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Jun 03

newsletter-112-june-1980

By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

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ANNIVERSARY IN THE EAST

One of the oldest parish churches in our area, St Mary the Virgin in East Barnet, has recently started a season of celebration in honour of its 900th anniversary. The church, on the eastern edge of the Borough, stands on the hillside above Pymme’s Brook, with the possible site of a deserted medieval village on the slopes below it in Oak Hill Park. It is the “oldest building in the Barnets,” and was once parish church of a large part of the “heel” of Hertfordshire and of adjacent parts of Middlesex.

Some of the fabric of the original church, built 1080-1100, still remains, notably the 3-ft thick north wall of rubble and plaster. Originally it had 3 narrow slit apertures; today these are windows containing 13th/14th c. glass. The inner doorway on the south side is also thought to be part of the 11th c. building. Once it was an outer door but now the south aisle, added in 1868, lies outside it. The present chancel, built c. 1400, has been enlarged and rebuilt several times, the latest occasion being in 1880. The ceiling of the nave used to be thronged with flights of painted angels of pre-Reformation date, but the angels were first whitewashed and later damaged in World War II and now there are no angels left.

St Mary’s has a fine collection of 10 hatchments showing the arms of the families who lived in the l8th/19th c. parish. These are funeral plaques which traditionally hung over the entrance to the family home for a year after death, and were then moved to the parish church. The last hatchment to be added was that of the father of Frederick Cass, Rector of nearby Monken Hadley and a notable local historian.

Many events are planned for this summer. The ceremony of beating the bounds was performed on Rogation Sunday, May 11; and HADAS member Ken Vause was there with his camera to record it. A concert will be given on June 7 by the choir of St Albans Abbey; from June 14-21 there will be a week of community celebration, with a civic service on June 15 to be attended by the Mayor of Barnet.

Perhaps of special interest to HADAS members will be a daily exhibition, from June 30-July 5, of church treasures and documents. The Church’s earliest register of baptisms dates from 1553, burials from 1568 and marriages from 1582.

A souvenir booklet, price 50p, is available at the Church, with messages from the Queen and from St Mary the Virgin’s bishop until recently – Robert Runcie, now translated to Canterbury.
OF MEMBERS AND M0NEY

The Society’s 19th AGM took place on May 8 at Hendon Library. Some 75 of our 440 members were present. Vice-President Eric Wookey conducted the proceedings with his usual charm, verve and good humour -though he failed by a long chalk to beat his own previous record of getting through the meeting in 7 1/2 minutes flat. This time it took an hour – but of course there was money to discuss, and that always makes a difference.
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A special resolution, introduced by Hon Treasurer Jeremy Clynes, was passed. This will raise the annual subscription from April 1981 to £3 for full members, and to £2 for members under 18 or over 60. Family membership remains at £1 for each additional member after the initial subscription of £3.

The following were elected to serve during 1980/81:

Chairman: Councillor Brian Jarman

Vice Chairman: Edward Sammes

Hon Secretary: Brigid Grafton Green

Hon Treasurer: Jeremy Clynes

Committee: Christine Arnott, John Enderby, Peter Fauvel-Clinch, Vincent Foster, George Ingram, Dave King, Daphne Lorimer, Dorothy Newbury; Nell Penny, Ken Vause, Freda Wilkinson, Sheila Woodward, Eric Wookey.

An exotic note was introduced into what is usually a fairly prosaic occasion by Percy Reboul’s description of his current dig (you’ll find more about it elsewhere in the Newsletter). The feature he is exploring in Cedars Close, Hendon, consists of various walls, red brick arches and massive floor gratings. It is, he thinks, possibly a Victorian melon house, demolished c. 1930. Somehow, on a cold May evening in NW4 the idea of melons growing just round the corner brightened the proceedings considerably.
THE JUNE OUTING

…on Sat June 14 is to the West Midlands. The highlight will be a visit to Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, a Gothic gem described by Dr Eric Grant, who leads the expedition, as the very first Gothic mansion in England, dated c. 1780/90, built for MP Sir Roger Newdigate. It has associations with George Eliot, whose father was steward to the estate. En route it is planned to drop in on an excavation in progress.

Members who want to join this expedition are asked to fill in the enclosed application form and post it, with their remittance, to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible.
Other outings ahead are

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne (Raymond Lowe)

Aug 16 – Northamptonshire (Isobel McPherson)

Our long weekend, from Sept 19-21, will be to Southampton and the Isle of Wight. The application list is still open, and Dorothy Newbury will be glad, to hear as soon as possible from members who want to take part.
DIG NEWS

PERCY REBOUL presents a (very) preliminary report from 14 Cedars Close, Hendon, where HADAS has been excavating the back garden of a private house. This followed a report by the owner that he had uncovered an “old wall” during the cutting of trenches to lay modern land drains across his lawn. (The owner has been most helpful and co-operative and we are extremely grateful to him).

The area is one of archaeological significance, being near the site of the old Tenterden Hall (sometimes called Hendon Place) which was demolished in the 1930s and the supposed area of various medieval and Tudor structures. There has, however, been little or no evidence concerning these last two items.
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Excavation quickly revealed that the brick wall was certainly substantial, being some 80 cm wide and 120 cm high. It was also pierced by an arch 80 cm high and 100 cm wide, with a brick floor. Another arch was found a little lower and it is probable that the wall, which may be over 20 m long, is pierced by a series of arches. The whole structure is exceptionally well built and has been well preserved by virtue of being completely buried beneath the soil.

Our first trench, to the south of the wall, revealed the above information and the finds included typical glazed middle to late 19th c. pottery and a nice clay pipe bowl of the same period. Our old friends the oyster shells were also much in evidence.

Investigations by Ted Sammes and Dave King (who has also done an excellent scale drawing of part of the wall) of early maps of the area showed that the site is almost certainly the walled kitchen garden of Tenterden Hall. The 25″ OS maps of 1863 and 1904 show a glass-house complex within the garden and further confirmation was provided by a study of the 1836 Tithe map and the associated books which describe “a melon ground, gardener’s cottage, sheds, etc.” So we called it the Melon House – which may not be right, but sounds unusual!

Since that time it has been all action. A trench on the north side of the wall, much to our surprise, revealed another and probably earlier wall, 23 cm wide, also with its own arches – although differently centred. A splendid Victorian cast-iron grill, the sort you see in greenhouses, was found. This was about 100 x 50 cm and contained the name “J. Weeks, Chelsea.” Old directories show Weeks as “hot-house engineers;” they ceased trading in 1908. We have some of their early advertisements and a catalogue entry, but anyone who could throw more light on them, or on melon houses, would be doing a useful job for us. Associated with the grill were numerous flower pots, metal clips, putty, glass and lead strips – all indicating a greenhouse complex.

In the last few days we have found some Tudor bricks and a whole series of intriguing drains and the top of a brick dome arrangement which defies description but may be quite early. It is causing us that agitated speculation which makes it all worth while. More later!

Percy Reboul would be happy to have a few more volunteer diggers for Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Numbers must be limited owing to the nature of the site; and strong pick-and-shovel diggers rather than neat trowellers are required. Please ring Percy if you can help.

Speaking from West Heath, Hampstead, DAPHNE LORIMER says that there, too, the cry is Diggers Wanted! However, as most members know, West Heath calls for trowelling and sieving, not heavy manual work.

The site is at its best just now. Last year’s trenches are almost finished and new trenches in a rich area are waiting to be started; Daphne hopes members will come whenever they possibly can, on Weds., Sats (but not Sat. June 14, when there is an outing) and Suns from 10. am – 5 pm.

Footnote: Mislaid- the one remaining whooper swan. His trumpeting on the pond beside the site is much missed, but the ducks are having a lovely time!
NEW MESOLITHIC SITE ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH

In April this year Desmond Collins was delighted to be shown a superb mesolithic blade from an area at the edge of Kenwood, close to the site found earlier by HADAS member Phyl Dobbins. The blade (found by Tony Hilton of Sandstone Place, Dartmouth Park Hill) was of pale grey cherty flint, 60 mm long, 13 mm wide and 5 mm thick. Mr Collins describes it as a fine example of blade core technique, resembling the best found at West Heath. It has, however, semi-abrupt retouch on both sides.
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Other flakes have now been found and Desmond Collins reports that a different stratigraphy to that of West Heath is indicated. The finds are appearing at the depth of 27-30 cm below modern ground surface; and the evidence is that the podsol is deeper and mixed with pebbles.

This significant site is being closely watched and all finds are being recorded. Daphne Lorimer.
SURVEYOR’S DELIGHT

By Brian Wibberley.

Examination of the David & Charles (Brunel House, Newton Abbot, Devon) re-issue of the 1890 OS Record sheet No 71 London proved to be of surveying interest. The text appended to the map was written by Dr J. B. Harley, who mentions not only base-lines, triangulation and the like, but also comes near HADAS territory.

“The station at Hampstead Heath was re-visited in 1799 by the Board of Ordnance Surveyors under the direction of Capt William Mudge … with the ‘great theodolite’,” he writes, “… but at Hanger Hill the tower was obliterated because of the ‘wind blowing the thick and darkened atmosphere of London between the stations’.”

One or two interesting features have been noted already, such as, the presence of “the windmill on Hadley Green – but not the one at Arkley, although some brick kilns are shown near Barnet. The Finchley Road crossing with Golders Green Road and North End Road near the present memorial clock is shown in its more pristine state before the Northern Line was in existence, and when Littlewood Farm was the only building near this Junction.

There are many more little delights to be seen and discovered, and interested members are recommended to investigate further.
FARM INTO MUSEUM

By Nell Penny.

The current exhibition at Church Farm House Museum, running until July 5, celebrates 250 years of working farm and 25 years of a museum organised by the Borough’s Library department.

The first recorded farmer at Church Farm was Daniel Kemp who in 1688 rented the farm from the lord of the manor of Hendon, the Marquis of Powis. In 1764 Mr Broadhead bought the farm; his descendants, renamed Brinkman, owned it until 1918.

The most important tenant during this period was Andrew Dunlop, who came to Hendon from Scotland in 1870 and lived in the house until his death in 1904. He seems to have worked a considerable acreage, for when his daughter was married he gave a supper to 30 farm servants. Dunlop’s family sold the house to Hendon Council in 1944; the land had been sold piecemeal earlier for housing development and to create Sunnyfields Park. After 1945 the Council twice decided to demolish the house, so it must have given considerable pleasure to the Mayor, Norman Brett James, a notable local historian, to open it as a museum in 1955.

(EDITORIAL – Mr Brett James was not the Mayor – see correction in Newsletter 113 for more information)

One exhibit explains the construction of the house and the materials used. Seventeenth c. builders were as anxious to conserve heat as their 20th c. successors. They laid a thin layer of thatch on the rafters before they tiled the roof.
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There are 18th and 19th c maps of the local area: one drawn in 1754 records such field names as Thistlely Downage and Great Hundred Acres which are perpetuated in street names today. Photographs of the house from the second half of the 19th c. until today show the changes from rural to suburban Hendon. Butter making equipment is a reminder that this important farm function may have been carried out in what is now the museum’s storage cellar.

It selection of farm tools and horse harness from the museum’s own collection is supplemented by loans by Mr and Mrs Morley of Totteridge. And there is information about the aforesaid Andrew Dunlop who was a considerable Hendon worthy.

The former rather seedy parlour furniture in the downstairs front room of the Museum hats been replaced by a display of library publications. Latest of these is an attractive Jackdaw-type kit about Church Farm. It costs £1.80 and is the work of Library staff who are also HADAS members – David Bicknell, Joanna Corden, Elizabeth Holliday and Gerrard Rootes. Mike Shearing did the art work and design.

Footnote. An interesting slant on the continuity of local building practice is provided by the farm accounts of the manor of Hendon for 1326, preserved in the Muniment Room at Westminster Abbey. They record that the roofs of the barns at the new Hendon Rectory, comp1eted that year for the lord of the manor, the Abbot of Westminster, were all thatched first and then tiled over the thatch. This roofing method must have gone on for at least 500 years. Ref: Trans LMAS, vol. 21; Pt 3, 1967, p 159.
MORE THAN JUST DIGGING

Research Committee Corner

This may be the digging season, but not everyone wants to – or can – get down on hands and knees with a trowel. So the HADAS research committee has other work on hand, some of it related to excavations, some quite separate, which is waiting for members, experienced or not.

Under the committee’s new structure, described in the last Newsletter, research projects are largely divided on a period basis, from prehistoric to industrial, and work underway ranges from study of field walk finds to compilation of a gazetteer of industrial sites. Members interested in joining should contact the group leaders, listed last month, or the committee chairman Sheila Woodward, or secretary Liz Sagues.

It would be of great help to the research committee if members who have any material finds, documents and photographs, or anything else relevant to the Borough’s past could let Sheila Woodward or Liz Sagues know about them. In that way, valuable research resources can be recorded and duplication of effort can be avoided.

After that request, something in return: there have been requests in the past for the names of people to contact for advice and information should anything of archaeological interest arise in specific areas of the Borough. So here they are:

Hendon: Helen Gordon

Finch1ey: Paddy Musgrove

Barnet: Myfanwy Stewart

Cricklewood, Childs Hill, Golders Green: Bill Firth
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Hampstead Garden Suburb: Brigid Grafton Green

Totteridge: Daphne Lorimer

Edgware: Sheila Woodward

Hampstead: Philip Venning

Two research groups will be meeting in the near future.

The Documentary Group, now six strong, will be meeting for the first time on Thursday evening, June 5. More members will be very welcome. If you would like to come along, please give Brigid Grafton Green a ring for further details.

The Industrial Archaeology Group will discuss future plans on Wednesday June 25 at 8 pm. Please let Bill Firth know if you expect to attend.
HENDON – CRADLE OF AVIATION

Nearly 6 years ago – to be precise, in autumn 1974 – HADAS, along with other amenity societies in the Borough of Barnet, was invited to suggest ways of updating the Statutory List of Buildings of Architectural or Historic Interest, originally drawn up under section 32 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962.

Some 30 members took part in the Society’s survey of buildings which followed. As a result, in November 1974, we submitted a 4-part folio of suggestions to the Borough Planning officer, including a section devoted to the preservation of street furniture such as milestones, horse troughs, drinking fountains and post boxes.

Alas, the new Statutory List for the Borough of Barnet has still not been published. We were thanked for our work at the time and told we should see the results fairly soon: but the years have slipped by and the Planning Department is still waiting to hear what the DoE – the central department ultimately responsible – is prepared to do as regards Listing. No wonder patience is an essential virtue in local government.

Meantime Barnet occasionally makes further ad hoc additions to the old Statutory List. The most recent, made just over a year ago, were two on the former Hendon Aerodrome, which is one of the cradles of aviation in this country. BILL FIRTH now provides notes on the two latest additions to the List:

GRAHAME-WHITE HANGAR. Former Hendon Aerodrome, NW9. TQ 221 901

This building has been Listed on account of its historic interest.

It was erected partly prior to 1914 and partly in 1919 by Claude Grahame-White, the great pioneer of British aviation. Unfortunately it is inside RAF Station Hendon and is therefore not normally accessible, but it can be seen from Grahame Park Way and particularly well from beside the Battle of Britain Museum building adjacent to the RAF Museum.

The hangar is in two parts. The east section is smaller, and older, and is built of load-bearing brickwork with “elliptical (roof) trusses of timber lattice webs.” Photographs look very like the Belfast truss roofs of the hangars in the RAF Museum. The newer part is a 4-bay steel-framed structure with full height sliding doors on the north side.

The official description says the east section. Distant observation and a photograph of the NE corner suggest that it is the west section which is older.

A photograph of the interior shows that the “office” section was named in large letters THE GRAHAME-WHITE COMPANY LIMITED.
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FORMER ENTRANCE GATES TO THE GRAHAME-WHITE AVIATION COMPANY LIMITED.

Re-sited at the entrance to the RAF Museum, Grahame Park Way, NW9. TQ 220904

Iron gates of simple vertical bar design with a top panel of pierced capital lettering THE GRAHAME-WHITE AVIATION CO LTD. The original date and position of these double entrance gates is at present uncertain. It is believed that they are pre-1914; and they stood at the now wired-off entrance in Aerodrome Road (TQ 219819) where the pedestrian entrances still have iron gates of similar design. The building immediately inside this entry carries a winged symbol with the letters G and W intertwined, and the date 1915.

There are very few industrial monuments of importance in our Borough, so HADAS was happy that these two had been Listed.

However, the ink was hardly dry on Bill Firth’s notes above when we were informed by the Borough Planning Officer that the Ministry of Defence proposed to demolish the Listed hangar.

We have therefore written urging Barnet to do all it can to protect any buildings or other installations which still remain at what was Hendon Aerodrome and thus to safeguard the early history of one of our most important modern industries. For many years Hendon’s name was synonymous with excellence in aviation, and we should be proud of that. It is not just by chance that the coat of arms of the Borough of Barnet is surmounted by a crest with a 2-bladed Airscrew.
HELP!

A small working party has made a valiant start on clearing the out-house at College Farm, Finchley, which farmer Chris Ower has kindly lent us for storing and working on finds. Volunteers are still badly needed, however, for jobs such as painting. Any surplus pots of cream or white emulsion paint would also be gratefully received. Shelving is to be put up to store finds. Volunteers to help please contact Brigid Grafton Green.

The greatest need initially is to get the electric light system working. We have installed a strip light, but unfortunately there is a short at the switch box, and we need a knowledgeable electrician to check what is wrong. We shall be most grateful if any HADAS member can help with this problem, either personally or by recommending an economical electrician.
A FLAWLESS DAY IN OXFORDSHIRE

Report by CRAIGIE BESWICK on the first 1980 outing.

The church of St James the Great at South Leigh, Oxon, was the first place we visited on May 17. The earliest chapel on the site was probably Norman, and was perhaps re-built and enlarged between the 13th/16th c. A Norman window and door survive, as do Early English and Perpendicular windows. The greatest glory of the church, however, is the murals, discovered during restoration work in 1872 under four coats of whitewash. Four can now be scan, and a fifth is partly visible. The paintings are 14th/15th c; those depicting the last judgement are still a most vivid warning of the perils of the evil life.

In the largest painting, round the chancel arch, souls are being summoned from their graves by trumpeting angels. The archangel on the north side, dressed in white, calls forth the saved, who are received by St Peter at the gates of heaven; the archangel on the south, clothed in dark colours, marshals the damned, some of whom, bound together with a spiked band, are dragged towards the flames of hell on the south wall.
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Next to the painting of hell is a large picture of the archangel Michael weighing a soul. In his left hand he holds a sword, and in his right a balance of judgement with two panniers, one occupied by a soul, the other by a devil trumpeting to attract other devils to his pannier in order to weigh it down towards the soul’s damnation. But at the other side the Virgin Mary redresses the balance with rosary beads.

Next stop was North Leigh Roman villa, one of the largest in northern Europe. The site was first excavated in 1815-16 and again in 1908, when money was raised for more work and for conservation. In 1952 the Ministry of Works took responsibility for the site, which covers about 13 acres.

Buildings included living rooms, dining rooms (some with hypocausts”) and bath houses; they were constructed between the 2nd-4th c. Some fine mosaic pavements have been uncovered in the geometric style favoured by the Corinium (Cirencester) school. One, now protected from the weather, is in good enough condition to give a fair picture of the craftsmen’s skill. The villa may have supported a hundred Romanised Britons.

A 2O-minute drive took us to Minster Lowell, whore we picnicked in a meadow that sloped gently down to the River Windrush. To the left were the towering ruins of the huge manor house built in the first half of the 15th c. by William, 7th Baron Lovell of Tichmarsh. In the mid 18th c. Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, dismantled the buildings. Some continued to be used, mainly for farming, but in general they fell into decay. A drawing by Alan Sorrell gives his idea of what a magnificent manor house once stood there. Enough is loft of lofty walls and beautiful archways to confirm that it was a building of great grandeur.

We were reluctant to leave Minster Lovell. The perfect early summer day, the winding river, the rich green meadows and the architectural beauties made many of us decide to go back some day and linger. But now it was back into the coach and on to Oxford. Some of the group spent an absorbing hour in the Pitt-Rivers Museum admiring the fine ethnographical collection, while others enjoyed a visit to the Ashmolean, the oldest public museum in the country. {Elias Ashmole, the 17th c. antiquarian who gave his name to the Museum, has links with the Borough of Barnet.. He lived at Belmont, Mount Pleasant, East Barnet, where Ashmole School, in Burleigh Gardens, near Southgate station, commemorates the fact).

It was a most successful and pleasant excursion. We are indebted, as always, to Dorothy Newbury, who came out early on Saturday morning to see the coach off at the Quadrant. We were sorry that she could not come with us. We should like to thank the organisers, Sheila Woodward and Wendy Page, not only for all the work they did that day, but also for the immense amount of preliminary preparation that made the arrangements so flawless. We also thank Mrs Banham for her customary generosity in passing a box of delicious sweets round the coach.

Tailpiece from one of those who explored the delights of the Pitt Rivers Collection.

It is a glorious mixed bag of objects and facts which can best be described as a Jack Horner collection: you put in a thumb and (almost always) pullout a plum!

As an anthropologist General Pitt-Rivers pioneered the theory that the arts of mankind (using the word “arts” in its widest possible sense) progressed by a process of evolution. To prove this, he built up an immense collection of objects, classifying them in series which showed how complex and specialised forms evolved from simple, generalised primitive ones.
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Because he began as a soldier (he was at the siege of Sebastopol) his collection, and his theory, started with weaponry; it ended by covering virtually every aspect of life. Here is just one example -from darkest Yorkshire – of how the theory is demonstrated in his collection.

Under the heading Avril, Arvil or Arval Bread there is a description of biscuits made for the funeral of Mrs Oliver, who died on Nov. 7 1828, aged 52. These delicacies were contained in wrappings, one of which is on show, inscribed with three devout quatrains by T. Robinson, Surgeon, of Settle. It was customary at that time to distribute specially prepared biscuits to mourners in these pious packets, sealed with black wax.

Next, the ancestry of Mrs Oliver’s funeral biscuits is taken back a stage further. The 19th c. custom, we are told, was probably derived from the earlier tradition of “sin-eating,” by which the sins of the deceased were transferred, for a fee, to a parson who consumed food and drink handed to him over the coffin. That habit, in turn, is suggested as being a survival of a much earlier prehistoric cannibalism by which, if you ate a part of the deceased, you inherited his virtues and, even better, his abilities.

So Mrs Oliver’s biscuits link up in a remote kind of way with the brain eating customs of Borneo head hunters and the supposed habits of one of our earliest ancestors, Pekin Man.
FAMILY HISTORY

Members of the North Middlesex Family History Society are currently producing two indices. One is of the 1641 Protestation Rolls for the county of Middlesex (60 parishes). The other is of Monumental Inscriptions pre-190O for Middlesex. The fee for using an index is 75p plus 10p postage. Full details are obtainable from the Hon. Sec, Mr H.F.B. Moore.
Church Terrace Reports: No 5

A FORGERY AND A FOREIGNER.

The series continues with another article by EDWARD SAMMES on coins from the site.

THE FORGERY

Forgeries appear early in the history of coins, either using vary debased alloys or plated coins. There is evidence for them in Greece as early as the 5th c. BC. They were common during the Roman Empire, first during the reign of the Severi, a dynasty founded by Septimius Sevarus (AD 193-211), and secondly in the troubled period between AD 271-286.

J. J. North, in vol 2 of English Hammered Coinage, considers that only coins made at a later date to deceive collectors are forgeries in the numismatic sense; others throw light on the conditions of the period and should be accepted as articles of interest and value.

From trench D3 a coin was excavated in January 1974. It came from beneath a layer of fallen or dumped roofing tiles. Its appearance suggested that it was a corroded copper coin. Attempts to clean it in alkaline glycerol wore unsuccessful and in a partly cleaned state it was submitted to the Dept of coins and Medals at the British Museum.
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There it was cleaned and identified as a forgery of a groat of the reign of Henry V (1413-22), Mint of London. The high copper content of the alloy was the reason for the original confusion. There are two explanations for the coin. It could be a contemporary forgery; or it could be one of a later date, the mid-15th c. being suggested. Soon after the accession for the first time of Edward IV in 1461 he was faced with a monetary crisis and coins were then struck of lighter weight. With those two monarchs we are dealing, so far as Henry V is concerned, with the later phase of the Hundred Years War with France; while with Edward IV we are in the Wars of the Roses.

The groat (4d) was introduced into the English coinage in the reign of Edward I during a recoining, 1279-80. It continued in use in Britain until 1355, when it was withdrawn; it remained in use in India and British Guiana until 1945. It still has a limited use in forming part of the Royal Maundy money.

THE FOREIGNER

The Middle Ages saw the decay of feudalism; towns and cities grew up under a middle class more law-abiding than the barons, and by the 14th c. much wealth had been accumulated through trade. Wool was shipped to F1anders and wine imported from Bordeaux. Fleets of ships from Venice and Genoa brought luxuries from the Mediterranean. As has already been noted in Reports 2 and 3, small change was often scarce. To remedy this, money of low denomination of continental origin was often used. One such source was Venice.

The foreign coin found on the dig has been cleaned and identified as a silver soldino from Venice about 1450. It is badly worn and it was not possible to identify the Doge who issued it. Money was issued in Venice from 1280 until the end of the Republic in 1797.

The Venetians usually set sail in May, when the weather was fair, going to Flanders and England. In England they built up a trade in wool, mainly through London, Sandwich and Southampton. The fleets of galleys in which they sailed brought, besides their wares, large numbers of small coins, many in base metal. They came to be called galeyhalpens, i.e. Galley Halfpence. They circulated illegally in the country during the 15th c. Successive laws against them had little effect, and our coin is one such. Some were still being imported in the 16th c.

I am indebted to Miss M. M. Archibald and Mr S. A. Castle of the Dept. of Coins and Medals at the British Museum for arranging the cleaning and identification of these two coins.

newsletter-111-may-1980

By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

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DATES AHEAD

I. Roman revels and matters more businesslike:

A final reminder that the 1980 AGM will be held on Thursday – yes, Thursday – May 8 at Hendon Library, The Burroughs, NW4. Coffee from 8 pm, AGM at 8.30 pm and, afterwards, slides of some of the year’s activities, including the Roman Banquet. The chair will be taken by our most senior Vice-President – who also helped found the Society 19 years ago – Eric Wookey.

2. Out into the country – The May outing

How about a trip to Oxford and Oxfordshire in Maytime? This will be the first HADAS outing of the year and as we hope to include visits to a Roman villa, the ruins of a medieval manor house, a church with medieval wall-paintings and an archaeological museum there should be something to suit everyone’s taste. Further details , and a booking form will be found at the end of the Newsletter.

To repeat the list of pleasures ahead, the other outings this summer will be as follows:

June 14 – Warwick and the West Midlands, led by Eric Grant

July 12 – Bignor and Fishbourne, led by Raymond Lowe

August 16 – Northamptonshire, led by Isobel McPherson

And the long weekend – September 19, 20 and 21 – will be to Southampton and the Isle of Wight

3. Time for trowelling:

West Heath starts work again on Saturday May 3 and digging will continue through the season on Wednesdays and weekends, reports Daphne Lorimer. It is hoped to organise the occasional full-time weekly digs – provisionally, one is being contemplated for the week beginning Monday July 14. The site – just in case new members are unfamiliar with it – is a Mesolithic encampment, which has produced large quantities of microliths and waste flakes and some enigmatic environmental evidence.

