Your Excellency, Vice-Presidents, Ladies and Gentlemen,

What I am going to say this evening is my valedictory address to you, and I must first of all thank the Society and its staff very warmly for the support which I have received in all branches of our activities during the last five years.

The fact that the Pleistocene ice-sheets mantled so great a part of Britain was long regarded as sufficient explanation of the absence of Lower Palaeolithic remains from the territory south of a line drawn from the Wash to the Bristol Channel. Recent work and finds, however, show that during genial conditions early man certainly moved quite far into areas freed by the waning ice during periods of retreat. Thus, from extremes beyond those cited, there are reports of a few Lower Palaeolithic implements from Pleistocene gravels in the valley of the Trent in Lincolnshire, from the valley of the Don and from Huntow, in Yorkshire, and of an odd piece from Cheshire. But of most import to the present study are the Lower Palaeolithic stone tools from the basin of the Severn in the Midlands, and an Acheulian hand-axe has been found within the past few months at Pen-y-lan, near Cardiff. With the palaeoliths discovered at intermediate sites in the basin of this great river the range in the Atlantic drainage is extended from Somerset into once glaciated territory.

The parish of Riseholme lies immediately north of the Lincoln city boundary and on the east side of Ermine Street as it runs along the top of the Jurassic ridge towards the Humber. It is an area of fertile, easily worked land lying between 130 and 200 ft. above sea-level, and must have presented a sharp contrast, in prehistoric eyes, to the areas of difficult settlement on the low-lying clays to east and west. The latter no doubt came under the plough in Roman times and indeed probably formed the bulk of the territorium attached to the colonia at Lincoln after its foundation at the end of the first century; but the higher ground, with few or no trees to clear, must still have seemed desirable land to the discharged legionary.

The site known as Durrington Walls, in the parish of Durrington, Wiltshire (Nat. Grid Ref. 41/150437), has been known as an antiquity since the early nineteenth century, when its bank and ditch was recorded by Colt Hoare (Anc. Wilts. (1812), i, 169) and included by him in his map of the Stonehenge region. The nature of this vast enclosure, some 1,720 by 1,470 ft. in dimensions, with an average diameter of 1,600 ft., and an originally huge internal ditch and outer rampart enclosing the head of a combe above the river Avon, was not, however, appreciated until 1929, when the first serious study of the site was made by O. G. S. Crawford (Antiq. iii (1929), 49-59). In this account, which includes the first accurate plan of the monument and corrects serious errors in previous descriptions, Durrington Walls was recognized as one of a class of ceremonial monuments of the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age which included Avebury, Arbor Low, and many others, and consisting of a roughly circular area enclosed by a bank with internal ditch having two (or exceptionally at Avebury four) entrances, and in some instances at least standing stones within the area.

Palaeolithic flint implements from the Severn gravels are very rare, and therefore attention is here drawn to the series found in the neighbourhood of Barnwood, Glos. Some of these have already been published with comments by the Abbé Breuil and Reginald Smith, but others are here published for the first time.

The engravings devoted to the Trésor in Dom Félibien's history of the abbey of Saint-Denis, in spite of their inaccuracy, are a precious source of information about the pieces, some extremely ancient, that composed that celebrated ensemble, unfortunately dispersed at the Revolution. On the plate by Nicolas Guérard, dealing with the third armoire, is pictured a reliquary consisting of two oval rock crystals, placed one above the other, in a rich gold setting (Fig. I). The crystal situated beneath, which is the larger one, is engraved with a representation of Christ on the Cross between the Virgin and St. John the Evangelist. We learn from Dom Félibien that in his time—his book was printed in 1706—this reliquary enclosed some remnants of the clothes of St. Louis, king of France.

Towards the end of 1951 the Countess of Shaftesbury presented to the Dean and Chapter of Winchester a brass-bound wooden casket of nineteenth-century neo-Gothic design which contained a glass bowl and several other ancient objects. The casket and its contents had only recently come into Lady Shaftesbury's own possession, but they had been in the possession of the Grosvenor family (to which she belongs) for some time before that.

