Volume 12 : 2025-2029

No. 649 April 2025 Edited by Sue Willetts

 HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming Lectures and Events

Tuesday 8 April 2025 Hugh Petrie (London Borough of Barnet Heritage Development Officer)

Mapping the Kingdom The colourful maps of the first County Series were one of the greatest feats of the Victorian period. This lecture is the story of the first large scale survey of England made in the 1860s at 1:2500 or 25,344 Inches to the mile. The lecture looks at how and why the survey was carried out, the people who made it happen, from the labourers through to the sappers and officers of the Royal Engineers, and how the maps tell us about local history, using maps from the local studies collection of the London Borough of Barnet.

Tuesday 13 May 2025 Les Capon (AOC Archaeology) A community/HLF excavation at Cranford, Hillingdon with trenching over four seasons that discovered Romano-British roundhouses,Saxon Houses, medieval and Tudor and post-medieval remains and intact cellars. Encompassing the Bronze Age to the 19th Century.

Weekend of 7th – 8th June 2025 It’s back! Barnet Medieval Festival at Lewis of London Ice Cream Farm, Galley Lane, Barnet, Herts EN5 4RA Note new venue – not Barnet Rugby club as before due to redevelopment. Barnet Medieval Festival – Reenactment of the Battle of Barnet 1471

Tuesday 10 June 2025 – 7.30 pm Annual General Meeting to be followed by a lecture from our President Jacqui Pearce from MOLA.

A web of influences – imported ceramics in London 1000-1700

Throughout the medieval and early post-medieval period, pottery from countries outside Britain was entering the country alongside other imports. Many different wares had a deep impact on local potters,influencing their styles of decoration, and even their technology. We will be looking at a wide range of pottery, from many centres in Europe, particularly France, the Low Countries, Germany, Italy and Spain,as well as the significant and long-lasting impact of wares from the Far East. London was a particularly rich source of inspiration as a major hub for imported goods and this is reflected in the wide range of pottery recovered in archaeological excavations.

Lectures held in the Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE. 7.45 for 8pm.

Buses 13, 125, 143, 326, 382, and 460 pass close by, and it is a five-ten-minute walk from Finchley Central Station on the Barnet Branch of the Northern Line where the Super Loop SL10 express bus from North Finchley to Harrow also stops.

Tea/Coffee/biscuits available for purchase after each talk.

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Membership Renewals

It’s that time of the year again! Subscriptions again this year, therefore the amounts are: Full member
£15, Additional member at the same address £5, Corporate member £15, under 18 or student under 25 in
full time education £6.

The HADAS membership year runs from 1st April to 31st March, and so this is to remind all members
who pay by cheque that their renewal subscription will be due on or soon after 31st March 2025. With the
closure of many banks, it is helpful if payment is made by Bank Transfer using Account Number
00083254, Sort Code 40-52-40 (CAFBANK). Please include your surname and first initial in the
reference field. If you do need to pay by cheque, please post it to Jim Nelhams – address on p.8

Members who pay their subscription by standing order need take no action. We look forward to receiving
your continued membership and thank you for supporting HADAS in its objectives.

BENNETT’S SCHOOL – Additional details Andy Simpson

Whilst looking through the HADAS library shelves recently I came across a little book I had overlooked
when originally looking for background details on Bennet’s School as excavated in Hendon by HADAS
in the summer of 2024.

This is the snappily titled ‘The Story of the Hendon St Mary’s Church of England Schools Founded 1707
by the Reverend Meshach Smith, M.A Vicar of Hendon from 1679 to 1707’ Told by a Member of The
Parochial Church Council and published by the Board of Governors in commemoration of The School’s
250th Anniversary in 1957’ Brushing aside irreverent thoughts of the Monty Python sketch ‘The Bishop’
‘produced by Church of England Films in conjunction with the Sunday Schools Board’ I read on.

The story begins with a note from the Hendon Parish notes; ‘In the year 1766 another Charity School was
erected nearer the Church, which has ever since been liberally supported by voluntary contributions and
is now endowed. This was one built by Mr. John Bennett at his sole expense in 1766, on a piece of waste
ground granted by the Lord of the Manor (of Hendon), David Garrick the actor…it was variously called
‘Bennett’s Charity’ and ‘Bennett’s School’, and stood next to Daniels’ Almshouses and it was with this,
on this site, that Revd. Meshach Smith’s Charity School became united in 1788, though not actually
incorporated with it until 1801.Around 1770 Bennett’s School took in at least some of the Burrow’s
School Charity boys. John Bennett had left £100 in his will for the benefit of the school.

Around 1788 there were further developments on the site. A charity School in nearby Brent St moved –
contemporary minutes record ‘That for the accommodation of the children who are Day Scholars as also
of the Sunday Scholars, a Room be built adjoining the Old School House near the Church, agreeable to
the plan now produced by Mr. Cole the Surveyor and estimated to cost around £130, which he engages
shall be built in a workmanlike manner, & not to exceed such estimate’ We need more map work I
suspect to figure out which building was which, although I would guess the two story central building
was the original schoolhouse.

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This new schoolroom was next to the old Bennett’s School building, built on the piece of waste ground
between Daniel’s Almshouses and what was later the entrance to Wroughton Terrace at Church End. The
buildings were demolished in 1937.

The Masters and their wives, together with a number of scholars, were examined annually – this led to the
dismissal of one couple (on a joint salary of £70-80 per year) since the governing committee judged ‘the
present Master and Mistress are too imbecile, and full of engagements, to do justice to the important
charge that the Subscribers have placed in their hands.’

Detectorist strikes gold with £10k medieval ring Stewart Wild

A metal detectorist is celebrating after discovering a stunning gold medieval ring worth more than
£10,000. Steel worker Paul McLoughlin, from Carmarthenshire, South Wales, had been searching for
two years without ever finding gold before he took part in a rally in Salisbury, Wiltshire.
After a day during which he unearthed only a rusty bolt, a horseshoe and bits of lead, he was stopped in
his tracks by a strong signal. The 32-year-old dug 8 inches into the soil and spotted the exquisite gold ring with an intricate engraving of martyr Saint Christopher on it.

Mr McLoughlin said that he would split the proceeds of the sale with the landowner.

SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, 28 December 2024, item edited by Stewart Wild

Honey-basted venison was on Bronze Age menus Stewart Wild

Bronze Age families dined on meat stews with dumplings and honey-basted venison, a Cambridge
University study has found. The Must Farm settlement near Peterborough – known as the Pompeii of the
British Isles – has produced the largest collection of everyday Bronze Age artifacts discovered in the UK.
Among the items that survived after a catastrophic fire destroyed the settlement nine months after it was
first occupied 3,000 years ago were the remains of dishes including porridge topped with meat juices.
Studies by Cambridge University’s Archaeological Unit (CAU) of the best-preserved Bronze Age
dwellings in Britain have given an unprecedented insight into the domestic life of our ancestors.
Researchers found that the fenland site’s destruction and collapse meant that objects that became buried
in the muddy water below mirrored their original positions inside the houses, enabling archaeologists to
see how spaces were used. The combination of charring and waterlogging caused thousands of domestic
items to survive, including 200 wooden artifacts, over 150 fibre and textile items, 128 pottery vessels and
more than 90 pieces of metalwork.

