Fellows were treated to a preview of the newly restored King’s Library at the British Museum, on Thursday, when Andrew Burnett, FSA, explained how the Museum had risen to the challenge of finding a new and appropriate function for the room once George III’s book collection had been moved to the British Library. Andrew described the architecture and symbolism of the Library, dubbed ‘one of the noblest rooms in England’ when it was completed by Smirke in 1827, and sparingly decorated with Grecian motifs as a reminder that post-Waterloo London was portrayed as the new Athens, as a riposte to Parisian claims to be the new Rome. He also explained the thinking behind the new exhibition that will open in the Library on 12 December, as the climax of the Museum’s 250th anniversary celebrations, revealing the Enlightenment’s preoccupation with new methods and approaches to the systematic classification of human artefacts and natural phenomena.
A full report of the meeting held on 2 October is now available on the Fellows’ side of the Society’s website.
9 October: Lambeth Palace: recent work on the fabric, by Tim Tatton-Brown
16 October: Curators and Curatorship at Sir John Soane’s Museum, 1837’1995, by Margaret Richardson, FSA
The British Museum is hosting a series of lectures under the broad theme of ‘The World in 1753’ to accompany the special exhibition London 1753 and as part of the celebrations of the Museum’s 250th anniversary. Forthcoming lectures include James Walvin on ‘The Caribbean, Slavery and British Wealth’ on 16 October 2003, Peter Marshall on ‘Britain and India in the 1750s’ on 23 October 2003 and Sheila Canby on ‘Roses and Nightingales ‘ Iran in 1753’ on 30 October 2003. All lectures are in the Clore Education Centre, starting at 18.30. Tickets ‘5, BM Friends and concessions ‘3.
Public participation in archaeology
The report of a CBA working party on public participation in archaeology, chaired by Mike Farley, FSA, is now available on the CBA’s website, together with the full text of all the responses made to the Working Group’s earlier survey, on which the report is based. Comments on the report and the forty-nine recommendations it contains will be very welcome as a further contribution to the ongoing debate.
Carved stones: Historic Scotland’s approach
Historic Scotland first produced a formal policy statement on carved stones in 1992. Guidance is being prepared that is intended to supersede, update, expand and clarify recommended practice in the face of recent research and best conservation practice. This relates to prehistoric rock art, Roman, medieval and post-Reformation sculpture, in situ and ex situ architectural sculpture and gravestones. The draft guidance will be circulated for public consultation early in 2004. If you would like to be notified of this so that you may have the opportunity to comment, please send your contact details (preferably an e-mail address) to Trish Stewart.
Moratorium on English Heritage grants
Chris Scull, FSA, Head of Archaeology Commissions at English Heritage, has asked us to point out that the moratorium on English Heritage grants announced in Salon 63 does not apply to the Archaeology Commissions Programme. Further details of that programme can be found at www.english-heritage.org.uk/archaeology/commissions.
Lottery consultation ‘ is Stonehenge under threat?
A little-noticed proposal contained in the DCMS Lottery consultation document suggests the possibility of a drastic reduction in funding for the Heritage Lottery Fund. Under the heading of Guidance on Managing Balances, the document criticizes Lottery distributors for holding large sums of unspent money and lists proposals to confiscate interest on ‘unspent’ deposits, and to ‘reduce balances where they appear to be excessive and to reallocate them to other good causes’. Very specifically, the document says that the Government is considering legislation to ‘take away from any of the lottery distributors their balance greater than a proportion of their previous year’s lottery income and distribute this to other good causes’.
