An examination of at least six views of Lindisfarne Priory dating from the late eighteenth century, at which time most of the nave was still standing, led to the surprising conclusion in an earlier study that the nave was covered by groin vaults. Because of the unequivocal evidence of ribbed vaults in the choir, transept arms and crossing, as well as in the nave aisles, it would be expected that the form of the nave vault was the same. Since the evidence provided by the early views has been greeted with some scepticism, this study documents the collapse and restoration of the nave during the nineteenth century, closely examines the only two points at which the springing of the former nave vault is preserved, and, finally, considers the continued use of groin vaults in England after the appearance of ribbed vaults at Durham Cathedral, c. 1093–-1100. None of these further investigations produced any evidence that contradicts the conclusions based on the early views as initially presented, nor does a consideration of other views from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, during which time the nave elevations were gradually collapsing. Whether ‘logical’ or not, the nave of Lindisfarne was covered by groin vaults. This finding leads to the suggestion that groin vaults, not ribbed vaults, may have been used over the choir of Durham.

This paper was submitted for publication in November 1992.

It may be premised that no stone or wooden weapon can rightly rank as a sword, for such can at best be but a flattened club, and not until the advent of metal could such a weapon as the sword be made. Moreover, in early days metal was too scarce and the workers were insufficiently skilled to make so large a casting. It has been assumed that because arms took a higher rank than tools or domestic implements, therefore the first use to which metal was put was the manufacture of arms, but such a deduction is erroneous, at least as far as Great Britain is concerned.

I have the honor to exhibit to this Society a brass instrument lately found by digging in the ruins of Gleaston Castle, situated in The Lower Furness, in the county of Lancaster. Lord George Cavendish the elder, whose property it is, was so obliging as to put it into my hands, as a curiosity not unworthy the notice of this Society. It is about nine inches long, and half an inch thick in the middle; one end, formed like our common hatchet, with a sharp edge, is 5 inches broad; from this end it tapers on both sides, gradually, to the other end, which is not above if inch broad, and is formed also with a sharp edge. It is for the most part finely polished, and covered with a beautiful patina, except where it has been injured by rust. It weighs two pounds, five ounces. In some respects it is similar to those instruments, called Celts, which have been found in great numbers in various parts of this island, and figured and described by various authors. These, in general, have had one end sharp, as this has; but the other has been formed into a kind of groove, or socket, to fix a handle in; and some have a loop annexed to them; but this is destitute of every thing of that kind, and seems intended to have been held in the hand only for use, whatever that use might have been; for there can be no doubt, but that, if a handle of any kind had been necessary, the workmen who formed this, could as easily have formed it with one, or with a conveniency to fasten one to it. The learned antiquaries who have seen and considered these Celts, have differed much as to the uses for which they were designed.

In the days of King Edward the Confessor there was in Arundel a church dedicated in honour of St. Nicholas, which at the time of the Great Survey received from the tithes of Arundel 24s. a year. The clerks of St. Nicholas also held six hides of land in Harting, and “so it was in the time of King Edward.”

The great cavern of Wookey-Hole is situated two miles to the north-west of the city of Wells, in the centre of Somerset, and immediately adjacent to the thriving- village which has taken the name of the cavern, and has depended for its prosperity on the existence of the copious and usually pellucid stream, which here bursts forth from Mendip's hidden reservoirs. This is the source of the Axe, which winds its way through the lower lands, and after uniting with the sister stream of Cheddar, flows into the sea near Weston-super-mare. From Wookey-Hole the southern slope of Mendip rises in an unbroken sweep till it reaches a thousand feet above the sea, commanding a magnificent view to the east, south, and west. It is not a limestone cave in the ordinary sense of the word, since every known cavity in the immediate vicinity is not in the Carboniferous Limestone, but in the Dolomitic Conglomerate, which here attains enormous thickness. To the north, the great mass of Carboniferous Limestone, receiving the water of innumerable springs from the Old Red Sandstone and Shales and from a generous rainfall, engulfs it in a countless number of swallets, many of which are insignificant, whilst some of the larger have been opened by our exploring parties during the past few years, and followed through unimagined beauties to profound depths.

