ABSTRACT
In 1530/31 and again in 1533, inventories were drawn up of the buildings and possessions of the guild of the Blessed Virgin, or St Mary’s guild, Boston (Lincs).1 The two inventories are virtually identical, describing first the house occupied by the guild’s nine chantry priests, followed by the guild’s chapel in the south aisle of the parish church of St Botolph’s, and finally, the guildhall in South End. The inventories are an important reminder of the sheer wealth and variety of the objects owned by late medieval guilds on the eve of the Reformation and are a valuable record of categories of ‘everyday’ religious material culture which has been lost from the archaeological and art historical record, partly as a result of the Reformation but also, of course, other vicissitudes of history.2 However, the inventories do more than this, for they also allow us to explore the complex relationship between objects and architectural space. In particular, they allow us to understand how objects
could be used to construct particular kinds of meaning in the very flexible and mutable spaces of pre-modern buildings.
