Volume 6 : 1995 – 1999

Issue No 296 NOVEMBER 1995 Edited by Bill Bass

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 7th November

Lecture: “Not What They Used To Be”

Presidential Address by Michael Robbins, FSA.

The reasons for the massive work of church restoration undertaken in the 19th century, some of the principal figures engaged in it and the controversies it gave rise to, and the intellectual, artistic and social background to the process.

Tuesday 5th December

Christmas Dinner: This has not yet been finalised as we go to press. However, the enclosed leaflet and application form contains full details of this annual HADAS event. NB:The date may have been changed.

Tuesday 9th January, 1996

Evening Visit: Royal Institution and Faraday Museum with Mary O’Connell

HADAS Lectures are held in the Stephen’s Room, 1st floor, Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley Central. Doors open at 8.00 pm for refreshments, lectures commence at 8.15 pm. The Society’s library in the Garden Room will be open on lecture evenings and can be accessed via the ground floor of Avenue House.

Details of non-NADAS events are given on the back page.

1995 MINIMART – ALMOST THE BEST EVER! Dorothy Newbury

We have made a clear profit of f1,500, all expenses paid. This is our second best result. Every stall exceeded last year’s takings. Our pre-Minimart sales were nearly f 600 which included income from our monthly Sales and Wants slips, Margaret Marshall’s bead stringing and donations kindly sent by several members who could not come on the day. Forty eight stalwarts helped on the Saturday, mostly regulars who by now know the routine and set to with gusto. The day didn’t pass without incident – so great was the lunch demand that Tessa had to send out for a pound of ham. The three ladies on the gift stall came to me trembling with fear – a customer was threatening to fetch her husband and sue the Society. In the crush she was seen to be filling her bag with goods and objected when asked to empty it so that the helpers could count the cost. Then before the start, the “bush telegraph” sent a message up to me

that a dealer had sneaked in. When I approached her she said she was not a dealer, nor a member but “a doctor’s wife”. Did she think HADAS stood for Hendon and District Association of Surgeons?

Anyway, tough guy Roy Walker quickly ejected her! When the whistle blew, everyone was ready for the off and, as always, everyone,I think and hope, found it a fun-day as well as a fund-raising day.

Thanks to everyone who made it such a success especially to Bill, Roy, Arthur and Alec who did the heavy transporting and lifting and the dismantling and transporting afterwards.

It is fair to record that those Society members involved throughout the year in all aspects of the Minimart are fully aware that the success of this venture is due to the time and effort expended by Dorothy in controlling the Sales and Wants slips, storing the sale items in her home and factory, as well as organising the hall, helpers and transport. The motivation and encouragement comes from Dorothy to whom the Society is greatly indebted.

MEMBERS’ NEWS

· Malcolm Stokes has successfully completed the second year of Birkbeck College’s Certificate in Field Archaeology

· Gareth Bartlett has had a letter published in Current Archaeology, he was concerned about neglect and vandalism at the Deserted Medieval Village site of Wharram Percy.

SITE WATCHING

HAMPSTEAD HEATH DITCH

After a small break work is continuing on the boundary ditch (weather permitting). Anybody interested in volunteering, or just interested, is welcome to drop by and find out what’s involved (see map in September’s Newsletter)

· HADAS has been asked to help in watching work in roads to be affected by re-routing of services in preparation for the roadworks/widening of the North Circular Road. At present this is around the Golders Green Road area. Nothing of any note has yet been seen.

n From Tessa Smith: Planning applications have been received for the Upper Welsh Harp, where a Bronze Age barrow was destroyed when the Welsh Harp Reservoir was constructed, and for land at 217- 227 West Hendon Broadway. which is close by. English Heritage has asked the applicant that archaeological assessments be carried out.

EXCAVATION REPORTS FROM OTHER UNITS

Bridgedown Evaluation: The Herts Archaeology Trust kindly sent a report of their evaluation at the Bridgedown Golf Course, just north of Chipping Barnet, (August Newsletter), here are some extracts. “200 trenches were cut, these being between 10-30m in length and 2m wide, spaced at approx 30m intervals. The areas trenched encompassed significant ground disturbance associated with construction of the golf course. These comprise the clubhouse, tree planting, lakes, greens, tees, fairways and bunkers. The entire site has been extensively drained to combat the heavy subsoil, and much evidence of land and mole drainage was observed. A number of man-made pits and ditches were located, the majority are post-medieval, i.e. relatively modern, but a handful contained Saxo-Norman and Roman pottery. Very few archaeological features were found. Those that were are dispersed and not readily indicative of concentrated activity i.e. an archaeological site”. There then follows a list of trenches with features and their fills, perhaps the most interesting being:

“Trench 36 contained a number of shallow depressions, filled with a light grey/brown, silty clay and flint nodules (5%) and charcoal (I%)- They contained sherds of coarse, flint tempered, Saxo-Norman (11th­12th century) pottery. Trench 121, feature 100 is an elongated pit 0.75m long 0.45m wide. It is filled with a light/mid grey silty clay, with flint inclusions and charcoal. It contains iron nails and thin-walled, dark grey pottery of Roman date (no other details). Feature 101 is a gully with similar fill to F100 and also contained Roman pottery. Features in trench 121 may be indicative of an archaeological site located beyond the north-western boundary of the area of development”.

The shallow hollows with 11/12th century pot mentioned, sound remarkably similar to features that were found during the laying of a gas pipe line near Dyrham Lane, Hertsmere, about 1.5 miles N/W of the golf course (August 1993 Newsletter). Here, the pottery was thought to be domestic and looked very similar to that from the Arkley kiln site.

Field Evaluation, 86 West Heath Road, NW3: A report of the work undertaken by Mike Webber (independent archaeological consultant) on behalf of developers London and Argyle Ltd has also been received. Twelve test pits were dug which revealed features associated with modern horticultural activity. Two unabraded flint blades and a blade fragment, mesolithic or neolithic, were recovered as well as sherds of Border Ware (1550-1750), Post Medieval Fine Redware (1600-1800), an early 17th century clay tobacco pipe bowl and other more modem domestic wares. The unabraded condition of the prehistoric artifacts suggests they were found close to their place of original deposition showing that full use was made of the local environment – not just the well-watered and dry sands of West Heath but also the less-well drained, wooded areas that surrounded it. It was concluded that post-medieval activity destroyed the earlier deposits.

Both reports are held in the HADAS library at Avenue House and are available for loan.

A LETTER SENT FROM THE TRAVELLERS’ CLUB, 5th October, 1995 Author unknown

Dear Bungle,

The strangest thing happened this morning at the Club and I don’t really know what to do about it. I was in the library, the most valuable club library in the country, perusing the fine collection of 1st editions and, as always, admiring the frieze cast from the Temple of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia and as is my wont, occasionally leaning against the corinthian columns that divide the room into three, when 1 heard the sound of voices, mainly womens’ voices, coming from downstairs. At first they came from the Morning Room or it could have been the Ladies Dining Room next to it. That was fine but I realised it was too early for luncheon when the ladies are usually admitted so who could it be? Then I heard the House Manager explaining some of Charles Barry’s architecture – how the unusual feature of the Club was its central well open to the sky with three rooms and a corridor surrounding it. The narrow corridor allowed the three rooms to be larger and the well made for a light and airy feel to the building. Tourists! I settled down into my favourite leather armchair but soon was back on my feet. They were in the Gentlemen’s smoking room. I could hear them admiring the leather armchairs, the country house style fireplaces and making some unkind comments about the stale tobacco smell. And they weren’t even members! I bet they looked at the bound copies of Punch too! The quiet of Carlton House Gardens impressed them – I couldn’t wait until they heard the noise of Pall Mall within the dining room, should they be allowed to progress upstairs. Damn it all. I travelled to four countries outside Europe and America, had to have two nominations from people who had known me for over five years and be elected to membership without opposition by the committee for the privilege of using this building. And pay an annual fee of £750. These interlopers were now in the corridor, marvelling at that trick fireplace that backed onto the well with a window immediately above it. The Manager then told them that the smoke was extracted via a flue running to the left not above as in normal fireplaces. With indignation I sank back into my chair.

I must have dozed for a few moments for I then heard them declining to travel upstairs in the second oldest lift in London. Upstairs! It was no consolation that I had guessed right – they disliked the noise of Pall Mall in the first floor dining room but appreciated the mirrors at each end which gave reflections of the chandeliers through to infinity. The dome over the staircase had been restored to its former glory which they also appreciated. They moved on into the Castlereagh Room named after one of our founders in 1819, although, as you know, we have only been here since 1832 when this Italian Renaissance design of Barry’s was completed. I heard the Manager tell more of our secrets, the two suicides in the mid-19th century, one a failed gambler, the other a manic depressive and they were even shown our voting boxes.

The secret door in the library, the one with the fake books on it, opened and Jones came through carrying some bottles of sherry. For me? I joked. No, the chap said, it’s for our visitors. That’s it, I thought. I am all for friendliness, but when a chap can’t have some peace and quiet in his own club or a snooze in its library then the world is a worse place. You know, old boy, while supping our sherry, they would want to see Thackeray’s chair, the frieze, another country house fireplace and stare at the Gardens from the balustrade. Time for action I thought. 1 enquired who these people were. He told me HAAS. Never heard of them! They are interested in dusty old relics, he said, looking me straight in the eye. Well, discretion being the better part of valour, I laid back, put The Thunderer over my face and quietly sank into dreams of the Hindu Kush where life was so different those many years ago. There were no tourists!

A VISIT TO PALL MALL & ST JAMES’S, 5th OCTOBER, 1995 Roy Walker

Mary Connell braved the discomfort of a painful leg to lead a small group around the Travellers’ Club, the work of Sir Charles Barry, and then for a tour of Pall Mall and St James’s. The Club was virtually unoccupied that early in the morning so we had a rare opportunity to inspect a piece of grand Georgian architecture under the guidance of the House Manager, Nigel Sharpe. The tour finished with a glass of sherry in the library, disturbed only by the flutter of that day’s Times newspaper. Mary’s tour then encompassed the architecture of Clubland – exteriors only. We were shown the homes of clubs, both past and present including the former United Services Club, now the Institute of Directors: the Athenaeum with its external Parthenon frieze and the Duke of Wellington’s mounting block: the Reform Club (next door to the Travellers’ also designed by Barry, completed in 1841) and the massive RAC Club. The home of Neil Gwynne next to the late-17th century Schonberg House gave rise to speculation as to the origin of the Dukedom of St Albans. Clubland was followed into St James’s Street now the home of the Carlton Club, Boodles, Whites and Brooks. Pickering Place, once the home of the Ambassador to the Lone Star State of Texas was inspected and Mary drew our attention to the commercial aspects of this select part of London -Berry Bros &Rudd, Lobb’s and Lock & Co noted for wines, shoes and hats, operating from premises dating from the early 18th century to the early 19th. Shining shoes and furry hats were in evidence when we had paused between Pall Mall and St James’s Street to watch the guard change at St James’s Palace. No doubtText Box: 4 the wine would have been in evidence when the officers fell out.

On that morning, courtesy of Mary, we had in a very small circuit seen the architecture of Nash, Decimus Burton, Sir Charles Barry, Norman Shaw, Robert and Sidney Smirke, Luytens, James Wyatt and Pennethorne. We had supped sherry in a Club established for travellers some 170 years ago and enjoyed the Changing of the Guard at a Tudor palace built on the site of a hospital for leper maidens! Those that enjoyed the morning thank Mary for sharing her love and knowledge of London with us – it is a very generous thing to do.

THE SPITALFIELDS’ PROJECT Roy Walker

Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, Spitalfield’s, opened in 1729, has been claimed to be London’s finest Baroque church. At the October lecture we delved deep into its history, down into the crypt which had been sealed since 1860. Here, coffins compacted to a height of 9 feet were removed by a MoLAS team and their grisly contents cleaned and measured on site over an eighteen month period. Further scientific analysis followed and is still ongoing. Theya Molleson of the Natural History Museum took us through the results of this work and indicated the areas where future research is needed. The excavation provided skeletal material of known age and sex, details given on coffin plates and in Parish records. Significantly, this enabled the methods of bone dating and sexing to be applied to a controlled sample and to test the efficacy of these methods. First some statistics -385 individuals, one third of the sample, had dates and names; the earliest was born in 1648, the latest in 1853; the earliest burial was in 1729, the last in 1852; the age at death covered all ranges, they did not all die at 30! They were on average shorter than today, males 5 feet 5 inches, the females four inches shorter. Historically, this was a period of scientific exploration. It was the beginning of medical schools, dissection and (ironically perhaps) grave robbing. One recovered skull showed signs of an autopsy. There were signs of dental work on others – the first mercury/silver amalgam filling of modern time, “Waterloo” teeth and porcelain ones on springs. The measurement of teeth provides an accurate indication of age and it was possible to compare the Spitalfields sample with modern growth rates. As it was with other parts of the skeleton and we were shown graphs of bone analysis. Comparison of the long bones indicate that at birth the sample were equal to 20th century population but by the age of one or two years there was a falling away and growth never catches up. The reasons for this were explored – sickness perhaps, the age of weaning or poor diet when being weaned. However, the sample had not necessarily died young nor had the development caught up in later life when the diet had improved. The Spitalfields weaving community would have started work from the age of seven or weight and a contributing factor to poor development may have been this working beyond adequate energy intake. The average age of death was 56 years, male and female but the low 90s were achieved.

With the wealth of known age and sex, “blind” tests were run to compare estimated age and sex (as would be carried out on unknown archaeological samples)with the known facts. The results showed that the younger individuals had higher estimated ages and the older samples were given younger ages. for example, Louisa Courtauld who died aged 77 years had the bones of a 50 year old. And she had eight children!

Further investigations were carried out. Bone achieves full thickness at 30 years and women in the sample thin out from the age of 50. Today’s woman thins out from the age of 30 to 35 – there is now less density at an earlier age. This indicates a change over the last 150 years in the life style of women living in London – perhaps less physical activity is the reason.

One example emphasised the need to involve experts in forensic interpretation. Two holes in a skull were not recognised as gunshot wounds until the death certificate was consulted – white marks on a subsequent x-ray revealed lead from the bullet. It was a suicide who had suffered from abscesses – evidently gout and toothache were major causes of suicide! There was an 18th/19th century epidemic of gout due to kidney damage from a high intake of lead. Theya pointed out that this was dietary lead not inhaled lead which would have come from lead cisterns or lead-lined wooden barrels. Diet was examined but there was a problem over possible contamination of the sample from the coffin metals themselves. A skeleton from a wooden coffin had four times the modern lead content so this was obviously a dietary intake not influenced by the coffin materials. To test whether skeletal metals from those interred in lead coffins were dietary or absorbed from the coffin involved a piece of statistical logic for which Theya apologised as being difficult to follow so I shall not apologise again for failing to repeat it here! Other metals could be linked to diet -potassium from vegetables, copper from shellfish especially when stored in verdigris used as a bactericide. We finished with the relevance of oysters in the diet of that period – 3 million a year from Whitstable alone – common to the rich and the poor alike. Theya wondered if this was why they had such large families!

Theya was impressed by the standard of questions at the end of the lecture so much so that she complimented the Society on its interest in the Project.

CALLEVA ATREBATUM Bill Bass

Following our outing to Silchester and walk around the Roman town wall, I recently managedto visit the Museum of Reading where the principal collection of finds are kept. At present the refurbished
galleries are based on three floors with The Silchester Gallery being on the third. Here you can see a wealth of objects relating to everyday life from the site including jewellery, fine glass and pottery, sculpture,

mosaics, locks and keys, coins and craftsmen’s tools. The exhibition also explains how the political and legal life of the town functioned from the Forum/Basilica and the social centre of the baths;and how trade in

the province was conducted in the shops, inns and work-shops of the town. Also of interest on the floor below is a full-scale replica of the Bayeux Tapestry displayed in a continuous show- case Sewn by thirty five Victorian ladies, the replica was the idea of Mrs Elizabeth Wardle, leader of the Staffordshire Leek Embroidery Society, no less. It is faithful to the original in every detail, recreating the original colours, fabric, design and embroidery stitches. There are brief interpretive panels below the scenes.

THE WHOLE TOOTH AND NOTHING BUT. • •

Well not quite, it wasn’t a whole one and it was found in association with a load of other stuff!

A few weeks after our visit to the Boxgrove site, it was announced they had discovered Britain’s oldest human fossil (we didn’t forget anybody did we?). The tooth was found surrounded by animal bones, lumps of chalk And the waste products of flint tool manufacture. It is probable that the dental clue – a lower central incisor – belonged to a mature or elderly male, 17mm of its length survived of an estimated 25mm. Its enamel covering was at least 50% thicker than that found in modern human teeth. Together with evidence from the tibia, found 30 feet away, the tooth found slightly deeper, supports the conclusion that the early humans of Boxgrove were big – between 5 feet 10 inches and 6 feet tall.

Also noted by several members when visiting Boxgrove were similarities between the excavation here and that of West Heath. – careful trowelling of sandy material, finding flint and accurate three-dimensional recording. It was also interesting to see the use of baulks between trenches, in a time when “open area” excavation appears more fashionable.

TRAINED SPOTTERS

Under the guise of industrial archaeology, two members of HADAS joined a walk exploring old railway trackbeds in north London earlier this summer. The railway in question used to be the old LNER branch from Finsbury Park to Highgate, Alexandra Palace, High Barnet and Edgware. It was proposed that the branch would be electrified and extended to Bushey Heath (via Edgware) as part of the Northern Line but due to a lack of resources after the War and the creation of the Green Belt it was decidedto modify these plans to the tube system we have today. In fact, it was more than proposed. An estimated f2 million ( pre – War value) was spent on works such as cable-runs, signalling, civil engineering and, in the case of Highgate, a completely new high level station – all abandoned!

The tour concentrates on features of this uncompleted project, many of these items are still in situ and can be inspected especially between Finsbury Park and Highgate as this section has been left as a footpath. The line can be traced through Highgate Wood, now rather overgrown, to Ally Pally. From here buses took the party to view sections past Mill Hill East to Edgware. Further north, the only remaining evidence are traces of a brick-built arched viaduct which would have supported a station at Brockley Hill. A tunnel under the hill would have reached Elstree and thence Bushey Heath.

Organised by Jim Blake, this walk is an annual event held on the first Sunday in July and is documented by him in his book “Northern Wastes”.

THE ABBEY HABIT Bill Bass

Martin Biddle has continued his excavations at St Alban’s Abbey this year. A five weeks campaign during August and September saw three or four HADAS members taking part. Trenches from last year were left open over the winter so that rain and frost could work on the difficult clay subsoil and more features were observed and planned for the forthcoming dig. These included further graves from the Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon cemeteries, with more work on the cellarium with excavation of the north-west corner. Several more Roman burials were investigated, most contained evidence for coffins (e.g. nails) and grave goods such as pottery and glass attested to possible graveside ceremonies. There was an example of a “flexed” burial; another had signs of a healed bone fracture. Of the Saxon burials at least three generations were identified. These graves can be broadly dated to the 10th and 11th centuries by the presence of “pillow stones” supporting the heads.

Those members who have seen Fountains Abbey will have some impression of what the vaulted cellarium would have looked like. Last year’s trench in this area was extended to reveal more of the northern end, again with remains of the ribbed vaulting and decorated floor tiles which had collapsed into the cellar on demolition. Study here of the different mortars, wall facings and floor surfaces will give further understanding of the phasing and relationship of the cellarium to the outer court and Abbot’s reception parlour. Usually there were twenty or so people on site, all volunteers except the Biddies, ranging from local diggers to students, others from America, Germany etc. The work in sweltering conditions was hard but enjoyable. In future, Martin would like to excavate further south of the medieval complex, where he feels St Alban was originally buried 700 years before Paul of Caen, the first Norman abbot, built his Abbey.

CUTTING COMMENTS

· In the Daily Mail (25 September) there’s a report on a new site, 10 miles from Skara Brae in the Orkneys. It was found by a local farmer when ploughing and a team from Glasgow University used geophysical techniques to pinpoint further walls. Excavation has revealed stone furniture, recesses in the wall which look like beds, a polished stone axe and worked flints, This was contained in two complete houses with walls still standing eight to ten stones high. The team are confident that Stonehall, as it is now called, is several centuries older than Skara Brae: carbon dating of charred hearth wood may confirm this.

· Thinking of moving? The same newspaper pictures a fort in the mouth of the River Cleddau at Milford Haven. Historic Stack Rock fort is up for auction at a guide price of £50,000, the buyer however will need plenty of extra cash – not to mention a boat to get there, as “substantial renovation” is required. The limestone structure, with brick and stone interior, has 29 rooms on three levels. Built in the 1850s to protect the Royal Naval Dockyard at Pembroke from Napoleon Ill, it remained in military use until the end of World War II, but has since been in private hands.

Text Box: 7HAVE TROWEL – WILL TRAVEL Jean Bayne

It was in the best field archaeological tradition; cockroaches in the kitchen, ants in the shower and alcohol in the fridge !. These were the high profile features of the small, dark spartan flat which was our living quarters this summer at Roda de Ter, about 50 miles north east of Barcelona. I had gone there with a friend from a field archaeology class to undertake a week’s excavation in connection with the course. To complete the picture, ten young, lively, funny, caring students were crammed into the tiny flat with us !. Every morning we were on site, L’Esquerda, by eight o’clock, trowel in hand and we worked through until nightfall. Our afternoon break was for a large 4 course meal with wine in the local workman’s cafe, but ‘siesta’ seemed to be an unknown English concept 1. Another large 4 course meal was taken about 10.00-

10.30 at night. After this the students went dancing but we couldn’t stand up!. Even the weather took us by surprise: in other years, we were told, the temperatures reached 43°c. This year was an exception: rain, mists and early morning chilly cold!. Everyone except us was very excited about the rain – during which we processed finds – and told us constantly about high temperatures in London while we shivered in our ‘hot summer’ gear!.

The site was spectacular. Perched alongside the village on a hilltop with the river Ter running around it below and forests on the nearby hillsides, we looked out across a wide valley surrounded by mountains. Ruins were clearly visible at the furthest northern end of the long flat hilltop and at the southern end was an earlier prehistoric site.

The local villagers were fiercely proud of their site and could trace their involvement back to the beginning of the century. Back then all that was visible was one wall of the ruined medieval church as the site had been farmed continuously since the 14th century. Nevertheless, they knew that there were extensive archaeological remains running the length and breadth of the hilltop. When the villagers heard of plans to build a factory there they dug up the fields to expose the archaeology in an attempt to thwart the plan. No factory was ever built, and the University of Barcelona began to take an interest in the site. It has always, though, acknowledged its debt to the villagers by giving them priority places on their annual two week summer dig. Some young people there had been coming to the dig for more than 10 years. Also, every October they would hold a meeting in the village, attended by over a hundred people, to explain their progress and findings. A small museum in the village houses the finds. During the rest of the year the villagers keep an eye on the site and, recently, when someone set fire to the grass on the hilltop, the fire engine was accompanied by most of the villagers!. The other diggers were university students from all over Catalonia, specializing in archaeology as part of their history degrees. We were the only foreigners out of approximately forty people.

The site spanned several chronological periods from the late Bronze Age, 7-8th century BC, (for which pottery has been found) until the late medieval period of the early 14th century. The main phases of interest are the 4th century BC, in which a fortified Iberian oppidum was built, and the 10-13th century when the medieval village was begun and expanded. The medieval site, at one end of the hilltop may have extended to the walls of the Iberian site at the other. There is also a suggestion that it is partly built over the original Iberian site as ancient water cisterns there are clearly pre-medieval. Curiously, little evidence of Roman occupation has been found although they were in the area and the village has a Roman bridge over the Ter. By the 14th century the hilltop village was deserted for the lowlands nearer the river, where it lies today.

So there are two main sites, rich in structures and finds. At the medieval end, the stone walls of small medieval houses, graves dug into the soft rock near the church, and evidence for a central square and road are clearly visible. House building appears to have been planned rather than spontaneous. Unfortunately, agricultural practice over the centuries has removed much of the stratigraphic evidence. Archaeologists suggest that its early 8-9th century use is likely to have been as one of the fortification points along the river Ter to counter the advance of the Muslim army. In later times, the area seems to have been divided into three storage places, living areas and units for agricultural production e.g a granary, a mill and floors for threshing and haystacks. Finds include stone mills, grey & black pottery, animal bones and carbonized seeds.

Whilst we were there, further wall structures were uncovered but they appeared less compact and uniform than the house walls and went off at angles and in diverse directions. This caused much interest and also seem to show that the area of occupation was extensive, built on former structures and possibly included a variety of building types.

The Iberian was also dominated by structures though less immediately visible. It was a fortification with evidence for walls, tower and gateways. Four large post-holes suggested timber construction and a major street was evident. Storage rooms for weaponry, pottery and other objects have been found. An example of early urban living Greek pottery suggests that it was also a community involved in trade.

We worked on the smaller Iberian site, cleaning features and trowelling several new walls; gateways came to light and a more precise picture of the overall layout was exposed. Former ploughing, though, made it difficult to find clean stratigraphic levels with any precision: the soil was very mixed. There were a few areas where the soil changes were dramatic and one or two spots which were jealously guarded as it was thought that they might have escaped deep ploughing because of the stone walls. (These were to be explored last – a bit like leaving your favourite morsel of foodto the end!). Finds were abundant: pot of different kinds, bones, a few coins and some iron objects. Charcoal deposits were common. It seems that the site was thriving in the 4th century BC, destroyed by a major fire in the 3rd century BC and reconstructed during the Ist/2nd century BC.

As there was only enough money to finance a fortnight’s digging, the pace was relentless, albeit very good-natured. The people we worked with were easy-going, charming, gentle and courteous and there was much fun and laughter. We were very well looked after, though we had to, graciously, decline offers to go disco-dancing at midnight!. They all spoke Catalan and I soon discovered that my efforts to show off my few words of Spanish were defined as “politically incorrect”. The site directors were two delightful women, dedicated to the Catalan cause. So we made do with their English which they enjoyed practising and a lot of guesswork and gesture. The last Saturday we spent in Barcelona in a luxury hotel – soft beds with pillows, an enormous bath and fluffy towels. We felt more like ‘stretcher’ archaeologists by then than ‘field’ or even armchair ones! But we will always remember our experience in Catalonia with great affection!

