Past Newsletters

Number 369 December 2001 HADAS 40th Year Edited by Liz Holliday

HADAS DIARY

There will be no lecture in January, a cold and busy month for both lecturers and audiences. Instead, there will be an extra lecture in May as the AGM is now held in June. The first lecture in 2002 will be held at 8.00pm on Wed. 12 February at Avenue House.

Speaker: Francis Grew

Life in Roman London

Pubs and Brewers in Barnet Borough

Church Farmhouse Museum will be mounting an exhibition on the history of local pubs and brewers from May to September 2002. There is no shortage of pictorial or documentary material already available but the museum is particularly keen to borrow relevant objects – from barstools to beer mats, bottles to beer-engines – for display.

If anyone has any material which they would be prepared to lend or if they know of local pubs being refurbished, please phone Gerrard Roots at the museum on 0208 203 0130.

The 19th-century paneled dining room at Church Farmhouse Museum will, as usual, be decorated for a Victorian Christmas. Be sure to catch this wonderful display which is only on show from 6 December until 6 January.

MICRO-MINIMART 13 OCTOBER 2001 by Dorothy Newbury

As intended, this was to be lower key, as well as the last Minimart I feel I can organise. As it happens, it was a very happy day with members, friends and the public chatting over Tessa’s freshly served lunches. I would have been happy to make £500, but thanks to everyone’s willing help we made over £600 clear profit, and I am still selling items un-sold on the day – watch for future Sales & Wanted Lists in your Newsletters.

If anyone would like to view the substantial number of books we have left over before we dispose of them, please come and browse. (Bargains at a few pence each!).

There has been no response to my request for a volunteer to run a Car Boot Sale – I’m sure there must be someone out there who relishes the cut and thrust of bartering in the snow! Please get in touch if you are able to help with this (0208 203 0950).

I would like to thank everyone who, over the last 25 years, has helped the Minimart sales to raise about £16.000 for the Society.

GRIM’S DYKE

a note on the venue for our Christmas party by Sheila Woodward

Grim’s Dyke earthwork, much damaged by modem development, has never been securely dated. It originally extended 3km southwest of the hotel to Pinner Green where P.G.Suggett excavated in 1957 and found Iron Age and Belgic pottery. in 1979, excavating in the hotel grounds prior to new building, Rob Ellis found only two abraded pottery sherds, probably Iron Age, and a possible hearth with charcoal, radio-carbon dated to AD50+-80. This suggests that Grim’s Dyke earthwork pre-dates the Pear Wood earthwork, 3km to the east (excavated by Stephen Castle 1948-73) which is post-Roman possibly 5th or 6th century AD. (See LAMAS Transactions Vol. 33 pp 173- 176).

MEDIEVAL QUERY

The following letter was sent to our Chairman.

Can any member help?

Dear Sir,

I got your contact details from the HADAS website having seen an article in Archaeological Matters. I must congratulate you on your website, it’s excellent!

I have been researching the Heydon family of Watford on behalf of Charles Le Quesne, the site director in charge of excavations at The Grove Estate, Watford.

(See www.archaeologyatthe grove.com)

William Heydon, the first of the family to own The Grove married Elizabeth Aubery around 1479. Her parents were Robert Aubery and Christian. The Visitation of Heralds to Hertfordshire in 1572 states that he was Dailey, co. Middx. By going through various documents I have come to the conclusion that this could be Dollis, as in Dollis Hill.

I noticed that HADAS have done some work on medieval Hendon and wondered if you could throw any further light on this for me.

Regards,

Stella Davis

284 Baldwins Lane Croxley Green Rickmansworth HERTS., WD3 3LD

OTHER SOCIETIES’ DECEMBER EVENTS

Prepared by Eric Morgan Wed. 5 Dec. at 5pm British Archaeological Association at Society of Antiquaries,

Burlington House, Piccadilly, W.1 Nonsuch Palace Revisited a talk by Martin Biddle.

Wed. 5 Dec. at 8pm Islington Archaeology & History Society Islington Town Hall, Upper Street N.1 The Archway a talk by Simon Morris

Thur. 6 Dec. at 8pm The Historical Association at Fellowship House, Willifield Way, NW 11 Observing the Western Front: Changes in Depicting the Battlefield 1914-18 a talk by Dr. Keith Grieves

Thur. 6 Dec at 7.30pm London Canal Museum, 12-13 New Wharf Road, Kings Cross, N.1 The Salisbury and Southampton Canal a talk by Peter Oates. (Cones. £1.25)

Sat. 8 Dec 10.15am-3.30pm Amateur Geological Society at St. Mary’s Hall, Hendon Lane, N3 Mineral and Fossil Bazaar Refreshments. Admission 50p Wed. 12 Dec at 6.30pm LAMAS at Interpretation Unit, Museum of London After the Fire: London Furniture 1660-1714 by David Dewing

Wed, 12 Dec. at 8.15pm Mill Hill Historical Society at Harwood Hall, Union Church, Mill Hill Broadway. Christmas in England 1539-1939 a talk by Peter Street.

Thur. 13 Dec. at 7.30pm Camden History Society at Burgh House, New End Road, NW3. Photographic Surveys of Camden (previous 8,, recent) a talk by Aiden Flood

Fri. 14 Dec. at 8pm Enfield Archaeological Society. Junilee Hall, Parsonage Lane, Chase Side, Enfield Poland: 1000 Years of Civilisation a talk by Stephen Gilburt

GADEBRIDGE ROMAN VILLA REVISITED Report of the October lecture by Peter Nicholson

On Tuesday 9 October Dr. David Neal, well-known for his work on Roman mosaics, spoke to members about his excavations of the Roman villa at Gadebridge Park, on the north side of Hemel Hempstead.The first discovery was made in 1962 when a new road cut the site of a Roman swimming bath and provided archaeological interest and exercise for local schoolchildren. A systematic exca­vation directed by Dr. Neal began the following year and contin­ued until 1968. Although, the dig was professionally directed, volunteers made a substantial contribution, showing the differ­ence between archaeology then and now, as does the timescale of the investigation.Dr. Neal’s excavation revealed that the swimming bath belonged to the last phase in the development of a villa complex. Its begin­nings were dated 75-100AD. The only substantial survival from this period were the remains of a stone, three-room bath house. The villa it served was probably timber built as the only remains are some ditches and drainage gullies. Both the villa and the bath house were to go through a number of modifications and enlargements. A particularly significant change occured in 150- 160AD when the bath house was extended and the villa was built in stone. The villa was of a design which frequently occurs, having a linear spine of rooms with shorter wings projecting at each end, the whole being surrounded by a corridor, probably in the form of a verandah.The swimming pool was found to be of remarkable size. At 21 metres long by 12 metres wide, with a depth of 1.5 metres it was almost the same size as the great bath at Bath. Its construcyion c.325AD was part of the final phase of building on the site, when the last of a series of extensions and alterations was carried out. Coin evidence showed that the villa and bath house complex was demolished in 353AD, with only two small outbuildings being left standing. It was thought that the demolition may have been part of the punative measures taken against supporters of the usurper Magnentius, who was defeated at Mursae in 351 AD and died two years later.

The 1960s excavations are described in articles in Current Archaeology No.1 (March 1967) and No. 18 (January 1970) which are available from The Hadas library.

Last year Dr. Neal returned to excavate at Gadebridge as a millenium project.

The passage of time has increased background knowledge of the period and Dr. Neal’s own expertise. It has also brough changes in excavation techniques, particularly in the excavation of extended areas rather than small trenches. These considera­tions caused Dr. Neal to doubt some of his earlier interpretations and wonder if more information could be obtained. Not surpris­ingly, this proved to be the case.

Although the main features of the earlier picture remained the same, some interpretations were amended. What had originally thought to have been a cottage associated with the bath house proved to be an extension of the porticus of the villa. A chalk surface, dated 75-100AD originally believed to have been an external yard was found to have been the floor of a circular building and evidence was found of an earlier, smaller, swim­ming bath. Finally, the “blood and thunder” explanation of the cause of demolition of the villa in 353AD is now thought unlike­ly as their is evidence of a general economic decline in south east Britain during this period. This is confirmed by the diminished state of London at this time as well as evidence from other villa sites in the area.

Dr. Neal’s talk not only supplied interesting and relevant infor­mation but also reminded us that that reports, which always appear authorative on the printed page, are only interpretations which which depend on the skill and knowledge of those who make them.

Gadebridge Roman Villa seems to be auspicious for beginnings. The report of the original excavation appeared in the first issue of Current Archaeology and the October talk saw the faultless debut of our new slide projector, complete with infra-red control. Technology marches onward at HADAS – can it be long before our pot-washers are equipped with electric toothbrushes?

CHRISTMAS DINNER AT GRIM’S DYKE on Tuesday 4 December

This is now fully booked with 60 members attending but there is no-one on the waiting list at present. If anyone would like to join us please phone Dorothy Newbury on 0208 203 0950 as there may be late cancellations.See page 3 for a note about the venue. As it will be too dark to see much on the 4 December, members may like to return there for tea during the summer to see the site.

RESISTIVITY SEARCH IN ENFIELD

HADAS members Bill Bass. Andrew Coulson and Brian Wrigley joined forces with members of the Enfield Archaeological Society in October to take part in a resistivity survey to try to locate the remains of a Tudor building in the grounds of Myddleton House in north Enfield. The twelve-room, red brick gabled 16th centu­ry manor house. known as Bowling Green House, was demol­ished in 1818 when Myddleton House was built. The founda­tions of the Tudor house were discovered in 1986 when they were struck by a digging machine while irrigation pipes were being laid.

Myddleton House is owned by the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority and no decision has yet been made whether to give permission for a full excavation on the site.

A photograph of our intrepid resistivity team is recorded for pos­terity in the pages of the Enfield Advertiser for 24 October.

LAST TRAM FROM BARNET

by Andy Simpson

As one or two other HADAS members are aware (and have even indulged in themselves) I am a habitue of transport enthusiasts collectors fairs, where those so inclined can pick up all manner of railway, tram, bus and shipping memorabilia and ephemera, from models to tickets, photos, books, magazines, records, timetables, waybills, posters and hardware (wagon plates to used ticket boxes). A regular venue is Camden Town Hall (next fair to be held on 2 February 2002) with others in Enfield (St. Paul’s Centre, near Enfield Chase Station) and an annual major event at Picket’s Lock Leisure Centre early in November. Here, careful perusal of box upon box of photos, prints and slides can produce the occasional gem – at a price. Black and white postcard-size prints average 40p to 70p each; £2 to £3 or more on certain stands for “rare” subjects!

My own chief quarry is Black Country tram and trollybus pho­tos, with a more local interest in the Barnet, Edgware, Finchley and Golders Green areas. Therefore I was particularly pleased with a discovery at the October event at Camden Town Hall. This was a postcard-size print showing the last electric tram to run from High Barnet in 1938. An early hours of the morning view, it shows the trams driver and conductor in traditional leather- cuffed uniforms, the driver complete with heavy overcoat, flank­ing a smartly dressed gentleman holding three tram tickets. On the vestibule bulkhead window of the tram is a small hand-writ­ten paper notice, “Barnet The Last Journey 1907-1938”. The caption on the back of the photo reads:

“LPTB (London Passenger Transport Board) Staff/Passenger off the last tram Barnet Route. On the morning of 6th March 1938 at Tally Ho Corner depot. Driver Lowe Conductor Mardell Passenger Herbert Bee holding first and last tickets of 1907 and 1938”

The tram itself is a former Metropolitan Electric Tramways H class double deck eight-wheeled car, which was scrapped within a few months.

The first public tram to Barnet ran from Whetstone on 28 March 1907; when route numbers were introduced the Barnet to Tottenham Court Road (Euston Road) via Highgate, Archway and Camden Town run became Route Number 19. A full trip took 54 minutes and cost 8d (3p!) in 1935.

Trollybuses on route 609, and shortly afterwards the 645 to Canons Park. replaced the trains on Sunday 6 March 1938 and survived until 2 January 1962, since when the motorbus has ruled the roost.

The former Metropolitan Electric Tramways Finchley depot off Ballards Lane/Rosemont Avenue, which opened in 1905, closed to trams in March 1938. It later served as a trollybus and motor­bus depot, closing completely in December 1993. It was later demolished and replaced by a Homebase Superstore, although the wall of the former offices fronting Rosemont Avenue survives, complete with bricked-in doors and windows and some relics of it remain in London Transport Museum’s store at Acton Town.

Andy Simpson hopes to write a follow-up article on these and other Barnet Transport relics held by London Transport Museum in due course.

FESTIVE FARE

Two 18th century recipes “The best recipt for Minced Pie mixture:

One pound of tripe well shred or thirteen eggs hard boiled with half the whites taken out; two pounds of suet well shred as small as pos­sible; one pound raisins; two pounds of prunes stoned and shred; one pound currants and half an ounce of nuts; cinnamon, mace and cloves a quarter ounce each; eight sour apples shred; one gill each of verjuice, sack and brandy; and half a pound of lemon peel with sugar.”

Fairfax Household Book

Mince pies were originally rectangular in shape and said to rep­resent Christ’s manger. They were abominated as “Popish and superstitious” by the Puritans and in 1656 were described as:

“Idolatry in crust? Babylon’s whore

Defiled with superstition, like the Gentiles

Of Old, that worshiped onions, roots and lentils”

On the Tenth Day of Christmas you should set about making your Twelth Night Cake:

” Put two pounds of butter in a warm pan and work it to a cream with your hand; then put in two pounds of loaf sugar sifted; a large nutmeg grated; and of cinnamon ground, allspice ground, ginger, mace and coriander each a quarter ounce. Now break in eighteen eggs one by one, meantime beating it for twenty min­utes or above: stir in a gill of brandy; then add two pounds of sifted flour, and work it a little. Next put in currants four pounds, chopped almonds half a pound; citron the like; and orange and lemon peel cut small half a pound. Put in one bean and one pea in separate places, bake it in a slow oven for four hours, and ice it or decorate it as you will.”

From The Experienced English Housekeeper’ by Elizabeth Raffald 1769.

Season’s greetings to all o members and their families
and all good wishes for a happy New Year

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 9 January An evening with Derek Batten sharing the Time Team’s Visit to his Castle in Towcester prior to the programme’s showing on TV.

