Volume 82, 2002

Papers:

Anniversary Address 2002 by Rosemary J Cramp, PSA
The Architecture of St Davids Cathedral: chronology, catastrophe and design by Roger Stalley, FSA
Christological Personal Seals and Christocentric Devotion in Later Medieval England and Wales by Elizabeth A New
Some Aspects of Heraldry and the Role of Heralds in Relation to the Ceremonies of the Late Medieval and Early Tudor Court by John A Goodall, FSA
The Pre-Reformation Altarpiece of Long Melford Church by Kim W Woods
Auro et Argento Pulcherrime Fabricatum: new visual evidence for the feretory of St Dunstan at Glastonbury and its relation to the controversy over the relics by Julian M Luxford
Early Tudor Canopywork at the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester by Angela Smith and Nicholas Riall
Tudor Silver-gilt Dress-hooks: a new class of treasure find in England by David Gaimster, FSA, Maria Hayward, David Mitchell and Karen Parker
Privacy, Display and Over Extension: Walter Strickland's rebuilding of Sizergh by Ian Goodall, FSA
Vegetius's ‘De Re Militari': the triumph of mediocrity by Sydney Anglo, FSA
Robert Reid and the Early Involvement of the State in the Care of Scottish Ecclesiastical Buildings and Sites by Richard Fawcett, FSA
Victorian Excavation Methodology: the Society of Antiquaries at Silchester in 1893 by Michael Fulford, FSA, and Amanda Clarke, FSA, with contributions by Hella Eckardt and Ruth Shaffrey

Shorter contributions:

13. Does Corieltavi Mean ‘Army of Many Rivers'? by Andrew Breeze, FSA

14. Orientation within Early Medieval Cemeteries: some data from north-west Wales by David Longley, FSA

15. A Viking Scabbard Chape from Chatburn, Lancashire by B J N Edwards, FSA

16. Three English Romanesque Lecterns by Geoffrey L Pearson, John E Prentice and Alastair W Pearson

17. A Fragment of Medieval Painting Discovered Next to St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield by Jane Spooner

18. The Remedius and Maximus Reliquary by Jerome Bertram, FSA, and John A Goodall, FSA

19. Richard II, Henry Yevele and a New Royal Mansion on the Thames by Michael Bennett

1. Anniversary Address 2002

Delivered 23 April 2002 by Rosemary Cramp, PSA

The initial and most congenial task in this, my first anniversary address, is to record, more formally than I could do in taking over from him last year, thanks to my predecessor, Simon Jervis, for his distinguished service to the Society. He guided the Fellowship for six years with great panache, as well as wisdom, and for this we are deeply indebted. I am sure we all miss his benign and learned asides and the wealth of the anecdotes which enlivened his Anniversary Addresses and his comments at the Thursday lectures. Luckily, past Presidents do not immediately disappear, leaving only a smile behind, but they are transmuted into Honorary Vice-Presidents, and, if they are Simon Jervis, they also continue to provide help and comment – for example, during this year as the editor of The Antiquary, which he has revived with considerable success.

He left his successor, however, with a rather more dubious legacy: the Review of the activities and future prospects of the Society as seen by its Fellows, and later summarized by its Officers. As a Vice-President and President Elect, my first major donation from the General Secretary was the massive bulk of paper which this Review engendered in the form of replies from the Fellowship. Awestruck, I read them all, and although I cannot now remember in detail every comment, was immediately heartened and enlightened by them. I was heartened because, from the cross-grained to the wildly optimistic (and all opinions that come in between), the responses made clear how many Fellows care deeply about the Society – its traditions, as well as its potential for future development. I was enlightened because the diverse, even contradictory, nature of the replies obviously set one a major task for providing a coherent response. In the replies I saw some of the fervour which enlivened reports of our Proceedings in the past and there was also apparent an enormous reservoir of good will and expertise to be drawn on.

I was increasingly aware, as the time for taking over the Presidency drew near, of how little I really knew about the structures and ethos of the Society, even though I had been a Fellow for over forty years, but I also felt that there were others, amongst those who did not reply to the Review questionnaire, who would have been in the same position. To get to know the groupings within the Fellowship, some of them very mysterious, and to involve a larger part of the membership in activities, and to gain an understanding of the Society’s unique role in interpreting the antiquity of our country, these became important aims. During this year I would like to think that we have taken the Review by the scruff of the neck and shaken out a reasonable profile for the future, and in what I say later I hope that many of the comments and criticisms contained in the responses to the Review will be answered, explicitly or implicitly.

So, as a new President and one who lives (I found I had originally written lived) in the middle of Britain, or for some of you, the far north of England, I needed a lot of help and information, and I would like above all to thank the General Secretary and his staff for their patience and guidance, and my fellow Officers, most of whom had a much more extensive experience of the Society than I had, for the generosity of their advice and assistance. I am very grateful that the Fellowship has seen fit to elect this team for another year. Their work has played an essential part in many of the activities I will be mentioning later.

In encouraging Fellows to visit Burlington House more often, and to take a more informed interest in its riches, I have been glad to observe that my own tardy appearance for formal admittance has encouraged other laggards to come forward, so that at the same time they can be briefed by the General Secretary concerning new developments in the Society. Moreover, this year, for the first time in the United Kingdom, we held a Thursday meeting outside London, and many northern Fellows who gathered in the University of York were afforded not only the opportunity to hear Andrew Lawson speak about Stonehenge from an intimate and up-to-date knowledge of that troubled site, but also to meet some of the staff, who may have been just names before, such as Kate Owen, our Publications Manager, Christopher Catling who is responsible for the website and SALON, Ortrun Peyn who is responsible for the library catalogue and Jayne Phenton, the administrator. I hope that this external Thursday may be repeated in another part of the United Kingdom next year.

Of course external meetings have been held before, in the United States of America, and I had hoped to attend this year’s meeting of the American Fellowship in Boston, Massachusetts, in November; in the event the meeting was postponed and my visit had to be cancelled because of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September. There will, however, be a chance for the British Fellowship to hear the lecture prepared for the American meeting when Professor Redford speaks to us in May, and I hope very much that there may be a meeting in the USA this year which delegates from London can attend. Whether Presidents in the future will be asked to attend meetings even further afield I do not know, but this year we appointed a Secretary for Australasia – Professor Dan Potts – and we wish him well in his role of bringing together the Fellows in that huge region.

