In the course of the twelve months of the year 1936 our Society had three Royal Patrons. The signatures of King Edward VIII and King George VI have been added to our Roll of Fellows, separated by that of H.R.H. the Crown Prince of Sweden, who honoured us by accepting election as a Royal Fellow. To each of the two Sovereigns who have followed one another at so short an interval the Society offered an assurance of its loyal devotion to the Royal House under whose patronage it was born, has grown and prospered, and its prayers that it may be permitted to continue the studies of the antiquities and history of this kingdom and nation amid the blessings of a tranquil and prosperous reign, and with the encouragement of the Sovereign on whom all these national traditions are now centred.

The third season's work at Maiden Castle, Dorset, extended from July to December 1936, and was to have been the last of the series. Two unexpected discoveries combined to necessitate a fourth season's digging in July and August 1937, with the end now clearly in sight. The first of these discoveries was that of a large Neolithic ditch of somewhat unusual form near the summit of the eastern knoll within the camp; and the second was that of an early complex under the existing eastern entrance of the Iron Age earthwork. The present summary will indicate these problems, and will incidentally correct certain provisional inferences embodied in the Second Interim Report (1936).

When St. Cuthbert's tomb was opened in 1827, the jewelled pectoral cross (pl. LXXV) was found ‘deeply buried among the remains of the robes which were nearest to the breast of the saint’. It had thus escaped disturbance in 1538 at the time of the savage ransacking of the tomb during the Dissolution, and it can be inferred from the circumstances in which the saint's stole and maniple were found that the Commissioners had ceased their plundering before the body had been fully stripped of its wrappings.

Investigation of this site in July 1935, reported in the Antiq. Journ. xvi, 165, was severely limited by time, and, since certain problems still remained unsolved, advantage was taken of the presence of the University Camp for Unemployed at Eynsham in July 1936 to endeavour to clear up some of these problems. For this purpose additional radial trenches were driven at various points of the compass and the ground immediately south of the tower was also examined. Although the weather was less favourable than in 1935, nevertheless a fair amount of work was done, resulting in an appreciable addition to our knowledge of the construction of the fortification.

The chipping-floor and its associated artifacts, situated at Orleigh Court in the parish of Buckland Brewer, lie about four miles south-west of Bideford in North Devon (fig. i), where an area of about three-quarters of a square mile is covered by a gravel deposit of doubtful age. The gravel has a foxy red colour and, in its upper portion, is characterized by an abundance of flint nodules, of a type which could have been derived only from the Chalk, the nearest representative of which is in Dorset, over sixty miles to the south-east. The artifacts come from a field lying north-west of the Rookery and a little above the 200-ft. contour line (fig. 2).