Volume 7 : 2000 – 2004

Newsletter
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Seasons greetings to all our members for a happy holiday and a healthy and prosperous New Year.
HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 9 December CHRISTMAS DINNER at the Pavilion On The Park Restaurant, Barnet College, Colindale, NW9 Some tickets at £23 still available – hurry to book. Phone Dorothy Newbury on (020) 8203 0950. The recent postal strike has played havoc with book¬ings and Dorothy is anxious to fill vacant spaces. So if you and a friend would like to come please let Dorothy know as soon as possible – a private room has been reserved for us and the deposit paid.

Tuesday 13 January 2004 Portable Antiquities, A lecture by Nicole Weller, the new Portable Antiquities Liaison Officer and Community Archaeologist at The Museum of London, Nicole will be talking about her work, the Treasure Act and related matters. She will also discuss any small finds that members would like to bring along.

Tuesday 10 February 2004 London Burial Grounds. A lecture by Dr. Roger Bowdler, Lectures start at 8.00pm in the Drawing Room at Avenue house, East End Road, Finchley, and are followed by question time and coffee. Meetings close promptly at 10.00pm
CAN YOU SPARE AN AFTERNOON ONCE A MONTH ?

The Stephens Collection at Avenue House is in desperate need of stewards to preside while the museum is open from 2pm to 4.30pm on Tuesdays. Wednesdays and Thursdays each week. Members may well be familiar with the collection_ featuring the fascinating history of writing implements, ink and the Stephens family, as it often open by special arrangement prior to our monthly meetings at Avenue House. This is an easy, relaxing task that might suit some HADAS members whose bent is not for excavation or finds processing.Volunteering for as little as one afternoon a month would help enormously, and you would be accompanied by an experienced steward to learn the ropes’. Your reward would he a greater knowledge of Avenue House and the amazing Stephens family, and the oppor-tunity to help preserve the memory of Henry Stephens whose generosity led to Avenue House being left in public ownership.
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Brian Arthur Wrigley remembered

1926 -2003 Some twenty members of HADAS attended the service for Brian Wrigley at the church of St. Michael & All Angels, Mill Hill on Monday 3 November, The well-filled church testified to the affection and esteem in which Brian was held. Conducted by Canon Barry Wright, the service celebrated and gave thanks for Brian’s life in all its aspects: as a family man, as a solicitor and colleague and as a friend sharing in many leisure activities. The reading from Ecclesiasticus on the value of friendship and the qualities of a true friend seemed particular¬ly apt. Three speakers paid tribute to Brian. Roderick Hunter remembered him as a colleague and convivial drinking companion. He spoke of Brian’s work as a solicitor for The Prudential, of his service in litigation especially in the High Court and Appeal cases and his clear and concise presentation and advice. Brian was greatly respected by both barristers and the judiciary – witness the comment by Lord Denning when Guest of Honour during Brian’s Presidency of the Holbourn Law Society, that for all to go well one needed a Mr. Wrigley in charge. Peter Manix, Best Man at Brian and Joan’s wedding, said that he had known Brian since 1943. He recalled their respective wartime service, their subsequent law studies together and their continuing long friendship. He also spoke of Brian’s sporting activities and amateur dramatics. Denis Ross spoke of Brian the archaeologist, who joined HADAS over 25 years ago, became secretary in 1983 and was latterly Vice Chairman, until ill health led to his resignation last year. Brian was an active field-worker, obtained his Diploma of Archaeology in 1978 and continued his archaeologi¬cal studies until very recently. He also handled all the Society’s legal work. Brian and Joan have been regular attenders at the Society’s functions and out¬ings and have for many years hosted committee meetings at their home. A much loved and respected members of HADAS, Brian will be greatly missed. The service reflected Brian’s love of music. His son Stephen and Didier Messidoro played Gymnopedie No.1 and Gnossienne No.1 by Erik Salle, the choir sang a Walford Davies anthem, there were traditional and modern hymns and music by Handel and Elgar. There was also a reading of John Rudney’s poem “Do Not Despair”. Afterwards, during refreshments in the Hartley Hall, there was a delightful “Brian” touch – he had arranged that we should drink to his memory in champagne. Sheila Woodward
From Joan Wrigley:

Joan. Norman, Stephen and Ann (Brian’s sister in Devon) wish-to thank everyone for their kind messages and sympathy on the passing of Brian, a good hus¬band, father, brother, lawyer and an even better archaeologist. He will surely rest in peace.
250 YEARS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM Sheila Woodward reports on the October lecture given by Marjorie Caygill

The British Museum: a simple all-embracing title for a great institution which most of us probably take for granted. It is 250 years old this year and historian Marjorie Caygill talked to us about its foundation and some highlights in its history. She pointed out that cramming so long a story into an hour’s lecture neces¬sitated rigorous selection. The founding father of the Museum was Sir Hans Sloane, physician and naturalist. He returned from a trip to the West Indies with a huge natural history collection (and a recipe for a milk chocolate drink which Cadbury’s were still said to he using in the 20th century!). Sloane established a lucrative medical practice, became President of The Royal Society and continued to indulge his collecting enthusiasm. When he died in 1753 at the age of 92 he bequeathed his collection to King and Parliament in return for a payment of £20,000 to his daughter. As his collection was estimated to have cost him about £100,000, it was a bargain. The bequest was accepted and on 7 June 1753 the British Museum Act became law, establishing the first national museum freely open to the public. Its principal trustees were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons. Sloane’s collection was eclectic. Its 71,000 objects included an Asante drum from Ghana, a lower palaeolithic hand axe found in 1696 and an English asto¬lahe of about 1295. The 50,00() hooks, manuscripts, prints and drawings includ¬ed an album of 138 drawings attributed to Albrecht Duren There were also 337 volumes of dried plants. Parliament immediately supplemented the collection with an earlier bequest of coins and manuscripts from the estate of Sir Robert Cotton which included the Lindisfarne Gospels, two copies of Magna Carta and the manuscript of Beowulf. A further addition was the purchase of the l-larleian Library and in 1757 George II gave the Old 250 years of The British Museum continued

Sir Hans Sloane 0660-1753) Royal Library to the Museum with its right to a copy of every publica¬tion printed in the country. The first home of the Museum was Montague House in Bloomsbury, situated where the Museum still stands. Its galleries and a reading room opened on 15 January 1759. Despite generous donations, money was a problem and initial funding was by a scandalously conducted public lottery. (Lotteries, comment¬ed Dr. Caygill, are almost always scandalous!) The prospect of public access to the collection was viewed with horror by the Trustees and total mayhem was anticipated. Visitors had therefore to obtain pre-booked tickets and were taken round in small groups led by a curator. But there was no charge; even tips were forbidden. In its early days the Museum was more like a cabinet of curiosities; its hotchpotch collections even includ¬ed a portrait of a horned lady. However, a vogue for the Grand Tour benefited the Museum and the purchase in 1772 of Sir William Hamilton’s classical acquisitions changed the balance of the whole collection. In 1778 a South Sea Room was opened to display items brought hack from Captain Cook’s voyages and further connoisseurs’ bequests increased the Museum’s stock of drawings, prints and coins. By the end of the 18th century the Museum was shabby and over¬crowded and expansion was planned. Antiquities from Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign which were ceded to Britain in 1802 vastly enlarged the Museum’s Egyptian Collection. The “plum” was the Rosetta Stone which enabled the decipherment of ancient hieroglyphs. In 1818, courtesy of Henry Salt, the British Consul in Cairo, came the splendid bust of Rameses II. The classical collection was augmented by the superb Charles Townley collection (includ¬ing the famous Discobolus) and in 1816 the Elgin Marbles arrived. Building expansion was gradual and by this time “persons of decent appearance” were allowed to wan¬der unescorted through the Museum. In 1808 the first purpose-built gallery was opened to house the Townley Collection. In 1817 a tem¬porary Elgin Room was erected to house the Marbles. In 1823 George IV gave his father’s library to the nation, parliament granted £40,000 to the Museum to house it and the architect Sir Robert Smirke began his neo-classical building. The East Wing (for the King’s Library) was completed in 1827 and the rest of the quadrangle in 1847. The famous domed Reading Room in the central courtyard was completed and opened in 1857, Kari Marx was one of its first regular readers; he visited it daily for nearly 30 years. Meanwhile, new acquisitions to the Museum’s collections continued to pour in. Layard was excavating at Nimrud and when the first massive Assyrian sculptures reached the Museum in 1847 they caused a sen¬sation. In 1852 a room was opened for the display of British antiquities, previously much neglected. Augustus Woolaston Franks, who joined the Museum staff in 1851, had a private income which he used for the benefit of the Museum. He became Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography and with his friend and fellow benefactor Henry Christy, laid the foundation for much of the Museum’s later work. At Frank’s death in 1897 his huge bequest to the Museum included the Oxus treasure. The creation of a separate Museum of Natural History, long mooted, was implemented in 1880. Plans for further expansion in Bloomsbury, shelved during the Boer War, were resumed in 1902 and the Edward VII Galleries were opened in May 1914. During World War I the possi¬bility of air raids necessitated the evacuation of precious exhibits. Things returned to normal briefly in the 1920s and Leonard Woolley’s excavations at Ur produced rich finds which were divided between Iraq, the British Museum and Philadelphia. By -1933 preliminary plans were already in place for the packing and removal of treasures in the event of war. The excavation of the great Anglo Saxon ship at Sutton Hoo in 1939 entailed the storage of finds under Mrs. Pretty’s bed before they were taken to the Aldwych tube tunnel “for the duration”. In 1941 incendiary bombs hit the south west corner of the Museum, destroying the coin room and about 250,000 books. During the 1950s much repair work and refurbishment was done. The Duveen Gallery for the Elgin Marbles was finally opened in 1962. The 1960s also saw the beginning of the great special exhibitions. The Tutankhamun Exhibition was seen by over 11/2 million visitors. A plan in 1962 for new buildings to the south of the Museum to provide more space for the library was rejected and in 1973 a new institution, the British Library, was formed and was moved to its new building at St. Pancras in 1998. Work was then begun on the Museum’s central courtyard area and the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, the biggest covered courtyard in Europe, was opened in December 2000. It has proved very popular.. Dr. Caygill commented that the British Museum has not been good at publicising and celebrating its special anniversaries. She has ensured that its “quarter of a millennium” should not pass unrecorded.
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MORE NEWS FROM FONTWELL MAGNA

Recent finds at Spinghead Farm, Fontwell Magna indicate that there may well be a Romano-British settlement or rural Roman villa/farmhouse on the site. Finds unearthed by metal detectorists from the Dorset Detection Group include coins (mainly Constantine and Constantius c. 300AD), bronze brooches and a solid gold strip with striations on one side. The gold strip is of course Treasure Trove and is currently being examined at the British Museum. Their initial opinion is that the strip dates from the late Bronze Age and thus very rare. Fontwell is one of Dorset’s oldest villages, first recorded in the Shaftesbury charter of 888AD, almost 200 years before the Doomsday survey. John Gadd, the village archivist, has long suspected that the village may have a Roman settlement as it is so close to the Roman fort at Hod Hill. The exact location of the site is being kept secret to prevent disturbance and theft of atrefacts by treasure hunters while permission is sought to excavate, possibly next year..
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Joyce Corlet 1912 – 2003 remembered

Members will be sorry to learn of the death, on 17 October, of Joyce Corlet, aged 91. Joyce, who was born on the Isle of Man, published many short stories and travel articles over the years and was a great devo¬tee of cats. Dorothy Newbury remembers Joyce’s late husband Geoffrey spending many weeks copying out the church records of St. Mary’s, Hendon before these were called in by the Church of England. Joyce is survived by her son Andrew and her grandchildren Kate, Vickie and Grace, who live in Powys.Deirdre Barrie
Helena Nash 1909 – 2003 remembered

Helena Nash, a HADAS member for many years, died in November during a fire at her home in Denman Drive, Hampstead Garden Suburb. Sadly, a gallant attempt to rescue her from her bedroom by her neighbour David Ambrose failed and Mrs. Nash was found to have died from smoke inhalation while asleep. Mrs. Nash was horn in the house and had lived there all her life. She was still very active, well-known in Temple Fortune and a dedicated supporter of the North London Hospice.
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CHURCH FARMHOUSE MUSEUM

New exhibition opens on 15 December “Winter Wonderland” Victorian and early 20th century toys Displays will include dolls’ houses, toy soldiers. Christmas angels and many more items from the vast and wonderful collection owned by Irene and Mark Cornelius. An ideal outing at Christmas and the New Year. Note: The Museum will be closed on 24,25 & 26 December and on 1 January 2004
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OTHER SOCIETIES’ DECEMBER EVENTS Prepared by Eric Morgan

Wed. 3 Dec. 5.00pm British Archaeological Association Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House,Piccadilly, W I ‘De Profundis’: an archaeology of the medieval funeral Talk by Barney Sloane

Thur. 4 Dec. 7.30pm London Canal Museum 12-13 New Wharf Road, Kings Cross, N1 Built Heritage of British Waterways Talk by Nigel Crowe and Mike Manuel Concessions £1.25

Mon. 8 Dec. to Sat. 20 Dec Barnet Borough Arts Council Chipping Barnet Library, Stapylton Road

Newsletter
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HADAS Diary The winter lecture series takes place at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE. Lectures start promptly at 8pm.

Tuesday, 14th October 2003: “250 years of the British Museum”. Lecture by Dr. Marjorie Cayhill

Tuesday, 11th November 2003: “Roman Silchester” Lecture by Prof. Mike Fulford

Information sought

We have had a request for information concerning the ownership of land in Harrow by the Clerkenwell Nunnery (Convent of St. Mary). Can you help please? Do any records exist? This is part of a project by the Clerkenwell Green Preservation Society to trace the ownership of Clerkenwell Green itself. If you have any information please contact me (Don Cooper) at the address on the back of this newsletter.

Early notification of the LAMAS conference

The annual local history conference run by the London & Middlesex Archaeology Society will take place this year in the Museum of London’s Lecture Theatre on Saturday the 15th November 2003 from 10.00am to 05.00 pm. It is entitled “Lunatick London” and is concerned with the care and housing of the mentally ill over the ages in the London area. Among the many interesting speakers will be Dr. Oliver Natelson of the Friern Barnet & District Local History Society who will deliver a lecture on the Friern Hospital. As usual there will displays of recent work and publications by the many London based Local History Societies and of course afternoon tea. The tickets are £5 each (£4 for LAMAS members). Please send your application with an appropriate cheque and a stamped, self-addressed envelope for your tickets to Local History Conference, 36 Church Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7PX

Stephens Museum Support Group by Stewart Wild Invitation to an Inaugural Meeting

Finchley’s Stephens Collection, described as “one of the best small museums in England”, has decided to establish a Stephens Museum Support Group. The inaugural meeting will take place in Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, London N3 3QE on Friday 10 October 2003 from 5 to 7pm. All members of the public are invited to attend.

The meeting will discuss procedural matters, steering committee, members’ benefits
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and future plans. For further information call Norman Burgess on 020 8346 6337.

As most HADAS members will know, the Stephens Collection (a registered charity, no. 1051384) was established at Avenue House in 1993 to honour the memory and achievements of Dr Henry Stephens FRCS (1796-1864), the inventor in 1832 of the famous ink, and his son Henry Charles Stephens (1841-1918), who was a chemist, inventor and successful businessman, MP for Finchley (1887-1900) and a generous local benefactor. On his death in 1918 he bequeathed his family estate, Avenue House and Gardens, to the people of Finchley. Since then it has been the responsibility of a succession of local councils until late last year (2002) when the London Borough of Barnet transferred ownership to Avenue House Estate Management, a responsible newly formed local charitable trust.

Like many small museums, The Stephens Collection, which welcomes visitors every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon from 2pm to 4.30pm, is run entirely by volunteers and relies on donations and fund raising for its income. The Support Group will be dedicated to ensuring the financial stability of The Stephens Collection in the face of increasing costs for insurance, service charges and other overheads.
More on standard railway gauges by Jim Nelhams

An article in the May newsletter tells us that very old wheel tracks in Malta are a “standard” width apart, and that the distance is close to the Standard Railway Gauge. Should this be a surprise?

A number of mostly humorous articles have been written on the subject, but they do seem to contain an element of possibility. I’ll try to summarise.

Firstly, the standard railway gauge throughout most of the world is 4 foot 8.5 inches. There are exceptions – Spain, Portugal, Ireland and most of Eastern Europe have different gauges, and there are a number of narrow-gauge railways throughout the UK.

Most early major roads in Europe were built by the Romans particularly to help them transport the army and the supplies that it needed. They would have used horse drawn carts, and chariots. Some of the equipment required, such as the yoke worn by the horses, as well as the carts and chariots, would have used standard specifications and models which were designed for practical purposes. A yoke for two horses would need to be comfortable for them, and would also need to fit between the shafts of the vehicle. This would also allow the wheels to run without the dirt kicked by the horses getting underneath them. So our starting point is the width of two horses!

Once this has been established and the wheels start to travel on the road, ruts will appear, and any vehicle that does not conform to these ruts is liable to be damaged. Visitors to Pompeii will have seen ruts in the stone roads and will also have seen the stepping stones in the roads. The stones allowed pedestrians to cross the road without stepping in the “pollution”, but they would have caused a major problem had not all the wheeled traffic been wide enough to span them. So perhaps the ruts are actually grooves cut to guide the wheels rather than grooves made by the wheels themselves. And of course, the stepping stones would have the effect of keeping the traffic to a sensible speed. So did Pompeii effectively have a tramway and speed bumps? Also, since there are no passing places, did the streets operate a one way system?

The tramway idea is not as absurd as it sounds. Evidence exists that the Persians and Assyrians, to improve the safety of their war chariots, deliberately cut grooves on mountain passes to prevent the wheels from slipping sideways. The distance between these grooves fits closely to our standard.
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Move on to the industrial revolution. The first railways would have been horse drawn, with the trucks adapted by those already skilled in carriage building. So why change the width? After all, it did allow for the horses to walk between the rails without risk of injury from them.

How was the standard spread? Well if you want to join two railways together, or even build one railway in sections that join up later, you must have a standard. And when steam power comes along, the cost of changing to anything else may be prohibitive. Isambard Kingdom Brunel built his Great Western Railway with a seven foot gauge, and it was undoubtedly faster, smoother and more economic, but being a minority of one, the great man was unable to persuade Parliament that his answer was “best”, and was forced to conform.

During the Victorian era, railways sprang up all over the world, most of them were built by British engineers, and started with British locomotives and other equipment. So they used the same gauge.

Effectively, the standard had become a default, and had perpetuated that used long before railways came along.

Some isolated places used different gauges. Even today, most of Eastern Europe has rails wider apart, and trains travelling between west and east have to stop and change wheels.

And the effect of the standard must not be underestimated. How does equipment reach Cape Canaveral? And how are the rockets moved to the launch pads? You’ve got it – by rail. So perhaps the size of the rockets is influenced by the width of those long dead horses.

It’s not finished. The love of some of our road engineers for speed bumps and width restrictions could have similar effects. Cars should be narrow enough to go through the width restrictions but with wheels far enough apart to miss the bumps! Pity the poor person driving a Robin Reliant! Except that speed bumps don’t seem to have a standard width, so there have been lots of complaints from the Ambulance services.

And with tramways returning to our cities, we do not want our car wheels to catch in them. (Remember the film Genevieve!). So cars must use a different standard, if that makes sense.

I leave you to make up your own mind, but it does seem to be a case of the old adage, “if it works, don’t change it!”

