News - Page 59 of 70

Sep 03

newsletter-115-september-1980

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

Page 1

OUR NEXT OUTING: SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 13TH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bibliography.

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

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

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

Another article in the series by Edward Sammes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For further reading:

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

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

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

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

In Golders Green …

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

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

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

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

In Mill Hill and Edgware …

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

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

Both courses 24 meetings; fees £14.

In Barnet …

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

In Hendon …

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

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

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

Fees: 24 meetings, £12.
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In Finchley …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally to Stoke Bruerne for tea beside the canal lock.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dave King.
MORE DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E. Sammes.

Aug 03

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newsletter-114-august-1980
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

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FUTURE OUTINGS

August 16 – Brixworth & Raunds. Northamptonshire

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

September 13 – Southampton trip. Details later.
WEST HEATH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, Central Square, NW11

Enrolments in office hours in August and September.

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

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

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

Among other courses of historical interest are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Report by Bill Firth.

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

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

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

By Ted Sammes.

PENNIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milne J G et al – Coin Collecting, OUP 1951

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

By Percy Reboul.

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

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

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

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

Jul 03

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newsletter-113-july-1980
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

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FUTURE OUTINGS

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne led by Raymond Lowe.

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

August 16 – Northamptonshire (Isobel McPherson)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maurice Cantor reports on the June outing into Warwickshire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A note from Bill Firth.

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

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

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

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

Great Exhibition Gates (1850)

– now marking the boundary between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens opposite Exhibition Road, SW7.
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Victoria Gates. Kew Gardens (Kew Road, opposite Lichfield Road)

– marked Coalbrookdale on lock plates.

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

– Coalbrookdale ironwork.

Water Carrier Statue at foot of Blackfriars Bridge, EC1.

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

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

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

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

– Beam engine by the Lilleshall Company, 1895.

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

The Gamble Room (restaurant) Victoria and Albert Museum.

– Tile pavement and other ceramics by Maw and Company.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Percy Reboul’s transcript of a tape recording.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mersey Tunnel.

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

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

Jun 03

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newsletter-112-june-1980
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

ANNIVERSARY IN THE EAST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following were elected to serve during 1980/81:

Chairman: Councillor Brian Jarman

Vice Chairman: Edward Sammes

Hon Secretary: Brigid Grafton Green

Hon Treasurer: Jeremy Clynes

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

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

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

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

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne (Raymond Lowe)

Aug 16 – Northamptonshire (Isobel McPherson)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Brian Wibberley.

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

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

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

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

By Nell Penny.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Research Committee Corner

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

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

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

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

Hendon: Helen Gordon

Finch1ey: Paddy Musgrove

Barnet: Myfanwy Stewart

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

Totteridge: Daphne Lorimer

Edgware: Sheila Woodward

Hampstead: Philip Venning

Two research groups will be meeting in the near future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Report by CRAIGIE BESWICK on the first 1980 outing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A FORGERY AND A FOREIGNER.

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

THE FORGERY

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

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

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

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

THE FOREIGNER

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

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

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

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

Further reading:

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

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

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

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

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

This small church had been closed for loss than two years (since September 1978) when the demolition men moved in to pull it down last month. Many passers-by paused to watch the destruction, and to murmur “What a shame!” Its going breaks another link with mid-19th c. Hendon.
Page 11

The earliest recorded meeting of the founders of the church was on Aug 4 1854, when they decided to build a Congregational church. It was so called till about 1972, when the name was changed to United Reformed Church, as a result of union between the Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presented Anonymously:

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

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

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

Craik, E M. – Dorian Aegean. 1980

Johnson, S. – Later Roman Britain. 1980

Wacher, J. – The Coming of Rome. 1979

Journal of Mithraic Studies vol 2 pt 2 1978

Art History vol 2 pt 4, Dec 1979

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

TROLLEY POLE SURVEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 03

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newsletter-111-may-1980
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

DATES AHEAD

I. Roman revels and matters more businesslike:

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

2. Out into the country – The May outing

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

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

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

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne, led by Raymond Lowe

August 16 – Northamptonshire, led by Isobel McPherson

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

3. Time for trowelling:

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

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

4. A silver jubilee celebration:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SMOKED OUT – OR THE PERILS OF EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bill Firth reports on the April lecture.

The weather always seems to be foul on the evening of the HADAS annual lecture on industrial archaeology and April 1 proved no exception. However, this did not seem to deter many members and there was a large audience to listen to Mr Ian Lawley, Research Supervisor for the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.
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The Ironbridge Gorge Museum may have been Mr Lawley’s title, but he gave us much more than that. He started with some history to sat the scene and not only peopled it with some of the chief characters but also illustrated it with examples of the output of the industries in the Gorge and made these the more topical by including examples from London which we may either know or can go and see. Iron has been worked at Coalbrookdale for more than 400 years and this still continues in modern foundries turning out cast iron parts for Aga cookers and other purposes. However, it is primarily on the innovations of the Darby family that the industrial importance and fame of the area depend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brigid Grafton Green visits London’s latest museum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another in Percy Reboul’s series of tape transcripts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PUBLICATIONS

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

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

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

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

THE INSULAR LONDONERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apr 15

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Volume 3 1980 1985
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Apr 03

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newsletter-110-april-1980
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Newsletter

Page 1

APRIL LECTURE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For further reading: –

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

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

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

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

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

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

i) A general survey for likely excavation sites

ii) A survey of standing buildings with significant historic features

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An interesting lecture.

BRIAN WIBBERLEY.
DAVID GARRICK, 200 YEARS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COLLEGE FARM OPEN DAYS

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

Admission is free, and refreshments will be available.

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

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

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

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

Feb 03

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newsletter-108-february-1980
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Newsletter

Page 1

BARNET PROPOSES METAL DETECTOR CURB IN PARKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

WEST HEATH MYSTERY UNRAVELLED

By Joyce Roberts MSc PhD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

LECTURE PROGRAMME

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Report of the January Lecture, by Frances Radford.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George Ingram also gives this further note concerning Collinson:

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

TED SAMMES has also some light to shed :

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

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

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

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

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

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

The British Museum’s current exhibition 7000 Years of History Cyprus BC continues until 16th March. Admission free.
Page 6

EXCAVATION AT 97 SOUTHWOOD LANE, HIGHGATE

Report by Philip Venning.

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

The excavation.

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

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

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

Identification.

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

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

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

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

Jan 03

0

newsletter-107-january-1980
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

BEST WISHES FOR A HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL NEW YEAR
1980 LECTURE PROGRAMME

Our first lecture in 1980 will be held on TUESDAY, 8th JANUARY at Hendon Library. Coffee will be available at 8.00 p.m. and the lecture begins at 8.30 p.m.

