In the days of King Edward the Confessor the Manor of Eye next Westminster, entered as Eia in Domesday Book, was held of Queen Edith by William the Chamberlain. This William, to use the significant words of the record, lost the manor (manerium amisit) at the Conquest by William of Normandy, when it fell into the possession of Geoffrey de Manneville or Mandeville (latinized as Magna Villa), who, as perhaps chief of the Conqueror's companions in arms, profited in the acquisition of some 118 English manors, situated in ten counties, chiefly in Essex and Suffolk. This baron by many tenures, about twenty years after the Conquest, being in possession of the Manor of Eye adjoining the estate of the Abbey of Westminster, and no doubt desiring in a measure to atone for his misdeeds, gave the manor to the Abbey. He, in the words of the grant, “for his soul and the soul of Athelays his wife buried in the cloister of Saint Peter, where next to her he also was to be buried, and for the souls of his sons and daughters, gave to Saint Peter of Westminster the manor which near his church he had held, namely Eye, in perpetual heritage,” etc. The grant is undated.

I beg to submit through you to the Society of Antiquaries, drawings, from actual admeasurement, by Mr. C. W. Edmonds, of that interesting monument of the Celtic period, popularly known as “Wayland Smith's Cave,” (PI. XVII.) situated at Ashbury, in the county of Berks.

At a period when Antiquarian researches are prosecuted with so much zeal and vigour, anything that may assist our knowledge of the manners and customs of the early races in Britain cannot but prove interesting. We are, it is to be hoped, no longer in danger of seeing the most curious remains of antiquity gradually perishing under the united assaults of ignorance and cupidity.

The following extracts have been made by me, by the kind permission of the Bishop of Lincoln, from certain fragments of visitation books and detached papers connected therewith in the possession of his lordship. They range from 1473 to 1627, and are, as will be seen, of very varying degrees of interest; some of them are perhaps so trivial that it may seem almost an intrusion to bring them under the notice of the Society of Antiquaries; but all have at least a local interest, and the originals from which they are copied are many of them in a state of such rapid decay that it is to be feared, if they be not now preserved by being printed, that all memory of them may be lost.

The re-excavation of this well-known barrow was undertaken at the suggestion and cost of Sir Edmund Davis (upon whose estate it is situated) after the recent publication of Dr. R. Austin Freeman's novel, The Penrose Mystery, in which it largely figures. With the ready consent of the Commissioners of His Majesty's Office of Works, the work was carried out in July 1936, and the writer had the assistance either for the whole or part of the time of Miss M. E. Greenwood, Dr. S. Graham Brade-Birks, and Sir Edward Harrison; and our thanks are due to Mr. H. Read Gillett, Sir Edmund Davis's agent, for much valuable help.

The linear patterns on British mirrors and other bronzes show with what zest the Celtic craftsmen of the first centuries B.C. and A.D. copied and adapted the triquetral design in relief exemplified on the well-known bronze plaque from Llyn Cerrig Bach, Anglesey (fig. 1).

On the other hand, the evidence for the continued use and development of this attractive asymmetric motif in plastic art is but slight, and any additional example of fine metalwork thus decorated is welcome.

Such a specimen, an open-work disc in cast bronze, is here figured (pl. I). It is mentioned by our Fellow Mr. E. T. Leeds in his Celtic Ornament (p. 56), and this led the writer to ask our Fellow Mr. D. B. Harden, Keeper of Antiquities at the Ashmolean Museum, for facilities for its study, and thereafter for permission to publish, both requests being readily granted. The Museum number is N.C. 448. The disc appears, Mr. Harden tells me, in a catalogue of c. 1879–80, at which time, apparently, its origin and date of accession were unknown, as they were left blank in the catalogue.

Marwell Hall Hampshire (fig. I), N. G. Ref. SU 508217, stands in the middle of the well known Zoological Park, and now serves as the main administrative building of Marwell Preservation Trust. Until a few years ago, it was supposed that the house dated originally from the reign of Elizabeth I, though it had clearly been extensively refashioned in Tudor-Gothick style in the early nineteenth century; indeed Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (Pevsner and Lloyd 1967, 331) considered that the house had been completely built in the latter period.

The origins of the coach in England have never been clearly documented, but the very complete records of the royal wardrobe in the reign of Queen Elizabeth reveal her part in their introduction, and the extent of her lavish expenditure on the creation and repair of coaches from 1564 until her death four hundred years ago. Detailed descriptions of eleven new coaches, and the repairs to a number of gifts from her courtiers, record the astonishing richness and quality of these machines. This suggests that the furnishings, decoration and trappings of both horse and carriage were both an extension of the queen's costume, and also a significant part of the public persona of the monarch.