Archaeologia Aeliana Series 5

During the second half of 1599 William Camden and Robert Cotton toured the Roman wall country in Northumberland and Cumberland collecting first-hand materials for the new edition of Camden's Britannia. Britannia was the foundation of serious Roman epigraphical and archaeological study in Britain and the visit marks the start of systematic studies of the Hadrian's Wall and Cotton's collection of Roman inscribed stones (along with the difficult process of transporting them to his home in Huntingdonshire). Also discusses the sometimes disputed issues of where Camden and Cotton visited in the north and whether Cotton made a second visit to Northumberland to locate and collect inscribed stones, notably the important altars from Redesdale.

Refers to Tarset Castle (near Bellingham) and the use of cumeman in a writ of Henry I sometime between 1114 and 1118.

Revealed the first archaeological sequence of occupation within an area of the medieval Old Borough which lay to the west of the Framwellgate bridgehead. Dumping of sandy loams containing thirteenth-century pottery on the southern edge of the valley of the Milburn was temporarily halted for the construction of a series of features including a cess pit and a corn-drying kiln (the last firing of which was dated by archaeomagnetic analysis to the fourteenth- or early-fifteenth century). The resumption of dumping sealed these features and terminated with the construction of a very substantial revetment wall along the edge of the Milburn slope flanked walkway with a sunken feature beyond. Demolition of this wall and the lowering of the ground surface on its southern flank preceded the insertion of parallel freestanding tenement walls running back from the Crossgate frontage. The western wall, at least, terminated in a vertical and finished face on the edge of the slope down to the Milburn. Exactly when this occurred is uncertain although it was certainly not before the later sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century buildings bounded the area of excavation, those to the south subsumed but conformed to the alignment of the freestanding boundary walls and the building to the north was constructed against an extension of the western burgage boundary. Nineteenth-century developments included the insertion of a brick linking structure between buildings I and II (those to the south) associated with cobbled yards. Developments in the 1950s destroyed large areas of archaeological deposits in the angle of land between Crossgate and North Road prior to the 1995 development. There are notes on the `Medieval pottery' by Lucy Whittingham (62--7), `Post medieval pottery' (67--70) and `Clay pipes' (70 & 71) by Jenny Vaughan, `Vertebrate and marine mollusc remains' Sue Stallibrass (70--2), `Palaeoenvironmental analysis' by Jacqui Huntley (72--3), and the `Recording of standing fabric' by Peter Ryder (73).

An article using the iron purchases of Durham Cathedral Priory, as recorded in the bursars' account rolls for 1464 to 1520, to shed light on the location, extent and personnel of iron production and trade in the north-east of England towards the end of the Middle Ages. It is observed that locally-produced iron took over from imported iron in the mid--1480s, and explanations for this change are discussed. It is suggested that the local iron industry was in expansion earlier than had been previously thought. The location of the industry is discussed and suppliers' names listed. Several differences between suppliers of imported and local iron are noted.