Members will remember the, interesting lecture on Neolithic Crete given by Professor Evans last year. The January lecture entitled “THE ART OF BRONZE AGE (MINOAN) CRETE” covers the following amazingly rich period of Minoan civilisation of the island. Our speaker will be Mr. M. S. F. Wood, M.A., F.S.A., who is a specialist, on the subject.

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

FEBRUARY 5th. “The Later Roman Empire and the Codex Spirensis” by Mark Hassall, M.A., F.S.A.

MARCH 4th. “Medieval Kings Lynn: an archaeological, architectural and documentary survey” by Dr.Helen Clarke, B.A., Ph.D., F.S.A.

APRIL 1st. “Iron Bridge Gorge Museum” by Stuart B. Smith, M.Sc., A.M.A.

MAY 13th. Annual General Meeting,
OTHER MEETINGS OF INTEREST

The Finchley Antiques Appreciation Group will be holding two meetings in January which may be of interest to HADAS members. On Wednesday, 9th January, Wellesley Clinton will be speaking about “Bronzes and Sculptures,” and on Wednesday, 23rd January “18th Century English Glass” will be described by John Hutton. The meetings will be held at Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley and non-members may attend on payment of £1.20. Further details from Mrs. Phyllis Adams.

Barnet Library Lectures.

Members may like to make a note of two lectures in the post-Christmas Wednesday Lecture season arranged by Barnet Libraries. On 20th February at North Finchley Library, Ravensdale Avenue, N12, Douglas Priestley the well-known art critic of the Barnet Press will be speaking about The Art and Craft of Stained Glass and on 27th February Myrtle Ellis will be “Looking at English Silver” at Hendon Library. Both lectures begin at 8.15 pm and will be illustrated with colour slides.
THE SCENE SURVEYED

On Saturday mornings 19th and 26th January (weather permitting), it is hoped to have surveying practise in FRIARY PARK under the direction of Barry Martin. Meet at the main gate at 10.00 a.m. Please telephone Daphne Lorimer if you are coming.
WEST HEATH EXCAVATIONS 1979

During the season of 1979 over 70 members worked a total of about 4000 man hours at the West Heath Site which proved to be its usual fascinating, exasperating arid tantalising self. The now customary bad spring delayed theoretical start of the digging season until mid-May, while bad weather during the whole of the early summer held digging up considerably (and members acquired an unappreciated skill at wet sieving!). A pleasant autumn, however, brought the HADAS troops out and the flints up in large quantities. In all, 16 trenches were under excavation during the season, of which nine (36 sq. m.) were finished and seven have still to be completed.
Page 2

The Carbon 14 dating is posing problems and it is hoped that cross-checks can be done using the residue of charcoal obtained from the original hearth and, possibly, from the small area of burning found at a similar level in XIII M (which had been detected as an anomaly in the Magnetometric Survey done in l977).

Two features containing quantities of burnt stone have been excavated – one in Trench XIV M, to the east of the new fire area and the other in the southern portion of the site in Trench XII H. This is a well defined tailed pit (i.e. a flued hearth) and the stones came up in layers, those at the bottom being the most calcined. These features have necessitated a great deal of patient, meticulous excavation and have been drawn in plan and section and photographed at every stage.

The area under excavation this year is still, undoubtedly, the richest part of the site and, while it is not yet possible to ascertain the density of artefacts per square meter, the count of tool types at the end of October was 76. This included 19 obliquely blunted points, 17 microburins, 10 backed blades, 4 point tips, 5 serrates, l ‘Dufour’, 1 notched piece, 1 axe sharpening flake, 1 geometric microlith, 3 scrapers and one tool of exceptional interest – a miniature core axe. There were a large number of cores and 12 pieces with miscellaneous retouch. The proportions of one tool type to another remain relatively constant.

Post holes have not been a major feature bf this year’s excavation but some small ones, with charcoal in the fill, have been cast. Dr. Joyce Roberts is hot foot in pursuit of the identification of the small carbonised globules which continue to appear in large numbers in parts of the site.

Excavation has not ceased for the year, – it is too fascinating and rewarding at this stage. If the Wednesdays are fine, hardy souls will be welcome for mornings only. Check with Daphne Lorimer first.

Last, but certainly not least, every Wednesday afternoon during the whole of the summer, a stalwart band under Christine Arnott’s enthusiastic leadership 9 have processed flints at Avenue House. This is a very essential job and all volunteers will be very welcome. Ring Christine if you can come.
SITE WATCHING IN BALLARDS LANE

Building work has begun on a large site in Finchley which embraces 11~19 Ballards Lane (a terrace of shops with housing above dating from about 1870), Albert Mews, and buildings lying between Albert Mews and Albert Place. Paddy Musgrove, who has been watching the extensive preparatory excavation for an underground car park reports that there were no indications of any buildings on the site: earlier than-the Victorian terrace.

A line of cesspits marked the back yards of the terrace. That behind number 11 was in, red brick and circular; the others were rectangular and made from yellow brick. An underground air-raid shelter of reinforced concrete was uncovered in Albert Mews. To the west of the site, a well was found. This would have been beneath the warehouse building which stood at the bend of Albert Place. Like others found in the neighbourhood, it was circular and constructed from un-mortared red bricks.

The natural undisturbed boulder clay yielded the usual supply of substantial flint nodules, but the most interesting find was a large piece of tabular flint. Unfortunately this was shattered into many pieces by the mechanical digger, but three fragments recovered jointly weighed just under 13 kilos. For tool-making, this piece would be considered of very poor quality. This seems to be the first recorded case of tabular flint being found in the Finchley boulder clay.
Page 3

MUSEUMS IN THE WARS

The Museums of our Borough seem to have hit a bad patch at the moment: In the last Newsletter we mentioned that Church Farm House Museum at Hendon will have to close for seven weeks in the New Year while re-wiring takes place. The museum will re-open on Saturday, 1st March and an exhibition of Asian life and culture – EAST COMES WEST – will be staged from 8th March to 20th April 1980.

Meantime Barnet Museum, at 31 and 33 Wood Street, Chipping Barnet, (you may remember HADAS staged an industrial archaeology exhibition there about this time last year) has also closed for repairs. We learn from its Curator, Mr. Bill Taylor, that it may not re-open for quite some time. The 18th century buildings are affected by a combination of dry rot, woodworm and rising damp. Mr. Taylor believes it may take as long as two years to repair them completely.

