A five-year research programme commenced in 1993, designed to investigate many aspects of the civilization that was centred at Aksum, Ethiopia, during the first seven centuries AD. For the first two excavation seasons work has been concentrated on major tombs in the area of the stelae for which the site is famous. An area of domestic occupation has been explored and will be a focus of future work. The Cathedral precinct has also been surveyed and shown to offer great archaeological potential. The Aksum project, supported by a Major Research Grant from the Society, is expanding and diversifying knowledge of ancient Aksum, as well as contributing to the training of Ethiopian archaeologists, monument conservation and museum development.

The promontory site of Le Yaudet, on the north coast of Brittany, was occupied from the Bronze Age to the present day, at various stages during this period sharing in maritime exchange systems linking Brittany to Britain. In the Late Iron Age the site, of some 6ha, was surrounded by stone and rubble defences the main cross-promontory defence being of murus gallicus type. The defences are of at least two phases, the later probably dating to the time of Caesar. Occupation continued and in the late third century AD a new wall was built around the defensive circuit at a time when similar coastal sites on both sides of the Channel were being defended. On one site, agricultural activity of the early medieval period was followed by village development in the eleventh century. The present village is a shrunken remnant of the earlier, more extensive settlement.

Most commentators have acknowledged a significant role for coal in Roman Britain (e.g. Collingwood 1937, 37; Collingwood and Myres 1937, 231-2; Richmond 1955, 125-6 and particularly Frere 1987, 288). Forty years ago Graham Webster reviewed the archaeological evidence for its use, and his account (Webster 1955) superseded earlier national and regional accounts (e.g. Cunnington 1932, 173; cf. Webster 1955, 199 n. 2). Since 1955, however, a considerable expansion in both excavation and publication, coupled with developments in recovery, recording and identification procedures, has resulted in a commensurate increase in the quantity and quality of the available evidence, which makes a detailed re-assessment of coal's significance overdue.

After the devastating fire of 1184, the Lady Chapel of Glastonbury Abbey was constructed on the site of the Old Church (Vetusta Ecclesia), the wattle church traditionally associated with Joseph of Arimathea. The lavish decoration of the chapel is frequently mentioned in the literature. In many cases authors emphasize the old-fashioned, Romanesque character of much of the ornament in contrast to the seemingly more progressive contemporary early Gothic mouldings of nearby Wells Cathedral. Nevertheless, it is generally recognized that the designer of Glastonbury Lady Chapel knew of the latest developments in French Gothic architecture as witnessed in his use of crocket capitals and sharply pointed arches in the vault. This juxtaposition of Romanesque and Gothic motifs has led to the categorization of the Lady Chapel as Transitional. Convenient as such a label may be as a term of reference in charting a purely typological evolution, it does little for our understanding of the use of some distinctly different elements in contemporary structures located in the same region. Is it the case that the patron and/or master mason of Glastonbury Lady Chapel are simply more conservative than at Wells Cathedral? Could Glastonbury Lady Chapel be consciously archaizing in an effort to emphasize the antiquity of the site? Should we perhaps think in terms of a traditional Benedictine monastic style at Glastonbury as opposed to an innovative style for the secular canons of Wells? Or is the rich decoration at Glastonbury Lady Chapel to be explained in a more general sense as an imitation of the art of church treasures? To address these questions the first part of this essay will examine the stylistic sources of the Lady Chapel. The meaning of the style of the Lady Chapel in the context of the beginnings of Gothic architecture in Britain will be discussed. Attention will then be turned to the sculpture of the Lady Chapel (Thurlby 1976a).

Recent recording work on the masonry of the West Front of Westminster Abbey is here described. The later medieval documentary evidence for the rebuilding of the western half of the nave (in the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) is also re-assessed and a new architectural history for the whole of the west end of the Abbey church is proposed. It is also suggested that the core of the lower fifty feet of the western towers dates from the twelfth century, and that the western porch and lower windows in the tower were added in about 1340.

Preliminary study for a group of perspective reconstruction drawings of the exterior of Durham Cathedral has led to a reappraisal of the original design and of its progress towards completion. The west towers may be fifty or more years earlier than the generally accepted date of c. 1200, preceding the Galilee chapel. The paired eastern towers strongly suggest links with the ‘imperial’ churches of the Rhineland, and are not readily paralleled in Normandy. Some English churches with eastern towers are listed, indicating that they were not especially rare.

Durham was built on the largest scale to house the body and shrine of St Cuthbert. It was an avant-garde showpiece indicating the wealth and importance of its bishop and monastic community at both English and European levels.

