Newsletter-127-September-1981

West Heath Dig: The area under threat of erosion has finally been excavated at West Heath, but there are still one or two problems needing answers in this our last season, writes Daphne Lorimer. The 1981 season started on Saturday August 29 and will continue throughout September and October, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays as well as Saturdays and Sundays. As many people as possible are wanted (beginners need have no fears as they will receive training). Do come and make 1981 as happy and successful as all the other seasons.

NORTHAMPTON AND AROUNDJulia Rawlings and Robert Michel report on the August outing

Another day damned bright and clear for the August HADAS outing, and some 45 members set out to explore the historical delights of Northampton and surrounding area.

Roy Friendship-Taylor met us at Piddington and led us to the site of a large Roman villa on which he and his friends from the Upper Nene Archaeological Society are currently engaged. Work has been going on for approximately 2½ years following the rediscovery of the site by a metal detector wielded by the local vicar. While much damage has been caused by treasure hunters and farming methods, there is still a great deal to be learnt from the site.

A vast quantity of tessera has been collected and many pieces are of good quality and are in various colours. Plaster fragments have also been found and are thought to have come mainly from decorated ceilings in the villa. Roman roof tile fragments abound, and all these finds are useful in dating the levels, as so far relatively little other material has come to light.

The villa was probably started in about AD 100 and it covers an ex­tensive area some distance from the parameters of the current exca­vation. The number of rooms with evidence of a heating system leads us to suppose that this must once have been a particularly grand villa. Perhaps one of the most interesting features is a corridor floor with tiles set herringbone fashion in alternating bands of yellow and red, and the quality of this floor strengthens Mr Friendship-Taylor’s opinion of the importance of this villa.

 With the decline of the Roman Empire, the villa was used variously as a store for domestic goods and as an industrial site.

 Next on the programme was the Eleanor Cross on the outskirts of Northampton. This is one of the three remaining original crosses and it is such a pity that monuments like this prove so popular with the “Fred was ‘ere” brigade. Nevertheless, Edward I’s engaging memorial to his dead wife was enthusiastically recorded by HADAS photographers who expertly times their masterpieces to coincide with the occasional gaps in the traffic.

 Hunsbury Hill Fort, sadly overgrown, must have presented a stiff challenge to the average member’s imagination. The task was not an easy one: it was necessary to sweep away the undergrowth, fell the circle of dense trees and banish the adjacent picnic tables to reveal an early Iron Age single ditch and bank hill fort, badly damaged by 19th century ironstone quarrying.

 In Northampton, members were free to wander as they pleased. Ted Sammes’ annotated maps identified Northampton’s attractions: the Leathercraft Museum, the Central Museum, the rare, round church of the Holy Sepulchre – we seemed spoilt for choice. We, ourselves, elected to visit the round church, which proved a fascinating mixture of ecclesiastical architecture of all ages.

Assembly in the Co-op restaurant for tea brought together a selec­tion of church and museum guides as well as second-hand books and other shopping – testimony to the many and varied interests of the members and evidence of how much could be achieved by so few in so short a time.

Grateful thanks are due to our leader for the day, Ted Sammes, and to Dorothy Newbury and the other people without whom the day would not have been the sweltering success it was.

A SMALL BOY’S RECOLLECTIONS OF THE START OF HENDON AERODROME

As an appetiser to Bill Firth’s report of the HADAS visit to Hendon Aerodrome as it is now – delayed for approval by the RAF authorities – we print an account of the aerodrome’s earlier days. It comes from Mr George Johnston, who some weeks ago wrote to the local paper from his home in the country saying he remembered the development of the aerodrome. HADAS wrote and asked Mr Johnston to put his memories on paper – and this is the result.

I was born in 1903 at Priory Hill, 63 Sunny Gardens, and the family moved in 1907 to St Ann’s, Sunningfields Road. At that time there was a field in Sunningfield Road which overlooked the Midland Railway and the land that was to become the aerodrome. It was used as a playground by the local boys to whom it was known as Hepple’s field after Miss Hepple who ran a small girls’ school in the road and where the girls played hockey. The field became allotments at the beginning of the 1914-18 war and has now been built over.

It was also possible to see the aerodrome from the gardens of St Ann’s but more especially from the “house in the tree”, a wooden building constructed around a large tree. The building had a proper staircase, was some 10 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet high and was some. 15 feet above ground.

It was from these three spots that I was able to see the development of the aerodrome.

Until the building of hangars for the planes started the site was fields and quite rural. The land was farmed by a Mr Dunlop and was part of Church Farm. He and my father used to go partridge shooting over it every September. Later on each winter there used to be meetings of the drag hounds at The Greyhound. The run was across the fields to Mill Hill and back on the west side of the railway to their original starting point.

The fact that Church Farm had a 40 acre field although it was not entirely clear of trees brought flying to Hendon. It had in fact a few oaks and on the north western edge there was a spinney with a small pond.

I cannot be certain which was the first plane to come to Hendon. It may well have been Louis Paulham’s Farman or it might have been a Bleriot belonging to Messrs Everitt and Edgecomb, an electrical engineering firm whose factory was in Colindale and where my brother Rutherford worked in 1915 for l¼ (old money) an hour. The chances are that the first plane to fly was Paulham’s Farman. In 1910 it was entered for the Daily Mail £10,000 prize for the first person to fly from London to Manchester. After waiting all morning in Hepple’s field I saw it take off in mid afternoon.

