- Museum of London Archaeology, 46 Eagle Wharf Road, London, N1 7ED
Nigel Jeffries
Museum of London Archaeology, Finds and Conservation, Faculty Member
- Historical Archaeology, Material Culture Studies, Early Modern London, East End of London, Post-Medival Ceramics, Clay Tobacco Pipes, and 29 morePost-medieval glass, Medieval ceramics (Archaeology), Ceramic Analysis (Archaeology), Urban archaeology, Urbanism (Archaeology), Archaeology, Medieval Archaeology, Early Medieval Archaeology, Historical Geography, Pottery (Archaeology), Victorian Studies, Consumption and Material Culture, Medieval Pottery, Post-Medieval Archaeology, History Of London, Post Medieval London, Sanitation (History of Public Health), History, Household Archaeology, Post medieval pottery, Material Culture, Artefact Assemblage Studies (archaeology), Archaeology of Pipes and Smoking, Glass Bottles, Glass (Archaeology), Eighteenth Century History, Microhistory, Assemblage Theory, and Postmedieval Archaeologyedit
- I am a medieval and post-medieval pottery, glass and clay tobacco pipe specialist at MOLA (Museum of London Archaeolo... moreI am a medieval and post-medieval pottery, glass and clay tobacco pipe specialist at MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) with considerable experience of the archaeology of London and publication. An expert on identifying, analysing and interpreting artefacts and object collections dated to the 17th to 20th centuries in particular, I have provided specialist and academic support, analysis and staff mentoring on archaeological assemblages for various institutions and projects abroad. Recent examples of this work have included collections from sites in the eastern Caribbean (St Kitts and Nevis), the United Arab Emirates and the Low Countries (Belgium).
I have a wealth of expertise, experience and contacts crossing both the museum and academic worlds. I have MCIfA level professional accreditation and am a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA). Teaching experience includes holding a Visiting Lecturer post on the MA V&A/RCA (Victoria & Albert Museum and Royal College of Arts) History of Design course (2013-16) and as a A level Archaeology tutor at Graveney School in Tooting, London (2013-14).
As a post-excavation specialist, my strengths and expertise nevertheless extends far beyond identification and cataloguing. My key achievements has been working collaboratively with multi-disciplinary teams across cultural sectors whilst developing new archaeological and academic approaches to studying material culture during the 17th to 20th–century.
An example of this approach would be the large excavation that took place close to the Spitalfields’ Market site in London where I led the analysis, interpretation and writing up of the 17th and 19th-century evidence, focusing on the domestic material culture of silk merchant families.
This work – and much of my other research – included extensive archival investigation alongside the analysis of material remains that is rich in detail and strongly informed by academic concerns.
These led to a successful application to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) with Alastair Owens (Principal Investigator, Queen Mary, University of London. Award no: AH/E002285/1, July 2007–March 2008). The well-received outputs for this project can be viewed in my papers below.
I have two current research goals. The first is to further understand the material culture of drinking in the 17th- century London and the routines and rituals that underpin this within the inn/tavern/alehouse sphere. Second i am keen to progress further various agendas in British Victorian urban archaeology that have developed from the above noted AHRC project.edit
Excavation and building survey, related to the redevelopment of parts of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station by Crossrail Ltd, chart the history of food manufacturer Crosse and Blackwell in the Victorian and Edwardian periods until... more
Excavation and building survey, related to the redevelopment of parts of Tottenham Court Road Underground Station by Crossrail Ltd, chart the history of food manufacturer Crosse and Blackwell in the Victorian and Edwardian periods until the 1922 move to Branston, Staffordshire. Operating from their 1838 premises in Soho Square, the company converted properties to the east for warehousing and factory space, enabling production of its food sauces, pickles, vinegar, jams and marmalades on a vast, industrial, scale. With a royal appointment and the innovative use of celebrity chefs, Crosse and Blackwell were able to dominate the domestic market and compete globally
Research Interests:
This volume of the Spitalfields series covers the period from the closure of the medieval priory of St Mary Spital in the 1530s to the 19th centuries and reconnects the archaeological assemblages with documentary evidence in order to... more
This volume of the Spitalfields series covers the period from the closure of the medieval priory of St Mary Spital in the 1530s to the 19th centuries and reconnects the archaeological assemblages with documentary evidence in order to describe the early modern suburb, its people and their possessions. From the private mansions and artillery ground of the 16th century to London’s first terraced houses in the 1680s, and on to Spitalfields Market and the silk industry of the 18th and 19th centuries, the household economies and leisure activities of the residents are revealed, notably by the items discarded in their cesspits!