This time capsule also contained rare personal items including decorated textiles along with pots and jars
containing food remains. The foodstuffs were analysed using a combination of lipid analysis and
microscopy, including scanning electron microscopy, to help identify the components.
This showed that the villagers ate meat stews, dumplings and bread, lamb and pork chops, along with venison with honey and a wheat-grain porridge mixed with fat from goats or red deer.

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They appeared to have favourite cuts of meat, often only bringing the forelegs of a boar back for roasting, as well as eating pike and bream caught in the waters around them.

Following fears about the location and future preservation of the site, the remains were removed for
recording and analysis by CAU as part of a £1.1 million excavation project funded by Historic England
and landowner Forterra.

Dr Chris Wakefield, the CAU project archaeologist, said: “The site is providing us with hints of recipes for Bronze Age breakfasts and roast dinners. Chemical analysis of the bowls and jars showed traces of honey along with ruminant meats such as deer, suggesting that these ingredients were combined
to create a form of prehistoric honey-glazed venison.”

SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, 20 March 2024, item edited by Stewart Wild. Note: Flag Fen and Must Farm
have been visited by HADAS on three occasions, the last being in August 2008.

Further information. The 2-volume publication on Must Farm is open access – free to read online.
Publications | Must Farm. Links to volumes below:

Vol 1. Landscape, architecture and occupation https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/400b29d5-2e22-4321-878c-cb122d291660

Vol 2. Specialist reports https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/7bc599e9-d8be-4a49-8dfe-4bb6c324fac4

Prehistoric axe head in an auction sale Sue Willetts

The Hellenic and Roman Library has recently acquired some auction catalogues including one from the
Classical Numismatic Group, Inc – offices in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and London, dated 16th September
1988. Amongst the antiquities section there was an item, marked as rare, found in November 1905. It is
not known if this was sold – I would doubt it at the suggested price of $750.00.

Does anyone know any more about Hales Works, Church End, Finchley?

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Advance information:

Festival of Archaeology 2025.

This year’s theme for the Festival of Archaeology – 19th July – 3rd August has as its theme – Archaeology
and Wellbeing. More information https://www.archaeologyuk.org/festival.html

Online lectures:

Beatrice de Cardi Lecture. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeTTkAy_BCo
Dr Claire Nolan, a postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork, delivered the 2025 Beatrice de
Cardi Lecture ‘Being Present with the Past: Finding meaning through mindful engagement with
archaeology’.

Genetic Histories of Kinship and Ancestry in Roman Britain by Dr Marina Soares da Silva. Lecture given at Society of Antiquaries 4th March 2025. 49 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeQZAojuzYI

Other Organisations’ / Societies’ events Eric Morgan / Sue Willetts

As always please check with the societies’ websites before planning to attend since not all societies and
organisations have returned to pre-covid conditions.

We realise this newsletter is intended to allow for forward planning, but a note about some April events
may be of interest to members.

Thursday 3rd April, 7.00 pm. Digging for Erlestoke is a community dig with a difference, the
community being a group of male prisoners from HMP Erlestoke, a category C prison in Wiltshire.
Designed and delivered by Wessex Archaeology and supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund,
the project set out to improve wellbeing through access to archaeology and heritage. In the process, the
project took on its own unique energy; a small band of men found meaning and fulfillment and
experienced a profound change in their mindset and outlook on life.

Not only that, but they also made a genuine contribution to the archaeological record, uncovering a story
that spans 6000 years on a seemingly insignificant Greensand outlier within the confines of the prison.
Join Leigh Chalmers and Dr. Phil Harding as they discuss the project’s impact, exploring how
archaeology can be a tool for rehabilitation, the discoveries made during the dig, and the personal stories
that emerged from this unique initiative. Free to join this lecture – but need to register via the link below https://www.archaeologyuk.org/get-involved/events-and-activities/this-is-archaeology-lecture-series.html Text taken from CBA website.

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Wednesday 9th April. 5.00 pm. Royal Archaeological Institute. Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BE. Digging deeper: Initial results from the A428. Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet Improvement Scheme revealed evidence for Iron Age Pioneer Settlements in the Claylands of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, as well as Roman development of infrastructure and food production.A portion of deserted Medieval Village was also excavated along with two 8th-9th century AD ovens and a post-medieval mill. Talk by Simon Markus. Non-members welcome but should make contact in advance www.sal.org.uk/event.

Friday 11th April 1pm or 2pm The London Archives, 40 Northampton Road, EC1R 0HB. Free. Tramways Posters. Trams were a common sight on London streets in the first half of the twentieth century, and the tramways service was managed by the London County Council from 1899-1933.The council’s archives include a rich collection of posters created to promote the service. In this informal session we will display a range of original artworks and posters for you to browse, with staff to answer your questions. Use this link to book. Archives on Show: Tramways Posters Tickets, Multiple Dates | Eventbrite. Doors open from 12.50pm.

Friday 11th April 7.00-8.30 pm. Enfield Archaeological Society Jubilee Hall, 2 Parsonage Lane,Junction Chase Side, Enfield EN2 0AJ Recent Fieldwork by the EAS (preceded by AGM) Ian Jones and Martin Dearne £1.50 for non-members. Refreshments and sales from 7.00 pm. https://www.enfarchsoc.org/

Thursday 17th April 8.00 pm. Historical Association. Hampstead and N.W. London Branch. Fellowship House, 136A Willifield Way, London, NW11 6YD –off Finchley Road, Temple Fortune. Past and present of the British Welfare State. Talk by Prof Patricia Thorne, Birkbeck College, University of London. Please email Dudley Miles (HADAS) dudleyramiles@googlemail.com or phone 07469 754075 for details of the link and how to pay. There may be a voluntary charge of £5. Refreshments afterwards.

Friday 9th May, 7.30 pm Enfield Archaeological Society. Imperial Logistics in Early China, the First Emperor’s Mausoleum and the Making of the Terracotta Army, Andrew Bevan. Talk on Zoom, visit website for further details Enfield Archaeological Society.

Sunday 11th May, 1.00 – 4.00 pm Coppetts Wood Festival. Entrance from Colney Hatch Lane, N11 or off Summers Lane, N12 – where there is a car park. Lots of craft and food stalls. Finchley Society have a stall here, also music and entertainment.

Tuesday 13th May, 6.30 pm LAMAS Joint meeting with Prehistoric Society. Hunter Gatherers in Tottenham. Talk by Shane Maher, (Pre-Construct Archaeology). PCA undertook an excavation on land at the Welbourne Site, Tottenham Hale Centre, between 21st November 2019 and 13th March 2020.Three Early Mesolithic lithic scatters of high density were found stratified in the upper horizon of the Enfield Silt brickearth. To attend on Zoom, members are requested to book on Eventbrite with booking generally available 2 weeks before a lecture. Non-members are very welcome. There is a charge of £2.50 for non-members attending either in person (please note we are only able to accept cash) or attending on Zoom.

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Friday 16th May, 7.00 pm. COLAS. St. Olave’s Church, 8 Hart Street, EC3R 7NB. Talk also on Zoom. A Late Medieval Tannery in Stratford, Excavations at Jubilee House by Harry Platts (PCA) Book via Eventbrite www.colas.org.uk. HADAS may send out link to its members.

Friday 16th May, 7.30 pm. Wembley History Society. St. Andrew’s Church Hall, behind the new Church, Church Lane, Kingsbury, NW9 8RZ. Wembley 1924: The first concrete city. Talk by Kathryn Ferry on the art and architecture of the British Empire Exhibition site and its innovative artists. Dr Ferry specialises in architecture and design, particularly as they relate to the British seaside. Her next book on Twentieth Century Seaside Architecture will be published by Batsford in May 2025.

