The Bursledon Brick Company's works are situated on rising ground north-east of the Southern Railway's branch line from Southampton to Fareham, and some 600 yards east of the tidal river Hamble, as shown on the plan (fig. 1). The geological formation is London clay; the beds have been exposed here to a depth of 40 ft, the section showing 1½ ft. of humus on an upper stratum of brownish-red clay resting on a bed of grey clay. The country immediately around supports oak, hazel, and alder.

Two shrines of circular and polygonal shape, probably part of a larger group, were erected early in the second half of the third century A.D., and occupied until late in the fourth century. The shrines occur in an area of widespread settlement dating from the late Iron Age until the end of the fourth century. Many objects of bronze and iron of ritual significance, together with a large number of votive deposits and coins, were recovered from the circular shrine. Miss M. V. Taylor's discussion of the principal objects appears on pp. 264–8.

In the first modern excavation of an Arras Culture cemetery 189 burials have been excavated so far and most had been at the centre of barrows with square-plan ditches. Two distinctive burial rites produced mutually exclusive ranges of grave-goods. There are at least 800 square barrows in the immediate vicinity arranged in large cemeteries, in smaller groups, and as isolated examples, and aerial photography has revealed a wealth of settlements as well.

Roman, Saxon, and medieval levels were examined in 1968. At Castle Yard the north end of the Norman andlater castle was uncovered. At Lankhills fifty fourth-century graves were excavated. In Lower Brook Street open-area excavation was continued into mid thirteenth-century levels on four house-plots and on St. Mary's Church, where twelve phases can now be recognized between c. 1250 and c. 1470. St. Pancras Church was located. On the Cathedral site no Belgic occupation was found. A late second- to early third-century addition to the forum was excavated, and much of its painted wall-plaster recovered. The structure was abandoned c. A.D. 300. A laterally apsed tenth-century crossing was found in the Old Minster linking two earlier buildings. After his translation in gjl from outside the church, St. Swithun's shrine appears to have stood within this link-building. At Wolvesey Roman buildings were excavated, and additions were made to the plan of the Norman palace. A second halljchamber-block of c. 1129–35 has been planned. In an appendix D. M. Wilson considers an important decorated bronze strap-end of c. A.D. 1000 found on the Old Minster site.

In the summer of 1932 two young geologists, Messrs. C. W. and E. V. Wright, while examining the low cliffs of the Humber Bank, near North Ferriby, noticed dark patches of black earth containing bones and sherds (Y.A.J. xxxi, 199). The material collected by them from these pits at various times since then forms the principal subject of this paper.

On 16th January 1540 the abbot and twenty-four monks assembled in the Chapter House at Westminster in order to sign the deed of surrender of the monastery. To some in that gathering it must have seemed the end, but to others it was but the prelude, as perhaps they already knew, to a new life amid the old familiar surroundings.

Mr. Thomas Layton died on 4th September 1911 at the advanced age of ninety-two years, having been a Fellow of this Society since 1868. He had contributed to the Bronze Age Exhibition at Somerset House in 1872, and in 1883 gave a remarkable Roman sword and sheath (fig. 25) to the British Museum; but otherwise his energies were devoted to collecting, unhappily with little method or discretion, and the task of carrying out the terms of his will was anything but a formality. Most of his antiquities came to light during dredging operations in the Thames at Kew, where he resided, and these were left to the Brentford Public Library as the nucleus of a Layton museum. The Librarian, Mr. F. A. Turner, has cleaned, sorted, and exhibited the specimens with infinite pains and considerable success; and it is to him and the Brentford Library Committee that we are indebted for the present exhibition and for permission to examine and describe the principal items of the collection.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and illustrate the development of shields of arms and their accessories upon the seals of English men and women from the simple devices of the later twelfth century to the complicated armorials and complete achievements of later times. The great seal of William the Norman, like that of Edward the Confessor, had two sides. On one William was shown seated in majesty as king of the English; on the other, unlike Edward, he appeared fully armed upon horseback as duke of the Normans. This equestrian representation of a knight fully equipped with the arms and armour of his time was the type of seal adopted by the greater barons in the early twelfth century. It was upon the shields borne by these horsemen that armorial charges first appear. Part I of this paper deals with this equestrian type.

The paper begins by considering the importance of springs as a focus for votive deposits in Bronze Age Britain. This is not a new idea, but nowhere has this association been examined through the excavation of one of these features. The point is illustrated by excavation at the findspot of a famous group of Late Bronze Age weapons, the Broadward hoard, discovered in 1867. Little was known about the site, where it was found or the character of the original deposit, but a study of contemporary accounts of the hoard, combined with geophysical and topographical surveys, led to small-scale excavation in 2010, which showed that the deposit had most probably been buried in a pit on the edge of a spring. Other finds associated with the spring included an Early Bronze Age macehead, a Roman pot and various Saxon and medieval animal bones. The latest deposit, with a post-medieval carbon date, included a wooden knife or dagger. An adjacent palaeochannel provided an important environmental sequence for this part of the English–Welsh borderland and suggests that the Late Bronze Age hoard had been deposited not far from a settlement. A nearby earthwork enclosure was associated with a clay weight, which may be of similar date. Despite the limited scale of the fieldwork, it illustrates the potential for treating springs associated with artefact finds on the same terms as other archaeological deposits.

