Newsletter

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Two Noteworthy Dates

… on Wednesday, 8 February, HADAS will appear “on the box.” The Chronicle programme on which the West Heath dig has an 8-minute spot will be shown then on the BBC 2 — exact time as yet unspecified. The Radio Times of that week will carry further details.

… on Saturday, 4 March, the Minimart — out major fund-raising effort for 1978 — will be held at the Henry Burden Hall, Egerton Gardens, NW4, from 10.00a.m.-12.00p.m.

Full information about the stalls, plus collection details, will be given in the February newsletter. Meantime, may we suggest that over the Christmas holidays you might put aside any unwanted gifts and/or other items which would be suitable either for the Bric-a-brac stall of for “Nearly New” clothing.
Forthcoming HADAS Lectures

3 January. “A Possession for ever: the Parthenon at Athens” – Brain Cook, MA, FSA.

The 7 February lecture, HADAS’s first for many years on Latin American Archaeology, will be given by the P.B. Barnes, MA, on the Pre-Colombian Cultures of Mexico. Mr Barnes is Secretary of the Association for Cultural Exchange; in that capacity he has made a wide study of South and Central America, where he often acts as guide to archaeological parties.

7 March. The Meaning and per Person of English Wall Paintings – E. Clive Rouse, MBE, FSA.

4 April. Excavations in South West London — Scott McCracken.

Lectures are at Central Library, The Burroughs, NW4 on the first Tuesday of the month, starting with coffee at 8.00p.m.

Monday 15 May. HADAS Annual General Meeting at Central Library, 8.00p.m.
Other HADAS Events

Saturday 21 January. Surveying session, with Barrie Martin, at West Heath. Meet 10.00a.m. at the Pond site.

Sunday 29 January. Field walking at Bury Farm, Edgware, on a field we have not yet sampled. Meet at 10.00a.m. in Edgwarebury Lane at its junction with Clay Lane, which is a wide foot path on the right hand side of Edgwarebury Lane just before the Bury Farm buildings. Shiela Woodward is organising this walk, but as she is not on the telephone it would be very helpful if members would ring Brigid Grafton Green and let her know if they intend coming.

Saturday 11 February. Probable surveying session with Mr Martin at St. Joseph’s Convent, Hendon, 10.00a.m. This arrangement is conditional upon the Convent giving permission; final details in the next newsletter. It is planned to record a large mound (origin at the moment unknown) in the Convent grounds.
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Weekend 18/19 February. Processing of West Heath finds at the Teahouse, Hampstead Garden Suburb, from 10.00a.m.-5.00p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Elizabethan banquet at Hatfield Palace

By Lily Lewy.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I spent many happy years here as a child, and a less happy term of uneasy internment during the turbulent reign of her sister, Mary Tudor. Most of the palace was torn down by Robert Cecil when he built his new mansion Hatfield House nearby (E-shaped as a compliment to his Queen), but the Great Hall remains, with its steeply pitched timbered roof whose supports seem to spring from quaintly carved corbels, and its walls hung with good stout twills printed with curious designs of dragons and exotic plants. And here we latter-day Elizabethans gathered to take part in a banquet. (How the real Elizabeth would have envied the least of us, who had made our way, on a rainy December night, from Hendon to Hatfield, dry-shod, with not a hair out of place, within less than an hour!)

From the dais within the Great Hall a lady impersonating Gloriana directed to the entertainment provided by a group of minstrels was who sang both loud and clear, frequently becoming audible above the hubbub created by members of HADAS and their guests (some 200 in all) and an additional 60 policemen, also wassailing. Her Master of Ceremonies schooled us in the art of applauding the Tudor style (you bang your fist on the board), instructed us in the aphrodisiac properties of that rare and costly commodity, salt, and told the men to break the bread for all to share has a sign of male dominance.

“Her Majesty” calling for a taster to see whether her wine was safe for her to drink, no less than 9 gallants made their way to the dais and were each rewarded with a fearsomely resounding case. Then the wine flowed without stint, and so did delicious flowery-scented mead.

The feast followed, beginning with stout pottery jugs full of steaming hot and savoury broth. How the eyes of HADAS members gleamed, as at a glance they assessed the age and provenance of each remarkably well-preserved vessel! Herring and Venison, Sallets and Gypsy Cake followed in due order, with Cheese and Coffee to conclude the repast. And the entertainment continued with singing and dancing and the Death of the Dragon at the hands of St. George, admirably performed.

It was a stroke of genius that prompted “Her Majesty” to knight by our own John Enderby, threatening him with the capitation as she administered the accolade. Creating him Knight of the Garter, moreover, so that duly robed in stately gown and cap he was forced to fumble for the Garter among the many-layered skirts of one of the comely Court ladies! How sad that the trophy of his gallantry proved to be but a modern imitation, no circlet of blue velvet embroidered with costly jewels.

It is not possible to list all the joys of the evening, but sovereign among them must be “Her Majesty’s” sad-visaged jester who walked on stilts, tumbled, juggled, ate fire and performed many feats of sleight of hand, not only from the safe height of the dais, but “below the salt,” where “Her Majesty’s” lesser subjects were enjoying every moment.

Our thanks go to Dorothy Newbury who, as usual, performed the feats of impeccable organisation that we have come — almost — to take for granted; and to her able lieutenants who looked after the passengers in the individual horseless conveyances.

We can’t wait to see what HADAS’s Christmas outing will be in 1978!
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The Burnt Stone Project

Here Myfanwy Stewart provides an insight into the work she has been doing on some of the material from West Heath.

When we began at the dig at West Heath last year, questions came thick and fast over the fence. They varied from the affable “Got a dinosaur there?” to the somewhat belligerent “Who’s paying for this lot, then?” Another frequent inquiry was “Do you think anyone lived here?” The burnt stone project attempts to throw some light on the last question.

In the earliest stages of the dig we noticed both reddened stones and the crazed white stones sometimes called “pot boilers.” Both were believed to be the result of exposure to fire. Material found in the top layer of the excavation could well be the result of modern picnic fires. Burnt stone found in the lower levels, however, might be evidence of ancient hearths.

It was decided to attempt to trace the centres of fires, where temperatures were highest, out to their cooler parameters. We knew that the white crazed stone was the result of high temperatures but were unsure of the heat required to produce the different shades of orange and red, which might indicate in the outer areas of the fires.

The Fire Research Station packed Borehamwood was consulted. They said that little work had been done on the effect of heat on flint, but sent us an HMSO publication on the “Investigation of Building Fires,” which dealt with aggregates containing flint. This confirmed that the development of the red colour “corresponds with the dehydration of the iron compounds and that its presence is a reliable indication that the sample has been heated to a temperature of at least 250°-300°C — the higher temperature with shorter heating periods.” At the other end of the scale, calcined white crazed opaque stone results from temperatures above 575°C; its more friable quality is the result of the expansion of quartz grains and the inversion subsequently of the alpha and beta forms.

We had pictured mesolithic hunters grouped around their open wood fires and wondered if temperatures above 575°C were possible in those pre-pottery times, when presumably the use of forced draught to produce high temperatures was unknown. The Fire Research Station reassured us and said that the red embers would be about 600°-700°C, while yellow embers or flames would be a great deal hotter. So if concentrations of white crazed stones were found in archaeologically interesting levels, they might indicate the centres of ancient fires. Similarly, quantities of red stones might be evidence of the outer limits.

We saw that there were many shades of red burnt stone ranging from orange to dark ox-liver red. As we had little idea of how long it would take to produce any colour change, I decided to do some preliminary experiments at home. Might domestic oven can produce a temperature of 285°C and so could be used.

The most common type of stone on the site is yellow, opaque and chert-like. Samples were used in the tests, together with examples of the hard glassy grey flint similar to that used by the mesolithic people of West East in their tool making.

It was not without some trepidation that work began and continued.
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Loud bangs shattered the Sunday calm and while I reassured my incredulous family that all was well, I wondered privately how much of the glass oven door would cost to replace. The dogs wisely took refuge under the table.

Miraculously nothing shattered except for family nerves and we had some results. Within 2 hours the yellow flint was veined with orange, in 4 hours it was a definite red and in 7 hours it was a dark liver read. The hard grey flint was unchanged. Temperatures of 600°C were required for tests to produce the crazed white flint. As a result of HADAS member Alec Gouldsmith’s powers of persuasion, Johnson Mathey Chemicals generously undertook a series of tests for which they made no charge. After 17 hours at 600°C the stone, although calcined, was a pinky-orange and a further 17 hours was required to produce the white crazed flint similar to that found in the excavation.

