England and York Before and After 1066

9.30 – 9.55 Registration and refreshments

10.00 – 10.15 Welcome by Dr. Andrew Woods

10.15 – 10.55 Dr. Pragya Vohra - The Personal is Political: Untangling the Connections Leading to 1066

10.55 – 11.10 short break

11.10 – 11.50 Dr. Aleks McClain - Northern resistance, resilience and recovery

11.50 – 12.30 Prof. Sarah Rees Jones – Cultural, political and economic change from 1086 to 1190

12.30 – 1.00 Questions and discussion - Ending with refreshments

Note: On-site parking only by prior arrangement.

There is limited street parking. Bus stops outside the venue

Entrance £5, including refreshments. Booking is essential.

This ½ day conference is organised by Fishergate, Fulford and Heslington Local History Society. With the battle of Fulford on our doorstep and Stamford Bridge not far away, our expert speakers will explore the complex causes and dramatic consequences of the invasions and regime change of 1066.

King Knut ruled England for two decades and created a powerful Anglo-Scandinavian empire. This was lost after his death, when Edward the Confessor restored the supremacy of the Wessex dynasty. His death in 1066 brought rival claims to the throne of England, with profound consequences which still resonate today.

The Bayeux Tapestry tells the story of William’s claim for the throne of England and his victory at Hastings, but it ignores the crucial battles at Fulford and Stamford Bridge.

How was Norman power imposed on England, particularly in the north? Was there resistance and resilience? And how was that power consolidated?

The devastation wrought by the Harrying of the North is reflected in the Domesday Book. But as well as military force, collaboration and assimilation were significant in rebuilding and reshaping local government, commerce and the church.

How did this transformation happen?

This is our first event to mark the Bayeux Tapestry coming to the British Museum in September. We have further events planned for the autumn.

Chaired by:

Dr. Andrew Woods. Head of Collections and Research at York Museums Trust. Andrew has a background in research, with a specialism in Archaeology, Numismatics, and the Viking Age.

Speakers:

Dr. Sarah Rees Jones is Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of York and works on medieval urban history, with a special interest in the history of citizenship and town planning. She is the author of York, the Making of a City, 1068-1350 (Oxford, 2013).

Dr Rees Jones’s talk will focus on changes in local northern society in the century following the Norman Conquest, beginning with the Domesday Book of 1086 and ending with the massacre of the Jews of York in 1190. She will discuss the consequences for northern society, economy and culture of the Norman establishment’s reorientation away from the North Sea world towards western Europe and the Mediterranean.

Sarah will look at changes in patterns of migration to York and the north associated with trade as well as conquest, the dramatic changes to the urban environment, partly associated with the imposition of royal authority, and changes to the religious culture associated with the rise of the crusades. These changes both provided opportunities and created tensions in local society which often manifested themselves in civil conflict and fresh, if failed, invasions.

The ‘lost’ twelfth century was as vibrant as it was dangerous and has often been overlooked in histories of the city that tend to focus on the pre-Conquest and later medieval periods.

Dr. Aleksandra McClain is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York and works on the archaeology of the Norman Conquest and the Anglo-Norman period, with a particular interest in transition and cultural contact, social and cultural identity, and the development of northern local and regional identities in the Middle Ages.

Of the various events comprising the Norman Conquest, King William’s 1069-70 military campaign in northern England, known as the Harrying of the North, is nearly as well known as the Battle of Hastings itself. Its severity and unprecedented nature is emphasized in a number of documentary accounts of the Conquest and its aftermath, and perhaps due to this notoriety, native rebellion and Norman retribution have often become the only story told about the Normans in the north of England.

However, if we look beyond documented history to the archaeology of late 11th- and early 12th-century Yorkshire, a more nuanced picture of the Norman Conquest of the north emerges.

This lecture will review some of the evidence for landscape, buildings, and material culture in Yorkshire before and after 1066, in order to explore how its inhabitants dealt with the impacts of the Norman Conquest, actively negotiated the complicated post-Conquest sociocultural situation, and how Normans and natives together ensured that the region did not remain a ‘harried’ backwater, but emerged as a vital and vibrant part of 12th-century Anglo-Norman England.

Dr. Pragya Vohra is Lecturer in the Medieval History at the University of York and works on the social, political and cultural history of the Viking age British Isles and Scandinavia, including the Norse North Atlantic, with a special interest in migration, settlement and the formation of diaspora.

1066 is remembered as the year of the three battles – Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings. It was a year of political turmoil for those involved. However, the conditions that led to this year of upheaval, conflict and conquest, were the consequence of historical developments and connections that reached far back into the earliest years of the first millennium.

In this talk, Dr Vohra will take you back to the early 11th century in England to explore the creation of new Europe-wide interpersonal links between the elites of England and those across the Continent. While these networks of kinship and power flourished in times of political stability, like the reign of King Knut, they became liabilities during the periods of political and dynastic uncertainty that came about in the mid-11th century.

Dr Vohra will explore these kinship networks and their key players to uncover the foundations of the special interests and personal politics that led to the claims and counter-claims that precipitated the three battles of 1066.

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