Newsletter

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The Winter Lecture Season

By Dorothy Newbury.

Lecture time will soon be with us again, and for those who can’t find their programme cards, we repeat the details.
Oct. 4 1977 – Archaeology and History of Iona – Dr. Richard Reece, BSc, PhD, FSA
Nov. 1 1977 – Silchester – the Investigation of a Roman Town – Dr. Michael Fulford, BA, PhD
WED Dec. 7 1977 – Elizabethan Banquet, Old Palace, Hatfield — see page 2
Jan. 3 1978 – Archaeology of Peru (or Mexico) – P. Barnes, MA
Feb. 7 1978 – A Possession for ever – the Parthenon at Athens – B. F. Cook, MA, FSA
Mar. 7 1978 – Meaning and Purpose of English Wall Paintings – E. Clive Rouse, MBE, FSA
Apr. 4 1978 – Excavations in South West London – Scott McCracken

With our increased membership it is difficult to provide a programme that caters for all tastes – not to mention every period – but we have tried to make the scope of our lectures as wide and as varied as possible.

Lectures will as usual take place on the first Tuesday of each month at Central Library, The Burroughs, NW4 (near the Town Hall). Buses 83 and 143 pass the door; Nos. 240, 125, 183 and 113 are within ten minutes walk, as is Hendon Central Underground station. There are two free car parks nearly opposite the library.

The lecture room upstairs opens at 8.00 pm, when coffee and biscuits will be available at 10p, and there will be an opportunity to meet each other and chat, and particularly to greet new members (old members please note!) Our Hon. Librarian, George Ingram, will be there to arrange loans from the Book box, and our publications will be on sale. Lectures start about 8.30 and, if time permits, are followed by questions. The Library building closes at 10 pm sharp.

Members are welcome to bring a guest, but guests who wish to attend more than one lecture should be asked to join the Society.
The First Lecture

Dr. Reece, who will be giving our opening talk, is on the staff of the Institute of Archaeology. His lecture promises to be a lively one, as anyone who has read g=his article “Ideas in Archaeology,” in the current issue of London Archaeologist” will agree.

His subject is Iona, an island in the Inner Hebrides granted to St. Columba in 563 for the foundation of a monastery. It was the base from which the Celtic Church converted Northern Britain to Christianity.
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More HADAS dates for your Diary

Oct. 15. SYMPOSIUM for HADAS members on the West Heath dig, with various speakers, at Bigwood House, Bigwood Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb (behind the Institute). 2-6 pm. Tickets buy post from Dorothy Newbury, or available at the first lecture. No entrance fee, but a first-class tea(with HADAS made cakes) will be provided at 30p per head.

Oct. 22. BOOKSALE at the Teahouse, Northway, Hampstead Garden Suburb, 10-12 noon. Entrance, including coffee and biscuits, 15p. Donations of books, including paperbacks, will be very welcome. Please stockpile them now, and await further details about their disposal in the October Newsletter.

Nov. 12/13, 19/20. PROCESSING AND RESEARCH SESSIONS, two weekends, at the Teahouse, 10 am – 5 pm daily. Further details next month.
Dec 7. CHRISTMAS EVENT: DINNER AT HATFIELD

The Society’s 1977 Christmas celebration will befit this Jubilee year: it will be an Elizabethan banquet (with Elizabethan entertainment) at the Old Palace, Hatfield House, where the first Queen Elizabeth waited quietly in the wings for her return to ascend the throne of England.

Hatfield was an ecclesiastical manor belonging to the Bishop of Ely from Medieval times. The Old Palace was built in 1497 for Cardinal Morton (of “Morton’s Fork” fame), then Bishop of Ely and later Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1538 the manor passed from Ely to the Crown. The Bishop’s Palace became a Royal Palace and the nursery of Henry VIII’s children. Mary, Elizabeth and Edward, all of whom were to rule England, all spent part of their childhood there.

We shall dine in the authentic Tudor Great Hall, already a century old when nearby Hatfield House was built by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury and Prime Minister in turn to Elizabeth I and James I. An application form for the dinner is enclosed. Please return it to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible.
JUBILATION

.. is the title of a Jubilee exhibition of Royal commemorative pottery at the Bethnall Green Museum of Childhood – but only till Sept 4.

On show are 260 pieces, starting with Delft ware of the reign of Charles II and ending with pieces produced for George V’s Jubilee. These are from the extensive collection of James Blewitt, who in the last 15 years has amassed over 5000 pieces. There is an interesting catalogue and visitors get an added bonus by seeing the displays of toys, Punch and Judy and toy theatres, whilst upstairs are costumes, furniture and Japanese armour. The Museum is only three minutes walk from Bethnal Green tube station.

Have you bought your copy of the Society’s latest booklet, Victorian Jubilee? It deals with the events that took place during the two Victorian celebrations in the then rural areas of today’s Borough of Barnet. Price 65p post free from Jeremy Clynes.
Tracing your Ancestors

How many of us have fleetingly thought that it would be interesting to follow up our ancestral tree – with the vague notion that we would have to consult the parish records of the place where our parents were born, but knowing little more? David Ireland’s “Your Family Tree,” one of the Shire Publications “Discovering” booklets, tells you how to set about the job methodically, where to look, how to use tracings already made and how to record your findings so that they are readily available when needed. It lists numerous sources of information – secular as well as church records, apprenticeship indentures, tithe and enclosure records and many others.
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This booklet (available form Jeremy Clynes, 60p post free) is an excellent first step on the ancestral trail. You may (perish the thought!) find you have singularly uninteresting ancestors – but you will still manage to catch a fascinating glimpse of social history. Once started, indeed, you may find yourself hooked! It would be interesting to hear from HADAS members who have already traced their family tree. What did they find on the way?

Parish Registers

Recently the Parish Registers of Hendon St, Mary’s, formerly kept in the Parish Chest, have been lodged by the Vicar in the Record Office of the Greater London Council (Middlesex Section, Queen Anne’s Gate Buildings, Dartmouth Street, SW1), where they have been copied onto microfilm. They consist of:

Baptisms – Oct.1653-Aug. 1946

Marriages – Mar. 1654-Sept. 1949

Burials – Oct. 1653 – June 1953.

The Libraries department of the London Borough of Barnet has applied to the GLC for microfilm copies, fro the Borough’s Local History Collection.

It may be of some help to HADAS researchers to know the whereabouts of other local parish registers: (* dates give the total span within which the three registers fall.)

AT QUEEN ANNE’S GATE BUILDINGS:

St. Mary-at Finchley (registers from 1558-1958*)

St. Margarets, Edgware (1717-1867)

St. James the Great, Friern Barnet (1674-1968)

South Mimms (1558-1906)

Monken Hadley (1619-1956)

AT COUNTY RECORD OFFICE, HERTFORD:

St. John the Baptist, Chipping Barnet (1560-1692)

St. Andrews, Totteridge (1546-1947).

A helpful research tool, “Original Parish Registers” published 1974 by Local Population Studies, provides much of the above information. It lists original registers to be found in Record Offices and small libraries in England and Wales, and costs £2.25 from Tawney House, Matlock, Derbyshire. If the registers of a parish are not mentioned in this booklet they probably either (a) remain with the incumbent (as do, for instance, the registers of St. Mary the Virgin, East Barnet, where the Rector is the Rev. H. Steed); (b) they may have suffered some accident – destruction by fire, water or rats being the most likely; or (c) occasional volumes may drift into the possession of great libraries such as the Bodleian or the British Museum.

The August Outing: A Trip Full of Superlatives

Report by Lucile Armstrong.

The sky was persistently grey as our HADAS coach nosed its way through the lovely town of Marlborough, with its enchanting old houses, and on past Wiltshire landscape and rolling hills. We caught a glimpse of “The Sanctuary” (from which a stone avenue leads to Avebury Ring) and parked the coach on the Roman road, almost at the foot of Silbury Hill. From here we trudged up to West Kennet long barrow – built c. 3650 BC – from which an extensive view of the surrounding “treasures of Neolithic Britain” could be admired: Windmill Hill, The Sanctuary, Silbury Hill and innumerable barrows dotted along the ridgeway against the sky. West Kennet barrow (said to have contained 45 skeletons) is the largest in England; from its summit our guide, Dr. Eric Grant, explained its history and that of the Avebury complex seen from the crest of the barrow. This part of Wiltshire is remarkable for its obvious importance to Neolithic man. The Icknield Way – the route for a prosperous flint trade – passes here. Some flints may have come from Grimes Graves.
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Silbury Hill is the largest man-made mound in Europe. It is estimated to have taken 700 men ten years to construct. Material was quarried from around it and this enabled the erection of what is virtually a step pyramid – not unlike that of Mycerinus in Egypt, also built in the 3rd millenium BC. In Silbury’s construction 12 and 1/2 million cubic feet of stone and soil were used. It is believed to have represented the Earth Mother (se Michael Dames’ book “The Treasure of Silbury Hill”, London, 1975).

There was no time to climb Silbury Hill, so we rushed on to Avebury, visited the museum – it contains many finds from the neighbourhood – and then the Great Ring, which afforded us time for lunch and a breather among the stupendous stones erected “in the time before metal was known.” The Great Ring is protected by a ditch 20 feet deep (how did they excavate it using red deer antlers alone?) then an outer rampart 50 feet high. Within the ring are two smaller ones – from an aerial photograph these look like two eyes. A few stones, which have withstood the erosion of time and the depredations of man, still indicate the Avenue to the Sanctuary.

Dazed at the cyclopean work accomplished by Neolithic man in dragging these enormous sarsens across from the neighbouring hills and erecting them, so that they still stand five thousand years later, we made for Swindon and the Great Western Railway museum, with its colossal steam engines. The railway employees’ village was also visited; it is undergoing a most imaginative face-lift, and looked very attractive.

After that an enormous and delicious tea awaited us at McIlroys before our journey home. Much thanks are due to Mrs Newbury for organising such a wonderful outing, and to our guide Dr. Grant. We all felt sad that (except, of course, for Bristol), this was the final outing of the season.
Legal Literary Luminary

By Daphne Lorimer.

Thomas Jarman lived in one part of our Borough – Hadley – and was buried in another – Totteridge – where he lies with his two sisters and a nephew in the Dissenters Graveyard. To the casual passer-by he is a forgotten name on a forgotten tombstone; but to the legal world he is no “village Hampden,” but “one of those pioneers of legal literature” whose works are still in use today. “Jarman on Wills” is as standard a work for the lawyer as Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall” is for the classical historian.

Thomas Jarman was born in 1800, son of Francis Jarman, Gentleman, of Bath. He certainly had two sisters, Anne (b. 1795) and Rebecca (b. 1802) and one brother. He first became a clerk in the office of his uncle, a Bristol solicitor, but in 1821 he moved to London and entered the Middle Temple. He was called to the Bar in 1826 and became one of the Conveyancing Counsel to the Court of Chancery, an office he held until his death in 1860.
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His literary work began at once. He edited the third edition of J.J. Powell’s “An Essay on Devizes,” published in 2 volumes in 1827, writing the whole second volume himself. In the same year he continued the work of W.M. Blythwood, compiling volumes 4-10 of “A Selection of Precendents forming a System of Conveyancing.” In 1844 he published “A Treatise on Wills;” previously, in 1835, he and W. Hayes had together written “A concise form of Wills with Practical Notes” which reached 9 editions by 1883.

He died a relatively poor man, and his law practice was never large. He had not had the advantage of pupilage in the chambers of a fashionable conveyancer and, as far as his Bristol connections were concerned, he himself ruefully admitted that “a prophet is not without honour save in his own country.” His professional reputation grew from his legal writings and was, in consequence, slow in coming. His genius (and inclination) lay not in the practice of law, but in “collating, methodising and elucidating a scattered medley of cases.” His labours were directed, as he once said, to helping “other men into their carriages at the rate of the day-labourer’s wages.” While others grew rich on the results of his work, he would often reject a temptingly endorsed brief in favour of research, once remarking that “were I a solicitor, I would not lay papers before a man deeply engaged in bookmaking, for then his client has only half a counsel.” Possibly in an effort to increases income, Jarman speculated unwisely on the money market. This, plus his recurring ill-health, may be why he had so often to change his chambers.

Jarman’s writing and practice were interrupted by three major illnesses. He had, however, the tenacity of purpose; much of his editorial work was accomplished despite physical disabilities. He was first afflicted with a serious eye condition which lasted many months. During this time he and an ailing fellow conveyancer indulged in rural wanderings (their only library being the 4th canto of “Childe Harold” and Arthelet’s “Shepherd’s Touchstone”). His second major ailment left him lame; his third and most serious illness in 1855 left him further paralysed.

The nature of these later illnesses is not specified but may have involved high blood pressure since he possessed a fanatical desire for fresh air and low temperatures. He was seen in his chambers in the Temple on a bitterly cold day in March, upright before his standing desk in his shirt sleeves, with all the windows open. He had not fire, saying that he benefited from the stove of a less hardy worker below. Again, a neighbour at Hadley, where his devoted sisters kept house for him, records finding him, one Christmas, working at a crude desk under a tree in a bleak field, cattle all round and snowflakes falling steadily on his manuscripts.

Thomas Jarman gave generously, if indiscriminately, to many charities. He was entirely free from avarice or rapacity and cheerfully gave his services free to indigent clients. A prominent member of the Totteridge Lane Chapel, he was wont to describe himself as a “Dissenter and an old Whig.” He was a republican at heart and an admirer of all things American but although a great law codifier, he was no law reformer.His friends, who were many and from all walks of life, regarded him as a man of large, inquiring and candid mind.

He died on Feb. 26, 1860, at Hadley Green, from erysipelys of the face and head – an illness which today is not considered fatal – one of “those rare men of whom the truth, the whole truth might be safely as well as instructively told.”
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The HADAS Bookbox

Members who ordered them have now received copies of the first list of contents of the Bookbox. Since the Box is constantly growing, there are already additions. We shall in future print occasional supplementaries to keep the original list up to date. Here is the first: references on the left (e.g. Misc 139) are to categories and numbers in the original list:
Misc. 139 The Lake Villages of Somerset Arthur Bulleid
Arch. 144 Report on Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, 1951 Trans. LAMAS 1953
Rom. Brit. 145 A Kiln of the potter Doinus Arch. J. vol 129
Brit. Hist. 79 Reconstructed Map of London under Richard II Marjorie Honeybourne
Local Hist 164 Medieval Camden Deidre le Faye
165 Streets of West Hampstead ed. Christopher Wade
166 Camden History Review No. 2 Camden History Soc.
167 Camden History Review No. 3 Camden History Soc.
168 Camden History Review No. 3 Camden History Soc.
169 Hampstead Garden Suburb 1907-1977 Brigid Grafton Green
Forthcoming Events

York Archaeological Weekend, Nov. 25-27, on the Norman Conquest of Yorkshire, particularly the violent events of 1068-9. Conference fee £8.00 (non-residential). Applications to Director of Special Courses, Dept. Adult Education, Leeds University, who will also supply on request a list of possible accommodation in York.

British Mesolithic, with particular reference to the Midlans: residential school at Knuston Hall, Irchester, Wellingborough, Northamts, Jan. 14/15 1978. Fee £12 (full residential). Applications (sae) to the Principal. Tutors: Mrs W, Tutin (The Environment of Britain, 10000-4000 BC): Paul Mellars (Chronological and Cultural Structure and Economic and Social Aspects of the British Mesolithic); A. Saville (Mesolithic in Midlands and Mesolithic Implement Types); Clive Bonsall (A case-study: the Mesolithic in West Cumbria).
Bristol Weekend, Sept. 23-25.

The coach for Bristol is full, with a very small waiting list. If anyone is still keen to go, please ring Dorothy Newbury. She will be glad to add names to the waiting list in case of further late cancellations.

Here is a short reading list for the Bristol area, suggested by Mr. M.W. Ponsford, Field Archaeologist to Bristol University, who will conduct our Sunday walkabout in Bristol:

Steamship Great Britain, Garahm Farr, 20p

Prehistoric Bristol, Grinsell, 20p

Romans in the Bristol area, K. Branigan, 20p

Medieval Churches in Bristol, M.Q. Smith, 20p

Bristol Mint, K. Grinsell, 20p

Industrial Archaeology of Bristol, R.A. Buchanan, 15p

Bristol in the Early Middle Ages, David Walker, 25p.

In addition we suggest The Mendip Hills in Prehistoric and Roman times, by John Campbell, David Elkington, Peter Fowler, and Leslie Grinsell, 60p.

If you would like any of these pamphlets, please lead Dorothy Newbury know, and she will order them in bulk.

Newsletter

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CONGRATULATIONS and to those HADAS members who took examinations this summer (most of them either for some stage of the London University External Diploma in Archaeology or for the Certificate in Field Archaeology) and passed with flying colours. We haven’t yet heard from all who have been through the mill — but these are the results as far as we know them:

Helen Gordon (passed 3rd year Diploma)

Alec Gouldsmith (passed 1st year Diploma)

Marguerite Hughes (passed 1st year Diploma)

Dave King (passed 2nd year Diploma)

Merle Mindel (4th year Diploma, with Merit)

Liz Sagues (4th year Diploma, with Distinction)

Elizabeth Sanderson (passed 2nd year Diploma)
Autumn Courses

Still on academic matters, here is an alteration in the arrangements for one autumn course of which we gave advance news in the June Newsletter.

It forms the first year of the London University Certificate in Field Archaeology. There has been difficulty, however, in finding a lecturer. Now the college has arranged for Michael Pitts, BA, to take the course; but as he is busy on Wednesdays, the evening has been changed to Mondays, 7.30-9.30p.m. starting 19 September, the term will run to 12 December; the second term is from 9 January – 20 March.

The Certificate is an essentially practical 3-year course, and HADAS members who have already taken it have found it very useful. Barnet College is re-starting the Certificate (which has not been in their programme for the past two years) after urging from HADAS, so we hope that many members will support it. Those who do will study, in the first year, recognition and location of sites of all kinds and periods; various archaeological techniques ranging from field walking to resistivity; and the use of photographic and documentary evidence.

We would also again draw members’ attention to another course of which we gave advance details in June, called “Beginning Archaeology” at Hendon College of Further Education, Flower Lane, Mill Hill, on Tuesday evenings 7.30-9.30. This, too has been put into the college programme at HADAS’s suggestion. It is genuinely for beginners and it will be a positive advantage if you know very little about Archaeology — ideal, therefore, for recently-joined HADAS members who place themselves in the archaeological “Don’t Know” category.

Here are details of further courses on archaeological, historical or allied subjects which will start in the Borough of Barnet this coming autumn:
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Archaeology of London, Tues. 8-10 pm, South Friern Library, Colney Hatch Lane. Further details, Miss E.F.Pearce (WEA).

History of English Architecture from 1066, Mons. 8-10 pm, Queen Elizabeth School Barnet. Lecturer Frank Bradbeer. Details Mrs. S. Neville (WEA).

Roman London, Thurs. 8-10 pm, Golders Green Library, Mrs. Roxan. Details Mrs. L Hieger (WEA).

London Architecture, 1800-Today, Thurs. 10 am-12. 44 Rotherwick Road, NW11, Mrs. Smith. Details Mrs. Hieger (WEA).

Victoriana, Mons. 10.30 am – 12.30, Union Church, Mill Hill Broadway, Stephanie Dummler, details Mrs. Symons (WEA).

Earth and Its Resources (conservation), Weds. 8-10 pm. Burnt Oak Library, John Matthew. Details Mrs. Symons (WEA).

Antique Appreciation, 2 courses, Thurs. 1.30-3.30 pm, Tues. 7.30-9.30 pm, Hendon College, Flower Lane, NW7.

Physical and Ecological Basis of Conservation, Tues. 7.30-9.30 pm. Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. D. Crouch.

English and Continental Ceramics, Renaissance-1900, Tues. 10.30 am-12.30, HGS Institute, Miss L.M.Knox.

Elizabethan and Stuart England, Fri. 10.30 am-12, Fellowship House, Willifield Way, NW11. Philippa Bernard.
HADAS on Display

Report by Jeremy Clynes.

During the last six weeks HADAS has staged at five successful exhibitions within the Borough of Barnet, each for a dual purpose — broadening public understanding of archaeology and selling our Jubilee booklet.

The first display at the Hampstead Garden Suburb June Flower Show was organised by Christine Arnott. It showed a selection of flints from West Heath and a general exhibit on “What you might be up in your garden.” The stands at Hendon St. Mary’s Junior School Fete (run by Ted Sammes), Woodhouse School Fete (Vincent Foster), Hendon St. Mary’s Parish Fete (Dorothy Newbury) and Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute week (Jeremy Clynes) showed a variety of material, including pottery from the Church End excavation.