Trial work has already started and floor boards are up in several rooms, preparatory to infiltrating material which will kill the woodworm. As well as repairs, it 1s planned to enlarge some rooms by taking down interior walls. Mr. Taylor hopes it may be possible to re-open the Museum bit by bit as each stage is completed; just now, however, plans are too preliminary to say whether this will ultimately be possible.

As many HADAS members will know, Barnet Museum is a repository for various documents, maps, photographs, etc. (see Newsletter 85, March 1978, for Joanna Corden’s summary) of what is available at the Museum). At the moment, as work has not yet got fully under way on repairs, and the heating system is still working, this material remains at the Museum; but Mr. Taylor hopes that the Borough will soon find some temporary accommodation (possibly in a school) in either East, New or Chipping Barnet to which the documents can be moved for safe storage. He also hopes that some temporary study space can be found for students who wish to consult documents – either at the temporary store or at Chipping Barnet Library.

The Museum’s collections – clay pipes, pottery, metalwork, etc. – will also be packed up and it is hoped, stored in the temporary accommodation. The Battle of Barnet banners which hung in the Museum (they were made by local Townswomen’s Guilds and, Women’s Institutes for the quin-centenary exhibition in 1971, in which HADAS played such an active, part) have been removed to hang in the Museum safe. Any HADAS members who wish to consult material during the next few months should be encouraged, Mr. Taylor says, to ring him at home and explain their problem. He will be glad to do his best to arrange for material to be consulted during this difficult period.

Further news for documentary researchers is that GLC will be re-opening the Search Room of the Greater London Record Office (serving the London and Middlesex sections) on January 2nd next. It has been closed (with great inconvenience to students) since last summer.

The letter from GLC then goes on with the following chilling paragraph:

“Some collections are now stored in an out-repository and will have to be ordered at least three working days before a visit. It is not possible to issue hand-lists detailing the contents of the different repositories and they will, anyway be subject to change. Readers are advised to check whether records they wish to consult need to be ordered in advance. Specific orders can, of course, be made by letter or telephone”.
Page 4

What this means is that GLC has made no attempt to meet in any way the many complaints made by societies and individuals about its proposed future arrangements; and that local historians of the London area will unfortunately receive an archive service inferior to that provided by most county record offices.

The Search Room at County Hall is Room B21; it is open Mons-Fris, 9.30 a.m.- 4.45 p.m. with late evening opening (by appointment only) on Tuesdays, 4.45 p.m. -7.30 p.m. For enquiries and appointments. telephone 016336851 (direct line).
WORLD WAR II STRUCTURES

Mr. A. Christie of Barnet, has sent the Newsletter some information about World War II structures which are still to be seen in our area.

“If you look over the railway bridge (Northern Line) at Squires Lane, Finchley, on the south side) you will see three blocks of concrete on the railway embankment, two on one side of the bridge and one on the other. Tank blocks, don’t you think?

Up to a few years ago around the Borough of Barnet there were several of these concrete blocks, but most of these have disappeared. There were some opposite Totteridge Tube Station, and also some behind a hedge where the office block is now, north of Whetstone High Road.. And there were still, until quite recently, air raid shelters in Ballards Lane just below Perry’s. With regard to pill boxes, there was one in Barnet Lane, in front of a house; but this is very overgrown now, and there was one – which may still be there – at New Southgate, on the surrounding wall of Friern Hospital. Some air raid sirens still exist too, like the one at Tally Ho!”

Mr. Christie says that he photographed some of the installations he mentions) and offers to let us see the photographs.
NOTES AND QUERIES

The December Newsletter sought help from readers on two matters – and we seem to have struck oil on both of them.

In his article called “The Milkman’s Tale” Percy Reboul asked if someone could throw light on the phrase “A barn of milk”. Dr. Edward Hoblyn, whose wife is HADAS member, has tracked this one down. A barn of milk, he says, was a measure used when small dairymen were buying direct from the farmer. It was 16 pints plus one for spillage – that is, 2 gallons and a pint. Dr. Hoblyn’s authority for this is the director of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers.

In some paragraphs headed Hendon Cedars in Sussex we asked for further information about the Great Cedar of Hendon Place. HADAS member Andrew Moss tells us that he found, at Guildhall Library, in Topographical and Statistical Description of the County of Middlesex, by G. Cooke (pub. 1810) the following passage:

“There was formerly a very remarkable cedar tree in the garden of Hendon House. It was blown down by a high wind on the first day of January, 1779. Sir John Collum gives its dimensions thus:

Height: 70ft

Diameter of horizontal extent of branches: 100 ft

Circumference of trunk 7ft above ground level: l6ft Diam. and at l2ft. from the ground 20 feet in circumference.

The limbs are from 6ft. to l2ft. in girth.”

The gardener two years before the tree was blown down made £50 from cones.”
Page 5

The only problem that this quotation raises is whether the writer really meant Hendon House – that is the big house which stood where Hendon School now stands, off Brent Street, and which was once the home of Elizabethan cartographer John Norden and later belonged to Sir Jeremy Whichcot, whose splendid memorial is in St. Mary’s parish church. If so, then it suggests that there may have been two extraordinary cedars in Hendon, one at Hendon House and the other at Hendon Place – the manor house of Hendon, later Tenterden Hall, and situated further north than Hendon House, in the area that is today Tenterden Gardens, Drive and Grove. Or was it just a confusion of names in the mind of the author?
PAINT YOUR WAGON

Liz Holliday is currently investigating the history of agriculture in Hendon and would be grateful if any member can shed light on the Middlesex Wagon. Similar to the Hertfordshire wagon in design (but often shorter in the body), references consulted to date are rather vague on detail. Farm wagons were usually painted brown with a buff underbody but road wagons were rather smarter as they travelled further afield. Red was a popular colour for wheels and underbody and one source describes “a Middlesex wagon painted blue” – presumably referring to the bodywork.

If any member has any further information, please telephone Liz Holliday.
ROME-ANTICS

The 1979 HADAS Christmas Party

Uxor mea Ann and I journeyed to Hendon using the modern equivalent of a Roman road, along the Al from Roman Baldock. As we travelled, there was time to reflect that a centurion’s amour may have been useful forwarding off the slings arid arrows of outrageous barbarians but it was certainly not designed with driving a car in mind!

When I first heard of the Roman banquet theme for the 1979 HADAS Christmas Party, I was immediately determined to dress as a centurion. However, the local theatrical costumier was (a) difficult to find and (b) very reluctant indeed to admit that he had a suitable outfit at all. He mellowed considerably when it was explained to him that the event in question was an archaeological gathering and not an event of the wilder sort. In fact his resulting peace of mind was such that he even offered me the alternative metal (‘real’) sword instead of the more usual wooden one. Very steady, reliable people, we archaeologists!

