21682 results in Drama, Theatre, Performance Studies
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Michael Farley, The Kings at Brill: The Early History of a Buckinghamshire Village in the Forest of Bernwood
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- By Mark Page
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- 15 May 2024, pp 374-375
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Summary
In the Middle Ages the small Buckinghamshire village of Brill developed close associations with neighbouring Oxfordshire, based in large part on a thriving pottery industry, its location at the centre of a royal forest, and on the appropriation of its parish church by an Oxfordshire monastery. From the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries potters at Brill produced a range of distinctive bowls, jars and jugs which found a ready market at Oxford, 12 miles (19 km) to the south-west. Brill was also an administrative centre for the surrounding forest of Bernwood, which extended into eastern Oxfordshire and was a source of timber, firewood and venison for Oxfordshire’s medieval landholders. Finally, St Frideswide’s priory at Oxford was patron of the Buckinghamshire church of Oakley, to which Brill was attached as a dependent chapelry.
These and other themes are explored in Michael Farley’s book-length study of the village, which combines documentary evidence with archaeological investigation and topographical survey, and is lavishly illustrated with colour photographs of sites, buildings, objects and maps. One of the book’s chief aims is to identify the location of the royal residence at Brill, which successive kings kept in repair from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Thereafter it fell out of royal ownership, and was either demolished or incorporated into a later building. The ‘King’s Field’ in the centre of the village is a plausible candidate for a royal enclosure, although a recent geophysical survey proved inconclusive, and Farley reaches only a tentative judgement as to its use based on evidence revealing the buried remains of one or several stone-footed buildings.
Another mystery surrounds a large mound called ‘Castle Hill’, which is shown on a late sixteenth-century map in the centre of the village where the main streets follow a pronounced curve to produce a well-preserved U-shaped enclosure encompassing the ‘King’s Field’. The mound no longer exists, and documentary evidence of a castle is lacking, though it is possible that the mound was associated with, or mistaken for, a surviving earthwork near-by. A substantial bank and ditch divided by a trackway survives on the edge of ‘King’s Field’, and is associated with Iron Age pottery and other Iron Age finds.
Prehistoric Landscape and Late Iron Age Agriculture South of Banbury: Excavations at Wykham Park Farm and Bloxham Road
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- 15 May 2024, pp 73-108
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Two adjacent excavations on the southern outskirts of Banbury recorded an extensive landscape of prehistoric features. Neolithic evidence, some of it probably representing activities associated with the adjacent Wykham Farm causewayed enclosure, included a pit and a tree-throw hole that contained sherds of early Neolithic Plain Bowl pottery, a pair of pits with middle Neolithic Mortlake Ware, and a feature that produced a late Neolithic radiocarbon date and is likely to represent a cremation burial or a pair of such features. A group of three unurned cremation burials was attributed to the middle Bronze Age on the basis of radiocarbon dates from two of them, and an isolated inhumation burial was radiocarbon dated to the early Iron Age (late sixth or fifth century cal BC). No other features or artefacts from either of these periods was found, suggesting that the burials were located away from areas of settlement. Following an apparent hiatus of several centuries, there was a burst of settlement and agricultural activity that extended from the first century BC to the end of the first century AD. Two discrete enclosures may represent successive late Iron Age settlements, and a field system continued into the early Roman period, when a third enclosure, possibly for livestock, was constructed beside it. The features form part of an extensive though short-lived episode of occupation, and it is possible that the Iron Age enclosures represent the pastoral component of a farmstead with a domestic and arable focus represented by a complex of enclosures that has been separately excavated in the fields adjacent to the east.
Oxford Archaeology (OA) and Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) undertook adjacent excavations on former agricultural land on the southern outskirts of Banbury in advance of separate housing developments. The MOLA site, known as East of Bloxham Road, was excavated between November 2014 and March 2015 and comprised a sub-rectangular arable field within the interstice formed by the junction of Bloxham Road and Salt Way, a historic route now used as a bridleway. The OA investigations were undertaken at Wykham Park Farm between November 2019 and May 2020 and encompassed six excavation areas situated across six fields to the south and east, as well as the footprint of a drainage outfall that extended to the south (Fig. 1).
