Past Newsletters

Newsletter 161: July, 1984

WEST HEATH IN ACTION AGAIN

HADAS re-opened its West Heath site on June 16 and the dig is now going strong, The first weekend – unfortunately cut short, on Sunday, by a highly temperamental thunderstorm – was spent ‘laying out.’ Digging proper began on the Monday and three trenches were opened – XVH, J and K. More will follow.

It has been harder work in the early stages of this dig than in the halcyon seasons of the ’70s. During the last three years – our first phase on the site, you may remember, ended on October 31, 1981 – much building rubble has been dumped and is now grassed over. Before we could reach the flint-bearing stratum in the new trenches some heavy pick-and­ shovel work was needed to remove it. It was much tougher going than the gentle sand trowelling that was a hallmark of earlier years.

The present area is close to the original site – just a little more into the trees and marginally further away from the Leg of Mutton pond, which is still just below us. The whooper swans we once nervously knew have gone; instead there is a pair of Canada geese with a delightful family of goslings; and, of course, there is a familiar quackery of ducks.

Dave King has come up trumps again with a Mk II processing shed which can be put up – or taken down – in ten minutes flat. It’s a little roomier than the original Mk I version and as great a success as ever. Only drawback is that it’s slightly higher than before, so the short ones among us can only just manage to raise the roof!

The most important thing to report, however, is that the excavation is well under way and will continue to flourish – but only if every HADAS member who can do so will come along to help. Digging is all day every day till July 31 – and we need to put into it every bit of HADAS muscle that’s available, So if you haven’t yet signed on for a trowelling stint, please do right away – don’t put it off till next week. Should you want any more details, ring either Margaret Maher (907 0333) or Sheila Woodward

(952 3697) – but in the evening, as both will be on site most days.

PROGRAMME NEWS

Sat July 14. Outing cancelled (see June Newsletter).

Sat Aug 18. Outing to Repton, Derbyshire. Martin Biddle is running an excavation there and has agreed to show us round and talk about the site. More details in the August Newsletter.

Sat/Sun Sept 15/16. Lincoln: arrangements for the mini-weekend are reaching their final stages. The Lincoln Archaeological Trust are providing guides for the whole weekend and the Director of the Trust will give a talk on Saturday evening. Accommodation will probably be in a small hotel, and depending on numbers and transport we hope to do it for an all-in figure of app. £39. If you wish to come, please fill in the enclosed application form and send it to me with £10 deposit per person by July 7, as the hotel is waiting for our booking. Late comers should ring me as usual, please, in case there are cancellations.

DOROTHY NEWBURY

A WALK WITH THE FAMOUS FRANCES RADFORD describes

HADAS’s Hampstead Walk

In May Christopher Wade, Curator of Burgh House, New End Sq, pro­vided a group of HADAS members with a guided tour round a small Area of Hampstead village. It was full of memories of the famous in art, science and literature, and particularly of one of the most notable Hampstead families, the du Mauriers.

We started in Well Walk, which took its name from the springs of ferruginous water known as chalybeate for which it became famous. In 1698 the Hon Susannah Noel and her son, Baptiste, 3rd Earl of Gainsborough, gave a Well and 6 acres of land to ‘the use and benefit of the poor of Hampstead ‘The Gainsborough family was responsible for developing much of this area, promoting it as a spa. Hampstead waters became so famous that they were bottled and sold at 3d a bottle in Fleet Street. Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale were among the notables who visited the spa.

No 40 Well Walk was for a time the home of John Constable the painter, who had moved to Hampstead for his wife’s health. He came here in 1827 from his previous home in Downshire Hill. D H Lawrence stayed in the road for a while before eloping with Frieda. John Masefield once lived at No 13.

We moved on to Cannon Lane to see the Parish lock-up (c.1730) built into the wall of Cannon Hall where local magistrates had held court. Prisoners were kept there ‘until more lengthy arrangements’ could be made for them. When a police force was founded in 1829 the prisoners were transferred to the Watch House in Holly Walk, The lock-up is a Listed building,

Cannon Hall (early 18c) later became the home of Gerald du Maurier, (1873-1934) the well-known actor-manager who ran Wyndham’s Theatre from 1910-25 and opened the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead, now a cinema. He was the original Captain Hook in Barrie’s Peter Pan in 1904. His daughter Daphne, the novelist, used the changing room above the stables as a study, writing while her friends and sisters played tennis.

Gerald’s father, George, the artist, had been advised to live in Hampstead for the good of his health. He had a detached retina of one eye, which caused him much concern as he feared he might not be able to carry on his work. He was a cartoonist with ‘Punch’ and seems to be best known for his cartoon ‘the Curate’s egg – good in parts!’ When he turned to writing, his novel Trilby was a huge success.

George used to walk his dog up to the Whitestone Pond, from whence the dog chose the route; either to the Bull & Bush or the Spaniards Inn. One day, the story goes, George rescued a dog that had fallen through the ice on the Pond. The owner came up to offer him 6d for his pains. When George refused it, the man exclaimed ‘sorry, sir, I never knew you were a gentleman’

George lived at 28 Hampstead Grove, opposite Fenton House, a beautiful 17c building now owned by the National Trust and a home for antique musical instruments. A few yards away is a house which once belonged to George Romney, the painter. When he moved there he took over a building which was then a stable, intending to turn it into a picture gallery. The project never got off the ground and was abandoned in 1800.

Another well-known building is the Admiral’s House in Admiral’s Walk, distinguished by its white exterior and the quarter-deck construction of the upper storeys. It never was an admiral’s house, although Admiral Barton lived nearby in Vane House, now demolished. -A mere lieutenant owned the Admiral’s House. Adjoining is, Grove Lodge, where Galsworthy wrote The Forsyth Saga.

As Hampstead had long been considered a healthy place many came there to recover from illness, one patient being Robert Louis Stevenson. The large building at Mount Vernon, now a research laboratory, was once the largest TB hospital in the country,

Our walk continued down Holly Hill, with a brief glimpse of the Roman Catholic Church where de Gaulle worshipped during the war years. Now the centre building in a terrace of houses, the west end of the church itself was once a house with a small chapel at its rear. On to Hampstead Parish Church where the churchyard, or more aptly, the church garden, is a resting place for many well-known people – the du Mauriers, Beerbohn Tree, Anton Walbrook, Llewelyn Davies of the ‘Lost Boys,’ Gilbert Scott, John Constable and Professor Joad, to Mention but a few.

Hampstead abounds in plaques, blue, brown and black, commemorating the many distinguished people who have lived in the area. There are four names to add to those already mentioned – Newman Hall, a nonconformist preacher who founded homes for the aged; Sir Henry Cole, who originated the habit of sending Christmas cards; Sir Henry Dale, physiologist; and last but not least in the eyes of HADAS, Sir Flinders Petrie, Egyptologist and a founding father of modern archaeology.

Many thanks to Christopher Wade for his splendid commentary, fact-filled and highly entertaining. We had, of course, gone to the fountain head, because he is the compiler/editor of the Camden History Society’s excellent ‘Streets of Hampstead’ booklets ‘The Streets of Hampstead’
(1972), ‘More Streets of Hampstead’ (1973) and ‘The Streets of West Hampstead’ (1975).

ROMAN MILITARY TOMBSTONES by Alastair Scott Anderson Shire Archaeology,

Reviewed by RAYMOND LOWE No 19, £1.95

When Shire Publications first introduced their archaeology series the Roman titles were of a very general nature. They covered subjects that were already available to the general reader. This has now to some extent changed and we have several volumes dealing with specific subjects that cannot be found elsewhere. Roman Military Tombstones is such a subject. A S Anderson covers only the period of the lst/2nd centuries, and we must hope for a second volume for the 3rd/4th centuries.

After a succinct description of the army, Roman funerary practices are discussed. The stones are classified into four groups in chapter 3. Chapter 4 deals with the most interesting section, epigraphy. It is a pity it is so short. A crib of all the usual abbreviations found on tom stones would be most useful to the non-Latin Romanist. Even a catalogue of all the stone’s would be possible. There are, we are told, only 450 extant in Britain There is certainly room on p24 for another example.

Chapter 5 discusses the various styles and Chapter 6 the possible dating. The book is well supplied with illustrations. In spite of my criticisms; this book is a must for anyone interested in the Roman army in Britain, and is good value at £1.95.’ Copies are obtainable from Pete Griffiths, 8 Jubilee Avenue, London Colney, Herts AL2 1QG (61-23156),

NEW COURSE AT THE HGS INSTITUTE

In the May Newsletter we mentioned the possibility off the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute starting courses in London University’s Certificate in Field Archaeology.. This idea has now come to fruition and the first year of the Certificate, which deals with prehistory, will begin on Thurs Sept 27. It will be a daytime course, from 2-4 pm at Friends meeting House, on the NE corner of Central Square, behind the Teahouse.

The course will consist of 24 meetings and 4 visits, and will cost £30 for two terms. Lecturer will be Tony Legge, Staff Lecturer in Archaeology to the Extramural Department of the University. Among other things he specialises in environmental archaeology.

It is hoped that the course will be well supported by HADAS members; if you would like to join it, let the Institute know, on 455 9951.

INTO SUNNY SUFFOLX LINDA BARROW reports on the HADAS outing of June 16

A better day could not have been chosen for this outing the beautiful landscapes in which Icklingham, West Stow and Ickworth were situated gained even more from the sunny summer weather.

After leaving the suburbs we soon crossed once-glaciated areas into Grimes Graves country. We arrived at Icklingham in excellent time after a welcome stop at Comfort Cafe. The journey was pleasant and informative, with handouts for all – in which not the least interesting item was a cartoon of Ted Sammes.

Icklingham was a small village with two Churches, one of them, renowned for its thatched roof. The Marston family, to whom the ‘museum’ belong­ed, had been – and still are – private millers. Duncan Marston spoke about his father’s collections and of his interest in gathering goodies from all over the locality. These were displayed in cabinets of which the frames, glass and timber were constructed from old machines removed from the flour mill after the Second World War.

Exhibits a ranged from lucky stones, buried under hearths of wattle ­and daub cottages at the time of the Black Death, to instruments once attached to the rear legs of horses to prevent kicking. There were collections of old photos and postcards and ‘war budget’ magazines priced three pence each to leaf through.

A most impressive cabinet displayed Anglo-Saxon burial urns, one of which was thought to be one of the finest examples in existence. There was a fine ethnographic collection of beautifully worked. Stone pearheads, impressive displays of prehistoric artefacts, a collection of arrowheads including the rare single-barbed variety, quernstones made from local materials, ancient farming implements, Edwardian and Victorian dolls, millers’ tools and last but not least a miscellaneous section in which ‘Little Lucy’ (traction engine), a large haycart and an old Morris van were housed.

The museum is not open to the public. It has retained a very indi­vidual character. The warmth and humour of Duncan Marston’s talk is illustrated by this quote: ‘Father was like a flying buttress he never went into the church but supported it from outside – by donations!

It was not only the archaeological features that interested members on the trip: the unexpected appearance of a pheasant or the sound of a cuckoo produced many an ‘ooh’ and ‘aah.’

A short drive from Icklingham brought us to West Stow and the Anglo-Saxon village reconstruction. Reminders that we were in Saxon country were reinforced by posters advertising a forthcoming ‘Saxon Skirmish.’ After picnicking in West Stow Country Park we were shown around by the Warden Richard Darrah. The hill on which the reconstructions stand could be considered as a multi-period site – starting with. Mesolithic occupation and occupied until about 1300 AD when the site was buried by a sandstorm, West Stow had links with the Icklingham collection – one of its Saxon in­habitants may have been cremated in an urn on show at the Marston museum.

The reconstructions of the buildings were based on archaeological evidence. Oak was used to build the walls and floors, hazel for the roofs, ash for the rafters and straw for thatch. Mr Darrah gave us a detailed talk on the technology behind the reconstructions – the timber was split with wedges and hewn with adzes. Apparently there used to be controversy about where the Saxons actually lived in the houses. It is now known that they were living on floors over the pits rather than in the pits. One house was set up especially to show how the Saxons did not live.

The economy of the village was predominantly agricultural. During excavation forty tea chests were filled with animal bones, mainly from domesticated types. Numerous bone implements were found; and again bone combs were displayed in the Ickingham collection, one of two of which one had been found at West Stow. Cereals grown in Saxon times included wheat, barley and rye and some pulses.

Our next move was to Ickworth House – a great contrast to the thatch settlement of the Saxons. The first thing that struck us was the rotunda, with its bas relief friezes glowing golden in. the mid-afternoon sun. The beckoning park with its midsummer green was a serious challenge to the glories of the house itself. Many members preferred the natural beauty of park and garden to the more ornate sights inside.

When we boarded the coach again it was rather like entering the temperate house at KEW, It had been- as so many HADAS trips are – an outing to savour. It’s the little touches – the passing of the sweet the raffles plus the excellent organisation – that make HADAS expeditions so memorable.

HISTORIC BUILDINGS SAVED

We were happy to learn, from the last Newsletter of the Council for British Archeology, that there has been a reprieve for the Historic Buildings Division of the GLC. At first it looked seemed possible – though incredible – that Government plans to scrap the GLC and Metropolitan counties would mean the total loss of this unique organisation with all its accumulated knowledge.

The CBA Newsletter says:

The Secretary of State announced … when introducing the Second Reading of the. Local Government (Interim Provisions) Bill, that the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England had indicated it was ready to take on the Division in the event of the GLC being abolished, and to maintain it as a discrete unit within the Commission.”

The HBMCE is the ‘new body, established under the National Heritage Act, which came into being on April 1 last and which now controls both Listed Buildings and scheduled sites in England. The proposed set-up should work well from both sides: the Historic Buildings Division has

Much to offer HBMCE in experience and expertise; and HBMCE will, we hope be able to provide the Historic Buildings Division with the finance and stability it needs to do its work to best advantage.

Also in the June CBA Newsletter was news of a new organisation called Archaeologists for Peace, founded in Bedford in April.

Archaeologists for Peace, says CBA, is ‘seen as a voice for archaeo­logists who are concerned with the escalation of the arms race and all its implications. As students of human society, archaeologists may be deemed to have a special perspective on this subject, seeing the future as part of a continuum deriving from man’s earliest development.’

More details about AFP can be obtained from Hilary Major, 57A South Street, Braintree, Essex. CM7 6QD.

SITES TO WATCH

The following applications for planning permission have been made since the last Newsletter:

Land forming part of 24 Uphill Rd, NW7 detached house

Land at rear of 22 Kings Rd, fronting

Jennings Way, Barnet bungalow

4 Farrington Cottages, Moon Lane, Moxon

St, Barnet (amended plan) semi-detached dwelling

Land adj. 2 Ash Cottages & part of Highwood demolition of coach house &

Lodge, Highwood Hill, NW7 stable; erection 2 detached houses

Land adj. Ashley Pines, Barnet Gate Lane,

Arkley 2 detached houses

201 High Rd, N2 3-storey flats (outline)

Land adj. 4 Parsons Crescent, Edgware detached house

Members who notice signs of building or development activity on any of these sites are asked to alert Brian Wrigley on 959 5982.

There have been a couple of applications for alterations to interesting Listed buildings recently. One is Hill House, Elstree Hill South, Elstree. There it is proposed that the end bay of the south wing be reconstructed. Hill House, now a memorial Home, is basically a mid-18c red brick mansion with many additions. The 2-storey main block has two full-height flanking bays, and on the ground floor the central door, with a window either side, is covered by a conservatory which fills the space between the bays. There is a mid-18c wing one side, with a late 18c wing beyond it. On the other side a long, 2-storey wing with a steep pitched roof and irregularly spaced windows may be earlier. There are also 19c additions.

The second application is for Gingerbread Cottage on Totteridge Green. This is the only remaining gatehouse of the former Copped Hall, where Bulwer Lytton is said to have written ‘The Last of the Barons’ in the summer house and where Cardinal Manning was born. Gingerbread Cottage is sometimes called Green Lodge and has been in the news several times recently. It is a small, attractive 2-storey 19c weather boarded house with a fretted barge boarded gable. Its small size is a temptation to owners to wish to extend it – and the last time someone proposed doing so there was a storm of protest because it was felt that any extension would spoil the whole. This time a flat-roofed extension which will con­tain a kitchen and breakfast room has been applied for.

RESEARCH AND GROUP ACTIVITIES

In the June Newsletter we printed part of the report given at the AGM on Research& Group activities, and said that the remainder of the report would follow this month. Here it is:

The INDUSTRIAL ARCHAEOLOGY GROUP may be small but it is not inactive. Research on the aircraft industry and the aerodromes in the district has continued and a paper on the archaeology of Hendon Aerodrome is at an advanced stage of completion. We have been particularly active in the last few months with the Borough Planning Department in trying to get Grahame-White’s offices and control tower at Hendon Listed. The offices are the main prestige building built during World War I by Claude Grahame White and the control tower is believed to be the earliest extant, so these buildings are of much more than local importance. –

During the year we have also commemorated the centenary of STC and the Diamond Jubilee of the Tube extension to Edgware with some research and Newsletter articles. Research on STC revealed an unexpected link with Hendon Aerodrome, where the company leased premises between the wars,

Bill Firth

The DOCUMENTARY GROUP has continued work on various long-term projects previously reported. One of these – Field Names in the Borough of Barnet ­was completed by Nell Penny in October, 1983, and the material deposited with John Field, coordinator of field-name studies for the English Place-name Society. Mr Field hopes to include the material in a future publication.

New projects begun or planned during the year include:

a study of the Barnet end of the Welsh droving trade in 18c/early 19c, coupled with research into Barnet Fair; the preparation of a new index of Listed buildings in LBB, to coincide with the new Statutory List now undergoing final revision; research into the papers of the Overseers of the Poor in our area, of which there is a fine collection, hitherto unstudied, in the LBB Local History library. Two brief papers, arising from this, have already been published in the Newsletter – Annals of the Peer in the 18c (Jan 1984) and Charity Children March 1984 the possibility of a more ambitious publication is being investigated.

Other results of documentary work published in the Newsletter during the past year include:

The history of ‘The Village,’ Finchley (Sept 1983)

Maps, drawings and a report recording Church Farm, East

Barnet (Feb 1984)

A biographical note on Joseph Grimaldi (April 1984)

Further recording, by photography and drawing, has been planned for sites (such as the Hand & Flower pub at Whetstone) which are under threat of re-development; and a photographic record was made of the old RAF married quarters in Booth Road, NW9, before their demolition.

A leaflet on Archaeology in Barnet, for which HADAS provided documentary work and illustrations, was published by LBB Planning Dept in October 1983 and has been sufficiently successful – particularly in schools – for a reprint, in changed format, to be planned for later this year by LBB Libraries Dept.

An illustrated booklet called Milk for the Millions, for which HADAS produced the text and photos, on the history of the Express Dairy in this area, was published by LBB Libraries Dept in June 1983.

The Documentary Group has co-operated in various ways with the Brit­ish Association for Local History (of which HADAS is a corporate member). In all 12 members of the Society have taken part in the various projects mentioned.

Brigid Grafton Green

Members interested in joining either the .Industrial Archaeology or the Documentary. Groups (both of, which will welcome new members) should ring Bill Firth for 455 7164), or Brigid Grafton Green for Documentary (455 9040).

The EXCAVATION WORKING PARTY has continued to meet throughout the years as a body reviewing site-watching and research activities and operating with the Greater London Archaeological Service, with an eye to possible digs. Of the list of 6 possible sites reported last year, an excavation has taken place at Hadley Wood earthwork, which has been reported in the Newsletter; some documentary research is continuing. No urgent rescue operation has cropped up during the year; so the position is that we have opportunities to dig which can be pursued whenever we have the enthusiasm of diggers and most importantly, someone available and prepared to take charge ‘for a few weekends.

This summer there will by a 6-week full-time dig at West Heath and much work is being put into organising this. This should not preclude other part-time digs, if needed.

The first incumbent of the post of site-watching co-ordinator, Elizabeth Sanderson has unhappily had to give up the job; we are grateful for her considerable work in getting an organisation started.

BRIAN WRIGLEY

ROMAN POTTERY: TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGY,

Some discoveries at the Teahouse, described by TESSA SMITH

Once again at the Teahouse weekend of May 19/20 the pottery excavated at Brockley Hill before 1954 was available for research and hypothetical analysis, Special interest centered on pottery assembly. For example, exactly how did Roman potters fit together the amphora-type flagons made at Sulloniacae?

Study of the inverted necks of this type of vessel, which are usually broken off where they meet the body, shows clear evidence of join-marks. The neck was obviously thrown independently of the body and joined later. Close inspection of the grooves in the handles suggested that finger-pressure alone was the method of furrowing the two-groove handles, but that a tool had left sharper-edged grooves in the three-groove handles. The handles were then pressed onto the assembled body and neck, clear finger-poking marks at the base of the handle being noted on several examples. Not proven, but put forward as a hypothesis, was the thought that a firm circular foot ring had been added for stability to the bases of two examples.

Pinch-neck flagons were .examined. The pinch-neck rims, which produce two spouts, one larger at the back above the handle for filling the flagon, one smaller at the front for pouring, were compared with our own fingers and thumbs. It was uncannily obvious which pinch-marks had been made by the potter’s thumb and which by his forefinger, the thumb-press being slightly wider.

It was also demonstrated that a tazza could have been rotated slowly on a wheel, the top rim and the lower edge of the carinated shape being pinched towards each other by light pressure of the thumb and forefinger at regular intervals to provide a ‘frilled’ appearance. There were 23 press-marks on the top rim and 25 corresponding press-marks on the lower carination, Neat detective work.

Rough clay which had been used in the kiln packing also showed interesting features. Two examples had clear finger pressure marks where the potter had rammed them into position as kiln filling. Another piece had the clear indentation of a four ringed flagon neck. We also found a four ringed flagon-neck which just happened to fit the indentation exactly, giving a neat motive and negative example.