In Volume 82 (2002) of the Antiquaries Journal, the canopied benches at St Cross were described, along with a discussion of their date and patronage. This paper takes the subject further by suggesting a reconstruction of the layout of these fittings. Conclusions reached in the earlier paper are further refined: the distinctive mouldings on the frieze, benches and desks clearly demonstrate that all three elements are integral to the same work and not added to preexisting benches, as previously argued. Further research suggests that the imagery and style of the frieze at St Cross had little impact on the aesthetic of the works patronized by Bishop Fox in Winchester Cathedral. Instead, parallels are drawn between the St Cross frieze and other modes of all'antica work in France, including the celebrated Renaissance stalls from the chapel of the archiepiscopal palace at the Château de Gaillon (Eure) and the cathedral stalls at Amiens (Somme). It has also become apparent that there is no other extant work in England that directly parallels the frieze at St Cross, and that the nearest analogue is the stallwork from Gaillon.

This paper affords a complete analysis of the construction of the original Northampton (later Northumberland) House in the Strand (demolished in 1874), which has never been fully investigated. It begins with an examination of the little-known architectural patronage of its builder, Lord Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton from 1603, one of the most interesting figures of the early Stuart era. With reference to the building of the contemporary Salisbury House by Sir Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, the only other Strand palace to be built in the early seventeenth century, textual and visual evidence are closely investigated. A rediscovered elevational drawing of the original front of Northampton House is also discussed. By associating it with other sources, such as the first inventory of the house (transcribed in the Appendix), the inside and outside of Northampton House as Henry Howard left it in 1614 are re-configured for the first time.

The manuscript volume which, by the kind permission of Lord Hastings, I am enabled to exhibit this evening, is one of great value and interest. Those great antiquaries Sir F. Palgrave and Albert Way saw the volume, and while the former made a rough note of its contents, the latter contributed to the fourth volume of the Archæological Journal a valuable paper on one part. The notes of these two gentlemen have been compared with the original MS., and I have ventured, whilst giving transcripts of some portions of the volume, to add a few notes and descriptions. The manuscript, which is written on vellum, consists of fifteenth-century copies, with some illuminations, of various treatises dealing with chivalry, state, etc. These have been bound in one thick volume, which from external evidence we may suppose to have at one time belonged to that distinguished Prince, Henry, son of James I.

This paper reports excavations in 1977 and 1978 at the chapel and adjoining cemetery of St Patrick's, Heysham, and an architectural survey of the nearby church of St Peter's. The chapel initially comprised a single-celled, stone-built structure, plastered inside and out. Associated with it were pieces of painted plaster, two bearing letters, and, in all probability, a stone carved with a bird's head, perhaps of late seventh- to late eighth-century date. The chapel was subsequently enlarged. One burial included a bone comb of Anglo-Scandinavian type, and calibrated radiocarbon dates for three skeletons range between AD 960 and 1185.

This report was submitted for publication in March 1992.

During excavation in 1967 of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Mucking in Essex, bronze belt equipment (pls. liii, liv) was found in situ on a body stain in grave 117. Its importance is immediately obvious, for not only is it a fine piece of craftsmanship and the only complete set of its kind, but it supplies the missing link between the late Roman military belt equipment and metalwork in the Quoit Brooch Style of Anglo-Saxon England. At much the same time that this buckle came to light at Mucking, another buckle of the same period, but of a different type, was found in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Orpington in Kent (fig. 2 a), and a few weeks later another was found in a cemetery at Bishopstone, Sussex. With the advantage of the information provided by these new buckles it is now possible to distinguish other works belonging to the same milieu, and to see problems connected with them in a different perspective.

Horns were often preserved not for their aesthetic qualities but for their significance as symbols of either office or tenure. This article discusses horns associated with forests and shows how their symbolic interest led to their preservation and study by antiquaries.

The great eighth-century earthwork on the frontier of Wales and England has been known for at least eleven hundred years as Offa's Dyke. Research into this work has been dominated by the need to find, or explain, the ‘missing’ stretches of the Dyke. The interpretation presented here is based on the known earthwork and does not involve the need to explain away any perceived gaps.

