The Society of Antiquaries of Londons Online Newsletter (Salon) is a fortnightly digest of news from the heritage sector, focusing especially on the Society and its Fellows and the contribution that they make to public life through their many and varied activities. Like the intellectual salons of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it aims to amuse and to stimulate debate as well as to inform. A copy of Salons editorial policy can be found on the Societys website and feedback should be addressed to the Editor, Christopher Catling.
18 September 2012: Archaeology as rehabilitation for soldiers injured in Afghanistan, by Richard Osgood, FSA
In the first of the Societys public lectures (starting at 1pm), Richard Osgood, Senior Historic Adviser to the Ministry of Defence, will describe the award-winning Operation Nightingale project, in which injured soldiers are enabled to work on archaeological digs around the country. The lecture will highlight the achievements of this project, both in terms of the archaeological work undertaken and the benefits to the participants.
The lecture is free. Tickets can be reserved online.
27 September 2012: a recital to be given by Charlotte de Rothschild (soprano) and Danielle Perrett (harp)
The Society is holding this special evening event to mark the return of the Societys Making History: Antiquaries in Britain exhibition from the USA. Charlotte will perform a selection of British songs inspired by the exhibition and first performed at the McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, MA, USA.
To reserve free tickets, please contact Jola Zdunek; tel: 0207 479 7080).
4 October 2012: Late Hellenistic jewellery from the Antikythera shipwreck: new chronological evidence, by Monica Jackson, FSA
In the middle of the first century BC, a heavily laden Roman merchant vessel sank off the coastal cliffs of the tiny island of Antikythera, north of Crete. A storm 2,000 years later was the catalyst for the discovery of the wreck by Greek sponge divers returning from Tunisia. The ships rich cargo included jewellery and one immensely complicated scientific instrument, now known as the Antikythera Mechanism, a device of such sophistication and astonishing accuracy of construction that its original function and structure have eluded scholars for more than a century. One of the most challenging of the questions surrounding the Mechanism is its precise date. This paper will throw some light on that issue by examining the Late Hellenistic gold jewellery from the wreck, in conjunction with a comparable coin-dated jewellery deposit from the island of Delos, whose chronology coincides with the most recent date suggested for the manufacture of the Antikythera Mechanism. In addition further comparative material will be presented in the form of a series of terracotta Erotes from Gortyn, Crete, which may help place the jewellery in the wider context of Mediterranean production and practice.
11 October 2012: Dating old Welsh houses, by Margaret Dunn, FSA
An outline of the North West Wales Dendrochronology Project will be presented, including its aims, objectives and results. The Society has supported this project which is nearing the successful conclusion of its three-year grant-aided scientific phase during which nearly one hundred houses have been sampled and many tree-felling dates obtained. Interim results suggest that domestic architecture in the region was more innovative and some styles of architecture were earlier and more widespread than previously thought. Community involvement has been a key aspect and will develop further as future programmes will encourage a deeper appreciation of local Elizabethan houses.
Consultation on proposed changes to the system of Listed Building Consents
Our President Maurice Howard has written to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) with a number of suggestions relating to the reform of Listed Building Consent (LBC), in response to controversial Government proposals to reduce the circumstances in which LBC is required and reduce the level of information applicants are required to submit, thus reducing burdens on developers and allowing the public agencies which administer these consents to focus upon the highest risk areas and to deliver a more efficient service.
The reform options presented by the DCMS include: a system of prior notification of intended works to a listed building, leaving it to the local planning authority to decide whether to request a more detailed LBC application; a list of approved works, that are exempt from LBC because they do not impact the significance of the heritage assets; a certificate of lawful works, which is almost the same as the previous option except that it is specific to the building concerned, rather than consisting of general classes of exempt work; and (most controversially of all), giving independent accredited agents the right to certify works as acceptable, a role currently exercised by conservation officers employed by the local planning authority. The consultation also states that the Government is concerned about the number of listed buildings that have been on the Heritage at Risk Register for a long time and are seeking views on possible measures to make such enforcement mechanisms as Repairs Notices and Compulsory Purchase Orders more effective.
The Societys response questions whether the current system even needs reform, and asks what evidence there is of inefficiency in the present system, other than anecdotes of absurdity that are likely to be exceptions to the norm. It points to the fact that most LBC applications are successful: this does not imply that the application was therefore unnecessary, but is evidence that the current system, based on pre-application discussions with the relevant local planning authority, is working, and remains the best route to ensuring that work which is likely to affect the special interest of Listed Buildings is properly considered. However, the pressures facing under-resourced conservation staff mean that they are increasingly unable to provide detailed pre-application advice. The Societys response goes on to say that the time has come, perhaps, to authorise the introduction of fees for LBC applications, which could be ring-fenced to finance conservation officer posts and, if linked to the ability to give a definitive view about what does or does not require LBC, the provision of authoritative pre-app advice.
For this reason, the Society says that it strongly disagrees with the proposal to introduce a system of accredited independent agents, saying that it is an idealistic notion to think that a developer or applicant can be expected to pay for a completely unbiased approach. Other heritage bodies have taken the same line as the Society: underlying their responses is a fear that local authorities will increasingly rely on accredited independent agents to replace conservation officers, accelerating the regrettable decline in the numbers of conservation staff employed by local planning authorities in recent years (31 per cent since 2006, according to the Institute for Historic Building Conservation).
Pointing to the conflict of interest inherent in such an approach, the Societys response acknowledges that there are some professional firms that can and do provide careful advice to clients on what may or may not gain LBC but goes on to say that it is a different matter to be engaged by a client to write a report for the local planning authority recommending the granting of LBC. We cannot imagine that any of these reports will suggest rejection!
The Societys response concludes by re-emphasising that conservation officers act in the public interest, as should local planning authorities, and that it is not possible to delegate such a responsibility to agents, no matter how professional and accredited, whose first duty is to their client.
New Charity Commission guidelines on public benefit
Another consultation that impacts on many of us in our capacity as Fellows of the Society and as charity trustees is the Charity Commissions new draft public benefit guidance. The need to revise the guidance came about as a result of a judicial review regarding the public benefit requirement for charitable independent schools published by the Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) on 14 October 2011, which found that certain parts of the Charity Commissions guidance were erroneous and should be rewritten.
