PROGRAMME EXTRAS

When arranging to hold ISAS in London we decided that, rather than arrange a pre-conference trip, people should spend a few days exploring London before the conference. Sources of information you may find it useful to consult before arrival are:

In addition to the many displays of Anglo-Saxon materials to be found in London's museums and libraries, colleagues have set up small specialized exhibitions for you to visit, for example at the British Library and the Maughan Library (the old PRO office in Chancery Lane now refurbished as the library of King's College London). ISAS delegates are welcome to visit and use Senate House Library and its Palaeography Room. (See below for details).

Two meetings that may be of interest are being held in London University in the week before the conference: the Manuscript Studies Summer School and the London Rare Book School. At the Victoria and Albert Museum Paul Williamson has arranged a viewing of early ivories on Friday, 27 July (see immediately below). Should you be coming into London on the Sunday, you will find that the Museum of London is open during the afternoon and should make time to visit its display of Roman and early medieval London.

ADDITIONAL EVENTS

Pre-conference: Friday 27 July: 2.30pm
Small group (25 max.) to see Anglo-Saxon ivories, Victoria and Albert Musuem
The visit will allow a close inspection to be made of Anglo-Saxon and early Romanesque English ivories in the rich collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Several of these walrus ivory carvings are well known, having been shown in various exhibitions - including The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art at the British Museum in 1984 - but others will be less familiar. Those wishing to do some preliminary reading may consult John Beckwith's Ivory Carvings in early Medieval England (London, 1972), where some of the ivories are discussed and illustrated (see nos. 19, 20, 32, 33, 39, 40, 42, 57). TO BOOK: please email Jane Roberts directly at jane.roberts@kcl.ac.uk.


Pre-conference: Sunday 29 July: 6.00pm: Book Launch
Menzies and Hancock Rooms, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square
Launch Party: Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature and its Insular Context, in Honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin, ed. Alastair Minnis and Jane Roberts (Brepols).
TO BOOK: please contact Jon Millington directly at jon.millington@sas.ac.uk. Numbers restricted to 75.


Monday 30 July: 6.30pm: Conference Reception, Senate House
Hosted by the Institute of English Studies and the Institute of Historical Research. Open to all registered ISAS delegates without prior specific booking.


Tuesday 31 July: from 6.45pm: Reception, Medieval Gallery (Gallery 41), The British Museum: FULLY SUBSCRIBED: NO MORE BOOKINGS ARE BEING TAKEN
This gallery contains the Museum's uniquely rich collection of Anglo-Saxon, Continental Migration period, Viking and early medieval Celtic material, including the Sutton Hoo royal burial material and the Franks Casket.

Wednesday 1 August: Trip to Sutton Hoo:
TO BOOK: SEE REGISTRATION FORM

9.30am Coaches depart Senate House

12.00 arrive Sutton Hoo for lunch, tour of the site, and visits to permanent exhibition and special temporary exhibition, 'Wondrously Wrought: the Royal purse-lid', which has as its theme Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship. Angela Evans, Leslie Webster, Angus Wainwright and James Graham-Campbell will act as guides to the exhibitions and monument.

3.30pm depart Sutton Hoo

5.00pm stop off at Greenstead, to be confirmed

7.00pm approx. return to Senate House

Thursday 2 August: from 6.30pm: Reception and Dinner at King's College London
Reception sponsored by KCL English Dept., History Dept. and the Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies. TO BOOK: SEE REGISTRATION FORM

7.30pm: Please take seats for dinner in the Great Hall.

Over coffee, Susan Irvine will introduce the after-dinner speaker David Johnson: "Mucking about in the Marshes: Alfred in Dialogue"

Friday 3 August: from 7.00pm: Reception and exhibiton at Lambeth Palace Library
For the final evening of the conference, we visit Lambeth Palace for a reception with wine and light refreshments. The visit to the palace will have as its main focus the library, where the Librarian, Richard Palmer, will welcome us to a special exhibition of the collection?s earliest manuscripts. David Ganz speak briefly about the significance of the manuscripts on display, and Patricia Lovatt will demonstrate the use of the quill in the creation of Anglo-Saxon and Caroline scripts. TO BOOK: SEE REGISTRATION FORM


Saturday 4 August: Overnight Trip to Brixworth - Coventry:
FULLY SUBSCRIBED: NO MORE BOOKINGS ARE BEING TAKEN

2.00pm Coaches depart Senate House

4.00pm arrive Brixworth. Discussion of the eighth-century church led by Rosemary Cramp, David Parsons and Richard Gem; Susan Rankin will talk about the experience of medieval music in the Anglo-Saxon church and on the content of pieces of chant to be sung by two of her students. Brixworth is probably the largest and most complete extant Anglo-Saxon building, and yet very little is known of its pre-Conquest history. The Visitor Centre will be open.

