Newsletter 182: April 1986

GOING FOR SILVER

Although we are celebrating HADAS’s Silver Jubilee all through this year (as we’ve said before you can’t have too much of a good thing), this is the month in which our 25th birthday actually occurs. It was in April, 1961, after a public meeting, that the Society was set up with a President, Vice-Presidents, officers and committee, and a membership of 73. Later that year the first dig began at Church End Farm, Hendon.

In our 25 years we have dug a lot of holes, shifted a lot of spoil, backed

a lot of causes, seen a lot of places, learnt a lot of archaeology (with a spice of history thrown in) and blazed quite a few new trails.

One part of our HADAS activities which has been particularly satisfying has been co-operating from time to time with other like-minded societies in the area whose aims and sympathies run tandem with our own. That our friendly feelings towards them are reciprocated is shown by this letter which arrived last week from the Mill Hill Historical Society:

The Committee, Officers and Members of the Mill Hill Historical Society wish to congratulate the Hendon & District Archaeological Society on the celebration of their first 25 years.

We have watched with interest your well founded progress and have been impressed by the breadth of your activities, your wide contacts

and the energy and enthusiasm you have brought to the tasks you

have undertaken.

.Perhaps your most notable local achievements have been the persistence with which you have pursued the matter of the local plaques and your long-running dig at Hampstead Heath.

As with all of us you have had to operate in a period of rising costs which make all voluntary organisation difficult but we are confident that your celebrations will prove to be a tonic and that you will continue your valuable academic research and friendly approach for many years to come.

We wish you well. .Yours sincerely

R S Nichols (Chairman), John W Collier (Secretary)

What a pleasant letter to usher in our birthday! HADAS really appreciates it, and thanks the MiII Hill Historical Society warmly for their good wishes. They know what they are talking about, too – they have served this area his­torically for more than twice as long as we have in fact, since 1929.

WORLD ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONGRESS, SOUTHAMPTON, SEPTEMBER 1986

This Congress is formally the 11th Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric & Protohistoric Sciences -(IUPPS). ‘The Congress takes place every 5 years, and the 1986 one was to be in Britain, and intended to attract widest international support, so it was named the “World Archaeological Congress.” Its supporters included the Council for British Archaeology (CBA).

As a result of pressure from anti-apartheid groups, the organiser reluct­antly decided not to invite participants from South Africa and Namibia, black or white; their announcement of this made it clear that their decision was reluctant and taken under duress. Following this, a number of prominent people and bodies withdrew their support from the Congress, basically on the principle that exclusion of people for political reasons was against the academic princi­ple of freedom in the exchange of ideas.

The CBA at a full Council meeting on Jan 13, considered whether to with­draw support, and decided by 34 votes to 29 to continue support.

Since then, the IUPPS itself has withdrawn its recognition of the World Archaeological Congress, and proposes instead to hold its 11th Congress in Mainz in 1987. The UK organisers intend still to go ahead with the arrange­ments for the Congress in Southampton in 1986. In the circumstances, CBA are balloting their members, of whom HADAS is one, to ask whether we wish the CBA to continue to be associated with the World Archaeological Congress as planned

OR

we wish the CBA to withdraw completely from the World Archaeological Congress

Brian Wrigley

Before HADAS casts, its vote in the CBA ballot, we want as many members as possible to have a chance to state which option they prefer. There is a HADAS meeting on Apr 1 at which we hope to take a show-of-hands vote. Those who cannot be present on Apr.1 can record their preference by telephoning Brigid Grafton Green (455 9040) before April 4.

HADAS DIARY

Tues Apr 1 Recent Excavations at Perachora Prof Richard Tomlinson

Professor Tomlinson has taught in the Dept. of Ancient History and Archaeology at Birmingham University for nearly 30 years, becoming Professor and Head of Department in 1971. He is a member of the Managing Committee of the British School at Athens – which celebrates its Centenary this year – and Editor of the Annual. Perachora was first excavated by Humphrey Payne in the early 19300, Professor Tomlinson carried out supplementary digs in 1964, 1965 and 1966 – he talked to HADAS about those excavations some years ago. The site is a small sanctuary dedicated to Hera, close to the Isthmus of Corinth. His recent excavations have led to the discovery of a new building which he thinks has a certain historical significance.

Sat Apr 19 Afternoon walk in Clerkenwell Mary O’Connell (application form enclosed)

0at May 10 Trip to Mary Rose/Portchester Castle with Marion Newbury

(Application form enclosed please return promptly as Mary Rose require numbers & cash now)

Tues May 20 Annual General Meeting (see note below)

Sat June14 Trip to Faversham/Rochester Paul Craddock

Text Box: Sat July 26 Sutton Hoo/Orford Sheila Woodward (members who intend to join this trip may like to know that from Apr 29-May 2, 3.30pm each day, there will be a film on the Sutton Hoo ship burial in the lecture theatre of the Assyrian Basement at the British Museum

Thur.-Sun Sept 18-21 Exeter Weekend with Ann & Alan Lawson (application form enclosed)

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING. After the business part of our AGM – which usually isn’t a long-drawn out affair – we are hoping to have another of our informal slide shows, when members bring along pictures of interesting places they have been to or unexpected things they have done during the past year. The slides needn’t necessarily link up with HADAS events – though recent outings often provide lively photos.

Have you any slides you would like to show – and comment on? They needn’t take more than 5 minutes and 10 minutes would be a maximum. If you have, please ring Dorothy Newbury and she will be happy to reserve a slot for you. The more members take part, the more variety there will be: so give Dorothy a ring now, while you think of it – on 203 0950.

WEST HEATH

Don’t forget there’s digging at West Heath this month.

As announced in the last Newsletter the site will re-open on Apr 7 for 3 weeks, as well as being open throughout June and July. Any member who plans to dig is asked to let either Margaret Maher (907 0333) or Myfanwy Stewart (449 3025) know, as precise days/times will depend on demand. Margaret asks us to apologise for her phone being on the blink last month – she hopes it didn’t put off any potential processors so that they gave up in despair. Her phone is all right now.

All volunteers over 16 will be most welcome, both old friends and beginners: but it’s essential for ‘first-timers’ to ring to discuss equipment, gear and dates in advance.

BROTHER FOR A MASCOT

This second phase of West Heath started on June 16, 1984, and one of the first visitors – because his Dad, being a master carpenter was rebuilding the West Heath site hut – was a young man, just on 7 months old, named Philip Hugh King. He was immediately adopted as the West Heath mascot, ‘and he puts in at least one (sometimes it’s more) ritual appearance each season to make sure that his diggers’ work is keeping up to scratch.

Now we, have much pleasure in announcing that our West Heath mascot has a brother, born this spring; Edward James, second son of Jenny and Dave King. -It’s reasonable to predict that West Heath this year will be a very lucky dig armed with two mascots: Incidentally, Edward James entered the world at 9lb10oz; our director at West Heath could only mutter to herself in awe

“What a “whopper!”

HISTORIC, BUILDINGS AND ANCIENT MONUMENTS

Select Committees of the House, of Commons have already hit the headlines this year the Committees for Defence and for Trade & Industry both played leading roles in the Westland affair.

The Environment Committee is hardly likely to have any such potentially hot potatoes to handle but it has just embarked on an inquiry that is of considerable interest to archaeologists, amateur and professional alike, and to any local society like HADAS. It concerns Historic Buildings and Ancient Monuments. This is the official letter in which the Committee Office of the House of Commons invites evidence:

“The Environment Committee has recently begun an inquiry into historic buildings and ancient monuments. The object of the inquiry is to review the whole field and specifically to examine the following:

1. the way in which buildings and monuments are identified. as being of historic interest or value;

2. the system of grants and other forms of financial assis­tance to encourage the proper maintenance and repair of historic buildings;

3. the arrangements for public access to historic buildings and monuments;

4. the financing, operation and effectiveness of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.

The Committee would be glad to-receive written evidence from your organisation. It would be helpful if you could explain your con­stitution, your current work programme, your objectives and some­thing about your financial resources,

Your evidence should be forwarded to me to reach me by the end of March at the latest. If I can offer you any assistance or advice on the form of your memorandum or the suitability of items you propose to insert into your paper, please do not hesitate to contact me or Tony Larsen (219 3290).

The letter is signed by one of the joint Clerks to the Committee, Andre Gren; Tony Larsen is the other joint Clerk.

This is an inquiry in which we feel the amateur view should be represented if the Committee wishes to arrive at a true picture of British archaeology; so our Hon Secretary is working on a HADAS memorandum which we to be to put forward.

It is interesting that two of the 11 MPs who compose the Committee represent North London Constituencies the Chairman, Sir Hugh Rossi, sits for Hornsey & Wood Green, and Sydney Chapman, one of our own four Borough of Barnet MPs, represents Chipping Barnet.

ENHANCED SCHEDULING.

Talking of Ancient Monuments, you may like to know of the latest develop­ments regarding scheduled sites.

Six years ago the Dept. of Environment began updating its List of Buildings of Architectural and Historic Interest (we’ve reported.in the newsletter from time to tithe on how that updating was going so far as our area is concerned). Re-Listing, which will have cost some £7,000,000, will be completed next year.

Now a similar project is under way for Scheduled sites. English Heritage ­which advises the Secretary of State for the Environment, who does the actual scheduling, announced at the end of February what it called a “scheduling enhancement programme”. Its aim is to Schedule some 45,000 new sites in the next ten years, giving England some 60,000 scheduled sites in all, out of a known total of some 630,000 sites. Nearly half a million £s has been earmarked for the first year’s work. The aim is to schedule

“those sites and monuments of national importance, which are estimated
at about 10% of the total. There are eight criteria for scheduling a site including its archaeological potential; its period; its rarity; its vulnerability, its diversity of features; and its relationship to other contemporary sites.”

There are at the moment two scheduled sites in the Borough of Barnet: some of the fields bordering the east side of the A5 at Brockley Hill; and the remains of the moat in the grounds of the Manor House, East End Road, Finchley. We hope that the emphasis by English Heritage on the national aspect of the new sites they propose to schedule will not blind them to the importance also of scheduling some sites which are of local concern. We also hope that an opportunity will be given to local societies to take part at some point in the scheduling enhancement programme.

THE ROMAN GROUP

This notice heralds the re-birth of HADAS’ ‘Roman Group, which has been dormant for the last few months.

Please mark the morning of Sunday, Apr 13 in your diaries now for a walkabout at Brockley Hill, We will meet at the Pipers Green Lane/Brockley Hill corner a 10 am. We hope that new members unfamiliar with the Borough’s best known archaeological site may welcome this chance to get to know it; and that members of longer standing may care to renew their acquaintance with it.

We also intend to walk part of the west end of the proposed water pipe­line route. Even though the pipeline won’t be coming through the Borough until 1988 at earliest, it’s an area we ought to get to know between then and now like the palms of our hands.

So please join us on April 13 – you will be most welcome. It would help us to plan if you could let Gill Braithwaite know your intentions in advance ­ring her on 455 9273,

HEALTH SERVICES IN 18c. HENDON by NELL PENNY

In the last quarter of the 20c there is much argument about the extent and expense of the National Health Service. In 18c Hendon poor law overseers records are the tools for constructing the story of how the parish cared for its poorest inhabitants when they were ill.

Throughout the century the overseers’ accounts detailed payments made to ‘weekly pensioners’ and to ‘casualties.’ The usual dole was 2s -or-2s6d a week, rising with inflation to 3s or 3s6d at the end of the century. It is not possible to separate the sick from the old or the ‘children in care’ among the pensioners, but most of the ‘casualties’ seem to have been ‘sick.” Payments often went on for 6 months or longer, and often enough ended with the expenses of a pauper’s funeral.

In 1706. Edward Chalkhill and his wife were buried for 19s.; two shrouds and two coffins cost 14s, and 5s was spent on beer for the bearers. Later ‘Old Danell’ was buried for I7s – ‘ a shroud, coffin, bread, cheese and beer for the bearers.’ At the end of each financial year the Vicar was paid for the pauper funerals he conducted at 2s a time and the parish clerk got a small sum for ‘the use of the black cloth.’

Perhaps the overseer asked the parish doctor to decide whether a poor person was really ill and deserved a dole and maybe a ‘cough bottle.’ Certainly the parish paid a doctor or a ‘surgeon apothecary’ in most years between 1710 and 1835, mr Ingram was contracted for 12 guineas a year in 1711; by 1798 Dr Rodgers was paid 20 guineas. Mr Kent was the doctor between 1808 and 1814 at 28 guineas a year, but in the latter year the parish had to

pay him an extra £10 because the parish officer, dismissed him without notice. Mr Holgate, who lived in Brent St, was the last parish doctor. In.1835 he was paid 50 guineas.

Special medical treatment merited separate entries in the overseer’s accounts. 1n 1706 -1setting one man’s leg and another’s arm’ was expensive at £5. Bleeding, to which there are ten references, was cheaper if performed by the workhouse master at is a time. Alcohol was sometimes provided for the ‘ sick poor; 6d bought half a pint of wine for a sick woman in the workhouse, and Richard Marshall, ‘being sick,’ was provided with strong beer. A parish boy was dosed with ‘Jesuits Bark’ costing 2s. Jesuits’ Bark was a form of quinine – a powder made from the bark of the- South American cinchona tree. This remedy for fevers had been introduced into Europe by Jesuit missionaries. Now and again the overseers paid for orthopedic treatment. They supplied a wooden leg which, with alterations, cost 10s; and in 1757.they paid £1-11-6d for a ‘leg iron for Sarah Lawfords boy.’

I feel we should cheer the gentlemen of the vestry for the care they gave to Robert Debnam in 1795. He lived in the workhouse and was nearly blind. When it was discovered, that Dr Matthew Phipps of London was offering to operate on Debnam’s eyes without a fee, the vestry meeting voted £2.10.6 for Debnam’s fare and his maintenance in London. At their next meeting they told the clerk to write to Dr Phipps thanking him for his generous and humane treatment in restoring Debnam’s sight. There is no record of what Debnam thought of an operation without an anaesthetic.

Smallpox was endemic in the country throughout the 1814 and very often killed its victims. Hendon did not escape the scourge the disease was rife between 1750 and 1780. Whole families were nursed by dames paid by the parish. Widow Shaw was paid £3.1.7d for nursing three men with smallpox. Burying a man with smallpox who died in the fields cost £1.5s. In 1772 the overseers relieved a boy in the ‘pest house, I have not been able to find out where this isolation unit was, but after 1783 the parish was paying Mr Bond £5 a year rent for a pest house, so smallpox must still have been active at the end of the century.

I don’t think the parish was interested in normal births in poor families or in the workhouse, although payments to midwives increased throughout the 18c; ‘for fetching and carrying the midwife, 2s’ and ‘the midwife 5s’ are common entries in the overseers ledgers. When a birth was difficult the parish could be generous even to a tramping woman. In 1722 Edward Cooper was the overseer for the North End of Hendon. He paid Mrs Timms 5s ‘for nursing a travelling woman who lay in my house.’ He paid himself 10s for giving the ‘ woman houseroom for. 4 weeks ‘necessaries’ for her included ‘candles, soap, beer, butter, sugar; bread, cheese, oatmeal, meat, bacon and Venice treacle.’ (The OED defines Venice treacle as an antidote to poison and a balm for treat­ing malignant diseases). If a doctor attended a confinement in the early 19c the parish paid him. a guinea.

Special care of the mentally ill poor was rare and very expensive. In 1705 the case of Samuel Murrin fills a page of the overseers accounts: “expended to getting him into Bedlam.6s; for going after Murrin 5s; for looking after him 7s.6d; for giving Goody Murrin 1s6d for having him cried; expended in having him to the doctor £1.7s; spent in going to the Lord Mayor and the chief officer of Bedlam about Murrin £1.” Bedlam was Bethlehem hospital for lunatics in Lambeth, which had been founded as a royal charity in the 16c. When the parish had to put Widow Bennett into Bedlam it was just as expensive.

“horse hire and standing going to meet the committee 5s.1d; going to see Henry Hoare Esq; and the Turnkeys to see if any vacancy 5s.6d; 5s paid into the Treasury box at Bedlam; paid the two nurses and the two Turnkeys their fees 5s”

In the 19c the parish seems to have relied on private asylums to house difficult mentally ill patients. Mr Warburton of the White House in Bethnal Green had 300 patients and for nearly 30 years. Hendon parish sent one or two paupers there at a cost of 12s a week.. But in 1802 the vestry decided that ‘John Page be immediately sent home from the Mad House at Bethnal Green, the expense of keeping him there being considered too much.’

Reminder for those so thoroughly ‘into’ our new money that they have forgotten the old 6d=2½p; ls=5p; and so on. ‘1 guinea = £1.05.

SITE WATCHING

The following sites have been the subject of recent planning applications. If permission is granted, it is possible they might be of some archaeological interest:

Land west of Diploma Av & Rear & Side of 216-244 East End Road Finchley;

Land Adj. Borderside, Hendon Wood Lane

Former Trafalgar House site The Hyde, NW9

Land adj. Railway Tavern, Hale Lane NW7

Rising Sun Public House Marsh Lane NW7

Hadley Lodge, Hadley Common

3-7 East End Rd. N3

139 Elmshurst Cresent, N2

13-15 Moxon Street, Barnet

133-5 High St. Barnet

Land adj. Pymlico House Hadley Green, (Pymlico House is a listed building)

206 High Street Barnet

Would members who notice any signs of development activity on the above sites please let John Enderby know.