In particular, the Upper Tribunal said that it was not for the Charity Commission to decide how charities should be run for the public benefit or to set minimum targets that had to be met in order to demonstrate public benefit. Instead, trustees are responsible for deciding how best to carry out the purpose for which a charity was established and for setting and reporting on their own measures, with the proviso that they should be more than tokenistic.
The Charity Commission is keen that as many serving charity trustees should take part in the consultation as possible and you have until 26 September 2012 to comment on the new draft.
This sets out two tests for defining what it means to be a charity. The first is very simple: it is a charity if its purpose falls within the descriptions of thirteen charitable purposes listed in the Charities Act (for example, the advancement of education, the advancement of the arts, culture, heritage or science, the advancement of environmental protection or improvement and (the wonderful catch-all thirteenth purpose), any other purposes currently recognised as charitable or which can be recognised as charitable by analogy to an existing charitable purpose).
Much more difficult is the vexed question of public benefit, and whether the activities of the charity have to benefit all and sundry, or whether they can be restricted to a class of people (for example, authors of scholarly books in the fields of history, archaeology, art and architectural history). The new guidance says that if there are to be restrictions on who benefits, those restrictions have to be justifiable and the potential beneficiaries [must be] appropriate for the purpose.
Words like appropriate and justifiable are, of course, wholly subjective, and hence a field day for lawyers. On the other hand, this new guidance really does seem to put control over the charities they run back in the hands of trustees; it says that there are no general rules, and that each charity will be judged on its own merits.
Who then decides whether or not a charity (say a private school) is providing an appropriate public benefit? The Charity Commission guidance says that it is primarily up to funders, supporters and to the wider public to scrutinise the charitys annual reports, and call the trustees to account if they seem not to be performing adequately in terms of demonstrable public benefit. The Commission will, though, check a random sample of public benefit reports of individual charities, and would consider persistent non-reporting of public benefit a potential regulatory issue (whatever that means).
The future of the Birmingham Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity
Salon 282 reported that Birmingham University was planning changes to its highly regarded Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity (IAA), which is headed by our Fellow Professor Simon Esmonde-Cleary. Subsequently Professor Michael Whitby (Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of the College of Arts and Law (of which the IAA is part) contacted Salons editor to say that the College has set up a website to provide further information concerning the IAA review. This says that the university is proposing, with the full support of the leadership within IAA, to create a new Department of Classics and Ancient History (including Egypt and Ancient Near East), located in the School of History and Cultures. In the view of the IAA leadership team this new department will improve the visibility and focus of Classics and Ancient History at Birmingham. The University is also discussing the creation of a Centre for Archaeology Research, which would co-ordinate the diverse expertise across the institution.
The main activities that will cease under the new proposals are contract archaeology and the Single Honours programme in Archaeology, which has been unable to attract sufficient applicants of the appropriate quality. Instead, four Joint Honours archaeological programmes will continue to be offered within the School of History and Cultures, and it is hoped that this will remove barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration that have served to thwart some developments in the past.
Help needed in the fight to save Ancoats Dispensary
Left: Ancoats Dispensary before the roof was removed
The campaign group called Fight 2 Save Ancoats Dispensary has been set up to try and prevent the demolition of the last of nineteen Grade II-listed buildings on the historic Ancoats Hospital site in Manchester. Private Eye, SAVE Britains Heritage and the Victorian Society are all on board, as is the local newspaper, and a petition calling for a halt to the proposed demolition has garnered 5,000 signatures (a significant proportion of the population of Ancoats).
The campaigners are calling for help from the wider heritage community and say they are looking specifically for assistance from anyone with experience of project management, structural scaffolding and fund raising. We have got a friendly surveyor on board but architectural input would also be appreciated, says campaign secretary Gillian Potter-Merrigan.
Left: Ancoats Dispensary after the removal of the roof
A vigil has been mounted at the Dispensary site (as a result of which they have already received a visit from some very non-communicative and camera-shy besuited visitors) and an offer has been made to the developers, Urban Splash, to buy the site for £2 twice as much as they paid for it in 2001 when they promised to refurbish the building and create new homes. Instead, the roof was removed and the building was allowed to deteriorate to the point where demolition is now claimed as the only option. Experts dispute this, and two educational organisations (one a local college) are keen to utilise the building.
The Gothic Revival building was designed by Lewis & Crawcroft and opened in 1891. Ancoats Hospital was the first in the world to specialise in bone fractures, and is regarded as the home of modern orthopaedics; it has also been in the vanguard of research into hay fever, blood typing and the treatment of stab wounds. Manchester University plans a symposium on Ancoats role in the history of medicine and the organisers are said to be appalled at the prospect that this last remaining building of a once world-leading hospital may soon be gone.
Westmorland of Apethorpe archive saved for the nation
Proof that vigorous grassroots campaigns can work comes from the news that the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) has stepped in to offer a £650,000 grant to enable Northamptonshire County Councils Record Office to purchase the Westmorland of Apethorpe archive, a rare collection of papers of outstanding historical importance that spans more than 600 years of the countys history. The grant fills the funding gap between the purchase price of £760,000 and the sum that has been raised from a ten-month public fundraising campaign, supported by our Fellow David Starkey, which has raised £45,000 and pledges of support from the J Paul Getty Jr Charitable Trust, The Friends of The National Libraries, the Coral Samuel Trust, the John R Murray Trust and the Finnis Scott Foundation.
The archive is one of the most important family collections in the UK and is based around the Northamptonshire Westmorland family whose main residence was Apethorpe Hall (near Oundle). Family members were active at court and in national politics and the archive includes letters signed by Elizabeth I (see left) and Oliver Cromwell. It also contains records relating to the management of the extensive estates owned by the family over hundreds of years.
Jane Baile, who owns the excellent Prebendal Manor and Museum, in Nassington, Northamptonshire, and who has been very active in the fundraising campaign, thanked all those Fellows who made donations and who gave their support. It has been a long hard slog, she said, but well worth it.
Campaign to stop the break-up of the Mendham Collection
Here is another campaign seeking supporters: Canterbury Cathedral and the University of Kent have joined forces in a bid to prevent the Mendham Collection from being broken up and sold by its owners, the Law Society of England and Wales. The collection, consisting of 5,000 medieval manuscripts and rare books, has been held under the custodianship of the university and cathedral since 1984, but the Law Society has now instructed Sothebys to sell 300 of the most valuable items as a fundraising measure.
