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Salon: Issue 347
27 July 2015
Next issue: 7 September 2015
The Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter (Salon) is a fortnightly digest of heritage news. It focuses on the activities of the Society and the contributions that the Society's Fellows make to public life. Like the intellectual salons of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it aims to amuse and to stimulate debate as well as to inform. A copy of Salon’s editorial policy can be found on the Society’s website.
Please note: Send news, comment and feedback for publication to the Editor, Mike Pitts, at Salon Editor (if you are reading this in an email, do not reply directly as we will not receive your message).
Salon does not review books, but the Editor is pleased to receive details and front cover images of new titles written by Fellows. Scholarly publications are reviewed in The Antiquaries Journal: for details see Publications.
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Inside this issue
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From the Desk of the General Secretary
Magna Carta Exhibition – 11,000 Visitors and Counting!
 The Magna Carta Through the Ages exhibition has allowed us to make real progress in achieving our goal of making our collections more accessible to a wider public. With one week left in the exhibition, we’ve received more than 11,000 visitors, a figure that does not include the guests of our six Magna Carta Anniversary public lectures nor the school-age participants in our 10 education workshops. The exhibition has attracted visitors of all ages to Burlington House, from all over the world. A special Magna Carta Museum Late event (extended evening exhibition hours) attracted families, university students, young urban professionals and seasoned cultural consumers.
We have 42 visitor assistants, including students, retirees, people looking for work or career experience, and three Fellows. Without this team of volunteers, the exhibition would not be possible. They have enabled us to confidently welcome visitors to the building and present a friendly, helpful and professional face to the public. They have all received overwhelmingly positive feedback; one visitor claimed that gallery staff and volunteers at other museums could learn from our volunteers.
We’ve engaged with new online audiences during this exhibition, too. The introductory film and recordings of the public lectures can be found on the exhibition web page. There, you can also find our crowd-sourced audio recordings of the 37 clauses from the 1225 Magna Carta (social media volunteers also supplied an image or video to represent the clause they recorded). Our Magna Carta Digital Resource (comprising full text transcriptions and digital images of each of our three copies) went live on 15 June and is available on our website's Library page.
The exhibition and online resources we’ve produced were generously supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, The Headley Trust, the Ruddock Foundation for the Arts, and the Magna Carta 800 Anniversary Committee.
We would like to thank everyone who helped make this exhibition successful, either by contributing expertise or time, or by visiting the exhibition with family and friends. There’s still one more week to see it before it closes on 31 July!
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17 September 2015: 'The Cultural Legacy of the Battle of Agincourt, 1415-2015' (Conference, Society of Antiquaries)
 The Battle of Agincourt has come to mean much more than simply a battle fought in northern France on 25 October 1415 between the English and French. Over the centuries it has stimulated literary, artistic and musical outputs. It has also been used as a symbol of British identity as well as of family ancestral pride, even in cases where participation in the battle is dubious. There are claims of objects associated with the battle, as well as problematic early excavations. Major wars have stimulated new interest, especially the Napoleonic wars and the First World War. This day conference explores these themes and others to explain why Agincourt has generated such a legacy in antiquarian traditions as well as in the popular psyche.
This full-day conference has been organised by Fellow Anne Curry. Tickets are £20 per person and can be booked online or by contacting our Executive Assistant (admin@sal.org.uk, 020 7479 7080). Details of the conference (including a full programme and booking details) are available at www.sal.org.uk/events.
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Burlington House summer closure
The Society’s apartments and library will be closed in August.
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Regional Fellows Groups
Stay up to date with Regional Fellows events by logging into the Fellows' Area of the website and checking the 'Fellows' Discussion Forum', where forthcoming events are posted.
South West Fellows
7–8 November (Exeter): Save the date for the Bronze Age Forum, which will be co-sponsored by the Society of Antiquaries of London. For details and to book, email Anthony Harding FSA at h.f.harding@exeter.ac.uk.
Want to join the South West Regional Fellows Group? If you would like to receive email updates about forthcoming meetings in the South West, you can subscribe online at: http://eepurl.com/MvHUr
Welsh Fellows
16–18 October: Weekend meeting at Cawdor Arms, Llandeilo, including visits to local prehistoric, Roman, medieval and industrial heritage sites. The weekend will include a visit to Talley Abbey on Friday; Carn Goch hill fort and industrial landscape, lunch, a Norman castle and St Dingat’s Church on Saturday; and a visit to Dinefwr Castle on Sunday.
Additional field meetings near Cardiff are being planned for November or December. For details on any of the above, email Alan Aberg FSA at alan.aberg@btinternet.com or Gareth Davies FSA at garethdavies39@sky.com.
York Fellows
21 August—Afternoon Cream Tea at Goddard’s, with a tour of the house and grounds. For details or to book, email Jim Spriggs FSA at spriggs.conserve@hotmail.co.uk (book before 17 August).
6 September—Guided tour of Roman Aldborough, led by Martin Millet FSA and Rose Ferraby, followed by lunch. For details or to book, email Stephen Greep FSA at sjgreep@gmail.com (book before 29 August).