It set off in the direction of Hampstead as Hendon was not considered part of London. Then it came back and set off on its way. It had to land once but took off again and late in the evening landed at Manchester.

The only other competitor was Claude Grahame White. As soon as he heard that Louis Paulham had taken off he too started and although he tried to fly guided by car headlights he had to land and did not reach Manchester until the next morning, by train.

rom that time onwards, thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit of Grahame White and supported by handsome prizes presented by the Daily Mail, the aerodrome made good progress.

In 1911 there was a round Great Britain competition. The race started from Brooklands on Saturday and the planes were due to reach Hendon in the afternoon. The Daily Mail recommended to onlookers to go into the churchyard of St Mary’s and this they did in their thousands. They then spread into Sunningfields Park or fields as it then was. It was an exceptionally hot day, with little breeze. As we were looking over the garden fence someone asked if we could give them a glass of water as they felt very faint. Immediately we were besieged with people so much that jugs of water were insufficient and we had to lay on a garden hose to satisfy the demand.

The competitors had to take off at dawn on the Sunday and as it was a perfect summer’s night hundreds of people camped out in the fields ready for the morning flight. The noise of laughing and shouting was devastatingly increased by the sound of a one-string fiddle being played as it was on this and every Saturday by someone on Greyhound Hill. So disturbing was the uproar that the police were contacted, only to get the reply: “They are passing the police station (then in Brent Street) in droves.”

During the three years before the war the number and types of planes using the aerodrome increased greatly. There were Henri Farmans, Maurice Farmans with their large front elevators, Deper-dussins, Valkyries, a monoplane with a front elevator, a main plane with a propellor behind it and a tail plane with two rudders. This plane was designed by two enthusiasts, Barber and Prentice, who afterwards built the Viking. This was probably the first bi­plane with two pulling propellors driven by chains from a centrally placed engine. It was not a very great success but it started a style which was to lead to considerable developments.

Then there were Grahame Whites, Bleriots, Caudrons made in France, and occasionally S.F. Cody would fly his heavy biplane over from Farnborough.

After a year or two displays of night flying became common on summer Saturday nights. The planes, lit by a row of electric lights on their wings, flew around the aerodrome about 200-300 feet off the ground.

Another event in 1911 was the first aerial post from Hendon to Windsor. This went on for a week, the planes taking off every day carrying the mail. It was more of a curiosity than serving any useful purpose. Still, everything has to have a start. The week was not without its excitements as one plane, a Maurice Farman, could not reach the aerodrome on its return flight and had to land in a field next to the present Sunningfields Park. After some servicing it was able to get back to its starting place.

In the 12 months before the war a Frenchman called Pegout had looped the loop in France. The first man to do so at Hendon was, I think, B.C. Hucks. Another celebrated pilot was Gustav Hamel and he flew often from Hendon.

In the early weeks of the war he disappeared on his way back from France. No-one knew what happened to him. One suggestion, probably correct, was that his plane landed in the Channel, the other was that he was a German spy and had gone home when things got too hot in this country.

.All during the years the aerodrome had been developing flying schools had been increasing and more and more pilots had been turned out. When the war’started-there was. a. tendency for civilians to be re- placed by Army and Navy officers and later, of course, by the Royal Flying Corps.This. andother wartime activities lead to more flying, especially during the week and as my generation of boys grew up there was less timet to devote to watching planes and :our general interest in. what was., happening on the other side of the old Midland Railway declined.

It was once more stimulated when in about 1915 a Zeppelin dropped some bombs one night in the fields close to the Silkstream and one actually in the aerodrome near to the railway line.

POTTED HISTORY

Members who have followed-the excavations by Harvey Sheldon and Tony Brown of the Roman pottery production site in Highgate Wood will be happy to know that some of the fruits of their labours will soon be permanently on display locally.

One of the five kilns they uncovered has been presented to the Bruce Castle Museum in Tottenham on permanent loan and work has just finished on restoring it – after being split into sections for removal it was, in the words of museum curator Claire Tartan, “in a slightly fragmentary condition”.

Now she and her colleagues are working on the display of which the kiln will be a principal feature. They’re preparing background material and waiting for more examples of the Highgate Wood pottery – still being studied prior to publication of the final report on the site-. but hope all will be ready early in the new year,

Meanwhile, the museum is happy to show the kiln to specialists, keen amateurs or organised groups. But make arrangements first, by writing to the museum, in Bruce Grove ,N17,.or phoning 808 8772.

BOOKSHELF

Brigid Grafton Green reviews Ancient Agricultural Implements by Sian E. Rees (Shire archaeology,£1.95)

Shire Publications has recently added three titles to its archaeology list, and this is one of them. The book opens by stating that-“by-the end of the-Roman period in Britain all the agricultural implements that were used in Britain until the industrial revolution had been invented”. There were, it continues, improvements – but by 400 AD the basic shape of each implement had been developed.

The author then. takes the three main areas of agriculture – preparation of soil and ploughing, care of the crop during growth and harvest — and describes, in a short text, the evolution of tools in these three departments during the prehistoric and Roman times.

After some 25, pages of text come eight pages of photos and some 30 pages of figures, showing ards, coulters, yokes, hoes, mattocks, spades, sickles, bill-hooks, scythes and rakes.