The delightful island of Rhodes is famous for a variety of reasons, and not least because of its possession for over two centuries by the Knights Hospitallers or Knights of St. John. After retreating from the Holy Land the Knights took Rhodes from the Byzantine Empire in 1309; they left it on 1st January 1523, according to the terms of the capitulation, after a most arduous siege by the Turks in the preceding year. They had also been besieged by the Turks in 1320, by the Egyptians in 1444, and by the Turks again in 1480. These sieges and the almost constant danger of attack by hostile neighbours laid upon the Knights the necessity of maintaining their defences in a high state of readiness. The mainland of Asia Minor is normally visible from the island at a distance of twelve miles.

The Benedictine Nunnery at Mailing, Kent, was founded by Bishop Gundulf of Rochester (1076-1107) c. 1090, and though there appears to be some evidence of a pre-conquest foundation here, it is to Gundulf that the medieval nunnery owes its origin, and much of the walling still remaining can confidently be ascribed to his period. Of particular interest is the eastern processional doorway (pl. xivb) constructed entirely in calcareous tufa and probably the earliest doorway of its kind in the country.

The middle years of the seventh century witnessed several important changes and events in the Anglo-Saxon scene: firstly, the gradual stages of the conversion to Christianity; secondly, the resultant, but by no means uniformly final, abandonment of pagan burial rites, whether by cremation or interment; thirdly, the deposition of the Sutton Hoo ship; and fourthly, the issue of what Dr. Hodgkin has described as that interesting and important puzzle, the early assessment of population contained in the Tribal Hidage. It would be strange if archaeology were unable to cast some light upon the interaction of the first three, and it is possible, even probable, that it can contribute some help to the interpretation of the fourth.

The two Saxon urns from Ickwell Bury (pl. xxi, b and c) belong to a small group of special interest to the historian both because it can be closely dated to the earliest years of the Saxon settlement in this country and because its continental connexions are precisely located in the Old Saxon territory between the Elbe and the Weser. Only about a dozen urns exactly of this continental type appear to be known from this country. It is remarkable that, while no more than two or three specimens at most occur among the hundreds of urns from great cemeteries like Lackford or St. John's, Cambridge, the only examples of Anglo-Saxon pottery known from Ickwell should both belong to this unusual and quite distinctive class.

Documentary sources and excavated evidence have both shown that blue slate, occurring naturally in the older rock formations of the more westerly parts of Britain, was used to a considerable extent for roofing during the middle ages in a wide area of southern England. The evidence as at present known is summarized in the map, fig. i. Although new evidence occurs from time to time in documents, particularly as building accounts are more fully explored, the main opportunity of obtaining a fuller picture of this medieval trade in slates lies in the preservation of examples found in excavated medieval levels, so that they can be subjected to appropriate petrological examination. It is evident that these slates can expand our knowledge of medieval trade, and this account is presented in order to draw attention to their importance among excavated material.

The village of Weston Favell is situated on high land to the north of the river Nene, some 2½ miles to the north-east of the centre of Northampton. On the north side of the Wellingborough Road at this point the Northampton Education Committee are erecting the Cherry Orchard School. In April 1953, during the filling in of a disused quarry preparatory to building, one of the writers noticed sherds of Roman pottery in a disturbed patch in the quarry face (Nat. Grid 5237.2819). Further examination disclosed two large burnt stones protruding from it, which proved on excavation to be the cheeks of the stokehole flue of a small pottery kiln.

The quarry was some 16 to 18 ft. deep, and had been used to get the local limestone. The field to the south of it shows disturbance of the surface over a considerable area. Overlying the stone hereabouts is an extensive layer of grey clay, which may well have served as the raw material of the potters. It contains pockets of whitish sand similar to that which gives the clay of the local ware its characteristic texture.