Thus we were able to make up a “shade chart” which indicated the degrees of heat to which stones had been subjected. Three shades of red obtained in the kitchen tests were used for lightly burnt flint; 2 types of calcined stone for the highly burnt flint. When processing began, every burnt stone found in the season’s dig was colour matched to our samples, and an attempt was made to build an overall picture of the fires on the site.

We cannot claim that clearly separate areas of light, medium or heavy burning are to be found. However, interesting concentrations were apparent. By far the most burnt area of the site was the southwest corner. Evidence of burning increased the further down we dug. In one south west trench the total number of calcined stones far exceeded those in any other and this appears to be the centre of a fire. Extensive burning was seen in the north east of the site and again in one trench on the south.

A most interesting fact is that the main areas of burning are not those in which possible postholes were found. This brings us back to the question “Did anyone live here?” In view of the enormous numbers of man-struck flakes that were found in 1976, the even greater number in 1977, the evidence of possible postholes and the evidence of burning, we may well be justified in believing that we are indeed excavated a dwelling site — though it may be a seasonal one.

This season’s processing is still in the earliest stages. Nevertheless, once again areas of heavy burning of becoming apparent, especially in the northeast of the site. A further report will be made when this later evidence has been sifted and started.
Exhibitions, Conferences and Courses

At Church Farm House Museum until 8 January (not 1/2 January) a phographic exhibition on their history of Hendon Errors Road, 1910-57. An excellent catalogue gives an outline history of this Mecca of flying.

Tuesday, 7 February, at City University, Northampton Square, EC1: one-day conference on the Materials in Archaeology, organised by the Materials Science Club, starting at 10.30a.m. Subjects to be discussed include Roman Silver plate, armour penetration, papyrus, the swordsmith in antiquity, bone in archaeological time, wood from archaeological sites, Highgate pottery, analysis of ancient metal objects, ancient bronzes, third century development of coinage alloys, pottery under the electron microscope and how soil alters buried materials.

Conference fee £4, including coffee, tea and buffet lunch with wine. Non– members may attend free. Further details from David Price Williams, City University.
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Saturday 18 March: all-day Conference of London Archaeologists, organised by the LAMAS that Museum of London. Further details next month.

Cambridge University has recently sent us their list of next year’s extra-mural residential courses at Madingley Hall — one of the most attractive and historically-interesting adult colleges, in a beautiful setting 4 miles from Cambridge. An interesting innovation is a “Family Weekend” from July 28-30, on archaeology, natural and local history, to be conducted by David Dymond, Roland Randall and David Trump. It is described as “an opportunity for parents to bring older children to Madingley for a study weekend.”

Other courses are:

Feb. 24-26. Interpretations of Air Photographs, with Prof. J. K. St. Joseph amd Dr. Trump.

June 16-18. Hedgerows and hedgerow dating, with Roland Randall.

Two linked weekends, June 2=30-Julyu 2, and Sept 29-Oct. 1, with Lionel Munby, on discovering that the history of a family and uncovering the history of a house.

Further details of all Madingley courses from the Director of Extra-mural Studies, Madingley Hall, Cambridge, CB3 8AQ.
Thanks where Thanks are Due

As another year ends, the editor of the Newsletter would like to thank all those who have made it possible were during 1977 for the Newsletter – HADAS’s main line of communication with its ever-growing membership — to reach you in the first week of each month.

First, thanks to many contributors, who come up smiling whenever they are asked to write for HADAS. A refusal to do so is very rare, and this willing response makes the editor’s job of much easier.

Then thanks to Irene Frauchiger, who gives our duplicator a home (and it’s not everyone who would tolerate a large and messy object like that around the place) and rolls off the stencils each month; and to Trudi Pulfer, who so willingly helps with the job of collating and stapling hundreds of pages, so that you can read them in good order.

Thanks also to Jeremy Clynes, who keeps our mailing list trim and up-to-date; and to Raymond Lowe, who looks after our addressing machine and produces the hundreds of envelopes we need to each month.

Last — but certainly not least — thanks to Harry Lawrence, on whom newsletters, insertions and envelopes converge from all sides, and who then “stuffs” and stamps the envelopes, agonises over the posting of them and whether you will get yours in time, and even delivers some 30 or 40 by hand, thus saving the Society, over the year, a pretty penny.

It’s a good team, it works hard, and HADAS is truly grateful.
Sewer Vent Pipes

Our Industrial Archaeology organiser, Bill Firth, was asked about sewer vent pipes by a HADAS member at the Research Tea on 20 November. Unfortunately he has mislaid the name of the member. Would whoever was concerned kindly give him a ring?
Man before Metals

A report by Audrey Hooson.

Early man returned recently to the British Museum with the opening of “Man Before Metals,” a permanent exhibition replacing the old First Prehistory room.
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As well as familiar exhibits like the Folkton Drums (from a Bronze Age round barrow near Filey, Yorkshire) and finds from Grimes Graves, Star Carr and the Swiss Lake sites, there are many interesting new showcases. These include one on the development of stone tools, which starts with pebble chopping tools from Olduvai and ends with mesolithic tools from Farnham in Surrey. “Working in Flint,” with experimental flint work by a Dr Mark Newcomer, includes a fascinating “Core’s View” of the sequential removal of flakes to form a hand axe. “The Search for Rare Materials” shows good samples and artefacts of jadeite, rock crystal, amber and other material was traded by neolithic man.

The exhibition is spaciously arranged and the lighting is good. However, I felt that it could do with better labelling — for instance, the same grave goods from the Barnack Grave seen to be shown in two different places at once, without reference to one or the other (or both) being a copy. The gallery is certainly worth a visit — even for non-devotees of prehistory — to look at the Palaeolothic carvings; and you get a wonderful aerial view of the Hinton St. Mary fourth century Roman pavement below, thrown in for good measure.
Diploma Exam Papers

Many HADAS members are making their way steadily through the four years of the London University External Diploma in Archaeology. They may like to know that copies of recent examination papers in each of the four years or kindly donated to the Society by John Cundy before he left England a few months ago to live in Australia. The papers, which are launched in the book box, or are:

1st Year: Archaeology of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Man: 1969-1972 inc.

2nd Year: Archaeology of Western Asia: 1969-1971 inc & 1973.

3rd Year: Prehistoric Europe: 1969-1974 inc (duplicates of 1970-71).

Final Year: (2 papers for each option each year):

(a) Egyptology 1969-1971 inc.

(b) Roman Britain 1968-70 inc.

(c) Prehistoric Britain 1969-1974 inc (duplicates of 1969-71).

If exams are looming ahead in May, how about borrowing some of these from our Hon. librarian, George Ingram?
Additions to the Bookbox

(References on left are to categories and numbers on the Hon. Librarian’s master list)
Rom. Brit 149 Fishbourne – the Roman Palace and its History
Arch. Foreign F.27 Middle America – Archaeological Map
F.28 Greek & Roman Life – guide to exhibition at British Museum, 1908
F.29 Soc for Libyan Studies, Annual Reports 1969-1975.
F.30 Iranian Art and Archaeology – Vth International Congress

Newsletter

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HADAS now has 400 members — a landmark in the history of any society, and one which we passed a few weeks ago. The Newsletter sends Christmas greetings to each and every one of that happy 400, and a wishes them a rewarding, fortunate and prosperous 1978.
Last Word on Hatfield

… is that the times for joining the respective coaches will be as follows:
COACH A COACH B COACH C COACH D
The Quadrant, Classic Cinema, Refectory, Royal Oak,
Hendon NW4 Colindale Golders Green Temple Fortune
7.00 p.m. 7.00 p.m. 7.00 p.m. 7.00 p.m.
Greenshield Smiths, Barnet, Victoria Park,
Showroom, opposite Ballards Lane
Edgware Road Salisbury Hotel
7.10-7.15 pm 7.20-7.30 pm 7.10-7.15 pm
Waitrose Stores,
Whetstone
7.25 pm

Note: times of second and third pick-ups must be approximate, as they depend upon the state of traffic. PLEASE BE PUNCTUAL AT YOUR PICK-UP POINT.

