Victoria County Research Articles

The Victoria County History of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely. Vol. IV. Ed. by R. B. Pugh. Pp. xvi + 280. London: Institute of Historical Research, 1952. 63s.

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Stukeley's Lamp, The Badge of the Society of Antiquaries

‘A Roman brass lamp from St. Leonard's Hill was given to the Society of Antiquaries and adopted by them for their common seal.’ So runs the note by Haverfield in the Victoria County History of Berkshire which records, under the heading ‘Windsor’, the discovery and subsequent fate of the bronze lamp which forms this Society's seal and adorns, in brass inlay, the marble pavement of its entrance hall.

The Victoria County History of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely. Edited by L. F. Salzman, M.A., F.S.A. Vol. 11. 12 + 8½. Pp. xiii+419. Published for the University of London Institute of Historical Research, by the Oxford University Press, 1948. 63s.

The Victoria County History of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely. Edited by L. F. Salzman, M.A., F.S.A. Vol. 11. 12 + 8½. Pp. xiii+419. Published for the University of London Institute of Historical Research, by the Oxford University Press, 1948. 63<i>s.</i>

Developments in South Texas in 1947

Development in the South Texas district during 1947 showed a 26 per cent increase over the previous year. In all, 2,386 tests, 1,758 wells in proved areas and 528 wildcat wells, were drilled and resulted in 1,541 successful completions. The exploratory development resulted in the discovery of 63 new producing areas, the Bloomington field of Victoria County and the Cam field of Duval County being the outstanding discoveries of the year. Wells drilled in productive areas uncovered 151 new producing zones, the Frio-Vicksburg trend accounting for 112. The new producing zones in old fields are probably of greater reserve importance than the new fields discovered in 1947. At the close of 1947, 15,775 oil wells in South Texas had produced 154,179,726 barrels of oil, 11 per cent ore than that of the previous year, and gas transmission lines had marketed 140,227,866 MCF of gas well gas and 5,980,000 MCF of casinghead gas. Seventy-six per cent of the oil produced in South Texas comes from fields of the Frio-Vicksburg trend.

Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and the Gardens of Adonis

In the architectural description in the Victoria County History of the superstructure over the tomb of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (d. 1447), in St. Albans Abbey, there is a drawing by our late Fellow, the Rev. E. E. Dorling, of a frequently repeated ornamental detail that is called ‘a device of daisies in a standing cup’, and there rightly said to be one of the duke's badges, for it was observed that it was used not only in conspicuous decorative bands, but also as the cresting of the coronets over the duke's arms (pls. xiv and xv). In 1796 our famous Director, Richard Gough, also noted and figured this badge, which he described as ‘wheat-ears in vases on pedestals’, and he suggested that it was the device of Abbot John Whethamstede who, he thought, had built the tomb. Chauncey (1700) and the later historians of Hertfordshire made no reference it it; Weever (1631) did not notice it, nor did Sandford (1677), whose beautiful, but in this respect inaccurate, illustration of the canopy shows the device as an angel's head with wings.

The Coletto Creek Field, Victoria County, Texas: ABSTRACT

The Coletto Creek Field, Victoria County, Texas: ABSTRACT

ANGLO-SAXON CAMBRIDGESHIRE. By T. C. Lethbridge. Reprinted from the Victoria County History of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, vol. I, 1938. Price not stated.

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The Roman Camp-Site near Castor on the Nene

In his Editorial Notes for September 1930, the Editor of ANTIQUITY described an exploratory flight over England and Scotland taken by him and Mr H. J. Andrews in June of that year, in the course of which a most remarkable discovery was made. A main objective of the flight was the Roman town of Durobrivae, where the Ermine Street from London to Lincoln and the North crosses the river Nene, now the boundary here between the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton. Extensive, and for their period careful excavations were carried out in this vicinity by E. T. Artis in the twenties of the 19th century, and illustrated in a sumptuous quarto volume of plates; but despite exhaustive summaries of these and all recordable discoveries contributed to the Victoria County History, by Haverfield for the Northamptonshire side in 1902, and by Miss M. V. Taylor for the Huntingdonshire side in 1926, no systematic modern work has been attempted on any part of the site, and an air reconnaissance seemed an ideal way of re-introducing it in 1930 to the attention of archaeologists.

