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ROYAL ARCHAEOLOG IC ALINST I TUTE NEWSLETTERN*� 5 1 A�R I L 2 016

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EDITORIAL Katherine Barclay

e latest edition of the Heritage Alliance newsletter (dated 1 April, but no joke, I fear) includedoverviews focused on matters likely to affect heritage, with links to responses from otherorganizations, for two major matters: the 2016 Budget of 16 March, and the Government’sCulture White Paper, published 23 March. ey can be seen by following links fromwww.theheritagealliance.org.uk/news/. e principal concerns of those who’ve commentedso far seem to be with proposals for speeding up the planning system, raising fears of areduction of protection for the historic environment.

Our Institute is looking for a new member for each of the Audit and Investment and theResearch Committees. For the former, an RAI member with legal or financial expertise wouldbe welcome. For the latter, Council is looking for an Institute member with current experienceof research, especially field projects, and particularly, but not exclusively, in the commercialor voluntary sectors. ere is only one meeting per year of each committee. Any member whowould like to be considered should write to the Administrator.

To mark the 300th anniversary of ‘Capability’ Brown’s birth and in celebration of England’smany gardens and landscapes, ‘Year of the English Garden’ is VisitEngland’s theme for 2016.Lady Cobham, the chairman of Visit England, said ‘e images that Brown created are asdeeply embedded in the English character as the paintings of Turner and the poetry ofWordsworth.’. At the centre of the celebrations is the Capability Brown Festival, which is acollaboration between a large number of organisations, everyone from the National Trust tothe Embroiderers’ Guild. e Heritage Lottery Fund awarded the festival a grant of £911,000which is being managed by the Landscape Institute. English Heritage commissioned theUniversity of East Anglia’s Landscape Group to review research carried out to date and to mapgaps in knowledge. eir 85-page report (Gregory et al. 2013) looks at the reputation of Brown,his style, the drivers for the English Landscape Style, and poses questions about how to definewhat are Brown landscapes and how they should be conserved in the twenty-first century. Ofthe 260 or so landscapes with which he is associated, 150 are generally considered worth visitingtoday. Some rarely-open places are taking part in the National Gardens Scheme.

To find out more about the background and what is proposed, visit the festival’s websiteat www.capabilitybrown.org. As well as an interactive map from which you can find out whengardens and parks are open to visitors, there are links to all manner of events, fromphotographic and design competitions and exhibitions to study days and major conferences.

My favourite is a National Trust project, aerial filming with drones. is has producedtwenty-three hours of footage covering fourteen Trust properties, from Cambo village(Northd) where Brown went to school, via Stowe (Bucks), his first big job, to Croome Park(Worcs) and Berrington Hall (Herefs), which were amongst his last landscapes. e tastervideo is a little hectic, but in passing includes a clear view of Housesteads Fort and Hadrian’sWall! e finished videos will be available on the National Trust’s website and atwww.gardensfromabove.com

Gregory, J., Spooner, S., Williamson, T., 2013 Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown: A research impactreview English Heritage Research Report Series no. 50-2013.

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GRANTS AND AWARDS

Current Archaeology Awards 2016e CA awards have no panels of judges, but arevoted for entirely by the public. ey areannounced at Current Archaeology Live!, held thisyear on 26–7 February, at Senate House, London.For Rescue Dig of the Year, readers of CAmagazine chose the early medieval crannog site atDrumclay, Co Fermanagh. Controversy overshortcomings of the initial stage of the excavation(during road works) has led to a major reviewwhose recommendation have been accepted by theNorthern Ireland Department of the Environ -ment, and ‘when implemented, the resultingaction plan will make a significant contribution toarchaeological practice in Northern Ireland’.

Roberta Gilchrist was awarded Archaeologist ofthe Year; Research Project of the Year went toBristol University’s excavations at Berkeley Castle,Gloucestershire directed by Stuart Prior and MarkHorton. For Book of the Year, voters preferred eArchaeology of Caves by Marion Dowd and, a new

award, Current World Archaeology Photo of theYear, went to Shuo Huang for a view taken onEaster Island.

Current Archaeology Live! 2017 will be held on24–25 February 2017, at Senate House, London.

ROYAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTERESEARCH GRANTSe Institute awards the following grants annually:

Tony Clark Fund Up to £500 for archaeological work and dating

Bunnell Lewis Fund Up to £750 towards archaeology of the Roman period in the UK

RAI Award Up to £5000 towards archaeological work in the UK

Please download an application form at http://www.royalarchinst.org/grants or write toAdministrator, RAI, c/o Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, London, w1j 0be

7th- or 8th- century red-deer antler comb fromDrumclay crannog (© Crown, NIEA)

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RAI Cheney Bursariese bequest of the late Frank S. Cheney wasestablished to enable students to participate in Institute events or other conferences ormeetings. An allocation is available annually from which individuals can apply for a maximumsum of £200; full terms can be seen atwww.royalarchinst.org/grants. Before applying,please check with the Administrator,admin@royalarchinst.org.uk that monies remainin the yearly fund.

Last year, two students, from the universities ofBirmingham and Winchester, received bursariesin order to attend the Institute’s annual conferencefor 2015, ‘Ships and Shore-lines’ (for their report,see p. 24).

RAI Dissertation Prizese RAI holds two competitions for dissertationson a subject concerned with the archaeology orarchitectural history of Britain, Ireland andadjacent areas of Europe. In even-numbered years,

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Hare Hill: Food Vessel found in central cist [134] (K. Boughey)

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the competition is for the best dissertationsubmitted by an undergraduate in full-timeeducation, the Tony Baggs Memorial Award. Inodd-numbered years, the prize is awarded to thebest dissertation submitted by a Master’s student.Nominations are made by University and CollegeDepartments. e winner receives a prize of £500and the opportunity for a paper based on thedissertation to be published in the ArchaeologicalJournal. e chief criteria considered are (a)quality of work and (b) appropriateness to theinterests of the RAI as reflected in the Journal.

e RAI Master’s Dissertation Prize, coveringyears 2014 and 2015, has been awarded toStephanie Blankshein of the University of South -ampton for her dissertation, Liminality Set inStone: Establishing a Connection Between AtlanticIron Age Roundhouses and the Maritime CulturalLandscape. Our President, Professor TimChampion, presented her with her prize at theInstitute’s meeting on 9 March 2015.

RAI Research Grants, 2016Research grants for 2016 have been awarded to thefollowing projects:Ben Jervis e dietary impact of the Normanconquest (Tony Clark Memorial Fund)Earl Hintze, Ashelby Pasture project, Nidderdale,N.YorksEleanor Sier Excavation of the Tudor dovecote atFulham PalaceGordon Noble, Kevin Edwards and Claire ChristieEarly agricultural settlement of ShetlandSteven Willis Central Lincolnshire Wolds project:Hatcliffe Top (Bunnell Lewis)

RAI Research Grant ReportsPublication of the excavation by WelburyWilkinson Holgate of Hare Hill RingCairn, Craven, North YorkshireKeith BougheyBetween 1932 and 1950, a Bronze Age ring cairn onHare Hill, ornton Moor, North Yorkshire (SD929 476), was excavated by the amateur archae -ologist, Welbury Wilkinson Holgate, assisted byhis three sisters. eir excavation exposed the fullstructure of the cairn. e site has rising ground tothe south, but commands extensive views of thebroad valley below to the west, and of the hills ofAiredale to the north. Conspicuous both on theground and in aerial photography, it survivestoday as a circular flat-topped mound of stone andearth up to 0.7 m in height and 28 m in diameter,surrounded by a bank, with faint indications of aditch between the bank and the mound.

Flint finds and radiocarbon dating of charcoaland cremated bone reveal a long and complexhistory for the site, beginning in the Mesolithic. Ashallow pit beneath the cairn containing ash,charcoal, worked flint and a ground Neolithicaxehead gave a date of 3957–3797 cal BC. e cairncontained the cremated remains of between fieenand twenty-one individuals, mostly children andadolescents, many in cists, and associated withBeakers, food vessels (e.g. [134]) and collared urns,and returned radiocarbon dates spanning theBeaker–Early Bronze Age period from 2026–1895cal BC to 1746–1620 cal BC. Finds also included afine jet ear stud, a jet ring and two bone points orneedles.

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Excavating a possible structure with central hearth (at centre of baulk), Caochanan Ruadha, Upper Dee (G. Warren)

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Nothing was ever published. is author hasnow produced a comprehensive account backedup by a suite of secure radiocarbon dates. We haveclear evidence of trade in key materials such as flintand jet. e ring cairn occupies a key locationstraddling the Aire–Ribble gap, to the east pro -viding access into and across the Pennines andbeyond, and to the north and west to Cumbria andthe Irish Sea. e people who built and used thecairn on Hare Hill undoubtedly belong to thiswider economic and cultural narrative. e pub -lica tion of the excavation will ensure that thehitherto unheralded work of the Holgates will atlast make its long overdue contribution to ourunderstanding of this story (see special offer, p. 27).