Every trowel is wanted. West Heath is always full of surprises. Come and see if this season will produce an even bigger one. This will probably be the last season and we want to obtain every scrap of information we can from the site.

4. A silver jubilee celebration:

Not a HADAS event, but certainly one for your diary: From May 3 to July 5 an exhibition at Church Farm House Museum to celebrate the museum’s own silver jubilee, covering life at Church Farm from 1688 to 1944.
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LOOKING BACK, MOVING FORWARD

Field walks, detailed studies of the West Heath flints, the compilation of a gazetteer of industrial archaeological sites in the borough – these are some of the planned activities of the new, energetic Research Committee. They are being organised by different groups – prehistoric, Roman, medieval, industrial and documentary – under the benign control of the main committee. Prospective researchers should make contact with the leader of the group in which they are most interested – the names are given below, in the brief summaries of the projected work.

The newly-formed Prehistoric Group is, writes its leader Daphne Lorimer, the old West Heath crowd and is very occupied with the organisation of material for the five-year report. The interim report was held up by the C14 date but, come what may, the report will be up-dated and submitted for publication at the end of the year.

Study of finds from previous HADAS field walks is already under way by the Roman Group, on alternate Tuesday evenings. The first session was scheduled for April 29. Contact Jenny Griffiths for more details. Next on the list of things to do is completion of study of the Brockley Hill finds. And, thirdly, the group plans to investigate the route 167, which is supposed to cross Copthall and continue along the Ridgeway to Arkley and St Albans.

Helen Gordon, who leads the group, will be contacting anyone who has already expressed an interest in Roman research, but those not content to wait for her approach should ring her or Jenny Griffiths.

The Medieval Group is led by Ted Sammes, whose sterling work on the Church Terrace finds is being published, instalment by instalment, in the Newsletter. Contact him to learn of future plans.

The first task of the Industrial Archaeology Group, writes its leader, Bill Firth, is to complete the gazetteer of known sites in the Borough. When we know better what there is we can plan to investigate it properly. Secondly it is hoped that we can interest more members so that we can perhaps widen our activities (so that we can interest more members so that we can widen our activities so that we can …) Plans have not been finalised, so watch this space.

The Society’s new research arrangements envisage some back-up service for the groups engaged in active excavation and field work. Members who fancy doing a little quiet documentary research will be most welcome in the Documentary Group, writes its leader Brigid Grafton Green. They will be particularly welcome if they can spare the sort of time this kind of research requires: it just can’t be done at speed.

The London Borough of Barnet’s Local History Collection possesses many written records, maps, drawings and old photographs which we may want to consult from time to time; Hertford Record Office has material from the northern part of the borough) and there are other documents which may be relevant to our projects at County Hall, in the Westminster Abbey Muniment Room and even as far afield as All Souls College, Oxford.

Anyone who would like to help is invited to contact Mrs Grafton Green, who hopes soon to arrange a Documentary Group meeting to discuss future work.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY

To mark the 25th anniversary of Church Farm House Museum, Barnet libraries have published a folder packed full of information about the Museum and related matters. It even includes a cut-out model of the farm. It costs £l.80 from the Museum or Hendon Library.
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SMOKED OUT – OR THE PERILS OF EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Sheila Woodward hears of them in comparative safety, at the Prehistoric Society Spring Conference.

Experimental archaeology was the theme of the Prehistoric Society Spring Conference held at the Museum of London on March 29 and 30. It is an aspect of archaeology which bas received increasing attention in recent years, and the range of current experimental work was well illustrated by the varied nature of the conference papers.

The modern British Army helped Mr Brian Hobley at “The Lunt” Roman Fort to calculate the time and effort expended by the Roman Army in building the fort’s turf ramparts and wooden gateway. Dr Peter Fowler’s series of slides dramatically demonstrated the changes in the Overton Down experimental earthwork from the sharp white lines of the new bank and ditch 20 years ago to the present weathered and plant-colonised contours. Regular observation of the earthwork will continue and Dr Fowler declared his intention to be present at the survey in the year 2020, even if he has to be lowered from a helicopter in his wheelchair!

“Living a Stone Age Life” was the title of an entertaining paper and cine film presented by Messrs de Haas (father and son) from the Netherlands and other experimental villages were described by Dr Callahan (USA) and Dr Hansen (Denmark). Dr Hansen, emphasising the importance of not only building but also living in such villages, recounted the salutary experience of inhabiting an “Iron Age” house at Lejre during the winter. The daytime fire on the central hearth melted the snow on the thatched roof, which then froze into solid ice when the fire was damped down at night. When the fire was rekindled next day, the smoke had no means of escape through the roof and the hut became uninhabitable.

Experiments in stone and bone and metal working were reported by Drs Newcomer, Slater and Pleiner. Dr Newcomer warned of the danger of experiments becoming an end in themselves: for example, the making of a finer stone tool. The purpose of the experiments was to provide information about the method of manufacture of ancient artefacts and to enable us to study their function.

Mr R. Darrah spoke on the reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon houses at West Stow and the information obtained about the timber and tools used and the sequence for building such houses” and Dr Sean McGrail gave a lively account of testing the seaworthiness and passenger and cargo capacity of ancient craft.

Dr Peter Reynolds, in charge of the Butser Iron Age Farm experiment, talked about the weeds with which the early farmers had to contend and speculated on their methods of sowing and reaping. But man does not live by bread alone, and the technical accomplishment that produced the bronze “lurs” of Denmark and the stringed instruments of Anglo-Saxon and medieval England were vividly described by Mr Graeme Lawson and Dr Peter Holmes. The latter illustrated his lecture with a delightful example of the melodic potential of the six-stringed lyre. Altogether, a most stimulating and interesting conference.
A FAMILY OF IRON WILL.. THE DARBYS OF COALBROOKDALE

Bill Firth reports on the April lecture.

The weather always seems to be foul on the evening of the HADAS annual lecture on industrial archaeology and April 1 proved no exception. However, this did not seem to deter many members and there was a large audience to listen to Mr Ian Lawley, Research Supervisor for the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.
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The Ironbridge Gorge Museum may have been Mr Lawley’s title, but he gave us much more than that. He started with some history to sat the scene and not only peopled it with some of the chief characters but also illustrated it with examples of the output of the industries in the Gorge and made these the more topical by including examples from London which we may either know or can go and see. Iron has been worked at Coalbrookdale for more than 400 years and this still continues in modern foundries turning out cast iron parts for Aga cookers and other purposes. However, it is primarily on the innovations of the Darby family that the industrial importance and fame of the area depend.

Abraham Darby I was a Quaker born near Dudley but living and working in the foundry business in Bristol, who, in 1707, took out a patent for the manufacture of bellied cast iron cooking pots. In 1708 he took over the blast furnace in Coalbrookdale, which was built in the mid 17th century and, following rebuilding, in January 1709 he began to smelt iron ore using coke rather than charcoal as the fuel. Possibly the most important factor in Darby’s new process was that the increased demand for iron and thus for charcoal, and also for wood for ships, was rapidly denuding the country’s forests. Darby’s invention was instrumental in preserving some of them.

Before he died in 1717 Abraham Darby I had built a second furnace lower down the valley and established a successful industry in the area. His son, Abraham Darby II, was largely responsible for the great expansion of the Shropshire iron industry. It was his son, Abraham Darby III, who built the famous Iron Bridge.

Abraham Darby II had a daughter, Hannah, who married Richard Reynolds. Their son William developed the industry of the area by starting the manufacture of china at what later became the famous Coalport works and, among other activities, chain making and boat building.

In the early 1800s the workmanship at Coalbrookdale declined and it was Abraham Darby IV and his brother Alfred who reorganised and re-vitalised the works together with Francis Darby who introduced the production of art castings.

Having shown us slides of the early works and of the Darby family, Mr Lawley went on to show examples of the products, including plaques depicting the last Supper ornamental plates and, as an example of iron work combining the output of the Coalport works, desk ink stands with china ink wells. The heyday of the iron works was reached at the Great Exhibition, the famous gates from which, cast at Coalbrookdale, still stand, not far from the exhibition site, in Kensington Gardens. Later, lamp posts and other street furniture were produced and sent throughout the world. London examples are in Trafalgar Square. For a time, however, designs deteriorated and were in very bad taste.

Mr Lawley told a particularly good story of the Swan fountain intended for Sandringham, which was “banished” to Warrington and latterly, not being very welcome there, was left to languish in a park dump before the Museum Trust, in a superb piece of detective investigation, recovered the various bits and pieces for re-erection at the museum.

Finally Mr Lawley touched briefly on the Ironbridge Gorge Museum as a whole and, particularly, on the Blists Hill Open Air Museum where, in addition to the preservation of some items in situ, others which would otherwise be demolished, are being reconstructed.

Six square miles of museum under constant development can hardly be covered in one lecture. Mr Lawley did much better in concentrating on the history and background as an introduction to the area and gave us a most interesting evening.
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INTO HISTORY BY BUS AND TRAM

Brigid Grafton Green visits London’s latest museum.

A new museum opened in London last month beneath the elegant ironwork roof that spans the former Flower Market at Covent Garden. Five years ago the GLC organised a competition to find a new use for this building originally designed by William Rogers and erected in 1871. The winner was the London Transport Executive, which put in a plan for a permanent home for its collection of vehicles, then in temporary accommodation at Syon House, plus much ancillary material such as models, photographs, paintings, posters and maps. The vehicles included horse and mechanised omnibuses, coaches, trams, railway stock and trolley buses. The new museum also has a lecture theatre and a reference library for students engaged in transport research (open 10.30 am to 5 pm Tuesday to Saturday, by prior arrangement).

The displays start with models of the Thames wherries which for centuries provided the main public transport system for a much smaller London. Then comes the excitement of the first horse omnibuses – copied, in July 1829, by George Shillibeer from an idea which had been pioneered in the previous year in Paris. The first London route ran from Paddington to the City, via Islington. Mr Shi11ibeer, advertising his new service, pointed out “that a person of great respectability attends his Vehicle as Conductor; and every possible attention will be paid to the accommodation of ladies and Children”.

Models of cabriolets (at first it was considered vulgar to shorten the word to “cabs”) are shown: “coffin” cabs in the 1820s, so called because of the shape of the passenger seat, then four-wheeled “growlers” which could also cope with your luggage and, in 1837, the hansom of which 7,500 were on the streets of London by 1903.

Horse-drawn omnibuses show steady improvements; climbing rungs at the back are replaced by stairs, at first open but later covered. The open upper deck acquires a centre bench where you sat back to back; this was the “knifeboard bus “, so called because it resembled the Victorian domestic knife-cleaning board. One of the first knifeboard buses, “The Times”, is on show, painted in green and gold and drawn by life-size replicas of two magnificent greys. It bears a name with Hendon connections – that of Thomas Tilling, Job Master. It plied between Camberwell, Oxford Street and Peckham. Tilling (1825-83), whose buses brought him great fame, lived for some time at Guttershedge Farm. Hendon, (now Park Road, NW4) and his name is on the list which we put forward to the borough in 1978 for commemoration by a blue plaque.

In 1910 the motor bus arrived. Long before that, however, horse-drawn trams, running on their own tracks, had made an appearance. They too steadily improved, with the arrival of electric trams in 1901 and, by 1932, the luxury “Bluebird”, equipped with heaters and fully upholstered seats. The last London “Bluebird” was sold to Leeds in 1951. In 1931, the swift, smooth, swooping trolleybus came on the London scene – a vehicle which, to many suburban commuters, was the acme of speed and comfort and the passing of which is still much mourned.

There are vehicles, too, from the early suburban railways run by the main line companies. The first in London was the London and Greenwich, opened 1836, which brought passengers in to London Bridge. It was followed by local lines coming into Euston (1837), Paddington (1838), Shoreditch (1840), Fenchurch Street (1841), Waterloo (1848) and Kings Cross (1852). Crossing London, however, from one terminus to another was a nightmare, and by the 1850s plans were on foot to link the mainline stations by underground railway. In 1860 work began on the Metropolitan Line, and the first urban underground railway in the world opened on January 10, 1863, from Paddington to Farringdon Street, via Kings Cross.
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Some of the most interesting exhibits in this section show how much attitudes have changed. The luxurious double-car Rothschild Saloon, for instance, was specially built to carry Ferdinand de Rothschild’s eminent guests to house parties at his country estate Waddesden Manor, near Wendover. Similarly the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos had a private line – the Wotton Tramway – built in 1871, to convey goods and passengers to his estate. Railway carriages are marked with notices like “3rd class” and “Ladies Only” and the early Underground lifts have large printed warnings “Beware of Pickpockets”. The earliest locomotive on show was built in a glory of brass and ironwork and red paint in 1866 for the Metropolitan Line into Baker Street, and was refurbished and rebuilt in 1908 at the Neasden works.

The photographs and documentary exhibits are also worth study. There are some photographs of local interest to HADAS – showing Golders Green, for instance (and including the famous 1904 “cross-roads in the country” shot), and a plan of Hampstead Garden Suburb. Reproductions of the early transport posters are used to colourful effect in the hall, and the museum shop provides a whole range of reproductions at £1.50 each. The museum booklet (not an itemised catalogue) is 60 pence – 30 pages, with black and white and many colour illustrations.

The museum is open lOam to 6pm every day except Christmas and Boxing Days. Admission is £1.40, children and pensioners 60p. It has quite a good snack bar, with coffee, salads and sandwiches.
THE COMP’S TALE

Another in Percy Reboul’s series of tape transcripts.

I was born in Burn Street, Gateshead, in 1906, the eldest of eight children and went to Prior Street school which I left at the age of 13. My father was a glass bottle maker who was mainly on night work and suffered rather poor health. One of my memories of school was an old schoolteacher named Stephenson who got all the children to bring him their fathers’ tobacco coupons with which he got goods for himself.

It was hopeless for jobs in 1919 and the only possibility seemed to be a coalmine job at Scotswood, Newcastle, where they took my name and said they would let me know when something came up. On my way home I saw a notice in a shop in Collingwood Road, Newcastle, which said, “office boy wanted”. I went in and saw a Mr Laybourne, who told me that the job had been filled but that he needed an apprentice compositor for his print department. He asked me to spell the word recommendation, which I was able to do, and I got the job.

I was apprenticed for seven years and paid 10 shillings a week, of which I had sixpence and gave the rest to my mother. On my first day I was shown the proofing press and my job was to clean the black ink roller every night so that the compositors could have a fresh start the following day. I was so keen that 1 cleaned it up every time that it was used until I was told that ink was expensive, and one cleaning a day was enough! I was taken to the type cases, shown their arrangement and how to set type by hand and later how to set display type.

There were no “art” people then. The compositors did the layout and learned how to become artists in type. Mr Laybourne, the boss, was President of the Madrigal Society and each apprentice in turn as the Society came up with a concert, was asked to arrange a page for the front of the programme.

Laybourne’s were general printers. There was no newspaper advertising as we know it today, and the big stores such as Coxons and Bainbridges had their own catalogues printed. That was a big job, sought after by every printer. Perhaps 15,000 catalogues would go out by post.
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We did printing for Reyrolles the electrical people, building industry estimating forms, weigh-bills for the coal mines and the Newcastle tramway.

The firm employed seven compositors, two apprentice compositors and a works foreman in charge of the machine print room binding paper and despatch department. In the print department there were five letterpress printing machines, mainly British equipment; and we did every side of printing except block making. The working hours were from 8 am to 6 pm on weekdays, 8 am to l pm on Saturdays, with one hour for lunch.

I was the general runabout for the compositor. Every pay day, it was my job to buy beer and cigarettes for the men. I had a pole with notch cut in it and I went to the Jug and Bottle to get beer in the men’s own cans which I hung on the pole. Woodbines were bought in the packet of five for a penny and the men also bought sweets for the girls. The average wage was about £2. lOs to £3 and the foreman got about £5 per week.

In those days there were compositors employed solely for breaking up the type and redistributing it back into the type cases after the job was done. This was sometimes done by casual labour and as the apprentice it was my job to go to the Union office to get a man. I remember on one occasion going to the small office where compositors wanting work sat and asking a man if he would direct me to the secretary’s office. He asked where I was from and I told him. When I returned to work a little later the man I had asked to direct me was hard at work at Laybourne’s, having made good use of the information!

When I came out of my time in 1927 it was the custom for all apprentices to be sacked. You needed further experience elsewhere. I couldn’t find a job at all until a friend pointed out in a religious magazine that a London firm was looking for a compositor. This was the time of the hunger marches. I went to London and joined the Wicliffe Press, Finchley, on a month’s trial. A difference then arose with the union. The London Society of Compositors didn’t want me on the grounds that I was taking the job of a London man. I didn’t see the logic of this as the man I had replaced had gone to Liverpool. My pride would not let me return to Newcastle where so many friends had seen me off. When I did so later on a return visit I saw some of my school mates who had never had a job since leaving school. I was lucky.

I am still at the Wicliffe Press; which prints the Churchman’s Magazine for the Protestant Truth Society and an annual religious diary of 20-40,000 copies. To help finances we undertake local work – for example the organisations in Hampstead Garden Suburb such as the Dramatic Society.

Printing as we knew it has nearly priced itself out of existence. The small printer, like the small shopkeeper, is going out of business – which saddens me. There don’t seem to be the craftsmen about who learned about all aspects of the craft. Today it is highly specialised.
DIGGING INTO RELIGION

Helen O’Brien previews an educational film in which HADAS features.

The West Heath dig is featured, though somewhat fleetingly, in the first of a new series of educational films for secondary schools called “Religion and Civilisation”, about world religions. There are 10 films in the series and the first of these, “Origins”, was previewed recently at the Essential Cinema in London. “Origins” explores the growth of religion from its roots in prehistoric times and West Heath is used almost by way of introduction – to show archaeologists at work on a prehistoric site.
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Charles Harris of Rarmersue Ltd, who produces and directs the series, wanted an excavation sequence to illustrate the idea of “searching for clues” of prehistoric beliefs. A small team from Rarmersue visited the site last summer and spent several hours filming the work in the trenches. In fact only a few general shots and a close-up of Philip Venning uncovering a large blade were needed.

The main part of the 20-minute film features famous ancient sites, including stone circles, megalithic tombs and the caves of the Dordogne, as the evidence for prehistoric religious beliefs is discussed. As well as schools, universities and clubs throughout the English-speaking world will be offered the series. Foreign versions may also be produced, depending on demand.

This is a most attractive and informative short film. We wish the series every success.
BOOKBOX INTO LIBRARY

It was in January 1974 that George Ingram took over “for an experimental period” the organisation of the HADAS Bookbox, which had been started the previous year by Philippa Bernard. The “experiment” was successful enough to last six years – and it was with much regret that the committee heard recently that Mr Ingram wished to give up the librarianship.

In that time the Bookbox, which originally fitted into a small suitcase, has grown enormously. It is now a library, not a bookbox, and it has been moved for safe keeping to the HADAS room at Avenue House. We are lucky in having found another member, June Forges, who lives in Finchley not far from Avenue House, willing to take over the librarianship.

In the summer when there are no regular meetings it is sometimes difficult for members to use the library. Mrs Forges suggests that any member who wants to borrow, or wants to know if the library possesses a certain book, should ring and consult her.
Local History 246 “Harrow as it Was”, compiled by Brian Girling, 1975 Presented by Dorothy Newbury Misc 215 “The Romans” (a study of past culture), by H.H. Barrow, Pelican Paperback, 1949 Presented by Jeremy Clynes

Archaeology Roman 188 “The Coins of Roman Britain” by Andrew Burnett (booklet)

Presented by Brigid Grafton Green British History 71 “Celtic Britain” by Lloyd Laing, Routledge and Kegan Paul,1979 Anonymous donation Local History 243 Camden History Review No. 7, Camden History Society 244 “Barnet and Hadley almshouses” by W.H. Gelder, 1979 Both purchased by the Society

245 “The Book of Remembrance and War Record of Mill Hill School” complied by Norman B. Brett-James Presented by Mill Hill and Hendon Historical Society

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British History 72 (2nd copy) “What happened in History” by Gordon Childe 2 (2nd copy) “Man and the Vertebrates” by Alfred S. Romer Archaeology General 123 “Prehistoric Britain” by J. & C. Hawkes 254 “Archaeology from the Earth” by Sir Mortimer Wheeler Foreign F44 “The Pyramids of Egypt” by I.E.C. Edwards F45 “The Hittites” by O.E. Gurney F46 “The Pre-history of East Africa” by Sonia Cole F47 “Foundations in the Dust” by Seton Lloyd F48 “The Stone Age of Northern Africa” by C.E.M. McBurney F49 “Early Anatolia” by Seton Lloyd F50 “The Dead Sea Scrolls” by John M. Allegro F51 “The Pre-history of European Society” by Gordon Childe All Published by Pelican Anthropolgy 1 (3rd copy) “History of the Primates” (4th edition) by W.E. le Gros Clark 222 “From Savagery to Civilisation” by Grahame Clark All donated by Miss Phyllis Dobbins

PUBLICATIONS

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 13 volumes (1955 onwards). Donated by Miss Dobbins.

The Archaeological Journal, vols 12,(?128) 129, 130 (1971, 1972, 1973) and

Current Arcaheology, vols 43 to 53 inclusive (March 1974 to November 1975). Donated by Liz Holliday.
DOWN ON THE FARM

The College Farm open days were, by all accounts a huge success. Dave King, who with Nell Penny organised the HADAS contribution, estimates that between 2,000 and 3,000 people turned up to see the animals and other exhibits. The HADAS display featured an exhibition of the history of College Farm itself, telling the farm’s story, largely through photographs, from the time the Express Dairy took it over around a century ago to the present day. The display included photographs from the Express Dairy’s archives, from a former manager of the farm and from the HADAS collection. To complement it, there was material on other farms in the borough, some of it loaned by Church Farm House and Barnet Museums. And, going back to the days before farming was developed, there was a display of flints from West Heath. HADAS members stewarded the exhibition, while the Finchley Society, with the co-operation of the farm tenant, Chris Ower, was responsible for the rest of the attractions. They included such rustic sports as wellie throwing, demonstrations by the riding school based at the farm, pony rides and a horse-drawn milk float provided by the Express Dairy. Fine weather both weekends, – April 12-13 and 19-20 – helped enormously. One outcome is the planned formation of the Friends of College Farm, of which more details shortly.
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THE INSULAR LONDONERS

Sheila Woodward reports, post haste, on the 17th annual Conference of London Archaeologists, organised by the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society and held at the Museum of London on April 26.

When London archaeologists meet in conference each year they talk about London. Venture as far afield as Staines and you are in alien country and, commented Richard Reece darkly, you may encounter a hostile reaction. True, Tim Tatton-Brown talked about Canterbury, but only to compare and contrast it with London.

For the rest of the crowded programme we had a round-up of recent London excavations, followed by a more detailed consideration of the problems posed by Late Roman London. The speakers were excellent, the audience enthusiastic (every seat was sold), confirming that the usual high standard of LAMAS conferences was maintained.

As usual, HADAS staged a display for the conference – of photographs, showing the salvaging of the College Farm hay tedder and churchyard recording. For activities more purely archaeological, conference attenders were directed to another display, this time mounted by the museum itself and left from the earlier Prehistoric Society conference. That included prehistoric finds from all over London, including flints from West Heath.
CORRECTION

HADAS Newsletter 100 (June 1979) carried an article by Michael Purton on The Geology of the Borough of Barnet. On p.10 Mr Purton referred to “Neolithic” flint implements found on the Boyn Hill and Tap1ow river terraces at Yiewsley in West Middlesex. This was incorrect: the adjective should have been Palaeolithic, not Neolithic.

This error came to light when the 1979 Newsletter was being indexed. The index is now ready, and photocopies are available at 70 pence eacb (to cover cost of photocopying and postage). The index greatly enhances the value of the Newsletter as a tool, both for officers and members and also for libraries and record offices which take regular copies.

If you would like a copy of the 1979 index, please let Brigid Grafton Green know. It might also be possible to provide copies of indices for earlier years, at a similar sort of figure.
BONES OF CONTENTION

A true story, in which the participants shall be nameless.

It concerns an archaeologist who, digging a deserted medieval village site, chose to begin on the largest mound, in hope of finding the manor house. No such luck. It was the cemetery. But, not being one to ignore bones in the pursuit of buildings he handed over the skeletons to a bone-specialist colleague. The latter was delighted, as the bones had many pathological fascinations.

Next on the scene, however, was the vicar into whose parish the village fell. Outraged at the disturbance to his ancient parishioners, he ordered they should be reburied immediately in his own churchyard, for which he would charge the archaeologists a substantial fee. After much negotiation, the archaeologist agreed to reburial, but at a much reduced fee. The vicar was satisfied – and so were the archaeologists for, unbeknown to the cleric, the skeletons reposing in his graveyard were those not of medieval Englishmen but of ancient Egyptians, surplus to the bone specialist’s requirements.

Apr 15

Volume 3 1980 1985

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Apr 03

newsletter-110-april-1980

By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

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APRIL LECTURE

Tuesday April 1st, 8:00 for 8:30 at Hendon Library, N.W.4.

Lecture on Ironbridge Gorge Museum, winner of the European Museum of the Year Award in 1978. Many members will remember Ironbridge as the first weekend venture of the Society. The Museum covers six square miles of the Severn Gorge and retains much of the atmosphere of the time when Abraham Darby first smelted iron, using coke as fuel. The first iron bridge in the world is sited here, built at Coalbrookdale in 1779. Coalport china, was made here until 1926. Further reconstruction has been going on since our visit in 1974 and Mr. Ian Lawley, Research Supervisor for the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust is coming down to talk to us on its progress and aims.
THIS IS IMPORTANT

Please read our Treasurer’s enclosure with care and respond as best you can to his appeal. HADAS gives us all so much for so very little. Make it just a little more!
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Society’s AGM will take place on Thursdav, May 8, at ~ Hendon Library (please note it’s on a Thursday, not our usual Tuesday).

Coffee from 8-8.30, followed by the business meeting – a formal notice of which is enclosed with this Newsletter.

To end the evening Dorothy Newbury is arranging a slide show, which will include pictures of the Roman banquet and of one of last year’s outings – probably the visit to The Lunt.
Church Terrace Reports No. 4. – SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TOKENS

This is the fourth in the series of reports on material from the Church Terrace site, written by Edward Sammes.

Traders’ tokens were born of the expansion of trade and the non-existence of small change. They could be called an illegal money, born of necessity! There have been three main periods when they achieved popularity, i.e. during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Lead tokens, jettons and foreign coins were often used as small change from Medieval times.
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The official coinage in England from the Saxon period was made from silver and during the Medieval period went as low as the farthing. Under the Tudor and Stuart rulers, the monetary and economic structure was changing. Those needing money were largely shop-keepers, manufacturers and merchants. The small change below one penny was especially needed by small traders and the labouring classes. The 17th century tokens are concerned with the people who issued them and do not refer to the monarchs. They began in 1648 and continued to be issued until 1679.

In 1672 a Royal Proclamation was issued for making His Majesty’s farthings and halfpence of copper. This officially ended the tokens of the period but they continued to be issued in Chester until 1674 and in Ireland until 1679.

