Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology
The Department of Antiquities:
Monumental Brasses
Important Notice -- Please Read this

The Ashmolean has posted on its website a list of the brass rubbings it holds largely on behalf of the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society and the Oxford University Archaeological Society.

Many requests for further information on the rubbings are received, to which the Museum is unable to respond. These frequently take the form of enquiries about the personalities represented on the brasses concerned: we hold no information of this kind. The titles of a number of the most useful books on rubbings appear on the Museum's website, but it may be noted that the Museum itself possesses none of these.

Most of the rubbings in the collection are now over a century old. They are held in long-term storage which is inaccessible to the public; they are on large-format paper which is now extremely fragile, so that they cannot be made available for general consultation.

Unfortunately, due to the current Redevelopment of the Museum, it is no longer possible to produce photographs of any of the brass rubbings.
Information regarding brass rubbings, including many of those held in the Ashmolean, can be obtained from the following sources. The Museum has no access to genealogical information or to any details contained in these works, which will be widely found in reference libraries.
  • Incised Monumental Memorials of the Middle Ages (1847) and
    The Monumental Brasses of England, a series of Engravings upon Wood, with brief descriptive notices (1849).
  • Cambridge Camden Society, Illustrations of Monumental Brasses of Great Britain (1840-46).
  • Herbert Haines, A Manual of Monumental Brasses, comprising an introduction to the Study of these Memorials, and a list of those remaining in the British Isles, 2 volumes (1861, reprinted 1970).
  • John Page-Phillips, Macklin's Monumental Brasses (1969), a revised version of Macklin's original The Brasses of England (1907).
  • Oxford University Brass Rubbing Society, Oxford Journal of Monumental Brasses, vol. I (1897-9); vol. II (1900), and Oxford Portfolio of Monumental Brasses (1898-1901).
  • Mill Stephenson, A List of Monumental Brasses in the British Isles (1926) with an Appendix by M.S. Giuseppi and Ralph Griffin (1938).
  • Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue of Rubbings of Brasses and Incised Slabs, 2nd Edition (1929, reprinted 1969).
  • Sally Badham and Malcolm Norris, Early Incised Slabs and Brasses (1999)
    • © Copyright University of Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1999
    The Ashmolean Museum retains the copyright of all materials used here and in its Museum Web pages.
    Last updated: jcm/20-jul-2005