The reputed Romano-British church at Silchester was first excavated in 1892 by George Fox and W. H. St. John Hope in the third season of the Society's long campaign of excavations in that town.1 Claimed as a church by the excavators in their report of 1893, it has usually been so accepted; but the lack of decisive evidence for this interpretation was emphasized by Professor J. M. C. Toynbee in 1953, nor was the date of the building at all certain. Accordingly there existed a strong case for re-excavation by modern methods and this case was put to the Silchester Excavation Committee by Mr. George C. Boon in 1959. With the permission of the landowner, our Fellow the late Duke of Wellington and of Mr. A. J. Massie, the tenant farmer, excavations took place for five weeks in the summer of 1961: the work by invitation of the Committee was directed by Sir Ian Richmond. A brief report on the work was published the following year, and Richmond gave an illustrated account of the excavation to the Society on 31 January 1963; but at the time of his death in October 1965, though the plans illustrating the paper had been drawn, no written report was found. The account offered here accordingly derives partly from the field note-book kept by Miss M. G. Wilson, partly from the personal recollections of Miss Wilson and Mrs. M. A. Cotton (both of whom were on the site throughout the season), and partly from the J.R.S. account and some notes taken by Dr. W. H. Manning of a verbal report by Richmond to the Silchester Excavation Committee in 1962. Mr. George Boon also generously placed at my disposal his own independent discussion of the church which has now appeared in the second edition of his Roman Silchester (London 1974).

The fact that the Pleistocene ice-sheets mantled so great a part of Britain was long regarded as sufficient explanation of the absence of Lower Palaeolithic remains from the territory south of a line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol Channel. Recent work and finds, however, show that during genial conditions early man certainly moved quite far into areas freed by the waning ice during periods of retreat. Thus, from extremes beyond those cited, there are reports of a few Lower Palaeolithic implements from Pleistocene gravels in the valley of the Trent in Lincolnshire, from the valley of the Don and from Huntow, in Yorkshire, and of an odd piece from Cheshire. But of most import to the present study are the Lower Palaeolithic stone tools from the basin of the Severn in the Midlands, and an Acheulian hand-axe has been found within the past few months at Pen-y-lan, near Cardiff. With the palaeoliths discovered at intermediate sites in the basin of this great river the range in the Atlantic drainage is extended from Somerset into once glaciated territory.

It was in the middle of the nineteenth century that the site of Ur was identified and the excavation of its ruins begun by G. E. Taylor, consul at Basra, acting on behalf of the British Museum. A number of antiquities was brought back to London, but the unsensational character of the finds in southern Mesopotamia caused them to be overshadowed by the striking discoveries then being made in the northern mounds, and work was abandoned, not to be resumed until the Great War put the British in temporary possession of the country and gave it a fresh interest in the eyes of the public. In the latter part of the war Mr. R. Campbell Thompson, working for the British Museum, made soundings at Ur, but did not carry out extensive excavations; in 1919 Dr. H. R. Hall was sent out by the Trustees and began a systematic investigation of the site, employing a considerable force of men for nearly three months, and obtaining important results. Dr. Hall's work made it evident that if the site of Ur was to be tackled seriously, a whole series of campaigns extending over many years and involving very heavy outlay would be required, campaigns to which the post-war finances of the British Museum were by no means adequate. Fortunately the Trustees were at this juncture able to join forces with the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, and it was decided that an expedition should take the field at the joint expense of the two institutions, which should also share with the Iraq Government in the material results of the work. Of this joint expedition I was asked to take charge. Mr. F. G. Newton came as architect of the party, Mr. Sidney Smith of the British Museum dealt with the inscriptions, and at the end of the year we were joined by Mr. A. W. Lawrence. Hamoudi, my Carchemish foreman, was put in charge of the men; the actual labourers were the Muntafik Arabs of the district. Digging started at the beginning of November and went on without interruption, owing to an unusually clement winter, until halfway through February.

The find of pottery and bronzes described in this paper was made in Catuvellaunian territory (fig. 1), on the north bank of the Ouse near Felmersham Bridge, in Shanbrook parish, Bedfordshire. At this place the river makes a gentle bend southwards towards the village of Felmersham. Following the Belgic predilection for riverine settlement, the site to which the find belongs was established on well-developed flood-plain gravels situated on the inner margin of this curve. Here in January 1942, from the gravel-digging exploited by Mr. A. E. C. Howard of Bedford, the excavating machine simultaneously disgorged the following objects:

A bronze bucket-handle and two bronze bucket-escutcheons in the shape of cow-heads (fig. 2).

A bronze spout in the shape of a fish-head (fig. 3).

A damaged bronze bowl (no. 1) with one of the two original attachments for holding swinging ring-handles (pl. VII, a, b).

Fragments of another bowl (no. 2), including parts of the rim and shoulder (pl. VII, c).

A flat plate of thin bronze, in shape the segment of a circle, with traces of solder on both sides (pl. VI, b).

Three pieces of curved bronze rim-mounting of U-section (pl. VI, a).

Three pieces of flat bronze ribbon and an irregular piece of bronze plate of the same thinness (pl. VI, a).

Some thirty potsherds, the lower jaw of a young pig, part of the tibia of another young animal, probably a horse, and some pieces of burnt clay (fig. 11 ).