Wetlands preserve evidence which no other landscape in western Europe can provide. The variety of wetlands is great and conditions for the survival of evidence and for archaeological work are equally varied. The quantity and quality of organic, and inorganic, evidence from wetland sites is now well documented by work in Denmark, Switzerland and Italy in particular, but most European countries have such special sites, where the abundance of evidence can enormously augment our knowledge of the past. The purpose of wetland archaeology must be to expand our very restricted data base into new areas of research, both cultural and environmental. A scheme for the development of priorities for wetland sites and areas may help to direct resources, but the threats to wetlands by current agricultural and other policies are particularly severe, and only concerted efforts will retain these areas in suitable condition for future preservation or examination.

Details of a recently discovered Ewart Park phase hoard from Boreham, Essex are reported. The opportunity is also taken to publish Late Bronze Age metal finds from Boreham, together with a hoard discovered in the nineteenth century at Little Baddow. These finds are viewed in the light of recent fieldwork and previous finds in the Chelmer Valley.

Renewed excavation at the Iron Age hillfort of Oldbury, near Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1983 and 1984 was designed to effect a comparison with earlier excavation in 1938 and to relate the hillfort itself to others on the Greensand of Surrey and Kent. Re-examination of the defences suggests construction in the first half of the first century B.C. and questions the supposed refortification against the Roman invasion of A.D. 43; activity at this time and later in the Roman period is thought to reflect quarrying for stone. Some evidence for internal activity was recovered, but the scale was too slight to indicate permanent occupation.

This study traces the career of a single illuminator (the Ancient 6 Master) who was active in England from c. 1310 to 1335. For much of this time it can be shown that he worked in collaboration with the artist of Queen Mary's Psalter, one of the most profusely illustrated English manuscripts in existence Although a large number of books have been grouped under the heading of the ‘Queen Mary’ style, they have never received a proper classification, nor has any detailed attention been given to the problem dating. This paper attempts both to isolate the works in which the two artists participated and to propose a sequence ofproduction. Since most of these manuscripts are devoid of internal documentary evidence for dating, a chronology has been devised on the basis of the Ancient 6 Master's artistic development; this has involved an investigation of minor aspects of style. As a result, it has been possible to learn about the career of the Queen Mary Artist, and by virtue of the few firmly datable manuscripts, viewed in the light of the chronology proposed, dates have been suggested for the others within this group.

In the summer of 1602 at Harefield Elizabeth I was presented with the last great country-house Entertainment of her reign. Although it survives in fragments, it is possible to see that the Entertainment both adheres to the traditions of the court cult of the Queen and develops and adds variety to them. Pastoral is tamed into the world of Home Counties farming. The identification of the Queen with the Queen of the Fairies, instead of being that of a romantic heroine, is domesticated into the folk tradition of the fairies who reward good housewives. Other personifications of the Queen as good housewife are remarked. The entertainment has an elegiac tone, appropriate to the sense that the Queen's age must make her death increasingly possible.

The Old Baptist Chapel at Goodshaw was taken into the care of the Department of the Environment in 1976. Since then, comprehensive repairs to the external fabric and the internal woodwork features have been undertaken. In advance of this necessary work, and during its course, much evidence was discovered to chart the history of the building and to interpret its present form.

The chapel was built in 1760, and was extended around 1800 to its present size. A schoolhouse, on the site of the attached minister's cottage, was added in 1809, but was demolished towards the end of the last century. Further internal alterations to provide for more seating within the galleries and box pews were carried out in the middle years of the nineteenth century, but the chapel went out of use soon after its centenary, in 1863. It has remained in a virtually intact state since that time, and is now preserved as an Ancient Monument.