A headstone slab recovered from a thirteenth century shipwreck off the coast of Dorset has gone on show for the primary time within the newly refurbished Poole Museum.
The Mortar Wreck is the one identified wreck from the Eleventh-14th centuries in English waters. It was found in 2019 by divers from Bournemouth College and was granted official safety in 2022.
The ship was carrying 30 tons of Purbeck stone, some unworked stone, and a half dozen mortars, additionally product of Purbeck stone, with massive stones used as pestles, which gave the wreck its identify. and headstone slabs carved with a cross on the lids, however not completed with particulars and inscriptions. The headstone slabs had been raised final 12 months and underwent a desalination program to stabilize them. One in all them is damaged in two items whereas the opposite is full.
The brand new shipwreck gallery is housed within the City Cellars, a medieval port warehouse with thick masonry partitions and wooden beam ceiling. It’s the right setting for displaying objects within the museum’s assortment recovered from three protected shipwrecks: the Studland Bay Wreck, an armed cargo vessel originating from Spain that sank round 1520, the Swash Channel Wreck, an early seventeenth century service provider vessel believed to be of Dutch origin, and now the Mortar Wreck.
Joe Raine, Collections Officer at Poole Museum stated: “We’re actually fortunate to have a fantastic collaboration with Bournemouth College right here at Poole Museum in that we’re the receiver for lots of the artefacts that they bring about up from the wrecks they discover. After we first heard in regards to the discovery of the Mortar Wreck we had been simply so excited to play our half in the entire story which is to place the objects on show to members of the general public who could know nothing in regards to the commerce in Purbeck stone, or medieval seafaring, and we are able to inform that story.”
Members of the general public can now be taught extra about how buying and selling of Purbeck stone occurred within the mid 1200s and the vessel itself. This is called a ‘clinker’ ship, which is created from overlapping planks of wooden. A number of of the planks have been despatched for testing the place tree ring evaluation signifies that the timbers used to assemble the hull are from Irish oak bushes, felled between 1242-1265.
