Our Fellow and Local Secretary, Canon Greenwell, has recently devoted much time, thought, and labour to the piecing together of the broken portions of St. Cuthbert's coffin that were removed from the grave in 1827. Special attention having thus been directed to the matter, it was thought desirable that another examination of the grave should be made in order to recover, if possible, some of the missing fragments. For Dr. Raine expressly states that the new coffin provided in 1827 was “deposited in the bottom of the original grave, upon a mass of broken wood, iron rings, and iron bars, the remnants of the two outer coffins of the Saint, which had been thrown into the grave.” It was further considered that an examination of the human remains might throw some light upon the longdisputed question of the identity of the body that was placed in the grave in 1542 with that of St. Cuthbert, which had for nearly 840 years been enclosed in the coffin. After many delays, caused by the strong feeling in the minds of some whose objections rightly carried great weight, it was decided that the grave should be opened, the coffin of 1542 carefully raised, the other contents of the grave taken out, and the coffin returned to its place with its contents undisturbed.

I have had placed in my hands by B. B. Woodward, Esq., F.S.A., the Queen's Librarian, a Map of the World, which he has found in Her Majesty's Library at Windsor, in the collection of papers in the handwriting of Leonardo da Vinci. Mr. Woodward's object in sending it to me was that I might ascertain as nearly as possible the date of its construction, from the nature of the geographical information which it contained. It was evident at a glance that, apart from the value attaching to it from its connection with so illustrious a name as that of Leonardo da Vinci, the map possessed an intrinsic interest in connection with the history of geography and cartography, inasmuch as it not only belonged to a period fertile in geographical discoveries, though scantily represented by maps which have come to our knowledge, but contained delineations of a stage in those discoveries not represented at all in any map with which I am acquainted. Independently of this, it happens to possess some special points of priority of information, which have led me to think it desirable to submit it, with the following notice of its contents, to the attention of the Society of Antiquaries.

The Potential Importance of the detailed measurement and study of the proportions of different elements in metal alloys used for early Anglo-Saxon artefacts has been appreciated for several years now. Such analyses add, for instance, to the direct observations of early Anglo-Saxon metalworking practice that can be made, and have a contribution to make to attempts to construct absolute and relative chronologies. Two ranges of alloys in particular have been profitably studied: alloys predominantly of gold, of the late sixth and seventh centuries, in which a progressive decline in the gold content allows dating estimates to be made on the strength of the results of metallurgical analysis (Hawkes, Merrick and Metcalf 1966; cf. Brown and Schweizer 1973 for the application of such results), and the predominantly copper alloys that are characteristic of the diverse and plentiful range of artefacts—particularly dress-jewellery—found in Anglo-Saxon graves of the Migration Period, dating from the fifth century to some point in the second half of the sixth. Study of these copper alloys has been organized in terms of particular artefact-types—for instance studies by Peter Northover and Tania Dickinson of saucer brooches and by Catherine Mortimer of cruciform brooches (Mortimer 1990: the unpublished results of Northover and Dickinson's earlier work are reported in this thesis)—and in the form of comprehensive surveys of the material recovered from individual cemeteries, such as Spong Hill, Norfolk (Wardley in Hills, Penn and Rickett 1984, 38–40), Watchfield, Oxfordshire, and Lechlade, Gloucestershire (Mortimer, Pollard and Scull 1986; Mortimer 1988).

The Handley barrow (no. 19 on Grinsell's list) had a small, low, round mound and a surrounding ditch that was almost square in plan. The mound covered a cremation pyre, among the ashes of which were found potsherds of probable Iron Age date.

Preparation of an airport at Ronaldsway, Isle of Man, revealed several matters of archaeological interest. Some conjectural ancient graves were destroyed before information was given, and wall bases were left which probably are related to an entry in the Object Name Books of 1866 at the Ordnance Survey Office: ‘A number of years ago, stone cists containing human remains were turned up on improving circular eminence situated in the field west of Ronaldsway farmhouse. The mound is apparently artificial, higher on the east and west sides, being hollow in the centre; it is about 4 ft. in height, and about 100 ft. in diameter. Supposed by the authority quoted to have been a place of burial. Many cartloads of stones were also removed.’

After a short, general review of medieval shrine types, a particular category is defined and examined: ‘tomb-shrines’: which were a form of shrine-base with round, window-like openings, constructed over the pre-existing grave of a saint. The archaeological and documentary evidence (including evidence from drawings and painted glass) for tomb-shrines is examined, and the few extant structures are described and discussed. In the light of these findings an important fragment of thirteenth-century Purbeck work from Winchester Cathedral is reassessed: it is argued that it derived from the tomb-of St Swithun. This stood on the site of the saint's original grave until the Reformation, and was a focus of veneration that was as important as the main reliquary behind the high altar within the cathedral itself.