FURTHER DIARY DATES

Museum of London, Friday lunchtime lectures, 1.10 pm – 1.50 pm

The general theme is “Excavating London Today”

November 3rd Digging at No 1 Poultry (Peter Rowsome)

November 17th Cranford Lane: a prehistoric site in west London (Mark Birley & Nick Elsden) November 24th Medieval London Bridge: lost and found (Trevor Brigham & Bruce Watson) Museum of London Study Day

PHOTOGRAPHERS’ LONDON

Saturday 25th November, 1995, 1 0.00 am – 5.00 pm Fee f15.00 (concession £7.50)

Complements the exhibition Photographers’ London7839-7994 which runs until 31st December, 1995. Essex Archaeological Symposium

Saturday 4th November, 1995, 10.00 am – 4.30 pm, at St Charles Hall, Holland Road, Clacton-on-Sea. Tickets f 4.50, includes tea and coffee, from Pamela Greenwood, Newham Museum Service, Archaeology and Local History Centre, 31 Stock Street, Plaistow, London, E13 OBX (tel 0181-472 4785)

Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Kent

Saturday 11th November, 1995, 2.15 – 5.30 pm, at Christ Church College, North Holmes Road, Canterbury. Organised by the Council for Kentish Archaeology, 5 Harvest Bank Road, West Wickham, Kent, BR4 9DL from whom tickets are available at £2.00, cheques payable to CKA, sae required.

LAMAS Local History Conference

BANISHING LONDON’S SLUMS

Saturday 18th November, 1995, 10.10 am – 5.00 pm at the Museum of London.

Tickets (f 3.50) and enquiries from LAMAS, 36 Church Road, West Drayton, Middlesex, 1JB/ /PX. SCOLA Open Meeting

WHERE YOU SAT IN A MEDIEVAL HOUSE (AN ARCHAEOLOGIST’S VIEW) Dr Philip Dixon, President of CBA Saturday 4th November, 1995, From 2.15 pm, Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly. All welcome, admission free.

HADAS DIARY

LECTURES;

Tuesday, 3rd October “The Spitalfields Project”

An interpretation of the skeletons from Christ Church, presented by Theya Mollison of the Museum of London.

Tuesday, 7th November “Not What There Used To Be” Presidential address byMichaell Robbins, FSA.

The reasons for the massive work of church restoration undertaken in the nineteenth century, some of the principal figures engaged in it and the controversies it gave rise to, and the intellectual, artistic, and social background to the process.

REMEMBER ! Venue for Lectures in 1995 is the Stephen’s Room, 1st Floor, Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley. N.3. 8 p.m. for 8.30 p.m.

MORNING WALK and VISIT to the TRAVELLERS’ CLUB with MARY O’CONNELL Thursday, 5th October PLEASE NOTE this event is fully booked. MEMBERS who have BOOKED, please meet at the Club at 10.15 a.m.(not 10.30)

LAMAS EVENTS

Tuesday, 10th October LECTURE by Colin Manton on “The Early Aircraft Industry of North London”

Lecture is at the Museum of London – refreshments at 6 p.m.-lecture 6.30. Saturday, 18th November

LOCAL HISTORY CONFERENCE – ONE DAY

“Banishing London’s Slums”

Conference is in the Lecture Theatre, Museum of London, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

MEMBERS’ NEWS

HADAS EXAMINATION SUCCESSES 1995

MASTER of ARTS – ANDY SIMPSON, in MUSEUM STUDIES,LEICESTER UNIVERSITY

BACHELOR of ARTS – CELIA GOULD (1st Class Honours) in ANCIENT WORLD STUDIES, UNIUERSITY COLLEGE, London

BIRKBECK COLLEGE CERTIFICATE and DIPLOMA in FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY

BILL BASS, CARL HUMBERSTONE and ROY WALKER have completed the DIPLOMA YEAR; JEAN BAYNE has completed the third (final) year of the CERTIFICATE.

BIRKBECK COLLEGE CERTIFICATE in HISTORY VIKKI O’CONNOR has completed the first year of the CERTIFICATE.

We hear that TED SAMMES, who has recently had a spell in hospital, is

now safely back home again, We are sure he will soon be fully restored

to health and fighting fitness as usual

HADAS members were not the only ones curious about the identity of the bearded gentleman on last Autumn’s cover of the London Archaeologist. Sadly, it is not Paddy Musgrove after all. In the following Spring edit­ion of that magazine, Stephen Castle wrote to identify Philip Suggett, the site director, with Gilbert F. Cole inspecting a flagon at Brockley Hill in 1952. Our thanks to Max Hoathen for that information.

From Tessa Smith.

HENDON AERODROME

I had not been close to the buildings at Hendon Aerodrome for some time, although I had kept an eye on them in passing from the train or the motor­way and was satisfied that they were still standing. It was something of a shock, therefore, to walk around the area one hot afternoon in August to find that all but the Listed Buildings around the Grahame White Hangar have been razed to the ground,

The hangar, factory, and offices with control tower above are now highly visible from Grahame Park Way. The windows are boarded up and the balcony to the offices is in a poor state of repair. The neglect of these hist­oric buildings is only too evident. Unfortunately, there is not much one can do. The site retires money and that is the one thing that is lacking.

By contrast, the nearby hotel built by Grahame White for VIPs has been taken over by Middlesex University and, at least externally, looks in

good shape. One wonders what the university has done, or what the students will do, to the interior.,,but let’s be thankful that something of the Grahame White ’empire’ looks likely to survive.

From the grounds of the RAF Museum one can also see the 1930s buildings put up by the RAF during the expansion period before World War Two. These, too, are boarded up, and the weeds are growing high around them. They seem to be the next candidates for demolition. They are not unique – the RAF still uses similar buildings at other stations. However, it seems a pity that they cannot somehow be incorporated into the RAF Museum as actual ex-

amples of some of the buildings typical of RAF stations. They would be so much better than the models in the museum.

From Bill Firth.

DURHAM and HADRIAN’S WALL

The 1995 Long Weekend at Three World Heritage Sites – DAY 1

It’s ten past eight at Golders Green station, and the last group of hardy HADAS members join the coach bound for ‘Up North’. To our sur­pulse, there are a few empty seats. This, our amiable driver (Andy) explains, is because we are in a substitute coach; the one we should have had (plus loo) was leaking through the roof. By the time we reached Hadrian’s Wall in the rain, we were glad to have the water­proofed version.

The first leg of the journey took us to Tuxford, where we stopped for coffee at The Newcastle Arms. After coffee, the members divided into two main groups. One group explored the nearby church of St. Nicholas, part of which dates back to Saxon times. A stained glass St. Lawrence window dating from the 15th century could be seen – but why is it there in the church of St. Nicholas ?

From there we headed North. . The first. World Heritage site on our tour was Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Gardens, where we stopped for our lunch and a walk. Once the largest Abbey in England, and now the largest monastic remains, Fountains Abbey was founded in 1132, on a site which was later described as ‘fit more for the dens of wild beasts than for the use of man’. The buildings were reconstructed between 1148 and 1179, after enemies of the Abbot had broken in and destroyed the.Abbey by fire. The only major additions after 1179 were the Chapel of the Nine Altons in the 13th century, and the north Tower in the 15th century. At first, the monks suffered considerable hardship but the Abbey ultimately became the richest Cistercian house in England. The ruins clearly demonstrate the layout of a Norman and medieval monas­tic foundation as the whole ground plan has survived, and we could see the nave,tower, refectory, lay brothers’ quarters and cellarium with its fine vaulting, The Abbey also possesses its 12th century tunnell – ing, constructed to conduct the river Skell for waterworks and drainage. After viewing the Abbey, we then had time to walk around the beautiful water garden, dating from 1716, which is set in the steep-sided valley of the Skell. It is made up of straight canals and geometrically-shaped pools, with statues, temples and towers tucked into the land­scape of ridges and trees. An altogether enchanting place…

North again to Durham. We parked in the coach parkand transferred by minibus or on foot to St. John’s College. On arrival we were ushered into the dining hall where tea was served and rooms were allocated. Supper was taken in the dining room – a fine wood-panelled room with photographs of former college students on the walls. After refresh­ments, HADAS adjourned to the lecture theatre, where we had a short welcome talk, and then met our guide, Richard Brickstock. He present­ed an illistrated Lecture to introduce us to the area of Durham and Hadrian’s Wall, and to familiarize us with some of the local delights to come…

In summary

When HADAS from Hendon departed,

Our journey to Durham had started.

With Richard our guide,

Whose knowledge was wide,

Our experts were truly out-smarted.

Paul and Micky 0’Flynn

Day 2 – Saints and soldiers

Friday was a busy day with visits to a 12th century church, two major sites and Durham University’s Archaeological Museum.

The first stop of the day was at St Lawrence Church, Hallgarth in Pittington which was once part of the endowments of the Benedictine monastery in Durham. The church has the most wonderful carved Norman pillars, alternately octagonal and round. The octagonal pillars are decorated with vertical fluting; the round ones each have a spiral carved in relief, climbing sinuously round them from base to capital. Chi either side of the westernmost of two small windows are two impressive 12th century wall paintings, rediscovered in 1846 and restored in the early 1970s. One shows the consecration of St. .Cuthbert as a Bishop, with Ecfrith the King of Northumbria in the background. The other records St.Cuthbert’s vision of the death of “a holy person” which occurred when he was dining with the Abbess Aelfleda at Whitby Abbey. These two paintings may once have been part of a much larger cycle illustrating St.Cuthbert’s life. At the west end of the nave there is an intriguing collection of medieval sculptured stones and grave markers.

On our way to South Shields we paused briefly at the Penshaw Monument, a 19th century classical Greek temple paid for by subscriptions from Durham miners and later we glimpsed Hylton Castle, a 12th century fortified manor house, now reduced to a gutted shell.

Our main visit of the morning was to the Roman fort of Arbeia at South Shields, which lies in the middle of a residential area of the town on a flat-topped hill overlooking the mouth of the River Tyne. The importance of the site to the Romans was its position guarding a port on the riverside below (as yet undiscovered), through which passed men, materials and supplies on their way to Hadrian’s Wall and the frontier area.

Early excavation took place in 1875 when the land was cleared for housing. Many finds were unearthed and the remains of the buildings preserved as a “People’s Roman Remains Park”. Further excavations were carried out in 1930s, 50s and 60s. In 1975 Tyne & Wear Museums were given the responsibility of the site and they have been working continuously on the research area. (which covers 1000 square metres) since 1983.

Recent fmds of flint tools and an Iron Age farmstead indicate early occupation of the headland site but the date of the earliest Roman military occupation has still to be determined. Buildings dated to c. AD 125 seem to belong to a civilian settlement outside an early fort which has still to be located.

The site is very complex as buildings were altered, enlarged and adapted to the changing circumstances of the legions during the centuries of Roman occupation. In AD 160s when Hadrian’s Wall was re-occupied following the abandonment of the Antonine Wall further north, a new fort was built at South Shields. Its size indicated a garrison of 480 foot soldiers and 120 cavalry. In the early 3rd century it was enlarged to form a great supply base with thirteen huge stone-built granaries, each raised above ground level to allow underfloor ventilation of the stored grain. In the late 3rd/early 4th centuries there is evidence that many buildings within the fort were destroyed by fire and in the re-building granaries were converted into barracks. As previously, the fort was divided into two areas, the supply base to the north and the garrison accommodation to the south. A large courtyard house, a set of baths and a new headquarters building were erected. When the legions left Britain in the 5th century the fort continued to be occupied, probably by a local British chief. It may finally have been abandoned in the 7th century when the monasteries at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow were built. Dominating the site today is the impressive reconstructed West Gate, opened in 1988, which gives a vivid idea of the scale of Roman military building.

The afternoon visit was to Bede’s World, the museum of early medieval Northumbria in Jarrow. It is being developed on an 11 acre site on the banks of the River Don, adjacent to St. Paul’s Church and the remains of Bede’s Monastery. The centrepiece is a new museum building, not yet finished, designed in the style of an Italian villa complete with atrium. An experimental medieval farm is being recreated around the museum building to bring to life the world Bede knew. Medieval techniques are being used to construct timber-framed buildings and two oxen (called Wellington and Bantu) are being trained to pull a wooden plough. Ancient strains of wheat are being grown and more crops will be planted as the soil is improved. Sheep, pigs and pond complete the picture. 10,003 native species trees have been planted but unfortunately most have suffered badly in this summer’s drought. The whole ambitious project which aims to preserve the Jarrow site as a centre of historical, religious and cultural importance will cost £5 million.

The 7th century church of St. Paul built by monks from Monkwearmouth, has a beautiful Saxon chancel with fragments of some of the oldest stained glass in Europe set together in a small window. Outside the church are the remains of the domestic buildings of the monastery and the standing ruins date mainly from the 11th century. Bede came to Jarrow c.685 and taught, studied and wrote sixty books. He died in 735 and his bones now lie in the Galilee Chapel of Durham Cathedral.

Our return to Durham was delayed by traffic approaching the Tyne tunnel and unfortunately we were too late to visit the Heritage Centre in the city. After supper we walked to the old Fulling Mill on the river bank below the Cathedral which now houses the University’s Archaeological Museum. Richard Brigstock, our guide for the week-end is Curator of the Museum and arranged to open it specially for us. The excellent displays traced the development of the City, and presented key information about the history of Northumbria from Neolithic times to the present day. Friday was a full, exciting and exhausting day -well planned and illuminated by enthusiastic guides at every stop.

Day 3 – Saturday – Hadrian’s Wall

We woke to rain and leaden skies, the Sun-god had deserted us! No Problem! Our cohort set out for Hadrian’s Wall brandishing umbrellas instead of swords and spears, raincoats instead of cuirasses. We travelled north via Penshaw Monument. Hefty black and Parthenon-like, conspicuous for miles around, until the driver of our chariot manipulated a very tight corner most skillfully and we drew up at Corbridge (Corstopitum) Fort at the point where Stanegate – East/west, met Dere Street – north/south,

The vast expanse of stone foundations was impressive indeed buttressed stores with flagged stone floors suspended ation flues – elaborate series of conduits to channel supply – an aqueduct with basin pediment and statue bases – the famous Corbridge lion astride a stag. Inside the museum we warmed our hands and used our imagination to bring the camp to life – the Roman tools, medical instruments, ornaments, rings and the fascinating boxed hoard of armour, clamoured for our attention.

ndeed, huge over ventil­the water

In Corbridge village we saw the stone arch purloined from the Roman site and integrated near the bell-tower of the church. Some of us also saw the local leek show! Huge monsters, like fallen warriors, vied with each other for prize money of over £3,000

Then on towards Housesteads (Vercovicium). En route we stopped for a really close look at part of the wall and a turret, to see the construction building material, the facing stones, and huge vellum ditch. The wall was built by three Roman legions :

II Augusta, XX Valeria Victrix, and VI Victrix, and the turrets were a third of a Roman mile apart. Hands up those of you who know how long is a Roman mile !

Housesteads itself is built on a dramatic site on the crest of a steep escarpment with a huge drop on the north side. The hills were green and wet, we were damp and cold …

‘ Over the heather the wet wind blows,

I’ve lice in my tunic and cold in my nose –

The rain comes pattering out of the sky –

I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why.’

(W.H. Auden, with thanks to Muriel Large)

In contrast to the barracks, the commander’s house was opulent and impressive; built round a courtyard with under-floor heating, it incorporated kitchens, latrines and stabling. Another court-yard building has been interpreted as a hospital block, and, of course, there was the granary. But the best preserved building is set at the south-east corner, with scalloped stone holding-tank, a magnificent temple-like latrine with panoramic views.

We slithered down the slippery slopes; some slithered more than others, and on to the mysterious Carrawburgh Mithraeum. Here the Roman soldiers worshipped Mithras the god of light and witnessed the slaying of the bull in dark secrecy, with initiation rites to test powers of endurance and courage. The small sanctuary contained stone altars and sculptures, one of which had a pierced halo to allow through the flickering light& a candle. Spooky !

Thence onwards to altogether more convivial and lively wining and dining at the County Hotel in Hexham. Then, for some, a final spirited gathering in the college cellar-bar, for others a sprightly search for an empty hypocaust, for all of us, reluctantly, our last night in Durham.

Tessa Smith

Day 4 Sunday, 3rd September Part One – Durham Castle

We left St John’s College, where we had all enjoyed our stay, on Sunday morning, to visit the Castle and later Durham Cathedral. It was raining hard, so we walked quickly to the Castle and all were pleased to see a canopy opposite the main entrance where we could shelter before our guide arrived. The Castle, like the

Cathedral, was built on the narrow neck of land that once guarded the approach to the City. It was originally on the site of a Saxon church, founded in A.D. 995. The Castle was built about 1072, and formerly, for a while, the seat of the Bishops before they

moved to Bishop Auckland. The Bishops were the secular as well as the spiritual lords of the County Durham – which is a County Palatine.

Before we were taken upstairs, we descended to the old Norman Chapel, started 1078, but abandoned and opened up years later in 1840. It has the original Norman floor tiles. The sandstone pillars are mixed with iron, hence the lovely shades going down each one. The windows had been closed off with soil years ago to protect the Chapel. Services are held there today. We then climbed a spiral staircase and after I got my breath back I was able to walk along the Constable’s Gallery and admire the big table which is over 500 years old. Part of this gallery had been made into the Bishop’s quarters, but not now – there was some mention

of a ghost, but not around whilst we were there !

We then went to see the Great Staircase and admired a surrounding table which was originally used for hearing in the Cathedral, but earlier thought to be an ordinary table. The stairs were really beautiful, but had to be re-inforced over the years with black-looking tree trunks, which blended with the stairs.

We moved on to see the 13th century Great Hall, which was probably built in Bishop Bek’s time and is still used by the University

for many functions, including the awarding of degrees. The Castle houses the University and is the third oldest after 0xford and Cambridge. The students still have their meals in the Great Hall and we saw the Royal Arms of Charles II. On one wall there were hel­mets from the Civil War, including small helmets worn by children, who were in the army too. The lovely woodwork walls in the Hall were put in by the University, but blended in well. Then we were taken to see the original kitchens – still in use today, but mod­ernised. Bishop Fox in the 15th century had them built, and his black service hatches are still in use – in front there are prayers carved at the top of the hatches, so when food is served it has already been blessed by the Bishop. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Castle.

P.S. On Wednesday, 6th September, I watched a repeat of ‘Songs of Praise’ on BBC 2 and it was about Fountains Abbey -how lovely to see again the Abbey and beautiful walks along the river and the ruins of the area.

Thanks to all who arranged this weekend away.

Phyllis Fletcher

Day 4 Sunday, 3rd September Part Two – Durham Cathedral

Our final visit was to Durham Cathedral. As we entered via the Galilee Chapel, we could hear beautiful choral music. There was a service in progress, followed by a Communion Service for a vast gathering of lady bowlers in their whites and panama hats. The service was not due to finish until 12.30 p.m., so we took the opportunity to visit the cloisters, almshouses and other places of interest, followed by an early snack lunch at the Undercroft Cafe. Although time was limited, we were able to see the main features of the Cathedral: the tomb of the Venerable Bede in the Galilee Chapel; the 17th century font with magnificent carved canopy; a few yards from the font, a line of Purbeck marble set in the floor marking the boundary which no woman was allowed to pass-in accordance with Benedictine regulation; the splendid nave with huge incised columns;

the Bishop’s throne built by Thomas Hatfield, 1345 – 1381; and in

the choir in place of honour, St Cuthbert’s tomb behind the altar, together with a semi-circular lead line set in the floor showing

the position of the Norman Apse. Before leaving by the North door, I could not resist touching the Sanctuary Knocker, so called because it was used by criminals and others for their safety from pursuers.

The Cathedral was the ideal setting to bid farewell to Durham.

Thank you, Dorothy, for a well organised trip, full of archaeol­ogical and historical interest.

Marjorie Errington.

THE TREASURE OF PIGSTY VILLA from John Enderby, Fontmell Magma, Dorset

About two years ago when endeavouring to create a shrubbery from waste ground by our barn, I unearthed some fifty fragments of pretty flower-patterned porcelain. One wet evening sometime later, I occupied myself piecing these together with the help of polyfilla and UHU and, to my amazement, found I had an exquisite soup tureen, from what had previously been a doll’s dinner service! Every piece, including the cover, was there.

I placed the completed article on the mantelpiece, radiating pride in my handiwork. Then some six months later, Eddie and Betty Fuson, both 91, accompanied by their daughters Joan (Cherrie) and Dawn (together with Joan’s Husband, Eric), who had moved from Lurmer Street to Fosse Cottage (where John now lives) in the 1930s, called to see what we had made of their old home. Joan now lives with Eric in Zimbabwe and was on a brief visit to her parents in Bournemouth. When Joan looked at the knick-knacks on the mantelpiece her face dissolved in tears. When she had recovered, she explained that the soup tureen was hers some 60 years ago when she used to hold pretend dinner parties in the partitioned end of the barn which she called Pigsty Villa. How her treasured possession came to be found in its broken state in what had been the yard of the barn remains a mystery, but what is a happy fact is that the treasured relic is now displayed proudly in Joan’s beautiful home in Harare, Zimbabwe, having been at last reunited with its happy owner.

‘INTERNET ARCHAEOLOGY’ a new journal available to subscribers on ‘Internet’ is reported in The Times of 21st September. Published by the Council for British Archaeology, papers sub­mitted will be judged on scholarly criteria and suitability for the new medium. General articles, excavation reports and studies of new technology applied in archaeology will be available, with the advantage of much shorter time-lags to publication.

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 3rd October

Lecture: “The Spitafields Project”

Presented by Theya Mollison of The Museum of London.

Thursday 5th October

Visit: Morning walk and visit to the Travellers’ Club, Pall Mall. Guided by Mary O’Connell.

A booking form is incorporated within pages 5 & 6

Saturday 14th October

Minimart at St Mary’s Church Hall, Hendon

See enclosed sheet for details

Tuesday 7th November

Lecture: “Not What They Used To Be”

Presidential Address by Michael Robbins, FSA.

HADAS Lectures are held in the Stephen’s Room, 1st floor, Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley Central. Doors open at 8.00 pm for refreshments, lectures commence at 8.15 pm. The Society’s library in the Garden Room will be open on lecture evenings and can be accessed via the ground floor of Avenue House.

CHANGE OF DATE OF HADAS MONTHLY MEETINGS FOR 1996

HADAS has settled in at its new meeting venue, Avenue house, without too many problems and the Committee will be renewing the hire of a room in the House for 1996. However, one inconvenience is the location of the room – it is too high up requiring several flights of stairs to be negotiated. There is a slightly larger room on the ground floor, which has wheelchair access, that would suit our purposes but unfortunately it is booked regularly on the first Tuesday in the month. As intimated at the AGM (when June Porges took a rough poll on the wishes of the members present) the Committee has been considering changing the date of our monthly meetings so that this new room could be used.

The Committee has now decided to change our meetings to the second Tuesday in the month commencing with Tuesday 13th February. 1996. The remaining 1995 meetings will be on the 1st Tuesday of the month in the 1st floor room in accordance with the Programme Card.

This change has the additional advantage of being able to hold meetings in the month of January although the 9th January, 1996, has been already allocated to an evening at the Royal Institution and Faraday Museum with Mary O’Connell.

VOLUNTEERS REQUIRED FOR HAMPSTEAD HEATH SURVEY

Preliminary work has commenced on the HADAS survey of the Anglo Saxon boundary ditch at
East Heath, Hampstead, prior to the undertaking of a long-term recording project and contour survey with the likelihood of subsequent excavation across the ditch itself. The contour surveying will involve the placing of a level line across the ditch and recording at intervals the depth from the line to the surface of the ditch thus obtaining on a scale drawing the profile of the ditch at that place. This needs to be located on the map and its height OD ascertained. This work can be carried out in several places at the same time and requires teams of three for each location. The work is not difficult (honest!) and requires accuracy rather than technical ability. Further resistivity testing will also be undertaken, this also requiring a team of no less then three, so there is a need for more members to assist in this project. The work is carried out mainly at the weekends, working Saturday mornings from 10.30 am to 1.30 pm_ On Sundays we shall work from 10.30 am till about 3.00 pm taking a refreshment break (picnic lunch) at about 1.00 pm. Please contact Brian Wrigley, Roy Walker or Bill Bass for further details.

“OLD KING COLE WAS A MERRY OLD SOUL – A MERRY OLD SOUL WAS HE . ..” Ann Trewick

Setting out from Felixstowe at 9.00 am on Saturday, 15th July en route to Colchester I felt very happy to be going to meet a merry band of souls from Hendon! The weather could not make up its mind – sunshine and showers alternated. But of course it did not deter the well-experienced members of HADAS.

The first visit was to Colchester castle and museum. In my opinion this is one of the best local museums in the country. There is a wealth of information well-displayed and the Roman exhibits are particularly informative with very fine examples of artefacts from all aspects of Roman life. There is much to interest all ages and I especially liked the “hands on” experiences so good for children. This adult enjoyed them too, going so far as to try on a Roman helmet and immediately deciding that I was not prepared to walk 20 miles a day wearing it! The chain mail was even heavier! From jig-saws, language puzzles and coin-rubbing to feeling a mortarium and a lovely Samian bowl or reclining on a “Roman” chaise-longue there was plenty to excite one’s interest. The museum is housed in a building which is fascinating and I never cease to be amazed at its history. We started our tour in the Roman vaults, the basement of the temple built in honour of the emperor Claudius. As there is no local stone the Romans had to go to the in coast – Harwich, Walton and Felixstowe – to obtain septaria, a mixture of hardened mud and stones,with which to build. (The Roman fort at Felixstowe was also built with this. The fort has, unfortunately, disappeared into the sea.) Because septaria is poor building material it was reinforced with layers of red Roman bricks. These can be seen in several buildings around the town as well as in the Norman construction of the castle. The Normans used the Roman foundations for their castle, thus building the largest Norman, keep in Britain. Later, when the castle had fallen into ruins, one John Wheeley regarded it as a stone quarry but luckily he ran out of money before the building had entirely disappeared! It was rescued by a landowner in the town who bought the castle. He delighted in having a magnificent folly on his estate. He was responsible for some of the restoration, including the dome, a study, library and some arches. He must be the only person, too, who could boast an ice house in Roman ruins!