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The development of what Mayne and Lawrence (Urban History 26: 325–48, 1999) termed “ethnographic” approaches to studying nineteenth-century households and urban communities has gathered momentum in recent years. As such research agendas... more
The development of what Mayne and Lawrence (Urban History 26: 325–48, 1999) termed “ethnographic” approaches to studying nineteenth-century households and urban communities has gathered momentum in recent years. As such research agendas have taken hold and been applied to new contexts, so critiques, methodological developments, and new intellectual and theoretical currents, have provided opportunities to enhance and develop approaches. This article contributes to this on-going process. Drawing upon household archaeological research on Limehouse, a poor neighborhood in Victorian London, and inspired by the theoretical insights provided by the “new mobilities paradigm,” it aims to place “mobility” as a central and enabling intellectual framework for understanding the relationships between people, place, and poverty. Poor communities in nineteenth-century cities were undeniably mobile and transient. Historians and archaeologists have often regarded this mobility as an obstacle to studying everyday life in such contexts. However, examining temporal routines and geographical movements across a variety of time frames and geographical scales, this article argues that mobility is actually key to understanding urban life and an important mechanism for interpreting the fragmented material and documentary traces left by poor households in the nineteenth-century metropolis.
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This article describes a 15th-century Valencian Lustreware basil pot, excavated during archaeological works for the Crossrail project at Moorgate, London. The vessel is placed into its wider context by being considered against other known... more
This article describes a 15th-century Valencian Lustreware basil pot, excavated during archaeological works for the Crossrail project at Moorgate, London. The vessel is placed into its wider context by being considered against other known examples in late medieval and early modern Europe and the representation of basil as a herb is also considered.
Research Interests: Archaeology, Art History, Environmental Archaeology, Pottery (Archaeology), Material Culture Studies, and 8 moreMedieval Archaeology, Spanish archaeology, Medieval ceramics (Archaeology), Garden History, Post medieval pottery, Medieval and Post-Medieval Pottery, The Archaeology of London, and Post-Medieval Ceramics
Summary: Archaeological excavations on the site of Oxford’s first ‘modern’ hospital, the Radcliffe Infirmary, uncovered evidence for its use after its completion in 1770 and subsequent 19th-century expansions. Providing insights into the... more
Summary: Archaeological excavations on the site of Oxford’s first ‘modern’ hospital, the Radcliffe Infirmary, uncovered evidence for its use after its completion in 1770 and subsequent 19th-century expansions. Providing insights into the ancillary buildings, drainage and water supply structures located to the rear of the Infirmary, among the features excavated was a stone-built soakaway serving the first laundry complex. Upon the building being rebuilt as a fever ward in 1824, the soakaway became a receptacle for unwanted pottery, glass and other finds. The composition of this assemblage provides a glimpse of the material culture of a hospital during this period.
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The article details work which has, for the first time, delivered a comprehensive catalogue of 17th- and 19th-century dated English wine bottles with applied seals derived from archaeological excavations by MOLA (Museum of London... more
The article details work which has, for the first time, delivered a comprehensive catalogue of 17th- and 19th-century dated English wine bottles with applied seals derived from archaeological excavations by MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) and its predecessors. This text introduces the cataloguing methodologies employed, reviews the historiography of bottle seal studies and summarizes the survey results. We consider, among other issues, the context and parallels behind individual seal designs, their chronologies, geographies of their movement and spaces of use in early Modern London
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Redevelopment of the City Literary Institute premises in the London Borough of Camden during 2003 revealed evidence of Middle Saxon (c.ad 650—850) occupation, including external surfaces, fence lines, rubbish pits, a wattle-lined well and... more
Redevelopment of the City Literary Institute premises in the London Borough of Camden during 2003 revealed evidence of Middle Saxon (c.ad 650—850) occupation, including external surfaces, fence lines, rubbish pits, a wattle-lined well and one sunken-floored building. Some time after ad 730 a large ditch aligned east—west was dug across the northern portion of the site. This ditch is interpreted as a defensive feature encircling 8th- or 9th-century Lundenwic. By 1658 Humphrey Weld had built a large house on the site with formal gardens to the rear. This house was demolished before 1746 and replaced by terraced housing, which by the mid-19th century had become a notorious slum known as the Wild Court rookery. During 1855 the properties on the site were refurbished to convert them into ‘healthy homes’. This conversion involved the sealing up of a number of cesspits. The contents of these pits contained food waste and domestic rubbish providing an insight to the daily lives of the residents of Wild Court. There was evidence of gold refining using an archaic technology, implying that it was an illicit activity.