As the full implications of these measures has begun to emerge, many recipients of HLF grants, and many intending applicants, have expressed concern at the potential impact. For its part, HLF has confirmed that the confiscation of interest would lead to the loss of up to ’30 million a year, which is equivalent to the HLF’s annual spending on its much-praised programme of work to restore and give new life to inner city parks. Although HLF currently has a balance of around ‘988 million, this is money that has been earmarked for projects but not yet drawn down by applicants. HLF believes that the certainty of knowing that funds have been allocated is critical to applicants’ ability to plan ahead and to raise match funding. The fact that applicants often take longer than envisaged to draw down money allocated to projects is a reflection of the complexity of some of these large capital projects, such as the restoration of the Stonehenge landscape, or of London’s South Bank.
DCMS has stated that the Government does not intend drastically to reduce the funds available for heritage projects, and that there is nothing in the consultation document that should be read as putting any existing funding commitments at risk. But it does wish to see money paid out more quickly, and it does propose to give each Lottery distributor a total maximum balance, calculated as a ratio of their annual incoming funds.
Fellows might be reassured by this clarification from DCMS, but there is still some uncertainty about what the Government would regard as an ‘excessive’ balance and at what level the balances ratio might be set. And there is potential ambiguity over the definition of ‘existing funding commitments’. Does this include Stonehenge, for example, which has passed its first assessment stage at HLF, but does not yet have a grant contract?
This is a technical and difficult issue but one that potentially impacts many important heritage projects ‘ umbrella organisations, such as Heritage Link, are urging as many people as possible to respond to the consultation by the 31 October deadline to express their concerns. Copies of the consultation document can be downloaded from the DCMS website .
Gloves off at the National Gallery
The Director of the National Gallery, Fellow Charles Saumarez Smith, accuses the Government in the Gallery’s annual review, published on 30 September, of failing to provide the basic support needed to keep its world-class collections intact. His comments echo similar complaints made by Neil MacGregor at the shortfall in funding for the BM and by successive directors of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Dr Saumarez Smith stressed the particular problems faced by the Gallery in trying to acquire works of art, pointing out that the Gallery had probably ‘exhausted the goodwill’ of the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has offered ’11 million towards campaign to buy the Madonna of the Pinks.
Peter Scott, the Gallery’s Chairman, said that the year on year erosion of the Gallery’s grant had left it with nothing to spare. Taking inflation into account, the current year’s ‘20.4 million grant was worth ‘2.5 million less than the grant of eight years ago. ‘We do not get from Government even the basic operating costs of this place, what it costs to open the doors, turn on the lights and look after the collection’, he said, adding that in other European countries, ‘governments accept a responsibility to protect the heritage, not leaving it to the institutions to find large sums’.
Robert Byron and the Georgians
A recently published book ‘ Robert Byron, by James Know, John Murray, ’23) ‘ contains a riveting account of the tactics used by the Georgian Group in the 1930s to save various threatened buildings that have since become important London landmarks. In 1936, the Adelphi, the magnificent Thames-side terrace of the Adam brothers, had been torn down, and Rennie’s Waterloo Bridge had been reduced to a pile of rubble and Wren’s All Hallows Church in Lombard Street was under threat. Led by Byron, a group of Young Georgians, whose number included John Betjeman, Christopher Hussey, James Lees-Milne and John Summerson, decided to break away from the SPAB, whose campaigning tactics they considered too genteel, and thus the Georgian Group was spawned.
One of the Group’s greatest triumphs, apart from preventing the demolition of several Bloomsbury squares, was the saving of the Palladian house in Old Palace Yard, between Westminster Abbey and the House of Lords. To save this elegant building, Byron penned articles for the press, petitions were got up, politicians were lobbied and sandwich men were employed to parade outside the Palace of Westminster. The writer Nancy Mitford even threatened to chain herself to the railings. It is therefore fitting that the building now provides offices for several peers, including Lord Redesdale, Secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group, son of Nancy Mitford’s cousin, Clement.