Steady and reliable we may be, but when we let down our hair, we do it in style. Much learned discussion has taken place on the reasons for the upsurge of popular interest in archaeology. Is it the unique combination of academic and physical skills, is it the thrill of investigation, or is it an attempt to escape into a more glorious past? After the party, one would have no hesitation in choosing the last reason. The ease with which HADAS members donned Roman dress and custom, and entered into the Roman way of life was remarkable.

We were helped, of course, by the excellent and atmospheric hall layout, complete with shrine, mosaics and murals, all authentically illuminated by oil lamps (thanks to Brett Sampson). Authenticity, in fact, was the keynote of the evening. Nothing that happened had not been thoroughly researched for accuracy and then vouched for by our Guest of Honour, Mrs. Maureen Locket who lectured for the Extra Mural Department of Southampton University, and had travelled from Portsmouth for her third (and best, of course) Roman banquet of the week!
Page 6

As we sipped our aperitif of delicious honeyed wine (mulsum), John Enderby told us of the wine which we were to drink, purchased from the Roman wine trader, Augustus Barnetti, and thankfully undiluted. He also had the pleasant task of telling us that we could take away with us our drinking bowls. These delightful pseudo-samian souvenirs had been produced by Susan Bennett, and were used enthusiastically throughout the evening.

A glance at the menu provided anticipation of what was to come (twenty dishes) – all in Latin, of course, and we started off, after due propitiation of the household gods, with sala cattabia, a mixture, it was announced, of chicken, cucumber and cheese. It was delicious, as were the remaining nineteen dishes, all a tribute to the servae who had slaved away preparing them. We had fried anchovies, grilled fish in Alexandrian sauce, asparagus, pease mould ‘containing many things’ a ‘dish of little fish’, small stewed marrows, meat pieces cooked in wine, fricassee of pork with apricot sauce, etc., all served by cheerful slaves. Male heads were wreathed in laurel and at intervals we were entertained splendidly with a reading (Homer – very dramatic) from a guest, Dr. Malcolm Colledge of Westfield College, by music performed by young ladies from the Henrietta Barnett School (directed by their teacher Joy Richardson), and by a free lottery which produced a prize for nearly everyone. Later, the same young ladies displayed further talents by acting for us the tragic story of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, during which we watered the wine in our cups with many and large tears.

Still the slaves continued to tempt us with further dishes, despite our feeble protests, and the rustle of stomach-swathing togas being eased filled the air. (Wearing a breastplate was something of a disadvantage at this point). Replete as we were, it was easy to understand why Cassius had a lean and hungry look – it was probably directed at another helping of perna cum Armeniacis elixatis.

We toasted everybody with the remainder of the wine and then, quite suddenly, it was all over. Councillor Jarman thanked on our behalf the cooks, slaves, musicians, actresses and guests and the HADAS army marched on tender stomach out into the twentieth century night. There were just two questions to be answered:-

– How did the Romans finish off their banquets? (Plenty of opportunity for theorising here). Coffee was not known, until a thousand years later and those who, like me, have something akin to an addiction for the ground bean might well be tempted to put this lack of knowledge forward as a major factor contributing towards the decline and fall of the Empire!

-It was marvellous. Congratulations and thanks to all concerned. When can we do it again?
BANQUET TAILPIECE

As a footnote to Colin Evans’ report of the Roman banquet we thought you might like to have the recipe for one of the 19 dishes which were served. We have chosen one (patina asparagi frigidi – dish of cold asparagus) which would do either as a starter for eight at a dinner party, or might be served as a supper dish for a lesser number.

PATINA ASPARAGI FRIGIDI.

1 large tin of asparagus; 1/3 oz freshly ground black pepper; 1 tbsp. liquamen (or its salt equivalent, see note below); l fl. oz. dry white wine; 1 fl. oz. passum (use sweet Spanish white wine); 3 fl. oz. olive oil; 6 eggs; and, to make 1 1/2 tbspns. oenogarum, 1 tbsp. dry white wine mixed with 1 dsstsp. liquamen (or its salt equivalent).

METHOD: drain the asparagus and puree it. Mix together pepper, dry and sweet wines, oil and liquamen. Bring this liquid to boil. and reserve. Place asparagus in bottom of an 8″ diam. fireproof dish. Mix 6 eggs with the oenogarum and pour over the asparagus. Sprlnkle the oil and wine mixture over the eggs and bake in an oven at 375 C (Reg. Mk. 6) until firm {about 3/4 hr).

Note on liquamen:: the Romans used liquamen, or garum as it was also called, where we would today season a dish with salt: it was, in fact, liquid salt with a slightly fishy taste. For our banquet cookery we made up 2 gallons of liquamen some months ago, bottled it and issued it as needed to all our helper-cooks. Any HADAS member who wants to go the whole hog and use liquamen in her recipes can get the method for making it from Brigid Grafton Green.

Dec 03

0

newsletter-106-december-1979
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 2 : 1975 - 1979 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

HAPPY CHRISTMAS HADAS

Christmas is nearly here, so this Newsletter opens with greetings to all members for the Christmas season and best wishes for 1980.

This is the first year that the Newsletter is able to provide something like a Christmas card. It isn’t exactly a card, but our illustration at the back serves the same purpose: it is a token of our good wishes. It is a new drawing, by HADAS artist Mary Allaway, of the parish church of Hendon St Mary’s.

(EDITORIAL – to see this picture, select the following link)

This could almost be called the Society’s “mother” church. Our founder, the late Mr. Constantinides, when he brought HADAS into being in April, 1961, did so because he hoped to prove archaeologically that both St Mary’s and the community which it had served for centuries were of Saxon origin.

St Mary’s was therefore closely linked with our Society right from the start. Mr. Constantinides did not, alas, live to see his hunch proved right, as it was in the excavation which took place just south of St Mary’s from 1973 onwards. That dig, directed by Ted Sammes, produced the first solid evidence, in the form of ditches containing grass-tempered pottery, for Saxon Hendon. It was the churchyard of St Mary’s, too, that saw the start of another activity in which HADAS has specialised – the recording of tombstone inscriptions.
DIGGING PLANS

PADDY MUSGROVE writes: Our dig at Church Crescent, Finchley, having continued for six weekends, has ended for the time being at least. We hope to investigate further in the New Year when days are longer and dryer. Medieval pottery and two struck flakes nave been found, but the chief feature of interest has been the gently sloping edge of a large pit, the purpose of which has not yet been established.