12 December—Save the date for the York Fellows’ Christmas Lunch at Dean Court Hotel, York.
Want to join the York Regional Fellows Group? If you would like to receive email updates about forthcoming meetings in York, you can subscribe online at: http://eepurl.com/8nvxL
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The rising threat to heritage and museums
The UK government should have a dedicated Department of Heritage, said a hopeful archaeologist in a discussion organised by the Heritage Alliance, chaired by Loyd Grossman FSA. The debate, held in London on 14 July, can be heard in a podcast (no one can say ‘I hope you are all tweeting vigorously’, quite as arrestingly as he can). Its title, Heritage and Government: towards a coherent policy, already sounds optimistic, as the future of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) is being questioned.
On 21 July the Chancellor, George Osborne, published his Spending Review 2015, called A country that lives within its means. The DCMS is one of the departments asked to show how they would cut their budgets by 25% and 40% by 2019–20; they have until November to work that out. In the DCMS’s public spending projections for 2015–16, museums and galleries do relatively well with £393m, as do arts with £363m. Heritage, however, gets £131m, and of the three sectors appears to be the most vulnerable.
Having already suffered significant cuts, the DCMS might seem to have little left to shed, leading to suggestions it may merge with other departments. UKIP’s manifesto pledge to remove the DCMS (along with the Departments of Energy & Climate Change and International Development, unskilled migrants and hospital parking charges) may be about to come true.
In recent days the focus of public debate has been on museum entrance charges. Free admission, for national museums in England, Scotland and Wales that had previously charged, was introduced by the Labour administration in 2001, subsidised by central government. Many local museums have also been free of charge, though dependent on local funding, that has always been a bit of a pot luck for the tourist.
York Art Gallery (pictured above) is due to re-open on 1 August after a major redevelopment, with display spaces increased by two thirds, and housing the Centre of Ceramic Art. It will charge a £7.50 entrance fee, after the City Council more than halved its annual grant. Brighton Museum and Art Gallery started to charge outside visitors in May, ahead of 40–50% cuts in funding from the Council up to 2018. ‘I'm absolutely certain', said Museums Association President David Fleming 'that museums all over the country are considering introducing admissions fees.’
Free entry had been brought back to the York gallery in the early 2000s, after which visitor numbers doubled in the first year. That is a common pattern, and one frequently quoted as indication of the cultural success of total entrance fee subsidies. There is no doubting the rise in gallery and museum attendance during this period, which has been spectacular. Museums which were free before, however, notably the British Museum, have also been attracting unprecedented numbers of visitors.
The key argument for free entrance – that it opens permanent public collections to those who would otherwise be unable to afford to see them – is also being debated. Surveys appear to show that the same people who enjoyed the collections before do so now, they just go more often. These are visitors, it is said, who could afford to pay if asked to. Support for re-introducing charging is coming from unexpected places, including Jonathan Jones in The Guardian and Rachel Cooke in The Observer.
‘Museums are the NHS of the mind and soul,’ Chris Smith wrote to The Guardian from the House of Lords. ‘They are the places where, as a society, a community, a nation, we store our history, our memories, our knowledge, our science, the things of beauty we have created, the special objects we want to hand down from generation to generation.’
Charging for entry, he adds, would exclude a vast proportion of our society, reduce visitor numbers, ‘inhibit the quick visit to see a few favoured objects, savour them, and decide to come back again in a few weeks’ time’, and damage tourism. It was Smith who, as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, made it possible for many museums to stop charging admission fees in 2000.
Northampton Borough Council’s approach to the problem, selling valuable artefacts on the pretext that no one comes to look at them (a policy it recently defended) seems, so far, to remain unique.
Let us know your views. How has free charging affected your own experiences of museums and galleries? Should tourists have to pay? Should anyone have to, at least at the gate?
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A bit more representative?
‘I've been following the features in Salon on the gender composition of the Fellows with great interest,’ writes Susanne Hakenbeck FSA, Lecturer in Historical Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, ‘and I very much commend Francis Pryor for asking about it.’ And so do I.
‘Since you wrote in the last issue’, she continues, ‘that prior to 2000 25% of Fellows were female, rising to 32% since then, it seemed to me that there were curiously few female Fellows mentioned in the Salon issues.’ Oh dear. Here are her figures for Salon 346:
‘In total, 45 Fellows were mentioned, 12 of these deceased (bookplates etc). Of those alive, 16 became Fellows before 2000 and 17 after 2000. In the first group there are two women, in the second there are three. This means only 15% of living Fellows mentioned in today's Salon are women. This is a lot lower than the proportion of female Fellows in general.’
It gets worse. ‘If you look at the Fellows' News section,’ adds Hakenbeck, ‘the imbalance (if you can still call it that) is particularly striking, since not a single woman seems to have done anything newsworthy.’
‘Do you have any idea why this could be so?’
That is the big question. Editors and commissioners sometimes get criticised for unrepresentative publishing. Clearly the latter does happen, but that is not to say editors are necessarily at fault. From my side of the screen I select from what I know about and what people tell me. I’d say the boys shout louder.
Last September, Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, blogged on ‘Gender balance among University Research Fellows’, confronted with the fact that in 2014 only 5% of University Research Fellowships had gone to women. ‘This is a problem across science,’ he says.
‘Could there be a drive to make the newsletter a bit more representative,’ concludes Hakenbeck, ‘at least of the way the Fellowship is now?’
Tell me your news, and I will do my best to report it.
