Newsletter 123: May, 1981

REMEMBER, REMEMBER – HADAS Annual General Meeting, Tues May 19, the Library, The Burroughs, NW4. Coffee, 8 pm; business, 8.30, with senior Vice-President Wookey in the Chair. Then a slide show, com­pered by industrial archaeologist Bill Firth.

SUMMER DAYS AHEAD

Apologies from DOROTHY NEWBURY for being late with this year’s pro­gramme planning. The first outing is very near, but she hopes we shall be able to fill the coach. She sends these further details:

Sunday May10th, trip to Bishop’s Stortford and Audley End. Please note that this is a SUNDAY outing for a change. Several members can never make Saturday trips, so I hope they can come on this one. The Bishop Stortford History Society will supply several guides, probably splitting us into three parties for a tour of this old town. There is evidence of occupa­tion from the Palaeolithic to the present day. Their small museum in the old cemetery lodge, built for the foreman in 1855, is virtually in its original form, and will be- opened for our members. Several flint finds including hand-axes will be displayed for the benefit of West Heath enthusiasts. Packed lunches can be eaten in the Castle Gardens and energetic members can climb the mound to view the remains of the Norman castle (c 1085) held by the Bishops of London for 600 years. After lunch the coach will go on to Audley End House, built by the Earl of Suffolk in 1603 and altered in 1720.

If you would like to join the outing, please complete the enclosed application form and send with cheque to Mrs Newbury as soon as possible.

Saturday, June 13: trip to Blackheath, Rochester and Swanscombe, and possibly Penshurst Place. This outing will be guided by a former member of HAMS, Paul Craddock, a prehistorian at the British Museum who now lives in Rochester.

July: we are trying to arrange a return trip to Bath, where Professor Barry Cunliffe is starting the first working archaeological museum. He and his team began, on Good Friday this year, to excavate the precinct area of the Temple to ,Sufis Minerva that lies beneath the famous Georgian Pump Room. More news of this later.,

August: details of outing still to be arranged.

Sept. 11-13: weekend in the Brecon Beacons. Details and application form were provided in the December, 1980, Newsletter.-

If you have not yet seen the HADAS exhibition at Church Farm House Museum, Pinning Down the Past, time is running out. We take it down on May 5.

ALSO FOR YOUR DIARY

Sat. May 23. CBA Group 7 one-day Conference on the Problems of the Late Iron Age in Britain and Gaul, at Campus West, Welwyn Garden City, 10 am 6 pm. Star-studded list of speakers; Sheppard Frere, Graham Webster, John Collin, Barry Cunliffe, Geoffrey Dannell, Jeffrey May, Colin Hazlegrove, Alain Duval. Tickets £3 from E Heathman, 92 Charmouth Road, St Albans, Herts.

May 21-August 31. Exhibition, “Royal Westminster,” mounted by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Takes the history of Westminster from the days when Thorney Island (site of the Palace of Westminster and the Abbey) was “a terrible, uncultivated place” in the middle of a marsh. Roman and Anglo-Saxon occupation, medieval life and illuminated manu­scripts, the growth of the Abbey from small beginnings, the story of Westminster Hall and its varied uses and all the vicissitudes of the Houses of Parliament will be shown.

Open Mons & Sats 10-6; Thurs 10-8; Suns 12-6. Admission £1.80; OAPs, students, children, £1.00.

MY MEMORIES OF HENDON by Madeline Lovatt, nee Spearman

I came to Hendon from Fulham as a child in 1904 with my parents. My father was employed by the Metropolitan Water Board as a turncock; he came to Hendon to take charge of the Hendon District water supply. My first recollection is of arriving at Station Road, West Hendon, and waiting there for the horse bus to take us to Church End.

We lived in Church Walk, which was a very quiet road of about 12 houses, with an open space in front known as the “nursery.” This was the playground of all the children in “the Walk.”

St Mary’s Church of England School was just across the road. The headmistress of the girl’s school was Miss J B Jones, and Mr A Kamester was headmaster of the boy’s school. The very youngest class was in charge

of Miss Champion, who remained teaching there for many years after I left.

When we went up from the infants section to the higher classes we were all able to read, write and draw; and we knew our “tables” and also simple arithmetic. The school rooms were heated by a black iron coal. stove, refuelled several times a day by “Teacher” and the books written today by “Miss Read” are so like St Mary’s that I feel sure all village:schools throughout the country were similar during that time.

We celebrated Empire Day each year with a playground display by girls each representing a country in our Empire. Of course Christmas was anti­cipated weeks in advance, with the making of paper chains and the drawing and painting of Christmas cards for our parents and relations.

We were taught to sew and mend and also in the latter years of my schooling to use a sewing machine. Our school was not equipped for the teaching of cookery and housewifery and when we were old enough we had to attend Bell Lane School one day a week to take these subjects. I always enjoyed those days, as on the way to school we passed a bakers shop in Bell Lane and if we were early, we were able to buy “stale” cakes and buns, and get two or three for 1d.

All our leisure activities centered around St Mary’s parish church. I attended Sunday School and was a member of the Band of Hope and the Coral League and later became a Girl Guide when a troop was started.

I was confirmed at the first Confirmation service held in the newly enlarged church in 1915. By that time we had moved from Church Walk to the Company’s house in Finchley Lane.When the war (the first war) broke out and the air raids began, Mother and I used to go to the Baptist Church a few yards away, as Father had to report to the police station and stand by during air raids in case fires were started or water mains damaged by bombs in the district. The base­ment of the church was used by American troops as a canteen during normal times, but it also served as an air raid shelter. When the all clear was given I remember two scouts (one of them was Laurie Mills) from, the 8th Hendon St Mary’s troop used to cycle round the streets sounding the all clear on bugles.

After the war social life for the younger parishioners began again at St Mary’s. The Guild of Fellowship was started by the Rev. G. Barnicoat; it was run by Commander Robinson, after the Rev. Barnicoat went to Cornwall. This Guild met weekly; it had concerts and whist drives and in the summer a tennis club.

In 1924 the Vicar, the Rev. Chettoe, asked me to form a club for girls, who were not in any other organisation. With the help and encouragement of friends the St Mary’s Girls club was formed for girls aged 7-18 plus. We gave gymnasium displays and on one or two occasions gave a display in Hendon Park, where we combined with the St Mary’s scouts. We learned country dancing and handicrafts and played netball every Saturday during the season, as well as competing in swimming galas and sports days and having an annual camp, often in the Isle of Wight.

The Club continued to flourish until 1935 when I had reluctantly to resign – it was getting very difficult to travel to Hendon two evenings each week plus every Saturday afternoon during the netball season from Kingsbury where I had moved on my marriage. The Club continued for a short time after I left, but finished when a Ranger group was added to the Girl Guides.

The Club held a reunion in my home a few years ago, people travelling long distances to join us and many of the members meeting again for the first time since Club days. I am still in touch with many of “my girls,.; and many of them are now grandmothers. When I look at the snaps we took during the life of the Club the years roll back and I see Hendon as I used to know it. Today it is sadly unrecognisable, except for dear St Mary’s Church.

NEWS FROM OUR LIBRARY

Our Hon. Librarian, June Porges, asks us to say that she will be at Avenue House on Friday evening, May 15 (the Friday before the AGM). Thereafter during the summer she will be happy to meet any interested member at our Avenue House book-room on a Friday evening, but would appreciate it if members could telephone her first (346 5078), preferably giving a few days’ notice, to say if they wish to use the library on a particular Friday.

Recent additions to the Library include:

Journal of Egyptian Archeology, vol. 60, 1974; vol 61, 1975

(presented by Alec Gouldsmith) –

Johnson, S, Later Roman Britain. Routledge & Kegan Paul 1980

Herity, N & Eagan, G, Ireland in Prehistory. Routledge & Kegan Paul 1977 World Archaeology. June 1980 Classical Archaeology

Oct 1980 Musical Instruments

Feb 1981 Early Man

(all presented by an anonymous donor)MUSEUM Programme-

On Thursdays, from May 7, a new series of Workshops begins at the Museum of London, starting 1.10 pm and usually lasting about 75 minutes. Subjects include:

May 7 Buckle making at Blossom’s Inn: 15th c mass production

John Clark

May 21 Pottery for the archaeologist: analysing fabrics.

Tony McKenna

June 11 Excavating William Paget’s Manor House. Jon Cotton

July 9 Death and Burial in Roman London. Geoff Marsh

‘Two new stories of Museum of London lectures also start in May: Weds, 1.10pm, beginning May 6, a series on Shakespeare’s impact on the London theatre from Elizabethan times;. and on Fridays, from May 8;

1.10 Landmarks in London Architecture, including talks on Wren, Inigo Jones, James Cribb s, William Kent and Robert Adam, Telford and Smirks.

FROM OUR POSTBAG come a variety of topics:

Milestones

Dear Editor,

The southernmost (R14) of the milestones on a winding route from Hampstead to Mill Hill listed by Bill Firth in the November Newsletter is seven miles from London. Until about 25 years ago the sixth stone was outside the White Swan in Golders Green Road, at OS ref: TQ 243 C32. It was removed after being badly damaged by a lorry.

What appears to be the fifth stone is at the back of Church Farm House Museum. The OS places the original site in North End Road at TQ 256 873, but when Park Drive was built at that point the stone was at first placed on the opposite side of the main road.

The rest of the series was evidently superseded in Hampstead by stones of a different type, starting with the White Stone near the pond of that name. Yours, etc

R F ALLEN

Hansom Cabs

Dear Editor,

I came across an intriguing reference to Hendon that night be worth further study. In one of H V Morton’s books about London, called “The Ghosts of London,” he refers to a conversation he had in 1939 with one of London’s last three hansom cab drivers. In talking about the demise of the hansom, the driver asserts that hundreds of the cabs were taken down and placed in a very large field in Hendon, there to be broken up for their glass, and timber,

I wonder whether you could put a reference to this in some future Newsletter and see if anyone remembers a “Hansom Graveyard.”

Yours, etc

PERCY REBOUL

NOTE: If anyone does have an angle on this fascinating piece of local history, please ring Percy Reboul (203 3664) and let him know.

Milk Bottles

Our final letter comes from a new member who joined HADAS during the Pinning Down the Past exhibition. She writes:

Since your membership questionnaire does not allow for our hobby of collecting milk bottles, I thought I would supplement it a little.

My husband is a weather forecaster. I teach English at King Alfred School. We know little about archaeology except as avid museum-and-cave visitors, and I suppose collecting milk bottles counts as social history rather than archaeology.

Since we began collecting three years ago, in an entirely haphazard and uninformed manner, we have formed a collection of nearly 1400 bottles, mainly from ditches and woods and lay-bys on main roads. We have corres­ponded endlessly with glass manufacturers and dairies, and are forming a pretty good picture of the industry from the 1920s onwards, my husband is good on the technical side; I am fascinated by the design, and by the claims made by the dairies for their own milk.

We have a card index showing all details of each bottle, including where we found it; this can be fascinating: there’s a wood in Wiltshire which has yielded us 300 different bottles, and our last trip there pro­vided bottles from seventeen counties.

I’m not sure how much help we can be to the Society … but visitors to the collection (if they will give a little notice) will be welcome

and I think. I might give a serious talk to the Society entitled “Objects Found in and Around Milk Bottles:” We’re accustomed now to rotting voles, but my husband has just found a bomb, nestling in the bracken on Peddars

Way … Yours sincerely,

NAOMI HULL

NOTE: Mrs Hull would be happy to hear from other HADAS members who have acquired interesting milk bottles. If you would like to see her collection, or to talk to her about it, her telephone number is 343 1959.

A PLEA FOR HELP

from George Ingram. For some years he has been reading the local papers of the Borough of Barnet for HADAS, and cutting from them not only mentions of our Society, but also articles or paragraphs on local history or archaeology, so that these may be kept for later reference.

George now has a problem. Until recently a member who lived in the north of the Borough provided him with a copy of the Barnet Press, but this source has now dried up. Are there any members living in the Totteridge/ Barnet/North Finchley area who regularly take the Barnet.Press and would be prepared to pass their copy to Mr Ingram after they have read it? If so, could you please give him a ring (202 844l). He will be delighted to hear from you.

LEARNING TO DIG

Many HADAS members, specially-those with` eye fixed ultimately on a Diploma – took their first tottering steps in trowelling techniques at the residential training courses which have been run every summer for 20 years or more in Cambridge by the Cambridge Board of Extra-mural Studies.

This year’s courses – called, as usual, Archaeological Excavation

Techniques – take place from July 4 – Aug 1. You sign on for at least a week (longer if you want to and if there are places – but the courses are usually heavily booked). Courses are suitable for experienced diggers a well as beginners, since instruction in more• advanced skills – surveying, archaeological photography, data-sampling, etc – is included. Fees are now 265 a week (in the halcyon days of 1964 they were g;18: we didn’t realise how lucky we were!), with accommodation at Lucy Cavendish College.

Cambridge also offers weekend or full week courses at Madingley Hall and at Flatford Mill on various local history and archaeology subjects. A new venture is one-day cour 8,-s at Madingley on everyt hing from antique furniture restoration (Aug 22) and landscape history (Sept 19) to Mediterr­anean Archaeology (Nov 28). Further details about Cambridge courses from our Hon. Secretary.

UNDERGROUND MYSTERY a note from BILL FIRTH

When Andrew and I were looking round the outside of the ex-Handley Page factories in Claremont Road, Cricklewood, recently we discovered an extensive underground structure, built into the embankment facing the railway. There were a number of entrances (mainly facing the railway) with steps down, numerous vents from Whatever is underground, a concrete structure, which might have been a pill box, on the top and there had been a number of gated entrances from Claremont Road. It was difficult to investigate closely because the complex is within the railway boundary fence and; although this is broken in a number of places so that one could get in, the most interesting parts are open to the railway and one’s presence would have been very obvious!

Was this only an extensive air raid shelter for railway workers, or was it something more? Any information, please, to Bill Firth (455 7164).

GREEK ROYAL ART BRIAN WIBBERLEY reports on the final HADAS lecture of the winter

It was good to hear again the rich tones of Dr Malcolm College, telling us of the arts of the Hellenistic Age, complete with quotations from Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra and, of course, The Iliad.

The period he covered was approximately the first half of the 4th c to the last half of the let c BC. Firstly the cultural inheritance of Alexander the Great and his world was sketched in. We were reminded Of the strong architectural, carving and plastic art tradition of Greece, the

Parthenon and the temples of the Periclean age, naturalistic marble carvings and geometrically decorated pottery. The spread of Greek art was admirably demonstrated in the slides and lecture.

The choice of the lecture title was almost a misnomer, in the sense that no royal Hellenistic palaces have been found yet, with the possible exception of Vergina. Some of the finds and diagrams of the recently dis­covered tomb wore shown, but it was explained that some caution must be exercised in taking Professor Andronicos’s interpretation as fact. It was better to wait until further work had been done on the finds. Vergina may indeed be a royal burial, but whether or not it is the tomb of Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedon, is still speculative. The burial caskets of gold, the superbly made fine golden wreath, the woven purple cloth inter­laced with gold thread, are only someof the tomb finds which were shown. The series of smell carved heads, reputedly of the deceased’s family, including Alexander the Great, are appealing and haunting,.

