30% off RRP on our Warhorse book when placing advanced order on Liverpool University Press website using code: 27WARHORSE
https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781836243359

We have put together a small exhibit about our research in the foyer of our department in Exeter (Laver Building). If in the area, by all means come and have a look!

Our main project monograph, entitled “Medieval Warhorse: Equestrian Landscapes, Material Culture and Zooarchaeology in Britain AD 800-1550″, is now very much in press. It will be out in March 2025. It is already available for pre-order: https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781836243359

Our latest project publication in the journal Science Advances is now available open access.

Using cutting-edge isotopic science, applied to the archaeological site of Elverton Street, Westminster, it reveals this Tudor-era horse cemetery as the resting place of elite imported animals. Click this link to access it.

Read the University of Exeter’s press release here.

We are delighted to announce our latest project publication, which you can read here.

This blog marks the conclusion of the formal funded phase of our AHRC Warhorse project, but our work of course continues as we develop publications and use the project’s achievements as a platform for future funding bids and other initiatives. So please do watch this blog for future updates.

The following account draws on the end of project statement submitted to our funders to first flag some of our key research achievements and, secondly, to reflect on how our research is having an impact on the wider world.

The headline is that our project succeeded in carrying out the first ever systematic and integrated study of the full range of archaeological evidence for warhorses and horses in medieval England — from scientific samples extracted from teeth through to analysis of bones, equestrian artefacts and armour, and the sites and landscapes associated with horse breeding and training.

Key Findings

The work has created new knowledge on three main fronts:

First, in the field of zooarchaeology the project applied cutting-edge GMM (Geometric Morphometric) and isotopic sampling methodologies to medieval horses for the first time. This has enabled the skeletal signatures of breeding and training regimes to be ascertained and for the biographies of individual horses to be revealed, and highlighted Europe-wide movements of breeding stock in a case study site in London. A headline finding about horse stature from a project database of 8500+ bones is that most medieval horses were below the size of modern ponies (1.48m to the withers, or shoulder), and detailed measurement of over 130 items of horse armour confirms the findings suggested from bone evidence. While popular perceptions of medieval warhorses picture large beasts, not a single bone from the entire project indicated a medieval horse that would have met the size criteria for a modern police horse (1.68m). Our zooarchaeology dataset is one of several important resources that we have now uploaded to the Archaeology Data Service website (https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/1005150/) where they are freely available for researchers.

Image of the ADS homepage where datasets from our work can be accessed and downloaded.

Second, in the field of landscape history, the work has generated entirely new information about an aspect of the medieval countryside (the horse stud) that had been neglected. Over 800 medieval documents have been examined to provide information on the nature and organisation of studs, principally during the High Middle Ages. The project produced the first ever mapping of the English royal stud network, clarified the number and location of stud sites (within parks), characterised their landscape contexts (frequently in uplands or wetland zones), and reconstructed their hinterlands. The work highlighted that while studs can be located to places, physical traces of their buildings and infrastructure are exceptionally ephemeral.  It has also drawn attention to the tendency to misidentify equine structures, especially stables, as being for other livestock and purposes.

Third, in terms of debates within medieval archaeology and history the project has provided new evidence for continuity and/or change across the Saxo-Norman divide by highlighting that in terms of equestrian material culture the Norman Conquest had a minimal signature, with the introduction of the curb bit the principal indicator of change. Mapping of equestrian material culture from a project database of 14,000+ separate artefacts shows great potential, previously unrecognised, to map the footprints of medieval tournament sites and (through harness pendants decorated with arms and symbols) noble families. Follow the ADS link above to access our online dataset.

As an overall methodological achievement, the project’s integrated approach has made a powerful statement about how barriers between traditionally discrete research fields can be broken down to produce new understandings. In answer to the key questions of (1) whether we can identify warhorses in the archaeological record; and (2) whether the warhorse was a breed, a selection or some sort of cultural product, we can reach some preliminary conclusions by combining all our lines of evidence. First, it is rare for warhorses to be deposited in archaeological contexts which clearly identify the function and role of the animals. It is, however, clear that exceptional care was taken to breed and train appropriate horses, including importing or being gifted suitable animals from overseas. Whilst selective breeding in a stud network formed a key part of warhorse management, the destrier cannot be considered to be a ‘breed’. It more likely represents a selection for appropriate temperament and body conformation, accompanied by intensive training that resulted in highly valuable steeds. Warhorses might additionally be marked out to some degree by activity-related bone remodelling and pathologies. While the ‘great horse’ was likely of a larger stature than the average medieval equid, the metrical evidence from animal bones, horse armour and other material culture, suggests that raw size was considered less of a key trait than the physical and mental characteristics highlighted above. 