The tokens issued by tradesmen usually bear both the Christian name and surname of the issuer, the town or village and his trade or profession. Sometimes the value of the coin is added, plus a symbol of his craft or the arms of his trade guild.

It is probable that they did not usually travel very far from their point of issue, but some archaeological evidence suggests otherwise.

In London one can imagine a frequenter of inns carrying a bag with an assortment of tokens and also the publican sorting his into piles, using sorting trays, prior to their being redeemed at the place of issue. One can only wonder how often the issuer “went broke” and possibly not all such coins were freely accepted because of this.

Additionally, such tokens also acted as a kind of circulating advertisement.

One token was excavated and possibly the unidentifiable remains of a portion of a second. The first was issued at Bushey. The obverse side reads “WILL LITCHFIELD OF BUSHEY” – and in the centre it has a lion rampant holding an arrow and beneath it 1/2d. The reverse side reads “JOHN PILE OF BUSHEY” and in the centre is a maltster’s shovel and the year, 1669. (Catalogued Williamson p. 307, No. 74). These men were probably partners in trade.

Williamson’s “Tokens of the Seventeenth Century” notes:-

“it is singular that one of the issuers’ names, (i.e. of Bushey tokens), occur in the parish registers before the 17th century”.

For our own area in the 17th century, Elstree, Edgware end Potters Bar each have a single known example; Finchley, Harrow, Hendon and Willesden, two examples each; Enfield and Hampstead, three, and High gate and Barnet, nine.

Looking at this distribution, one cannot help but notice that these are all places along the main roads of communication.

For further reading: –

Berry George – Discovering Trade Tokens – Shire Books. 1969. Out of print.

Boyne W – Tokens Issued in the 17th Century. 1858. Revised edition by G C Wi11iamson, 1887-1891, (Reprinted 1967) – usually referred to as “Williamson”.

Lowe R – The History of Trade Tokens – HADAS Newsletter No. 36, February 1974. pps 2-.3.

Seaby P and Bussell M – British Tokens and Their Va1ues – Seaby’s Numismatic Publications Ltd. (my copy is dated l970).
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MEDIEVAL KING’ LYNN. MARCH LECTURE GIVEN BY DR H. CLARKE

Dr. Clarke’s lecture, which concentrated on the work of surveying medieval King’s Lynn, was well illustrated with colour slides of many old buildings as they exist to-day, together with constructional diagrams and maps. The work carried out at Lynn had a three-fold aspect, we were told, namely:

i) A general survey for likely excavation sites

ii) A survey of standing buildings with significant historic features

iii) A thorough documentary survey to support the above aspects.

The efforts of those who took part were well rewarded; King’s Lynn is not only one of the best preserved medieval parts but also one of the best documented and recorded towns. The report on the excavation work between 1963 and 1967 is to form Volume II of a series of three books. Volume I, The Making of King’s Lynn by Vanessa Parker, published by Phillimore and Co., 1971 is recommended to medieval buffs as well as to those interested in the town itself.

The impulse to carry out this exploratory work came in 1961 with the realization that extensive re-development would soon be under way: King’s Lynn was to expand and become a London overspill area. Ironically, much the same kind of activity had taken place in the 11th century, when the Bishop of Norwich founded a church and priory there, at the same time regularizing commercial activities by the grant of a market and a fair. Presumably the families of the five salters who, according to the Domesday Book, owned the land thereabouts, thought it was a good idea, too. This nearby town of Bishop’s Lynn, (Lynn is thought to be derived from “Len”, Celtic for “lake” or “1agoon”) with its Saturday Market held near St. Margaret’s must have been successful as by the 12th century more land had been reclaimed. This Newland, as it was called, was used for docks and merchant housing to satisfy an increased demand for water frontage either on the main River Ouse or on one of the smaller tributary rivets, the fleets.

Newland, lying between the Fisher Fleet and the Purfleet has the Tuesday market site next to its own church of St. Nicholas (rebuilt in grand manner in the 15th century and reflecting the wealth of the town in that period) but apparently it has always played a role second to St. Margaret’s with its Saturday market.

In the South-West corner of St. Margaret’s tower is the trace of a crossing arch Romanesque colonnade retained in the brickwork fabric – one of the oldest surviving structures in the town. Dr. Clarke pointed out the area of South Lynn, lying adjacent to Bishop’s Lynn, between the Mill Fleet and River Mar, which has an enigmatic Saxon church, as well as the South Gate of the city wall.

The interesting buildings discussed included Clifton House, Hampton Court, the Hanseatic Steelyard, the Guildhall, the Greenland Fishery and the Valiant Sailor Inn, now a private house. All had major features dating from the 15th century or before. Later buildings of interest included the Custom House and the present Duke’s Head Hotel, both built by Henry Bell and showing the influence of Christopher Wren with whom Bell had studied.
Page 4

Many of the medieval buildings were difficult to date: there was a shortage of local stone, a town wall buttress being the only example shown, so there were few clues from stone-dressing techniques: the dominant brickwork offers less help in dating. A good example of East Anglian building is the Guildhall, whose frontage is of chequer work in limestone with flint.

Although the bricked-in four-curve arches of Hampton Court, the medieval doorway and the Hanseatic warehouse are good examples, Clifton House, with its vaulted undercroft and locally produced (Bawsey) tiles came out tops for me.

An interesting lecture.

BRIAN WIBBERLEY.
DAVID GARRICK, 200 YEARS

The year 1979 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the death of the actor David Garrick. To mark this, the British Museum has staged an exhibition in the King’s Library of the Museum until 11th May 1980, and it traces his career as an actor.

His connection with Hendon began when in 1756 he purchased, through a buyer, the Lordship of the Manor of Hendon, and the right to present the living of St. Mary’s church. He built Hendon Hall (now Hendon Hall Hotel). There seems to be no record of his actually living there, but during the rest of his life he spent much money on the hall and grounds.

In the laying out of the grounds, he built an octagonal temple in the Classic style which was demolished when the Great North Way, (now the Al) was constructed. On the North side of what is now Manor Hall Avenue, he erected a memorial to Shakespeare, which stood until the 1950s.

Admission to the exhibition is free, and there is a lecture at 1:l5 p.m Mondays to Fridays. Visit. This at the same time as you view the Vikings!
THE BRICKLAYER’S TALE

Another of PERCY REBOUL’S transcripts of tape-recordings.

I was born in January 1910 and went to All Saints School at Oakleigh Road, Whetstone and later to St. James’s, Friern Barnet Lane. I left school at 14 and went to work with my father who at that time was building man-holes for Sir Thomas Adam of Wood Green in Netherlands Road, East Barnet.

In those days bricks cost 16s. per thousand, sand was 6s. per yard and cement 1s. 6d. for a 1 cwt sack. We bought our materials from local suppliers such as Knowles at Totteridge Station and they were delivered by horse and cart.

My father specialised in the building of man-holes and sewers and he arranged contracts for the work. I think the price for man-hole brickwork was 6s. 6d. per rising foot – that is about 250 bricks. I got paid 6d. per hour.

We worked irregular hours, sometimes until nine or ten o’clock at night until the job was done. Funnily enough, Monday afternoon was often taken off by builders doing piece-work and many of them met together at the Griffin Inn, Whetstone.

In those days, the man-holes were dug by the ‘navvies’. There were no mechanical diggers. All the wheelbarrows were wood with iron-rimmed wheels and the navvies wore straps around their knees into which they tucked their ‘little old man’ – a small scraper used to clean their grafting tool. A lot of them wore mole-skin trousers. They came from all over the country and got about ls. per hour. There was also the ‘timber-man’ who shored-up the trenches – he was the most important member of the team because your life could depend on him.
Page 5

When I was about 15 1/2 years of age, I worked with my Dad building houses in Oakleigh Avenue, Whetstone. As it was summer, work started at 7 a.m. and at 9 a.m., it was my job to collect from home the breakfasts that my mother had cooked for the men. About 9.30 a.m., I was told by my father to take the haversack containing six quart bottles to a back door in the Griffin Inn to be filled with beer. This was drunk up to midday. In the afterneon they drank tea. In those days it was all green fields. Mr. Floyd, a dairyman, kept his cows in fields where the new Whetstone Police Station now stands at the top of Friern Barnet Lane. I used to milk a friendly cow direct into an empty milk bottle but in the end Floyd ‘tumbled’ to it.

Sir Thomas Adam, the engineer, was a funny old man. He would come to the site on pay-day (Friday). I remember a terrible storm one pay day and heard Adam say to his foreman “Mr. Chalkley, please shut the door {of the site office), the lightning may strike the notes!”. One week my father earned the colossal sum of £20 and Adam offered to escort him home!

Monday morning was ‘sub-day’. Things were so hard in those days, particularly if the weather was bad, you might not even have your rent money. So on Monday you could draw, say, 15s. which was deducted at the end of the week. You had to ‘sub’ to live in those days; it was standard practice but mostly the sub went on buying beer and you might need another sub on Wednesday. The men were a good crowd, good at their jobs. The worst years were 1926 and 1928 but just before the war it was really good – plenty of work.

I remember building man-holes in Hendon around the Welsh Harp – Mount Road and that Area. They were about 105 ft deep. Bricks were lowered by crane and it was 18 ins. brickwork at the bottom, reinforced with concrete and iron bars. At certain hours of the day, the sewers, which we were repairing and enlarging and which were closed when we were working on them, were opened and the water rushed through at about 60 m.p.h.

I was one of the first bricklayers on the Ideal Home Estate which is Gallants Farm and all around there. The purchaser could pick his own site for his bungalow – they were £675. When finished, Jelks of Finchley, the furniture people, invited you to see their show house. These houses fetch about £35,000 today. There was such a rush for these houses that within months they went up to £1,000.

They were built in sand and cement, (not the old-fashioned lime mortar) and Belgian bricks were used. They were extremely hard bricks, hard on the hands to lay but ask anyone on that estate how hard it is to drill a hole in their walls!

The head of Ideal Homes was Mr. Mayer. He said to us “You’ve got the best of materials that money can buy. I want no shoddy work.” But we had trainees on the site with only 6 weeks training behind them so you couldn’t help but have bad work in some places. The late 30’s was the time of the jerry-builder but the estate, on the whole, was well built. We would lay about 1000 bricks a day and were paid 2s. 6d. per hour, which was good money.

One of my most vivid memories is of 1926 when I went with my father to Marylebone Cemetery to build a vault for a Mr. Salmon. After the mourners had left the Superintendent ripped down the vault and took all the tapestries off the coffin just before they roiled the stone over. My father said “Now you’ve seen people with money buried, I’ll show you how people with no money are buried.”
Page 6

We went to the far side of the cemetery and I saw a deep hole with about 6 or 7 coffins on top of each other and finished off with about 6 babies’ coffins. It was then filled in and grassed over and that was the end of them.
HADAS RESEARCH COMMITTEE

Good news for those itching to delve deeper into Barnet’s past.

The HADAS Research Committee is being revitalised and its members have plans – which will be described in more detail next month – to instigate a variety of projects, ranging in period from Prehistoric to Post-Industrial Revolution. Enthusiastic researchers, expert or otherwise, will be warmly welcomed on them. Anyone keen to be involved from the beginning should contact Sheila Woodward or Liz Sagues.
JUST TO REMIND YOU

…that, as announced in the last Newsletter, there will be two processing weekends this month at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Teahouse, Northway, NW11. They will start on Sat. April 19 and Sat. April 26 respectively, and will be mainly concerned with work on finds from and projects connected with the West Heath dig. Please come and help if you possibly can – and it will be much appreciated if you can let Daphne Lorimer know if you are coming (up to April 14) or Brigid Grafton Green know (after April 14).
HADAS AT THE MUSEUM OF LONDON

Those members who are going to the Museum of London for the Prehistoric Society’s Spring Conference (29th/30th March) or the LAMAS Conference of London Archaeologists (26th April) should keep their eyes open when they are drinking their coffee or tea. The Museum is mounting a special exhibit in the Educational Department to mark the occasion and HADAS has been honoured by being asked to lend some West Heath material.

Since the Spring Conference is on Experimental Archaeology, some of HADAS’ own experimental work will be on show as well as our two axes and a representative selection of tools.

The exhibit will remain on display for the whole of April for Educational parties but those members of HADAS who are unable to attend the two conferences will be able to visit it by request at the entrance kiosk.

A London Kiln Study Group Seminar will be held on Saturday and Sunday, May 10th and 11th, at the Museum of London. Applications to the Secretary, L.K.S.G., 155, Walworth Road, S. E. 17. Course fee: £8:00 (Members) £8.50 (Non-Members), to include tea, coffee and a Saturday night Wine & Cheese Party. A splendid opportunity to discuss techniques and theories with a wide range of experts in this field.
Page 7

COLLEGE FARM OPEN DAYS

A reminder that College Farm is being opened to the public during the weekends of 12-13 and 19-20 April. Visitors will be able to see the wide variety of animals kept at the farm, watch the farm’s horses being exercised and enjoy rides on a horse and cart. HADAS is organizing exhibits on farming and College Farm itself, and a Finchley Society exhibit will deal with the farm’s recent past and somewhat uncertain future. A number of other activities will be going on, including a barbecue, organised by local scouts, on the afternoon of April 20.

Admission is free, and refreshments will be available.

We hope a large number of HADAS members will be able to come along to see how Mr. Owers manages to be “a farmer in suburbia”. A few stewards are still needed to assist with the exhibition. If you can help, please ring Dave King.
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE RESIDENTIAL COURSES

The current programme offers much of interest to HADAS members, including a course for beginners and experienced students in the elements of digging technique within the context of an actual excavation and in skills such as surveying, archaeological photography, recording, biological data sampling and the recognition of archaeological material.

July 5th – August 2nd. Fee: £55.00 per week, including accommodation and breakfast. Applications to:

The University of Cambridge Board of Extra-Mural Studies, Madingley Hall, Madingley, Cambridge CB3 8AQ.

Feb 03

newsletter-108-february-1980

By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Page 1

BARNET PROPOSES METAL DETECTOR CURB IN PARKS

The London Borough of Barnet is planning to restrict the use of metal detectors in its parks after some gentle prodding from HADAS. In a letter to the Society the Borough says that the Council is proposing to make a new bye-law for its public parks which will say: ” A person shall not in the pleasure ground remove or displace any soil, turf, or plant.”

The effect of this, the Council hopes, will be that anyone who takes a metal detector into a public park will be unable, if the machine excitedly registers a “find”, to explore further what that find is. Before the bye-law comes into force it must be advertised, and the Council must then have it confirmed by the Home Secretary. If it does go through the Borough will join the growing number of local authorities who hope to minimise the worst hazards of what is euphemistically called “treasure hunting”

We welcome the Council’s action which we suggested last September that they might consider taking. One of our members had at that time observed the flagrant misuse of a detector in Sunnyhill Park, Hendon, by a treasure hunter who dug a number of small pits and made no attempt even to replace the earth and turf.

Though our West Heath dig will be outside the jurisdiction of the proposed bye-law it has been the victim of treasure-hunters on at least two occasions. The site is of course much too old for metals but it seems that the intruders were misled by the naturally occurring ironstone and did considerable archaeological damage in their fruitless hole digging.

The CBA and other national archaeological bodies will be launching a campaign called STOP (“Stop Taking Our Past”} against the use of metal detectors early in March. There will be programmes on TV and radio as well as press and magazine coverage. This will all be specially aimed at the use of detectors on sites known to be of archaeological interest. CBA hopes that once the national campaign begins local societies will keep the pressure up at their level too.

A section of the Ancient Monuments Act which bans the use of metal detectors on statutorily listed sites will shortly come into effect. But this is limited to about 13,000 sites, a fraction of those likely to be at risk. The CBA does not want a complete ban on all metal detectors, but favours very much stricter controls on their use.
Page 2

WEST HEATH MYSTERY UNRAVELLED

By Joyce Roberts MSc PhD.

At long last we now know the nature of the globules found at all levels on the West Heath site. They are fungal sclerotia of Coenococcum Geophi1um Fs. 1825, and are not in fact carbonised. They were first illustrated under the name Lycoperdon graniforme by a British botanist, J. Sowerby in 1800. From our point of view it is interesting that the ‘locus classicus’ i.e. the place in which he found the first specimens is given as Hampstead. In “Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms” he writes: First shown to me in Lord Mansfield’s wood, Hampstead, by Mr Hunter who showed me the last. It grows loose, like small shot above ground without any apparent root. From its first or smallest size it alters but little in colour. The riper ones are very brittle and crack irregularly. They enclose a black powder.

Though the sclerotia are widespread in the peaty soils of the Northern Hemisphere and have been found in Denmark from pre-glacial times onwards, very little is known about the fungus which has been quietly ignored by mycologists. It produces no spores, only fine fungal threads and it is at the moment a matter of conjecture as to what part it plays in the soil. From the archaeological point of view it is one those hazards, like the root galls and the nests of the Potter Bee, which one cannot ignore until identified, just in case they provide valuable environmental information. These, after all, were first assumed to be carbonised seeds.
DOCUMENTARY RESEARCHERS – MORE BAD NEWS

A serious deterioration in the service offered local historians by the Public Record Office is now imminent as a result of Government spending cuts. To save money the PRO has decided to close its public search rooms in Chancery Lane, though most of the record there will remain. Instead anyone wanting to use them will have to travel down to the search room at Kew, where the modern records are kept.

A few of the more commonly used records will be transferred to Kew, but most items, will have to be ordered well in advance and then brought across London by van. Chancery Lane houses an enormous range of documents of interest to the local historian – probate records and hearth tax returns to name two.

Not surprisingly the plan has aroused considerable opposition from professional historians including John Higgs, chairman of the Standing Conference for Local History, and A. J. Taylor, past president of the Society of Antiquaries, who wrote: to The Times in protest.

This follows the warning in last month’s Newsletter that some of the items held by the GLC Record Office will now be harder to obtain.
Page 3

LECTURE PROGRAMME

Our next lecture will be held on Tuesday 5th February at Hendon Library. Coffee will be available at 8.00 pm and the lecture begins at 8.30 pm.

Mr Mark Hassall MA FSA, a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, is known to many of our members. The title, “The Later Roman Empire and the Codex Spirensis”, is a little misleading, he feels. In fact he describes the Codex Spirensis as a book of “Roman red-tape”, and an associated pamphlet describes some of the ludicrous war-machine inventions thought up at that time. This lecture promises to be entertaining as well as informative.

The programme for the rest of the season is as follows:

MARCH 4th. “Medieval Kings Lynn: an archaeological, architectural, and documentary survey” by Dr Helen Clarke BA PhD FSA

APRIL 1st. “Iron Bridge Gorge Museum” by Stuart B. Smith MSc AMA

MAY 8th. Annual General Meeting (NOT May 13th as stated in last Newsletter)

Daphne Lorimer is planning two more finds processing weekends. The dates have not yet been fixed but they will probably be in April.
THE ART OF BRONZE AGE (MINOAN) CRETE

A Report of the January Lecture, by Frances Radford.

Our January lecture by Sinclair Hood MA FSA took us back to the Cretan civilization in the years approximately between 1700 and 1450 BC. Crete, the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean, situated in a volcanic area was densely wooded in parts presenting a picture of a more verdant, fertile land than it is now.

In such a setting arose a civilization with a distinctive decorative art form having remote links with that of Egypt but achieving a greater freedom and plasticity than is seen in the wall paintings, sculpture or artefacts of ancient Egypt. By the middle of this period the influence of Minoan culture had spread to the mainland of Greece, as evidenced by finds at Mycenae. How this period of artistic flowering came to an end is not known but certainly it is likely that Knossos and other palaces which were also centres for skilled craftsmen were destroyed by war (Mycenaen conquest?) or volcanic action.

The knowledge we have of this particular culture is largely due to Sir Arthur Evans’ excavations of the palace of Knossos. From fragments of wall and floor paintings reconstructions have been made showing a highly decorative art. Though some of the figure paintings are stylised – with the legs in profile but with a frontal view of the chest and eye as in Egyptian art {e.g. the Priest-King fresco of Knossos) -those of birds and animals are altogether freer, more colourful and lively, often catching a characteristic pose e.g. the floor painting of flying fish, the curve of a swallow in flight. Accurate observation of the natural world is then put into a decorative form – a monkey uprooting saffron crocuses (used for dye), partridges crouched in the grass, dolphins leaping through a pattern of waves.
Page 4

Male figures were in brown, female in white, the outlines in black. Although the artist often incised a line by means of a rope in wet plaster on the bottom of a wall on which to place his figures, the painting was executed in such a free style that sometimes the line was disregarded and the figures appeared to be walking in air. Neither were corners regarded, the painting simply continuing along the walls.

Many of the scenes depict wildlife, others are of activities related to what is thought to be a religious cult of the time involving bulls, e.g. the well known bull leaping panel at Knossos. Other evidence of the cult comes from the famous golden ‘Vapheio’ cup with relief scenes of bull hunting on it (circa 1500 BC and possibly made in Greece at a time when Mycenae was influenced by Minoan art). Here we see the bull trapped by means of a decoy cow and later hobbled. Another fine piece of craftsmanship of this period is the stone Harvester Vase depicting a procession of farm workers carrying winnowing forks and accompanied by singers and a can with a rattle – a somewhat humorous scene.

By means of excellent slides one was able to see in close up the details of these fine pieces. The vigour, colour and design of the art work of this period appealed to the Mycenaeans who either employed Minoan craftsmen or imported fine works from Crete. Its appeal is as strong today, giving pleasure as well as stimulating the mind to answer many questions it poses about the life of the creators. What, for example, was the significance of the bull in the religion of the time. It is presumed it was used for sacrifice in Earth-worship. Was the bellowing of the bull in any way connected with the deep rumblings of the earth preceding tremors – the Minotaur of the Labyrinth? Evans had recalled a line of the Iliad “In Bulls does the Earth-shaker delight”, but without this preoccupation with the wonders of the natural world would we have had such a lively, joyous art form?
CEDARS – THE CONTINUING SAGA

Following the information that Andrew Moss supplied in the last Newsletter, GEORGE INGRAM, our Hon. Librarian, confirms that he too has seen and noted references to a great cedar blown down in Hendon on January 1st, 1779. His references however say that the cedar was definitely in the grounds of Hendon Place, not Hendon House – that is, at the manor house in Parson Street, not Norden’s house in Brent Street.

Mr Ingram also provides the reference: “there are three fine cedars in the Mill Hill grounds, two a return present from Goodwood Park, to which Collinson had sent 1000 small cedar trees from Hendon Place, and one a gift in 1761 from a Mr Clark. This was badly damaged by a very heavy snow-storm in 1916, when I was housemaster at the School House” (Norman Brett-James, Middlesex, County History Series 1951 p187).

The reference to a “Mr Clark” is particularly interesting since – as Newsletter readers who have followed the complex story right from the start will recall – the point at which HADAS first came into it was in the December Newsletter (No 106) when we were asked by a colleague in Barnet and District Local History Society for information about “John Clark, a Barnet butcher, who had a nursery garden and who in 1761 sold 1000 cedar seedlings, at a price of £79.6s, to the Duke of Richmond for planting at Goodwood House.” It looks as if Peter Collinson, the famous botanist (1694-1768), may actually have paid for the Duke’s trees.
Page 5

George Ingram also gives this further note concerning Collinson:

“He was called to advise the third Duke of Richmond on the laying out of the ducal seat of Goodwyn. The outcome was that he bought 1000 5- year-old cedars, then growing off Parson Street, Hendon, for 1s 6d each, and had them planted at Goodwyn where they contributed to its glory.” (Hendon Times June 19th 1964, in a 4-page supplement on the local history of Mill Hill written by the late Arthur G Clarke). This suggests that John Clark, butcher and nurseryman, may have had a nursery at Parson Street, Hendon, as well as at Barnet.

TED SAMMES has also some light to shed :

The reference found by Andrew Moss was probably taken from a note by Sir John Cullum (not Collum) in the Gentleman’s Magazine for March 1779, and quoted in Evans, History and Topography of the Parish of Hendon, Middlesex, 1889, p.15.

Evans’ quotation states that the tree “stood close on the north side of Hendon Place, the elegant residence of Mr Aislabie”. This gentleman did live in Hendon Place for a period until his fortunes failed with the collapse of the South Sea Bubble, when he was forced to sell and return to Yorkshire. If a member has the time it would be worth checking the original note in the Gentleman’s Magazine.

Hendon certainly had a number of cedars until recently and they also exist at Mill Hill. There is still one in Parson Street close to the site of Hendon Place. I also believe there was a large cedar at the entrance of Cedars Close until after the war.

I can remember three Cedars of Lebanon in the Churchyard of St Mary’s Hendon prior to the 1939-45 War, one by the tower, the sawn off rotting stump of which can still be seen. Another stood at the south east corner of the church close to the yew tree and one at the east of the church. This latter one is the only survivor.

Until about 10 years ago there was one standing incongruously between the houses of First and Second Avenue, just off Victoria Road. Grove House, along the Burroughs, had a fine specimen in the north western corner of its lawn. This, like the Victoria Rd tree, died. Could it be of old age?

The Cedar of Lebanon has been grown in this country for over 250 years and it would seem probable that the presence of Collinson, the botanist, from 1749 at Mill Hill may account for the interest in these trees in the area. It is regrettable that none of these fine trees have been replaced. It should certainly be possible to replant in Grove Park as the space needed for the mature tree is still available-
DIARY NOTE

The British Museum’s current exhibition 7000 Years of History Cyprus BC continues until 16th March. Admission free.
Page 6

EXCAVATION AT 97 SOUTHWOOD LANE, HIGHGATE

Report by Philip Venning.

In July 1919 HADAS was contacted by Hornsey Historical Society about a feature found by a builder 1n the garden of 97 Southwood Lane, Highgate, which he had been renovating. Just under paving outside the back door of the Victorian house (c. 187O) was the 52 cm square opening of a sunken brick structure, filled with rubble.

The excavation.

Between July l8th & 2Oth Philip Venning, Dave King, and Terry Keenan, carried out a rescue excavation of the interior. (It was too close to the house to allow an outside section to be dug).

Removing loosely packed 20th century builder’s rubble revealed a circular brick lined chamber on average 14O cm in diameter with a brick-corbelled roof, 75 cm from apex to base. At the top of the walls and entering the side of the dome from the south-east was a ceramic pipe (18O mm diam.) at an angle of about 5 degrees. It was heading under the house, did not appear to connect with existing drains, and was blocked 60 cm from its mouth. One metre below the entrance the loosely packed fill gave way to a clay soil, containing rather less rubble and a mysterious white substance rather like soft, soapy, lumps of chalk (still unidentified).

About 215 cm down the soil fill gave way to a concretion of the white substance, above which was a dispersed layer of bottles, transfer-decorated crockery and other late Victorian refuse. Partly because of pressure of time, partly the problem of digging at depth, the rest of the feature was dug in section. At a depth of 3 metres a thin layer of mortar, covering a brick floor, was found. This was resting on natural and the wall footings disappeared. The bottom had been reached.

Identification.

The small finds indicate that the structure was probably filled in when the house was built. But nothing was found to suggest a date or purpose. The brickwork and mortar are certainly post 17th century.

One theory is that it was an ice-house – underground stores where Victorians kept ice for preserving food. On balance this seems unlikely. Ice-houses varied considerably and this structure has parallels elsewhere. But it lacks one item common to all – a drain at the base to remove melting water. (Searching for a drain, the section was undermined. An assymetrically placed one could have been in the rest of the un-dug section). Maps reveal that before the present house was built the ground formed a garden to the north of a small house, now demolished. This looks too unimportant to have had a luxury like an ice-house.

