Newsletter
HADAS EVENTS 2008
Tues 12 February Lecture by Christopher Sparey-Green, BA MIFA ‘The Archaeology of Dorset – A Time-Torn landscape’
Tues 11 March lecture by Chloe Cockerill – Regional Development Manager ‘The Work of the Churches Conservation Trust’
Tues 8 April lecture by Peter Davey – Bristol Tram Photographic Collection ‘Clifton Rocks Railway’
Tues 13 May lecture by Angela Wardle – MOLAS Finds Specialist ‘Finds From Roman London’ Angela hopes to present some results of a Roman London glass working project and talk about the Roman London website with an online finds catalogue
The winter lecture series is held, as ever, at Avenue House, 17 East End Road, Finchley. Nearest tube Finchley Central. Lectures start promptly at 8pm, non-members £1, coffee/biscuits 80p.
AN IMPORTANT DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES by DON COOPER
The next HADAS long weekend trip will take place from Wednesday 27th August 2008 to Sunday 31st August 2008. The accommodation will be at Bishop Burton College (single rooms only I’m afraid) near Beverley, South Yorkshire. The detailed programme is still being worked on, but highlights of the trip will include a day in Lincoln, the Humber Bridge (one of the world’s longest single-span suspension bridges – see www.humberbridge.co.uk), the thirteenth-century Beverley Minster with its medieval gothic architecture and Saxon sanctuary chair (see www.beverleyminster.org.uk) in the market and festival town of Beverley in East Yorkshire, Wilberforce birthplace Kingston-upon-Hull’s Hull and East Riding Archaeological Museum (part of Hull’s ‘Museums Quarter’, with Maritime Museum and Streetlife Museum of Transport nearby – www.hullcc.gov.uk), St Peter’s Anglo-Saxon church in Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincs, excavated 1978-84, with its thegn’s tower museum and new ‘Bones Alive!’ exhibition (as featured in Current Archaeology 214, January 2008), Thornton Abbey with its enormous gatehouse, called the ‘finest surviving in Britain’ by English Heritage, Skidby Windmill and Museum of East Riding Rural Life, and, possibly, Wharram Percy, the remains of a medieval village, for those who have never been there. The cost, including four nights accommodation with breakfast, dinner and a packed lunch at Bishop Burton College and a coach throughout our stay, will be approximately £350 per person. Places will be limited and a deposit of £50 will be required during March for those wishing to travel.
HADAS Christmas Event by Ken Carter
St. Lawrence, Whitchurch/Finchley Chamber Choir
Tuesday 18th December, 2007
The surprise of St Lawrence’s exterior struck grey and chill on a very cold night in Little Stanmore. Without frost, the two-acre churchyard had no glitter. Rearing up towards the sky is a c.1500 brick, stone and flint tower [with much red Roman tile, possibly from a kiln whose waster dump was found in ‘The Spinney’ nearby and excavated by the Museum of London in the 1970s – Ed], deprived of its original mediaeval nave. Jammed in its place is an early-C18 temple in continental baroque style, the grand project of James Brydges, the 1st Duke of Chandos around 1715, extended to include a mausoleum in 1735. St Lawrence’s is apparently Britain’s only such parish church (following Vanburgh at Blenheim or Hawksmoor in the City).
We huddled into oak-box pews, original. Gathering before the altar, the organ and flanking murals, the Finchley Chamber Choir sang for us – in confident, stylish and practised manner – two of George Frederic Handel’s familiar Coronation Anthems for King George II and Queen Caroline’s Coronation in 1727 (Zadok the Priest – sung at every British coronation since – and Let Thy Hand Be Strengthened). David Lardi directed gustily and amiably. The experience had rare authenticity – this small, well-trained choir sang in the intimate atmosphere of the church where first performances had taken place, John Winter accompanying them on the organ (case of 1716 possibly by Grinling Gibbons) with newly-restored works (Goetze & Gwynn) producing sound close to that which Handel made. At the finish of the ‘surprise’ third item – We Wish You A Merry Christmas – a soprano’s high note resounded around the nave quite spectacularly. Handel – the Dukes’ composer-in-residence around 1717-1718 – composed 11 Chandos Anthems for a staff of twenty or so musicians.
