NEWSLETTER
205; APRIL 1988 Edited
by: June Porges
DIARY
Tuesday
April 5 Archaeology
and the Great Fire of London 1666, by Gustav Milne.
Members will remember the excellent lecture on the
Roman City Centre Project 1986 which Gustav Milne gave us that year. Mr. Milne
works for the Department of Urban Archaeology, Museum of London, and their
recent work on the Great Fire has thrown new light on this event.
Saturday
April 23 Morning
tour of St Lawrence Whitchurch, Edgware, led by Sheila Woodward. Details and
application form enclosed.
SUNDAY
MAY 1 AN ADDITIONAL ITEM TO OUR
PROGRAMME
It is the 400th anniversary of the Armada and there
will be an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, from 21 April
to 4 September this year. An afternoon visit has been arranged for May 1st - a
Sunday for a change. Details and application form enclosed.
Tuesday
May 10 Annual
General meeting. Programme to be announced in the May Newsletter.
Saturday
May 14 Outing to
Windsor - Ted Sammes.
Saturday
June 11 Outing to
Flag Fen and Peterborough - Dr Francis Pryor
Saturday
July 16 Outing to
London Dockland
SUBSCRIPTIONS Phyllis Fletcher
April 1st is the time to renew your membership
subscription. You will find a renewal form with this Newsletter. Please send
your subscription as soon as possible - the rates are set out on the form.
HADAS
DIG
It is hoped that a short dig will be possible over
the May Bank Holiday weekend (April 30 to May 2). Details will be announced in
the next Newsletter. Enquiries to Brian Wrigley tel: 959 5982
BOARDING
SCHOOLS IN HENDON IN THE FARLY 19TH CENTURY. Part 2
Nell Penny
Letter to the Editor from Percy Reboul:
"Nell Penny has done it again with a
fascinating and well researched article into local boarding schools. Congratulations,
it was a good read."
The first half of this article was published in the
March issue of the Newsletter - in good 19th century tradition it is being
published in parts. So for Percy and everyone else who is eagerly awaiting the
second part, here it is!
I have not been able to find any information about
the Reverend George Lawrence's school. He appeared in the census of 1811 as the
Occupier of a house of 35 males and 8 females. He paid a modest £1:5s.0d when a
6d rate was set and he paid rates between 1811 and 1817. He was not attached to
the parish church so I can only guess that he was a schoolmaster clergyman
earning his living in the Burroughs, Parson Street, Holders Hill area of the
parish.
There were also small girls' boarding schools noted
by the enumerator who visited William Lockwood's mansion and the Reverend
George Lawrence's house. Mrs. Young had a household of 13 females in 1811, but
I do not think that Mary Garvie dubbed "school mistress" was anything
more than a children's nurse. In 1821 Mrs Williams had a small school: one of
her 13 residents was an infant, 3 were between five and ten years old, 4
between 10 and 15 and 2 between 15 and 20 years.
In 1801 there were no boarding schools in the 'North
End' of Hendon parish. Perhaps Mill Hill was too remote from London and served
by no main roads. But by 1811 the most famous of Hendon's boarding schools,
Mill Hill School for the education of the sons of Protestant Dissenters, had
been founded on part of its present site. In 1807 a committee of ministers and
London merchants purchased Ridgeway House, originally an Elizabethan mansion,
for their new school. In 1811 the school appears in the census records. It is
recorded as headed by John Wood although Mr. Atkinson was the headmaster. John
Wood was the clearheaded, stern disciplinarian who taught mathematics until
1825. He was responsible for all "matters not scholastic". In 1811
there were 62 males and 5 females living in Ridgeway House. The school fees
were £45 a year with a reduction to £15 a year for the sons of ministers and
"deserving cases". The timetable had a heavy classical bias; Latin
and Greek occupied a great deal of the boys' time; but French, Mathematics,
Drawing, Geography, History and English were also taught. The school day was a
long one: In summer it stretched from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. with 4 ½ hours for
meals, prayers and recreation. There were half-holidays on Wednesdays and
Saturdays. In 1821 the school was still "Mr Wood's Academy", housing
82 males and 6 females. Of the males 56 were obviously schoolboys between 10
and 15 years and 22 aged between 15 and 20 years. Before the next census in
1831 Ridgeway House had disappeared and the core of the present school had been
built.