Meantime DAPHNE LORIMER reports that digging will continue later than usual at West Heath because we appear to be in the early stages of uncovering another hearth; and if this materialises, we would rather deal with it quickly and not have to cover and leave it.

It is therefore proposed to continue digging on Wednesdays until further notice, although there will be no more weekend digging till after Christmas. Such is the chanciness of the weather however, that intending diggers should check with Mrs. Lorimer before making the journey to Hampstead even on Wednesdays.
HADAS PROGRAMME

The next HADAS “meeting” (perhaps “encounter” would describe it better) will, of course, be the Roman banquet on Dec. 8, of which members have all details.

Our opening meeting of 1980 will not be on the usual first Tuesday of the month, because in January the first Tuesday falls on Jan. 1, a bank holiday.
Page 2

We meet therefore instead on Tuesday, Jan. 8, at Hendon Library, The Burroughs, NW4, to hear Sinclair Hood speak on the Art of Bronze Age (Minoan) Crete. Coffee 8 pm, lecture 8.30.
BOOKBOX CORNER

We have a plaintive plea from our Hon. Librarian, George Ingram, about some of the Society’s books which have been on loan for rather a long time. Would the members who have borrowed the following please phone George and let him know that the books are safe:

Prehistoric and Roman Enfield; The Age of the Vikings; London before the Conquest.

Another problem is worrying our Librarian. The Society should possess a run of Transactions of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society from 1970 onwards; but the volumes for 1974 (No 25) and 1977 (No 28) are missing, and there is no record of who has them. Is any member aware of having borrowed these or does any member have a copy of either volume which he would be prepared to put on permanent loan to the Bookbox, to make our set complete?

An earlier copy of Transactions – New Series vol VI pt IV (1931) has been presented to the Box by Paul Craddock. This volume contains some material of particular interest to HADAS. Norman Brett-James’s paper on Some Extents and Surveys of Hendon; a report on an exhibition on the History of Hendon; and “St Mary’s Church, Finchley,” by Ernest H Rann.

Other recent additions to the Bookbox include:
Archaeology General The Archaeologists’ Year Book 1977, Dolphin General Press, Poole
Archaeology and Society, Grahame Clark, Methuen 1939 (Presented by Jeremy Clynes)
Archaeology, GB 204 The Lake Villages of Somerset, Arthur Bulleid (not Roman) (Presented by Miss Rhona Wells)
Archaeology, European/Foreign F41 The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe, Jacques Briard
Local History 239 Story of Hampstead Illustrated (Priory Press, 1909) (Presented. by Mrs Worby)
240 Flying at Hendon – A Pictorial Record. Clive Smith (Presented by Dorothy Newbury)
261 Mill Hill School Buildings, 1968 (Presented by Daphne Lorimer)
Misc 213 Pollen Analysis – illustrated guide, P D Moore & J A Webb (Presented by Philip Venning)
214 The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. from Greek by Meric Casaubon. Dent 1908
Periodicals World Archaeology, vol 10 No 1 June 1978
vol 11 No 1 June 1979
Collection of 19 issues of London Archaeologist, Winter 1968-Autumn 1978 (incomplete) (Presented by Dr Ann Saunders)
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ARCHAEOLOGY OF ROMAN BRITAIN

Last month we listed the lectures under this main title which are being delivered up to December each Thursday at 7 pm at the Institute of Archaeology. The following are the post-Christmas lectures in the same series:

Jan 17 – The Potteries and Pottery Trade in Roman Britain – M G Fulford

Jan 24 – Death and Burial in Roman Britain – R Jones

Jan 31 – Small Towns and non-Villa Rural Settlements, Lowland Zone – M Todd

Feb 7 – Rural Settlement in the Highland Zone – lecturer to be announced

Feb 14 – Coastal Defences in Britain – J S Johnson

Feb 21 – Britain and the Roman Empire – M Hassall

Feb 28 – The End of Roman Britain – Prof P Rahtz
GREETINGS TO NEW MEMBERS

In this final Newsletter of 1979 we welcome all those who have joined the Society in the second half of this year, and hope they will enjoy the various activities HADAS offers. Our new members are:

Simon Aldridge, Highgate; Linda Barrow, Muswell Hill; Victor Bignell, Barnet; Mrs Braithwaite, Garden Suburb; Maurice Cantor, Edgware; Percy Cohen, Mill Hill; Dennis Crane, North Finchley; Renee Deyong, Hendon; Terry Finn, Fulham; Audrey Fletcher, Southgate; Rachel Gershon; Hendon; Beth Gewell, Harrow; Anne Hayman, Hampstead; Eric Heggie, Cricklewood; Kathleen Herbert, Colindale; Aubrey Hodes, Belsize Park; Rosalind Hunt, Hendon; Carole and Ruth Kent, Hendon; Sarah Lawson, Hampstead; Miss Loney, Eltham; Phillipa Lowe, Garden Suburb; Anne McMullan, Garden Suburb; Liza Maher, Harrow; Mrs Marsh, North Finchley; . R G Micbel, Colindale; , Michael Nixon, Southgate; Joelle Noguera, Hampstead; Renee 0berlander, Golders Green; Eric Paulson. Edgware ; Miss Rawlings, Harrow; Joyce Richards. Hendon; Tessa Sholl; Highgate; Mrs Fay and Mrs D Sputz, Kensington; Mrs Wagland, Colindale; Jean Walton, Hampstead; Mrs. Wibberley, Barnet.
THE MILKMAN’S TALE

A further episode in PERCY REBOUL’S series of tape-recorded interviews.

From 1910-1921 there were a number of small one-man dairy businesses set up mainly in local shops. They employed between three and ten milkmen, assisted by boys; and very often had six or seven “battery” cows in a shed behind the shop. The competition was intense and the milkman would use the old street cry of ‘milk-o’.

The dairy owner had negotiated with a farm for supplies of milk, and this came up by the milk train to the nearest station – for example, Oakleigh Park, Church End Finchley, New Southgate or Winchmore Hill. The dairy collected the milk in a special horse-drawn low-loader van at 5.30 am. Each milkman had his own round and for his first round of the day he would be issued with enough milk just to do the round. In some oases the milkman would have to harness his horse; others had push floats and would set off on the round accompanied by 2 or 3 boys at 6 am.

The milk was in bulk, of course, which the milkman poured into the customer’s own can and the boy delivered. These cans were important because one of the ‘fiddles’ was to knock up the bottom of the can (and with an easy-going customer the front of the can as well). In some cases the milkman might be able to ‘save’ a quarter pint of milk in this way.
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The milkmen each kept a book but their memory was fantastic: they could remember the daily requirements of, say, a hundred customers.