LONDON ARCHAEOLOGISTS CONFERENCE

Owing to the vagaries of the postal service in Edgware – members in that area believe that No One Anywhere is Thinking of Them” as they have had no recent collections or deliveries -.we are unable to publish in this issue a report of the 23rd Conference of. London Archaeologists, which, took place on March 15. Sheila Woodward had kindly agreed to cover it, but alas her report is held up in the post.

However, that will be a pleasure in store for the next Newsletter, as the report will undoubtedly surface by then. To be continued, therefore, in our next ….

THE EFFECT OF ALEXANDER Report on the March lecture by GILL BRAITHWAITE

Dr .Malcolm Colledge; our lecturer last month, is an old friend of HADAS and he had a full house for his talk on March 4. It was concerned not so much with Alexander himself, as with the effect of Alexander’s momentous conquests upon Western Asia, and particularly upon the art forms in that region.

For thousands of years in prehistory the main cultural trends were all one way, from east to west, as ideas spread from the Fertile Crescent westwards through Greece into the Balkans and the Mediterranean. With the development of Greece as a colonial power, and the foundation of the Ionian cities in Anatolia, this trend started to be reversed. Around 600 BC Greek ideas began percolating through Anatolia into the heartlands of the vast Eastern Empire now ruled by the Achaemenid dynasty portals with Ionian columns were attaches to traditional oriental ‘broad-room’ temples, naturalistic draperies softened the stiff stone relief sculptures and a number of Greek stone-working tech­niques became widespread, such as the use of the claw chisel for roughing out marble and limestone, or the use of iron clamps to fix stone blocks together.

But for the purpose of Dr Colledge’s lecture, what was most interesting in all this was the interaction of Greek and oriental ideas in the realm of art, and the consequent development of an independent hybrid art form that borrowed from both worlds but was original in its own right. The birth of semi-realistic portraiture seems to have been one result of this interaction between East and West, something that was unknown to either the Greeks or Persians before this. This is best seen in coin portraiture. The Greeks had invented coinage, but no rulers were portrayed on the early coins. The Persian coinage, when it was introduced around 500 BC was based on Greek models but the standard coins issued in the different capitals bore semi-realistic portraits of the deified emperors or their various satraps on the obverse, with their names conveniently printed on the reverse. With the aid of these coins it is possible that some of the three-dimensional Persian statues of this period, found mainly in Anatolia, may be identified.

With the advent of Alexander, the influence of Greece was greatly inten­sified. New Greek-type cities many of them called Alekandria, with a grid- plan, an agora and an acropolis, sprang up right the way across the Empire, even as far east as Ai Khanum in Bactria. Theatres, stoas and Greek-style temples were introduced into many of the old Persian cities. This trend con­tinued under Seleucis, one of Alexander’s generals, who became the ruler of Western Asia and founded the Seleucid dynasty. Oriental traditions persisted, however, alongside. The old ‘broad-room’ temples with the entrance on the long side continued to be built, while elaborate, labyrinthine royal palaces of Persian style occupied-a dominant place in the city plans. Coins issued on the old Persian standard by Alexander and the Seleucids retained the portrait heads of the deified rulers, but portraits became ever more naturalistic, as did portrait sculpture. Again it seems likely that some of the Hellenistic statues found in Western Asia can be identified on the basis of these coins. Meanwhile the new hybrid Greco-oriental art style continued to flourish, becoming increasingly florid and ornate.

In the third and second centuries BC the Seleucid Empire disintegrated. The Parthians began to move in from the northeast. Oriental traditions became more dominant, -but the hybrid art style -lived on, even in the remote, now Parthian city of Ai Khanum where semi-naturalistic sculptures with a definite Hellenistic flavour were still being commissioned. By the first century BC and the Roman conquest of the eastern Mediterranean, the rather baroque art style of Western Asia was well established, but already a new element was appearing the influence of the steppes. Dr Colledge left us with some un­forgettable portrait sculptures of warrior chieftains with fierce Asiatic features and baggy silk trousers, eloquent symbols of the new forces from the East, those nomadic hordes from Central Asia and beyond, who were soon to threaten the eastern frontiers of the Roman Empire.

MORE DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

This is Domesday Year – as if you could escape the fact! A special Domesday Exhibition opens at the PRO Chancery Lane, on Apr 3, Continues till Sept 30 Mons-Sats. 10am-6pm„ July 13-19 is earmarked countrywide, by the way, as Domesday Week.–

Many thanks to Alec Gouldsmith for letting us know about a Centenary conference on ancient Mining and Metallurgy at University College of North Wales at Bangor from Apr 10-12. It is in honour of the centenary of the British School at Athens (with which our April lecturer Professor Tomlinson, has links). Twelve international speakers will talk on “early Greek mining, metals and metallurgy and contemporaneous British activities.” Conference fee £7, accommodation in college £43 (inc. all meals). Should you take a last-minute decision to attend, contact J Ellis Jones, Dept of Classics, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2DG.

The British Association for Local History (to which HADAS is affiliated) will hold its Annual Conference (combined with its AGM) in our neighbouring borough of Enfield this year – at Trent Park on Sat Apr 19, 10am-5pm. The venue has been chosen in honour of the Edmonton Hundred Historical Society’s 50th anniversary. Tickets, including lunch, are £5.50 from Dr J Burnby, Mill Managers House, Cromford, Derbys DE4 3RQ, and. HADAS; members might find it well worth attending – some very expert speakers have been lined up. Many members will know David Pam, a prolific writer on Enfield history and author of the recently published History of Enfield Chase; and there are also Dr Joan Thirsk, historian of agricultural economics; Professor Dodgson, who will speak on Domesday; and Dr David Hey, who has made packmen and packhorse roads his specialty.

ANOTHER KIND OF OMNIBUS by Brigid Grafton Green

One of my pet journals – it appears twice yearly – is called Omnibus. It is published by JACT (Joint Association of Classical Teachers), financially helped by the two societies for the Promotion of Hellenic and of Roman Studies. The first issue, in March 1981, announced that it would be ‘a magazine for sixth formers and others interested in the ancient Greeks and Romans.’

It is an often deliciously tongue-in-cheek publication on every aspect of the classical world. Sixth formers are encouraged to participate actively in cleverly designed competitions which sometime produce hilarious results. It explores some fascinating subjects and doesn’t hesitate to take the micky out of anything it considers pompous or pretentious.

The current issue is No 11, March 1986. It contains – among other goodies – an interesting piece on papyrus, by Dr Ignace Hendriks.of. Groningen University.

Dr Hendriks points out-that papyrus wasn’t an exclusively Egyptian writing material: it’s merely that, because of the dryness of the Egyptian climate, the remains of papyrus are found almost exclusively in Egypt. He reckons it was used widely in the ancient world. The first papyrus document, from an Egyptian tomb, was dated c 3000’BC. by.AD 800 papyrus had been superseded by the new-fangled Arab material, paper.

The process by which the tall stalk of the papyrus plant was turned into a sheet on which a scribe could write was described by Pliny in his Natural History (XIII, 74-82) and that text is the only more or less trust worthy description of the manufacturing process that exists. It’s a text, however, that has always been considered-‘difficult’ by scholars, and has seemed to contain many inconsistencies.

Now Dr Hendriks believes that for, centuries scholars have mistranslated it. As a result they have believed that papyrus was made by cutting the stalk of the plant lengthwise in strips, laying a row of strips with the fibres running vertically and another row on top with them running horizontally, ‘ pressing or hammering the two so that they fused and drying them.in the sun, thus producing a sheet of papyrus.

Many scholars have tried to provide evidence for this strip process by close examination of the thousands of papyri that exist in museums and libraries; strangely enough, they have never been successful. Dr Hendriks thinks that is because there have never been any strips to find, he believes a papyrus sheet was made in a different way Here is his description of his own experiments (which come very close to experimental archaeology):

“I got myself a stalk of papyrus from the Botanical Garden of the University and tried ‘my idea out: the result was a number of sheets of papyrus made according to a new principle – and of not bad quality.

What is this new principle? To put it in a few words: a piece of stalk is peeled off without interruption till nothing of the pith remains. In this way a sheet of peeled-off papyrus is obtained which, together with a second piece forms a sheet of writing material after pressing and drying. I baptised this ‘the

Groningen method:’ it is, in my opinion, closer to the text of Pliny than the strip theory. First, cut a piece from the upper half of the stalk and remove the hard shell round it. Second, start the actual peeling process. Since Pliny says that a needle is used I used a needle too. In fact the sharp point of the, needle does the peeling.

This process offers explanations for passages in Pliny’s text which for a long time have remained ‘difficult.’ It also leads to a better understanding of the passage Pliny devotes to the different grades of quality … the criteria distinguishing between. a better or a poorer papyrus: fineness, firmness, whiteness and smoothness. Most important, however, appears to have been the the criterion of measure. Sheets of papyrus differed in width (and height): the best measured 13- digits (9ins 24 cm), the poorest only 6 digits (44in=11cm).

It is only with great difficulty that we can explain these differences in width on the basis of the strip-theory, since a sheet made accord­ing to that principle could have any measure simply by adding a few strips to it. According to the Groningen method the amount of material from which a sheet is made is limited: once you have peeled the piece of stalk, you have nothing to add. The amount of material in the stalk diminishes towards the top. This means that a sheet peeled from the middle is of necessity Wider than a sheet peeled from any part above it. ”

Dr Hendriks clearly feels that he has solved a problem which has teased’ ‘scholars for centuries -and has added a bit to our knowledge of ancient technology,’ too.

His paper on papyrus is just one of a number of interesting pieces in the current Omnibus. You can find out more details about the magazine by writing to JACT,.3134 Gordon Square, WC1H OPY. I believe one or two earlier issues are out of print, but most are still available.

Newsletter 181: March 1986
THE PROGRAMME CARD

At last the programme for our 25th Anniversary Year is ready – and the card is enclosed in this Newsletter. As you will see, it is a pretty full programme and we hope all members will come to as many events as possible, and will so help to make it a memorable year. Coach and entrance fees have risen astronomically and the more people who attend, the more reasonable we can make the charges – and the more opportunities our members will have to get to know each other.

There’s one particular item on the card which we must point out because it changes a date already announced in two previous Newsletters – last month’s and November’s. In those issues we gave the date of October 11 next for the start of the exhibition which Ted Sammes is organising under the title of One Man’s Archaeology at Church Farm House Museum. This date has now been altered to October 18, in order that it shall not clash with the Minimart. If you had put the original date in your diary, please change it now.

Here are the dates for events for the next couple of months:

Tues Mar 4. Alexander the Great and Art in the Greek East by Dr Malcolm Colledge

Dr Colledge is on the staff of the University of London and has taught Classics for many years at Westfield College. He is an old friend of the Society. The most memorable occasion was his talk on Pompeii in 1976 prior to our visit to the Exhibition at the Royal Academy the following February. He also came to our Roman Banquet in 1979 as an honoured guest and gave us dramatic readings from Homer. This will be his fourth lecture to us and it is certain to be as entertaining as his previous ones.

Tues Apr 1. Recent excavations at Peracora, near Corinth by Professor R A Tomlinson

Sat Apr 19. Clerkenwell Walk

Sat May 10. Outing to Mary Rose at Portsmouth and to Portchester Castle

Tues May 20. Annual General Meeting

Lectures and AGM at the Library, The Burroughs, Hendon NW4, coffee 3 pm, meeting 8.30 pm.

NEWS FROM OUR CHAIRMAN

It was a real pleasure recently to get a letter from our Chairman, Brian Jarman, in which he reported that he is now on the mend and feels very well. Sadly, however, he has, for health reasons, to move from Hendon.

‘I have now sold my flat,’ he writes, ‘and am staying in Herstmonceux, waiting for my new home here to be built. As usual, builders are very slows but I hope it will be ready by the end of March. That’s where my Newsletter to which I look forward every month – should be sent … I don’t want to lose my links with the Society, which I have been connected with from the very first meeting in the Town Hall in 1961, and which has given me so much pleasure.’ (Note* that first meeting was nearly 25 years ago – on Apr 19, 1961 – Ed).

Councillor Jarman (he will give up his seat on Barnet Council as from May, when the next local elections take place) is hopeful that he may be able to join us at the AGM on May 20, just to see old friends and, as he puts it, ‘to say a few words of thanks and hand over to whomever is the new Chairman.’ He also intends to make a special effort to attend the Silver Jubilee display at Church Farm House Museum next autumn. And he ends by asking the Newsletter to ‘remember me to all.’

GENERAL RESEARCH DAY AT THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY: A report by

PREHISTORY AND THE REGION E JOHN HOOSON

The afternoon programme organised on January 25 by the Prehistoric

Society, and arranged by staff of the Field Archaeology Unit of the Institute of Archaeology, attracted a ‘full house’ of members amongst them about a’ score from. HADAS. In his opening remarks the President, Dr Geoffrey Wainwright, said, that this was a new venture for the Society and was to introduce members to a range of work carried out in various regions. The meeting was organised by Peter Drewett director of the Field Archaeology Unit (FAU), whose work is mainly carried out in Sussex.

Peter Drewett then described the formation and transformation of the FAU. Founded in 1974, the years 1974-6 were formative, based on rescue requirements. However, there were far too many threatened sites for the Unit to handle, and random excavation was neither academically desirable nor financially justifiable. In 1976 it was decided to design research projects centred on rescue situations to provide knowledge both: for Sussex and nation-ally. To identify the appropriate sites, an extensive survey of plough damage to known archaeological sites was carried out,

In 1984 the unit was integrated with the Institute of’ Archaeology with responsibility for

drawing, survey, research; etc.;

rescue for Sussex (other than Chichester, which has separate archaeological cover);

worthwhile projects elsewhere. These have included the PrescelIy Mountains, which served to familiarize students, with the highland zone and tropical excavations, to introduce Students. (many from overseas) to different methods ,and requirements – it being pointed

out that crop-marks are not found in a desert! At present a team is working.in the Barbadoes.

In all 136 excavations have been undertaken of which 130 have been published. The remaining six have been delayed due only to outside agencies. Many of the reports have been published in the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society or in the Bulletins of the Institute of Archaeology. Of the latter, a generous supply of off-prints was available free to those at the meeting.

While the FAU has responsibility for all periods, the work described during the afternoon was confined to the prehistoric Excavations at Boxgrove, a lower Paleolithic site at 33ft OD, revealed by quarrying, produced some lithic finds but principally faunal evidence. Although the site fell within the presently ascribed ‘Hoxnian’ sea level, the evidence produced indicated a later date and it seemed probable that the lower Palaeolithic dating should be reviewed.

The 1985 Long Down FlintMine excavations were described next. Informa­tion obtained from the working floors was different from that from the mines. As it is now possible to analyse flint to identify the source, it appears to be probable that much flint was imported during the earlier period and obtained from the mines during the later Neolithic. Furthermore, it appears that work was on a communal basis during the earlier period and on a more individual basis later this being supported by burial evidence.

Finally, the 1985 excavations at Thundersbarrow Hill (a Late Bronze/Early Iron Age enclosure) were described, Together with recent excavations at previously excavated hill forts and enclosures; evidence is being found that the dating of many of .these monuments to the Iron Age is in need of revision. While many now appear to be .from the Bronze Age, others can be dated to the early Neolithic (e.g. Bury Hill, Court Hill).

During the afternoon there was an opportunity to watch a video on the Boxgrove excavation; also demonstrations of prehistoric charcoal and ceramic thin sectioning, and archaeological illustration. There were also displays of major prehistoric excavations by the FAU. Members had previously been invited to show their own recent work, and Essex and. Oxford mounted displays; so did HADAS, with finds fromWest Heath,-Hampstead.

NEWS FROM WEST HEATH

Processing. Two sessions are planned for Mondays, March 10 and 17, from 10 am – 4.30 pm, at 13 Greystone Gns, Kenton, if there are enough volunteers. Six people would be an ideal number and unlimited tea/coffee and a snack lunch are offered as inducements: Would anyone interested please ring me on:907 0333 Don’t drop in unannounced, because you won’t get any refreshments

Excavation. It is planned to re-open the site on April 7 for three weeks, and then for the whole of June and July, in order to extend the trenches north and eastwards. .

A telephone call would be appreciated, from anyone interested in digging in April as days/dates when the site will be open will depend very much on demand. Either ring me on 907 0333 or Myfanwy8tewart on 449-3025.

Any volunteers over 16 are very welcome, both old friends and beginners, but it is essential that ‘first-timers’ ring to discuss dates, equipment, etc, as this helps with forward planning. Looking forward to seeing you all there MARGARET MAHER

NEWS FROM AROUND

Archaeological news, came recently from two of HADAS’s haunts, both of which we have visited not all that long ago.

First Canterbury where we had an outing in July 1982 (and previously in 1965). There the Canterbury Archaeological Trust has unearthed in the grounds of the present Archbishop’s house (built at the turn of this century) the undercroft of the palace built over 900 years ago, in 1080 by Lanfranc, William the Conqueror’s archbishop. They also discovered that large bits of the original palace have been incorporated into the present building. This was a surprise to everyone,-because it had long been believed that no trace of Lanfranc’s palace – most famous, perhaps, as being the house from which archbishop Thomas a Becket fled to seek unsuccessful sanctuary in his cathedral – remained after its demolition in 1832.

Second news item comes from Repton, visited by HADAS in August 1984. Then Professor Martin Biddle showed us finds from a large 2-cell building excavated in the garden of the Repton vicarage, including disarticulated bones of some 250 skeletons. It was then uncertain who these bones had belonged to: whether they were Saxon soldiery, killed fighting the Vikings who occupied the area in 874-5, or someone else.

