Volume 81, 2001

        Papers:

  1. Anniversary Address 2001 by Simon Swynfen Jervis, PSA

  2. Two Early First Millennium BC Wells at Selsey, West Sussex, and their Wider Significance by Mike Seager Thomas

  3. Is There Anybody Out There? A Reconstruction of the Environmental Evidence from the Breiddin Hillfort, Powys, Wales by Paul C Buckland, FSA, Mike Parker Pearson, FSA, Andy Wigley, and Maureen A Girling†

  4. The Carnyx in Iron Age Europe by Fraser Hunter

  5. Gadebridge Revisited by David S Neal, FSA

  6. John the Baptist and the Agnus Dei : Ruthwell (and Bewcastle) revisited by Jane Hawkes, FSA, and Éamonn Ó Carragáin with Ross Trench-Jellicoe

  7. The Orientation of Churches: some new evidence by Jason R Ali and Peter Cunich

  8. The North Portal of Durham Cathedral and the Problem of ‘Sanctuary' in Medieval Britain by J Philip McAleer, FSA

  9. Divine Kingship and Dynastic Display: the altar murals of St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster by Emily Howe

  10. The Archaeology of Cane Sugar Production: a survey of twenty years' of research in Cyprus by Marie-Louise von Wartburg, FSA

  11. The Chantry Chapel of John Oxenbridge in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle by John J Begant, FSA†

  12. Serjeant Knight's Discourse on the Cross and Flags of St George (1678) by C S Knighton, FSA, and Timothy Wilson, FSA

        Shorter contributions:

  • A Linch-Pin of British Type Found at Blicquay (Hainault, Belgium) by Léonce Demarez and Germaine Leman-Delerive

  • The Examination, Interpretation and Replication of an Iron Lock from Lullingstone Roman Villa by J W Anstee†

  • A Tudor Astrolabe by Thomas Gemini and its Relationship to an Astrological Disk by Gerard Mercator of 1551 by Gerard L'Estrange Turner, FSA and Koenraad van Cleempoel


1. Anniversary Address 2001

Delivered 23 April 2001

By Simon Swynfen Jervis, MA

High on a Throne of Royal State, which farr
Outshon the wealth of Ormus and of Ind …

Long Presidential tenure can go to the head, and sitting on this Chair your President has sometimes wondered how he may appear to Fellows and guests. The extreme images are Laurence Olivier as Richard III, writhing malevolently and misshapenly on his throne, and Reynolds's 'Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse', shown at the Royal Academy in 1784 and now in Dulwich College Art Gallery, in which the actress has adopted an imposing, even monumental, Michelangelesque pose, which she claimed to have invented. But I am fairly certain that these theatric tableaux are not true to life, and that the reality is closer to the somewhat tentative, inconsequential and ephemeral image of Lord Leicester, later Lord Townshend, who served as President for twenty-seven years, two centuries ago, long before a normal seven-year limit was introduced in 1876, to be replaced by the present five-year limit in 1906, as shown in the caricature which the Society purchased last year. At least your President is spared the humiliation of wearing the cocked hat, which threatens to drown Lord Leicester.

Because we shall later this year be commemorating the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the granting of our Royal Charter on 2 November 1751 it was decided, after due process, that this President's five-year term should be extended by an as-it-were intercalary year, so that a new President could be introduced in 2001. I have thus been privileged to serve not only for part of our Charter Anniversary year, but also for the last year of the Second Millennium of the Christian era, and for the initial months of this first year of the Third.

Six years is no time: the Daily Telegraph recently carried a long obituary of a cousin of your President, who had died at ninety, as the longest serving Master of Beagles in Britain, having been in post since 1958, forty-three years. He hunted in shorts and plimsolls to the end (obituary of Lt-Col Anthony Swynfen Jervis, Daily Telegraph, 9 April 2001 (illus). But I digress: the purpose of highlighting the intercalary character of your President's last year of service is to excuse some general remarks about the pleasures and pains of Presidency. I can dispose of the latter quickly. Obviously sometimes things go wrong, whether by accident, commission or omission. Whether they are the President's fault or not, he may be involved in the necessary response, be it defence, attack or apology, or helping to sort things out. In practice the support of fellow Officers and staff is such that these pains have been very limited, and I have the impression that the bouts of odium academicum, which have sometimes fuelled spats within the Society, are not as frequent as they once were; perhaps Fellows no longer have the time. However two attitudes, happily rare, are nonetheless provoking when they surface. The first is represented by the class of complaint to which I alluded in my last year's Anniversary Address, 'There is nothing in this year's Journal for me', which tends to reflect narrow self-interest and tunnel vision. The second, usually related, combines an occasionally purblind inability to give credit for the Society's considerable achievements with a lack of understanding of quite how demanding it is, particularly on staff and finances, to keep such a complex, ambitious and altruistic organism afloat and thriving. Such attitudes are all the more irritating because they suggest to the President that, had he been a better figure-head, articulator and advocate, they could have been mitigated, and thus reinforce his awareness that he has not devoted enough time and energy to the Society.

The obverse of this coin is that the vast majority of active Fellows are broad-minded and sympathetic, although well capable of arguing a range of cases with generous vigour, while the 'silent majority', which is numerically preponderant in our Society as in most others, convey by their action, or inaction, that they feel, broadly speaking, that the Society is reasonably well run, by people of good will, and generally on the right course. There is a remarkably small rate of lapse or resignation, and few resignations are on grounds of discontent, while interest in joining the Fellowship is buoyant.

For a new President the task of summing up after our meetings may appear daunting – it certainly did so to me – but I soon realized that the range of subject matter was such that no one person could be even superficially informed on everything, and began to enjoy the challenge of saying, or trying to appear to say, something coherent on, to cite my favourite exemplar, 'Neolithic burial practices in Madagascar'. (A revelation was that these practices only developed in the nineteenth century.) The meetings provide some indication of the range of our Fellowship's interests and concerns, as do the informal gatherings afterwards, where the President meets newly admitted Fellows, along with a remarkable variety of guests, a surprising number in both categories foreign or resident abroad. But only visiting Burlington House with some frequency over a period of years, at different times of day, really brings home the extent of activity here. Our own meetings, whether in this Meeting Room, or of your Council in the Council Room, or of the Executive, Finance or other Committees, usually in the General Secretary's Room, are a small part of what goes on. The programmes of other societies and groups is such that it is frequent for two substantial 'outside' meetings to be in progress at the same time. And there must be added to these such ad hoc but important occasions as the meeting recently called by the Historic Environment Forum, which meets at Burlington House, to bring together interested bodies, including the National Trust, the Institute of Field Archaeologists, the Institute of Historic Buildings Conservation and the Council for British Archaeology, to consider the future of the English Heritage report on the historic environment, The Power of Place. (It is gratifying to report that this occasion was attended by prominent politicians from the three main parties, and that a Minister present is reported to have identified Burlington House as the best possible location for such a discussion.) But meetings are only part of the story: there is a constant va et vient of readers to our Library, some regulars, some here for set periods, an American Fellow on a Sabbatical, say, and some fleeting, Fellows on a brief visit to check a reference, pick up a publication or make an enquiry. And on top of all these are guest scholars and students, the curious, and those with business concerning, say, computers, publications or conservation. And over the years one comes to understand and appreciate the annual rhythm of activities, much enlivened by our General Secretary's two popular and now established innovations, the Summer Soirée and the pre-Christmas Miscellany followed by mulled wine.

