REVIEW BY JACQUELINE PITT This monograph successfully compiles the results of a series of excavations into a comprehensive chronology of a former MOD site south of Bicester. Evidence for prehistoric to modern activity was identified, along with a significant medieval…
Excavations this past summer have revealed the remains of three Bronze Age barrows, as well as a large Anglo-Saxon cemetery in New Alresford, Hampshire. Led by PCA Winchester and the environmental consulting group RPS, the project was carried out last…
Across 5 Egyptian falcon-headed god also known as Horus (8)8 Roman goddess of the dawn (6)9 English river taking its name from the Old English for ‘winding’ (6)10 Spanish cave system containing Palaeolithic art (8)11 Building in Oxford housing varied…
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The Norman Conquest of 1066 remains one of the best-known events in English history – but French attempts to invade three centuries later have now largely been forgotten, as Duncan Cameron explains.
REVIEW BY GRAHAM GOODLAD Ian Knight has gained a deserved reputation as an expert on the Anglo-Zulu War. In Warriors in Scarlet, he turns his attention to a broader canvas. His subject is the British army in the first half…
Nick Spenceley recalls one of the great works of military history.
With one of the UK’s oldest commercial units recently celebrating its 50th birthday, Carly Hilts spoke to its founding director, Tom Hassall, and current CEO, Ken Welsh, about how the archaeological profession has changed over this period – and what the future might hold for the ways in which we engage with the past.
A new Roman garden and mosaic has been unveiled at Butser Ancient Farm, an open-air museum in East Hampshire that hosts a number of historical building recon-structions, spanning from prehistory through to the early medieval period. The garden was funded…
The British Sauna Society (BSS) qualifies for inclusion in our ‘Odd Socs’ column by virtue of its support for the bid to secure listed status for Britain’s oldest sauna, a wooden hut in Kent that is (in the words of…
REVIEW BY CH Large infrastructure schemes are often archaeologically exciting because they allow us to explore underlying features on a landscape scale. This comprehensive monograph summarises the results of one such excavation, by Cotswold Archaeology, where the creation of a…
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
• War, betrayal, and loss: retracing the story of the Klein Hollandia
• Illuminating Icenian interactions with Rome at Caistor St Edmund
• Christianity and continuity: exploring life in early medieval Wales
• Hard times: investigating life in a 19th-century London workhouse
• Monastic memories: hunting for Hyde Abbey in Winchester
The discovery of an anonymous shipwreck off the coast of Sussex set archaeologists on the trail of a 350 year-old mystery. Mark Beattie Edwards reports on efforts to identify the sunken vessel and to protect its historic remains, sharing a story of bravery in battle, acts of ‘piracy’, and tragic loss of life.
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Community excavations in Winchester are helping to piece together the layout of a long-demolished Benedictine monastery. Carly Hilts visited this summer’s investigations to find out more.
The first major archaeological investigations of the moated house of St John’s Jerusalem in Sutton-at Hone, Kent – once home to a Knights Hospitaller Commandery – have revealed some of the site’s medieval origins, as well as its evolution during…
REVIEW BY AB It is easy to think of castles as a static part of the historical landscape, towering relics of a bygone era, but these buildings have rich stories, many of which are still being written. In Castles of…
Fifty years ago, I received a life-changing letter. David Peacock, my tutor at Southampton University, offered me a doctoral scholarship to study the imported Frankish pottery from Hamwic, the 7th- to 9th-century emporium at Southampton. The newly formed Southampton Archaeological…
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David Porter on Military History's doomed inventions.
In the second part of our series on the use of deception during World War Two, Taylor Downing uncovers the extraordinary true story of Operation Mincemeat.
In the first part of a new occasional series, Graham Goodlad profiles Robert Blake, the republican ‘general at sea’ who laid the foundations of sea power after the Civil Wars.
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles
REVIEW BY ANDREW MULHOLLAND Few recent military books can have been quite as timely as this one. For while conceived several years ago, Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman’s study of the British Army brings us right up to date and…
This image shows the remains of an innovative catapult – designed to launch fighter aircraft into the sky – which has recently been uncovered by archaeologists in Oxfordshire. The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Mark III Catapult was one of a…
Thomas Hardy’s second novel – Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) – is a masterpiece of rural comedy with a tragedy at its heart: the usurpation of the centuries-old tradition of church music, represented by the loss of the west-gallery musicians…
Work by MOLA in advance of the development of a Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire has uncovered the remains of an experimental catapult from the Second World War. Known from historical records, the catapult in question was called…
Survey records 30 wrecks sunk during Operation Dynamo Over the course of two weeks in September and October, DRASSM (the French marine heritage agency), in partnership with Historic England, carried out a survey of 30 shipwrecks sunk during Operation Dynamo,…
REVIEW BY KK For those not familiar with the eponymous ‘bone chests’, they are the – rather innocuous-looking – wooden chests placed high atop the choir screens in Winchester Cathedral, which, based on the names written on the outsides, purportedly…
REVIEW BY CH This magazine should reach you in November, bridging the period between Hallowe’en and Christmas – both dates traditionally associated with the sharing of spooky stories. If you would like your frights to have an archaeological flavour, this…
REVIEW BY KK Rogers’ book serves well as a succinct introduction to the Roman towns of Britain. It starts by discussing how these towns evolved, whether de novo or through the expansion of pre-existing settlement sites, and highlights the different…
For the last two years, archaeologists have been exploring the remains of a medieval nunnery that once occupied the bank of the Thames opposite to where Magna Carta was signed. Carly Hilts met James Brown on site to learn more.
This unusual object was recently found in a garden near Boldre in the New Forest. While its function was a bit of a mystery when the finder first brought it to the Finds Liaison Officer to be recorded, it was…
Many societies are concerned with a specific aspect of church heritage (monuments, sculptures, or wall paintings, for example) but the National Churches Trust (NCT) is arguably the most holistic, raising money for places of worship of all denominations and in…