Newsletter
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SPECIAL EVENT
To mark the retirement of Dorothy Newbury from the HADAS committee, HADAS are holding a lunch in her honour. The event will take place at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 3QE, Tel: 020 8346 7812 on Sunday, 30th September 1007 from 12.30 to 15.00. Price to members will be £5.00 and a booking form is enclosed. Dorothy has been a member of HADAS for nearly 30 years and during that time has done sterling work for the society. Her contribution to the society is inestimable and the lunch is a small token of appreciation for all her hard work over the years, so do come along and participate in this tribute to Dorothy.
HADAS Diary
Saturday 4th August, 2007: HADAS outing to Sussex with June Porges & Stewart Wild.
Tuesday 9th October, 2007: Denis Smith (lecturer, industrial archaeologist) Thomas Telford (1757-1834) 250th anniversary lecture.
Tuesday 13th November, 2007: Martyn Barber (English Heritage Aerial Survey) Mata Hari ‘s glass eye and other tales: a history of archaeology and aerial photography.
Tuesday 8th January, 2008: Kate Sutton (Museum of London) The Work of a Finds Liaison Officer.
Tuesday 12th February, 2008: Christopher Sparey-Green BA, MIFA The Archaeology of Dorset: a time-torn landscape.
Tuesday 11th March, 2008: Chloe Cockerill (Regional Development Manager) The Work of the Churches Conservation Trust.
Tuesday 8th April, 2008: Peter Davey (Bristol Tram Photograph Collection) Clifton Rocks Railway.
Tuesday 13th May, 2008: tba
Lectures start at 8.00 pm in the Drawing Room, Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley N3 30E. Buses 82, 143, 326 & 460 pass close by, whilst Finchley Central station (Northern Line) is five to ten minutes walk
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The Birkbeck/HADAS Course by Don Cooper
Do come and join us!! It’s that time again! The task of processing the Ted Sammes archives of the HADAS excavations from the 70s continues anew this autumn. As usual the course is being run at Avenue House by Jacqui Pearce of MoLSS (the Museum of London’s Specialist Services). Jacqui is one of the country’s experts in post-medieval pottery and clay pipes. This is your chance to learn how to identify artefacts found in excavations, research the sites, write up the results, and publish them, at a local venue and in a very friendly environment. So do come and join us!! (See details below from the Birkbeck internet site). To apply write, phone or e-mail for an application form quoting the course code below to: Archaeology FCE Birkbeck 26 Russell Square London WC1B 5DQ Tel: 020 7631 6651 E-mail archaeology@fce.bbk.ac.uk Course title and description Course code is FFAR015UACP After the Excavation: Archaeology from Processing to Publication The module will run as a workshop, providing a model for post-excavation procedures based on current practice; covering finds processing, identification, recording and analysis leading to publication and archive deposition. Amateur groups and local societies are encouraged to bring along material from excavations to be used in practical sessions, with teaching and supervision by specialists. Wednesday, 26th September 2007, 6.30pm-8.30pm 24 meetings including visits £240 (£120 for concessions) Jacqui Pearce, BA, FSA Avenue House, 15-17 East End Road, Finchley N3 30 CATS points at Level 2
Building demolitions at Colindale by Andy Simpson
Demolitions in June 2007 included some landmark buildings in Colindale Avenue at the junction with Edgware Road. The former bank building at the corner has now gone, along with the adjacent boundary wall with the well-preserved circa 1930s ‘Studebaker Depot’ wall painted advert. Also now gone is the large building behind, upon the southern wall of which was still visible ‘Integral Propeller Co.’, dating back to the First World War when much of the Edgware Road was lined with aircraft and component manufacturing companies serving/associated with the adjacent Hendon Aerodrome of Claude Grahame-White fame.