Hundredth birthdays are not a normal part of the Society's rhythms, but that of our Royal Fellow Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother clearly called for a response. Two occasions presented themselves. The first was the presentation, at Clarence House, of the Society's book on Glamis Castle, written by our Fellow Harry Gordon Slade, with, bound in, the Loyal Address which had been agreed, with acclamation, at the Summer Soirée. This process was much eased by our Fellow Nicholas Assheton, Treasurer to Her Majesty and a valuable member of both our Council and our Finance Committee for many years. The second was the National Tribute held at Horse Guards on 19 July 2000. For the record our order and style of dress was thus:

  • Standard Bearer
    • Adrian James, Assistant Librarian (Morning Dress)
  • Mace Bearer
    • David Morgan-Evans FSA, General Secretary (Windsor Uniform)
  • Mace Bearer
    • Jayne Phenton, Administrator (Windsor Uniform)
  • Cushion and Cocked Hat
    • Niall Finneran, Library Assistant (Cambridge Doctoral gown)
  • President
    • Simon Swynfen Jervis PSA (President's collar and badge, Cambridge Master's gown)
  • Secretary
    • Susan Youngs FSA (Cambridge Master's gown)
  • Author of Glamis Castle
    • Harry Gordon Slade FSA (Highland dress)
  • Flag Bearer
    • Ann Clark, Editor, Antiquaries Journal (Leicester Master's gown)

I think that we made a decorous but picturesque little group, marching in disciplined form, with well-rehearsed mace drill (the General Secretary saw to that), in some contrast to the boisterous St Marylebone Housing Association in their T-shirts on one side, and to two serious and impeccably turned out small girls, appropriately mounted to represent the Shetland Pony Stud-Book Society, on the other. I suspect, however, that the little girls got the popular vote. We did not take ourselves too seriously; indeed your President was irresistibly reminded of a scintillating episode in that brilliant but neglected novel, Nigel Dennis's Cards of Identity, published in 1955 with a dust-jacket designed by Lucien Freud, entitled 'The Case of the Co-Warden of the Badgeries'.

Identity has been a matter of some debate over the last year, both during the preparation of the Review of Activities and Resources, which was instigated by Council in October 1999, and the consultations and discussions which followed its delivery in July 2000. For many Fellows the formulation in our Royal Charter, 'the encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of this and other countries', stands as an eloquent, clear and sufficient statement of the Society's purpose. For many other Fellows it was a useful and necessary exercise to define the 'core values' of the Society and the objectives that sustain and promote those values. Such transparency, as it is known, tends nowadays to be required of public bodies. However it may be a reassurance to those who worry that managerialist jargon may be seducing your Society into 'politically correct' posturing, which will distort both its values and its language, to learn that the brief Statement of Public Benefit, which your President drafted in Korea shortly before taking office in April 1995, remains as valid in April 2001, after the Review, as it was before. Perhaps in the long perspective the theoretical aspects of the debate which the Review has occasioned may be seen, essentially, as a stimulating re-examination of that perennial question, the balance between justification by faith and justification by works.

For your President the essence lies in our very title. This does not define us by an abstract noun, nor even by an adjective derived from an abstract noun. The Society of Antiquaries is an association of individuals, the Fellowship. Wisely, the Review did not attempt a definition of 'antiquary', and a recent debate in Council recognized that any definition was bound to be limiting and reductive. We now comprise, among many others, court historians, epigraphers, archaeologists, art historians, numismatists, architectural historians, historians of music, bibliographers, archivists, editors, curators, collectors, conservators, scientists, airy theorists, brutal positivists, obsessed specialists, broad generalists, amateurs and professionals. Every one here today could readily modulate or extend this list (some might even wish to reduce it). Coming Ballots, this year and for years to come, will further enrich our Fellowship and subtly change its balance. In the future the Fellowship will be different. In the past it was different. But the differences are far from absolute: we evolve by a system of natural selection, which we ourselves control, Antiquaries begetting Antiquaries. However, as there was in the beginning no single ur-Antiquary, no common ancestor, but a gathering of individuals in a tavern, a considerable degree of variety and change was genetically inevitable.

It would be an interesting exercise to trace the Antiquarian descent of Fellows present back, via proposers and supporters, to the eighteenth century. Sooner or later some student will doubtless put all the available data on computer and distinguish many species and sub- species of the genus Antiquary, revealing in that process surprising linkages, unholy alliances, and undetected fissures. And it is probably only a matter of time before a specialist in Antiquarian cladistics is elected a Fellow.

When your President looks round this Meeting Room of ours – he has had plentiful opportunities to do so – designed by our Fellow, Charles Barry Junior, the conspicuous objects include the neo-classical clock, with borrowings from Montfaucon, above the door, designed by our Fellow, Sir William Chambers, for our Meeting Room at Somerset House, whence comes our chandelier, supplied under his aegis, and a major example of eighteenth-century ormolu. Then there are the paintings, including the remarkable run of early Royal portraits, culminating in the Hans Eworth of Mary Tudor over the mantelpiece, which was bequeathed by our Fellow Thomas Kerrich in 1828. The very bell the President rang at the beginning of this Meeting was presented by our Fellow Augustus Wollaston Franks for our first Meeting here in 1875. We could subdivide our possessions into furniture and utensils, regalia and collectanea, but whether their character is mainly practical, or ceremonial, or ornamental, or historic, they are among our lares et penates. Guardian numina? In two intrinsic senses, yes. First as encapsulating the interests and purposes of Antiquaries who begat us, and second as our own selection, at once arbitrary and exemplary, from the material remains of the past, including our own Society's past, which Antiquaries, most of them, have always fought to study and preserve.