All the exhibits aroused much interest; and 49 Jubilee booklets were sold. HADAS is greatly indebted to the various organisers and the members who helped them. Chances of putting on this kind of one-day-stand often crop up; if you would like to help with similar events in the future, please let our Hon. Secretary know.
Trading Stamps

Our earlier appeals for trading stamps have been highly successful. We have bought over £30 worth of equipment, including wheelbarrows, forks and spades. Now we would like to remind members again that donations of trading stamps will be most gratefully accepted. With them we would like to buy some of the more specialised tools which hitherto we have had to borrow, including:

pliers, ordinary and long-nose; wire-cutters; small hammer; small saw; screw drivers of varying sizes; Stanley trimmer; chisel; wooden mallet.

All this equipment is in fairly constant use on the West Heath dig; and although members (not to mention members’ husbands!) are extremely kind about lending it for long periods, we feel that the Society should as far as possible have its own tools.
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Anyone with trading stamps to spare during the next few months is asked to send them to the Hon. Treasurer.
From Prehistory to Steam

The HADAS August Outing.

For a rapid transition from the world of prehistoric man to that of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, join the HADAS excursion to Avebury and Swindon on 13 August (see accompanying itinerary and booking form). Visit the greatest prehistoric mound in Europe, the largest Neolithic tomb in a England, the widest stone circle in Britain — and then measure the structures and achievements against the magnificent iron and steam-age monuments built by the Great Western Railway People at Swindon.

Complete your form and send it, as soon as possible, to Dorothy Newbury. But if you were one of those who wanted to join the last outing but didn’t get further than the waiting list, please also ring Dorothy Newbury immediately you receive this Newsletter, and tell her that you want to reserve a place for the August trip.
In the Steps of the Crusaders

By JOANNA WADE, one of our younger members now waiting to go up to Cambridge. She has filled part of the interval between school and university travelling — and described here are some of the things she has seen.

From March to June this year I followed the approximate route of the Crusaders, culminating in a tour of Israel. Masada and Caesarea were just to other sites we visited.

I’ll never understand how the Romans managed to capture Masada. We got up at 3.00a.m. to begin the long climb to the summit, and even then it was hot; by 8.00 am. we were beginning to wilt. It is, however, the site itself, not the heat, that makes the fortress so impregnable — I suppose soldiers working in that climate, 1292 ft below sea level, the lowest place in the world, would get quite used in time to wearing their armour under the glaring sun.

As we wound our way up the Snake Path the neat squares of the eight Roman camps, joined by a surrounding wall, appeared on the plain below, hopelessly puny compared with the massive fortifications to be assaulted. In the distance was the Dead Sea and the hills beyond, over which the sun began to rise as we climbed. Eventually we reached the top and sat on the wall, staring out at the plain on one side and on the other the yellow hills and deep crevassed valleys folding away. It was remarkably still up there, in the vast empty water cistern around which a bird wheeled, and in the long storerooms, workshops, towers and bath house. Beleaguered on Masada, the Jewish rebels could only wait, watching the ever-growing height of the ramp was the Romans began to build in 73 AD on the less steep side of the mountain. From this incredible feat of engineering the Romans battered a breach in the wall and broke in — to find the entire garrison dead. To avoid enslavement, they had killed themselves.

Masada has a grandeur which inspires both nobility of purpose like that and beauty like Herod’s Northern Palace. As one enters the area of the palace, the whole atmosphere changes from the calm of desolation to the calm of peace. King Herod (40 BC-4 AD), fearing assassins, built himself a pleasure palace on three tiers down the side of the mountain, where in the perfect safety of his painted, collonaded a room he could lie looking out over the sea.
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Herod may have been dissolute, but he was also undoubtedly Great — as his other enterprise, the huge city of Caesarea, shows. Compared to Yadin’s work on Masada, Caesarea seems to have been less well excavated: part of the site is being used as a car park or is overgrown, the ground around the second Century Roman Amphitheatre is absolutely strewn with potsherds while the theatre itself is painfully over-restored. Nevertheless it must be exhilarating to sit in the theatre and looking out over the Mediterranean, for performances are still held there.

Some distance away two vast and headless figures sit beside the hippodrome which could hold 20,000 spectators. Much more is still tantalisingly covered by sand which blows everywhere, hiding but also preserving things such as the Emperor Hadrian’s other great feat, an aqueduct running all the way from Mount Carmel, in Haifa, to the city. Its top has now been revealed by and stretches along the white sand close to the sea; modern technology cannot compete with it, so that Caesarea has been left to the sands and the drought, and the town has moved inland.

Masada and Caesarea are among the most famous and impressive sites in Israel, and we set off intending to visit them, but what is so exciting about the country is the number and variety of sites one simply stumbles across, from Beit Shean’s Roman Theatre which is miraculously complete with brilliant acoustics, to the engagingly primitive mosaics of the sixth century synagogue of Beit-Alpha: I must hold myself back from even beginning to enthuse about the glories of Jerusalem and Jericho! The archaeology of Israel shows clearly the great waves of people who have trampled over this land — fascinating to study, but daunting when I realise the gaping holes in my knowledge. I hope to return when I am a bit wiser.
Lunch with Emily

A report on the HADAS July outing by John Hooson.

Three hours after leaving Hendon HADAS members were at Grimes Graves, a group of Neolithic Flint Mines covering an area about 34 acres 5 miles north of Thetford, Norfolk.

30 ft below ground, at the bottom of Pit 1, Mr Lord, the Department of Environment custodian, gave us a clear explanation of the pits and the ways in which it is thought they were worked. The attraction for the miners was a stratum of extremely high-grade flint lying up to 40 ft below the surface. Where it was nearer the surface, it could be worked on an open-cast basis, but the quality was inferior, due to the buckling of the strata by glacial action. To obtain the finest quality, it was necessary to sink pits and extract the flint from galleries radiating from the bottom of the pit. In all, 366 known pits have been identified, but Pit 1 alone is open for inspection.

Red deer antlers were used to remove the Flint. Many antler picks have been found in the pits and is estimated that 50,000 may have been used in all. The antlers are exceedingly strong and last year, during research on the site of by the British Museum, professional Dutch miners found that they could remove the flint with them almost as quickly as if they were using the modern steel picks. It is believed that this high quality flint was needed to make axes to clear forested areas. This appears to be supported at Grimes Graves from the results of pollen analysis.
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Waste material from a new pit was discarded into an exhausted pit; and examination of the infill shows that after mining ceased about 1500 BC, later Bronze and Iron Age people occupied the site.

Before we left, Mr Lord demonstrated flint knapping and pressure flaking, presenting HADAS with a “Neolithic” axe-head he had expertly made during the fifteen minutes we were watching. His small daughter sat on the ground at his feet and the pressure-flaked one of the waste flakes. The pair presented a picture which might have been the prototype of a Neolithic family and work! (Mr Lord’s axe-head has now been carefully and indelibly marked — lest by some missed chance it should be mislaid, and a future archaeologist leap upon it with glad cries and enshrine it falsely and for ever on the distribution map!)

A picnic lunch was taken at a nearby Emily’s Wood. At present its most outstanding feature is that the source of its name has defeated our indefatigable Hon. Secretary, Brigid Grafton Green, who had (otherwise) so excellently organised to the whole day’s arrangements.

We then travelled to West Stow, to the site of the Anglo-Saxon Village discovered nearly 30 years ago and excavated from 1965-72. Occupied up to the seventh century, it was untouched until the present time apart from mediaeval ploughing which ceased around 1300 when the site was inundated by about three feet of sand during a sand storm.

The Warden, Richard Darrah, explained that 3 pit houses (grubenhauser) had been reconstructed and work was progressing on a hall house. No Saxon houses have survived and the work is, of necessity, experimental, using the evidence of the pits and postholes together with the results of analysis of the charcoal remaining from two huts which had been destroyed by fire. Only contemporary style tools have been used. Local traditional styles have been applied in an endeavour to determine a true representation and the effect of weather conditions upon them are carefully noted. Perhaps the most interesting fact emerging is that the pits were in all probability floored over and not left open, as previously believed, for it has been found that when left uncovered the recognisable shape of the pit soon disappears, due to wear.

We were very fortunate to visit West Stow in its early stages and it should be interesting to follow its development during the coming years. The intention is that it will form part of a country park open to the public, but at present visits are by prior arrangement only.

At Bury St. Edmunds we were met by Mrs. Margaret Statham, chairman of the Bury Past and Present Society, who showed us first of the Abbey ruins. The Abbey was founded by Benedictine Monks in 1020 upon the Shrine of Edmund, who had been buried there in 869. Mrs. Statham explained at the Abbey Gate that relations between Abbey and townspeople were not always friendly, and the present gate replaces one built shortly after the original was destroyed by townsfolk in 1327. Following the Dissolution, the West front of the Abbey Church had dwellings built into it, so that the “ruins” now present an unusual appearance, being at the same time both the ruins and inhabited houses.

Next we went to the fifteenth century St. Mary’s Church, a magnificent building, light and airy, with a splendid Angel Roof to the nave and decorated roofs to the chancel and Baret’s Chantry, the latter recently restored by the Victoria and Albert Museum and set with twinkling pieces or mirror glass, like stars.

One would have been happy to linger in Bury for a day or two, seeing the town and visiting the Moyses Hall Museum, which contains many of the Anglo Saxon finds from West Stow. However, tea awaited us in a pleasant cottage garden at Great Sampford, where our charming hosts, HADAS members of Mr and Mrs. Bergman, had prepared for us most perfectly. Everyone was able to relax comfortably on the lawn, amid flowers and apple trees, while tea, sandwiches and strawberry scones appeared in an apparently unending procession. A perfect ending to our day.
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Biological Overtones at West Heath

Botanist and HADAS member Dr Joyce Roberts provides an unexpected slant on our current excavation.

Nothing at West Heath but sand and flints and burnt stones? Don’t you believe it! Mesolithic man may have been dead long since, but living denizens of the site are with us still — perhaps direct descendants of creatures who shared the Bagshot Sands with our “ancestors.” West Heath is a living place. When the diggers depart, the site is left to tree roots, insects and possibly bigger creatures, who don’t live in archaeological strata. They move up and down, mixing everything, and the tree roots go down and decay in situ.

The soil is very acid and heavily leached, so biological activity is at a minimum; but there is sufficient activity to decay all organic materials except charcoal. This, to the archaeologist, may be evidence for fires and hearths; to the biologist it will give clues to the plant material available and used as fuel, provided the fragments can be identified. Some of the West East charcoal has been identified as oak.

What has been found so far? Twice, objects thought to be archaeological turned out to be entomological. Brown, wrinkled, nut-like objects were discovered, well below the surface; these have been identified as a root galls of the Cynipid Wasp (Biorhiza pallida). Within each gall a wingless female develops which climbs the trunk of an oak tree and lays eggs in a bud. The oak responds by enclosing the developing lava in an oak-apple gall.

Tiny clay “pots” of the large hairy solitary bee (Anthophora acervorum) were found at the bottom of a pit. The female burrows down into soft soil, excavates a circular cavity and smooths it inside. In this she lays an egg, with some pollen and honey, and then seals it with the clay lid. She repeats this a number of times, making a group of nests. These objects are of no archaeological interest, unless they point to a possible sort of protein — grubs and larvae.

The pollen in the soil is being examined as an indicator of the vegetation of the past. At the lowest level there was oak, hazel, alder, birch, heather, grasses and various ferns including Polpody. Neither Hazel, alder, heather nor Polypody are to be found on or near the site now.

Knowledge of the usual habitat for these plants at the present time enables one to imagine the plant cover in the past. A picture is emerging or mixed oakwoods with birch and lime; in open clearings are hazel bushes and grasses, in damper hollows alder trees and undergrowth of various forms including Polypody — the latter now found only in damp woods of the western and northern parts of the British Isles. In the dry sandy areas denuded of trees there was heather and bracken. A happy time can be spent conjecturing the reasons for the denuded areas or even wondering if Mesolithic man would have recognised the above as a description of “home.”

NOTE TO ALL DIGGERS. No West Heath dig during August. Digging re-starts on 3 September, will continue all the month on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
Comments

Volume 2 : 1975 – 1979‎ > ‎
newsletter-078-august-1977
Newsletter
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CONGRATULATIONS and to those HADAS members who took examinations this summer (most of them either for some stage of the London University External Diploma in Archaeology or for the Certificate in Field Archaeology) and passed with flying colours. We haven’t yet heard from all who have been through the mill — but these are the results as far as we know them:

Helen Gordon (passed 3rd year Diploma)

Alec Gouldsmith (passed 1st year Diploma)

Marguerite Hughes (passed 1st year Diploma)

Dave King (passed 2nd year Diploma)

Merle Mindel (4th year Diploma, with Merit)

Liz Sagues (4th year Diploma, with Distinction)

Elizabeth Sanderson (passed 2nd year Diploma)
Autumn Courses

Still on academic matters, here is an alteration in the arrangements for one autumn course of which we gave advance news in the June Newsletter.

It forms the first year of the London University Certificate in Field Archaeology. There has been difficulty, however, in finding a lecturer. Now the college has arranged for Michael Pitts, BA, to take the course; but as he is busy on Wednesdays, the evening has been changed to Mondays, 7.30-9.30p.m. starting 19 September, the term will run to 12 December; the second term is from 9 January – 20 March.

The Certificate is an essentially practical 3-year course, and HADAS members who have already taken it have found it very useful. Barnet College is re-starting the Certificate (which has not been in their programme for the past two years) after urging from HADAS, so we hope that many members will support it. Those who do will study, in the first year, recognition and location of sites of all kinds and periods; various archaeological techniques ranging from field walking to resistivity; and the use of photographic and documentary evidence.

We would also again draw members’ attention to another course of which we gave advance details in June, called “Beginning Archaeology” at Hendon College of Further Education, Flower Lane, Mill Hill, on Tuesday evenings 7.30-9.30. This, too has been put into the college programme at HADAS’s suggestion. It is genuinely for beginners and it will be a positive advantage if you know very little about Archaeology — ideal, therefore, for recently-joined HADAS members who place themselves in the archaeological “Don’t Know” category.

Here are details of further courses on archaeological, historical or allied subjects which will start in the Borough of Barnet this coming autumn:
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Archaeology of London, Tues. 8-10 pm, South Friern Library, Colney Hatch Lane. Further details, Miss E.F.Pearce (WEA).

History of English Architecture from 1066, Mons. 8-10 pm, Queen Elizabeth School Barnet. Lecturer Frank Bradbeer. Details Mrs. S. Neville (WEA).

Roman London, Thurs. 8-10 pm, Golders Green Library, Mrs. Roxan. Details Mrs. L Hieger (WEA).

London Architecture, 1800-Today, Thurs. 10 am-12. 44 Rotherwick Road, NW11, Mrs. Smith. Details Mrs. Hieger (WEA).

Victoriana, Mons. 10.30 am – 12.30, Union Church, Mill Hill Broadway, Stephanie Dummler, details Mrs. Symons (WEA).

Earth and Its Resources (conservation), Weds. 8-10 pm. Burnt Oak Library, John Matthew. Details Mrs. Symons (WEA).

Antique Appreciation, 2 courses, Thurs. 1.30-3.30 pm, Tues. 7.30-9.30 pm, Hendon College, Flower Lane, NW7.

Physical and Ecological Basis of Conservation, Tues. 7.30-9.30 pm. Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. D. Crouch.

English and Continental Ceramics, Renaissance-1900, Tues. 10.30 am-12.30, HGS Institute, Miss L.M.Knox.

Elizabethan and Stuart England, Fri. 10.30 am-12, Fellowship House, Willifield Way, NW11. Philippa Bernard.
HADAS on Display

Report by Jeremy Clynes.

During the last six weeks HADAS has staged at five successful exhibitions within the Borough of Barnet, each for a dual purpose — broadening public understanding of archaeology and selling our Jubilee booklet.

The first display at the Hampstead Garden Suburb June Flower Show was organised by Christine Arnott. It showed a selection of flints from West Heath and a general exhibit on “What you might be up in your garden.” The stands at Hendon St. Mary’s Junior School Fete (run by Ted Sammes), Woodhouse School Fete (Vincent Foster), Hendon St. Mary’s Parish Fete (Dorothy Newbury) and Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute week (Jeremy Clynes) showed a variety of material, including pottery from the Church End excavation.

All the exhibits aroused much interest; and 49 Jubilee booklets were sold. HADAS is greatly indebted to the various organisers and the members who helped them. Chances of putting on this kind of one-day-stand often crop up; if you would like to help with similar events in the future, please let our Hon. Secretary know.
Trading Stamps

Our earlier appeals for trading stamps have been highly successful. We have bought over £30 worth of equipment, including wheelbarrows, forks and spades. Now we would like to remind members again that donations of trading stamps will be most gratefully accepted. With them we would like to buy some of the more specialised tools which hitherto we have had to borrow, including:

pliers, ordinary and long-nose; wire-cutters; small hammer; small saw; screw drivers of varying sizes; Stanley trimmer; chisel; wooden mallet.

All this equipment is in fairly constant use on the West Heath dig; and although members (not to mention members’ husbands!) are extremely kind about lending it for long periods, we feel that the Society should as far as possible have its own tools.
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Anyone with trading stamps to spare during the next few months is asked to send them to the Hon. Treasurer.
From Prehistory to Steam

The HADAS August Outing.

For a rapid transition from the world of prehistoric man to that of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, join the HADAS excursion to Avebury and Swindon on 13 August (see accompanying itinerary and booking form). Visit the greatest prehistoric mound in Europe, the largest Neolithic tomb in a England, the widest stone circle in Britain — and then measure the structures and achievements against the magnificent iron and steam-age monuments built by the Great Western Railway People at Swindon.

Complete your form and send it, as soon as possible, to Dorothy Newbury. But if you were one of those who wanted to join the last outing but didn’t get further than the waiting list, please also ring Dorothy Newbury immediately you receive this Newsletter, and tell her that you want to reserve a place for the August trip.
In the Steps of the Crusaders

By JOANNA WADE, one of our younger members now waiting to go up to Cambridge. She has filled part of the interval between school and university travelling — and described here are some of the things she has seen.

From March to June this year I followed the approximate route of the Crusaders, culminating in a tour of Israel. Masada and Caesarea were just to other sites we visited.

I’ll never understand how the Romans managed to capture Masada. We got up at 3.00a.m. to begin the long climb to the summit, and even then it was hot; by 8.00 am. we were beginning to wilt. It is, however, the site itself, not the heat, that makes the fortress so impregnable — I suppose soldiers working in that climate, 1292 ft below sea level, the lowest place in the world, would get quite used in time to wearing their armour under the glaring sun.

As we wound our way up the Snake Path the neat squares of the eight Roman camps, joined by a surrounding wall, appeared on the plain below, hopelessly puny compared with the massive fortifications to be assaulted. In the distance was the Dead Sea and the hills beyond, over which the sun began to rise as we climbed. Eventually we reached the top and sat on the wall, staring out at the plain on one side and on the other the yellow hills and deep crevassed valleys folding away. It was remarkably still up there, in the vast empty water cistern around which a bird wheeled, and in the long storerooms, workshops, towers and bath house. Beleaguered on Masada, the Jewish rebels could only wait, watching the ever-growing height of the ramp was the Romans began to build in 73 AD on the less steep side of the mountain. From this incredible feat of engineering the Romans battered a breach in the wall and broke in — to find the entire garrison dead. To avoid enslavement, they had killed themselves.

Masada has a grandeur which inspires both nobility of purpose like that and beauty like Herod’s Northern Palace. As one enters the area of the palace, the whole atmosphere changes from the calm of desolation to the calm of peace. King Herod (40 BC-4 AD), fearing assassins, built himself a pleasure palace on three tiers down the side of the mountain, where in the perfect safety of his painted, collonaded a room he could lie looking out over the sea.
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Herod may have been dissolute, but he was also undoubtedly Great — as his other enterprise, the huge city of Caesarea, shows. Compared to Yadin’s work on Masada, Caesarea seems to have been less well excavated: part of the site is being used as a car park or is overgrown, the ground around the second Century Roman Amphitheatre is absolutely strewn with potsherds while the theatre itself is painfully over-restored. Nevertheless it must be exhilarating to sit in the theatre and looking out over the Mediterranean, for performances are still held there.

Some distance away two vast and headless figures sit beside the hippodrome which could hold 20,000 spectators. Much more is still tantalisingly covered by sand which blows everywhere, hiding but also preserving things such as the Emperor Hadrian’s other great feat, an aqueduct running all the way from Mount Carmel, in Haifa, to the city. Its top has now been revealed by and stretches along the white sand close to the sea; modern technology cannot compete with it, so that Caesarea has been left to the sands and the drought, and the town has moved inland.

