At one of this Society's meetings last January Mr. Laird Clowes, of the Science Museum, read a paper on the remains of a ship in the Hamble river above Bursledon. The chief feature of this paper, or at least the point emphasized in the daily press, was the conclusion that the wreck—from its shape and the heaviness of its timbering—was probably that of a merchantman of the middle of the nineteenth century.

This suggestion aroused a good deal of indignation locally, since the existence of a so-called ‘Danish galley of about A.D. 900’ was a matter of considerable pride, even though the wreck was generally invisible and always difficult of access. Critics pointed out very promptly that Mr. Laird Clowes had somehow overlooked the fact that even the present remains are quite as wide as the largest opening of Bursledon bridge, which was built between 1783 and 1800, and yet are a mile or more above that bridge. Clearly the ship must belong to a date before 1800, while various peculiarities mentioned by Mr. Laird Clowes seemed to make it impossible for her to belong to either the eighteenth or the seventeenth century. If so, she must date from before 1600, but how much before it was difficult to say.

I was very glad to receive two years ago permission from the Hon. Mrs. Abel Henry Smith and Major Edward P. Smith to calendar the mass of deeds relating to the Woodhall Park estate, at Watton-at-Stone, Herts. These deeds range from the twelfth down to the eighteenth century and cover the villages and hamlets of Watton-at-Stone, Aston, Stapleford, Sacombe, Wempstead, and Waterford, so far as concerns the manors of Aston, Bardolfs, Waterford Hall, Patchendon, Woodhall, Gobions and Lanvars, and Sele.

Of the two earliest of these deeds one, which belongs now to Mr. Vernon Austen Malcolmson, of Aston Bury, Herts., is Queen Adeliza's charter giving the manor and church of Aston, Herts., to Reading Abbey. The other is King Stephen's charter of confirmation of the same, and is still amongst the Woodhall Park deeds.

Titterstone Clee Hill lies some five miles due east of Ludlow. It is crowned by a camp which comprises the whole of the comparatively flat top, measuring about ½ mile from east to west and ⅓ mile from north to south. In area (71 acres) and in elevation (1,749 ft. at its summit) it is abnormal amongst hill-forts in Great Britain; both these facts have important bearings on the excavation of 1932, particularly on the lack of finds (see p. 30).

A full discussion of its topographical features and environs will be published shortly in Archaeologia Cambrensis. It will be sufficient here to call attention to the camps on Brown Clee Hill and the connexion between them and Titterstone; and to the main East–West trackway, which passes close under the rampart of the latter. The two main branches of this track to the west are well attested for the prehistoric period, and there can be little doubt that the camp on Titterstone was placed to command their point of junction.

The area north of the Middle Thames situated between Acton and West Drayton reveals extensive deposits which have been referred by H.M. Geological Survey to the Boyn Hill, Taplow, and Low terraces. As within the valley of the Lower Thames, these features have yielded implements and mammalian remains. In the opinion of the officers of the Geological Survey the formation of the Taplow terrace and its contained deposits occurred prior to the formation of the Coombe Rock which succeeded Early Mousterian times; further, they consider this Coombe Rock is to be equated with the ‘Trail’. It has long been established that the series of deposits revealed in a typical section cut through the so-called Taplow terrace of the Middle Thames in this district shows:

5. Surface soil.

4. ‘Trail’, often composed of slipped material from the Boyn Hill or ‘100-ft.’ terrace.

3. Brickearth, with thin layers of pebbles in its lower portion representing land-surfaces, overlying gravel with black seams.

2. Gravel, unstratified, much contorted, and containing large included masses both of solid Chalk and of London Clay.

1. Gravel, stratified, but showing a disturbed and deeply eroded upper surface penetrated by deposit no. 2.

London Clay.

Whereas deposits nos. 1, 2, and 3 have all been regarded as having been laid down by the river during the Taplow terrace stage, it would appear that this is not the case. There are reasons, archaeological and geological, for considering that these beds represent three separate periods and that only one of them (deposit no. 1) belongs to the Taplow terrace sequence proper.

It is the purpose of this article briefly to enumerate the facts which cause the correctness of the official geological reading of this type-section to be questioned.

The existence on Selsey Bill in West Sussex of sites belonging to the Early Iron Age was recognized in 1909, but recent finds of pottery at one of these, the gravel pit in Golf Links Lane, has made a closer study of the question necessary.