Now detailed medical examination of the skeletons suggests that they may have been the remains of members of the occupying Viking force which encamped at Repton; and that they died, not in battle, but of natural causes. All the skeletons are of tall robust men. No evidence of violence – such as sword cuts – was found on the bones. The fact that many small bones of hands and feet are missing has led to the theory that during the winter of occupation of 874-5 the dead were buried progressively as they died but were finally disinterred for mass burial in a charnel house.

Long established beliefs about early stone tools have been upset by the theories advanced by an American archaeologist in Science (vol 231, 113-5). Nicholas Toth, of the University of California at Berkeley, suggests that early core-tools, of 1.5 million years ago, hitherto thought of as choppers or scrapers, were in fact only waste products after early man had removed from them the sharp ‘flaked’ blades which he wanted – and used – for hunting and cutting meat. In other words, Mr. Toth believes that blade industries go right back to man’s earliest days as a tool-maker. His theories which, we feel, are likely to provoke some argument – are based on the hundreds of stone tools which he himself has made and has compared with those found at the Lake Turkana excavations in Kenya.

His stone-knapping has produced another new idea: Mr Toth suggests that predominance of right handedness in modern humans is a comparatively recent occurrence. Originally, a million and a half years ago, it was a 50:50 chance whether you were born right or left-handed. The great apes still have that 50:50 ratio. Mr Toth’s evidence for this is that right-handers, when removing flakes from cores, produce more flakes with a crescent on the right side of the object; left-handers do the reverse. He investigated the finds from a number of sites and discovered that the later the site and the more sophisti­cated the tools, the more right-handedness appears.

MEMBERSHIP

The Society’s financial year is drawing to its close, and at the end of this month – on April 1, to be precise – subscriptions will again become due. Our Membership Secretary, Phyllis Fletcher, will include a reminder in the April Newsletter.

The membership list (as at Jan 1, 1986) is going out to the Committee with this Newsletter, and also to non-committee members who have said that they would like it. If you want a copy – but have not yet let Phyllis Fletcher know please give her a ring on 455-2558 and she will send it to you with the April Newsletter.

NEOLITHIC ARRAN A report on the February lecture by SALLY SPILLER

Dr Eric Grant, in his lecture on February ,took us on a lively tour of the megalithic and cairn monuments of the beautiful Isle of Arran, at the mouth of the Clyde. There are eighteen listed Clyde chambered cairns, and suspected remains of a further eight – a greater density than anywhere on the Scottish mainland. Some, such as East Bennan, are horned cairns: Gordon Childe in fact took this one as type-site for the Clyde group. Dr Grant drew our attention to the arrangement of paired orthostats on the side walls of the chambers; on the mainland these are aligned edge to edge, but in Arran they are typically set to overlap, giving a ‘feathered edge’ in plan. One passage grave is also known, like those in Brittany and elsewhere.

Most cairns were excavated by Dr James Bryce in the latter half of the 19c. He was a medical doctor, an enthusiast for bones, and unfortunately dis­carded artefacts and did not record structures. One has been re-excavated, however, and radio-carbon determinations were obtained indicating the mid-4th millenium for the inside, mid-3rd millenium BC for the outside, implying usage over a period of about a thousand years.

Most of the tombs are in the undulating south of the island rather than the more mountainous north; they are generally set at the junction of arable and upland, though cliff top sites are also known. The builders took advantage of slight rocky knolls to give the monuments firm foundations; this also en­sured maximum visibility and. impressiveness. A few were sited on high ground; now so overgrown with the lush vegetation of the Gulf Stream climate that.they are hard to find.

Tombs are not the only prehistoric structures on Arran; Dr Grant also showed us several ‘four-poster”- settings of great boulders; also on Machrie Moor, a close group of five stone circles, one of which was double. Whereas other structures were grey granite, these were mostly thin slabs of red sand-stone, sometimes rain-grooved and toppled, but many standing to four or even five metres. One ring was of alternate grey granite boulders, perhaps one metre tall, and sandstone slabs. Some of the circles had cists in the middle with burial traces, though acidic rainwater running off the slopes above had dissolved much of the bone material.

Colin Renfrew had some time ago produced a map of Arran (see Renfrew, Before civilisation, Pelican edition 1976,-147) in which megalithic tombs were taken as nuclei for Thiessen polygons dividing land into territories of roughly equal areas of arable land, plus varying amounts of hill pasture from this he deduced that the people lived in groups of roughly equal status, no one group being dominant. Dr Grant had initially been skeptical of these deductions but his own survey work, coupled with comparison with land-use indicated on a map 1801commissioned by the Duke of Hamilton (the laird) now supports Renfrew’s hypothesis. Dr Grant also took various considerations likely to have influenced the original builders, such as proximity to farmland (and, by extension; to habitations), proximity to water, accessibility of stone for building etc, and found that these, taken with such natural features; as form natural boundaries, made for a significantly better ‘fit’ than by taking purely arbitrary divisions of land.

At this point came the frustration, just as many of us were brimming with questions, Dr Grant was off – not even a puff of smoke – to catch a train to Scotland, We could only hope that the roads to King’s Cross were not icy, and that one day he can be persuaded to return.

FINDS PROCESSING

For the last 18 months or so some HADAS volunteers have been helping the Greater London Archaeological Unit of the Museum of London with finds processing at Theobalds Road.

This work has now been moved to a new address: at 3, Ray Street a short street off Farringdon Road, EC1 (phone’837:8363). The nearest station is

Farringdon. More volunteers would be very welcome, and anyone who would like to help is asked to ring Jean Snelling (346 3553), who can give further in­formation. Jean usually goes down for a daytime session on Mondays, and there is an evening session on Tuesdays.

CONSERVATION – PREHISTORIC STYLE

The General Research Day described on p2 of this Newsletter by John Hooson isn’t the only good new idea that the Prehistoric Society has floated recently. Last year when the Society celebrated its half-century it set up, for the first time, a Conservation Committee under a

coordinator, Francis Pryor.

The idea behind the new Committee is to project a picture of prehistory as an integral part of the conservation movement. In its first year of life the Committee has made recommendations to English Heritage about the future of Stonehenge and has briefed a representative to give evidence to the Navan Fort planning enquiry in Northern-Ireland. It aims to provide such ‘expert witnesses’ whenever they are required.

AU REVOIR, DAPHNE

These paragraphs are written with great regret from the HADAS point of view. We have to report that the LORIMER family has now moved completely to Orkney, and no longer has a London base. DAPHNE tells us that their Golders Green flat has been sold and that her address henceforth will be Scorradale, Orphir Orkney; telephone Orphir (085 681) 255.

She hopes to return to London every so often to see her mother, but will not be staying for more than a few days at a time; and so feels that in future her archaeological interests will be Orkney-orientated. That’s really sad news for HADAS, to whom she has been such a tower of strength in all circumstances.

However, perhaps we should look at it more positively, and now think of Orkney as an outpost of HADAS! Daphne asks us to pass on to members a message which is characteristic of Lorimer friendliness and hospitality: any member who visits Orkney in the future can be sure of receiving a warm welcome at Scorradale!

COMMITEE CORNER

The Committee met on February 21 and matters discussed included the following:

Newsletter. As Brigid Grafton Green will be giving up the editorship of the Newsletter from next May, a subcommittee of three (June Porges, Christine Arnott and Victor Jones) was appointed to consider editorial arrangements.

Roman Group. It was reported that Gill Braithwaite and Tessa Smith are hoping to re-activate the Roman Group.

Trial Excavations, summer 1986 The Borough has offered HADAS excavation facilities at two sites which are to be redeveloped soon – Stapylton road, Chipping Barnet (new library, etc) and an area at Watling Avenue, Burnt Oak, which is earmarked for car parking. We had already expressed interest in the Chipping Barnet development, and the other – the open area alongside the Silkstream at the back of Burnt Oak station – is close to Watling Street and, though lower-lying, is only ¼ of a mile from the HADAS excavation of 1971 which uncovered 3rd century Roman material in the garden of 33 Thirleby Road. The

Committee decided that, if possible, trial-trenching at both sites desirable this coming summer.

Proposed Water Pipeline. A further spring/summer activity this year will be closer examination on the ground of the route of the proposed water pipeline (on which work is not due to begin before 1988) across the north part of the Borough. It is hoped that a reconstituted Roman Group will look at the West side of the route; Isobel McPherson and Victor Jones have undertaken to concentrate on the eastern part.

Membership. Despite taking on five new members in the last month, membership is down by 9 on this time last year 376 instead of 385.

The Photographic Group is to be asked to record the foundations of the west (carpark) end of Church Farm House Museum while the present deep trench there is open.

LBB Topic Study on Recreation and Leisure. HADAS has received a copy of this and has been asked to comment on it by March 31 next.

West Heath Phase I Report.– . Daphne Lorimer reported that she has still been unable to set any response from LAMAS to her enauiries about the publication of this in the LAMAS Transactions. She and Desmond Collins are engaged in streamlinj.ng the,report.

West Heath plans, 1986. Margaret Maher has heard from Peter Challon, the manager of, Golders Hill Park, that with the imminent demise of the GLC, the London Residuary Body is taking over administration and has given permission for excavation at the West. Heath site this coming summer (see p3 of this Newsletter for details of the West .Heath precessing/dig programme).

Next GLAS Local Societies meeting will take place at the Museum of London on April 7. Sheila Woodward, Victor Jones and Ted Sammes will represent HADAS,

CONFERENCE OF LONDON ARCHAEOLOGISTS

On Saturday March 15 the 23rd of these conferences will take place at the Museum of London, starting at 11 am and finishing at 5.30 pm.

Theme of the morning session is described tersely as ‘Recent, Work;’ it includes reports on four sites and one report on recent acquisitions by the by the Museum of London. .

The afternoon will be devoted to ‘Recent Monastic Archaeology.’ The subjects will be holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate; Bermondsey and Barking Abbeys; and inner London monastic sites.. Lecturers will be mainly members of the Greater London Archaeological Service or Museum of London staff.

HADAS hopes to have a bookstall and a display of ‘some of the post-­excavation work which has been done on the Church Terrace dig.

Tickets (£2.50 LAMAS members, £3.50 non-members) are obtainable from the Museum of London; London Wall, EC2Y 5HN, marking the envelope LAMAS Archaeological Conference (enclose an sae).

MORE ABOUT COLOUR SLIDES by Brigid Grafton Green

In the last Newsletter I mentioned that I’d been doing a trawl among the museums for prehistoric and Roman transparencies with which to broaden my colour slide collection. Some suggestions for fresh sources of slides were immediately forthcoming from HADAS readers (it’s surprising how often, if you air a problem in the Newsletter, someone comes up with an answer: HADAS members are knowledgeable in all sorts of fields). The information – specially the addresses – may be helpful to other members.

First of all Andrew Selkirk provided me with the fact that Brian Philp, the Kentish archaeologist, ran a flourishing slide business which services a number of museums, and suggested that Mr Philp’s catalogue would be well worth looking at: the address to write to is 5 Harvest Bank Road, West Wickham, Kent.

Then Gill Braithwaite offered further ideas. “Do you know the D.o.E. slide catalogue, Colour Slides of Ancient Monuments in Britain?” she wrote. “It includes a number of Roman monuments and the address – a remarkable one! ­is: D.o.E DAMHB/P Stores, Building 1, Vision Way, Victoria Rd, South Ruislip, Middx HA40 ONZ.

“I also have another address, of a Mr H.A.B. White, who can provide ‘classical film strips’ (which can be cut and mounted as slides), again on a wide range of archaeological subjects, mainly Roman, and the main emphasis is on Roman Britain. In 1982 a colour film strip of 35-40 frames cost £4.50 with full notes. They could be framed for an extra £3.35. The quality was excellent on the ones that I ordered.”

I’m now busily exploring these new avenues.

HADAS TALKS IN HORNSEY

Slides have been an integral part of the lecture series which HADAS members have been giving for the two winter terms 1985/6 at Hornsey Historical Society’s HQ at the Old Schoolhouse in Tottenham Lane. The lectures are just coming to their end as this Newsletter goes to press.Daphne Lorimer, Sheila Woodward and Brigid Grafton Green have done six lectures each, under the general title “Aspects of Archaeology;” and Christine Arnott has organised two museum visits, one to the BM and the other to the Museum of London.

The series seems to have been pretty successful. The course luckily produced the sort of class that ‘gelled’ from the word go – most members of it didn’t know each other beforehand, but they got on well and sparked each other – and the lecturers: – off from the start. Numbers kept up, with an average class of 12-15 each time, and never below 10 good, when you think of the recent bitter weather. As an experiment, lectures were timed from 2-4 pm instead of in the evening – and the experiment paid off.

Sheila included, among her six, three lectures on famous archaeologists of the past and their digs. She felt that the one on Sir Leonard Woolley and the Royal Tombs of Ur went down particularly well, partly because it was less familiar territory to her audience than Schliemann, Mycenae and Troy or the exploits of Mortimer Wheeler. Brigid’s talks on town life in Roman Britain and the prehistoric search for salt both started a lot of discussion. Daphne found that her talk on “Any old Bones?”-was highly popular, not least because she took along half a human skeleton for demonstration purposes; Incidentally, we feel that full marks for courage must go to Daphne’s husband, Ian Lorimer, who brought the skeleton down by car from Orkney for the occasion: one shudders to think what the reaction of the police might have been had Ian been involved in even the slightest road accident enroute!

SITE-WATCHING. We haven’t got quite enough space this month to include our’ regular list of possibly interesting planning applications: we are holding them over and will provide double measure next month.

Newsletter No 180: February, 1986

QUARTER CENTURY FOR HADAS

This year HADAS celebrates its Silver Jubilee. The Society began in April, 1961, so in two months’ time we’ll be 25. Dorothy Newbury is planning an attractive programme for Jubilee Year – here are some of its highlights.

Tues. Feb 4 Neolithic Arran by Dr Eric Grant

Dr Grant will need no introduction to many HADES members – specially the old hands. He first joined the Society in 1971 and was an active member until he left the area a few years ago. He is senior lecturer in Archae­ology in the School of Geography & Planning of the Middlesex Polytechnic at Enfield. In 1981/2 he did fieldwork in Arran, surveying the distribution of Neolithic chambered tombs and their relationship to agricultural land use

Tues Mar 4 .Alexander the Great and Art in the Greek East by Dr Malcolm Colledge

Tues Apr 1 Recent excavations at Perachora, near Corinth by Professor R A Tomlinson

Tues May 20 Annual General Meeting

Thur-Sun Sept 18-21 Weekend in Devonshire, staying in one of the Halls of Exeter University. We shall see Exeter and any excavations current at the time. We’ll have a day on Dartmoor looking at classic Bronze Age stone alignments, etc; a day on Exmoor looking at hill-forts and barrow groups, and comparing these two very different geological areas; before we come home on Sunday afternoon we shall see the newly opened Deer Caves.

We shall be guided on the moors by lecturers from the Extra-mural Dept and in Exeter by an archaeologist from the Field Studies Unit. Anyone interested please phone Anne Lawson, 458 3827.

Oct 11-Dec 7 exhibition at Church Farm House Museum, Hendon, in honour of HADAS’s Silver Jubilee, and to tell the story of Ted Sammes addiction to the twin interests of archaeology and Hendon. Ted proposes to show many of his own photographs and other objects in this display.

Dorothy Newbury much regrets that the 1986 programme card is not yet out. We hope to include in our summer programme the following outings:

to Portsmouth, to see the Mary Rose (ship and exhibition) and also to visit Portchester;

a promised return visit to Sutton Hoo;

another trip into Kent, with tea by kind invitation of Paul Craddock, at his house by the river in Rochester;

a City Walk with Mary O’Connell, HADAS member who is now a fully-fledged City guide;

and a trip to a special 900th Anniversary Domesday exhibition at the Great Hall in Winchester.

Our lectures next autumn will be on Tues Oct 7 and Tues Nov 4, but other details about them have not yet been finalised – which is the reason for the programme delay. As soon as all dates and other details are complete, the programme card will come out and will be sent to you.

And now a forewarning for 1987. Next year our lecture evenings will have to be changed. We are sad about this, because we have had the first Tuesday of the month for many years. However, the Gramophone Society has its lectures on fortnightly Tuesdays throughout the year, so that in a 5-week month some of their Tuesdays inevitably clash with these of other societies. The HADAS Committee has decided that it might be confusing if we occasionally switched from Tuesday in order to accommodate the Gramophone Society. Instead, we have asked the Library to reserve the first Wednesday of every month for our lectures.

OBITUARY

We are much indebted to Andrew Selkirk, Editor of Current Archaeology and HADAS member, who sent us this tribute by John Musty to the late

DR MAUEEN GIRLING;

It is with much sadness that I have to record the death of Dr Maureen Girling at the early age. of 35 ‘One of a mere handful of specialists in this country dealing with the examination of fossil insect remains from archaeological deposits, her loss is a severe blow to the archaeological science community in general and to the Ancient Monuments Laboratory in particular. Her work has been distinguished by a meticulous attention to detail; clear-cut conclusions and an admirable publication record (some 30 papers).

Initially trained as a geographer at Reading; University, she developed her specialist interest. in fossil beetles as the result of research she under­took with Russell Coope at Birmingham University which subsequently earned her a PhD. She joined the Ancient Monuments Laboratory around 1975 and for the last ten years had been engaged in the study of beetles and other insect remains from rescue excavations of all periods and from all parts of England.