For the fourth time the Society's Anniversary Meeting takes place under the shadow of war, and once again our activities are confined and controlled by the imperious demands of our present case. Since our last Anniversary, however, the prospect has markedly lightened and we begin to see, although as in a glass, darkly, the term of our tribulation. Even in our darkest hour we have never ceased to anticipate a brighter future, though it became more and more apparent that our present was shadowed by perhaps the darkest menace that has ever threatened the human race. Now, however, that the binding of the Teutonic beast, and all who bear his mark, is more obviously in view, we may well be encouraged to look more confidently ahead and to make preparations to shoulder those responsibilities which will inevitably fall upon us in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to record three stones recently brought to my attention. The first was found about twenty years ago by Mr. Benjamin Wyles when digging a dyke in a field called the Long Liner near Slate House Farm, in the parish of Wilsford near Grantham. It is preserved in Wilsford church and is published by the kind permission of the Rector, the Rev. J. D. Smart. The other two, which are fragmentary, were found in the core of the north-east buttress of the east of Ancaster church in the course of reconstruction during August 1960. The wall, which is of the late twelfth century with flat plain buttresses, has had a fourteenth century window inserted into it, and has been repaired and refaced possibly at same time as the insertion of the window. There remain traces of the jamb-shafts and arch-springing of the original triple twelfth-century window. The wall developed serious settlement-cracks, and these were bonded by inserting concrete tie-beams behind the face of the wall, and at the same time grouting the loose core. Both stones are likely to have been built into the buttress in the twelfth century. I am indebted to Mr. L. H. Bond, L.R.I.B.A., for bringing them and the above facts to my notice, and to the Rev. L. W. B. Bacon, Vicar of Ancaster, for permission to publish.

One of the most spectacular sections of the great mound, which embodies the rampart and town wall of Roman Cirencester, is visible in the grounds of St. Mary's Abbey Estate (pl. XIX). The exploitation of this area of the estate for building, bordering upon the London Road and Grove Lane, required excavation on as large a scale as possible, since the total area involved was about 11 acres. Accordingly, excavation took place during March and April 1960 for a period of seven weeks. It was, however, obviously impossible to trench the whole area with the available resources, and it was decided to concentrate upon a detailed study of the town defences, which, with the exception of a single section cut in 1952 by Miss M. Rennie in the Watermoor Recreation Ground at the south-east corner of the town, had not hitherto been systematically examined. This policy implied that any buildings in the immediate vicinity of the Wall would be left unexplored; but it was vindicated by a resistivity survey made by Mr. Anthony Clark, F.S.A., after the excavations had finished, which recorded only one stone building in the whole area. The walls of this building are only a few inches below the surface, and are being uncovered and planned by Mr. Peter Broxton, so that not all is lost.

Although the Romans were mining lead in the Mendips by A. D. 49, it seems almost certain that they did not begin seriously to work the Cornish tin-mines for another two hundred years. We only know of one site at which they appear to have mined tin in the first century: the earthwork at Tregear, close to Bodmin, was probably occupied by Roman tin-workers under Vespasian, but it does not seem to have outlasted the reign of Trajan. Cornwall contains no other Roman site of the first or second century; and the isolated finds of that period, which are almost exclusively single coins, are evidence of trade and not of occupation.

In the course of a search for material likely to be useful in an inquiry into the evolution of the sailing ship in Northern Europe I was attracted to the surviving mural paintings of St. Christopher, for now and then we find a masted vessel or row boat in the stream through which the saint wades. The immediate result was disappointing, for I found only twenty-three pictures with vessels of any kind; moreover the small size of the latter precludes insertion of the details of rigging or other gear, besides which a mural painting is a work of the picture-poster order, strong lines to produce an impression at a distance. The only instance of a vessel of particular value to a student of nautical archaeology I found is in the well-preserved paintings in Breage (St. Breaca's) church in Cornwall, which is seen on the left side of fig. 18. The picture is c. 1490, the date of the church, and for that time the topsail is noticeably large, while the sheets being led to the yard-arms of the main course is a point of interest in view of the controversy whether early topsails, which came into use in the second half of the fifteenth century, were usually sheeted to the tops or to the yard-arms below. As material accumulated it seemed worth while attempting a summary of our knowledge of the mural paintings of St. Christopher in English churches, in respect of their distribution, survival, and the details of the conventional representation.