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Making History
 Unfortunately what I am about to report does little for the statistics (see above), but here goes. Radio 4’s history and archaeology programme, Making History (presented by a man in armour, Tom Holland, left) has been interviewing Fellows on the theme of ‘Is there a crisis in local archaeology?’. Mike Heyworth FSA, Dan Hicks FSA (Council Member) and John Lewis FSA (General Secretary) discussed the impact of austerity on local government planning archaeology and Heritage Environment Records (Hicks immediately blogged interestingly on HERs). The programme will be broadcast at 3 p.m. on Tuesday 28 July, with other features on archaeologists recording Roman sites in Lebanon, and the newly discovered stone circle at Sittaford on Dartmoor.
Earlier programmes can be listened to on iPlayer, where recent interviewees include Guy de la Bedoyere FSA (Was Carausius’s break with Europe ‘a UKIP-styled revolt or just a simpler way of gaining power while still following Roman ideals?’) and Ronald Hutton FSA (explaining ‘how wolves move from “good†to “badâ€â€™). From last 17 February you can hear Sir Barry Cunliffe FSA, Tim Loughton MP, FSA and Matt Pope FSA, who spoke to Rachel Pope FSA and Bill Klemperer FSA, presenting the case for keeping new housing away from Oswestry hillfort.
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Historic carved ivory
Martin P Levy FSA hopes saving elephants will not prevent American museums from collecting works of art. He writes:
‘Fellows may be aware that the generally effective operation of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), which entered into force in 1975, is under siege. In the UK, licences are pragmatically issued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for the movement of works of art made of, or including, endangered species, for educational or commercial purposes. But in February 2014, President Obama issued Director’s Order 210, which has led to a de facto ban on the import of any ivory into the U.S.A.
‘While presumably Fellows and all fair-minded members of the public support the conservationists’ battle to preserve the African elephant, surely none would agree that there is a correlation between the present-day illicit slaughter, and the admiration or study of a mediaeval ivory diptych, an ivory baroque cup or the ivory mounted cabinet, commissioned by the antiquarian Sir Horace Walpole for Strawberry Hill, and now a centrepiece in the V&A’s British Galleries.
‘Some Fellows have articulated the value of our shared cultural inheritance, and cajoled the Washington authorities to avoid the law of unintended consequences that is leading to no distinction being made between easily identified historic works of art, and worthless modern trinkets.
‘From the UK we can only offer support and argue for an outbreak of common sense in the United States. Lobbying from the museum world, academics, collectors and the dealing community is ongoing, but for every chink of light, there are reversals. There is some support in Congress to overturn Director’s Order 210, but meanwhile States such as New York and New Jersey are introducing draconian impediments of their own.
 ‘On 1 July The Art Newspaper reported that a decision by the Fish & Wildlife Service (the U.S. equivalent of Defra) had led to the stopping of a loan of six Byzantine ivories by the British Museum to an exhibition touring the United States. I am inclined to see this as an administrative misunderstanding. But such stories send out a warning, and the battle to separate the argument about preserving wildlife from the enjoyment and benefits of culturally significant works of art is going to be long.
‘Were the status quo to be allowed to continue, no museum in America would be able to build and properly celebrate its collection of works of art made from or containing ivory, and over a generation, interest and scholarship would dwindle. And not a single elephant would be saved.’
• Photo shows an ivory panel featuring the Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds, made in France in the 15th century and acquired by the British Museum in 1878.
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Recreating Holt Castle
 Rick Turner FSA and Chris Jones Jenkins FSA have built a castle. The Edwardian Holt Castle near Wrexham was popular with Richard II, who used it as a royal treasury for storing an estimated 100,000 marks, before it played a crucial role in his downfall. It was robbed of stone to build Eaton Hall in the 17th century. No one is quite sure what the castle looked like. Alfred Palmer, in 1907, and Lawrence Butler FSA, in 1987, with access to contradictory plans and views drawn in 1562 and 1620, struggled to make sense of it.
New evidence has since become available. This includes documentation of Richard II’s work; publication of a transcript of the Holt Castle inventory taken after Sir William Stanley’s arrest in 1495; discovery of an early 17th century plan in the National Library of Wales; and a programme of masonry consolidation, archaeological excavation and survey led by Steve Grenter, Wrexham County Borough Council, working with the Holt Local History Society.
 Taking advantage of all this, and funded by the Castle Studies Trust, Turner and Jenkins have digitally reconstructed Holt in detail, outside and in. Trying various combinations of layout and floor heights, building on surviving fixed points at basement level and rising up, they managed to accommodate all the rooms. Helped by Chris Marshall of Mint Motion, they have made a video of the result.
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More Richard III portraiture
 Having described a recently sold portrait of Richard III in the last Salon, I can report the surfacing of another historic representation. Last year art historian and picture dealer James Mulraine blogged about a portrait ‘a friend and I’ bought at Christie’s South Kensington. ‘It was catalogued as Eighteenth Century,’ he wrote, ‘and relatively cheap at £1,000–2,000', looking ‘a bit of a pub sign’.
A restorer cleaned it up for him, however, and what emerged did seem as if it might be older (left). Mulraine had ‘no doubt that it represents an earlier generation of the type’, arguing it was late 16th century. Below is the same painting, we are assured,  restored to 21st century splendour.
The wood on which the better preserved portrait was painted, as described in the previous Salon, appears to come from a tree cut down while the king was alive. The style of the picture suggests it was made a century after his death. What does this mean?
