Nov 01

Newsletter-572-November 2018

By Roger | HADAS, Latest Newsletter, Past Newsletters, Volume 10: 2015 - 2019‎ | No Comments

No. 572 NOVEMBER 2018 Edited by Sue Willetts
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming lectures and events Lectures, the finds group course, and the film are held at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE. Buses 13, 143, 326 & 460 pass close by, and it is five to ten minutes’ walk from Finchley Central Station (Northern Line). Tea/coffee and biscuits follow the lecture.

Sunday 9th December – HADAS Christmas Lunch at Avenue House. 12:30 – 4 p.m. £30 including full Christmas dinner. See p.2.
Tuesday 8th January 2019 NO LECTURE
Tuesday 12th February 2019. Jon Cotton Prehistory in London – some Problems, Progress and Potential
Tuesday 12th March 2019. John Clark Lost and Found: the Rediscovery of Roman London
Tuesday 9th April 2019. Gustav Milne The CITiZAN Project
Tuesday 14th May 2019 Lyn Blackmore (but waiting for final confirmation) Crosse and Blackwell factory excavations
Tuesday 11th June 2019 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Tuesday 8th October 2019 To be arranged. Tuesday 12th November 2019 Bob Cowie Shene and Syon: a royal and monastic landscape revealed

For your diary – 2019 Long Trip
We have booked the hotel for our long trip in 2019. Details will follow in due course.
The hotel is: Best Western Aberavon Beach Hotel, Aberavon Beach, Port Talbot, SA12 6QP
Dates Monday 23rd to Friday 27th September 2019

Cost will be slightly higher than 2018 because of the increasing cost of fuel for the coach.
If you are interested, please let Jim Nelhams know (treasurer@hadas.org.uk)

Battle of Barnet Project
We were pleased to receive from the above a card saying: “Thank you for being part of the Battle of Barnet Project”. This is in recognition of our help with the test-pitting and other associated actions.
Although no site for the Battle of Barnet…….

Remember, Remember, Remember to sign up for the HADAS Christmas party.
The party is on December 9th, 2018, between 12.30pm and 4.00pm at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, N3 3QE. The party is for HADAS members and their guests. The price is £30 per person.
Send remittances to Peter Pickering, 3 Westbury Road, Woodside Park, London N12 7NY
Or pay directly to: Account title: HADAS, Bank code: 40-52-40 Bank account: 00007253
Please title the payment “HADAS Party 2018”

HADAS vacancy
As Jim Nelhams, who has been HADAS treasurer for the last ten years plus, has decided to stand down at next year’s AGM, HADAS is in dire need of a replacement.
Could you manage HADAS’ treasury function? If you could we would love to hear from you.
To discuss this vacancy and what the role entails please contact me (Don Cooper) by any of the various methods below. (See last page of the newsletter)
PS An assistant editor to help Sue Willetts in preparing the newsletter for printing would be very welcome. Please contact Don Cooper to discuss this role.

Exciting archaeology news from the Black Sea and Pompeii Sue Willetts
A merchant ship, thought to be Greek, dating back more than 2,400 years has been found lying on its side off the Bulgarian coast. The 23m (75ft) wreck, found in the Black Sea by an Anglo-Bulgarian team, is being hailed as officially the world’s oldest known intact shipwreck. See the BBC website for more information: It was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface. A lack of oxygen at that depth preserved it, the researchers said. The principal investigator of the Black Sea Maritime Project (MAP) is Professor Jon Adams – his view is that this will change our understanding of shipbuilding and seafaring in the ancient world.
In Pompeii a new coloured fresco has been discovered in the House of the Enchanted Garden, so called due to the variety of animals and plants that decorate its walls, which was partially excavated in the 19th century but the frescoed room has only now been found. The director of the site is Massimo Osanna. The frescoes include the figure of a horse, birds in flight and a strange human figure with a dog’s head. The main room is believed to be a lararium, a room designed to hold the images of the lares, divine protectors.
For more information and images from the Daily Telegraph – click here – or look out for more coverage to come in the archaeology press.

New Publication Information from Don Cooper The Roman Pottery Manufacturing Site in Highgate Wood: Excavations 1966-78 by A. E. Brown and H. L. Sheldon.

This book co-authored by our president Harvey Sheldon has, after a long germination, finally been produced. It is being sold by Archaeopress and is priced at £60. I know it is expensive, but you can also download it as a pdf from the link to the Archaeopress site below.
Perhaps one of our Romanists would like to write a review in due course.
See http://www.archaeopress.com/Public/displayProductDetail.asp?id=%7B7915E40D-7B87-49DD-B1CC-08D5FDABB505%7D The following text is taken from the publicity for this volume.
Excavations over a period of eight years uncovered at least ten pottery kilns, waster heaps, ditches and pits, but only a few definite structures. The pottery from the site indicates a period of operation extending from the first half of the 1st century AD to the later 2nd century. The pottery made at the site included initially a vegetable tempered handmade ware, but subsequently the bulk of it consisted of a grog tempered ware and then pottery in a sandy fabric which is well known from assemblages in London. The type of kiln varied with the pottery fabric; there was possible evidence for a pre-Roman pit firing, and later kilns set in ditches were of the twin flued type, eventually replaced by the more familiar above ground kilns with raised floors. Changes in pottery fabric were reflected in different methods of clay preparation, which led to changes in the function of the various ditches, the stratigraphy of which, along with the variation in the fabrics, was significant in enabling the four broad phases into which the site has been divided, to be proposed.
The report includes a very detailed analysis of the forms and fabrics of the pottery made at Highgate. Finds of prehistoric flintwork and pottery during the excavation, and of material of later date, together with the observation of earthworks and historical research, have been used to show the place of the pottery kilns as an element in the exploitation of the woodland of northern London over the last eight thousand years.

London Archaeologist 50 (1968-2018): an archaeological conference held in London
Robin Densem

I went to an archaeological conference on 6th October 2018. The conference, at King’s College London, was attended by some 200 amateur and professional archaeologists, and others, and was held to celebrate fifty years of the London Archaeologist magazine that had been founded in 1968. I saw at least two other members of HADAS there, including Harvey Sheldon who was co-chairing the proceedings.

The publication is an A4 sized quarterly magazine that presents archaeological research and excavation reports; interviews; finds, artefact, and bioarchaeology studies; book reviews and an events diary, and it is probably well known to our members.

The magazine contains articles from writers across the archaeological spectrum in London, on topics ranging from human skulls in the Walbrook, to community archaeology in Fulham, to Tudor bee boles in Greenwich.

London Archaeologist is run by a completely voluntary team elected annually each May at the AGM. The production of the magazine, marketing, membership and financial matters are handled by the officers. The officers are joined on the Publication Committee by up to six further ‘ordinary’ members, drawn from the professional and voluntary side of archaeology. The organisation is a registered charity, no 262851.

The presentations by various speakers at the conference included considerations of the development of archaeological practice in London over the last fifty years, and specialist contributions on finds, public engagement, health and safety, and commercial archaeology carried out to satisfy town planning requirements.

It may be that developers, planners, and construction professionals would find it interesting and worthwhile to subscribe to the magazine, as well as local society members and other archaeologists, if they are not already doing so: https://www.londonarchaeologist.org.uk/ . One of the themes at the conference was the importance of archaeology in enhancing development schemes and this is one of the threads in commercial archaeology, in amongst the fact that archaeology is a material consideration in the planning process. The reality that a developer may be faced with ten, twenty or more planning conditions, of which the historic environment is just one of these.

The left-hand image shows the front cover of a recent issue of the magazine, featuring the reverse of a gold coin minted in London of the Saxon king Coenwulf who ruled Mercia (the Midlands down to London), from AD 796 until his death in 821. The legend reads DE VICO LUNDONIAE (‘from the wic of London’). A wic was, of course, a Saxon trading settlement or emporium, usually on a navigable river or on the coast, and the place-name element can be present in some in modern place names, such as in Sandwich on the Kent coast, or it may be preserved in the archaic names for places such as Hamwic for Southampton, Jorvic for York, and Lundenwic for London. These places were all important Saxon trading settlements, and in London and York’s cases they overlay former Roman towns there.

The right-hand image was taken during the conference. Clive Orton who edited the magazine for 40 years from 1976 can be glimpsed at the lectern on the extreme right facing the audience as he reads a paper written by Peter Marsden on the latter’s important work on Roman London. Peter Marsden is on the left on the slide on the screen, taking notes from Mortimer Wheeler who, with his arm raised, is declaiming the history of an archaeological site in London in the 1960s. Wheeler (1890-1976) was a big figure in archaeology in England, publicising many discoveries, latterly on television, and founding the Institute of Archaeology in London, now part of University College London, in 1937.

A speaker at the conference explained how some archaeological sites in London are now being displayed for public access, notably the Temple of Mithras in the City of London. Another speaker told how a Roman sarcophagus has formed a central element of an exhibition on Roman Dead at the Museum of London (25 May – 28 October 2018) at its Docklands site. A room of displays at the conference featured books for sale, and t-shirts, though with the weather as it was on the day umbrellas would have been more appropriate!

HADAS Long trip to East Anglia Jim Nelhams
Monday 17th September and a quick tour around the borough to pick up 34 travellers for our trip, with five more to join us later at the Hotel in Brome, just south of Diss.

Cressing Temple Peter Pickering
A comfort break at a service station apart, our first stop out of London was at Cressing Temple, which I remembered having visited on a HADAS day trip in 1990, when there were ‘crowds milling around Women’s Institute competition entries’, and before the walled garden had been restored. The temple is not, as its name would imply, a place of worship, but rather a group of enormous barns with ancillary buildings and a beautiful walled garden. It is called ‘temple’ because the two largest barns were built in the thirteenth century by the Knights Templar, the famous, indeed unfairly notorious, military order who fought in the Crusades and got some of the finance for these operations out of agriculture. The ‘Barley Barn’ is the first, built early in the thirteenth century, and the ‘Wheat Barn’ came some fifty years later. Magnificent barns like these are often compared to cathedrals, and because they do not have stone or much-decorated vaults it is easier to comprehend from barns how the carpenters covered great buildings. Add to these two barns from the thirteenth century one rather similar from the seventeenth and another, smaller, from the eighteenth – and a seventeenth century farmhouse – and the true value of this complex emerges. But that is not all; Essex County Council, to whose stewardship we owe it, have, since the 1990 HADAS visit, restored the walled garden, with lots of (clearly identified) interesting and attractive plants, which looked glorious in the balmy autumnal sunlight. Oh, and there was a cafe run by Tiptree, which leads on to . . .

Tiptree Jam Shop, Tea Room and Museum Deirdre Barrie
The second stop on Day One allowed HADAS to shop early for presents (albeit weighty ones!) at the Tiptree jam shop and museum. There was also an outdoor exhibit of farm machinery. Tiptree not only manufacture jams, but also chutneys and delicacies such as an addictive lemon curd – and there are FIVE varieties of raspberry jam alone. (One preserve is actually called “Traffic Jam!”). Most of us will be familiar with the handy little 28 gram mini jars of jams and honey available in restaurants and supermarkets (and later at our hotel).
Those who could bear to postpone their trip to the tea shop could visit a small museum about the history of the firm. The Tiptree business was founded in 1885 by the Wilkin family. Peter John Wilkin (who lives nearby in a house unsurprisingly called Tiptree Hall) is the fourth generation of the Wilkin family to join the board. One of their early, witty company mottoes was “By their fruits shall ye know them.”

The management appear to have been caring employers. Houses were built for their workers, and whole families have and still do work for the company. “Wilkin & Sons Limited”, says the sign outside the factory. Present management are watchful that modern slavery does not play any part in their suppliers. Production methods continue to improve. Before the Killie Jam Filler machine was introduced in 1950, an employee could manage to fill only 20 jars of jam in an hour by hand. Now 200 jars whizz along the production line in the same time.
Jam was sent to the troops in World War I, and Tiptree was awarded a Royal Warrant for jam in 2008.
Part of the Tiptree secret is that they grow all their own fruit. Twelve mulberry trees not far from the factory were planted 120 years ago. Tiptree even have their own variety of strawberry, named “Little Scarlet”. Apparently Little Scarlet Conserve is a favourite of James Bond – it is mentioned in the Ian Fleming novel, “From Russia with Love”.

East Bergholt Church Peter Pickering
We arrived in East Bergholt fortified by Tiptree and walked from the coach past many reminders of the artist John Constable (whose parents’ house had stood there) to the imposing church of St Mary. The church signalled at the same time the wealth produced by the wool industry that had paid for it and the ferocity of the reformers who had despoiled it. Was the strange half-built but clearly ambitious tower outside the west doors evidence of a recession in the wool industry or an early sign of the reformers’ zeal?
Inside, the austere appearance left by the Puritans, who were strong in the area, is only partly softened by the Victorian reintroduction of stained glass. Careful exploration, however, reveals many features of interest – the parish chest, a fifteenth century wall-painting of the Resurrection, a seventeenth century brass (the only survivor of many once on the church floor), and a monument to Edward Lambe listing his merits in two columns – one of those beginning with E and the other of those beginning with L. But perhaps most striking was the monument to John Mattinson, schoolmaster, who was ‘unfortunately shot’ in 1723; he is described in a Latin verse as ‘a terror and a delight to his pupils’.
We were also amused by a repeated notice in the choir stalls reminding those inhabiting them to be careful what they say because the microphones mean that it will be heard throughout the church; one wonders what libellous or ribald remarks made such a reminder necessary. On our way out of the church we noted various tombs, including those of Constable’s parents, and a free-standing bell-cage, needed because there was no tower.

Flatford Mill Don Cooper
And so to Flatford Mill, the last visit of the day before we went to the hotel. Flatford Mill is rightly famous for being the site of many of John Constable’s paintings. John Constable (1776-1837), one of the greatest British artists, was the son of the owner of Flatford Mill. The mill itself is sited by the river Stour in a beautiful landscape now often referred to as “John Constable country”. Constable created many of his more famous paintings in the area of the mill and its surroundings. Below are a couple of my photographs, I hope they convey some sense of the beauty of the area.

Figure 1 Stour river at Flatford

It was fascinating to see the actual landscape which has hardly changed from the time it was painted by Constable. The sun was shining, and the late afternoon light highlighted the colours of the trees, vegetation and reflections on the water.

Figure 2 Willy Lot’s cottage
There is a small museum with poster illustrations of some of his paintings as well as a tea and gift shop on the site. For those, like me, that love Constable’s paintings this was an exciting and rewarding visit.
Further reports on the trip will follow….

Queen Eleanor’s Journey – Part 3 Jim Nelhams
After leaving Geddingstone, the procession made its way to Hardingstone, where another of the surviving crosses remains.

The route continued across to Watling Street (A5) and southwards along it to Stony Stratford, now part of Milton Keynes.
No trace remains of this cross – it was destroyed during the civil war by troops on their way to the Battle of Naseby. The town has many Royal connections including King John, Edward IV and Richard III.
A house at the north end of the High Street displays a plaque with the following wording.
“Near this spot stood the Cross erected by King Edward the I to mark the place in Stony Stratford where the body of Queen Eleanor rested on its way from Harby in Nottinghamshire to Westminster Abbey in 1290”
Further south along Watling Street, the cortege made a slight diversion to the Cistercian Abbey at Woburn. The original Abbey is thought to have been somewhere near the west side of the current Woburn Abbey. In 1547, Henry VIII granted the land to the first Earl of Bedford, John Russell. The building was rebuilt in 1744, and remains the residence of the Dukes of Bedford.
No trace of the Woburn Cross remains.
This is situated on the A508 London Road on the south side of Northampton. It is at the edge of Delapré Abbey, or more properly, the Abbey of St Mary de la Pré, which was a monastery, originally founded as a nunnery about the year 1145 devoted to the congregation of the great Abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, France.
Its expansive sloping grounds are a nationally-protected Wars of the Roses battlefield, as a one-time site of the advance of the Yorkists during the Battle of Northampton (1460).
This cross is octagonal and stands on some steps. The steps have clearly been replaced. When erected, there was a cross at the top, but this was lost before 1460.
Continuing along Watling Street, the next stop was at Dunstable, where overnight custody of the coffin was taken by the canons of Dunstable Priory and placed on the High Altar. The carriage was kept near the crossroads. There is a plaque on the wall of the NatWest Bank by the traffic lights.

In High Street North, there is now a modern statue of the Queen.
Nearly there. Only three more stops before Charing Cross.

OTHER SOCIETIES & INSTITUTIONS EVENTS, compiled by Eric Morgan Please check with the organisations before setting out in case of any changes / cancellations

Friday 16th November 7.30 pm Wembley History Society, English Martyrs’ Hall, Chalk Hill Road, Wembley, HA9 9EW. Talk by Camilla Churchill. Brent archives revealed, Visitors £3. Refreshments
Monday 19th November. 6.00 pm Council for British Archaeology. London Archaeological Forum, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN. An opportunity to hear about London archaeology in recent months – the sites currently under investigation, recent discoveries and to discuss the issues that matter for the protection and promotion of archaeology in the capital.
Thursday 22nd November. Mill Hill Preservation Society. An evening meeting held at The Hub, Hartley Avenue, Mill Hill Library Building, Hartley Avenue, NW7 2HX – doors open 7.15 pm for coffee / subscription payments. Individual membership is £13.00 per year. The meeting will start at 7.45 pm when Chris Beney, chair of the Open Spaces Society (OSS founded 1865) will be giving a talk on the important work it does – including the protection of footpaths, common land, green spaces and parks. OSS is the oldest National conservation body in the country.
Sunday 25th November 11:30 – 16:30 Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE. Frost Fair with the Finchley Women’s Institute who are hosting their 7th Annual Frost Fair, with art and craft stalls.
Wednesday 28th November. 7.45 pm. Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, North Middlesex Golf Club, Friern Barnet Lane, N20 0NL. Film about Britain’s past. Coast and Sea. Non-members £2.
Thursday 29th November. 8.00 pm Finchley Society. Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Lane, N3 3QE Lecture VAD Nurses in WWI. Jean Scott Memorial Lecture given by John Drewry + actors. Non-members £2. Refreshments
Thursday 6th December. 8.00 pm Pinner Local History Society. Village Hall, Chapel Lane car park, Pinner, HA5 1AB. Talk by Brian Thompson. West Hertfordshire in the Footsteps of Herbert Tompkins on exploring with a Victorian Guide. Visitors £3.00
Friday 7th December 7.30 pm Wembley History Society (address as above). Talk. Turning the pages of History – on a historical oddity (Or Odyssey?) by Philip Grant (Brent Archives) Refreshments & mince pies. Visitors £3.00
Tuesday 11th December 6.30 pm LAMAS. Clore Learning Centre, Museum of London. (address as above) The Everyday Heroes of Postman’s Park. Talk by Dr John Price (Goldsmith’s College, University of London) Refreshments 6.00 pm Non-members £2.00
Tuesday 11th December, 7.45 pm Amateur Geological Society, Finchley Baptist Church Hall, East End Rd, N3 3QL (opp. Avenue House): Talk on enigmatic minerals of the UK by Mike Rumsey (Natural History Museum)
Wednesday 12th December, 2.30 pm. Mill Hill Historical Society. Trinity Church, 100 The Broadway, Mill Hill, NW7 3TB. Talk. Richard III: the body in the carpark. Dr Barry Walsh.
Thursday 13th December, 7.30 pm. Camden History Society. Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, NW3 1LT. Käthe Strenitz’s Camden Town and the Railways Lands. Talk by Peter Darley on how KS’s drawings are a unique record of Camden’s past and deserve far greater recognition. Visitors £1.00 Wine and nibbles from 7.00 pm.
Saturday 15th December. 1.30 – 3.30 pm Barnet 1471. Battlefields Society. St. John the Baptist Church, Barnet Church, junction High St. / Wood St. EN5 4BW. Mad Monk of Mitcham. Talk by Andrzej Lubienski on Medieval jewels and gemstones. Non members £5 + donation for refreshments. Pay at door.
Wednesday 19th December. 7.45 pm for 8.00 pm Edmonton Hundred Historical Society, Jubilee Hall, 2 Parsonage Lane at the junction with Chase Side, Enfield, EN2 0AJ. Christmas traditions. Talk by Howard Whisker. Wine and nibbles. Visitors £1.


With many thanks to this month’s contributors:
Deidre Barrie, Don Cooper, Robin Densom, Eric Morgan, Jim Nelhams, Peter Pickering, Sue Willetts

Hendon and District Archaeological Society
Chairman Don Cooper 59, Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8440 4350)
e-mail: chairman@hadas.org.uk
Hon. Secretary Jo Nelhams 61 Potters Road Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
e-mail: secretary@hadas.org.uk
Hon. Treasurer Jim Nelhams 61 Potters Road Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
e-mail: treasurer@hadas.org.uk
Membership Sec. Stephen Brunning Flat 22 Goodwin Court, 52 Church Hill Road,
East Barnet EN4 8FH (0208 440 8421) e-mail: membership@hadas.org.uk
Join the HADAS email discussion group via the website at: www.hadas.org.uk

Oct 01

Newsletter-571-October-2018

By Roger | HADAS, Latest Newsletter, News, Past Newsletters, Volume 10: 2015 - 2019‎ | No Comments

No. 571 OCTOBER 2018 Edited by Robin Densem
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming lectures and events

Lectures, the finds group course, and the film are held at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3
3QE. Buses 13, 143, 326 & 460 pass close by, and it is five to ten minutes’ walk from Finchley Central
Station (Northern Line). Tea/coffee and biscuits follow the lecture.
Wednesday 3rd October – Finds Group Course recommences. The weekly meetings are on Wednesdays,
from 6.30 to 8.30pm. There may be one or perhaps two places available. Please contact Don Cooper if
you would like to discuss and learn availability– if there is space it is possible to enrol after the course has
started.
Tuesday 9th October 2018 7.45pm for 8pm: Motor Launch M.L. 286-The Not So Silent WWI Movy
Hulked at Isleworth Ait by Suzanne Marie Taylor
The talk/lecture will describe Motor launch M.L. 286-also known as a Movy, a veteran of World War I
and World War II. Built for speed in 1916, she began her adventurous life as a spirited submarine chaser
as a part of The Grey Patrol in World War I. In World War II, M.L. 286 was one of the Dunkirk Little
Ships, which took part in Operation Dynamo in 1940-by which time, she was named Eothen. In the 1980s
Eothen was a houseboat until she was abandoned on the Thames foreshore at the back of BJ Wood & Son
Boatyard at Isleworth Ait. In the present, it would seem that M.L. 286 lies stationary in the boatyard of
Isleworth Ait. Yet, is she stationary? This talk will examine M.L. 286 as vibrant material culture which is
continuously moving and evolving, and becoming a dynamic part of the boatyard landscape. This talk
will highlight how M.L. 286 continues to evolve through the dedicated volunteer work of The Thames
Discovery Programme, and what the future could possibly hold for her. This talk will aim to highlight
how M.L. 286, is still very much a Movy.
Thursday October 11th – Quiz at Avenue House – 7:30 – £15 including a cooked supper.
HADAS regularly fields a team. Contact Stephen Brunning if you would like to be involved.
Tuesday 13th November 2018: The Rose – Shakespeare’s Secret Playhouse – a film made by Suzanne
Marie Taylor, Anthony Lewis and Siegffried Loew-Walker. The documentary film will be introduced by
one of the filmmakers, Anthony Lewis. The film’s highlight is HADAS member Suzanne Marie Taylor’s
interview with one of the world’s greatest and most respected actors, Ian McKellen, who speaks about his
own personal experience during the 1989 Save the Rose Campaign when the Rose was partially excavated
by the Museum of London. The film was premiered at Canada House on February 2nd 2017.
Sunday 9th December – HADAS Christmas Lunch at Avenue House. 12:30 – 4 p.m. £30 including full
Christmas dinner.

CHARING CROSS Stewart Wild
Jim Nelhams pondered in the last newsletter, with reference to Charing Cross station and the nearby
Eleanor Cross, on the origin of the name Charing. I must say, I think an etymology of “chère Reine” (dear
Queen) is rather ludicrous.

The Oxford Dictionary of London Place Names (2001) may be more helpful: Charing Cross
Westminster. The first part of the name is recorded early, as Cyrringe c.1100, Cherring 1198, La
Cherryng 1258 and’ La Charryng 1263. Derivation Old English c(i)erring (turning or bend), which may
refer either to the bend in the River Thames here, or to the well-marked bend in the old main road from
London to the West (Akeman Street, the Great West Road).

Personally I prefer the river derivation, as the Thames at this point makes a spectacular 90-degree turn
from a northerly to an easterly course which would have been unmissable, and significant, to eleventhcentury
Londoners settled nearby.

CHARING CROSS, AND THE EQUESTRIAN STATUE Robin Densem
Jim Nelhams wrote in the last issue (no. 570) that the folk etymology is that the place-name was perhaps
derived from “Chère Reine”. I took his mention of folk to be a warning that the derivation may or may
not be reliable – as it was folk etymology. It post-dated earlier variations of the place-name for the place.
The site (Site) of the original wooden Eleanor Cross is where the equestrian statue of Charles I stands, at
the south end of Trafalgar Square. The stone replacement cross on the Site was destroyed in 1647.

There is a story about the statue, cast by Le Sauer in 1633, and said to be the earliest equestrian statue in
England. The bronze statue had been ordered by Charles I’s Lord High Treasurer, Richard Weston, for
his garden at Roehampton. In 1649, John Rivett, a brazier or bronze-smith, was ordered to destroy the
statue, but instead he buried it in his garden. Rivett made a fortune by selling fragments of bronze,
purportedly from the statue. These were purchased by Roundheads and Cavaliers, respectively to either
rejoice in the destruction of the image of the king, or to have and treasure a memento of him.

Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, eight of the regicides who had signed the death
warrant of Charles I were executed at the Site. The Site was chosen so these regicides would look south at
the Banqueting House on Whitehall where their order to execute Charles I had been carried out in 1649.
Meanwhile also in 1660 the equestrian statue was unearthed by Rivett from his garden. He refused to give
the statue up to Lord Weston’s son, and by gift or purchase it came into the hands of Charles II, and was
erected on the Site in 1675, where it still stands, the earliest equestrian statue in England.

