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.

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.

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.

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.

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.