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Research on the Hendon House History by Don Cooper
As part of further research for this year’s excavation at Hendon School (address: Golders Rise, Hendon, London NW4 2HP), which I will publish in a future newsletter, I have been trying to get more information on the history of Hendon House on which the school is supposed to stand!! Here is the story so far. (if anybody can add/correct any of the information please contact me) The blue plaque on the main Hendon School building proclaims that this is the site of the residence of John Morden (sic) (1548 — 1625) antiquary and topographer. It is wrong in a couple of aspects.The blue plaque should say John Norden (not Morden) a strange and inexplicable typographical error. Even though the Barnet Borough’s web site http://www.bamet.gov.uldindex/leisure- culture/local-history-heritage.htm accessed on 25th June 2007 at 21.15 states “Hendon School now occupies the site where the famous 16th- century mapmaker John Norden lived” the plaque is in the wrong place. As can be seen from old map of Hendon, his house was between Golders Rise and Brent Street rather than on the other side of Golders Rise!! However, the school is in the grounds of the famous old house and, therefore, represents an opportunity to investigate if there are any remnants left of its former glory. According to Kitchen (1997) there is a local tradition that John Norden built Hendon House. He certainly lived at Hendon in 1607, as by then he was signing his works as “from Hendon”. He lived there until 1619 when he moved to St Giles-in-the-field (Kitchen, 1997). Norden prefaced, at least, two of his works, “Speculum Britanniae” and “Surveyor’s Dialogue” as being written from “his poore house in Hendone”. On Speeds map of Middlesex dated 1611 (http://faculty.oxy.edu/horowitz/home/johnspeed/Maps3-4.htm, accessed on 26th June 2007 at 0900), which he says was described by Norden, shows a “Hendon house” in approximately the right position. I believe it is one of few houses recorded on that map. Kitchen (1997) disagrees and suggests that it refers to Hendon Manor and not Hendon House. According to Baker( 1976): “John Norden (1548 — 1625), the topographer, who is believed to have lived at Hendon House, Brent Street”. The issue as to whether Hendon House was actually where he lived is not resolved.
Kitchen (1997) constantly refers to Norden’s poverty pleas, which is not in keeping with buying or building a mansion with 16 hearths!!! However, by about 1607, his popularity was such that perhaps he could have afforded to have the house built. Until more evidence comes to light it should be treated as a strong probability rather than a certainty that lived in Hendon House or that he built it. In the Middlesex Session Records for 1614 Volume 2 there is a record of convictions for “assaulting and robbing John Norden and Josias Norden of Hendon on the highway, both gentlemen”. What we know with some certainty is that the house was a gabled building probably of the 16th century and had 16 hearths in 1664 according to Middlesex Record Office (now called The Greater London Record Office (Middlesex Records) reference Mit/TH/5 (Hearth tax assessments). We don’t yet know who lived there between 1619 and 1660, but the next residents we know of are the Whichcotes. The Whichcotes family were a well-known family of 17th c in Hendon (Brett-James, undated, p76). Jeremy Whichcote, who lived at Hendon House from 1660 to 1677, was Solicitor General to the Elector Palatine, presumably after he had lost his Palatinate and his Kingdom of Bohemia. During the Commonwealth, Whichcote bought the post of Warden of Fleet Prison and was able to help shelter many of the exiled king’s friends and agents in this way. He was made a baronet after the Restoration as a reward for his devotion to the king. His heir and eldest son Sir Paul Whichcote also lived at Hendon House until 1691. It then became the residence of Sir William Rawlinson (1640-1703), a Commissioner of the Great Seal, appointed on the 14th May 1690. There are also references to him in the House of Lords Journal; Volume 15 dated 19 November 1692. He is recorded as having purchased the house from the Whichcotes in 1691. He died of apoplexy in Hendon in 1703 and is buried in Hendon Church. He had two daughters, one of whom Elizabeth married, for the second time, Giles Earle (1678 — 1758), a politician and wit. They lived at Hendon House. They had two children, one of whom his son William Rawlinson Earle died in 1774 aged 72 and is buried with his sister in the vault of his grandfather at Hendon Church. It is unclear how long the house stayed in the possession of the Rawlinson/Earles, however, in the 1790s it came into the ownership of John Cornwall, said to have been a Director of the Bank of England. Lysons (1795) says: “At Brent Street, about quarter of a mile from the church, stands an old mansion, now the property and residence of John Cornwall, Esq. which was formally a seat of the Whichcotes, whose arms are in the windows of the drawing room and afterwards of Sir William Rawlinson, one of the Keepers of the Great Seal.” There are a number of references to the house being rebuilt in the 19th century (Baker,1976), (Petrie, 2005), however, a recent publication (Dean, 2006) refers to work Sir John Sloane did in 1791 and 1798 for John Cornwall. From Dean (2006, p149)) “1791 21st December ‘went to Hendon with own horse, survey’d house…” and again in 1792 23rd November ‘delivered his bills at Mr Thorntons Kings Arms Yard…”. The bills, which are in the Soane’s archives (Dean, 2006), show that the work was additions to stables and coach house, greenhouse and fruit room at a cost of £1323.0.53/4. Later in 1798 another bill is for a new chimneypiece in the drawing room. Perhaps the house had a make-over rather than a rebuild. There is a painting of the house in Petrie (2005) before John Cornwall’s additions.By 1841, according to British Census, the house, with the address shown as BRAINT Street, as being occupied bif Major General Christopher Fagan, a 55 year old retired soldier who had served in Bengal. Also in the household is his 30 year old wife, 5 children and 8 servants. The Major General left in 1843. I still have to discover who was living in Hendon House between 1843 and 1860! The 1861 census tells a different story, the house has become a private mental institution run by Charlotte Dence for ladies described as “lunatics”. It is still recorded on the 1871 census after which it disappears!! There is a painting of the house when it was a mental institute in 1860 in Petrie (2005, p21). By 1871, the new owner was Mr Ardwick Burgess, eldest son of Henry Weech Burgess of the Temples. Ardwick Burgess had married in 1871, and it seems that he purchased Hendon House at this time. His first wife died, and he remarried in 1881. The Times of April 6th 1886 reports the birth of a daughter at Hendon House. In 1909 Burgess sold the house and 23 acres for £15,350 according to The Times dated 20th May 1909. In 1909 Hendon School is built. I have not so far researched the history of the school.