The execution by beheading of Charles I on a makeshift scaffold in front of Banqueting House in January1649. The king called for two shirts so he wouldn’t shiver in the cold. He
is reported to had said “the season is so sharp as probably may make me shake, which some observers may imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no such imputation.”

SOME EARLY DAYS IN ROMAN SOUTHWARK Robin Densem
I arrived again at Montague Close, SE1 one Sunday in late May 1972 to volunteer on what would have
been a third season for me on the local Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Society excavation on a
17th century delftware pottery site. Their site was full, but they thought there might be space down the
road at Harvey Sheldon’s site at 207 Borough High Street (207BHS). There I was set to work shovelling
what I later realised was natural sand and gravel! I asked about coming back another day, and there was
some discussion in the background, out of my earshot – the site supervisor said they would be open again
on Wednesday, so I returned. The site supervisor was the late Eric Ferretti who was to be my mentor for
the next fifteen months. Apparently there had been some concern I was too noisy but he had felt I might
just be useful. This site was being excavated on behalf of the Southwark Archaeological Excavation
Committee, SAEC, founded in 1962, for which Harvey was their Field Officer. Later I discovered that
Harvey led a band of archaeologists who had excavated several Roman sites, including Highgate Wood
(with A. E. Brown), and various rescue sites, in advance of redevelopment, in the East End of London, a
site in Clapham, another in Cambridge, and a major site, Toppings Wharf, in Southwark, by London
Bridge. I eventually realised much of this work was funded by grants from the Directorate of Ancient
Monuments and Historic Buildings (DAMHB) of the Department of the Environment, working in liaison
with the Inspector and Assistant Inspector of Ancient Monuments for London, and by grants from the
county archaeological society, the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society.

At 207BHS we had other volunteers on site on the weekends, working alongside a few full-timers who
were funded, and on Wednesdays to Fridays there were far fewer, if any volunteers, apart from me! So,
after a few days Eric said he would like me to open a trench, and it was suggested I should purchase a
double-sided notebook, with graph paper alternating with lined paper.

We worked in imperial scale and drew plans at one inch to two feet, so at 1:24. I remember being worried
that it was difficult to record relationships, as we generally only drew the extents of features, not layers –
all this was to change in the early 1980s with our adoption of the ‘single context recording system’ that
involved the planning of all layers and features, so plans could be overlain to discern relationships.
My trench, and I was so proud to have a role, was trench 4 and it contained the eastern edge of the gravel
metalling of the Roman bridge approach road, Stane Street, and its underlying ‘agger’ or bank of dumped
sand and silt, laid of a raft of timbers. The seriousness and commitment to recording was all-present, and I
began to learn about the complexities of archaeological stratigraphy, and a little about finds.

207BHS on a week-end day in summer 1972. I am sitting on the end of the far trench
wearing a white helmet, and writing in one of my notebooks.

BARNET IN CONTEXT: DATA FROM THE GLHER Robin Densem
Archaeology Advisors and Greater London Historic Environment Record (GLSMR) staff at
Historic England Greater London Archaeology Advisory Service (GLAAS). Photo: Robin Densem.
I had great plans to study the historic environment record (HER) data for the extent of the London
Borough of Barnet, but have only just started! My idea was to quantify the HER entries by period, and
see what this told me about the archaeology and history of Barnet. This idea goes back to 1976 when
Harvey asked me to look after the archaeology of Lambeth for his archaeological unit, the Southwark &
Lambeth Archaeological Excavation Committee, and I began researching local archaeology then.
Meanwhile in the City, John Schofield and Brian Hobley of the Museum of London’s Department of
Urban Archaeology began from 1978 “suggesting to every developer that they should pay for the
necessary archaeological work on their redevelopment site.” (John Schofield 1998 Archaeology in the
City of London 1907-91 (Museum of London). Harvey established the Museum’s Department of Greater
London Archaeology in 1983, having been instrumental in establishing the Greater London Sites and
Monuments (GLSMR) record that saw the employment of its first staff member, Pete James, in 1982.
We had achieved some developer funding for prominent sites from 1983, and then, largely George
Dennis, developed the use of archaeological planning conditions in Southwark from 1985, including for
the Rose Theatre in 1989. That year saw several sites in the news, as archaeological excavation work
found sites that needed preservation. In the reorganisations that followed, the GLSMR was taken into
English Heritage and is now the GLHER that is a marvellous and essential source of archaeological
information.

There is some information about GLAAS and its constituent GLHER on the internet at:
https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/our-planning-services/greater-london-archaeology-advisoryservice/
. The website explains “The GLHER is a comprehensive and dynamic resource for the historic
environment of Greater London. From the earliest human occupation to the present day, its data supports
the work of the Greater London Archaeological Advisory Service. Our computerised record contains over
87,000 entries providing data on archaeological sites, historic buildings, historic parks and landscapes,
finds and heritage features, and supporting sources of information.” (accessed 22nd September 2018).
My hope is to use the GLHER data for Barnet to identify historic houses and mansions, and maybe to
give some lectures about them. Some of the buildings still stand today.

As part of my background reading I counted the number of archaeological projects in each London
borough from 1972, the first year for which the London Archaeologist magazine took to publishing an
annual round up of archaeological fieldwork. The full table is a bit too big to publish here but if you email
me, robindensem@btinternet.com, then I should be able to email the table to you. Some extracts:

My conclusion is that I have more work to do. I have been a great believer in a theory that there is more
archaeology on sands, silts and gravel then on London Clay, but is this true? And how much of Barnet is
on London Clay? A problem is that such theories can become self-reinforcing, as if sites on London Clay
are rarely investigated, then the truism that there isn’t much there appears proved! And I haven’t started
looking at Rocque’s map of London and Ten Miles Round of 1746 that I expect covers at least part of
Barnet. And there are many more maps that I hope to look at. Meanwhile I am very grateful to Laura
Hampden of the GLSMR for providing Table 1, and to her colleague Rebecca Seakins for my visit.

HADAS AT THE HENDON PAGEANT Don Cooper
HADAS had a stall at the Hendon Pageant which was held at the Royal Airforce Museum on Saturday
15th September 2018. It was a well-attended event. Andy Simpson, Bill Bass and I were there to represent
HADAS. The highlight of the event was a fly-past by the last surviving airworthy Lancaster Bomber in
Britain – a splendid sight.

QUEEN ELEANOR’S JOURNEY – PART 2 Jim Nelhams
When Queen Eleanor died in Harby in Northamptonshire on 28th November 1290, King Edward decreed
that her body be carried back to London for burial. The procession could only move in daylight, so it took
12 days to reach London. The King also ordered that a cross be erected at the places where they stopped
for the night, the first now being in Lincoln. There being not that many suitable stopping points on the
journey south, most were at religious establishments. In Lincoln her body was embalmed, probably at
the Gilbertine Priory. Parts of her body were sent to the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral for burial,
where they still rest, and part of the cross which was erected is now in the grounds of Lincoln Castle.
Next stop was Grantham, though no part of this cross remains. Following this, stop three was in
Stamford.

Stamford’s cross stood for approximately 350 years, and to confirm this we have two eye-witnesses. The
first was Captain Richard Symonds of the Royalist army, who visited Stamford briefly on his way from
Newark to Huntingdon on Saturday August 22nd 1645. He wrote the following in his diary,
‘In the hill before ye into the towne stands a lofty large cross, built by Edward I in memory
of Eleanor whose corps rested there coming from the north.’

The cross was probably destroyed by Cromwell’s forces during the commonwealth.
On January 16th 1745 William Stukeley wrote to a fellow antiquarian:
‘Our surveyor of the turnpike road opened up a tumulus half a mile north of Stamford on the brow of a
hill by the roadside and there discovered the foundations of the Queen’s Cross, the lower most tier of the
steps intact and part of the second, tis of Barnack stone, hexagonal, the measure of each side thirteen feet
so the diameter was thirty feet. It stood on a grassy heath called by the towns people Queens Cross’.
Stukeley also noted that the Grantham Cross decoration almost certainly contained Eleanor’s coat of
arms.

In the 1960s, a stone spire was erected at Castle Dyke, Stamford. Is this connected?
Stop 4 was at the village of Geddington, in Northamptonshire, where there was a Royal hunting lodge.
The cross is the best preserved of the remaining crosses and is unusual having 3 sides.

(Hadas visit to this
cross is recorded in
Newsletter 257 –
August 1992.)

EXPLORING THE OCEANS (PART 2) Jo Nelhams
James Cook’s Second Voyage
Having returned safely from his first voyage, much of the praise was directed to Joseph Banks, a useful
passenger and wealthy landowner from Lincoln and an amateur botanist. He had provided most of the
scientific personnel for the first voyage.
A second voyage was planned and the Admiralty’s instructions were to sail south from the tip of Africa to
search for the Great Southern Continent. Cook needed the summers in the Antarctic and suggested
circumnavigation in the higher latitudes in the winter months.

Joseph Banks was very keen to go on a second voyage and this time two ships would sail. The ships
selected were the Resolution, 462 tons and a smaller one the Adventure, 336 tons. Since the Resolution
had been selected, Joseph Banks wanted modifications to be made for his large party of naturalists,
scientists and the artist Joseph Zoffany to be accommodated. After some work had been done on the ship,
it proved to be unstable. Joseph Banks also thought that he should be in charge on the ship. After these
disagreements, Joseph Banks and his party withdrew and the Resolution and the Adventure, with
replacement naturalist, artist and draughtsman left Plymouth on July 13th 1772.

An artist and astronomer were included with those aboard. The artist was William Hodges and the
astronomer a Yorkshire man named William Wales. He took care of the chronometer, a copy of the
invention of John Harrison, which gave accurate time for the calculation longitude. Harrison’s
chronometer had been used on other ship’s voyages and had proved to be very successful. In later life
William Wales became a tutor at the Royal Mathematical School, located within Christ’s Hospital School
in the city. He was the first master there to have had considerable practical experience of navigation at
sea, which needed real mathematical knowledge.

Wales had kept a detailed logbook on board. One of his students at Christ’s Hospital was Samuel Taylor
Coleridge, and his poem, “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”, has significant parallels with Wales’
descriptions of the voyage.

The Antarctic waters were very different from the Arctic waters. In 1773 Cook sailed across the Antarctic
Circle, the first man ever to do this. Penguins, seals and whales were not good for eating. Visibility was
often poor and there was much ice and the area of sea free to sail gradually decreasing. He had come as
far as a sailing man could go. In the poor weather the Resolution and Adventure lost contact. They knew
that a possible parting was long foreseen and the Adventure, if adrift, had her orders to make for Queen
Charlotte Sound, New Zealand.

When the Resolution reached Queen Charlotte Sound the Resolution and Adventure were reunited. The
Adventure had scurvy aboard the ship. Cook made sure that they consumed fresh food and the Adventure
was restored to being scurvy free.

The circular plan was an ideal method of investigating the South Pacific. They sailed to the east of the
longitude of Tahiti. From first crossing the Antarctic Circle in January 1773, Cook spent the next 2 years
exploring the southern oceans. On March 21st 1775 the Resolution anchored at the Cape of Good Hope.
During that time he had discovered new groups of islands in both the Atlantic and Pacific. The Resolution
had not lost a single man to scurvy or anything else avoidable. Three were lost by drowning and one from
a disease brought aboard. After 5 weeks at the Cape of Good Hope Cook sailed for England and in July
1775 dropped anchor off Spithead, but “Terra Australis” was still a mystery so there was great
disappointment at the results from this second voyage.
To be continued: Third Voyage next newsletter.

OTHER SOCIETIES & INSTITUTIONS EVENTS, compiled by Eric Morgan
Until 4th November 2018, Museum of London Bluecoats in the City: 350 Years of Christ’s Hospital, a
small, free display open daily at the Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2 5HN, 10am to 6pm.
October 2018 is Huguenots Month in Spitalfields, London. For programme visit:
http://www.huguenotsofspitalfields.org/walks-events.html or contact: Charlie de Wet at
info@huguenotsofspitalfields.org or telephone 020 7247 0367. Huguenots of Spitalfields is a registered
charity promoting public understanding of the Huguenot heritage and culture in Spitalfields, the City of
London and beyond.
Wednesday 10th October 2018, 2.30pm. Mill Hill Historical Society, Supporting Churches for 200
Years, The National Churches Trust, by Eddie Tulasiewicz, Head of Communications and Public Affairs.
The talk will be held at Trinity Church, 100 The Broadway, London NW7 3TB.
Saturday 13th October 2018. Local London Guiding Day. There are free walks, lasting up to 60
minutes by guides from Camden, Clerkenwell and Islington and Westminster.
Friday 19th October 2018, 7.30pm. Wembley History Society, 7.30pm, Power Play, a tale of Victorian
values (the life and times of Mary, Dowager Duchess of Sutherland), by Bruno Bubna-Kasteliz. The talk
will be at English Martyrs Hall, Chalkhill Road, Wembley,HA9 9EW. Visitors £3.
Thursday October 25th 2018, 8pm. Finchley Society, Major Cartwright’s obelisk … and other fine
tombs in Finchley Churchyard by Dr Roger Bowdler. Major Cartwright was an early advocate of
American independence, universal (male) suffrage, the abolition of slavery and many other causes. The
talk is at 8pm in St. Mary-at-Finchley Church, Hendon Lane, London N3. Visitors £2.
Thursday 1st November 2018, 8pm. Pinner Local History Society, Watford’s Bronze Age Hoard, by
Laurie Elvin, a local archaeologist. The talk will be in the Village Hall, Chapel Lane Car Park, Pinner
HA5 1AB. A £3 donation from visitors would be appreciated.
Saturday 3rd November 2018, 10am to 6pm. Aldenham Transport Spectacular, an indoor transport fair,
held at Allum Manor House & Hall, 2 Allum Lane, Elstree and Borehamwood, WD6 3PJ. Admission £3.
Saturday 3rd November 2018, 10.30am – 4.30pm. Geologists’ Association Festival, including exhibitors
from the world of geology, including fossil and mineral displays. University College London, Gower
Street, London WC1 6BT. Free event.
Saturday 3rd November 2018, 1.30-3.30pm. Barnet 1471 Battlefields Society, The Knights Templar, by
Robert Stephenson. The talk will be held at St John the Baptist, Barnet Church, Junction of High Street
and Wood Street, Chipping Barnet, Hertfordshire, EN5 4BW. Visitors £5, and the Society asks for
donations/money in the hat towards tea/coffee and cake.
Wednesday 7th November 2018, 8pm, Stanmore and Harrow Historical Society, The Ellen Burgin
Lecture: Historic Greenwich, by Diana Burnstein. The talk will be held at the Wealdstone Baptist
Church, High Street, Wealdstone, Harrow, HA3 5DL. Visitors £3.
Friday 9th November 2018, 8pm (doors open 7.30pm), Enfield Archaeological Society, Walbrook
Mithras Temple Reconstruction, by Sophie Jackson, MoLA. The talk will be held at the Jubilee Hall at
the junction of Chase Side and Parsonage Leane, Enfield, EN2 0AJ. Visitors £1.50.
Wednesday 14th November 2018, 2.30pm. Mill Hill Historical Society, The Oldest House in London, by
Fiona Rule. The talk will be held at Trinity Church, 100 The Broadway, London NW7 3TB.
Wednesday 14th November 2018, 7.30pm for 8pm, Hornsey Historical Society, The Folklore and
Traditions of the Tidal Thames, by Mark Lewis. The talk will be held at Union Church Hall, (corner of
Ferme Park Road/Weston Park) N8 9PX. Doors open at 7.30pm for the sale of refreshments and
publications and talks start promptly at 8pm.
Thursday 15th November 2018, 7.30pm, Barnet Museum and Local History Society, How to Capture a
Castle by Julian Humphrys, from the Battlefields Trust. The talk will be at Pennefather Hall, St Albans
Road, EN5 4LA. Tickets on the door: member £3, visitors £5; 18 & under free. Refreshments included.
Thursday 15th November 2018, 8pm, Historical Association (Hampstead and Northwest London
Branch), Harold Godwinson: his family and career, by Dr Ann Williams, FSA, FRHistS. The talk will be
held at Fellowship House, 136A Willifield Way, NW11 6YD and are followed by free refreshments.
Visitors £3.00. “There is no difficulty with parking.”
Friday 16th November 2018, 6.30pm for a 7pm start, City of London Archaeological Society, A
Sarcophagus and a Roman Road in Southwark, by Ireneo Grosso. The talk will be held at St. Olave’s
Church Hall, Mark Lane, London EC3R 7BB. The lecture is followed around 8.30pm with an opportunity
to chat with the lecturer and fellow members over tea and biscuits, with an optional extension to an
adjacent pub. Visitors are asked to sign the visitors’ book and to donate £3 toward expenses.

Saturday 17th November 2018, London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, 10.30am to 6pm,
53rd Local History Conference: “An Emporium for many Nations”: London shaped by trade. Various
speakers. The conference will be held in the Weston Theatre, Museum of London, London Wall, London
EC2Y 5HN. Tickets £12.50 until 31st October 2018, and £15 from 1st November 2018. Tickets can be
purchased using PayPal via the LAMAS website http://www.lamas.org.uk/conferences/localhistory/
local-history-conference-2018.html or by post from Patricia Clarke, 22 Malpas Drive, Pinner,
Middx. HA5 1DQ, and do provide your name and address, a cheque for the requisite amount, and a
stamped addressed envelope so your ticket(s) can be posted to you.
Saturday 17th November 2018, North London & Essex Transport Society, 11am to 2.30pm, Enfield
Transport Bazaar. The bazaar will be held at St. Paul’s Centre, 102, Church Street, Enfield EN2 6AR.
There will be no bus display at this event, but up to forty selling stalls. Light refreshments available.
Admission £3, accompanied under 16 years of age free.
Wednesday 21sat November 2018, Willesden Local History Society, 7.30pm, First World War in
Willesden, by Margaret Pratt. The talk will be held in St Mary’s Parish Centre, St Mary’s Parish
Centre. Neasden Lane NW10 2TS. There is limited parking in Church Path.
Saturday 24th November 2018, Amateur Geological Society-North London, 10am to 4pm, Mineral,
Gem & Fossil Show. The show will be held at Trinity Church, Nether Street, Finchley, London N12 7NN.
Admission £2, accompanied children under 12 years of age free.

With many thanks to this month’s contributors:
Don Cooper, Eric Morgan, Jim Nelhams, Jo Nelhams, and Stewart Wild

Hendon and District Archaeological Society
Chairman Don Cooper 59, Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8440 4350)
e-mail: chairman@hadas.org.uk
Hon. Secretary Jo Nelhams 61 Potters Road Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
e-mail: secretary@hadas.org.uk
Hon. Treasurer Jim Nelhams 61 Potters Road Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
e-mail: treasurer@hadas.org.uk
Membership Sec. Stephen Brunning Flat 22 Goodwin Court, 52 Church Hill Road,
East Barnet EN4 8FH (0208 440 8421) e-mail: membership@hadas.org.uk
Join the HADAS email discussion group via the website at: www.hadas.org.uk

Sep 23

Newsletter-570-September-2018

By Roger | HADAS, Latest Newsletter, News, Past Newsletters, Volume 10: 2015 - 2019‎ | No Comments

No. 570 September 2018 Edited by: Sandra Claggett

HADAS DIARY 2018/19

Thursday September 13th – Quiz at Avenue House – 7:30 – £15 including a cooked supper.
HADAS regularly fields a team. Contact Stephen Brunning if you would like to be involved.

Saturday September 15th. RAF Centenary event. Hendon Pageant. See p.2 for details

September 17th – 21st – Long trip to East Anglia staying in Brome.

Wednesday 3rd October – Finds Group Course recommences.

Tuesday 9th October 2018: STOP PRESS: Gabriel Moshenska has moved from the UK and will be unable to give the lecture on Unrolling Egyptian Mummies in Victorian London. Membership Secretary will arrange for another speaker on a different topic to be announced.

Thursday October 11th – Quiz at Avenue House – 7:30 – £15 including a cooked supper.
HADAS regularly fields a team. Contact Stephen Brunning (see p.12) if you would like to be involved.

Until 12th October – Bluecoats in the City – FREE Exhibition at Museum of London.

Until 28th October – “Roman Dead” at London Docklands Museum.

Tuesday 13th November 2018: The Rose – Shakespeare’s Secret Playhouse – a film made by Suzanne Marie Taylor, Anthony Lewis and Siegffried Loew-Walker. The documentary film will be introduced by one of the filmmakers, Anthony Lewis. In the film Ian McKellen speaks about his own personal experience during the 1989 Save the Rose Campaign when the Rose was partially excavated by the Museum of London. The film has been shown at Canada House and the Birkbeck Archaeology Society in 2017.

Sunday 9th December – HADAS Christmas Lunch at Avenue House. 12:30 – 4 p.m. £30 including full Christmas dinner, quiz. Application form to follow with next newsletter

Until 30th December 2019 – Star Carr exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) in Downing Street, Cambridge. See article below.

All Lectures are held at Stephens House & Gardens (Avenue House), 17 East End Road, Finchley, N3 3QE, and start promptly at 8.00 pm, with coffee /tea and biscuits afterwards. Non-members welcome (£1.00). Buses 82, 125, 143, 326 & 460 pass nearby and Finchley Central Station (Northern line) is a short walk away.

RAF Hendon Pageant Saturday 15th September 2018 11am – 5pm Free

The pageants of the past drew huge crowds and were a chance for spectators to see aircraft fly, to experience technology they had never seen before and to see the Royal Air Force in action.
This Centenary year we they will be bringing this tradition back to the Hendon Aerodrome, which is now home to the newly transformed Museum. This family festival will capture some of the magic of the past with re-enactors, traditional fairground games, live music from the 1930’s and much more! The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight will be flying the Dakota ZA947 over the Museum, times are still to be confirmed and the flypast is subject to change. It is possible that HADAS will have a display stall. https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/london/whats-going-on/events/hendon-pageant/

Fifty years of archaeology in London

This year marks the 50th anniversary of London Archaeologist magazine and there is a conference to celebrate. Speakers include Harvey Sheldon, Peter Marsden, Jane Sidell and Jelena Bekvalec. The venue is the Waterloo campus of King’s College from 10.00am to 5.30pm on Saturday 6th October. Ticket details and the outline programme are at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/50-years-of-londons-archaeology-tickets-45718893441

London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Conference

Saturday 17th November. 10.30 – 6.00 pm. “An emporium for many nations: London shaped by trade” Tickets before 31st October are £12.50, thereafter £15.00. Also Local History Societies will have displays. Afternoon tea / biscuits included. www.lamas.org.uk.conferences/local-history

Forthcoming exhibition: Sue Willetts

The British Library have announced Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War which will run from Friday 19th October until Tuesday 19th February 2019.
The following text is taken from their website: Treasures from the British Library’s own collection, including Beowulf and Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, sit alongside stunning finds from the recently discovered Staffordshire Hoard. Domesday Book offers its unrivalled depiction of the landscape of late Anglo-Saxon England while Codex Amiatinus, a giant Northumbrian Bible taken to Italy in 716, returns to England for the first time in 1300 years.

Read some of the earliest-surviving words inscribed in English on objects large and small. Come face-to-face with manuscripts of Old English poetry and prose and the first letter written in English. Wonder at the wit and wisdom in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Encounter handwritten books intricately decorated. Discover finely crafted metalwork and sculpture unearthed in recent times. See the deep artistic connections between Anglo-Saxon England and its European neighbours. Glimpse into the past through original manuscripts to explore the corners of the kingdoms. Many books were produced, but few survive – this is your opportunity to follow the journeys of these magnificent manuscripts, brought together for a major landmark exhibition.
Full Price: £16.00; Senior 60+: £14.00; Concessions £8.00; National Art Pass Full member £8.00 and Senior National Art Pass rate: £7.00; Child 0-4: Free; Child 5-17: £5.00

Finds in Focus
Hendon & District Archaeological Society Finds Group
Course tutor: Jacqui Pearce BA FSA MCIfA

A 22-week course in post-excavation analysis to be held at Stephens House (formerly
Avenue House), East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE on Wednesday evenings, 6.30–8.30, starting on 3 October 2018

This year we will conclude our recording of the finds from the Birkbeck training excavations at Lant Street in Southwark (LNT99). Some pottery and other finds remain, and we will aim to produce a short article summarising the work of the Finds Group on this site over the past two years. Regular presentations and professional tuition will be provided throughout the course. This is an ideal opportunity to gain – or increase – your experience of working with and handling a wide variety of archaeological finds. We will also embark on the recording of smaller new sites in Barnet, excavated by HADAS. The aims will be the same – to introduce the various types of finds and provide opportunities to become more familiar with post-excavation procedures, while working toward publication.

All are welcome – it doesn’t matter whether or not you have experience of working with archaeological finds! There are only a couple of places left on the course.

Course fee: £295 for 22 sessions. To book, contact Don Cooper (olddormouse@hotmail.com; tel. 020 8440 4350) or Jacqui Pearce (pearcejacqui@gmail.com; tel. 020 8203 4506). Please make cheques payable to HADAS and send to Don Cooper, 59 Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS.

Hornsey Historical Society

This organisation has a local history surgery for those conducting their own local history research. This takes place on the first Saturday of every month from 10.30 am – 2.30 pm. Members of the public are invited to attend as well as HHS members. Please phone 07531 855714 or email hornseyhistoricalsurgery@gmail.com to book a half hour appointment.
The Old Schoolhouse, 136 Tottenham Lane, Hornsey, N8 7EL

Further details at www.hornseyhistorical.org.uk/whatson.

Exploring the Oceans Jo Nelhams

An exhibition of the achievements of Captain James Cook was recently displayed at the British Library. The story of Cook’s three round the world voyages was told through original journals, maps and artwork, which were the records compiled while on board the ships.

The first voyage was from 1768 to 1771 in the Endeavour. The Endeavour was a Whitby Coal Cat, the type of boat in which Cook learnt his skills sailing down the east coast to London delivering coal. They were strong, comparatively shallow draught, good carriers with plenty of room for men and stores, which was Cook’s description.

The Endeavour set sail carrying 94 people in the 109-foot vessel, also loaded with supplies.

Cook had instructions from the Admiralty and the Royal Society to observe the Transit of Venus across the face of the sun in Tahiti in June 1769. The route was to sail south through the Atlantic Ocean, round Cape Horn across the Pacific and search for land in the South Pacific.