7.00pm depart Brixworth

8.30pm approx. arrive Coventry

Sunday 5 August: Return: Coventry - Breedon - Lichfield - Repton - London:

10.15am depart Coventry

11.15am arrive at the Church of St Mary and St Hardulph, Breedon-on-the-Hill (Leics) to see the fine series of 8th and early 9th-cent. sculptures (Michelle Brown and Jane Hawkes to lead discussion)

12.15pm depart Breedon

1.00pm arrive at Lichfield Cathedral (Staffs); buffet lunch with wine provided; viewing of the Lichfield angel (a recently discovered major sculpture from c.800 probably from the shrine of St. Chad) and the Lichfield Gospels, with discussion led by Michelle Brown and Pat Bancroft the Cathedral Librarian.

3.30pm Evensong

4.15pm depart Lichfield

5.00pm arrive the ninth-cent. crypt at Repton (Derbs), with discussion led by Martin Biddle and Richard Gem

6.00pm depart Repton

9.00pm approx. arrive Senate House

SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS

At Senate House Library
Conference delegates are welcome to use the Senate House Library during the week of the conference for a small charge of £5. They are also welcome to unlimited reference use of the library for 6 months for a flat fee of £16. UK academics and postgraduates can use the library free of charge. Library cards will be issued upon presentation of photographic identification such as a driving licence, passport, or college photoID, and proof of current address such as utilities bill or credit card or bank statement.

One of the glories of the Senate House Library is 'the Senate House Palaeography Room, which opened in 1956-most welcoming and most helpful of palaeography libraries', which holds a reference collection 'worth crossing oceans to use' with 'books which cannot be found in Princeton, Chicago, Toronto, or even Oxford and Paris.'

David Ganz, 'Latin Palaeography since Bischoff', in Omnia disce: Medieval Studies in Memory of Leonard Boyle, O.P. , ed. Anne J. Duggan, Joan Greatrex and Brenda Bolton
(Aldershot : Ashgate, 2005), p. 95

The Palaeography Room houses over 18,000 volumes of books and periodicals on its open shelves. The collection concentrates on Western manuscripts written in the classical languages and European vernacular languages from Late Antiquity up to the establishment of printing, with topics ranging from palaeography, codicology, and the illumination of manuscripts to the history of medieval and renaissance libraries and collections; manuscript readers and collectors; reading and literacy in the manuscript period; scribes and illuminators; the transmission of manuscript texts; and the manuscript production.

There are impressive holdings of medieval liturgical, literary and historical manuscript facsimiles, and among the many treasures are facsimiles of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Book of Kells, Chaucer and Virgil manuscripts. Catalogues of manuscripts from libraries and collections worldwide account for a large part of the holdings, and there is a sizeable proportion of 18 th and 19 th century catalogues.

The Senate House Library also holds the papers of former teachers of palaeography at the University of London , amongst whom eminent scholars such as Francis Wormald (1904-1972) and Julian Brown (1923-1987). Teaching materials, of which reproductions of scripts, are an important resource, used throughout the academic year in the many paleography classes taught in the library. There is also a significant collection of original medieval manuscripts, often assembled by palaeographers in support of their teaching.

The Librarian of the University of London Palaeography Room will introduce small groups to the library and its holdings in thirty-minute visits during lunch-breaks on Monday and Tuesday, 2.00-2.30pm. If you would like to book a slot please contact Jon Millington at the Institute of English Studies office: first-come/first-served.

More information about the Palaeography and Manuscript Studies Collection can be found on the Senate House Library website.