Pamela Tudor-Craig FSA writes that the portrait’s ‘softer, thinner clothes, “robes loosely flowing†of Ben Jonson (d. 1637) argue a date into the reign of James I. As John Fletcher used to say, wood is selected for a shipment from a store, and it always possible to get to the back of the store and fetch older planks. Tree rings only establish an ante quem. However, in view of the remarkable uniformity between this picture and its numerous cousins, and their consistent tree ring dating within the later 16th and early 17th centuries, I am puzzled by this striking deviation in date of a picture that otherwise conforms to the norm.’
Richard Buckley FSA wondered if the painting might actually have been done from life? ‘Having worked on Roman wall plaster in the 1980s’, he says, ‘I became very sceptical of art-historical dating, especially when we found good evidence to suggest that the supposedly 4th century paintings were more likely to be 2nd century!’
Few of the several dendrochronology studies of Richard III portraits have been peer-review published. That would help understanding of the art, though it might not always be compatible with the wishes of dealers and collectors. Last week the US Archaeology Data Service launched Dendrochronological Data in Archaeology: A Guide to Good Practice, by Peter Brewer and Esther Jansma. ‘It is good practice’, they say, ‘to archive all verified dendrochronological data and metadata including photos and research reports.’ These ‘should be made publicly available wherever possible in order to enable follow-up research and to assist cultural-heritage management.’
• Leicester’s new Richard III Visitor Centre has released its first year’s attendance figures: the Council had expected 100,000, and got 81,627. Martin Traynor, Chairman of the centre’s board of trustees, was upbeat. ‘The board are very pleased’, he said. ‘The visitor centre is essentially a start-up business, and to be profitable within the first eight months of operation is outstanding.’
Richard Buckley adds that the Jewry Wall Museum, just bought by Leicester City Council, inspired him as a child. ‘I went on a primary school trip when it first opened in the 60s’, he says, ‘and remember seeing the Peacock pavement upside down on its hessian in preparation for conservation.’
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Treading the hoards
 Deb Klemperer FSA, Principal Curator at The Stoke-on-Trent Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, reports that the Staffordshire Hoard documentary drama Unearthed featured three Fellows. The one-hour play was developed from 80 hours of interviews recorded with people involved with the hoard, and was staged at the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme. It was but one of 19 new pieces linked to the discovery of the hoard six years ago, in an imaginative and ambitious Hoard Festival which has just ended. Writers included Alan Garner FSA, who contributed The Hoard Speaks, a five-minute monologue performed at the stage bar.
Written and directed by the Vic’s artistic director, Theresa Heskins, Unearthed brought onto the stage Michael Wood FSA, historian and Festival patron (played by Adam Morris), Chris Fern FSA, the hoard’s principal researcher (Perry Moore) and Klemperer herself (Jemma Churchill). The play, which followed the hoard’s story since it was found in 2009, was part of a double bill. In The Gift, Jemma Kennedy imagined Mercian warriors returned from battle with their gold spoils, and the trouble that ensued.
James Watt devoted a programme to the Festival on BBC Radio Stoke (available on iPlayer until 8 August, with a lot of music), and Klemperer and Heskins appeared live on TV on BBC Breakfast. ‘All in all,’ said Clare Brennan in the Observer, ‘the Vic’s Hoard provides a rich and rewarding cache of stories.’
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Forth Bridge World Heritage Site
 The Forth Bridge is now Scotland’s sixth World Heritage Site. Miles Oglethorpe, who leads the Industrial Heritage team at Historic Scotland, has kindly written this note for Fellows explaining how it happened. The photos are his, too; he is clearly a man with a head for heights as well as a good eye.
‘The Forth Bridge was first included in the UK’s Tentative List of candidates for World Heritage in 1999, but was never nominated. However, following a submission by Fife Council, it was included on the new UK Tentative List in 2011, the nomination process commencing in 2012 and coinciding with the completion of a massive restoration project by Network Rail.
 'The nomination dossier was subsequently prepared by the Industrial Heritage team at Historic Scotland, but was submitted by “The Forth Bridges Forumâ€, a partnership comprising key stakeholders in the Scottish Government, local government, local communities, businesses and heritage trusts, and Visit Scotland. On completion in January 2014, the nomination dossier was formally submitted to UNESCO via DCMS on behalf of the UK Government. It was then evaluated positively by UNESCO’s cultural advisory body, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and finally approved for inscription by the World Heritage Committee at its 39th Session in Bonn on 5th July 2015.’
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Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution
Sir Neil Cossons FSA writes about a new world heritage site in Japan, and an extraordinary tale of Scottish engineers.
‘It was a good day for Scotland at the recent UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting in Bonn, when members of the 21-nation Committee inscribed on the World Heritage List the Forth Railway Bridge to become Britain’s 29th site, joining the others that mark the country’s status as the first industrial nation. The Forth Bridge, completed in 1890 and the first great steel engineering structure, is still in use. Superbly conserved, it symbolises as no other the zenith of the Industrial Revolution. But it also has its tragic side. It was built in reaction – some might say over-reaction – to the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879 when over 70 people died. As many again were killed during construction of the Forth Bridge itself.