Although there had been many previous explorers who had sailed to the Pacific, half of it remained quite unseen and wholly unexplored. Cook had experienced sailing across the Atlantic, but the voyage of the Endeavour was far longer than anything he had done before.

Supplies need to be replenished and many naval ships would stop over in Madeira. The Endeavour stopped here for six days and replenished supplies taking on fresh fruit that would keep well, water and a large quantity of Madeira wine. The voyage continued round Cape Horn and on to Tahiti.

Cook was not only a very competent sailor, but a navigator and astrologer, which qualified him to understand the significance of the Transit of Venus. Also, on board were scientists and artists who were to document information of wildlife and flora and fauna.

Leaving Tahiti and sailing south, after six weeks on October 6th 1769 land was sighted. This was the beginning of Cook’s circumnavigation of both main islands of New Zealand. New Zealand’s coast was familiar to no man. One of Cook’s skills was cartography and his maps have proved to be extraordinarily accurate. It took over six months to chart the coasts of both islands.
They sailed on westwards and came to the east coast of ‘New Holland’ (Australia) and turned northwards following the coast. The only way to properly examine this was by using smaller boats and going ashore frequently. As the coast was about 2,000 miles, to do this would take years. Much was missed such as Jervis Bays and Sydney Harbour. He landed at Botany Bay (first called Stingray Bay and then Botanists Bay), which was not the best harbour.

Further north off Queensland, the Endeavour became grounded on the coral. She began to leak but at the top of high water she floated again. Although leaking she was gently sailed to a harbour to beach and somehow to repair the ship. A large piece of coral broken from the reef was found. It took many weeks to make the hull sound again and eventually leave the Great Barrier Reef. The passage had been a nightmarish, nerve-wracking experience for months. In his subsequent voyages Cook never approached the area again.
They made their way via the Cape of Good Hope back to England arriving in July 1771 having been away for nearly 3 years

To be continued: Second voyage next newsletter.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Star Carr Mesolithic exhibition at the (maa) Sandra Claggett

Although not a large exhibition the Star Carr Mesolithic exhibition at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge is very interesting. It focuses on the Mesolithic site of Star Carr (in Yorkshire) on the shore of Lake Flixton from around 11,500 years ago. This site has remarkable preservation due to waterlogging which means there is more than the typical lithic remains and it has preserved bone, antler and wooden objects. This makes Star Carr one of the most important Mesolithic sites in Europe.

This link to the Wikipedia page shows the location of the site. It was discovered in the late 1940s by John Moore and then excavated by Grahame Clark from 1949-1951. There were more excavations between 2003-2015, directed by Conneller, Milner and Taylor who were investigating the nature of the site and its use. They found evidence that the site was in use for Figure.1 shows the location of the site. It was discovered in the late 1940’s by John Moore and then excavated by Grahame Clark from 1949-1951. There were more excavations between 2003-2015, directed by Conneller, Milner and Taylor who were investigating the nature of the site and its use. They found evidence that the site was in use for around 800 years despite climate change during this period. Structures for houses and three large wooden platforms were found along the lake edge and lithic activity areas with intensive manufacture and tool repair.

Mesolithic people made use of the natural environment such as iron pyrite for making fire at Star Carr. Iron pyrite would be struck with flint to make sparks. Bracket fungus that grew
naturally on trees was also used as tinder when dry it becomes flammable. Tightly wound birch bark rolls could be used as portable tinder, one showing signs of burning. Birch bark can also be
heated to make resin to fix flint arrowheads and barbed points to wooden shafts. Another use of the natural environment is flora, a drink which can be made from pine and other plants could also be eaten such as crowberry, yellow water lily and bogbean. Tools were made from animal bones; Antler harpoons were used to hunt pike and perch. Other animals hunted in the landscape were deer, elk, wild boar and aurochs which were large cattle now extinct. The animal bones and hide were used for food, clothing and tools such as pins from elk antlers. A wooden paddle has survived from a boat. Another famous find from Star Carr was the Antler headdresses made from deer skulls with holes bored into them. Twenty-four have been found these are thought to be used for hunting and or ritual Shamanic purposes. More than 90% of all European prehistoric headdresses come from Star Carr.

Fig. 1 Antler headdress from Exhibition Fig 2. Author’s photograph of engraved pendant Both mages reproduced with kind permission from the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (maa)
There have been other recent examples of the use of Antler headdress including from about 100 years ago by shamans of the Orochen culture of Inner Mongolia.
The earliest Mesolithic art in Britain is found here in an engraved pebble of shale with a deliberate perforation. As in Figure 2. Other engraved motifs on Mesolithic pendants are rare and found only in Amber pendants from southern Scandinavia. The engravings were hardly visible until computer imaging techniques were used. Analysis shows barbed lines typical of Danish motifs and it is suggested that the lines may have been made visible by the use of pigment as possibly for the Danish amber. Near Star Carr at Seamer Carr and Flixton School House an ochre crayon and pebble have been found. An ochre crayon measuring 22mm has been discovered with heavy striations caused by scraping to remove the red powder.

According to Dr Needham the tip is faceted and has gone from a rounded to a sharpened end through use. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-42831463
Why not make a trip to Cambridge and go along to the MAA, there is plenty of time to plan your trip as the exhibition is on until the 30th December 2019!

Links to Star Carr information and publication details for further reading:
Milner N., Taylor B., Conneller C., Schadia-Hall., T. (2013) Star Carr: Life in Britain after the Ice age. (Archaeology for all) Council for British Archaeology.
Exhibition details are entitled ‘A survival story- prehistoric life at Star Carr on until the 30th of Dec 2019. http://maa.cam.ac.uk/a-survival-story-prehistoric-life-at-star-carr/
Here is a link to the Star Carr website where it is possible to download the two monographs produced for the site for free. http://www.starcarr.com/
An academic article on the pendant. http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue40/8/index.html
An academic article on the analysis of the Red Deer headdress from Star Carr. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0152136&type=printable
An academic article on the fish remains. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X1630044X?via%3Dihub

Charing Cross Jim Nelhams

When Jo was teaching, each year she would take her class on an outing into London. One year, it was decided to take all three classes from Year 1 (5/6 years old) to investigate Queen Eleanor, Eleanor of Castile, the wife of King Edward I as part of a history project.
When Queen Eleanor died in Harby in Northamptonshire on 28th November 1290, King Edward decreed that her body be carried back to London for burial. The procession could only move in daylight, so it took 12 days to reach London. The King also ordered that a cross be erected at the places where they stopped for the night, the first being at the Castle in Lincoln and the last at what we now call Charing Cross.

Eleanor’s tomb is in St Edward the Confessor’s chapel at Westminster Abbey, behind the High Altar, as is that of her husband, so Westminster Abbey was the start of our self-guided walk.
From there, we crossed Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge stopping to admire the statue of Boadicea on the north east corner of the bridge, then along by the river in front of the old County Hall, now the London Aquarium, to have lunchtime sandwiches on the grass on the old site of the 1951 Festival of Britain where the London Eye now stands. A quick toilet stop at the Royal Festival Hall before crossing Hungerford Bridge to reach Charing Cross Station and look at the stone cross in the forecourt. Those that have been on our HADAS trips might recognise that we try to know where there are toilets available, though the children on our trips are a little older.

Finally, we went back to the Embankment to re-join our coach by Cleopatra’s Needle. Quite a distance for 5/6-year olds. In fact, one mother was concerned that her daughter was not good at walking and came with us. To our surprise, we discovered later that she and her daughter had so enjoyed themselves that the following weekend they repeated the walk with the rest of their family.
The original wooden cross stood on an island at the south end of what is now Trafalgar Square which is occupied by an equestrian statue of Charles I see Figure 1.

If you look at the street names at that point, there is a short section of road named Charing Cross between Northumberland Avenue and Whitehall. It must be one of the shortest roads in England, though it was at one time longer.

The cross was replaced by a stone cross which was demolished in 1647.

Charing Cross Station and the Charing Cross Hotel were built in 1864, and it was decided as a marketing initiative to erect on the station/hotel forecourt a replica of the stone cross based on drawings in the British Museum. See Figure 2. It is 70 feet tall and octagonal. Next time you are in the area, why not take a closer look.
Opinion about the place name varies. Some say that there was a small village named Charing at the spot, very near to the Palace of Westminster. Folk etymology is that it was actually named “Chėre Reine” – ‘dear Queen’ in French. The royal court at that time spoke Norman French and the inscription on Queen Eleanor’s tomb is in this French dialect. But we cannot ask those involved.
What about the other crosses? Well they are the subject of another article to be published later.

Figure 1 Author’s own photo

Figure 2 Author’s own photo

Below is some information from the Historic Buildings and Conservation Committee

We have spaces open – come and find out what we do!
The historic built environment disappears – sometimes by outright demolition, at other times by disfigurements by new owners; or adjacent redevelopments ruin the setting of a building or a whole area. Important internal as well as external features of Listed buildings can be at risk. Does this cause you concern?

LAMAS has many new members and we hope some may be interested in assisting the Society with one of its important activities – the work of the LAMAS Historic Buildings and Conservation Committee. This Committee reviews applications for listed building consent and seeks to ensure a sustainable future for vital aspects of London’s built heritage.
The Committee’s remit fills the gap between amenity societies working within boroughs and national amenity societies who consider only the more high-profile cases.
The Committee is composed of individual members of LAMAS, or members of its Affiliated Societies, and meets monthly to consider cases. The meetings take place on a Tuesday evening from 6.30 to 8.30 pm and are held at 75 Cowcross Street, close to Farringdon Station. The Committee secretary sends an agenda out in advance.
This is one of LAMAS’s important activities and cannot work without the co-operation of its members in bringing their knowledge of buildings across London, and particularly in areas with which they are familiar.

An interest in historic buildings is all you need. Although some Committee members have an architectural or heritage background, others are just ordinary interested people who will give some time to the matter.

If you wish you could come to a meeting to see how it works. If you are interested please contact Vicki Fox (e-mail: vickifox2011@hotmail.co.uk) for more information.

Details of other societies’ events Eric Morgan

Tuesday 11th September, 7.45pm. Amateur Geological Society, Finchley Baptist Church Hall, East End Road, N3 3QL. Sharks in the desert, Laboratory and ocean by Charlie Underwood.

Tuesday 15th September, 10.50am. Mill Hill Historical Society visit to the London Transport Museum Depot, Acton Town, 118-20 Gunnersbury Lane, W3 9BQ. A behind the scenes private tour of over 370,000 objects including rare road and rail vehicles spanning over 100 years. Members £13.50, Non-members £15.50 to book send a cheque payable to Mill Hill Historical Society and s.a.e. to Julia Haynes, 38 Marion Road, Mill Hill London, NW7 4AN. Contact Julia Haynes on 020 89060063 or Haynes.julia@yahoo.co.uk (see also 22-23 Sept, Open weekend.

Wed. 19th September, 6pm. Gresham College at the Museum of London, 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN. Painting, patronage and politics under the Tudors by Professor Thurley. Free.

Friday 21st September, 7pm. CoLAS St. Olives Hall, Mark Lane, EC3R 7BB. The archaeology of Fulham Palace by Alexis Haslam. Visitors £3. Light refreshments after.

Friday 21st September, 7.30pm. Wembley History Society, English Martyr’s hall, Chalkwall Road, Wembley, HA9 9EW talk on the Shree Swaminorayan Mandir building by Somar Savani. Visitors £3. Refreshments.

Saturday 22nd – Sunday 23rd September,11am-5pm. London Transport Museum Depot, W3 open weekend admission £12, concessions £10. https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/whats-on/museum-depot/open-weekends
Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd September. Open House weekend buildings not normally open will be open and it is free. Local buildings included are Myddelton House Gardens and the Old Vestry House both in Enfield.

Saturday 22nd September, 11:00 – 4:00pm. Barnet Museum and Local History Society with Barnet 1471 Battlefields Society – St John the Baptist Church, Wood Street, Barnet EN5 4BW. Day conference including –
 12:00 “Warwick & Edward IV” with questions at 1:00. By David Santuiste.
 1:30 Lunch break
 2:30 “Richard III, man or Myth”. Gillian Gear memorial lecture by Alison Weir with questions.
Tickets on door – £3, non-members £5.
Wednesday 26th September, 7:45pm. Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, North Middlesex Golf Club, Friern Barnet Lane, N20 0NL. “Hendon School Excavations” by Don Cooper (our chairman). Non-members £2.

Saturday 29th September, 11.30am-4.30pm CoLAS and Totally Thames, Fulham Palace, Bishops’ Avenue, SW6 6EA. A day of family archaeology activities as part of the Mayor’s Thames Festival.

Thursday 4th October, 8pm. Pinner Local History Society, Village Hall, Pinner, HA5 1AB. Pinner’s old roads and paths, tracks, travellers, turnpikes and tarmac. By the research group. Visitors £3.

Saturday 6th October, 2pm. London Parks and Gardens Trust. Humphry Repton and the Wembley Park Barn Hill landscape. Wembley Park and Barn Hill guided walk by Leslie Williams and

Susan Darling. Details on www.londongardenstrust.org This is part of Repton 200 and is one of the events planned in and around London to celebrate landscape designer Humphry Repton who died 200 years ago.

Sunday 7th October, 2.30-4.30pm. Heath and Hampstead Society. Flagstaff, Whitestone Pond, Heath St. Hampstead Heath from the 1820’s to the 1920’s. Guided walk by Thomas Radice. £5.

Monday 8th October, 3pm. Barnet Museum and Local History Society. Church House, Wood St, Barnet, EN5 4BW. Katebrygge: 100 years of East Finchley by Richard Selby. Visitors £2.

Monday 8th October, 6.20-7.50pm. Finchley Church End Library. 318 Regents Park Road, N3 2LN. An evening with Dr Fraser in association with the RAF Museum Hendon. The story of the established British Jewry’s involvement with the royal flying corps in WWI. A mystery prize for the best question after the talk. Book by email on libraryevents@barnet.gov.uk

Saturday 13th October, 1.30-3.30pm. Barnet 1471 Battlefield Society. St John the Baptist, Barnet Church, High St, Wood St, Barnet, EN5 4BW. English fashion and art of the 1470’s by Mario Carvana. Non-members £5.

Monday 15th October, Museum of London Docklands, Canary Wharf. Finds of the dead in roman London and beyond. Roman finds group autumn conference with MoLA. Info at www.romanfindsgroup.org.uk email sigreep@romanfinds.org.uk Details were in the HADAS August newsletter.

Friday 19th October, 7pm CoLAS. Address as above. Respect your elders: old swords in Anglo-Saxon England by Dr Brunning. Visitors £3.

Wednesday 24th October, 7.45pm. Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. North Middx Golf Club, The Manor House, Friern Barnet Lane, N20 0NL. The history of almshouses by Simon Smith. Non-members £2.

Thursday 25th October, 8pm. Finchley Society. Major Cartwright’s obelisk … and other fine tombs in Finchley Churchyard. Dr Roger Bowdler NB venue is St. Mary-at-Finchley Church, Hendon Lane, Discussion and tea. Visitors £2. Free for members – but if you join at the same meeting, the charge is waived.

Thursday 25th October, 8pm. Heath and Hampstead Society. Burgh House, New Square, NW3 1LT. John Constable and Hampstead Heath: in the foot-steps of a contemporary artist. The Springett lecture by Lindy Guinness exploring Constable’s passion for Hampstead Heath. Free.

Saturday 27th October, 10.30am. Enfield Society. Relaunch of Pymmes Brook trail. Part 1: High Barnet to Arnos Grove. Guided walk by Colin Saunders. Meet at High Barnet Station to depart at 10am. 6-mile linear walk ending at Arnos Park.

Sunday 28th October, 10.30am. Part 2 of above. Arnos Grove to Tottenham Hale by Colin Saunders meet at Arnos Grove Station. 7-mile linear walk ending at Tottenham Hale Station.

Thanks to this month’s contributors Jo and Jim Nelhams, Don Cooper and Eric Morgan, Sue Willetts
Apologies for the late arrival of this newsletter, which was due entirely to Sue Willetts’s holiday from 18th August – 3rd September with very limited access to email / computer.

Hendon and District Archaeological Society
Chairman: Don Cooper, 59 Potters Road, Barnet, EN5 5HS Tel 020 8440 4350
E-mail: chairman@hadas.org.uk
Hon. Secretary: Jo Nelhams, 61 Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS. Tel 020 8449 7076.
E-mail: secretary@hadas.org.uk
Hon. Treasurer: Jim Nelhams, 61 Potters Road, Barnet, EN5 5HS Tel 020 8449 7076.
E-mail: treasurer@hadas.org.uk
Hon. Membership Sec: Stephen Brunning, 1 Reddings Close, Mill Hill, London NW7 4JL.
E-mail: membership@hadas.org.uk Tel 020 8959 6419
Web site: www.hadas.org.uk
Discussion group: http://groups.google.com/group/hadas-archaeology

Aug 15

Newsletter-569-AUGUST-2018

By Roger | Latest Newsletter, Past Newsletters, Volume 10: 2015 - 2019‎ | No Comments

No. 569 AUGUST 2018 Edited by Jim Nelhams

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HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming lectures and events

Thursday September 13^th – Quiz at Avenue House – 7:30 – £15 including a cooked supper.

HADAS regularly fields a team. Contact Stephen Brunning if you would like to be involved.

September 17^th – 21^st – Long trip to East Anglia staying in Brome.

Wednesday 3^rd October – Finds Group Course recommences.

Tuesday 9th October 2018: Unrolling Egyptian Mummies in Victorian London by Gabriel Moshenska, Senior Lecturer in Public Archaeology, UCL

Thursday October 11th – Quiz at Avenue House – 7:30 – £15 including a cooked supper.

HADAS regularly fields a team. Contact Stephen Brunning if you would like to be involved.

Until 12^th October – Bluecoats in the City – FREE Exhibition at Museum of London. Article below.

Until 28^th October – “Roman Dead” at London Docklands Museum. See following article Throughout October – Huguenot Month – Information below.

Tuesday 13th November 2018: The Rose – Shakespeare’s Secret Playhouse – a film made by Suzanne Marie Taylor, Anthony Lewis and Siegffried Loew-Walker. The documentary film will be introduced by one of the filmmakers, Anthony Lewis. The film’s highlight is HADAS member Suzanne Marie Taylor’s interview with one of the world’s greatest and most respected actors – Ian McKellen, who speaks about his own personal experience during the 1989 Save the Rose Campaign when the Rose was partially excavated by the Museum of London. The film was premiered at Canada House on February 2^nd 2017.

Sunday 9^th December – HADAS Christmas Lunch at Avenue House. 12:30 – 4 p.m. £30 including full Christmas dinner. Application form to follow.

Lectures start at 7.45 for 8.00pm in the Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3

3QE. Buses 13, 143, 326 & 460 pass close by, and it is five to ten minutes’ walk from Finchley Central Station (Northern Line). Tea/coffee and biscuits follow the talk. .

ROMAN DEAD – Exhibition at London Docklands Museum

Piecing together burials and beliefs in Roman London Deirdre Barrie

This compact exhibition at the London Docklands Museum is well worth a visit. Not only are there the expected skeletons and cremated remains of over 30 Roman Londoners, but a great deal of other interesting material.

It was the discovery of a huge stone coffin in Harper Road, Southwark which inspired this exhibition. The coffin was for the burial of a wealthy woman – costly, because no local stone is available. Most cremations use only pottery vessels, but higher status cremations have lead or glass vessels.

The burials and cremations in London demonstrate the diversity of the local population, who came to London from all over the Empire. One gravestone commemorates a man who came from the modern city of Arezzo, in Italy. Another third century tombstone was set up in memory of Marciana, a ten-year-old girl. and hints at her origin being from the Rhine or Danube area. Roman gravestones are often discovered reused in later buildings.

Burials had to be outside the central city, and there would also have been tombs beside roads leading there. (Think of the tombs lining the Appian Way). However, babies or newborns were sometimes buried near threshholds or under the floors of buildings.

I was intrigued by a mass of clumped, corroded soil enclosing a pair of Roman sandals. The X-ray photograph beside it showed clearly the outline of the soles by their studs, and beside that was a shiny, new reconstruction of similar sandals.

The millefiori glass dish found in Prescot Street, near Aldgate was worth more than a year’s wages for a Roman army officer. Its patterned glass was once brilliantly coloured red and blue, but after 2000 years has faded.

Entry to the exhibition is free, but donations are welcome. Minimum visitor age: 8.

Website: https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum –london –docklands/whats –on/exhibitions/roman –dead

Open until 28^th October 2018; open 10 am-6pm. The Docklands Museum entrance is two minutes’ walk from West India Quay Station. Access is good, wheelchairs are provided, but there are cobbles outside the entrance.

Tomb fragments Millefiori glass dish

Cremations and vessels

Huguenot Month Launches in Spitalfields

October is Huguenot Month! Huguenots of Spitalfields have a packed programme of events to celebrate these extraordinary, creative and talented people.

Huguenots were French Protestant refugees who fled persecution during the 16^th to 18^th centuries, many of whom settled in London. They contributed their skills to many fields, including silkweaving, furniture design, spinning and dyeing, silversmithing, clock making and jewellery.

Highlights include:

Take a step back in time – Visit the unique and atmospheric ‘still-life drama’ of Dennis Severs’ House – a beautiful Georgian house in Folgate Street.

Enjoy a Georgian-Style ‘Back in Time for Dinner’

Find out how to trace your Huguenot ancestors

Hear how Queen Anne’s ladies- in- waiting prepared for her dazzling candlelit birthday ball, at the Townhouse in Fournier Street.

Hear Dan Cruickshank talk about Queen Mary II, and enjoy a gin and tonic.

Take a room-by-room tour of a Georgian house in Spitalfields to eavesdrop on those living and working in the kitchen, parlour, bed chamber and garret.

Come along to a ‘Skills Day’ for all the family : Try craft activities from collage and embroidery to paper making and plant dyes, admire and buy the work of talented artisans including textile art, stained glass and jewellery, inspired by Huguenot skills.

Saturday 20th October, in the Crypt of Christ Church and Hanbury Hall Spitalfields, 11am to 4pm.

For full programme visit: http://www.huguenotsofspitalfields.org/walks –events.html

Contact: Charlie de Wet at info@huguenotsofspitalfields.org or telephone 020 7247 0367.

Huguenot Month is supported by the City of London Corporation as part of their initiative, ‘Women: Work and Power.’

Huguenots of Spitalfields is a registered charity (no. 1151801) promoting public understanding of Huguenot heritage and culture in Spitalfields and beyond.

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Bluecoats in the City: 350 Years of Christ’s Hospital Jim Nelhams Museum of London until 12^th October

Explore the history of the ‘Bluecoat School’ in London in this small free display.

In 1546, the former buildings and church of Greyfriars monastery in Newgate Street were given to the City of London for the benefit of the poor, elderly and sick. The buildings were used to establish Christ’s Hospital; founded in 1552 for the education of poor children. The School became known as the ‘Bluecoat School’ because of its distinctive uniform of navy coats and yellow stockings.

Two pupils in normal uniform in the cloisters which adjoin the quadrangle.

Painting of the old school in Newgate Street. The tower of Christ Church is on the right.

After 350 years in London, the School moved to the market town of Horsham in 1902, but its strong bonds to the City of London remain. Since opening, Christ’s Hospital has educated, lodged, fed and clothed more than 65,000 children. Today the School continues its mission to advance the education of children, mainly for the benefit of those whose families are in social, financial or other specific need. Although officially a public school, over 80% of the pupils do not pay the full fees, with some 15% paying nothing.

This new display delves into the history behind the School’s creation, its iconic uniform, historic practices, charitable benefactors, and some of its famous pupils including Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The original site was on Newgate Street close to the Old Bailey. When the school moved to Horsham, the site was used by the Post Office. The church of Christ Church Greyfriars was used by the school pupils among others, but total attendances declined after 1902. The church was badly damaged in the blitz in December 1940, though has not been fully demolished. Part of the old churchyard became “Postman’s Park”.

The school site is now occupied by Bank of America Merrill Lynch and in 2017, they sponsored a sculpture to commemorate their predecessors on the site.

Sculpture erected in 2017 at junction of Newgate Street and King Edward Street with ruins of Christ Church in the background.

The school has a strong musical tradition and boasts a large marching band, well used since pupils march from their boarding houses to lunch on most days. The band has played at lunchtime for Lord’s test matches, and at Twickenham for rugby internationals. It takes part each year in The Lord Mayor’s Show. In addition, parts of the school march through the City of London to a church service marking St Matthew’s Day (21^st September). Should you choose to visit the museum on this day, you will be able to see the march. (Check the times.)

The school also boasts its own railway station on the line between Horsham and Arundel, and had a steam locomotive in the Southern Railway “Schools” class carrying its name – 30913 “Christ’s Hospital”.

Akiva School Jim Nelhams

Members will be aware that, as a charity, we include education in our remit. This is not just the education of ourselves, it includes the wider public. Over the years, we have had much contact with schools in the borough, and have carried out digs with some of them.

Akiva School is a Jewish school in East End Lane on the site of the medieval Bibsworth Manor and a few hundred yards from Avenue House. Back in November 2017, we received an email from one of the teachers at the school asking if there was any way the children could be involved in an archaeology project or if somebody could talk to them about archaeology.

There have been previous digs on the school site and it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. School security is tight. A dig within the school was not therefore practical.

This year, when we planned a dig near the water tower in Stephens House and Gardens, I contacted the school to see if, with this dig, we might help them, though for insurance reasons, having the children dig was not possible.

During the dig, the six classes in years 3, 4 and 5 (ages 8-10) were all given a half-hour presentation on archaeology and Avenue House before visiting the dig to see what we had done, some of the finds and some of our equipment. They also used measuring tapes and the dumpy level. Some 170 children were included.

Appreciative feedback has been received from the school.

A full report on the dig will appear in a later newsletter.

Wallingford and Dorchester Abbey Don Cooper

This was a coach outing with the Barnet Museum and Local History Society (BM&LHS) to Wallingford and Dorchester Abbey on Saturday, 23^rd June 2018. The coach with 44 eager passengers set off at 08.30 from the layby outside the BP garage on the Great North Road. It was a lovely sunny day.