Upper Dee Tributaries Project 2015 (TonyClark Fund) S. M. FraserIn a collaboration among the National Trust forScotland, the Universities of Aberdeen and Stirlingand University College Dublin (UCD), this was the

final season’s fieldwork in a three-year pilot studyof early prehistoric settlement high in theCairngorms, with a number of very satisfyingdiscoveries.

UCD undertook excavations at the very remotesite of Caochanan Ruadha, Glen Geldie, the mainfocus being a trench begun in 2014 which hadrevealed a tight distribution of mainly flint lithicartefacts clustered around a fire setting/pit. isfeature has now been dated to 6,215–6,050 cal BC,coinciding with the most extreme climaticdownturn of the Holocene. e flint cluster wasc. 2.5 by 3 m in maximum dimension; excitingly,the very tight distribution of artefacts and a suddenfall-off in frequency at the edge of the distributionsuggests some kind of light structure — perhaps atent? e lithic assemblage is dominated by flintmicroliths and microlith fragments, frequentlyburnt. e site appears to be a very specialist andpossibly short-term settlement.

At Chest of Dee, Aberdeen University con -tinued work along a stretch of the River Dee

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Surveying Castle Dyke Henge (A. Gibson)

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between a confluence and a spectacular waterfall,excavating a series of test pits and trenches toestablish the density and character of prehistoricoccupation. Radiocarbon dates have demonstratedrepeated occupation of the river banks from thelate ninth millennium BC through to the lateBronze Age — including, importantly, activityaround 6,200 cal BC. Ephemeral spreads of char -coal and well-defined fire-pits — in one case withfire-cracked stone in situ — were revealed withinthe alluvial sands, accompanied by microbladecores and extensive debitage. A few small cutfeatures were also found, one of which containeda narrow-blade microlith. Further downstream,evidence for human activity was revealed incharcoal lenses and large pits or ditch sections,packed full of rounded boulders. No lithic artefactscame from these features, so the radiocarbon dateswill be key in establishing intra-site chronologicalrelationships.

Lastly, during a walk-over erosion survey ofriparian tree-planting compartments by UCD, afurther prehistoric site was discovered deep intoUpper Glen Dee, at the southern end of therenowned Lairig Ghru mountain pass.

Castle Dykes ‘henge’, North Yorkshire(Tony Clark Fund) Alex GibsonCastle Dykes henge (SD 982 872) is in the York -shire Dales National Park near Aysgarth and hasusually been regarded as Neolithic. Geo physi calsurvey was undertaken over some twelve hec taressurrounding the henge, and the henge bank andwaterlogged ditch were cored for palaeo environ -mental data. e geophysical survey data are stillbeing processed but preliminary plots have revealeda pit circle in the centre of the henge, and anothersome 90 m to the west of this and appar entlyassociated with an active spring. A laser-scan neddigital terrain model of the survey area is currentlybeing prepared and the ground penetra ting radardata are being processed. Palaeo environ mental datafrom the ditch com prised pollen, waterloggedwood, calcined bone, charcoal and other plantremains. e last-named are still being analysed butthe pollen indicates an area of hedged grass landwith increased cereal cultivation. e char coals andwaterlogged wood indicate hedg ing species but theburnt bone is too small to allow identi fica tion. Asmall jet bead was also recovered from the core.Pollen and soil micro morphological samples frombeneath the bank are currently under analysis.

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Apsidal end of a large Roman building near Elloughton (R. Hutty)

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e two radiocarbon dates from below andupon a stabilization layer in the henge ditch arestatistically identical and date to the Iron Age(c. 750–400 cal BC). e dates were unexpectedand raise questions as to their relevance to thehenge. Was the henge ditch recut in the Iron Ageor is the henge an Iron Age construction? Exca -vation of the internal pit circle and/or dry areas ofthe ditch may resolve this issue.

Excavation of a multi-period site nearElloughton, East Yorkshire (Bunnell LewisFund) Peter Halkon and James LyallHull University archaeology students and mem -bers of East Riding Archaeological Society contin -ued work in 2015 on structures associated with aRoman road heading for the river Humber. reemore trenches were placed to clarify the interrela -tion ship of features detected in the 2014 magneto -meter survey and to provide dating evidence.

In Trench BA, the apsidal end of a stone build -ing 18 m by 8 m, sampled in 2014, was revealed.Heavily damaged by demolition and ploughing, ithad once been well appointed with polychromewall plaster and figured mosaics. Some tesseraeremained attached, the largest area making up aguilloche pattern. Window glass, hypocaust androof tile were also found.

e square feature in Trench BB was comprisedof a number of phases. Upper layers of the ditch fill

contained Roman material including a copper-alloybuckle and an infant burial. Under the upper fill wasa slot and post hole for a timber structure. At theditch base was a rim sherd from a Neolithic deco -rated Peterborough Ware bowl, either resid ual orfrom the original cutting of the enclo sure ditch. Atthe centre of the enclosure a grave con tained thepartial skeleton of an adult of uncertain age and sex.

Further graves to the east were excavated withthe assistance of York Osteoarchaeology. Twoorientated east-west were intercutting; one wassurrounded by oyster shells and white stones.ere were no grave goods; the fills includedRoman greyware pottery.

Metal detecting of machine-stripped plough soilrecovered iron coffin fittings comparable with lateRoman examples from Lankhills, Hants, andTrentholme Drive, York. A relatively undisturbedburial had similar iron fittings still in position,including loop handles at each end. e fittingsand burial, of a small adult female, were lied byYork Archaeological Trust Conservation labora -tories and await further conservation.

e intercutting ditches in Trench BC weresequenced and were all Roman; they containedcoins, pottery, animal bone and an enamelled platebrooch with its pin still intact. Semi-articulatedlegs of a human were found at the northern end ofthe trench, probably the occupant of a grave cutthrough by a curved ditch.

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Beyond the rivers: Lower Palaeolithicarchaeology at Knowle Farm Rob Hosfieldand Chris GreenNew fieldwork was undertaken in July 2015 at theKnowle Farm Lower Palaeolithic site (in theSavernake Forest, Wilts) to re-assess the landscapecontext of the site’s rich artefact collections. Wethank Mr Norman Smith for granting permissionto excavate on his land, and for his generoushospitality. Fourteen sections were machine-excavated, both within and outside the mappedmargins of the Knowle Farm gravel pit; sectionswere dug to the top of the underlying Chalkbedrock. Five flakes and one handaxe wererecovered. e heights of the gravel/bedrockcontact in the sections were highly variable,suggesting that the overlying, artefact-containinggravels were not deposited on a horizontally-cutriver flood plain. e typical sediment sequence inthe sections was: (1) an upper, disturbed unit,repre senting in-filling of the gravel pit and

landscaping of the ground surface at the end of theperiod of active quarrying (discussions with thefarm staff during the fieldwork, combined withanalysis of Historic England’s aerial photographicarchive at Swindon, suggests that this infilling ofthe pit occurred in the 1960s); and (2) a lower unitof undisturbed, sub-horizontally-bedded gravels.is indicates that the pit was never fully workedout in the early twentieth century (i.e. the gravelswere not fully extracted down to the top of thebedrock). In combination with the photographicarchive, the antiquarian reports from the 1900s,Froom’s (1983) earlier fieldwork, and the relativelysmall number of artefacts recovered in the currentinvestigations, this suggests that the majority of theKnowle Farm artefacts came originally from theupper part of the sediment sequence. During thefieldwork, no sediments were identified with thepotential to support OSL dating.

e fieldwork generated a full set of sedimentsamples. Analysis of this material is ongoing andwill address these points: the source and mode ofdeposition of the Knowle Farm gravels and theassociated handaxes and other artefacts (is it aresult of local slope processes?); the distribution ofthe enigmatic Knowle Farm ‘polish’ (does it occuron natural gravel clasts as well as on humanartefacts?).

e Lochbrow Landscape ProjectHelen Goodchild, Kirsty Millican, andDorothy Graves McEwanis project aims to investigate the locations of anearly Neolithic–Bronze Age monument complexand Iron Age settlement enclosures, all recordedas cropmarks at Lochbrow, Dumfries andGalloway, within their wider context and topo -graphic location. A sixth season of investigationtook place in September 2015. Assisted by localvolunteers, electrical resistance survey (usingGeoscan RM15 and RM85 meters) was carried outover an area of approximately 1.5 hectares, creatinga total surveyed area in this field of c. 3.3 ha.Previous surveys had established that the barrowsand timber circle obvious from aerial phototranscription are evident in the resistance results.e aims of this season were a better under -standing of the length of the cursus, and to link theindependent surveys from previous years.Experiential survey to record sensory experiences

Handaxe from Knowle Farm gravels (July 2015fieldwork) SI: 50mm. (R. Hosfield)

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Overview (darker areas: higher resistance, lighter areas: lower resistance) with (inset) features from aerialphotographs (H. Goodchild and K. Millican)

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of the landscape was also carried out, illustratingcomplex patterns of sight and sound and enablingnew interpretations of how past peoples mighthave experienced the monuments and landscape.