So why did Brunel consider a 7 foot gauge? Well, I don’t know the answer, but the standard width of canal locks in this country is either 7 foot or 14 foot!
ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE BALEARIC ISLANDS by Stewart J. Wild

On a recent visit, I was reminded how much there is of archaeological interest in the lovely Balearic Islands. The Majorca Daily Bulletin (20 August 2003) had an article under the headline Digging in Valldemossa about ongoing excavations at an ancient cemetery complex at Ferrandell-Oleza that dates back to around 2,500BC.

Dr William Waldren has spent 30 years working on these excavations, unearthing human remains of the people who inhabited Mallorca in prehistoric times. The project, which is funded by Earth Watch, a research centre based in Boston, Massachusetts, attracts volunteers every summer from all over
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Europe and from as far away as Australia and the USA. Some come year after year. Many of the finds unearthed can be seen in the Museum of Deià, which is also under the direction of Dr Waldren.

The earliest inhabitants of the Balearic Islands probably arrived from the Iberian peninsula; archaeological evidence suggests that the islands were occupied by 4,000BC. Prehistoric remains include flint tools, arrowheads, primitive pottery, and artefacts made of horn, indicating that these early settlers were shepherds and hunters.

As well as herding sheep, the early inhabitants hunted the local species of mountain goat (Myotragus balearicus), now extinct. Most archaeological finds were discovered in caves, which were used for shelter and ritual burials.

The best preserved complex of caves, developed and extended by the Talayotic settlers, are the Cales Coves near Calla en Porter, on Menorca. There is also evidence of the culture of the Beaker folk who were capable of working in bronze. The Beaker people appeared in the islands around 2,300BC.

Close to Es Pujols on the north coast of the tiny island of Formentera is the megalithic burial chamber of Ca Na Costa dating from around 1,700BC. It consists of a circle of seven vertical limestone blocks, an arrangement not found anywhere else in the islands. Excavations were begun in 1974 and have unearthed a number of objects, including ceramic and bronze vessels and axes, which are on display in Ibiza’s Archaeological Museum.

The Talayotic Period

The mysterious prehistoric structures made of giant stones found on the islands, especially on Menorca, date from between 2,000 and 1,000BC. The most typical of the time, which also gave the period its name, is the talayot, derived from the Arabic word atalaya meaning observation tower. These structures are only found in Mallorca and Menorca, none having been located on Ibiza or Formentera.

Other common stone buildings are taulas (tables) and navetas (like upturned boats). Some taulas on Menorca are over 14ft high. In southern Europe the only other place with similar structures is Sardinia, where they are called nuraghi.

Menorca alone has an estimated 1,600 megalithic sites, while the best site on Mallorca is arguably Capocorb Vell, a rocky plateau on the south coast of the island. This settlement, dating from around 1,000BC, had five talayots, 28 smaller dwellings and Cyclopean walls reaching 13ft high in places. The area was protected as a cultural heritage site as long ago as 1931.

Nobody really knows the exact purpose of all these structures – they may have been used as defensive towers and guardhouses, burial sites or storehouses, as well as dwellings.

Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians

The Phoenicians arrived in the islands sometime after 1,000BC, founding a trading settlement on the north coast of Menorca. Two hundred years later the roving Greeks arrived, but did not stay. Apart from apparently getting a hostile reception from the inhabitants, the islands lacked the metal ores that the Greeks were after.

They did however leave the islands with a name: Baleares derives from the Greek ballein (to hurl from a sling, as in ballistic). It seems the early islanders used volleys of sling-shots to repel invaders.
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By the 7th century BC the Carthaginians were in the ascendency. They founded Eivissa (Ibiza Town) in 654BC, and indeed, it was here that the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal was born in 247BC. Ciutadella and Maó (Mahon) on Menorca were also founded by the Carthaginians.

The Roman Period

The Balearic Islands played a strategic role during the Punic Wars. Following their defeat at Zama (north Africa) in 202BC, the Carthaginians were crushed. Soon afterwards they left Mallorca and Menorca but remained in Ibiza until the Romans conquered the island in 146BC. Roman rule was to last over 500 years, during which the islands were renamed Balearis Major (Mallorca), Balearis Minor (Menorca), and Ebusus (Ibiza).

The tiny island of Formentera, which the Greeks called Snake Island, derives its name from the Latin Frumentaria (Wheat Island), so called by the Romans on account of the cereals and other crops they grew here. In fact, Roman rule brought peace and prosperity to all the islands, but that’s another story.
PHOTO-FINNISH! By Jack Goldenfeld

This month, I paid a short visit to Helsinki and was fortunate enough to get to the National Museum of Finland on the one day in the year when an archaeological event is held, somewhat similar to that which I reported in last month’s Newsletter. However, this one was utterly Nordic in character and featured artisans producing objects which were modern-day replicas of the museums exhibits. There were tools and projectile points being formed from slate and other local stones, as well as from (imported) flint in one area whilst, in another, barbed hunting and fishing spears, arrows, harpoons and leisters were being made from wood and bone. There was a digging area which had been seeded with pottery fragments and stone debitage for the benefit of the younger vistors, something which my two granddaughters (of Mill Green Museum fame!) would have greatly appreciated. Regrettably though, they’ve now returned home to Illinois. There was also a food-preparation display, with querns and examples of indigenous edible plants, exampling environmental seed evidence from excavated sites.

The Museum is well worth a visit. It has a most impressive prehistoric display of stonework and ceramics with the only known example of a fragment of fishing net, complete with stone sinkers and firbark floats, dating to circa 8000bc, part of the contents of a fishing canoe which sank, with much of the fisherman’s equipment, organically preserved in a silted-up water channel.

Helsinki is easy and cheap to get to, and is well recommended for a short visit.
TRANSPORT CORNER by Andy Simpson

BOOK REVIEW –

NEXT STOP SEATON! – 50 years of Modern Electric Tramways Limited By David Jay and David Voice Published by Adam Gordon 2003 ISBN 1 874422 43 5 Price £17.00, soft back.

Why review a book about a three-mile long narrow-gauge tourist tramway in Devon? Well, read on. This book is full of Barnet, Hadley and Hendon connections. This book celebrates the golden jubilee in 2003 of the Modern Electric Tramways Company, formed 19th May 2003 by Claude Lane to run his trams. Claude Lane was born in 1908 in Totteridge, the son of William Lane, joint manager of Manor
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https://www.hadas.org.uk/cgi-bin/nl/nlarchive.pl?issue=391&page=6 Issue 391 Page 6] Farm Dairies, Highgate; having introduced pasteurisation he became a director. In 1911 the family moved to Finchley, where the infant Claude, fascinated by trams, would persuade his nanny to take him to the tram depot off Rosemont Avenue to watch them entering and leaving the depot. As a young boy he would travel to Hendon to watch the trams at the depot/workshops on the Edgware road, where Merit house now stands – of which more later. At school he developed a flair for electricity and mechanics, and served his electrical engineering apprenticeship at Stoke Newington power station. Aged 22, he formed the Barnet based ‘Mobile Welding and Workshop Company’, and opened a small workshop in Lancaster Road, New Barnet, renamed the Lancaster Electrical Company, after the road. Here he repaired batteries, radios and the like.

A growing interest in battery vehicles led to his building a workshop at 77-79 Brookhill Road, New Barnet, whilst spending his summer holidays driving trams in Llandudno and Blackpool. From WW2 his company produced many battery-operated vehicles such as the ‘Lecar’ for local deliveries by traders. In 1949, he produced his first own 15-inch gauge scale model tram, number 23, based on a modern double decker then running in Llandudno; he built a test track in the Barnet works and locals soon got use to this little tram running around the yard, giving rides to local children. As news spread, invitations to local fetes, using portable overhead and track, grew; one such being the Hadley House Conservative Association Fete of July 1949, followed by South Mimms later that month. Summer weekends saw the tram travel as far as Hitchin and Uxbridge, often with ’19 Barnet’ on its destination blinds – the pre-1938 route via Finchley to High Barnet. In 1950 a second tram was completed in New Barnet, based on the ‘Blackpool Boat’ open top single deck design, and numbered 225. In 1951 the two trams moved to a new sea-front miniature tramway at St Leonards, Hastings, as a holiday attraction. They were supplemented in 1952 by a third Barnet-built tramcar, a traditional four-wheel open topper, number 3, but local complaints had seen an end to the Hastings operation after a few months. Also built at Barnet in 1952 was a four-wheeled battery operated tram for the Air Ministry. In 1952 the whole set-up moved to a park at Rhyl. A planned move to Eastbourne in East Sussex saw trams 225 and 3 move back to Barnet for refurbishment. The Rhyl operation was leased out and the Barnet works produced a fourth tram, open ‘toastrack’ number 6, in 1954 to help maintain services there. The Rhyl operation closed in 1957.

Operations in Princes Park, Eastbourne began in 1954, with the track gauge increased to two feet. Barnet works produced a second ‘boat’ car, No.226 to help work the line, and number 238, based on the double-deck Blackpool ‘Balloon’ design. Toastrack number 6 was rebuilt at Barnet 1955/56 as a traditional bogie open top car using parts from original full-sized trams from Southampton and Llandudno. The last tram partially built in East Barnet, in 1958, was similar tram number 7, again using full-sized components such as electrical gear rescued from newly scrapped Llandudno trams, and seats from Leeds trams. The Barnet works closed, and were sold in 1959, and operations moved entirely to Eastbourne, where the tramway was partly lit by ex-Hendon gas lamps! Also built at Barnet in 1957 was a miniature ‘B’ type open top bus, based on the 1929 chassis of a Swift car, registration LA 9927.

In 1963, three of the Barnet built trams – 3, 225, and 238 – were sold to a collector in America. Barnet built Cars 6 and 7 remain in operation at Seaton, to where the tramway moved in 1969. In October 1964 the former Metropolitan Electric Tramways tram/trolleybus depot and works in Hendon, where Merit House now stands opposite the oriental shopping complex, was being demolished, following closure in 1962, and Claude Lane rescued two sets of depot gates, for use at Eastbourne and, later, Seaton. Another local link at Seaton is tram 14, originally Metropolitan Electric Tramways 94 of 1904, later London Transport 2455, rescued in 1961 from an orchard near Waltham Cross, and now cut down to single deck, of the type once common around Hendon, Finchley and Barnet until the local tramways converted to trolleybus operation c.1935-1938.
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https://www.hadas.org.uk/cgi-bin/nl/nlarchive.pl?issue=391&page=7 Issue 391 Page 7]

This is a splendid book. Though not cheap, it is well written with plenty of ‘human interest’ and lots of pictures of the Barnet works and its advertising literature, Hadley Fete, and the Hendon depot gates! Well recommended for transport and local history enthusiasts.

Other Societies’ Events

Talks

Thursday 2nd October 10.30am at Mill Hill Library, Hartley Avenue, NW7 there is a talk entitled “The changing face of Mill Hill – from agriculture to modern development”.

Thursday 2nd October 7.30pm at the London Canal Museum, 12-13, New Wharf Road, Kings Cross, N1 there is a talk by Clive Chambers (historian) entitled “Greenwich & Wapping Thames ferries”. Admission costs £1.25.

Thursday 2nd October, 8.00pm at Pinner Local History Society, Village Hall, Chapel Lane Car Park, Pinner there is a talk by Andrea Cameron entitled “The story of Pears’ transparent soap – a history since its foundation in 1789”. Admission for visitors costs £1.

Tuesday 7th October, 2.00pm at Harrow Museum and Heritage Centre, Headstone Manor, Pinner View, North Harrow there is a talk by Noel Lynch entitled “2500 years of auctioneering”. Admission costs £2.

Wednesday 8th October, 5.00pm at British Archaeological Association, Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1 there is a talk by Dr. Jane Geddes entitled “Christina of Markyate & the St. Albans’ Psalter”.

Wednesday 8th October, 8.00pm at Barnet & District History Society, Wyburn Room, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet there is a talk by Valerie Johnston entitled “Man, Myths & Magic in Anglo-Saxon England”.

Wednesday 8th October, 8.00pm at Hornsey Historical Society, Union Church Hall, corner of Ferme Park Road/Weston Park, N8, there is a talk by Malcolm Stokes (HADAS Member) entitled “The Bishop’s hunting park in Highgate”.

Monday 13th October, 6.00pm at the Ancient Monument Society, Kenneth Clarke Lecture Theatre, Courtauld Institute, Somerset House, Strand, WC2, there is a talk by Phillip Venning (HADAS Member) entitled “Schools in 16th to 18th centuries”. Admission costs £2.

Wednesday 15th October, 6.30pm at LAMAS interpretation unit, Museum of London, 150, London Wall, EC2 there is a talk by Ken Walsh entitled “Human inhabitation of the Heathrow landscape”.

Wednesday 15th October, 8.00pm at Willesden Local History Society, Willesden Suite, Library Centre, 95 High Road, NW10, there is a talk by Alyson Herbert entitled “The origins of the Francis Frith collection (famous national photographs)”.

Friday, 17th October, 7.00pm at City of London Archaeological Society, St Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3, there is a talk by Lesley Dunwoodie (MoLAS) entitled “Recent re-evaluation of the Roman London forum”.
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https://www.hadas.org.uk/cgi-bin/nl/nlarchive.pl?issue=391&page=8 Issue 391 Page 8] Friday, 17th October, 8.00pm at Enfield archaeological Society, Jubilee Hall, junction of Parsonage Lane/Chase Side, Enfield, there is a talk by Kim Stabler entitled “Planning for archaeology – Current thoughts on evaluation methodologies”.

Saturday, 25th October, all day conference from 10.00am at Edmonton Hundred Historical Society, Jubilee Hall, Corner 2, junction of Parsonage Lane/Chase Side, Enfield on the theme “People, Places and Events in Southgate”. Admission costs £6 or £3 for morning or afternoon only.

Tuesday, 28th October, 8.00pm at Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, Old fire station (next to the Town Hall) Friern Barnet Lane, N12, there is a talk by Jim Lewis entitled “Royal Gunpowder Mills”. Admission costs £2.

Thursday, 30th October, 8.00pm, at Finchley Society, Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road N3, there is a talk by Ros Ward entitled “Planning Barnet’s Future (Jean Scott Memorial Lecture)”.

Exhibitions & Displays

Saturday, 4th October 4.00pm to 7.00pm, at Avenue House, N3, The Finchley Society have a display commemorating the 70th anniversary of the granting of the Royal Charter to the borough of Finchley. There will be a display of books, photos and artefacts from their archives.

Sunday, 5th -19th October, at the Brent Cross Shopping Centre Barnet Borough Arts Council have exhibitions & what’s on.

Wednesday, 8th October 10.30am – 3.00pm at Highgate Wood Information Hut there is a demonstration of a charcoal kiln.

Saturday, 11th October 10.00am – 4.00pm at Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard off Gresham Street, EC2 there is an exhibition and talks entitled “London maze 2003”. Find your way through London’s history from the Romans to the Victorians.

Saturday, 1st November, There is an open day at Avenue House.

Saturday, 1st November, 10.30am – 4.00pm at LAARC, Mortimer Wheeler House, 46 Eagle Wharf Road, N1 there will be an exhibition devoted to “The Archaeology of Rubbish” with displays of objects washed up on the Thames and from rubbish pits. Thanks to our contributors: Jim Nelhams, Stewart Wild, Jack Goldenfeld, Andy Simpson, Eric Morgan

Newsletter
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HADAS DIARY

Thurs 11 – Sun 14 September: London Weekend in the West Midlands Now full, but ring Jackie Brookes in case there is a cancellation

Tues 14 October, 8pm: 250 years of the British Museum. Lecture by Dr Marjorie Cayhill

Tues 11 November, 8pm: Roman Silchester. Lecture by Prof Mike Fulford
HADAS TRAINING “DIG” AT AVENUE HOUSE by DON COOPER

As announced in the last newsletter, HADAS will run two training “digs” at Avenue House, one on each of the last two weekends in September 2003. Each session is expected to take the two full days. The objective will be to impart as much excavation methodology as we can during that time. We already have a number of applicants. If you would like to participate please contact Don Cooper – his postal and email addresses are at the bottom of the newsletter – and don’t forget you need to have an up-to-date tetanus jab. We regret that we will only be able to take people aged 16 or over
VISIT TO WEALD & DOWNLAND OPEN AIR MUSEUM: Saturday 20 September

Graham Javes is organising a coach outing to the Weald & Downland Open Air Museum for members of the Barnet & District Local History Society and invites HADAS members to join them. The museum has a collection of -over 40 historic buildings which have been rescued from destruction, carefully dismantled and painstakingly reassembled in 50 beautiful acres of the Sussex Downland, just north of Chichester. The coach will leave Barnet Odeon at 9.00am, returning at 5.00pm from the museum. The cost is £16.00, including coach, driver’s tip and group entrance to the museum. Barnet Odeon is at the junction of the Great North Road and Station Road, near the foot of Barnet Hill, or High Barnet tube station is about 5 mins walk. The outing may be popular so please ring Graham initially to see if there are vacancies. Only then send your application to him with your name, address, contact phone number and your cheque, made payable to Barnet & District Local History Society.
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EXHIBITION: Memories of Hendon Aerodrome from Gerrard Roots The current exhibition at Church Farmhouse Museum is based on the remarkable collection of photographs of early aviation in Hendon belonging to Clive and David Smith. The photographs concentrate on the beginnings of flying here – with Claude Grahame-White, Gustav Hamel and Samuel Cody – to the great aerial displays of the 1920s and 1930s which brought thousands of excited visitors to North West London. The Exhibition also includes flying memorabilia from the Royal Air Force Museum and from local private collectors. Memories of Hendon Aerodrome ends on 14th September, so hurry if you don’t want to miss it. Phone 0208-203 0130 for further information, or to check on opening hours.
OUTING TO READING AND SILCHESTER Deirdre Barrie

Reading Museum’s Roman Section holds many of the important finds from Silchester, and the limited time we had here meant we had to concentrate on a quick look at just this part, but the whole museum really merits another visit. The large Roman mosaics from Silchester were being restored and repaired so for now we could only view them from a distance. Their Victorian excavators had lifted one mosaic out in nine hexagonal pieces and reassembled them on a metal backing against a wall, but the sections were now rubbing against each other, so that individual tesserae were falling off. Among Reading Museum’s virtues were the drawers full of real objects available for handling and the “dressing-up” clothes to allow schoolchildren – and, inevitably, others – to experience the feeling of power that comes with joining the toga-wearing plutocracy. (Footnote: the Museum’s 2nd C AD wingless eagle, excavated in Silchester Basilica in 1866, inspired Rosemary Sutcliffe to write “The Eagle of the Ninth”) Just part of Denis’s secretarial duties On we sped the 9 miles south-west to Silchester, the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum, where the Department of Archaeo¬logy at the University of Reading were holding a very colourful open day. Prof Michael Fulford, who wrote a guide to Silchester in 2002 and recently figured in “Meet the Ancestors” on TV, was not there, but our groups were conducted round the site by Dr Hella Eckhart and Amanda Clarke (Prof Fulford is giving the November 11 HADAS lecture – see HADAS Diary on page1). The site is not only a research excavation, but also a training school. Younger members of the archaeological team mingled with the crowd, dressed in robes, togas and tunics. (The contingents of “Ancient Britons” with their spiky hair and woad-covered chests, suitably loud and unruly, had to be called to order by the person taking our party round the site.) Victorian excavation methods involved driving long trenches across the site until they hit a wall, which meant they did not take into account the many wooden buildings in the town An overview of the modern Silchester dig (photos courtesy of Barry Reilly but not available on the site yet!!)