Vivian Ridler (ed. Colin Ridler), Diary of a Master Printer: A Year in the Life of the Printer to the University, Oxford
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- 15 May 2024, pp 387-389
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In 1970 the British economy was on the cusp of radical change. The ‘golden age’ of capitalism that had started in the early 1950s, when economic growth was broadly stable and continuous, and inflation was benign, was coming to an end. It would be replaced by ‘stagflation’ (that ugly portmanteau which combines stagnating economic growth with inflation), civil unrest and political instability. Memories of that economic turmoil have been recently rekindled by surging inflation and sluggish economic growth fuelled by the disruptions of Covid, war in Ukraine and geopolitical instability. The state of British manufacturing in 1970 is startlingly illuminated in the Diary of a Master Printer (edited by Colin Ridler) which conveys the industrial disputes, management failings and disruptive impacts of technological change that beset the Printing House of Oxford University Press (OUP). The ‘Master Printer’ was Vivian Ridler (father of the editor) who was in charge of the Printing House from 1958 to 1978 and kept this diary between June 1970 and June 1971.
Vivian Ridler managed a strange business beast: his Printing House was part of the much larger OUP business which was (and is) owned by the University of Oxford; in 1970 it operated alongside two publishing houses (the Clarendon Press and the London Business) and a paper mill. A challenge for academic publishers, such as OUP, was the tension between scholarly and commercial activities. Scholarship required the publication of the latest research which was often not profitable, and which could conflict with commercial imperatives. A further tension is evident throughout the diary: Ridler and his colleagues wanted to craft and print beautiful books which were increasingly less competitive than books that were mass produced by the latest technologies.
The diary is eloquently written and includes aspects of Ridler’s business and social lives and their frequent intersections. As far as business is concerned, Ridler documents the challenges of book production, negotiating with the bank and dealing with unions. His business life permeates his social life as he effortlessly moves from book production and conversing with authors to attending trade association meetings, dining at high table, attending concerts and lunching at the Garrick Club. His approach to his workers was both paternalistic and condescending. He attends to the welfare of his workers, visits them in hospital and attends their funerals, but class divisions were very apparent.
Middle Iron Age to Roman Settlement at Swan School and Meadowbrook College, New Marston
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- By Jo Barker
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- 15 May 2024, pp 257-292
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SUMMARY
Four areas were excavated by Cotswold Archaeology at Swan School and Meadowbrook College, New Marston, Oxford. The site was the focus of settlement activity from the middle Iron Age period up to the end of the Roman period in the fourth century AD. The main focus of middle Iron Age settlement was two enclosures containing pits, a sub-enclosure and the remains of three roundhouses. After a short hiatus, from around the middle second century BC, renewed activity in the late Iron Age/early Roman transitional period saw the establishment of a trapezoidal enclosure and two trackways. Activity continued into the Roman period with the establishment of a rectilinear enclosure system focused on the junction of three trackways. During the third to fourth centuries AD the site was involved in pottery production, operating as part of the Oxford Roman pottery industry.
Between April and July 2019, Cotswold Archaeology (CA) carried out an archaeological investigation on land at Swan School and Meadowbrook College, New Marston, Oxford (centred on NGR: 452526 208373; Fig. 1). The development site measured 5.6 ha in extent and was located to the north-east of the city of Oxford on the north-western edge of New Marston, a suburb of the city. The development site was situated on low-lying ground (60 m above Ordnance Datum) on the edge of the River Cherwell floodplain and immediately north of the Marston Brook. The site lies on an area of alluvium and Oxford Clay Formation and West Walton Formation mudstone, capped by seasonally wet, acidic but base-rich loamy and clayey soils that typically support areas of pasture and woodland.
The archaeological potential of the site was established by previous archaeological works within the development area (Fig. 1), comprising a Heritage Statement and two stages of trial-trench evaluation. The investigations identified remains pertaining to Iron Age, Roman, medieval and post-medieval activity in the south-western half of the development site and in light of these discoveries, four areas (A, B, C and F) were subject to archaeological excavation.
