In search of the flower planet: further conversation with a decorated floor tile
In an earlier article I recorded some observations and speculations about the making of one particular decorated floor tile recovered from the priory excavations at Lossenham. It is the only complete decorated tile found so far. As we work on the tiles it is useful to have something more memorable to refer to them by than their formal archaeology find numbers, so they have nicknames. This one is "the flower planet".
As recorded previously, the tile found at Lossenham is one of three examples of the same design we had found at that point: one of the other two being in a private collection, and the other (recorded as being from Lewes Priory) in the British Museum. Intriguingly the match of images of the three suggested strongly that they were from the same tile stamp, and hence, probably made in the same place, or by the same tile maker. At the time the comparison with the British Museum example was based on the drawing of the tile in the BM catalogue 1 (well worth a browse if you want to get an idea of the creativity and diversity of medieval tile designs). Since then I have been able to examine the BM tile directly, and take a photographic image which confirms the match of the designs.
The British Museum tile - found in Lewes
As previously indicated, placing four of the original flower planet tiles together clearly forms a coherent pattern, but the presence of the additional element in the outer corner of each tile suggests it is part of a larger design.
Four-tile composite image from the original Lossenham tile
In the British Museum I also examined a tile, from Lewes Priory, which Elizabeth Eames places alongside the original flower planet tile in her illustrations for the BM catalogue 1, with the clear implication that it is part of the same design (illustration below). The additional tile in the catalogue suggests this is a 16 tile set with the inner pattern surrounded by a circle of two double borders with a foliage pattern in between.
The second tile of the flower planet quartet? Illustration from the British Museum catalogue
The full sixteen tile set would be made up of four tiles, repeated four times. So far we had two of the four. The third tile was fairly easy to guess from the second, as it must be a continuation of the same pattern. The remaining tile, forming the outer corner of the square, was not so easy - there was clearly a little part of the circle border, but what was in the corner itself?
The final piece to the puzzle came from the report from the Museum of London Archaeology 2, who reviewed the Lossenham tiles and identified the original flower planet tile as one of several belonging to the ‘Dieppe Group’: tiles made, and used, in the area of northern France around Dieppe but also exported to England, where various representatives turn up at sites in Kent and Sussex, and occasionally further afield, the evidence forn which comes from a paper by Norton (1993) 3.
The primary distribution of 'Dieppe Group' tile finds (redrawn from Norton, 1993 3)
In the course of discussing that trade that study also documented some of the tile designs from France, including the flower planet quartet. This clarified the design of the third tile, and provided the complete design for the last (fortunately, since the actual design turned out to be very different from the guess I might have made!).
The carved wooden stamp for the fourth (corner) flower planet tile (design from Norton (1993) 3)
It seems that vessels trading from France in the late 14th century, possibly carrying tiles as both commodity and ballast, reached the Kent and Sussex coast and navigated up the River Rother to Newenden, or the Ouse to Lewes, or transferred their cargoes to other vessels which could do so, making it straightforward to supply heavy goods such as floor tiles to the Carmelites at Lossenham and Cluniac priory at Lewes. Why, given the natural resources and tile works closer to hand, at places such as Rye, Battle, Canterbury and Ashstead 4, the French tiles were preferred is unclear. Possibly they were cheaper or better quality. Possibly the more local tile works - though known to be active in the same general period - simply weren’t in production at the precise point the tiles were needed. Or possibly the apparent proximity - to our land-orientated view - of major tile works such as the one at Canterbury, was actually not a good reflection of the real transport difficulties and a sea journey from Dieppe was both easier and more cost effective.
The work in progress is to produce a new version of the full sixteen tile pattern so that we can see it again in all its glory. The first trial (below, from the electric kiln) is promising - but there is quite a lot of overdarkening in the glaze (too much iron oxide, producing the brown 'smudges') and, of course, the real test will be firing the tiles in the wood kiln!
Notes
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Eames, E, 1980. Medieval lead-glazed earthenware tiles in the Department of Medieval and later Antiquities, British Museum; British Museum Publications, British Museum, London.
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Betts, I M, Coleman, B, 2025. Lossenham Priory, Kent: Ceramic Floor Tile Report 2025. Museum of London Archaeology.
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Norton, C, 1993. The export of decorated floor tiles from Normandy. In: Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rouen. British Archaeological Association, pp. 81–97.
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Eames, E, 1992. English tilers. British Museum Press, London.