Interpretation of the results is complicated bythe strong geological influence of the gravel ter -race, with NE–SW trends, and dark and lightpatchy areas. Nevertheless, it is still possible to seeanthropogenic features within the dataset. oughthe aerial photograph and resistance results do notline up perfectly (due to the rectification process),certain features of the cursus are visible. ere areclear linear trends of both high and low resistancethat align with the cursus and appear as lowresistance postholes (particularly in the centralpart of the survey area). Within the southern areaof the cursus there is a slightly offset accretedrectilinear enclosure that shows a higher resistancelinear trend aligned with features from the aerialphotograph. By recognising such features, addi -tional similar anomalies are now illuminated thatmay represent cursus features not previouslyidentified from the aerial photograph. Mostintriguingly, there is a series of low resistanceanomalies in the central section of the survey areathat might represent other phases of the cursus.

However, given the complex nature of the geologyin this area, it is necessary to be extremely cautiousin such interpretations.

Illustrating Eddisbury: re-evaluating W. J. Varley’s Eddisbury, in light of recentexcavations Richard Mason and Rachel PopeAt 6.2 hectares, Eddisbury Hillfort is the largestand most architecturally complex Iron Age hillfortin Cheshire. Historically the site of Æthelflaed’sBurh of AD 914, and the Black Prince’s HuntingLodge in 1337, this multi-period site has long beenconsidered worthy of modern reappraisal.

From 1936–8, excavations were conducted byUniversity of Liverpool prehistorian W. J. Varley;and, whilst heavily contested by Molly Cotton,Varley’s work has formed the basis for allsubsequent interpretations, as both finds andarchive were considered lost.

In 2010–11, excavations on Merrick’s Hill,Eddisbury were conducted over six weeks by theUniversity of Liverpool, as part of a workingpartnership with the Heritage Lottery-fundedHabitats and Hillforts Project (Cheshire West andChester Council). Project aims were to re-assess

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From left: two late 16th- to early 17th-century tin-glazed drug jars, three 17th- to 18th-century yellow-waredrug jars 1:2 (R. Mason)

Sceatta (Series E) excavated in ploughsoil at Rendlesham, RLM 054 (© Suffolk County Council)

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the 1930s work of Bill and Joan Varley, in a bid toupdate and provide closer dating for our under -standing of Iron Age settlement along Cheshire’ssandstone ridge.

Excavation successfully relocated Varley’ssection through the hillfort’s northern rampart,obtaining a well-stratified sequence of second tofirst millennia BC events, including a Bronze Agepalisaded enclosure. e project also provided anexcellent opportunity to revisit the medieval andpost-medieval archaeology of Merrick’s Hill.

is year has seen illustration of finds from2010–11, as selected by specialist assessment, andof objects recovered during amateur investigationsin 2002–3. In total, 66 hand-drawn line illustra -tions were produced over a period of fourteen daysin June 2015, including: medieval ceramic vessels(4), post-medieval ceramics (51), clay pipe (10), andone stone object. All illustrations have been digit -ised in readiness for final publication, archive andmedia (Fig. 1).

e project now seeks final post-excavationfunding for further illustrations as Varley’s ‘lost’1936–8 finds assemblage has now been found. iswill enable us to proceed with publication, and to

provide a contemporary public record and arch -aeo logical synthesis for the Merrick’s Hill site.

Survey and Excavation at Rendlesham,Suffolk Faye Minter, Jude Plouviez andChris ScullSpecialist analysitical work has been carried out onmaterial recovered from small scale excavation intwo fields within the major Anglo-Saxon complexat Rendlesham, Suffolk (NL 47, April 2014).

Material culture and radiocarbon dating haveconfirmed fih- and sixth-century settlement andburials in the northern field (site code RLM 055).One Grubenhaus and a group of cremation burialscan be dated to the late fih to early sixth centurieson the basis of pottery, a brooch and vessel glass.A second Grubenhaus and adjacent pit containedmainly later, probably sixth-century, pottery.Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates from thepit sequence suggest that it was backfilled cal AD420–620 (at 95% probability). ree cremations,probably fih century, were an infant, a child, andan unsexed adult; a fourth, probably sixth century,was a mature or older adult, probably female.Metal-detecting finds, some high-status, suggest

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2016Spring Meeting 13–15 May to the Vale ofGlamorgan, led by Ann Ballantyne and Sian Rees(details in this mailing)

Summer Meeting Sunday 2 – Sunday 9 July inWiltshire, led by David Hinton (details in thismailing). Please note Sunday start and end dates,and closing date for applications is extended to 30 April

Autumn Day Meeting 1 October, Knole Houseand Park, led by Nathalie Cohen (details in thismailing)e early date of this meeting is to take advantage

of the opportunity to be shown the conservationwork being undertaken by the National Trust.

If you would like further details of any of these, orfuture, meetings sent to you, please send your e-mail or postal details to the Administrator, RAI, c/o Society of Antiquaries of London,Burlington House, London, w1j 0be oradmin@royalarchinst.org or to Caroline Raison,RAI Assistant Meetings Secretary, e Firs, 2 MainStreet, Houghton on the Hill, Leics. le7 9gd, orcsraison@gmail.com

Please check our website for news and earlydetails, at www.royalarchinst.org/events

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

ROYAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2016

The Neolithic of Northern EnglandTullie House Museum, Carlisle, 21–23 October

is conference is being organised by the RoyalArchaeological Institute, in association with thePrehistoric Society and the Cumberland and West -morland Antiquarian and Archaeology Society.

e opening keynote lecture will be given byProfessor Richard Bradley. e programme willinclude lectures by leading professionals in thefield and early-career archaeologists.

For full programme and arrangements, seewww.royalarchinst.org/conferences, and seeprovisional details in this mailing.

Surveying the Langdale axe factory (Oxford Archaeology North)

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continued activity here in the seventh and eighthcenturies but this was not represented in the verysmall excavated sample.

Excavation in the southern field (RLM 054)identified early to middle Anglo-Saxon featuresand deposits, including a midden layer containingmuch animal bone. Pottery was predominantlyhand-made with some Ipswich ware, suggesting amixture of sixth- to eighth-century material, andthe radiocarbon dates give a TPQ for depositionwithin the range cal AD 590–670 (at 95% prob -ability). ere are indications of iron smithing inthe vicinity but traces only of cereal processing; soil

micromorphology also points to latrine depositsand chalky cob debris from buildings. Cattle werethe predominant domestic species, with a highpercentage of young. Wild fowling and falconryare also indicated. Metal detecting finds includeitems of the highest quality and overall the evi -dence shows that the southern site is within a highstatus settlement of the sixth to eighth centuries.

Targeted excavation has tested and refinedinterpretations drawn from geophysics and metal-detector survey, and has confirmed both archaeo -logical potential and the applicability of thesampling and analytical techniques used.

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MEETINGS NOTES

161st SUMMER MEETING, 5–11 July 2015: Stockholm and environsMARGARET NIEKE

Stockholm: view SE to Birger Jarl’s Tower at the NW corner of Riddarholmen islet in Gamla Stan (R. Arnopp)

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e RAI’s summer war-band gathered atHeathrow for a trip to Sweden. Motivated by avariety of desires — whether to see the lands ofViking forebears, the opulence of historic Swedishdesign and elegance, or scenes of those NordicNoir crime thrillers which so dominate Saturdaynight TV, we were all campaign ready. Ourdeparture was a day later than scheduled — thanksto bad play on the part of British Airways, whocancelled our original outward flight at very shortnotice. With no immediate prospect of re-booking,our Assistant Meetings Secretary and her travelagent rose to the challenge, and were lucky to findflights for the following day. British Airways wereroundly rebuked for their temerity, and eventuallypaid some compensation. All a stark reminder ofhow difficult these trips can be to organise andhow much we value and appreciate the effortsmade by officers on our behalf.

Gaining our bearings in Stockholm Despite a rainy start (we later discovered this wasSweden’s wettest summer since 1938!) we beganour visits at the beautiful brick-built Riddarholm

Church. It is one of the city’s earliest buildings,built c. 1270 by the Grey Friars and completed inthe fourteenth century. A spire, added in the later1550s, was destroyed by lightening in 1835, aerwhich the current distinctive cast iron one wasadded. Of note was its role as Royal burial site inuse between 1632 and 1950. Within are a remark -able sequence of sarcophagi; the splendour of thevault of nineteenth-century King Karl XIV Johanwas most magnificent; the small tin coffins foryoung royals the most poignant. e chivalricOrder of the Seraphim, created by King FrederickI in 1748, was opened to women only in 1952; since1975 it is awarded to foreign heads of state andmembers of the royal family.