Sheila Woodward filled in some background: – Canons, Chandos’s mansion, a ‘most magnificent palace’ according to Daniel Defoe, was constructed concurrently with the St Lawrence modernisation, to replace its Tudor predecessor after Brydges made a fortune out of being the Duke of Marlborough’s Paymaster-General; Canons was dismantled and the parts sold off in lots by the debt-laden second duke between 1747 and 1753, following the Duke’s huge losses in the South Sea Bubble of 1720 and his death in 1744 – part of the portico apparently survives at the Hendon Hall Hotel. Chandos employed the same ‘continental’ masters for both edifices (Belluci, Laguerre and Sleter); the church interior’s continental baroque encompasses coloured scenes on the ceiling and on the east wall, behind altar and organ, designed to present the whole scheme of Christian salvation with ‘trompe l’oeil’ figures of the four evangelists in grisaille. The Chandos pew, entered through a door in the tower at first floor level, faced the altar along the length of the nave with its complete set of box pews. The mausoleum, a later addition and definitely the coldest place in the church, primarily accommodates a sculpture in Roman style of the Duke, flanked by his first two wives.
By now, we were pleasantly and warmly ready for our HADAS Christmas Dinner at the Apollonia Restraint, Stanmore. And our thanks go to Jim and Jo Nelhams for organising it all, and to Christopher Newbury for kindly providing himself and his minibus for transport!
NB – the HADAS finds archive stored at Avenue House includes seven fragments of imbrex, tegulae and bonding tile from the vicinity of the Canons Park Roman tile kiln, recovered from the park by Ted Sammes in 1979.
ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE CLAY TOBACCO PIPE, BY PETER HAMMOND
This was a lecture to the City of London Archaeology Society (CoLAS), reported by Andy Simpson
Peter Hammond is an archaeologist and a member of the Society for Clay Pipe Research, which has some 70 members worldwide. His excellent lecture covered the technical and historical development of the clay pipe, with a particular London emphasis, since London was a major centre for clay pipe production, with many made for export.
He explained that he had enjoyed studying clay pipes since childhood, first finding stems in local fields; aged 12, near Nottingham, he found his first bowl, and has been intrigued by them ever since, exploring fields, canals and the Thames at low tide for examples. Clay pipes are an excellent source for social history, being well made and surviving in huge numbers and being so well dated and sourced after years of research by clay pipe enthusiasts; he did his PhD on London Clay Pipes, studying their patterns and markings, and he is doing active research on pipemakers also.
The talk focused on the clay pipes of London; they have been around since the late Tudor period. King James 1 was very anti-smoking, increasing the tax on tobacco. Pipes developed to cater for the smoking habit, increasing in size to the end of the nineteenth century from their sixteenth century beginnings with very small bowls. Pipes are often decorated and have the maker’s name, and can often be closely dated to an exact year of manufacture. Early pipes have few markings. Pioneer archaeological studies of clay pipes were by Oswald and Atkinson in 1969 in their paper ‘London Clay Tobacco Pipes’, since when much more information has been discovered and a more comprehensive list of makers is possible. The size of the bowl gradually increased over time, initially flat heeled to stand upright on the table top. Mid- nineteenth century bowls were often plain and milled around the top of the bowl, and relatively fine-walled compared to those made in Northern England. Spurs on the base of the pipe appeared in the eighteenth century, often with maker’s initials either side or a maker’s mark (name) on the back of the bowl on late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century (1860s-70s) London-made pipes, though in the early and mid-nineteenth century a number of London makers also marked their names in relief along the stems, as done too in southern and eastern England. Scottish makers also practised bowl stamping to some extent. Some were burnished (polished) and may have been more expensive to purchase. It is not always clear who the maker’s initials represent.
There were many pipe makers in parts of the City of London, and there are more makers’ stamps in London than elsewhere in the UK. Some Victorian examples of the 1860s-70s are extremely ornate, such as Masonic emblems, plus Generals and actors, and some makers actually registered the designs to prevent them from being copied by others. A fluted bowl design was common in London and Eastern England. Three complete pipes were found in the recently excavated Tower of London moat, being very rare survivals of the ‘Churchwarden’ type nearly two feet long. Many of this type were made at Broseley, Shropshire, possibly being so-called due to the length of Vicar’s meetings.
Late Victorian London pipes were made in various localities such as King’s Cross, Shoreditch, Poplar, Stepney, and south of the river at Southwark, Lambeth, Bermondsey and Clapham and with particular concentrations in the east and south-east, often with the makers having moved to London from elsewhere in the country. Documentary research into pipemakers covers parishes through Parish records such as registers of baptisms, marriage records and census returns, and nineteenth century trade directories, issued annually by 1840.
