The pottery recorded in this paper was found at Flints sandpit on Lordship Farm early in 1933 by Mrs. C. Wager, till recently of Holwell, to whom thanks are due for permission to publish. The sand-pit is half a mile south of Holwell, a village 2¼ miles north-west of Hitchin. It is situated on a slope facing westwards, at 200 ft. above sea-level, and the soil is a patch of sand on boulder-clay (plan, fig. 1).

In the course of sand-digging, some pits were cut into and destroyed on the north side of the sand-pit. The pits were about 5 ft. in diameter and 4 ft. deep. Other pits may lie to the north. Mr. W. H. Lane, of Letchworth, has kindly sent the following note: ‘In one of the pits there were two hearths. The first hearth was at a depth of about 4 ft. 6 in. Above this was silted material sloping at a rather acute angle from east to west. The pit had then been levelled by dumping surface-soil, and the second hearth made some 2 ft. above the first.’

This report gives a brief account of a field reconnaissance in the Levant during August and September 1955. Seven weeks were spent in ground-checking archaeological sites noticed on air photographs taken by the Royal Air Force over Greece and Rhodes during the Second World War, and later in Cyprus. Assisted by my wife, I was able in these few weeks to locate and to examine in detail a large number of archaeological features, as the consequence of having these photographs as a guide. I shall reserve for a future occasion the description of the results and discoveries from our work in Cyprus, which was based on (i) my study of some thousands of photographs which the Department of Lands and Surveys in Nicosia kindly made available, and (ii) ground-checks on foot in various parts of the island. A very helpful grant of £50 given by the Craven Committee in the University of Oxford contributed towards the cost of this short campaign in 1955. The work was in direct continuation of my field research in Mediterranean lands since 1945, with the emphasis extended for the moment to the eastern end. This was a planned sequel to discoveries which I had made years ago, and an opportunity to complete them with fieldwork on the ground had been long awaited.

The Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London has set up a sub-committee to encourage co-ordinated research aimed at deciphering the organization of the landscape from the earliest times to the recent past. After a detailed consideration of the evidence, it decided to concentrate its attention, in the first instance, on the chalk lands of central southern England, where the spread of detectable remains is denser and more widespread than anywhere else in the country, and where the archaeological material in the form of artefacts and faunal remains is best preserved in the greatest quantity.

Alchester is a flat site of some 26 acres, 11 miles from Oxford and 1½ from Bicester, in the parish of Wendlebury, on gravel over clay. Remains of a bank and ditch enclose it, forming approximately a square, the axis of which runs nearly N. 40 W. At the south-east corner is a mound 4 ft. 9 in. high, and remains of another at the north-east.

From south to north through the site passes the Roman road which comes from Dorchester over Shotover Hill and across Otmoor: it goes on past Bicester north by east towards Watling Street near Towcester. On entering Alchester this road deviates some thirty yards east from its direct course (with which the ramparts are aligned), to rejoin which at its exit on the north it runs askew across the site N. 10° W.—an unexplained peculiarity.

It is to the ancient practice of suspending the funeral insignia of the deceased over his tomb that we owe the survival of our few existing English helms. Foreign visitors to our country churches often express their surprise at finding these relics still in situ. The practice also obtained on the Continent, but surviving instances there are very much rarer than here. Despite our innate conservatism, many church helmets must have disappeared through decay, indifference, and, latterly, the avarice of collectors. That they are not yet safe from spoliation was shown by a case which came before the Courts last year.

Portchester Castle remained untouched by archaeologists until the Office of Works took charge of the site in 1926. From that date until 1938 tidying up operations were carried out, entailing the excavation of moats and the general lowering of the ground level within the Inner Bailey. In 1956 Mr. R. Robertson-Mackay, on behalf of the Ministry of Works, supervised the digging of a trial trench, to the south of the present road, across the line of the second Roman ditch outside the west wall of the fort. In June and July 1961, the writer excavated an area, 100 ft. by 30 ft., against the inside of the west wall, to the south of the Landgate, the work being organized by the Ministry of Works as a rescue excavation prior to the proposed construction of a changing-room and lavatory. The site was later considered to be unsuitable for such a structure, but it was decided to conduct further excavations, the first phase of which (Easter 1962—Easter 1963) was designed to examine the Roman defences. The work was carried out with the co-operation of the Ministry of Public Building and Works and was financed by grants from the Libraries and Museums Committee of the Portsmouth City Council, the Hampshire Field Club, and the Joint Archaeological Committee.

This paper provides a comprehensive description of St Davids Bishop's Palace. Almost completely built under the patronage of Bishop Henry de Gower (1328–47), it represents the most remarkable secular building in the Decorated style. Detailed analysis of each elevation of the palace has enabled sixteen phases of work to be identified, nine of which are grouped into three building campaigns sponsored by Bishop de Gower. This has enabled the evolution of the plan and the functions of the different rooms to be identified. The two main ranges of the palace are decorated with a unique, arcaded parapet, containing over 130 carved corbels, with other sculpture surviving internally. This represents the largest group of sculpture in a domestic building of this period and a detailed catalogue and analysis is presented. Both the architectural detailing and the sculpture show that the master craftsmen had close links with the Bristol school of the Decorated period.