A short walk led us to the Riddarhuset (houseof nobility), built 1641–7. Oen thought one of themost beautiful buildings in Stockholm it is astriking example of Dutch Baroque. Between theseventeenth and nineteenth centuries this was achamber of the Estates of the Realm — theequivalent of the House of Lords.

en on a tour of the Old Town which extendedacross Gamla Stan island, led by Tina Rodhe,

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A migration period collar from Allenborg, at the Historiska Museet, Stockholm (R. Arnopp)

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Director of the Medieval Museum. Stockholm wasfounded here in 1252, the character and layout ofthe medieval town preserved in the narrow streetsflanked by tall buildings fanning out from theStortorgot. A tourist focus today it originallyprovided a hub for merchants busy with theinternational cast of trades and crasmen whohelped Stockholm thrive. Nearby we found theStorkyrkan (Great Church), another of the greatbrick built churches. Originally a small villagechurch was built here, probably by the city’sfounder Birger Jarl. It was replaced in 1306 by alarger basilica dedicated to St Nicholas which inturn was altered over the centuries, notably with afieenth-century Gothic makeover. e cathedralchurch houses one of the finest late Gothic worksof art in Northern Europe, the St George andDragon carved in wood. It also houses a 1630s copy of what is thought to be the oldest portrayalof Stockholm, the Parhelion Painting which recalls an event on 20th April 1535 when a lightpheno menon was observed there — six rings with sparkling solar halos (see www.atoptics.co.uk/fz346.htm). e final stop on ourOld Town tour was a remarkable brick vaultedcellar — a rare medieval survival.

We then reached Sweden’s oldest museum,Livrustkammeren, the Royal Armouries, foundedin 1628. Aer an introduction by its former headcurator, Ann Grönhammer, we viewed a range ofitems used by the Royal family over the last fivecenturies. One display presents royal figures

dressed in the clothes they were wearing whenkilled — whether assassinated or killed in battle.Also prominent is Gustav II Adolf’s stuffed stallionStreiff, the horse he rode at the Battle of Lutzen in1632. Amongst the military exhibits was a leathercannon — an experimental weapon first used bythe Swedes in battle in the 1620s — largely unsuc -cessfully. e final stop of the day was the RoyalPalace. e first fortification here was the midthirteenth-century Tre Kronor Castle, destroyedby fire in 1697. e current building, designed byTessin and Harleman, was first occupied in 1754.With 1430 internal rooms there was much to see!A quick walk-through fully displayed its grandeurand scale and hinted at the deep symbolismredolent throughout its design. A favourite for mewas Karl XI’s Gallery, the finest example of lateSwedish Baroque, modelled on the Hall of Mirrorsat Versailles.

Gold and Gardene next day saw us coach bound towards thenorth, stopping initially at the Historiska Museet(National Museum of Antiquities). is opened in1943 focusing on exhibits from the Viking Era. Wewere guided by Kent Andersson, Keeper ofarchaeology with a tour of the Guldrummet. eGold Room is a strong room built in the 1990s bya team who had previously worked for SaddamHussein! It is in two circular sections; the innercircle housing the main collection of some 50 kg ofgold and 250kg of silver dating from the Bronze

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Age to the Middle Ages. ankfully Swedish lawstipulates that any finds of gold, silver or copperalloy objects more than 100 years old and with noknown owner are to be redeemed by the state.Items collected for the nation as a result make animportant contribution to the understanding ofearly history. e quantity of finds is remark able,not least as none of the raw material is native inorigin. While, as at home, there was significantBronze Age gold, my eyes were drawn particularlyto the early Historic and Viking period artifacts.Here we were able to see items considered toofragile and precious to be allowed to travel outsidethe museum. Chief amongst these were three fih-century magnificent gold collars, all found in thenineteenth century, and formed of hollow tubescombined into rings. ese were then decoratedwith fine filigree wire and a multitude of minutefigures including animals, humans and variousmythical beasts. It is difficult to express how spec -tacular these pieces are. Elsewhere in the Museumwe saw excellent galleries covering Viking life,including a large model of the settlement at Birka,a useful taster for later in the week. Guides intro -duced us to Viking period ironing (pieces alsoknown as linen smoothers) giving us a new insightinto Viking housework. And in the courtyard wecould sample living history displays. It washeartening to see the number of families investi -gating Viking cras, food and games. e museumholds a plethora of material including muchmedieval ecclesiastical art and sculpture and I waspleased to find a splendid wooden medieval fontcarved from a single piece of timber.

A drive to the north brought us to Uppsala, thefourth largest city of Sweden and, since 1273, theecclesiastical centre and seat of the archbishop ofSweden. Uppsala Cathedral, with spires 389 high,so the tallest church in the Nordic countries, wasdesigned in French gothic style, and mostly brick-built, between 1272 and 1420. Following theProtestant Reformation it was used for corona -tions of Swedish monarchs and several chapelswere converted to house their tombs. In 1702 fireranged across the city and burnt the towers andspires. Lack of money restricted eighteenth-centuryrestorations and it wasn’t until the 1880s thatmajor restorations happened. During the 1970smedieval frescos, painted over aer the restora -tion, were uncovered and restored. Currently the

window glass is being restored with help fromCanterbury Cathedral. St Eric’s Chapel houses therelics of King Eric, later the Holy, patron saint ofSweden (d. 1160). e largest chapel, the VasaChapel, originally the chapel of the Virgin Mary,later became the burial monument for GustavVasa (1496–1560) and his family. In 2005 theVirgin Mary re-appeared — as a highly realistic lifesize wax figure dressed in simple clothes. Shestands perfectly still, reflecting upon the ornateVasa chapel which previously bore her name.

A short walk gave us a feel for the city, home ofthe oldest University in Sweden, and took us to theLinnaeus Garden. Carl Linneaus (1707–1778) wasa botanist, physician and zoologist, who laid thefoundations for modern biological namingschemes and modern ecology. A garden wasoriginally planted in 1655 but damaged in the 1702city fire and by 1741 Linnaeus had taken controland rearranged it according to his own ideas. Withthe architect Carl Hårleman he created a botanicalgarden in baroque style. It also included foreignanimals. A great favourite of Linneaus’ was a tameraccoon but there were also goldfish, peacocks,parrots and various monkeys. Six monkey huts,

Monkey houses in the Linnaeus Garden, Uppsala (M. Nieke)

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mounted on tall poles, remind the visitor of theirpresence. Today the garden is run by the Uni -versity and only species known to have beencultivated in Linneaus’s day are allowed — some1300 species arranged for the most part in linearbeds. We noted many garden favourites; but it wasequally pleasing to me to see several species wenow tend to attack as weeds including RosebayWillowherb!

Museum MedleyDay three saw us tackle four major museums andanother cultural icon — a typical RAI day out.Rain necessitated a short ferry ride to the island ofDjurgarden rather than the lengthy waterfrontwalk originally planned; some relief on a very busyday. Djurgarden was a royal hunting ground butis now home to a variety of cultural attractions.Sadly we didn’t have time for the historic GrönaLund amusement park which looked so enticingfrom our hotel. Our starting point was the Vasamuseum — purpose-built home of the man-of-warcommissioned in 1625 by King Gustavus IIAdolphus. Designed to be the most powerful shipin the Royal Navy with 64 cannons, and scope for450 (including 300 soldiers) onboard, the ship tooktwo years to build under the direction of a Dutchshipwright and set sail on 10 August 1628 but aerjust a few hundred metres, and near the site of ourHotel at Slussen, with water flooding the gundecks,it sank taking with it 30 of the crew of 150. Clearlythe new-fangled multiple gundecks proved itsAchilles Heel. e sunken vessel survived in thecold low-salt Baltic waters which prevent attackfrom ship worms. Most of the cannon were sal -vaged in the seventeenth century but it was notuntil 1956 that it was rediscovered by marinearchae ologists. Following a complex salvage opera -tion it was lied in 1961 with the museum openingin 1990 exhibiting 95% of the original. Today thescale of the ship, the size of six jumbo jets, is asastonishing as the level of preserved detail.Keeping it in ‘suspended animation’ is a difficultfeat. Aer a series of wet summers and enormouscrowds of damp visitors, in the early 90s it wasrealised that controlled numbers and betterventilation and air conditioning was required.Even so, and despite all efforts, it is recognised thatthe ship will not survive forever, and annualsurveys monitor the extent to which it is deform -

ing. Good that we saw it in all its magnificence.Displays show the detail of original paintwork anddecoration — it having all the ‘bling’ of a modernsuper liner. Most poignant were the facial recon -structions of those who died on-board. As with allmodern museums, the shop was the final port ofcall with a remarkable array of themed goods(Vasa teatray anyone?).

Onward to the Nordiska Museum which por -trays everyday life in Sweden from the 1520s to thepresent day, based on collections started by ArturHazelius (1833–1901), known as the most skilfulbeggar in Sweden — a man whose magpie habit ofcollecting everything from socks to churchfurniture and more I secretly admire! With morethan 1.5 million objects and 300,000 visitors eachyear, this is quite a performance; it’s the onlymuseum I have come across dedicating a sectionto disability aids. e collection is housed in asensational building resembling a Renaissancecastle, and opened in 1907 following an architec -tural design competition. Following a welcomelecture by the curator Cecilia Hammarlund-Larsson we were briefly let loose to marvel. ebuilding itself is staggering — with a main hallwhich was, until the 1990’s, the largest events spacein the city and an entrance overseen by an over -sized statue of King Gustav Vasa. Sadly time didnot allow a full inspection of the collections; oneof many reasons to plan a return visit. e nextstop (for those who could tear themselves away)was the Biologiska Museet built in the 1890s toresemble a simple Norwegian stave church.Created ‘to maintain a biological museum toinclude all the Scandinavian mammals and birdsas stuffed specimens in natural surroundings’ theresult is the world’s first museum of its type. Whata period gem! It avoids the ‘stuffed zoo’ sensationof similar collections and presents the birds andanimals shown against realistic diorama back -grounds so good you can almost smell the sea orthe treetops.