Of course our genetic inheritance is not only encoded in the objects which surround us in this Meeting Room, or in the Room itself; the same arguments apply to our Library, our Collections elsewhere, our Publications, our Research activities, and so on. But one of the lessons of the Review was how little many Fellows know about many of our possessions and activities, and, if the Fellowship knows relatively little, we may assume that the wider world knows even less. The fact that two of our greatest treasures, the Becket Châsse, presented by our Fellow Sir William Hamilton in 1801, and the Jacob Zech clock, bequeathed to the Society in 1808 by Henry Peckett, and formerly in the collection of the autodidact Scottish astronomer, James Ferguson, who received early encouragement from our Fellow and President, Martin Folkes, both have been on loan to the British Museum since 1996 should be more celebrated. And it is pleasing to report that this year we have placed the remarkable three-sided diptych of St Paul's, which was painted by John Gipkyn in 1616, purchased by the Society in 1781, and usually hangs on our Stairs, on a long loan to the London Museum, after cleaning, and agreed loans of our earliest portrait of Henry VII, from the Kerrich bequest, to Tate Britain for its inaugural display in October, and a later, larger Henry VII, bequeathed by our Fellow, Philip Leathes, in 1838, to Historic Scotland for an exhibition at Stirling Castle. Such loans demonstrate the Society as a responsible and generous possessor, but also as a proud one. In devoting a personal bequest as executor from our late Fellow Ralegh Radford to the production of a dozen postcards showing a selection of the Society's treasures your President hopes to increase knowledge of and pride in this aspect of the Society, but also, within the necessarily straitened caption format, to render the intrinsic explicit, by saying something of our benefactors and their links to the Society. One of the subjects, incidentally, is our silver Admiralty Badge, which we shall be lending to Somerset House, and which is on the table before me. (The cards are as follows: Mary I, by Hans Eworth; the Saint Thomas Becket Châsse; the Virtues Largesce and Debonereté, by C A Stothard; the Arms of Death, German, c 1520; Jousting-cheque for the Field of the Cloth of Gold; Table Observations, London, c 1611; A Miracle of Saints Cosmas and Damian, Venice, c 1470; The Society's Lamp, by John Talman, FSA; An Antiquarian, by Thomas Rowlandson; Admiralty Badge, by William Lukin I; Queen Charlotte's Watch, by John Gregson; Yeoman of the Crown, brass.)

Happily benefactions continue. This year I am breaking with my recent practice of running through an anthology of books given to the Society to single out one book. This is a copy of the 'summer tayl' of the 1488 Nuremberg edition of Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend, printed by Anton Koberger, with rubricated and, in one case, illuminated initials, nicely coloured woodcuts, and a neat late Gothic binding with engraved brass corner, centre and clasp mounts, not complete. It has been bequeathed to the Society by a friend who was not a Fellow, Dr Elizabeth de Haas, who inherited 7 Hammersmith Terrace, the former home of our Fellow, Sir Emery Walker, from his widow. The book is inscribed to 'Emery Walker from William Morris Feb. 20th 1894'. Our Fellow William Morris first met Walker after a Socialist meeting and, from its foundation in 1884 at Kelmscott House, Walker kept the minutes of the Hammersmith branch of the Democratic Federation, of the Socialist League branch which supplanted it, and of its successor, the Hammersmith Socialist Society. Morris developed a close friendship with Walker and relied much on his typographical expertise; indeed Walker's 1888 lecture on 'Letterpress Printing' inspired Morris's career as a designer of typefaces. Walker did not take up Morris's offer of a partnership when the Kelmscott Press was formally founded in 1891, but Morris continued to consult him. Morris's first type, used on more than half the entire Kelmscott output, was called 'Golden', because intended for what was planned as the first Kelmscott Press book, but in the event only appeared in November 1892, a reprint of Caxton's translation of the Golden Legend. Morris's gift to his friend Walker must thus have been a very personal and pertinent tribute; our Society's ownership of this incunable, thanks to Dr de Haas's generosity, may be seen not only as a commemoration of that relationship, but also as a lasting enrichment of the 'Kelmscott' dimension of our Society.

It would be wrong to give the impression that, apart from this one example, gifts of books have dried up. On the contrary the Society continues to be indebted to the generosity of Fellows and others. Our funds for the purchase of books are small, and we rely on such support. One example pertinent to the Society is the gift from our Fellow Robert Hutchison of a rare printed List of the Society of Antiquaries from 1717–1796, published in 1798. Another relevant acquisition is John Rocque's Survey of Berkshire, given by our Fellow, Mrs Henrietta Jope, in memory of her husband, our Fellow Edward Martyn Jope; by good fortune Sheet XII includes Kelmscott, just north of the Thames. From our Fellow and Gold Medallist, Philip Grierson, we received several books, including a catalogue of the ivories at Dumbarton Oaks, with which he has been so closely associated. Perhaps the most amusing book was among those bequeathed by our Fellow, Janet Arnold, the second edition of Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform'd: or, The Artificiall Changling, published in London in 1653. Written by John Bulwer, a pioneer in the education of the deaf, this work, plentifully illustrated by woodcuts, addresses cosmetic alterations of the human body, and concludes with an appendix 'Exhibiting the Pedigree of the English Gallant', which makes graphic comparisons and links between modern fashions and those of savage and exotic peoples, all to moral rather than anthropological effect, but nonetheless supplying vivid insights into dress, the object of Janet Arnold's study.

In the same period our Collections have received a signal reinforcement to one of our greatest strengths, in the form of a collection of no fewer than 358 seals, generously given by our Fellow, Pierre Chaplais. They range from Mesopotamian specimens of the fifth millennium before Christ to a Japanese example later than the last War. Apart from weaknesses in the Islamic world and the Far East our seal collections are remarkably comprehensive, most major classes being represented.

An important milestone for the Library, the Society and the scholarly community beyond has been the publication of our Fellow Pamela Willetts's Catalogue of our manuscripts, commenced in 1989 and incorporating accessions up to April 2000. This monumental achievement replaces a predecessor that appeared in 1816. There are no fewer than 1,010 entries, and a single entry may run to several pages. At the Miscellany on 14 December 2000 Pamela Willetts sketched a tempting anthology of the riches within, supported by a seductive selection of exhibits. The index, itself 146 double-columned pages long, and the entries themselves, render easily available a mass of material, which up to now could only be mined by serendipity or assiduous detective work. We acknowledge the support this project has received from the British Library, the Marc Fitch Fund and the Pilgrim Trust. Coming as it does hard on the heels of our publication of Henry VIII's prodigious inventory the Catalogue may be seen as a further practical demonstration of the Society's determination to make its riches accessible. It is to be hoped that a further break-through may occur when the Society can publish the catalogue of our drawings, estimated to number over 15,000, now being worked on by our Fellow George McHardy and others, with the support of the Getty Grant Program. But an even more dramatic development is at hand. Since 1988 our Library has been using a system called TINLIB to catalogue its accessions. That system, invaluable in its time, has more or less reached the end of its 'natural' life. Its replacement has been a long, difficult and fraught project, but the task is now almost complete. A system called 'Voyager', already in use by the Library of Congress as well as a number of academic institutions in this country, has been selected. Its performance has been thoroughly tested and the omens are so promising that it is probable that, within the month, Internet users will, for the first time, have access to the Society's current catalogue.