It was suggested that, although no palaces of this period have been found, wealthy and middle class tastes reflect those of royalty. Hence the

higher or middle class colonnaded houses with marble plaques or painted wall decorations and sometimes mosaics, which all serve as good models of royal residences. Their house contents, too, supported occasionally by literary references, are thought to mimic kinglike possessions. The contemporary area of influence was divided into three sections – firstly, the Hellenistic homeland of Macedonia and Greece; secondly the eastern states ranging from Phrygia through Syria to Bactria; and thirdly, to the south, Egypt.

The specific pieces chosen to represent the first section included the Vergina finds noted above, plus scrolls with illustrations, metal’ vases and bowls with scenes brought into high relief by repousse work, river pebble mosaic (dated c. 250 BC) and, of course, sculptured figures, including the beautifully proportioned Aphrodite of Rhodes.

The second section also had its share of distinctive objects including the Sidon (or Lebanon) gable-vaulted sarcophagi, the Telephos “Gods and giants” frieze and the Pergamum Gallic prisoner statues. It had its share of characters too, including King Mithridates VI of Pontus, who tried to poison himself after a life-long homeopathic immunisation against poisoning, and Antichos IV who virtually bandrupted his empire by building temples

to Zeus.

Finally came Ptolemaic Egypt, with slides of tombs and terracottaa and the superb cameo-d Portland Vase from the BM. A final allusion was made to the barge of Queen Cleopatra, so that the lecture came full circle and ended, as it had begun, in a rolling declamation that owed its glory partly to Dr Colledge and partly to Shakespeare.

NOW FOR A GOOD READ

Excavations at Billingsgate Buildings, Lower Thames Street, 3_974
LAMAS Special Paper No 4, by D M Jones and M Rhodes

More information about the establishment and consolidation of the Roman river bank is contained in this clear and detailed excavation report. In the late 1st and 2nd c AD there was a series of artificial terracings

of the north bank of the Thames, represented on this site by three dots of oak posts with horizontal planks retaining dumps of building rubble, soil and domestic refuse. It is possible that the most southerly of these features was actually the quayside but there is no clear evidence of this. In fact the report is mainly concerned with Roman London as the post-Roman levels were largely destroyed by a modern basement.

The waterlogged condition of the site has led to the survival of a large quantity and range of finds, providing evidence of small-scale work­shops for shoe-making and repairs; cattle-slaughtering; and bone, lead and bronze working. The most interesting finds to me are the leather shoes. Five different types of Roman shoes and sandals are represented, including both adult and children’s sizes – and all seem to have been professionally made and some have been repaired. This section of the report includds a short general study of Roman footwear, as published material on this subject is rather limited.

A large quantity of pottery, mostly sherds, is drawn and described, including some from the Brockley Hill/Verulamium kilns.

This excavation is just one of a series planned by the Museum of London to gain further knowledge of the Roman waterfront. Future reports will set this site in its true context.

Jenny Griffiths

The HungryYears: .Edmonton and Enfield before 1400: Occasional Paper

New series No 42, Edmonton Hundred Historical Society,

This well-researched paper: (price 95p), illustrated with maps and drawings, is striking for two reasons. The first is that there is so much evidence available from this early time. Mr Pam says “I had intended to continue this story through to the 16th c but the evidence proved so abundant that ‘the period ‘from 1400-on must await another paper.” The present paper, with its references and sources, runs to 27 A4 pages, closely typed, in a small typeface. That is heartening information for all documentary researchers, because what, is discovered in Edmonton today could be relevant; for work in Barnet or Hendon tomorrow.

The second interesting point is that violence was so rife and so habitual in the period Mr Pam has been investigating. The aggressive acts of the present day pale into gentle insignificance beside the doings of some of our medieval forebears.

Mr. Pam’s main sources were charters; inquisitions, post mortem and civil and criminal court records; while his principal ports of call were ,the PRO.the Westminster Abbey Muniment Room; and the Archives of Hatfield House

As an encouragement to our HADAS documentary researchers to delve into this forgotten medieval world, here are the opening lines of Mr Pam’s paper, a quotation from John Sherwen of Enfield, surgeon, about Richard Gough of Enfield, antiquary:

Like one who with incessant zeal

Belabours with a flint and steel

While all around obscure and dark

Will catch at last a little spark

Behold with joy the spark he blows

And round, about him light bestows

Yet many a time he blows in vain

And all is doubly dark again

Thus who the wrecks of time explore

In depth of antiquarian lore

Will after all that care and pain

Alternate dark and light obtain

Finally, two booklets published by Barnet Libraries which, we understand,

are the forerunners of a series:

Fincley Common: a notorious place is by schoolteacher Fred Davis.

It is a 14-page history of the Common from the 16th-19th c, illustrated with maps and drawings. It deals with all the ways in which the Common; up to the time of its enclosure for cultivation and development in 1814, was used:

for grazing, as a refuge from plague, for religious meetings, military exercises, sporting events such as horse-racing and boxing; and its most notorious phase as a happy hunting ground for highwaymen.

Avenue House Finchley

This 6-page guide to Avenue House, East End Road, bequeathed to the people of Finchley by its last private owner, “Inky” Stephens, has been written by Paddy Musgrove for the Finchley Society. It

is attractively produced and illustrated with excellent drawings by Herbert Norman.

Both the above booklets are available from local libraries. Finchley Common costs 50p, Avenue House ’20p.

newsletter-119-january-1981

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Newsletter

Page 1

GREETINGS AND BEST WISHES TO ALL MEMBERS FOR A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR
THINGS PAST
THE CHRISTMAS PARTY Report by Nell Penny

Seventy members of HADAS celebrated Christmas early at Hendon Hall Hotel. On December 2nd we sat at round tables in a room of the imposing country villa built for David Garrick after he had bought the Manor of Hendon in 1756. Parson Street must have been a very pleasant rural area two hundred years ago. We eat a turkey dinner, drank our wine and talked with friends. I doubt that any of our chatter had a serious archaeological content. There were no speeches – but we did thank Dorothy Newberry for her first class organisation. After dinner we were entertained by the “Beaux Belles”. Dressed in appropriate costumes they sang Victorian, Edwardian and neo-Georgian ditties. By this time, HADAS members were mellow enough to join in the choruses in fluting soprano, piping tenor and mellow bass. At 11 p.m. our Chairman, Brian Jarman, who was able to join us for the second part of the evening, wished us all a happy Christmas and prosperous New Year.

Page 2

FROM THE EAST: ADVENTURES IN THAILAND experienced by Daphne Lorrimer

For nearly a week, I have had the thrill of walking in a land where anthropology brings archaeology alive. I have seen a primitive tribe who still use slash and burn agriculture, Still use a stone quern to grind their meal and a crossbow for hunting. I have gazed, with awe in the museums, at the earliest Bronze Age objects so far discovered in the world and have come back to Britain with the uncomfortable feeling that, primitive tribes or no, there lies the cradle of civilisation and ours is merely parvenu. The Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, one of whom we visited, consist of small, isolated groups of nomadic people, who, even now, are barely practicing settled agriculture. The earliest known inhabitants were the Negritos, a pigmy race found in Thailand, Java and Sumatra, of whom very few are left. A small group of the Tibetan-Burmese people moved across from Burma. They had come down the big rivers from central Asia and gave Burma settled government for hundreds years. In Thailand these people, the Karens, still practice slash and burn to a certain extend although some terrace and irrigate their land. They are en- dogamous, matrilinear, and animist in religion and still use the custom of boat burial.The Lis people inhabit the Upper Salween river area, are patriachal and practice healing and exorcism. The Ekaw and Enter are connected to each other and, in common with many of the hill tribes, wear short pleated skirts and leggings to prevent damage by roots and branches left by slash and burn procedures. The Shan are mainly found in Burma but half a million are found in Thailand where they practice wet paddy as well as hill (dry) cultivation of rice. They are mainly Buddhist or Christian. The Maeo are divided into two groups, the Black and the White, (nothing to do with the colour of their skins but are the decoration on their clothing). Two and a half pillion Maeos have spread into China where they are regarded as a recognisable minority. Known as the Kings of the Mountains, they are animist in religion and are a hard-working, adaptable and ingenious people. They are said to be mediums and their wanderings controlled by spirits; they build both long and round houses. The Yao are the most prosperous group and migrated from Southern China between the 17th and 19th centuries. They are found mainly in Laos and Northern to Eastern China. The women wear trousers. The Thais, themselves, who arrived in Thailand after the Shan, but before the Maeos are believed to have originated in Southern China, Burma and Mongolia and founded the Kingdom of Nanchao which was important until about the 11th century. It was destroyed by Kublai Khan in the 13th Century and it is thought that the Thais may have moved south to escape him. There are references in Chinese literature from the 10th century onwards to Siam. The Siamese are, however, only one group of the Thai-Siamese peoples of whom the Thais arrived first, were by far the larger group and the leaders. The village we visited, belonged to the Black Maeos and was reached by bumping up a hair-raising track through the jungle – up an incredible series of hair-pin bends over torrent-strewn boulders with the wheels of the land-rover only inches from a sheer drop, when we were not crashing our heads against the roof or clutching frantically at the grab rails, we could see cultivated clearings on the hillside and patches abandoned and reverting to jungle. The area under cultivation is planted with hill rice as soon as it has been cleared by cutting and fire, so that the potash maybe used before it can be leached by the rains. All the clearings were within walking distance of the village but, in many cases, the climb was formidable. When the area around the village is worked out, the tribe, according to custom, move on – a practice which is causing alarming depredations to the only remaining major teak forests in the world. Hill rice is grown dry without paddy and only one crop a year is obtained. The rice has to be harvested by hand and is left for several days in small bundles, carefully balanced on the stubble, to dry. It is carried to the village in panniers on the back, threshed and spread out on a shallow wooden platform to dry further, in the sun as this improves its keeping qualities. The village is built on a considerable slope at the bottom of which is a communal patch of ground (possibly used as a meeting place). A fast running stream about 100ft below provides fish (caught in a tubular net on a bambo frame) and a washing place. One large long house lies immediately above the level patch and about 5 or 6 are sited on levelled plots up a very steep slope. Water is piped from a spring above by an ingenious system of bamboo pipes. The midden is carefully sited below the communal open ground but in such a position that it does not drain into the bathing place. Domestic sewage is taken care of by the numerous pigs at large in the area. The Maeo house is built on stilts and consists of a bamboo framework with thatch roof and walls of rush pannels. The stilts are a very necessary provision against the torrents of water gushing down the hillside in the rainy season. In the dry weather they provide a workshop area for weaving etc., and for housing animals. Inside the house, the family shrine faces the door and on the right is a shallow platform which serves as a seat (on which visitors are entertained) during the day and if necessary as a sleeping platform at night. To the left is an area partitioned off as a sleeping room. Storage of grain is in sacks and vessels within the house. The young men leave the family roof at puberty and inhabit a bachelor longhouse. Marriage does not take place until the girl is pregnant. The crossbow (of a very primitive type) is still used for hunting, together with rifle and spear. Small animals such as rabbits, ground squirrels, lizards and snakes are shot. The costume consists, for the men, of baggy black trousers and tunics with batik cummerbunds in red and blue. The hat is a round skull cap with a red pompom for festive occasions. The women wear short kilts of black batik ornamented with blue and red bands of traditional pattern, a black tunic with a batik sash and leggings. These hill people are the opium-growing tribes of the golden triangle. Outsiders suggested to them that it could be grown as a cash crop and it rapidly became the way in which they could earn luxuries they could not manufacture for themselves. The very enlightened Thai government realised that they could not prohibit the growth of opium (however much pressure the outside world put on them) without sponsoring an alternative cash crop. This was amalgamated with the desirable end of eliminating slash and burn to conserve the remaining teak forests. A policy of settlement, led by the King himself, has been undertaken to achieve these ends as well as to provide stability on a very insecure frontier. In the case of ‘our’ village, coffee was the cash crop chosen and the people have been settled in the last decade – deserted slash and burn can be seen across the valley and barbed-wire fencing, a brick built school and a community centre with a corrugated iron roof have, alas, now appeared. The Ban Chieng Culture The primitive tribes are but the modern successors of far older cultures and the hill regions of North-East Thailand have been inhabited since 7000BC, as has been shown by the discoveries in the four North Eastern provinces of Udonthani, Sakhang Nakhon, Nakon Phanon and Honkeen. Finds have been made in 17 villages of which one, Ban Chieng or Chiang, has given its name to an important Bronze Age culture, which has been C14 dated to about 3660 BC (thereby antedating the finds from Iraq and the Stang dynasty in China which is only 1300BC). Permanent settlement of people or peoples occurred from the 4th Millemium onwards on the Karat plateau, with a sequence of cultures which included domesticated animals, cultivation of rice and the existence of some sort of social stratification. The earliest phases (1 and 2) of metal working cover a period from approximately 3600 to 2900 BC and produce black burnished and incised pottery, decorated and undecorated beaker forms and a variety of cord-marked and burnished vessels. Burial, in phase I was flexed and phase 2 supine. The two types are not clearly separable but a large bronze spearhead was found with the flexed burial. About 2000BC Phase 3 produces cord-marked vessels with incised curvilinear designs. There were jar burials of children and the evidence from the graves is said to indicate sophisticated hunting techniques. In phase 4 (1600-1200BC) a great number of bronze objects were found together with metal objects made of bronze and iron – iron was still rare and used for ornament or important worked edges. The pottery has incised and curvilinear decoration as well as geometric designs with areas outlined and painted red. Phase 5 (from 1000-500 BC) shows a continuation of iron and bronze metallurgy. The burials are supine with rich grave goods – this is the red- buff pottery, painted freehand which is best known as the Ban Chiang pottery. Also found in this period are fired clay bodkins which are deeply carved with patterns of geometric and/or curvilinear designs. Complex and often inter- locking curvilinear designs have been discovered on some remnants of blue, red and ochre pigments together with strands of silk thread. These are unique to South-East Asian archaeology and continue into phase 6 (300-250 BC) which is the last funerary phase. Iron is far more commonly used, bronze being confined, principally, to ornament. Many glass beads were found and also special alloys for jewellery. The pottery of this phase is large, often thick and crudely made with a red slip. The report on the Ban Chiang excavations is awaited eagerly. Information for the European is sparse but archaeology in the Far East is beginning to uncover much exciting information and, be it ancient or modern, Thailand is fascinating,

Page 3

THINGS PRESENT
THE SILVER STUDIO COLLECTION 1880-1963 exhibition report by Ted Sammes

This free exhibition staged by the Middlesex Polytechnic at the Museum of London is open until 31st January 1931. The studio was founded by Arthur Silver, a contemporary of Walter Crane and William Morris. It produced designs for specialist shops such as Liberty’s and John Line & Sons. There are 523 different items on show covering menu cards, wallpapers, carpet and textile patterns and some examples of metal working. Rex Silver, the son, who carried on the business after his father’s early death, owned number 9 Wellgarth Road from 1926 – 1964. Another site for a Blue Plaque perhaps?
THINGS TO COME
A DATE FOR YOUR DIARY

The first lecture of the New Year is at 8.00 p.m. on TUESDAY 6th JANUARY at Hendon Library. Dr. John Alexander from the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, will speak about “RECENT EXCAVATION AT OASF IBRIM: A FORTRESS ON THE NILE”. Many members will remember Dr. Alexander for his lecture about World Archaeology in November 1975, and others will know him as the Secretary of the Council for British Archaeology.
AN URGENT REMINDER from Christine Arnott
MINIMART 1981