From a base of 25 makers during the early 1820s, clay pipe manufacture in London peaked in 1856, with 84 pipemakers recorded at the time, with Briar and Meerschaum types also being produced; after that, numbers gradually declined, reflecting the pattern in many other parts of the country, to just 66 in 1880. In 1853 makers of pipes for export are first distinguished.
A Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipemakers was established, but faded away soon after the 1860s. Pipes were normally sold by the dozen or by the gross rather than individually, and by 1872 the cheapest regular pipes were one shilling per dozen. Cutty (short) pipes could be had for 10d per dozen. The maker’s wives were often pipe trimmers, removing excess mould material, and many pipemakers were apprenticed to learn the trade. Peter Hammond is in contact with their descendant families.
As a relatively small industry, there was a well-developed social network; pipemakers often kept pubs. Firing the kiln was a skilled job, but it was a low-paid trade. Registration of pipe design ended after around 1874 as a gradual decline set in. Victorian pipemakers sometimes copied older bowl shapes dating back to the eighteenth century, as deliberately ‘antique’ designs. One pipemaker, Ebenezer Church of Pentonville, near St. Pancras, had rat designs on the stem and bowl.
Local clays used in the seventeenth century were off-white or yellow, succeeded by china clay from Cornwall brought in as railways and canals developed in the nineteenth century. Makers would actually taste the clay to see if it was suitable for use. They could have their own kiln in their family backyard, or share a kiln between several families, rarely being factory based, though occasionally in London, Manchester and other big cities up to 20 people could be employed at a pipemakers. More usually the workforce was no more than eight journeymen. The National Archives at Kew have a register of pipe designs in the nineteenth century, riflemen were a popular design in the 1860s with the growth of rifle clubs, and a Negro’s head was often the sign of a tobacconist. Pipes were of course very disposable; short pipes were known as ‘nose warmers’, and short ‘cutty’ pipes were in common use.
Pipes have a great archaeological and social research value, allowing study of the maker’s inter-relationships and hierarchy. In the eighteenth century, maker’s names were common on the backs of bowls from pipes made in London, but not in the rest of the UK. Of those that are stamped in the regions, 70% are linked with London makers. Peter Hammond has studied the Museum of London and British Museum clay pipe collections, and is always interested to see others.
Sadly, many of the skilled pipe maker’s two-piece cast iron pipe moulds were melted down for scrap during the two world wars; by the time of the Great War, cigarettes were rapidly killing off use of the clay pipe.
A few pipe makers survived in London into the 1950s making pipes for fairground shooting galleries; now, even the long-established Pollock’s of Manchester has closed, despite producing pipes into the 1980s. Today, a few small-scale pipemakers survive, such as at the former William Southern works at Broseley, near Ironbridge.
ASSOCIATION OF BRITISH TRANSPORT & ENGINEERING MUSEUMS (ABTEM) AUTUMN SEMINAR AND ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
LEARNING IN TRANSPORT AND ENGINEERING MUSEUMS
TUESDAY 2 OCTOBER 2007 THE BRUNEL MUSEUM, ROTHERHITHE, LONDON
A REPORT BY ANDY SIMPSON
The splendid Brunel Museum in Railway Avenue, Rotherhithe, in south-east London celebrates Brunel’s Thames Tunnel built between 1825 and 1843 and is housed in the Brunel Engine House – a scheduled building with riverside gardens. It is open daily, and covers the careers of both Brunels, father Marc and son Isambard. Further information on www.brunel-museum.org.uk
It is close to Rotherhithe Station on the East London Underground line, shortly to close for refurbishment and extension as the East London Railway. The original tunnel, first opened as a pedestrian route beneath the River Thames from Wapping to Rotherhithe in 1843, now forms part of the route of the tube line, being the oldest tunnel on the present London Underground. Marc Brunel employed his then 19-year old son Isambard as resident engineer. His work through the many physical and financial tribulations of the project won him the respect of the miners employed to dig the double tunnel through treacherous soft and marshy ground beneath the Thames using a cast-iron tunnelling shield invented by Marc Brunel. The tunnel, was then lined with brick. Although it was relined in the mid 1990s sections of original lining are still visible.
The shield, as shown by a model in the museum, housed 36 miners at a time, each in their own cell, cutting soil four inches at a time, looking out for sudden floods (five major floods during construction, one of which almost killed Isambard Brunel) and explosions of marsh gas. Seven men drowned during the digging. After 20 years as an underwater shopping arcade and fairground, the tunnel was sold to the East London Railway in 1865, opening for railway freight and passenger use in 1869.
