October 13, 2020

Joint Prehistoric Society and LAMAS lecture - Revealing a Late Bronze Age enclosure

Andrew Peachey, 
Archaeological Solutions

Postponed from May 2020

Overlooking the former marshes on the north bank of the River Thames, the soil mark of a square enclosure has been recognised since the 1960s.  Recent archaeological excavation in advance of mineral extraction has revealed this to be a Late Bronze Age enclosure with two distinct phases of activity, including roundhouses, and most intriguingly the very carefully located deposit of a group of bronze hoards.  This talk will characterise a rare opportunity for the complete excavation of such a monument and explore the artefacts contained within.

  November 10, 2020

Layers of London: putting histories on the map

Adam Corsini, Layers of London

Discover how over 250 layers and 9000 public contributions came together to form Layers of London, a free online, crowd-sourced mapping resource that anyone can get involved with.

  December 8, 2020

Additional Kilns of the Roman Thameside Ceramic Zone: Excavations at the land of the former Mardyke Estate, Rainham, London Borough of Havering (postponed from April 2020)

Eniko Hudak, Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd

Postponed from April 20120

Excavations at the land of the former Mardyke Estate by Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd in 2013 uncovered three Roman pottery kilns, which were producing local sand- and shell-tempered wares dated to the second quarter of the second century AD. This talk will present the kilns and the pottery produced on site and will consider the kilns together with those of the neighbouring site to the west of the River Beam in their wider context as part of the Thames Estuary or Thameside ceramic production zone.

  January 12, 2021

London Calling: an elsewhere archaeology of the Calais Jungle

Louise Fowler, MOLA

This lecture will present the initial results of work by MOLA and collaborators on a group of objects collected by photographer Gideon Mendel at the site of the Jungle camp in Calais, following its demolition in 2016. The project brings time depth and archaeological insight to a situation that is often framed as a moment of crisis, and challenges some long-held archaeological assumptions.  

  February 16, 2021

AGM and Presidential Address - The Long History of Conservation

Gillian Tindall

We are inclined to date concern for historic buildings from the time of Ashbee and Morris, but an interest in `relics' was already developing two centuries earlier in the wake of Cromwellian destruction. With the New Learning, the relative peace and easier travel the 18^th century brought, antiquarianism flowered. Even before 1800 enthusiasts were busy sketching parts of Tudor London before they disappeared; and as enthusiasm for the Gothic and for the pre-Raphaelite world expanded, new discoveries were made – and sometimes faked.

  March 9, 2021

Clitterhouse Farm, an Anglo-Saxon farm on the doorstep of Brent Cross. 

Roger Chapman,  Hendon and District Archaeological Society

HADAS, the Hendon and District Archaeological Society has operated in Barnet for over 50 years. For the last few years HADAS has been exploring Clitterhouse Farm. This is the story of that exploration and the local archaeological society that has undertaken it.

  April 13, 2021

Excavations within the Great Kitchen of Westminster Abbey

Joe Brooks, Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd

Between 2017 and 2018, PCA undertook a complex excavation within the former Adrian Boult Music Centre at Westminster School. The school lies immediately south of Westminster Abbey within the monastic precinct, and the site largely lay within the monastic Great Kitchen built during the 1070s to serve Edward The Confessor’s Abbey and used until its demolition shortly after the Dissolution. Extensive evidence for the arrangement and use of the kitchen was found, and the later reuse of the site for dwellings. 

  April 19, 2021

Special Lecture - John Stow's Legacy

Vanessa Harding, Birkbeck, University of London

John Stow’s Survey of London, has been reprinted, revised, and expanded many times since its first publication in 1598, but Stow’s impact on the writing of history is much wider than the Survey alone. His ‘legacy’ can be considered in two ways: the materials he collected and preserved for posterity, and the influence of his own writings on successors in the field. What happened to Stow’s books and papers after he died in 1605? Who followed him in his endeavours? This talk will introduce Richard Smyth (1590-1675), city law officer, book collector, and independent scholar, who acquired some books once belonging to Stow, and made his own contribution to the history of London through his collection of manuscripts and information used by later writers, notably John Strype for his massively expanded edition of Stow’s Survey of London published in 1720.

  May 11, 2021

Joint Prehistoric Society and LAMAS lecture - 'In this Heathe hath many campes bin pitched ...': The West London Landscapes Project in context

Jon Cotton and Nicholas Elsdon

The West London Landscapes Project is intended to round up the last of the historic Greater London archaeological backlog. We will highlight results from a range of prehistoric and Roman sites examined between 1979 and 1994 on and beyond the Heathrow terrace gravels in west London and set them in their local and wider regional contexts.