List of Contributors
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Frontmatter
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John Naylor and Eleanor Standley, with other contributors, The Watlington Hoard: Coinage, Kings and the Viking Great Army in Oxfordshire, AD 875–880
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In 2015 James Mather fulfilled every metal-detectorist’s dream when he discovered an early medieval hoard not far from the small Oxfordshire town of Watlington – the exact location is not provided so as to deter other detectorists. When fully excavated and analysed the hoard was found to comprise 203 silver coins, mostly from the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex in the 870s, 15 silver ingots, 6 arm- and neck-rings (whole or in part), a fragmentary hooked tag and a small piece of cut gold. A conference to discuss the results was held at the Ashmolean Museum in 2018, and this book of essays stems from that event. Details are provided about the discovery and treatment of the finds, together with discussion and a catalogue of the coins (by Julian Baker and John Naylor) and of the non-numismatic finds (by Jane Kershaw and Eleanor Naylor). Readers of this journal may be particularly interested in the papers by John Naylor and Ryan Lavelle about the broader context for the finds in the archaeology and history of the upper Thames valley in the late ninth century when a complex jockeying for power brought together Mercian, West Saxon and Viking leaders in ways that can only be partly understood, but would seem to be directly responsible for the hoard’s interment.
By a strange coincidence a hoard very similar to the Watlington one was discovered near Leominster (Herefordshire) in 2015, but only some of that hoard is available for study because the finders disposed of part of it before it came to the notice of the relevant authorities (for which those unprincipled metal-detectorists have served prison sentences). Both hoards consist predominantly of joint issues of coins made by the Mercian king Ceolwulf II (874–9) and the West Saxon ruler Alfred (871–99) when they were in alliance against the Viking Great Army under the leadership of Guthrum. One of the issues known as the ‘Two Emperors’, after a Roman design on which it was based, seems a particularly apt testimony to the alliance between two royal houses which had so often been rivals, particularly over control of the upper Thames. In 878 King Alfred defeated Guthrum at the battle of Edington (Wiltshire) and a new accord was reached between them, perhaps involving a handing over of some of the very coins that were buried at Watlington.
The Site of St Frideswide’s Minster Debated
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- 15 May 2024, pp 17-34
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SUMMARY
By longstanding tradition the Anglo-Saxon minster of St Frideswide was located on the later site of St Frideswide’s priory (now Oxford cathedral), and John Blair took that identification for granted in his contribution of 1988. In the recent Oxford volume of the Historic Towns Atlas Alan Crossley suggested an alternative location at Oxford Castle. The following contributions set out John Blair’s reaction to Crossley’s ideas, followed by Alan Crossley’s restatement and elaboration of his case and a final thought from John Blair. No resolution is offered by this journal, but readers are given fuller information for future consideration of an issue which has important implications for the early layout of Oxford and its subsequent development.
A REACTION TO ALAN CROSSLEY’s SUGGESTIONS by JOHN BLAIR
The Oxford volume in the Historic Towns Atlas series has long been awaited, and its appearance in 2021 is a matter for celebration. Alongside the rich abundance of primary material that it assembles, it is a vehicle for the summation of past hypotheses and the development of new ones. It crowns the distinguished career of the editor, Alan Crossley, who ran the Oxfordshire Victoria County History for many years, and fought tirelessly for its survival through bleak and adverse circumstances.
The editor has a particular interest in west Oxford, about which he has recently written in other places. Several interesting points are made in the Atlas, not least with reference to St George’s chapel in the Castle, where the recent discovery of two burials dated to c.1000 supports the idea (proposed in 1976 by Janet Cooper) that the Norman chapel replaced a pre-Conquest church. Crossley builds on this argument to take it in an unexpected direction.
It should be said at the outset that an important Anglo-Saxon minster was not just a single church, but an ecclesiastical zone – often a substantial one – within which churches, chapels and other ritual foci were dispersed alongside accommodation, services and craft buildings. Arrangements of churches were often linear, on a west–east axis. In accordance with that model, I suggested in 1988 that the twelfth-century church of St Frideswide’s priory (now Oxford cathedral), the nucleus of the early minster complex, was the easternmost in a line of churches following the edge of the gravel terrace.