At least our far-flung Fellowship has been significantly linked to Burlington House and its doings, in a very immediate way this year, by new information in the Society’s website; and by e-mail, through the initiation of a weekly news bulletin, which bears the Society’s name – SALON (Society of Antiquaries of London On Line). Now one can read reports of the weekly meetings and a fascinating medley of news about Fellows and all aspects of those interests that the Society embraces. This up-to-date information is an enormous bonus for those who have not time to read a range of newspapers, and it is heartening that Fellows are now sending in information for SALON on a regular basis. We realize, however, that many Fellows are not linked to a website, and do not have e-mail, but I have only received one letter complaining that they are thereby being deprived of a benefit. I hope that this is because everyone now realizes that it is possible to get the same information in hard copy by sending a stamped addressed envelope to the Office. By an extraordinary coincidence, as this meeting began, I was handed a letter from one of our long-established Fellows who finds the visits to London now difficult and describes herself as ‘a technophobe’, but writes to say how much she values the weekly printouts of SALON. One could hardly have had a more timely endorsement of the system. Communication by e-mail is not going to die away, even though some may mourn the wretched deterioration in grammar and spelling which it engenders (I speak of my own missives, of course), but there can be no doubt that this has provided another way of making those Fellows feel more involved, who, for various reasons, cannot easily get to London.

Yet nothing is a substitute for the ambience of the Thursday tea and lecture at Burlington House, and I have very much appreciated the range of lectures I have attended this year. Before Christmas we heard a retrospective analysis of ‘Power of Place’ and were treated to the riches of Waddesdon Manor and Oxford and Cambridge Twentieth-century illustrations; to new interpretations of the Romanesque St Paul’s Cathedral and of Thomas Wolsey’s Hampton Court Palace, the Bayeux Tapestry and the Roman site of Alchester, whilst the series of Bronze Age watering holes at Swalecliffe, Kent, introduced, to me at least, an entirely new type of archaeological feature. After Christmas we began with fascinating contrasts in explorations of the longbow in the Hundred Years’ War, followed by continental church furniture in England, and after that have visited Han Dynasty China, the portus Romae, World Heritage Sites, prehistoric Scotland, Viking Age Derbyshire, and we have finished with a trio of lectures from Iron Age Spain, through Roman Apulia to the Himalayas – with perspectival restoration drawings in Roman archaeology and the doings of the Dilettanti in the Levant still to come.

A range of subject such as these has certainly been a mind-widening experience for me, but that is what being an Antiquary is all about: taking an informed interest in subjects outside one’s specialist range (which is anyway catered for by other specialist Societies to which one belongs), and meeting people whose activities are congenially allied but not the same as one’s own.

I hope that many of these lectures will find their way into the Antiquaries Journal. Our publications have been as always a very important part of our activities, and during this year we have maintained our output of major scholarly work, as well as producing a bumper edition of the Antiquaries Journal for the centenary year. This was the last volume to be edited by Ann Clark who has served the Society so well in this role for many years. Kate Owen has now taken over the role of co-ordinating all the Society’s publications, including the Journal and the website, and she brings to this an outstanding track record. During the year the Publications Committee chaired by the Directors – first Professor Gwyn Meirion-Jones and then Professor Martin Millett – has grappled with the policy for publications in the future. With immediate effect I am sure that Fellows would like to know that the backlog of books for review has been dispersed to reviewers and a hierarchy of review structures established. We are very grateful that our Fellow David Crossley has been persuaded – indeed volunteered – to take up the post of Reviews Editor, and he and the Director will form a firm academic team.

A new initiative that has proved very popular this year has provided a wonderful opportunity for the enlightenment of those Fellows who had not appreciated the richness of our holdings or the interesting history of some of our possessions. The General Secretary and the Librarian have offered conducted tours of either the archives and manuscripts in the Library or the antiquities and furnishings in the building, so that now no one can claim that they did not know that certain esoteric objects existed. These occasions – ‘Getting to know the Society’ – do represent a significant amount of extra work for the staff and they have been much assisted in the Library by our Fellow Pamela Willetts, who knows the collections well; I would like to record the Society’s thanks to her for her help. Some Fellows have said that they felt rather lost in finding their way around the library holdings, especially on days when the library staff are very busy, and in the future we hope to use the services of those long-established Fellows who know their way around and have volunteered to help.

The Library has always been at the heart of the Fellowship and its care and documentation was one of the Society’s earliest concerns – in fact in the simpler life of the Secretaries of the past it must have been the main preoccupation. In the Proceedings for 1864–5 (page 7), the Secretary, Knight-Watson, reported: ‘I may safely assert that of the 10,000 volumes to which your library approximately amounts, there is not one to which I have not with my own hands assigned to its proper place ... For the letters which hitherto marked the presses I have substituted numbers and to each shelf I have affixed brass letters.’

What an achievement; and the brass letters are still there for our assistance! The then President, in thanking the Secretary, noted that: ‘The Society may at last hope, not merely to possess a valuable library, but a library in which there will no longer exist books which have slipped aside, or been put away in corners unvisited for years, or have been buried in dusty recesses time out of mind, or which have been so imperfectly referred to that they can only be discovered by accident’ (page 14). This is not the situation now, but we have substantially increased our holdings over the years.

This year the generosity of donors has added many important new volumes to our Library, which now totals more than 60,000 titles, and I would especially like to mention the bequest of Dr Clive Wainwright, Fellow, who died in 1999. Through the good offices of his widow, Jane Wainwright, we have received forty-seven books this year, ranging in date from the early eighteenth century to the late twentieth century, mostly on medieval architecture and the Gothic Revival; I was particularly delighted to see the eight volumes of Grose’s Antiquities of England and Wales in the 1783–7 edition. In addition, Alecto Editions have given to the Society the Millennium edition of the facsimiles of the Great and Little Domesday Books. This is a limited edition whose bindings are based on the Society’s twelfth-century Winton Domesday.

This year is remarkable in that it has seen a new milestone passed in making the collections accessible, which is quite as significant as that achieved in 1865. The use of the new Voyager software for cataloguing the Library has been mentioned in previous reports, but in 2002 Ortrun Peyn completed the digital catalogue of the post-1988 books and this catalogue is now online and available for general use. Already we know how much this has been used, and in fact we have had to add extra facilities to cope with the demand. The next task is to catalogue the pre-1988 collection, and for this large operation we may need external funding.

