Tring Tiles come home

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It's not quite like the Elgin Marbles story, but a small Hertfordshire museum has managed to secure the loan of some important medieval tiles once associated with it.

After years of negotiation, the V&A Museum has agreed to loan its examples of the ‘Tring Tiles’ to Tring Local History Museum.

The tiles, believed once to have adorned the walls of Tring’s Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul, date from the 14th century. In cartoon style, they tell ‘apocryphal’ stories of the childhood of Jesus, stories which don’t appear in the recognised gospels and are wildly improbable, but are depicted with great gusto, in the manner of Dennis the Menace.

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All the tiles and fragments known to exist have some connection to Tring. The British Museum has eight, said to have been found in the 1860s in a ‘curiosity shop’, and Tring Local History Museum already displays modern replicas of those.

A scene from one of the Tring Tiles seriesA scene from one of the Tring Tiles series
A scene from one of the Tring Tiles series

The V&A has two others, plus two fragments, found by Tring people and given in the 1920s and 30s. These examples are the real thing, and will be on display here from late October for the next six months. “It’s a great honour for a small local museum like ours to secure a loan from a major national institution like the V&A”, said chairman Tim Amsden. “We’ll do our best to justify their confidence, and enable people to explore the history and meaning of these important examples of medieval ceramics.”

Talented artist and tile maker Sue Jones has gone one step further, by exploring the original sources and creating speculative designs for tiles that may once have existed. She has made and fired some of these, which we will also display. It is hoped she can offer tile-making workshops as well, and even take the results away to fire them.

Tring Local History Museum is at the Market Place, Brook Street. It’s open on Fridays and Saturdays, 10 am to 3.30 pm. An Accredited Museum, run entirely by volunteers, it is free of charge to enter, but relies on visitors’ generosity.

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