The Mystery of the Tring Tiles

The Tring Tiles come home

The V&A has two examples of the Tring Tiles, plus two fragments, found by Tring people and given to  the museum in the 1920s and 30s. These examples are the real thing, and will be on display at Tring Local History Museum until the spring.

‘It’s a great honour for a small local museum like ours to secure a loan from a major national institution like the V&A,’ says chairman Tim Amsden. ‘We’ll do our best to justify their confidence, and enable people to explore the meaning of these important examples of medieval ceramics.

‘Talented artist and tile maker Sue Jones has gone one step further, by exploring the original sources and creating speculative designs for tiles that may once have existed. She has made and fired some of these, which are also on display. It is hoped she can offer tile-making workshops as well, and even take the results away to fire them.’

Tring Local History Museum is at Market Place, Brook Street. It’s open on Fridays and Saturdays, 10am-3.30pm. An Accredited Museum, run by volunteers, it is free of charge to enter, but relies on visitors’ donations.

In an exciting development for local history fans, examples of the Tring Tiles are now on loan to Tring Local History Museum. We take a look at their history.

After years of negotiation, the V&A has agreed to loan its examples of the ‘Tring Tiles’ to Tring Local History Museum.

The tiles, which measure approximately 20 by 35.9cm, are believed once to have adorned the walls of Tring’s Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul, and date from the 14th century. In cartoon style, they tell stories of the childhood of Jesus, stories which don’t appear in the recognised gospels and are wildly improbable, but are depicted with great gusto, probably for the benefit of those who were illiterate.

The V&A tiles came from Mrs Foulkes, widow of a churchwarden; while one of the fragments was found by Mr Butcher, the banker, and the other by Mr Vaisey, the town clerk.

All the tiles and fragments known to exist have some connection to Tring, although it’s not known who made them, where or why. The British Museum has eight, said to have been found in the 1860s in a ‘curiosity shop’, and Tring Local History Museum already displays modern replicas of them.

According to the V&A, medieval tiles were normally made by impressing designs into raw red clay blanks. The designs were carved onto wooden blocks, and the hollows in the clay were then filled with contrasting white pipe-clay.

The Tring Tiles, however, are brown, and coated with white slip using an expensive technique called sgraffito. This sees these handworked tiles decorated using lines and the slip carefully removed, leaving a yellow design underneath.

There are no tiles like it found in this country at all – which adds to their mystery – the only similar tiles having appeared in France.

It’s unknown how these tiles found their way to Hertfordshire. One tile fragment, showing the heads of two bearded men, one holding a thick rod or scroll, and the head and shoulders of a boy, was purchased from a Mr Vaisey, a long-time resident of Tring. The Duke of Rutland apparently begged him for the tile and said he would give a considerable amount of money to the church if given it. Mr Vaisey didn’t concede and the £5 he was given by the V&A was handed over to church funds.

Because the tiles are in such good condition, it’s believed that they were positioned on the chancel walls near the altar, inside the church, rather than on the floor. As fashions changed, they might have been covered up by 18th century improvements in the church, and only later uncovered and discarded.

Some tiles also appeared for sale in a curiosity shop in the town – the owner would not say how he had acquired them! They were bought by Reverend Owen, a rector of a nearby parish, for a few shillings.

Those tiles didn’t come back into public view until the sale of the Reverend’s son’s effects – after he had moved to Essex – in 1922. Bought by an antiques dealer for £17, when they went to auction at Sothebys they were then bought by the British Museum for a whopping £1,420 (the equivalent of more than £72,000 today).

The tiles have such great historical importance that they were chosen to appear on the cover of a book published by the British Museum – English Medieval Tiles by Elizabeth Eames.

According to the Curator’s comment on the British Museum website: ‘The relationship of such a fine series of tiles to a minor parish church is puzzling. The scenes are depicted with great humour, and the economy of line produces a vividness of expression that borders on caricature. The device of showing the dead person upside down is a remarkable way of showing death.’

tringlocalhistorymuseum.org.uk

Find out more at tringlocalhistory.org.uk/Tiles.

Thanks to Tim Amsden and Tring Local History Museum for their help with this article.

Main image © The Trustees of the British Museum