About Us

The Anglo-Saxon Laboratory and Textile Research
The Textile Research business was established in 1980 as a service to museums and archaeologists in the field of textiles, clothing, animal pelts and dyes. Within five years it had acquired 250 clients on five continents and a customer list which included many of the major museums of Europe and North America. For further details, go to www.textileresearch.com.

The Anglo-Saxon Laboratory began as a parallel enterprise, established in 2001 as a service to British archaeologists. Its aim was to cover all aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture, from the 5th to the 11th centuries, including the Anglo-Scandinavian period. Following the success of the new business, Textile Research has been nested inside The Anglo-Saxon Laboratory. The current staff at The Anglo-Saxon Laboratory are Penelope Walton Rogers (manager/proprietor), two part-time employees, and sundry volunteers and post-graduate students. There is also an established team of external consultants, who contribute from their specialisms as the need arises.

Projects carried out under the new trading name include a report on a Viking woman’s grave in Yorkshire, published in Medieval Archaeology (Speed and Walton Rogers 2004). A national survey of costume (metalwork and textiles) on behalf of English Heritage, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England, AD 450-700, has recently appeared (Walton Rogers 2007, published by CBA). A study of the garment accessories from Saltwood, Kent, has been completed (forthcoming) and work is currently in progress on the finds from the Anglo-Saxon cemeteries at Flixton, Suffolk, and Tittleshall, Norfolk.

Penelope Walton Rogers, FSA, Dip.Acc.
Penelope Walton Rogers was born in 1950 in the West End of Newcastle. A government-sponsored scholarship took her to a girls’ public school, but at the age of 17 she gave up a place at Girton College Cambridge and went to work in field archaeology. Her first publication on artefacts appeared in 1971 while she was Finds Officer with York Minster Archaeologists and since that time she has produced catalogues, reports and research papers on a range of artefacts of different periods and materials.  In 1980 she set up Textile Research, an independent unit specialising in textiles and costume. In this capacity she has been author of two monographs and over 150 reports, published in Britain and abroad. She also has 38 years' experience as an editor and has brought to publication two volumes of conference papers, nine issues of the journal, Dyes in History and Archaeology, and an assortment of other books and papers. In 2001 she established a new business, The Anglo-Saxon Laboratory, which provides archaeologists with reports on early medieval artefacts of all types. She is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, qualified in accountancy and trained in business management.

A non-matching pair of late 9th-century tortoise brooches from the burial of a Norwegian woman, excavated at Adwick-le-Street, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, by Northern Archaeological Associates. Brooches of this type were copied and re-copied throughout the Viking world and the motifs seen here are only distant echoes of the original animal images (for a close-up view of the side motif, see top of page). The brooches were found on the woman's shoulders, where they would have been used to fasten the strap dress worn by Viking women until the mid 10th century.