The excavations were undertaken by the Silchester Excavation Committee supported by donations from public and private bodies and from individuals and by permission of the Duke of Wellington, K.G., F.S.A. Their purpose was the investigation of (a) a previously unsuspected polygonal enclosure of about 85 acres, here named the Inner Earthwork, which lay partly inside and partly outside the line of the familiar Roman town wall; and (b) a western extension to the known line of the Outer Earthwork, which increased the size of this enclosure from about 213 to 233 acres. With the assistance of the Ordnance Survey, the aerial traces of these earthworks, first observed and recorded by Dr. J. K. St. Joseph, F.S.A., were confirmed and extended by field-work and excavation, and have been planned as appears on pl. I.

The excavations showed that the Inner Earthwork was a defence of Gaulish ‘Fécamp’ type, and that it was erected, on the south, over an area of late pre-Roman occupation, the first clearly identified at Calleva Atrebatum, but one with strong ‘Catuvellaunian’ influences in its pottery-series. It is claimed that the Inner Earthwork was constructed by the client King Cogidubnus in or shortly after A.D. 43–4, as the defence of this, the most important settlement in the north-west of his dominions. It is further suggested that the Inner Earthwork was replaced by the Outer Earthwork also during the reign of Cogidubnus.

The excursus attempts to collate with the results of excavation the earlier discoveries of pre-Conquest material. The total evidence is finally related to the Belgico-Roman topography of Silchester and its neighbourhood, within the historical framework of the century and a half which separated the arrival of the earliest Belgic immigrants in the region from the death of Cogidubnus and the consequent emergence of the Roman Civitas Atrebatum.

This medieval industry was operating one mile south-east of Salisbury at Nat. Grid Ref. SU/160298 (fig. 1). It lay in the Royal Forest of Clarendon, within which there are other hints of the medieval pottery industry. Medieval sherds from Laverstock were first reported by Mr. Frank Stevens in 1940 and in 1955 further finds made during levelling of land formerly used as allotments and from road work were brought into Salisbury Museum. The site was then examined, revealing a twelfth-century cesspit and two pits with pottery wasters of the thirteenth century (one associated with what is now identified as a potters' workshop) but still no kilns. The first kiln was found on a new road line in 1958 and further investigation was aided by a grant from the Ministry of Public Building and Works. During six months trial trenches were opened over 1½ acres; six kilns, two buildings, and eighteen pits (some of them twelfth century) were excavated. Another kiln was found in 1960, and two more in 1963 when a bank at the edge of Duck Lane was levelled, making nine kilns in all. Some were stratigraphically interrelated, and were also in sequence with some pits.

The painted glass at All Saints', North Street, York, is exceptional even in York, and although that of the fourteenth century in two of the windows (II, VIII), is not outstanding, the early fifteenth-century glass is of very high quality. The Prick of Conscience window (III), is unique, and the theme of the Corporal Acts of Mercy, window IV, is rare. The whole medieval body of glass was limited to the church which existed before the penultimate bay, and the tower and the aisles on either side of it, were added by c. 1450. Windows which replaced the previous doorways in the fourth bay, on either side, contained plain glass in the later Middle Ages.

The local government in this country and most countries in Europe is carried out by Corporations of Cities and Boroughs, the head of which is a mayor or corresponding official. One of the most important duties of local government is the preservation of law and order, and for this purpose, in former times, the mayor was usually authorized by charter to enlist men or ‘sergeants’ as they were called, later to be called ‘sergeants-at-mace’. These men were armed with a mace which was both a weapon and a staff of office. Originally a weapon only, it was later replaced by a ceremonial equivalent. There was usually also, from the fourteenth century and probably earlier, a ‘Great’ or mayor's mace, carried by the mace-bearer, usually a sergeant, which represented the authority of the mayor and was carried before him on formal occasions. Both of these types of mace exist in their ceremonial form today and are carried on formal occasions, although the sergeant's former duties have to a great extent now been taken over by the police. The sergeant's maces are small, averaging about one pound: the mayor's are larger, usually about ten pounds. The powers of these sergeants were, of course, limited to within the boundary of the city or borough to which they belonged.