200 members will be coming to the Banquet: but Dorothy reckons she could fit in up to eight more people if anyone has a last-minute urge to join us.

Dress will be informal. Tickets will be distributed on the coaches, except for those travelling by car, who will received theirs in the post.

Happy banqueting!
Post Christmas Programme

There will be one change in arrangements for lectures after Christmas. Mr P.B. Barnes, who was to have spoken to us in January on South American Archaeology, has unexpectedly to go abroad early in the New Year. We have accordingly, with the kind co-operation of Brian Cook, swapped the January and February lectures.

Mr Cook, of the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum, will therefore be talking to us on Tuesday 3 January on a subject dear to the heart of most archaeologists — “a Possession for ever: the Parthenon at Athens.” That title speaks for itself, and needs no introduction.

Lectures on Tuesdays at central library, The Burroughs, NW4. We start at 8.00p.m. with coffee; the lecture begins at 8.30. The remainder of the winter programme will be:
Feb. 7 1978 – Archaeology of Peru (or Mexico) – P. Barnes, MA
Mar. 7 1978 – Meaning and Purpose of English Wall Paintings – E. Clive Rouse, MBE, FSA
Apr. 4 1978 – Excavations in South West London – Scott McCracken

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Members may like to note in their new diaries that the annual general meeting will take place on Monday 15 May, 1978, at Central Library at 8.00p.m.
On Holiday with HADAS

“Speed Bonny boat like a bird on the wing, over the sea to — Orkney.”

Arrangements for one-week trip to Orkney on now all but finalised — the “but” being British rail’s inability to provide summer schedules and prices until next April.

We plan a 9.00p.m. start from Euston on Friday 7 July with sleeper, to arrive Inverness at 8.00 am on Saturday 8 July. An hour or two to stretch our legs and perhaps have breakfast, before leaving at 10.00a.m. for a meandering train ride along the coast and through the wild mountains of Northern Scotland to Thurso.

We board the St. Ola at Scrabster, where Daphne Lorimer will be awaiting us, for a two-hour trip over the Pentland Firth to Stromness. Daphne will point out the beautiful coastline of Hoy, with its spectacular rock stack, “The Old Man,” St. John’s Head, the second highest headland in Britain, Rackwick Bay, etc. A bus will meet us at the harbour and take us to our hostel for supper.

From then on we shall be in Daphne his hands. She is arranging the itinerary, as Orkney is her second home and there is nothing new she likes better than showing of its archaeological treasures and scenic beauties. She hopes to enlist, as necessary, the help of other guides, and to arrange some evening functions: lectures and possibly music.

Sites we hope to see include the famous Neolithic village at Skara Brae, chambered tombs, henges, brochs, Viking Settlements, fairy-tale Stuart castles, the Cathedral, museums and some of the more modern architectural achievements of the Orkneys. We shall be going to other islands, either by boat or across the wartime Churchill barriers. We also have an invitation from the Lorimers to visit them in their Orkney home, an old Scottish manse with lovely views over Scapa Flow. We will leave early Saturday 15 July, arriving Euston early Sunday morning, 16 July.

Accommodation will be in double and treble rooms, with a limited number of singles, in the newly built school hostel in Kirkwall which caters in term time for children coming in from smaller islands. The price, to include train fare, sleepers, or travel throughout our stay, and full board bracket (food on outward and return journeys excluded) will be about £98.50 (this costing includes the estimated rise in fares). If you wish to join this exhibition, please fill in the enclosed application form and send to Dorothy Newbury with a £10 per percent deposit by 18 January, 1978.
Important West Heath Find: A Hearth

Report by Daphne Lorimer.

Defeated at last by the weather, digging finished at West Heath on 5 November. During the season 96 members took part at one time or another; although the area excavated was smaller than last year, it was much richer in finds, indicating that we are probably moving towards the centre of the encampment area.
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The end of the season also saw a discovery, in Trench XM, of a hearth — the first major feature of the West Heath site. This appeared as a blackened area, about 1 m square, in the lower levels of the North-West quarter of the trench. The unburnt soil above contained many flakes and blades. The hearth was rich in charcoal and one sample has already yielded over 5 grams of pure carbon — quite enough for C14 dating, for which arrangements are being made. The section exposed at the side of the trench showed an area of reddened burnt soil at the bottom of the hearth.

The hearth was examined by Jane Fox, from Martin Aitkin’s Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at Oxford. Samples are to be taken for thermoluminesence dating and magnetic density. Alastair Bartlett from the Department of the Environment examined the site with a magnetometer in an effort to locate other hearths; his results may help determine the area for excavation in the 1978 season.

The exposed hearth was vulnerable to weathering and vandalism, so it was felt that back filling on top of it might not provide sufficient protection for what may well prove to be a unique find and the only opportunity to obtain a positive date for the site. For this reason it was decided to lift the hearth. HADAS was fortunate in obtaining the advice and assistance of Paul Burford, a post-graduate student working in the conservation department of the Institute of Archaeology.

The area surrounding the hearth was gridded and the soil around it lifted and placed in numbered bags for subsequent examination. The hearth itself was then enclosed in a stout wooden frame of 2 inch timber provided by Dave King, and its surface covered with metal foil. Wooden battens were screwed into place at intervals over the top, and all the interstices within the frame were filled with polyurethene foam — proceedings reminiscent of spine-chilling episodes of science fiction!

The polyurethene was left for eighteen hours to harden. The hearth, in its frame, was then cut from the soil like a slice of cheese, a wire hawser being pulled through the base by a one and a quarter ton winch. Metal strips were inserted in the wake of a wire and were afterwards used by seven strong men and true (including the Director) to tip the encased hearth into a vertical position. It was then gently lowered onto its face onto metal rollers, which we used to run it up builders’ boards into a waiting truck supplied by Dave King.

The hearth is now safely ensconced in the Park Superintendent’s garage at Golders Hill Park, and its lower surface (now uppermost) has been covered with polythene in order to slow down the process of drying out. Before being cut from the earth, the magnetic North was marked on quick drying cement let into the polyurethene foam and, using a flat metal disc and a spirit level, a flat surface 6 in. in diameter was made on the cement for subsequent study of the magnetic declination.

The whole exercise provided an exciting finish to a rewarding season, and HADAS has reason to be grateful to many people who have given time and skill to enable the maximum amount of information to be wrung from this Mesolithic site. The discovery of a possible Mesolithic hearth is sufficiently rare to be of note, and we can now hope that positive dating of the site will be obtained.
Parish Registers of Hendon St. Mary’s

In Newsletter 79 we mentioned that the Borough Libraries Department had asked the GLC for microfilm copies of the parish registers of St. Mary’s to be lodged in the Local History Collection at Central Library for the use of research workers. We are happy to report that microphone copies of the earlier registers are now also launched, as follows:
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ROLL 1. Register of Baptisms 1653-1743
Marriages 1654-1743
Burials 1653-1678
Baptisms 1743-1812
Marriages 1744-1762
ROLL 2 Register of Marriages 1754-1781
Burials 1678-1785
Burials 1786-1812
ROLL 3 Register of Burials 1813-1838

Copies of the later registers (baptisms from 1812-1946, marriages from 1781-1949 and burials from 1838-1953) have not yet reached our library. We have asked the Borough Librarian (whose help in this matter has been greatly appreciated by HADAS) if he will kindly make arrangements for microfilm of later registers to be made, to complete the record; we hope that this may be done in the reasonably near future.
Welcome to 66 New Members

— who have joined HADAS since July. It is good news that almost a quarter of them are under 18, and we particularly welcome our largest family so far: Dad-plus-five, who joined in September! Our new members are:

Phyllis Altman, Hampstead; Marion Babbington, Hendon; Charles Bacon, HGS; R.J. Ballheimer, Golders Green; Ann Barrett and Julian, Colindale; Marion Berry, HGS; Christopher Bradshaw, NW1; Lynn Bright, Temple Fortune; Martin Butcher, N. Finchley; Mrs. & Miss Canniford, Edgware; Simon Coleman, Stanmore; Harold Cover, E. Barnet; Mrs. Craddock, HGS; A.H. Creighton and John, Mill Hill; James Docherty, HGS; Patricia Edwards, S. Norwood; Vania Ermolly, Edgware; Barry Feinberg & Nicholas & Daniel, Temple Fortune; Dr. E.B. Finch, Golders Green; Beth Gevell, Kenton; A.H. Gordon, Hendon; Peter Goulde, Edgware; Francis Grew, Finchley; Miss Gwyther, HGS; Maxine Hamilton, Highgate; Eileen Haworth, Willesden; Dr. Betty Jacobs, HGS; Mrs. Jampel, HGS; Shirley Korn, Maida Vale; Mary Lawson-Tancred, Kensington; John Lloyd, HGS; Miss B. McClane, New Barnet; Barbara McTeare, Finchley; Peter & Miss Marsh, Mill Hill; Dr. & Mrs. Michaels, Stanmore; Mr. Moriarty, HGS; Helena Nash, HGS; Laurie Neill, NW6; Lesley O’Connell, Kingsbury; Cordelia Pendse, Hendon; Kaye Perryman, Mill Hill; Stephen Petrie, E. Finchley; Helen Pickering, N. Finchley; A.J.W. Reeve, Mill Hill; Derrick Smith, Childs Hill; Miss T.R. Smith, Ealing; Sally Spiller, HGS; Taqui Stephens, WC2; Robert Stephenson & family, Hampstead; Diana Tallon, Muswell Hill; Sandra & Susan Unerman, Mill Hill; S.G. Waite, Essex; Gerty Webber, Golders Green.
Tea and Research – HADAS-Style

November saw two highly successful processing weekends at Hampstead Garden Suburb Teahouse, when much backroom work was done on finds from the digs at West Heath, Church Terrace and Burroughs Gardens.

The last weekend culminated in the Research Tea on 20 November, when 8 members who are engaged in particular research projects “cried their wares” and sought to enlist volunteers for their pet projects. Even if at times the Teahouse seemed a bit like Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, the tubs were thumped to good effect. HADAS members turned up in force and a number of new volunteers came forward for research work.
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The Edgware project (a study of the Edgware area in depth, requiring a both field workers and documentary researchers), the Dissenters Burial Ground project in Totteridge (where the field work has already been done but more documentary work is needed) and the Friern Barnet churchyard recording (not due to begin until after Christmas) all reported steady recruitment of new helpers.

One project — the parish boundary survey — even acquired a new organiser. Paddy Musgrove, who has nursed this project from outset, has long wished to hand over its administration, although he intends to continue his own work on the Finchley part of it; at the Teahouse he enlisted a new HADAS member, Peter Griffiths — a welcome addition to the ranks of active researchers — as organiser.

The leaders all the projects announced themselves as satisfied with the way the afternoon had gone; and everyone was more than satisfied with Christine Arnott excellent tea: it’s surprising what a major a little research can put on your appetite!

Only sad note in the afternoon was the absence of George Ingram, who had intended to tell us about his work on nonconformist church records in the Borough. He fell at home the night before, and was laid low with a possible cracked rib. We missed him very much, and wish him a speedy recovery.

In case you didn’t get to the Teahouse and would like to help with their win to work, these are the projects on tap, with the names of those in charge of them. Please ring or write and volunteer: you will be very welcome:
Edgware project – Sheila Woodward
Dissenters Burial Ground – Daphne Lorimer
Friern Barnet churchyard recording – Ann Trewick
Hendon St. Mary’s churchyard recording – Ted Sammes
Industrial Archaeology – Bill Firth
Farm Building Survey – Nigel Harvey
Parish Boundary Survey – Peter Griffiths
Resistivity Metering – Raymond Lowe
New Courses Coming Up

Members may like to be reminded of the one-term course in Classical Archaeology starting at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute on Monday 9 January, 8.00-9.30p.m.. There are still places available on it. The lecturer will be Dr. Malcolm Colledge, who last year provided HADAS with such a graphic picture of Pompeii. Both subject and lecturer was suggested by the Society, so we hope that the course will be well supported by members.

Also interest will be the ten Thursday lectures on Recent Research in European Prehistory, starting at the Institute of Archaeology on 12 January at 7.00p.m. — season ticket £3.50, individual lectures 40p payable at the door. Five lecturers have so far accepted: R. Roddon, on Balkan Neolithic (19 January); Ian Kinnes, North European Neolithic (26 January); Tony Legge, Prehistoric European Agriculture (9 February); R. Harrison, Cross-channel EBA Contacts (16 February); Prof. Megaw, Iron Age Art (16 March). The University hopes that the opening lecture will be on the Mesolithic.

Finally, news of a HADAS walk: Bill Firth, our Industrial Archaeology organiser, will lead a walk around the perimeter of the Midland Railway’s Brent Yard on Sunday 15 January. Meet at Cricklewood Station at 10.30a.m. All members of HADAS welcome.
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Silchester

A review of Dr. Michael Fullford’s November lecture, by Helen Gordon.

Silchester is of particular interest because, of all towns in the Roman Empire, it is second only to Pompeii in the completeness of its excavation; secondly, because this has revealed in some detail the Romanisation of a native British agricultural community; and thirdly, because of its connection with the fascinating Quisling, King Cogidubnus, and his ill-gained Fishbourne Palace; or, to put it differently, the forward-looking Client-King, who early recognised the advantages of Pax Romana. The effect of Roman civilisation is cynically described thus by Tacitus:

“… to accustom (the people) to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities… that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively… the population was gradually led into the demoralising temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as “civilisation, “when in fact they were feature only of their enslavement.”

Silchester’s history illustrates this Romanisation; Cogidubnus most probably spent considerable time in exile in Rome before he became king.

Dr. Fulford’s lecture brought up to date the account of the excavations, originally started in the 1860s by the Rev. James Joyce and continued by many others since. Unfortunately much dating evidence was lost because of the earliness of the first investigations. Dr. Fulford’s recent work examined the south and south-east gates and a small area of the forum, to determine the extent of plough damage (there was none). His excellent slides illustrated the town with its series of fortifications, forum, basilica, baths, inn, Christian church, etc.

Originally an iron age oppidum lay on the site. The first town defence, the inner earthwork, based on the reign of Cogidubnus, and since its east and west entrances are lined on the strategic Roman road from London to the west, it must have been built after the conquest. It was flattened about 50 AD, but a second outer defence, encompassing 95 hectares, had to be built at the time of the Boudiccan rebellion. The dwellings enclosed in this were largely scattered agricultural units. The forum and baths were built at this time, and when a proper Roman Street Grid was laid down, probably after Cogidunus’ death, these buildings had to be adapted to the new plan.

In the late second century stone walls were erected, probably as a safety measure when Clodius Albinus withdrew troopers in AD 196/7. This tremendous work required some 45,000 wagon loads of Cotswold limestone and 105,000 loads of flint. An earth fortification had earlier been constructed, and Dr Fulford’s work on the south gate showed that free-standing stone gateways had been erected prior to the earthwork. Of particular interest was the south east gate, commonly described as a sluicegate. Dr Fulford believes the “sluicegate” timbers to be those of the bridge.

Silchester was last occupied in the fifth century, and now little remains but the walls. However, aerial photography indicates that many areas previously thought empty contained dwellings which still remain to be excavated.

Newsletter

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Recent Research at West Heath

Last month HADAS held its first symposium, in order to provide a progress report for members on the results and implications, so far, of the West Heath dig. Below HELEN O’BRIEN describes the proceedings:

The West Heath Symposium took place at the Bigwood House, Hampstead Garden Suburb, on 15 October, shared by the Director of the dig, Desmond Collins. He warned us that, although progress reports on the last two years’ excavations were about to be given, any conclusions, especially regarding the 1977 material, must be provisional.

He showed slides of both the Pond and Spring sites (the former dug in 1976 and 1977, the latter trial-trenched in 1976 and dug this year). At the Spring site a large area had been exposed by a Hymac mechanical digger, in order to obtain the longest possible sequence of environmental samples. Only two worked flakes and the core were recovered from this site: not true evidence of occupation.

Comparing the successive digs at the Pond site, Mr Collins said that the number of tools found in 1977 was as high as in 1976, but was concentrated in a rich area of half the size, on the east of the site.

