12 July 2008: Tercentenary Fellows Day at Kelmscott Manor
A special programme is planned by the Kelmscott Manor team for this years Fellows Day, which will take place on Saturday 12 July and will mark the close of our Tercentenary celebrations. The event starts at 1.30pm, continues until 5pm and is open to Fellows, their families and guests at a cost of £17.50 per head (£7.50 children aged six to sixteen). Cheques should be made out to Kelmscott Manor and sent in an envelope marked Fellows Day with the names of the people in your party to Kelmscott Manor, Kelmscott, Lechlade GL7 3HJ. For further information, please contact Kelmscott Manor on 01367 253348 or email [email protected].
The Societys Library and Apartments will be closed on Wednesday 23 July when the staff will be taking their annual outing to visit Red House, William Morriss home in Bexleyheath, now owned by the National Trust. The Apartments will also be closed between 25 July and 29 August for cleaning and conservation work and the replacement of the boiler.
Westminster Abbey Chapter House and Pyx Chamber
If Salon is somewhat lighter than usual on news this week, it is because the editor spent half the weekend (when Salon usually gets written) at the Societys two-day seminar on the Westminster Abbey Chapter House. This was an occasion that defines what our Society does uniquely well, bringing together people of very varied expertise, all leading specialists in their field, to give an account of recent research into the history of one of the great Gothic buildings of Europe.
We learned on the first day that Henry III and his brother-in-law, Henry IX of France, engaged in a piety competition, which Henry III surely won in terms of his expenditure of money on a building that has always been anomalous in serving both as a monastic Chapter House and as a room for the realm, as David Carpenter described it, a place of assembly for the kings Great Court, the predecessor of the English Parliament, and that to this day remains a royal property rather than a possession of the Abbey.
Successive speakers revealed the buildings unique and innovative architectural qualities, illustrated by comparison with similar buildings in England and France the overall impression, said Christopher Wilson, is of an almost continuous sequence of windows with minimal masonry interruption, and to achieve this the masons had solved structural problems that had previously eluded the builders of great Gothic cathedrals in England and France.
Liz Hallam-Smith then took to the podium, promising that we would not enjoy her paper, and true to her word she told us how this glorious, radically different and much admired building was turned by a series of irascible librarians into a little-visited and often chaotic public record office; the windows that had once been the buildings chief glory were bricked up, the roof and vaults removed and the building filled with a Gormenghast-like assemblage of rickety staircases, ladders and unsafe floors, piled high with chests, cupboards and makeshift shelves for dusty and mouldering Exchequer records.
From this low point it was Stephen Brindles lot to end the first day with a gripping and detailed account of how the quarrelling record keepers were finally turned out so that Sir George Gilbert Scott could rescue the hidden structure, bringing the Chapter House back to its full Gothic splendour and ignoring budgetary constraints in his determination to restore a building that he clearly loved in a very personal way, and that the thirteenth-century chronicler Matthew Paris described as the Chapter House beyond compare (though Stephen did leave us wondering just how much of todays building is that of Henry of Reins, the original master mason, and how much is Scotts).
The surviving sculptural decoration and wall paintings came under scrutiny the following day there was no doubting the authenticity of any of this, though Laurence Keen got everyone thinking about the likelihood that the great tile pavement was probably not made for the Chapter House but was composed of tiles intended for other parts of the Westminster Palace complex. We were given the dating evidence for the various doors and chests (including what is now claimed as the worlds oldest door, surviving from the Saxon cathedral and reused in the Chapter House vestibule), and Warwick Rodwell, organiser of the conference, gave us a guided tour of the features of the associated Pyx Chamber, describing it as the best surviving part above ground of Edward the Confessors cathedral.
Some 120 Fellows then descended on the Abbey to scrutinise every detail of the two linked buildings, including wall paintings inspired by the great Florentine and Siennese masters, graffiti and masons marks, an enigmatic altar in the Pyx Chamber with a circular recess of unknown use and a humble shelf now known to be made of reused twelfth-century planks, perhaps from a timber partition screen. With difficulty did Abbey staff then drag Fellows from their studies and herd them into the adjacent undercroft (converted into a museum in 1908 by a former Surveyor of the Fabric who was also a Fellow of our Society) to enjoy the warm hospitality that is a continuing part of the Benedictine monastic tradition.