Glamorgan County History

THIS handsome and well-produced volume is the first instalment of a projected history of the county of Glamorgan which was initiated in 1930 by the Lord Lieutenant of the County, the Earl of Plymouth. It is intended to cover the scientific interest of the county, and includes sections on the geology, climate and meteorology, soils, botany and zoology, written by voluntary workers, the whole being edited by Prof. W. M. Tattersall, professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in University College, Cardiff. This volume is to be followed by five others covering the industries, archaeology, and ecclesiastical, political, economic and parochial history of Glamorgan. The scheme adopted is more or less that of the “Victoria County History”, but the material of future volumes will be treated chronologically as a whole, and not as separate sections. Glamorgan County History Vol. 1: Natural History. Edited by Prof. W. M. Tattersall. Pp. xix + 444 + 39 plates. (Cardiff: William Lewis (Printers), Ltd., 1936). 25s. net.

The Domesday Survey1

HistoryVolume 21, Issue 83 p. 249-257 The Domesday Survey1 David Douglas, David DouglasSearch for more papers by this author David Douglas, David DouglasSearch for more papers by this author First published: December 1936 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.1936.tb00700.x 1 The sole indispensable printed text of Domesday is still that issued by the Record Commission in 1783. Translations of Domesday are included in the Victoria County Histories, and the introductions which precede them, though of unequal merit, are often (as in the case of Essex and Worcestershire) of the greatest value: they form perhaps the best means by which the student can in the first instance be made familiar with the scope and with the method of Domesday Book. Among the older works on Domesday, some are still of great value. The Appendix and Glossary which form the conclusion of Robert Brady's Introduction to the Old English History (1684) contain information not easily obtained elsewhere. P. C. Webb's two tracts on Domesday (1756) are more than antiquarian curiosities, and Robert Kelham's Domesday Book Illustrated (1788) was a notable publication. The indices contained in Henry Ellis's General Introduction to Domesday Book (1833) are indispensable to the researcher. In the latter years of the nineteenth century a number of outstanding works on Domesday appeared. The edition of the Inquisilio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis produced by N. E. S. A. Hamilton for the Royal Society of Literature in 1876 is of the greatest importance; Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond (1897) is a classic which should be read in connection with James Tait's review thereof in Eng. Hist. Rev. vol. XIV. p. 768; while Vinogradoff's English Society in the Eleventh Century (1908) is a monument of patient research into the evidence of Domesday. But of all the works produced about this time J. H. Round's Feudal England (1895) has best stood the test of modern criticism. Among more recent works on Domesday, F. M. Stenton's William the Conqueror (1908) contains in its concluding chapter what is still probably the best introduction to Domesday for the general reader. In his edition of Danelaw Charters (1920) the same writer showed how best the evidence of Domesday could be collated with that derived from other sources, whilst in his English Feudalism (1932) he appraised the value of Domesday as a source of English feudal history. W. J. Corbett in Comb. Med. Hist. (vol. v. pp. 506–516) gives an admirable general account. Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, edited by me for the British Academy in 1932, contains a critical edition of Abbot Baldwin's Feudal Book, together with an introduction which seeks to show the extent to which general Domesday criticism is affected by the evidence of that text. My essay “Odo Lanfranc and the Domesday Survey” in Hiitorical Essays Presented to James Tait (1933) attempts to appraise the relation of the Domesday inquest to contemporary litigation. The edition of A. Ballard's The Domesday Inquest, published in 1923, gives “A Bibliography of Matter relating to Domesday Book published between the years 1906 and 1923.” And the following among recent special studies may be mentioned as bearing either on the process by which Domesday Book was constructed or on the methods by which its evidence may be interpreted:—H. C. Darby, Chapter V of Historical Geography of England (1936); H. M. Cam, “Manerium cum Hundredo”(Eng. Hist. Rev. XLVII. 353–376); D. C. Douglas, “Fragments of an Anglo-Saxon Survey from Bury St. Edmunds” (Eng. Hist. Rev. XLIII. 376–383); D. C. Douglas, “Some Early Surveys of the Abbey of Abingdon” (Eng. Hist. Rev. XXIV. 618–625); J. E. A. Jolliffe, “Hidation of Kent” (Eng. Hist. Rev. XLIV. 612–618); F. M. Stenton, Introduction to “The Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey” (Line. Rec. Soc, vol. XIX); F. M. Stenton, “St. Benet of Holme and the Norman Conquest”(Eng. Hist. Rev. XXXVII. 225–235; W. H. Stevenson “A Contemporary Description of the Domesday Survey”(Eng. Hist. Rev. XXII. 72–84). Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume21, Issue83December 1936Pages 249-257 RelatedInformation