HADAS member Alec Jeakins then described his discovery of the Pond site in 1973, and showed the exact spot where the first worked flint was found.
Evidence of Pollen

Richard Hubbard (Institute of Archaeology) next reported on the pollen spectrum from the Pond site. He explained the difficulty of recovering pollen from soil, as compared with doing so from the well-stratified peat deposits of the Spring site. He stressed that although the present acidic podsol at West Heath is entirely free of earthworms, there had been disturbance by worm action in the past. Partly for these reasons he described the analysis of 27 samples taken at 2 cm intervals from modern ground surface downwards as “disappointing and not of vast antiquity” — probably dating from the Bronze and Iron Ages. The pollen indicates an open landscape with 20% grasses and a slightly higher percentage of heather, from which acidic root secretion has formed the present podsol. Birch, lime and alder were also represented.

Maureen Girling (Department of Environment) then reported on her work at the Spring site, and on that of her colleague, James Greig (Birmingham University). Samples had been taken at 5 cm intervals to a depth of 130 cm. She explained the difficulties of dating these until James Greig’s pollen analysis established the zone of elm decline. It was then possible to attribute material below this level to the Mesolithic. Miss Girling described last year’s investigations — now published in Nature — which have established the Neolithic-to-Iron Age environments at West Heath. The combined pollen and entomological evidence for the Mesolithic deposits show “a mature forest, compact but not close, dominated by deciduous trees – lime, oak but also some pine and holly.” There were few grasses, but marshy areas occurred which probably provided water for Mesolithic man.
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Dr Joyce Roberts, botanist and keen HADAS bigger, next spoke of the environmental evidence, which is recovered today from the pond site trenches. Because of the acid soil, organic decay is rapid; only charcoal survives over a long period, other finds are relatively modern. Entomological material includes root galls of the Cynipid Wasp and clay “pots” of the hairy solitary bee.

One of the provisions laid down, at the request of various environmental groups, when HADAS was given permission to dig out West Heath was that the Society should provide surveys of modern insect and botanical life on the Heath. As a part of this work, Raymond Lowe showed a number of beautiful slides which he has taken of butterflies. The symposium adjourned after this for a delicious tea, organised by Dorothy Newbury, Betty Clinch and Irene Frauchiger.
Possible Postholes

The conference resumed with Brigid Grafton Green’s description of recording possible postholes. These usually appear as pale circles 5-10 cm across, at about 15 cm below modern ground surface. 56 appeared during the first season, but only 33 were considered worth casting — the remainder were probably due to root or animal action. There seem to be two areas of concentration, distinct from the areas where burnt material is found. A point has now been reached in this year’s dig where possible postholes are again beginning to appear.

Myfanwy Stewart then outlined her investigation of burnt material. By experiment and consultation with the Fire Research Council she and Alec Gouldsmith have been able to determine the visible effects of heat on stone and flint in the kind of open fire which could have been used by Mesolithic man: at 250-300°C the material reddens, at about 500°C it becomes calcined. Five stages of burning may be recognised. Charts showing the concentrations of 1976 burnt material have been compiled.

Describing the typology of West Heath, Desmond Collins said it most closely resembled the Maglemosian material from Broxbourne, dated by C14 dating to the first quarter of the Mesolithic — 8000-7500 BC. Summarising the tool types recovered over both seasons he said the highest percentage were of oblique and dorsal backed points. Geometric forms, characteristic of the later Mesolithic, were minimal.

Loretta Gevell and Margaret Maher showed that serious research can go hand-in-hand with a light-hearted approach. They presented the results of their work on cores — including study of the quality of the material, methods of working, number of striking platforms, etc — with wit and humour, concluding with the intriguing suggestion that it may be possible to determine areas of good and poor quality knapping from the variable appearance of their cores.

An account by Daphne Lorimer followed of her investigations into flint wear patterns. Recent work by Lawrence Keeley and Mark Newcomer has shown it is possible to relate wear patterns to use when flint is examined microscopically. Following preliminary experiments by HADAS members on cutting meat, vegetable, bone, etc, Mrs. Lorimer has continued to experiment by shaping birch and pinewood — such as may have been used in the West Heath postholes. Photographs of the flint were taken before and after use, and it is hoped that for the work will establish a reference framework for wear patterns.

Sheila Woodward then explained the significance at a Mesolithic site of “manuports,” the travelling range of prehistoric man. Unfortunately, despite promising material, she was advised by the Geological Museum that all the 1976 “manuports” were pebble gravels and local to the Heath. Fragmentary ochre is also appearing in the trenches and although this is known to originate in the nearby stream, it may prove of some significance in the final interpretation.
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Christine Arnott gave an account of studies at the British Museum by a group of HADAS members, peering West Heath material without from Broxbourne and High Beech. Broxbourne is closer to typologically and also has evidence of fires and calcined flint. High Beech, discovered by Hazeldine Warren in 1913, has never been published. Unlike West Heath, this assemblage includes an axe and fabricators.

Barrie Martin then briefly described the equipment and methods of surveying used at West Heath; and Dave King rounded things off with an exposition, on slide, on the theme of site-hut simplicity. He showed us his easy-to-erect “executive” hut, where processing is done, and the “bivouac” for keeping equipment dry — two invaluable additions which he has made this year to HADAS’s equipment.

In conclusion Desmond Collins spoke of future plans: possibly two further seasons’ digging within the fenced area. As total excavation is currently fashionable, however, investigations beyond the pale could continue into the 1980s!
Looking Ahead

Tues, Nov. 1. HADAS lecture at Central Library, The Burroughs, nw4 at 8 pm. Dr. Michael Fulford on Roman Silchester.

Sat. Nov. 5. Please note that the surveying session for this date will not now take place as Barrie Martin cannot make it. The session will be re-arranged later, and members will be informed of the new date.

Weekends of Nov. 11/12 and 18/19. processing at the Teahouse, North Way, Hampstead Garden suburb, from 10.00a.m.-5.00p.m. each day. All volunteers welcome. In addition, on Sunday 19 November, between 2.00 and 4.30p.m. this winter’s research projects will be discussed fully with all who wish to take part. And there will be a good tea!

Wed. Dec. 7. ELIZABETHAN BANQUET AT HATFIELD HOUSE. Will members who have booked for this event please remit the balance of £6.80 per person by 15 November at latest, as payment has to be made by the Society three weeks in advance?

It is most important that you feeling your chosen departure point on the form attached to this Newsletter and return it as soon as possible. There are ten places left if any member still wishes to book.

DURING NOVEMBER on Wednesdays and at the weekends of November 5/6, 26/7 — if weather permits. Members can check the position about digging with either Daphne Lorimer or Brigid
Conference Of Local Historians

This annual conference, sponsored by the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, will be held this year for the first time at the Museum of London on Saturday 19 November. Doors open at 1.30 and the conference begins at 2.30.
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Colin Sorensen, Keeper of the Museum’s Modern Department, will describe the problems of creating his part of the new Museum; after tea the Conference will discuss Oral History and tape-recording. Various local societies, including HADAS will mount exhibitions.

Tickets (£0.80 including tea) are obtainable from the LAMAS Local History Committee.
Additions to the Bookbox

(References on left are to categories and numbers on the Hon. Librarian’s master list)

Anthrop 4 Ramapithecus (rep from Scientific American May 1977 Elwyn L. Simmons
5 Archaeology of Early man. J.M. Coles & E.S. Higgs
6 Fossil man Frank E. Poirier
7 Evolution of man J. Jelinek
Arch.Gen. 16 Pleisticene Geology & Biology R.G. West
19 Old Stone Age Frances Bordes
21 Palaeolithic Cave Art Peter Ucko & Andree Rosenfeld
171 Background to Archaeology —
Britain in its European setting Desmond Collins
172 Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology Richard Bray & David Trump
Rom. Brit. 146 Vindolanda Robin Birley
147 Roman Folkestone S.E. Wimbolt
148 Excavations – The Chessalls, Kingscote, Glos
Misc. 151 Evolution of the peasant house in 17th. C.
(JBAA, vol XXXIII 1970) J.T. Smith
152 Lost Roads of Wessex C. Cochrane
153 “The Engineer” – highlights of 120 Years

The above have been presented by various members, to whom HADAS is most grateful: John Enderby, Peter Fauvel-Clinh, Brigid Grafton Green, Betty Low (for Jini Ring), Miss A.H. Ningo and Brian Wibberley.
Final Word from the Hon. Treasurer

Members’ subscriptions for the current year became due on 1 April.

Each November the Hon. Secretary and I go through the members list and removed from it the names of those whose subscription is in arrears. We assume that those who have not paid after eight months probably do not wish to continue as members but have forgotten to notify me of the fact.