Why was Silchester finally deserted? Is the date of the Roman street grid earlier than AD 40-60? The present excavation is now concentrating on one of the “street blocks”, Insula IX, and hopes to answer these and other questions Insula IX was chosen because one of the houses is asymmetrical to the street grid, which means it pre-dates the Roman street plan. It is hoped to interpret some of the earlier layers known to exist – the settlement was founded in the Iron Age. There was practically no running water near the town, and the large number of wells are yielding finds (pottery, ritual objects) from the time of the Emperors Claudius and Nero. As we managed to lose at least one member (temporarily) in the woods around Calleva Atrebatum, the coach arrived late at the Vyne. Shrewd people made straight for the house. Others stopped for tea. The Vyne was built in the early 16th century for Henry VIII’s Lord Chamberlain and, from the mid- 17th C belonged to the Chute family. The house is on a small scale and set in beautifully kept gardens. Some of the furniture and paintings are from National Trust “central stores”, but there is a fine Palladian staircase, a unique mid-17th C classical portico and a Tudor chapel with renaissance stained glass. (One of the Chutes was offered one hundred pounds, then a very large sum, for the 400-year old oak in the grounds, and refused to sell. The buyer returned the next day and offered one hundred guineas. The owner said if the oak could increase in value so much overnight he thought he would just keep it.). Our thanks again to Tessa and Sheila for their hard work in arranging an excellent outing.
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Visit to Bodrum Jeffrey Lesser’s recommendations

Recently I had a successful holiday outside Bodrum in south-west Turkey. Now a holiday town, Bodrum was once the site of one of the seven wonders of the Classical world – Halicarnassus – and the original e century Mausoleum (occupying a site higher up in the town, but now hardly worth a visit, it has been robbed of almost all its stonework and only the base and a few columns remain, scattered on the ground – much cheaper and cooler to visit Room 22 at the British Museum). Stonework taken from the Mausoleum was used by local inhabitants, but principally by the Knights of St John to build their Citadel, the Castle of St. Peter, at the edge of the harbour. The castle is well worth a visit, needing several hours. It celebrates underwater archaeology with several shipwrecks reconstructed to show how cargoes and parts of the ships themselves were found on the sea floor. Along one courtyard is a display of amphora, explaining their characteristic anthropomorphic variations of neck, body and lip as well as handles and base and how these, and their clay, define their origin, purpose and period The Spanish Tower has a further display of amphora, this time arranged in groups of types as a serried audience in a lecture theatre. The Chapel of the Knights now houses a reconstructed trading vessel, showing its construction. As one walks round it at different levels, the crew quarters, their cooking and working methods can be seen as well as the methods of stowing cargo. Although there are many more conventional displays of archaeological materials – statues, reliefs, domestic and trade articles – it is the castle itself with its many towers used by different nationalities of the Knights which repays inspection, Despite a grisly dungeon and platform for dispatching but not discharging prisoners, there are many shady courtyards, some with pools, where one can buy refreshments during the lunch hour.
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OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS Compiled by Eric Morgan

Thurs 4 Sept 8pm: Pinner Local History Society, Village Hall, Chapel Lane Car Park, Pinner Pinner Chalk Mines Revisited Talk by Ken Kirkman on the historical features, etc

Sat 6 Sept 10.30-4: LAARC, M Wheeler House, 46 Eagle Wharf Rd, NI Urban Jungle Open Day

Tues 9 Sept 8pm: Amateur Geological Society, The Parlour, St Margaret’s United Reform Church,Victoria Ave, N3 Stonehenge: Geology & Prehistory Talk by Dr Christopher Green Wed 10 Sept 6-7.30pm: Highgate Wood Information Hut Walk to look at places of historical interest

Thurs 11 Sept 10 30am: Mill Hill Library, Hartley Ave NW7 Late Victorian Enfield, 1880-1900 Talk

Sun 14 Sept 11.30am-3.15pm: Natural History Museum Flint Knapping Demonstrations A chance to meet Phil Harding, flint expert & star of Time Team. Cones. £1,50 2pm-4pm: Friern Barnet & District Local History Soc, meet forecourt New Southgate Stn Tour of Friern Hospital led by Dr Oliver Natelson £1

3pm-5pm: Finchley Arts Centre Trust, The Bothy, Avenue House Grounds Garden Party (proceeds in aid of bothy and walled garden) music, refreshments, £5

Mon 15 Sept 8.15pm: Friends of Barnet Borough Libraries, Finchley Church End Library,Hendon Lane, N3 The Old Watling St from Marble Arch to Edgware Talk, David Barker

Wed 17 Sept 8pm: Willesden Local History Society, Willesden Suite, Library Centre,95 High Rd, NW10 Some Willesden Churches Between the Wars Talk, Dr Rex Walford

Thurs 18 Sept 7.30pm: Camden History Society, Burgh House, New End Sq, NW3 Dollis Hill House Talk by Hamilton Hay

8pm, Enfield Preservation Society, Jubilee Hall, jctn Parsonage Lane/Chase Side Commons & Village Greens Talk by Margaret Smith

Fri 19 Sept 7pm: City of London Archaeological Society, St Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3 London’s Pottery from Alfred toVictoria Talk by “our”Jacqueline Pearce (MoLSS)

8pm: Enfield Archaeological Society, Jubilee Hall (see 18 Sept) Romano-British Cavemen Talk by Dr Martin Dearne, Visitors £1

Sat 20 Sept 12.30pm: LAARC (see Sept 6) Connected Earth History of telecomms lecture, Neil Johannessen, BT Group Historian, followed (2-3.30pm) by tours incl. communications equipment

Sat 20/Sun 21 Sept London Open House Weekend Various buildings not normally open1 lam-5pm: Enfield Autumn Show, Town Park, Cecil Rd, Enfield, incl E. Archaeol_ Soc, etc

Tues 23 Sept 8prn: Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, Old Fire Station (adj. Town Hall),Friern Barnet Lane, N12 Vernacular Architecture Talk by John Donovan (Pres. & Sec.) £2

Thurs 25 Sept 8pm: Finchley Society, Drawing Rm, Avenue House, East End Rd, N3 Work of the Peabody Trust & Urban Development Talk by Christine Wagg

Newsletter
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HADAS DIARY

Thurs 11 – Sun 14 September. Long Weekend in the West Country. Now full, but ring Jackie Brookes in case there is a cancellation.

Tues 14 Oct. 250 Years of the British Museum. Lecture by Dr Marjorie Cayhill.

Tues 11 Nov. Roman Silchester. Lecture by Prof. Mike Fulford.
HADAS TRAINING DIG from our Chairman DON COOPER

Following requests from members who would like to improve their skills in excavation techniques, HADAS are arranging a training dig at Avenue House during the last two weekends in September. A specific area has been allocated by Avenue House and we are hoping to open a 1 metre by five metre trench. We expect to be able to cater for a maximum of 10 trainees per weekend. There will be more details in the September newsletter, but this is early notice to those who might like to participate
SECRETARY’S CORNER from DENIS ROSS

On 11 July the Committee held its first meeting since the AGM in June. Don Cooper was welcomed as the new Chairman and Peter Pickering as the new Vice-Chairman. Among matters discussed were the following: 1. It was agreed to co-opt June Porges ( who has had a very long association with the Society ) to fill the one vacancy on the Committee. 2. Mary Rawitzer was re-appointed as Membership Secretary. 3. The following appointments of Co-ordinators were made: Field Work: responsibility was allotted to the ‘Digging Team’ of which the principal members are Bill Bass, Christian Allen, Andrew Coulson, Graham Javes, Eric Morgan and Andrew Simpson. Programme and Newsletters: Dorothy Newbury with June Porges who arranges the lectures. Equipment: Andrew Coulson. Publicity: Tim Wilkins. Events: Eric Morgan. Archives/Library: June Porges. 4. Mary Rawitzer reported that there were now 283 paid members ( which represented a drop in numbers ) and a number of members had not so far paid their subscriptions for the current year. It was agreed that steps be taken to survey members’ requirements. 5. The Society’s resistivity equipment and expertise were in demand and surveys had been or will be conducted in various areas. 6. Eric Morgan reported on successful displays of the Society and its activities at the Cricklewood and Barnet Festivals and also at Avenue House on one of its Open Days.

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ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY IN SAUDI ARABIA by STEWART WILD

Reading in the press recently that Mount Sinai, a revered holy site, is now believed to be an extinct volcano located in Saudi Arabia, and not in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, has reminded me how much archaeology there is in this little-known and much-maligned country. I was fortunate to spend some time here earlier this year (during the Iraq conflict, actually) and although 1 didn’t get to all of the major sites, I was invited to write about them. Saudi Arabia is a vast country the size of western Europe; it is a two-hour flight from one side of the country to the other (Jeddah on the Red Sea to Dammam on the Arabian Gulf). In the southeast of the country, the Empty Quarter, beloved by explorers like Wilfred Thesiger and Harry St John Philby, is a huge desert the size of France. Archaeological sites include the remains of Qaryat Al Fau that for around 1,400 years was a wealthy town on the spice and frankincense routes across Arabia. It was abandoned in the first century AD when maritime routes carne to prominence and the trading centre of Najran (close to the border with present-day Yemen) declined. Finds from recent excavations, which are on-going, may be seen in the King Saud University Museum in Riyadh. The Jawan Chamber Tomb, on the Arabian Gulf coast, was excavated by oil company employees in 1952 and was found to contain a number of objects, including gold, bronze, iron and ivory, probably dating from at least 2,000 years ago. In the northern desert, Al-Rajajil is a barren plain with groups of standing stones believed to be well over 5,000 years old. The tall thin stones, up to 10 feet high, have Thamudic inscriptions and are aligned to sunrise and sunset. Like Stonehenge, they are a bit of a mystery and together with pottery shards and nearby rock carvings make the area a magnet for archaeologists. The most spectacular site, however, is undoubtedly Mada’in Saleh, in the northwest of the country. Sister city to Petra in Jordan, the site is famous for its more than 80 rock-cut tombs, evidence of the wealth of the Nabateans who levied taxes on the camel trains on the incense route to Mesopotamia, Greece and Egypt in the first century AD and before. Unlike Petra, however, Mada’in Saleh was never colonized by the Romans. Archaeological digs in the area (including one in 1968 by a team from the University of London) have uncovered buildings made of adobe with stone foundations. They have also uncovered a variety of coarse, plated and polished pottery, with animal, plant and geometric ornamentation. Other finds include glasswork, some thin and some thick with a snow-white colour, stone cisterns, cooking vessels and 96 coins. Some of these artefacts are in the National Museum in Riyadh while others are kept in a local museum. The surrounding area has many other archaeological treasures, including rock-cut tombs, petroglyphs and inscriptions in obscure Dedanite, Lihyanite and Minaean dialects dating from the 7th to the 5th centuries BC. The nearby town of Al-Ula is on the route of the famous Hejaz Railway, which T E Lawrence and his Bedouin supporters famously wrecked in a series of raids during the First World War. The origins of the railway go back to 189’7 when the Turks, who controlled most of the Arabian peninsula as part of the Ottoman Empire, conceived the idea of a railway between Damascus and the holy city of Madinah. The idea was supposedly to make it easier for pilgrims to reach Madinah and Makkah (Mecca) and it would cut the journey time from Syria from six weeks to four days. The Arabs, however, saw the project for what it was: a method of reinforcing Turkish military and political aims in the region, since troops and ammunition could quickly be supplied in the event of an insurrection. Despite opposition, construction of the railway began in 1900.The route ran from Damascus to Amman in Jordan, and on to Al-Ula and Madinah. Along the 1,000- mile route about 50 stations were built, although some were never finished. The planned extension to Makkah was never built. The line opened in 1908 and was a source of friction from the outset. Although pilgrims benefited from the convenience, the Bedouin camel-train operators saw only declining revenues. The trains were frequently stopped and raided, forcing the Turks to provide armed guards all along the route. During the First World War, the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany. Sherif Hussein of Jeddah made an alliance with the British to drive the Turks from the region, and Lawrence led the Arab Revolt. The Turkish garrison in Madinah was cut off which heralded the end of Turkish domination in the Arabian peninsula. In recent years, in the area around Al-Ula, some old railway engines and carriages have been put on display. Elsewhere, in the middle of the desert, you can see the remains of the track-bed, derelict engine sheds and abandoned stations. Some restoration is under way and it is hoped that one day it will again be possible to travel from Al-Ula by train.

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LOCAL SOCIETIES CONFERENCE by VANESSA BUNTON

May 31 2003 On the last Saturday in May a conference was held in the Museum of London on, about and for London’s archaeological societies and their members. There was a good turnout and societies from all over the region attended. The morning session focused on the contributions that each society had made to our understanding of London’s archaeology with the afternoon focusing on single events, programs, or research. The morning was started by Tim Harper of Enfield Archaeological Society (EAS) who gave an overview of how EAS had identified the roman settlements of the borough and introduced the Past finder’s activities to the forum. Dennis Turner followed Tim from Surrey Archaeological Society (SAS) who told us how SAS has supported smaller societies in southwest London. Betty Jones from West Essex Archaeology Group (WEAG) told us of their past research in Waltham forest, increasing our understanding of prehistoric east London and that the group also excavated Little London a roman staging post near modern Abridge. Michael Meekums of Orpington and District Archaeological Society (ODAS) spoke of the gazetteer the group has put together identifying sites from different periods in the Upper Cray Valley. He also highlighted the work at Survey House where ODAS had undertaken an exciting standing building recording of a multi-phased dwelling prior to its remodelling. John Boult of Kingston Upon Thames Archaeological Society (KuTAS) talked of the origins of the group and their ongoing work in conjunction with Surrey Unitech at Tolworth Court Farm in Kingston; a multiphase and multiuse site that includes iron age, through a moated manor and 19111 century fanning remains. He indicated that the current part of the project being undertaken by the group is the ceramic analysis. From Richmond Archaeological Society (RAS) we had Anna Cronin who informed us of the varied activities of the group, including their ongoing work along the Thames Foreshore. These foreshore studies have revealed many exciting finds covering Saxon Richmond and particularly focusing on the remains of the Tudor Palace. In addition Anna outlined the attempts RAS has made to incorporate younger members and attract teenagers; these include targeting schools and participation in local fairs and displays. Moving much closer to today, Daniel Hayton of the Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society (GLIAS) gave introduction of the work that GLIAS undertakes in and around London. Daniel featured a recent visit to the Hawker Siddeley Power Transformers factory and testing station in Waltham Forest recording the testing of the last transformer. Before the factory closed down earlier this year. City of London Archaeology Society (COLAS) was represented in the morning by Stacey Callagher who spoke of the public open days that CoLAS runs in conjunction with the Tower of London. This event, which includes opening the Tower Beach, attracts a wide variety of the public from both the local area and tourists visiting the city. Stacy outlined the types of activities that are run, ranging from identifying the clay pipes turned up on the beach through ethnographic archaeology where children are given the opportunity to make a wattle wall, to dressing up as a roman with hand ground makeup and environmental sampling. From just south of the river Richard Buchannan of the Southwark and Lambeth Archaeological Society (SLAS) spoke of the societies beginnings in rescue archaeology and their support of a more structured scheme for archaeological survival, which gave rise to current commercial archaeology. Richard spoke of the variety of lectures that the group now holds and the regular attendance at their monthly meetings and outings. John Clark representing the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society (LAMAS) finished the morning session with a brief overview of the societies almost 150 years of existence. John outlined LAMAS’s development from a Victorian gentlemen’s society to the active role they have today in supporting other societies through their annual conferences and publication programs.Hedley Swain of Museum of London started the afternoon session by engaging the attendees in a lively debate over the role of Societies in archaeology today and the need to publicize more widely the valuable work being undertaken by these groups that is often ignored by other sectors. Moving into backyard archaeology Tim Harper of EAS spoke of the recent excavation work to uncover roman Enfield in a family’s back yard. Some possible remnants of Roman Enfield were discovered, but interestingly a 1940’s bicycle buried upright was excavated. It is thought that this bike was buried when a bomb shelter was removed. Karen Thomas from YAC central London gave a brief outline of the activities that the children undertake and how they enjoy being part of the group. Also highlighted that the YAC shows a varied ethnic mix that may be reflected in local societies and the profession in the future. Audrey Monk of SAS spoke of the exciting work that they are undertaking in Village Studies. This program utilizes a variety of tools well known in archaeology to decipher how villages have developed over time. Looking into technological advances to identify archaeological information Christian Allen of Hendon and District Archaeological Society (HADAS) talked of the resistivity surveys undertaken by the group and the answers that they have displayed, along with the practicalities of getting results from the instruments. He touched on the resistivity undertaken at Burnt Oak and the resulting excavation, along with more recent studies undertaken at Friary Park and Bowling Green house. Betty Jones of WEAG updated us of the ongoing work at the Tudor manor Copped hall and the finds that they had made in the previous two weeks. These included the possible base for a turret and a great variety of ceramics from the Tudor period through the 19th century when the area was used as a rose garden. Alan Hart of ODAS talked of the 2002 work at Scadbury Manor. This site consists of a moated manor with surrounding buildings and was occupied from as early as the 13th century. Alan focused on the excavations of the footprint of a new prefab classroom where they revealed an extensive range of 18th/19th century brick lined sunken storage bins found in last seasons excavation. In a step forward in time Susan Hayton of GLIAS talked of the history and recording of the rise and fall of the famous chronometer and anemometer makers Lowne Instruments. GLIAS was informed of the impending closure of Lowne Industries and destruction of the factory; this detailed recording on the processes, history and building of a small factory in South London. Such insightful research in recent archaeology ensures that we have a good understanding in the processes that took place as well as the building that housed it for over 150 years. Graham Dawson of SLAS spoke of the tin glazed ware industry in Southwark, particularly Montague Close. The pottery was produced on site for 140 years from 1612 with a great variety of patterns and vessel styles. Moving back to the north side of the Thames, Bethan Featherby of CoLAS talked about the ongoing research COLAS undertakes along the foreshore. A core group of keen members search the foreshore of the City and Tower Hamlets when the tide allows. Most recently they have been recording and researching the lock that leads from the now built over Gun Dock in Tower Hamlets. Robert Whytehead of the Greater London Archaeological Advisory Service (GLAAS) spoke of the importance of the work being undertaken and that it should be linked to the Sites and Monuments Record. GLAAS advisors are interested and should be kept abreast of development in their areas. He also reminded us all that Local Society members are also the eyes on the ground for archaeology and should let people know if there is anything they feel uneasy about in their areas. The day was highly successful in bringing together groups from throughout London and giving them a forum to speak to each other and discover the exciting possibilities for projects they could apply in their own areas. It also highlighted the great amount of good research and archaeology that is being undertaken by local societies and speaks brightly for the future.

