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NEWSLETTER

Archaeology in Marlowwww.archaeologyinmarlow.org.uk

AiM’s Forthcoming Events

Volume 16 Issue No: 6 December 2018

Dear AIM members and friendsJoin us for our Christmas Quiz!

8pm on Thursday 13th Decemberin the Garden Room Liston Hall, Marlow, SL7 1DD.

Come along an enjoy a fun-filled evening with new and old friends. This is ageneral knowledge quiz for teams of four. It is not necessary to come as a team,

as teams can be made up on the night.Teams will compete to win a small prize!

As usual, Mulled wine and Fruit juices will be provided on the night, but wewould ask quizzers to bring along a snack, or dish, if possible (Crisps, SausageRolls, Quiche, Nuts, Chocs, etc.), so we have a good selection of snacks to go

with the drinks. This has worked well in previous years.

We will also be holding our famous Raffle, which will again have prizes worthin excess of £100! Should you wish to donate a raffle prize, please bring it

along on the night. We are indebted to our sponsorsand AIM members who donate raffle prizes.

Entrance fee for AIM Members and Visitors £1

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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AiM’s Events at a Glance

Thursday 14th February at 8pm in the Main Hall, Liston Hall, ChapelStreet, Marlow SL7 1DD

‘LIDAR - The new illuminating the past’ a talk by Andy McGrandle

This is a joint talk with AiM organised by MAS

8pm in the Garden Room of Liston Hall

Members of AIM and MAS £3, visitors £4.50

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Thursday 28th March at 8pm

‘Wycombe Rye Roman Villa’ a talk by Brian Withington

This is an AiM talk

8pm in the Garden Room of Liston Hall

Members of AIM and MAS £3, visitors £4.50

*Liston Hall’s full address is:Chapel Street, Marlow, SL7 1DD.

Free parking is available in the adjacentcar park after 7 pm.

Hunt’s of Marlow

For First ClassDIY, Hardware andGarden Supplies

35 Station Road, MarlowTel 01628 488228

Image courtesy of Bucks County Council

(The graphic above shows a LIDAR survey of DanesfieldHillfort, courtesy of the Environment Agency)

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Wycombe Museum in the 21st Century

On Thursday the 18th of October, KeithSpencer, a volunteer at the Museum in HighWycombe (see photo), gave a talk outliningthe changes that are happening to WycombeMuseum and Museums across the country.

Keith said that Wycombe Museum had beenunder the aegis of Wycombe District Counciluntil recently. The Museum is now managedby WHAT (Wycombe Heritage and ArtsTrust). This change resulted in the Museumlosing between 30% and 40% of its funding.This has meant that the five permanent staffhave now reduced to one full-time and threepart-time employees. Without volunteersthe Museum would cease to function.

On a brighter side, Keith said that a lumpsum received from Wycombe District Councilduring the management change had beenspent on developing extra exhibition spaceand improving the café and shop. Museumvolunteers are currently into their third year

(of a one year project) to transfer photo-graphs and text from hard copy to the Mu-seum’s computer. It is planned that Wy-combe Museum will follow other Museums,such as the Petrie Museum in London, all ofwhose artefacts can be seen on-line.Keith also mentioned that new exhibitionstook up to two years to plan and that theMuseum generally had two new exhibitionsat any one time. The newer ones have more‘inter-active’ exhibits for the younger visitor.

The Museum endeavours to work with andinvolve local groups, plus schools’ ‘nationalcurriculum’ requirements.

The Museum needs good publicity and thebooklet Keith handed out entitled ‘What’son’ is a very comprehensive guide to theMuseum’s activities over the next sixmonths. The Museum is taking advantage oftechnological changes and can be found onFacebook and other media.

Keith concluded by saying that all are wel-come to visit the Museum (free entry), any-one can become a Friend of the Museumand/or adopt a Museum object.

This was a most informative talk and verywell presented.

John Laker

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BLHN + HS2 Conference

The annual Buckinghamshire Local History Net-work conference took place in Aylesbury on 29September. With HS2 as the theme, it was a sell-out with about 170 people attending – includinga few who have given AIM talks in the past. Itwas quite irritating that having queued to regis-ter, attendees then had to join another queuefor GDPR purposes. Thankfully things improvedafter that and the conference ran smoothly andon time.

Eliza Alqassar (Bucks County Archaeology Ser-vice) set the scene by briefly describing what wealready know about the archaeology of thecounty, and how this may be impacted by theHS2 archaeology project. This was followed by ageneral talk on the project by Jay Carver, thelead archaeologist. Jay previously ran the Cross-rail archaeology project so he has a lot of rele-vant experience with massive projects of thissort.