From fish to meat ‘ the Neolithic diet
Writing in the journal Nature last week, Michael Richards, from the University of Bradford, reported that he and his colleagues at Oxford and Belfast had detected evidence for an abrupt change in diet around 5,200 years ago. The team found a strong marine isotope signal in the nineteen Mesolithic skeletons that they studied, while the carbon isotopes from 167 Neolithic bones bore a distinct meat hallmark. Seafood, which had been a major part of both coastal and inland diets, as confirmed by the huge shellfish middens of western Scotland, seems to have been comprehensively abandoned at the onset of the Neolithic period in Britain. According to Michael Richards, this argues against a gradual uptake of domesticated plants and animals into Mesolithic society and in favour of a fundamental shift in diet associated with a new culture. ‘I personally think this is linked with the spread of a new belief system’, Richards commented. ‘Even now religions have dietary prescriptions’.
Oldest human remains in Europe
The jaw of a man found in Romania, dating back 35,000 years ago, is being claimed as the oldest fossil yet found of a modern European. Found in February 2002 in a recently discovered cave in the Carpathian Mountains in south-west Romania, the jaw was radiocarbon dated by a team led by Erik Trinkaus, an anthropology professor at Washington University in St Louis. An international team of scientists is now studying the cave to determine if it was a burial place. A new expedition is expected in mid-2004. Further details at dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20030922/jawfossil.html.
Closer to home, a cave in the Mendip Hills has been revealed as the earliest scientifically dated cemetery in Britain. The site at Aveline’s Hole, near Burrington Combe, contained human bone fragments representing about twenty-one individuals. These have now been dated to between 10,200 and 10,400 years old. The remains represent only the surviving fragments of a much larger assemblage of 100 or more skeletons that were first recorded lying on the floor side by side in 1797. The cave was excavated in 1914, when evidence of ceremonial burial was found. Some remains were found in association with a disused hearth, together with red ochre, perforated animal teeth and fossil ammonites.
Peter Marshall of English Heritage’s Scientific Dating Service, which commissioned the dating, said: ‘One of the most exciting aspects of the radiocarbon results is that they show Aveline’s Hole was used as a place for the burial of the dead over a relatively short period of time ‘ about 200 years. People in early Mesolithic Britain were creating what we can recognise as a cemetery thousands of years earlier than has previously been thought’.
Dating was carried out by a team of experts headed by Dr Rick Schulting of Queen’s University, Belfast. Dr Schulting said: ‘Aveline’s Hole is giving us the opportunity to reconstruct something of the diet, health and life-style of these enigmatic [Mesolithic] people. Generally we think that cemeteries only appear when people have an interest in marking a claim to a territory or an important resource. It is certainly not something that persists, as in Britain the next such concentration of burials is not seen for another 4,000 years, with the appearance of farming in the Neolithic.’
Further information can be found on the English Heritage website under ‘News’.
Underwater scanning to map drowned landscapes
English Heritage is hoping to secure funding to create a complete map of the seabed in the Channel and North Sea according to a report that appeared in the Observer recently. New sonar scanning technology, known as bathymetry, will be used to create sea-bed maps and images as accurate and detailed as those made of dry land. For the first time, we have the technology to map the North Sea and Channel sea beds in unsurpassed detail, said David Miles, chief archaeologist of English Heritage. That offers us a unique chance to open up our history. There could be dozens of perfectly preserved sites down there.
Bathymetry uses techniques developed by a team of researchers at Imperial College, led by Dr Sanjeev Gupta, which uses satellite positioning devices and special software to compensate for sea swell and ship movement and create a perfect three-dimensional image of the drowned landscape. Tests off the Sussex coast at Littlehampton have traced the ancient course of the River Arun. Before the English Channel was drowned by rising post-glacial sea levels, this flowed south to a valley where it joined a long-lost river created by the combined waters of the rivers Arun, Thames, Rhine and Seine.
What we saw was astonishing, said Gupta. The topography was incredibly detailed, rich and complex. We could see the river bed that the Arun had created thousands of years ago and examine the bays and cliffs along its valley. We could see a rocky ledge that might have formed a waterfall, an ideal place for an ancient settlement. We could also see where boats have since sunk and settled on top of this landscape.
