Recreating Medieval Floor Tiles

The purpose of this blog is to document and record my experiences in trying to recreate medieval floor tiles. To my knowledge there is no such record elsewhere and we risk losing the skills once again. Medieval floor tile making first came into this country from the Low Countries in early 13 century and their use and development probably peaked at the end of that century. With the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 floor tile manufacture stopped and many of the ‘pavements’ and skill sets were lost.

I anticipate that I will only post periodical and spasmodically. Some posts will look at the history of the tile making, others will document the skills and techniques I have developed and yet other posts will chronicle my progress in making tile ‘pavements’. My initial projects looked to recreate the tile patterns found in Winchester and else where in South England. These tiles have been drawn together in the spirit of a needlework ‘sampler’ to show what I have learnt. My second project is trying to re-create the original ‘roundels’ from Muchelney Abbey and I am just starting to look at how the mosaic pavements were created in the Cistercian Abbeys of Yorkshire.