Two small-scale excavations were carried out at Verulamium during 1961. In January it became necessary to explore the site about to be occupied by the museum extension, and several trenches were cut on the north-east and south-east sides of the existing museum building. It was not possible in the time and with the resources available to excavate down to natural soil, but only to examine those layers due for removal by the builders. Considerable depths of deposit are known to exist here, possibly filling an early ditch. The site lies in the west corner of Insula XVIII: the earliest structure reached was a timber-framed building, burnt down possibly c. A.D. 155. This was succeeded by an Antonine masonry building with channel hypocausts. Possibly c. A.D. 300 this building was enlarged by encroachment on the street frontages. It clearly extends some way outside the area excavated both towards east and south. The character of the structure is domestic.

It has long been thought that Laurence Nowell, Dean of Lichfield and Laurence Nowell, antiquary and tutor in the household of Sir William Cecil, were one and the same person. However, evidence embodied in a Court of Requests Case of 1571 has recently given rise to doubts as to whether the dean and antiquary were, indeed, one. A re-examination of evidence already known and the discovery of some new documents sheds further light on the career of Laurence Nowell, antiquary, and tends to substantiate the claim that the dean and antiquary should be ‘separated’. The evidence remains inconclusive but the reputation of Laurence Nowell, antiquary, as a scholar and cartographer suffers in no way from the possibility that he may not have been Dean of Lichfield.

Surviving records afford only a very incomplete impression of the appearance of the fine Gothic cross erected by the Fraternity of the Holy Cross in the market place at Abingdon in the 1440s and destroyed by Parliamentarian troops in 1644. An early seventeenth-century painting of the Abingdon cross at Christ's Hospital in the town shows it after it had been substantially altered during restoration in 1605, but its original appearance can be partially reconstructed from what is known of the Coventry cross, set up between 1541 and 1545, which was closely modelled on the Abingdon example, the most elaborate of its type built in the fifteenth century.

The great tower of Dudley Castle, in the West Midlands, is re-examined in order to situate it within the evolutionary sequence of great tower designs. In so doing, it is argued that the origins of its plan are to be found in the works of the early to mid-thirteenth century, and that the tower itself was probably begun during the 1260s. Furthermore, it is asserted that the tower represents a milestone in the thinking that underpinned the redevelopment of castle mottes, and that it is to be seen as the prime connection between the circle-based plans that dominated motte redevelopments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and later developments that led, ultimately, to the radically different, but architecturally successful scheme adopted by the builder of the donjon of Warkworth Castle in Northumberland.

The history in the seventeenth century of a fourteenth-century picture can only be of secondary importance. But since many writers on the Wilton diptych and the Westminster Abbey whole-length portrait of Richard II have complained of disputed statements and doubtful evidence, it is worth while to set out a few new suggestions which appear to be adequately supported. They are based upon a close study of such sources of information as we possess, and may perhaps ultimately help to a clue to the undiscovered first owners and authors of the paintings.

A Roman kiln was discovered in 1906 by Mr. Harold Falkner, a member of the Surrey Archaeological Society, and described by him in the county Archaeological Collections, vol. xx, pp. 228–32, with diagrams of the kiln and representative pottery ; but Mr. Falkner states that this kiln was empty when he discovered it, and that he never properly understood this site.

The northern end of the Isle of Man is a low plain, a legacy of the Ice Age, consisting of boulder clay, sands, and gravels, bordered round the coast by a range of sandhills rising from 100 ft. at the break made by the Lhen to over 300 ft. where they cluster around the little village of Kirk Bride. The mouth of the Lhen at a distance of five miles from the foot of the hills, the pre-glacial coastline of the Island, is the reputed landing-place of the Scandinavian settlers who came sailing down from the western isles of Scotland; and for their small and shallow vessels the gravel beach, still known by their name of ‘the Ayres’, was admirably adapted.

The Cistercian Abbey of Rievaulx owes its foundation to a mission from Clairvaux, sent to England under the direction of St. Bernard in 1131. Waverley Abbey in Surrey, and Tintern in Monmouthshire, daughter houses of L'Aumône, were already in existence, having been founded in 1128 and 1131, the first Cistercian houses in England. A beginning having thus been made in the South, it was no doubt a matter of policy that the order should be planted in the North also, and Rievaulx came into existence, the first of that splendid company of Yorkshire Cistercian houses which numbers Byland, Fountains, Jervaulx, Kirkstall, and Roche among its members. A benefactor was found in Walter le Spech or l'Espec, who gave in his charter of foundation nine carucates of land in Griff and Tilstone, and with this endowment the monastery was started, receiving no considerable increase of revenue till 1145, when the founder added Bilsdale to their lands. In spite of this Rievaulx must have grown quickly, for colonies went from it to inaugurate new monasteries at Melrose in 1136, Warden in the same year, Dundrennan in 1142, and Revesby in 1143. But a grant of a site at Rushen, given by Olaf, King of Man, could not be accepted for lack of any one to send to take possession.