The limestone head from the Bon Marché site, Gloucester, has long been considered one of the finest examples of Romano-Celtic sculpture. A detailed description is accompanied by a discussion of its original architectural context, and the possibility of a Romanesque date is argued. The essential similarities between many simple facial representations of different dates is, however, emphasized.

The castle of Chilham stands immediately to the west of the Jacobean mansion built by Sir Dudley Digges in 1616. Traditions of remote antiquity have long been associated with the site, but the record of discoveries of Roman remains during the building of the mansion is not circumstantial, and a tunnel driven through the mound under the ancient keep by a recent owner failed to reveal any trace of Roman age. Chilham was held under Edward the Confessor by Sired and was granted by the Conqueror to Odo bishop of Bayeux. It was held, under him, by Fulbert de Dover, and on Odo's disgrace in 1084 it was granted to Fulbert in chief and became the head of his barony. The subsequent descent of the property need not detain us, as it has no bearing on the architectural history of the castle.

On Mull or Meayll Hill, a mile north-east of the Calf Sound, Isle of Man, is the remarkable megalithic monument known as the Mull Hill Circle. It is not a stone circle of normal type but consists of six T-shaped structures, each comprising two rectangular cists averaging 5 ft. 9 in. by 2 ft. 8 in., placed end to end with the inner end of each open and forming the head of the T, and approached by a short passage about 7 ft. long at right angles (the upright of the T). These pairs of cists are arranged in a circle some 50 ft. in diameter; each group distinct, with the cists placed tangentially and the passages leading radially outwards. They are so spaced as to leave a larger interval between the groups on the north and south to form two opposite ‘entrances ’. Apparently the entire circle of cists had originally been covered by a ring of stones and earth, the whole forming a ‘disc-barrow’, the bank of which contained chambers. There are vague indications of a central chamber or cist. The stone used in the construction of the monument was a local slate. No capstones remain to any cists or passages, but all appear to have been paved with flat slabs.

The Romano-Celtic temples of Britain, unlike those of Gaul, rarely provide evidence of their dedications and the nature of the cults practised within them. At Silchester (Insula XXXV) and also at Worth, Kent, fragments of statuary found within the temple cella have been suggestive, although not conclusive. The remaining examples yet excavated in Britain (some eighteen in all) have been far less communicative: not one has yielded an inscription or votive object which would leave no doubt as to the identity of the god whose worshippers frequented it.

Since our knowledge of the local cults popular in the civilian areas of Roman Britain is so limited, an object which, though found ninety years ago at Farley Heath in Surrey, has hitherto escaped publication deserves belated recognition not only for its own sake, because it displays very curious features, but also for the light that it may throw on the subject.

The purpose of this paper is to record as far as is now possible the relics from a small but interesting Saxon cemetery which was found in 1931 during the working of a gravel pit in the parish of Westbere, some 3½ miles north-east of Canterbury.

In 1868, during the British military expedition to Magdala in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), an archaeological excavation was undertaken, under the auspices of R. Holmes, a representative of the British Museum, at the ancient port-city of Adulis a few kilometres from the Red Sea coast. The excavation, of which some details were reported in a War Office Publication of 1870, was one of the earliest undertaken in Africa south of the Sahara. As a result an ancient church was discovered and cleared. Among the finds were a number of items of ecclesiastical furniture, some apparently imported in a prefabricated state from the Roman eastern Mediterranean. Some of these pieces, now lodged in the British Museum, are here published for the first time.

The excavation described in this paper was occasioned by the impending destruction of the Quernhow barrow in the course of construction of a new carriage-way on the Great North Road. Proposals for the preservation of the monument had been advanced prior to the last war, but these proving inexpedient, the complete investigation of the structure was requested by the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate of the Ministry of Works, at the instance of the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, and the writer invited to supervise the excavation. A generous grant towards the cost of labour having been made by the Ministry and the Society undertaking to meet all other expenses involved, work commenced on 2nd May 1949, and continued for six weeks, four men being employed throughout this period. At no time was the weather ideal, alternating between an exceptionally long dry spell, which made the study of the barrow structure an extremely difficult task, and a period of continuous rain which unfortunately coincided with the investigation of the primary burial complex.

At one of this Society's meetings last January Mr. Laird Clowes, of the Science Museum, read a paper on the remains of a ship in the Hamble river above Bursledon. The chief feature of this paper, or at least the point emphasized in the daily press, was the conclusion that the wreck—from its shape and the heaviness of its timbering—was probably that of a merchantman of the middle of the nineteenth century.