The collection was formed in the nineteenth century by Joseph Mendham, an Anglican clergyman with a keen interest in the history of theology. Dr Alixe Bovey, Director of the universitys Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, said: The collection is a valuable witness to the development of Protestantism and Catholicism, and the tensions between them, from the time of the Reformation up to Mendhams lifetime.
The collection was donated by Sophia Mendham to the Law Society in 1869, on the understanding that it would be kept intact. A scholarly catalogue was published with public funds from the British Library in 1994; a condition of the funding was that the collection should not be dispersed. The cathedral and the university have issued a statement saying that they are deeply saddened by the Society’s disregard for the Mendham familys wishes as well as its determination to break up a collection of such national significance. Our Fellow Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church in the University of Oxford, has described the proposed sale as vandalism. These libraries and manuscripts are the heritage of everyone, he said, not just of the organisations who currently own them. Collections lose their value when they are dispersed, especially when, as in the case of the Mendham collection, they have annotations from the person who built them up.
Some 3,000 scholars from around the world have signed an online petition urging the Law Society to rethink its break-up and sale and to work with the university and cathedral to find a way to preserve this invaluable collection. A Law Society spokesperson has said that the auction will not take place until November 2012, allowing time for the university and cathedral to make an offer, and that it has become increasingly difficult to justify the ongoing cost of maintaining these items, which our members are very unlikely ever to study; despite the value to academics, the collection is not of practical value to our members.
Westminster Abbeys Cosmati pavement revealed
Westminster Abbey has launched a new website providing a comprehensive account of the history and conservation of the abbeys magnificent Cosmati Pavement. The core content of the website consists of more than fifty short videos covering different aspects of the history and conservation of the thirteenth-century floor. They include presentations by our Fellows Paul Binski, Richard Gem, Richard Mortimer, Warwick Rodwell, Sandra Davison and Sarah Staniforth, and cover topics as diverse as the ethics of conservation and repair, the significance of the pavement, the conservation techniques deployed and the mysterious inscription that has been interpreted in the past as containing a formula for calculating the date of the Last Judgement and the end of the world!
Olympic education project fires young imaginations
Almost as colourful as Westminster Abbeys Cosmati pavement are the papier-mché vases on display at Sir John Soanes Museum, made by budding young Grayson Perrys from St Albans C of E Primary and Nursery School in Camden for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games.
Their vases are on display alongside one of the museums most important exhibits, the large fourth-century Apulian red-figure volute krater (wine-mixing vessel) that Soane purchased from the collection of Lord Cawdor. This is decorated with scenes inspired by Pindars First Olympic Ode(c 518443 BC) on the origins of the Olympic Games. In Pindars version, King Oinomaos, fearful of a prophecy that stated he would be killed by his son-in-law, challenged all would-be suitors for his daughters hand to a chariot race. Oinomaos always won because horses were a present from the gods. Pelops got the better of him, though, when he replaced the bronze axle pins on the kings chariot with pins made of wax. When the race took place, the wax melted, the chariot came apart and Oinomaos was killed. Pelops had won, and was free to marry Hippodamia. The prophecy had come true. But in order to expiate the sin of killing his father-in-law and taking the crown, Pelops started the first Olympic Games, with chariot racing as the first Olympic sport.
Inspired by the Cawdor Vase, the children of St Albans Primary and Nursery School seized the opportunity to paint their own versions of the real origins of such modern Olympic sports as Power Lifting and Synchronised Swimming.
Also on at the museum currently is Stadia, a special exhibition examining the architecture of great sporting arenas past and present, from the new Olympic Stadium in Stratford to the Coliseum of Ancient Rome.
A magnificent example of eighteenth-century heraldic art, a painting of the Royal Arms of King George II, has gone on display at the Grosvenor Museum after restoration generously funded by the Chester-based Megan Gwynne-Jones Charitable Trust, writes our Fellow Peter Boughton, Keeper of Art at the Grosvenor Museum (open Monday to Saturday 10.30am to 5pm, and Sunday 1pm to 4pm). The work was made for the Shire Hall at Chester Castle by Edward Orme in 1750, just four years after the suppression of Bonnie Prince Charlies Jacobite rebellion and is a powerful statement of loyalty to the Hanoverian dynasty by the county authorities.
Edward Orme (born in Chester around 1716, son of the painter Charles Orme and godson of Francis Bassano, Deputy Herald of Chester) was the last Deputy Herald of Chester. First recorded in 1578, the Deputy Heralds of Chester assisted Norroy King of Arms, who was responsible for the northern half of England but was based at the College of Arms in London. The Deputy Heralds covered Cheshire and north Wales, exercised a monopoly on heraldic painting in Chester and also practised as genealogists. Orme was appointed joint Deputy with Bassano, and on Bassanos death in 1746 inherited his business and became sole Deputy. His career culminated in his appointment as sheriff of Chester in 17734. He was also a musician, and became organist of Chester Cathedral in 1765. He died in 1777 and his monument is in the cathedrals north transept.
Left: the royal arms of Queen Anne above the chancel arch of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Warminghurst
Following on from its much-praised online resource called Discover Wallpaintings, launched last year, The Churches Conservation Trust (CCT) has created a new resource dedicated to explaining the history and symbolism of royal arms in English parish churches. According to the CCT, Royal Arms now survive in only 15 per cent of Anglican churches: the new website illustrates the history, artistry, evolution and conservation of royal arms using the one hundred or so examples that are found in churches maintained by the CCT.
Vitruvius and the mystery of the scamilli impares
On 21 July 2012, The Times published a report by our Fellow Norman Hammond on a paper by our Fellow Jacques Heyman on the intriguing reference to scamilli impares in Book III of De Architectura, by Vitruvius. The first-century BC author is writing about the subtle optical trick (called entasis) whereby the basal platform (or stylobate) of a Greek temple is domed slightly, and the columns swell fractionally in the middle in order to give the appearance of straight lines. Vitruvius says that if the stylobate is laid perfectly level it will look to the eye as though it were hollowed a little. To compensate, the level of the stylobate must be increased along the middle by the use of scamilli impares, he says, and he refers the reader to a figure at the end of the book, with a description showing how the scamilli impares may be made to suit this purpose. Unfortunately, all the illustrations were lost in antiquity, and the precise nature of these scamilli impares has been the subject of vigorous debate for many decades.