Typical Brockley Hill ware feels gritty, due to the addition of sand to the clay body. Sand is mainly silica which melts at a higher tempera­ture than pure clay. During firing the clay particles melt and fuse together while the silica remains in its stable state, thus retaining its gritty feel, Brockley Hill ware is, of course earthernware and thus slightly porous. The Romans did not have the ability to reach the consistently high temperatures needed to produce non-porous stoneware.

However, over-firing does seem to have occurred frequently, and examples of colour changes from normally fired, to heavily over-fired were examined. The change was from natural buff and pinky-orange to burnt sienna and purple grey, some sherds even showing a ‘sandwich’ effect. Some scorched sherds showed clearly where they had faced the outer lick of flames in the kiln. It is not the flames but the high-temperature gas that fire the pots and change the clay body into pottery. This is known as becoming isotrophic and occurs around 800°C.-850°c,

Generally speaking Brockley Hill ware looks creamy and pink and fresh­ly scrubbed this is due in part to oxygenating firing of the kilns.

This means that air was allowed to enter continuously throughout the firing time through the arched flue. Excess gases passed out through the dome of the kiln. In this type of firing the natural clay colours, buff, pale cream, slightly pink, etc were preserved. It was only from over-firing of the kiln that the previously mentioned darker colours resulted.

Examples of slipped sherds, where the potter has painted or dipped the pot in a coat of creamy slip, pose the question of whether this was an experiment to try to produce non-porous ware. It could have been purely for decoration, but Brockley Hill ware is generally functional and un­decorated. Some of the pottery excavated had, in fact, been imported to Brockley Hill for example, samian ware with its smooth, glossy surface and occasional pieces of burnished or colour-coated ware.

Highgate Wood ware was also imported. The body fabric of this is consistently grey, resulting from reduction firing. Here the oxygen supply is cut off during firing, the kiln is sealed completely, including the dome, and the fuel produces free carbon or smoke

Techniques and technology of Roman pottery give most interesting food for thought and it is intended that these aspects of research done during the Teahouse weekends will result in another exhibition by HADAS at Church Farm House Museum later in the summer. More of that in a later Newsletter.

.

PARAGRAPHS ABOUT PEOPLE

VICTOR JONES, our Hon. Treasurer, is in midst of moving house and is finding it – as it always is – traumatic. It’s doubly so because he is attempting to fit the contents of a large building into a much smaller one. His new address is 78 Temple Fortune Lane, NW11 (only 5 houses away from the Editor of the Newsletter) and he is keeping the same phone number: 458 6180.

Birthday greetings this month to GEORGE INGRAM who will achieve the age of 84 on July 28. We regretfully report that George is still struggling against eye trouble but – being George – is determined not to be beaten by it. Last month, for the first time since his operation in June of last year, he set forth alone one evening on an expedition to see a display at the Old Bull, in Chipping Barnet. It meant travelling by train there and back, as well as searching out a building he didn’t know ­no small undertaking, when you can’t rely on seeing properly. However, it was accomplished triumphantly. We know that George’s many HADAS friends will want to join in wishing him a very happy birthday.

At the other end of the age-scale, one of our youngest members, 10-year-old. LLOYD MORRIS, gave the vote of thanks to TED SAMMES for compering the last outing with such kindly efficiency. Lloyd and his brother GWILYM, who is 11, joined the Society last year- their father, WILLIAM, .one of our most valued artists and draughtsmen, is a member of long standing, and was active on the Research Committee until paternal duties became too time-consuming. Lloyd paid his tribute to Ted early on the trip home, announcing that it was better to say ‘thank you’ quickly as he would probably fall asleep later:, It sounds as if he is another satisfied HADAS customer. We all know that feeling of returning from a Society outing, replete with sunshine, good talk and archaeological knowledge painlessly applied!

Another HADAS member who has been fighting against odds is NELL PENNY. .A few weeks ago she had the unpleasant experience, while driving across Streatham Common, of being rammed in the back by another car. It was during a torrential rainstorm and she was in the middle of three lanes of traffic, so it can’t have been much fun. Delayed shock a few days later (‘I hadn’t time to be shocked straight away,’ she says) was followed by an attack of bronchitis. However, she is now not only up and about again, but is driving a replacement car while her own is put right.

PERCY REBOUL dashed into Dewhurst’s butcher’s shop in Ballards Lane a few weeks ago just before it closed. He wasn’t, however, after the Sunday joint. Camera at the ready, he took a smashing set of photos for the HADAS archives of the delicious decorative wall tiles which have been a feature of the shop for years. There are 10 pictures-in-tile, each one made up of four 6-inch sq. tiles: a mother sow with one piglet running by her; a cock and two hens; a chicken run, with two haystacks in the background; a pair of geese; a black-faced sheep with its lamb; A pair of ducks on a pool; a pair of black and white rabbits; doves, with a dove-cot behind; a turkey cock on the warpath; and a windmill on top of a little hill. The tiles are polychrome, in four or five colours, with a coloured border all round.

The shop was, alas, closing forever that night and Percy fears the tiles will be demolished with the building.

The HADAS library has just had a splendid acquisition. A non-HADAS member, MRS STARR, who recently completed the external Diploma in Archaeo­logy, kindly donated all her books for the four years of the course to the Society. This is no small benefaction there are over a hundred of them, in three large boxes, and our librarian, JUNE PORGES, is purring with pleasure! The Newsletter would like to seize this chance of thanking Mrs Starr very much on HADAS’s behalf for her generous gift.

‘INKY’

Don’t forget that when you get this Newsletter the ‘Inky’ Stephens exhibition, organised by Paddy Musgrove and the Finchley Society at Avenue House, East End Road, N3, will be in full swing. You can see it up to and including July 8, opening times 10.30 am-8 pm.

To accompany the exhibition there is an interesting illustrated booklet, in which Paddy has written a history of the Stephens ink firm and the two men – Henry Stephen’s father and son – who put it on the map.

Newsletter No. 155: January 1984

May 1984 be a year of memorable meetings, rewarding research and delightful digs – best wishes to all members for a happy New Year.

PROGRAMME NEWS

Don’t forget that the January Lecture is on the second (not the first) Tuesday of the Month

Tuesday, 10 January Richard Darrah will be travelling from deepest Suffolk to talk to us about the reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village at West Stow (near Bury St. Edmunds), of which he is warden.

The site was dug in the late 1960s, having previously lain undisturbed, except for medieval ploughing, since the inhabitants abandoned it in the 7th century AD. Even the ploughing ceased about 1300, when the site was covered – and preserved ­- by a sandstorm.

Using the evidence of pits and postholes, grubenhauser (sunken huts) and a hall house have been reconstructed. The lecture will be particularly interesting because of HADAS’s visits to West Stow in 1977 & 1978, when it was noted in the Newsletter that” we were fortunate to visit West Stow in its early stages and it should be interesting to follow its development…” With Mr. Darrah’s help, that’s exactly what we should be able to do on 10 January.

Tuesday, 7 February HADAS excavation at Church End, Hendon 1973-74 by Ted Sammes

Tuesday, 6 March Twenty-five years of excavation in Wiltshire By John Musty

Tuesday, 3 April Underwater archaeology today by Alexander Flinder

Tuesday 15 May Annual General Meeting

STREAM-WALKING 1983 a summary by Daphne Lorimer

Last winter the Silk Stream and its tributary Dean’s Brook, were walked by a stalwart band of HADAS members, for their entire length. No archaeological artifacts or features were discovered at this time but the exercise was useful in that hitherto unknown aspects of the Borough were revealed and places of possible future interest noted.

Considerable portions of both streams have been constrained and in some parts canalised but they are swift flowing, tend to meander and where oxbows are present, do form beaches on which a considerable amount of debris collects. These beaches are ideal spots for regular and systematic inspection, especially after heavy rain, for Medieval and Roman pottery (and since the basis is flint gravel) for flint artifacts.

Beach formations particularly noted were those in Montrose Park, in the stretch beyond Montrose Bridge on the Silk Stream and on the Dean’s Brook, in the stretch parallel to Wenlock Road and south-east of Edgware station beyond the culvert carry­ing the stream beneath the railway.

It was noted ,that a narrow band of pebbles was a feature of Dean’s Brook wherever stretches were found in their natural state. Samples of soil and gravel were taken.

Some interest was aroused in local- residents whose houses abutt the streams and information was gleaned about the alteration of courses and the straightening of reaches. Members were always alert to the possibility of garden finds.

It is hoped that stream-walking will continue in 1984 as we have already done one walk on our new project: The River Brent and the Dollis and Mutton Brooks. It is a pleasant occupation, gives a new light on old places and in the Borough of Barnet is a very possible source of archaeological material.

ORPHEUS AND HIS DOG

SHEILA WOODWARD lightens the winter gloom by looking back, Proust-like, with the eye of affection on one of HADAS’s summertime expeditions.

One of the Roman Group’s most enjoyable summer visits in 1983 was to Littlecote Park in Wiltshire, where an impressive Roman villa has been under excavation since 1978. Seen on a glorious summer day, in its idyllic setting beside a peaceful River Kennet, the site could scarcely have failed to capture our imagination.

The excavation itself, the history of the villa and the interpretation of what has been found are all of particular interest. The excavation is funded by a charitable trust set up by Mr, D.S. Wills, the present owner of the Littlecote estate-, and is said to be the largest “private” excavation in this country. Six full-time staff; led by Bryan Walters who showed us round, are supplemented by students and other volunteer diggers during the summer.

The villa seems to have been built about AD170 – displacing the small settlement of the previous century, rather as the building of the present Littlecote House caused the abandonment of an adjacent medieval village some 1340 years later. Altered and enlarged over a period of 200 years, the villa fell into decay and was abandoned at the end of the 4th century. During its heyday the villa was the centre of a large farming estate.

Traces of the Roman field system have been found over an extensive area but have not yet been completely surveyed. Farm buildings are being excavated, including barns, workshops, a bakery and a possible watermill. The villa was well sited for importing supplies and distributing its farm produce. It was on a major Roman road of military construction, which ran from Silchester to a Roman fort near Marlborough with a further road connecting it with the Fosse Way near Bath. The River Kennet was navigable by flat-bottomed boats with a 13 inch draught, capable of transporting heavy loads of grain, building stone etc. and it provided a direct link with the Thames.

After its abandonment, the villa lay buried until 1727 when it was uncovered during the building of a hunting lodge.

The magnificent Orpheus mosaic excited considerable interest and was described by Roger Gale as” the finest pavement that the sun ever shone upon in England.” The Society of Antiquaries commissioned George Vertue to produce an engraving of it (a colossal print survives in the Ashmolean Museum; Oxford but it not on public display)
and the wife of the estate steward who discovered the mosaic embroidered a tapestry of it which can still be seen in Littlecote House.

Unfortunately the winter of 1727/8 was exceptionally harsh, and exposure badly damaged the mosaic. Indeed, it was believed to have been destroyed until the excav­ation of 1977 uncovered it once more. Only about 40% of the mosaic had survived the engraving and the tapestry mentioned above have enabled the other 60% to be restored. Whatever one’s views about restoration, the mosaic is certainly impressive.

It had originally been supposed that the mosaic floor was that of a triclinium (dining room) used in the summer and the central figure with his lyre had been interpreted as Apollo. However, a canine figure beside him, not shown on the engraving or the tapestry but now clearly visible, leads Bryan Walters to argue that the figure is Orpheus and to interpret the surrounding mosaic pictures within the cycle of the Orphic myth. He regards the whole complex as an Orphic temenos, a pagan Orphic chapel to the 4th Century villa. It is a bold claim which is by no means universally accepted but which Mr. Walters supports with persuasive argument.

Excavation at Littlecote is to continue and a visit there can be most warmly recomm­ended. In addition to the Roman villa, Littlecote House is well worth seeing. The gardens are pleasant, and an excellent tea can be obtained, the small shop is imaginatively stocked and there is even a (discreetly hidden) Wild West Show for those who like that kind of thing.

NEW MEMBERSHIP LIST

This is always a hectic time of year for our Membership Secretary. Once December 31 has passed, it’s time to bring the HADAS membership list absolutely up to date and to stencil it. Ensuring that several hundred names, addresses and telephone numbers are spot-on is, no typist’s dream of pleasure but Phyllis Fetcher bears her cross bravely. Last year we circulated a copy of the Jan.1, 1983 list to every member with the February Newsletter. We usually do that every second year The other year i.e. this year – we sent it, in the interests of economy, only to members who will need it because of their work for the Society (e.g. Committee members, group leaders, our librarian etc) and to any other members who specifically asks for it So if you would like to have a copy of the membership list as at 1 January 1984, ,please let Phyllis Fletcher know (on 455 2558).

She will then arrange for a copy to be enclosed with your February Newsletter.

NEW MEMBERS

We can start the New Year most happily by welcoming all those who have joined

HADAS during the back-end of 1983. They include Mr J.S. Adams, North Finchley, Mr & Mrs Faraday, Cricklewood; Joanna Fells, East Finchley; Carolyn Fiddes, Finchley, Mark Forrest, East Finchley; Duncan Henry, Finchley Mr. T.G.Holden, North Finchley, Christine Hudson, Battersea; Carole, Melanie and Ruth Kent, West Hendon; Ian McKevitt, Mill Hill, Jean Matt, Hendon; Irene Sala, W.17; Sally White, Barnet.

The Newsletter hopes that they will find their HADAS membership gives them added zest to 1984.

PAYING A DEBT OF GRATITUDE

This seems a suitable moment to express the Editor’s heartfelt appreciation of all those who so willingly, with never a grouse, help to get the Newsletter out on time each month.

First, may I thank my associate editors, each of whom makes herself responsible for a couple of issues a year – Enid Hill, Liz Holliday, Isobel McPherson and Liz Sagues and with them I would like to couple the names of Deirdre Barrie and Joan Wrigley, who so kindly cut Newsletter stencils when the editor-of-the-month can’t do it.

A particular tribute should go from all of us to Enid Hill. She not only edits the News­letter from time to time, but every time she takes charge of our addressograph machine, makes sure our mailing list is correct and tackles all the envelopes.
Finally, we are all deeply in debt – as we have been now for many years – to Rene Frauchiger and Trudi Pulfer. Rene keeps our Duplicator and yearns over it (and it can be a temperamental beast) like a mother. She rolls off the whole of each Newsletter, collates it pages and the she and Mrs. Pulfer stuff’ the envelopes, stamp and post them. It’s a mammoth task 12 times a year and the fact that it’s a labour of love doesn’t make it any less labour, either’!

Anyway, everyone who enjoys the Newsletter will, I’m sure, want to join me in grateful thanks to all these willing helpers.

Brigid Grafton Green

THE ANNALS OF THE POOR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY By Nell Penny

There is a wealth of local history material in the library archives at The Burroughs N.W.4 Particularly rich are the annals of the poor, both indigenous and “foreign” These are contained in the manuscript material for the years 1660 to 1835 deposited by the officials of St. Mary’s church – vestry minutes, church wardens’ accounts, accounts of the overseers of the poor, examinations, artifacts and removals.

By an act passed in 1601, Hendon, like all other parishes, rural and urban, had to appoint two overseers of the poor. These men, unpaid like all parish officers, were to get money by collecting rates on land and tenements. During the first half of the eighteenth century Hendon overseers generally raised two rates a year. They were charged to support the impotent poor (i.e. the sick, the old and young children), to apprentice older children by paying premiums and to buy a stock of materials upon which the able-bodied poor were to be set to work. Hendon overseers seem to have performed these duties reasonably well in a paternally despotic way, typical of eight­eenth century local administration. Because office was unpaid, nobody was willing to be an overseer for more than one year but most overseers served the following year as church wardens.

Between 1703 and 1757 four overseers only made their mark instead of signing their names when they produced their accounts before the vestry, and none appropriated parish money.

The treatment accorded to the “out poor” was a different story. Small sums paid to “casualty” poor and examinations of people not recognisably of Hendon reveal callousness and even brutality. This harsh attitude was not confined to Hendon. It bedeviled all parishes after the Settlement Act of 1662. By this act only poor born in a parish, apprenticed in it or who had rented property of an annual value of £10, who had been a servant or a parish officer for at least a year, were entitled to help from that parish. So parish officers chased away travelling poor, rigorously examined poor people and fought other parishes about settlements, all in the good cause of keeping down the rates. One classic fight was between two London parishes at Clerkenwell Sessions. The parish boundary ran across a poor man’s bed. Sessions decided the poor man was settled in that parish where his head lay – his head being the essence of his body,

In Hendon between 1700 and 1750 the payments to “casualty” poor show a zealous determination not to allow “foreigners” to remain in the parish. In 1709 Matthew Higgs the overseer for South End (Church End, the Burroughs, Parson Street, Golders Green, Childs Hill, Guttersedge and the Hyde) paid 5/9 for “a great bellied woman for relief & expenses and several times to send her away” . If a parish could not establish the paternity of a bastard child, that child would have a settlement in the parish. So there are many payments in Hendon to pregnant women of 6d or 1/- “to go away”. In 1721 a woman who had a child “sick of the small pox” was given 3/- and sent out of the parish, A poor man “sick of an ague” was given 2/6 and sent away. In 1734 it was thought worth 3/- to send away an Irish woman with three children. A case showing a rare streak of generosity was 2/6 for “a man lodging at Mr. Brooks, 2/- for two pints of sack for him” and 1/- when he went away.

Examinations of people who might become chargeable on the parish were chores which unpaid overseers might like to evade. An examination meant taking a person before a magistrate and getting a statement from him or her which the magistrate would sign. So the bundle of examinations made between 1727 and 1757 is a very irreg­ular series. There is one paper each for 1727,1731,1735,1739 and 1741; two each for 1736 and 1740 three for 1732 ten in 1737 and eight in 1742. All these people made their statements before John Nicolls, magistrate. In 1751 twenty-six poor made statements before four magistrates.

What kind of people came to Hendon or drifted through it in the first half of the eighteenth century? James Nicolls had been apprenticed to a wheelwright in Redbourn (Herts.) Thomas, his son 45 years old with a wife and three Children had been born in Hendon, but had been a yearly servant of Daniel Nicolls at Rowley Green in Shenley parish for £6.10s a year. Benjamin Sapwell was born at Newport Pagnell in Bucks . He had a wife and two very young children. In 1737 Matthew Pittman was examined. He said he had been born in Ghent in, Flanders “in 1708 or thereabouts”. Was he the child of one of Mariborough’s men? He thought he had a settlement in St. Giles in the Fields because he had been-“apprenticed to a barber and periwigg maker in Earle Street in that parish”. Also in 1737, Thomas and Edward Medcalfe, father and son were examined. Father had been born in Yorkshire, went to Ireland and farmed for forty years in County Longford. Edward had been born in Ireland. But the overseers and the justices must have mistrusted the men – “ordered that they quit the parish in 35 days”.

Did eighteenth century gentlemen tip the barber? A barber with a settlement in High Barnett said his wages were 18 a year besides “other perquisites”. In 1740, Poor Elizabeth Kirby, a single woman, had a child at her father’s, house in Hendon. She was, questioned when the baby was two months old. She said the baby’s father was John Jordan, a fellow servant at a farm in Idlestree. Jordan “several times bad carnal knowledge of her body” . The parish would be faced with either trying to attach a paternity order on Jordan or persuading “Idlestree” to pay for Elizabeth’s baby. The case of Susannah Beadle, a widow examined in 1734 was typical of the stern attitude towards women who might be ‘burdens on the parish for some years. Susannah,, born about 1700 in Bushey, Married John Beadle “at the Fleet” about 1720, (The.Fleet debtors’ prison and the taverns round it were notorious stamping grounds for dissolute clerics who would marry couples for a fee and no questions asked. So deep was the scandal of “Fleet weddings” that an act of 1753 declared that only marriages celebrated in a parish church after calling of the banns, were legal). To continue Susannah’s saga. Five months previously John had died at Hertford, Some 14 years earlier he had told her he had served John Nicoll at Highwood Hill for a whole year and by this had acquired a settlement in Hendon. In 1757 Ann Butler another widow with three young children confessed that she had been born in Southwark and had no other settlement.

It is difficult to calculate how many “out poor” there were in Hendon in the first half of the eighteenth century. Mrs. Corder, our very helpful archivist, found me bundles of examination papers, certificates of settlement from other parishes and removal orders to and from other parishes. Twelve settlement certificates from other parishes survive from the period 1704-1751. A certificate was a legal acknowledgement by a parish that ‘John Smith’ had a settlement in that parish and that the parish was financially responsible for him. Labourers in Hendon had settlements in Edgware, Totteridge, Ridge, St. Andrews, Holborn, Abbots Langley, Monken Hadley and Aldenham. Five certificates come from more distant parishes – Stevenage, Redbourn, Little Gaddesden; Bisbury (Staffs.) and the greatest traveller from Llanvylling in Montgomery. The overseers of that parish declared that John Wynn, accompanied by his wife Winifred and their six children had a settlement in that parish as a “yeoman of the borough”. They provided this information for “Poole in Montgomery and all other parishes in Great Britain”.

Sometimes a certificate from another parish was not enough. Widows were liable to removal to a parish where their husband had a settlement. Only five removal orders, 1737-1757, survive. Four widows had “lately intruded” themselves into Hendon and were to go – one to Aldenham, one to Abbots Langley, one to High Barnett and Sarah Darben with Diana, 8 years and Mary, 5 years and a boy “about five weeks not yet baptized” was sent back to Stain(e)s, Middlesex. Robert Saunders and Mary his wife had to go back to Hornsey – Robert “being lunatick”.

But six times in the same period, Hendon had to take back its own poor from other parishes. A widow with two children had become chargeable on the rates in St. Anne’ s Westminster; another widow with two very young children was returned from Mouldsey (Molesley), Surrey a couple with a young child came back from Totteridge and another couple from Hampstead. Mary Hurst a single woman had “intruded’ into Rotherhithe and was sent home.

It is dangerous to generalise about movements of the labouring poor between 1700 and 1750 from a surviving handful of examinations, certificates and removal orders. Hendon had a much larger population than most villages: Two main roads, Watling Street to the north-west and the North Road not far away, must have brought more than average the number of people seeking work in London and perhaps getting no further than Hendon., But what survives must be typical if it is random survival and it proves that working people did not move far in search of work. A circle with a radius of ten miles would cover most of-the parishes mentioned.