This suggestion aroused a good deal of indignation locally, since the existence of a so-called ‘Danish galley of about A.D. 900’ was a matter of considerable pride, even though the wreck was generally invisible and always difficult of access. Critics pointed out very promptly that Mr. Laird Clowes had somehow overlooked the fact that even the present remains are quite as wide as the largest opening of Bursledon bridge, which was built between 1783 and 1800, and yet are a mile or more above that bridge. Clearly the ship must belong to a date before 1800, while various peculiarities mentioned by Mr. Laird Clowes seemed to make it impossible for her to belong to either the eighteenth or the seventeenth century. If so, she must date from before 1600, but how much before it was difficult to say.

Between 1919 and 1931 a large amount of medieval pottery, objects of metal, jet, and bone, and coins and jettons were found at Rievaulx Abbey in the course of clearance by H.M. Office of Works (now the Ministry of Public Building and Works). The collection includes two examples of heraldic metalwork and a decorated strip which are sufficiently remarkable to merit detailed publication. The pendant (pl. xxi a) was found in 1922 at the east end of the Church, in the filling of the second from the south of the five chapels in a row against the east wall. The mounting and roundel (pl. xxi b–d) were found in 1924 in the filling on the west side of the Frater, south of the flight of steps leading to the pulpit. The third object, the metal strip with inscription (pl. xxi e), was found in 1925 between the Frater and the Reredorter. No significance can be attached to these findspots, since small objects were found in nearly every part of the abbey. No doubt some were lost during the period of occupation, but the majority seem to have been scattered about by despoilers at the time of the Suppression in 1539.

The church of St Mary at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire is well known for its Anglo-Saxon fabric and sculpture. In 1993 a painting of an Anglo-Saxon figure was discovered, and in 2002 it became possible for the authors to study the painting in detail.

The painting is on one of a pair of triangular-headed stone panels set high in the internal east wall of the church. The discovery provides a significant addition to the tiny corpus of known Anglo-Saxon wall paintings. The identity of the standing, nimbed figure remains elusive, but the figure can be tentatively dated on art historical grounds to the middle to late tenth century.

The authors also explore the structural context of the painting. It is suggested that in the first half of the ninth century the church had an upper floor over the central space (the present east end), and that this floor possibly extended over the whole church. At the east end, there were internal openings from this upper floor into a high-level space in the polygonal apse. At a later date two of these openings were blocked and covered by stone panels, one of which is the subject of this paper. It is possible that the panels flanked a high-level altar or an opening through which a shrine, set on a high-level floor in the apse, could be viewed.

In November 2000 metal detectorists located a decorated copper-alloy mirror, a single silver Knotenfibel brooch and some pottery sherds at Pegsdon, Shillington, Bedfordshire. Subsequent excavation of the findspot uncovered a Late Iron Age cremation burial pit associated with further pot sherds and a single fragment of calcined bone. The opportunity is taken in this preliminary account to revisit both the occurrence in southern England of the brooch type and to discuss the mirror's decoration in relation to the variation of views as to the British mirror series as a whole, and in particular with regard to other recent mirror discoveries. The burial is discussed in its local context and the possible significance of the topography in relation to the site is highlighted.

This paper takes as its start-point the entry for Thomas Bertie in John Harvey’s English Medieval Architects and uses it to explore the life and work of a master-mason who was trained in the Gothic tradition, but came to be one of the first to utilise Renaissance detail in his works in Winchester Cathedral and across Hampshire. Bertie’s work encompassed an astonishing range of projects, extending from the remodelling of the presbytery of Winchester Cathedral to the construction of chapels and tomb monuments, and from the conversion of monastic buildings into country houses to helping create a chain of artillery forts to defend the south coast. The distinctive Renaissance style that appears on so many of these works allows a connection to be made between them and Thomas Bertie.

This paper presents the results of a case study of wax seals dated between 1225 and 1250 from St Ethelbert’s Hospital, Hereford. When medieval matrices were impressed into soft wax, handprints were often left on the reverse of the seal. The use of modern forensic techniques to capture and compare these prints provides evidence about the process of sealing and its relationship to the individual matrix owner. Seals with the same print on the reverse could be impressed with different matrices, and impressions of the same matrix have different prints on the reverse. The impressing of the matrix was not, then, as has been claimed, the responsibility of the matrix owner as the only way to impress their identity into the wax. This evidence allows a reappraisal of administrative developments in sealing, and the separation of the process of sealing from both the performance of livery of seisin and the seal owner.