An Eighth- to Seventh-Century BC Pit Cluster and a Middle Iron Age Boundary Ditch: Further Excavation at Chinham Farm Extension, Bowling Green Farm Quarry, Faringdon
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- 15 May 2024, pp 227-256
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Archaeological investigations carried out over more than a decade in advance of mineral extraction revealed a very low volume of archaeological features. Eight pits formed a small cluster, with one outlier to the south and a notable lack of features in the whole remaining area of the site, with the exception of two small, undated pits by the western limit of the area. The pit cluster contained a surprisingly dense group and range of finds and two radiocarbon dates confirm that it represents a relatively short-lived use of the site in the eighth or seventh century BC. An especially concentrated deposit of pottery vessels in particular suggests the filling of the pits was the result of feasting. As is often observed, there were no associated structural remains to indicate permanent settlement and it may be that some symbolic occasion was being celebrated in a one-off event. A linear ditch previously revealed in the quarry can now be seen to be at least 520 m long and may be a significant territorial boundary on the ridge: it seems to date to the Middle Iron Age.
Thames Valley Archaeological Services (TVAS) is undertaking a long-running archaeological recording action in advance of mineral extraction at the c.19 ha Chinham Farm Extension of Bowling Green Farm Quarry, Faringdon (SU 3155 9475) (Fig. 1). The work overall extended from May 2007 to September 2020. The results of the first seven years of the project (Phases 1–3, covering around 7.7 ha) were published in advance of completion of the rest, as there was then an interval of several years, and this report presents the results from the most recent seasons of the archaeological work (Phases 4 to 6, 2017–2020), covering a further 3.35 ha.
The site is between the market town of Faringdon and the village of Stanford-in-the-Vale in the south-west of Oxfordshire, on the northern side of the A417 (Fig. 1). It is located on the Corallian Ridge, with the top of the ridge locally at a height of c.103 m above OD sloping gradually down from south to north to the Frogmore Brook at c.95 m above OD. The underlying geology at the high point in the south is Stanford (Jurassic) Limestone, with alluvial clay, sand, gravel and sandstone silts filling on the valley edges to the north.
Geoffrey Tyack, The Making of Our Urban Landscape
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Geoffrey Tyack’s entertaining book describes the economic and political imperatives that have formed our towns and cities over two millennia, and which have taken us from being a rural to an urban society. The author’s canvas extends from late Iron Age oppida to the garden centres and retail villages of modern towns, pausing briefly en route at the former Brakspear’s Brewery in Henley and in his own street in south Oxford, which are stitched elegantly into the fabric. He acknowledges debts to Celia Fiennes and to W.G. Hoskins – to the latter for the term ‘urban landscape’ (rather than ‘townscape’), and for his chronological approach. Tyack draws extensively on the three-volume Cambridge Urban History of Britain (2000) and on numerous recent studies of towns and cities in England, Wales and Scotland.
Tyack demonstrates in his first chapter, ‘Creating an Urban Landscape’, that modern urban centres are often unrecognisably the products of ancient influences and forces, such as river crossings, pre-existing ritual centres, patterns of trade and original burgage plots. As readers of Oxoniensia would expect, Tyack provides informative summaries of subsequent phases of urban history, neatly encapsulated as ‘Building the Late Medieval Town’, ‘Reformation and Rebuilding’, ‘Classicism and Commerce’ and ‘Improvement and Industry’. He provides vibrant descriptions of contrasts between gradual and cumulative processes of urban change and moments when State, landowners or civic interests, spurred on by cultural or economic momentum, invested in new urban forms. Within the book’s broad compass, the narrative becomes more detailed as time passes, though throughout the book there are also standalone ‘capsule’ summaries of places, and well-chosen illustrations, which exemplify particular aspects of urban development.
For this reviewer, the book really ‘takes wing’ in four more thematic chapters, entitled: ‘Worktown’, ‘Reshaping the Centre’, ‘The Suburban Landscape’ and ‘The Way We Live Now’. In chapter 6, ‘Worktown’, Tyack is blunt and direct about the brutal forces that made or broke industrial towns and the horrific conditions in which most workers lived.
