This interim report is principally concerned with waterlogged lower ditch deposits of the Etton causewayed enclosure. The site is situated near the eastern edge of the Maxey complex of cropmarks, and owes its remarkable preservation to a high local water table and a blanket deposit of clayey alluvium which has protected the archaeological deposits from plough-damage. The description of the causewayed enclosure includes interim discussions of woodworking, the use of cattle as draught animals, and outlines of the environmental succession. Short statements on pottery and other finds are also included. Brief mention is also made of the earlier (Phase I) and later (Phase II) Neolithic sites at Etton Woodgate, immediately to the west of the causewayed enclosure. These sites, which were also partially waterlogged, were discovered during a watching brief of topsoil-removal work in the adjacent quarry. Etton Woodgate II produced very early evidence for textiles and for possible charcoal manufacture. The Discussion outlines recent research in the region and offers provisional explanations for the roles of lowland causewayed enclosures.

The first opportunity which a President of the Society of Antiquaries has to express his gratitude to the Fellowship for the honour they have done him is the Anniversary Address in the year following his initial election. My thanks are none the less heartfelt for being thus belated. It is indeed a great privilege to be permitted to serve this distinguished Society, at once so venerable and so vigorous, in the capacity of its President. A privilege I take to be something beyond or unrelated to one's deserts, and that exactly expresses my feelings on finding myself standing as the latest in the long succession of Presidents which includes so many of the great names in the study of very various aspects of antiquity. This variety itself reflects the wide range of the Society's interests, which is one of its most valuable characteristics. It is a classic illustration of this that I, a prehistorian, should succeed as President one of our most distinguished medieval historians. Christopher Brooke was a most active and devoted President to whom the Society owes a great deal. His interest and concern extended to all fields of the Society's activity, and under his leadership a number of highly desirable reforms and innovations were introduced into our procedures. If the path of his successor has thus been made smooth by the clearance of outstanding difficulties, it is on the other hand hard to follow the brilliance and virtuosity of his Anniversary Addresses. Not for nothing did he refer last year to their ‘sonata-like form’. Though I do not feel that I can emulate such subtleties, yet I hope at any rate to avoid offering you merely a medley.

Investigations into a later prehistoric ditch system in an area of Wessex about 15 km. south-west of Salisbury are described. The main objectives were to study the past environment of the earthworks at various stages in their history and to investigate their form and how they may have functioned. The two parts of the system studied were just south of Blagdon Plantation, Pentridge, Dorset, and on Knoll Down, Damerham, Hants. Excavations, study of soil and sediment macromorphology, and molluscan analysis were the main techniques used.

At Blagdon Plantation the earthwork lay in an area in which there was no trace of earlier fields. The bank was of simple dump construction, the ditch shallow and flat-bottomed, possibly unfinished. The molluscan sequence prior to the construction of the earthwork indicated a succession from closed woodland to stable grassland. The ditch sequence showed no trace of shading, and there was no indication of a former hedgerow on the bank crest. At Knoll Down, the earthwork crosses lynchets of an Iron Age field system, dated by potsherds from the ancient ploughsoil sealed beneath the bank. In one profile, lynchet deposits with an open-country molluscan fauna preceded the bank, and in some sections clear ploughsoils were present. A short episode when the area was under grass immediately preceded the earthwork. At one point, where there was no accompanying buried soil, deeply incised ploughmarks were present at the base of the bank, interpreted as clearance- or marking-out lines, possibly of a symbolic nature. The bank was of simple dump construction, the ditch deep, steep-sided, and with a narrow, flat bottom. There was no indication of a hedge. An earlier, smaller ditch, which may have held a wooden palisade, had been backfilled deliberately. These changes, which may reflect friction between different groups of people on various scales, took place in a prevailing environmental background of open country.

In 1962, an important hoard of Christian late Roman silver was found at Canterbury and declared Treasure Trove. The assemblage, which dates to the end of the fourth century A.D. or the first decade of the fifth, and includes ingots and inscribed spoons, was published in 1965. In 1982, a spoon appeared on the London antiquities market which on investigation proved to be one of five objects (with two stamped ingots and two siliquae) that had formed part of the 1962 discovery, but had not been declared; they were pronounced Treasure Trove in 1983. This paper is an illustrated catalogue and discussion of all the items now known to constitute the Canterbury treasure. Two further sets of late Roman silver spoons are also catalogued, an unprovenanced group in private hands which displays marked links with the Canterbury treasure, and the Dorchester-on-Thames hoard, found in the late nineteenth century and typologically and chronologically closely related to Canterbury. X-ray fluorescence analyses of all the items have been carried out in the British Museum Research Laboratory, and the results are discussed.