 ‘But Scotland’s Victorian pre-eminence as an engineering nation is symbolised as visibly in another of UNESCO’s inscriptions, the Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution. Here, in Nagasaki, stands the giant cantilever crane (left), built in Motherwell and the oldest in the world still in use. It has recently been the subject of a meticulous digital survey carried out by Historic Scotland as part of a wider, worldwide, study of Scotland’s overseas engineering heritage. Across the harbour is the Kosuge patent slipdock built in 1869 by Hall Russell and Company, the celebrated firm of Aberdeen engineers, while overlooking the whole bay is the house of Thomas Blake Glover from Fraserburgh who set up the Nagasaki shipyard, foundation of today’s Mitsubishi Corporation.
‘It was Glover who in 1863 assisted the clandestine departure of five bright young men – the ChÅshÅ« Five – to University College London at a time when it was still forbidden for Japanese to leave the country. By their return, the ban had been lifted as part of the newly established Meiji regime’s determination to modernise Japan. They all went on to become central figures in laying the foundations of the new Japan, one as Prime Minister and architect of the constitution.
‘The sites of this new world heritage inscription reflect this extraordinary transformation, with its sharp focus on the development of heavy industry. Iron and steel making, coal mining and shipbuilding were key to achieving this change, in part as a means of improving the standard of living of a growing rural poor, but also to enable Japan to join the wider world on equal terms and avoid becoming victim to pressures from foreign powers. The arrival of the United States Navy’s squadron under Commodore Perry in 1853 and the increasingly visible presence of European naval powers, most notably the Dutch and the British, alerted Japan to her acute vulnerability and provided the spur for a rapid and forthright programme of modernisation through industrialisation.
‘Japan’s new World Heritage Site is a “serial nomination†consisting of 23 separate sites, clustered in eight groups, mainly across Kyushu and in Yamaguchi Prefecture, which chart the extraordinary transformation of Japan from isolated feudal country to modern industrial state in a period of less than 50 years. Japan offered fertile ground for many of these new industrial technologies. A longstanding and highly developed tradition of craftsmanship in the making of steel by the tatara process, for example, meant that there was already a familiarity with specialised metallurgical processes.
 ‘But it was the adoption of large-scale western industrial technologies that allowed rapid change, forming the thread uniting these sites into both a single and compelling narrative and a coherent nomination. Initially, western ideas were copied, as from textbooks, and there were many failed attempts, but later Dutch, British and German engineers, working and living in Japan, enabled a successful and self-sustaining industrial economy to emerge. At Kagoshima (right) is the handsome foreigners’ residence built in the 1860s for the seven British engineers who helped install spinning machines from Platt Brothers of Lancashire, part of Japan’s first steam-powered spinning mill for the production of ships’ sails. And, at Yawata, stand the German-designed and built repair and forge shops of the Imperial Steelworks.
‘Japan had become the first Asian industrial nation, not through colonial intervention but by her own resolute single-mindedness. Well before 1910 – the terminal date for the period of this inscription – Japan was recognised as a world power with all that went with it; a thriving industrial economy, increased urbanisation and rising prosperity. Her 1905 triumph in the brief war with the Russians, widely applauded in the West, led in the following year to King Edward VII conferring the first honorary Order of Merit on Japanese Admiral TÅgÅ, victor of the Battle of Tsushima. Less than a decade later, as one of the western allies, it was the Japanese cruiser Ibuki that escorted the ANZACs across the Indian Ocean towards Gallipoli.
‘After a meticulous and detailed assessment ICOMOS recommended inscription. But in doing so came signs of the first collision between a heroic 19th century past and the realities of the mid-20th century. In recognising that these sites qualified unreservedly for world heritage status, ICOMOS requested that as part of the post-inscription interpretive planning the story after 1910 needed to be told too. Conscripted Korean labour had been used at some of these sites during the Second World War, as had Chinese workers and prisoners of war. In a region with little shared memory of 20th century history, this insistence that the labour issues be addressed was a wise stipulation. Paradoxically, it could offer real opportunity rather than pose the threat that Japan may fear. Many Japanese – and especially younger generations – know little of the events that took place across the region after 1930. Japan has found it difficult to address these issues so this nomination has forced Japanese to come face-to-face with some of the unpalatable facts of their past.
‘None of this diminishes the inspirational power and relevance of the inscription. On the contrary, this assemblage of sites documents in striking detail the roots of today’s industrial Japan. In no other nation does the material evidence of its own industrial origins endure in such complete and vivid detail. But Japan should also see this as her occasion to write that most recent chapter.’
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The battle of Drumclay Crannog
 An early medieval crannog at Drumclay, Co Fermanagh, excavated between June 2012 and April 2013, is being described as one of Northern Ireland’s most significant field projects. Unfortunately, it became so only after a whistle-blower let out that things were not being run on site as they should have been, as a short bypass road, planned by the then Roads Service of the Department of Regional Development, was built through the exceptionally preserved remains. Researching the story for British Archaeology, I was shown what on the face of it seemed to be a report that had been clumsily doctored in an attempt to obscure events.
The then Minister for the Environment, Alex Attwood MLA, inspected the site in July 2012. He was impressed, and asked the Department of the Environment to take over. He also asked for a report into what had gone wrong. That task went to Gabriel Cooney FSA, Chair of the Historic Monuments Council, whose riveting account was published on 25 June. The whole affair is reviewed by Robert Chapple, an archaeologist who first drew public attention to the site. He points out that Cooney’s report had been completed and submitted in October 2013.