Excavations at St Georges Road, Wallingford: Evidence for a Complex Sequence of Defences near to the West Gate of the Late Anglo-Saxon Burh
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- By Andrew Hood
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- 15 May 2024, pp 323-342
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Excavations in advance of development at Cross Keys public house, St Georges Road, Wallingford revealed part of a substantial ditch, which was located to the west of the extant late Anglo-Saxon burh rampart. Limited dating evidence suggested that the ditch was contemporary with the earliest phase of the burh and it was possible, though not proven, that it represented the northern extent of wider, or enhanced military outworks associated with the west gate. A note by John Blair proposes an alternative hypothesis: that the large primary ditch at Cross Keys represented the north-west corner of an earlier phase of the fort, possibly dating from the mid to late eighth century. Such a sequence is compatible with the earliest radiocarbon dates so far obtained from Wallingford. A linear bank, which was constructed of imported chalk marl, was subsequently laid along the line of the infilled ditch, possibly as early as the mid eleventh century, or shortly thereafter. The purpose of this bank was not entirely clear, although, a military function was a distinct possibility. A further ditch to the west of the bank appeared to be of a later date and may have been related to a boundary shown on historic mapping, however, this feature was only partially revealed during the excavations and its interpretation remained highly uncertain.
This report presents a summary of archaeological investigations undertaken by Foundations Archaeology in 2013 to 2014 at Cross Keys public house, St Georges Road, Wallingford. The works consisted of an archaeological strip, map and sample excavation and subsequent watching brief, which were conducted in advance of, and during, the construction of two residential dwellings. The works complied with an approved Written Scheme of Investigation (WSI) and the relevant IfA Standard and Guidance. A summary of the results of the fieldwork is presented below; further detailed records are contained within Foundations Archaeology’s post-excavation assessment report. The project was commissioned by Brakspear.
The study area is located immediately south of St Georges Road car park and approximately 50 m north of the junction of St Georges Road, High Street, Croft Road and Station Road (Fig. 1). At the time of the fieldwork the site consisted of an area of hardstanding, which was associated with the Cross Keys public house to the south. The topography around the site is generally flat at a height of approximately 48 m above OD.
Archaeological Work in Oxfordshire, 2022
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The county archaeological team have dealt with a considerable level of planning casework over the last year and were consulted on 1,805 planning applications in 2022/23, including 431 major schemes. We asked for archaeological work in association with 461 of these applications.
SELECTED PROJECTS
Ambrosden Manor, Ambrosden
An archaeological evaluation was carried out by CA on land where the HER recorded the possible location of Ambrosden Manor, which was also recently seen in aerial photographs. The Manor was built after 1673 and was pulled down in 1768. A geophysical survey recorded the remains of the Manor in more detail. Evaluation trenching on the site recorded a layer of demolition material overlying the remains of walls and a possible moat around the outside of the building. The trenching also recorded a possible outbuilding, which was not identified from aerial photography or in the geophysical survey but appeared to be of a similar date to the main building. The pottery recovered from the site was largely consistent with the date of the Manor house.
Symmetry Park, Ardley
CA undertook an archaeological evaluation on the proposed site of the new Symmetry Park development at Junction 10 of the M40. The site was known to have produced a large number of metal-detected finds, including a hoard, and aerial photographs had recorded a potential Roman settlement, banjo enclosure and ring ditch on the site. A geophysical survey confirmed that there was an area of dense, likely Roman, settlement with potential for buildings and agricultural activity on the site, as well as a possible banjo enclosure.
On the southern side of the site a potential sunken-featured building with other remains of Anglo-Saxon settlement were recorded, which is rare in the general area. Trenching over the area of the Roman activity revealed a well-made wall and demolition layers, but the function of this building is not clear. Below the demolition layers, Iron Age features have been recorded which suggests there could be a level of continuity of occupation on the site. Surrounding the potential building, the trenches have revealed dense activity with some very large ditches, the function of which is currently unclear. The trenching also revealed a number of cremations and an inhumation burial.
Berry Hill Road, Adderbury
OA carried out an excavation on Berry Hill Road in Adderbury, following on from an evaluation they carried out earlier in 2022.