In the speeches of thanks, the possibility of publishing the conference papers was raised some consolation perhaps for those many Fellows who were unable to attend the over-subscribed symposium. If so, they will form an account of the building as complete and as rounded as it is possible to have thanks to the multi-disciplinary nature of modern antiquarianism.
History of archaeology research cluster
Something else the Society does well is to support the study of the history of archaeology, and on 5 June 2008 we were pleased to host the first meeting of the newly formed Histories of Archaeology Research Network (HARN), convened by our Fellow Pamela Jane Smith. The aim of this new inter-university collective is to begin untangling the histories and philosophies of archaeology and make them intelligible supplementing archival research with interviews with the people who were involved or who knew the people concerned so as to provide a dimension that is often missing from published works: the social side of archaeology, the friendship (and the enmities), and the ways in which ideas were discussed and developed in conferences, tea rooms and in the field.
The research being carried out by HARN members looks at specific people (Louis and Mary Leakey, Herbert Jankuhn, Margaret Murray, Jacquetta Hawkes), places (archaeology in the British Mandate Territories, in Israel, Norway, Greece, Germany, Africa and Iran) and at institutions, policies and processes (including the History of the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG), founded as recently in 1978, and the history of the politics and policy-making processes impacting archaeology in recent decades). HARN currently has twenty postgraduate and post-doctoral members and plans regular meetings, seminars and workshops at the Society of Antiquaries and at member universities. If you are interested, contact Amara Thornton.
The future of Stonehenge: public consultation
A three-month public consultation on the future of Stonehenge will begin on 17 July, seeking feedback on two important initiatives relating to this World Heritage Site: proposals for the roads near Stonehenge and options for the location of new visitor facilities. The new proposals will be exhibited first at Antrobus House, 39 Salisbury Road, Amesbury, from 17 to 19 July. Our Society will then host the exhibition at Burlington House from 24 to 26 July, daily from 10am to 5pm; the exhibition will then transfer to Wyndham House, 65 The Close, Salisbury, and be open Monday to Friday during office hours by appointment (tel: 01722 343830) from 28 July to 17 October. Details will also be posted on the consultation website from 15 July 2008.
Simon Jenkins to be next National Trust Chairman
The National Trust has announced that our Fellow Sir Simon Jenkins is to succeed Sir William Proby as the next Chairman of the National Trust. Simon will take up the three-year appointment after the Annual General Meeting in Liverpool on 1 November. A former editor of The Times and the London Evening Standard, Simons career has been characterised by his championing of conservation causes. He founded the Railway Heritage Trust, was a founder member of SAVE Britains Heritage and the Thirties Society (now the Twentieth Century Society) and has long supported conservation issues in London, in particular the protection of the skyline. He has served as deputy chairman of English Heritage and continues to chair the Buildings Book Trust, which publishes the Pevsner Architectural Guides.
Currently a columnist with The Guardian and The Sunday Times, he has written a number of books on the press and politics and had bestsellers with Englands Thousand Best Houses and Englands Thousand Best Churches. He is now writing a book on the buildings of Wales. Sir Simon claims to have visited every one of the Trusts houses in England and Wales and has long been a public, if occasionally critical, friend of the National Trust. Dame Fiona Reynolds, the Director General of the National Trust, described him as a hugely respected public figure with a deep understanding of what we do and a passion to move it forward. He will be a powerful advocate for our work and we all look forward to welcoming him.
Simon Jenkins said: It is with a sense of awe and excitement that I take up this post. I have always said that the Trust is one of Britains finest organisations one in which we should all take pride so it is a great honour to have been appointed. I now have a great deal to learn, so I wont be saying anything about the future of the Trust until I have got my feet firmly under the desk.
Climate change and traditional homes
English Heritage has launched a new website that provides detailed advice for homeowners on improving the energy efficiency of traditionally constructed houses without harming their historic character. A section is included on micro-generation which details how technologies such as micro-wind generation and solar thermal energy can successfully be incorporated into older buildings. The site allows users to tailor the information according to the age of their home (pre-1700, Georgian, Victorian/Edwardian and Inter-War) as well as to the particular region of England in which they live. Some 34 per cent of Englands current housing stock was built using traditional methods prior to 1939.