On arrival at Wallingford we were “set free” to do our own thing. Wallingford is a pretty town by the banks of the Thames in Oxfordshire. It has a long history. In 1066 William the Conqueror came to Wallingford to cross the Thames with his army to negotiate terms for the surrender of the kingdom. The following year he ordered the building of a royal castle. It became the third great royal castle on the Thames after the Tower of London and Windsor Castle. The castle remained the main source of the wealth of Wallingford right up to the end of the Civil

War when Charles II ordered it to surrender to Cromwell. Cromwell ordered and paid for the castle’s demolition. There is little left of the castle, but it was lovely to walk along the bank of the Thames and marvel at how large the castle had been.

A stroll around the town with its market square and three lovely churches was thirsty work and a pint and sandwich at one of the many pubs was welcome.

The museum at Wallingford deserves a special mention for both good and bad reasons. The bad is it charges £5 entrance fee (although we were told we could come back as many times as we liked during the next year!). The good is that is it jam-packed with items from the area and from every period. It especially has memorabilia of Agatha Christie who lived in Wallingford with her archaeologist husband.

Then it was back on the coach at 15.30 for the short ride to Dorchester Abbey. Dorchester on Thames as its name implies was a Roman town and the seat of a bishopric from AD634 when Pope Honorius had sent St Birinus to be its first bishop.

The bishopric was transferred to Lincoln in 1085. The abbey was founded in 1140 by the Augustinian canons although there are traces on the north side of Saxon masonry. The abbey is famous for its lead font, one of the few surviving lead fonts in England; its surviving effigies, especially the well-known “Swaggering Knight”; its Jesse Tree window; and an ornately carved sedilia and piscina dating from 1330. We were given a conducted tour by volunteer guides who were both knowledgeable and helpful.

At the end of the tour we were treated to a magnificent cream tea. A beautiful abbey well worth another visit.

Then it was back on the coach for the return to Barnet. It was a splendid day ably organised by Denis Bird.

OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS compiled by Eric Morgan

Sunday 5^th August, 2:30 – Finchley Society – unveiling of information panel about Octavia Hill – Green Man Community Centre, Strawberry Vale, East Finchley, N2 9AB.

Until 28^th August – Exhibition at British Library – “James Cook – the voyages” – £14 entry but concessions. Booking suggested. Daily times vary. Check www.bl.uk for more information.

Friday 7^th September, 7:45 – Enfield Archaeological Society, Jubilee Hall Chase Side, Enfield, EN2 0AJ. Lecture “Exploring the Material Culture of Roman London” by Michael Marshall (MOLA). Visitors £1.

Saturday 8^th September, 8:30 am. Barnet Museum and Local History Society. Coach trip to West Stow AngloSaxon Village and Bury St Edmunds. £25. Contact Dennis Bird, 020 8449 0705 for more information.

Monday 10^th September, 3:00 – Barnet Museum & Local History Society. Church House, Wood Street, Barnet, EN5 4BW. Lecture “Miss Marjorie Honeybourne – an avid local historian” by Yasmine Webb. Visitors £2.

Thursday 13^th September, 2:30 – London Parks & Gardens Trust. Tour of New Southgate Cemetery, Brunswick Park Road, N11 1JJ, led by Colin Barratt. £10.

Saturday 15^th September, 10:30 – 4:00. Metroline Holloway Bus Garage, 37A Pemberton Gardens, N19 5RR. Open Day. Vehicle displays and Heritage vehicles. Admission by programme. Proceeds to charity.

Wednesday 19^th September, 7:30. Willesden Local History Society. St Mary’s Church Hall, Neasden Lane, NW10 2TS. “An Evening with Brent Archive” by an archive team member about resources available to local historians.

Saturday 22^nd September, 11:00 – 4:00. Barnet Museum and Local History Society with Barnet 1471 Battlefields Society – St John the Baptist Church, Wood Street, Barnet EN5 4BW. Day conference including –

12:00 “Warwick & Edward IV” with questions at 1:00. By David Santuiste.  1:30 Lunch break
2:30 “Richard III, man or Myth”. Gillian Gear memorial lecture by Alison Weir with questions. Tickets on door – £3, non-members £5.

Wednesday 26^th September, 7:45. Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, North Middlesex Golf Club, Friern Barnet Lane, N20 0NL. “Hendon School Excavations” by Don Cooper (our chairman). Non-members £2.

Thursday 27^th September 8:00. Finchley Society – Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Lane, N3

3QE. “The Story of London’s Buses” – talk by Dr John Hodgson. Non-members £2. Refreshments at interval.

Saturday 6^th October – 10:00 – 17:30 – London Archaeologist 50^th Anniversary Conference at King’s College London, Waterloo Campus, Stamford Street, SE1 9NH. Booking for non-members opens August. Book online or contact Becky Wallower on www.Londonarchaeologist.org.uk. £16.76

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With many thanks to this month’s contributors:

Deirdre Barrie, Don Cooper, Eric Morgan

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Hendon and District Archaeological Society

Chairman Don Cooper 59, Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8440 4350)

e-mail: chairman@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Secretary Jo Nelhams 61 Potters Road Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)

e-mail: secretary@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Treasurer Jim Nelhams 61 Potters Road Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)

e-mail: treasurer@hadas.org.uk

Membership Sec. Stephen Brunning 22 Goodwin Court, 52 Church Hill Road,

East Barnet EN4 8FH (0208 440 8421) e-mail: membership@hadas.org.uk

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Dec 12

Newsletter-537-December-2015

By Roger | Past Newsletters, Volume 10: 2015 - 2019‎ | No Comments

Newsletter-537-December-2015

No. 537 DECEMBER 2015 Edited by Don Cooper

Doesn’t time go quickly, here we are in the middle of November looking forward to that end-of-year holiday period again!! Do the years go faster as we get older? It seems like only yesterday that I edited last December’s one!

May I, on behalf of the HADAS community, wish you and yours the compliments of the season and a healthy, happy and prosperous 2016.

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 12^th January, 8pm. Royal Palaces of Enfield. Lecture by Ian Jones (EAS)

Tuesday 9^th February, 8pm. Medieval Middlesex – The Archaeological Remains by Adam Corsini.

Tuesday 8^th March, 8pm. The Crossrail Archaeology Project. Lecture by Jay Carver.

Tuesday 12^th April 2016, 8pm. In the lift to the beach: a visit to the Lundenwic waterfront by Douglas Killock

Tuesday 10^th May, 8pm. Hadrian’s Wall: Life on Rome’s northern frontier. Lecture by Matt Symonds.

Tuesday 14^th June 2016 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Tuesday 11^th October 2016 To be arranged

Tuesday 8^th November 2016, 8pm. The Cheapside Hoard. Lecture by Hazel Forsyth

All the above events, unless otherwise stated, will be held at Stephens House & Gardens (formerly Avenue House), 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE, starting at 8pm, with tea/coffee and biscuits afterwards. Non-members are welcome (£1.00). Buses 82, 125, 143, 326 and 460 pass nearby. Finchley Central Station (Northern Line) is a short walk away.

Church Farm House by Don Cooper

Church Farm House, Hendon (formerly Church Farm House Museum) is STILL vacant. The museum was closed in March, 2011, so it won’t be long until the 4^th anniversary of its closing. We are being assured by Barnet Council that it is secure and being properly maintained and Historic England have not felt it necessary to add it to the buildings-at-risk register published last month (October 2015). Negotiations, we are told, are proceeding with Middlesex University but have yet to result in the signing of a lease.

Recent discoveries about Roman Britain By Peter Pickering

On 7th November I went to a conference organised by the Roman Society and the Association for Roman Archaeology. There were four lectures describing very recent excavations with remarkable new discoveries from Roman Britain. One was of a late Roman temple site in south-west Wiltshire, with a spectacular set of finds, especially miniature amphorae and hammers, and a large number of coins, over 30 of which have iron nails in them – perhaps originally attached to pieces of cloth, or hammered into a wooden post. There are also some lead curse tablets. But no indication, as yet, of what god or gods might have been worshipped there.

Professor Michael Fulford took us over the eighteen years of his excavation of part of Insula

IX of Silchester, which has finally come to an end, discovering so much more than the Society of Antiquaries had been able to find at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We were all fascinated by the evidence of a flourishing business of skinning dogs, presumably to make fur cloaks – a knife was found carved with an image of mating dogs. It seemed at the end that Professor Fulford was weaning himself and his students slowly from the excavation, having done some work on another insula, re-excavating some of the trenches of the Society of Antiquaries.

Sam Moorhead then gave an account of the Romans west of Exeter.

Although he was standing in for a lecturer who had been prevented from telling us about Binchester, the ‘Pompeii of the North’, no-one would have guessed this from his polished and fluent presentation. The discovery of the site at Ipplepen was due to two active and responsible metal detectorists (who recorded the GPS data for the many coins they found). The coins demonstrated that the Romans had not lost interest after they got to Exeter; geophysical surveying and excavation has already found many archaeological features over several acres, including a roadside cemetery. The dig has a strong community focus. Finally, Andrew Birley told us about the most recent work at Vindolanda, which continues to be one of the most important Roman sites in the country. He is the third generation of Birleys to work there. Among the finds he described were a gold coin of Nero, and the wooden toilet seat. The anaerobic conditions in parts of the site continue to reveal wooden writing tablets and other things which are usually lost. It looks as if the Vindolanda excavations will continue for many years.

The Sandridge Hoard by Jean Lamont

Members of HADAS may be interested to know that the Sandridge Hoard has now been conserved and has gone on display at the Verulamium Museum in St Albans. The Museum is open all year round and every day (Monday to Saturday from 10.00 to 17.30 and Sunday from 14.00 to 17.30), for public holidays such as Christmas check with the Museum, tel. 01727 751 810.

The Sandridge Hoard consists of 159 gold solidi and is the largest collection of solidi ever found in this country: they date from 375-408 AD and represent more wealth than most people could earn in a lifetime. There is no trace of the original container. The guidebook suggests a connection with one of the local villas and mentions Turnershall Farm a few miles away, itself subject of a separate display. Well worth a visit.

http://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/verulamium/ Website gives details of entrance fees / parking etc

Lyndhurst Trip – continued

Our aim on our trips is to visit a variety of places without spending too long on the coach. These cover a range of interests, with twenty of our travellers submitting interesting newsletter contributions about our stops, and related topics. Our thanks to all who have put pen to paper.

Day 2 started with one of our longer excursions – one hour to Stonehenge.

Visit to Stonehenge Liz Gapp

Our coach dropped us at Stonehenge in time for entry timed for 10.30. As the threatened rain was holding off, most of us decided to get the shuttle bus to visit the monument first, before visiting the visitor centre. Some people walked the 1¼ miles to the site; some later also walked back.

We had all been provided with audio tour guides. There were numbers on the site which went from 1 to 8 corresponding to the audio descriptions. These descriptions also gave additional numbers for more detailed information about specific aspects. The descriptions pointed out that Stonehenge is the only stone circle with lintels; there are 300 later mounds around the circle using it as a focal point; the monument is not a true henge as the ditch is inside the defensive mound, not outside it; it was all built over a period dating 3,000 – 2,000 BC; the famous bluestones reputedly from the Preseli Hills in Wales are the smaller of the upright stones, the larger ones being the Sarsen stones from a more local area, most likely the Marlborough Downs in North Wiltshire; the stones had been rearranged at various times in the past. As you walk round the circle of the monument various features such as the Heel Stone and the Slaughter Stone are described. You are kept to the edge of the monument by barriers, as the archaeology inside the barriers is deemed too fragile to be walked on.

Talking to people who knew the site from previous visits, it was felt the new approach, whether by shuttle bus or foot, was more atmospheric and a good way to enter the landscape.

After returning to the interpretive centre (around midday), we went to the café and ate our lunch. Then we went to the exhibition, not large but with quite a few interesting video displays. After this we briefly walked round the reconstructed village of round houses. There we also saw two sample bluestones and a Sarsen stone, the latter in a frame to enable it to be moved. This was so that it was possible to feel the difference between the two stone types. The Sarsen frame was set up with a challenge for people to try and move it, with pressure gauges to highlight how much effort it would take to move it, and showing that in practice it would have taken 200 people to move it.

We returned to the coach just after 13.00, although it wasn’t due to depart until 13.30. We were lucky, the rain had held off until just as we were due to leave the site, despite forecasts predicting an earlier start to the rain. Although not the warmest, it was a very enjoyable and rewarding visit.

Old Sarum Peter Nicholson

The grey skies which had threatened, but mercifully held off during our visit to Stonehenge began to rain at a sprinkle on the coach trip to Old Sarum, then dampened us more and more. This curtailed both the time we spent on site and the proportion of it we explored.

The boundaries of the site are those of an Iron Age hillfort probably from about 400 BC.

When the Normans arrived, ready-made defences seemed a bonus too good to ignore and William the Conqueror raised a motte and bailey castle inside in about 1070. Our access was easy – the coach park is in the outer bailey, so no need to climb a hill as at Danebury. The view in front of us was impressive. A deep ditch was crossed by a modern wooden bridge and, rising above us, the inner bailey with rubble cores of walls of extensive ranges of buildings remaining.

Besides castles, the Normans were great cathedral builders and, at Old Sarum, they built two in quick succession inside the hill fort. The first, begun about 1075 was small by their standards with three apses at the east end. The second, larger, cathedral is shown by the rubble cores of its walls, which remain to a little above ground level. The wall lines of the first cathedral, where they do not coincide, are shown by lines of modern paving.

Time moved on and so, unusually, did the cathedral. A hilltop site exposed to extremes of weather and inconvenient for trade had obvious disadvantages. Proximity to a Royal castle, which was politically advantageous in the eleventh century, had ceased to be so in the thirteenth when the Pope had excommunicated the King. After years of dissatisfaction and discord, the foundation stone of the present cathedral, on its site in the river valley below, was laid in 1220. After the cathedral went downhill, literally, Old Sarum did so metaphorically, suffering depopulation, and eventually became notorious as one of the rottenest of rotten boroughs.

Lyndhurst

With the inclement weather, we opted to return to the hotel. The rain having relented, it gave an opportunity for a brief walk around Lyndhurst itself. The town is quite small, with roads that do not lend themselves to modern traffic with frequent queues of traffic for some 400 yards from the traffic lights onto the High Street. Our hotel was at the northern end of the town opposite some open ground.

Race Course View by Vicki Baldwin

Although the ‘view’ is now open ground where the New Forest ponies come to graze, in the 18^th Century there really was a popular racecourse here that appears on contemporary maps and continued in use until the 1880s.

The Custards Vicki Baldwin

Opposite the hotel a turning, Race Course View, had a sign stating that it led to The Custards, which turned out to be a rather unremarkable road with houses on either side. It seemed a very strange name so I started to look on-line for an explanation. The reason given on the website for ‘Rhubarb Cottage, The Custards, Lyndhurst (I know, I know!) was that there had been orchards on the site and the apples were eaten with custard. This seemed rather an odd link until I remembered that there was a variety of cooking apple named Costard. It would seem rather more logical that ‘The Custards’ is a corruption of ‘The Costards’ and these were the apples grown in the orchards.

Report on HADAS Lecture – October 2015 by Ken Sutherland-Thomas Scientific Methods in Archaeology.

Lecture by Dr Caroline Cartwright from Department of Scientific Research at the British Museum.

The speaker’s primary areas of scientific expertise were identification and interpretation of organics such as wood, charcoal, fibres and other plant remains, shell, ivory and bones from all areas and time periods in the British Museum’s collections. She has led expeditions in many parts of the world.

The quite technical talk was illustrated with digital images of many of the objects under investigation. The many techniques used in analysis and investigation were discussed. She highlighted the fact that the processes used for this apply pre-excavation, during excavation and post-excavation as well as in conservation. Also highlighted was the need for outreach with emphasis on the requirement to publish results in an understandable form both in print and online; and to stage exhibitions.

The advance in analysis techniques including ever more sophisticated microscopes in the last couple of decades has been phenomenal and the hardware and software required mean an expenditure of many millions of pounds. Very few organisations can afford this expenditure.

The storage and archiving of objects is important as future techniques not yet discovered may well enable more information to be extracted from these objects.

The meeting, which was well attended, concluded with a question and answer session. Dr Caroline Cartwright was thanked for a very interesting lecture.

CROSSRAIL at Liverpool Street

We have a lecture in March 2016 on the Archaeology discovered during the Crossrail project. Here is a taster from the Crossrail website

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology/liverpool –street/

The Bedlam burial ground was in use from 1569 to at least 1738, spanning the start of the

British Empire, civil wars, the Restoration, Shakespeare’s plays, the Great Fire of London and numerous plague outbreaks. 2015 marks the 350th anniversary of London’s last Great Plague in 1665 and archaeologists hope that tests on excavated plague victims will help understand the evolution of the plague bacteria strain.

The Bedlam burial ground, also known as Bethlem and the New Churchyard, is located at the western end of Liverpool Street. Over 20,000 Londoners are believed to have been buried at Bedlam between 1569 and 1738. It got its name from the nearby Bethlehem Hospital which housed the mentally ill, although only a small number of Bedlam residents are believed to have been buried there.

In June last year Crossrail invited 16 volunteers to scour parish records from across the capital to create the first extensive list of people buried at Bedlam.

The resulting database of over 5,300 names and backgrounds is published on the Crossrail website and will inform Crossrail’s archaeological excavation.

The Roman remains that archaeologists uncovered at the Liverpool Street station tell a very different story from the Bedlam burial ground skeletons. Initially, skulls found in a small river channel were interpreted as wash-out from a Roman cemetery somewhere upstream. But the discovery in May 2015 of a reused cooking pot full of cremated human bones changed archaeologists’ minds…..

Be sure and put a note in your diaries for what I’m sure will be an exciting lecture.

A Member’s Lecture by Don Cooper

Stewart Wild is giving a lecture to the Mill Hill Historical Society at Trinity Church, Mill

Hill Broadway, on 13^th January 2016 at 14.30 to 16.00 on the following subject: “History of Stevens’ ink and its Finchley connection”

Other Societies’ Events by Eric Morgan

Thursday, 7^th January 2016 at 10.30 am. Pinner Local History Society, Town Hall, Chapel

Lane Car park, Pinner. “Memories of the Queen’s Coronation.” a talk by Terry Jenkins. Visitors £2, Please note the earlier time.

Monday, 11^th January 2016, at 15.00 Barnet Museum and Local History Society, Church House, Wood Street, Barnet (opposite Museum). “Photographic History of Charing Cross Road.” Talk by Bob Kayne. Visitors £2.

Wednesday, 13^th January 2016 at 19.45 Hornsey Historical Society, Union Church Hall, Corner Ferme Park Road/Weston Park N8 9PX. “The Friern Hospital Story.” Talk by David

Berguer (Chair, Friern Barnet and District Local History Society). Visitors £2 Refreshments.

Friday, 15^th January 2016, at 19.00 City of London Archaeological Society (COLAS), St Olave’s Church Hall, Mark Lane, EC3R 7BB. “The Temples and Gods of Roman London.” Talk by Dominic Perring (Institute of Archaeology University College London). Visitors £2.

Thursday, 21^st January, 2016 at 19.30 Camden History Society, Venue details not yet available. “Dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park.” Talk by Professor Joe Cain. Visitors £1. Further details, visit www.camdenhistorysociety.org or Telephone Mrs. Jane Ramsay on 0207586 4436 (acting secretary)

Thursday, 28^th January 2016, at 14.30 Finchley Society, Drawing Room, Avenue House, (now Stephens’ House and gardens) East End Road, N3 3QE. “Women and Medical Care in the First World War.” Talk by Dr. Susan Cohen. Non-members £2, refreshments (Please notice earlier time.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our contributors: Peter Pickering, Jean Lamont, Vicki Baldwin, Ken Sutherland-Thomas, Liz Gapp, Peter Nicholson and Eric Morgan.

Dec 12

Newsletter-549-December-2016

By Roger | Past Newsletters, Volume 10: 2015 - 2019‎ | No Comments

Newsletter-549-December-2016

No. 549 DECEMBER 2016 Edited by Don Cooper

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and Healthy, Happy and Prosperous New Year.

HADAS Diary

Sunday 11^th December 2016 HADAS Christmas Party at Stephens House and Gardens (formerly Avenue House) from 12.30 to 4.00 pm

Tuesday 10th January 2017: My Uncle, the Battle of Britain VC, by James Nicolson

Tuesday 14th February 2017: London Ceramics at time of the Great Fire, by Jacqui Pearce

Tuesday 14th March 2017: Bugging the Nazis in WW2: Trent Park’s Secret History, by Helen Fry

Tuesday 11th April 2017: to be confirmed

Tuesday 9th May 2017: The Cheapside Hoard by Hazel Forsyth

Tuesday 13th June 2017: ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Tuesday 10th October 2017: The Curtain Playhouse Excavations, by Heather Knight, MOLA

Tuesday 14th November 2017: The Battle of Barnet Project, by Sam Wilson

Lectures start at 7.45 for 8.00pm in the Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Road,

Finchley N3 3QE. Buses 82, 143, 326 & 460 pass close by, and it is five to ten minutes’ walk from Finchley Central Station (Northern Line). Tea/coffee and biscuits follow the talk.

Women in Medieval London – Professor Caroline Barron by Vicki Baldwin

Professor Barron’s talk dealt mainly with the period following the Black Death (1348-9) during which women appeared to become more prominent as members and practitioners of skilled trades. Her sources were Custumals, Mayor’s Court records, City Livery Company records, Parish Records, Indentures and Wills. Custumals were compiled over time and record the obligations and acceptable practises in a particular manor or town. The records of City Livery Companies mainly date from the 15^th Century, although a few have material from the 14^th Century. There were 100 parish churches but only around 30 have records that are Pre-Reformation. Few original Indentures of Apprenticeship survive as once the term of apprenticeship had expired they had no use. Wills could be made by married women with their husbands’ consent, and by single women and widows, and provide some indication of the financial status of a certain group of women. Personally I suspect that even though the general workforce was diminished by the ravages of the Black Death, the majority of women would never have been in a position to be apprenticed to, and subsequently follow independently, a trade.

Custumals afforded women a number of opportunities not available outside towns. If a woman followed a trade that was not that of her husband, the City Custumal allowed her to claim the status of a feme sole, a single woman, as opposed to a feme covert or married woman. This enabled her to make contracts, sue or be sued, and to take on male or female apprentices to her trade.

Girls could be apprenticed to a Master or a Mistress, and some fathers left money in their wills so their daughters could be indentured. In some cases women apprenticed themselves to a trade. At the end of the period of apprenticeship boys became Freemen or citizens, whereas the skills the girls had acquired probably made them more marriageable. As some of the female apprentices came from minor gentry, presumably their skills would help swell the family coffers until such time as they married. The City of London oversaw the welfare of both male and female apprentices, and would punish their Masters and Mistresses for mistreating them. For example, one Alice Boston who had prostituted her apprentice, was imprisoned and on three market days led from prison, accompanied by pipers or other musicians, and made to stand in the pillory for an hour with the reason for the punishment proclaimed.

The status of feme sole allowed a woman to claim the legal and economic advantages of a Freewoman and she could petition to be allowed to trade outside London, unlike a Freeman she could play no part in the political life of her guild or trade. In addition, women who were living with their husband at the time of his death could also claim to be Freewomen as long as they remained unmarried and ran their husbands’ businesses.

In conclusion, this was an interesting talk that covered the opportunities available for a relatively small number of women at a specific point in history.

From Peter Pickering

I was interested to read the reference in the November newsletter to Gildas, since I recently went to a lecture at the British Library about this gentleman by Dr Rowan Williams, who was recently Archbishop of Canterbury, and is now Master of Magdalene College Cambridge. He was talking about Gildas’s education and the books to which he had access (which was why it was appropriate to the British Library). Gildas was more a polemicist than a historian in the sense we know it to-day; his prime purpose was to excoriate the kings and clergy of the Britons after the end of Roman domination, and to blame them for the terrible state the country was in (does this remind you of today’s politicians?). He does not speak of Arthur by name, but rather of the British victory at Mount Badon, at which other writers tell us Arthur led the British.

The lecture on Gildas was the first of a series of three. The second was on Bede and his library; Bede was much more a historian in the modern sense – interested in dates, and quoting sources – though he is biassed towards the Anglo-Saxons and against the Britons, whom he regards as inferior Christians. The third lecture, which I was unfortunately unable to go to, was about Nennius, a very shadowy figure who may have been the author of a ninth-century history of the Britons which connects Arthur with the battle of Mount Badon. I hope the lectures will be published in due course.

I also look forward to the results of the excavations at Tintagel; I viewed the site in the distance from the Victorian hotel now called Camelot Castle (run by scientologists) on a trip to Cornwall in the summer.

The Greek Pompeii by Don Cooper

Akrotiri, a Minoan site, on the volcanic island of Santorini (called Thera in classical times) it is known as the “the Pompeii of Greece”. After a volcanic eruption, which destroyed the settlement and covered it with metres deep of pumice in 1627 BCE the site disappeared from view for 3½ thousand years. Although known about from the mid-19^th century, excavations were not begun until 1967 and are still being carried out despite a number of pauses. They were initially carried out by Spyridon Marinatos of the Archaeological School in Athens, who died on site in 1974 and is buried by the side of it.

It seems that the volcanic eruption was preceded by severe earthquakes probably causing the population to leave the site (and go to Crete?) as no evidence of human remains have been found. The settlement was large about 20 hectares (c.50 acres), and with its sophisticated three-storey buildings, elaborate drainage system and street layouts it was an important place. It also seems to have been wealthy as witnessed by magnificent wall paintings, furniture and pottery vessels.

My wife and I visited Akrotiri in September 2005 where sadly about an hour after our visit and while we were driving back to our hotel, the “bioclimatic” roof over the site collapsed, killing one British tourist and injuring six tourists from other countries. The site staff had been watering the grass roof when one of the pillars supporting it gave way. Eight people were persecuted and subsequently jailed. The “bioclimatic” roof had recently replaced an asbestos one. The site then remained closed for seven years.

My wife went back in October this year (2016) and the change was amazing. The new entrance see (fig. 1) was landscaped and there are picnic areas and good toilet facilities.