Visitors £3.00 Refreshments in the interval.

Saturday 17th May. 11am start. Herts Association for Local History, Spring meeting and A.G.M. Dagnall Street Baptist Church, 1 Cross Street, St. Albans, AL3 5EE. Admission £2 for visitors. Morning session: Short presentations from Local History Societies on their activities. Afternoon session A.G.M.followed by Lionel Munby lecture given by Dr John Morewood (President St. Albans & Herts Architectural and Archaeological Society) St. Albans and Western Hertfordshire in the 17th century British Civil Wars: Trials and Tribulations. https://www.stalbanshistory.org/ for details.

Wednesday 19th May 7.30 pm. Enfield Society. Jubilee Hall. See 11th April for the address. The Battle of Barnet. Talk by Paul Baker. (Barnet Local History Society and City of London Guide). www.enfieldsociety.org.uk.

Wednesday 21st May, 7.30 pm Willesden History Society St. Mary’s Church Hall, bottom of Neasden Lane, round corner from Magistrates’ Court) NW10 2DZ. Grand Junction Waterworks. Talk by Rob Enges (Guide at the London Museum of Water and Steam) On the challenges faced by the waterworks in the 19th century, introducing some of his unpublished research. For details www.willesden-local-history.co.uk.

Thursday 22nd May 7.00 pm. London Archaeologist. UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PY. Usual short A.G.M. will be followed by the annual lecture. Free. Hopefully also on Zoom. Lecture details not yet listed. Book on website www.london.archaeologist.org.uk.

Thanks to our contributors this month; Andy Simpson, Eric Morgan; Stewart Wild.

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Hendon and District Archaeological Society

Chair   Sandra Claggett, c/o Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE
email : chairman@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Secretary   Janet Mortimer 34 Cloister Road, Childs Hill, London NW2 2NP
(07449 978121), email: secretary@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Treasurer  Roger Chapman, 50 Summerlee Ave, London N2 9QP (07855 304488),
email: treasurer@hadas.org.uk

Membership Sec.  Jim Nelhams, 61 Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
email: membership@hadas.org.uk

Website:       www.hadas.org.uk

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No. 648 March 2025 Edited by Deirdre Barrie

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HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming Lectures and Events

Tuesday 11 March 2025 Robert Stephenson (Vice Chair, CoLAS) London’s Most Curious Stones and Bones. London possesses many unusual and out-of-place stones as well as several curious bones and burial places, all of which have fascinating tales to tell.

Tuesday 8 April 2025 Hugh Petrie (London Borough of Barnet Heritage Development Officer) Mapping the Kingdom. The colourful maps of the first County Series were one of the greatest feats of the Victorian period. This lecture is the story of the first large scale survey of England made in the 1860s at 1:2500 or 25,344 Inches to the mile. The lecture looks at how and why the survey was carried out, the people who made it happen, from the labourers through to the sappers and officers of the Royal Engineers, and how the maps tell us about local history, using maps from the local studies collection of the London Borough of Barnet.

Tuesday 13 May Les Capon (AOC Archaeology) A community/HLF excavation at Cranford, Hillingdon with trenching over four seasons that discovered Romano-British roundhouses, Saxon Houses, medieval and Tudor and post-medieval remains and intact cellars. Encompassing the Bronze Age to the 19th Century.

Weekend of 7-8 June 2025 It’s back! Barnet Medieval Festival at Lewis of London Ice Cream Farm, Galley Lane, Barnet, Herts EN5 4RA Note new venue – not Barnet Rugby Club as before due to redevelopment. Barnet Medieval Festival – Reenactment of the Battle of Barnet 1471.

Tuesday 10 June 2025 HADAS Annual General Meeting

Lectures held in the Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE. 7.45 for 8pm.

Buses 82, 125, 143, 326, 382, and 460 pass close by, and it is a five-ten-minute walk from Finchley Central Station on the Barnet Branch of the Northern Line, where the Super Loop SL10 express bus from North Finchley to Harrow also stops.

Tea/Coffee/biscuits available for purchase after each talk.

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HADAS Study Day Susan Trackman

On Saturday 18 January 2025 HADAS held its first study day of the year. Jacqui Pearce led a one-day workshop on clay tobacco pipes.

The day began with Jacqui giving us a superb presentation on the history of smoking in Britain and the evolution of the shape of pipes over the centuries, from the tiny pipes of the 16th and early 17th century to the large ‘cadgers’ of the 19th century. Clay tobacco pipes were smoked by large swathes of the population from the late 16th century until the early 20th century and are one of the most common finds on archaeological sites and as such are an invaluable tool to archaeologists. We were instructed and then set to work, using a large handling collection from pipes found on the Thames foreshore, on recording, the condition, marks, designs, shape and maker of a pipe. All of which might allow the pipe to be dated. Finally, we looked at some pipes in HADAS’s own collection.

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Some of the students. The photo directly above shows students and HADAS Chair Sandra Claggett with Jacqui Pearce from Mola who kindly led the workshop.

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The largest human-made explosion before the atomic bomb Don Cooper

Liz and I visited Halifax in Nova Scotia at the end of October 2024 and had a half-day tour of the city with an approved guide. The story he told, which I have summarised below, came as a surprise as we had never heard it before. It seems it was suppressed during the First World War so as not to give “Comfort to the enemy”.

Our guide told us that on the 6th December 1917 in Halifax harbour, two ships collided. The result was nearly 2000 people died and 9000 were injured. The explosion also destroyed more than a square mile of the city of Halifax. The first ship involved was the SS Imo. The SS Imo was a Norwegian merchant vessel carrying humanitarian aid for the population of German-occupied Belgium, who were having a hard time. The SS Imo started its journey in the Netherlands on route to New York and called at Halifax for “inspection for neutrality” and spent two days in the harbour waiting for refuelling coal to continue its journey.

The SS Imo was built in Belfast by Harland & Wolf in 1889 as a livestock and passenger carrier for the White Star line. She then became a whaling ship, and by 1917 she was carrying humanitarian aid under a Norwegian flag having been chartered by the Commissioners for Belgian Relief.

The second ship involved was a French cargo ship, the SS Mont Blanc under orders from the French government to carry her cargo from New York via Halifax to Bordeaux. She was carrying nearly 3000 tons of explosives. She was travelling to Halifax to await there, before joining an escorted slow convey for the journey across the Atlantic.

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The SS Mont Blanc was built in Middlesbrough, UK in 1899. She was a tramp steamer and passed through a number of hands before she set off on her fateful journey.

Halifax harbour is entered via a narrow channel appropriately named “The Narrows”. Because of the risk from Germany U-boats a system of nets was in place across the narrows. These were raised at specific times during the day to let ships in and out and so the stage was set.
The details of what led to the collision between the two ships are involved and were dealt with at the Board of Enquiry. They were so complicated that the argument ended with the final appeal to the Privy Council in London which decreed that each ship had acted in an imprudent manner and therefore shared responsibility for the collision.

