The excavation report of Howe, a multi-period prehistoric site in Orkney, appeared, in 1994 and is reviewed here in detail. The Iron Age levels revealed a series of stone roundhouses and broch-like buildings which – it is claimed – show the local development of these structures in the north. However the evidence for the nature of the structures concerned, and for the dating of the earlier ones, is not really clear enough to support this hypothesis, and the unstable site raises doubts about the primarily defensive nature of the structures. The large quantities of well stratified pottery and other finds have huge research potential, and the writer has undertaken some new work on the rotary querns. The remains of neolithic buildings – including two superimposed chambered cairns – were found underneath the Iron Age levels at the end of the excavations. Fresh fieldwork by the writer is described which suggests that the first tomb was linked to the winter solstice. Clear continuity with the orientation of the later structures can be seen, and it is possible that access to the neolithic structures in the Iron Age was retained by means of an underground chamber. The ceremonial purposes of the site at Howe throughout most of its life may thus have been seriously underestimated.

Two silver vessels from different periods, discovered in the lands of ancient Thrace are studied in this article. They were found several decades ago, but up to now they have only been mentioned in exhibition catalogues and short papers. The Borovo pitcher-rhyton is dated to 390–360 BC and belonged to the famous Odrysian King Kotys I. The upper frieze and lower friezes show Dionysiac scenes. The shape of the pitcher-rhyton and the iconography indicate that this vessel was made in some East Greek workshop located in Ionia. The Stara Zagora skyphos is dated to the mid-first century AD. The vessel shows masks of Dionysos and satyrs, together with other mystic Dionysian attributes. Some of them have deep symbolism connected with fertility, sacred marriage and death. This vessel was probably made in some Italian workshop.

This paper explores links between the archaeology of cauldron deposition during the European Iron Age and the mythology of cauldrons as presented in the early vernacular texts of Wales and Ireland. During the last millennium BC, cauldrons were apparently the focus of repeated ceremonial activity, involving their deliberate deposition in watery contexts. Evidence for such cauldron deposits comes from all over temperate Europe. The medieval mythic texts of Wales and Ireland contain references to cauldrons as instruments of death and resurrection. Models are proposed to explain the possible link between allusions to sacred cauldrons found in the early vernacular myths and their presence in archaeological contexts. It may be that redactors of myth were influenced in their writings by observation of ancient cauldrons either in situ or recovered from watery sites, or that they may have learnt about them through oral tradition.

This paper examines the effects on the landscape of Anglo-Saxon immigration in a frontier zone, on either side of the Cam valley which formed the ancient boundary between East Anglia and Mercia. An examination of the placenames, institutions and landscape archaeology on either side of the Cam frontier appears to reveal an unexpected degree of continuity in landscape use between the Roman and middle Saxon periods. This apparent continuity is more marked on the eastern side of the frontier which was subject to centralized East Anglian control from an early date, than on the western bank where political and administrative fragmentation is more easily demonstrable.

Since the early eighteenth century, on the basis of no particular evidence, the tower standing uncomfortably close to the north choir aisle at Rochester has been attributed to Bishop Gundulf, the builder of the first Romanesque cathedral church begun c.1080. Recently, it has been suggested that the tower dates to the mid-twelfth century and was erected as a bell tower. This paper assembles the documented history of the tower, speculates about its original form, and presents comparative material. Early post-Conquest towers of a possible defensive function and the few known examples of free-standing bell towers in twelfth-century England are considered in an attempt to establish a date and function for the tower. On the basis of this evidence, it may be suggested that an early post-Conquest – and pre-Gundulf – date is more likely than one in the mid-twelfth century, and that it was more probably erected for defensive purposes rather than as a bell tower.

Tintern is one of the best-known monastic sites in the British Isles, even if its architectural history is less well understood than assertions in the general literature might suggest. This study focusses upon a distinct group of ex situ masonry fragments until recently dispersed across the site. As reconstructed on paper, the material represents the remarkable ‘rediscovery’ of a hitherto unattributed fourteenth-century pulpitum screen. The stylistic context for the feature lies largely within the great architectural lodges of south-west England. There are strong grounds for suggesting that its designer was the innovative master, William Joy. If this attribution is correct, the commission is probably to be dated to the later 1320s, and no later than c 1330. The fact that the patrons for this prestigious work were the White Monks of Tintern serves only to underline its importance. From the surviving evidence, the construction of such an elaborate pulpitum within a British Cistercian context appears to have been an especially rare occurrence.