Figure 1: The new entrance

In the interim, there have been further excavations which have highlighted the multi-storey nature of many of the buildings as well as improving the definition of the street layout. So far only about 40 buildings have been uncovered which probably represent no more that 5% of the site. The whole Akrotiri harbour has not yet been excavated.

The volcanic ash which gets everywhere, has provided great preservation but means that the place looks as though it could do with a good hoovering! (Fig: 2 & 3).

The journey around the site is now largely on raised walkways so that you are looking down on the various features.

Figure 2: Earthquake damage to staircase

Figure 3: New areas

There are information plaques on the walkways around the excavation but it is a feature of the site is that there isn’t an official guide book nor indeed any book on the site for sale locally. However, there are local human guides that will show you around for 60 Euro.

The museum associated with the site is in the islands capital – Thera. It is an excellent museum with the artefacts well displayed – but still no written literature! The museum highlights the magnificent wall paintings – many now in Athens museum, the furniture, tables and chairs as well as the extensive pottery vessels. The various imported artefacts highlight the extent of Akrotiri’s trade links with items from Cyprus, Egypt, Syria and the Greek mainland. The photos below show various aspects of the displays: a wall painting, pottery vessels and an oven.

If possible it is best to visit the museum first before going to the site as it gives you a better understanding of this amazing site. Further information can be gleaned from the many web sites that have write-ups on the site.

Report on the Gillian Gear Memorial Lecture 4^th November 2016

It is hard to believe that it is over a year since Dr Gillian Gear PhD MBE died and those of us who knew her still miss her. She was the driving force at the Barnet Museum and a fountain of local knowledge.

This inaugural lecture took place at Chipping Barnet Library and between 45 and 50 people heard a fascinating lecture about Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (known as the “Kingmaker”) by Karen Clark. Karen Clark is a historian and author who has just published a book entitled “The Nevills of Middleham”, the book is for sale at Waterstones in Barnet.

The lecture was entitled “Warwick’s War” and she described the many battles that the Earl was involved in. Indeed it seems that if there was a battle then Warwick was there, he fought on both sides of the War of the Roses. He was also involved in fighting at sea. After success at the first battle of St Albans, he was made Captain of Calais, later Admiral. During his time there he acted inter alia as a pirate capturing and plundering a fleet of Hanseatic salt ships on their way to Lubeck and capturing six ships of the Castilian fleet. England was not, at that time, at war with either Castile or the Hanse.

His luck ran out at the Battle of Barnet in 1471 where he was killed. His body was brought with other nobles killed to London and put on display at St Pauls Cathedral to prove to the populous that he was dead. He was later buried at Bisham Abbey.

This was a very enjoyable lecture although the complexities of the relationships during the “War of the Roses” was difficult to understand.

Editor’s note:

Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known as “The Kingmaker” as a pirate.

Following the lecture, and not having known that Warwick indulged in piracy, I consulted the annuals of British Naval history notably “The Safeguard of the Sea” A Naval History of Britain 660 to 1649 by N.A.M Roger (Professor of Naval History at Exeter University) published in 2004 by Penguin Books, from which I quote.

“The Earl of Warwick became Captain of Calais in 1456, and soon showed himself a skilful and unscrupulous exponent of sea power, building his squadron on the revenue of the Wool Staple* and the plunder of unrestrained piracy. In 1458 he took six prizes out of a Castilian fleet. They at least were enemies, which the Hansa and Genoese, whom he plundered soon after, were not. All this was extremely popular in England where people cared nothing for legality or diplomatic consequences and saw only an English commander whose bold deeds did something to restore battered national esteem.” P153.

“In May 1460 Warwick’s squadron met the Lancastrian fleet under the Duke of Exeter at sea in the Channel, and Exeter ran away. The next month Warwick raided Sandwich, where the royal fleet lay and captured the entire force.” P154

In 1469 Warwick was at war with the Hansa. He captured a Flemish fleet in the Channel and was blockaded in Honfleur by an English and Burgundian fleet from which he escaped.

The Hansa and the Burgundians had their revenge when in March their fleet brought Edward 1V back to England and on 14^th April 1471 Warwick was killed at the Battle of Barnet and his fleet surrendered.

In between all this piracy Warwick found time to change sides and help to install Henry V1 in October 1470 having previous helped to install Edward 1V after the battle of Northampton in 1461 – thus earning the title of “The Kingmaker”

N. A. M. Roger, 2004. ““The Safeguard of the Sea” A Naval History of Britain 660 to 1649” London/ Penguin Books. P153-154

The Wool Staple

The Wool Staple was a trading stratagem whereby a government required that all trade in certain designated goods could only be transacted at specific towns or ports. Calais was designed as the port for wool. All wool sold overseas was taken first to Calais, then under English control. Under this system, Calais itself was called ‘the Staple’. The trade was dominated by the Merchants of the Staple who, from 1363, had been granted the exclusive right to trade raw wool in Calais.

The English system remained in place for nearly two centuries, though it would decline in importance as exports of finished cloth were substituted for exports of raw wool. With the fall of Calais to the French, in 1558, the staple moved again to Bruges.

Warwick was able to impose and extract levies on the trade.

Jenckes, A L. 1908. “The Origin, Organisation and the Location of the Staple in England” Philadelphia/ University of Pennsylvania

Report on the lecture by Lyn Blackmore by Peter Pickering

Many thanks to Lyn Blackmore of Museum of London Archaeology for stepping in at very short notice when Hazel Forsyth cancelled the advertised lecture. Lyn took as her subject From Londinium to Lundenburgh – the development of Anglo-Saxon London. Her talk, well-illustrated with slides of pottery and other artefacts was, actually, almost as much an account of the steady development since the war in our knowledge of the area between the City of London and Westminster as it was of the development of Anglo-Saxon London itself.

The defences of the Roman walled city of Londinium were being strengthened as late as the beginning of the fifth century, but for whatever reason, the early Anglo-Saxons avoided it, though St Paul’s cathedral is mentioned in a seventh-century charter. For a long time where actually the Anglo-Saxons had lived in the London area was a mystery. Then, from the 1960s, when excavations at the Treasury site in Whitehall uncovered a well-preserved ninth-century settlement, the real Anglo-Saxon London began to emerge. In 1972 Saxon pottery was identified on the site of Arundel House on the Strand; evidence accumulated over the next ten years, and from 1984 the major excavations at the Royal Opera house, Covent Garden, found Lundenwic, a planned town established from AD 670s by Wulfhere of Mercia, or Hlothere and/or Eadric of Kent, which became the port of Mercia. Here, then, was the metropolis described by Bede in the early eighth century. To the east of Lundenwic, towards the Treasury, recent discoveries of sarcophagi and a tiled structure (perhaps a temple) near the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields have confirmed antiquarians’ accounts and show that Anglo-Saxons did not avoid this significant late Roman site. There were major fires in Lundenwic late in the eighth century, but it continued to flourish into the ninth century; then came Viking attacks, and people began to return to the old Roman city, which was re-established and refortified by Alfred the Great in 886. Lundenwic was forgotten, though some memory survived in the name ‘Aldwych’, (the old ‘wic’).

Lyn believes that there is still more evidence of the Anglo-Saxons waiting to be discovered; the small excavation for a lift-shaft in the Adelphi building, described for us at our May meeting, which found some of the Lundenwic waterfront, is a good omen. But Lyn thinks there is unlikely ever to be another site like the Royal Opera House – the Law Courts in the Strand will not be redeveloped for a long time, and shall we ever know if there was a temple of Apollo where Westminster Abbey now is?

BRADFORD Trip – Day 2 Jim Nelhams

Unlike Henrietta Barnet, who had long visits to Bristol (see November newsletter), the HADAS contingent had only a few hours to explore, starting at SS Great Britain.

“SS Great Britain” Kevin McSharry

Day 2 of the HADAS expedition to Bradford-on-Avon and environs, was to Bristol.

The highlight for me was the visit to the “SS Great Britain”. The story of this mighty vessel, and the many, many people associated with this ship, is both epic and heroic.

Fig: 5 Launch of the SS Great Britain by Prince Albert 18th June 1843

Fig 4 Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a visionary engineer designed “SS Great Britain”. The “Britain’s” supersize hull made her, at that time, the biggest, strongest ship ever built.. She was fitted with a ground-breaking steam powered screw propeller, instead of the conventional paddle wheels, the very latest in maritime technology; the most powerful steam engine ever afloat; a balanced rudder, designed to make steering the ship easier for the crew … …. I could go on but suffice it to say “The Britain” was at the cutting edge of technology for its day.

“The Britain” had a long working life from 1845 to 1933. A working life brilliantly recounted in the inter-active exhibition that tells the life-story of this Leviathan of the seas from its inception to its abandonment in Sparrow’s Cove in the Falklands in 1937.

“The SS Great Britain” has been lovingly and meticulously restored, as a result one experiences what the “Britain” was like in its heyday for the crew and the passengers, 1st Class to Steerage. It would take days to do justice to this magnificent restoration of our heritage. My appetite was whetted for further visits.

Just as it was ground-breaking technology that enabled the building of the “SS Great Britain” it was ground-breaking technology that enabled its rescue from Sparrow’s Cove in the Falkands and its later restoration e.g. the floating pontoon which returned the “Britain” to Bristol, her birthplace, to the desert-like moisture reduced atmosphere that prevents the deterioration of the iron hull.

The visit left me with a kaleidoscope of reflections and emotions. The heroism of the men, who crewed the “Britain” through the “roaring 40s”, the genius of those who collaborated with Isambard Brunel to bring his brain-child to fruition; the intrepid daring and boldness of our Victorian forbears. In these post-Brexit days and the hysteria about immigrants, I pondered the fact that Brunel was the son of an immigrant and how Isambard enriched and garnered with honours this land of Britain that his father had adopted. I believe there is a message, a lesson for us.

Hoorah! For the “SS Great Britain” and for all that the “Britain” and the people associated with it, from its birth to its honourable retirement, stands for. An epic saga filled with heroes.

I heartily commend a visit to the “SS Great Britain”.

SS Great Britain as she is today.

Clifton Suspension Bridge Sylvia Javes

Figure 6: The Clifton Suspension Bridge

The Clifton Suspension bridge is an elegant structure almost 75 metres above the Avon Gorge, between Clifton and Leigh Woods, Bristol. It was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who won a competition to design a bridge in 1830 at the age of 24. Work began, but the Bristol riots in 1831 caused investments to dry up. However, work resumed and by 1841 towers on the Leigh side were completed, but again money ran out and work was abandoned.

Brunel died in 1859, and it was decided to complete the bridge in his honour. Two engineers, John Hawkshaw, a railway and bridge engineer, and William Henry Barlow, who designed the St Pancras rail terminus, picked up the brief and completed it. The bridge finally opened in 1864.

Four wrought iron chains from Brunel’s Hungerford pedestrian bridge (demolished to make way for a rail bridge) were used, together with new ones for the uppermost layer. They built a more robust deck than Brunel had planned and there were other variations caused by the reuse of the existing chains. Its 214m span was the longest in Britain at the time.

The towers, 26.2 meters high, are in unadorned rough stone, rather than Brunel’s formal Egyptian style, complete with lions.

The bridge was constructed by workers working from a ‘traveller’ suspended on ropes, from which they joined individual links to make up the chains. The chains are anchored in tunnels 25 metres long at each end of the bridge. Suspension rods were hung from the links in the chains, girders hang from these to support the deck. The deck is almost a metre higher at the Clifton end than at Leigh Woods, but it appears horizontal.

The Bridge is a Grade 1 listed structure which still has around 99% of its original parts. When maintenance work takes place, care must be taken to replace parts like for like. It is maintained by the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust, a non-profit making charity. The Trust receives no financial assistance and all maintenance and operating costs must be covered by the toll, £1 for cars and motor cycles. Pedestrians, cycles and horses cross free of charge. About 11-12,000 vehicles cross every day. There is a weight limit of 4 tons, which meant that our coach had to park on the Clifton side and we walked across to the visitor centre on the Leigh Woods side, enjoying the view along the gorge as we crossed.

BRISTOL MUSEUM and ART GALLERY Jeffrey Lesser

It was with a depressing feeling of déjà vu that I entered the 1^st floor of the Museum by the side entrance. The exhibits of glass cupboards stuffed with tableaux of stuffed animals and birds were very similar to those in the pre-War local museum of my childhood; they might have been taken over directly. My spirits were only slightly lifted by an irrelevant, but donated, fully furnished Gipsy caravan.

But my mood was instantly changed by going up to the top floor to the Ceramic section. One could see why Bristol in the 18^th century was a noted centre of production and many examples were displayed with appropriate explanations. Particularly of note were specimens of the famous Bristol blue glass. An explanation of soft and hard porcelain was given together with some beautiful Chinese and Persian pieces which had stimulated British production. There were also examples of modern design including those from the 1930s.

The Museum was formed from two neighbouring buildings on a steep hill so there was a half-floor difference of level on each of the floors – a source of confusion when following the ground plans of the three floors. But the French Art, Old Masters and Age of Enlightenment galleries were comprehensive, the French Impressionists being well represented. In contrast there was an 17^th century 4X3 metres piece of English art; it was a representation of all the animals entering the Ark and was marked by the ping-pong bats and balls which had struck it when displayed in the hall of its aristocratic owner. It was noticeable that there were many art students attempting their own versions – some very idiosyncratic. Reluctantly it was time to hurry on, lingering to see one of the earliest experimental aircraft, suspended in the central hall; a Bristol Boxkite. It was accompanied by an equally experimental – it seemed – short film of the ‘plane in flight. One can only marvel at the bravery of its pilot.

The ground floor is notable particularly for the section on Egypt, covering several periods with explanations of their developments. This, with the neighbouring display of Assyrian reliefs, seemed designed to stimulate the interest of children older than those for whom the nearby ‘Curiosity’ gallery was intended. I was interested to see this as it might have been similar to an 18th century ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’. But it was intended to whet the appetite of young children to ask “What” and “Why” and “When” by means of carefully designed interactive displays. From this approach, they could gain so much more from the otherwise static displays of geology and maps, metalwork and art, dinosaurs and sculpture that had tempted me.

After a stimulating afternoon, it was time regretfully to leave the Museum and literally go downhill towards the Cathedral and it’s Green.

Bristol Cathedral by Peter Pickering

Figure 7: Bristol Cathedral

When we got down the hill from the art gallery, Bristol Cathedral appeared prominent across the grass, colourful flowers and water feature of College Green. The building is rather deceptive, in that the large nave, through which we entered, is much more recent than the eastern parts; it dates from the nineteenth century, and is the work of G E Street, architect of the Law Courts on the Strand.
Bristol was not built as a cathedral, but as an Augustinian abbey, and was made into a cathedral when the monasteries were dissolved; for three hundred years after that, there was no nave, but the heart of the church was the chancel. Archaeological investigations connected with the installation of underfloor heating may however reveal something about a mediaeval nave.
The earliest thing visible is a late Saxon carving of the ‘Harrowing of Hell’, though the cathedral as it stands contains no existing or known Saxon structure. There are however important Norman features, especially the remarkably complete chapter house, its walls covered with patterned arcades and geometrical forms. The Elder Lady Chapel is of the early thirteenth century, with carvings including one of a monkey dressed as a King and playing a pipe. But the chancel itself and the Lady Chapel behind it are from the beginning of the fourteenth century, in an innovative ‘Decorated’ architectural style.
Throughout the building are tombs and wall-monuments, perhaps most notably those to abbots, to the Berkeley family, and to eighteenth century citizens of Bristol, many of whom prospered from the slave trade.
A fascinating visit to a major building. It was salutary to learn that it was almost burnt down in 1831, in riots when the bishop voted against the Reform Bill.

Visiting Bristol Jim Nelhams

Our reconnaissance to Bristol for the trip proved an interesting exercise. How better than to use God’s Wonderful Railway as the GWR was known, and follow the route designed by Brunel. His grand plan was that you left London on his railway to Bristol, where you would board one of his ships to complete your journey to New York. So we started at Paddington without our marmalade sandwiches, but with time to visit Paddington’s statue on Platform 1 and his shop on Platform 11 before boarding our standard gauge train.

A bonus on reaching Brunel’s Temple Meads station: Bristol busses accepted our London freedom passes for the ride to the city centre.

Our trips only provide a flavour of possible places to visit, during the Hadas trip we scheduled only four, but there are lots of other places, museums and churches worthy of interest. And a day trip by train is very straightforward.

Our return journey was by a different route (with work going on elsewhere), and included an unscheduled stop at Bradford on Avon for 5 passengers who had boarded the wrong train.

Other Societies’ Events by Eric Morgan

Thursday, 16^th December, 7.30pm, Camden History Society, Burgh House, New End Square, NW3 1LT. “Images of Camden Past and Present”. Talk by Gillian Tindall & Richard Landsdown. Visitors £1 with wine and mince pies from 7.00pm

Sunday, 18^th December, 2.00pm, Jaywalks Enfield, Bush Hill Park, Meet Bush Hill Park Station, Queen Anne’s Place, Enfield. History guided walk lead by Joe Studman. Discover a conservation area with a surprising selection of historical associations. Cost £5 (Concessions £4). Lasts 90 minutes.

Thursday, 5^th January, 10.30am, Pinner Local History Society, Village Hall, Chapel Lane Car Park, Pinner, “Cassiobury – The ancient seat of the Earls of Essex”. Talk by Paul Rabbitts on the untold story of the estate and family behind the Watford Park. Visitors £3

Monday, 9^th January, 3pm, Barnet Museum and local history society, Church House, Wood Street, Barnet (opp. Museum). “The B to Z of street furniture”. Talk by Rob Kayne. Visitors £2

Wednesday, 11^th January, 2.30pm, Mill Hill Historical Society, Trinity Church, The Broadway, NW7 “Fair shares for all – rationing in Britain during and after the 2^nd World War”. Talk by David Evans.

Wednesday, 11^th January, 7.45pm, Hornsey Historical Society, Union Church Hall, cnr Ferne Park Rd/Weston Park, N8 9PX. “Hornsey in WWI”. Talk by Nick Allaway. Visitors £2 Refreshments & Sales% information from 7.00.

Thursday, 12^th January, 8.00pm, Historical Association (Hampstead and N W London Branch), Fellowship House,136a Willifield Way NW11 6YD (off Finchley Road in Temple Fortune). “Why was there no Socialism in America?”. Talk by Professor Lawrence Goodman.

Monday, 16^th January, 8.00pm, Enfield Society, Jubilee Hall, 2 Parsonage Lane, Enfield, EN2 0AJ. “Alms of Enfield and Edmonton between 1930’s and 1970’s”. Presented by Film London incl. Edmonton & Enfield charter days, Joint Meeting with Edmonton Hundred Historical Society.

Thursday, 19^th January, 7.30pm, Camden History Society, at Camden local studies and & archive centre, 32-38 Theobalds Road, London WC1X 8PY. “Twenty extraordinary Buildings on Primrose Hill”. Talk by Martin Sheppard. Visitors £1. (For further details visit www.camdenhistorysociety.org

Friday, 20^th January, 7.00pm, COLAS, St. Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3R 7BB. “Creating the Museum of London’s –Fire! Fire! Exhibition”. Talk by Meriel Jeater (MoLA). Visitors £2, Refreshments after.

Friday, 20^th January, 7.30pm. Wembley History Society, English Martyr’s Hall, Chalkhill Road, Wembley, HA9 9EW9 (top of Blackbird Hill, adj. to the church). “From fire to fountain – Film and Television at Wembley Park”. Talk by Philip Grant (Brent Archives) commemorating over 100 Years of cinema and TV programmes made at Wembley, as its last TV studio closes. Visitors £3

Wednesday, 25^th January, 7.45pm Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, North Middlesex Golf Club, The Manor House, Friern Barnet Lane, N20 0NL. “New Southgate”. Talk by Colin Barratt. Visitors £2, Refreshments including bar.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to our contributors: Eric Morgan, Peter Pickering, Vicki Baldwin, Jeffrey Lesser, Sylvia Javes, Jim Nelhams, Kevin McSherry

Feb 12

Newsletter-515-February-2014

By Roger | Past Newsletters, Volume 9: 2010 - 2014 | No Comments

Newsletter-515-February-2014

Number 515 February 2014 Edited by Andy Simpson

HADAS DIARY

Lectures are held at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley, N3 3QE, and start promptly at 8 pm, with coffee/tea and biscuits afterwards. Non-members: £1. Buses 82, 125, 143, 326 & 460 pass nearby and Finchley Central station (Northern Line), is a 5-10 minute walk away.

Tuesday 11th February 2014

Ian Blair – Senior Archaeologist (MOLA) Anglo-Saxon finds at Southend.

This covers the investigations at Prittlewell near Southend. An Anglo-Saxon burial was discovered along with a large collection of ornate grave goods. This led the experts to believe they were dealing with a 7th century prince.

Tuesday 11th March 2014

David Thorold – Curator, Prehistory to Medieval. Verulamium Museum; The Sandridge Coin Hoard

Tuesday 8th April 2014

Brian James-Strong, River Lea Tidal Mill Trust; Restoring House Mill (working title)

Tuesday 13th May 2014

Malcolm Stokes (HADAS member); The bishop’s hunting park in Highgate

Tuesday 10th June 2014

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Tuesday 14th October 2014

Dr Nick Ashton – British Museum; Finding Neanderthal tools in Norfolk cliffs

Tuesday 11th November 2014

TO BE CONFIRMED

Jo Nelhams adds; Long outing to Kent, 29 June to 3 July; we need your support to swell the numbers booked to make sure the trip is viable!

Sunday Mornings at Avenue House…

Continue in the usual vein for post-excavation work. Our three ‘master sets’ of HADAS Newsletters have been checked over and gaps filled, duplicate books and journals weeded out – as those of you attending the monthly lectures will have noticed – and cleaning and recording of the remarkably varied finds from the 2013 Avenue House greenhouse/water tower excavations are ongoing.

Buxton day 4 – the grand tour Jim Nelhams

One of the objectives we have when planning our trips is to minimize the time spent on the coach. Although the countryside in the Peak District is delightful, we wanted to see as much as we could. This day was a challenge, with a number of visits planned and booked. At Eyam and Bakewell, there were small museums, so our numbers dictated splitting the group and “swapping over”. We also hoped to stop at Arbor Low stone circle on the way back to the hotel – which we managed, though with the weather closing in. But let our correspondents take up the story.

The Cathedral of the Peak Micky Watkins

St John the Baptist at Tideswell is known as the Cathedral of the Peak because it is surprisingly large for a parish church. The church dates from the 14^th century and is in the Gothic style, except for the chancel and tower which were built after the Black Death, at the end of the 14^th century, and are in the Perpendicular style.

The woodwork is a most delightful feature of the church This is one of the few churches which has an original wooden screen, and even a screen door which is beautifully carved. On the organ case there are carvings of birds, leaves and plants and all sorts of animals. On the choir stalls there are carvings of Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination and Visiting the Sick, all about ten inches high. There are further carvings on the pew ends. This beautiful work was done by in the early 20^th century by Advent Hunstone, a local carver.

There was an earlier church on this site, and the font which appears to be Norman must have been in that church. In the Lady Chapel there is a very old window and a curious tomb with two female stone figures which date from before 1300.

In the De Bower chapel there is a stone monument of a knight and his lady, probably Sir Thurstan de Bower and Lady Margaret. A large tomb in the centre of the chancel is that of Sir Sampson Meverill, a famous knight and soldier who fought Joan of Arc and died in 1462. There are several brasses, one to Bishop Purseglove who was born in Tideswell and became Bishop of Hull. He was an agent of Thomas Cromwell and was involved in the dissolution of the monasteries, becoming rich in the process.

This medieval church was sensitively restored in 1875, and a fine Jesse window was made in the east window behind the altar. In 1907 the vicar paid for a new and very colourful west window. The 19^th and 20^th century craftsmanship has added to the glory of this big church.

“Ring a Ring of Roses” Kevin McSharry

Eyam (pronounced ‘eem’) is a small village in the heart of the Dales of Derbyshire. Picturesque? Oldy worldy? Yes, to a degree, but probably no more so than many a neighbouring village or hamlet. Yet Eyam is a name with which to conjure; a name that has resonated down the years; and a name that drew the HADAS intrepid explorers on the third day of the 2013 visit to Buxton.

Eyam made its stamp on history and entered into National and International Chronicles during the fateful thirteen months from September 1665 to October 1666 – the fifth and sixth years of the restored Stuart monarchy, in the person of Charles II. Years better remembered in the school history books for the Great Plague and Great Fire of London.

The Great Plague was the fatal portal by which Eyam entered into the history books. The Great Plague, The Black Death, Bubonic Plague by whatever name one wishes to call it meant a painful death for the individual and for the population, as a whole, decimation.

The Plague came to Eyam from London on a wagon carrying a bolt of cloth which was delivered to George Viccars, the village tailor. The cloth was flea infested. It was the flea from the Black Rat (Rattus rattus) which carried the Bubonic Plague. George, the tailor, was the first to be infected. Within two days he was struck down by a raging fever, swellings (buboes) on his body followed by a rose-red rash and finally death. Hence,

“Ring a ring of roses

A pocket full of posies

Atishoo, atishoo

We all fall down.”

In this simple children’s rhyme, a grim legacy of the plague, the complexities of the plague, its symptoms, how it is spread (a red rash, sneezing), its possible prevention (a nosegay of posies) and its inevitable outcome death (we all fall down) are succinctly summed up.

The plague spread rapidly; and, at this point in the story of Eyam two names figure prominently: the Reverend William Mompesson, village Rector, and the Reverend Thomas Stanley, Mompesson’s immediate predecessor. Under their strong leadership, putting aside their deep doctrinal differences, they persuaded the villagers to enter voluntary quarantine to prevent the plague spreading to neighbouring settlements; to bury their own dead; and to worship in the open air, in the Delph, to limit the spread of the disease. This self-imposed quarantine, this self-sacrifice prevented the spread of the Plague, it saved lives. One hears echoes of the Evangelist John:

“Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13.

The cost of this self-sacrifice by the villagers of Eyam, was a high one. Painful death after painful death resulting in 260 mortalities, probably a third of the population of Eyam. Some families were wiped out. Some left but a sole survivor such as Elizabeth Hancock who buried her husband and six children in just eight days. Each body Elizabeth dragged or carried from her home, dug the grave and filled it herself

The call to sacrifice came from the clergymen, Mompesson and Stanley, but the response was a communal one – hesitant perhaps but nonetheless a resounding yes! The self-sacrifice of the good people of Eyam was not typical of the rest of society:

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured and far away.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).

