Staff profile

I am working at present with Dr Margaret Harvey on a new edition of the Rites of Durham, a text last published in the Surtees Society by Canon Fowler in 1902. This text, put together by 1593, which purports to describe aspects of the buildings, furniture, and fittings of the late medieval monastery of Durham, together with certain of the ceremonies conducted there, has generally been considered to be the recorded memories of an old former monk of Durham. Our work, building on that of Dr A.I. Doyle, suggests that the text, written by William Claxton, a local antiquary, is in reality an anti-reform polemic. Often copied in a recusant environment, it was also, because of its content, of interest to the Arminian arm of the Church of England and seems to have informed Bishop Cosin's restoration of the cathedral after 1660.

Edited book

• Rollason, Lynda (2016). • The Thorney Liber Vitae (London BL Add. MS 40,000, fols 1-12), critical edition, linguistic and prosopographical commentaries, introduction and indexes. The Boydell Press.
• Rollason, David & Rollason, Lynda (2007). The Durham Liber Vitae (London BL MS Domitian A. vii). British Library Publications.

Journal Article

• Graves, C. Pamela & Rollason, Lynda (2013). ‘The monastery of Durham and the Wider World: Medieval Graffiti in the Prior’s Chapel’. Northern History 50(2): 186-215.
• (2011). ‘Medieval Mortuary Rolls: Prayers for the Dead and Travel in Medieval England’. Northern History 48(2): 187-223.