The subject of early Wall-Papers has not been much investigated in England. Of the various forms of hanging or wall-decoration which preceded them–designs painted, stencilled, or incised on the walls; and hangings of plain material, of tapestry, of embroidery, of cloth stained or painted, and even of painted paper–and of the wall-papers of the eighteenth century–painted or printed importations from China and the printed products of our own country, from simple floral designs to the Gothics of Horace Walpole or the elaborate ‘scenes’, one set of which sufficed to decorate a whole room –of all these something is known; though we still wait for an authoritative and comprehensive work. But little attempt has been made so far to bridge the gap between medieval and modern, the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.

In the year 1919 it became necessary to excavate to a depth of 2 ft. over a given area on Worthy Down, near Winchester. At the north-east corner of the excavation a number of iron currency-bars were uncovered. None of the excavators knew what they were at the time and they were thrown aside, but one of the party, Mr. C. H. Blenkinsop, eighteen months after, on visiting the British Museum, noticed similar objects labelled ‘Iron Currency-bars’. He returned to the site, collected several bars, and brought them to me. A few days afterwards I examined the ground in his company. The excavation was oblong, with its long axis east and west, and the section exposed showed 6 in. of soil and 1 ft. 6 in. of chalk. At the north-east angle was seen what appeared to be the section of one of the sides of a shallow trench filled with earth, chalk-rubble, and burnt flints. On digging to remove the turf on the surface contiguous to this section, the spade was checked by several iron currency-bars, which lay hidden by the grass that had grown over them since they were cast out. At 1 ft. 6 in. below the surface I found the end of a bar 8⅗ in. long, which fitted on to one of the bars already in my possession. The exact position and level of the original discovery were thus known. At a depth of 2 ft. the chalk was reached. The digging was then directed eastwards, and it was found that the soil deepened. A seam of flint ‘pot-boilers’ and charcoal was met with at 2 ft. 6 in. A fragment of a human cranium, bones and teeth of (?) horse, ox, pig, and sheep, with pieces of pottery were also found. These discoveries occurred on the 13th August 1920. Further excavations were made on various dates.

Recent discoveries of pebble mosaics in various settlements in southern Spain from the seventh to the fourth centuries B.C. reveal an early tradition in floor-making. These discoveries have thrown new light on the origins of the most commonly used floors in Roman times, opus signinum and opus tessellatum. The first technique, thought to be Italian in origin, was probably developed in Italy from previous experiments in other Mediterranean sites which were of Punic origin. The origin of tessellated floors has been widely discussed and, although they were being produced on a large scale in Italy towards the first century A.D., we can assume that there existed a long experimental stage prior to the Roman period in which two general types of mosaic floors were developed—those with a uniform surface and those formed with small elements.

When Birtsmorton Church, Worcestershire, was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, a number of its windows were filled with painted glass of the period. The only portions now in situ are the arms of the Ruyhales, the lords of the manor, in the tracery lights of some of the windows in the nave, and of one in the north transept. What remained of the contents of the main lights, together with various fragments in the style of the fifteenth century, had been collected, perhaps early in the last century, in the east window of the chancel, where facsimile drawings, partly coloured, were made of them for Dr. Prattinton, whose Worcestershire collections are in our library. When the church was restored in 1877, the east window was rebuilt on a new pattern, but the glass was not replaced in it, and ultimately found its way into the adjoining ‘Birtsmorton Court’, where the present owner Mr. F. B. Bradley-Birt discovered it lying loose, and had the fragments releaded so as to form two panels. When I first saw the latter, I recognized that they contained the principal elements of the drawings in the Prattinton collection with which I had recently made acquaintance.

The mound of Kilindir (fig. 1) lies about one kilometre south-west of the station of that name on the railway that runs from Salonika to Constantinople via Seres, Dedeagatch and Adrianople. A small stream called Gyol Ayak issues from the south side of Lake Doiran exactly at the modern village at Doiran station. This stream, after passing through nine kilometres of broken and ravined country, issues into more open ground just by the modern Chiflik which represents the pre-war site of the village of Kilindir.

The following notes relate to one of a number of ancient occupation and other sites examined by the writers between 1925 and 1939, in the district between St. Keverne and Coverack in the Lizard peninsula, and of which a record will appear in due course in the Journal of the Royal Institute of Cornwall. Meanwhile as the pottery found on the site in question may be of importance in helping to date Dark Ages ceramics discovered elsewhere, it has been thought advisable to publish the present account in the Antiquaries Journal.

Excavations at Portchester Castle have produced evidence of occupation throughout the Saxon period. After the cessation of standard Roman wares and local hand-made types early in the fifth century two Grubenhäuser were built. The contemporary assemblage, assignable to the mid fifth century, included (?) imported carinated bowls and local hand-made grass-tempered wares made in the Roman tradition. Late in the fifth or early in the sixth century stamped Saxon urns appear and probably continue, alongside the grass-tempered tradition, into the seventh century. An association of a grass-tempered pot with an imported glass vessel of eighth-century date shows that the local tradition persisted, but by the middle of the eighth century hand-made jars in gritty fabrics, like those from Hamwih, appear in a substantial rubbish deposit which belongs to the initial occupation of the hall complex. By the tenth century a new style of wheel-thrown pottery, called here Portchester ware, is dominant. It is mass produced and distributed largely from the Isle of Wight to central Hampshire and from the Sussex border to the River Mean. Contemporary forms include imported wares, green-glazed pitchers, pots from the Chichester region, and an assemblage made in a wheel-made continuation of the local gritty-fabric tradition. Portchester ware had gone out of use by 1100 at the latest.