This means that if your subscription is not up-to-date you will not receive any further Newsletters. If you want to continue as a member, please send me your subscription:

full member – £2.00; under-18 – £1.00; over-60 – £1.00; family membership, first member – £2, others £1 each.

Jeremy Clynes.
Fund Raising

The latest HADAS of fund-raising effort, organised by Christine Arnott, took place on 22 October: a book sale, that the HGS Teahouse, Northway, NW11.

It was successful from all points of view: a pleasant occasion both for buyers and sellers, and financially rewarding, adding £180 odd to the HADAS Kitty. This is urgently needed for the purchase of next major piece of equipment, a”Dumpy”-type surveying level — an expensive item. It will also help towards continually increasing bill for publication.
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Hendonian Inventor

By Bill Firth.

The entry in the dictionary of national biography (vol LIII, 1898)) opens with these bare bones of information about a Hendon personality of the last century, Sir Francis Pettit Smith:

“Born Hythe (Kent) 9 December 1808, son of Charles Smith, postmaster, of Hythe and Sarah, daughter of Francis Pettit of Hythe. Educated at private school in Ashford, Kent. Began life as a grazing farmer on Romney Marsh, later moving to Hendon (Middlesex).”

In boyhood Francis Pettit Smith was skilled in model boat-making and ingenious in contriving methods of propulsion for them. In 1835 he developed a model, propelled by a screw activated by a Spring, which was so successful that he became convinced of the superiority of screw propulsion over the paddle wheel.

Unaware of proposals of others or of contemporary work of the Swede, John Ericcson, Smith abandoned farming and in 1836 built a superior model which he demonstrated first two friends “on a pond in Hendon” (other evidence suggests that this was done on his own farm pond). Later he demonstrated it publicly at the Adelaide Gallery in London. A patent was taken out in 31 May, 1836 and in November that year a 10-ton boat with wooden screw of two turns was demonstrated. An accident to the propeller led to the use of a shortened screw, and in 1837 a single screw was fitted. In October, 1839 the 237 ton Archimedes, built by John Rennie, the first screw-propelled ship, achieved a speed of 10 knots, when the Admiralty would have been satisfied with 5 knots.

Smith acted as advisor to the Admiralty until 1850 but was poorly remunerated. When his patent expired in 1856 (an extension had been granted) he retired to farm in Guernsey. Despite a £200 pension in 1855, and a National Testimonial in 1857 which gave him a service of plate and £3,000, lack of money compelled him to accept the post of curator of the Patent Office at South Kensington.

Knighted in 1871, he died at South Kensington on 12 December, 1874. He was an associate of the Institute of Civil Engineers, a member of the Institute of Naval Architects and a member of the Royal Society of Arts of Scotland. He had been married twice — first to Ann, daughter of William Buck of Folkestone, in 1830, and they had two sons; and then, in 1866, to Susannah, daughter of John Wallis of Bexley, Kent.

Bibliography:

On the Introduction and Progress of the Screw Propeller, 1856 (biographical notices of Smith published in various journals in 1855).

Origin and Progress of the Steam Navigation, B. WoodCroft, 1848 (appeared later as a paper inTrans.Soc.Arts, 1852). WoodCroft (1803-1879) was Clerk to Commissioners of Patents.

Treatise On the screw Propeller, Bourne.

Smile’s Industrial Biography — Men of the Reign.

Obituaries, Illustrated London News and the Times Sunday 17th February, 1874.

If any member of HADAS has further information about Sir Francis or his descendants, Bill Firth would be delighted to hear of it.
Start of the New Lecture Season

A report by Nell Penny.

Perhaps some of the 120 HADAS members as the first meeting of the 1977-78 season were as uninformed as I was about the early history of the church in Iona. Vague legends floated in my mind — St. Patrick rowing of from Wales to Ireland; St. Columba at rowing from Ireland to Iona; and the dramatic scene as the court of Northumbria where the Roman Church triumphed over the Celtic missionaries. Dr Richard Reece gave me facts, not legend, in his racy, informal yet very informative talk. He set Iona in its geographical and meteorological frame.
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His early slides were of a mound where a stone cross-socket and a broken wall were adequate data for postulating a monastic village consisting of a wooden church and wooden huts. Was this where Columba first lived, in a 563?

Dr Reece took us to an area below the mound where he believes there was a flourishing community of 300 until 800 AD. There are broken crosses and documentary evidence to support his thesis. He was prepared to argue that to the Book of Kells, a magnificent manuscript found that Kells, in Ireland, was in fact written in Iona, the centre of the Celtic church. The most spectacular evidence was the excavation of a clay mould stamped with an interlacing pattern repeated on the crosses and in the manuscript. The flowing lines and the variety of Celtic decoration made me wonder what splendidly different mediaeval churches there might have been if Iona had vanquished Rome.

We were shown an interesting slide of a soil profile in the area below the foundations of the twelfth century Benedictine monastery. Disturbed soil at these lower levels was capped by a layer of burnt soil. Dr Reece thought this proof of a hiatus of more than three centuries between the two communities.

Dr Reece is versed in rescue archaeology, but he must have found it trying to be involved in three rush digs because of the indecision of the site owner about building a new guest house. One dig revealed an apparently random collection of postholes. Diagrammatic plotting suggests these outline a semi-circular building.

As usual the midden produced a great deal of evidence about the monks’ diet — beef and venison (prime cuts, too!) and some lamb and pork. Barley probably made their daily bread.

Visitors to Iona today see the 20th century restoration of the Medieval Church and the lines of the monastic buildings. For us Dr Reece opened a window through which we could see a bustling, vigorous Celtic community Flourishing in the Dark Ages of Western Europe.
News from Other Societies

From Camden. Enclosed with this Newsletter is an order form and list of Camden History Society publications. Camden’s latest booklet — Camden History Review No. 5 — has also just been published and still costs only £0.75 (plus postage). It can be ordered on the same form.

We commend their adventurous publishing programme to you and hope you will give it every support.

From Enfield. Enfield Archaeological Society will be showing, from now until the end of December, at Forty Hall, Enfield, an exhibition of finds from their Roman site at Lincoln Road. Open from 10.00a.m.-6.00p.m. each day except Mondays.

The Historical Association NW London Branch extends a cordial invitation to HADAS members to their lectures, held monthly at 8.00p.m. at Westfield College, Kidderpore Avenue, NW3, and particularly to the talk by Professor H.R. Loyn on Thursday, 9 March next on the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

Newsletter

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As will be seen from this issue of the Newsletter, the Society is humming with activities this autumn. Help and support is needed for a variety of projects from fund-raising to finds-processing. Whatever your interests, your talent, flair and enthusiasm is required and a Research Tea on Sunday afternoon, 20 November has been specially arranged to enable members to find out about the various current projects (full details elsewhere in this Newsletter).
Lectures at Hendon Library

4 October: don’t forget the first lecture of the season by Dr Richard Reece, who will be talking about “The history and Archaeology of Iona.”

1 November: “Silchester — the Investigation of a Roman town”. Silchester, built by the Romans, and overlapping the capital of the Atrebates tribe, can be called “the town that died”. It was extensively excavated between 1890-1909, but no buildings are visible today. The town walls are in the care of the D.O.E., and Dr Mike Fulford, of Reading University, who will be our speaker, has recently been engaged in the excavation of the West Gate of the town, undertaken as part of a plan to stabilise the walls.
West Heath Symposium Saturday, 15th October – 2-6 pm.

The symposium will take place at Bigwood House, Bigwood Road, Hampstead Garden Suburb, NW11.

The excavation of the West Heath Mesolithic site has involved a lot of work by many members and it is hoped that as many members as possible will come and hear about it on 15 October.

Desmond Collins will chair the meeting and will outline the stages of the excavation; Maureen Girling and, it is hoped, James Greig, will describe the exciting environmental evidence; members will expatiate on such subjects as postholes, burnt flint, problems of surveying, site hut erection, the solitary hairy bee and many more topics! The finds will be on show and Peter Favel-Clinch’s superb slides will make it all come alive.

Do come! It is YOUR dig and YOUR Society and it has already aroused a great deal of interest. (There is, moreover a lavish tea, price 25p!) Space is limited, so applied AT ONCE to Dorothy Newbury for your ticket.

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Boundary Survey

An appeal by Paddy Musgrove.