Masada and Caesarea are among the most famous and impressive sites in Israel, and we set off intending to visit them, but what is so exciting about the country is the number and variety of sites one simply stumbles across, from Beit Shean’s Roman Theatre which is miraculously complete with brilliant acoustics, to the engagingly primitive mosaics of the sixth century synagogue of Beit-Alpha: I must hold myself back from even beginning to enthuse about the glories of Jerusalem and Jericho! The archaeology of Israel shows clearly the great waves of people who have trampled over this land — fascinating to study, but daunting when I realise the gaping holes in my knowledge. I hope to return when I am a bit wiser.
Lunch with Emily

A report on the HADAS July outing by John Hooson.

Three hours after leaving Hendon HADAS members were at Grimes Graves, a group of Neolithic Flint Mines covering an area about 34 acres 5 miles north of Thetford, Norfolk.

30 ft below ground, at the bottom of Pit 1, Mr Lord, the Department of Environment custodian, gave us a clear explanation of the pits and the ways in which it is thought they were worked. The attraction for the miners was a stratum of extremely high-grade flint lying up to 40 ft below the surface. Where it was nearer the surface, it could be worked on an open-cast basis, but the quality was inferior, due to the buckling of the strata by glacial action. To obtain the finest quality, it was necessary to sink pits and extract the flint from galleries radiating from the bottom of the pit. In all, 366 known pits have been identified, but Pit 1 alone is open for inspection.

Red deer antlers were used to remove the Flint. Many antler picks have been found in the pits and is estimated that 50,000 may have been used in all. The antlers are exceedingly strong and last year, during research on the site of by the British Museum, professional Dutch miners found that they could remove the flint with them almost as quickly as if they were using the modern steel picks. It is believed that this high quality flint was needed to make axes to clear forested areas. This appears to be supported at Grimes Graves from the results of pollen analysis.
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Waste material from a new pit was discarded into an exhausted pit; and examination of the infill shows that after mining ceased about 1500 BC, later Bronze and Iron Age people occupied the site.

Before we left, Mr Lord demonstrated flint knapping and pressure flaking, presenting HADAS with a “Neolithic” axe-head he had expertly made during the fifteen minutes we were watching. His small daughter sat on the ground at his feet and the pressure-flaked one of the waste flakes. The pair presented a picture which might have been the prototype of a Neolithic family and work! (Mr Lord’s axe-head has now been carefully and indelibly marked — lest by some missed chance it should be mislaid, and a future archaeologist leap upon it with glad cries and enshrine it falsely and for ever on the distribution map!)

A picnic lunch was taken at a nearby Emily’s Wood. At present its most outstanding feature is that the source of its name has defeated our indefatigable Hon. Secretary, Brigid Grafton Green, who had (otherwise) so excellently organised to the whole day’s arrangements.

We then travelled to West Stow, to the site of the Anglo-Saxon Village discovered nearly 30 years ago and excavated from 1965-72. Occupied up to the seventh century, it was untouched until the present time apart from mediaeval ploughing which ceased around 1300 when the site was inundated by about three feet of sand during a sand storm.

The Warden, Richard Darrah, explained that 3 pit houses (grubenhauser) had been reconstructed and work was progressing on a hall house. No Saxon houses have survived and the work is, of necessity, experimental, using the evidence of the pits and postholes together with the results of analysis of the charcoal remaining from two huts which had been destroyed by fire. Only contemporary style tools have been used. Local traditional styles have been applied in an endeavour to determine a true representation and the effect of weather conditions upon them are carefully noted. Perhaps the most interesting fact emerging is that the pits were in all probability floored over and not left open, as previously believed, for it has been found that when left uncovered the recognisable shape of the pit soon disappears, due to wear.

We were very fortunate to visit West Stow in its early stages and it should be interesting to follow its development during the coming years. The intention is that it will form part of a country park open to the public, but at present visits are by prior arrangement only.

At Bury St. Edmunds we were met by Mrs. Margaret Statham, chairman of the Bury Past and Present Society, who showed us first of the Abbey ruins. The Abbey was founded by Benedictine Monks in 1020 upon the Shrine of Edmund, who had been buried there in 869. Mrs. Statham explained at the Abbey Gate that relations between Abbey and townspeople were not always friendly, and the present gate replaces one built shortly after the original was destroyed by townsfolk in 1327. Following the Dissolution, the West front of the Abbey Church had dwellings built into it, so that the “ruins” now present an unusual appearance, being at the same time both the ruins and inhabited houses.

Next we went to the fifteenth century St. Mary’s Church, a magnificent building, light and airy, with a splendid Angel Roof to the nave and decorated roofs to the chancel and Baret’s Chantry, the latter recently restored by the Victoria and Albert Museum and set with twinkling pieces or mirror glass, like stars.

One would have been happy to linger in Bury for a day or two, seeing the town and visiting the Moyses Hall Museum, which contains many of the Anglo Saxon finds from West Stow. However, tea awaited us in a pleasant cottage garden at Great Sampford, where our charming hosts, HADAS members of Mr and Mrs. Bergman, had prepared for us most perfectly. Everyone was able to relax comfortably on the lawn, amid flowers and apple trees, while tea, sandwiches and strawberry scones appeared in an apparently unending procession. A perfect ending to our day.
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Biological Overtones at West Heath

Botanist and HADAS member Dr Joyce Roberts provides an unexpected slant on our current excavation.

Nothing at West Heath but sand and flints and burnt stones? Don’t you believe it! Mesolithic man may have been dead long since, but living denizens of the site are with us still — perhaps direct descendants of creatures who shared the Bagshot Sands with our “ancestors.” West Heath is a living place. When the diggers depart, the site is left to tree roots, insects and possibly bigger creatures, who don’t live in archaeological strata. They move up and down, mixing everything, and the tree roots go down and decay in situ.

The soil is very acid and heavily leached, so biological activity is at a minimum; but there is sufficient activity to decay all organic materials except charcoal. This, to the archaeologist, may be evidence for fires and hearths; to the biologist it will give clues to the plant material available and used as fuel, provided the fragments can be identified. Some of the West East charcoal has been identified as oak.

What has been found so far? Twice, objects thought to be archaeological turned out to be entomological. Brown, wrinkled, nut-like objects were discovered, well below the surface; these have been identified as a root galls of the Cynipid Wasp (Biorhiza pallida). Within each gall a wingless female develops which climbs the trunk of an oak tree and lays eggs in a bud. The oak responds by enclosing the developing lava in an oak-apple gall.

Tiny clay “pots” of the large hairy solitary bee (Anthophora acervorum) were found at the bottom of a pit. The female burrows down into soft soil, excavates a circular cavity and smooths it inside. In this she lays an egg, with some pollen and honey, and then seals it with the clay lid. She repeats this a number of times, making a group of nests. These objects are of no archaeological interest, unless they point to a possible sort of protein — grubs and larvae.

The pollen in the soil is being examined as an indicator of the vegetation of the past. At the lowest level there was oak, hazel, alder, birch, heather, grasses and various ferns including Polpody. Neither Hazel, alder, heather nor Polypody are to be found on or near the site now.

Knowledge of the usual habitat for these plants at the present time enables one to imagine the plant cover in the past. A picture is emerging or mixed oakwoods with birch and lime; in open clearings are hazel bushes and grasses, in damper hollows alder trees and undergrowth of various forms including Polypody — the latter now found only in damp woods of the western and northern parts of the British Isles. In the dry sandy areas denuded of trees there was heather and bracken. A happy time can be spent conjecturing the reasons for the denuded areas or even wondering if Mesolithic man would have recognised the above as a description of “home.”

NOTE TO ALL DIGGERS. No West Heath dig during August. Digging re-starts on 3 September, will continue all the month on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Newsletter

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West Heath in Training

By Daphne Lorimer.

HADAS celebrated the Queen’s Silver Jubilee as a working archaeological society might expect to — by digging. The second West Heath fortnight of 1977 — on the lower, or Leg of Mutton site — had started three days before, on 4 June. We did, however, mark the Queen’s anniversary with a special ceremony. Diggers downed trowels at 12.00p.m. on 7 June and cracked some bottles of Italian champagne, one of which had been awarded to the West Heath entry in the recent Rescue Archaeology competition.

Mr Peter Challon, Superintendent for the GLC of Golders Hill Park and West Heath, who has helped HADAS immensely in countless ways, joined us for the celebration. Together we toasted Her Majesty and sang (waveringly, and in several keys,) God Save the Queen. Then we returned to the trenches in a warm glow of patriotism and Asti Spumante.

Before the dig began our Hon. Surveyor, Barrie Martin, had fixed datum points on two trees at 100 m and 99 m above Ordnance Survey sea level. From these, three datum points (all at 99 m) were set up on the site for diggers to use in plotting the depths of their finds.

From June 6-18 HADAS, under the careful and invigorating direction of Desmond Collins, ran its first training excavation, recognised by London University as suitable required training for the external Diploma in Archaeology. The course was fully booked from an early date; ten students each week braved the rigours of the English summer with cheerful disregard, amid showers and ice northeast winds, for their personal comfort. They appeared to enjoy themselves considerably in so doing, and it was a very happy fortnight for HADAS members involved in their training.

Thanks to the kindness of HADAS member June Porges and her husband, a tent was made available for the comfort of the class during talks. On days when our experienced camper-members were absent, it provided a great source of hilarity during its erection. Had the weather been kinder, we understand that the whole perilous process would have been immortalised on cine-film.

Talks in the tent — and on the site — covered such subjects as flint recognition, what to look out for in the way of palaeobotanical evidence, the importance of burnt material (both charcoal and stone), postholes and how to recognise, excavate and cast them, section drawing, recording of finds in the trenches and follow-up processing after excavation. Students visited the upper site and were shown what work had been down there and told what results might be hoped for.

Mention of the tent leads me on to another structure which has made its appearance this year at the West Heath site. It, too, has made a great difference to the comfort of HADAS’s life at Hampstead. It is the brain-child of Dave King who, with ingenuity and considerable generosity both of time and materials, has equipped us with a handsome and completely collapsible site hut. Made of timber, corrugated perspex and plastic sheeting, it provides perfect conditions for find-processing (no more chasing little plastic bags around the site in a gale, as we had so often to do last year); held together by nuts and bolts, it can be erected and taken down in ten minutes once you get the hang of it.
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And this is not the end of Dave’s sterling work on the site. He has provided us with a second of sieve (with very beneficial effect on HADAS tempers); and has also perfected a new “bivouac” for the dry storage of equipment. Now that we are so well-equipped to withstand the rain, we fully expect the sun to start shining every day!

Ten new trenches have now been opened at West Heath, of which seven are arranged in the usual chequer board pattern to the northeast of the area we excavated last year. Two others continue the investigation of the area around the trees on the southern side of the site; and one trial trench has been opened by the south east fence.

The main area is proving a rich source of man-struck flints and, although it is early to draw conclusions, does appear to be producing a particularly large number of retouched pieces including broken points (which may be broken arrow tips) and blades and flakes showing signs of utilisation as scrapers — a rarity last year. A considerable amount of burnt material has also been recovered but this is, perhaps, too near the surface to be of great significance at this stage.
Future Digging Plans

Digging will now continue on Wednesdays and weekends with the exception of Saturday 16 July — the date of the Grimes Graves outing.

In response to requests from a number of members who want a further full-time dig, the excavation will be open for the whole of July — from Saturday 23 July to Sunday 31st inclusive.

The dig will close for the whole August, but will re-start for Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 3 September – 2 October, with the exception of the Bristol weekend, September 24-25. Should the autumn be particularly fine, digging might continue a little longer.

DO COME AND DIG. We appear to have reached a very rich area and need as many diggers as can wield a trowel. Christine Arnott also needs find processors and will be very grateful for anyone willing to do a stint at the “executive table.”
New Members

Since we last broached the matter — which was only in May — the Society has enrolled a further 38 members, so it is again time to welcome these fresh additions to the HADAS ranks. We hope all those who have joined us in the last two months will enjoy their membership. They include a number of students from the West Heath training dig; and also a Finchley school, which has taken out the Society’s special schools membership:

Mrs. Elizabeth Aldridge, Highgate; Mrs. Mary Barnett, N2; Bishop Douglas School, Finchley; Miles Blencowe, Hampstead; C.E. Bowden, N2; Mrs. Debbie Bradshaw, Hampstead; Mrs. E.J. Brown, Finchley; Mrs. Grace Clark, Islington; Mrs. June Davies, North Finchley; Miss Rose Edgcumbe, Hampstead; Miss Vi Field, SE1; Miss Frances Goodman, Temple Fortune; Mr. & Mrs. Harmes, Hampstead; Colin Hughes, Finchley; Simon Joyce, Hampstead; Ivan Knowlson, Mill Hill; Miss Rosa Leon, Garden Suburb; Miss Frances Lewis, Kenton; Mrs. Theresa McDonald, Maida Vale; Mrs. Merle Mindel, Berkshire; Mr. J. Minnitt, Borehamwood; Mr. W. Noble, Hornsey; Ms O’Connor, New Southgate; Miss Margaret Phillips, W13; Samuel Pozner, Golders Green; Mrs. M.A. Proffer, Hampstead; Miss C. Salisse, Garden Suburb; Mrs. E. Sharpley, Finchley; Mrs. Peggy Slade, Garden Suburb; Mr. & Mrs. Tessler, North Finchley; Mike Watkins, SW18; Mr. & Mrs. White, Maida Vale; Bronwyn Williams, N5; Anne Young, Edgware; and Miss Xenia Zurawska, Golders Green.
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The Next Outing

… on Saturday 16 July, will be to the Neolithic Flint Mines at Grimes Graves where, after showing us the one shaft still left open, the custodian, Mr Lord, will demonstrate flint-knapping and pressure flaking. Next stop will be the new country park at West Stow (not yet open to the general public), where an Anglo-Saxon village is in course of reconstruction following excavation; and then the ancient city of Bury St. Edmunds, for a taste of monastic medievalism.

To round off the day two HADAS members, Mr. And Mrs. Bergman, have kindly invited the Society to take tea with them in their cottage in a Suffolk Village some miles south of Bury — the first time we had been entertained in this way by a member.

An application form for the outing is enclosed. Please complete and return, with remittance, to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible.
Looking Ahead

Saturday 13 August. Trip to Avebury, Silbury and Swindon.

Weekend at Bristol, September, 23-25. The coach for this is fully booked, but don’t let that stop you putting your name on Dorothy Newbury’s waiting list, in case there are cancellations.

Full details of Bristol with the August Newsletter — but to whet your appetite, guides on the trip will include, in the Mendips, Peter Fowler of Bristol University (well-known to many HADAS members) and, in South Wales, Dr Manning of Cardiff University.
Have you paid your Subscription yet?

The Hon. Treasurer would like to remind members that their subscriptions for the current year were due on 1 April last. As yet he has received renewal was from only 50 per cent of members. If you are among the “other half,” he would like to hear from you as soon as possible — sending out individual reminders, in these days of high postage, is an expensive business.

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

Subscriptions should be sent to Jeremy Clynes.
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An Outing for All Tastes

Phyl Dobbins reports on the HADAS June outing into Northamptonshire.

In spite of the wintry weather a full coach sped up the M1 to our first stop at Hardingstone on the outskirts of Northampton. The Briar Hill site was earmarked for housing by Northampton Development Corporation, but indications of ditches, first noticed in crop marks in 1972, led to the commissioning of a magnetometer survey by the Department of Environment. Bearing in mind that the underlying rock is ironstone, a surprising amount of accurate detail was revealed by the survey. After mechanical removal of 9 in. of topsoil from the 8 acre site, a rescue dig began under the direction of Dr Helen Bamford.

Cross sections and longitudinal sections of the two deep outer ditches, and a shallower spiral ditch inside the enclosure, confirm that the site is a Neolithic causewayed camp. Flints and fragmented pottery have also been found in the ditches and in deep pits. Careful study of the sections shows that the ditches were re-cut at least three or four times, indicating that the site was probably occupied intermittently from the early to late Neolithic times. Because of the acidity of the sandy soil and rock, organic material has not survived except for a very few animal bones and one cremation burial in the outer ditch.

Traces of Iron Age buildings have also been found (the site is near the Iron Age camp of Hunsbury Hill) together with two early Saxon grubenhäusen (sunken buildings with large posts at each end).

As the housing project has been in delayed for financial reasons, the dig continues.

After exposure to the icy winds blowing up the Nene valley we were glad of the comfort of the Boat Inn on the Grand Union Canal at Stoke Brewerne. Later we crossed the canal to visit the Waterways Museum housed in a converted granary. This contains a full history in models, pictures and objects, of canal building, the boats, and the people who worked the boats.

The canal here is crossed by a fine double arched bridge (c. 1800) and has a flight of locks to raise boats for the traverse to the two-mile long Blixworth Tunnell. There is no towpath through the tunnel, so in the past the boats were worked by “leggers.” Two men lay on boards projecting from the sides of the boats, are pushing them along with their feet against the side walls of the tunnel.

Our final visit was to Castle Ashby House, the home of the Compton family. The present building was started in 1574 by the first Lord Compton, later Earl of Northampton, with a later addition c. 1630 attributed to Indigo Jones. On arrival we were greeted by the roar of cannon and the sound of gunfire — the Sealed Knot Society was rehearsing the battle of Naseby, to be re-fought in the Park the following day.

In a conducted tour of the house, which is still lived in, we were shown many fine rooms furnished with items ranging from Chinese Coromandel screens and cabinets to Venetian and English pieces of 17th/19th century, including work by Chippendale and Sheraton, and an Adam fireplace. There were also tapestries, 16th/17th century, from Brussels and Mortlake, and fine examples of wood carving, glass and china.
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However, even a without all these the house would be worth visiting for its collection of paintings alone. The majority are portraits of the family by such artists as a Van Dyke, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Kneller, Lawrench, Raeburn and Hoppner, and there is also a famous portrait of Mary Tudor by Antonio Moro. The best works are from the Italian Renaissance, Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Wise Men,” Bellini’s “Virgin and child,” among them. Also of interest is a pair of carved walnut bellows inscribed with the name of Benvenuto Cellini.

An unexpected archaeological bonus is the very fine collection of Greek vases, mainly red and black figure ware.

After an excellent tea in the converted Elizabethan kitchen decorated with antique copper utensils, we return to London, congratulating Liz Holliday on a very well-organised day spent travelling through time.
Index to the HADAS Newsletters

In addition to their archaeological know-how, many members possess other skills. It is one of the pleasantest traits of HADAS that so many of its members are prepared to spend their knowledge and craft in the Society’s service.

One example of this kind of help was provided recently by committee member Freda Wilkinson, who is by profession an indexer. Earlier this year she produced a detailed 55-page index of the HADAS newsletter from No.1 to No. 70 (October 1969-December 1976). This is a highly skilled, well produced piece of work, which will be most helpful to the Society’s officers and will increase the Newsletter’s value considerably as a work of reference by making the information it contains quickly accessible.

It so happens that the circulation of Newsletter is not confined to HADAS members only. Some 25 or so complimentary copies go to neighbouring societies, libraries, museums, etc. We asked three of these bodies — the GLC library, the Camden Local History Library and Barnet Libraries, — if they would like copies of Mrs. Wilkinson’s index, at a cost of £3. All enthusiastically accepted.

This response was so immediate that the Committee decided to publicise the existence of the index further, and to invite any member, or anyone who normally receives a complimentary copy, to let the Hon. Secretary know if they too would like to buy a photo-copy of the index at £3 (including postage).
“Lost” Station in New Southgate

By Bill Firth.

In 1853 the Great Northern London Cemetery Company was constituted by Act of 18 and 19 Vic, cap. 159, to establish a burial ground at Colney Hatch (now better known as New Southgate) and 150 acres of land were required. In 1859 the cemetery company entered into an agreement under which the railway company provided two stations for the use of the cemetery company, one at Maiden Lane, Kings Cross, on railway land, the other on the cemetery land at New Southgate. The railway also agreed to run trains between the two stations for the conveyance or coffins and mourners.
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The King’s Cross station, where the main building was still standing in 1954, although in a dilapidated condition, was just north and east of the northern end of the Gas Works Tunnel (the first tunnel of out of Kings Cross) with a road approach from Rufford Street; a high wall and gate prevented viewing of the building from this angle. This station included a mortuary.

The station at Colney Hatch was alongside the cemetery. The line branched off the main GNR Line at New Southgate station and ran parallel to the main line until it had passed the road overbridge (Oakley Road South) where it veered away somewhat, terminating about 400 yards south of the mouth of Barnet tunnel. There was a platform on the east side and a run-round the loop. The station buildings were elaborate, with waiting rooms, a C of E Church and a chapel for Dissenters. The church had a spire of some 150 feet and was in existence at the turn-of-the-century.

