A limited excavation was undertaken in the Roman reservoir beneath the medieval King's Bath which lies in the centre of Bath. The reservoir had been partially cleaned in 1878 but the lower filling remained in position. Structural details were recovered, sufficient to show the different stages in the reservoir's construction: part of its vaulted roof, added later, was also found. The finds included coins, pewter curses, silver and pewter vessels and other trinkets dedicated to the goddess Sulis Minerva. The subsequent development of the site from the medieval period to the nineteenth century is briefly noted. Future work on the temple precinct beneath the Pump Room is outlined.

We are emerging from a winter of global discontents, and despite the approach of spring I see no immediate prospect of improvement in world affairs, in general rather the opposite. In particular, too, we are witnessing a fashion shift in crime. Past Presidents have not chronicled changes in wrongdoing, and I doubt if in the eighteenth century the occupants of this chair in the security of our premises commented upon the popularity of highway robbery. Today, kidnapping, spreading from countries further south and east where it is endemic, and bombing, instigated from a country further west where it is not, have become the popular weapons of coercion. Indeed, the times are depressing and established ways are threatened. But we in this room, and indeed all concerned with and for the humanities, have the elixir of hope: namely, a sense of history. Despite the ‘new look’ given in this year 1980 to the Vikings, ‘traders not raiders’, I doubt if some such commendation would have encouraged a welcome from the apprehensive customers resident on these and other shores who saw them coming in their long boats. I doubt, too, if the Anglo-Saxons viewed the approach of William of Normandy with cool equanimity or, since then, our thirteenth-century forebears slept soundly during the incursion of Louis of France. Later again the shadow of Napoleon fell upon our people, to be followed within living memory by the darker shadow of the threat of German aggression: to quote Virgil, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem. And still today we remain on the alert, mindful of the great Russian bear and his enveloping hug which shuts out the light. It is, I believe and proclaim, a source of strength and consolation to men and women of our disciplines to be able to watch with a measure of detachment the movements of these great shadows over the beautiful landscape of England which itself, under our special scrutiny, reveals the changes and chances of history.

The third and fourth seasons of excavations at St. Oswald's Priory, Gloucester, have led to the discovery of two further pre-Conquest building phases, including evidence of a separate building to the east of the ‘New Minster’ founded by 909. It has also been established that the church occupies the site of a late Roman cemetery.

Part of a decorated standing stone cross was found built into the early tenth-century church, and a report is provided on a carved slab from an early tenth-century context. A summary of the evidence from the Saxon grave-yard is given. The parish of the ‘New Minster’ and Free Chapel Royal is plotted and its origins discussed.

The examination of the Romano-British kilns situated on the Derby Racecourse Playing Fields (SK36133755) was continued during 1972/3 and a total of six kilns, in two groups, was excavated. The first group comprised two kilns of likely early second-century date which shared a common stokehole; this stokehole and one of the kilns had been greatly disturbed by unauthorised digging. The remaining kiln was found to have been constructed partly over a filled-in well which yielded pottery pre-dating the kiln. The second group consisted of four kilns situated close to a Roman road. Two kilns were of Antonine date and shared a common stokehole; adjacent to this stokehole and partly cut by it lay a small kiln, the oven of which was only 0·46 m. in diameter. A fourth kiln, the furnace of which alone survived, was of a first-century type; what remained had also been partly destroyed when one of the Antonine kilns was constructed. The principal products of the kilns consisted of bowls, jars and dishes; oxidized BBI sherds were found in the furnace chamber of the first-century kiln.

In July 1978 the main burial vault of the Roper family in the medieval chantry chapel of St. Nicholas at St. Dunstan's church, Canterbury, was opened to enable a complete record of its contents to be made by members of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust. This marked the 500th anniversary of the birth of the martyr Sir Thomas More (related by marriage to the Roper family), whose head was believed to be contained in the vault.

A hoard of Roman gold jewellery found at Wincle, Cheshire, in the 1870s had apparently been lost but re-emerged in 1978. The opportunity has been taken to publish and illustrate the objects in full, and to assess the significance of the hoard which is dated to the third century.