A Short time ago I took an opportunity of laying before the Society of Antiquaries by your hands, a Letter containing much interesting information on the state of parties in the year 1454; and I now beg leave to add, as a supplementary communication, copies of several Political Poems written at various periods of the reigns of Henry the Sixth and Edward the Fourth, all of which, with the exception of the first, have hitherto remained unpublished. Documents of this kind are confessedly not beneath the notice of the historian, since they shew the popular feelings of the time better than any other contemporary record, and often mention minute circumstances worthy of note, which may in vain be sought for elsewhere. In the Transactions of the Society some few specimens of this political versification have already appeared, of the reigns of Edward the Third, Richard the Second, and Edward the Fourth, and some others belonging to the reign of Henry the Sixth, may be found in the Excerpta Historica Of the six poems now sent, five were composed by adherents of the house of York, the first of which relates to the murder of the Duke of Suffolk, in 1450; the second to the chiefs of the Yorkist faction, probably about May, 1460; the third to the battle of Northampton, in July following; the fourth, to the policy and position of the adverse parties, probably towards the end of the same year; and the fifth to the battle of Towton, in 1461. The remaining poem was written by a Lancastrian, and presents a curious contrast to the others. It enumerates the principal Lords on the King's side, and, under the metaphor of a ship, describes the position of each in the guidance and government of the state towards the close of the year 1458.

Conway occupies a position of great natural strength and, from a medieval standpoint, of great military importance. It is defended on the one side by the River Conway, here a wide estuary, on the other by the mountains of Snowdonia; and in the middle ages it commanded the road from England into the Welsh strongholds of Gwynedd. It might be thought that the strategic value of such a site would be recognized at an early period, but there is no evidence of its military or communal occupation before the arrival of the Cistercians, whose houses were normally placed on secluded spots, in the twelfth century. The Cistercian abbey of Aberconway was founded about 1186.

The custom of washing the hands before the principal meal of the day, based, as it is, upon common decency and convenience, has at all times been observed by civilised people. The Greeks and Romans, or at any rate the more leisured and luxurious among them, not only took their baths before the chief meal, but had water for their hands brought round repeatedly during the meal, which would be the more necessary when the fingers were used in eating much more than they are now. The disciples of Christ were accused by the Pharisees and certain of the Scribes of transgressing the tradition of the elders by not washing their hands when they ate bread. The “tradition of the elders” is abundantly illustrated in the literature of the Jews, and similar traditions prevail among the Mohammedans and other Orientals. In religious minds the act of washing the hands has naturally acquired a symbolical meaning. Hence the Lavabo in the Eucharistic rite which i s described by Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 348-386) as not merely for the sake of personal cleanliness, but as a symbolic act, connected with the words of Psalm xxvi. 6, “I will wash my hands in innocency, O Lord, and so will I go to thine altar.”

The report which I have the honour of submitting to the Society, on behalf of the Executive Committee of the Silchester Excavation Fund, of the discoveries made during the year 1896, is also the record of the systematic excavation of the site by the Committee for the seventh successive season.

It is a curious fact that in these days when so much notice is taken of and so many papers have been compiled on the various objects of architectural interest, which fortunately still abound in our English churches, so little attention has been paid to perhaps the most distinctive feature to be found in the churches of Devonshire, namely, the series of scriptural subjects, apostles, prophets, and saints, depicted on the panels of the screens, of which so many and such fine examples have been preserved throughout the county. Elsewhere, except in Norfolk and parts of Suffolk, it is extremely unusual to find figures of saints painted on the panels of the screens, though it is probable that the vandalism and mistaken religious zeal of former days have obliterated many which then existed, and it therefore seems especially important that some attempt should be made to describe and thereby perpetuate a memorial of these specimens of religious art, so comparatively uncommon in this country.

The Roman city known to us under the name of Silchester forms part of a large farm upon the Hampshire estates of his Grace the Duke of Wellington. The land was occupied till very lately by Mr. Barton, whose name is familiar to archæologists in connection with the place as having formed a small but interesting collection of coins and antiquities found within or around the walls. At Mr. Barton's death, in 1864, this collection was purchased by his Grace.

By the most gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen, I bring before the Fellows of the Society two MSS., the one in Latin and the other in English, of one of the several draft schemes which, were drawn up in the reign of Edward the Sixth for a revision of the Statutes of the Order of the Garter. They present the new Statutes as submitted at a Chapter on the 24th of April, 1552, with subsequent alterations and additions made by the king himself and by Sir William Cecil, Chancellor of the Order, with a view to submission to a later Chapter.

