastings took place and was later immortalised in the famous Bayeux Tapestry.

In 1816 the Society’s historical draughtsman Charles Stothard was commissioned to copy the entire Bayeux Tapestry. The drawings from his initial visit to France were engraved by James Basire. Stothard took these engravings with him on a later visit to Bayeux and hand-coloured them on site from the original work. These were published in Vetusta Monumenta between 1821 and 1823 – the first time that a complete colour reproduction of the tapestry had been made available to the public.

Stothard’s work is also significant because it is the first record of the Bayeux Tapestry after it was damaged during the French Revolution and before repairs were carried out in the 19th century. By working with clues from surviving threads and colours he recreates sections of missing embroidery and reveals scenes lost through damage.

The Society holds both the original coloured engravings and the published plates.

09/10/2026

Is there a coat of arms more suited to the Halloween season than this one?!

This image comes from a German manuscript made up of a collection of coats of arms which relate mainly to the Holy Roman Empire. It was probably written in southwest Germany or Switzerland, around the early 16th century.

It also includes a wide selection of fictitious arms of legendary figures, including this full-page allegorical representation of the arms of Death. The arms are supported by a skeleton and a female figure, surmounted by a helm, hourglass and clock as crest, over which two arm bones hold a rock. It shows many similarities with the coat of arms of Death in Hans Holbein's famous 'Dance of Death' series'.

What would your Halloween coat of arms include?

07/10/2026

Aylett Sammes, a maverick among the antiquaries of the seventeenth century, produced one of the most bizarre books of the age - 'Britannia antiqua illustrata: or, The antiquities of ancient Britain, derived from the Phœnicians'. Educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and associated with the Inner Temple, one of the Inns of Court, London, he turned to antiquarian studies, which he pursued seemingly in isolation.

Sammes’ thesis was that Britain had been first settled by the Phoenicians, a proposition that had respectable antecedents. Yet, Sammes overplays his hand: he not only advocates for a flourishing Phoenician civilisation but even claims Phoenician as the original language of Britain, which he represents as a variant of Hebrew.

Sammes’ wicker image, shown here, is inspired by the classical concept that Druids carried out human sacrifice to save others from sickness or war – he believed that the giant statue was filled with live men and set on fire!

No one show this image to Lord Summerisle, we don't want to give him ideas...

01/10/2026

It's October, so you know what that means - all things ghosts and ghouls!

The Danse Macabre, or the Dance of Death, is a popular allegory from the late medieval period that considered the universality of death and frailness of life. A personification of Death summons those in every walk of life to dance to their graves.

This image of it is from our 1491 copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle (Liber cronicarum, : cm figuris et ymaginibus ab inicio mundi), which has illustrations and portraits from history, starting with the beginning of the world.

30/09/2026

This is one of 26 leaves of fragments of a 10th century Gregorian sacramentary, removed between 1773-1790 from the original binding of another manuscript, the Winton Domesday, where they formed the packing of the boards.

Conserved and rebound in 1997, some folios include an early form of music notation, typical of the period: cheironomic (staff-less), adiastematic (unheightened) neumes. Music notation in the 10th century was relatively rudimentary, and various forms coexisted both in theory and in practice.

Both scholars and practicing musicians explored several systems for writing music during the early Middle Ages, with the adoption of the 4-line staff becoming widespread in the 11th century. As notation became more sophisticated, manuscripts with imprecise forms of notation such as those found in the packing of the Winton Domesday quickly became obsolete, and now often survive only through their subsequent reuse in bindings of other manuscripts.

25/09/2026

These tiles, located at Kelmscott Manor, come from a series depicting heroines from Geoffrey Chaucer’s 'Legend of Goode Wimmen', a poem recounting stories of virtuous women who suffered or died through love.

These were William Morris’s firm’s most popular designs, and can be found in the form of stained glass and embroidery. Other heroines include Dido, Lucretia and Philomela.

The panel of Cleopatra was likely to be painted by one the female associates of the firm (of whom did most of the painting). The other panel, labelled ‘If Hope Were Not Heart Should Break’ has Burne-Jones’s initials on it, suggesting it was painted by him.

23/09/2026

Not everyone is a pro artist, but having a go to record history is always important!

This charmingly drawn image is a recording of a find of a Medieval crucifix figure dug out of the Foundation of an Old Wall in the Town of Brighthelmstone (now Brighton), in or near a place called the Mockbeggars in 1771. It was where a Church formerly stood, dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, which was by then long since demolished.

18/09/2026

It's the week of the annual Open House Festival, a London-wide festival that examines the city's built environment, so let's celebrate our building!

Looking at our Library, which is the largest antiquarian library in the country, it has an outstanding collection amassed over 300 years. The Society acquired its first book in 1720: Strype’s edition of Stow’s Survey of London, which we still have!

Electric lighting was installed in the principal rooms between 1887 and 1891, and in the ceiling of the main library you can still see the original gasoliers, which apparently were better at producing heat than light. The glass roof and windows were damaged in an air raid in 1941 (the London Library was destroyed in the same blast) and had to be replaced.

With a focus on the history of material culture, the Library covers British and Northern European archaeology, architectural history, heraldry, book and collecting history, art history and the decorative arts, antiquarianism, British local history – and many other related subjects besides.

15/09/2026

Thomas Kerrich, collector, antiquarian and artist, was passionate about recording antiquities and created a large number of drawings. This one reproduces the tiles depicted in the 15th-century 'Life of St Etheldreda' panels, which are currently on loan to the exhibition 'Living by the Rule: Contemporary meets Medieval' at the Sainsbury Centre until 4 October.

Maintaining the original scale and colour of the panels, Kerrich depicted the second panel’s pavement as red and green, as opposed to the 1864 assessment conducted by the watercolourist and antiquarian George Scharf, who reproduced them as red and black.

This drawing is one of many in our display 'The Fabric of Britain: Landscapes, Legends & Legacies' which is on until early 2027 and celebrates the geographic breadth of the British Isles, bringing together hidden gems from our library, archive, and museum collections.

Please note: This display is available to be seen on the Ground Floor by Fellows and Affiliate Members during our regular Library opening hours (Monday to Friday, 10am-5pm) and by members of the public who are coming to the building as part of an event which they have booked for. https://www.sal.org.uk/events/the-fabric-of-britain/

11/09/2026

As we've got a conference on relics taking place today, here's a look at an item in our collections which has its own link to relics, the Bosworth Cross.

It is known as the 'Bosworth Cross' due to its recorded place of discovery in Leicestershire. It was presented to the Society by James Comerford FSA in 1881, and was published by the historian John Nichols FSA in 1811, who, quoting a Mr Sharp of Coventry, described it among other finds as being ploughed up on the Field of Bosworth about 1778.

The Bosworth Cross has the unique feature of a hinged metal ring about the base which would have held a cloth wrapped around the shaft or a tassel, and Nichols noted that the decaying remains of a wooden staff which had traces of paint and gilding were found with it, supporting the suggestion that this cross was lost in its processional mode, and might have been abandoned on the battlefield.

Recent reassessment of the Cross has suggested that it may have been a Catholic relic that came through the Fortescue family of Husbands Bosworth since at least the 1530s, as opposed to having been discovered in 1778 in Market Bosworth. The sunburst symbols on the reverse of the cross's roundels have been interpreted as the Yorkist sun emblem, and are known on two other examples of English processional crosses of this kind.

Address

Burlington House, Piccadilly
London
W1J0BE

Website

http://www.sal.org.uk/

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