School of English

Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh

BA, MA, PhD (Kent)

Interests

Having spent a decade in farming, I decided to try academic life, liked it and stayed. Such a background was an asset for investigating medieval peasants and from there I have become increasingly interested in other aspects of medieval society, such as poverty and charity, civic ritual and drama, and, most recently, material culture – things, what people do with them and the meanings they give to them. My next project will focus on objects in late medieval society and will include items such as mazers, beds, tombs and shoes (not necessarily in that order).

Teaching

  • EN302: Early Drama (Stage1)

  • Town Life – an option course for the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Postgraduate)

Monograph

The Role of the Hospital in Medieval England: Gift-giving and the Spiritual Economy (Dublin, 2004).

Edited volume


Later Medieval Kent, c.1220–1540, Kent History series (Woodbridge, 2010): ‘Kentish Towns: urban culture and the parish in later medieval Kent’ and ‘Kentish hospitals during the late Middle Ages’.

Articles


‘Anglo-Saxon saints and a Norman archbishop: ‘imaginative memory’ and institutional identity at St Gregory’s Priory, Canterbury’, in J. Burton & K. Stöber, eds, The Regular Canons in the British Isles in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2012).

‘Hythe’s butcher-graziers: townsmen in the late medieval English countryside’, in C. Dyer et al., eds, Local History: New Directions since Hoskins (Hatfield, 2011).

‘The social structure of New Romney as revealed in the 1381 Poll Tax returns’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 131 (2011)

‘Caught in the cross-fire: patronage and institutional politics in late twelfth-century Canterbury’, in P. Dalton, C. Insley & L. Wilkinson, eds, Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2011).

‘Overcoming disaster? Farming practices on Christ Church Priory’s marshland manors in the early 14th century’, in M. Waller, E. Edwards and L. Barber, eds, Romney Marsh: Persistence and Change in a Coastal Lowland (Sevenoaks, 2010).

‘Remembering the dead at dinner-time’, in C. Richardson and T. Hambling, eds, Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings (Aldershot, 2010).

‘‘My painted chamber’ and other rooms: Stephen Hulkes and the history of Calico House, Newnham’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 130 (2010).

‘Eternal town servants: civic elections and the Stuppeny tombs of New Romney and Lydd’, in M. Baum et al eds, Negotiating Heritage: Memories of the Middle Ages, Ritus et Artes: Traditions and Transformations (Turnhout, 2009).

‘The Austin Friars in late medieval Canterbury: negotiating spaces’, in J. Burton and K. Stöber, eds, Monasteries and Society in the later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2008).

‘The documentary sources’, in L. Barber and G. Priestly-Bell, eds, Medieval Adaptation, Settlement and Economy of a Coastal Wetland: the evidence from around Lydd, Romney Marsh, Kent (Oxford, 2008).

‘The poor, hospitals and charity in sixteenth-century Canterbury’, in R. Lutton and E. Salter, eds, Pieties in Transition (Aldershot, 2007).

‘Royal patrons and local benefactors: the experiences of the hospitals of St Mary at Ospringe and Dover in the thirteenth century’, in E. Jamroziak and J. Burton, eds, Religious and Laity in Northern Europe 1000-1400: Interaction, Negotiation and Power, Europa Sacra, Number 2 (Turnhout, 2007).

‘Strategies of inheritance among Kentish fishing families in the later Middle Ages, The History of the Family: An International Quarterly, 11:2 (2006).

‘Mayor-making and other ceremonies: shared uses of sacred space among the Kentish Cinque Ports’, in P. Trio and M. de Smet, eds, The Use and Abuse of Sacred Places in Late Medieval Towns, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series I, Studia XXXVIII (Leuven, 2006).

‘Historical Background to Medieval Dover’ and ‘Fishing in Medieval Dover, c.1350-1550’, in K. Parfitt, ed., Excavations Off Townwall Street, 1996. Medieval and Post-Medieval Dover (Canterbury, 2006).

‘The Archangel Gabriel’s stone and other relics: William Haute’s search for salvation in fifteenth-century Kent’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 126 (2006).

‘Clothing the naked in late medieval east Kent’, in C.T. Richardson, ed., Clothing Culture, 1300-1600 (Aldershot, 2004).

‘Wax, stone and iron: Dover town defences in the late Middle Ages’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 124 (2004).

‘Joining the sisters: female inmates in the late medieval hospitals of east Kent’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 123 (2003).

‘Land holding and the land market in a fifteenth century peasant community: Appledore, 1400-1470’, in A. Long, S. Hipkin and H. Clarke, eds, Romney Marsh: coastal and landscape change through the ages, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology (Oxford, 2002).

‘Supporting the Canterbury hospitals: benefaction and the language of charity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 122 (2002).

In press


‘‘To move the mind’: scenes from Christ’s life on Faversham’s painted pillar’, in S. Kelly and R. Perry, eds, ‘Diuerse Imaginaciouns of Cristes Life’: Devotional Culture in England and Beyond, 1300–1560, Brepols.

Negotiating the Political in Northern European Urban Society c.1400-1600, Brepols: ‘Discord in the public arena: processes and meanings of the St Bartholomew’s day festivities in early-sixteenth-century Sandwich’.

In preparation


‘The Guy of Warwick Mazer: gift-giving and remembering at St Nicholas’ Hospital, Canterbury’, in A. Bovey, ed., Canterbury: Architecture, Artefacts and Archaeology, BAACT.

‘Writing the town in mid fifteenth-century Sandwich: the contribution of John Serle, common clerk’, in C. Bartram, ed., Book Culture in Provincial Communities: Contexts for Reading and Writing 1450-1650, Ashgate.

‘A history of the Whitefriars site – the documentary sources’, in A. Hicks and M. Houliston, eds, Excavation of the Whitefriars Site, Canterbury, Canterbury Archaeological Trust.

‘Looking to the Past: the St Thomas Pageant in Early Tudor Canterbury’, in M-P. Gelin and P. Webster, eds, After Becket: The Reaction of the Plantagenet World, Boydell.

‘Canterbury’s martyred archbishop: the ‘cult’ of Simon Sudbury and relations between city and cathedral’, in R. Oram and M. Penman, eds, Monuments and Monumentality in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Shaun Tyas.

Contact details

Address: School of English, Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NX

Phone: 01227 764000 ex 7195

Email: s.m.sweetinburgh@kent.ac.uk

School of English, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NX

The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T: +44 (0)1227 823054

Last Updated: 22/05/2012