In his paper in the journal Engineering History and Heritage (Vol 165, Issue 2, pages 937), Jacques Heyman notes that scamnum means a bench or stool, so scamilli are little stools in other words, physical blocks of wood, of odd or unequal (impares) height, placed on the surface of the stylobate and used as a guide to laying out the curves. If this sounds complex, the illustrations in Professor Heymans paper make it clear and plausible, except that to make the very subtle curve of the Parthenon stylobate would involve making blocks that differed from each other in height by a mere 1.71mm, requiring, in Professor Heymans words, a totally unrealistic degree of accuracy.
Instead, suggests Professor Heyman, the meaning may be more abstract, consisting not of physical blocks of wood, but a system of measurement based on subdivisions of the Roman inch and foot; thus scamilli impares are really a set of unequal numbers that defines the departure of the stylobate from a plane surface. Why then the apparent reference to little stools? Professor Heyman suggests this could be a copyists error for sicilius, or one quarter of a Roman inch, or 6.17mm, a number that does indeed seem to work in Professor Heymans calculations, and that is an interval not too fine to be marked out on a Roman surveyors levelling staff.
Jacquetta Hawkes and the Personal Past
Left: Jacquetta Hawkes and J B Priestley
Earlier this year, Salon reported that our Fellow Christine Finn had been commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to make a documentary about the life and work of Jacquetta Hawkes (191096), and asked Fellows who knew Jacquetta to contact Christine. Christine is very grateful to the many Fellows who did so. The results (including an interview with Barry Cunliffe in the Societys Library and a fascinating archive recording of Hawkes in conversation with Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs) can be heard when the programme is broadcast on Sunday 9 September 2012 at 7.45pm.
Christine asks why the best-known archaeologist of the post-war generation has faded from public memory, while the work of her second husband, J B Priestley, with whom she wrote and collaborated, remains celebrated and well known. In the course of the programme she investigates the reasons for the immense popularity of Hawkess best-selling 1951 book, A Land, fêted by critics and the public as a celebration of Britains landscape as it emerged out of the dark days of war a work that has just been reissued in the Collins Nature Library and that was recently described by the writer and Cambridge English Faculty don Robert Macfarlane as a short history of Planet England; a geological prose-poem; a Cretaceous cosmi-comedy; a patriotic hymn of love to Terra Britannica; a neo-Romantic vision of the countryside as a vast and inadvertent work of land-art; a speculative account of human identity as chthonic in origin and collective in nature; a homily aimed at rousing us from spiritual torpor; a lusty pagan lullaby of longing; and a jeremiad against centralisation, industrialisation and our severance from the land.
Coinciding with the broadcast, the Upper Gallery of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (near Wakefield) is hosting an exhibition of Christines own work, including photographs and film inspired by revisiting the key locations of A Land, reflecting on how Britain has changed since the books publication (on until 4 November 2012). Christine will also be making two new installation pieces in situ in response to my long-term engagement with Hawkes as her official biographer.
The National Trust has announced that our Fellow Ian Barnes has been appointed as its new Head of Archaeology, taking over from our Fellow David Thackray, who retired from the post at the end of August 2012. Ian was previously employed as the head of the Ministry of Defences Environmental Advisory Services. Announcing his appointment, the National Trust said: Ian has been with the MoD for over sixteen years, having built its professional archaeological capability from scratch and subsequently broadened his leadership remit beyond the historic environment to include the natural environment, public access and sustainability. He also has several years experience in the charity sector working for Wessex Archaeology, is a highly experienced hands-on archaeologist and has published extensively.
Five new members have been appointed to the National Trusts Archaeology Panel, which is chaired by our Fellow Jason Wood. They are Fellows Adrian Olivier, former Heritage Protection Director, English Heritage, Sian Rees, former Inspector of Ancient Monuments, Cadw, and Robin Skeates, Reader in Museum Studies, Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, plus Niall Hammond, Director, Archaeo-Environment, and Helen Maclagan, former Head of Heritage and Culture, Warwickshire Count Council.
Fellow Richard Hodges has taken up a new post, having served his term as the Williams Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. As of 1 July 2012, Richard became President of the American University of Rome. The AUR website has a brief profile of the universitys new President, with a link to the article that Richard contributed to the latest issue of Current World Archaeology saying why he is thrilled to be back living in the centre of Rome, a city that seems barely to have altered since Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck scootered around it with such sweet gaiety.
Fellow Mark Harrison writes to say that the Timescapes community archaeology group that he leads recently featured in Archaeologia Cantiana (Volume 132 (2012), pages 15387), the journal of the Kent Archaeological Society, in a paper on Kents Twentieth-century military and civil defences, by Victor T C Smith and Peter Seary. Timescapes specialises in the history and archaeology of the Canterbury District. Our main project for the last three years, says Mark, has been the recording of World War Two structures in Whitstable, which we have called the Forgotten Frontline Project.
Mark is perhaps better known now as the National Policing and Crime Adviser at English Heritage and it was in that capacity that he welcomed the recent conviction of a Lincolnshire metal detectorist who was arrested after members of the farming community in the Horncastle area had reported damage to their crops in 2011. Operation Totem was launched as a result, leading to the arrest of Kevin Thomas Lomas, aged forty-one, who on 24 August 2012 was found guilty on eight counts of theft and one of going equipped to steal. An order was made forcing him to forfeit his metal-detection equipment and a large quantity of coins and historic artefacts that were found at his home. He received a twelve-month conditional discharge and was ordered to pay £400 towards costs.
Mark said that cases of unlawful metal detecting have been prosecuted before, but this is the first time we have taken such a co-ordinated team approach, involving an expert lawyer, dedicated police investigators, finds experts and archaeologists. Sergeant Alasdair Booth, of Horncastle Police, said: This case sends out a clear message that illegal metal detecting and heritage crime will be taken seriously … behaviour such as this removes part of our heritage and will not be tolerated.
