Whereas it seemed advisable for many reasons to resume the work at Atchana as soon as possible after the interval due to the war, uncertainty regarding the conditions under which the work would be carried on impelled one to plan for a short season with a strictly limited objective. That there should have been a rise in costs was inevitable; but only on our arrival did we learn that wages had increased ninefold and that the living-index had gone up by 1,000 per cent. In such circumstances the utmost economy had to be observed; 150 men were employed, but only six weeks’ actual digging could be done. In that very short time we did in fact fulfil our programme, but results would have been much better in proportion had we been able to continue the excavations for another three weeks.

‘A Roman brass lamp from St. Leonard's Hill was given to the Society of Antiquaries and adopted by them for their common seal.’ So runs the note by Haverfield in the Victoria County History of Berkshire which records, under the heading ‘Windsor’, the discovery and subsequent fate of the bronze lamp which forms this Society's seal and adorns, in brass inlay, the marble pavement of its entrance hall.

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the careers and conditions of service of some of the foremost English royal masons of the later medieval period. The craftsmen in wood, however, are on the whole less well known, partly, perhaps, because their medium is less durable than the mason's and therefore relatively fewer outstanding examples of their work have survived to witness to their skill. Carpenters of the capacity of Hugh Herland and timber work of the scale and quality of Westminster Hall roof are exceptions that prove the rule. There is, however, no lack of documentary evidence, the great bulk of it still unpublished, for the activities of many royal carpenters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. But the details are scattered in works accounts and wardrobe books, Liberate and Memoranda rolls, and until these prolific sources are searched systematically for the almost limitless information they contain, the foundation for any authoritative general work on medieval English building craftsmen will scarcely have been laid. Such a search has yet to be undertaken. Meanwhile, the purpose of the present note is to illustrate the general problem and the nature of some of the available sources by collating facts about a single craftsman that have come to light more or less accidentally in the course of research directed to another objective.

Charmy Down is a plateau three miles north-east of Bath (fig. 1, 1), east of the Bath-Tetbury road. About a square mile in extent it has a general height of well over 600 ft. To the north the scarp falls swiftly, on the east more gently, to the wooded valley of St. Catherine's Brook, a tributary of the Bristol Avon and the modern Somerset–Gloucester boundary. At the foot of the steep western scarp a second stream flows south to the Avon. On the south Chilcombe Bottom separates Charmy Down from Solsbury Hill, distinguished by its Iron Age earthwork. The underlying rock is oolite, a southward continuation of the Cotswold formation.

Papers have been written on the orientation of churches, but most of them deal with the origin of orientation. In only two that I have come across are there any data of actual orientations, namely, ‘The Orientation of Scottish Churches’ by F. C. Eeles, and ‘Orientation of Churches in Hampshire’ by T. W. Shore.

I have measured the orientation of 642 churches. I had originally planned to measure many more, but the war and its aftermath have prevented it, and I feel it is better to publish what I have done rather than to wait indefinitely.

Such information as we possess about the king's sport in the twelfth century is derived mostly from the Constitutio Domus Regis, which, it is now generally agreed, was drawn up in England soon after the death of Henry I, presumably for the information of his successor. This Establishment of the King's Household enumerates all the officers of the household, from the highest to the lowest, with their daily pay and allowances in kind; details which make it possible to assess the comparative importance of their respective offices.