The communication which I now have the honour to lay before the Society of Antiquaries presupposes a knowledge of the contents of my two papers concerning Jersey antiquities already published in Archaeologia. I beg to thank the Society for enabling these successive reports on the excavations of La Cotte de St. Brelade to be printed and illustrated on so generous a scale. I would here take the opportunity of likewise acknowledging my debt to many other helpers: first, to Mr. G. F. B. de Gruchy, Seigneur of Noirmont, and owner of the cave, who has not only made over the whole of the treasure-trove to public institutions, providing funds into the bargain in order as it were to exploit him-self, but has throughout been my constant adjutant and co-worker; then to my Oxford friends and pupils who have at considerable cost to themselves taken part in the work for weeks and months together, Captain A. H. Coltart and Mrs. Coltart, Mr. T. B. Kittredge, Mr. B. de Chrustchoff, Miss Bayly, Mr. R. de J. Fleming Struthers, the Rev. E. O. James, Mrs. Jenkinson, Mr. P. H. Brodie; next, to Jersey residents innumerable, most of them ardent members of the Societe Jersiaise, such as, to mention but a few, Mr. E. T. Nicolle, Mr. J. Sinel, the late Dr. A. Dunlop, Mr. H. J. Baal, Mrs. Briard, Mrs. Symons, Mr. G. Le Bas, Mr. A. H. Barreau, Mr. E. F. Guiton, the two last-mentioned gentlemen having as draughtsman and photographer respectively helped largely to make our results intelligible by way of the eye; and, finally, to the many experts who have in various ways assisted in the interpretation of what we brought to light, among them being Sir Hercules Read and Mr. Reginald A. Smith of the British Museum; Dr. A. Smith Woodward and Dr. C. Andrews of the British Museum of Natural History; Dr. A. Keith of the Royal College of Surgeons; and Professor W. J. Sollas and Mr. H. Balfour of Oxford. Let me add, in order to save the face of my kind allies and advisers, that I am in the last resort responsible for every statement of fact or opinion that appears here.

Villas are so uniform in character that they arouse comparatively little interest compared with the military problems of Roman Britain. But a villa surrounded by ditches, whether for defensive purposes or not, can be immediately classed as a rarity. A list of such examples of domestic fortification in the Roman period includes the houses at Castle Dykes, near Ripon, at Cwmbrwyn in Carmarthenshire, at Bartlow in Cambridgeshire, at Langton in Yorkshire, and at Ely near Cardiff. Of these only the two last have been scientifically excavated, and only the house at Ely has fortifications which conform to the building. In these circumstances the discovery of a villa surrounded by five ditches and occupied, through five periods of construction and reconstruction, from the latter half of the first to the middle of the fourth century is of particular interest.

The villa in question is situated some 200 yards east of the Fosseway, at a point 9 miles south of Lincoln and a mile and a half north of Brough (Crococolana). The site is marked on the Ordnance Survey and known locally as Potter Hill. It comprises a long ridge of land some hundred feet higher than the plain in which Crococolana is placed. Stukeley in his Itinerary says, ‘and journeying to the space of about 12 Roman miles, I found Collingham on my right hand: there is a high barrow or tumulus called Potters Hill, where they say was a Roman pottery: it stands upon an eminence commanding a prospect both ways upon the road. Half a mile further is Brough.’

Nevertheless the presence of a Roman building was not suspected until the discovery in 1933 by the farmer, Mr. E. Taylor, of a mosaic pavement.

One of Winchester Cathedral's most celebrated monuments, the so-called ‘Tomb of William Rufus’, has been officially re-attributed. It is now displayed to visitors as that of Bishop Henry of Blois (1129–71). The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the evidence which has led to the renaming of the monument. Information obtained when the tomb was last opened in 1868 is newly evaluated, leading to conclusions quite different from those of the nineteenth-century investigators, whose analysis of the evidence was coloured by their conviction that they had discovered the remains of the Red King. It is further suggested that William Rufus's bones are indeed located in the mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral presbytery, as inscriptions on those chests maintain.

A half-century of research and discussion has advanced our knowledge of the Pharos of Alexandria without, however, eliminating all the uncertainties that enshroud its architecture, ornament, and technical character. In his monumental study of 1909 Hermann Thiersch worthily prepared the ground, by collecting into a single volume nearly all the evidence then available; but his architectural conclusions must now be read in conjunction with Don Miguel de Asin's essay of 1933 based on an Islamic source which Thiersch had overlooked. More recently, in 1952, Professor Charles Picard has published some important observations which refer particularly to the summit of the Pharos, with its projecting Tritons and crowning statue.

Among the many brooches which have been found at Corstopitum, six specimens are recorded of the S-shaped or dragonesque type, which in its fully developed form has been well described as one of the finest examples of Romano-Celtic art. The type occurs predominantly in the military districts of Roman Britain (cf. distribution map, fig. i). Over 75 per cent. of the known examples have been found north of a line joining the Severn and the Humber, but even in this area only one site, Traprain Law, has yielded so many examples as Corstopitum, and of the six found at Traprain only two were complete, and one was a mere fragment. The Corstopitum brooches, while having in common the S-shaped or dragonesque outline, differ so much in other details as to invite the consideration of their mutual relationship and their respective places in the development of the type.