Vision for wetland creation and restoration across England
Conservationists and government agencies from the natural heritage and the built heritage have formed the Wetland Vision Partnership, an alliance that includes the RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts, Natural England, the Environment Agency and English Heritage in a campaign to protect and restore wetlands in England over the next fifty years. The Partnership has produced a series of maps showing the loss and fragmentation of the countrys wetlands and where opportunities exist to create new ones (see the Wetlands Vision website for further information). Wetlands bring significant benefits, says the Partnership, in reducing flood risks to people and property, combating climate change by storing carbon and safeguarding wildlife and bio-archaeological heritage. Carrie Hume, the Wetland Vision Project Manager, said that: Great efforts are already being made by groups involved in wetland conservation, but our Vision signals a step change in ambition for the partners in the project. By showing what is possible and where, we want to inspire action to preserve and create wetlands across the landscape, from local ponds to wide expanses of fen. The hope is that as well as informing the Partnerships work, the maps will be used by everyone from community groups to local authorities and from farmers to water companies to protect existing wetland and invest in the creation of new wetland sites.
Jim Williams, English Heritage regional archaeological science adviser and Steering Group member, said: Wetlands are unique places. The range of materials that are preserved in their waterlogged soils provides us with a much more complete picture of life in the past. It is important that we maintain the wet conditions on these sites.
Exhibition in Parliament in honour of the National Heritage Memorial Fund
Chelsea Pensioners joined MPs and peers last month at the opening of a parliamentary exhibition to celebrate the achievements of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), which was set up in 1980 to provide a living memorial to those who gave their lives for the country in various wars. Sponsored by our Fellow Sir Patrick Cormack, MP, the exhibition was held in the Upper Waiting Hall at the Palace of Westminster from 23 to 26 June 2008, and was designed to remind parliamentarians of some of the most significant heritage assets funded by the NHMF since its inception, including contributions to the purchase and/or conservation of the Aerofilms Collection, Dumfries House, Skokholm Island, the Cabinet War Rooms, the Mary Rose, the Mappa Mundi, the Flying Scotsman and Canovas The Three Graces.
Dame Liz Forgan, Chair of the NHMF, said: Together they tell a powerful tale about our national history and identity, a history that we owe, in part, to the sacrifices of our fallen heroes. Sir Patrick Cormack said: The National Heritage Memorial Fund has made a marvellous contribution to and has, in many ways, transformed the cultural scene in this country.
The exhibition coincided with the announcement by the British Library that its campaign to keep the Dering Roll in the UK has been given a significant boost by the award of £100,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Gabbie Filmer-Pasco, who has been energetically leading the fundraising campaign on behalf of the British Library, said: This is wonderful news and means that we have nearly reached our target.
Heritage Lottery Fund grant for Jane Austens house and Astley Castle
Bicentenary celebrations for Jane Austens move to the cottage that was to be her final home at Chawton, just outside Alton, Hampshire, on 7 July 1809, have been boosted by the news of a £540,000 restoration grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). The grant will be used to move the sales and visitor facilities out of the house and enable more of the collection to be displayed. The Austens kitchen will also be reopened to give a fuller picture of her life at the house. A substantial reference library, reading room and archive store will also be set up. A new learning centre will be built within the grounds, providing more space for educational activities and events.
Jane Austen wrote three of her novels Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion at a small desk in the parlour. She also revised her three earlier novels Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey there.
The HLF has also announced that it has earmarked £1.47million for the restoration of Astley Castle in North Warwickshire, one of only sixteen buildings on the English Heritage register of heritage assets deemed to be most severely at risk. The Grade I medieval castle (granted a licence to crenellate in 1266) is known as the home of three Queens of England (Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York and Lady Jane Grey) and has lain derelict since it was extensively damaged by fire in 1978. Its ruinous state means that restoration is not an option, so the Landmark Trust plans to construct modern holiday accommodation within the ruined structure at a cost of £2.2 million. Tim Johnston, English Heritage Regional Director for the West Midlands, said: The Landmark Trust has come up with an innovative scheme that will breathe new life into this significant historic building at risk.