The collision was relatively minor but it disturbed barrels of benzol on the deck of the SS Mont Blanc and some split and were set alight by sparks from the SS Imo disengaging from the SS Mont Blanc. A fire started and at 9.05 AM the SS Mont Blanc blew up. The blast killed just over 1963 people and left 9000 injured. More than 12000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged either by the blast or by subsequent fires. As an example of the force of the explosion, part of the anchor of the SS Mont Blanc weighing 1140 pounds was thrown through the air and landed nearly two miles away where it still is, as a reminder of that dreadful day. The sound of the explosion was heard and felt in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada 120 miles away. The explosion was followed by a tsunami which swamped the single storey dwellings on the opposite side of the harbour but apart from the damage there were no fatalities. The same tsunami caused the SS Imo to be beached on that side of the harbour. Amazingly, the SS Imo was refloated in 1918 and went on, under new owners and a new name as a whale tanker until abandoned to the sea in November 1921.

Our guide told many harrowing stories especially of people blinded by the blast, but also tales of heroism and bravery. Subsequently, I supplemented the guide’s information by purchasing a book written by Janet F Kitz called “Shattered City: the Halifax explosion & the road to recovery” published in 1989 by Nimbus Publishing Ltd in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

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Decline and fall

What have the Romans ever done for us? Not as much as they could have, it seems.

It turns out that the Romans were greatly affected by lead poisoning to such an extent that their IQ levels were impaired. Researchers at Oxford University found cognitive decline in the period towards the end of the republic and the first 100 years of the imperial era.

The pollution stemmed largely from silver mining which involved melting the mineral galena to extract precious metal and releasing lead into the atmosphere as a result. Lead was also used extensively in plumbing and cosmetics and 80,000 tons were produced each year, seeping into the water supply.

It might have helped precipitate the decline and fall of Rome. If only Gibbon had known.

Comment column, Daily Telegraph, January 2025, spotted by Stewart Wild

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Vikings originally came from Britain before returning to invade (Stewart Wild)

When the Vikings first attacked Lindisfarne in Northumberland in 793AD, it was to start a major upheaval that brought bloodshed, a new language and eventually the creation of England.
The Scandinavian migrants were feared warriors who had seemingly been toughened by generations of survival in the frozen north. Yet a new study shows that their ancestry may be nearer home.

Human remains from Scandinavia dating from before the eighth-century raids show genetic links to Britain and central Europe suggesting that there may have been a large migration northward in the centuries before the Vikings had apparently set out. It indicates that a number of raiders, some of whom were searching for better land to farm, could have been retracing the paths of their ancestors rather than conquering completely unfamiliar territories.

Biomolecular analysis of teeth of people buried on the island of Oland, Sweden – known for its impressive Viking remains – was found to contain ancestry from Central Europe and Britain. Likewise, researchers found a “clear shift” in genetic ancestry in eighth-century Denmark in which Viking communities had genetic links to Iron Age groups much further south. Experts estimate the shift happened around 500AD.

“We already have reliable statistical tools to compare the genetics between groups of people who are genetically very different, like hunter-gatherers or early farmers, but robust analyses of finer-scale population changes, like the migrations we reveal in this paper, have largely been obscured until now,” said Leo Speidel, the first author of the study.

The former post-doctoral researcher at the Francis Crick Institute and University College London, who is now the group leader at Riken in Japan, added: “It allows us to see what we couldn’t before, in this case migrations all across Europe originating in the north of Europe in the Iron Age, and then

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back into Scandinavia before the Viking age. Our new method can be applied to other populations across the world and hopefully reveal more missing pieces of the puzzle.”
The team was also able to tease out the migration routes using a new, more precise method of ancient DNA analysis, called Twigstats, which can pick out small differences between genetically similar groups.

They applied the new method to more than 1,500 European genomes – a person’s complete set of DNA – from people who lived primarily during the first millennium AD, encompassing the Iron Age, the fall of the Roman Empire, the early medieval period, and the Viking age.

As well as uncovering new migration routes, the technique was also able to back up accounts from the historical record. At the beginning of the first millennium, the Romans wrote about coming into conflict with Germanic groups at their empire’s frontiers, and the new analysis shows that northern groups and Scandinavians were indeed moving south during this period, towards the Roman borders.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, 4 January 2025, item edited by Stewart Wild

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OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS

As always, please check with the Societies – for example via their websites – before planning to attend, since not all Societies and organisations have returned to pre-covid conditions.

Saturday 15th March. 11 am. – 5 pm. L.A.M.A.S. Archaeological Conference. London Museum Docklands, Wilberforce Room, West India Quay, Hertsmere Road, London. E14 4AL. Morning Session = Recent work including presentation of the 2024 Ralph Merrifield Award by Harvey Sheldon (ex-HADAS President). 1.05 – 2 pm. – Lunch Break. Afternoon Session = Mud Larking on the Thames Foreshore. 3.25 – 4 pm. Tea Break. 5.10 pm. Close. Tickets (Priced £20) will be available via Eventbrite. Details on how to book can be found on the L.A.M.A.S. website www.lamas.org.uk.

Friday 21st March, 7 pm. C.O.L.A.S. St. Olave’s Church, Hart Street, London. EC3R 7NB. Talk, also on Zoom – Excavations at Barn Elms for Tideway by Michael Curnow (MOLA) on a significant Thameside Iron Age Settlement revealed during work for London’s new super sewer. Please book via Eventbrite. Visit www.colas.org.uk. HADAS may send out a link to its members.

Friday 21st March, 7.30 pm. Wembley History Society. St. Andrew’s Church Hall (Behind St. Andrew’s new church) Church Lane, Kingsbury, London. NW9 8RZ. ‘Ace times, then and now’. – A Café and a Culture. Talk by Mark Wilsmore M.D. of Ace Café) on the history of this local cultural Icon. Visitors pay £3. Refreshments will be available in the interval.

Tuesday 8th April, 6.30 pm. L.A.M.A.S. Also on Zoom. Book on Eventbrite via website www.lamas.org.uk/lectures/html. Non-members £2.50. Bartmann Goes Global? Talk by Jacqui Pearce (HADAS President and also MOLA). How German stoneware travelled round the known world in the 16th/17th centuries.

Monday 14th April, 3 pm. Barnet Museum and Local History Society. St. John the Baptist Church, Chipping Barnet, Corner High Street/Wood Street, Barnet. EN5 4BW. Not Bloody Likely – the Marketing of Covent Garden 1600 – 2000. Talk by Daniel Snowman. For further information please visit www.barnetmuseum.org.uk.

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Wednesday 16th April, 7.30 pm. Willesden Local History Society. St. Mary’s Church Hall, Bottom of Neasden Lane (Round corner from Magistrates’ Court) London. NW10 2DZ. The History of the Willesden Jewish Community and Willesden Jewish Immigrants Trail. Talk by Irina Porter (Chair) based on archival research and memories of the members of the local community. This project incorporates an online trail, website, a film and an interactive map. For further details please visit www.willesden-local-history.co.uk.

Wednesday 23rd April, 7.45 pm. Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. North Middlesex Golf Club, the Manor House, Friern Barnet Lane, London, N20 0NL. History of London Mapping including Barnet. Talk by Simon Morris. Please visit www.friernbarnethistory.org.uk for further details. Non-members charge £2. A bar will be available.

Thursday 24th April, 7.30 pm. Finchley Society. Drawing Room, Avenue (Stephens’) House, 17, East End Road, London. N3 3QE. Society’s Archive Collection. Talk by Alison Sharpe (Archivist) and hands-on activities. Visitors charge £2. Refreshments to be available in the interval. For further details please visit www.finchleysociety.org.uk.