There was no sign of discoloured soil associated with cesspits (nor would a floor have been needed). Another suggestion was that it might have been a storage vat belonging to an 18th century brewery that once existed nearby. A more likely explanation is that it was a water storage cistern, others of which have been found on Hampstead and Highgate hills, dating from a time when it was difficult to get piped water to the summit.

A measured drawing of the structure, accompanies the Newsletter. (EDITORIAL – to see this drawing, select the following link)

Jan 03

newsletter-107-january-1980

By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984 | No Comments

Page 1

BEST WISHES FOR A HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL NEW YEAR
1980 LECTURE PROGRAMME

Our first lecture in 1980 will be held on TUESDAY, 8th JANUARY at Hendon Library. Coffee will be available at 8.00 p.m. and the lecture begins at 8.30 p.m.

Members will remember the, interesting lecture on Neolithic Crete given by Professor Evans last year. The January lecture entitled “THE ART OF BRONZE AGE (MINOAN) CRETE” covers the following amazingly rich period of Minoan civilisation of the island. Our speaker will be Mr. M. S. F. Wood, M.A., F.S.A., who is a specialist, on the subject.

The programme for the rest of the season is as follows:

FEBRUARY 5th. “The Later Roman Empire and the Codex Spirensis” by Mark Hassall, M.A., F.S.A.

MARCH 4th. “Medieval Kings Lynn: an archaeological, architectural and documentary survey” by Dr.Helen Clarke, B.A., Ph.D., F.S.A.

APRIL 1st. “Iron Bridge Gorge Museum” by Stuart B. Smith, M.Sc., A.M.A.

MAY 13th. Annual General Meeting,
OTHER MEETINGS OF INTEREST

The Finchley Antiques Appreciation Group will be holding two meetings in January which may be of interest to HADAS members. On Wednesday, 9th January, Wellesley Clinton will be speaking about “Bronzes and Sculptures,” and on Wednesday, 23rd January “18th Century English Glass” will be described by John Hutton. The meetings will be held at Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley and non-members may attend on payment of £1.20. Further details from Mrs. Phyllis Adams.

Barnet Library Lectures.

Members may like to make a note of two lectures in the post-Christmas Wednesday Lecture season arranged by Barnet Libraries. On 20th February at North Finchley Library, Ravensdale Avenue, N12, Douglas Priestley the well-known art critic of the Barnet Press will be speaking about The Art and Craft of Stained Glass and on 27th February Myrtle Ellis will be “Looking at English Silver” at Hendon Library. Both lectures begin at 8.15 pm and will be illustrated with colour slides.
THE SCENE SURVEYED

On Saturday mornings 19th and 26th January (weather permitting), it is hoped to have surveying practise in FRIARY PARK under the direction of Barry Martin. Meet at the main gate at 10.00 a.m. Please telephone Daphne Lorimer if you are coming.
WEST HEATH EXCAVATIONS 1979

During the season of 1979 over 70 members worked a total of about 4000 man hours at the West Heath Site which proved to be its usual fascinating, exasperating arid tantalising self. The now customary bad spring delayed theoretical start of the digging season until mid-May, while bad weather during the whole of the early summer held digging up considerably (and members acquired an unappreciated skill at wet sieving!). A pleasant autumn, however, brought the HADAS troops out and the flints up in large quantities. In all, 16 trenches were under excavation during the season, of which nine (36 sq. m.) were finished and seven have still to be completed.
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The Carbon 14 dating is posing problems and it is hoped that cross-checks can be done using the residue of charcoal obtained from the original hearth and, possibly, from the small area of burning found at a similar level in XIII M (which had been detected as an anomaly in the Magnetometric Survey done in l977).

Two features containing quantities of burnt stone have been excavated – one in Trench XIV M, to the east of the new fire area and the other in the southern portion of the site in Trench XII H. This is a well defined tailed pit (i.e. a flued hearth) and the stones came up in layers, those at the bottom being the most calcined. These features have necessitated a great deal of patient, meticulous excavation and have been drawn in plan and section and photographed at every stage.

The area under excavation this year is still, undoubtedly, the richest part of the site and, while it is not yet possible to ascertain the density of artefacts per square meter, the count of tool types at the end of October was 76. This included 19 obliquely blunted points, 17 microburins, 10 backed blades, 4 point tips, 5 serrates, l ‘Dufour’, 1 notched piece, 1 axe sharpening flake, 1 geometric microlith, 3 scrapers and one tool of exceptional interest – a miniature core axe. There were a large number of cores and 12 pieces with miscellaneous retouch. The proportions of one tool type to another remain relatively constant.

Post holes have not been a major feature bf this year’s excavation but some small ones, with charcoal in the fill, have been cast. Dr. Joyce Roberts is hot foot in pursuit of the identification of the small carbonised globules which continue to appear in large numbers in parts of the site.

Excavation has not ceased for the year, – it is too fascinating and rewarding at this stage. If the Wednesdays are fine, hardy souls will be welcome for mornings only. Check with Daphne Lorimer first.

Last, but certainly not least, every Wednesday afternoon during the whole of the summer, a stalwart band under Christine Arnott’s enthusiastic leadership 9 have processed flints at Avenue House. This is a very essential job and all volunteers will be very welcome. Ring Christine if you can come.
SITE WATCHING IN BALLARDS LANE

Building work has begun on a large site in Finchley which embraces 11~19 Ballards Lane (a terrace of shops with housing above dating from about 1870), Albert Mews, and buildings lying between Albert Mews and Albert Place. Paddy Musgrove, who has been watching the extensive preparatory excavation for an underground car park reports that there were no indications of any buildings on the site: earlier than-the Victorian terrace.

A line of cesspits marked the back yards of the terrace. That behind number 11 was in, red brick and circular; the others were rectangular and made from yellow brick. An underground air-raid shelter of reinforced concrete was uncovered in Albert Mews. To the west of the site, a well was found. This would have been beneath the warehouse building which stood at the bend of Albert Place. Like others found in the neighbourhood, it was circular and constructed from un-mortared red bricks.

The natural undisturbed boulder clay yielded the usual supply of substantial flint nodules, but the most interesting find was a large piece of tabular flint. Unfortunately this was shattered into many pieces by the mechanical digger, but three fragments recovered jointly weighed just under 13 kilos. For tool-making, this piece would be considered of very poor quality. This seems to be the first recorded case of tabular flint being found in the Finchley boulder clay.
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MUSEUMS IN THE WARS

The Museums of our Borough seem to have hit a bad patch at the moment: In the last Newsletter we mentioned that Church Farm House Museum at Hendon will have to close for seven weeks in the New Year while re-wiring takes place. The museum will re-open on Saturday, 1st March and an exhibition of Asian life and culture – EAST COMES WEST – will be staged from 8th March to 20th April 1980.

Meantime Barnet Museum, at 31 and 33 Wood Street, Chipping Barnet, (you may remember HADAS staged an industrial archaeology exhibition there about this time last year) has also closed for repairs. We learn from its Curator, Mr. Bill Taylor, that it may not re-open for quite some time. The 18th century buildings are affected by a combination of dry rot, woodworm and rising damp. Mr. Taylor believes it may take as long as two years to repair them completely.

Trial work has already started and floor boards are up in several rooms, preparatory to infiltrating material which will kill the woodworm. As well as repairs, it 1s planned to enlarge some rooms by taking down interior walls. Mr. Taylor hopes it may be possible to re-open the Museum bit by bit as each stage is completed; just now, however, plans are too preliminary to say whether this will ultimately be possible.

As many HADAS members will know, Barnet Museum is a repository for various documents, maps, photographs, etc. (see Newsletter 85, March 1978, for Joanna Corden’s summary) of what is available at the Museum). At the moment, as work has not yet got fully under way on repairs, and the heating system is still working, this material remains at the Museum; but Mr. Taylor hopes that the Borough will soon find some temporary accommodation (possibly in a school) in either East, New or Chipping Barnet to which the documents can be moved for safe storage. He also hopes that some temporary study space can be found for students who wish to consult documents – either at the temporary store or at Chipping Barnet Library.

The Museum’s collections – clay pipes, pottery, metalwork, etc. – will also be packed up and it is hoped, stored in the temporary accommodation. The Battle of Barnet banners which hung in the Museum (they were made by local Townswomen’s Guilds and, Women’s Institutes for the quin-centenary exhibition in 1971, in which HADAS played such an active, part) have been removed to hang in the Museum safe. Any HADAS members who wish to consult material during the next few months should be encouraged, Mr. Taylor says, to ring him at home and explain their problem. He will be glad to do his best to arrange for material to be consulted during this difficult period.

Further news for documentary researchers is that GLC will be re-opening the Search Room of the Greater London Record Office (serving the London and Middlesex sections) on January 2nd next. It has been closed (with great inconvenience to students) since last summer.

The letter from GLC then goes on with the following chilling paragraph:

“Some collections are now stored in an out-repository and will have to be ordered at least three working days before a visit. It is not possible to issue hand-lists detailing the contents of the different repositories and they will, anyway be subject to change. Readers are advised to check whether records they wish to consult need to be ordered in advance. Specific orders can, of course, be made by letter or telephone”.
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What this means is that GLC has made no attempt to meet in any way the many complaints made by societies and individuals about its proposed future arrangements; and that local historians of the London area will unfortunately receive an archive service inferior to that provided by most county record offices.

The Search Room at County Hall is Room B21; it is open Mons-Fris, 9.30 a.m.- 4.45 p.m. with late evening opening (by appointment only) on Tuesdays, 4.45 p.m. -7.30 p.m. For enquiries and appointments. telephone 016336851 (direct line).
WORLD WAR II STRUCTURES

Mr. A. Christie of Barnet, has sent the Newsletter some information about World War II structures which are still to be seen in our area.

“If you look over the railway bridge (Northern Line) at Squires Lane, Finchley, on the south side) you will see three blocks of concrete on the railway embankment, two on one side of the bridge and one on the other. Tank blocks, don’t you think?

Up to a few years ago around the Borough of Barnet there were several of these concrete blocks, but most of these have disappeared. There were some opposite Totteridge Tube Station, and also some behind a hedge where the office block is now, north of Whetstone High Road.. And there were still, until quite recently, air raid shelters in Ballards Lane just below Perry’s. With regard to pill boxes, there was one in Barnet Lane, in front of a house; but this is very overgrown now, and there was one – which may still be there – at New Southgate, on the surrounding wall of Friern Hospital. Some air raid sirens still exist too, like the one at Tally Ho!”

Mr. Christie says that he photographed some of the installations he mentions) and offers to let us see the photographs.
NOTES AND QUERIES

The December Newsletter sought help from readers on two matters – and we seem to have struck oil on both of them.

In his article called “The Milkman’s Tale” Percy Reboul asked if someone could throw light on the phrase “A barn of milk”. Dr. Edward Hoblyn, whose wife is HADAS member, has tracked this one down. A barn of milk, he says, was a measure used when small dairymen were buying direct from the farmer. It was 16 pints plus one for spillage – that is, 2 gallons and a pint. Dr. Hoblyn’s authority for this is the director of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers.

In some paragraphs headed Hendon Cedars in Sussex we asked for further information about the Great Cedar of Hendon Place. HADAS member Andrew Moss tells us that he found, at Guildhall Library, in Topographical and Statistical Description of the County of Middlesex, by G. Cooke (pub. 1810) the following passage:

“There was formerly a very remarkable cedar tree in the garden of Hendon House. It was blown down by a high wind on the first day of January, 1779. Sir John Collum gives its dimensions thus:

Height: 70ft

Diameter of horizontal extent of branches: 100 ft

Circumference of trunk 7ft above ground level: l6ft Diam. and at l2ft. from the ground 20 feet in circumference.

The limbs are from 6ft. to l2ft. in girth.”

The gardener two years before the tree was blown down made £50 from cones.”
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The only problem that this quotation raises is whether the writer really meant Hendon House – that is the big house which stood where Hendon School now stands, off Brent Street, and which was once the home of Elizabethan cartographer John Norden and later belonged to Sir Jeremy Whichcot, whose splendid memorial is in St. Mary’s parish church. If so, then it suggests that there may have been two extraordinary cedars in Hendon, one at Hendon House and the other at Hendon Place – the manor house of Hendon, later Tenterden Hall, and situated further north than Hendon House, in the area that is today Tenterden Gardens, Drive and Grove. Or was it just a confusion of names in the mind of the author?
PAINT YOUR WAGON

Liz Holliday is currently investigating the history of agriculture in Hendon and would be grateful if any member can shed light on the Middlesex Wagon. Similar to the Hertfordshire wagon in design (but often shorter in the body), references consulted to date are rather vague on detail. Farm wagons were usually painted brown with a buff underbody but road wagons were rather smarter as they travelled further afield. Red was a popular colour for wheels and underbody and one source describes “a Middlesex wagon painted blue” – presumably referring to the bodywork.

If any member has any further information, please telephone Liz Holliday.
ROME-ANTICS

The 1979 HADAS Christmas Party

Uxor mea Ann and I journeyed to Hendon using the modern equivalent of a Roman road, along the Al from Roman Baldock. As we travelled, there was time to reflect that a centurion’s amour may have been useful forwarding off the slings arid arrows of outrageous barbarians but it was certainly not designed with driving a car in mind!

When I first heard of the Roman banquet theme for the 1979 HADAS Christmas Party, I was immediately determined to dress as a centurion. However, the local theatrical costumier was (a) difficult to find and (b) very reluctant indeed to admit that he had a suitable outfit at all. He mellowed considerably when it was explained to him that the event in question was an archaeological gathering and not an event of the wilder sort. In fact his resulting peace of mind was such that he even offered me the alternative metal (‘real’) sword instead of the more usual wooden one. Very steady, reliable people, we archaeologists!

Steady and reliable we may be, but when we let down our hair, we do it in style. Much learned discussion has taken place on the reasons for the upsurge of popular interest in archaeology. Is it the unique combination of academic and physical skills, is it the thrill of investigation, or is it an attempt to escape into a more glorious past? After the party, one would have no hesitation in choosing the last reason. The ease with which HADAS members donned Roman dress and custom, and entered into the Roman way of life was remarkable.

We were helped, of course, by the excellent and atmospheric hall layout, complete with shrine, mosaics and murals, all authentically illuminated by oil lamps (thanks to Brett Sampson). Authenticity, in fact, was the keynote of the evening. Nothing that happened had not been thoroughly researched for accuracy and then vouched for by our Guest of Honour, Mrs. Maureen Locket who lectured for the Extra Mural Department of Southampton University, and had travelled from Portsmouth for her third (and best, of course) Roman banquet of the week!
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As we sipped our aperitif of delicious honeyed wine (mulsum), John Enderby told us of the wine which we were to drink, purchased from the Roman wine trader, Augustus Barnetti, and thankfully undiluted. He also had the pleasant task of telling us that we could take away with us our drinking bowls. These delightful pseudo-samian souvenirs had been produced by Susan Bennett, and were used enthusiastically throughout the evening.

A glance at the menu provided anticipation of what was to come (twenty dishes) – all in Latin, of course, and we started off, after due propitiation of the household gods, with sala cattabia, a mixture, it was announced, of chicken, cucumber and cheese. It was delicious, as were the remaining nineteen dishes, all a tribute to the servae who had slaved away preparing them. We had fried anchovies, grilled fish in Alexandrian sauce, asparagus, pease mould ‘containing many things’ a ‘dish of little fish’, small stewed marrows, meat pieces cooked in wine, fricassee of pork with apricot sauce, etc., all served by cheerful slaves. Male heads were wreathed in laurel and at intervals we were entertained splendidly with a reading (Homer – very dramatic) from a guest, Dr. Malcolm Colledge of Westfield College, by music performed by young ladies from the Henrietta Barnett School (directed by their teacher Joy Richardson), and by a free lottery which produced a prize for nearly everyone. Later, the same young ladies displayed further talents by acting for us the tragic story of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’, during which we watered the wine in our cups with many and large tears.

Still the slaves continued to tempt us with further dishes, despite our feeble protests, and the rustle of stomach-swathing togas being eased filled the air. (Wearing a breastplate was something of a disadvantage at this point). Replete as we were, it was easy to understand why Cassius had a lean and hungry look – it was probably directed at another helping of perna cum Armeniacis elixatis.

We toasted everybody with the remainder of the wine and then, quite suddenly, it was all over. Councillor Jarman thanked on our behalf the cooks, slaves, musicians, actresses and guests and the HADAS army marched on tender stomach out into the twentieth century night. There were just two questions to be answered:-

– How did the Romans finish off their banquets? (Plenty of opportunity for theorising here). Coffee was not known, until a thousand years later and those who, like me, have something akin to an addiction for the ground bean might well be tempted to put this lack of knowledge forward as a major factor contributing towards the decline and fall of the Empire!

-It was marvellous. Congratulations and thanks to all concerned. When can we do it again?
BANQUET TAILPIECE

As a footnote to Colin Evans’ report of the Roman banquet we thought you might like to have the recipe for one of the 19 dishes which were served. We have chosen one (patina asparagi frigidi – dish of cold asparagus) which would do either as a starter for eight at a dinner party, or might be served as a supper dish for a lesser number.

PATINA ASPARAGI FRIGIDI.

1 large tin of asparagus; 1/3 oz freshly ground black pepper; 1 tbsp. liquamen (or its salt equivalent, see note below); l fl. oz. dry white wine; 1 fl. oz. passum (use sweet Spanish white wine); 3 fl. oz. olive oil; 6 eggs; and, to make 1 1/2 tbspns. oenogarum, 1 tbsp. dry white wine mixed with 1 dsstsp. liquamen (or its salt equivalent).

METHOD: drain the asparagus and puree it. Mix together pepper, dry and sweet wines, oil and liquamen. Bring this liquid to boil. and reserve. Place asparagus in bottom of an 8″ diam. fireproof dish. Mix 6 eggs with the oenogarum and pour over the asparagus. Sprlnkle the oil and wine mixture over the eggs and bake in an oven at 375 C (Reg. Mk. 6) until firm {about 3/4 hr).

Note on liquamen:: the Romans used liquamen, or garum as it was also called, where we would today season a dish with salt: it was, in fact, liquid salt with a slightly fishy taste. For our banquet cookery we made up 2 gallons of liquamen some months ago, bottled it and issued it as needed to all our helper-cooks. Any HADAS member who wants to go the whole hog and use liquamen in her recipes can get the method for making it from Brigid Grafton Green.

Dec 03

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newsletter-106-december-1979
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 2 : 1975 - 1979 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

HAPPY CHRISTMAS HADAS

Christmas is nearly here, so this Newsletter opens with greetings to all members for the Christmas season and best wishes for 1980.

This is the first year that the Newsletter is able to provide something like a Christmas card. It isn’t exactly a card, but our illustration at the back serves the same purpose: it is a token of our good wishes. It is a new drawing, by HADAS artist Mary Allaway, of the parish church of Hendon St Mary’s.

(EDITORIAL – to see this picture, select the following link)

This could almost be called the Society’s “mother” church. Our founder, the late Mr. Constantinides, when he brought HADAS into being in April, 1961, did so because he hoped to prove archaeologically that both St Mary’s and the community which it had served for centuries were of Saxon origin.

St Mary’s was therefore closely linked with our Society right from the start. Mr. Constantinides did not, alas, live to see his hunch proved right, as it was in the excavation which took place just south of St Mary’s from 1973 onwards. That dig, directed by Ted Sammes, produced the first solid evidence, in the form of ditches containing grass-tempered pottery, for Saxon Hendon. It was the churchyard of St Mary’s, too, that saw the start of another activity in which HADAS has specialised – the recording of tombstone inscriptions.
DIGGING PLANS

PADDY MUSGROVE writes: Our dig at Church Crescent, Finchley, having continued for six weekends, has ended for the time being at least. We hope to investigate further in the New Year when days are longer and dryer. Medieval pottery and two struck flakes nave been found, but the chief feature of interest has been the gently sloping edge of a large pit, the purpose of which has not yet been established.

Meantime DAPHNE LORIMER reports that digging will continue later than usual at West Heath because we appear to be in the early stages of uncovering another hearth; and if this materialises, we would rather deal with it quickly and not have to cover and leave it.

It is therefore proposed to continue digging on Wednesdays until further notice, although there will be no more weekend digging till after Christmas. Such is the chanciness of the weather however, that intending diggers should check with Mrs. Lorimer before making the journey to Hampstead even on Wednesdays.
HADAS PROGRAMME

The next HADAS “meeting” (perhaps “encounter” would describe it better) will, of course, be the Roman banquet on Dec. 8, of which members have all details.

Our opening meeting of 1980 will not be on the usual first Tuesday of the month, because in January the first Tuesday falls on Jan. 1, a bank holiday.
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We meet therefore instead on Tuesday, Jan. 8, at Hendon Library, The Burroughs, NW4, to hear Sinclair Hood speak on the Art of Bronze Age (Minoan) Crete. Coffee 8 pm, lecture 8.30.
BOOKBOX CORNER

We have a plaintive plea from our Hon. Librarian, George Ingram, about some of the Society’s books which have been on loan for rather a long time. Would the members who have borrowed the following please phone George and let him know that the books are safe:

Prehistoric and Roman Enfield; The Age of the Vikings; London before the Conquest.

Another problem is worrying our Librarian. The Society should possess a run of Transactions of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society from 1970 onwards; but the volumes for 1974 (No 25) and 1977 (No 28) are missing, and there is no record of who has them. Is any member aware of having borrowed these or does any member have a copy of either volume which he would be prepared to put on permanent loan to the Bookbox, to make our set complete?

An earlier copy of Transactions – New Series vol VI pt IV (1931) has been presented to the Box by Paul Craddock. This volume contains some material of particular interest to HADAS. Norman Brett-James’s paper on Some Extents and Surveys of Hendon; a report on an exhibition on the History of Hendon; and “St Mary’s Church, Finchley,” by Ernest H Rann.

Other recent additions to the Bookbox include:
Archaeology General The Archaeologists’ Year Book 1977, Dolphin General Press, Poole
Archaeology and Society, Grahame Clark, Methuen 1939 (Presented by Jeremy Clynes)
Archaeology, GB 204 The Lake Villages of Somerset, Arthur Bulleid (not Roman) (Presented by Miss Rhona Wells)
Archaeology, European/Foreign F41 The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe, Jacques Briard
Local History 239 Story of Hampstead Illustrated (Priory Press, 1909) (Presented. by Mrs Worby)
240 Flying at Hendon – A Pictorial Record. Clive Smith (Presented by Dorothy Newbury)
261 Mill Hill School Buildings, 1968 (Presented by Daphne Lorimer)
Misc 213 Pollen Analysis – illustrated guide, P D Moore & J A Webb (Presented by Philip Venning)
214 The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. from Greek by Meric Casaubon. Dent 1908
Periodicals World Archaeology, vol 10 No 1 June 1978
vol 11 No 1 June 1979
Collection of 19 issues of London Archaeologist, Winter 1968-Autumn 1978 (incomplete) (Presented by Dr Ann Saunders)
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ARCHAEOLOGY OF ROMAN BRITAIN

Last month we listed the lectures under this main title which are being delivered up to December each Thursday at 7 pm at the Institute of Archaeology. The following are the post-Christmas lectures in the same series:

Jan 17 – The Potteries and Pottery Trade in Roman Britain – M G Fulford

Jan 24 – Death and Burial in Roman Britain – R Jones

Jan 31 – Small Towns and non-Villa Rural Settlements, Lowland Zone – M Todd

Feb 7 – Rural Settlement in the Highland Zone – lecturer to be announced

Feb 14 – Coastal Defences in Britain – J S Johnson

Feb 21 – Britain and the Roman Empire – M Hassall

Feb 28 – The End of Roman Britain – Prof P Rahtz
GREETINGS TO NEW MEMBERS

In this final Newsletter of 1979 we welcome all those who have joined the Society in the second half of this year, and hope they will enjoy the various activities HADAS offers. Our new members are:

Simon Aldridge, Highgate; Linda Barrow, Muswell Hill; Victor Bignell, Barnet; Mrs Braithwaite, Garden Suburb; Maurice Cantor, Edgware; Percy Cohen, Mill Hill; Dennis Crane, North Finchley; Renee Deyong, Hendon; Terry Finn, Fulham; Audrey Fletcher, Southgate; Rachel Gershon; Hendon; Beth Gewell, Harrow; Anne Hayman, Hampstead; Eric Heggie, Cricklewood; Kathleen Herbert, Colindale; Aubrey Hodes, Belsize Park; Rosalind Hunt, Hendon; Carole and Ruth Kent, Hendon; Sarah Lawson, Hampstead; Miss Loney, Eltham; Phillipa Lowe, Garden Suburb; Anne McMullan, Garden Suburb; Liza Maher, Harrow; Mrs Marsh, North Finchley; . R G Micbel, Colindale; , Michael Nixon, Southgate; Joelle Noguera, Hampstead; Renee 0berlander, Golders Green; Eric Paulson. Edgware ; Miss Rawlings, Harrow; Joyce Richards. Hendon; Tessa Sholl; Highgate; Mrs Fay and Mrs D Sputz, Kensington; Mrs Wagland, Colindale; Jean Walton, Hampstead; Mrs. Wibberley, Barnet.
THE MILKMAN’S TALE

A further episode in PERCY REBOUL’S series of tape-recorded interviews.

From 1910-1921 there were a number of small one-man dairy businesses set up mainly in local shops. They employed between three and ten milkmen, assisted by boys; and very often had six or seven “battery” cows in a shed behind the shop. The competition was intense and the milkman would use the old street cry of ‘milk-o’.

The dairy owner had negotiated with a farm for supplies of milk, and this came up by the milk train to the nearest station – for example, Oakleigh Park, Church End Finchley, New Southgate or Winchmore Hill. The dairy collected the milk in a special horse-drawn low-loader van at 5.30 am. Each milkman had his own round and for his first round of the day he would be issued with enough milk just to do the round. In some oases the milkman would have to harness his horse; others had push floats and would set off on the round accompanied by 2 or 3 boys at 6 am.

The milk was in bulk, of course, which the milkman poured into the customer’s own can and the boy delivered. These cans were important because one of the ‘fiddles’ was to knock up the bottom of the can (and with an easy-going customer the front of the can as well). In some cases the milkman might be able to ‘save’ a quarter pint of milk in this way.
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The milkmen each kept a book but their memory was fantastic: they could remember the daily requirements of, say, a hundred customers.

Delivery was to the tradesman’s entrance and the first round finished about 8 am. The milkman would have breakfast at the dairy and some employers provided cooking facilities. The second round was at 9 am and on this round customers were supplied with butter, eggs and cream and the milkman called at each household himself, finishing about 2 pm.

The third round of the day was in the afternoon, where only part of the round was visited. It was back to the dairy about 4 pm, where we washed up the churns, measures, cans, etc and would ‘book-in’ with the book-keeper. The horse was also unharnessed.

I want to say something about ‘chance’ sales which were an absolutely essential part of the milkman’s existence. Chance sales gave the milkman a chance to sell for cash the milk he had ‘fiddled.’ In the big houses with weekly or monthly accounts there was collusion with the housekeeper, who would order a pound of butter and ask to be charged for two pounds.

Wages and Conditions.