Bibliography
Baker, T F. T. (Ed.) 1976. A History of Middlesex. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dean, Ptolemy, 2006. Sir John Sloane and London. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Lund Humphries. Kitchen, Frank. 1997. John Norden (1547-1625): Estate surveyor, Topographer, County mapmaker and devotional writer. Imago Mundi, Vol. 49: P43-61.
Lysons, Daniel. 1795. The environs of London, Volume 3: The County of Middlesex. London: T. Cadell, Jun., and W. Davies.
Petrie, Hugh. 2005, Hendon and Golders Green Past. London: Historical Publications
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Digging at Vindolanda by Vicki Baldwin
For the third year running, Lydia Demitris and I spent 13th-17th May in Northumberland as volunteer excavators at Vindolanda. In previous years we had been working in the South West corner of the later stone fort; this year we were opening a new area outside the fort walls on the North West corner. The intention was to locate the North West corner of Stone Fort I c. 160-190 AD. Sunday morning we began by de-turfing the area we were to excavate. Our supervisor was Matt, an American PhD. student, and the fourth member of our team was Richard, a surveyor whose family had paid for his trip to Vindolanda as a Father’s Day present. These two were very keen and moved prodigious quantities of earth over the next few days. Lydia and I were working in the part of the trench nearest to the wall and uncovered an area of large flat stones. Although at first they looked promising, it decided to remove them. Matt and Richard had located a turf rampart which showed up as very dark, almost black, lines in the side of the trench. Two days of digging produced very little in the way of finds — a few pieces of pot and some animal bone. We dug further down and found another area of stones similar to the first. Again they were removed. The picture(unfortunately the pictures are not yet accessable – ed.) shows the trench we were working in. Shortly after it was taken, the rain began. At Vindolanda excavation only stops if the rain makes it hazardous to continue or there is thunder and lightning. Fortunately, filming for a programme featuring Clive Anderson had finished before the rain. The programme will be aired in August and will show him excavating in the Vicus. Our trench was not included in the filming. By Wednesday morning the rain was so heavy that no digging took place. After a very early lunchbreak, we were treated to an illustrated lecture by Andy Birley which made the chronology of the fort sequence very clear. At that point the fmdings from our trench appeared to indicate that although there was a turf rampart, Stone Fort I perhaps did not extend that far North of the later wall. However, the following week’s excavations revealed the stone wall to be about 30cms deeper. The heavy rain had left our trench too wet to continue excavation so on Thursday, our last day, we were transferred to the Vicus where the majority of our group had been working. What a difference! Within minutes I found the base of a samian cup or bowl with a (very degraded) maker’s stamp. There were sherds of Black Burnished ware, pieces of mortaria, bone, nails and other objects including the spoon in the picture, found by Lydia. In addition we uncovered the North wall of the Severan fort 208-212 AD which was smaller than Stone Fort II but made use of that fort’s West wall as its East wall; and in the centre of the building we were excavating, there appeared to be the remains of an oven. After lunch, we tidied our area, had a group photo taken, and went to view the latest work in Area B. At Vindolanda there are two areas under excavation at any time: Area A which works Sunday-Thursday and mainly deals with the fort and Vicus areas, and Area B which works Tuesday-Saturday and focuses on the latest area to be opened which is further West and has revealed, among other things, some huge timbers. This means that during the excavation season from April to September, weather permitting, there is always work in progress for visitors to see. As excavators we become part of the visitors’ experience of the site and we are expected to answer their questions or direct them to someone who can. This can be very pleasant as it gives you a break from what is often very heavy-duty digging! Many people who dig at Vindolanda came as visitors before they volunteered and all are welcome to apply. For more information about Vindolanda the following websites may be of interest. Matt’s journal covers the whole period of his stay in England this year and includes details of his walks and trips in the area. The web forum has some very good topics. Vindolanda website: http://www.vindolanda.com/ Matt’s Digging journal: http://diggerjoumal.blogspot.com/ Web forum for those interested in/involved with Vindolanda: http://www.wedigvindolanda.com/
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What’s On by Eric Morgan
Sunday 5th August, 2.30pm: Heath and Hampstead Society, The Hill Garden, off North End Road, NW3 (meet beside the ornamental pond) walk led by Ian Greenwood. Donation £2. Lasts 2 hours approximately.
