Antiq J 86

The church of St Mary at Deerhurst in Gloucestershire is well known for its Anglo-Saxon fabric and sculpture. In 1993 a painting of an Anglo-Saxon figure was discovered, and in 2002 it became possible for the authors to study the painting in detail. The painting is on one of a pair of triangular-headed stone panels set high in the internal east wall of the church. The discovery provides a significant addition to the tiny corpus of known Anglo-Saxon wall paintings. The identity of the standing, nimbed figure remains elusive, but the figure can be tentatively dated on art historical grounds to the middle- to late-tenth century. The authors also explore the structural context of the painting. It is suggested that in the first half of the ninth century the church had an upper floor over the central space (the present east end), and that this floor possibly extended over the whole church. At the east end, there were internal openings from this upper floor into a high-level space in the polygonal apse. At a later date two of these openings were blocked and covered by stone panels, one of which is the subject of the paper. It is possible that the panels flanked a high-level altar or an opening through which a shrine, set on a high level floor in the apse, could be viewed. Includes

The paper examines the collapse of the crossing tower at Lincoln Cathedral, an event that took place in the 1230s. Although the circumstances that led to the collapse are far from clear, it is argued that a contributing factor was the lightweight pier design furnished by the master mason of St Hugh's choir. The reconstruction of the crossing was carried out with considerable skill, and the process included the dismantling and subsequent reuse of original masonry. The implications of the collapse are explored in relation to medieval design, to the supposed empiricism of the architectural process and to the assumption that architects learnt from their mistakes.

It is argued that the results of this survey of almost 1,500 rural churches do not support the idea that churches are aligned with their patronal saint's sunrise, but in fact provide evidence that the churches specifically do not face different sunrises and that churches dedicated to saints with summer feast-days are aligned in the same direction as those dedicated to saints with winter feast-days. However, the results of the survey raise questions about other aspects of church alignment. A significant variation in alignment has been uncovered east to west across the country, with a difference of 10º in the mean alignment of churches between the west and east of England. Possible reasons for this are explored. In addition, churches built on sloping sites are found to have downhill-facing chancels. If the choice of site were random, churches would face uphill as well as down. The possible implications of this for church and village location are also explored. Includes

The major excavations at Cadbury Castle, Somerset, which took place in the 1960s, owed their inspiration in part to the identification of the site as `Camelot', thus forging an association with `King Arthur'. John Leland, the sixteenth-century antiquary, was the author of this identification and the paper considers how he might have arrived at this conclusion. Factors identified include the role in Tudor politics of `King Arthur' and of the owners of the site -- the Hastings family. Consideration of the evidence of later writers on the site, both national and local, shows their almost total dependence on Leland's original description, but the evidence of the Hereford Mappa Mundi suggests a new dimension. It is suggested that the interpretation of the archaeology of the site would benefit from a clearer understanding of John Leland's description and of Tudor and Stuart activity at the site.

The review explores the key concepts underpinning the work of the antiquarian John Mortimer on progress and racial identity, and how they were developed both in his monograph Forty years researches in the British and Saxon burial mounds of East Yorkshire (1905) and in the fieldwork and museum arrangements upon which the monograph was based. It argues that although Mortimer is best known for his work on the Neolithic and Bronze Age of East Yorkshire it was the material from Iron Age burials in the region that crystallized his thinking on these issues. The article also explores the way in which this archaeological collection shaped Mortimer's own relationships and sense of place, while contributing more broadly to regional and national discourses on identity. Finally, it highlights the contemporary significance of this collection and its associated archive, currently held at the Hull and East Riding Museum.

This note describes the scene on Side A, and offers a reading of the inscription on Side B, of a recently discovered lead pendant from Norfolk. The inscription is read as two symmetrical lines of Anglo-Latin verse that contain transcriptions of one word of Greek and two words of Hebrew, both divine names. All the phenomena on Side B are illustrated by close parallels in Insular Latin literature from the seventh century to the tenth, and related to the scene on Side A.

The board games historian H J R Murray stated categorically in 1952 that the popular Germanic game of tæfl (more specifically referred to in a ninth- to twelfth-century Norse context as hnefatafl), a game entirely of skill, was the only board game played in Anglo-Saxon England. However the author argues that Old English literary evidence might pose a challenge to Murray's thesis, and could be taken to suggest that the English also played games of chance (perhaps even tabula, an ancestor of backgammon) in the first millennium AD.

representative citations to teeth as tools in technological and lexical literature, third to seventeenth century

The legal basis by which the learned societies (including the Society of Antiquaries of London) occupy Burlington House was the subject of a hearing before the High Court in 2004. No verdict was given because terms of occupation were eventually agreed by all parties in 2005. The paper contains transcriptions, with background notes, of some of the more interesting and previously unpublished documents presented in evidence on behalf of the societies as part of the negotiations.