Owing to intense booking at the ‘Henry Burden Hall, we have had to accept 7th FEBRUARY 1981 for the great Saturday morning fund-raising effort. Please note this is a month earlier than we normally arrange, so we shall all have to get our skates on to achieve the spectacular result desired! Articles can be brought to the January and February lectures, or will be collected if necessary. Telephone Christine Arnott – 455 2751 or Dorothy Newbury – 203 0954 for help or information. There will be our usual stalls: HOMEPRODUCE – Daphne Lorimer – 455 2380 MISCELLANY – Nell Penny – 458 1689 “NEARLY NEW” – Dorothy Newbury – 203 0950 BRIC-A-BRAC – Christine Arnott We shall also have a stall selling HADAS publications and a stall for second-hand books (George Ingram – 202 8441). Please save any unwanted Christmas Gifts for us and if you have any spare time over the New Year, have a good turn-out in advance of the spring cleaning, so that we can relieve you of clearance problems. Now that we are renting two sets of premises for our activities and expenses are rising, as we all know only too well, the need to augment our income is very real so please reserve Saturday morning 7th February, 1981 from 10.00 a.m, to 12 noon.
“PINNING DOWN THE PAST”

is the title of the HADAS exhibition which will open at Church Farm House Museum, Hendon, at the end of next month. Nearly a year ago about a dozen members began to plan the project; since then they have been working quietly, collecting the basic material for various displays. Now the pace has begun to hot up. Although HADAS has played a part in several recent exhibitions at the Museum, our last full-scale show there, using all three upstairs rooms, was in 1977. The aim of Pinning Down the Past will be to indicate some of the avenues which the Society has explored in the last four years. Though there will, of course, be material on digging, the main emphasis, as the title suggests, will be on research and post excavation work. One section, called “Science and Archaeology”, will show some of the projects that the backroom boys (and girls) of West Heath have been engaged on in their study of the Mesolithic. Similarly, displays of material from the early Brockley Hill digs will illustrate work which has been continuing on finds from that important Roman site. The key role of agriculture in the history of our area will be underlined in several exhibits. We shall follow the thread of farming through various parts if our Borough of Barnet; and a large wooden relief map, covering one wall, will name about 150 farms, past and present, from Chipping Barnet to Cricklewood, and Edgware to Southgate. One display will illustrate how College Farm, Finchley, provided milk for the growing suburbs of North London for over a century, and was used as a model for other dairy farms to copy another will pinpoint the importance of the hay trade, which sent the hay-carts rolling down to London from the outlying villages of North Middlesex. An exhibit on Edgware in History starts in the stone age and ends in the railway age; and from the other side of the Borough there will be a view of the hamlet of Friern Barnet – and particularly of its links with the City of London over several centuries – built up as a result of recording tombstone inscriptions in the church and churchyard of St. James the Great.. Those are just a few highlights of HADAS’s recent work – to whet-your appetite, as it were.However, it isn’t only as a visitor that we hope to see you at the exhibition.Your help with it is needed too, as NELL PENNY says in the following appeal: Are there 46 enthusiastic volunteers to steward the HADAS exhibition at Church Farm House Museum? It starts on Saturday February 28th and ends on May Day bank holiday, Monday May 4th. We need two stewards on duty on Saturday and Sunday afternoons – Saturdays 1.30-5.30, Sundays 2.30-6 p.m.; and possibly on two Bank Holidays as well. They will answer simple questions about the exhibition and will sell HADAS publications – and we shall have a new booklet to sell, about which you will hear more in next month’s Newsletter. If you can offer to help, please ring Nell Penny on 458 1689. She’ll be delighted to hear from you.

Page 4

ASPECTS OF ARCHAEOLOGY: A SPECIAL HADAS COURSE

The first course of HADAS lectures at Hendon College of Further Education Flower Lane, Mill Hill, finished just before Christmas. This month, as we mentioned in the August Newsletter, a second, quite separate, course will start called Aspects of Archaeology. The ten lectures will deal with particular areas of archaeological study. There are five lecturers, each of whom was invited to talk on two subjects which he or she found particularly interesting.Daphne Lorimer will devote both her lectures to the beginnings of farming; Ted Sammes will take Megalithic Man as one of his topics, and the island communities of Cyprus and Malta as the other; Brigid Grafton Green has opted for the early history of food for one talk and man in the next world for the other, covering both religion and burial practices. Sheila Woodward will handle Minoan Crete -in one lecture and Mycenae and Troy in a second; and the course will end with two lectures by Nicole Douek on Egyptian archaeology, a subject in which she has specialised. Because a course starting after Christmas is something of a new venture for the College, there is a little worry lest the numbers signing on should not come up to the figure that the authorities require: so we hope very much that any HADAS member who is interested in the topics to be covered will enrol. The course is on a Monday.

Page 5

ROMAN WEEKENDS AT THE TEAHOUSE Report by Helen Gordon

It is a tantalizing fact that Roman remains in this Borough are still largely below ground level, whether they are undiscovered (though suspected) or excavated but covered up again, or excavated and stored away in cellars. Brockley Hill is, after all, of great historical importance to Barnet,it should hold pride of place in any history of the Borough as the first industrial de- velopment in the area, and is one of the first instances of the mass production of pottery in Britain. The material that was examined at the Teahouse falls into all three of these categories. HADAS has the custody of all pottery dug in and before 1954 at Brockley Hill, carefully housed in strong wooden boxes. Shifting these boxes is the work of strong men, and we are very grateful to the strong men who in fact devoted two evenings to shifting these boxes in and out of cars between cellar and Teahouse. We are much indebted too, to Mr. Enderby for making the arrangements so easy for the unpacking and spread of this pottery in the spacious comfort of the Teahouse, which enabled some forty HADAS members to view and handle it during the weekends of November 8 and 15.While some came to do just that, steady work was carried on by others with a variety of skills – sorting, marking, mending, drawing and indexing. Field-walk finds, picked up from the area where occupation is suspected, were also sorted and marked; and in another corner maps were pored over in search of further clues to the line of the elusive Route 167. On the first Saturday afternoon a seminar was held, opened by a very competent rundown on the Brockley Hill Excavations by Brigid Grafton Green, and, needless to say, the usual HADAS coffees were consumed, and the picnic sandwiches partaken of, in the now customary HADAS fashion. Subsequent plan included the third Route 167 walk, which took place on November 23rd, examining both the line excavated by Brian Robertson on Copthall Fields, and an alternative line via Page Street; both these warrant further investigation including document search. Further work on the pottery is under discussion. Anyone interested is invited to attend the next meeting on Raman research on Wednesday, January 7th at 0.0 pm at 94 Hillside Gardens, Edgware.
RECENT ADDITIONS TO THE SOCIETY LIBRARY Presented by Christine Arnott

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 1966, 1967, 1968, 19789 1979 LAMAS Transactions vol.27, 1976; vol.28, 1977 LAMAS Collectanea Londiniensia: studies in London archaeology and history presented to Ralph Merrifield. LAMAS special paper no.2, 1973. Presented by Dorothy Newburyry Smith, C.R. Hendon as it was Book-box Gear, G. and Goodwin, D. East Barnet village. Barnet Press Group Hewlett, G. ed. A history of Wembley. Brent Library Service. 1979 Boddington, A. The excavation record. Part 1. Stratification: an interim policy statement, Northamptonshire County Council Archaeological occasional paper no.1 1978. Boddington, A. and Morgan, M. The excavation record. Part 2. Inhumations. Northamptonshire County Council Archaeological occasional paper No.2 1979. Farrar, R. Survey by prismatic compass. Council for British Archaeology 1980. Presented anonymously Johnstone, P. The sea-craft of prehistory. Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1980. LAMAS Vol.39, 1979. Members are reminded that our Librarian, June Porges, will be at the HADAS room in Avenue House (East End Road, N3) on the Friday evening before each Society lecture, from 8-9 p.m. and will be delighted to see members and show them the library.

Page 6

BARNET LIBRARIES LOCAL HISTORY PUBLICATIONS

New sets of postcards On sale now at all libraries – five postcard views of Mill Hill (1900-1930). Drawn from the Local History Collection. Price 30p per set. Single cards availrble from Church Farm House Museum, price 6p each. On sale shortly – two sets of cards of Chipping Barnet in the 1890s from a collection of photographs recently donated to the Libraries Department. Church Farm, Hendon Copies of the anniversary folder are still available from ‘Hendon Library and Church Farm House Museum, price £.1.80. The Contents of the folder include: reproductions of James Crow’s “Plan of the Manor A Parish of Hendon” 1754 and the O.S. map 1914 a page from 1756 sale catalogue describing Church Farm; a superb lithograph of Hendon Church, 1798; a plan and isometric drawing of the farm house; and five descriptive broadsheets entitled ‘Chronology’, ‘Architecture and Building’,’Domestic Life’, ‘Farming’ and’Hendon Village’. Illustrations are drawn from the Local History Collection (many of them never previously reproduced). HADAS were involved in producing the folder – all wearing their other hats as members of the library staff.

Page 7

A BOOKLET for DOCUMENTARY RESEARCHERS

The list of Original Parish Registers in Record Offices and Libraries published in 1974 by Local Population Studies broke new ground and put a valuable (and reasonably priced) tool into the hands of all those local historians interested in demography, family reconstitution and similar studies. Supplements were added in 1976 and 1978 and now we have a third supplement, priced 0.75, obtainable from Tawney House, Matlock, Derbyshire. It is the first in the series to be produced since the Parochial and Records Measure came into force in. January 1979. There is therefore information about many new deposits – 1900 of them, against 1100 deposits additionally made by parishes which had already appeared in the earlier booklets. The supplements cover the whole of England and Vales county by county (with Middlesex included as a county). The full address and telephone number of each repository is given. Middlesex’s working repositories are cut from seven to five, with the demise of the Greater London Record Officer at Ouccn Anne’s Gate Buildings and Mary-le-bone Library ceasing to act as a repository. The registers previously held by these two offices have been transferred to the Record Office at County Hall. Of new deposits from our own Borough there is only the registers of All Saints, Durham Road, East Finchley, from 1893-1959. The eastern boundary of the Borough of Barnet has a kink in it which just includes this church and its grounds in the Borough.

Newsletter

Page 1

A MERRY CHRISTMAS

to all members of HADAS from the Editors (six), Contributors (many) and Distributors (a very faithful few) of the Society’s Newsletter And may we wish you also, jointly and severally, ten wishes for the coming New Year: May your trenches never be waterlogged and your sections never crumble May your lecturers always be both audible and interesting May your pottery not be Saxon when what you want is Bronze Age May there always be film in your camera when you need it May your spoil-heap never produce finds May your medieval documents always be decipherable May no one tramp across your trench when you’ve just trowelled it May you have fine days on your outings and fruitful ones on your field walks May your excavated pits always possess recognisable limits And perhaps the key wish, given by the ultimate in archaeological fairy godmothers: May your radio carbon dates be what you expect.
BRIGHTER DAYS AHEAD FOR MIDDLESEX RECORDS?

Eighteen months ago – in July 1979 – our newsletter began with the headline °Bombshell for Local Historians of Middlesex” and went on with the sorry story of the closing of the former Middlesex Record Office at Queen Anne’s Gate Buildings and the removal of its invaluable records to a warehouse in Whitechapel. We therefore rejoice greatly to be able to bring you news of brighter- days – if not yet there, at least on the horizon. We have had this letter from James Wisdom, a leading campaigner in the wave of protests which arose from historians all over the London area last year:”I enclose a photocopy of an article from the Daily Telegraph for Thursday Nov 13 1980. As you will see, the GLC has taken a lease on a building in Clerkenwell which will house a new search room and all the records from the old Middlesex Record Office, the GLC Record Office and those records stored in the Middlesex Guildhall. There is no proposal to retain anything below the flood line at County Hall. This news was confirmed by interviews on Thames TV on Thursday evening. This is clearly very good news. There will obviously be another period of disruption while renovations are made and the records moved again, but after that we should have a secure service from the record office for the life of the lease (55 years).” The Daily Telegraph article provides a bit more information. The GLC Archive is to be housed in Bowling Green Lane, Clerkenwell, as a result of “a deal with IPC Business Press financed by the sale of other GLC property.” Mr Wisdom also says that the prime figure on the GLC side in finding this now accommodation is Councillor Cyril Taylor, Chairman of the Professional and General Services Committee of the Greater London Council. As HADAS protested loud and long over the earlier arrangement (a fact for which Mr Wisdom was clearly grateful) we have now had much pleasure in writing to Councillor Taylor to congratulate him on what seems to be a happy result. Of course there is going to be a tricky time while the records are moved; as you may remember, when the move from Queen Anne’s Gate took place, the GLC Search Room at County Hall closed for 4 months. Local historians will be keeping an eagle eye out for announcements from GLC about another close-down, in order to urge that it be as short as possible. Another area where vigilance may pay off is in the rules laid down for the new search room. At present notice of at least 3 days is required for any records kept in an out-depository, and this has a frustrating effect on research. Often one does not know until one starts working at the Record Office exactly what documents one may need. When everything is housed under one roof it is very much to be hoped that the 3-day rule will no longer be either implemented or necessary.