In my 1999 Anniversary Address I had to report not only the difficulties in obtaining suitable cataloguing software that have now been overcome, but a further disappointment in that our application for a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund towards the cost of converting the existing author catalogue into computer-readable format had been rejected, apparently on grounds of cost and the limited extent of public access. Given that the coming presence of our current catalogue on the Internet will transform public access, and that Voyager may bring cost benefits to the task of retrospective conversion, there must be optimism about securing this long-desired goal. The simple statistic that a third of our titles are not in the British Library or the Library of Congress dramatizes the benefits retrospective conversion will bring not only to the Fellowship, but also urbiand orbi.

A new means by which the Society now communicates both with the Fellowship and with a much broader international audience is our Web site, www.sal.org.uk, which has been up and running in its interactive form since last Autumn. The site, professionally designed, has a public face but also allows Fellows access via a password to internal Burlington House information such as Blue Papers. Reactions thus far have been uniformly positive, and there can be little doubt that, if we can develop it successfully, the site will be an extremely useful practical tool, as well as an advertisement for the Society. But new media are not the only means of communication. In my first Anniversary Address in April 1996 I pledged the revival of our newsletter, The Antiquary. That this has now, in 2001, taken place is certainly a sop to Presidential vanity, but it is, I hope, more than that. The previous brief series, initiated under my predecessor, Barry Cunliffe, was suspended on financial grounds. Since then the flame of written communication with the Fellowship has been valiantly kept alight by our General Secretary, through the thirty-one issues of Miscellanea. But no one could pretend that this has been a vehicle commensurate with the size, scope and, not to be ignored, status of our Society. The first issue of the resumed series of The Antiquary has been circulated to the Fellowship. That its production has involved extra expenditure in this period of economy is a reflection of the importance Council attaches to the encouragement of involvement by Fellows in the Society's activities. The new format, smaller than the original, designedly matches that of the Antiquaries Journal and of the Society's Annual Report. The reappearance of The Antiquary seems to have been widely welcomed, but there is certainly scope for improvement, refinement and, above all, for participation by Fellows.

Having mentioned earlier our Catalogue of manuscripts and Harry Gordon Slade's monograph on Glamis Castle, it might be thought that I had done with publications. But this would mean omitting mention of Landscape Plotted and Pieced by our Fellow Peter Fowler, the summary of a forty-year investigation of two parishes in Wiltshire, or of the two volumes of Archaeology at Aksum, Ethiopia, 1993–7, by our Fellow and former Treasurer, David Phillipson, or indeed failing to draw attention to the appearance on time of volume 80 of the Antiquaries Journal, that for 2000, and of the General Index to volumes 61 to 70, also published in 2000. To get back on schedule is an achievement easily sung, but thus to keep to time year after year also deserves commendation. It is also easy to overlook the cumulative extent of your Society's publishing activities. For this Meeting, therefore, our General Secretary has assembled the Society's publications of the past six years on a table in this Room; the Journal not included, they comprise twenty-one separate publications in twenty-three volumes, reflecting an unprecedented rate of production. I hope those present will agree that this tout ensemble is not unimpressive.

Your President cannot always attend our Thursday Meetings; he was particularly sorry to miss the inaugural session last October when our Fellow Sir Neil Cossons, the new Chairman of English Heritage, spoke on the historic environment, and the later Meeting when our Fellow, Ian Goodall, spoke on Sizergh Castle, which falls beneath the President's professional umbrella at the National Trust. But he has been present at enough sessions to be confident that the variety and quality of the speakers assembled by our General Secretary has maintained its accustomed high standard. We have heard from our Fellow John Schofield about a great monument, the earlier St Paul's, with tributes to the incredible accuracy of Wren's survey and demonstrations of the power of modern reconstructive technology – ex pede Herculem indeed. Our Fellow, Madge Moran, pieced together a much-enriched corpus of high-quality timberwork in Shropshire, via investigations in attics and public house bedrooms, shedding an adventitious and not altogether favourable light on wallpaper taste in her area. In total contrast our Fellow, Giles Worsley, gave a deft and illuminating account of the formidably successful John Carr of York, that prominent but unsung luminary of late eighteenth-century architecture. Our Fellow, Gerard Turner, applied his acute forensic skills to Elizabethan scientific instruments, while our Fellow, Keith Branigan, recounted a remarkable investigation of the remnants – at a superficial glance they could be neolithic – of nineteenth-century stone houses on the exposed and bare landscape of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, which led to a complementary transatlantic excavation of the wooden houses, to which the inhabitants of Barra moved, amid Canadian forests and lakes. Egyptology has been too scantily represented in our programmes in recent years; it was thus refreshing to hear from Dr Nigel Strudwick how much can be derived from a close examination of what ancient tomb-robbers left behind in a tomb at Luxor, including some fine painted cloths. We have had more Roman subjects, but not often are we carried, as we were by our Fellow, Timothy Strickland, from Chester, or rather Deva, round the Roman Empire to find parallels for its walls. A cave in Sarawak was even further flung, but our Fellow, Graeme Barker, was able to demonstrate its importance for the study of early agriculture, and at the same time reveal it as the site of an ambitious and in some respects surreal excavation in the 1950s. Mining took us to Dürnberg bei Hallein under the aegis of our Fellow Vincent Megaw and his colleague Thomas Stoellner. Salt mining there was followed by early copper mining in Liguria under the guidance of Mark Pearce. For his concluding remarks that evening your President was able, in the desperation of ignorance, to dredge up the name of an obscure and distant cousin, William Paget Jervis, who was Conservator of the Royal Italian Industrial Museum in Turin at the end of the nineteenth century. Mirabile dictu, not only was he known to Mark Pearce, but he had actually published on the site. However, the really gratifying matter for the Society is that the excavations at Dürnberg, and those at Monte Loreto, had been pump-primed by Research grants from the Society.

Research remains one of our prime activities. The Annual Report for 2000 lists our grants in that year; two months ago the Research Committee met again to consider this year's applications and I am glad to report that we were able to award grants totalling £30,649 to twenty-one of the fifty-seven applicants, and a further five grants, in total £1,980, from the Lambarde Fund, which attracted eighteen applicants. There has been some debate about the demand for Research Grants, where they should be targeted and why. Officers, myself included, have taken the pragmatic view that in a time of pressing financial stringency – not yet with us – this is a tap which can be turned in the 'off' direction, just as it can be turned in the 'on' direction when the Society is prosperous. The Review has elicited a perception that Research Grants have tended to be concentrated almost exclusively on one area of activity, archaeology. In this context it is very encouraging to announce that a coming bequest from our late Fellow Janet Arnold, whose bequest of books I mentioned earlier, promises to establish a substantial fund to encourage the study of textiles, and that an American friend and admirer of Janet Arnold has declared the intention of supplementing that fund. Your President suspects that the essential problem of the Research Fund may be 'critical mass'. If specific benefactions can enlarge the Society's canvas and capability we can take even better advantage of the Society's undoubted expertise and authority in grant distribution and establish more firmly our capacity to operate freely and creatively.

