Excavations made in June 1935 for the foundations of a new sub-station of the London Passenger Transport Board at Trinity Place, Trinity Square, E.C., brought to light some remains of the Roman town wall of London. A large portion of the medieval superstructure is still standing on the east side of Trinity Place, and to the north of this the Inner Circle Railway runs in a cutting under the roadway. The construction of this cutting involved the removal of a length of 73 ft. of the wall in 1882 (R.C.H.M. Roman London, 83). The site of the discoveries to be described here was immediately behind the southern retaining wall of the cutting. Both faces of the Roman wall were exposed at this point, and could be examined in detail, and against the external face was a fragment of one of the later Roman bastions (pl. 1). These remains were investigated by the writer on behalf of this Society, and the Passenger Transport Board kindly granted all necessary facilities, and rendered every possible assistance.

To commemorate Queen Victoria's Jubilee a work on the Great Seals of England by Alfred Benjamin Wyon, who died in 1884, was completed and published by his brother Allan in 1887; both had the special qualification that they held the Office of Seal-Engraver to Her Majesty as their father and grandfather had held it before them; and their work has remained the standard authority on the subject. It seems suitable in the present year to see how much the discoveries of nearly fifty years have added to it.

The history of the invasive movements associated with the diffusion of Deverel-Rimbury pottery during the Late Bronze Age in Britain can be studied from two main points of view. We may seek to discover the continental sources of the various components of the general complex, and in this way arrive at the origins of the movement and its chronology in terms of continental cultures; or we may adopt the less spectacular, if no less interesting, course, and see what can be learnt of the impact of the alien on the indigenous culture of the period in Britain. As Dr. Curwen's work on the Plumpton Plain site in Sussex has demonstrated, in conjunction with Mr. Hawkes's analysis of the pottery, the continental affinities of the Deverel-Rimbury folk are best studied within an area of primary diffusion. The mutual relations of the invasive and the indigenous folk, can, on the contrary, be appreciated most easily by working on sites peripheral to the Deverel-Rimbury distribution, such as the one in Mildenhall Fen, West Suffolk, to which attention is drawn in this paper (fig. 1).

I have the permission of Captain Pitt-Rivers and Mr. Trelawney Dayrell-Reed to describe anew the ‘Temple Pyx’ that is in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Farnham, Dorset. It has been published in line-drawings, and its existence is well known, but photographs (pl. ix) of such an interesting piece of metalwork have been wanted for some time.

Every schoolboy knows the name of Clarendon in connexion with the Constitutions of Clarendon 1164; but as regards the importance, historically as well as archaeologically, of Clarendon Palace, as regards its gradual growth to great splendour and magnificence in Plantagenet days, and as regards its subsequent vicissitudes—on all these points I think it may be said without exaggeration that the world at large knows next to nothing; nor have such inquiries as have sporadically taken place into the history and archaeology of Clarendon Palace ever penetrated very deeply into the subject. Having through a variety of circumstances come to give a good deal of thought to these questions, I have developed the conviction that Clarendon Palace offers a field of study which is of prime importance, and indeed, from certain points of view, of unique importance for the medieval archaeology not only of England but of the whole of Europe. I venture to hope that the present paper, though necessarily in the nature of a preliminary summary, may afford grounds for conceding that this is not too large a claim to make.

The view that diffuse lustre on the sharp edge of a flint indicates that the flint has been used for cutting corn, or at least grass, has often been put forward. It has recently been criticized by M. René Neuville, and these criticisms have been countered by fresh experimental evidence which has convinced the writer that this interpretation holds good. Flint flakes, some worked, some apparently unworked, are frequently found in Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere, bearing diffuse lustre on both faces adjacent to one or more edges, and such flakes are generally recognized as having served as parts of flint sickles, for some have actually been found in their wooden mounts. The possibility of analogous implements having been used in Britain has not so far received much attention, except that the beautifully worked crescentic ‘knives’ of Scandinavian type are now generally recognized as having been sickles. A few of these latter show the characteristic corn-lustre on their concave edges.