Tuesday 13 February Lecture Aspects of Roman Tunisia by Kader Chelei

Tuesday 13 March Lecture Waltham Abbey Gunpowder Mills (an outing to this site is being planned for August)

All lectures start promptly at 8,00pm at Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley. N.3 and are followed by questions and coffee. Meetings close at 10.00pm

One Man and His Castle by Derek Batten

In life it’s amazing how one thing leads to another. Had I not mis-spent my youth in the Gaumont and Odeon cinemas (not to mention the New Bohemia and the Rex) I would never have developed an interest in the American Wild West, never taken part in the archaeological work done

at Little Big Horn in 1985 and subsequently, and never have seen myself as a very amateur archaeologist. Thus it was in 1997, with a substantial windfall jangling in my pocket, I saw an estate agent’s board advertising “Castle and Moat For Sale”, within two miles of my Northamptonshire home – and I never knew it was there! I had to submit a sealed bid and wondered whether I’d fixed on the right number. The rest, as they say, is history…

The Mount (my castle) covers some 1.72 acres, is sort of triangular in shape and has a very deep (25 feet in places), well-preserved and quite dramatic moat, There is quite a bit of tree cover, particularly around the edges, and it occupies a dominant position on a ridge overlooking the valley of the River Tuve in south Northamptonshire. It was certain- ly used in Norman times as a ringwork. a sort of squashed motte with all the buildings inside the perimeter moat.

How nice, I thought, to do the odd day’s digging on my own castle to while away my declining years. Alas, I had reckoned without English Heritage, as I has bought a Scheduled Ancient Monument and I’m not allowed to go up there and break wind without their consent.I also realised the need for a proper earthwork survey, geophysical investiga­tions and and professional control. All very expensive.

In conjunction with Northamptonshire Heritage a management plan was produced. This is a detailed document which sets out the history and plans for the future, including a report from the local Tree Officer recommending that certain trees be removed because they were a dan­ger to the archaeology, or to persons or property. I sent a copy of the management plan to the village but, of course, no-one really bothered to read it. Then I applied to have twenty of the one hundred and thirty trees removed and the balloon went up! Nasty letters, petitions, protests, a bit in the local newspaper and general bad feeling. This was not helped by the fact that two neighbouring gardens were encroach­ing on my land. More bad feeling, verbal and physical confrontation and worst of all, horrendous lawyers’ bills.

I suppose it was Bridget’s idea and persistence that made me approach Time Team. Nothing much happened but I had another go as a member of the Time Team Club at the same time as they were in touch with the County Archaeologists about a possible location. Two lovely researchers came to look at the site in February, Bridget plied them with home-made soup, bread and cheese. I opened my best bot­tle of Cab. Sauv. and it all happened from then.

April, then October and finally the end of July were suggested as likely dates and I was rewarded with three of the most exciting days of my life. Everyone involved with the project, Tony Robinson, Mick Aston et at could not have been nicer. There are a number of human stories that space does not permit me to recall but I have promised Dorothy to speak at the HADAS meeting in January and to show the professional video that we took of the whole exercise. Incredibly, and because of Time Team’s influence, I made peace with the village and settled my boundary dispute in front. of the cameras. Quite how much will appear in the Time Team fifty-minute programme remains to be seen. At this moment I do not have a date for transmission but I promise that HADAS members will know as soon as I do.

(Readers of the SAGA Magazine will have read about Derek and his cas­tle in the September issue.)

KING ALFRED’S GRAVE

In King Alfred’s day, monastic life was not flourishing, a fact of which he was very aware, having received little formal education himself as a boy, although he had made two journeys to Rome by the age of ten.

After the society’s lecture in October about Archaeology in Winchester, and the search for King Alfred’s grave on the site of Hyde Abbey, I referred to the book “The Life and Times of Alfred the Great” by the late Douglas Woodruff, who gained first class honours in history at New College, Oxford. As we heard in the lecture, Alfred did found New Minster, Hyde Abbey in Winchester and intended it to be a place of learning where learned monks from abroad were to be encouraged to reside, there being a shortage of scholars in Wessex. To quote from Douglas Woodruff:

At the time of Alfred’s death ” the New Minster was not ready and he was buried in the old, and when, a year or two later, the New Minster, soon to be Hyde Abbey, was ready, his body was transferred there, apparently with the full acquiesence of the canons of the Old Minster, because, they said, he troubled them by appearing at night and walking in their cloisters on a way which much alarmed them. At the Reformation, when Hyde Abbey like all other religious houses was suppressed and then despoiled, the tombs of the Saxon kings were not spared. Some of the bones were later gathered into wooded caskets and placed above the chancel in Winchester Cathedral, but all mixed up. There they remain.” I hope this may be of interest to members of HADAS.

Margaret E. Phillips

SPECIAL OFFER TO MEMBERS

Some years ago Bernard H. Oak, a local resident, published a book entitled “A History of Mill Hill in its Environment”, which was sold through local book­shops and libraries at £17.50. Bernard is now able to offer copies to members of HADAS at a special price of £3.00. If you would like a copy please ring Brian Wrigley on 020 8959 5982 and he will arrange for all orders to be delivered to one address for collection.

RECENT PLANNING
APPLICATIONS

58 Gervase Road, Edgware, Middx, HAS OEP for front, rear and side extension;

81 Gervase Road, Edgware, HA8 OEW for rear extension.

Gervase Road joins Thirleby Road where sherds of Roman pottery have been found and this area is close to Hanshaw Drive where HADAS is involved in an excavation.

WANTED: A PROFESSIONAL INDEXER

Is there a professional indexer in the Society? We need one to contin­ue the index of Newsletters started by Bridget Grafton Green in 1961, which reached 1976, This provides an invaluable reference tool to past events and activities of the Society. Can anyone help complete the job? Please contact Dorothy Newbury an 020 8203 0950.

NEWS OF MEMBERS

A sad note to end the year, with the news of the deaths of three long­standing members, each of whom contributed much to the Society in their own way:

Olive Banhain, a founder-members, died on 11 October, her 94th birthday.

In her last letter to me she said she was going to reverse her age from 93 to 39, Olive and her husband, Jim, were very active in the Society. HADAS started with fifteen members and was very soon producing a newsletter, for which Jim addressed the envelopes and then delivered them by hand. Olive outlived Jim by many years and she came on all outings including out first week-end away to Ironbridge and Wroxeter in 1974. On day trips many members will remember the large tin of sweeties she always brought to pass round the coach. On our first trip to Orkney in 1978 she came round with a bottle of sherry which she shared round the dormitory. We felt like naughty schoolgirls having a midnight feast! Olive often reminded me of the fun we had in Orkney all those years ago.

She never forgot HADAS and only a couple of months ago she sent a donation for the Minimart, which she has done every year since she left Hendon to live near relatives in her home village in Norfolk.

Olive was a school-teacher by profession and started her career in the same village to which she returned. June Porges and I attended her funeral at Hendon Crematorium on behalf of HADAS.

Dorothy Newbury

Janet Heathfield died on 16 September. She had been a HADAS mem­ber for over thirty years and in spite of being disabled, joined enthusi­astically in whatever HADAS activities were available to her. An abid­ing memory is of her at the exploratory dig near the well at East Barnet Church. Because she was partly paralysed she could only ‘dig’ by lying prone on her left side and scraping with her good arm. Each of her ‘finds’ was greeted with a whoop of delight.

Janet’s most recent activity was to try to get the 17th century village clock in East Barnet restored.

Arthur Till, a Committee Member and digging team stalwart, died sud­denly in October at the age of seventy-four.

Arthur and his wife, Vera, joined HADAS in July, 1988, two year’s after his early retirement from British Telecom. He brought to the Society his immense practical skills and a marvellous sense of humour coupled with a willingness to join in and to offer assistance and guidance as necessary. He participated in most of our excavations and would often arrive with items of site equipment prepared at home from odds and ends – the auger, safety tops for pegs and the red and white pegs them­selves made from reinforcing rods “liberated” from the site of an earli­er dig! The bookcases and shelves at Avenue House garden room were Arthur’s handiwork. His specialities were clay pipes and building mate­rials and he had recently benefited from the training in ceramic building materials identification given to HADAS by the Museum of London. There is no doubt that his humourous sayings. usually attributed to his Grannie, will long be repeated by members of the digging team! Several HADAS members attended his funeral at New Southgate where condolences were passed to Vera and her family.
Vikki O’Conner and Roy Walker

COMMORATIVE PLAQUES by Liz Holiday

Many thanks to the dozen or so members who flew to their refer­ence books and cudgelled their brains to help with answers to my outstanding queries.

I can confirm that a love and knowledge of cricket is alive and well among our gentlemen mem­bers, at least five of whom have filled me in on the life and tri­umphs of Ranjitsinhji – The Black Prince of Cricket.
Three plaques I had not included in the list have been brought to my attention, including a new one erected by The Finchley Society in March this year.

Percy Reboul has very kindly offered to check the Local Collection for suitable illustra­tions, so it looks as if the final draft is not too far off. I did manage to get the text of the book I have been working on this summer to the printer in time – just- and it is due to be published on 9 December. Entitled “Chipperfield Within Living Memory”, it is based on recorded interviews with 64 long-standing residents of the village and (hopefully) gives a picture of life in a small Hertfordshire village during the 20th century. As a community project it must rate a gold star as well over 100 people have been involved in it!

BOUNDARY STONE REPLACED

An inscribed stone dated 1896 which marked the boundary between the parish of St. John’s, Hampstead and St. Pancras disappeared dur­ing roadworks in May has now been found and replaced.

PROGRESS 2000BC By Arthur Till

” Dad, I’m cold . . .”

“So am I, Little Ug.”

“Well, can I put some more wood on the fire, Dad?”

“Sorry, Little Ug, but I’ve promised all that wood we collected yesterday to old Smog for a couple of spears and a few arrows.”

“What happened to our last spears, Dad?”

“They went rusty, son.”

‘What’s ‘rusty’ Dad?”

“It’s what happens now that we’re in the Iron Age. If you don’t keep your iron things in the dry, the next time you go to use them they’re just a heap of red rust.”

“That never happened to the old ones we used, did it Dad?” “Well, they were bronze, son, and that didn’t go rusty.”

“Why are we using the iron ones then, Dad?”

“Well, Little Ug, it’s what’s called Progress. These iron things are sup­posed to be sharper and harder than the bronze ones were, and Old Smog says that there’s not much call for the old bronze ones any more. It was just the same when we changed over from flint to bronze –

your mother and I didn’t have a decent shave for years when that came about!’

“Didn’t people complain about it, Dad?”

“They did try to, Little Ug, especially Old Chipper and his tribe. They used to supply all the people around here with their flint axes and things. But they were reckoned to be backward so they were all sent to a place called Knapsbury, so people didn’t complain much after that and bronze gradually took over. Anyway, Old Smog seems to be doing alright for himself – he’s taking over another new but and for some rea­son he’s calling it ‘Santa Fe’.”

“I’m still cold, Dad.”

“OK, son, bung a little bit on the fire, just to keep the wolves away!” “Thanks Dad.”

“Dad?’
“What now, Little Ug?”

“Where does all the smoke go to?”

“Ask your mother, son, she knows everything!”

NEW SOCIETY MUSHROOMS

Welcome to a new local history society in the Borough. John Donovan, who lived in Friern Barnet for thirty years, fulfiled a long-held ambition when he organised the inaugural meeting of The Friern Barnet & District Local History Society at Friern Barnet Town Hall in September. Forty members of the public attended and heard Andrew Mussell talk about the Borough’s Archives and Local Studies collec­tion. With the support of local resident Dr. Oliver Natelson, another keen local history enthusiast, the society has mushroomed and now boasts 95 members. The next meeting will be held at 8.00pm on Wednesday 10 January in Friern Barnet Town Hall when our own John Heathfield will he speaking.

If you would like to join the society or find out more about their aims and objectives contact John Donovan, 19 Cringle Court, Thornton Road. Little Heath, Herts, EN6 IJR or telephone him on 01707 642886

OTHER SOCIETIES’

DECEMBER EVENTS Wed. 6 Dec. at 2pm Highgate Wood
Children’s Events, Christmas Tree Sale, Cream Teas, Band, Shop. Guided winter walk from the Information Hut.(For map & details see page 3 of July Newsletter)

Wed. 6 Dec. at 5pm British Archaeological Association at Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W.1 Channel Island Churches a talk by Warwick Rodwell.

Thur. 7 Dec. at 7.30pm London Canal Museum, 12-13 New Wharf Road, Kings Cross, N.1 Enchanted Waters of the Basingstoke Canal a talk by Arthur Dungate. Admission £2.50 (£1.25 concessions)

Sat. 9 Dec. 10.15am-3.30pm Amateur Geological Society at St. Mary’s Hall, Hendon Lane, Finchley, N.3 Annual Bazaar (Rocks, minerals, fossils, crystals, gemstones. jewellery) Admission 50p.

Wed. 13 Dec. at 6.30pm LAMAS at The Museum of London. London on Ice: the Thames Frost Fairs a talk by Jeremy Smith.

Wed. 13 Dec. at 8.15pm Mill Hill Historical Society at Harwood Hall, Union Church, Mill Hill Broadway. Art History a talk by Ian Littler.

Thur. 14 Dec. at 7.30pm Camden History Society at Burgh House, New End Road, NW3. The Monuments of St. Paul’s Cathedral a talk by HADAS President Dr. Ann Saunders

Fri. 15 Dec. at 8pm Enfield Archaeological Society. The Archaeology of the Jubilee Line Extension a talk by James Drummond-Murray (£1 visitors

HADAS Newsletter no. 368 November 2001 edited by DAWN ORR

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday November 13th : Professor Vincent Megaw, on study leave from Flinders University, South Australia, will lecture on the ‘Ancient Saltmines in ‘Sound-of-Music Land’: Iron Age Archaeol­ogy on the Durrnberg, near Salzburg.

N.B. June Porges, our lecture organiser, has the 2002 part of our lecture programme well in hand, and is juggling with dates. She will give details as soon as possible.

Lectures start at 8 p.m. in the drawing-room (ground floor) of Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley. N.3, and are followed by question time and coffee. We close promptly at 10 p.m.

Tuesday, December 4th: Christmas Dinner at Grimsdyke Hotel

57 Members have booked in (6 travelling independently so 2 places now available on the coach). Any other latecomers will go on a waiting list in the event of cancellations.

Friday, Novernber 16th : HADAS Member, Mary O’Connell,will give a talk, on the Tower of London to Wembley History Society at 7.30 pm. Address on page

‘L.A.M.A.S.’ Saturday, November 17th: 10 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. with

Lunch Break 12.30 p.m. to 1.45 pm. six papers on the theme of ‘Edwardian London – A New Era? including ‘Heart of Empire’ by David Gilbert; `Transport’ by Roger Brasier;’ Film’ by Amanda Huntley; ‘Suffragettes & Other Women’ by Di Atkinson; ‘Theatre’ by Malcolm Jones; ‘White City Exhibitions by Keith Whitehouse.

MINI-MINI MART ‘SWAN SONG’ runs merrily on. Still selling items from Dorothy’s garage. Offers to run Car Boot Sale eagerly sought: Full report next Newsletter.