Page 2

PLANNING PROGRAMME

Although it isn’t even Christmas yet,this is the time we start planning next summer’s programme. It has been suggested that next year, in addition to our normal four or five Saturday trips, we should include some outings which might have a more limited appeal – for groups, for instance, which have special interests. One suggestion – which would doubtless appeal particularly to our surveying and field archaeology members – is a behind-the-scenes visit to the Ordnance Survey centre at Southampton. That is the sort of outing which we might manage to do by minibus, unless it proved unexpectedly popular. We haven’t, at the moment, explored this idea fully, but when we do you will hear more of it. Another possibility is for a week or two in Crete, at the end of May or beginning of June. That trip, if it were to come off, would be handled by two HADAS members who know Crete well, Lynn Bright and Elizabeth Goring. They need to estimate in the next week or so how many members might be interested. If you think that you would be, please ring Lynn Bright (on 455 9506) and tell her, and at the same time you can get any further details that she has. The third suggestion is for a weekend study group in the Brecon Beacons. This last project is one for which arrangements must be settled some way ahead, so details of the weekend, Sept.’11-13, and an application form, are attached. For further information, ring Jeremy Clynos on 455 4271.
FRIENDS OF COLLEGE FARM

The Finchley Society, which is organising the Friends of College ‘ Farm, formed as a result of the Open Days held at the Farm last spring, have asked us to say that they would be happy to enroll more Friends. To join you should send an application to the Finchley Society, Room 4, Avenue House, East End Road, N3, Friends are asked to College Farm in the first weekend of every month, Saturday and/or Sunday, 2 pm to dusk, to join a working party. The first project is to clean up the old bottling department of the dairy. This is to be turned into a home for various animals which can be shown to visiting school parties. If you decide to help with this practical and useful work, please wear old clothes, strong shoes and gloves if you like using them for manual work.
UNEXPECTED SLANT ON 17TH C. MIDDLESEX

The principal speaker at the LAMAS Local History Conference on November 15 at the Museum of London was Dr David Avery. He is a member of the Cambridge group on demography and was until recently editor of that excellent journal, Local Population Studies, His title was intriguing – Middlesex for Sin – and caused quite a bit of speculation beforehand. It turned out to be a quotation from some 17th c doggerel describing the characteristics of various counties – with “sin” (particularly in its immoral connotation) as Middlesex’s outstanding feature. His evidence was taken from a study of 7 years of the records of Middlesex sessions – 1612-1618. He began by giving the figures for the numbers of cases which came before the 70 Justices of the county under such headings as:fathering illegitimate children; keeping bawdy houses; frequenting them; whoring (i.e. being a whore); using whores; adultery; homosexuality; rape; bigamy; and a category merely called “other cases.” He made the point- that the figures in each category (from 194 men who fathered bastards to 4 who engaged in homosexual practices) were the cases which actually reached sessions; they were the tip of an iceberg. They represented those who were found out. Three offences – rape, bigamy and sodomy – were capital, and tried before a jury; for minor offences the justices (many of whom were said to be leading Puritans) adjudicated without a jury. This is a transition period, when cases which in times past would have gone to the ecclesiastical courts were now being settled by the Justices. Being found out usually resulted from two causes: either information was laid against you (often by a nosey neighbour) or you were caught in the act by the:watch – who had the right, and often used it, to break into private premises without a warrant, if they suspected an offence was being committed. One lasting impression left by the cases and the sentences is of an age of cruelty and inequality. For instance, when a Bishop licensed a midwife to practice her calling, he laid upon her the duty of extract¬ing the name of the father from any mother of a bastard at the moment of birth, When the mother might be expected to be at the point of least resistance. This was considered important because, if the identity of the father could be established, he could be made to support his child, instead of the whole burden of support falling on the parish concerned. If the putative father could not be found, the mother was punished – such punishment usually being “that she be whipped at the cart tail until her body be all “bloodied”. ‘Districts of Middlesex had particular claims to notoriety. Clerken¬well, for example, had 56 bawdy – or “lewdly famed” houses, as compared with Westminster’s 4; and Clerkenwell, too, had high figures for “common whores taken in the street.” For the first offence of soliciting a woman was bound over; offences thereafter turned her into a “common whore”. Outer areas – like our own – did not feature in the bawdy-house table. The occasional sexual cases which were mentioned for outer areas were, for instance, a Whetstone woman, Ann Robinson, who was hanged for murdering her illegitimate baby by throwing it down the privy; or a step¬father in Tottenham, who committed incest with his wife’s daughter by an earlier marriage and was sentenced to 20 lashes and hard labour. The category “other cases” included some odd ones. Three married couples living in South Mimms indulged in a bit of wife-swapping; and there was a splendid instance of four people (three male, one female) having high jinks in one bed for a fortnight; “but,” says the report as if it were a total explanation, “three of them were French,” The total of “sin” cases coning before the Middlesex Justices over the seven years was 560; it far outdistanced those for any other county. No wonder the old rhyme ran:

Derbyshire for lend Devonshire for tin Wiltshire for plovers’ eggs Middlesex for sin. (And Dr Avery says that plovers’ eggs are still a Wiltshire specialty).

Other speakers at the Local History Conference were John Richardson, Chairman of our neighbours, the Camden History Society, who gave an interesting talk on the history of the buildings of the Covent Garden area; and Dr R J M Carr, who spoke on Dockland history. Many interesting displays were mounted by local history societies. HADAS had an exhibit on the work – excavation, tombstone recording and documentary back-up – at St James the Great, Friern Barnet. Judging by the exhibits, local history is alive and kicking throughout Middlesex. It was, in fact, rather a pity that the displays had to be mounted in the Education Department of the Museum, which is not ideal for this kind of use; and also that there was insufficient time to study them all. An hour and a quarter (actually cut to an hour) is not enough. Perhaps next year the organisers could consider these points, and perhaps make other provision.

Page 3

DIG AT CEDARS CLOSE a further note from PERCY REBOUL

The season’s excavation at this site finished on Oct 24 and the trenches have been covered for the winter. The owner has specifically asked us not to backfill, as he is considering the whole future of his garden and may want to use the uncovered structures as a “feature.” There is little to add to the surmises of the preliminary report (see Newsletter 112 June 1980) Almost total lack of stratification (the area was backfilled with yards of coal ash back in the early 1930s) means that identification and dating of the brick structures and drain complex will have to be done by examining maps and consulting garden encyclopaedias. of the time. It seems reasonably certain, however, that we have been excavating in what was the kitchen garden area of the old Tenterden Hall and the work is middle and late Victorian – a golden age of horticulture. Two giant volumes on British Gardens have just been obtained through Barnet Reference Library and the object will now be to study them in detail. Work will start soon on the final report on the digs Dave ??? is doing final drawings; many photographs have been taken and a number of interesting finds made – most recent being some Tudor bricks.

Page 4

INVESTIGATIONS OF ROMAN LONDON HELEN GORDON reports on the November lecture

We were shown a delightful series of portraits of the antiquarians of Roman London when Dr Hugh Chapman, of the Museum of London, lectured on their history. The development of their style of dress through the 400-year’s span of time, from elegant bewigged gentlemen to modern archaeologist, bears an inverse relationship to the refinement of the methods at their disposal. However, that may be, we are fortunate that they became obsessed so early with the accurate observation of Roman. London. One of the first John Stow, born 1525, recorded Roman remains in his Survey of London. He is commemorated by his statue in the Church of St Andrew Undershaft, which holds a real taill pen, renewed annually. In the 17th c Sir Christopher Wren kept a watch for Roman antiquities. The Great Fire of London gave him the opportunity for extensive observation, and while rebuilding St Paul’s cathedral he was able to lay the legend that there was a temple to Diana underneath; he records there was no evidence for this. He noticed the Roman cemetery at Spitalfield and recorded that the graves contained cremations and grave goods. Wren found the Roman carriageway of rough stone’ beneath St Mary-le-Bow, though he thought it was the northern boundary of the city; and the famous tombstone of the Roman soldier, which appears in so many histories of Roman London. He gave it to the Archbishop of Canterbury; it later passed to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, from where its return to its city of origin was negotiated only at the time of the opening of the Museum of London. Many other antiquarians contributed to our knowledge of Roman London by their close and careful observation combined with a sound classical know¬ledge. Stukeley, born 1687, Secretary of the Society of Antiquaries, made the first plan of the city. Throughout the 17th and 18th c many antiquarians made collections, the largest being that of Charles Roach Smith (1807-1890) which constituted the first Museum of London Antiquities„ Ho had great difficulty in persuading the authorities to recognise the importance of antiquities: and they refused to house his collection. Eventually he sold it to the British Museum. The Corporation of Londron opened the Guildhall Museum in a room in their library in 1841. Excellent recording was carried out in the 19th c particularly by Henry Hodge, who made a great number of water colour sketches and meticulous drawings of the Basilica in 1880 and 1881. . World War II was an opportunity comparable-with the Great Fire for observation in devastated areas. Our President, Professor W F Grimes, with archaeology now developed into a science, was able to examine 63 bomb sites, and one cutting at least was made in each between 1947 and 1962; this led to discoveries such as the city Mithraeum, with its associated group of marble statues, and investigation of course continues whenever development permits. This brief summary does no justice to Dr Chapman’s detailed account nor to his excellent slides of people, pictures and plans. But the slide which gave the most amusement was of a drawing of the Roman soldier’s tombstone, so highly embellished as to be unrecognisable: not the work of the antiquarians for whose excellent recordings we have reason to be thankful.
ROMAN LAMPS

The pottery department of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute has produced another batch of the attractive Roman lamps that we used, in two styles, for our Roman banquet a year ago. These are available from John Enderby at the Institute, price £4 each. more information can be obtained by phoning him on 455 9951.
OUR MEMBERS

This seems a good time to welcome the new members who have joined us in the last few months, and to wish them pleasure in their membership of HADAS. They are: Dr S Adam, Golders Green, Martin Balanon, Hampstead; David Bowler Hendon; Camden School for Girls (institutional members); Gladys Clark, Hendon; M W Coffee, Parliament Hill; Ann Collins, Hampstead; James Cox-Johnson, Hampstead; Linda Friedman, Hendon; C H Guntrip, Golders Green; Evelyn Gunz, Hendon; E G Halse, NW9; Barbara How, Hampstead ‘

JulIet Levy, NW11; Miss C M Lyons, ‘

South Woodford; Miss C F McMullan, Garden Suburb; Harry Pickett, N. Finchley; .C Rochester, Kingsbury;’ Diana Rockledge, NW6; Mr & Mrs H. E. Boyle, Hampstead; David St George, Garden Suburb; Jean Snelling, Finchley: Joanna Walton, Hampstead; Also on a personal note, good wishes too to an “old” (though not in years) member, Wendy Page, one of the stalwarts of Dorothy Newbury’s outings team. She was married this autumn and is now Wendy Cones. She remains a HADAS member, though now living in Watford; and we are sure that members will want to wish her every happiness and send her our congratulations.

Page 5

A GAZETTEER OF TRANSPORT IN THE BOROUGH OF BARNET
Part II: Rail Compiled by BILL FIRTH

Great Northern Railway, main line. Opened 1855, much altered in recent years by electrification and upgrading for 125 mph High Speed Train running. Many GNR features have disappeared only quite recently Stations – all c 1890 but may incorporate parts of earlier 1855 stations; all altered, but some Victoriana remains:
1 New Southgate.84 Friern Barnet, TQ 287 923

2 Oakleigh Park, TQ 270 948

3 New:Barnet, TQ 265 959

4a SouthgateTunnel, TQ 277 936 to TQ 274 941, original 2-traced 413 bore 1855, 4-tracked c 1290.

4b Friern Hospital wall at New Southgate station, bricked-up arch through which line serving hospital ran. No other visible evidence now remains.

Great Northern Railway, High Barnet Branch (now LT Northern Line, Barnet Branch). Opened to Finchley Central 1867, to High Barnet 1872. Stations;
5 East Finchley, TQ 272 891, rebuilt for LT electrification and extension 1938-9, in typical “Holden style.”

6 Finchley Central, TQ 253 906

7 Woodside Park, TQ 257 926

8 Totteridge Whetstone, TQ 261 939

9 East Barnet, TQ 250 962 These four above date from 1872 and a considerable amount of original work remains, together with adjacent related buildings.

10 Finchley, TQ 256 918; built 1933, but in older style since material and fittings from other old stations were used. Great Northern Railway, Edgware Branch.Opened 1867, now open only as LT Northern Line Mill Hill East branch as far as Mill Hill East, Electrification through to Edgware was proposed in 1938 works programme. Interrupted by World War II, the scheme was finally abandoned in 1954. Most of the trackbed can be followed from Mill Hill East to Edgware; there are considerable traces of the early works of electrification and some other interesting features noted below.

11 Dollis Viaduct, Dollis Road, N3, TQ 246 911. 13-arch red brick viaduct over Dollis Valley, opened 1867

12 Mill Hill East station, Bittacy Hill, NW7, TQ 241 914, built.1867

13 Bridge carrying Watford Way over Bunns Lane, NW7, TQ 219 912. Railway ran through southern arch, track A. converted to M1 slip road before M1 extended to Staples Corner. Now- this too is disused.

14 Bunns Lane Bridge at junction with Flower Lane, NW7, TQ 217 916.Built 1867, originally took Bunns Lane over the railway. Road improvements in .1960s re-sited road over filled-in railway track so bridge remains as an isolated monument.

15 Site of Mill Hill, The Hale, station, Bunns Lane, NW7, TQ 213 917. Traces of now platforms built by LT in 1938/9 are visible.

16 Deansbrook Bridge near Westway, Edgware, TQ 199 917. Three-arch structure of 1867. On north side original GNR railings remain, on south side those have been replaced by LT railings. The structure to hang a colour light signal beside the line on one of the bridge piers remains.

17 Edgware station, car park behind Green Shield House, Station Rood, Edgware, TQ 194 917. Goods shed remains, now part of junk yard. From car park traces of station platforms are visible. Midland Railway. Extension from Bedford to St Pancras opened 1867. Much altered by building of M1, Mill Hill station is modern, Hendon station buildings have been reduced to a booking office and platform shelters. Currently being electrified and re-signalled, most of what remains of the old MR features will disappear in the next few years. Throughout, the line retains MR mileposts and gradient posts. Major marshalling yard – Brent Yard – north of Cricklewood, at least 100 acres now largely derelict, on east side carriage sheds including new: one for new electric trains. Stations:

18 Cricklewood, Cricklewood Lane, NW2, TQ 239 559. Station entrance 1885, platform buildings.rebuilt 1906.

19 Welsh Harp, Edgware Road, NWa. TQ 229 874. Open 1870-1903.Notraces remain except cobbled entrance road from Edgware Road, which could be original.

20 Hendon, Station Road, NW4, TQ 222 883. Such MR features as remained after M1 was built have recently disappeared under electrification

21 Mill Hill Broadway, ‘The Broadway, NW7, TQ 212 920, rebuilt in 1960 in connection with Ml extension. Signal boxes will all go out of use on completion of resignalling scheme in 1983. All of typical MR style, note “triangular” inserts in top of windows, many retain MR style finials on roof ends. Adjacent to 10. Cricklewood, TQ 239 860, visible from station.

22 Brent No 1 and Brent No 2, 228 870 .controlling Brett Yard and junctions to and from Midland & South West Junction Railway connecting with North London line at Acton Wells junction, thus giving MR round London access to south. Between boxes typical MR 8-post signal gantry (only 4 now in use) some with MR finials on top. Best view from footbridge complex at Staples Corner TQ 227 872. Adjacent to 20. Hendon, TQ 222 884, visible from station Other features:

23 Silkstream Junction TQ 224 897, accessible by public footpath from Aerodrome Road, NW9

24 Campion, Needham, Johnstone, Midland and Gratton Terraces, in 12, Tcl 237 860. Housing built by MR for workers in adjacent Brent Yard. Derelict Midland Institute at NW corner of estate.

25 Brent Terrace (originally Midland Brent Terrace) NW2, TQ 235 866. MR housing.

26 Macadam Works, Tilling Road, NW2, TQ 230 874, derelict, now scrap car dump. Only remains of gas works built by MR to supply Brent Yard before there was any public supply in area.

27 Shelmedine & Mulley Ltd (service station), Edgware Road, NW2, TQ 233 865. Only remaining building of Cricklewood locomotive depot, now in other use.

28 Brent Viaduct, North Circular Road, NW2, TQ 225 874, 19 arches, 30 ft high over Brent valley, originally 4 tracks, 2 added on west side c 1890; note different style on each side, and “join” in arches showing where extension was built.

29 Portals to Elstree Tunnel, TQ 197 948, eastern 2-track original 1867, 4-tracked (western tunnel) c 1890. London Electric Railway (now LT Northern Line Edgware branch). Opened to Golders Green 1907, to Edgware 1924.

30 Site of Bull & Bush station, underground, visible from passing trains, TQ 260 870. No 1 Hampstead Way is said to stand on intended site of surface buildings.

31 Tunnel Portals, c 400 m to the London side of Golders Green station, TQ 252 873. Only LER tunnel portals of this date (1907).