Delivery was to the tradesman’s entrance and the first round finished about 8 am. The milkman would have breakfast at the dairy and some employers provided cooking facilities. The second round was at 9 am and on this round customers were supplied with butter, eggs and cream and the milkman called at each household himself, finishing about 2 pm.

The third round of the day was in the afternoon, where only part of the round was visited. It was back to the dairy about 4 pm, where we washed up the churns, measures, cans, etc and would ‘book-in’ with the book-keeper. The horse was also unharnessed.

I want to say something about ‘chance’ sales which were an absolutely essential part of the milkman’s existence. Chance sales gave the milkman a chance to sell for cash the milk he had ‘fiddled.’ In the big houses with weekly or monthly accounts there was collusion with the housekeeper, who would order a pound of butter and ask to be charged for two pounds.

Wages and Conditions.

In 1910 a milkman worked 11 or 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 25s a week, with another 25s made on fiddles. There were no holidays. My father was a milkman before me and from 1910-1916 when he went into the forces, he had only 3 days holiday. You worked Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and you could not go sick otherwise your book-keeping would be discovered.

You did not retire – you worked till you died, and there was no commission or pay incentives. Our rent was 12s 6d a week and there wore no increases in wages at any time. I started to help my father when I was 5 years of age and worked on the first round before school and, when I was 6, also worked from 12-2 pm during the lunch break and sometimes in the evening. Later on I helped another milkman at the Friern Watch Dairy and with Saturday and Sunday work, was paid 3s 6d a week.

We never saw the people who owned the houses. Everything was done at the tradesman’s entrance via the servants such as the cook or house-keeper. A pound of butter cost 10d for Salt; 1s 2d for fresh; eggs were 10 1/2d a dozen.

In 1920/21 the small dairies were frozen out by the combines such as United Dairies. Two things happened; they stopped using cans and went over to bottles. Chance was finished, and the milkman was back on his basic pay. In 1921 there was a milkman’s strike which lasted 3 days and the violence was terrible. My milk float was tipped up by flying pickets. The milk went down the drain and I had to pay for it. The strike failed and all we got was a ‘choking off’ by the boss.

The combine served the public by giving more hygienic milk in bottles, but it meant death to the milkman. Incidentally, I never heard of a single case of illness through ‘bad’ milk. Many times on a hot summer day the milk would curdle in the churns because of the movement of the cart. I used to strain it through a piece of rag, otherwise I would have to pay for the milk. No one worried about hygiene. The only worry was to get rid of the milk!

NOTE : an interesting term used by the milkman in this interview was, ‘a barn of milk.’ Apparently milk was bought by the dairy from farms in a measure called a ‘barn’ which was a little over a gallon. Can anyone throw any light on this word?’ Was it, for example, just over a gallon to allow for spoilage, or was it a multiple of a smaller measure such as a gill?
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CHURCH FARM HOUSE MUSEUM

Members may like to have warning that the Museum will be closed for a minimum of some 7 weeks in the early part of next year.

The building is to be re-wired, and will certainly be closed from Jan 7-Feb 29 – longer if the work is not completed in that time.
HENDON CEDARS IN SUSSEX

A member of the Barnet & District Local History Society who is studying market gardening in Barnet in the 18th c has asked if any HADAS researcher can throw light on John Clark, a Barnet butcher who also had a nursery garden and who in 1761 sold 1000 cedar seedlings, at a price of £79 6s to the Duke of Richmond for planting at Goodwood House.

The point at which Hendon enters this tale is that the seeds from which the seedlings were raised were obtained by John Clark from cones of the Great Cedar of Hendon Place – the manor house of Hendon, later Tenterden Hall. The seedlings, when sold, were 5 years old, therefore the seeds were probably planted in 1756, at which time Hendon Place was in the occupancy of the Nicoll family. It is possible that anyone who has done work on the Nicolls of Hendon Place may have come across a reference to John Clark or may be able to enlarge on the history of “the Great Cedar” and on its ultimate fate.

Clark owned a house and land off Wood Street, Barnet, and his butcher’s shop was in Wood Street. He may have been related to the Henry Clark (died 1782/3) whose effects, including nursery garden stock, were sold in February 1783, although so far it has not been possible to establish the link between the two (see Trans. LMAS vol 26, 1975, “Mid-Georgian Nurseries of the London Region,” by John H Henry).

If anyone has information on this subject, will they please let our Hon. Secretary know?
TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF CANTERBURY

Report by LIZ SAGUES on the November lecture. The formidable tidiness of Tim Tatton Brown’s rescue trenches in Canterbury much impressed the large audience at the Society’s second winter lecture. But they betrayed far more than a fetish for neatness among the Canterbury Archaeological Trust’s 7-days-a-week diggers. The finds from them, sometimes spectacular and always interesting, have revealed the 2000-year story of the cathedral city, from Belgic oppidum to 20th c shopping centre for continental day-trippers.

The rescue unit, which is directed by Mr Tatton Brown, was set up in 1975, rather later than many similar units and thus less richly provided with Government funds. Instead about three-quarters of its income came from private sources, and a good deal of that from the developers who were currently rebuilding the city to cater for the tourist boom.

The immediate environs of the city concern the Trust as well as Mr Tatton Brown showed in a slide of a rural gravel working with evidence of late bronze age, iron age and Roman occupation.

Within the city the Belgic levels were the earliest and in one of these, in what had been a muddy hollow in the former roadway, had been found the wheel marks of a chariot and the hoof prints of the horse that drew it. It was a chariot, Mr. Tatton Brown argued, rather than a heavy cart, pointing out on his slide the shallowness and narrowness of the tracks. What better evidence could there be to confirm Caesar’s comment about the prevalence of chariots in England?
Page 6

The Belgic levels also revealed a substantial number of fine and rare coins, as well as more mundane evidence of the pre-Roman population in the form of the pits from which they extracted clay for pottery, their houses, tracks and roadways.

The first Roman occupation was military, and effectively so – one ditch contained skeletal remains, marked by sword cuts, of men and horses, seeming to date from the Boudiccan rebellion. In the more peaceful times that followed, Canterbury grew into a substantial Roman town. Its theatre and public baths were known and a huge temple court had had been traced, though the temple itself has yet to yield itself to the excavators.

Mr Tatton Brown gave the lie to the theory of Roman “garden cities,” which had arisen because of gaps noticed between the stone buildings. In Roman times those gaps were filled by wooden buildings, whose traces had been too insubstantial for earlier archaeologists to recover.