Friday 25th April, 7 pm. C.O.L.A.S. Talk on Zoom only. The Archaeology of London’s Modern Mega Events = from the Great Exhibition to London 2012. Talk by Dr. Johnathan Gardner. A new way of looking at heritage, from the winner of London Archaeologist’s 2024 publication prize. Please book as for Friday 21st March.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

With many thanks to this month’s contributors: Sandra Claggett; Don Cooper; Susan Trackman; Eric Morgan; Stewart Wild.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hendon and District Archaeological Society

Chair   Sandra Claggett, c/o Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE
email : chairman@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Secretary   Janet Mortimer 34 Cloister Road, Childs Hill, London NW2 2NP
(07449 978121), email: secretary@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Treasurer  Roger Chapman, 50 Summerlee Ave, London N2 9QP (07855 304488),
email: treasurer@hadas.org.uk

Membership Sec.  Jim Nelhams, 61 Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
email: membership@hadas.org.uk

Website:      www.hadas.org.uk

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No. 647 February 2025 Edited by Andy Simpson

HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming Lectures and Events

Tuesday 11 February 2025 Nick PeaceyThe Highgate Wood Kiln’s Site. See article in November2024 issue of the HADAS newsletter (NL No.644)

Tuesday 11 March 2025 Robert Stephenson (Vice Chair, CoLAS) London’s Most Curious Stones and Bones London possesses many unusual and out-of-place stones as well as several curious bones and burial places, all of which have fascinating tales to tell.

Tuesday 8 April 2025 Hugh Petrie (London Borough of Barnet Heritage Development Officer) Mapping the Kingdom The colourful maps of the first County Series were one of the greatest feats of the Victorian period. This lecture is the story of the first large scale survey of England made in the 1860s at 1:2500 or 25,344 Inches to the mile. The lecture looks at how and why the survey was carried out, the people who made it happen, from the labourers through to the sappers and officers of the Royal Engineers, and how the maps tell us about local history, using maps from the local studies collection of the London Borough of Barnet.

Tuesday 13 May Les Capon (AOC Archaeology) A community/HLF excavation at Cranford, Hillingdon with trenching over four seasons that discovered Romano-British roundhouses,Saxon Houses, medieval and Tudor and post-medieval remains and intact cellars. Encompassing the Bronze Age to the 19th Century.

Weekend of 7-8 June 2025 It’s back! Barnet Medieval Festival at Lewis of London Ice Cream Farm,Galley Lane, Barnet, Herts EN5 4RA Note new venue – not Barnet Rugby club as before due to redevelopment. Barnet Medieval Festival – Reenactment of the Battle of Barnet 1471

Tuesday 10 June 2025 HADAS Annual General Meeting

Lectures held in the Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE. 7.45 for 8pm.

Buses 82, 125, 143, 326, 382, and 460 pass close by, and it is a five-ten-minute walk from Finchley Central Station on the Barnet Branch of the Northern Line where the Super Loop SL10 express bus from North Finchley to Harrow also stops.

Tea/Coffee/biscuits available for purchase after each talk.

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BENNET’S SCHOOL UPDATE ANDY SIMPSON

Sue Loveday has found another contemporary image of the buildings, viewed from another angle; this was originally reproduced in an education pack produced for the former and much missed Church Farm Museum.

It is possible that the substantial E-W brick wall foundation found in trench 2, shown in the previous edition of the newsletter, is for the rear wall of the elaborately fronted block visible on the left, with the wall footings in Trench One being part of the lower gabled building situated between there and the still extant almshouses.

Good progress continues to be made with the post excavation work; all finds have now been washed, marked, sorted and bagged, and the finds record sheets completed, and detailed analysis of the clay pipe, small finds, pottery, glass and building materials underway so reports can be written on these categories; the clay pipe, glass and building materials reports have now been written and will be published along with the full excavation report in due course. The Sunday team undertaking this work meet most Sundays, 10.30 am – 1pm (ish) and visitors are welcome.

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‘His Name Liveth for Ever in Hendon’ Revisited Andy Simpson

In the February 2023 newsletter, No.623, I discussed the four men from Hendon buried in Greece having been casualties in the lesser-known Salonika Campaign of 1915-1918. Full biographical and service details for each man are given in that article.

In September 2024 I was able to once again join a battlefield tour of the area run by the Salonika Campaign Society (SCS), led by Chairman and former RAFM colleague Alan Wakefield, now Head of the First World War Dept at the Imperial War Museum, and pay my respects and place a poppy at the graves of all four men and give a short ‘stand’ (presentation) on each of them to members of the group.

35729 Gunner Ralph Henry Byatt Plot 767, Lembett Road CWGC cemetery, Thessaloniki, Greece

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Note the different form of grave marker used in these other two cemeteries; as explained on the CWGC website;

FLAT HEADSTONE MARKERS

A flat, or recumbent, marker can be used to display multiple casualties in one spot, either in the event of a lack of space in the cemetery or where multiple casualties have been buried together, where there were many burials in a limited space, meaning flat markers were required to prevent an overcrowded feel that would’ve come from individual headstones.

They can also be used on sites where the soil or weather conditions are unable to support the usual standing headstones. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission | CWGC.

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On a previous visit to this cemetery in September 2013, Society members saw extensive work underway to renovate the cemetery including all new grave markers and inscriptions, which were the ones seen in 2024.

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Also buried at Karasouli, on the opposite side of the Cemetery;

Roots of writing traced to 6,000 years ago

The history of human writing has been ‘rewritten’ after archaeologists studied engravings on 6,000-year-old cylinders used by accountants.

The earliest known writing system is thought to be Sumerian cuneiform, which developed around the region of present-day Iraq, dating to around 3350-3000BC. Experts have linked early cuneiform symbols to designs that appear on cylinder seals between 4400-3400BC, a millennium earlier.

Similar images representing words such as wine vessels, buildings, nets and reeds were seen on cylinders from Uruk, one of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia, and in early cuneiform.

The University of Bologna study was published in the journal Antiquity.

SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, 9 November 2024, item edited by Stewart Wild

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Medieval chiefs melted assets into money

Medieval chieftains melted prize possessions into silver coins in an early example of quantitative easing, Cambridge University research has found.

Between AD660 and AD750 thousands of silver coins were minted in Anglo-Saxon England. A chemical and isotopic analysis of the metal shows that it originated in the Byzantine eastern Mediterranean and was originally brought to England as ornate silver objects such as the intricate bowls found in the Sutton Hoo burial. Experts believe that elite families literally liquidated their assets, melting silver goods and making coins to boost the economy and encourage trade among the burgeoning rich farming classes.

Sutton Hoo’s Byzantine silver objects alone weigh just over 22lb (10kg) and could have produced 10,000 early pennies when melted down, the experts said.

Dr Jane Kershaw, from the University of Oxford, said: “This was quantitative easing – elites were liquidating resources and pouring more and more money into circulation.”

Rory Naismith, professor of early medieval English history at Cambridge, said: “The money supply in early medieval Britain and the rest of western Europe was relatively low, so putting more into circulation stimulated the economy. Something that couldn’t happen without more coins at this time was the rapid growth of towns and trade across eastern England and the North Sea.”

The coins are held by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The findings were published in the journal Antiquity.

SOURCE: Daily Telegraph, 5 April 2024, item edited by Stewart Wild

Other Societies’ Events Eric Morgan

As always, please check with the societies – for example via their websites – before planning to attend in case of any late changes, since not all societies and organisations have returned to pre-covid conditions.