32 Golders Green station, TQ 253 874. Basically original 1907 station and only above ground LER station of this date. Wooden platforms currently being replaced, with loss of original platform features. Golders Green Maintenance Depot, adjacent to station, TQ 253 875, 1901. One of only two remaining early Underground maintenance depots (Ealing Common is the other). Other stations, designed by S A Heaps, LER Architect, only example of this style:

33 Brent Cross, originally Brent, TQ 238 879, 1923 Site of passing loops used briefly to allow non-stop trains to pass slow trains at platforms.

34 Hendon Central, TQ 230 885, with office block built over it. Opened 1923.

35 Colindale, TQ 214 900, rebuilt after World War II bombing.

36 Burnt Oak, TQ 203 907. Opened 1924.

37 Edgware, TQ 195 919, opened 1924, East wing demolished in 1939 as part of uncompleted plans to rebuild for extension to Bushey Heath. Inside, platforms 2 & 3 are original, platform 1 is a 1939 addition. Other features:

38 Brent Viaduct, TQ 238 880. The whole length of line from Golders Green station to the far side of the bridge over Sheaveshill Avenue, TQ 236 861, is built on brick arches or in brick supported cuttings with a number of brick arch or iron bridges and might be regarded as an industrial monument in itself. (If it dated from the 1840-1860 railway age it certainly would be),

39a Burroughs Tunnel, TQ 229 887 to TQ 222 894, built in the same way

39b as the deep tube tunnels under London.

40 Under the 1938 New Works Plan it was intended to extend the line beyond Edgware to a terminus at Bushey Heath which is now the site of Aldenham bus depot. Quite a lot of work was done before it was stopped during World War II; it was never resumed before the plans were finally abandoned in 1954.-. The route of the line can be traced, the major relic is the part-built arches of the viaduct which would have taken the line across Edgware Way near Spur Road, (See HADAS Newsletter 36, Feb 1974, for further information). LT Piccadilly Line. About 1 km of the northern extension of this line (1932-33) lies in the easternmost corner of the London Borough of Barnet and two of the major civil engineering works of the line (excuding stations) are in the Borough.

41 Viaduct over Pymmes Brook valley, TQ 292 931; the northern end is in LBB.

Newsletter

Page 1

THE MONTH AHEAD

Next HADAS lecture on Tuesday November 4th will be by Dr Hugh Chapman, Keeper of the Dept. of Prehistoric and Roman Antiquities at the Museum of London. Dr Chapman writes:

“The purpose of my lecture will be to explore the history of archaeological investigation in the City of London. Today’s excavations by the Museum of London are the direct descendants of the work of scholars and antiquarian investigations from the 16th c onwards. The personalities involved include John Stow, Sir Christopher Wren, William Stukeley and Charles Roach Smith. The products of their work are well-known, but less attention has been paid to the motivation behind their conscious efforts to record the vanishing past, the way in which they set about their task and the development of their methods. The events and physical changes to the fabric of the City that unsealed London’s past and provided the opportunity of archaeological investigation and recording have also to be examined, as well as the effect the news of the discoveries had on a wider public.”

Nov 8/9 and 15/16: Roman Weekends at the Teahouse, Northway, NWll.

No, not an orgy, (anyway, not a planned orgy) but pottery study. Material from sites in the Borough of Barnet, particularly Brockley Hill, will be available, current work will be continued and new projects planned. Field walk finds will be further examined.

Helen Gordon, who is organising the sessions, says HADAS members unfamiliar with Roman pottery will be particularly welcome to use this opportunity to handle the local Romano-British ware; training projects will be arranged as required.

A research seminar will be held on the first Saturday, Nov 8, at 2.30 pm, which all members interested in the Borough’s Roman past are invited to attend.

A further investigation of the Roman road (The Viatores route 167) was made on October 5, and a hitherto unrecorded possible agger was observed which merits closer examination. This will also be considered at the Teahouse.

Teahouse sessions from 10 am-5 pm each day. Bring a picnic lunch if you wish -coffee/tea making facilities available.

From now till Nov 30, Exhibition at Church Farm House Museum.

The General Arts Division of Barnet Borough Arts Council (to which HADAS is affiliated) currently has an exhibition which shows how wide the interpretation of “general arts” can be. Called “The Things that Go On in Barnet Borough” it includes displays by some 20 different organisations. They range through churches, ceramic groups, gemmologists, neighbourhood associations, historical literary and amenity societies, local branches of the WEA and National Trust, the HGS Institute and, of course, HADAS. Nell Penny has mounted a general photographic display of various HADAS activities.
Page 2

There are live events on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. These include several lectures by members of the Mill Hill & Hendon Historical Society on topics which will interest HADAS members; and tape-recording of reminiscences of the district by the Finchley Society.

Lectures later this season will be:
Tues Jan 6 – Recent Excavations on the Nile. – John Alexander MA PhD
Tues Feb 3 – Hoards and Hillforts: Ireland in the 1st Millennium BC. – Harold Mytum BA
Tues Mar 3 – Sutton Hoo. – Kenneth Whitehorn BA.
Tues Apr 7 – Greek Royal Art. – Malcolm Colledge MA PhD.

Meetings are at Hendon Library, The Boroughs, NW4. Coffee 8pm, Lecture 8.30
LONDONERS ON WHEELS

A report by BILL FIRTH on the opening lecture of the season.

As usual, a large audience attended the first lecture of the 1980-1 season given on Oct 7 by John Freeborn, head of interpretation and display at the London Transport Museum. Mr Freeborn had two topics. First he described significant events in the development of urban transport in London; secondly he talked about the, problems, pitfalls and triumphs of setting up the new London Transport Museum Covent Garden. All illustrated by slides of course.

When I first wrote a synopsis of the lecture I found I had run to eight pages without getting to the second part. This would not have been popular with the editor but more importantly it shows now much Mr Freeborn packed into his time. I can pick out only a few of the highlights.

We wore first invited to think of London and its communications 200-300 years ago. These were two main East-West arteries, which still remain and are now known as Oxford Street and the Stand; but London was a compact city, no one lived more than a mile from the river, and the usual way to get about was to use the river to the nearest point and then walk. The alternative was the hackney carriage and Mr Freeborn pointed out that the word hackney comes from a French pronunciation meaning a strong horse. In the early 19th c some 1100 hackney licences were issued in London.

Interestingly a number of developments in London’s transport have originated in France. Around 1820 a new type of carriage, the cabriolet, was introduced from across the Channel and eventually led to the English contraction- a cab. In 1829 Mr Shillibeer introduced his omnibus and, again, the idea originated in Paris. The first route was from Paddington to the Bank along the New Road (now Marylebone, Euston, Pentonville, City Roads), which was the North Circular of its day. Shillibeer’s route was chosen because it lay outside “the stones,” the area within which stage coaches could not pick up: or set down except at the terminus at the Bull and Mouth, at a site near St Martins le Grand now marked with a plaque.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was instrumental in popularising the bus. Planks were laid on the roof then to “take more passengers – the first double-deckers. However, competition was cut-throat and buses tended to run only on highly profitable routes at peak hours. It was from Paris again that the next development came -the formation of the London General Omnibus Company to buy up the independents, and, by pooling receipts, to subsidise the unprofitable routes from the proceeds of the profitable ones.
Page 3

Mr Freeborn then turned to the tram. The advantage of this was that a horse could handle a much higher payload when pulling a vehicle on rails. Consequently by packing more passengers in, more profit could be made while charging lower fares. The 19th c history of the horse tram, which became the working class mode of transport, was outlined.

This covered 19th c road transport. Mr Freeborn then went back to the early 1860s to describe the construction and opening of the Metropolitan Railway underground from Paddington to Farringdon Street, again along the line of the New Road because of the relative ease of construction by cut-and-cover methods along an unbuilt-up road. The railway was operated by steam locomotives since the electric motor was not yet available. We had to wait until the end of the century for the first deep tube, the City and South London Railway, operated by electricity. This was rapidly followed by a large part of the present tube network.

The electrification of trams and the introduction of the motor bus were early 20th c developments. Moving rapidly through the middle of the~ century there was the first trolleybus in 1931, nicknamed the Diddler because it could “diddle” all over the road, the last tram in 1952, the last trolleybus in 1962, the RT and RM buses and the Victoria and Jubilee tubes.

Fina11y we came to the museum at Covent Garden. Mr Freeborn out-lined London Transport’s scheme to use the old Flower Market. He described the floor strengthening necessary to take the load of vehicles to be displayed, how they are parked on special stands and how their positions had to be precisely determined in advance on a plan.

He then showed us some of the problems involved in manoeuvring trams and railway vehicles through the narrow approach streets, and how it took twelve hours of backward and forward movements to turn a single 60-ft railway carriage through 900 degrees onto its track. Opening day also posed problems since three buses had to be taken out to make room for the official opening party but needed to b~ replaced very quickly afterwards in order not to delay public opening.

There were also slides of a horse bus under restoration -one might almost call it rebuilding, since it nearly fell apart because the timber was so decayed. Lastly we were shown something of the museum itself, with its low -hung display cabinets for the benefit of children -though they are quite comfortable viewing, too, for adults. If Mr Freeborn’s enthusiastic description (he himself calls it his “commercial”) does not persuade some of his audience to visit the museum soon, nothing will.

Nell Penny adds this comment:

The lecture by Mr Freeborn produced an interesting footnote from Mrs Mason, our kindly lecture coffee lady, and near-founder member of HADAS. Her father, Frederick Jackson, was born in 1879. When he was eleven he got a job leading a tram trace-horse down Highgate Hill to the Archway. If the roads were icy, young Fred wrapped sacking round the horse’s front hooves and round his own feet. The boy graduated to being a “boy behind”’ on an LMWR horse delivery van. Mrs Mason remembers being told about one badly brought up horse which refused to pass a certain East End pub till it had been bought a drink of beer.
Page 4

FINCHLEY IN HENDON

HADAS played host on Sunday Sept 28 to twenty-nine members of the Finchley Society (not forgetting the dog). The occasion was a Sunday afternoon stroll through the highways and bye-ways of Hendon, following mainly the Hendon Town Trail.

Paddy Musgrove looked after the mustering arrangements. Percy Reboul and Ted Sammes did the commentary on points of special interest, finishing with Church Farm Museum and Hendon St Mary’s churchyard.

A pleasant walk on a nice warm autumn afternoon. PR
THE PROUD PUMPS OF HADLEY

A few months ago HADAS was told of some old wells in Hadley. We asked HAROLD COVER to investigate, and this is his report.

I visited 120 Hadley Road, New Barnet (OS ref: TQ 258969) to meet a lady who, instead of fairies at the bottom of her garden, had something almost as interesting – an old English well.

The house had originally been built in the early 1900s and was now in process of being rebuilt by new owners. A capped well in the garden, which had been covered with soil, had recently been re-discovered.

The diameter of the well opening was 26 ins. The inner wall was bell-shaped, with a diameter of 64 ins. The opening was capped by a circular stone slab 2½ ins thick, movable by a metal ring. The wall of the well was lined with bricks 4½ ins thick.

The well contained very muddy water that had reached to within 12 ins of the top. Protruding through one side was a metal pipe that presumably formerly led to a pump.

It is considered locally that the area was once the site of a large orchard.

Descending Hadley Road I visited next the courtyard of the Hadley Hotel at no. 113. This contained an iron pump painted black in good condition but no longer capable of drawing water. The pump has a raised inscription- WARNERS -at the side.

Going further down to the garden of 96 Woodville Road – only a short distance from the Hadley Hotel – I was shown an iron pump in remarkable condition that had been refurbished by its enthusiastic owner. The pump, once primed, still produced a good and regular supply of clear water. The owner stated that even in the driest of summers this flow was maintained. It is estimated that the well serving the pump is 13 ft deep, the water level being 24 ins from the top.

Once again local information is that the area was once the site of a large orchard.

The three wells are on an apparently descending spring line that would possibly lead to the Town Hall annexe at the junction of Station Road and Lytton Road, which was formerly the site of Metcalfs Hydro and Turkish Baths.
FROM EGYPT TO ISLINGTON

– some New Year lecture courses.

In the last Newsletter we reported that the City University, Northampton Square, ECl (just beyond the Angel, Islington, and not too difficult of access for HADAS members) had various interesting one-term courses starting after Christmas. Here are some details:
Page 5

An Introduction to Ancient Egypt, including a start on hieroglyphic writing. Tues. from Jan’20. Virginia Northedge. Fee £4.50.

South American Archaeology, particularly Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Mons from Jan 19. Alexandra Morgan. £4.50

The Journeys of St Paul: a travellers-eye view of the Roman Empire in the lst c. AD. ‘Weds from Jan 21. Geoffrey T Garvey. £6.00

19th c Islington: transformation from village to industrial area. Tues from Jan 20. Mary Cosh. 8 meetings £3.60

Recent Work on Early Man: evidence from Africa, Australasia and the Americas. Thurs from Jan 22. Esmee Webb. £4.50

The above are all 10-meeting courses unless otherwise stated, and are from 6.30-8 pm. In addition, there are two 8-meeting courses later in the year:

Aztec Cities of Mexico. Apr 28-May 21, 2 meetings a week on Tues, Thurs. Fee £4.80. Elizabeth Baquedano de Alvarez, who will be returning from Mexico just before the course, with details of latest excavations.

Subterranean London: all that goes on under London, including archaeological problems and geological uncertainties. Weds from Apr 29. Roger Morgan. £6.00.
MEDIEVAL TILES

Excavations lat Norton Priory, Runcorn, Cheshire, have in the last 10 years provided fresh insights in various medieval matters. Of particular interest are the tile floors which have been uncovered at the Priory; and the experiments which have been made to reproduce similar tiles.

Now the Norton Priory Museum has issued a brief illustrated booklet which summarises what they have discovered about the manufacture of medieval floor tiles and methods of laying them. Techniques of tile decoration and use of colours and glazes are also covered.

I

The museum also has a set of 5 slides on 14th/15th c tiles at 75p plus post. The booklet is 30p plus post. Write to Norton Priory Museum, near Astmoor, Warrington Rd, Runcorn, Cheshire WA7 1RE.
CONGRATULATIONS

…are in order for HADAS member Rosalind Batchelor and, her husband, John, who became the proud parents of a second son, Peter James, in the middle of October.

Mrs Batchelor, who has been a member for 6 years and is a town planner by profession, represents HADAS on the Historic Buildings Committee of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. Best wishes to her and husband – not forgetting Peter James himself.
A CAUTIONARY TALE

When people talk of the pitfalls of archaeology don’t always necessarily mean falling into a trench or down a hole.

About 5 years HADAS mounted an excavation, directed by Ann Trewick, in the churchyard of St James the Great, Friern Barnet, at the request of the then Rector, Canon Norman Gilmore. You’ll find the final report on that dig in Newsletter 58, December 1975.
Page 6

Among the most interesting finds were 8 coffin plates from 18th and 19th c burials – 3 mid-18th c brass plates, and 5 of lead, one dated 1727, the others l9th century.

In July 1977 HADAS was approached by two research workers who were studying the history of coffin plates and working on methods of conserving them at the Dept. of Archaeology of Cardiff University. They had read of the St James’s plates.