Sadly we didn’t then have time for the Skansenopen air museum but pressed on via ferry and footto the Stadshuset (town hall), completed in 1923 inthe Swedish National Romantic style and a majorsymbol of Stockholm. It houses a range of admin -istrative offices but also suites of function rooms,all displaying the best of art and crawork.Externally it is another brick building, but with

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Diorama in the Natural history museum, Stockholm (M. O’Brien)

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copper roof-cladding and spires and goldencrowns. Internally the Prince’s gallery has frescospainted by Prince Eugen, whilst the Golden Hallhas Byzantine-themed wall mosaics with over 19m of fragments of gold leaf — all a suitably grandsetting for the annual Nobel prize festivities. Last,but not least, was the museum of medievalStockholm. is had interesting origins in a largescale urban excavation, necessitated underSwedish Law when the adjacent Swedish Parlia -ment wanted to upgrade their facilities andprovide more car-parking space. Some 8000 sq mwere excavated and, as anticipated, revealedsignificant evidence of the medieval town. Keyfeatures included a medieval church and burialground, Gustav Vasa’s town walls of 1530, and nofewer than eleven boats. e excavations arousedgreat interest and were soon christened‘Riksgropen’ (the National Hole). Eventually themost prominent remains were kept in situ and in1986 the new museum opened. Structured aroundthe city wall and other features it is a lively andentertaining museum full of building reconstruc -tions giving a real sense of medieval Stockholm. In

a gallery for recent archaeological interventions welearned of the work in advance of urban regen -eration in Slussen, near our hotel, which hasdiscovered finds extending back to the Neolithic.e importance of the area focused on the linkagebetween Lake Målaren and the Baltic through ahistoric sequence of locks. e earliest, the QueenKristina Lock, opened in 1642. Horse-power wasused and the gates were greased with butter andseal oil. Anyone caught throwing stones into thelock was fined 40 marks or sentenced to empty thecommunal toilets.

Royal Mounds and a Fairytale CastleAnother foray outside Stockholm saw us headingnorth again to Gamla (Old) Uppsala, one of themost remarkable cultural sites in Scandinavia. Aroyal manor and important Iron Age cult site,carefully placed in the landscape and takingadvantage of a ridge and local river access, itdeveloped an extensive burial ground and laterbecame the site of the first archiepiscopal cathedralin Sweden. We were fortunate to be given a tourby Joakim Kjellberg of the ‘Old Uppsala Mythical

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Gamla Uppsala:Viking burial mounds(R. Arnopp)

Gamla Uppsala church (R. Arnopp) Gamla Uppsala bell tower (M. O’Brien)

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Centre’ research project. Early written sources tellus that in the fih century it was the home of theYngling dynasty of Kings. e most visibleremains are three huge burial mounds said to bethe burials of Kings Aun, Egil and Adils, alldescribed in opening lines of Beowulf. ese aresurrounded by thousands of other burials, manyunder smaller mounds, and include several boatburials. Two of the three mounds investigated inthe mid 1800s produced evidence of funeral pyresand a variety of fih- and sixth-century objects andhuman bone, female as well as male. Early sourcessuggest that a great pagan temple and associatedrituals including sacrifices still existed in the 1070salthough recent work is reconsidering this inter -pretation.

e present church is a remnant of the originalcathedral and overlies what might be the pagantemple site. e archbishopric was established in1164 on land of the royal manor with the help ofKing, later saint, Eric. Recent excavations adjacentto the graveyard identified a large boat-shapedhouse some 50 m by 12 m, thought to be late sixthto seventh century in date and reminiscent of theGreat Halls described in early literature. isappears to have been approached by a processionalway over 1.3 km long and marked by long posts. Itwas burnt; the subsequent Viking period settle -ment appears to have been much smaller —possibly just a farm within the present churchyardarea. ere is then limited evidence for settlementuntil the later twelh century when a large palatial

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style building appears complete with high statusfinds. Later a Benedictine Chapter was establishedunder English influence but this seems to havebeen short-lived and the importance of OldUppsala declined as the bishopric moved to (new)Uppsala in 1273. In the sixteenth century, GustavVasa realised the symbolic importance of the site and used it to mobilise national idealogicalstrength in troubled times. e desire to traceancestry back to such a potent site continued formany years. Even today the site remains inSwedish consciousness as evidenced by the Papalvisit of 1989. is in part relates to the role the sitehas as the first burial site of Eric, martyred King ofSweden and national saint. Today the complex hasa well-designed modern museum filled withinstructive reconstructions and illustrations of theearly mound excavations. Overall the site and on-going research is inspiring and certainly one forearly medieval scholars to keep in view.

From Gamla Uppsala our coach took the sceniccross-country route to Skokloster Castle where wewere guided by Bengt Kylsberg, retired curator. Itoverlooks Lake Mälaren on the main waterwaybetween Stockholm and Uppsala and was designedto impress; it was commissioned by Carl GustavWrangel, of one of the German-Baltic noblefamilies recruited to the Swedish military duringthe seventeenth century. He began building in1654, filling the house with collections from acrossEurope and beyond. When complete it was thelargest private palace ever built in Sweden and isone of the best preserved Baroque castles. Surpris -ingly the family lived in it for only three weeks,spending most of their time in other properties inSwedish Pomerania. It passed down through thefamily until 1967 when it was bought by theSwedish government for a museum. e collec -tions manage to survive in a building in which themain rooms have no heating or light and havetemperatures dropping to minus 15°C in winter.e main family rooms, the Wrangel floor, werebuilt in suites in French style, including for the firsttime separate male and female bedrooms, and arefurnished exquisitely, with impressed and gilt calf-leather wall covering. Some of furnishings werewar trophies reflecting Wrangel’s military roleduring Sweden’s era as a Great Power. Along theinner corridor are portraits he commissioned of allhis leading military comrades in arms. Next to the

Wrangel rooms is the Brahe Apartment, namedaer the family his heiress daughter married into.Here we saw elegant rooms with furniture anddecoration from the 1600s–1800s. Amongst theBrahe introductions were the proverbs paintedalong the corridor. ese have been added to overtime and today there are over 151 in a variety oflanguages along the ‘speaking corridors’. On theupper floor we saw the well-stocked library ofsome 30,000 volumes origi nating with Wrangel’sextensive collection, and seven pairs of globes ofthe 1640s. Perhaps more surprisingly, here we alsosaw the unfinished hall — what was to have beenthe largest room in the castle. Work stopped onWrangel’s death and never restarted, providing aunique insight into the fabric and construction ofthe castle. Beside the hall is Wrangel’s lathe room— the skills of fine wood-working being a mark ofaristocracy — with the finest array of tools fromacross Europe. Next to it is the armoury —Wrangel’s creation of a weaponry ‘kunstkammer’— the only one now preserved in its originalseventeenth-century setting. It includes over 2000pieces but focuses on hunting rather than militaryweapons. Lastly, to continue a ‘stuffed horses’theme, at the top of the stairs we encounteredAndalous, warhorse of King Karl XIV Johann atthe Battle of Leipzig in 1813.

Sadly we had little time to view the surroundingparkland. We were able to see some of the originalLime avenues — with trees said to date back to thelate 1660s. A fleeting visit to the church —Sweden’s second-oldest brick example, built in the thirteenth century — introduced us to theCistercian nunnery which originally occupied thesite, the church being all that remained when itbecame the Wrangel family church in the seven -teenth century.

Over Lake Mälaren to BirkaTo visit Birka (birch island), a major Vikingtrading settlement, involves a pleasant two-hourboat journey. It forms a World Heritage Site jointlywith the Royal residence of Hovgården on the nextisland. Founded around 750 AD, Birka was, forover 200 years, the most important Viking tradingcentre in Scandinavia. It was a royal establishmentwhich quickly developed into a cra and tradefocused settlement. e population grew from acouple of hundred to perhaps 1,500 at its height,

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Building a jetty at Birka (R. Arnopp)

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before its decline at the end of the tenth century,possibly due to changing lake levels. Extensiveexcavations of its ‘black earths’ have providedevidence of layout, building form, and activitiestaking place. Earthwork remains of a Viking-period hillfort — the only one known in Sweden— and urban ramparts indicate that defence wasneeded. ough Ansgar, a future patron saint ofScandinavia, is believed to have arrived as amissionary c. 830 AD, no trace of a church has yetbeen found on Birka. It was founded as part of aroyal strategy to gain control over Baltic trade,thereby gaining power and prestige. is certainlyworked, with finds showing trade links acrossEurope and through Russia to the Black Sea andbeyond. Some of the goods traded related toBirka’s position at the junction of summer andwinter trade routes, with furs, antler and ironbeing important. ere was an early slave tradehere, including Christian prisoners. Highlydeveloped cra skills included fine metal, bone,antler, and glass working. Over 1,000 graves havebeen excavated, and known cemeteries includemore than 3000 burials, mostly pagan cremations,many placed beneath low mounds. Today, like us,visitors all arrive by boat, and have the option of avariety of well-led tours across the island land -scape. Despite a rain storm we returned aer our

tour much informed and were then able to visit thevarious building reconstructions (com plete withperiod re-enactors doing Viking-inspired cra -work), and the informative new museum building,although it is a pity that it houses only replicapieces.