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AVENUE HOUSE OPEN WEEKEND from BILL BASS

As part of the National Archaeology Weekend HADAS held an open weekend at Avenue House on July 12 & 13th. Good weather saw many people sunbathing or admiring the landscaped gardens adjacent to the house. In amongst the footballs, shuttlecocks, picnics and a wedding HADAS members were seen conducting a resistivity survey on the lawns in readiness for a large scale survey in the near future. Some of the local children tried the resistivity machine and a competition evolved on who could produce the highest number! There was also a chance for members to brush up on their levelling skills using the dumpy level and theodolite. The Garden Room was open, our base of operations, where the library was open for inspection currently being reorganised) and some of the finds from previous digs were being displayed together with the HADAS sales stand. Thanks to those members involved with the weekend.
EGYPTIAN DAY OUT by JACK GOLDENFELD

I took my son and his family to an Egyptian Day Out at the Mill Green Museum and Mill at Hatfield on the 20th. July, part of the nationwide series of archaeological events, intended to stimulate the interest of the general public. The weather was brilliant and the activities there were a tribute to the effort and ingenuity shown by the team of volunteers from the Welwyn Hatfield Museum service, splendidly co¬ordinated by Sarah Adamson, the Education and Access Officer, and ably assisted by Eve Lloyd. They created a series of displays and projects, which were experienced and enjoyed by a large public attendance, with many young people and children present, all of whom were able to involve themselves with explanations and guidance. There was flour grinding, using a quern and rubbing-stone, then bread- making, Egyptian food of various types, all of which w ire delicious, a working model of a shaduf, or water-lifting device, excavations in both loam – with real Roman shards – and in sand, with jewellery items which were lost by Queen Nefertiti’, ceremonial collar making and colouring, pyramid construction, using paper, hieroglyphic studies, cartouche designing, herb-identification and – best of all – dressing up as ancient Egyptians! The event was clearly very child-oriented, but the grown-ups participated fully too, including this correspondent, and his two granddaughters, the younger of whom is a keen and knowledgeable budding Egyptologist, the elder being more concerned with the neolithic. The whole enterprise proved that a public awareness and enjoyment can be created with few simple resources, supported by unbridled enthusiasm and unstinting effort.
WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS

The following new members have joined since the start of our 2003-4 year, last April: Martin and Laura Ellis in East Barnet, Monika and Jean-Paul Bannister, North Finchley, Elaine Ackley, East Finchley, David Marcus, Finchley,N3, Robert Hogan, Earls Court, who lived in Whetstone as a boy, Michael Hammerson, who is very active in the Highgate Society and a retired professional archaeologist, and Fran Martell from New Barnet. They are all most warmly welcome and we hope to see them at some of the meetings, outings and at Avenue House. From Mary Rawitzer, Membership Secretary.

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OTHER SOCIETIES’ EVENTS Compiled by ERIC MORGAN

Sun 3 August, 2.30pm Heath & Hampstead Society. Burgh House, New End Square, NW3 Lakes and 1342116 of Kenwood, Walk led by Andrew Ginner. £1 donation. Also Hampstead Antiques & Collectors Fair, Community Centre, 78 High St, NW3 10am – 5pm.

Thurs 7 August, 7.30pm – 9.30pm London Canal Museum, 12-13 New Wharf Rd. Kings Cross, N1 Along the Canal Towpath to Camden. Guided Walk. Also on Sat 16 August, 2-4pm.Concessions £1.25

Fri 8 August, 7.30pm Wembley History Society. St Andrew’s Church Hall, Church Lane, Kingsbury, NW9. Welsh Harp Guided Walk, led by Leslie Williams (Brent Conservation Officer)

Tues 12 August, 8pm Amateur Geological Society. The Parlour, St Margaret’s United Reform Church, Victoria Ave.N3. Santorini and the Story of Atlantis Talk by Susanna Van Rose Fri 15 August, 7pm City of London Archaeological Society St Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3. The Bishop of York’s Palace. Wandsworth. Talk by Karl Hulka (pre-construct archaeology)

Sat 16 & Sun 17 August, 12-6pm Friern Barnet Show Friary Park, Friern Barnet Lane, N12. Friern Barnet Local History Society will have a stand here with latest details of HADAS resistivity survey.

Tues 19 August, 7.30pm Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, Dissenters Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery, Ladbrooke Grove, W10. Highgate Cemetery – Past. Present and Future. Talk by Jean Paternal], £3; refreshments.

Wed 25 August,! 1am Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane NW3. Gardeners’ Walks, walk and talk about landscape surrounding Kenwood House and current work. 1.50 – £3.50.

Sun 24 & Mon 25 August, 12-6pm Barrow Show, Headstone Manor, Pinner View, North Harrow. The Museum& Heritage Centre will be open till 5pm each day.

Newsletter
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HADAS DIARY

Sat 26 July, Outing to Reading and Silchester. Prof. Mike Fulford will guide us around the current excavation. Details enclosed. It might he possible to borrow a tape of the TV programme shown last spring. Contact Tessa 020 8958 9159. (See also November lecture below.)

Thurs 11 to Sun 14 September, Long Weekend to the West Country. Now full, but ring Jackie Brookes in case there is a cancellation.

Tues 14 October, 250 Years of the British Museum, by Dr Marjorie Caygill

Tues 11 November, Roman Silchester, by Prof Mike Fulford. (See 26 July above)

The AGM by Denis Ross

The Society’s Annual General Meeting was held at Avenue House on 10 June 2003, with the President. Harvey Sheldon, in the Chair. Some 40 members attended. All the Resolutions set out in the Notice of Meeting were duly passed. The Meeting recorded the end of an era – Andrew Selkirk did not seek re-election as Chairman after 17 years in that Office and Brian Wrigley did not seek re-election as Vice-chairman after many years in that office and having previously served as Secretary. Each had agreed to continue to serve on the Committee. The Meeting approved with acclaim the proposal that each of them be appointed as a Vice-President and also an Honorary Member of the Society. After the formal business of the Meeting, Dorothy Newbury thanked each of them for their long and valuable services to the Society and the President presented each of them with a picture. The Officers duly elected for the current year were: Chairman: Don Cooper

Vice-Chairman: Peter Pickering

Hon. Treasurer: Micky O’ Flynn

Hon. Secretary: Denis Ross

The following were duly elected as other members of the Committee: Christian Allen, Bill Bass, Jackie Brookes, Andrew Coulson, Catherine Da Costa, Eric Morgan, Dorothy Newbury, Peter Nicholson, Mary Rawitzer (Membership Secretary), Andrew Selkirk, Tim Wilkins and Brian Wrigley. The Constitution provides for up to 13 members of the Committee apart from the Officers so there is one vacancy at the present time. The other matter to note is that the Meeting approved the proposal that as from 1 April 2004 the annual subscription for membership of the Society be increased from £8 to £12, subject to the following concessions: (a) £4 for a person who is a member of the same family as, and lives at the same address as, a member paying the full subscription; (b) £5 for a member under the age of 18, or under 25 if a student in full-time education. After the formal Meeting had ended, members of the Committee gave presentations on some of the Society’s activities during the past year.

Following the AGM … Don Cooper

After the business of the AGM there were a number of short talks by members of the society on events that had taken place during the past year and also mentioning some forthcoming attractions:
Don Cooper described the course run jointly by Birkbeck College, University of London and HADAS

entitled “Post excavation: An analysis of materials from the Sammes archive.” During last year the dozen of so students of this course concentrated on completing the analysis of the Church End Farm excavation from 1961-1966, under the expert guidance of Jacqui Pearce (the countr•’s foremost expert on Medieval and Post-medieval pottery) with lectures by experts on metals, glass, buildings etc. The results will be published in the next volume of HADAS Journal. A new course will start in September 2003 and will concentrate on analysing the archive from the Church Terrace excavations at Hendon. The artefacts from these excavations covering Roman, Saxon, Medieval and Post-medieval will provide a great opportunity for anyone wishing to become more familiar with the methods and techniques of post excavation analysis as well as the story of Hendon over the years. We are delighted that Jacqui Pearce has agreed to run the course again. For further details see the enclosed flyer.
Andrew Coulson then spoke on river walking on the upper Dollis Brook.

It was both amusing and informative and in what is now becoming an annual event he showed slides of verdant foliage and enigmatic “cobble” surfaces. He also displayed a small collection of “finds”. There are many unanswered questions in relation to the brook and its environs and Andrew with his team hope to continue river walking during the coming year. Anyone wishing to join him in this venture will be most welcome.
Andy Simpson described the major exhibition put on by HADAS at Church Farm Museum between 15 March and 15 June 2003.

The exhibition entitled “Hendon’s Hidden History” concentrated on the story and artefacts from the many HADAS excavations in the immediate area of Church Farm Museum. He praised and thanked Gerrard Roots, the curator, for his help and co-operation in mounting the exhibition. Andy and other members and Gerrard are to be congratulated for all their hard work in making it such a success.

Finally Bill Bass described the many other events that have taken place during the last year.

These ranged from the excavation at Hanshawe Drive (lots of demolition rubbish but no Romans!) to G.I.S. surveys at Friary Park and Middleton I louse, using the new resistivity meter, the latter survey being a joint operation with Enfield Archaeological Society. HADAS had a presence at Avenue House Open Days, the East Barnet Festival, and the LAMAS conference.
A Letter from Joan and Brian Wrigley

June 2003 The Editor Joan and Brian would like to thank the Committee for their kind words and the most apt retirement gift. It is most appropriate as we had just come back from a visit to Stonehenge with the Prehistoric Society. Brian hopes to be able to contribute as a Committee Member and Joan is happy to provide a venue with refreshments for Committee Meetings. Thank you HADAS for all the good wishes. Sincerely, Joan & Brian Wrigley

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Society visit to the Mackerye End excavation and Ely by Graham Javes

In March Simon West, field archaeologist at St Albans Museums Service gave us a lecture about the ongoing excavations at Turnershall Farm, Mackerye End, Wheathampstead (see the report in the April Newsletter). On 14 June Simon gave HADAS a guided tour of the site. Metal detectorists working in a field had reported to St Albans Museums finds of bronze objects which seemed to come from cremations burials; soon after a massive gas pipeline was routed through the field. This led the Museums Service to mount an archaeological excavation last year. This season’s digging had only begun the week previous to our visit and Simon showed us how the site had weathered and ‘greened up’ since last year. Geophysical survey and excavation has dated the site from the Late Iron Age, about 50 BC, through to the Late Roman period in the 4th century AD. There is some suggestion of an Anglo-Saxon settlement, before AD 600. Pollen evidence suggests a dry, open wooded landscape similar to today, with ponds when it is wet, but fields were smaller. Simon showed us the two burials, seen now only as changes in coloration of the soil but which probably once were small barrows 3-4ft high, though there is no evidence of quarrying, The excavation was very dry making it difficult to see features but Simon was able to delineate for us the semi-circular outline of half of a Late Iron Age roundhouse. Analysis of pottery, especially of Samian ware has revised the date for the burials to no earlier than AD 140-155. Coin pellet moulds excavated containing traces of bronze, silver and gold raise the question was this a minting site? A pyre-related pit and the quality of objects buried in the grave suggest a high status site. Some of the pottery and bronze vessels may have been already over 100 years old when buried and the deceased may have been clothed in material from Egypt or Turkey. In another field we saw the corner of a flint building emerging which geo-physics tell us is 10m x 10m, certainly indicating a villa estate but very large to be an agricultural building. By the time this report is read the suggestion that it may be a temple mausoleum might have been proven. There is a public open day on 5th & 6th July 2003. The site is at Turnershall Farm, Mackerye End, off Marshalls Heath Lane, Wheathampstead. it can also be found on the internet at www.stalbans@museums org.uk Coffee was taken at the Crooked Chimney pub in Lemsford. It is not often that one is able to get into the roof space of an ancient timber-framed building, but pursuing the call of nature, the gentlemen in the party were able to inspect the roof timbers of the oldest part of the building. I later discovered the pub was called The Chequers in 1756 but had previously been a farmhouse known as Hornbeam Hall. We proceeded to Ely, where our itinerary included a guided-tour of the cathedral, with time free to visit some of the numerous attractions. These included the Stained Glass Museum in the cathedral triforium, where it was possible to examine windows not normally at such close distance. Built in the 13th-century Cromwell’s House had been an inn, a vicarage, and now a museum. devoted to Oliver Cromwell, although he only lived there a mere ten years. The Town Museum occupies the former gaol of the bishops of Ely, dispensers of justice until 1836. The day ended with a delicious clotted cream tea in the cathedral Almonry, Our thanks go to Micky Watkins who planned and led the outing so successfully.
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Reminiscences of Southwark Peter Pickering

Our President’s lecture in May was very nostalgic for me. For when I came to London in 1958 and was looking to pursue an interest in archaeology, the first society I found was the London Natural History Society, which had at that time an active archaeological section. We had a close association with the Cuming Museum in Southwark, and helped with the sorting of pottery stored there from Kathleen Kenyon’s excavations at Newcomen Street and 199 Borough High Street later we worked on material in an old and draughty building in Upper Ground, which I came close to setting on fire with one of the heaters. I also remember spending a few days digging on another site in Borough High Street (where I was almost left behind in a deep trench) and at Winchester Palace (one of Francis Celoria’s unpublished excavations). We tried, without success, to find evidence of a Roman Road behind a pub called The Two Eagles on the Old Kent Road. We also helped in the work Peter Marsden did on a wooden Roman boat found on the site of New Guy’s House. It was all interesting, and 1 hope productive, though some aspects of the excavation techniques would not measure up to the requirements of to day – those were the days before the Health and Safety Act.
River meanders to the end of its Journey Emma Freeman

To the relief of many, Emma Freeman is proud to announce that her dissertation on the River Brent is nearing completion. The prolonged gestation of this monster has been arduous for all concerned, but I would especially like to thank Andrew Coulson and the river walkers for their optimism and ideas and for trailing through the mud on behalf of the greater good! If anyone has any last minute nuggets of history, archaeology or general wisdom they wish me to include, please feel free to e-mail me at em-ma@rocketmail_com. Thanks again to everyone for all your help. Luv and kisses Emma We wish Emma success with her submission and hope that she might allow us to read her dissertation in due course. Ed.
The Battlefields Trust walk of the site of the Battle of Barnet. by Graham Javes.

The Battle of Barnet, one of the bloodiest and most decisive battles of the Wars of the Roses, was fought on, or near, Hadley Green. Two crowned kings of England fought for the English crown. Actually Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (the Kingmaker) represented Henry V1 of the House of Lancaster, who was present as the prisoner of the Yorkist Edward 1V. As the legend on the Hadley Highstone reads: ‘Here was fought the Famous Battle between Edward the 4th and the Earl of Warwick April 14th ANNO 1471 in which the Earl of Warwick was Defeated and Slain’. Not many people know these facts according to The Battlefields Trust, which seeks to raise public awareness of this and other battlefields. To this end and to mark the anniversary of the battle, the Trust, in co-operation with this society, organised a battlefield walk on Sunday 13 April this year. Participants assembled in Barnet Museum to hear a welcome speech by Gillian Gear and introduction by Frank Baldwin. others joined the walk at Ye Olde Monken Holt, the original advertised meeting point. Some sixty people, members of the Battlefields Trust and from local organisations including HADAS, and other interested people assembled at the Hadley entrance to King George’s Fields where Jonathan Smith and Frank Baldwin of the Battlefields Trust produced a large sketch map of the possible battlefield site. They admitted that they didn’t have all the answers and indeed that there are more questions than answers; further, the recent English Heritage Battlefields Register is not without error, as became obvious during our walk. We moved on to about the middle of King George’s Field, to be told that the marsh from where Edward attacked was probably at the bottom of the hill. It was a hot spring day as we looked down on New Barnet. To attack uphill in full armour, holding formation seems to this listener a poor strategy and rather unlikely, even if the hillside might then have been well-grazed by animals. On Hadley Green we were asked to assemble into opposing ‘battalions’, and to imagine we were each many times our number. the purpose to consider the area offal ground needed to execute a medieval battle on the scale of Barnet. On Old Fold Manor Golf Course we inspected an ancient hedge behind which Warwick may have sheltered. I’m told there are three possible hedges depending upon your theories of the battle and that the one we saw was not the one examined recently for the TV programme Two Men in a Trench’. Finally we looked at fields at the end of Warwick Close, off Barnet Road, marked ‘Deadman’s Bottom’ on the English Heritage battlefield map. Deadman’s Bottom has traditionally been associated with the burial of many of the common soldiers who fell in battle_ According to my Pathfinder 2.5-inch OS map Deadman-s Bottom lies further north between Barnet Road and Wagon Road? The organisers warned that there are more questions than there are answers. They were right, but only by walking the area might we begin to answer some of them_ I realise there are people who have walked the battlefield for many years longer than myself and I was grateful to meet some of them. The walk stimulated a lot of interest and the organisers are to be congratulated. The weather too was kind and the day most enjoyable. [A slightly different version of this report appeared in Barnet & District Local History Society Newsletter 2003-2] Page 4

News of Members

Jack Goldenfeld was selected as one of the archaeological advisors for the Channel 4 Time Team Big Dig on the weekend of the 28th and 29th June. Also, he continues with his work as Tutor in Archaeology at West Herts College where the next Academic Year commences on 29th September at Berkhamsted, and on 1st October at Hemel Hempstead. His ‘Introduction to Archaeology’ 1-year course has now been arranged as two 15-week semesters, instead of the usual three 10-week terms, with Berkhamsted’s being on Mondays_ from I till 3pm whilst Hemel’s is on Wednesday evenings, from 7.15 to 9.15pm. Anyone who is interested and wants further details may contact Jack
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Madingley Hall. Cambridge

The new brochure of ‘Residential courses at Madingley Hall’ was published last month listing a wide range of fascinating courses for ‘life-long learners’ (aren’t we all?). For those not in the know, Madingley Hail is the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education centre: a Jacobean manor house, sensitively extended, set in grounds laid out by Capability Brown. Most courses run from Friday evening until Sunday, midweek, Madingley is a conference centre, and standards of accommodation and catering are excellent. To single out individual courses is invidious: two archaeology courses which caught my eye are: Medieval Pottery and Osteoarchaeology, the Study of Ancient Human Remains, other courses include The Black Death (a personal recommendation) and The Architecture of Ely Cathedral. There is also Natural History, Philosophy, Psychology and Religion. For a brochure contact Madingley Hall, 01954 280399, or visit the website at www.cont-ed.cam.uk
Exhibition of West Heslerton excavation. by Sylvia Javes

Members travelling to the York area this summer may be interested in an exhibition at Malton Museum, celebrating 25 years of digging at West Heslerton. Following the discovery of Early Anglo-Saxon burials in 1977, West Heslerton has been the focus of one of the largest archaeological research programmes in Europe. This exhibition provides the first opportunity to present the results of this project, which has changed our understanding of settlement in the Vale of Pickering from the prehistoric to mediaeval periods.Many of the finds in the exhibition are displayed for the first time, including Anglo-Saxon jewellery, Bronze Age beakers, flints and pottery. The museum also has an excellent display of local Roman artefacts including pottery from the Norton and Crambeck potteries, and a small display of items from Wharram Percy. At nearby Orchard Fields, the ramparts of the Derventio Roman fort can be seen, close to The Lodge (now a hotel) and the site of the castle, where Time Team dug some years ago. Another attraction in the area is Eden Camp at Old Mahon. This was a prisoner of war camp consisting of 35 huts, which is now a ‘Modern History Theme Museum’, mainly a museum of WW2. Each but has a different theme, such as Bomber Command, The Blitz, The Home Front, Women at War, Rationing, and so on. A small section is devoted to WW1, and recent conflicts are represented. A visit to Eden Camp needs several hours’. Mahon is 18 miles north east of York. The museum is in the old Town Hall in the market place. Open: Monday Saturday, I0 — 4, until October 31st, closed Sundays. Eden Camp is open daily from 10 — 5, admission adults £4, cons £3. .West Heslerton is on the web at www.landscaperesearchcentre.org/Research also on the English Heritage site at www.eng-h.2ov.uk
Archaeology in Lithuania by Stewart Wild

I recently spent a few days in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, one of the three Baltic States making great strides since gaining their independence from the former Soviet Union in August 1991. In the heart of the city, just behind the Cathedral and in the shadow of Castle Hill, there is an unusual archaeological site that has attracted international attention. It is the site of a 14th-century royal palace razed during the Tsarist occupation at the end of the 18th century. Vilnius was founded in 1323. The old palace was built by Grand Duke Gediminas, a pagan ruler who consolidated his power over the newly created state. After a fire in 1419, Grand Duke Vytautas rebuilt the palace, and a century later Zygimantas the Old added a third storey, remodelling it in the Renaissance style. In 1610 further renovation introduced elements of the Baroque style. During the war with Moscow in 1655 the palace was looted and burned and decline set in No longer a royal residence it was ignored, robbed and finally torn down in 1799. The foundations and filled-in cellars were left in the damp earth, coming to light once more in 1987-2001, when a four-year project of excavations provided a cornucopia of information_ Now, in a celebration of statehood and to mark Lithuania’s joining the European Union, the palace is being rebuilt. The excavated archaeological remains have been conserved and protected against the elements, and 200 piles are being sunk to carry the weight of the new building. The site is open on weekdays (there’s a tiny museum/souvenir shop) and visitors are welcome. At an anticipated cost of 100 million Litas (E18 million), the project is scheduled for completion in 2009. The controversial new building will become a cultural and educational centre and museum of statehood as well as, no doubt, a tourist attraction.