A First-Hand Account of Daily Life in Woodstock Union Workhouse in the High Victorian Period
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- 15 May 2024, pp 361-364
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Joseph Oliver of Stonesfield near Woodstock gave a first-hand account of life in a Victorian workhouse in the 1860s. Although Oliver was perfectly literate thanks, he said, to a good education at the village school as a boy, due to his failing eyesight his words were taken down by workhouse chaplain the Revd W. Saunders. Probably what brought Oliver to Saunders’ particular notice was his participation in the battle of Waterloo; in a precursor of the late twentieth-century realisation that the small group of survivors of the First World War was dwindling, there was an upturn in interest in veterans of the final battle against Napoleon. Saunders explains frankly in Charles Dickens’ periodical All Around the Year that, ‘The following memoir was not actually written down on paper with pen and ink by the narrator himself, but it is a transcript of notes made during the old man’s narration, and is in truth what it professes to be: the real uninterpolated history of a genuine soldier of 18 June 1815, given as nearly as possible in the veteran’s own vernacular.’ Oliver’s military memoir is published elsewhere with, it must be acknowledged, quite a few interpolations and, happily for Oxfordshire historians, his original narration of that story to Saunders also included the details of day-to-day life in the Woodstock Union workhouse which are reproduced here for the first time since 1866.
Joseph Oliver was born in Stonesfield in 1792. The Oliver men, like most of the menfolk in the village, worked in the local hillside quarries. Stonesfield slate was reputedly the best, lightest and least porous of roofing materials. The slates were created by the splitting action of frost on fissile rock, and they were in use by the seventeenth century at a time when there was rapid building development in the region. At nineteen, somewhat harassed by the family of the young woman he was courting, Oliver went into Oxford to sign up with the local militia and then transferred to the Rifles.
Officers and Committee of the Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society
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Reports
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Peregrine Horden (ed.), The Reredos of All Souls College, Oxford
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- By Tim Ayers
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- 15 May 2024, pp 378-379
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The creation of this collection of essays was inspired, the Preface explains, by the ‘sheer beauty and splendour’ of the reredos in the chapel of All Souls College, Oxford (founded 1438–43) – and the lack of any previous study. It provides a wide-ranging account of this magnificent work, by leading scholars in the fields of history, and art and architectural history, as well as specialists in stone types and the analysis of paint. The chapel, and the college site and its constraints, are introduced lucidly by the editor, enhancing previous histories of the buildings. The book then has a chronological structure, around themes of making, breaking, covering and restoring. Essays on the reredos itself are thrown into relief by broader surveys of changing devotional practices.
Christopher Wilson’s essay introduces and reassesses the medieval reredos. He makes a new analysis of the rich documentary evidence in the college archives to confirm that work was in progress on such a structure from the mid fifteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. In assessing the surviving object, the medieval stonework may be distinguished by its polychromy from that created in the scholarly restoration by George Gilbert Scott (1870s). Wilson argues that the consistent forms and block sizes of the surviving architectural frames indicate a single date. Their form and style are consistent with the later recorded work (from 1493). Only parts of the sculpted Last Judgement at the apex are considered to date from the reredos begun in the time of the college’s founder, Archbishop Henry Chichele (died 1443). Possible reasons for a change in design are addressed briefly, including the more limited extent of the first design. The creation of a vast new reredos in Magdalen College chapel in 1474 could also have prompted the new work, within a pattern of emulation in late-medieval Oxford. An attribution is made to the local carver Robert Fustyng, named in an account for 1502–3. A careful, if hypothetical, reconstruction of the arrangement of documented and lost images on the two versions of the reredos, with wide reference to other sites, proposes iconographical emphases that would have been appropriate to the foundation. These are complemented by Eamon Duffy’s lively account of fifteenth-century devotion in England, including the cult of the saints, and of the founder’s devotional interests and the liturgical character of his college.