Having said something earlier of the continuing and active life of Burlington House I must not omit mention of the Courtyard, which we share with four other Learned Societies and the Royal Academy. In my last Anniversary Address I gave an account of what was then very recent history, the reactions to the Royal Academy's eleventh-hour proposal to incorporate a scheme of water jets into the new paving of our courtyard.

Our suggestion that a Conservation Plan with shared ownership – and we declared ourselves willing to contribute to the cost – might guide future decisions was welcomed by the Royal Academy, and that Plan is now in a second draft. The Society can be happy with almost everything in the Plan which, if observed, will ensure that the character of the ensemble of buildings which constitutes our Courtyard will be sensitively maintained and, in detail, improved. Our landlord, the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR), representing the Crown, has reserved its position on the status of the Plan, and is preparing its own strategy. But it would, your President believes, be happy to accept the uncontroversial elements of the draft Plan.

This leaves the water jets scheme. The Society has never adopted a position of opposition à outrance, but has argued that any such innovation should be treated as part of the greater whole, and not as an improvised addition, and that the Conservation Plan process should allow the various arguments and concerns, for or against, to be recorded, whatever conclusion might finally be reached. The Society's caveats are not exclusive to the Society: indeed at a consultation meeting held at the Royal Academy in June 2000, bringing together a large number of interested parties, our concerns were articulated as much by others present, as by your President and General Secretary, both of whom attended.

The original plan of Burlington House was that of a typical Parisian hôtel particulier. An imposing gate led into a courtyard flanked by low offices, deferential to the loftier mansion on the axis. Hierarchically, such a courtyard was a place for conspicuous restraint rather than conspicuous display. The poet John Gay commented specifically of Lord Burlington's house: 'Beauty within, without proportion reigns'. The transformation of Burlington House, which took place from 1868 onwards, changed this hôtel particulier into a 'quadrangle', the term then used, surrounded by lofty urban palazzi, of Renaissance design, more or less integrated into a cortile, whose character is part private and academic, witness the triple gateway and the nature of its inhabitants, and part public and institutional, witness the pavements, railings, lights and inscriptions. There was no central accent, until Alfred Drury's statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, now temporarily absent, was introduced in 1931. The Royal Academy's proposal for a dispersed water-jet scheme lacks historic congruity on this particular site. Even more incongruous is the fact that the plan of the jets follows the configuration of some heavenly bodies on Sir Joshua's birthday. This is an astrological concept and very much at odds with Sir Joshua as a great man of the Enlightenment, when, as the historian Roy Porter has recently written, 'Among the élite astrology had been reduced to a joke' (Roy Porter, Enlightenment Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, London, 2000, p 152). At the June meeting our Fellow Giles Worsley, who is a Somerset House Trustee, not only questioned the suitability of such pre-Newtonian thinking, but also counselled extreme care in drawing positive conclusions from the water-jet grid in the courtyard of Somerset House, a very much larger space. There must be a worry that such a scheme, especially introduced at the last minute, may be a response to recent fashion, witness Somerset House itself and another set of water jets in the Thames Barrier Park, opened last year by Mr Ken Livingstone. Your President does not wish to labour such concerns, but they deserve to be recorded and taken into account, in the context of the historic, present and future particularity of a very individual, special, and vulnerable space, our shared Burlington House courtyard – or should we revert to the expressive 'quadrangle'?

It is a relief to turn from this unresolved and somewhat knotty issue to Kelmscott Manor, which has enjoyed another very successful season. The decision to convert the Brick Barn into a new shop was vindicated by much-increased turnover and profits, visitor numbers were maintained, and a healthy surplus of £8,485 resulted. This winter has not been idle. The South Road Barn, long a source of worry, has been comprehensively but sensitively repaired with funds allocated from the Ralegh Radford bequest, and with generous grants from Sir John Paul Getty and from West Oxfordshire District Council. Obviously the recent Foot and Mouth Disease crisis has caused considerable worry, but, although the saga is by no means over, it is encouraging to report that Kelmscott Manor was open last weekend, that there were 178 visitors and that shop takings were about £2,400, producing an average spend per visitor, in the shop alone, of about £13.50. Once again I strongly recommend any Fellow – or indeed guest – who has not visited Kelmscott to do so. Your President has always found an excuse to attend the summer meetings of the Kelmscott Management Committee, held at the Manor, as the idyllic surroundings and invariably beautiful weather lift the spirits and transform Antiquaries, for a few hours, into landed gentry. But this is no sinecure: under the leadership of the Committee's Chairman, our Fellow Tom Hassall, supported by a small but dedicated staff and platoons of generous volunteers, Kelmscott aims to be exemplary. A Conservation Plan for the Manor, its curtilage and the Kelmscott estate is in preparation, while KELP, the Kelmscott Landscape Project, with its own Special Committee, also chaired by Tom Hassall, is into its second year of activity, involving Fellows, local residents, the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, West Oxfordshire District Council and many others, building on the launch in November 1999.

The other Morris dimension of the Society is the William and Jane Morris Fund, founded in 1935, by a bequest of £15,000 from William Morris's daughter, Jane Morris. The income is to be applied towards the protection and repair of ancient churches and other ancient buildings or monuments in the United Kingdom in accordance with the principles of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, founded by Morris in 1888. The Morris Committee now concentrates on churches and since the last Anniversary has recommended twenty grants, totalling £11,500, including an unusually large grant of £2,000 towards the conservation of the alabaster monuments of the Bromley family at St Peter's, Worfield, in Shropshire. We continue to be grateful to our Fellow Mrs Lesley Lewis for her support of the Morris Fund.

There are now no unproductive committees. The Croft Lyons Committee might once have appeared so, as there was an interval of sixty-six years between Colonel Croft Lyons's bequest of 1926, intended to forward heraldic studies, and its first fruit, the 1992 initial volume of the Dictionary of British Arms, which replaces Papworth. A second volume followed in 1996, and I am glad to report that the third volume is now in an advanced state of preparation, with 2003 as the planned publication date.