Fellow Kasia Szpakowska writes to say that she has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Grant to study the fascinating topic of Ancient Egyptian demonology. This extract from the Leverhulme Trust press release announcing the award gives a flavour of the trials and difficulties Kasia will face as she seeks to construct a modern demonology of Ancient Egypt. Defining this category of demons is not easy as there is no obvious uniformity to their natures or intent. Some harm, some help. Some inhabit the afterlife, others walk the paths of the living. Some assault in gangs while a few have individual names. Although they played a crucial role in the Egyptian understanding of the cosmos some were blamed for a host of physical and psychological afflictions, others were petitioned for aid demons have remained peripheral to most scholarship focussing on Egyptian religion or ancient ritual practice. While gods such as Osiris, Isis, and Ra are familiar, the darker side of religion and ominous entities such as Sehaqeq, or Fiery-breath, have remained in the shadows. This project aims to illuminate this darker and more private side of Ancient Egyptian religion that impacted daily lives, driving individuals to access the supernatural realm through rituals.
We wish Kasia much luck and we hope that the demons dont turn nasty let us hope they are flattered to be the subject of academic study and dont object to being pinned down, so to speak.
Salon 282 included an obituary of Pat Wilkinson by Andrew Argyrakis to which Fellow Peter Pickering would like to add the fact that Pat was involved in the establishment of the Standing Conference on London Archaeology (SCOLA) and was its Secretary for many years. The SCOLA archives have now been deposited in the Society’s Library, and they bear witness to the great effort she put into her role.
Pats funeral service will take place at 3pm on Thursday 6 September at Christ Church, Wanstead Place, Wanstead, London E11 2SW, and all are welcome (there is to be a private cremation afterwards at 4pm). Wanstead is on the Central Line; leaving the station, you will find Christ Church by turning into the High Road and taking the second left.
Not my field, writes Vincent Megaw, but I must support Dr Margaret Faull, my former student true; that’s called basking in reflected glory in emphasising the importance of the Nord Pas de Calais World Heritage Sites. More than twenty years ago when, with my historian wife, we were driving through the area en route to research the discovery of the Basse-Yutz find, we were struck by both the almost ghostly feeling of the largely deserted communities and their virtual completeness. Surely few industrial areas of Europe can match this Völklinger Hütte near Saarbrücken, already on the World Heritage List perhaps is one such.
Fellow Janet Freeman, author of The Epicures Almanack (Salon 282) and delighted that the book commanded the lead review spot in the Times Literary Supplement at the beginning of August, writes to respond to Robin Milner-Gullands comment (Salon 282) on the date of the Good Food Guide: while the Good Food Guide did indeed begin life in 1951, as Robin says, it was not until 1968 that Raymond Postgate issued a separate Good Food Guide to London, the first comprehensive handbook since The Epicures Almanack was published in 1815 to be dedicated specifically to London eateries. In just under 200 pages it covered 337 establishments, including patisseries, nightclubs and discotheques and one chophouse that had figured as well in the 1815 Epicures Almanack, the George and Vulture, near Cornhill. Still in business today, this was described in 1968 as hot and hectic, with service willing but wild; the house speciality was something called Pickwick Pudding, but readers were warned that the dish was served only on Thursdays and only in the oyster season, which gives a clue to one of its ingredients. (Editorial note: Pickwick Pudding is described on a number of website as the same as steak and kidney but with the addition of oysters, and it is claimed that the dish features in Charles Dickenss novel, The Pickwick Papers. Searching a digital version of The Pickwick Papers, Salons editor found several references to oysters, including Sam Wellers observation that poverty and oysters always seem to go together, but no mention of Pickwick Pudding.)
Fellow Henry Cleere says that the opening sentence of Salon 282 caused him some concern: a series of public lunchtime lectures will take place over the next nine months to introduce the Society to the wider world. On reflection, Henry decided that it probably was a fair statement and that there are some people who may have an (albeit unworthy) feeling that the Society does not in fact know the wider world very well!
In the list of people involved in the new programme of research into the Staffordshire Hoard mentioned in Salon 282, one name that was omitted was that of our Fellow Deb Klemperer, Principal Collections Officer at The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent. Deb says: I am working very closely with Hilary Cool, as this research is being organised through The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery Fellows get everywhere!
Lives Remembered: Gerard L'Estrange Turner, FSA
The following obituary for our late Fellow Gerard LEstrange Turner, who died on 19 July 2012, at the age of eighty six, was written by Brian Bracegirdle and first appeared on the website of the Royal Microscopy Society.
Gerard Turner was born in Rugby on 22 January 1926. His father was an officer in the Essex Regiment who served in WW1. Gerard took a London BSc in physics in 1949, and the MSc in crystallography in 1959. After a post in the GEC research labs he lectured at Battersea, then worked at Philco in Philadelphia before becoming Senior Assistant Curator at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford from 1963 to 1987. He then moved to Imperial College as a Senior Investigator, before becoming a Visiting Professor in the History of Scientific Instruments.
His achievement lay first in his putting firmly on the map work in the history of the microscope and other instruments, based on the collections of the museum in which he worked. As time went by his interests in scientific instruments moved further back in time, to experimental apparatus of the eighteenth century, and then to Renaissance instruments: he was the first to identify any instruments from the workshop of Gerard Mercator.
He was awarded the London DSc for his work in the history of scientific instruments in 1982, and the DLitt by Oxford in 1996. He was a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, of the Museums Association, of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society. He had a number of foreign memberships and fellowships, and edited Annals of Science as well as being on the editorial boards of other prestigious journals.
His legacy is considerable. He wrote more than a dozen books, edited more than four others, and published well over 120 papers and over 200 book reviews. For the RMS he served as Secretary, Vice President, President, Archivist and as a long-time member of Council. He wrote the catalogue of the RMS instrument collection in 1989, and a short history of the Society in the same year both in time for the 150th Anniversary: he was an Honorary Fellow. He was President of the British Society of the History of Science, and founding Chairman of the Scientific Instrument Society and then its first President. He was also Secretary of the Scientific Instrument Commission of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, and received a number of awards for his work.
His connections with museums in Holland and in Italy were especially important to both sides, as exemplified by his publishing the catalogue of Teylers Museum in Haarlem, and of the instruments in the Museum of the History of Science in Florence. His friends and colleagues in the history of science presented him with a Festschrift (Anderson et al: Making instruments Count: essays on historical scientific instruments presented to Gerard LEstrange Turner) in 1993, and this contains notes on his career and a full list of his publications. All were cogent and worth keeping!