MEMBERS’ NEWS from DOROTHY NEWBURY

Long-standing Members will be sad to learn that Alec Goldsmith died in October. Alec was a very regular lecture attender and rarely missed our outings and weekends. He was over 90 and still enjoyed our Newsletter. His later years were spent in a nursing home in Dorchester, near the home of his sister. Marion Newbury visited him there,where he was comfortable and happy.’ spoke to him on the phone only a few weeks ago. He told me then that he joined HADAS in its very early days – 1962.

Margaret Taylor, another long-standing Member,tells me that she visits family in Oregon,U.S.A., and joins a group of volunteers restoring old log cabins. She was interviewed by the local press who wrote an article about her which created much amusement when they discovered she was older than the cabin she was restoring ”

Margaret Taylor dug with me on Ted Sammes’ excavation near St. Mary’s in 1972/73, but I forgot to ask her when she joined HADAS. She now lives in St. Albans and is closely associated with their Archaeology Society. She was very disappointed, that she could not be involved in our Roman Pottery firing at College Farm last August – she was in Oregon restoring the log cabins at the time!!

Members who attended classes in 2000/2001 – please let us know of your successes, I know of just one! Don’t be shy – let us know of more (phone me on 8-203-0950),

The Committee would like to thank all those Members who completed and returned the recent questionnaire relating to Members’ skills and interests. Your replies – more than 30 have been received so far – are of great value in compiling a central register of volunteers who may be called upon at need, and whose interests and capacities will have a considerable effect on the Society’s activities.

IF YOU HAVE NOT YET returned your copy, please do so now…

The Thames – whose river? Peter Pickering

The Museum of London held a study day on 13th October about the Thames. It was not solely about the past of the river, since it ceased to be a tributary of the Rhine, but dealt also with its present and future. Members may be interested in some notes I took. Jon Cotton produced some ideas which were new to me about the use of the Thames for ritual deposits, from a prehistoric one in the middle of the river opposite Vauxhall to very recent diwali lamps. Gustav Milne was his usual witty and stimulating self on the subject of waterfront archaeology – one of his ideas was that the number of ‘classis britannica’ stamps could suggest that the Roman port of London began under the control of the procurator. Hazel Forsyth of the Museum of London and Chris Elmers of the Museum in Docklands drew mostly on pictures and literary sources to tell the story of the Thames since the mediaeval period. The Museum in Docklands will open in the Spring, and might well merit a HADAS visit.

The Environment Agency’s conservation officer for the South East Area, Thames region, who is soon moving to a job with the Thames Barrier to plan for the time when the present barrier will be ineffective gave an encouraging message about the improvement in the quality of the Thames, and in the range of wildlife it supports, over the past few decades. But it seems that Bazalgette’s brilliant sewerage system, that monument to our Victorian forebears, cannot be expected to cope all that much longer, and renewing it would be very disruptive indeed – just think of having to dig up the Embankment!, It would help if we could get more surface water to drain into watercourses instead of into sewers.

After an account of mudlarking and collecting on the Thames foreshore that might have irritated those purists who believe that all artefacts from the past should go to museums, the final speaker was Mike Webber, Community Archaeologist of the Museum of London. He had some very imaginative ideas for the use of the banks of the Thames in ways that would engage everybody in thinking about its past, but he seemed too keen on windmills (the electricity-generating sort) for my taste.

Other Societies’ activities with thanks to Eric Morgan

Wednesday, 14th November – Hornsey Historical Society, at 8 p.m. Union Church Hall, cnr. Ferme Park Rd. Weston Park, N.6,
‘Highgate’ – talk by Gwynydd Gosling in conjunction with launch of a new 90 minute video, the first film portrait of Highgate, a London village for over 800 years. Produced by Hornsey Historical society, the video captures the hidden history of Highgate since mediaeval times – rare archive material both pictorial and oral, with extracts from diaries, letters and historical records, revealing the everyday lives of the humble and the famous. The speaker is an archivist, consultant on the video project.Information on obtaining copies (£14.99 plus £1 p. &p.) from The Old Schoolhouse, 136 Tottenham Lane, N.8 or Tel. 8348-6429.

Thursday. 15th November – Historical Association, at 8pm. Fellowship House, Willifield Way, Garden Suburb, NW 11. ‘Ancient Athens’ Finest Hour? Battle of Marathon 490 BC.Lecturer: Dr Tim Ryder. Visitor entrance: £2.

Friday, 16th November – Wembley History Society,at 7.30 p.m. St. Andrew’s Church Hall, Church Lane, Kingsbury. N.W.9. ‘Tales from the Tower’ – talk by Mary O’Connell (HADAS MEMBER)

Monday, 19th November – Friends of Barnet Borough. Libraries, 8pm Church End Library, Hendon Lane, N.3.

Talk by Norman Burgess – ‘The Two Remarkable Stephens’ (relating to Avenue House).

Wednesday, 21st November – Barnet & District Local History Soc. A.G.M. at 8 p.m. Church House (opp. Barnet Museum, Wood St.)

Thursday, 29th November – The Finchley Society at 8 pm The Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road, N.3. Talk by Martyn Gerrard – ‘Trading in the High Street’

(re-scheduled from September Meeting.)

CONFERENCES

Edmonton Hundred Historical Society – ‘Gone but not Forgotten’

Saturday, 3rd November at Jubilee Hall, cnr. 2 Parsonage Lane and Chase Side, Enfield. 10 a.m. to 12.3q p.m. and 2 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. Both sessions £6; one session £3 .Tea and Coffee incl. Subjects: Lost Buildings of Enfield – Talk by Graham Dalling

Cinemas in Enfield from 1899- Talk Geoffrey Gillam

Local Worthies – series of short talks – 2 parts p.m.

Tickets from Mrs. Betty Smith, 16 Westwood Court, Village Rd. Enfield, EN1 2HQ. Cheques payable to Edmonton Hundred Hist­orical Society, with s.a.e if confirmation required.

LAMAS 36th Local History Conference – Sat. 17th Nov. at Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2. Ticket applications £4 to affiliated Society Members – MENTION HADAS. Send name and address, s.a.e.(for return of tickets), and cheques payable to ‘L.A.M.A.S.’at 36,Church Road, West Drayton, MIDDX. UB7 7PX.

CAMDEN’S HISTORY REVIEW from Yvonne Melnick

The Review is published annually by the Camden History Society, sent to all Members free of charge (non-members £6.95). Subjects are well researched and all sources acknowledged. Relevant photos included. This year, in Review 25, there have been articles on Mabel Quiller-Couch, who lived in Downshire Hill. Her brother was Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, the well-known Edwardian author and Cambridge professor, who wrote under the name of ‘V. There is an article on the chequered past of 277 Grays Inn Road, where, in 1834, Madame Tussaud held her first permanent exhibition of waxworks.

Other articles include one on bollards in Camden – it would be interesting to have one on bollards in Hendon: ‘Electricity in Hampstead’ is written by workers at the Central Supply Station in Lithos Grove, The school for sons and orphans of missionariesin Mornington Crescent (1852-1857); a short history of Oak Village (the Gospel Oak); the Irish in Kilburn and the Church of the Sacred Heart in Quex Road; provident and non-provident dispensaries in Camden; architectural details on Hampstead houses; history of Kingswell in Hampstead, a late 20th century development,1960-95.; Keeley House (Keeley Street) and its predecessors; and the rise and fall of the Aerated Bread Company (written by a worker in the baking industry for some 15 years) show a wide coverage of subjects.

‘MEDIA WATCH’ with thanks to MICKY COHEN & STEWART WILD

‘The Times’ readers may have noticed a picture of a reconstruction of a Cro-Magnon skull found at Cheddar Gorge, said to be at least 9,000 years old. The astonished expression of our ancestor’s gaze may have some connection with the firm hold on his head exercised by Professor Chris Stringer. Professor Stringer is directing a five-year project of research into the origins of modern man which will culminate in an exhibition at the Natural History Museum. Our island is an ideal place for such research he says, since it has been a peninsula from time to time, when migrants’ coming and going can be discovered. Watch this space

‘The Daily Telegraph’ of 27th September revealed some Roman remains nearer our own time, being water wheels powered by a slave driven treadmill, discovered in the City in Gresham Street. One is tree-ring dated to AD 63, possibly a replacement for an earlier well, destroyed in Boudicca’s rebellion. This is a unique find and is or display in the Museum of London.

No 356 NOVEMBER 2000 EDITOR DAWN ORR

HADAS’ OWN – THE EVER SUCCESSFUL MINIMART …….. SATURDAY, 14th OCTOBER

“Does anyone know what this is ?”

The annual cry of the MINI MARKETEER rises above the busy hum of chatter and hurried movement. In and out the front door we go, unloading the various elasticated vehicles – we thought there wouldn’t be any, but here they are, and the stalwarts are on parade. Absolute treasures every one!
“Thank goodness it’s not raining :”

“Hullo – haven’t seen you for ages :”

“You need a man (?!) – here – let me help you :”

“When’s the coffee coming round ?”

“Have you had a meringue yet? Best ever this year!”

“Asparagus quiche, please…”

Boxes, bins, bundles – open, unpack, lay out – ah, “there’s the rub…”

An object (not “of art”) emerges from careful layers of wrapping and the cry we heard comes up s “Does anyone … ?” followed shortly by “Is it priced ?” and inevitably “it” lands on the Bric-a-brac tables- a foursome in a row this year and a welcome relief from the log jam.

If I could find my way into the 21st century, I could put this onto a disk (sic!) and just ‘tweak it’ a bit each year, for indeed the formula tried and true works every time – even when effort has been made to cut it down or make it ‘MICRO’.

So – the funds are still rolling in as we go to press – total to date £950

Don’t let’s destroy THE DOME – just put Dorothy in charge of it!

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday, November 14th HADAS LECTURE ‘Medieval London Bridges – Lost & Found’ by Bruce Watson

Tuesday, November 28thCHRISTMAS VISIT to GEFFRYE MUSEUM – ‘English Domestic Interiors through the Ages’ followed-by DINNER at PRIDEAUX HOUSE, HACKNEY. (Details and app. form encl.)

Tuesday, January 9th

HADAS LECTURE An evening with our member DEREK BATTEN sharing the TIME TEAM’S visit to his ‘CASTLE’ at Towcester, prior to its showing on TV.

Tuesday, February 13th HADAS LECTURE ‘Aspects of Roman Tunisia’ by KADER CHELBI

Note. LECTURES ALL START at 8pm prompt at AVENUE HOUSE, 17 EAST END RD. FINCHLEY N3 3QE followed by question time and coffee. We close promptly at 10 p.m.

The October Lecture – Tuesday 10th October, by Graham Scobie, who is publicity and- communications officer of Winchester City Museum.

Tessa Smith reports:

Several of us who visited Winchester as part of the Isle of Wight weekend last year met the lecturer, who showed us the excavation at Hyde Abbey. We saw how far the Abbey had extended and where the high altar was thought to have been. His lecture was a follow-up to that

visit.

Archaeologists search for body of Alfred the Great in Winchester car park.

The media had, of course, got it wrong again, under the auspices of

Winchester City Museum, Graham Scobie and his team have been on a dig – not for the body of Alfred, and not in the car park, but in a site claimed to be that of Alfred’s grave at Hyde Abbey, in the parish of St. Bartholomew, north of Winchester Cathedral.

The Normans established the Cathedral on the site of King Alfred’s Saxon church, where he was originally buried. At the Dissolution of the monasteries, his body was moved and re-buried near the high altar at the New Abbey at Hyde. Lead tablets had been found on 3 tombs, thought to be those of the King, Ealhswith his wife, and his son, Edward. Today the Gate house or the Abbey remains, as does the parish church of St. Bartholomew.

Five years ago, Graham began a community project to excavate at the Hyde Abbey’s outer court, to try to gain understanding of the origins of the Abbey. The brief was to excavate only to post-medieval levels in an attempt to confirm that it was the site of Alfred’s grave. The community project was not, however, the first dig in this area. In the 18th century the site was bought by the local authority to be converted into a goal during construction of a garden for the governor, large stones were discovered which revealed a stone coffin encased in lead, with a body partly corrupt. Subsequently, more coffins were found and the lead sold for 5 guineas! An 18th century plan of this area identified the sites of the three graves.

In 1866, trenches were excavated on the site, once more looking for evidence of Alfred chalk-lined coffins were uncovered but no human remains. This was the time of Burke and Hare and local animosity towards the excavation caused it to be hurriedly terminated.

In 1906, a local landowner excavated large pits by the high altar,

using prisoners as a labour force. He claimed that this was the area where the 3 coffins had originally been dug up.

Graham’s excavations have uncovered, the foundations of an apsidal east end of a church building, which had re-used earlier stone. The stone shape of a woman laid on her side, with some original paint still visible, is astonishing evidence. The team has also uncovered the 3 pits previously excavated in 1903, in front of the possible site of the high altar. A bone identified as a human hip bone has been dated to 1780. The on-going community dig is intended to give local people ‘hands-on’ archaeological experience, 1,200 people last year, with a maximum of 45 at one time. The local archaeological society was also invited to take part. There are many questions unanswered … Graham foresees 5 more years digging on the site.

RIFLEMAN ALFRED CROOK 1899 – 1917

A soldier of the Great War with no known grave. By Myfanwy Stewart

This obituary is based on original letters and documents cherished by his mother until her death, bequeathed to her daughter and then inherited by the writer.

Sarah and George Crook were married at the parish church, New Southgate in 1889. She had signed the register but George had only been able to mark it with a cross, as had one of the witnesses. They were a poor family and between 1891 and 1895 two sons and a daughter had died in infancy. Their son Alfred was born in April, 1899 but his father died young and Sarah married Richard Sindle in 1906. He survived the Salonika campaign and kept his ticket from Salonika to Friern Barnet as a souvenir. They both lived into their eighties.

In 1913, Alfred was working as a delivery boy and a character reference for a new job, written in March 1914, describes him as “civil and obliging”. However, by July 1914, aged only 15, he had enlisted in the army and was in the 6th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade. His army Certificate of education shows he was competent in arithmetic (“compound rules and reduction of money, avoirdupois weight and linear measurement, addition and subtraction of vulgar fractions, a simple messing account”), that he was proficient in writing regimental orders from dictation and that he could write a letter.

From the beginning the new recruits were suffering from various ailments and March 1915 Alfred was in an isolation hospital at Winchester for four days with a fever but was soon dispatched to France. In August a severe attack of group B typhoid was diagnosed and the matron of the isolation hospital in Etaples wrote to his mother that he was “very weak and ill” but that he sent his love. The padre, writing on the same day and hoping to reassure Alfred’s mother describes him as “very ill…but wonderfully bright at intervals… and a firm favourite and quite happy and content”. He recovered by the end of September but 28 days of Fever left him with an enlarged spleen and in October he was sent home on the SS hospital ship “Dieppe”, as shown by his kit bag label.

Alfred convalesced at Woodford and by November was back in barracks at Croydon. He was able to go to a friend’s wedding at Christmas but was inevitably sent back to France.