The castle was roofed over in 1935/36 after it came into the possession of the local authority in order to protect the fabric. Yet another surprise was to come when this roof was removed to effect repairs in 1988. The remains of the Norman chapel were recognized and it is believed that the chapel in the White Tower at the Tower of London was modeled on this one at Colchester. Continuing the tradition of imaginative design shown in the museum, the new roof brilliantly suggests the chapel without reconstructing it. There is even a touch of stained glass window. The visit to the roof, however, would not be complete without viewing the sycamore tree planted in 1815 to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo. The castle is altogether a very satisfactory place to visit.

After lunch we set out in three groups to explore the town of Colchester. From Roman “colonia” times to modern days, Colchester has been a thriving town with interesting stories and people connected with it. Legend has it that St Helena, the mother of that Constantine who decreed that Christians could worship freely, was born here, the daughter of Old King Cole. William Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth I, was born in Colchester and is buried in Holy Trinity churchyard. He wrote about magnetism – years ahead of his time. Part of his house is still in the centre of town, in a quiet backwater. It was later owned by Bernard Mason who collected clocks and watches made in Colchester. He left this collection to the town when he died. John Constable was a regular visitor because his solicitor owned the house which is now the Quaker Meeting House. The legend of Humpty Dumpty is reputed to have begun in this town at the time of the Siege of Colchester in 1648. A one-eyed gunner named Thompson was manning a gun on St Mary’s church tower when the top of the tower was blown off by the Parliamentarians. The gun was reputed to be a shaker gun, shaped a bit like an egg! And there’s an elephant! The weather-vane on top of the water tower sports an elephant. This is in memory of Jumbo, the largest elephant ever in captivity. It commemorates the Rector complaining about the elephant-like water tower built just outside his garden in 1882. It was about this time that Jumbo was bought by Barnum and transported to America the animal eventually met a sad end after a collision with a train.

Our final visit was to Gosbecks Archaeological Park. This is a new, exciting venture. A Romano-Celtic temple and theatre have been discovered very near to the Iron Age settlement of Camulodunum, home of King Cunobelin, about 2 miles from Colchester. A huge area has been acquired so that it can be explored, studied and preserved. What an exciting concept! Finally we enjoyed tea in the nearby church. Our thanks to the ladies who provided it. Our thanks also to our guides at the castle and in the town for making the history come so alive. Our thanks to Janet Lumley and Steve Benfield for their interesting talks at Gosbecks. Although I where frequently visit Colchester both for shopping and because I belong to the Colchester Archaeological Group, I thoroughly enjoyed my day with HADAS both because of the opportunity to see old friends and because of the chance to learn so much about the castle and town. On behalf of us all, I would like to thank Tessa and Sheila for making all the arrangements and for leading on the day to create a very happy and interesting experience.

Ann Trewick has been a member of HADAS for many years and was one of our active diggers before she moved to Felixstowe. She directed the HADAS excavation at xxxxxxxx in the early 1970s and was digging at Sutton Hoo when we had an outing there several years ago.

TILL’S HANDY HINTS FOR DIGGERS No 1

The need to leave grid markers in position on sites accessed by the public can cause problems which can be overcome by the use of the plastic tops from toothpaste tubes. Instead of leaving highly visible, easily vandalised (and potentially hazardous) metal spikes in the ground, the planning co-ordinates can be
marked by nails poked through the centre of the white plastic tops, the lids can then sprung back into position before being pushed into the ground. The colour makes then simple to locate even when hidden beneath vegetation but their size and apparent unimportance protects them from unwanted interference.

BOXGROVE – A STEP BACK INTO THE DISTANT PAST Jack Goldenfeld

HADAS was privileged to visit this c500,000 year-old site on July 30th, 1995, a brilliant summer’s day, thanks to Percy Cohen, our organiser June Porges and our hosts, English Heritage. Our able guide, Simon Parfitt, provided the background to the site by explaining the way in which the geology reflected the changing landscapes over millennia. Successions of stratified beach and cliff-lines were laid down as sea levels responded to climatic changes with the evidence of a long series of intermittent floral, faunal and human activities present, trapped within the layers and frozen in time, revealed only now through massive commercial gravel and sand extraction processes. We learned of the way in which random surface finds of chipped flint artefacts led to Boxgrove’s inclusion in Andrew Woodcock’s survey of palaeolithic sites in the 1970s and early 1980s, and the ongoing yearly investigations there by Mark Roberts through the late 1980s for English Heritag. After a tour through three separate areas to familiarise us with the general topography of the site ,and its differing stratification patternings we were taken to the area designated Quarry 1B where the excavation team were hard at work in the baking heat and dazzling white sand. This area had anciently been a source of spring water which had channelled the landscape, creating a marshy environment, probably with pools and perhaps extensive enough to be an inland lagoon or fenland. Bone small remains of carnivores, bear, rhino, red deer, bison, equids and bird varieties were plentiful and in a good state of preservation, together with flint debitage and finished hand-axes, showing that tool-making butchery practices occurred upon these light silt and marine sand surfaces. The unmistakable association of these two classes of data, in an undisturbed context, and with a clear indication of a series of have been able to see this working area. It was from this part of the site that the human tibia was recovered and, of course, the search continues for other skeletal evidence, particularly cranial or mandible fragments. The high levels of expertise and precision demonstrated by the archaeologists in their excavation and recording techniques were very apparent. It was clear that they were operating under skilled direction with pinpoint plotting accuracy and clear time/space relationships of faunal and artefactual data as prime objectives. Our visit ended with a close look at some of the processed finds – flaked hand-axes, both finished and “rough-outs”, bones and teeth of rodents like vole and mink, rhino teeth and larger bones with humanly-made butchery marks. We also saw a cast of the famous tibia – Homo Boxgrovensis something that we may never be able to see and again!

The Society was fortunate indeed to have had the opportunity of visiting Boxgrove, even though only eighteen members were able to be present. Those of us who were there have a very special and enlightening experience to remember.

separate events but each within a relatively short time-span, is rare to say the least, and I was thrilled to

Those who attended were impressed by the clarity of Simon Parfitt’s explanation of the geology and archaeology of this complex site making the day very worthwhile indeed. It was unfortunate that the time factor did not allow a fully-fledged HADAS outing to be organised which led to the small turnout. However, if you were unable to visit the site don’t despair! It is hoped to arrange a lecture by Mark Roberts or Simon Parfitt (of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London) on the subject of the Boxgrove excavations early in 1996.

TILL’S HANDY HINTS FOR DIGGERS No 2

HADAS work on Hampstead Heath has required stringing lines across well-used footpaths with the danger of tripping passersby or the fairly frequent jogger. Originally these danger points were highlighted by taping red card to the string but more convenient is the use of coloured plastic clothes pegs as they are reusable and easily transferrable to other locations on site as necessary.

Arthur Till recently contributed to the Society an extendable auger that he made from an army-surplus 1 inch drilling bit, two pieces of gas pipe, much solder and drilling. This has enabled us to probe to a depth of 1.5 metres on Hampstead Heath and is a much-welcomed and appreciated addition to our excavation equipment. The digging team is hoping he will now make a solar-powered motor to assist in pulling the auger from the ground.

WOT, NO CASTLE? ROY WALKER

The August outing fell neatly into three historic and gastronomic sections – Roman Silchester and coffee in the morning, rural Tilford and tea in the afternoon with lunch in late-medieval Odiham sandwiched in between. Perfect organisation by Bill Bass and Vikki O’connnor who also laid on suitable weather for a totally outdoors day.

First, after a refreshment stop at the Red Lion Inn, Mortimer West End, we headed for Silchester Museum where our two guides provided a choice of long or short tour of this Roman settlement. The cooling breeze on what would have been another very hot day perhaps encouraged the majority to opt for the longer perambulation of the walls. Rampier Copse, the pre-Roman bank and ditch was pointed out to us as we followed the remains of the Roman walls from the west gate around to the turn of the south gate. Calleva Atrebatum was abandoned around AD 450 and was never fully reoccupied by later settlement although the amphitheatre which we visited had signs of a 12th century

hall which may have had the defensive advantage of the surviving seating bank. A short stop in the neighbouring 12th century church of St Mary the Virgin completed the morning of this leisurely visit to Hampshire. We departed for lunch at a village which combines an ambiguous mixture of those peaceful days of yore with the intrusive 20th century. Odiham is the home of the RAF’s helicopter training school but as the RAF sleeps at weekends we did not see or hear the twin-rotored Chinooks that regularly overfly the village. We were not able to see the 13th century, much decayed, octagonal keep of Odiham Castle. This unfortunately is quite a distance from the village, over stiles and through fields, alongside the Basingstoke Canal. The Canal was originally designed in the 18th century to link London with Bristol and Southampton but was never completed. Lunches were mainly taken in the vicinity of the much-restored 13/14th century church of All Saints which was open as was the Pest House in its churchyard, once used to isolate victims of contagious diseases such as the pox. This village had all the charm of rural Hampshire – timber-framed buildings, flowers in bloom, 17th century almshouses behind the church, and, most-importantly as this was lunchtime, pleasant public houses. Feeling sentimentally bucolic, we left Odiham in search of more of our rural heritage. The Rural Life Centre at the Old Kiln Museum near Tilford is a collector’s dream. It might also be

a restorer’s nightmare judging by the number of items awaiting attention on the periphery of the ten acre site! Henry Jackson has superbly transformed his collection of rural artefacts into discrete groups representing various aspects of country life. And what a collection it is – a shepherd’s hut, a wheelwright’s shop, two forges, farm vehicles and carriages and assorted household items. Hands up those who said”my grandmother had one of those”? Th was even a special VJ Day exhibition. One feature is the craft demonstrations, this time a lace-maker and a wood-turner although upto thirty have displayed on special craft days. The turner showed the 3 feet long object illustrated and asked “What is it?” It was a joke walking stick designed to be used in either the left or right hand! An enhancement to the site was the hundred or so trees from around the world planted by Mr Jackson. This was an the ideal stopping point to recharge our batteries with a cup of tea (or two) and slice of cake, have a stroll round the grounds or just sit and imagine a rustic life far from London before we rejoined the madding crowd on the M25.

MARY O’CONNELL’S MORNING WALK AND VISIT TO THE TRAVELLERS’ CLUB, PALL MALL
THURSDAY 5TH OCTOBER, 1995
MEET 10.30 am AT THE TRAVELLERS’ CLUB, 106 PALL MALL

The Club was built 1829-32 to the Italian Renaissance designs of Sir Charles Barry who also was responsible for the Reform Club next door. Our morning will start with a tour of the building and a welcoming glass of sherry. Afterwards we shall undertake a short tour of the Pall Mall area, the heart of London’s clubland.

Please complete the booking form overleaf and return as soon as possible

WHY THERE WAS NO CASTLE Vikki O’Connor

In the course of arranging the Hampshire trip we visited Odiham twice. The first visit was on early closing day and we were unable to get any detailed information on the area, so the plan was to learn the lay-out, visit the canal and find King John’s castle. The canal was no problem, but, the Canal Authority information board was ambiguous regarding orientation – so we went in the opposite direction from the castle and ended up on the wrong side of the towpath hacking through the undergrowth with a Swiss army knife. ….An hour or so later we backtracked to a small marina and guzzled several cans of Perrier. Not to be defeated by this off-the-beaten-track castle, we tramped through the village, along the B3349 to North Warnborough and found a clue – a c1550 terrace of timber-framed buildings called Castlebridge Cottages. Some 600 yards down a small turning on the other side of the main road, we came to a deep muddy puddle overhung with trees, and just a few yards further was the ford proper a foot or so deep with such clear running water it could have come from a tap. If only all streams were this pure. The castle was not signposted and we followed a footpath over a stile, field and second stile on to the towpath of the

Basingstoke Canal. A few yards away was the entrance to the site where a lone English Heritage board gives basic details about the castle which is surrounded by high trees and is only visible when you stand before it.Having trekked thus far it would have been

useful to have seen a detailed plan of the total castle area. Can we assume that the canal cut across it? The ruins have a slightly mystic quality about them, I imagined visiting them on a misty November afternoon… The second time we visited was, frustratingly, to confirm that there were no way a coach could get to the ford from either end of the, road. So we couldn’t share with HADAS our visit to the swing bridge (which wasn’t freshly greased and didn’t look as if it had swung for some time), or the swans with their ten(!) or so young, the horse and buggy trotting through the ford leading a foal, or the sight of the local children paddling in the ford. Yes, I did join them – on both occasions. That cold fresh water performed miracles on red-hot feet; I wish I could have shared that bliss with you all. The stream is in fact the aptly-named Whitewater, but in the past it bus was known as the Weargeburna or felons’ stream – where wrongdoers were drowned. Odiham is now a village, not a town, the market house having been demolished last century. In the course of “researching” the local pubs for lunch stops, we spent a hour or so at The Crown chatting with Chris, a retired wheelwright who lives in a house the edge of a chalk quarry where French prisoners of (the Napoleonic) war worked and were housed in his cellar. The Crown sells a monthly newsletter called The Voice (news with a from all the villages) with a real community flavour. In one article we learn that Odiham police are testing an electric ‘stealth’ Ford Escort van; then, in the local Bobby’s column that the same vehicle is having its front end repaired. Was it so stealthy that the vehicle in front didn’t see it?

If any members are interested, our HADAS library holds a book called Odiham Castle by Patricia McGregor – one of the several interesting books donated by Jean Snelling. Having read it you may wish to visit the castle: by car, head for North Warnborough; on public transport, trains from Waterloo to Hook leave half-hourly and the Hampshire from Hook to North Warnborough (5 minutes journey) leaves hourly. Nearest stop: The Jolly Miller – we don’t recommend the beer, but the local architecture is interesting.

NEWS FROM FONTMELL MAGNA, DORSET

We have received from Dorset the following item from The Gossip Tree., a monthly village magazine produced by HADAS Vice President, John Enderby.

In the Parish Churchyard, near the remains of the massive ivy clad Yew, said to be the oldest tree in the village, is the headstone of Sapper II J Whiteman who was accidentally killed by a traction engine at Iwerne Minster on 29th August 1898. The wording on the memorial has invoked the following verse from a reader of the Gossip Tree:

How on earth it happened

Must be considered weird

For carelessly he crossed the road

as the huge Steam Roller neared,

He did not see it coming

and he’s truly in a fix,

Now he’s in the local hospital

in Wards 4, 5 and 6!

ROMAN GARDEN AT FISHBOURNE

A new feature at the Roman “Palace” at Fishbourne, near Chichester, is a reconstructed Roman garden which includes an outdoor dining area, a 1st century water feature and trellis work. Research into works by Pliny and Dioscorides has led to the selection of 500 authentic plants and the layout was the product of study of the ruins of Pompeii and Herculanium. A museum of Roman gardening which exhibits replica horticultural tools is associated with the garden.

“ANTIQUARIANS INTO ACADEMICS”
St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society 1845 -1995

Four commemorative public lectures are to be held at St Albans School assembly hall under the Chairmanship of The Rt Rev Lord Runcie MC, DD. Tickets for each lecture (Members £1, public £2) are available at the door, tickets for the full programme (L3 & £6) can be obtained from David Aubrey, 28 Faircross Way, St Albans, Herts, AL1 4SD (tel 01727 855843). The four lectures which commence at 8.00 pm are :

13th September RAILWAYS, RELIGION & ROMANCE: Antiquarians & Architects around 1845

John Cherry FSA, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries.

11th October THE EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH LOCAL HISTORY

Professor Christopher Ellington FSA, Former General Editor of the VCH.

8th November STOWE AND THE TEMPLE OF CONCORD AND VICTORY

Peter Inskip RIBA, Consultant Architect to the National Trust.

29th November DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY: The St Albans Experience Martin Biddle FBA, Professor of Archaeology, University of Oxford.

BIRKBECK COLLEGE – ASSESSED COURSES IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Birkbeck’s Extra-Mural programme now includes courses with a lesser element of assessment than the traditional certificate and diploma courses. For example, two pieces of work (essays, logs, case studies etc) for a course of 20 meetings. Full details are in the 1995/96Prospectus but the following “assessed” courses to be held locally may be of interest to HADAS members.

INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY (Denis Smith) Ewan Hall, Wood Street. 20 meetings from Monday 2nd October, 1995, 7.45 – 9.45 pm.

BRITAIN’S INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE (Denis Smith)

Cuffley Junior School, Theobalds Road, Cuffley, Herts.

20 meetings from Tuesday 26th September, 1995,8.00 – 10.00pm.

BRITAIN AFTER THE ROMANS (B D Adams)

Borehamwood Community Centre, Allum Lane, Elstree, Herts. 20 meetings from 26th September, 1995,7.30 9.30 pm.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF ROME (Janet Corran) The Stable Room, Rudolf Road, Bushey. 24 meetings from Wednesday 20th September, 1995,10.00- 12 noon.

ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY LONDON{ John Maloney) Barnet College, Wood Street site. 24 meetings from Thursday 21st September, 1995,7.30- 9.30 pm.

For beginners to archaeology who may find the prospect of a three year certificate course daunting, there is an assessed course in METHOD AND PRACTICE IN ARCHAEOLOGY run by Tony Legge at 26 Russell Square, London, WC1. it commences Monday 2nd October for 18 meetings, 6.30- 8.30pm

The Extra-Mural Information Bureau can be contacted on 0171-631 6633 for further details.

ISSUE No. 293 AUGUST 1995

EDITED by ANNE LAWSON

DIARY

Saturday, 10th August SILCHESTER and ODIHAM and TILFORD

with Vikki O’Connor and Bill bass

(Details and application form enclosed.)

Thursday,3lst August to Sunday 3rd September LONG WEEKEND in

DURHAM, SOUTH SHIELDS and HADRIAN’S WALL with Dorothy Newbury.

Tuesday, 3rd October Our LECTURE SEASON begins with a TALK

by Theya Mollison on ‘The Spitalfields Project’.

Lectures will resume at Avenue House, East End Road, N.3. 8 for 8.30 p.m.

Any new members requiring a map or details, please ring June Porges on 0181 – 346 – 5078.

Thursday, 5th October MORNING WALK and VISIT to THE

TRAVELLERS’ CLUB, PALL MALL, with Mary O’Connell.

Saturday, 14th October MINIMART ! MINIMART

OTHER DATES FOR YOUR DIARY AT THE CHURCH FARMHOUSE MUSEUM – see Page 7.

STOP PRESS STOP PRESS !

DURHAM WEEKEND

Four members who have booked for this trip may have to drop out due to medical or work commitments.

Please ring Dorothy Newbury on 0181 – 203 – 0950, if you would like to go, or to have your name put on the waiting list.

Text Box: THE FOUR BURYS Roy WalkerAndrew Reynold’s lecture to the Society in March this year had certainly fired our members’ enthusiasm for landscape archaeology – the complementary outing to Wiltshire on 17th June was oversubscribed by more than twenty.

The first stop was for refreshments at Marlborough, thought by some to be the ideal centre for a future outing, and then we moved into the vicinity of the Compton Bassett Area Research Project (CBARP). At Yatesbury Manor Farm we were shown the results of several season’s careful excavation in a field containing residual earthworks plus parts of dismantled aircraft. CBARP has been investigating settlement patterns and by excavation together with extensive map and historical research has shown how the village has been replanned through the ages. Our guide pointed out the remains of an enclosure which had been maintained from the late Roman period through the early Anglo Saxon period and survived until the mid-18th century. Within the farm area, traces of Anglo Saxon house platforms and terraces had been located and the existence of a pathway through the site was confirmed by a gap within the enclosing earthwork.

One puzzle which we were asked to help solve was the mortared platform lying half a metre below the surface. There was no dating evidence and no local knowledge of it having been a base to any structure. Geophysical survey had ruled out any adjoining archaeology. The team cannot interpret this feature. My view was that it may have been linked to the nearby airfield, a large training base during the war. It was noted with some amusement that in the field next to the excavation was a mixed flock of rare breed sheep which included a Wiltshire which had the build and stance of a bull terrier!

We moved on to Avebury for lunch and a tour of the locality, this time not to look at the monument but to see the work carried out by the team. However, a brief history was given,plus details of the reassessment of the Avebury road patterns which show that four roads possibly led to the site. The church had been surveyed by the team as had the ones at Yatesbury and Cherhill. St James’s, Avebury, is of Anglo Saxon foundation, dated to around 1000 AD, and displays building features of the period – side-alternate quoins; round-headed windows; original plaster within the north aisle and a long string-course. A piece of the shaft of a late Anglo Saxon stone cross has been incorporated into the west wall of the church. The tour took us to edge of the village where the movement of the settlement since Roman times was explained. It was interesting to see Silbury Hill from a new viewspot and perhaps appreciate this prehistoric landscape a little better.

Our final port of call was another “bury” that of Malines. Malmesbury Abbey, founded on the site of a 7th century hermitage, competed with Salisbury to be the most splendid ecclesiastical building in the west country and required a superb tower surmounted by a spire in order to eclipse its rival in height. Predictably this tower collapsed at the end of the 15th century demolishing most of the east end of the Abbey. The west tower, dating from the 14th century collapsed two hundred years later taking three western bays with it. Accordingly we were shown around a severely diminished church with a disproportionately high ceiling but its splendour is still apparent. Here among the late Romanesque pillars and arches of the nave we were presented with another problem. Jutting out from the triforium was a large stone “box”, with windows. Its purpose was obscure – was it a lookout post for the medieval security guard ensuring the faithful did not misappropriate any holy relics or was it a penance chamber or a screened seat for a visiting dignitary? My view on this one was that it was where Elmer the flying monk was locked away for his own safety. In the early 11th century, Elmer made a pair of wings and “flew” 200m from the Abbey tower, being severely injured upon coming down to earth. lie is commemorated by a stained glass window.

This was truly a HADAS outing, covering as it did a range of archaeological periods with the bonus of being linked to a lecture. Micky Cohen and Micky Watkins were thanked for the work that went into preparing the way and finding two ideal refreshment stops, the second next door to the Abbey. There was only one problem – we went a day early. Summer started the following day, we caught the last of the April showers!

There is a fifth “Bury” – Dorothy Newbury – who co-ordinates the arrangements for outings and our thanks go to her as well.

WHAT HAPPENED ON CHAPEL HILL ? AUDREE PRICE-DAVIES

Excerpts from an account written by Father Cuthbert in 925 A.D. (Translated from the Latin.)

MONDAY I was up early for my morning prayers – earlier than usual.

The light was just breaking through into my cell in the woods – a wattle and daub structure with a reed roof. I live here away from my keeil to escape the notice of the Vikings. I go down to the keeil
every morning, and although it is ruined and roofless, I say my morn­ing prayers, and where the altar would be, I use a simple cross of twigs as a focus, and if I am sure I am not detected I burn a taper.

Recently I have noticed – in the semi-darkness – that they are digging opposite the keeil inside the hill-fort enclosure. There is a boat alongside the digging

TUESDAY To-day I went – in ordinary clothes – to visit Edwin, the

Celtic chieftain in his round-house. He was worried and pale. Seeing the Viking long-house near the shore on my way to visit Edwin, I saw that they were making a pyre – wood and brushwood were piled up. I mentioned this to Edwin, who told me that Ericson the Viking chief has been killed in a raid on Ireland. His body has been brought back for
a ship burial. The warriors have laid out the body on a wagon in the long-house. Ericson married Branwen, Edwin’s daughter, and they have

a son, Anund, who is four years old………………………………..

The Vikings used to raid our shores and rob and pillage. They burnt the keeil and stole the cross and the communion plate and they killed Father Aidan. I have been here ten years – in hiding Now, the
Vikings no longer return to Scandinavia in the winter after the raid­ing season – they have settled here and married our women. We are a conquered people – we work for them, collect and store the grain and herd the cattle. They make raids on Ireland and on Meirioneth in North Wales and they bring the treasure back, but we are no longer free ……….

FRIDAY Even through Odin’s day, Thor’s day and Frey’s day,the digg-

ing goes on. The boat is 11 metres long and 3 metres wide, so Mordant tells me. He is one of Edwin’s nephews and he lives in the round-

house, but he oversees the slaves who are digging…………………………………………………

They have built a wall around the space to hold the boat – this is to hold back the earth. Mordant had been upset because they have un­earthed Christian graves in the digging. The remains were in stone-lined graves, with no grave goods. Morcant wanted to stop digging

and move the graves, but Leofric the Viking warrior in charge, insisted they dig on. The covering slabs of some graves and even the wall slabs have been removed he says. Some of the bones have been disturb­ed and spread out over the earth ………………………………………………………………

SUNDAY The burial is fixed for Wednesday – Odin’s day. The warr-

iors believe that Ericson will go to Valhalla and live feasting and fighting. Each night his wounds will be healed and he will fight again the next day. It has been decided that Branwen must accompany her husband’s passage to Valhalla as his companion.

WEDNESDAY Yesterday the feasting of the warriors in the long-house

carried on into the night and into the early hours of to-day. They lit the fire and what was left of the bones and what they did not eat, was thrown onto the pyre and burnt – joints of pig, ox, horse, cow, were all consumed by the fire.

Two wagons have been loaded – the first one with the body of Ericson and his grave goods. With him will be buried his shield and his sword,

Contd

CHAPEL HILL (Contd.)

his knife and the hone for sharpening the blades and a flint flake. There are also his stirrup irons, his spurs and mounts, and the straps and buckles of his horse and the bridle mounts of his horse. There is also a cauldron. His cloak is fastened with abronze ring-headed pin, a Celtic brooch fashioned to Viking taste.

The other wagon is loaded with the calcined bones and the ash from the pyre.

The hill is steep and the horses strain and pull with the heavy wag­ons. The Vikings, in full armour with shields and swords, stride cheerfully past us as we make our way sadly but steadfastly to the enclosure. Branwen holds Anund’s hand. He talks excitedly, amazed at the number of people – Branwen makes no attempt to silence him. She is quiet and composed, as is also her father. We are the ones who feel sick and trembling. We file into the enclosure at the top of the hill and no-one seems to notice me.