Petition to prevent the closure of the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient
Our Honorary Fellow Maurizio Tosi, of Bologna Universitys Dipartimento di Archeologia, is seeking signatures on a letter addressed to the Italian President (Giorgio Napolitano), asking him to intervene, as the guarantor of the independence of the institutions of high culture under the Italian constitution, in the proposed closure of the Istituto Italiano per lAfrica e lOriente (IsIAO).
How, asks the letter, can Italian culture afford to relinquish such a prestigious legacy, continued and revived by the current mission of IsIAO in all the fields in which it has been active for over 100 years ranging from archaeology to the restoration and conservation of cultural heritage (Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Mali, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Sudan, Tadjikistan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen), and from a broad spectrum of scientific research on the history, languages and civilizations of Asia and Africa, to a rich and flourishing publishing activity?
If you wish to add your signature to the 7,000-plus that are already there, the petition can be found on the Giuseppe Tucci website website.
The last issue of Salon unintentionally transformed Lord Faringdon from a Knight into a Dame, by describing him as DCVO in the Queens Birthday Honours List, instead of KCVO; sincere apologies for any embarrassment that might have been caused.
Another error was contained in the announcement of the CBA Wessex fiftieth birthday conference to be held on 1 and 2 November 2008. Salon said the cost for the two-day conference was £40; it is slightly more, though still good value, at £50 for CBA Wessex members, £55 for non members (plus £29.95 per person in both cases to attend the conference dinner).
The Society has a number of Fellows who are remarkably well informed about the history of morris dancing. In answer to Linda Halls query about the earliest pictorial records, Toby Parker says that all is revealed in The History of Morris Dancing 14581750, by John Forrest (James Clarke & Co, Cambridge, 1999), which uses the detail of dancers from The Thames at Richmond (c 1620) described by Linda (the painting itself is in the Fitzwilliam Museum) on its front cover.
Toby goes on to say that: the book has an authoritative discussion of early English moresk, moresh or morris dancing. The Richmond scene certainly includes elements of morris found both in recent tradition and in historical documents, but of course has no indication of what the dancers called their dance. By comparison, the only words which feature in the Betley stained-glass window (in the V&A) are A Mery May attached to a maypole; other characters in the window look like morris dancers but they cannot be categorised as such. The Betley window might be earlier than the Richmond painting, though much of it must be imitated from Flemish prints; so, too, might be some carvings at Abington Hall (Northampton), though these, again, have no guarantee as morris dancers and are, to my knowledge, not closely dated.
Maybe some Fellow knows the whereabouts of a gold salt belonging to Henry VIII, referred to in 1532 and 1547 as the Mores (or Morres) Daunce Salt and nowadays said to be lost: it was described as having standing about the v morres dauncers and a tabrell, and the Ladie holding the salt, and would (if it could be found!) provide the earliest specific English illustration of Morris, even though it was probably made in or derived from Flanders (cf www.rosemoresk.org/history.html). The characteristic musician of the morris dance in England, right up to modern times, was the taborer, and it is a taborer (playing three-hole pipe and tabor) who appears on the Richmond painting.
Paul Stamper (whilst denying any particular personal knowledge of what he calls early hanky-waving) points out that another source for information on this topic is REED (Records of Early English Drama), an international scholarly project based at Victoria University in the University of Toronto, but involving scholars in early drama and related fields from Canada, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, including a number of Fellows who are members of the Executive and Advisory Boards. REED examines the historical MSS that provide external evidence of drama, secular music and other communal entertainment and ceremony from the Middle Ages until 1642, when the Puritans closed the London theatres; for further information, see the REED website. The related Patrons and Performances website is rich in period images that provide valuable evidence for medieval and renaissance entertainment in England, Scotland and Wales.