The scale of the project was highlighted by thefigures relating to the geophysical surveying thathas been done along the route: 2200 hectareshave been covered and there are still a few hun-dred to be done. A hectare is 100m x 100m(10,000 square metres), which is about fourtimes the size of the inner enclosure at WarrenWood. The main technique used is magnetome-try and this is supplemented by field walking –often with local volunteer help.

Survey results are analysed and further investi-gations involving trial trenches are carried outwhere potentially interesting features are found.There were three talks on specific sites and ar-eas that have already been identified as signifi-cant and where more detailed work has takenplace or is planned. One of the archaeologicalcontractors involved has already dug over 500trial trenches, although not many of these are inthe Chilterns.

An unusual project concerns the old church at

Stoke Mandeville. This fell out of use over 100years ago and was demolished in the 1960s,leaving a large pile of rubble which probablyprotect floors, wall footings and early construc-tion details. The team involved aim to excavateinside and outside the church which – not sur-prisingly - is a very rare occurrence withchurches. They will use some of the latest tech-nology, including drones, and also hope to pro-vide opportunities for local people to get in-volved with some activities. BuckinghamshireArchaeology Society have already done somefield-walking on this site.

The HS2 archaeology project is keen to engagewith local people and there may be opportuni-ties to apply for funding for local projects atsome point. However, it sounded unlikely thatthere would be opportunities for volunteer helpwith excavation – probably due to a combina-tion of commercial, legal and health and safetyreasons.

The conference ended with a talk on the intro-duction of the railways to Buckinghamshire, bywell-known local historian Julian Hunt. Juliannoted that the builders of the first railways did-n’t pay much attention to any archaeology theyencountered on the way. His talk included lotsof nice old photos of trains and stations – includ-ing one of Marlow.

If you want to know more about the project,here are two useful websites:

https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/archaeology/

https://hs2inbucksandoxfordshire.commonplace.is/

From the commonplace website you can use themenu tab to access information on archaeologyin Bucks and Oxfordshire.

Martin Fowkes

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GIS Course

On Saturday the 24th of November, MartinFowkes (our Chairman) and John Lakerjoined 17 other interested people to learnmore about GIS (Geographic InformationSystem) in a four hour session.

This free course was run by the Beacons ofthe Past Project. Ed Peveler (see photoabove), took the course, which was held inone of the buildings in Bucks New Universityin High Wycombe.

Ed explained that GIS is used by archaeolo-gists and others to overlay data on maps,graphics, or diagrams. Most people will haveseen a map of the UK being overlain withblue, red and other colours during generalelections. This is putting data (election re-sults) on to a map (of the UK). Weathermaps are a good example of GIS in use,where weather fronts, clouds, temperaturesand wind speed are laid over a UK map.

All the course participants were allocated acomputer and the GIS programme QGIS 2.18was then copied onto each machine. We all‘unzipped’ the programme and Ed explained

how maps (generally ‘Rasta’ files) could beviewed and how data (generally ‘Vector’files) could be added to maps.

The initial map we used was one showingthe topography of Chilterns and then weoverlaid the Chilterns Area of OutstandingNatural Beauty (AONB) onto this map. Wethen added some Vector data to show theHillforts on the maps. Later we were able toinsert on the maps specific artefacts fromvarious periods of history, which had beenfound in the Chilterns (coins, arrow heads,armour, etc.).

Although Ed needed to dispense a hugeamount of information in a short time, hedid this with good humour and answered aflood of enquiries during the course. Every-one seemed to have enjoyed this introduc-tion to what is a vast subject.

No doubt Martin and I will try to put the the-ory into practice!

John Laker

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Little Wittenham Clumps

Little Wittenham Clumps are two hills, CastleHill and Round Hill. They are situated a fewmiles west of Wallingford.

Castle Hill boasts a Bronze Age Hill Fort andin 2003, Oxford Archaeology excavated astrip from the top of the Hill to the bottom.Two AIM members, Dave Greenwood andJohn Laker helped with this excavation (seephoto). In addition to this excavation, a digwas carried out near the Clumps car park.This was prior to the construction of a newbuilding for the Earth Trust.

The Earth Trust is about to construct anotherbuilding, but beforehand an archaeologicalinvestigation is being carried out by DigVen-tures (see digventures.com for more infor-mation on them).

The Earth Trust looks after 500 hectares ofland, which include the two Hills and sur-rounding agricultural land and woodlands(see www.earthtrust.org.uk for more de-tails).