Mr Wood left Mill Hill School in 1825 when the new
school was being built. Perhaps the trustees were annoyed that he was a partner
in a junior school established by his brother-in-law, Mr Thorogood, in a
castellated house in front of the present St. Paul's vicarage. This school had
20 boys aged between 5 and 10 years, and 27 between 10 and 15 years. Perhaps
Mill Hill trustees thought Mr Thorogood was poaching their pupils.
Nearer the top of Bittacy Hill there was another
boys' boarding school in Littleberries, the old mansion today part of St
Vincent's Convent. Mr Lockwood of Burroughs Union House School had moved to
Mill Hill - presumably in 1816. In 1821 his mansion housed 65 persons - 56
males and 9 females. There were 12 boys aged between 5 and 10 years, 31 between
10 and 15 years, but only 4 between 15 and 20 years. Mr Lockwood paid £2.10.00
rates on a 6d rate for his mansion and £2.10.00 for land. He continued to
occupy Littleberries until 1825 when it was bought as a private residence by a
Mr. Kerr.
TITHE
MAPS AND THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE Enid Hill
Geraldine Beech began her lecture with a short
account of the work of the Public Record Office. All Government Departments
have to decide which of their many documents need to be preserved and these are
deposited with the P.R.O. After 30 years most of these documents can be read by
the public except in such cases as documents concerned with national defence,
and personal records which may have a time limit of up to 100 years before they
can be read. Going on from this introduction Miss Beech turned to tithe maps kept
at the P.R.O. emphasizing that these
maps only constitute a very small proportion of the several million maps held
by the Map Department of which Miss Beech is an Assistant Keeper.
Historically tithes were a tenth part of the annual
value of the products of the land, of stock reared on the land and of profits
made from mills and fishing which had to be paid to the Church.
Tithes were also divided into great and small tithes
- great tithes which consisted of corn, grain, hay and wood generally were paid
to the rector, and small tithes went to the vicar. At the dissolution of the
monasteries many of the rectorial tithes went to laymen while the vicar kept
the rest. From early times money payments began to replace payments in kind,
this increased with enclosures especially in the 18th century. Enclosure Acts
fixed a payment which varied with the price of corn or allocated an amount of
land in lieu of tithes. But by 1836 tithes were still payable in the majority
of parishes in England and Wales. So it was decided to commute tithes. This
meant that maps had to be drawn to show details of each parish - areas of
pasture, crops, orchards, common land, houses, boundaries, roads. Only about a
sixth of the total maps were sealed as first class maps by the Tithe Commissioners.
The remainder were sometimes old manorial maps or inferior original surveys.
Finally in 1936 a Tithe Act abolished all tithe rent charges payable on land,
these were replaced by redemption annuities and these in turn were abolished in
1976. To the local historian the tithe plans and the written survey that
accompanied them are of greatest value, since they provide the first large
scale survey of a large part of the country (extending to some 11,800 parishes
in England and Wales) and from them it is possible to reconstruct rural and
sometimes urban conditions as the work of the Tithe Commissioners extended to
many towns. There are of course many errors and emissions in the maps and the
maps need to be used with other evidence, but their value remains as the
Commissioners said 'as a General Survey and Register of Real Property'
ANNUAL
CONFERENCE OF THE LONDON AND MIDDLESEX ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY
(LAMAS )March 12 1988, at the Museum of London. Jean Snelling
We had a full day of recent excavations in Greater
London and of archaeology on Thames gravels, including work based on Oxford and
northwest Surrey. This conference always produces a wealth of interesting stuff
that is just too much to pass on (and why don't more HADAS members come? or
even join LAMAS as individual members?).
Certain themes emerged, to be reported here. First
the extraordinary extent of present excavations while the City Big Bang and the
riverside gravel extractions make their impacts. London office buildings even
of the 1960s are replaced by larger buildings to house new electronic needs;
roads are insatiable for travel. The Museum of London's teams of archaeologists
expect 50 excavations in 1988 and staff expanding from 97 to 168.
Among the organisational changes involved the theme
of relating to developers is persistent and includes the gravel developers.
Strides are being made in acquainting them with archaeological interests, in
cooperating with them and respecting their needs, and in being funded by them.
In the more promising areas flexibility advances; we heard of the rural Roman
amphitheatre excavation (Frilford) to be funded by a neighbouring Italian
restaurant, and of aerial photography for a site of common interest to be
funded by the local metal detectors' club.
