29.
WINE BOTTLE
English, 16th/17th century
E. T. Leeds of the Ashmolean was interested in early wine bottles, and Lawrence
occasionally helped him to collect examples and to research the origins of those which
bore Oxford innkeepers' stamps. By 1914 Leeds had been able to establish the sequence of
wine bottles made in Oxford between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. His
conclusions provided a basis for dating wine bottles that is now used throughout the
world.
The bottle exhibited here was given by Lawrence to Ernest Barker of St John's college,
a family friend and also one of is history tutors. It is said to have been excavated at
Oxford Castle.
After the war, when Lawrence was elected to All Souls College, he discovered a cellar
full of empty wine bottles dating from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He
and Leeds spent three evenings during the winter of 1920 examining them by candle light
and collecting a specimen of each type. This set was subsequently presented by the College
to the Ashmolean.
Nicolas Barker Esq.
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