Members might remember receiving anemail from CBA South Midlands advertisingDig Ventures’s excavation, near Little Wit-tenham Clumps, in October. AIM member,Ann Pitwell, contacted Dig Ventures and ar-ranged to join a tour of the excavation site.So, on Sunday the 28th of October, Ann, andJohn Laker visited the venue.

After a brief introduction from Sophie, Indieguided us around the site, showing thegroup (see photo) the half sectioned grainstorage pits, later possibly used as rubbishpits, the post holes (for structures protecting

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Little Wittenham Clumps (cont)

the grain pits) and parts of various trenches.The site dates from the Middle Iron Age (400to 300BC).

Johanna then took us inside the Trust’s Fisonbarn, where artefacts were being washedand cleaned. Johanna also showed us aBronze Age cremation urn, plus three skele-tons, displayed in a case, one of which wasRoman and the other two (a 19 year old manand very young child) were Iron Age (seephoto, below).

This was an excellent (free) tour in a very at-tractive part of Oxfordshire. The Clumps areonly 30 minutes away from Marlow and theadjacent car park is always open. You canalso visit the Earth Trust Centre on weekdaysbetween 9am and 5pm.

You can view the archaeological ‘dig records’at digventures.com/earth-trust

John Laker

Saddle SafariCYCLE SALES & SERVICE

9 Dean Street, Marlow,Bucks, SL7 3AA.Tel. 01628 477020

www.saddlesafari.co.uk

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During early October, one of our memberscontacted us and put us in touch with a ladywho lives in Station Road. The lady informedus of excavation work, being done at therear of the car park in Institute Road, Mar-low, that was unearthing broken pieces ofcrockery and glass. The lady’s garden backson to the site.

Wycombe District Council had contracted acompany to demolish a failing wall and makethe area safe. Removing the wall revealedvarious bits of rubbish thrown away in Geor-gian, or Victorian times; possibly from Mar-low Place (an imposing building further upStation Road, once frequented by the PrinceRegent).

I quickly visited the area and spoke with theSite Manager and, as he had no request toretain any artefacts that his team unearthed,I gave him a plastic box and he kindly depos-ited into it items they had found. Latterly hepassed these on to the lady in Station Roadand, when the work had finished, I collectedthese finds from her. I have subsequentlywashed and cleaned these items and photo-graphed them.

None of the items are of any particular ar-chaeological significance, but if you don’t

check, you don’t know!

We kept Wycombe District Council in touchwith our findings. Having seen our photo-graph, they are happy for the ‘finds’ to bediscarded (again).

John Laker

Goings on in Institute Road!

Marlow Market & Tony’s Grill Bar

Dean Street Car Park, Marlow

A small friendly market offering large quantities of English and Foreign fruits andvegetables, along with fresh eggs, with discounts for bulk orders. Every Wednesday,8.00am - 3.00pm

Fresh fish from Grimsby. Every Wednesday, 8.00am - 12.00 noon The best kebabs, burgers and chicken in the UK. Every evening, 5pm - 12 midnight

(2 am Fridays and Saturdays)

All enquiries - Peter Smith 07789-713099

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The decaying ‘Gout Road’ Obelisk, at the top of Marlow High Street, has been reno-vated and recut.

1. In Toll Road times, what was the nearest town listed on the distance post?2. What was the longest one-way route listed on this route?

Answer:The post was erected, near its present site, in September 1822 by the Trustees of theReading and Hatfield Road. The aim of the route was to avoid going into London.

Answer 1 - Wycombe and Maidenhead (Thicket) are both 5 miles distantAnswer 2 - The longest journey on the Toll Road was from Hatfield to Reading viaHenley; a distance of 51 miles. The journey to fashionable Bath was a further 65 miles.

n.b. The two routes from Marlow to Reading were weather and condition dependant.The shorter route via Henley was often impassable in the winter. It became treacher-ously boggy, muddy, rutted and waterlogged, west of Medmenham; more so whenthe River was in flood. The alternative drier way crossed the Marlow bridge to Bisham,then went uphill to the heathlands of Maidenhead Thicket and there joined the BathRoad, a notorious hunting ground for Highwaymen.

No member gave the correct answers to these October questions

October’s Quiz Question and Answer

How many people are known to haverepresented the borough of Marlow between

Edward I’s Model Parliament of 1301 and 1624when James I was King?

Prize for the AIM member with the first correct answers:Two tickets to any AIM talk. Email or phone your answer to Ann Pitwell

(see back page for contact details).