Impact

The impact of the project on wider non-academic audiences and stakeholders was of central importance to our work. The key areas of impact, recorded through the period of the funded project (Feb 2019-March 2023), fall into four areas.

First, the project generated benefits for our partner organisations. The Portable Antiquities Scheme, run through the British Museum, benefitted from the delivery of three intensive training workshops on recording equestrian artefacts to over 100 staff and volunteers and from the delivery of 10 freely available finds guides to help metal detectorists record items such as harness pendants and horseshoes (see https://finds.org.uk/counties/findsrecordingguides/guides-by-use-and-function/horses-and-transport/). According to the Head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme: “What is most important is that the work of the results of the project’s partnership working – the training workshops and freely-accessible finds guides – have a legacy, transforming the way that staff and public volunteers record metal-detected equestrian objects” (Professor Michael Lewis, 2023). The Royal Armouries benefited from the experience of working with an academic partner, including enhancement to its catalogue and records, opportunities for the co-publication of results, and enrichment of outreach activities (the project had a presence at two public events run by the Armouries attended by over 17,000 members of the public).

Second, the project is playing a key role in changing public perceptions about the size and appearance of medieval horses, which are often based on experiences of film and TV.  A press release which accompanied a project publication in The International Journal of Osteoarchaeology generated 197 press articles in 34 countries, while project staff have contributed through the podcasts and programmes including BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ to reach mass public audiences. The project had a presence at five large public events attracting 41,400 members of the public in total and generating reactions from participants such as “I had no idea a medieval warhorse could be so small; it’s fascinating to hear that historical films can get it so badly wrong!”

Third, the project’s findings have been actively promoted and disseminated on the national and international conference circuit, with staff speaking at 18 separate events in the UK to reach in excess of 750 participants and 15 events in a further 10 countries reaching a minimum of 550 participants.

Compilation image of outreach events and lectures involving members of the Warhorse team

Fourth, the academic impact of the work is having knock-on effects for the way that equestrian heritage is presented in museums and heritage sites. For example, Historic Royal Palaces reported in January 2023 that their website for Hampton Court has been amended to reflect our project’s findings. Another example is the way that English Heritage’s newly installed signage and the new (2022) official guidebook for Launceston Castle, Cornwall, now recognise a building on the site, which was previously misidentified, as a medieval stable, on the basis of the project’s findings.

Beyond these impacts, the high level of public interest in all manner of equine pursuits, such as show jumping and horse racing, is likely to open up opportunities for further aspects of public engagement, which the project will exploit, including through a Follow-on-Funding Bid.

With so much to shout about, and such exciting possibilities for the future I can only end this blog with the most enormous thank you to the incredible, energetic team of talented researchers that have driven the work forward, as well as to our project partners and everybody who has shown an interest. But the work continues…  

In this blog post, Dr Gary Baker shows how the documents for England’s royal warhorses can be used to show us what they looked like.

One of the most interesting facets of English medieval documents concerning royal horses is that many of them provide details of what the animals looked like in terms of their colouration and distinguishing marks. This is information that is often sorely lacking for medieval people and shows just how important horses were in the medieval world.

The colouration of horses is revealed by their names. In English medieval documents concerning royal warhorses (all of which were male), the naming practice is always the same. A horse’s “forename” was its coat colour expressed as a Latin or French noun. There were around ten to fifteen types, of which bausan (white spots on a coloured ground), bay/badius/bayard (bay), ferrandus (iron-grey), grisel (grey), morel (shiny black), lyard (very small spots of white on grey, or vice-versa, giving a silver-grey appearance), and sorel (chestnut) were the most common. The horse’s “surname” is either that of the former owner (surname or title) or the place from whence the horse came either by birth or purchase. Occasionally a further description is appended, describing some other physical characteristic. This is most often related to the coloration of the feet or head if it differed from the rest of the animal (like a white nose), but it can also refer to some other corporeal trait like a docked tail.

A typical list of the names of the royal horses

To provide an example of how historians can use this information, let us take a small sample size from the accounts of John Waterton, Master of the Horse (the chief officer in charge of equine matters) under Henry V. The most prevalent coat colour for the royal horses in Waterton’s account for 1414–16 was “lyard”, or silvery-grey horses. Of the 233 horses in the Master’s care over these two years, ninety-eight were silver-greys with the second most common being bays at fifty-five. If we include the silver-greys with horses described simply as “greys” (grissel) this number rises to 117, or half of all the king’s horses in the account.

