For the fourth time the Society's Anniversary Meeting takes place under the shadow of war, and once again our activities are confined and controlled by the imperious demands of our present case. Since our last Anniversary, however, the prospect has markedly lightened and we begin to see, although as in a glass, darkly, the term of our tribulation. Even in our darkest hour we have never ceased to anticipate a brighter future, though it became more and more apparent that our present was shadowed by perhaps the darkest menace that has ever threatened the human race. Now, however, that the binding of the Teutonic beast, and all who bear his mark, is more obviously in view, we may well be encouraged to look more confidently ahead and to make preparations to shoulder those responsibilities which will inevitably fall upon us in the future.

Excavations at Chalbury were begun in the summer of 1939, and a second season was planned for 1940. This was postponed owing to the outbreak of war, but the uncertainty which hangs over archaeology in the future makes immediate publication of an interim report desirable, although papers dealing with the skeletal material and kindred subjects must be postponed till after the close of hostilities. The work was a sequel to the excavation of Maiden Castle, and was undertaken as part of a scheme for making cuttings in selected Dorset hill-forts with a view to ascertaining their cultural relationships. Poundbury, Dorchester, was scheduled to be dug in the spring of 1939, and Chalbury, only three miles from Maiden Castle, was next upon the list.

The early years of the fourteenth century were memorable ones in the history of Exeter Cathedral, for work on the new presbytery, or novum opus as it is called in the Fabric Rolls, was in progress. When Bishop Bytton died, in 1307, building operations had reached an advanced stage, and the task of completing the work devolved upon his successor, Walter de Stapledon, a Devon man and at the time of his election precentor of the cathedral. At that date the presbytery vaulting was finished, with the exception of its colouring, and the windows were glazed. The transformed chancel of the Norman church was nearly ready to receive the stalls, but the Norman apse still separated the old and new parts of the building. In 1309–10 ‘John of Glastonbury’ was engaged in removing the stalls to the new quire, but we find no record of the date when the linking-up of the Norman building with the new work took place. The Fabric Roll of the following year records a visit of ‘Master William de Schoverwille’, master mason of Salisbury, to inspect the new work: from this we may infer that a stage had been reached when important decisions were pending—the furnishing of the chancel, the building of the altar-screen, and the addition of a triforium arcade and clerestory gallery to the newly built presbytery—and it may have been these undertakings which prompted the chapter to seek expert advice.

The T-shaped furnace or oven is already a familiar feature of Romano-British archaeology. Whether among the huts and pits of Woodcuts, the more substantial dwellings of Silchester and Caerwent, or the farmsteads of the rural areas, this type of oven occurs with such frequency that its place in Romano-British economic life must have been an important one.

It is not proposed to discuss here at length the function of these furnaces. This problem was resolved beyond any measure of doubt when the Romano-British villa was excavated at Hambleden, Bucks., in 1912, and Professor Gowland, in an Appendix to the excavators' report, stated that ‘In my opinion they are flues of drying floors which have been used for drying harvested grain.’ The evidence from sites elsewhere (as at Caerwent and at King's Worthy, Hants, at both of which sites charred wheat was recovered from the flues of the ovens) has provided strong corroboration of Professor Gowland's hypothesis, and it is only surprising to find that the unmistakable corn-drying ovens of Woodcuts village were still classed as ‘hypocausts’ in the 1931 edition of Professor Collingwood's Archaeology of Roman Britain.

The main interest of the Hambleden discoveries lies, however, in the great variety of types of ovens excavated, for in all no less than fourteen specimens were unearthed, ranging from the simple and basic T-shaped type to structures of considerable elaboration. Such a variety of types on one single site demands some explanation, and it is not inconceivable that the Hambleden villa was something in the nature of an experimental station.