The Librarian and his staff, together with the Library Committee, have also been engaged in absorbing the implications of a review of the conservation needs of our books. They have drawn up a staged programme, but we will need to seek outside funding to accomplish this task if both it and the catalogue are to be completed in a reasonable time, and then maintained. I hope that there will be more to say on this topic next year. Our last President, in his 2001 address, noted that we would have to assess priorities for fund-raising and that he would not be surprised if the Library did not feature prominently. It is indeed our first priority, not only because the cost implications have been worked out in some detail already, but also because a capital benefit for the Library would free up funding for our other activities, most notably for enhancing our capability to aid research.

Despite the fact that this has been an exceptionally difficult year financially, as detailed in the Report to Council in our Annual Report for 2001, we have now, thanks to the efforts of the Treasurer and the aid of the new Sage computing system, a much more rigorous method of controlling our expenditure. Your Finance Committee and the Society’s financial advisers have met in frequent sessions and the Treasurer has established firm budgetary parameters within agreed deficit funding. This has allowed Council to continue in some measure those activities that the Fellowship decided in the Review were an essential part of the Society’s remit. But some hard decisions have been taken, especially in the fields of book publication and research support.

Every year it is a heartbreaking task to turn down so many good research applications, but this year we have managed to fulfil to some measure the Society’s aims as set out in our first charter for the ‘Encouragement, advancement and furtherance of the study and knowledge of Antiquities and history of this and other countries’ whilst keeping our budget at the same level as last year. This has enabled us to fund the completion of some projects and to initiate new ones, to support twenty-two projects, ranging in date from the Neolithic to the age of Sir Philip Sidney, and covering not only most regions of Britain and Europe, but projects in countries as far flung as Bengal and Madagascar. In these days when money for individual research projects is so difficult to acquire, the often -modest amounts that the Society is able to provide do usefully serve as an endorsement of quality which attracts other funding, as several of the recipients have stressed. Of course, for the Fellowship, there can be also the added benefit of learning through a Society lecture the first results of this research, and, at a later date, of reading in a more digested form an account in the Antiquaries Journal. This year lectures on monasticism in medieval Ethiopia, a survey of the port of Imperial Rome and the discovery of palace sites and fortresses in Nepal were all the products of research grants, and one of the papers in Volume 81 of the Antiquaries Journal was an intriguing reinterpretation of the excavation of the Gadebridge Roman villa, by its original director, who had published his original findings in the Society’s Research Reports series in 1974.

The last major research project that the Society supported for several years, in partnership with the British Museum, was the survey and excavation of the burial ground of the Anglo-Saxon princes at Sutton Hoo, and this came to a triumphant conclusion this year with the despatch of the text for publication, and the opening by Seamus Heaney of an exciting new Visitor Centre on the site. The Society was well represented at the event by the Past President, the President, Treasurer and Secretary, all of whom enjoyed listening to Seamus Heaney reciting his translation of Beowulf, as well as visiting the new displays of both site and finds.

Another event that I attended as the representative of the Society was concerned with the loan of one of our portraits of Henry VII to an exhibition, opened by the Princess Royal in Stirling Castle, called ‘The Thistle and the Rose’. This very elegantly celebrated the 500th anniversary of the signing of the ‘Treaty of Perpetual Peace’ between King James IV of Scotland and King Henry VII of England, and our portrait gratifyingly enjoyed a prime position. The Treaty was very short-lived and perhaps for that reason the exhibition period – just two months – was also very short; it deserved a longer life.

Before reviewing the celebratory events of last year, this is perhaps the place to refer to another very recent and sadder royal event, which I attended on behalf of the Society: that was the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, who was one of our Royal Fellows. In only the last Presidential address, Simon Jervis provided a lively account of the manner in which the Society celebrated her hundredth birthday, which was a time of informal and heartfelt celebration by a wide section of the public. Even more widespread was the mourning of the British people at her death in March this year. The Lying in State in Westminster Hall and the funeral service at Westminster Abbey were, as she herself wished, immaculately conducted with a formal, traditional pageantry. Everyone who shared in the events, whether thronging the streets or watching on television, seemed to be conscious that this solemn celebration of a long life marked the end of an era, and it was indeed a memorable privilege to be part of the congregation at the service in the Abbey. The General Secretary composed a letter of sympathy to our Royal Fellow, Her Majesty The Queen, and this was passed by Council and signed by me. We also sent a less formal letter of sympathy to Prince Charles, Royal Fellow, whose broadcast concerning the loss of his grandmother was one of the most moving moments in the period of national mourning.

In 2001, as was appropriate for our 250th Anniversary Year, there was a series of celebratory events, which have already been well illustrated in The Antiquary. The summer soirée, which is always a very enjoyable occasion, was especially enhanced this year by the presence of our new Royal Patron, His Royal Highness, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester. He demonstrated admirably the way in which the royal family has developed its role in the modern world, not only by being the first Royal Patron to attend a meeting in person, but in a witty and impromptu speech, indicating that he was among friends. By a happy coincidence not only was one of the medal holders known to him but so also was the donor of the Frend award, and the three interesting short papers delivered that evening were also especially appropriate for his interests. Fellows present on that occasion were very appreciative at the way in which the Duke circulated freely at the reception afterwards and managed to talk to so many of them, and to the staff, who, after all, are the people who make such events the success they are.

The Garden Party held at Kelmscott Manor was an event especially conceived for the Anniversary. Its organizers – Jayne Phenton, Helen Webb and Sue Ashworth – had prepared all the ingredients for success, and a success it was; the rain cleared away, everyone dressed appropriately, the brass bands played, the Morris dancers danced, the refreshments were appreciatively eaten, the house and gardens were admired and the Kelmscott shop was lavishly patronized. The most outstanding female hat was voted (by the President) to be that of the Secretary, and this has been recorded in two photographs you will have received in The Antiquary and the Annual Report; one of the most outstanding items of male headgear was the flower-trimmed boater of the General Secretary, but unfortunately that has not yet been published. On a further personal note, the week of that event was the first time I had visited Kelmscott, and I suspect that I am not alone amongst the Fellowship in this omission. It is well worth a detour for all Fellows, since the hard work that has been expended on it by its staff and the Kelmscott Management Group has made the house, its interesting contents and its gardens a most seductive place, and not only for admirers of William Morris. I am very grateful to everyone who gave up their time to show me round and to explain not only the house and garden but the estate and the Landscape Project as well. This year we will be entertaining our fellow Antiquarians from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland there, and I hope that many more Fellows who have not visited Kelmscott Manor will be able to do so then.