The boat is in position in the hole and the space between the retain­ing wall and the boat has been filled with earth so that the boat is firmly in position. We look on silently and uncomfortably, and then a woman, veiled and dressed in black, steps towards us and takes Branwen’s arm. She offers no resistance and walks towards the circle of warriors – seven or so – who are standing in front of the burial place. Two warriors appear with a rope which they twist round Bran-wen’s throat, each taking one end. As they pull at the rope, the other warriors beat their shields with their swords, so that no screams are heard – but Branwen would not scream. A warrior slides his sword under Branwen’s ribs as she slides lifeless to the ground, and the shield-beating stops. There is a stunned and sustained sil­ence. Anund, frightened by the noise and then the silence, runs screaming to Morcant, who picks him up and takes him away.

The warriors place Ericson in the boat with the grave goods alongside him and then place Branwen in the boat. She still wears her cloak with the belt and her ankle bracelets. A layer of stones is placed across the dry-walling and the boat, and on top of this the calcined bones and the ash – the remains of the previous night’s feast. On top of this, the slaves are placing stones …………………………………………………………….

Unable to watch any longer, Edwin moves away down the slope and the Vikings also move away. There will be more feasting to-night, but later they will sleep with their wives in the Celtic round-houses …

THOR’S DAY On Chapel Hill, a white sail flies above the burial

place, which is now 12 metres long by 5 metres wide. The sail is att­ached to a post erected where the prow of the boat would be.

Ericson is sailing to Valhalla.

The characters are fictitious, the story is imaginary.

The archaeological details are in accord with the account of the ex­cavation as recorded in “Three Viking Graves in the Isle of Man”

by Gerhardt Bersu and David Wilson.

other material is taken from “Vikings” by Magnus Magnusson,

12The Vikings” by James Graham-Campbell and Dafydd Kidd,

“The Celts” by Nora Chadwick, and “Celtic Britain” by Charles Thomas.

SITE WATCHING Bill Bass

Bridgedown Golf Course, Barnet

This was a large-scale evaluation undertaken by the

Hertfordshire Archaeological Trust (HAT), on a site just north of Chipping Barnet, adjacent to the west of St Albans Road but on the Hertsmere side of the boundary.

They found very little in the way of archaeology due to “a reflection of the underlying geology, an unattractive heavy clay which is prone to waterlogging”. They did, however, locate a small number of ‘features’ containing Roman or Saxo-Norman pottery.

It would be interesting from a HADAS point of view to find-out the nature of this pottery and types of feature, even if they are ephemeral. As in the case of any Roman finds, these are very few and far between in the area (Chipping Barnet). I will ask if there is a report available.

HAT have also carried out evaluations at 311-313 Regents Park Road, Finchley (April ’94), nothing found. And at the junction of Regents Park Road and North Circular Road (Oct. ’94), “one early post-medieval ditch”.

English Heritage have written to confirm that Barnet’s War of the Roses battlefield is included on their Register of Historic Battlefields, published by EH on 7th June 1995.

A DIFFERENT ANGLE ON WESTMINSTER A.M. LARGE.

Westminster Abbey is reaching the end of a 23-year restoration, and is looking resplendent, with stonework cleaned or restored as necess­ary.

Until 30th September there is a small but fascinating exhibition on the work, finds, etc. Entrance is via the north door in St. Margarets church nearby. The modest admission fee includes a chance to visit the stonemasons’ yard, where some work is still in progress, and, for a small extra fee, visitors may be lifted by hoist to see part of the work on the roof at close quarters, 90 feet up. The modern grotesque animals are a delight.

You will be issued with a ‘Hard Hat’: hildren may also like to do

the trip – the view over Westminster is one that is rarely seen.

GARDEN SUBURB WEEKEND

A worthwhile £30 worth of various books were sold on the HADAS stall in the Suburb Tea House during the Suburb Weekend, 24th and 25th June.

Text Box: BOOK NEWS Bill FirthBARNET AT WAR – Percy Reboul & John Heathfield. Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd. £7.99.

To write an account of the Second World War in an area as large as the present London Borough of Barnet, which at the time was administered by five separate councils in rather disparate areas, would seem to be either impossible or to require at least five volumes, but John Heathfield and Percy Reboul, who are both well known to members, have succeeded admirably. By taking typical examples they have succeeded in recounting the effects of the war throughout the borough so that a missing favourite story from one area is compensated by an equally apt one from another.

The story too seems to be comprehensive. It starts with preparations for the expected air attack, not in 1938 when such preparations became more obvious to the public, but in 1935 with the formation of a sub-committee of the Imperial Defence Committee to consider what needed to be done and we can see whether the plans succeeded or not.

It ends in October 1945 under the heading “Home at Last” with the finding of 11 Salvation Army nurses, “now fit and well” in Java but I was a little disappointed that there was nothing about the returning servicemen.

In between, every possible subject seems to have been covered, some of which few of us would ever have thought of. It may sound macabre, but to cope with the vast numbers of casualties, which it was thought would materialise but thankfully did not, temporary mortuaries were built. In 1942 the, furnishings at Hendon mortuary behind the town hall were valued for insurance at £85.

The ethnic and religious mix of the area led to particular problems. The Jewish population in Golders Green and Hendon was particularly affected by the shortage of fish, a situation whch was aggravated because they could not always get kosher meat. Long queues occurred at fishmongers and the local food committee in Hendon reported “an added irritation is that the queues are often substantially composed of foreigners”.

The involvement of the civilian population in total war with the bombing, both high explosive and incendiary, and the Vls and V2s is reported with many personal stories often of great courage but also showing the fortitude and humour shown by the people – ” we were all suffering from shock, but you can soon shake that off with willpower and a cup of tea”.

There has been a spate of books commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. This one does not claim to be an anniversary publication but it is timely in that we can still record the memories of some of those who took part in the momentous events of the time. This is local history at its best.

No doubt the book will be available at many outlets but it can be bought at local libraries. I urge you to go out and get your copy now.

HADAS LIBRARY AND HADRIAN’S WALL Roy Walker

There are two books in the library at Avenue House which may be of interest to members participating in the outing to Durham as they are likely to be out of print. The first is “A walk along the Wall” by Hunter Davies (1974). It is a chatty traveller’s guide which recounts the author’s experiences at Hadrian’s Wall and should make good bedtime reading before the outing. The second is “The monks of Durham” by Anne Boyd (1975), an ecclesiastical history, more specialised in its subject but not too technical in its content. Please contact me on 0181­361-1350 if you would like to borrow either of these.

A recent guide to Hadrian’s Wall is the English Heritage/Batsford “Hadrian’s Wall” by Stephen Johnsons one of the excellent series covering all aspects of British archaeology from individual sites to regions and periods. This costs round £15 paperback but English Heritage also publishes a much cheaper “Souvenir Guide, the Roman Wall” which is a very adequate guide for short trips. Guide books are available for individual sites on the Wall such as “Corbridge Roman Station” by Eric Birley and “Roman Vindolanda” by Robin Birley. These are best purchased at the Wall where a full choice is available.

Finally, one warning: in 1990 the Ordnance Survey issued a map of Hadrian’s Wall for the non­specialist market. Professor Sheppard Frere called the map “disgraceful” as it contained historical errors. For example, it stated that the Wall was attacked by the Scots at a time when they were an obscure group in Ireland; that it was abandoned in 383 AD instead of after 400 AD and that it was built by two legions instead of three. The lack of field boundaries made it difficult to know whereabouts on the Wall you were and evidently the scales were wrongly printed further adding to the confusion. The earlier OS maps (1964 and 1972) are considered accurate. You are therefore advised to check the date of any map before making a purchase.

FORTHCOMING EVENTS AT CHURCH FARMHOUSE MUSEUM

‘Spirit of Place’

Saturday, 16th September to Sunday, 5th November – an exhibition of water colours and etchings of local important houses, by Peter Hume.

Also included in the exhibition are water colours of Venice, by the same local artist.

1 A Small World of Mini Mansions’

CHRISTMAS EXHIBITION this year at the Borough’s Church Farmhouse Museum in Hendon will feature dolls’ houses over the last 20D years.

The museum is keen to include examples owned by local resident s in the Borough, and would be very pleased to hear from anyone who wou ld be prepared to lend material for the exhibition. Dolls/ houses a nd mini-ature furniture of all types and periods would be of interest, but early examples and any made within the Borough would be particularly welcome.

If you have anything suitable for the exhibitio n, please conta ct the museum’s Curator, Gerrard Roots, as soon as po ssible on 0181- 203-0130. All loans and assistance will be gratefully ack nowledged.

The Christmas Exhibition will open on 25th November, and be on show until Sunday, 14th January,1996.

WASHDAY IN THE SCULLERY AT THE CHURCH FARMHOUSE MUSEUM

The museum is gradually developing its collection of artefacts re­lating to washing and cleaning, so that the kitchen scullery can be completely re-arranged with new displays. If you have any items you would be prepared to give, or to lend on a long-term basis, please contact the curator, Gerrard Roots, at the museum.

Small objects like clothes-pegs, soap packets and cleaning brushes will be very useful, but most urgently the museum needs white sheets – to

be put in the linen press and through the mangle to show how they worked.

Does anyone have a collarless shirt or a pair of ‘long johns’ they no longer need ? If you have anything you think may be suitable, please phone Gerrard on 0181-203-0130.

ISSUE NO 292 Edited by Peter Pickering JULY 1995

DIARY

SATURDAY JULY 15 Outing to COLCHESTER with Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward. (application form and details enclosed)

SUNDAY JULY 30 BOXGROVE, near Chichester.

We have, unexpectedly, through the good offices of Percy Cohen, been given a chance to visit Boxgrove, the Middle Pleistocene site where part of the tibia of the “Oldest European” has been found. The 500,000-year old tibia was associated with stone tools (biface handaxes> and butchered animal bones. Digging is continuing through this summer, but the site may have to be covered at the end of the season as the money is running out. So this is a unique opportunity to see this dig. At this late date we have not been able to lay on the usual organised HAMS outing, so interested members are asked to go in their own cars, offering lifts to as many people as possible. The site is near Chichester (West Sussex near to Goodwood House). Maps will be provided. No meals will be arranged – picnic lunches would be a good idea. After the visit (planned for 11 am) everyone will be free to visit other places of interest in the neighbourhood – Chichester, Arundel, Goodwood House and Fishbourne are all close and teas can be obtained there. Please fill in the enclosed form if you would like to come, June Porges will do her best to co-ordinate lifts.

SATURDAY AUGUST 19 Outing to SILCHESTER with Bill Bass and Vikki O’Connor

THURSDAY AUGUST 31 – SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 3

Long weekend away to DURHAM, staying at St John’s College. We are lucky to have obtained the help of Richard Brickstock, Curator at the University Museum of Archaeology. He will guide us during our stay, visiting Hadrian’s Wall, the current Roman excavation at South Shields, and other sites ranging from Roman to Industrial. Further details enclosed for members who have booked for this trip.

New members may find it helpful to be told that we do not acknowledge your outing applications – unless we notify you that the trip is full. You are welcome to ring Dorothy Newbury (0181-203 0950) if you want to confirm that your application has been received. The June trip was overbooked, and had 24 members on the waiting list, When this happens, those members have priority for the next outing. But please ring 0181-203 0950 straightaway if you want to take up this offer.

Members’ NEWS

Ivor Leverton has resigned his membership after many years as he is no longer able to participate in our activities. We wish him well.

And, a reminder to the members who have not yet renewed their subscriptions – please do so!

Car Boot Sale at Edgware on June 4th. The weather was awful on the day Gill Baker, Gwen Searle and Tessa Smith struggled to dispose of left-overs from last year’s minimart. Nevertheless, they managed to make £30 which is a very helpful addition to our funds and was well worth the effort. Our thanks to them for braving the weather. Can we have any volunteers to run a table at the Cricklewood Car Boot Sale? We still have lots of surplus goods, particularly summer dresses which we can’t sell in October. Any volunteers ring Dorothy Newbury on 0181-203 0950

EXCAVATION REPORT – ST MARTHA’S CONVENT SCHOOL, MONKEN HADLEY (CTY95) by Roy Walker

A brief report on TRENCH 1 was made in last month’s Newsletter. The continued excavation revealed that the “wall” was only one course of brick and rubble and contained a piece of metal foil indicating its modern origin. This “wall” as found could have been a garden feature limiting the end of the path. It was placed on a brown clay with charcoal flecks which ran the full extent of the trench and overlay the natural (clay and sand), As mentioned previously, the stratigraphy varied either side of the “wall” showing the effects of cultivation on the mound (now lawn) side.

TRENCH 2 Extensive probing of the lawn had revealed in places the existence of a hard layer beneath. This trench, one metre square, was the first of three to investigate the nature of this feature.

The turf was lifted in three strips revealing a very dry, powdery, humic soil about 4cm deep. Beneath this was yellowy brown sand with some clay flecks, dry but firm. This 3cm deep layer contained pottery fragments, glass and ceramic building material. The hard surface was beneath this – a layer of pebbles covered the full 1 square metre area of excavation at a level of between 126.21 and 126.18 m OD. This is over one metre higher than the pebble layer found in Trench 1 (125.35 m OD) which has been interpreted as an earlier pathway based upon its location, At present the pebble layer in Trench 2 is tentatively regarded as a levelling or drainage layer for the turf. Brick and slate were associated with this layer.

The trench was then half-sectioned•reducing it to lm by 0.5m. The pebble layer (4-5 cm deep) rested upon 12cm of firm, light brown clay contaminated with soil intrusion possibly due to root action. Below this was a 4cm layer of yellowy brown sand containing brick fragments which rested upon a brown sandy/clay containing flecks of charcoal probably the same as context 108 located in Trench 1 although the Trench 2 layer is around 0.35m higher. This context was not excavated owing to the need to backfill and reinstate the turf but augering revealed a clay beneath, interpreted as natural by comparison with Trench 1.

TRENCHES 3 & 5 These further two trenches, dug to investigate the nature of the “hard layer” beneath the lawn produced similar results. In summary, the stratigraphy from the top was sandy clay beneath which was a pebble layer with a sandy brown clay matrix and patches of dumped clay. The lower layers were disturbed clay with sand beneath, interpreted as natural.

SUMMARY OF TRENCHES 2,3 & 5 The mound, a photograph of which formed part of the original research design, had been lowered to its present level and grassed over. The area we investigated was below the mound and contained no archaeology.

TRENCH 4 A further trench was dug on the northern edge of the lawn near to an existing classroom block to investigate the nature of a curved parch mark. This trench contained modern building material close to the surface thus reducing the depth of soil.

WATCHING BRIEF ON SITE OF NEW CLASSROOMS

The trenches for the floor beams for the new classrooms were machine-dug on 24th and 25th May 1995. The trenches around the perimeter basically followed the line of the previous sleeper wall with others crossing the site east/west and north/south linking the series of piles sunk over the previous seven days. The trenches were excavated with a half-metre toothed-bucket to a uniform level but the unevenness of the ground gave a depth range of between 1.90 and 0.40 meters. All the ground was disturbed -seemingly excavated and re-deposited during the construction of the now-demolished classroom block. The matrix was a dark brown clay/silt mix, loosely compacted, with patches of dumped brown clay. the higher layers contained building debris including bricks, window glass, lino tile fragments, ceramic tile fragments and broken glazed sewer pipe, but lower down within the walls of the trenches and embedded in the base were brick fragments, brick flecks, not all of which had been redeposited during the current building works. In places, at c20cm below ground level, redeposited turf was visible – in divots, not as an earlier land surface.

No cut features were observed within the sections but two pits were noted on the floor of two trenches at c70cm below surface level. They had a burnt clay infill, blue/black, containing charred treewood. An edge to these deposits was confirmed by trowelling although they could not be fully excavated and the full diameters could not be ascertained owing to containing by the sides of the trenches and truncation by the new piles. They were both in excess of 60cm wide. Within the top few centimetres were a clay pipe stem, modern crockery fragments, fragments of pottery (flowerpots?), a piece of bone and oyster shells. These features are post mediaeval or modern.

The floor of the new building will be suspended upon the beams laid in these trenches and it is therefore unlikely that there is any additional risk to archaeological remains not revealed by the current works.

Our investigation at the School has now been completed and our thanks go to the volunteers who assisted at weekends, and especially to the Headmistress for her helpfulness and co-operation throughout. A full report is now in preparation.

SITE-WATCHING AT HENDON CAMPUS, MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY, THE BURROUGHS, HENDON

Brian Wrigley

During May, the South-East London Archaeological Unit (SELAU) undertook to watch earthmoving operations for the building of a new sports hail at this site, which is of archaeological importance particularly because of the finding, in 1889, of Roman material nearby, in what were then the grounds of Grove House, by Dr Hicks. According to the Borough’s Archaeology Adviser, Robert Whytehead of English Heritage, who attended the site for the earth-stripping, some remains of a gravel pit (possibly the pit the Roman finds came from) were revealed plus the fact that the surrounding area had been so much terraced in the past that no ground surface from Roman times remains.

HADAS had been asked by the contractors, at the beginning of May, to help by preparing “a programme of archaeological work in accordance with a written scheme of investigation” for approval by the Planning Authority before development. We did not feel able to take this on, and pointed out that we knew from our past excavation (Church Farm Museum) that on this slope an ancient land surface is overlain by slipped sandy soil from above,

and any archaeological recommendations would require detailed examination of the local geology as evidenced by records of previous works in the area, and of any changes made, plus consideration of the precise location, depth and likely effect of any ground disturbance for the proposed building. We suggested MoLAS, but in fact the contractors went to SELAU whom they had, I gather, used before. From copy correspondence I have seen, it is clear that our comments were passed on to SELAU.

THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY SPRING CONFERENCE, PERTH

Myfanwy Stewart and Brian Wrigley

HADAS members were 4 out of the 32 prehistorians on this expedition to this land of (as some of us learnt for the first time) the Picts. Our visit coincided with the Parliamentary by-election and rumour was rife of famous (or notorious) national political figures being seen in the bar of our hotel. (Famous archaeological figures were of course commonplace!)

Our guides were from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and it was most instructive to be told about the sites by their excavators. Strat Halliday described the increase in recent years of knowledge of Scottish prehistory, with new scientific techniques of dating and aerial photography. We got a feeling of the excitement and enthusiasm of the Commission in its programme of newly-identified sites, (We Sassenachs were also reminded that, because of Scottish/Pictish success in limiting Roman incursions, prehistory here goes on later than in England!)

On the first day we visited some of the hill-forts of Strathmore (=”wide valley”). The former assumption that such forts are Iron Age is now becoming misleading, as thermoluminescence dates from forts in Scotland where vitrification has resulted from burning range from 2300BC to 1000BC. We saw 3 forts, the White Caterthun, the Brown Caterthun and, on the south side of Strathmore, Turin Hill. In each there are multiple earthworks, apparently not built at the same time, and suggesting activity over a long period with reconstructions from time to time for different purposes – quite possibly starting from Neolithic times.

The second day we went to the Balfarg prehistoric ceremonial complex, including a henge and remains of an earlier henge, mortuary enclosures, the Balbirnie stone circle with 4 cists, ring ditch and ring cairn, and sundry pits. Roger Mercer, who excavated the henge in 1977/8, told us that, at the time a housing estate was planned, what was known of the site was the 2 standing stones and a circular mark in air photography. The authorities recognised that archaeological investigation was needed, and excavation revealed a nearly complete circular ditch, originally with a bank outside, and inside it the holes for a timber-post circle and a later stone circle, of which the 2 surviving stones had been part. The building plan was changed, to preserve the henge, now encircled by a road with houses numbered “1 The Henge” etc, with a reconstructed circle of wooden posts.

The nearby mortuary enclosure has been partly reconstructed with wooden posts in the original postholes. This is thought to have been an examination platform for bodies before communal burial, and had been covered by a mound with ritual deposits when it went out of use, and surrounded by a henge-type ditch, part of which survives; this in turn went out of use when the great henge was made.

The Balbirnie stone circle has been re-set about 125 metres from its original site to allow for road-building. The earliest activity here was probably the deposition of pottery and burnt bone, before the construction of the great henge. Then the stone circle was erected some time after 3000 BC and after the henge. There are 4 burial cists. At some stage these were sealed with a cairn, but small deposits of cremated bone were inserted later into the surface of the cairn. It was impressive to see how the

pottery and other dating evidence have enabled the investigators to construct a sequence and time-table for the use of this ceremonial site during three millennia, from the early Neolithic to the late Bronze Age.

We then went to the fort and broth (a small diameter circular fortification) at Laws Hill, Montifieth (the broth may be 1st century AD, and later than the remaining segment of fort wall) and then to an underground chamber typical of the Angus area, a souterrain at Tealing -happily its excavation has left it open to the air, so we did not have to scramble underground to inspect it Its likely date is later 1st century BC or 1st century AD.

The third day was devoted to the 9th and 10th century Pictish sculpture for which this part of Scotland is renowned. More than 30 carved stones and fragments have been found in the Meigle district and many are in the Meigle Museum. Gazing at these splendid carvings, the uninitiated soon became familiar with the round mirrors, combs, serpents, fish and “Z rods” which typify this art form. We were intrigued by lions, elephants, a kneeling camel and a winged Persian god, while the horseman, foot braced in a pocket at the lower edge of his saddle cloth, demonstrated riding techniques at a time when the stirrup was unknown in Scotland.

The Pictish cross in Eassle Church is famous for its clear depiction of a cloaked warrior marching along carrying his spear and square shield. The cross is filled with interlaced designs and opposite the warrior is a finely carved stag. On the back of the stone, 3 cloaked figures are shown together with a typical double disc design, a Z rod and a mythical beast.

At Glam.’s, a cross slab in the Minister’s garden shows the two main aspects of Pictish art. On one face, the mirror, a fish and a serpent were very clear and, on the reverse, the cross is completely filled with complex interlaced designs. Reminders of the more violent aspect of life were two men facing one another, each armed with an axe, and the cauldron from which two pairs of legs protruded! We then walked with the Minister to the nearby sacred well and lunched in the idyllic setting of the river and gardens.

The St Vigeans Museum, in one of a row of weavers’ cottages, had more sculptures the most noted of which bore a rare Pictish inscription in Roman script, a hooded archer and the equally rare depiction of a crossbow

On the morning of day 4 we walked the 1820m of the Cleaven Dyke neolithic earthwork which was once thought to be of Roman date. Similar to a curses, its central bank, some 8-10m across and 1-2m high, is composed of linked dumps giving five breaks in all. The two flanking ditches, between 45 and 51 m apart, are also segmented and, like the dumps, each is slightly out of alignment. Limited excavation in 1993 revealed a construction technique of layers of turf and soil and a pre-monument hearth dated to 4,587-4,002 and 4,653-3,999 Calibrated BC. Work is now in progress to clear the woodland covering the earthwork and to annihilate the plague of rabbits which threaten the site. A new section has recently been put through the bank, a detailed survey is almost complete and further palaeoenvironmental work will be undertaken. It is hoped that all this will shed more light on this important earthwork and its relationship with the surrounding area.

In the afternoon was a field study of the complex series of ring cairns, stone circles, round cairns, but circles and the later earth and stone foundations of rectangular houses which are all to be seen in the Balnabroich landscape. The group extends over one square kilometre in terraine composed of rough pasture and higher moorland rising to 330m OD via a series of terraces and ridges. We tramped up through the heather, eyeing the black-face sheep and the snow on the distant corries, and grateful for the clement weather.

Day 5 began with the neolithic Pitnacree round cairn. Excavations in 1964 had revealed a rectangular stone mortuary enclosure in the centre of this impressive cairn. Dr John Coles, the excavator, added greatly to our

knowledge and enjoyment of the site. At Lundin he described the fourposter stone circle, incorporating a round cairn. The visit to Fortingall was prefaced by a warning to keep together and not stray on account of the bull and his retinue of wives who were in the vicinity! Fortunately the pleasure of seeing one of the few unploughed areas of land along the lower valley of the Lyon was unmarred. The long cairn, the ring ditch with its recumbent cup-marked stone and the mediaeval moated homestead again attested to the long-time settlement of the area.

A crannoch is a man-made island built out in the waters of a river or loch. At Loch Tay a replica is being built directly over the remains of the Iron Age crannoch which lies beneath the water. Based on the evidence obtained from the under-water archaeology, concentric rings of the tall tree trunks which support the platform have been set in position and lashed together using only techniques proved to have been used in the Iron Age. The excavations have yielded artefacts and evidence of construction methods. Amongst the finds were a wooden spoon and plate, with a wooden dish which, we were assured, still contained traces of ancient butter.

Some intrepid members went, via a raft, to the reconstructed crannoch, climbed the steep ladder and braved the alarming gap between the top of the ladder and the upper platform. Others watched the video made by Dr Nick Dixon and his team and visited the exhibition. All took tea and shortbread before leaving for our final site, the imposing Croftmoraig stone circle with cup-marked stones in the inner and outer rings.

THE ROMAN CITIES OF TUNISIA Peter Pickering

At the end of March we went on a week’s tour of the Roman cities of Tunisia. Africa Proconsularis was one of the wealthiest parts of the Roman empire, since it supplied Rome with corn, and much evidence of that wealth has survived the depredations of subsequent invaders. Although there is a clear family resemblance, each of the thirteen sites we visited has some distinctive feature. Bulls Regia, for instance, has two-storey houses, the lower storey being underground, perhaps for coolness; Thysdrus (El Diem) a very well-preserved amphitheatre, second only to the Colosseum in Rome; Mactaris massive baths; Sufetula a forum with three temples to each of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, rather than the usual single temple to the Capitoline Triad; and Thugga a theatre with stage-buildings, and a public square with a large compass incised on it, its twelve points each inscribed with the name of a wind.

Impressive triumphal arches are ubiquitous, but most impressive are the mosaics. Most of the figural ones (some very beautiful) are in museums, and most, except for El DJem, in the Bardo museum in Tunis; but many of the patterned ones in situ are very fine, The baths of Mactaris have one with a complex maze.

The Romans have a clear domination over earlier and later civilisations, though there is a Numidian tower tomb in Thugga, and the poignant remains of the tophet in Carthage – it seems much more likely to me that the Carthaginians sacrificed children than that they had such an affection for them that they had a special children’s cemetery. The Vandals have left little trace, but many places have the massive walls built by the Byzantines following their reconquest of North Africa; most evocative of these is the remote Ammaedara, with a church paved with crudely inscribed graves. Nor can one forget the holy city of Kairouan, its Great Mosque a veritable museum of Roman columns.

