A small but interesting find of Roman coins was made recently by Mr. Stuart Piggott during his examination of the site at Rams Hill, near Uffington, described in the preceding paper; and I may here recapitulate his description of the discovery. Two adult skeletons were found, buried one above the other, in a ditch which appeared to belong to an enclosure of the Ditchley–Wootton–Fawler–Kiddington type, and of which three sides were defined, suggesting a square 260 ft. across. There had evidently been occupation within this (although a trench encountered no foundations)—probably a wooden building on analogy with Ditchley; and the pottery in the ditch was first-century, with abundant Belgic types. Into the filling of this ditch, or rather in a cleared-out portion of it (since no grave dug through the filling could be detected in the section), the two burials had been deposited, the upper on his back with no grave-goods, the lower on his left side with the coins. Two coins, one silver and one bronze, were enclosed between two thin silver-foil discs folded over each other in the mouth; the other coins (seven) were all together in a compact mass high up against the ribs, a fact which suggests the previous existence of a bag or purse slung round the neck. Thus there is no doubt of the strict contemporaneity of the whole group. There was nothing else to suggest late Roman occupation of the site.

If you deem the following statement of the late discovery of an ancient Canoe near the village of North Stoke, in the west of Sussex, with a description of it, and some observations concerning its probable antiquity, likely to interest or afford pleasure to the Members of the Society of Antiquaries, I would entreat the favour of you to lay it before them; together with a drawing of it, and a plan of the situation where it was found, and you will oblige

This paper brings together the evidence bearing on the relationship between the Society of Antiquaries and the women who contributed to it during a significant period when archaeology, through the work of such men as Samuel Lysons and Richard Colt Hoare, was beginning to emerge as a distinct field with its own conceptual and technical systems. It takes its departure from the first substantial appearance by a woman in the Society's publications in 1776, and continues until the accession of a female monarch, Victoria, in 1837, a period of just over sixty years. It explores what women did and what reception they received and assesses the significance of this within the wider processes of the development of an understanding of the past and the shaping of gender relationships through the medium of material culture, in a period that saw fundamental changes in many areas of intellectual and social life, including levels of material consumption and the sentiments surrounding consumerism.

This paper draws upon documentary, visual and archaeological evidence to chart the development of the sacristy of Westminster Abbey from its construction as one of the earliest parts of the abbey’s thirteenth-century rebuilding to its demolition in the mid-eighteenth century − a story that reflects wider changes of religious and political history.

This paper describes and analyses a previously unrecorded Sarum book of hours of considerable artistic and textual interest. Seven of its pages have bar-frame borders illuminated in a distinctive and remarkable style. Four of these pages also have initials with figure-subjects, some of which are contextually unusual or unique. There is also an initial with a coat of arms displaying a black engrailed cross on a gold field (the arms of Mohun of Dunster in west Somerset). While the manuscript cannot be linked to a member of the Mohun family, the occurrence of a Somerset toponym in an obit dated 1429 in the calendar and the early addition to the litany of St Urith of Chittlehampton show that it was owned by someone who lived in Somerset or Devon in the early fifteenth century. Indeed, the book may also have been made in this region. Several features of its border illumination are paralleled in the Sherborne Missal (London, British Library, Additional ms 74236), produced in north Dorset or Somerset in the decade c 1398–c 1408. The parallels suggest a relationship (not necessarily direct) between the two manuscripts. Certainly, the book of hours discussed here is closer in style to the missal than it is to manuscripts made in or around London in the same period.

This paper seeks to characterise through elemental analysis some unusual gold glass tesserae said to have been found at a Roman villa site in Southwick, West Sussex. The site is no longer accessible, being underneath a Methodist chapel, but it has been excavated, to some extent, on several occasions. Glass tesserae are not common in a British setting but they are by no means unusual in Roman mosaics. Gold glass tesserae, however, in which gold leaf is sandwiched between two layers of glass, are very unusual: fewer than twenty such tesserae are known from Roman Britain and the seven examples from Southwick make up the largest single group. However, the provenance of these Southwick tesserae remains doubtful and so they were analysed and compared to gold glass tesserae from Roman London to try and establish whether they are compositionally related to typical Roman glass. For comparative reasons, the handful of coloured glass tesserae from Southwick were also analysed. Our results suggest that the tesserae said to be from Southwick are anomalous in relation to the other material and cannot be assigned to the Roman period.