Finally there was on 1 November the celebration of the Granting of the Charter itself. The document was displayed and short explanatory lectures were given by Dr Nigel Ramsay, the General Secretary, and the Librarian. A distinguished group of Fellows and guests gathered in the Library to mark the occasion and to listen, when the conversation allowed, to the mellifluous sound of a string trio, playing from the gallery. A splendid cake bearing the celebrated lamp of the Society was then borne in, cut by the President and consumed by the assembled company.

I would not like you to think that this year has been entirely given over to such events: quite the contrary, it has been a very hard-working year for all the Officers and staff, as you will have heard in the Reports, but particularly for the General Secretary. A rearrangement of the committees – so that there is a logical flow of information one to another – may make for smoother running, but it has not diminished the amount he has to do. The most significant addition to the General Secretary’s workload derives, however, from the diseased age in which we live in which there is a constant pressure from on high for reviews of, and returns on, practically every activity. We are very lucky to have in him someone who has been trained in the civil service mode of composition and who also writes with facility. In this year he has had to prepare, for Council to endorse, papers on Health and Safety, Risk Assessment, Museum Acquisition and Disposal Policy, Reserves Policy, and perhaps the most serious of all, several letters concerning the legal status of our tenure of Burlington House. In addition, a sheaf of papers had to be prepared for the visitation of the Charity Commissioners (who used the Society as a pilot project). It is greatly to his credit that their report contained only a few minor admonitions, underlining the need for Council to be representative, to include IT representation and for its members to be aware of their Trustee responsibilities. We have tried to accede to these requests, and it was gratifying to receive so many ticks for good practice in the report. This visitation did, however, underline the problem our Society has to recognize in walking the tightrope between serving the interests of the Fellowship and providing evidence for the greater good, which earns us a charitable status. It is this wider remit of the Society that I would like to consider next.

In the past our Society has not been backward in commenting to the Government in London, and indeed to governments abroad, about activities that appeared to contravene its interests, as set out in the Charter. In 1917, for example, the President, Sir Arthur Evans, submitted the following resolution which was carried unanimously: ‘The Society of Antiquaries of London, having been informed of the proposal to erect large collegiate buildings in the immediate neighbourhood of the pyramids of Gizeh, is of the opinion that it is impossible to justify such a use of a site of supreme historical and archaeological interest and that any interference with the integrity of the view of the pyramids from the surrounding countryside would amount to an outrage on civilisation’. The Government was desired to act immediately so that no initial steps could be taken ‘which might render the business of the stopping of this unspeakable proposal more difficult’. Equally full blooded was the protest to government in 1918 at a request by the Air Board that the British Museum should be closed, cleared of its personnel and requisitioned as the headquarters of the War Cabinet, thus making it ‘a legitimate butt for German bombs’. Other learned Societies followed the Antiquaries in their protest and, in the face of these, the ‘obnoxious order’ was withdrawn, but (as noted in the Proceedings, page 205) ‘perhaps the most characteristic feature in the whole episode was the unfeigned surprise expressed by the authors and abettors of the proposal at the outcry which it called forth’. (Nothing changes!)

But perhaps my favourite intervention was one in 1866, when the President, Lord Stanhope, wrote directly to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Clarendon, demanding that he convey the Society’s disquiet to the Italian government at their proposal to legislate for the suppression of all monastic institutions within their kingdom, and the ancient site of Monte Cassino was especially noted. The President prevented any question as to what right the Society had to intervene in such a matter in a foreign country by invoking the Royal Charter and saying: ‘As a learned Society, we deem nothing alien to us which affects the interest of learning and literature and we are accordingly anxious to rescue from the general fate an institution which through long centuries to the present has done its utmost to foster both.’

In the light of our past interventions, the letter that I sent in early March 2002 to the Minister for the Arts, the Baroness Blackstone, seems bland indeed. Lady Blackstone had spoken earlier this year at a meeting concerned with the Valetta Convention, held in the Society’s Rooms, and she also paid us the compliment of attending our Charter celebrations, so she knows that we are an independent and long-established body. The matter of the letter concerned the future of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which was set up in relation to the Treasure Act to promote and co-ordinate the voluntary recording of chance finds in England and Wales; as SALON has informed us, so far over 2,000 members of the public have volunteered their finds for recording, and the database of the Portable Antiquities Scheme now holds information on some 18,000 archaeological finds. Much of the funding for this scheme (which did not then cover the whole of England and Wales) goes to pay a network of local liaison officers who work with detectorists and others who make chance discoveries of antiquities, identifying and recording their finds. It was this funding that had been cast into doubt, and which was still in doubt at the time of my letter. On 14 March the Minister announced that, as a stop-gap measure, the Government would be funding the Portable Antiquities Scheme for one further year whilst negotiations took place to try to achieve long-term funding. My letter, written on behalf of the Society, stressed that the loss of antiquities from our soil without any record being made was a cause for serious concern. Happily the representations made by the Society and other interested bodies seem to have had the desired effect, for the Heritage Lottery Fund has now agreed to fund the scheme for a further three years and, moreover, to increase the staffing so that the entire country will now be covered. This is a very welcome piece of news.

There is still cause for concern in a related area, however. There is now a vast market in smuggled or illegally acquired antiquities from this and other countries and, despite legislation that should impede their export, there is not the surveillance to monitor how often the law is ignored. Antiquities freely offered for sale on the internet clearly demonstrate how widespread this problem is. There is considerable debate in progress at the moment about all aspects of the illicit trade in antiquities, and I hope that the Fellowship and parliamentarians will be increasingly aware of the problems.

One way that the Society can work towards a resolution of such problems is by liasing with those parliamentarians who have an interest in the heritage, and in this respect we in this Society are pleased to be able to host the website of the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group (APPAG) on our own website and to be linked with their efforts to make issues such as these more widely known amongst their parliamentary colleagues. At a recent meeting convened for all heritage bodies in the House of Lords it was apparent that such work was very much needed. The report that APPAG is currently preparing on the state of archaeology in the UK, with proposals for reform, will, we hope, serve as a useful step forward.