Horse coat colours in the English royal stock 1414–16

Interestingly, a good proportion of equine literature produced in Western Europe during the Middle Ages had a good deal to say about the conformation and personality desired in the “ideal horse,” including warhorses, and many also remarked on desirable coat colours. One of the most influential medieval works was De medicina equorum (c.1250–56) by the Italian knight Jordanus Rufus which survives in numerous contemporary copies in several languages. In one of these French, or rather Occitan copies, Lo libre de la marescalcia des cavals, dating from the late fifteenth century, now in the Bibliothèque Municipale in Fréjus, France, “Rufus” states that there are so many different opinions about the optimal coat colours that it was not worth discussing them all. This is illustrated by divergences at this point of the text in several of the French versions of Rufus’s work, where the copyists express their own opinion as to the optimal colour for a “good” horse. For example, the Fréjus MS says that bay is the preferred colour over all others while a copy in Reims by François du Tronchoy, Livre de la cure et garde des chevaux (1390) states that bay and grey are the most advantageous. The evidence from Waterton’s account of the predominance of gifts of bays and especially greys made to, and by Henry V, constituting 109 out the 135 received by the king (80 per cent) and thirty-five of the fifty-two given away (67 per cent), suggests that ideas of equine colour preferences, or at least the prestige of animals of these colours, had taken root by the time of Agincourt. It is telling, for example, that the famous image of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell mounted on horseback in the Luttrell Psalter (c.1325–40) shows Geoffrey mounted on a dappled grey warhorse.

Sir Geoffrey Lutterell assisted by his with and daughter-in-law (British Library Add. MS 42130 f. 202v.)

Our team has been busy investigating medieval (war)horses since 2019 and it was time to share our work with the research community on the international stage. So, we headed to Budapest (in person and digitally) to host the session ‘Dark Horse – Archaeologies of Horses and Horse Culture in the Middle Ages’ at this year’s European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) Annual Conference.

Oliver Creighton introducing the Warhorse Project

In a lecture room on the campus of Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University, we attracted a sizeable crowd very interested in all the horse-y research presented throughout the day. Colleagues from around the world showcased their explorations into medieval equine archaeology – we heard about various aspects of equestrian material culture, such as horse armour, bits and harness pendants; how horses were treated in life and death; and several papers asked what a medieval horse (ought to have) looked like. Interdisciplinarity was clearly evident in all of the presentations; from history and traditional zooarchaeology to genetics and isotopic analysis, everyone made valuable contributions to the bigger picture (see here for the Session line-up).

We started off with an introduction to the session and the Warhorse project by our PI Oliver Creighton who highlighted how we are interrogating multiple lines of evidence – from horse remains through to artefacts, landscapes, documents and buildings – to create new understandings of the equine world in medieval England. ‘Zooming’ in from his professional-looking recording studio at the University of East Anglia, Robert Liddiard explored the historical context for horse breeding in the first half of the 14th century and revealed how place names can help identify key places within the royal stud network. Camille Vo Van Qui, staying on the historical side of things, gave an insight into the contemporary perception of the ideal (war)horse through Jordanus Rufus’ well-known manuscript De medicina equorum. Many participants reflected on how his descriptions of horses shine a different sort of light on the zooarchaeological evidence.

Kate Kanne presenting her work on (war)horse pathologies

The practicalities of certain conformations and their ability to perform when ridden were at the centre of Markku Niskanen’s talk. His findings aligned intriguingly with our own results based on the biometrical analysis of medieval horse remains, which were presented by Helene Benkert. Her PhD examines changes and developments in horse size and stature across medieval Europe and the preliminary results confirm the predominance of pony-sized horses we proposed for England. As per their occupation, medieval warhorses were prone to injuries and other pathologies. Using some stunning imagery, Kate Kanne highlighted how this line of evidence may help in identifying warhorses but also other types of horse usage in the zooarchaeological record.

Using the case of medieval Brno (CZ), Vera Klontza-Jaklova presented her full-suite analysis of the horse skeletons which had been unusually disposed of in shallow pits in backyards. Sporting a variety of shapes and similar average size, these horses fall well in line with trends observed in the rest of Europe. In Poland, Daniel Makowiecki informed us that the historical information on horses is equally scarce as it is in England, despite the animal’s great importance. Interestingly, evidence for hippophagy suggests that the Slavic population consumed horse meat on a regular basis, a clear taboo in much of Western Europe!