NEWS ABOUT HADAS PEOPLE

Two HADAS members are now proud parents,. Dave ‘and Jennifer King’s first child was born towards the end of November – a son. His name is Philip Hugh and

we’re told that Mum and baby – not to mention Dad – are all doing well. Congratulations are in order and we shouldn’t be surprised if there was a tiny trowel in his first Christmas stocking.

Have you ever heard of Strawberry-pickers’ Palsy? It sounds like one of those bad jokes in a funny film, comparable with Housemaid’s Knee for one HADAS member it’s been bad all right – but certainly no joke. Bryan: Hackett is one of our keenest under-18 members. For several years he •

was junior representative on the HADAS Committee, until he ‘retired’ last year to prepare for.0 Levels. Last, summer he started his school holidays by joining a dig at St.Albans. The evening of the first day he sudden realised that there was no feeling in his feet and legs and nothing he tried would bring it back. Later, in hospital, he was told that he had developed a rare but not unknown complaint Strawberry-pickers’ Palsy. It results from a trapped nerve in his knee – and alas, the cure is long, slow and tedious, ,We’re glad to report that now, some months later, recovery is on its Way. Bryan was able to return to school at UCS for the autumn term, but his summer vacation was wrecked and, for the moment, there’s no hope of his enjoying any form of sport.

This is the first time the Newsletter has heard of this complaint, but we feel it must be one of the natural hazards for an archaeologist, who spends so much time on his/her knees. We’send Bryan our very best wishes for his complete recovery.

HADAS members have been on the move this autumn. Three long-standing members have left the Borough, though we hope very much that their contacts with HADAS will not be completely broken.

One is Daisy Hill, a Vice-President of the Society and our Hon. Secretary through the later 1960s.There was a note with her Christmas Card this year to say that in mid-December she was off to a new home in Chesterfield. We know Hendon will miss Daisy greatly – she has lived in Burroughs Gardens for many years, and has been a tower of strength to many a local voluntary organisation; we have a feeling that she will miss Hendon too, so we hope to see her still, from time to-time.

Andrew and Joan Pares, members since 1975 – when Andrew Pares was Mayor of Barnet and opened a HADAS exhibition at Church Farm House Museum – moved recently from Hadley to Northwood, to be nearer their grandchildren. ‘But it isn’t all that far,’ Mrs.Pares’ said comfortingly at the November lecture, ‘and we hope to be able to keep in touch with our interests here’.

Also moving house were Brian and Rosemary Wibberley and their three children. We’re glad to say their move was only a matter of a few streets, so they will continue to support HADAS actively in Chipping Barnet. We shan’t forget their contribution to our 21st birthday party in 1982 – that magnificent boar’s head they lovingly decorated and the sight of Brian proudly bearing it into the banquet at the head of the corps of HADAS cooks.

“CHRISTMAS 198S’AT WHITBREADS Report by Isobel McPherson

No meteorological disasters threatened the HADAS Christmas Dinner this year. We set off by coach or car or public transport through mild autumn weather on December 6th and walked in from busy Chiswell into the 18th century. The cobbled yard was so immaculate that one could scarcely believe that the famous draught horses were still stabled there. (They are, but must surely “have their exits and their entrances” through other by-ways). Drinks in the Directors’ entertainment suite,’ a quick look at the Speaker’s Coach;and then we were on our way to the Sugar Room for dinner, through a small,. but very interesting museum of the brewing trade and Whitbreads in particular.

HADAS celebrations are always enjoyable and this one was certainly no exception.
Under the lovely Queen Post roof, round tables well-spaced made conversation easy. The food was good – special, but not heavily traditional – and we were admirably cared for by Whitbread’s staff. While we relaxed over coffee Dorothy sprang surprise on us and our Chairman, who was, we learned celebrating his birthday with us. The small gift he received was appropriate to the setting (no – it was not a bottle!) Before we moved on into the magnificent Porter Tun Room of 1784, with its unsupported King Post roof – the second largest in Europe – we were given a short history of this impressive building.

Some of us may have approached the Overlord Embroidery with a degree of condescension considering any attempt to rival the Bayeux Tapestry as a touch presumptuous but we were deeply impressed by this record of our own times. We could not be aware of all the technical problems involved in translating the artist’s vision into an artifact, worked on by many hands, but we could appreciate some of the skills involved the deliberately vigorous, even coarse working is perfect for its theme- stand close and you are distracted by corded edges and the puffiness of skin areas, stand away and you are won over by the totally convincing mixture of realism and formality.

Some of us were driven home under the Christmas lights of Regent Street, others said Goodbye in the cobbled courtyard. All went off with a renewed sense of gratitude to Dorothy, who always finds the perfect venue and shoulders the burden of organ­isation which takes up many hours of her time. Though we may have noticed that she was tired that night; none of us knew that she was seriously under the weather, as she still is at the time of writing, though she says she is well on the mend. By the time this appears in the Newsletter, We hope she will have recovered completely.

NEWS FROM THE DOCUMENTARY GROUP

A Note on Hedge-dating

“NAB”, which is the quarterly Newsletter of the British Association for Local History, has some interesting material for documentary researchers in its fourth issue. There is a note, for instance, on a subject which straddles both arch­aeology and local history – the dating of hedges.

Fourteen years ago BALH’s forerunners, the Standing Conference on Local History, together with the Botanical Society of the British Isles, organised a conference on ‘Hedges and Local History’, at which Dr. Max Hooper unveiled his theory on how to date hedges from the number of species they contained. This now well-known theory, says “NAB” has not turned out to be quite the instant tool that archaeologists and historians once hoped. Within its limitations however, it has provided useful dating information and has helped to concentrate thought on the whole subject of hedge-dating. BALH members are now asked to say whether another conference on this interesting topic, at which recent developments in techniques can be explored, would be relevant at this time. HADAS – which is a corporate member of BALH – has written with some enthusiasm to support the idea of such a conference.

Many members will recall that, even in our somewhat urban landscape, we have been concerned in the dating of two historic hedges, using data based on Dr.Hooper’s system. These were the perimeter hedge of the Bishop of London’s estate, a portion of which still goes through Lyttelton Playing Fields in Hampstead Garden Suburb, and the famous hedge which crosses part of the Old Fold golf course at Hadley, behind which the Earl of Oxford’s troops were said to have been originally deployed at the Battle of Barnet (Easter, 1471). Paddy Musgrove, who has always taken a particular interest in hedge-dating, tells us that he checked the Lyttelton Playing Fields hedge only the other day, and found that it still contains eleven species, He also points out that in winter the hedge-bank and ditch figure more prominently than they did when we first surveyed the hedge in its overgrown summer state.

NEW LOCAL PUBLICATIONS

Wartime Camden published by Camden Libraries & Arts Dept. £1.50 (plus 30p p&p)

This booklet, similar in format to the excellent Camden History Reviews, takes us – with a kind of horrified nostalgia – through two world wars on the home front, rounded off with a delicious anti-climax description of ‘the day peace broke out’. The illustrations are well produced and sometimes shocking – once the scars have been erased, how quickly the devastation of bomb damage is forgotten

The booklet is based on essays submitted to a competition held by Camden History Society in 1981 and on material shown in the ‘Camden at War’ exhibition of 1980. Available from libraries in Camden or write to Local History Library, Swiss Cottage. 88 Avenue Road, NW3 3HA.

The Pinn: No.1 Pinner Local History Sobiety. £1.65 (25p p&p)

This is the first in a series of occasional magazines reporting on research carried out by this lively and enterprising society. Seven projects are described in the opening issue ranging from a starter with the splendid title ‘The Stench of Progress’ (all about the inter-relationships of the newly discovered water-closet, cholera andthe River Pinn) to Pinner’s historic hedges (four of them) and to the working of Pinner’s Poor Law (1782-1845). Order from PLHS. 45 Lincoln Road, Harrow, HA2 7RH.

Holy Innocents Church, Kingsbury by Geoffrey Hewlett £1 (25p p&p)

Twenty-eight page history of this interesting parish church (less than mile from Barnet’s boundary at the Hyde) and its architect, just published in honour of the Church centenary. Available by post from 39 Wemborough Road, Stanmore, HA7 2EA

Newsletter No. 154: December, 1983

TRAILER FOR WEST HEATH, 1984

Roll up, roll up and book your summer holiday now, folks! WEST HEATH Mesolithic excavation will re-open for a limited season of 6-7 weeks on June 16, 1984. Digging will continue seven days a week to accommodate all volunteers, so please mark the date in your diary whether you are a mid-week or a week-end digger – or both!

Attractions include lakeside setting, rustic scenery and invigorating air; amenities include zoo, cafe, loos and weekly band concerts.
Lots of lovely HADAS people, too – and the site’s not bad, either!

Old (and new) friends very welcome and your call is eagerly awaited. You don’t have to make a definite commitment now, but a call will assure you of a place on the ‘Interested’ list, and we will contact you later to finalise details. People prepared to answer questions from the public about the excavation and the work of the society are especially needed either on an occasional or a regular basis.

Please ring Margaret Maher (907 0333) or Sheila Woodward (952 3897)

HADAS DIARY

Tues Dec 6 Dinner at Whitbreads Brewery, Chiswell Street, EC1. If you have arranged to join this Christmas outing, please note that your ticket and an information sheet, with details of the coach, etc, are enclosed with this Newsletter.

Programme for 1984. We have been notified that the library will be closed on the first Tuesday of January. Therefore our first lecture will take place on second Tuesday, which is:

Tues Jan 10 Reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon buildings at West Stowe, nr. Bury St Edmunds by Richard Darrah

Tues Feb 7 The HADAS excavation at Church End, Hendon, 1973-74 by Ted Sammes

Tues Mar 6 Twenty-five years of excavation in Wiltshire by John Musty

Tues Apr 3 Under Water Archaeology today by Alexander Flinder

Tues May 15th Annual General meeting

TAILPIECE TO THE SUMMER PROGRAMME

If you went on the HADAS outing into Gloucestershire last July you are not likely to have forgotten the reproduction of the huge Woodchester Roman mosaic, with its million and a half tesserae, which we saw displayed in a redundant non-conformist tabernacle.

So you will be interested to know that this 2,300 sq ft replica, built by local farmers Bob and John Woodward, is now being moved to the Unitarian Church in Lewins Mead, Bristol, where it will be possible for more people to see it,

THE HADLEY WOOD DIG …..Brian Wrigley asks us to say… has now closed

The interim report in the October Newsletter stated that it was hoped “to dig rapidly a second trial trench,” mainly to confirm the profile of the first trench. Unfortunately, however, this did not prove possible. “The time and opportunity just didn’t offer,” says Brian.

He is working now on a final report sections, etc, and hopes to publish this in the Newsletter in due course.

BRITONS AND ROMANS IN HERTFORDSHIRE A report on the November lecture by SHEILA WOODWARD

Tony Rook is an old friend of HADAS. We expected his talk to be a blend of entertainment and instruction, and we were not disappointed. In a lively lecture he gave us an account of the widespread evidence of Roman and Belgic occupation in the Welwyn area and his methods of locating and dealing with sites.

The famous Roman bathhouse at Welwyn came to light as a result of a field walk during which pieces of Roman tile were noticed protruding from the bank of the River Nimram. The problems of the ensuing excavation were vividly described. A training dig for new recruits was hastily con­verted to a rescue dig when the construction of the Al(M) began.

The excavation timetable had to be geared to the football fixtures of the adjacent school, whose pitch covered much of the Roman material. Total excavation was not possible and there have been difficulties of interpretation. What, queried Dr Rook, is one to make of a 20 ft square building beside the canal? A fountain? A sacred rhubarb patch? The excavators refer to it merely as ‘The Enigma.’

Recent field walking and site watching have revealed an amazing density of Belgic occupation in the area: one Belgic site per square of the National Grid.

The Belgic settlements are readily identifiable in the Hertfordshire gravels, and even limited excavation has produced a wealth of material. Belgic burials are also being found, though not many are of the so-called ‘chieftain’ class, such as the Panshanger burial now exhibited in the British Museum. There was an exciting detective story of a farmer’s chance find of a battered Iron Age mirror, followed by the discovery many weeks later of its handle, which led to the excavation of the related burial.

Study of the Belgic pottery, especially of the typical S-profile butt beakers, is producing valuable information and the cry ”I’ve had a fit’ from one of the archaeologists requires congratulation, not medica­tion. It simply means that two more potsherds have been fitted together.

Field walking and study of aerial photographs are also beginning to -bring to -light Neolithic, Bronze Age and Medieval sites in the area. Our speaker’s approach to the problems of field walking was sometimes a little unorthodox. For example, if there is difficulty in tracing the ownership of a field lac suggested a simple solution begin walking across the field without permission and the irate owner will soon appear in hot pursuit.

Dr Rook showed some salutary slides illustrating the speed with which a site can be destroyed or damaged by development even when a care­ful watch is being maintained. However, one was left with the overwhelming impression that a programme of field walking and site watching, knowledge­ably and selectively organised, is the surest way of identifying and protecting areas of archaeological interest.

SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING

Councillor Brian Jarman took the Chair at a Special General Meeting of the Society hold before the lecture on November 1, 1983, to consider the following Resolution:

That from the 1st April 1984, the Society’s subscriptions will be:

Members aged 18 – 60 £5 per annum

Members under 18 £3 per annum

Members over 60 £3 per annum

Family membership

First member £5 per annum

Subsequent members £1 per annum

Two amendments were put forward. One, proposed by Mrs Nell Penny, suggested two alterations in the above proposals, namely that members aged 18-60 pay £4 per annum and that corporate membership be £5 per annum.

The other amendment, proposed by Mr Philip Greenall sought to ensure that family membership was open to over-60s at the over-60 subscription of £3 plus 1£ for subsequent members.

After discussion, in which many of the hundred or so members present took part, the first amendment was defeated and the second was carried, the original Resolution, with Mr Greenall’s amendment incorporated, was then put to the meeting and carried by a very large majority.

COMINGS AND GOINGS

We were delighted to hear again a few weeks ago from CAROLE KENT, who was a member back in 1979. Then she went with her pilot husband to West Africa. Now, back in England again, she has rejoined us with her two daughters, MELANIE and RUTH, both keen on archaeology.

In fact Melanie joined HADAS over a year ago, before her mother’s return, and took part in some of the Prehistoric Group river walks last winter. She started on a degree course at the Institute of Archaeology last October. ‘She went in at the deep end,” Mrs Kent told us. “The very first thing she had to do was a 4-day survival course in Sussex, on which she had to kill and skin a rabbit – and she loves animals!’

Our Hon. Treasurer, VICTOR JONES, is on his travels – he departed on November 20 for a 2-month stay in India. It sounds like a real get­away-from-it-all trip. Six weeks will be spent in Madras and then some weeks travelling round. He hopes to catch up on some archaeology, too, Particularly since his starting point, Madras, is the place wherein 1944 Mortimer Wheeler found (in a museum cupboard, not stratified!) the Roman amphora neck which provided the vital clue to a hitherto unsuspected 1st century AD Roman trading post in India. This was at Arikamedu, near Pondicherry – a site to which Wheeler returned a year later to direct one of his ‘model’ digs.

AUBREY HODES, a HADAS member since 1979, and a teacher at Holloway School, tells us that he has applied for early retirement and will leave Holloway in the spring of 1984. The following autumn he hopes to be off to China to teach English literature for a year, though he says this job ­which obviously he is longing to do – is not yet ‘in the bag.’ A formal letter from Peking is still awaited. If he goes, he promises us a column from ‘our China Correspondent’. Meantime, as you see below, we already have one correspondent from China.

HADAS members, either at work or on holiday, are considerable travellers – as this account by ROSE EDGCUMBE shows …

A GLIMPSE OF CHINA

A 3-week tour of China that attempts to cover archaeology, archi­tecture, landscape gardens, the arts and traditional industries, of necessity gives little more than tantalising glimpses of the riches of China’s history. The Chinese themselves, though friendly and welcoming, are not always aware of or interested in their past, and are only just beginning to cater for tourists by providing catalogues, site explana­tions And museum labelling in languages other than Chinese. Fortunately for us, when there was a translation English was the most frequently Used language. Equally fortunately our English tour leader, Philip Barnes, was both erudite and experienced in negotiating with our Chinese tour organizer, so that we sometimes got off the beaten tourist track.

Thus in Hangzhou History Museum, we sidestepped the queues for the mummies and spent our time in rooms where we seemed to be the only visitors looking at finds from two neolithic sites in the area south of the Yangzi mouth.

The Majiabang site was excavated in 1959, and the Hemudu site in 1973; but due to the upheavals of the cultural revolution no proper report of either site has yet been published. The exhibits were labelled only in Chinese, which neither our local guide nor the museum staff could reliably translate, and no catalogue was available, so that we were in­debted to Pr Barnes for information about these finds. The Hemudu site has been carbon-dated to about 4800 BC, the Majiabang site to between 4600-4300 BC, Both are probably an early Thai culture rather than a precursor of the Chinese, who spread to this area only after the unific­ation of the North by the Qin over 4000 years later.

Organic Materials Preserved

Because of the waterlogged and peaty nature of the sites some wooden structures and woven materials have been preserved, in addition to stone and bone artefacts.’ From the Hemudu site we saw wooden fragments with mortice and tenon joints, and fragments of hemp as well as bone noodles and loom weights. In addition to stone tools there were many bone farm­ing implements (bones of alligator, hippopotamus, tiger and elephant were used), and primitive rice seeds and plants were found on the site, giving evidence of rice cultivation. There was also evidence of domestic­ation of pigs as well as of hunting. The Museum contained, too, a good deal of blackware pottery, and evidence of lacquer work had been found.

At the Majiabang site evidence of jute-weaving was found; and the museum contained many jade discs up to 7 or 8 in. in diameter, with holes in the centre, also oblong-shaped pieces with holes at one end, for ‘ritual’ use. (Obviously in China, as elsewhere in the archaeological world, ‘ritual’ covers a multitude of possibilities)

Further north we saw a slightly later Neolithic site (4000 BC): Banpo, near Xian, in Shaanxi province. This was much better presented: the actual site of 50,000 sq w, excavated between 1954-57, has been roofed over, and walkways provided for those who wish to count post holes and judge shares and sizes for themselves. The sites of dwelling houses, storage nits, pottery kilns and burials (some communal, with the sexes separated) are well labelled and described in English. On show is a large collection of stone and bone tools and implements, many very finely executed, painted pottery (notably black geometric patterns on a red _background, but also animal and plant figures), and personal ornaments in bone, stone-and pottery. A small illustrated catalogue was available, so that it-was altogether easier to comprehend this impressive site. But oven here unawareness of our likely interest in the site meant that too little time had been allowed for a really satisfying viewing.

Silent Ranks of Soldiers

Xian, of course, also boasts, at Mount Li, the one site that has been so well publicised that it needs no description the pottery warrior and horse pits east of the mausoleum of Shi Huang Ti, the first emperor of China, of the Qin dynasty (221-207 BC). Here again one could walk through the actual site, and the museum included examples of different types of warriors repainted as they would originally have been. Sets of slides and a translation of the preliminary report by the archaeological team were available. Though we had all read about this excavation, which began in 1974, and had seen illustrations of the life-sized men and horses, we were still unprepared for the overwhelming experience of walking among these silent ranks of soldiers, all individually sculpted, no two faces alike, a real army ready to move off. It was a moving and eerie experience, the stillness somehow emphasising the apparent aliveness of the men and animals. In some places the warriors are still emerging from the ground, or lying tumbled and broken in pitiful fashion.

In the course of our tour we saw many examples of tombs and their contents, ranging from the sacrifice of live slaves and concubines in the Shang dynasty to the exquisite figurines of the Tang dynasty. The clay warriors of the Qin tomb are an intermediate step: life–size and lifelike, as if the sculptors had taken the emperor’s real soldiers as their models. Presumably Shi Huang Ti needed to keep his army alive and fighting; not so the craftsmen who prepared his actual mausoleum: according to a contemporary account they were buried alive to preserve the secrets of the entrance to the tomb, and the marvels within.

More Finds to Come?

In our briefing at the site we were told that excavation of the mausoleum itself is to begin at the end of this year. It is thought likely that the mausoleum was subsequently plundered and burnt, in spite of the emperor’s precautions, so the archaeologists do not know what they will find. In other areas outside the mausoleum they think they may find lifesize figures of court officials and other non-military people.

Xian, formerly the capital city Chang’an and the start of the silk road to the west, boasts a wealth of historical treasures and was for me, the high point of the tour; there are a Buddhist temple and a mosque,pagodas and gardens. The Provincial Museum houses a huge collection from several dynasties of bronzes, pottery, stone carvings, iron implements, frescoes, paintings, gold and silver objects and tomb figurines.

Most impressive was the forest of steles:’ a collection of inscribed tablets (variously given as over 1000, 2000 and 3000 – we seemed to have a lot of trouble translating numbers!) some dating back to the Tang dynasty (AD 618-906). They are in various forms of script, and include classics, history, encyclopaedias, odes and commemorative tombstones, and were used as textbooks for students.

Farming, Fields and Houses

We covered thousands of miles, visited many cities and managed to see an amazingly large number of palaces, temples, Buddhist rock carvings and gardens – almost to the point of getting mental indigestion. A lot of our travel was by train and bus, which gave us a good look at the workers in the countryside. Much of the farming is still done using medieval equipment and techniques which are labour intensive and efficient. We saw, for instance, ploughs drawn by horses, oxen and men, and harrowing done by a 6-man team pushing and Pulling a square wooden harrow.

We even found ourselves helping in the harvest, since the peasants spread their grain over the road and make use of passing vehicles to help thresh it.We found this technique nerve-racking at first, because they dart out into the road in between vehicles to turn over the heap of grin and dodge back at the last second. The crops looked thick and healthy; the harvest good, except in one area where recent severe flooding had rotted the maize and millet in the fields, as well as washing away whole villages.