Today’s Community of Eyam, the spiritual heirs of the Eyam Community of three and a half centuries ago, have ensured that the heroism and self-sacrifice are remembered, that they are not forgotten. Their sacrifice is kept ever-green through its excellent Museum, its craft centre, which served a welcomed cup of tea, well-maintained Parish Church of St. Lawrence, excellent signage to dwellings and graves of those who lived and perished in the Plague, the provision of car-parking and public toilets; an annual service of Thanksgiving, held at the open-air Delph, their place of worship during the plague, on the last Sunday of August.

The poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt said that there was:

“No truce with Time nor Time’s accomplice Death.”

The weathervane on the top of Eyam Museum.

There is no truce with death but Eyam seems to have gained a kind truce with time, because the name of Eyam and the place of Eyam, in history, has not faded. Why is Eyam remembered? Why does its name endure? The answer lies in the eternal verities of love of neighbour and self-sacrifice so poignantly manifested by the good people of Eyam centuries ago. Surely humanity at its best.

Monsal Head Jim Nelhams

Having left Eyam on our way to Bakewell, time for a brief coffee (or something stronger) stop at The Monsal Head hotel. The hotel is situated at the top of Monsal Dale, giving a splendid view over the dale, and of the famous railway viaduct built by the Midland Railway in 1867, and the River Wye meandering below. Was that Andy disappearing into the distance? (It was!! With great views from the viaduct, adjacent tunnel, and station remains a short walk away -Ed)

Bakewell Dot Ravenswood

The church of All Saints stands on a steep hill overlooking the town. It may have been founded as early as the 680s, and a church building was almost certainly there by 800. The two crosses in the churchyard, not on their original sites, date from the early 9th century. The fenced-in cross on the west side is particularly well preserved, having its original socket stone and part of its head.

The west front and part of the north and south arcades of the nave are 12th-century work. The main part of the church was rebuilt in the mid-19th century, when an amazing number of Anglo-Saxon and Early English stones was discovered beneath the north and south transepts and the crossing, including decorated cross shafts, grave slabs and standing stones.

Many of the grave slabs had symbols inscribed on them, a chalice or sheep shears or a sword, to indicate the occupation of the deceased.

Some of these stones, piled up and cemented together, line the south porch and the northwest arch. What they are doing at Bakewell is a mystery. One theory, based on recent research sponsored by the Heritage Lottery Fund, is that they may relate to Edward the Elder’s reconquest of the northern lands held by the Danes, which was affirmed at a meeting at Bakewell in or about 920. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, Edward built a fort at Bakewell in that year, and the northern tribes assembled there to acknowledge his authority.

At the top of the south aisle there is an unusual alabaster wall monument commemorating Sir Godfrey Foljambe (d. 1376), and his wife Avena (d. 1382). Their small, waist-length figures are in a recumbent attitude, with hands closed in prayer, but set upright inside a window-like frame. On the right is the “Newark,” an extension of the south transept, so called because it was “new work” in the mid-13th century. It was rebuilt in 1841-52. The screened-off area was a mortuary chapel for the Manners and Vernon families, whose tombs include a spectacular wall monument to Sir George Manners (d. 1623), with two tiers of kneeling children and arches inscribed with verses from the Bible; the alabaster tomb of Sir George Vernon (d. 1567), and his two wives, with effigies; and a wall monument to Sir John Manners (d. 1611), and his wife Dorothy (d. 1584).

It was a surprise to see that the church contains work by several distinguished modern artists and architects. The stained-glass window of the Adoration of the Lamb was designed by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Henry Holiday, and the striking black and gold altar in the north transept is by Ninian Comper. The chancel was redesigned by Gilbert Scott the Younger about 1880.

The Old House Museum, behind the church and further up the hill, occupies a building which was described as “a competant dwelling house” in 1534, when it was leased to the tax collector Ralph Gell of Hopton by the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield. In 1777 Sir Richard Arkwright leased it from the Gell family and converted it into six homes for mill-workers. The house was saved from demolition in 1935 by the Bakewell and District Historical Society, who run it as a local history museum, with displays of costumes, lace, toys and tools, and Tudor and Victorian room settings.

Much altered and extended, the building is roughly H-shaped, with a two-storey porch and mullioned windows. It has oak beams and floorboards, a two-storey timber partition with some original wattle and daub infill, a garderobe, and big ashlar fireplaces on both floors. The ground-floor fireplace is flanked by the original stair turret (occupied by a modern staircase).

(Note – Emma Robinson has conducted further research on the cross and stones at Bakewell – to be included next month.)

Arbor Low Stone Circle Jean Lamont

Our visit to Arbor Low was the last we made – at the end of our “3 churches and a Plague” day, before setting off home on Thursday. A gentle ½ mile climb along a farm track brought us to the site 1,230 feet above sea level. We could immediately see why it had been chosen by the Neolithic builders, because of the nearly-360 degree panoramic view of the surrounding countryside.

The site is thought to date from the 3rd millennium BC and to have been developed in at least 3 stages: first a long barrow on the adjacent Gib Hill, then in the late Neolithic an elliptical henge (a 2m high bank with a 7-12 m wide ditch inside) broken by two opposing entrances in the NW and SE. The diameter of the bank is around 90m to 85m externally. Finally a ring of stones was erected on the inner platform: these vary in size around 1.5 – 2m tall, with monoliths 2.6m and 2.9m tall at the entrances. A small group of 7 stones was placed in the centre of the ring. Allowing for broken stones it is estimated that there were originally between 41 and 43 standing stones. The site would have been very impressive, but all the stones have now been flattened, possibly, at the suggestion of English Heritage, for superstitious reasons.

Buxton Museum has a display of artefacts found at or near the site including a skull, discoidal flint knives, flint knives and scrapers, a stone “mace head” and stone axe and some delicate flint arrowheads, all dating from the period 3,200 – 1,400 BC.

Unfortunately the rain which had held off until we reached the site started to come down in a chilly wind, and this discouraged us from exploring and experiencing the site as we would have liked, so we made a hasty retreat to the coach.

As always, prehistoric monuments like Arbor Low raise many questions: what ceremonies took place there? What beliefs did the communities who built it hold, so strong that generation after generation continued their work? It is frustrating that we shall never know.

Site of Cricklewood Locomotive Shed evaluation Bill Bass

During November 2013, Museum of London Archaeology (MoLA) undertook an evaluation dig at this site before a planned housing development is built. The site is bordered by the Edgware Road and the Midland Main Line at the end of what is now Geron Way, south of Staples Corner.

Edgware Road is well known as being the line of Watling Street Roman Road. The steam shed buildings were closed in 1967 and mostly demolished c1969. Eventually a thick concrete raft was laid over the entire site with latterly ‘Parcelforce’ using it as a depot.

A series of large trenches were opened up through the concrete, much of this revealed that most archaeology had been truncated away by various demolition and levelling works. However, the remains of concrete foundations, cast-iron drains and what could be the bottom levels of brick lined ‘inspection pits’ of the loco shed were seen. Inspection pits were used to gain access to the underneath of locos for servicing. At Cricklewood there was a brick built double-roundhouse with a turntable for each, these ‘inspection pits’ may be the ones surrounding the turntables. The above features were directly built into solid London Clay.

Many thanks to MoLA Site Manager Paul Thrale and Project Manager Michael Smith, and also Sandy Kidd of EH for their time.

Some recent Roman finds in Kingsbury by Philip Grant (Wembley History Society)

Back in its early days, in 1953, Wembley History Society campaigned to try to save what was thought to be a Tudor farmhouse at Blackbird Hill in Kingsbury from being demolished. Although there was talk of an archaeological dig, no record appears in the Society’s early Journals to show that any such work was done. Blackbird Farm was demolished around 1955, and “The Blackbirds” public house opened on its site a couple of years later.

A sketch of Blackbird Farm in January 1927,
by local amateur artist, L. Hill. [Source: Brent Archives – Wembley History Society Collection]

Scroll forward to 2010, and the pub had closed like many others, despite an attempt to revive it as the Irish-themed “Blarney Stone”. Developers put in a planning application to build a five-storey block of flats, with an underground car park and retail unit on the ground floor, on the site. Luckily, the location had been identified as one with archaeological potential in a document drawn up in the 1980’s by Brent’s then Planning Conservation Officer, Geoffrey Hewlett, a Wembley History Society member and now a well-known local history author. The Society, backed by Brent Museum, supported the Planning Officer’s recommendation that there should be a condition in the planning consent for a proper archaeological assessment of the site, and this was agreed by the Planning Committee, including a requirement that both the Museum and the Society should be consulted about the archaeology work.

The desk-based archaeology assessment for the site suggested that, although there was a good prospect of finding post-medieval material, the chances of finding anything earlier were low. The information that we provided was that there could well be earlier material, based on the possibility that what is now Blackbird Hill was part of a pre-Roman trackway from a Thames crossing near Westminster up into Hertfordshire (known as Eldestrete, or the old street, in Saxon times), and that the Roman tiles and other domestic material included in the rubble walls of the nearby St Andrew’s Old Church (which dates from around AD1100) may have come from a local building.

A photo taken during our visit on 18 September, with cabins in the background.

In the Summer of 2013, we learned that building work on the site was about to begin, and that Archaeology South-East (“ASE” – the commercial arm of University College London’s archaeology department) would be carrying out the excavations. Preliminary work by ASE had involved three trial trenches at various locations around the pub building, which established that the only area worth full excavation was at the lower end of the site alongside Old Church Lane. This agreed our own ideas, based on the 1950’s building plans. Because the contractors were already on site, excavating for the underground car park, ASE could not allow public access to their “dig”, but did allow a group from Wembley History Society to visit on 18 September 2013, in hard hats and high-visibility jackets and under close supervision.

One of the brick pads

Among the first excavated remains we were shown were the brick pads which would have supported the wooden frame of the square timber building (seen in the sketch on page 7) at the corner of the site. This was probably a store for grain or a similar crop, which needed to be raised off of the ground to protect it from damp and rats, and the bricks were thought to be 18^th century. A range of buildings with brick foundations had been uncovered, with a wall which the site manager thought probably dated from the 18th or late 17th century butting on to another which could be 16^th century, but which had then been used as the base for 19^th century brickwork. These finds tend to confirm continuous occupation of the site from Tudor times, when a freehold smallholding called “Findens” is shown here on the 1597 Hovenden map produced for All Souls’ College, with a succession of barns or other ancillary farm buildings.

Close-up of a pit showing the different brick wall and floor details

Among the “finds” we were shown at the end of our visit, mainly pieces of pottery dating from between around 1600 and 1800, the most interesting was a shard from an Iron Age pot, one of four that had been unearthed at the site.

A shard of black Iron Age ware found at the site.

We were told that such finds are quite common on “digs” in the London area, but although there was no evidence linking them with Iron Age activity at the site, their presence must surely lend some support to the belief that Blackbird Hill may have been on the route of a pre-Roman trackway.

Although our visit was towards the end of the scheduled two-week excavation, it was only several weeks later that I heard news of the exciting final discoveries at the site. There were several cabins at the north-east corner of the “dig”, and while excavating close to these, the archaeologists saw signs that there might be interesting features underneath the cabins, so they arranged to have them moved. When they returned, clearance down from the surface level indicated several areas where trenches were needed to investigate further. Two trenches revealed a clearly defined ditch, which from its shape and other evidence leads the archaeologists to believe that it probably dates from the Roman period.

View of part of the last area excavated, previously under the cabins.
[This and subsequent photographs all courtesy of Archaeology South-East]

The second feature uncovered was a shallow pit.

The ASE Project Manager, Andy Leonard, explained that although this pit ‘admittedly does not look very impressive’, the “rubbish” thrown into it (almost certainly by the occupants of the ditched area) was of great interest to the archaeology team. It included some pieces of what were initially thought by the archaeologists to be Samian ware pottery. After cleaning up, and following close examination by ASE’s Roman pottery expert, Anna Doherty, it has now been identified as some sherds of Oxfordshire red-slipped ware, a Romano-British pottery type which is later in date than genuine imported Gaulish Samian ware but which is of a similar stylistic tradition. It probably dates from the 3^rd or 4^th century, and is definitely from the Roman period.

Some of the Oxfordshire red-slipped ware pottery found on the site.

We will have to wait until the post-excavation work has been carried out by specialists, and the final report on the excavation has been approved, but what appears to have been found here is the first “in situ” evidence that there were people actually living in Kingsbury, on a permanent basis, in the early centuries of the first millennium. This takes Kingsbury’s known history back by at least 500 years from the Saxon origins of the parish and its name.

It is interesting to note that Blackbird Farm stood on top of a low hill, with gravel deposits covering the underlying London Clay. About one kilometre due east, on the other side of the River Brent valley, archaeologists from the Museum of London uncovered evidence of another Roman period farm on a similar gravel-covered hill top at Brook Road, Dollis Hill, in 2000. Their “finds” also included red-slipped ware from the 3^rd or 4^th centuries. In the 21^st century it is beginning to appear that this side of Brent, between the Watling Street Roman road and the earlier Eldestrete trackway, may have been part of an agricultural area serving Londinium around 1,700 years ago.

If you would like to know more about the history of Blackbird Farm, Kingsbury, before these latest archaeological discoveries, you can read an article about it in the online local history resources collection on the Brent Archives website: http://www.brent.gov.uk/media/4468821/Blackbird%20Farm,%20Kingsbury.pdf

Illustrated Talks at Guildhall Library (Aldermanbury, London EC2) by Robert Stephenson (a CoLAS stalwart known to several HADAS members)

Free- but please book a place with Eventbrite http://www.eventbrite.com

Friday 26 February 2014 2pm – 3pm The Knights Templar and their London Connections – an overview of their London properties and sites connected with their brutal suppression.

Lecture by Robert Hulse, Director of the Brunel Museum Sylvia Javes

The society’s lecture on Tuesday 8th October was given by Robert Hulse, Director of the Brunel Museum. The museum beside the Thames at Rotherhithe is on the site of the shaft of the Thames Tunnel. When it first opened in 1843 the Thames Tunnel was described as the Eighth Wonder of the World: the first tunnel to be built with a tunnelling shield under a navigable river.

The tunnel was proposed in 1824 by Marc Brunel, a French engineer who had fled France in 1793. The Thames was extremely congested, and it was difficult to take boats across the river. A tunnel would allow horses and carts to cross with goods. Money was raised, and work began in 1825, with the building of a 50ft wide brick tower at Rotherhithe. The tower sank into the clay under its own weight as it was excavated, creating a 50ft wide lined shaft.

To excavate the tunnel, Marc Brunel had devised a frame, or shield, in which there were 36 miners’ cells. Each miner excavated his own cell. As the cells were excavated, the frame was jacked forwards, and bricklayers lined the walls behind. A mechanised version of this system is used in tunnelling today. Working conditions were extremely difficult. Miners were continually showered with foul Thames water, and many suffered from infections. Oil lamps lit the workings, and marsh gas caused sudden flares. Men could only work in these conditions for two hours at a time.

In 1827 there was a flood, but no lives were lost, and Marc’s son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel repaired the breach. Money ran out, but a fund-raising banquet was held in the tunnel, attended by the Duke of Wellington and the Band of the Coldstream Guards. Work restarted, but another inundation occurred in 1828 killing six men, and almost killing Isambard, who was swept along the tunnel to the shaft. He was seriously injured and sent to Clifton (Bristol) to convalesce. Although immediate repairs saved further damage, money had run out, the tunnel was bricked up, and work stopped for several years, until finally in 1834 the government loaned money to restart work. It took another nine years of difficult excavation and building before the tunnel finally opened – as a foot tunnel only, as money could not be found to build ramps for horses.

On opening day 50,000 people walked through the tunnel paying one penny each. Soon there were souvenir shops in all 60 of the archways, but the tunnel attracted thieves, preying on the crowds. Shops closed as visitors decreased. Despite various carnivals and fairs, the tunnel eventually fell out of favour and it was finally sold to the East London Railway in 1865, and in 1869 incorporated into the East London Line eventually to become part of the London Overground The Grand Entrance – the original shaft – still remains, and the Brunel Museum is planning to restore and use it as a space for concerts and other events. The museum opens daily and there are occasional tunnel walks arranged through the museum.

Gresham College lectures – a prompt from Guy Taylor…

Wednesday 12 March, 6pm at the Museum of London – Simon Thurley: ‘War Halls: Royal Houses from the Saxons to the Hundred Years War.’

Wednesday 16 April, 6pm at the Museum of London – Nicholas Flemming (Southampton University) ‘Humanity and a Million Years of Sea Level Change.’

Wednesday 23 April, 6pm at the Museum of London – Simon Thurley: ‘Playing Catch-up: Palaces from the Hundred Years War to the Wars of the Roses.’

Tuesday 6 May, 1pm at the Museum of London – Gustav Milne: ‘The Gresham Ship: An Armed Elizabethan Merchantman.’ Further details at www.gresham.ac.uk

OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS compiled by Eric Morgan

Friday 14 February 8pm Enfield Archaeological Society Jubilee Hall, 2, Parsonage Lane Junction, Chase Side, Enfield EN2 0AJ ‘By the Waters of Nineveh’; The Archaeology of Iraqi Kurdistan. Talk by Ian Jones Visitors £1.

Friday 21^st February, 7.30pm Wembley History Society English Martyrs Hall, Chalkhill Road (top of Blackbird Hill adjacent to church) Wembley HA9 9EW. Wembley’s Nigerian Village, 1924. Talk by Philip Grant (Brent Archives) Visitors £2.

Thursday 27 February 2.30pm Finchley Society Drawing room, Avenue House, East End Rd

N3 3QE. Ally Pally Prison Camp. Talk by Dr. Maggi Butt, Visitors £2.

Sunday 2 March, 10.30am – 12.30 approx. Heath and Hampstead Society Meet between Old Kitchen Garden and Entrance to English Heritage Staff Yard, East of Kenwood House. The Hidden Heath. Walk by Michael Hammerson (HADAS Member) Cost £3.

Wednesday 5 March, 8pm. Stanmore & Harrow Historical Society Wealdstone Baptist Church Hall, High St, Wealdstone. Three Women of Pinner Talk by Pat Clarke (Pinner L.H.S and LAMAS) Visitors £1.

Thursday 6 March, 8pm Pinner Local History Society Village Hall, Chapel Lane Car Park. Pinner Research Group Presentation: Various Speakers. Visitors £2.

Monday 10 March, 3pm Barnet Museum & Local History Society Church House, Wood St, Barnet ((opposite Museum). Maria Merian, an early C17th Scientist and Artist. Talk by Helen Walton.

Wednesday 12 March 2.30pm Mill Hill Historical Society Trinity Church, The Broadway, NW7. Pugin; The Architect of the Palace of Westminster. Talk by Malka Baker. Preceded by A.G.M.

Wednesday 12 March 7.45pm Hornsey Historical Society Union Church Hall, Corner Ferme Park Rd/Weston Park, N8 9PX. She Dared to be a Doctor; The story of Elizabeth Garett Anderson. Talk by Eileen Rowlands. Visitors £2.

Friday 14 March, 8pm Enfield Archaeological Society Jubilee Hall, 2, Parsonage Lane, Enfield EN2 0AJ. Remarkable Pots & Extraordinary Vases – Some unusual byways of Archaeological Ceramics. Jacqui Pearce (HADAS course tutor) Visitors £1; refreshments, sales and info from 7.30pm.

Wednesday 19^th March, 7.30pm Willesden Local History Society St Mary’s Church Hall, Neasden Lane NW10 2TS (nr. Magistrates Court). The Beauty of Gothic Architecture in Willesden.

Talk by Julienne McClean.

Wednesday 19 March, 8pm Stanmore & Harrow Historical Society Wealdstone Baptist Church Hall, High St, Wealdstone. History Book evening Visitors £1.

Thursday 20 March, 7.30pm Camden History Society Joint with Friends of Highgate Cemetery 10A, South Grove, N6 (Highgate Village). Who Lies in Highgate Cemetery? Talk by writers involved in new guide. Please Note; The venue for their talk of 20 Feb is Burgh House, New End Square, NW3 – details in January HADAS newsletter. Visitors £1.

Thursday 20 March, 8.15pm Hampstead Scientific Society Crypt Room, St John’s Church, Church Row, NW3. The Star-crossed Stone – the archaeology, mythology and folklore of fossil sea urchins. Talk by Dr Ken McNamara. Part of Science Week. Refreshments at interval.

Friday 21 March, 7pm CoLAS St Olaves’ Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3R 7NB. Roman coins – a window on the past. Talk by Ian Franklin, visitors £2.

Friday 21 March, 7.30pm Wembley History Society English Martyr’s Hall, Chalk Hill Road, Wembley HA9 9EW. The Life and Legacy of George Peabody. Talk by Christine Wagg. Visitors £2. Refreshments available.

Saturday 22 March 11am–5.30pm L.A.M.A.S Archaeological Conference Weston Theatre, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN.. Morning session 11–1; Recent Work Afternoon session 2-5.30: Entertainment in Tudor and Stuart London (including all those Southwark theatres and bear baiting venues – Ed)

Tuesday 25 March, 1pm Gresham College Barnard’s Inn Hall, Holborn, EC1N 2HH. The Museum and Historical Collections of the Bank of England. Talk by Jennifer Adam. Free admission.

Wednesday 26 March, 7.45pm Friern Barnet & District Local History Society North Middlesex Golf Club, The Manor House, Friern Barnet Lane, N20 0NL. The Turin Shroud. Talk by Colin Barrett. Visitors £2. Refreshments before and after meeting.

Thursday 27 March, 8pm Finchley Society Drawing Room, Avenue House East End Road, N3 3QE. Discussion – please see March/April newsletter for further details. Visitors £2.

Jul 12

newsletter-424-july-2006

By Roger | Past Newsletters, Volume 8 : 2005 - 2009 | No Comments

newsletter-424-july-2006

Page 1

HADAS DIARY

Saturday 22 July, Outing to Leicestershire with Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward. Details were sent out last month.

Wednesday 30 August — Sunday 3 September, HADAS Long Weekend in Devon and Cornwall, staying at Plymouth University. Now fully booked with a small waiting list.

Lectures

Tuesday 10th October 2006, Nadia Durrani (assistant editor, Current Archaeology), The Queen of Sheba.

Tuesday 14th November 2006, Barry Taylor & Steve Ellwood (both of English Heritage), The Sites and Monuments Records for Barnet.

Tuesday 9th January 2007, Stephen Knight (curator, Colne Valley Postal Museum, Essex), British Post Box Design and Use: the first 150 years.

Tuesday 13th February 2007, tba.

Tuesday 13th March 2007, Eileen Bowlt (Chairman, LAMAS) The London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (LAMAS) in the early days.

Tuesday 10th April 2007, Denis Smith (Lecturer, Industrial Archaeologist) title tba.

Tuesday 8th May 2007, TBA.

Lectures start at 8.00pm in the Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Rd, Finchley N3 3QE. Buses 82, 143, 260, 326 & 460 pass close by, whilst Finchley Central station (Northern Line) is a five to ten minute walk.

Fieldwork

At the time of writing this note (13 June) the HADAS Fieldwork Team is very busy, assisting on a number excavations. The UCL excavation at Kingsbury old parish church, mentioned by Andy Agate in his May lecture (see below) is now underway, with assistance from HADAS. This dig is scheduled to continue for four weeks. At Hendon School a UCL excavation is due to start on 19th June under the government’s Widening Participation and Social Scheme. HADAS has been involved in carrying out the resistivity survey and researching the background to the site. HADAS is due to return to Pinner Golf Club for a small excavation on 4-6th July. We regret numbers are very restricted on this dig, as golfing must go on! There may be more opportunities for members to dig on our return to Kingsbury School in early July. We are hoping to carryout a resistivity survey, and possible metal detecting scan at Wrotham Park over what is believed to be the site of the mortuary chapel from the Battle of Barnet. Also, perhaps in late July carry out another resistivity survey at Swanley Bar where a considerable amount of medieval pottery has been found. Meanwhile the sorting of flints from the West Heath excavation continues in the Garden Room at Avenue House on most Sunday mornings from about 10.30 am onwards. Members new and old are welcome to come along, but do check emails or contact Bill Bass, to confirm the room will be open. One hardly needs to say that this is a good place to keep up to date with HADAS fieldwork. Arrangements for field working are usually at short notice and members interested in taking part should inform Bill Bass or Don Cooper and watch out for emails.

Page 2

News in Brief

Don and Liz hosted a nibbles and wine ‘get together’ for members in the Dining Room at Avenue House on Sunday afternoon, the 21st May. The event, which brought out some familiar faces, saw a number of new members present. It was pleasant to chat; there never seems to be enough time after lectures! Thanks to Don and Liz and other committee members.

HADAS usually has a stall at Cricklewood Festival but the festival has been cancelled this year due to the uncertain future of Hendon Football Club and its Claremont Road ground. which is earmarked for redevelopment.

Rosemary Bentley remembers Julius Baker Julius Baker, ‘possibly the world’s oldest demonstrator’, was a sufficiently public figure to be featured in the BBC obituary programme, Brief Lives, on April 30th. A South African lawyer, he was involved in the anti-apartheid movement and was one of the many arrested during a demo after the Sharpville shootings in 1960. Released on a technicality he fled to Swaziland and escaped, with Donald Trelford after the Observer newspaper sent a light plane for them. Settling in north London he had secret meetings with ANC members and also protested against the Vietnam War. At the age of 97 he joined the march against the Iraq war and walked all the way from the Embankment to Hyde Park. He was proud to receive a telegram from Mandela on his 90th birthday, and later that year visited South Africa. After various ceremonies he took a holiday alone at Victoria Falls. A notice read ‘See the Falls from the air-, so he took a ticket and was taken by jeep to a small, high hilltop by silent young South Africans. Apprehensively he asked where the airfield was. There was no airfield, and Julius became probably the world’s oldest hang glider. Dorothy remembers going to Julius’s 90th birthday party, held at Regents College, Regents Park, and still has her invitation.

