In the Anniversary Address which I delivered last year I gave notice that to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of the Society's continuous existence there would be a party in this building. This took place on Thursday, 12th October 1967, between 5.30 and 8.30 p.m. and was the first occasion on which the newly decorated hall and staircase were visible in all their glory, and glorious they certainly are when compared with those sombre tones which formerly greeted us. Not only has marbling been substituted for dull green, but some of the Society's possessions have been put on view in the entrance hall. The floor has also been relaid. The general effect is a good deal more splendid and more welcoming than before. As in other matters, which will be mentioned later, the Society is very much indebted to our Vice-President, Mr. Dufty, for all the trouble he took in this business, and in your name I would wish to thank him for his pains.

In the spring of 1857 a ploughman on The Law Farm, in the parish of Urquhart, Morayshire, Scotland, turned up a group of gold ornaments. The exact number of objects is uncertain, and the relics were widely dispersed. This paper records the results of an attempt to discover the whereabouts of the surviving pieces, and makes some suggestions about the significance of the find. Although a considerable number of the torcs have been located, several still remain hidden to view, and it is one of the purposes of this paper to publicize the find in the hope that the missing objects will be identified and made known. I would be grateful for any information which could be sent to me at the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

The pre-Roman Iron Age communities of eastern England have not received the attention afforded to those of other parts of the British Isles. Admittedly, individual sites such as West Harling and Fengate have been published in detail, and the affinities of their materials have been discussed, but little attempt has been made to study the region as a whole. The nature of the problem, however, was vividly underlined by the admirable summary published by Clarke thirty years ago (Clarke, 1939). Although at the time many scraps of evidence were available, few sites had been adequately excavated, and still fewer published. In recent years the situation has improved and it is now possible to offer a tolerably coherent consideration of the earliest phases in the Iron Age occupation of the region. Even so, the evidence is thin and without support from further controlled excavations the framework offered below can be regarded only as a basis for further discussion.

It is by this time axiomatic that regional studies of pottery types, wares, and fabrics can greatly expand our knowledge of the pottery industry in Roman Britain. Some of the most penetrating studies which have contributed to the subject of Romano-British coarse pottery in recent years have concerned themselves with the peculiar types and wares of individual regions, or with the geographical spread of distinctive products as mirrored in the pattern of their distribution. This outline study of two large and varied classes of common coarse wares, current in the east Midlands towards the end of the Roman period, is designed primarily to provide (a) a brief discussion of a very distinctive burnished grey ware, and (b) to record some results of further work on the remarkable north-east Midland jar types, best known in the forms of Derbyshire and Dales Ware. With the exception of these two, the major late Roman wares of the area have not been systematically studied. Taken with the recent studies on those two wares, it is intended that these notes will form a convenient introduction to the late Roman pottery industry in this region.

The purpose of this paper is briefly to make known investigation of an area of Thames terrace gravel in Essex (at N.G.R. TQ 673 803) before its rapid destruction by quarrying (pi. XLVII and figs. 1 and 2). With work still continuing, and with the bulk of the finds and records yet to be synthesized, archaeological observations must necessarily be provisional.

During excavation in 1967 of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Mucking in Essex, bronze belt equipment (pls. liii, liv) was found in situ on a body stain in grave 117. Its importance is immediately obvious, for not only is it a fine piece of craftsmanship and the only complete set of its kind, but it supplies the missing link between the late Roman military belt equipment and metalwork in the Quoit Brooch Style of Anglo-Saxon England. At much the same time that this buckle came to light at Mucking, another buckle of the same period, but of a different type, was found in an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Orpington in Kent (fig. 2 a), and a few weeks later another was found in a cemetery at Bishopstone, Sussex. With the advantage of the information provided by these new buckles it is now possible to distinguish other works belonging to the same milieu, and to see problems connected with them in a different perspective.

In 1967 the Winchester Excavations Committee was again joined by the University of North Carolina and Duke University in excavations on five sites in the city, while a sixth site was excavated by the Winchester College Archaeological Society. The main season lasted ten weeks from late June to early September and an average of 165 people took part, about £17,500 being spent.

On the 6th February 1685 King James II of England and VII of Scotland succeeded to the throne of Great Britain on the death of his elder brother, King Charles II. His reign, which was to last for less than four years, was beset by many difficulties. A number of these problems stemmed from the fact that James, before his accession, has gone over to the Church of Rome and made no effort to conceal that fact. One of the results of this spiritual allegiance of King James was the provision of Chapels Royal at Whitehall, Windsor, Dublin, and Edinburgh, where James could worship according to the ritual of his Church, and these chapels were duly furnished with suitable altar plate. The altar plate provided for the English and Irish chapels seems to have disappeared but, by a stroke of good fortune, several of the altar vessels made for the Chapel Royal in the Palace of Holyroodhouse have survived. These vessels, which are of superb quality, have up till now escaped the notice of the experts who have dealt with the history of the silversmith's craft in Great Britain. They are now discussed in the following pages: the historical circumstances of their survival will first be described and this will be followed by a technical description of the various surviving pieces.

The inscribed stone which is the subject of this article was found in the early spring of 1967 in ploughing just inside the defences of the Roman town at Wroxeter (Viroconium), just west of the ‘Eastern Cemetery’ marked on the V.C.H. plan. As the stone is heavy it is unlikely to have been dragged any distance by the plough. It may be suggested that at a late date interments had spread inside the once-inhabited area. The latest levels at Roman Wroxeter have been totally removed or extensively disturbed by persistent ploughing. Dr. G. Webster can cite no artefacts which can be placed in the fifth century, but chance discoveries may help to fill this lacuna. Precise dating cannot be attained, but it seems possible that Cunorix as an Irish foederatus could have settled at Wroxeter in a decade early in the fifth century, though it should be emphasized that the only firm date we have is c. A.D. 460–75 when the stone was set up, as Professor Jackson estimates on linguistic grounds.