The fifth season of the current Verulamium Excavations lasted from 29th July to 23rd September 1959, a period of 8 weeks of exceptionally dry weather. Work was done on a slightly smaller scale than previously, the highest daily number of helpers being about 75. The main work was undertaken in insulae XIV, XXI, XXVII, and XXVIII; in addition a trench was cut in the Theatre and another through the defences on the north-east side of insula XVIII.

I must first express to you a double debt of gratitude. You most unexpectedly elected me at our last anniversary; and you have failed to avail yourselves of the amended statutes on nominations, and have honoured me by re-election this year. I thank you sincerely; and I thank you still more for the steady and unfailing encouragement and support I have received from everyone, officers, Fellows, and staff.

The timber-framed houses of south Lancashire and Cheshire first became familiar to antiquaries through the publication between 1851 and 1859 of Turner and Parker's Domestic Architecture of the Middle Ages. In 1884 the architect Henry Taylor produced a more extended study entitled Old Halls in Lancashire and Cheshire that remains today the best general account of the subject. Subsequently the only important addition to knowledge was the detailed description of the Lancashire halls for the Victoria County History, published between 1906 and 1914. Thereafter little work has been done on them, and certainly nothing comparable to the studies of timber-framed buildings in Sussex, Essex, or the midlands. As a group these northern houses are remarkable for their heavy timbering and a contrasted ‘black-and-white’ effect which is more marked than anywhere else in England.

The carved marble fragment illustrated in plate IX and in the accompanying drawing (fig. 1) is walled into the right-hand side of the entrance to the museum of Riom, a small town about ten miles north of Clermont-Ferrand, in the department of Puy-de-Dôme. It is labelled ‘Fragment d'un tombeau gallo-romain’; and although nothing further seems to be known either about the circumstances of its discovery or how it came to enter the museum collections, to judge from the other lapidary fragments with which it is displayed there is a strong probability that it was found locally.

At the north-west corner of Lancaster House, near the ground now concreted for a car park, lies a sealed, ruinous, subterranean vault, and in that vault, as in some folk-tale about the secrets of the hills, there stands a riderless horse, with an attendant in an inner room a few paces away. It is nearly twenty years since he was visible to mortal eyes; the last living person known to have seen him is my colleague Mr. Arthur Trotman, who tried indeed to move him from his position, but was dissuaded. Not without reason, indeed, for an enemy land-mine had fallen in the neighbourhood and caused a considerable degree of damage, including the subsidence of the entire corner of the building. The sturdy frame of the horse was found to be actually supporting the roof and wall of the corridor in which he stood, and it was only too likely that further movement might bring down the vaulting on him and on those who had ventured to disturb him. Further investigation was discouraged, rubble and concrete were poured into the crater above, and the vault was left sealed and inaccessible beneath the newly created terra firma.

Three of the four main periods of artillery fortification in England, when construction was undertaken on a national scale, are represented in the Thames: the castles and bulwarks of Henry VIII, the bastioned forts of the late seventeenth century, and the Royal Commission forts of the 1860's. The exception is the rather special case of the Martello Tower system, but its place here is taken by the steady improvements carried out at the end of the eighteenth century and in the 1840's and 1850's. Shornemead, Cliffe Creek, and Slough Forts are ruined and derelict, Coalhouse Fort is used as a store, but Tilbury, now in the guardianship of the Ministry of Works, can show the progress of fortification over the course of 250 years. That they never saw the action for which they were designed is irrelevant, for, as Sidney Herbert said in 1860, ‘the object of the fortifications is not so much to resist as to deter attack’.

The subsequent coastal batteries of the last two wars, the hastily constructed pill-boxes, and even the ‘flak’ towers off the east coast are simply gun positions. They are neither self-contained nor self-defensible fortresses. By these criteria the forts erected as a result of the 1860 Royal Commission can be regarded as the last legitimate successors of the prehistoric hill fort and the medieval castle.

This report describes sections cut through the Roman wall of Caistor, and includes a new survey of the outline of the walled area, as surmised from the evidence given by these sections and by field-work.

In May 1957 a mail shirt of quite exceptional quality was acquired for the Tower of London Armouries. The purchase was made through Master Sergeant G. A. Gordon, a member of the United States Army serving in Germany, who was good enough to draw the writer's attention to the shirt and subsequently to arrange for it to be sent to the Tower for examination.

When the deanery of Westminster Abbey was being rebuilt in the autumn of 1951, as a result of war damage, a pit was found containing fourteen complete pots and fragments of nearly twenty others. The Ministry of Works was called in and the pottery was cleaned and restored in the Ancient Monuments Laboratory; it is now in the deanery. Unfortunately the pit was dug out by workmen before the find was reported to the Clerk of Works, but all the pottery was said to come from the one pit. The pit was about 5 × 3 ft. and was situated under a new flight of stairs in the new entrance hall (fig. I). It is not possible to tell exactly how this part of the building was arranged in late medieval times but the pit appears to have been inside the building. Although it has the general appearance of a latrine pit it may have been used for storage or some other purpose. The wall immediately to the east is twelfth century and the room in which the pit now is was probably the twelfth-century hall of the abbot's lodging. The whole building was reconstructed by Abbot Litlington in the late fourteenth century and Abbot Islip carried out further work in the early sixteenth century.

A two-month season of excavation was carried out, on behalf of H.M. Ministry of Works, during September and October 1958 in the grounds of Brough House at Brough-on-Humber, the area which was originally occupied by the north-west corner of the Roman town of Petuaria.

The samian bowl, of form 72 with barbotine and appliqué designs in relief, illustrated in fig. 1, was found in 1958 during a small excavation carried out in connexion with rebuilding work at Guy's New House, Bermondsey; it has already been briefly noticed in the Journal of Roman Studies.

This globular bowl (ht. 7⅝ in., with an inner rim diameter of 4⅜ in. and a maximum diameter of 7⅛ in.), of which nearly two-thirds has been restored, belongs to a class of samian ware that was first extensively studied by Déchelette. The decoration (fig. 1), consisting both of reliefs applied from a mould and of barbotine designs, is divided into three zones which are in turn separated from one another by double grooves of varying width.

In 1956 excavations were carried out by the Ministry of Works in Ben Becula and South Uist, Outer Hebrides, on sites lying within the area of the projected Rocket Range. Not long after the end of the season, one of the workmen who had been engaged on the excavations handed in a fibula said to have been found when filling in (fig. 1, 1, and pl. XXXVIb). Although the site from which it was recovered could not be ascertained, it seems not unlikely that this was one of those examined in 1956. The brooch was sent to the British Museum Research Laboratory for examination and the following technical report on the metals of which it is composed and its craftsmanship is of particular interest.

In November 1947 two schoolboys, David Ashforth and Leslie Leek of Westwick Gardens, digging about on some spare land near the Pike Drain on the west side of Rookery Lane (fig. I), found a quantity of ash and charcoal and a small Anglo-Saxon vessel which they brought into the Lincoln Museum. The area was subsequently excavated by the Lincoln Archaeological Research Committee following the ready permission by the owner of the land, Mr. A. Priestley.

In 1958 the archbishops of Canterbury and York appointed a Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Bridges, to consider problems arising in connexion with churches regarded as redundant, that is, no longer required for pastoral use, but having a claim to preservation on historical or architectural grounds. Our Society was one of the learned bodies invited by the Commission to submit evidence to it orally and in writing.