When I had the honour of addressing you last year I gave an outline of the programme for our celebration of the Bicentenary of our Royal Charter. This programme as you will remember was carried out as planned. When the moment came in Grocers' Hall to drink to the health of His Majesty, I think we all did so with more than formal emphasis for we knew that he was seriously ill. Since then, we have suffered the loss of our Royal Patron, the ninth since 1751. We are for the moment without a Patron, but I think we can confidently expect that in due course Her Majesty the Queen will be graciously pleased to continue the succession.

In the parishes of Stanwick St. John and Forcett-with-Carkin, eight miles north of Richmond in the North Riding of Yorkshire, are more than six miles of rampart and ditch, forming a complex of enclosures of a very remarkable kind. Since Leland's day they have been a sufficiently notorious archaeological problem, but their size and remoteness on the one hand, and possibly the counter-attractions of Hadrian's Wall on the other, have combined to deter analytical investigation of them.

The discovery of the site of ‘Karamallos’, near Apliki, was due to the late Mr. Carl Allen, one of the mining engineers of the Cyprus Mines Corporation. In 1938 the Corporation was engaged in opencast exploration of the South Hill of Apliki. In cutting into the hill they uncovered many fragments of large jars belonging to the Late Bronze Age. One or two whole vessels, together with some stone tools, were brought to the Cyprus Museum for identification.

Among the most remarkable discoveries made in the course of the Society's excavations at Stonehenge in 1919–26 was the discovery of a series of small pits set in a circle immediately within the bank of the surrounding earthwork. Some of these had left slight surface depressions which had been recorded by John Aubrey on his plan of Stonehenge made in 1666, and the pits were appropriately named the Aubrey Holes in recognition of this sound piece of field observation by a pioneer antiquary.

The Isles of Scilly, situated in the Atlantic Ocean twenty-eight miles south-west of Land's End in Cornwall, have long been noted for their number of chambered tombs. Borlase bears witness to this, and has often been quoted by later writers. He dug into some of the tombs with disastrous results and many another must have done the same. For in general appearance the tombs of Scilly are like their fellows in many other parts of Britain; their chambers are completely empty. G. Bonsor was fortunate in finding one partly intact on Gugh which he excavated carefully, as is shown by his drawings, published in these pages by Dr. H. O'Neill Hencken. It should be noted that he found evidence of many cremations, but as secondary burials, following a primary inhumation. There was no direct dating evidence available, but the finds included that which until 1948 was the only piece of bronze recorded as found in an English chambered tomb.

Fifty miles due north of Mombasa and two miles south of Gedi, a large Arab walled town where excavations have been carried on since early 1948 by the Royal National Parks of Kenya, is Mida Creek (fig. 1). In the middle of the creek are two mangrove-fringed islands with the passage into the inner basin lying between them. At the south-east end of the smaller but higher island, overlooking the passage, are the ruins of a small township. As part of the investigation of the major site of Gedi, a limited exploration of these ruins was undertaken, the results of which are here recorded. It will be appreciated that without the knowledge gained from the work at Gedi it would have been impossible to write this paper.

Caister Castle (see air view, pi. xvi, a) stands on the low ground about half a mile north-west of the little village of West Caister, one and a half miles from the rapidly encroaching sea, and some four miles from Great Yarmouth. Interest has always attached to the castle owing to the facts that it was built by the famous Sir John Fastolf, and that it played a part in the chequered fortunes of the Paston family, so brilliantly illuminated by their correspondence. The ruins, with their tall, slender tower, have also attracted attention as an early and splendid example of the use of brick; and we hope to show that the affinities of the castle lie in a quarter hitherto unsuspected, and that it is an important architectural document in the history of the cultural relationships of England during the first half of the fifteenth century.

The Ravenscar inscription (C.I.L. vii, 268 = E.E. ix, 561), found in 1774 on what may be presumed to have been a Yorkshire ‘signal-station’ site, and now in Whitby Museum, needs no lengthy introduction. Its importance was recognized by Huebner and Mommsen, and it has been discussed by Haverfield, who published a good photograph, and by Collingwood, who included a line-drawing of it in his Archaeology of Roman Britain. Despite its importance as one of the latest epigraphic documents of Roman Britain, and the attention it has therefore received, its exact meaning has remained far from clear, the uncertainty resting largely in the third line. Most recently, Mr. C. E. Stevens has re-examined the text in an appendix to his article on the British sections of the Notitia Dignitatum.

Well might Gailliard rate the hamaide among difficult charges, nor have later armorists done much to dissipate the fog, rather the reverse. The problem is threefold. What is the meaning of the word ? How should the charge be represented in armory? And how should the term be used in blazoning? Those are the three aspects under which the charge will be considered in this essay, looking first to medieval sources, then to the later French writers, and lastly to English heraldry.

Tablet weaving has been popular in the north from the early centuries A.D. It is present, for example, in the well-developed tablet braids and edgings of the Torsberg find from Schleswig, and therefore might be expected to occur in Anglo-Saxon remains. It is most appropriate, then, that the first examples of tablet weaving to be recognized in this country come from East Anglia, and in two cases these are fastened to wrist-clasps regarded by E. T. Leeds as distinctive of districts which were occupied by the Angles.

This is a brick house, or rather a pair of houses, built in or about 1706, as is shown by the date on the hood of the eastern door. Damage due to enemy action was made good in 1943 by means of temporary repairs in accordance with the Ministry of Works scheme for bomb-damaged historic buildings. After the end of the war consideration was given to permanent repairs. Since, however, the immediate locality is now entirely given over to industrial activity, it did not seem to the owners to be practicable, or at least advantageous, to repair the building for use as a house, and no other use could be found for it. Its condition began to cause alarm to those working near at hand and demolition had of necessity to be agreed to. Since, however, the plan of the building is a very peculiar one, the Ministry of Works made a special survey with the kind permission of the owners. This is here published with the other illustrations by permission of the Minister of Works and of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.