There is no need for me here to stress the extraordinary scarcity of surviving panel pictures of undoubted English origin dating from the fourteenth century, in spite of the fact that at the time they must have been produced in enormous quantities. All the greater is, in consequence, the importance which attaches to the notable examples which I have the honour of exhibiting and commenting upon to-night; and that I am able to do so is due, in the first instance, to the privilege extended to me by the owner of the panels, the Earl of Leicester, G.C.V.O., C.M.G., and H.M. Office of Works; while I owe a further and special debt of gratitude to Mr. F. J. E. Raby, C.B., F.S.A., through whose initiative my attention was first drawn to these panels.

The pictures in question (pl. xxix) have come down to us in very fragmentary condition, and are painted on thick boards, three in number, two of which join up satisfactorily enough for us to deduce that they originally formed part of one and the same composition, while the remaining panel, though evidently a unit belonging to the identical scheme, does not link up with the others. All three boards come from Castle Acre Priory, and were discovered there in recent years, though not all at the same time: the panel on the left of the two belonging together on 19th November 1930, and the two other boards on 25th August 1932. The room in which they were found was the outer parlour, underneath the prior's chapel, in the western range of the buildings: they were used as part of the panelling of the wall when this portion of the buildings was occupied as a dwelling-house. The painted side, in each case, was uppermost, clearly indicating that they had been discarded as decorative panels and re-used for structural purposes. The panel found in 1930 was built into the twelfth-century door in the west wall, and the two other boards into the window-head in the north wall.

In the course of the twelve months of the year 1936 our Society had three Royal Patrons. The signatures of King Edward VIII and King George VI have been added to our Roll of Fellows, separated by that of H.R.H. the Crown Prince of Sweden, who honoured us by accepting election as a Royal Fellow. To each of the two Sovereigns who have followed one another at so short an interval the Society offered an assurance of its loyal devotion to the Royal House under whose patronage it was born, has grown and prospered, and its prayers that it may be permitted to continue the studies of the antiquities and history of this kingdom and nation amid the blessings of a tranquil and prosperous reign, and with the encouragement of the Sovereign on whom all these national traditions are now centred.

In the spring of 1935 I was sent by the Trustees of the British Museum to North Syria to look for a site for excavation. The object which I had in view was to trace the connexions, if such existed, between the civilization of Minoan Crete and that of the Asiatic mainland, and the conditions required by such theoretical intercourse limited my investigations to a relatively small area. Mycenaean and sub-Mycenaean remains are, of course, not uncommon in South Syria and Palestine, but no excavations there have produced anything of Minoan date. If commerce brought the Cretans to this coast, the influence resulting from it must have been largely one-sided, for Palestine was always a poor country culturally speaking, and South Syria offered no more than a local market; its civilization was confined to the coastal belt, and the hinterland of the Syrian desert cut off all direct intercourse with the great centres of the East. North Syria was clearly indicated: it was the part of the coast most easily reached by coasting-vessels (Mount Casius is visible from Cyprus), and it was the meeting-place of the Hittite and Mesopotamian civilizations, either or both of which might have had Aegean contacts. Here again the choice was limited. Commerce demands a sheltered anchorage for shipping and good trade-routes to the inland markets. In North Syria the coast is formed by a range of mountains whose flanks drop for the most part precipitously to the sea; harbours are small and few, and passes across the mountain ranges are extraordinarily difficult; in fact, only two are at all practicable. In the extreme north the Gulf of Alexandretta affords good shelter in most weathers, as an open roadstead, and at its southern end at Arsus there is a little rocky harbour which has been artificially enlarged and improved. Arsus is certainly an ancient site, though so deeply overlaid by Roman remains as to give little encouragement to the excavator; but from it the only road inland was by the steep and none too easy pass of Beilan, and to reach that one had to skirt the foothills for a distance of some twenty-five miles, for the flat land bordering the gulf is of recent formation and contains no remains earlier than the Roman. South of the gulf is the forbidding headland of Ras al Khanzir and the cliffs of Gebel Musa, and then comes the shallow arc of the gulf of Sueidia, with the ruins of Seleucia at its northern end, the Orontes mouth towards its southern end, and beyond that the rock-bound coast at the foot of Mount Casius. The only other harbour between this and Latakia, or rather between this and Mina-t-al-Beda, the Leukos Hormos of the Greeks, is Basit, and from Basit, whose remains seem to be exclusively Roman, a break-neck track alone leads up into the wild fastnesses of the hills.