Piddington Roman Villa, Northamptonshire by June Porges

I had a message from Roy Friendship-Taylor who spoke to us in April 2002 and whose site we visited in August. The latest news from the Piddington Roman villa site is that another building has been found in the adjacent field. It seems to have burnt down in the late second century. There is much associated burnt Sam ian and other pottery. Roy says anyone who wishes to visit during the August dig will be most welcome. See the excavation on: www.unas.org.uk [Ed]
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Other Societies’ Events Compiled by Eric Morgan

Thurs 3 July, 7.30pm, The London Canal Museum, 12-13 New Wharf Rd, NI. The River Fleet, Past, Present & Future’ by Jane Trowel].

Sat 5 July, 10 00-5.00pm Kensall Green Cemetery Open Day, Ladbrooke Grove, W10

Sat/Sun 5/6 July, 12.00 – 7.00pm, East Barnet Festival, Oak Hill Park, EB. Theme: ‘Glory Days’, with 50s- 70s music & dance. HADAS hopes to have a stall on the Sat if there are sufficient members to man it. Offers of help, part/full day to Eric please, .

Sun 6 July, 10.30-7.00pm, North London Transport Society, ‘Uncompleted Northern Line Extensions’ Walk, led by Jim Blake, starting Finsbury Park Station. Walk via Highgate to Alexandra Palace, then vintage bus connection to Mill Hill East, walk to Edgeware and Bushey Heath. Return to Finsbury Park by vintage bus. Advance booking essential, with large SAE to NLTS Events, 8 The Rowans, N13 5AD.

Sun 6 July, 2.30pm, Heath & Hampstead Society, Burgh House, New End Sq. NW3. ‘Artefacts of East Heath’, walk led by Michael Welbank, £1. (HADAS surveyed a Saxon ditch here.) Also Hampstead Antiques & Collectors’ Fair, Community Centre, 78 High St, NW3, 10.00-5.00pm.

Tues 8 July, 8.00pm, Amateur Geological Society, The Parlour, St Margaret’s United Reform Church, Victoria Ave, N3. The History of the Thames, by Prof. John Catt (UCL).

Thurs July 10, 6.45pm, Friends of Cricklewood Library, Cricklewood Library, 152 Olive Rd, NW2. The Grange Museum and Churchill’s Bunker, by Alex Sidney, (Brent Archivist).

Sat/Sun 12/13 July, 10.00-3.00pm, HADAS at Avenue House for a pre-National Archaeology Weekend. Surveying in the grounds of Avenue House, training in use of the level, resistivity meter & computer processing of results. Members are needed to open the library, run bookstall. Other activities could include finds processing, etc. depending on the number of members available.

Sun 13 July, 2.00-4.00pm, Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, Tour of North Finchley, led by Oliver Natelson, £1. Meet corner Dale Grove/Ballards Lane, N 12.

Tues 15 July, 2.00pm, Harrow Museum & Heritage Centre, Headstone Manor, Pinner View, North Harrow. `History of Neasden & Dollis Hill’, by Mr Barres-Baker. £2.

Thurs 17 July, 7.30pin, Camden History Society, Burgh House, New End Sq., N3. Burgh House Now & Then, by Marilyn Greene.

Fri 18 July, 7.00pm, City of London Archaeological Society, St Olave’s Parish Hall, Mark Lane, EC3. Recent Excavations at Fenchurch St, by Vaughan Birbeck (Wessex Archaeology).

NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGY WEEKEND, Saturday/Sunday 19-20 July, at various venues: Sat 10.30-4.30pm, Sun 12.00-4.30pm. LAARC, Mortimer Wheeler House, 46 Eagle Wharf Rd, N1, National Archaeology Weekend, Local Societies’ Fair. Come and investigate many London archaeological societies, see what’s happening in your area. Museum of London, London Wall, EC2, London Archaeological Trail between five sites: MoL, LAARC, Museum in Docklands, the Roman Amphitheatre at Guildhall Art Gallery, the Billingsgate Roman House & Baths. Events include discovering our ancestors using DNA testing, object handling, Roman soldiers, reconstructing prehistoric tools, the reconstructed Roman water lifting machine, participation in a dig, recording ancient buildings, etc. COLAS will be working at the Tower of London

Sun 20 July, HADAS will give a demonstration Resistivity Survey at Forty Hall, Enfield at the invitation of Enfield Archaeological Society.

Newsletter
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HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 10 June ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 8pm prompt in the drawing room, ground floor, of Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3

Saturday 14 June OUTING TO WHEATHAMPSTEAD AND ELY with Micky Watkins At Wheathampstead Simon West will show us his excavation which will be in progress in June — a rare opportunity. At Ely we can visit Cromwell’s House, the local museum, the Stained Glass Museum as well as the Cathedral. (Application form enclosed)

Till 15 June – DON’T MISS ! The two exhibitions currently at the Church Farm Museum have been extended to 15 June by popular demand! For details please see the April 2003 Newsletter — ‘Hendon’s Hidden History: finds made by HADAS at Church End Hendon area over the last forty years’, and ‘Weird and Wonderful Contraptions: everyday gadgets 1800-1950.’ Admission to the Museum is free. It is open Monday-Thursday 10-12.30 and 1.30-5, Saturdays 10-1 and 2-5.30 and Sundays 2-5.30. It is closed on Fridays.

Saturday 26 July OUTING TO READING AND SILCHESTER with Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward. (Did anyone happen to tape the ‘Meet the Ancestors’ programme on Silchester? It would he very useful before the Silchester outing. If you can help please contact Tessa)

Thursday September 11 — Sunday September 14th LONG WEEKEND TO WORCESTERSHIRE, HEREFORDSHIRE AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE. Please contact Jackie Brookes to check if there are any places left or cancellations
The Museum in Docklands opened on 24 May in one of London’s oldest warehouses

It will illustrate the story of London’s river, port and people from Roman times to the present.No.1 Warehouse, West India Quay, Hertsmere Road, E14 4AL (0870 444 3856)Open 7 days 10am — 6pm
Victor Jones’s Legacy by Don Cooper

As recorded in the January 2003 Newsletter, Victor left £1,000 to HADAS for use towards providing more archaeological information to the schools in the Borough. The Museum of London run a scheme whereby boxes of artefacts from their vast collection are provided to schools to use as a teaching aid. Each box contains pieces of Roman pottery and other suitable objects to interest children. Ideally, every school should have one, but money… The Museum of London have agreed to provide Barnet with up to 22 new boxes using Victor’s generous gesture. The boxes will record his donation and will include a HADAS leaflet. I am sure Victor would be delighted to know that his legacy has been put to such good use.
Roman Southwark by Harvey Sheldon Don Cooper

In the last lecture of this year’s series, Harvey Sheldon, our current HADAS President, introduced one of his favourite subjects, that of Roman Southwark. He sets the scene by showing some fascinating slides of the development of North Southwark since the Second World War. These were mostly slides of ghastly high-rise tower blocks, which not only spoilt the skyline; but also as a result of the deep foundations they required, destroyed the archaeology. He outlined the search for the Romans in Southwark by archaeologists over the years, from the early finds by antiquarians, through the work of Mortimer Wheeler and especially the good work done on five sites by Kathleen Kenyon after the war, while W.F.Grimes was excavating in the City. Again he showed some fascinating slides of those early excavations. Southwark on the South side of the river is topographically lower than the North side, and in pre-Roman times, was not a contiguous river hank but a series of islands surrounded by marshes and water channels. Evidence of the prehistoric occupation of the Southwark area comes from plough (ard) marks from a number of sites as well as fragments of Beaker pottery. However, it seems that the area was occupied by small farmsteads rather than there being a settlement. It was clear from aerial views of the Thames estuary why the Romans chose the area around what is now London Bridge, at what was near the first achievable crossing point with good estuarine access for shipping. The Roman roads in Southwark took advantage of the high ground of the islands in the river. Watling Street ran along the line of what is now Borough High Street; somewhere along the way it was joined by Stane Street, the Roman road to the Wealden industries. There is a third, very substantial road, which may go between the main Roman crossing point and perhaps an earlier crossing from Lambeth, over Thorney Island (where the Houses of Parliament now are) and on to the North side of the river. As well as the northern part of the Roman city being destroyed during the Boudican revolt, it has now been established that the settlement in Southwark was also destroyed. Evidence of the status of Roman Southwark is indicated by the excavations at Winchester Palace by Southwark Cathedral, where a large Roman masonry building was found with hypocausts and high quality wall paintings. It is possible that this was a military building. Recent excavations at Tabard Street and Long Lane have uncovered a complex of Roman masonry buildings, including one, which is similar in shape to a Romano-Celtic temple. A dedicatory plaque was found nearby, apparently by a trader from Gaul, which might also indicate a temple in the vicinity. Other evidence comes from the large cemetery recently discovered and not yet fully analysed. Harvey emphasised that there is still lots of work to be done in Southwark and he promised to come back again soon to tell us more.

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LAMAS CONFERENCE Eric Morgan

Once again HADAS was represented, though fewer of us could attend due to the unfortunate restriction in numbers allowed this year. We had our stand and managed to sell some hooks. Overall the conference seemed to go down very well. The morning session started with the presentation of the Ralph Merrifield award by our President Harvey Sheldon to the joint inventors of the ingenious full-sized reconstruction of the water-lifting machine, which they kindly demonstrated during the lunch break. The rest of the morning session reviewed recent work in progress, including a Paleolithic site at Lower Kingswood in Surrey; another at Canons Farm, Banstead nearby, which is thought to have been occupied by Homo Heidelbergensis. The work was done by the PAD MAC Unit of Oxford University and the Plateau Group. This was followed amongst others, by a review of a Roman building at Carshalton; of the excavations at Southwark by Pre-Construct Archaeology; of which we heard recently; and on developing a framework for London archaeology. The afternoon session was devoted to London’s prehistory. It started with an introduction by Jan Cotton of the Museum of London on their new gallery, ‘London before London’. This was followed by a review of the prehistoric landscapes at Perry Oaks, Heathrow, the work was done by Framework Archaeology; then of the Bronze Age political economies along the river Thames; of prehistory in the City; and finally of London in the Iron Age.
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Daisy Hill remembered

Dorothy Newbury writes: Last week I received a letter from a friend of Daisy Hill, one of our Vice Presidents. She regularly received and enjoyed our Newsletters, and I spoke to her last year, hoping she could send us some interesting memories of our early years. Sadly she did not do so. John Enderby, our only remaining founder member, who was on the committee with her in the 60’s, has kindly sent us some memories of her. John Enderby: We are very sad to report the death of Daisy, a Vice President of the Society and a very early member, at her home in Chesterfield on 16 April after a massive heart attack at the age of 86. She will be remembered as a Hendonian with a deep knowledge of the area who contributed to HADAS in many ways. Before her retirement from a long-standing position with a coal merchant in Hendon in 1982 and her move to Chesterfield, she was a hard working Secretary of HADAS for several years. In 1969 she published its first Newsletter; the first since the Society’s foundation in I961. It was fulfilling a long wanted need. She was then living in Prince of Wales Road spending much time tending her garden, which was a delight to see — an interest that occupied her retirement in Chesterfield. Daisy will be remembered as a private person but a valuable committee member’ who worked closely with Ted Sammes and Bridget Grafton Green in particular on many archaeological ventures. She was never afraid to express herself strongly if she felt it necessary, but her opinions always had a sound factual basis. R.I.P. P.S. Dorothy Newbury… Many members will remember a day trip in 1998 to Shaftesbury and to the delightful village of Fontmell Magna where John now lives after retiring as Principal of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute for 31 years. I am hoping we can twist his arm for a “repeat performance” next year — he says there are more things to show us.
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Training Excavation in Lewisham: The Roman Road-Lewes Road 9 June-11 July 2003

Applications are invited for this year’s Birkbecks summer training excavation at a site in the Bellingham-Bell Green area between Catford and Lower Sydenham. Attendance must be for a minimum of one week and for a maximum of two. Each week will provide training in surveying, excavation and recording techniques, initial finds processing and other aspects of archaeological investigation. This is a non-residential project costing £155 per week. The course organisers are Harvey Sheldon and Louise Rayner. (Contact: Phil Jefferies, Birkbeck College (020 7631 6627)
Enrich UK net

A new portal has been launched providing free access to some 150 digitalised collections in Britain’s libraries, museums and galleries, including some voluntary and community organisations and small local museums. (CILIP Update April 2003)
Tudor Self Catering

Christopher and Juliet Hawkins of The Hall, Milden, Lavenham, Suffolk, will make one of their early 16c.barns available for self catering in Tudor style with access to herbs from a Tudor garden and many foods grown or imported in Tudor times. Christopher is a keen amateur historian and local parish recorder, and collects and catalogues Roman and medieval pottery. This year, for the first time, the Hall is also part of the Suffolk Historic Houses Invitation to View, in which 18 houses not open regularly to the general public will admit visitors for special tours. Tours will be held on June I0 and 30, and July 15 and September 10. (The Times 1 May 2003)
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OTHER SOCIETIES EVENTS by Eric Morgan

Thursday 5 June 7.30pm London Canal Museum, 12-13 New Wharf Road, Kings Cross, NI.Waltham Abbey/Gunpowder Canals. Talk by Richard Thomas (HADAS visited in 2001)

Saturday 7 June 10.30 – 4pm LAARC Open Day: Life in Islington and Hackney. Mortimer Wheeler House, 46 Eagle Wharf Road, N1

Sunday 8 June 2 – 4pm Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. Meet by statute near Friern Barnet Lane, N11. Cost £1.00. Friary Park and St. James’s Church. Circular walk with Oliver Natelson. (Includes ancient cemetery where HADAS did a survey)

Wednesday 11 June 8pm Barnet and District Local History Society, Wyburn Room, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet. London in the 1880 ies. Talk by Jeff Page

Wednesday 11 June 8pm Homsey Historical Society. Union Church Hall, corner Ferme Park Road, Weston Park, N8. The Two Remarkable Stephens. (of Avenue House) Talk by Norman Burgess.

Sunday 22 June 2pm Friem Barnet and District Local History Society. Meet by forecourt of Friern Barnet Town Hall. Tour of Colney Hatch and St. John’s Church with Oliver Natelson. Lasting 1-2 hours. Cost £1.00

Tuesday 24 June 8pm. Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. Old fire station next to Town Hall, Friern Barnet Lane, N11. New Southgate revisited. Talk by Colin Barratt. Cost £1.00

Thursday 26 June 8pm. The Finchley Society. Drawing room, Avenue House, East End Road, N3 AGM followed by talk by Laurie Chivers. Trading: small businesses in East Finchley and the effects of supermarkets.

Sunday 29 June 1-6pm Cricklewood Festival. Clitterhouse playing fields, Claremont Road, NW2(HADAS will have a stand and would welcome offers of help on the day or part of it)

Sunday 29 June 2 – 4pm Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. Meet at entrance to Homebase, Station. Tour of New Southgate with Colin Barratt. (Includes 90 year old gasholder, former cattle byre and dairy, 100 year old postal sorting office) Cost £1.00

Newsletter
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HADAS Diary

Tuesday 12th May ROMAN SOUTHWARK Harvey Sheldon

Tuesday 10th June ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (Details enclosed)

All lectures start at 8.00 p.m. prompt in the drawing room on the ground floor of Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley N3, and are followed by question time and coffee. We close promptly at 10.00
Outings

Saturday 14th June OUTING to WHEATHAMPSTEAD AND ELY with Micky W. and Dorothy. At Wheathampstead, Simon West will show us his excavation which will be in progress in June – a rare opportunity. At Ely we can visit Cromwell’s House, the local museum. the Stained Glass Museum as well as the Cathedral.

Saturday 6th July READING and SILCHESTER, with Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward. (Did anyone happen to tape the ‘Meet the Ancestors’ programme on Silchester? It would be very useful before the Silchester outing. If you can help, please contact Tessa on 020 8958 9159.)

Application forms for outings are sent out with the Newsletter the month prior to the event.
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The Great Well Hunt at Avenue House by Andrew Coulson

“Inky” Stephens did more than invent inks. He set about enlarging Avenue House and landscaping its grounds, and he paid special attention to the water supply. He developed systems for collecting and storing the run-off water from the roofs of the House by means of drains and sumps. Some of these are thought to be under the asphalt on the terrace outside the Garden Room. One such sump, capped with a man¬hole cover in the year 2000, is about six feet in diameter and some twenty-five feet deep. Avenue House management suspected that there might be more sumps under the terrace and asked HADAS to look for them. The lack of ground water in the asphalt and its impenetrability rendered our resistivity meter unworkable. The team considered dowsing, bosing, or metal detection (we assumed that any well-cap would contain some metal). Dowsing was not tried because we had no rods (wrong – it seems some are available!) and it was feared it would look silly and un-scientific. Perhaps, but one wonders if it works, and if so how well? Maybe we will find out some day. Stephen experimented with his metal detector which, according to its manual, could detect a 10 pence coin under 6 of soil, and an iron man-hole cover under 4 or 5 feet, and which would indicate what sort of metal was involved. We found, however, – that experience is needed to fine-tune the equipment and to interpret its signals. The experts Stephen consulted stated that detection through the estimated 5″ of asphalt was quite feasible, though they did have some reservations as to the capacity of the equipment to do this. On tests in flower beds. it worked well. We tried echo-location or “basing”. This involves dropping an object and listening to the sound made. If the sound changes, then the subterranean structures have also changed providing, of course, you have dropped the same object in the same way. It helps, we found, to have a “listener” as well as a “dropper”. We found a mattock handle in the stores with a rounded “big end”. This is useful because a “squared off end is less likely to achieve a constant angle of impact. Hold the mattock handle at its point of balance pointing downwards and at about waist height. As you pace slowly forwards, release your grip, and the handle will fall, hit the asphalt, and bounce back to your hand. Repeat ad infinitum. Note the harmonic vibrations emitted by the handle and ignore them; they are not what you are after. Listen to the sound of the impact. Ignore constant similar sounds; they are mere background. Only when, for example, “BONG” becomes a strident “BOING”, do you sit up and take notice. With the chalk in your other hand, you mark an X, or whatever, and add your “listener’s” interpretation. We used three; “hard”, “soft”, and “It’s different, but I can’t say how”, recorded on the grid as “h”, “s”, and ‘7’. We found it best for the “listener” to decide which type it was_ Does it work? We now have a grid plan of the terrace showing spots and areas which produce sounds which are distinctly different from those obtained in adjacent places. This difference would, perhaps, be more easily quantified by using an oscilloscope or a D.I.Y. seismometer. One supposes that a solid (concrete) substructure will produce a solid or hard sound, whilst any sort of cavity will make a soft or hollow response. Indeed, the plan shows lines of similar noise which could be caused by drains, except that these are usually “hard” when they ought, if they are indeed drains, to be “soft”! It is a puzzle. To find the answer the asphalt will have to go. Avenue House, egged on by English Heritage, have schemes to do just that. There is also the chance of a prize for the most accurate “guess” at what is where. Who said archaeology doesn’t pay? With grateful thanks to Christiane, Eric, Stephen, Bill and all the other Bosers.
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Clapham Junction Peter Pickering