English Heritage now wants to use the techniques developed at Imperial College to create a national survey of Britain’s territorial waters (which extend 12 miles from the coast), as well as mapping regions of the North Sea. To do that, they will need government and industry funding. ‘Most of the world’s seabed is still a mystery to mankind,’ said David Miles. ‘We have better images of Mars and Venus than of two-thirds of our own planet’.
Last week’s Daily Telegraph contained a glowing review of Fellow Francis Pryor’s latest book, Britain BC: life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans (Harper Collins, ’25), in which Francis continues the arguments that he first propounded in his TV series of the same name ‘ that the Roman invasion of Britain was a black moment in our island history, and that aspects of our national identity go back further than the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans into deep prehistory. To do so, as the reviewer points out, is potentially dangerous because it involves an attempt to define the ‘national character’, which some would consider futile ‘ and others might consider politically incorrect. Francis manages to avoid the flak by defining ‘the British belief in individual freedom’ as the characteristic that sets us apart from the bureaucratic Romans. And for those who enjoyed Francis’s first TV series, the good news is that he has just been signed up by the BBC to make a second.
Staff at the Portable Antiquities Scheme have announced the finding by a metal detectorist in Staffordshire of an elaborately decorated patera (handled pan), covered in ‘Celtic-style’ curvilinear scrollwork in red, turquoise, yellow and (possibly) purple enamel and dating from the second century. An inscription below the rim lists the four forts at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall in sequence ‘ Mais (Bowness), Coggabata (Drumburgh), Uxelodunum (Stanwix), and Cammoglanna (Castlesteads) ‘ along with the Greek name, Aelius Draco.
Sally Worrell, of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, said: ‘Aelius Draco was perhaps a veteran of a garrison of Hadrian’s Wall and, on retirement, had this pan made to recall his time in the army. His name suggests that he or his family originated in the Greek-speaking part of the eastern Roman Empire.’ A full report and picture of the vessel can be seen at www.finds.org.uk/news/newsarticle.asp?id=155.
A huge Roman iron factory has been excavated at a site near Brayford, on the southern edge of Exmoor. A test trench dug across a heap of discarded iron slag has revealed the scale of the production, which could have supplied markets right across the Roman Empire, according to excavation director Dr Gill Juleff from the University of Exeter’s archaeology department. Pottery from within the trench indicates that much of the activity at the site took place during the second and third centuries AD. Future research at the site will seek to understand whether the site was operated by the army or whether it was run by a local entrepreneur.
Europe’s second biggest amphitheatre
Archaeologists excavating the site of Cordoba University’s former veterinary faculty have found an amphitheatre measuring 175 by 145 metres, rising to a height of 20 metres, and capable of holding 50,000 spectators ‘ making it second in scale only to the Coliseum in Rome. They have also found plaques marking the seats of prominent Cordoban citizens, and twenty gravestones commemorating fallen gladiators, inscribed with a record of their victories, laurels and prizes. Built in the first century and abandoned in the fourth, the amphitheatre was used as a quarry by Moorish settlers from AD 711 and so comprehensively robbed that the site was forgotten. The university and city authorities now intend to turn the site into an archaeological park.
Dating the Long Man of Wilmington
A team of environmental archaeologists led by Professor Martin Bell, FSA, has concluded that the Long Man of Wilmington dates from the mid-sixteenth century. Martin Bell’s conclusions, broadcast on 2 October in a BBC2 programme called Figures in the Chalk, come from an analysis of chalk fragments from the Wilmington hillside. This revealed that there was little activity on the hillside during the Iron Age, Roman and medieval period, but that a sudden change occurred when a layer of chalk rubble was swept down the slope about 500 years ago. Martin Bell believes that the chalk debris probably came from the freshly cut Long Man. The earliest known record of the figure comes from 1710.
