Post-Medieval Archaeol 40 (1)

A major programme of building recording and analysis was carried out by Northamptonshire Archaeology in 1993--94 during the conversion of Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire. This charted the conversion of the dissolved Cistercian abbey into a house and successive alterations over four centuries until its partial demolition after 1923. Among its most striking features are two ambitious phases of late-seventeenth-century building, the first by Sir Isaac Gibson, the second by William Winde with ceilings by the leading London plasterer Edward Gouge. Works of 1863--64 by William Eden Nesfield reflect an antiquarian reinterpretation of the site's medieval past. Includes separately authored contributions on

The article reports an excavation on the site of a seventeenth-century glasshouse and eighteenth-century pottery at Silkstone, Yorkshire, and summarizes the results of an intensive analytical programme of scientific analysis of the glassworking debris arising from it. The area excavated was small, but the sieving of soil samples ensured a high rate of recovery of artefacts and debris associated with the industries. A large number of samples of glass and glassworking waste from the well-dated stratigraphic sequence were analysed to determine their chemical compositions. This has confirmed that both `white' and `green' glass were produced and has shown that the `white' glass changed from a mixed alkali glass to a lead glass c. 1680. These results illustrate both the importance of the Yorkshire glass industry and the information which can be obtained from even limited excavations of industrial sites through the use of scientific techniques. Includes separately authored contributions on