Re the question of where the Indiana Jones scriptwriters got their references to the story of Notgroves golden coffin, our Fellow Robert Thompson points out that that great barrow man, Leslie Grinsell, FSA, mentions the legend in his Folklore of Prehistoric Sites in Britain (1976, page 143), with a further reference to the paper on Gloucestershire Barrows that he published with Helen ONeil, FSA, in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, 79 (1961, pages 1149). Pages 50 to 53 of that B&G paper contain a fascinating summary of legends connected with barrows: Notgrove proves to be only one of a number of Gloucestershire barrows believed to contain a golden coffin: this, along with the idea of buried treasure and secret passages, seems to have been a very common motif in barrow folklore, but even more common was the belief (apropos of current theories about the bluestones of Stonehenge) that earth taken from barrows had healing properties (we are not told whether the earth has to be consumed, applied as a poultice or simply kept on ones person in a container) and that sick children could be cured by performing various rites at barrows and standing stones.
Fellows Roy and Lesley Adkins say they were reading Salons account of the Save our Streets campaign when an item popped up on the regional TV news about a heritage hero who chained himself to a Victorian lamp-post to stop the council removing them. Before 66-year-old David Cemlyn took action, the council had already relocated seventeen of the cast-iron columns from the St Andrews area of Bristol to Clifton conservation area. David Cemlyn, a retired archaeologist, vowed to do whatever necessary to keep the thirteen remaining lamp-posts and said that: Taking them away is destroying the ambience of the area and its breaking down the community. A city council spokesman said: The cast-iron columns in St Andrews do not meet current environmental standards, but then agreed to suspend the street-light replacement programme pending further talks with St Andrews residents.
The sad end to the story is that the duplicitous city council waited until Mr Cemlyn had left the scene, then went in and removed the lamp, leaving local people frustrated, angry and bewildered, and perhaps justifiably accusing the council of being twisted, fake and deceitful.
A spokesman for the council came out with a typically plastic statement: We have 181,000 households across the city to take into consideration and want the resources allocated for our citywide street lighting replacement programme to stretch as far as possible to help improve as many neighbourhoods as we can across Bristol.
Volume 87 of the Antiquaries Journal contained an account by our Fellow Michael Lewis on the theft of a fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry in 1816, following a visit that Charles Stothard made to Bayeux on behalf of the Society to make drawings of the Tapestry. Stothards young wife, Eliza, was subsequently accused of having stolen the missing fragment, though Michael Lewis believes it was Stothard himself who removed the Tapestry fragment as a souvenir of his work. Now Michael says that the casts he made of the Tapestry for the Society, along with a facsimile of the stolen fragment, can be seen in the Kings Library, at the British Museum. The display has been organised to coincide with a conference on New Research on the Bayeux Tapestry, to be held at the British Museum on 15 and 16 July 2008 (see the BMs website). Michael was recently quoted in the Daily Mail as saying that it would be good to see the Tapestry pay a visit to the shores where it was made: I think an exhibition here would engage British people with one of the most fabulous British works of art from the medieval period it is a pity that people in this country dont know more about its history, he said.
Fellow Carola Hicks advised Daily Mail readers to go to Reading Museum and look at the excellent Victorian copy that was sewn in the 1880s, rather than risk moving the delicate Tapestry. The UK Government has twice asked the French government for the loan of the Tapestry: the first for the Queens Coronation in 1953 and the second for the 900-year anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1966. The French said Non.
Astonishingly, in view of the critical reception given to the European Science Foundations controversial journal rankings, the Australian Research Council has decided to follow suit and has, according to our Fellow Vincent Megaw, released a provisional ranking of some 19,500 journals in four categories, A* to C, as the first major stage in responding to the Federal Governments proposed research performance exercise, the Excellence in Research for Australia, which, when finalised, will show the percentage of any single universitys research under each of the rankings.
Vincent goes on to say: leaving on one side the vexed question of what might be considered to be outcomes and the utility of individual areas of research (priority aspects of the Governments proposals), the Australian listing offers hours of endless angst. Here are just a few rankings, which make clear yet again that there is a bias against publications emanating from countries or institutions where English is not the native tongue: American Journal of Archaeology A*; Acta Archaeologica Hung B; Antiquaries Journal B; Antiquity A; Germania C; Proc Soc Antiq Scot A (!); Proc Prehist Soc A*; Pamatky Arch B. I leave it to Fellows to make their own odorous comparisons; I note only that our own distinguished Journal does better in the Australian list while what many of us Colonials would regard as the major Australian journal, Australian Archaeology, here makes a B while in the European listing it was ranked A. For hours of endless fun go to www.arc.gov.au/ and follow the prompts under ERA.