Royal EndingsFinally, and thanks to rescheduling by ourorganisers, we were able to see the royal palace atDrottningholm, which many of us has thought lostfrom the programme. is royal summer palace,now a World Heritage Site, dates primarily fromthe seventeenth century when Sweden was a majorplayer on the European stage. Commissioned byDowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora, designed byTessin the Elder and completed by his son withinteriors by Carl Hårleman and Jean Eric Rehn, thepalace looked to France and Versailles for inspira -tion and incorporated the work of the finest Euro -pean crasmen. We toured the magnificent stateand private rooms, including Hedvig Eleanora’sState Bedchamber, complete with more gold-workthan any of us would care to dust. All includedmore treasures than it is possible to describe andthese only within that section of the palace not stilloccupied by the current Royal family. Externallythe Palace is complemented by a seventeenth-

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e two neighbouring riverside villages of Kewand Richmond are unique in the United Kingdom,and therefore well worth a visit by the RAI. Uniquein their later royal growth and in their handsomedomestic architecture in the classical tradition,their sites span a far longer period, from prehistoryto early recorded history. It is a story of surprisinglength, variety, and national significance.

Of prehistory, preceding the settlement byhumans of the ames Valley some 440,000 yearsago, remains of mammoth, hippopotamus, hyena,bison and elephant have been found on both riverbanks, and in building the nineteenth-century

railway line navvies discovered the only bone of apolar bear ever found in the London area. Amongearly artefacts, a Neolithic flint axe-head and a lateBronze Age socketed axe-head with part of originalha surviving, were found while building the thirdKew Bridge in 1903, and an Iron Age tankard (ofc. 4 pint capacity) was discovered in the amesbetween Kew and Richmond.

In Kew Church local historian David Blomfieldoutlined its history and set it within its royalcontext. Founded and in part funded by QueenAnne (thus its tactful dedication) it has beenperiodically enlarged and embellished, once

century baroque garden, again of French inspira -tion, complete with vistas, water features andtrimmed box hedges defining intricate parterrebeds, all originally designed to be visible as a ‘grandreveal’ only from the Palace or Palace terrace.Bronze sculptures throughout are the work Adriande Vries (1556–1626), one of the most eminentsculptors of the Northern European Renaissance.Having fallen into decay the garden was exten -sively restored in the 1950s and 60s, to the originaldesign. e Baroque garden was complemented bya picturesque English Park designed in 1777 whichfollowed the Capability Brown tradition ofnatural istic landscaping with winding woodlandwalks, irregular water features and informal treeand shrub plantings. A few romantic ruins andmonu ments completed the picture. Nestlingwithin these landscapes are several fashionablebuildings. Some of our party managed a quick hoofto visit the Kina Slott (Chinese Pavilion) — anunusual combination of rococo and Chinese styledesigned by someone who had no real under -standing of what a true Chinese Pavilion shouldlook like! e prefabricated structure was asurprise present from King Adolf Frederik to hisQueen Lovia Ulrika in 1769. Others of us touredthe theatre, dating to 1766 and a replacement foran earlier example which burnt down. A somewhatplain building externally it is transformedinternally but this time by paintwork mirroringmarble rather than the actual material, with papiermâché corbels and wallpaper which was nailed up.

e latter economy allowed it to be taken down,rolled up and safely stored during the winter whenthe site was closed. Today this is the largest collec -tion of eighteenth-century wallpaper in Sweden!e theatre had side boxes for the court and a mainseating area for the rest with the poor allowed tooccupy the rear, segregated behind curtaining. estage still retains many original settings, andmachinery which originally needed some 42 mento operate. Dutch and German sailors used to beemployed for this work, being considered strongerand more reliable than their Swedish counterparts.To get over language barriers com mands had to bewhistled; leading to a ban on whistling within anystage productions. In 1771 the ‘Déjuener Salon’facing the English Park was added providingcirculation space which could be opened out intothe Park. During the late 1770s the eatre was thecentre of Swedish cultural life with new plays andoperas opening here. Subsequently it fell out of useand was mothballed until rediscovery by a theatrescholar in 1921. Brought back to life it remains inuse for summer performances, focusing on worksof eighteenth-century date. In 2015, e Marriageof Figaro was the main attraction.

is, reader, brought us to the end of our visitand we gathered at Arlanda airport with cultureoverload and sore feet . . . before our return flight(which thankfully British Airways had not altered).We are grateful to Hedley Swain and CarolineRaison for organising our visit, and to HelenPersson, who helped with the initial contacts.

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Autumn Day Meeting, 24 October 2015: Two Royal Villages and aRoyal River – Kew, Richmond, and the Thames between ROBIN PRICE

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compris ing a school, and is still within the occa -sional royal orbit and interest. Its handsomeinterior is bedecked with many memorials, amongthem tablets to the Royal gardeners, Aiton fatherand son, and to the first Directors of the RoyalBotanic Gardens, William and Joseph Hooker, alsofather and son, whose reign spanned the years 1841to 1911. Its surprisingly rural graveyard includes thetombs of omas Gainsborough, Johan Zoffany,Jeremiah Mayer and John Kirby, some servants ofthe royal households at Kew, and of many othersattracted to, or attending, the eighteenth-centurycourt in its rural setting.

On Kew Green, Robin Price introduced thehistorical concept, beloved of media historians, of‘the long eighteenth century’, in this case1680–1840, whose prime domestic architecture,inspired by classical models, we would enjoythroughout the day, beginning in proper archaeo -logical mode with Kew as the more recent,c. 1740–1840. For Frederick Prince of Wales withhis wife Princess Augusta settled here in charac -teristic Hanoverian rivalry to his father George IIat Richmond, employing (annoyingly?) the samearchitect and garden designer. us the origin ofthe present Royal Botanic Gardens, which weresubsequently greatly enlarged, and passed to the

state by Queen Victoria in 1840. It has long sincebecome of immense international botanical andhorticultural significance, not least for formerimperial botanical exchange; and it presentlyhouses the largest collection of living plant speci -mens in the world.

Among the handsome buildings of note aroundKew Green, he pointed out the separate houseoccupied as study and botanical library of the 3rdEarl of Bute, not only a botanical enthusiast, butalso tutor, mentor, friend, and briefly PrimeMinister 1762–3 of George III: as also his house,now Cambridge Cottage, 37 Kew Green, lateroccu pied by the two nineteenth-century Dukes ofCambridge, and by Princess Mary Adelaide,mother of Queen Mary, consort of George V.Many of the houses on the south side of KewGreen were acquired by George III for his ever-growing family, among them the school house bythe modern entrance gates to Kew Gardensattended by his ducal and unruly sons. e famousHerbarium, once the site of a couple of privateresidences, now houses some 7 million driedbotanical specimens, an unrivalled and regularlyaugmented reference collection. One house on thenorth side of Kew Green dates back to the lateseventeenth century. For those enjoying kinetic

St Anne’s Church, Kew (M. O’Brien)

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archaeology, Kew Green was the site of a famous1737 cricket match between teams captained byFrederick Prince of Wales and the Duke ofMarlborough. e Prince won the £100 bet.Cricket is still frequently played on the Green, forthose who like their archaeology continuant.

Embarked on the river launch at Kew Pier, theparty enjoyed a festive, generous, if mildly damp -ened lunch in so rain, not unaccompanied bytherapeutic doses of decent wine. We immedi atelypassed the London Museum of Water and Steam(formerly known as the Kew Bridge PumpingStation) of 1840s origin, once pumping a vastvolume of pure water as far as Bayswater in westLondon. e Museum celebrates Victorian engin -eer ing at its most dramatic and powerful. e oncevast complex included extensive filter beds andreservoirs and employed 80 staff; and its splendidVictorian industrial edifice still contains suchimpressively massive beam engines as theMaudsley (1838), the Boulton and Watt (1820), theGrand Junction (Cornish) 90 inch engine (1846),and many others, with many still maintained inworking order, and assembled here, both steamand diesel, as a representative collection. A placeof pilgrimage for industrial archaeologists,especially on in-steam days.

