The observations already transmitted to the Society of Antiquaries, respecting some Celtic remains discovered near Sawston, were hardly communicated to the Society when our attention was again called to similiar antiquities of much more elegant form, and very superior workmanship, that were found by a party of labourers in the service of Greaves Townley, Esq. of Fulbourn, as they were digging upon Fulbourn common. Mr. Townley had the kindness to send these men to me at Cambridge, with the curious reliques they had brought to light; and as he allowed me to make what use of them I pleased, I am enabled to lay before the Society such other remarks as appear to me to be worthy of notice; accompanied, as before, with a drawing, by Mr. Kerrich, of the things as they were found, remarkable for its fidelity and exactness of delineation.

On the 27th February 1930 I gave to this Society a preliminary account of the armour which had for centuries passed unrecognized in the Sanctuary church of the Madonna delle Grazie near Mantua. My observations on that occasion were based on notes made from the top of a ladder, and the illustrations were from photographs of the figures taken in situ in the niches of the gallery which runs round the nave of the church. The true appearance of the armour was at that time concealed under a thick coating of paint and accumulated layers of dust. Component parts of individual suits were distributed among different figures, often quite incongruously and mixed with supplementary parts supplied in papier mâché. The neglected and shambling appearance of the figures went far to explain why the true character of the armour that clothed them had not previously been realized. In summing up I ventured to predict that ‘if the armour at Grazie were cleaned and well set up, it would present a very different appearance from what it does at present, and would almost certainly reveal some interesting armourers' marks. Nine of the seventeen suits include Gothic pieces, in some cases virtually complete’

Mr King, in his many ingenious and pertinent Observations on Ancient Castles, (published in the Archaeologia, vol. VI. art. XXVII.) for the purpose of explaining the conclusions he has drawn from them, has given a full description of Rochester castle, which he remarks was in great part re-edified, if not originally built by Gundulph bishop of that see, about 1088. The justice of this prelate's claim to have been the architect of this venerable fabric is examined in the following disquisition ; and, should the paper appear to you to be not unworthy of the attention of the society of which you are a member, by communicating it to that learned and respectable body, you will oblige

Now that the public attention is so much directed upon the Tower at Westminster which is to receive the great clock and bell which are to proclaim the hour to the whole population of London, it appears not unseasonable to draw into notice the ancient and long-lost Bell-Tower which formed part of the buildings of the ancient Palace of Westminster, and stood very near to the site of the more splendid and imposing Tower recently erected.

Although many places from their extent may have possessed greater importance in early times, no British camp is perhaps better known to ourselves than Mount Caburn. Situated, not in the midst of a deserted heath as some of them are, but in the centre of a populous district, a very conspicuous feature from the town of Lewes, and close to the junction of the railways from Eastbourne and Newhaven, it has necessarily attracted the attention of all who pass that way. Various conjectures have been hazarded in local histories as to its origin and uses, and more numerous by far must have been the unrecorded speculations of the curious during the long period that Lewes has figured in history.

We have the honour of laying before the Society, on behalf of the Executive-Committee of the Excavation Fund, a report of the work carried out at Silchester in 1899, being the tenth year in succession of the systematic investigation of the site.

The plan of operations decided upon last year has been pursued without change during the season just past. It may be remembered that Insula I., partly explored in 1890, is traversed at its southern extremity by a modern road, which passes completely across the site of the city. All the ground to the north of this road was examined last year, but the small section south of it still remained untouched. One task was, therefore, to complete our researches in Insula I.; the other, there being ample funds for the purpose, to work out two more insulæ.

Recent excavations in Cyprus have brought to light a vast number of tombs of theprimitive inhabitants of the Island, and a careful examination of the contentsof these will help us to understand something of the manners, ideas, andartistic character of the different peoples whose remains are theredeposited.

The curious article which you have entrusted to me for exhibition to the Society of Antiquaries has at least three claims to the attention of that body ;—1st, as an authentic memorial of a celebrated person; 2nd, as an excellent specimen of a curious description of mathematical and nautical instrument, long superseded in actual practice, but full of interest in the history of the sciences to which it relates; and, 3rd, as a production of a skilful artist in this kind of work whose name has fallen out of remembrance.

The object of this Paper is to describe certain Roman remains discovered in the year 1881 during extensive alterations on the premises of Messrs. J. Tylor and Sons (of which firm the writer is a member) in Warwick Square, adjoining the last of the three successive Roman walls of London, and near one of the gates of that wall (Newgate), and to draw therefrom certain conclusions as to the state in which Britain was found by the Romans, and the nature and object of their occupation.

It may be of interest to the Society if I submit to its notice some observations made last year, which render it necessary to re-write the history of one of the best known monuments of Rome.

The monument, which for fifty-six years has been called the Column of Phocas, was formerly, when nothing but the pillar itself was seen above ground, the subject of much curiosity and speculation among the visitors of the Forum. The “nameless column with the buried base” was thought by some to be the sole relic of a great temple or other public building. By others it had been conjectured to be part of the famous bridge by which Caligula united his palace on the Palatine with the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. In the early years of the century, among other works of the same kind, it was resolved to clear away the soil and débris from the substructure of this column; and on the 13th of March, 1813, the inscription of its pedestal, which had remained for centuries a few feet below the level of the ground, was uncovered, and revealed the fact that it had supported a statue dedicated by the exarch Smaragdus to the honour of a Caesar, whose name had been erased, but who, by other indications, could be no other than Phocas, an emperor of evil reputation, but to whom Rome and the world owe some gratitude for having been instrumental in dedicating the Pantheon to Christian worship, and so preserving from ruin one of the noblest and most original architectural works of antiquity.