Very divergent views have been held about the constitution of the Church of Worcester in the centuries before Oswald established the Benedictine Rule. The ideas of eighteenth-century historians are perhaps of little importance to-day in the light of our further knowledge, for in the last fifty years the attention of an increasing number of scholars has been turned upon the investigation and elucidation of the history of that church, and much light has already been thrown upon its dark spots. But for a time there was considerable confusion, and it was a little hard to see where the truth lay, so various were the views put forward by investigators.

Ten years ago two pairs of Romano-British kilns for the manufacture of pottery were discovered by some boys from Bootham School, York, on the slope of the hill from Whitwell to the Crambeck, about thirteen miles north-east of York and five miles from the fortress of Malton. These were excavated by boys from Bootham School under the writer's supervision, and details of their structure and of the pottery made in them have been published. Earlier finds of kilns in the same neighbourhood were then recorded, and these, together with the amount of pottery recovered, made it clear that pottery manufacture had been very extensive in the district. Since that report was published, the importance of Crambeck wares and their wide distribution in the northern military area in the fourth century have been widely recognized. The discovery of another pair of kilns in 1936, which throw more light on kiln-structure than did those of the earlier find, provides, in the light of subsequent investigations, an opportunity for a fuller discussion of the date of their activity than was at that time possible.

The third season's work at Maiden Castle, Dorset, extended from July to December 1936, and was to have been the last of the series. Two unexpected discoveries combined to necessitate a fourth season's digging in July and August 1937, with the end now clearly in sight. The first of these discoveries was that of a large Neolithic ditch of somewhat unusual form near the summit of the eastern knoll within the camp; and the second was that of an early complex under the existing eastern entrance of the Iron Age earthwork. The present summary will indicate these problems, and will incidentally correct certain provisional inferences embodied in the Second Interim Report (1936).

The ermita of Santa Maria de Quintanilla de las Viñas, although one of the most important examples of pre-Romanesque architecture and sculpture in Spain, was unknown to archaeologists until 1927.

Padre Enrique Flórez, writing in 1772, mentioned the building in connexion with the reported existence of Roman inscriptions in its vicinity, but, as he had not seen it, gave no description. J. A. Cean Bermudez, who likewise had not been on the spot, published a somewhat confused account of certain inscriptions. From Cean Bermudez, Hübner copied three enigmatic monograms said to be ‘in aedicula S. Mariae de las Viñas prope Quintanilla, non longe a Lara oppido’, and published them both in his Inscriptiones Hispaniae Latinae and Inscriptionum Hispaniae Christianarum Supplementum.

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.

Villas are so uniform in character that they arouse comparatively little interest compared with the military problems of Roman Britain. But a villa surrounded by ditches, whether for defensive purposes or not, can be immediately classed as a rarity. A list of such examples of domestic fortification in the Roman period includes the houses at Castle Dykes, near Ripon, at Cwmbrwyn in Carmarthenshire, at Bartlow in Cambridgeshire, at Langton in Yorkshire, and at Ely near Cardiff. Of these only the two last have been scientifically excavated, and only the house at Ely has fortifications which conform to the building. In these circumstances the discovery of a villa surrounded by five ditches and occupied, through five periods of construction and reconstruction, from the latter half of the first to the middle of the fourth century is of particular interest.