Important among the Roman finds is a set square, exquisitely made in bronze and in Mr Tatton Brown’s view, certainly the finest known from anywhere in the Roman empire.

After the Romans abandoned the city in the 5th c it fell into the decay from which St Augustine revived it in the late 6th c. The Saxons cut their huts into the Roman levels, adding to the complexity of excavation but leaving behind objects of everyday life and some finer pieces – a decorated object, of 8th c date and unknown use, with ornamentation like that illustrating the Lindisfarne Gospels, and a lOth c “Stanley knife,” its swivelling blade encased in a richly carved case. That will be seen next year in London, in the British Museum’s Viking exhibition.

From around 1050 onwards, a picture of the whole of Canterbury could be reconstructed, with some streets surviving to the present day and still retaining their Anglo-Saxon names. By 1200, aided by documentary sources, the map was as complete as that of any city in North-west Europe, with the positions, of houses known and the landowners’ names recorded. Archaeology had revealed evidence of building practices – including the opportunist one of slipping an oyster shell under a timber to level it – and the perils of medieval life, in the form of a Black Death plague pit.

It had also helped to extend the history of the cathedral itself, through one Saturday morning’s excavation while new electricity cables were being laid in the crypt. That brief opportunity enabled traces of the original crypt of the church built in 1070 by Archbishop Lanfranc to be revealed.

The Trust’s current excavation, at the King’s School, demonstrated the complexity of all work in Canterbury, concluded Mr. Tatton Brown. But it was essential for the city’s past to be recorded before it was totally destroyed.
WHERE LIZZIE SLEPT IN THE AIR RAIDS

The Newsletter has had a detailed description, complete with sketch, of another World War II relic from the Rev. David Viles, who lives in Ravensdale Avenue, North Finchley. He writes:

“We still have a sturdy brick-built air raid shelter fitted to the end of our house. Its walls are 35 cms thick and it has a 14 cms thick concrete roof. It has a small airbrick near the top of one wall. When we arrived in 1966 it still had a metal escape hatch with a weaker brick wall behind it. I am afraid we vandalised this escape hatch some years ago by constructing a narrow 55 cm entrance, using the hatch space as part of the entrance.
Page 7

The rest of the brickwork and cement was incredibly difficult to demolish but I eventually managed to knock a doorway through and now use it for storing garden sundries. There is a wooden door at the far end but this was very inconvenient for use as a normal entrance from the garden. It was obviously designed for quick entry from our French windows. There wore enough bricks from the thick wall of the narrow entrance to floor over completely the original floor level of the shelter. The metal catch to hold the escape hatch still remains.

Inside there still hangs from one wall a fold-up wooden bed-frame. Remains of the former webbing are still attached to this. On the side of the bed is a little wooden plaque with a name carved on it – LIZZIE – presumably the name of the lady who slept in it. On the opposite wall was clearly a bed for her husband, as there are still two hooks up in the wall, to one of which a wire is still attached. (Hooks and wire still survive on the other bed frame). Hinges also remain on the wall to indicate the line of the second bed, but no frame remains on this wall.

High in one corner is a little triangular shelf – presumably a ledge for some kind of light. It had an electric light, since there is still a switch, crumbling wiring and the remains of a light holder above Lizzie’s bed. I still possess the crude iron hinges on which the metal escape hatch hung.

The roof has now a layer of lovely green moss on the outside. The whole structure is almost covered on one side with clematis, honeysuckle and rose. I imagine it must have been a miserably cold, damp and depressing place to try to sleep in. Indeed, there is a small drainage channel leading out of the shelter at the bottom of one corner to the adjacent down pipe drain – to let the water out after a heavy rainstorm?”

Mr Viles is not a HADAS member, but had heard we were interested in World War II relics. It is extremely kind of him to record this shelter so carefully and vividly and we thank him very much for a11 the detail he has given us.
OVERHEARD ANY GOOD JOKES LATELY?

The following (absolutely true) conversation was overheard at the souvenir stall outside the wire-fenced and dog-patrolled entrance to the Palaeolithic-paintings cave at Lascaux, in the Dordogne, during the summer just past:

Woman Visitor (brightly, to stallholder): “We’ve come to see the cave paintings.”

Stallholder: 1 am sorry, Madame, but the cave is not open at the moment.”

Visitor (dashed, but looking at watch hopefully): “How long has it been closed?”

Stallholder: “About 16 years…”

Exit visitor, looking slightly dazed.

(Thanks for the above bit of light relief to COLIN AND ANN EVANS, who observed it)
LONDON HISTORIANS MEET

The llth Conference of London’s local historians took place at the Museum of London on Nov 17. Piece de resistance was a talk by Sir John Summerson – introduced by Chairman Max Hebditch as “our leading architectural historian” – who is Curator of the fascinating Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields as well as being author of such standard works as Georgian London and Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830. His subject was “Nash and Regents Park,” but for good measure he gave us Regent Street as well.
Page 8

Sir John’s first book, published in the 1930s, had been on Nash; but the release in the Public Record Office of the Crest documents on Nash in 1961 (Sir John paid graceful tribute to the work of Dr. Ann Saunders – a HADAS member – who in 1969 published a book on Regents Park founded on her study of those papers) provided a large amount of new material so that, as he put it, “there are now no questions about Regents Park and Regent Street which cannot, by careful study, be answered.”

Sir John took us through various changes in the plans for Regents Park from the first, in 18l1, which was a high-density development of which the Prime Minister, Spencer Percival, disapproved, to the final arrangement of the terraces and villas (only 8 of them, in the end) and the cutting in half of the southern circus, making what we know today as Park Crescent. The final part of his talk, on Regent Street, showed interesting views of the original curved colonnades of middle Regent St, demolished in the 1840s for various reasons including their use as meeting places for prostitutes and the extreme darkness of the shop windows under them. He ended with a fine modern picture of All Souls, Langham Place, “virtually the only part of the original Regent Street that survives.”

Both before the conference and during the tea break there was a chance to see exhibits staged by local historical and archaeological societies from a11 over London. The large open space behind the Museum bookstall, hitherto kept for this kind of temporary use, was alas considerably diminished, and we hope that it is not a harbinger of a future Museum policy of cutting down on space for these transient displays which so enrich conferences.

The local historians had to make do with about half the usual display area, and considering their cramped quarters they managed pretty well. There was much to see and many publications to buy. HADAS had a display, kindly loaned to us by the LBB Library Services, based on the Hendon Town Trail.