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Skate parks and Medieval drawings
 Historic England (HE) has published the third annual Designation Yearbook. It’s an attractive and fascinating guide, edited by Paul Stamper FSA and introduced by Sir Laurie Magnus, HE’s enthusiastic new Chairman. It features a wide range of buildings and sites added to the National Heritage List for England in 2014–15, including medieval settlements, war memorials, a skate park, a bacon smokehouse and ‘some unusual public lavatories’. The online List received its millionth visitor in March.
Malcolm Airs FSA thinks Fellows will be interested in a book they might otherwise miss, as it has been privately published by its author. English Architectural Drawing: Medieval Craftsmen and Design, by Arnold Pacey, is an illustrated gazetteer of around 40 sites where drawings can be found that have come to light or been re-interpreted since his Medieval Architectural Drawing (Tempus 2007); there are also seven new chapters. Available from York Publishing Services, 64 Hallfield Road, Layerthorpe, York YO31 7ZQ (orders@yps-publishing.co.uk) for £7.50.
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News of Fellows
Malcolm Colledge, a Fellow until 2011, died in June. He was a leading specialist on the art of Palmyra, his books including The Parthians (1967), The Art of Palmyra (1976), How to Recognize Roman Art (1980) and The Parthian Period (1986).
 Kevin Brown, Governor of Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, tells Salon that his university has awarded Julian Richards FSA an Honorary Doctorate, citing his passion for the past and ‘his mission is to bring it to life in whatever way he can for the widest possible audiences. He also likes old cars…’
 The Maryport Roman Temples Project features in the BBC TV series Coast on 30 July, in which Mark Horton FSA introduces Ian Haynes FSA and Tony Wilmott FSA (seen here with Jane Laskey, Senhouse Museum Manager). Such is Coast’s longevity, it was ten years ago that Cumbria’s Roman coastal defences first appeared in the series.
 The BBC has announced that Mary Beard FSA will present a forthcoming film called Pompeii: Life Before Death, an hour-long ‘landmark programme for BBC One with unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the Great Pompeii Project’.
Peter Fowler FSA has a new website dedicated to his paintings, behind which, he says, ‘lies a lifetime in public service and academic archaeology’.
 Robin Derricourt FSA has written Antiquity Imagined: The Remarkable Legacy of Egypt and the Ancient Near East (I.B. Tauris). ‘Despite the publisher’s rather bland subtitle,’ says Derricourt, ‘it is a strong (and at times perhaps controversial) critique of the kind of ahistorical and “pseudoarchaeological†pasts that have been created for Egypt, Israel/Palestine and more: often reflecting political, religious, ethnic and financial priorities over the scholarly and scientific knowledge of archaeology and history.’
The previous Salon incorrectly awarded Brian Schofield a Fellowship, while omitting to note that Tim Mitford has one. Thanks to Paul Latcham FSA and Norman Hammond FSA respectively.
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Fellows' Bookplates
 Caroline Wells FSA has this bookplate in her copy of Sir Cyril Fox FSA’s Personality of Britain, bought second-hand in 1977. If C. E. Stevens FSA bought the book new in 1932, he would have paid 2/6. Michael Binns described Stevens (‘alias Tom Brown’) in his recent recollections of Eric Birley, an excavator of Hadrian’s Wall. Stevens had a motorbike and sidecar and he, Birley and Richard Wright (Reader in Roman Epigraphy in the Durham Classics Department) were close at Oxford, calling themselves ‘the Mechanics’. The bookplate seems to be more about fishing than bike parts. And what does the inscription mean?
The previous Salon promised Norman Hammond FSA’s story of John Henry Evans FSA’s bookplate. Here it is.
‘Evans was a petroleum technologist and Kentish antiquary, and a prolific contributor to Archaeologia Cantiana in the late 1940s and 50s, and also to the Rochester Naturalist. His death on 10 November 1974 was briefly noted in Antiquaries Journal 55: 489 (1975). His bookplate seems to have been pasted in to this third edition of Fellow Sir John Lubbock's Prehistoric Times (1872) on 4 November 1934, when JHE also added his initials.
 ‘These are on the verso page where Lubbock (1834–1913, from 1900 1st Baron Avebury) had (or had had) inscribed “From the Authorâ€. This was followed by “to G. Payne F.S.A.â€, in a different hand – presumably Payne's – and ink. Payne was a brewer in Sittingbourne, Kent, and the Society’s “Local Secretary for Kent†even when he was proposed in 1879 (by Augustus Franks FSA, a future President, and three of the then Vice-Presidents). He had been active in the Kent Archaeological Society since the age of 22 and was elected FSA at 32, on 8 January 1880 and admitted on 22 January. He died on 29 September, 1920: Archaeologia Cantiana 135: 161–5 (1921) has a somewhat ambivalent obituary by “C. E. W.†Payne published prolifically in Archaeologia Cantiana over the last decades of the 19th century and into the second decade of the 20th; in later life he moved to live in the Cathedral Close at Rochester, and founded the Eastgate House Museum there (having given his Sittingbourne collections to the British Museum when he left there for a period in Suffolk).