The eyots of the Thames were mentioned frequently.
From Lechlade to Chertsey to Hounslow to Bermondsey to Barking and Rainham the
search is on for the prehistoric settlements on those islands which are now
obscured by the surrounding channels filled with alluvium. Alluvium masks but
also preserves what it hides. The gravel extraction can help to reveal the
archaeology, if the archaeologists are quick enough.
From these and other excavations the prehistory
emerges little by little. A dig below the old canal dock and the old high road
at Uxbridge, searching for the underlying ruins of an Elizabethan mansion, came
eventually to an undisturbed late Paleolithic knapping floor. Flint flakes lay
beside their cores , and large flint tools (10-14 cms) are attributed to the Long
Blade industry, rare in England but known on the continent, and operating in
the last glacial period about 10,000 years ago. Nearby bones of reindeer, horse
and other large mammals are expected to give radiocarbon dating.
From South Woodford come lower Paleolithic hand axes
and flakes in situ. From Bermondsey eyot comes a Neolithic hand axe of 20cms of
chipped stone and hafted, found below the shoreline, perhaps a ritual deposit.
Close to it lay a platform of cut and interlaced wood similar to platforms of
the Somerset trackways, raising the possibility of Southwark trackways. From
Sipson Lane, Harmondsworth, come the bones of an auroch (wild bull) along with
barbed and tanged arrowheads. (in the displays mounted by local societies as
part of this conference were our HADAS finds, the Mesolithic flints and Bronze
Age arrowhead from Brockley Hill 1987. We can feel gratified to have a rare
clay site, amid all this gravel.) Another Neolithic axe comes from the Roman
villa site at Beddington, Sutton, with a BA perforated hammer head. From
Shepperton come a Neolithic mace head, a BA socketed axe with wooden handle and
an Iron Age sword with enamelled scabbard.
The well-known 'ritual deposits' of BA and IA fine
metalwork found in the Thames not only point to lost settlements, but may also
indicate a particular spot for such deposits at the confluence of the Thames
with the river Wey. Continuity extends to Roman pewter plates and Saxon swords.
New features of Roman London have appeared in the
press, for instance the amphitheatre and the C1 mosaic in Gutter Lane. We heard
too of the excavation of the Bucklersbury shaft (Mansion House) of the
Docklands Light Railway. Roman buildings at the bottom set up property lines
which were maintained by medieval buildings and so through to Victorian times.
A Roman planked floor allowed soldiers to drop bits of equipment through it for
excavators to find.
Saxon London, probably 600-900 AD, has also appeared
in the press. Stretching from the Fleet River to the National Gallery and to
Long Acre on the north, its Covent Garden industrial areas are emerging part by
part.
We heard from the Oxford unit that early C5 Saxon
farms around Lechlade, relaxing after the intensive land development of the
Roman period, made the same choice of lighter soils as had the Neolithics and
settled for the secondary gravel terraces.
After so much London and Middlesex activity it was
refreshing to hear about the Oxford unit's five counties, where repeated aerial
photography combines with field walking to discover new sites. Over such a wide
area policy has to be considered with care. Regional complements and
deficiencies in types of site influence planning. Comparability between
suitable sites can be enhanced by selecting comparable methods of excavation. Large
slabs of country, due for development, can be studied layer by layer from
modern to prehistoric settlement - with help from the metal detectors. The
study of weed remains can show ancient advances to new arable lands. The
contents of Iron Age grain storage pits show distinctions between the large
scale producers and the modest local consumers.
Contrasts between broad principles and excavation
minutiae made this a very stimulating day.
SULEYMAN
THE MAGNIFICENT
We have had a feast of exhibitions in
London recently and after the razzamatazz of the Emperor's Warriors and the Age
of Chivalry there is still another waiting to be seen at the British Museum.
This has parallels with the Chinese exposition in that Suleyman the Magnificent
was also a great leader who consolidated an empire, doubling the size of the
Ottoman Empire during his life.
Suleyman (born in 1494. son of Selim I)
was contemporary with Henry VIII of England, the Habsburg emperor Charles V,
Francis I of France and Ivan ("the Terrible"), Tsar of Muscovy. He was an outstanding leader
lawgiver and patron of the arts.