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"This presents the paleoparasitological findings from the analysis of five coprolites from 17th and 18th century London. The preserved faeces were analysed using both microscopic and immunological techniques (ELISA). Two parasite species,... more
"This presents the paleoparasitological findings from the analysis of five coprolites from 17th and 18th century London. The preserved faeces were analysed using both microscopic and immunological techniques (ELISA). Two parasite species, the whipworm and roundworm were identified, but there was no evidence for dysentery. The results of the present analysis further our knowledge of intestinal health of London‟s past, and promotes our understanding of the interaction between parasitic disease and the cultural environment.
The present study is a part of a major project with Museum of London Archaeology that aims to investigate the introduction and spread of parasitic diseases throughout London‟s history."
The present study is a part of a major project with Museum of London Archaeology that aims to investigate the introduction and spread of parasitic diseases throughout London‟s history."
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Research Interests:
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Lining the shelves of a Museum of London warehouse are thousands of boxes of the broken and fragmented belongings of Victorian Londoners. But how might such evidence – the product of recent archaeological excavations across the city –... more
Lining the shelves of a Museum of London warehouse are thousands of boxes of the broken and fragmented belongings of Victorian Londoners. But how might such evidence – the product of recent archaeological excavations across the city – contribute to our understanding of the social and cultural worlds of Victorian Londoners? Can it take us beyond the familiar tropes of social investigation, or past the enduring literary narratives that have so powerfully influenced the historical imagination? Does it allow us to grasp the ‘actualities’ of life in the modern metropolis that are otherwise obscured by a pervasive bourgeois gaze that saturates other historical sources? Taking inspiration from methodological perspectives developed by North American and Australian historical archaeologists, this article deploys an ‘ethnography of place’ approach to demonstrate and evaluate the contribution of material evidence to the study of the nineteenth-century city. Sifting through a rich assemblage of objects discarded by a group of households in mid-century Limehouse and weaving it together with a range documentary sources that cast light on the function, ownership and use of the material artefacts, it explores everyday domestic life in the Victorian East End. It reveals the promise (and limitations) of such evidence in understanding the active role of objects in people's lived experience; in enabling a better grasp of the complexities of metropolitan social worlds; and in comprehending the banal and mundane elements of everyday life in the city that are so often invisible to the historian's eye.
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"In recent years historians have begun to show renewed interest in studying ‘the material’ dimensions to urban life. This shift has opened up a space for new dialogues between historians and post-medieval archaeologists working on British... more
"In recent years historians have begun to show renewed interest in studying ‘the material’ dimensions to urban life. This shift has opened up a space for new dialogues between historians and post-medieval archaeologists working on British cities. It offers the potential for reassessing approaches to studying the urban past and for experimenting with fresh methodologies. Noting that archaeological perspectives have been largely absent from recent historical accounts of the modern metropolis, in this chapter we explore the potential for pursuing collaborative research that fuses archaeological evidence and thinking with other forms of historical practice to write material histories of London.
The discussion divides into three parts. First, we sketch the post-war development of urban post-medieval archaeology in London, and the range of archaeological collections and excavation sites that relate to the Georgian and Victorian city. Second, we consider some of the ways in which the analysis of these sources might be used in interdisciplinary urban historiography, especially
in the light of methodological approaches developed in North American and Australian urban archaeology. Third, we present a case study that explores how nineteenth-century
household archaeologies in London might be developed, examining some of the complexities and challenges of integrating archaeological methods into the study of households and
localities in the nineteenth-century metropolis. In conclusion we consider the prospects for the development of interdisciplinary approaches to the material remains of London’s modern past."
