The figurative and schematic designs on two pieces of decorated bone from Creswell, Derbyshire are related to motifs used in later Magdalenian portable art in south-western and northern France, and are assigned to a period between 11,000–12,000 years ago on grounds of design and environmental evidence. One piece, that from Robin Hood's Cave, which is carefully engraved with complex motifs on both sides, shows handling traces indicating carriage over a period of time by one or more individuals. As the late Glacial Hunters at Creswell are thought to be nomadic, and the cave to have been inhabited only in the Summer months, the piece may have been made elsewhere and carried to Derbyshire, possibly from the continent.

The site of Le Câtel lies in the parish of Trinity in the north-east corner of Jersey, close to the village and harbour of Rozel (figs. 1 and 2). The defensive characteristics of the promontory are best appreciated from the contour plan (fig. 3). The archaeological site is located at the end of a long narrow plateau bounded on the north and east by cliffs plunging steeply to the sea and on the south by a deep valley cut by a stream flowing into Rozel bay. A subsidiary valley bites deeply into the south flank of the promontory leaving only a narrow neck of land, some 200m across, between its head and the sea cliffs on the north. This approach is barred by a massive earthwork which gives the site its name—Le Câtel.

In November 1987 a bronze highly stylized animal head was shown to me in my capacity as Curator of Newport Museum (figs. 1–3). The head which appeared to be of late Iron Age date is described below. The owner agreed to lend the piece to the Museum for conservation. The investigations included two separate metal analyses, carried out independently by Dr J. P. Northover at the University of Oxford and by R. Jones at the University of Wales, Cardiff. A black bituminous substance from horn cores on the head was analysed by C. Heron also at Cardiff; these analyses are reported below (Appendices 1–3). Additional advice was given by Dr H. N. Savory F.S.A., formerly Keeper of Archaeology at the National Museum of Wales, and by Dr I. M. Stead F.S.A. at the British Museum. Replicas were made for Newport Museum and the British Museum before the head was returned to the owner in August 1988. In July 1989, the head was purchased at auction by the Newport Museum and Art Gallery for £5,800 (Sotheby's: Antiquities, Monday 10 July and Tuesday 11 July 1989, Lot 403).

An Investigation into the original documentary records of a bog body found near Amcotts, Lincolnshire, led to the rediscovery of a shoe which had been taken from the body in 1747. Not only is this one of the few surviving artefacts to have been found with a British bog body, but it is apparently also the first shoe, recovered by excavation, to have been subsequently preserved in an antiquarian collection. Moreover, recent advances in footwear studies have enabled this shoe and hence the body to be dated. Its late Roman origin is highly relevant to the ongoing controversy concerning the date and cause of death of the bodies from Lindow Moss and elsewhere in Britain.

A Drawing By The Antiquarian Edward Lhuyd or one of his assistants, which was made some time before the completion of his Parochialia c. 1699, was recently located in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (fig. 1). It shows a triangular-section wooden box decorated with metal mounts and is captioned Arch Gwenfrewi yn eglwys Gwytherin yn swydh Ddimbech (‘the shrine of Gwenfrewi [i.e. Winefride] in the church of Gwytherin Denbighshire’). This drawing, together with other illustrations of the shrine, and a discussion of its ornament, affinities and dating were subsequently published in an article in this journal. The shrine was thought to have been finally destroyed in the mid-nineteenth century, perhaps when the old church at Gwytherin was demolished in 1867. But in June 1991, while the above article was in press, a piece of wood was discovered by Tristan Gray Hulse in the presbytery attached to St Winefride's Catholic Church in Holywell (Flintshire), which includes the site of the famous holy well bearing her name. The fragment was wrapped in brown paper and labelled in faded black ink ‘From the wooden chest at Gwytherin supposed to have contained body of St Winifrede’. Enough survives for the piece to be identified securely as a fragment of one of the gable ends from the shrine of Gwenfrewi as illustrated in the Bodleian manuscript.

When Presbyterian iconoclasts tumbled the Ruthwell Cross in 1642 they inflicted irreparable damage on one of the great monuments of Anglo-Saxon art and, unwittingly, provided scholars with boundless opportunities for discussion about how the Cross originally looked. Attempts to reconstruct and interpret the imagery and inscriptions have become a staple of scholarly endeavour. New evidence about its early appearance, therefore, is likely to be of some value. This note presents some eighteenth-century drawings of the Cross, until now unpublished, that survive in the library of the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. They have the merit of illustrating all the fragments of the Cross that were known in 1788. And in a modest way they supplement our information about the Cross before it deteriorated further under inclement Scottish skies in the hundred years prior to its reinstallation in the church at Ruthwell in 1887.

Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Countess of Richmond and Derby, was one of the most remarkable women of her time. A wealthy heiress, she was married early, and was already widowed at the age of thirteen, shortly before the birth of her son, who was to become King Henry VII. During the Wars of the Roses she learned to survive through political astuteness, though she showed that she was willing to risk all for her son when, during Richard III's reign, she conspired to bring Henry to the throne. Her devotion to Henry, together with her outstanding personal qualities, meant that when he became king in 1485, Lady Margaret remained his most trusted supporter and adviser. Accorded semi-regal status, she administered her vast estates with exemplary efficiency and fairness, showing a concern for individuals which sprang from her own religious humility. She is best known today for her patronage of learning, particularly at Cambridge, where in addition to providing endowments for individual religious scholars, she was the foundress of Christ's and St John's Colleges. In view of Lady Margaret's achievements it seems entirely appropriate, not only that she is buried in Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, but also that her epitaph was written by Erasmus and that her splendid gilt bronze tomb-effigy (fig. 1) is the masterpiece of another man of the Renaissance, the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano.

Christian IV, King of Denmark and Norway, was appointed to the Most Noble Order of the Garter in 1603, after his brother-in-law, James VI of Scotland, had succeeded to the English throne. A copy of a warrant dated 28 September 1603 lists the work of the tailor, John Danson, and the embroiderers John Parr and William Broderick (fig. 1), preparing a set of Garter robes for him. John Danson made a purple velvet mantle (fig. 2), a crimson velvet kirtle, or surcoat (fig. 3), and a crimson velvet tippet and hood, all lined with white taffeta.