In 1910 a milkman worked 11 or 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, for 25s a week, with another 25s made on fiddles. There were no holidays. My father was a milkman before me and from 1910-1916 when he went into the forces, he had only 3 days holiday. You worked Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and you could not go sick otherwise your book-keeping would be discovered.

You did not retire – you worked till you died, and there was no commission or pay incentives. Our rent was 12s 6d a week and there wore no increases in wages at any time. I started to help my father when I was 5 years of age and worked on the first round before school and, when I was 6, also worked from 12-2 pm during the lunch break and sometimes in the evening. Later on I helped another milkman at the Friern Watch Dairy and with Saturday and Sunday work, was paid 3s 6d a week.

We never saw the people who owned the houses. Everything was done at the tradesman’s entrance via the servants such as the cook or house-keeper. A pound of butter cost 10d for Salt; 1s 2d for fresh; eggs were 10 1/2d a dozen.

In 1920/21 the small dairies were frozen out by the combines such as United Dairies. Two things happened; they stopped using cans and went over to bottles. Chance was finished, and the milkman was back on his basic pay. In 1921 there was a milkman’s strike which lasted 3 days and the violence was terrible. My milk float was tipped up by flying pickets. The milk went down the drain and I had to pay for it. The strike failed and all we got was a ‘choking off’ by the boss.

The combine served the public by giving more hygienic milk in bottles, but it meant death to the milkman. Incidentally, I never heard of a single case of illness through ‘bad’ milk. Many times on a hot summer day the milk would curdle in the churns because of the movement of the cart. I used to strain it through a piece of rag, otherwise I would have to pay for the milk. No one worried about hygiene. The only worry was to get rid of the milk!

NOTE : an interesting term used by the milkman in this interview was, ‘a barn of milk.’ Apparently milk was bought by the dairy from farms in a measure called a ‘barn’ which was a little over a gallon. Can anyone throw any light on this word?’ Was it, for example, just over a gallon to allow for spoilage, or was it a multiple of a smaller measure such as a gill?
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CHURCH FARM HOUSE MUSEUM

Members may like to have warning that the Museum will be closed for a minimum of some 7 weeks in the early part of next year.

The building is to be re-wired, and will certainly be closed from Jan 7-Feb 29 – longer if the work is not completed in that time.
HENDON CEDARS IN SUSSEX

A member of the Barnet & District Local History Society who is studying market gardening in Barnet in the 18th c has asked if any HADAS researcher can throw light on John Clark, a Barnet butcher who also had a nursery garden and who in 1761 sold 1000 cedar seedlings, at a price of £79 6s to the Duke of Richmond for planting at Goodwood House.

The point at which Hendon enters this tale is that the seeds from which the seedlings were raised were obtained by John Clark from cones of the Great Cedar of Hendon Place – the manor house of Hendon, later Tenterden Hall. The seedlings, when sold, were 5 years old, therefore the seeds were probably planted in 1756, at which time Hendon Place was in the occupancy of the Nicoll family. It is possible that anyone who has done work on the Nicolls of Hendon Place may have come across a reference to John Clark or may be able to enlarge on the history of “the Great Cedar” and on its ultimate fate.

Clark owned a house and land off Wood Street, Barnet, and his butcher’s shop was in Wood Street. He may have been related to the Henry Clark (died 1782/3) whose effects, including nursery garden stock, were sold in February 1783, although so far it has not been possible to establish the link between the two (see Trans. LMAS vol 26, 1975, “Mid-Georgian Nurseries of the London Region,” by John H Henry).

If anyone has information on this subject, will they please let our Hon. Secretary know?
TWO THOUSAND YEARS OF CANTERBURY

Report by LIZ SAGUES on the November lecture. The formidable tidiness of Tim Tatton Brown’s rescue trenches in Canterbury much impressed the large audience at the Society’s second winter lecture. But they betrayed far more than a fetish for neatness among the Canterbury Archaeological Trust’s 7-days-a-week diggers. The finds from them, sometimes spectacular and always interesting, have revealed the 2000-year story of the cathedral city, from Belgic oppidum to 20th c shopping centre for continental day-trippers.

The rescue unit, which is directed by Mr Tatton Brown, was set up in 1975, rather later than many similar units and thus less richly provided with Government funds. Instead about three-quarters of its income came from private sources, and a good deal of that from the developers who were currently rebuilding the city to cater for the tourist boom.

The immediate environs of the city concern the Trust as well as Mr Tatton Brown showed in a slide of a rural gravel working with evidence of late bronze age, iron age and Roman occupation.

Within the city the Belgic levels were the earliest and in one of these, in what had been a muddy hollow in the former roadway, had been found the wheel marks of a chariot and the hoof prints of the horse that drew it. It was a chariot, Mr. Tatton Brown argued, rather than a heavy cart, pointing out on his slide the shallowness and narrowness of the tracks. What better evidence could there be to confirm Caesar’s comment about the prevalence of chariots in England?
Page 6

The Belgic levels also revealed a substantial number of fine and rare coins, as well as more mundane evidence of the pre-Roman population in the form of the pits from which they extracted clay for pottery, their houses, tracks and roadways.

The first Roman occupation was military, and effectively so – one ditch contained skeletal remains, marked by sword cuts, of men and horses, seeming to date from the Boudiccan rebellion. In the more peaceful times that followed, Canterbury grew into a substantial Roman town. Its theatre and public baths were known and a huge temple court had had been traced, though the temple itself has yet to yield itself to the excavators.

Mr Tatton Brown gave the lie to the theory of Roman “garden cities,” which had arisen because of gaps noticed between the stone buildings. In Roman times those gaps were filled by wooden buildings, whose traces had been too insubstantial for earlier archaeologists to recover.

Important among the Roman finds is a set square, exquisitely made in bronze and in Mr Tatton Brown’s view, certainly the finest known from anywhere in the Roman empire.

After the Romans abandoned the city in the 5th c it fell into the decay from which St Augustine revived it in the late 6th c. The Saxons cut their huts into the Roman levels, adding to the complexity of excavation but leaving behind objects of everyday life and some finer pieces – a decorated object, of 8th c date and unknown use, with ornamentation like that illustrating the Lindisfarne Gospels, and a lOth c “Stanley knife,” its swivelling blade encased in a richly carved case. That will be seen next year in London, in the British Museum’s Viking exhibition.

From around 1050 onwards, a picture of the whole of Canterbury could be reconstructed, with some streets surviving to the present day and still retaining their Anglo-Saxon names. By 1200, aided by documentary sources, the map was as complete as that of any city in North-west Europe, with the positions, of houses known and the landowners’ names recorded. Archaeology had revealed evidence of building practices – including the opportunist one of slipping an oyster shell under a timber to level it – and the perils of medieval life, in the form of a Black Death plague pit.

It had also helped to extend the history of the cathedral itself, through one Saturday morning’s excavation while new electricity cables were being laid in the crypt. That brief opportunity enabled traces of the original crypt of the church built in 1070 by Archbishop Lanfranc to be revealed.

The Trust’s current excavation, at the King’s School, demonstrated the complexity of all work in Canterbury, concluded Mr. Tatton Brown. But it was essential for the city’s past to be recorded before it was totally destroyed.
WHERE LIZZIE SLEPT IN THE AIR RAIDS

The Newsletter has had a detailed description, complete with sketch, of another World War II relic from the Rev. David Viles, who lives in Ravensdale Avenue, North Finchley. He writes:

“We still have a sturdy brick-built air raid shelter fitted to the end of our house. Its walls are 35 cms thick and it has a 14 cms thick concrete roof. It has a small airbrick near the top of one wall. When we arrived in 1966 it still had a metal escape hatch with a weaker brick wall behind it. I am afraid we vandalised this escape hatch some years ago by constructing a narrow 55 cm entrance, using the hatch space as part of the entrance.
Page 7

The rest of the brickwork and cement was incredibly difficult to demolish but I eventually managed to knock a doorway through and now use it for storing garden sundries. There is a wooden door at the far end but this was very inconvenient for use as a normal entrance from the garden. It was obviously designed for quick entry from our French windows. There wore enough bricks from the thick wall of the narrow entrance to floor over completely the original floor level of the shelter. The metal catch to hold the escape hatch still remains.

Inside there still hangs from one wall a fold-up wooden bed-frame. Remains of the former webbing are still attached to this. On the side of the bed is a little wooden plaque with a name carved on it – LIZZIE – presumably the name of the lady who slept in it. On the opposite wall was clearly a bed for her husband, as there are still two hooks up in the wall, to one of which a wire is still attached. (Hooks and wire still survive on the other bed frame). Hinges also remain on the wall to indicate the line of the second bed, but no frame remains on this wall.

High in one corner is a little triangular shelf – presumably a ledge for some kind of light. It had an electric light, since there is still a switch, crumbling wiring and the remains of a light holder above Lizzie’s bed. I still possess the crude iron hinges on which the metal escape hatch hung.

The roof has now a layer of lovely green moss on the outside. The whole structure is almost covered on one side with clematis, honeysuckle and rose. I imagine it must have been a miserably cold, damp and depressing place to try to sleep in. Indeed, there is a small drainage channel leading out of the shelter at the bottom of one corner to the adjacent down pipe drain – to let the water out after a heavy rainstorm?”

Mr Viles is not a HADAS member, but had heard we were interested in World War II relics. It is extremely kind of him to record this shelter so carefully and vividly and we thank him very much for a11 the detail he has given us.
OVERHEARD ANY GOOD JOKES LATELY?

The following (absolutely true) conversation was overheard at the souvenir stall outside the wire-fenced and dog-patrolled entrance to the Palaeolithic-paintings cave at Lascaux, in the Dordogne, during the summer just past:

Woman Visitor (brightly, to stallholder): “We’ve come to see the cave paintings.”

Stallholder: 1 am sorry, Madame, but the cave is not open at the moment.”

Visitor (dashed, but looking at watch hopefully): “How long has it been closed?”

Stallholder: “About 16 years…”

Exit visitor, looking slightly dazed.

(Thanks for the above bit of light relief to COLIN AND ANN EVANS, who observed it)
LONDON HISTORIANS MEET

The llth Conference of London’s local historians took place at the Museum of London on Nov 17. Piece de resistance was a talk by Sir John Summerson – introduced by Chairman Max Hebditch as “our leading architectural historian” – who is Curator of the fascinating Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields as well as being author of such standard works as Georgian London and Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830. His subject was “Nash and Regents Park,” but for good measure he gave us Regent Street as well.
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Sir John’s first book, published in the 1930s, had been on Nash; but the release in the Public Record Office of the Crest documents on Nash in 1961 (Sir John paid graceful tribute to the work of Dr. Ann Saunders – a HADAS member – who in 1969 published a book on Regents Park founded on her study of those papers) provided a large amount of new material so that, as he put it, “there are now no questions about Regents Park and Regent Street which cannot, by careful study, be answered.”

Sir John took us through various changes in the plans for Regents Park from the first, in 18l1, which was a high-density development of which the Prime Minister, Spencer Percival, disapproved, to the final arrangement of the terraces and villas (only 8 of them, in the end) and the cutting in half of the southern circus, making what we know today as Park Crescent. The final part of his talk, on Regent Street, showed interesting views of the original curved colonnades of middle Regent St, demolished in the 1840s for various reasons including their use as meeting places for prostitutes and the extreme darkness of the shop windows under them. He ended with a fine modern picture of All Souls, Langham Place, “virtually the only part of the original Regent Street that survives.”

Both before the conference and during the tea break there was a chance to see exhibits staged by local historical and archaeological societies from a11 over London. The large open space behind the Museum bookstall, hitherto kept for this kind of temporary use, was alas considerably diminished, and we hope that it is not a harbinger of a future Museum policy of cutting down on space for these transient displays which so enrich conferences.

The local historians had to make do with about half the usual display area, and considering their cramped quarters they managed pretty well. There was much to see and many publications to buy. HADAS had a display, kindly loaned to us by the LBB Library Services, based on the Hendon Town Trail.

After the interval Mr N H MacMichael – who lectured to HADAS some years ago – described the material which is available to local historians in the Muniments Room of Westminster Abbey. Incidentally, his exposition of the origin of “muniment” was interesting: it derives from part of the Latin verb munire, meaning to fortify: your muniments were your fortifications against the depredations of other landlords, i.e. your documentary title to your land.

The Abbey Archives are the most complete set of records of any ecclesiastical body in this country. Because of the physical position they have always occupied in the building, the documents have been safe for many centuries from damage by either fire or flood. They are kept high up in the Abbey: as Mr. MacMichael put it, “if you come out of the Muniments Room you can look down on the High Altar on one side and Poets Corner on the other.”

The muniments deal with all the manors which, up to the Dissolution, owed allegiance to the Abbot and community of Westminster – mainly in the Home Counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Berkshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, and also a pocket of lands in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Among the Middlesex papers are, of course, those of the manor of Hendon.

Estate documents form the biggest part, starting with charters that are “Saxon and Genuine” and proceeding through other charters not quite so genuine – probably 12th c versions of Saxon originals. Papers get steadily more numerous as the years roll on. In the 14th c account rolls of various monastic officials – chamberlain, almoner, refectorer – appear. There are, says Mr MacMichael, “vast untapped sources” in the papers. There is a very full index – it is possible to follow place names through or, if you know the names of families, to follow them. There is also a collection of papers from estates Westminster did not own: probably there by accident. Edmonton and Penge were mentioned.
Page 9

In addition to this reservoir of Medieval material, many more modern groups of documents are included – for instance, on the organisation and running of the Abbey; police court records; and a depressingly large number of volumes of Coroners Inquests for old Westminster from 1760-1880. These are arranged chronologically and are an untapped source of social history.

The seating in the Muniments Room is limited to 4 researchers at a time: so you are invited to make an appointment if you wish to study there. The Room is open from Monday-Friday.

Final talk of the afternoon celebrated the 250th anniversary of Putney Bridge. Billed as an essay in industrial archaeology, it in fact included early material on possible places for crossing: the river between Putney and Fulham from prehistoric times onwards, and the speaker emphasised the importance, when studying bridges, of taking into account archaeological as well as documentary sources. Evidence for ferries, from the 13th-18th c, was included: large, flat-bottomed barge like boats on Which in the 17th c, n coach and 6 horses could be accommodated; and there was interesting material on charges made from the 1500s on. In 1599 foot passengers, for instance, paid a toll of 1d.

During the Civil War a bridge of boats was built to take Commonwealth soldiers across, with a fort either end. As well as the short ferry between Putney and Fulham, a long ferry started from Putney for Westminster, and was much used because of the poor condition of the roads.

In 1671 a Bill for building a bridge was introduced into Parliament – unsuccessfully, because of lobbying by the vested interests of watermen and ferry owners; but in 1725 fresh proposals were passed and by 1729 the first Putney Bridge (of wood) spanned the Thames. There were some interesting slides of this old bridge, with a tollhouse either end and a row of triangular protuberances down each side in which foot passengers could stand while vehicles went by.

In 1882 it was decided to build a more modern structure, which was opened by The Prince of Wales; and the wooden bridge was demolished.
SOLUTION TO YOUR CHRISTMAS CARD PROBLEM?

Talking about the Hendon Town Trail – as we were a few Paragraphs ago – we thought we might suggest that this, at its low cost of 10p a copy, would bean excellent memento to sed to any friends who know or used to know Hendon – much better value than a Christmas card.

You can get the Trail from our Hon. Treasurer. Why not ask him for a bulk order, and solve at least part of your Christmas card worries?
THE EMERGENCE OF MAN

The Royal Society, in conjunction with the British Academy, is planning one of its occasional discussion meetings on this topic for March 12/13 next. The caste – if that is not too light-hearted a term to apply to some 30 top-brass of the academic world – is star-studded. The first four papers, for instance, will be delivered by three professors (two from the US, one from South Africa) plus Dr Richard Leakey (to give a practical balance) on “the evidence in the field.”
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On the first afternoon there will be a session on the evidence from teeth and another on locomotion. Dr Mary Leakey is the final speaker.

Next day’s discussion will range over Genetic considerations, the human brain and the emergence of human behaviour patterns, with papers from top scientists from various British and American universities and from the Netherlands and Northern Ireland. Full details will be obtainable from the Executive Secretary, the Royal Society, 6 Carlton House Terrace, SWl, in about 5 weeks time.
A GOLDEN JUBILEE EXHIBITION

..is being staged by Ealing and Hounslow’s Gunnersbury Park Museum from now till the and of January. This Museum, in an early 19th c mansion which once belonged to the Rothchilds, deserve to be better known. It is centred on the history of West London and Middlesex, and has reserve collections which it is happy to show to students.

The Jubilee display shows acquisitions made during each of the last five decades. The Museum is open every day (except Christmas) from 2-4. It is near the main entrance to Gunnersbury Park, at the east end of Popes Lane (nearest station, Acton Town). Admission is free.
RECENT BOOKS AND BOOKLETS

Latest publication from the Council for British Archaeology is Research Report 30 – an assessment of the Alice Holt/Farnham Roman pottery industry, by M A B Lyne & R S Jefferies. The potteries were in production almost throughout the Roman period (from 60 AD-5th a) though their heyday was the 4th c when their grey coarsewares dominated the London market. This account differentiates various groups of kilns according to locality and analyses the contents of some of the huge waster dumps. Ono chapter deals with raw materials and how the industry was organised. Illustrated with maps, diagrams and, of course, lots of pottery types. Essential reading for serious Romanists. £8.50 or £6.35 for subscribers to CBA’s consolidated subscription.

From the Edmonton Hundred Historical Society their latest Occasional Paper No 33, price 35p, People and Parish Registers, by T Lewis. This booklet is the result of years of study of the registers of Tottenham, Edmonton and Enfield, and is intended to interest both local historians of North London and historical demographers. Tables deal with age at first marriage, bridal pregnancy, infant mortality and age at death.

From the Camden History Society the annual treat of the Camden History Review. This, No. 7, is as good as the other six have been and is an excellent buy at £1, with Gillian Tindall writing on Vice and Temptation in late Victorian Camden Town, Gavin Stamp tracing the association of the Gilbert Scotts with Hampstead, the prize-winning essay in the CHS “My Street” competition and other joys.

A “stocking filler” at 70p (inc. postage) is a delicious little booklet called Animals in Early Art -26pp. of black and white photos, of animals from the Ashmolean Museum Collection – horses, lions, ducks, fish, some delicious hedgehogs and an enchanting pig.

Nov 03

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newsletter-105-november-1979
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 2 : 1975 - 1979 | No Comments

Newsletter

Page 1

THE EARLIEST TRACKWAY IN THE WORLD

A report by PAUL CRADDOCK on our October lecture.

Well over 100 HADAS members attended the first lecture of the winter season to hear John Coles describe his work on the Somerset levels.

Within the peat Levels are the until now perfectly preserved remains of timber built trackways of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, running across what would then have been open bog, between the ‘mainland’ of the-Polden Hills and the ‘islands’ of arable land. The trackways are of complex construction and show an extremely developed knowledge of civil engineering, carpentry and also, indirectly, of forest management and coppicing. The men who built these trackways did not have to rely on available timber from the primeval forest but had a selection of suitable poles deliberately grown upon which to call.

The earliest trackway, the Sweet Track, dates from the middle of the 4th millenium BC, which makes it the earliest surviving built track in the world. Lengths of sturdy tree trunks (‘telegraph poles’ as Dr. Coles put it) were carefully pegged through the bog to the clay, and peat was stacked against this, then timber planking was pegged on top to make a continuous if narrow trackway going for kilometres at a time. As the track was only about 30 cms wide and lapped by water, it is hardly surprising that numerous everyday items of flint and pottery were dropped in. Because of the unique preservative properties of the peat bog, however, a flint arrowhead preserves the end of the shaft stuck to its side and traces of nettle fibre binding, while the Neolithic pot still has its content of nuts intact. Just occasionally more spectacular finds, such as a superb Jade axehead, are made as well; someone must have had an anxious but fruitless search of the waters beside the track to try to retrieve such a treasure.

As well as the study of the timberwork and its conservation, a great deal of scientific work – for example, on the beetles and fungi – has been carried on, which has enabled a detailed picture of the changing environment of the Levels to be built up. Tree ring analysis of the timbers enables Dr. Coles’ team of experts to correlate when different parts of track were built and even sometimes to identify the planks, etc from one single tree along a track.

Man’s activity in the Levels did not cease after the Bronze Age, and Dr. Coles’ team have also turned their attention to the famous Iron Age Lake villages at Meare where they excavated one of the house platforms, producing a host of new information with the battery of scientific techniques that can now be used.

Sadly, this is not just a research dig. Peat cutting and a lowered water table mean all this unique preservation is steadily deteriorating. With the co-operation of the peat diggers and with his team Dr. Coles is recording as much as possible of the unique remains of the Somerset Levels and adding another dimension to our knowledge of prehistoric Europe.

NOTE: Dr. Coles’ digs in the Levels are not only models of difficult excavation beautifully executed; they also provide an example of how publication of results should be handled.
Page 2

Each year a Somerset Levels Paper is produced. We are now at No. 5, which contains eleven separate papers including the annual report on the 1978 dig, an account of the conservation of wooden objects and details of the radio-carbon dating of a floating tree-ring chronology.

Somerset Levels Papers Nos. 4 (1978) and 5 (1979) are obtainable at £3 each. (including postage) from the Somerset Levels Project, Dept. of Archaeology, Downing St, Cambridge. Papers 1, 2 and 3 are sold out.
NEWS FOR DIGGERS

Digging will continue at West Heath on Weds, Sats and Suns till rain and frost render it impossible. The change in the clocks, however, makes it virtually morning digging only, as the light starts to go soon after lunch. Diggers who intend to work at West Heath should contact Daphne Lorimer if they have any doubts about the weather.

Paddy Musgrove’s long-heralded dig at Church Crescent, Finchley, started in the weekend of Oct. 20/21 and will continue for several weekends; or if interesting features are found, perhaps longer. Diggers who have already volunteered to help have been notified by phone; but if you have not yet volunteered and would like to, please give Paddy a ring and he will provide all the details.
AFTER THE DIG IS OVER

… comes processing. As announced last month, processing weekends will take place.” at the Teahouse, Northway, NWll on Nov 24 and Dec 1; we shall be happy to have the help of as many members as possible.

We are aiming at a pretty full programme of work. Processing of this summer’s West Heath finds has been going on regularly at Avenue House, but there is still much to do. In addition, Daphne Lorimer has several new projects she wants to get started.

We also hope to begin work on the HADAS Photographic Record. Now that we have a room of our own at Avenue House all our photographic archives – ranging from negatives an inch square up to exhibition prints 12 in. by 8 in. can be stored there, but we want to get them catalogued and indexed so that they can be easily used. This is no simple job, because of the diversity of the material, but Ted Sammes hopes to collect a small team and make a start on it at the Teahouse.

Thirdly, Sheila Woodward, whose particular pigeon is the Edgware area, will begin marking and studying finds of Roman pottery and building material from our latest field walks near Brockley Hi11.

Members who intend to take part in the weekends are asked, if possible, to let either Daphne Lorimer or Brigid Grafton Green know beforehand, as this will help in planning the various projects.
BLUE PLAQUE FOR THE BARNETTS

More than five years ago HADAS first suggested to the GLC the possibility of putting up a Blue Plaque on Heath End House, Spaniards Road, Hampstead, “to commemorate the fact that for nearly a quarter-century ” it was the home of Canon Samuel and Mrs (later Dame) Henrietta Barnett.

The mills of the GLC, like those of God, grind fairly slowly. However, after many vicissitudes, and just as this Newsletter was going to press, we received the following letter from the GLC’s Department of Architecture and Civic Design.
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“Your suggestion for a commemorative plaque has been considered at a recent meeting of the Council’s Historic Buildings Committee. I am pleased to inform you that it was decided to erect a plaque at Heath End House, Hampstead and the proposed inscription reads:

DAME HENRIETTA BARNETT

1851-1936

Founder of Hampstead Garden Suburb

and

SAMUEL BARNETT

1844-1913

Social Reformer

lived here

I shall write to you again in due course when all the necessary consents have been obtained and the plaque ordered from the manufacturer. With a backlog of plaques awaiting manufacture and erection I am afraid their may be some further delay before this stage is reached.”

This is excellent news, even if we still have some time to wait before the plaque goes up.

Heath End House is a white, weather boarded 18th c. building near the Spaniards Inn. There are several other interesting facts about it, as well as the one we are proposing to commemorate.” The Manx novelist, Hall Caine is also said to have lived there for a time, after the Barnetts left. The house itself straddles the boundary of the Boroughs of Barnet and Camden, and side by side in a ground floor broom cupboard (of which HADAS photographer Peter Clinch took excellent photos some years ago) are the twin boundary stones of Hampstead St. Johns and Hendon St. Marys.

From the upper windows at the back you used to be able to look out over rolling Middlesex countryside to the ridge of Mill Hill. Henrietta Barnett has described how she was able to watch, in the valley below, the Suburb which was to make her internationally known beginning to take shape and grow.

When the Barnetts bought the house in 1889 they re-named it “St Judes Cottage” (it has now returned to its original name), because Samuel Barnett was Vicar of St Judes, Whitechapel. They used it as a retreat from the sights, smells and noise of the East End going there for what they called their “Sabbath” – in fact, a Friday, as Mr. Barnett had always to be back in Whitechapel for Sunday services.

Although named “cottage,” it was a large house. The Barnetts did not keep it to themselves. Indeed, it soon earned the nick-name “St Judes Hold-all.” The visitors to, and residents, in, St. Judes Cottage mirror the Barnetts many interests.

From 1875 Mrs Barnett was a manager of Forest Gate “barrack” school, to which the union workhouses of Poplar and Whitechapel sent their orphan or destitute children. One of her reforms was to set up small houses for training girls who were about to leave school and go “into service.” As she put it, they could “prepare before they made their, entry into “the world.”

St. Jude’s Cottage was used for this work, and there were always 5 or 6 girls in training there under a matron as house or parlour maids, “practising” on the Barnetts. To St Judes Cottage too, went tired workers from Toynbee Hall (founded by Samuel Barnett in 1884) to find rest. “In those years that end of the Heath was very quiet,” wrote Mrs Barnett, “and a few days at Hampstead became a joy to many weary people of all classes.” Mrs Barnett ‘s Girl Pupil Teachers Club used to meet at the Cottage; so did “Mr Barnett’s boys” – Whitechapel lads, shoeblacks, street orderlies, and later, when the Barnetts themselves had made the dramatic translation from the poverty of Whitechapel to the luxurious seclusion of a house in Westminster Abbey, the Abbey choirboys; and there were also, as Henrietta Barnett put it, “guests that were not quite ready to amalgamate; either the very shy, the very sad, the very superior or the very dirty.”
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Mrs Barnett’s sister, Alice Hart (one of the first women to train in medecine) provided a new pony as a present, and the Barnetts constantly drove out to see the beauties of Totteridge and other places. Their deep enjoyment of what was then still real countryside is made abundantly clear in this almost lyrical letter from Mr Barnett, dated March, 1899: “We have just returned from a drive in the sunshine which sets one’s whole being quivering with inexpressible longing to be more, to enjoy more, to live more. The day is divine by its soft warmth, deep colour and freshening air. For three hours we jogged through the lanes and lived.” BGG
THE NOVEMBER LECTURE

The next lecture, on Recent Archaeology in Canterbury, will be on Tues. Nov 6 at Hendon Library. Coffee 8 pm, lecture begins 8.30.

