A small team of archaeologists has been undertaking research into the island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides. Camping for a few days at a time over a number of years, they have carried out both survey and excavation work. Derek Alexander, Daniel Rhodes, Stuart Jeffrey, Tessa Poller, and Siân Jones describe the results of these efforts to date.
This month’s selection of summer digging opportunities includes projects from Staffordshire, Stirling, Edinburgh, and Nottinghamshire.
Excavations by York Archaeology on the site of a former hospital at Clifton Ings have shed light on the institution’s origins as a Victorian asylum, offering insights into how approaches to mental health care have changed over the centuries. Anne Jenner and Katherine Bradshaw report.
Are letter boxes, postage stamps, Christmas and birthday cards, love etters, thank you notes, pen pals, and postcards all destined to become archaic curiosities, like telephone kiosks? Denmark’s national postal service, PostNord, ended traditional letter delivery on 31 December 2025,…
REVIEW BY STEPHEN RIPPON The character of the countryside all around us plays an important part in many communities’ sense of place. This is particularly clear in the south-west of Britain, where Cornwall’s distinctive place-names – those that pre-date its…
Mint House is a Grade II*-listed timber-frame building, which stands opposite Pevensey Castle on Pevensey High Street in East Sussex. It has been on the Heritage at Risk Register since 2022, and is currently in extremely poor condition – but…
A new study, which was recently published in Antiquity, has examined a sediment core from a palaeochannel of the River Ure, near Aldborough in North Yorkshire, and combined it with both historical and archaeological evidence in order to discern how…
An excavation led by archaeologists from the National Trust and York Archaeology, with the help of local volunteers, has helped unearth the remains of a house originally built for Hannah Newton (née Ayscough), the mother of Sir Isaac Newton. The…
Historic England’s laboratories at Fort Cumberland, near Portsmouth, recently reopened after major refurbishment. Carly Hilts visited the new facilities and spoke to Gill Campbell, Jen Heathcote, Ian Morrison, Simon Mays, Francesca Gherardi, and Angela Middleton to learn about some of the latest advances in archaeological understanding to which the site’s specialists have contributed.
A community excavation within Moira Demesne – a public park in Northern Ireland – has revealed finds spanning from prehistory through to the 18th century. Once the location of a fine country house called Moira Castle, the excavation is being…
REVIEW BY MARK BEATTIE-EDWARDS It was with some delight that I received an email to write this review, as I had literally only one hour before I purchased my own copy. Over the last five years I have been working…
As we move into warmer months, the words ‘I’m going to go out for some Vitamin D’ are beginning to make their appearance in conversation. Vitamin D is essential for bone growth, and plays an important role in immunity and…
Of the many new religious groups that emerged from the ferment of ideas that characterised the Civil War and Commonwealth era (1630s to 1666), the Quakers proved to be one of the best organised and most influential. They have also gone further than other dissenting congregations in abandoning the architectural form that has been used for worship since the earliest days of Christianity by inventing a new kind of worship space – the meeting house. Chris Catling reports on a study of this distinctive Quaker building and its 17th-century origins.
A delectable drink from Derby Derby’s profusion of malthouses (CA 420) included an early 18th-century example which had the distinction of being converted, in 1773 (by the architect Joseph Pickford for the Irish impresario James Whiteley), into Derby’s Theatre Royal,…
By the time you read this, February fill dyke will be over for another year and March will (perhaps) have come in like a lion. Sherds is always glad when winter is over, but in the depths of the cold, dark, and grey weeks of January and February there is one sure way to find warmth and consolation – by reaching for a book called Next to Nature, an anthology of the ‘Word from Wormingford’ diary columns that Ronald Blythe wrote for many years for the Church Times.
The websites of upmarket estate agents will typically feature a dozen or more properties for sale in Sussex or Kent converted from 19th-century oast houses. These desirable residences once served a humbler purpose, drying the resinous hop flowers that are an essential ingredient in the nation’s beer. Patrick Grattan recorded the last of these buildings in use for that purpose in the 1960s, and his knowledge has fermented into a detailed history of the oast, as Chris Catling now reports.
New research into the burial sites of 17th- and 18th-century whalers on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard is providing rare insight into the lives of these individuals and the impact of climate change on Arctic archaeology. Project leader Lise Loktu tells us more.