Further up-river we passed Lots Ait where someriver scenes of ‘e African Queen’ were filmed(the parakeets added for verisimilitude were

unwisely released to wreak later ecological havoc).We also passed the ford crossed by Julius Caesar’slegions on his second invasion of Britain in 54 BC.e numerous stakes in the centre of the river andon its banks, discovered, plotted, and removed inthe nineteenth century, were very probably thoserecorded so clearly as laid down by the defendingBritons in Caesar’s Gallic War, Book V. Here onthe North bank, Edmund Ironside defeated theDanes under Canute in 1016 (but within the yearEdmund was dead and Canute had won). On thesame bank we identified Syon House, once aBrigittine Convent (hence the present redolentname) and since the late sixteenth century in theownership of the Dukes of Northumberland. Itsinterior is by Robert Adam, and its handsomegardens were designed by Capability Brown.

Among the more distinguished riverside build -ings we passed were: the King’s Observatory in theOld Deer Park at Richmond, built for George IIIto observe the transit of Venus in 1769; Marble HillHouse, an exquisitely correct Palladian gem(1724–9), built for Henrietta Howard, laterDuchess of Suffolk, quondam mistress of GeorgeII; Ham House, of handsome seventeenth-centuryinterior and exterior — once described as a‘sleeping beauty’ of a house, and said to be muchhaunted; Orleans House, its early structure nowrepresented solely by its octagon designed byJames Gibbs (c. 1720), of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields

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Marble Hill House seen from our Thames river boat (M. O’Brien)

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fame and much else, whose resplendent rococointerior, recently restored, is now part of thepublicly avail able art gallery bequeathed to thelocal authority by Mrs Basil Ionides in 1962; YorkHouse, built in the 1630s for a courtier to CharlesI, now the municipal offices of the Royal Boroughof Richmond-upon-ames; finally, of interestrather than architectural distinction, was Eel PieIsland, home to 26 artists’ studios, home also until1970 to the Eel Pie Hotel, the venue for many jazzmusicians and pop groups, not least the RollingStones. It is still home to Trevor Baylis, theinventor of the ever-desirable wind-up radio.

Following disembarkation, Ann Ballantyne leda fascinating tour of Richmond Village describingthe architecture, so much older, richer, larger andaltogether grander than Kew, as the more ancientrural seat of successive monarchs since Edward IIIin the later fourteenth century. ough beloved ofRichard II and his consort Anne of Bohemia, littleremains of Richmond Palace aer its seventeenth-century sale and privatisation by the dour Com -monwealth Commissioners. Known as ShenePalace until Henry VII renamed it Richmond aerhis earldom in Yorkshire, it retains its muchrestored early Tudor entrance tower and thebuildings of the Wardrobe (store for so furnish -ings) now long since converted into privatedwellings. Terraced residences built for courtiersfrom the 1680s border Richmond Green, togetherwith houses of merchants from the City,

physicians and lawyers, and some built-for-let(what’s new?). Perhaps most noteworthy amongthis living museum of prime domestic architectureis Maids of Honour Row, built 1717–21, two ofwhich were rented by the Prince of Wales, laterGeorge II, for those we would now term the ladies–in–waiting of his wife Princess Caroline. ey arestill in original condition. ere is also thearchitecturally significant late seventeenth-centuryOld Palace Terrace, another early example of anurban brick terrace. Yet another is Old PalacePlace (1688–9), built one room deep across the rearparts of three timbered houses of the late sixteenthand early seventeenth centuries.

Central to these and other architecturaltreasures is Richmond Green, witness to Courtjousts from the reign of Henry VII, not least thetournament staged under his son Henry VIII,attended by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.A place of magnificence indeed.

Returning to urban Richmond we noted theredevelopment of the riverside by the ever-sensitively classical hand of Quinlan Terry,preserving much of what was best of existingbuild ings. ence we moved gradually and pain -lessly uphill by way of a glance at Little Green withits Richmond eatre by Frank Matcham (percontra, paying no architectural respect whatsoeverto adjacent Georgian elegance); through BrewersLane (the shopping centre in the time of QueenElizabeth I) whose Britannia pub and nos 12–14 arec. 1690; and past Richmond Church, whose nave isof respectable eighteenth-century construct, andwhose tower is of the fieenth to seventeenthcenturies.

ose with undiminished energy aer ademanding and intermittently drizzling dayblithely ascended Richmond Hill past moreeighteenth- and early nineteenth-century terracesto the transcendent upriver view of the sylvan andglinting ames, so justly celebrated by Turner,and uniquely protected by an Act of Parliament of1902. Wick House, built by Sir William Chambersfor Sir Joshua Reynolds who lived there until 1792,lies just short of the summit, together with otherelegantly proportioned houses of contemporarydate.

Descending by way of e Vineyard, we viewedMichel’s Alms-houses founded 1695, rebuilt 1810and augmented in 1860; also Bishop Duppa’s 23

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Richmond Palace: the Tudor gateway (C. von Patzelt)

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Alms-houses, founded in 1661, a particularlyhandsome edifice with its memorial plaque to thefounder, tutor to Prince Charles, later Charles II,at Richmond Palace, who became aer theRestoration Bishop of Winchester; and QueenElizabeth’s Alms-houses, founded elsewhere in1600 and rebuilt in e Vineyard in 1767, againrebuilt in 1958 aer war damage. Passing throughthe narrow burial ground of 1790–1874 weidentified the tomb of omas Key, who at 17 wasthe youngest ever (and sadly briefest) curator of

the newly established Fitzwilliam Museum in 1816.On our way we noted 34 Paradise Road, whereLeonard and Virginia Woolf founded the HogarthPress in 1917. Returning to the church and itspleasing and aged village setting the remaininggroup dispersed aer expressing their warmgratitude to Ann Ballantyne for her meticulousand imaginative organisation of a varied, full,informative and most enjoyable day, as also toRobin Price for his assistance.

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In his key-note address, Professor Jon Adamsreminded us that Maritime Archaeology is nolonger a new discipline, but an established part ofthe archaeological community. He noted that thecriticisms faced by maritime archaeologistsincluded that ‘maritime archaeology was toofocused on ship and boats, it had underdevelopedarchaeological theory, it was slow to publish andwas seen as something of a niche interest with littlerelevance to the discipline at large’. It was clearfrom this conference that these were pastcriticisms.

Professor Adams concentrated on the advancesin technology which have made new projectsviable and allowed older projects to be revisited.Using a number of examples he explained howgood practice in maritime archaeology can involvea number of different partners from industrythrough to academia — and this formed a templatefor the rest of the conference.

e conference itself was opened by theMaritime Archaeology Trust. Papers coveredBouldnor Cliff in the Solent, the HLF-fundedWWI forgotten wrecks project, and education andoutreach. Maritime archaeology is not just cutting-edge research (although that was present) it is alsoinvolving the wider community. Photogrammetryof wrecks means that volunteers working at homecan research and report on artefacts, measuringthem from the imaging.

Developing technology within the disciplinebecame a common thread of the conference, fromthe lost port of Dunwich, with the use of Didsontechnology to view its structures through darkmurky waters, to the Newport Ship, where despitelimited funding and insufficient storage facilities,they are utilising emerging technology within theconservation process, through systematic 3-Drecording, 3-D printing and dendrochronology.is approach allows for real-time research and

Royal Archaeological Institute Conference, 16–18 October 2015: Ships and Shore-lines – maritime archaeology for the 21st centuryJAMIE DAVIES AND KATY BELL (CHENEY BURSISTS)

3D-printed part for a scalemodel of the Newport ship

(C. von Patzelt)

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planning for storage and future display. As a resultover 12,000 files are now publicly available onlinethrough the Archaeology Data Service — a modelfor twenty-first century maritime archaeology.

Submerged landscapes were presented to theconference. From the new scientific approach thathas allowed wheat DNA to be identified atBouldnor Cliff, allowing speculation of contactwith far away farming communities about 2,000years before it was thought contact occurred,through to sea-level modelling. Fraser Sturtreported on the findings of the Neolithic SteppingStones project, which included creating a model ofsea-level rise for the British Isles, and the findingof a flint assemblage in Scilly which is helping re-write our understanding of Mesolithic toNeolithic transition. Kieran Westley continuedwith this theme talking about exposed and erodingpaleo surfaces in Northern Ireland and how this isadding to our understanding of prehistoric

Ireland. Crossing the boundary between sub -merged landscapes and ships was a paper on MustFarm, where nine boats spanning in date from theBronze Age to the Iron Age have been recoveredin varying states of preservation.

Despite maritime archaeology not being allships, no conference could avoid the Mary Rose.e research of the 19000+ objects, 3000 timbers,5000 environmental samples and 179 humanremains, in storage and display in the new MaryRose museum, was discussed by Alex Hildred andChristopher Dobbs within the context of impres -sive research partnerships including universities,public institutions and television reconstructionopportunities.

In conclusion, as Professor Adams said,‘maritime archaeology is no longer liminal and nolonger the preserve of a few enthusiasts regardedas being on the fringes of the discipline (or outsideit)’.