On the 8th July 1916 he qualified as a signaler second class and later in the month (date uncertain) was at the Belgium front. A parcel had been sent by his mother containing clothes. Army shortages are shown by the fact that he thanks her for the jersey but asks her to send another parcel so that can change my underclothes”. In October he was on active service. Only cards were allowed to be sent and his mother received one written on the 4th October. Splattered with mud and almost illegible, it reads “I am going in to the firing line tomorrow night. Will write as soon as possible… am in the best of health. Cheerio, all will meet some day Alf xxx.”

Alfred survived and in April 1917 was back in barracks in Sheerness, Kent. In a letter to his step father he writes “I am just about fed up with France, twice is enough for me”. He reveals that “Mother stopped me from going out again I am glad that she did”. He was optimistic that he would remain in England believing that the news from France was good, that the war could not last much longer and that “I think we have got them beat there”. I-le had served 3 years in the army and described himself as “an old squaddy”. Ominously all leave had been stopped except for special leave.

He had formed a close friendship with a fellow soldier, Will. He always referred to him as “my chum” – and in September 1917 he made the fateful decision to volunteer for another tour of overseas duty to be with him in the same platoon. Alfred was soon back in the trenches but came out on the 301 September only to receive bad news. By a terrible irony, almost immediately after returning to France, Will had been injured in the knee and was subsequently repatriated back to Britain. On October 1st Alfred told his mother “I wish my chum was with me” and that “when you have a chum with you, a good one like Will, it cheers you up”. Sarah Crook had heard that her son

had planned to bring Will home to meet her, she had worried about the state of their home. He wrote back to reassure her, saying that “my chum is the same as myself so you need not think anything about our home being humble”. In spite of being at the front, mail and parcels were still getting through to the men. In that first week of October, 10 letters were awaiting him from family and friends and this would keep him “busy”.

By October 10th he could not hide the fact from his mother that conditions were bad and that he was depressed. They were having “very rotten weather ..rain every day”. Trench warfare was taking its toll on the young soldier and he writes to his poor mother “I don’t think I shall last till Christmas if this weather continues…My feet are still bad from the last lot I got last winter. If I get them wet I can hardly put them down to the ground”. His premonition about Christmas proved to be only too true.

On the 22 October Alfred was still in the trenches but in better spirits as he had received a parcel from his mother. Another parcel got through in November, “packed well with nothing broke or damaged”. On the 11th he had “just come out of the trenches” again, he thanked her for the socks and gloves but said they were -expecting to go in the trenches again”.

Field cards were issued to the men in the trenches with printed sentences which the men could delete, as appropriate. Alfred sent one on the l7th November, 1917 to his mother. It acknowledged her letter and said he was well. This was the last time he wrote because he was killed on December 1st 1917.

On December 11th Sarah wrote a letter to her son which was subsequently returned to her with his effects. She does not know -how to bear” herself because she has not heard from him since the field card. “Something seems to tell me there is (something wrong ) as I have not heard … I pray night and day that you will have the strength to keep up…. It will be a poor Christmas for me for I shall be thinking of you. …God bless you and keep you safe”.

On the l3th December, Sarah could not wait any longer and she wrote to the brigade officer at Winchester. He replied on the back of her letter telling her that no casualty had been reported but on the 20th she was informed that Alfred had been wounded but that his whereabouts were unknown.

By February 1918 the Red Cross were making enquiries both for Sarah and his “young lady”, Flo, but without success until 10th July when they sent Sarah an eye witness account of her son’s last hours. Her horror can be imagined as she read the following report given to the Red Cross by a fellow rifleman.

“On December the Battalion was behind the front line in reserve between Gouzeaucourt and Villiers Pluich. The Germans were attacking. The Battalion went up to reinforce the front line, and your son was left in charge of the tents. The men were driven back, and passed the place where your son had been left, and Rfn. Penny saw him wounded. He passed by a few yards from him and shouted to him, asking what was the matter, and Pte. Crook answered that he was wounded.

Unfortunately it was impossible for Rfn. Penny to wait and see more of him, as the Germans were close behind.

There was heavy firing going on at the time and I am afraid it is only too certain that your son must have lost his life in this way, for if he had survived and had been taken prisoner you would have had news of him long before this.”

It was not until the 11th September 1918 that the official notice of missing presumed dead was sent. Sarah received £9.16s.8d back pay and his war medals. His effects included a purse, some photographs, cloth badges, cards, a full packet of Players Navy Cut cigarettes, her letter, written on the 11th December 1917 and part of the New Testament. She kept them all and they are now in the writer’s possession together with his letters, written on very thin paper in indelible pencil. He was 18 years old when he was killed and was mourned by his mother all her life until her death in 1952 at the age of 82.

Wednesday 13th September – Visit to St. Lawrence Whitchurch Laurence Bentley.

Tessa Smith reports on HADAS at Little Stanmore.

When the grand old Duke of Chandos made his fortune as the Paymaster- General to Marlborough’s army, he spent some of it building “a most magnificent palace” (said Daniel Defoe) at Canons, and reconstructing the ancient local church of St. Lawrence, which he also endowed with some magnificent plate. The palace was later broken up to pay Chandos’s son’s debts, but the church remains, as his memorial, and it was there, blessed with a perfect summer’s day, that we met on 13th September. Our brilliant guide was Sheila Woodward, and we could not have had a better.

We began in the churchyard. God’s acre at St. Lawrence is a large one, two acres in fact, and the sense of rural seclusion is complete. We circumnavigated the church – clockwise of course -visiting the grave of an incumbent whose duties were frequently interrupted by residence in the

debtors’ prison, and that alleged to belong to the ‘harmonious black- Smith’ immortalised by Handel.

The reconstructed church represents, according to your principles, a degree of insensitivity to the past, or a creative self-confidence, unimaginable in our time. There were no style censors to prevent him, when the Duke commissioned the architect, John James, to destroy much of the ancient church in 1715 to rebuild, and the result is remarkable and unique for an English parish church.

All that remains of the original is the tower, economically composed of flint, puddingstone, Reigate stone, re-used Roman tile and brick, into which has been driven a slightly pompous door, for the Duke’s private entrance, with a circular window above. This assortment of materials was, until recent times, covered by a decent coat of plaster – ‘Whitchurch’ means white church. The tower is topped by anachronistic battlements of Tudor origin; clearly architectural nostalgia is not a new thing.

The rebuilt remainder of the church is of tidy brick, with large windows set in Roman arches, heavy plain stone dressings, a parapet and a slate roof, presenting in all a severe frontage to the public view from Whitchurch Lane, which leaves you totally unprepared for the “coup de theatre” which you are privileged to view when you enter.

The scene is worthy of an 18th century opera, set, say, in Prague. The Duke was evidently influenced by his experience of the German baroque on the Grand Tour. From elegant plain box pews (enhanced for our visit by flowers left over from a wedding), you face an altar surmounted by a superb oak pediment, adorned with cherubs, supported by Corinthian pillars and pilasters in oak and flanked by life-size paintings. Behind this are more paintings and the organ used by Handel as the Duke’s Composer

in Residence at Canons, and behind that a trompe l’oeil sky on the ceiling suggesting an infinite distance. When you have recovered your breath you see that the effect is truly theatrical, a proscenium arch in effect, backed by receding ‘flats’.

In front of the altar, the ceiling is tinted with a luminous ‘Adoration of Jehovah’ matched at the opposite end of the nave with a good copy of Raphael’s ‘Transfiguration’ by Bellini.

Baroque designers seemed to accept no limits, here, for example, they

could, not use stone, they shamelessly imitated it with plaster; or paint to extend their vision. This artificiality enhances the sense of theatre, especially as the paintings are used as a trompe l!oeil to enhance the perspective as well as the richness of the scene. So here, the plaster ceiling is painted to give the effect of elegant mouldings and the almost mono- chrome ‘grisailles’ are used to decorate the north wall of the nave, with the effect of biblical statuary.

When the wall was threatened with collapse in recent times, the church was closed for years while the plaster paintings were removed in sections, intact, and replaced after the wall had been repaired. This was a miracleof modern technology and a very expensive one. Several sections would have been as tall as a man and almost as wide as his outstretched arms. The Duke of Chandos would I am sure, given the choice, have repainted.

At the rear of the nave at first floor level, opposite the altar but superior to it and the rest of the congregation, is the Duke’s private pew. This is like a Royal Box, and had a private fireplace, at that time the only heating in the church, stoked from behind the wall by servants in an adjacent pew. Bodyguards – Chelsea pensioners – occupied the pew on the other side.

Leaving the nave on the north side, by the altar there is an ante-chamber to the Mausoleum, then the Mausoleum itself, designed by James Gibbs, in which the principal monument, apparently designed by Grinling Gibbons, shows the Duke in Romantoga and 18th century wig, flanked by two of his three successive wives, kneeling humbly beside him. This was carved in the Duke’s lifetime and he considered himself overcharged for it. The inscriptions on the monuments are typical 18th century advertisements of the virtues of their occupants, and like many advertisements are not entirely convincing.

After this it was a relief to enter the Lady Chapel. Located in the base of the tower in 1966, in a simple traditional manner, it recreated the sense of long historical continuity of St. Lawrence Whitchurch.

Final impressions are paradoxical. Here is a church in a setting of rural calm beside a busy road in a London suburb. Outside it appears rather severe to the passer-by, but inside it is voluptuously ornate, enhancing
a sense of private privilege, as a rich man’s chapel, designed to impress with the glory of the Duke of Chandos as well as of God. Yet the Duke is now best remembered for employing Georg Frederic Handel.

Other Societies’ Events, Compiled by Eric Morgan

Mill Hill Historical Society Wednesday 8th November at 8.15 p.m. Talk : Charles II (Prof. John Miller)

Harwood Hall, Union Church, The Broadway, Mill Hill.

Hornsey Historical Society : Wednesday 8th November at 8 p.m. Talk : Post Cards (Hugh Garnsworthy)

Union Church Community Centre, cnr. Ferme Park Road/ Weston Park N 8. Finchley Antiques Appreciation Group : Wednesday 8th November at 7.50 p.m. Talk Furniture & The Grand Tour – Avenue House, East End Road, N 3.

‘Wesden Local History society Wednesday 15th November at 8 p.m.
Talk ancient Hedgerows of Willesden (Leslie Williams)

Willesden Suite, Willesden Library Centre, 95 High Road,NW 10. Hampstead Scientific Society : Thursday. 16th November at 8.15 p.m. Talk : Historical Stringed Keyboard Instruments (Dr. Lance Whitehead)

Crypt Room, St. John’s Church, Church Row, N W 3.

Enfield Archaeological Society : Friday 17th November at 6 p.m.

Talk: Excavating the Crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields (Jez Reeves)
Jubilee Hall, Junction of Chase Side/Parsonage Lane. Visitors ti, Wembley History Society Friday 17th November at 7.30 p.m.

Talk : Parish Boundaries (Malcolm Stokes)

Church Hall, rear of St. Andrew’s Church, Church Lane, Kingsbury. Friends of Barnet Libraries ; Monday 20th November at 8.15 p.m. Talk : The Secret Power of a Sacred Treasure

Church End Library, Hendon Lane, Finchley, N 3.

The Jewish Museum, Finchley Sunday 26th November at 3.30 P.m.

Talk :

Whitehall & the Jews 1933 — 1948 (Dr Louise London)

The Jewish museum, 80 East End Road, Finchley, N 3.

The Finchley Society Thursday 30th November at 8 p.m.

Talk : The Life of Samuel Pepys – his London (Andrew Davies) The Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N

North London Transport Society: Saturday 18th November, 11 am-4 pm Enfield Transport Enthusiasts AUTUMN BAZAAR at St. PauIs Centre, Enfield Town, Corner of Church Street and Old Park Avenue.

London & Middlesex Archaeological Society: Saturday 18th November, 10am-4pm – 35th LOCAL HISTORY CONFERENCE: Crossing The Thames at the Museum of London, London Wall. Admission £4.00. Details and application forms from: 36 Church Road, West Drayton, Middx UB77 7PX

Museum of London Study Days. For Bookings telephone 020 7814 5777

Saturday 25th November

Saturday 9th December

“Riche was th’array” – Dress in Chaucer’s London

Speakers include our President, Mrs. Anne Saunders

Registration 10.00 am, Close 5.00pm. Entry £15.00 (Conc. £10) incl Tea/Coffee

Exploring the identity of people living in early Roman

London. Speakers include Mark Hassell (UCL Institute of

Archaeology) and other Historians & Archaeologists.

Registration 10.30am, Close 4.30 pm. Entry £16.00 (Conc. £10).

SOAS Russell Square WC1; Near Eastern Collections, Collectors & Archives in Landon

Monday 6th November The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Antiquities- Stephen

Quirke, UCL.

Monday 20th November The Petrie Palestine Collection- Rachel Sparks, UCL.

‘The London Assessment Document’ Peter Pickering

It was a decade ago that PPG16, the Planning Policy Guidance Note “Archaeology and Planning” came into force and brought archaeology into the planning process, so that archaeological work was funded by developers as a condition of their getting planning permission. In the same year English Heritage and the Museum of London Archaeology Service decided to produce an assessment of the current state of knowledge of the archaeology of Greater London. This was long known as the “London Assessment Document”; it has now, at last, appeared, under the title The Archaeology of Greater London – An assessment of archaeological evidence for human presence in the area now covered by Greater London.”

It has seventeen accredited authors, not to speak of editors and the like. The result is an impressive synthesis, with descriptive chapters covering each period from the Lower Palaeolithic to the post-medieval, all but the last with its own gazetteer of sites and finds (necessarily selective, especially for the extensive Roman and medieval remains from the City and Southwark) and no fewer than fourteen separate maps, locating the sites and finds listed in the gazetteers. (The symbols on these maps are, I fear, rather small for my aging eyes, and people like me should furnish themselves with a magnifying glass.) There are, throughout, full references to original publications (the bibliography spans 27 pages) which does not make for easy reading, but then that is not the purpose of the book – it is rather, as it says, intended to serve as a research framework and as a wider archaeological management framework, and to meet local, regional and national enquiries. It is a definitive but not a permanent book – as the foreword points out, the more quickly it begins to seem in need of revision the more successful it will have been in achieving its aims. The text is broken up with a number of sober illustrations, some showing diggers in their traditional postures, and one or two where artists have been allowed to produce their impressions.

Naturally, I had a special look at the items relating to the London Borough of Barnet. A word of caution here; since West Heath is in Camden and Brockley Hill partially in Harrow a first glance suggests something has been omitted; in fact, the heroic days of HADAS on West Heath have earned a full paragraph, longer than that on the Temple of Mithras.

This publication will be followed by another one setting out an Agenda for future archaeological research in Greater London.

