Your Excellency, Vice-Presidents, Ladies and Gentlemen,

What I am going to say this evening is my valedictory address to you, and I must first of all thank the Society and its staff very warmly for the support which I have received in all branches of our activities during the last five years.

The site known as Durrington Walls, in the parish of Durrington, Wiltshire (Nat. Grid Ref. 41/150437), has been known as an antiquity since the early nineteenth century, when its bank and ditch was recorded by Colt Hoare (Anc. Wilts. (1812), i, 169) and included by him in his map of the Stonehenge region. The nature of this vast enclosure, some 1,720 by 1,470 ft. in dimensions, with an average diameter of 1,600 ft., and an originally huge internal ditch and outer rampart enclosing the head of a combe above the river Avon, was not, however, appreciated until 1929, when the first serious study of the site was made by O. G. S. Crawford (Antiq. iii (1929), 49-59). In this account, which includes the first accurate plan of the monument and corrects serious errors in previous descriptions, Durrington Walls was recognized as one of a class of ceremonial monuments of the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age which included Avebury, Arbor Low, and many others, and consisting of a roughly circular area enclosed by a bank with internal ditch having two (or exceptionally at Avebury four) entrances, and in some instances at least standing stones within the area.

Palaeolithic flint implements from the Severn gravels are very rare, and therefore attention is here drawn to the series found in the neighbourhood of Barnwood, Glos. Some of these have already been published with comments by the Abbé Breuil and Reginald Smith, but others are here published for the first time.

Towards the end of 1951 the Countess of Shaftesbury presented to the Dean and Chapter of Winchester a brass-bound wooden casket of nineteenth-century neo-Gothic design which contained a glass bowl and several other ancient objects. The casket and its contents had only recently come into Lady Shaftesbury's own possession, but they had been in the possession of the Grosvenor family (to which she belongs) for some time before that.

The middle years of the seventh century witnessed several important changes and events in the Anglo-Saxon scene: firstly, the gradual stages of the conversion to Christianity; secondly, the resultant, but by no means uniformly final, abandonment of pagan burial rites, whether by cremation or interment; thirdly, the deposition of the Sutton Hoo ship; and fourthly, the issue of what Dr. Hodgkin has described as that interesting and important puzzle, the early assessment of population contained in the Tribal Hidage. It would be strange if archaeology were unable to cast some light upon the interaction of the first three, and it is possible, even probable, that it can contribute some help to the interpretation of the fourth.

The two Saxon urns from Ickwell Bury (pl. xxi, b and c) belong to a small group of special interest to the historian both because it can be closely dated to the earliest years of the Saxon settlement in this country and because its continental connexions are precisely located in the Old Saxon territory between the Elbe and the Weser. Only about a dozen urns exactly of this continental type appear to be known from this country. It is remarkable that, while no more than two or three specimens at most occur among the hundreds of urns from great cemeteries like Lackford or St. John's, Cambridge, the only examples of Anglo-Saxon pottery known from Ickwell should both belong to this unusual and quite distinctive class.

Documentary sources and excavated evidence have both shown that blue slate, occurring naturally in the older rock formations of the more westerly parts of Britain, was used to a considerable extent for roofing during the middle ages in a wide area of southern England. The evidence as at present known is summarized in the map, fig. i. Although new evidence occurs from time to time in documents, particularly as building accounts are more fully explored, the main opportunity of obtaining a fuller picture of this medieval trade in slates lies in the preservation of examples found in excavated medieval levels, so that they can be subjected to appropriate petrological examination. It is evident that these slates can expand our knowledge of medieval trade, and this account is presented in order to draw attention to their importance among excavated material.

The village of Weston Favell is situated on high land to the north of the river Nene, some 2½ miles to the north-east of the centre of Northampton. On the north side of the Wellingborough Road at this point the Northampton Education Committee are erecting the Cherry Orchard School. In April 1953, during the filling in of a disused quarry preparatory to building, one of the writers noticed sherds of Roman pottery in a disturbed patch in the quarry face (Nat. Grid 5237.2819). Further examination disclosed two large burnt stones protruding from it, which proved on excavation to be the cheeks of the stokehole flue of a small pottery kiln.

The quarry was some 16 to 18 ft. deep, and had been used to get the local limestone. The field to the south of it shows disturbance of the surface over a considerable area. Overlying the stone hereabouts is an extensive layer of grey clay, which may well have served as the raw material of the potters. It contains pockets of whitish sand similar to that which gives the clay of the local ware its characteristic texture.