This last year has been the year of our Review. Such an exercise has its dangers, especially when conducted against a backdrop of not too distant financial thunder. Introspection can lead to nerves and divisions. It is, I believe, a tribute to the robustness of the paper produced by our three Vice-Presidents, Elizabeth Hallam-Smith, Geoffrey Wainwright and Paul Williamson, and their Committee, and to the clarity of our Fellow Martin Williams's single-handed Financial Annexe, that attitudes and responses have been largely positive and constructive. The Society owes all involved our gratitude. Throughout this Anniversary Address I have attempted to convey a sense that Council has drawn conclusions from the Review, and that things are already moving. There is a determination to engage and inform the Fellowship. An increase in the Fellowship has been approved. Your President is well aware that some entertain serious misgivings. But the strong majority of responses have been positive. The arguments, either way, are varied. For me they come down to fear of dilution versus hope of enrichment. Some misinformation is in circulation. I have read the suggestion that the Fellowship may be 'almost doubled', which would involve an increase of around 2,000. The Financial Annexe floated a figure of 750, an increase of about a third. In fact, Council has not signed up to a particular figure. Any increase will be spread over a number of years, and the process is ultimately self-regulating. If candidates are not put up by Fellows, there will be no increase, and if dilution of quality results, a halt can be called at any point. However I am happy to nail my colours to the mast and reiterate my belief that, if the increase is sensibly managed, as I am sure it will be, the Fellowship will be enriched, not diluted.

Another enrichment is in front of me, in the form of our New Register of Admissions, paid for from a subscription organized by our Fellows Jean Cook and Elizabeth Hallam Smith, the names of subscribers being listed at the back. A few final touches are needed, but, if Fellows examine its binding and calligraphy after this Meeting, I am confident that they will agree that it is an appropriate and worthy successor to the old Register.

The need for economy is another lesson of the Review, and it is encouraging that in the most recent year, ending in September 2000, our deficit was less than half of that in the preceding year. That comparison may send an over-optimistic signal, but on the other side of the balance sheet, I am, though ruefully, proud that during three years of my Presidency the Society did grasp the nettle of subscriptions, by accepting a sequence of substantial increases. The Society is not composed of ostriches, and realizes moreover that subscriptions cannot stand still; I hope, however, that we have reached a position where annual changes are relatively modest but sufficient to avoid the need for another more drastic campaign. In this context I should record another generous gesture on the part of our Fellow Mrs Lesley Lewis, who compounded some years ago, in sending the Society a donation amounting to several years' subscription, which Gift Aid will increase.

Fund-raising is the next matter on the Society's agenda, as is clear from the Review. It will be tackled as a careful, strategic and structured process, although unexpected windfalls continue, needless to say, to be welcome. Specific needs must be identified and quantified. We must establish priorities, and I should be surprised if our Library does not feature prominently, although it is important that we do not discourage prospective benefactors who may prefer to support, say, Research or Publications or some other facet of the Society.

This President is confident that your Society's efforts will be successful for two principal reasons, one negative, the other positive. My negative reason is that there clearly emerged from the Review consultations a complete absence of any concerted will on the part of the Fellowship that the Society should abandon any of its activities. All Fellows are proud of some of their Society's achievements, and many take pride in all of them. This should hardly come as a surprise: our activities have developed organically, and Antiquaries are genetically encoded to support them, to return to my earlier metaphor. The Fellowship, I believe, wants the Society to do more, not less, supports prudence, but does not want radical pruning, and will, if motivated, make sure that we secure the means necessary to serve our ends. My positive reason is a response to the occasional Cassandras who claim that the Society is attempting to do too much on too many fronts with too few resources, and cannot carry on. In this Anniversary Address I have tried to demonstrate that, although our Society is stretched and should always try to do more, surely the right posture for an altruistic charity, its achievements – on all fronts – are impressive. There is no room for complacency, but there is proper cause for pride, and such a positive message and record should, I believe, command support within and without our Society. So: 'Excelsior!'.

As I relinquish the Presidency I must take the opportunity to re-affirm the debt of gratitude the Society owes to its staff. Their dedication was conspicuous when, in the latter half of 2000, a peculiarly unsettling and unpleasant episode had to be survived. Things are now back on an even keel, but the demands of Burlington House are no less insistent. The extent to which the Society's systems and procedures have been reformed and improved over the past six years is a tribute to the energy and perseverance of the General Secretary, our Fellow David Morgan-Evans, for whose support your President is extremely grateful. Many other names could be mentioned, but I would like to single out Adrian James, our Assistant Librarian, who recently completed twenty years in the Society's service. I must also extend our thanks to all those who have served on Council and Committees, or have helped the Society in less formal roles. But I should make particular mention of our Officers, past, in the form of our Fellow, Jean Cook, former Secretary, and our Fellow, Kenneth Painter, former Director, and present, our Fellows, Susan Youngs, Secretary, Derek Renn, Treasurer, and Arthur MacGregor, Director. All have been devoted servants of your Society, but I want to say a little extra about Arthur MacGregor, our Director since 1996 and now outgoing. The Director has many duties, but the most demanding is his involvement in our programme of publications. That this is in such a healthy state is a tribute to his clear thinking and attention to detail, well supported, as he would be the first to acknowledge, by our Publications Manager and by the editor of the Antiquaries Journal. He has been a very regular presence at our Meetings, on occasion in this Chair, but my most indelible memory was his presentation as a Ballot exhibit of O G S Crawford's cavalryman's mapping board, adapted to aerial use. Happily this virtuoso set of variations on a relatively unprepossessing object has since been published in Antiquity('An aerial relic of O G S Crawford', Antiquity 74 (2000), pp 87–100 y) Arthur MacGregor is one of the most versatile and productive Antiquaries. We are proud to have had him as our Director, and hope that he will long continue to be actively involved with the Society.

The Society had come to take for granted, as one of the permanent unchangeables, the position of Her Most Sacred Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as our Royal Patron. There therefore was, let me be frank, very understandable regret when it was announced that, after a review of Her many commitments, Her Majesty had decided to give up this position. Council was, however, very pleased when Her Majesty indicated that Her election as a Royal Fellow would be welcomed, and this election duly proceeded, giving Council an opportunity to thank Her Majesty for Her long service. As His Royal Highness The Duke of Gloucester accepted Council's invitation to serve as the Society's new Royal Patron from 2000, that position is now very appropriately filled. His Royal Highness is well known for His interest in matters antiquarian, and is a former user of our Library. I know that He regretted not being able to be present today, but that He has every intention of becoming involved in our Society's affairs. We look forward to an opportunity formally to inaugurate the relationship in this our Royal Charter year.

