Three watercolours painted by Thomas Telford survive within the Society's archives. Two of these watercolours are a plan and sections of an excavation of a Roman bath suite, supervised by Telford at Wroxeter, and the third is an elevation of the medieval Mardol gate over the Welsh bridge, Shrewsbury. The paintings provide an insight into his interest in archaeology and ancient buildings whilst practising as an architect in Shropshire, before he began his engineering career. Further, their deposition helps confirm the standing of the Society at the time, as the place where important archaeological discoveries from across the country were brought to public attention, and how it acted as an archive for their primary records.

This paper will describe and illustrate variations on a sculptural theme in late-Hanoverian and early-Victorian funerary monuments by Sir Francis Chantrey (1781–1841), which, taken as a whole, demonstrate a shift in taste from severe Neo-Classicism to Early Romanticism. In the 1820s and 1830s, Chantrey carved several memorials to Anglican bishops featuring the prelates kneeling in prayer or contemplation: some showed the bishops in high relief against architectural backgrounds, others depicted them as free-standing figures. From the 1840s onwards, the impact of the Gothic Revival and Ecclesiology led to numerous bishops being commemorated by recumbent effigies, so the kneeling type was a relatively short-lived form, and could even be called an invention of Chantrey.

In England, crosses on commemorative carvings are unusual in the two centuries after the Reformation. In south-east Wales, however, there are numerous examples, in a range of styles, suggesting the work of several groups of stonemasons. A number have the IHS trigram, in the square capitals format popularised by Ignatius Loyola as the emblem of the Jesuits. Some of these memorials commemorate known recusants, but most seem to exemplify the characteristic Welsh combination of traditionalism and loyalism. There is plenty of other evidence for Welsh communities in the early modern period continuing with traditional ‘Catholic’ practices (pilgrimage, veneration of relics and wells) while still regarding themselves as members of the Established Church. Some similar stones are found over the border into Herefordshire, but there are very few in north and west Wales, suggesting that this was a purely local fashion.

The prosecution in Cyprus of an Italian citizen for illicit excavation in 1878 is a very early case in modern cultural heritage law. In taking over from the Ottoman empire the administration of Cyprus in June 1878, Britain inherited the Ottoman legal system, including its 1874 law on antiquities. Four months later, the British arrested Alessandro Palma di Cesnola for flouting a newly announced ban on excavation. The evidence of official, confidential records reveals the steps leading to the Italian’s arrest, trial and conviction in court. His trial followed Ottoman legal procedures, but the verdict was decided by the district commissioner, a British military officer unfamiliar with local law and languages. Alessandro Palma di Cesnola’s claims of American citizenship and a diplomatic status are shown to have been invalid. A closing review suggests that the British Museum was influential in prompting the ban on excavation and that moral and financial pressures led Alessandro Palma di Cesnola to ignore it.

The Temple Church, founded as the chapel of the motherhouse of the English Templars around 1160, is among the most intriguing medieval churches in London. Utilising a wide range of textual, archaeological and architectural evidence, this paper provides a new account of the evolution of the ecclesiastical complex from the mid-twelfth century to the mid-thirteenth century, focusing in particular on the form and the function of a series of now largely obliterated auxiliary structures. It argues that one of the driving forces for the construction of these buildings was a competition for both patrons and prestige that existed between the two preeminent military orders of the period: the Templars and the Hospitallers.

The Saxons used beorh for prehistoric barrows and hlæw for their own barrows, but pleased themselves which term to use for prehistoric barrows containing intrusive Saxon burials (e.g. Rough Barrow, Cheselbourne 8b, Dorset; Cwicelmes Low, Ardley, Oxon.; the better known Cwichelmes Low (East Hendred, Oxon. ex Berkshire) is mentioned not in a charier but in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Long barrow Swell IV, Glos., contained Saxon intrusive burials.

There are more than twenty rough barrows but only one rough low (in Chetwode-Hillesden, Buckinghamshire, S 544), implying that the Saxons normally kept their own barrows tidy but did not bother much about those of earlier date.