Commemorative Plaques

As many members of HADAS will know, one of the society’s major current projects is to produce an updated version of our booklet on the commemorative plaques to be found in the Borough of Barnet. Liz Holliday, our former secretary, has completed the text and it is now undergoing final checking. There are a number of queries and Liz would appreciate some help from members All these queries can be solved by visiting a reference library and the Local Studies Collection. At present Liz is in the final stages of editing another book due to be published in December which must be ready for the printer for November.

The queries are:

1. The date when the plaque to Peter Collinson was erected.

2. The date of publication of Fanny Trollope’s novel The Widow Barnaby – 1838 or 1839.

3. William Callley’s date of birth, 1788 or 1789. Date when the plaque was erected.

4. Who was Ranjitsinhji (a friend of the cricketer C.B.Fry)

Harry Beck’s date of birth.

5. When did Amy Johnson obtain her pilot’s licence – 1928 or 1929?

6. Who was responsible (i.e. what organisation) for erecting the black plaque to Emil Savundra?

7. What date(s) was the series Handcock’s Half Hour broadcast?

8. What does “copt” in Copthall mean?

9. When did the Victoria Cottage Hospital open – 1887 or 1888? When was the plaque erected?

10. There is a plaque to Kenneth Legge in Windsor Open Space (N.3), Who was it erected by and when?

Below is a complete list of the known plaques. Does any member know of any others lurking anywhere in the borough?

PEOPLE:

Birt ACRES, Ove ARUP, Harry BECK, William BLAKE, William CATTLEY, Eric COATES, Peter COLLINSON, Robert DONAT, Joseph GRIMALDI, C.B.FRY, Tony HANCOCK ,Myra HESS, Holbrook JACKSON, Gilbert JESSOP, Amy JOHNSON, Kenneth LEGGE, John LINNELL, Thomas LIPTON, David LIVINGSTONE, Nicholas MEDTNER, Eric MORCOMBE, James MURRAY, John NORDEN, Robert PAUL, Anna PAVLOVA, Frank PICK, Stamford RAFFLES, Harry RELPH, Emil SAVUNDRA, Fanny TROLLOPE, Raymond UNW1N, Harry VARDON, Benjamin WAUGH, Evelyn WAUGH, William WI LB E RFO RC E

PLACES:

Abbot’s Bower NW4, Cattle Pound NW4, Church House NW4, Copt Hall NW7 Court Leet & Court Baron NW4, Parish Cage NW4, Phoenix Theatre N2, Rosebank NW7.St. Mary’s School N3, St. Paul’s Church NW7, Sulloniacae (Edgware), Tollgate NW2.Tudor Hall (Barnet), Turnpike (Edgware), Victoria Cottage Hospital (Barnet), Wylde’s Farm NW11

We also need a picture researcher to help finalise the illustrations. For the People, section Joanna Cordoii has already identified those portraits that are available through the National Portrait Ga1le6 but there are still a number for which we need to find illustrations – either of people or the houses where they lived or the plaques themselves. For the Places section we need illustrations of the houses or their sites. Would someone be prepared to visit the Local Studies Collection to undertake a search?

All answers to the questions above and offers of assistance to Liz Holliday please.

No. 367: OCTOBER 2001 HADAS 40th anniversary year edited by Deirdre Barrie

OUTING TO WALTHAM ABBEY AND THE GUNPOWDER MILLS Part 1

Our first stop on the outing to Waltham Abbey and the Gunpowder Mills was at Theobalds Park, the current resting resting-place of Temple Bar. “Abbey National Centre of Excellence” said the sign at the entrance, appropriately enough.

Built by Wren in 1672, Temple Bar originally stood as the entrance to the City of London, at the foot of Chancery Lane. Monarchs were greeted there by the Lord Mayor. Titus Oates and Daniel Defoe were pilloried there. Traitors’ heads were displayed on spikes. In 1878 it was demolished (presumably to ease traffic) and ultimately privately acquired, to be taken into retirement at Theobalds Park, where it stands in a secluded corner of the grounds.

Although it is several storeys high, the slope of the ground diminishes the effect of Temple Bar’s height, but it is nevertheless a monumental building, bigger than one supposed from illustrations, because it is quite deep, and the upper arch contains a room. The strong presence of the building is enhanced by the heavy grandeur of its style.

I think the outline of the building is well known, perhaps because for many years it was the logo of one of our defunct insurance companies. There is a wide depressed arch over the roadway entrance filled by a massive wooden gate, coffered, studded and spiked. On either side are quite narrow openings for pedestrians. The upper arch contains central windows on each side, flanked by marching niches, and it is topped by curved pediment. On each side of the upper arch are big curly stone volutes, like bookends. There is also a great deal of decoration in the classical style of its period.

The building is covered with notices warning that it is dangerous to enter. The chance would be a fine thing. Wisely it is surrounded by a spiked steel fence which is perhaps ten feet high, and a great frustration to photographers. It is good to see that so much of it remains in an identifiable state, but it gives the impression of being on the cusp of dissolution. The top is covered by sheets of corrugated iron giving a slight touch of the pagoda.

A private trust was created in 1976 which would like to restore the building and place it to the north of St Paul’s, but it looks like time may defeat it. Thanks to Stewart Wild for his expert guidance. In Michelin terms, “worth a detour”, LAURENCE BENTLEY

OUTING TO WALTHAM ABBEY AND THE GUNPOWDER MILLS — Part 2

The Town of Waltham Abbey, formerly known as Waltham Holy Cross, includes an area called Waltham Cross which relates to an Eleanor Cross, not to be confused with a cross brought from Somerset by an official of King Canute and placed in the Saxon church. It rep utedly had healing powers and cured Harold Godwinson of a paralysis.

We had the luck to be shown round by Peter Huggins who took part in the dig there 25 years ago. He showed how the building developed over the centuries, always using the 8th C foundations which encompassed a 7th C wooden church. Harold in 1060 added transepts, making a T-shaped church similar to some in Germany, and founded a secular college. He prayed there on the way to Hastings and is buried there though not, Peter thinks at the designated spot.

Henry II, as a penance for the murder of Beckett, greatly enlarged the building and established an Augustinian order. The Lady Chapel, originally a Guild Chapel built by private subscription, has a fine 15th C wall-painting of Judgement Day.

This was the last religious house to be dissolved, in 1540 when Thomas Tanis was organist. The Norman nave escaped destruction because it had always been the Parish Church. The Victorian restoration, by William Burgess, includes a painted ceiling, copied from Peterborough Cathedral, featuring the signs of the zodiac.

Externally, the building is a mishmash of styles and materials, including Saxon herringbone masonry, and immaculate East Anglian flints. The gardens have a wall containing fragments of Portland stone from the Plantagenet church, and beyond are the foundations of a smithy where iron was forged from local coal and ore. The Royal Gunpowder Mills, not far from the Abbey, occupy a site half the size of Hyde Park, on the banks of the River Lee (or Lea). Started in 1660, bought by the government in 1797, they made gunpowder, gun cotton, nitroglycerine and cordite. The Barnes Wallis bomb was tested there. From 1948-1977 it was a research establishment. The site has now been cleaned at a cost of £18 million and given to a Trust who opened it to the public last May.

It is largely covered by alders (best for making charcoal), has 5 miles of canals and has become an SSSI. From the Land Train you have tantalising glimpses of ruined huts, indestructible blast walls, elegant bridges, heron and pike. The HADAS lecture last May described the Mills as they were. Now go there, a ticket covers 2 consecutive days.

On the way home we took tea at Forty Hall, built for a Lord Mayor of London and now home to a flock of geese, all snoozing, facing the sun. Our thanks to June and Stuart.

ROSEMARY BENTLEY

Future Events

Church Farmhouse Museum – “Do You Believe in Magic?” (22 Sept 2001 – 6 January 2002)

The Museum’s autumn exhibition is on conjuring and stage magic, and will include material on early magicians and escapologists such as Houdini, as well as Victorian “props” from Davenports, Britain’s manufacturers for conjurers’ equipment. The Museum hopes to present some shows over half-term and the early part of the Christmas holiday. Please ring 0207 203 0130 for further details. GERRARD ROOTS

Medieval Treasures at the Tate: 17 Sept – 2 March 2002, Duveen Galleries, Tate Britain

The exhibition (admission free)”highlights the international context for British art and the cataclysmic effects of the Reformation”. Displays of architectural ornaments, funerary monuments and freestanding figures.

This exhibition will be of especial interest to members who visited Wenlock Priory on the way to Wales, during HADAS’s recent trip, as among items on display will be two panels and fragments, all that remains of the Wenlock Lavabo, described as “a wonderful example of 12th century narrative sculpture”. This was a ritual wash basin (which resembled a large fountain) used by the monks.

THE TWO HENRYS – Audree Price-Davies replies to Percy Reboul

It was very kind of Mr Percy Reboul to comment on my write-up of the visit to Canterbury Cathedral. There are one or two inaccuracies which I would like to indicate.

I did not “sum up in a single sentence great events in history”. I sought to show in a few paragraphs that Canterbury Cathedral shows evidence of the power struggle between church and king. I did not label either Henry II or Henry VIII as bad. The actions of kings as leaders have to be judged within the historical context of the facts and there is no room for emotional sympathy.

Henry II was aware of the necessity to reform the judicial system – I wrote this. The people however were not happy with the reforms and applauded Becket’s opposition. In a moment of exasperation Henry II asked his famous question and four knights took him literally. Henry, alive to public feeling, did penance at Calais for the murder. History is not written in black and white – both sides had their reasons.

I did not write that Henry VIII “lusted after Anne Boleyn” – Mr Reboul wrote this. I do not know whether Henry did or not – it is irrelevant. If it had not been Anne Boleyn – it would have been someone else. His quarrel with Rome was not “about a divorce from Catherine of Aragon” even though “in the context of the times the claims he made to have the marriage annulled had some validity”. This was merely the pretext. The real reasons were more complex. Henry wanted an heir, Catherine had borne a daughter, Mary; but Henry wanted a son, and so he wanted to marry again. The church diverted a great deal of money to Rome and used its influence to interfere in official appointments. The Reformation in Germany weakened the influence of the Pope in the west and the growing nationalism in England made many question the influence of the Pope in English affairs. If Henry had not broken with Rome it would have been left to succeeding rulers and it would have been more difficult. Henry was statesmanlike, well-advised and aware of the opinions of his time. It is not possible in write-up of a visit to quote the background history – I assumed this. Mr Reboul has an axe to grind about the Henrys, but he should not attribute ideas to me which I do not hold and did not express, so that he can refute these ideas in support of his theory. It seems I was right about the beheading of statues and breaking of windows by the Parliamentary solder,- but for the wrong reasons! Oh, really!

Does Mr Reboul really believe that “cakes and nice hot freshly-brewed tea are another of the great England! What price glory!

I used Trevelyan’s History of England as a text book.

AUDREE PRICE DAVIES

CALIGULA’S LOST SHIPS

At the side of Lake Nemi outside Rome is a huge double-chambered museum, as big as an aircraft hangar — but it is almost empty. It was built by Mussolini to house two immense Roman ceremonial barges salvaged from the bottom of the lake in 1929-32, after nearly 2000 years.

It had been known for centuries that the ritual ships lay at the bottom of the volcano-crater lake and there were several attempts to raise them — one in 1599 used an early diving bell. Mussolini lowered the water level to get the ships out. But his tribute to his Roman forebears did not last long. On the night of 31 May 1944, retreating German soldiers fired the ships, which were destroyed.

Metal fragments remain — the lead piping die-stamped with the G.CAESARIS AUG GERMANIC which dated the ships to 37-41 AD; anchors, a rotating platform which shows that the Romans used ball-bearings; a deep-water valve. I was very taken by a wonderful series of fierce and lively bronze heads holding mooring rings: a leopard (with spots), a lion and a wolf. (see above)

The ships (230 feet long and 35 feet across) were unpropelled craft, either pulled by shore-to-shore lines, or pushed across the sheltered lake by smaller boats. There was a temple to Diana Nemorensis nearby.

An excellent account of the ships is given in H.V. Morton’s indispensable guide A Traveller in Rome, where he quotes from Frazer’s The Golden Bough to the effect that the priest of Diana at Nemi was always a runaway slave who had to murder the previous priest, and spent his time waiting nervously for his successor to arrive and challenge him by plucking the “golden bough”.

In 1995 Rosario D’Agata, a retired oil-company executive who lived at Nemi, started the Diana Lacus Association to reconstruct one of the 70 metre ships.

Although there was a commencement ceremony in 1995, and an impressive keel has been laid outside the front of the Museo Delle Navi by the Di Donato shipbuilders of Terre del Greco, work seems to have ground to a halt, possibly from lack of funds. All the internet references lead to a web page which is frustratingly unavailable.

D.BARRIE

THE MISTRESS OF MYSTERY IN MESOPOTAMIA, AND IN BLOOMSBURY

An exhibition on Agatha Christie might hardly seem prime material for a HADAS Newsletter. But the renowned crime writer (she was the most popular novelist in history, with more than two billion books sold) was married for almost 50 years to archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, excavator ofNimrud and Tell Brak among many other notable western Asiatic sites.

Agatha Christie’s archaeological ventures with her husband gave her material for many of her novels — think of Death on the Nile or Murder in Mesopotamia, for example. Now, 25 years after her death, the British Museum is to pay due credit to that aspect of her own story, in Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia, running from November 9 to March 24. Much intriguing material, much of it not at all the normal content of archaeological displays, is promised, and including films made by Agatha Christie herself, memorabilia and personabilia.

To gain a taste of how Christie linked the two threads of her life, and to enjoy a very good read, Mary O’Connell recommends her “archaeological memoir”, Come Tell Me How You Live. It begins with this delightful poem (“with apologies to Lewis Carroll”). HADAS is most grateful for permission to reprint it here.

I’ll tell you everything I can
If you will listen well:

I met an erudite young man
A-sitting on a Tell.

“Who are you, sir?” to him I said,

“For what is it you look?”

His answer trickled through my head

Like bloodstains in a book.

He said: “I look for aged pots

Of prehistoric days,

And then I measure them in lots

And lots of different ways.

And then (like you) I start to write,

My words are twice as long

As yours, and far more erudite.

They prove my colleagues wrong!”

But I was thinking of a plan
To kill a millionaire

And hide the body in a van

Or some large Frigidaire.

So, having no reply to give,

And feeling rather shy,

I cried: “Come, tell me how you live!

And when, and where, and why?”

His accents mild were full of wit:
“Five thousand years ago

Is really, when I think of it,

The choicest Age I know.

And once you learn to scorn A.D.

And you have got the Knack

Then you could come and dig with me

And never wander back.”

But I was thinking how to thrust

Some arsenic into tea,

And could not all at once adjust

My mind so far B.C.

I looked at him and softly sighed

His face was pleasant too…

“Come, tell me how you live?” I cried,

“And what it is you do?’

