Bone Strainer from New Inn Court, Oxford: 12th century

The simple but effective strainer has been made from the shoulder blade of a sheep - an excellent example of the recycling of materials practised widely in England in Medieval times. Presumably it functioned like a slotted spoon does today, for stirring and dipping into the cooking-pot for the extraction of tit-bits.

In Late Saxon times, sheep shoulder-blades were used to make the little round bone counters popular for board games like draughts. The waste piece of bone with its perforations probably suggested the idea of re-use as a strainer.