Currently undergoing building work to improve facilities such as toilets, and aided by funding from the HLF Outreach Grant to fund a part-time education officer, the Museum in the Brunel Engine House now attracts over 11,500 visitors per year, from an original level of just 500 per year in 2002, and is greatly involved in community and local school projects, including, as delegates saw, the furnishing and decoration of its gardens.
The meeting was kindly hosted by Robert Hulse, Curator of the Brunel Museum, and three interesting presentations were given to nineteen ABTEM delegates, on Museum Education, Adult Education (report reproduced below, with so many HADAS members involved in Adult Education), and a case study on the Heritage Motor Centre, Gaydon, Warwickshire.
A new web page ‘Learn with Museums’ (www.learnwithmuseums.org.uk) is helping to develop on-line resources for teaching and learning with Museums in the East Midlands. There are downloadable images for pupils and teachers. On line – adding value – provision of services for teachers, and engaging children with access to new material, plus skills development for museum and archive staff.
Continuing Education – The Adult Experience Denis Smith, Engineering Historian
The speaker has been involved with Extra Mural Studies for some 40 years. The three ages of man are school/further or higher education, work, and retirement. In 2005, over 20,000 people over the age of 65 were studying for a degree. This figure does not include postgraduate students in the ‘Third Age’ – now truly ‘Lifelong Learning’.
George Birkbeck was the pioneer of adult education, born in 1776 to a Westmoreland Quaker background. In 1800 he began a free course of Saturday evening lectures for artisans – from such beginnings grew the Mechanics Institutions, feeding the need for young apprentices; such institutions, with their informal learning, expanded enormously in the nineteenth century, serving the artisan/’respectable working class’ desire for education. A famous example is the Great Western Railway Apprentices’ School at Swindon. Birkbeck’s name lives on today – indeed, the writer of this piece spends Wednesday evenings on a University of London/Birkbeck College archaeological post-excavation course, processing finds and archives from London archaeology sites for publication. Students on such courses build up Credit Accumulation and Transfer Scheme (CATS) points towards award of a degree, even to those without a single O-level/GCSE. After two years on his course, your scribe now has 60 CATS points; completing an assignment this academic year will give another 30 – enough (90) to claim a Certificate in Archaeology – a further year and another 30 CATS points leads to a Diploma, equivalent to the first year of an undergraduate degree course. If I attain 360 CATS points that is equivalent to an undergraduate degree.
From 1854, Working Men’s Clubs, run by Christian academics to share their knowledge with working men and apprentices were established. People went because they wanted to. The Worker’s Educational Association (WEA) was founded in 1903 and by 2003 ran courses for 110,000 adults. The University of the Third Age – U3A – began in Toulouse, France, in 1972, for retired people wishing to continue their education. The UK’s founder members joined in 1978. A U3A group can be set up anywhere, with a fee paid to attend meetings, though as volunteers share their knowledge with others, the lecturers receive no payment. As people live longer, it is an affordable pastime. The speaker warned of the danger of doing superficial things to get people through the doors of your museum.
Highlight of the afternoon, after an excellent canapé lunch, was the floodlit journey through the Thames Tunnel, kindly arranged with London Underground by Robert Hulse who led the walking tour and train ride – the lights in the tunnel were specially turned on, and our normal service train run at walking pace to permit us to view its arched construction – a rare treat. Standing inside the original tunnel (now lift) shafts was certainly impressive. The Brunel Museum hopes to install a viewing platform inside one of the shafts as part of its expansion plans.
HISTORIC BARNET PHOTOS ONLINE
A new service from Barnet Local Studies is publication of ’Image Bank’ – an image database of an initial 500 pictures (from a total collection of some 16000 – it is hoped to add more) from the collection that can be browsed on the internet from the Barnet website (www.barnet.gov.uk/archives). Where little detail is known, people can add detail to the pictures by completing an online form.
NEW SERIES OF TIME TEAM
That time-honoured feature of winter Sunday evenings is back- the new series of Time Team. Channel 4, around 5.45pm (times and transmission order may vary-details from the Unofficial Time Team web site, www.timeteam.klz.com); Series started 6 January. See also the official site, www.channel4.com/history/timeteam.