The earliest record of the Henge at Durrington Walls, in the parish of Durrington, Wiltshire (SU. 150437) (location map, fig. 1), is that made in the early nineteenth century by Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1812, p. 169). Today, the bank and ditch of the henge have been largely either ploughed flat or masked by comparatively modern accumulations of plough-soil and there is little to indicate to the casual visitor that these degraded earthworks represent all that is left of the largest henge monument in Britain.

In examining some material in the reserves of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, I noticed a small necklace which includes beads of blue faience (pl. vii a). The entry in the museum's Accessions Book stated that it had been presented in 1917 by Mr. A. Amos, ‘from a barrow on Beacon Hill, North Molton’, and that it had been ‘found with cremated bones, an urn and flint implements’. After many difficulties I succeeded, with the help of Mr. R. Tucker, agent to Lord Poltimore for his North Molton estate, in obtaining details of the discovery. I am much indebted to him for his services, and to Mrs. Lamb and Miss Amos of Dawlish, and to Mr. Passmore of North Molton for the information they so readily provided about an event of so many years ago.

This mail shirt, which was in the Hearst Collection and is now in the Armouries of the Tower of London, dates from the fourteenth century. By tradition it was the property of Rudolph IV, Duke of Austria, Carinthia, and Ferrette (1339–65), but, as far as is known, there are no records to prove this. It is, however, a fine, early shirt which is well worth recording.

The shirt is constructed of alternate rows of riveted and whole rings, of rump length, with a wide and rather square neck opening and three-quarter length sleeves. Brass rings are used for decoration, two rows on the rump edge and three on the sleeve edges.

A collar of heavy fifteenth-century mail has been added at the neck, but this is a ‘restorer's’ addition as it has been linked on with cut rings from the collar. This is a type of shirt which would not have had a high collar.

The British Museum acquired in November 1961 a Roman marble portrait head (pl. XLVI) found at Broadbridge, three miles west of Chichester (fig. 1). It was given to the museum by the late Captain A. W. F. Fuller through the National Art-Collections Fund.

I have ventured to bring the documents which form the subject-matter of this paper to the notice of the Society because they seem to suggest a possible source of material to any one who may have a mind to be the future historian of the iron industry of the Weald. Due attention has already been paid to the later and more distinguished period of the history of that industry, and we are now able to form a fair idea of its extent and the processes in use, after the discovery of the art of casting and the subsequent employment of the works, in the production of the iron ordnance of the kingdom, had made it something more than of mere local importance. For the earlier period, when casting was not, our knowledge of the industry must probably remain imperfect, but that it may possibly be a little less vague than it is at present will, I hope, appear from the evidence which I now produce.

Any study of British spear-heads of the Bronze Age must be inspired by, and largely based on, the very valuable pioneer work of Greenwell and Brewis, whose handsomely illustrated paper on ‘The Origin, Evolution and Classification of the Bronze Spear-head in Great Britain and Ireland’ was published in Archaeologia for 1909. Indeed, their general analysis of the subject is so masterly and their conclusions so impressive that the paper has perhaps been allowed to pass too long unchallenged. Relatively little was known, a quarter of a century ago, of the continental material, and the close connexions between Britain and the mainland in late prehistoric times were almost unsuspected. Comparative studies have revealed the widespread interchange of various products and ideas in the European Bronze Age ; and no one would now go so far as to claim, with Greenwell and Brewis, that ‘there can be no doubt whatever that the spear-head in its origin, progress, and final consummation, was an indigenous product of these islands, and was manufactured within their limits apart from any controlling influence from outside’.

A number of ancient brooches on the penannular principle is to be seen in the British Museum and the National Museum of Antiquities at Edinburgh, as well as in the National Museum at Dublin, where most are naturally preserved, as the type is predominantly Irish. It is not surprising to find that the ends of the hoop are frequently joined, thus rendering the ordinary name in a strict sense inapplicable, but it will be convenient to include as penannular those, generally of the middle period, that have evidently been developed from the standard pattern but have a different arrangement of the pin owing to the fusion of the terminals. The penannular group of brooches includes specimens which, if considered apart, would hardly betray any common features; but the existence of many intermediate stages renders a logical and chronological sequence possible, and an attempt will be made to give some degree of precision in place of the unsupported guesses of the past.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were three essential things to be seen by visitors to the Tower of London: the menagerie, the crown jewels, and the Line of Kings. The first and second of these still exist, although the menagerie was moved to Regent's Park in 1834 and became the London Zoo. The jewels, of course, are still in the Tower, but the Line of Kings as such has disappeared, although most of its component parts survive.

Bogo de Clare, whose private expenditure forms the subject of the present paper, was a son of Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hertford, and a younger brother of Gilbert who succeeded his father in those earldoms in 1261.

The very interesting chessmen illustrated on pls. v and vi were found during excavations carried out by Mrs. McGeagh at Witchampton Manor about five miles NNW of Wimborne. The work revealed the foundations of buildings regarded as mainly of medieval origin, though a British fibula and a quantity of Roman pottery, chiefly in fragments, have also come to light.

Six years ago we read a paper before you on ‘Recent Discoveries in connexion with Roman London’, when you kindly gave us leave to make further researches on behalf of the Society. Since then we have been almost constantly watching excavations in London, and it is now our duty to give an account of Roman remains exposed to view since June, 1906. It will naturally be asked why we have delayed so long: the reply is, that these diggings have followed each other in rapid sequence, lasting in some cases over protracted periods and demanding much sacrifice of time and energy. A large part of our observation also has met with little definite result, while frequently later finds have had a bearing on those which preceded them, and have thus offered opportunities of correcting and amplifying the previous records.