‘Pasted on the front fly-leaf is a brief note from Lubbock, clearly the end of a longer letter (and thus missing the salutation): “I sympathise much with your efforts and if you will accept a copy of my work on ‘Prehistoric Times,’ which I have directed my publisher to forward to you, I shall feel gratified. I remain Yours Truly John Lubbockâ€. It looks as though Lubbock left with his publisher (Williams & Norgate, in Covent Garden) inscribed but unsigned copies of his book to be sent out as directed, and Payne simply personalised it.
‘Whether “From the Author†is in Lubbock’s hand or was written in at Williams & Norgate is uncertain (but copies of Pitt-Rivers’ Cranborne Chase volumes, privately printed, are similarly inscribed, it has always been assumed by the General himself, in an idiom of its time; Gertrude Caton-Thompson [1888–1985] used the same signature-less formula when she inscribed a copy of her Hureida Moon Temple report [SAL Research Report XIII, 1944] for me at Broadway in 1982).
‘The note from Lubbock is in violet ink, the signature in black and a different hand: Lubbock seems to have dictated the letter, then signed it. It was presumably to Payne; the “efforts†Lubbock refers to are a mystery to me.
‘On the half-title recto page opposite the inscription there is a further inscription in Payne's handwriting: “G. E. Dibley. Successor to G. Payne. GED, in addition to personal knowledge of the Author & also recipient of works from him, produced testimonial from Lord Avebury for the post of Director at Eastgate House Museum, Rochester 1920.†(Lubbock lived at Kingsgate Castle, Broadstairs, so presumably knew Dibley as a Kentish antiquarian). Dibley obviously got the job, since his address by 1923 was at Eastgate House, Rochester, having moved from Sydenham (where he was already a Kent Archaeological Society member by 1921); the last record KAS has of him is in 1941.
‘Payne gave the book to Dibley (who was never elected FSA) not long before he died, and it looks as though Dibley passed it on, without further annotation, to Evans. Dibley and Evans wrote complementary articles for the Rochester Naturalist Vol. 6 on the Murston Boat discovery, so all three of the book’s owners were serially if not mutually acquainted.
‘In the top right-hand corner of the recto page is the date 12 June 1929, which could not have been written by Payne and probably not by Evans. The likelihood is that it was added by Dibley, but this book, successive property of various Fellows (I probably bought it from the Brighton bookshop of George Holleyman FSA [1910–2004 – an early mentor of mine] – which from Lubbock to me would make five), still keeps some secrets.’
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Memorials to Fellows
 Patricia Andrew FSA and Iain Gordon Brown FSA – ‘a married couple’, they say – recently left Edinburgh for a Baltic cruise, on which Andrew was lecturing. Pausing in Copenhagen, they visited St Albans Anglican Church. There they spotted this memorial to George Stephens FSA (1813–95), a Liverpool-born philologist and runologist. ‘St Albans,’ they write, ‘the only Anglican church in Denmark, is located in the Churchillparken and is now very international and inter-denominational; Professor Stephens is described as “the driving force behind the building of the Churchâ€. The very English-looking building was designed by the celebrated architect Sir Arthur Blomfield, while its construction was the responsibility of Danish architect Professor L. Fenger. The plaque to Stephens accompanies a memorial window, which shows Jesus carrying the cross with Mary at his feet.’ ‘The sheer volume of Stephens's published work is formidable’, says the ODNB.
 Geoffrey Dannell FSA sends this shot of Carol Sharples, the last surviving relative in the UK of Edmund Tyrell Artis FSA, at his recut headstone which she unveiled at Castor Church, Cambridgeshire on 12 July. Artis was the House Steward to the Earl Fitzwilliam at Milton, and excavated the large Roman building which surrounds the church as well as numerous other sites, over a period of more than 25 years. The ceremony was organised by the St Kyneburgha Building Preservation Trust (photo by S. G. Upex FSA).
This is the grave of Thomas Bateman FSA (1821–61), at Middleton by Youlgreave, Derbyshire . ‘It's not in the churchyard’, writes Kevin Leahy FSA, National Adviser Early Medieval Metalwork to The Portable Antiquities Scheme; ‘he was a non-conformist’. The names of Bateman are inscribed down one side of the memorial, and his wife Sarah on the other. ‘The stone collared urn,’ says Leahy, ‘leaves us in no doubt of his interests.’ But what of the urn itself? Is it a real bronze age type? Perhaps a Fellow will know.
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Forthcoming Heritage Events
Summer: Things to see in Lincoln
Mick Jones FSA (retired Lincoln City Archaeologist) writes. ‘Lincoln Castle’s new visitor facilities re-opened in April (with much financial support from HLF), with a complete wall-walk, enhanced presentation of the Victorian prison, and a new vault for the Lincoln Magna Carta, including the results of excavations undertaken in association with the new scheme. Lincolnshire’s Great Exhibition is open at various locations until 27 September, featuring exhibits connected with the City and County, including the Luttrell Psalter and portraits of Sir Isaac Newton. Much of the credit for the exhibition goes to Lord Patrick Cormack FSA, who chairs the Historic Lincoln Trust, with Nicholas Bennett FSA (former Lincoln Cathedral Librarian) as his historical advisor.’ The Lincoln Business Improvement Group and Visit Lincoln have organised a Barons’ Charter Trail. Virgin Trains East Coast has laid on additional direct trains from London on certain Saturdays.