The sites are reasonably well looked after, and restoration is going on. There is also some excavation in progress, rather less professional than HADAS would achieve; at one site in Thugga we saw some pots and a Roman lamp being unearthed at the corner of a room. “Tresor” the diggers

said, and put them carefully on one side; but we were forbidden to take photographs. I do not think the dig was clandestine – there were several diggers, in full daylight – but it looked the next worst thing.

LONDON LOCAL SOCIETIES MEETING 15th May 1995 Brian Wrigley

I attended for HADAS this twice-yearly meeting organised by MoLAS, as an opportunity for exchange of information, ideas and problems on the working of archaeology in London. Brief summaries were given of work done recently by local societies and professional bodies (I contributed for HADAS). Some concern was shown about the working of PPG16 in London, seemingly sometimes varying between different planning authorities. SCOLA have been surveying this matter, and are expected soon to produce a report of findings and recommendations.

There was also some concern about units from outside London operating in London failing to keep in touch with societies; it was agreed that this Committee could be a useful forum to help on this.

Work done by statutory undertakers, not requiring planning permission and hence liable to be missed by archaeological watchdogs, was also raised, and it was agreed that all should keep eyes out on this, and report any failings to this committee who might be able to draw attention to the problem. (I am not aware that we have many such problems in Barnet, but it could be useful if members would keep an eye out and let me know of any things such as public utility roadworks in sensitive areas which might not have been spotted in planning applications.)

LIBRARY NEWS Roy Walker

We have recently received three Site Reports from MoLAS, which are available for loan upon application to Roy Walker (0181-351 1350) 1182-1228 High Road, Whetstone (Lawson’s Timber Yard)

Church Farm Industrial School, East Barnet

The Wimpey Sports Ground, Brockley Hill

As this last will be of interest to the Romanists in our membership, I set out the abstract to the Report:-

“Fourteen archaeological evaluation trenches were investigated in order to determine if archaeological evidence survived for the Roman road, Watling Street, and any associated Roman roadside settlement or pottery kilns as have been located to the north of the site in the area of the Scheduled Ancient Monument (Sulloniacae). In six of the trenches adjacent to the modern road a Roman road with a ditch on the west side was found directly below the topsoil. Limited investigation showed that the road had been constructed an a bank of clay and pebble layers, and had undergone periodical maintenance as indicated by a number of earlier layers of road gravels and recutting of the ditch when it had silted up. Dating evidence confirmed the road was in use into the 4th century AD. Early Roman pottery was of the type produced at Brockley Hill and the Roman ceramic building material was of fabric types produced in kilns found alongside Roman Watling Street. The Report concluded that these are significant archaeological remains of national importance and as such merit preservation in situ or full archaeological investigation where below-ground disturbance is unavoidable.

NORTH LONDON ARCHAEOLOGICAL LIAISON COMMITTEE MEETING Brian Wrigley

I attended this Committee for HADAS, and reported on our work since the last meeting. Reports from MoLAS included two Barnet sites, Church Farm Industrial School, East Barnet, where only the remains of the Victorian

school were found, and the rear of Tapster Street, Barnet, where signs of mediaeval activity were found but most of the area dug showed gravel pits. MoLAS produced a Publication Programme, some of the titles in which will be of interest to HADAS. Our Librarian, Roy Walker, has this list and will be on the watch for publication (though it should be said that the dates for the “finished drafts” go on to the year 2000!). Many of them are bound for the London Archaeologist or LAMAS Transactions.

There were also reports of work starting on the LAMAS project for archaeological survey of the Thames foreshore, for example in Richmond. There are encouraging signs suggesting that there is not so much disturbance by the river of deposits and artifacts as previously assumed and, for example, it could turn out that deposits of bronze weapons, formerly thought to have been ritually thrown into the river, were actually dry-land hoards later covered by a change in water-course.

SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS

We have just reprinted “Those were the Days”, our ever-popular booklet about Barnet between the wars. It was compiled at the end of the 1970s from tape-recordings by Percy Reboul, and the titles of some of its chapters (“The Brewer’s Tale; The Commercial Traveller’s Tale; The Postman’s Tale” give the flavour of its contents. If any new members do not possess their own copies, Dorothy Newbury will let you have one for £2.50 post free.

KINGSBURY MULTI -CULTURAL FESTIVAL

This will take place on the 8th and 9th of July in Roe Green Park Kingsbury Road NW9. There will be a “local history hail” at Holy Innocents’ Church Hall, Roe Green, and besides your favourite Society, the Grange Museum, Harrow Museum and the Church Farm House Museum, and local history societies will be exhibiting. The Wembley Observer will be displaying historical photographs from its archives.

TAILPIECE (From the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, via Private Eye)

Sally Morgan’s work explores the fragility of knowledge and the impossibility of certainty. You are invited to measure your heart and to understand what cannot be understood. You are invited to make truth immutable through the exacting processes of archaeology. The crypt will be open over two days, during which time you may enter the installation and, if you choose, excavate for meaning.

(Why then did not more of you members come along to excavate for meaning in St Martha’s Convent, Monken Hadley? – Editor)

No: 291 JUNE 1995 Edited by MICKY WATKINS

DIARY

Sunday, June 4 HADAS Car Boot Sale Stall at Spur Rd. School, Edgware.

Early morning till lunch-time. Members welcome to help or buy.(958 9159)

Saturday, June 17 Outing to Yatesbury, Avebury and Malmesbury

(Application form and details enclosed)

Saturday, July 15 Outing to Colchester with Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward

Saturday, August 19 Outing to Silchester with Bill Bass and Vikki O’Connor

September Weekend away in Durham (Application form and details enclosed)

CHAIRMAN’S REPORT FROM ANDREW SELKIRK

At our last AGM we said farewell to our previous president Ralph Merrifield and welcomed our new President Michael Robbins, who we are delighted to see with us this evening. Sadly Ralph Merrifield died earlier this year and a memorial service for him will be held on Tuesday May 16th at St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, at 3.00. This is the day on which we are also having our outing to the House of Commons and so for those of us who wish to celebrate the life of Ralph Merrifield and all that he did for the archaeology of London there is an opportunity to combine this with our visit to the House of Commons.

The last year has been a quiet year. Our lectures and visits continued unabated and the newsletter continued to appear regularly. In all these activities Dorothy Newbury played a significant role at least behind the scenes. Many of the outings have been franchised out to various other members of the society. A major part has been played by Mary O’Connell who led many of the excursions herself; the highlight was the visit to the Isle of Man. The lectures too have come under new management and we are very grateful to June Porges who has taken over the role of lecture secretary.

The major change has been the transfer of the lectures from the Hendon Library to Avenue House where we are now meeting. The main motive was to reduce costs, but it also helps that we meet in the same house where we have our library so that members can make better use of the facilities. Nevertheless it must be recorded that the cost of the facilities and that of renting rooms in Avenue House remains a burden and although we have negotiated a reduced rate with Barnet Borough Council it is only possible to meet this high rental through the activities of the Minimart and we are no longer able to put money aside for our research activities. If the society is to continue to flourish we need a more sympathetic attitude from the Borough Council, either in the form of a reduced rent or in the form of a grant to reduce our costs.

The digging team continues to be active in a small way. No major excavations have been carried out in the past year though there were several watching briefs and the team continued the task of writing up the previous excavations. The society and indeed archaeology in North London as a whole needs to look for a major research excavation which can be carried out over a number of years and we hope that the revived Research Committee will be able to produce such a project.

May I conclude my thanks to all the other members of the committee – the Secretary Liz Holliday, Brian Wrigley, Vikki O’Connor the Membership Secretary, and above all to Dorothy Newbury. We look forward to a successful year ahead.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The AGM was held at Avenue House on Tuesday, 2nd May, 1995. President R.Michael Robbins CBE. FSA. DLitt. was in the Chair and 34 members attended. Andrew Selkirk gave his Annual Report, which is printed in this Newsletter. The Hon Treasurer, Will Parnaby presented his financial statement and Brian McCarthy was elected as Auditor.

ELECTION OF OFFICERS

Our Vice-Presidents were confirmed in office: John Enderby, Miss D.P.Hill, Brian Jarman, Daphne Lorimer, Mary Phillips, Edward Sammes and Andrew Saunders.

Officers were re-elected: Andrew Selkirk as Chairman, Brian Wrigley as Vice-Chairman, Liz Holliday as Hon. Secretary, Will Parnaby as Hon. Treasurer.

A Committee was also elected: Bill Bass, Micky Cohen, Victor Jones, Dorothy Newbury, Vikki O’Connor, Peter Pickering, Edward Sammes, Andy Simpson, Myfanwy Stewart, Roy Walker, Micky Watkins.

MEMBERS’ NEWS

Christine Arnott had heart surgery last Autumn, and it is good to see her walking – and driving – round the Suburb again. We hope she will soon be able to come to HADAS meetings.

Miss Ningo. We are very sorry to report that Miss Ningo died on 9th April, 1995. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany, she had lost all her relatives. She lectured at the Belsize Park Synagogue and worked for a publishing firm. She had an alert and critical mind and enjoyed a good discussion. She was active in local societies and was a member of HADAS for many years.

THE HOME FRONT IN BARNET IN WORLD WAR 11 GERRARD ROOTS

An Exhibition at Church Farmhouse Museum (3rd May – 3rd September, 1995 )

Between 1939 and 1945 Britain was introduced to the concept of ‘total war’ in which the population at home was as directly threatened by hostilities as troops in battle. Of the total British war dead, over one-fifth were civilians.

Old men and young boys in the Home Guard; women in the Land Army and in factories; children from the cities evacuated to the countryside – for these and many more the war front was not delineated any more by a line on the map of some faraway country, but marked by the pile of sandbags at your front door, the barrage balloon above your school, the ranks of sleeping families sheltered from the bombs in a tube station..

Daily life became extraordinary, but then the extraordinary – inevitably – became itself ordinary: if it had not, no-one could have carried on. There was the black-out, but people still went to pubs, dances and the cinema; there was rationing, but people ate (indeed, thanks to rationing many were better fed during the war than before it ); there was the constant presence of death, but the essential services, though sometimes stretched virtually to breaking point, continued to work, and, indeed, the necessary central planning of hospital care in World War II laid the foundations of the NHS that came in the Peace.

Times were hard – the crime rate rose, as did the number of illegitimate births – and the effects of the War on separated families lasted long after the celebrations of VE and VJ Day were over. But life – poorer and less comfortable for everyone; more liberated for some (especially young single women ) – continued.

( Do go to this Exhibition. As an oldie, I find it very evocative, but young people and grand-children also are intrigued by war-time rations, the air-raid shelter, and the paraphernalia of Dad’s Army. – Ed.)

Windmills – Talk by Ted Sammes following the business of the AGM

Ted once more dipped into his Aladdin’s cave of slides and illustrated his talk with both picturesque and technical shots. In fact, it was so interesting it sent me scurrying to the architecture section at the library (windmills 725.4) to fill the gaps in my notes!

The earliest milling was done by hand on saddle querns, and statuettes depicting this activity have been found in Egyptian tombs. Rotary hand querns developed from this, and, from the Roman period larger commercial versions, which turned on a conical stone base and were operated by asses or slaves, have been found at many sites including Pompeii. Water mills were the next development and Ted mentioned a water supply gully for such a mill which was found at Chesters, Hadrian’s Wall. Horizontal water wheels developed from the earlier vertical type and probably led to the development of the primitive wind mills known to have existed in Persia in the 10th century. The early Persian and Chinese windmills were used for drainage.

However, windmills as we know and love them are recorded in England from the 12th century – an 1185 reference refers to one at Weedley, Yorkshire with an annual rent of 8s. Ted did mention that millers were wealthy folk. Originally, milling was governed by milling sake where every mill was the property of the lord of the manor, regardless of who had built it. This worked for the mutual benefit of lord and population – he got their business but also had an obligation to provide and maintain mills. This monolopy was eventually broken when some estates became very large and their mills were tenanted, also, technology improved, and the population chose to use mills other than on their home estates.

The earliest type of windmill was the timber post mill comprising a body (buck), canvas sails, and central post (supported by cross timbers) on which the buck revolved. Although the bottom was subject to rotting many remained operational for several centuries. Access was gained by hinged ladder to the buck, which could be raised, and the structure was turned by walking round, pushing the timber tail pole. The earliest post mills had pitched roofs which evolved into a rounded shape to better accommodate the brake wheel – the large cog wheel which drives the millstone machinery. The brake wheel in fact has an iron band or wooden shoe to slow it down, also to hold the sails steady when they are being worked on. The speed of the sails is crucial – if it is too fast this stresses the machinery and could start a fire. Although the ‘norm’ is four sails, the addition of a cast-iron cross poll attached to the windshaft and sail backs enabled between five and eight sails to be fixed; this became popular in the east Midlands. William Cubitt’s patent sail (1807) has shutters which are controlled by an automatic striking gear and can be adjusted without stopping the mill. We saw the aptly-named spider which lives on the cross of the sails “the cruciform linkage at the centre of the patent sail assembly, connecting the striking rod to the shutter bars Some mills, however, found it useful to employ two common sails and two patent sails as at Chillenden, Kent.

From the 18th century the post and trestles were enclosed by a round house for protection from the weather and additional room for storage or machinery. This could also raise the height of the mill, to catch the wind. A variant of the post mill is the Dutch wip mill which has a hollow pole to accommodate the drive shaft, giving additional room within the buck.

Smock mills and tower mills differ from post mills – the sails are fixed to a revolving cap which is turned by a fantail. Although operating on the same principle, the smock mill is built of timber and boarded, either vertically or horizontally, painted or tarred, and the tower mill is built of brick or stone. Tower mills first appeared in Europe in the 15th century. Earlier tower mills had a basic design fault -the windows were aligned vertically and the stresses the structures were subjected to sometimes led to their collapse. These did not replace post mills which continued to be built.

Mill stones had to be of a high quality as changing them and re-dressing the stones was an awkward and time-consuming job. Millers would have had more than one pair of stones. The best quality stone came from Germany and France, the French burr stone was only available in small lumps and a patchwork stone was made by cleverly shaping these, cementing and binding them with iron hoops. The millstone grooves were pecked with a tool called a mill bill and the quality of this important tool depended on the skill of the blacksmith. The clearance between the mill stones was adjusted by a regulator (governor) to suit the speed of the wind.

Although steam engines gradually took trade away from windmills, according to Suzanne Beedell in her book “Windmills” (David & Charles, 1975), windmills were finally put out of business by the Milling Standards set in World War I.

For a reason Ted could not explain, Milton Keynes has a modern, totally decorative modern windmill. Perhaps one of our members knows the answer to this one?

Hilaire Belloc apparently had a love for mills, apart from writing a poem “Hannaker Mill” about Halnaker Mill, Sussex, he bought Shipley (smock) Mill in Sussex in 1906.

Ted – if I’ve got any facts wrong, could you write to the next newsletter editor? Thanks for stimulating talk! Vicki O’Connor

Visit to the Houses of Parliament by Micky Watkins

Mr John Marshall MP kindly invited HADAS to a visit and reception on Tuesday, 16th May 1995.

Seventy two members and friends passed through the security guards at the St Stephen’s entrance and in true HADAS style started wandering off to the Lobby admiring the paintings and statues. However we were soon assembled in the Jubilee Room where we had a most sumptuous supper. The Jubilee Room, cosy under its panelled and embossed ceiling, was just the right size for our party and there was a buzz of conversation – meanwhile the TV monitor showed us that the Gas Bill was being debated in the Commons.

Mr Marshall was in sparkling form. He told us that the Commons now is in many ways more orderly than in the nineteenth century. Then proceedings were often suspended in the summer because of the stench of the River, while now the Thames is the cleanest metropolitan river in western Europe. Proceedings were frequently interrupted and delayed by the Irish Nationalists – at one time twenty of them were suspended in one day. I particularly enjoyed Mr Marshall’s story of Lady Astor and Churchill: when Lady Astor got especially cross with Churchill she was heard to say, “If I were married to you , I would be tempted to put poison in your tea”, to which Churchill replied “If I were married to you, I would be tempted to drink it.”

After supper we walked the great length of Westminster Hall to the Crypt Chapel. This Chapel is used as the Members’ church for services, christenings and weddings It was built about 1300, but little of the original decoration remains. During the Interregnum Cromwell had the walls whitewashed and stalled the horses there, and it was thoroughly redecorated in the 19th century. Almost every nook and cranny of our Houses of Parliament can tell us something of our history. Mr Marshall told us that in 1911 a suffragette spent a night in the Chapel broom cupboard in order to get returned in the Census as residing in Parliament!

Visitors are only allowed to enter the Crypt Chapel if guided by a Member, so this part of our visit was a special privilege. Mr Marshall had to dash off to attend the very last meeting of the Hendon South Conservative Party Executive. ( In the next election Hendon South will have been divided between Hendon and Finchley & Golders Green).

Rosie Daniels, Mr Marshall’s Secretary, guided us for the rest of our tour. Westminster Hall has been twice saved from fire. In 1834 most of the Palace of Westminster was burnt down and in 1941 the Commons’ Chamber was bombed and burnt, but on both occasions Westminster Hall was saved. The Hall was built by William Rufus, son of William the Conqueror, and at that time was the largest hall in Europe. Three hundred years later in Richard II’s time the very fine hammer beam roof was added. The timber came from southern England and it was shaped – ‘prefabricated’ – to reduce the weight to be transported and then floated down the Thames to Westminster. Until the reign of Henry VIII the Palace of Westminster was a royal residence and the Hall was used for the King’s Council, and for great feasts. The Hall was then used for law courts until the late 19th century. King Charles I was tried here, as was Guy Fawkes. It is now used for ceremonial occasions such as Churchill’s lying-in-state and the VE celebrations.

St Stephen’s Hall was a chapel and was the home of the House of Commons from 1550 to 1834. After the fire, the present Hall was built and Barry retained the shape of the previous Chapel, while around the walls were placed statues of great politicians. Meanwhile Barry chose a similar rectangular design for the new Commons Chamber, so the structure of the Chamber with two rows of seats facing each other is derived from the medieval Chapel, and perhaps has tended to encourage our two party system.

As proceedings in the Commons had finished early, we wound our way up to the House of Lords visitors gallery. The red seats and newly renovated golden throne provided a colourful background to the rather sparsely attended debate on the Jobseekers Bill. It was at the Report stage when detailed amendments can be made, and Earl Russell (son of Bertrand Russell), together with Baroness Dean of Fulton le Fylde (better known as Brenda Dean of the Printworkers) were trying to lessen the severity of benefit reductions on the job-shy and improve the job-search facilities for disabled people. It was by no means a scintillating debate, but it did show the House of Lords doing useful work in scrutinising the details of legislation and making small changes.

Andrew Selkirk, our Chairman, thanked John Marshall for hosting this excellent visit, and also thanked Rosie Daniels for all the preparatory work she has done for us. HADAS members heartily endorse this vote of thanks.

By the time we left the Houses of Parliament the rain was pouring down, but, as the Lords would say, we were “content”, indeed very content.

EXCAVATION REPORT: ST. MARTHA’S CONVENT SCHOOL, MONKEN HADLEY FROM ROY WALKER

Work has now commenced at St. Martha’s Convent School, Monken Hadley, with a HADAS attendance of 11 enthusiastic diggers on the first working day.

In the pre-excavation period, however, we were given access to a 1.5 metre wide trench running n/s specially dug for us within the footprint of the new classroom, that is, on the site of the demolished classroom. Unfortunately, this trench had to be backfilled the same day but we were able to sketch a side section which showed three features, probably post medieval. One feature, a rubbish pit, had a back fill with oyster shells, bone fragments and fragments of crockery – two plates marked “Doric Star”.

We are still waiting for the contractors to dig foundation trenches in readiness for the new classrooms, but as preliminary piling work has been delayed we have had to concentrate on the area of the former mound in front of Mount House. A resistivity survey of the lawn which covers the area of the mound was inconclusive – higher readings may have reflected the root systems of two elderly trees in the centre and south of the site. However, the probes revealed the presence in places of a harder layer and this is now being investigated by further probing with a view to the excavation of a trial trench to ascertain the nature of this layer.

At the same time, a 3 metre by 3 metre area which covered the junction of the lawn and surrounding gravel path was pegged out for excavation. Only the path area within this square has so far been dug (in order to minimise damage to the grass area!). Our first discovery was a rectangular board lying e/w across the trench leading onto the grass. The eastern half of the excavated area was covered by a compacted pebble layer which has been interpreted as an earlier pathway. This pebble layer was remove to reveal the base of a ‘wall’ about 40cm wide comprising tumbled bricks and stone, including some moulded stone. Its depth has yet to be ascertained. The pebbles to the west of the wall overlay a clay base; to the east (where they were shallower) was a more humic mixture, probably a cultivated layer. The area to the east of the wall is now being removed down to natural.

In summary, we have a ‘wall’, path to one side, cultivation to the other side. There is little positive dating evidence, being mainly modern pottery, some fragments of glass, clay pipe stems and clay pipe bowl, tentatively dated to about 1750.

The dig continues. We welcome assistance, although at weekends we cannot guarantee there will not be some standing around due to the restricted area being worked at present. Please phone me on 0181-361 1350 if you would like to join in

NEWS OF COURSES

Birkbeck College is organising Training Excavations at Southwark, each lasting one week, and starting on 3rd, 10th, and 24th July 1995. The courses will provide appropriate field experience for students undertaking Extra-Mural Certificate and Diploma Courses. Apply to Lesley Hannigan, Birkbeck College.

The Museum of London. Archaeology Seminars at 5.00pm on 14th June -“Roman Cullet Dump from Guildhall Yard”, 12th July -“Use of Geographic Information Systems”. Others on 9th August, 6th September.

Butser Ancient Farm, Waterlooville, Hants. has Sunday Workshops on flint technology, woodlands and archaeology for children. Tel. 01705 598838.

MAP OF MIDDLESEX

Though Middlesex County Council was abolished in 1965 the County still exists. Now a large map of the County is available, 37″x 33″, laminated. From Map Marketing, 921104 Carnwath Rd., SW6 3HW

YATESBURY

Our outing on 17th June will start with a visit to Yatesbury. This very small hamlet must be known by thousands of ex-servicemen Stella Greenall tells me that her late husband, Philip Greenall, was posted there as a Squadron Leader in World War 11. There was a huge camp of Training Command at Yatesbury with over 3000 men. We wonder whether the medieval village patterns have been overlaid by runways and lost NAAFI cutlery?

HELPING HADAS

Vikki O’Connor has worked hard for our Society this month. Besides her usual tasks as Membership Secretary, she has written the report on Ted Sammes talk on Windmills which is printed in this Newsletter. She also looked after our HADAS bookstall at the Finchley Festival in Avenue House grounds on 7th May. Thank you, Vikki.

NEWS OF OTHER SOCIETIES

Hornsey Historical Society has an Exhibition on William Heath Robinson (1872-1944), the famous illustrator and humourist who was born in Stroud Green and spent the last 15 years of his life in Highgate. The Exhibition is at the HHS headquarters – The Old Schoolhouse, 136 Tottenham Lane, London N8 7EL. It is open Thursday and Friday morning from 10 to 12 noon and on Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm. Buses W3, 91,41.

“Highgate and Muswell Hill”, by Joan Schwitzer and Ken Gay has just been published. This is an historical account of the area, illustrated with over 230 photographs and pictures from private collections as well as from major London archives. Chalford Publishing Co. Price £8.99.

Barnet and District Local History Society has an outing to Ironbridge on Sunday llth June. Price £14.50. contact Mrs G.Gear, Barnet Museum, 31 Wood St., Barnet for details.

“Barnet’s History in its Street Names”, by Doreen Willcocks is on sale at Barnet Museum_ Price £3_50.

Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, NW3.

“The London of John Keats”, lecture by Dr Ann Saunders, on Friday 23 June at 7.30pm.

WHAT THE PAPERS SAY

American archaeologists have found in Zaire what may be the oldest bone tools fashioned by man.The tools include harpoon tips and a flat dagger. Dating techniques suggest they may be 90,000 years old! This makes them about twice as old as the earliest tools from Europe. If this find is corroborated the history of human culture may need rewriting. Times 1.5.1995

In the Valley of the Kings in Egypt,a vast royal tomb has been found. It contains at least 67 chambers and it is believed that 50 of Rameses 11’s sons may have been buried there 3,000 years ago. It is situated close to the tomb of Rameses 11, but hitherto the entrance to most of the chambers has been blocked by debris. Times. 16.5.1995.

No: 289 APRIL 1995 Edited by VIKKI O’CONNOR
DIARY
Remember – meetings venue for 1995 – Stephenson Room, (1st floor), Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3 – starting at 8pm for 8.30pm.

Tuesday 4th April Lecture: Excavation at Folly Lane, St Albans by Simon West, Field Archaeologist, St Albans Museums Service.
Late Iron Age ditch enclosure with ritual deposits and a timber-lined sunken shaft which was later recut and reused by the Romans.
Tuesday 2nd May Annual General Meeting.
Tuesday 16th May Evening visit to the House of Commons with John Marshall, MP. Date now confirmed. Application form enclosed.
Saturday 17th June Outing: Malmesbury and Compton Bassett with Micky Watkins and Micky Cohen.

NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
To all Members: The Annual General Meeting of the Society will be held at Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3 on Tuesday 2 May 1995. Coffee will be available before the meeting from 8.00 – 8.15pm.
Nominations for the Officers and Members of the Committee must be submitted to me at the address below. The consent of your nominees must be obtained in writing before submitting their name/s, Nominations must be received by me not later than one week before the date of the Annual General Meeting.
Resolutions submitted by members for consideration at the Annual General Meeting must be received by me not later than three weeks before the date of the Annual General Meeting.