Roman Shiroukhov took us to the Sambian Peninsula in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, to explore the distinctive horse burial rite in early medieval Prussia. He supported his investigations with stable isotope analysis and C14 dating to further our understanding of those horse burials or sacrifices. Returning to medieval Poland, Danijela Popovic presented the genetic aspect of the interdisciplinary project ‘Horses in Poland in the Early Piasts and Internal Fragmentation’. In this context, medieval equestrians seem to have had a fable for chestnut horses and, as in much of Europe at the time, stallions (or geldings).

Carly Ameen remotely presenting her research on GMM

Continuing our exploration of horse conformation, Carly Ameen introduced us to her ground-breaking work on geometric morphometric analysis within the context of the Warhorse Project. She hopes to use GMM to detect in-life activity-related remodelling and usage-related conformation in metapodial and tarsal bones in horses. Alan Outram informed us how horse armour and horseshoes can contribute to the conformation debate, while discussing the problems posed by object design. Measurements taken from late medieval and early post-medieval shaffrons (head armour) as well as horseshoes largely confirm the average size estimates for the faunal remains. Our final speaker, Robert Webley, presented his work on equestrian material culture, specifically stirrups and bridle bits, highlighting its potential to connect iconographic, historical and archaeological evidence to better understand medieval equestrian culture.

Since Ludovic Orlando was, unfortunately, unable to join us and present his large set of genetic data we had some time to hear about Anna Szencsenyi-Nagy’s exciting new project for which she had prepared a poster. The project aims to explore how horses and humans interacted in Avar-period Hungary, using a variety of methods from traditional zooarchaeology to genetic analysis. We finished off this excellent session with a final round of discussions before relocating to the campus bar for some well-earned refreshments and more, friendly, debating.

It was a pleasure to hear about all this new and exciting research and to see the puzzle pieces fall into place with each new presentation. We would like to extend a massive thank you to all our presenters and the attentive audience for their interest, engagement and fantastic contributions. We greatly enjoyed the session and are excited to hear more about all the excellent work that was presented!

Part of the team and a couple of Exeter PhD students with their well-earned post-conference drinks. Cheers!

In this podcast, Oliver Creighton and Alan Outram discuss the nature and characteristics of the medieval warhorse at length with Jason Kingsley. Jason has a wealth of experience in riding horses fully armoured and training them to do so. It makes for a fascinating three-way discussion, weaving together their different areas of specialist knowledge.

To listen to the podcast click here.

After three years away, the Tewkesbury Medieval Festival was finally back, running across the weekend of the 9th-10th July. We were back too! With a boot full of (horse) skulls, posters and horsey bits and bobs we headed up to Tewkesbury on the Saturday morning to present our research to the re-enactors and visitors of Europe’s largest medieval re-enactment event.

Sarcophagus of Sir Guy Brian

Tewkesbury is a beautiful place, and well worth a visit, especially the abbey which is a stone’s throw away from the field where the Battle of Tewkesbury took place. The space is serene now, but was not so in the aftermath of the battle in 1471 in which so much blood was spilt within the abbey’s walls that it required reconsecrating. Today, it contains the tombs of many notable medieval people including George, Duke of Clarence (brother of Edward IV), Eleanor de Clare, Hugh Despenser the Younger, and many other earls and knights (though sadly with no images of their warhorses that we could find)!

As usual, it was sweltering the entire weekend, but that did not seem to stop anyone from attending the festivities and market. Luckily, we had a stall in one of the marquees and could escape the sun, if not the heat. Many people stopped by to learn about medieval horses and their use in warfare, and some even remembered us from our very first and much smaller appearance pre-pandemic! 

Our two mares – one in a fitting shaffron, the other in a slightly too large bit, demonstrating where in a horse’s mouth it sits and how it works.

Outside the marquee we unveiled our new poster which invited people to guess the height of a medieval warhorse. The craft corner was a favourite with the younger ones, who replicated harness pendants with great enthusiasm, and many a visitor was fascinated to hear about the research our project has undertaken, from both a material and historical perspective. Our two lovely mares turned many heads and patiently helped visitors discover their species’ secrets. Seeing their live counterparts fully caparisoned during the re-enactment of the battle was a wondrous sight to behold. 

If you are curious to find out what sort of things were fed to warhorses in the Middle Ages, have a look at our flyer from the event and see how many you can get right (the answers are at the bottom – we won’t tell anyone if you sneak a glance)!

We chatted with many lovely people over the weekend, from interested members of the public to keen equestrians and (former) professional jousters. We also had the chance to meet Zac Evans, modern jouster and YouTuber, and filmed a short reel with him discussing our project and popular misconceptions about medieval warhorses. You can see the video here.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend outing and a delight to see so much interest in our work. We plan on a few more of these events in the future so watch out for news on our Twitter feed and website.

Some impressions of the weekend: