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Volume 3 : 1980 – 1984

newsletter-118-december-1980

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Newsletter

Page 1

A MERRY CHRISTMAS

to all members of HADAS from the Editors (six), Contributors (many) and Distributors (a very faithful few) of the Society’s Newsletter And may we wish you also, jointly and severally, ten wishes for the coming New Year: May your trenches never be waterlogged and your sections never crumble May your lecturers always be both audible and interesting May your pottery not be Saxon when what you want is Bronze Age May there always be film in your camera when you need it May your spoil-heap never produce finds May your medieval documents always be decipherable May no one tramp across your trench when you’ve just trowelled it May you have fine days on your outings and fruitful ones on your field walks May your excavated pits always possess recognisable limits And perhaps the key wish, given by the ultimate in archaeological fairy godmothers: May your radio carbon dates be what you expect.
BRIGHTER DAYS AHEAD FOR MIDDLESEX RECORDS?

Eighteen months ago – in July 1979 – our newsletter began with the headline °Bombshell for Local Historians of Middlesex” and went on with the sorry story of the closing of the former Middlesex Record Office at Queen Anne’s Gate Buildings and the removal of its invaluable records to a warehouse in Whitechapel. We therefore rejoice greatly to be able to bring you news of brighter- days – if not yet there, at least on the horizon. We have had this letter from James Wisdom, a leading campaigner in the wave of protests which arose from historians all over the London area last year:”I enclose a photocopy of an article from the Daily Telegraph for Thursday Nov 13 1980. As you will see, the GLC has taken a lease on a building in Clerkenwell which will house a new search room and all the records from the old Middlesex Record Office, the GLC Record Office and those records stored in the Middlesex Guildhall. There is no proposal to retain anything below the flood line at County Hall. This news was confirmed by interviews on Thames TV on Thursday evening. This is clearly very good news. There will obviously be another period of disruption while renovations are made and the records moved again, but after that we should have a secure service from the record office for the life of the lease (55 years).” The Daily Telegraph article provides a bit more information. The GLC Archive is to be housed in Bowling Green Lane, Clerkenwell, as a result of “a deal with IPC Business Press financed by the sale of other GLC property.” Mr Wisdom also says that the prime figure on the GLC side in finding this now accommodation is Councillor Cyril Taylor, Chairman of the Professional and General Services Committee of the Greater London Council. As HADAS protested loud and long over the earlier arrangement (a fact for which Mr Wisdom was clearly grateful) we have now had much pleasure in writing to Councillor Taylor to congratulate him on what seems to be a happy result. Of course there is going to be a tricky time while the records are moved; as you may remember, when the move from Queen Anne’s Gate took place, the GLC Search Room at County Hall closed for 4 months. Local historians will be keeping an eagle eye out for announcements from GLC about another close-down, in order to urge that it be as short as possible. Another area where vigilance may pay off is in the rules laid down for the new search room. At present notice of at least 3 days is required for any records kept in an out-depository, and this has a frustrating effect on research. Often one does not know until one starts working at the Record Office exactly what documents one may need. When everything is housed under one roof it is very much to be hoped that the 3-day rule will no longer be either implemented or necessary.


Page 2

PLANNING PROGRAMME

Although it isn’t even Christmas yet,this is the time we start planning next summer’s programme. It has been suggested that next year, in addition to our normal four or five Saturday trips, we should include some outings which might have a more limited appeal – for groups, for instance, which have special interests. One suggestion – which would doubtless appeal particularly to our surveying and field archaeology members – is a behind-the-scenes visit to the Ordnance Survey centre at Southampton. That is the sort of outing which we might manage to do by minibus, unless it proved unexpectedly popular. We haven’t, at the moment, explored this idea fully, but when we do you will hear more of it. Another possibility is for a week or two in Crete, at the end of May or beginning of June. That trip, if it were to come off, would be handled by two HADAS members who know Crete well, Lynn Bright and Elizabeth Goring. They need to estimate in the next week or so how many members might be interested. If you think that you would be, please ring Lynn Bright (on 455 9506) and tell her, and at the same time you can get any further details that she has. The third suggestion is for a weekend study group in the Brecon Beacons. This last project is one for which arrangements must be settled some way ahead, so details of the weekend, Sept.’11-13, and an application form, are attached. For further information, ring Jeremy Clynos on 455 4271.
FRIENDS OF COLLEGE FARM

The Finchley Society, which is organising the Friends of College ‘ Farm, formed as a result of the Open Days held at the Farm last spring, have asked us to say that they would be happy to enroll more Friends. To join you should send an application to the Finchley Society, Room 4, Avenue House, East End Road, N3, Friends are asked to College Farm in the first weekend of every month, Saturday and/or Sunday, 2 pm to dusk, to join a working party. The first project is to clean up the old bottling department of the dairy. This is to be turned into a home for various animals which can be shown to visiting school parties. If you decide to help with this practical and useful work, please wear old clothes, strong shoes and gloves if you like using them for manual work.
UNEXPECTED SLANT ON 17TH C. MIDDLESEX

The principal speaker at the LAMAS Local History Conference on November 15 at the Museum of London was Dr David Avery. He is a member of the Cambridge group on demography and was until recently editor of that excellent journal, Local Population Studies, His title was intriguing – Middlesex for Sin – and caused quite a bit of speculation beforehand. It turned out to be a quotation from some 17th c doggerel describing the characteristics of various counties – with “sin” (particularly in its immoral connotation) as Middlesex’s outstanding feature. His evidence was taken from a study of 7 years of the records of Middlesex sessions – 1612-1618. He began by giving the figures for the numbers of cases which came before the 70 Justices of the county under such headings as:fathering illegitimate children; keeping bawdy houses; frequenting them; whoring (i.e. being a whore); using whores; adultery; homosexuality; rape; bigamy; and a category merely called “other cases.” He made the point- that the figures in each category (from 194 men who fathered bastards to 4 who engaged in homosexual practices) were the cases which actually reached sessions; they were the tip of an iceberg. They represented those who were found out. Three offences – rape, bigamy and sodomy – were capital, and tried before a jury; for minor offences the justices (many of whom were said to be leading Puritans) adjudicated without a jury. This is a transition period, when cases which in times past would have gone to the ecclesiastical courts were now being settled by the Justices. Being found out usually resulted from two causes: either information was laid against you (often by a nosey neighbour) or you were caught in the act by the:watch – who had the right, and often used it, to break into private premises without a warrant, if they suspected an offence was being committed. One lasting impression left by the cases and the sentences is of an age of cruelty and inequality. For instance, when a Bishop licensed a midwife to practice her calling, he laid upon her the duty of extract¬ing the name of the father from any mother of a bastard at the moment of birth, When the mother might be expected to be at the point of least resistance. This was considered important because, if the identity of the father could be established, he could be made to support his child, instead of the whole burden of support falling on the parish concerned. If the putative father could not be found, the mother was punished – such punishment usually being “that she be whipped at the cart tail until her body be all “bloodied”. ‘Districts of Middlesex had particular claims to notoriety. Clerken¬well, for example, had 56 bawdy – or “lewdly famed” houses, as compared with Westminster’s 4; and Clerkenwell, too, had high figures for “common whores taken in the street.” For the first offence of soliciting a woman was bound over; offences thereafter turned her into a “common whore”. Outer areas – like our own – did not feature in the bawdy-house table. The occasional sexual cases which were mentioned for outer areas were, for instance, a Whetstone woman, Ann Robinson, who was hanged for murdering her illegitimate baby by throwing it down the privy; or a step¬father in Tottenham, who committed incest with his wife’s daughter by an earlier marriage and was sentenced to 20 lashes and hard labour. The category “other cases” included some odd ones. Three married couples living in South Mimms indulged in a bit of wife-swapping; and there was a splendid instance of four people (three male, one female) having high jinks in one bed for a fortnight; “but,” says the report as if it were a total explanation, “three of them were French,” The total of “sin” cases coning before the Middlesex Justices over the seven years was 560; it far outdistanced those for any other county. No wonder the old rhyme ran:

Derbyshire for lend Devonshire for tin Wiltshire for plovers’ eggs Middlesex for sin. (And Dr Avery says that plovers’ eggs are still a Wiltshire specialty).

Other speakers at the Local History Conference were John Richardson, Chairman of our neighbours, the Camden History Society, who gave an interesting talk on the history of the buildings of the Covent Garden area; and Dr R J M Carr, who spoke on Dockland history. Many interesting displays were mounted by local history societies. HADAS had an exhibit on the work – excavation, tombstone recording and documentary back-up – at St James the Great, Friern Barnet. Judging by the exhibits, local history is alive and kicking throughout Middlesex. It was, in fact, rather a pity that the displays had to be mounted in the Education Department of the Museum, which is not ideal for this kind of use; and also that there was insufficient time to study them all. An hour and a quarter (actually cut to an hour) is not enough. Perhaps next year the organisers could consider these points, and perhaps make other provision.

Page 3

DIG AT CEDARS CLOSE a further note from PERCY REBOUL

The season’s excavation at this site finished on Oct 24 and the trenches have been covered for the winter. The owner has specifically asked us not to backfill, as he is considering the whole future of his garden and may want to use the uncovered structures as a “feature.” There is little to add to the surmises of the preliminary report (see Newsletter 112 June 1980) Almost total lack of stratification (the area was backfilled with yards of coal ash back in the early 1930s) means that identification and dating of the brick structures and drain complex will have to be done by examining maps and consulting garden encyclopaedias. of the time. It seems reasonably certain, however, that we have been excavating in what was the kitchen garden area of the old Tenterden Hall and the work is middle and late Victorian – a golden age of horticulture. Two giant volumes on British Gardens have just been obtained through Barnet Reference Library and the object will now be to study them in detail. Work will start soon on the final report on the digs Dave ??? is doing final drawings; many photographs have been taken and a number of interesting finds made – most recent being some Tudor bricks.

Page 4

INVESTIGATIONS OF ROMAN LONDON HELEN GORDON reports on the November lecture

We were shown a delightful series of portraits of the antiquarians of Roman London when Dr Hugh Chapman, of the Museum of London, lectured on their history. The development of their style of dress through the 400-year’s span of time, from elegant bewigged gentlemen to modern archaeologist, bears an inverse relationship to the refinement of the methods at their disposal. However, that may be, we are fortunate that they became obsessed so early with the accurate observation of Roman. London. One of the first John Stow, born 1525, recorded Roman remains in his Survey of London. He is commemorated by his statue in the Church of St Andrew Undershaft, which holds a real taill pen, renewed annually. In the 17th c Sir Christopher Wren kept a watch for Roman antiquities. The Great Fire of London gave him the opportunity for extensive observation, and while rebuilding St Paul’s cathedral he was able to lay the legend that there was a temple to Diana underneath; he records there was no evidence for this. He noticed the Roman cemetery at Spitalfield and recorded that the graves contained cremations and grave goods. Wren found the Roman carriageway of rough stone’ beneath St Mary-le-Bow, though he thought it was the northern boundary of the city; and the famous tombstone of the Roman soldier, which appears in so many histories of Roman London. He gave it to the Archbishop of Canterbury; it later passed to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, from where its return to its city of origin was negotiated only at the time of the opening of the Museum of London. Many other antiquarians contributed to our knowledge of Roman London by their close and careful observation combined with a sound classical know¬ledge. Stukeley, born 1687, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries, made the first plan of the city. Throughout the 17th and 18th c many antiquarians made collections, the largest being that of Charles Roach Smith (1807-1890) which constituted the first Museum of London Antiquities„ Ho had great difficulty in persuading the authorities to recognise the importance of antiquities: and they refused to house his collection. Eventually he sold it to the British Museum. The Corporation of Londron opened the Guildhall Museum in a room in their library in 1841. Excellent recording was carried out in the 19th c particularly by Henry Hodge, who made a great number of water colour sketches and meticulous drawings of the Basilica in 1880 and 1881. . World War II was an opportunity comparable-with the Great Fire for observation in devastated areas. Our President, Professor W F Grimes, with archaeology now developed into a science, was able to examine 63 bomb sites, and one cutting at least was made in each between 1947 and 1962; this led to discoveries such as the city Mithraeum, with its associated group of marble statues, and investigation of course continues whenever development permits. This brief summary does no justice to Dr Chapman’s detailed account nor to his excellent slides of people, pictures and plans. But the slide which gave the most amusement was of a drawing of the Roman soldier’s tombstone, so highly embellished as to be unrecognisable: not the work of the antiquarians for whose excellent recordings we have reason to be thankful.
ROMAN LAMPS

The pottery department of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute has produced another batch of the attractive Roman lamps that we used, in two styles, for our Roman banquet a year ago. These are available from John Enderby at the Institute, price £4 each. more information can be obtained by phoning him on 455 9951.
OUR MEMBERS

This seems a good time to welcome the new members who have joined us in the last few months, and to wish them pleasure in their membership of HADAS. They are: Dr S Adam, Golders Green, Martin Balanon, Hampstead; David Bowler Hendon; Camden School for Girls (institutional members); Gladys Clark, Hendon; M W Coffee, Parliament Hill; Ann Collins, Hampstead; James Cox-Johnson, Hampstead; Linda Friedman, Hendon; C H Guntrip, Golders Green; Evelyn Gunz, Hendon; E G Halse, NW9; Barbara How, Hampstead ‘

JulIet Levy, NW11; Miss C M Lyons, ‘

South Woodford; Miss C F McMullan, Garden Suburb; Harry Pickett, N. Finchley; .C Rochester, Kingsbury;’ Diana Rockledge, NW6; Mr & Mrs H. E. Boyle, Hampstead; David St George, Garden Suburb; Jean Snelling, Finchley: Joanna Walton, Hampstead; Also on a personal note, good wishes too to an “old” (though not in years) member, Wendy Page, one of the stalwarts of Dorothy Newbury’s outings team. She was married this autumn and is now Wendy Cones. She remains a HADAS member, though now living in Watford; and we are sure that members will want to wish her every happiness and send her our congratulations.

Page 5

A GAZETTEER OF TRANSPORT IN THE BOROUGH OF BARNET
Part II: Rail Compiled by BILL FIRTH

Great Northern Railway, main line. Opened 1855, much altered in recent years by electrification and upgrading for 125 mph High Speed Train running. Many GNR features have disappeared only quite recently Stations – all c 1890 but may incorporate parts of earlier 1855 stations; all altered, but some Victoriana remains:
1 New Southgate.84 Friern Barnet, TQ 287 923

2 Oakleigh Park, TQ 270 948

3 New:Barnet, TQ 265 959

4a SouthgateTunnel, TQ 277 936 to TQ 274 941, original 2-traced 413 bore 1855, 4-tracked c 1290.

4b Friern Hospital wall at New Southgate station, bricked-up arch through which line serving hospital ran. No other visible evidence now remains.

Great Northern Railway, High Barnet Branch (now LT Northern Line, Barnet Branch). Opened to Finchley Central 1867, to High Barnet 1872. Stations;
5 East Finchley, TQ 272 891, rebuilt for LT electrification and extension 1938-9, in typical “Holden style.”

6 Finchley Central, TQ 253 906

7 Woodside Park, TQ 257 926

8 Totteridge Whetstone, TQ 261 939

9 East Barnet, TQ 250 962 These four above date from 1872 and a considerable amount of original work remains, together with adjacent related buildings.

10 Finchley, TQ 256 918; built 1933, but in older style since material and fittings from other old stations were used. Great Northern Railway, Edgware Branch.Opened 1867, now open only as LT Northern Line Mill Hill East branch as far as Mill Hill East, Electrification through to Edgware was proposed in 1938 works programme. Interrupted by World War II, the scheme was finally abandoned in 1954. Most of the trackbed can be followed from Mill Hill East to Edgware; there are considerable traces of the early works of electrification and some other interesting features noted below.

11 Dollis Viaduct, Dollis Road, N3, TQ 246 911. 13-arch red brick viaduct over Dollis Valley, opened 1867

12 Mill Hill East station, Bittacy Hill, NW7, TQ 241 914, built.1867

13 Bridge carrying Watford Way over Bunns Lane, NW7, TQ 219 912. Railway ran through southern arch, track A. converted to M1 slip road before M1 extended to Staples Corner. Now- this too is disused.

14 Bunns Lane Bridge at junction with Flower Lane, NW7, TQ 217 916.Built 1867, originally took Bunns Lane over the railway. Road improvements in .1960s re-sited road over filled-in railway track so bridge remains as an isolated monument.

15 Site of Mill Hill, The Hale, station, Bunns Lane, NW7, TQ 213 917. Traces of now platforms built by LT in 1938/9 are visible.

16 Deansbrook Bridge near Westway, Edgware, TQ 199 917. Three-arch structure of 1867. On north side original GNR railings remain, on south side those have been replaced by LT railings. The structure to hang a colour light signal beside the line on one of the bridge piers remains.

17 Edgware station, car park behind Green Shield House, Station Rood, Edgware, TQ 194 917. Goods shed remains, now part of junk yard. From car park traces of station platforms are visible. Midland Railway. Extension from Bedford to St Pancras opened 1867. Much altered by building of M1, Mill Hill station is modern, Hendon station buildings have been reduced to a booking office and platform shelters. Currently being electrified and re-signalled, most of what remains of the old MR features will disappear in the next few years. Throughout, the line retains MR mileposts and gradient posts. Major marshalling yard – Brent Yard – north of Cricklewood, at least 100 acres now largely derelict, on east side carriage sheds including new: one for new electric trains. Stations:

18 Cricklewood, Cricklewood Lane, NW2, TQ 239 559. Station entrance 1885, platform buildings.rebuilt 1906.

19 Welsh Harp, Edgware Road, NWa. TQ 229 874. Open 1870-1903.Notraces remain except cobbled entrance road from Edgware Road, which could be original.

20 Hendon, Station Road, NW4, TQ 222 883. Such MR features as remained after M1 was built have recently disappeared under electrification

21 Mill Hill Broadway, ‘The Broadway, NW7, TQ 212 920, rebuilt in 1960 in connection with Ml extension. Signal boxes will all go out of use on completion of resignalling scheme in 1983. All of typical MR style, note “triangular” inserts in top of windows, many retain MR style finials on roof ends. Adjacent to 10. Cricklewood, TQ 239 860, visible from station.

22 Brent No 1 and Brent No 2, 228 870 .controlling Brett Yard and junctions to and from Midland & South West Junction Railway connecting with North London line at Acton Wells junction, thus giving MR round London access to south. Between boxes typical MR 8-post signal gantry (only 4 now in use) some with MR finials on top. Best view from footbridge complex at Staples Corner TQ 227 872. Adjacent to 20. Hendon, TQ 222 884, visible from station Other features:

23 Silkstream Junction TQ 224 897, accessible by public footpath from Aerodrome Road, NW9

24 Campion, Needham, Johnstone, Midland and Gratton Terraces, in 12, Tcl 237 860. Housing built by MR for workers in adjacent Brent Yard. Derelict Midland Institute at NW corner of estate.

25 Brent Terrace (originally Midland Brent Terrace) NW2, TQ 235 866. MR housing.

26 Macadam Works, Tilling Road, NW2, TQ 230 874, derelict, now scrap car dump. Only remains of gas works built by MR to supply Brent Yard before there was any public supply in area.

27 Shelmedine & Mulley Ltd (service station), Edgware Road, NW2, TQ 233 865. Only remaining building of Cricklewood locomotive depot, now in other use.

28 Brent Viaduct, North Circular Road, NW2, TQ 225 874, 19 arches, 30 ft high over Brent valley, originally 4 tracks, 2 added on west side c 1890; note different style on each side, and “join” in arches showing where extension was built.

29 Portals to Elstree Tunnel, TQ 197 948, eastern 2-track original 1867, 4-tracked (western tunnel) c 1890. London Electric Railway (now LT Northern Line Edgware branch). Opened to Golders Green 1907, to Edgware 1924.

30 Site of Bull & Bush station, underground, visible from passing trains, TQ 260 870. No 1 Hampstead Way is said to stand on intended site of surface buildings.

31 Tunnel Portals, c 400 m to the London side of Golders Green station, TQ 252 873. Only LER tunnel portals of this date (1907).

32 Golders Green station, TQ 253 874. Basically original 1907 station and only above ground LER station of this date. Wooden platforms currently being replaced, with loss of original platform features. Golders Green Maintenance Depot, adjacent to station, TQ 253 875, 1901. One of only two remaining early Underground maintenance depots (Ealing Common is the other). Other stations, designed by S A Heaps, LER Architect, only example of this style:

33 Brent Cross, originally Brent, TQ 238 879, 1923 Site of passing loops used briefly to allow non-stop trains to pass slow trains at platforms.

34 Hendon Central, TQ 230 885, with office block built over it. Opened 1923.

35 Colindale, TQ 214 900, rebuilt after World War II bombing.

36 Burnt Oak, TQ 203 907. Opened 1924.

37 Edgware, TQ 195 919, opened 1924, East wing demolished in 1939 as part of uncompleted plans to rebuild for extension to Bushey Heath. Inside, platforms 2 & 3 are original, platform 1 is a 1939 addition. Other features:

38 Brent Viaduct, TQ 238 880. The whole length of line from Golders Green station to the far side of the bridge over Sheaveshill Avenue, TQ 236 861, is built on brick arches or in brick supported cuttings with a number of brick arch or iron bridges and might be regarded as an industrial monument in itself. (If it dated from the 1840-1860 railway age it certainly would be),

39a Burroughs Tunnel, TQ 229 887 to TQ 222 894, built in the same way

39b as the deep tube tunnels under London.

40 Under the 1938 New Works Plan it was intended to extend the line beyond Edgware to a terminus at Bushey Heath which is now the site of Aldenham bus depot. Quite a lot of work was done before it was stopped during World War II; it was never resumed before the plans were finally abandoned in 1954.-. The route of the line can be traced, the major relic is the part-built arches of the viaduct which would have taken the line across Edgware Way near Spur Road, (See HADAS Newsletter 36, Feb 1974, for further information). LT Piccadilly Line. About 1 km of the northern extension of this line (1932-33) lies in the easternmost corner of the London Borough of Barnet and two of the major civil engineering works of the line (excuding stations) are in the Borough.

41 Viaduct over Pymmes Brook valley, TQ 292 931; the northern end is in LBB.

newsletter-117-november-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

THE MONTH AHEAD

Next HADAS lecture on Tuesday November 4th will be by Dr Hugh Chapman, Keeper of the Dept. of Prehistoric and Roman Antiquities at the Museum of London. Dr Chapman writes:

“The purpose of my lecture will be to explore the history of archaeological investigation in the City of London. Today’s excavations by the Museum of London are the direct descendants of the work of scholars and antiquarian investigations from the 16th c onwards. The personalities involved include John Stow, Sir Christopher Wren, William Stukeley and Charles Roach Smith. The products of their work are well-known, but less attention has been paid to the motivation behind their conscious efforts to record the vanishing past, the way in which they set about their task and the development of their methods. The events and physical changes to the fabric of the City that unsealed London’s past and provided the opportunity of archaeological investigation and recording have also to be examined, as well as the effect the news of the discoveries had on a wider public.”

Nov 8/9 and 15/16: Roman Weekends at the Teahouse, Northway, NWll.

No, not an orgy, (anyway, not a planned orgy) but pottery study. Material from sites in the Borough of Barnet, particularly Brockley Hill, will be available, current work will be continued and new projects planned. Field walk finds will be further examined.

Helen Gordon, who is organising the sessions, says HADAS members unfamiliar with Roman pottery will be particularly welcome to use this opportunity to handle the local Romano-British ware; training projects will be arranged as required.

A research seminar will be held on the first Saturday, Nov 8, at 2.30 pm, which all members interested in the Borough’s Roman past are invited to attend.

A further investigation of the Roman road (The Viatores route 167) was made on October 5, and a hitherto unrecorded possible agger was observed which merits closer examination. This will also be considered at the Teahouse.

Teahouse sessions from 10 am-5 pm each day. Bring a picnic lunch if you wish -coffee/tea making facilities available.

From now till Nov 30, Exhibition at Church Farm House Museum.

The General Arts Division of Barnet Borough Arts Council (to which HADAS is affiliated) currently has an exhibition which shows how wide the interpretation of “general arts” can be. Called “The Things that Go On in Barnet Borough” it includes displays by some 20 different organisations. They range through churches, ceramic groups, gemmologists, neighbourhood associations, historical literary and amenity societies, local branches of the WEA and National Trust, the HGS Institute and, of course, HADAS. Nell Penny has mounted a general photographic display of various HADAS activities.
Page 2

There are live events on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. These include several lectures by members of the Mill Hill & Hendon Historical Society on topics which will interest HADAS members; and tape-recording of reminiscences of the district by the Finchley Society.

Lectures later this season will be:
Tues Jan 6 – Recent Excavations on the Nile. – John Alexander MA PhD
Tues Feb 3 – Hoards and Hillforts: Ireland in the 1st Millennium BC. – Harold Mytum BA
Tues Mar 3 – Sutton Hoo. – Kenneth Whitehorn BA.
Tues Apr 7 – Greek Royal Art. – Malcolm Colledge MA PhD.

Meetings are at Hendon Library, The Boroughs, NW4. Coffee 8pm, Lecture 8.30
LONDONERS ON WHEELS

A report by BILL FIRTH on the opening lecture of the season.

As usual, a large audience attended the first lecture of the 1980-1 season given on Oct 7 by John Freeborn, head of interpretation and display at the London Transport Museum. Mr Freeborn had two topics. First he described significant events in the development of urban transport in London; secondly he talked about the, problems, pitfalls and triumphs of setting up the new London Transport Museum Covent Garden. All illustrated by slides of course.

When I first wrote a synopsis of the lecture I found I had run to eight pages without getting to the second part. This would not have been popular with the editor but more importantly it shows now much Mr Freeborn packed into his time. I can pick out only a few of the highlights.

We wore first invited to think of London and its communications 200-300 years ago. These were two main East-West arteries, which still remain and are now known as Oxford Street and the Stand; but London was a compact city, no one lived more than a mile from the river, and the usual way to get about was to use the river to the nearest point and then walk. The alternative was the hackney carriage and Mr Freeborn pointed out that the word hackney comes from a French pronunciation meaning a strong horse. In the early 19th c some 1100 hackney licences were issued in London.

Interestingly a number of developments in London’s transport have originated in France. Around 1820 a new type of carriage, the cabriolet, was introduced from across the Channel and eventually led to the English contraction- a cab. In 1829 Mr Shillibeer introduced his omnibus and, again, the idea originated in Paris. The first route was from Paddington to the Bank along the New Road (now Marylebone, Euston, Pentonville, City Roads), which was the North Circular of its day. Shillibeer’s route was chosen because it lay outside “the stones,” the area within which stage coaches could not pick up: or set down except at the terminus at the Bull and Mouth, at a site near St Martins le Grand now marked with a plaque.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was instrumental in popularising the bus. Planks were laid on the roof then to “take more passengers – the first double-deckers. However, competition was cut-throat and buses tended to run only on highly profitable routes at peak hours. It was from Paris again that the next development came -the formation of the London General Omnibus Company to buy up the independents, and, by pooling receipts, to subsidise the unprofitable routes from the proceeds of the profitable ones.
Page 3

Mr Freeborn then turned to the tram. The advantage of this was that a horse could handle a much higher payload when pulling a vehicle on rails. Consequently by packing more passengers in, more profit could be made while charging lower fares. The 19th c history of the horse tram, which became the working class mode of transport, was outlined.

This covered 19th c road transport. Mr Freeborn then went back to the early 1860s to describe the construction and opening of the Metropolitan Railway underground from Paddington to Farringdon Street, again along the line of the New Road because of the relative ease of construction by cut-and-cover methods along an unbuilt-up road. The railway was operated by steam locomotives since the electric motor was not yet available. We had to wait until the end of the century for the first deep tube, the City and South London Railway, operated by electricity. This was rapidly followed by a large part of the present tube network.

The electrification of trams and the introduction of the motor bus were early 20th c developments. Moving rapidly through the middle of the~ century there was the first trolleybus in 1931, nicknamed the Diddler because it could “diddle” all over the road, the last tram in 1952, the last trolleybus in 1962, the RT and RM buses and the Victoria and Jubilee tubes.

Fina11y we came to the museum at Covent Garden. Mr Freeborn out-lined London Transport’s scheme to use the old Flower Market. He described the floor strengthening necessary to take the load of vehicles to be displayed, how they are parked on special stands and how their positions had to be precisely determined in advance on a plan.

He then showed us some of the problems involved in manoeuvring trams and railway vehicles through the narrow approach streets, and how it took twelve hours of backward and forward movements to turn a single 60-ft railway carriage through 900 degrees onto its track. Opening day also posed problems since three buses had to be taken out to make room for the official opening party but needed to b~ replaced very quickly afterwards in order not to delay public opening.

There were also slides of a horse bus under restoration -one might almost call it rebuilding, since it nearly fell apart because the timber was so decayed. Lastly we were shown something of the museum itself, with its low -hung display cabinets for the benefit of children -though they are quite comfortable viewing, too, for adults. If Mr Freeborn’s enthusiastic description (he himself calls it his “commercial”) does not persuade some of his audience to visit the museum soon, nothing will.

Nell Penny adds this comment:

The lecture by Mr Freeborn produced an interesting footnote from Mrs Mason, our kindly lecture coffee lady, and near-founder member of HADAS. Her father, Frederick Jackson, was born in 1879. When he was eleven he got a job leading a tram trace-horse down Highgate Hill to the Archway. If the roads were icy, young Fred wrapped sacking round the horse’s front hooves and round his own feet. The boy graduated to being a “boy behind”’ on an LMWR horse delivery van. Mrs Mason remembers being told about one badly brought up horse which refused to pass a certain East End pub till it had been bought a drink of beer.
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FINCHLEY IN HENDON

HADAS played host on Sunday Sept 28 to twenty-nine members of the Finchley Society (not forgetting the dog). The occasion was a Sunday afternoon stroll through the highways and bye-ways of Hendon, following mainly the Hendon Town Trail.

Paddy Musgrove looked after the mustering arrangements. Percy Reboul and Ted Sammes did the commentary on points of special interest, finishing with Church Farm Museum and Hendon St Mary’s churchyard.

A pleasant walk on a nice warm autumn afternoon. PR
THE PROUD PUMPS OF HADLEY

A few months ago HADAS was told of some old wells in Hadley. We asked HAROLD COVER to investigate, and this is his report.

I visited 120 Hadley Road, New Barnet (OS ref: TQ 258969) to meet a lady who, instead of fairies at the bottom of her garden, had something almost as interesting – an old English well.

The house had originally been built in the early 1900s and was now in process of being rebuilt by new owners. A capped well in the garden, which had been covered with soil, had recently been re-discovered.

The diameter of the well opening was 26 ins. The inner wall was bell-shaped, with a diameter of 64 ins. The opening was capped by a circular stone slab 2½ ins thick, movable by a metal ring. The wall of the well was lined with bricks 4½ ins thick.

The well contained very muddy water that had reached to within 12 ins of the top. Protruding through one side was a metal pipe that presumably formerly led to a pump.

It is considered locally that the area was once the site of a large orchard.

Descending Hadley Road I visited next the courtyard of the Hadley Hotel at no. 113. This contained an iron pump painted black in good condition but no longer capable of drawing water. The pump has a raised inscription- WARNERS -at the side.

Going further down to the garden of 96 Woodville Road – only a short distance from the Hadley Hotel – I was shown an iron pump in remarkable condition that had been refurbished by its enthusiastic owner. The pump, once primed, still produced a good and regular supply of clear water. The owner stated that even in the driest of summers this flow was maintained. It is estimated that the well serving the pump is 13 ft deep, the water level being 24 ins from the top.

Once again local information is that the area was once the site of a large orchard.

The three wells are on an apparently descending spring line that would possibly lead to the Town Hall annexe at the junction of Station Road and Lytton Road, which was formerly the site of Metcalfs Hydro and Turkish Baths.
FROM EGYPT TO ISLINGTON

– some New Year lecture courses.

In the last Newsletter we reported that the City University, Northampton Square, ECl (just beyond the Angel, Islington, and not too difficult of access for HADAS members) had various interesting one-term courses starting after Christmas. Here are some details:
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An Introduction to Ancient Egypt, including a start on hieroglyphic writing. Tues. from Jan’20. Virginia Northedge. Fee £4.50.

South American Archaeology, particularly Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Mons from Jan 19. Alexandra Morgan. £4.50

The Journeys of St Paul: a travellers-eye view of the Roman Empire in the lst c. AD. ‘Weds from Jan 21. Geoffrey T Garvey. £6.00

19th c Islington: transformation from village to industrial area. Tues from Jan 20. Mary Cosh. 8 meetings £3.60

Recent Work on Early Man: evidence from Africa, Australasia and the Americas. Thurs from Jan 22. Esmee Webb. £4.50

The above are all 10-meeting courses unless otherwise stated, and are from 6.30-8 pm. In addition, there are two 8-meeting courses later in the year:

Aztec Cities of Mexico. Apr 28-May 21, 2 meetings a week on Tues, Thurs. Fee £4.80. Elizabeth Baquedano de Alvarez, who will be returning from Mexico just before the course, with details of latest excavations.

Subterranean London: all that goes on under London, including archaeological problems and geological uncertainties. Weds from Apr 29. Roger Morgan. £6.00.
MEDIEVAL TILES

Excavations lat Norton Priory, Runcorn, Cheshire, have in the last 10 years provided fresh insights in various medieval matters. Of particular interest are the tile floors which have been uncovered at the Priory; and the experiments which have been made to reproduce similar tiles.

Now the Norton Priory Museum has issued a brief illustrated booklet which summarises what they have discovered about the manufacture of medieval floor tiles and methods of laying them. Techniques of tile decoration and use of colours and glazes are also covered.

I

The museum also has a set of 5 slides on 14th/15th c tiles at 75p plus post. The booklet is 30p plus post. Write to Norton Priory Museum, near Astmoor, Warrington Rd, Runcorn, Cheshire WA7 1RE.
CONGRATULATIONS

…are in order for HADAS member Rosalind Batchelor and, her husband, John, who became the proud parents of a second son, Peter James, in the middle of October.

Mrs Batchelor, who has been a member for 6 years and is a town planner by profession, represents HADAS on the Historic Buildings Committee of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. Best wishes to her and husband – not forgetting Peter James himself.
A CAUTIONARY TALE

When people talk of the pitfalls of archaeology don’t always necessarily mean falling into a trench or down a hole.

About 5 years HADAS mounted an excavation, directed by Ann Trewick, in the churchyard of St James the Great, Friern Barnet, at the request of the then Rector, Canon Norman Gilmore. You’ll find the final report on that dig in Newsletter 58, December 1975.
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Among the most interesting finds were 8 coffin plates from 18th and 19th c burials – 3 mid-18th c brass plates, and 5 of lead, one dated 1727, the others l9th century.

In July 1977 HADAS was approached by two research workers who were studying the history of coffin plates and working on methods of conserving them at the Dept. of Archaeology of Cardiff University. They had read of the St James’s plates.

In due course these conservators came to London, saw the plates and offered to conserve four of them, if the Rector was agreeable, in the University laboratories at Cardiff. HADAS Was asked to give an undertaking that, once conserved, the plates would henceforth be properly stored and displayed. This we were able to do, as Canon Gilmore was enthusiastic at the prospect of being able to show them in his church. Indeed, two handy members of the Research Committee straight away began to plan how best to mount the conserved plates for display, possibly under glass.

It’s unwise, however, to count your chickens.

In mid-1978 HADAS began to press for the return of the plates. The letter from the conservators at this time is worth quoting:

“The position with the coffin plates is as follows: We have managed to conserve two plates. Now that I have some time I shall be able to finish the others properly for you. I regret the delay in dealing with the plates due to pressure of academic work, but I would urge you to wait until we have managed to preserve them properly. I feel confident that you will be well satisfied with the transformation that has taken place.”

The plates were not ready in 1978. The whole of 1979 went by and despite periodic reminders, no coffin plates appeared. Finally, in 1980, after some fairly tough letters, Ann Trewick managed to get the managed to agree a date in September on which they would bring the conserved plates to London.

They were handed over, in something of a hurry, at a main line station. Ann bore them back in triumph, eager to see the heralded “transformation”. She opened the wrapping. Inside were the plates, done up precisely as they had left her over 3 years’ before, each with its little bag of silica gel.

“I couldn’t absolutely swear to it,” she says, “but the parcel looked as if it had never been opened. I reckon no conservation work of any kind had been done”.

There is even a tailpiece to this sorry story. In addition to getting back the Friern Barnet plates, we also received a package of fine coffin plates, unprovenanced, belonging to some other wretched excavator. Perhaps instead of complaining we ought to be thanking our lucky stars that our plates didn’t get shipped off to Timbuktu, never to be seen again by HADAS
Letter to the Editor

I think Ken Vause’s “Druid temple” (see Newsletter 116) is a mini-Stonehenge made by William Danby of Swinton Hall, about 1820, at Ilton. There are a number of these false antiquities around the county which bring one up with a jolt.

For further reading, see Follies, a National Benzole book, edited by Sir Hugh Casson, publisher Chatto & Windus, 1963.

Yours, etc TED SAMMES
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FROM THE EXCAVATION FRONT

News from both our digs is that they are coming to their close.

From West Heath Daphne Lorimer (soon off on a month’s globe-trot half-way round the world) reports that excavation finished with the end of October, although back-room work on the finds will continue through the winter. The season has been successful and has provided answers to a number of our questions about West Heath. Daphne will report fully early in the New Year.

At Cedars Close Percy Reboul says that he, too, has shut up shop, and has settled down to the various post-excavation jobs which will enable him to produce his report in due course.
CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

Now news on another topic in which many members are deeply interested – how will HADAS celebrate Christmas this year?

Dorothy Newbury has been beavering away at this problem and has tried all sorts of options -from dinner at the House of Commons to a boat trip down the Thames. Inflation, alas, has taken the price of most of the more exotic ideas through the roof. So she has decided to come back nearer home – in fact, to David Garrick’s 200-year old manor house, now the Hendon Hall hotel.

Our Christmas feast will therefore take place there on Tuesday, December 2, accompanied by old-time music hall entertainment to give it the Christmas spirit. An application form is enclosed – please fill it in as soon as possible if you would-like to join us, and send it to Dorothy Newbury.
NEW TITLES IN SHIRE ARCHAEOLOGY SERIES

Three new titles – on Later Stone Implements, Roman Coinage and Romano-British Towns – have recently been added to this series. Two are reviewed below, and we hope to publish a review of the third next month. Each book costs £1.50 and is obtainable from our Hon. Treasurer. When you buy a Shire publication through him, you put a little commission into the HADAS kitty – so don’t be backward about buying.

Roman Coinage in Britain by F J Casey.

This book should be in the library of every Romanist and collector of Roman coins. The explanation of the relative value of coins, particularly in the vexed later centuries, when inflation was even worse than ours, is excellent. The various emperors whose coinage turns up in Britain are listed. The highly involved study of hoards is explored, but perhaps such a subject might be better treated in n separate book.

The suggested book list, oddly enough, omits Seaby’s “Roman Coins and their Values” which, although a commercial catalogue, is extremely useful for identification and is much cheaper than the recommended Mattingley and Sydenham. R.L.

Towns in Roman Britain by Julian Bennett.

The Romans brought town life to Britain for the first time: indeed, towns were a vital necessity to their successful administration of the country. Mr. Bennett explains the set-up with admirable clarity, describing the status of the various kinds of town, from coloniae to vicus, how administration and taxation worked, public buildings and amenities (aqueducts, latrines, sewers etc), shops, defences.

Inevitably, since Shire books are of small compass, the “chapters” are heavily condensed and specialist detail is missing. This is, however, an admirable resume, well illustrated, for anyone who wants a general idea of Roman Britain.
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A GAZETTEER OF TRANSPORT IN THE BOROUGH OF BARNET

Part 1: By Water, Air and Road – Compiled by BILL FIRTH.

(EDITORIAL: For map to which marginal references apply, select the following link)

We are working on a gazetteer of all industrial sites in the Borough of Barnet. It is however a large area and industry is scattered, so that it takes time. To start with, here is Part I of a gazetteer of transport sites only (Part II will follow next month). This has proved easier to complete than the full gazetteer, partly because of a greater personal interest, partly because, although the Borough is large, transport follows certain well defined routes. However, there ate still problems, because features can change quickly and unnoticed, particularly for example, as has happened in the last few years when major electrification has occurred on a railway (e.g. both the Great Northern and Midland lines). It is thought that at the time of going to press the list is up to date. The criterion for inclusion has been visible remains, except for a few cases where a site is marked with a blue plaque or has been proposed for one. One final word -the inclusion of a site is no guarantee of accessibility.

WATER TRANSPORT

Wl. Brent Reservoir, NW9 (Welsh Harp) TQ 215 870, partly in LB Barnet. Formed in 1835 on completion of dam (in LB Brent) across Brent Valley to provide water for Grand Junction Canal.

W2. Site of Guttershedge Farm, now Park Road NW4, TQ 225 879. Sir Francis Pettit Smith (1808-74), inventor of the screw propeller, lived here and demonstrated a model of his invention on the farm pond in 1836 (Newsletters 81, Nov. 1977, and 93, Nov. 1978) Note also that Thomas Tilling, motor bus pioneer, lived here too.

AIR TRANSPORT

Al. llO Cricklewood Lane, NW2, TQ 244 861. Handley Page Aircraft Co moved here from Barking in 1912 prior to move to Claremont Road.

A2 Handley Page factories Claremont Road/Somerton Road,NW2, TQ 240 862. Occupied by Handley Page c. 1914-70, now in other use.

A3 RAF Museum, Grahame Park Way, NW9, TQ 221 903, incorporates two early hangars, c. 1914, with timber Belfast truss roofs.

A4 Grahame-White Hangar, RAF Station Hendon, NW9, TQ 221 901. Listed as an historic building ( Newsletter 12, June 1980).

A5 Former Entrance Gates to Grahame-White Aviation Co Ltd. Re-sited at entrance to RAF Museum; Grahame Park Way, NW9, TQ 220 904, originally in Aerodrome Road, NW9; TQ 219 890 (Newsletter 112, June 1930).

A6 Other sites on the RAF station are mentioned in Newsletter 116, October 1980.

ROAD TRANSPORT

Some main North/South through-roads have been shown on the map at the end of this gazetteer. There are a number of ancient East/West routes too, as well as shorter North/South roads and lanes which do not transect the whole Borough. Many of these have been in use, on almost or precisely the same line, since medieval times, and are worthy of study -to name only a few, Golders Green/North End Road, Colindeep Lane and The Burroughs, Nether Street, East End Road. Any member who would like to “adopt” a road to study in detail might find it very rewarding.
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For evidence for Roman Watling Street and The Viatores suggested route 167 see newsletter 102, August 1979.

TOLL HOUSES

Rl Spaniards Toll House, Spaniards Road, NW3, TQ 266 872. This is on the Borough boundary with Camden.

R2 Tollgate Cottage, Hadley Green, TQ 248 975.

R3 Site of Childs Hill Toll House, Castle Public House, Finchley Road, NW2, TQ 250 864. Blue plaque.

R4 Site of Edgware Toll House, Edgware Road, TQ 195 913. Blue plaque.

MILESTONES

On the Edgware-Kilburn Turnpike, opened 1711 (now Edgware Road) Early 19th c cast iron, V-shaped, round headed, all marked Hendon Parish:

R5 In front of 3/4 Grafton Terrace, NW2, TQ 236 859. London 4 Watford 10

R6 20-25 m. N of junction Edgware Road/Goldsmith Avenue NW9, ‘TQ 217 885. London 6 Watford 8

R7 70-75 m. S of junction Edgware Road/The Greenway, NW9. TQ 207 898. London 7 Watford 7.

R8 The London 5 Watford 9 stone was removed from Staples Corner, TQ 226 873, when the flyover was built and is in safe-keeping. It is hoped that the Borough may re-erect it at an appropriate point.

R9 On tile continuation of this route, half-way up Brockley Hill, TQ 178 934, rectangular stone milestone. ?18th c.

On the Finchley-Regents Park Turnpike, built 1826, milestones similar to above:

RlO Outside 604 Finchley Road, NWll. TQ 252 872, Regents Park 3, Barnet 6 1/4

Rll Junction Regents Park Road/The Avenue, N3, TQ 249 902, Regents Park 5, Barnet 4 ¼

On the Holyhead Road (later Great North Road) which existed pre-19th c, but was re-surveyed by Telford in 1810:

R12 50-55 m. S of junction High Road N12/Ravensdale Ave, TQ263 925, London 8 Barnet 5, similar to above

R13 Junction Barnet Hill/Meadway, TQ 251 964, stone milestone possibly dating from Telford’s survey.

Hampstead-Mill Hill, on a winding route, rectangular stone milestones, stated by Peter Collinson to be newly erected in 1752:

R14 Brent Street NW4, between Lodge Road and Church Road, TQ 233 893.

R15 Holders Hill Road, NW7, close to Hendon Park Cemetery, TQ 241 906

R16 Top of Bittacy Hill, NW7, opposite UK Optical Factory, TQ 237 921 R17

R17 The Ridgeway, NW7, on green by War Memorial, TQ 224 029.

R18 Highwood Hill, NW7, near junction with Hendon Wood Lane, TQ 222 938

CATTLE/HORSE TROUGHS AND DRINKING FOUNTAINS (not marked on map)

These are a historic link with the final days of horse-drawn traffic immediately before the start of mass production of the motor car. The following (all of which bear the primary inscription “Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association”) are known:
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Cattle trough/drinking fountain, corner Wellgarth/North End Roads ,NW11. Secondary inscription: “George & Annie Bills. Australia.” TQ 257 872 Note: this trough was taken into care by Borough Engineer’s dept. for duration of the still incomplete Wellgarth development, with a promise of re-erection when building is finished.

Cattle trough/drinking fountain, at Meadway Gate, NWll. Now used as a plant container by Parks Dept LBB TQ 251 881

Cattle trough/drinking fountain outside 40 The Burroughs, NW4. Secondary inscription “Be kind and merciful to al animals in memory of Louis David Benjamin, 1917” TQ 226 890

Cattle trough/drinking fountain at top of Bell Lane, NW4. Secondary inscription “Be kind and merciful to your animals”. Erected by Mrs F C Banbury. TQ 235 090

Cattle trough (no drinking fountain) at junction Nether St/Ballards Lane, N3. Secondary inscription “In memory of John White of this parish, surgeon, obit AD 1868 and Emily his wife, obit AD 1891.” TQ 252 907

Cattle trough/drinking fountain, with dog-trough running underneath junction Re,venscroft Park/Wood St, Barnet TQ 241 965

Note: we have not checked how many of these are in their original positions, which were often at the top, or part-way up, a hill. Some may still be as first placed, others patently are not.

In Ravenscroft Park, Barnet, TQ 241 965, is a boundary stone inscribed inter alia “This stone was originally a boundary stone of the Whetstone & Highgate Turnpike Trust which built Barnet Hill about 1823″ (not marked on map).

STREET FURNITURE

There is a diminishing amount of other interesting street furniture connected with transport which still remains and urgently needs listing. An example of such recording is the study of trolley bus poles made by B G and B L Wibberley {see Newsletter 112, June 1980). Since that survey these poles have vanished, sure proof of the need to record them. Offers from members to do similar types of study in their own area of the Borough would be joyfully received. If you are prepared to examine your own street and perhaps a few surrounding roads for surviving street furniture, and to record it, please get in touch with Bill Firth.

TRAM AND BUS DEPOTS

R19 Finchley Tram Depot (now a bus garage), Woodberry Grove, N12, TQ 264 919. Built by Metropolitan Electric Tramways, 1906

R20 Hendon Bus Garage, Church Road, NW4, TQ 229 894. Built by London General Omnibus Co, 1913. Entrance, originally onto Church Road.

R21 Edgware Bus Garage, Edgware Station, TQ 196 919. Originally built 1925, completely rebuilt 1939.

MODERN ROADS

For the benefit of the future industrial archaeologist mention should be I made of the arterial roads of the 1920s – Hendon Way/Watford Way/Edgware Way/North Western Avenue {Watford by-pass) started 1924; Barnet Way (Barnet by-pass) started 1924; the North Circular Road {1925) and the Great North Way system (1926); and, in the 1970s, the Ml. One good area at which to study modern roads and flyovers is between Staples Corner TQ 226 873 and Brent Cross TQ 237 880 (approx. R8 on map).

newsletter-116-october-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

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THE WINTER PROGRAMME

By Dorothy Newbury.

This month sees the start of HADAS’s winter activities. We hope to have full houses again for the coming lecture season, which I trust has been planned with enough variety to suit all tastes. However, catering for 450 rugged HADAS individualists is never the easiest assignment!

As usual lectures will be at Central Library, next to Hendon Town Hall, on the first Tuesday of each month, excluding December. We start soon after 8 pm, with coffee and biscuits (price 10p), which gives members a chance to chat about the year’s archaeological exploits and to inspect the new publications on the bookstall. May I again ask long-standing members to welcome new ones and make them feel at home? Mrs Banham, long one of our coffee-making stalwarts, cannot continue this season. A volunteer to take her place would be most welcome. Liz Holliday’s expert hand will, as before, be working the projector.

For new members, buses 183 and 143 pass the Library door. It is 10 minutes walk from Hendon Central Station and only a few minutes from the 113 route (bus stop “The Burroughs”) or the 240 and 125 routes (bus stop “The Quadrant”) .There are two free car parks opposite. Members may bring a guest to one lecture; but guests who wish to attend further lectures should be invited to join the Society.

Tuesday October 7 is our first lecture, on the history of transport in London over the last 150 years. London Transport is the world’s largest urban passenger undertaking; our lecturer, John Freeborn, will describe significant events in the development of the system and its impact on the growth of London. The problems, pitfalls and triumphs of setting up the new London Transport museum in Covent Garden will also be described. Our speaker is head of interpretation and display at the museum.

The rest of the lecture programme is:

Nov 4 – Roman London: an antiquarian and archaeological history – Hugh Chapman PhD, FBA, AMA

Jan 6 – Recent Excavations on the Nile – John Alexander MA, PhD, FBA

Feb 3 – Hoards and Hillforts: Ireland in the 1st millenium BC – Harold Mytum BA

Mar 3 – Sutton Hoo – Kenneth Whitehorn BA

Apr 7 – Greek Royal Art – Malcolm Colledge MA, PhD

Of course the start of the winter programme means the end of the summer one. Before you go on to read about our final outings I want to thank those members who, as I was unable to go on trips myself this year, were kind enough to take charge. Wendy Page, Sheila Woodward, Eric Grant, Raymond Lowe and Isobel McPherson have put a great deal of work into organising the trips, while Tessa Smith attended to the domestic side of things. Every outing has been over-subscribed, which is reward in itself for everyone’s efforts.
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I would be pleased to hear from any member who has discovered an interesting place we might visit next year; and better still, from anyone who would like to take charge of an outing in 1981.
LAST OF THE SUMMER OUTINGS

A report by MARION BERRY on the September trip.

Our guide on September 13 was David Johnston, of Southampton University, who came aboard the HADAS coach at Kingsworthy and from then on shepherded us with calm, charm and competence. His first hurdle was finding on arrival at the Hospital of 5t Cross in Winchester that we had been expected the day before. However, a delightfully whimsical Brother put himself at our disposal. He wore the claret coloured gown (murrey they used to call it) and silver Beaufort badge of the Henry VI Noble Poverty Foundation, the later of the two groups which share St. Cross.

He gave us a comprehensive history of the ancient hospital from 1136 onwards; Henry de Blois, 12th c. Bishop of Winchester, the Knight Hospitallers, William of Wykeham, the great 14th c. Bishop, and his friend, John de Campeden, moved through the tale. This last man, appointed Master of the Order to repair the ravages of previous greedy Masters, was responsible for much rebuilding. He had the church paved in 1390; many of the encaustic tiles still remain. They were probably made at Romsey or Poole.

A fine brass of John de Campeden was originally set in the floor before the high altar. I remember taking a rubbing of it in 1940. Later all brass rubbing was forbidden, after a helper, coming to see to the flowers, found brass rubbers at work with a transistor blazing pop music and beer cans on the altar. The brasses were removed to the north transept.

After admiring the garden and lily pond, once a fish pond stocked from the Itchen, we moved to the Brothers’ Hall, with its central hearth for a charcoal fire and a minstrels’ gallery. On the dais an oval table of solid Purbeck marble, made in the 12th c, was reputed to have come from Winchester Castle. The old kitchen beyond was fascinating, with its relics of by-gone cookery. What might have been thought of as a copper was really a giant stew pan; there were huge plates, of wood with a pewter veneer, and a row of spikes meant for hanging the meat on a screen to keep warm by the fire.

A random sample of our party partook of a quarter glass of beer and a finger of bread – a symbolic remnant of the time-honoured medieval dole for poor travellers.

We picnicked in the adjacent water meadows, with St Catherine’s Hill as centrepiece of the view. Mr Johnston spoke of it as an Iron Age fort with rather special earthworks. Then on to the excavations at Hayling Island, where the wind blew, dark-clouds loomed and rain drizzled, but Bob Downer held our attention by his obvious enthusiasm for the work being done by his 20 or so diggers of all ages and sizes. He told us of the chain of events from 1826 when Richard Scott “observed an area of stunted corn while out riding, and noted that it consisted of a circle within a square” – a concise but exact description of the temple’s plan. Spectacular crop marks appeared in the drought of 1976 and aerial photography demonstrated the similarity in plan to the temple known as “Le Tour de Vesone” just outside Perigueux in SW France (3rd Interim Report on Excavation of Iron Age and Roman Temple 1976-8).

The tea awaiting us at Newtown House Hotel was more than welcome and revived us for the final stage of our itinerary, the headquarters of the South Hants Archaeological Rescue group at Fort Widley. The view from Portsdown hill over Portsmouth harbour and the ruined Porchester Castle was spectacular.
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There was no time to see the Museum at the Fort, but going inside such a building was quite an experience. The group have the use of two old barrack rooms, with blocked up windows. Richard Bridgland, who edits their Newsletter, gave a summary of their work, and we looked at some of their finds – bone, flint, pottery, etc. We also noted that their gear included a rolled-up rope ladder for investigating deep holes.

Our grateful thanks to all who planned and carried out such a varied and interesting trip.
NEWS FROM THE RESEARCH COMMITTEE

On August 23 the Roman Group continued its investigations into the Roman road (no. 167 in Roman Roads in the SE Midlands, by the Viatores) that is believed to pass through the Borough, with a field walk from Nan Clarks Lane to Barnet Gate.

Sections of agger and metalling along this route had been positively identified by The Viatores in 1964, but the evidence today was rather harder to find. Further walks are planned. Members who are interested should contact Helen Gordon.
A CENTURY OF LONDON TOPOGRAPHY

Should you happen in the next 10 days to be near Oxford Street, take time off and go and see the centenary exhibition of the London Topographical Society at Paperpoint, 63 Poland Street. It’s on 9.30-4.30 weekdays till October 10. This remarkable society is dedicated to one purpose only: the publication, at a reasonable price to its members, of material, particularly maps, charts and drawings, on the history of London.

The inaugural meeting was held in the Mansion House, under the wing of the then Lord Mayor, on Oct 28 1880. Membership has fluctuated since, with a decline in the 1930s and a desperate low of 111 in 1942. After the war came a slow rise followed by a rapid one, so that today there are over 500 members. For the first 90 years the subscription was one guinea. In 1974 it rose to £2.50 and today it is £5 – but it’s one of the best fiverworths you can find.

For that you get for free two newsletters a year and – this is the plum – the Society’s yearly publication. Last year it was the A to Z of Elizabethan London, which is a gem. Another splendid production (so good that it did for 2 years, not one) was Milne’s 1800 Land-use Map of London and its environs (it covers part of our area) in 6 coloured – plates each about 18″ by 2′, with 3 equally large pages of introduction.

This year’s publication is well worth having – a dozen papers on aspects of London’s past, from the 17th c. clothworkers of St. Stephen Coleman parish to the history of 17 Bruton Street where the Queen was born. This volume is edited by Dr Anne Saunders (who is a HADAS member of long standing) who took over the editorial chair on the death of Marjorie Honeybourne.
PRELIMINARY RECCE AT HENDON AERODROME

By Bill Firth.

Thanks to the RAF authorities, and in particular to Fl. Lt. Olliver who showed me round, in early August I was able to make a preliminary (I hope) reconnaissance of what remains of the RAF station at Hendon.
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The present station consists of West and East Camps, separated by the roundabout at the junction of Grahame Park Way, Colindale Avenue and Aerodrome Road.

West Camp, entry to which is from the roundabout, seems to date almost entirely from the 1930s. A number of the buildings are dated 1931 and appear to be standard brick-built RAF designs of that time. The houses on the north-east side of Booth Road, adjacent to but now fenced off from the camp, are the original other ranks married quarters, but have been acquired by Barnet Council as council houses.

The entrance to East Camp is a few yards along Aerodrome Road. Just inside the gate and visible from Grahame Park Way is a large building in a black and white timbered style which was the restaurant of Grahame-White’s flying club. It is dated 1917, but it was suggested that some parts are earlier. Now used as the officers mess, I was told that there are some “interesting” rooms inside. The nature of “interesting’ must be followed up.

Also clearly visible from Grahame Park Way is a 6-bay hangar now used by the MT Section. It seems to be of similar construction to the Grahame-White hangar of 1914-19 (which we came to later) and has a lower, possibly earlier, structure at the west end.

Continuing behind this hangar and roughly parallel to Aerodrome Road, we came to a wired-up gap in the boundary fence from which the original Grahame-White gates were taken for display at the entrance to the RAF Museum. Facing the gap there is a single storey brick building with a Grahame-White emblem and the date 1915 by the entrance. Between this building and the MT hangar the early control tower is visible.

Behind the building is another long low building, said to have been used as a munitions factory during the 1914-18 war but now derelict and awaiting demolition. (This is not imminent – the building is likely to remain derelict and out of bounds until it falls down!)

From here we went on to the Grahame-White hangar which was described in Newsletter 112 (June 1980). The main item of interest was to confirm that it is the west section that is the smaller and older, not the east as the GLC description has it. This is the most derelict part of the building; it is out of bounds and fenced off as dangerous. Further the outer metal wall is paper-thin in places. The rest of the hangar is in better condition although the sliding doors are not thought to be very safe. It is in occasional use by the RAF and the RAF Museum as a workshop and for storage, but these uses are not essential.

It is reported that the estimated cost of restoration at today’s prices would be £250,000 and annual maintenance would also be required. Such a sum of money is not currently forthcoming and since the RAF does not need the building, the Ministry of Defence has applied for permission to demolish it although it is Listed as an historic site. HADAS and other interested bodies have protested and urged the authorities to protect and preserve what little remains of Hendon Aerodrome. At present all that can be said is that the MoD is in no hurry to demolish the hangar since this would cost money which is not available; but some concern is expressed that a heavy gale might render permission to demolish unnecessary.

Between the hangar and the railway are a number of brick-built RAF buildings of which several are dated 1931-2, including the Vickers block built as the station NAAFI but now a barrack block, the Bristol block (1931) built as a barrack block, and a number of workshop buildings. There is also a number of wooden huts of uncertain vintage now largely unused and generally decaying. One was the airmen’s mess and has been condemned due to rotten floors.

The south-east corner of the site has been taken over by the Department of Transport with an entrance from Aerodrome Road and it was suggested that there might be interesting buildings on this site too. Later observation from the road confirmed this. There are also some adjacent buildings occupied by contractors about which little is known.
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Following the tour inside I looked around the outside of the site from Aerodrome Road. Backing onto the contractors area there is a wall most of which is apparently the end wall of the buildings inside and in which there are a number of bricked-up entrances; clearly this needs further investigation. On the other side of the road there is a building, numbered 36, outside which there is a weighbridge marked Ashworth Son & Co Ltd, Dewsbury. To the east of this is another old building. Further east still, beyond the entrance to Peel Centre, is an old boundary wall suggesting something important behind it, but now everything seems to be modern. It must be remembered that in the early days Aerodrome Road was for access to the aerodrome only and was not the public through road that it is today. The Grahame-White site spread on both sides of it.

The RAF are not averse to the idea of more investigative visits, nor to photography, but the centre of the area which is completely wired off from the rest is a secret establishment and on this account there would be restrictions on photographs which might include parts of this area. Further visits will be planned, and I would be pleased to hear from anyone who would like to join one. Ring me.

NOTE. A few days after Bill Firth wrote the above report HADAS heard from the Borough Planning Officer. He wrote that when the proposal to demolish the hangar came before Barnet Council, it was decided to tell the Ministry of Defence that –

“this Council is deeply concerned about the proposal to demolish the Grahame-White hangar, in view of its significance to the historical development of Aviation in Great Britain in general “and in thrr London Borough of Barnet in particular and has requested that further consideration and publicity be given to possible alternative uses of the building which could lead to its retention and restoration.”

Good for the Council – or at least, so far so good. We hope that the recommendation to give more publicity to the matter will be followed (local papers please note) and that the suggestion of considering alternative uses will be thoroughly explored.

Any HADAS members got ideas for alternative uses?
TREASURER’S SPOT

First, a subscription reminder. The Treasurer would like to remind those members who have not yet renewed their subscriptions for the current year that those became due on April 1. Prompt renewal now will save him sending out a reminder – which will inevitably, in chronic cases, be followed by removal from the members list. Subscription rates are:

Full membership – £2.00
Under-18 – £1.00
Over-60 – £1.00
Family Membership: – first member – £2
– additional members £1 each

Second, Christmas is coming. May we make a suggestion? We have just had a reprint of our very successful HADAS notelets, featuring a spirited picture of Warwick the Kingmaker on horseback. How about using it as a Christmas card? A pack of 10 with envelopes costs 40p.
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You can buy these at our monthly lecture or by post from the Hon. Treasurer, using the enclosed form. And on the subject of Christmas presents, may we remind you that the Society can obtain the whole range of Shire Publications. We hope to include a catalogue of these with either this or the next Newsletter.
WEST HEATH

Digging continues at West Heath in October so long as good weather lasts. Digging days are Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

As much help as possible is still needed urgently on the site, but please get along as early in the day as you can (digging starts at 10 am). Once the clocks go back the shadows begin to close remarkably fast round the trenches when the lunch-break is over.
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

October 26 – Mini Open Day at College Farm, Finchley, organised by the Friends of College Farm (newly formed offshoot of the Finchley Society) 2-5.30 pm. Rides, farm shop, Scout and Guide displays in paddock and a small indoor exhibit on Intermediate Technology. What’s that? Well, the Chairman of the Finchley Society defines it as “the alternative to the high technology, high growth society.”

Nov. 8 and Nov. 15 – HADAS Roman weekends at the Teahouse, Northway, NWll. Further details in next Newsletter, but put the dates in your diary now.

Nov. l5. – For those not engaged at the Teahouse, LAMAS Local History Conference, Museum of London.

During October, November, at Museum of London, Thursdays 1.10pm, Museum Workshops on subjects ranging from how to cast a Roman figure to Queen Victoria’s dolls. They offer a chance to meet specialist staff and see, close-to, objects from the Museum collections. Fridays, 1.10 pm, lecture series on London’s River, from Roman to modern times.

On October 15, at the Society of Antiquaries, the monthly meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute will be of particular interest to HADAS. The lecture that evening at 5 pm is by David Parsons on St. Boniface. A11 those who went on the August outing to Brixworth will recall the enthralling saga of St Boniface’s relics and their travels in Europe, which was unfolded for us by David Parsons while we sat in the medieval church.

After the lecture, this year’s Lloyds Bank grants for independent archaeologists will be announced, in the presence of Norman St John Stevens, Minister for the Arts. To mark the occasion, those organisations which have already benefited from grants will be putting on small displays to show how they spent the money. That, of course, includes HADAS: Daphne Lorimer will mount an exhibit showing our surveying equipment in use.

Although RAI meetings are for RAI members, a member is permitted to introduce a visitor. Quite a number of HADAS members also belong to the RAI, so if anyone not a member has a burning desire to attend on October 15, it might be possible to arrange it. Please consult our Hon. Secretary.
NOTES FROM OUR LIBRARIAN

Any HADAS member who has signed on for evening classes may like to know that our Library contains some “recommended reading” for courses.
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If you want a particular volume ring June Porges and she will check whether it is in the HADAS collection.

She adds that books bought specially for courses and no longer needed when the course is over will gladly be given a happy home in our Library!

During the winter lecture season Mrs Porges will be at the HADAS room in Avenue House (East End Road, N3) on the Friday evening before each lecture (it will sometimes be the first, sometimes the last, Friday of the month) from 8-9 pm. Members will be very welcome to come along and browse and borrow.

The following books have been presented to the Library: The Industrial Archaeology of Farming in England & Wales by Nigel Harvey. Batsford 1980 (presented by the author)

Anglo Saxon England, 7, edi t .P Clemoes. Cambridge University Press 1978

Western Mediterranean Europe: a historical geography of Italy, Spain & Southern France since the Neolithic, by C D Smith. Academic Press 1979

Artifacts: [a introduction to early materials and technology by H Hodges. John Baker 1974

Archaeological excavations 1976. Dept. of Environment. HMS0 1977

Norse discoveries ,and explorations in America 982-1362: Leif Erikson to the Kensington Stone, by H R Holland. Dover Publications 1969 (Reprint of Westward from Vinland, 1940)

{all presented by Philip Yenning)

Medieval Pottery and Metalware in Wales. National Museum of Wales 1978

The Coins of Roman Britain by A. Burnett. British Museum n.d.

(presented by Brigid Grafton Green)

The Roman Riverside Wall and Monumental Arch in London-: excavations at Baynards Castle, Upper Thames St, London 1974-6, by C Hill, M Millett and T Blagg. LAMAS special paper No 3 1980.
Church Terrace Reports No. 9 – WANFRIED WARE

The series continues with another article by EDWARD SAMMES.

One of the more pleasurable aspects of having directed a dig is to sit down afterwards with the latest batch of washed and marked finds, pick up \n unknown artefact and muse on it. The follow-up to this is browsing through books and reports in an effort to identify the find.

One evening during the summer of 1973 my eye caught a small sherd of redware pottery from the finds in trench E3 at Church Terrace. It had a very pronounced hammer-shaped vertical rim and was glazed on the top only. Its decoration consisted of a series of concentric circles of pale green slip on the top surface. When complete the dish or bowl would have been 30 cm in diameter with the red of the fabric showing between the pale green slip.

I was defeated in my search for an analogy for many weeks until in the City of Westminster Library I came for the first time upon Ivor Noel Hume’s “Guide to the Artefacts of Colonial America”. There on p.139 was an illustration of a dish of which my small rimsherd could have been a part. At the LAMAS Archaeological Conference the following spring I hesitatingly put it on show so labelled, with a question mark. Its identification was confirmed by Tony Rook on the adjoining stand, And during the following winter I had an opportunity to show it to John Hurst, one of our leading experts on medieval and post-medieval pottery, who confirmed its origin.
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This ware, as you will have guessed, is a foreigner and is rarely found as a complete vessel on digs or in museums in England. It came from the Central uplands of Germany, today close to the East German border, between the Weser/Werra and Leine rivers. Wanfried is about 80 km south-east of Kessel, in a hilly area on the edge of the Thuringian forest.

The mind boggles at the difficulties which must have been faced and overcome in order to transport the pottery. Not only was it a long way to the sea but also in such a hilly area river rapids would have required the cargo to be unloaded several times until more tranquil waters were reached. Eventually the consignment would have got to Bremen and so could have been shipped across to England. Nothing daunted, some was re-exported to Jamestown, Virginia – or, indeed, it may have gone direct. Direct importation was not prohibited until the Staple Act of 1663 specifically stated that goods bound for the colonies could be shipped only through English ports, after paying English duries.

Much of this pottery is self-dating. as the potters have dated their dishes in central areas in white slip. As would be expected, finds of this ware are mostly along or near the east or south coasts: Newcastle, King’s Lynn, Colchester, Faversham, Dover, Poole, Southampton, Plymouth and London. It has also been found in Chester; and at Dublin and Carrickfergus in Ireland. Its period of production was 1580-1650; a nearby area produced a similar ware called Werra ware.

The rim usually had a dash decoration (not present on our shard) in white pipe clay slip. Inside this were several concentric lines of slip. The central area carried a design, often a person in Elizabethan clothing, an animal or flowers. In this area the date was drawn in slip whilst the design was in sgraffito. A load glaze with a small amount of copper converted the white slip into pale green. Dishes were made with and without handles. The complete dish could be said to be a kind of medallion dish.

As the Church Terrace dig progressed two more small sherds were found in trenches D4 and D5. The green coloration is much deeper on these and one can only wonder how the two dishes journeyed to Hendon and where the rest of the sherds are.

For further reading: –

Hurst, J G – A Wanfried Dish from Newcastle , Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series vol 1(1972)

Naumnnn, J – Meisterwerke hessischer Topferkunst, Wanfrieder Irdenware urn 1600. Informationen aus Kassel. Jg 5 (1974)

Platt, C & Coleman-Smith R – Excavations in Medieval Southampton 1953-69. vol 2 p 165 (illustration no 1236). Cambridge UP 1975.

And the Noel Hume volume already quoted.
FROM THE NEWSLETTER POSTBAG

Dear Editor,

While we were on holiday in Yorkshire we found what was locally described as “a Druid Temple” near the village of Healy. We have been unable to find any references to it in guide books or archaeological works, and I am tempted to think it may be in the nature of a folly (albeit rather expensive to construct).
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However, some HADAS member may be able to shed light on the matter. The map reference (Metric OS series) is SE 175 787 and the site is shown on Sheet 99 about 5.25 km west-south west of Masham.

Yours sincerely,

KEN VAUSE

FAME?

Dear Editor,

I have a complaint to make.

When I go on holiday I like to get away from it all. Last month while I was contemplating the architecture in some of the older parts of Kings Lynn, a kindly lady (a perfect stranger) went out of her way to point out interesting extra information not in the guidebook.

“Where do you come from?” she asked.

“Hendon,” I said.

“Do you know Nell Penny of HADAS?”

“Do I know Nell …”!!

I am thinking about visiting the Great Wall of China next year, but don’t be too surprised if you get another letter in 1981 starting “I have a complaint to make”.
FOR YOUR BOOOKSHELF

Some reviews of recent publications.

A History of Wembley.

This long-awaited publication is the result of work by members of the Wembley History Society over a number of years, brought together under the editorship of Geoffrey Hewlett.

Its approach is down to earth. It is concerned with everyday folk as well as the “gentry.” Starting at the ice age, it ends in the 20th c. It is an ambitious project of 259 pages, including 67 illustrations, four maps and an index. I could have wished for more on archaeology. The reference to the Rundell and Neeld families on p 131 will interest Hendonians.

The book is available from the Grange Museum, Neasden Lane, and from Brent libraries, price £2.50 (or by post 75p extra). It is a good buy for all interested in the past of north-west London. A copy has been purchased for the HADAS Library.

The Roman Riverside Wall & Monumental Arch in London. C Hill, M Millett and T Blagg. LAMAS Special Paper No 3.

“Protected on the left side by walls, on the right side by the river, it neither fears enemies nor dreads being taken by storm” wrote Bishop Guy in the 11th c, looking down-river to the City of London from Duke William’s headquarters in Westminster. Did the Romans, too, regard the river as an adequate line of defence, or did Londinium have a river-side wall to complement its land-wall?

An answer to this controversial question has at last been provided by a series of excavations in the City between 1974-6. Various lengths of the Roman riverside wall were identified along Upper and Lower Thames Streets and details of its construction were studied. These details illustrate the technical ability of the Romans to vary their method of building according to the nature of the subsoil. Dating evidence indicates that “the riverside wall was built late in the 4th c, nearly two hundred years after the land-wall. In spite of its solid construction it seems to have collapsed sometime during the 11th c. Erosion seems the most likely cause, but why then did some sections of the wall fall inwards? Did it fall or was it pushed? Perhaps we shall never know.
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The last part of the report, and for me the most fascinating, deals with a spin-off from the wall excavations. A number of carved stone blocks from an earlier period were re-used as building material for the wall. Tom Blagg, known to many HADAS members who studied Roman Britain for their diploma, has meticulously measured the size and shape of the blocks and catalogued their designs. He has then patiently and skilfully pieced them together like a gigantic jigsaw. Many pieces of the puzzle are missing, of course (and what excitement when a key piece, missing at the end of the 1975 excavation, turned up during the 1976 dig) but enough remain to give a glimpse of two of the public monuments of Londinium: a monumental arch and a screen of gods. We know so little of the public face of Roman London that this unexpected discovery is a joy indeed.

Other interesting contributions deal with a panel of four Mother Goddesses, perhaps from a temple precinct, and two inscribed altars, one of which records the name of a hitherto unknown Roman Governor of Britain. The whole publication is full and clear, if a trifle repetitious, and it is accompanied by all those specialist reports without which no archaeological publication can now be considered complete.

S.W.

East Barnet Village

Gillian Dear & Diana Goodwin pub. 1980 by Barnet Press Group, at 50p (Proceeds for St. Mary’s Church, East Barnet)

This well-researched 15-page booklet (which includes 4 pages of illustration) fills a gap. Little, has been written recently about either New or East Barnet, and the latter, particularly, has a long history.

As our June Newsletter reported, East Barnet church, St Mary the Virgin, this year celebrated its 900th anniversary. The booklet opens with the Saxon charter granting Huzeweg (Osidge) Wood to the Abbey of St Albans. Early documentary evidence for a settlement at East Barnet is scanty (which does not necessarily mean that there wasn’t one) but records of courts hold under the auspices of St Albans Abbey are in existence from 1237. In 1291 there is mention of a mill at East Barnet; in 1406 a Will mentions a bridge, called Katebrygge, across Pymmes Brook (named after William Pymme who owned the surrounding land from 1307-27). The booklet does not, alas, mention the theory which has frequently been put forward that near the top of the slope running from just below the church down to the water meadows of Pymmes Brook is the site of a deserted medieval village.

Evidence is, of course, much more frequent for the settlement of East Barnet from Tudor times onwards. It includes some details of the original manor house, still standing in 1558; by 1612 there is documentary evidence for a “newly-built house” (called Church Hill House) on or near the site.

We meet, too, the various better known inhabitants of the area – Arbella Stuart, James I’s cousin, in hiding here for a few months; Elias Ashmole, of Ashmolean fame; Ralph Gill, a 17th c Keeper of the Queens Lions at the Tower; Sir Simon Haughton-Clarke, of Jamaica, who lived in East Barnet 1810-1832 and was said to be “the riches commoner in England.” He lost much of his fortune as a result of the work of another commoner who lived in the Borough – William Wilberforce, of Mill Hill, who achieved the abolition of slavery and changed the basis of the sugar trade on which, no doubt, Sir Simon’s fortune was founded.
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There is much detail of interest to the archaeologist about the various large houses (most of them now gone) which stood in East Barnet during the last 300 years. Indeed, a HADAS field worker might well find it fruitful to take this booklet as a starting point and try to plot, by map and on the ground, the precise sites of some of these buildings.

B.G.G.
WINTER COURSES – A FURTHER INSTALMENT

Scientifically-minded members may be interested in a new part-time degree course starting soon at the North East London Polytechnic in Romford Road, E15. It is a 4-year BSc in Archaeological Sciences, developed with the co-operation of Tony Legge of the London University Extra-mural Dept. It is aimed, the Poly tells us, primarily at those who already hold the extra-mural Diploma in Archaeology, which many HADAS members now have. However, the Poly is also prepared to enrol students with no formal archaeological qualifications who are able to show proven ability through experience, publication, etc.

The course involves 9 hours attendance weekly; fees this year are £45. The first-year tutor is Richard Hubbard, who has advised us on palaeobotanical problems at West Heath. In the early years of the dig he made several meteoric visitations to the site; armed with a rolled umbrella and a latchkey. He has the reputation of being one of the fastest talkers in the business.

The Poly authorities stress that although the course provides the end product of a BSc degree, it requires no previous scientific qualifications. “We will teach all the science and mathematics required” they promise. HADAS members who would like to read the scheme in detail (it runs to 108 pages) should contact Brigid Grafton Green.
Short Courses in Islington

The City University (Northampton Sq, EC1) has sent us details of its courses, which are in some respects a bit unusual. Most are of 10 lectures only (there are a few of 20 lectures), which means that a fresh round of courses starts in January 1981. Pre-Christmas courses do not begin until the week of October 13, and you can enrol either now by post or in person at the first lecture. Ten-lecture courses usually cost £6.

The University thinks a new course on Surveying for Archaeologists might be particularly appealing to HADAS members. The 10 lectures cover the construction, use and adjustment of modern survey instruments, the theory and calculations needed for large-scale work, using chain survey, traverse, tacheometry, plane table, etc, and the techniques and methods on site for setting out base lines, level datums and grids, as we11 as recording and plotting. Lectures are on Weds, starting Oct 15.

All lectures at the University are from 6.30-8.30 pm. other pre-Christmas courses include America before Columbus (Weds); Ancient Civilisations of Central Mexico (20 lectures, Thursdays); Archaeology of the pre-Biblical Holy Land (20 lectures, Weds); The Sumerians (Tues, fee £4.50); and Roman History and Civilisation (Weds).

There are some interesting courses in the post-Christmas programme too, which will be mentioned in the next Newsletter.
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PUBLIC LECTURES

The Thursday public lectures at the Institute of Archaeology have become something of an institution over the last few years. There will be 18 this year on the general theme of subsistence economies, at a fee of £10 for the series or 60p for single lectures, payable at the door.

They start on October 23 at 6.45 pm with Late Glacial Hunters in Central Europe, and go on through hunter-gatherers in various areas, reindeer herders, African pastoralists and early agriculturalists. Unfortunately none of the lecturers’ names were known when the Newsletter went to press.

The Extramural Department also informs us that Richard Hubbard has been given the use of the Institute of Archaeology laboratory for his post-Diploma course on Plant Remains in Archaeology, on Mondays, starting Oct. 6 (fee £13). Students are invited to apply for this to the Extra-mural Dept.
WEEK-ENDS AWAY

Knuston Hall, near Irchester, Northants, has long been a happy hunting ground for HADAS weekenders. From the current programme the following stood out as likely to be of interest:
Wood for Archaeologists – Nov. 28-30 – Graham Morgan
The English Village – Nov. 7-9 – Chris Taylor & others
Understanding Stoneworking in Prehistoric Britain – Dec. 12-14 – M W Pitts & C Wickham-Jones
The Neo-Assyrian Empire – Jan. 23-25 1981 – Dr Harriet Martin
History in the Hedgerow – May 1-3 – Max Hooper
Roads and Trackways – May 29-31 – Chris Taylor & others

These courses cost £20, including 2 nights at Knuston and all meals. Further information from The Principal, Knuston Hall, Irchester, Wellingborough, Northants NN9 7EU.
ROUNDING UP A STRAGGLER

In the last Newsletter we mentioned most of the WEA courses available in our Borough. We missed Friern Barnet branch, however, because we could not contact the secretary. Now we have caught up with their activities, and here are the details:

English Heritage (historic houses and gardens). Mrs Pamela Dormer, Weds. from Oct 1, 2.30-4.30 pm, Assembly Rooms, 321 Colney Hatch Lane, N11

Egyptology, Mrs R C Abbott. Thurs. from Oct 2, 10-12 noon, venue as above

Romans and Ancient Britons – British Archaeology from the New Stone Age to the Roman period. Peter Macrae. Thurs. from Oct 2, 8-10 pm South Friern Library, Colney Hatch Lane.

All courses are 24 lectures. Fee £15, pensioners £12.50
AUTUMN AND WINTER HOLIDAYS

The Snowdonia National Park Study Centre, where HADAS stayed on last year’s Welsh trip, has several interesting courses for anyone wanting a late break.

Oct 12-17 – Introduction to Industrial Archaeology

Nov 8-14 – Field Work in Archaeology

Feb 14-20 – Roman and Native in Snowdonia

Further details from Plans Tan Y Bwlch, Maentwrog, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd LL41 3YU.

newsletter-115-september-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

OUR NEXT OUTING: SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 13TH

N.B. This one day outing is not in fact to Southampton, as previously announced, but replaces the Southampton week-end originally planned. Mr. David Johnston, Tutor in Archaeology for the Department of Adult Education at Southampton University will conduct us. He is known to some members through the Roman Cookery Course and Flint Knapping Course and has arranged an interesting day, starting at the Hospital of St. Cross, Winchester, Britain’s oldest existing Charitable Institute housed in one of the most beautiful groups of Medieval buildings still in use. Here we will partake of the daily ‘Traveller’s Dole” of bread and beer, a tradition dating back to the 12th century. We will go on to Hayling Island where an excavation of a Roman Temple and its Iron Age predecessor is in progress.

Please fill in the application form and return it as soon as possible if you wish to join the group.
MRS ANN EVANS

It will shock and horrify HADAS members to hear of the untimely death early in August of Ann, wife of Colin Evans.

Ann and Colin, then already experienced diggers, joined the Society eight years ago, first when they were living in Finchley and later in New Barnet. They were among the keenest of our younger members, Colin taking his Certificate in Field Archaeology (with Distinction) and being an active member of the Research Committee, while Ann joined him on digs, at Teahouse processing sessions and in the small group which helped Dorothy Newbury to arrange and organise the year’s programmes.

Many members will remember with great pleasure our first-ever HADAS weekend, to Shropshire in October 1974, and how excellently Ann and Colin arranged it all, from their attractive booklet with its quotations from The Shropshire Lad to the comfortable stay at Attingham Park and the visits to Shrewsbury, Wroxeter and the Ironbridge Gorge.

Some three or four years ago the Evans moved up to Bedfordshire, but they remained members of HADAS and keenly interested in our activities. We always hoped to see them at least once each summer at West Heath, and they were enthusiastic Roman Banqueters last Christmas, Colin as a centurion and Ann dressed as a slim, pretty Roman matron.

We send Colin our deepest sympathy in his tragic loss.
TREASURE HUNTING

The following article appeared in Current Research in Archaeology No 8, May 1980. It seemed to provide a rather different slant to the classic archaeological reaction to treasure hunting, so we asked if we might reprint it. We do so now, with kind permission of both the Editor of CRA and of the author.
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POTENTIAL DAMAGE TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA FROM TREASURE HUNTING.

By D.R. Crowther of the Cambridgeshire Archaeological Committee.

For well over a decade the activities of “treasure hunters” have been causing archaeologists considerable alarm. It is felt that the arbitrary removal of metal objects from the ground inevitably will involve the removal, and therefore the destruction, of potential archaeological data, thereby jeopardising both present and future field work. Despite this growing feeling against the hobby, now finding expression in the national publicity campaign STOP, little or nothing has been done to quantify the efficiency of popular treasure hunting machines or methods; and this creates the danger of rendering many of the accepted anti-treasure hunting arguments flimsy, and even cant, in the critical eyes of the public.

The Welland Valley Project is currently excavating a six-acre prehistoric and Romano-British crop mark site threatened by gravel extraction at Maxey, Cambridgeshire, and as part of the intensive programme of topsoil studies prior to stripping, it was decided to attempt a metal detector survey of the site. This presented the opportunity to test a variety of equipment.

Over a survey transect measuring approximately 200 by 20 m, several types of machine and operator were employed, including experienced “treasure hunters” using their own machines. Using a search method far more rigorous than any hobbyist metal detector user would ever consider, the commercially popular (Induction Balance) machines, even in the hands of experienced operators, were unable to locate more than 7% of the material recovered by a more expensive, less popular type of machine. Out of the 1200 objects recovered, nearly 900 were nail fragments, the distribution of which suggested a post-medieval (i.e. post ridge and furrow) date. As for the rest, only 115 were even remotely identifiable, and about 25 were non-ferrous. Finds of direct relevance to the archaeology below: one Roman coin. No finds deeper than 20 cm were recovered from the damp clay-loam, and machine efficiency dropped appreciably in wet weather. Nearest neighbour analysis points to a random distribution of material and though the presence of a Roman coin proves the long term survival of non-ferrous objects at any rate, nothing else can yet be dated to even medieval times, rendering the material largely irrelevant for our purposes. Several of the objects, however – post-medieval tokens, Victorian harness decorations etc. – would be of great interest to the hobbyist treasure hunter.

Most “treasure hunters” it appear to prefer Induction Balance machines for their simplicity, low battery drain, lightness and value for money (Crowther 1978) and are not necessarily prepared to sacrifice these virtues for far more expensive, deeper penetrating equipment which may not be any more ‘fun’ to operate.

Much work still has to be done in testing such machines on various site and soil-types before any realistic assessment of the hobby should be made. Nevertheless, from the evidence so far collected, the direct threat to archaeological data caused by hobbyist treasure hunting could have been wildly exaggerated.

Bibliography.

Crowther D.R. – Archaeology and Treasure Hunting: a Discussion and Survey Unpublished undergraduate dissertation, Institute of Archaeology, London, 1978.

In view of Mr Crowther’s remarks about the need to quantify the efficiency of popular treasure hunting machines, it is interesting that the current issue of “Which” – August 1980- tries to do just that, from the point of view of the purchaser.
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It takes 12 machines, American and British, ranging in price from £25 to £326 (this last the only machine from the Irish Republic, is described as “discontinued, but may still be in the shops”). It finds that two are good value (£52.50 and £100 respectively); one at £35 is “worth thinking about;” and one at £169.50 is “good but pricey.” The other two-thirds suffer either from poor sensitivity, poor construction or poor performance in pinpointing finds.

The test results are accompanied by a general article which makes some of the points that the STOP campaign would like to see made; but by no means all of them, and probably none of them in terms emphatic enough to please STOP.
CHURCH TERRACE REPORTS NO 8 – Wig Curlers

Another article in the series by Edward Sammes.

When today the modern belle puts in her hair rollers, she is continuing a practice which, as far as wigs are concerned, possibly goes back to the Assyrians, since the very formal hair styles on bas reliefs would suggest the possibility of hair waving, or was it natural?

Artificial hair in the form of a wig has been found on Egyptian mummies, whilst the wig is often used to cover baldness it was also used as a fashionable means of adornment by both men and women. In the sixteenth century ladies took to wearing false hair and this fashion came into its full flowering, both in France and England during the 17th century and continuing into the l8th. Pepys wrote that he had “paid three pounds for a periwig” and that on going to church “it did not prove so strange as I thought it would”.

By the first quarter of the eighteenth century a great variety of wigs of different fashions were on sale; full bobs, miniature bobs, naturels, Grecian flys and curly rays. Full play upon the extravagances of this fashion was made by caricaturists of the day. The fashion began to wane during the reign of George III except amongst professional men on the judicial bench, clergy and the Speaker of the House of Commons.

A necessary adjunct was a wig stand to support the wig when not in use. These were usually made of wood with leather overlay. During the seventeenth century stands were made in Dutch Delft pottery, usually with a blue and white decoration in imitation of Chinese porcelain. Examples of both types can be seen in the Museum of London.

A necessary accompaniment to the wig and stand was some means of setting the curls. Just who first discovered that the application of heat and moisture would curl hair must remain a mystery. To set hair it was wound round rollers of wood or any cylindrical object, together with a layer of paper. These cylinders varied in size according to the size of curls desired. The damp, curled up hair was subjected to heat in an oven until the pattern was set.

By the late seventeenth century these cylinders were being fashioned from pipe clay which had been fired to retain the desired shape. These curlers were rounded at each end and were thinner in the middle, thus helping to retain the hair on the curler. Some examples exist which are hollow to give quicker heat penetration. A wide range of types and sizes may be seen in Salisbury Museum, together with the clay pipes. It is reasonable to suppose that wig curlers were made by the pipe makers, but as far as I have been able to ascertain, no proof of this has yet been found.

Church Terrace yielded four examples, all broken in half, varying in diameter 6-9 mm in the middle and 9-14 mm at the widest part. Of these four, three bear an incuse stamp W B and two dots, one above and one below the space between the letters. The smallest has an illegible stamp. An article in the London Archaeologist by Richard le Cheminant would date these to about 1750. This article, although described as a preliminary survey, gives much useful background material. The use of incuse marking on pipe bases is, according to Adrian Oswald, limited to the seventeenth century. Brian Bloice has pointed out to me that the majority of Wig curlers found in London bear the initials W.B. Oswald lists 43 pipe makers with the initials W.B. in London, but of these only five were active in the eighteenth century.
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One can easily imagine the trials and tribulations that wig wearers suffered in trying to discipline the hair in time for a special function! Maybe the oven was too hot or too cold, and what happened if, like the Church Terrace curlers, these fragile objects fell on the floor and broke? Yes, we have regressed.

For further reading:

le Cheminant R. – The development of the pipe clay curler London Archaeologist, Summer 1978. Vol 3, No 7, 187-191

Hume I.N. – Artifacts of Colonial America Pub: A.A. Knopf 1970 pps 321- 3

Oswald A – Clay pipes for the archaeologist B.A.R. Report no 14. 1975 pps 62 and 132-3
MORE ABOUT EVENING CLASSES

Last month’s Newsletter provided details of courses this coming winter at the three Colleges of Further Education in the Borough. Nowhere is some information about the various WEA classes:

In Golders Green …

Thursdays starting October 2nd. GREEK ARCHAEOLOGY at Golders Green Library, 8 p.m. Lecturer Tony Rook

Wednesdays starting October 1st, FAMOUS HOUSES, CASTLES AND GARDENS , at 52 Clifton Gardens, N.W.ll. Lecturer Mr Bradbeer 8 pm.

Fridays starting October 3rd, HISTORY OF ART SINCE MID-19th CENTURY, at 44 Rotherwick Rd, N.W.ll. 1.30 p.m., Lecturer Mr. Tompkins

These three courses are each two terms, fees £13/14, pensioners £9.

In Mill Hill and Edgware …

Mondays starting September 29th – THE GREEKS – MYTH, HISTORY AND ART , at Edgware Library, 8 p.m. Lecturer, Dr. Ann Ward.

Tuesdays starting September 30th, EARLY GEORGIAN-LATE VICTORIAN COUNTRY HOUSES, at Mill Hill Union Church, 10.30 a.m. Elizabeth Duncan

Both courses 24 meetings; fees £14.

In Barnet …

Fridays starting October 3rd, GREEK SITES AND ARCHAEOLOGY, at Owen Adult Education Centre, 10 am- 12 noon. Tony Rook. 24 meetings £10.

In Hendon …

Wednesdays starting October 1st, MESOPOTAMIA at Hendon Library, 7.30 p.m. Dr. Ulla Jeyes. Suitable for both beginners and more experienced students.

Wednesdays starting September 24th, AGE OF BAROQUE, at Hendon Library, 10.30 am -12.30 p.m. Mrs. Ford-Wille.

Thursdays starting September 25th, SOCIAL HISTORY OF LONDON IN 20th CENTURY, at Henry Burden Hall, 7.30 p.m. Malcolm Brown.

Fees: 24 meetings, £12.
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In Finchley …

Wednesdays starting September 24th GREAT IDEAS IN HISTORY, at Avenue House, East End Road, 10 am -12 noon. Mr. Boothby

Wednesdays starting October 1st, ITALIAN CITIES AND ARCHITECTURE at North Finchley Library 10 a.m. -12 noon. Mr. Brill

These two courses, each two terms, fees £15, pensioners ~12.50. Please note there will be a creche at Avenue House where young mothers can leave their babies.
AUGUST OUTING

Rep ort on the visit to Brixworth and Raunds Northamptonshire by D. Lambert.

8.30 am to Raunds, first mentioned in 980 A.D. – the name means “at the borders or edges” – where a rescue dig, started in 1976, has revealed the foundations of a medieval manor house, two Saxon churches and the surrounding cemetery. The churches were in use centuries before 1066: there were four phases of construction, the first, a church, probably demolished in the 11th century to make way for a larger two-celled nave and chancel built in flat-bedded rough-hewn stone construction. Around 1100 A.D. there were alterations and the church went out of use to become a manorial hall. In the last phase the manor house was expanded and a dovecote, hall, passage and a service wing added. Around 1400 A.D. the house served as a barn and blacksmiths shop and eventually became derelict.

Bodies in the cemetery were buried East-West, mostly without coffins, laid to rest on beds of stones, with stones around and over the bodies. In one instance a stone had been used to support a deformed arm. No grave goods were found and even pins and buckles were not left in the graves. Mr. Graham Cadman, Director of the site on behalf of the Northamptonshire C.C. Archaeology Unit described for us the most exciting discoveries he had made during this rescue effort.

Before leaving, we all enjoyed coffee or a cold drink with biscuits – a special treat generously provided by Mr and Mrs Wade, Joanna’s parents, who live in the district and take a lively interest in the dig.

On to Earls Barton to see All Saints Parish Church and its 10th century Saxon Tower – the finest Saxon tower in Britain. Its foundations were laid in the 8th century and it was built in four stages, ending with the battlements in 1450. Each stage is in stone and rubble with a distinctive pattern, the outside in plaster, all resembling the wooden buildings of Saxon times. Structural alterations were made in the 13th, 15th and 19th centuries and as a result Earls Barton has become a ‘treasury of ecclesiastical architecture’ down the centuries: in 1972 it feature in a special issue of our postage stamps.

Brixworth – the ladies of the village had prepared our lunch: good food by any standard, well organised and more then enough!

All Saints Church at Brixworth had its treasures described to us by David Parsons who has been conducting the research on it for the last five years, for Leicester University.

680 A.D. has been chosen as the founding date; there may have been an earlier church but details are not available although it was mentioned in connection with two Peterborough Abbots in the late 7th century, as a monastery. It became a parish church, (after going out of use in the late 9th century) by 12th century at the latest. 680-1980 was being celebrated in a local exhibition. The earliest surviving structures are not in their original condition, the nave walls were originally open with large arches. These now contain windows with masonry surrounds, inserted in the Victorian period. The restoration work contrasts well with the original building material and no effort was made to imitate the Saxon fabric.
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Some forty types of stone have been identified in the walls and a special study is being made to determine the geological source of the stone, to throw light on the phases of the construction. Bricks have been used, and dating tests suggest that some could be Saxon, or Roman. Most of the material is non-local, it is believed to have come from deposits or demolished buildings 30 miles away.

A study is being made to determine when the clerestory was built. One approach is to assess the age by the contents of the scaffold put-log holes: in one case the end of the original scaffold pole was found – though it proved unsuitable for carbon-14 dating. In addition it is noted that the holes were packed with waste material from the earlier construction stage.

In 1821 a Reliquary was found under a window in a chapel. It was a small piece of bone wrapped in a fabric contained in a small wooden box. The fabric disintegrated immediately on opening: the bone is believed to be the larynx of St. Boniface, brought to Brixworth possibly because the crypt chapel would have been an important missionary centre and a place of pilgrimage. St. Boniface died in 757; he was born in Devon and became Bishop of Mainz.

Our next visit was to Harrington. There we found the site of a medieval manor and some fish ponds, the ponds being fed by local springs and apparently expertly laid out and managed, to provide a continuous stock. There were extensive terraces too, part of a formal garden to an 18th century country house.

Finally to Stoke Bruerne for tea beside the canal lock.

An enjoyable day, full of interest, for which we are indebted to Mr. Alan Hannen, the County Archaeologist who was our guide and mentor for the day: it was his interpretation of what we saw that helped to make the visits memorable. The whole trip, itinerary and arrangements were planned by Isobel McPherson, to whom we owe our sincere thanks. It ranks as one of the best of the HADAS outings.
DO YOU HAVE ANY OLD MAPS?

HADAS is hoping to build up a collection of the earlier series of one inch Ordnance Survey Maps showing the Borough of Barnet. They are particularly useful in showing how the Borough and its surroundings developed. If anyone has copies of one inch series maps (including those of the 1960s) which they would be prepared to donate, could they please ring Dave King who will arrange collection.
AGRICULTURAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Agriculture was man’s first industry and it remains his largest. The English landscape has been altered beyond all recognition by the demands of farming, but because it has been farmed for so long traces of almost every stage in the development of agricultural technology can be found in our countryside.

In his new book ‘The Industrial Archaeology of Farming in England and Wales’ (published by Batsferd, 1980 £15), HADAS member Nigel Harvey describes the evidence remaining for the development of agriculture, and relates this development to the changes in technology and economics which brought it about.

The early chapters of the book are mainly concerned with the agricultural landscape. Enormous areas of Britain have been reclaimed by farmers from heath land, forest, marsh and the sea. This process still continues, but much of it was accomplished in the middle ages using the most primitive equipment. Sometimes the improvements were on a grand scale, and were the work of great landlords or the monasteries. But often single fields were reclaimed piece-meal by the hard work of individual peasants.

As the demand for farm products changed, so did British agriculture. The feudal agricultural system was one of self-sufficient communities working their lands on the three-field system, making use of woodland and common for animal pasture. This gradually was replaced by the enclosed fields and isolated farms of an economy primarily dedicated to the production of wool. The demand for food from the increasing urban populations of the 18th and 19th centuries produced a boom in agriculture and allowed the developments of the agricultural revolution. The development of better communications, combined with the opening-up of the farmlands of America and Australasia led to a surfeit of cheap produce and an agricultural depression lasting from the 1880s until the second world war.
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Mr. Harvey shows how the landscape, the buildings and communities upon it, and the techniques of agriculture changed with these developments. Much of the traditional English landscape is relatively modern. The small enclosed fields surrounded by hedges were only established in some areas in the 18th century, although the process of enclosure began many hundreds of years earlier. The Kentish Oasthouse was a 19th century introduction, and the typical three-sided ‘farmyard’ with its pig-sties and cattle sheds was first built during the agricultural revolution. Some well-known agricultural ‘traditions’ were also relatively short-lived. The heavy horse only replaced the ox team during the 18th century; the farm cart, made famous as Constable’s ‘Haywain’ was developed from its two wheeled predecessor in the same period.

Mechanisation of agriculture was closely linked to the horse, and not as might be thought the steam engine. Jethro Tull invented his seed drill in 1700; the first thrashing machine dates from 1786 and Ransome’s hardened steel plough from 1803. Of course steam engines were used on some farms, but lack of mobility limited their range of application. The traction engine, invented around 1850, rapidly gained popularity for ploughing and driving thrashing machines, but the farm horse was only finally replaced by the diesel engined tractor in the 1940s. Farm buildings are a large subject in their own right (Mr. Harvey has already written a history of them), but they are also dealt with in this new book. Very few farms have buildings of a single period, and in some areas ancient forms of building survived until surprisingly recently. Thus the ‘long house’ with animals at one end and people at the other, whose original design dates from the Neolithic, was still being built in some areas until the 18th century. But farmers are practical people, who will only use a building design for as long as it serves a necessary purpose. The ‘medieval’ barn with its large opposed doorways to produce the draught needed in flail thrashing, largely ceased to be built after the introduction of the thrashing machine. Mr. Harvey’s book is full of interesting snippets of agricultural history. One concerns the ‘urban dairies’ where cows were kept to provide fresh milk in city centres. The last cow was milked in the City of London in the 1950s and the last in Liverpool as late as 1975. This particular ‘herd’ was incidentally fed on the grass cuttings from the training ground of Everton Football Club!

Nigel Harvey describes his book as an ‘introduction to an enormous subject’. Like all good introductions it provides in most readable form a concise account of its subject and a stimulus to further reading.. (There is a comprehensive bibliography). There are a number of well-produced illustrations, and many evocative photographs.

Dave King.
MORE DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Until September 21st next there is an interesting exhibition at Church Farm House Museum, Greyhound Hill, Hendon. Entitled “The Silver Years”, it shows the work of John Maltby, a photographer who worked locally (his business is in Watford Way), although you wouldn’t in a month of Sundays call him a local photographer.

He ranged his subjects all over the country, specialising in architecture and industrial processes, and encapsulating in many of his pictures the moods of the 30s and 40s. The cover of the catalogue is from one of his best known series, on the Odeon cinemas of the 30s.
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Mr. Maltby himself planned the early stages of this exhibition, although sadly he died last March. It is, therefore, by way of being a memorial to him.

Advance news now of the LAMAS Local History Conference to be held on November 15th at the Museum of London, from 2 pm. Tickets (price £1.50) from Mr. Robins, 3 Cameron House, Highland Road, Bromley, Kent. Further details later.

Several members, we know, have participated in the York Archaeological Weekends held every winter. These are non-residential, and you make your own arrangements for board and meals (the organisers will, if asked, supply a list of guest houses and hotels).

The eighth conference will take place from November 21st-23rd at the de Grey Rooms, St. Leonards Square, York. It is on the subject of Urban Friaries in Britain. It will trace the story, from archaeological evidence (from York, Oxford, Bristol, Leicester) of the spread of the friars in the 13th century through Britain and the work they did for both rich and poor. A visit to Beverley is included on Saturday afternoon.

Conference fee £18.00. Further details from Director of Special Courses, Department of Adult Education, The University, Leeds, LS2 9JT. Apply before November 14th.
WEST HEATH NEEDS YOU

Digging will continue at West Heath throughout September (except Saturday, September 13th) on Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays.
THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY

The Society is anxious to increase its membership in order to maintain a respectable coverage of the field in this country and to increase its international reputation. With more members and larger funds, action can be more effective and opinion better informed. Write for further details and an application form to: The Secretary, Prehistoric Society, Department of Archaeology, The University, READING.
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CITY OF LONDON

-Text John Schofield and Tony Dyson F.S.A.

A recent publication, by the City of London Archaeological Trust which attempts to combine the work of past generations, both documentary and archaeological, and that of the Department of Urban Archaeology during the first six years of its life.

Inevitably the lion’s share goes to the Roman period and especially the excavation along the Thames waterfront. Saxon, Medieval, Tudor and later periods are represented and there are maps to illustrate all periods. Regrettably the reproduction of the photographs is poor. Despite this, a useful book of 76 pages with about 100 illustrations. Buy it from the book stall of the Museum of London £2.50 or by post 60p. extra. All profits go to the Trust which supports the Archaeological efforts of the Department.

E. Sammes.

newsletter-114-august-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

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FUTURE OUTINGS

August 16 – Brixworth & Raunds. Northamptonshire

Isobel McPherson writes: At Raunds excavation is still in progress on an interesting group of late Saxon buildings and an extensive cemetery. From there we drive to Earls Barton and then on to Brixworth where the impressive and complicated Saxon church of All Saints is celebrating its l300th anniversary. After lunch and a look round the exhibition of local history and archaeology we visit Harrington, a fine Medieval manorial site.

September 13 – Southampton trip. Details later.
WEST HEATH

Report on two weeks’ full time digging, plus future plans by Daphne Lorimer.

Despite the worst the weather could do, the first full time week’s digging at West Heath was a successful and enjoyable venture. HADAS members turned up in very respectable numbers, new trenches were opened and a rich assortment of flint flakes, blades and cores were recovered. Two pits were sectioned:, one of which contained four tools and is the cause of some speculation. It also seems likely that the northern and southern boundaries of the site are being reached as there is a marked (at the moment) diminution in the number of finds in the northern and southern quadrants of the trenches now being dug in these areas.

The first three days were enlivened by a visit from 16 girls from Camden School under Mrs Collins. The first day, alas, it rained steadily and depressingly all day, so they were taken to the Museum of London (which was shut). HADAS members in true style dug until even they could cope with the mud no longer. The next two, days however were pleasant and the girls were initiated into the mysteries of trowelling, sieving, processing and even (in a secluded corner on a ground sheet) into the noble art of flint knapping. It is to be hoped that some, at least, will develop an abiding love for archaeology.
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Another week’s digging is being arranged for the second week in September, (starting Monday 10th Sept).

Digging during August will continue as usual on Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays (except for HADAS outing days). Contact Brigid Grafton Green to find out who is running the dig each day.
DIARY NOTE

We now have a subject for the lecture on Tuesday January 6th by Dr John Alexander. It will be: Recent Excavations at Qasr Ibrim, a fortress on the Nile. Please add this to your programme card.
HADAS EXAM RESULTS

Congratulations to Dave King, Margaret Maher, and Jill Braithwaite, on success in their first year on the Degree course at the Institute. Also to Liz Aldridge on completing her Diploma, and Eileen Haworth on passing her second year. Apologies to other HADAS members whose results we do not know.
SOME COURSES FOR THE COMING WINTER

Once again we have selected a few of the hundreds that might be of interest. Details of WEA courses will come later.

Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, Central Square, NW11

Enrolments in office hours in August and September.

As usual the Institute offers classes for years one and two of the London University Extra-mural Diploma in Archaeology:

The Archaeology of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Man: by Desmond Collins. Weds 7.30 to 9.30 pm from 24th Sept, 24 lectures & 4 visits. £10.

The Archaeology of Western Asia: by David Price Williams. Thurs 7.30 to 9.30 pm from 25th Sept, 24 lectures & 4 visits. £lO.

Among other courses of historical interest are:

London’s Heritage – by Ron Phillips. 22 lectures on London’s past: plus 4 visits. Fri 11 to l2.30 pm from 26th Sept. at Fellowship House, Willified Way NW11. £9.

People and Places – by Kathleen Slack. 10 lectures on the birth & growth of the Hampstead Garden Suburb. Thurs 11 to l2.30 pm from 2nd October. Fellowship House, Willifield Way, NW11. £6.75
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Barnet College, Wood Street. Barnet.

Enrolment on 16th Sept from 10.00 am to 8.00 pm & 17th Sept from 6.00 to 8.00 pm.

The college has just completed one three-year course of the London University II Extra-mural Certificate in Field Archaeology, which it undertook at HADAS’s suggestion. It has decided to repeat the course, which will be held on Wednesdays from 7.30 to 9.30 pm, starting on 24th Sept. Each course consists of 24 lectures plus visits, and concentrates on the field archaeology of south east England.

The lecturer will be David Williams who took his degree at the Institute of Archaeology and then worked in the British Museum and in Turkey for three years. Fees will be £10.

The college is also running a three term course in local history, on Mondays starting 29th Sept, from 7.30 to 9.30 pm £9 a term, and a two term course at Finchley Manorhill School, Summers Lane, N 12 called Trace Your Family History, on Wednesdays from 7.30 to 9.30 pm, also £9 a term.

Hendon College of Further Education. Flower Lane, Mill Hill.

For the fourth year running HADAS is organizing lectures on archaeology at the college. From 1977 when the society first began arranging these courses, they have been designated as “beginners” lectures -something to start people off on archaeology, and to get them sufficiently involved to want to go on to more advanced studies.

The 1980/1 lectures in the autumn and spring terms will in fact form two separate courses, each complete in itself. This is at the suggestion of the college, who have had to put up their fees sharply this year – to £9 a term. They felt that some students might prefer to sign on for just one term of 10 lectures, although they hope most students will want to do both terms.

The autumn course is called Digging Up the Past and is described as “back to basics in archaeology” .It is chronological, and summarises the course of events from the early Palaeolithic through to the Roman occupation of Britain. It touches on such special topics as dating and the pros and cons of field work and excavation. The spring course – “Aspects of Archaeology” – deals with particular subjects, such as farming, megaliths, burial practices, Mediterranean island communities, Egypt.

Lectures are on Mondays, starting 22nd September and 12th January, 1981, from 7.30 to 9.30 pm. Five HADAS members are lecturing: Nicole Douek, Brigid Grafton Green, Daphne Lorimer, Ted Sammes, and Sheila Woodward. In addition Christine Arnott hopes to arrange a museum visit each term. We hope that other HADAS members, either new to archaeology or those of longer standing who want to brush up on elements will join the classes as students. Enrolment is at Hendon College, The Burroughs, NW4 on Tues 9th Sept (2 to 8.30 pm) or Wed 10th Sept (2 to 8.30 pm).
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RESEARCH COMMITTEE

Get out your notebooks and walking boots, brush up on surveying techniques, and get your eyes trained for spotting pottery in ploughed fields. The Research Committee is planning a programme of field walking and surveying of potential sites of various periods and at various locations in the borough. Details will be announced in later issues of the newsletter.

Meanwhile, the background work of the groups investigating particular periods or subjects – prehistoric, Roman, mediaeval, industrial, documentary – continues. Among projects under way are the study of Roman finds from field walks, documentary investigation of brickworks and field names, work on the West Heath finds in anticipation of the site report, and surveys of industrial remains. Research Committee chairman Sheila Woodward or secretary Liz Sagues will put would-be researchers – experience is not necessary -in touch with the group or groups which most interest them.
JULY OUTING

A Report on the visit to Bignor & Fishbourne by Audrey Hooson.

Although there is no archaeological or historical reason to connect these sites, the fact that they are both near Chichester and have good examples of mosaic floors in situ made them an excellent combination for a full day outing.

Our leader Raymond Lowe; had carefully planned the route from London to Chichester to follow as closely as possible the line of Stane Street. This enabled us to pass several Romano-British sites such as the settlement at Ewell and the villa at Ashstead.

Like all Roman villas Bignor went through several phases of development over quite a long period. The villa was first discovered in 1811 and partially excavated. It has been open to the public since 1815 and is privately owned. Further excavations took place in 1935 but it is the more recent work between 1956 and 1962 by Professor SS.Frere that provided the evidence of the building history of the villa and its gradual expansion from a Romanized form in the 2nd century to its final form as a Romano-British courtyard villa covering 4.2 acres during the 4th century.

The modern buildings covering the mosaics have stone walls and thatched roofs, and use the standing remains of the villa walls. Fortunately it was a bright day and all the rooms were well lit giving a good impression of the variety of colour and design in the mosaics. The well known Venus mosaic which has been re-laid on a level foundation looked magnificent and the recently uncovered and re-laid North Portico with its regular blue/grey, red and white design was impressive in its present visible length of 82 feet. It is estimated that it originally extended the full 231 feet of the northern corridor.

On arrival at Fishbourne our impression was its contrast with Bignor. Fishbourne, to quote the excavator Prof Barry Cunliffe, was possibly but not incontrovertibly the Palace of Cogidubnus.
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Much of the large area originally covered by the palace and its outbuildings is now lost beneath the A27 and neighbouring houses although trial trenches made in gardens have helped to delimit the site and give evidence of its many developments and changes in fortune. The north wing and the northern parts of the east wing, west wing and ornamental garden are in the preserved area and a walk across the garden courtyard gives a good impression of the size of the main palace.

Excavation has shown that the original garden was planted out by cutting bedding trenches and filling them with marled loam or black soil and this has enabled the shape of the beds to be reconstructed. The north wing was built soon after AD 70 and remained in use for 200 years during which it was altered, repaired and partially re-floored several times. The mosaics on view are therefore from several periods with some areas showing two layers. The Black and white geometric forms are of most interest since they are the earliest surviving mosaics in the country. Other early floors have in addition red, yellow, and grey tesserrae with simple guilloche and running scroll borders. During the second and third centuries new polychrome floors were laid with a far more complex use of figures, designs. Unfortunately the best known of these the Cupid on a Dolphin has been taken up prior to re-laying.

After tea in Chichester in the Vicar’s Hall Restaurant, which is not only an interesting re-use of part of the claustral buildings but also the site of the first HADAS outing tea, we returned to London by a more direct route.
INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY GROUP

Report by Bill Firth.

A small group of industrial archaeologists, not all HADAS members, met on 25th June to discuss plans. We had a wide ranging discussion out of which we concluded that the immediate aim must be to collate what we already know. However this is an ideal – threatened sites will not wait for us, and it seems that there will be pressing needs to research the remaining historic buildings at Hendon aerodrome and the Public Health Laboratories at Colindale.

Even in a largely residential area an organized field walk is an excellent way of spotting possible sites for investigation and we hope to arrange some walks in the autumn.
APPEAL FOR PHOTOGRAPHS

Percy Reboul would be pleased to hear from any members who might be prepared to let him borrow for a short time any photographs or postcards which could be used to illustrate a forthcoming book about the borough of Barnet in the 20s and 30s. His primary interest is in people at work or events, rather than places: for example, a carnival, a cinema opening, shops” builders at work, trams – anything that might be regarded as typical of the period. The book will be a HADAS publication and the best possible care would be taken of anything borrowed. Please contact him before sending anything.
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CHURCH TERRACE REPORTS No. 7

By Ted Sammes.

PENNIES

This report is the last one dealing with coins from the dig.

“See saw, Marjorie Daw, Johnnie shall have a new master, He shall have but a penny a day, Because he can’t work any faster.”

We all know this rhyme and never stop to think about it. By the time the jingle was written (traditional or possibly 16th century) the penny was obviously not the valuable coin it had been in earlier days.

During the 7th century coinage was resumed in England with the issue of small silver coins called sceats, which took current Frankish coins as a model. In the 8th century Pepin the Short, father of Charlemagne, introduced a silver coin called a denier, named after the previous Roman denarius. Charlemagne improved the coinage striking 240 deniers from a pound of silver. It is an interesting thought that at this remote period the seeds of the £ s d system, which was discontinued in 1971, were sown. From this also comes the abbreviation of “d” for penny. Copies of the coin replaced the sceats in England during the period e.g. King Offa produced coins of standard weight and good quality. During the Saxon and Norman periods coins were minted in many towns, 107 sites are known in England.

The use of the cross, in embryonic form, in the design on the reverse side of the penny in the 8th century, gradually grew and was well established by the Norman conquest. Henry II introduced the short cross penny in 1180 AD. In 1247 Henry III introduced the long cross which continued in use until the reign of Henry VIII, when the royal coat of arms was superimposed on the cross. The use of the long which extended to the edge of the coin, made it more difficult for people to “pass off” coins which had been clipped.

During the l2th to l4th centuries pennies were popularly called “easterlings” or “sterlings”, possibly due to those coming in from the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic. From this possibly comes the use of the name “sterling”. The silver penny survived the Commonwealth period but shortage of small change resulted in the introduction of traders tokens in brass and bronze by 1648.

From the doorway areas of the demolished shops at Church End came Victorian and later coins, dropped through hole in the boards of the floors.
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Pride of place must be given to the hammered silver penny of Edward II, 1307-1327. This is a long cross coin, type 10, minted in London about 1309, and inscribed RX. CIVITAS LONDON.

A second coin is of Henry VIII. It has Lombardic lettering and was minted in Canterbury about 1549. Henry died in 1547, hence this is one from his posthumous coinage. Edward VI issued coins in his father’s name until 1549. Henry VIII had also debased the coinage in 1526 to compete with the great number of inferior foreign pieces in circulation. (This has a somewhat familiar ring today). Debased silver coins tended to crack on striking and part of our coin is missing and there is an evident crack in the remainder.

Decimalization saw the end of the penny with Britannia seated. This again broke a pattern started with the coins of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and re-adopted by Charles II on both the halfpenny and farthing, and finally George III on the penny of 1797.

I am indebted to Keith Howse, Conservation Officer, and Stephen Castle, both at the British Museum, for the cleaning and identification of these coins. For further reading – the books mentioned in Church Terrace Report No. 6 plus:

Milne J G et al – Coin Collecting, OUP 1951

Piggott W – Twelve Centuries of the British Penny (article in Coins & Medals, July 1970}
A VENUS OBSERVED

By Percy Reboul.

I think readers may be interested in an unusual sequel to my last month’s story about the tunnel miner. After the recording, we were discussing some of the unusual things found in tunnelling , when my subject referred to a Roman “dolly” he had found in the city of London many years ago. I asked to see it, and he produced a very nice figurine, obviously Roman, and in exceptionally fine condition.

On his behalf I took it to the Museum of London, and they declared immediately that it was “A museum piece”: in fact, a pipe-clay Venus figurine, about six inches high, dated between the first and second century and made in SW France.

They showed me their display case in the museum which contained about half a dozen similar objects, none of which were comparable in condition to “our dolly”. Even her base is in perfect condition and she was possibly used, or intended for use, in the lararium of some poorer home, which could not afford the bronze equivalent.

The museum has made an offer to purchase which has been accepted, and I for one will look forward to seeing Dolly Venus housed in a style befitting her dignity as a goddess. Where will HADAS activities lead next?

newsletter-113-july-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

FUTURE OUTINGS

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne led by Raymond Lowe.

He says “we are returning to these two famous and important Roman sites. Both have something new to see. Bignor now has the largest mosaic pavement open to view in the country, the 80 foot North Corridor. Fishbourne have lifted the polychrone Cupid and Dolphin and found an earlier Black and White Pavement underneath. Tea is in Chichester in a Crypt.”

August 16 – Northamptonshire (Isobel McPherson)

September – The September weekend – Sept. 19-20-21 at Southampton has been cancelled due to lack of support. However, Mr. David Johnston of Southampton University who was to have guided us that weekend has kindly agreed to arrange a day trip for us on September 13. Details will follow later.
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

At West Heath there will be full-time digging for the week of Mon. July l4 – Fri. July 18 – as well, of course, as on the preceding and following weekends. That means committed diggers will be able to get in quite a lot of hard labour! Digging will be from 10 am – 5 pm each day, and Daphne Lorimer hopes that as many members as possible will come for as many days as they can.

It may be possible to continue with a further full-time week from Mon. July 21 – Fri. July 25 if enough members want it. Daphne would like to hear from you if you can come during either week. Please ring her and let her know.

In addition to the full-time weeks, digging continues at West Heath every Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday (except on the Saturdays of HADAS outings) throughout the summer.

ROMAN PLANS. It may seem far ahead, but we hope you will note in your diary now the dates of two late autumn weekends when Roman pottery processing is planned. These are the weekends of Nov. 8 and Nov. 15. We have already, through the kind co-operation of John Enderby, booked the Teahouse, Northway, Hampstead Garden Suburb, for these dates, and will let you have a more detailed programme nearer the time.
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CALLING THE UNDER-18s

HADAS provides a special subscription for members under the age of 18 and a number of youngsters have taken this up. In addition we have several corporate school memberships.

Junior members enjoy the same rights as senior ones, except that if they want to take part in one of our digs under the age of 14 they must for safety reasons be accompanied by an adult relative who is a member. This usually doesn’t present problems because many junior members have dads and mums who belong. Apart from that they can take part in outings, lectures, processing sessions, field walks and any of our research projects that interest them.

The Committee has been considering whether in addition to these activities, junior members might like either to help organise or to take part in any special activities for the junior section. If any of our under-18 members have ideas about this will they please let our Hon. Secretary know? Would you for instance be interested in working out a Town Trail based on the history of some part of the Borough? Or making a study of buildings or street names in a particular area? Or is there some other pet project you would like to put forward?

Under the Society’s constitution two places are available on the HADAS Committee for junior members -and in the past these have been filled often by members in the 14-17 age-group. For the last year or two however there has been no junior representative on the Committee. If any junior member feels a yen to take part in the administration of the Society will he or she let me know?
CORRECTION

In the report in last month’s Newsletter on the current exhibition at Church Farm House Museum it was stated that the building was opened as a Museum in 1955 by the Mayor, Norman Brett-James.

We regret that this was incorrect. Major Brett-James did indeed open the Museum, but he was not the Mayor. Hendon’s Mayor who was present was Councillor S.E. Sharpe.

The present Secretary of the Mill Hill & Hendon Historical Society, John Collier, sent us this note on Norman Brett-James, founder-secretary of his Society and a noted local Historian:

“Major Brett-James did indeed exert some influence in Hendon. Under his stimulus this society initiated the movement leading to the preservation of Church Farm House (which is why he was invited to perform the official opening ceremony). The society also devised the Borough coat of arms, initiated the scheme for the Hendon memorial plaques, formed the nucleus of the history of aviation now in the local archives, advised on such matters as street names and assisted the Corporation in making its survey of field paths. With all these pioneer achievements of civic importance Brett-James was identified. But he was never Mayor.”
MORE ABOUT MOATS

Back last September, in Newsletter 1O3, we reported on our long-drawn out campaign to have the remains of the moat at the Manor House, East End Road, Finchley, scheduled as of historic interest. Our attempts then appeared to be nearing success. Now, at long Inst, we have a letter from the Department of Environment which says that the moat is definitely scheduled and therefore has some protection if the land around it ever becomes ripe for development.
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Scheduling – the process used by the authorities for safeguarding land, as distinct from Listing which is used for buildings – is of course much rarer in the London boroughs than Listing. There are however other scheduled areas in the Borough of Barnet – notably some fields at Brockley Hill which are known to contain the sites of Roman pottery kilns. HADAS has now asked the DoE to investigate the possibility of scheduling the remains of another moat at Hadley – a fine moat still filled with water, which is near the 18th green of Old Fold Manor Golf Club. It is periodically dredged and usually produces a rich crop of lost golf balls.
APPEAL FOR WILBERFORCE’S CHURCH

St. Paul’s Church, Mill Hill – William Wilberforce’s church – is in the news this month. It has launched an appeal for £15,000 to restore the building.

Wilberforce, the great campaigner against slavery, retired to Highwood Hill towards the end of his life in 1825 and bought a property of 140 acres called Hendon Park (the site to-day is marked by a blue plaque). He was a leading Evangelical, and his new home was some distance from the perish church of Hendon so with the help of the Bishop of London, Bishop Blomfield, he obtained permission to build a Proprietary Chapel on the Ridgeway at Mill Hill – much to the disgust of the Rev. Theodore Williams, the notorious and quarrelsome vicar of Hendon who saw his pew-rentals diminishing. It was to be a century in fact before St. Paul’s was allowed to have a parish of its own in 1926.

Church building in the early 19 c nicknamed “Commissioners Gothic” – was akin to jerry-building: the operative consideration was economy in all things. In Wilberforce’s church, designed by Samuel Hood Page, the brickwork was cheap, with rendered cement: the galleries were supported by cast-iron columns. The church was built on the site of a gravel pit, given by Sir Charles Flower, a Lord Mayor of London who lived at Belmont. (Flower Lane, Mill Hill, is named after him.) The building was supported on brick arches in the gravel pit to bring it level with the road. The church cost £3,547.2s.0d., paid by Wilberforce himself who was then in financial difficulties.

St. Paul’s to-day has to pay the price of these economies. There is damp on all the internal walls due to the poor quality of the brick. The exposed position of the building – on a clear day it is said that you can see Windsor Castle from the roof-top – adds to the problems. An estimate of £35,000 has been put forward for damp-proofing the walls and redecorating.

To this the Diocese will contribute £20,000, but the St. Paul’s Appeal Committee hopes to raise the other £15,000 locally.

Donations can be sent to the Appeal Treasurer, Charles Surrey, at 3, Weymouth Avenue, N.W.7. A short history of the Church (on which these paragraphs are based) has been prepared by the archivist, Howard Mallatratt. This is obtainable, price 10p, at the church.
WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS

HADAS is happy to greet a number of new members who have joined us this year, and to wish them a happy membership of the Society. They are:-

Mrs. Barrie, Hendon; Miss Bay, Barnet; Ann Gillian Bond, Hendon; Vanessa Bond Finchley; Miss Bumstead, Finchley; Mrs. Canter and family, Edgware; N. P. Chandler, Hampstead; Mr. & Mrs. Cousins, North Finchley; Molly Creighton, Mill Hill; Patricia Dearing, Mill H111; Gordon Garrad, Colindale; Mr. & Mrs. Gower, N.W.9. Mr. & Mrs. Hackett and Bryan and Kirstie, Garden Suburb; Sylvia Harris, Hampstead; Irene Henderson, N.W.9; Margaret Hunt, Kensington; Peter Keeley, Mill Hill; Cynthia King, North Finchley; Anne Lawson, Garden Suburb; Peter Loos, Marylebone; Jacqui Pearce, Hendon; H. Phillips, Hampstead; Hans Porges, Finchley; Kay Susan Rider, Hendon; Miss. R. Walters, North Finchley; Mrs., Mr. E. S. and Mr. P. G. Ward, Southgate; and Louise Yeoell.
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RAIN DID NOT STOP PLAY

Maurice Cantor reports on the June outing into Warwickshire.

The weather forecast was daunting and the sheets of rain that fell from the skies were proof enough of the fore-bodings, but with true HADAS grit our intrepid party set off for the backwaters of Warwickshire. Dr. Eric Grant, who ably led the group, made some slight alterations to the itinerary as he felt that as there was a distinct possibility that we would all sink without trace into the waterlogged clay of The Midlands, so he decided to cut out the visit to the Fillongley, Motte & Bailey. Apart from this, he managed to keep to his original schedule.

Our first stop was at the Hawkesbury canal junction, the confluence of the Coventry, Oxford and Ashby canals. Armed with detailed plans of the area, which tended to get pretty soggy in the downpour, we were acquainted with the history and lay-out of the land and told of the importance of the junction to the commerce of the area, when canals were in their golden era. The canal was opened in 1769, linking Coventry with the Trent and Mersey canals to the west, Oxford to the south and Hull to the east. The area was a thriving coalfield and brick making was also an important industry. Coal mines were opened all along the canals. When one seam was worked out, another shaft was sunk a few hundred yards further along the canal, and one can find a pattern of coalheads straddling the canal all along the bank. Coal and bricks were sent down to Banbury and Oxford, while finished goods could be sent from Coventry to the Mersey. A feature of the junction was a steam pumping house built at Hawkesbury for pumping water out of the mines into the canals. The industrial archaeologists were delighted to find in 1963 the original Newcomen pumping engine dated 1725 still intact and, as this was the only engine of its type and era in existence, it was removed to the birthplace of the Newcomen engine at Dartmouth and can now be seen in the grounds of Dartmouth Park.

We went on through the lanes of the old mining countryside, through the industrial hamlets of the area, the derelict mining villages with their exotic names like Bermuda, California, Piccadilly, the towns that developed from these villages, such as Stockinford, Bedworth. All the time Dr. Grant supplied us with a fund of interesting anecdotes of the localities through which we were passing, such as in the early history of Bedworth, when the town had a notorious reputation of being a place of drunkeness and crime and was known as “Black Bedworth”. A new rector came to Bedworth, a former naval chaplain, the Canon Henry Belairs. It appears the only way he could win over the respect of the tough miners of the town was by challenging the toughest of them to a fist-fight every Saturday. As he managed to win all the bouts he fought, the miners grudgingly gave him their respect. The last story, however, was the best, for as we were driving slowly through a derelict mining village, surrounded on each side by ancient tips, right off the beaten track, a local came up to Dr. Grant to offer directions to get back to the main road as he was sure we had lost our way. You can imagine the look of incredulity on the man’s face when told we knew exactly where we were and where we were going!

Next stop was Griff House Hotel, the home of Mary Evans, better known as the novelist, George Eliot, where her father was Steward to the Arbury estate.
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As it was still teeming, the hotel proprietor took pity on us and we spent a comfortable hour in the hotel lounges with our packed lunches.

Our fortunes were indeed changing as, at last, the rain had stopped and the sun broke through just in time for the highlight of our trip, Arbury Hall.

The “Cheverel Manor” which appears in many of George Eliot’s novels is indeed Arbury Hall and Sir Christopher Cheverel was drawn from Arbury Hall’s owner, Sir Roger Newdigate. It was Sir Roger who transformed the early Elizabethan house into a Gothic one in the later 18th century and Arbury Hall and Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill at Twickenham were the first major buildings in England to feature in the Gothic revival of the day. The house has a stable building attached with a central porch designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and the house itself is filled with the most exquisite furniture, fireplaces, paintings, glass-ware and porcelain.

The Newdigate family have lived in the house since the middle of the 16th century and their direct descendents still live there today. We were a little perplexed when we found portraits of the family in the early 19th century containing a double-barrelled name, “Newdigate-Newdegate”. Of course Dr. Grant had the explanation; it appeared that one side of the family spelt the name with an ‘i’ in the middle, whereas the other side of the family spelt it with an ‘e’. To avoid a major family feud, an admirable compromise was reached. In the best British tradition, the family decided to make the name double-barrelled, with the ‘e’ and the ‘i’, which pleased everybody.

The sun, which had shone for us for most of the afternoon, brought out the beauty of the informal gardens surrounding the house and most of us walked the many paths which brought us to one delight after another.

The day was rapidly drawing to a close and after our set tea in the stable building and a quick look round the early sewing machine, bicycle and motorcycle collection, it was back to the coach for our last stop, the Church of St. Mary at Astley. The church dates back to 1343; it looks for all the world like a cathedral in miniature with most interesting 17th century wall panels. We were treated to an extra bonus as, in celebration of the centenary of the death of George Eliot, delightful floral tableaux were displayed portraying imaginative scenes taken from her works.

So our journey to Warwickshire ended. A shaft of light had been thrown on apart of the world few of us had ever thought about, but the sights and impressions of the journey will long be etched in our memories. We are all indebted to Dr. Grant, who worked so hard to make the day so interesting. Thanks also to Tessa Smith for doing the “admin” so efficiently.
COALBROOKDALE IN LONDON

A note from Bill Firth.

Those who attended the April lecture on the Ironbridge Gorge Museum will recall that Mr. Lawley mentioned a nwnber of Coalbrookdale artefacts in London.

In connection with the 200th anniversary of the bridge the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society (GLIAS) has researched the whereabouts of these artefacts and the following list of the more important (reproduced thanks to GLIAS) may be of interest to members.

Macclesfield Bridge, Regents Park (opposite Avenue Road, NW8)

– otherwise known as “Blow-up Bridge” on account of the explosion of a gunpowder barge underneath it in October 1874. The brick arch bridge rests on cast iron columns clearly marked Coalbrookdale. The bridge was originally erected in 1812-16.

Great Exhibition Gates (1850)

– now marking the boundary between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens opposite Exhibition Road, SW7.
Page 6

Victoria Gates. Kew Gardens (Kew Road, opposite Lichfield Road)

– marked Coalbrookdale on lock plates.

Bandstand. Greenwich Park. Great Cross Avenue, SE1O (ca 189O)

– Coalbrookdale ironwork.

Water Carrier Statue at foot of Blackfriars Bridge, EC1.

– Designed for the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountains Association; 1861.

Eagle Slaver Statue outside Bethnal Green Museum, Cambridge Heath Road, E2.

– The bowman, who has lost his bow, was originally inside a “cage” decorated with eagles.

Abbev Mills Sewage Pumping Station, Abbey Lane, West Ham, E5.

– Beam engine by the Lilleshall Company, 1895.

Lamp Standards; Outside the Russell Hotel, Russell Square, WC1. Outside the City of London School for Boys, Victoria Embankment, Blackfriars, EC1. In Trafalgar Square, WC2 – on traffic island at top of Whitehall.

The Gamble Room (restaurant) Victoria and Albert Museum.

– Tile pavement and other ceramics by Maw and Company.

Many late Victorian pubs had an abundance of tiles, mosaic and architectural faience made by Maw and Company. One known surviving example (1896) is the Old Tiger’s Head, 351 Lee High Road, Lee Green, SE12.
CHURCH TERRACE REPORTS No. 6 – FARTHINGS

Continuing the series, Edward Sammes deals this month with the humble, but defunct, farthing. This report should be read bearing in mind what has already been written on Jettons and Galley Halfpence (Reports 4 and 5). The farthing, or fourthling, has a long history, which ended in 1956 when the farthing of our present monarch, bearing on its reverse side a wren, was withdrawn, a victim of inflation.

During the Middle Ages there was no official base metal coinage and until 1279 there were no silver farthings. This issue was made in the reign of Edward I, together with halfpennies. This in theory brought to an end the system of the Saxon and Norman kings, whereby these two denominations were made by halving or quartering the silver penny. The arms of the cross on the reverse side of the coin was a useful guide. However, this practice gave rise to fraud, pieces being cut off the quarters and smelted down and perhaps even being divided into five sections! The introduction of the long cross penny in 1247 by Henry III made this practice, and that of trimming the circumference, more difficult.

Throughout the Medieval period and into the 17th century, too few silver farthings were issued. Illegal private ‘tokens’ finally caused James I to sanction the striking of base metal farthings in 1613. These were not made by the normal Mints, but their production was granted to Lord Harrington. The profit from these tokens, which do not bear a royal head, was divided 25% to Harrington and the remainder to James I.
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Charles I continued this system, by which time the patent was held by the Duchess of Richmond and Sir Francis Crane. In 1625, this exclusive right was granted to them for a period of 17 years in exchange for which they would pay the King 100 marks annually.

As before, to facilitate and encourage their use, the patentees were forced to sell 21 shillings worth of farthing tokens for 20 shillings sterling. Counterfeiting of these coins was rife and in 1635/6 a new grant was made, this time to Lord Maltravers and Sir Francis Crane for a term of 21 years. These new tokens were the so-called “rose farthings” which carried a Tudor rose and crown instead of the harp and crown previously used.

Two such rose farthings were found in the excavation, one well preserved and a second badly corroded and cracked across the centre. Officially these coins could always be changed for silver coin of the realm and were only to be used for the payment of small sums to those willing to accept them.

In April 1643, the House of Commons ordered a Mr. Playter to cease striking these tokens and all stocks and tools were seized. Striking of farthings was soon resumed, but under Parliamentary control. Production possibly ceased in December 1644. Various tokens, not necessarily issued by tradesmen, were issued during the periods of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate.

During the early years of Charles II, there was still a shortage of small change, but an announcement in the London Gazette dated 25th July 1672 ordered that in future “no person should make, coin or otherwise use any other farthings or tokens except such as should be coined in His Majesty’s Mint”.

Difficulties were experienced in working the copper and for a period blanks were imported from Sweden. These farthings bore the head of the Monarch on the obverse and Britannia on the reverse.

One such farthing was found in trench D4. It was badly corroded but identifiable.

Owing to the forgeries appearing, some farthings were later struck in tin with a copper plug to make counterfeiting difficult.

The farthing, when finally withdrawn in 1956, had spanned from 1279 as a separate coin. In base metals it spanned 17 reigns, the coin in base metal, which had the longest existence.

The study of the farthing issues of the Stuarts is very complicated. For more detailed reading, Peck’s “English Copper, Tin and Bronze Coins” should be consulted.
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For further reading: –

North J.J. – English Hammered Coinage. Vol.2. Spink & Sons Ltd. 1960.

Peck. – English, Copper, Tin & Bronze Coins 1558-1958. British Museum. 1970.

Seaby H.A. – Standard Catalogue of British Coins – England & The United Kingdom 11th edition 1972.

Sealy D.L.F. – Farewell to Farthings – Two articles in Coins & Medals, 1966, Vol. 3, pages 564-570 and 620-623.
THE TUNNEL-TIGER’S TALE

Percy Reboul’s transcript of a tape recording.

I was born in 1901 at Stepney. My father was a tunnel miner too, and when he worked on the Oakleigh Park and Wood Green tunnels we moved to Muswell Hill. I went to Cromwell Road School and left at 14.

My first job was with my father. He was working on the Post office Tube Railway which runs from Paddington to Mount Pleasant and that was my first time underground. My grandfather was also a tunnel miner and he was what they call the ‘walking ganger’ or the ‘walking boss’ on the Oakleigh Park and Wood Green tunnel and my father worked with him as a leading miner.

I started off as a tea boy for about a year and gradually went down the tunnels with my father driving a little cart pulling out the muck as the miners got it out. In those days we did about 5 feet of tunnel a day. We worked two 12-hour shifts, one on day and one on night – 6.30 in the morning or 6.30 at night – six days a week. We worked a week of days and a week of nights. Pay was a guinea a shift but when I first started I got 15/- a week.

The work is as dangerous and as hard as coal mining although they work in a smaller space. Average tunnels are 12ft 3in: the first one that was done was 10 feet on the old City and South London – what they called the ‘tuppeny tube’. I worked on enlarging that original tunnel.

In my early days there was no protective clothing. In some places, if you were in bad ground and had to have compressed air put in (to keep back the water) you could be working in a temperature of 80-90F but come outside the airlock and it would be freezing. You come out every 8 hours if you are working in compressed air. We worked by candle light. The candles were put in a metal holder with a spike, which you stuck in the ground. The gang would be given a packet of candles as they went down and you lit as many as was necessary to see the job. Many times you had to walk to work. My father walked from Muswell Hill to Hackney Wick every day just to get to work. He would get up about 4 a.m. There was no transport then as there is today.

The miners were generally fit men. I’ve never had a serious illness. You were not allowed to work in compressed air if you had a cold. You had to go before a doctor before you went into the tunnel and the doctor would say “not today” and you had to go home. You could take cigarettes into work and occasionally they might take a bottle of beer.

On tunnelling you have 8 men in the gang: one leading miner, three miners and four back-fillers who load the muck into skips which are pushed on rails out of the pit. I was an Inspector on part of the Central Line tunnels and one of my jobs was to check the line and level of the tunnels. This was done by two plumb lines fitted up by the civil engineers. One line is on the face of the tunnel and one back about 20 feet. You line up the two and a good miner never goes wrong.
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About 1934/35, I worked for Charles Brand on the Finsbury Park to Cockfosters Piccadilly Line underground tunnel. We were paid a guinea a shift. The tunnel runs from Finsbury Park through Wood Green end runs into the open at Arnos Grove. I was leading miner at Wood Green. Just beyond the station is what they call a cross-over road where the train changes direction. It’s a telescope tunnel which gets gradually bigger starting at 12 feet then through 14 feet and 16 feet until it gets to 27 feet.

I was an Inspector on the Liverpool Street to Newbury Park on the Central Line. I was employed by the Consulting Engineers and we were down 70 feet in the London clay which was good ground. I had to make out a report every night on the nature of the ground or strata.

As a rule you don’t find things in tunnels. I spent 16 years tunnel mining for the Cities of Westminster and London building and maintaining sewers. We were doing a tunnel at Fenchurch Street/Mincing Lane when all of a sudden I came across a wall. It was all chalk. The Chief Engineer came down and said I was to knock a hole through it which I did. It was about 18 inches thick. We shone our torches through and it was full of Roman pottery, different kinds or pots. The Archaeologist came down and the guvnor said to me “Don’t break them. I’ll get the contractors to send you down some baskets”. We had 10 baskets full of pots and when we knocked off work the guvnor said “Have you got all those pots out Fred?” I said “Some of them are broke, it’s no good saving them”. He said “Where have you left them?” I said “Down there”. He said “God, don’t leave them down there, go down and watch them. They will send a lorry round”. When the lorry came it had four Police escorts to take them round to the Guildhall. They are in the British Museum now.

There was a lot of Roman stuff. I was doing a job in London Wall once and the engineer said “Be very careful when you go down there, Fred”. (I was sinking a pit to start tunnelling). “You might come across the gate of London. We’re expecting to find them just here. If you do find it – stop!” I never did.

The Mersey Tunnel.

Tunnel miners are proud of the Mersey tunnel it being the largest underwater tunnel in the world: 44 feet in diameter. For a start we dug 3 ordinary tunnels right through – a bottom one to take surplus water coming through crevices in the rocks. At one point we were only 3 ft below the bed of the river. We built the first 100 ‘rings’ by hand, no machinery. My father was in charge of that. He was the ganger. My father, my 2 brothers and myself each had a gang – 24 people to the gang. A lot of them were Irish (being Liverpool) and we were picked men. I was on the top of the tunnel bolting on a metal segment when the spanner slipped and I fell face-first on the rock below. We had 3 or 4 people killed. The Labour Exchange sent 30 men to the shaft, every shift every day, in case anyone regular didn’t turn up for work.

Tunnel-Tigers are a particular breed of men. It’s in the blood. My father was classed as the finest clay miner in London although he did say he thought I was better. You’re all a happy gang together, laughing and singing as you work. Now they have a transistor radio. Today it’s all mechanical work – a lot easier. I’ve come home on a morning with my flannel shirt so soaked in sweat that you can wring it out. Most miners wore flannel shirts for warmth and for soaking up the sweet. We were more content in the old days.

newsletter-112-june-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

ANNIVERSARY IN THE EAST

One of the oldest parish churches in our area, St Mary the Virgin in East Barnet, has recently started a season of celebration in honour of its 900th anniversary. The church, on the eastern edge of the Borough, stands on the hillside above Pymme’s Brook, with the possible site of a deserted medieval village on the slopes below it in Oak Hill Park. It is the “oldest building in the Barnets,” and was once parish church of a large part of the “heel” of Hertfordshire and of adjacent parts of Middlesex.

Some of the fabric of the original church, built 1080-1100, still remains, notably the 3-ft thick north wall of rubble and plaster. Originally it had 3 narrow slit apertures; today these are windows containing 13th/14th c. glass. The inner doorway on the south side is also thought to be part of the 11th c. building. Once it was an outer door but now the south aisle, added in 1868, lies outside it. The present chancel, built c. 1400, has been enlarged and rebuilt several times, the latest occasion being in 1880. The ceiling of the nave used to be thronged with flights of painted angels of pre-Reformation date, but the angels were first whitewashed and later damaged in World War II and now there are no angels left.

St Mary’s has a fine collection of 10 hatchments showing the arms of the families who lived in the l8th/19th c. parish. These are funeral plaques which traditionally hung over the entrance to the family home for a year after death, and were then moved to the parish church. The last hatchment to be added was that of the father of Frederick Cass, Rector of nearby Monken Hadley and a notable local historian.

Many events are planned for this summer. The ceremony of beating the bounds was performed on Rogation Sunday, May 11; and HADAS member Ken Vause was there with his camera to record it. A concert will be given on June 7 by the choir of St Albans Abbey; from June 14-21 there will be a week of community celebration, with a civic service on June 15 to be attended by the Mayor of Barnet.

Perhaps of special interest to HADAS members will be a daily exhibition, from June 30-July 5, of church treasures and documents. The Church’s earliest register of baptisms dates from 1553, burials from 1568 and marriages from 1582.

A souvenir booklet, price 50p, is available at the Church, with messages from the Queen and from St Mary the Virgin’s bishop until recently – Robert Runcie, now translated to Canterbury.
OF MEMBERS AND M0NEY

The Society’s 19th AGM took place on May 8 at Hendon Library. Some 75 of our 440 members were present. Vice-President Eric Wookey conducted the proceedings with his usual charm, verve and good humour -though he failed by a long chalk to beat his own previous record of getting through the meeting in 7 1/2 minutes flat. This time it took an hour – but of course there was money to discuss, and that always makes a difference.
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A special resolution, introduced by Hon Treasurer Jeremy Clynes, was passed. This will raise the annual subscription from April 1981 to £3 for full members, and to £2 for members under 18 or over 60. Family membership remains at £1 for each additional member after the initial subscription of £3.

The following were elected to serve during 1980/81:

Chairman: Councillor Brian Jarman

Vice Chairman: Edward Sammes

Hon Secretary: Brigid Grafton Green

Hon Treasurer: Jeremy Clynes

Committee: Christine Arnott, John Enderby, Peter Fauvel-Clinch, Vincent Foster, George Ingram, Dave King, Daphne Lorimer, Dorothy Newbury; Nell Penny, Ken Vause, Freda Wilkinson, Sheila Woodward, Eric Wookey.

An exotic note was introduced into what is usually a fairly prosaic occasion by Percy Reboul’s description of his current dig (you’ll find more about it elsewhere in the Newsletter). The feature he is exploring in Cedars Close, Hendon, consists of various walls, red brick arches and massive floor gratings. It is, he thinks, possibly a Victorian melon house, demolished c. 1930. Somehow, on a cold May evening in NW4 the idea of melons growing just round the corner brightened the proceedings considerably.
THE JUNE OUTING

…on Sat June 14 is to the West Midlands. The highlight will be a visit to Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, a Gothic gem described by Dr Eric Grant, who leads the expedition, as the very first Gothic mansion in England, dated c. 1780/90, built for MP Sir Roger Newdigate. It has associations with George Eliot, whose father was steward to the estate. En route it is planned to drop in on an excavation in progress.

Members who want to join this expedition are asked to fill in the enclosed application form and post it, with their remittance, to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible.
Other outings ahead are

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne (Raymond Lowe)

Aug 16 – Northamptonshire (Isobel McPherson)

Our long weekend, from Sept 19-21, will be to Southampton and the Isle of Wight. The application list is still open, and Dorothy Newbury will be glad, to hear as soon as possible from members who want to take part.
DIG NEWS

PERCY REBOUL presents a (very) preliminary report from 14 Cedars Close, Hendon, where HADAS has been excavating the back garden of a private house. This followed a report by the owner that he had uncovered an “old wall” during the cutting of trenches to lay modern land drains across his lawn. (The owner has been most helpful and co-operative and we are extremely grateful to him).

The area is one of archaeological significance, being near the site of the old Tenterden Hall (sometimes called Hendon Place) which was demolished in the 1930s and the supposed area of various medieval and Tudor structures. There has, however, been little or no evidence concerning these last two items.
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Excavation quickly revealed that the brick wall was certainly substantial, being some 80 cm wide and 120 cm high. It was also pierced by an arch 80 cm high and 100 cm wide, with a brick floor. Another arch was found a little lower and it is probable that the wall, which may be over 20 m long, is pierced by a series of arches. The whole structure is exceptionally well built and has been well preserved by virtue of being completely buried beneath the soil.

Our first trench, to the south of the wall, revealed the above information and the finds included typical glazed middle to late 19th c. pottery and a nice clay pipe bowl of the same period. Our old friends the oyster shells were also much in evidence.

Investigations by Ted Sammes and Dave King (who has also done an excellent scale drawing of part of the wall) of early maps of the area showed that the site is almost certainly the walled kitchen garden of Tenterden Hall. The 25″ OS maps of 1863 and 1904 show a glass-house complex within the garden and further confirmation was provided by a study of the 1836 Tithe map and the associated books which describe “a melon ground, gardener’s cottage, sheds, etc.” So we called it the Melon House – which may not be right, but sounds unusual!

Since that time it has been all action. A trench on the north side of the wall, much to our surprise, revealed another and probably earlier wall, 23 cm wide, also with its own arches – although differently centred. A splendid Victorian cast-iron grill, the sort you see in greenhouses, was found. This was about 100 x 50 cm and contained the name “J. Weeks, Chelsea.” Old directories show Weeks as “hot-house engineers;” they ceased trading in 1908. We have some of their early advertisements and a catalogue entry, but anyone who could throw more light on them, or on melon houses, would be doing a useful job for us. Associated with the grill were numerous flower pots, metal clips, putty, glass and lead strips – all indicating a greenhouse complex.

In the last few days we have found some Tudor bricks and a whole series of intriguing drains and the top of a brick dome arrangement which defies description but may be quite early. It is causing us that agitated speculation which makes it all worth while. More later!

Percy Reboul would be happy to have a few more volunteer diggers for Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Numbers must be limited owing to the nature of the site; and strong pick-and-shovel diggers rather than neat trowellers are required. Please ring Percy if you can help.

Speaking from West Heath, Hampstead, DAPHNE LORIMER says that there, too, the cry is Diggers Wanted! However, as most members know, West Heath calls for trowelling and sieving, not heavy manual work.

The site is at its best just now. Last year’s trenches are almost finished and new trenches in a rich area are waiting to be started; Daphne hopes members will come whenever they possibly can, on Weds., Sats (but not Sat. June 14, when there is an outing) and Suns from 10. am – 5 pm.

Footnote: Mislaid- the one remaining whooper swan. His trumpeting on the pond beside the site is much missed, but the ducks are having a lovely time!
NEW MESOLITHIC SITE ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH

In April this year Desmond Collins was delighted to be shown a superb mesolithic blade from an area at the edge of Kenwood, close to the site found earlier by HADAS member Phyl Dobbins. The blade (found by Tony Hilton of Sandstone Place, Dartmouth Park Hill) was of pale grey cherty flint, 60 mm long, 13 mm wide and 5 mm thick. Mr Collins describes it as a fine example of blade core technique, resembling the best found at West Heath. It has, however, semi-abrupt retouch on both sides.
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Other flakes have now been found and Desmond Collins reports that a different stratigraphy to that of West Heath is indicated. The finds are appearing at the depth of 27-30 cm below modern ground surface; and the evidence is that the podsol is deeper and mixed with pebbles.

This significant site is being closely watched and all finds are being recorded. Daphne Lorimer.
SURVEYOR’S DELIGHT

By Brian Wibberley.

Examination of the David & Charles (Brunel House, Newton Abbot, Devon) re-issue of the 1890 OS Record sheet No 71 London proved to be of surveying interest. The text appended to the map was written by Dr J. B. Harley, who mentions not only base-lines, triangulation and the like, but also comes near HADAS territory.

“The station at Hampstead Heath was re-visited in 1799 by the Board of Ordnance Surveyors under the direction of Capt William Mudge … with the ‘great theodolite’,” he writes, “… but at Hanger Hill the tower was obliterated because of the ‘wind blowing the thick and darkened atmosphere of London between the stations’.”

One or two interesting features have been noted already, such as, the presence of “the windmill on Hadley Green – but not the one at Arkley, although some brick kilns are shown near Barnet. The Finchley Road crossing with Golders Green Road and North End Road near the present memorial clock is shown in its more pristine state before the Northern Line was in existence, and when Littlewood Farm was the only building near this Junction.

There are many more little delights to be seen and discovered, and interested members are recommended to investigate further.
FARM INTO MUSEUM

By Nell Penny.

The current exhibition at Church Farm House Museum, running until July 5, celebrates 250 years of working farm and 25 years of a museum organised by the Borough’s Library department.

The first recorded farmer at Church Farm was Daniel Kemp who in 1688 rented the farm from the lord of the manor of Hendon, the Marquis of Powis. In 1764 Mr Broadhead bought the farm; his descendants, renamed Brinkman, owned it until 1918.

The most important tenant during this period was Andrew Dunlop, who came to Hendon from Scotland in 1870 and lived in the house until his death in 1904. He seems to have worked a considerable acreage, for when his daughter was married he gave a supper to 30 farm servants. Dunlop’s family sold the house to Hendon Council in 1944; the land had been sold piecemeal earlier for housing development and to create Sunnyfields Park. After 1945 the Council twice decided to demolish the house, so it must have given considerable pleasure to the Mayor, Norman Brett James, a notable local historian, to open it as a museum in 1955.

(EDITORIAL – Mr Brett James was not the Mayor – see correction in Newsletter 113 for more information)

One exhibit explains the construction of the house and the materials used. Seventeenth c. builders were as anxious to conserve heat as their 20th c. successors. They laid a thin layer of thatch on the rafters before they tiled the roof.
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There are 18th and 19th c maps of the local area: one drawn in 1754 records such field names as Thistlely Downage and Great Hundred Acres which are perpetuated in street names today. Photographs of the house from the second half of the 19th c. until today show the changes from rural to suburban Hendon. Butter making equipment is a reminder that this important farm function may have been carried out in what is now the museum’s storage cellar.

It selection of farm tools and horse harness from the museum’s own collection is supplemented by loans by Mr and Mrs Morley of Totteridge. And there is information about the aforesaid Andrew Dunlop who was a considerable Hendon worthy.

The former rather seedy parlour furniture in the downstairs front room of the Museum hats been replaced by a display of library publications. Latest of these is an attractive Jackdaw-type kit about Church Farm. It costs £1.80 and is the work of Library staff who are also HADAS members – David Bicknell, Joanna Corden, Elizabeth Holliday and Gerrard Rootes. Mike Shearing did the art work and design.

Footnote. An interesting slant on the continuity of local building practice is provided by the farm accounts of the manor of Hendon for 1326, preserved in the Muniment Room at Westminster Abbey. They record that the roofs of the barns at the new Hendon Rectory, comp1eted that year for the lord of the manor, the Abbot of Westminster, were all thatched first and then tiled over the thatch. This roofing method must have gone on for at least 500 years. Ref: Trans LMAS, vol. 21; Pt 3, 1967, p 159.
MORE THAN JUST DIGGING

Research Committee Corner

This may be the digging season, but not everyone wants to – or can – get down on hands and knees with a trowel. So the HADAS research committee has other work on hand, some of it related to excavations, some quite separate, which is waiting for members, experienced or not.

Under the committee’s new structure, described in the last Newsletter, research projects are largely divided on a period basis, from prehistoric to industrial, and work underway ranges from study of field walk finds to compilation of a gazetteer of industrial sites. Members interested in joining should contact the group leaders, listed last month, or the committee chairman Sheila Woodward, or secretary Liz Sagues.

It would be of great help to the research committee if members who have any material finds, documents and photographs, or anything else relevant to the Borough’s past could let Sheila Woodward or Liz Sagues know about them. In that way, valuable research resources can be recorded and duplication of effort can be avoided.

After that request, something in return: there have been requests in the past for the names of people to contact for advice and information should anything of archaeological interest arise in specific areas of the Borough. So here they are:

Hendon: Helen Gordon

Finch1ey: Paddy Musgrove

Barnet: Myfanwy Stewart

Cricklewood, Childs Hill, Golders Green: Bill Firth
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Hampstead Garden Suburb: Brigid Grafton Green

Totteridge: Daphne Lorimer

Edgware: Sheila Woodward

Hampstead: Philip Venning

Two research groups will be meeting in the near future.

The Documentary Group, now six strong, will be meeting for the first time on Thursday evening, June 5. More members will be very welcome. If you would like to come along, please give Brigid Grafton Green a ring for further details.

The Industrial Archaeology Group will discuss future plans on Wednesday June 25 at 8 pm. Please let Bill Firth know if you expect to attend.
HENDON – CRADLE OF AVIATION

Nearly 6 years ago – to be precise, in autumn 1974 – HADAS, along with other amenity societies in the Borough of Barnet, was invited to suggest ways of updating the Statutory List of Buildings of Architectural or Historic Interest, originally drawn up under section 32 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962.

Some 30 members took part in the Society’s survey of buildings which followed. As a result, in November 1974, we submitted a 4-part folio of suggestions to the Borough Planning officer, including a section devoted to the preservation of street furniture such as milestones, horse troughs, drinking fountains and post boxes.

Alas, the new Statutory List for the Borough of Barnet has still not been published. We were thanked for our work at the time and told we should see the results fairly soon: but the years have slipped by and the Planning Department is still waiting to hear what the DoE – the central department ultimately responsible – is prepared to do as regards Listing. No wonder patience is an essential virtue in local government.

Meantime Barnet occasionally makes further ad hoc additions to the old Statutory List. The most recent, made just over a year ago, were two on the former Hendon Aerodrome, which is one of the cradles of aviation in this country. BILL FIRTH now provides notes on the two latest additions to the List:

GRAHAME-WHITE HANGAR. Former Hendon Aerodrome, NW9. TQ 221 901

This building has been Listed on account of its historic interest.

It was erected partly prior to 1914 and partly in 1919 by Claude Grahame-White, the great pioneer of British aviation. Unfortunately it is inside RAF Station Hendon and is therefore not normally accessible, but it can be seen from Grahame Park Way and particularly well from beside the Battle of Britain Museum building adjacent to the RAF Museum.

The hangar is in two parts. The east section is smaller, and older, and is built of load-bearing brickwork with “elliptical (roof) trusses of timber lattice webs.” Photographs look very like the Belfast truss roofs of the hangars in the RAF Museum. The newer part is a 4-bay steel-framed structure with full height sliding doors on the north side.

The official description says the east section. Distant observation and a photograph of the NE corner suggest that it is the west section which is older.

A photograph of the interior shows that the “office” section was named in large letters THE GRAHAME-WHITE COMPANY LIMITED.
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FORMER ENTRANCE GATES TO THE GRAHAME-WHITE AVIATION COMPANY LIMITED.

Re-sited at the entrance to the RAF Museum, Grahame Park Way, NW9. TQ 220904

Iron gates of simple vertical bar design with a top panel of pierced capital lettering THE GRAHAME-WHITE AVIATION CO LTD. The original date and position of these double entrance gates is at present uncertain. It is believed that they are pre-1914; and they stood at the now wired-off entrance in Aerodrome Road (TQ 219819) where the pedestrian entrances still have iron gates of similar design. The building immediately inside this entry carries a winged symbol with the letters G and W intertwined, and the date 1915.

There are very few industrial monuments of importance in our Borough, so HADAS was happy that these two had been Listed.

However, the ink was hardly dry on Bill Firth’s notes above when we were informed by the Borough Planning Officer that the Ministry of Defence proposed to demolish the Listed hangar.

We have therefore written urging Barnet to do all it can to protect any buildings or other installations which still remain at what was Hendon Aerodrome and thus to safeguard the early history of one of our most important modern industries. For many years Hendon’s name was synonymous with excellence in aviation, and we should be proud of that. It is not just by chance that the coat of arms of the Borough of Barnet is surmounted by a crest with a 2-bladed Airscrew.
HELP!

A small working party has made a valiant start on clearing the out-house at College Farm, Finchley, which farmer Chris Ower has kindly lent us for storing and working on finds. Volunteers are still badly needed, however, for jobs such as painting. Any surplus pots of cream or white emulsion paint would also be gratefully received. Shelving is to be put up to store finds. Volunteers to help please contact Brigid Grafton Green.

The greatest need initially is to get the electric light system working. We have installed a strip light, but unfortunately there is a short at the switch box, and we need a knowledgeable electrician to check what is wrong. We shall be most grateful if any HADAS member can help with this problem, either personally or by recommending an economical electrician.
A FLAWLESS DAY IN OXFORDSHIRE

Report by CRAIGIE BESWICK on the first 1980 outing.

The church of St James the Great at South Leigh, Oxon, was the first place we visited on May 17. The earliest chapel on the site was probably Norman, and was perhaps re-built and enlarged between the 13th/16th c. A Norman window and door survive, as do Early English and Perpendicular windows. The greatest glory of the church, however, is the murals, discovered during restoration work in 1872 under four coats of whitewash. Four can now be scan, and a fifth is partly visible. The paintings are 14th/15th c; those depicting the last judgement are still a most vivid warning of the perils of the evil life.

In the largest painting, round the chancel arch, souls are being summoned from their graves by trumpeting angels. The archangel on the north side, dressed in white, calls forth the saved, who are received by St Peter at the gates of heaven; the archangel on the south, clothed in dark colours, marshals the damned, some of whom, bound together with a spiked band, are dragged towards the flames of hell on the south wall.
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Next to the painting of hell is a large picture of the archangel Michael weighing a soul. In his left hand he holds a sword, and in his right a balance of judgement with two panniers, one occupied by a soul, the other by a devil trumpeting to attract other devils to his pannier in order to weigh it down towards the soul’s damnation. But at the other side the Virgin Mary redresses the balance with rosary beads.

Next stop was North Leigh Roman villa, one of the largest in northern Europe. The site was first excavated in 1815-16 and again in 1908, when money was raised for more work and for conservation. In 1952 the Ministry of Works took responsibility for the site, which covers about 13 acres.

Buildings included living rooms, dining rooms (some with hypocausts”) and bath houses; they were constructed between the 2nd-4th c. Some fine mosaic pavements have been uncovered in the geometric style favoured by the Corinium (Cirencester) school. One, now protected from the weather, is in good enough condition to give a fair picture of the craftsmen’s skill. The villa may have supported a hundred Romanised Britons.

A 2O-minute drive took us to Minster Lowell, whore we picnicked in a meadow that sloped gently down to the River Windrush. To the left were the towering ruins of the huge manor house built in the first half of the 15th c. by William, 7th Baron Lovell of Tichmarsh. In the mid 18th c. Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, dismantled the buildings. Some continued to be used, mainly for farming, but in general they fell into decay. A drawing by Alan Sorrell gives his idea of what a magnificent manor house once stood there. Enough is loft of lofty walls and beautiful archways to confirm that it was a building of great grandeur.

We were reluctant to leave Minster Lovell. The perfect early summer day, the winding river, the rich green meadows and the architectural beauties made many of us decide to go back some day and linger. But now it was back into the coach and on to Oxford. Some of the group spent an absorbing hour in the Pitt-Rivers Museum admiring the fine ethnographical collection, while others enjoyed a visit to the Ashmolean, the oldest public museum in the country. {Elias Ashmole, the 17th c. antiquarian who gave his name to the Museum, has links with the Borough of Barnet.. He lived at Belmont, Mount Pleasant, East Barnet, where Ashmole School, in Burleigh Gardens, near Southgate station, commemorates the fact).

It was a most successful and pleasant excursion. We are indebted, as always, to Dorothy Newbury, who came out early on Saturday morning to see the coach off at the Quadrant. We were sorry that she could not come with us. We should like to thank the organisers, Sheila Woodward and Wendy Page, not only for all the work they did that day, but also for the immense amount of preliminary preparation that made the arrangements so flawless. We also thank Mrs Banham for her customary generosity in passing a box of delicious sweets round the coach.

Tailpiece from one of those who explored the delights of the Pitt Rivers Collection.

It is a glorious mixed bag of objects and facts which can best be described as a Jack Horner collection: you put in a thumb and (almost always) pullout a plum!

As an anthropologist General Pitt-Rivers pioneered the theory that the arts of mankind (using the word “arts” in its widest possible sense) progressed by a process of evolution. To prove this, he built up an immense collection of objects, classifying them in series which showed how complex and specialised forms evolved from simple, generalised primitive ones.
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Because he began as a soldier (he was at the siege of Sebastopol) his collection, and his theory, started with weaponry; it ended by covering virtually every aspect of life. Here is just one example -from darkest Yorkshire – of how the theory is demonstrated in his collection.

Under the heading Avril, Arvil or Arval Bread there is a description of biscuits made for the funeral of Mrs Oliver, who died on Nov. 7 1828, aged 52. These delicacies were contained in wrappings, one of which is on show, inscribed with three devout quatrains by T. Robinson, Surgeon, of Settle. It was customary at that time to distribute specially prepared biscuits to mourners in these pious packets, sealed with black wax.

Next, the ancestry of Mrs Oliver’s funeral biscuits is taken back a stage further. The 19th c. custom, we are told, was probably derived from the earlier tradition of “sin-eating,” by which the sins of the deceased were transferred, for a fee, to a parson who consumed food and drink handed to him over the coffin. That habit, in turn, is suggested as being a survival of a much earlier prehistoric cannibalism by which, if you ate a part of the deceased, you inherited his virtues and, even better, his abilities.

So Mrs Oliver’s biscuits link up in a remote kind of way with the brain eating customs of Borneo head hunters and the supposed habits of one of our earliest ancestors, Pekin Man.
FAMILY HISTORY

Members of the North Middlesex Family History Society are currently producing two indices. One is of the 1641 Protestation Rolls for the county of Middlesex (60 parishes). The other is of Monumental Inscriptions pre-190O for Middlesex. The fee for using an index is 75p plus 10p postage. Full details are obtainable from the Hon. Sec, Mr H.F.B. Moore.
Church Terrace Reports: No 5

A FORGERY AND A FOREIGNER.

The series continues with another article by EDWARD SAMMES on coins from the site.

THE FORGERY

Forgeries appear early in the history of coins, either using vary debased alloys or plated coins. There is evidence for them in Greece as early as the 5th c. BC. They were common during the Roman Empire, first during the reign of the Severi, a dynasty founded by Septimius Sevarus (AD 193-211), and secondly in the troubled period between AD 271-286.

J. J. North, in vol 2 of English Hammered Coinage, considers that only coins made at a later date to deceive collectors are forgeries in the numismatic sense; others throw light on the conditions of the period and should be accepted as articles of interest and value.

From trench D3 a coin was excavated in January 1974. It came from beneath a layer of fallen or dumped roofing tiles. Its appearance suggested that it was a corroded copper coin. Attempts to clean it in alkaline glycerol wore unsuccessful and in a partly cleaned state it was submitted to the Dept of coins and Medals at the British Museum.
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There it was cleaned and identified as a forgery of a groat of the reign of Henry V (1413-22), Mint of London. The high copper content of the alloy was the reason for the original confusion. There are two explanations for the coin. It could be a contemporary forgery; or it could be one of a later date, the mid-15th c. being suggested. Soon after the accession for the first time of Edward IV in 1461 he was faced with a monetary crisis and coins were then struck of lighter weight. With those two monarchs we are dealing, so far as Henry V is concerned, with the later phase of the Hundred Years War with France; while with Edward IV we are in the Wars of the Roses.

The groat (4d) was introduced into the English coinage in the reign of Edward I during a recoining, 1279-80. It continued in use in Britain until 1355, when it was withdrawn; it remained in use in India and British Guiana until 1945. It still has a limited use in forming part of the Royal Maundy money.

THE FOREIGNER

The Middle Ages saw the decay of feudalism; towns and cities grew up under a middle class more law-abiding than the barons, and by the 14th c. much wealth had been accumulated through trade. Wool was shipped to F1anders and wine imported from Bordeaux. Fleets of ships from Venice and Genoa brought luxuries from the Mediterranean. As has already been noted in Reports 2 and 3, small change was often scarce. To remedy this, money of low denomination of continental origin was often used. One such source was Venice.

The foreign coin found on the dig has been cleaned and identified as a silver soldino from Venice about 1450. It is badly worn and it was not possible to identify the Doge who issued it. Money was issued in Venice from 1280 until the end of the Republic in 1797.

The Venetians usually set sail in May, when the weather was fair, going to Flanders and England. In England they built up a trade in wool, mainly through London, Sandwich and Southampton. The fleets of galleys in which they sailed brought, besides their wares, large numbers of small coins, many in base metal. They came to be called galeyhalpens, i.e. Galley Halfpence. They circulated illegally in the country during the 15th c. Successive laws against them had little effect, and our coin is one such. Some were still being imported in the 16th c.

I am indebted to Miss M. M. Archibald and Mr S. A. Castle of the Dept. of Coins and Medals at the British Museum for arranging the cleaning and identification of these two coins.

Further reading:

Finn P – An article on the Groat, in Coins & Medals, May 1969, vol 6, pp 383-4

Laing Lloyd R – Coins and Archaeology, Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1969

North J J – English Hammered Coinage; vol 2, Spink & Son 1960

Seaby H A – Standard Catalogue, British Coins. Revised periodically. 11th edition 1972
FAREWELL TO A HENDON CHURCH

George Ingrain writes of the late United Reformed Church, Brent Street.

This small church had been closed for loss than two years (since September 1978) when the demolition men moved in to pull it down last month. Many passers-by paused to watch the destruction, and to murmur “What a shame!” Its going breaks another link with mid-19th c. Hendon.
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The earliest recorded meeting of the founders of the church was on Aug 4 1854, when they decided to build a Congregational church. It was so called till about 1972, when the name was changed to United Reformed Church, as a result of union between the Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

In 1854 a suitable piece of land was secured “in the best part of the village, with a frontage on Brent Street of 80 ft and a depth of 150 ft, for £12 a month on a 99-year lease, with an option to purchase within 10 years for £300. At this time “the parish consisted of an area of about 8500 acres and a population of about 3500… there was the small central village of Church End around the 12th c. church of St Mary, with nine other hamlets over the countryside from Mill Hill in the north to Golders Green in the south, a land of sloping meadows, meandering streams and pleasing vistas. One of the hamlets was named Brent Street and the thoroughfare of the same name running through it, alongside which our church is built, is reputed to have been from earliest times the regular way taken by travellers into London from the Midlands and Northwest.”

The building was opened on July 18, 1855. The architectural description states that the church was built in:

“the decorated style of the 15th c. The western front has four entrance doors, which are flanked on either side by heavy octagonal turrets surmounted by decorated spires. The material employed is Kentish ragstone laid in random courses and pointed triangularly in dark mortar. The facings to the windows, doors and buttresses are of Bath stone. The original windows were of stained glass by Lavers of London. The roof is carried by heavy, darkly-stained oak hammer-beams and left open to a considerable height . .. originally designed to seat 400, and the total cost, including the freehold of the ground, was approximately £3500. In 1876 a gallery was added which provided additional seating for 100 people.”

A “progressive Sunday School” had been established before the building of the church, in premises used for a day school in New Brent St. Later the Spalding Hall was built and the Sunday School was transferred there. The number of scholars regularly exceeded 200.

On the night of Sept 19 1940 both church and Spalding Hall were hit by bombs. After first-aid repairs the usual services were “faithfully maintained in a rather dismal church.” It was not till the final repairs including new windows and an overhaul of the organ were completed 10 years later that a full recovery was possible, with help from the War Damage Comm.

We are indebted to the Rev L. Al Stringer, last Pastor of the Church (1969-77) for providing a copy of the Centenary Booklet, on which much of this article has been based.
NEWS FROM THE HADAS LIBRARY

Our now Hon. Librarian, June Porges, invites members to meet her at Avenue House one evening to browse through our books. Please ring her to fix a date. Meantime, these are some recent additions:

Presented Anonymously:

Branigan, K.- Foundations of Palatial Crete: survey of Cretan Bronze 1970

Briard, J. – Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe: megaliths to Celts. 1976

Cartledge, P. – Sparta and Lakonia: regional history 1300-362 BC. 1979

Craik, E M. – Dorian Aegean. 1980

Johnson, S. – Later Roman Britain. 1980

Wacher, J. – The Coming of Rome. 1979

Journal of Mithraic Studies vol 2 pt 2 1978

Art History vol 2 pt 4, Dec 1979

World Archaeology vol 2, pts 1, 2 & 3, Juno & Oct 1979, Feb 1980
Page 12

TROLLEY POLE SURVEY

along FRIERN BARNET ROAD, LONDON N11 by Master B. G. Wibberley & Mr B. L. Wibberley MSc, CEng, MIM prepared for: Hendon & District Archaeological Society November 3, 1978.

This survey was carried out at the request of Mr W. Firth, representing the Industrial Archaeology section of HADAS. The express desire is to record that some twenty years after the last trolley buses ran in the area, some trolley wire support poles were still standing, although in course of replacement. These few poles were still in existence because of their continued use as lamp standards or power cable support poles.

A small extension to the original suggestion was carried cut because it was discovered that a number of other lamp standards were also being replaced as part of the same renewal programme. These included two concrete standards, denoted type 3, on Woodhouse Road; and four ornate Cast iron standards, denoted type 2, interposed with the trolley poles along Friern Barnet Road. According to Mr Firth these latter standards were bought second-hand from Hendon Council by the Friern Barnet Council. The fact that the HC initials below the coat of arms had been removed from three of these standards would appear to confirm this. A unique style of standard, not due for removal at present, was discovered on the railway bridge. This has been recorded here and is denoted type 4.

It is worth noting that the present writer witnessed what was perhaps the beginning of the end for these interesting pieces of street furniture. Being a frequent commuter along this road, I was surprised to see one evening some months ago that one of the cables slung across the road was burning. No doubt this occurrence reflected the rather poor condition of the cables, a situation which perhaps galvanised the Engineers Department of the Borough of Barnet into its present action of replacing not only the wiring but the adapted trolley poles too.

The following page shows the plan of the area in which the survey was carried out; and after that comes a page of detailed sketches of trolley poles and lamp standards. All distances have been measured in metres.

(EDITORIAL – to view these pages, select the following links. Page 15 shows the map. Pages 13/14 show the sketches – split over two pages since the original is larger than A4)

newsletter-111-may-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

DATES AHEAD

I. Roman revels and matters more businesslike:

A final reminder that the 1980 AGM will be held on Thursday – yes, Thursday – May 8 at Hendon Library, The Burroughs, NW4. Coffee from 8 pm, AGM at 8.30 pm and, afterwards, slides of some of the year’s activities, including the Roman Banquet. The chair will be taken by our most senior Vice-President – who also helped found the Society 19 years ago – Eric Wookey.

2. Out into the country – The May outing

How about a trip to Oxford and Oxfordshire in Maytime? This will be the first HADAS outing of the year and as we hope to include visits to a Roman villa, the ruins of a medieval manor house, a church with medieval wall-paintings and an archaeological museum there should be something to suit everyone’s taste. Further details , and a booking form will be found at the end of the Newsletter.

To repeat the list of pleasures ahead, the other outings this summer will be as follows:

June 14 – Warwick and the West Midlands, led by Eric Grant

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne, led by Raymond Lowe

August 16 – Northamptonshire, led by Isobel McPherson

And the long weekend – September 19, 20 and 21 – will be to Southampton and the Isle of Wight

3. Time for trowelling:

West Heath starts work again on Saturday May 3 and digging will continue through the season on Wednesdays and weekends, reports Daphne Lorimer. It is hoped to organise the occasional full-time weekly digs – provisionally, one is being contemplated for the week beginning Monday July 14. The site – just in case new members are unfamiliar with it – is a Mesolithic encampment, which has produced large quantities of microliths and waste flakes and some enigmatic environmental evidence.

Every trowel is wanted. West Heath is always full of surprises. Come and see if this season will produce an even bigger one. This will probably be the last season and we want to obtain every scrap of information we can from the site.

4. A silver jubilee celebration:

Not a HADAS event, but certainly one for your diary: From May 3 to July 5 an exhibition at Church Farm House Museum to celebrate the museum’s own silver jubilee, covering life at Church Farm from 1688 to 1944.
Page 2

LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD

Field walks, detailed studies of the West Heath flints, the compilation of a gazetteer of industrial archaeological sites in the borough – these are some of the planned activities of the new, energetic Research Committee. They are being organised by different groups – prehistoric, Roman, medieval, industrial and documentary – under the benign control of the main committee. Prospective researchers should make contact with the leader of the group in which they are most interested – the names are given below, in the brief summaries of the projected work.

The newly-formed Prehistoric Group is, writes its leader Daphne Lorimer, the old West Heath crowd and is very occupied with the organisation of material for the five-year report. The interim report was held up by the C14 date but, come what may, the report will be up-dated and submitted for publication at the end of the year.

Study of finds from previous HADAS field walks is already under way by the Roman Group, on alternate Tuesday evenings. The first session was scheduled for April 29. Contact Jenny Griffiths for more details. Next on the list of things to do is completion of study of the Brockley Hill finds. And, thirdly, the group plans to investigate the route 167, which is supposed to cross Copthall and continue along the Ridgeway to Arkley and St Albans.

Helen Gordon, who leads the group, will be contacting anyone who has already expressed an interest in Roman research, but those not content to wait for her approach should ring her or Jenny Griffiths.

The Medieval Group is led by Ted Sammes, whose sterling work on the Church Terrace finds is being published, instalment by instalment, in the Newsletter. Contact him to learn of future plans.

The first task of the Industrial Archaeology Group, writes its leader, Bill Firth, is to complete the gazetteer of known sites in the Borough. When we know better what there is we can plan to investigate it properly. Secondly it is hoped that we can interest more members so that we can perhaps widen our activities (so that we can interest more members so that we can widen our activities so that we can …) Plans have not been finalised, so watch this space.

The Society’s new research arrangements envisage some back-up service for the groups engaged in active excavation and field work. Members who fancy doing a little quiet documentary research will be most welcome in the Documentary Group, writes its leader Brigid Grafton Green. They will be particularly welcome if they can spare the sort of time this kind of research requires: it just can’t be done at speed.

The London Borough of Barnet’s Local History Collection possesses many written records, maps, drawings and old photographs which we may want to consult from time to time; Hertford Record Office has material from the northern part of the borough) and there are other documents which may be relevant to our projects at County Hall, in the Westminster Abbey Muniment Room and even as far afield as All Souls College, Oxford.

Anyone who would like to help is invited to contact Mrs Grafton Green, who hopes soon to arrange a Documentary Group meeting to discuss future work.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY

To mark the 25th anniversary of Church Farm House Museum, Barnet libraries have published a folder packed full of information about the Museum and related matters. It even includes a cut-out model of the farm. It costs £l.80 from the Museum or Hendon Library.
Page 3

SMOKED OUT – OR THE PERILS OF EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Sheila Woodward hears of them in comparative safety, at the Prehistoric Society Spring Conference.

Experimental archaeology was the theme of the Prehistoric Society Spring Conference held at the Museum of London on March 29 and 30. It is an aspect of archaeology which bas received increasing attention in recent years, and the range of current experimental work was well illustrated by the varied nature of the conference papers.

The modern British Army helped Mr Brian Hobley at “The Lunt” Roman Fort to calculate the time and effort expended by the Roman Army in building the fort’s turf ramparts and wooden gateway. Dr Peter Fowler’s series of slides dramatically demonstrated the changes in the Overton Down experimental earthwork from the sharp white lines of the new bank and ditch 20 years ago to the present weathered and plant-colonised contours. Regular observation of the earthwork will continue and Dr Fowler declared his intention to be present at the survey in the year 2020, even if he has to be lowered from a helicopter in his wheelchair!

“Living a Stone Age Life” was the title of an entertaining paper and cine film presented by Messrs de Haas (father and son) from the Netherlands and other experimental villages were described by Dr Callahan (USA) and Dr Hansen (Denmark). Dr Hansen, emphasising the importance of not only building but also living in such villages, recounted the salutary experience of inhabiting an “Iron Age” house at Lejre during the winter. The daytime fire on the central hearth melted the snow on the thatched roof, which then froze into solid ice when the fire was damped down at night. When the fire was rekindled next day, the smoke had no means of escape through the roof and the hut became uninhabitable.

Experiments in stone and bone and metal working were reported by Drs Newcomer, Slater and Pleiner. Dr Newcomer warned of the danger of experiments becoming an end in themselves: for example, the making of a finer stone tool. The purpose of the experiments was to provide information about the method of manufacture of ancient artefacts and to enable us to study their function.

Mr R. Darrah spoke on the reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon houses at West Stow and the information obtained about the timber and tools used and the sequence for building such houses” and Dr Sean McGrail gave a lively account of testing the seaworthiness and passenger and cargo capacity of ancient craft.

Dr Peter Reynolds, in charge of the Butser Iron Age Farm experiment, talked about the weeds with which the early farmers had to contend and speculated on their methods of sowing and reaping. But man does not live by bread alone, and the technical accomplishment that produced the bronze “lurs” of Denmark and the stringed instruments of Anglo-Saxon and medieval England were vividly described by Mr Graeme Lawson and Dr Peter Holmes. The latter illustrated his lecture with a delightful example of the melodic potential of the six-stringed lyre. Altogether, a most stimulating and interesting conference.
A FAMILY OF IRON WILL.. THE DARBYS OF COALBROOKDALE

Bill Firth reports on the April lecture.

The weather always seems to be foul on the evening of the HADAS annual lecture on industrial archaeology and April 1 proved no exception. However, this did not seem to deter many members and there was a large audience to listen to Mr Ian Lawley, Research Supervisor for the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.
Page 4

The Ironbridge Gorge Museum may have been Mr Lawley’s title, but he gave us much more than that. He started with some history to sat the scene and not only peopled it with some of the chief characters but also illustrated it with examples of the output of the industries in the Gorge and made these the more topical by including examples from London which we may either know or can go and see. Iron has been worked at Coalbrookdale for more than 400 years and this still continues in modern foundries turning out cast iron parts for Aga cookers and other purposes. However, it is primarily on the innovations of the Darby family that the industrial importance and fame of the area depend.

Abraham Darby I was a Quaker born near Dudley but living and working in the foundry business in Bristol, who, in 1707, took out a patent for the manufacture of bellied cast iron cooking pots. In 1708 he took over the blast furnace in Coalbrookdale, which was built in the mid 17th century and, following rebuilding, in January 1709 he began to smelt iron ore using coke rather than charcoal as the fuel. Possibly the most important factor in Darby’s new process was that the increased demand for iron and thus for charcoal, and also for wood for ships, was rapidly denuding the country’s forests. Darby’s invention was instrumental in preserving some of them.

Before he died in 1717 Abraham Darby I had built a second furnace lower down the valley and established a successful industry in the area. His son, Abraham Darby II, was largely responsible for the great expansion of the Shropshire iron industry. It was his son, Abraham Darby III, who built the famous Iron Bridge.

Abraham Darby II had a daughter, Hannah, who married Richard Reynolds. Their son William developed the industry of the area by starting the manufacture of china at what later became the famous Coalport works and, among other activities, chain making and boat building.

In the early 1800s the workmanship at Coalbrookdale declined and it was Abraham Darby IV and his brother Alfred who reorganised and re-vitalised the works together with Francis Darby who introduced the production of art castings.

Having shown us slides of the early works and of the Darby family, Mr Lawley went on to show examples of the products, including plaques depicting the last Supper ornamental plates and, as an example of iron work combining the output of the Coalport works, desk ink stands with china ink wells. The heyday of the iron works was reached at the Great Exhibition, the famous gates from which, cast at Coalbrookdale, still stand, not far from the exhibition site, in Kensington Gardens. Later, lamp posts and other street furniture were produced and sent throughout the world. London examples are in Trafalgar Square. For a time, however, designs deteriorated and were in very bad taste.

Mr Lawley told a particularly good story of the Swan fountain intended for Sandringham, which was “banished” to Warrington and latterly, not being very welcome there, was left to languish in a park dump before the Museum Trust, in a superb piece of detective investigation, recovered the various bits and pieces for re-erection at the museum.

Finally Mr Lawley touched briefly on the Ironbridge Gorge Museum as a whole and, particularly, on the Blists Hill Open Air Museum where, in addition to the preservation of some items in situ, others which would otherwise be demolished, are being reconstructed.

Six square miles of museum under constant development can hardly be covered in one lecture. Mr Lawley did much better in concentrating on the history and background as an introduction to the area and gave us a most interesting evening.
Page 5

INTO HISTORY BY BUS AND TRAM

Brigid Grafton Green visits London’s latest museum.

A new museum opened in London last month beneath the elegant ironwork roof that spans the former Flower Market at Covent Garden. Five years ago the GLC organised a competition to find a new use for this building originally designed by William Rogers and erected in 1871. The winner was the London Transport Executive, which put in a plan for a permanent home for its collection of vehicles, then in temporary accommodation at Syon House, plus much ancillary material such as models, photographs, paintings, posters and maps. The vehicles included horse and mechanised omnibuses, coaches, trams, railway stock and trolley buses. The new museum also has a lecture theatre and a reference library for students engaged in transport research (open 10.30 am to 5 pm Tuesday to Saturday, by prior arrangement).

The displays start with models of the Thames wherries which for centuries provided the main public transport system for a much smaller London. Then comes the excitement of the first horse omnibuses – copied, in July 1829, by George Shillibeer from an idea which had been pioneered in the previous year in Paris. The first London route ran from Paddington to the City, via Islington. Mr Shi11ibeer, advertising his new service, pointed out “that a person of great respectability attends his Vehicle as Conductor; and every possible attention will be paid to the accommodation of ladies and Children”.

Models of cabriolets (at first it was considered vulgar to shorten the word to “cabs”) are shown: “coffin” cabs in the 1820s, so called because of the shape of the passenger seat, then four-wheeled “growlers” which could also cope with your luggage and, in 1837, the hansom of which 7,500 were on the streets of London by 1903.

Horse-drawn omnibuses show steady improvements; climbing rungs at the back are replaced by stairs, at first open but later covered. The open upper deck acquires a centre bench where you sat back to back; this was the “knifeboard bus “, so called because it resembled the Victorian domestic knife-cleaning board. One of the first knifeboard buses, “The Times”, is on show, painted in green and gold and drawn by life-size replicas of two magnificent greys. It bears a name with Hendon connections – that of Thomas Tilling, Job Master. It plied between Camberwell, Oxford Street and Peckham. Tilling (1825-83), whose buses brought him great fame, lived for some time at Guttershedge Farm. Hendon, (now Park Road, NW4) and his name is on the list which we put forward to the borough in 1978 for commemoration by a blue plaque.

In 1910 the motor bus arrived. Long before that, however, horse-drawn trams, running on their own tracks, had made an appearance. They too steadily improved, with the arrival of electric trams in 1901 and, by 1932, the luxury “Bluebird”, equipped with heaters and fully upholstered seats. The last London “Bluebird” was sold to Leeds in 1951. In 1931, the swift, smooth, swooping trolleybus came on the London scene – a vehicle which, to many suburban commuters, was the acme of speed and comfort and the passing of which is still much mourned.

There are vehicles, too, from the early suburban railways run by the main line companies. The first in London was the London and Greenwich, opened 1836, which brought passengers in to London Bridge. It was followed by local lines coming into Euston (1837), Paddington (1838), Shoreditch (1840), Fenchurch Street (1841), Waterloo (1848) and Kings Cross (1852). Crossing London, however, from one terminus to another was a nightmare, and by the 1850s plans were on foot to link the mainline stations by underground railway. In 1860 work began on the Metropolitan Line, and the first urban underground railway in the world opened on January 10, 1863, from Paddington to Farringdon Street, via Kings Cross.
Page 6

Some of the most interesting exhibits in this section show how much attitudes have changed. The luxurious double-car Rothschild Saloon, for instance, was specially built to carry Ferdinand de Rothschild’s eminent guests to house parties at his country estate Waddesden Manor, near Wendover. Similarly the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos had a private line – the Wotton Tramway – built in 1871, to convey goods and passengers to his estate. Railway carriages are marked with notices like “3rd class” and “Ladies Only” and the early Underground lifts have large printed warnings “Beware of Pickpockets”. The earliest locomotive on show was built in a glory of brass and ironwork and red paint in 1866 for the Metropolitan Line into Baker Street, and was refurbished and rebuilt in 1908 at the Neasden works.

The photographs and documentary exhibits are also worth study. There are some photographs of local interest to HADAS – showing Golders Green, for instance (and including the famous 1904 “cross-roads in the country” shot), and a plan of Hampstead Garden Suburb. Reproductions of the early transport posters are used to colourful effect in the hall, and the museum shop provides a whole range of reproductions at £1.50 each. The museum booklet (not an itemised catalogue) is 60 pence – 30 pages, with black and white and many colour illustrations.

The museum is open lOam to 6pm every day except Christmas and Boxing Days. Admission is £1.40, children and pensioners 60p. It has quite a good snack bar, with coffee, salads and sandwiches.
THE COMP’S TALE

Another in Percy Reboul’s series of tape transcripts.

I was born in Burn Street, Gateshead, in 1906, the eldest of eight children and went to Prior Street school which I left at the age of 13. My father was a glass bottle maker who was mainly on night work and suffered rather poor health. One of my memories of school was an old schoolteacher named Stephenson who got all the children to bring him their fathers’ tobacco coupons with which he got goods for himself.

It was hopeless for jobs in 1919 and the only possibility seemed to be a coalmine job at Scotswood, Newcastle, where they took my name and said they would let me know when something came up. On my way home I saw a notice in a shop in Collingwood Road, Newcastle, which said, “office boy wanted”. I went in and saw a Mr Laybourne, who told me that the job had been filled but that he needed an apprentice compositor for his print department. He asked me to spell the word recommendation, which I was able to do, and I got the job.

I was apprenticed for seven years and paid 10 shillings a week, of which I had sixpence and gave the rest to my mother. On my first day I was shown the proofing press and my job was to clean the black ink roller every night so that the compositors could have a fresh start the following day. I was so keen that 1 cleaned it up every time that it was used until I was told that ink was expensive, and one cleaning a day was enough! I was taken to the type cases, shown their arrangement and how to set type by hand and later how to set display type.

There were no “art” people then. The compositors did the layout and learned how to become artists in type. Mr Laybourne, the boss, was President of the Madrigal Society and each apprentice in turn as the Society came up with a concert, was asked to arrange a page for the front of the programme.

Laybourne’s were general printers. There was no newspaper advertising as we know it today, and the big stores such as Coxons and Bainbridges had their own catalogues printed. That was a big job, sought after by every printer. Perhaps 15,000 catalogues would go out by post.
Page 7

We did printing for Reyrolles the electrical people, building industry estimating forms, weigh-bills for the coal mines and the Newcastle tramway.

The firm employed seven compositors, two apprentice compositors and a works foreman in charge of the machine print room binding paper and despatch department. In the print department there were five letterpress printing machines, mainly British equipment; and we did every side of printing except block making. The working hours were from 8 am to 6 pm on weekdays, 8 am to l pm on Saturdays, with one hour for lunch.

I was the general runabout for the compositor. Every pay day, it was my job to buy beer and cigarettes for the men. I had a pole with notch cut in it and I went to the Jug and Bottle to get beer in the men’s own cans which I hung on the pole. Woodbines were bought in the packet of five for a penny and the men also bought sweets for the girls. The average wage was about £2. lOs to £3 and the foreman got about £5 per week.

In those days there were compositors employed solely for breaking up the type and redistributing it back into the type cases after the job was done. This was sometimes done by casual labour and as the apprentice it was my job to go to the Union office to get a man. I remember on one occasion going to the small office where compositors wanting work sat and asking a man if he would direct me to the secretary’s office. He asked where I was from and I told him. When I returned to work a little later the man I had asked to direct me was hard at work at Laybourne’s, having made good use of the information!

When I came out of my time in 1927 it was the custom for all apprentices to be sacked. You needed further experience elsewhere. I couldn’t find a job at all until a friend pointed out in a religious magazine that a London firm was looking for a compositor. This was the time of the hunger marches. I went to London and joined the Wicliffe Press, Finchley, on a month’s trial. A difference then arose with the union. The London Society of Compositors didn’t want me on the grounds that I was taking the job of a London man. I didn’t see the logic of this as the man I had replaced had gone to Liverpool. My pride would not let me return to Newcastle where so many friends had seen me off. When I did so later on a return visit I saw some of my school mates who had never had a job since leaving school. I was lucky.

I am still at the Wicliffe Press; which prints the Churchman’s Magazine for the Protestant Truth Society and an annual religious diary of 20-40,000 copies. To help finances we undertake local work – for example the organisations in Hampstead Garden Suburb such as the Dramatic Society.

Printing as we knew it has nearly priced itself out of existence. The small printer, like the small shopkeeper, is going out of business – which saddens me. There don’t seem to be the craftsmen about who learned about all aspects of the craft. Today it is highly specialised.
DIGGING INTO RELIGION

Helen O’Brien previews an educational film in which HADAS features.

The West Heath dig is featured, though somewhat fleetingly, in the first of a new series of educational films for secondary schools called “Religion and Civilisation”, about world religions. There are 10 films in the series and the first of these, “Origins”, was previewed recently at the Essential Cinema in London. “Origins” explores the growth of religion from its roots in prehistoric times and West Heath is used almost by way of introduction – to show archaeologists at work on a prehistoric site.
Page 8

Charles Harris of Rarmersue Ltd, who produces and directs the series, wanted an excavation sequence to illustrate the idea of “searching for clues” of prehistoric beliefs. A small team from Rarmersue visited the site last summer and spent several hours filming the work in the trenches. In fact only a few general shots and a close-up of Philip Venning uncovering a large blade were needed.

The main part of the 20-minute film features famous ancient sites, including stone circles, megalithic tombs and the caves of the Dordogne, as the evidence for prehistoric religious beliefs is discussed. As well as schools, universities and clubs throughout the English-speaking world will be offered the series. Foreign versions may also be produced, depending on demand.

This is a most attractive and informative short film. We wish the series every success.
BOOKBOX INTO LIBRARY

It was in January 1974 that George Ingram took over “for an experimental period” the organisation of the HADAS Bookbox, which had been started the previous year by Philippa Bernard. The “experiment” was successful enough to last six years – and it was with much regret that the committee heard recently that Mr Ingram wished to give up the librarianship.

In that time the Bookbox, which originally fitted into a small suitcase, has grown enormously. It is now a library, not a bookbox, and it has been moved for safe keeping to the HADAS room at Avenue House. We are lucky in having found another member, June Forges, who lives in Finchley not far from Avenue House, willing to take over the librarianship.

In the summer when there are no regular meetings it is sometimes difficult for members to use the library. Mrs Forges suggests that any member who wants to borrow, or wants to know if the library possesses a certain book, should ring and consult her.
Local History 246 “Harrow as it Was”, compiled by Brian Girling, 1975 Presented by Dorothy Newbury Misc 215 “The Romans” (a study of past culture), by H.H. Barrow, Pelican Paperback, 1949 Presented by Jeremy Clynes

Archaeology Roman 188 “The Coins of Roman Britain” by Andrew Burnett (booklet)

Presented by Brigid Grafton Green British History 71 “Celtic Britain” by Lloyd Laing, Routledge and Kegan Paul,1979 Anonymous donation Local History 243 Camden History Review No. 7, Camden History Society 244 “Barnet and Hadley almshouses” by W.H. Gelder, 1979 Both purchased by the Society

245 “The Book of Remembrance and War Record of Mill Hill School” complied by Norman B. Brett-James Presented by Mill Hill and Hendon Historical Society

Page 9
British History 72 (2nd copy) “What happened in History” by Gordon Childe 2 (2nd copy) “Man and the Vertebrates” by Alfred S. Romer Archaeology General 123 “Prehistoric Britain” by J. & C. Hawkes 254 “Archaeology from the Earth” by Sir Mortimer Wheeler Foreign F44 “The Pyramids of Egypt” by I.E.C. Edwards F45 “The Hittites” by O.E. Gurney F46 “The Pre-history of East Africa” by Sonia Cole F47 “Foundations in the Dust” by Seton Lloyd F48 “The Stone Age of Northern Africa” by C.E.M. McBurney F49 “Early Anatolia” by Seton Lloyd F50 “The Dead Sea Scrolls” by John M. Allegro F51 “The Pre-history of European Society” by Gordon Childe All Published by Pelican Anthropolgy 1 (3rd copy) “History of the Primates” (4th edition) by W.E. le Gros Clark 222 “From Savagery to Civilisation” by Grahame Clark All donated by Miss Phyllis Dobbins

PUBLICATIONS

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 13 volumes (1955 onwards). Donated by Miss Dobbins.

The Archaeological Journal, vols 12,(?128) 129, 130 (1971, 1972, 1973) and

Current Arcaheology, vols 43 to 53 inclusive (March 1974 to November 1975). Donated by Liz Holliday.
DOWN ON THE FARM

The College Farm open days were, by all accounts a huge success. Dave King, who with Nell Penny organised the HADAS contribution, estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 people turned up to see the animals and other exhibits. The HADAS display featured an exhibition of the history of College Farm itself, telling the farm’s story, largely through photographs, from the time the Express Dairy took it over around a century ago to the present day. The display included photographs from the Express Dairy’s archives, from a former manager of the farm and from the HADAS collection. To complement it, there was material on other farms in the borough, some of it loaned by Church Farm House and Barnet Museums. And, going back to the days before farming was developed, there was a display of flints from West Heath. HADAS members stewarded the exhibition, while the Finchley Society, with the co-operation of the farm tenant, Chris Ower, was responsible for the rest of the attractions. They included such rustic sports as wellie throwing, demonstrations by the riding school based at the farm, pony rides and a horse-drawn milk float provided by the Express Dairy. Fine weather both weekends, – April 12-13 and 19-20 – helped enormously. One outcome is the planned formation of the Friends of College Farm, of which more details shortly.
Page 10

THE INSULAR LONDONERS

Sheila Woodward reports, post haste, on the 17th annual Conference of London Archaeologists, organised by the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society and held at the Museum of London on April 26.

When London archaeologists meet in conference each year they talk about London. Venture as far afield as Staines and you are in alien country and, commented Richard Reece darkly, you may encounter a hostile reaction. True, Tim Tatton-Brown talked about Canterbury, but only to compare and contrast it with London.

For the rest of the crowded programme we had a round-up of recent London excavations, followed by a more detailed consideration of the problems posed by Late Roman London. The speakers were excellent, the audience enthusiastic (every seat was sold), confirming that the usual high standard of LAMAS conferences was maintained.

As usual, HADAS staged a display for the conference – of photographs, showing the salvaging of the College Farm hay tedder and churchyard recording. For activities more purely archaeological, conference attenders were directed to another display, this time mounted by the museum itself and left from the earlier Prehistoric Society conference. That included prehistoric finds from all over London, including flints from West Heath.
CORRECTION

HADAS Newsletter 100 (June 1979) carried an article by Michael Purton on The Geology of the Borough of Barnet. On p.10 Mr Purton referred to “Neolithic” flint implements found on the Boyn Hill and Tap1ow river terraces at Yiewsley in West Middlesex. This was incorrect: the adjective should have been Palaeolithic, not Neolithic.

This error came to light when the 1979 Newsletter was being indexed. The index is now ready, and photocopies are available at 70 pence eacb (to cover cost of photocopying and postage). The index greatly enhances the value of the Newsletter as a tool, both for officers and members and also for libraries and record offices which take regular copies.

If you would like a copy of the 1979 index, please let Brigid Grafton Green know. It might also be possible to provide copies of indices for earlier years, at a similar sort of figure.
BONES OF CONTENTION

A true story, in which the participants shall be nameless.

It concerns an archaeologist who, digging a deserted medieval village site, chose to begin on the largest mound, in hope of finding the manor house. No such luck. It was the cemetery. But, not being one to ignore bones in the pursuit of buildings he handed over the skeletons to a bone-specialist colleague. The latter was delighted, as the bones had many pathological fascinations.

Next on the scene, however, was the vicar into whose parish the village fell. Outraged at the disturbance to his ancient parishioners, he ordered they should be reburied immediately in his own churchyard, for which he would charge the archaeologists a substantial fee. After much negotiation, the archaeologist agreed to reburial, but at a much reduced fee. The vicar was satisfied – and so were the archaeologists for, unbeknown to the cleric, the skeletons reposing in his graveyard were those not of medieval Englishmen but of ancient Egyptians, surplus to the bone specialist’s requirements.

newsletter-110-april-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter


Page 1

APRIL LECTURE

Tuesday April 1st, 8:00 for 8:30 at Hendon Library, N.W.4.

Lecture on Ironbridge Gorge Museum, winner of the European Museum of the Year Award in 1978. Many members will remember Ironbridge as the first weekend venture of the Society. The Museum covers six square miles of the Severn Gorge and retains much of the atmosphere of the time when Abraham Darby first smelted iron, using coke as fuel. The first iron bridge in the world is sited here, built at Coalbrookdale in 1779. Coalport china, was made here until 1926. Further reconstruction has been going on since our visit in 1974 and Mr. Ian Lawley, Research Supervisor for the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is coming down to talk to us on its progress and aims.
THIS IS IMPORTANT

Please read our Treasurer’s enclosure with care and respond as best you can to his appeal. HADAS gives us all so much for so very little. Make it just a little more!
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Society’s AGM will take place on Thursdav, May 8, at ~ Hendon Library (please note it’s on a Thursday, not our usual Tuesday).

Coffee from 8-8.30, followed by the business meeting – a formal notice of which is enclosed with this Newsletter.

To end the evening Dorothy Newbury is arranging a slide show, which will include pictures of the Roman banquet and of one of last year’s outings – probably the visit to The Lunt.
Church Terrace Reports No. 4. – SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TOKENS

This is the fourth in the series of reports on material from the Church Terrace site, written by Edward Sammes.

Traders’ tokens were born of the expansion of trade and the non-existence of small change. They could be called an illegal money, born of necessity! There have been three main periods when they achieved popularity, i.e. during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Lead tokens, jettons and foreign coins were often used as small change from Medieval times.
Page 2

The official coinage in England from the Saxon period was made from silver and during the Medieval period went as low as the farthing. Under the Tudor and Stuart rulers, the monetary and economic structure was changing. Those needing money were largely shop-keepers, manufacturers and merchants. The small change below one penny was especially needed by small traders and the labouring classes. The 17th century tokens are concerned with the people who issued them and do not refer to the monarchs. They began in 1648 and continued to be issued until 1679.

In 1672 a Royal Proclamation was issued for making His Majesty’s farthings and halfpence of copper. This officially ended the tokens of the period but they continued to be issued in Chester until 1674 and in Ireland until 1679.

The tokens issued by tradesmen usually bear both the Christian name and surname of the issuer, the town or village and his trade or profession. Sometimes the value of the coin is added, plus a symbol of his craft or the arms of his trade guild.

It is probable that they did not usually travel very far from their point of issue, but some archaeological evidence suggests otherwise.

In London one can imagine a frequenter of inns carrying a bag with an assortment of tokens and also the publican sorting his into piles, using sorting trays, prior to their being redeemed at the place of issue. One can only wonder how often the issuer “went broke” and possibly not all such coins were freely accepted because of this.

Additionally, such tokens also acted as a kind of circulating advertisement.

One token was excavated and possibly the unidentifiable remains of a portion of a second. The first was issued at Bushey. The obverse side reads “WILL LITCHFIELD OF BUSHEY” – and in the centre it has a lion rampant holding an arrow and beneath it 1/2d. The reverse side reads “JOHN PILE OF BUSHEY” and in the centre is a maltster’s shovel and the year, 1669. (Catalogued Williamson p. 307, No. 74). These men were probably partners in trade.

Williamson’s “Tokens of the Seventeenth Century” notes:-

“it is singular that one of the issuers’ names, (i.e. of Bushey tokens), occur in the parish registers before the 17th century”.

For our own area in the 17th century, Elstree, Edgware end Potters Bar each have a single known example; Finchley, Harrow, Hendon and Willesden, two examples each; Enfield and Hampstead, three, and High gate and Barnet, nine.

Looking at this distribution, one cannot help but notice that these are all places along the main roads of communication.

For further reading: –

Berry George – Discovering Trade Tokens – Shire Books. 1969. Out of print.

Boyne W – Tokens Issued in the 17th Century. 1858. Revised edition by G C Wi11iamson, 1887-1891, (Reprinted 1967) – usually referred to as “Williamson”.

Lowe R – The History of Trade Tokens – HADAS Newsletter No. 36, February 1974. pps 2-.3.

Seaby P and Bussell M – British Tokens and Their Va1ues – Seaby’s Numismatic Publications Ltd. (my copy is dated l970).
Page 3

MEDIEVAL KING’ LYNN. MARCH LECTURE GIVEN BY DR H. CLARKE

Dr. Clarke’s lecture, which concentrated on the work of surveying medieval King’s Lynn, was well illustrated with colour slides of many old buildings as they exist to-day, together with constructional diagrams and maps. The work carried out at Lynn had a three-fold aspect, we were told, namely:

i) A general survey for likely excavation sites

ii) A survey of standing buildings with significant historic features

iii) A thorough documentary survey to support the above aspects.

The efforts of those who took part were well rewarded; King’s Lynn is not only one of the best preserved medieval parts but also one of the best documented and recorded towns. The report on the excavation work between 1963 and 1967 is to form Volume II of a series of three books. Volume I, The Making of King’s Lynn by Vanessa Parker, published by Phillimore and Co., 1971 is recommended to medieval buffs as well as to those interested in the town itself.

The impulse to carry out this exploratory work came in 1961 with the realization that extensive re-development would soon be under way: King’s Lynn was to expand and become a London overspill area. Ironically, much the same kind of activity had taken place in the 11th century, when the Bishop of Norwich founded a church and priory there, at the same time regularizing commercial activities by the grant of a market and a fair. Presumably the families of the five salters who, according to the Domesday Book, owned the land thereabouts, thought it was a good idea, too. This nearby town of Bishop’s Lynn, (Lynn is thought to be derived from “Len”, Celtic for “lake” or “1agoon”) with its Saturday Market held near St. Margaret’s must have been successful as by the 12th century more land had been reclaimed. This Newland, as it was called, was used for docks and merchant housing to satisfy an increased demand for water frontage either on the main River Ouse or on one of the smaller tributary rivets, the fleets.

Newland, lying between the Fisher Fleet and the Purfleet has the Tuesday market site next to its own church of St. Nicholas (rebuilt in grand manner in the 15th century and reflecting the wealth of the town in that period) but apparently it has always played a role second to St. Margaret’s with its Saturday market.

In the South-West corner of St. Margaret’s tower is the trace of a crossing arch Romanesque colonnade retained in the brickwork fabric – one of the oldest surviving structures in the town. Dr. Clarke pointed out the area of South Lynn, lying adjacent to Bishop’s Lynn, between the Mill Fleet and River Mar, which has an enigmatic Saxon church, as well as the South Gate of the city wall.

The interesting buildings discussed included Clifton House, Hampton Court, the Hanseatic Steelyard, the Guildhall, the Greenland Fishery and the Valiant Sailor Inn, now a private house. All had major features dating from the 15th century or before. Later buildings of interest included the Custom House and the present Duke’s Head Hotel, both built by Henry Bell and showing the influence of Christopher Wren with whom Bell had studied.
Page 4

Many of the medieval buildings were difficult to date: there was a shortage of local stone, a town wall buttress being the only example shown, so there were few clues from stone-dressing techniques: the dominant brickwork offers less help in dating. A good example of East Anglian building is the Guildhall, whose frontage is of chequer work in limestone with flint.

Although the bricked-in four-curve arches of Hampton Court, the medieval doorway and the Hanseatic warehouse are good examples, Clifton House, with its vaulted undercroft and locally produced (Bawsey) tiles came out tops for me.

An interesting lecture.

BRIAN WIBBERLEY.
DAVID GARRICK, 200 YEARS

The year 1979 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the death of the actor David Garrick. To mark this, the British Museum has staged an exhibition in the King’s Library of the Museum until 11th May 1980, and it traces his career as an actor.

His connection with Hendon began when in 1756 he purchased, through a buyer, the Lordship of the Manor of Hendon, and the right to present the living of St. Mary’s church. He built Hendon Hall (now Hendon Hall Hotel). There seems to be no record of his actually living there, but during the rest of his life he spent much money on the hall and grounds.

In the laying out of the grounds, he built an octagonal temple in the Classic style which was demolished when the Great North Way, (now the Al) was constructed. On the North side of what is now Manor Hall Avenue, he erected a memorial to Shakespeare, which stood until the 1950s.

Admission to the exhibition is free, and there is a lecture at 1:l5 p.m Mondays to Fridays. Visit. This at the same time as you view the Vikings!
THE BRICKLAYER’S TALE

Another of PERCY REBOUL’S transcripts of tape-recordings.

I was born in January 1910 and went to All Saints School at Oakleigh Road, Whetstone and later to St. James’s, Friern Barnet Lane. I left school at 14 and went to work with my father who at that time was building man-holes for Sir Thomas Adam of Wood Green in Netherlands Road, East Barnet.

In those days bricks cost 16s. per thousand, sand was 6s. per yard and cement 1s. 6d. for a 1 cwt sack. We bought our materials from local suppliers such as Knowles at Totteridge Station and they were delivered by horse and cart.

My father specialised in the building of man-holes and sewers and he arranged contracts for the work. I think the price for man-hole brickwork was 6s. 6d. per rising foot – that is about 250 bricks. I got paid 6d. per hour.

We worked irregular hours, sometimes until nine or ten o’clock at night until the job was done. Funnily enough, Monday afternoon was often taken off by builders doing piece-work and many of them met together at the Griffin Inn, Whetstone.

In those days, the man-holes were dug by the ‘navvies’. There were no mechanical diggers. All the wheelbarrows were wood with iron-rimmed wheels and the navvies wore straps around their knees into which they tucked their ‘little old man’ – a small scraper used to clean their grafting tool. A lot of them wore mole-skin trousers. They came from all over the country and got about ls. per hour. There was also the ‘timber-man’ who shored-up the trenches – he was the most important member of the team because your life could depend on him.
Page 5

When I was about 15 1/2 years of age, I worked with my Dad building houses in Oakleigh Avenue, Whetstone. As it was summer, work started at 7 a.m. and at 9 a.m., it was my job to collect from home the breakfasts that my mother had cooked for the men. About 9.30 a.m., I was told by my father to take the haversack containing six quart bottles to a back door in the Griffin Inn to be filled with beer. This was drunk up to midday. In the afterneon they drank tea. In those days it was all green fields. Mr. Floyd, a dairyman, kept his cows in fields where the new Whetstone Police Station now stands at the top of Friern Barnet Lane. I used to milk a friendly cow direct into an empty milk bottle but in the end Floyd ‘tumbled’ to it.

Sir Thomas Adam, the engineer, was a funny old man. He would come to the site on pay-day (Friday). I remember a terrible storm one pay day and heard Adam say to his foreman “Mr. Chalkley, please shut the door {of the site office), the lightning may strike the notes!”. One week my father earned the colossal sum of £20 and Adam offered to escort him home!

Monday morning was ‘sub-day’. Things were so hard in those days, particularly if the weather was bad, you might not even have your rent money. So on Monday you could draw, say, 15s. which was deducted at the end of the week. You had to ‘sub’ to live in those days; it was standard practice but mostly the sub went on buying beer and you might need another sub on Wednesday. The men were a good crowd, good at their jobs. The worst years were 1926 and 1928 but just before the war it was really good – plenty of work.

I remember building man-holes in Hendon around the Welsh Harp – Mount Road and that Area. They were about 105 ft deep. Bricks were lowered by crane and it was 18 ins. brickwork at the bottom, reinforced with concrete and iron bars. At certain hours of the day, the sewers, which we were repairing and enlarging and which were closed when we were working on them, were opened and the water rushed through at about 60 m.p.h.

I was one of the first bricklayers on the Ideal Home Estate which is Gallants Farm and all around there. The purchaser could pick his own site for his bungalow – they were £675. When finished, Jelks of Finchley, the furniture people, invited you to see their show house. These houses fetch about £35,000 today. There was such a rush for these houses that within months they went up to £1,000.

They were built in sand and cement, (not the old-fashioned lime mortar) and Belgian bricks were used. They were extremely hard bricks, hard on the hands to lay but ask anyone on that estate how hard it is to drill a hole in their walls!

The head of Ideal Homes was Mr. Mayer. He said to us “You’ve got the best of materials that money can buy. I want no shoddy work.” But we had trainees on the site with only 6 weeks training behind them so you couldn’t help but have bad work in some places. The late 30’s was the time of the jerry-builder but the estate, on the whole, was well built. We would lay about 1000 bricks a day and were paid 2s. 6d. per hour, which was good money.

One of my most vivid memories is of 1926 when I went with my father to Marylebone Cemetery to build a vault for a Mr. Salmon. After the mourners had left the Superintendent ripped down the vault and took all the tapestries off the coffin just before they roiled the stone over. My father said “Now you’ve seen people with money buried, I’ll show you how people with no money are buried.”
Page 6

We went to the far side of the cemetery and I saw a deep hole with about 6 or 7 coffins on top of each other and finished off with about 6 babies’ coffins. It was then filled in and grassed over and that was the end of them.
HADAS RESEARCH COMMITTEE

Good news for those itching to delve deeper into Barnet’s past.

The HADAS Research Committee is being revitalised and its members have plans – which will be described in more detail next month – to instigate a variety of projects, ranging in period from Prehistoric to Post-Industrial Revolution. Enthusiastic researchers, expert or otherwise, will be warmly welcomed on them. Anyone keen to be involved from the beginning should contact Sheila Woodward or Liz Sagues.
JUST TO REMIND YOU

…that, as announced in the last Newsletter, there will be two processing weekends this month at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Teahouse, Northway, NW11. They will start on Sat. April 19 and Sat. April 26 respectively, and will be mainly concerned with work on finds from and projects connected with the West Heath dig. Please come and help if you possibly can – and it will be much appreciated if you can let Daphne Lorimer know if you are coming (up to April 14) or Brigid Grafton Green know (after April 14).
HADAS AT THE MUSEUM OF LONDON

Those members who are going to the Museum of London for the Prehistoric Society’s Spring Conference (29th/30th March) or the LAMAS Conference of London Archaeologists (26th April) should keep their eyes open when they are drinking their coffee or tea. The Museum is mounting a special exhibit in the Educational Department to mark the occasion and HADAS has been honoured by being asked to lend some West Heath material.

Since the Spring Conference is on Experimental Archaeology, some of HADAS’ own experimental work will be on show as well as our two axes and a representative selection of tools.

The exhibit will remain on display for the whole of April for Educational parties but those members of HADAS who are unable to attend the two conferences will be able to visit it by request at the entrance kiosk.

A London Kiln Study Group Seminar will be held on Saturday and Sunday, May 10th and 11th, at the Museum of London. Applications to the Secretary, L.K.S.G., 155, Walworth Road, S. E. 17. Course fee: £8:00 (Members) £8.50 (Non-Members), to include tea, coffee and a Saturday night Wine & Cheese Party. A splendid opportunity to discuss techniques and theories with a wide range of experts in this field.
Page 7

COLLEGE FARM OPEN DAYS

A reminder that College Farm is being opened to the public during the weekends of 12-13 and 19-20 April. Visitors will be able to see the wide variety of animals kept at the farm, watch the farm’s horses being exercised and enjoy rides on a horse and cart. HADAS is organizing exhibits on farming and College Farm itself, and a Finchley Society exhibit will deal with the farm’s recent past and somewhat uncertain future. A number of other activities will be going on, including a barbecue, organised by local scouts, on the afternoon of April 20.

Admission is free, and refreshments will be available.

We hope a large number of HADAS members will be able to come along to see how Mr. Owers manages to be “a farmer in suburbia”. A few stewards are still needed to assist with the exhibition. If you can help, please ring Dave King.
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE RESIDENTIAL COURSES

The current programme offers much of interest to HADAS members, including a course for beginners and experienced students in the elements of digging technique within the context of an actual excavation and in skills such as surveying, archaeological photography, recording, biological data sampling and the recognition of archaeological material.

July 5th – August 2nd. Fee: £55.00 per week, including accommodation and breakfast. Applications to:

The University of Cambridge Board of Extra-Mural Studies, Madingley Hall, Madingley, Cambridge CB3 8AQ.

newsletter-108-february-1980

By | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter


Page 1

BARNET PROPOSES METAL DETECTOR CURB IN PARKS

The London Borough of Barnet is planning to restrict the use of metal detectors in its parks after some gentle prodding from HADAS. In a letter to the Society the Borough says that the Council is proposing to make a new bye-law for its public parks which will say: ” A person shall not in the pleasure ground remove or displace any soil, turf, or plant.”

The effect of this, the Council hopes, will be that anyone who takes a metal detector into a public park will be unable, if the machine excitedly registers a “find”, to explore further what that find is. Before the bye-law comes into force it must be advertised, and the Council must then have it confirmed by the Home Secretary. If it does go through the Borough will join the growing number of local authorities who hope to minimise the worst hazards of what is euphemistically called “treasure hunting”

We welcome the Council’s action which we suggested last September that they might consider taking. One of our members had at that time observed the flagrant misuse of a detector in Sunnyhill Park, Hendon, by a treasure hunter who dug a number of small pits and made no attempt even to replace the earth and turf.

Though our West Heath dig will be outside the jurisdiction of the proposed bye-law it has been the victim of treasure-hunters on at least two occasions. The site is of course much too old for metals but it seems that the intruders were misled by the naturally occurring ironstone and did considerable archaeological damage in their fruitless hole digging.

The CBA and other national archaeological bodies will be launching a campaign called STOP (“Stop Taking Our Past”} against the use of metal detectors early in March. There will be programmes on TV and radio as well as press and magazine coverage. This will all be specially aimed at the use of detectors on sites known to be of archaeological interest. CBA hopes that once the national campaign begins local societies will keep the pressure up at their level too.

A section of the Ancient Monuments Act which bans the use of metal detectors on statutorily listed sites will shortly come into effect. But this is limited to about 13,000 sites, a fraction of those likely to be at risk. The CBA does not want a complete ban on all metal detectors, but favours very much stricter controls on their use.
Page 2

WEST HEATH MYSTERY UNRAVELLED

By Joyce Roberts MSc PhD.

At long last we now know the nature of the globules found at all levels on the West Heath site. They are fungal sclerotia of Coenococcum Geophi1um Fs. 1825, and are not in fact carbonised. They were first illustrated under the name Lycoperdon graniforme by a British botanist, J. Sowerby in 1800. From our point of view it is interesting that the ‘locus classicus’ i.e. the place in which he found the first specimens is given as Hampstead. In “Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms” he writes: First shown to me in Lord Mansfield’s wood, Hampstead, by Mr Hunter who showed me the last. It grows loose, like small shot above ground without any apparent root. From its first or smallest size it alters but little in colour. The riper ones are very brittle and crack irregularly. They enclose a black powder.

Though the sclerotia are widespread in the peaty soils of the Northern Hemisphere and have been found in Denmark from pre-glacial times onwards, very little is known about the fungus which has been quietly ignored by mycologists. It produces no spores, only fine fungal threads and it is at the moment a matter of conjecture as to what part it plays in the soil. From the archaeological point of view it is one those hazards, like the root galls and the nests of the Potter Bee, which one cannot ignore until identified, just in case they provide valuable environmental information. These, after all, were first assumed to be carbonised seeds.
DOCUMENTARY RESEARCHERS – MORE BAD NEWS

A serious deterioration in the service offered local historians by the Public Record Office is now imminent as a result of Government spending cuts. To save money the PRO has decided to close its public search rooms in Chancery Lane, though most of the record there will remain. Instead anyone wanting to use them will have to travel down to the search room at Kew, where the modern records are kept.

A few of the more commonly used records will be transferred to Kew, but most items, will have to be ordered well in advance and then brought across London by van. Chancery Lane houses an enormous range of documents of interest to the local historian – probate records and hearth tax returns to name two.

Not surprisingly the plan has aroused considerable opposition from professional historians including John Higgs, chairman of the Standing Conference for Local History, and A. J. Taylor, past president of the Society of Antiquaries, who wrote: to The Times in protest.

This follows the warning in last month’s Newsletter that some of the items held by the GLC Record Office will now be harder to obtain.
Page 3

LECTURE PROGRAMME

Our next lecture will be held on Tuesday 5th February at Hendon Library. Coffee will be available at 8.00 pm and the lecture begins at 8.30 pm.

Mr Mark Hassall MA FSA, a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, is known to many of our members. The title, “The Later Roman Empire and the Codex Spirensis”, is a little misleading, he feels. In fact he describes the Codex Spirensis as a book of “Roman red-tape”, and an associated pamphlet describes some of the ludicrous war-machine inventions thought up at that time. This lecture promises to be entertaining as well as informative.

The programme for the rest of the season is as follows:

MARCH 4th. “Medieval Kings Lynn: an archaeological, architectural, and documentary survey” by Dr Helen Clarke BA PhD FSA

APRIL 1st. “Iron Bridge Gorge Museum” by Stuart B. Smith MSc AMA

MAY 8th. Annual General Meeting (NOT May 13th as stated in last Newsletter)

Daphne Lorimer is planning two more finds processing weekends. The dates have not yet been fixed but they will probably be in April.
THE ART OF BRONZE AGE (MINOAN) CRETE

A Report of the January Lecture, by Frances Radford.

Our January lecture by Sinclair Hood MA FSA took us back to the Cretan civilization in the years approximately between 1700 and 1450 BC. Crete, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean, situated in a volcanic area was densely wooded in parts presenting a picture of a more verdant, fertile land than it is now.

In such a setting arose a civilization with a distinctive decorative art form having remote links with that of Egypt but achieving a greater freedom and plasticity than is seen in the wall paintings, sculpture or artefacts of ancient Egypt. By the middle of this period the influence of Minoan culture had spread to the mainland of Greece, as evidenced by finds at Mycenae. How this period of artistic flowering came to an end is not known but certainly it is likely that Knossos and other palaces which were also centres for skilled craftsmen were destroyed by war (Mycenaen conquest?) or volcanic action.

The knowledge we have of this particular culture is largely due to Sir Arthur Evans’ excavations of the palace of Knossos. From fragments of wall and floor paintings reconstructions have been made showing a highly decorative art. Though some of the figure paintings are stylised – with the legs in profile but with a frontal view of the chest and eye as in Egyptian art {e.g. the Priest-King fresco of Knossos) -those of birds and animals are altogether freer, more colourful and lively, often catching a characteristic pose e.g. the floor painting of flying fish, the curve of a swallow in flight. Accurate observation of the natural world is then put into a decorative form – a monkey uprooting saffron crocuses (used for dye), partridges crouched in the grass, dolphins leaping through a pattern of waves.
Page 4

Male figures were in brown, female in white, the outlines in black. Although the artist often incised a line by means of a rope in wet plaster on the bottom of a wall on which to place his figures, the painting was executed in such a free style that sometimes the line was disregarded and the figures appeared to be walking in air. Neither were corners regarded, the painting simply continuing along the walls.

Many of the scenes depict wildlife, others are of activities related to what is thought to be a religious cult of the time involving bulls, e.g. the well known bull leaping panel at Knossos. Other evidence of the cult comes from the famous golden ‘Vapheio’ cup with relief scenes of bull hunting on it (circa 1500 BC and possibly made in Greece at a time when Mycenae was influenced by Minoan art). Here we see the bull trapped by means of a decoy cow and later hobbled. Another fine piece of craftsmanship of this period is the stone Harvester Vase depicting a procession of farm workers carrying winnowing forks and accompanied by singers and a can with a rattle – a somewhat humorous scene.

By means of excellent slides one was able to see in close up the details of these fine pieces. The vigour, colour and design of the art work of this period appealed to the Mycenaeans who either employed Minoan craftsmen or imported fine works from Crete. Its appeal is as strong today, giving pleasure as well as stimulating the mind to answer many questions it poses about the life of the creators. What, for example, was the significance of the bull in the religion of the time. It is presumed it was used for sacrifice in Earth-worship. Was the bellowing of the bull in any way connected with the deep rumblings of the earth preceding tremors – the Minotaur of the Labyrinth? Evans had recalled a line of the Iliad “In Bulls does the Earth-shaker delight”, but without this preoccupation with the wonders of the natural world would we have had such a lively, joyous art form?
CEDARS – THE CONTINUING SAGA

Following the information that Andrew Moss supplied in the last Newsletter, GEORGE INGRAM, our Hon. Librarian, confirms that he too has seen and noted references to a great cedar blown down in Hendon on January 1st, 1779. His references however say that the cedar was definitely in the grounds of Hendon Place, not Hendon House – that is, at the manor house in Parson Street, not Norden’s house in Brent Street.

Mr Ingram also provides the reference: “there are three fine cedars in the Mill Hill grounds, two a return present from Goodwood Park, to which Collinson had sent 1000 small cedar trees from Hendon Place, and one a gift in 1761 from a Mr Clark. This was badly damaged by a very heavy snow-storm in 1916, when I was housemaster at the School House” (Norman Brett-James, Middlesex, County History Series 1951 p187).

The reference to a “Mr Clark” is particularly interesting since – as Newsletter readers who have followed the complex story right from the start will recall – the point at which HADAS first came into it was in the December Newsletter (No 106) when we were asked by a colleague in Barnet and District Local History Society for information about “John Clark, a Barnet butcher, who had a nursery garden and who in 1761 sold 1000 cedar seedlings, at a price of £79.6s, to the Duke of Richmond for planting at Goodwood House.” It looks as if Peter Collinson, the famous botanist (1694-1768), may actually have paid for the Duke’s trees.
Page 5

George Ingram also gives this further note concerning Collinson:

“He was called to advise the third Duke of Richmond on the laying out of the ducal seat of Goodwyn. The outcome was that he bought 1000 5- year-old cedars, then growing off Parson Street, Hendon, for 1s 6d each, and had them planted at Goodwyn where they contributed to its glory.” (Hendon Times June 19th 1964, in a 4-page supplement on the local history of Mill Hill written by the late Arthur G Clarke). This suggests that John Clark, butcher and nurseryman, may have had a nursery at Parson Street, Hendon, as well as at Barnet.

TED SAMMES has also some light to shed :

The reference found by Andrew Moss was probably taken from a note by Sir John Cullum (not Collum) in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March 1779, and quoted in Evans, History and Topography of the Parish of Hendon, Middlesex, 1889, p.15.

Evans’ quotation states that the tree “stood close on the north side of Hendon Place, the elegant residence of Mr Aislabie”. This gentleman did live in Hendon Place for a period until his fortunes failed with the collapse of the South Sea Bubble, when he was forced to sell and return to Yorkshire. If a member has the time it would be worth checking the original note in the Gentleman’s Magazine.

Hendon certainly had a number of cedars until recently and they also exist at Mill Hill. There is still one in Parson Street close to the site of Hendon Place. I also believe there was a large cedar at the entrance of Cedars Close until after the war.

I can remember three Cedars of Lebanon in the Churchyard of St Mary’s Hendon prior to the 1939-45 War, one by the tower, the sawn off rotting stump of which can still be seen. Another stood at the south east corner of the church close to the yew tree and one at the east of the church. This latter one is the only survivor.

Until about 10 years ago there was one standing incongruously between the houses of First and Second Avenue, just off Victoria Road. Grove House, along the Burroughs, had a fine specimen in the north western corner of its lawn. This, like the Victoria Rd tree, died. Could it be of old age?

The Cedar of Lebanon has been grown in this country for over 250 years and it would seem probable that the presence of Collinson, the botanist, from 1749 at Mill Hill may account for the interest in these trees in the area. It is regrettable that none of these fine trees have been replaced. It should certainly be possible to replant in Grove Park as the space needed for the mature tree is still available-
DIARY NOTE

The British Museum’s current exhibition 7000 Years of History Cyprus BC continues until 16th March. Admission free.
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EXCAVATION AT 97 SOUTHWOOD LANE, HIGHGATE

Report by Philip Venning.

In July 1919 HADAS was contacted by Hornsey Historical Society about a feature found by a builder 1n the garden of 97 Southwood Lane, Highgate, which he had been renovating. Just under paving outside the back door of the Victorian house (c. 187O) was the 52 cm square opening of a sunken brick structure, filled with rubble.

The excavation.

Between July l8th & 2Oth Philip Venning, Dave King, and Terry Keenan, carried out a rescue excavation of the interior. (It was too close to the house to allow an outside section to be dug).

Removing loosely packed 20th century builder’s rubble revealed a circular brick lined chamber on average 14O cm in diameter with a brick-corbelled roof, 75 cm from apex to base. At the top of the walls and entering the side of the dome from the south-east was a ceramic pipe (18O mm diam.) at an angle of about 5 degrees. It was heading under the house, did not appear to connect with existing drains, and was blocked 60 cm from its mouth. One metre below the entrance the loosely packed fill gave way to a clay soil, containing rather less rubble and a mysterious white substance rather like soft, soapy, lumps of chalk (still unidentified).

About 215 cm down the soil fill gave way to a concretion of the white substance, above which was a dispersed layer of bottles, transfer-decorated crockery and other late Victorian refuse. Partly because of pressure of time, partly the problem of digging at depth, the rest of the feature was dug in section. At a depth of 3 metres a thin layer of mortar, covering a brick floor, was found. This was resting on natural and the wall footings disappeared. The bottom had been reached.

Identification.

The small finds indicate that the structure was probably filled in when the house was built. But nothing was found to suggest a date or purpose. The brickwork and mortar are certainly post 17th century.

One theory is that it was an ice-house – underground stores where Victorians kept ice for preserving food. On balance this seems unlikely. Ice-houses varied considerably and this structure has parallels elsewhere. But it lacks one item common to all – a drain at the base to remove melting water. (Searching for a drain, the section was undermined. An assymetrically placed one could have been in the rest of the un-dug section). Maps reveal that before the present house was built the ground formed a garden to the north of a small house, now demolished. This looks too unimportant to have had a luxury like an ice-house.

There was no sign of discoloured soil associated with cesspits (nor would a floor have been needed). Another suggestion was that it might have been a storage vat belonging to an 18th century brewery that once existed nearby. A more likely explanation is that it was a water storage cistern, others of which have been found on Hampstead and Highgate hills, dating from a time when it was difficult to get piped water to the summit.

A measured drawing of the structure, accompanies the Newsletter. (EDITORIAL – to see this drawing, select the following link)