E A Holliday, Hon Secretary
Gorse Cottage, The Common, Chipperfield, Herts, WD4 9EL

MEMBERS’ NEWS
TAMARA BAKER
We are sad to report the death of Tamara in March this year. She and Julius have been regular attenders at lectures over the years, joining us on outings and weekends away. She was ill a year or so ago, but, apart from having to give up driving, was back amongst us last year and was her old self again at our Christmas dinner in December. Sadly, her illness suddenly returned soon after. She died peacefully at home with Julius at her side, and our thoughts and sympathy go out to him.
TRUDI PULFER
Another member of long-standing died in February, For many years she assisted Irene Frauchiger in producing a newsletter on a very aged Gestetner. Between them they ran off, collated, stuffed and dispatched them, until Irene moved to Radlett. Both have remained keen members, and many of us will remember them on outings and on our memorable weekend to Hadrians Wall.
Trudi Pulfer was German-born and had few relatives in this country, and Irene Frauchiger cared for her over the last few years. Mrs Puffer had always expressed her wish for many items to go to HADAS on her death. Her niece came over from Germany, and, confirming this request, has donated them to HADAS.
On the clearance of the house she has also given us further contributions for our Minimart to help HADAS funds. We are grateful to Trudi for this and also to her niece for her generosity.
Dorothy Newbury
Andrew Selkirk has received the following note from Ralph Merrifield’s widow:
“Dear Andrew, Thank you very much for your kind letter, I know that Ralph much enjoyed his presidency of HADAS and greatly regretted it when he found it increasingly difficult to make the journey to attend meetings and other functions. I think he always felt he was returning to his roots, though of course he did not remember the area at all But he felt it was a very fitting rounding off to his connection with the district. With, again, many thanks. Yours very sincerely, Lysbeth,”
NEWS FROM NORTH WEST LONDON Frances Radford
A new Conservation Area has come into being. It is centred on West End Lane and West End Green, NW6. The hamlet of West End, as it was known, dates back to medieval times and, as Christopher Wade says in his book “The Streets of West Hampstead”, it “was held of the Abbot of Westminster by the Prioress of Kilburn. In the reign of Henry VIII its estimated area was eighteen acres.” Population growth was slow so that as late as 1841 the census recorded only eight households. It is interesting to note that during the Great Plague a report of 1665 stated that though there had been over two hundred deaths in Hampstead only a quarter of a mile away at West End none had died.

A three-day fair used to be held annually on the Green until it became so riotous that local residents had it suppressed in 1821. Even in the 1860s maps show a relatively rural area with a few large houses but before long the railway brought with it a rapid development of housing. Now, because of its medieval history, it has been designated as an Archaeological Priority area.
THE MARCH LECTURE TESSA SMITH
Our second lecture at Avenue House was well attended, for Andrew Reynolds’ lecture entitled “Landscape Archaeology in North Wiltshire”, He began by comparing a range of rural settlement patterns, where he has been surveying and excavating – Compton Bassett, a roadside development; Yatesbury – a cluster of houses and church; and Cherhill, built on a Roman site, with manor and church.
He explained his research into old documents, maps, aerial photos, and charters from before the Viking invasion, Sites & Monuments Records, and field name maps. It was interesting to hear the meanings of certain place-names, Burr, Bailey and Bury relating to a fortified enclosure, Yatesbury meaning ‘Entrance gate of a fortified place’. It was here at Yatesbury that Andrew Reynolds concentrated his excavations, where a `barrow way’, a half-forgotten road, ran right through the middle of an early earthwork enclosure, on its way to Avebury. He dug trenches at intervals in the area of the church and earthwork enclosure, apparently sometimes helped by sheep! His finds included barbed and tonged arrowheads, unexpected evidence of Bronze Age, and medieval, including a late medieval wolfhound skeleton and rubbish pits which revealed pottery of a high status. Finally, a medieval manorial site and fishpond were identified close to the present church, apparently church and manor are often developed close together in Wiltshire.
Finally, Andrew linked his excavation area to wider administrative centres and old army routes of communication, explaining how the barrow way had sunk into the almost forgotten past, as the modern Yatesbury road system and the major Bath to London road evolved.
We are looking forward to our summer outing to Avebury, and thank Andrew Reynolds for highlighting this particular area and current excavation.
PS It was good to have a preview of the HADAS display boards for the March LAMAS conference. This is a bonus for our new venue at Avenue House. Thank you to those concerned.
EVEN BETTER THAN LASCAUX Stuart Wild
Last December a group of covers exploring in the remote Ardeche region of southern France noticed a draught of air coming from a recent rock slide. They spent a day clearing a narrow shaft to what they hoped would be a new cave to explore.
A week later, last Christmas Eve, they descended into it by rope. What their lamps illuminated was stunning – the most significant trove of prehistoric art to be discovered in the last half-century. Four chambers, the largest 210 feet long, contained more than 300 paintings of rhinos, lions, oxen, mammoths, a rare red hyena and the only panther and owl images ever recorded. Most of the amazingly clear pictures are rendered in yellow ochre, charcoal or iron oxide. The paintings, believed to be 20,000 years old, are accompanied by sketches of a human hand, possibly that of the artist.
The cavern, near the little town of Combe D’Arc, rivals Lascaux in the Dordogne and
Altamira in northern Spain, and is likely to transform most of what little we know about
palaeolithic man. Unlike those at other sites, the Ardeche paintings depict mostly

beasts that humans didn’t hunt, suggesting they were painted for religious or purely decorative reasons. Many of them are extinct European cousins of African animals, lending weight to the theory that a land bridge once connected the two continents.
Suggestions that the paintings may be a hoax have been dismissed. Researchers say that the virgin state of the cave’s floor guarantees that nobody’s been there for centuries. And few people will be stopping by now. The French Ministry of Culture plans to buy the cave from its private owner, and for the foreseeable future, only experts will get access.
Abridged from an article in Newsweek, 30 January 1995.
KEEPING TIME IN BARNET Rick Gibson
(How Rick Gibson found his place in time)
One of Barnet’s landmarks is the clocktower at Golders Green, but how many of us knew that it had stopped, or why, and that it had subsequently been repaired, and by whom? NADAS member Rick Gibson reveals all..
In 1993 June phoned the Council to ask why the clock hadn’t worked for the last 5 or
years, to be told that it was due to a severe fault, and to problems with the firm contracted to maintain the public clocks in Barnet. They said it couldn’t be fixed without enormous expense, so, being familiar with tower clock mechanisms, I volunteered to look at it, and the Council duly delivered the key. Opening the door for the first time I was presented with a fairly standard tower clock mechanism – the sort supplied to the Admiralty and the War Office. Sitting about 3′ from the bottom of the tower on an iron frame, it was covered in a mixture of pigeon guano, brickdust, rust and water, because the roof had been leaking for several years. 1 told the Contracts Dept and as soon as I had fixed the clock they not only repaired the roof but also put floodlighting on the four faces of the clock because I had told them wanted to get the clock going and chiming for Remembrance Day.
The first thing 1 had to do was clean the clock, which was quite ❑ palaver, then, when I tried to get it going for the first time I realised there was something severely wrong with the auto-wind mechanism. It has two electric motors, fitted to it after the last war, and, although the weights only descend two feet, as soon as they reach the bottom of their travel they are re-wound. The problem was serious because ❑ slightly longer pendulum had been fitted and when the weights descended the pendulum fouled the weights and stopped the clock. (This hadn’t been realized by the maintenance team). I realigned the motor-driven rewinding chains so the pendulum could swing and miss the weights when they descended. Even then I had problems because, when the motor suddenly galvanised into action to raise the weights again, they swung slightly and, once again, the pendulum hit them – so I had further work there to realign the chains on the other side of their idler gears.
So, the clock was ticking at last. I cleaned and oiled the mechanism and it merrily went for four hours then jammed up solidly! This was due to the striking rack which had been re-made by the contractors – the teeth had been cut very inaccurately, so as it descended it jammed on its drive pull. It was rather a long-winded business re-cutting several teeth on the rack. Then, the clock was working again, and for the next four weeks, once a week, I adjusted the clock. It is now at its best accuracy – to within 5 minutes per fortnight and I adjust it once a fortnight and oil it once a month, There is so much wear in the mechanism due to lack of lubrication through the years, with brick dust etc getting into the gears, that there is sufficient play in the escarpment. Also, it has an uncompensated pendulum so when the weather is hot it slows down, and when it’s cold it speeds up, but 5 minutes a fortnight isn’t bad for a 1923 tower clock mechanism.

The Mechanism
There are two motors, the left one winds the chiming mechanism weight and the right one winds clock drive weight.
The wooden pendulum shaft descends in centre, and ❑ chain runs over pulley on right. The pendulum can easily swing, hit and foul the chain which used to run on the right side of the pulley, so that the pendulum could easily catch the chains and weights which were correspondingly closer during its operation. Looking straight at the clock mechanism, the vertical shaft goes up to a quadral gear mechanism that drives the four faces of the clock at the top of the tower.
Everything on the right hand side is connected with the clock and the escapement, and everything on the left hand side is connected with the chiming mechanism, A large fan regulates the chiming speed. A lever, below the wire, goes up to the bell, where it’s disconnected so it doesn’t pull on the wire and chime on the bell. It has an anchor escapement, also known as a recoil escapement, What we are looking at is a good quality turret clock mechanism which can be mounted in the top of towers or, in this case, low down, providing there is automatic winding. I don’t know whether it has always been in this position but, judging by the flooring which is halfway up the tower, I should imagine it has because it is original flooring with one single hole going up through the centre for the drive shaft.
The nameplates are visible – the date is on the centre dialled wheel which is turned with ❑ brass key to adjust the hands of the clock. Just behind that is a cam which operates the chiming mechanism. The electrical switch on the right in the tower operates the lights which are behind the dials of the clock. Originally the dials were of an opal glass so that when they were illuminated from within all four faces were lit. Some bright spark came along and covered them with blue paint – probably just thinking they would look reasonably attractive –
but of course it is peeling off, and no light gets out, although the facility for lighting the clock internally is still there. Up on top of the tower is a trap door, and you can actually climb a metal ladder (which you can’t see very well but is on the immediate right just behind the door jamb) and get out on to the roof of the clock. Barnet Council did a bit of re¬wiring during the Remembrance period; I was very pleased because it meant that they were paying some care ana attention to it.
The History
The date on the clock mechanism, which I presume also relates to the tower, is 1923. It was built by subscription as a memorial to the 1914-18 war. Barnet Council couldn’t tell us who subscribed, or how much it cost. I’m not sure who owns it now, but presumably the responsibility lies with Barnet Council. The clockmaker is J W Benson of Ludgate Hill, clockmakers to the Admiralty, War Office and the India Office.
After WWII they also carved on the monument “1939-45”. The book of honour on it has people from Golders Green and Hampstead Garden Suburb -there are some interesting names and would like to look into this and see if there are any surviving relatives who maybe I could talk to.

There was an annoying incident when some mindless yobbos daubed graffiti on the clocktower and the door; I managed to get the Council to sandblast that off, but I daresay it will happen again.
One other thing I should mention is that the gears on the clock in the early stages of the escapement mechanism are terribly worn. They consist of thin steel shafts mounted like a squirrel cage. Some of them are worn nearly halfway through due to the diet of brickdust, water, and no lubricant for many years. I think that within the next two years I will have to stop the clock, strip it down and do a considerable amount of work to stop these gears snapping. Unfortunately, if they break on this type of clock with autowind, they can go into self-destruct. You probably know that the clock mechanism in Big Ben actually exploded when the shaft on the fan controlling the chiming mechanism snapped due to a gear failure, and the clock just whirred out of control. It actually snapped in half the main frame that held the clock. £1.5 million were spent on it and even now it is a patched up job. To actually see Big Ben and go up the tower is quite an experience, but if anyone had been in the vicinity when that exploded they would certainly have been killed because there were gears and fragments of metal everywhere.
Time past
When I was working at DoIlis Hill Research Station, two colleagues and myself volunteered to try and sort out the clock at the ancient church of St Mary’s, Willesden – the site of the Black Madonna. The stairs going up to the clock tower were extremely unsafe, and the clock had to be wound constantly. We managed to get a large geared electric motor and we actually coupled this up to the clock in the top of the tower. This was another clock that had given intermittent trouble due to lack of maintenance through the years, and pigeon droppings had fouled between the hands, the hour and the second hand – it was a solid lump. The work also involved us stripping out the gearing to the four faces of the tower itself, and people having to go outside of the tower, which isn’t for me because I suffer from vertigo!
As the weights of the clock descended the tower they came to a hinged platform which operated a micro switch (this is all stuff built by us) which operated a large relay. This in turn switched the motor on, and the weight steadily rose up the tower. At the top it operated another micro switch that turned it off again, We had a lot of fun with this because the actual weight of the clock descended into the church itself and could be viewed by the congregation, so we made a lovely golden cardboard angel and fitted it to the clock weight so that it actually disappeared into a pit in the floor of the church. When the mechanism operated you suddenly heard the whirring noise and this golden cardboard angel steadily rose up the wall and disappeared into the clocktower, (The Reverend there was a friend of ours!) Everyone loved it, but it was only a short-term thing to amuse the congregation. We did that work nearly twenty years ago and it’s still going beautifully. There are other clocks in my life, but that certainly was one of the most rewarding one,
Footnote.’ The Golders Green project took Rick about three weeks to sort out the mechanical problems, with a further couple of weeks regulating the clock. Asked if he had his eye on any other public clocks Rick stated a preference for “a long-term project in my workshop – something I can fiddle with”.
As a matter of interest, how many public clocks in the Borough aren’t working? (Clockhouse Parade, East Barnet Village, for one,..)
The Society for Medieval Archaeology and the Medieval Settlement Research Group held a conference at the British Museum in March entitled Recent Work in the Archaeology of Medieval Rural Settlement. Maurice Beresford, vintage archaeologist of Wharram Percy fame responded to Prof Christopher Dyer’s open invitation to the

audience to nominate a new Wharram for the next millenium. Mr Beresford, rather than predict another site, is rather hoping for the National Lottery or a friendly millionaire to provide the wherewithall to re-open the Wharram project.
SURFIN’ in the 1990’s doesn’t require much physical energy, just a computer and a modem. Members having access to the Internet might like to check out the LAMAS information pages which have just been set up by their Secretary, Malcolm Harden. He lists their current activities and has impressively scanned their logo into the document. To view, the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for LAMAS is
http://www.unl.ac.uk/nfstest/arch/lamhome.htm
Distance is no barrier to the Internet; one can browse documents world-wide on virtually any subject, including information from archaeological institutions, for example, interim excavation reports. Looking ahead, communications are evolving so rapidly that we can expect to see not just pages of information on digs but video shots of sites, finds, etc. on the Internet by the end of this century – the technology for this already exists in the form of CD ROM, now entering the classroom as a teaching aid. Programs are being fine-tuned at an ever-increasing rate to make the Internet faster, easier to use, cheaper, and available for most home computers. Maybe HADAS could put up info pages in the not too distant future? Our Chairman is into electronic mail and the information superhighway, but are other HADAS members on¬line? Membership queries by e-mail? v.oconnor@unl.ac.uk If anyone didn’t quite understand what this is all about, I’m sure Andrew can explain!!
BIRKBECK have just published their 1995-96 extra-mural part-time course prospectus. Certificate courses span 3 years with a fourth year available to convert the qualification to a Diploma. Of possible interest to HADAS members: Archaeology; Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology; Egyptology; Field Archaeology; Industrial Archaeology; Prehistoric Archaeology; Garden History; Genealogy & the History of the Family; History; Local History; History of London; Medieval History; History of Art; Islamic Studies; Victorian Studies, Required course work: 4 written pieces, carrying 100% of the marks. Details of fees, enrolment, etc, will be published mid-June, phone the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies on: 0171- 631 6687 for a free copy of either document.
LAMAS Conference of London Archaeologists
The Conference Chairman, John Kent, advised us that Harvey Sheldon couldn’t attend as he was “undergoing routine conservation”. Harvey has been in hospital for an eye operation – HADAS wishes him a full and speedy recovery. It was especially noticeable this year that each speaker thanked the several funding bodies contributing to the excavations, in a manner reminiscent of the ‘Oscar award ceremonies. Several of the sites were on brickearth and after a couple of hours we wondered if they were re-cycling the slides. It seems unlikely though – we understand that the first four speakers had never met before the conference – even though their areas are interrelated. (Report on the conference will be in the May newsletter).
In our February newsletter Andy Simpson advised that a leaflet entitled ‘Sites to See -Northern & Eastern Herts’ can be obtained by phoning Hertfordshire Environmental Information Service. We took up the offer and were pleased to receive, not one, but three leaflets! The other two are entitled: Sites to See – Southern & Western Herts; and Mooted sites. Apparently, there are over 200 hundred mooted sites in Hertfordshire -not all are accessible to the public, but the Hells Environment Info Service will provide further details on request – tel: 01992-555244 / 5. (Revised number with the extra digit, necessary after ‘phone day’ on April 16). We understand that one of our members, Norma King, had difficulty getting through to the right department. We re-checked the number and they helpfully promised to send a copy of the leaflet to Ms King, We trust other members haven’t stumbled on the same problem?

NEIGHBOURING SOCIETIES
BARNET & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY – Wed. 26th April 8pm for 8.30pm The Hyde Room, Chipping Barnet Library, Staplyton Rd, Barnet
Beating the Bounds- talk by Peter Willcocks
ENFIELD ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY – 21 April 8pm Jubilee Hall, Parsonage Lone, Enfield
Invasion 1940 – Operation Sea-Lion – talk by Geoffrey Gillam
THE FINCHLEY SOCIETY – Fri. 27th April at 7.45pm Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3
The Regents Canal System – talk by Dr M Essex-Lopresti
AN OPEN INVITATION has been received, from the Finchley Society for HADAS members, to attend their National Trust Centenary Meeting on Thursday 29th June at Christ Church C School, Hilton AvenuelWarnham Road, North Finchley at 7.45. Peter Clayton, Chairman of the Octavio Hill Society, Wisbech, will talk about ‘Octavio Hill’s Childhood in Finchley` She was a great social reformer and a co-founder of the National Trust. Admission is free, and to help them estimate how many to cater for we have been asked to advise the Finchley Society how many HADAS members expect to attend. Anyone who plans to accept, please contact Vikki O’Connor (0181-361 1350) so we can respond to them by the end of May. Thanks!
NATIONAL TRUST ARCHAEOLOGY CENTENARY CONFERENCE
Another NT centenary event, scheduled for 18/19 May in London, will include some of the Trust’s archaeological activities: gardens and designed landscapes, historic buildings, industrial archaeology, and historic ecology. Further details are available from Archaeology Conference Co-ordinator, The National Trust, 33 Sheep Street, Cirencester, Glos, GL7 1QW. Telephone 01 285 651818.
MORE MEMBERS’ NEWS…
Our congratulations to Daphne Lorimer – she has been made Chairman of the Orkney Heritage Society.
STOP PRESS: it is likely that building works at St Martha’s Convent School, Monken Hadley, will commence at the end of April – those interested in participating in archaeological excavation should contact Brian Wrigley (0181-959 5982) or Roy Walker (0181-361 1350) after 15th April when further details should be available.

No. 288 Edited by Liz Sagues MARCH 1995

Diary
Remember: New meeting venue for 1995. HADAS now gathers in the Stephens Room (first floor) at Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3, starting at 8pm for for 8.30pm. The HADAS library, also located at Avenue House, should be open before the meetings.
Tuesday March 7: Landscape Archaeology in North Wiltshire —
Lecture by Andrew Reynolds, from the Institute of Archaeology.
This lecture will give some recent results from the Compton Bassett Area Research Project. An outing has been arranged to this site, on June 17 this year.
Tuesday April 4: Excavation at Folly Lane, St Albans — Lecture by Simon West.
Tuesday May 2: Annual General Meeting
Please phone June Porges on 0181-346 5078 or Dorothy Newbury on 0181-203 0950 if you have slides on any HADAS activities over the past year for showing at the AGM.
Tuesday May 16 (to be confirmed, alternative dates Monday 15 or Wednesday 17):
Evening visit and supper at the House of Commons with John Marshall MP
The uncertainty is because definite dates cannot be fixed more than two months ahead. A firm date and application form will be with the April Newsletter. In the meantime, please phone Dorothy (0181- 203 0950) if you would like your name added to the list.
A Programme Card for 1995 is enclosed with this Newsletter.

Chosen for the nation’s archives
Membership secretary Vikki O’Connor was some¬what surprised to receive a request from the British Library for back numbers of the Newsletter. Had we been remiss in not — as all commercial publishers are obliged to — giving the Library a copy of every¬thing we bring out, she worried.
Not so, came the charming explanation, it was simply that the Library’s “selector” had felt the copies would be an appropriate addition to the collection. Could this be a result of the enthusiasm shown by members during the excellent HADAS guided tour of the BL Newspaper Library at Colindale last year?
Not all quiet on the excavation front
Rather than cavorting in the mud, the excavation team is hard at work tying up loose ends in the publications department, including reports on the Golders Green 1991 and the Barnet High Street 1992 excavations.
Do you want to be on the list?
Following several requests, the Committee proposes issuing an updated membership list to all members. HADAS used to distribute such a list, comprising members’ names, addresses and telephone numbers, to members on a regular basis.
However, as some time has now elapsed since the last issue, we may well have new members who would not wish this information to be made avail¬able to all members. This could apply especially those whose numbers are ex-directory. The informa¬tion is currently available only to Committee mem¬bers, for administrative purposes.
Any members who would like their names/ addresses/phone numbers, or any combination of these, omitted from the new list, should advise Vikki O’Connor, 2a Dene Road, London N11 lES (tel: 0181¬361 1350) by April 15th. If we have received no objection to listing your above details by that date, we will issue the list as it stands. Please note that the list will be purely for internal distribution within the Society and must not be passed to anyone outside it.

A collection of
collections…
Liz Sagues finds nostalgia, and more, at Church Farmhouse Museum.
Do you remember a poster? It was used for the poster publicising Chinese Papercuts from the Cultural Revolution, a display of intricate scissor-work at Church Farmhouse Museum back in the ’80s. Like so many other of the papercuts shown, it had a caption as naive as its execution was sophis-ticated: “Sending grain to the state”.
The original is back at the museum, one among many hundreds of objects in Collectomania!, an ex¬hibition in which curator Gerrard Roots has brought together a synthesis of displays past. Some 20-plus collections are represented, from limited edition prints to paperclips, from trolleybus tickets to Victo¬rian cartes de visite, from English cottage glass to models made of matchsticks.
As Gerrard points out, they serve splendidly to illustrate the variety of exhibitions which have been seen at Church Farmhouse over three decades. Most archaeological is the mineral display from Clement Krysler, which includes fossil-bearing rocks and three neolithic flints alongside Victorian coral and jet jewellery, Florentine inlaid stone pendants and a lot more besides.
Among the souvenir silver spoons is a shovel-shaped reproduction Roman spoon, designed to prise open oysters and scoop out their flesh. Given the Roman Londoners’ propensity for consuming oysters, surely there’s the possibility of an original turning up sometime, somewhere in Barnet.
Many memories will be evoked by the writing equipment collected by not-quite-retired stationer Philip Poole, who, at the age of 85, still plies his trade, supplying old steel nibs to artists. Centrepiece of the showcase is a monitor’s ink tray, full of those ceramic wells which slotted into the desks of so many of our childhoods. Beside the tray, ready to pour, is a quart jar of Stephens (yes, ‘Inky’ Stephens, of Avenue House) Blue Black Writing Fluid.
Then there are the headlines of 40 years ago. 1955 was the year when Eden became Prime Minis-ter, a Comet flew from London to Sydney in a day and Princess Margaret declared that her romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend was over — the papers are on show, to prove them all.
But what prompts people to gather together so much, so specialised? One answer comes from the enthusiast of anything to do with piers — for him, the spark was buying a plate decorated with Colwyn Bay’s.
And why, sometimes, such horrible objects? For the answer to that, look no further than HADAS member Percy Reboul. “You can become very at¬tached to some of the more exotic items of bad taste,” he explains of his repulsive plastic pieces. Really? To the banana harmonica, or the Highland piper backscratcher? Beware, however: “Be prepared for the seminal moment when you conclude that what you thought was an example of bad taste is now rather artistic and something to be admired.”
Collectomania! continues at Church Farmhouse Museum, Greyhound Hill, Hendon, until April 9.

Major find in the spoil heap!
Some embarrassing typing errors crept into the last issue of the Newsletter. Apologies for them all:
Page 1: The 32nd LAMAS Conference is, of course, on Saturday March 18, not 20 as printed.
Page 3. The OS grid reference for the Brockley Hill reference should be TQ, not TZ.
Page 6: St Martha’s Convent: Jennie Cobban has helped (not hoped) to produced a detailed re-search design, visiting the site mid January to get the lie of the land, paying particular attention to the site of a now levelled mound.
Spellcheck corner
Clearly, computer programmers have not yet caught up with archaeology. For fun, here’s a selection of suggestions from the spellchecker of the desktop publishing program on which this issue of the News¬letter was produced.
HADAS:Hades; Brockley: broccoli; Cistercians: sisters-in-law; mesolithic: measliest; microburins: macrobiotics; microliths: humiliators; mortaria: mortuary; neolithic: inelastic; tranchet: turncoat. Palaeolithic, however, foxed the system completely! The editor just hopes none of them have crept in..,

London’s other mesolithic site

The first lecture of 1995 had a new organiser of meetings (everything went very smoothly, thank you, June) and a new venue. The Stephens’ Room in Avenue House, Finchley, was warm and comfort¬able and the admirable signposting ensured that we didn’t get lost.
HADAS claims a vested interest in the mesolithic of the London area, and it was good to see so many of the West Heath digging team at this lecture. John Lewis compared and contrasted West Heath with his own more recently excavated site at Three Ways Wharf, Uxbridge.
He commented first on the general scarcity of mesolithic material from London where, for obvious reasons, urban archaeology has been the priority. The sensational discoveries at Star Carr in 1954, and even earlier at Broxbourne in 1934, had no parallel in London. Scattered finds from the Colne and Lea Valleys and the Thames flood plain were published in the early 1960s, and suggested the presence of itinerant hunting groups. It was only recent heavy gravel-extraction from these valleys and the conse¬quent archaeological watching briefs which led to more extensive finds and the Uxbridge excavations from 1986 to 1988.
Unlike West Heath, there were buildings above the Uxbridge site, which lies alongside the Grand Union Canal and the River Colne. The remains of a twin-turreted Tudor gatehouse had to be removed, and a medieval ditch (which produced 13th century pottery) had cut through the earlier levels, river gravels laid down in about 10,000 or 11,000 BE
The two main flint scatters have been labelled A and C. Scatter A, which appeared to be mainly in situ, included microliths, largish crested blades with heavy edge-damage and opposed-platform cores.
Originally thought to be mesolithic, this flint-scatter is now identified as a late palaeolithic long-blade culture not unlike the Ahrensburgian. Faunal remains are of horse and reindeer, characteristic of the late glacial tundra of about 10,000 BE Similar artefacts and fauna have been found on several French sites; at that period there would still have been a land-bridge between Britain and the Conti¬nent. The flint artefacts at Uxbridge tend to be smaller than their counterparts elsewhere, due to the use of poor river-gravel flint.
Flint-scatter C represents the mesolithic phase of the site, though Dr RogerJacobi has suggested that half of that scatter may date from the late glacial.

