Nottingham Alabaster

In episode two, Dr Janina Ramirez sets ex-forger Shaun Greenhalgh the challenge of making an alabaster carving of the kind mass-produced in Catholic England in the centuries before the Reformation. But the mines in Nottingham that produced English alabaster were closed down long ago, and the destruction unleashed by Henry VIII has left behind precious few examples, so Shaun’s views about how the Nottingham alabasters would originally have looked shock Janina.