REVIEWS

A Short History of the Jewish People, 1600 B.C. to A.D. 1935. By Cecil Roth. A History of the Roman World from A.D. 138 to 337. By H. M. D. Parker. The Iudicium Quinquevirale. By Charles Henry Coster. The Statute of York and the Interest of the Commons. By George Lee Haskins. Early Tudor Government. By Kenneth Pickthorn. Queen Elizabeth and the English Catholic Historians. By Joseph B. Code. The Huguenot Settlements in Ireland. By Grace Lawless Lee. Das Ringen um Frieden und Sicherheit in den Entscheidungsjahren des Spanischen Erbfolgekrieges, 1708 bis 1709. By Werner Reese. Lord Chesterfield. By S. Shellabarger. The Command of the Howe Brothers during the American Revolution. By Troyer Steele Anderson. Metternich. By H. du Coudray. Governor Arthur's Convict System: Van Diemen's Land, 1824–36. By William Douglass Forsyth. Australia and England: A Study in Imperial Relations. By Henry L. Hall. The Squatting Age in Australia (1835–1847). By Stephen Henry Roberts. Before the War. Studies in Diplomacy: By G. P. Gooch, D.Litt., F.B.A. Gustav Stresemann. His Diaries, Letters, and Papers. Edited and Translated by Eric Sutton. The Fall of the German Republic. A Political Study. By R. T. Clark. History Teaching for To‐day. By Eric C. Walker, M.A., Ph.D. The Victoria County History of Rutland. Vol. II. Edited by the late W. Page. The Victoria County History of Sussex. Vol. III. Edited by L. F. Salzmann. A History of Carmarthenshire. Vol. I. Edited by Sir J. E. Lloyd.

Placedo Oil Field, Victoria County, Texas: GEOLOGICAL NOTES

Placedo Oil Field, Victoria County, Texas: GEOLOGICAL NOTES

Romano-British Kent. Offprint from Victoria County History of Kent. Pp. 176, with 34 plates and 32 illustrations and plans in text.

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The Victoria History of the County of Kent

Boydell & Brewer are pleased to announce that as from 1 December 2001 they will be distributing the Victoria County History, which has an international reputation as a work of reference for English local history. Begun in 1899, the publication of about three new volumes each year is gradually creating an encyclopedic history of the counties, ranging from earliest times to the present. For each county there is or is planned a set of volumes, containing general chapters on subjects such as prehistory and ecclesiastical and economic history, and topographical chapters giving a comprehensive, fully referenced account of each city, town and village in the county. Fourteen county sets have been completed; work is in progress on a further thirteen.

Grimsditch and Cuthwulf's Expedition to the Chilterns in A.D. 571

In its original form this paper was prefaced with an account, painfully extracted from the somewhat unsatisfactory descriptions in the Historical Monuments Commission’s volumes for Herts and South Bucks and in the Victoria County History, of the existing portions of the earthwork with which I proposed to deal. For the South Oxfordshire Grimsditch, which I ventured to associate with the continuous work which runs through Herts and Bucks, I relied upon Plot and Burn, and some of the original documents used by the latter.As readers of ANTIQUITY are already aware, the Editor, moved by the conviction that the earnest seeker after truth in this field at least deserved to be supplied with the facts, has during the past two years personally investigated the whole of the remaining fragments of earthworks in the district, and I am therefore able to refer to his paper in the June number, and to the map which he has compiled to illustrate this paper as well as his own, as furnishing a succinct and authoritative statement of the main features of the Chiltern Grimsditch, by which my arguments stand or fall.