This paper describes the contents of an album of photographs taken in 1861–2 by the seventeen-year-old third son of the renowned architect George Gilbert Scott. The album is evidence of the growing popularity of photography as a hobby for amateurs in the 1850s and 1860s as a result of technical developments that made the equipment easier to transport and use in the field. Analysis of the subjects in the album reveals a pioneering interest in vernacular architecture; the album also contains rare and early photographs of railway subjects and the only known portrait of George Gilbert Scott's wife, Caroline Oldrid.

The presbytery vault at St Albans is one of only two thirteenth-century wooden vaults over a main span to survive in England. A programme of cleaning and conservation carried out between 1997 and 2002, coupled with an analysis of the source and date of the timber used in its construction, significantly advanced our understanding of both the late thirteenth-century presbytery campaign at St Albans and thirteenth-century timber vault construction generally. As the inevitable density and restricted circulation of the final report on that work has hindered its wider reception, the following paper offers a summary, drawing attention to two features that may have wider implications for an appreciation of vaulting in timber. The first is that, although the general form adopted at St Albans is one associated with masonry vaulting, the wooden boards used for the vault webbing required a junction between the wall and the ridge rib, meaning that shallow liernes were originally deployed to run parallel to the central ridge. It is difficult to see this as imitative of vaulting in stone; rather it is likely to be the result of carpenters developing their own solutions to the constraints imposed by timber. Secondly, the late medieval remodelling of the vault replaced these liernes with false tiercerons, and rather nicely illustrates the ease with which timber vaulting could be modified. The dendrochronology gives a date range of 1273–93, and a date of around 1285 is suggested for the primary build. The major late medieval alterations are here associated with the second abbacy of John of Wheathampstead (1452–65).

The location of Argistillum in the Ravenna Cosmography has been obscure. This paper uses linguistic and historical analysis to suggest that it was the Roman fort at Caersws, in the cantref (district) of Arwystli, still with a name relatable to Argistillum.

Dr. Percy, in that part of the Essay on the Ancient English Minstrels, prefixed to his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which concerns the state and condition of these people in the Saxon times, previous to the Norman conquest, has given us, in my opinion, a false, or at best, an ill-grounded idea of their rank and condition within that period. This imaginary notion, for such I take it to be, I propose to discuss in the shortest manner I can.

The Society has already published, in the third volume of the Vetusta Monumenta, engravings of the three Crosses which alone remain of the twelve that were erected by the King in memory of his Queen. An historical discourse is also there given on the circumstances under which these beautiful structures were erected, the work of Mr. Gough, assisted by Sir Henry Englefield. This discourse contains nearly every thing which was then known on the subject, and has been the source from whence later accounts have been derived. What I now propose to do is to make some material additions to what was then known on the subject, and to correct some important misconceptions; and, in doing this, to make some small addition to the knowledge we possess concerning the arts and artists of the period, and particularly to assert for England, against Walpole and others, the claim of having produced by the hands of native artists most of the beautiful works of sculpture and architecture which are connected with the name and memory of this Queen.

The civilization which Western Europe received at the hands of Rome was due in great part to the colonies planted by her in every subjected portion of it. It may, therefore, be neither trivial nor uninteresting to inquire whether that colonisation extended itself and its benefits to this country also. Throughout the history of Rome conquest preceded colonisation. The land of a conquered nation, if the Roman government insisted upon its right, became the absolute property of the Roman people. Belonging from that time to the State, it could be retained by the Government as public property (i. e. in fact and etymology the property of the people,) to be used for the support and relief of the finances, or it could, by an act of the Legislature, be granted and appropriated to private individuals, of course a portion of that people or their privileged allies.

The attention of the Council of the Society of Antiquaries having been directed to the recent Act of Parliament for the disafforesting of the royal forest of Wychwood, it was deemed right that some account of its ancient and recently existing state should be placed on record: I accordingly proceeded in the autumn of the past year to make a personal survey of this well-known yet but little explored district,—a district which in old times extended, north and south, from the woody upland of Charlbury and Ditchley to the green meadows of Witney and Cogges; and east and west, from the stream known as the Glyme, near Woodstock, to the borders of Gloucestershire.

In the spring of 1889 a large series of documents formerly in the possession of Edmund Gibson, the learned prelate who for a quarter of a century presided over the see of London, were offered to me for purchase. I at once recognised their interest and importance, and, as it seemed to me that such documents should not remain in private hands, I secured them, not for my own collection but for the library of St. Paul's cathedral church. The papers comprised about ninety volumes in folio or quarto, together with a considerable mass of loose sheets of manuscript matter.