Our speaker will be Tim Tatton Brown, who studied at the Institute of Archaeology in London, His experience of Roman and medieval sites ranges as far afield as Turkey, Benghazi, Carthage and Italy, as well as this country. His present work is for the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, set up in 1975 and now continuously engaged on rescue archaeology in the city.

His talk will deal with medieval as well as Roman Canterbury.
Church Terrace Reports: No. 3

The next in the series of post-excavation reports from the Church Terrace site, by EDWARD SAMMES, on WINDOW GLASS.

The presence of glass in our windows is something we take for granted. The evolution of glass has been a long slow process, and one which is still being perfected.

It has been suggested that the origin of glass-making lay either in pottery production; or arose from the lighting of cooking fires in a sandy area where natural sodium salts abounded.

The oldest use of glass is that of natural obsidian, a volcanic glass which was flaked to make tools and weapons. This material was widely traded in Mesopotamia, Turkey and the Mediterranean from the Neolithic period.

In this country window glass begins with the coming of the Romans; it was most likely imported. Manufacture was by two methods:

(I) casting, i.e. pouring molten glass into a shallow flat mould and smoothing off the top surface with a charred wood striker.

(2) Blowing. A closed cylinder was blown and then the ends were cut off. A cut was then made down one side parallel to the axis. This cut cylinder wags then reheated on a flat surface so that the cylinder opened out to made a sheet of glass. This is called the cylinder or broad glass-making process.
Page 5

Roman glass has been found at the Roman villa at Newport, Isle of Wight. A second and recent find comes from the Romano-British phase of Garden Rill, the Iron Age hill fort in East Sussex, where a whole pane 9″ x 10 1/4″ was uncovered in the area of the cold plunge of the bathhouse. This piece has been acquired by the British Museum.

Window glass was imported from the Continent during the Saxon period for ecclesiastical purposes, though some may have been made at Glastonbury.

The Wealden area, with its supplies of sand and wood, was to be one of the main areas of production in England. Wood supplied both the fuel and wood ash – the alkali needed to make glass.

By 1226 a flourishing glass industry was established at Chiddingfold in Surrey. In 1351 glass was transported from Chiddingfold to London at a cost of 8s a load – an additional 8d being charged for transporting it the extra distance from London to Westminster.

By 1611 coal had been successfully used and production moved to London and sites in the midlands and north of England. Much of the window glass of this period was crown glass. This was made by blowing a large hollow globe and then flattening one side to produce a hemisphere. A solid rod, called a pontil, was then fixed to the centre of the flattened area by means of a blob of molten glass. The blowpipe was removed leaving a hole which was enlarged. After re-heating, the hemisphere was spun, producing a circular “flat” pane with the familiar ‘bulls-eye’ in the middle. This bulls-eye was really the unwanted piece, which today has acquired a position of hallowed antiquity.

Window glass was found in three places at Church Terrace: the pit in trench B6, and in adjoining trenches C4 and D4. Most of it was discarded after examination; only a representative portion being kept.

The glass from C4 was mostly trimming pieces with one side rounded. The glass itself was green in colour, probably crown glass made with ashes as alkali. Trench D4 was clearer in colour, possibly soda glass. From the pit in B6 three pieces of trimmed glass are of note, as they give an indication of the probable size of window panes. All are broken, there being no complete pane.

Two pieces are each 2 3/4″ wide and one is 4 1/2″ long. All have corners cut off to facilitate fixing in lead window cames, portions of which wore also found. From other material, the glass in this pit would be mid-18th c.

For further reading

JANSON, S E – Glass Technology Catalogue, Science Museum, London. 1969

KENYON, G H – The Glass Industry of the Weald. Leicester Univ. Press. 1967

MONEY, J H – Garden Hill, Sussex. Britannia VIII, 1977, p 339

TOMALlN, D – Newport Roman Villa Guide. IOW Museums Publication No 1, 1977
NEXT TO GODLlNESS: A CENTURY OF DOMESTIC CLEANING

By Sheila Woodward.

Cleanliness as a virtue was very much a Victorian concept. For earlier generations, the twice-yearly household wash and a periodic sweeping-out of refuse into street or yard sufficed. But the Victorians, living in a grubby industrialised atmosphere, made cleanliness a fetish, a sign of respectability as much as a hygienic necessity.

A glimpse of the drudgery of domestic cleaning before the advent of the machine can be obtained at the current exhibition at Church Farm House Museum. Hero can be seen the dolly-peg, the wash-board and the mang1e, the on1y aids of the old-fashioned washday, and the sad irons, slug irons and crimping irons which wore used to “get up” the starched frills and flounces. The heavy materials used for dresses could often only be sponged, not washed, and many ingenious recipes for spot-cleaning were, devised. The removal of scorch-marks with a mixture of onions, vinegar, white soap and Fullers earth makes one wonder whether the remedy was worse than the blemish. A mixture of white wax and brandy was recommended to add “shine” to a man’s shirt-front and collar. To remove shine from a suit, logwood, ferrous sulphate and gin could be used – or, more cheaply, urine!
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A primitive washing machine invented in the 1830s was hand-operated, and water, had to be heated before it was put into the machine. An attempt to heat water in the machine by a coal fire failed, as it added a fresh quota of soot, smuts and ash to the washing day problems. The great break-through came with the development of electricity to power the machine and heat the water.

Similarly, neat and efficient vacuum cleaners need electrical power. An early cleaning machine, the “Aspirator,” was about the size of a small bookcase. Its makers claimed that it was “not a cumbersome affair but a handsome article of furniture, easily moved from room to room.”

There are amusing examples of the advertisements for branded products which proliferated towards the end of the last century. “As the gentle showers of spring brighten Mother Earth, so is the household brightened by the use of Powder Monkey” proclaims one advertisement for a household cleaning powder produced by Brooke & Co of Edgware (later taken over by Lever Brothers). The housemaid using the product is on hands and knees, cleaning with brush and dustpan.

The exhibition continues until Nov 25, and a free introductory brochure is available at the Museum.
ASPECTS OF TOWN AND COUNTRY IN ROMAN BRITAIN

By Audrey Hooson.

CBA’s Regional Group 7 (Herts, Essex and Cambridgeshire) were the organisers of this successful and well attended conference at St. Albans on Oct 6. Unfortunately it was a beautiful day, perfect for a field trip but much too bright for a conference in a hall that could not be adequately darkened for slide projection. Some of the presentations, especially that of David Wilson on Aerial Photography, were hard to follow; maps and diagrams that had obviously been prepared as the main support for a paper were indistinct.

The first speaker was Dr Graham Webster, his subject the advent of Rome and its effect on the tribes of SE Britain. Amongst other points he suggested that Cassivellaunus, the enemy of Rome, and the Catuvellauni, who traded so freely with Rome, could surely not have been associated; and that early writers were confused by the similarity of the Celtic names.

The next speaker, David Wilson of the Cambridge Aerial Photography Unit; emphasised that whilst aerial photography is of great use to archaeology, one needs to be aware of the probable presence of large additional areas of timber-built settlement outside the boundaries of towns, posting stations and villas which do not necessarily show up in photos and cannot be recognised in most excavation conditions. One of his most interesting photographs showed the asymetric street plan of Irchester compared with the usually accepted regular Roman grid, as postulated by the excavator.

In the afternoon there were four speakers: Michael Hammerson of the Southwark & Lambeth society on Imitations of the Coinage, AD 330-348; Paul Drury, Director of Chelmsford Archaeological Trust, on Small Towns, Rural Settlements and Landscape in the Trinovantian Area; David Neal on the Development of the Villa; and Dr. Kate Pretty, “Finding an End? Roman Britain in the 4th and 5th century.”
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Dr Pretty’s paper, which was inspired by the Durham Conference in March, 1978 (see Current Archaeology 62) caused the most interest and comment, especially from those of us who were still struggling to sort out the more conventional view of this period. She stated most of the points normally used as evidence and presented the conference with alternative interpretations, e.g. that zoomorphic ‘military’ buckles were probably also worn by women and civil servants; and that it would be hard to recognise the British element in an Anglo-Saxon area since cultural impoverishment during the decline of the Empire would have made their artefacts similar. She also suggested that opinions on this period have suffered in the past from the Victorian attitude that the end of the Empire and decline of Christianity must obviously bring chaos and the collapse of civilisation. It is her opinion that continental historical evidence cannot be used to interpret events in Roman and sub-Roman Britain, except in the cautious way that ethnography is used by prehistorians; and that archaeological evidence is of far more importance.

In conclusion the Conference chairman, John Wacher, said it was impossible for him to summarise such interesting and stimulating papers in under three hours, so I make no excuse for these disjointed comments. Perhaps mindful of the large number of note-taking students present, he warned that one must be cautious when discussing continuity. By his definition, continuity of settlement on a site is almost a foregone conclusion, if people are still living; but the continuity of culture, language and art is very different.
LOOKING NORTH OR SOUTH?

At the Group 7 Conference which Audrey Hooson reports above HADAS had a small exhibit planned and mounted by Dave King. In fact we were the only local society outside Group 7 to have one. In the audience too, were a number of familiar HADAS faces. This was interesting, because sometimes those who do their archaeology in the perimeter areas of Greater London may seem to be a bit too London-orientated.

Yet traditionally some parts of our large and sprawling Borough of Barnet have always looked northwards for inspiration, not south. Till only decade ago the Barnets (Chipping and East) and Totteridge were in Hertfordshire, and had little truck with Middlesex or Greater London. In medieval times Finchley was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London and Hendon owed allegiance to the Abbot of Westminster: but the church of St Mary the Virgin at East Barnet (probably the oldest in the Borough) was built by the monks of St Albans, while St Mary’s at Hadley belonged to the Abbot of Walden, in Essex. Earlier still Romano-British inhabitants, perched on the hills of Hendon and Brockley about mid-way between Londinium and Verulamium, may well have taken their tone from the latter place rather than from the former.

Archaeologically and historically speaking, therefore, we probably have as much to learn from the finds and documents of Hertfordshire as from those of the London area. Until very recently in its long time-scale, our part of north Middlesex was more like the countryside of Herts than the conurbation of London.

In the HADAS exhibit we wore able, by kind permission of our Borough Librarian, to show a number of pots from the digs at Brockley Hill – mainly kiln wasters. Alongside this excavated material were some of the finds HADAS has recently made on various field walks in the Edgware area. All this material shows just how important Edgwarebury is for Roman evidence and how thickly it is concentrated there. The Brockley Hill pots aroused considerable interest, particularly an unusual square pot which is part ~ of the Moxom Collection (see Trans LMAS vol 18 pt I, 1955, p 60) and may be a copy in clay of a glass cinerary urn.
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HADAS SHOWS THE FLAG

St Albans is not the only place at which HADAS has had recent exhibitions. In fact three are on at the moment; members who live near may like to drop in to see them.

At the Old Bull Gallery, 68 Barnet High Street, the general section of Barnet Borough Arts Council is staging a display till Nov 10 under the heading “Things that Go On In Barnet Borough.” HADAS has a small part in this, consisting of an exhibit collected by our Industrial Archaeology expert, Bill Firth, on Transport; and a photo display, taken by Ken Vause, of Harold Cover’s work recording tombstones in New Southgate cemetery. The exhibition is open from 10 am-6 pm, Mons-Sats.

Until Nov 24 there is an exhibition in the annexe to the Reading Room at the Library in The Burroughs, Hendon, to celebrate the centenary of Hendon’s creation as a Local Health Board. This exhibition is the brainchild of our Mayor, Mrs Rita Levy, and a number of local organisations are taking part. HADAS has mounted a couple of panels on the Church Terrace dig, which include documents on the history of Church End and photos by Ted Sammes of the dig itself. Members who come to the November lecture will have a chance to see this exhibition, as the annexe is the room in which we usually dispense coffee.

Finally, at Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, until at least mid-November, there is an exhibit on the West Heath dig. It includes a selection of photographs from the record which Peter Clinch has kept of the dig since it began four years ago; and displays of various almost jewel-like flint tools, beautifully arranged by Daphne Lorimer, as well as some of the environmental evidence found at the spring site.

This seems a suitable spot to draw your attention to Burgh House itself, open Tues-Sats 12-5 pm; Suns 2-5. The house alone is worth a visit, quite apart from the exhibitions, some permanent, some changing, which grace it. It was built in 1703 and has the spaciousness and fine proportions one expects from an early Georgian mansion. It has been excellently restored inside by Camden Council, who also allowed the Burgh House Trust (which raised the money to save the building) to re-open it in September as a community centre. Except for the custodians, it is staffed and looked after entirely by volunteers.

On the ground floor is a room for a changing exhibition (this is where you will find West Heath) and a Music Room used for auditions, lectures and meetings; and in the hall, an excellent bookstall, where all the Camden History Society publications are to be found. On the first floor the Museum Room houses a permanent exhibition on the history of Hampstead. This is only a nucleus at the moment, but is bound to grow and will probably in time take over the other rooms on this floor. Just now, however, these rooms are being used for changing exhibitions. Above, again, is a flat for the full-time custodians.

Nor are these all the joys of Burgh House. In the basement you will find the Buttery, run by two delightful ladies in long print dresses and mob-caps, assisted at weekends by a most enchanting small girl who seems to have stepped straight from the pages of Kate Greenaway. The Buttery provides tea or coffee and genuine homemade cakes; and at lunchtime something more substantial, but still home-made -soup, quiches, etc. The ladies have been responsible, too, for the magnificent herbaceous borders in front of the building, still full of colour when this is written at the end of October. The flowers have obviously been planted and tended with love, just as the food is cooked with love. It’s unmatchable as an ingredient.
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MEMBERSHIP LIST

An up-to-date membership list has, for some years, been circulated annually with the January Newsletter. This year, however, we propose to change this arrangement for two reasons: first, the problem of getting the list out in the middle of the Christmas rush; second, the Committee is not sure that all members really want a list or find it useful.

The 1980 list will therefore be available from Feb 1 next instead of January. It will not be circulated to everyone with the Newsletter, but if you would like to have a copy, please let our Hon. Secretary know before Dec 31 and she will earmark one for you at a cost of 10p. It will be sent with your February Newsletter. Members of HADAS committees will automatically receive a copy.

The task of typing the list is no easy one – all those telephone numbers to check and double-check, and chaos reigning if one digit runs amok. The Committee is therefore particularly grateful to Helen 0’Brien, who has kindly offered to do this difficult job this year.
HADAS CHRISTMAS PARTY

Applications for the Roman banquet on Dec 8 have been brisk; we have already reached maximum and have a small waiting list. Don’t let this deter you from sending Dorothy Newbury an application, however, if you haven’t yet applied and want to do so. Waiting lists can vanish, and people sometimes have to change plans and drop out, so there is always a chance of a vacancy.

We intended to arrange a coach if enough members wanted it; but so few have asked that it does not warrant hiring one. We shall try to find those concerned lifts in cars if possible.

On two small matters we should be glad of members’ help. If anyone obtained a copy of one of the posters at the Pompeii exhibition some years ago and is prepared to lend it to help decorate the banqueting hall, would they please let Dave King know?

Several members have kindly agreed to help with the cooking by making dishes at home; if anyone else would like to try their hand at Roman cookery, will they give Brigid Grafton Green a ring? Full recipes will be supplied, along with any scarce or unexpected ingredient.

At the end of the Newsletter you will find some companion pictures to those published last month – this time for an easy-to-make gentleman’s toga in four simple steps.

(EDITORIAL – to view this diagram, please select the following link.)
EVENS AHEAD

On Sat Nov 17, at the Museum of London, the 14th LAMAS Local History Conference will take place from 2.30-6 pm. Speakers include Sir John Summerson, on Nash and Regents Park; N M MacMichael, Keeper of the Westminster Abbey Muniments, on the Abbey Muniments as a source for local historians (of particular interest to HADAS members, since Hendon was an Abbey property up to the Dissolution); and a talk on the history of Putney Bridge during the last fifty years.
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Tickets cost £1, including tea, and are obtainable from 3 Cameron House, Highland Rd, Bromley, Kent.

On Weds, Thurs and Fris at lunchtime, starting at 1.10 pm, the Museum of London organises series of lectures. At the moment Transport in London is the Wednesday subject, Thursdays are Museum Workshops and Fridays are devoted to London’s Castles.

Museum Workshop is an interesting idea, as it gives the audience a chance to meet the Museum’s specialist staff and to see objects from the collections at close quarters. On Nov 1 Clive Orton talks about medieval pottery; Nov 8 is Joan Pollard on 18th c watercolours, Nov 15 Harvey Sheldon on recent finds in Southwark, Nov 22 Rosemary Weinstein on the horner’s craft; and Nov 29 bows and early firearms.

Every year the Dept of Extra-mural Studies of London University organises a course of public lectures at the Institute of Archaeology on a specific theme. This year the theme is the archaeology or Roman Britain, the lectures are on Thursdays at 7 pm and you can pay at the door, 50p a time.

Unfortunately the Newsletter has only just had notice of the series, so we did not give details of the October lectures. Those up to Christmas, however, are as follows:

Nov 1 – Art and Architecture in Roman Britain , Tom Blagg

Nov 8 – Villas in Britain, J T Smith, RCHM

Nov 15 – Religion in Roman Britain, Ralph Merrifield

Nov 22 – Towns and the Administration of Roman Britain, John Wacher

Nov 29 – Roman Wales, Prof. M G Jarrett

Dec 6 – Industry and Trade in Roman Britain, Richard Reece

Lectures start again in January, and we will give further details in a later Newsletter.
WORLD WAR I AS WELL?

In the last Newsletter we asked for information about World War II installations still left in this Borough. We have had some interesting letters as a result, including the following from Geoffrey Gillam, Chairman of the Enfield Archaeological Society:

“Why stop at World War II? Having completed an account of that war for Enfield, I am now working on events here in the First World War, and have been agreeably surprised by the material I have so far gathered, including tape recordings of first-hand experiences.

With regard to the fixed installations of WWII, did you know of the ‘stop line’ which ran from Rickmansworth through Watford, Potters Bar, Northaw and Cheshunt to the River Lea? I located some of the pill boxes etc some years ago and at odd moments am trying to fill in the gaps, on my map. The line continued beyond the Lea to Chelmsford but I have not carried out as much fieldwork as I would like in that county. Once this line is drawn on a map, the secondary defences at road and river crossings begin to make sense and a clear pattern of defensive positions can be seen.”

Any members who can provide information which they feel might interest Mr Gillam are asked to let our Hon. Secretary know.

Oct 03

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newsletter-104-october-1979
By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 2 : 1975 - 1979 | No Comments

Newsletter

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AUTUMN DIGGING PROGRAMME

At West Heath digging will continue on Weds, Sats and Suns, from lO am-5 pm, until the weather breaks and sieving of spoil becomes too difficult. All help will be warmly welcomed, as there are, in particular, two or three trenches which must be finished this year because they contain potentially interesting features and so cannot be left to over-winter, for fear of vandalism.

Wednesday, October 17 is one day on which diggers will also be specially welcome, as we are to be visited by a film unit. The film being shot does not specifically concern West Heath, but is an educational one on archaeology generally. HADAS’s help has been sought to provide a typical digging sequence.

In connection with West Heath, there are two other dates which you may like to note in your diary.

Through the kind cooperation of Mr Enderby, there will be processing weekends on Nov. 24 and Dec. l at the Teahouse, Northway, Hampstead Garden Suburb. Work will be not only on the West Heath finds, but also on other HADAS projects. Further details about this next month, but meantime, do keep the dates free if you can.

There will also be digging at Finchley. We may soon be able to start our long-delayed dig at Church Crescent, as the new owner of the land has now given permission. He plans to strip the top eight inches or so of the site and, insofar as one may predict any activity in the building trade, this should be some time during October.

The surface now contains concrete areas and much rubble, so stripping will ease our task. We shall, however, have to move in sharply at short notice. Paddy Musgrove still has the names of those who volunteered to dig earlier in the year, and will phone them as soon as he has a date. He would like to hear from additional volunteers, including first-time diggers, as this would enable a larger area to be investigated.

Digging will be on Saturdays and Sundays and may last over only two or three weekends. Progress should be rapid, as we know exactly what we are looking for – a possible extension of the unexplained feature discovered last year over the fence in the old Rectory garden. The site will, of course, be kept under observation during subsequent building operations.
THE END OF A QUANGO

A protest from RAYMOND LOWE.

The government that I voted for – and I expect some of you did too – is doing great things. Among the list of cutbacks to be made by Mr Michael Heseltine, the Environment Secretary, is the ending of the Hadrians Wall Advisory Committee.

Those of us who have been fortunate enough to visit the Wall realise just how badly an overall scheme is needed for the largest single monument in the whole of the Roman Empire. If Mr Heseltine thinks saving £400 per annum and dismissing the 11 unpaid members of the Advisory Committee is great government, I for one disagree with him.
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We are forever being told how much the country earns from tourists. Well, some of them come to see the Wall. I doubt if any will come to see the British Government saving £400 at expense of our heritage.

Think again, please, Mr. Heseltine.
SOURCES OF AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY

By DAVE KING.

There are now about four million aerial photographs of Great Britain. Only a small proportion were taken specifically for archaeological purposes, but many contain information of use to us. The photographs are distributed among a number of organisations. In this article I will try to indicate where they may be found.

The majority of aerial photographs are verticals (in appearance like a map) and were usually taken for cartographic or planning purposes. There are also verticals taken on intra-red film, normally for use in vegetation analysis.

The main source of verticals in London is the Department of Environment Air Photographs unit. They hold (on microfilm) the photographs produced by RAF reconnaissance squadrons, and are able to supply copies quite cheaply.

The Ordnance Survey have a collection of verticals, although these are normally available only at their Southampton headquarters.

Commercial air photographers produce surveys for private customers and will supply copies of their photographs, providing this is not against their clients’ wishes. They also produce oblique photographs (high angle views); these however are rarely of archaeological sites.

Local authorities often commission air surveys for planning purposes, and may allow archaeologists to view them. The London Borough of Barnet is most helpful in this respect. Finally, the Local History Collection of a Borough may contain a collection of obliques. Our Borough has one, housed at Egerton Gardens.

There are two collections of specifically archaeological air photographs: that of the Air Photographs Unit of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments; and that of the Committee for Aerial Photography at Cambridge University. These collections will certainly have the best archaeological air photographs, particularly those showing crop and soil marks. They do not, however, claim to provide a comprehensive country-wide coverage. Archaeological Units and Museums sometimes have collections. A number of amateurs take archaeological aerial photographs, although they tend to concentrate on particular areas or types of site. To find out more about these sources it is probably best to write to the Committee on Aerial Photography (Anglian Region) who despite their name have contacts throughout Britain. They publish an annual journal called “Aerial Photography.”

Most people associate archaeological air photographs with “crop marks,” those changes in height or colour of growing crops caused by archaeological features beneath them. Unfortunately the vegetation and soils of this Borough, plus of course the large areas of housing, mean that very few crop marks will ever be found. Even in Barnet, however, aerial photographs are still useful. They are almost as accurate as maps, and tend to show up old hedge lines and road alignments more clearly. They are certainly easier to read than maps, and contain much more information. Finally they are historic documents. The Borough’s long association with flying has provided us with aerial photographs dating almost from the first world war. These are of immense value to local historians, showing the area before housing development and providing priceless information on everyday activities in Barnet.
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Addresses of the organisations mentioned above:

The Air Photographs Unit, D.o.E., Prince Consort House, Albert Embankment, London SEl 7TF

Fairey Surveys Ltd, Reform Rd, Maidenhead, Berks, SL6 8BU

BKCS Air Surveys Ltd, Cleeve Rd, Leatherhead, Surrey, KT22 7NL

The Air Photographs Section, Ordnance Survey, Southampton, Hants

Aerofilms Ltd, Elstree Way, Borehamwood, Herts, WD6 172

Meridian Air Maps Ltd, Marlborough Rd, Lancing, Sussex, BN15 8TT

The Committee for Aerial Photography, 11 West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DP

The Air Photographs Unit, National Monuments Record; Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, Fortress House, 23 Savile Row, London W1X lAD

The Committee for Archaeological Air Photography (Anglian Region), 17 Bull Plain, Hertford, SG14 lDX

For all enquiries, quote the grid reference of the area in which you are interested, and if possible the type of site you expect to find.
LECTURES AHEAD

Details of the first lecture on Tues. October 2, appeared in the last Newsletter. The programme for the rest of the winter (in case you have mislaid your programme card) will be as follows:

Tues. Nov 6. Recent Archaeology in Canterbury – Tim Tatton Brown BA

Tues. Jan 8. The Art of Bronze Age (Minoan) Crete – Sinclair Hood MA FSA

Tues. Feb 5. The Later Roman Empire and the Codex Spirensis – Mark Hassall MA FSA

Tues. Mar 4. Medieval Kings Lynn: an archaeological, architectural and documentary survey – Dr. Helen Clark BA PhD FSA

Tues. Apr. 1 Iron Bridge Gorge Museum – Stuart B Smith MSc AMA

Details of our Christmas event on Dec. 8 will be found elsewhere in this Newsletter.
OTHER FORTHCOMING EVENTS

A series of Wednesday lectures will be sponsored this year at various libraries by LBB Library Services. Of particular interest to archaeologists is The Saga of the Vasa, at Burnt Oak Library at 8.15 on Wed. Oct. 24. This is the story of the raising a few years ago of the Swedish galleon Vasa from the sea-bed where she capsized in 1628. Anyone who was lucky enough to see the exhibition on the Vasa at the Science Museum some years ago, with its fascinating detail of how the great wooden ship was lifted and her timbers preserved, along with all the contents down to such things as kegs of butter, will want to hoar this lecture by Ley Kenyon, who is a diver and underwater photographer.

On Sat. Nov. 3 the Council for British Archaeology is organising a one-day conference on non-conformist places of worship at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Further details may be obtained from the CBA, 112 Kennington Road, London, SEll 6RE.

The annual Conference of Local Historians organised by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society will take place at the Museum of London on November 17 next. No other details at the moment, though we have peen told that Sir John Summerson, expert on Georgian London, will be one of the speakers. Further information, we hope, in next Newsletter.
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Next year will see the 25th anniversary of a landmark in English Local History Studies – the publication of The Making of the English Landscape by W G Hoskins. The book was published in 1955 by Hodder & Stoughton (and reprinted in 1970 by Pelican in paperback). The original publishers are sponsoring a one-day conference on the English Landscape to mark the occasion, on March 1 next at the D.o.E. lecture theatre, Fortress House, 23 Savile Row, Wl.

Professor Hoskins will give an address, and there will be other papers by experts in local history and field archaeology – Lionel Munby (Hertfordshire), Professor Glanville Jones {North Wales), Christopher Taylor (Cambridge and Dorset), Peter Brandon (Sussex), David Palliser (Stafford) and Trevor Rowley (Shropshire and Hereford).

The Conference starts at 10, ends at 5, and the fee of £5 includes tea and coffee but not lunch. Tickets obtainable from Archaeological Education, Vine Cottage, Hethe, Nr. Bicester, Oxon, with a closing date of Feb 18 for applications.
ARE YOU IN DEBT TO HADAS

Have you renewed your subscription for the current year, due on Apr. 1 last? , If not, please send it now to our Hon. Treasurer.