In due course these conservators came to London, saw the plates and offered to conserve four of them, if the Rector was agreeable, in the University laboratories at Cardiff. HADAS Was asked to give an undertaking that, once conserved, the plates would henceforth be properly stored and displayed. This we were able to do, as Canon Gilmore was enthusiastic at the prospect of being able to show them in his church. Indeed, two handy members of the Research Committee straight away began to plan how best to mount the conserved plates for display, possibly under glass.

It’s unwise, however, to count your chickens.

In mid-1978 HADAS began to press for the return of the plates. The letter from the conservators at this time is worth quoting:

“The position with the coffin plates is as follows: We have managed to conserve two plates. Now that I have some time I shall be able to finish the others properly for you. I regret the delay in dealing with the plates due to pressure of academic work, but I would urge you to wait until we have managed to preserve them properly. I feel confident that you will be well satisfied with the transformation that has taken place.”

The plates were not ready in 1978. The whole of 1979 went by and despite periodic reminders, no coffin plates appeared. Finally, in 1980, after some fairly tough letters, Ann Trewick managed to get the managed to agree a date in September on which they would bring the conserved plates to London.

They were handed over, in something of a hurry, at a main line station. Ann bore them back in triumph, eager to see the heralded “transformation”. She opened the wrapping. Inside were the plates, done up precisely as they had left her over 3 years’ before, each with its little bag of silica gel.

“I couldn’t absolutely swear to it,” she says, “but the parcel looked as if it had never been opened. I reckon no conservation work of any kind had been done”.

There is even a tailpiece to this sorry story. In addition to getting back the Friern Barnet plates, we also received a package of fine coffin plates, unprovenanced, belonging to some other wretched excavator. Perhaps instead of complaining we ought to be thanking our lucky stars that our plates didn’t get shipped off to Timbuktu, never to be seen again by HADAS
Letter to the Editor

I think Ken Vause’s “Druid temple” (see Newsletter 116) is a mini-Stonehenge made by William Danby of Swinton Hall, about 1820, at Ilton. There are a number of these false antiquities around the county which bring one up with a jolt.

For further reading, see Follies, a National Benzole book, edited by Sir Hugh Casson, publisher Chatto & Windus, 1963.

Yours, etc TED SAMMES
Page 7

FROM THE EXCAVATION FRONT

News from both our digs is that they are coming to their close.

From West Heath Daphne Lorimer (soon off on a month’s globe-trot half-way round the world) reports that excavation finished with the end of October, although back-room work on the finds will continue through the winter. The season has been successful and has provided answers to a number of our questions about West Heath. Daphne will report fully early in the New Year.

At Cedars Close Percy Reboul says that he, too, has shut up shop, and has settled down to the various post-excavation jobs which will enable him to produce his report in due course.
CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

Now news on another topic in which many members are deeply interested – how will HADAS celebrate Christmas this year?

Dorothy Newbury has been beavering away at this problem and has tried all sorts of options -from dinner at the House of Commons to a boat trip down the Thames. Inflation, alas, has taken the price of most of the more exotic ideas through the roof. So she has decided to come back nearer home – in fact, to David Garrick’s 200-year old manor house, now the Hendon Hall hotel.

Our Christmas feast will therefore take place there on Tuesday, December 2, accompanied by old-time music hall entertainment to give it the Christmas spirit. An application form is enclosed – please fill it in as soon as possible if you would-like to join us, and send it to Dorothy Newbury.
NEW TITLES IN SHIRE ARCHAEOLOGY SERIES

Three new titles – on Later Stone Implements, Roman Coinage and Romano-British Towns – have recently been added to this series. Two are reviewed below, and we hope to publish a review of the third next month. Each book costs £1.50 and is obtainable from our Hon. Treasurer. When you buy a Shire publication through him, you put a little commission into the HADAS kitty – so don’t be backward about buying.

Roman Coinage in Britain by F J Casey.

This book should be in the library of every Romanist and collector of Roman coins. The explanation of the relative value of coins, particularly in the vexed later centuries, when inflation was even worse than ours, is excellent. The various emperors whose coinage turns up in Britain are listed. The highly involved study of hoards is explored, but perhaps such a subject might be better treated in n separate book.

The suggested book list, oddly enough, omits Seaby’s “Roman Coins and their Values” which, although a commercial catalogue, is extremely useful for identification and is much cheaper than the recommended Mattingley and Sydenham. R.L.

Towns in Roman Britain by Julian Bennett.

The Romans brought town life to Britain for the first time: indeed, towns were a vital necessity to their successful administration of the country. Mr. Bennett explains the set-up with admirable clarity, describing the status of the various kinds of town, from coloniae to vicus, how administration and taxation worked, public buildings and amenities (aqueducts, latrines, sewers etc), shops, defences.

Inevitably, since Shire books are of small compass, the “chapters” are heavily condensed and specialist detail is missing. This is, however, an admirable resume, well illustrated, for anyone who wants a general idea of Roman Britain.
Page 8

A GAZETTEER OF TRANSPORT IN THE BOROUGH OF BARNET

Part 1: By Water, Air and Road – Compiled by BILL FIRTH.

(EDITORIAL: For map to which marginal references apply, select the following link)

We are working on a gazetteer of all industrial sites in the Borough of Barnet. It is however a large area and industry is scattered, so that it takes time. To start with, here is Part I of a gazetteer of transport sites only (Part II will follow next month). This has proved easier to complete than the full gazetteer, partly because of a greater personal interest, partly because, although the Borough is large, transport follows certain well defined routes. However, there ate still problems, because features can change quickly and unnoticed, particularly for example, as has happened in the last few years when major electrification has occurred on a railway (e.g. both the Great Northern and Midland lines). It is thought that at the time of going to press the list is up to date. The criterion for inclusion has been visible remains, except for a few cases where a site is marked with a blue plaque or has been proposed for one. One final word -the inclusion of a site is no guarantee of accessibility.

WATER TRANSPORT

Wl. Brent Reservoir, NW9 (Welsh Harp) TQ 215 870, partly in LB Barnet. Formed in 1835 on completion of dam (in LB Brent) across Brent Valley to provide water for Grand Junction Canal.

W2. Site of Guttershedge Farm, now Park Road NW4, TQ 225 879. Sir Francis Pettit Smith (1808-74), inventor of the screw propeller, lived here and demonstrated a model of his invention on the farm pond in 1836 (Newsletters 81, Nov. 1977, and 93, Nov. 1978) Note also that Thomas Tilling, motor bus pioneer, lived here too.

AIR TRANSPORT

Al. llO Cricklewood Lane, NW2, TQ 244 861. Handley Page Aircraft Co moved here from Barking in 1912 prior to move to Claremont Road.

A2 Handley Page factories Claremont Road/Somerton Road,NW2, TQ 240 862. Occupied by Handley Page c. 1914-70, now in other use.

A3 RAF Museum, Grahame Park Way, NW9, TQ 221 903, incorporates two early hangars, c. 1914, with timber Belfast truss roofs.

A4 Grahame-White Hangar, RAF Station Hendon, NW9, TQ 221 901. Listed as an historic building ( Newsletter 12, June 1980).

A5 Former Entrance Gates to Grahame-White Aviation Co Ltd. Re-sited at entrance to RAF Museum; Grahame Park Way, NW9, TQ 220 904, originally in Aerodrome Road, NW9; TQ 219 890 (Newsletter 112, June 1930).

A6 Other sites on the RAF station are mentioned in Newsletter 116, October 1980.

ROAD TRANSPORT

Some main North/South through-roads have been shown on the map at the end of this gazetteer. There are a number of ancient East/West routes too, as well as shorter North/South roads and lanes which do not transect the whole Borough. Many of these have been in use, on almost or precisely the same line, since medieval times, and are worthy of study -to name only a few, Golders Green/North End Road, Colindeep Lane and The Burroughs, Nether Street, East End Road. Any member who would like to “adopt” a road to study in detail might find it very rewarding.
Page 9

For evidence for Roman Watling Street and The Viatores suggested route 167 see newsletter 102, August 1979.

TOLL HOUSES

Rl Spaniards Toll House, Spaniards Road, NW3, TQ 266 872. This is on the Borough boundary with Camden.

R2 Tollgate Cottage, Hadley Green, TQ 248 975.

R3 Site of Childs Hill Toll House, Castle Public House, Finchley Road, NW2, TQ 250 864. Blue plaque.

R4 Site of Edgware Toll House, Edgware Road, TQ 195 913. Blue plaque.

MILESTONES

On the Edgware-Kilburn Turnpike, opened 1711 (now Edgware Road) Early 19th c cast iron, V-shaped, round headed, all marked Hendon Parish:

R5 In front of 3/4 Grafton Terrace, NW2, TQ 236 859. London 4 Watford 10

R6 20-25 m. N of junction Edgware Road/Goldsmith Avenue NW9, ‘TQ 217 885. London 6 Watford 8

R7 70-75 m. S of junction Edgware Road/The Greenway, NW9. TQ 207 898. London 7 Watford 7.

R8 The London 5 Watford 9 stone was removed from Staples Corner, TQ 226 873, when the flyover was built and is in safe-keeping. It is hoped that the Borough may re-erect it at an appropriate point.

R9 On tile continuation of this route, half-way up Brockley Hill, TQ 178 934, rectangular stone milestone. ?18th c.

On the Finchley-Regents Park Turnpike, built 1826, milestones similar to above:

RlO Outside 604 Finchley Road, NWll. TQ 252 872, Regents Park 3, Barnet 6 1/4

Rll Junction Regents Park Road/The Avenue, N3, TQ 249 902, Regents Park 5, Barnet 4 ¼

On the Holyhead Road (later Great North Road) which existed pre-19th c, but was re-surveyed by Telford in 1810:

R12 50-55 m. S of junction High Road N12/Ravensdale Ave, TQ263 925, London 8 Barnet 5, similar to above

R13 Junction Barnet Hill/Meadway, TQ 251 964, stone milestone possibly dating from Telford’s survey.

Hampstead-Mill Hill, on a winding route, rectangular stone milestones, stated by Peter Collinson to be newly erected in 1752:

R14 Brent Street NW4, between Lodge Road and Church Road, TQ 233 893.

R15 Holders Hill Road, NW7, close to Hendon Park Cemetery, TQ 241 906

R16 Top of Bittacy Hill, NW7, opposite UK Optical Factory, TQ 237 921 R17

R17 The Ridgeway, NW7, on green by War Memorial, TQ 224 029.

R18 Highwood Hill, NW7, near junction with Hendon Wood Lane, TQ 222 938

CATTLE/HORSE TROUGHS AND DRINKING FOUNTAINS (not marked on map)

These are a historic link with the final days of horse-drawn traffic immediately before the start of mass production of the motor car. The following (all of which bear the primary inscription “Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association”) are known:
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Cattle trough/drinking fountain, corner Wellgarth/North End Roads ,NW11. Secondary inscription: “George & Annie Bills. Australia.” TQ 257 872 Note: this trough was taken into care by Borough Engineer’s dept. for duration of the still incomplete Wellgarth development, with a promise of re-erection when building is finished.

Cattle trough/drinking fountain, at Meadway Gate, NWll. Now used as a plant container by Parks Dept LBB TQ 251 881

Cattle trough/drinking fountain outside 40 The Burroughs, NW4. Secondary inscription “Be kind and merciful to al animals in memory of Louis David Benjamin, 1917” TQ 226 890

Cattle trough/drinking fountain at top of Bell Lane, NW4. Secondary inscription “Be kind and merciful to your animals”. Erected by Mrs F C Banbury. TQ 235 090

Cattle trough (no drinking fountain) at junction Nether St/Ballards Lane, N3. Secondary inscription “In memory of John White of this parish, surgeon, obit AD 1868 and Emily his wife, obit AD 1891.” TQ 252 907

Cattle trough/drinking fountain, with dog-trough running underneath junction Re,venscroft Park/Wood St, Barnet TQ 241 965

Note: we have not checked how many of these are in their original positions, which were often at the top, or part-way up, a hill. Some may still be as first placed, others patently are not.

In Ravenscroft Park, Barnet, TQ 241 965, is a boundary stone inscribed inter alia “This stone was originally a boundary stone of the Whetstone & Highgate Turnpike Trust which built Barnet Hill about 1823″ (not marked on map).

STREET FURNITURE

There is a diminishing amount of other interesting street furniture connected with transport which still remains and urgently needs listing. An example of such recording is the study of trolley bus poles made by B G and B L Wibberley {see Newsletter 112, June 1980). Since that survey these poles have vanished, sure proof of the need to record them. Offers from members to do similar types of study in their own area of the Borough would be joyfully received. If you are prepared to examine your own street and perhaps a few surrounding roads for surviving street furniture, and to record it, please get in touch with Bill Firth.

TRAM AND BUS DEPOTS

R19 Finchley Tram Depot (now a bus garage), Woodberry Grove, N12, TQ 264 919. Built by Metropolitan Electric Tramways, 1906

R20 Hendon Bus Garage, Church Road, NW4, TQ 229 894. Built by London General Omnibus Co, 1913. Entrance, originally onto Church Road.

R21 Edgware Bus Garage, Edgware Station, TQ 196 919. Originally built 1925, completely rebuilt 1939.

MODERN ROADS

For the benefit of the future industrial archaeologist mention should be I made of the arterial roads of the 1920s – Hendon Way/Watford Way/Edgware Way/North Western Avenue {Watford by-pass) started 1924; Barnet Way (Barnet by-pass) started 1924; the North Circular Road {1925) and the Great North Way system (1926); and, in the 1970s, the Ml. One good area at which to study modern roads and flyovers is between Staples Corner TQ 226 873 and Brent Cross TQ 237 880 (approx. R8 on map).

Newsletter

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THE WINTER PROGRAMME

By Dorothy Newbury.

This month sees the start of HADAS’s winter activities. We hope to have full houses again for the coming lecture season, which I trust has been planned with enough variety to suit all tastes. However, catering for 450 rugged HADAS individualists is never the easiest assignment!

As usual lectures will be at Central Library, next to Hendon Town Hall, on the first Tuesday of each month, excluding December. We start soon after 8 pm, with coffee and biscuits (price 10p), which gives members a chance to chat about the year’s archaeological exploits and to inspect the new publications on the bookstall. May I again ask long-standing members to welcome new ones and make them feel at home? Mrs Banham, long one of our coffee-making stalwarts, cannot continue this season. A volunteer to take her place would be most welcome. Liz Holliday’s expert hand will, as before, be working the projector.

For new members, buses 183 and 143 pass the Library door. It is 10 minutes walk from Hendon Central Station and only a few minutes from the 113 route (bus stop “The Burroughs”) or the 240 and 125 routes (bus stop “The Quadrant”) .There are two free car parks opposite. Members may bring a guest to one lecture; but guests who wish to attend further lectures should be invited to join the Society.

Tuesday October 7 is our first lecture, on the history of transport in London over the last 150 years. London Transport is the world’s largest urban passenger undertaking; our lecturer, John Freeborn, will describe significant events in the development of the system and its impact on the growth of London. The problems, pitfalls and triumphs of setting up the new London Transport museum in Covent Garden will also be described. Our speaker is head of interpretation and display at the museum.