Working with APPAG is one way of furthering the Society’s objectives, but I would like to mention another important initiative in trying make the aims of our Society known to a wider public. This is especially aimed at the next generation of Antiquarians, since a prize will be awarded for the highest achievement in GCSE and ‘A’-level archaeology. The Council is considering calling this the Leland Award after the sixteenth-century antiquarian, John Leland, whose peregrinations through the kingdom, and the records of what he observed of the antiquities he encountered, are still of research value and perhaps qualify him as the first modern antiquary.

Clearly this has been a very busy year and I will not exhaust you further with its recital. Instead I shall turn to the important business of the evening, the award of medals to our distinguished honorands.

We come first to the award of the Society Medals. These medals are awarded by Council to those people (and they need not be Fellows) who have provided outstanding service to the Society or the aims of the Society. Our two medallists today have done both of these things. They are also very important in that they represent the ‘amateur’ element in the Society. They have both had lives and careers where they have been gainfully employed in other ways than the practice of archaeology and art history, although both have a deep knowledge and love of the past and have written significantly about it. The Society is greatly strengthened by this element in our Fellowship and it is fitting that we continue to recognize its importance and prize its contribution.

Here the likeness between them ends. Martin Williams represents those Fellows who at the height of busy working lives have managed at crucial times in the Society’s history to provide professional and individual guidance, much of which will be generally unknown to the Fellowship as a whole. Martin was elected a Fellow in 1994, and came to the Society via an interest in printing, which had led him in turn to William Morris, to the Treasurership of the William Morris Society from 1969 to 1980, then to the Kelmscott Manor Management Committee as Treasurer in 1991. He has served on the Society’s main Finance Committee since 1993, and stepped down from this only last week. He has given hugely of his time in advising the Society on its finances. Martin Williams was closely involved in the development of Kelmscott Manor from a liability to an asset for the Society, and his outstanding work on the Financial Appendix of the recent Review provided a clear-sighted analysis of the Society’s present position and future prospects that was universally praised and will form a solid platform for the future. He has the ability to put finance and administration into the broader context of our activity, and the Society is grateful for the wise advice he has given. He has an extensive experience of charity administration, and at this time when we are just coming to terms with its arcane parameters, his advice has been of enormous help to the General Secretary. Now that we are moving forward with Kelmscott as a more stable resource and the Review behind us it seemed an appropriate moment to thank him for his efforts.

His commitment to the Society continues undiminished, however. I noted that he was one of the select group of London-based Fellows who travelled north to the York meeting, and, more substantially, he has offered me his services to help with our next fund-raising initiative. This is very generous because I know that he is also committed elsewhere to the service of other charities. Martin, for all that you have done and continue to do for the Society, we say ‘thank you’.

Our second medallist, Lesley Lewis, became a Fellow in 1964, and is a well-known figure in Burlington House, being a faithful attendee at the Thursday lectures. But not all may know what an interesting career she has had. She was educated at home, and then led a sociable life, until an interest in the history of art prompted her to take university entrance through a correspondence course – and she entered the Courtauld Institute as one of the first four undergraduates in 1932. Her BA and subsequent MA established a life-long interest in eighteenth-century architecture, and she has, over the years, published papers in the Warburg Journal, Apollo and The Burlington Magazine. In addition to her published work on eighteenth-century Commemorative Monuments in Jamaica, in 1962 Lesley published a book intriguingly entitled Connoisseurs and Secret Agents in Eighteenth-century Rome.

Before her marriage to the entomologist David Lewis in 1944, she had worked for a short time as a clerk in her family’s firm of solicitors. This acquaintance with the law no doubt prompted her to undertake a second degree in quite exotic circumstances. Her husband had been posted to the Sudan Medical Service. As she trekked with her husband in the remote areas of the bush, it was difficult to pursue art history and so she read for the Bar by correspondence, and was called to the Bar in 1956. Lesley is thus one of the Society’s three barristers, and although she did not practise, she prizes the association with the Inns of Court, as do we also. She has, however, continued to develop her architectural and art-historical interests and has given much public service, being a Trustee of Sir John Soane’s Museum and a doughty fighter and raiser of money for matters concerning Chelsea, especially the Old Church and pictures of Sir Thomas More.

Lesley has served the Society with unswerving generosity: she was on Council in the 1960s, was a Vice-President from 1980 to 1984 and (as those of you who read your Annual Reports will know from the regular acknowledgements) she has provided good advice and support to the Morris Committee, which gives grants to churches. She is happily at home in the Society as she proved when she celebrated her 90th birthday on our premises in March 1999. This event (with its jugglers and stilt walkers) has already passed into legend.

The spirit of adventure that she showed in her travels with her husband has stayed with her until today, and it would be difficult to find amongst our Fellowship anyone who, in a long life, has so well fulfilled the spirit of the original Antiquarians. Lesley Lewis is an example to us all.

The Frend Medal is awarded each year in recognition of outstanding contributions to knowledge in the fields of the archaeology, history and topography of the e

arly Christian Church. It is alternately awarded to a scholar from Britain and from abroad. This year our Frend medallist is Professor Nancy Gauthier, Professor Emeritus of the University of Tours. Nancy Gauthier was a student at the Sorbonne and, after a period of study in Rome at the Pontifical Instituto di Archaeologia Cristiana, she became an assistant to H I Marrou, Professor of the History of Religions at the Sorbonne. She prepared two doctoral theses under his supervision: one (within the framework of the Nouveau Recuil des Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaulle) was concerned with the Christian inscriptions of Trier (published in 1975 as Volume 1 of the series); the second was a general history of the evangelization of the area round the Moselle (published in 1980). After receiving her doctorate, Nancy Gauthier spent the first part of her career as Professor of Roman History at the University of Rouen, and the latter part in the Chair of the same subject at the University of Tours.

The titles of her Chairs, however, hardly do justice to the scope of her interests. She has been prodigiously active in her research output, having already published approximately one hundred articles. From 1975 she was associated with the collective project, the Topographie Chrétienne des Cités de la Gaule (IV–VIIIe siécle), which was launched by Noel Duval, Paul-Albert Fevrier and Charles Pietri. From 1983 she was responsible, with Jean-Charles Picard, for co-ordinating the publication of the fascicules of the Topographie Chrétienne. From 1992 she was the sole editor of the fascicules, of which eleven appeared between 1986 and 1999. She was herself the principal author of Volumes I (Trier), IX (Rouen) and XI (Mainz), and with various other authors she prepared the volume on Cologne. She was also associated with the survey (directed by Noel Duval) of the Premiers monuments chrétiens de la France, to which she contributed a chapter on early Christian epigraphy, in Naissance des Arts Chrétiens de la France (Paris 1983), as well as some of the historical and archaeological entries for Volume III of Premiers monuments de la France – Ouest, Nord et Est (Paris 1998).