As usual, the Treasurer will send out in mid-October a final reminder to all members who have not by then subscribed. The names of those who have not responded by mid-November will be removed from the membership list. Our current subscription rates are:
Full membership – £2.00
Under-18 – £1.00
Over-60 – £1.00
Family Membership: – first member – £2
– additional members £1 each

Payment should be made to Jeremy Clynes.
THE BREWER’S TALE

Another of PERCY REBOUL’s series of transcripts of tape recordings made by older residents of our Borough.

I was born in 1921 at Barnet, and have lived and worked in the area all my life. My family has close associations with Barnet: my grandfather started the Dental Manufacturing Company and worked there as General Manager.

I joined Hadley Brewery as office boy on January 7 1935 and my starting wage was 9s. a week. On my first day I was shown a very obsolete old telephone system and told to take messages and put people through. I was also told to take, at 7 am, the numbers of the barrels to be used that day.

The brewery was owned at that time by a limited company, Harris Brown Ltd. There were four directors: Mrs Harris Brown; Mr Leaney; Capt Dudley Moseley and Mr T Duncan. It was very much a family business – friendly and with great loyalty, both given and received from workers, management and customers. We owned 4 houses and 3 off licences. There was the Star Tavern at Barnet (now a shoe shop); the Victoria at North Hill, Highgate; the Bridge House at Potters Bar; and, later, we built the Brookman’s Park Hotel – a large venture for us and not a very successful one, because the Underground did not, as we had hoped get extended beyond Cockfosters to Brookman’s Park.
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Hadley Brewery was an old established business – the brewery was founded in 1700. Harris Brown extended it. He was a remarkable man in that he did most of the architectural and design work himself for the extensions. I am certain that when they took the old brewery down they discovered just how good a builder he was!

We had good water from our own artesian wells and could draw upon it whenever we liked. I see from the ledgers that, in 1937 for example, we could brew 1504 barrels of bitter for the cost of £12. 6s in raw materials such as hops, malt and sugar, plus another £1.15s for incidentals like caramel. Material costs were vary low. We imported a certain amount of hops from Czechoslovakia.

In 1935/6 we employed about 52 people for production, distribution and sales. The top man was Harris Brown; Capt Moseley was Head Brewer and Mr Duncan was in charge of admin and sales. Capt Moseley had an under-brewer and an apprentice brewer, John Duncan’s son, who eventually became Head Brewer of Bass Charrington.

You cannot learn about brewing from a book. It is a great tradition requiring an intimate knowledge of the brewing processes. 1 find even today the brewers are people with the most heart, the most will and the most thought for others because they have been brought up in the tradition. They are dedicated men, very powerful in their own sphere.

The Draymen.

I would like to say something about the old draymen. They delivered the beer by horse and cart (later in T-type Ford lorries) to private houses in an area stretching from Hadley to Muswell Hill. Most of those houses stored the beer in their cellars and they represented a large part of our business. This carried on until the outbreak of war in 1939. We sold under many brand names. There was Hadley Stout; Hadley Special Pale Ale ; Dinner Ale; Nourishing Stout; and bottled Guinness which was Dublin-brewed and picked up by us from the London docks. We also supplied lager from Czechoslovakia, Germany and Wrexham.

The draymen of those days were characters. They knew all their customers personally and made friends with them. If the Guv’nor was down with ‘flu the drayman was prepared to bottle up, set up casks and do anything required. Today, they are merely delivery men. The drayman was an important part of the business. He worked terrific hours, starting at 7 am and sometimes finishing at 8 pm. At Christmas he worked round the clock, with just 3 or 4 hours sleep.

They were a jolly crowd, big drinkers but the work was physically tough. They had to manhandle hogsheads of beer (that is 54 gallons) into cellars by ropes. They were highly skilled, very capable and very much underpaid. In 1935, for example, a drayman would earn £3-£4~ a week including overtime. A clerk in the brewery earned about £2. 15s and a senior person about £5 a week; on that you could afford to run a car.

Drunk on Ginger Beer.

Once a year we brewed Old English Ale which was a very heavy barley wine. We made only about 20- 30 barrels which was bottled by hand. Everyone helped and by the end everyone was “stoned” out of their minds! We also brewed ginger beer, using raw ginger ground down to a powder plus yeast and sugar. In those days in Hadley Woods we had Folly Farm which was often visited by Sunday school parties and we supplied them with ginger beer for the outing. One year, something happened to the brew and both children and Sunday school teachers became inebriated! We had a visit from a large sergeant of police, and after that we were very careful to watch the gravity of the ginger beer!
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I managed a great team of people and we had enormous respect for each other. One day I was sitting in Old Fold Manor Golf Club, on Hadley Green, when someone said “Your brewery is on fire.” I looked across the Green, and it suddenly struck me that this was the end. I felt terrible, and the ghosts of people I had known seemed to come back to me. Next day, I sat down and wrote an epitaph on the Brewery.

FOOTNOTE: The fire at the brewery occurred in 1962. It was rebuilt, but the only original part of the building from then on was the cellars. It was used for storage purposes and gradually grew more and more dilapidated. Finally it was demolished about a year ago.
AWAY INTO WALES

A report from PADDY MUSGROVE on HADAS’s visit to Snowdonia.

The Snowdonia National Park Study Centre, Plas Tan y Bwlch, where 49 HADAS members arrived on the evening of September 19 for a four-day stay, is a splendid Victorian mansion, high on the steep slopes of the Vale of Ffestiniog, in 105 acres of wooded grounds and gardens, with views which can be described only as spectacular.

On the way our coach had stopped for some hours at Ironbridge, where we noted many improvements since HADAS visited there in 1974. The Coalport China Works Museum is now open and various new buildings have been added at Blist’s Hill.

Our official programme of visits from Plas Tan y Bwlch listed more than 40 sites; and dozens more emerged as we roamed on foot and by coach from Penmaenmawr to Barmouth and from Blaenau Ffestiniog to the Lleyn Peninsula and over the water to Anglesey.

We saw monuments of the Neolithic and bronze ages, hill forts on remote uplands and one, strangely, on the edge of a sandy beach, a Roman marching camp and the forts of Segontium and Tomen y Mur, medieval castles (including massive Caernarvon), gold and copper mines, the old workshops of the Dinorwic Slate Quarry (only closed quite recently), and the famous Graig Lwyd axe factory (closed some thousands of years ago).

With so much to see, our party was split into two groups each day and so each individual could choose one of the two itineraries which best suited his interests and degree of athleticism. The choice was difficult, with all this happening amongst the magnificent mountains and lakes of Snowdonia.

To Mr. Alun Davies, Principal of the Centre, and our guides and evening lecturers, Messrs. Crew, Gareth Davies, Dean, Elias and Mrs. Llywellyn, sincere thanks are due for our comfort, entertainment and learning. Dorothy Newbury’s advance planning was evident at every turn and, although we missed her company, Jeremy Clynes most ably looked after our minor day-to-day problems.

It was a worthy successor to last year’s Orkney visit.
THE LEGACY 0F WORLD WAR II

A few weeks ago the names of the’ six finalists in this year’s Chronicle Award for independent archaeologists were announced. Among them was a project which studies the martial remains of World War II – pill boxes, platforms for ac-ac guns and the like – in the English countryside.
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This reminded the HADAS Research Committee that there are still some of these man-made structures left in our own area; and that they probably won’t remain much longer, and should therefore be recorded while it is still possible to do it. One example, for instance, is a pill-box near the foot of the railway viaduct that crosses the valley of the Dollis Brook in Finchley. It is just south-west of the viaduct and visible, though heavily overgrown, in the steep bank above Dollis Road.

If members know of any other World War II remains still visible in our Borough, we would be glad to have details of them – what they consist of and their precise location. Please send any such information to our Hon. Secretary, Brigid Grafton Green.
Church Terrace Reports: No. 2

This is the second in the series of Church Terrace post-excavation work reports. It is by GEORGE INGRAM and EDWARD SAMMES.

JETTONS

Prior to the late 15th c, when Arabic (originally Hindu) numerals were introduced, all calculations involved the use of Roman numerals.

To aid in the process of reckoning accounts, discs of copper, brass or latten, imitating coins, were used on a board or cloth similar to an abacus, having seven lines on which the counters were moved. The Romans used a similar system, using pebbles or discs of horn. (Note : the Museum of London has a replica of a counting board on display in its Medieval Section) The system was based on fives, using the numerals I, V(5), X(1O), L(50), C(100), D(500), M(1000). No more than five counters were allowed on a line. By these means simple addition and subtraction could be accomplished and the merchant needed to be able to count only in fives: Obviously, the coin of the realm could also be reckoned by such methods.

Jettons of coin type originated in France in the mid 13th o and there were English versions by 1280. By the 14th c. they were being struck in Paris, Toulouse and Lyon. Flemish counters or jettons appeared during the 14th c. They were made in Tournai, a copper mining town, and were in production for over 150 years.

By the early 16th c. the manufacture of jettons had moved to Germany and was centred on Nuremburg. These counters were thin, crude and again of “brass.” Their production was in the hands of five families, Koch, Krauwinckel, Laufer, Maler and Schultz.

The most common type has on its obverse a central rose surrounded by three open crowns and three fleur-de-lis arranged alternately. This is surrounded by the maker’s name and a rope design. The reverse side bears the Reichsapfel (a crowned orb) of Nuremburg and a legend.

Jettons are often pierced, probably to aid in distinguishing them from genuine coins. This confusion could easily have arisen in the case of English jettons which were copies of the coin of the reigning monarch.

The Italian market must have been particularly attractive, as special jettons were made depicting the winged lion of Venice on one side and a ship on the other.

A11 these foreign reckoning counters were imported into England , in large numbers and are frequently found on medieval and later sites, especially ecclesiastical ones, hence they are often called “Abbey Tokens”. Excavations at Waltham Abbey monastic grange in 1970-72 produced 1 French, 2 Nuremburg and one unidentified jetton. Five German jet tons were found at Sewardstone Street, Waltham Abbey, in 1966.
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The Church Terrace excavation produced one jetton (weight 3.37 gr) in trench Cl. It was badly corroded but it is possible to identify it as of German, possibly Nuremburg, origin. On one side it bears the winged Lion of Venice, on the other a mitre; date about 16th c, possibly for use in Italy. It has been pierced in antiquity.

Two other jettons have been found in Hendon. The 1962 excavation at Church End Farm produced one by Wolf Laufer of Nuremburg. The second was found about 1965 in the garden of 6 Grove Gardens. It is typical 16th Nuremburg type, as described, but the inscription is too badly corroded to read.

For further reading:

BERRY, G – Three articles on jettons. Coins and Medals, Link House Publications: June 1968, pp. 544-6 Sept 1968; pp. 743-5 Dec 1968, pp. 953-4

HUGGINS, P J – Excavations at Sewardstone St, Waltham Abbey. Post-Medieval Arch, vol 3, pp. 47-99. See p.96

HUGGINS, P J – Monastic Grange and Outer Close Excavation, 1970-2 Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. 1972, pp. 30-126. See p.125
BAPTISTS IN CRICKLEWOOD

By GEORGE INGRAM.

Earlier this year, in the March Newsletter, there was an article on Childhood in Cricklewood, by Miss Ethel and Miss Winifred Wardley. In it they mentioned the opening, in 1877, of the Baptist Church in The Mead.

Recently an interesting booklet has come my way from the Secretary of the Childs Hill Baptist Church, Mr K A Pitkethley. Some facts from it may fill out the personal memories described so graphically by the Misses Wardley. The booklet is a history of the church, by the Rev. J Sylvester Poulton, from its first beginnings (before the present church was built) up to 1927.

As early as 1865 the activities of the Heath St Baptist Church in Hampstead included a Home Mission at Childs Hill. One day an evangelist, Mr Rickard, on his way to Childs Hill, found a large contingent of men working on the construction of the “new Midland Railway.” He began open air meetings where the church now stands. This was in Old Mead (now renamed Granville Rd). It was a private way and had never been made up. In wet weather it was almost impassable. Carts would congregate at the top of the road and their contents had to be carried to the houses and laundries on the drivers’ shoulders. Big brothers had to carry their smaller sisters home on their backs through the mud and slush.

The area had a somewhat unenviable reputation; it was said to be unsafe on a Saturday night for a single constable to patrol the district alone. There was much drunkenness; cock-fighting went on where the Chapel now stands.

Sunday evening services were first held in April 1866, in a small upper room at the Model Laundry in the Mead (later 85 Granville Rd), and this is where the work of the church started. In May 1866 the Sunday school was launched. It held its first meeting in Mr Elphick’s laundry (later the Victoria Laundry) with 16 children and Mr Rickard as first superintendent. Two years after there were 145 children on the books.
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In those days Heath St Church loyally supported the Sunday school by sending to Cricklewood some of its enthusiastic young men and women; in 1878 there wore 250 scholars and 20 teachers. The next step was to obtain the loan of a Mission Hall for three years, and this was opened for public worship on Jan 19, 1867.

A Day School for infants was also opened and before the close of the year 120 little scholars were attending. Several clubs and groups were formed, and it was next decided, with the consent of Heath St church to build a permanent Chapel. A Memorial Stone was laid on June 28 1870 and the building cost £2500. It was opened on November 17 of that year. A British School (mixed) was started about this time for older children at a cost of £600. On June 12 1877 the Childs Hill Baptist Church was founded when 60 members of the Heath St Church agreed to form the nucleus of the new church. A new organ cost £lOO in 1885 and in November 1899 a Mission Room opened in Elm Terrace, the idea being to induce people to attend first the Mission and afterwards the Chapel.

In 1890 the numbers attending Sunday and Day Schools had so increased that it was found necessary to provide more accommodation. The room known as “The Middle Class Room” was built. The Rev Rickard retired after 25 years service and his successor, Rev J Sylvester Poulton, began his ministry on Dec 9 1894.

At the turn of the century there was a great stir in the parish of Hendon over education. The voluntary system, which had been languishing for some time, finally broke down and the School Board stepped in and took over administration. The British School was transferred to the School Board and became overcrowded. The Board was given permission to use the Chapel temporarily for Day School purposes till the Childs Hill Board School was built and opened in June 1901.

In autumn 1905 a successful Mission – the Claremont Mission – was held at Midland Brent Terrace, Cricklewood, and at a meeting of members in September it was resolved that it be called the Claremont Baptist church. Later, however, it was taken over by Childs Hill church. In 1915 Mr Poulton completed 21 years as pastor, and a presentation was made to him; he continued his ministry till 1928, the year after he wrote his history. We have a list of the ministers who followed him, but little more history of the church until recent times. Part of the premises have now been given up to the young people of the neighbourhood for use as a community centre. In June last year Barnet Council granted £2760 towards this scheme.

HADAS members will be sad to hear that one of the co-authors of the article which George mentions on Childhood in Cricklewood, which we published last March, died on September 6 this year. This was Miss Ethel Wardley, who had lived to the great age of 92 with a marvellous and completely clear memory. We offer our sincere sympathy to her sister, Hiss Winifred Wardley.
NON-CONFORMiSTS IN THE BOROUGH OF BARNET

George Ingram’s article is a reminder that, as some members will know, he has been master-minding the collection of information about non-conformist churches in our area. This is a long-term project and one on which George will be most Grateful for offers of help from members. If you know anything about a particular church or are in a position to provide a booklet or a history, of it; or if you are prepared to help generally on the project, please give him a ring.
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ROMAN BANQUET, HADAS STYLE

With this Newsletter is an application form for this year’s Christmas party, to be held on Saturday, December 8 at St Jude’s Church Rooms, Central Square, Hampstead Garden Suburb at 7 pm.

This will take the form of a Roman banquet, with as many Roman touches as it is possible to devise in a modern world. The occasion will be modelled on the banquet given during the annual Roman Cookery weekend organised by Southampton University. That function takes place under the jurisdiction of the Tutor in Archaeology, David Johnston, and the cookery course tutor, Maureen Locke, both of whom have done considerable research into details of Roman banqueting.

We are indebted to them for many helpful suggestions regarding our banquet. Mr. Johnston, for instance, assures us that it was the custom in the northern Empire to sit for meals, not to recline, so we propose to follow that fashion and offer you chairs, not couches. We are also assured that most Roman families, even the well-to-do, lived frugally, and though the fatted calf was metaphorically killed for special occasions like this, the sort of orgies described by Petronius in his Satyricon (the most notorious being Trimalchio’s banquet) were considered by most Romans to be – if you’ll forgive the pun – in doubtful taste.

We hope very much that members who decide to attend will choose to wear Roman dress, as this will greatly enhance the authentic atmosphere. Thanks again to help from Southampton, we include on the next page, details – with drawings by HADAS member William Morris – of how our female guests can easily provide themselves with a tunic and palla. Instructions for male dress will be included in next month’s Newsletter.

(EDITORIAL: To view this drawing, select the following link.)

If you are coming to the banquet, please fill in the application form and return it to Dorothy Newbury as soon as possible. We need to know numbers fairly soon because some of the ingredients for Roman cookery are expensive nowadays – e.g. pine kernels, dried apricots, nuts, honey and various herbs and spices – and we propose to bulk-buy our supplies if possible. A prompt application will help us to do this.

This seems an appropriate place to give details of the next Southampton University Roman Cookery course, on Sat. May 17-Sun. May 18 1980, at St. Swithuns School, Winchester. Non-residential. Fee £9.50. Applications to Dept. Adult Education, Southampton University, by Mar 31, stating relevant interests and experience of ancient/modern cookery.

Another Southampton course in which HADAS members may be interested is Practical Flintworking, Sat. June 14-sun. June 15 1980, at the University. Fee £7, tutor J C Draper. This will cover core preparation, simple flake tools and microliths. Applications as above by Apr. 30 next.

TWO OPEN UNIVERSITY SHORT COURSES

… may be of interest. Doing History is an 8-week course; Feb-May 1980, described as showing you “how to go about historical writing and research.” The Editor of the Newsletter, with more than half an eye on future contributors, will be delighted to hear from any members who decide to take it!

The other course is an introduction to Industrial Archaeology, 10 weeks from Feb-Apr 1980. Fees for both courses £8, applications up to Dec. 14 next, further details from the Associate Student Central Office, Open University, PO Box 76, Milton Keynes MK7 6AN.

Sep 03

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By LWDadmin | Past Newsletters, Volume 2 : 1975 - 1979 | No Comments

Newsletter
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NOT BRAWN ALONE! BUT BRAINS TOO

This summer several of HADAS’s hardest working diggers have, with flying colours, reached the end of four years of London University’s external Diploma in Archaeology. Our warm congratulations go to them and to all our members who succeeded in the 1979 examinations. We have not yet been able to track down all the results, but here are some of them, collected for us by Dave King.

Shirley Korn and Dave King himself both specialised in Prehistoric Britain for their final year: Shirley “passed her two papers (essay and general) with Merit in one and Credit in the other; Dave reversed that result, with Credit in one and Merit in the other. Margot Maher did even better: her 4th year speciality was Environmental Archaeology, which she passed with Distinction and Credit.

There is good news from the earlier years, too. Elizabeth Aldridge passed her 3rd year; Geoffrey Gammon passed his 2nd year with Credit; and Carole Halligan achieved what must be a unique double: in the same week she learnt that she had passed her midwifery finals and had also, gained a Distinction in her 2nd year extramural archaeology. As a result, she’s headed for a B.Sc (Hons) degree course in anthropology this coming autumn.
ALL SORTS OF PROGRAMME NEWS

.. from Dorothy Newbury.

Another lecture season approaches and the first Tuesday of each month from October to April will find us meeting at Hendon Library, The Burroughs, NW4, at 8 pm. Meetings start with coffee, served between 8-8.3O, while members have a chance to exchange views, borrow books from our Hon. Librarian, George Ingram, or look at the publications on the HADAS bookstall. (Incidentally, have you yet bought your copy of our latest booklet, the Hendon Town Trail, from our Hon. Treasurer? If not, please do – your support can make this interesting experimental publication the success that we would like it to be. Price lOp, plus 8p postage).

At 8.30 the lecture starts. We are delighted that Elizabeth Holliday has again kindly agreed to run the projector for us, except for our first lecture when she will be on holiday.

We have tried this year, as always, to vary our winter programme as much as possible with something for everyone :

Tues. Oct. 2 Archaeology in a Waterlogged Landscape: the Somerset Levels Dr. John Coles, MA PhD FSA

Tues. Nov. 6 Recent Archaeology in Canterbury Tim Tatton Brown BA

Sat. Dec.8 Roman Banquet

Tues. Jan. 8 The Art of Bronze Age (Minoan) Crete. Sinclair Hood MA FSA
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Tues. Feb. 5 The Later Roman Empire and the Codex Spirensis. Mark Hassall, MA FSA

Tues. Mar. 4 Medieval Kings Lynn: an archaeological, architectural and documentary survey Dr Helen Clark BA PhD FSA

Tues. Apr. 1 Iron Bridge Gorge Museum Stuart B Smith MSc AMA

The opening lecture of the season, on Oct. 2, will set a high standard for all those that follow: it is on the timber trackways, mainly Neolithic, which have been uncovered during the last decade in the low-lying marshland of the Somerset Levels by Dr. John Coles and his team from the Department of Archaeology in Cambridge.

Dr. Coles himself will be our lecturer. He is known already to many members, particularly those who belong to the Prehistoric Society, as he is President of the Council of that Society and Hon. Editor of its Proceedings. The current (1978) Proceedings in fact open with a brilliant paper by him and two of his younger colleagues on the use and character of wood in prehistoric Britain and Ireland.
THE HADAS CHRISTMAS PARTY

For our Christmas festivity this year we plan something a bit out of the ordinary: we offer members a Roman banquet (with all the authentic Roman frills we can contrive) cooked by HADAS cooks who undertake to use only known Roman ingredients.

This historic event is planned for Sat. Dec. 8, at St. Jude’s Church Rooms, Central Square; Hampstead Garden Suburb. It will start at 7 pm and it is hoped that, although this will be optional, as many members as possible will add to the authenticity of the occasion by wearing Roman dress.

The rooms will be decorated in Roman (indeed Pompeiian) style, and the entertainment will have a Roman slant, though we fear it will not quite live up to the expectations of one of our digger-members who, having been told what was in store, was heard to murmur “God. I’ve always wanted to experience a Roman orgy under controlled conditions!”

An application form for tickets, plus instructions on how to make a do-it-yourself toga (out of an old sheet) will accompany the next Newsletter. Meantime, if your spirit is adventurous and your digestion sound, chalk a mark in your diary against Sat. Dec. 8.
THE WALES TRIP

… from Sept. 19-23, is now full, but there is no waiting list. We have received the complete programme from the Centre and it sounds very exciting. If anyone has a last-minute wish to join the party, please ring Dorothy Newbury and let her know, in case there are any late cancellations.
WEST HEATH

Digging plans for September are as announced in last month’s Newsletter. There will be a full-time dig for the week starting Mon. Sept 3, as well as digging every Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday throughout the month. Digging is from 10 am-5 pm each day.

No one needs telling that a lot of good digging hours have gone up the spout this so-called summer because of bad weather. We are keeping our fingers crossed for a fine “back-end” so that we can begin to catch up on our schedule; and we hope that everyone who has even an hour to spare will come along to West Heath, trowel at the ready, to help us in that aim during September.
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IN SEARCH OF WATLING STREET

Site-watching report by HELEN GORDON.

HADAS member Albert Dean, who keeps a wary eye for us on any digging-up of the Edgware Road, last month spotted a trench cut for pipe-laying purposes on the east side of the street at The Hyde, at the north corner of Greenway Gardens, NW9 (OS grid ref: TQ 204901).

The trench, when observed on July 9 1979, had been dug in the pavement parallel to the Edgware Road about 30 cm. from the kerb, for a length of about 30 m. northwards from the corner. It was about 80 cm. wide and 1.75-2 m. deep. The pipe-laying was being continued, and a second visit was paid on July 11, when a further 10 m. had been dug.

For the first 20-30 cm. from the surface the soil was mixed disturbed sand and blackened material. Below this was clay with some small stone. No evidence was seen of any layers of pebbles or gravel which might had indicated the metalling of the Roman road.
Church Terrace Reports: No. 1

During the next few months the Newsletter will publish a series of papers by EDWARD SAMMES on post-excavation work, since 1974, on finds from the Church Terrace, Hendon, dig. Below is the first in the series, on:

BALE SEALS

Much of the material excavated at Church Terrace, Hendon (TQ 22898953) in the HADAS dig of 1973-4 came from disturbed layers. As far as can be ascertained, no dumping had ever taken place on the area. The finds are therefore a record of occupation on this site, close to the parish church of St. Mary’s Hendon, starting in the 3rd/4th c. and continuing through to this century.

Whilst excavation is in progress, the separate layers are approximately dated. This is followed in post-excavation by a more detailed study of specific artefacts. This series of articles will cover the results of such work in more detail than is possible in a final archaeological report where, for instance, you might merely get an entry like this:

Merchants Bale Seal of lead, in two parts, slightly elliptical 18-21 mm. diameter, weight 6.29 grams. One half plain with lug flattened. Main side bears the impressed letters R.G. with a vertical interlace between. This is surrounded by a border line. 18th c. Trench Bl, 58 cm.

Such a description gives most of us little idea of the use of the object and fails miserably to make it “live.” Yet this rather insignificant piece of worked lead has its origins in England’s flourishing Medieval wool trade and can take us back through the history of that trade. In the Middle Ages the export of wool in sacks to the continent, mainly Flanders, was a major source of wealth. In 1275 a duty of 7s. 6d was fixed on every sack. Henry III, however, began to encourage the manufacture of woollen cloth in England. The industry was established in London, Norwich, the Cotswolds and Somerset. The settling of Flemish weavers here in 1337 brought a sudden increase in the knowledge and practice of weaving. A tax was levied on the finished cloth and for each producing county an officer, called an alnager, was appointed. His task was to examine the cloth for quality and length, to affix seals and also to collect the tax. In 1353 this tax amounted to four pence a cloth. Each alnager had a seal, resembling a pair of pincers, with his own particular mark engraved on it.
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Measurement was carried out in the unit length of one ell. This derives from the Anglo-Saxon eln, and is of cognate origin with the French aulne, from the Latin ulna, an arms length. From this too derives the name alnager. Confusingly, the length of an ell in inches varied as follows: England 45, Flanders 27, Scotland 37, France 54. Thus the bale seal was a certificate of the length of the cloth as well as of its quality.

By the 17th c. this work was being done by three people types of seals were in use as, additionally, merchants began lead seals with their own impressed mark.

Bale seals are found from that period onwards. They were following types:

1. Single lobed pieces with a central hole

2. Two-lobed, one lobe having a tongue projecting from its centre which, in use, would be passed through a hole in the second lobe. The Church Terrace seal is of this type.

3. Four lobed seals. official seals for the collection of excise duty.

For further reading:

EGAN, G – London Archaeologist, vol 3 No 7, Summer 1978. 177-9

HUME, I N – Artefacts of Colonial America, pub. A A Knapp, 1970

LIPSON, E – Economic History, vol 1, 1929

PILE, C C R – Cranbrook Broadcloth and the Clothiers, Cranbrook & District Local History Society, 1967
A DAY OUT IN NORFOLK

A report by R F Allen on the August outing.