They sometimes distinguished between long and round barrows (e.g. Long Barrow, Swell IV, Glos.; ‘the barrow which lies between the two long barrows’, Wonston, Hants. They never distinguished between round barrows of bowl, bell, disc and saucer types.

Scrutiny of the charters has led to the discovery of a few barrows previously unknown to the Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division, e.g. Buckland Newton I, Dorset; Cheselbourne 17, Dorset; Tetbury Upton 3, Glos.

As the charters were written more than a thousand years ago they recorded many barrows long before they had been reduced to their present sorry state by ploughing and other agencies.

That the present San Marco (fig. 1) either incorporates substantial remains of earlier structures or has had its design constrained by structures no longer extant can hardly be doubted. This much is obvious even from the ground plan, especially at the ends of the north and south transepts. Further anomalies apparent in the building itself also suggest that it is not all of a piece. Setting aside obvious later changes that have not affected the basic form, they include the existence of pointed arcades alongside semicircular ones and the curious way in which the barrel vaults to the north and south of the eastern dome oversail the side chapels.

When, at midday on 13 June 1842, Queen Victoria first boarded a train to carry her on the eighteen-mile journey from Slough to Paddington, she inaugurated a relationship between the court and the railways whose continuity is only now under threat. Less propitiously, that mechanical excursion heralded the decline of one of the most venerable departments of the Royal Household, the Stables. A further diminution in the live horse-power of the Stables was ushered in sixty years later with the acquisition by King Edward VII in 1901 of a Daimler motor car – the first such machine to cross the threshold of the Mews. Today the contribution of the Stables to ceremonial occasions is impressive, immaculate and professional, while transportation of the royal family remains the first duty of the Mews. However, while the scope of the department undoubtedly has broadened dramatically, with respect to their primary role, the Stables today present scarcely a shadow of what was once a pivotal element in the everyday life of the court.

In the early summer of 1919 a memorable discovery was made on Traprain Law in the county of Haddington, a hill on the East Lothian estate of the Rt. Hon. A. J. Balfour. From the natural advantages for defence which the hill presents, as well as from the plentiful surface indications of occupation, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland had concluded that the site was well worth excavating, and had begun work on it in the summer of 1914. This was continued during the following summer till operations were suspended by the war. One of the results of these two seasons' exploration was the revelation that beneath the turf were four welldefined floor-levels referable to periods of occupation dating from the first to the fourth, or commencement of the fifth, century of our era. In May last year the latest of these floor-levels had been removed, and the second was just being loosened with the point of the pick when a remarkable hoard of Roman silver plate was discovered buried in a hole some two feet in diameter and two feet in depth. No evidence remained of any sack or box in which it might have been contained, but the pieces lay jumbled in a mass as if they had been thrown in disorder into the hole. Few of them resembled silver—to such an extent had the treasure been affected by its long burial in the soil—and a dull leaden hue with a tinge of purple best describes its colour. Its condition otherwise bore eloquent testimony to the treatment it had received at the hands of its owners previous to its concealment.

The pottery is divided into four groups according to the stratigraphical evidence, which is given in detail in the descriptions of the pottery on pp. 66–67. With one exception (group 1, no. 1), which is a stray of earlier date, all the pottery may be regarded as contemporary, since even the latest, group 4 from pit C1, was sealed by the old turf-line over the Norman Bank. There is no historical evidence for the construction of this Bank, but since it is not in alignment with the Castle Keep, built c. 1076–86, it is believed to be slightly later in date. It may be said at once that no appreciable difference in date can be detected between the pottery of groups 2, 3, and 4. Comparison with dated material found elsewhere in England suggests that the pottery is not later than the early part of the twelfth century, but closer dating is provided by comparison with material from Colchester Castle itself. This consists of four sherds, including the angle of a sagging base, obtained from the foundation trench of the Castle Keep in 1931–2, which Mr. Hull kindly sent to me for examination. Although so few in number, the ware of these sherds is consistent and agrees precisely with that of groups 2, 3, and 4 as described below. The date of these groups, and therefore of the Norman Bank, is thus as close to the date of the Keep as the sequence of construction will allow. On balance, the available evidence points to a date within the period c. 1080–1100 for the Norman Bank.