Monday February 10th, 3 pm. Barnet Museum and Local History Society. St. John the Baptist Church, Chipping Barnet, Corner High Street/Wood Street, Barnet. EN5 4BW. The Art of Class War – Looking at the Miners’ Strike through the eyes of Cartoonists from the Right and the Left. Talk by Nick Jones. For further information please visit www.barnetmuseum.org.uk.

Friday 14th February, 7.30 pm. Enfield Archaeological Society. Jubilee Hall, 2 Parsonage Lane/Junction Chase Side, Enfield. EN2 0AJ. Landscape of Defence. Talk by Stuart Brookes (U.C.L. I.O.A). Please visit www.enfarchsoc.org for further details.

Saturday 22nd February, 11 am. – 4 pm. Lauderdale House, Waterlow Park, Highgate Hill. London. N6 5HG. Heritage Weekend – Free. Discover the history of Highgate and North London, with special talks. Lots of stalls including Camden History Society, Hornsey Historical Society, Highgate Society, Highgate Literary and Scientific Institute, Friends of Highgate Roman Kiln, Friends of Kenwood, Friends of Bruce Castle Museum, u3a North London Branch and many more. For further details please visit www.lauderdalehouse.org.uk or telephone 0208 348 8716.

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MUSIC NIGHT ANDY SIMPSON

On Monday 9 December 2024, The Editor, Sue Loveday and Eric Morgan from HADAS attended an unusual and informative free event in the Grove Atrium on the Middlesex University campus on the Burroughs in Hendon. This was a Music Archaeology Day ‘to celebrate and explore the fascinating world of reconstructed ancient brass instruments’ Led by local resident Dr. Peter Holmes it featured live demonstrations in the evening and, earlier in the day, a musical handling session and tour of the well-equipped Grove Building workshop facilities including 3-D printing equipment used by the MADET – Music Archaeology Design Engineering Team – to produce some of the instruments.

Dr Holmes is one of the world’s leading experts on ancient lip-blown instruments and has pioneered this field for over 50 years, travelling the world analysing instruments and instrument fragments. He looks at how they were made and played, and what they meant to people at the time. Several full-sized instruments and replicas were shown and played, including a Roman military Cornu used in the recent blockbuster Gladiator II film. He was joined for the evening event by Simon O’Dwyer and a fellow practitioner from Ireland, who played a haunting duet on two horns representing the Bronze Age sun god joining with the earth goddess as might have been heard at annual fertility celebrations. The Iron Age Karnyx which Boudicca would have heard as she battled the Romans during her revolt was also demonstrated, along with an ancient classical Greek horn.

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Other items on display included a silver mounted trumpet from Nepal crafted from a human thighbone, a Minoan shell trumpet, and more recent instruments including a hunting horn, bugle, and an electronic trumpet made in 2024.

ALL BOXED UP ANDY SIMPSON

Readers will recall that over the past year the West Heath 2 finds, mostly flints, have been re boxed and bagged to standards more in tune with those currently maintained by the Museum of London Archaeological Archive, (still popularly known as the LAARC to many) whose base at Mortimer Wheeler House, Eagle Wharf Road in Hackney has been visited or even volunteered at by many HADAS members, one of whom is even currently employed there.

With the initial large delivery all used up by this, Don Cooper and Bill Bass kindly facilitated a new equally large delivery of boxes, mainly of the standard ‘shoebox’ size of archival standard boxes so that we can re-box more of the collection.

As the photograph below taken early last month in the HADAS basement room at Stephens (Avenue) House in Finchley shows, this is now well underway; in addition to working on the Bennet’s School materiel further discussed elsewhere in this newsletter, some members of the Sunday morning team have been able to sort, re-box and re-bag two significant sites; on the top shelf the mainly post-medieval materiel from the Forge Golders Green Road site dug in 1991, site code FG91.

On the second shelf we have done the same with the also mainly post-medieval materiel from the Whetstone High Road (Studio Cole) dig in 1989-90, site code WHR89. This was the first site dug on by both your editor and Bill Bass when we joined the society back in 1989.

Below this we have made a start on the large quantity of Roman, medieval and post-medieval materiel from several season’s gigging in the grounds of the former, and much – missed, Church Farm Museum, starting in 1993.

The lower two shelves retain some of the remaining old grey archive boxes which have performed sterling service over the past 30 years or so, but do not meet current Museum of London requirements.

These will be replaced in due course. Some displaced by the re-boxing have been donated for further use by a fellow charity, the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution. We have still marked the boxes individually in ink, although apparently the Museum of London now uses QR codes on the box ends rather than paper labels which can peel and fade.

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MORE EVENTS

Thursday 20th March, 8 pm. Historical Association. Hampstead and N.W. London Branch. Fellowship House, 136A Willifield Way, London. NW11 6YD (off Finchley Road, Temple Fortune). The Army That Never Was – D-Day and The Great Deception. Talk by Taylor Downing (F.R.H.S.) about the extraordinary ploy to fool the enemy into thinking that Normandy was just a sideshow and the real invasion was at the Pas De Calais and the invention of a completely hoax army led by General Patton and the creation of hundreds of dummy landing craft, tanks and aircraft to convince the Germans it was real. Also a hidden link with the cinema Industry. Also on Zoom. Please email Dudley Miles (HADAS) on dudleyramiles@googlemail.com or telephone 07469 754075 for details of link and how to pay (there may be a voluntary charge of £5). Refreshments to be available afterwards.

Saturday 1st March, 9.30 am. – 5 pm. Current Archaeology Live. U.C.L Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way (off Russell Square) London, WC1H 0A. Wide range of expert speakers sharing latest Archaeological finds and research. Also Archaeology Fair and photography competition from Current World Archaeology . Also the Current Archaeology awards will be announced. Tickets on sale at a standard price of £65. To book please visit www.archaeology.co.uk/live or call 0208 819 5580. The fair has lots of stalls with travel companies, booksellers and other archaeological organisations.

Monday 10th March, 3 pm. Barnet Museum and Local History Society. St. John the Baptist Church (address as for 10th February). A School Girl’s War. Talk by Mary Smith.

Wednesday 12th March, 2.30 pm. Mill Hill Historical Society. Trinity Church, 100 the Broadway, London. NW7 3TB. History of Barnet Town. Talk by Michael Noronha (Chair, Barnet Local History Society). Preceded by the A.G.M. Please visit www.millhill-hs.org.uk.
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Wednesday 19th February, 7.30 pm. Willesden Local History Society. St. Mary’s Church Hall, bottom of Neasden Lane (Round corner from Magistrates’ Court). London. NW10 2DZ. Never Had It So Good! Talk by Nick Dobson describing London life in the 1950s. For further details please visit
www.willesden-local-history.co.uk.

Thursday 27th March, 7.30 pm. Finchley Society. Drawing Room, Avenue (Stephen’s) House, 17 East End Road, London. N3 3QE. The Silvery Goon. Talk by Jane and Sile Milligan (Spike’s daughters). Spike was the former Patron of the Society and a prolific writer, broadcaster and Comic. Visitors £3. Refreshments in the interval. For further details please visit www.finchleysociety.org.uk.

Thanks to our other contributors this month; Eric Morgan; Stewart Wild.