He had the faculty of phrasing one-line character assessments of colleagues and others, and could be very good company indeed. He and I shared many interests and occasions, and shared also a drive across Europe in 1974 to visit the Abbe museum in Jena [then in East Germany, home to the Carl Zeiss optics and the Schott glass factories]. This was memorable in many ways, not least when, having no soap provided in our hotel, we discussed the shortcomings of the regime in clear tones in a bedroom: soap was provided the next day!
Our Fellow Robert Anderson says that there are two further aspects of Gerard Turners life that should be remembered. One was his conviviality: in 1979 he started a private dining club called the Equinoctial Club (because it met and continues to meet twice a year, in March and September, around the time of the equinoxes) for scientific instrument enthusiasts. The other was his major published work, Elizabethan Instrument Makers: the origins of the London trade in precision instrument making (OUP 2000), which traces the origins of Britains rise to global pre-eminence to the measurement instruments crucial to navigation, surveying, fortification and gunnery made by a group of sixteenth-century London instrument makers led by Thomas Gemini, a Flemish migrant, and the Englishman, Humfrey Cole.
Lives Remembered: Barbara Lowe, FSA
Barbara Joyce Lowe, elected a Fellow on 11 January 1990, died on 28 August 2012. Her funeral will take place at the parish church of St John, Keynsham, on Wednesday 19 September 2012, at 1pm. Barbara will chiefly be remembered for her work on Keynsham Abbey, founded by William, Earl of Gloucester, for the Augustinian Canons Regular around 1170. Barbaras reports on the Keynsham Abbey Excavations 19611991 were published by the Somerset Archaeology and Natural History Society, as were her works on the Keynsham Abbey cartulary, the medieval floor tiles of Keynsham Abbey and her catalogue of medieval decorated floor tiles from Somerset, based on excavated tiles found in situ on Somerset sites, and from collections in Somerset museums.
The European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards
The European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards are a means of celebrating exemplary heritage projects in four categories Conservation; Research; Dedicated Service by Individuals or Organisations; Education, Training and Awareness-Raising with up to six monetary awards of 10,000 each being awarded to the top laureates in these categories. Entries can be on a scale ranging from small to large, local to international, and should display a standard of work considered outstanding in a European context. Entry forms are now available on the Europa Nostra website, and the closing date for submission of entries is 1 October 2012.
Organised by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, Digital Past is an annual conference that showcases innovative technologies for the data capture, interpretation and dissemination of heritage sites. Open to anyone working in, or studying, the archaeological, heritage, education or museum sectors, the conference is aimed at allowing informal networking and exchange of ideas within a friendly and diverse audience made up of participants from commercial, public and third-sector organisations.
The two main themes for next years conference, to be held in Monmouth on 20 and 21 February 2013, are Heritage Tourism and Digital Data Sets: Manipulation, Dissemination and Archiving. We are seeking submissions from those working in a research or operational capacity who can contribute to this forward-looking conference. Contributions can be made through formal presentations, seminars or workshops, or more informally through the unconference session or a show stand.
The deadline for the submission of proposals for papers, seminars and workshops is 26 October 2012. For further information, please contact Susan Fielding; tel: 01970 621219).
Call for papers: Trade, Travel and Transmission in the Medieval Mediterranean
The third Biennial Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean will take place at Churchill College, Cambridge, on 8 to 10 July 2013. The objective of the conference is to highlight the extent to which the medieval Mediterranean was not just an area of conflict but also a highly permeable frontier across which people, goods and ideas crossed and influenced neighbouring cultures and societies.
Proposals are invited for twenty-minute papers in relevant fields, and especially on the activities of missionary orders; artistic contacts and exchanges; the Byzantine and Muslim navies; captives and slaves; cargoes, galleys and warships; costume and vestments; diplomacy; Judaism and Jewish Mediterranean history; literary contacts and exchanges; material culture; minority populations in the Christian and Islamic worlds; Mirrors for Princes; music, sacred and secular; port towns / city states; relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims; religious practices: saints, cults and heretics; scientific exchange, including astronomy, medicine and mathematics; seafaring, seamanship and shipbuilding; Sufis and Sufi Orders in North Africa and the Levant; sultans, kings and other rulers; trade and pilgrimage; travel writing; warfare: mercenaries and crusaders.
Abstracts of no more than 250 words, together with a short CV (two sides of A4 maximum), should be sent to Dr Rebecca Bridgman, Vice-President of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, by 1 December 2012.
Call for papers: Rust, Regeneration and Romance: iron and steel landscapes and cultures
This conference is to be hosted by the Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage, University of Birmingham, and the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust on 10 to 14 July 2013, at Ironbridge. It will examine the roles of iron and steel as the fundamental building blocks of modernity … that have revolutionised the lives of billions of people.
Abstracts of 300 words with a clear title and contact details should be sent as soon as possible, but no later than 31 January 2013 (to: [email protected]). Indicative themes are as follows: understanding iron and steel landscapes (historic and contemporary perspectives); human / technology relationships; challenges in the presentation and interpretation of iron and steel heritage; touring and tourism in iron and steel landscapes; histories and ethnographies of iron and steel communities / labour relations and working environments; architectural tropes surrounding the mining and fabrication of iron and steel; representations of iron and steel cultures in the popular media; the role of the cultural industries (arts, sport, tourism, etc) in the regeneration of iron and steel communities; the languages of steel cities / dialects and territories; symbolic economies of iron and steel / iconography, art and design.
Information and updates will be posted on the conference website.
Deerhurst Lecture, 8 September 2012: change of speaker
Salon previously announced that this years annual Deerhurst Lecture would be given by our Fellow Professor Nicholas Brooks on St Ælfheah from Deerhurst to Martyrdom (1012): some millennial reflections on religious ideals. Unfortunately Nicholas is not well enough to give the lecture, which has therefore been postponed until a later date. Instead, our Fellows Carolyn Heighway and Richard Bryant will present the results of recent research and excavation at Deerhurst, including their own excavation earlier this year under what is now the St Alphege chapel. Fellow Michael Hare will also talk about his research into liturgical alterations to the church between 1540 and 2012, including the Puritan arrangement of the chancel and the abortive plan to rebuild the apse in 1914. The meeting is at Deerhurst Church, Tewkesbury GL19 4BX; admission from 7pm; lectures from 7.30pm. For further information see the Friends of Deerhurst website.