The illustration from Animal Bones by James Rackham (British Museum Press) was used by John Lewis to illustrate how the discarded bones found on an archaeological site can indicate whether it was a kill site (black bones, top skeleton) or a temporary hunting camp (black bones, bottom skeleton). The Uxbridge bones, toes apart, fitted well with the lower skeleton.
Indeed, some horse and reindeer bone has been found there. But the rest of the bone is mainly red and roe deer, species associated with the woodland which replaced tundra as the climate warmed up between 10,500 and 9,500 BE
Many of the artefacts are typical of the early mesolithic as people adapted to a forest environ¬ment and different hunting quarry: tranchet axes (sharpened by a transversely-struck blow), micro¬liths, microburins and obliquely blunted points. Scrapers and burins are also present, and unlike those in scatter A they have been retouched.
The flint-scatters sit on the ground surface ad¬jacent to the contemporary water channel but high enough to escape flooding. Scatter C is much denser than scatter A. Areas of flint knapping can be iden¬tified by the distribution of waste-products and hammer-stones, and concentrations of burnt flint suggest activity round a camp fire. John Lewis showed some eye-dazzling computer graphics to illustrate this data!
Refitting of flakes/ tools to cores has confirmed
their manufacture on site, but cortex is missing so

the flint nodules were rough-trimmed elsewhere. The bone surfaces have been eroded and butchering cuts are seldom visible.
A “reconstruction” of the mesolithic way of life suggests there were three types of camp: a base camp, with some hunting nearby; a temporary camp set up on larger hunting trips away from base; and a kill site where initial butchering was carried out and some parts of the animals discarded. Red deer, like those from the Uxbridge site, might weigh up to 6001b, so carving up before carrying made sense.
Analysis of bone and antler remains gives clues to the use of the site. At Uxbridge there were no ribs or vertebrae, but legs (toeless!) and parts of skulls are found, and the tines only of antlers. This suggests a temporary hunting camp, not a kill site. No bone or antler tools have been found, nor any evidence of vegetable or plant processing as would be expected at a base camp. (How sad that the West Heath soil was too acid to preserve bone and antler.)
Pollen analysis at Uxbridge reveals arboreal vegetation typical of Zones V and VI (hazel, birch and pine). Large-scale burning, presumably to open up the forest, is indicated by bands of charcoal. This modification of the environment may well have contributed to the subsequent waterlogging of the site and its abandonment. The effect of human activities on the natural habitat is nothing new!
This was a most interesting lecture. It is to be hoped that more mesolithic sites will rapidly be¬come available for excavation in the London area. We need them!
.

Liz Sagues follows up February’s lecture with a visit to the Museum of London.

A gallery of sights, sounds, but no smells
You’ve heard the lecture (or even if you haven’t), now see the finds… The Uxbridge material is used to illustrate mesolithic life in the newly revamped prehistoric gallery at the Museum of London, an exercise in modern display techniques which aims to slow down visitors’ urgent progress to the Roman section.
The showcase — complete with the gory out¬come of a successful hunt comes at the end of the chilliest part of the gallery, as the tundra landscape depicted on the backdrop changes to open wood¬land, and the recorded birdsong moves on from arctic geese to the familiar British blackbird. Even the lighting changes, as visitors move through 500,000 years of London’s past. The aim, says curator Jon Cotton — HADAS members will remember him as a lecturer to the Society — is to appeal to the five senses. Touch is there (come on, urge the captions, tap these pots, stroke these textiles, feel the cutting edge of this flint blade) as well as sight and hearing. But taste and smell? Those would be intriguing…
There’s a great deal of emphasis on reconstruc¬tions and models, on trying to set finds in context, on explaining technology and on interpretation (politi¬cally correct, with a place for prehistoric woman, and environmentally conscious).
Large-type titles, in newspaper headline style, catch the attention, and more detail comes in smaller print. A time-tine provides the chronological se¬quence, linking events in prehistoric London to those in the rest of the world: the building of the Pyramids, for example, or the first Olympic Games.

But do not despair that nothing conventional remains. There are a lot of objects on show, there are some typological displays, there are cases full of treasures, there is room for new finds, there are groups of material from specific sites.
Three Ways Wharf is one of those featured sites, but West Heath — largely because the finds are not at the Museum — is not. The elm bark beetle find does get a mention, however, and the prehistoric bibliog¬raphy refers to the HADAS report. Sadly, north west London as a whole can contribute little to knowledge of other prehistoric periods in the capital, as the sites map makes clear.
But the display is well worth far more than a passing visit. And let me share with you one advan-tage of being shown round by an insider: the acqui¬sition of snippets of information that never reach the general public. Take the problem of moth, for exam¬ple — yes, the common clothes moth. However hard you seal a display, it gets in, admits Jon Cotton. Which is why there is nothing made of wool — spot the Indian cotton, instead — in the iron age hut, and everything in it was fumigated before display .

Specialisation and experimentation
Tessa Smith reports on a student survey which provides new insights on Brockley Hill.

Did you come to the one-day exhibition of Brockley Hill pottery held at St Mary’s Church Hall, Hendon, in 1993? Two young archaeology students, Fiona Seeley and Cheryl Thorogood, were busy taking measurements of a large selection of the Roman pottery, which is in our safe keeping. This activity was, for them, part of a master’s degree.
They compared pottery from sites at Brockley Hill, one on the east side excavated by Stephen Castle, and one on the west side, a kiln of the Roman potter Doinus. They also used Brockley Hill pottery which is kept at the Museum of London — 174 boxes to choose from! (Several members of HADAS visited the museum some time ago for a “hands-on” display of some of that pottery.) Seeley and Thorogood were also able to use Brockley Hill pot¬tery which had been excavated from Leadenhall Court and Newgate Street.
The results of the research have been published in the London Archaeologist (Autumn 1994, Vol.7 No.9) with a splendid photo on the front cover of the archaeologist Phillip Suggett, who excavated at
Brockley Hill between 1951 and 1954. He is examin¬ing the handle-less flagon which imitates a metal form, found at the café site there.
Seeley and Thorogood give an up-to-date resume on Brockley Hill production types, includ¬ing wine amphorae, and a clear diagram shows the results of their quantifying and comparing the pot¬tery at four different locations.
Their conclusions are that certain kilns seemed to specialise, e.g. mortaria at one kiln, flagons at another, and that the Roman potters did not only produce a limited range of vessels but were also keen to experiment.
This report is well worth reading, comprehen¬sive and concise. Our congratulations to its authors.
Follow-up note: Bearing out their conclusion re experimenting — we have in the Moxom collection at Church Farmhouse Museum the square-sided flagon which is an exact copy of a Roman glass form. Nobody in archaeological circles has ever seen any¬thing similar in pottery. It is clearly a “one-off” experiment.

The Iceman herdeth
HADAS vice-chairman Brian Wrigley has been in correspondence with the distinguished German academic Professor Andreas Lippert, following the latter ‘s lecture at the Prehistoric Society before Christmas and the subsequent letter in the Times in which Dr Michael Ryder argued that the Iceman was no mountain herdsman, but a hunter.
Professor Lippert confirms his thesis, though acknowledges that “some quite critical investigations are as yet far from completed”.
He continues: “We do not yet know the true cause of death, albeit freezing to death is the most likely. This could, however, be recognised from changes in the stomach lining.” Knowledge, too, of the Iceman’s last meal could offer indications of his occupation.
Professor Lippert tells Brian of a symposium in Vienna where results of la test research were reported. It is now clear, he says, that no bone fractures hin¬dered the Iceman in his journey, and previous sug¬gestions that the exhausted man slipped into an ice channel have been discounted. “In my view, Otzi deliberately sought out the rock hollow, in some¬what finer weather, and laid himself down to sleep, whereby in a cold snap in the following hours he was frozen to death.”
Neighbourly business
The Finchley Society: March 30 — The North Circular Road Project in Finchley. A talk by Mr J. Dodman, resident engineer of the project engineers/ constructors, at Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, starting at 7.45pm. Numbers are limited, so check with hon sec Eileen Cox on 0181-445 8422.
Barnet & District Local History Society: March 22 — Victorian Table Glass. A talk by Beryl Clarkson, in the Hyde Room, Chipping Barnet Library, Stapylton Road, 8pm for 8.15pm.

Enfield Archaeological Society: March17—Annual General Meeting, followed by reports of excavations, fieldwork and research. At the Jubilee Hall, Parson¬age Lane, Enfield, starting at 8pm.

Last month, Pamela Taylor investigated the early history of Monken Hadley. Here, Jennie Cobban concentrates on its early religious community.
Who, and where, were the Hadley hermits?

During on-going research into the origins of Monken Hadley, a document of apparently unrecognised significance recently came to my notice in records relating to Hurley Priory, Berkshire.
It takes the form of a letter, dated before 1141, from Geoffrey de Mandeville II to King Stephen, in which he informs the king that he is exchanging the tithes which Hurley Priory receives from Edmonton, Enfield and South Mimms churches, for 100 shillings of his own rents. So, prior to Geoffrey’s grant of these churches to Walden Priory circa 1140, the monks of Hurley received the tithes from these churches, and Geoffrey’s thus returning the income to the churches concerned, “so that each church may have its abso¬lute freedom for the support of the priests there serving God”, while compensating Hurley by grant¬ing alternative income in the form of rents.
Geoffrey continues: “…and regarding anything left over (from the tithe income) it is to go for provid¬ing support and clothing for the brethren of Adlege, who are living according to rule.” “Adlege” can with confidence be identified with Hadley. (Dugdale, Monasticon (III), p. 434, gives “Adlege” (Wethered’s rendition) as “Hadlega”.).’
This is significant, as the document confirms that an unknown group of religious personnel was present in Hadley before 1141 and, therefore, that a chapel of some sort for the brothers’ use is almost certain to have been present at this time. Previously, our earliest documentary evidence for a church at Hadley dates from 1163-68. The document also tells us that this religious settlement, presumably the hermitage of Hadley, had, at least at this time, no independent income.
Geoffrey’s motives for this reorganisation are unknown, but it may be commented that at this period a religious house which had received the gift of a church was free to dispose of its income from tithes however it wished, and the bishops constantly made it part of their duty to see that the owner of a church made proper provision for the priest. Possi¬bly, therefore, by restoring the tithes for the benefit of the local priests, Geoffrey was making it known to the king (and through him the church authorities) that he was being a responsible lay patron in that he was aware of current concern in these matters.
However, also around the year 1140, Geoffrey granted the same churches removed from Hurley’s control, along with Hadley hermitage, to his new foundation of Walden Priory. The priests of Edmon¬ton, Enfield and South Mimms cannot have felt the full benefit of their restored tithes for very long! At this point we can only wish for a tighter chronology
The identity of the religious brethren, living together in what we must assume to be the hermit¬age of Hadley, is unknown. Likely candidates would be members of a house of canons who followed the Rule of St Augustine and some of whom continued the hermit tradition. Many of these houses were founded in the post-Conquest period. A completely independent settlement of monks, which had bro¬ken away from a mother house in order to follow a more spiritual path, is also, of course, a possibility.
The relationship between the canons of the hermitage and its new Benedictine owners remains anyone’s guess at present. As the brothers of Hadley were to be maintained by any surplus of tithes, it is possible that Walden decided that there was no surplus, and that the hermitage ceased to exist as such. We know, at any rate, that Walden itself was maintaining a small cell at Hadley in 1144. How long this cell endured is also unknown.
We remain in the dark, therefore, as to the chronological relationship between the hermitage and Walden’s cell, and we are equally in the dark concerning the location of these religious sites.
The archaeological implications of the above are interesting. I would suggest that the site of the hermitage should, on balance, be sought in the vicin¬ity of Monken Hadley church.”2 While it is always possible that the Benedictines chose an entirely new site in Hadley for their church and cell, it would surely have been more sensible for them to utilise and adapt the existing hermitage for their own pur¬poses in order to maximise the potential of this grant from Geoffrey de Mandeville.

The high plateau of land on which the church stands, with water readily accessible, would have been recognised as a suitable site to settle by hermit and Benedictine alike. The wilds of the heathland
clearing of Hadley would especially appeal to the hermits, as a perfect “desert” environment where they could emulate the privations of the Desert Fathers of the fourth century. At the risk of piling
speculation upon speculation, there is also the former presence of a mound at St Martha’s School (just north of the church) to consider. Apparently isolated mounds with a good water supply nearby are one of
the hallmarks for sites selected by groups of hermits. Hermits were living in the wilder parts of Brit- ain in the early 12th century and this may have been the case since the Conquest:3 It became quite com-
mon for the great monastic houses to take over the sites of these isolated settlements. It may also be significant that in 1582, when William Kympton, Lord of the Manor of Monken Hadley, was squab-ling with the Duchy of Lancaster over his rights in Enfield Chase, he based his claims on the fact that “the Manor or Lordship of Hadley in auncient tyme was knowen by the name of the heremytage of Hadley and was sometime cell of the possessions of the late dissolved monastery of Walden”. This could suggest that the hermitage and cell were thought of as one and the same shortly after the Reformation.
It seems probable, therefore, that the hermitage site lies near to Monken Hadley Church, although it is interesting that no artefacts of the medieval period seem ever to have been found in the village.
Precincts of the canons varied enormously both in size and style in the early medieval period. Many sites were similar to those of the Cistercians, in secluded situations, with surrounding defences and with great attention being paid to the management of local water supplies. Bearing this in mind, a survey of the various banks and ditches observed in the vicinity of Hadley church may pay dividends, although many of these probably represent the south¬ern boundary between Enfield Chase and Monken Hadley, and others may be C18 or C19 drainage ditches. A study of the old Monken Mead stream (see the 1777 survey of Enfield Chase) whose course is now difficult to trace on the ground due to residen¬tial development, may also be in order, when consid¬ering possible monastic water management.
*1 Pam Taylor is engaged in studying the original documents which pertain to this article and will no doubt comment on the above in due course.
*2 Another favoured location for the hermitage is within Wrotham Park, citing as evidence a 1606 survey of the Manor of South Mimms which makes mention of “the herrnytage”. How¬ever, the wording suggests that the writer was in fact referring merely to a cottage of that name. This site cannot be ruled out as the early medieval extent of the Hadley boundaries is uncertain. As to other suggested locations, another C 17 cottage named “the Hermitage” was present in Monken Hadley village until 1872. This lay very close to Hadley Lodge, where a Saxon village apparently awaits Bill Bass under the garage (according to the Barnet Press). Can’t wait, Bill! There is a modern house, “The Hermitage”, in the village at present.
’13 It is possible that the monks of Hurley had been supporting a hermitage at Hadley since 1086-7, as Hurley Priory was a foundation of Geoffrey de Mandeville I, who inherited vast land holdings around Hurley from Ansgar after the Conquest. The lands around Hadley also, it might be remembered, were part of Ansgar’s estates in pre-Conquest times.
Selection of source material
F.T. Wetherell, St Mary’s Hurley in the Middle Ages: Based on Hurley Charters and Deeds 1898, p228
M. Aston, Know the Landscape: Monasteries, 1993
R. Morris, Churches in the Landscape, 1989
D.M. Stenton. English Society in the Early Middle Ages, 1951 F. Cass, Monken Hadley, 1880
N. Clark, Hadley Wood, (Map of Enfield Chase 1777)
Personal communications: Dr. Pamela Taylor
P.S. Readers of the Barnet Press last month may have read the startling news: “Jenny Cobban has come up with documentary evidence of a Saxon village in the area.” This surprised me immensely. It probably sur-prised Pam Taylor, too!
A sight of the Abbey’s hidden history
Deidre L. Barrie reports on a rare privilege.
The “Great Pavement” of Westminster Abbey was shown to the public for five days in February for the first time in three years. This Abbey treasure dates back to 1268 when King Henry III and Richard de Ware, Abbot of Westminster, caused one Petrus Odericus to assemble the mosaic, “these porphyry stones”.
The pavement is usually covered to protect it from further erosion. The general effect of the design is of an ancient, valuable but tattered carpet pattern in stone — a complex design of whorls and roundels in porphyry, marble and glass tesserae.
It is (says the Abbey’s useful guide sheet) “the finest example of so-called ‘Cosmati work’ north of the Alps”. There is apparently similar work on St Edward the Confessor’s shrine and the tomb of Henry III. Experts say the style of the pavement is not the Gothic one would expect from its date but that it is “more akin to Roman or Renaissance work”.
The Abbey leaflet gives scholar Stephen Wan¬der’s translation of one of the pavement’s mysterious Latin inscriptions. To my inexpert ear this has the ring of alchemical writings, an ancient riddle, or even an obscure board game!
The pavement is some 24ft square and is in the sanctuary, before the high altar. During my lunch-hour visit a dozen or so awed visitors gazed down over the surrounding rails at the complex and still colourful pattern being revealed for so short a time. A gaggle of academics conferred. A young woman examined the stones through a special magnifying eyeglass. I felt very privileged to have seen this mysterious, battered masterpiece unveiled.
No further Roman finds
HADAS held a watching brief for English Heritage’s London Sites and Monuments Record on work at Annunciation Infants’ School, Thirleby Road, Burnt Oak — opposite the site where in 1971 the Society excavated pits containing Roman pottery — for the first ten days of February.
Brian Wrigley reports that observation of foun¬dation trenches dug at the rear of the school showed much disturbance of clay sub-soil by previous build¬ings, drains and concrete and tarmac surfacing. Two or three modern fence postholes were seen, on the line of the present garden boundary. No artefacts were found, apart from modern building material.
One feature was noticed — a chalk lump de¬posit with a humic rectilinear patch directly above it. This possibly could be a remnant of a footing for an early timber-framed building.

Glass fit for a Queen…
A celebration of the stained glass of Crathie Church on Deeside — where Queen Victoria was a frequent worshipper — will published on April 3 by long¬standing HADAS member Douglas Morgan.
The glossy 72-page A4-size softback (printed, incidentally, by the Newbury family’s Hillary Press) contains detailed text and fine colour photos of the windows, the work of designer-craftsmen who both followed the Gothic revivalist tradition and looked forward to a more modern, original style. Robert Anning Bell was one of the noted artists involved; another was George Daniels, from the workshop of John Richard Clayton and Alfred Bell.
The church was designed in Gothic style by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie (known for, among other buildings, the Waldorf Hotel in London’s Aldwych). Queen Victoria approved of the plans and laid the foundation stone in 1893.
DouglasMorgan is offeringthebook to HADAS members at a special pre-publication price of £6.50 including p&p (a £3 reduction). Cheques to Ara¬besque Publications, 12 Wildwood Grove, NW3 7HU.
… and grist for mill enthusiasts
Another forthcomingbook which may interest mem¬bers is an historical survey of Windmills & Watermills of Middlesex, written by Guy Blythman and with some 75 illustrations. It is planned by Quotes Ltd, a Northants-based publisher, which is inviting sub¬scribers to reserve numbered copies in advance, as 500 reservations are needed to justify publication.
The price will be £15.95, a £2 saving on the post-publication price. If any member wants an order form, please ring Liz Sagues, 0181-868 8431.
Time to pay up
Subscriptions will be due on April 1. A payment slip is enclosed with this Newsletter. Please complete it and send it back to Vikki O’Connor, Hon Member¬ship Secretary, as soon as possible.
More about mortars
Further to my recent article (Newsletter 286) and Roy Allen’s interesting letter and photos about domestic mortars in the following issue, while wandering around the Museum of London’s medieval section I noticed two mortars there, writes Bill Bass.
One, dated to the late 13th century, was roughly shaped from Purbeck marble. It is attributed to Crutched Friars, in the City of London, and looks very similar to the types in Roy’s photo, confirming his medieval date.
The example found in Edgware appears to have a finer fabric, being from a different marble. In general, mortars of this type were used from the 13th to the 18th centuries.
The past and the future
Current thoughts and ideas on London’s prehistory and problems associated with its interpretation were aired at the Standing Conference on London Archae¬ology at the Museum of London at the end of January. Ways were suggested to find out more, and, hope¬fully, to conserve evidence for the future.
The conference was well attended, including by HADAS members. We also put on a small exhibition of West Heath material and set up a bookstall, from which we sold £103 of publications — a successful weekend.
Topics included the history of prehistory in London, by Nick Merriman; the Thames Valley before and after Swanscombe, by John Wymer, who discussed the gravel terraces and their associated palaeolithic industries; the early mesolithic, from John Lewis (who covered some of the same ground in the HADAS February lecture, see report on p.3); environmental evidence, from _lames Rackham, who mentioned glaciation, pollen and bone evidence between 20,000 and 3,000 years BR
Other papers covered aspects of the neolithic, bronze age wetland use of the Thames flood plain, and the iron age.

No: 287 FEBRUARY 1995 Edited by ANDY SIMPSON
DIARY
Remember – new meetings venue for 1995 – Stephens Room, (1st floor), Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3 – starting at 8pm for 8.30pm.

Tuesday 7th February Lecture: Mesolithic Sites in London – John Lewis from MOLAS describes some of the other sites in the London area contemporary with West Heath

Tuesday 7th March Lecture: Landscape Archaeology in North Wiltshire,
Andrew Reynolds from the Institute of Archaeology gives some recent results from the Compton Bassett Area Research Project. (We hope to be able to arrange a visit to Wiltshire this summer).

HADAS Outing dates for your diaries this year will be: Sat. June 17th, Sat. July 15th, Sat. August 19th. Details of locations in next newsletter.
Dorothy Newbury writes – As always with change, the new venue (Avenue House) suits some and not others. This is a three-month trial period, mainly brought about by the escalating costs at Hendon Library. But have we jumped out of the frying pan into the fire? The Hendon Times (12 January) reports that Avenue House has an annual deficit in running costs of some £13,000 and Councillors have been proposing to use the building as a venue for wedding services. Local residents are objecting on grounds of noise and traffic congestion, claiming the plan breaches the spirit of ”Inky” Stephens’ bequest to the borough. The Land and Buildings Committee are to consult with the Charity Commission to ensure the proposal complies with the Trust’s deeds.
(The Council stress that Avenue House must break even to ensure its future, and that if what the Council want is unacceptable to residents they will have to come up with alternative revenue-earning ideas. – Ed.)
We have received no backing for changing the meetings date to the second Tuesday in the month. In fact, some years ago we changed to the first Wednesday following a few requests but it didn’t work out. Unfortunately, whatever we choose will inevitably not please everybody.

The 32nd LAMAS Conference of London Archaeologists – Saturday 20th March 1995. Advance notice of the above conference, at which HADAS will have their usual display. It will be held at the Lecture Theatre, Museum of London, commencing at 11 am and finishing at 5.30pm. Tickets at (members), £4.00 (non-members) are available from Jon Cotton, Early Dept., Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN.

DR. RALPH MERRIFIELD, B.A., D.LITT, F.S.A., F.M.A.

HADAS members and all those involved in London’s archaeology will have been saddened to learn of the death of our past president, Dr. Ralph Merrifield, Ted Sammes provides an appreciation of this eminent archaeologist.

The London archaeological scene will be saddened at the death of Ralph Merrifield at the age of 82. To many, myself included, he was regarded as Mister Roman London. I first met him when the London Borough Secretaries,designed to bring together representatives of all London areas engaged in archaeology (mostly non-professional), was started in the 1960s , There were few professional units operating at that time,
He was of great help to us in looking at Brockley Hill material and my few Roman finds from the Church Terrace, Hendon dig of 1972-73. He was our third President, elected in 1989, and he retired at the 1994 AGM at his own request.
He was born in Brighton, and at the age of 17 worked in Brighton Museum. Always having a calm and critical eye for detail, his wartime service was in the Intelligence section of the RAF. After the war he returned to Brighton Museum but by 1950 he was Assistant Keeper of the Brighton Museum, London. On the combining of the London and Guildhall Museums in 1975 he was actively engaged in designing the Roman Galleries. He retired in 1978 as Deputy Director of the Museum of London. A few years later he was honoured by the University of London with a Doctorate for his historical contribution to London’s past history.
I never saw him really agitated and he always took time before he replied to any question or brick-batl His two books, The Roman City of London (1965) and London, City of the Romans (1983) are essential reading for anyone deeply interested in Roman London. He plotted all Roman find spots, walls included, a feat which greatly added to our knowledge of the shape of Roman London within the walls.
I will always remember him at the Bristol Conference of the Prehistoric Society, trying to interest us also in the Roman remains. Another memory is of his interest in the supernatural, witch bottles and walled-up cats and shoes near fireplaces. On this subject his book The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic (1987) is also interesting reading. His publications in Transactions of LAMAS and other journals are too numerous to list.
Yes, he will be sadly missed by all of us and I for one will be eternally grateful for the unselfish support and advice he gave to all. Museums, and what they can convey, were his life blood.

TIME TEAM
In case you hadn’t noticed, a new series of Time Team started three weeks ago, 7pm, Sundays on Channel 4. So far, they have investigated sites at Islay (Western Scotland), a ruined castle in Sunderland and a hitherto unknown Roman villa site in Dorset. Although the programme format may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it is worth watching for the computer graphics alone, and the HADAS digging team are drooling over the expensive geophysical equipment used. Somebody – please win the lottery!