However, possibly her spectacular results have come from prehistoric sites.- notably the Somerset Levels and Hampstead Heath.

In the Levels she was, able to provide information on such topics as palaeotemperatures (by identifying extinct beetles in both Neolithic and Early Iron Age deposits known to require warmer temperatures than present-day ones) and palaeohydrology by demonstrating changes from raised bog to fen conditions (as shown by changes in beetle fauna with change of habitat), She also identi­fied the presence in the Neolithic phase, of syanthropic species (such as wood borers and dung beetles) – that beetles directly related to man’s influence on the Levels environment.

At the Hampstead-Heath site she produced the exciting identification of the beetle responsible for Dutch Elm disease in a position shown by the pollen record to be just below that of the Elm Decline episode. This discovery was the subject of her last published paper (Journal of. Arch, Science, 12, 1985, 347)

It is evident from ‘the high quality of the work Dr Girling had carried out that there is much more that she would have achieved. Her untimely death is a great loss to archaeological research: I feel that it will be very hard to replace her.

To John Musty’s words we would like to add HADAS’s own tribute to Maureen Girling, who died just after Christmas of pneumonia, She first came to West Heath in 1976, at the invitation of Desmond Collins and Daphne Lorimer. Many West Heath diggers of the early days will remember watching her slight figure (she always looked like a teen-ager) up to her neck and beyond in a hole taking careful samples. Death is always untimely – but never more so then when it takes someone so young and with so much to offer.

MRS CONNIE MASON. Some members will already have heard, with great sadness

of the death in the Royal Free Hospital, just before Christmas, of Mrs Connie. Mason – a HADAS member, with her husband Harry, of many years standing. She had been ill for some months. Olive Banham, Dorothy Newbury and Isobel McPherson represented the Society at her funeral on December 23

Mrs Mason it was who presided so gently and kindly the HADAS coffe cups before lectures she and her husband were always great supporters be of lectures and of outings, and it’s nice to remember that, although she was already in the early stages of her last illness, she managed to join the trip to Cumbria last June and, in her own words “had a whale of a time,” writing afterwards to say how much she had enjoyed it.

We shall miss her cheerful presence greatly, and our warmest sympathy goes to her husband who is now living at Abbey Lodge, Brunswick Park Road .- Old friends may care to write to him there.

MISS RHONA WELLS. We must also record with sorrow the death in January, in a home in North Finchley of Rhona Wells, long a resident in Hampstead Garden Suburb. For ten years from 1974 she was a HADAS member taking a great interest in all the Society’s enterprises. She resigned only when ill-health made it impossible for her to take part any longer in our activities.

THE ROMAN .BASILICA

The latest DUA dig at Leadenhall, on the site of the Roman basilica (said to the largest basilica built north of the Alps) has had much publicity since Christmas: a spread across the whole top page of The Observer (Jan 12), an article in the Dec ’85/Jan ’86 issue of Popular Archaeology, and interviews on the radio and tv with .Brian Hobley. In mid-January a viewing platform over the site was opened for the public; we asked ENID HILL to look in and see what was visible. Here’s her report:

The site is on the corner of Gracechurch Street and Leadenhall street. From the viewing gallery it is possible to see the Roman road running across from east to west on a slightly different alignment from the present street with part of the north wall of the basilica in the background. But until road is excavated it will not be possible to see much of the foundations of the wall – it has been extensively robbed.

I was fortunate enough to have a chance to speak to Gustav Milne, one of the site directors (members may recall him talking to HADAS in October 1981 about the discovery of the original Roman port of London which is the subject also, of his recently published book). It is suggested that it might be better for HADAS members to wait to visit the site until April, when there will be more to see, and it is hoped that the excavation will have been extended south to cover 1000 sq.m.

Going round to the back of the site I saw that there is a hole under the wall foundations where the soil has moved away, so the wall is cracking in places, possibly due to poor foundations. Also a section of the road, next to part of the wall, shows evidence of earlier layers of occupation, so the site must have been used before the road and basilica were built*

It is hoped that it will be possible to give a talk to viewers on some future occasions, and details about these talks will be announced later. Needless to say, I enjoyed the visit and I think many HADAS members would find it worthwhile too.

*We understand that trial trenching on the site showed three metres of Roman deposits.

.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

A leaflet from the DUA mentions that volunteer guides and sales counter staff are wanted for the public viewing gallery, which is a 40ft long porta-cabin with inbuilt heating and lighting. It is intended that the gallery will be open on weekdays from 9am-5pm, but if enough volunteers come forward it may be possible to organise two shifts. Phase I of the dig is due to finish at the end of April; Phase II is programmed provisionally for Nov ‘86-Apr ’87.

If you are interested, and you like working with the public, phone Diana Twells on 600 3699, ext 213.

THE ART OF SURVIVAL LIZ SAGUES reports on

“a seminar two-thirds successful”

Is there anything new to learn of prehistoric art? Yes, was the answer for seminar –attenders at the Commonwealth Institute on December 10, several HADAS members among them. Prehistoric Art – the Art of Survival was the title of the all-day event, one of several linking with The Human Story exhibition (which, as those who have seen it will know only too well, does prehistoric art a great injustice with a near-unintelligible blow-up of part of a Lascaux scene).

For an audience of an archaeological bent, the seminar was certainly two-thirds successful, most notably in Clive Gamble’s clear and.- within its limited time -,comprehensive introduction.

Dr Gamble, a lecturer in prehistoric archaeology at Southampton University, looked at the ‘art of survival’ in two ways – in terms of what has survived from the prehistoric past and of how art has contributed to human survival.

The facts came before the interpretation. He showed that the artistic lead was given by Central Europe, with carvings dating back well beyond 30,000 years. South Western France’s remains, he stressed, were later – those of 30,000-29,000 years ago were highly schematic, far from the naturalistic efforts further north and east. A time-span from 30,000-plus to a mere 10,000 years ago – the date established by C14 from an abandoned torch in a recently-. discovered painted gallery.at Niaux, most celebrated of the Pyrenean caves – was too long a period for a single tradition of art, a view supported by regional differences.in its execution.

After the where, the when, the how – the why? Dr Gamble summarised the major theories, from the original ‘hunting magic’ of Breuil, still favoured by some commentators today, to the complex symbolism advocated by Leroi-Gourhan. The Latter, he argued, had produced a major breakthrough in showing a pattern­ing in the decoration of’cavcs but was the rest of his thesis tenable?

Turn instead, he suggested, to Michael Jochim, who summarised in Hunter Gatherer Economy in Prehistory (ed G Bailey, Cambridge University Press,

1963) an explanation which linked art to survival, as more functional reasoning

for why, when much of Europe had invitingly paintable surfaces, only some

were exploited. Might the answer not lie in the fact that the areas where art was found corresponded with remaining areas of rich food resources (remember, the artists worked in Ice Age Europe, where conditions could be hard). The coastal waters, warmed by Atlantic currents, were inviting to salmon, which migrated up the rivers, providing a reliable food source, while the valleys were the routes of migrating reindeer. People crowded in to exploit both, there was stress, inevitable conflict. Cave art could be seen as a way of marking group territories, of being an essential element in a system which served to ease that conflict and establish workable social patterns.

And, with the ending of those environmental circumstances, the ending of art was understandable – it was no longer needed.

Questions later brought support for this explanation in a recent ethnographic parallel quoted by the second speaker, anthropologist Robert Layton, of Durham University when he referred to the highly territorial systems of the NorthWest coast Indians of North America, even though they lived in a very rich environment. Elaborate assignment of people to land was not necessarily a sign of economic near-collapse.

In his own talk, Dr Layton discussed more recent rock art – though, with no informants left from the Palaeolithic past, the danger of impressing recent ideas onto ancient minds could never be overlooked.

He compared and contrasted Aborigine rock art in two areas of Australia, the Western Kimberleys and the Kakadu, where the former had a totemic importance to the clan and the latter was concerned with subsistence activities.

The Kimberley Aborigines had one major painted site per clan, portraying the clan’s particular symbol, retouched each year to ensure its continued effectiveness. The Kakadu had paintings in every shelter, in very different style –sometines ‘x-ray’ views, showing animals’ internal organs and, in earlier examples, hunting scenes which resembled the Bushman art of South Africa. The Kakadu paintings had no respect for clan boundaries, and included figures positioned one over another. The totemic art, particularly, lacked movement which, stressed Dr Layton, was not a reflection of the artists’ abilities, but ­fundamental to the art and its purpose.

He considered Bushman art, too, noting that it was not based on clans’ totems but showed the same species throughout its area. Like Paleolithic art; the animals depicted were not necessarily the most significant food resources – Eland was most important in the art, but wildebeests, just as crucial an element of the diet, was never shown. Could the horse/bison frequency in Paleolithic art be explained in the same way as Bushman interest in particular animals?’ But the Bushmen’s work showed similarities, too, with the totemic Aborigines in. the positioning of art sites related to concen­trations of people.

. And what of the signs in Paleolithic art, which are not paralleled in recent hunter-gatherer art? Could they have evolved to achieve some other function, perhaps communication?

Final Speaker, art historian Alastair Grieve, from the University of East,. Anglia, discussed – and graphically illustrated – how tribal art had influenced Modern artists. Gaugin, for example, had simply copied from tourist photos of Tahitian temple art, and tribal art could be seen directly in Cubism revealing as his words and slides were, however, they had over­taken Paleolithic art by millennia.

STICKING LIKE GLUE

Interesting to note in the November issue of Popular Archaeology, in the Spoilheap column, a paean of praise for HMG Adhesive for mending ancient and/or valuable pottery and other artefacts.

When HADAS first began working at the HGS Teahouse on finds from the 1940-50s digs at Brockley Hill, the adhesive we decided to use was HMG. POP Arch now says, some 12 years later, that Liverpool University has just used it to reconstruct painstakingly a 3500-year-old Bronze Age collared urn. One great advantage of HMG is that, if one makes a mistake, the adhesive can be dissolved with a standard solvent and work can start again.

Main use of HMG (the Manchester manufacturers’ name is H Marcel Guest) is in model construction – of, for instance, boats or planes. We certainly found it invaluable for mending Roman pottery.

IDLE HANDS AT WORK

Albert Dean, who has been taking part in the Photographic Group’s project of recording all the Blue Plaques in the Borough in their 1986 settings, has produced one unexpected photo.

The forty or so excellent prints and negatives which he recently lodged with the society (and thanks very much, Albert, for your note that there’s ‘no charge’ for the film and developing: HADAS is most grateful) covered five plaques: one commemorating the site of Hendon parish cage (on the green at the junction of Bell Lane and Brent Street); the site of the parish cattle pound (on the wall above a dry cleaners at the Brent St/Finchley lane cross-roads); the site of the Courts Leet and Baron (at the White Bear inn, The Burroughs, NW4) ; one commemorating ‘Little Tich’ (music hall artist Harry Relph) on 93 Shirehall Park, NW4; and one in memory of John Norden; Elizabethan antiquary and topographer, on the wall of Hendon Senior High School, The Crest, NW4,

It’s this last that, at the moment, looks distinctly odd. Norden (1548­ – 1625), mapmaker to Queen Elizabeth I, moved to Hendon, where he had built himself a house facing Brent Street, in the early 1600s. Because of his own connection with it, ‘Brentstreete’ thereafter appears as a place on all his maps of Middlesex. In his Speculum Britanniae he says that Brentstreete is ‘so called of the river or brooke called Brent through which it runneth.’

The close-up which Albert Dean has taken of Norden’s blue plaque, however, reads ‘Site of the residence of John Morden … etc” Some skilful joker has blacked out the bottom half of the diagonal of the ‘N’ and added an upward half-stroke, making it ‘M.’ You can imagine the confusion that may create for future researchers when they see Albert’s picture – because there was also a well-known cartographer called Morden (though he was ‘Robert’, not John, lived in the 18C and didn’t, so far as we know, have any special Hendon links.

Moral of this tale: don’t site Blue Plaques so low on the wall of a building (specially one inhabited by the youthful) that mischievous fingers can alter then easily. This plaque is on the brickwork, between two ground floor windows – about 4ft above ground level. It would have been safer – as well as more visible to passers-by – had it been 5ft or so higher. Albert suggests that the chap who put it up had forgotten his ladder!

MEMBERSHIP LIST

Here’s a message from our Membership Secretary, Phyllis Fletcher, who has just finished one of the Society’s nastier chores – typing and checking an up-to-date members list.

Last year every member received a copy of the 1985 list, and since then new members have had one on joining. The 1986 list will therefore be circu­lated, as a matter of course, only to members of the Committee, to whom it will go with the March Newsletter, If, however, you are not a Committee member and you would like a copy of the 1986 list, please let Phyllis Fletcher know on 455 2558 and she will see that you get one.

WOODS AND HEDGES A report by JOAN EDWARDS of the HADAS New Year lecture

Large quantities of fresh snow in side roads caused difficulties in reaching Hendon library on Jan 7 and reminded us of similar Arctic conditions last year. In spite of this there was an enthusiastic audience to hear Dr Oliver Rackham speak on ‘The Archaeology of Hedges and Woodlands,’

Dr Rackham explained that he would not be talking about wildwood – that is, woods undisturbed since the Ice Age retreat – nor about plantations which are relatively recent. His subject would be woodlands, i.e. collections of spon­taneous trees, some of which can be traced to Saxon times, which may have been extensively used by man, Woodlands can be divided like this:

Wood pasture a mixture of trees and grazing land

Park: woodland, mainly trees but enclosed

Forest, wooded land but open

He described the management of woods, by which scattered large trees were left for use as timber and the important underwood was maintained. This was mainly ash, hazel and sallow, which could be used for two purposes: first, for making tools such as scythe sticks, hurdles and wattle and daub framework; secondly, for fuel – faggots, logs and charcoal.

Slides illustrated the serial stages of growth of the stool which was left after cutting the underwood: it would throw up growth which would be small trees ready for cutting 12 years later. Similar wood could be grown in woodland where animals roamed by pollarding at a height above the reach of the animals.

Dr Rackham explained that information about the distribution of ancient woods could be obtained from ancient land records in which woods and hedges are described in detail; and by studying place names. When the endings -ley, -hurst, -thwaitc and -field occur, it can be assumed that these places grew up in clearings within wooded land.

In the woods themselves features such as isolated large trees, earthworks and boundary banks can indicate ownership and boundary lines. Moats may provide clues to abandoned manors or farms. Evidence of ridge and furrow indicates agricultural land replaced by spontaneous woodland.

Pollen analysis of bogs gives information on the composition of past forest, but it is important to remember the variation in pollen production by different trees; for instance, oak produces vast quantities of pollen, whereas hazel will flower and produce pollen only if the tree can reach up to the light. Small-leafed lime was common in ancient times in southern Britain. Plants under the trees, such as oxslips, wood anemony and violet, woodruff, lily of the valley and the Servis tree, will indicate ancient woodland and frequency of coppicing.

Another approach to historic woodland is to look at old local buildings and identify their timbers – rafters, beams and the wood content of the wattle and daub. Wood for great houses may, however, have been brought long distances.

Dr Rachham18 beautiful slides included examples of ancient trackways across peat bogs, showing Neolithic hurdles cut with stone tools; and similar modern copies made the same way. There were panoramas of different types of countryside showing trees and hedging. The patterns varied according to past social patterns and the enclosure laws.

Some field grid systems covering large areas seem to belong to the Bronze or Iron Age, as they are cut through by Roman roads. A series of photographs of fencing over the years showed how hedges can arise spontaneously along fencing that has been neglected or abandoned, e.g. such as beside disused railway lines. Dr:Rackham suggested it was likely that many old hedges grew up this way along boundaries and banks rather than by deliberate planting.

The vote of thanks was given by Paddy Musgrove, who has studied some of our local hedges; but I am sure that for many of us this talk opened up a completely new field of interest.

WHO’D DE A PROGRAMME SECRETARY?

As a postscript to Dr Edwards’ report of the January meeting, take a look behind the scenes of a programme secretary’s nightmares as described by DOROTHY NEWBURY.

Thirty people braved the elements for the opening lecture of 1986, and I’d like to thank every one of them; and most of all, those who stepped in at the last minute to help me out of what seemed an unending sea of troubles. At 6 o’clock on lecture evening, due to weather and domestic hitches, I found myself without a chairman, without a tea lady and with no bed for the lecturer to lay his head that night. The final straw came at 8.15: ,no projector at the Library for the slides!.

BUT … June and Hans Porges stepped in with a meal and transport for the lecturer; Andrew Selkirk took the chair at literally at 5 minutes notice; Dr Edwards agreed to do the write-up; Deirdre Barrie coped with coffee; Mr Selkirk rushed back to my house for a spare projector and slide boxes and the lecturer ended by coming back and staying with the Newburys that night.

It was the sort of experience that makes any sensible programme secretary declare she’ll chuck her hand in and let someone else have a go; However, when members rally round so willingly to help in every direction, one decides perhaps it’s not such a bad job after all (unless, of course, there’s someone out there who’s itching to take it over?).

Perhaps I could seize this opportunity to thank all those members who organise summer outings for me from time to time – without their help I really couldn’t cope. l’m sure they would agree that at the end of a day’s, when 53 people get off the coach and all seem to have had a happy day,- it makes the hard work worthwhile.

P.S. The lecture night on January .6 had a final twist. When the lecturer retired chez Newbury (he slept in Marion’s. room) I forgot there was no handle on the inside of her door and the poor man found himself locked in! We got him out unscathed in the end, but I doubt if he’ll forget his visit to Hendon!