Not, I can assure members, in South London, but in Malta. There, in many places on the bare limestone, are pairs of grooves in the rock, of varying depth, up to 60 centimetres in places. The grooves in each pair are some 1.41 metres apart (though there is not absolute uniformity). 1.41 metres is 4ft 7in – remarkably close to the standard railway gauge. The grooves fork, or cut across each other, for all the world like railway tracks – hence the popular name for one particular concentration of them, which we visited with the Royal Archaeological Institute just before Easter. The date and purpose of these grooves are alike enigmatic. Dating might feasible when the grooves encounter another feature, such as a tomb, but no robust conclusions have yet been reached. The grooves have, naturally, attracted the lunatic fringe, who ascribe them to aliens or the citizens of Atlantis, drawing attention to places where they seem to run beneath the sea. But sober archaeologists cannot choose amongst three possible purposes: transport, irrigation and quarrying. T o each of these there are objections: the grooves might have been worn by wheels or the runners of sledges, but one would have expected the animal pulling the vehicle to have left some trace; no association of the grooves with water sources has been found; and the length of some of the grooves (more than a kilometre in places, uphill and down) is hard to reconcile with quarrying. By the way, there was a railway in Malta, running from Valletta to the ancient capital Mdina, but it closed in 1931, though traces of it are visible to the enthusiast.
The villa of Tiberius Claudius Severus Tessa Smith

We were very pleased to welcome Roy Friendship-Taylor for our April lecture, as several of us met him last year on the site of his dig at Piddington. Set against this background, the excavation was vividly brought to life for us by our lecturer. Originally the Viatores had traced a Roman road to Piddington, and later air photos seemed to show the corner of a Roman fort. More recently a local vicar with a metal detector had dug up an iron key, Roman tile and tesserae, and it was at this point that the Upper Nene Archaeological Society were called in to excavate. They have now been digging there for 24 years. Last summer, they found a timber villa dated A.D.70, associated with a huge spread of iron slag and many lengths of cauldron chain, indicating an iron-age smelting industry_ Previous years’ excavations have uncovered a large nine-roomed Roman villa which had an amazingly colourful tiled roof, cream tegulae overlaid by sky blue imbrex, and bright red tiles with drops of red paint applied, Over 80 very fancy white and red ‘chimneys’ have been found, which could have been bird feeders, but definitely went on the roof of the villa. The floors were tiled in herringbone, ears of wheat pattern, and 2nd century heart-shaped mosaics were found, as well as key and swastika designs. Low limestone wails were plastered in red, topped by highly decorated supporting columns, and a formalized courtyard garden was edged with pillars. A very rare and prestigious find is a tile inscribed TIBERIUS CLAUDIUS VERI, meaning ‘the estate of Tiberius Claudius’, which identifies very neatly who owned the property at that time, In the corner of the villa, a hypocaust and stoking room heated the bath house which had box-flue tiles with internal lead piping found in situ. Two stone seats were situated in one corner. Water was fed to the villa by means of a wooden pipeline and although the wooden pipe has not been found, its iron collar has, thus giving the diameter of the pipe. One of the largest stone-lined wells in Roman Britain, over 8 metres deep and 2 across, contained over 25,000 oyster shells and whelks, (the original “fishy water”?) Pots, jugs and a decorative bucket-hook were found at the bottom. Amphorae, two Brockley Hill carmated bowls, four huge mortana over 1 metre in diameter, made in the 2nd century by the potter Viliarcus, army horse harness and scale armour show that it was a site of the Roman army, It will be very interesting when they- excavate the area where the aerial photos indicated the corner of a Roman fort to be. Several medical instruments have been found, scalpels, traction hook, needles. Silver spoons, a gladiator penknife, 18 brooches stamped with the maker’s name, and the head of a Mercury statuette from a dining bowl (which is one of only three found in Britain) and a large collection of Samian indicate a superior lifestyle at that time, In the 3rd century, the villa was burnt down and refurbished more than once, and a detached bathhouse suite of rooms was built. In the 4th century, squatters moved in and pig bones, bird bones and a horse’s head were found in the ruins. In spite of a rather squalid ending to the villa, the latest news is very exciting. Partly due to a lottery grant, partly due to a bequest, and a lot to do with Roy Friendship-Taylor, a new museum will be opened to the public later on this year, showing all the finds. A conservation area, education area, library and photographic section will all be available. What a wonderful event in the ongoing excavation at Piddington, and the Estate of Tiberius Claudius.
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Other Societies’ Events

Saturday and Sunday 3rd and 4th May 10.00-5.00 Family History Fair, Royal Horticultural Society, New Hall and Conference Centre, Greycoat Street, Westminster, SWI. Society of Genealogists event to launch Local History month

Sunday 4 May 2.30 pm Heath and Hampstead Society, Burgh House, New End Square, NW3. “Historic Features”. Walk led by Brian Senddon. £1.00 donation.

Sunday 4th May 10.00-5.00 7th May 5.00 Hampstead Antiques and Collectors Fair, Community Centre, 78 High Street, NW3. Admission 20p. Postcards, photos, prints, watercolours, maps etc. British Archaeological Association Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1. “According to Function? Decorum in English Architecture of 12tm-13’th centuries. Talk by Peter Draper. Church End Festival, Avenue House grounds, East End Road, Finchley, N3. HADAS will have a display stand here. We welcome any offers of help on the day or part of it.

Wednesday 14th May 6.30 pm London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, Interpretation Unit, Museum of London, 150 London Wally, EC2. From Flints to fire Engines: Work of the conservation Department at MoL. Talk by Helen Ganiarus.

Wednesday 14th May 8.00 pm Barnet and District Local History Society, Wyburn Room, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet. “Medieval Armour”. Talk by Christopher Gravett.

Wednesday 14th May 8.00 pm Hornsey Historical Society, Union Church Hall, corner of Ferne Park Road and Weston Park, N8. “History and Operation of the New River”. Talk by John Cunningham. £1 entrance fee.

Thursday 15th May 8.00 pm Enfield Preservation Society, Jubilee Hall, junction of Chase Side and Parsonage Lane, Enfield. ‘Church Farm, Hendon”. Talk by Gerrard Roots (Museum Curator and HADAS member) May is also Museums and Galleries month. City of London Archaeological Society, St. Olave’s Church Hall, Mark Lane, EC3. “Understanding and Recording Standing Buildings in London”. Talk by Andrew Westman (MOLAS)

Newsletter
Page 1

HADAS DIARY

Tuesday April 8th LECTURE “The Villa of Tiberius Claudius Severus: a peep into the past” by Roy Friendship-Taylor. This is the Piddington Roman Villa, which HADAS visited in August last year The visit was written up in the November newsletter.

Tuesday May 13th Lecture by Harvey Sheldon (our President) on Roman Southwark. Tuesday June 10th ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING.

Saturday 14 June Outing to Wheathampstead with Micky Watkins. At Wheathampstead Simon West, whose lecture at our March meeting is reported below, will show us his excavation in progress. In Ely we can visit Cromwell’s House, the local museum, and the Stained Glass Museum as well as the Cathedral.

Saturday July 26th Outing to Reading and Silchester with Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward.

Thursday September 11th to Sunday September 14th Long Weekend to Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire (including Hereford Cathedral, its Mappa Mundi and chained library, Stokesay Castle and the ruins of Witley Court). There may still be one or two places available. Contact Jackie Brookes

Lectures start at 8pm in the Drawing Room (ground floor) of Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley N3. Buses including the 82, 143, 260 and 326 pass close by, and it is a five to ten minute walk. from Finchley Central Tube Station.
A MUST-VISIT: CHURCH FARMHOUSE MUSEUM

All members should visit the exhibitions now on at the Church Farmhouse Museum, and continuing until 1st June 2003. Besides Hendon’s Hidden History, which curator Gerrard Roots describes below, there is an exhibition of ‘Weird and Wonderful Contraptions Everyday Gadgets 1800-1950’. This collection, gathered together by Barnet resident Morris Collins over the last 30 years, includes a hundred-year-old clock that makes tea, a kettle that turns into an iron and an implement to massage your eyes. The display focuses on items that were used in everyday life and have been developed into products that can still be bought in the shops today. Admission to the Museum is free. It is open Monday-Thursday: 10-12.30 and 1.30-5; Saturday:10-1 and 2-5.30; and Sunday: 2-5.30. It is closed on Friday.
HENDON’S HIDDEN HISTORY Gerrard Roots

Hendon’s Hidden History, one of two current exhibitions at Church Farmhouse Museum, displays finds made by HADAS in the Church End Hendon area over the past forty years. Highlights of the show include the Saxon pin from the Church Terrace excavation and the astonishing number of fragments of bird- pots from the Church End farm site. l am particularly pleased that material uncovered during the two excavations in the Church Farmhouse Museum garden is at last displayed in quantity. I am only sorry that my cat, Henry, who died last year, was not present at the private view for the exhibitions on 16th March, Henry was adopted by HADAS as their site supervisor during the Church Farm digs — a role Henry carried out with great authority. Henry even received an acknowledgement in the excavation report in the HADAS journal! I am very pleased that the ongoing happy relationship between HADAS and the Museum is highlighted by our exhibition. Please come and see it.

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CBA Winter Meeting Peter Pickering

The Winter General Meeting of the Council for British Archaeology was held on February 27th in the elegant rooms of the British Academy in Carlton House Terrace. The talks were linked, sometimes loosely, by the theme ‘The Value of Development-led Archaeology’, and everybody was awaiting the appearance of the consultation draft of PPG15, which will combine and update PPG15, which deals with standing historic buildings, and PPG16, which deals with archaeology. Many of the talks focussed on the need to involve and inform the public, on which the current PPG16 was not thought adequate, and which some people feared did not sit well with developer-funded archaeology and competitive tendering; they tended to believe that a general tax on developers and area franchising of the right to conduct archaeological investigations in advance of development would be preferable. But others were more optimistic that developers could see publicity for archaeological discoveries on their sites as being good publicity for them, and that the problems of health and safety and confidentiality could be overcome and really successful open days arranged. Kim Stabler of English Heritage produced statistics to show the increase over the last ten years not only in planning applications and archaeological interventions in Greater London but also in the number of requests made for access to the Sites and Monuments Records. She admitted that it was difficult to enforce the conditions requiring publication that had been imposed on planning applications, since a development might well be complete and a building open before it was apparent that publication would not be adequate, but on at least one occasion a condition had been enforced and an opening delayed. Natalie Cohen of the Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS) described the problems of archiving the material found in developer-funded digs, which the contractors would scarcely want to store indefinitely. It became clear that the position in London, with the excellent new Archaeological Archive and Research Centre, is much better than that in most of the rest of the country. Digital archiving had great potential, but the problem of obsolescence must not be forgotten. One interesting paper separate from the main theme was by David Jamieson of MoLAS. He described an attempt to produce a computer topographic model of the prehistoric and early Roman land surfaces within the City of London. Using the available data for every archaeological intervention, he fed into the computer the levels above Ordnance Datum at which ‘natural’ and early Roman brickearth had been encountered, and then interpolated between the reference points so as to get a contour map. He freely admitted to problems with the accuracy of the data, and with the way in which the computer calculated interpolations, particularly at the edges of the map. But the results he has already obtained were suggestive, especially in the demonstration of Roman terracing on the river front, and he has ideas for solving the problems, for instance by using data from geological bore-holes, and so improving the results.
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The Mackerye Burials

Our March lecture was by Simon West, the Field Archaeologist for St Albans Museum Service, a man of quite infectious enthusiasm. He has, actually, a lot to be enthusiastic about. Mackerye End Farm is near Wheathampstead. In March last year metal detectorists who had been working a field there for some time without great success found several bronze objects from suspected cremations. They reported this to the St Albans Museums Service, who immediately started digging. Close to the cist burial found by the detectorists, there was another rather less rich one close by. The ‘Main’ burial was accompanied by eight bronze objects, the other by three., most striking were two bronze jugs with Medusa heads and bulls or tritons on the handles; they were of a type made in Campania in the late republic or early years of the Roman empire, the wear on them showing that they had been in use for some considerable time before they were deposited. There were also two silver brooches, great quantities of Roman glass, and, between the two burials, a complete dinner service for four people of undecorated Samian pottery, made before 140AD. Simon was most enthusiastic about a mass of heavily corroded iron objects which after conservation proved to he hunter’s set of 25 arrow heads, of three different types — bolts for large game, barbed arrows for medium-sized game, and leaf-shaped ones for duck, hares and the like. These finds led to a geophysical survey of the whole field, and the excavation of three large trenches. Though the deposits had been truncated by ploughing there were ditches, pits and postholes. One set of postholes may indicate an Iron Age hall; or a Roman barn; or a Saxon hall. A series of walls may indicate a tower-tomb, or a temple mausoleum. Two of the pits may have had a ritual use — in one of them there was a vessel surrounded by burnt clay which had in it unburnt gravelly soil. Previously, two other pits had produced coin pellet moulds, usually associated with Iron Age royalty. Were the burials perhaps of a rich Roman couple in the second century AD whose estate had been owned by, and were perhaps even descended from, royalty from before the Roman conquest? The circumstances of the investigations were nearly as interesting as the finds themselves. Unlike so many nowadays, the excavations were not developer-funded and carried out by a professional contractor. This was not a well-known or scheduled ancient monument, though of course it is in an area where there are many Iron Age and Romano-British sites. The discovery was not the outcome of a research assessment. Metal detectorists found it in a field being inexorably eroded by ploughing; they very responsibly told the Museums Service what they had found (though not before their understandable enthusiasm had led to some damage and loss of context for the larger burial.) Because funding was short, much of the work was undertaken not by paid archaeologists but by volunteers from the Manshead Archaeological Society of -Dunstable. Simon and the St Albans museum are very keen on informing local people and involving them; they had a Young Archaeologists’ Club working through spoil heaps, and held an open day which attracted over 1000 visitors. The BBC have become very interested, are putting some money into the excavation and are planning a programme about it in September this year. Simon intends to have another campaign to find out more. Very fortunately, HADAS will be able to visit Mackerye End on the way to Ely on 14th June while the excavation ‘is going on, and Simon should be able to show us it.
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On the trail of HADAS finds Don Cooper

I appealed in the January newsletter for information on the whereabouts of any documents and/or artefacts that might be from the 1961-66 excavations at Church End Farm, Hendon. I have not as yet had anything relating to that particular dig, but I have received a box containing a large number of clay-pipe fragments (some with very interesting stamps on them) and a very few small pieces of pottery, almost but not quite all of which are recorded as coming from the dig which HADAS carried out from February 6th to March 6th 1982 at the Old Bull Arts Centre in Barnet in advance of the building of a new theatre. The excavation was reported on by Philip yenning in the newsletter of October 1982. I wonder where the other finds from this dig are? And what other important finds are lurking elsewhere in the garages and attics, or even under the beds, of HADAS members of longer-standing. Please look urgently, and do not wait for the better weather. Let me know what you find; my address is 59 Potters Road, Barnet ENS 5HS, and my e-mail address is atdcooper@msn.com. If it would help you, I would gladly come and collect.
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Nostalgia Audree Price-Davies

Looking through some of the back numbers of the Newsletter has been a reminder of the early years of the society. The original members had far-reaching enthusiasm and the number of excavations is inspiring. The society was started by Mr. Constantides who wanted to prove that Hendon had a Saxon foundation. The original meetings in 1961 were held in Church End House. The committee consisted of Dorothy Newbury, Daphne Lorimer, Sheila Woodward, Ted Sammes, George Ingram, and Brian Jarman. Two of the members, Dorothy and Sheila, are still active in the society to-day and Daphne Lorimer is active in the Orkney society and has recently been awarded the O.B.E. for her work in this field. Excavations were conducted at Church End Farm from 1961-66; the Birkbeck College course is currently well on with producing a report. The 1974 committee was larger and included Brian Jarman as chairman, Edward Sammes as Vice- chairman, Brigid Grafton-Green as Secretary and Jeremy Clynes as Treasurer. Committee members were:

Christine Arnott, Dorothy Newbury, Michael Bird, Nell Penny, G.M.T. Corlet, Anne Trewick, John Enderby, Joanna Wade, Eric Grant, Freda Wilkinson, Elizabeth Holliday, E.E. Wookey and Daphne Lorimer. Anne Trewick organised day trips and the society was organised into groups to cover research, Industrial Archaeology and Documentary Archaeology. Numbers grew significantly and at the Church Terrace dig from 1971-1974 there were 85 members on site in total. In 1974, Paddy Musgrove reported on hedgerow dating and Percy Reboul reported on churchyard surveys; the Church Terrace dig was on-going. In 1976 there were exhibitions of West Heath by Daphne Lorimer, and of Finchley by Percy Reboul and Vincent de Paul Foster at St Mary’s Junior School. The main dig was at West Heath; there was also the Church Terrace dig and activity at Brockley Hill. In 1977, the exhibition “Archaeology in Action” got off to a flying start at Church Farm House when the Mayor of Barnet, Mr. Andrew Pares, came on February 19th to open it. Several Vice-Presidents were present: Mrs Rosa Freedman, Mrs. Daisy Hill and Mr_ Andrew Saunders, the Borough Librarian. In 1977 the current projects included:- A Parish Boundary Survey with Paddy Musgrove in charge. Edgware, a study of the district, both from documentary sources and in the field; Sheila Woodward was in charge. St. James the Great, Friern Barnet. The rector, Canon Norman Gilmore – a member of HADAS readily agreed that the society should record the tombstones. This project was expected to take several years to complete. Anne Trewick was in charge. History of Non-conformist Churches in the Borough. George Ingram had been steadily amassing information including, where they existed, copies of church guides. Dissenters Burial Ground Totteridge. Here HADAS has already recorded and photographed the graves but researchers were needed to dig out from libraries and other sources information about the families or individuals who were buried there. The co-ordinator was Daphne Lorimer. Resistivity Survey. Raymond Lowe was directing operations for the society. Industrial Archaeology — Bill Firth. Farm Building Survey – Nigel Harvey Parish Boundary Survey – Peter Griffiths. In March 1974 there were 234 members, in 1975 200, and in 1976 294. In 1977 there were 400 members and in November 1977 there were 120 members at a lecture. In 1978 a mound in the grounds of St. Joseph’s Convent Hendon was excavated. Speculation as to its purpose was:- a brick kiln, a priest’s secret passage, or an ice house. It proved to be an ice-house. In 1978 there were 100 members present at a lecture on Bridewell Palace and in 1979 digging continued at West Heath, co-ordinated by Daphne Lorimer, and at Church Crescent Finchley, monitored by Paddy Musgrove. The recording of graves in St. James the Great, Friern Barnet, co-ordinated by Anne Trewick, was also continuing. These are impressive achievements and have helped the society to its present position. Present members owe these early members a great deal and I hope that these events have stirred some memories.
Transport Corner Andy Simpson

Bill Bass advises me that in mid-February a contractor’s trench across the old Great North Road at High Barnet revealed the tram lines still in situ about a foot beneath the present road surface. This on a route converted to trollevbuses in 1938. This was at a point virtually opposite the present entrance to High Barnet Tube station on Barnet Hill, a few hundred yards short of the former terminus at Barnet church. This time last year, similar roadworks at the foot of the hill just north of the Northern Line bridge also revealed the tram lines to be in situ. Some 15-20 years ago, road surface stripping allowed a colleague from the London County Council Tramways Trust restoration group to view double tram track right up Barnet Hill! As always, I would be delighted to hear of any other such sightings from around the Borough.

