We are emerging from a winter of global discontents, and despite the approach of spring I see no immediate prospect of improvement in world affairs, in general rather the opposite. In particular, too, we are witnessing a fashion shift in crime. Past Presidents have not chronicled changes in wrongdoing, and I doubt if in the eighteenth century the occupants of this chair in the security of our premises commented upon the popularity of highway robbery. Today, kidnapping, spreading from countries further south and east where it is endemic, and bombing, instigated from a country further west where it is not, have become the popular weapons of coercion. Indeed, the times are depressing and established ways are threatened. But we in this room, and indeed all concerned with and for the humanities, have the elixir of hope: namely, a sense of history. Despite the ‘new look’ given in this year 1980 to the Vikings, ‘traders not raiders’, I doubt if some such commendation would have encouraged a welcome from the apprehensive customers resident on these and other shores who saw them coming in their long boats. I doubt, too, if the Anglo-Saxons viewed the approach of William of Normandy with cool equanimity or, since then, our thirteenth-century forebears slept soundly during the incursion of Louis of France. Later again the shadow of Napoleon fell upon our people, to be followed within living memory by the darker shadow of the threat of German aggression: to quote Virgil, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem. And still today we remain on the alert, mindful of the great Russian bear and his enveloping hug which shuts out the light. It is, I believe and proclaim, a source of strength and consolation to men and women of our disciplines to be able to watch with a measure of detachment the movements of these great shadows over the beautiful landscape of England which itself, under our special scrutiny, reveals the changes and chances of history.

The examination of the Romano-British kilns situated on the Derby Racecourse Playing Fields (SK36133755) was continued during 1972/3 and a total of six kilns, in two groups, was excavated. The first group comprised two kilns of likely early second-century date which shared a common stokehole; this stokehole and one of the kilns had been greatly disturbed by unauthorised digging. The remaining kiln was found to have been constructed partly over a filled-in well which yielded pottery pre-dating the kiln. The second group consisted of four kilns situated close to a Roman road. Two kilns were of Antonine date and shared a common stokehole; adjacent to this stokehole and partly cut by it lay a small kiln, the oven of which was only 0·46 m. in diameter. A fourth kiln, the furnace of which alone survived, was of a first-century type; what remained had also been partly destroyed when one of the Antonine kilns was constructed. The principal products of the kilns consisted of bowls, jars and dishes; oxidized BBI sherds were found in the furnace chamber of the first-century kiln.

A hoard of Roman gold jewellery found at Wincle, Cheshire, in the 1870s had apparently been lost but re-emerged in 1978. The opportunity has been taken to publish and illustrate the objects in full, and to assess the significance of the hoard which is dated to the third century.

York Minster once contained a relief bronze effigy to Dean William de Langton who died in 1279, the earliest known example of such a monument in this country. The effigy was probably destroyed in 1645 though remnants of the tomb survived until 1829. Its appearance is known from antiquarian sources. It is not clear that the expertise to cast a full-size effigy existed in England at that time and the tomb may have been made on the Continent, possibly in France.

The marblers Richard and Henry Lakenham, perhaps father and son, worked in London during the period c. 1355–87. In 1376 Henry contracted to supply a tomb comprising a freestone effigy resting on a plain marble chest with a moulded ledger and brass shields and inscription. This monument (now lost) seems to have resembled the standard tomb-chests of London ‘series B’ brasses. Henry Lakenham's suggested association with this workshop tradition is strengthened by the fact that William West, a known major producer of ‘B’ brasses in the early fifteenth century, was his apprentice.

This article seeks to counteract the tendency of some recent historians to underrate antiquarian studies in medieval England. It demonstrates the flourishing antiquarianism of the fifteenth century, first especially among the monks and later among the clergy and even the laity. The monks did research on local history in order to prove the antiquity and legal rights of their houses, while the ‘seculars’ viewed the subject more broadly. It is usually impossible to assess exactly to what extent a scholar engaged in antiquarian studies for practical reasons, and to what extent his motive was objective, intellectual curiosity; however, the evidence suggests that by the end of the century the latter motive was gaining ground.