Some time between 1867 and 1873 the arrangements ceased and the station was closed. In 1876 the cemetery company obtained an Act authorising alternative use of the land on which the station was built. The Act stated that the traffic between the two stations did not justify upkeep of the works. The land is now occupied by the works of Standard Telephones and Cables, and it appears that all trace of the station has now disappeared. The signal box, Cemetery Up, situated at the north end of the STC buildings on the east side of the railway, was demolished about two years ago, as a preliminary to electrification of the main railway line.

Reference: The Railway Magazine, 19 October ’54.
Local Pamphlets for your Reading List

Camden History Review 4, published last autumn by Camden History Society, 75p, copies by post (add £0.15). Available in the HADAS book box. Mainly about Georgian Camden, but something on Stuart and Victorian Camden also.

Hendon As It Was – vol. 2. Many members will know the “As It Was” photo-books edited by HADAS member Clive Smith. The series, which covers also Mill Hill, Harrow, Golders Green and Finchley, was extended last autumn by a further volume on Hendon. Full, as always, of pictures fascinating in a detailed, often of places now changed beyond recognition. Price £0.75, from the editor.

Memories of Hornsey, by Edwin Monk, published last year by the Hornsey Historical Society (whose publications, including their Quarterly Bulletin, always delight the eye), £0.95 (has £0.20 postage). The first in a series of Occasional Papers, profusely and attractively illustrated.

Pinner Streets, Yesterday and Today, by Elizabeth Cooper, published last November by Pinner and Hatch End Local Historical and Archaeological Society, 70p. A series of well conducted at street surveys, finely illustrated.

And of course we can’t close without reminding you of our own Society’s Victorian Jubilees, published last month at £0.50 (£0.15 postage), obtainable now from our Hon. Treasurer. It has had excellent reviews in the local press and has been described as the best £0.50 worth of Jubilee souvenir that you are likely to obtainable.

Got your copy yet?

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Mud, Glorious Mud

A report on the adventures of the HADAS Bog-people by Daphne Lorimer===

It has been the wettest May for a century, and HADAS has spent most of the month digging in a bog! Contrary to Genesis, the waters which were under the firmament and the waters which were above the firmament were not divided on this occasion — it was wet underneath and wet on top. The trench note-books were wet, the kneeling pads were wet, the trowels and buckets and barrows were wet, and the diggers were wettest of all! It did not however, seemed to dampen their spirits, and this will be a “Crispin’s Day” of which to tell generations of HADAS members yet unborn.

On Saturday 7 May, thanks to an unparalleled accuracy of Billy Maher, husband of HADAS member Margaret Maher, McNicholas Cable and Engineering Company Limited send a High-Max excavator to excavate a trench (hereafter known as the McNicholas Pit), 6 metres by 5 metres in the waterlogged area of the West Heath spring site. A 3 inch slurry pump was also most generously loaned by Mr Maher; in use all and every day, except the dig free of standing water. Those members injudicious enough to use the outlet pipe for wet-sieving found that it possessed a life and will of its own.

Complete soil sequences for pollen, fossil beetles and botanical analysis were taken by Maureen Girling of the Department of the Environment and her colleague, James Craig of Birmingham University, who kindly volunteered their services. These samples came from a face on the northwest corner of the trench (the sump face); large samples were taken along the whole of the North face and 1 metre intervals and a further complete series of samples was taken from a parallel section which appears to lie on the bed of an ancient stream. Large samples containing fossil wood were taken for C14 dating.

It became apparent that the organic muds were part of this ancient stream; no evidence was found in the area excavated for an ancient pond, as had been supposed from 1976 investigations.

The dry area north of the McNicholas Pit was gridded along a magnetic north/south line, and six scattered trenches were opened on the south-facing slope, where it was thought possible a campsite might be located. Apart from two or three possible struck flakes, two-and-a-half musket bulls and a musket flint (shades of the Hampstead Volunteers?), plus an interesting podsol formation, these trenches proved sterile.

On the slope to the south of the pit, a pathway had been made by the excavator. This revealed an area rich in bog iron with a thin layer of gravel. In the lumps of matrix thrown up by the digger from this area a superb conical bracelet core was retrieved. Examination of the baulks on either side of the entrance revealed one plunging flake and one burnt flake with evidence of working. Other small worked fragments were recovered from the spoil. All the flint is heavily stained with iron; it seems possible, on superficial examination, that use may have been made of local raw material.
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Small these archaeological finds are, they do nevertheless make the botanical evidence doubly valuable. They also tie the upper side in with last year’s findings at the Leg of Mutton pond, as the two industries appear to be the same. The matrix from which the core was retrieved has been saved for pollen analysis. Soil samples have been taken from the face where the plunging flake was found. The results are awaited with considerable excitement, and the whole exercise has been well worthwhile.

As much as possible all the organic mud from the stream bed was wet-sieved or examined minutely by hand. Section drawing was discovered to possess hazards all its own, since the face being plotted frequently showed a distressing tendency to disappear into the surrounding ooze in the middle of the proceedings (on one occasion it had to be held forcibly in position while the last measurement was taken). Any digger so foolhardy as to stand in one position for too long suddenly found his (or her) boots been lovingly grasped by the mud and sucked slowly into the slime.

Dr Joyce Roberts (a HADAS member and a qualified botanist) and Miss Girling took careful note of all the plants present in the area before the excavation, and will return from time to time to keep an eye on the re-growth of the flora. (Dr Roberts was observed to be carefully transplanting and sundry green-leaved objects to places of safety before the High-Max arrived). It is hoped to obtain some information from the Nature Conservancy about ways in which the area can be helped to regenerate, and HADAS expects that nature will cover the scars that have been made and produce a spot more beautiful and more abundant in rare plants than it was before — and in the not too distant future.

Members are reminded that excavations start again at the lower site, by the Leg of Mutton Pond, on Saturday 4 June and will continue until 19 June. The training dig it begins on the 6 June, but HADAS members who are not trainees will also be very welcome. Except for those involved in training, there will be no excavation on Saturday 18 June, when there is a Society outing to Northamptonshire.

The swans are whooping it up on the pond, and the ducks are lying in wait for tit-bits; and those members who have not been across Golders Hill Park recently may like to know that the black-and-white goat has just produced three enchanting kids. In fact, West Heath is ready with all its attractions — and we look forward to seeing you at the dig.
Victorian Jubilees

A note from Edward Sammes.

Last February we invited HADAS members to help towards the cost of publishing the Society’s next Occasional Paper. The response was good, and now Occasional Paper No. 4 has been published. It is called Victorian Jubilees, and it describes the events in 1887 and 1897 in the areas which today form the London Borough of Barnet: Edgware, Mill Hill, Hendon, Childs Hill, Finchley and the Barnets — Chipping, Friern, East and New.

Six Society members have co-operated in the writing of the booklet. It entailed many hours of research, delving into local newspapers and other records. After a brief introduction, which sets the national scene, there follows a fascinating account of how individual areas celebrated. Parties, sports, bonfires and firework displays, plus the struggles of a minority to produce some permanently useful memorials of the occasion, all come within its scope, as do the vagaries of that old enemy, the weather.
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The cover bears a representation of a Golden Jubilee jug, drawn by Elizabeth Holliday, and the 48 pages include fourteen illustrations. Price is £0.50, or by post £0.65. An order form is included with this Newsletter, and we hope that every HADAS member will use it! But please don’t stop there; turn yourself into a salesman for HADAS, and try to sell at least three copies — perhaps to your neighbours, perhaps to members of other societies use support, such as the Townswomens Guilds, the Womens Institutes, the Church association, a youth group, an old people’s club.
June Outing
Come away for a day,
Quite soon – early June;
See a camp on a hill,
Narrow boat in a mill,
Country house in a park,
And be home before dark.

Liz Holliday tempts you, in the above lines, to join the outing on 18 June: full details are enclosed on a separate sheet).

Outings for the remainder of the summer are:
Sat July 16 – Grimes Graves
Sat August 13 – Avebury, Swindon
Sept 23-25 – Weekend in Bristol
Diggers of a Different Kind

By Christine Arnott.

The Hampstead Garden Suburb Horticultural Society of holding a special Jubilee Flower Show on Saturday 25 June from 3-6p.m. It will be at the Free Church Hall, Northway, NW11, entrance 5p.

Permission to sell out Jubilee booklet has been given, so that we can have a stall there, and the Horticultural Society want us, in addition, to mount a small archaeological exhibit.

HADAS members are cordially invited to come to this Show, to see what other “diggers” can produce! They will be assured of an afternoon’s entertainment: a brass band will put in appearance and there will be country dancing on the lawn; a special display of floral arrangements, to mark the Queen’s Jubilee, is planned, as well as the usual flower, vegetable and domestic economy entries. Teas are available in the Teahouse (familiar territory to Brockley Hill and West Heath weekenders).
HADAS goes into East Anglia

A report on the May outing by HELEN and DAN LAMPERT.

The 90-minute drive to Thaxted, in Essex (the first leg of the HADAS May outing) passed in a flash, thanks to the interesting commentary provided by George Ingram and Alec Gouldsmith. At Thaxted we started our tour by looking at the Guildhall, a two-storeyed 15th century building recently restored, with the ground floor open on three sides, and went on to the fourteenth century Church of St. John — a large building, as befits a town whose ancient prosperity was based on wool and cutlery.
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It possesses a particularly fine wooden fifteenth century front cover. The roof timbers in both aisles are original, dating from c 1360-80. Any restoration has been done with great care. Gustave Holst, who composed parts of the Planets in Thaxted, also wrote several works especially for the choir of this church.

Near the church were some recently restored and unusual almshouses — one row thatched, the other with a barge-boarded north gable. Beyond was a windmill, built in 1804 and in operation for about a century, with walls 18 ft thick and three floors above ground level. Graffiti on the blocked-up door proclaimed “William and Gregory did Thaxted, 12 March, 1977;” but we really needed two days to “do” Thaxted!

However, it was already time to move on to Saffron Walden. Here George Ingram was in his element, for his mother was born in Wimbish four and a half miles off, and George imparted to us his love for this beautiful undulating part of Essex. The startling yellow of the fields of rape, or wild mustard, against the sky, was a joyous burst of colour, and the unusual number of water towers of different shapes and sizes made us realise how important they are to this sheep rearing countryside.

Our guide at Saffron Walden was the Museum curator, John Pole. His conducted tour took in first of the ruined castle keep and then the houses around the circular base of the mediaeval castle. Many were decorated with pargetting, some patterns in the shape of the saffron flower or crocus. We ate our packed lunches in the Museum grounds and then took on all-too-short look at the Museum itself. As we left Saffron Walden we passed the common, still used today as it has been since 1605, for fairs. At its eastern side lies a maze, which from time to time has to be re-cut. The origin of grass and earth mazes such as this is obscure and little is known of their history.

On next to Lavenham, where John Popham, Director of the Suffolk Preservation Society, told us some of the history of this walled town before taking us to the Guildhall (c. 1520), built by the Guild of Corpus Christi and now much restored, and then on a tour. Some houses with eighteenth century facades have the original mediaeval oak behind the brick cladding. Recent owners who have removed the brick have found that the oak beneath (which is, in Suffolk, light grey, not black) then rapidly deteriorates. We saw the only house in the town with walls of the original deep pink colour; modern paints, said Mr Popham, cannot emulate the beautiful varied colourwash produced by the original ochre, painted onto lime-washed plaster.

The church of SS Peter and Paul is a landmark for miles around. Unfortunately Victorian restoration has robbed its interior of much of its original splendour, but it is still considered one of the finest “wool” churches in East Anglia. And so, after tea at the Swan… — Alec Goldsmith and George Ingram’s certainly did their homework for this trip, and nothing of interest was left out. Our thanks to them for making us feel we must return to this beautiful part of East Anglia, so full of historical detail.
The New HADAS Committee

The Annual General Meeting having just finished, we seize the chance of recording the names of the Officers and Committee for the year ahead: Officers:
Chairman – Mr. Brian Jarman
Vice-Chairman – Mr. E. Sammes
Hon. Secretary – Mrs. B. Grafton Green
Hon. Treasurer – Mr. J. Clynes

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Committee:

Christine Arnott, John Enderby, Peter Fauvel-Clinch, Irene Frauchiger, George Ingram, Elizabeth Holliday, Dave King, Daphne Lorimer, Dorothy Newbury, Nell Penny, June Porges, Freda Wilkinson, Eric Wookey.
Lecture Courses for 1977/78

Here is advance news of Archaeology classes in our Borough next winter and spring. Some have been arranged as a result of HADAS’s suggestions to the various colleges, so we hope that members would take full advantage of them:

AT HGS INSTITUTE, CENTRAL SQUARE, NW11

London University 4-year Diploma in Archaeology:

1st Year, Palaeolithic/Mesolithic Archaeology. Desmond Collins. Weds. 7.30-9.30, from Sep 21. 24 lectures, 4 visits, £7.50.

2nd year, Western Asia. David Price-Williams. Thurs 7.30-9.30, from Sep 22. 24 lectures, 4 visits. £7.50.

Classical Archaeology: Greek/Roman. Dr. Malcolm Colledge. Mons 8-9.30, Jan 19-Mar 13, 1978
lectures, 2 visits. £3.50.

New Research at West Heath Mesolithic Site. Desmond Collins. Weds. &.30-9.30, from May 3-June 14, 1978. 6 lectures, £2.

AT BARNET COLLEGE, WOOD STREET, BARNET

London Univ. 3-year Certificate in Archaeology: 1st year, Field Archaeology and Prehistoric SE England. Weds 7.30-9.30, starting Sept 21, 24 meetings, 2 visits. £7.50. (Lecturer’s name not yet available).

AT HENDON COLLEGE OF FURTHER EDUCATION, 43 FLOWER LANE, NW7.

Beginning Archaeology. Mrs Portia Wallace-Zeuner. Tues 7.30-9.30, starting Sept. 20, 23 lecture, £8.28.
A New History of Hampstead Garden Suburb

Reviewed by Joanna Corden.

This History, produced on the Suburb’s 70th Anniversary, is one of the most readable and informative accounts of the origin and subsequent development of the famous estate. It gives a clear, concise account of the aims, achievements and occasional failures of the founders and their successors, from the conception of the idea of a mixed community down to the present day. It is freely illustrated with photographs of those who created the Suburb and of buildings and roads; and has maps which show both the original layout and later changes and additions.

The History includes a brief account of the conditions in Whitechapel which provided Henrietta Barnett with her main motive for creating the Suburb. The proposal to extend what is now the Northern Line to the country surrounding her country retreat at Hampstead spurred her to give practical expression to her ideas, and it was largely due to her enthusiasm and the support she was able to rally that the idea of the Suburb became a reality.

To planners and architects the planning aspect is of great importance, and rightly so. The Anniversary History gives this aspect its proper emphasis, and indeed gives a very clear account of how the original plans evolved. The administrative and legal history of the original Suburb is however of interest, and not only the Suburb residents. It is a pleasure to see that this aspect also has been given its proper emphasis. Again, the post-war history of the Suburb has the hitherto been sadly neglected, possibly because it seemed both complicated and confusing, and here a concise and clear account of recent developments remedies both the neglect and the confusion.
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HAMPSTEAD GARDEN SUBURB 1907-1977 – A HISTORY, by Brigid Grafton Green. Published by the HGS Residents Association. Price 65p, including postage./packing from the Archivist, HGS Institute, Central Square, NW11.

Independent Rescue Archaeology Competition

Last month we announced that HADAS had reached the final stages in this competition, initiated by Current Archaeology and Rescue for independent (i.e. not officially funded) rescue work. Alas, we must now report that we got no further, despite an excellent presentation of our case — audible, reasoned and lucid — by the Director of the West Heath Dig, Desmond Collins. The many HADAS members who journey it to the new Museum of London for the final considered his exposition of the significance of the West Heath Mesolithic incomparable — but you could say that we were prejudiced!

The winning order, in the final, was:

First (£250), Offa’s Dyke Project, presented by the extra-mural Department of Manchester University. This traced the ninth century boundary between England and Wales through back gardens and across ploughed fields — geographically, an enormous piece of research.

Second (£150). Waltham Abbey Historical Society, currently exploring the complex of monastic buildings around the church originally founded by Harold of Hastings fame.

Two third prizes of £100 each were won by (a) an entry called The Rape of Hastings (non-violent: a “rape” in this sense is one of the six divisions into which Sussex has been divided since 1086); and (b) by the Severn/Avon Aerial Survey. The first project was entered by a husband-and-wife team who study and record, with archaeological exactitude, every ancient building in the Hastings area which is threatened either with demolition or alteration. The Survey is the work of a single individual, Arnold Baker, who last year hired a tiny training plane to photograph prehistoric and later sites in the two river basins concerned. 1976 was the vintage year of all time for aerial photography, so his results were spectacular.

All good and worthy projects, we thought, and lovingly carried out — but really not a patch on West Heath!
Calling All Typists

One talking point at the HADAS AGM was the strides which the Society has made in membership in recent years. On 31 March 1974, we had 234 members; in 1975, 270; in 1976, 294; and this year 389 members. A result of this steady (even spectacular) growth is an increase in paperwork, particularly duplicating. Apart from our Hon. Secretary, two other members help by cutting a pretty stencil — Angela Fine and Marilyn Lund — and we are deeply grateful for their assistance.

We worry, however, about overloading them. Are there any other members lurking in the background have the ability and would it be prepared to cut the occasional stencil? If so, we would greatly appreciate an offer of help. They would need to possess a suitably strong typewriter.

Newsletter

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Stop Press News

— has just arrived: the HADAS entry for the Independent Rescue Archaeology competition has reached the last six, to be judged in the final on 7 May at the new Museum of London.

As reported in last month’s Newsletter, our entry is on the West Heath excavation. We understand that there were over 20 entries, from all parts of the country, so have to have got as far as this is a real cause for rejoicing.

In the final part case will be presented by Desmond Collins, in a 15-minute speech. The contest starts at 2.15p.m., and the HADAS century comes no, 6 on the programme. Whether or not it’s advantageous to have the last word can be argued both ways!

The other five finalists are described like this:

The Rape of Hastings

Severn Avon Aerial Survey

Welwyn/Lockleys Archaeological Society

Waltham Abbey Historical Society

Offa’s Dyke Project

First prize in the competition is £250; second prize £150; and third prize £100. The awards will be made in a BBC “Chronicle” programme next September.
Back Home to West Heath

By Daphne Lorimer.

Once more the digging season is upon us and HADAS members will be getting out their trowels and refurbishing their kneeling pads. Already a small group, inspired by a gleam of sunshine, has spent a day tidying up the West Heath site and removing bushels of acorns. Two ducks inspected the proceedings and it felt like being home again.

Digging plans for West Heath this year are complicated, but exciting — and members may wish to note dates in their diaries:

30 April – 15 May has been reserved for the dig on the upper side, where the stream feeding the Leg of Mutton pond arises. This dig, of necessity, has to be limited both in time and number of diggers, as too many people working there might harm this interesting botanical area. The GLC Parks Department, the Nature Conservancy, the London Natural History Society and the Heath and Old Hampstead Society of all given the project their blessing. Miss Maureen Girling, the paleao-entomological expert from the Department of the Environment, and her botanical colleague, have written a most interesting report on the findings of last year, which has been submitted for publication in the journal “Nature.” The samples which they took in 1976 provided evidence of the environment of West Heath back to 3,000 BC; and they hope, this year, to obtain evidence that will carry the story back as far as the end of the last Ice Age.
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Unfortunately finance, at time of going to press, may preclude the investigation of the waterlogged area for the present. We would required to hire or borrow a mechanical digger, steel shuttering to ensure the safety of the unstable sides of the trenches and a pump to run continually. However, even if we are unable to start on the marshy area in May, conventional trenches will be dug on the dry edge of the bog was to ascertain if evidence exists of Mesolithic settlement.

Will members wishing to excavate or help on the site (either in the marshy area if dug, or in the perimeter trenches) please contact Daphne Lorimer as soon as possible? A shift system has been worked out to meet the GLC’s requirements. Members are warned that, if it does prove possible to open a trench in the waterlogged area, this will be very heavy, tiring and dirty work — for which reason strong men will be doubly welcome!

4 June – 19 June. A full-time dig (10.00a.m.-5.30p.m. each day) will be held at the lower site on which we dug last year. Is hoped to extend the area and to finish investigating along the edge of the bluff. Some trenches will be opened near the southern fence and a trial trench may be dug along the side of the stream in order to estimate the limits of the occupation area.