The second phase of the Senate House Library refurbishment programme will start Monday 6 August. This will involve temporarily re-locating the entrance to the Library and moving some of the collections. The Library will be closed from 18.00 Thursday 9 August and will re-open at 09.00 Monday 20 August.

The Palaeography and Book Studies collections and the Special Collections Reading Room will be closed from Monday 6 August to Monday 13 August while it moves to the Small Hall, ground floor, North Block. If you wish to consult material during this time please contact the Special Collections team. The Reading Room, with Palaeography and Book Studies materials, will re-open in its new location on Monday 13 August 9am - 5pm Monday to Friday. It will not be open on Saturday 18 August. If you wish to consult material during this time please contact the Special Collections team by telephone on 020 7862 8470 or by email: shl.specialcollections@london.ac.uk

When the Library re-opens:

• The entrance to Senate House Library will be on the 4th floor, North Block and can be reached through the entrance leading to the Institute of Classical Studies Library , 2nd floor, North Block

• Take the stairs or lift from the ground to the 2nd floor, turn left and go straight through a set of doors leading to the Institute of Classical Studies Library, then go straight ahead through the next set of doors which leads to the Institute of Historical Research and up the stairs or lift to the 4th floor

• This will take you into the Exhibition Hall, 4th floor, where the Membership Desk and returns counter will be re-located

• The Issue Desk and stack request service will be re-located in the Special Collections Reading Room

• There will be no separate Photocopying Office Desk. All requests for the reprographics / scanning service will be taken at the Issue Desk

• Most open access periodical volumes will be re-located in the Upper Library, 3rd floor, above the Institute of Classical Studies Library

• The most recent issues of periodicals will remain in the Periodicals Room, as at present

While every effort will be made to keep materials on open access, on occasion some will be temporarily re-shelved in the stack. These will remain available on request.

We apologise in advance for any inconvenience or disruption the moves may cause and we hope to keep disruption to a minimum.

Please check the website, newsletter and notices in the Library for the latest information about further moves.

At the British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1
In addition to some old favourites on display, such as the Beowulf mss, to coincide with the ISAS conference there will be a single display case in the Treasures Gallery at the BL containing, it is intended, the following 4 items: 1. the Liber de Hyda, purchased recently from the Macclesfield family: the opening on display will be the unique copy of the will of King Eadred; 2. the New Minster foundation charter, Cotton Vespasian A. VIII; 3. the New Minster Liber Vitae, Stowe 944; 4. the will of the Aetheling Athelstan (Sawyer 1503), Stowe Charter 37.

The important special exhibition "Sacred", which explores the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, will also be open (timed tickets) and includes exhibits such as the Lindisfarne Gospels.

At the Library, King's College London
King's College London's Maughan Library & Information Services Centre occupies one of the masterpieces of Victorian public architecture, the former Public Record Office in Chancery Lane.
Designed by Joseph Pennethorne to serve as the "strong box of the Empire", the building was acquired by King's in 1998 and has been imaginatively and sensitively adapted for use as a modern university library.

The English Department at King's has a long tradition of Old English scholarship. Sir Israel Gollancz, who was Professor of English from 1903 to 1930, did much to foster this interest. Of particular interest among the library's collections to scholars of Old English are the 1,000 or so books and pamphlets from the library of Walter William Skeat, who was educated at King's College School. Many of these are housed in the library's Foyle Special Collections Library, which contains over 110,000 rare books and other special collections material.

A rolling programme of special collections exhibitions takes place in the matchless surroundings of the Weston Room, the former Rolls Chapel, whose features include Tudor and Jacobean funerary monuments, seventeenth century stained glass and a late Victorian mosaic floor.

ISAS delegates will be given reference access to the Maughan Library & Information Services Centre (including the Foyle Special Collections Library) from 21 July to 3 August 2007, upon production of the special delegates' ticket. Tickets are available to fully registered conference delegates from the Institute of English Studies office (tel. +44 (0)20 7664 4859).

At Lambeth Palace Library, post-conference
Tuesday 14 August (2-5pm) Lambeth Palace Librarian Richard Palmer is available to meet for anyone to come along and see the Anglo-Saxon exhibition in the library. Small group only: if you would like to come along please contact jon.millington@sas.ac.uk.