When HADAS embarked on a survey of the boundaries of the ancient parishes now included in the modern Borough of Barnet, it was obvious that it would be a long-term project. Since the publication of a comprehensive progress report in the January, 1976 Newsletter, further work has been carried out, notably along the Finchley — Friern Barnet boundary. Progress, however, has been slow, partly because of a shortage of volunteers to search out boundary stones on the ground, but largely through lack of adequate organisation to co-ordinate the work of individuals and institute effective central record-keeping.

Year by year these boundary stones or disappearing. As the old boundaries are no longer of administrative importance, we can expect the tempo of destruction to increase. With the growth in membership of HADAS, there must be one or more members who would be able to take on the very important, but not unduly demanding, role of co-ordinator.

No specialist archaeological knowledge is involved. A system of work and record keeping has already been evolved and this can be quickly explained to anyone taking on the function of co-ordinator. Although it is vital work, it can be done in one’s own home and at one’s own pace. CAN YOU VOLUNTEER? If so, please contact Brigid Grafton Green.
St. James the Great, Friern Barnet

Ann Trewick as arranged to show the details and some of the finds from the excavation at an Art and Crafts Exhibition organised by parishioners to help raise funds for the new church hall. Pop in and see them at 23, Ravensdale Avenue, Finchley, N12 between 2.00p.m. and 5.00p.m. on Saturday 22 October. A small entrance fee will be charged.
WHAT DID YOU DO FOR THE JUBILEE?

HADAS undercover agent, Joanna Wade, currently working at the Museum of London before going up to Cambridge, tells us that the Museum is busy collecting material for the historians of the future and would like to receive any accounts, in prose or poetry, recalling what you, your family, your street or your firm did to celebrate the Jubilee. Please write to the Museum of London, London Wall, EC2Y 5HN.
The Medieval Banquet

140 members will be coming to the Christmas revelry at the Old Palace, Hatfield on 7 December, but there is still room for more. Contact Dorothy Newbury if you would like to come.
Over the Sea to ?

Plans are afoot for a 7-day trip to Orkney in July, 1978 in place of our autumn weekend. If the arrangements prove successful, further details will be announced in the New Year.
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SUBSCRIPTION REMINDER

The Treasurer does not want to waste 124 stamps writing to the members who have not yet paid their subscriptions! A reminder to those defaulting members:
Full membership – £2.00
Under-18 – £1.00
Over-60 – £1.00
Family Membership: – first member – £2
– additional members £1 each

Send to Jeremy Clynes.
FUND-RAISING ** BOOK-SALE ** FUND-RAISING

Book sale: Saturday 22 October, 10.00a.m. to 12 noon at the Teahouse, Northway, NW11. Entrance fee: £0.15 including coffee and biscuits.

(Underground to Golders Green — from there, minibus to Central Square.)

DONATIONS — books, paperbacks or magazines — required, but please be sure to deliver them BEFORE THE DAY OF THE SALE, to enable them to be sorted and priced.

CONTACT — any of the following as soon as possible:

Daphne Lorimer, Brigid Grafton Green or Helen Gordon.

Any member who would like to use books left unsold for their own charity or has any queries, please contact Christine Arnott before 22 October.
Ideas for Christmas Presents

Enclosed with this Newsletter is the latest list of HADAS publications, any (or your) of which would make ideal Christmas presents. The full range of Shire Publications are also available and may be ordered, even if not listed, on the order form provided.
West Heath Plans

Digging will continue at West Heath until the trenches are finished or the weather breaks. It will not be possible to dig on dates on which other HADAS activities have been arranged (i.e. Saturday 15 October — symposium; Saturday 22 October — book sale). Digging will, however, take place on Saturday 29 October at the same time as the surveying course. If in doubt, telephone Daphne Lorimer or Brigid Grafton Green.
Surveying Course

Saturday 29 October and 5 November, 10.00a.m.-12.00p.m.

Surveying courses will be held at West Heath where HADAS Hon. Member, Barrie Martin, will give a refresher course to last year’s surveying team and at the same time undertake a fresh survey of the site. He will also initiate a few new members into the arts of surveying. Numbers must, of necessity, be limited so please contact Daphne Lorimer if you wish to come along.
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Processing at the Teahouse

This autumn two further HADAS processing weekends will take place at the Teahouse, Northway, Hampstead Garden Suburb, on November 12/13 and November 19/20, from 10.00a.m.-5.00p.m. each day.

All members are cordially invited to come along and help. Several activities are planned, so they should be something for all tastes.

Finds from West Heath (where this season, although shorter than that of 1976, is providing even more material) will be studied; there will be further work on clay tobacco pipes, pottery and glass from the Church Terrace and Burroughs Gardens sites; and it is hoped also to do some documentary work on the Society’s maps and index of findspots and sites in the Borough of Barnet; and on the tombstone index which we have been compiling, as a long-term a project, for Hendon St. Mary’s churchyard.
Research Tea

Not an investigation into how many spoonfuls go into a pot but an afternoon on which members can learn about the many projects which HADAS undertakes in the winter months. From to 2.30 to 4.30 p.m. on Saturday 20 November at the Teahouse, Northway, NW11 members who are in charge of projects will be there to talk about them and to show the results so far. New volunteers are needed for all projects, so do come along and see how you can help. This will be a real opportunity for members who have joined in the last year or so to find out what research is going on.

Current projects include:

PARISH BOUNDARY SURVEY (as mentioned elsewhere in this Newsletter, volunteers are needed both on the administrative side and for field work). Paddy Musgrove will tell you all about it.

EDGWARE. A study of the district both from documentary sources and in the field. Sheila Woodward has been ploughing a lone furrow for the last year or so (helped, of course, by some HADAS field-walking) and she would be glad of some help.

ST. JAMES THE GREAT, FRIERN BARNET. The Rector, Canon Norman Gilmore (who is an Hon. member of HADAS), has kindly agreed that the Society should record of the tombstones in this historic churchyard. The project — a long-term one which may take several years to complete — will start later this year. And Trewick is in charge.

HISTORY OF NONCONFORMIST CHURCHES IN THE BOROUGH. George Ingram has been steadily amassing information, including — where they exist — copies of Church guides. He could have, however, do with some help, because there are a fair number of churches and some of them are disappearing unreported.

DISSENTERS BURIAL GROUND, TOTTERIDGE. Here HADAS Friars already recorded and photographed the graves, but researchers are needed to dig out, from libraries and other sources, information about their families or individuals who were buried there. The co-ordinator is Daphne Lorimer.

RESISTIVITY SURVEY. Raymond Lowe is directing operations for the Society and will explain what is involved.
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Fresh Fields

By special correspondent: Daphne Lorimer.

Autumn is here and with the season of mists comes the HADAS weekend. On Friday, 23 September, an intrepid band of 52 under the expert leadership of Dorothy Newbury, sallied forth for three days exploration of Bristol, the Mendips and the land of the Silures.

On arrival, Dr Peter Fowler showed members the Mendips — the key to hose Archaeology lies in its geological formation. This ranges from the Somerset levels (5 ft below sea level) through the Carboniferous limestone region to the Highland scenery of the Old Red Sandstone of Blackdown (1,000 O.D.). Only in the last 50 years has the relationship between the sea level and the land been stabilised by the building of a sea wall. Previously, most of the valley was waterlogged and boats are reputed to have come up river as far as Cadbury Congressbury.

For two and a half gruelling miles, members charged over hill and dale; they scaled the heights of Dolbury Hill Fort, walked round the 20 ft. high ramparts and peered through the mist at the distant hill forts of Banwell, Brean Down, Worbury and Breedon Hill; they saw Romano-British field systems, learnt of the relationships between Roman Villa estates, ecclesiastical parishes and Saxon charters. They peered down Read’s cavern — a fascinating hole formed by surface water erosion where the carboniferous limestone meets the Old Red Sandstone. The cave had been in occupation as late as the nineteenth century (a very desirable residence!) Members then scaled a near-vertical slope by judicious pushing and pulling and the thought that the coach was near at hand. Passing Aveline’s Hole (late Palaeolothic) and on to Wookey Hole, where those who braved the catwalks of the new cavernous were richly rewarded.

Charterhouse lead mines gave a fascinating glimpse into Roman, mediaeval and nineteenth-century mineral workings. (Thereafter members were knowledge of the spotting gruffies and bell pits from the coach windows). A complete Roman Town lies frozen beneath the fields at Charterhouse, since no soil must be disturbed by farmer or archaeologist for fear of lead polluting the water supply.