The Portable Antiquities Scheme in Oxfordshire, 2022
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- 15 May 2024, pp 351-358
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In 2022 the PAS logged 43,316 entries recording c.53,490 artefacts across England and Wales. The number of treasure cases continued to rise, with 1,298 cases reported from England alone. Typical activities for the scheme were almost entirely resumed following mitigations during the COVID-19 pandemic. This included organising regular finds surgeries at five museums across the county, attending metal-detecting clubs, hosting pop-up finds recording events at temporary exhibits, and hosting regular finds appointments. As a result, a larger number of individuals were brought into contact with the scheme and a higher number of finds suitable for recording were viewed. In addition, Oxfordshire was host to the first National Council for Metal Detecting-funded emergency excavation in Warborough. This was in response to the discovery of what was thought by the finder to be a possible cauldron but upon excavation was identified as a modern barrel. However, this has provided a useful case study in the use of this fund for future cases of in situ discoveries. A report is now housed in the county Historic Environment Record.
OXFORDSHIRE FINDS PROFILE
In 2022 a total of 2,249 artefacts were recorded in 2,060 records for the county. This represents a c.50 per cent increase in the number of finds found in the previous year and is nearly the same number of reports recorded for the county in 2019. This increase reflects the return to pre-pandemic activities. Fifty treasure cases were reported, thirty-eight of which were reported to the Oxfordshire FLO. This is broadly consistent with the number of cases recorded from 2019. In 2022, 160 of the county’s 323 parishes had at least one find reported from them (Fig. 1). While the overall distribution of finds is not notably different to the established distribution seen in years prior to 2022, six parishes had artefacts recorded for the first time, namely Lyneham, Rouseham, North Newington, Mollington, Hatford and Kelmscott. As a result, only seventeen parishes are now lacking any finds in the PAS database (Fig. 2).
Roman period artefacts were, once again, the most numerous finds reported in Oxfordshire, making up 52 per cent of all records from the region, followed by post-medieval and then medieval finds (Table 1). Coins make up over half the assemblage. Overall, the profile is very similar to those of all finds reported in the county since the inception of the PAS.
A Neolithic Burial and Prehistoric to Anglo-Saxon Activity at Polar Technology, Eynsham
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- 15 May 2024, pp 191-226
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Summary
SUMMARY
Excavation at the edge of a dense cropmark complex south of Eynsham uncovered features spanning the Neolithic to the medieval period. The cropmarks probably represent a monument complex that developed around the adjacent Eynsham causewayed enclosure, and the three earliest pits, associated with Decorated Bowl pottery (c.3770–3245 BC), may have been contemporary with the construction and use of the enclosure. Eight middle Neolithic pits associated with Peterborough Ware (mid-fourth millennium to early third millennium BC) were excavated. One contained the burial of a woman, accompanied by an oyster shell pendant and a whelk shell, both exotic items this far from the coast. The burial produced a radiocarbon date of 3340–3030 cal BC. Three pits dating from the earliest Iron Age, one possibly a waterhole, represent rare evidence for settlement of this period, and limited Roman activity was restricted to pits that were probably dug for gravel extraction. Anglo-Saxon occupation was represented by a sunken-featured building, and medieval evidence comprised further gravel pits, field boundaries and plough furrows.
Oxford Archaeology (OA) undertook an archaeological excavation in advance of construction of an industrial unit at Polar Technology’s headquarters at Oasis Business Park, Eynsham (NGR SP 42761 08768; Fig. 1). The site lay 1 km north-west of a northern loop in the River Thames by means of which the river circumvents the limestone outcrop of Wytham Hill before turning south to pass through Oxford. The northern boundary was marked by the Chil Brook, one of a number of minor watercourses that drain this flat agricultural landscape and flow eastward into the Thames, the confluence in this instance lying a short distance downstream of Eynsham Lock. Prior to excavation the site consisted of agricultural land, the northern part of which was crossed by a former railway line that had been tarmacked and used as a car park. The site was situated at c.66 m above Ordnance Datum on the Summertown-Radley gravel terrace of the Thames, a short distance off the alluviated part of the floodplain, which lies at c.60 m above OD.
The development area was situated partly within a scheduled monument, described in the listing as a ‘large and important concentration of cropmarks, mostly comprising Bronze Age ring ditches and barrows, and Iron Age/Roman enclosures and settlement sites’.