The villa in question is situated some 200 yards east of the Fosseway, at a point 9 miles south of Lincoln and a mile and a half north of Brough (Crococolana). The site is marked on the Ordnance Survey and known locally as Potter Hill. It comprises a long ridge of land some hundred feet higher than the plain in which Crococolana is placed. Stukeley in his Itinerary says, ‘and journeying to the space of about 12 Roman miles, I found Collingham on my right hand: there is a high barrow or tumulus called Potters Hill, where they say was a Roman pottery: it stands upon an eminence commanding a prospect both ways upon the road. Half a mile further is Brough.’

Nevertheless the presence of a Roman building was not suspected until the discovery in 1933 by the farmer, Mr. E. Taylor, of a mosaic pavement.

During the time that the excavation of the theatre was being carried out, the investigation of insula XVI, immediately west of it, was begun, and was completed after some three months' work.

The insula, a rectangle measuring 300 ft. by 160 ft. (with its greater length stretching from east to west) is bounded by roads on three sides, and by the metalled space surrounding the theatre on its fourth, or eastern, side. Cross-trenches showed the south road to be 29 ft., and the north road 18 ft., in width; the west road had been at least 29 ft. wide, but, owing to soil having been denuded from this higher part of the site, the exact width of this road was not determined by either of the two trenches dug across it (plan, pl. xxv).

It is well known that wooden vessels were in common use for domestic purposes in medieval times: dishes, bowls, etc., almost certainly made of this material are shown in use in the kitchen and at table in several documents, for instance, the Bayeux tapestry, the Luttrell Psalter, and Queen Mary's Psalter. It is seldom, however, that the actual wooden vessels are found in excavations on medieval sites: mention may be made of ‘two turned saucer-like bowls of beechwood, 8 in. in diameter, and about 1¼ in. deep’, found with other wooden objects and early medieval pottery in the filling of a deep shaft at Pevensey Castle.

A remarkable find was made in 1929 during excavations on the site of the Bank of England beneath the NW. side of the old Power of Attorney, that is, about 100 ft. south of the Lothbury frontage and 140 ft. west of the Bartholomew Lane frontage. A well, 7 ft. 6 in. in diameter, built of chalk blocks, of which nine courses remained, to a height of 5 ft. 6 in., had been sunk through the lower deposits into the gravel. The well was filled with greenish black slime, from which were extracted pottery vessels, a number of wooden bowls, a few broken animal bones, and a hen's egg. All the pottery appears to be of about the same date in the fourteenth century, and is of value as a group of associated types and in giving a date to the wooden bowls.

When St. Cuthbert's tomb was opened in 1827, the jewelled pectoral cross (pl. LXXV) was found ‘deeply buried among the remains of the robes which were nearest to the breast of the saint’. It had thus escaped disturbance in 1538 at the time of the savage ransacking of the tomb during the Dissolution, and it can be inferred from the circumstances in which the saint's stole and maniple were found that the Commissioners had ceased their plundering before the body had been fully stripped of its wrappings.

Investigation of this site in July 1935, reported in the Antiq. Journ. xvi, 165, was severely limited by time, and, since certain problems still remained unsolved, advantage was taken of the presence of the University Camp for Unemployed at Eynsham in July 1936 to endeavour to clear up some of these problems. For this purpose additional radial trenches were driven at various points of the compass and the ground immediately south of the tower was also examined. Although the weather was less favourable than in 1935, nevertheless a fair amount of work was done, resulting in an appreciable addition to our knowledge of the construction of the fortification.

This survey of Lochaneilean Castle was conducted in April 1935 on behalf of the Inverness Field Club, by which the expenses were defrayed. I gratefully acknowledge the warm interest shown in the undertaking by the Council of the Club, and the assistance which I received, in making the survey, from Dr. John Craig, F.S.A.Scot., and Mrs. Craig. The laird of Rothiemurchus, Lieut.-Col. John P. Grant, M.C., T.D., D.L., M.A., LL.B., Sheriff-substitute of Inverness, Elgin, and Nairn, kindly placed a boat and boatman and ladders at our disposal, and had the overgrowth removed from the ruins before our visit.