This is an edition of an important and largely unpublished sixteenth-century chronicle from Worcester. The chronicle forms five folios in a manuscript volume of miscellaneous collections and memoranda completed in the early seventeenth century by John Steynor of Worcester. The volume is among the former episcopal estate papers taken over by the Church Commissioners and then lodged at St Helen's Record Office in Worcester. It is structured as a list of the annually-elected pair of senior and junior bailiffs of the city of Worcester from 1483 to 1578; to this list, annalistic entries have been added, within the framework of the city bailiffs' year of office from September to September. In its present form the chronicle is a copy of the early seventeenth century, all in the same hand. The section of the book which contains the chronicle is numbered from fol. 151, although only thirty-seven folios precede this section in its present format.

Since the eighteenth century the Society has acquired many heraldic manuscripts, mainly English; but there are also several continental books, mostly from the Franks Bequest. Among the foreign books the most important is MS 54 which was bequeathed to the Society by Charles Lyttelton, Bishop of Carlisle when he died in office, as President in 1768. In the old catalogue of the Society's manuscripts the Latin half of the title page was quoted but it omitted to mention that the text was partly written in Cyrillic script. The Minutes, recording the important bequest of Lyttelton's books and manuscripts, described it adequately as: ‘A Book containing the Shield (sic) of Arms of all the Princes of Illyria, finely illumind. Vellum Qto.’ While Illyria does not occur on modern maps of Europe, the classical name for the province on the eastern shores of the Adriatic comprising the later territories of Bosnia, Croatia, Dalmatia and Hercegovina was revived in the sixteenth century by the local humanists and conveniently describes the scope of the collection.

The Willmott and Braikenridge manuscripts (1591) are the survivors from five partbooks containing twenty-seven pieces of Latin church music. Nine composers, most of them English, are represented. The source transmits entire pieces rather than only particular sections. It follows no conventional copying scheme reflecting derivation from other sources, from liturgical or seasonal use, or from groupings by composer, text or number of voiceparts. There are numerous inscriptions and drawings. Their nature, together with the choice and order of the Latin texts, suggests that the source was a statement of allegiance to Roman Catholicism by the scribe, John Sadler, schoolmaster and Anglican priest, of Northamptonshire.

This note summarizes and expands one of the short papers communicated to the Society on 23rd February 1995 under the title of ‘New Thoughts on Some Castles in Wales’.

The paper's purpose was twofold. First, it sought to present, through a series of ‘before and after’ photographs (figs. 1-8), an up-to-date picture of the transformation effected at Conwy in the course of the last forty years, not only by the careful and conservative repair of the fabric of both components of the monument, i.e. town walls as well as castle, but also by the systematic clearance wherever possible of every kind of built disfigurement from the forefront of the medieval enceinte, so as to reveal and display anew the whole circuit of towers and curtains in an ambience worthy of Britain's most outstanding example of medieval town fortification. Closely related to the process of gradually re-establishing awareness of the monument's unity, with the walls receiving the same respect, in financial as in other terms, as the castle and the work of repair proceeding simultaneously on both, was the defeat, likewise a long and complex process, of the Welsh Office's proposal effectively to destroy the natural setting and amenity of the whole southward aspect of castle and walls alike by driving a dual-carriageway ‘express-way’ through the Gyffin valley (brazenly promoted as the Minister's ‘preferred route’) and erecting a monster new suspension bridge whose ‘goalposts’ would have overtopped even the turrets of the castle towers. The abandonment of this disastrous plan, in favour of the submerged tube tunnel under the river opened by H.M. the Queen in October 1991, was of incalculable benefit in preserving Conwy's unique character into the future. As such, it has its proper place in the present record (figs. 9-12).

Francis Grose (1731-91) initiated the eighteenth-century's most extensive series of published illustrations of ancient monuments. A thousand plates with accompanying descriptions, based on his and others ‘views and researches, appeared in The Antiquities of England and Wales (1772-6, Supplement, 1777-87), of Scotland (1789-91) and of Ireland (1791-5). He combined the role of popularizer with original contributions to the study of folklore, slang and military antiquities, but has received little scholarly attention for several reasons. His own drawings are indifferent artistically, so he scarcely features in art history. His books and pictures were sold on his death, and no archive of his papers is known to survive. The largest collection—about 380 pictures given to the publisher and now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries—are his reductions of views for the engraver to copy for The Antiquities of England and Wales. They yield little information on the circumstances of the original drawings. He did not sign his pictures, so many may survive without, or with wrong, attributions. Dudley Snelgrove, F.S.A. (1906-92) amassed much material by and on Grose, but published nothing and the pictures are now dispersed though his notes, lately presented to the Antiquaries, are a valuable quarry. For a century the Dictionary of National Biography has provided the authoritative biography, which relied on obituaries, contemporaries’ fond recollections and a few letters printed by John Nichols.