Obituary: John Dore (19512008)
The last issue of Salon gave a very brief account of the life of our late Fellow John Dore. The following extracts are from a much fuller obituary written by our Fellow David Mattingly and published in the Independent on 25 June 2008.
John Dores archaeological career was unconventional and adventurous, involving numerous projects in the north east of England, Italy, Portugal, Tunisia and, particularly, Libya. He was co-author or co-editor of seven monographs and over fifty published articles and pottery reports a substantial legacy and achievement. The work for which Dore will be best remembered concerns his pioneering classifications of classical pottery from North Africa. For their geographical and temporal range and the elegance and clarity of their construction, his typologies set new benchmarks in the field. He was among the great Mediterranean ceramicists of his generation and his work is widely employed both to date sites and to understand the economic connections between regions.
Born in 1951 in Altrincham, son of the Cheshire historian Robert Dore, John took a degree in Latin and Archaeology at Birmingham University (196972). Scratching around for what to do next, he was dispatched by Professor Barri Jones of Manchester University to join an archaeological excavation in Benghazi, initiating a 36-year love affair with Libya and determining Dores future career. A second key development was his appointment in 1974 as research assistant to the Roman pottery expert John Gillam at Newcastle University. Newcastle upon Tyne became Dores adopted home thereafter and his specialism Roman ceramics.
As Research Associate in Newcastle he brought to press important work on the Roman frontier in Britain (including books on the forts at South Shields and Corbridge). His pottery reports embellish (and enliven) many a northern excavation report published in the last thirty years. He co-authored the standard work on Romano-British pottery fabrics, The National Roman Fabric Reference Collection: a handbook (1998).
From 1983 until 1985 he served as curator of English Heritages Hadrians Wall properties, seeing through the opening of a new museum at Corbridge. The museum development phase was exciting but he became frustrated by the narrowness of the subsequent role and he surrendered security of employment in favour of being a self-employed consultant. This allowed him to supplement bread-and-butter projects in British archaeology with more adventurous forays overseas.
From 1995 until 2002 he was director of the Archaeological Practice, the professional unit attached to the Newcastle Archaeology Department. This involved managing all aspects of a commercial archaeological service, operating in a challenging competitive tendering environment. When financial pressures within the university led to the (short-sighted) closure of the Practice, he returned to consultancy work again, while at the same time completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Arabic and an MA in ArabicEnglish Translation from Durham University.
Dore was a stalwart servant of the Society for Libyan Studies, a scholarly body funded through the British Academy that has done much to foster academic links between Britain and Libya and to facilitate British research in the region, and was Honorary Secretary, 19932001, and Head of Mission, 19982008. He played a key role in the Societys success in the post-Lockerbie years, when fieldwork and academic contacts could easily have been sacrificed in the face of the political difficulties.
Dores understanding of the quiet dignity of North African society won him many friends in Libya and Tunisia, as did his championing of heritage issues there. His command of Arabic was much appreciated, though his linguistic training in elegant classical Arabic occasionally led him to express ideas in a language that could disconcert Libyans expecting more colloquial conversational constructions as Dore himself put it, it could be a bit like hearing someone speaking perfect Chaucerian English on a Newcastle street today.
He played a leading role as ceramicist on the Unesco Libyan Valleys Survey (19809). Another opportunity seized was a two-year research fellowship funded by the Society for Libyan Studies (19868), leading to the publication of the internationally significant pottery assemblage from Sabratha (Excavations at Sabratha 194851: the finds, volume 1; 1989). From 1990 he became involved with the Leptiminus Project, excavating a Tunisian port city of Roman date.
It was also in this phase that he directed a major field project based on al-Marj (ancient Barca) in eastern Libya (198992). Although al-Marj had been expected to produce significant remains of the classical city, what his textbook excavation demonstrated was a deep stratified sequence of medieval and early modern Islamic buildings, overlying the remains of the classical and early Islamic town. In the last decade he worked with me on two major projects in the Libyan desert, the Fazzan Project (19972002) and the Desert Migrations Project (2007 and continuing: see D Mattingly et al, The Archaeology of Fazzan, Volumes 12). He was already experiencing back pain and a persistent virus when we were last in the field in January the first symptoms of the blood cancer (multiple myeloma) that ended his life.