Training dig. The West Heath cite is now an official training excavation, recognised by the Extra-mural Department of London University as providing suitable training for the external Diploma in Archaeology. A certain number of trainees will therefore be accepted for the two weeks 6-11 June and 13-18 June. Cost to non-members will be £12 per week (including membership of HADAS). Anyone who was a member of the Society before 1 April 1977, will however be required to pay only £6 per week. A full programme of instruction is being devised, under the direction of Desmond Collins. Members who wish to participate as trainees are asked to apply at either to Brigid Grafton Green or to Daphne Lorimer.

Digging will continue during the summer on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, except for the month of August, when the dig will be closed. Digging will start again on 3 September. It is possible that the dig may be closed on those Saturdays when there is a Society outing: and members who intend to dig on those days should check first with Daphne Lorimer.

It has been suggested that a full week’s dig would be appreciated in July. Would members who are interested, and would like to take part if this can be arranged, please contact Daphne Lorimer?

At the end of last season the West Heath excavation gave every appearance of moving into an even richer and more exciting area. It is hoped that as many members as possible will come along to help with it and enjoyed this summer.
Annual General Meeting

The notice calling the Society’s Annual General Meeting accompanies this Newsletter. The Meeting will be on Tuesday 24 May, 1977 at 8.30 p.m. at Central Library, The Burroughs, NW4.

Would members note that this will be on the third, not the first, Tuesday of the month.? We would hate members to make a wasted journey and turn up, by mistake, on the first Tuesday in May.

There will be coffee before the meeting, from 8.15 on; and a show of slides of HADAS activities of the business is completed.
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The May outing

On Saturday, 14 May, will be to Thaxted, Saffron Walden and Lavenham.

Like most HADAS outings, there should be something from every period and for most tastes. Thaxted is basically a mediaeval town; at Saffron Walden we shall have a conducted tour of the Museum, with collections ranging from Palaeolothic to nineteenth century; and at Lavenham we start by inspecting a 16th century Guildhall and end with tea at a pub with fourteenth century connections.

An application form for the outing is enclosed: please completed as soon as possible and send it, with remittance, to Dorothy Newbury.
Outings Ahead

Further dates for the some are are:
Sat June 18 – Northamptonshire
Sat July 16 – Grimes Graves
Sat August 13 – Avebury, Swindon
Sept 23-25 – Weekend in Bristol
New Members

HADAS has recently enrolled its first Australian member — Miss Maria Koulaouzos she was on holiday in England last summer and heard about HADAS and the West Heath dig. When she returned to New South Wales she decided to join as an overseas member. The Newsletter welcomes her warmly, and also the 41 other new members who have joined us since Christmas.They include Mrs. Joanna Corden, Archivist to the London Borough of Barnet and a real friend in need to HADAS researchers; and Andrew Selkirk, founder and editor of Current Archaeology:

Mrs. Balham Davis, E. Finchley; Mrs. Bedford, Edgware; Mr. Berkenstead, Mrs. Bowling, both Mill Hill; Mrs. Brockdorff, Hampstead; Olive Burton, Finchley; Mrs. Garsaniga, St. Johns Wood; Mrs. Corden, Golders Green; Hugh Curtis, Hampstead; Harry Dillon, Finchley; Miss Diver, Hampstead Garden Suburb; Robert Dominy, Mrs. Ferris, both Finchley; J. Fuller, Stanmore; Christopher Gallagher, Edgware; Mr. & Mrs. Griffiths, Barnet; Miss Hall, Totteridge; Mrs. And Miss Harling, Hadley; Miss Hawkins, Hampstead; Mrs. Sandra Hooper, Finchley; Mrs. V.R. Hooper, E. Finchley; Douglas Jobson, Hampstead Garden Suburb; Maria Koulaouzos, New South Wales; Mrs. Killeen, Hendon; Miss Lau, West Hampstead; John Luce, Michael McKeen, both Hampstead; Yann Maidment, Wembley Park; Eric Morgan, Hendon; Mr. & Mrs. George Mortimer, Mill Hill; Miss Murray-Davey, Cricklewood; Yvonne and Carl Nunn, Hendon; Miss Reading, Mill Hill; Andrew Selkirk, Hampstead; Miss Slatter, Hendon; Mrs. Stocks, Mill Hill; Mr. Tink, Hoddesdon, Herts; Mrs. Wooldridge, N. Finchley.
Jutland, Denmark

A report by JOHN HOOSON on the April Lecture.

Two years ago Mr Ted Sammes, HADAS Vice-Chairman and Archivist, participated in a tour of Jutland with the Medieval Society, under the leadership of Prof. David Wilson. For this season’s concluding lecture, a capacity audience thoroughly enjoyed a sampling of that tour, excellently illustrated by colour slides and description.
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We were reminded that it was C.J. Thomsen of the Danish National Museum who in 1836, developed the time-scale precepts of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages leading to the Vikings. Around 2700 BC the first farmers emerged, and with them pottery and long barrows. From the Bronze Age came the famous Trundholm sun-chariot and the lurer, distinctive wind instruments since recovered from the peat-bogs. The Vikings brought terror and fear to Britain, but current excavations at York are producing much evidence that they eventually settled peacefully.

In Jutland much remains from the Viking Age. At Jelling, Gorm the Old and his wife Thyra were reputedly buried in the two Round Barrows, the largest of their kind in Scandinavia. By the tenth century Church there now stand two rune-stones, the larger of which was set up by Gorm’s son Harald Bluetooth in his parents’ memory. Its carving includes a crucified figure in addition to the characteristic Viking ornamentation. There is also an avenue of standing stones.

One of the four known army barracks in Denmark, the Fyrkat Viking Fortress, has been reconstructed on its original site at Hobro. Consisting of a large circlar rampart and ditches, the enclosure is divided into four quadrants by roads joining opposite gates, with the barrack buildings symmetrically arranged in the quadrants. The resultant geometric pattern has not been overlooked by the present day brewery who have adopted it, as we were shown, as the symbol appearing on their bottle labels.

The excavation of a large area of wind-blown sand has revealed at Lindholm a vast Viking cemetery where many of the graves have been enclosed by stones set in the form of ships of varying size. Also revealed was a ridged field where the ploughed furrows can now easily be seen.

Of more recent date of the half-timbered buildings which abound in Jutland, many dating from the sixteenth century and many with Tudor-style brickwork. As the Danes are not averse to using colour, these fine buildings are brilliantly and beautifully decorated. Although many of the streets in towns such as Aarhis and Ribe appear to have remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years, about 70 years ago Den Gamle By was established in Aarhus. This is an open-air museum for the conservation of threatened buildings in Jutland and it has been set out as a village with cobbled streets on the banks of a stream, with the houses and shops appropriately equipped inside.

In the space of a rapidly passing hour, HADAS members were conducted on an extremely enjoyable tour of Jutland by Mr. Sammes, their personal guide, who explained clearly and succinctly the significance of the places he, and we, visited.
News about the Book Box

First, kindly presented by Jeremy Clynes: Finchley Vestry Mminutes, 1768-1840, parts 1 and 2 (two volumes) by Alan B. Collins. Pub. Finchley Public Libraries, 1957-8.

Next, our indefatigable Hon. Librarian, George Ingram, has listed the contents of the book box, which now runs to some 150 volumes. This list, itemised under such headings as Anthropology, General or Roman Archaeology, General or Local History, etc, runs to some five A4 pages. If there is sufficient demand, we would arrange for it to be duplicated. Will any member who would like a list of the contents of the HADAS book box at 31 March, 1977, therefore please let the Hon. Secretary know?
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The book box has been well used during the past winter, with members seizing the chance to change books before lectures. George Ingram hopes that those who have books out at the moment will return them as soon as possible; or, if they wish to retain them a little longer, will warn him by phone or at the AGM.

Summer arrangements for borrowing are not as simple as winter — but members who arm themselves with the book list will know what is on offer and can ring George if they want to borrow.
New Site in Brockley Hill

By Brigid Grafton Green.

Evidence has come up in the last few weeks of a possible new area of interest on Brockley Hill.

HADAS members will be very familiar with the evidence already available for the 1st/2nd century AD pottery kiln site of Sulloniacae on either side of the present A5 road, in the vicinity of the Orthopaedic Hospital on the west and of Brockley Grange Farm on the east. Digs took place in various parts of this area in 1937, from 1947-56 and more recently in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The finds, mainly pottery, from the early excavations are in fact on permanent loan to the London Borough of Barnet, and HADAS has been able, thanks to have permission from the Borough Librarian, to work on it, studying and cataloguing, for the last few years.

There has, however, always been one gap in the Brockley Hill story: although there is abundant evidence for pottery-making between c. 60-160 AD, and for later occupation by 3rd century farmers, no evidence has been found either for the settlements where the 1st/2nd century potters must have lived or for the mansio (or hostel for travellers), standing beside the Watling Street, which has been presumed to be indicated by the inclusion of the name Sulloniacae on the Roman Road map known as the Antonine Itinerary.

Now, further south than the kiln site (the parameters of which, incidentally, have never been defined) deep ploughing has brought to the surface a concentration of Roman pottery and building material (including roofing tile, both imbrex and tegulae, bricks and flue tiles) on the east (or Barnet) side of the modern A5 road and near its junction with Pipers Green Lane.

This is the same area in which, in the mid-1950s, the late P.G. Suggett excavated some five trenches, following the chance discovery of two second century cremation urns, a small and almost complete flagon, the head of the Roman Key and some fragments of pottery. This excavation revealed nothing further; yet recent evidence suggests that Mr Suggett’s dig missed what may well be a rich Roman Site by only a whisker.

Field walking by HADAS in the field at the junction of the two roads during the last few weeks has produced 291 sherds of Roman Pottery, including fragments identifiable as Brockley Hill forms, flagons handles and rims, mortaria, tazze, red-rimmed bowls, lids. There are one or two fragments of abr??ed Samian; and sherds of grey and black ware as well as the more familiar cream and buff sandy fabric characteristic of the Brockley Hill kilns. In addition, 86 pieces of identifiable Roman building material (as well as a large number of pieces which might be Roman) had been found.
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The first field walk was undertaken by two members, merely as a sampling. It was clear from this that much material lay on the surface, and permission for a full walk was obtained from the farmer, to whom HADAS is most grateful. The field was divided into approximate 20 m squares, and the material found was kept square by square. As a result it is now possible to pinpoint where the concentration of pottery occurs in that part of the field which has been walked.

Unfortunately and the weather did its best to wreck the whole project. The full field walk took place on the wettest day of this spring. At least four separate and unofficial streams were running down the field. One HADAS members disappeared over his hocks in a bog, and might have vanished altogether if he hadn’t been pulled out with loud sucking noises. Rain stopped us walking on several other occasions; and when finally the date for our second walk (on which we hoped to complete the field) was fixed, it was only to find that the very day before the farmer had decided the ground was dry enough for sowing, and the seed had gone in.

This means that the field has not been completed; and we shall now have to wait until after harvest to finish it. Sufficient evidence has, however, already been gathered to suggest strongly that this is a Roman site. At first glance the material seems to be mainly 1st/2nd century. The presence of flue tile may indicate some kind of hypocaust system, and could mean a bathhouse. An interesting fact about the pottery finds is the unexpectedly high proportion of sherds from heavy, coarse storage jars. The finds from the Brockley Hill digs of 1947-56 included only eight fragments of this type of jar; yet two field walks had produced at least 16 surface fragments, including bases and rim sherds. One or two of the rims are of distinctive incurved type, possibly from imported oil amphorae from Southern Spain — type Bessell 20.
The Outing Season Starts: St. Albans, April 23

A report by Enid Hill.

We set off in Good Roman style along Watling Street, led by Ted Sammes, who pointed out Roman kiln sites at Brockley Hill and Radlett and the site of the Park Street villa.

Highlights of visit to Verulamium Museum came when the Director, Mr Gareth Davies, described the conservation work done in the Museum laboratory, using not only normal reassembly of sherds, but x-rays, ultra-sonic equipment and something resembling a dentist’s drill!

After visits to either the Roman theatre, the hypocaust or a later industrial site — the Kingsbury Watermill, dating from Tudor times and in good working order, powered by a low-breast shot wheel — and a picnic lunch, we climbed the hill to the Abbey. It is founded on the supposed site of the execution in AD 209 of St. Alban. Particularly noteworthy are its wall and ceiling paintings, two find stone screens, the chapel containing the shrine of St. Alban, the wooden watching chamber where the monks guarded the shrine, and the chantry of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, founder of the Bodleian Library.

We managed finally to visit the City Museum, full of craft tools, plus a Natural History section with live mice and guinea pigs, and return through the busy Saturday market to tea and the coach. Even then Ted found another site for us to visit — Beech Bottom Dyke, probably the boundary to land connected with the Catuvellauni– a good end to a well-organised day.

Newsletter

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A Conference to Remember

The London and Middlesex Archaeological Society’s Conference of London Archaeologists is now an annual event for all societies operating within Greater London. This year it moved from its original venue, Guildhall, to the new Museum of London. For many years HADAS has exhibited at the Conference. This year we also had the honour of opening the proceedings at the Conference’s new home, when Desmond Collins talked on West Heath. DAPHNE LORIMER reports below on his lecture and those which followed.

The fourteenth Conference of London Archaeologists took place at the Museum of London on 19 March, under the chairmanship of Max Hebditch, President of LAMAS.A varied and interesting programme was provided for a packed audience, among were as many members of HADAS as could beg, borrow or buy a ticket.

The Conference opened with a masterly account of our West Heath dig by its Director, Desmond Collins. He spoke of the unexpected discovery of the site, its geology and setting and the method of excavation; and then went on to describe his gradually dawning realisation that the consistent density of finds (68 per square metre) indicated that rarity, a Mesolithic habitation site.

He detailed the careful accumulation of supporting evidence such as postholes, fires, etc; the analysis of 7810 chipped flakes which produced, among waste chips, unmodified flakes and blades, 74 highly characteristic tools — mostly oblique points, backed blades, microburins, etc. There were few scrapers and now tranchet axes. He commented that pairs of microliths indicating a barb and tang had not been found but that the number of broken points could well have been broken projectiles from carcasses of game brought back to the camp by hunters.

Next Mr Collins spoke of the exciting results obtained from the samples taken by Maureen Girling, fossil beetle expert from the Department of the Environment, from the trial pit at the spring site. Here organic mud yielded rare information about the vegetational history of South-East England. The lowest sample came from 30 cm below the period of elm clearance (i.e. the period of Neolithic farming) and showed a phase rich in lime-pollen, of which only one other example is known in Southeast England. The results also indicated a surprisingly late development of the heathland, around 500 BC.

Mr Collins did not forget to show slides of the many visitors to West Heath — including our adoptive mascot, the ducks.
Documents

Tony Dyson of the Museum of London covered a very different aspect of archaeology. He discussed the role of documentary evidence which, in theory, should complement the archaeological record; in practise, however, it seldom does so. Preservation of records varied from landholder to landholder and documents did not always produce direct evidence and might, in fact, prove contradictory.
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Names were used for signposts – e.g. the gradual adoption of French names after the Norman Conquest, while the “Englishness” of the City of London continued alongside, as testified by the consecration of a 12th century Church in Bread Street to St. Mildred, venerated in the 8th/9th century Anglo-Saxon England.

The investigator should pose three questions about a building — when, how and why was it occupied? The documents at his disposal to answer these questions would probably be legal records (the more litigation, the greater the amount of information); Royal records (grants from the Crown, etc); and revenue records (wealth was expressed by property, so taxation returns tell much). The property deed is the skeleton upon which all else depends.

After 1250, Hustings Rolls give valuable information, but once in the possession of the church, property ceases to be recorded there. After 1250, too, forgeries became prevalent, especially at Westminster Abbey; but even these can be useful, provided the date of forgery only is used. (Note: this particular point, incidentally, is of interest to our area, where much land was owned by Westminster. The three so-called “Saxon” charters of Kings Edwy and Edgar concerning Hendon, BCS 994, 1290 and 1351, are considered to be twelfth century forgeries). (BCS = de Grey Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum)
Coinage

John Kent of the British Museum fascinated LAMAS (as a short while ago he fascinated HADAS) by his account of the origin and development of coinage in the London area. Since his recent talk to HADAS is fully reported elsewhere in the Newsletter, let it suffice to say that, after giving a vivid political interpretation of the coinage distribution in Britain at the time of Julius Caesar’s invasion, he deduced the disruption and demoralisation of Cassivellaunus’s empire.
The Tower

Philip Walker (Department of Environment) induced in his audience an overwhelming desire to revisit the Tower of London — if only to see the ravens! His excavations had uncovered the bank of the Thames in the Roman period and a prehistoric burial on the foreshore. He traced the history of the consolidation and use of this area up to the building of the new Ordnance House in 1788.
Survey

Rescue work in south-west London was the theme of Scott McCracken of the Surrey Archaeological Society. His professional team of three had undertaken a survey of the archaeological potential of the Boroughs of Wandsworth, Merton, Richmond and Sutton, and had produced a site index, using period maps and other documentary evidence. They investigated, with the help of local volunteers, the mediaeval settlement of Battersea around St. Mary’s Church, reputedly a Saxon foundation built on “Batteric’s Isle.”

The sil-beams of wattle and daub houses were unearthed, together with a 9th century bone comb, 8th/9th century pottery, grass-tempered ware and ninth century black burnished ware imported from France. (They also uncovered some long dark stains on the soil which proved to be a potato patch!)

The team’s second excavation took place in a goodsyard, the site of Augustine Priory. Volunteers drawn from all over south west London dug his side. The documentary evidence of a 12th century foundation was confirmed, a calico-bleaching pit uncovered and some rare and interesting floor tiles, decorated with dancing girls, were found — a strange find from a Priory!
In Kent

The meeting concluded with an entertaining and staccato account from Brian Philp of the Kent Archaeological Rescue Group’s excavation of so-called Roman “villa” at Keston. This proved to be a mausoleum: subsequently a cemetery of mixed type, dating to mid-2nd/early-3rd century was uncovered around it. Following consolidation and turfing the site is now open to the public.
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Also in Keston the group ran a series of training digs which uncovered the ramifications of an important Anglo-Saxon grubenhaus on top of a Roman villa. Mr. Philp concluded by describing the very successful open day held by his society on this series of sites. It attracted over 1,000 visitors.

There was, inevitably, a certain amount of nostalgia at the meeting for the solid splendour of the Guildhall and the solid, almost nineteenth century abundance of its teas; but the airy spaceiousness of the exhibition space and some very good home-made scones did much to reconcile the Conference to its new venue. An enjoyable and informative day.
Rescue Archaeology Competition

HADAS hopes for a further chance in made to set up a small display of the West Heath finds at the Museum of London, similar to that shown at the Conference of London Archaeologists.

The AGM of Rescue will be held there on Saturday 7 May next at 11.30a.m. Afterwards, starting at 2.15, the Independent Rescue Archaeology Competition for a BBC TV award of £250 will take place. This is sponsored jointly by Current Archaeology and by Rescue. We know many members saw the “Chronicle” programme on BBC 2 some weeks ago at which this competition was announced, because several of them rang or wrote to the Hon. Secretary saying they thought HADAS should enter.

Well, HADAS has entered for the competition, which is open only to archaeology societies engaged in rescue work with no paid staff and virtually no financial help from either national or local government. As our West Heath dig is a rescue operation (the site has been steadily eroded for the last ten years and the Mesolithic evidence would, had we not dug, probably have vanished completely in the next ten) and as we get no financial help, we feel that we are eligible.

A short-list of six entrants will be chosen to compete on 7 May. All societies who enter, even if not short-listed, will have the right to set up displays at the Rescue meeting.

Should HADAS be fortunate enough to reach the short-list, Desmond Collins has kindly agreed to present a case in a 15-minute talk. On this, and on a written paper submitted in advance, the issue will be judged. The five judges (Barry Cunliffe, CBA President; Graham Thomas, Rescue Chairman; Andrew Saunders, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments; Bruce Norman, BBC television; and James Pickering, independent) will announce their decision after tea on 7 May. The award will be made in a BBC TV programme next September.

Anyone who would like to attend the afternoon session and see the final stage of judging should send a stand addressed envelope before 23 April to either Robert Kilmer, Rescue; or Andrew Selkirk, Current Archaeology. There is no charge for tickets, but a collection will be taken at the meeting for expenses.
The Next HADAS lecture

This will be the last of this current season. It will be given by Mr Ted Sammes, will talk and show slides of Jutland, Denmark. The talk will be based on pictures taken during a recent visit organised by the Medieval Society.
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Further Date for your Diary

— is that of the HADAS Annual General Meeting, which will be held on Tuesday 24 May next. Vice-President Mr Eric Wookey has kindly agreed to take the chair.