The once rich and mitred abbey of Malmesbury has provided a subject for many writers, and the remains of its church a model for artists and draughtsmen, but no one seems to have combined description and drawing to explain the history of this building. The writer, having been engaged professionally for many years upon the repairs of the church, has had exceptional opportunities for the study of the structure, and although much of necessity has been said before, some little fresh matter has been brought to light.

Acton Scott is situated about three quarters of a mile to the east of the Watling Street road, which leads from Wroxeter, through the Strettons to Leintwardine and Brandon Camp, and from thence to Kentchester. In the “Salopia Antiqua” another line of Roman road is described by Mr. Hartshorne, as going from Nordy Bank, at the foot of the Brown Clee hill, to Wroxeter, which at Wall would pass within four miles of Acton Scott, on the other side.

The promontory site of Le Yaudet, on the north coast of Brittany, was occupied from the Bronze Age to the present day, at various stages during this period sharing in maritime exchange systems linking Brittany to Britain. In the Late Iron Age the site, of some 6ha, was surrounded by stone and rubble defences the main cross-promontory defence being of murus gallicus type. The defences are of at least two phases, the later probably dating to the time of Caesar. Occupation continued and in the late third century AD a new wall was built around the defensive circuit at a time when similar coastal sites on both sides of the Channel were being defended. On one site, agricultural activity of the early medieval period was followed by village development in the eleventh century. The present village is a shrunken remnant of the earlier, more extensive settlement.

The results of architectural recording within the North Range of the University's Old Schools are described. Argued to have stood independently as a hall in the later fourteenth century, the progressive development of the Schools' quadrangle, and extensive alterations to it – culminating in Wright's neo-classical facade of 1754–58 – reflects upon the historical development of academic architecture. The prestigious display of the complex in the mid eighteenth century, facilitated through the mass levelling of domestic properties, equally tells of the institutional ‘realization’ of the University.

The inventory of the jewels of Anne of Denmark, wife of James I of England, belongs to a group of catalogues of personal jewellery of Tudor and Stuart royalty of which one of the most important is that made after the death of Henry VIII in 1550. It is now in the National Library of Scotland (Adv. MS 31.1.10) and was compiled in 1606, the last entry being dated January 1607. It records over four hundred items giving the weight of gold or silver, and the number and nature of the gems in each. The text was written in a neat secretary hand on the recto of each folio, the verso being left blank for later notes. Most of these, together with the marginalia and corrections to the main text, are in the same hand; but two other writers can be distinguished. The presence of these corrections and annotations show it to have been the working copy kept in the Jewel House.

The detailed descriptions make it possible to trace some of the jewels in the earlier inventories of Henry VIII, Mary Tudor and Queen Elizabeth, and, in the case of the latter, to donors such as her favourite, the Earl of Warwick. On his accession James I declared certain jewels to be ‘individually and inseparably for ever annexed to the kingdome of this realme,’ but this did not prevent either their use at Court of subsequent dispersal.

The ‘Prison of Saint Catharine’ is an ancient monument on the outskirts of the ruins of Salamis, on the east coast of Cyprus. It consists of two chambers, of which the inner, rectangular with gable roof east-to-west and door at one end, is cut out of a single block of limestone, and roofed with another, which projects slightly above the modern surface of the ground. The junction of the two blocks is about half-way up the gable roof. The outer chamber is much larger and lies transversely to the inner, with its long axis north and south, and the inner chamber door in the middle of its west wall. Nearly opposite in the east wall is the outer entrance, approached from ground-level by a descent of rough steps, between walls of large squared masonry, now much damaged. The walls of the outer chamber consist of enormous upright slabs, crowned by a massive cornice, of a wide cavetto between two fillets, of which the upper projects considerably beyond the lower. On this cornice rests a semicircular vault of very large stones, the largest of which are set on end and occupy as much as a third of the vault. Within, they are carefully dressed, like the wall surfaces, but outside they were left rough, and have suffered further damage from exposure. They were not, however, intended to be seen, for there are remains of an outer casing of massive squared masonry, consisting of a cornice below, of the same profile as that of the vaulted chamber; and over this a plinth of three courses, the upper and lower plain, the middle bearing a simple cyma moulding, convex above. One course of the wall face is traceable still above the plinth, about half-way up the vault. The ends of the vault above the cornice are filled with rough walling, mostly recent, but including a number of stones from the plinth. A breach in the north wall serves as an entrance now, with a modern flight of steps. The building is now buried up to the level of the cornice and the great roof-slab, in a low mound; but the natural ground-level is only about a metre lower.