12 September 2012: Behind Closed Doors: the hidden histories of great buildings, by Suzannah Lipscombe and Hallie Rubenhold, 7pm at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR. This is the first lecture in the autumn 2012 / winter 2013 season organised by the World Monument Fund, which also includes Anthony Beevor on The Second World War on 8 November 2012 and Bettany Hughes on Socrates and his world on 28 February 2013. The programme also includes study days on the stained glass of Coventrys medieval church of St Michaels, currently being restored thanks to the fundraising efforts of the WMF, and a Thames Cruise and guided tour of St Pauls Cathedral, on 27 September. Full details are on the WMFs website. Attending such events is a great way of supporting the excellent work of the WMF which is the subject of a special exhibition opening at Sir John Soanes Museum in October 2012 about which there will be more in a future issue of Salon.
13 October 2012: Timber Castles. With excavation reports on South Mimms, Sulgrave and Danes Castle about to be published, this one-day conference (to be held at University College London, Gower Street) will look at work done in Britain and Ireland in the twenty years since the publication of Higham and Barkers seminal work on timber castles. For further details and an enrolment form, see the Castle Studies Group website.
17 October 2012: Heritage and Tourism: who needs whom?, a debate between Fellow Loyd Grossman (Heritage Alliance), Robert Hewison (author of The Heritage Industry), James Berresford (Chief Executive of VisitEngland), Dame Fiona Reynolds (Director General of the National Trust) and Fellow Marie Louise Stig Sorenson (Reader in Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Cambridge), hosted by the Heritage Alliance in partnership with the Cambridge Heritage Research Group; 6.15pm for 6.30pm start at Magdalene College, Cambridge, followed by a reception, finishing at 8.30pm. This event is free of charge but please register by emailing Sheralyn Wade by 5 October 2012.
2 November 2012: The Lost Prince: an international academic conference presenting new scholarship on the life and death of Henry, Prince of Wales (15941612), the elder son of King James I and Anne of Denmark (shown above in a portrait of c 1610 by Robert Peake the Elder), to be held at the National Portrait Gallery from 10am to 6pm. Speakers to include our Fellow Karen Hearn, on the art patronage of the Harington family, and the day will finish with a drinks reception and performance of mourning songs for Prince Henry written by Giovanni Coprario (aka John Cooper, 15701626). To find out more, visit the NPG website.
15 November 2012: Heritage Research: defining a new era in science, at the Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, University College London, from 9.30am to 5.30pm, with a drinks reception afterwards at the Grant Museum of Zoology until 7pm. The symposium will be split into two sessions: Understanding organic materials (chaired by Professor Dana Arnold, Middlesex University) and Technologies for cultural heritage (chaired by Dr David Saunders, British Museum). For a copy of the programme, contact Henoc Agbota.
16 November 2012: Recent Research and New Discoveries in Glass and Ceramics: a conference in honour of the late Sarah Jennings, at the Wallace Collection, London, starting at 10am and finishing with a wine reception in the evening. This conference has been organised by the Medieval Pottery Research Group and the Association for the History of Glass to celebrate Sarahs research into archaeological glass and ceramics; the day will be introduced by Fellow Duncan Brown, President of the MPRG; Fellow Justine Bayley, President of the AHG, will bring proceedings to a close with an appreciation of Sarahs role in the societies to whom she gave so much time. The morning and afternoon sessions will be chaired by Duncan Brown and Fellow Tony Wilmott respectively. The conference fee (£25 or £10 (students)) will go towards the costs of publishing a book in Sarahs memory. Booking details and details of the speakers can be found on the MPRG website.
29 November 2012: How coin finds are changing the face of Roman Britain: the contribution of the Treasure Act and Portable Antiquities Scheme, by Fellow Roger Bland, Head of Portable Antiquities and Treasure at the British Museum, the sixth annual Joan Pye lecture, will be given in the Chancellors Hall at Senate House at 5.30pm, hosted by the Roman Research Trust / Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
15 to 17 January 2013: Non-destructive approaches to complex archaeological sites in Europe: a round-up, Ghent, Belgium. The colloquium will bring together a series of European specialists in non-destructive survey techniques and the interpretation and visualization of results. For further details, see the Radio Past website.
Brief is the right word for the discovery of ancient underwear at Lengberg Castle in the Austrian Tyrol. The four bras and a pair of male underpants were found in debris that had been used to fill the void beneath the floorboards of the second storey of the castle, added in the fifteenth century, along with large quantities of straw, wood shavings, leather shoe parts and some 2,700 textile fragments. The find was made in 2008, but hit the headlines after Beatrix Nutz, who is studying the textiles for her PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Innsbruck, wrote an article about the underwear in BBC History magazine; perhaps the fact that publication coincided with the beach volleyball competitions in London added to the topicality of the story. Hilary Davidson, Fashion Curator at the Museum of London, was one of the experts quoted in media coverage: she described the find as a kind of a missing link in the history of womens underwear.
Which brings us neatly to the question of human origins, and there has been an awful lot going on in this field while we have all been enjoying our summer holidays. The August edition of the journal Nature, for example, introduced us to yet another long-lost cousin, Homo rudolfensis, identified after the discovery of three new skull and jaw fossils by a team led by Maeve Leakey of the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi. The article concludes that several species of early man [Homo habilis, H erectus and now H rudolfensis] lived cheek by jowl in the same region of east Africa some two million years ago.
We have also been informed that Neanderthals were not the macho men we imagined: the muscular asymmetry that we see in the arms of Neanderthals was the result of spending hours and hours each day on such domestic tasks as scraping animal skins to make them suitable for use as clothing, resulting in over-developed right arms, rather than hunting with spears, which develops both arms equally.
A bit of a row has broken out between those on the one hand who want us to believe that 4 per cent of our genome is Neanderthal (unless you are African) as a result of interbreeding that took place in south-west Asia soon after Homo sapiens sapiens migrated out of Africa, and a group of Cambridge anthropologists on the other who say that the DNA crossover is exactly what you would expect of two species that shared a common ancestor some 500,000 years ago.
Professor Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, who has championed the idea that modern humans interbred with Neanderthals, said that his original paper on the subject had considered this possibility and rejected it; he also says he has a further paper, yet to undergo peer-review, that will present further evidence of human / Neanderthals interbreeding.