We all know what maps are. Most of us have occasion to use them frequently. Many of us, no doubt, have spent pleasant hours in our studies, performing, with their help, what have been called ‘armchair travels ‘. But only a few have been led to inquire into the history of maps and mapmaking, and fewer still have interested themselves in that period of the history of cartography which is the subject of this paper—the medieval period.

In the course of the paper on ‘Elizabethan Sheldon Tapestries’ (Archaeologia, vol. lxxiv), which Mr. John Humphreys read before the Society on 3 April 1924, he dealt principally with the historical and topographical interests of many of the then known examples of Sheldon tapestry-work. In the persons of Mr. Humphreys, Colonel Howard, and Mr. A. F. Kendrick we indeed salute pioneers in research concerning this subject. The object of this present paper is to deal as far as possible with the results of my recent documentary researches concerning William Sheldon's scheme and those who were associated with it. I should at once add that these researches have only been made possible by the financial support of our Fellow, Mr. Rees Price, of Broadway, Worcestershire, who himself has done so much similar work concerning the history of the Sheldon family.

In 1938 the Kent Archaeological Society carried out extensive excavations on the site of the important Iron Age hill-fort of Oldbury, above Ightham, Kent. An abridged report of the work has already appeared in Archaeologia Cantiana, li (1939), 137–81. But in view of the more than local importance of some of the results obtained it has seemed advisable to republish them on a considerably expanded basis. The actual work of excavation, recorded in detail in Archaeologia Cantiana, is here more briefly summarized; whereas the bearing of the results obtained upon more general problems is considered at rather greater length.

The scribe of these and the following lines, which lament the English disasters France about 1449, had the kindness to insert the names of the noblemen, thus denoted by their badges. The Root, he tells us, for example, is Bedforde, the swan Gloucetter, and the cresset Excetter. This swan badge of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who died in 1447, is familiar, but he was by no means the only bearer of a swan in his time. It had been the badge of the great house of Bohun, earls of Hereford and Essex (pls. XXXVI, g; XXXVII, g; XL), and is assumed to have come to Humphrey through the marriage of his father the earl of Derby, later King Henry IV (pls. XXXVI, f; XXXVII, g; XL), with Mary de Bohun the younger daughter and coheir of Humphrey, earl of Hereford. But even among Mary's own descendants Duke Humphrey was not alone in using it, for Henry V (pls. XXXIV, a, b; XL), Henry VI, and the latter's son Edward did so too. Mary's elder sister Eleanor (pls. XXXVII, f; XL) used it also, as did her husband, Thomas of Woodstock (pls. XXXIV, c, d, e; XL), duke of Gloucester, and the Staffords, dukes of Buckingham (pls. XXXVI, a, c; XL), descended from their daughter Anne. Nor was this all, for in 1325 Margaret de Bohun (pls. XXXIX, b; XL), the daughter of an earlier Humphrey, earl of Hereford and Essex, had married Hugh de Courtenay, earl of Devon, and many of their descendants, Courtenays (pls. XXXIV, f, j; XXXVII, h; XL), Luttrells (pls. XXXVII, a, b, c, e, i, j; XL) and others (pl. XXXIX, a) used swans as badges, or as crests or supporters in their arms.

The series of relics exhibited to the Society come from an early settlement at Peterborough, dating from a time when flint was in general use, perhaps before the introduction of metal, at least among the poorer inhabitants of the country. The site is a promontory rising out of the Fens and lying on the north-east side of the town. The river Nene joined the Fens about half a mile to the south-west of the site, which is only a few feet above sea-level, and was almost surrounded in times of flood. So far as can be determined at present, the extent of the settlement is several acres, but the ground has not yet been moved except on the west side, where unfortunately no observations were taken. There were no surface indications of human habitation, and no burrows noticed on the promontory or in its neighbourhood. The subsoil is gravel, fine and coarse, varying in depth from 8 to 10 feet. The top 18 inches of gravel, underlying the soil, is reddish brown, mixed with a reddish loam, which sometimes occupies natural pockets 3 to 8 feet deep, cutting down through the gravel and at times reaching the cornbrash below.

A remarkable hoard of gold objects was recently acquired by our Fellow Mr. Robert Day, of Cork, who has kindly allowed me to describe them and exhibit them to the Society. The objects were found together by a ploughman, who turned them up in sub-soiling, and the ploughshare somewhat injured the boat and bowl. The spot where the treasure was found is near the sea on the northwest coast of Ireland.