In 1876, while the York railway station and goods yard were being planned anew by the North Eastern Railway (now the London and North Eastern Railway), a carved stone was found on the ‘hill near the New Goods Station’, a site of which the exact position, now obscured by still more extensive railway development, is discussed below (see p. 7). The stone was presented by the Directors of the North Eastern Railway to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, which already owed much to their public spirit; and it was in due course described, in the Society's catalogue, as ‘a fragment of pillar, 2 ft. 8 in. high, ornamented with human heads and basketwork, over which a man is climbing’. In the Society's Annual Report for 1876 it had, however, won no particular description and was doubtless regarded as among ‘the one or two sculptured stones’ blandly recorded as having ‘added to the completeness of the collection of Roman antiquities’.

The purpose of this paper is to record as far as is now possible the relics from a small but interesting Saxon cemetery which was found in 1931 during the working of a gravel pit in the parish of Westbere, some 3½ miles north-east of Canterbury.

One of the most impressive features of Scandinavian archaeology in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era is the wealth of gold which the three countries enjoyed during that period, more particularly Denmark and southern Sweden. About its source there can be little doubt, for it can hardly be regarded as other than deriving from direct subsidies bestowed by successive Roman emperors as deterrents to the restless tribes lying immediately beyond the frontier of the empire. Eventually it reached Scandinavia in the hands of tribes whose movement from south Russia constituted one of the streams which diffused the Gothic culture over a large part of Europe during the migration period.

The areas which bound the Irish Sea and North Channel possess physical diversities which offered differing degrees of attraction to megalith building peoples. This paper attempts a discussion of those regional differences and of their influence on settlement and intercommunication during the centuries in which the different types of megalith were being built. The Irish Sea basin and its narrower northern strait are fringed by lands in which lie the major portion of our British megaliths. The main reason for this is to be found in the existence of marine highways along the Irish Sea and along the arms which it pushes into the land, and in the presence of connecting routes across the peninsulas which bound its bays.

In 1888 the Society of Antiquaries of London issued a circular to many archaeological societies, which began as follows:

‘In accordance with a request conveyed in a memorial from a large number of representative members of various Archaeological Societies throughout England and Wales, the President and Council of the Society of Antiquaries of London have resolved to summon a Congress of Delegates of the leading local Societies to be held in their Apartments at Burlington House on a day in the ensuing Autumn hereafter to be fixed.

‘Each Society will be requested to send not more than two Delegates to the Congress, the object of which will be to consider in what manner to promote:—

1. The better organization of antiquarian research, and

2. The preservation of ancient monuments and records.’

The year 1888, therefore, marks the actual birth of the Congress, although its first meeting was not held until 17th July, 1889.