Hendon and District Archaeological Society

Chair   Sandra Claggett, c/o Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE
email : chairman@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Secretary   Janet Mortimer 34 Cloister Road, Childs Hill, London NW2 2NP
(07449 978121), email: secretary@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Treasurer  Roger Chapman, 50 Summerlee Ave, London N2 9QP (07855 304488),
email: treasurer@hadas.org.uk

Membership Sec.  Jim Nelhams, 61 Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
email: membership@hadas.org.uk

Website:     www.hadas.org.uk

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No.646 January 2025 Edited by Peter Pickering

HADAS DIARY – Forthcoming lectures and Events

Lectures take place in the Avenue House Drawing Room.17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE, 7.45 for 8pm. Buses 13, 125, 143, 326 and 460 pass close by, and it is a five to ten-minute walk from Finchley Central Station on the Barnet Branch of the Northern Line. Bus 382 also passes close to Finchley Central Station. We are also on the SuperLoop Bus, SL10. Tea/Coffee/biscuits will be available for purchase after the talks..

Saturday 18 January, 10.30am to 4.00pm. A Study Day at Avenue House by our President, Jacqui Pearce of the Museum of London Archaeology entitled “Clay Pipes: how to identify them and what they mean” This study day has not yet filled up, and we are anxious to make it a success; so if you have been thinking about it or meaning to enrol but have not yet got round to it, do so now. Send your £5 (£10 for non-members) to HADAS (Bank code 40-52-40) account No. 00007253, with your surname and SD125 as a reference with the payment.

Tuesday 11 February by Nick Peacey on the Highgate Wood kiln’s site. See article in November issue of the HADAS newsletter (No. 644).

Tuesday 11 March by Robert Stephenson from COLAS on London’s most curious stones and bones. London possesses many unusual and out-of-place stones as well as several curious bones and burial places, all of which have fascinating tales to tell.

Tuesday 8 April Hugh Petrie (London Borough of Barnet archivist) Mapping the Kingdom. The colourful maps of the first County Series, were one of the greatest feats of the Victorian period. This lecture is the story of the first large scale survey of England made in the 1860s at “1:2500 OR 25.344 INCHES TO THE MILE.” The lecture looks at how and why the survey was carried out, the people who made it happen, from the labourers through to the sappers and officers of the Royal Engineers, and how the maps tell us about local history, using maps from the local studies collection of the London Borough of Barnet.

Tuesday May 13. Les Capon (AOC Archaeology) A community /HLF excavation at Cranford, Hillingdon with trenching over 4 seasons that discovered Romano British roundhouses, Saxon houses, medieval and Tudor and post-medieval remains and intact cellars.Encompassing the Bronze Age to the 19th century.

Weekend June 7 & 8 2025 Barnet Medieval Festival at Lewis of London Ice Cream Farm, Fold Farm, Galley Lane, Barnet, Herts. EN5 4RA

Tuesday 10 June 2025 Annual General Meeting.

HADAS Christmas Tea Sandra Claggett

We had our festive get together on the 1st of December in the nicely decorated Salon room which was well attended with nearly 30 members and guests. Avenue House looked after us well with sandwiches hot food fruit juice and tea and coffee. There was also a bar for those who wanted an alcoholic beverage.

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Liz provided HADAS with some beautiful cakes as on other years and they were very tasty.

We thank Jim and Jo Nelhams for the quiz. Jim was the Quiz master with some interesting questions on music general knowledge and London railways. The latter with questions such as which underground station has a London underground river flowing through it? and which radio programme did Mornington Crescent appear in?

Among the difficult questions on the music quiz for on our table were ‘what is the source of ‘And I couldn’t turn it on’ and another question was what is the source of ‘measuring the marigolds’. It was great fun and got everyone at the table talking and comparing notes.

Thank you for everyone that provided raffle prizes, the raffle raised £120.

We had a great time and thank everyone for coming along and adding to the celebrations.

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HADAS site visit to The Birches, 18 Totteridge Village Bill Bass

A short notice site-visit was organised by Greer Dewdney (London Archaeological Advisor) for 16th November at The Birches, 18 Totteridge Village which has produced evidence of the 17th century Poynters Hall with later extensions. The original part of the building includes some very impressive, vaulted cellars.

Poynters Hall was a house originally in the ownership of Sir Richard Gurney, a royalist in the English Civil War and Lord Mayor of London, who died in the Tower of London in 1647. It had a succession of largely aristocratic owners before being demolished around 1925. The tower clocks from the stables were donated to the nearby St Andrews church; another reminder of Poynters Hall is a line of trees along the former approach road crossing Totteridge Green” (Wikipedia – Poynters Grove)
On arrival to the site, we were shown around by the site-director Les Capon of AOC archaeology who kindly gave up a Saturday for the visit to happen. A 1950s house had been demolished leaving the foundations and the cellars of previous structures. From the entrance we were looking north, the ‘main ’section of the house would have been to the front, an apsidal extension behind this and to the right the remains of the vaulted cellar dating back to the 1640s. Beyond to the north would have been landscaped grounds but since built over.

The vaulted cellar was thought to have been the earliest structural remains; the type and size of the bricks and the type of mortar pointed to a mid-17th century date; a drain/soakaway was to be recorded with evidence of ‘putlok ’holes in the walls for wooden scaffolding which if correct may be an early use of this system. A possible windowsill may show evidence of a south facing high-up light-giving opening. To the south of this cellar was a smaller one of similar date, there was evidence of coal stains and staircase so may have been a coal cellar or a source of heating. Here you could see earlier brickwork with later types on top.

A large later apsidal foundation facing north may have been a room to look over the gardens, but there was also speculation of a chapel, a nearby tin-glazed wall-tile showing a religious figure which could lend credence to the chapel theory.

A house next door may also be demolished and could contain further cellars from Poynters Hall which will need archaeological recording.

Les showed a collection of mid-17th century finds, not from this site but to give an impression of the sort of pottery, clay-pipe and glassware you would expect to find. Many thanks to Les and Greer for the opportunity to inspect impressive archaeological remains from a Barnet site.

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Enfield Archaeological Society Excavations at Monken Hadley Common. Martin J. Dearne

Monken Hadley Common, almost the last untouched remnant of Enfield Chase, is of archaeological interest mainly because of the presence of a later prehistoric enclosure. It was discovered in 1913 (Taylor 1913) and is an ovate bank and ditch defined enclosure of c. 4 ha on patches of gravel geology with a possible entrance at a southern angle. Though damaged by the construction of a railway line through it in 1847, a section cut in 1951 showed an inner bank rising 1.52 m from the base of a 3.00 m wide V-shaped ditch (Renn 1952/4), but limited EAS excavations in 1972 produced no significant results (Green 1973). HADAS excavations in 1983 obtained a second section through the defences, but added nothing further (Wrigley 1983). Indeed, often regarded as a small Iron Age ‘hillfort ’(though how appropriate that term is might be questioned) the site is, however, undated and associated worked flint has been suggested as having been deposited as ballast during railway construction. Its interpretation is further complicated by the presence of areas of quartzite potboilers within it which appear likely to be burnt mounds which are generally more associated with Bronze Age activity and so may hint at continuity of use of the site over a long period. It sits on a low hill 30 m south of the line of the Green Brook, a small stream that runs through the still quite heavily wooded common, and here a flood alleviation scheme involving a little widening of part of the stream and a small ‘wetland cell ’(essentially a large pond) was proposed by the London Borough of Enfield.