A SLANT ON COLOUR SLIDES by Brigid Grafton Green

The Newsletter doesn’t often venture into the field of consumer research, but you may be interested in a small exercise in it which I undertook recently.

I wanted to broaden my collection of colour slides,-particularly Prehistoric

and Romanl so I wrote to about dozen museums outside London, from Carlisle

to Devizes, sending a stamped addressed envelope and asking what slides they

had for sale. The response was remarkably varied.

There is quite a range in the price of slides. A rough rule seems to be

that the further you get from London the more reasonable in price slides

become. In Carlisle and Newcastle, for instance, you pay 20p each; in Colchester

its almost double: 35p each. Colchester, too, charged heavily for postage:

an order for 3 slides, costing £1.05, would have set you back an additional

£1.50 for post and packing. The museum there comes under the local authority.

At the other end of the postage scale, I’d like to record that our colleagues at Verulamium Museum (which charges 25p per slide, probably the average) enclosed a note saying “We stand post and packing on small parcels.” Bully for them:

The most extensive list of Roman slides came from Newcastle, where the Museum of Antiquities is under the wing of the University and the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. That’s partly, of course, because of the photogenic character of Hadrian’s Wall. They were also the quickest to reply ­by return. Leicester had an interesting selection to offer, both in prehistoric and Roman; and Devizes was – rather naturally – pre-eminent in the prehistoric section.

York – which nowadays has the reputation of being the front runner in all museum marketing enterprises – seems so overcome by the Vikings that it doesn’t offer anything at all which portrays its Roman roots. Cirencester is in process of changing slides in midstream, so I hope to return there when the new collection is ready; Canterbury didn’t bother to reply.

Salisbury was the slowest to answer – our correspondence got caught up in the Christmas rush – but they offered an excellent selection of all periods, including medieval and post-med: and they were punctilious enough when sending my order, to refund 30p .1 had overpaid in postage. I thought that very civilised,

SITE-WATCHING

The following applications have been made for planning permission in the last few weeks, and might be of some archaeological interest if granted:

Ambulance station 165 High St, Barnet

Land south of Pointalls Close, 1266, High rd, N20

Convent of St Mary at the Cross, Hale Lane, Edgware

1 Pipers Green Lane, Edgware

Old Central Public Health Lab, Colindale Avenue, NW9

If a member notices signs of development activity on any of the above sites John Enderby would much appreciate a call informing him.

LISTED BUILDINGS

Now some news about Listed Buildings: one bit of good news, one bad. Let’s get the bad bit over first.

The Grahame-White hangar at RAF Hendon, Listed in Grade II in 1979, is again under threat of demolition, again menaced by the Ministry of Defence. They applied to demolish it in 1980, and the Borough of Barnet withstood them: now the Ministry is having another go.

This is one of the few remaining buildings in the whole country which is connected with the birth of today’s great aviation industry. It was erected partly prior to 1914 and partly about 1919 by Grahame-White, a pupil of Louis Bleriot, as part of his School of Aviation. Claude Grahame-White also started on the same site in Hendon about 1911 the Grahame-White Aviation Company, producing early planes ander licence.

Lendon was once synonymous with flying. We ought to rejoice in that aspect of its history and hang onto every shred of it that we can. Moreover, the RAF Museum is adjacent, and should surely be able to put such an historic building to good use, if the Ministry of Defence doesn’t require it.

HADaS has – as it did in 1980 – written to LBB urging refusal of the Ministry of Defence application; and we understand that GLIAS, LAMAS and the Industrial Archaeology committee of CBA. have all done similarly – so keep your fingers crossed and pray that Barnet will stand firm.

COLLEGE FARM FINCHLEY

Here’s the good news. College Farm has, after years of pleading, by HADAS and the Finchley Society, at last been listed. The first HADAS request for that was made 12 years ago.

Other things, too, are happening on the College Farm front. Tenant farmer Chris Ower rang up in mid-January to tell us about them – we much appreciate the way he has kept us posted.

The farm has been taken out of the whole razzmatazz associated with the ‘improvement’ of Henly’s Corner – up till now it was being held by the Ministry of Transport as a pawn in that particular game. The possibilities are now either that Mr Ower might be offered a long lease (hitherto he has had to operate on an annual basis, which made planning ahead impossible); or, if and when a Trust is set up for the farm, the Trust might be able to buy the property. These two alternatives are not in fact exclusive: the second might follow the first.

A third bonus is that the Dept of Transport has agreed to pay (a grant, not a loan) for repairs for the main College Farm building. That’s really a great gain, and one which will help Mr Ower to ‘sleep happier at nights’.

A further plan is that Chris Ower is thinking in terms of possibly opening once again a little Museum like the one there used to be at the farm. Many HADAS members will remember it. It was the pet baby of .falter Nell, ‘of Express Dairies, who built it up in the years after the second war. HADAS and the Finchley Society fought hard – but, alas, unavailingly – to keep the objects in the original museum in the Borough of Barnet when the Express Dairy left the farm in 1974.

Mr Ower is at the moment negotiating with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust for College Farm to become one of the Trust’s centres. Should that come off, it might be possible to use the room where the Museum used to be partly as a display centre for Rare Breeds and partly as a museum.

COMMITTEE CORNER

The first Committee meeting of 1986 was held on January 10.

An 8-page mini-newspaper was available for inspection, entitled Greater London’s Rescue Archaeology Service. This appeared to be a Rescue News publication prepared in co-operation with the Greater London Archaeological service of the Museum of London. It contained separate articles on recent prehistoric, Roman, Saxon and Medieval discoveries and ended with an account of the Greater London Sites and Monuments Record, which began to be built up in 1983. The publication came out in September 1985 with financial help from the GLC.

The Hon Treasurer reported that a cheque for £8o had been sent last November to Chris Ower at College Farm as a small token of our appreciation for the accommodation he lets us have there: it is most valuable for storing and working on finds and for keeping equipment.

Membership is down by 8 on the same time last year – 371 instead of 379

The Water Board has deferred the cutting of the new pipeline across the north of the Borough, from Bushey to Arkley, until 1988 at earliest (see. Newsletters 171 May, 173 July; and 178 December, 1985, for previous mentions).

List of Local Buildings of architectural or historic interest. A further letter and a list of buildings so, far suggested for inclusion in a local list (for previous mentions of this subject, see Newsletters 172, June and 177, November, 1985) had been received from the Borough. Comments were invited by January 31, 1986. This meant that we were again unfortunately left with inadequate time in which to comment effectively. The Committee decided to remind LBB of our past work by sending them copies of the 4-part list we had prepared some 12 years ago for updating the Statutory List; and to point out that that project had taken us over 6 months work. A similar exercise now on the ‘local’ list would require equivalent time if it were to be properly done

Arrangements were discussed for a bookstall and display at the Conference of London Archaeologists on March 15 at the Museum of London.

A brief report on West Heath 1985 has been sent to the London Archaeologist for their Excavation Round-up for 1985.

COMPUTER INFORMATION

HADAS members who are computer-conscious may like to know of the latest Cambridge University Press publication in the series Manuals in. Archaeology. It is Data Processing in Archaeology by J D Richards and N S Ryan, published last year.

The authors say that they have aimed at a handbook which “should be of interest to all archaeologists whether working in the field or in an academic environment;” and they hope that the book will be of equal value to the newcomer to computer use, without previous experience, and also “to those whose involvement has so far been limited to the use of published programme packages.”

TURN YOUR EYES ABROAD

Some of the foreign study tours that the Cambridge Extra-mural Studies

Board is organising this year are really mouth-watering. How would you like

to explore ancient Peru for 3 weeks in May, searching for the Nazca civilisation

and the later Incas, under the expert guidance of Nicholas Saunders? You can

do that for £1375.

Also in May, but for a fortnight, there’s a trip to Sardinia with Dr. David

Trump, whom many members will know from working with him on Diploma digs in Cambridge. Rock-cut tombs, the famous nuraghe (stone-built defensive towers dated c 1500 BC megalithic gallery graves, Roman sand Phoenician remains, as well as medieval sites, are all on the menu.. Cost of that is £495.

A September trip – a fortnight led by Morag Woodhuysen, an expert on Asiatic archaeology – will visit Hazor, Megiddo, Caesarea, Nabatean desert towns-. Jericho, Masada and, of course, Jerusalem. That costs £650.

But the jewel in the crown must be three weeks in China in August, taking in Peking, the Great Wall, Sian and its terracotta army, Lonyang (where there are about 100,000 images of Buddha in 1300 caves, with 2100 grottoes) and many excavation sites including Anyang, Zhengzhon, Kaifeng, Qufu (where you see the birthplace of Confucius) and. Shanghai, returning via Hong Kong. Cost of that is £1659.

OR- HOW ABOUT ORKNEY?

After all that, something as close to home as Orkney might seem small beer: but never to those who took part in HADAS’s unforgettable trip there in 1978.

This time it’s nothing to do with HADAS – but you may be interested, all the same. Christopher Newbury and a few friends, are hoping to organise a week in Orkney from June 13-21. The St Magnus Festival will be on that week; and it would also be a chance to revisit some of the sites we saw in 1978.

Anyone interested in joining, please phone Christopher Newbury on 203-0950 to hear more about it.

WHERE’S THE BODY?

When you start an archaeological project you can never be sure where – or when – you’ll end.

Ten years ago, in the autumn of 1975, Daphne Lorimer and Peter Clinch volunteered to do a survey of the memorial stones which still remained in the Dissenters Burial Ground at Whetstone, towards the top of Totteridge

There was at that time a plan to develop the site for an old people’s home and we wanted to record it before that happened. The Burial Ground’s own records had been lost in a fire in 1888.

The graves covered the period 1836-1881, Some of them had had wooden headboards which had disappeared. All those with stone monuments- about 40 -were photographed and the inscriptions were copied. Subsequently, in Newsletters No 60 and 61, Daphne reported on the project; and a display based on it, using Peter’s photos, was incorporated in several HADAS exhibitions. We thought that was the end of it . The Society moved on to other projects and the Dissenters Burial Ground became part of HADAS history.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Ten years later, in December 1985, HADAS had a call from Mr Nash of Hendon Cemetery. Again, plans were afoot to develop the site of the Dissenters Burial Ground. The 1975 plan had been abortive and the site was still empty. Before any development took place, however the Cemetery had been asked to exhume and rebury the remains interred in the Burial Ground. They couldn’t find any records, so didn’t know where to begin someone remembered the HADAS survey. Could we, by any chance, help?

We could – and we were happy to do so. Daphne Lorimer had kept her records and was able to place them at Mr Nash’s disposal.

That was certainly a twist in the tale that we could never have anticipated. There’s a spin off for HADAS, too, in this last instalment of the story. Mr Nash unearthed, in the remains of a stonemason’s yard by the Burial Ground, some ancient stone Working tools, and invited us to photograph them – so that’s “been passed to the Photographic Group for action. He is also working on a plan, for the Council, on which the position of each grave will be plotted: and has pro­mised that we shall have a copy to complete our records.

News Letter No. 178 December 1985

COMING EVENTS.

Tuesday December 3rd, 7:30pm. Christmas Party at The Meritage Club Church End Hendon.

Come and enjoy our informal buffet, with good food, wine and a variety of homespun activities which we hope will amuse you. There will be plenty of time to talk and revive old memories. Bring those HADAS snaps along: – we see plenty of cameras in use on our expeditions, but never see the results!

If you ring DOROTHY NEWBURY, quickly, on 203 0950, there is still time to book.

Numbers are flexible since there is no seating problem but we must know how much food to provide. ACT NOW.

Tuesday January 7th. The Archaeology of Hedges and Woodlands by Dr. Oliver Rackham.

Tuesday February 4th. Neolithic Arran by Dr. Eric Grant.

SEARCH YOUR CONSCIENCE

Some time ago, Daphne Lorimer lent, and lost track of, some precious slides of an Iron Age village at Skaill Earth, Deerness, Orkney.They show, among other things, a series of Round Houses was it to you she lent them? She would very much like to have them back. RING 458 5674.

STAR CARR REVISITED. Report by Michaele O’Flynn. B.Sc.

TONY LEGGE was unfortunately unable to give the November HADAS lecture, but we were exceedingly lucky that Dr. Peter Rowley-Conwy was able to take Tony’s place at very short notice. Dr. Rowley-Conwy is working with Tony on the re-analysis of Star Carr. This is the most famous Mesolithic site in Northern Europe and maybe even the World, and is of great interest to us as it is of very similar date to our West Heath Site: Star Carr is radio­carbon dated to c7500 BC and West Heath T L dating – to c.7675 BC. It is only due to the excellent work in 1949/1951 of Graham Clarke that this re-evaluation can take place, as they are looking at the original data and building on the work.

Star Carr is in the Vale of Pickering and it has been suggested that it was a lake shore camp where refuse was discarded into the prehistoric lake. Due to the wet alkaline conditions there is excellent organic preservation and the following varied assortment of items have been found: a tree with axe marks, a ‘platform’ (which some have argued could be just a chance natural accumulation of wood rather than for habitation), a paddle (implying the use of canoes perhaps), plenty of early Mesolithic flint, antler points, animal bones, and the famous antler skull caps.

Answers to two questions are presently being sought. Firstly, at what time of year was the camp occupied? And secondly, for what purpose? The recent re-analysis has concentrated on the animal bones of which there are decreasing numbers of red deer, elk, aurochs (wild ox), roe deer, and wild pig. The bones have been compared with modern bones of the same species of known animal age, in order to determine the age of the prehistoric. bones at the time of the kill. The jaws have also been compared with modern jaws, for tooth wear analysis, and can be aged from this. Knowing at what time of year the young are born one can then use the ages of the animals to assess the approximate month of the kill. The roe deer mandibles gave a striking pattern.of a one year old summer kill, two year old summer kill and third summer kill with no winter roe deer. The red deer and elk data also shows a mid-summer kill for the young, but adult red deer cannot be differentiated.

This interpretation as a summer occupation is in contrast to Clarkes’ own theory of a winter camp based on the concept of deer migration. Red deer are now not thought to migrate in woodland areas, and the implication is that they were present at the lake shore all year round and were killed in summer due, to the presence of man at that time. Frazer & Kings’ other classic argument of a winter/spring site based on the antler analysis has also been disputed, as antler being a very important raw material could be carried from site to site at different times of year. Indeed two-thirds of all antlers (shed & unshed) found at the site are worked.

In trying to answer the second question the bone assemblages were compared with those of modern Eskimo and Caribou hunters, from kill sites, hunting camps and villages. The best match was with a hunting camp, and the argument put forward is that the heads were left in the place where the animals were killed, hence the low proportion of skull bones; but the jaws were brought back to the camp for the meat and then left. The front legs were eaten at the camp by the hunters and the bones left, and then the best meat from the back legs was taken to the village. This would be a compact load to carry containing good meat, and fits with the low proportions of rear leg bones in the assemblage at Star Carr.

Dr. Rowley-Conwy then talked a little of the Danish Mesolithic sites, where the prehistoric shoreline ‘.as been preserved due t. the land having risen. Unlike in England where our Mesolithic coastal sites have been drowned in the North Sea, the bones are lucky enough to have inland sites and coastal si-ces, and they show the range of possible functions for a Mesolithic site. Some have been shown to be large all year round base- camps with_no’, particular specialisation, others were specialist hunting camps only occupied at certain

seasons where afew people went for a short time for local reasons; for example Ring loster was a pine marten camp of winter/spring occupation. Other sites show large amounts of whale, seal, small cod, oyster and even swan bones.

In summary it has yet to be resolved definitely whether Star Carr was a permanently, settled base camp, seasonal base camp or seasonal hunting camp: but Dr. Rowley-Conwy showed us how through their research they have come to the conclusion that star Carr was a hunting camp occupied in the Summer.

ENFIELD AND WORLD WAR II.

Our colleagues in Enfield Archaeological Society have just published the second instalment of ‘Enfield at War’. The first part dealt with 1914-18, and was published 1982. Now comes 1939-45: both booklets are by EAS Chairman, Geoffrey Gillam.

The booklet is abundantly illustrated with evocative photos: photographs are what will make the history of 1850 onwards so much more vivid and comprehensible to future historians than any earlier century can ever be. The pictures in Enfield at War show, too, how soon one forgets – for instance, what food shortages were really like. A picture of a food queue a good hundred yards long in an Enfield suburban street brings it all back; and what ‘an insight you gain into the reality of the Blitz from a photo of a communal grave for 1940 air raid victims at Lavender Hill cemetery. Photographs of flattened buildings may look much the same in Beirut, 1985, or High Road, Ponders End, 1940 – it’s the Censor’s instruction on the Ponders End picture to “block out” the identifying features he has marked that brings it all home.

Mr. Gillam starts with the early signs of possible conflict in 1935 and takes the story right through, in nearly 60 pages, to the clearing up in 1945 and the healing of the physical scars of war since then. He ends with this note:

“Attempts are being made by the Enfield Archaeological Society to protect at least one communal shelter in the Borough. The events which caused these sites to be built have now faded into the respectability of history, and the surviving monuments of the Second World War have an equal claim for preservation as do Roman forts, medieval castles and other archaeological sites.”

Enfield at war, 1939-45, costs £4 (including postage) ‘from Geoffrey Gillam, 23,Merton Road, Enfield, Middlesex.