York Minster once contained a relief bronze effigy to Dean William de Langton who died in 1279, the earliest known example of such a monument in this country. The effigy was probably destroyed in 1645 though remnants of the tomb survived until 1829. Its appearance is known from antiquarian sources. It is not clear that the expertise to cast a full-size effigy existed in England at that time and the tomb may have been made on the Continent, possibly in France.

Innumerable panels of Flemish glass of the late sixteenth/early seventeenth centuries survive in England and on the Continent. This paper describes and catalogues over seventy glass-paintings, deriving from the Mannerist-influenced religious paintings of the Netherlandish artist Marten van Heemskerck (1498–1573), found in parish churches and secular buildings in this country. Thomas Kerrich, F.S.A., compiled an incomplete catalogue of the engravings of Heemskerck's work from which the glass-paintings were copied. Published posthumously in 1829, it now forms part of the list of glass-paintings in this paper.

Baroque artists were so concerned at the changeability of contemporary fashion that they employed Roman, Arcadian and informal dress in portraits in an attempt to be timeless.

The marblers Richard and Henry Lakenham, perhaps father and son, worked in London during the period c. 1355–87. In 1376 Henry contracted to supply a tomb comprising a freestone effigy resting on a plain marble chest with a moulded ledger and brass shields and inscription. This monument (now lost) seems to have resembled the standard tomb-chests of London ‘series B’ brasses. Henry Lakenham's suggested association with this workshop tradition is strengthened by the fact that William West, a known major producer of ‘B’ brasses in the early fifteenth century, was his apprentice.

This article seeks to counteract the tendency of some recent historians to underrate antiquarian studies in medieval England. It demonstrates the flourishing antiquarianism of the fifteenth century, first especially among the monks and later among the clergy and even the laity. The monks did research on local history in order to prove the antiquity and legal rights of their houses, while the ‘seculars’ viewed the subject more broadly. It is usually impossible to assess exactly to what extent a scholar engaged in antiquarian studies for practical reasons, and to what extent his motive was objective, intellectual curiosity; however, the evidence suggests that by the end of the century the latter motive was gaining ground.

St. Paul's is a post-Reformation cathedral, built on a pre-Reformation plan; designed for Anglicans, re-planned for Evangelicals, and then re-decorated for Anglo-Catholics. Hence the complexity of its architectural history. This article examines Wren's unfinished legacy, and discusses the many schemes to complete the cathedral's decoration, beginning with Sir James Thornhill and ending with Sir William Richmond. Central to its theme are the decorative proposals produced between 1870 and 1874 by William Burges (1827–81). Public outcry prevented the implementation of Burges's plans for a full-scale programme of marble and mosaic decoration. Nevertheless, his schemes formed the basis of the cathedral's eventual refurbishment during the 1890s.

The Society's library has grown considerably in size and stature during the 270 or so years of its existence. Reflecting as it does the tastes of the Fellows, many of whom have been bibliophiles both as collectors and writers, it has inevitably acquired by various means a large number of early printed books. Exactly how many was revealed when a shelf list of those published before 1700 was prepared in 1967. Of those fifty-one are incunabula, and they were thought to be of sufficient interest to be published in this extended list for the benefit of Fellows in general and bibliophiles in particular.

The three bronze fragments from Lezoux belong to a particular type of cult-wagon manufactured in central Italy in the seventh century B.C. Their presence in Lower Auvergne, together with other largely contemporary Italo-Etruscan bronzes, suggest that they are a result of a commercial exchange in return for tin ores. Such trade links between France and central and northern Italy were close and continuous in the centuries preceding the foundation of Massalia by the Phocaeans in c. 600 B.C. The cult-wagon from Lezoux is a particular central Italian creation drawing on a variety of Urnfield decorative techniques and symbolic motifs from eastern and central Europe. Whether or not the wagon was used at its ultimate destination for the cult practices intended by its creators remains open to debate.