King Edward the Confessor had a royal palace at Brill, or Brehul, in Bucks, to which he often retired, for the pleasure of hunting in his forest of Bernwood. This forest, it is said, was much infested by a wild boar, which was at last slain by one Nigel, a huntsman, who presented the boar's head to the king; and for a reward the king gave to him one hyde of arable land, called Derehyde, and a wood called Hulewode, with the custody of the forest of Bernwood, to hold to him and his heirs per unum cornu, quod est charta praedictae forestae. Upon this ground Nigel built a lodge or mansion house, called Borestall, in memory of the slain boar. For proof of this, in a large folio vellum book, containing transcripts of charters and evidences relating to this estate (supposed to have been written in or before the reign of Henry the Sixth), is a rude delineation of the site of Borstal house and manor, and under it the figure of a man presenting on his knees to the king the head of a boar on the point of a sword, and the king returning to him a coat of arms, Arg. a fess G. between two crescents, and a horn Vert, as represented in Plate I. No 2.

It is well known that early in the reign of Hadrian a wall was built across Britain from the Solway to near the mouth of the Tyne, and that about twenty years later, under Antoninus Pius, another wall was built still further north, from the Clyde to the Forth. Forty years before the wall of Hadrian, Agricola, in the early years of the reign of Domitian, penetrated even further than the line of the Antonine wall. It is with the period from the first advance of Agricola until the coming of Hadrian that the following paper deals.

The University Museum of Archaeology and of Ethnology at Cambridge, of which I was appointed Curator in 1922, is comparatively little known.

That it is not known as well as its contents deserve by the Fellows of this Society is not surprising when it is even less appreciated by the University to which it belongs. Whilst a very large number of classical students take a great interest in the Museum of Classical Casts, there is great difficulty to get them to take an interest in the Museum of Archaeology and of Ethnology. Half of the teachers of Classics in the University have never been in the Museum, and many do not know where it is.

A portion of the town of Largs is built on a raised beach which here attains a breadth of nearly a mile, though in general it is a mere strip of flat land along the coast. This low ground is fertile, and beyond it rises a picturesque background of grassy hills which shelter the town and bay on the east, a combination of natural advantages which must have rendered the locality an attractive place of abode for man from the earliest times. A plot of cultivated land, near the termination of Nelson Street which intersects the raised beach, was acquired by a townsman as the site of a small villa. The area selected was slightly more elevated than the vacant ground on the east side, but its relative height with respect to its western boundary was uncertain, owing to the land there having been already built upon. It would, however, be no exaggeration to describe it as a low gravelly mound. While digging the foundations of the proposed villa nothing of an archaeological character attracted attention, but later on, in course of some outside operations close to the south wall of the newly erected building, the workmen came upon a small cinerary urn containing calcined bones. The vessel was shaped like a modern flower-pot, without any ornamentation, and stood mouth upwards, having, apparently, been simply deposited in a hole in the gravel. It appears to have been extracted in fragments, and dispersed among private collectors.

In the summer of the present year, a paragraph appeared in the newspapers stating that some ancient weapons had been discovered at Harnham Hill, in the neighbourhood of Salisbury, in a field in the occupation of William Fawcett, Esq. one of the borough magistrates. The description of these relics was sufficiently accurate to assure me that they were of the Anglo-Saxon period. I immediately wrote to Mr. Fawcett, who most promptly and kindly replied to my inquiries, and promised me the requisite facilities for a proper exploration of the site as soon as the crop which the field then bore should be carried. He further stated, that about eight years ago a carpenter, in digging a hole to receive a gate-post on the south side of the field, had turned up a spear-head and part of a human skull. This circumstance attracted no attention at the time, but in June last a further discovery was made by Robert Wallan, “the drowner,” or person in charge of the water meadows in the occupation of Mr. Fawcett, who, when employed in the field, perceived, about two yards from the gate-post, a spear-head protruding from the ground. This induced him to make further search, and in a short time he discovered the iron umbo of a shield and portions of a skeleton. Subsequently, an iron knife and a buckle were turned up with the remaining portions of the skeleton.

In Sir William Wilde's Catalogue of Bronze Antiquities is described and illustrated under the heading of chariot furniture an iron-backed bronze disc, 3¾ in. in diameter, coated with white metal, projecting from which is a bronze stud in the form of a dog's head, 1½ in. long, with a human head engraved on its muzzle. The stud is threaded by a bronze chain made up of two rings and double loops (fig. 1, 1). Wilde considered this object was intended for the attachment of a trace. It was found when making a railway cutting near Navan Station adjoining the River Boyne in July 1848, associated with a quantity of human remains; the skull of a horse; a number of antiquities including a bronze bridle-bit, and harness-plate; iron rings plated with bronze; some small bronze buttons; and seven ornamented gilt-bronze plaques.

As every circumstance relating either to British or Roman Antiquities must be interesting to your Society, I beg leave to transmit to you some account of four Mosaic Pavements discovered in the county of Hants, and which, I believe, have not yet been described in the Archæologia.

In the Exhibition of Works of the Old Masters made this year (1873) at Burlington House there have been four pictures attributed to Holbein. Three of the four were from the collection of the Earl of Radnor at Longford Castle, where they have long been well known, and they are particularly described by Mr. Wornum in his Life and Works of Hans Holbein, 1867. But the occasion of their being publicly exhibited to many thousands of intelligent observers is one which must invest them with fresh interest, whilst it has afforded an opportunity for more considerate examination than it is always possible to bestow upon pictures when suspended on the walls of a great house. I therefore think there may be room for a few remarks upon these three pictures, even after the attention they have received from Mr. Wornum; whose general conclusions I do not propose to dispute, but rather to confirm; whilst I would offer some historical illustrations in relation to them, which, though actually not very recondite or far-fetched, do not appear to have been hitherto applied as they might have been.

During 1949 three souterrains were revealed and recognized in Angus. The excavation of two of them, Ardestie and Carlungie I, extended over three years (1949-51) and full reports are in preparation. Both Ardestie and Carlungie I have been completely excavated, both now lie open for inspection, and both are preserved as ancient monuments under the guardianship of the Ministry of Works. The third site is Carlungie II. Its fate has been very different. After a short exploratory excavation the structure was reburied, and there is nothing above ground to catch the eye.

The discovery in 1719, at Brough-on-Humber [North Humberside, SE 93 26], of a hoard of Late Bronze Age weapons and casting matrices is described from contemporary manuscript and printed sources. The subsequent passage of its component artefacts through antiquarian collections is carefully documented, and four pieces are recognized as surviving in the British Museum. These comprise two rare two-piece casting moulds together with one example of each casting product. One mould is a Welby, the other a Meldreth, type, formerly provenanced respectively to ‘Yorkshire’ and ‘Quantock Hills, Somersetshire’. All are described in detail and suggestions made as to the casting techniques in which they were employed. The hoard, possibly originally comprising more artefacts than were recorded, was accompanied by a spearhead, a socketed chisel and a tanged awl or spike, now lost. These are attributed to Burgess's ‘Ewart Park phase’ of LBA2, with parallels scattered throughout the north-east, east, south-east and south of England.