He said: “1 hunt for objects made

By men where’er they roam,

I photograph and catalogue

And pack and send them home.

These things we do not sell for – gold

(Nor yet, indeed, for copper!),

But place them on Museum shelves

As only right and proper.

“I sometimes dig up amulets

And figurines most lewd,

For in those prehistoric days

They were extremely rude!

And that’s the way we take our fun,

‘Tis not the way of wealth.

But archaeologists live long

And have the rudest health.”

1 heard him then, for I had just

Completed a design

To keep a body free from dust
By boiling it in brine.

I thanked him much for telling me

With so much erudition,

And said that I would go with him

Upon an Expedition…

And now, if e’er by chance I dip

My fingers into acid,

Or smash some pottery (with slip!)

Because I am not placid,

Or If I see a river flow

And hear a far-off yell,

I sigh, for it reminds me so

Of that young man I learned to know —

Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,

Whose thoughts were in the long ago,

Whose pockets sagged with pot sherds so,

Who lectured learnedly and low,

Who used long words I didn’t know,

Whose eyes, with fervour all a-glow,

Upon the ground looked to and fro,

Who sought conclusively to show

That there were things I ought to know

And that with him I ought to go

And dig upon a Tell!

A-SITTING ON A TELL from COME, TELL ME HOW YOU LIVE, published by HarperCollins, Copyright 1946 by Agatha Christie Mallowan

COURSES

“Introduction to Archaeology” — West Herts College, Hemel Hempstead. Term 1 began on 25th September, but please phone Jack Goldenfeld on 01923 285225 if you are interested.

(Jack Goldenfeld, a lecturer at the College, has been assessing the late Ted Sammes’ archive material, and has just returned from America where he visited Mesa Verde and the Crow Canyon Archaeological Museum, Colorado.)

“Post-Excavation Analysis” — Avenue House, 15-17 East End Road, Finchley, N3 — 6.30-8.30 pm for 24 meetings. Fee £118 (£59 concessions).The course, which began on 26 September, aims to record, assess and analyse to modern standards the full site archives from the excavations carried out by the late Ted Sammes, with a view to publication as part of a programme of research into the origins of Hendon. Lecturers: Jacqueline Pearce, BA and Kim Stabler, BA, MA. Please phone 020 7631 6627.

Other Societies’ Activities

Thursday 41h October

London Canal Museum, 12-13 New Wharf, Road, King’s Cross, N1 — “Keeping our Canal Heritage Alive”. Talk by Tom Chiplin, 7.30 pm. (Concessions £1.25).

Saturday 6 October

Barnet and District Local History Society. Coach trip to Brighton and Preston Manor. Free time in Brighton itself in the morning. If interested please phone Pat Alison (01707 858430) for an application form as soon as possible. Cost: £13, departs 9.00 am from Barnet Odeon.

Wednesday 10 October

Barnet & District Local History Society: “Families Working on the Cut (Canals)”. Talk by Valerie Johnson. Wyburn Road, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet, 8.00 pm.

Mill Hill Historical Society: “History and Impact of Roman Canals on Britain”: talk by Dr Roger Squires. Harwood Hall, Union Church, The Broadway, NW7, 8.15 pm.

Friday’ 19 October

Wembley History Society — “Church Farm, Hendon”. Talk by Gerrard Roots (of HADAS). Jubilee Hall, corner Parsonage Lane/Chase Side, 7.30 pm

Sunday 21 October

Friern Barnet & District Local Historical Society — “Over 150 Years of History of Friern Hospital” conducted walk led by Oliver Natelson (2-4 pm). Meet outside New Southgate Station for 2 pm. Charge £1.

Thursday 251h October

Finchley Society — “London Assembly” (Jean Scott Memorial Lecture) given by Brian Coleman. Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3. 8 pm.

Wednesday 31’t October

Friends of Bruce Castle The Peopling of London” — talk by Gail Cameron (Museum of London) Bruce Castle Museum, Lordship Lane, N17, 7.30 pm.

No. 366 SEPTEMBER 2001 HADAS 40th anniversary year edited by Liz Sagues

On course for the course

All is going well with the proposed Birkbeck course, which starts later this month and will provide participants with practical experience of writing up archaeological excavations — the work done by Ted Sammes at Church Terrace, Hendon, as part of his ambition to identify Saxon Hendon.

The lead tutor will be Jacqui Pearce, of MoLSS (Museum of London Specialist Services — not MAAS) where she is their expert on Post Roman ceramics. She lives in Hendon. We could not ask for better qualifications! She will be supported by Kim Stabler of Pre-Construct Archaeology, who will deal with the stratigraphic side, while Louise Rayner and Roberta Tomber, both of MoLSS, will also be involved as occasional lecturers.

For full details, see the leaflet which is enclosed with this Newsletter. Do apply soon if you want to join the course.

Tell us, please

At its last meeting your committee recognised that it was not making best use of the interests and skills of the society’s members, and it wishes to correct this.

A questionnaire is therefore enclosed. Please give it your most earnest consideration. No capacity is too small, every little will help and all contributions will be grate­fully received! Please fill it in and send it off. Now!

Were these two king Henrys as bad
An item in the July HADAS Newsletter prompts Percy Reboul to pen this letter to the editor:

Audree Price-Davies’ review of the HADAS visit to Canterbury Cathedral was a fascinating reminder of having to sum up in a single sentence great events in history. It also reveals, I suspect, the author’s interpre­tation of such events.

Let me say right away that it is not a question of a right or wrong view or the choice of word and phrase. For example, “Thomas Beckett… was zealous in defence of the church… He criticised Henry II’s judicial reforms…” So he did, but we tend to be weaned at school on the colourful story of Beckett’s murder, at the expense of the importance of Henry’s attempted reform of the courts of law, the wiping out of feudal warring and the promotion of a jury system to evaluate the truth in judicial disputes. More particularly, the king was insist­ent that the church and its cohorts (who were by tradi­tion immune from civil trial and punished far less se­verely) should be judged, and punished, in a similar way to the laity.

Henry VIII, bless him, is always a good topic for discussion. Here again, yes, he lusted after Ann Boleyn, which is always good copy. But his quarrel with Rome was about a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and, in the context of the times, the claims he made to have the marriage annulled had some validity. He certainly thought so and he was, contrary to popular belief, a deeply religious man.

Finally, the beheading of statues and breaking of windows by the Parliamentary soldiers. Today, we can hardly conceive the importance of religion at that time. Such statues and finery were redolent of an authoritar­ian church so hated by much of the army who had fought long and hard for what they saw as religious freedom. Coupled with a religious commandment about not wor­shipping graven images, they gloried in what they saw as destroying the work of the devil. I suppose all of this can be summed up in Audree’ s phrase “… they objected to the power of the church over the people…”, but that seems to underplay the reasons for the vandalism.

With that said, I enjoyed reading all the reviews and was positively salivating at the thought of those cakes and nice hot freshly-brewed tea. Another of the great glories of England!

Impressive still – a Sardinian Nuraghi

Castles in the Mediterranean

One of the perks of editing the HADAS Newsletter (or contributing to it, for that matter) is to be allowed to tell everyone about your summer holiday (or rather, this time, an early spring one). We went to Sardinia, continuing our Mediterranean island hopping which has already included Corsica and Sicily — both strongly recommended, not only for archaeological reasons.

Sardinia’s unique contribution to the archaeological record is the im­pressive defensive architecture of its argumentative Bronze Age tribes. Nuraghi are circular towers, built of massive stone blocks, each one the central point of a settlement of round huts. The fashion for them continued from around 1800 to 500BC. The oldest, simplest nuraghi are a single tower; as centuries passed the design became more complex. Several machiolated towers, linked by a broad rampart, circle a single taller keep, double-walled and multi-storied, with a staircase spiralling up inside.

In one of the largest of the settlements, Palmavera, is another much bigger but still circular space, outside the central fortress and beside the small round living huts. It is interpreted as a meeting place, and at its centre was found a contemporary model of a nuraghe, proof of the original architec­ture of now partially-tumbled remains.

An even more astonishing example of the geometric building skill of these quarrelsome tribes is angular rather than circular, however. At the sacred spring of Santa Cristina they built, in precisely-squared masonry, a trapezoidal entrance and descending flight of steps which would be a tribute to the ability of any modern builder.

The people who the 7,000-plus nuraghi protected continued the circular theme in pottery as well as buildings. Among surviving examples are large, flat discs, which even serious-minded excavators suggest just might be the original pizza platters… They also shared another continuing Sardinian taste, for clams, as the leftovers stuck on a 3,000-year-old dish prove. And they made fine stylised bronze figurines which indicate what they wore, which weapons they used and implying they were a tall, thin race.

But there is much more to Sardinian archaeology than simply nuraghi. Massive remains exist of the Phoenician and Roman city of Tharros, in­cluding hugely impressive stone streets with covered drains. Move forward into historic times, and on many headlands there are crumbling examples of more defensive towers, built against invading Vandals, Arabs, Pisans, Genoese, Aragonese. Some, even, date from World War Two…

Sardinia also has great scenery, food, wine (one of the major wineries owns the necropolis of Anghelu Ruju and has a fine museum of its finds), beaches and clean sea. If any HADAS member is keen to go, I’d be happy to pass on information of where to stay and what to visit. Liz Sagues

Hedley Swain, Head of Early London History and Collections, Museum of London, reports on the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre and Mortimer Wheeler House

A place for everyone interested in London’s archaeology

This summer was due to see the completion of major building work at the Museum of London’s Eagle Wharf Road resource centre and the turning of the museum into a two-site institution. Not only will the extensive building work provide a home for LAARC (the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre), but there will also be new offices for the Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS), which has just moved from Walker House, its current base in the City.

The team of archaeological finds and environmental specialists (the museum’s Specialist Services, MoLSS) are already based at EWR, as are the reserve social and working history collections. For the first time all the museum’s staff, activities and collections will be in just two buildings, London Wall and Eagle Wharf Road. To mark the occasion the latter has been re-named Mortimer Wheeler House to recognise the links between perhaps the best-known 20th century archaeologist and the Mu­seum of London.

The creation of LAARC has received funding sup­port from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Getty Foundation, Government and from many local societies, including HADAS (whose name will be inscribed on the funders’ wall), institutions and individuals. It has created the space properly to store and curate all the archaeological finds from past, present and future London excavations.

Mortimer Wheeler House and LAARC will become the place in London for anyone with more than a passing interest in London archaeology. Researchers, students, local society members, school parties and indeed any­one will be able to make an appointment to come and consult the archaeological archive— the finds and records from over 4,000 London excavations.

The archaeological archive team is working hard to ensure the centre caters for the needs of all who might want to use it and this will include evening and weekend opening. The whole ethos of the building is accessibility, with as much material as possible on open display.

The presence of MoLAS, LAARC and MoLSS in the same bu ilding should also lead to some exciting research collaborations. It is also hoped that the close proximity of the archaeological and social history collections will lead to research across traditional periods and subjects. With much talk of regionalisation and centres of excel­lence in the museum world, Eagle Wharf Road will hopefully act as a model for others elsewhere to follow.

LA ARC will be open to the public between 9am and 9pm every weekday, and between 10am and 4pm on the first and third Saturdays every month. However, this will always be by prior appointment only.

There will be three self-contained rooms available for meetings and group or individual study. These are the Visitor Centre, the Stuart Waller Room (named to commemorate the major bequest from the estate of

Stuart Waller which helped fund the LAARC project) and the Society Room. The Visitor Centre, on the ground floor by the entrance, can take up to 100 people and is hilly equipped to act as a seminar or lecture room. The Waller and Society Rooms are on the first floor near the archive. Each will take about 20 people. All these rooms will be available with prior booking during opening hours. Other open areas will be available for individual researchers in the actual archive storage areas.

The entire archaeological archive will be available for study, including finds, photographs, records, re­ports, plans, etc. This will be available both physically and wherever possible electronically. A computer index and access system is being developed to further facilitate use. It will also be possible to consult reference collec­tions, and indeed staff. There are no plans to charge for the use of any facilities but we will monitor this, and will deal with exceptional items on an individual basis.

The archive team, currently five staff, will be there to help researchers. There will also be different guidelines and manuals on how to use the archive, and a computer access system. However, we fully appreciate the need to provide personal support to users.

We would welcome voluntary help from either indi­viduals or groups from local societies to undertake the many collections management projects that are planned. Indeed it is hoped that over time local societies might have their own projects, both collections management and research based, at LA ARC.

For further information about LAARC and how it can be used contact the Archaeological Archive Manager John Shepherd on 020 7566 9317.

HADAS tours town and country during the outing to Cranborne Chase

A place of churches, a causeway – and coffee

The outing to Cranborne Chase and Wilton House on July 14 started well, in spite of the pessimistic weather forecast. After driving through showers we arrived at the market town of Stockbridge to have coffee and biscuits at the Grosvenor Hotel, an old coaching inn.

The wide High Street was busy, with local people doing their shopping and visitors enjoying the cafes, the pretty cottages and shops. There was a craft fair being held in the town hall, which was a tempting attraction for some HADAS members.

The buildings in the High Street are constructed on an old causeway of chalk and bundles of withies over the marshy valley of the River Test, which can be seen as you leave the town. There are small ponds at the sides of the High Street where some mallards were taking the opportunity to enjoy the periods of sun­shine and the attention of passers by.

Stockbridge has a long history. The Lordship of the Manor can be traced back to 1066 and the Courts Leet and Baron, which also date back to the Norman Conquest, continue to be held early March. There are many reminders of Stockbridge’s period as a “rotten borough” (1563-1832). The town hall, built in 1790, was an election bribe, paid for by the two MPs. The magnificent silver mace of one of the three officers of the courts was also presented by an MP, in 1681, as was the church communion plate, in 1697-1700.

There are two interesting churches, both named St Peter’s. Old St Peter’s was built in the 12th century, although parts of the chancel date back to a much earlier West Saxon chapel.

In 1866 the new church, St Peter’s Parish Church, was built in the High Street and the people of the town turned out with barrows to move some items from the old church to the new one, before demolition of the former began. Thse included a 12th century stone crucifix, a 13th century Purbeck stone font and 14th century window frames.

Demolition of the old church began, but the chancel resisted all attempts to destroy it. After falling into disrepair, it was renovated in 1963 and in 1990 a major restoration began. Items restored, mainly by local experts, include an oak door of 1354, wall murals, 18th century commandment boards and a royal coat of arms dated 1726. There is a mass clock c.1240 on the jamb of the west door and in the east wall there are two rare white glass windows with 14th century grisaille work.

With so much to see, our “coffee-stop” in Stock­bridge passed all too quickly and soon we were on the coach, wending our way to Sixpenny Handley.

Dewella Morgan

After the hens, prehistory

Following his army career, General Pitt-Rivers inher­ited large family estates, and was able to begin excava­tion and field survey of Cranborne Chase. His scientific approach, as well as the publication of his work in the late 19th century was so good, so far in advance of his time, that he has become known as the “father of modern archaeology”.