Five building contracts dating from the early 1460s are fully transcribed and interpreted, and their terms are explained in a glossary. They relate to four domestic properties in the west Suffolk town of Bury St Edmunds and a rural barn four miles away. As well as mentioning important structural details such as the differential spacing of studs and the use of green timber, these contracts reveal that the domestic houses of Bury were advanced in design. One open-hall is replaced by a ‘parlour’ with screens passage and jettied solar above; two completely new houses were to be continuously jettied against the street. Fashionable decorative features such as oriel windows and carved shafts were deliberately copied from other houses in the town.

The paper discusses a tournament-helm from Lullingstone Church, Kent, which was identified as ‘English … of the first quarter of the sixteenth century’ by the late Sir James Mann in a paper read at a meeting of the Society, at which it was exhibited, on 22 October 1931. It was not then noticed that the helm is struck twice with the well-known mark of an armourer who was working for the Habsburg Court in Brussels in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A possible identification of the owner of the mark is given together with a reassessment of a group of related helms from funerary achievements in this country once thought to be English.

A group of unusual, large, rectangular ceramic tiles excavated from the abbey church of Bordesley (Worcestershire) is presented. These tiles were handmade locally, using the sgraffiato technique, and have part of two inscriptions in English. The larger inscription, which combines Lombardie capitals with black letter, was commemorative. The stratigraphie context suggests that the tiles were originally laid in the retrochoir in the late fifteenth to early sixteenth century as part of a tiled setting over a grave. A review of examples of other special purpose tiles made using the sgraffiato technique illustrates the adaption of this technique for individual funerary memorials.

The paper discusses an unsigned London made sector, a mathematical instrument which provides instrumental solutions to trigonometrical problems. The instrument is identified as being made to the design published by Sir Jonas Moore in 1673 with scales specifically intended for use in drawing ground plans for fortifications. It encapsulates the codified design rules of various seventeenth century engineers. One of the fortification scales which adopts general rules of the Count de Pagan, is attributed to Charles II. The use of the sector is explained and the Carolian design parameters compared with others. Consideration of the design work of the King's Engineer, Sir Bernard de Gomme, suggests that his Royal Master may have influenced that engineer's acceptance of Pagan's rules. Specifically de Gomme's design for Tilbury Fort is seen to follow design ratios probably attributable to Charles II and issued on a medal in 1666.

For almost six and a half centuries, the wardens (and later the Deans) of St George's Chapel have been lodged in the extreme north-east corner of the Lower Ward at Windsor Castle. From fairly modest beginnings, the house developed into a much grander building, after the construction of a huge new chapel in the late fifteenth century. After the Elizabethan settlement it developed further and was a childhood home of Sir Christopher Wren, before being vandalized in the Commonwealth period. Following the Reformation, it was reconstructed and then given a grand new front in 1710 for the first of a series of aristocratic Deans. The final major rebuilding was carried out in 1831 immediately after the demise of George IV, and the house was used by Queen Victoria as a sort of ‘confessional’ and very private access to the royal pew after her widowhood. Today it is still a fine house after being reduced in size for twentieth-century Deans who do not have large families and many servants. Its rendered south front can still be seen immediately behind the buttressed east end of the Albert Memorial Chapel (fig. 1).

The windows of the Great Hall, the Chapel, the Porch, the Priest's Chamber and ‘Queen Anne's Bedroom’ are all garnished with stained glass – figures, roundels, coats of arms, and interesting fragments from a variety of sources English and Continental, and of all centuries from the fifteenth to the twentieth. The most striking are perhaps the four Oxford scholars in the Great Hall, wearing their medical gowns, with the seventeenth-century arms of the Due de Guise below; the three medieval Flemish roundels in Queen Anne's Room; and in the Chapel the Virtues inspired by Reynolds’ designs for New College, Oxford, alongside a late nineteenth-century Crucifixion, no doubt by C.E. Kempe & Co. The collection as a whole is fully worthy of a fine historic house.