Bill Bass’s report on `The Thing’ (possibly a chemist’s mortar) in the January newsletter has prompted a reply from Roy Allen:
Support for identification of ‘the thing’ as a mortar comes from the church of St Enodoc in North Cornwall, nowadays best known as the last resting place of Sir John Betjeman. The path to the entrance is lined with similar receptacles and most of these are believed to be domestic mortars, once used for grinding corn; they are said to be medieval but this appears to be conjecture. A lady recalls that it was her grandfather who collected the relics and presented them to the church, holes were later drilled for drainage.
(Mr Allen sent photos of the St. Enodoc specimens, taken in 1977 and 7982, Ed.)
Further to the note asking for information on medieval bronze cooking pots and skillets and their foundries, also in the January newsletter, Peter Keeley has been contacted by John Enderby who has a skillette. Peter then put him in touch with his friend researching such items, who lives in Devon, This particular skillette was made by a founder in Bristol called ‘Rice’ who was one of the few founders who applied his name to some of his products, which makes him ideal to study. An article on this founder is planned for the next Metalware Journal. Peter would appreciate any further information on foundries or founders of medieval bronzeware and can be contacted on 0181-959 2864 (evenings),

NEWS FROM BROCKLEY HILL
Tessa Smith reports:
Walking along Spur Road, Brockley Hill, I noticed that the corner field had been trenched, all round the edges, to a depth of one metre, being half a metre wide.
I examined the trench for its entire length, approximately 200 metres, and found it to be pure loam and clay, with a short layer of pebble which could have been natural. However, this small patch of pebble lay on the line of a ‘buried’ road, the gravel layer of which was in evidence when excavated by Philip Suggett and Professor Grimes in 1954, and by Gillian Braithwaite (HADAS) in 1988.

PLANNING APPLICATIONS IN THE NORTHERN AREA
English Heritage have recommended archaeological conditions on the following sites:
• Land rear of 26 Kings Road, Barnet – a watching brief on any earthmoving.
• Part of Park Road Industrial Estate, Park Road, Barnet – an assessment of the archaeological implications.
• 58 High Street, Barnet – field evaluation and mitigation strategy (ways to avoid damaging any archaeology).
Applications for Planning permission have also been made for the following sites, reports Tessa:
Brockley Hill Area, Edgware:
• Brockley House • No 1 Brockley Hill
• No 17 Brockley Ave. • No 5 Newlands Close.
All the above lie close to the area of Pipers Green Lane where 2nd century AD cremation burials were found in 1953.
Annunciation Infants School – Thirleby Road, Burnt Oak
Work is due to start here shortly and HADAS members hope to observe the trenches and spoil heaps during demolition and rebuilding work, In 1971 HADAS dug at 33 Thirleby Road opposite the school and found two Roman pits with 52 sherds of late 3rd-early 4th century pottery and a radiate coin of 270-300. So this site will be worth monitoring.
15-17 Sunningfields Road Hendon Construction of fifteen 2-bed flats.
Please keep your eyes open and report any activities.

THE EARLY HISTORY OF MONKEN HADLEY Pamela Taylor
A recent enquiry concerning Monken Hadley’s early history set me checking the standard authorities, the parish histories by Cass and Lysons, the Victoria County History of Middlesex (VCH) vol. 5, and behind them Dugdale’s Monasticon and the original manuscripts in the British Library. It was all very enjoyable, but the main result was to confirm the reliability of previous accounts rather than to uncover much that was new. Unless new sources are discovered – and no medieval manorial records have ever been found – our knowledge will always remain distinctly sketchy. It nevertheless seems worthwhile to put down a few slightly new points, which may help to amplify answers to the basic questions: when did Hadley originate; was it originally part of Edmonton or of Enfield; and what is the history of its church?
The first question is the only one for which new evidence has recently emerged. The recently discovered 1005 boundary description of the woodland which later became the manor of Barnet names Hadley along its circuit, and thus shows that there was at least a clearing and quite probably some sort of habitation well before Hadley was acquired by Geoffrey de Mandeville in the wake of the Norman Conquest, or transferred to Walden Abbey c.1136.

Domesday Book shows Geoffrey de Mandeville holding both Edmonton and Enfield, with the former including an outlier called (South) Mimms. Since the survey deals only with administrative units, the failure to mention Hadley is not remarkable, and it must be included within either South Mimms/Edmonton or Enfield. There has, however, been some uncertainty as to which, Geoffrey de Mandeville’s charter of c. 1136 stated that the hermitage at Hadley lay within his park (see below). Unsurprisingly, this has created a presumption that Hadley was within Enfield (e.g. David Pam, The Story of Enfield Chase ( 1984), p. 10). Cass kept an open mind, citing on the other hand Lysons’ reference to a list of the possessions of Walden Abbey which places the hermitage of Hadley within the parish of Edmonton. (P.37; Lysons’ source, BL MS Cotton Vespasian E vi, f 56, is a poorly written post-medieval copy; Cass makes a small mistake in transcribing ‘in hominibus’ for ‘cum hominibus’.) The VCH places Hadley unequivocally within Edmonton, and this is almost certainly correct. One of the best pieces of evidence comes in the Quo Warrant enquiries of 1294, in which the crown was challenging manorial lords’ titles to various legal jurisdictions over their tenants. The abbot of Walden was summoned to prove his right to hold view of francpledge and the assize of bread and ale in Edmonton, Enfield, Mimms and Hadley. He did very badly, first claiming that he had always exercised these rights, and then that he only claimed them in Enfield. Even here the local jury reported that he only exercised the assize of bread and ale (which checked that full measures were sold), and that even for this did not have the necessary scales. Fascinating as the detail is, the key point in this context is that Hadley is firmly placed with Mimms and Edmonton rather than with Enfield. In addition, areas of jurisdictional rights were fixed very early and not altered without good reason, so that the 1294 division probably echoes the Norman and Anglo-Saxon one. The connexion of Hadley to South Mimms and Edmonton might have been more obvious if its ecclesiastical history had been more normal. Geoffrey de Mandeville’s foundation endowment to Walden Abbey (Essex), given c,1136, included 18 churches, among them Enfield, Edmonton and South Mimms. In a later section of the same grant, after giving some land and mills, he gave ‘the hermitage of Hadley, with all things pertaining to that place, entry, and exit, and common pasture for their herds in my park, in which the hermitage is situated.’ It is unknown whether the hermitage already contained some sort of chapel or oratory, or what the arrangements made between the monks and hermit were. There was certainly some sort of church by the time of bishop Gilbert Foliot (1163-87), who included Hadley in list of 12 churches within his diocese which he confirmed to the abbey. The deed, found like the foundation charter in a Walden cartulary, BL Harleian MS 3697, is transcribed by Cass, p.38. (The revised edition of Le Neve alters Foliot’s death date from February 1188 to 1187.) Cass is also correct in stating that three later bishops of London (William, 1199-1221; Eustace, 1221-8; Roger, 1229-41) gave similar confirmations. He then moves directly on to provide a complete transcript of the 15 later medieval lay deeds concerning Hadley to be found in the cartulary. (His interleaved copy of his book, Barnet Museum SJ36, as well as his interleaved copy of his article on the parish in Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Association, SJ35, contain additional material, mostly 17th-18th century wills, genealogies and some 19th century press cuttings, but no further information on the topics under consideration here.)
Cass did however skate over some interesting aspects of the episcopal section of the cartulary. First, bishop Foliot gave three other confirmations, covering 7, 11 and 15 churches respectively, in none of which is Hadley mentioned. Secondly, under dean Geoffrey de Lucy (1231-41) the dean and chapter of St Pauls gave a differently worded confirmation, which separates Geoffrey de Mandeville’s foundation grant from later acquisitions, and finishes its list of the former’s grant of parish churches ‘Enfield, Edmonton and Mimms with the chapel of Hadley’ (ecclesias parochiales de…cum capella de Hadlele). The distinction between churches (ecclesiae) and chapels was always of considerable importance and, despite the inconsistency, almost certainly explains Hadley’s non-appearance in 3 out of bishop Foliot’s 4 confirmations. The confirmation of the 15, for instance, itemises the ‘churches’ but concludes generally with chapels, lands…,’ Presumably because of its distinct origin, the chapel of Hadley does not seem to have been attached to a parish church.
Hadley seems to have remained a chapel until after the Reformation. As Cass notes (p.47) the grant of Walden in 1549 to Sir Thomas Audley includes ‘our manor of Hadley in the county of Middlesex with its appurtenances in the county of Middlesex and the rectories and churches of Edmonton, Enfield and South Mimms’, Equally telling is the entry for Walden in the Valor Ecclesiasticus, which was made shortly before the Dissolution and distinguishes incomes from temporal (i.e. secular), and spiritual (le ecclesiastical), sources. Walden’s spiritualities include Edmonton, Enfield and South Mimms rectories, but Hadley appears only among the temporalities, as a manor. As an interesting addendum, in terms of actual value Hadley was assessed in the Valor at 2 10sAd, while the values of Edmonton, Enfield and South Mimms rectories were respectively 20 3s.0d, 28 Os.Od, and 7 Os .0d. Either this is a relative fall, or Hadley had had an atypical period of higher value in the late 13th century, The Walden return for the Taxation of Pope Nicholas of 1291, which does not mention South Mimms and fails in Middlesex to distinguish between temporalities and spiritualities, gives incomes from: ‘Edmonton from land, rent and meadow 2 4s,2d; Enfield from land rent and meadow 3 I Is.8d; Hadley from land, rent, coppice wood and produce (silva cedua et foetu) 3 10s.2d’.
There is a famous 12th-century phrase comparing contemporary scholars to dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. This exercise has felt remarkably similar, but I hope the view has been at least slightly extended. A file of notes is stored at the Archives and Local Studies Centre.

ST. MARTHA’S CONVENT (The Moat House), Camlet Way, Monken Hadley
Jennie Cobban has been studying the Monken Hadley area, and possible forthcoming classroom rebuilding at the school at St Martha’s – a grade II listed building within Monkey Hadley Conservation Area, may permit site observation at this important site.
Jennie has hoped to produce a detailed research design, and the HADAS excavation team made a preliminary site visit in mid-January to ‘see the lie of the land’, paying particular attention to the site of a new levelled mound within the school grounds that may have been a medieval windmill mound. There is also a legend that the Battle of Barnet Chantry Chapel stood on the present site of Mount House. The chapel was already ruined by the sixteenth century, and exact proof of its location has yet to be found.
Following last month’s mention of the ‘Museums on the Northern Line’ leaflet comes a reminder of another useful London Transport publication:
The official London Transport guide to all LONDON’S MUSEUMS, 5th edition 1993
This invaluable 80-page guide lists all the museums in Greater London, includes comprehensive travel information and uses clear symbols to indicate admission charges, refreshment facilities, etc. Main entries are listed alphabetically by name but there are also listings by borough and by subject, plus the address of a further 77 galleries, archives and other useful institutions and organisations. Available from London Transport Information Centres and Church Farmhouse Museum shop, price £3.50.

OTHER EVENTS
Members will remember the recent review of David Sullivan’s book The Westminster Corridor’, in which Hendon figures frequently, Until March 26th, Hampstead Museum, Burgh House, New End Square, NW3 1LT (0171-431 0144) are hosting an exhibition ‘The Westminster Corridor and the Medieval Manor of Hampstead’ featuring the book and David Sullivan’s associated research, HADAS hope to be involved in fieldwork on Hampstead Heath connected with establishing boundaries described in the book.

NEIGHBOURING SOCIETIES
Barnet & District Local History Society – Mon. 20th February 245pm for 3,00pm The Hyde Room, Chipping Barnet Library, Staplyton Rd, Barnet
Costume – talk by Sandra Hildreth-Brown
Enfield Archaeological Society – Fri. 17th February at 8.00pm Jubilee Hall, Parsonage Lane, Enfield
The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta – a talk by Stephen Gilburt
Oxford University summer school for adults
5-12 Aug. The Anglo-Saxon Church David Beard
The Glorious Age of Egypt (Tutankhamen & 18th Dynasty) Annette Depla
Place-Names and Landscape Margaret Gelling
The Census & 19th Century Local History Edward Higgs
Archaeological Excavation Gary Lock
12-19 Aug, Environmental Archaeology Gill Campbell
Archaeological Excavation Gary Lock
The Crusades Colin Paine
The View from the Vicarage: Rural England 1750-1850 Kate Tiller
Domestic Industries in England Barrie Trinder
Further details from Hon.Secretary or for prospectus phone: 01865 270396
Byzantium – the new exhibition at the British Museum which opened on 9 December, features treasures of Byzantine art and culture in the context of 1,000 years of history. This stunning exhibition is on show until 23 April.
Museum of London – Events in February
Gallery talk – 2,30pm Thursday 2nd February
Knitting Nettles – Prehistoric Clothing by Barbara Wood (40 minutes)
Gallery Workshop – Conservation Matters 2pm & 3,15pm Sunday 5th and Sunday 12th February.

Tour of new Resource Centre at Eagle Wharf Road, Hackney
2,30pm – Wednesday 15th February. Tickets (including tea) £4.20, concessions £2.10.

Sites to See in Northern and Eastern Herts – this useful leaflet produced by Herts County Council is available from Herts Environmental Information Service (0992 555244/5) gives brief descriptions of 18 sites, most privately owned, and includes clear instructions on how to find them together with National Grid References.

GENEALOGY – A recent publication ‘London & Middlesex – A Genealogical Bibliography’ by Stuart A. Raymond, published by the Federation of Family History Societies will be useful to those studying family links in the London area. Price £7.00, available from S.A. & M.J. Raymond, Genealogical Bibliographers, 6 Russett Avenue, Exeter, Devon, EX1 3QB.

ANOTHER NIGHT TO REMEMBER…
The New Year Dinner at the Old Bank of England attracted another 30 members and friends. It was unfortunate that the room was not big enough to hold all of us in one go but the New Year group were able to enjoy the ambience of the building and bar as it was so much less crowded than before Christmas.
Our thanks to Mary O’Connell for making the second trip to guide us round the Temple Church and tell us the history of Fleet Street.
Our thanks also to our Vice-Chairman Brian Wrigley who, at a moment’s notice, drew the raffle and gave us a few witty words at the end of the evening. We were pleased to have Joan Wrigley with us now that she is up and about again.
Bearing in mind that prices are escalating – any ideas for next December?

A FOOTNOTE TO THE CHRISTMAS OUTINGS Roy Walker
It was noted in the last Newsletter that The Cock and The Haunch of Venison pubs were demolished in the 1880s to make way for the Bank of England office recently converted into our Christmas venue. Relics of The Cock, including an inn sign claimed to be by Grinling Gibbons, were transferred into a new public house on the south side of Fleet Street now called Ye Olde Cock Tavern which is still standing but unfortunately suffered a tragic fire in 1990 which destroyed some of the old furnishings. In the 17th century there was another Cock Tavern on the south side which is the subject of a pottery report in the LAMAS Transactions, Vol 37, 1986, as pottery from the Fulham Potteries was evidently made especially marked with a cockerel and the initials of the then landlord, Henry Crosse.

MEMBERSHIP NEWS Vikki O’Connor
Our membership year ends on 31st March – renewal forms will be sent out with the March newsletter, except to those members with Standing Orders.
We notice that Bill Bass gets a mention in the 25 January edition of the Barnet & Finchley Press – the Barnet Planning Sub-Committee have agreed an application to build a swimming pool at Hadley Lodge “on the proviso that Hendon & Barnet Archaeological Society member Bill Bass inspects the site”. It seems they have overcome the problem of re-naming the Society!
The Committee will be considering the re-establishment of the HADAS Research Committee in a new format; details to follow shortly.

Issue no 286 January 1995 Edited by Liz Holiday

Diary
No meeting this month
Tuesday 3 January New Year Dinner at The Old Bank of England. There may be a few places left (or late cancellations). Contact Dorothy Newbury on 0181-203 0950.FINCHLEY
New meeting venue for 1995
AVENUE HOUSE, EAST END ROAD, 141NCHLEY, N3
Tuesday 7 February Mesolithic Sites in London. John Lewis from MOLAS describes some of the other sites in the London area contemporary with West Heath.
Tuesday 7 March Landscape Archaeology in North Wiltshire. Andrew Reynolds from the Institute of Archaeology, gives some recent results from the Compton Bassett Area Research Project. (We hope to be able to arrange a visit to Wiltshire this summer).
Finchley member, Miss A M Large, is delighted that HADAS will be meeting at Avenue House and points out that buses 143 and 326 will be particularly useful for members travelling from Hendon. Both stop in Gravel Hill, only a short distance from our new venue. Another member has written welcoming the change of venue and suggesting that perhaps the day could also be changed as some members cannot come on the first Tuesday each month. The second Tuesday has been suggested. Any support for this idea?
CHRISTMAS DINNER Bill Firth reports
This year’s dinner was held in The Old Bank of England, a Grade I listed building in Fleet Street on the corner of Bell Yard. Two earlier pubs, The Cock and The Haunch of Venison, were demolished in 1888 to make way for a new branch of the Bank of England which was set up to cater for the administration depart-ment of the Royal Courts of Justice_ The Bank occupied the building until 1975 when it was let to the Bristol & West Building Society and in 1994 the brewers, Fuller, Smith and Turner, took over the lease. Although it is now a pub, great care has been taken to retain and enhance the splendid features of the building.
The evening began with a visit to the Temple Church led by Mary O’Connell. We had a quick look at Brick Court, where Oliver
Goldsmith lived and died, Fountain Court (which by the time you read this will have featured in the last episode of Martin Chuzzelwit on TV) and the outside of both Middle Temple and Inner Temple Halls before entering the church.

Mary gave us an account of the history and the monuments in the church and then left us to wander round at our own pace admiring the various features. For anyone not familiar with the church, the original “round”, seriously damaged in 1941 but well restored, dates from 1185 and is in Transitional style. A small chancel was enlarged in Early English style to become “oblong” in 1240. The round is reminiscent of a chapter house and is decorated with “grotesques”. Most of them might be described as “mason’s naive” art, but among them are four kings. On the floor are recumbent figures, badly damaged in 1941, of Knights Templar. There are two fine monuments and a host of commemorative tablets in the “oblong”. There is lots more but not enough space to describe it …
From the church we crossed Fleet Street to The Old Bank of England where our dinner was served in a cosy room. It was all very friendly and I cannot do better than quote Dorothy from the menu:
” Our thanks to lain and Karen Anderson, managers, and to Xanthe in charge of banqueting, for receiving Mary and I in such a friendly and helpful manner in the first instance”
Our thanks go beyond the “first instance” to the occasion itself and must be extended to include Dorothy and Mary who arranged it all. Those who are going in January have a treat in store!

MEDIEVAL LIFE, a quarterly magazine of the Middle Ages, is due this year. Supported by the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, this new publication will concentrate on the period between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. Although it will be for sale at selected museums and historic houses, it will primarily be available by subscription, price £8.50. Cheques, payable to Medieval Life should be sent to C J R Pickles, Rectory End, Gilling East, York, YO6 4JQ with your name, address and postcode.
On Thursday 17 November 1995, Edward Sammes, Vice President of HADAS, was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
The Antiquaries are the oldest of our archaeological societies and claim to he the most prestigious – the members, who call themselves Fellows, are encouraged to display their prestige by putting the letters FSA after their names. Thus Ted Sammes will in future be known as Edward Sammes, FSA.
The Antiquaries were founded in 1707 and met at the Young Divel Tavern; Stukeley soon became their first secretary and the driving force, and after various ups and downs, they acquired a Royal Charter in 1752. Today it occupies prestigious grace and favour premises at Burlington House in Picadilly, next door to the Royal Academy. It boasts one of the finest archaeological libraries in London and it holds meetings every Thursday evening at 5 o’clock in the winter months, preceded by the best archaeological tea in London.
Election is by ballot. Ballots are held three times a year: there are mahogany ballot boxes where you insert your hand, and nobody can tell whether you are voting aye or nay, and the officers distribute one cork ball per fellow per candidate. One black ball in four excludes: noes are counted first. Academics and professionals sail smoothly through, but anyone suspected of being an amateur, or of being in trade, or right wing in politics is always suspect. Ted, being an amateur, described on the ballot paper as being “Retired Assistant Chief Scientist, Western Research Labs Ltd” was inevitably in the suspect area.
After the votes have been cast, the counting of the ballots always takes place in very public view, the President counting the balls as he drops them into a glass howl. Barry Cunliffe, the President, was unable to be present and his place was taken by one of the Vice Presidents, Sheridan Bowman of the British Museum Research Lab, surely the youngest and most glamorous Vice President to preside at an Antiquaries ballot.
When the name Edward Sammes was called out we all held our breath. Postal votes: no
noes. The ballot box was opened: the ‘no’ box was empty! There were no noes at all: Ted was through! The rest was a formality, as the President counted the ayes – first those on blue paper, then the postal votes, then the little cork balls, till eventually it came to a grand total of 41.
Only one question then remained: was no-one going to be blackballed? An Antiquaries ballot is like a public hanging, and the Fellows always expect to have a least one good hanging per ballot. A Tudor historian came near. Apparently he is a star of the telly, and was therefore suspect. He duly received 11 noes: But alas! he received 49 ayes, so he too was through, despite the telly. (One fears that many Fellows do not actually watch the box and were therefore unaware of his heinous crime).
Afterwards the Sammes supporters gathered round and we mutually congratulated ourselves – Lady Hanworth, Ann Saunders and others -each hoping to be the first to telephone Ted with the good news. We then went to the Fellows room on the top floor for some sherry commiserating with each other over the lack of hanging and vowing that next time we would do better.
The next week Ted duly completed the process, appearing in his best suit to be formally admitted, signing the ‘Book’ and shaking hands with the President – Barry Cunliffe in person – and graciously accepting our plaudits. So the next time you see Edward Sammes, FSA bow low …
(Contributed by our Chairman, a fellow Fellow)
SHEILA KELLAWAY applied to join Mary O’Connell’s City Walk in October but instead of becoming a member of the group, found herself inveigled into leading part of it to help Mary cope with the large number of members who turned up!
GRAHAM JAVES has recently succeeded Arthur Jones as Hon.Editor of Hertfordshire Publications, the imprint of Hertfordshire Libraries, Arts and Information, in association with Herts Association for Local History.
DIERDRE BARRIE is happy and settled in her new home in Enfield and has been busy researching the area with a view to a HADAS visit.

THE ” THING ” Bill Bass investigates
A couple of months ago a stone bowl-shaped object was handed in to Gerrard Roots at Church Farmhouse Museum. It had been dug up from a garden in Hillside Gardens, Edgware. Gerrard then asked HADAS if we could identify the “thing”.
Its dimensions are 20cm diameter (top), 10cm (base),12.5cm (tall) and weighed a hefty 10 lbs with walls 2.5cm thick. Around the opening are four rounded lugs. The fabric appears to be an unpolished marble-type stone.
The object lived in the boot of my car for several weeks as it was shown to various people including HADAS members, Barnet Museum and the Rector of Monken Hadley. To some it suggested a garden ornament (bird bath), others thought maybe a stoop which held holy water or perhaps some other piece of church architecture.
Finally, I took it to the British Museum. They said it was a mortar, possibly used by an apothecary or chemist to grind medicine. Dating was difficult – perhaps 19th century -and it may have come from Italy.
Gerrard suggested a mortar in the first place -so back to you Gerrard!
If you need something identified, it can be taken to the BM Department of Medieval & Later Antiquities on weekdays between 2 and 4.40pm – go to the information desk first.
INFORMATION WANTED – CAN YOU HELP ?
A friend of Peter Keeley is researching medieval bronze cooking pots and skillets. Bronze cooking pots with three legs come in all sizes; skillets are usually saucepan-size with
long handles, sometimes with names and dates cast into the handle. Peter’s friend is looking particularly for information concerning the foundries, as some of these pots appear to have similar marks to those found on local church hells. Any information would he appreciated to Peter Keeley, 9 Parkside, Mill Hill, NW7 211 : 0181-959 2864 (evenings).

SITE WATCHING with Bill Bass
In 1990 and 92 HADAS excavated 19-29 Barnet High Street This site is now being fully developed. Whilst the foundations were being dug a substantial “well”-type structure appeared which would have been behind Guyscliffe House, a now demolished Victorian building. The feature was 230cm diameter, made with frogged bricks laid in English bond fashion and double brick wide. Its inner face was completely mortared. A depth of approximately 3 metres was visible, beginning 1 metre below the present (car park) surface. Although described as a “well”, it could have been a sump of some kind or a cistern.
HADAS members have been watching tree planting at Mill Hill Park (between Dawes Lane and A41). The holes did not reveal any obvious archaeology but this area was once a Victorian rubbish dump, so several sherds of 19th century and later date pottery were found.
Last month when mentioning closure of the Passmore Edwards Museum, 1 also referred to Harlow Museum. To put the record straight, Harlow Museum is still open for business.

CHURCH FARMHOUSE MUSEUM
The current exhibition Synagogue in a Suburb illustrates the history of the Jewish community in Hendon and includes personal memorabilia as well as religious artefacts. On show until 15 January; but note, closed on Monday 2 January.

Book review
Barnet, Edgware, Hadley & Totteridge by Pamela Taylor and Joanna Corden was published on 9 December by Phillimore, price £12.95. It completes the trilogy of pictorial histories covering the Borough, (Finchley & Friern Barnet was published in 1992 and Hendon, Childs Hill, Golders Green and Mill Hill in 1993).
This volume covers the north part of the Borough and as with it companion volumes, is prefaced by an excellent, although necessarily brief, introduction to the history of the area. There are 162 illustrations selected from Barnet Libraries’ own collection, together with material from Barnet Museum, Enfield’s Local History Unit and a number of other individuals and institutions. Dates range from a manorial map of Edgware dated 1597 to a photograph taken in 1994 of the old Regal Cinema in New Barnet. Some pictures of East Barnet, New Barnet, New Southgate and Osidge are included but by keeping to the present Borough boundaries, the authors have had to exclude much interesting material from the “wrong” side of the Edgware Road and in the Cockfosters area.
I did find the arrangement of material rather confusing (dodging from Barnet to Edgware and back) but this was more than compensated for by the quality of the reproductions and the excellent captions. Besides – it kept me alert from beginning to end! Copies are for sale in all Barnet Libraries, at Church Farmhouse Museum and from Archives and Local Studies in Egerton Gardens. The earlier volumes are also still available.

A NEW FREE LEAFLET Museums on the Northern Line is a pocket-size guide
produced by London Museum Service supported by London Underground’s Northern Line. Lists 19 museums all within easy reach of the tube, giving opening times and brief details of material on show. Copies from all libraries and museums in the Borough.