Derby Museum secures Arkwright portrait
Two last-minute grants have enabled Derby Museum and Art Gallery to purchase Joseph Wright’s 1790 portrait of the pioneering industrialist, Richard Arkwright junior, with his wife Mary and daughter Anne. Despite grants of ‘999,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and ‘50,000 from the Art Fund, fundraisers failed to raise enough money to keep the portrait by the initial deadline. A rare two-week extension was granted by the arts minister, sufficient to enable two extra grants to be confirmed, of an additional ‘5,000 from the Art Fund and ‘66,000 from the Government’s landfill tax scheme, bringing the total raised to the ‘1.2m required to secure the picture.
Joseph Wright was born and died in Derby and spent the majority of his working life in the city. Appropriately, Derby Museum and Art Gallery holds the world’s largest public collection of his paintings and drawings, and acts as a study centre for the artist. The artist’s subject, Richard Arkwright junior, helped shape the development of the textile industry in Derbyshire’s Derwent Valley, now a World Heritage Site.
On the Isle of Wight, campaigners have just launched a campaign to raise ‘635,000 in match funding to add to the ‘2.5 million grant allocated by the Heritage Lottery Fund for providing a new superstructure to protect the mosaics at Brading Roman Villa. The Earl of Wessex and Phil Harding, of the Wessex Unit and Time Team, have already given their support to the campaign, as has Fellow Stephen Cosh, co-author with Fellow David Neal of the Society’s four-volume corpus of Romano-British mosaics. Anyone who wishes to make a donation should contact the Oglander Roman Trust, Brading Roman Villa, Moreton Old Road, Brading PO36 0EN.
Septimius Severus heads the list of the hundred greatest black Britons
The African-born Roman emperor Septimius Severus, who rebuilt Hadrian’s Wall and died from pneumonia in York in AD 211, has been pressed into service by Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, as one of the hundred greatest black Britons in a list published last week to mark the start of Black History Week in the UK. Other historical figures on the list include St George of Lydia, Queen Charlotte (consort of George III), Queen Philippa, and Niger Val Dub, King of the Picts.
The Mayor’s list takes a broad view of the description of ‘black Briton’, particularly when it comes to some of the historical figures. Douglas Lee, of the department of classics at the University of Nottingham, said that Septimius was only in Britain because he was fighting the Caledonian campaign and that, although he was born in what is now Libya, he was not especially dark skinned. ‘I would be very hesitant about claiming him as a black Briton,’ he said.
Michael Eboda, editor of the New Nation newspaper, said the list would help to change the perceptions of both black and white people. ‘I think it’s important for people to know that my ancestors were more than just slaves,’ he said.
In an article in The Guardian on 22 September, Maev Kennedy described the funeral shield of Henry V as a ‘scruffy assemblage of wormy lime wood, flaking paint, horsehair and faded silk’. She reported that the shield has recently been removed from Westminster Abbey for the first time since the monarch’s death in 1422. It has been taken to the V&A for close examination prior to being shown at major exhibition on Gothic art which will open at the musuem later this week.
The shield bears the coat of arms of Henry’s stepmother, Joan of Navarre. Claude Blair, FSA, believes that the shield probably belonged to Henry V’s father, Henry IV, Shakespeare’s ruthless Bolingbroke. Why, then, was Henry V buried with his parent’s shield? The answer may lie on the reverse of the shield, which is covered with Chinese silk of imperial quality. This was already antique when the shield was made, and may have been one of the earliest examples of silk to reach northern Europe from Tartar-ruled China, in the early 14th century.
The shield will go on display after gentle cleaning, and the exhibition ‘ Gothic: Art for England 1400-1547 ‘ will be open from 9 October 2003 until 18 January 2004.