A recent issue of Salon noted the launch of a fine CD of the music of John Milton senior and Martin Peerson based on modern performing editions researched by our Fellow Richard Rastall, Emeritus Professor of Historical Musicology at the University of Leeds. Trio Literati has now teamed up with Concert Bites to celebrate the 400th anniversary of poet John Miltons birth with an entertainment based on the words and music of the two John Miltons (composer father and poet son). You can catch a performance on Friday 11 July 2008 at 7.45pm at St Giless Church, Cripplegate (Fore Street, in the Barbican; not far from the Bread Street home of the Miltons, and the church where both men are buried). Tickets are available at the door and cost £14 (£11.50 concessions and £10 per head for parties of four or more).
The forthcoming Maurice and Shelagh Bond Memorial Lecture to be held at St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle, on Wednesday 22 October at 7pm will be given by our Fellow Professor Nigel Saul (Royal Holloway University) on the subject of The King of the Castle: Edward III, the Order of the Garter and Chivalric Kingship. Admission is free but guests are required to apply for a named ticket. Applications for tickets should be addressed to: The Chapter Office, Windsor Castle, Berkshire SL4 1NJ, with a stamped addressed envelope by Wednesday 15 October 2008.
Ashgate Publishing, specialists in books on religious studies and theology, have just published a work by our Fellow the Revd Dr Allan Doig, Fellow, Chaplain and Tutor for Graduates at Lady Margaret Hall, and a member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford. The book is called Liturgy and Architecture: from the Early Church to the Middle Ages. This is a study of the archaeological and historical evidence for the physical form of early churches, and the way that their form reflected the liturgical practices of the day, during a period when patterns of worship had yet to be fixed, codified and made universal.
Three Fellows have already sung the books praises in print: our former President, Eric Fernie, says: Allan Doigs book performs the sterling service of synthesising and analysing great swathes of the disparate research on the subject, producing a clear overview of how the Christian liturgy interacts with architecture from the first century to the sixteenth. It will be greatly welcomed by architectural historians; Oxford colleague Diarmaid MacCulloch says: Doig is a sure guide to the drama of Christian liturgy and the ways in which it has shaped the spaces in which it is performed, and Richard Pfaff, University of North Carolina, says: I know nothing of comparable range and readability.
The 254-page book is already reasonably priced at £15.99 but Ashgate is offering this, and three other titles by and/or of interest to Fellows, at a 20 per cent discount. To obtain the discount, go to the Societys page on the Ashgate website. The code that is needed to claim the discount is H8ADS20; you need to enter this code into the promotional code field when placing an order, and the offer expires on 30 September 2008.
Fellows who work in publishing look forward every year to the industrys search for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. This year, the shortlist contained one or two books on quasi-antiquarian topics, though fortunately no Fellow has suffered the indignity of being mentioned on the list. Here then is the pick of the odd title list:
How to Write a How to Write Book
Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
Cheese Problems Solved
People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: from King Canute to Dr Feelgood
Stafford Pageant: the exciting innovative years 19011952
Tiles of the Unexpected: a study of six miles of geometric tile patterns on the London Underground
Squid Recruitment Dynamics
Glory Remembered: wooden headgear of Alaska sea hunters
Library gifts, April to June 2008
The Society is very grateful to the donors of the following books, given to the Library in the period from April to June 2008 and now available in the Library. Full records for all can be found on the Societys on-line catalogue.