WEST HEATH ROUND – UP 1 9 8 5. by Margaret Maher.D

espite appalling weather it was a successful season, with the site open 6 days per week for 3 months – June, July and September.

27 sq.metres were excavated in an area to the NE of and butting on to the 76-81 excavation. All trenches were dug to a depth of 40 cms in 2 cms levels. All finds were recorded with three co-ordinates, with the exception of chips of less than 1 cm, which were recorded by the quadrant and level only. As in 1984, volunteers learnt to use the Quick Set level easily and rapidly. All spoil from the top 30 cms was sieved through 8 mm and 4mm racked sieves and the residue wet-sieved in 2 mm sieves.

A total of 12500 flint finds have been recorded and entered and a small number (c.200) remain to be marked. Myvanwy Stuart has started work on the burnt stone and numbers are expected to reach between 8-10,000. The most notable finds were a tranchet axe, two fabricators and several lumps of ochre.

39 people took part in the digging and another 10 participated in other ways such as surveying, finds processing and photography. Volunteers included this year 3 from the Institute of Archaeology, 4 from U.C., and 5 Extra-Mural diggers. West Heath is thus an approved site for U.C.C, and the Institute and for the Extra-Mural Diploma and Certificate.

Sales of information leaflets and offprints from the site were less than in 1984. £40 in 1985, £70+ in 1984. This was due to several factors –the-most important being the summer weather which I am assured is not the wettest since records began. There were far fewer walkers on the Heath as a result. The information table was at a greater distance from the trenches this year, and this resulted in the theft of some leaflets, and in numbers of people reading and then replacing the leaflets without buying. More volunteers prepared toman the table at weekends would partially solve the problem.

Up to the time of writing, no permission for excavation in 1986 has been received. However, Mr. Challen has expressed his willingness to maintain the enclosure fence and to keep an eye on the site until we re-start work next year. As he says: “HADAS is part of the place now, after all these years”.

LAST WORD ON ONIONS?

Dear Brigid,

I may as well add my ‘two penn’orth’ to the scallion discussion.

There never was any doubt in my mind about the strong onion connection, my mother – ­a Hertfordshire lass – always called small spring onions scallions; and also the leggy shoots which come up from onions stored in the larder when she noticed an onion starting to shoot she would let it grow and in due course we would get it in a salad.

I note that the Concise Oxford Dictionary lists them as ‘Shallot: long-necked onion without normal bulb.’ yours, TED SAMMES.

SITE-WATCHING.

The following applications, which might be of some Archaeological interest, have appeared on recent planning lists:

1266-82, High Rd, N20 & land at rear in Athenaeum Road 3-storey block

Land adj. 131, Marsh Lane, NW7. Detached house with basement (amended.)

Ambulance Station Site 165 High Street Barnet

Elstree Moat House, Barnet By-Pass, Boreham Wood

Old Central Public Health Laboratory. 175 Colindale Avenue NW9

1 Pipers Green Lane, Edgware. 2 detached houses

The Hawthorns, Barnet Rd. Arkley. 3 detached houses

Land adj. Oakwood, Oaklands Lane, Arkley detached house (outline).

Members who observe signs of activity on any of these sites are asked to inform n Enderby (203 2630).

COMMITTEE CORNER.

The Committee met on November 1st. The following matters arose during discussion:

£25 will be sent as a donation to the Hampstead Garden Subury Institute Rebuilding Appeal.

Phyllis Fletcher reported a rise of 22 in paid-up Membership: 370, as compared with 348 at the same time last year.

A liaison group has been set up to discuss the monitoring of the proposed Water Board pipeline across the North of the-Borough (see Newsletter 171, May, 1985, p5). The group consists of representatives of HADAS, of the Stanmore & Harrow Historical Society, of the Borough of Barnet and of the Greater London Archaeological Service.

Documentary work on maps of the Stapylton Road area of Chipping Barnet, where HADAS hopes to dig, has been completed.

The lecture course on ‘Aspects of Archaeology’ which has been provided by HADAS lecturers during the autumn term at the Hornsey Historical Society’s headquarters will continue for a second term after Christmas.

HISTORIC FARM BUILDINGS GROUP.

The recently formed Historic Farm Buildings Group held its first conference in October its inaugural AGM during that conference.

The Group’s first Chairman is a HADAS Member of longstanding – Nigel Harvey,

recently retired from the Ministry of Agriculture, who lives in Hampstead Garden Suburb. He

sums up the inaugural weekend, held at West Dean Collge, Sussex, as showing ‘a good spread interest from many disciplines;’ and adds that ‘wherever people look, there is much more to be found in the way of old farm buildings than one at first expects.’

As Author of The Industrial Archaeology of Farming in England and Wales .(published by Batsford in 1980) Nigel Harvey seems an excellent choice as Chairman, and we send him HADAS’s warm congratulations. We also look forward to hearing from him from time to time about the activities of the Historic Farm. Buildings Group. Meantime, he has sent the Newsletter a copy of the new Group’s first press release which sets out the objects of the Group as ‘the advancement of the study of the history of farm buildings in the British Isles, including their related equipment and the agrarian and economic systems of which, they formed part, and the promotion, where appropriate, of their conservation!

The press notice also points out that old farm buildings are ‘the structural documents of agrarian history with much to tell us about the pattern of rural settlement, reclamation and enclosure, about farming systems, building techniques and the lives and work of our rural ancestors. The fact that these buildings are rapidly disappearing as modern farming abandons their use, adds urgency to the task of recording and examining those which survive.

Membership is open to all interested in the past, present and future of old farm buildings. The Annual Subscription is £5, payable on January 1st.

COMING EVENTS.

Barnet & District Local History Society will hold their AGM in the Council Chamber, Wood Street, Barnet, on November 27th at 8:p.m. After the business meeting there will be talk on-Hadley Wood, by Andrew Pares, whom many Newsletter readers know – he has been a HADAS member for more than 10 years.

The BDLHS 54th Annual Report mentions with proper and justified pride that Barnet Museum has comfortably exceeded the figure of 5,000 visitor during the past year.

SPRING TERM COURSES AT THE CITY UNIVERSITY (TELEPHOLE 253 2399 Ext.3268J9)

The Ancient World II. Mediterranean Civilization from Early Greece to the fall of the Raman empire. Tutor Geoffrey T. Garvey. Wednesday 6:30 – 8:30

Archaeology in Roman London. Recording and dating techniques. Roman town, planning, building methods. Londinium as a unit in Brittania. The legacy of Rome as it affects the modern City. Tutors. Ken Steedman, Simon O’Connor Thompson. Thursday 6:30 -‘8:30.

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. Dept. of External. Studies. Rewley House, 1, Wellington Square, Oxford.OX1 2JA.

In January 1987, an impressive lecture series on the Seaborne Trade in Metals and Ingots

Lecturers include Barry Cunliffe and Paul Craddock.

The Late Roman: Town.-Weekend course, 17th – 19th January, 1986.

Study Tour of Normandy 21st- 28th .June,, 1986.

DETAILS OF ALL THESE COURSES FROM THE ABOVE ADDRESS.

Members who are increasingly aware of the overlap of Archaeological and wildlife interests in undisturbed areas will be interested in a volume recently published by OUDES.,

Archaeology and Nature Conservation is available from Rewley House, price £7, including £1 postage.

MARY LEAKEY’S FOOTSTEPS

There were some 15 familiar HADAS faces at the Prehistoric Society’s well-attended 50th anniversary lecture on Nov 15.

The speaker was Mary Leakey over from Kenya for the occasion. She spoke particularly about work at Olduvai Gorge and Laetoli, but began by saying that not only was this a celebration for the Prehistoric Society but also for her, too, because 50 years ago this year she took part in her first dig, on a Clactonian site with Kenneth Oakley: she must have started archaeology at a pretty youthful age.

The most famous thing from Laetoli of course, are the footprints.

Potassium argon tests have given the Laetoli tuffs dates between 3.59 and 3.77 million-years. About three and a half million years ago an active volcano Sadiman near Laetoli (it is still there, but extinct today) puffed out a very fine ash. .This covered everything nearby to a depth of about half an inch. Then came rain moistening the ash so that it began to take footprints of every, animal and even every bird that walked across it.

Among the animals were elephants, rhinos, giraffes, antelopes, pigs and hares; birds included ostrich and guinea fowl. Most important of all were three hominids who already, at that remote date, were walking with a fully upright, bi-pedal gait: two were side by side, one with a much larger print than the other; while a third came in at an oblique angle to cross the trail of the first two. Reckoning the length of a human footprint at 15% of normal stature, the largest hominid stood about 4½ ft tall.

The hot sun dried the footprints quickly, almost as if they had been in cement and within days Sadiman erupted again and deposited another half-inch layer, sealing them. In fact, the process of deposition, rain and hardening went on for some little time, so that when the first of the foot-prints was found some 8 years ago there was a layer about 8 ins thick, made up of a series of these very thin depositions. Something that required the most delicate excavation, particularly since Laetoli is well covered in vegetation and there were problems of root damage well. Ultimately hominid footprints were uncovered over a distance of 77 feet.

This is not the first time that Mary Leakey has told the Prehistoric Society the footprint story. That was at an ordinary Prehistoric Society lecture some years ago, and one HADAS member who had been present on that first occasion reminisced about it. It was, she said, an electrifying lecture – particularly since Mrs Leakey had laid out casts of the prints across the

floor of the hall, exactly as found.

Mary Leakey had come to England not only for the Prehistoric Society meeting but also for the opening by the Queen on Nov 20 of an exhibition called The Human Story, on human evolution over millions of years. It is at the Commonwealth-Institute in Kensington High Street until Feb 23 and should be well worth a visit. Open Mons-Sats 10-5.30 pm, Suns 2-5 pm; admission £1, OAPs/under 16s 50p.

OUT AND ABOUT IN ST ALBANS

Members may be interested in this letter from the St Albans & Herts Architectural and Archaeological Society about a book they are publishingon Dec 9: :

“At a tribute to the memory of Geoff Dunk, for years our Publicity

Officer; we are publishing a collection of some 40 of his articles on local history, entitled ‘Around St Albans with Geoff Dunk.’ The book will be A4,60 pp of illustrated text, price 4.50 from Dr Norman Kent, 20 Jennings Rd,St Albans, packing and postage free.”

NEWSLETTER No. 177: NOVEMBER 1985

PROGRAMME NEWS

Tuesday November 5: A Reappraisal of Star Carr, by Tony Legge

Tony Legge, environmental archaeology specialist, will be known to many members who attended the University of London Certifi­cate in Field Archaeology first-year course at HGS-Institute last year, or through ‘his work in the extra-mural department of

the university.

The original excavation of this Mesolithic site at Star Carr in Yorkshire (about 7,500 BC) revealed a dense concentration of flint, bone, wooden and other implements and ornaments, the richest collection of material of this period so far found in Britain. The finds are at Scarborough Museum, the Museum of Archaeology at Cambridge and the British Museum,

Tony Legge and colleagues have been studying the environmental material again and have reached important new conclusions

His lecture promises to be stimulating and informative.

Tuesday December 3: Christmas buffet party at the Meritage Club, Church End, Hendon (same place as our Arabian Night last year). The HADAS cooks are having a sabbatical this year. We hope that all our new members will come along, and a lot of our old members too, who we never seem to get to know beyond names on the members’ list. Please write to Dorothy Newbury, 55 Sunningfields Road, Hendon NW4., if you can come, enclosing your remittance. Tickets – £3.50 per person – will then be sent with your December Newsletter.

Tuesday. January 7: Archaeology of Hedges and Woodlands, by Dr Oliver Rackham.

THEY CAME FROM FAR AND WIDE…

The MINIMART on October 5 again exceeded expectations – thanks to all those members who so gallantly help each year (and some new ones), or cook for Brigid’s food stall or Tessa’s lunches, We get a good attendance from the public – some are becoming regular customers, so our goods must be worth buying. In fact, our fame must be spreading as one gentleman came from Victoria and gave June his phone number in order to be notified in good time next year.

The same gentleman was so loaded with his purchases that he had to ask Nell for a lift to the station – What a Wonderful service HADAS provides. And it all paid off to a grand total £925.

We would also like to thank several members who could not attend, but sent in donations to boost our takings.

Dorothy Newbury

OFF TO A FLYING START

Edward Sewell reports on the first lecture of the 1985-86 season, on October 1

What a flying start to any season we had, with the first lecture of the 1985-86 series given to us by Christopher Stanley, who for 20 years has been archaeological field officer for the Middle Thames Archaeological Society and in 1979 received the Vinten Award for his contribution to aerial archaeology.

Five thousand years of the history of our islands passed before our eyes in just 90 minutes and all from a completely new angle for most of us. We were treated to stone circles and burial mounds, so clear from the air and often not visible from ground level. The Roman’ forts, towns and villas appeared in fascinating detail temples, shops, houses and streets outlined, even the ruts in the Roman roads showing. Iron Age hill forts and later stone fortifications revealed their strategic locations in our landscapes.

We saw stately palaces and country houses in their gardens and parks as their original designers and owners could never have viewed them.

The development of villages, towns and cities could be seen, from hut circles and medieval strip layouts, through Regency Bath and on to modern London, culminating in the National Westminster Bank tower in the City, the shape of which – derived from the Nat West logo – is visible only from the air.

Thanks were given to Mr Stanley for the visual treat and his interesting and witty commentary. I for one would like to see many more of his fascinating and detailed views in the future.

At the October meeting members heard news of two HADAS’ invalids.

Our chairman, Councillor Brian Jarman, convalescing near Hurstmonceux, sent his best wishes for the coming lecture season and regretted greatly that he could not be with us. After nearly five weeks in .hospital, he is now much recovered, but still has to have regular check-ups in hospital and is on a very strict diet.

Another familiar face which was greatly massed was that of Mrs Connie Mason,-who has dispensed-HADAS’s coffee-and-biscuits-so cheerfully over the years. She is at the moment in the Royal Free Hospital at Hampstead – and very sad at missing the-last of the summer outings and the start of the winter season. Well-wishers could send her cards – she is in the Jex Blake ward

After the October lecture, a bunch of four keys was found under a seat -‘Yale key’, Chubb security key, a mortice-type key and a car or cashbox key. The library has been informed, but there is no claimant so far. Ring 203 0950 if they are yours.

SALES TALK

The monthly HADAS sales table has moved to a more comfortable position in the coffee room, where we hope members will take a fresh look at the stock before each lecture. Our own publications and the extensive range of Shire books are inexpensive and well worth attention: why not send a few instead of Christmas cards?

COMMITTEE CORNER

The committee met on September 27. Here is a selection, from a long agenda, of some matters it considered:

Membership: Phyllis Fletcher reported a total paid-up membership since the start of the HADAS year (April 1, 1985) of 354, which compared reasonably with the same time in 1984. Nine new members had joined in the previous two months. Her suggested “Cut-Off” list of those who had not yet paid their subscriptions was considered and approved. Long-time members Mr and Mrs Levison, of Barnet Lane, Edgware, had sent a most generous-donation of £100 to the society.

The Programme Secretary reported that a small profit made on outings this summer would help towards offsetting the charge for the lecture hall in the coming winter.’

West Heath: Permission has again been granted by the authorities to dig at West Heath next summer, during a period from mid-March to September. ”Our exact programme will be finalised later.

25th Anniversary of HADAS’s founding occurs next year. To celebrate, Ted Sammes hopes to arrange an exhibition – possible under the title One Man’s Archaeology – at Church Farm House Museum from October 11 to December.7 1986.

The committee decided to ask for space for a display and bookstall at ‘the LAMAS Local History Conference on November 30 next and to arrange an exhibit on the history of farming in the London Borough of Barnet.

The Prehistoric Society is organising, as part of its current programme, a General Research Day on January 25 next, at which members are invited to display their own recent work. It was agreed to ask the Prehistoric Society if a small display of the West Heath finds would be acceptable.

Adult Education Survey. HADAS has; as part of a current CBA Survey of Adult Education, completed a questionnaire on the provision of informal training.in archaeology by local societies. This included details of the courses which HADAS has promoted locally, including the current course on Aspects of Archaeology which is taking place this term and next at the Old Schoolhouse, Hornsey Historical Society’s headquarters in Tottenham Lane:

Community Radio. The society has been approached by Anthony Samuelson, of the Production Village, Cricklewood Lane, in connection with his application for a community radio station based at the village. Mr Samuelson wanted to know if HADAS members would be prepared to take part in broadcasts, either on specific historical or archaeological subjects or in general discussion. We have agreed that if his application is granted we will be happy to help.

The Photographic Group reports having started photographing the blue plaques in the borough and the buildings on which they are installed.

Listed Buildings, In the June Newsletter (No.172, p6) we mentioned that LBB Planning Department had decided to draw up a local list of buildings of architectural and historic interest. Early in August the council wrote to say that it proposed to consider for inclusion on the local list buildings. which we had suggested earlier, but that had not been accepted, for the Statutory List, and inviting us by August 31 to add any others we felt might be worthy. Unfortunately, that kind of exercise deserves months rather than weeks, of study. We have therefore not added to our original list because there has not been time to do so.

LETTERS… LETTERS… LETTERS…
From Mary Spiegelhalter:

Just a few lines from the remote south west:* We had planned to come up for the October Minimart and had arranged to stay in East Barnet for that week – but unfortunately my hip trouble is much worse and I have to go into hospital soon. It will be a long job, but I hope that next year will see me more active.