A mystery dump of Clay pipe bowls found in Hadley Woods by Graham Javes

A phone call some months ago from Barnet Museum’s Gillian Gear brought Jim Nelhams and myself together with Mr J M Lee, Curator of Monken Hadley Common, to Hadley Woods one cold morning. A few days earlier a volunteer worker cutting brambles in the woods had reported finding a large number of clay tobacco bowls among the brambles. He had in fact collected together some sixty claypipe bowls with a section of stem attached. Our visit netted a further 100 similar pipes within a short space of time, just by trowelling around in the soil filth, in a compact radius of some four to five feet. The topsoil here is very shallow, lying on very hard layer. We suspect the pipes to have lain in the wood for only two or three years and could have been thrown down from a sack. Why not just put them in a dustbin? This dump is unusual in a number of respects. It is usually pipe stems, not the bowls, which are found; the half-dozen or so stems found can be accounted for by breakage. More unusual, not one pipe is decorated or has a maker’s mark, suggesting that these are someone’s rejects after sorting through a much larger assemblage. It is possible that they have been washed previously before dumping. The absence of any marked or decorated pipes is compensated by the rich variety of bowl shapes and sizes. Stephen Brunning is working on the pipes and is to use them to form a reference typology. The pipes found by the volunteer have only recently reached Stephen. Of the 100 pipes which Jim and I found, Stephen reports that 50% are 17th century and 50% 18th century, including quite a number which span the turn of the century. No pipes are 19th or 20th century. The earliest type is dated between 1610 and 1640 and the latest between 1740 and 1770. Those yet to be examined might produce other types and dates and a full listing should be available by the next Newsletter.

Page 3

Letter to the editor

8 Watford Heath Farm Pinner Road

Watford WD 19 4ER

01923 210 752 15 June 2006

To: The Editor

HADAS Newsletter

We should perhaps remind ourselves that the HADAS Newsletter purports to be a journal of record. As such, Philip Bailey’s speculative article on the origins of Whetstone (June issue) sits uncomfortably on its pages and raises the issue about the need for some form of peer review on such contributions. His attempt to link the surname Bywestern, which he found in modern transcripts of Barnet manor court rolls needs several caveats. First, if Westen means the western settlement of farm, there is an equally strong or stronger candidate in Barnet manor’s own West End which lay towards the present hospital site and is obviously still commemorated in West End Lane. Secondly, absolutely no weight can be placed on whether such settlements were exactly west, or any other compass point of the main settlement or its church. Think of East End in Finchley, which is south east of the church and clearly south of the parish. Mr Bailey’s article also relies upon the assumption that what he saw in the 1930’s translation and transcription of the Barnet court rolls was entirely reliable. We should take account of the fact that Richard Bywesten would probably have spoken a form of Middle English and been dealt with in the court baron by a Norman French speaking clerk acting as the lord’s bailiff. The record of the court’s proceedings would have been taken down in rough by a clerk writing in Norman French and then translated into legal Latin by the lord’s steward, who was usually a trained lawyer. By 1246 legal Latin was almost a language in itself with many short forms and legalistic conventions. There was no agreed spelling at that period as Mr Bailey demonstrates in his article by listing some of the spellings of the name ‘Whetstone’. Richard’s name might well have been Weston, Westen or Westun. The opportunities for mishearing, mis-spelling and misunderstanding were manifold. The whole subject is a minefield for anyone untrained in its complexities and even worse, is a beacon for those afflicted with what we might call the Da Vinci syndrome! Yours etc. John Heathfield, Percy Reboul, Pamela Taylor

Page 4

St Andrew’s Old Church Kingsbury — A topographical approach by Andy Agate

In May, Andy Agate spoke to us on the old parish church of Kingsbury, Middlesex and the work he has undertaken as part of his MA studies at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL. In place of our usual lecture report, Andy has written the following article based on his lecture. On the southern border of the ancient parish of Kingsbury, just to the north west of the Brent reservoir, sits St Andrew’s Old Church. The church, which is now redundant, is rarely open to the public and its secluded location makes it vulnerable to vandalism. Past work at the church has generally been narrowly focused upon dating the building itself, however, a new project aims to assess the significance of the site by considering it in a wider landscape context. Through the examination of a range of existing evidence. for example documents and maps, combined with new evidence from topographical survey and archaeological excavation it is hoped to build a better understanding of the significance of this sadly neglected site. Early documents relating to Kingsbury (the name means ‘the King’s Stronghold’) include a charter of AD 957 referring to Kingsbury as Tunworth, whilst at Domesday there was a priest who had one virgate of land (about 30 acres). The church itself is not mentioned, however. the three fields directly north of the church were known as ‘Church Fields’ in 1597. These amount to just over 30 acres and provide some circumstantial evidence of a link between the Domesday priest and a Saxon church. But was it this particular building? The main clues to the age of the church are the architectural features and whilst the corner stones of the church resemble Saxon ‘long-and-short’ work the style of the Romanesque doorway in the south wall suggests a mid to late twelfth century date. It is conceivable that the church was built post-conquest by workmen who still employed some of the older techniques. However there is much more to this site than the standing building. The site was first recognised as being significant by the antiquarian William Stukeley who visited and sketched the site in 1757. Two features of the site led him to believe that the church had a Roman connection; firstly the Roman tile which forms part of the building material used and secondly, a rectangular earthwork which surrounds the site. Stukeley imagined the site as one of ‘Caesar’s camps’ and concluded that the Roman tile must have come from Verulamium (St Albans). The origin of the Roman tile may be disputed, however, the existence of complete hypocaust box-flue tiles inside the church and the inclusion of Roman pottery in the building fabric strongly suggest a more local origin than St Albans. Meanwhile the surrounding earthwork, recorded by Stukeley is now barely visible. A topographical survey carried out last year shows that there is perhaps some trace of a bank on the south and east sides of the church but that the supposed ditch was not detected. This survey also showed that the church and the earthwork followed different alignments; a feature also picked up on by Stukeley. I he topographical survey also showed that the church was built on the very edge of the highest contour in the area. This means that the church was constructed in a prominent location in the landscape; on the end of a spur of land which overlooked the valley of the river Brent. Indeed the church can be seen from almost a kilometre away on the far side of the Brent valley. It has been noted that there existed a Middle bronze Age cremation cemetery in the valley (now under the Brent reservoir), which leads to a tantalising question; does the site have a prehistoric origin? I his question, and many others which surround this enigmatic site, may only be answered through archaeological excavation. Such intervention is difficult in the crowded graveyard, however there are some areas which are accessible and this summer a limited excavation project will take place. It is hoped that the results of this may be presented in a future edition of the newsletter.

Page 5

Hendon House — the paper trail by Jim Nelhams

As mentioned by Don Cooper at the AGM, HADAS has been working with UCL on a ‘dig’ at Hendon School. It is recorded that the house, once occupied by John Norden, the famous 16th century mapmaker stood on the site now occupied by the school. The aims of the dig are to see if the house can be located, and to introduce pupils and staff at the school to archaeology. Andrew Coulson, Don Cooper and myself have assisted in a survey of the school field, covering an area 80 metres by 50. Although this did not reveal any striking features, the plan is to dig at least one small trench on the field. This was planned for late June, and an update will follow in a later newsletter. As part of the research, I located a copy of the 1895 OS map at Hendon Library, and Andy Agate has used his computer skills to overlay this on a satellite picture taken from the Google Earth internet site. Those present at the AGM will have seen the results, which clearly show Hendon House to the east of the school site. We know that this house was built in the early 18th century to replace the earlier house. The map also shows a walled garden, and if, as believed, the then owner, John Cornwall, first Director of the Bank of England, lived in the old house while the new one was being built, the walled garden may well be the site of the original house. We wait to see. The later house was demolished in 1909 — the school dates from shortly after this. I have also been using other internet facilities to find out more about the later Hendon House. The story, like the dig is incomplete, but this is what I have found. The 1841 census shows the house, with the address as BRAINT Street, occupied by Major General Christopher Fagan, a 55 year old retired soldier who had served in Bengal. Also in the household are his 30 year old wife, 5 children and 8 servants. The Times recorded later in 1841 the wedding of his son from his first marriage. Major General Fagan died in 1843 at his estate in Wiltshire (register of births, deaths and marriages), having left Hendon. In the 1851 and 1861 censuses the house is shown as a private mental institution. This caused some amusement to the current school staff! I have not been unable to find any residents in the census records of 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901. This seems to be because the owner at that time had several houses and was elsewhere each time the census was taken. The new owner was Mr Ardwick Burgess, eldest son of Henry Weech Burgess of the Temples. This house was at the southern end of the parish of Hendon at Childs Hill, near where the Watford Way joins the Finchley Road today. (There are roads in this area called Weech Road, Ardwick Road and Burgess Hill.) Since Ardwick Burgess also served in the army, it is possible that he was overseas for at least one census. Ardwick Burgess had married in 1871, and it seems that he purchased Hendon House at this time. His first wife died, and he remarried in 1881. The Times of April 6th 1886 reports the birth of a daughter at Hendon House. While helping on Andy Agate’s dig at Kingsbury Old Church, I noticed in the churchyard the family vault of Henry Weech Burgess, and on one face is records the death in 1908 of Ardwick Burgess. So perhaps that is why, in early 1909, The Times is advertising the sale of Hendon House by auction. (The price required was £15,250.) My documentation has been passed on, and will help the school in the understanding of their history and the project.

Page 6

How Calendar Confusion came about. by Stewart Wild

Most people in the Western world are aware that Islam works to a different calendar, based on moon cycles, with the result that this year of 2006 is 1427 AH and that the holy month of fasting (Ramadan) comes around about eleven days earlier each year. But few are aware of how this difference came about, a lacuna I seek to fill with this offering. And what is the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars? The hijri calendar In the year we know as AD 638, six years after the death of the Prophet Muhammed, Islam’s second Caliph Umar recognised the need for a single calendar to govern the affairs of Muslims throughout a rapidly expanding empire. This was first of all a practical matter. Correspondence with officials in newly conquered lands had to be dated. But tribes in Persia used a different calendar from Syria; Egypt used yet another. Each of these calendars had a different starting point, or epoch, and none accorded with systems used in the Arabian peninsula. The Sasanids, the ruling dynasty of Persia, used June 16, AD 632, the date of the accession of the last Sasanid monarch Yazdagird III. Syria, which until the Muslim conquest had been part of the Ottoman Empire, used a form of the Roman calendar, with an epoch of October 1, 312 BC. Egypt used the Coptic calendar, with an epoch of August 29, AD 284. And although all were solar, geared to the seasons and containing 365 days, each had a different system for compensating for the fact that the true length of the solar year is not 365 but 365.2422 days. In tribal pre-Islamic Arabia, a number of systems of measuring time had been used. Some calendars were lunar, while others were lunisolar, using months based on the phases of the moon but intercalating days outside the lunar cycle to synchronize the calendar with the seasons. In central Arabia, the course of the year was charted by the position of the stars relative to the horizon at sunset and sunrise, dividing the ecliptic into 28 equal parts corresponding to the position of the moon on each successive night of the month. The names of the month in that calendar have continued in the Islamic calendar to this day. There were two other reasons why Umar rejected solar calendars. Firstly, the holy Qur’an advises that time should be reckoned by the moon. Not only that, but calendars used by the Persians, Syrians and Egyptians were identified with other cultures and religions. He decided therefore to create a single calendar specifically to be identified with Islam: it would be lunar, and would have twelve months, each with 29 or 30 days. This gives the Islamic lunar year 354 days [6×29 + 6×30], eleven days less than the solar year. Even today, the official start of each month is only decided when a gathering of senior clerics in Saudi Arabia first spots the new moon. Umar chose as the epoch for the new calendar the hijrah, the date of the legendary journey of the Prophet Muhammed from Makkah to Madinah, where Muslims first attained religious and political autonomy. The hijrah thus occurred on 1 Muharram 1 according to the Islamic calendar, which was named hijri after its epoch. This date corresponds to July 16, AD 622 in the Gregorian calendar. Today, in the West, it is customary, when writing hijri dates, to use the abbreviation AH, which stands for the Latin anno hegirae, `year of the hijrah’. Because the Islamic lunar calendar is eleven days shorter than the solar one, it is therefore not synchronized with the seasons. Its festivals, which fall on the same day of the same lunar months each year, make the round of the seasons every 33 solar years. This eleven-day difference between the lunar and the solar year accounts for the difficulty of converting dates from one system to another. The Julian calendar The early calendar of the Roman Empire was lunisolar, containing 355 days divided into twelve months beginning on January 1 (after Janus, an ancient Italian god, and the guardian of doors and gates). To

keep it more or less in accord with the solar cycle, a month was added every two years. The system for doing so was complex, and cumulative errors gradually misaligned it with the seasons. By 46 BC, it was some three months out of alignment, and Julius Caesar decided on its reform. Consulting Greek astronomers in Alexandria, he created a solar calendar in which the year we call 46 BC was extended by eighty days. Every fourth year one day was added to February (from Februa, a festival of purification held in the middle of the month), effectively compensating for the solar year’s length of 365.25 days. Although, even this turned out to be not entirely accurate. What came to known as the Julian calendar continued in use throughout Europe and the New World until 1582. The use of epoch AD 1 dates from the sixth century, becoming widespread over the centuries that followed, in part due to the writings of the Venerable Bede (c. 673-735). Because the concept of zero had not yet reached the West from Islamic lands (an innovation credited to the arrival of the Moors in Spain in 711), there was no year between 1 BC and AD 1. During the seventh century, the spread of Christianity led to Christmas Day being recognised as the start of the year. However, during the twelfth century, the Church changed its mind and decided that the year should begin on Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, which fell on March 25. In the Middle Ages, the Christian liturgical calendar was further grafted onto the Julian one, and took into account traditional pagan festivals, and the computation of lunar festivals like Easter (after Eostre, goddess of Spring), which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. It exercised some of the best minds in Christendom. The Gregorian calendar The Julian year was however 11 minutes and 14 seconds too long. By the early sixteenth century, due to the accumulated error, the spring equinox was falling on March 11 rather than when it should, on March 21. Copernicus and others provided the calculations, and advised the pope that each year was in fact 365.2422 days long. As a result Pope Gregory XIII ordered that Thursday October 4, 1582 would be followed by Friday October 15. Most catholic countries accepted the new ‘Gregorian’ calendar, but protestant countries held back and it was not adopted in England and the Americas until the eighteenth century, and in Turkey and Russia not until 1917. Its use is now almost universal worldwide, although in Islamic countries, especially in Saudi Arabia, the traditional hijri calendar is still in common use outside the business and scientific world. The ‘loss’ of eleven days in the calendar, which in Britain took place after an Act of Parliament when September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, is the reason our current tax year ends oddly on April 5. Simple folk were furious that their lives were being shortened by eleven days, while taxpayers objected to paying a full year’s tax on 354 days’ income. Moreover, rents were traditionally due on March 25, a quarter day, and the end of the financial year. Tenants rioted when they realised that they were being cheated out of eleven days for the same rent, and demanded that the due date be advanced by a similar amount. Thus rents and taxes henceforth became due on April 5, 1752.

Page 7

OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS Compiled by Eric Morgan

Sunday 2 July, 1am-4.00pm, Kensal Green Cemetery, Open Day. Tours, band.

Tuesday 11 July, 8.00pm, Amateur Geological Society, The Parlour, St Margaret’s Church, Victoria Ave, N3. Paul Craddock (BM), Prehistoric Metal Mining in Britain.

Tuesday 11 July, 7.00pm Edmonton Hundred Historical Society & Enfield Preservation Society, Guided walk, starting from gates of Millfield House, Edmonton and ending in Church St Conservation Area.

Saturday 15 July 11.00am, Willesden Local History Society. Tour of St Matthew’s Church, Willesden, led by Fr. Alex Hill, proceeding to Roundwood Park for coffee/ lunch & tour of park. Meet: St Matthews Church, St Marys Rd, NW 10.

Saturday 15 July 9.00am, Barnet & District Local History Society, coach outing to Faversham and Downe House with coffee at Maison Dieu, Ospringe. Meet Barnet Odeon. Cost £20 (£15 EH members with card) Contact: Pat Alison, 37 Ladbrooke Drive, Potters Bar, EN6 1QR. n 01707 858430. Cheques payable to Barnet & District Local History Society.

National Archaeology Week, Saturday 15 July— Sunday 23 July. Many local events, including:

COLAS, Sat-Sun 15-16th, COLAS at the Tower of London, Free displays & activities held in open space by the River Wall. Artefact handling of COLAS and LAARC collections, replicas & games.

Enfield Archaeological Society & Enfield Preservation Society, Sun.16th, 11.00- 4.00pm, Forty Hall, Under you Feet: the Archaeology of Enfield, a free family activity day. Details from Enfield Museum Services 8379 1468 or www.enfield.gov.uk/museum

Museum of London. Events throughout the week, including adult lectures and family activities. Families can join in a ‘Real Dig’ in Haringey. Information leaflets or see museum website. Some events must be pre-booked.

Friday 21 July, 7.00pm, COLAS, St Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3 Lucia Gahlin (Petrie Museum) Digging in the City of the Sun: Amarna in the Petrie Museum, visitors £2.

Friday 21 July, 11.00am AND Sunday 23 July, 11.00am. Amateur Geological Society, The Roman Wall from Tower Hill. Walks led by Mike Howgate. Cost £7. Contact Mike Howgate 8882 2606, mehowgate@hotmail.com. Cheques (payable to Mike Howgate) to Mike Howgate, 71 Hoppers Rd, Winchmore Hill, N21 3LP.

Tuesday 25 July, 2.00pm, Harrow Museum, talk by Tony Earle, The Thames Sailing Barge. Cost £2.

Dec 12

Newsletter-405-December-2004

By Roger | Past Newsletters, Volume 7 : 2000 - 2004 | No Comments

Newsletter-405-December-2004

Number 405 December 2004 Edited by Liz Holliday

HADAS DIARY 2005

Tuesday 11 January

COLCHESTER Lecture by Kate Orr. A follow-up to our summer visit.

Tuesday 8 February

THE SILK ROAD Lecture by Dr.Susan Whitfield.

Tuesday 10 May

THE ROAD TO ROME in the steps of a medieval pilgrim. Lecture by Mark Hassell

Lectures start at 8.00pm in the Drawing Room at Avenue House. East End Road, Finchley, N3. Non-members £I. Tea or coffee 70p. Meetings close promptly at 10.00pm.

VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS at Church Farmhouse Museum Every Winter, the Museum’s 1850s Dining Room is decorated for a Victorian Christmas.The display reveals that so much of what we think of as the ‘traditional British Christmas’- Christmas trees, Christmas cards, crackers, turkey for dinner, even Father Christmas and the giving of presents on 25 December – was either invented or introduced here from other countries in the 19th Century. The Dining Room display will be on show from 6 December until 6 January 2005.

Note: the museum will he closed on 25 and 26 December and I and 2 January.

CHRISTMAS DINNER at AVENUE HOUSE on FRIDAY 10 DECEMBER

There are still some places available as the change of date due to a double booking at Avenue House has led to some cancellations. Please phone Dorothy on 8 203 0950 as soon as possible if you would like to come, or if you have already booked,

WEEKEND TRIP TO NORTHUMBRIA 27-31 JULY 2005

Enclosed with this Newsletter is a booking form for the HADAS trip to Northumbria next year Members who attended the November lecture were able to collect booking forms and many places have already been taken. If you wish to come, please complete the form and send it with your deposit to Jackie as soon as possible.

SCHEDULED ANCIENT MONUMENT MOVES AGAIN! It is always pleasing when an oganisation achieves its aims and can disband. After nearly 30 years the Temple Bar Trust can do just that, for Temple Bar is once again resplendent in London’s Square Mile.

Members who joined the HADAS outing to Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills in August 2001 will remember that we visited Temple Bar in its leafy but lonely setting in Theobald Park. Hertfordshire. where it had been re-erected after removal from its original Fleet Street, Strand location. Designed by Christopher Wen and inaugurated in 1672, the huge gateway had become an impedance to London trafic and was demolished in 1877. Fortunately for us its 2,650 stones were numbered and saved on the orders of brewing magnate Sir Henry Meux and his wife who relocated the famous arch to their country estate north of London.

Now, thanks to the efforts of the Temple Bar Trust and as part of the redevelopment of Paternoster Square, Temple Bar once again enjoys a splendid setting in the shadow of St Paul’s, Wren’s other great masterpiece. It was officially opened with great ceremony on November 10 by the Lord Mayor of London. Alderman Robert Finch. For further information and a view of the City’s newest landmark, a visit is recommended, either in person or on the Internet at www.templebar.info. Stewart J. Wild

MEDIEVAL CODE BREAKERS

HADAS member Dr Okasha El Daley has discovered evidence in Arabic texts that scholars could decipher hieroglyphic signs in the 9th century The medieval alchemist Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Washiyah knew that hieroglyphs had associated sounds and could be read as a phonetic script. Howe\ erArab scholars had little interest in the grammatical structure of hieroglyphs. script and it wasn’t until 1822 that the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion deciphered the language by using the Rosetta Stone which is carved with hieroglyphs, demotic Egyptian and Greek.

Okasha’s discoveries will appear in his book The Missing Millennium due to be published shortly (Source: New Scientist) ^‘

News from Church Farmhose Museum

THE EXPLOSIVE HISTORY OF FIREWORKS on show until 5 February 2005

The current exhibition at Church Farmhouse Museum gives a wonderful overview of the history of fireworks and it has proved to be very popularwith over a thousand visitors by 15 November

Fireworks probably first appeared in China about two thousand years ago and were introduced into Europe, via Arabia, in the 14th centuryThe first recorded use of fireworks in England was in 1242.

By the 17th century elaborate firework shows were common throughout Europe. Fireworks are often associated with religious festivals – saints days in Spain and Portugal, Diwali (the Hindu Festival of Light), Chinese New Year, Independence Day in America and of course, 5th November in England. The exhibition is based on the amazing private collection of Eileen Amabilino. It includes books, posters and photos of 19th century displays as well as numerous postcards and hundreds of examples of fireworks (explosives removed!). In 1989 a set of stamps were produced based on photos taken by fireworks photographer Davis Amabilino.

DOLLS’ HOUSES

A smaller exhibition currently on show in the Dunlop Room at Church Farmhouse Museum until 9 January features dolls’ houses from the collection of Anne Styles. Anne is a former TV costume designer and now an interior designer and romantic novelist. The dolls’ houses are decorated to represent different periods, with many fixtures and fittings made by Anne herself. There are also some fascinating miniature room-sets on show including a grand Edwardian house, a Victorian haberdasher’s shop, a scene from Gone with the Wind and a bedroom from the swinging sixties. A perfect exhibition for Christmas!

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

From 17 January until 11 February 2005 a special exhibition to mark Holocaust Memorial Day will be on show in the Dunlop Room.I Never Saw Another Butterfly will feature drawings and writings by children caught up in the horrors of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s.

NORMAN BURGESS

22 February 1922 — 21 October 2004

We regret to report the death of Norman Burgess, a keen HADAS member who, amongst many other interests, dedicated his life to preserving the historical aspects of Finchley and district. Although Norman only joined HADAS relatively recently, he and his wife Betty took a keen interest in all our activities ties and were with us on our outing to Greensted Saxon Church and Colchester only a few weeks ago. Unfortunately Norman suffered a minor stroke at the beginning of October and died peacefully in Barnet Hospital three weeks later as a result of complications.

Norman was born and educated in Finchley and spent his life as a teacher and school principal. He was an energetic member and archivist of the Finchley Society and led the editorial committee for Finchley Remembered, a book of residents’ memories published with much success in 2002. He was also the driving force behind the establishment of the Stephens Collection, the museum in Avenue House dedicated to the work and achievements of ink magnate Henry Stephens, who bequeathed ‘Venue House to the people of Finchley in 1918. From its inception in 1993, Norman was Chairman of the Collection management committee and its principal fundraiser well known throughout the Borough for his talks about the Stephens family

Our sympathy goes out to his wife Betty three children and four grandchildren. A memorial service held at Ballards Lane Methodist Church on October 28 was attended by several hundred people and followed by a gathering of friends and family at Avenue House. Stewart Wild

MARIE PICKERING

We send our condolences to our Vice-Chairman Peter Pickering following the death of his wife Marie. Since her retirement Marie had been coming on HADAS outings and to Christmas dinners. Her quiet, friendly presence will be missed by all her friends in the Society.

DOROTHY AT THE PALACE My investiture at Buckingham Palace on 3 November; accompanied by Jack, Christopher and Marion went without a hitch except that both the Queen and Prince Charles were unavoidably absent and the Princess Royal stepped into the breach.

On arrival all recipients are given their instructions and then you arc on your own. However because of my failing eyesight, 1 was allocated my own footman to guide me throughout. He was a smasher and treated me like a queen!

It occurs to me that 1 am the fourth member of HADAS to receive the M.B.E., all of them connected with archaeology.

Daphne Lorimer received her award for servces to archaeology in Scotland. Members will remember that she was our guide and hostess on HADAS visits to Orkney

Ann Saunders, our recent President for two years received her M.B.E. for services to history.

Ann Kahn, whose earliest interest was archaeology; actually received her award for services to yachting. Ann is one of our regular Newsletter editors.

Is this a record for a small society’ like ours? Are there any other members who have been honoured?

Dorothy Newbury

MEDIEVAL SURGERY

Detailed analysis of the skull of a 40-year-old man from the cemetery at the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy has revealed sophisticated Anglo-Saxon cranial surgery. Evidence of trepanning to remove depressed bone fragments has been found. The patient survived, lived for many more years and died of other causes. (From: The Times 6/10/04)

LOCAL HISTORY AND THE FUTURE

Archivist Hugh Petrie introduces “The Free to View Internet”

Only eighteen months ago it could have been argued that the Internet was no place for the serious local history researcher However, in the last few months a number of digitisation projects (the putting images of old documents, pictures, and maps, on to computers) have just come “on line” including the Ordnance Survey County Series and Clive Smith’ Memories postcard collection, as well as a number of irregular collections, such as: Corbis, Frith, British Pathe, the pie ture collection of the Guildhall in London. By simply filling in a box with an appropriate place name, and waiting a minute or two, the image appears before us (albeit with a watermark to preserve copyright).

