Medieval shipwreck tomb slabs on display – History

A gravestone recovered from a 13th-century shipwreck off the Dorset coast has been put on display at the newly renovated Poole Museum for the first time.

The mortar wreck is the only known shipwreck from the 11th to 14th centuries in British waters. It was discovered by divers from Bournemouth University in 2019 and granted official protection in 2022.

The ship carried 30 tons of Purbeck stone, some unworked stone, and six mortars, also made of Purbeck stone, with a large stone used as a pestle, from which the wreck was named. The lid of the tombstone is engraved with a cross but lacks the finished details and inscription. The tombstone slab was raised last year and a desalination program was undertaken to stabilize it. One of them was broken in two, while the other was intact.

The new Shipwreck Gallery is located in the town cellar, a medieval port warehouse with heavy masonry walls and wood-beamed ceilings. It’s the perfect place to display the museum’s collection salvaged from three protected shipwrecks: the Studland Bay Wreck, an armed cargo ship from Spain that sank around 1520; the Swash Channel Wreck, an early 17th-century merchant ship believed to have originated from the Netherlands; and the current Mortar Wreck.

Joe Raine, collections officer at Poole Museum, said: “We are very lucky to have good collaboration with Bournemouth University at Poole Museum as we receive many of the artefacts they have brought from the discovered shipwrecks. When we first heard about the discovery of the mortar wrecks we were really excited to play our part in the overall story, by putting these objects in front of a public who may have no idea about the Purbeck stone trade, or medieval seafaring, that we could tell the story.”

The public can now learn more about what was going on in the Purbeck stone trade in the mid-1200s, as well as the ships themselves. This is called a “clinker” boat and is made of overlapping wooden planks. Several of the planks were sent for testing, and growth ring analysis showed that the wood used to build the hull came from Irish oak trees felled between 1242 and 1265.