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Rescue meeting Peter Pickering

On 8th March RESCUE, the British Archaeological Trust (which our President, Harvey Sheldon, chairs), held its Annual General Meeting at the Museum of London, followed by an open meeting. The open meeting was on ‘Buried Boats: Rescuing and Safeguarding Marine Archaeology’. The most interesting talk was about the Newport Ship, on which Andy Simpson reported in the last Newsletter. The others were about the new Marine Team which English Heritage have set up to implement the powers they have recently been given over archaeology between low-water mark and the twelve-mile limit, and about the survey Wessex Archaeology are carrying out on the salt-marshes of North Kent, finding many abandoned Thames barges, wooden minesweepers and concrete lighters (which had been used to carry ammunition and fuel during the Second World War); what about preserving some of the minesweepers and lighters (there are probably enough Thames barges preserved in maritime museums up and down the country)? Reports at the AGM itself focussed on four of the most difficult cases of the past year. One was the Newport Ship, saved (though there are still unresolved issues) following a major campaign, which reminded one of the Rose Theatre saga, and an enormous display of public support, which persuaded Welsh politicians to find a substantial sum of money. Another was the St Pancras cemetery, where the Channel Tunnel Rail Link contractors suddenly ordered the archaeologists off the site and prepared to dig the graves out themselves using excavation machinery and were only persuaded by a campaign from archaeologists and the Church to treat the human remains with dignity and respect and allow proper archaeological work to continue. Third was a road-widening near Southend where there is now to be reasonable protection for a Saxon cemetery. Finally, the serious problem of deep ploughing of the unexcavated parts of Verulamium has not been resolved, and there is no permanent voluntary agreement in sight. Indeed, after the expiry of the voluntary moratorium of two years the Earl of Verulamium estates could start ploughing again very soon. It is amazing that scheduling of this enormously important monument cannot guarantee its protection. It is to be hoped that the Government will act, and that resolving Verulamium will lead to a more general solution to the problem of plough damage to important sites unhindered by the planning controls because of what are known as Class Consents.
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Walking on Water Part 2 Andrew Coulson

As is becoming customary, I would like to begin with an apology. In last month’s Newsletter I stated that Vanessa Bunton, our Community Archaeologist, was employed by MoLAS. This is quite wrong. In fact she operates under the aegis of MoL. MoLAS is the Museum of London Archaeological Services a commercial organisation — whilst MoL is, of course, the Museum of London. I wish to apologise for any confusion I may have caused. I would also like to apologise for the postponement, or maybe cancellation, of the survey and river walk intended for March 23rd. Unhappily I had neglected to obtain the land-owner’s permission. Events must wait, therefore, until this is done. But all is not lost. Whilst it is impossible to disappear a full survey team in an instant, and hard to explain one away, much use can be made of tourists. Ours reported back that the ford (not, alas, the fort, as reported previously) was indeed a ford but only for deer, to judge by the hoof prints. They did not think it involved human activity because the banks were not scarped down to the water level, the ‘track’ was much less than one cart’s width, and the gravel bed was not a continuous firm surface from bank to bank. They did not feel it was worth a survey at this stage. Stream walking, however, is still a possibility. It is very apparent that seasons when there is no leaf cover and visibility is best are the times to go. At the least we will be able to take photographs without needing to use flash! It is impossible to be entirely up to date in a monthly newsletter. The latest information is distributed on the E-mail list — hadas@hadas.org.uk.
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Other Societies’ Events Compiled by Eric Morgan

Tuesday and Wednesday 8th and 9th April. The Family Records Centre 1 Myddleton Street EC1 ‘Meet the Neighbours’ fair with stalls from twenty archive services in London and Home Counties including Camden Local Studies and Archives with Islington Local History Centre on the 8th.

Wednesday 9th April 8pm Barnet and District Local History Society. Wyburn Room, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road Barnet ‘Women I have Married’. Talk by Richard Selby.

Wednesday 9th April 8pm Hornsey Historical Society Union Church Hall, corner of Ferme Park Road and Weston Park, N8 `Muswell Hill to Hornsey’. Talk by Hugh Garnsworthy. £1 entrance fee.

Friday llth April 8pm Enfield Archaeological Society. Jubilee Hall, junction of Chase Side and 2 Parsonage Lane Enfield. Reports of fieldwork, excavations, research and other activities 2002, preceded by AGM Entrance fee £1.

Sunday 13th April llam Battlefields Trust (Barnet branch) meet at Ye Olde Monken Holt for site walk of Battle of Barnet. Adjourn to Barnet Museum 1pm.

Tuesday 15th April 8pm. National Trust Barnet Association. St. Mary Magdalen Hall, Athenaeum Road, Whetstone. ‘The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial’. Talk by Charlotte Edwards.

Wednesday 16th April 6.30 pm London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. Interpretation Unit, Museum of London, 150 London Wall EC2. ‘Recent Discoveries at Saxon Lundenwic’. Talk by Gordon Malcolm (MoLAS).

Tuesday 22nd April 8pm Friern Barnet and District Local History Society. Old Fire Station (next to Town hall) Friern Barnet Lane ‘The World of Second-hand Books’ Talk by Martin Gladman £2.

Thursday 24th April 1pm Finchley Society. Drawing Room Avenue House East End Road N3 ‘History of Post Boxes in the Finchley Area’. Talk by Stephen R Krause.

Friday 25th April 6.30 pm City of London Archaeological Society St Olave’s Church Hall, Mark Lane EC3. `Excavations at Paternoster Square’. Talk by Sadie Watson (MoLAS)

Saturday 26th April 2.15 pm Enfield Preservation Society Meet at front door of Forty Hall Mansion for 3 hour circular walk led by Colin Davies.

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HADAS DIARY

Tuesday 11 March – The Mackerye Burials – lecture by Simon West (Field Archaeologist for St Albans Museum Service). The burials, at a site off Marshalls Heath Lane near Wheathampstead, are in a zone of dense occupation and activity from the Later Iron Age through possibly to early Saxon (c. 600 AD).

Tuesday 8th April – The Villa of Tiberius Claudius Severus – lecture by Roy Friendship-Taylor. (Villa at Piddington, near Northampton – HADAS outing, August 2002).

Saturday 14 June – Ely – outing (Micky Watkins).

Saturday 26 July – Reading and Silchester – outing (Tessa Smith and Sheila Woodward).

Thursday 11-Sunday 14 September 2003 – HADAS Long Weekend (Jackie Brookes) to Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire (including Hereford Cathedral, its Mappa Mundi and chained library, Stokesay Castle, and the ruins of Whitley Court). A few further places are available. Please contact Jackie Brookes

Lectures start at 8 pm in the drawing room (ground floor) of Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3. Buses including the 82, 143, 260 and 326 pass close by along Ballards Lane, a five to ten minute walk from Finchley Central Tube Station.

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KITCHEN CROCKS TO SUNDAY BEST – CERAMICS IN THE HOME FROM HENRY VIII TO VICTORIA – the February 11 Lecture by Jacqui Pearce

Jacqui introduced the lecture with a series of snapshots of items from Tudor to Victorian times, to demonstrate both the type of ceramics used at any period, and, by comparing the snapshots, to indicate the way in which they had both changed and stayed the same through the ages. She said she would demonstrate that the function of identifying pottery was not just to allocate dates to it, but to provide a picture of everyday life as it happened in the past. Jacqui started by providing a contemporary focus, with a slide showing the type of wares to be found in any 21st century household, comprising items in glass, plastic, metal and ceramic materials. Only a very small proportion was ceramic She then went on to cover each period in turn, starting with the Tudor period from Henry VIII to Edward VI, for which there were two snapshots, of items dating from 1531 and 1588; the early 17th century – James I, Charles 1, Oliver Cromwell, the mid-18th century comprising the first two King Georges, the turn of the 18th century to the 19th century, a snapshot in 1803 in Napoleon Bonaparte’s time; and finally, the death of Prince Albert. For each of these periods, she showed representative groupings of the ceramics in everyday use, and as evidence included pictures painted of the lifestyle of the period, illustrating the ceramics in use. Some of the domestic ware – cooking pots, kitchen bowls and chamberpots – hardly changed throughout all the periods. This was because they were functional rather than decorative But the decorative wares were a different matter. The impetus for change came from greater individual wealth and hence buying power, which in turn led to a desire to demonstrate this wealth by having high- status tableware. First imported pottery, then locally made pottery, fulfilled this need. Another catalyst for high-quality ware was the start of tea and coffee consumption, combined with much greater availability of porcelain, initially from China. This changed over time as tea and coffee prices dropped and they became available to everyone. Jacqui concluded her lecture by showing slides of the large collections of pottery that have come from excavations in the City, which demonstrate what the households of the period were using in the kitchen and dining areas of their houses. Jacqui, perhaps the country’s foremost expert on post-medieval pottery, demonstrated her great enthusiasm for her subject and the pleasure she gets from sharing her “beauties” with her audiences. by Liz Gapp (Jacqui Pearce also runs the Ted Sammes post excavation course).
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LAMAS CONFERENCE (40TH ANNUAL) – 22 MARCH 2002

Harvey Sheldon, President of HADAS, is to present the Ralph Merrifield Award at the 40th Annual LAMAS Conference. HADAS will also have a stand at the Conference, to be held from 11 am to 5.30 pm on Saturday 22nd March at the Museum of London. Topics include “Excavations in Southwark” (Pre-construct archaeology); “Developing a Research Framework for London Archaeology” (Peter Rowsome, MOLAS); “An Introduction to London Before London” (Jon Cotton, MOL); “Bronze Age Political Economies along the River Thames” (David Yates, Reading University); “Prehistory in the City” (Nick Holder, MOLAS) and “London in the Iron Age” (J.D. Hill, British Museum). Ticket applications (enclosing an SAE) and general enquiries to: Jon Cotton, Early Department, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, London EC2Y 5HN [e-mail to: jcotton@museum of london.org.uki LAMAS members E4, non-members £5. Cost includes afternoon tea. Eric MORGAN
MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL

For most HADAS members, the membership year runs from 1st April to 31st March. The next Newsletter will include a renewal form to be completed and sent back to me with a cheque, cash or a postal order for anyone who does not pay by standing order. If you are not sure which form of payment you have arranged, or if you want to change to making your payment by standing order (our preferred method for the time it saves), please contact the Membership Secretary (see details on back page). The exception to this is for those who have joined during the latter part of the year to 31st March 2003, whose subscription entitles them to membership until the April of 2004.

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SEVERN ESTUARY LEVELS RESEARCH COMMITTEE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Saturday 16th November 2002 – NATIONAL MUSEUM AND GALLERY, CATHAYS PARK, CARDIFF (Continued from February issue)

After a nice lunch of home-made tomato soup in the museum café, we resumed with our keynote speaker, Garry Member, Director of the Hams and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology, on ‘Merged landscapes and Archaeology in the Solent’. Grant aided by English Heritage, the Trust has a staff of three to cover a programme that is more than just shipwrecks. A maritime SMR covers the many shipwrecks around the Isle of Wight, and was the first such database when established in 1989. Since copied by the RCHME, it has over 800 sites – archaeology beyond the low water mark to include submerged landscapes, intertidal areas and the area of the River Test, There are only 53 protected wrecks around the UK coastline. At Langstone Harbour, truncated cliffs give archaeological sections. A Bronze. Age hearth has been found there with scattered potsherds. Friends of the Trust are involved in fieldwork and found a log boat in Langstone Harbour, lying in a palaeochannel and carbon 14 dated to around 500 AD. It lay near shell middens and hurdle work of c. 900 AD. Split timber trackways have also been found. The increased size of modern vessels in the area increases damage to deposits due to silts being lifted off the stronger wakes and propellor wash, exposing the archaeology beneath. The Isle of Wight protected the Hampshire coast from erosion and the action of the sea as sea-levels rose. One oyster fisherman has recovered hundreds of stone axes, yet only three are shown on the local SMR. Volunteer divers working in low underwater visibility have been used to report on the nature of artefacts on the seabed – such as buried salt marshes and sunken peat deposits with channels and truncated peat cliffs, mapping this submerged landscape. An acoustic survey was made to image the sea bed. Peat with Mesolithic finds lies above estuarine silt deposits, with a typical date of 4100 cal BC for the Solent. 8m of sediments formed over 2000 years indicate a steep rise in sea levels. Next up was Richard Brunning, talking about ‘Huntspill’ A joint project in 2002 involving the Environment Agency and Somerset County Council on the Huntspill River, which gives a running section through the landscape. The river was cut in the 1940s to act as the reservoir for a wartime munitions factory and to help drain the inland peat meres. Today, in windy weather waves erode the soft shoreline, undercutting the river banks. Since the 1940s some 5m from each bank has been lost, uncovering much archaeology.. The Environment Agency is now grading the bank to avoid undercutting, and planting it with weeds and willow to stabilise it. At one site, erosion has exposed Roman pottery and masonry remains and field ditches. Roman salt making traces have been found, with the salt water originally contained in settling tanks. Hearth structures for the industry have traces of internal structures in the hearth, below trays in which the salt water was evaporated – the trays may have been of lead, with the nearby Roman lead mines at Charterhouse. Remains of Roman baskets have also been recovered, together with forged coins produced originally in this remote salt marsh environment where unwanted visitors could be spotted a long way off, giving time to hide the evidence! I found Richard Turner’s paper on Chepstow Castle of particular interest, having visited this spectacular site some years ago. It is not every town that boasts a WWI U-boat deck gun in the central square! Working for CADW, Turner described how the actual structure of the castle has been examined in great detail, and relevant documentation also collected together. There has also been some limited excavation. The castle perches on a limestone cliff above the River Wye, which acted as water source and transport highway for supplies and building materials, water transport being dramatically cheaper than land transport. The oldest part of the castle is the great Norman tower at the centre, remodelled in the 1230s and finally completed in the 1290s. The original main Norman door is framed by re-used Roman tile. Sandstone and limestone was quarried from the Forest of Dean, Lydney, the Wye Estuary and other local sources. Much – how much is under study – is re-used Roman masonry, brought by river from Roman sites in the Severn Estuary area, but which ones exactly is presently unclear, though some suggest the major Roman temple at Lydney, Glos; there is tufa in the arches and crushed Roman tile in the plaster of the earliest phase of the tower (1080s). The second phase (1230s) uses different stone including Purbeck marble and stone from the Bristol area, with very high quality carving. Some was carved at the quarry and shipped to the site in kit form. Wooden doors of the 1190s survive in the castle – the oldest castle doors in Europe. The castle was proviSioned from the river, with supplies winched up into the castle. For water supplies, a natural spring at the foot of the castle cliff fed out below tide level, so a high quality circular stone cistern was bult to store the water, which could then be plumbed by bucket from the top; excavation has shown that it stands on a ?Norman timber platform. The conference finished with a very up-to-date joint presentation by Kate Howells and Nigel Nayling on the excavation of the recently discovered and highly controversial Newport Medieval Boat, and its Dendrodating. This fifteenth century ship was found on the site of the new Newport Theatrical Arts Centre. Most of it has now been recorded and lifted by the Glamorgan Gwent Archaeological Trust on behalf of Newport City Council. A watching brief is continuing on the site, and Cows at Llanwern steelworks have provided water tanks and storage facilities. The people of Newport gave outstanding support for the well- orchestrated “Save Our Ship” campaign. The site is on the River Usk in the centre of Newport, some 300m downstream of the castle ruins and adjacent to an Augustinian Friary site. When the orchestra pit for the new building was dug, archaeology was quickly uncovered including a post-medieval stone slipway running towards the river and a timber drain of similar date. The very well preserved clinker-built vessel – with overlapping hull planking over the ribs lying in alluvial clays – started to appear as three battered ribs, and eventually was revealed as being 21m long and 8m wide, with the extreme bow and stern beyond the line of the contractor’s coffer dam – the renamed ‘Save Our Stem’ campaign is trying to ensure that these sections are also recovered, now that the area within the coffer dam has been fully excavated. Dendrodated to the mid-fifteenth century, excavation of the interior of the ship revealed more ships’ timbers from this and possibly other vessels, including rigging, decking and a pulley block. The whole ship was planned at 1:10. Finds included Portuguese pottery, iron slag, three stone cannonballs, coins of Alfonso V of Portugal, and brass strips, possibly from a chest binding. A pump hole in the hull was lined with a wicker basket. Much rope, wool, textile – including hems and buttonholes – was recovered, plus reed matting, tool handles, combs and barrel staves. Since the vessel could not be cut or lifted out, it was dismantled piece by piece and placed on pallets for storage in 17 water tanks at Llanwern. It will be conserved and reassembled, probably in a basement close to where it was found. The vessel, probably built as a cargo carrier, most likely had a central mast with square sail: the keel was beech, deck planks of sawn softwood, and the hull planks oak, being assembled before the framework was inserted. The mast step, a rectangular hole, shows evidence of contemporary cracking thorugh the stresses imposed on the structure by a single mast, and would have required beaching for repair. Some 250 planks survive as 35 strakes (planking levels) on the partly collapsed starboard side, and 16 on the port side, which was probably cut down post deposition as a ground levelling exercise. One timber, which might be part of the vessel, has been dendrodated to 1465-66; the ship certainly had a long life. Updates and further details on the SOS Newport website. Andy Simpson
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WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS Mary Rawitzer (Membership Secretary)

It is a long time since we have had a news item concerning recently joined members, so may we welcome: Mr Donald Harris, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, whose particular interest in Whetstone was evident in his recent contribution to the Newsletter. Mr and Mrs Parks (Andrew and Val) and son Luke, London N3; Laurence Malin, Watford Way, Mill Hill; Stephanie Cooke, London N12; Michaela Iafrate, Cricklewood; Dorothy Rowan-Wicks, Barnet; Christopher Wiley, Kensal Rise; Dr Vivien Shanson, London N2; Christiane Fitzke, London N12, (who tells us she is a chef and has cooked Mediaeval and Roman dishes).
WALKING ON WATER – Andrew C and HADAS go river walking

Rivers make useful archaeological tools. People need water and settle near it; rivers function as routes for trade or war; ways have to be found of crossing them, and things are dropped in them. River-walking offers the chance of examining places which may have been untouched for centuries. HADAS members began river-walking in the early seventies, and began again in the Spring of 2001. There is no manual – we are constantly evolving methods and procedures. At present we are concentrating on the sources and headwaters of the Dollis which flows into the Brent and from there to the Thames. Wellies are adequate for ankle-deep water, waders for knee-deep and a boat for waist-deep water. You need to wear tough, “slippery” clothing so that you are not stung by nettles or ripped by thorns. Winter or early spring are thus good times. People interested in river walking could be given a brief course on what to look for (basic finds identification), and learn about riverine erosion and deposition patterns. We could “cheat” by using an SMR or finds register or archive to point us at a “lucrative” area, but we feel that the whole area needs searching. The best view is from the stream bed. The leader slowly scans the stream bed (the view of others in the group will be obstructed) and pays close attention to its banks. He or she must also test the bottom of the river for firmness with a walking stick – under four inches of water may be eighteen inches of mud! Progress is slow – recently it took us 180 minutes to cover 320 metres. We are using computer-generated maps on a scale of 1:4038 (approximately 7.8″ to 1 km). Accurate map- reading from the stream bed is usually impossible. The best method we have so far found is to use marker tags. The report form, designed and produced by Emma Freeman (who also produced the OS maps of the river on handy A4 sheets which fit on to a clipboard) has 21 main headings along with sub-options to be marked. We hope to re-walk Dollis Brook from where it crosses Hendon Wood Lane at Grid: 221947 to its source at Grid: 217946; to survey with the resistivity meter for the possible fort on that section, to investigate the features (“cobbles” and “dry lake”) found at the source, and also field-walk the area generally. Vanessa Bunton, MoLas Community Archaeologist, will attend. Dates: Sat / Sun March 22/23 and 29 / 30 March. (Probably Sundays). A minimum of four people will be needed for the river survey. A photographer (Eric?) and a liaison person (Emma Freeman?) would be helpful. Arrangements have to be made via e-mail (only medium fast enough) but you can contact me by text or voice-mail on 07803 470 475 giving your name and phone number and I will give you an e-mail contact.
18TH CENTURY MILITARY MEMORIALS IN NORTH LONDON

In an effort to assist a friend who has compiled a huge database on the officers of the British Army from 1715 to 1793, Andy Simpson has been trying to spot tombstones or memorials which record any details of officers who served in the army between these dates. Should any HADAS member know of memorials in churches local or otherwise, he would be very interested to hear of them or to receive a transcription of the text. The individual concerned must have served between the above dates, though of course he may have died after 1793
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OTHER SOCIETIES’ LECTURES AND EVENTS – Eric Morgan

Tuesday 4th March, 10.45 am, Hornsey Historical Society. Guided Tour of Mortimer Wheeler House (LAARC & Social Working Collections, including items specifically related to North London). Meet in reception area, 46 Eagle Wharf Road (Between City Road and New North Road)

CENTENARY STUDY DAY – “They Came to Rome – Power and Poetry” Saturday 8 March 1030 – 3 pm. As the Republic crumbled, ambitious provincials sent their sons to Rome – they came to make their fortunes in law, politics and literature… Tutors: Janet Corran, MA and Mary Lanch, MA. Bushey Centre, High Street, Bushey. Tickets £10. Apply to Barbara Beaumont: Tel 020 8950 6046 (WEA)

Monday 10th March, 3 pm Barnet & District Local History Society, Wyburn Room, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet. “The History of Barnet – An Introduction” -Talk by Graham Javes (of HADAS).