Medals follow fittingly from matters Royal. Each year it is your President's privilege to award the Frend Medal, named for and given by our Fellow William Frend, happily present today. Its purpose is to recognize contributions to knowledge of the archaeological and material remains of the early Christian Church. I must preface this year's award with an apology to last year's Frend Medallist, Professor Günter P Fehring, for the regrettable misspelling of his name in the printed version of my Anniversary Address for 2000. This year, 2001, the Frend Medal goes to our Fellow Michael Jones. He is best known in Britain for work arising from the discovery of a church in the Roman forum at Lincoln, on which he published a paper in the Society's volume, Churches Built in Ancient Times, published in 1994. He has also worked for some years at St-Bertrand-de-Comminges in the Pyrenees, and, as a regular contributor to the International Conferences on Early Christian Archaeology, has developed wider awareness of British research and indeed the British evidence, including his own original contributions, while bringing to Britain greater awareness of European research and discoveries. I am sure he will be a worthy holder of the Frend Medal, which I now call on him to accept.

The Society's Medal is awarded for outstanding service to the Society or the aims of the Society. In 2001 two Medals are being awarded. The first goes to our Fellow Norman Hammond. Norman Hammond's main professional affiliation is as Professor of Archaeology at Boston University. He is also Associate in Maya Archaeology at the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, and can boast a row of fellowships, publications and excavations. These would not qualify him for the Society's Medal, nor even would his lucid and illuminating paper, delivered here in February, on 'La Milpa: a classic Maya city in the Belizean rainforest'. His work since 1967 as archaeological correspondent of The Times is closer to the mark, as he has missed no opportunity to promote our interests. But what really matters to the Society is that before and since his appointment by Council in February 1996 as the Society's first Local Secretary in America, following the first Meeting of the Society outside these shores, held at the Boston Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts, on 24 October 1995, with your President and General Secretary present, and our second-best mace, Norman has been the driving force in bringing together the Fellowship in America, where an autumn evening in Boston has become an annual fixture, whether as a social dinner or a full Meeting. Moreover, although resident in Boston, Norman contrives to be a regular attendee at Burlington House, always creative as a contributor to our discussions and indefatigable as both schemer and activist on the Society's behalf; thus recently he and your President have identified a tax-efficient channel for American donations to the Society. If additional Antiquarian credentials were required I rest my case on an article by this Maya archaeologist in the Church Monuments Society's journal, on church monuments in Belize, which includes the sad fate of John Hume Usher, who died aged nineteen in 1848, 'cruelly murdered in cold blood by numerous gun shot wounds inflicted ... by a Spaniard named Marcello Seravia, a native of Central America who left him to perish at Manatee but was miraculously rescued by his brother and after undergoing excruciating agonies departed this life'. What a trouvaille. Norman Hammond cannot be here to receive the Medal today, but hopes to do so at the Summer Soirée.

Which brings me to our second Medallist. Some of you may have wondered why, in thanking our outgoing Officers, I scarcely mentioned our Fellow and outgoing Treasurer, Derek Renn. This was not an accidental, still less an intended slight, but because I wished to save Derek till last. Derek Renn has served as the Society's Treasurer since 1993. His career was as a government actuary, experience which has doubtless helped him always to consider the long perspective when guarding the Society's interests, and to keep a sense of proportion about the market fluctuations which sometimes afflict us. But this has also meant than Derek can legitimately, and often does, describe himself as an amateur. He has a long involvement with the Surrey Archaeological Society, and with other societies, and thus has a profound appreciation of the amateur contribution. Professionals have their place, but this Society started with amateurs and I suspect most of us will end as amateurs. Derek has always insisted, rightly, on the importance of the amateur element to the Society. He has every right to do so. However, the other day I was leafing through the preliminaries of our Fellow Eric Fernie's new book on The Architecture of Norman England and found that Derek was acknowledged twice, secondly for general helpfulness, which rings entirely true, but firstly as one of the leading authorities on Norman secular buildings. His own publications on castles underline that claim. Some amateur. The Society could have found no one kinder or fairer or more discreet in dealing with delicate issues with regard to subscriptions. He always takes an independent but thoughtful view, without being strident. When Derek says 'Yes, but ...' in a meeting, one can be confident that in most cases his 'but' will prevail, its wisdom evident. That might give the impression that Derek has acted as a brake on the Society, to its benefit; 'cunctando restituit rem'. Sometimes, certainly, but just as often, when convinced of the case, he is wholeheartedly positive, and, insofar as is fitting for a Treasurer, open-pursed. The final point I want to make about Derek is one he has often made during the Review discussions, which is that the Society has much to gain from the involvement of volunteers. Derek Renn has been an exemplary volunteer, and intends, I know, to continue as such. I call upon him to accept the Society's Medal.

And now, last of all, there is the matter of succession. Our Fellow, Rosemary Cramp, Professor Emerita of Archaeology, of the University of Durham, and still resident there, is well known to the Society. She is a Vice-President now, and served as a Vice-President from 1978 to 1983. Somehow, although elected in 1959, she had contrived not to be formally admitted a Fellow until last year, when I had the great pleasure of remedying that deficiency. She has been a very productive and still is a very active scholar in her fields of early monasticism, Anglo-Saxon sculpture and Northern archaeology. Among many appointments she has been a Trustee of the British Museum, has served on the Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments for Scotland, serves on the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art, and is President of the Society for Church Archaeology. I could continue but need not. Rosemary Cramp spans many worlds, commands respect in all and has pupils everywhere. There could be no one better equipped to take on the Presidency of your Society as the thirty-ninth holder of this Office since Peter Le Neve in 1707. I count myself and the Society fortunate that, in a moment, I shall be handing over to such a capable and distinguished successor.

2. Two Early First Millennium BC

Wells at Selsey, West Sussex, and their Wider Significance. Two early first millennium BC assemblages from Selsey Bill are considered, one of Late Bronze Age date and one of Early Iron Age date. Detailed examination of two large features suggests both a common function for the features and a functional similarity between the sites to which they belong. Data from them are tested against a contemporary regional database. In terms of site activity and settlement form, both belonged to the same cultural tradition. But differences in inter-regional relationships, outlook and resource strategies are identified. The change, paralleled on contemporary Sussex sites, is attributed to population growth and a filling-out of the landscape.

3. Is There Anybody Out There?

A Reconstruction of the Environmental Evidence from the Breiddin Hillfort, Powys, Wales. Researchers have often assumed that the Iron Age hillforts of the Welsh borders were densely occupied centres of population. One of these is the Breiddin, occupied in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, which was excavated in 1969–76. At its centre was a natural water reservoir, Buckbean Pond, which provided a radio-carbon dated sequence of deposition contemporary with the later prehistoric occupation of the hillfort. The beetle assemblage from these deposits was never properly studied or published due to Maureen Girling's death. As a result its implications for understanding the human impart on the pond's immediate environment were not fully appreciated. Despite the remains of four-post structures close to the pond, and of round houses and associated deposits in the vicinity, both flora and insect faunas indicate a quiet natural pond with little disturbance other than casual grazing by animals. This ‘evidence of absence' does not square with the archaeological evidence which is here interpreted as deriving from human activity which was neither permanent not intensive.