Coffee will be served at 8.15, before the meeting, which will start at 8.30p.m. A notice officially calling the meeting will be circulated with the next Newsletter. After business has been completed, Dorothy Newbury proposes to organise a show of members’ slides, showing the events of the past year. She did similarly for the last AGM, and it was an occasion not to miss.
Outings for the Coming Season

Saturday 23 April sees the first outing of the summer season. It will be to St. Albans. Many members have mentioned that, although this ancient city lies almost on our doorstep, they have never properly explored it: this is the chance to do so. St. Albans was one of the largest and most important Roman Towns (Verulamium, on the river Ver); its magnificent cathedral is on the site where Alban, the first British martyr, was beheaded in the fourth century.

Full details of the outing may be found on the enclosed application form. Please complete, if you would like to join us, and returned with fee to Dorothy Newbury. New members please note that HADAS outings fill up quickly and application should be made by return. Should your application be delayed, please don’t hesitate to telephone as we sometimes have last-minute cancellations.

Further outings this summer will be:
Sat May 14 – Thaxted, Saffron Walden, Lavenham
Sat June 18 – Northamptonshire
Sat July 16 – Grimes Graves
Sat August 13 – Avebury, Swindon

Please note particularly that the August outing is a week earlier than was announced in the last Newsletter — that is, on 13 August not 20 August.
Subscriptions for the Coming Year

The HADAS financial year starts on 1 April. At a special meeting of the Society on 1 March the Committee’s proposal to raise the subscription to £1.50 per annum was amended. The meeting decided that from 1 April the subscription would go up as follows:
Full membership – £2.00
Under-18 – £1.00
Over-60 – £1.00

A new rate has been instituted for Family Membership. The first member of a family pays £2; additional members will pay £1 each.

Subscriptions are now due and should be sent, using the enclosed form, to the Hon. Treasurer. Forms are available from him for those members wishing to play by standing order.
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The Coinage of Pre-Roman Britain

A report by Raymond Lowe, of Dr John Kent’s lecture of 1 March.

British pre-Roman Coinage is an extremely difficult and abstracts subject, yet Dr. Kent was able, with some excellent slides and without a single note, to guide us through its tangled history.

Britain being on the very edge of Europe was almost last in having her own coinage. The earliest Coins found in this country came from Gaul. The exact date of the introduction of currency is not known, but its use and origin are quite clear.

Philip III of Macedonia had struck a fine gold Coin, a stater, the approximate size and weight of a sovereign. One side, the obverse, bore a head of the god Apollo wearing a laurel wreath. The reverse showed a chariot with driver and two horses, with an inscription under it. This coin continued to be struck long after the king’s death, a posthumous immobilised type, but the design changed a little — the charioteer, for instance, sprouted wings. It is these late coins which the Gauls copied, the wings becoming diagnostic. A Greek writer stated that one gold coin would pay one fighting man one year and so we have on record one of the first uses of coin in the West. The Gallic staters found in Britain are mercenaries’ wages.

As far as coinage was concerned, Gaul at this time was divided into zones: the North West Gaul(Belgic Gaul) which struck gold, and South West Gaul (Armorica) which could produce only a very poor silver coin. Only a few of the silver coins have been found in Britain, along the South Coast and up the Bristol Channel; many thousands had been found in Jersey. Find-spots of the Belgic coins, along the North Downs, skirting London, and through the Chilterns to Colchester, show how the population was distributed away from the heavy wet cold clay lands.

Most of these early issues were produced during Caesar’s Gallic wars, and were war money. None of these coins were copied direct from the originals, but were copies of copies of copies — therefore the later the coin, the greater the remove from the source. Tin coins, of a lead tin alloy (French potier), provide a small supporting currency found along the Thames, contemporary with the iron bars mentioned by Caesar. The design was based on a copper coin of the city of Marseille, a butting bull on one side and a head on the other. They were not struck, but cast in strips and then broken apart.

The distribution of these coins and bars along the Thames shows a trade route. This was completely altered with Caesar’s invasion of 54 BC when the Thames became a frontier between the petty kingdoms. London would probably have come into being a century earlier but for the invasions of 55 and 54 BC. Cassivellaunus then started to strike his own coins, copying Gaulish copies. He was followed by other kings. The further from the South East the coins were produced, the poorer, lighter and baser they were. When hoarded they were kept in hollow flints and not pots, as later. The coins of this period show a change of areas of power because of Roman interference.

The Dorset Durotriges produced a coinage which lasted longer than most; some are found in second century Roman hoards, one was found in Jersey in an Armorican hoard.

Soon the coins bear the abbreviated Latinised name of the king. One such was Tincommius, whose later designs improve — the charioteer becomes a Roman-style horseman and the reverse bears his name. Both half and quarter-staters were struck, plus silver in a classicizing style. In the first century Verica marked his coin COM FIL VER REX (“son of Commius King Verica”); a vine leaf shows the influence of Rome, for large amounts of Mediterranean vine were imported. Tasciovanus at Verulamium depicted the Celtic trumpet, the carnex. The find-spots show an expansion of power. A possible coin portrait is of Cunobelin – with a very hairy face. It was he who finally removed the last vestiges of the god Apollo, with the laurel band becoming an ear of barley. The end of our first indigenous coinage came with the invasion of Claudius, AD 43.
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Although we use modern terms to describe ancient coinage, the idea behind it and its actual usage were quite different to the ideas of today. Early coinage was treasure handed out by the king, not money of circulation. Dr. Kent’s lecture made it very clear that all finds should be reported and the coins declared: something the members of the coin detector brigade seldom do.

FURTHER READING:

Britannia, Sheppard Frere, chaps 1-4. Routledge Kegan Paul 1967.

Britannia Vol I (1970) The coins of the Iceni by D.F. Allen

Britannia Vol III (1972) The Origin of Some Ancient Britsh Coin Types by M. Henig.

The last two above produced by the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
Minimart, 1977

By Christine Arnott.

This was a very successful morning, making over £300 for HADAS. It demonstrated once again the splendid way in which members unite to work hard (and I mean hard!) in a common cause. Some 30 people took part. Each of the seven main stallholders had additional helpers; two members looked after the entrance lobby, another two dispensed coffee and the Treasurer presided over the Society’s information stall.

Not a lot of material was left over, but even so it was possible to make substantial contributions to charitable bodies such as St. Mary’s Church Young Wives, Oxfam, Toc H, Hampstead Comprehensive School’s parents-teacher association and HGS Fellowship House.

The fund-raising committee are happy that the Society will now be able to contemplate buying special equipment for excavation and research which otherwise would have been far beyond our means.
Any Local Coronation Souvenirs?

In honour of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee The Borough’s Library Services will stage a special exhibition on the Coronation of 1953, at Central Library, Hendon. It will start on 14 May and go on to 18 June.

The Library will be most grateful to any member of HADAS who is able to lend-local photos of street parties, tree planting or other Coronation events; or Coronation souvenirs — spoons, medals, etc — which have a local connection. Members who have such articles are asked to get in touch with Elizabeth Holliday before mid-April.
More News from the Library

HADAS’s highly successful exhibition on Archaeology in Action ends on 27 March, and will be followed, from 2 April – 15 May, by toy-time at Church Farm House Museum. The next exhibition, on old toys, will include trains, figures, animals and vehicles in tin plate and lead, steam engines, constructional toys, musical toys, dolls, games and books.

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Archaeology in Action

The new HADAS exhibition, or Archaeology in Action, got off to a flying start at Church Farm House Museum when the Mayor of Barnet, Mr Andrew Pares, came on 19 February to open it. He was accompanied by the Mayoress, who has been a HADAS member for some time.

We knew that the exhibition was to have this auspicious send-off only ten days or so before it happened. Despite the short notice, however, the occasion was splendidly stage-managed by Christine Arnott and Dorothy Newbury. Our chairman, Brian Jarman, who presided, warmly welcomed several Vice-Presidents — Mrs. Rosa Freedman, Miss Daisy Hill and Mr Andrew Saunders — the Borough Librarian, Mr David Ruddom, representatives of the press, many members of the Society’s committees and those who had helped to design and mount displays.

This is the Society’s 4th exhibition at Church Farm House Museum, and the first to have the honour of being opened by the Borough’s first citizen. HADAS appreciated the mayor’s visit very much, and the appreciation was mutual — as this note from the Mayoress, dated the day after the exhibition, shows:

“The Mayor and I would like to thank you most sincerely for your welcoming hospitality on Saturday, and to congratulate everyone concerned in mounting such a comprehensive and stimulating exhibition at Church Farm.

We hope very much that the great number of people in our area will take the opportunity to see it, and we shall certainly recommend it to friends and acquaintances.”

The exhibition continues until 27 March, so we hope there will be ample opportunity for all members to see it. To whet your appetite, we asked Research Committee member Helen Gordon to go round and described what she saw. This is report:

The Archaeology in Action exhibition illustrates well the scope of HADAS’s work. It brings alive the history of our Borough right back to Roman times. Indeed the Church Terrace dig, only 100 yd from the Museum itself, reveals that in Roman times Hendon may have been a centre of some little importance. There are straws of evidence which suggest that it may have been the site of the Roman Temple, or some other building where religious rites were carried out. When you visit the exhibition, notice particularly in one of the Church Terrace showcases the neck of a redware flagon with a face on it, and the fragments of a possible multiple vase — both types of vessel probably used in religious ceremonies.
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Church Terrace was one of several digs conducted by HADAS in the last few years, and on show now are finds from the St. James the Great, Friern Barnet: Woodlands, Golders Green Road: and, just outside the Borough, West Heath Mesolithic dig. Out of the 6,000 man-struck flints found at West Heath a selection of shining, delicately-shaped artefacts are on show. Their workmanship would do honour to any modern display of arts and crafts. Detailed legends make plain both the subject matter and the archaeological processes by which the information is obtained, while the many excellent photographs portray vividly the bewitching magic of a dig, come rain or come fair weather.

Other aspects of HADAS’s work are also on view — a case full of material picked up on field walks, another of chance finds; one section illustrates the recordings of the relics of our industrial past; another describes the tombstones in the Dissenters’ Burial Ground at Totteridge and the people those tombstones commemorate. Yet another illustrates the Parish Boundary Survey, including photos of the beating of the bounds, and one of the bumping of the Mayor of Finchley in 1935. We are glad admirable Mayor was prepared to risk the danger of this custom being revived when he kindly opened the exhibition, with a warm appreciation of the work HADAS dollars in the Borough of Barnet.
Volunteers Needed

The Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London, is calling for volunteers, and will be happy to help hear from any HADAS member who is interested.

Finds from recent City digs have accumulated and work on the backlog is just starting. Volunteers prepared to help clean and sort pottery, bones, leather and building material will be welcome. Many finds come from waterfront sites where wood, leather, cloth, iron, bronze and pewter to have been preserved intact.

Work takes place at Old Guildhall Library on Wednesdays and Thursdays, 9.15a.m.-4.45p.m.; within those hours volunteers may come and go as is convenient to them. This is an excellent opportunity for those who want to gain practical experience of dealing with finds and learning different techniques of processing.

Any HADAS member who is prepared to help should get in touch.

One HADAS member, Clodagh Pritchard, has already signed on for this voluntary work. Here she describes what it is like:

I started working at the Old Guildhall library just before Christmas for the Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London. Since January I have been going there on Wednesdays. I arrive about 10.30 and leave about 3.30 to avoid the rush hour.

I have been working on finds from the various City digs dating back to 1974, washing leather, pottery, bone and building material, or marking sherds. On my first morning I was excited to find a small buckle; later its pair turned up — both on pieces of leather that I was washing. Shoes, soles and sandals are often found, as well as belts, straps and off-cuts.

Pottery ranges through early shell-tempered coarseware, Medieval green-glazed ware, Samian and even occasionally Victorian Pottery. I have been marking pottery for several weeks now. Some pieces, showing a clean break, can be stuck together. The experts from another department often come down to see what we are doing; they will always identify your pieces and point out the differences between lead, tin or salt glaze — something I hope to learn more about.
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I work with four or five general assistants (GAs for short); sometimes two other volunteers turn up. We are down in the basement of the building, where files are stored tier upon tier in labelled boxes. The building itself is a formidable Gothic structure belonging to (and I believe still partly used by) the Corporation of London. An extra floor has been inserted, so that the once huge Gothic pillars are truncated and looked very squat; arched doorways leads to a labyrinth of other departments; and the books which remain on the shelves are huge dusty tomes containing the Minutes of the Court of Common Council, or Law Reports of the Probate Division back to 1875.
Operation Minimart

A most important event in the HADAS calendar is coming up — the Minimart, on Saturday 12 March at the Henry Burden Hall, Egerton Gardens, NW4 from 10.00a.m.-12.00p.m. This year, with all our costs sky-rocketing, the minimart fund-raising capacity will be more important than ever. Its success will depend on members being able to help every way they can.

The more goods we have for sale, or more funds we shall raise, so first and foremost:

If you haven’t done so yet, please turn out whatever you don’t want and let us have it for sale;

If you have already had a turn-out, how about taking a final look in case you’ve missed anything?

If you have time, please make something for the produce stall — scones, sausage rolls, pies, marmalade, chutney, sweets, cakes.

Let the organisers Christine Arnott or Dorothy Newbury know what you have and where and when it can be collected.

There are other ways to help too. Could you display a poster advantageously at your house? Or could you persuade a local shopkeeper (specially in the Hendon/Golders Green area) to do so? Will you make sure to come along yourself on 12 March and have morning coffee at the Minimart, and patronise any stall you fancy?

One innovation will be a notice board, which members can place “For Sale” or “Wanted” postcards, at £0.05 the time. Should a transaction result, a small donation to HADAS funds by the buyer or seller would be very welcome!

Tailpiece: after the Minimart comes the clearing up. If you would like to take over any unsold goods for the use of your pet charity, please let Christine or Dorothy know and be prepared to remove the leftovers from the hall by twelve noon on Minimart day.
The Next Lexture

On Tuesday 1 March, this will be by a Dr John Kent, FSA, on the Coinage of Pre-Roman Britain — the subject of much of Dr. Kent’s current research.

Dr. Kent takes a considerable interest in local archaeology. He is a of Vice-President of the Barnet and District Local History Society and of the Stanmore and Harrow Historical Society. He directed the excavations which took place over several years at South Mimms. He is Assistant Keeper of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum and is an outstanding authority on his subject.
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His lecture will be preceded by a brief Extraordinary General Meeting, details of which have already been circulated.
Dates Ahead
April 5 – Denmark – Ted Sammes
May 24 – Annual General Meeting

All meetings will be at central library, The Burroughs, NW4 at 8.15p.m.
Provisional Summer Programme

Many members like to jot down the summer outings in their diaries as early as possible. The following is a provisional programme only: and the later outings, particularly, are subject to possible alteration. We hope to publish the final program in the April newsletter.

April 23 – St. Albans
May 14 – Stanstead/Saffron Walden/Long Melford
June 18 – Northampton
July 16 – Grimes Graves
August 20 – Swindon

This year all outings are on Saturdays.

Members will also be delighted to know that Dorothy Newbury is already hard at it planning a weekend away towards the end of September.
Mr. Geoffrey Corlet

It is with deep regret that we record the recent death, after a long illness, of Geoffrey Corlet, who was a member of HADAS for seven years and served on the main Committee of the Society from 1973 until illness caused him to resign in 1976.

Mr Corlet’s work at the Public Record Office had made him an expert palaeographer. On HADAS’s behalf he began transcribing, in 1972, the early parish registers of Hendon St. Mary’s — a long-term task which, alas, he was never able to complete.

Our warmest sympathy goes to his widow, Joyce, also a HADAS member of a long-standing; and to their son, Andrew Kirkwood, who was a member of the HADAS main committee, 1970-72.
New Thoughts on Ancient Britain

A report by Elizabeth Holiday on Andrew Selkirk’s February lecture to HADAS.

In a controversial and ingenious talk, Andrew Selkirk urged his audience to erase traditional thinking about prehistory from their minds and to reconsider the accepted divisions of the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. Mr Selkirk maintained that the periods of British prehistory should be redefined, for the present conventions are not only arbitrary but unsubstantiated by recent evidence and far from being the neat categories suggested by many scholars.

Mr Selkirk suggested that the identification of the periods of development of our prehistoric forebears from their technology and artefacts is a narrow and misleading approach; and that the key to understanding the changes that occurred during the 2000 years before Christ is a better understanding of the social organisation of the groups and tribes which produced such monuments as Stonehenge, the barrow cemeteries and the hill forts.
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The Age of Stonehenge, he suggested was the age of a dynasty of priest-kings and was followed by a period of instability and insecurity — the Age of Excalibur — during which the population kept its wealth in a portable form (jewellery, and particularly swords) rather than lavishing it on extravagant building projects. The building of hill forts identified the return to a stable society and immediately preceded the greatest change of all — the introduction of money, and with it the development of the market place and the beginning of a market economy. It was this last factor, Mr. Selkirk suggested, that destroyed the previously unassailable chieftain system.

The lecturer concluded with yet another challenge to traditional thinking, by suggesting that not only did the Roman conquest of this island make much less impression than is generally supposed, but that far from imposing servitude to Rome, the conquerors provided the first taste of freedom for the native inhabitants. Food for thought indeed!
Queen’s Jubilee Booklet

A reminder from the Hon. Treasurer.

So far we have received £125 in loans towards the Society’s next Occasional Paper, which will be called a Queen’s Jubilee and will tell the story of how Queen Victoria’s two Jubilees were celebrated in the areas which now make up the Borough of Barnet. We greatly appreciated the response of all those who have sent contributions, and to thank them warmly.

Any member who would like to lend the Society up to £5 for the booklet, but has not yet got round to doing so, is invited to send his or loan to the treasurer as soon as possible, with the form which was attached to the last Newsletter. If you have lost your form, the Treasurer will gladly supplier another.
Running the Mail

The production of this Newsletter involves members from all parts of the Borough. One problem that arises to is the transportation of material between members. It usually needs to be done promptly to catch deadlines.

The Hon. Secretary would therefore be happy to hear from any members who commute through the borough, and would be willing to collect and deliver an occasional envelope on their way to or from work. One particularly vital run is between Edgware and the Hampstead Garden Suburb.
Patents in the Borough of Barnet

By William Morris.

Patents form a basis for studying Industrial Archaeology. Often they show what industries have been present in an area, throwing light on the products made by various companies. In some areas patents may fall within a limited field of industry. In other areas, mainly non-industrial, the pattern is different, as there are often private inventors working on very disparate ideas and the range of invention is much wider.

The residents of the area which we now call the London Borough of Barnet — from Edgware to Chipping Barnet, from Arkley to Cricklewood – were in days gone by (and no doubt still are) an ingenious lot, as a study of the records at the Patent Office shows. Indeed, for its size our area has been granted an almost disproportionate number of patents. If you take a sample year like 1916, for instance, to this is what you find.
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Early that year a patent was granted for an apparatus for disinfecting, perfuming and purifying air in theatres. It was invented by A. Jackson, of “Woodleigh”, Temple Gardens, Golders Green. This device took the form of a tank, which was filled with an appropriate as liquid and provided with the nozzle on a vertical tube depending (?) into the tank. A horizontal tube supplied compressed air to the nozzle to blow the liquid out, in the manner of a giant scent spray. One wonders if it was ever considered for use in the Ionic or the Hippodrome at Golders Green!

Next came a patent for a sign illuminated by varying coloured lights. This was invented by R. Atherton of 16 Cavendish Avenue, Church End, Finchley. Each lamp on the sign was surrounded by a multi-coloured chimney or funnel, which was to be rotated, through the hot rising from the lamp, by means of vanes.

To A. Claflin of 30 Corringham Road, Golders Green, went a patent for a soundproof typewriter cover. This has an opening at the top covered by a pivoted, counterweighted cylindrical window which allowed access to the platen but left the keyboard exposed.

Another local patent went to H. Webb of 38 Meadway Court, Hampstead Garden Suburb, for his hand truck, designed to mount curbs. This had an auxiliary pair of wheels whose axle position was variable along truck to take into account variations in kerb heights.

Interest in dairying is revealed by the parent granted to C. Harrison of 22 High Road, East Finchley and R. Cole of 98 High Street, North Finchley, who jointly invented a novel milk churn lid which snap-fitted onto the churn. Spring biased bolts in the neck of the churn slotted into the holes in the lid. (Incidentally, would High Street, North Finchley, now correspond to some number in High Road, N12?)

An electric torch patent was granted to A. King of 65 Lichfield Grove, Finchley. This had an electrically conductive ball in a conical tube between its two its cells. The ball would roll to make contact between the cells and so light the torch — but only when the latter was tilted downwards.