As the EAS’s fieldwork team includes current and retired professional archaeologists it has for some years fulfilled the role commercial providers normally would on such Enfield council projects and in September 2024 it undertook the evaluation excavation required by conditions placed on the grant of planning permission (by Barnet Council – by a quirk of the 1963 London Government reorganisation the site is in the borough of Barnet). Such evaluations are not typically what you might think – we don’t excavate entirely by hand but supervise machine excavation in shallow spits, turning to hand excavation only if and when features appear. In this case too everything was metal detected as there was a vague possibility of finds deriving from the 1471 Battle of Barnet being present (though this was probably fought some kilometres away).

As is not uncommon in such evaluations there was no archaeology present – the four trenches excavated showed a fairly thin woodland soil lay over an entirely undisturbed subsoil developing on the top of a natural deposit of brickearth which here coats the underlying Lea Valley gravels. Never the less it is important to undertake such evaluations because it is only by doing them that we can be sure that new infrastructure projects are not going to remove important information about, in this case, the fairly poorly understood pattern of settlement and other activities in the area in the later prehistoric period.

• Green, J. (1973) Hadley Wood Earthwork, Enfield Archaeological Society Newsletter (Bulletin of the EAS) 73 (March 1973).
• Renn, D. (1952/4) Hadley Wood Earthwork, Trans. East Herts. Arch. Soc. 13ii, 204 – 6.
• Taylor, H. D. (1913) Prehistoric Earthwork in Hadley Wood, TLAMAS NS 4i, 97 – 9.
• Wrigley, B. (1983) The Dig at Hadley Wood, Hendon and Dist. Arch. Soc. Newsletter, August 1983, 7 – 9 and October 1983, 2.

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OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS compiled by Eric Morgan

Please check with the organisations before setting out in case of any changes / cancellations. Many organisations expect a small contribution from visitors.

Tuesday 14th January, 8 pm. Amateur Geological Society. Talk on Zoom. Death and Destruction in the Red Beds of Russia. The Greatest Mass Extinction of all Time. Talk by Professor Michael Benton. At the end of the Permian period, 90% of species were wiped out. The cause has been a mystery. Numerous hypotheses have been presented including impact by an Asteroid, but the consensus now focusses on massive volcanic eruption in Siberia. For details of link visit https://amgeosoc.wordpress.com.

Tuesday 14th January, 8 pm. Historical Association: North London Branch. Jubilee Hall, 2, Parsonage Lane/Junction Chase Side, Enfield, EN2 0AJ. Queens as Co-Rulers: Examining Power Sharing and Ruling Partnerships in the Pre-Modern World. Talk by Dr. Ellie Woodacre. Non-members contribution £2. Payable at the door.

Wednesday 15th January,7.30p.m. Willesden Local History Society, St.Mary’s Church Hall, bottom of Neasden Lane (round corner from Magistrates Court)London,NW10 2DZ. Becoming Brent. Talk by the Brent Archive team, who will update on their projects in this year of Becoming Brent, and the commemoration of the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley in 1924/5.For further details please visit www.willesden-local-history.co.uk.

Friday 10th January, 7.30 pm. Enfield Archaeological Society. Talk on Zoom. Who Built London and Why? Talk given by Professor Dominic Perring (UCL.)
Visit www.enfarch.soc.org for further details and link.

Thursday 16th January, 7.30 pm. Camden History Society. Talk on Zoom. Oliver Heaviside = an Electrical Genius of the Victorian Age. Talk by Hugh Griffiths. Visit www.camdenhistory.org for further details and link.

Wednesday 22nd January, 7.45 pm. Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. North Middlesex Golf Club, the Manor House, Friern Barnet Lane, London, N20 0NL. The 1950s. Talk by Terence Atkinson. Please visit www.friernbarnethistory.org.uk for further details. Non-members contribution £2. Bar available.

Sunday 2nd February, 10.30 am. Heath and Hampstead Society. Kenwood Estate versus Hampstead Heath – History and Relationship. Meet at entrance to old Kitchen Garden, east of Kenwood House stable block, off Hampstead Lane, London, N6. Guided walk led by Thomas Radice (Trustee). Lasts approximately 2 hours. Donations – £5. Please contact Tereza Pultarova. 07776 649163. Email hhs.walks@gmail.com or visit www.heathandhampstead.org.uk.

Tuesday 4th February, 11 am. Enfield Society. Jubilee Hall (Address as for H.A. North London Branch Tues 14th January.) Dolly Shepherd. Talk by Kirsten Forrest. Dolly Shepherd was a pioneering fairground parachutist, who made her first and last jumps at Alexandra Park. She also went to serve in both World wars. There will also be an update on recent developments at Alexandra Palace. Visit www.enfield.society.org.uk. for further details.

Tuesday 11th February, 6.30 pm. L.A.M.A.S. Also on Zoom. Book on Eventbrite via website www.lamas.org.uk/lectures/html. Non-members contribution £2.50. A.G.M. and Presidential Address by Professor Vanessa Harding (Birkbeck U.L.) Mapping Early Tudor London. with special reference to The Historic Towns Trust’s Map of London 1520.

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Wednesday 12th February, 2.30 pm. Mill Hill Historical Society. Trinity Church, 100, the Broadway, London. NW7 3TB. The History of Pentonville Prison. Talk by Sarah Bourn. www.millhill-hs.org.uk.

Thursday 20th February, 8 pm. Historical Association: Hampstead and N.W. London Branch. Fellowship House, 136A, Willifield Way, London, NW11 6YD (off Finchley Road, Temple Fortune). Agincourt Myth and Reality. Talk by Professor Anne Curry (Past President of H.A. and in 2015 was chair of Agincourt 600). It was fought on the 25th October 1415 with victory for Henry V. Also on Zoom. Please email Dudley Miles (HADAS) on dudleyramiles@googlemail.com or telephone 07469 754075 for details of link and how to pay (there may be a voluntary charge of £5). Refreshments afterwards.

Friday 21st February, 7.30 pm. Wembley History Society. St. Andrew’s Church Hall (behind St. Andrew’s New Church) Church Lane, Kingsbury, London. NW9 8RZ. The Mercenary River. Talk by Nick Higham. He introduces his book on the river that gave us the company that gave us all the other companies. Visitors charge £3. Refreshments to be available in the interval.

Wednesday 26th February, 7.45 pm. Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. North Middlesex Golf Club (Address as for Wednesday 22nd January). Aircraft through the Ages. Talk by a speaker from De Havilland. For further details please see January talk.

Thursday 27th February, 7.30 pm. Finchley Society. Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Road, London. N3 3QE. The Royal Air Force Museum. Talk by David Keen on the story of the historic site at Hendon from the days of aviation pioneer Claude Grahame-White through the Hendon air shows of the twenties and thirties to RAF Hendon’s role in both world wars and the development of the museum. www.finchleysociety.org.uk. Non-members contribution £2 at the door. Refreshments in the interval.

Hendon and District Archaeological Society

Chair   Sandra Claggett, c/o Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE
email : chairman@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Secretary   Janet Mortimer 34 Cloister Road, Childs Hill, London NW2 2NP
(07449 978121), email: secretary@hadas.org.uk

Hon. Treasurer  Roger Chapman, 50 Summerlee Ave, London N2 9QP (07855 304488),
email: treasurer@hadas.org.uk

Membership Sec.  Jim Nelhams, 61 Potters Road, Barnet EN5 5HS (020 8449 7076)
email: membership@hadas.org.uk

Website:    www.hadas.org.uk

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