The 2016 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium focus on The Great Household, 1000 – 1500. It takes place in July

The 33rd Harlaxton Medieval Symposium: The Great Household, 1000-1500
Harlaxton Manor, Harlaxton, Grantham, LIncolnshire, Grantham NG32 1AG, United Kingdom
19.07.2016 -22.07.2016

The theme of the 2016 Symposium is the medieval great household, from the eleventh to the early sixteenth century, with a focus on elite contexts in the British Isles. Papers will look at changing structures within the household; household membership, lords and their servants; domestic material culture; literature, music and entertainment in the household; the role of the household chapel; sensory environments, consumption and the routines of the household. Delegates will be given a guided tour of Harlaxton Manor (our own ‘Great Household’) and our afternoon outing will be to Gainsborough Old Hall, one of the finest and best-preserved fifteenth-century manor houses in England. Our conference banquet will feature food inspired by authentic medieval cuisine. Our keynote will be delivered by Chris Dyer (University of Leicester).

Programme (draft):

Welcome: Gerald Seaman (Principal of Harlaxton College) and David Harry (Secretary of the Symposium)

• Chris Dyer (University of Leicester): Households great and small: aristocratic styles of life across the social spectrum

Politics and Households

• James Ross (University of Winchester): The aristocratic household as a political centre at the end of the Middle Ages
• Emma Cavell (University of Swansea): The aristocratic household in times of stress: some thirteenth century evidence
• Louise Wilkinson (University of Kent): The great household in wartime: Eleanor de Montfort at Odiham and Dover in 1265

The Household, Literature and Writing

• Michael Johnston (Purdue University): The household and beyond: places and institutions of writing in late medieval England
• Elliot Kendall (University of Exeter): The great household and network building in late fifteenth century literature
• D. Vance Smith (Princeton): The national allegory of the household

Education and courtesy

• Nicholas Orme (University of Exeter): Childhood and education in the great household
• Claire Weeda (University of Amsterdam / Radboud University Nijmegen): Rules of hygiene and medicine in medieval courtesy books
• Fiona Whelan (University of Oxford): Administering the noble household in England c. 1180 – 1280: the evidence from early courtesy literature

Religion, Ceremony and Plate

• Kent Rawlinson (RIBA): Chapels, oratories and portable altars: framing religious life and ceremony in the great medieval household
• Jenny Stratford (University of London): The provision of plate for the royal household in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

Music and the Household

• Roger Bowers (University of Cambridge): The musicians and music of the Chapel Royal and its imitators noble and episcopal, c. 1315 -1500
• Magnus Williamson (University of Newcastle): Musical repertories and household chapels
• Richard Rastall (University of Leeds): Trumpeters in English royal households

Households of the Clergy and of Women

• Martin Heale (University of Liverpool): Abbots’ households in late medieval England
• Sue Powell (University of Salford): Lady Margaret Beaufort: a progress through Essex and East Anglia, 1498
• Jennifer Ward (University of London): The great household on the move: travel among the servants of Elizabeth de Burgh (d. 1360)

Service and the Household

• David Green (Harlaxton): The household of Edward the Black Prince
• Caroline Dunn (Clemson): ‘If there be any goodly young woman’: female servants in aristocratic households
• Martha Carlin (University of Wisconsin Milwaukee): Catering for great households: practical matters

Excursion to Gainsborough

• Reception in bar/ Book launch of ‘The Plantagenet Empire’ (Proceedings of the 2014 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium)
• Conference Dinner in the Great Hall (black tie welcome): Medieval inspired banquet organised by Harlaxton College and Caroline Yeldham (University of Leeds)

Goods, Consumption and the Household I

• Anne Rudloff Stanton (University of Missouri): What the Queen saw: images and artifacts in the inventory of Isabella of France
• Maria Hayward (University of Southampton): In their father’s image? The role of textiles in defining the households of Henry VIII’s children

Goods, Consumption and the Household II

• Eleanor Standley (University of Oxford, Ashmolean Museum): To rabbit on: the management, consumption and significance of rabbits in great households
• Chris Woolgar (University of Southampton): Principal goods, heirlooms and the great household

The Harlaxton Symposium

The Harlaxton Symposium is an interdisciplinary gathering of academics, students and enthusiasts which meets annually to celebrate medieval history, art, literature and architecture through a programme of papers selected around a chosen theme.

The Symposium, which began in 1984, was the brain-child of Dr. Pamela Tudor-Craig, Lady Wedgwood, and the host of the four- day conference has always been Harlaxton College in Lincolnshire, a delightful Victorian Baroque mansion which is now the British campus of the University of Evansville, Indiana.

Harlaxton has long been able to boast a strong participation by international scholars from educational establishments as far afield as America and Australia. In recent years, the profile of the conference has increased, and the high standard of papers delivered – as well as the varied programme which always includes a conference dinner and an outing – creates a forum for friendly intellectual debate which attracts people back to Harlaxton year after year.

The proceedings of each conference are published, and since 1989 they have been published in a series entitled Harlaxton Medieval Studies by Shaun Tyas of Donington, Lincs. Many previous volumes are still available (see previous and forthcoming publications) at Paul Watkins Publishing

For additional information, please contact the Symposium Secretary, David Harry at harlaxtonsymposium@gmail.com

READ MORE:

The Great Household in Late Medieval England
By C. M. Woolgar
Yale University Pres 1999
ISBN-10: 0300076878
ISBN-13: 978-0300076875

An investigation of life in the great household of late medieval England. Based on household accounts and related primary documents, it looks at the daily routines, weekly and annual patterns, and the life-cycle observances of birth, childhood, marriage, death and burial.