Open now until the end of September: ‘Richard Deacon: This is where ideas come from’ (Cambridge)
An exhibition curated by Phillip Lindley FSA in the Old Combination Room of Wolfson College, Cambridge, displays 16 maquettes for large-scale abstract sculpture by Richard Deacon. The exhibition is one of three organised for the 50th anniversary of Wolfson’s foundation. ‘The Royal Academy at Wolfson’, curated by Anthony Green, comprises works in various media by contemporary Royal Academicians (until January 2016). ‘Henry Moore and Photography’ will be on show from September 2015 to February 2016. Lindley co-curated ‘Image and Idol: Medieval sculpture’ with Deacon at Tate Britain in 2001–02, and the present exhibition also juxtaposes old and new. Entrance is free.
 1–31 August: Hawks, walks and talks (York)
JORVIK Medieval Festival fields experts, re-enactors and interpreters and nearly 1000 years of history at 27 venues. Try your hand as an eagle-eyed archer, discover mighty birds of prey with falconry demonstrations, see brave knights battle in thrilling re-enactments and spend the day in some of Yorkshire’s most idyllic settings. The programme includes lectures and tours.
5 September: 2nd Annual Wheeler Conference (Ipswich)
Subjects inspired by Magna Carta include laity and liberty in 12th-century Suffolk, freedom and serfdom in Medieval Suffolk, the Winthrop family of Suffolk & New England, Tom Paine, Thomas Clarkson and the slave trade, and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Millicent Garrett Fawcett. Organised by the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology & History.
12 September: 2015 Deerhurst Lecture (Gloucestershire)
The 2015 Deerhurst Lecture will be given by Trevor Cooper, Chairman of the Ecclesiological Society, under the title of ‘The post-Reformation chancel fittings at Deerhurst: a unique survival’. The 7.30 p.m. talk at St Mary’s Church, Deerhurst, will discuss the 17th-century communion arrangements, and why the chancel has three-sided seating around the table.
25–27 September: Craft and Production in the European Iron Age (Cambridge)
A conference with a regional focus on Britain, central Europe and the
Mediterranean, will be held at Magdalene College and the McDonald Institute, Cambridge. Early bird registration and accommodation close on 15 August. The programme and abstracts of over 50 papers are online.
21–22 November: Coastal and Maritime Archaeology of the Modern Era (University of Portsmouth)
A conference organised by the Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology in partnership with the Nautical Archaeology Society, to bridge the gap between terrestrial and marine archaeology audiences, focusing on the way ships and shipping are generative of the modern world from the 16th century to the present. There will be speakers from Britain and overseas including the USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, France and Belgium.
 14 December: 2015 Geoff Egan Memorial Lecture (Burlington House, London)
The 2015 Geoff Egan Memorial Lecture will take place at the Society of Antiquaries. Jacqui Pearce FSA (Senior Finds Specialist, Museum of London Archaeology) will talk on the subject of ‘Down at the old Ship and Ball – taverns, trade and daily life in the London Borough of Southwark’.
1–3 April 2016: Post-Medieval Archaeology Congress 2016 (University of Sheffield)
The Society for Post-Medieval Archaeology is celebrating its first 50 years with a special congress. Proposals are invited for posters and 15-minute papers to showcase the diversity of archaeological studies of the post-medieval world.
20–22 April 2016: Chartered Institute for Archaeologists annual conference (Leicester)
The CIfA 2016 conference, Archaeology in Context, will spotlight archaeology and archaeologists – what is the role of archaeology in society, or within the wider landscape that cultural heritage occupies? How should archaeology be embedded within the teaching curriculum, or within sustainable development projects? Sessions are invited from all those with an interest in archaeology –practicing archaeologists, those who work alongside archaeologists, or who benefit from or fund archaeological investigations. The deadline for proposals is 17 August 2015.
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Vacancies
Marketing and Publicity Officer, London & Middlesex Archaeological Society
LAMAS is seeking a bright and efficient person to become its Marketing and Publicity Officer. The Society has 650 members world-wide, including many archaeologists, historians and conservationists. LAMAS plays a leading role in the protection and preservation of London’s heritage. Through its publications, lectures and conferences the Society makes information on London’s past accessible to a wide audience. This interesting and varied job will be to promote all of the Society's activities and especially publications, at events and online. The officer will be responsible to Council and make periodic reports to it. Experience of online marketing would be useful but is not necessary. Enthusiasm for London's archaeology and history is essential. The job is unpaid and honorary, as are those of all of the Society's officers.
Please contact the Honorary Secretary, Karen Thomas, kthomas@mola.org.uk, for further details, by 30 September 2015.
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Propose a Lecture or Seminar
Please email Renée LaDue, the Society's Communications Officer if you are interested in giving a lecture at one of the Society's Ordinary Meetings (Thursday evenings at 17.00) or as part of our Public Lecture series (occasional Tuesday afternoons at 13.00). When proposing a lecture, it is helpful to provide a working title, a few sentences about the topic and its significance, and how you will make it relevant and accessible to the entirety of the diverse Fellowship. We welcome papers based on new research on themes related to the Society's field of interest: the study of the material past. You can view our current lecture programme in the Events section of our website.
Fellows are also encouraged to propose topics or themes for conferences or seminars that bring scholars and professionals from a variety of disciplines together to explain, discuss and debate our material culture. Please email Renée LaDue, the Society's Communications Officer, if you are interested in helping us organise such an event.
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