For the last one-day outing of this summer our guide was Raymond Lowe, who enlivened the long drive to Castle Acre with comment on features of interest on the way, including the Roman bathhouse under the A1 at Welwyn and Knebworth House, sadly forced to live now by acting as a pop festival venue and surrounded by acres of litter from the latest event.

After Baldock we followed the Icknield Way for ten miles and could pick out the odd round barrow, taking care not to be deceived by golf-course earthworks. There was also Ashwell Pond with its remarkable worm, left behind since early post-glacial times and no doubt longing a for the next ice age. Ermine Street went off north from the traffic lights at Royston and we jumped forward to industrial archaeology: aircraft brooding on the tarmac at Duxford, accompanied incongruously by a rusty two-man submarine. Back to early Saxon days for two linear works at right angles to our line of Approach, Fleam Dyke and Devils Ditch.
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The Priory at Castle Acre, a Cluniac house, was founded in 1090, the original buildings being within the outer defences of the castle. Soon afterwards it moved to the present site near the River Nar, where there was room for the vast complex whose ruins we see today. The main feature is the west wall of the church, standing to much of its original height and described as a fine example of l2th c. architecture.

The prior’s chapel and lodging, though altered in Tudor times, survive as complete buildings, with fine dressed flint over the porch. Upstairs is a model of the priory as it might have appeared just before the Dissolution; this was made, under expert supervision, by the Castle Acre Youth Club. The local youth and their supervisor must be perfectionists: having built one model they decided that, with the skills acquired on the job, they could do better; so they built another, the one now on view. The priory kitchen had its fish tank but the ponds were presumably further up the valley. A DoE dig, in progress beyond the kitchen, revealed some interesting brick-lined circular structures, with a spectacular tilt due to subsidence. These are provisionally thought to represent the brewery – there must have been one somewhere.

This caused our thoughts to turn towards The Ostrich in the village, but first there was the parish church, with l5th c. painted panels round the pulpit and along the remains of the screen. The font cover, also l5th c, is termed the telescopic variety: the lower part, by an ingenious sliding mechanism, can be lifted up to give access to the font itself.

The Ostrich came up to expectations, real beer and no fruit machine. Then through the north gateway (in the village street) for a quick look at the motte and bailey castle; the remains are mostly earthworks but are impressive for their size and extent.

Next to Oxburgh Hall, a moated red-brick mansion built about 1482 by Sir Edmund Bedingfeld and now owned by the National Trust, with the Bedingfield family still living in part of it. There is no doubt here about the main feature: the magnificent original gatehouse, the best of its period in the country, with a projecting octagonal tower on either side, 80 ft. high from moat to battlements. The west tower contains an architectural gem, the newel staircase to the roof. The vault is of cut and rubbed brick, laid with incredible precision those 500 years ago and giving an effect of great beauty; if the whole thing were turned upside down you would think you were looking at a well worn watercourse.

Inside, the house has been drastically altered down the centuries but has much of interest. One room is devoted to needlework hangings by Mary Queen of Scots and Bess of Hardwick. Another gives up an entire wall to the Sheldon tapestry map of 1647; this measures 18′ by 13′ 2″ and extends from Tetbury, Gloucestershire, to London. It gave members a chance to find Hendon and nearby villages.

It was a memorable day and we must place on record our gratitude to Raymond Lowe for efficient arrangements and entertaining commentary.
MORE ARCHAEOLOGICAL WEEKENDS

Last month we mentioned the programme of archaeological weekends organised by Leicester University at Knuston Hall. This inspired a member to send details of similar weekends under the aegis of the
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Oxford University Department of External Studies, many of which take place at the department’s headquarters at Rewley House, 3-7 Wellington Square, Oxford. Here is a selection from the programme:

Oct. 12-14 – Weekend conference on Churches and Local History

Nov. 9-11 – Symposium on Burial in the Saxon Period

Jan. 5-6 – The Roman at Work: artisans, merchants, trade, travel, inns and entertainment

Jan. 11-13 – The Archaeology of Santorini (to be held at New College)

Jan. 25-27 – Hill-forts in Britain and Europe: a forum for the latest research

Feb. 15-17 – The Study of Farm Buildings

Mar. 14-16 – Th1rd Century Problems: looking at the least well known century of Roman occupation

Apr. 18-20 – Recent Work on Wills and Inventories

Costs vary according to venue – a weekend at Rewley House, with full board and a shared room, is about £23.5O. Further particulars of the above courses, and of others in a very full programme, can be obtained from the Dept. of External Studies.

A study tour of the principal museums and medieval sites in the Cherbourg Peninsula – an “in the footsteps of William the Conqueror” trip, as it were – is also offered from Apr. 24-27, crossing from Southampton-Le Havre, with 3 days in Normandy, for £70.
PROTECTING A MOAT

Back in early 1977 HADAS suggested to the Department of Environment {the ministry responsible for both Listed buildings of architectural and historic interest and for scheduled sites of historic and archaeological importance) that the remains of one of the moats in our area should be scheduled. This is the partial moat (only an L-shaped piece remains, the rest having been filled in, and possibly walled over, in earlier times) which still exists in the walled garden of the Manor House (now a convent) in East End Road, Finchley. The present Manor House was built in 1723 as the centre of the manor of Bibsworth, but there has probably been a manor house on, or within the fairly near neighbourhood of this site since medieval times.

The moat itself has never been dated, nor is anything known of its genesis. It may well pre-date the present early Georgian house.

The DoE was sympathetic to the idea, and in September 1977 sent one of its Inspectors to examine the moat. He went away saying that he would recommend it for scheduling. Now, after quite an interval, it seems the idea is coming to fruition, for we have had a letter from the Department saying “This is to let you know that the Moated Site at 80 East End Road, Finchley N3, is in process of being scheduled and this should be completed by early next year.”

We greatly welcome the DoE’s action and the fact that this piece of Finchley’s history will have some protection.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT – PART II

CHRISTINE ARNOTT finishes her round-up of next winter’s classes with details of WEA courses available locally.

Unless otherwise stated, the following courses offer 24 lectures, with visits that are additional and vary in number; the cost, also unless otherwise stated, is £8, with concessionary fees for pensioners of $6.50. Enrolment can be made at the class on the first day; and in some instances you will be allowed to attend for two weeks without obligation to join.
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GOLDERS GREEN. “Why the Romans Came to Britain,” lecturer Margaret Roxan, Golders Green Library, Thurs. from Oct. 4, 8-10 pm. Slides, films and visits are included.

FINCHLEY. “Industrial History”‘ – from the Industrial Revolution to today. North Finchley Library, Tues. starting Sept. 25, 8-10 pm.

“Geology” This course will deal with SE England and pay particular attention to a 30-mile radius from Finchley. Special films and 6 field visits. The lecturer, a master at Mill Hill School, is a real enthusiast. Venue is 46 Southover, Nl2, Weds. from Sept 26, 8-10 pm.

MILL HILL. “Ancient Mesopotamia her Neighbours Politics and History” Richard Evans, Hartley Hall, Flower Lane, 8-10 pm, Tues. from Oct. 9, 22 meetings £12.

“Greek Civilisation: Foundations of Western Theatre, ” Dr. Anne Ward; Edgware Library, Hale Lane, Mons. from Oct.8, 8-10 pm. 22 meetings, £12

BARNET. “Roman Archaeology,” Tony Rook, Ewen Hall , Wood St, Barnet , Fris. from Sept 8, 10.30am-12.30 pm. “Trace the History of Everyman,” Queen Elizabeth School for Boys, Thur from Sept. 27, 7.45-9.45 pm A genealogy class which will involve student participation.

HENDOW “Peoples and Civilisations of the Ancient Near East”, R G Evans, Hendon Library, Weds: from Sept. 26, 7.30-9.30 pm. The fee for this class is £10.

FRIERN BARNET. “Natural History with Archaeology”, South Friern Library, Colney Hatch Lane, Weds. from Sept. 26, 8~10pm. Evolution and environment, including fossil study and pollen analysis.
Barnet College

As mentioned last month, details of classes at this College were given to us before the printed prospectus was available and there are therefore some alterations in the details we printed in August.

The principal one is definitely an improvement: the fee for the third year course of the Certificate in Field Archaeology of London University (on the post-Roman period in SE England) is £8, not £15 as stated.

Fees quoted for the other courses at Barnet College were also too high. Three “terms of 2-hour classes in Family History will cost £12, not £15; two terms of 2-hour classes in Local History at East Barnet Junior High School will be £8, not £10.

In Addition, there is a 3-term course in Local History at Barnet College itself, on Mons. from 7.30-9.30 pm, fee £12.

The above classes are all “non-vocational” and this type of class begins at the College in the week starting Mon. Oct. 1.
NEWS FLASH

One day conference on Town and Country in Roman Britain. Sat. Oct. 6, 10 am-5 pm. St A1bans School, Abbey Gate, St. Albans. Tickets (£1.25) and further details from E J Heathman, 92 Charmouth Rd, St. Al bans, AL1 4SQ.
Page 8

GAZETTEER OF ROMAN SITES AND FINDS: Pt. II

HELEN GORDON continues her round-up of evidence for the Romans in the Borough of Barnet.

BROCKLEY HILL. Finds from this site are recorded below, area by area. Those to the east of the A5 (the boundary between the Boroughs of Harrow and Barnet) are recorded more fully as this gazetteer particularly concerns Barnet. Finds to the west, in Harrow, are summarised, but full references are given. Numbers in the margin refer to the map printed with the August Newsletter. Numbers’in brackets after kilns are as listed by SA Castle in Trans LAMAS 27, 1976, p 225/6.

NW corner of field 412. TQ 1744 9404. Excav. 1956-8 by Mr. Ridley

1. Kiln (no 6) and pottery in south bank of pond. Mus. Lond. ref: F36

Kiln furnace constructed of burnt clay, reinforced with wasters. Quantity of miniature votive urns, frags. of poppyhead beakers and other vessels. Multi-coloured glass ring. Kiln debris. Date: c. 110-150 AD.

Present location of finds unknown

Ref: Castle, SA, “Roman Pottery from Brockley Hill, Middx, 1966 & 1972-4,” Trans LAMAS 27, 1976, 206-227 (p.225)

2. Three kilns (nos. 12-14). TQ 174 940. Excav. 1972 by S A Castle and Brockley Hill Excavation & Field Work Group

Pottery kilns, one with pedestal of mortaria wasters, including stamp of DRICCIVS. Possibly worked by potters Driccius and Arentus. Pottery included ring necked flagons, reed rimmed bowls, jars, lids and mortaria with stamps of ARENTVS, DOINVS, DRICCIVS.

Date: c. 110-160 AD Present location: Mus. Lond

Ref: Castle, S A, “Trial Excavations in Field 410, Brockley Hill, Pt .2,” Lond. Archaeologist, vol 2 No 4, 1973, 78-83

SW corner of field 410. TQ 17489393. Excav. 1937 by F Cottrill with LAMAS & Stanmore, Edgware & Mill Hill Hist. Socs.

3. Brooch and pottery

Date: lst c. AD

Location: some pottery in custody of Borough Librarian, LBB

Ref: Cottrill, F, “Note on the Trial Excavation at Brockley Hill, 1937,” Trans LAMAS NS 7, 1937, 686-7.

4. Pit containing pottery. TQ 175939. Excav. 1972 by S A Castle and BHE & FWG

Clay pit containing kiln material and coarseware pottery including Hofheim type flagons, South Gaulish samian and a large quantity oak charcoal. Imitation as of Claudius I.

Date: c. 50-60 AD

Present location: Mus. Lond.

Ref: Castle, SA, “Trial Excavation in field 410, Brockley Hill; Pt. I,” Lond. Archaeologist vol 2 No 2, 1973, 36-39
Page 9

Hilltop Café Sire, NW corner of field 413. TQ 175 939. Excav. 1972 by S A Castle & BHE & FWG

5. Kiln (no.11), possibly of potter Secundus, with part of furnace, 6ft. diam, of burnt clay reinforced with coarseware sherds, including mortarium of SECVNDVM & ring necked flagons, which were main product.

Date: 65-100 AD

Present location: Mus. Lond.

Ref: Castle, S A, “Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, 1972,” Trans LAMAS 25, 1974, 251-263

(i) Pottery

Ring necked flagon, 2-handled flagons, bowls, jars, mortaria SECVNDVS, samian, brick and tile wasters.

Date: 1st/2nd c. AD

Location: some pottery in custody of Borough Librarian, LBB

Ref: Cottrill, F, “Note on the Trial Excavation at Brockley 1937,” trans LAMAS NS 7, 1937, 686-7

(ii) Clay Pits

Excav. (a) 1947 by K M Richardson

(b) 1952 by Philip Suggett

(c) 1972 by S A Castle

Pottery found included mortaria stamped MELVS, SECVNDVS, RIPANVS, MARIMVS, MATVGENVS, SATVRNINVS, ANDIL, MERTVMAR. Ring necked flagons, jars, 2-handled bowls, amphorae, reed rimmed bowls, samian. Coins included antoninianus of Claudius II, unworn sestertius of Vespasian, sestertius of Hadrian, two 3rd c. antoniniani, sestertius of Septimius Severus.

Date: 60 AD/end of 2nd c.

Present location: pottery from (a) and (b) above in custody of Borough Librarian, LBB; from (c) Mus. Lond.

Refs: Richardson; K M, “Report of the Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, Aug/Sept 1947,” Trans LAMAS NS 10 pt 1 1948, 1-23

Sugett, P G, “Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, March 1952- May 1953,” Trans LAMAS NS 11 pt. 3, 1954, 259~276

Castle, S A, “Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, March-May 1972, Trans LAMAS 25, 1974, 251-263

7. Pit under road opposite Hilltop Cafe Found 1953 by Mr Robinson

Contained samian ware

Undated

Present location: in custody of Borough Librarian, LBB

Ref: Castle, S A, “Brockley Hill, the Site of Sullonicae?” Lond. Archaeologist vol 1 No 14, 1972, 324-327

8. Kiln (no.5) Excav. 1952 by Philip Suggett

Width 8 ft. lying in pit with cobbling at edge of stokehole. Pit nearby contained small amphorae with ring bases, ring necked flagons, reed rimmed bowls, mortaria stamped MELVS; coin of Constantine in soil above kiln.

Date: 70/80 AD

Present location: some pottery in custody of Borough Librarian, LBB

Ref: Suggett, P G, “Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, March 1952-May 1953, Trans LAMAS NS 11 pt. 3, 1954, 259-276

Gold ring found unstratified 1953

Heavy gold ring with oval bevel, probably once contained a stone, misshapen and marked as though run over by heavy machine.

Undated

Present location: Local History Collection, LBB
Page 10

Part of Brockley Hill lying to W of A5 road in Borough of Harrow – (finds listed from N to S)

SW of Green Cottage.

Kiln (no. 7) undated, observed by Mr. Upton 1965

Ref: Castle, S A, “Roman Pottery from Brockley Hill, Middx, 1966 and 1972-4,” Trans LAMAS 27, 1976, p 225

E Side of Field 154

Kiln (no. 2) dated 90-150 AD, excav. 1951

Ref: Suggett, P G, “Report on the Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, Aug/Sept 1951,” Trans LAMAS NS 11 pt. 2, 1953, 173-188

Kiln (no. 1) dated 100-160 AD, excav. 1950

Ref: Applebaum S H, “Sul1oniacae, 1950, Excavations at Brockley Hill,” Trans LAMAS NS 10 pt 3, 1951, 201-228

Two kilns (nos. 3 & 4) , no. 3 built on remains of no. 4, dated 100-160 AD & 70-100 AD, excav. 1951

Ref: Suggett, P G, “Report on Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, Aug/ Sept 1951,” Trans LAMAS NS 11 pt 2, 1953, 173-188

Tennis Court Area

Kiln (no. 10), 1st/2nd c. AD, observed by Mr. Harris 1971

Ref: Castle SA, “Roman Pottery from Brockley Hill, Middx, 1966 & 1972-~,” Trans LAMAS 27, 1976, 226/7

Hut, etc, dated 1st c. AD, excav. 1953/4

Ref: Suggett P G “Report on Excavations at Brockley Hil1, Middx, Aug 1953/4,” Trans LAMAS NS 19 pt 1, 1956, 65-75

S of Brockley Hill House. TQ 174 940

Kiln (no. 9) dated 70-110 AD, excav. 1971

Ref: Castle, S A, “A Kiln of the Potter Doinus,” Arch. J. 129, 1972, 69-88

Field 157, S of Wood Lane. TQ 174 942

Kiln (no. 8) dated 70-120 AD, excav. 1968

Ref: Castle S A & Warbis J H, “Excavations on Field No. 157, Brockley Hill, (Sul1oniacae’?) Middx, Feb-Aug 1968,” Trans LAMAS 24, 1973, 85-110

Finds from the above excavations are now either in Mus. Lond. or in custody of Borough Librarian, LBB.

II THE ENVIRON OF BROCKLEY HILL

Pipers Green Lane. TQ 1798 9328. Found 1954 by Mr. Probert; excav. 1955 by Philip Suggett.

9. Cremation urns and pottery Mus. Lond. ref: F44

Found when service trench dug to Aldenham Garage, in field NE of junction of Pipers Green Lane and Brockley Hill; further archaeological trenches in 1955 revealed nothing more. Finds included one whole Urn (now missing), frags of another urn, small ring necked flagon, frags of storage jar and samian, part of a bronze key.

Date: lst c. AD
Page 11

Present location: HADAS

Ref: Suggett, P G, “Report on Excavations at Brockley Hill, Middx, Aug. 1953/4,” Trans LAMAS NS 19 pt 1, 1956, 65-75, (p.68)

10 (i) Pottery. TQ 1797/1798 9326/9343. Found 1977 by HADAS

A scatter of pottery (291 pieces) found on field walks; including sherds in typical Brockley Hill fabric, frags. flagons, mortaria, tazze, reed rimmed bowls, etc. Also 86 pieces of building material including imbrices, tegulae and flue tile.

Present location: HADAS

Ref: HADAS Newsletter 75, 1977, 5-6

(ii) Pottery. Small quantities of tile and pottery found 1970 when a gas-main trench was dug near, and parallel to, the A5, at three points within 300 m. of Pipers Green Lane.

(iii) Pottery has also been found at the border of golf course at of Pipers Green Lane, TQ 18239315. Mus. Lond. ref: F43

(iv) And also on playing field near Canons Corner, TQ 18259292. Mus. Lond. ref: F42

Present location of (iii) and (iv) unknown

Edgwarebury

11. Pottery. TQ 1857 9433. Found 1976 and 1977 by HADAS

A scatter of pottery near foot of electricity pylon (approx. 70 identifiable pieces) and building material, including imbrex and tegulae: was found during field walking on Bury Farm estate, in OS field No.5831.

Date: late 1st-3rd c. AD

Present location: HADAS

Ref: HADAS Newsletter 72, 1977, 6

15 Blackwell Gardens, Edgware. TQ 193930. Found 1974 by house owner Mr Selby

12. Pottery. Circular piece, 3 in. diam. found in back garden. Typical Brockley Rill fabric, function unknown, possibly kiln equipment.

Dating impossible.

Mus. Lond. Ref: F761

Present location: Kept by owner

13. Tile Fragments. TQ 189 934 – reported 1958 by Godfrey Cole & 1960 by Mr. Phillips

Found in field near sharp kink in stream where earthen bank was possibly a dam. Mus. Lond. ref: F47

Undated

Present location unknown

14. Pottery_and charcoal. TQ 1792 9424 No details Mus. Lond. ref: F48

III EDGWARE

15. 4 Farm Road, NW7 (off Hale Lane). TQ 20599080. Found by house owner, Mrs. Hall.

Coin. Tetradrachm of Aurelian, mint of Alexandria, Condition probably too good to have been lost in antiquity.
Page 12

Present location: kept by owner

Ref: HADAS Newsletter 49, 1975, 2

IV BURNT OAK —~,

33 Thirleby Road. TQ 20599080. Found by house owners Mr & Mrs Whiston, 1970. Excav. 1971 & .1972 by HADAS

16. Pits, pottery, coin. About 30 unstratified sherds found in front garden; later excavation revealed rubbish pits containing further pottery frags. including colour coated ware, dishes, mortaria, flagons , lids, storage jars and a barbarous radiate of c. 270 AD.

Date: 3rd/early 4th c. AD

Present location: HADAS

Ref: “Roman Pottery from Thirleby Rd, Burnt oak, Edgware,” Trans LAMAS 29, 1978, 154-5.

V HENDON

Grove House, The Burroughs. NW4. TQ 227 894. Found 1889 by Dr. Hicks

17. Pottery, tile and brick. Six pieces of grey, red and orange-buff pottery, including a whole single-handled ring necked flagon, also roofing tile and “circular brick,” were found with some frags of bone about a foot below the surface in a gravel pit.

Date: late 1st/early 2nd c. AD

Present location: Local History Collection, LBB

Refs: Proc. Soc. Antiquaries 2nd series, 13, 1889, 16

Hendon & District Times, 13.12.1889

Robertson, E, “Roman Material found at Grove House, Hendon, in 1889,” Trans LAMAS 24, 1973, 146-150

Corner of Church Terrace/Greyhound Hill NW4. TQ 22898953. Excav. 1973/4 by HADAS.

18. Pottery. A small quantity of pottery and tile was found at western perimeter of site, including coarse redware, imitation samian, colour-coated and grey ware. Frags. which might have been from a multiple vase and a flagon neck in redware with a stylised face could be from religious vessels.

Date: late 3rd/early 4th c. AD

Present location: HADAS Ref: Sammes, E, “Moulded Face-flagon from Church Terrace, Hendon,” Trans LAMAS 28, 1977, 272- 3

111 Sunny Gardens Road, NW4. TQ 2298 8998. found 1966 by Sq. Ldr. Rideal

19. Burial urn containing Ashes and calcined bone, poss. of a child. Urn of Highgate Woods type, light sandy fabric not-identified. Height 21.5 cm, diam. 22.25 cm.

Date: end 1st/beginning 2nd c. AD

Present location: on display at Church Farm House Museum, Hendon

Ref: Robertson, B, “Human Cremation Burial from Hendon,” Trans LAMAS 22 pt. 2, 1969, 53-55

NOTE RE Item 17 above. – Tessellated pavement (16×12 cm) usually associated with the pottery is probably a collectors item, and almost certainly not from The Grove.
Page 13

Copthall Fields. TQ 232 914. Excav. 1968 by HADAS

20. (i) Pottery. Black, brown and grey~ware found at edges of road. Mainly native ware. Mus. Lond. ref: F659

Date: 1st c. AD to early 2nd c, Some pre-conquest

Present location: HADAS

(ii) Road surface. Resistivity survey indicated presence of road which subsequent excavation demonstrated in two places TQ 232 914 and TQ 2325 9120. Aligned partly NW/SE, partly NE/SW, not on line of route 167 suggested by Viatores. Mus. Lond. ref: F924

Date: by associated pottery, 1st c. AD, already declining in usage by beginning of 2nd c. AD.

Refs: Viatores, “Roman Roads in SE Midlands,” 1964 ,

Robertson, B, “An Investigation of Roman Road No 167,” Trans LAMAS 22 pt 2, 1970, 10-29

21. (iii) Lamp. TQ 2329 9030. Found c. 1963 by N Ashdown, 20 Sunny Hill, NW4

Coarse pottery lamp, 3″ diam. with engraved design, found on E side of path to allotments from Great North Way. (Possibly brought to England in modern times).

Date: late 3rd/4th c. AD Present location: kept by finder

Ref: HADAS Newsletter 25, 1973, 2; and 27, 1973, 2.

(iv) Coin, prob. Antonine, found in Archfields Allotments by L Lewis.

Present location: Local History Collection, LBB

51 Kings Close, NW4. TQ 239 893 Reported by Rolf Hansen

22. Coin. Found in garden and said to have been identified as a coin of Probus.

Present location: kept by finder, the owner of this house

Church Walk, NW4. Found 1960s by Mr. Peacock (owner of nearby timber yard)

23 Coin. Found “lying on top of ground” – possibly dropped by collector. Clipped sestertius of Hadrian.

Present location: kept by finder

The Hyde, NW9. found in 19th c.

24. Coin. gold. Mus. Lond. ref: F56

Present location: unknown

Refs: Brett-James, N G, “The story of Hendon,” 1931

Evans, E T, “History & Topography of Parish of Hendon,” 1890

26. Coin of Vespasian mentioned in local paper of Oct. 30, 1925, as having been found in Hendon. No further details.

Present location unknown.

VI Hampstead Garden Suburb

N. side of Falloden Way, NWll. TQ 254 891. Found 1974 by Garry Wadkin, 5 Brookland Hill, NWll

27. Pottery. Base of samian cup, with stamp, found during road works.

Present location: kept by finder
Page 14

VII MILL HILL. Said to have been found 1769

29. Lamp and coins, No. details.

Ref: Sharpe, Montagu, “Midd1esex in British, Roman and Saxon Times,” 1932, 113

Moat Mount Park/Moat End Farm. TQ 2168 9427. Found 1953

30. Coin. Inscription il1egible. Mus. Lond. ref: F67

Date: Probably 3rd c. AD

Present Location: Local History Collection, LBB

VIII Arkley

Ark1ey Hotel 32. Coin of Antoninus Pius said to have been found in grounds.

Present location: unknown

Ref: Viatores, “Roman Roads of SE Midlands,,” 1964, 117

IX NORTH FINCHLEY

16 Wolsetnbury, Woodside Park, N12. TQ 2499 9219. Found by A D King, 54 Lul1ington Garth, N12

33. Coin of Hadrian, found in garden

Present location: kept by finder

X BARNET

Mansfield Avenue. TQ 279 954. Found 1961. Mus. Lond. ref: F110

34. Coin struck in Constantinople 337 AD

Present location: unknown

Ref: Thames Basin Arch. Obs. Group Newsletter No 7 Dec. 1961

NOTE 1. Two separate finds of Gallo-Belgic coins in the area (which may of course have been depQsited outside the Roman period) should be recorded, as follows:

28. Coin found in Golders Green, 1926.

Ref: Inst. Archaeology Occasional Papers No. 11 1958, 150 (Allen)

35. Coin found near Barnet. Gaulish gold stater, inscribed (Evans type B8).

Refs: Allen, “Belgic Dynasties of Britain & Their. Coins,” Archaeologia XC 1944

Evans, J, “Ancient British Coins.”

NOTE 2. Some coins shown on the HADAS finds map (circulated with the last Newsletter) are not detailed above. Recent research suggests their authenticity is now in some doubt and that the same find has been reported more than once. The numbers concerned are 25 and 31.

Past Newsletters

newsletter-112-june-1980

Newsletter

newsletter-111-may-1980

Newsletter

Volume 3 1980 1985

newsletter-110-april-1980

Newsletter

newsletter-108-february-1980

Newsletter

newsletter-107-january-1980

Newsletter

newsletter-106-december-1979

Newsletter

newsletter-105-november-1979

Newsletter

newsletter-104-october-1979

Newsletter

newsletter-103-september-1979

Volume 11: 2020 - 2024

Volume 10: 2015 - 2019‎

Volume 9: 2010 - 2014

Volume 8 : 2005 - 2009

Volume 7 : 2000 - 2004

Volume 6 : 1995 - 1999

Volume 5 : 1990 - 1994

Volume 4 : 1985 - 1989

Volume 3 : 1980 - 1984

Volume 2 : 1975 - 1979

Volume 1 : 1969 - 1974

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