4. The Carnyx in Iron Age Europe

This paper reviews the evidence for the carnyx, the Iron Age animal-headed horn, in its European setting. The starting point is the head from Deskford, north-east Scotland: the results of recent work are described and a revised dating propposed. Excavations at the findspot strongly indicate that it was a votive deposit. The nature of the wider European evidence and its biases are reviewed, to provide a firmer basis for commenting on the date and distribution of the instrument. Finally, attempts to reconstruct the carnyx are described.

5. Gadebridge Revisited

For a number of years the writer has harboured doubts over the correct interpretation of a number of features found in the 1960s. The millennium year presented an opportunity to reinvestigate parts of the site to test whether these doubts were justified. What was once believed to have been an external chalk floor proved to be the floor of a timber roundhouse and what was once believed to have been a stone cottage proved to be a porticus linking the villa with the baths. Several phases of timber structures were found but most remarkable of all was evidence of a possible bathing pool predating the example discovered earlier. 

6. John the Baptist and the Agnus Dei: Ruthwell (and Bewcastle) Revisited

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The identity of the figure with a lamb carved on the upper stone of the Anglo-Saxon cross at Ruthwell, Derbyshire, was interpreted by Paul Meyvaert (in 1982 and 1992) as an apocalyptic image of the Deity instead of John the Baptist. Close inspection of the panel, however, makes it difficult to accept such an explanation. Instead, an adaptation of the early Christina images of the Baptist is proposed, and it is argued that the details of the panel are best understood in the light of the introduction of the Agnus Dei chant into the mass by Pope Sergius I (687–701), and of biblical commentary which saw the Baptist himself as an apocalyptic figure associated with the Lamb, the paschal sacrifice, commemorated each day in the Mass.

7. The Orientation of Churches: Some New Evidence

We hypothesised that the important early second millennium churches in England may have been aligned using a magnetic compass. If true, the building orientations would enable the post sixteenth-century geomagnetic observatory records to be extended back several hundred years. Directional data were collected from 143 sites, most of which were constructed between the mid-eleventh and the late twelfth centuries, including all of the old English cathedrals and many large church buildings in use today, as well as numerous ruined monastic sites. However, processing the data revealed that the compass was not used to align the buildings. Attempting to explain the data, we exhumed Wordsworth's suggestion that church orientation was governed by the sun's position as it rose above the horizon on the feast day of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. The data obtained in the present study suggest that Wordsworth's basic hypothesis might hold for as many as 43 per cent of the churches if sunrise and sunset positions are considered; sun-based Easter Day and equinoctial day orientation could explain a significant majority of the rest of the sites.

8. The North Portal of Durham Cathedral

and the Problem of ‘Sanctuary' in Medieval Britain. A small room (which has since been destroyed) located over the north portal of Durham Cathedral has been explained as a watching room for fugitives fleeing to seek sanctuary at the cathedral that housed the shrine of one of England's pre-eminent saints, Cuthbert. The source behind this identification is an account of the customs of Durham written only c 1593. There is no earlier documentary evidence indicating a function for this room. An examination of the customs and traditions of sanctuary, some aspects of which were unique to England in the Middle Ages, suggests that there was no need for such a supposed watching room. A search for parallels, especially among cathedral and abbey churches from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, produces no conclusive evidence for the function of similar but larger rooms located over strongly projecting porches sheltering lateral entrances to naves. Although a function as a watching room can be doubted more than firmly disproved, it can nonetheless be suggested that the room was more likely to have been constructed for a liturgical purpose, such as some aspect of the ritual surrounding the arrival of the bishop and his entrance into the church.

9. Divine Kingship and Dynastic Display: the Altar Murals of St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster

Destroyed by fire in 1834, St Stephen's Chapel at the Palace of Westminster was undoubtedly one of the most opulent and enduringly influential English building programmes of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Focussing on the programme of wall-painting which flanked its high altar, this paper seeks to clarify the royal chapel's importance not only in terms of its stylistic innovation, but as an arena for Edward III's kingly image making. The study explores the ways in which the chapel space was used and the audiences for which its dynastically forward-looking images were intended. Scrutinizing the representations of Edward III and his family, and the biblical scenes beneath which they kneel, it tests the hypothesis that the Westminster murals reflected more than just conventional mid-fourteenth-century devotional preoccupations, and were, in fact, indicative of the Plantagenet's own Christian ideology of his kingship.

10. The Archaeology of Cane Sugar Production: a Survey of Twenty Years' of Research in Cyprus

The first research project in medieval industrial archaeology in Cyprus originated with the investigation of the Lusignan cane sugar production centre in Kouklia (the Stavros Project); it became an incentive for the exploration of the establishments of the Hospitallers at Kolossi and the Carnaro family at Episkopi. Excavations at Kouklia-Stavros (1980–82 and 1987–92) recovered a sophisticated structure of milling and refining installations, and revealed new economic and technological aspects of this important, but thus far hardly explored, aspect of the island's industry in Lusignan and Venetian times. The wealth of new information gained has made it possible to understand for the first time thoroughly how Levantine cane sugar refineries actually worked. The contextual approach of the Stavros Project, interrelating archaeological evidence and written information, suggests further interesting research topics such as the repercussions of the sugar industry on social structure, settlement patterns and environment, or the transfer of the methods and technology of sugar production from Islamic lands to the western Mediterranean and finally to the Americas.

11. The Chantry Chapel of John Oxenbridge in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle

In many ancient churches the establishment of chantries and chantry chapels provides a fascinating appendix to the archaeology and history of the building. This paper is a short study of a chantry founded in St George's Chapel, Windsor, not long after the Henrican and Edwardian reforms that were to underpin the theological principles upon which such establishments were erected. It refers to the life and the achievements of the founder and seeks to highlight, through the examination of architectural and heraldic evidence, the difficulties of tracing the history of the building and decoration of the chantry chapel for which the Foundation Deed and the will of the founder are lost.

12. Serjeant Knight's Discourse on the Cross and Flags of St George (1678)

In January 1678, John Knight, the Serjeant Surgeon of Charles II, sent to Samuel Pepys a ‘Discourse containing the History of the Cross of St George and its becoming the Sole Distinction = Flag, Badge or Cognizance of England, by Sea and Land'. Knight argued that St George's cross should become the dominant feature on English flags and supported his argument with a history of the cross. A manuscript copy of this discourse, with Knight's original drawings, survives in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and is published here. A brief biography of Knight is presented and an account of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century controversies about St George. The latter was an issue that caused acrimony between Royalists and Puritans. An appendix reconstructs Knight's library, principally consisting of books concerning heraldry, topography and history.