On the same day, an exhibition will open at Tate Britain on the theme of Turner and Venice. Fellows may already be aware that preparation for this exhibition has led to the renaming of two of Turner’s paintings, catalogued in the 1960s as depictions of the Venetian lagoon, but now brought closer to home, as images of the somewhat less romantic waters of the Solent at Portsmouth. Thus Festive Lagoon Scene, Venice (1840’5) is now to be known as The Arrival of Louis-Philippe at Portsmouth, 8 October 1844, and Procession of Boats with Distant Smoke, Venice (1845) has become The Disembarkation of Louis-Philippe, 8 October 1844.
Ian Warrell, the curator at the Tate who is preparing the exhibition, said that these two canvases were anomalous in Turner’s Venetian series because they are considerably larger than the painter’s other Venetian scenes. They also depict a line of soldiers in red uniforms ‘ the colour worn by English troops at the time. Letters from Turner make it clear that he was at Portsmouth for the arrival of the French king on 8 October, and there are other works by the artist depicting this event. What is more, Louis-Philippe was a friend and patron of Turner, having got to know the painter while the future king was living in exile in Twickenham in 1838.
Louis Philippe’s visit to England in 1844, in order to reinforce his good relationship with England and with Queen Victoria, was described by the Illustrated London News of the day as a gala affair, with gun salutes, and troops stretching from the royal dockyard to the railway terminus. Both paintings can be seen at the Tate exhibition, which will be open from 9 October 2003 until 11 January 2004.
Landmark Trust takes on 1970s house
The Landmark Trust, best known for conserving castles, medieval halls and the occasional neo-Grecian pigsty, has just taken on a building designed by a living architect. Anderton House, commissioned by the Anderton family from Peter Aldington, was built in 1972 and is now listed as a Grade II* building. Reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Utility House, it is, according to the Landmark Trust, ‘an exceptional example of uncompromisingly modern design executed in simple materials, happily caught before changing tastes had been allowed to blur its clean lines or site drainage problems to damage its fabric. For all its modernity, the Anderton House is at much at home in the rolling Devon landscape that it overlooks as the longhouses which inspired its profile.’ The house retains all its contemporary materials and detailing and is furnished to match. Further details are available on the Trust’s website at
Perhaps a candidate for Landmark Trust ownership in the future is the similarly named Anderson House, which has just won the 2003 Award for Building in an Historic Context, awarded by RIBA London and English Heritage. The central London house, built largely of glass, was designed by Jamie Fobert Architects and was described by the judges as ‘a shining example of how innovative, contemporary and spatially aware architecture can be constructed in the heart of a Conservation Area. It is an exemplar of a new urbanism for central London in the 21st century’. Further details are on the RIBA website.
World Monuments Fund identifies the buildings ‘most at risk’
Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, St Vincent Street Church in Glasgow, Battersea Power Station in London, and Stowe House in Buckinghamshire have all been identified as buildings at risk in the worldwide list that the World Monuments Fund publishes every two years. The list aims to highlight the threat to structures all over the globe that have an international importance or resonance. Other structures on the list include the Great Wall of China, the Panama Canal, the ancient Nineveh and Nimrud palaces in Iraq and the hut built by Sir Ernest Shackleton at Cape Royds in Antarctica in 1908 as a base for his polar exploration.
Strawberry Hill was the home of Horace Walpole (1717’97), son of Britain’s first Prime Minister, who was himself an MP, as well as being an author and antiquary. Walpole transformed what had been a small and unremarkable house into a 58-room Gothic mansion to showcase his extensive collections of art and antiquities. Well known even in its own time, Walpole’s house, with its towers, battlements, gilded ceilings, and painted glass showing rustic and Biblical scenes and heraldry, established the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century taste for the Gothic.
According to the WMF: ‘Strawberry Hill is threatened by inappropriate use. Owned by St Mary’s teacher-training college, it is frequently rented out for private parties and as a location for unsupervised filming, and has suffered significant harm as a result. The Renaissance leaded-glass windows have been broken, the eighteenth-century interior has been seriously damaged, and some of the objects in the house have been stolen. Negotiations are in progress to transfer ownership of the property from the college to the Strawberry Hill Preservation Trust to allow funds to be raised solely for the conservation of the house, and to secure and increase appropriate public access.’ An estimated ’12 million is needed for restoration.
