In August I was asked by the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society to undertake a tentative excavation of the earthwork near Winchester known as Oliver Cromwell's Battery to ascertain its date of construction. Mr. F. W. Talbot, the lessee of the site, Mr. E. S. McEuen, the Rev. S. T. Percival, Mr. G. Weeks, and Mr. Lewis Williams at once offered to join me, and with the help of our own men we were the working party. We had the assistance of the Hon. Secretary Mr. Frank Warren, F.S.A., Dr. J. P. Williams-Freeman, Sir Thomas Troubridge, F.S.A., and Mr. V. B. Crowther-Beynon, F.S.A., the last named having been most helpful throughout.

The hill-fort of Cissbury, situated on a ridge of the Sussex Downs four miles north of Worthing, is one of the best known examples of its kind, though in regard to the strength of its defences it can scarcely be compared with such Wessex forts as Maiden Castle (Dorchester), Hambledon, Yarnbury, or Battlesbury.

Of the two collections which I exhibit this evening, the first consists of objects found early in the present year at Stanwix, the northern suburb of Carlisle. Carlisle itself is on the site of a small Roman town, which probably succeeded a fort of the first century; when the wall of Hadrian was built, its course was laid out so as to run about half a mile to the north of this site, reaching the river Eden after passing over the hill of Stanwix, on which a fort was built. The position of the fort, of whose plan and details we know very little, is marked by Stanwix church.

The form of the Fusetto di bombardiere, or gunner's stiletto, is typical of most Italian stilettos of the seventeenth century. The grip is usually spiral, of ivory or wood inlaid with bone, or of turned iron, the quillons short and straight, and the blade stiffly triangular and tapering to a point. It is distinguished from other stilettos by the numbered graduations marked along one side of the blade.

The small priory of the nuns of Kingsmead was situated on the west of the medieval town of Derby in the meadows by the Odde brook; nothing now remains above ground, but Nuns' Hill and Nun Street keep the site in memory. The foundation recalls the origin of the Order of Sempringham and the story of the seven maidens for whom St. Gilbert built a habitation. In 1160 the abbot of the Augustinian canons of Darley Abbey built a habitation for maidens a mile away on land belonging to his house, and the bishop of Coventry and Lichfield with Chester gave the abbot permission to consecrate the maidens, and put them under his charge. At Kingsmead, as in a number of small nunneries in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a prior or master served the nuns as chaplain and managed their property. The nuns subsequently struggled for independence, and about 1250 the bishop released them and their property from the jurisdiction and control of the abbot and canons of Darley. A document among the Wollaston charters in the British Museum, which has hitherto not been noticed, records the effort of the prior and the nuns to raise money for the repair of their church and the buildings of the priory. Collectors were sent out with the appeal, and it was usual to read such appeals as these in parish churches after the gospel at high mass on Sundays and holy days. The appeal had been carefully prepared.