Houses in the countryside are still built largely in mud-brick as they must have been for centuries. This continuity with the nest is everywhere apparent in China, though the Chinese do not seem consciously interested in their history except insofar as it provides inspiring or warning examples for their present behaviour and aspirations. An enduring memory, which typifies China for me, is of a spirit way to a on tomb: the great carved marble animals stood, some among a tobacco crop, others with maize stalks stacked beside them, others in the midst of a field where a farmer was carefully ploughing round them, taking their Presence for granted. He was amiably acquiescent to our picking our way along the edge of the fields to admire and take photos of him and the animals, but somewhat puzzled by our peculiar curiosity.

If Rose’s report whets your appetite for things Chinese, you may like to know of a trip being arranged next year by the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding. This is their China Tour called Chinese treasures 23 days from August 11-September 2, 1984. It takes in Beijing, Xian, Luoyang, Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Nanjing, Changzhou, Shanghai, Hong Kong and then home. Travel is mainly by rail (including one overnight train) occasionally by bus; and out and back by air. Cost is £1641.

OBITUARY

Many members will have already heard, with great sadness, of the death on October 23 of Christine Arnott’s husband, Eric, following a short illness in the Royal Free Hospital.

Eric had been a member since 1978, but he had been a friend of HADAS long before that, as he often accompanied Christine on outings from the time she first joined us over 12 years ago. Christine has been a Committee member almost as long as she has been a Society member, and Eric supported her in the many jobs that fall into a Committee members lap.

After his most distinguished war service (he was an RAF Pathfinder with a double DFC) Eric became an accountant and banker. Many people will remember him particularly for the gentle, unobtrusive way in which he looked after the financial side of our annual Minimarts, moving quietly among the stallholders to collect the takings, totting them up with in­credible speed and telling us how well we had done almost before the door closed behind the last customer.

HADAS will miss him very much: we shore in small part the great loss suffered by Christine and her daughters and son, and our deepest sympathy goes to them all.

NEWS FROM THE GROUPS

Prehistoric. The new series of river walks mentioned in the November Newsletter will start on December 11, when we begin our investigation of the Dollis Brook. meet in Brent Street, at the east corner of the North Circular Road/Brent St junction, at 10 an. Please let Sheila Woodward know on 952 3897 if you intend coming, so that we don’t move off without you. Urgently needed on this (and subsequent) walks: a Photograph or two might be even better, as we would like to record in both black and white shots and also colour slides.

Roman. A very satisfying working weekend was enjoyed by the Roman Group on November 12-13 at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Teahouse. With extra assistance from two valiant husbands the 8 crates of Brockley Hill pottery were moved from Institute to Teahouse. Indexing the collection continued, as did pottery drawing. The contents lists of the crates were chocked and renewed. Some frail pots were repaired (a cold job, done on the verandah to avoid fumes from the repairing kit) and research continued on particular items, such as amphora bases, mortarium stamps, and London Ware. The group was joined by two new members who soon found their feet (though not, we hasten to say, literally!) among the bowls, jars, flagons, dishes, tazze and kiln furniture.

Next meeting of the Roman-Group will be on Monday Dec 12 at 94 Hillside Gardens, Edgware at 8 pm. If you hope to come, please let Tessa Smith know on 953 9159.

DOCUMENTARY – The STATUTORY LIST

Thanks to LBB’s Planning Department (to which we are most grateful) HADAS now has the use, on loan, of a copy of the DoE’s new Statutory List for this Borough of Buildings of Architectural and Historic Interest. It is not the final word on the subject – some corrections are still required in this List – but it is what secondhand booksellers would call ‘a good working copy,’ and it has enough information for the Documentary Group to he able to start on a new project.

This will be to make (using the Statutory List as basis) an index of all Listed buildings in the Borough, with as much information as we can about each of them.

Listed building means anything from a Lutyens church like St Jude’s, Hampstead Garden .Suburb, or the historic 15c Tudor Hall in Wood Street Barnet, to street furniture such as a milestone in Brent Street, the whetstone that provides Whetstone’s name or statues like ‘Peace’ in Friary Park or ‘La Deliverance’ (known locally as ‘rude Annie’ because of her lack of apparel) at Henly’s Corner, The milestones and street furni­ture are of particular interest to HADAS because when we made recomendations for this List back in 1975 we put in a whole section on street furniture, which until then had never figured on a List for Barnet. Our only regret is that some things we suggested – horse troughs, drinking fountains, Victorian post boxes – have not made it.

The Society has for years had an index of the old Statutory List, to which we added as new buildings were listed. It was originally made for us by Adrian Jeakins, Alex’s father, and it has always been a .rose: useful tool. ‘The information in it came from original Lists, some of which (for Hendon, for instance) were dated as early as April, 1947. We feel that we will get a better result now if we start again from scratch, rather than trying to alter the old index; and we also propose to extend the scope.

For instance, the DoE List has a brief note about most buildings: the notes are mainly architectural and are a bit short on history. We will start with the DoE information, and hope to build it up, particularly on the historical side. We will note wherever a Blue Plaque or other inscription appears on a building and record the precise wording. Also it would also nice to have each building photographed, and put a strip of contact prints on the back of the index card.

This will be a long-term exercise, on which people can do as much or little as they choose. Anyone who would like to take part will be most warmly welcomed by the Documentary Group. We want three kinds of help:

those prepared to copy out index cards, either in clear handwriting or on their own typewriters;

those who will Lake a short list of buildings and see what further information they can dig out about them, either in LBB Local History Collection or further afield if necessary;

photographers, prepared to take several exterior shots of buildings, either in their own vicinity or in other part of the Borough.

If you would like to help in any of these ways, please ring Brigid Grafton Green (455 9040) and let her know.

A CRY’ FOR HELP from our site-watching organiser, ELIZABETH SANDERSON

As you know, HADAS maintains a watch on developments within the Borough of Barnet which might be of some archaeological interest. Our intrepid site-watchers can often be seen lurking where holes are being – or are likely to be – dug.

First stage of the monitoring procedure (after we have picked out possible sites on the weekly planning application lists) is for someone to look at the plans at the local planning department during weekday office hours, so gathering information which will help us decide if actual site-‘ watching will be worthwhile. Sometimes only part of a site is of interest, and the plans may show that part is not affected; or plans may show lines of trenches to be cut for drains or other services.

We desperately need volunteers for this particular stage of site-watching, because so many members are at work during normal office hours. If you happen to have time free on weekdays between 9-5 please let me, know on 950 5106. I should add that higher degrees in architecture are not necessary! If you are interested in helping, even though you are not used to studying plans, please give me a ring.

SITES TO WATCH

In the last month or so planning applications have been submitted to the Council for the following sites, which might have some archaeological interest if the application were granted:

John Croons, Edgware Way. 905-25 High Road 2 blocks and access road

3 Potters Rd, New Barnet 3 storey block

land between 104/6 Blundell Rd, Burnt Oak. Two storey maisonettes

3 Farrington Cottages, Moon Lane, Barnet

land adj. Featherstone Hse, Wise NW7

land fronting Meadowbank Cottage,Barnet Rd, Arkley

land adj 43 Ripon Way, Boreham Wood

24 Farnham Close, N20 3 detached houses

that development is imminent, Elizabeth Sanderson would greatly appreciate the information, on 950 3106.

LONDON AT WAR

LAMAS held its 18th Local History Conference at the Museum of London on November 19. This year war was the theme: not, perhaps, the most appealing of subjects. Such however is the popularity of this conference that attendance was as high as ever and the audience as lively and as questioning.

The real joy of the event lies in meeting friendly colleagues and having a chance to discuss with them the triumphs and disasters of local history work. HADAS incidentally, had a stand, but it was disappointing that only three HADAS members attended the conference. Jeremy Clynes organised a bookstall, for which we thank him very much; Brigid Grafton Green put on a display of photographs; and George Ingram attended his first major public function since his operation: it was a real pleasure to sec him enjoying himself again.

There were four speakers. Rosemary Weinstein, of the Museum of London, talked about London in the Civil War, and particularly of the 18 miles of trench and rampart, studded with 24 forts, thrown up at speed by a fiercely •independent citizenry when the King’s forces got worryingly close the fortifications are as much an archaeological as an historical problem, and the pity is that we have no evidence for them from the ground. A few street names – Mount St, in Mayfair, and some Castle Streets – indicate where the forts may have been sited. Documentary sources include William Lithgow’s Surveigh of London, 1643, which records his perambulation of the defences; and Vertue’s map of London’s Civil War defences, drawn in 1738, nearly a century afterwards.

C W Harrison, Borough Archivist of Lewisham, described Deptford Dockyard, taking us back to a possible origin in 1420 and then the first establishment of formal facilities by Henry VIII in 1513. The yard was at its peak during the Napoleonic wars, with Nelson’s flagship at the Nile, the Neptune, being launched at Deptford in 1797. The last ship to go down to launch was HMS Druid in 1869.

Alistair Glass, an architect in the Ministry of Defence, outlined the history of barrack buildings, pointing out what a long gap there .. as in such building in Britain. In the 1200 years from the departure of the 1 ;ions c.410 AD to the Restoration in 1660 no accommodation for soldiers was built except in specially defended spots like the Tower.

Mr Glass started with houses built for the Foot and Hors* Guards at Hampton Court in. 1661, than took us through the remaining 17c, the 18 (when billeting rather than barracks was favoured) into the two periods of almost frenzied building– one from 1792-1815; the other, as a result of conditions in the Crimea, from bout 1860-onwards.

The outstanding ‘lecture’ of the day – and the most recent, in time ­came from Dr Wood, Deputy Keeper of the Department of Sound Records at The ­Imperial War Museum. He took just 36 weeks as his theme – the Battle of 1940-41.

Records of the Blitz

The Imperial War Museum has since 1971 had a policy of recording oral history. The majority of its records to date, deal with the First war, but it is just getting into its stride in recording the second war. In addition to its own recordings, it keeps selections from the media. – the BBC’s September 1957 programme, “The Winter Of the Bombs;”

Radio’s 1981 “London Can Take It;” and part of the Thames TV current series on the second war.

Instead of the usual pattern of slides held together by commentary, we had cassettes and commentary, both of high standard. For those who had lived through the London Blitz many memories were evoked; and it was interesting to note that people born long after the Blitz seemed to find the session equally gripping.

The commentary didn’t shirk unpalatable facts – for instance, when the Blitz began on September 7, 1940, London was ‘almost undefended:’ and what equipment there was: – searchlights, anti-aircraft guns – was ‘prehistoric.’ In the early winter some who used public shelters had to be treated for frostbite because there was no heating; and shelter sanitary arrangements were nil, so that ‘it hit you in the face as you went in., In the week following the heavy raid of May 10, 1941 (the night the House of Commons was hit) one-third of London streets were blocked and only one mainline station was operating; fires were still burning in places a week after the raid.

Most unforgettable were descriptions by ordinary Londoners give twenty or thirty years later. There was the lady who was dining at the Cafe de Paris the night it was hit. She came to in a dim, trance like aftermath, in no pain but unable to move. She was lying partly across a man, whom she later found to be a dead Scotsman in a kilt, part ly her side on the ground, her hand outflung inertly, palm upward. A figure shambled through the greyness and she felt it pick up her hand pull the rings off it. “There was,” commented Dr Wood drily, looting after the Cafe de Paris bomb. It was thought that everyone there must be rich.”

Mordant and Macabre

One searing description came from an appropriately named Miles Mordant, in his story of what it was like suddenly to be put on mortuary duty for the first time. He did not spare us the grisly details, but one of the most interesting points he made was the way that his mind shied away from coping with the gruesomeness and instead concentrated on an unimportant sideline. “It was the form that worried me most,’ he said. “I couldn’t get it off my mind that I had to fill in a form for each of of the bundles – things like estimated height, age, sex, colour of eyes ­and they hadn’t left me enough room on the form between the lines to do it ..

Macabre and funny at the same time was the description given by a lady who saw the bomb explosion at Bank station. “We were all sleeping on the tube platforms by then,” she said, “and the terrible thing was, the bomb came down the escalator. I don’t mean step by step, but it slanted so that it came down to the platform; and just as it came down, the train came in too …”

some snap judgments are interesting. “It wasn’t a bit humdrum then,” one man said, “rather exciting really, like a football match.” “You couldn’t go window-shopping any more,” complained another; and there weren’t no class distinctions, and that was good,” said a third.

We were also played background recordings about general conditions ­for instance, stories from a midwife, working in Kings Cross in 1939 – which make today’s poverty trap sound like paradise. “Often when I delivered a baby – and most people didn’t go into hospital then – there was nothing in the house except the mother, perhaps several children, and a few sticks of furniture. No bed linen or blankets, no crockery, no food. I’d be offered tea afterwards – in a jam jar. I used to give a friend of the mother – there was always a friend then, helping – a 6d. From that she could get enough stewing beef and 2d worth of potherbs ­potatoes, carrots, onions – to make a big stew for the family.’

Between 20,000-30,000 Londoners were killed in the Blitz (that doesn’t include later casualties of rocket and doodle-bug days) but one of the most interesting statistics was that, in its wisdom, the Government foresaw that the bombing of a civilian population would produce appalling nervous shock, comparable to the shell shock of the World War 1 trenches. So seven neurosis clinics were set up in London to deal with disoriented citizens. By the end of the Blitz they had treated 29 patients.

COMMITTEE CORNER

The Committee met on November 4 and these are some of the matters which were discussed.

A proposition put forward by BILL FIRTH at the last AGM was considered that HADAS should publish an annual Journal or Transactions. After debating the various implications, and considering the impact on the News­letter, it was decided that, at the moment, it would be wiser not to undertake such a financially heavy commitment as an annual publication. It was, however, suggested that a small working-party be set up to consider the present production of the Newsletter and to look for ways in which costs could be kept down or production and distribution methods improved.

It was reported that, under the leadership of BRIAN WIBBERLEY, some work had been done last summer on a resistivity survey at East Barnet of a field by St Mary’s Church and Church Farm. Mr Wibberley’s interim report was noted, together with the fact that he intends doing further traverses of the field during next spring/summer, prior to a final report.

Copies of the new leaflet on Archaeology in Barnet (the production stages of which have been mentioned in earlier Newsletters) were available. It has been designed by LBB Planning Department and is based on material and drawings provided by HADAS. It will be distributed free by libraries throughout the Borough and will be available to schools. A copy is enclosed with this Newsletter for your own use, and it will be much appreciated if you are able to show it to non-archaeologist friends who might. be interested. Should you like a few extra conies to pass around, please let Brigid Grafton Green know, on 455-9040.

During October an opportunity arose to take aerial photographs of much of the northern part of the Borough. ELIZABETH SANDERSON achieved the miracle of laying on an aircraft at infinitesimal cost and PETER FAUVEL-CLINCH took the photos. These have not been studied fully yet but it is hoped that when they are we may gain some archaeological insights. The Committee warmly thanked both Elizabeth and Peter for their work.

HADAS has been invited to lend material on the West Heath dig to the Libraries Department of the Borough of Camden for an exhibition on Hampstead Heath to be held at St Pancras Library during December and early January. The exhibition may possibly travel later to other venues ouch as Lauderdale House and Burgh House. It has not been possible to lend artefacts, as our West Heath researchers are now in the final frenetic weeks of preparing the West Heath report (deadline is December 1) and all the flint is required for final checking, plotting distribution patterns, etc. However, we have been able to lend some of our extensive collection of photographs and drawings.

The small exhibit of Roman finds from Brockley Hill, which was mentioned in the September Newsletter, has now been mounted by HADAS at Church Farm House Museum, in the room to the left of the door as you enter. There are two showcases: one on the making of pottery at Brockley Hill, the other on Roman kitchens. If you should be near the Museum, do drop in and see the display. You will notice that this particular room now wears quite a Roman look, as the Museum’s Moxom Collection. is displayed in a wall case, and the Roman urn found behind a house in Sunny Gardens road and borrowed by HADAS on permanent loan from the finder is also on display.

ANGLO-SAXON CHURCH BUILDING

Latest volume in the Shire Archaeology series is Anglo-Saxon ­Architecture, by Mary and Nigel Kerr. It is concerned principally with the stone buildings. which survive from the years between the end of the Roman occupation and the Norman Conquest.

This really boils down to churches, because vernacular Saxon building ­halls, houses, palaces – was in timber Indeed the Anglo-Saxon verb ‘to build’ was ‘get timber,’ which speaks for itself. The authors do in fact devote one chanter to wooden buildings, and include in it some material about West Stow – the subject of our first lecture in 1984 (see p.1 of this Newsletter).

The chapters on stone church building cover the form and function of churches, materials (including the re-use of Roman material, as at Hexham) and architectural decoration and detail. The excellent photo­graphs and diagrams show some of HADAS’s old friends (such as Earl’s Barton and Brixworth) and others too far away for us to have reached on a day trip.

. This book fills a gap, not only in the Shire series but also in the mainstream history of building in Britain. It costs £1.95 and is obtainable from Pete Griffiths, 8 Jubilee Avenue, London Colney, forts AL2 1QG. Add 30p for packing and postage.

NEWSLETTER NO. 153. NOVEMBER, 1983.

PROGRAMME NEWS.

Tuesday November 1st. Britons and Romans in Hertfordshire. Tony Rook.

Tony Rook from Welwyn is known to most of us, and well remembered for his lively lecture on Roman Bath Systems which he gave us in January, 1979. He is an extramural Lecturer in Archaeology for Cambridge and London Universities. He directed the Roman excavations in Welwyn from 1960 and was the chief instigator in saving the Baths under the Motorway which many of us may have visited. His most recent /dig’ is a huge boundary ditch in a rural area in which he has located a

Belgic farmstead, a Roman cemetary, a Bronze Age domestic site, a Roman tile factory, a late Norman-Early English chapel and settlements etc.,and a Belgic burial with a celtic mirror (now on display in the British Museum.) This exploration leads him to say in his letter – “I am fascinated by what happened as the Britons became the Romans in Britain, and what on (or in) earth happened to them after 410. I have

some outrageous ideas about this.” I am sure we shall learn what some of these ideas are on November 1st.

Sunday November 20th. Junior Members Roman walk in the City of London. 2;00 p.m. (Separate slip for Junior Members enclosed.)

Tuesday December 6th. Christmas Party. Dinner at Whitbread’s Brewery, Chiswell Street, and viewing of the Overlord Embroidery. A few places are still available for this outing – please apply to Dorothy -Newbury, 55, Sunningfields Road, N.W.4. (203-0950). Coach pick-up points will be circulated later.

PLEASE NOTE

THE LECTURE ON NOVEMBER 1ST ALL BE PRECEDED AT 8:P.M. BY A SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING (ALREADY NOTIFIED FORMALLY TO MEMBERS.)

Professor John Coles on Bronze Age Rock Carving in S. Scandinavia..

Reported by Ted Sammes.

Returning to speak to us after a period of 4 years, Professor John Coles held us spellbound as he addressed us on his work over the just eight years. This work had been aided by others and concerned the Bronze Age rock carvings of Scandinavia. These he said were to be found on large rock outcrops, many of which have been smoothed by glacial action as evidence by the score marks which they bear.

It would seem that prehistoric man preferred these sites in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Within these countries there are many thousands of rock carvings of a variety of types. In some cases rocks which have an intrusive pattern of quartzite have been chosen, possibly .as decoration or to represent snakes. The size of such carvings varies considerably from a few inches to men larger than life.

The production of these patterns would have been accomplished by the use of successive blows with a hard hammer stone. An experiment had demonstrated that the production of a simple round Pup mark required the application of ten thousand blows of the stone to produce only a small’ symbol many of the rocks chosen have, nearby springs of Water.

The carvings ‘were first recognised in 1626, and much pioneer work was done in. the 19th Century. Finding the symbols produced some difficulties as the rocks are often covered with moss and lichens. Since that time, 1881, many more sites have been found, mainly due to the efforts of amateur Archaeologists each working in their own areas. Some of the earlier’ recorded ones have not been found probably due to forestry and other vegetation cover.

Recording the symbols once found is not easy but they can be made more readily visible by using very oblique lighting for photography, or by chalking in the outlines. The Swedish Antiquities Department are filling in the engravings with either red or white paint. Other Archaeologists are not allowed to carry out this technique!! Difficult .marks can sometimes be recorded using a brass-rubbing technique Very good results have been obtained by using fresh grass as a rubber.

In taking drawings and sections the use of a type of depth comb is a great aid to securing the profile.

In some areas tall Bronze Age barrows exist’ and the burials when they occur in wet conditions are found in wooden coffins with weapons and jewellery for the after life. Many such burials also have well preserved clothing. During this period there is no trace of local mining of lead, copper, tin or silver. These were 11 obtained over long distances by trade, probably by exchanging amber which wars plentiful in Scandinavia.

Returning to a discussion of the symbols he said that these covered many types of animals, cattle and oxen. -Sometimes these were harnessed to an and or plough. Chariots and, boats were found, there human figures are depicted they had no faces or eyes, and mostly they are male and phallic. “Foot-sole” marks looking like shoe marks are also found and these usually point towards water. At that time the water level of the sea would have been higher than it is to-day. There are hunting scenes, and flotillas of boats houses, children and sheep are not represented.

Professor Coles concluded by discussing the changes in the relative heights of land and sea and the climatic conditions which would have put most of these carvings near the water’s edge in the Bronze Age. He believed that the designs, most of which were probably executed during the period 1700 – 1500 B.C, could have taken many years to produce.

RECORD BREAKING MINIMART.

Brigid Grafton Green.

This year’s Minimart, held on familiar ground at St. Mary’s Church Hall, Hendon, on October 15th, was a record breaker. At the time of going to press the net total takings top £650. They are still climbing, Dorothy Newbury thinks. The highest figure we have made before – in February, 1981 was £565.

When we first held a Minimart in March 1974 we rejoiced mightily at making £115. This Year is the eighth since then (we’ve missed only one year, 1980) and perhaps someone less ham-handed at figures that I am can work out whether £650 in 1983 keeps pace with, or betters, inflation since 1974.