In the last ten years her research has expanded to Dalmatia where (on the initiative of Noel Duval) she has been working on a survey of the Christian inscriptions of Salona – and Volume IV of Salona is scheduled to appear in 2003. She has been an active collaborator with a wide range of European scholars, as was evidenced by her work in assisting with the direction and publication of a recent project of the European Science Foundation, The Transformation of the Roman World, and as co-organizer and co-editor of a conference on Gregoire de Tours et l’Espace Gaulois (published in 1997).

Nancy has indeed been a major participant in the renewal and widening of research on early Christianity in the west, and she has spread the message across the Atlantic, since, almost every year, she is a welcome participant at the medieval congress at Kalamazoo. In short, she is the ideal recipient of the Frend Medal for 2002.

The highest honour that the Society can award is its Gold Medal, and perhaps the greatest pleasure any President can have is to nominate someone for this award. It may seem that I have acted with unseemly haste to taste this pleasure, but this award seemed far too long overdue to a man of whom it was recently said: ‘when the archaeology of our time is looked back on in retrospect, some hundred years ahead, he will be one of the few who will still be reckoned with and whose influence will still be felt’. John Coles has been a pioneer in so many fields of archaeology that it is impossible to do him, or his phenomenal output of publications, any sort of justice; and if you are in any doubt as to the justice of my meagre statements, I recommend the volume of essays published in his honour in 1999 – Experiment and Design – from which my opening quotation was taken.

Perhaps his birth and early life in Canada imbued John with the no-nonsense, ‘just do it well and get it done’ sort of attitude that has characterized his work throughout his career – that and a liking for research in comparable latitudes perhaps. He came to Britain in 1955, after graduating from the University of Toronto, and pursued a postgraduate career under two of the Society’s previous Gold Medallists: first Graham Clarke, of whom he wrote a moving memoir in 1997, and then Stuart Piggott. Whilst working in Scotland with Piggott for his PhD (which he completed within two years!), he established two of the major strands of his later work – Scottish Archaeology and the Bronze Age. Piggott had established a framework for the Neolithic in Scotland but Coles filled the next major gap in knowledge by a series of articles on Scottish Bronze Age metalwork followed by three long magisterial articles which covered the Scottish metalwork for the whole of the period. In 1971 he crowned his work in Scotland by his publication of the settlement site at Morton, Fife, an excavation in which he blazed the way for many techniques of environmental analysis which have since become standard.

By that date he had been back in Cambridge for eleven years, and it was in Cambridge – as Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Reader and Professor – that he remained until 1986, when he moved to Devon, where he still lives. By the early 1970s he had explored other research avenues that he was to make characteristically his own. He demonstrated his interest in archaeology by experiment as early as 1963, but this interest culminated in 1973 with the publication of his book Archaeology by Experiment, which was hugely influential on several generations of colleagues and their students – all of whom tried ineptly to follow his lead and plough with an ard, cut down trees with flint axes, or test the capability of early weapons. Not many, perhaps, succeeded as well as he did in playing Bronze Age instruments, but then, although he has never been a man to sound his own trumpet, he was, in his youth, no mean exponent of jazz . Not everyone laid down such rigorous parameters in experimental archaeology as John did; through his work one was made to realize that there is a huge difference between controlled experiment and re-enactment – which is such a popular pastime today.

John Coles was always conscious of where gaps in academic knowledge should be filled for students of archaeology, and, in 1979, he published, with Anthony Harding, The Bronze Age in Europe, a work that they modestly claimed had to be written because of the lack for students and teachers of a general survey of the European Bronze Age. It has remained the standard reference book ever since. But 1979 also saw the publication of another strand of John Coles’ work – wetland archaeology – and specifically, at that stage, the archaeology of the Somerset Levels. The crusade to investigate (before destruction by peat cutting) the trackways and other timber vestiges of prehistoric man’s activities which had been so well preserved in the Somerset Levels’ waterlogged conditions, was shared by Bryony Orme, now Bryony Coles. Together, since 1971, they have, through their rigorous methodology and swift publication of their discoveries, set standards in wetland archaeology that have been adopted widely in Britain and internationally. Through this work also John became increasingly absorbed in the archaeology of Scandinavia, and in particular the remains of people preserved in its wetlands.

The study of the ancient trackways can tell us about climate change, as well as ancient technology, communal activity and the vagaries of the individual human mind, but the bodies in the bogs introduce one directly, vis-à-vis, to early man. In 2001, in an article entitled ‘Energetic activities of commoners’, which derived from a lifetime’s study of prehistory, John Coles laid down six elements that are crucial for understanding the lives of prehistoric peoples – ‘the ordinary folk’, or ‘the commoners’ as he dubs them – and so deeply has he considered their lives that he even credited them with the creation of a gourmet diet. It seems to me that in his later work, especially in his important studies of prehistoric rock art, John Coles has moved a little from the more antiseptic approach of his earlier researches to a deeper exploration of the motivation of prehistoric peoples and their individuality. The very titles of his later works indicate this: People of the Wetlands, whose Images of the Past can be dredged up From The Waters of Oblivion, and this can even result in Boats on the Rocks or indeed Sex on the Rocks.

But before John Coles gets too furious at such whimsy, I must just say something about his work outside the huge production of archaeological publications. He has been, amongst many other honorary posts, a Vice-President of this Society, President of the Prehistoric Society and a Commissioner for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland – from 1992 until this year. Of this last, I know (because I overlapped with him for part of the time) how much effort and intellectual energy he put into that role, despite the fact that he had to commute from Devon. He knew the terrain and he could appreciate the work of the staff in surveying and recording it. He was also an indefatigable and helpful member of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and many successful heritage projects have reason to be grateful to him for his advice and guidance, as well as for the searing scrutiny he brought to bear on their weaknesses.

He has been honoured elsewhere, for example, as one of the few British archaeologists who has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala, but I hope that he will consider the Society’s Gold Medal as an honour also, as I do for the privilege of presenting it.