The
exhibition consists mainly of loans from Turkey, notably from the Topkapi Saray in Istanbul which was Suleyman's palace. There
are prints from the British Museum's own collection and ceramics, especially
from the Goodman collection which was bequeathed to the EM in 1983. The
exhibition glows with colour, - costumes, armour, books and ceramics depicting
the rule of Suleyman the conqueror and the ruler, as well as the religion and life
of the court during his reign.
ZIMBABWE
- THE GREAT June
and Hans Porges
We left Bulawayo on a sunny morning driving through
the suburbs filled with the astonishing blue of the jacaranda trees and the
varying shades of bougainvillaea and out onto the good straight road to
Masvingo (formerly Fort Victoria) which is the oldest town in Zimbabwe, founded
by the first settlers as they trekked northwards. Matabeleland was dry and
brown, suffering from the drought which has lasted seven years, and waiting
longingly for the rains due in a month. The animals we saw from the car, mostly
kudu and eland and cows, were thin and gaunt and the road dusty as we drove
across the Highveld, passing the through areas rich in gold and other minerals.
Gradually the country became less dry and glimpses of red appeared on the
hillsides - the first masasa blossom of the spring. We turned off the road and
found ourselves in a green flat valley, unloaded our cases at the attractive
one- storey hotel, walked for five minutes and there standing up from the
valley floor was a steep-sided rocky hill - the Hill Complex of the Great
Zimbabwe. We only had time to scan it with field glasses that evening before
the sun set, but had time to appreciate the wonderful position and atmosphere
of the site.
Great Zimbabwe lies on the southern scarp of the
400-5000ft high plateau that forms the watershed between the Zambezi and the
Limpopo rivers: cool, well watered, gently rolling plains covered in light
savannah woodlands, free of tsetse fly and healthy for man and cattle. The
largest and most striking hills around Great Zimbabwe are enormous smooth,
bare, rounded domes of granite, formed by the exfoliation of layers of rock
caused by marked daily changes of temperature due to the clear skies and
tropical sunshine. These parallel-sided slabs of granite, 3 to 7 inches thick
split off the domes, much as an onion peels, and slide down the slopes to
collect as scree at the bottom. These can be readily cracked and broken down
into manageable sizes to provide an abundant and natural source for building
material. The fracture planes of the granite ensure that the broken pieces all
have a very regular cuboidal shape with parallel top and bottom, vertical sides
and a standard thickness, giving an accessible material which lends itself to
building techniques based on more or less regular layers of stone.
All this became obvious the next morning when we set
out to explore the site thoroughly, it was bright and sunny but cool enough for
a cardigan, the following day was similar to the best hot English summer day.
The whole site consists of three main groups of stone structures, the Hill
Complex, the Great Enclosure and the Valley Complex. We went first to the Hill
Complex which was known for many years as the Acropolis, there the huge natural
boulders have been linked by short sections of dry stone wall built of neatly
coursed, dressed blocks to form a series of inter-connected enclosures. There
are several paths to the top which were used at different times and there are
traces of circular huts built of daga, the local red clayey soil with gravel
aggregates, which here must have been carried up from the valley. The Eastern
enclosure of the Hill Complex, which incorporates towering natural boulders 50
- 60 feet high, and man-made platforms and stone pillars, six of which were
capped with the famous stone birds - the Zimbabwe birds - is thought to have
been a ritual site of some kind.
The Great Enclosure itself, sometimes known as the
Elliptical Building, was a massive cuter wall, 100 feet in circumference and
accompanied along about a third of its length by a parallel inner wall making a
narrow corridor with walls in some places 30 feet high and 15 feet thick. At
the end of the corridor is a solid conical tower. There are remains of daga
huts within the enclosure, but unfortunately the whole site suffers from having
been stripped by early settlers in the search for treasure. Radio carbon dates
are few but from these, from the style of some pieces of pottery found and from
parallel dating with other sub-Saharan structures five phases of occupation
have been distinguished ranging from the Early Iron Age phase 1 occupation of
the Hill Complex in the 3rd to 5th centuries AD, later Iron Age around the 11th
and 12th centuries with Gumange ware pottery but no stone buildings, and around
the 13th century pottery with a finer finish and relatively simple walled
enclosures, pole and daga structures were more substantial than earlier. This
was followed in the 14th and 15th centuries by the finest coursed stone and
solid daga buildings.