We’ve been asked to thank everyone who combined to make this such a success – the providers of goods, without whose generosity we would have had nothing to sell; the sellers and the setter-uppers who worked like demons on the day; the buyers, who either liked or didn’t count the cost; and, above all, the two Queen-pins, Dorothy Newbury and Christine Arnott, who organised the whole thing and lived with it for, the best part of six weeks beforehand.

As always, everyone will carry away from Minimart ’83 memories of some unforgettable moments. I have two. One is the astonished face of one of our tougher male diggers who was approached by a small boy of three who handed him something saying politely “I think this is your handbag.” The other is the equally

staggered look on our Hon. Treasurer’s countenance when informed that a bag of French bread, uneaten during the ploughman’s lunch, had been left because it was thought he might like to give it to the horses at College Farm. “But I don’t know the horses at College Farm,” he objected, in shattered accents.

NEWS FROM THE GROUPS.

Documentary Group. This month JEREMY CLYNES provides a note on:-

THE DROVERS.

The Snowdonia National Park Study Centre, which H.A.D.A.S., Members know well, recently ran a course on Drovers and Drove Roads of North Wales. It was led by a member of the Centre Staff, Tomos Elias, who has done a great deal of research on the subject. —

What was surprising was the number of times the names Barnet and Edgware turned up in the documents he was studying, these being prime destinations for drovers with sheep or cattle on the hoof.

At least from the time of the Norman Conquest to the establishment of the railways the most important long distance travelers were drovers, who took sheep — and cattle reared in the remotest areas of England, Scotland and dales to chose parts of the country that consumed the meat – of which London was one of the largest consumers. They sold their beasts at venues such as Barnet Fair to local farmers who would fatten the cattle and then resell them at Smithfield for slaughter.

The drovers and the cattle they brought must have been of great economic importance to our Borough for centuries, yet little research has been done on this so far. Also what was Barnet Fair like? It sounds great fun, from the following extract from the Daily News of 1850:

“A Welsh drover fell among the thimble-riggers at Barnet fair, end was considerably fleeced. He, however, had his revenge in the following fashion. Quitting the town with his drove, he espied ore of his plunderers in the road; with the assistance of a brother drover or two, he made capture of him, fastened him Mazeppa-like astride one of their wildest unbroken colts, started the animal off at a rough trot, and after a ride of four or five miles the fellow,

galled, jaded and three parts dead, was glad to purchase his release from further torment by disgorging his illgotten pelf.”

*NOTE: welsh drovers brought unbroken horses and ponies to the Horse Fair at Barnet; and also cattle – cows, heifers and steers – to the Cattle Fair, held near the Horse Fair but closer in to the town.

We hope to carry in a later Newsletter a more detailed article from Tomos Elias himself on the Welsh end of the story. We would also like to persuade one or more H.A.D.A.S., Members to follow this fascinating topic of study up from the Barnet end. Any volunteers to help in this project will be warmly welcomed – please let Brigid Grafton Green know if you would like to take part, on 455 9040 or at 88, Temple Fortune Lane NW.11.

For new Members who may like to know more about the Snowdonia National Park Study Centre, the Centre is run by the National Park Authority. It organises courses on all aspects of the National Park, including Archaeology. In the next few months there will

be:-

November 11-14 Neolithic Wales.

January 13-16 Bronze Age Burial Ritual.

February 24-27 Prehistoric Settlements.

March 17-23 Introduction to Industrial Archaeology

” Archaeology of Snowdonia

March 23-26 Early Iron Industry in North Wales,-

More information obtainable from:-. The Principal, Plas Tan y Bwich, Maentwrog, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd LL41 3YJ (Phone 076685 324).

Documentary researchers may like advance warning (because it’s likely to get overbooked) of a one-day course being organised by the British Association for Local history on -April 27th next. It consists of a guided tour round the two parts of the Public Record Office starting at Kew at 9:45 p.m. and ending Chancery Lane at 5:p.m. Types-.
of records and the mechanics of P.R.O. research will be discussed. Cost £3 to BALM. Members -£5 non-Members… Apply to BALH,-43, Bedford Square, WC.1.B.3DP.

ROMAN GROUP.

Don’t forget the working potter ‘weekend on November 12/13th. For details, see October News Letter.

PREHISTORIC GROUP..

14 Members of the group met on the 18th October to discuss future plans. These include:-

Surveying. 2 evening lectures on surveying to be given by 1,1r. Lampert, probably during November to be followed by a practical exercise t Moat Mount. Any Members interested should telephone Audrey Hooson, 445-4437.

Stream Walking. ‘Walking of the Silkstream and Dean’s Brook has been completed and it is now proposed to follow the course of the Dollis Brook from South to North. The

initial walk will probably take place early in December. Any Members interested should telephone Sheila Woodward, 952-3897.

Dig at West Heath. .A new season of excavation of the Mesolithic Site on Hampstead Heath will open in June, 1984 and will continue for a period of 6 weeks. Further information will be given in the December Newsletter. Meantime, any Members wanting

further details should telephone Margaret Maher, 907-0333, or Sheila Woodward, 952-3897.

SITES TO WATCH

Among recent applications for Planning Permission; on sites which might be of some Archaeological interest if development were to be approved, are the following:-

Hand and Flower public house, Whetstone Office block.

Bald-faced Stag public house, East Finchley ditto.

Old Fold Golf Club, Hadley single-storey Artisans clubhouse.

Any Member who notices activity (which, in the first two instances, would start with demolition) is asked to let Elizabeth Sanderson know on 950-3106.

LONDON AND MILITARY CONFLICT, is the subject of the 18th Local History Conference (mentioned briefly in the September Newsletter) which is being organised by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society on November 19th at the ,Museum of London.

There will be four main lectures: London in the Blitz; victualling the Navy from Deptford; London barracks; and London in the Civil War. There will also be a wealth of displays of their work by local societies and all the latest local publications will be on sale. Offers of help on the H.A.D.A.S., stall will be most welcome. (Ring Brigid Grafton Green on 455-9040 if you would like to help).

SOMETHING FOR YOUR CHRISTMAS STOCKING?

Latest books for Shire include Ancient Boats (51.95) by Sean McGrail of tine National Maritime Museum; and Discovering Roman Britain (£2,50) edited by David Johnston of Southampton University.

The latter, in gazetteer form with six introductory chapters by the Editor, is of particular interest to H.A:D.A.S., as one of the six gazetteer contributors is Vice-President Ted Sammes. He is responsible for the entries for Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Greater London, Surrey and Sussex.

Copies of these books – and either would make a nice small Christmas present -are obtainable from Pete Griffiths, .8, Jubilee Avenue, London Colne, Herts, AL2.IQG.

MORE ABOUT ARCHAEOLOGY IN GREATER LONDON.

Members will recall that in the June Newsletter TED SAMMES wrote about the now London Archaeological Service which started on April 1st last, funded by the GLC and under the control of the Museum of London. KATE BALEN, Junior Representative of H.A.D.A,S. Committee, attended a meeting in September at the Museum to discuss the new service. She provided a detailed report for the Committee, and here are some of the points which she made in that report:-

About 50 people attended the meeting, from the staff of the Museum, from the professional archaeological units in London and from local societies. HADAS was represented by Victor Jones, Paddy Musgrove, Brian Wrigley and myself.

The present archaeological situation in Greater London was described, and hopes for the future were outlined. Harvey Sheldon, Archaeological Officer to the Museum of London, explained the desirability of getting some kind of coherence of effort among the different groups and units who work in the area; and of starting to cover those parts of Greater London in which no unit or local society exists. He also underlined the need for some kind of even distribution throughout the area of the funds which are available. The service, he thought, should provide economical ways of publishing excavation reports and also prevent backlogs of unpublished information accumulating. Better conservation of finds, and improved photographic and archive facilities are also on the agenda.

The GLC’s initial grant of £250,000 will be spent on staffing the new service with 25 permanent professionals. Funds from the Department of Environment will cover equipment, short-time staff, rates and rents. Local societies which already receive grants for their work were urged to continue to press for them from their local authority.

In the discussion which followed Mr. Sheldon’s exposition, the present precarious position of the GLC was immediately raised. The Museum authorities are, however, quite certain that now this service has been established, it will be very difficult for anyone to get rid of it, even if or when the GLC is dismantled. The storage of archives and finds was discussed. It was quite clear that local societies wished those to be kept

in local areas, but this point may not have been accepted by Museum officials.

There was a strong call for co-operation between professional Archaeologists and local societies regular meetings between the two at local level are planned, and more occasional general meetings will take place between the Museum and local societies.

TRYING IT ON.

About a year ago the Newsletter reviewed the third issue of the Bulletin of Experimental Archaeology, produced each year by the Department of Adult Education at Southampton University. Now the fourth issue has surfaced. This excellent publication deals with different experiments going on all over the world. It is something of a lucky dip – wherever you put in your thumb, you pull out a plum.

Here are one or two items from the present issue, reprinted by kind permission of the Editor of the Bulletin, David Johnston:

The Fracture of Flint Arrowheads,

Three or four years ago Dr. Mark Newcomer of the Institute of Archaeology, London, carried out tests to measure the effectiveness of prehistoric flint arrowheads and to study the way they broke on impact. The Bulletin reports as follows on these experiments.

“Replicas included leaf-shaped points, microlithic arrowheads and wooden arrow tips barbed with flint microliths. These points were fixed to wooden arrow-shafts with an adhesive compound of pine resin and beeswax. The target was composed of layers of meat covering an arrangement of bones. To ensure consistency of aim and force, a replica mesolithic bow with a draw-weight of 21 kg was used in preference to throwing or to the use of a spear-thrower. The range was about 3m.

All the arrowheads penetrated deeply and caused extensive damage to the muscular tissues. The shattering of the flint on hitting the bones often proved identical to the fragmentary points sometimes excavated in association with animal bones; this suggested that many such broken points had been carried back to camp in the carcasses.”

Source: Dr. M.H. Newcomer. .

Institute of Archaeology,

31-34, Gordon Square, W.C.1.

Flint Debitage Analysis.

A study is currently taking place in British Columbia of 38 flint assemblages from 4 regions, mainly from settlement sites: winter pit-houses, cachepit sites, open-air habitation sites, large mammal processing sites and miscellaneous lithic scatters. The Bulletin reports:

“One of the most important findings is that weight of individual flakes is not a good predictor of reduction stages when several tool forms arc replicated. Instead, dorsal face and platform scar counts are highly accurate predictors of early middle and late reduction stages. Crucial to the identification of stages is the recognition of two major flake classes, that is, flakes that are platform remnant bearing (PRB) and those without platforms (shatter). Not only does the relative frequency of shatter flakes decline as reduction proceeds, but also the dorsal flake scar count of shatter flakes is as accurate a predictor of stages as the platform scar counts of PRBs.

The result of the experimental program is the ability to analyse complete samples of debitage by means of a stage classification that uses platform and dorsal scar counts as criteria. This information is related to similar data on tools and cores with the aim of producing a series of measures of assemblage variability with respect to task expediency, row material conservation, tool duration and other middle range concerns in lithic technology.”

Source: Martin Magne, Archaeological Laboratory, Dept. of Anthropology and Sociology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC.

Some of the other subjects covered in this issue of the Bulletin (which is obtainable from the Department of Adult Education, University of Southampton, price £1.50) are the use of antler and bone tools for fluting Folsom points; producing and measuring use-polish on flint hoes; comparing the efficiency of flint and ground-stone axes; the Bronze Age use of rope-traction ands for ploughing; the moving of heavy capstones for megalithic tombs; how vitrification was produced within timber-laced ramparts; and methods of shale-working in Roman Britain.

One article describes an attempt by a group of six Archaeologists to live for a week as a hunter-gatherer group on a remote lake-shore in Sweden. They ate berries, fungi, lichens, fish and a butchered reindeer, but cheated a bit by supplementing their diet with modern bread, cheese and apples. Their activities included fishing with home-made rods and lines; skinning and butchering the reindeer and preparing the skin; cooking and smoking their food; stripping and using birchbark and knapping and working various stones.

It is interesting that they found they had so much to learn just to keep alive that they had no time for any controlled experiments. The Bulletin sums it up “For that, a group greatly experienced in life in such setting would be necessary,” and ends “although the possibilities of finding similar areas capable of supporting such work in Britain are limited, experiments like this are most useful.”

anyone got any ideas for where, or how, H.A.D.A.S., could conduct such an experiment in the London Borough of Barnet?

Sixty years of the Edgware Extension.

by Bill Firth.

In 1967 London Transport published a booklet “Sixty Years of the Northern” to commemorate the diamond jubilee of the opening of the tube from the Strand (now Charing Cross) to Golders Green and Highgate (now Archway). On the 19th November, 1923 the extension of the line from Solders Green to Hendon Central was opened and on the 18th August, 1924 it was opened right through to Edgware. This is, therefore, the time to commemorate sixty years of the Edgware extension.

In 1902 an extension of the line from Hampstead to Golders Green was sanctioned. At the same time the Edgware and Hampstead Railway Company was incorporated to continue the line to Edgware. In 1903 the Watford & Edgware Railway Company was

formed to build a six mile extension from Edgware to Watford. (This line, or something like it, was planned to come into operation in December 1940 but world War iI stopped it – however, that is another story).

The original Company had by now become part of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London Ltd., more generally called the Underground, which absorbed the authorised but deferred extensions and when World War I was aver, started to proceed with the work. Construction started on the Solders Green – Hendon Central section on the 12th June, 1922 when the first sod was cut near Highfield Avenue and 17 months sufficed to see this completed. The Hendon-Edgware section was

not started until November 1922 and was not ready until August 1924 because of the time required to build the Burroughs tunnel North of Hendon Central. On opening day the stations at Colindale and Edgware were not fully completed and Burnt Oak could not be opened until October because of a strike of builders.

From Solders Green the line is built on brick arches or in embankments with
brick retaining walls with brick arch or metal span bridges as far as the North West

side of the Brent Valley. In the early days of railways this stretch would have been an engineering wonder but by the 1920’s such efforts had become commonplace. The line crosses a number of roads and Montpelier Rise, where the road and rail levels are much the same, is actually split into two parts by the railway.

At Brent Station (originally to have been Woodstock and now of course Brent Cross) passing loops were installed to cater for a short lived non-stop train experiment.

The space for the extra-lines is clearly visible from the station platforms and there are two bridges over Highfield Avenue, originally to take four tracks.

The Burroughs tunnel, over half mile long, was built in the same way as the tube tunnels under London and is the main engineering work on the rest of the line which otherwise runs in shallow cuttings or on low embankments.

The stations were designed by the Underground Group’s Architect, S.A.Heaps, and were styled to match the (then) rural surroundings. The front elevation was a Doric collonaded portico and the buildings were designed to take an extension on top, as at Hendon Central. The entrance at Colindale was extensively damaged in an air raid

in World War II and is a modern rebuilding (I don’t think Mr. Heaps nor Mr. Holden, who designed so many tube stations in the 1930’s, would have approved).

At Edgware the possibility of extension to Watford was remembered and the shops and flats on Station Road were built on a raft to facilitate tunnelling through at

a later date.

The main station buildings at Edgware were symmetrical with a range of small shop buildings on the north side to balance the open bus waiting room on the South.. The former range was demolished in 1939 in connection with the works for the not-to­be-completed extension to Bushey Heath. There is an interesting series of pictures, one of the yard, taken over a number of years showing originally a bus turning circle

and a large raised rose bed – as bus traffic increased the rose bed got smaller until inevitably it disappeared altogether.

When opened, Edgware Station had only an island platform with two faces like the other stations. The new, present platform I was built in connection with the proposed extension.

In the early days the Underground group was not happy with the slow build-up of traffic because of the slow residential build-up of Edgware (fast as it may hove become later) and through its associate, the London General Omnibus Company, a number of feeder bus routes were operated with cheap and, in some cases, through road-rail fares. Even the opening of the Metropolitan Railway’s Stanmore branch in 1932 did not stem the tide of commuters from around Cannons Park because until 1939 the Metropolitan’s fares were much higher. Ironically in 1937 there was an outcry at the inadequacy of the tube service and one palliative measure was the operation of nine-car trains – some platforms were lengthened fort his but at the underground stations special arrangements were necessary. (If all the proposed 1938 Northern line extensions had gone ahead none-car trains would have become more common).

To cater for the buses a garage was built at Edgware in 1925 but was rebuilt on a new site in 1939 because the original site was required in connection with the

proposed tube extensions. The other major railway building around the station is the carriage sheds on the North side. -.

Following the extensions at the South end of the line and the integration of the City Branch, with the flying junctions at Camden Town, a problem over the name of the system developed. There were various trials with such names as Edgware, Highgate & Morden, and Morden-Edgware (not popular with Highgate Branch residents) before Northern Lino was adopted in August 1937.

Lastly there are one or two minor features to be noted. When the railway was built, wooden distance posts (from Charing Cross) and gradient posts were installed. Good examples can be seen from the North end of the platform at Brent Cross and at Hendon Central and Colindale. There are also three stylistically interesting “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” notices inside the railway boundary alongside the footpath in Colindale Park.

Sources:

The three main sources for the above are:

Lee, Charles E., Sixty Years of the Northern, London Transport, 1967.

Hardy, Brian, The Northern Line Extension, Underground,9? 1981. (The journal of the London Underground Railway Society).

Jackson, Alan A:, Semi-detached London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1973. STOP PRESS.

A new course at The Polytechnic of North London Post Graduate (part-time) Diploma in Planning for Conservation in Britain.

A Course concerned with key issues and modes of involvement in ‘Planning the conservation of the man-modified environment.

Fee details and application forms on request from The Polytechnic of North

London, Department of Geograply and Geology, The Marlborough Building, 383, Holloway Road, London N.7. Telephone: 01-607-2789. Course starts January, 1984.

Palestine Exploration Fund illustrated lectures at The Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W.1.

Monday 24th October at 5:30 p.m. The Anglican Bishopric in Jerusalem – An Historical Survey by Mr. Patrick Irwin.

Monday 14th November at 5:30 p.m. Early Photographers in the collection of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Monday 5th December at 5:30 p.m. At the Linnean Society, Burlington House -A Zoological Expedition to the Negev. Mr. L. A. Heizler and Dr. Philippa Moss.

Admission to all Lectures free without tickets.

Two Thursday evening Lectures, December 1st & 8th at 7.p.m. at The Institute of Archaeology, Gordon Square, by Dr. Soren Andersen, Director of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Aorhus, Denmark.

December 1st: Recent excavations at Tybrind Vig and the Ertobolle culture. December 8th: New light on the origins of Agriculture in Scandinavia.

Tickets (i2) from Miss Edna Clancy, Room 255, Department of Extra-Mural Studies, 26, Russell Square. W. C. 1.

Newsletter No 152: October, 1983

MINIMART MINIMART
What is Saturday, October 15? Why, it’s a date no HADAS member should forget: our annual Minimart at St Mary’s Church Hall, top of Greyhound Hill, NW4 (opposite Church Farm House Museum) from 11.30 am to3 pm.
Here’s a message from the organisers, CHRISTINE ARNOTT (455 2751) and DOROTHY NEWBURY (203 0950):
P1ease give us your support in every way you can. The Minimart is a mainstay of the Society’s finances – but only because of your help. The ways you can help are:
give us all the goods you can to sell – the more there is the more we shall make for HADAS, and the wider the grin will be on our new Treasurer’s face;
come and have a coffee or a ploughman’s lunch or both – as well as a gossip with new friends or old;
buy our tempting goods – there’s a tradition that no one leaves a HADAS sale without a bargain.
If you want to have your offerings collected, please give one of
us a ring; or you can bring them to the October lecture. Thrice-blessed will he/she who brings their contribution early in the month thus giving us time to sort and price at leisure instead of in a mad rush.
The items we particularly want are: small bric-a-brac; unwanted gifts; toiletries; stationery; jewellery; toys; household linens; and good-as-new men’s, women’s and children’s clothing.
We hope to entice non-members to buy too, so please publicise the Minimart wherever you can. Stickers for display on cars, front windows or in friendly shop will be available at the October meeting.
Finally, two words about food. First, will everyone who can cook please make something for the produce stall? Brigid Grafton Green says she has even extracted a promise from one of our founder members (male) to produce his celebrated rockcakes! It will help if you let her know roughly what you’re bringing – just so we don’t have a thousand sausage rolls and no iced cakes at all!
Secondly, Tessa Smith, organiser of our smashing ploughman’s lunches, would welcome offers of home-made quiches. She’s aiming at 10, so if
you feel able to offer one – or even two – please ring her on 958 9159.

HAVE YOU SIGNED UP YET?
Any HADAS member still looking for an evening class to join this winter is reminded that the Society’s own class, Aspects of Archaeology, is taking-place at Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. Dave King gave the first lecture on September 19, but new members can still join: sign on at Lecture Room B on Monday, October 3, at 7.30 if you would like to take part.
THE DIG AT HADLEY WOOD by VICTOR JONES
‘The seasons work at Hadley Wood is now coming to a close but we hope weather permitting, to continue for a few more weekends until mid-October. Digging will start at 10.30 am each Saturday and Sunday and go on till mid-afternoon. If intending diggers can ring Brian Wrigley (959 5982) or me (458 6180) first it will be helpful.
The season’s work so far includes a detailed survey of the complete remaining parts of bank and ditch. This is a comparatively large feature: the original perimeter was approximately 800m; about 60% of the bank remains, and there are some traces of the ditch and in places the suggestion of a counterscarp. Bank and ditch surround the top of a clay feature known as Newman’s Hill.
All this has been carefully recorded and an accurate scale-plan drawn with Ordnance references. We have also produced a detailed surface profile of the bank and ditch on the steeper slope of the hillside where the evidence for bank, ditch and scarp is quite prominent.
We have dug a 10m trench to section banks ditch and possible counter Scarp. We traced about 8 strata of soil above undisturbed clay and ob¬tained samples of one distinct buried soil surface and a second possible lower level – these just might give some dating information. The bank is quite extensive at this point, still being about lm in height, as a
scarp on a 15% slope, with the bottom of the ditch about 1.2m below the top of the bank. The ditch appears to be perhaps 1.2 to 2m wide. It was not possible to define clearly the bottom of the unexpectedly shallow ditch (D F Penn reported it about 30 cm deeper in 1952), because it was so disturbed by root activity.
Finds were limited to bottles at the surface level and burnt stones lower down.
We now hope to dig rapidly a second trial trench to confirm if, on the more level part of the hill, the shape is the same; or if, as previous digs have suggested, the ditch is deeper. Also, we still hope for dateable finds.
We were fortunate at the start in having advice from Dr John Kent of the British Museum on the selection of the site and the method of in¬vestigation. Bernard Johnson, an experienced rescue archaeologist who has met many types of soil in motorway rescue work, advised us on digging methods and soil level identification throughout the dig. Palaeobotanist Richard Hubbard – well known to West Heath diggers – kindly advised us at the beginning of the season on how and where to look for buried soil samples. He may be able to help with further investigation of those we have found. We had welcome help from several new members who joined on hearing of the dig back in July.