The present owner of Down Farm, Martin Green, has continued these excavations and revealed henges, barrows, pits and postholes. There has been no excava­tion this year, but we were rewarded by a walk to the natural shaft which he has explored to a depth of 13.2 metres during the last eight years. It was amazing to see how deep this shaft was, as we were able to stand on an inspection platform erected over it.

Martin Green had been alerted to its presence by noting a crop mark when walking the fields with his dog. Excavation revealed beaker pottery, late Neolithic, early Neolithic and Mesolithic levels in the upper 1.5 metres of the shaft. Below this there is a much deeper area in which charcoal and some animal bones, includ­ing two complete roe deer skeletons, were discovered. From the various levels, 17 radio-carbon dates were established, which produced an unbroken sequence from about 4500-2000BC. The beginnings of human activity in the Neolithic period were dated to 3990­37805C.

There remains the question of how this shaft devel­oped. Martin Green spoke of “underground caverns” known within the chalk, and said it seemed likely that this shaft resulted from the collapse of such a cavern. Perhaps, he thought, there might have been a stream running in the bottom which a later Mesolithic commu­nity could have regarded as a sacred place.

Before starting back to the farm, Martin Green pointed out a long barrow on a hill in the distance, further evidence of neolithic settlement in the area.

The hen house museum (from which the hens were ousted in 1970) is full of artefacts from probably all the various excavations carried out in the 20th century near Down Farm. The exhibits include two deer skulls, over 400 beaker sherds, and a grooved ware group which produced an extraordinary splayed flint axe, to mention just a few. There were Roman coins dating from Hadrian (117-138AD) to Constantine (307-337AD) followed by others until about 378AD. There were more of the later coins at a lower value, illustrating the debasing of the coinage later in the Roman Empire. Also in the museum was a local history section including an impressive display illustrating the last blacksmith in the area.

Apart from the archaeological interest, it was a great pleasure to walk in the heart of the country around the farm. Margaret Phillips

Smells, spits and an electric rat

The weather was much improved when we arrived at Wilton House, a little before 3pm. Our visit began in the riding school, now an exhibition centre, followed by Noblesse Oblige, a short film on the history of the house, narrated by a nun claiming connection with the earlier Benedictine abbey but bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anna Massey. In 1544 Henry VIII gave the abbey to Sir William Herbert, brother-in-law of Catherine Parr, who demolished it to build a house worthy of his rising status. Several years later Edward VI elevated him to Earl of Pembroke.

Down Farm: Excavating the henge monument at Wyke Down, possibly part of a major grooved ware settlement, in 1996, above, and, below, section through the great shaft. Drawing Wessex Archaeology, both illustrations courtesy of Current Archaeology (read more in issue 169).

Leaving the film theatre we found ourselves in the Tudor kitchens where modelled cooks were prepar­ing a banquet. We had by this time acquired a “Wilton House Script for a Tudor Kitchen” to heighten our visual appreciation of the scene: “A place of great heat, noise, smells, confusion and curses… joints turn on spits operated by a boy… rats and mice scuttle away from sleek, ever-watchful cats, which cockroaches abound…”. But all is sanitised and even the rat is powered by electricity. The laundry drying rooms would have been useful last winter. A footman flirts with a laundry maid — all rather twee!

Our visit to Wilton House was to be curtailed by half an hour because of a concert that evening by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, but their rehear­sal compensated us with strains of pastoral music. Though time was short, afternoon tea was essential before visiting the house. And with time in mind it was irritating to follow the one-way system around the house, without the freedom to deviate.

Inigo Jones was commissioned to design Wilton House after fire had destroyed the first earl’s house in 1647, but it was much altered during the early 19th century after designs by James Wyatt. Perhaps its most famous room is the Double Cube Room, spe­cially built to house the family’s paintings by Van Dyke, with its fine ceiling. However, we preferred the simpler ceiling of the Colonnade Room with its monkeys, hoopoes and other birds in the treetops, set against the sky.

Our thanks go to Sheila and Tessa for yet another successful outing.

Sylvia & Graham Javes

It’s that time of year again…

Many HADAS members have, over the years, benefited from the certificate and diploma courses in archaeology run by Birkbeck, and these can be approached at any level: as an introduction to the subject, to widen existing knowledge, or as a stepping stone to further studies.

The subjects on offer include prehistory, Ancient Egypt, British field archaeology, Britain’s industrial her­itage, medieval London, and much, much more. Course tutors include our new President, Harvey Sheldon, Paul Craddock of the British Museum, Hedley Swain of the Museum of London, and J. Scott McCracken.

There are several venues which should be easily accessible for HADAS members, such as: the City Lit in Stukeley Street; the Museum of London; the Institute of Archaeology in Gordon Square; Barnet College in Wood Street; Highgate Library & Scientific Institution; and Barnet WEA in Queen Elizabeth Sports Centre.

Prospect us enquiries telephone number-: 0845 601 0174; email: info@bbk.ac.uk; website: www.bbk.ac.uk/fce

Other societies’ events

Friern Barnet & District Local History Society

Tuesday September 4, 8pm Talk: Women in Roman Times, by John Brodrick. Old Fire Station, adj Town Hall, Friern Barnet Lane, N11. Visitors £2.

Stanmore & Harrow Historical Society

Wednesday September 5, 8pm Talk: Working Conditions in the Old Potteries, by Robin Gurnett.

Wealdstone Baptist Church, High Road, Wealdstone. London Canal Museum

Thursday September 6, 7.30pm Talk: Canals & Waterways on Film, by Amanda Huntley, with rare archive film. 12­13 New Wharf Road, King’s Cross, Nl. Concessions £1.25.

Avenue House, East End Road, N3

Sunday September 9 Open Day, music in The Bothy walled garden and other events.

Barnet & District Local History Society

Wednesday September 12, 8pm Talk: People and Nicholls Farm, by Dr Gillian Gear. Wyburn Roan, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet. Visitors £1.

Edmonton Hundred Historical Society

Wednesday September 19, 8pm Talk: Everyday Life in South Mimms area in the Middle Ages, by Brian Warren. Jubilee Hall, june Parsonage Lane / Chaseside, Enfield. City of London Archaeological Society

Friday September 21, 7prn Talk: Recent AOC Archaeologi­cal Group Work in the City, by John Maloney.

St Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3.

Enfield Archaeological Society

Friday September 21, 8pm Talk: York Minster – England’s Largest Stained Glass Museum, by Nigel Swift. Jubilee Hall, junct Parsonage Lane /Chaseside, Enfield.

Friern Barnet & District Local History Society Sunday September 23, 2pm-4pm Conducted walk: High Road, Whetstone. For precise meeting point contact John Donovan, 01707 642886. Charge £1.

The Finchley Society

Thursday September 27, 8pm

Talk: Trading in the High Street, by Martyn Gerrard. Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road, N3.

Doors not usually open

A rare chance to see inside many outstanding buildings not usually open to the public is offered by London Open House Weekend Saturday September 22, Sunday September 23. Those open (booking advised) range from private offices to livery companies’ halls, from schools to cinemas. The list is available from London Open House, PO Box 25361, NW5 1GY, (£1.50 by cheque or in postage stamps, plus an addressed A5 size envelope with 41p stamp) or look at it in local libraries.

Explosive happenings

On August 11, HADAS visited the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey (report in the next Newsletter). The site (01992 767022) is open daily, 10am-6pm, until October 28, and the following special events are planned: September 8-9: Science weekend — The chance to experi­ence controlled demonstrations of mini explosions. September 15-16: 1940s re-enactment – Re-enactors take the royal Gunpowder Mills Back in time to the 1940s. September 29-30: Napoleonic training — the Napoleonic Association display their training techniques.

HADAS Diary

Wednesday September 13: Visit to St Lawrence Church Edgware with Sheila Woodward. The HADAS Programme combined this with a visit to Boosey & Hawkes. Unfortunately, this was cancelled, and should not have been listed in the August Newsletter.
Details and application form enclosed with this Newsletter.

Early September: Fieldwork at Hanshawe Drive, Burnt Oak. We now have permission from the Borough of Barnet to investigate, including some excavation, at this site (see May Newsletter) and we hope to be able to start in early September.
Would anyone interested please get in touch with Andrew Coulson (020 8442 1345) or Brian Wrigley (020 8959 5982).

Tuesday October 10: The new lecture season opens with Archaeology in Winchester by Graham Scobie — a follow-up to our Portsmouth and King Alfred weekend in 1999.

Lectures start at 8pm in the Drawing Room (ground floor) of Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3, and are followed by question time and coffee. We close promptly at 10pm.

Saturday October 14: MicroMart — our annual fundraiser and social get-together.
Details, for old and new members, are on a separate sheet enclosed with this Newsletter.

Saturday October TBA: The seminar De-mystifying Resistivity with Bill McCann will definitely go ahead.
Date and details will be given in the October Newsletter.

Andrew Selkirk and Vikki O’Connor report:
Out of the ashes… pots of success

On the weekend of July 30-31, HADAS joined forces with the St Albans Archaeological Society for an experimental archaeology weekend: we set out to fire some replica – pots of Bronze Age type, most of them made by HADAS members.

As an introduction to the project we were given a talk in early June by Janet Miles of the St Albans group; they also gave us a bucket of clay from the Cutts Wood (Bronze Age) site which we used to make some vessels. HADAS collected clay from the Highgate Wood area (with permission) and from Brockley Hill — from the riding school adjacent to the scheduled Roman kiln site (thanks to proprietors Debbie and Chris). We also got clay samples from Arkley when we surveyed and dug test trenches recently, and another from Hadley Wood.

HADAS members went through the whole process of creating a suspension of clay in water, letting it settle, draining the clay until it was usable, then tempering with crushed oyster shell and crushed burnt flint (the flint came from Cutts Wood— thoughtfully pre-burnt by our Bronze Age ancestors!).

We made the pots on Wednesdays and Saturdays at Avenue House, over a period of two months. Although we attempted to recreate Bronze Age types many of the forms could only be described as “rustic”.
With the help of our guests we set out to College Farm, in Fitzalan Road, Finchley, where we were able to build our bonfire — we thought we ought to start with the simplest form of pottery firing, just a bonfire made of logs, not a kiln.

As many members know, College Farm was estab­lished early in the 20th century by Express Dairy, as a model farm to show how milk was produced. It is now owned by a trust and the resident farmers, Chris and Jane Owers, kindly allowed us to set up our fire there.

We kept a close watch on the temperature of the fire. Two thermocouples were used to record the tempera­ture, but unfortunately there was only one thermometer, so a protective cage of concrete slabs had to be erected, making it possible to approach the great heat to change the leads of the thermocouples. In this way we could keep readings going throughout the night.

The temperatures turned out to be a great surprise. The desired temperature of around 400 degrees was quickly reached, but it then fell back to around 200, and remained there as long as the fire was stoked. However, once the fire was banked down for the night, and no more fuel was put on, the temperature began to rise steadily, and reached 350 degrees by time the fire was eventually pulled apart at 4 o’clock on Sunday after­noon, when the pots were revealed.

Did we succeed? YES!
When the embers were removed, there on the bot­tom of the pit were the pots — almost all of them complete. Only a very few had “blown”, and all of them had roasted to a very satisfactory hardness.

After the pots had been admired, they had to be allowed to cool down a little, and then it was possible to start removing them from the embers. Bill Bass began the task gingerly with a rake (see picture left). When the cooling had gone a little further some intrepid members of the St Albans society started removing the pots with smaller utensils to take them over to a corrugated iron sheet where they could cool more rapidly.

The pots (pictured below) were rather black when they came straight from the firing, but it will be interest­ing to see how they look after they are properly cooled and washed.

They were grouped according to clay source, and their positions recorded:- The St Albans group are ana­lysing the results of the firing and the effects of tempera­ture in the various areas of the kiln floor.

Coincidence or not, the Brockley Hill and Highgate Wood pots fired with no breakages whereas the other types were far less successful.
Our thanks to the St Albans Society for joining us in this, to all the HADAS members who put in so much hard work and to everyone who donated wood. It was impossible to gauge in advance how much fuel we needed with a few twigs to spare.

Buildings at risk

English Heritage has issued the 10th edition of its register of buildings at risk in Greater London. It includes 17 in Barnet, 14 listed Grade II and three in conservation areas.

The listed buildings are: The Grahame White factory and offices and the G-W Hangar at Hendon Aerodrome, in very bad condition. Hertford Lodge, The Bothy and The Water Tower, East End Road, Finchley. Hertford Lodge is in poor condition, the other two buildings are described as very bad. These are new entries on the list. Friern Hospital, fair condition. Christ’s College, Finchley, fair condition, The Martin Smith Mausoleum at Golders Green Crematorium, poor condition. No.8 Shirehall Lane, Hendon, poor condition. Eller?’ Mode, Totteridge Common, poor condition. The Manor House, Totteridge Common, poor condition, new entry. – The Cartwright Memorial in St Mary’s Churchyard, Finchley, poor condition. The Physic Well, Barnet, poor condition. The Lodge to Finchley RC High School, N12, fair condition.

The three conservation area buildings are: St Mary’s Churchyard, Hendon, poor condition. The Garden Build­ing, Waterlow Court, Heath Close, NW11, poor condition. St Mary’s Churchyard, Finchley, poor condition.

Thirteen of these buildings were on previous lists and nothing seems to have been done about them. Those at Hendon Aerodrome are entries of long standing.

In the pipeline

Brian Warren contributes part of an answer to the Pipe Puzzle posed in the August Newsletter: When I read the words “Smith” and “Gifford” it took me back to July 1977 when I was given a small piece of pipe stem with on one side the words “IFFORD ST” and on the other “SMOKE SMIT”. I wrote to Adrian Oswald, who suggested the pipemaker was Richard Smith, Upper Gifford Street (BAR 14, 1975, p146). I have now consulted Kelly’s Directory for 1876 (Guildhall 9 6917/122) and discovered that Richard Smith, tobacco pipemaker, was at 24 Upper Gifford Street. Therefore what does the number 49 mean? Richard Smith made pipes from 1868-99. Graham Javes also responded to the call for information: According to a book by Brian Bloise of the Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Society, there were two R. S. Smiths, one at Upper Gifford Street, Caledonian Road, 1858-1899, the other at Gifford Street in 1898. Richard Smith is assumed to have been the father. So far, there are no clues about the “boxing” figures.

Make a date for Bangor

During our Orkney visit in July, Jackie Brookes, David Bromley and Dorothy Newbury discussed the weekend away for 2001. Bangor University in North Wales was suggested. For the last two or three years Dorothy has said “this must be my last weekend away for HADAS” — she has been organising them for the past 20 years. So she was delighted that Jackie and David were happy to take over (David’s son is a student at Bangor). They are planning already for four days, Thursday to Sunday September 6-9, Put these dates in your diary now.