Wednesday 12th March, 8 15 pm. Mill Hill Historical Society – Harwood Hall, Union Church, The Broadway, NW7 “The Geological Society of London” – talk by Andrew Mussel] (Barnet Archivist).

Wednesday 19th March, 6.30 pm London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, Interpretation Unit, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, EC2. “Surgery in Roman Britain and Beyond”. Talk by Ralph Jackson (British Museum).

Thursday 20th March, 1 pm, Senate House Archaeological Historical Society, Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House, Malet St, WC1 “Radiocarbon Dating – Recent Projects and Developments at the Oxford Laboratory”. Talk by Dr T Higham.

Thursday 27th March, 8 pm. The Finchley Society. Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road, N2. “Industrial Heritage”. Talk by R.W.G. Smith (National Trust).

Sunday 30th March, 10.30 am-4.30 pm. The Jewish Museum, the Sternberg Centre, 80 East End Road, N3. Open Day for 70th Anniversary. Art, craft, drama, films, music.

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DAPHNE LORIMER MBE

In her capacity as Chair of the Orkney Archaeological Trust, HADAS vice-president Daphne Lorimer has been awarded the MBE for services to Scottish archaeology in the 2003 New Year Honours List. She is in good company, with Richard Morris, previously Director of the CBA, receiving the OBE for services to archaeology, and Tim Strickland also receiving the MBE for services to archaeology and the Community in Middlewich, Cheshire. – Another HADAS member was honoured at the same time – PHILIP VENNING has been awarded the OBE for services to ‘The Society For The Preservation of Ancient Buildings in Britain’ Philip was very active in our society’s early days and will be known to all our older members, reports Dorothy Newbury. Our congratulations to them both!
HADAS ON DISPLAY

With the kind permission and co-operation of Curator Gerrard Roots, HADAS are again going to be putting on an exhibition at Church Farm Museum, Hendon, in the upstairs back room – the Dunlop Room – from Saturday 15th March to Sunday 1 8thMay inclusive – ‘HENDON’S HIDDEN HISTORY’. The theme will be excavations in the Burroughs/Church End area, featuring material from the three seasons of Church Farm excavations, the Church Terrace dig, material from the Ted Sammes course, and the Paddock Roman and other material from site watching by Stephen Alec in 1998.
HADAS DIARY

Tues 11th February 2003 Kitchen crocks to Sunday best – Ceramics in the Home from Henry VIII to Victoria Lecture by Jacqui Pearce FSA, who is well known to HADAS, particularly for running the excellent Ted Sammes post excavation course. Jacqui has been working as a ceramics specialist with the Museum of London for 25 years, currently as a senior specialist in medieval and later pottery. and also has an interest in clay tobacco pipes.

Tues 11th March 2003 The Mackerye Burials, Lecture by Simon West

Tues 8th April 2003 The Villa of Tiberius Claudius Severus; Roy Friendship-Taylor

Lectures start at 8pm in the Drawing Room (ground floor) of Avenue House, East End Road, Finchley, N3. Buses including the 82/143/2601326 pass close by, a 5-10 minute walk from Avenue House or 15-20-minute walk from Finchley Central Tube Station.

HADAS LONG WEEKEND, 111h – 141h September 2003

Jackie Brookes reports that those who have already booked will on this occasion need to arrange their own travel insurance. should they need it also that although the trip is almost fully booked she and David are trying to obtain more rooms so those still interested in wing should contact Jackie to see if there is a room available.
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OBITUARY — MICHAEL ROBBINS by Peter Pickering

Michael Robbins, our President from 1994 to 1998, died on December 21st 2002 at the age of 87. He had a long connection with our area, having been brought up in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Members may remember his presidential address Not What They Used To Be’ about church restorations in the nineteenth century and the many controversies surrounding it. The list of Michael’s high offices is awe-inspiring. He was at some time, and often for many years, President of the Omnibus Society, President of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, President of the Greater London Industrial Archaeological Society. President of the Society of Antiquaries, Chairman of the Middlesex Council of The Victoria County History, Chairman of the Victorian Society, Chairman of the Governors of the Museum of London, and Chairman of the Standing Conference on London Archaeology. Oh, and he was Managing Director (Railways) of London Transport from 1971 to 1978. It must be a matter of dispute whether his most enduring monument is the Heathrow extension of the Piccadilly Line or the magisterial History of London Transport, which he and T C Barker wrote. He was a historian rather than an archaeologist, but he was very knowledgeable about and sympathetic towards archaeology, and his influence was exercised in his best interests. He was in appearance and demeanour an English Gentleman, and HADAS is proud to have had him as President.
POST BOX SURVEY Bill Firth

At the time of writing 243 post boxes have been recorded in the Borough. These are listed by postal area and by cipher in the tables below. It should be noted that only a small part of N14 and rather larger parts of N10, NW9 and HA8 (Edgware) are in the Borough so the returns from these areas might be expected to be lower than elsewhere. The boxes with no cipher, ignoring one which is modern, and with VR and EviiR ciphers are, as expected in the old parts of the borough. The preponderance of GR (George V) boxes gives some indication of when the area became built up. Some of the EiiR boxes are double boxes. They seem to be fairly new and are sited in business areas to take ready franked business mail in one part and ordinary mail in the other. Many thanks are due to the 12 people who recorded boxes. The word got out to the Finchley Society and the Friern Barnet Local History Society and a member of each of these was a major contributor. I am not going to list names and numbers because the contributions of those who recorded only a few boxes are just as valuable as those who recorded many more. In any case some boxes had more than one recorder but I have attributed the sighting to the first report I received. Later recorders might feel aggrieved that their contribution had been downgraded. No. of boxes by Postal Area

N2 16, N14 4, NW9 8, N3 31, N20 25, NW11 41, N10 7, NW2 12, EN5 7 (Barnet), N11 13, NW4 27, HA8 7 (Edgware), N12 33, NW7 12, No of Boxes by Cipher – a total of 243 recorded in the Borough. None 13, VR 10, EviiR 40, GR 120, EviiR 1, EiiR 39,
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AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Ann Kahn kindly brings to my attention more archaeology on the web. A new dataset has been digitised for increased access by Getmapping, the company responsible for producing the Millennium Map, in association with the MoD and the National Monuments Record. This concerns the complete aerial survey of the UK made by the RAF between 1945 and 1949. This is one of the most significant national pictorial records available, showing the state of the country after the bombing and before the post war reconstruction and development of huge areas of former countryside. Previously there was limited access to the negatives, taken on fragile cellulose and nitrate film. Now a digitally scanned version will begin to appear on the Get Mapping website during 2003. See www.getmapping.com for details.
STORES Andrew Coulson

Every organisation of substance has stores. Not mere stores of things but stores. That is a place where thing are kept, categorised. listed; numbered. cleaned, -counted, and piled up-in logically ordered and mutually exclusive heaps. HADAS, as is only proper, has Stores. No longer the simple dump as before, our collection of things has evolved into a highly organised assemblage comprising a multitude of items. Did you know, for example, that thee are at present some forty major categories of things and that this is only the start? It is anticipated that the final total will run into hundreds of categories and thousands of things. Numbers alone are not enough. Each sub-category must be described. If this is not done we will not know where we are, nor where we should be. Take mattocks, for instance. Presently we have mattocks Large ancient and Mattocks Large Modern; two of each there should be but records say there’s only one. Left behind at Hanshaw Drive, perhaps? Needs looking into. Then there are Mattocks Iron Small with funny red handles Five. If they are Mattocks at all, that is. Something to do with the (Very old — ed) Resistivity Meter we did not know we had. perhaps. But all this pales into nothing in comparison with the scandal of the Mattocks Military Small. Four of them are all complete, but the other four lack Mattocks and only the handles remain. And that is not all. The bayonets that once adorned the non-Mattock end of the handles are also missing. We want those back as well. They will do very nicely as a combination tin-opener/excavation trowel/assegai and they can have a category all to themselves. All good stores develop an ambience, which encourages the deposition of items but not their removal. Our stores are no exception. As witness our burglars who broke in, opened two finds boxes, and then left closing the doors behind them. What discouraged them? Could it have been the bones in one of the boxes, or the influence of that minor Deity which, since classical times, has interested itself in stores and especially in their willingness to receive and their unwillingness to disgorge. Appreciation of the existence and power of this force is vital. How else are you to retain your sanity when you find the item you need will not be given to you because it is being cleaned. It is only for emergencies, there is only one left, the key has been lost, it is being repaired. X took it out yesterday, they are stock-taking, and then when finally you arrive panting at the gates of the Stores with the right forms signed by the right people you are told you cannot have it as they are closing for lunch? The minor Deity may be a little more laid back in Hadas’ case. Hopefully. But how much remains to be seen! With grateful thanks to all who had a hand in sorting out the Garage. (And to Andrew for cleaning all the tools! — Ed)

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LECTURE REPORT Andy Simpson
The Archaeology and Anthropology of Australian Rock Art Prof Robert Layton

The January lecture was an unusual and fascinating topic. Aboriginal peoples have been in Australia for some 50.000 years — before the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe. Humans evolved in Africa and spread south via the coasts of India and South — East Asia. initially colonising the North and South Australian coastline but not the centre. The two main aspects of their culture are living as hunter-gatherers and their distinctive religious traditions. Their broad-based diet features some 250 animals and plants — actually better than the restricted diet of a peasant farmer. In this egalitarian society, the men hunt, the women gather. A kill gives more meat than can be consumed by the immediate hunting group, so the social aspect of sharing the meat in the camp cements social relationships within the group. Since a the hunting/gathering necessary to feed the group may only occupy 2-3 hours per day, there is plenty of spare time — far more than that available to the peasant farmer. The bulk of the diet, including lizards and bugs (the latter eaten raw, or cooked), and bitter-tasting wild apples is gathered by the women as they chat. Calorific value comparisons included roast Kangaroo at 150 calories per 100 grammes, comparing favourably to beef at 160 calories per 100 gm. This is not a starvation level diet — there are plenty of calories. Distinctive heavy grindstones with their upper and lower portions are left at regular campsites. Population density is low, around one person per square Kilometre, this partly being controlled by women’s body fat levels needing to build up to a sufficient level to ensure a successful pregnancy, whereas more sedentary lifestyles mean higher body fat levels and higher pregnancy rates/population level increases. Low-level landscape management includes setting bush fires to encourage growth of fresh grass for Kangaroos; yam tops are cut off and replanted to permit re-growth when dug up. Religion is based on the creation-period ‘dream time’ when hybrid beings, part human, part animal such as kangaroo, emu and python travelled the landscape. Clans of aborigines, each of whom has a separate ancestor, were given territory at this time, which it is their duty to look after as the locations shared by ancestors from a time thought just out of reach, trailing their ancestors across the landscape, figuratively speaking, by living out the customs that they established and followed. A key word for aborigines is ‘becoming’ as in `becoming a rock’. Of the 200 aboriginal languages spoken 200 years ago, some 40 survive. Though its antiquity is much debated, carbon 14 dating indicates that rock art at least 10,000 years ago (some suggest 12-15.000 years) with examples on the walls of rock shelters. Footprints, such as emu footprints, (follow them and you will find a water hole!) are central in rock art, as are circles representing campsites to which the footprints lead as the story of the ancestors/more recent clan or clan-members travels is recorded in rock or ground art, which can be both secular — recording a hunt or journey — or sacred, recording the ancestors. A distinctive form is X-ray style images of animals such as turtles showing their liver, other organs bone structure and eggs, the latter possibly as a symbol of fertility. Cross-hatching indicates a representation of the ancestors. Rock art is usually in red ochre on a white background, which needs regular re-touching, since if it fades, the power of the ancestors is diminished. Older rock art features only land animals, including now-extinct marsupial species, pre-end of last ice age, when melting ice raised sea levels and separated Australia and New Guinea, previously a single land-mass together with New Zealand at the height of the ice-age. Rather more recently, European colonisation is recorded with images of biplanes and highly detailed images of sailing ships showing cargoes in the holds, bullocks, and men on horseback. Aboriginal copyright to their artwork is now finally recognised, following granting of Australian citizenship in the 1960s, some half-million aborigines remaining today from a pre-colonial population of two million, of whom 90% were killed by colonists in some areas.
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PREHISTORIC ‘BARGAINS’ Eric Morgan

At the last two Amateur Geological Society’s Mineral and Fossil Bazaars in December (See December Newsletters) as well as the obvious mineral and fossil specimens for sale, there was a stall also selling a number of Mesolithic artefacts. These included a ‘Finds Bag’ containing six potboilers from Lemsford, Herts. going for a real bargain at 50p. Some individual worked flints and scraper tools from the Upper Mesolithic at South Weymouth cost a pound each, and if you really wanted to splash out you can purchase larger individual scraper tools from Hertford for a mere £2.50. (Whatever your views on such things. the local antiquities market is obviously flourishing — Ed). The next such Bazaar is December 2003.
=SEVERN ESTUARY LEVELS RESEARCH COMMITTEE —(Continued from last issue)Andy Simpson

Martin Bell then discussed ‘Mesolithic Coastal Activity and Goldcliff East and Redwick’ These surveys were undertaken with CADW support, with eroding Iron Age structures recorded in the 1990s. There is a shortage of well-stratified Welsh/western British Mesolithic sites with associated environmental evidence. There are however, a number of such sites in the Severn Estuary/Bristol Channel area. The estuary formed 6,500 — 5.500 cal BC, affecting the lives of hunter gatherers and drowning old oak forest, submerged trees being found in various locations. sometimes only exposed at low or spring tides. At Redwick for the 2001 survey season a submerged forest was found at the base of the estuarine sequence. Dendrochronological samples indicate oaks up to 400 years old when they died. around 6,200 BC. Some trees had been burnt; there is no archaeological evidence, but it is unclear if this burning was natural or influenced by man. At Goldcliff in a bay thee is an island in the middle of an expanse of coastal wetland, which preserves Mesolithic human and animal footprint evidence in the silts — an old land surface with occupation evidence on it, being encroached by burying deposits which seal and preserve it. Activity on the surface is dated 5,700 — 5,300 cal BC from surveys undertaken August — September 2002. Submerged forest was excavated. sealed by a Mesolithic peat surface containing bone and flint. The peat included two submerged forest horizons on estuarine silts. A charcoal rich old land surface lay above glacial deposits. The Mesolithic peat horizons included calcined bone. Originally, encroaching salt marsh would have gradually inundated grassland. Traces of grass charcoal may reflect man-influenced burnings like the tree trunks mentioned earlier as areas of landscape were ‘burnt off. Footprints and tracks, similar to those at Uskmouth. have been found. At Goldcliff they are in sediments tying over the basal peat and below the forest remains, c.5. 100 — 4,100 BC. Tracings are made on plastic sheets, and indicate oxen. gulls, and humans in the laminated surfaces, including 37 prints from 3 or 4 human individuals. including one person in their late teens. Animal bone evidence is mostly from deer_ with fish scales and bones also showing the importance of fishing. (To he Continued in future New sletters)

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OTHER SOCIETIES’ LECTURES & EVENTS Eric Morgan’s Monthly Round-Up

Saturday February 1.30-3pm, LAARC Open Day, Mortimer Wheeler House, 46, Eagle Wharf Road, N I . Buildings In Bits-From Roman London’s Forum to Medieval Monasteries, Tudor Theatres, Palaces and Victorian Terraces. Handle and Examine original stone carvings, decorative bricks, tiles and stained glass etc

Thursday 6th February 1030am Mill Hill Library Hartley Ave, NW7; History of English Surnames — talk.

Thursday 6th February 8pm Pinner Local History Society, Village Hall, Chapel Lane Car Park, Pinner: Swakeley’s House, Ickenham — talk by Mrs. Betty Dungey. Donation £1.

Monday 10th February 3pm. Barnet & District Local History Society, Wyburn Room, Wesley Hall, Stapylton Road, Barnet: BARNET IN POSTCARDS- talk by Terence Atkins Wednesday 12th February 8pm Hornsey Historical Society, Union Church Hall, Corner of Ferme Park Road & Weston Park, N8; Alexandra Palace — North London’s Treasure, Deborah Hitchcock.

Wednesday 12th February, 8.15pm Mill Hill Historical Society —The The Harwood Hall, Union Church, The Broadway, NW7; Raffles In Mill Hill — talk by Dr. Richard Bingle (Preceded by AGM)

Thursday 13th February 2.30pm Edmonton Hundred Historical Society, Ordnance Road Methodist Church Hall, Junction with Raynton Road, Enfield; River Lea to Lee Navigation — talk by David Pain

Friday 14th February, 8pm Enfield Archaeological Society, Jubilee Hall, Junction Chase Side/Parsonage Lane, Enfield, visitors £1; Turkmenistan: Civilisations of the Oxus Valley. Talk by Ian Jones.

Wednesday 19th February 6.15pm London & Middlesex Archaeological Society Interpretation Unit, Museum of London, London Wall; Another World; Urban Archaeology in Russia Today; Clive Orton (Preceded by AGM)

Wednesday 19th February, 6.30pm Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, Lecture Theatre, 2/3 John Vane Science Block, Medical College (Barts) Charterhouse Square, EC.1: Beneath Your Feet and Above Your Head: Street Furniture — talk by Sue Hayton

Wednesday 19th February, 8pm Willesden Local History Society, The Willesden Suite, Library Centre, 95 High Road, N W 10: W E Gladstone, PM and Willesden Resident Talk by Corinne Gladstone

Friday 2nd February 7.30pm Wembley History Society, St Andrew’s Church flail, Church Lane, Kingsbury N W9: The Future of the Grange Museum of Brent (Neasden) Talk by Curator Alex Sidney

Tuesday 25th February 8pm Friern Barnet & District Local Hist. Soc, Old Fire Station, (Next to Town Hall) Friern Barnet Lane, N.12; To Finchley By Train; Talk by Alan Williams

Tuesday 27th February 2.30pm The Finchley Society, Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Road. N3 Barnet in Old Photographs; Talk by HADAS Member Graham Javes