OF CROMLECHS AND CROSSES
TESSA SMITH reports on the HADAS long weekend in Wales
Two mini-buses transported us through space and time, from Barnet 1983 to historic sites in Wales. Romanist members were especially keen to explore the site of Inca (Caerleon), our lunch stop. The small porticoed museum housed a good variety of locally excavated materials including a tombstone inscribed in red commemorating a Roman veteran who died aged 100. The barracks and amphitheatre of the II Augusta Legion looked brassily serene, the only approximation to animal-baiting being HADAS members offering picnic leftovers to two Welsh collies.
As we approached Dale Fort the weather worsened, the first rain peppered the windscreen and with slight apprehension we drove up to the Victorian fort, an ominous stronghold built in 1856 in defence of Milford Haven. As Charles George Gordon (later of Khartoum) wrote “I pity the
officers and men who will have to live in these forts as they are in the most desolate places.”
That evening the Warden, Mr D Emerson, gave us a brief talk on the history and rules of the fort, now converted to a Field Centre. As chief meteorologist of the area he also informed us that a ‘vigorous low’ was approaching. Luckily the Centre was well equipped for marine biology:
Next morning Professor W F Grimes, our President, met us at break¬fast and the weather and our spirits brightened. We climbed briskly to the Iron Age promontory fort where his current excavation has so far disclosed the gateway and gatestone of the settlement. We then whisked’ on to St David’s Cathedral, small and solidly built of purple sandstone, where the delicate roof-carvings contrasted with the remains of the shrine itself. Some of us explored the gloriously arcaded ruins of the nearby Bishops Palace before travelling in search of crosses and cromlechs.
Near the south wall of Nevern Church we examined a high Celtic cross with richly patterned carvings in Prescelly stone. Inside the church the Maglocunus Stone, embedded in a window sill, was inscribed in Ogham (Irish-Celt) and Latin. This bi-lingual inscription has helped to provide the key to the Ogham alphabet.
The first cromlech I have ever seen was also the finest in Wales, Pentre Ifan, breathtaking in its monstrous elegance and idyllic setting. Professor Grimes, who excavated the site in 1937!), explained the unique structure of this neolithic burial chamber. From there we
cromleched from the dumpy Carreg Coitan to the multiple Carrig-y-Gof to Carreg Samson with the biggest capstone in Wales. We learned that the term ‘cromlech’ comes from the Welsh ‘crwm’ (curved) and “llech” (stone).
That evening the Professor took us on a slide-projected tour around Pembrokeshire in prehistory.
On Friday the ‘vigorous low’ arrived and winds were blustering erratically over the Prescelly Hills as we climbed upward. Like a line of fluorescent mushrooms in our wet-weather gear we dared the realms of the ‘blue stones,’ an area rich in megalithic remains and the source of the Stonehenge imports. We must have invoked the wrath of the Welsh weather-dragon for, on reaching the craggy shelter of one of the cairns of Carn Meini, rain turned to stinging sleet and further advance was in-advisable feeling betrayed we turned to face the full blast of a gale force 8 whiplash and beat a retreat. It was the worst mountain weather ever remembered by the Professor himself and that night two yachts were wrecked in the estuary right below Dale Fort.
A monstrous yellow beetle also met a watery grave that night when it inadvertently strayed into the shower. In spite of mass research into the Dale Fort library of Coleoptera it could not be identified and became known as the Coleopte Gigantica Trewickii:
Tenby Museum on Saturday was much more calm and welcoming. It is an excellent museum, built high on the site of a medieval castle. It is run by a voluntary committee and the hon. curator, Mr Harrison, in a brief talk, introduced us to the history of the area.
After a picnic lunch, high above Tenby sands, we travelled to Carew Castle, tidal mill and cross. We approached the early 13c castle from the mill-stream side, admiring the unusual combination of a massive defensive fortress with the delicate oriel windows of a Tudor residence. We were told that the building is being taken over by the National Trust this month. The French tidal-mill nearby won an award for restoration in
the 1970s but already seems broken and neglected. In theory sea-water enters the mill-stream at high tide and is dammed and controlled by lock gets. Near the entrance to the castle is one of the finest wheel-headed Celtic crosses in Britain, commemorating King Margiteut.
On Sunday morning the more self-destructive of us dragged ourselves up for an early morning coastal walk in the rain, before setting off for home. En route we enjoyed a Private opening of the gates in front of Llawaden Castle and later cast quizzical eyes over the restoration of Mordinium Roman amphitheatre.
Our Welsh trip was a most stimulating success, mainly due to Peter Griffiths’ excellent organisation and good-humoured shepherding. Our thanks to Professor Grimes for his spirited leadership on Thursday and Friday, to Jenny Griffiths, our chief navigator, and to Pete himself
and Hans Porges, the co-drivers who transported us so safely and smoothly, finally back to Barnet and 1983.
FROM BOOK BOX TO LIBRARY
For many years what is now the HADAS ‘library’ was carried by our previous Hon. Librarian, George Ingram, from his home to the Burroughs for display at monthly meetings. It started life as 34 books in a blue cardboard suitcase, lived in George’s spare room, and was faithfully tended by him.
Over the years the collection grew, mostly through the addition of books kindly contributed by HADAS members, and co-incidentally, as George and his spare room both felt that enough was enough, the Society was offered a small room at Avenue House which it was decided to use as a library-cum-workroom. Shelves were installed, the books transferred, and George gracefully retired after many years of sterling work.
Now we have over 500 items in our stock, many of which can be of help to members attending evening classes (including Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society and LAMAS Transactions) and many of which are just Plain interesting. JUNE PORGES is now Hon. Librarian and is in the pro¬cess of cataloguing the collection. She hopes that fairly soon there may be a list of books available for members.
At every lecture a selection from the HADAS Library is on display at the front of the hall and members may borrow from these or may visit Avenue House from 8-9pm on the Friday before each lecture. This is an opportunity to browse and have a little get-together with other members. A HADAS dream has long been to have premises large enough to have a bigger ‘dropping-in’ place where we could work, browse and chat – so if anyone knows of any suitable accommodation, please speak to a member of the Committee. Meantime, do come to Avenue House. We now have a whole wall of bookshelves, but to some long-standing members the Library will always be the ‘Book Box;’ and the old blue suitcase still stands in the corner as a nostalgic reminder.
Ring June Porges on 346 5078 for information and to check that Avenue-House is open. June will be happy to meet members there on other evenings if Friday is not convenient.

CHRONICLER OF BUILDINGS,
Many members will have heard with sorrow of the death in August of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner. There must be few of us who have not wandered, clasping’ a ‘Pevsner’ in our hand, through cities, country towns and even villages, seeing the buildings and their grouping so much more clearlyby virtue of his imaginative and informed eye and his clear and picturesque pen. Pevsner’s ‘Buildings of England,’ even though the later volumes became pricey, have a hallowed place on most historians’ and archaeo-logists’ bookshelves. I have a ‘Middlesex,’ bought secondhand at 6s (old Money; and one of the best six bobsworths I ever spent) and a Herts, also 6s. Both had started life at 3s.6d (today’s Herts, revised 1977, will set you back £4.75, if you can find it). Pevsner was one of the great – perhaps the greatest – of archi¬tectural historians writing in English. I stress the last three words because that is what made him so extraordinary. He had been born in Leipzig, educated at German schools and universities and worked in German galleries till he was 30. During the second war he was even interned here for a short time as an enemy alien. Yet his fame rests – and most solidly’- on his English writings – the 46 volumes of the Buildings of England, the Pelican History of Art and the Outline of European Architecture He had many links in our area. He lived just on the Camden side of the Camden/Barnet border, in a terraced Victorian house behind the Old Bull and Bush at Hampstead North End, within a stone’s throw of Wyldes Farmhouse (one of Barnet’s most historic buildings) and an estate which he greatly admired – the Hampstead Garden Suburb. When he came to England, a refugee from the Nazis, in 1934, the ‘vintage’ Suburb was complete. In 1957, the year of the Suburb’s Golden Jubilee, he wrote an article entitled ‘Master Plan’ for the Jubilee souvenir booklet.’ His final sentence was a prophesy: “Unless I am severely mistaken, our quinquagenarian will emerge … as the most nearly perfect example of that English invention and speciality, the garden suburb.” Sir Nikolaus is buried beside his wife, who died 20 years ago, in the Wiltshire churchyard of St Peter at Clyffe Pypard, where they had a country cottage. He described this country churchyard himself, years before, in ‘The Buildings of England,’ as “in a lovely position, below a wooded stretch of the cliff.” BGG

ALL ABOUT PEOPLE
Members’ examination results during last summer continue to trickle through. Latest we’ve heard is that PETER LOOS, who joined HADAS in 1980, has passed his, final exams in the internal degree course at the Institute of Archaeology – moreover, he topped the list.
Another success story comes from DANIEL LAMPERT, a HADAS member for nearly 10 years, who has got through his 3rd year Diploma exams.
From JOANNA CORDEN, Borough Archivist and HADAS member, comes the news that her job in the Local History Collection in Egerton Gardens will be split in the near future, so that she will share it with archivist
Dr Pamela Taylor, each of them doing 18 hours a week.
HADAS researchers need not fear that this will cut the time the Local History Collection is available: it will in fact increase it, allowing for full-time opening every Saturday. We shall in fact have two
half-time archivists instead of one full-time – and both of them, mothers of young families, will have more time to spend with their children. It seems a sound idea from every point of view.
Dr. Taylor, like Joanna, lives in the Borough – at Long Lane, in East Finchley. The precise starting date of the new system hadn’t been decided when the Newsletter went to press.
The Newsletter is somewhat late congratulating ALBERT DEAN and his Wife on the birth of their first baby. When we talked recently to Albert about the happy event he said their new daughter is already 5 months old and has just cut her first tooth. He name is Tania Kristi (which comes from the same Scandinavian root as Scots Kirsty). She took a poor view of the heat and humidity of this summer, poor mite, and Albert confesses ruefully “we’ve had hardly an uninterrupted night since she was born.” The Newsletter can’t help remembering that when Albert first joined HADAS over 10 years ego he put down as one of his specialist skills ‘solving problems.’ We hope his daughter hasn’t presented him with an insoluble one – and wish her and her Mum and Dad lots of peaceful nights to come!
Finally, news of a HADAS invalid, for which we thank Ted Sammes: he tells us that FREDA WILKINSON, who has been recuperating at Hove, is pleased with the early results of her eye operation, and can see flowers in colour again and read – though slowly still – with a magnifying glass. We are delighted to hear such a good report and send her our very best wishes for continued progress.

A DIRE WARNING from the Membership Secretary
Alas and alack – some members are not going to get their November Newsletter – the members who have not yet paid their 1983-4 subscription, which has been due since April 1 this year.
During October the Hon Treasurer and I will be going through the membership list and removing the names of all who have not yet renewed. If therefore you want to come to this season’s lectures and to go on receiving the Newsletter, please pop your sub in the post right away.
MUDLARKING AT WEST HEATH by MARGARET MAHER
On Monday July 25 an intrepid band of four wellie-booted stalwarts, trowels in hand, gathered at the Leg of Mutton Pond, West Heath, to wit¬ness the dredging of 30 years accumulated silt and rubbish. Work was scheduled to last one week but in fact took three, and apologies are here tendered to those members who would like to have taken part. Due to very short notice, it was impossible to inform people via the Newsletter. As a consolation, they also missed the odiferous aroma and black oozing -gunge!
We were there for two reasons – the first to try to assess how much the shape and form of the pond were natural and how much artificial. It was reputed to have been constructed about 1820 by damming the gorge of a small stream at its western end. In fact two small streams converge at the eastern end and the naturally sloping bank contours appear to be unmodified at that end. At the western end, near Sandy Road, the banks show truncated profiles suggesting that the gorge was artificially widened to give the shape of the pond as it is today.
As the pond is so close to the Mesolithic site excavated by the Society from 1976-81, the second objective was to search the debris re¬moved during the dredging operations for worked flints. None were identi¬fied because of the difficulty of handling oozing black mud, and it is hoped that as the material dries and weathers, a search will be more feasible. Most of the debris – which contains many modern artifacts – has been deposited east and west of Sandy Road, and adjacent to the pond on the north and south sides.
We are grateful to Mr Challon for his kindness in informing us when work was due to start and for allowing access to the pond, and to the machine drivers who were most helpful. Any members who would like to take part in a search of the debris are asked to telephone me on 907 0333.

MORE ABOUT WEST HEATH
As we’re on the subject of West Heath, here is something else. It
is interesting how often, even before the publication of its final report, West Heath is being referred to in archaeological literature as a key Mesolithic site.
There is an intriguing article, headed ‘Homo Sapiens or Castor Fiber?’ in the current Antiquity, that erudite but never dull quarterly much read by HADAS members. The paper is by John Coles (who, handling a different subject, will be HADAS’s first lecturer of the season) and
Bryony Orme, joint directors of the Somerset Levels project. It gathers
together evidence for the effects on the prehistoric environment of the -beaver, which was present in Britain (on evidence from bones) during the interglacials and. throughout the prehistoric postglacial period, till as late as the Iron Age. Beaver colonies led, because of their damming operations, to the fall of timber and the spread of marsh conditions with subsequent further deforestation.
The authors focus particularly on Mesolithic sites and in this context say, of the evidence gathered at the West Heath spring site by
Maureen Girling and James Greig, and reported in Nature (268, 45-7): ‘The analysis of both pollen and coleoptera from a site at Hampstead Heath, London, was based on samples taken fromdeposits near a spring with mesolithic artifacts in the Vicinity. Together with the pollen evidence for the elm decline, there is an increase in deadwood feeders, followed soon afterwards by the appearance of aquatic beetles and seeds of aquatic plants, and dung beetles. The topography and the increases in these particular groups of beetles allow for interpretation in terms of a beaver pool, flooded trees and a local increase in food for herbivores, a combination that then attracted human use of the area.’
That’s an interesting possible pointer to the reasons which brought Mesolithic man to the West Heath site.

‘THOSE WERE THE DAYS’ AGAIN
Some of HADAS’s past work crops up in another publication, at the opposite end of the time-scale.
The current issue of The Local Historian carries a review of various – local history publications by Robin Chaplin. ‘Those Were the Days’ is mentioned on p.422. Mr Chaplin writes:.
‘The material is handled with great clarity – each person
gives an exact date of birth (in one case the exact time) . with the exception of the milkman. And the title tells you, on the cover, what this booklet is about, another point where amateurs frequently fall down. The book is sub-divided into Tales instead of chapters. This is a nice idea
If any of our newer members have not yet got round to buying this particular publication, you can get a copy, price 95p (add 25p for post and packing) from our Publications Manager, Pete Griffiths 8 Jubilee Avenue, London Colney, Herts. It is our Occasional Paper 5, by Percy Reboul.
COMMITTEE CORNER
The Committee met in mid-September after the summer break, and these were some of the topics discussed.
The Excavation working party (consisting of the Hon Secretary and Treasurer, Elizabeth Sanderson, Paddy Musgrove and Brigid Grafton Green) reported on recent meetings, including one with two officers of the new Greater London Archaeological Service. The Committee agreed that the Working party might invite one of these officers to sit in on its future meetings from time to time while matters likely to be of interest to the now service (such as site watching) were being discussed. It was also agreed that the working party should be enlarged to include representatives from groups such as the Prehistoric and Roman.
Recent – and somewhat confusing – statements by the Government on future Green Belt were mentioned, and the Committee agreed that
HADAS should show its interest in this Matter in the Borough of Barnet.
The Borough Planning Officer has recently sent to the Society, for comment, a copy of the Council’s draft Topic Study on Housing, which mentions
LBB’s attitude to the Green Belt. It was thought that this gave us an opportunity to put forward our views. The Topic Study will therefore be made available to as many Committee members as possible in the time allowed (it is a document of 90 pages) so that a summary of our views can be sent to the Borough Planning Officer.
The Society hopes to re-activate the suggestion – which we first put forward three years ago – that the remains of the fine moat at Old Fold, Hadley, should be scheduled as an antiquity. We first wrote to the DoE about this in February, 1980, when they replied that the moat was ‘certainly a possibility for scheduling.’ Subsequently we provided
DoEi on their request, with a scale survey of the moat made by. HADAS member BARRIE MARTIN. Despite subsequent enquiries, nothing further has been heard of this project.
Arrangements have been made, by kind permission of the Libraries Department and the Curator, for some of the Brockley Hill finds to go on display in one of the downstairs rooms at Church Farm House Museum.. TESSA SMITH, HELEN GORDON and ANN TREWICK will be organising the first display during October.

HADAS PROGRAMME
Tues Oct 4. Opening lecture of the winter season will be by an eminent
prehistorian and a lecturer well-known to HADAS: Dr John Coles, MA, PhD, FBA, FSA, Past President of the Prehistoric: Society and initiator of the Somerset Levels project, of which he is still a co-Director. Despite all these honours, he ‘is most approachable and an entertaining and interesting lecturer. He last spoke to us exactly 4 years ago in
October 1979, on the Somerset Levels. This time his chosen subject is Bronze Age Rock Carving in South Scandinavia.
Tues Nov I. Britons and Romans in Hertfordshire Tony Rook :
This lecture will be preceded, at 8 pm, by a Special General Meeting – see letter enclosed with this Newsletter.
Tubes Dec 6. Christmas Party will be a dinner at Whitbread Brewery,
Chiswell St, Ecl. The Brewery, over 200 years old, houses such unexpected gems as the Lord Mayor’s coach and the Over¬lord embroidery.
An application form for this event is enclosed – if you would like to join us, please fill it in as soon as possible and post it, with remittance, to Dorothy Newbury.

NEWSLETTER INDEX
Thanks to HADAS member JEAN NEAL, we can now offer members the index for the 1980 HADAS Newsletter, covering No 107-118.
Previously – for issues from No 1-106 – FREDA WILKINSON provided indexes. Both she and Jean are professional indexers, so we have been extraordinarily lucky, because our indexes are really admirable tools for anyone who wants to find a fact quickly. If you keep a file of your News¬letters, you are strongly advised to acquire a copy of the latest index. The Libraries to which the Newsletter goes – such as GLC Record Office, Barnet Libraries, Camden Local History Collection – always do so.
The 1980 index costs 50p – for 7 pages of photo-copying, plus post. Obtainable from Brigid Grafton Green. Incidentally, Jean Neal is now working on a combined 2-year index for 1981-2.

NEWS FROM THE GROUPS
PREHISTORIC. A meeting will be held at 2+ James Close, Woodlands, NW11, on Tues Oct 18 at 8 pm. Plans for the forthcoming season, and the possible re-opening of the West Heath site next year, will be discussed. Please ring Daphne Lorimer (458 5674) if you can come.
ROMAN. A working pottery weekend has been arranged at the Teahouse,’ Northway, NW11, on Nov 12/13. There will be plenty to do – indexing, sorting, mending, drawing and mapping – so why not come along and help? Sessions will be from 10am-5pm each day. Bring a packed lunch if you wish – coffee and tea-making facilities are available.
Next meeting of the Group will be on Wed Oct 19 at Sheila Woodward’s, 8 Hereford House, Stratton Close, Edgware, at 8 pm.

PREHISTORIANS IN THE NETHERLANDS by TED SAMMES
A party of 44 prehistorians spent a pleasant and highly informative week in the Netherlands this summer. Among them were several HADAS members. We kept the same coach and courier from our start at St Pancras right through the trip and back again. The itinerary had been carefully planned by Professor P J R Modderman of the Netherlands and Andy Lawson, meetings secretary of the Prehistoric Society. The initial programme made a full week, and the Professor managed to pack in a few extras too.
We got thoroughly damp looking at the gravel sections at Belvedere one morning; and the same afternoon we were drenched coming away from the Neolithic flint mines at Rickholt. To view these a tunnel has been
driven into the side of the hill,it gives a view of the original miners’
tunnels, which are now alas behind grills on either side. Having got so very wet outside, it’s no wonder that the cafe at the bottom of the hill did a roaring trade in warm alcoholic beverages for the inner man.
Next we moved north to study the Groningen neighbourhood. Here,- beside the older Dutch houses, we visited buried village sites and long barrows. One of the latter was in course of excavation and others were standing above ground. This brought home to us the magnitude of the Changes which have taken place in sea/land levels – at least since the Neolithic period.
In Assem we had A pleasant look around the museum which, in stark contrast to prehistory, also had a display on the history of plastics.-
The ship museum at Kethelhaven was memorable if only for the diversity of post-medieval boats and pottery – and there were some of those small yellow bricks we found at Church Terrace: There was also a brick hearth from a boat, similar to that found in the Mary Rose.
This area, close to the sea, emphasised for US the fact that we were well below sea level.
On day 7 we visited Leiden and were received in its fine archaeological museum. This is normally closed on Mondays, but was opened up specially for us. The arrangement was modern and we were especially impressed by one long room with archaeological displays of selected periods. Last stop was Dordrecht, a meeting place of many waters. It has a long history, of special importance for the period of the estab¬lishment of the Netherlands. We viewed the excavation of an early church with burials in wood coffins, all preserved by black, damp mud. Above this were later churches, and again we saw in use yellow bricks of the 17-18c at the higher levels.

