Professor David Stocker
- Position: Visiting Professor
- Areas of expertise: archaeology; medieval history; buildings, settlements; landscapes
- Email: D.Stocker@leeds.ac.uk
- Website: LinkedIn
Profile
After studying history and history of art at Cambridge, and taking an MA at York in Medieval Studies, in 1978-9 David joined the York Archaeological Trust. He was awarded a DLitt in Archaeology by York in 2013. Following a short period as a free-lance specialist on medieval architecture, his second post was at the Lincoln Archaeological Trust (1982-6). David joined English Heritage as an Inspector in 1986, where he was successively responsible for casework and designation in the North and Midlands, latterly handling policy development for designation in towns, industrial monuments and churches (1986-2001). After two years spent establishing the Archaeology Training Forum, and before retiring in 2012, he was responsible for developing heritage management initiatives in Landscapes, Settlements, and Churches. He was appointed Hon. Visiting Professor at the Institute for Medieval Studies at Leeds University in 2010 and also appointed to the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s East Midland Committee in 2013. In 2017, he was nominated to the Council of the National Trust by the Council for British Archaeology. In 2018 he was appointed a Trustee of the National Heritage Memorial Fund/National Lottery Heritage Fund by the Prime Minster.
David has played a number of roles within British Archaeology including: Director of the British Archaeological Association (1987-1990); (founding) Chair of the Institute of Field Archaeologists Buildings Group (1989-91); Honorary Fellow (now Affiliated Researcher) in Archaeology at University of York (1999-2004; 2016-date); (founding) Secretary of the Archaeology Training Forum (1998-2002); Vice-President of the Society for Medieval Archaeology (2005-2010); Trustee of the Council for British Archaeology (2007-16); Trustee of the Lincoln Record Society (since 2007) and its President (since 2015); Trustee of the Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology (2008-2018); and Trustee (2006-2016) and Chair (2010-16) of the Society for Church Archaeology. In 2018 he was Research Affiliate at St John’s College, Cambridge.
Research interests
David is a professional archaeologist, architectural historian and heritage manager specialising particularly - though not exclusively - in the archaeology and history of the medieval period, especially in buildings, settlements and landscapes. Geographically, his research work has focussed particularly in Lincolnshire, though he has also contributed to projects based in a dozen other English counties, including many in Yorkshire. His most recent paper however, written jointly with Dr Gill Chitty of York University, concerns ceramics at Kelmscott House (Oxfordshire) and William Morris’ interest in the stoneware industry.
His most recently published volume (one of many projects undertaken jointly with Paul Everson of Keele University) is The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Sculpture Volume XII. Nottinghamshire (Oxford UP/British Academy, 2015), which aims to exploit the county’s stone sculpture as evidence for its first-millennium history. His two current research projects, both also undertaken in partnership with Paul Everson, are a third volume of The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture volume XV. Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire (an AHRC-funded project to complete this long-running national assessment); and a three-year, AHRC funded, project involving a consortium of English and Welsh Universities, investigating ‘Sacred Landscapes of Monasticism’. This project builds on many years work on monastic sites in the Witham valley, Lincolnshire, which culminated in the publication, with Everson, of Custodians of Continuity? The Premonstratensian Abbey at Barlings and the Landscape of Ritual (HTL Heckington and London, 2011). This project is particularly concerned with the monastic response to perceptions of the sacred in the Witham valley’s long-established Forest landscape.
Publications
Key publications
‘Stranger on the Shore: Gainsborough Old Hall - Yorkist ‘merchant chique’ in Lancastrian Lincolnshire?’, in The Elite Household in England, 1100-1550 (ed. C Woolgar), Shaun Tyas, Donington, 2018. 56-74.
‘‘The Cros in the Markitte Stede’. The Louth Cross, its Monastery and its Town’, Medieval Archaeology, 61/2, 330-71 (co-author with P Everson), 2017
Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. Volume 12, Nottinghamshire, British Academy/Oxford, (co-author with P Everson), 2015.
‘Aristocrats, burghers and their markets: patterns in the foundation of Lincoln’s urban churches’, Life in Viking-Age Towns. Social Approaches to Towns in England and Ireland 800-1100 (eds. D M Hadley and L Ten Harkel), Oxbow, Oxford, 2013, 119-43.
Religion and Ritual Sites post AD410. An English Heritage Designation Selection Guide, English Heritage, London (principal author and editor), 2012
Custodians of Continuity. The Premonstratensian Abbey at Barlings and the landscape of ritual, English Heritage/HTL, London and Heckington. (co-author with P Everson), 2011
Download a PDF of Professor David Stocker's complete bibliography