During a recent visit to the famous gravel-pits at Warren Hill, Suffolk, one of the workmen handed me the bone which is described in this note. He evidently attached little importance to the specimen, which had been kept merely because it was a bone—as such are rare in the Warren Hill Gravel. The finder informed me that the specimen came from the concreted gravel—a very compact and chalky layer in the Warren Hill deposit. This claim is borne out, first, by the white, chalky appearance of the bone, which corresponds with the condition of others from the same horizon; and, secondly, by the fact that the medullary cavity of the specimen still retains some of the gravel in which it was embedded. The bone is clearly fossil, but, like others from Warren Hill, this condition is not accompanied by an addition to the weight of the specimen. The bone, in fact, probably now weighs less than it did in its pristine state—a condition of affairs, however, by no means uncommon in ancient specimens. It has assumed a consistency similar to that of chalk, and its surfaces can easily, though roughly, be scraped, or cut, by a knife.

In certain continental museums there are examples of a curious form of detached St. John's Heads, made of a sort of hard alabaster, all so much alike as to indicate that they must all have been carved in one locality (and very probably in one workshop), and within a fairly short period of time. These heads, which seem clearly not to be English in origin—although by some scholars it has been assumed that they were—differ from medieval English alabaster carvings in character and in style, as well as in material.

The types of decoration used on Anglo-Saxon pottery of the pagan period in England have never yet received the detailed analysis which their variety and historical importance deserve. The time has not yet come when a comprehensive study can be attempted, for the great bulk of the pottery concerned either remains unpublished or has been published so inadequately that the student is compelled to go back to the originals before coming to any conclusions. But it does already seem possible to isolate certain of the commoner elements of the decorative schemes employed and to investigate their history and affinities. In the following pages the attempt is prompted by the exhibition and publication of two urns from Lincolnshire and one from London, all of which are in private ownership. These three vessels happen to illustrate three characteristic styles of decoration which seem to be fundamental in this line of study, and the following remarks are offered without any undue dogmatism, in the hope that they may at least make a start in the elucidation of what is undoubtedly the most neglected of all pre-medieval groups of English ceramic material.

The bronze palstave here figured was found, in 1934, in digging a hole for a wooden post in the yard of a small holding known as ‘Mount Pleasant’ in the parish of Curland, 6 miles SSE. of Taunton and about 600 ft. above sea-level. ‘Mount Pleasant’ is not named on the 6-in. Ordnance Sheet (LXXX, S.W.), but it is the building 530 yards SSE. of Curland Church, and, as the crow flies, it is only 680 yards NNE. of the ‘Beacon’ of Castle Neroche. The implement was found about 3 ft. deep by the owner of the holding, Mr. D. G. Dicks, who gave it to Dr. Richard A. Fawcus of Chard. Through the instrumentality of Capt. W. S. L. Henderson, Dr. Fawcus presented it to the Somerset County Museum in April 1935, in which collection a similar implement, having two loops (from South Petherton), had been exhibited for many years.

The chipping-floor and its associated artifacts, situated at Orleigh Court in the parish of Buckland Brewer, lie about four miles south-west of Bideford in North Devon (fig. i), where an area of about three-quarters of a square mile is covered by a gravel deposit of doubtful age. The gravel has a foxy red colour and, in its upper portion, is characterized by an abundance of flint nodules, of a type which could have been derived only from the Chalk, the nearest representative of which is in Dorset, over sixty miles to the south-east. The artifacts come from a field lying north-west of the Rookery and a little above the 200-ft. contour line (fig. 2).

The miscellaneous notes herewith presented have been gathered, at various times and from various sources, since publication of my last series of notes of the kind, in the Archaeol. Journ. for 1931 (lxxxviii, 228–46). The one single factor they all have in common is some connexion or other with the medieval English alabaster industry, on which much scattered material has already appeared in several well-known books and in a very considerable number of papers on the subject in periodical publications.