SITES FOR WATCHING
The following are some recent applications – or amended applications for planning permission which might be of possible archaeological interest if approved:
69a High St, Barnet single storey storage .building
Elizabeth Sanderson (950 3106) will be glad to hear from any HADAS member who notices signs of activity on any of these sites.

AROUND AND ABOUT
London. Some of the autumn Workshops at the Museum of London sound interesting. They start at 1.10 on Thursdays and include:
Oct 6 Archaeological drawing: recording & publishing structures Oct 20 Death & mourning in Georgian London
Nov 3 Textiles: damage, decay and conservation
Dec 3 Roman Samian pottery: a practical session
This year the Museum will be a venue for evening classes. A series of 24 on Thursdays, 6.30-8.30, on Everyday Life in Roman London sounds interesting. First lecture was Sept 29, but we didn’t receive information about it in time for last month’s Newsletter. If you fancy this course,

NEWSLETTER No 150 AUGUST 1983

HADAS DIARY

Saturday August 13th Outing to Ashton (near Oundle) – an

excavation by the Northamptonshire Archaeological Unit. The proposed visit to the Peterborough Cathedral excavation is not now possible as the dig is finished and closed. This alternative is a rescue operation prior to a bypass development., -A Roman town once existed beside the River Nene at Ashton. The settlement evidence covers some 30 acres of mainly agricultural -land. Previous excavation has revealed traces of several buildings and features associated with them. During the last century Roman finds and a series of burials were discovered beneath the former site of Oundle Railway Station.

We will also visit the village of Ashwell in Hertfordshire with its 14th century church and tithe office of the Abbots of Westminster, which is listed as an ancient monument and houses an excellent village museum of local finds from prehistoric to present date. Time and permission permitting, we hope to make a brief stop to see the remains of a small Roman mausoleum at Harpenden, excavated in 1937.

Wednesday August 31st – Sunday September 4th : Trip to Gower Peninsula

Saturday October 15th : Minimart at St- Mary’s Church Hall, Hendon. More details in September Newsletter.

WHITHER LONDON’S HERITAGE NOW?

Pre-election promises and a mention in the Queen’s Speech – even though not very specific – suggest that the Government really means to carry out its intention to dismantle the GLC. The process is one which is likely to take time, but perhaps we should start thinking now of the implications in our neck of the London woods.

What, for instance, will happen to the Historic Buildings Division of ILEA? It is a part of London local government which really cares for historic buildings and does its best for them, and which possesses a reservoir of knowledge and expertise that, once dissi­pated, will be impossible to bring together again. Will its ‘ functions be apportioned to the individual boroughs and, if so, will they be able to handle them?

What happens to the GLC Record Office and all the treasures it houses – documents, photographs, maps, plans, books – including the entire collection which once composed Middlesex Records? Again, will there be a massive share-out between the boroughs and have they either the space or the staff to cope? And what of records which go across borough boundaries?

Is there any future for the GLC’s latest, newest infant, only four months old, the London Archaeological Service? Will that suffer an infant death, or will it be possible to find £250,000 annual funding elsewhere?

These are questions – and no doubt there are many others – which London historians and archaeologists should ponder in the months to come before the Government’s precise plans become known.

COMMITTEE CORNER

The committee met on July 8 – its last meeting before the summer break, as there is usually no meeting in August.

It was reported that GEORGE INGRAM is now safely installed at home again. He still doesn’t know how successful his eye operation has been, though he confesses that he had hoped to notice an improvement in sight by now. “It still may come and anyway tell everyone that I’m keeping cheerful he says. He also sends thanks to the many members who visited, telephoned, sent him letters and get-well cards and also imaginative gifts such as a green eye-shade. What he misses most is not being able to join this summer’s HADAS outings.

A meeting was fixed for towards the end of July between members of the committee and David Whipp of the North London unit of the new GLC-funded London Archaeological Service. See the June News-

letter for Ted Sammes’ description of how it is hoped this service will work.

The Hon Treasurer is adding a copy of the National Heritage Act -the final measure of the last Parliament to receive Royal Assent to the HADAS library. The Act transfers various functions from the Department of the Environment to a new Historic Buildings and Monuments commission, which will begin to function from April 1 next year. In so doing it lays down a new pattern for ancient monuments care and, in part, for archaeology.

Barnet Planning Department’s concertina-type leaflet, Archaeology in Barnet, is almost ready to go to the printers, with a text coordinated by HADAS and sketches and map by HADAS members Mary Allaway and William Morris. We will let you know as soon as it is published.

The committee passed a vote of thanks to NELL PENNY for putting up and stewarding a HADAS display on June 29 at Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, and to PETER GRIFFITHS for organising a bookstall at the Teahouse on three evenings in Institute Week,

ANOTHER BLUE PLAQUE

Another of the five commemorative plaques which HADAS initiated, with the backing of three other local societies, has been unveiled sadly without anyone from HADAS being present. The first we knew of the event was when we read about it in a local paper.

This plaque is to. Sir Thomas Lipton, and it is on his former home in Chase Side, standing almost on the- boundary between the boroughs of Barnet and Enfield, The house is today a home for retired nurses.

Thomas Lipton (1850-1931) is famous on three counts: as a self-made millionaire and philanthropist, as a grocer and tea-merchant and as a yachtsman extraordinary. He’d made his million by the age of 30, rising from the poorest circumstances, and he used a good deal of it appropriately, in providing better food and meals

for the poor. He spent, it’s said, more than a million in 30 years of unsuccessful effort to win the America’s Cup, with his Shamrock yachts.

HADAS AT HADLEY WOOD

Brian Wrigley reports on the latest HADAS dig.

Nine members have so far taken some part in this dig, which started at the beginning of July. The first weekend was devoted to surveying, marking out, recording levels and resistivity testing. We have now removed the humus layer completely over an area of the bank and ditch – proceeding at a cautious pace to avoid leaving the site between weekends in a state too vulnerable to interlopers!

One of our first finds was not an ancient one, but it gave some reassurance. It is a pre-war Express Dairy milk bottle, found on the surface beneath creeping holly. It is at least some indication that the site here has not been disturbed in recent decades.

Shallow as the excavation is, we can already see the beginnings (or rather the end, starting at the top!) of some sort of story. It seems fairly clear that after the ditch was already silted up nearly to the top, and a top soil had formed above this silting, there has been a collapse or fall (over however long a period) of the clay from the bank on to this topsoil – the topsoil layer disappears underneath the slope of the clay. How far it goes, we know not yet, and there are doubtless many more such complications to come as we get deeper.

A novel departure has been the use of a metal detector. This is at the suggestion of Dr John Kent, the object being to make sure that when the site has to be left for a period, we “clean” it ourselves leaving no objects to give a response which might excite any intervening treasure?-hunter who, one hopes, will then leave the excavation undisturbed.

All members are welcome on Saturdays and Sundays, approximately 10am to 4pm – but it may be as well to telephone during the week, to confirm times or to get directions, either Brian Wrigley

959 5982 or Victor Jones 458 6180.

MYTHOLOGY IN THE TABERNACLE

Jean Snelling reports on the July outing to Wotton-Under-Edge, Cirencester and Northleach

For our Gloucestershire visit on July 16 we were, for HADAS, an unusually select group of 30, depleted by holidays and heat; an economic misfortune but the extra coach space was luxurious.

We left the steamy M4 as our driver tackled with zest the swooping lanes of the Cotswold escarpment, and reached the combs and terraced hilltops of Wotton-under-Edge. In a redundant non-conformist Tabernacle, the entire ground space is taken up by a repro­duction of the buried Woodchester Roman villa mosaic.

Its staggering size – 47 feet square and one million and a half tesserae – and the pictures of the increasingly deteriorating original as in 1973 explained the difficulties preventing the uncovering promised for 1983 at Woodchester itself and the good luck that brings to completion now a full-size model for public display.

The Woodward brothers, prominent farmers, were seized in 1973 with the idea of copying the mosaic. Their detailed photographs, with the drawings made by Lysons (published 1796-1814) and by earlier antiquarians at Woodchester, together with studies of comparable mosaics of the “Cirencester school”, and advice from museums and universities, have all led to this completed repro­duction with the blank spaces filled reasonably. Orpheus, his birds and beasts, Neptune and the water-nymphs with the variously patterned marginal panels appear in a stone carpet whose tesserae match the originals in type and quality of stone, colour and dimensions.

The Tabernacle allows viewing from the ground and from the sturdy galleries above, and we heard from Mr Bob Woodward of this extraordinary undertaking over 10 years. The reproduction is very well worth the journey to Totten.

In making next for Cirencester we paused at Beverstone, a medieval castle quietly crumbling away after its Civil War battering, harbouring a 17th century farmhouse-mansion leaned -to on its walls and surrounded by moated gardens and red roses: a Cotswold dream, We climbed the tower for its ruined chapels and the views.

The museum at Cirencester-Corinium is being redeveloped and redisplayed. Its choice Romano-British artefacts include local mosaics and we were happy to see the remains of the Orpheus pavement from the rich villa at Barton Farm. The central figure, itself incomplete, complements the gaps in the Woodchester Orpheus, so enabling the Woodwards to complete their Wotton copy. The remains of Corinium, scattered around Cirencester, would require more time to visit and cooler weather than we had, and most of us took refuge in the great parish church, that mini-cathedral of the wool merchants, and in the adjacent grounds of the dissolved abbey and its Saxon forerunner.

We then followed the Posse Way to Northleach, where the Cotswold Countryside Collection is housed in the restored House of Correction – that is a stone-built country jail of the 18th century for

local poachers, vagrants, incompetents in charge of carts and deserting fathers. This excellent small museum illustrates a reforming prison and also presents farming and country domestic equipment, selected with discrimination and imaginatively shown. Its charm includes ample parking, a good cup of tea and homemade cake: for heartier needs there is a little Chef round the corner on the A40,

We came home in evening sunshine, across the Cotswold plateau where corn is already being cut, and thanked Dorothy Newbury for a day well planned, well executed and full of interest and variety.

SITES TO WATCH-

Here is our monthly selection of sites which have appeared recently on planning application lists and which, were the applications to be granted, might prove to be of archaeological interest:

Land adjoining 4 Parsons Crescent, Edgware (off Edgwarebury Lane) (a bungalow).

189-191 High Street, Barnet (amended plan for office block), land beside Farringdon Cottages, Moon Lane, Barnet (a house), 1500 High Road, N20 (amended plan for flats).

Anyone noticing signs of activity on these sites is asked to let Elizabeth Sanderson know, on 950 3106.

A development is also planned on the corner of Burnt Oak Broadway and Stag Lane. It is in Brent, not Barnet, but members passing by might look into any open trenches for evidence of Roman Watling Street,

HOW DID YOU DO?

It is always tricky to keep pace with HADAS members’ examination results, since a number of people are working at different stages of the two external courses – the Diploma in Archaeology and the Certificate in Field Archaeology. As we went to press these results were not through, but we hope to publish a round-up of them in September. Would anyone who sat an exam this summer care to let us know how he/she fared, so that we can include everyone’s results?

One bit of exam news has reached us, however – from a member who, after first doing the diploma, went on to take an internal degree at the Institute of Archaeology. MARGARET MAHER, a West Heath “veteran”, obtained her degree this summer, with excellent results in her finals. Now, she is hoping to undertake a special research project in connection with rest Heath post-excavation work.

Another HADAS student at the Institute of Archaeology, Myfanwy Stewart’ did very well in her second-year exams.

WINTER COURSES FEEL THE CHILL

The University of London Extra-Mural Department, which organises the excellent lectures and evening classes in archaeology and other subjects that are available in Greater London each winter has fallen on lean times nowadays. The department reckons it has lost about £400,000 of grant support in two years and, in its own phrase, “we’ve had to shed absolutely every bit of fat”.

The result must inevitably be fewer courses in all subjects and higher fees. A look at an advance copy of the 1983-4 archaeology prospectus shows that regrettably one of the casualties this year is a course beloved of HADAS members – the Thursday evening public lectures at the Institute of Archaeology at which experts have described the latest research into particular problems. You could either attend the whole lot or pick out specific subjects that interested you; and the effect was to keep everyone up to date with the latest thinking.

Other post-diploma courses, “intended to introduce students to the problems of analysis of excavated materials”, will however continue, on subjects similar to those of previous years:

Human Skeletal Remains in Archaeology, Wednesdays, Miss R. Volleson, PhD.

Animal Bones in Archaeology (beginners group), Thursdays, Mrs D. Sargeantson, MA.

Animal Bones in Archaeology (advanced), Mondays, Tony Legge, MA. Plant Remains in Archaeology, Mondays, Richard Hubbard, MA; MPhil. Recent Developments in the Prehistory of Africa,- Thursdays,

David Price Williams, BA, PhD.

All the above are central courses – ie, they take place at the Extra-Mural Department or the Institute of Archaeology. They begin in the last week of September and are from 6.30pm.

For the external Diploma in Archaeology (a four-year stint, with two terms of lectures, plus essays, practical work and exam each year) you will have to go to the Institute of Archaeology in Gordon Square for years two, three and four. But you can do year one at

Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute – the Archaeology Paleo­lithic and Mesolithic Man, Mondays 7.30pm to 9.30pm, fee £25 for 24 lectures and four visits.

Up to now HGS Institute has always offered also the second year of the diploma, on the Archaeology of Western Asia, but now that has fallen by the wayside, The Principal (John Enderby, a founder member of HADAS) hopes that if the 1983-4 first year course goes well, he may be able to revive the second year course next year. So we urge any HADAS members who would like to have a stab at the diploma to sign on this coming winter at the HGS Institute for year one.

There will not, either, be any courses in the three years of the Certificate in Field Archaeology anywhere in the borough of Barnet in 1983-84. The third year at Barnet College (where the certif­icate courses were put on at HADAS’s instigation) ended this summer and to replace it the college is starting the Diploma in Ecology and Conservation.

SUPPORT HOME INDUSTRIES PLEASE !

There is one course at HGS Institute – also on Monday evenings 7.30 to 9.30 – which we would like to encourage all HADAS members (other than those prepared to take on diploma responsibilities) to consider joining. It is the course, starting September 19, which HADAS itself has organised, under the title Aspects of Archaeology.

There will be 12 lectures, each on a particular topic, and a museum visit, and the fee is £14. The lecturers will be five HADAS diploma-holding members (Margaret Maher, Daphne Lorimer, Sheila Woodward, Brigid Grafton Green and Dave King) and the visit will be led by Christine Arnott. Topics will include: Archaeo­logical Research: How Do You Begin? The Why, Where and How of Cave Art; Travelling Man: Carts, Chariots and other Transport: Circles and. Bumps: “Mainly About Megaliths; Whence and Whither: Roads and Trackways; Food in History: What Did They Eat?

Last year HADAS arranged a basic chronological course at HGS Institute. This year’s course has been designed so that those who took the original course will find they are covering new and different ground; at the same time, the topics will be suitable for new students starting from scratch.

So if you are one of the last year students, please come along again: it will be a pleasure to see you. And if you didn’t make it last year, please come too, you will be equally welcome.

CELEBRATIONS AT WILBERFORCE’S CHAPEL

A week of celebrations marked the 150th anniversary of the conse­cration of St Paul’s, Mill Hill Ridgeway. William Wilberforce overcame strong opposition to build what started as his private chapel but soon became, as he intended, a focal point in the religious and social life of the village.

A dedicated band of organisers and stewards, including a HADAS team – Tessa Smith, June Forges and Phyllis Fletcher – set-up in the Church Hall an array of documents, photographs and other exhibits illustrating the history of the church and of the district it serves.

The Middlesex Regiment display, commemorating its long association with St Paul’s, included the switchboard from Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, the photographs spanned over 100 years of church and village life and, in addition to the original grants of patronage and Wilberforce’s deed of endowment, more humble docu­ments attracted the eye. The vicar’s cash accounts for 1841 mention “boys weeding, before Chapel, 1s 6d” and “tuning seraphine, l8s”. The seraphine, an early harmonium, needed this expensive attention every two months.

The Mill Hill Historical Society mounted an interesting selection of photographs and publications, and HADAS provided a neat and attractive exhibit of screen-mounted photographs, documents and field walking finds. Handbills and membership forms disappeared at a pleasing rate and we hope that some, at least, will come home again, filled out and signed. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the team who presented our society so effectively.

A CENTENARY OF CABLES

Bill Firth reports on 100 years of STC

Recently I discovered from one of the local papers that Standard Telephone and Cables plc (STC) is celebrating its centenary this year. As one of the major industrial employers in the borough with a large site on our eastern marches at New Southgate, this seemed to be the right time for some investigation.

When I probed further I found that it is only just too late to celebrate the diamond jubilee of the company in the borough, since it moved to the New Southgate site at the end of 1922. I found, too, an unexpected connection with the borough at Hendon Aerodrome in the 1920s, Here is a potted history of the company.

The origin of STC was the Western Electric Company which was the manufacturing branch of the American Bell Telephone Company, Western Electric set up the first factory in Europe for the manu­facture of telephone equipment in Antwerp in 1882 and established a sales office in London in 1883. This embryo organisation of “one man and a boy” in an office in Moorgate was the origin of the large manufacturing company which became STC in 1925.

For the first 15 years of its life Western Electric in this country was a sales organisation only but in 1897 it acquired the Fowler Waring Cable Company and with it a factory at North Woolwich, (This was closed by STC in 1977 and it seems that it has been at least partially demolished.) Despite a fire which destroyed the factory in 1899 the company prospered. An entirely new cable plant was opened on the site in 1904 and gradually the manufacture of other telephone components was added. In 1910 the organisation was incorporated as Western Electric Company Ltd.

Expansion continued, the company not only supplied vast quantities of equipment during World War One but also contributed a number of new inventions including mining and submarine detectors, a device for jamming enemy listening posts and an early guided missile system. Moreover the war isolated the company from its American parent and British talent was encouraged.

In 1925, in the sort of deal which only financial wizards under­stand and appreciate, International Telephone and Telegraph. Company (ITT) took over all the Western Electric interests outside the USA and Western Electric Company Ltd became STC,

Because of the need for more space to meet the post-war demand for telephones the New Southgate site was purchased in 1922.

It had been first developed by J. Tyler and Sons Ltd during the war for the manufacture of lorry engines, but the firm went into liquidation in 1922 and STC was able to obtain a 27-acre site with a two-storey concrete building alongside the Great Northern Railway for a bargain £60,000. There was plenty of room for expansion but also much room for improvement – for example the washing facilities, which were mixed, were austere troughs.

The building on the site was not large enough, however, and in 1925-26 short leases were taken on some 400,000 square feet of Grahame-White’s premises at Hendon Aerodrome on the north side of Aerodrome Road, Radio transmitters and receivers were made there. Activities at Hendon were further increased a few years later when laboratories were established in the former London Country Club. The ballroom became one laboratory, another, perhaps appropriately the chemistry lab, was set up in the kitchens.

The bedrooms became executive offices. In trying to make something like polyethene for insulating cable the chemistry lab was set on fire, but the chemists put it out themselves.

However, it was not economic to operate from several dispersed sites and when the slump came first the laboratories were closed (1931) and then the factories (1933). The labs became the Police College and were later demolished for new Police College buildings. One building from Hendon, which actually originated elsewhere,

went to New Southgate. The Alderman Cafe from the 1924-25 Wembley Exhibition site had been re-erected at Hendon and was transferred to New Southgate to continue its life as one of the early self-service cafeterias. (By implication this building is no longer in existence.)

By 1939 there were 15 acres of factory floor at New Southgate on a 40-acre site where 3,500 men and 2,500 women were employed. The company expanded enormously during World War Two not only at New Southgate but also at many other sites both around London and further afield. New Southgate did not escape war damage – there was a nasty incident in August 1944 when a V1 rocket fell as the night and morning shifts were changing, resulting in 33 deaths and 200 hospital casualties.

There is a nice post-war story of the visit of some top brass from the American company who were making an inspection at New Southgate with particular reference to the full utilisation of space. While they were at lunch an entire floor of offices was moved from one building to another and when the inspection was resumed none of the visitors noticed that they had seen the same people in the morning. It must have been some lunch:

In the post-war years STC was very much a telephone company and to some extent it became stultified. But it gradually got into the electronic age and developed a new type of telephone exchange which put it in the forefront of developments again with a system which was compatible with the digital exchanges to come.

What began actually as a two man/one boy import office in London is now a high technology company employing about 22,000 people in this country and with a turnover of £600 million. Moreover, ITT has relinquished much of its holding so that STC is now a company with a majority British shareholding.

To commemorate the centenary STC has issued a booklet entitled One Hundred Years of STC and has commissioneda full history, Power of Speech by Peter Young, published by George Allen and Unwin. This article relies heavily on these sources.

NO MODERN PHENOMENON…

One of our colleagues in the Camden History Society, Deirdre Le Faye, occasionally comes across information about Hendon in course of her research- and she very kindly takes the trouble to send us details of it. Last month she sent us the following excerpt from The Lady’s Magazine for April 1907, with the comment: “Road accidents are no modern creation.”

“April 1. On Saturday last, as the lady of Mr Williams was going from Mill Hill to Hendon, in her chariot, accompanied by two of her children and a gentleman, the coachman drove against a cart on the road and the shock was so violent that it threw him from the box; the horses being much frightened soon disentangled the carriage, and went off at full speed.

The road along which the vehicle had to pass was so extremely narrow that at any time it required great caution to drive with security- notwithstanding which, the carriage was not overturned.

The horses having to pass another cart, they had the sagacity, though they were going at the rate of 20 miles an hour, to pass on one side of it, but so near that the handle of the chariot door was struck off by a collision with the wheel.

Mr Williams was at a friend’s house on the road when his chariot passed, and almost fainted on seeing his wife and children in so perilous a situation. Mrs Williams shrieked for assistance to no purpose. The gentleman in the carriage contrived to open the door and jump out, by which mean she escaped unhurt.