In the valley there is a series of larger
free-standing walled enclosures, which in several cases surrounded a complex of
circular daga houses linked to each other by short sections of stone wall. The
word Zimbabwe is derived from the Shona and means either stone houses or
venerated houses. There are three wall styles at Great Zimbabwe - "P"
style characterised by untrimmed face stone blocks and wavy courses with the
bottom ones manning on unprepared foundations, these have been dated to the
13th century. The "Q" style has almost uniform sized face blocks and
regular courses with the bottom ones on prepared surfaces, and includes steps, platforms
and buttresses. This style has been dated to the 14th century. "R"
style has a poor finish with irregular blocks piled haphazardly and wedged on
top of each other, they were presumed to postdate the main building Phases.
Theories abound as to the use to which the
enclosures were put, ritual, defence, prestige, slave or cattle enclosures.
Opinion has fluctuated according to the political influences of the day.
Zimbabwe is not unique, though it is the largest of an estimated 150 ruins that
survive today over this area.
We spent nearly two days, not enough time, at this
fabulous site - a marvellous combination of fascinating archaeology and an
excellent hotel where we sat under the palm trees, sipping our cool drinks,
watching the monkeys running across the roofs and the weaver binds chattering
in and out of their tree colony.
While we were in Zimbabwe we also visited the
Matopos, the hills to the west of Bulawayo, where there are many rock shelters
and caves containing rock art. These Bushmen paintings, mostly depicting
animals and humans, show four stages of development and ceased when animal
husbanders and agriculturalists arrived and replaced the hunter-gatherers. The
paintings are remarkable for the movement depicted. It is difficult to date
this type of rock art, but carbon 14 dating has been used on some middens found
underneath the paintings and these dates range from 60,000 to 1,000 years BC.
Every phase of rock art shows the bow and arrow being carried by the human
figures, therefore all the paintings must have been executed after the
invention of the bow. Most of the paintings were done using colours obtained
from the natural minerals found in nearby areas. Unfortunately time, damp and
exfoliation are destroying some of the paintings, and at least one attempt at
preservation has caused more problems. The highest point in the Matopos
National Park is the dome named Malindidzimu (the place of spirits), where
Cecil Rhodes loved to sit and where he arranged to be buried. The view is
magnificent , Africa stretching away on all sides. Finally, after time spent at
a comfortable safari lodge, where we wallowed in our watering hole and then lay
on sunbeds to watch the animals visiting theirs, and where we had the
opportunity to see wildlife moving across the landscape to which it belongs, we
went on to the breathtaking Victoria Falls. Nature might have designed the
Falls for tourists, the water comes crashing down into a gorge and then the
river flows on to the right so it is possible to stand on the opposite side of
the gorge to watch the rainbows forming and to attempt to photographs this
immense sight. The spray from the Falls creates a rain forest, and water proofs
and umbrellas are needed at some times of the year when walking along the edge
of the gorge which is kept blessedly free of any commercial enterprises. Here
we stayed at the historic Victoria Falls hotel, the first version of which was
built in 1904 as soon as the railway, originally intended to go from the Cape
to Cairo, reached Victoria Falls. It immediately became the fashion to make an
excursion to the Falls and the father of our friend in Zimbabwe, who had been
an early mining engineer in what is now Zambia, and who incidentally made his
first journeys up from the Cape on a bicycle which he then used a his chief
mode of transport, once arrived rather travel-stained and short of clothing to
find in the two years he had been in the bush the railway and the hotel had
arrived and there were ladies and gentlemen in full evening dress dining in the
hotel. The hotel was also one of the stopover places for travellers on the
Imperial Airways (later BOAC) flying boat route from London to South Africa,
the plane landed on the Zambezi above the Falls, where the river forms one of
the longest stretches of uninterrupted water in Africa. We have given this
piece the title "Zimbabwe the Great" because that was how we found
it, a beautiful country with friendly, smiling people, good hotels and roads, a
beautiful climate and tap water you can drink!
PRESENTS
FROM THE PAST Ted
Sammes
This title has been given to an exhibition running
at the Church Farm House Museum, Hendon until April 17. It is an exhibition of
donations and other acquisitions from the Museum's own collection. This is an
opportunity to see material from books to bee-skips, from cradles to
calculators and from pie crimpers to projectors acquired during recent years.
Don't forget the Museum is open weekdays (except Tuesday) 10am - 1pm and 2pm -
5.30pm, Sundays 2pm to 5.30pm.