2. The Architecture of St Davids Cathedral: chronology, catastrophe and design

This article re-assesses the design of the nave of St Davids Cathedral in the light of modern scholarship, arguing that the cathedral has been a victim of an overly historicist approach to architectural writing. New documentary evidence is presented, including information about the existence of two churches on the site. Anomalies in the west bay are defined and some of the explanations offered by Lovegrove (1922, 1926) are rejected. Following an analysis of the design, the background of the scheme is firmly located in an English west-country environment and suggestions of French influence are dismissed. Although a vault may have been envisaged when the nave was first begun, a stone vault was never in fact erected. Nonetheless, the design of the nave emerges as a more significant and creative piece of architecture than is generally realized.

3. Christological Personal Seals and Christocentric Devotion in Later Medieval England and Wales

The study of British personal seals, particularly those that are non-armorial, is one of the most neglected areas of sigillographic research; these seals, however, provide the widest range of designs and the largest number of extant examples in the entire field. This paper focuses upon one aspect of such seals, the Christological designs and legends used on them, and integrates them into the broader area of the study of late medieval Christocentric devotion in order to demonstrate both the rich source of new material provided by personal seals, and the way in which they can add to our understanding of more general issues of a historical period.

4. Some Aspects of Heraldry and the Role of Heralds in Relation to the Ceremonies of the Late Medieval and Early Tudor Court

The present study arose from the need to provide the background for understanding the heraldry mentioned in the post-mortem inventories of Henry VIII, and while it seems unlikely that this commentary will appear in the foreseeable future it fills a gap in the heraldic literature. The role of the ‘British History' in English royal propaganda and state ceremonials antedated the accession of Henry VII as is evidenced by the material prepared in relation to Edward IV's supersession of Henry VI in 1461. The role of heralds and kings of arms in rationalizing the arms and beasts required for the pageants etc is examined, with the ways in which it was organized for entries and other ceremonials. The period also witnessed the introduction of new decoration for tournaments – ciphers and impresses. The appendices provide editions of some hitherto unpublished texts which were devised for these purposes.

5. The Pre-Reformation Altarpiece of Long Melford Church

The remarkable late sixteenth-century account of Long Melford church written by former churchwarden Roger Martyn includes a description of the carved wooden altarpiece placed at the high altar from 1481 (when, according to the inscription on the exterior of the church, the altarpiece was made) until 1547–8. The author suggests that this altarpiece is likely to have been Netherlandish rather than English and relates its purchase to the cloth-producing Long Melford and the Low Countries. The painted altarpiece shutters are known to have survived into Queen Mary's reign, but their subsequent fate is unknown, if indeed they survived at all. In Queen's College Chapel, Cambridge, are three shutters from a Brussels-carved altarpiece dating from c 1480 and owned by the College at least since 1717. It is proposed that these could be the Long Melford shutters, perhaps donated to the college after the English Civil War by Master Anthony Sparrow, who as archdeacon of Sudbury had oversight of Long Melford.

6. Auro et Argento Pulcherrime Fabricatum

New Visual Evidence for the Feretory of St Dunstan at Glastonbury and its Relation to the Controversy over the Relics. ive illustrations of the feretory of St Dunstan at Glastonbury appear in the margins of Cambridge, Trinity College MS R 5 16, a copy of John of Glastonbury's chronicle of the abbey. They provide a unique visual record of a major monument of English Gothic metalwork previously known only through documentation. The feretory of St Dunstan stood at the centre of one of Glastonbury's most important cults. Its form was more wholeheartedly architectural than other known English examples, and may be compared with contemporary Continental feretories. The illustrations also inform current understanding of the controversy surrounding the true location of St Dunstan's relics. Palaeographical analysis of accompanying inscriptions places them in the context of Archbishop William Warham's well-known attempt to claim the relics definitively for Canterbury (1508). The illustrations may be understood as part of Glastonbury's reaction to this attempt.

7. Early Tudor Canopywork at the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester

A fascinating example of early sixteenth-century carving is preserved in the church of the Hospital of St Cross near Winchester, in the form of three sections of wooden frieze. The frieze is carved with a profusion of Renaissance imagery that has until now received little attention. The carved imagery of the frieze will be examined here in detail for the first time; also its association with Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, 1501–28. The relationship between the imagery of the frieze and the decorative detail in other works associated with Fox will be discussed and its similarities to French models. A traditional dating of the frieze to 1525 or thereabouts will be challenged in favour of an earlier date and its likely association with stallwork discussed.

8. Tudor Silver-gilt Dress-hooks: a new class of treasure find in England

This paper combines a study of the typological, technological and constructional attributes of a sample of fifteen dress-hooks and cap hooks, reported between 1998 and 2000 under the terms of the Treasure Act (1996), with a survey of contemporary pictorial sources, probate inventories and associated wills, along with a trawl of ‘small wares' in the records of the Goldsmiths' Company in order to assess the role of these accessories in vernacular dress of sixteenth-century England. Of particular interest are questions of manufacture and design, followed by the questions of how these objects functioned in relation to the closure and decoration of dress, their noteworthiness in contemporary accounts, their social status, their ranking in the output of contemporary goldsmiths and whether there was a gender bias in terms of their ownership. This cross-examination of excavated finds with contemporary iconographic and documentary sources represents an interdisciplinary case study in historical archaeology.

9. Privacy, Display and Over Extension: Walter Strickland's rebuilding of Sizergh

Sizergh – known as Sizergh Hall from the seventeenth century, and renamed Sizergh Castle in the mid nineteenth century – has been the seat of the Strickland family for over seven hundred years. Although it has a medieval core, the house as it exists today is substantially the work of Walter Strickland (1516–69) who, in the mid 1550s, initiated a comprehensive rebuilding programme which more than trebled it in size. The enlarged house, built around three sides of a courtyard, reflected in its rooms and their disposition the concern for privacy and segregation which characterised the age. The fitting out of the interior with high quality panelling, ceilings and furnishings was incomplete on Walter's death, but was continued by his family over the next two or three generations. The house was altered and subdivided during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but much of the integrity of the mid sixteenth-century building still survives.