J. Cooper of 6 Sunnydale Gardens, Mill Hill, and his co-patentee, Mr Kay, acquired a patent for a method of making metal hoops for wheel rims. They round a strip of metal round and round the rim and then welded together the superimposed layers.

The last local patent granted in 1916 was to H. Gregory of “Al-Araf”, Dudley Road, Church End, Finchley, for a novel tobacco pipe. This had two separate smoke-bores, one of which could be stopped and cleaned by a rod secured to the mouthpiece of the pipe, while the other was still in use. Withdrawal and rotation of the mouthpiece allowed insertion of the rod into the other smoke-bore, while the cleansed one was used in its turn.
Recently Acquired for the Book Box

— “Leakey’s Luck” – The Life of Louis Leakey, 1903-1972, by Sonia Cole. excellent and readable account of the work of one of the most colourful of archaeologist-anthropologists, and his finds act Olduvai Gorge which have radically changed our thinking about the evolution of man.

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We hope this Newsletter of will reach most members in time to remind them of the February lecture there but it is always rather a hustle when the lecture comes on the first day of the month, as it does in both February and March. Please making mental notes now that you have a date with HADAS on 1 March, also.

The February lecture, on Tuesday 1 February, will be given by Andrew Selkirk. He is, incidentally, a HADAS member, but one of his main claims to archaeological fame is as founder and editor of Current Archaeology, a monthly journal to which many HADAS members subscribe. His talk will be on “Continuity or Change — a fresh look at Prehistoric Britain.”

Meetings for the remainder of this season are as follows:

March 1 – Coinage of Pre-Roman Britain – Dr. John Kent
April 5 – Denmark – Ted Sammes
May 24 Annual General Meeting (details later)

These meetings will be at Central Library, The Burroughs at 8.15p.m.

Tuesday 8 February is a date for 100 HADAS members who have booked to attend the Pompeii Exhibition. Details were in the January newsletter.

And don’t forget that, starting on 19 February and continuing until 27 March, HADAS will be staging an exhibition at Church Farm House Museum, Greyhound Hill, on Archaeology in Action. The museum is open on weekdays (not Tuesday afternoon), 10.00a.m.-12.30p.m. and 1.30p.m.-5.30p.m.; and on Sundays from 2.30 p.m. to 6.00p.m. We hope that you will all be able to drop in some time to see this demonstration of the Society’s activities.
Follow-up to Pompeii

The Institute of Archaeology is a ranging a series of five lectures on Pompeii — Life and Art in the early Roman Empire.

These will be on Mondays, from 14 February – 14 March at 6.45p.m. Each lecture will be given by a specialist in a particular field. First lecture is by a Dr Malcolm Colledge, who gave the Society an excellent talk on Pompeii last November. Subsequent speakers will be Martin Fredericken, Dr John North, Brian Caven and and Amanda Claridge. The full course, at the Institute in Golden Square, costs £2 or £0.50 pay-at-the-door for individual lectures.
Conference of London Archaeologists

The Conference will be held for the first time at the Museum of London, on Saturday 19 March. Another new feature will be its early start — at 11.00a.m.

The first lecture on the programme, at 11.10a.m. will be of outstanding interest to HADAS, as it will be by Desmond Collins, on our own dig at West Heath. Many members may wish to attend, to hear this, the first official exposition of the site, and to see the fine slides of the dig taken by Peter Clinch. Tickets are obtainable from Miss Jenny Hall, LAMAS secretary (LAMAS members 60p, non– members £0.80). Tickets include tea; lunch can be obtained from the Barbican Tavern, near the Museum, or there is a small “rest space” in the Museum for those who wish to bring a packed lunch.
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Other talks on the programme will be on Documents and Archaeology (Tony Dyson); Origins of Coinage in London (Dr Kent); Tower of London Excavations (Philip Walker); Work in SW London (Scott McCracken); and Excavations at Keston (Brian Philp). Local societies will show displays of their work, and HADAS will have an exhibit on West Heath.
No Mean Museum

London now has in Barbican one of the most modern museums in the world; and, more to the point, one of the most exhilarating and stimulating. A visit to the new Museum of London is a must for anyone with the slightest interest in the history of the City or of Greater London.

One visit, indeed, will not suffice: it may even take a week of visits to see it properly. The first time I went I never got beyond the displays on Roman London, beguiling as they are. A mock-up of a Roman kitchen, looking so authentic that you can imagine that cook has just nipped out to pick a handful of radishes, horse-parsley or endives (all of which figure in Roman recipes) repays the closest study. So does the display of inscribed stones, many of them historic landmarks in the Archaeology of Roman Britain, like the reconstructed tombstone of Julius Classicianus, the first century procurator, which was found in two bits, one in 1852 and the other over 80 years later, in 1935. Both had been re-used in different parts of the same fourth century bastion.

The riches of two museums — the London (until recently at Kensington Palace) and Guildhall — have gone to make these many displays, plus much completely fresh material. So, too, has a great deal of imagination and thought. The result is a distillation of the best of both collections, excellently laid out. Parts of the Museum are open-plan, so that even as you move to study early pottery you catch, from the corner of your eye, a glimpse of the sparkling golden roof of the Lord Mayor’s coach; or as you make your way towards a reconstruction of the Great Fire (complete not only with flames that flicker, rise and fall, but also roar and crackle) you can pull aside a small curtain and find yourself looking through a narrow slit into a Jacobean nursery with its carved wooden cradle.

Don’t be put off by the fortress-like exterior of the Museum. It is possible to scale those apparently impregnable walls. The entrance is on the first floor, so it takes a bit of walking round at ground level to find the narrow stairway which leads up from London Wall. (BGG)
From Muscle to Steam

A report on the last HADAS lecture by Nigel Harvey.

Denis Smith, chairman of the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, who is an engineer as well as an historian of technology, spoke on 4 January on the development of the energy conversion systems which have played so important and pervading a part in our history and have left us a unique heritage of buildings and equipment.
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The original energy sources were man — or more probably, woman — and animals. These sources survived in industrial use to the nineteenth century, the former turning capstans in the docks, the latter driving gins in the mills. Waterpower, operating through waterwheels, was harnessed in Roman times; windpower, operating through the windmill, in the middle ages; and the more revolutionary thermal energy, operating through the steam engine, in the eighteenth century.

Development was highly practical, much of it by rural craftsmen who were responsible for an astonishing series of technical achievements, such as the servo-mechanisms which enabled windmills to respond to changes in the strength and direction of the wind and the varied transmission systems whose scope and importance are not always fully appreciated. The famous nineteenth century Laxey water wheel in the Isle of Man, for example, drove a mine pump half a mile away, while some seventeenth century German mines depended on transmission systems 17 miles long.

London contains numerous relics of industrial history, such as the Liberty water wheel on the Wandle, the Walthamstow mill, the mid-Victorian steam engines at Thamesmead which powered the first major sewerage systems in the world and the primitive coke-fire ventilation systems of the Houses of Parliament, as well as the steam engine, still working, for pumping sewage there.

A particularly interesting group of survivals stands at New River Head — the remains of a windmill and of the building which houses an atmospheric steam engine and also the tall narrow building which housed a beam engine. The atmospheric engine there was built by Smeaton, so the site preserves the memory of one of the pioneers of engineering research and development and the first man to describe himself as an “engineer.” The lecture made clear the reason why the words engineer and ingenuity derive from the same route.

Members may be interested to know that the steam pumps which once helped to win this country is leadership in the development of pure water supplies, and are now maintained by the Kew Bridge Engines Trust, can be seen in steam at the pumping station near the bridge from 10.00a.m.-1.00p.m. and 2.00-5.00p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Bank on the Ball

Some bright spark in the Publicity Department of Lloyd’s Bank has come up with a fetching idea. He (or she) has designed a poster which sells, at a stroke, both banking and Archaeology. A copy has been sent to every archaeological Society in Britain, including HADAS.

It shows a splendid giant reproduction, about 1 ft in diameter, of a bronze Centenionalis of the Emperor Constantius II (AD 337-361) — the coin unearthed during the redevelopment of a branch of Lloyd’s at Alcester, Warwickshire. When Roman finds began coming up on this site, known to lie within the area of the original Roman Town, building work was halted for two months while Warwick Museum carried out a rescue dig — with Lloyd’s heaping coals of fire on the diggers’ heads by helping to finance the project.

The poster makes the point that many Lloyd’s branches are situated on historic sites — notably, at Lincoln and York where, as Peter Addyman told us last year, one of the most significant Viking sites found in Britain was discovered under the bank vaults.

Is the inference that all good archaeologists should bank at Lloyd’s? One can certainly infer that the Lloyd’s advertising boys don’t Miss many tricks.

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Buttons but not Bows

By Christine Arnott.

We hope to have a new stall at the HADAS Minimart next month — for remnants of material, odd balls of wool and BUTTONS. Mrs. Holliday (Elizabeth’s mother) intends to put sets of buttons on cards, if possible. Please look through your stores and let her know if you can provide anything or tell the general organisers Christine Arnott or Dorothy Newbury.

The Minimart on Saturday 12 March, will be open from 10.00a.m.-12.00p.m., at its usual venue, the Henry Burden Hall, Egerton Gardens, NW4. We hope as many members as possible will come along to support it.

We also intend to widen the scope of the Home Produce stall this year, as home-made food is so popular. If we can stock the stall with home-made bread, rolls and small dishes such as lasagne or good old shepherd’s pie, I am sure we shall do a roaring trade. All contributions of this kind will therefore be most welcome.

Other stalls will include books, garden, good-as-new, bric-a-brac, miscellanea (cosmetics, stationery, jewellery, unwanted gifts). Contributions to these can be brought to the February or March lectures, or can be collected if desired (ring the organisers about collection). Please let us have your offerings as soon as possible, as everything has to be sorted and priced in advance. Will members who have in the past indicated their willingness to do fund-raising, please “come to the aid of the party now” and help get together a bumper collection for this, HADAS’s main fund-raising effort of the year?
Urban and Suburban History

Harrow College of Further Education, Uxbridge Road, Hatch End, is organising a one-day Local History Conference, as it has done for the past 3 years. This year the subject is “Urban and Suburban Growth.” The Conference will be on Saturday 5 March, from 10.00a.m.-5.00p.m. Fee, including morning coffee, lunch and tea, £3.

The morning session on Medieval towns will be led by Tom Hassall of the Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit; in the afternoon Victorian urban growth will be the subject, under the chairmanship of Dr Reeder of Leicester University. HADAS members who are interested should write to R.W. Edwards, at Harrow College.
Central Public Health Laboratory, Colindale

By Bill Firth.

This is the complex of buildings, built by the Government Lymph Establishment in 1906 (probably by the Office of Works), where all vaccine for public vaccination in England and Wales was made.

The main buildings are: 1. A main office/laboratory block brackets still used as such) facing south fronting on the north side of Colindale Avenue.

2. Four animal houses sited at what are believed to be the four corners of the field in which hay was grown. These are behind (i.e. north of) the main building. They are still used as animal houses but no longer for calves. Though considerably altered inside, enough remains to enable the original layout to be discerned.

3. A large lymph preparation building sited between the southerly pair of animal houses, now used as a library.

4. Down the western boundary is an engineering block, housing a boiler with an original boiler chimney and two smaller buildings apparently used as a carpenters’ shop.
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5. The northwest corner is occupied by a house, originally used by the Manager.

6. along the North Boundary, a one-storey building — original use are known.

Over the front entrance of the main block 1906 is carved; there is an Edwardian clock face inside the main door (with modern mechanism). Built to the latest standards for hygiene and cleaning the floors are wood blocks, the walls are tiled from floor to ceiling and there is a curved coving at floor level. There are large sash windows to give maximum daylight and the interior doors are all glazed — some with the original glazing. The corridors of wide (about 6 ft 9 in.). There’s an old hoist to serve the first floor, made by Evans Lifts Ltd, London and Leicester.

The animal houses have many interesting features. Ventilation is through a duct from the ground floor through the first floor to a central roof turret. The roofs are lined (warmth for animals) and have an interesting arrangement of iron supports and wooden trusses. The windows have no mouldings — no dust trap, easy to clean. The outside steps to the first floor have slanted rainways in them for drainage and to keep the water away from the iron railings. The floors slope to gulleys for drainage an easy washing down. It appears that there were ten calf pens in two rows of five in each house, but this needs confirmation. Two of the animal houses (on the west side) have large doors in the first storey wall equipped with hoists, presumably for raising hay for storage. There are particularly good remains of the hoist in the north-west house.

These buildings are at some risk, since there are tentative plans for redevelopment, but the present public expenditure cuts have probably postponed these. Further investigation is in hand — both of the documentation which exists, and of how much recording is necessary.
Hon. Treasurer’s Department

Several enclosures accompany this Newsletter. One is the notice of an Extraordinary General Meeting, to be held before March lecture. At this a formal resolution will be put, to raise the Society subscription to £1.50 from the start of the next financial year on 1 April. We regret very much the necessity for this; but, as members know, we have managed to hold the subscription at £1 since 1 April, 1972 — and that has taken some doing, with rising prices! Now an increase has become essential.

Another enclosure concerns our latest publishing venture — a booklet to coincide with the Silver Jubilee — and how we propose to fund it. Whether or not we finally decide to publish will depend in large measure on the response we get from members. We hope therefore that you will read the enclosure sympathetically and help if you possibly can.
All Change

With this issue of the Newsletter two changes take place in its preparation and distribution. First, the Society’s duplicator has been given a new home by Irene Frauchiger, who will in future run our duplicating. We thank her warmly for accepting this responsibility.

Second, our membership has risen so sharply that we decided to buy an addressing machine. Angela Fine undertook the formidable task of typing the stencils for the machine and a Raymond Lowe is housing and operating it. We would like to thank both very much for their help.

We’d also like to seize the chance of thanking one of the Newsletters “old hands” — Harry Lawrence, who has for almost exactly four years handwritten each month a complete set of envelopes. Recently this has been a mammoth task. Harry will continue to collate and distribute the Newsletter, but we hope in the future he’ll be free of a writer’s cramp!
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As this is the month of the change-over, will you please check the address on your envelope in case, among over 300 addresses, one or two may contain an error? If you find a mistake, please let our Hon, Secretary know.
Field Walking Report

By Ann Trewick and Daphne Lorimer.

During December two further mornings were spent field walking — healthy exercise, especially on Boxing Day, after all that turkey. Both walks were muddy, and one felt one was carting an extra ton around on one’s Wellingtons.

However, so far as Roman Pottery is concerned, the walks had been most rewarding. Sherds, including handles and necks of Brockley Hill ware, and fragments of tegulae, or roofing tiles, were found. The latter suggest a building — and this, of course, has interesting and exciting implications. Over 100 Roman pieces have now been discovered, most of them concentrated in one area of the same field. Fragments of many other kinds of pottery have also been collected, right through from mediaeval to modern; not to mention bones, worked stone, bits of tobacco pipe and metal objects.

The results of our field walks so far will be on show at the HADAS exhibition at Church Farm House Museum. You will perhaps be surprised to see that what variety can be found on a walk — everything from part of a Roman flagon to a twentieth-century teaspoon from the Royal Free Hospital!
Presentation to the Book Box

On Librarian, George Ingram, has received from Irene Frauchiger two handsome new volumes. They are inscribed “Presented to HADAS in memory of Leslie Frauchiger.” They are:

Recent Archaeological Excavations in Europe, edit. Rupert Bruce-Mitford, pub. Routledge Kegan Paul 1975.

Heritage of Britain, pub. by the Readers Digest, 1975.

We thank Irene very much for this generous gift, and for finding such an appropriate way to keep Leslie’s memory green. George Ingram proposes to make special arrangements for lending these books which are weighty and cannot easily be brought to meetings. Any member who wishes to borrow one should contact George.
The Records on Non-Conformity

Many Nonconformist churches, chapels and meeting houses exist in our Borough and most of them must have an interesting history. The Research Committee has decided that it would be a worthwhile project to get in touch with as many as possible and collect details of their history — how early the first records are, when the church was built, the names of important past members of the congregation and so on. We may sometimes find there is already a written history, in pamphlet form.

George Ingram has kindly volunteered to take charge of this project. If any member has material which might help him, or can provide him with details of the church from which he might obtain information, would they please let him know?

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Looking Forward

— a seasonal occupation at New Year –-so let’s envisage some of the prospects of lying ahead of HADAS in 1977.

Lectures for the rest of the season will be:
January 4 – From muscle to Steam – the Archaeology of Energy. – Denis Smith
February 1 – Continuity or change: a fresh look at Prehistoric Britain – Andrew Selkirk
March 1 – Coinage of Pre-Roman Britain – Dr. John Kent
April 5 – Denmark – Ted Sammes

To top of the programme, the Annual General Meeting will be held as usual in May — exact date to be announced later.

All these events will take place at Central Library, The Burroughs, NW4; and this brings us to a bad sign of the times. Since HADAS was founded, back in 1961, we have enjoyed free use of the Library for monthly meetings, at first through the kindness of Hendon Borough Council and later thanks to the London Borough of Barnet. From this month on, however, that arrangement ceases; in future we should pay a rental of £4.20 per lecture, with an additional small fee for the use of the Library projector.

We would like to take this opportunity of thanking the Library authorities for their generous treatment in the past; and of saying that we are sure both councillors and officials regret as much as we do that, owing to present financial problems, this much appreciated helping hand can no longer be extended to small amenity societies.

To further social events will take place in the near future:

THURSDAY 6 JANUARY. A second HADAS dinner at the Tower of London will enable members to celebrate Twelfth Night. Arrangements will be as for the December dinner; in case you mislaid your last Newsletter, here they are again:

The coach will leave the Quadrant, Hendon, and 6.15p.m. and The Refrectory, Golders Green at 6.25 and cannot be held after those times. If you are unlucky enough to miss the coach, please make your own way to the Tower — dinner is at 7.30p.m. Members are asked to let Dorothy Newbury know in advance whether they intend to use the coach or go straight to the Tower.

Dress is informal — but please bring suitable clothing for watching the Ceremony of the Keys in the open. During the ceremony no smoking, photography or recording are allowed.

Wine is not included in the price of dinner, but you can buy it by the glass or bottle. Hot punch at the end of the evening is included in the ticket.
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TUESDAY 8 FEBRUARY. Visit to Pompeii Exhibition, Royal Academy, 7.30p.m. No more places are available; would any member who has reserved and not yet paid £1.75 please send the money to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible? Tickets will be sent to you. Note: no transport has been arranged for this event.
Money for the Future

Fund-raising is also on the future agenda. The next Minimart world, as announced last month, take place on Saturday 12 March at the Henry Burden Hall, Egerton Gardens, NW4 from 10.00a.m. to 12.00p.m.

The Minimart stalls will be: in Good as new (including clothes, men’s women’s and children’s ); Good Shoes and Boots; Bric-a Brac; books; plants and garden; toys and cosmetics; home produce.

Our fund-raisers will be grateful for their help you can give. Please collect anything you can for any of the stalls; items for Home Produce (which will include jams, marmalade, jellies, chutney, pickles and wines) and for Plants and Garden will be particularly welcome. Don’t forget that not only are costs escalating, but so too are HADAS’s needs. We do more each year; and the more we do, the more funds we need to raise. In 1976 we bought our Gestetner duplicator and a new addressing machine. In 1977 digging equipment, surveying equipment and publication costs are three out of many calls which will be made on our reserves.
HADAS Exhibition at Church Farm House Museum

This will be another early 1977 event. From 19 February – 27 March the Society will mount one of its periodic displays at Church Farm House Museum, under the title Archaeology in Action. It is hoped to illustrate a number of different aspects of local archaeology during the last two or three years.

Many of the finds from West Heath will be shown, together with some of the excellent photographs taken at each stage of the dig by our “resident” photographer, Peter Clinch. Material from three earlier digs will also be on display — from Alec Jeakins’ site at Woodlands, Golders Green Road; from Ann Trewick’s dig at St. James the Great, Friern Barnet; and from the closing stages of Ted Sammes’ Church Terrace dig. None of these finds have been on show at the Museum before.

A photographic record of the parish boundary survey to date will be included; and also some of the material assembled for another project — the Buildings Survey, carried out by a group of 30 or so members who helped to make recommendations to the Borough Planning Department about the updating of the Statutory List of Buildings of Architectural or Historic Interest.

Industrial Archaeology, chance finds, field-walking, the survey of a burial ground at Totteridge and a “HADAS at play “section, showing social events, will also be included.

