Archaeologia Aeliana Series 5

The evidence for the building of Hadrian’s Wall since 1968 is reviewed with assessments offered. The review embraces all elements of the Wall during the reign of Hadrian, and some later aspects and considers the implications for the building programme and the purpose of the frontier.

The Historia de Sancto Cuthberto makes retrospective claims to lands granted to St Cuthbert and, in some cases, later taken from the church. Sections 8 and 11 refer to lands granted by King Ceolwulf (729–737) and lost around 860. Retrogressive technique is used to reconstruct the geography of these lands, within the widely accepted models of shire and minster organisation, drawing on post-Conquest feudal records. The circumstances under which these and other estates were taken from the church in the 9th century are discussed. It is argued that Lindisfarne’s territorial reach in Northumberland declined from a high point under a partnership between Bishop Ecgred (830–845) and King Eanred (c. 820s–850s) in the 860s in the face of the arrival of the Danish army and the collapse of the Northumbrian state. Some of the place-names of Historia 8 and 11 present problems of identification, where generic elements of the names have proved unstable. Early forms of key names are reviewed and discussed.

This report describes a small excavation undertaken in advance of landscaping on the south side of the Close, adjacent to the High Level Bridge, and bounded on the west by a lane formerly known as Javel Group. Despite significant disturbance from cellaring associated with the post-medieval Cannon Inn, the remains of presumed medieval wharfage structures was revealed, extending southward over the river foreshore and dating to the late twelfth–thirteenth centuries. A small quantity of residual Roman material recovered from probable reclamation deposits is suggested to derive from medieval terracing into the bank on the north side of the Close.

The Custom House, completed in 1767, occupies a prominent position in the centre of the Quayside in Newcastle upon Tyne. Customs collections began in Newcastle in 1203; by 1604 a Custom House was recorded to the east of the Guildhall. The Custom House of 1767 was extended and refronted by Sydney Smirke in 1833, and expanded in the twentieth century to incorporate former brewery offices. It remained in use as a Custom House until 1998, and was acquired and renovated by Trinity Chambers in 2003. This article draws upon documentary sources to reconstruct the history of the Customs collection in Newcastle from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, and the ownership of the Custom House site from the fifteenth century to the present day. This evidence highlights the involvement of Tynemouth Priory in medieval land reclamation, possibly a tactic in its legal dispute with Newcastle authorities over port locations on the Tyne, and identifies the architect William Newton (1730–98) as the designer of the new Custom House of 1767.

In 2011, an open-area excavation was undertaken on the site of the Wear Flint Glass Works, Sunderland. This glassworks operated throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and was initially engaged in the production of pressed-glass vessels and then, from 1921 onwards, PYREX goods. The excavation exposed the remains of seven glass furnaces, which reflect both the historical development of the works and, more generally, the technological advances in glass-furnace design during the latter half of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. Detailed scientific analysis of glassworking debris has provided insights into the manufacture of twentieth-century glass.