10. Vegetius's ‘De Re Militari': the triumph of mediocrity

Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Vegetius was regarded as the most authoritative writer on Roman military institutions, in particular, and upon war, in general. His appeal was both historical and practical; his anti-mercenary fervour impressed Italian humanists in the fifteenth century; his aphoristic wisdom was incorporated by Machiavelli into his own work and was, in turn, further disseminated by the many military writers who fell under Machiavelli's spell. Nevertheless, Vegetius's reputation was increasingly under threat. The accumulation and publication of materials relating to modern warfare and to technologies unknown to the ancients was developing apace, and even writers who believed that classical military institutions remained relevant to modern warfare now had at their disposal a range of ancient authors largely unknown in the Middle Ages. Scholars were becoming simultaneously more aware of Vegetius's shortcomings and more sophisticated in their handling of historical sources. Yet, despite this, Vegetius enjoyed his greatest (though short-lived) triumph early in the seventeenth century when he was translated, paraphrased and illustrated by Johann von Wallhausen as an indispensable source for all practical military men.

11. Robert Reid and the Early Involvement of the State in the Care of Scottish Ecclesiastical Buildings and Sites

As a result of the Act of Annexation of 1587, and the removal of bishops from the Scottish church in 1689, the Crown in Scotland incidentally acquired ownership of a large number of monastic and cathedral churches. By the late eighteenth century, as interest in medieval architecture grew, occasional grants were made towards their maintenance; but between 1827 and 1839, when a Scottish Office of Works was established under the architect Robert Reid, major efforts began to be made to stabilise considerable numbers of these buildings. The approaches to this work are of interest for what they tell us about emerging attitudes to architectural conservation.

12. Victorian Excavation Methodology: the Society of Antiquaries at Silchester in 1893

The excavations of the Roman town of Silchester, Hampshire undertaken under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries between 1890 and 1909, are reconsidered in the light of renewed excavation on the site of insula IX, first explored in 1893. The excavation methodology of trial-trenching followed by area excavation of masonry buildings thus located is reviewed alongside the evidence of policy for the recovery and retention of finds. It is estimated that about 95 per cent of the archaeological resource survives for future research.

13. Does Corieltavi Mean ‘Army of Many Rivers'?

Building on recent evidence that the tribal name of the British people of the Leicester region is Corieltavi, this paper suggests an interpretation of their name as meaning ‘host of (the region of) many rivers'.

14. Orientation within Early Medieval Cemeteries: some data from north-west Wales

In volume 81 of The Antiquaries Journal, Ali and Cunich presented new evidence in respect of the orientation of eleventh- and twelfth-century churches. The object of their research was to test whether the important churches of the early second millennium in England might have been aligned using a magnetic compass. Their data, meticulously collected, led them to conclude that only in a very small number of instances could the use of a magnetic compass have been possible and that solar observation was, in a significant number of instances, the determinant of orientation. More particularly, the rising of the sun above the horizon and possibly, though less frequently, the setting sun, provided the alignment. It was possible to show a close correlation with sunrise or sunset at patronal feast days, that is, the day on which the venerated saint was believed to have died, at Easter and on true east, determined by equinoctial sunrise.

The present author, in undertaking an assessment of the evidence for early medieval burial in north-west Wales, also considered the orientation of burial where the evidence permitted. These early cemeteries, it should be said, are invariably ‘undeveloped', without the benefit of identifiable churches. Notwithstanding individual anomalies, the author was struck by the general preponderance of alignment corresponding to two of Ali and Cunich's major categories: sun rise at Easter and on patronal feast days. Clearly, in a cemetery context, the date of death of the individual deceased is rarely knowable. However, a high proportion of Ali and Cunich's patronal feast-day alignments related to dates within the summer season, between the spring and autumn equinoxes. In north-west Wales, the great majority of recorded early medieval burials are aligned on that arc of the horizon where the sun rises between the spring and autumn equinoxes. This, of course, is also the zone within which Easter falls. The following note is intended as a contribution to the debate from the perspective of cemetery layout.

15. A Viking Scabbard Chape from Chatburn, Lancashire

This paper describes a copper-alloy scabbard chape of Viking-period type and date, found by a metal-detector user at Chatburn, Lancashire, in 1993, now in Blackburn Museum, where its registration number is 1995.14.

16. Three English Romanesque Lecterns

Three surviving stone lecterns are described and analysed in terms of their petrography and sculptural style. The similarity between their petrography strongly suggests that they share a common origin, traceable to a quarry or quarries in the immediate vicinity of Much Wenlock and that the similarity of sculptural style and dimensions points to them being a product of a single workshop. Furthermore, the authors also suggest that the petrographic and stylistic characteristics show striking similarities to the Much Wenlock lavabo, thus adding support to the notion of a Much Wenlock workshop.

17. A Fragment of Medieval Painting Discovered Next to St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield

In 1985, excavations by the Department of Urban Archaeology in Kinghorn Street, adjacent to St Bartholomew the Great, resulted in the discovery of one of the most important pieces of medieval painting to have been found in the City of London. Discovered in two halves, the painted stone had been re-used in a sixteenth- or seventeenth-century well construction immediately to the east of the church. The curved right edge of the stone probably derives from this secondary usage. When found, the two pieces were covered in lime mortar, to which, unfortunately, some of the paint layer transferred. The fragment is now in the Museum of London, where the two halves have been rejoined and other conservation work has been undertaken.

18. Richard II, Henry Yevele and a New Royal Mansion on the Thames

A payment to a mason sent to Richard II in Ireland in December 1394 provides evidence of a proposal to build a new or substantially new royal residence at Isleworth, Surrey. The mansion was presumably intended as a replacement for the palace of Sheen, shortly to be demolished on the king's orders. The mason carried with him a model prepared by Henry Yevele and Hugh Herland. This entry in the issue rolls of the Exchequer thus offers an interesting perspective on Richard's domestic plans following Queen Anne's death at Sheen, and rare documentation of the use of architectural models in late medieval England. Further, it offers some support for the view that Yevele was actively involved in design work in the 1390s, and that Richard took a close interest in royal building projects.

19. The Remedius and Maximus Reliquary

The Carmelite monastery of Hoogstraat, like many English communities on the Continent, acquired a considerable number of treasures over the centuries, many of which were somehow smuggled into England when the nuns fled the Revolution, remaining at Chichester until the community was finally dissolved in 1994. Although much was sold, the major Carmelite relics went to Rome and the remaining relics were given to the Oxford Oratory. Among those now in Oxford is an important medieval silver-gilt reliquary, which has been deposited at the Ashmolean Museum.