In the old days we would have had to visit various institutions and companies, spent a morning consulting their lists, filling in slips to order the material in from the back, and then paying for a copy to be made. Even if the collections themselves have not been put on the Internet, many of their lists have. For example A2A, quite literally Access to Archives, substantially lists the collections of many archives in the country (including Barnet Archives). This enables the user to search all these lists at once, and even if the material is not fully transcribed it is still of benefit when it is found. Who would think that Coventry City Archives had records pertaining to the manor of Hendon for example.

There are also a number of word searchable transcriptions online. These include some which are regularly used by local historians, like the Middlesex sections of the Victoria County History. Others are more unusual. There are the Reports of the Old Bailey which list over a hundred cases involving Hendon from about 1675 to 1800. The Times online (available now at Hendon Library) list over 13,000.The British Library has started to put its newspaper collection on line, a process which will take a very long time; but already it is testing a selection. This morning I found a reference to cases of scarlet fever in London in 1886, which emanated from “a model dairy” in Hendon, using this site.

On the other side a number of diferent institutions are keeping their records on line, as with HADAS and the Finchley Society, and no doubt the Barnet and District Historical Society are not far behind. Most particularly are the local news papers. A site called “thisislocallondon” represents the Hendon and Finchley limes, and they have already archived nearly all their articles back as far as 1998 as well as many of the accompanying picturesThe Archer, East Finchley’s local paper, has done much the same.

Many of us will have heard ofEbay, the Internet auction site. At this site it is possible to search for objects for sale on a given subject, such as Hendon. I have noticed that objects sold, particularly images and documents, are often sold again a few weeks later It is clear that people are buying historical pictures, copying them (presumably) and then selling them on. This means they have the copyright to the copy and can, with a minimum outlay create picture libraries, which they can store on computer or copy for sale on to DVD. If this is the trend then we could be awash with cheap local history pictures in a few years time.

Despite all the benefits, is all this a good thing? I am not sure myself. The pleasure in finding something few living peo pie have seen or touched will not be there and it has to be said that there is a certain value in seeing a document the way our predecessors saw it and understood it. However we feel about this, the Internet is here to stay

Links

A2A

British Libraries newspaper catalogue

British Libraries digitised collection

British Pathe

Corbis Photographs:

Francis Frith

Guildhall Picture Collection

John Norden

Cary’s survey of 1786

Memories Postcards

Ordnance Survey 1st edition

The Old Bally on Line

Times on line 1785 — 1985is available at Hendon Library

Victoria County History.

1914 Kelly’s Hendon

OTHER SOCIETIES’ DECEMBER EVENTS

Prepared by Eric Morgan

Thur. 2 Dec. 7.30pm London Canal Museum 12-13 New Wharf Road, Kings Cross, NlCanals From Before 1940 to the Present Talk by Hugh Compton with illustrations from the Railway & Canal Historical Society collection

Concessions £2 Preceded by Christmas shopping in the museum shop ,linn 6.00pm with a glass of wine and mince pie. Discount on purchases.

Fri. 3 Dec. 6.30pm Geologists’ Association Lecture Theatre, Geological Society Burlington
House, Piccadilly W.1 The Evolution of the River Medway in the Context of Quaternary Paleoclimate and the Palaeolithic Occupation of North West Europe Talk by David R. Bridgland. Tea at 6.00pm

Sun. 5 Dec. 10.30am Heath and Hampstead SocietyBurgh House, New End Square, NW3
Artefacts of East Heath Walk led by Michael Welbank, Donation £1

Tue. 7 Dec. 8.15pm The Finchley Society: Local History Group 31 Court House Gardens, N.3
(off Nether Street, near West Finchley Underground station) The Role of a Local History GroupTalk by Hugh Petrie (Borough Archivist) The Finchley Society proposes to set up a local history group and need committee members and people interested in doing research. This first meeting is to hear about proposals at the home of the Chairman, David Marcus. The future work of the group will be discussed.

Wed. 8 Dec. 6.30pm London & Middlesex Archaeological Society Interpretation Unit, Museum of London, 150 London Will, EC2 “Where there’s Muck There’s Brass” – Doulton Pottery and the Sanitary Movement in the 19th Century. Talk by John Brown. Refreshments at 6.00pm

Wed. 8 Dec 8.15pm Mill Hill Historical SocietyThe Harwood Hall, Union Church, The Broadway
NW7 The History of the English Public House Talk by Graham Javes (a HADAS member)

Wed. 8 Dec. 8.00pm Hornsey Historical Society Union Church Hall, corner of Ferme Park Road, Weston Park, N.8 Charles Dickens in LondonTalk by Michael Slatter

Sat. 11 Dec. 10.15am Amateur Geological Society, St. Mary’s Hall, Hendon Lane, Finchley N3

to 3.30pm Mineral and Fossil Bazaarincluding rocks, crystals, gemstones, jewellery
Refreshments. Admission 50p

Tue. 14 Dec. 8.00pm Amateur Geological SocietySt. Mary’s Hall, Hendon Lane, Finchley N3 Now I Understand – Geology Texts Come Alive in the Field Talk by Marilyn Carter from the Natural History Museum

Thur. 16 Dec 7.30pm Camden History Society Burgh House, New End Square, NW3Sir Henry Cole: from Agitator to Autocrat in ArtTalk by Anthony Burton with wine and mince pies before and after the meeting.

Fri. 17 Dec. 8.00pm Enfield Archaeological Society Jubilee Hall, at junction of Parsonage Lane and
Chase Side, Enfield Cursus Publicus: the Roman Imperial Post Talk by

Geoffrey Gillam. Refreshments at 7.30pm. Visitors £1

Nov 12

newsletter-404-november-2004

By Roger | Past Newsletters, Volume 7 : 2000 - 2004 | No Comments

newsletter-404-november-2004

Page 1

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 9 November: `Durolevum’ – lecture by Paul Wilkinson.

Friday 10 December: HADAS CHRISTMAS DINNER – PLEASE NOTE NEW DATE Due to circumstances beyond our control date and venue have been changed. Details and booking form are enclosed; please complete and return with your cheque as soon as possible.

Tuesday 11 January 2005: ‘Colchester’ – lecture by Kate Orr: a follow-up to our recent visit.

Tuesday 8 February 2005 ‘The Silk Road’ – lecture by Dr Susan Whitfield

Lectures start promptly at 8pm in the Drawing Room of Avenue House, East End Road Finchley N3 3QE. Non-members £1, tea or coffee 70p

Page 2

SEPTEMBER OUTING TO CHIPPING ONGAR & COLCHESTER Reporters: Susan and David Willoughby

On a warm and sunny day we set off into beautiful Essex, through lovely villages on the outskirts of Epping Forest. On the way Stewart regaled us with tales of Dick Turpin, the famous highway¬man of Epping Forest. During the drive to Greensted, we passed the old North Weald Airfield (now privately owned) that had been used during Battle of Britain. Dorothy, our resident MBE, had been a telephone engi¬neer based on that airfield and she told us that the picture we have of airmen sitting around drink¬ing and smoking before being “scrambled” is completely true!

St Andrew’s, Greensted-juxta-Ongar

(Green = green; Stead = clearing or place) Dorothy told us that she had found the programme of the last HADAS outing to Greensted Saxon Church which had been organised by Ted Sammes in 1982. The programme showed a picture of the church, with details of the building and its history. But, more interestingly, inside it had a pic¬ture of our founder member, Aristotle Constantinides, together with his notice of HADAS’s very first outing in 1961 which was to …. Greensted Church! The cost had been 10/- including coach and everything! She informed us that Ted had left money to HADAS in his will and he had been buried in the family plot in St Andrew’s churchyard; we followed her to the Sammes memorial, in a shady cor¬ner of the graveyard, on which we found Ted’s name. The origins of the church date back to St Cedd, a Saxon Christian, who is said to have built the first church in Greensted in about 654 AD. An archaeological dig (in 1960) revealed two wooden structures under the chancel floor which are thought to have been built during the late 6th and early 7th centuries. The dedication of the church to St Andrew suggests a Celtic foundation. The nave was added in about 1060 AD and would have been windowless. Light would have been from lamps round the altar. Norman additions after 1066 include the flint footings of the chancel wall and the pillar piscine inside the sanctuary. Further alterations were made in 1500AD when the chancel was replaced and the thatch was replaced with tiles on both nave and chancel roofs. Three dormer windows were added to provide light to the nave. It is believed that the tower was added in the 17th century to house the bells, Extensive restoration was carried out in 1837. Although dendrochronology indicates that the timber walls were constructed around 1060/1063 AD, rather than the earlier date of 845 AD, it still remains the oldest wooden church in the world, and the oldest wooden building standing in Europe.

Chipping Ongar

(Chipping = cheap or market place, Ongar = grazing land) A short drive from Greensted brought us to Chipping Ongar, once the end of the Central Line, and, much earlier, the administrative centre of the Saxon Ongar Hundred. It’s a pleasant town with sev¬eral interesting churches and the meagre remains of a motte and bailey castle. St Helen’s Church is a small red brick building of 1870 with the typical Victorian use of bands of blue brick and fine ornamental ironwork on the original door. The United Reformed Church was built in 1833 (Architect: James McClelland) and replaced a smaller building of 1720 and is accessed through an archway in a line of cottages.The room over the archway was once occupied by the famous explorer, David Livingstone in 1838 while he was training for the ministry. St Martin’s Church has a Norman chancel and nave with original narrow round headed windows and the re-used Roman bricks at the corners. The belfry is 15th Century and the dormer windows were inserted in the 18th Century to give more light. Inside, the chancel roof is dated 1643, but is a unique and ingenious repair of a much older mediaeval structure. The nave roof is also medieval.

Colchester

From Ongar we headed off to Colchester along the Roding valley through several picturesque vil-lages named after the river, with their pretty pink-washed cottages. This journey reminded Dorothy of the green van she drove as a telephone engineer during the Second World War. Driving along a track in thick fog, her van was hit by an American jeep from a nearby airbase. After a 360 degree spin, the little van was a write-off. Dorothy, luckily only a little shaken, was driven back to the airbase on steamroller! She was given a tour of the camp and a rejuvenating meal of meat and rice pudding (served together on the same plate!). Colchester is reputedly named after the mythical King Cole (or Coel) of nursery rhyme fame (Col +chester = Cole’s Camp). Its Romano-British name was Camulodunum and it was probably the royal capital of the Trinovantes tribe. Some equate Cunobelin with King Cole. After the Roman conquest in 43 AD Colchester was established as a Roman colonia (`Colonia Victricensis’) where retired Roman soldiers and their families settled, coexisting with the British settlement at present day Gosbecks. At this time the town was the Roman capital. After the sacking of the town by Boudicca in 60 AD the town was walled and the British settlement appears to have lost its autonomy. In Colchester, we were met by our guide, Kate On of the Colchester Archaeological Trust who told us about the excavations of the Roman town in the modem town centre. She then guided us on a coach tour to see the British remains three miles to the south-west at Gosbecks and Lexden, pass¬ing the remains of a early presumed Christian church (circa 330 AD) at Butt Road. At Gosbecks we saw the site of the British town of Camulodunum with its impressive dyke system, designed to impede chariot warfare. At Lexden, which is the site of a major British cemetery we visited ‘the Lexden tumulus’ located in a private garden set off by giant redwood trees. Although the tumulus is somewhat degraded it was once the impressive tomb of a British king, perhaps the Trinovantian king Addedomaros. On returning to the town centre, many members picnicked in the Castle Park in glorious sun¬shine or went to explore the remains of the Roman town walls in the park. Others visited the Castle Museum, housed in the ‘largest Norman Castle Keep in Europe’ and built on the foundations of the Temple of Claudius in which many Roman citizens were burnt alive by Boudicca’s followers. This museum houses many finds from all periods of Colchester’s history. After lunch we were guided by Kate through the Dutch Quarter (named after the Flemish weav¬er immigrants who settled in the 16th century). This quaint quarter contained medieval half-tim¬bered buildings, the foundations of a Roman theatre, a Quaker burial ground and two early Norman churches, St Helen’s Chapel & St Martin, built of septaria stone and re-used Roman tile. From Colchester we headed south east through fruit growing areas, source of raw ingredients for the famous Wilkin & Sons Tiptree jams, to the small village of Goldhanger located by the mouth of the River Blackwater. Here we stopped at the 15th century ‘Chequers Inn’, next to the Norman church of St Peter. It was here that the church tax collector gathered church dues using a ‘chequer’ board. After sampling a cream tea which included Hartley’s (Of Bermondsey!) jam, many mem¬bers walked along the sea wall to enjoy stunning views of the Blackwater Estuary and Osea island. However, for many, the facilities of ‘The Chequers’ proved to be irresistible. After a passing through Maldon and a protracted encounter with East London traffic we returned home late in the evening looking back on a thoroughly satisfying day. Our thanks to June Porges and Stewart Wild for another fascinating and varied day out

Page 3

THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURY ROMAN MONEY IN BRITAIN Part Two of HADAS member William A Morris’s survey of Roman coinage

During the first and second centuries AD the Roman coinage was fairly stable and based on the denarius with its subdivisions the dupondius, the sestertius, and the as. The story during the third and fourth centuries is much more confusing however and one of a slow decline. At the end of the second century increasing military expenditure and civil war caused inflation in the Roman Empire and the value of the denarius decreased. Finally in about AD 215 it was nec¬essary to introduce a new, higher value coin with a value of 2 denarii. It was slightly larger than the denarius, made of silver, and distinguished from the denarius in having a radiate crown on the emperor’s head, the usual Roman method of indicating a double value coin. This new coin was called the antoninianus after the emperor Antoninus Caracalla who was reigning at the time of its introduction. It was the size of a modern twenty pence piece.

ANTONINIANUS

The silver denarius, brass sestertius, and copper as continued in use alongside the new coin, but the new silver coin caused the denarius to slowly fall out of use and no more were issued after AD 244. The value and standard of silver coins continued to decline and by AD 268, after a period of chaos for the empire, the antoninianus had lost much of its value and contained only 2% silver. By this time the lower value base metal coins, the dupondii, sestertii and asses, had been driven out of circulation. Things got so bad that the emperor Aurelian was obliged to reform the coinage in about AD 274. He produced a new, smarter looking antoninianus called an aurelianianus with 4% to 5% sil¬ver content. These coins, worth 4 denarii, were distinguished by the letters XXI on the reverse indicating an alloy of 20 (XX) parts of copper to 1 (I) part of silver. The old antoninianus coins remained in use as small change together with a limited number of base metal coins.

AURELIANIANUS (REVERSE)

The aurelianianus was not popular in Britain, especially between AD 286 and AD 2% when Britain was separated from the main empire. This reformed currency lasted until the Great Currency Reform of AD 294 when the emperor Diocletian laid down a completely new currency system comprising the argenteus, a high quality silver coin worth 100 denarii; the follis, asilver-copper coin worth 25 denarii and the size of a modem two pence piece, to replace the aurelianianus; and silver-copper coins of value 5 and 2 denarii respectively. Of these new coins the smallest value coin does not appear to have been used in Britain and the argenteus did not survive for long and was discontinued in AD 308.

FOLLIS

The old standard Roman gold bullion coin, the aureus, was replaced by a smaller size gold coin called the solidus in AD 310 and this coin lasted until the end of the Roman occupation. As the fourth century progressed Roman coinage became very confused. The monetary decline continued and by AD 315 the coinage had again become debased with a decreased silver content. Coins got smaller and smaller. In a further attempt to improve coinage, the emperor Constantine introduced in AD 318 a new coin called the centenionalis, equal to about 12.12 denarii, to replace the follis, and in AD 325 a new silver coin, the siliqua, to replace the argenteus, together with a more valuable coin called the miliarense which however appears to have served a mainly ceremo¬nial purpose. The siliqua, which was smaller than a modern five pence piece, remained in use until the end of the Roman occupation of Britain.

SILIQUA

In AD 346 Constantius II revised the coinage to coincide with the eleven hundredth anniversary of the founding of Rome and introduced a new coin called the maiorina, the size of a modern 20p coin and valued at one twelfth of a gold solidus. This new coin, huge numbers of which were pro¬duced, bore the upbeat legend on the reverse: “FEUICIUM] TEMKORUM] REPARATIO” (The Return of Happier Times), and was used together with the siliqua and centenionalis. Half and third maiorina coins were also produced for a while but by AD 361 had gone out of use. A number of low value copper coins circulated in the later fourth century as small change but their names and values are uncertain. Towards the end of Roman rule the use of coins decreased rapidly in Britain and after the depar¬ture of the Romans in AD 410 coinage quickly ceased to be used. Money was replaced by barter. There is a great deal of confusion over the coins used during the later period of the Roman occupation and such coins can be hard to identify. Sizes of particular copper coins changed sub-stantially over the years and this makes it hard to allocate values to them. Further difficulties arise in that there is not even agreement about the names of some of the later coins (a coin’s actual value was never written on it) and experts cannot agree exactly when specific coins were introduced or went out of use. Many counterfeit coins were produced. It can be seen therefore that the subject of late Roman coinage is a minefield, but the main details are as outlined above.

TOOL COLLECTION PROJECT AT ST ALBAN’S MUSEUM

HADAS member, Jack Goldenfeld, commenced a research and curation project in August at St Albans Museum in Hatfield Road, St. Albans, which is likely to run through to October or November 2004. Like the Ted Sammes Archive on which Jack did the original work for HADAS, the museum has produced for him a large collection of personal papers, correspondence, published articles and documents requiring sorting, curating and conserving, all relating to the tool collection which is on permanent display there, having been originally assembled by an eminent engineer and tool expert, Raphael Arthur Salaman FRS, of Harpenden, with, interestingly, children once resident in Hendon and Barnet! The tools and equipment of all sorts of trades, crafts and industries are represented, many of which no longer exist, having been overtaken by the march of technological advance in the years since the 1700’s. Wigmakers, quill-pen makers, hurdle and gate makers, sailmakers, fathers, coopers, wood-carvers, gunmakers are just some of the trades whose tools are now antiques in their own right, but which also document the way in which crafts and traditional skills, both present and extinct, influ¬ence social patternings and the development, and in some case, the decline of, communities. Hatfield Road is well worth a visit, exhibiting, as it does, artefacts from periods other than the Roman, that being the speciality of Verulamium. Also, there is a temporary exhibition at Hatfield Road relating to the Aircraft Industry in Hertfordshire, some items having been loaned to it by the Aircraft Museum at Hendon. There are also items there which were lent by one of Jack’s ex-students, who had served his apprenticeship at the de Havilland aircraft factory, and who had worked on Concorde.

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HADAS WEBSITE UPDATED

Our website, www.hadas.org.uk, has been updated. As well as a new look to the website, the Newsletter archive is being added, and Hadas members can login and contribute articles and stories. Please visit https://www.hadas.org.uk for more details.

NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE VOLUNTEERS WANTED

After the great digital scanning campaign, the complete Hadas Newsletter archive is now being added to our website. Once complete this will be a full, searchable collection of every issue from number one to the present and a most useful research tool for anyone researching our archaeology. However, we need more volunteers to prepare them for publication. Members with typing skills, a computer and internet access, can help with converting the scanned images to text in order to make them easier to read and fully searchable. Email Christian Allen at website@hadas.org.uk for more information.

BOOK REVIEW by Stewart Wild

Spice: the History of a Temptation by Jack Turner 409pp, HarperCollins, £25 In his new book Jack Turner sets out to demonstrate that for our earliest forebears spices were loaded with alluring associations. In particular, the most valuable, exotic eastern spices – pepper from India, mace, nutmeg and cloves unique to the Indonesian Molucca Islands, cinnamon from Sri Lanka and ginger from China – trailed resonances of tropical sensuality, extraordinary wealth and the loftiest social cachet. Spices were a well-known part of life for the ancients. The Greeks traded in India and the Romans navigated a route to its southwestern coast for the pepper they prized (which was available even to ordinary soldiers). But in the thousand years after the decline of the Roman Empire, knowledge of the “spice lands” fell again into myth. Direct European involvement dissolved. Meandering overland trading routes, which from time immemorial had snaked westwards to Egypt and the Levant and on to Europe, ensured a continuity of supply, but the cost spiralled. In medieval Europe, spices took their place alongside gold, diamonds and furs as the most prized and exquisite of luxuries. Turner shows that it was the promise of enormous financial rewards from monopolising the spice trade that provided the impetus for western colonial expansion. Vasco da Gama set out to claim the pepper harvests and the ancient spice trade of the Malabar coast for Portugal; Columbus sailed west explicitly in search of eastern spice and instead discovered America; Magellan’s global circumnavi-gation was fuelled by a quest for the rarest spice of all – the tiny clove. From the Romans to the Normans and the ruling powers of early medieval Europe, spices played a powerful symbolic role. The finest of them were reserved for ostentatious display as well as for oil¬ing the cogs of religious diplomacy, and their lack of nutritional value made them doubly impressive. Food was prized for being highly scented and robustly spiced, and cooks – once menial members of the household – became high-ranking officials (the possible cause, according to Livy, of Rome’s degeneracy and ultimate decline). Slowing the processes of decomposition, spices were as useful in the mortuary as in the kitchen. Roman emperors were immolated, like the phoenix, to be reborn from a cinnamon pyre. Used to bal-ance the “humours”, protect against poisoning and bad breath, cure piles, or act as an aphrodisiac, spices – at once mysterious and glamorous – wafted through the early history of the Western world. Only at the threshold of the modern era did their potency begin to decline. As the high flavourings of previous generations went out of fashion, simplicity and freshness began to reign over spice, and culinary obsession switched to tea, coffee and chocolate. Turner’s rather overbearing book is most informative, and best on the long view of history rather than the domestic or intimate, where he is encumbered by the sheer quantity of his source material. Copy abridged from a recent review in the Daily Telegraph by Kate Colquoun.

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ERIC MORGAN’S ROUND UP OF OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS

Saturday 6 November 1.30am – 4pm. LAARC, Mortimer Wheeler House, 46 EagleWharf Road N1. Open Day: Londinium Beneath Your Feet.

Wednesday 10 November 6.30pm. London & Middx. Archaeological Society – Interpretation Unit, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, EC2. Coram’s Children: History of the foundling hospital in London 1789 – 1926. Talk by Jane King.

Wednesday 10 November 8.15pm. Mill Hill Historical Society, Harwood Hall, Union Church, The Broadway, NW7. The History of Modern Architecture. Talk by Brian Adams.

Monday 15 November 8.15pm. Friends of Barnet Borough Libraries, Church End library,24 Hendon Lane, N3. An Introduction to the Local Studies Centre in Daws Lane, NW7. Talk by Yasmin Webb.

Friday 19 November 7pm. City of LondonArchaeological Society, St Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3. Further Excavations at Winchester Palace, Southwark. Talk by Bruce Watson (Molar). Friday 19 November 8pm. Enfield Archaeological Society, Jubilee Hall, Junction of Chase Side/Parsonage Lane, Enfield. Roman Harlow. Talk by Chris Lydamore.Visitors £1.

Saturday 20 November 10am-5pm. LAMAS Local History Conference, Museum of London Lecture Theatre. St Paul’s & Diocese of London: 1400 years. (For details see October diary).

Wednesday 24 November 8pm. Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, St John’s Church Hall (next to Whetstone Police Stn.), Friern Barnet Lane, N20. A Tour Around Musell Hill. Talk by Hugh Garnsworthy. Cost £2 + refreshments.

Thursday 25 November 3pm. The Finchley Society, Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road, N3. The Work of the Landmark Trust. Talk by R W G Smith.

Past Newsletters

HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming lectures and events

ROMAN DEAD – Exhibition at London Docklands Museum

Piecing together burials and beliefs in Roman London Deirdre Barrie

Huguenot Month Launches in Spitalfields

Bluecoats in the City: 350 Years of Christ’s Hospital Jim Nelhams Museum of London until 12th October

Akiva School Jim Nelhams

Wallingford and Dorchester Abbey Don Cooper

OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS compiled by Eric Morgan

Newsletter-537-December-2015

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 8th November 2016, 8pm. The Cheapside Hoard. Lecture by Hazel Forsyth

Church Farm House by Don Cooper

Recent discoveries about Roman Britain By Peter Pickering

The Sandridge Hoard by Jean Lamont

Lyndhurst Trip – continued

Visit to Stonehenge Liz Gapp

Old Sarum Peter Nicholson

Lyndhurst

Race Course View by Vicki Baldwin

The Custards Vicki Baldwin

CROSSRAIL at Liverpool Street

A Member’s Lecture by Don Cooper

Other Societies’ Events by Eric Morgan

Acknowledgements

Newsletter-549-December-2016

Newsletter-515-February-2014

newsletter-424-july-2006

Newsletter

Page 1

HADAS DIARY

Fieldwork

Page 2

News in Brief

A mystery dump of Clay pipe bowls found in Hadley Woods by Graham Javes

Page 3

Letter to the editor

Page 4

St Andrew’s Old Church Kingsbury — A topographical approach by Andy Agate

Page 5

Hendon House — the paper trail by Jim Nelhams

Page 6

How Calendar Confusion came about. by Stewart Wild

Page 7

OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS Compiled by Eric Morgan

Newsletter-405-December-2004

newsletter-404-november-2004

Newsletter

Page 1

HADAS DIARY

Page 2

SEPTEMBER OUTING TO CHIPPING ONGAR & COLCHESTER Reporters: Susan and David Willoughby

St Andrew’s, Greensted-juxta-Ongar

Chipping Ongar

Colchester

Page 3

THIRD AND FOURTH CENTURY ROMAN MONEY IN BRITAIN Part Two of HADAS member William A Morris’s survey of Roman coinage

ANTONINIANUS

AURELIANIANUS (REVERSE)

FOLLIS

SILIQUA

TOOL COLLECTION PROJECT AT ST ALBAN’S MUSEUM

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HADAS WEBSITE UPDATED

NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE VOLUNTEERS WANTED

BOOK REVIEW by Stewart Wild

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ERIC MORGAN’S ROUND UP OF OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS

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

Recent Posts

Bluecoats in the City: 350 Years of Christ’s Hospital Jim Nelhams Museum of London until 12^th October

Tuesday 8^th November 2016, 8pm. The Cheapside Hoard. Lecture by Hazel Forsyth