Somerset Archaeol Natur Hist 145

Biographical notes on some noteworthy early members of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society.

Gazetteer, with introduction, listing sites discovered in the Somerset section of the M5 motorway between 1971 and 1975; sites are listed in sequence running southwest from the Avonmouth Bridge to the Devon border.

Report on the results of an excavation of selected areas in advance of development, and subsequent watching brief, on land known as Hillyfields, formerly part of the playing fields of Kings School, Taunton. Evidence of a small rural settlement dating from the Late Iron Age through to the end of the Roman period was uncovered. Indications are of a system of small fields laid out along the hilltop and farmed by a nearby community from the Iron Age into the early Roman period; a new arrangement of plots and other features then indicates a later Romano-British settlement based upon a system of small but fairly regular enclosures, although no clear evidence of structures was found. Evidence of cereal cultivation is present, and the artefact assemblage includes an iron bench anvil found with a small quantity of slag, a spindle whorl and other items found together within the terminal of a boundary ditch in what appears to have been a deliberate deposit. The site was abandoned around the late-fourth or early-fifth century, and there is no significant evidence of later land-use until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when agricultural enclosure and the quarrying of mudstone for brick-making are indicated. Includes a separately authored contribution on

Article on a sketch in the margin of an early-sixteenth-century manuscript in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge, which appears to illustrate the monumental rood group, depicting Christ crucified, the Virgin Mary and St John the Evangelist, erected at Glastonbury Abbey under the auspices of Abbot Walter de Taunton and destroyed following the Dissolution.

Article on three fifteenth-century stained glass shields in the south window of the south transept of Yatton church. The history of the shields, including repairs and alterations, is described, and with the help of documentary and graphic evidence the author attempts to identify the families commemorated by the shields.

Numerous short, separately authored notes on archaeological investigations carried out in Somerset during 2001. Entries are arranged for the most part in broad chronological groupings, and alphabetically by town or parish within groups. Includes