Members news from Dorothy Newbury

Mary O’Connell is recovering in Taunton from a hip replacement operation and hopes to be back in London soon. In the next Newsletter she will give details of the possibility for members to visit Boosey and Hawkes individually if they wish (this follows the cancellation of the planned visit there on September 13).

Following the entry in the August Newsletter (page 3), the Time Team visited Derek Batten’s “ring work” with great success. It is hoped a Channel 4 TV programme about the excavation will be shown in January or February. Derek will be sending in a preliminary report for the Newsletter.

Browsers’ corner

Birkbeck College — view the subjects, order a prospectus, check events: http://www.bbk.ac.uk

You never know what you’ll come across next on the net. The University of St Andrews Archaeological Diving Unit site http://www.st-and.ac.uk/institutes/sims/Ada/6news.htm has news of their recent work in Orkney, operating out the harbour at Stromness, working with Ian Oxley of Heriot-Watt University who is researching the German High Seas Fleet scuttled in Scapa Flow in 1919. Historic Scotland is considering designating these wrecks as scheduled monuments, which would not prevent divers visiting but would make any disturbance/removal illegal. The Scapa Flow survey uses the latest equipment, begged, borrowed and bought, and includes side scan, magnetometer and seabed characterisation, also sonar imaging which has to be seen to be believed — it is so good. A visit to this site is recommended if you like technical stuff.

The sites to watch

Brockley Hill House: demolition and construction works have now started and are being monitored by Oxford Archaeological Unit. The Sites and Monuments area should not be affected. (Information from Robert Whytehead of English Heritage)

Canons Corner-Spur Road, Edgware: National Grid proposes to build a head house for the shaft of its tunnel linking Elstree and St John’s Wood. Parking area is also in the planning application. Robert Whytehead has advised that an archaeological mitigation strategy should be prepared for the entire area of ground disturbance. 36 Fortescue Road, Burnt Oak (joins Thirleby Road where Roman pottery has been found): single storey rear extension.

English Heritage has recommended the following sites for archaeological investigation:

72 High Street, Barnet — may affect medieval remains in the area.

3 Salisbury Road, Barnet — may affect possible medieval and earlier remains near the High Street.

32A Totteridge Common, Totteridge N20 — may affect medieval remains of Totteridge village.

On course for winter

· Many HADAS members have benefited from the courses on archaeology and history run by Birkbeck College. For anyone who might be wavering this autumn, why not attend the open evening on Tuesday September 5, 4pm – 8pm, Malet Street, London WC1.

· Harvey Sheldon has arranged another season of Thursday evening public lectures at the Institute of Archaeology, 20 Gordon Square. This year’s topic is Human Evolution with various speakers. To book for this short course, V10X17, which starts on October 5 and costs £60 (£30 concessions) you need an enrolment form from the prospectus. (There used to be the option to pay at the door for individual lectures. Watch the next Newsletter to see if this still applies.)
HADAS member Jack Goldenfeld is again running his course Introduction to Archaeology 1 at two centres West Herts College. The course is designed to describe and explain the science of archaeology, to cultivate an awareness of the past and the recognition of its effects on the world of today. As well as dealing with archaeo­logical theory, it will study site examples of all periods and from many locations world-wide. The only entry qualification required is an enquiring mind!

The courses are at: Dacorum Campus, Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead, starting Monday September 25, and Cassio Campus, Langley Road, Watford, from Wednesday September 27, 7.15pm – 9.15pm at both. Details from Jack on 01923 285225 or from the Adult Education Offices at each campus: Dacorum 01442 221542, Cassio 01923 812052.

Many in HADAS mourned the death last November of Freda Wilkinson, long a valued and active member. By profession, she was a highly-respected indexer, and here we publish extracts from an obituary written by Cherry Lavell, originally published in The Indexer, Vol. 22 No. 1, April 2000. It is followed by further tributes from members.

We are honoured to have had her among us

After recounting Freda’s early years — she was born in Lincoln in January 1910, cared for her craftsman father after her mother died while Freda was in her teens, then in her mid-30s moved to London and worked for a consultancy, then ran a ‘little school for small children” — The indexer article continues:

“Freda had never wanted to be a homebody but in 1958, aged 48, she married James Wilkinson, settling into a large house in Hendon. James was much older but they shared many enthusiasms, including archaeology, natural sciences, Fabianism and filling the house with books. It was probably when James became ill that Freda discovered her undoubted talent for indexing, which would enable her to work at home in the intervals of looking after James (who died in the late 1960s).

She joined the Society of Indexers (SI) in January 1968 and her first index was to a popular work on fish and chips — what a good start! Another book was on Venice and its gondoliers, but she gravitated naturally towards archaeology, becoming one of its very best indexers. Her orderly mind also found a talent for accounts, and on becoming SI Treasurer in 1974 she set about transforming a rather homely system into proper double-entry bookkeeping, continuing until 1980.

She was deeply engaged in fostering SI’s relationship with our affiliated societies; another valuable, even vital task she performed for SI was to introduce John Gordon to us in the mid-1970s: in her new neighbour she recognised an outstanding administrator who could, and most certainly did, revitalise our then sagging Society. She became a valued assessor and examiner at both levels of the Society’s qualifications; she also sat on the Editorial Board of the Indexer.

Besides all this she was attending conferences (both archaeological and our own), Touring Italy (she especially admired the Etruscan civilisation’s equality between men and women), amassing books on a wide variety of subjects, enjoying Shakespeare, and quietly

collecting an A-level in English — aged 64. Her keen

interest in art took her to painting courses and art exhibitions, her love of gardens and architecture led her to visit National Trust properties around the country.

She became an SI Vice President in 1983, relinquishing the position in 1991 but still keeping the liveliest interest in the Society. There is no doubt that if she had been born a couple of decades later and with better opportunities she could have made her mark as an academic —but then she might not have joined our Society! She cared passionately for the Society’s advancement and certainly made a strong contribution to it, for which she was made an Honorary Life Member. We are honoured to have had her among us.”

Margaret Maher writes: Freda and I met on our knees, literally, at the Mesolithic site at West Heath in 1976 and quickly found we shared a passion for flint artefacts and prehistory. On the surface a quiet, unassuming person, she had hidden depths, so getting to know her was a process of continual discovery. She had a marvellously dry sense of humour and a nice sense of the ridiculous.

At an age when most people are slowing down she pursued a wide range of interests. Apart from digging, attending conferences, lectures and classes, she travelled to archaeological sites with HADAS and with the Prehistoric Society. Cataracts briefly curtailed her activities, but as soon as the first was removed she resumed her indexing work, two of the later volumes being Derek Roe’s The Late Glacial in NW Europe (CBA 1991) and Nick Barton’s Hengistbury Head, Dorset (OUP 1992).

I enjoyed Freda’s company and in the last 10 years I particularly admired and respected her courage in the face of crippling illness. It was a friendship from which I felt I gained much.

Daphne Lorimer writes: Although the love of Freda’s archaeological life was flint it was through her skills as an indexer that I first met her. She had just rejoined HADAS when I first became a member, and was constructing a card index of artefact find spots in the Borough of Barnet, complete with map references. There was great excitement when I reported a struck flake from almost the same spot as a Roman coin (alas, it never turned out to be a multi-period occupation!).

It was, however, at the West Heath Mesolithic site that I really got to know Freda. She was there come rain, come shine, and for her, she said, West Heath was not so much a dig “but a way of life”. Her digging technique was exemplary and her knowledge of flint invaluable.

In the winter months, she was one of the happy band of six who went, once a week, to the Quaternary Room at the BM to help Clive Bonsall catalogue the Epping Forest Mesolithic material. It was a great privilege as well as great fun and after two years we felt we had a pretty good knowledge of the English Mesolithic tool types.

Freda’s last gift to West Heath was to provide the report with an index, one of the few BAR Reports, if not the only one, to be so completed.

Freda was a good friend, a knowledgeable archaeologist and one of the characters who stamped their imprint on HADAS in its early days.

Dorothy Newbury adds: Freda was a very knowledgeable and active member, and a regular digger at Ted Sammes’ excavation at Church End, Hendon, before West Heath. One of her most valuable contributions to the society was the production of an excellent index covering every HADAS activity in its early years.

HADAS has a great day out in Dover

Messing about in boats

After an early and gloomy start we made our way to Aylesford Priory, for coffee. Our route had been care­fully planned to cross the QE2 Bridge — a very impres­sive and elegant structure, (which I felt looked very similar to the second Severn crossing, between England and Wales). Well worth the diversion.

Aylesford Priory was founded by the Carmelite friars in 1240. It was dispossessed by Henry VIII and re­established as a pilgrimage centre in 1949, the buildings now a mixture of modern and medieval. In addition to being a place of retreat, and providing hospitality to weary travellers (i.e. us!), there is a pottery and shop.

The next stop was Dover Museum, in particular to see the “Dover Boat”. We were met by Keith Parfitt, the project field director, who gave us an introductory talk. After a short video we looked at the boat itself, the centrepiece of the museum’s Bronze Age display.

Built of wooden planks sewn together with twisted yew and sealed with moss and wax, the boat is believed to be 3,000 years old and is considered the earliest known example of a sea-going vessel. About three- quarters of its length survives (fortunately including the front). It was not possible to recover the rest because of its depth below street level. The recovered remains were soaked in a wax solution and freeze dried.

The other displays in the museum used figures and artefacts to show various stages in the history of the town. This included a series of models showing the development of Dover as a port. While most people were still marvelling at the earliest example of a cross channel ferry, Andy Simpson had the extra excitement of finding, among the exhibits, the brake handle of a Black Country train! Greg Hunt

Seeing the light

Twelve of us trekked down a lovely track to the South Foreland Lighthouse. The current lighthouse was built in 1843 to protect shipping from the Goodwin Sands just off the shore. From here on December 24 1898 Guglielmo Marconi made the world’s first ship-to-shore radio trans­missions and, subsequently, the first international radio transmission to Wimereux in France 28 miles away.

We were first shown the Generator Room which is below ground level. Here the fuel, originally oil from sperm whales, was stored. The next floor was the Weights Room and contained the mechanism for oper­ating the lamp. The weights are winched up through the central pillar. This was followed by the Watch Room where the keeper on duty would have spent most of his time. In this room Marconi sent out his signals.
Next was the Lamp Room. Lamp on, cage rotating gives flashing effect — 3 white flashes in 20 seconds. Lenses give the 3 flashes, black panels give a pause. One complete rotation takes 40 seconds. Last but not least was the balcony. From here we had a marvellous view of the coastline and local points of interest such as a windmill used for electric power and a white house in the bay where Noel Coward and Ian Fleming had lived.

The English weather was not at its best, regretfully, and we were certainly blown about, but it was a most exhilarating experience. Judy Kazarnovsky

Waiting for Henry VIII

A tour of Dover Castle at any time is an experience, but when the fortress is “en medieval fete” as it was when we arrived, the atmosphere was of history come to life. Colourful booths were selling their wares, one with chickens on a spit, tents had pennons streaming, arch­ery was in progress and among the many townspeople was a Mistress Quickley on the arm of a halberdier. Yes, there were soldiers too, some in clanking armour, all being serenaded by a villager playing what appeared to be a medieval form of bagpipe..

This all the way to Constable Gate, the entrance to battlement walk, from which up a steep incline is Palace Gate, the entrance to the Inner Bailey. Here are the precincts of the strongest royal castle in the country, built by Henry IL

It was an inspiration on the part of English Heritage to foster one’s imagination of the age by indicating the impending arrival of the great King Henry VIII to his royal residence. Large wrappings presumably holding his tapestries and trappings of wealth lay on the floors, while in his bedchamber the sumptuous royal four- poster clad in red and gold was being made ready. Rich, carvings adorned his tiny chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket — the only part of the keep remaining unaltered.

On a day such as this, one tends to have a historically romantic impression of Dover Castle, but the visitor is constantly reminded that this massive fortification was a stronghold serving its country from 1170 to 1945.

In 1216, Hubert de Burgh constructed tunnels for defence, modified in the Napoleonic Wars in 1797 and subsequently of immense value to the three services during the two World Wars. Totally secure additional_ underground barracks were constructed 50 feet below the cliff top, complete with a hospital now made to appear very realistic with bloodied bandages in bowls and surgical instruments everywhere (including a saw!). There were, too, meals on plates ready for the garrison at the end of their tour of duty. Not to be forgotten is the castle’s finest hour in May 1940 when Operation Dynamo – the evacuation of 338,000 soldiers from Dun­kirk – was directed from the underground barracks.

This cliff-top site has been occupied since the Iron Age, and within the castle walls there still stand the remains of a Roman lighthouse and a restored Anglo- Saxon church. The pharos was built by the Romans in the second half of the first century to guide ships across the Channel to the newly-developed port of Dover, and although little remains it is still a remarkable structure.

So much in so comparatively small an area. An inspired excursion indeed. Rita Simpson

Other societies’ events

London Canal Museum
Thursday September 7, 7.30pm
Talk: The Royal Military Canal, by Hugh Compton.
12-13 New Wharf Road, King’s Cross (£2.5 0, £1.25 concessions). Amateur Geological Society

Tuesday September 12, 8pm
Talk: Insects in Amber, by Andrew Ross.
The Parlour, St Margaret’s Church, Victoria Avenue, Finchley. Kenwood Estate

Wednesday September 13, 2pm
Lecture & walk: Humphry Repton at Kenwood, by Stephen Daniels. Starting outside the entrance to Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane (£3.50, £1.50 concessions). Booking: 020 7973 3693.

Barnet & District Local History Society
Wednesday September 13, 8pm
Lecture: Forty Hall 1629-2000, by Geoff Gilham.
Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet.

RAF Museum
Thursday September 14, 7.30pm
Talk: Amy Johnson, by Peter Elliott. Grahame Park Way, Colindale. Enfield Archaeological Society

Friday September 15, 8pm
Talk: Excavating Past Londoners — Archaeology on Cemetery Sites, by Hedley Swain. Jubilee Hall, Chaseside/Parsonage Lane, Enfield. Willesden Local History Society

Wednesday September 20, 8pm
Talk: Bygone Kingsbury, by Geoff Hewlett.
Willesden Suite, Willesden Library, 95 High Street, Willesden Green. Kenwood Estate

Sunday September 24, 11am
Guided walk of the Estate, by an estate ranger. Starting outside the Visitor Information Centre (near restaurant).
Finchley Society

Thursday September 28, 8pm
Talk: The Story of Hampstead Heath, by R.W.G. Smith.
Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley.

Exhibitions

Kenwood House until September 24

Eat, Drink and Be Merry: The British at Table 1600-2000

Heritage Open Days* September 16 and 17

London Open House* September 23 and 24

(*Usually inaccessible or fee-charging properties open free)

Conferences