The rest of the lecture programme is:

Nov 4 – Roman London: an antiquarian and archaeological history – Hugh Chapman PhD, FBA, AMA

Jan 6 – Recent Excavations on the Nile – John Alexander MA, PhD, FBA

Feb 3 – Hoards and Hillforts: Ireland in the 1st millenium BC – Harold Mytum BA

Mar 3 – Sutton Hoo – Kenneth Whitehorn BA

Apr 7 – Greek Royal Art – Malcolm Colledge MA, PhD

Of course the start of the winter programme means the end of the summer one. Before you go on to read about our final outings I want to thank those members who, as I was unable to go on trips myself this year, were kind enough to take charge. Wendy Page, Sheila Woodward, Eric Grant, Raymond Lowe and Isobel McPherson have put a great deal of work into organising the trips, while Tessa Smith attended to the domestic side of things. Every outing has been over-subscribed, which is reward in itself for everyone’s efforts.
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I would be pleased to hear from any member who has discovered an interesting place we might visit next year; and better still, from anyone who would like to take charge of an outing in 1981.
LAST OF THE SUMMER OUTINGS

A report by MARION BERRY on the September trip.

Our guide on September 13 was David Johnston, of Southampton University, who came aboard the HADAS coach at Kingsworthy and from then on shepherded us with calm, charm and competence. His first hurdle was finding on arrival at the Hospital of 5t Cross in Winchester that we had been expected the day before. However, a delightfully whimsical Brother put himself at our disposal. He wore the claret coloured gown (murrey they used to call it) and silver Beaufort badge of the Henry VI Noble Poverty Foundation, the later of the two groups which share St. Cross.

He gave us a comprehensive history of the ancient hospital from 1136 onwards; Henry de Blois, 12th c. Bishop of Winchester, the Knight Hospitallers, William of Wykeham, the great 14th c. Bishop, and his friend, John de Campeden, moved through the tale. This last man, appointed Master of the Order to repair the ravages of previous greedy Masters, was responsible for much rebuilding. He had the church paved in 1390; many of the encaustic tiles still remain. They were probably made at Romsey or Poole.

A fine brass of John de Campeden was originally set in the floor before the high altar. I remember taking a rubbing of it in 1940. Later all brass rubbing was forbidden, after a helper, coming to see to the flowers, found brass rubbers at work with a transistor blazing pop music and beer cans on the altar. The brasses were removed to the north transept.

After admiring the garden and lily pond, once a fish pond stocked from the Itchen, we moved to the Brothers’ Hall, with its central hearth for a charcoal fire and a minstrels’ gallery. On the dais an oval table of solid Purbeck marble, made in the 12th c, was reputed to have come from Winchester Castle. The old kitchen beyond was fascinating, with its relics of by-gone cookery. What might have been thought of as a copper was really a giant stew pan; there were huge plates, of wood with a pewter veneer, and a row of spikes meant for hanging the meat on a screen to keep warm by the fire.

A random sample of our party partook of a quarter glass of beer and a finger of bread – a symbolic remnant of the time-honoured medieval dole for poor travellers.

We picnicked in the adjacent water meadows, with St Catherine’s Hill as centrepiece of the view. Mr Johnston spoke of it as an Iron Age fort with rather special earthworks. Then on to the excavations at Hayling Island, where the wind blew, dark-clouds loomed and rain drizzled, but Bob Downer held our attention by his obvious enthusiasm for the work being done by his 20 or so diggers of all ages and sizes. He told us of the chain of events from 1826 when Richard Scott “observed an area of stunted corn while out riding, and noted that it consisted of a circle within a square” – a concise but exact description of the temple’s plan. Spectacular crop marks appeared in the drought of 1976 and aerial photography demonstrated the similarity in plan to the temple known as “Le Tour de Vesone” just outside Perigueux in SW France (3rd Interim Report on Excavation of Iron Age and Roman Temple 1976-8).

The tea awaiting us at Newtown House Hotel was more than welcome and revived us for the final stage of our itinerary, the headquarters of the South Hants Archaeological Rescue group at Fort Widley. The view from Portsdown hill over Portsmouth harbour and the ruined Porchester Castle was spectacular.
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There was no time to see the Museum at the Fort, but going inside such a building was quite an experience. The group have the use of two old barrack rooms, with blocked up windows. Richard Bridgland, who edits their Newsletter, gave a summary of their work, and we looked at some of their finds – bone, flint, pottery, etc. We also noted that their gear included a rolled-up rope ladder for investigating deep holes.

Our grateful thanks to all who planned and carried out such a varied and interesting trip.
NEWS FROM THE RESEARCH COMMITTEE

On August 23 the Roman Group continued its investigations into the Roman road (no. 167 in Roman Roads in the SE Midlands, by the Viatores) that is believed to pass through the Borough, with a field walk from Nan Clarks Lane to Barnet Gate.

Sections of agger and metalling along this route had been positively identified by The Viatores in 1964, but the evidence today was rather harder to find. Further walks are planned. Members who are interested should contact Helen Gordon.
A CENTURY OF LONDON TOPOGRAPHY

Should you happen in the next 10 days to be near Oxford Street, take time off and go and see the centenary exhibition of the London Topographical Society at Paperpoint, 63 Poland Street. It’s on 9.30-4.30 weekdays till October 10. This remarkable society is dedicated to one purpose only: the publication, at a reasonable price to its members, of material, particularly maps, charts and drawings, on the history of London.

The inaugural meeting was held in the Mansion House, under the wing of the then Lord Mayor, on Oct 28 1880. Membership has fluctuated since, with a decline in the 1930s and a desperate low of 111 in 1942. After the war came a slow rise followed by a rapid one, so that today there are over 500 members. For the first 90 years the subscription was one guinea. In 1974 it rose to £2.50 and today it is £5 – but it’s one of the best fiverworths you can find.

For that you get for free two newsletters a year and – this is the plum – the Society’s yearly publication. Last year it was the A to Z of Elizabethan London, which is a gem. Another splendid production (so good that it did for 2 years, not one) was Milne’s 1800 Land-use Map of London and its environs (it covers part of our area) in 6 coloured – plates each about 18″ by 2′, with 3 equally large pages of introduction.

This year’s publication is well worth having – a dozen papers on aspects of London’s past, from the 17th c. clothworkers of St. Stephen Coleman parish to the history of 17 Bruton Street where the Queen was born. This volume is edited by Dr Anne Saunders (who is a HADAS member of long standing) who took over the editorial chair on the death of Marjorie Honeybourne.
PRELIMINARY RECCE AT HENDON AERODROME

By Bill Firth.

Thanks to the RAF authorities, and in particular to Fl. Lt. Olliver who showed me round, in early August I was able to make a preliminary (I hope) reconnaissance of what remains of the RAF station at Hendon.
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The present station consists of West and East Camps, separated by the roundabout at the junction of Grahame Park Way, Colindale Avenue and Aerodrome Road.

West Camp, entry to which is from the roundabout, seems to date almost entirely from the 1930s. A number of the buildings are dated 1931 and appear to be standard brick-built RAF designs of that time. The houses on the north-east side of Booth Road, adjacent to but now fenced off from the camp, are the original other ranks married quarters, but have been acquired by Barnet Council as council houses.

The entrance to East Camp is a few yards along Aerodrome Road. Just inside the gate and visible from Grahame Park Way is a large building in a black and white timbered style which was the restaurant of Grahame-White’s flying club. It is dated 1917, but it was suggested that some parts are earlier. Now used as the officers mess, I was told that there are some “interesting” rooms inside. The nature of “interesting’ must be followed up.

Also clearly visible from Grahame Park Way is a 6-bay hangar now used by the MT Section. It seems to be of similar construction to the Grahame-White hangar of 1914-19 (which we came to later) and has a lower, possibly earlier, structure at the west end.

Continuing behind this hangar and roughly parallel to Aerodrome Road, we came to a wired-up gap in the boundary fence from which the original Grahame-White gates were taken for display at the entrance to the RAF Museum. Facing the gap there is a single storey brick building with a Grahame-White emblem and the date 1915 by the entrance. Between this building and the MT hangar the early control tower is visible.

Behind the building is another long low building, said to have been used as a munitions factory during the 1914-18 war but now derelict and awaiting demolition. (This is not imminent – the building is likely to remain derelict and out of bounds until it falls down!)

From here we went on to the Grahame-White hangar which was described in Newsletter 112 (June 1980). The main item of interest was to confirm that it is the west section that is the smaller and older, not the east as the GLC description has it. This is the most derelict part of the building; it is out of bounds and fenced off as dangerous. Further the outer metal wall is paper-thin in places. The rest of the hangar is in better condition although the sliding doors are not thought to be very safe. It is in occasional use by the RAF and the RAF Museum as a workshop and for storage, but these uses are not essential.

It is reported that the estimated cost of restoration at today’s prices would be £250,000 and annual maintenance would also be required. Such a sum of money is not currently forthcoming and since the RAF does not need the building, the Ministry of Defence has applied for permission to demolish it although it is Listed as an historic site. HADAS and other interested bodies have protested and urged the authorities to protect and preserve what little remains of Hendon Aerodrome. At present all that can be said is that the MoD is in no hurry to demolish the hangar since this would cost money which is not available; but some concern is expressed that a heavy gale might render permission to demolish unnecessary.

Between the hangar and the railway are a number of brick-built RAF buildings of which several are dated 1931-2, including the Vickers block built as the station NAAFI but now a barrack block, the Bristol block (1931) built as a barrack block, and a number of workshop buildings. There is also a number of wooden huts of uncertain vintage now largely unused and generally decaying. One was the airmen’s mess and has been condemned due to rotten floors.

The south-east corner of the site has been taken over by the Department of Transport with an entrance from Aerodrome Road and it was suggested that there might be interesting buildings on this site too. Later observation from the road confirmed this. There are also some adjacent buildings occupied by contractors about which little is known.
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Following the tour inside I looked around the outside of the site from Aerodrome Road. Backing onto the contractors area there is a wall most of which is apparently the end wall of the buildings inside and in which there are a number of bricked-up entrances; clearly this needs further investigation. On the other side of the road there is a building, numbered 36, outside which there is a weighbridge marked Ashworth Son & Co Ltd, Dewsbury. To the east of this is another old building. Further east still, beyond the entrance to Peel Centre, is an old boundary wall suggesting something important behind it, but now everything seems to be modern. It must be remembered that in the early days Aerodrome Road was for access to the aerodrome only and was not the public through road that it is today. The Grahame-White site spread on both sides of it.

The RAF are not averse to the idea of more investigative visits, nor to photography, but the centre of the area which is completely wired off from the rest is a secret establishment and on this account there would be restrictions on photographs which might include parts of this area. Further visits will be planned, and I would be pleased to hear from anyone who would like to join one. Ring me.

NOTE. A few days after Bill Firth wrote the above report HADAS heard from the Borough Planning Officer. He wrote that when the proposal to demolish the hangar came before Barnet Council, it was decided to tell the Ministry of Defence that –

“this Council is deeply concerned about the proposal to demolish the Grahame-White hangar, in view of its significance to the historical development of Aviation in Great Britain in general “and in thrr London Borough of Barnet in particular and has requested that further consideration and publicity be given to possible alternative uses of the building which could lead to its retention and restoration.”

Good for the Council – or at least, so far so good. We hope that the recommendation to give more publicity to the matter will be followed (local papers please note) and that the suggestion of considering alternative uses will be thoroughly explored.

Any HADAS members got ideas for alternative uses?
TREASURER’S SPOT

First, a subscription reminder. The Treasurer would like to remind those members who have not yet renewed their subscriptions for the current year that those became due on April 1. Prompt renewal now will save him sending out a reminder – which will inevitably, in chronic cases, be followed by removal from the members list. Subscription rates are:

Full membership – £2.00
Under-18 – £1.00
Over-60 – £1.00
Family Membership: – first member – £2
– additional members £1 each

Second, Christmas is coming. May we make a suggestion? We have just had a reprint of our very successful HADAS notelets, featuring a spirited picture of Warwick the Kingmaker on horseback. How about using it as a Christmas card? A pack of 10 with envelopes costs 40p.
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You can buy these at our monthly lecture or by post from the Hon. Treasurer, using the enclosed form. And on the subject of Christmas presents, may we remind you that the Society can obtain the whole range of Shire Publications. We hope to include a catalogue of these with either this or the next Newsletter.
WEST HEATH

Digging continues at West Heath in October so long as good weather lasts. Digging days are Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

As much help as possible is still needed urgently on the site, but please get along as early in the day as you can (digging starts at 10 am). Once the clocks go back the shadows begin to close remarkably fast round the trenches when the lunch-break is over.
DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

October 26 – Mini Open Day at College Farm, Finchley, organised by the Friends of College Farm (newly formed offshoot of the Finchley Society) 2-5.30 pm. Rides, farm shop, Scout and Guide displays in paddock and a small indoor exhibit on Intermediate Technology. What’s that? Well, the Chairman of the Finchley Society defines it as “the alternative to the high technology, high growth society.”

Nov. 8 and Nov. 15 – HADAS Roman weekends at the Teahouse, Northway, NWll. Further details in next Newsletter, but put the dates in your diary now.

Nov. l5. – For those not engaged at the Teahouse, LAMAS Local History Conference, Museum of London.

During October, November, at Museum of London, Thursdays 1.10pm, Museum Workshops on subjects ranging from how to cast a Roman figure to Queen Victoria’s dolls. They offer a chance to meet specialist staff and see, close-to, objects from the Museum collections. Fridays, 1.10 pm, lecture series on London’s River, from Roman to modern times.

On October 15, at the Society of Antiquaries, the monthly meeting of the Royal Archaeological Institute will be of particular interest to HADAS. The lecture that evening at 5 pm is by David Parsons on St. Boniface. A11 those who went on the August outing to Brixworth will recall the enthralling saga of St Boniface’s relics and their travels in Europe, which was unfolded for us by David Parsons while we sat in the medieval church.

After the lecture, this year’s Lloyds Bank grants for independent archaeologists will be announced, in the presence of Norman St John Stevens, Minister for the Arts. To mark the occasion, those organisations which have already benefited from grants will be putting on small displays to show how they spent the money. That, of course, includes HADAS: Daphne Lorimer will mount an exhibit showing our surveying equipment in use.

Although RAI meetings are for RAI members, a member is permitted to introduce a visitor. Quite a number of HADAS members also belong to the RAI, so if anyone not a member has a burning desire to attend on October 15, it might be possible to arrange it. Please consult our Hon. Secretary.
NOTES FROM OUR LIBRARIAN

Any HADAS member who has signed on for evening classes may like to know that our Library contains some “recommended reading” for courses.
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If you want a particular volume ring June Porges and she will check whether it is in the HADAS collection.

She adds that books bought specially for courses and no longer needed when the course is over will gladly be given a happy home in our Library!

During the winter lecture season Mrs Porges will be at the HADAS room in Avenue House (East End Road, N3) on the Friday evening before each lecture (it will sometimes be the first, sometimes the last, Friday of the month) from 8-9 pm. Members will be very welcome to come along and browse and borrow.