The horses still continued their pace; the flapping of the door tended to increase their speed, until they came to a narrow part of the road, when providentially the door of the chariot became entangled in the hedge, which stopped for a moment the career of the animals, but they soon ran off again with great rapidity. They broke all the traces, leaving the carriage behind; and fortunately Mrs Williams and her children received no injury whatever.

They suffered much, however, from the alarm. The coachman was taken up with three ribs broken, and so violent a concussion in his head that his recovery is despaired of.”

Deirdre Le Fay also asked us if we could guess where the drama had taken place, and whether we knew the Williams family. That whetted our detective instinct, so off we went to look in the Local History Collection at the census enumerators’ lists for Hendon in the two census years nearest to 1807 – 1801 and 1811.

Hendon parish is fortunate in having original census returns for 1801, 1811 and 1821. These are missing in many parishes; indeed, many historians consider that the first four censuses (there was one also in 1831, but the Hendon original of that is missing) are unreliable; they tend to start census work with the 1841 census, However, it seemed likely that the name of either Mr Williams or “the lady of Mr Williams”, or both, would appear in either 1801 or 1811.

For census purposes in those years Hendon parish was divided (as indeed it was for highway and other matters) into “South End” and “North End”. As Mrs Williams was coming from Mill Hill to Hendon, it seemed possible that she might have been living in North End (though of course she might just have been visiting in North End, and returning to her home in South End).

We started, anyway, with the two 1801 books for North End. These produced only one Williams – Edward, whose occupation was labourer and who had a wife, two sons and a daughter. Pretty clearly it was unlikely that a labourer would have either a chariot or, in those class conscious days, a wife important enough to be mentioned in The Lady’s Magazine, so we ruled Edward out. The two books for South End were devoid of Williamses in 1801.

For 1811 there were three enumerators’ books each for North and South End. It was in the first of the North End 1811 books that we struck oil. There we found Robert Williams, gentleman, with a total household of 10 persons (five male, five female), “including children of whatever age”. This census is less detailed than the first in that it does not mention wives nor does it differentiate between children and servants. However, of the 10 people in the household on the night of May 27, 1811 (when the census was taken), we think it fair to assume that Robert Williams, his lady and at least three children (the smallest number inferred by The Lady’s Magazine paragraphs) were present.

We also found Edward Williams again, described this time as working in agriculture and now with a household of three, not five. We checked the Hendon South books too, just to make sure there wasn’t

a likely Williams there. There was a Mr Williams (no Christian name given), engaged in agriculture, with a total family of five, four female and himself.

It seems more likely that Robert, gentleman, of North End, was the’ man who almost fainted at seeing his chariot pass in such disarray, rather than Mr Williams, in agriculture, of South End.

Finally, the chariot was probably on the most direct route from Mill Hill to Hendon (though of course it could have taken a round­about way: there are two other possibilities) which would have been down Milespit Hill, along Dole Street and along Ashley Lane. All of them were probably very narrow at this period. That is clearly the most

direct route on John Cooke’s map of 1796, and it would probably have been the same route 11 years later. There is a map of 1801, which is nearer the date we wanted, but it is said to be merely a copy of Cooke.

We would like to thank Deirdre Le Faye for providing that interes­ting sidelight on life in Hendon in 1807, and for starting off such an unexpected bit of documentary research.

WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS…

… who have joined the society in the last four or five months. May their HADAS days be happy and their HADAS life be long:

Mrs E.L. Barrie, Hendon; Hannah Cohen, N12; Mrs Cohen and David, Golders Green; Harold Fine, Garden Suburb;’ Mrs Jane Jones and son, Muswell Hill; Jennifer King, Finchley, Alan Lawson, Garden’ Suburb; Alf and Rose Mendel, Garden Suburb; Douglas Morgan, NW3; Gwilym and Lloyd Norris, Garden Suburb: Andrew Powell, Hendon; John Raisin, Kingsbury: Alan Roberts, Hammersmith; and Mrs P. Trenaman, NW6.

Welcome also to a new corporate member: North London Collegiate School (and thanks to junior committee member Kate Balen, who attends NLCS and encouraged the school to join).

Hendon and District Archaeological Society

Newsletter 149: July, 1983

PROGRAMME NOTES by Dorothy Newbury

Saturday July 16 Our outing is to Cirencester, the second largest town of Roman Britain, and to Northleach. At the time of going to press we are negotiating with the Oxford Archaeological Unit hoping to arrange a visit to their excavation of a Romano British Villa on an early Roman settlement site at Claydon Pike. Corinium (Cirencester) Museum has been completely redesigned recently and the displays are arranged from Pre-history, through the Roman period to Saxon and Medieval. There will be time to walk round Cirencester to see the Amphitheatre, a section of Roman Town Wall, or buildings of medieval

and later historic interest. In the afternoon we follow the Fosse Way to the Cotswold Countryside Collection at Northleach. This new museum tells the story of rural life in the Cotswolds and is housed in the remaining buildings of the Northleach House of Correction, one of the first “country prisons”. The original cell-block with its impressive’ 18th century facade is an almost forbidding sight in the heart of the Cotswold countryside. If you wish to join the party, please fill in and return the enclosed to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible.

Saturday, August 13 Visit to Peterborough.

Wednesday August 31 – Sunday September 4 Trip to Gower Peninsula.

NOTE FROM THE MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY

Once again outstanding and that you do not last year there, I would like to remind you that some subscriptions are still I should be very pleased to receive these, or confirmation wish to continue your membership. Out of our membership from are some 140 outstanding as from 3.6.83. Thanks .Membership Secretary PHYLLIS FLETCHER

COMMITTEE CORNER

First meeting of the 1983-4 Committee took place early in June. Here are some of the matters whieh were reported to or discussed at it.

SHEILA WOODWARD has joined the committee of the London Archaeologist quarterly journal – the second HADAS member to serve on it recently, as Daphne Lorimer completed a 3-year stint not long ago.

Advance news of another ‘mini’ Minimart next autumn: DOROTHY NEWBURY and CHRISTINE ARNOTT are thinking in terms of an October Saturday. More about this, of course, as the date gets closer. At the end of the AGM, PERCY REBOUL suggested the possibility of initiating a regular Constantinides Memorial Lecture to honour our founder. The Committee has decided such a lecture would be valuable – not as a regular item in our programme, but as an occasional event, particularly when we want to talk about HADAS’s own work. No precise plans at this early stage, but it is hoped that TED SAMMES might talk about the Church Terrace dig and its aftermath; while looking further ahead, the backroom work on the West Heath finds might well provide a good topic for DAPHNE LORIMER.

It was reported that arrangements had been made by HADAS member MARGARET MAHER for a visit to the West Heath site on June 8 by Mrs. Joan Huxtable of the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at Oxford. The aim of this was to insert probes which will measure the background thermoluminescence of the soil, as mentioned in Daphne Lorimer’s Prehistoric Group report in the May Newsletter. What we are hoping to do is to gain for West Heath something which we have never had and have.always wanted – a scientifi­cally-based dating for the site. This time it will be found by using the thermoluminescence of struck flint.

Another event for which HADAS has been anxiously waiting for a long time has now taken place. The Statutory List of Buildings of Architectural and Historic Interest for the Borough of Barnet has at last been updated by the Department of the Environment. We originally submitted our recommendations for it, at the Borough Planning Officer’s invitation, and after some months of work, on November 12, 1970

The List now has to be laid formally before the Borough’s Town Planning and Research Committee, and after that it will be made public. We hope to tell you in later Newsletters about some of the buildings which have been newly added to the List.

Reports on digs past. Three HADAS digs still go unpublished:

Church End Farm, Hendon, HADAS’s first dig, 1961-66. The Committee has been in touch with the director, Ian Robertson. He still hopes to.publish a report, possibly in Postmedieval Archaeology – but no date has been arranged for publication.

Church Terrace, Hendon, 1973-74. Ted Sammes is still working on this; no deadline for completion of the report has yet been fixed.

West Heath, 1976-81. Mr: Lorimer reports considerable research being done on the finds. It is hoped to publish this as a LAMAS Special Paper.

THE CORNER SHOP, HIGH STREET, ELSTREE: Pt.2

In the May Newsletter we published a report on an late< medieval house at the junction of Barnet Lane and High, Street, Elstree. (TQ 1782 9523), where a conversion to a dental surgery is taking place. We mentioned that it was proposed to dig a drain across the small backyard of the house, and that when that happened HADAS had permission from the developers to site-watch now been concluded. On June 6 a 3-ft (90 cm) deep, roughly rectangular trench was taken out in the yard. Its N/S dimension was 7ft (just over 2m), E/W 5ft (1.5m). The west side of the trench, at its Northern end, was dug 9ft (2.7m) away from, and parallel with, the wall of the surgery. Near the base of the trench an earlier drain could be seen - a pipe of about 10” (25cm) bore probably, laid some 30 years ago. The fill above, around and below the pipe was pebbly and of the same type throughout: no soil change could be seen in the section and no structures or small finds were visible. However, in the course of the excavation the builders did recover a little pottery of modern type, a modern knife handle, a fragment of animal jaw­bone and a corroded iron object, possibly a handle of some kind. The spoil - kindly left by the builders for us to trowel through - confirmed the evidence of the sections. It was clay with a heavy pebble content and was sterile. The fill of the trench probably dated from the time of the insertion of the original pipe. (Report compiled from the 'observations of HELEN O'BRIEN and TESSA SMITH)
A HADAS INVALID

As this is being written the Newsletter has good news from Edgware General Hospital, where George Ingram) until recently a member of the HADAS Committee and for many years our Hon. Librarian, underwent an eye operation on June 7.

His grand-daughter, who has been keeping his house warm for him, expected him home in the latter half of June. George himself reports that he is having so many eye-drops and tablets that when he moves he rattles – so obviously his sense of humour hasn’t deserted him!

We feel sure that all HADAS members will want, through the pages of the Newsletter, to wish George well and happy – and with improved eight – very soon.

Because of his eye trouble George has had to give up two long-term projects which he has been ‘nursing’ for HADAS. Our Hon. Secretary would greatly appreciate offers from other members prepared to take them on.

One project is keeping and adding to the Society’s collection of local newspaper cuttings. This includes cuttings in which HADAS itself is mentioned and also cuttings of general local historical or archaeological interest.

The other project is the collection of material of all kinds about the history of the nonconformist churches of the Borough.

Any member who would be prepared to step into George’s shoes in either of these respects is asked to ring Brian Wrigley.(959 5982). He has all George’s earlier papers, details of his contacts, etc.

OUTING TO CASTLE HEDINGHAM AND GESTINGTHORPE’ Report by JEAN HENNING

The first full day’s outing this year was celebrated in glorious sunshine on a perfect June day. At the request of the prehistorians the first stop was at Wandlebury hill fort. The warden told us an Iron Age community had lived on the 15 acre site for 300 years. The fort is situated on the crest of the Gog Magog Hills and is visible today as a circular ditch about 2.5m deep with an outer diameter of 310m.

A hop in time and a short stop at Bartlow Hills, where we saw 3 remaining Roman barrows out of .an original 8. We were suitably impressed by the size of the steep-sided mounds; the largest is 12m high and 33.9m in diameter. Excavations in 1840 were said to have revealed several fascinating burial finds but these were lost in a fire in 1847.

We continued on our way to Castle Hedingham through Sturmer village, home of the apple of that name. We arrived in time to look round the church of St. Nicholas which boasts a Norman wheel window, one of only five in the country, and 3 Norman doors in Norman doorways, before eating our lunch in the castle grounds.

Hedingham Castle is amazingly well preserved. The walls, faced with ashlar stone, are 12 ft. thick at the bottom and 10 ft at the top. We investi­gated all 4 floors, ground floor storage, second floor complete with minstrel gallery and the widest Norman arch in the country, top floor dormitory, and dungeons below. The 13th Earl of Oxford built the beautiful Tudor bridge
which spans the dry moat to replace the original drawbridge.

Back on the coach again to Gestingthorpe farm where farmer Harold Cooper, an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist showed us his collection of coins, jewellery, glass, pottery, ironwork – all found on his land, starting from 35 years ago when his plough turned up Some Roman pottery. The site is thought to be a village going back to a Belgic tribe c. 50 B.C. Some of us walked through the fields of lush green grain to the field where it all began, while others sat in the sun in Mr. Cooper’s garden.

Nothing could follow this, so we all went back for tea at Castle Hedingham’s Trading Post, and then home.

Our grateful thanks to Isobel McPherson for planning such an interesting day, and for leading us with such charm and good humour.

NEWS FROM THE GROUPS
THE ROMAN GROUP

On Saturday June 11 a small party visited Colchester Museum where we were shown the Roman pottery by a member of the staff. This collection must be one of the largest in England and we were allowed to handle items from the Museum shelves as well-as from the store room (a real treasure house) – mortaria,

Samian ware, coloured ware both plain and decorated, and vast amphorae in which wine, fish sauce and oil were brought from Spain to the port of Colchester.

We finished- the visit by going into the Roman vaults below the Norman castle in which the Museum is housed. Here the temple to Claudius was started in

AD 49-50.

Tuesday 12 July. The Roman Group will meet at the home of Peter and Jenny Griffiths, 8 Jubilee Avenue, London Colney, Herts. Tel. 612 3156:

Saturday 30 July. A visit is planned by car to see the excavations in Littlecote Park near Hungerford of a Roman villa site with the famous Orpheus Mosaic floor. Meet at the site at 2.0 pm.’ If interested, telephone Helen Gordon 203 1004, or Tessa Smith 958 9159.

THE DOCUMENTARY GROUP has news for members who would like to investigate the GLC’s Record Office and History Library in its new home at 40 Northampton Road, EC1.

The Record Office has arranged four Open Days in July – Monday 4, 11, 18 and 25. There will be an exhibition of documents, prints, books and photos called ‘Clerkenwell off the Record’; and there will be ‘behind the scenes! tours four times a day. Record Office opening hours are 10 am – 4 pm and the conducted tours take place at 10.45, 11.15; 2.00 and 2.45. Admission is free.

DIG AT HADLEY WOOD EARTHWORK

It was reported at the AGM in May that application had been made for permission to dig at the reputedly Iron Age earthwork in Hadley Wood; the Management Committee have agreed in principle subject to agreement on the precise location of the initial trial trench with Curators. This has been discussed with them on site and their final confirmation on the agreed location is expected shortly.

So we hope to start digging on the first weekend in July, ie the 2nd and 3rd July, and continue at weekends thereafter as needed. So if you are a potential digger (no previous experience required!) do please get in touch with Brian Wrigley on 959 5982. The only equipment needed will be the usual a waterproof, something to kneel on, and a 4 inch or smaller flat trowel.

The earthwork consists, as shown in the report in the last Newsletter, of a ring bank with, outside it, the barely perceptible depression of a silted-up ditch. Its somewhat tentative identification as Iron Age seems to rest mainly on the fact that there is nothing to make it fit in better with anything else; no relevant artefacts, so far as known, have ever been found. What a useful contribution it would be if HADAS’ investigation could provide some dating evidence: In the first instance, our object will be to expose a short length of the profile of the ditch and to find if there is a buried soil beneath the bank. The site where we expect to dig is in an area where previous investi­gators have suggested possible entrances: however thin the grounds .for these suggestions, they are the best we have as an indication of the hopes of finding artefacts to give possible dating. We shall also be looking for any evidence, eg postholes, for any wooden structure reinforcing the bank, and we hope to be able to arrange laboratory examination of any buried soil we find.

PLUMSTONES FROM THE MARY ROSE by Christine Arnott

In 1980 a basket of what appeared to be mainly plum stones was recovered from the hold of the Mary Rose. As it is possible to identify plum species and varieties from their stones, Peter Dodd of the Dept. of Horticulture at Wye College (Univ. of London) was invited by the Mary Rose Trust to examine them.

The sinking occurred in 1545 and little information on plum varieties grown at that time is available – up to 1509 much fruit was imported from the continent, but in 1533, Richard Harris, fruiterer to Henry VIII, was employed to import grafts of numerous fruits from France and the Low Countries and trees of these were planted on Crown land at Teynham in Kent. This orchard flourished and towards the end of the century similar-orchards were planted elsewhere in Kent and the rest of the country.

The earliest book to include names of plums is Parkinson’s “Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris” published in 1629, but the stones from the Mary Rose predate this work and’ thus provide an opportunity to find out what plum varieties were being grown (and consumed) before the influx of continental varieties.

The 100 odd stones in the basket, some still covered with flesh – appeared rather like old prunes – prunes were known to be an important part of the old seamen’s diet, so it was initially assumed these were just that. However, they could have been fresh fruit collected prior to the ship’s sailing, but the date of 19th July falls rather early in the plum season for many varieties to be ripe.

Two lines of investigation were therefore followed:-

1. If PRUNES – historic literature on fruit was searched to see which varieties might have been dried for prunes in and around the 16th C. and then checking those stones against those found in the Mary Rose.

2. If FRESH FRUIT – producing a short list of varieties described in literature of the period and taking into account their harvest dates to tie in with the date of the ship’s sailing. Not finding harvest dates in the older texts in all instances more recent information had to be used and rela­ted to 1545. In so doing two important adjustments had to be made:

1. To allow for the change in calendars to the Gregorian in 1752 which means that 19 July 1545 is equivalent to 30 July in our time

2. To allow for changes in climate between then and now which would affect ripening dates.

Although precise meteorological data does not exist for the 16th C. (weather recording instruments were not introduced until 1700s) there is considerable evidence that the climate between 1500 and 1550 was relatively dry and hot. Supporting evidence comes from the annual growth rings in bristle cone pine trees in the USA. Cereal harvests in England were good between 1537-1548 and low prices, both suggesting good summer weather. Further, European weather conditions were also steady as suggested by the S.W. Germany records of good wine years between 1480 to 1550.

Thus, given the change in calendar and climate, plum varieties that ripen up to the middle of August today ware included in the short list for comparison with a selected 30 from the Mary Rose, as far as possible including a representative range of-shapes and sizes.

After careful examination on (including scanning in an electron microscope up to a magnification of 5000 times) and comparison with selected varieties at the National Fruit Trials, Brogdale EHS, it was revealed that five varieties were represented – Catalonia, Greengage, Mirabelle, Myrobalan and Yellow Cherry plum. As the ship was putting to sea for a relatively short spell, Peter Dodd feels confident that these were fresh fruit, probably grown in this country and put on board just before she sailed – these stones thus providing the earliest record of these varieties in England.

BOOK REVIEW.- PREHISTORIC ASTRONOMY AND RITUAL by Aubrey Burl (Shire Publs.)

Report by Sheila Woodward

Archaeo-astronomy or astro-archaeology, the study of ancient astronomy, has become a popular subject for discussion in recent years, and books have proliferated with such tantalizing titles as Stonehenge Decoded and

Megalithic Lunar Observatories. Aubrey Burl has chosen a more modest title for his general review of this fascinating subject and has provided a useful, straightforward introduction to a complex subject.

While paying generous tribute to such archaeo-astronomers as Thom and Hawkins for their stimulation of general interest, Burl approaches his subject more cautiously, pointing out that elaborate theories about prehistoric lunar or solar observatories cannot be proved or disproved. Instead, he studies the alignment of prehistoric tombs in certain areas, noting such famous examples as Newgrange, aligned on the midwinter sunrise and Maeshowe, originally aligned on the midwinter sunset. He then notes the alignment of stone circle entrances and lines of stones in the same area, finding striking uniformity within certain areas of the country. From this he deduces that primitive people were interested in the “great lights of the heavens” and that they associated them with ritual observances which had strong links with death and burial. They were capable of simple measurements and alignments, but they were not always based on astral objects. They might be based on hills or cairns.

Shire Books are available from Pete Griffiths, 8 Jubilee Avenue, London Colney, Tel. 612 3156.

YORK ARCHAEOLOGICAL WEEKEND 23-25 September organised by University of Leeds Department of Adult Education. Cost is £60.00 for conference, accommodation in a College and meals. The subject is Highlights of Recent British Archaeological Research and Excavations including Billingsgate, Thetford, Silchester, York, Fountains Abbey, Seamer Carr, Bay of Birsay in Orkney and several others. Anyone interested should ask Brigid Grafton Green for details.

DIGGING IN ISRAEL

HADAS member AUBREY HODES sends us news of digs this summer in Israel which require volunteers. Information comes courtesy of the Anglo-Israel

Archaeological Society, 3 St. Johns Wood Road NW8. Volunteers must make their own travel arrangements and should consider taking out health and accident insurance.

We give details of two of the 25 or so sites of varying periods – just to whet your appetite. The full list – if any member would like to study it in detail – can be borrowed from Brigid Grafton Green; or you might be able to winkle one for yourself out of the Anglo-Israel A.S.

CITY OF DAVID, JERUSALEM. Located south of the Old City walls, Bronze Age to Roman. Dig June 20-Aug 12, under Dr Yigal Shiloh, Hebrew University. Age limit for diggers: 18-55 years. Minimum participation 2 weeks. Volunteers arrange own accommodation, and there is a registration fee of $15. Contact Dr Shiloh, Inst. Archaeology, Hebrew University, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905.

BIQ’AT QUNEITRA – open air prehistoric site in Golan Heights, excavation of Mousterian remains.In August (exact dates still to be finalised), under Dr. N. Goren, Hebrew University.

Accommodation in Qatzrin, Golan Heights, no fees.Minimum age 18,minimum participation 1 week. Contact Dr. Goren at the same address as Dr. Shiloh.

SITES FOR WATCHING

Planning Applications have been made in the last few weeks for development in the following sites. If members notice any sign of building work please let Elizabeth Sanderson know on 950 3106:

98 High Street Edgware Building at the rear

Land at the rear of 90 Nether Street

between 71/73 Avondale Avenue N12 Detached house

Land adj. 32 Cedars Close NW4 Detached house (renewal of earlier outline perm.)

Plot 12 Cenacle Close NW3 Detached house

157 East End Road 3-storey side extension