Friday ended with a privilege visit to Bristol Museum, opened specially for HADAS by the curator, Mr Michael Ponsford, who showed members behind the scenes and unveiled a mummy for their delectation.

On Saturday Mr Peter Price led the expedition over the Severn Bridge to South Wales. The Oppidum of Venta Silurium at Caerwent was probably built on the foundation of a Roman Fort and presents the most complete section of a Roman walled town to be seen in Britain. Memorable features include the South Wall, Bowed to accommodate an existing building; the abutting bastions which could never have withstood the recall of a ballista; the varying workmanship of the different sections of herringbone masonry; rows of shops and the Romano-Celtic Temple with unusual bastions at each corner.

Isca, the Roman legionary fortress at Caerleon, was built in 75 AD to replace a fortress in Ust. It is the perfect example of precise Roman military planning — so much so, that the straight lines of the barrack buildings, kitchens, latrines, parade ground and amphitheatre almost echoed with ministry bustle. The Museum, however, provided in the human touch in the pathetically poorly carved memorial tablets — the loving tributes from wives and children of dead soldiers.

Raglan Castle, built in 1431, was the next port of call. Here members admired the double portcullis counterbalanced to provide an “airlock” type of entry; the huge fireplace in the great hall with its bifurcating flue passing on either side of the magnificent window above; the patterned octagonal floor in the great tower and the huge pitched or cobbled courtyard.
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At Tintern HADAS members were privileged to see not only the magnificent Abbey but also the new excavation of the Medieval Gate House area, directed by Mr Paul Courtney who had just finished excavations at the Roman Bath House seen at Caerleon. On to Chepstow with its superb castle towering above the Wye and then back to Bristol where the day ended with the walk over the Clifton suspension bridge — not illuminated as the lights had fused!

On Sunday, the morning was spent exploring Bristol on foot, guided by Mr. Ponsford. He traced the area of the old castle and the Medieval town it dominated. He explained the growth of the port and its importance as a trading centre, when the King called upon the men of Redcliffe and Temple to help cut the new channel for the River Frome (1240-1247). Members saw the last of the nine great gates into the old town; the great brass nails on which payment was made by merchants and finally, Mr Ponsfod showed the party the complicated excavations he is currently conducting as the site of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

Sunday finished with a visit to the SS Great Britain, designed by Brunel and built between 1839 and 1843 — the first ship to be iron built and screw propelled. The great ship is gradually being restored to her former glory and it many members resolved (D.V) to make a pilgrimage to see the results 20 years hence.

This is but an idiosyncratic impression of a few of the highlights of a happy weekend and it only remains to add that the company was congenial, the food good and the organisation, as always, superb. HADAS tours has done it again!
It’s a small world

At Church Farm House Museum until 23 October, there is an excellent exhibition of model and toy soldiers, by members of the British Model Soldier Society. No exhibit is larger than 90 mm and the quality of painting is superb. For ingenuity, imagination and sheer skill in model-making, be sure to see the “Groups of the British Army in the Desert 1942” by John Sanders. All perfect historically and with the most incredible detail. Well worth a visit.
Finally – Dates to Remember

4 October: lecture at Hendon Library

15 October: West Heath Symposium at Bigwood House, NW11

22 October: at the Teahouse, Northway, NW11

29 October: surveying course at West Heath site

1 November: lecture at Hendon Library

5 November: surveying course at West Heath site

12/13 November: processing weekend at the Teahouse

19/20 November: processing weekend at the Teahouse

20 November: research tea at the Teahouse

7 December: Christmas banquet at Hatfield Old Palace

Newsletter

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The Winter Lecture Season

By Dorothy Newbury.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Parish Registers

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

Baptisms – Oct.1653-Aug. 1946

Marriages – Mar. 1654-Sept. 1949

Burials – Oct. 1653 – June 1953.

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

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

AT QUEEN ANNE’S GATE BUILDINGS:

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

St. Margarets, Edgware (1717-1867)

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

South Mimms (1558-1906)

Monken Hadley (1619-1956)

AT COUNTY RECORD OFFICE, HERTFORD:

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

St. Andrews, Totteridge (1546-1947).

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

The August Outing: A Trip Full of Superlatives

Report by Lucile Armstrong.

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

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

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

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

By Daphne Lorimer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steamship Great Britain, Garahm Farr, 20p

Prehistoric Bristol, Grinsell, 20p

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

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

Bristol Mint, K. Grinsell, 20p

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

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

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

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

Newsletter

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

Helen Gordon (passed 3rd year Diploma)

Alec Gouldsmith (passed 1st year Diploma)

Marguerite Hughes (passed 1st year Diploma)

Dave King (passed 2nd year Diploma)

Merle Mindel (4th year Diploma, with Merit)

Liz Sagues (4th year Diploma, with Distinction)

Elizabeth Sanderson (passed 2nd year Diploma)
Autumn Courses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Report by Jeremy Clynes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The HADAS August Outing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A report on the HADAS July outing by John Hooson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Volume 2 : 1975 – 1979‎ > ‎
newsletter-078-august-1977
Newsletter
Page 1

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

Helen Gordon (passed 3rd year Diploma)

Alec Gouldsmith (passed 1st year Diploma)

Marguerite Hughes (passed 1st year Diploma)

Dave King (passed 2nd year Diploma)

Merle Mindel (4th year Diploma, with Merit)

Liz Sagues (4th year Diploma, with Distinction)

Elizabeth Sanderson (passed 2nd year Diploma)
Autumn Courses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Report by Jeremy Clynes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The HADAS August Outing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A report on the HADAS July outing by John Hooson.

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

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

Red deer antlers were used to remove the Flint. Many antler picks have been found in the pits and is estimated that 50,000 may have been used in all. The antlers are exceedingly strong and last year, during research on the site of by the British Museum, professional Dutch miners found that they could remove the flint with them almost as quickly as if they were using the modern steel picks. It is believed that this high quality flint was needed to make axes to clear forested areas. This appears to be supported at Grimes Graves from the results of pollen analysis.
Page 5

Waste material from a new pit was discarded into an exhausted pit; and examination of the infill shows that after mining ceased about 1500 BC, later Bronze and Iron Age people occupied the site.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newsletter

Page 1

West Heath in Training

By Daphne Lorimer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mention of the tent leads me on to another structure which has made its appearance this year at the West Heath site. It, too, has made a great difference to the comfort of HADAS’s life at Hampstead. It is the brain-child of Dave King who, with ingenuity and considerable generosity both of time and materials, has equipped us with a handsome and completely collapsible site hut. Made of timber, corrugated perspex and plastic sheeting, it provides perfect conditions for find-processing (no more chasing little plastic bags around the site in a gale, as we had so often to do last year); held together by nuts and bolts, it can be erected and taken down in ten minutes once you get the hang of it.
Page 2

And this is not the end of Dave’s sterling work on the site. He has provided us with a second of sieve (with very beneficial effect on HADAS tempers); and has also perfected a new “bivouac” for the dry storage of equipment. Now that we are so well-equipped to withstand the rain, we fully expect the sun to start shining every day!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Phyl Dobbins reports on the HADAS June outing into Northamptonshire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bill Firth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Got your copy yet?

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Mud, Glorious Mud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A note from Edward Sammes.

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

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

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

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

By Christine Arnott.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Committee:

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

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

AT HGS INSTITUTE, CENTRAL SQUARE, NW11

London University 4-year Diploma in Archaeology:

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

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

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

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

AT BARNET COLLEGE, WOOD STREET, BARNET

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

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

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

Reviewed by Joanna Corden.

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

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

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

Independent Rescue Archaeology Competition

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

The winning order, in the final, was:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newsletter

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Stop Press News

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

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

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

The other five finalists are described like this:

The Rape of Hastings

Severn Avon Aerial Survey

Welwyn/Lockleys Archaeological Society

Waltham Abbey Historical Society

Offa’s Dyke Project

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

By Daphne Lorimer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A report by JOHN HOOSON on the April Lecture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Brigid Grafton Green.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A report by Enid Hill.

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

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

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

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

Newsletter

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A Conference to Remember

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FURTHER READING:

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

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

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

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

By Christine Arnott.

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

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

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

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

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

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