The following books have been presented to the Library: The Industrial Archaeology of Farming in England & Wales by Nigel Harvey. Batsford 1980 (presented by the author)

Anglo Saxon England, 7, edi t .P Clemoes. Cambridge University Press 1978

Western Mediterranean Europe: a historical geography of Italy, Spain & Southern France since the Neolithic, by C D Smith. Academic Press 1979

Artifacts: [a introduction to early materials and technology by H Hodges. John Baker 1974

Archaeological excavations 1976. Dept. of Environment. HMS0 1977

Norse discoveries ,and explorations in America 982-1362: Leif Erikson to the Kensington Stone, by H R Holland. Dover Publications 1969 (Reprint of Westward from Vinland, 1940)

{all presented by Philip Yenning)

Medieval Pottery and Metalware in Wales. National Museum of Wales 1978

The Coins of Roman Britain by A. Burnett. British Museum n.d.

(presented by Brigid Grafton Green)

The Roman Riverside Wall and Monumental Arch in London-: excavations at Baynards Castle, Upper Thames St, London 1974-6, by C Hill, M Millett and T Blagg. LAMAS special paper No 3 1980.
Church Terrace Reports No. 9 – WANFRIED WARE

The series continues with another article by EDWARD SAMMES.

One of the more pleasurable aspects of having directed a dig is to sit down afterwards with the latest batch of washed and marked finds, pick up \n unknown artefact and muse on it. The follow-up to this is browsing through books and reports in an effort to identify the find.

One evening during the summer of 1973 my eye caught a small sherd of redware pottery from the finds in trench E3 at Church Terrace. It had a very pronounced hammer-shaped vertical rim and was glazed on the top only. Its decoration consisted of a series of concentric circles of pale green slip on the top surface. When complete the dish or bowl would have been 30 cm in diameter with the red of the fabric showing between the pale green slip.

I was defeated in my search for an analogy for many weeks until in the City of Westminster Library I came for the first time upon Ivor Noel Hume’s “Guide to the Artefacts of Colonial America”. There on p.139 was an illustration of a dish of which my small rimsherd could have been a part. At the LAMAS Archaeological Conference the following spring I hesitatingly put it on show so labelled, with a question mark. Its identification was confirmed by Tony Rook on the adjoining stand, And during the following winter I had an opportunity to show it to John Hurst, one of our leading experts on medieval and post-medieval pottery, who confirmed its origin.
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This ware, as you will have guessed, is a foreigner and is rarely found as a complete vessel on digs or in museums in England. It came from the Central uplands of Germany, today close to the East German border, between the Weser/Werra and Leine rivers. Wanfried is about 80 km south-east of Kessel, in a hilly area on the edge of the Thuringian forest.

The mind boggles at the difficulties which must have been faced and overcome in order to transport the pottery. Not only was it a long way to the sea but also in such a hilly area river rapids would have required the cargo to be unloaded several times until more tranquil waters were reached. Eventually the consignment would have got to Bremen and so could have been shipped across to England. Nothing daunted, some was re-exported to Jamestown, Virginia – or, indeed, it may have gone direct. Direct importation was not prohibited until the Staple Act of 1663 specifically stated that goods bound for the colonies could be shipped only through English ports, after paying English duries.

Much of this pottery is self-dating. as the potters have dated their dishes in central areas in white slip. As would be expected, finds of this ware are mostly along or near the east or south coasts: Newcastle, King’s Lynn, Colchester, Faversham, Dover, Poole, Southampton, Plymouth and London. It has also been found in Chester; and at Dublin and Carrickfergus in Ireland. Its period of production was 1580-1650; a nearby area produced a similar ware called Werra ware.

The rim usually had a dash decoration (not present on our shard) in white pipe clay slip. Inside this were several concentric lines of slip. The central area carried a design, often a person in Elizabethan clothing, an animal or flowers. In this area the date was drawn in slip whilst the design was in sgraffito. A load glaze with a small amount of copper converted the white slip into pale green. Dishes were made with and without handles. The complete dish could be said to be a kind of medallion dish.

As the Church Terrace dig progressed two more small sherds were found in trenches D4 and D5. The green coloration is much deeper on these and one can only wonder how the two dishes journeyed to Hendon and where the rest of the sherds are.

For further reading: –

Hurst, J G – A Wanfried Dish from Newcastle , Archaeologia Aeliana, 4th series vol 1(1972)

Naumnnn, J – Meisterwerke hessischer Topferkunst, Wanfrieder Irdenware urn 1600. Informationen aus Kassel. Jg 5 (1974)

Platt, C & Coleman-Smith R – Excavations in Medieval Southampton 1953-69. vol 2 p 165 (illustration no 1236). Cambridge UP 1975.

And the Noel Hume volume already quoted.
FROM THE NEWSLETTER POSTBAG

Dear Editor,

While we were on holiday in Yorkshire we found what was locally described as “a Druid Temple” near the village of Healy. We have been unable to find any references to it in guide books or archaeological works, and I am tempted to think it may be in the nature of a folly (albeit rather expensive to construct).
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However, some HADAS member may be able to shed light on the matter. The map reference (Metric OS series) is SE 175 787 and the site is shown on Sheet 99 about 5.25 km west-south west of Masham.

Yours sincerely,

KEN VAUSE

FAME?

Dear Editor,

I have a complaint to make.

When I go on holiday I like to get away from it all. Last month while I was contemplating the architecture in some of the older parts of Kings Lynn, a kindly lady (a perfect stranger) went out of her way to point out interesting extra information not in the guidebook.

“Where do you come from?” she asked.

“Hendon,” I said.

“Do you know Nell Penny of HADAS?”

“Do I know Nell …”!!

I am thinking about visiting the Great Wall of China next year, but don’t be too surprised if you get another letter in 1981 starting “I have a complaint to make”.
FOR YOUR BOOOKSHELF

Some reviews of recent publications.

A History of Wembley.

This long-awaited publication is the result of work by members of the Wembley History Society over a number of years, brought together under the editorship of Geoffrey Hewlett.

Its approach is down to earth. It is concerned with everyday folk as well as the “gentry.” Starting at the ice age, it ends in the 20th c. It is an ambitious project of 259 pages, including 67 illustrations, four maps and an index. I could have wished for more on archaeology. The reference to the Rundell and Neeld families on p 131 will interest Hendonians.

The book is available from the Grange Museum, Neasden Lane, and from Brent libraries, price £2.50 (or by post 75p extra). It is a good buy for all interested in the past of north-west London. A copy has been purchased for the HADAS Library.

The Roman Riverside Wall & Monumental Arch in London. C Hill, M Millett and T Blagg. LAMAS Special Paper No 3.

“Protected on the left side by walls, on the right side by the river, it neither fears enemies nor dreads being taken by storm” wrote Bishop Guy in the 11th c, looking down-river to the City of London from Duke William’s headquarters in Westminster. Did the Romans, too, regard the river as an adequate line of defence, or did Londinium have a river-side wall to complement its land-wall?

An answer to this controversial question has at last been provided by a series of excavations in the City between 1974-6. Various lengths of the Roman riverside wall were identified along Upper and Lower Thames Streets and details of its construction were studied. These details illustrate the technical ability of the Romans to vary their method of building according to the nature of the subsoil. Dating evidence indicates that “the riverside wall was built late in the 4th c, nearly two hundred years after the land-wall. In spite of its solid construction it seems to have collapsed sometime during the 11th c. Erosion seems the most likely cause, but why then did some sections of the wall fall inwards? Did it fall or was it pushed? Perhaps we shall never know.
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The last part of the report, and for me the most fascinating, deals with a spin-off from the wall excavations. A number of carved stone blocks from an earlier period were re-used as building material for the wall. Tom Blagg, known to many HADAS members who studied Roman Britain for their diploma, has meticulously measured the size and shape of the blocks and catalogued their designs. He has then patiently and skilfully pieced them together like a gigantic jigsaw. Many pieces of the puzzle are missing, of course (and what excitement when a key piece, missing at the end of the 1975 excavation, turned up during the 1976 dig) but enough remain to give a glimpse of two of the public monuments of Londinium: a monumental arch and a screen of gods. We know so little of the public face of Roman London that this unexpected discovery is a joy indeed.

Other interesting contributions deal with a panel of four Mother Goddesses, perhaps from a temple precinct, and two inscribed altars, one of which records the name of a hitherto unknown Roman Governor of Britain. The whole publication is full and clear, if a trifle repetitious, and it is accompanied by all those specialist reports without which no archaeological publication can now be considered complete.

S.W.

East Barnet Village

Gillian Dear & Diana Goodwin pub. 1980 by Barnet Press Group, at 50p (Proceeds for St. Mary’s Church, East Barnet)

This well-researched 15-page booklet (which includes 4 pages of illustration) fills a gap. Little, has been written recently about either New or East Barnet, and the latter, particularly, has a long history.

As our June Newsletter reported, East Barnet church, St Mary the Virgin, this year celebrated its 900th anniversary. The booklet opens with the Saxon charter granting Huzeweg (Osidge) Wood to the Abbey of St Albans. Early documentary evidence for a settlement at East Barnet is scanty (which does not necessarily mean that there wasn’t one) but records of courts hold under the auspices of St Albans Abbey are in existence from 1237. In 1291 there is mention of a mill at East Barnet; in 1406 a Will mentions a bridge, called Katebrygge, across Pymmes Brook (named after William Pymme who owned the surrounding land from 1307-27). The booklet does not, alas, mention the theory which has frequently been put forward that near the top of the slope running from just below the church down to the water meadows of Pymmes Brook is the site of a deserted medieval village.

Evidence is, of course, much more frequent for the settlement of East Barnet from Tudor times onwards. It includes some details of the original manor house, still standing in 1558; by 1612 there is documentary evidence for a “newly-built house” (called Church Hill House) on or near the site.

We meet, too, the various better known inhabitants of the area – Arbella Stuart, James I’s cousin, in hiding here for a few months; Elias Ashmole, of Ashmolean fame; Ralph Gill, a 17th c Keeper of the Queens Lions at the Tower; Sir Simon Haughton-Clarke, of Jamaica, who lived in East Barnet 1810-1832 and was said to be “the riches commoner in England.” He lost much of his fortune as a result of the work of another commoner who lived in the Borough – William Wilberforce, of Mill Hill, who achieved the abolition of slavery and changed the basis of the sugar trade on which, no doubt, Sir Simon’s fortune was founded.
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There is much detail of interest to the archaeologist about the various large houses (most of them now gone) which stood in East Barnet during the last 300 years. Indeed, a HADAS field worker might well find it fruitful to take this booklet as a starting point and try to plot, by map and on the ground, the precise sites of some of these buildings.

B.G.G.
WINTER COURSES – A FURTHER INSTALMENT

Scientifically-minded members may be interested in a new part-time degree course starting soon at the North East London Polytechnic in Romford Road, E15. It is a 4-year BSc in Archaeological Sciences, developed with the co-operation of Tony Legge of the London University Extra-mural Dept. It is aimed, the Poly tells us, primarily at those who already hold the extra-mural Diploma in Archaeology, which many HADAS members now have. However, the Poly is also prepared to enrol students with no formal archaeological qualifications who are able to show proven ability through experience, publication, etc.

The course involves 9 hours attendance weekly; fees this year are £45. The first-year tutor is Richard Hubbard, who has advised us on palaeobotanical problems at West Heath. In the early years of the dig he made several meteoric visitations to the site; armed with a rolled umbrella and a latchkey. He has the reputation of being one of the fastest talkers in the business.

The Poly authorities stress that although the course provides the end product of a BSc degree, it requires no previous scientific qualifications. “We will teach all the science and mathematics required” they promise. HADAS members who would like to read the scheme in detail (it runs to 108 pages) should contact Brigid Grafton Green.
Short Courses in Islington

The City University (Northampton Sq, EC1) has sent us details of its courses, which are in some respects a bit unusual. Most are of 10 lectures only (there are a few of 20 lectures), which means that a fresh round of courses starts in January 1981. Pre-Christmas courses do not begin until the week of October 13, and you can enrol either now by post or in person at the first lecture. Ten-lecture courses usually cost £6.

The University thinks a new course on Surveying for Archaeologists might be particularly appealing to HADAS members. The 10 lectures cover the construction, use and adjustment of modern survey instruments, the theory and calculations needed for large-scale work, using chain survey, traverse, tacheometry, plane table, etc, and the techniques and methods on site for setting out base lines, level datums and grids, as we11 as recording and plotting. Lectures are on Weds, starting Oct 15.

All lectures at the University are from 6.30-8.30 pm. other pre-Christmas courses include America before Columbus (Weds); Ancient Civilisations of Central Mexico (20 lectures, Thursdays); Archaeology of the pre-Biblical Holy Land (20 lectures, Weds); The Sumerians (Tues, fee £4.50); and Roman History and Civilisation (Weds).

There are some interesting courses in the post-Christmas programme too, which will be mentioned in the next Newsletter.
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PUBLIC LECTURES

The Thursday public lectures at the Institute of Archaeology have become something of an institution over the last few years. There will be 18 this year on the general theme of subsistence economies, at a fee of £10 for the series or 60p for single lectures, payable at the door.

They start on October 23 at 6.45 pm with Late Glacial Hunters in Central Europe, and go on through hunter-gatherers in various areas, reindeer herders, African pastoralists and early agriculturalists. Unfortunately none of the lecturers’ names were known when the Newsletter went to press.

The Extramural Department also informs us that Richard Hubbard has been given the use of the Institute of Archaeology laboratory for his post-Diploma course on Plant Remains in Archaeology, on Mondays, starting Oct. 6 (fee £13). Students are invited to apply for this to the Extra-mural Dept.
WEEK-ENDS AWAY

Knuston Hall, near Irchester, Northants, has long been a happy hunting ground for HADAS weekenders. From the current programme the following stood out as likely to be of interest:
Wood for Archaeologists – Nov. 28-30 – Graham Morgan
The English Village – Nov. 7-9 – Chris Taylor & others
Understanding Stoneworking in Prehistoric Britain – Dec. 12-14 – M W Pitts & C Wickham-Jones
The Neo-Assyrian Empire – Jan. 23-25 1981 – Dr Harriet Martin
History in the Hedgerow – May 1-3 – Max Hooper
Roads and Trackways – May 29-31 – Chris Taylor & others

These courses cost £20, including 2 nights at Knuston and all meals. Further information from The Principal, Knuston Hall, Irchester, Wellingborough, Northants NN9 7EU.
ROUNDING UP A STRAGGLER

In the last Newsletter we mentioned most of the WEA courses available in our Borough. We missed Friern Barnet branch, however, because we could not contact the secretary. Now we have caught up with their activities, and here are the details:

English Heritage (historic houses and gardens). Mrs Pamela Dormer, Weds. from Oct 1, 2.30-4.30 pm, Assembly Rooms, 321 Colney Hatch Lane, N11

Egyptology, Mrs R C Abbott. Thurs. from Oct 2, 10-12 noon, venue as above

Romans and Ancient Britons – British Archaeology from the New Stone Age to the Roman period. Peter Macrae. Thurs. from Oct 2, 8-10 pm South Friern Library, Colney Hatch Lane.

All courses are 24 lectures. Fee £15, pensioners £12.50
AUTUMN AND WINTER HOLIDAYS

The Snowdonia National Park Study Centre, where HADAS stayed on last year’s Welsh trip, has several interesting courses for anyone wanting a late break.

Oct 12-17 – Introduction to Industrial Archaeology

Nov 8-14 – Field Work in Archaeology

Feb 14-20 – Roman and Native in Snowdonia

Further details from Plans Tan Y Bwlch, Maentwrog, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd LL41 3YU.