In my second column on the archaeology of Greater London, I stroll through the Saxon town, meander through the medieval city, and finally alight on some post-medieval and modern sites. There is a lot to review here, from the evidence of London’s last Romans to those who lived here in some of its most difficult of times: the Blitz during the Second World War.
A handful of tiny paper items discovered at Sutton House in Hackney offer a unique insight into the interests of the girls who were educated there in the 17th century. Carly Hilts spoke to Nathalie Cohen, Isabella Rosner, Kate Simpson, and Abigail Winslow to find out more.
Two hundred years ago, George Smith was granted the first licence to distil whisky legally in the Glenlivet area of Speyside, in the Scottish Highlands. Now archaeological fieldwork by the National Trust for Scotland, in partnership with The Glenlivet, has shed new light on how the whisky-making process was industrialised in the 19th century, as Derek Alexander and Daniel Rhodes report.
The latest on acquisitions, exhibitions, and key decisions.
The remains of a ‘lost’ 17th-century house built by a friend of Oliver Cromwell has been rediscovered during excavations at Auckland Castle in County Durham. During the Interregnum (the period between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the…
Orchards have not featured largely in studies of the historic environment, though there is a growing recognition of their ecological value. Yet orchards were once ubiquitous features of the landscape in many counties, whether in the form of a small plot attached to a farm, or as a large commercial orchard cultivated as the owner’s principal source of income. Making up for this omission is a new book by Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson that attempts, for the first time, to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of orchards in England from the Middle Ages to the present day, as Chris Catling reports.
Carly Hilts visited a new exhibition aiming to restore individuality to six women often grouped merely as the ‘wives of Henry VIII’.
REVIEW BY GEORGE NASH I have always thought that, for many archaeological projects, the process of data-gathering and reporting on previous archaeological activity is as important as the archaeology itself; the investigative activity at Rushen Abbey, including more than 100…
Research for a new experience that opened at Dover Castle this July has led to the discovery of a heavily graffitied door dating to the 1790s, revealing intriguing insights into the thoughts of the soldiers stationed there at that time.…
Your thoughts on issues raised by CA.
This unusual-looking doll was found by a mudlarker in a brook in Leicestershire earlier this year. A remarkable find, the lead- alloy female figure is the only complete example of such a doll currently recorded on the PAS database. The…
The people of Cornwall are so proud of their great engineer, Richard Trevithick, that when the Cornish Engines Preservation Committee and the Cornish Waterwheel Preservation Society decided to merge in 1971, they named the new organisation the Trevithick Society (Kowethas…
What can the combination of archaeology, documents, maps, and plans tell us about London’s port in the period between the Great Fire of 1666 and the shift of shipping activity downstream of the City, following the opening of the West India Dock in 1801? A new and highly readable publication brings together the evidence from four sites excavated by the Museum of London between 1974 and 1984, allowing us an insight into the area around London Bridge when it served as the focal point of London’s commercial waterfront. Chris Catling reports.
This is a medieval or early post-medieval silver pendant, set with jet, which was found last August by a metal-detectorist near Bletchingley in Surrey. It is probably a pilgrim souvenir dating to c.AD 1400-1550. The pendant comprises a silver, scallop-shaped…
With the summer digging season rapidly approaching, we are planning a series of spreads highlighting archaeological opportunities across Britain and Ireland. This month features projects ranging across East Anglia and East Sussex, Yorkshire and Northumberland, the Midlands, the Cotswolds, and London – please do get in touch if you would like to highlight your excavation to our readers in a future issue.
REVIEW BY DANIEL JACKSON Hampton Court Palace, nestled within a bend of the Thames 13 miles from the centre of London, has a fascinating history, during which it grew from a medieval agricultural estate to one of the greatest palaces…
Formerly known as the Historic Houses Association (HHA), Historic Houses has just marked its 50th anniversary, having been formed in 1973. A year after its foundation, a campaigning exhibition at the V&A drew attention to the loss of some 2,000…
The Honours of Scotland recently underwent the most significant conservation in their centuries-long history, helping preserve them for generations to come. The Crown, Sceptre, and Sword of State represent the oldest crown jewels in Britain and are among the oldest…
REVIEW BY AB Until the mid-20th century, England was covered with orchards. But these quintessential features of the historic landscape did not simply spring into being: the story of England’s orchards is filled with generations of people who cultivated them.…