The churches of the Yorkshire Wolds afford much interesting material for the study of the architecture of the Yorkshire village church during the second half of the century following the Norman Conquest. As a rule they have undergone much less alteration and enlargement than the churches of districts which have seen more change, and an unusually large proportion of them retain, if not a considerable part of their original structure, at least enough to make it easy to reconstitute their original plan. With very few exceptions, their plans follow the common type of aisleless oblong nave and narrower square-ended chancel, with or without a western tower, though they vary greatly in size, from the large scale of the nave of Hunmanby to the little nave of Kirkby Underdale, the length of which is less than one-third that of Hunmanby.

The history of the monastery of Reculver is short and scanty. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 669 Egbert, king of Kent, gave ‘Raculf’ to Bassa, the mass priest, mynster to tymbrianne. Ten years later there occurs a grant by King Lothair of Kent to Brihtwald, abbot of the monastery of ‘Raculf’, showing that the monastery was then in being. In 692 abbot Brihtwald was made Archbishop of Canterbury, a promotion unlikely to have come to the head of a small and obscure house. In 747 King Eadberht of Kent granted to Abbot Denebach the toll of one ship in Fordwich, and in 761 was himself buried in the abbey church. After that no record survives, except that in 949 King Edred granted Reculver and its possessions to the archbishopric of Canterbury. The abbey may have been laid waste by the Danes; at any rate it had evidently ceased to exist as a monastic house by the tenth century. It continued thenceforward as a parish church, and remained in use till 1805, when on account of its distance from the houses of parishioners it was abandoned and partly pulled down. Its western towers, with their wooden spires, were left standing as a seamark, and came under the control of the Trinity House. Finally in 1925 the church and its site were placed in the charge of the Commissioners of Works under the terms of the Ancient Monuments Act of 1913.

In consequence of the conversation which I had the honor to hold with you, I take an early opportunity of explaining, as far as the want of an original MS. will admit, the process of unrolling the ancient Papyri discovered in Herculaneum.

Royal assent to the foundation in the parish church of Tattershall (Lincs.) of a college dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Virgin, and SS. Peter, John the Baptist, and John the Evangelist was granted on 14th July 1439. The establishment was to consist of a Master or Warden, six priests, six clerks, and six choristers, and with an almshouse for thirteen paupers attached to the college, under the charge of the Master or Warden. The main purpose of the college was to pray for the souls of King Henry VI, Ralph, Lord Cromwell (the founder), and his parents, friends, and benefactors, and especially for the soul of his grandmother Maud Cromwell.

There has been much discussion by archaeologists in recent years of the reasons for which ancient hoards may have been deposited and not recovered. There is an apparently clear Roman definition of treasure in the Digest: Thesaurus est vetus quaedam depositio pecuniae, cuius non extat memoria ut iam dominum non habeat. There have been increasing difficulties, however, in interpreting this statement and the versions of it which have been incorporated into modern law. In England and Wales, for example, the uncertainties have even led to a replacement of the medieval law of Treasure Trove with a Treasure Act more suited to present-day conditions. In spite of the fact that most discoveries of treasure were made by chance, without adequate records, much of the argument revolves round the details of the deposits, from which attempts are made to infer the motives of those who made them. This speculation cannot be supported by direct evidence, and so, because our own particular interest is in hoards of Roman silver plate, we felt that it might be helpful first to review briefly some of the ancient documentary evidence for hoards of silver plate which the owner intended to recover, from literature and papyri, and then to publish two such hoards with detailed documentation, one from England in the seventeenth century and one from Germany in the twentieth century, which reveal some of the motives, hopes, actions and accidents which actually occur in such circumstances.

This paper demonstrates that the five Irish early medieval church types have markedly differential distributions. In particular, most of those with antae are in the east, while most of those without antae are in the west. It is shown that this regionalism cannot be interpreted as a deliberate strategy of material differentiation on the part of particular politico-cultural groups. A reconsideration of the chronology suggests that many of the antae-less churches are relatively late, and so the division is primarily indicative of differences in the period and rate of mortared church construction, something that is influenced by both environmental and cultural factors. It is suggested that differences in church dimensions between east and west are indicative of subtle economic differences; and a range of archaeological evidence is used to sketch other economic and cultural variations. These patterns highlight the importance of exploring regionality, even when studying relatively cohesive entities such as early medieval Ireland.

This paper provides a new interpretation of the date, form, meanings and theological sources of the former painted cycle on the vaults of Salisbury Cathedral. As the cycle is now known predominantly from antiquarian evidence, we begin with a discussion of the nature and significance of that evidence, namely the series of sketches, drawings and notes produced by Jacob Schnebbelie in the late eighteenth century before the whitewashing of the medieval paintings. Through consideration of the archaeological and stylistic evidence, we propose a date for the cycle between c 1235 and 1245, thus contemporary with the new building campaign begun in 1220. Two connected interpretations of the cycle are offered: first, we argue that the painted cycle was designed to function as a map of the major liturgical sites of the eastern arm; second, we suggest that the imagery was designed to structure an allegory of religious experience and personal salvation in accord with reform-minded thinking in the post-Lateran period.