December’s Quiz Question

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Warren Wood Update

We finally had some decent weather in October andmanaged to finish excavating Trench 13. The final layerof the trench didn’t produce much in the way of finds,although one piece of prehistoric pottery was found,similar to the pieces previously found in Trench 11. Morephotogenic was a large fungus by the enclosure en-trance.

Although we’ve now finished excavating all the trenchesfor our WW14 project, there is still work to be done. Weare now planning the post excavation activities of findsanalysis and report-writing. At the time of writing we arediscussing these activities with Phil Andrews, our profes-sional adviser from Wessex Archaeology.

Last winter we did some field-walking in the surrounding woodland and we still have a bit to fin-ish in Horton Wood. This will probably take place in February or March next year and dates willbe announced nearer the time.

Many thanks to all who of those who helped this year – especially those pictured who com-pleted the arduous task of backfilling just in time on our last visit of the year.

Martin Fowkes (Field Work Co-ordinator)

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Other Events of interestOther Organisations’Events and Resources

Henley Archaeological and Historical GroupTuesday 8 January 2019 7.45pm‘Wilts and Berks Canal - Past, Present andFuture’ A talk by Martin BucklandTown Hall, Market Place, Henley on ThamesRG9 2AQ£4 non membershttp://www.henley-on-thamesarchaeologicalandhistorical-group.org.uk/

Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society - Ac-tive Archaeology GroupTuesday 15 January 2019 7.30pm‘Archaeology north of the Cairngorms’ A talkby Doug StuckeySummer volunteering on an archaeological sitein Scotland.Bucks County Museum, Church Street,Aylesbury, HP20 2QPhttp://www.bucksas.org.uk/aag.htmlbucksasaag@gmail.com

Chess Valley Archaeological and Historical So-ciety (CVAHS)Friday 18th January 2019 8pmRisborough - Origins of our SettlementA DVD presentation by Paul Green, Risbor-ough ArchaeologyIllustrating the archaeological discoveries thatreveal the story of 4000 years of occupation ofPrinces Risborough, from the Neolithic to theend of the Roman period.Lowndes Room, Chesham Town Hall, CheshamVisitors £4 www.cvahs.org.uk

Other Events of interestThis is the information available to us at the time of publication, but weadvise you to check as this may have changed since then.

Buckinghamshire Archaeological SocietySaturday 19 January 2019 2.30pm‘Artist gardeners between the wars: ClareLeighton and John Nash in Buckinghamshire’A talk by Sarah GrayBucks County Museum, Church Street, Ayles-bury, HP20 2QPhttp://www.bucksas.org.uk/lectures.html

SOAG (South Oxfordshire ArchaeologicalGroup)Thursday 24 January 7.30pm 2019‘An introduction to Dendrochronology’ (Tree-Ring Dating)’ Lecture by Martin Bridge (UCLInstitute of Archaeology)Goring Heath Parish Hall, Whitchurch Hill, RG87NY Free, donations accepted.events@soagarch.org.uk

Marlow MuseumNov – Feb Sundays 2 – 4pmCurrent Exhibition ‘Travellers Tales’ withMarlow connectionsThere are 4 'Travellers' in the exhibition: TheSpotted Boy, Kate Marsden, Sir Robert Hartand King Zog, and 22 travellers featured in theexhibition booklet, which is available for saleat the museum.Sundays 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 December 2-4pmMinced Pies, and Mulled Wine and sweetiesfor the children. Come and join in the fun.Peacock Room, Court Garden Leisure CentreHigginson Park, Pound Lane, Marlow SL7 2AEFree entry, donations welcomewww.marlowmuseum.org

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AiM Committee MeetingsFuture AiM Committee Meetings

7.30pm Thursday the 17th of January 2019 at 3 Penington Rd, Beaconsfield, HP9 1ET7.30pm Thursday the 28th of February 2019 at 9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT

All members are welcome to attend all AiM meetings.

Please telephone a committee member in advance to confirm date and venue.

AiM Committee Members

Chairman Martin Fowkes88 Blind Lane, Bourne End, SL8 5LD01628 530832 - m88fowkes@gmail.com

Treasurer Ann Pitwell9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT01628 481792 - annpitwell@thamesinternet.com

Vice-Chairman John Laker9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT01628 481792 - johnlaker@thamesinternet.com

Membership Secretary Nicky Penderedc/o 9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT

Newsletter Compiler Jessica SmallSkeletal Biology Research Centre, University of KentCT2 7NR jfs25@kent.ac.uk

Field Work Co-ordinator Martin Fowkes

Committee Members01494 675195 - jabirkett@btinternet.com Tony Birkett01494 533669 - nicktillyer@yahoo.co.uk Beverley Howard

AiM

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