HER 2839 - Medieval pewter cruet: Chertsey

In 1975 Chertsey Museum">Chertsey Museum (Acc No D791) was able to purchase a pewter cruet from a local resident which was found a year or two previously in silt dredged from the Abbey River, Chertsey, just west of the cattle bridge on Abbey Chase Farm. The Keeper of Metalwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum examined the vessel and dated it on stylistic grounds to the 14th century. Very little Medieval pewter has survived in Britain. This cruet was possibly used by monks at Chertsey Abbey (HER 595). Cruet identified as being designed to contain either water or wine for the Mass, or else the consecrated oil (chrism) used amongst other things, in the administration of baptism, consecration and extreme unction. The cruets for all these purposes are often of identical design and one can normally only distinguish between them when they are marked, as the Chertsey example probably was, on its missing lid. A pair of 14th century silver cruets from the Treasury of Basel Cathedral, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum are for example, marked on the lids with the initial letters of the Latin words vinum (wine) and aqua (water). This pair can be dated, on the evidence of their heraldic decoration, to the period 1366-1382; it can hardly be doubted therefore, that the Chertsey cruet is of approximately the same period. An alternative interpretation of the pewter cruet by has been suggested by a trustee of Chertsey Museum">Chertsey Museum, who states that it is a 16th century Nuremberg, as an early British pewter would not be found with a baluster body or standing on feet.

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Related Records

• SHHER_595

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