Sunday 5th August, 2.30pm: Enfield Preservation Society, Heritage Walk: Winchmore Hill. Start on the green (by the station) to be taken round the conservation area with a possible visit to St. Paul’s Church and ending at Grovelands Park (near the café).
Tuesday 14 August, 8pm: Amateur Geological Society, The Parlour, St. Margaret’s Church, Victoria Avenue, N3 (off Hendon Lane): Evening of talks given by members including slides of a recent visit to Iceland by Susan Jacobs.
Friday 17th August, 10.30am: Camden History Society & Burgh House Museum: Edwardian Hampstead, guided walk led by museum curator Carol Seigel. Meet outside the house. Costs £6. Reservations tel. 020 7431 0144.
Friday 17th August, 7pm: COLAS: Ghosts & Graveyards. Guided walk led by Robert Stephenson. Meet outside Blackfriars public house, corner of Queen Victoria Street/New Bridge Street (by Blackfriars Station). Visit a number of City graveyards including St. Paul’s. Pass the City’s first playhouse and Shakespeare’s house. Find out about executions, bodysnatchers and the Black Dog of Newgate Prison!
Saturday 18th August & Sunday 19th August, 12-6pm: Friern Barnet Summer Show, Friary Park, Friern Barnet Lane, N12. Friern Barnet & District Local History Society and The Finchley Society will have stands here. Also an Art Exhibition by Barnet Borough Arts Council whose stand has HADAS info, and many other stalls.
Sunday 2nd September, 11 am-5pm: Angel Canal Festival, Regents Canal, City Road Basin, Islington Ni (near LAARC). Many stalls, boat trips & rally. London Canal Museum & Islington Archaeology & History Society have stalls.
Sunday 2nd September, 10am-5pm: The Jewish Museum, Camden Town, Raymond Burton House, 129-31 Albert Street, NW 1. Open Day for European Day of Jewish Culture free admission. Last opportunity to view before closure for redevelopment. Exhibitions: Ghetto Warriors — Minority Boxers in Britain, also Trace Jewish History in Britain Since 1066. Displays on Jewish religious life and ceremonial art.
Sunday 2nd September, 2pm: The Battle of Barnet guided walk. Meet at junction Great North Road/Hadley Green. Led by Paul Baker, cost £6.
Until Sunday 2nd Celebrating the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane, NW3: Slavery & Justice — the legacies of Lord Mansfield and Dido Belle. Admission free, guided tours 2pm. Also Sunday 26th & Monday 27th August, 1 lam- 4pm: Breaking the Chains — discover the voices of 1807 with costumed actors in short dramatic performances, (both Days).
Tuesday 4th September, 6-8pm: Highgate Wood. Walk to look at Places of Historical Interest in the Wood. Meet at Information Hut (access from Archway Road, N6).
Training Excavations at Copped Hall, with WEAG, August From Sundays to Saturdays, beginning 5th, 12th & 19th August. Excavation of an Elizabethan Great House and its Medieval predecessors. Learn basic excavation & recording techniques. Costs £170 (with a certificate at the end) or £120 for additional weeks or people who have taken the basic course previously. Topics include use of archaeological tools, principles of stratigraphy, surveying, writing and drawing, sessions on finds, landscape, post-excavation processing. Lunch & tea/coffee free. Details from Mrs. Pauline Dalton, Roseleigh, Epping Road, Epping, Essex CM16 5HW, tel. 01992813725, email: pmd2@ukonline.co.uk or visit www.weag.org.uk (HADAS have helped WEAG here with resistivity and surveying site). Latest excavation report (2004/5) available price £7 also from above.