Our local group is quite active and I thought you might like to see the enclosed newsheet, Recently we went to the caves at Buckfastleigh, where the bones of elephants, hyenas, bears,- etc. can still be seen in situ – very interesting. By the way, we should have enjoyed the Sutton Hoo outing – what a well-written account. Perhaps we can join next year’s outing„.

*Long-time HADAS members Mary and Frank Spiegelhalter have retired to Bideford, in Devon. Mary enclosed a newsheet about an excavation by the Exeter Museum Archaeological Field Unit on a large site in Barnstaple, which uncovered (on different areas of the site) a bell-casting foundry, the 17th and 18th century foundations of the workhouse, with medieval deposits underneath, parts of a protective moat surrounding the castle, a path built about 1600 and surfaced with broken pottery from a nearby kiln and traces of the 17th century pottery kilns themselves.

From Robert Michel:

I am glad to say that working tide mills are not quite as scarce as. Diana Mansell fears (Newsletter no.176).

Eling tide mill near Southampton, for example, produces its stone-ground flour in time-honoured fashion, with two ebbing tides a day producing some eight hours milling time in total. Although the present mill dates from “only” about the mid-18th century, milling has a very long history at Eling.

There was at least one mill in existence at the time of the Domesday Survey and although it is not certain that it was tide-powered, there is clear documentary evidence of one being built at Eling in the early 15th century. Milling by tidal power only took place until 1936, when a small internal combustion engine was installed.

Happily the recent enlightened attitude favouring the selective preservation of industrial relics has paved the way for the mill’s restoration and presentation to the public (at certain times). Perhaps one day the development of milling at Eling will be put into a clearer context by the restoration of the former steam. powered mill built, significantly, adjacent to the tide mill but some way back from the water’s edge.

NB: The factual content of this letter, Mr Michel adds, relies heavily on research undertaken by the authors of the pamphlet Eling Tide Mill.

From Stephen Pierpoint, Museum of London

I am writing to thank the members of HADAS for all the splendid effort you have put in processing the finds from our various sites, particularly. West Tenter Street. We are still getting help from HADAS members and are most grateful.

This year has been a particularly busy and gratifying one for the unit. Our excavations at. Jubilee Hall, Covent Garden, provided an important and perhaps first decent glimpse of middle Saxon .London. At Trinity Square we excavated an interesting stretch of the rampart behind the Roman city wall. We are well advanced in our programme of excavations, in the vicinity of Spital Square near the medieval infirmary. Not only has our work shown up the medieval buildings and associated cemetery, but an underlying Roman cemetery as well. A little earlier in the year we excavated behind Pinner. High Street and found traces of medieval buildings.

We will be processing the finds from all these sites over the next year and if any HADAS members are interested in helping, we continue to have volunteer sessions every Tuesday night as well as working most days of the week.

Thanks again for your help.

Editor’s notes HADAS members who have helped the Museum of London with finds processing at 42 Theobalds Road include Jean Snelling, Irene Owen, Helen Gordon and Astrid Heyman. Members who would like to volunteer to help this autumn/winter Can find out from Jean Snelling (346 3553) just what is entailed; Stephen Pierpoint’s number is 242 6620.

A SECOND HELPING OF ONIONS

Brigid Grafton Green sniffs out some more information

In the last Newsletter I mentioned two regional names, scallions and chibols, that I had found for onions (particularly shallots) and asked if readers knew any more about either of them. One thing immediately emerged HADAS is interested in onions. Five people at the first lecture came up and added to my store of information. What they said took us all over the world.

Mr and Mrs Meyer met me in the car park with the news that. Italian onions are cipolla and Spanish are cebolla; later Stewart Wild confirmed this; then (at the Minimart).Julius Baker added, the fact that German onions go by a’ similar name.

Jean Snelling pointed out that syboes was an Edinburgh variant; and Mary Spiegelhalter wrote to say that down in Devon “spring onions are chipples to country- people:

The “spring onion” usage takes us across to the other word – scallions – and also across the Atlantic, because that is what Rosalind Batch­elor says spring, or salad, onions are .called in the States.

Meanwhile, I’ve been digging about a bit, in dictionaries. I didn’t find “chibol.” in Dr Johnson, but he gives “scallion (scaloyna, Italian) a kind of onion”. A Latin dictionary provides the word “caepa” for onion, with “caepulla” for an onion bed – presumably thats the root from which modern Italian cipolla and all its variants come.

The OED provides definitions of both scallion and chibol. Scallions are a. shallots, b. Welsh onions or chibols.or c. an onion which fails to bulb: but forms a long neck and a strong blade. Chibols get a longer entry. They are said to be obsolete except in dialect; and the word originally meant either the species of Allium known as stone leek, rock onion or Welsh onions; or that it was “a young spring onion with the green stalk attached”. The first literary reference to chibols occurs’ in: Langland’s Piers Plowman in the14th century, in a passage which also mentions scallions, parsley, chives and chervil.

Finally, here’s the way Mair Livingstone, in a note to the News­letter, moved the whole subject into Wales: “‘Chibols’ in Wales: I have always assumed that this was an Anglicisation of the Welsh word for shallots, which is Sibwls. The alternative words are Sibwn and Sibol (whereas the various words for onions differ – wynwyn, nionod, etc). I checked this in the eighth edition of the Geiriadr Mawn – the ‘big’ Welsh dictionary.”

I’d be happy to have a third bite at these onions if anyone’s got any further information tucked away.

PAST SUCCESS, FUTURE?

From November 11 to December 7 Church Farm House Museum will be displaying Archaeology in Greater London, a small touring exhibition on the activities of the GLC’s London Archaeology Service, reports Gerrard Roots.

In eight well-presented panels, it shows examples of all aspects of the work of the service, from the major excavations to conservation and interpretation. There is no mention of any work in our borough. The exhibition tells a success story and therefore inevitably poses the question of how well will archaeology in London be served when this part of the GLC’s work is taken over by English Heritage.

Those unable to get to Church Farm can see the exhibition from now until November 9 at Southwark Cathedral, or from December 9 to December 23 at County Hall,

SITE WATCHING

The following sites, which might be of some archaeological interest, have appeared on recent planning application lists:

Land adjoining 41 Manor Road, Barnet

Land rear pf 36, 38 Kings Road, Barnet

131-131b High Street, Barnet

Lawrence Farmhouse, Goodwyn Ave, NW7 34 Barnet Gate. Lane, Arkley

Should members notice any signs of impending development on these sites, please let John Enderby know on 203 2630.

Lawrence Farmhouse, the fourth site on the list, for which there is an application for an extension, is a Grade II listed building.- a fine 17th-early 18th century red brick house with a steep roof and lean7-t6 additions at either end. It is said to have been built on the site of, a Tudor building known as Whytes Farm. .It appears on the 1863 OS 25in map.as “Lawrence Street Farm”. In the early 1970s it was the subject of considerable controversy when the North Hendon Conservatives made application to extend and alter it.

MORE DATES FOR YOUR DIARIES

On November 16, London University’s Institute of Historical Research is holding a day conference on the uses and problems of census data; All-day fee is £5 (payable to the Local Population Studies Society), details from Dr Brian Benson, 23 Plemomt Gardens, Bexhill-on-Sea, E. Sussex TN39 4HH.

Oxford University Department for External Studies is offering two days of lectures and discussion on English place-name studies, on November 23-24. Residential fee is £23, non-residential £16.50 (or £8 without meals). Details from Archaeology/Local History Course Secretary, Rowley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OXI 2JA.

Newsletter No 176: October, 1985

OCTOBER 5th means MiniMart

HADAS PROGRAMME

Tues Oct 1 Opening lecture of the winter season, on England’s Heritage; An Aerial View, by Christopher Stanley

Sat Oct 5 Write this date in letters of fire: the HADAS Minimart, 11.30am-2.30pm, St Mary’s Church House, top of Greyhound Hill, NW4. Please let Dorothy Newbury (203 0950) or Christine Arnott (455 2751) know if you have found any more items for the Minimart. We are doing very well, but more will help; and we will be glad to hear from anyone who can give an hour or so help in the rush hour when the sale starts – and then recover over a splendid ploughman’s lunch with Tessa. Everybody please come if you can to buy or just to browse and chat. From 9 am-9.30 help is required from car owners to transport goods from Church Road to the hall.

Tues Nov 5 Lecture: reappraisal of Star Carr by Tony Legge

Tues Dec 3 or Tues. Dec 10 Our Christmas party will be at the Meritage Club, next to St Mary’s Church, Hendon, on one of these two dates. We will confirm which in the November Newsletter; meantime, please keep both free if you can.

Note: lectures are at Hendon Library, The Burroughs, NW4. Coffee from 8 pm, lecture 8.30.

IN SEARCH OF AN EARLY ENGLISH KINGDOM. Report by DIANA MANSELL on

the September outing

The recent TV portrayal of Britain’s foremost archaeological discovery, the celebrated Sutton Hoo ship burial, prompted a larger enthusiasm for the September outing than is customary – our apologies to the disappointed overflow. The 53 fortunates who packed the coach warmly thank Sheila Woodward and Dorothy Newbury for all their reconnaissance and scheduling, which produced the usual high standard now expected of a HADAS outing.

Sutton Hoo (OE hoh: a spur of land) is situated on high ground above the east bank of the Deben estuary opposite the little market town of Woodbridge.. We approached the site along a sandy track at the edge of a bean field and were greeted by Cathy the site surveyor, along with the first spots of rain which she nonchalantly accepted as part of the scene.

We gathered on top of mound 1, the barrow of the ship burial, marked out with string to indicate the position and scale of the project. The ship itself was 89ft long; lying down in the marked rectangle representing the burial chamber, Cathy clearly demonstrated its position off centre. It seems likely that some destruction to the west end of the barrow by medieval ploughing had for once proved providential. The plunderers who came at a later date seeking treasure drove a hole down the centre from the top of the extant mound, missing the burial chamber and all its riches by inches.

The treasure itself, from the world-renowned 1939 excavation, is of infinite beauty and a craftsmanship which cannot be emulated today. It is on display in the British Museum.’ Sadly, the ship is not; the acidity of the sand had destroyed its timbers, leaving only an impression of the great clinker-built rowing boat, the profile of which could be traced along the rows of rust stains from hundreds of iron rivets.

Although the grave goods constitute both pagan and Christian symbols the burial itself was of pagan ritual. All traces of the body have disappeared. The objects denote a man of great Power with contacts in Scandinavia, Merovingian France (where all the coins had been minted) and Constantinople. The most probable candidate is Raedwald, a 7th c king of East Anglia who died 625 AD.

As we watched the current excavations in the NE corner of the cite, we were filled with not a little pride at seeing one of our own HADAS members, Ann Trewick, trowelling actively – this is her second season on the site.

Great as the temptation might be to excavate another barrow, modern principles dictate a much stricter discipline of gathering maximum information with minimum destruction. The 1984-5 research directed by Martin Carver has revealed the site to be much more extensive than previously thought and has been extended into the surrounding fields and woods using a wide range of modern techniques and meticulous recording devices. As a result, it is now known that the Anglo-Saxon cemetery is superimposed on a larger prehistoric settlement spanning some 2000 years from the late Neolithic period.

Some 12-14 hectares (c 35 acres) have been surveyed and it is still grow­ing. Of particular interest in recent major discoveries are the so-called ‘sandmen:’ sandcasts of bodies in shallow graves. The most recent discovered last month – may yield important information on Anglo-Saxon religion, possibly reflecting the change from paganism to Christianity. This latest discovery was aligned approximately E-W and superimposed over an earlier grave with the body lying approximately N-S. These ‘sandmen’ are egg-shell fragile and require infinite patience and skill in handling. We were fortunate in seeing the latest experiment in preserving one in fibreglass resin, and to the inexperienced eye it looked most authentic.

Heaped on top of all the elemental difficulties, diggers have to contend with the hazards inherited from modern military exercises. Within days of retrieving the ship treasure in 1939 the country was at war and the army took over the site, leaving a legacy of scars from tank tracks and anti-glider landing trenches, together with unexploded shells and mortar bombs. Cathy told us that one such bomb found its way into a finds tray before being identified.

The sun was already drying us off as we retraced our steps to the coach to go into Woodbridge, where we were met by local historian Mrs Gwen Dyke. She regaled us with facts about some of the past worthies of Woodbridge and its more interesting sights – like the beautiful little 15c. flush work flint and stone church. A fascinating museum displayed local artifacts including a model replica of the Sutton Hoo ship and the iron rivet or clench nail found by Basil Brown, a self-taught Norfolk archaeologist, on an exploratory cut into the largest of the mounds in 1939. It led, ultimately, to the archaeological excavation that has been likened to a discovery in the Valley of the Kings.

At 2.30 we gathered on the quayside at the Tide Mill. Mr Dunnett, the Warden, told us something of its long history and how the machinery operated. A tide-mill had been in -continuous working on this site for 800 years since 1170. The present mill was built in 1793 and worked entirely by the rise and fall of the tides operating the sluice gates to fill the mill pool until 1954, when a diesel driven hammermill was installed. The diesel power could grind 1 ton of corn per hour compared to 7 or 8 cwt by water. Consequently water power was little used except for grinding cattle food, and long periods of inactivity caused the wooden wheel floats to become waterlogged and heavy, producing increasingly erratic rower. It largely contributed to the general decay of the mill. It was purchased in 1968 and lovingly restored to its original glory, and opened to the public. in 1973 – the only working tide mill in England.

•

Most of us enjoyed tea in Ye Olde Worlde cafe of 1553 – a date that seemed to have had a rather disastrous effect on the service – before leaving for home punctually at 5 pm. We all recommend that Bob, our most courteous of drivers, be high on any list of future HADAS outings.

Dorothy Newbury asks us to add that, in view of the great popularity of this trip – there was a waiting list of 20 – she and Sheila. Woodward are already planning a similar visit for next mid-August.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED – FINALLY!

To all who have not paid their subscriptions: there are still nearly 50 people who have not raid subs which were due for renewal on April 1 this year. If I do not receive them shortly I am afraid that this October Newsletter will be the last you will receive. I hope you have enjoyed belonging to HADAS.

Yours sincerely,
PHYLLIS FLETCHER

Membership Secretary

THE SONGS CHILDREN SING

Ring a ring o’roses

A pocketful of posies

A-tishoo, a-tishoo

We all fall down

Childhood beliefs – so often, alas, founded on fallacy – die hard. -Oneof mine went for a burton when I read The Singing Game, by Iona and Peter Opie, who must be the world’s greatest experts on children’s games, lore and language.

In it I learnt that ring a ring o’roses – “the first of the singing games an infant is likely to learn, the only one he or she plays with older members of the family and … therefore scorned as soon as a child becomes independent and goes to school” – does not, as I had always believed, date from 1665 and the Great Plague.

“In satisfaction of the adult requirement that anything seemingly innocent should have a hidden meaning of exceptional unpleasantness,” say the Opies, “the game has been tainted by a legend that the song is a relic of the Great ‘Plague”… that the ring of roses was the. purpuric sore that betokened the plague, that the posies were the herbs carried as protection against infection, that sneezing was the final fatal symptom of the disease and that ‘all fall down’ was precisely what happened. This story has obtained such circulation in recent years it can itself be said to be epidemic. The mass-circulation Radio Times gave it a double-page headline on June 7 1973 … lecturers at medical schools have repeated it as fact in Britain and America …” and they add acidly that ‘men of science are notoriously incautious when pronouncing on material in disciplines other than their own.’

Yet the earliest reports of the game being played in Britain are dated by the Opies to the 1880s – at Bolton-le-Moors, Lanes, about 1880; in Kate Greenaway’s Mother Goose in 1881; at two places in Shropshire in 1883; and in London and Sheffield 1891. As negative evidence they mention that “no reference to ‘ring a ring o’roses’ appears in .Pepys’s careful record of hearsay during the long months of the Plague … Defoe’s brilliant evocation in A Journal of the Plague Year does not indicate that either sneezing or redness of spots was on men’s minds …”

In course of their argument the Opies demolish another favourite myth – that in saying ‘Bless you’ when someone sneezes, you also commemorate the Great Plague. They point out that The Golden Legend, printed by Caxton in 1483, particularly mentions the goodly practice of saying ‘God help you’ when a com­panion sneezes. So while ring a ring o’roses appears two centuries after the Great Plague, ‘bless you’ was current some two centuries before it.

The Singing Game is published by OUP at £15 and is highly recommended as a bedside book: it is eminently ‘dippable’. Sadly, it is the last book from Peter Opie; Mrs Opie completed it after his death in 1982.

MAPS AT HERTFORD RECORD. OFFICE a report from JIM BEARD

A major re-development of the Stapylton Road area of Chipping Barnett including the building of a new Library, has been proposed and before building work begins there, HADAS hopes to mount at least a trial dig.

From a documentary point of view, the first step has been to check what early maps of the area are available at the Local History Collection in Egerton Gardens and at Barnet Museum; and to get photo-copies of the relevant bits; and then to go further afield, to Hertford Record Office.

There was so much valuable material at Hertford that the half-.day I had available wasn’t nearly sufficient to examine it all fully. An 1818 Barnet enclosure award map, of which we are obtaining a slide may well provide valuable information; but there are also a number of other maps of Chipping Barnet, East Barnet and Totteridge from the days before 1963, when these areas were cut out from the jurisdiction of Hertfordshire and transferred for administrative purposes to the London Borough of Barnet by the London Government Act.