IV.—The Easby Cross

In August 1930 the Victoria and Albert Museum was enabled to purchase a fragment of a tall cross of the well-known Northumbrian type, of which the best-known examples are perhaps the Bewcastle and Ruthwell crosses. This fragment, which had been for a long time in private possession at Easby in Yorkshire, has frequently been illustrated as one of the finer examples of the carving of the period. It shows on the one broad face Christ Enthroned in Majesty between two angels (pi. xxv, fig. 1); on the other, magnificently designed vine scrolls with a bird, probably an eagle or a falcon, and a beast (I would rather not specify the breed) in the convolutions (pi. xxv, fig. 3). On the two narrow sides are panels of interlaced ornament and vine scrolls, separated by bands of pearled ornament (pi. xxv, fig. 2). Mr. W. G. Collingwood, both in his contribution on Anglo-Saxon sculpture in the Victoria County History of Yorkshire and in his later work on the Northumbrian crosses,2 noted two other fragments built into the fabric of the parish church at Easby, which, though only one narrow face was visible, appeared to him to be of the same date, and to have come from the same or a similar cross. Another small piece 3 with a bust of Christ was also noted by him on the outside of the south wall of the chancel. Last autumn permission was obtained by the authorities of the Victoria and Albert Museum to cut out these stones and to replace them with plain masonry. The carved stones, which were brought to the Museum for cleaning, were found to be covered on three sides to a depth of two or three inches with hard mortar; on cleaning this off the stones were found to show on two of the broad faces busts of eleven of the twelve Apostles, ranged in groups of three or more under arches (pi. xxvi, fig. 1, xxvn, fig. 1), the halo of the twelfth head appearing at the bottom of the fragment already in the possession of the Museum. This shows quite clearly the order of arrangement of the stones–the Christ in Majesty at the top, with the Apostles below. Mr. Collingwood, only having one stone to go upon, had restored them the other way round with the Christ at the bottom. The other faces of these two fragments of the shaft show vine scrolls and interlacing panels similar to the first piece (pi. xxvi, figs. 2 and 3, xxvn, fig. 2). A reconstruction of the three pieces of the shaft is shown on plate XXVIII. The third fragment recorded by Mr. Collingwood as in the church was found to have on the walled-in side a second bust of Christ and to be, as already suggested by him, a part of the head of the cross (pi. XXVII, figs. 3 and 4). Although now in pieces the cross would seem to have been originally composed of a monolithic shaft with the head carved from a separate stone, as in the case of the Bewcastle and other crosses. The Easby cross must have been violently thrown down at some time, probably during the Danish invasions, and then repaired with lead, a piece of which still remains at the base of the middle stone (pi. xxvi, fig. 3). In this connexion it is interesting to note that Symeon of Durham records the fact that when the Viking raiders of Lindisfarne had broken off the head of a stone cross the two pieces were afterwards joined together by being run with lead. The material of the Easby cross, like the other great crosses of Bewcastle and Ruthwell, is a local stone.

Our Bookshelf

THIS volume inaugurates a new series of County Archæologies of which the general editor is Mr. T. D. Kendrick of the British Museum. The need for such a series has doubtless been felt by many students for some time. Although the archæological sections of the Victoria County Histories are still invaluable, it is many years since most of them were written. During the last decade many new facts have accumulated; and fresh interpretation of the facts has profoundly modified many views on the prehistory of Britain.

The Spread of the Black Squirrel in the Toronto Region and Victoria County, Ontario

The Spread of the Black Squirrel in the Toronto Region and Victoria County, Ontario

The Distribution of Flint and Bronze Implements in Norfolk

In 1907 I contributed to the “Transactions of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society” a list of the localities in which implements of flint and bronze had been found in Norfolk. The only previous list was in Vol. I. of the “Victoria County History of Norfolk” (1901), in which nine localities were given for Palæolithic implements, 54 for Neolithic, and 38 for bronze. In my own list the classification and number of parishes for which records were published were:—Eolithic (Sub-Crag) 1, Palæolithic 30, “Cissbury type” 4, Early Neolithic 101, Intermediate Neolithic 100, Late Neolithic or polished 109, and Bronze 70. In that list one polished implement recorded for Rushall should have been from Runhall, and the bronze implement from Hanworth should have been from Hunworth. I also consider the records of palæoliths for Brockdish, Fritton, and Markshall doubtful.

The Book of Buchan: a Scientific Treatise, in Six Sections, on the Natural History of Buchan, Prehistoric Man in Aberdeenshire, and the History of the North-east in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Times

THIS is a compendium of essays, somewhat on the lines of the Victoria County Histories, dealing with the natural history, archaeology, and history of a district of north-east Aberdeenshire, known from ancient times by the name of Buchan. The essays, which are published by the local Field Club and edited by its secretary, are of varying degrees of merit. There are excellent essays on the geology of the district by Mr. A. W. Gibb and Dr. T. F. Jamieson. Prof. J. A. Thomson gives an admirable sketch of the fauna of the district and their origin. Prof. Trail deals with the flora in an essay which is chiefly concerned with pointing out the imperfections of the present knowledge of the subject, and urging the local botanists to complete the survey which he himself has so well begun. A valuable essay on “Stone Cists in Aberdeenshire” is contributed by Prof. R. W. Reid, to which are added tables of measurements of the skulls and limbs of the remarkable race which inhabited east Aberdeenshire in the late Neolithic and early Bronze age. Important contributions also bearing on the prehistory of the district at the same epoch are “The Prehistoric Pottery of Buchan,” by the Hon. John Abercromby, and “Some Notes on the Stone Circles of Aberdeenshire,” by Sir Norman Lockyer. These essays represent the latest views on these interesting archæological questions by acknowledged authorities.