In the spring of 1962 Mr. W. Turner, the owner of a gravel pit at Brigham, noticed the unusual occurrence of flint flakes in the top soil being removed to extend his pit. He drew the attention of Messrs. C. & E. Grantham to the site and kindly granted permission for an excavation. The greater part of the flint site had been removed by this time and only a very small portion remained for excavation. The top soil from the site had been dumped on the floor of the pit and it was possible to recover the flint assemblage from it. The arduous task of examining the dumped soil and the remaining portion of the site was carried out during 1962 and 1963 by Messrs. C. & E. Grantham assisted by Messrs. B. Brigham, T. Clarke, P. Edgar, C. Graham, M. R. Petch, and the late T. W. Wadsworth.

The present phase of the rescue excavations caused by the construction of the Cirencester relief road has ended and this interim report includes details of excavations during 1973–6. Work outside the town on the roads, cemeteries, and a building shows extensive use and a new alignment for the Fosse Way. The Bath Gate has been located and partly examined. Work within the town has added to the understanding of the military occupation, revised the position of some streets and found a new public building south of the basilica. In insula XII a farm has been identified. The north aisle wall of St. John's Hospital has been found, showing it to be a hall with nave and two aisles.

The types of decoration used on Anglo-Saxon pottery of the pagan period in England have never yet received the detailed analysis which their variety and historical importance deserve. The time has not yet come when a comprehensive study can be attempted, for the great bulk of the pottery concerned either remains unpublished or has been published so inadequately that the student is compelled to go back to the originals before coming to any conclusions. But it does already seem possible to isolate certain of the commoner elements of the decorative schemes employed and to investigate their history and affinities. In the following pages the attempt is prompted by the exhibition and publication of two urns from Lincolnshire and one from London, all of which are in private ownership. These three vessels happen to illustrate three characteristic styles of decoration which seem to be fundamental in this line of study, and the following remarks are offered without any undue dogmatism, in the hope that they may at least make a start in the elucidation of what is undoubtedly the most neglected of all pre-medieval groups of English ceramic material.

The following paper is to record certain prehistoric remains in an area already famous for the seventh-century oratory of St. Pieran. Several years ago I commenced a rough survey of the whole district and discovered (within an approximately twelve-mile radius) occupation sites yielding relics of Mesolithic facies and Iron Age and Medieval antiquities. Most of the remains are associated with the extensive tracts of blown sands that lie behind and on either side of the bays of Holywell and Perran. It was the widespread surface occurrence of potsherds and kitchen-midden material within the area that pointed to the possible existence of the habitational sites lying beneath them. Accordingly I dug trial trenches at several widely separated positions, and nearly all these exposed remains of shallow shell-middens.

In the parishes of Stanwick St. John and Forcett-with-Carkin, eight miles north of Richmond in the North Riding of Yorkshire, are more than six miles of rampart and ditch, forming a complex of enclosures of a very remarkable kind. Since Leland's day they have been a sufficiently notorious archaeological problem, but their size and remoteness on the one hand, and possibly the counter-attractions of Hadrian's Wall on the other, have combined to deter analytical investigation of them.

A small round barrow near Knob's Crook, Woodlands, Dorset, covered three pits, the largest containing a cremation burial accompanied by samian ware dated to C. A.D. 70–85, broken metal and steatite objects, and an unburnt trepanned roundel. A section was cut through the bank and ditch around one of the supposedly Roman barrows at Badbury Rings, Dorset (Appendix I), in re-examining the evidence for Roman barrows in Wessex (Appendix II). For comparison, details of three of the most recently excavated Roman barrows in England have been summarized (Appendix III).

Recent remedial work at Frogmore House, Windsor, presented the opportunity for an investigation into the origins and development of the building. In this paper the original house of 1680 is described and attributed to Hugh May. The subsequent history of Frogmore is outlined up to the late eighteenth century, when the house was altered and enlarged by James Wyatt. A previously unknown scheme of wall-painting was discovered during repairs in the staircase hall, and this is here analysed and assigned to Louis Laguerre. An inventory of the contents of the house in 1700 is appended.

Between 1998 and 2008, 450 inhumation burials of the fifth to eighth centuries ad were excavated in four separate but adjacent burial grounds within RAF Lakenheath airbase in Suffolk. Study of the evidence has been based on the typology of the national chronological framework of sixth- and seventh-century graves and grave goods published in 2013, and correlated also with a related East Anglian regional scheme. Fifty high-precision radiocarbon dates allow for thorough evaluation of the scope for applying the phase-structure and estimated date-boundaries of the national framework to this one large site. The results can be held to reproduce the core sequence of the national framework, albeit with necessary modifications that provide greater insights into the processes used to generate models of the data, besides significant modifications to the perceived date-ranges of certain artefact-types. The results have also been markedly influenced (and apparently improved) by a new standard calibration curve, IntCal20, launched in August 2020. This study thus suggests key agenda for further productive research into this contextually vital body of information.

The court of Common Pleas was one of the most important courts in the English legal system for more than 600 years, until its abolition by Act of Parliament in 1873. The cases heard before this royal court were civil disputes between the king’s subjects, often relating to land, inheritance and debts. The purpose of this paper is to introduce readers to the ornament and imagery that appeared on the headings of the main records of the court of Common Pleas between 1422 and 1509 and to explore the origins and contemporary context of the images and representations employed by the clerk-artists who wrote and decorated these headings. The decoration they chose ranged from simple ornament to representations of plants, birds, animals and people. Great emphasis was placed on the role of the sovereign as the fount of justice, and this emphasis was reinforced by the incorporation of words and phrases, acclamations and verses from the Psalms chosen to underline the majesty and power of successive monarchs. The illustrations provide an important insight into the art, history and politics of late fifteenth-century England.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicts three curious chequered garments. These garments are usually identified as gambesons, or some form of scaled armour. Several scholars have observed similar garments in the early twelfth-century Bible of Cîteaux. The Cîteaux garments are depicted in a pattern later used to represent fur (called ‘vair’) in heraldic art. This identification is confirmed by the pattern’s usage in cloak linings, but its simultaneous appearance as tunic material is unfamiliar in later art. The Cîteaux tunics suggest the possibility that the Bayeux garments may also have been intended to represent fur tunics. Reasons for that identification, as well as problems with the identification, are considered.