Another visit to Hertford for further research is a must but meantime I have listed the Map material that is available there concerning our Borough. I felt that the list of what there is at Hertford might well be helpful to other HADAS researchers – so here it is. The first part of the list comes from the Record Office catalogue:

1. East Barnet: Late 18c; 16″ to one mile, drawn by F Taylor, 119 Chancery Lane. Names of fields, adjoining landowners, churchyards.

2. Barnet/E.Barnet/S.Mimms. Map of Barnet Manor 1817. 13.3″ to mile. Surveyor unknown. Tracing on linen. List of demesne lands, names of fields and woods, state of cultivation. Separate sheet with map. Footpaths, parish boundaries, strips in common fields, turnpike. Originals in Barnet & District Local History Society’s strongroom.

3. Chipping Barnet/E.Barnet/Totteridge/Finchley. Descriptive Register of Estate of Edward Beeston Long Esq in above parishes of Herts/Middx. 10″ to mile. Includes small maps with tables of reference of. following: Whetstone Farm; Spencers Farm, Russells Farm; ..E.Barnet Farm; Spivey Meadows The Mansion and Home Demesnes; details of School House but no map; trees and shrubs; some roads; no adjacent landowners

4. Chipping Barnet. Plan of Copyhold Estate ‘of Mr Leonard Dell in parish of Chipping Barnet, surveyed by J Taylor, 50″ to mile. Fields with acreages, table of reference at side of map, ink on paper.

5. Barnet Award 1818. 5 maps, Chipping Barnet/E.Barnet/S.Mimms/Totteridge. Lists landowners, tenants, acreages, tenure. Bound volume.

6. OS parish of Chipping Barnet, 25″ to mile, 1st ed. Acreage book, parish of Chipping Barnet„

The second part of the list comes from entries in Hertford record Office card index system, and consists of maps and plans contained in other documents. Numbers on left are Hertford catalogue numbers:

VII.C 4B

Nicholas King’s lands called King’s fields (Bray’

26323

Plan of property in High Street, Chipping Barnet, 1783

D/EBt.P1

Cherry Tree estate Southgate belonging to the trustees of Valentine Poole’s Charity. Coloured 1793

D/Z 24 P1

Plan of copyhold estate in Chipping Barnet, Property of Leonard Dell, 1797 (see 4 above)

D/P/15/18/1

Polio 28, Plans of Barnet Workhouse, 1807

D/P 15. 6/3

Detailed plans of church, 1¼” to 10ft. no date

80912

Manor of Barnet in Chipping & East. Barnet & South Mimms, 1817 (see 2 above)

178 D/ESb

Simpson’s bundle – Builders Arms. No date

D/EX 94 Z1

Marginal plan of land North of Workhouse.

D/P15.29/5

Plan of East Barnet UDC area (in Vol. of Barnet Parish Records)

DES 1/9

Chipping Barnet national School, Plans etc, showing proposed additions, 1846

DES 1/10

E.Barnet National School plans of school etc 1871

DES 1/11

New Barnet Lyonsdown Trinity C of E School, plans etc 1869-71

D/EB 1073.P1

Mansion? (Writing unclear0. Property of National Freehold Land Society 1852

D/EB 9222 P1

Printed plan of freehold building estate, plots fronting on Salisbury/Carnarvon/Strafford/Alston/Stapylton Rds. 1881

D/EEA/10

Lease of land in Wood St with plan, 1893-1920

D/P 15.28/1

Barnet (no. 2) Light Railways Order – plans etc 1901

37324

Plan of Barnet Cattle Market & Auction Offices, New Rd 1902

D/P 15A3/1

62 OS map showing proposed district of Arkley 1902

37439

Plan of church of St Marys E Barnet 1912

HCP1/1/11-13

Town area maps, land use, town and programme maps. 6” to mile 1951

HCP1/2/5-6

Town and programme maps for Barnet & E. Barnet 1958

Footnote: the most intriguing item on the list seems to be “Simpson’s Bundle”. The very phrase conjures a world of imaginary possibilities. Who was Simpson, and what was in his bundle? Jim Beard says he can hardly wait to find out. He’s going back at the earliest opportunity to unearth the truth about Simpson and his bundle – and why it has Barnet connections.

NEWS ABOUT PEOPLE

Founder member OLIVE BANHAM (familiar to anyone who. has .ever been on a HADAS outing as ‘the lady with the sweet tin on the coach’) has been under the weather suffering, she thought, from sciatica. She asks us to thank the many members who sent her ‘get well’ cards, which cheered her immensely. “Please tell them it wasn’t sciatica at all,” she writes, “but a badly sprained back. And all I did was to bend down to pick up a key. However, I’m getting quite good now at crawling.”

Also news of another HADAS invalid – who we didn’t even know was an invalid till after it was all over. Isabella Jolly, a Hendon member of some 9.years standing, was whisked away in the middle of the night for an operation. She reports she’s now back home and ‘as good as new,’ though under orders not to. Drive or garden for six weeks. However she managed the Sutton Hoo outing without wilting!

And talking of that outing, it was a great pleasure to meet ex,-HADAS member Wendy Page (now Wendy Colles and the proud mother of 4-year-old Anthony) in Woodbridge, near which she now lives. Sheila Woodward is still in touch with her; and told us the interesting fact that the Dublin surgeon who discovered – and named – the Colles fracture was a great (or even possibly a great-great) grandfather of Wendy’s husband.

Among the 1985 intake of new members is chartered surveyor DEREK J BATTEN a friend of Dorothy and Jack Newbury. He ‘is interested in an unexpected aspect of archaeology, and he wrote the following account of a field exercise in which he took part earlier this year under the title

SURVEYING CUSTERS LAST STAND

At the end of May I was privileged to take part as a volunteer in an archaeological survey of the Custer Battlefield, at the side of the Little Big Horn River in Montana USA. The project, organised by the US National. Park Service, ‘continued a 5-week survey begun in 1984. The work was carried out mainly by volunteers under the direction of professional archaeologists. I was proud to be the only non-American taking part.

In case you are not a Custer fan, the-Battle took place on June 25, 1876; and the two days following. George Armstrong Custer, CinC of the 7th Cavalry,’ had some 600 troops, together with about 40 civilians and Indian scouts. His advance was part of an overall strategy to force recalcitrant Sioux and. Cheyenne Indians back. to their Reservations in S.Dakota. Custer approached the headwaters of the Little Big Horn River knowing there was a sizeable encampment of Indians on its banks; but’without taking the precaution of establishing the the enemy strength. In fact, there is estimated to have been between 12000 – 15000 Indians of whom roughly one third were warriors – so the odds against him were heavy.

Custer divided his attacking forces into tree battalions, each with a different objective. Two of the groups, failing in their Objectives, managed to establish a defensive position on high ground and with great difficulty to hold it for three days until they were relieved by US forces coming up the river valley; but Custer himself, leading the third battalion composed of 5 Troops, was not so fortunate. He was cut off and cut up, and the relief force found only the dead and mutilated bodies about 5 miles from the defensive position.

The exact movements and eventual end of Custer are not perfectly known. Since then historians have spent much time researching possibilities and a number of different conclusions and accounts have been published. The area where the bodies of Custer’s men were found, and the defensive position, were purchased as a National memorial and are open to the public.

The archaeological survey work on the battlefield was in three main parts. First, there was a complete metal detector survey of both battle sites. Well over 5000 artefacts were found in 1984-5. Although these consisted mainly of bullets and cartridge cases, other finds included tunic buttons and buckles, horseshoe nails, a watch, parts of a Cavalry revolver and spurs.

Each artefact was identified, its orientation established and its position surveyed by means of a,transit theodolite. The artefact was bagged and taken away for subsequent cleaning. All the bullets and cartridge cases removed were sent to firearms forensic science laboratories, where it was poSsible to identify and match cartridge case with bullet, and to plot the movement of rifles and ‘ other weapons around the battle. The general conclusion is that there was, almost certainly, a Last Stand; which took place roughly in the position indicated at the present time on the Battleground. In other words, Hollywood and Errol Flynn were right after all (‘They Pied-with Their Boots On,’ released 1941).

The Custer Battlefield is unique in being the only one in the world which has marker stones indicating the places where troopers actually fell in battle. The main problem is that there are more marker stones than there are troopers known to have died

The second part of the survey involved detailed excavation of 2m squares to a depth of 200mm close to certain of the existing markers. The soil was removed very carefully and screened for bone fragments or similar objects. This was done in an attempt to -persuade the authorities that such a survey should be carried out at each marker, so that these may be positioned more accurately. Although the remains of all officers who were killed were removed in 1877, and the remains of all troopers were buried in a mass grave in 1879, in the pen­ultimate week of the 1985 survey a virtually complete skeleton was found close, to a marker. It is gruesome that the skull of this skeleton was missing, and both thigh bones were chipped in roughly the same place, indicating that the body had been slashed on each upper leg – a known way in which the Cheyenne Indians marked their dead foes. Incredibly; one boot had survived, with the bones of the foot still inside again a vindication of Hollywood, and proof that they did indeed die with their boots on.

The third part of the survey was the least successful. Twenty-eight bodies, mainly men of E Troop, are recorded as having been buried at the head of a deep ravine, but none of these bodies has been located. Trenches were dug, borings taken, and a world expert geomorphologist (also a Custer buff) gave his skilled time to try to determine how the soil pattern might have changed over these last 109 years, all in an attempt to locate these bodies. Alas, to no avail. Most, of the other amateur Custer experts were convinced that he was digging in the wrong place, and there is certainly no unanimity as to the location of the correct ravine where men of E Troop wore laid to rest.

I found that American survey methods varied between the pedantic and the haphazard. My demonstration of setting out a simple right angle by the well-established five: four: three method was greeted with a mixture of wonderment and disbelief.

Hazards in the field included cactus spines, poison ivy, sharp Yuca plant leaves, wolf spiders, ticks, fiendish mosquitoes and even the occasional rattlesnake. These difficulties were more than compensated by the wonderful team spirit amongst all of the archaeologists and volunteers, and the friendship and hospitality shown towards an eccentric English chartered surveyor.

OIGNONS A LA PLINY

The August Newsletter reported that a Roman farm-and-garden complex has been created by the Butser Ancient Farm Project beside Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex. Now we have some more details of the project.

There are Shetland and Soay sheep, which are the direct descendants of the domestic sheep of southern England in the Iron Age; and Cotswold sheep, believed to be exactly similar to the.sheep introduced by the Romans. The Dexter cattle and the Old English type of goat have similar bone structure to archaeological bone evidence from Roman sites.

The field area has been sown with basic wheat cereals grown in the Roman period emmer and spelt, with areas of modern wheat to provide a comparison for yields and weed infestation.

The herb garden at Fishbourne includes two kinds of fennel, coriander, parsley, chives, caraway, borage, rue comfrey and thyme. The vineyard shows different methods. of Roman viticulture, using the Wrotham Pinot variety of grape, believed to be a direct descendant of the vines imported into Britain in the first century.

The vegetable garden bears direct comparison with a modern kitchen garden in terms of range and variety – there are three kinds of bean, lettuce, spring onions, shallots, and larger bulb onions endive, turnip, radish, carrot, beets chicory, two sorts of pea, lentils and garlic.,

Many of the plants are modern equivalents, some are exactly the same vari­eties as were grown two thousand years ago. A booklet tells us the fascinating fact that. “the onion Pliny refers to as coming from Ascalon (a Palestinian sea-port), corresponds exactly with the modern shallot, both in its description and cultivation. Oddly enough, the shallot is occasionally referred to as a. ‘scallion’ in certain parts of Britain even today, a word which is doubtless derived from Ascalon.”

I’ve met the word scallion used for shallots – but it was in the eastern counties of Ireland, Wicklow and Dublin, and that’s an area to which the Romans are not meant to have penetrated. I’ve also met the name “chibols” for shallots – in Wales. If HADAS members have come across these usages anywhere else – or if they have found other variations on the shallot theme – the Newsletter would be most interested to hear of them.

CONGRESS of INDEPENDENT ARCHAEOLOGISTS

A stop-press report by DAPHNE LORIMER, HADAS’ representative at the Congress

It would take a whole Newsletter to cover all the papers read at the Congress of Independent Archaeologists at Cambridge during the weekend of Sept 21/22. Andrew Selkirk, urged by Plantagenet Somerset Fry, had drawn together representatives from all over Britain and beyond to give us papers which ranged from the workings of America’s Earthwatch to Henry Cleere’s personal concept of Independent Archaeology; from the vanishing funds from central Government and the sparse sums provided by industry to the successful, self-financing efforts of the Jorvik Viking Trust; and from the working of local societies to the contribution of the individual researcher (some amateur, some freelance). Some papers pondered on the nature of an Independent while others explored the vast, untapped manpower resources of the newly retired and the mothers of grown-up families (did you know that the Americans call them ’empty nesters?’).

Above all, loud and clear, through practically every paper (except, obviously, that from Brian Hobley) came the anguished cry of what can only be described as the disestablished amateur – “Why are we pushed out in the cold?”

Henry. Cleere pinpointed the moment of the great divide of what he called two perfectly valid movements in archaeology in Britain. That moment came at the very peak of public fervour, when ‘Rescue’ was started and created the Units. He laid the responsibility for this polarization at the door of the very young professionals who staffed them. Their arrogance blinded them to the strengths of a system of amateur and professional co-operation which had been the envy of archaeologists abroad (he cited HADAS’s excavation at West Heath as an example of, that combination in practice).

Robert Kiln, an instigator in the foundation of the Units, was even more trenchant in his condemnation of the professional ‘Young Turks’ of the mid-seventies whose behaviour caused him to re-channel the charitable funds at his disposal away from archaeology.

There was, however, a note of hope in the Conference. It was suggested that there should be a clearing house of talent to put experts in touch with excavations; small funds are still available from commerce and there are charitable foundations able to donate sums of as much as £1000 or £2000 to projects. Robert Kiln offered to act as a clearing house for that, and he reminded the Congress that many development firms were insured against inter­ruption of their work due to archaeological discovery. A resolution was sent by the Congress to Lord Montague asking that a modest sum, in the order of £250000, should be set aside from the money granted by English Heritage in England (the Scottish Development Department and CADW for Wales should also set aside proportionate amounts) for distribution in small amounts for smaller projects by the independent sector.

These are just brief impressions of two days fascinating papers. The independent amateur archaeologist is there waiting and willing – it only needs that gifted professional (adept at man-management, public relations, inspira­tional teaching, organisation and delegation) to loosen the floodgates of man­power and talent and, as a result, the purse strings of the nation both public and private.

RECIPE FOR ROARING INFLATION

The marble head of a medieval knight which once graced a statue in Waltham Abbey is an instructive guide to the rising price of antiquities.

The statue was probably broken up at the Dissolution; the head was found between the wars then stolen from the Abbey by vandals in 1973, found again – buried – during building of a nearby council estate and sold by the builder who discovered it to a friend for 25 in 1982.

Next a local antique shop bought it for £90, then a Kensington shop paid £400 then a French business man acquired it at £7000. He sold a half-share to a London dealer, who persuaded the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to offer £36000 for it. Now a consistory court is trying to decide who it belongs to and whether it ought to be sold at all.

£5 to £36000 in three years really must be a record.

NEWS FLASHES

20th LAMAS Local History Conference will be held at Museum of London, Sat Nov 30 1985, 11.30am-5.30 pm.- Main theme: rural and agricultural history in London & Middlesex.’ Tickets Z3.00 (inc. tea) from Miss P A Ching, 40 Shaef Way, Teddington, TW11 ODQ,

On the Waterfront is title of a morning of lectures about the Port of London from Roman times to today, arranged, for Sat Oct 26 at Museum of London, followed in afternoon by a conducted river cruise. Coincides with launch of’ Gustav Milnes new book ‘Port of Roman London’. Price (book not included) £6.50. Tickets from Citi sights, 102a Albion Rd, N16.

With its current Newsletter LAMAS is circulating a 2-page Selected Reading List provided by transport expert Michael Robbins, on Transport in London for Local Historians to back up his excellent lecture at the last LAMAS Local History Conference, Material from days of horse-drawn society to age of aircraft. HADAS members wanting a copy should ring Brigid Grafton Green (455 9040).

Book Sale. On Sat Oct 19, at Education Dept., Museum of London, from 11.30am-4PM, LAMAS will be selling 700 surplus books and runs of periodicals from its library. LAMAS members and representatives of affiliated societies (and HADAS is an affiliate)-will be able to get in a 10.30 am. Prices from 10p, upwards, most in the £4 to £6 range.

The Times recently carried a photo of a farmer standing knee-deep in waving corn and holding a whole Roman pot, Complete with lid. Anyone who was on the HADAS outing to Gestingthorpe in June, 1983, would have recognised him at once: it was Harold Cooper, who showed us round his marvellous collection of Roman objects, unearthed from twelve of his rolling Essex acres in the last 35 or so years. Coins date the occupation of the site from about 50 BC-423 AD. A few weeks ago, in East Anglian Archaeology No 25, his work received its accolade: the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission did a full academic study of his thousands of finds.

To celebrate Domesday’s 900 years, the PRO will next year mount an exhibition

Apr 3-Sept 30, with documents and demonstrations by a parchment maker and an illuminator

A 13c pavement has been found, during rebuilding work, in one of central London’s few surviving medieval buildings,’ which ‘was saved from the Great Fire by a last minute change of wind. The building is the oldest Catholic parish church in the country, St.Etheldreda’s in Ely Place, Holborn. The pavement is part of the cloisters of the palace of the Bishops of Ely and is Flemish work – terracotta coloured tiles on which some painted pattern still remains. There are plans to preserve it.