The discussion divides into three parts. First, we sketch the post-war development of urban post-medieval archaeology in London, and the range of archaeological collections and excavation sites that relate to the Georgian and Victorian city. Second, we consider some of the ways in which the analysis of these sources might be used in interdisciplinary urban historiography, especially
in the light of methodological approaches developed in North American and Australian urban archaeology. Third, we present a case study that explores how nineteenth-century
household archaeologies in London might be developed, examining some of the complexities and challenges of integrating archaeological methods into the study of households and
localities in the nineteenth-century metropolis. In conclusion we consider the prospects for the development of interdisciplinary approaches to the material remains of London’s modern past."
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Article describing archaeological investigations at the site of the Red House, an eighteenth-century riverside tavern at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, Wandsworth. The article also presents an overview of the sites topographical history and early... more
Article describing archaeological investigations at the site of the Red House, an eighteenth-century riverside tavern at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, Wandsworth. The article also presents an overview of the sites topographical history and early post-medieval river defences and of the artefactual evidence from the excavations, and discusses the site in relation to evidence from other drinking establishments in London of the same period.
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The biography of a stoneware ginger bottle stamped with the retailer mark “Buicchi Bros” is approached from four different perspectives, each of which can be read as separate texts and illuminate context and use. The first discusses the... more
The biography of a stoneware ginger bottle stamped with the retailer mark “Buicchi Bros” is approached from four different perspectives, each of which can be read as separate texts and illuminate context and use. The first discusses the events following the object’s discovery, noting how different archaeologists played a part in its accumulating histories. Second, Basilio and Ernesto Biucchi – two second generation
Ticinese (Swiss Italian) brothers – are introduced by considering their fundamental role in this bottle’s life. Third, the bottle is positioned within the arena of soft drinks consumption in late nineteenth-century London. The article concludes by bringing the past into the present by introducing the descendants of the
Buicchi brothers while discussing tangibility in historical archaeology. When these different inquiries are woven together, the role that both individuality and ethnicity played in the bottle’s history is negotiated via different media: marking of the stoneware bottle with the Biucchi name, the brothers’ participation in making and selling soft drinks and the restaurant business (and those they employed).
Ticinese (Swiss Italian) brothers – are introduced by considering their fundamental role in this bottle’s life. Third, the bottle is positioned within the arena of soft drinks consumption in late nineteenth-century London. The article concludes by bringing the past into the present by introducing the descendants of the
Buicchi brothers while discussing tangibility in historical archaeology. When these different inquiries are woven together, the role that both individuality and ethnicity played in the bottle’s history is negotiated via different media: marking of the stoneware bottle with the Biucchi name, the brothers’ participation in making and selling soft drinks and the restaurant business (and those they employed).
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SUMMARY: The passing of the Metropolis Local Management Act in 1855 and the creation of an empowered body, the Metropolitan Board of Works, can be seen as the first statutory attempt to reform London at a municipal level during the... more
SUMMARY: The passing of the Metropolis Local Management Act in 1855 and the creation of an empowered body, the Metropolitan Board of Works, can be seen as the first statutory attempt to reform London at a municipal level during the Victorian period. This paper explores whether the subsequent programme of sanitary improvement conducted by the Board of Works and London’s vestries over the next 30 years, together with managed rubbish collection, can be detected in the archaeological record by using the extensive excavations in north Lambeth as an example of practices that occurred across London. It also demonstrates the strength and distinctiveness of (historical) archaeology in being able to examine disposal processes that otherwise remain largely mute in the written sources.
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Research Interests:
Throughout all periods, the historical, archaeological and anthropological study of the material culture of distinctive ethnic groups has always been a topic of much research and debate. The emigration of Europeans (through colonialism)... more
Throughout all periods, the historical, archaeological and anthropological study of the material culture of distinctive ethnic groups has always been a topic of much research and debate. The emigration of Europeans (through colonialism) and Africans (by slavery) during the post-medieval period, notably to America and the Caribbean, has been widely studied. As a result, little comment has been made on those immigrant communities settling into Britain and their impact on the archaeological record. However, the recent excavations, on part of the post-medieval suburb of Spitalfields in East London, have given the opportunity partly to redress the balance by allowing the study of the pottery from an area settled by the Huguenots (Protestant refugees from France and the Low Countries).