After the interval Mr N H MacMichael – who lectured to HADAS some years ago – described the material which is available to local historians in the Muniments Room of Westminster Abbey. Incidentally, his exposition of the origin of “muniment” was interesting: it derives from part of the Latin verb munire, meaning to fortify: your muniments were your fortifications against the depredations of other landlords, i.e. your documentary title to your land.

The Abbey Archives are the most complete set of records of any ecclesiastical body in this country. Because of the physical position they have always occupied in the building, the documents have been safe for many centuries from damage by either fire or flood. They are kept high up in the Abbey: as Mr. MacMichael put it, “if you come out of the Muniments Room you can look down on the High Altar on one side and Poets Corner on the other.”

The muniments deal with all the manors which, up to the Dissolution, owed allegiance to the Abbot and community of Westminster – mainly in the Home Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Berkshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, and also a pocket of lands in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Among the Middlesex papers are, of course, those of the manor of Hendon.

Estate documents form the biggest part, starting with charters that are “Saxon and Genuine” and proceeding through other charters not quite so genuine – probably 12th c versions of Saxon originals. Papers get steadily more numerous as the years roll on. In the 14th c account rolls of various monastic officials – chamberlain, almoner, refectorer – appear. There are, says Mr MacMichael, “vast untapped sources” in the papers. There is a very full index – it is possible to follow place names through or, if you know the names of families, to follow them. There is also a collection of papers from estates Westminster did not own: probably there by accident. Edmonton and Penge were mentioned.
Page 9

In addition to this reservoir of Medieval material, many more modern groups of documents are included – for instance, on the organisation and running of the Abbey; police court records; and a depressingly large number of volumes of Coroners Inquests for old Westminster from 1760-1880. These are arranged chronologically and are an untapped source of social history.

The seating in the Muniments Room is limited to 4 researchers at a time: so you are invited to make an appointment if you wish to study there. The Room is open from Monday-Friday.

Final talk of the afternoon celebrated the 250th anniversary of Putney Bridge. Billed as an essay in industrial archaeology, it in fact included early material on possible places for crossing: the river between Putney and Fulham from prehistoric times onwards, and the speaker emphasised the importance, when studying bridges, of taking into account archaeological as well as documentary sources. Evidence for ferries, from the 13th-18th c, was included: large, flat-bottomed barge like boats on Which in the 17th c, n coach and 6 horses could be accommodated; and there was interesting material on charges made from the 1500s on. In 1599 foot passengers, for instance, paid a toll of 1d.

During the Civil War a bridge of boats was built to take Commonwealth soldiers across, with a fort either end. As well as the short ferry between Putney and Fulham, a long ferry started from Putney for Westminster, and was much used because of the poor condition of the roads.

In 1671 a Bill for building a bridge was introduced into Parliament – unsuccessfully, because of lobbying by the vested interests of watermen and ferry owners; but in 1725 fresh proposals were passed and by 1729 the first Putney Bridge (of wood) spanned the Thames. There were some interesting slides of this old bridge, with a tollhouse either end and a row of triangular protuberances down each side in which foot passengers could stand while vehicles went by.

In 1882 it was decided to build a more modern structure, which was opened by The Prince of Wales; and the wooden bridge was demolished.
SOLUTION TO YOUR CHRISTMAS CARD PROBLEM?

Talking about the Hendon Town Trail – as we were a few Paragraphs ago – we thought we might suggest that this, at its low cost of 10p a copy, would bean excellent memento to sed to any friends who know or used to know Hendon – much better value than a Christmas card.

You can get the Trail from our Hon. Treasurer. Why not ask him for a bulk order, and solve at least part of your Christmas card worries?
THE EMERGENCE OF MAN

The Royal Society, in conjunction with the British Academy, is planning one of its occasional discussion meetings on this topic for March 12/13 next. The caste – if that is not too light-hearted a term to apply to some 30 top-brass of the academic world – is star-studded. The first four papers, for instance, will be delivered by three professors (two from the US, one from South Africa) plus Dr Richard Leakey (to give a practical balance) on “the evidence in the field.”
Page 10

On the first afternoon there will be a session on the evidence from teeth and another on locomotion. Dr Mary Leakey is the final speaker.

Next day’s discussion will range over Genetic considerations, the human brain and the emergence of human behaviour patterns, with papers from top scientists from various British and American universities and from the Netherlands and Northern Ireland. Full details will be obtainable from the Executive Secretary, the Royal Society, 6 Carlton House Terrace, SWl, in about 5 weeks time.
A GOLDEN JUBILEE EXHIBITION

..is being staged by Ealing and Hounslow’s Gunnersbury Park Museum from now till the and of January. This Museum, in an early 19th c mansion which once belonged to the Rothchilds, deserve to be better known. It is centred on the history of West London and Middlesex, and has reserve collections which it is happy to show to students.

The Jubilee display shows acquisitions made during each of the last five decades. The Museum is open every day (except Christmas) from 2-4. It is near the main entrance to Gunnersbury Park, at the east end of Popes Lane (nearest station, Acton Town). Admission is free.
RECENT BOOKS AND BOOKLETS

Latest publication from the Council for British Archaeology is Research Report 30 – an assessment of the Alice Holt/Farnham Roman pottery industry, by M A B Lyne & R S Jefferies. The potteries were in production almost throughout the Roman period (from 60 AD-5th a) though their heyday was the 4th c when their grey coarsewares dominated the London market. This account differentiates various groups of kilns according to locality and analyses the contents of some of the huge waster dumps. Ono chapter deals with raw materials and how the industry was organised. Illustrated with maps, diagrams and, of course, lots of pottery types. Essential reading for serious Romanists. £8.50 or £6.35 for subscribers to CBA’s consolidated subscription.

From the Edmonton Hundred Historical Society their latest Occasional Paper No 33, price 35p, People and Parish Registers, by T Lewis. This booklet is the result of years of study of the registers of Tottenham, Edmonton and Enfield, and is intended to interest both local historians of North London and historical demographers. Tables deal with age at first marriage, bridal pregnancy, infant mortality and age at death.

From the Camden History Society the annual treat of the Camden History Review. This, No. 7, is as good as the other six have been and is an excellent buy at £1, with Gillian Tindall writing on Vice and Temptation in late Victorian Camden Town, Gavin Stamp tracing the association of the Gilbert Scotts with Hampstead, the prize-winning essay in the CHS “My Street” competition and other joys.

A “stocking filler” at 70p (inc. postage) is a delicious little booklet called Animals in Early Art -26pp. of black and white photos, of animals from the Ashmolean Museum Collection – horses, lions, ducks, fish, some delicious hedgehogs and an enchanting pig.

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