A research excavation was commenced on the site of the basilica which forms the western side of the forum of Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester, Hants) in IQ80. Its aim is to examine the Late Iron Age and early Roman occupation which, despite extensive Victorian excavations, was preserved beneath the masonry basilica. So far there is evidence of the Iron Age sequence dating back to the last quarter of the first century B.C.; it ends with the construction of a palisade dating to about the time of the Roman conquest. Two major phases of Roman timber building have been recorded, of which the later consists of a large basilica, interpreted as part of a forum-basilica and of Flavian date. The masonry basilica dates to the early second century. From the mid third until the later fourth century the basilica was given over to metalworking. The amphitheatre, with its well-preserved earthen seating banks, was first constructed during the third quarter of the first century A.D., when the seating, arena wall and entrance passages were built of timber. After several phases of repair the arena wall and entrance passages were rebuilt in stone in the first half of the third century. The full plan of this phase has been recovered; it consists of two opposing entrances on the long axis and two apsidal recesses on the short axis. The monument enjoyed a brief period of reuse in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

This article offers an account of the components, the structure and the history of the so-called casula and velamina of Sts Harlindis and Relindis preserved at the Church of St Catherine at Maaseik in Belgium as relics of the two sisters who founded the nearby abbey of Aldeneik (where the textiles were kept throughout the Middle Ages). The composite casula of Sts Harlindis and Relindis includes the earliest surviving group of Anglo-Saxon embroideries, dating to the late eighth century or the early ninth. Probably similarly Anglo-Saxon, a set of silk tablet-woven braids brocaded with gold associated with the embroideries offers a missing link in the surviving corpus of Anglo-Saxon braids. The ‘David silk’ with its Latin inscription and distinctly western European design dating from the eighth century or the early ninth offers a rare witness to the art of silk-weaving in the West at so early a date. The velamen of St Harlindis, more or less intact, represents a remarkable early medieval vestment, garment or cloth made up of two types of woven silk cloths, tablet-woven braids brocaded with gold, gilded copper bosses, pearls and beads. The velamen of St Relindis, in contrast, represents the stripped remains—reduced to the lining and the fringed ends—of another composite textile. Originally it was probably luxurious, so as to match the two other composite early medieval textile relics from Aldeneik. As a whole, the group contributes greatly to knowledge of early medieval textiles of various kinds.

Winchcombe, a leading Mercian centre, was a royal burial-place and, later, the cult-centre of the alleged royal child-martyr Cynhelm. The antiquary Leland refers to an ancient chapel of St Pancras at Winchcombe lying between its two major medieval churches, both of which are arguably of Anglo-Saxon origin. The chapel is very probably one described in 1320 as having a cellarium, which may have been a crypt. The paper suggests that this chapel was, until the late tenth or early eleventh century, the free-standing mausoleum of Cynhelm and perhaps also of his father, King Coenwulf of Mercia, and discusses its precise whereabouts.

A presentation drawing and wall monument (1951) at Wollaton, Notts., erected in memory of Sir Henry Willoughby, can be associated with the Southwark stone-carving workshops on the basis of stylistic evidence. This casts new light on the patronage of Sir Francis Willoughby, builder of Wollaton Hall (1588), who commissioned the monument, and emphasizes the importance of London as a centre of high-quality works of art. Finally, the description of a group of contemporary tombs, linked by a distinctive motif, opens up the possibility of a specific attribution, perhaps to the workshop of Richard Stevens.

Recent remedial work at Frogmore House, Windsor, presented the opportunity for an investigation into the origins and development of the building. In this paper the original house of 1680 is described and attributed to Hugh May. The subsequent history of Frogmore is outlined up to the late eighteenth century, when the house was altered and enlarged by James Wyatt. A previously unknown scheme of wall-painting was discovered during repairs in the staircase hall, and this is here analysed and assigned to Louis Laguerre. An inventory of the contents of the house in 1700 is appended.

The nave roof of the Norman church of St. Mary, Kempley, Gloucestershire, is hidden above a seventeenth-century ceiling. Recent study has shown the roof structure to be substantially original. The roof is described and its date considered against various dating schemes for the building. A preferred date of c. 1120 is proposed.

During repair work to the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral carried out in 1979-83, a survey was made of the whole of the south elevation (including the Great South Window, the earliest extant example of the Perpendicular style). Examination of some 5,500 stones revealed that a great number of the original Norman stones had been reused in various positions during a major programme of conservation dated by documentary evidence to 1331-36, which was designed to modernize the poorly lit eastern arm and transepts. The structural problems involved included taking down the south and west walls of the transept to one-third of their original height while keeping the south-west turret intact, and dismantling and re-erecting the high-pitched gable between the two staircase turrets during the insertion of the new window. The structural problems and the solutions adopted are discussed, and a probable building sequence is suggested.

In the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia University in New York is an interleaved second (1819) edition of Thomas Rickman's An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture. This volume contains sixty-six relatively unknown illustrations of medieval architecture in Rickman's hand which can be dated to the later 1830s. It was discovered that many of these drawings in the Avery Library were either traced outright or modelled after plates from well-known contemporary works on architecture, in particular the works of John Britton. There is reason to think that Rickman may have purchased the rights to Britton 's plates and other sources, revised them, and had intended to reprint them as lithographs to illustrate afifth edition of An Attempt.

The ‘Celtic Cabinet’, acquired from John Britton when the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society and Devizes Museum were founded in 1853, is published for the first time. The cabinet, with its watercolours and plaster models, is described. The megalithic subjects of the watercolours which decorate it are identified; two of the paintings are ascribed to John Sell Cotman; the others are related to topographic artists in John Britton's employment. The models in the cabinet of Stonehenge and Avebury are identified as standard products of Hen Browne, the first guardian of Stonehenge. The meaning and associations of ‘Celtic’ as a name for megalithic antiquities are explored. It is shown that the cabinet was made, probably about 1824, for George Watson Taylor of Erlestoke Park, Devizes; the circumstances of its making are discussed, together with the intellectual context of the piece and its relation to Britton's plan for a Druidical Antiquarian Company.