St Bartholomew’s Priory, West Smithfield: the tomb of Rahere and the book of the foundation

Julian Luxford

doi:10.1080/00681288.2025.2484897

St Bartholomew’s Priory, West Smithfield: the tomb of Rahere and the book of the foundation

Julian Luxford^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

A case exists for revising the dates normally assigned to two late medieval objects which commemorate the origins of St Bartholomew’s priory in West Smithfield (founded 1123). It is possible to show that the effigy of Rahere in the priory church is an addition, rather than original, to the founder’s tomb on the north side of the choir, and also that the manuscript containing the so-called Book of the Foundation was made considerably later than is usually thought. Doing so entails accounting for the assumptions on which the received dates rest (this is done first). It also involves looking more closely and critically at the objects in question than anyone seems to have done in the recent past.

Original language	English
Journal	Journal of the British Archaeological Association
Volume	Latest Articles
Early online date	2 Jun 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00681288.2025.2484897
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 2 Jun 2025

Keywords

St Bartholomew's priory
Retrospective tomb
Medieval manuscript
Augustinian canons

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10.1080/00681288.2025.2484897Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Luxford_2025_JBAA_St-Bartholomew-Priory_CCBYNCND
Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Final published version, 4.05 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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St Bartholomew’s Priory, West Smithfield: the tomb of Rahere and the book of the foundation

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Keywords

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