On the top floor of the Society's apartments at Burlington House, overlooking the courtyard, is the Fellows' Room. It is a little haven in central London, which includes displays of some of our collections and paintings such as the recently-restored canvass of the Fire of London (showing St Paul’s in flames as seen from the riverbank).

Here Fellows can informally meet, read, use the internet, or take a break from work in the Library to have morning coffee or afternoon tea. Staff also take their breaks here. Fellows are encouraged to use this space, while being mindful of other users as well – particularly when hosting informal meetings in the room (for exclusive use of rooms for formal meetings, the Society has spaces for hire to Fellows at discounted charitable rates).

Occasionally, you may find library and collections staff in a corner of the Fellow’s Room photographing objects or preparing for a forthcoming display or exhibition as it is one of the best-lit rooms in the building. Fellows are encouraged to take advantage of these opportunities to see what we are doing with our collections — staff will be only too happy to answer questions.
 
The room is only very rarely closed, but because it is such a quiet haven in the building, being well above the noise of the courtyard, that it is the perfect location for filming or recording interviews, which happens two or three times a year. We try our best to notify Fellows' of forthcoming closings in advance via the Fellow’s Area of our website or other means of communication.

A copy of the Council’s Policy on the use of the Fellow’s Room can be found in the Fellows' Area of the website (login required) and pinned to the back of the Fellows' Room door.
 

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New Property Manager Appointed to Kelmscott Manor

I am very pleased to announce that the Society has appointed Gavin Williams as our new Property Manager at Kelmscott Manor. Gavin has spent the last 12 years managing Forty Hall Estate, a Grade I listed building and estate in the London Borough of Enfield. During his time at Forty Hall, Gavin developed and diversified the visiting audience and implemented a varied programme of activities and events. Gavin has worked closely with a large team of part–time staff and volunteers to make Forty Hall a success. Gavin led Forty Hall through a major Heritage Lottery Fund refurbishment programme, and this experience will prove invaluable at Kelmscott.

Gavin is able to start work at the Manor on 20 October. He will be bringing a wealth of experience in running a historic property and estate, and is looking forward to meeting and working with all the Fellows, staff and volunteers at Kelmscott and Burlington House.
 

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Tristan Hillgarth, FSA, Has Sponsored a Three-Year Research Award

The strength of the £15,000 grant demonstrates the project will have a guaranteed momentum for three years. This is really important for leveraging funding from elsewhere. The kudos and reputation of the Society of Antiquaries really strengthens the other grant applications and demonstrates the academic seriousness of the project. (David Roberts, recipient of the Tristan Hillgarth Award)

Click here to watch a short video about what the researchers have discovered in year one!

If you would like to help scholars undertake research and present important new discoveries to a rigorous academic audience through peer-reviewed publications there are many ways you can help.

• Make a donation towards our Research funds
• Become a named single sponsor of a three-year Research Grant for £15,000
• Leave a gift in your Will to support Research.

Contributions of any size are welcome and can be used to bolster the Society’s Research Grant funds. Get in touch to discuss supporting Research by contacting Dominic Wallis, Head of Development, at dwallis@sal.org.uk or 020 7479 7092.

Back to the beginning of the report

Back to the beginning of the report

 
It is designed to help courts ensure a standard approach to sentencing, focusing on the impacts on victims beyond financial loss. It applies to the full range of theft offences (including shop theft, pick-pocketing, handling stolen goods, stealing by employees or care workers and abstraction of electricity), and for the first time sets out that the theft of historic objects or the loss of national heritage can make an offence more serious. Significant heritage impacts could include damage to war memorials when thieves steal metal plaques, or theft of objects from a historic shipwreck.
 
Mark Harrison FSA, National Policing and Crime Adviser for Historic England, welcomed the new guidance. It will, he said, ‘help the courts identify all the relevant factors to include in their sentencing decisions in relation to heritage crime including “going equipped to steal”, “the act of theft” and “handling stolen goods”. It will also aid Historic England’s work with the Police and Crown Prosecution Service in bringing theft cases to court where it involves loss and damage to a significant “heritage asset”.’

Meanwhile, Mark Horton FSA was on the job, peering out of the dark from a field somewhere in Gloucestershire, on the trail of nighthawks – people with metal detectors operating illegally in the early hours. Horton presented a segment for local BBC TV’s Inside Out West on 12 October. The actions of nighthawks, he said, speaking from Bristol University’s annual dig at Berkeley Castle, ‘are destroying everything I work to achieve as an archaeologist’. At the excavation, archaeologists are in a ‘constant battle with nighthawks breaking into the site’. At the end of every season, detectorist Peter Twinn clears new metal finds to thwart potential thieves. Along the way, we see Mark Harrison talking to a barn full of police.
 
Horton spoke to a farmer with a scheduled archaeological site on his land, which nighthawks were ‘raping’, removing Roman history than can never be replaced. And sure enough, motion-sensor infra-red cameras catch three men in army camouflage with detectors in the middle of the night. They wait for a van. ‘Is that Vlad?’ says one. ‘He was quick, weren’t he?’ Horton is thrilled.

 

Back to the beginning of the report

Maev Kennedy FSA reported in The Guardian on 9 October that excavation by Steve Mithen FSA and Karen Wicks, both at the University of Reading, had taken the earliest evidence for human activity in Scotland back by more than 2,000 years. Stone tools left by ice-age hunter-gatherers on the island of Islay some 12,000 years ago, had initially been uncovered by rooting pigs. Mithen and Wicks write about their research in the new edition of British Archaeology.

Mike Fulford FSA tells the story of the University of Reading’s recently concluded major Field School excavation, in Silchester: Life on the Dig (Two Rivers Press), to accompany illustrations by Jenny Halstead. Halstead spent the summer of 2014 on site, recording day-to-day activity. The book will be launched at The Old Fire Station Gallery, Henley, on 24 October, with an exhibition of Halstead’s paintings continuing until 3 November.
 

American Travelers on the Nile: Early US Visitors to Egypt, 1774–1839, by Andrew Oliver FSA, retired art historian and museum administrator living in Washington, DC, was published in January by The American University in Cairo Press. Followers of the controversial Sekhemka sale will find descriptions of the collector Henry Abbott of interest. An export bar was imposed on the beautiful Egyptian statue of Sekhemka sold by Christie’s in 2014 on behalf of Northampton Council and the 7th Marquis of Northampton. On 2 October the government extended the bar until March 29 2016. How the statue came to be in Northampton is not clear, though it is said to have been brought to England by the 2nd Marquis of Northampton in 1850. Part of the case for that 1850 export lies in the fact that Abbott displayed another Sekhemka statue, presumed to be from the same tomb, in New York in 1851.
 
As Charles Higham FSA points out, his son Tom Higham (unlike the latter's colleague Christopher Ramsey FSA) is not a Fellow. Apologies.