3 February Mysteries of the Mosaic (Near Cheltenham, Glos) 10 February Blitzkrieg on Shooter’s Hill (South London) 17 February Keeping Up With The Georgians (Hunstrete, Somerset) 24 February Saxons on the Edge (Mkt Harborough, Leics) 2 March The Fort of the Earls (Dungannon, Ntn Ireland) 9 March From Constantinople to Cornwall (Padstow, N. Cornwall) 16 March Five Thousand Tons of Stone (Hamsterley, Co Durham) 23 March The Romans Recycle (Wickenby, Lincs) 30 March Hunting King Harold (Portskewett, S. Wales)
WORK IN THE GARDEN ROOM – BURROUGHS GARDENS EXCAVATION
Further to Bill Bass’s report in the previous newsletter, work continues on evaluation of the Burroughs Gardens 1972 site archive. Using standard LAARC recording forms, the approximately 100 clay pipes, of which around 80% are our old friend Andrews of Highgate type AO27, 1780 – 1820 (Thanks, Sigrid!), and about 60 coins, the earliest being George III, 1806 (thanks too Vicki, Natalie and Bill!), and other small finds have now been listed (glassware next), and work continues on interpreting the site plans and stratigraphy, which seemingly involves two phases of brick building and a substantial brick drain above a layer of buried soil which contained much medieval pottery at the front of the site closest to the Burroughs. The finds have now been fully re-boxed and re-bagged, and cleaned where necessary. There are many coins of nineteenth/twentieth century date, many found in a doorway sealed by a late 1940s concrete slab. There is even a stray1940s Irish Florin! It would appear from the site archive, which Peter N. is starting to interpret, that following the demolition of the six nineteenth century terraced houses, nos. 31-41 The Burroughs, in 1972, HADAS found beneath their footings the incomplete brick footings of an earlier building at the north end of the site. This lay over and cut through the dark layer containing much thirteenth-fourteenth century greyware pottery.
LAST MINUTE ADDITION – TWO MORE OUTINGS FOR YOUR DIARY!
Don Cooper reports; We are proposing an outing to the Bath area on 17 May 2008. Please put a note in your diaries and, also, an outing to West Sussex on 5 July 2008. Full details to follow in subsequent newsletters.
OTHER SOCIETIES’ LECTURES & EVENTS ERIC MORGAN
Thursday 7 February 8pm Pinner Local History Society, Village Hall, Chapel Lane Car Park, Pinner WEMBLEY PARK – 1750 TO PRESENT. Talk by Geoffrey Hewlett Visitors £2.
Sunday 10 February 2pm BARNET CHURCHES Guided walk – meet outside Barnet College, Wood St. A stroll around some of the churches of High Barnet & Monken Hadley, led by Paul Baker. Cost £6.
Monday 11 February 3pm Barnet & District Local History Society, Church House, Wood St (opposite Museum), Barnet IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE FAMOUS IN HIGH BARNET Talk by Paul Baker.
Wednesday 13 February 8pm Mill Hill Historical Society, Harwood Hall Union Church, The Broadway NW7 THE BEEFEATERS OF LONDON – Talk by Mike Casson (Yeoman Warder) preceded by AGM.
Sunday 17 February 11am THE HEART OF HIGH BARNET Guided Walk-Meet outside Barnet College, Wood St. Led by Paul Baker. Historical Walk. Costs £6, lasts two hours.
Sunday 24 February 11am THE BATTLE OF BARNET Guided Walk. Meet at junction of Great North Road/Hadley Green Rd. Led by Paul Baker. Cost £6.
Wednesday 20 February 7.30pm Willesden Local History Society, Scout House, High Rd (Corner of Strode Rd) NW10. THE LONDON CITY MISSION & WILLESDEN IN THE 19th CENTURY. Talk by Dr. John Nichols.
Wednesday 27 February 8pm Friern Barnet & District Local History Society, St John’s Church Hall (next to Whetstone Police Station), Friern Barnet Lane, N.20 HISTORY OF CHURCHYARDS Talk by Dr. Michael Worms, Refreshments 7.45pm. Donation £2.
Thursday 28 February 2.30pm Finchley Society. Drawing Room, Avenue House, East End Rd, N3 MR PEPYS & HIS DIARY Talk by Brenda Cole. Non-Members £2.
Sunday 2 March, 2.30pm Heath & Hampstead Society Meet at Entrance to the Kitchen Garden, Kenwood (Off Hampstead Lane N6) HIDDEN HEATH – A LOOK AT HISTORICAL & ARCHAEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE HEATH Walk led by Michael Hammerson, Highgate Archaeologist & HADAS Member. 2hrs – £2 Donation. .