From the co-author, Arnold Aspinall, Fellow, Magnetometry for Archaeologists, by A Aspinall, C Gaffney and A Schmidt. 2008
From the editor, T Richard Blurton, Fellow, Burma, Art and Archaeology. 2002
From the joint author, T Richard Blurton, Fellow, Burma and the Art of Lacquer, by Ralph Isaacs and T Richard Blurton. 2000
From the author, David J Breeze, Fellow, Edge of Empire. Romes Scottish frontier: the Antonine Wall. 2008
From the joint editor, David J Breeze, Fellow, Frontiers of the Roman Empire: the European dimension of a world heritage site, edited by D J Breeze and Sonja Jilek. 2008
From the author, Peter Cormack, Fellow, Illustrated Catalogue to an Exhibition of Morris & Company Stained Glass for the Chapel of Cheadle Royal Hospital. 2008
From Robert Croft, Fellow, The Archaeology of Somerset, by Tom Mayberry, Fellow, and Chris Webster. 2007
From the author, Robin Daniels, Fellow, Anglo-Saxon Hartlepool and the Foundations of English Christianity: an archaeology of the Anglo-Saxon monastery. 2007
From Robin Daniels, Fellow, Archaeology and the Environment of Submerged Landscapes in Hartlepool Bay, England, by Mags Waughman et al. 2005
From the author, Janet Ing Freeman, Fellow, The Postmaster of Ipswich: William Stevenson Fitch, antiquary and thief. 1997
From David Gaimster, Fellow, The Ristola Site in Lahti and the Earliest Post-Glacial Settlement in South Finland, by Hannu Takala. 2005
From Richard Gem, Fellow, A Technical Study of the Polychrome Beast Heads of St Marys Church, Deerhurst, by Emily Howe. 2006
From the author, Maurice Howard, Fellow, The Building of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. 2007
From Aideen Ireland, Fellow, The Lure of Greece: Irish involvement in Greek culture, literature, history and politics. 2007
From C E Jones, Fellow, Studies in Byzantine and Serbian Medieval Art, by Zaga Gavrilović. 2001
From the author, John R Kenyon, Fellow, Castles, Town Defences and Artillery Fortifications in the United Kingdom and Ireland: a bibliography 19452006. 2008
From Christopher Knüsel, Fellow, Velim: violence and death in Bronze Age Bohemia, by Hardig, Sumberova, Knüsel and Outram. 2007
From the editor, Arthur MacGregor, Fellow, Sir John Evans, 18231908: antiquity, commerce and natural science in the age of Darwin. 2008
From the editor, Conleth Manning, Fellow, From Ringforts to Fortified Houses: studies on castles and other monuments in honour of David Sweetman. 2007
From the joint editor, Nancy Netzer, Fellow, Fragmented Devotion: medieval objects from the Schnütgen Museum, Cologne, edited by Nancy Netzer and Virginia Reinburg. 2000
From the editor, Nancy Netzer, Fellow, Secular/Sacred: eleventh and sixteenth century works from the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts. 2006
From Derrick Renn, Fellow, Anglo-Saxon Button Brooches. Typology, genealogy, chronology, by Seiichi Suzuki, Fellow. 2008
From the authors, Mark Samuel, Fellow, and Kate Hamlyn, Blarney Castle: its history, development and purpose. 2007
From the author, Heather Sebire, Fellow, From Antiquary to Archaeologist: Frederick Corbin Lukis of Guernsey. 2007
From the editors, Roger Smith, Fellow, and Andrew Ledger, Benjamin Vulliamy and the Derby Porcelain Manufactory 178495. 2007
From the Library of Westminster Abbey, Renaissance Medals, by John G Pollard. 2007
From the joint editor, Philip Whittemore, Series of Monumental Brasses, Indents and Incised Slabs from the Thirteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, volume 2, part 4, edited by William Lack and Philip Whittemore. 2008
From the author, the Revd Dr David H Williams, Fellow, Images of Welsh History: seals of the National Library of Wales. 2007
From Sir David Wilson, Fellow, Det inneslutna rummet-um Kultiska hägnader fornborgar och befästa gårdar i Uppland från 1300 f kr till Kristi fodelse. 1995
Historic Environment Traineeship (HET) Scheme
Salary from £18,500 (plus London allowance of £2,316), closing date: 18 July 2008
As previously announced in Salon, English Heritage is launching ten new two-year traineeships for people wishing to gain conservation management skills in a planning and development context. Trainees will be placed with English Heritage regional teams, with some part-release secondment or work shadowing within other relevant organisations. In the second year trainees undertake a project. To be considered for a place you need ideally to have a first degree in archaeology, history, conservation, planning, urban design or environmental sciences and/or substantial practical work experience in a heritage discipline. Further information and application details are on the English Heritage website.