HISTORIC ENGLAND RELISTS ALL LUTYENS WARMEMORIALS Paul Stamper

As part of its wider programme of work on warmemorials to commemorate the centenary of theFirst World War, Historic England is newly listingor upgrading 2,500 war memorials. A componentof that listing work was a discrete project,completed in November 2015, to enhance the Listentries for the English memorials designed by thenationally renowned architect, Sir Edwin LandseerLutyens (1869–1944). He designed 58 memorials athome and abroad as well as 137 war cemeteries andfour Memorials to the Missing on the WesternFront in his capacity as Principal Architect for theCommonwealth (then Imperial) War GravesCommission. He conceived the Stone of Remem -brance which was placed in all Imperial WarGraves Commission cemeteries and some ceme -teries in England, including some with which hewas not otherwise associated.

Forty-four of his war memorials are in England,including the Grade I-listed Cenotaph in White -hall, the List entry for which was rewritten in 2014,following the memorial’s cleaning in advance ofceremonies to mark the outbreak of the war. Inthis work we were greatly assisted by Tim Skelton,

author with Gerald Gliddon of Lutyens and theGreat War (Frances Lincoln, 2008).

Overall, in line with our advice, the Govern -ment upgraded fourteen of the English memorials,five of them to Grade I, and listed Lutyens’remaining unlisted memorial, the Gerrards CrossMemorial Building. Lutyens’ memorials fall intothree main groups: cenotaphs; war crosses;obelisks, with columns and other designs forminga disparate fourth group. Examples are givenbelow, with in each case the List entry number.Add the number to the end of this link to see thefull entry, https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entryThe Southampton Cenotaph, 1340007 Relistedat Grade I. e design, which was approved in1919, was the first iteration by Sir Edwin Lutyensof a template which was to be adopted across thenation for some of its most notable war memorials,foremost among them the Grade I-listed Whitehallcenotaph. e relatively elaborate design of theSouthampton memorial, with a wealth of carveddecoration, stands in comparison to the austerityof the eight cenotaphs by Lutyens that were tofollow elsewhere. Unveiled 6 November 1920.

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York City War Memorial, 1257512 Relisted atGrade II*. is is one of fieen War Crossesdesigned by Lutyens, sharing a broadly similardesign. Aer much debate about design andlocation it was unveiled on 25 June 1925. Nearby,alongside the city walls, is Lutyens’ memorial to

the dead of the North Eastern Railway Company(listed Grade II*).

Northampton, Town and County War Memo rial,1191327 Relisted at Grade I. As was the case inseveral towns and cities, Northampton erected atempo rary wooden cenotaph in 1919. is wasreplaced in due course (in common with manyother places, there were discussions about whethera concert hall or civic improvements would be amore fitting form of remembrance) by an excep -tional com plex of a pair of obelisks with paintedstone flags, and a Stone of Remembrance, allstanding in a memorial garden by Lutyens. It wasunveiled on 11 November 1926.

Gerrards Cross Memorial Building, 1430052Newly listed at Grade II. is was adapted byLutyens in 1922 from the stables of the eighteenth-century vicarage alongside at the instigation of thevicar, who wished for a memorial which wouldserve the needs of local ex-Servicemen and thewider community. Lutyens provided an elegantnew frontage combining the English vernacularand classical traditions, and inside meeting roomsand recreational facilities. It was opened on 14 October 1922.

For more on Historic England’s war memorialswork, and links to guidance and other documents,seehttps://historicengland.org.uk/listing/showcasing/war-memorials-listing-project/

The Southampton Cenotaph (L. Millson-Watkins/Historic England)

The Gerrards Cross Memorial Building (P. Stamper/Historic England)

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Members’ e-mail addresses We are still seekinge-mail addresses from members, in case we haveto cancel the monthly meeting at short notice. We

are also looking at mitigating the impact ofincreased costs of distribution by making moreinformation digitally available. e impact of high

MISCELLANY

Caption CompetitionReaders were asked to provide a caption for thispicture, taken by Lara O’Brien during the guidedtour of Colchester Castle, at the Institute’s 2015Spring Meeting. Members were enjoying recon -structions of decoration of the walls and ceilingshown virtually on digital tablets. e winner isMaureen Davis.

‘I thought this was a mirror, but thatdoesn’t look like me.’ (L. O’Brien)

Special OfferLife and Death in Prehistoric Craven: WelburyWilkinson Holgate and the excavation of the HareHill Ring Cairn by Keith Boughey. YorkshireArchaeological Society, Leeds (Dec. 2015), 117+xiipp. + Appendices in CD. isbn 978-0-9932383-3-8.Fully illustrated in colour and black-and-white.RRP £15 (£17.50 with Appendices CD) PLUS UKp&p £2.50

Offer price to YAS/PRS/RAI members £12.50,(£15.00 with Appendices CD) including P&P. Allenquiries/orders to: Dr K. Boughey, c/o YAS,Church Bank, Church Hill, Hall Cliffe, Baildon, W. Yorks. bd17 6ne, tel.: 01274 580737 orkeith_boughey@hotmail.com

Hare Hill ring cairn (K. Boughey)

Book Newse Mystery of Marquis D’Oisy, by Julian Litten,with a foreword by Sir Roy Strong. 64 pages ofcolour plates, 128 pp., with appendices. Paperback,ISBN 978-1-907730-49-8, £14.95. Post-free in theUK from pulisher Shaun Tyas, 1 High St, Don -ington, Spalding pe11 4ta. Tel. 01775 821542shaun@shauntyas.myzen.co.uk

is study sets out to explain how Amand EdouardAmbroise Marie Lowis Etienne Phillipe d’SantAndre Tornay came to paint in axted, Essex. ‘Hemay have claimed to be a French aristocrat ofBrazilian descent,’ says the blurb, ‘but he had a

Cockney accent and he was certainly a refugeefrom bankruptcy. He was a talented artist, butappeared, as if from nowhere, in north-west Essexin 1917. He designed church furnishings and ladies’dresses, painted furniture, and staged a long seriesof historical pageants in the East Midlands until1936. He died in 1959.’ He was, says Strong, ‘one ofthose artistic hangers-on to whoever lived in the“great house”’. Litten establishes that the Marquiswas in fact born in Bath, but that he was genuinely‘a talented artist and his work deserves celebra -tion’.

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postage costs would be reduced if we could sendout material as attachments to as many membersas possible. ese might include the notices offorthcoming meetings, the Accounts, the pro -gramme card, and possibly the Newsletter. If you would be willing to receive informationdigitally, please send your e-mail address toadmin@royalarchinst.org

Subscriptions e current rates are: Ordinarymember, £40 and Associate or Student, £20, withdiscounts when paid by direct debit; Life member,£750 or £525 if aged over 60. Payment for subscriptions may now be made by direct debit or cheque only. For a membership form or direct debit instructions, please see http://www.royalarchinst.org/membership or contact theAdministrator.

Sponsored Young Student Membership of theRAI A year’s membership of the Institute, spon -sored by volunteer existing members, has beengiven to some second- or third-year degree stu -dents under 26, nominated by their archaeologydepartment, and to winners of dissertation prizes.ank you to those members who have beensponsors, and it would be a great help if you’d liketo continue. New sponsors are always welcome —£20 pays for a year’s membership for one. In 2015,there were six such members. If you can help us toexpand the scheme, either with funds or byproposing more candidates, please contact theAdministrator at the address below.

Gift Aid Members who pay the standard rate oftax and have filled in the gi aid form have gainedfor the Institute a substantial sum. Despiteprevious notices of encouragement, it is still the

case that less than a third of members have yetarranged for the Institute to receive gi aid. Underthis scheme, if you are a taxpayer, the governmentwill refund to the Institute, 25p in the pound of thevalue of your subscription. If you would like tohelp, please ask the Administrator for a form.

The RAI office e Institute’s Administrator willusually be at the Society of Antiquaries on thesecond Wednesday of each month from Octoberto May, between 11 am and 3 pm. e directtelephone number is 07847 600756, the email isadmin@royalarchinst.org and the postal address isRAI, c/o Society of Antiquaries of London,Burling ton House, London, w1j 0be.

Conference Anglo-Saxon Rendlesham: A RoyalCentre of the East Anglian KingdomA one-day conference on 24 September willpresent the results of archaeological investigationat Rendlesham 2008–14, at the Apex, Bury StEdmunds, Suffolk. Speakers include Chris Sculland Jude Plouviez (for research grant report see p. 10), with discussions led by Martin Carver,Catherine Hills and Leslie Webster. For details seeheritage.suffolk.gov.uk/rendlesham-conference-2016

ROYAL ARCHAEOLOG IC AL INST I TUTE NEWSLETTER

editor Katherine Barclay, Williamsgate, Governor’s Green, Pembroke Road,Portsmouth, Hants. po1 2ns. Email: newsletter@royalarchinst.org

next issue Copy for the next issue must reach the editor by the end of June 2016 forpublication in August 2016.

this issue’s cover picture: In the hall of the Nordiska Museum, Stockholm, Gustav Vasa(1496–1560), crowned King of Sweden 1523, was completed in 1925 by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles. (R. Arnopp)R

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