For additional information about this and other sites on the WMF List, see www.wmf.org.
Heritage Lottery Fund grant for Hardwick Park
Hardwick Park, near Sedgefield, in Tony Blair’s constituency, is to benefit from a ‘4 million HLF grant to restore one of England’s most important eighteenth-century parks. The landscaped gardens at Hardwick were created in the 1750s by acclaimed architect James Paine, but many of the features he designed and built now lie in ruins or are partially lost to a tangle of undergrowth. The first phase of the ten-year restoration scheme involves re-excavating the ornamental lake, and restoring the Temple of Minerva, the Gothick seat, the Grand Terrace and the Circuit Walk, all of which were laid out around the lake to provide views of the Park’s ornamental features.
Another challenge is to correct the tilt on the Park’s own ‘Leaning Tower’. The Gothick tower is now only half its original height and leans about four inches from the vertical. The aim is to restore the full 50 feet height, but that would increase the tilt to about a foot out of line. Structural resin will be injected into the ground directly beneath the sagging tower wall, which expands to 30 times its liquid volume as it hardens, pumping up the sunken ground beneath the tower to restore its vertical elevation and provide sound foundations on which to re-build. The system has been used successfully on an eleven-storey apartment block in Milan and on the fourteenth-century tower at Scaleby Castle in Cumbria.
Imperial purple ‘ the last word
Several Fellows wrote to comment on the story in Salon 63, reporting that the Romans used a gland from the murex shellfish to create purple dye, but that equally good results could be obtained from cockles bought in the local branch of Tesco’s. Michael Hammerson,FSA, believes that the finding throws open the whole question of Tesco supermarkets during the Roman period. Could so-called Chariot Burials actually be discarded supermarket trolleys? Are coins with TES in the exergue not, as has long been thought, from the mint of Thessalonika but supermarket trolley release tokens?
On a more serious note, Jeremy Montagu, FSA, said that the ‘tzitzit’ or tassles (‘fringes’ is the word used in the Jewish texts) worn by Orthodox Jews are today always white simply because ‘we do not know what colour ‘tekhelet’ was and Jews are forbidden to use the wrong colour. If John Edmonds has really found the right dye and the right process to make it, many of us would be very grateful, for we are commanded to have them blue (Numbers 15:38)’.
English Heritage, Historic Buildings Inspectors based in Bristol (ref: H/11/03) and Northampton (one-year post, ref G/02/03)
Salary ‘25,361 to ‘30,567, closing date 8 October 2003
To provide specialist advice on the conservation of historic buildings within the region. Further details by email from [email protected] quoting the relevant reference.
The London Library, Head of Fundraising and External Relations
Salary c ‘35,000, closing date 17 October 2003
To develop and implement an external relations strategy to include running a major Capital Fundraising Appeal. Full particulars from Kate Brooks by email: [email protected].
Resource, Chief Executive
Salary c ‘100,000, closing date 24 October 2003
Leading and managing the day-to-day operations of the principal policy-setting and advisory body for the UK’s museums, libraries and archives sector. Further details from Odgers Ray & Berndtson, tel: 020 7529 1111, email: [email protected].
Chair of Scotland’s Treasure Trove Advisory Panel
Closing date 31 October 2003
Scottish Ministers are seeking suitably qualified applicants who would like to be considered for appointment as the Chair of Scotland’s Treasure Trove Advisory Panel. Candidates must have a high level of relevant experience, for instance in archaeology, museums, history or cultural heritage. The successful candidate will be expected to lead the work of the Panel following on from a review of the Treasure Trove system in Scotland which is currently underway.
To request an information pack you can either telephone 0870 240 1818, fax 0870 600 4111 or email [email protected].