Meanwhile, Svante Pääbo and his team have been busy reconstructing the genome of a Denisovan girl from material extracted from her little finger bone. That 50,000-year-old bone fragment, and two fossilised teeth, are the only evidence we have for the extinct group of humans named after the Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of Siberia where the fossils were found.
David Reich, a Harvard geneticist who worked on the study with Pääbo, said that comparing the Denisovan genome with similar sequences from Neanderthals and modern humans from around the world revealed that Denisovan DNA has contributed 3 to 5 per cent of the genomes of people in Australia and New Guinea and aboriginal people from the Philippines, and some of the islands nearby. Commenting on the paper, our Fellow Chris Stringer, Head of Human Origins at the Natural History Museum in London, picked up on the evidence of very low genetic diversity, probably a consequence of Denisovans starting off as a small group of pioneers that expanded into regions like the Altai mountains in southern Siberia in small numbers and during warm spells.
At about the same time, modern humans had reached the somewhat warmer Annamite Mountains of Laos, as attested by the discovery of an ancient skull that has been dated to between 46,000 and 63,000 years old. The fossil, discovered in 2009, is described in a recent issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr Laura Shackelford, from the University of Illinois, who says that it shows that early modern humans migrating out of Africa did not simply follow the coast to the islands of south-east Asia and Australia: they also travelled northwards into very different types of terrain. Given its age, fossils in this vicinity could be direct ancestors of the first migrants to Australia. But it is also likely that mainland south-east Asia was a crossroads leading to multiple migratory paths, she said.
Coming forward a few millennia, the discovery of 20,000-year-old ceramic fragments in China is being hailed as evidence that hunter-gathers did use pottery, and that it was not invented by Neolithic farming communities. Published in the journal Science One, the pottery fragments were recovered from the Xianrendong cave in south Chinas Jiangxi province and were dated using samples of bone and charcoal from above and below the ancient ceramics, making them the oldest known pieces of pottery in the world.
If early farmers are no longer credited with inventing pottery, they can take consolation in the new research published in the latest issue of Science that says they gave us the Indo-European family of languages. Using Bayesian phylogeographic approaches previously developed for tracing the origins of viral pathogens, such as avian influenza, a team led by Quentin Atkinson of the University of Auckland in New Zealand has analysed basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages to model the most likely origin and expansion of the language family. Of two competing hypotheses ― that proto-Indo-European was spread by horse-riding pastoralists from the Pontic steppes about 6,000 years ago or by farmers from Anatolia 8,000 to 9,500 years ago ―Atkinson and his team say that the Anatolia hypothesis is the best statistical fit.
Our Fellow Colin Renfrew, who proposed Anatolia as the source of the Indo-European language family as long ago as 1987 (see his Archaeology and Language: the puzzle of Indo-European Origins (1990)) was quoted in the journal Nature as saying that many historical linguists will be slow to accept the evidence … The structure of Indo-European studies has been founded for so long on the myth of mounted Kurgan warrior horsemen riding down from the Russian steppes that it will take scholars a while to recover, he said.
It seems, though, that the non-farming hunter gatherers of Europe were also pretty good at keeping in touch with each other 8,000 years ago. A team led by geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox, of the University of Barcelona, has published a paper in Current Biology resulting from the study of twenty-seven Mesolithic skeletons from Spain and from central and eastern Europe and has found a remarkable degree of homogeneity, which she interprets as evidence that Mesolithic people did not live in small, isolated bands with little contact but in highly mobile groups with communication networks extending for thousands of miles. Such close genetic affinities between western, central and eastern European hunter-gatherers can best be explained by (you guessed it) a high degree of continent-wide interbreeding.
This genetic evidence is supported by cultural evidence for widespread contacts, the team argues, notably the use of pierced red deer teeth as personal ornaments right across Mesolithic Europe. Reaction to the findings has been cautious: other geneticists have warned that though the data look persuasive and exciting, they are based on tiny sample sets, while Solange Rigaud, of the University of Bordeaux, who has studied red deer canine ornaments, says the team is wrong to see the widespread use of ornamental teeth as evidence for close cultural contacts across the continent because widely varying techniques were used to produce the perforations in the canines, suggesting that although they started with the same raw materials, they had different cultural traditions when it came to the way they actually crafted the ornaments.
St Bartholomew the Great Heritage Trust: Chair
Closing date: Monday 1 October 2012
In the words of our Fellow, the Revd Dr Martin Dudley, Rector of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great: The Heritage Trust was established to support the fabric and secular community functions of St Bartholomew the Great. By reconstructing and restoring the complex of buildings we have inherited from Londons past, we will make St Bartholomew the Great a world-class heritage site, accessible and efficient in its running and open and welcoming to all. In order to achieve this ambition The Heritage Trust will concentrate on raising a total of £20 million, including £7 million in matched funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, to enable the redevelopment work to take place and to secure an endowment for the future.
The role of Chair is pivotal to the success of this mission working closely with me and with the other Trustees, the members of the development team, and our external consultants. You will be responsible for helping us to secure significant gifts to support the campaign; identifying, cultivating, soliciting and stewarding major donors for leadership gifts and helping to raise the profile of the campaign to a wider audience as the spokesperson and figurehead. Overall, you will be expected to bring to the role an understanding of major gift philanthropy and possess significant experience of strategic planning; with the ability to implement those plans, present a case convincingly, with passion and integrity, building networks and relationships to drive the success of the campaign.
If you are interested in this significant and high-profile opportunity and would like to discuss it in further detail, please contact our advising consultant, Philip Nelson; tel: 020 7691 1920).
Durham University: Professor / Reader of Classics and Ancient History; Grade 9 / 10 Closing date: 6 October 2012
See the Durham University vacancies website, using ref no. 1901.
University College London: Reader in the History of the Ancient Near East, from c 3000 BC into the Hellenistic period
Salary: £51,052£55,512; closing date 26 October 2012
For further details, use job ref 1271511 to search the UCL jobs website.
SPAB Mills Section Administrator
The Mills Section of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings is seeking a part time home- / office-based Administrator (central London). Duties include office administration, promotion and marketing; 16 hours per week over four days. Salary between £25,000 and £31,000 pro rata per annum. Further information from Jonathan Cook, Chairman of the SPAB Mills Section.