The exhibition will not only be open on weekdays but also for some six weekends. In the past we have always tried, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, to have one or two members present at the Museum to act as stewards and to answer questions about the Society and its work. We hope to do similarly with this exhibition. Committee member June Porges has kindly agreed to organise a weekend stewards rota — so if you feel that you can spare an hour or two on any Saturday or Sunday afternoon between 19 February and 27 March inclusive, please give Mrs. Porges a ring and let her know.
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Digging Ahead Too

We can’t provide precise dates at this stage for the next HADAS excavation, but you don’t need a Crystal Ball to foretell that, come the summer, we shall certainly be digging again.

Arrangements have already been made, thanks to ready co-operation from the GLC, for a further dig on two sites at West Heath. One will be a short (and undoubtedly muddy) dig on the “spring” site from which come the waters of the Leg of Mutton pond. It lies about half a mile up the hill from 1976 site. We shall probably dig there for about a fortnight sometime in May, and because of conditions the number of diggers may have to be limited.

In the following month we hope to start work again on extension of the 1976 site. One object of this will be to try to find the limits of the area used by early man. We shall probably dig well into the autumn, as we did in 1976.

Not only has the GLC be most cooperative about 1977 excavation plans; we have also had helpful conversations with a representative of the Nature Conservancy, the London Natural History Society and the Heath and Old Hampstead Society. As a result it is proposed that the area excavated at the spring site should not be completely back-filled. Part of the site will be left open to form a small pond, around which it is hoped that the rich marsh vegetation which used to exist here will re-establish itself. Of recent years the site has become overgrown and many rare plants and mosses have vanished.
First Steps in Surveying

By Paddy Musgrove.

In expectation of HADAS soon acquiring its own surveyors level and levelling staff, eleven members spend two cold December Saturday mornings learning how to use of this type of equipment.

Our short course (it is hoped that it may merely be an opening salvo, with more to come) was held in Friary Park, Friern Barnet, close to an area we may one day wish to survey in earnest in our search for lost sight of the old friary or preceptory of the Order of St. John. Our ever-patient and lucid instructor, Barrie Martin, cheerfully allowed us to put his equipment at peril.

Overcome by early successes, some students eventually claimed readings correct to the nearest millimetre. In public places, we now talk casually of “temporary benchmarks,” “backsights,” “reduced levels,” “flying levels,” and even “the height of plane of collimation!” Such esoteric back chat can, however, easily be countered by asking casually: “How did you get on with the figure-work? You know, the simple addition and subtraction?”

We may not have been too good as that side of things, but we have learnt some skills that in time to come may be of use to the Society. Moreover, our appetite for surveying has been whetted — and Mr Martin hopes that in the spring he may be able to spare some more time to assuaging it.
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Turkey and Towers

An Impressionist view of a HADAS Christmas outing with a touch of history.

Towers, round and square and nearly 1,000 years old, against a night sky in winter. Cold moonlight, picking out the black mortar lines separating the white stone blocks of which those towers were built. Between two towers the elegant pencilling of a leafless tree, etched against a faintly luminous sky. Between others, half-seen hsalf-timbered buildings, Tudor intrusions into a scene otherwise entirely Norman; and high on the upper skyline, topping a curtain wall of fully 30 ft, reminders of a later era — Georgian houses perched on the top most level of the wall. That was the setting: a back cloth of massed centuries.

Separating curtain wall and Tudor House, between circular tower and rectangular, ran a broad cobbled way, leading from one sombre gateway to the next. In the distance rang a word of command. Then, their heavy army boots clattering on the cobbles, four smart, small soldiers with alien faces, all the way from the foothills of the Himalayas, came stamping down the centre of the pathway. An older man, clad in scarlet cloth and flat black cap straight from the pages of a Tudor manuscript led them, and another brought up the rear.

The small party halted where the Bloody Tower looks across the cobbles to the Traitor’s Gate, and the staccato questions came. “Who’s there?” “The Keys.” “Whose keys?” “Queen Elizabeth’s keys.” Two questions asked every night for over 400 years; two questions answered in the same terms in 1576 when the first Elizabeth’s ruled and today, when the second does: that’s the continuity of English history.

HADAS stepped back into history — a most appropriate thing for an archaeological society to do — to celebrate its 1976 Christmas party. To start with, in the setting of a modern dining room, we had what was probably for most of us the first taste of Christmas this year — turkey and trimmings. Then, by contrast, out we went into Medieval England for the Ceremony of the Keys. Afterwards we watched the soldiers, their quicker rat-a-tat of questions over, wheel smartly away through the second gateway and up a small hill, where trumpeters played the dying falls of the Last Post.

Then we came back into modern life, to drink cups of punch provided by attendance dressed a la mode 1976, to sing Auld Lang Syne to the accompaniment of George Ingram’s flute and finally to make a warm and well-fed way home to a more everyday world.
Answer Needed

Bill Firth — who joined HADAS last year with the specific intention of brightening up our Industrial Archaeology scene — keeps coming up a with abstruse questions. This month he writes “a fellow industrial archaeologist wants information about the Great North Northern London Cemetery, and particularly the rail link to it. Can a member enlighten him?

If you know anything about this, please give Bill a ring and tell him.
Kiln Seminar

The London Kiln Study Group is organising another of its kiln seminars on 23/24 April next. This will be on Kilns of the Potteries and will be held at Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke-on-Trent. Cost of the seminar is £7, which includes tea and coffee, but not a main meal. Further details from the London Kiln Study Group, the Cuming Museum, 155 Walworth Road, SE17.

Newsletter

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HAPPY CHRISTMAS

Happy Christmas to all HADAS members.

Festivities will get off to an early start this year — on 7 December when, in place of the annual Christmas party, HADAS meet for dinner as the Tower of London. Here are the last minute instructions from Mistress of Revels Dorothy Newbury:

Members who have not yet indicated where they intend to board the coach are asked to let Dorothy know. Coaches leave the Quadrant, Hendon, and 6.15p.m. and The Refrectory, Golders Green at 6.25 and cannot be held after those times. Should you be unlucky enough to be late, please make your own way to the Tower — dinner is at 7.30p.m.

If you plan to go straight to the Tower, please also let Dorothy know. When you get there, ask if party has arrived; if it hasn’t, please wait for the main party.

Dress is informal — but a word of warning. If it is cold and wet, please bring suitable clothing, as we shall watch the ceremony in the open for about half-an-hour. During that time the authorities allow no smoking, photography or recording.

Wine is not included in the price of dinner, but you can buy your own by the glass or bottle. Hot punch after the ceremony is included in the ticket.
Twelfth Night Party

We shall be giving 1977 a good HADAS send-off, too. The second “overflow” dinner at the Tower on 6 January is now a definite booking, and all details of the same as for 7 December.
Dates for your New Diary

4 January. First lecture of the New Year by Denis Smith, an outstanding speaker on Industrial Archaeology. “From Muscle to Steam” is the title of his talk; the history of energy is its theme.

Other 1977 HADAS lectures will be:
February 1 -Continuity or change: a fresh look at – Andrew Selkirk
Prehistoric Britain.
March 1 – Coinage of Pre-Roman Britain – Dr. John Kent
April 5 – Denmark – Ted Sammes

8 February. Visit to Pompeii Exhibition. This, too, is now a definite date. Will members who have booked, but not yet paid, please send £1.75 to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible? Tickets will be sent to you, so that you can make your own way to the Royal Academy at 7.30 and go straight into the Exhibition. Please note that no transport has been arranged for this event.
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Field Walks

Two further field-walking expeditions have had been arranged. One has a specific purpose of enabling you to walk off the effects of a weekend of Christmas fare! They will be on Sunday, 12 December and Monday, 27 December (boxing Day).

Please meet for both, as usual, at Bury Farm at 10.00a.m., wearing strong shoes and armed with a plastic bag in which (hopefully) to carry your finds. It will be helpful if you can let one of the organisers, Daphne Lorimer and Ann Trewick, know if you intend to take part.
Surveying Sessions

As announced, the first of these will take place on Saturday mornings December 4th and 11 December. Will members please meet at the Friary Road entrance to Friary Park (near St. James’s church) at 9.55a.m? Please bring paper and pencil. If it rains heavily, arrangements have been made for a talk indoors, but weather permitting we hope to do practical work outside. Each session will probably last about two to two and a half hours.
Christmas Presents with a Digging Slant

Suggested by Raymond Lowe.

Do you read London Archaeologist? Four times a year, subscriptions £1.60 post free. Or if you are already a subscriber, binders at £1.50 each hold a volume.

Do you belong to the National Trust? Did you know that the Trust owns Housesteads Fort and a large stretch of the Roman Wall, as well as many prehistoric sites e.g. Avebury stone circle, Oldbury hillfort? Ordinary membership, £5; family membership £5 plus £2.50 for each additional member at the same address; life membership £75.

D.o.E. Historic Monuments season tickets. Full details from The Secretary (AMHB/P), Department of Environment, Room 106, 25 Savile Row, London, W1.

with a footnote from our Hon. Treasurer, Jeremy Clynes:

Don’t forget the Society’s notelets, with a drawing of Warwick the Kingmaker on the front, will make excellent Christmas cards. A pack of 10 with envelopes costs only 25p. We also have stocks of HADAS pens, price 12p each. Both can be obtained from the Treasurer.

And perhaps not quite Christmas reading – but still something no HADAS member should be without: a copy of the preliminary report on the Society’s 1976 dig at West Heath. This has been published in the current London Archaeologist (Autumn, 1976, vol. 2 No. 16). We have bought a number of offprints which can be obtained from Jeremy Clynes price 10p plus a stamped addressed envelope.
Church Terrace Pottery Weekends

During three weekends in November a select band of workers marked, measured and mended the pottery and glass bottles from the 1973-4 dig at Hendon.
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The finds have now been sorted into Roman, Saxon, Norman and post-Medieval. This will enable further work to be undertaken on individual periods. Much work remains to be done on the identification and sources of the pottery.

Thanks, as always, are due to John Enderby for allowing us to rent the Teahouse for these sessions.
Obituary

This has been, from one point of view, a sad year for HADAS – and particularly for three of our members.

Eric Wookey, one of our founder members and a Vice-President of the Society, lost his wife in the eartly autumn. Mrs. Wookey had been a member of the Society from the outset, and until recently came regularly to lectures and other HADAS meetings.

In October, Margaret Musgrove – many members will recall how entertainingly she organised the side-shows at last year’s Christmas party – died suddenly after an illness from which it had been hoped she was recovering. She and her husband, Paddy, have been familiar figures at most HADAS occasions for the last four years, and Paddy is a hard-working member of the Society’s research team.

Now, as this Newsletter is going to press, we learn of the tragic and untimely death of Leslie Frauchiger. He and his wife Irene (another of the organisers of last year’s Christmas party) have been members for only two years, but in that short time both showed themselves among HADAS’s keenest supporters, taking part in every activity.

The Society extends its most sincere sympathy to Mr. Wookey, Paddy and Irene in their great loss. HADAS, too, is the poorer for the passing of these three members.
A Cry for Help

If you enjoy reading this Newsletter, would you be prepared to offer some practical help with getting it out? We are looking — very anxiously, too — for a member who could do two things: first, house the Society’s duplicating machine; and second, work that machine as and when necessary.

Almost every document that HADAS uses — including minutes of meetings, notices of outings, forms, instructions for digs, and the Newsletter — has been duplicated by Philippa Bernard at her home in Totteridge. Often Mrs. Bernard has cut the stencils, as well as being responsible for rolling them off. She has housed our Gestetner in her own the spare room — greater devotion and service to HADAS than that it would be hard to find!

During that time our membership — and therefore the extent of duplicating work — has grown. So to have Mrs. Bernard’s many responsibilities. Now, to our great regret, she finds she cannot continue to do duplicating, and has asked us to find out whether any other member would be prepared to step into her shoes.

As several members have recently kindly offered to type for the Society, we shall not need to ask a volunteer to cut stencils. What will be needed, however, is sufficient space to house a Gestetner 4 ft high by 2 ft square, in a position where it can be plugged into a thirteen amp point and operated. The machine can be kept covered when not in use.
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Mrs. Bernard has offered to show anyone who wishes how to work the duplicator which is, she says, very simple to manage. If anyone feels that he or she could help in this way, would they please let our Hon. Secretary know? You need to be in no doubt that your offer will be greatly appreciated, and will be of very real help to HADAS.

This is an appropriate moment at which to thank Philippa most sincerely for her help in the past. She has never once failed the Society,, no matter how short the notice at which we asked her to work; and in more than one crisis it was she who saved our bacon.
More about Pompeii

By Elizabeth Holiday.

By the time this Newsletter is circulated, I am sure that everyone will be aware of the Pompeii Exhibition at the Royal Academy. Colour supplement articles, brochures and television documentaries abound, but in the vanguard — HADAS with, on 2 November, a superb lecture by Dr Malcolm Colledge.

A packed audience (a record figure of 175 was mentioned) Dr College recreated the bustle of everyday life in the ancient city. His quotations from contemporary literature and Pompeiian graffiti, vivid descriptions of the shops, streets and houses, the sacred and secular buildings, the wall paintings, sculptures and other works of art, brought to life the city encapsulated beneath the lava, ash and mud on that fateful day in August AD 79.

A truly unforgettable lecture.
Looking ahead to the next Minimart

Christine Arnott, chief of fund-raisers, reminds us that Christmas is coming, and asks all members please to remember HADAS if they received any “unwanted” gifts. The next minimart — our biggest annual fund-raising function — will be on Saturday 12 March. Unwanted Christmas presents would fit very nicely on a stall like “New — Good as New.”

There will, of course, be other stalls, and more about them next month. Meantime Christine hopes that everyone will keep an eye open for potential minimart “fodder” of all kinds.
Accessions to the Book Box

The HADAS book box increases almost weekly in scope, thanks to the generosity of members. Our Hon. Librarian, George Ingram, is most grateful to all those who have added to it recently. He reports the following acquisitions, and points out that the first fourteen volumes on the list had been presented by recently joined member Philip Venning — a splendid gift to the Society:

Graham Connor, The Archaeology of Benin; excavations in and around Benin City, Nigeria, 1975.

Barbara Bender, Farming in Prehistory; from hunter-gatherer to food-producer. 1975.

W. S. Whyte, Basic Metric Surveying; 2nd ed. 1976.

David L. Clarke, Analytical Archaeology. 1968

J.D.S. Pendlebury, The Archaeology of Crete (reprint 1971)

J.P.M.Pannell, The techniques of Industrial Archaeology. 1974.

P.H.Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings. 1975.

E.A.Fisher, Anglo-Saxon Towers: an architectural and historical study. 1969.

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The following numbers of the 4-monthly journal, World Archaeology: June, 1969 (vol 1 no 1); Feb. 1970 (vol 1 no 3); Oct. 1970 (vol 2 no 2); Feb. 1971 (vol 2 no 3); June 1971 (vol 3 no 1); Oct. 1971 (vol 3 no 2).

Christopher Hussey, The story of Ely House, 37 Dover Street, W1. (presented by Alec Gouldsmith)

River Brent Flood Alleviation Study (GLC document, with map)

Olive Cook, Constable’s Hampstead. 1976.

And the following duplicated papers, presented by John Enderby:

The Timestones of the Druids – Archaeology, Observation and Tradition at Stanehenge.

The Bowl of Glaeston by Ross Nichols (Glastonbury)

The Mysteries of Avebury – the Avebury-Stonehenge Axis of Powers by Ross Nichols.
Local Historians at Guildhall

The eleventh annual Local History Conference was organised by the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society at Guildhall on 20 November. Over a dozen societies and groups displayed their work, showing the increasing interest which this function arouses. When HADAS first started attending, there were wide open spaces between the various stands. Nowadays it would be difficult to insert a digger’s trowel between them.

HADAS was well represented. Christine Arnott and Daphne Lorimer, to whom the Society is most grateful, mounted an excellent exhibit on the background research which led to our booklet, Money, Milk and Milestones. Examples of Hendon tokens (lent by Ted Sammes) and photographs and other material connected with Philip Rundell (the millionaire jeweller who lived at Renters Farm, Hendon in the early nineteenth century and is buried in Hendon St. Mary’s churchyard) illustrated the “money” side of the title. Photographs of College Farm in 1893 and actual diary bygones from Totteridge (lent by Mr. And Mrs. Morley of Laurel Farm) came under the “milk” heading; and “milestones” was shown by photographs and a history of milestones on for routes in the Borough of Barnet.

There were three speakers as the Conference, the principal one being transport expert Charles E. Lee. He showed an encyclopaedic knowledge of both road and rail transport, speaking apparently without the use of a single note and handling questions with great fluency. His talk was as full of fascinating detail as a pudding of plums — alas, that you couldn’t all hear all of it. This is just one of the interesting and unexpected to bits of knowledge which Mr Lee produced: the passage of the Limited Liabilities Act profoundly affected the flow of capital into — and therefore the growth of — transport services. The first company was registered under the act only on 17 July, 1856. Till then there had been no limitation on liability: any partner in a concern was deemed to be liable for a company’s debts up to the limit. This had been off-putting, to say the least, to a rich patron who, while putting a trifle of money into a concern, wanted also to have some part in their handling of it.
The Brass Cow

Charles Lee was particularly interested in the HADAS exhibit because of the link between transport and the early milk supplies to London. (The Express Dairy, which owned College Farm, is so called because in its early days the milk distributed in the capital came by express train).
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He asked if we had ever come across “the brass cow.” This was a system by which, if you ran short of milk in the evening, you could go to the local Dairy with a jug, insert a coin, turn on the brass tap and get your pint of milk. Does any member recall this system, or can you remember any Dairies in our Borough at which it was in use? Are there any “brass cows” still in situ (even if not in use) anywhere?

This may be the last year that the Local History Conference will be held against the sombre and somewhat sumptuous background of Guildhall. Plans are in hand — though not yet complete — to transfer its next year to the Museum of London.

Which reminds us that as from 2 December London will have a new and very modern Museum — when the Museum of London opens in Barbican, combining the collections of Guildhall Museum and the London Museum. The new museum will cover the history of the whole Greater London area. Its scouts were out, at least two years ago, collecting material in our Borough — from College Farm and from the Hampstead Garden Suburb.
British Museum Exhibitions

Two special displays showing from now until 1 February at the British Museum are worth a visit.

One is the British Library’s commemoration of the quincentenary of printing, coupled with the name of William Caxton. It is beautifully mounted and shows some mouth-watering documents. The catalogue costs £2 but is worth it. It contains photographs of illuminated MSS – for instance, Edward IV at exile in Bruges in 1470, just before he returned to England to win the Battle of Barnet, receiving the Chronicles of England from the author, Jean de Waurin. It has reproductions of title pages and gems like the opening page of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales (1483). It also reproduces some delightful woodcuts, such as a clerk enduring the miseries of medieval arithmetic (from Mirror on the World, 1481), and an illustration from The Game and Play of Chess, 1482, with the unlikely caption “King Evilmerodach – a jolly man without justice” – feeding his father to the vultures.

The other exhibition is “7000 years of Jewellery.” The earliest exhibit is an obsidian bead necklace of 5000 BC, excavated at Arpachiya, Iraq. The collection goes up to the mid-19th century AD. Exhibits were found all over the world. They include a Minoan gold pendant; Chinese animal, fish and insect pendants in jade; Sumerian jewellery from Ur; a bronze dress-pin from Luristan; an Anglo-Saxon gold shoulder clasp, decorated with millefiori glass (from Sutton Hoo); Peruvian ear ornaments, a Chinese silver comb and Persian, Mughal and Spanish treasures.
New Members

HADAS has pleasure in welcoming the following new members, who have joined since mid-July:

Mary Ambrose, Garden Suburb; Lewis Baker, Totteridge; Deirdre Barrie, Hendon; Paul Baylis, N2; Mrs. Bohn, Hampstead; John Bomben, East Finchley; Kate Cabot, Hampstead; Mr. & Mrs. Chapman, Colindale; Laura Chernaik, Hampstead; Mrs Clinch, Mr. & Mrs. Cooper, all Finchley; Mrs. Dawson, Mill Hill; Mrs. Earle, Temple Fortune; Miss Edwards, Garden Suburb; Angela Fine, Highgate; Clive Gould, NW6; Miss Hall, Temple Fortune; Elizabeth Howard, Edgware; Mrs. Jolly, Hendon; Miss Johns, Hendon; Terence Keenan, Hampstead; Christina Kicman, Kingsbury; Jocelyn Kingsley, NW6; Mrs. Lund, Mill Hill; Mrs. McKenzie, Finchley; Mrs. Morgan, Totteridge; Mrs. Pestell, Temple Fortune; Paul Phillips, Edgware; Simon Porges, Finchley; Mrs. Raab, Garden Suburb; Miss Silver, Hendon; Mrs. Whitcombe, Finchley; Miss Williams, Hendon; Miss Withers, Hampstead; Mr. & Mrs. And Stephen Wrigley, Colindale.