Archaeology in Marlow www.archaeologyinmarlow.org.uk

NEWSLETTER

Volume 16 Issue No: 6 December 2018

AiM’s Forthcoming Events

Dear AIM members and friends Join us for our Christmas Quiz!

8pm on Thursday 13th December in the Garden Room Liston Hall, Marlow, SL7 1DD.

Come along an enjoy a fun-filled evening with new and old friends. This is a general knowledge quiz for teams of four. It is not necessary to come as a team, as teams can be made up on the night. Teams will compete to win a small prize!

As usual, Mulled wine and Fruit juices will be provided on the night, but we would ask quizzers to bring along a snack, or dish, if possible (Crisps, Sausage Rolls, Quiche, Nuts, Chocs, etc.), so we have a good selection of snacks to go with the drinks. This has worked well in previous years.

We will also be holding our famous Raffle, which will again have prizes worth in excess of £100! Should you wish to donate a raffle prize, please bring it along on the night. We are indebted to our sponsors and AIM members who donate raffle prizes.

Entrance fee for AIM Members and Visitors £1

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

1 AiM’s Events at a Glance

Thursday 14th February at 8pm in the Main Hall, Liston Hall, Chapel Street, Marlow SL7 1DD

‘LIDAR - The new illuminating the past’ a talk by Andy McGrandle

This is a joint talk with AiM organised by MAS

8pm in the Garden Room of Liston Hall

Members of AIM and MAS £3, visitors £4.50 (The graphic above shows a LIDAR survey of Danesfield Hillfort, courtesy of the Environment Agency) ------

Thursday 28th March at 8pm

‘Wycombe Rye Roman Villa’ a talk by Brian Withington

This is an AiM talk

8pm in the Garden Room of Liston Hall

Members of AIM and MAS £3, visitors £4.50 Image courtesy of Bucks County Council

Free parking is available in the adjacent *Liston Hall’s full address is: car park after 7 pm. Chapel Street, Marlow, SL7 1DD.

Hunt’s of Marlow For First Class DIY, Hardware and Garden Supplies 35 Station Road, Marlow Tel 01628 488228

2 Wycombe Museum in the 21st Century

(of a one year project) to transfer photo- graphs and text from hard copy to the Mu- seum’s computer. It is planned that Wy- combe Museum will follow other Museums, such as the Petrie Museum in London, all of whose artefacts can be seen on-line. Keith also mentioned that new exhibitions took up to two years to plan and that the Museum generally had two new exhibitions at any one time. The newer ones have more On Thursday the 18th of October, Keith ‘inter-active’ exhibits for the younger visitor. Spencer, a volunteer at the Museum in (see photo), gave a talk outlining The Museum endeavours to work with and the changes that are happening to Wycombe involve local groups, plus schools’ ‘national Museum and Museums across the country. curriculum’ requirements.

Keith said that Wycombe Museum had been The Museum needs good publicity and the under the aegis of booklet Keith handed out entitled ‘What’s until recently. The Museum is now managed on’ is a very comprehensive guide to the by WHAT (Wycombe Heritage and Arts Museum’s activities over the next six Trust). This change resulted in the Museum months. The Museum is taking advantage of losing between 30% and 40% of its funding. technological changes and can be found on This has meant that the five permanent staff Facebook and other media. have now reduced to one full-time and three part-time employees. Without volunteers Keith concluded by saying that all are wel- the Museum would cease to function. come to visit the Museum (free entry), any- one can become a Friend of the Museum On a brighter side, Keith said that a lump and/or adopt a Museum object. sum received from Wycombe District Council during the management change had been This was a most informative talk and very spent on developing extra exhibition space well presented. and improving the café and shop. Museum volunteers are currently into their third year John Laker

3 BLHN + HS2 Conference

The annual Local History Net- Stoke Mandeville. This fell out of use over 100 work conference took place in Aylesbury on 29 years ago and was demolished in the 1960s, September. With HS2 as the theme, it was a sell- leaving a large pile of rubble which probably out with about 170 people attending – including protect floors, wall footings and early construc- a few who have given AIM talks in the past. It tion details. The team involved aim to excavate was quite irritating that having queued to regis- inside and outside the church which – not sur- ter, attendees then had to join another queue prisingly - is a very rare occurrence with for GDPR purposes. Thankfully things improved churches. They will use some of the latest tech- after that and the conference ran smoothly and nology, including drones, and also hope to pro- on time. vide opportunities for local people to get in- volved with some activities. Buckinghamshire Eliza Alqassar (Bucks County Archaeology Ser- Archaeology Society have already done some vice) set the scene by briefly describing what we field-walking on this site. already know about the archaeology of the county, and how this may be impacted by the The HS2 archaeology project is keen to engage HS2 archaeology project. This was followed by a with local people and there may be opportuni- general talk on the project by Jay Carver, the ties to apply for funding for local projects at lead archaeologist. Jay previously ran the Cross- some point. However, it sounded unlikely that rail archaeology project so he has a lot of rele- there would be opportunities for volunteer help vant experience with massive projects of this with excavation – probably due to a combina- sort. tion of commercial, legal and health and safety reasons. The scale of the project was highlighted by the figures relating to the geophysical surveying that The conference ended with a talk on the intro- has been done along the route: 2200 hectares duction of the railways to Buckinghamshire, by have been covered and there are still a few hun- well-known local historian Julian Hunt. Julian dred to be done. A hectare is 100m x 100m noted that the builders of the first railways did- (10,000 square metres), which is about four n’t pay much attention to any archaeology they times the size of the inner enclosure at Warren encountered on the way. His talk included lots Wood. The main technique used is magnetome- of nice old photos of trains and stations – includ- try and this is supplemented by field walking – ing one of Marlow. often with local volunteer help. If you want to know more about the project, Survey results are analysed and further investi- here are two useful websites: gations involving trial trenches are carried out where potentially interesting features are found. https://www.hs2.org.uk/building-hs2/ There were three talks on specific sites and ar- archaeology/ eas that have already been identified as signifi- https:// cant and where more detailed work has taken hs2inbucksandoxfordshire.commonplace.is/ place or is planned. One of the archaeological contractors involved has already dug over 500 From the commonplace website you can use the trial trenches, although not many of these are in menu tab to access information on archaeology the Chilterns. in Bucks and Oxfordshire.

An unusual project concerns the old church at Martin Fowkes 4 GIS Course

On Saturday the 24th of November, Martin how maps (generally ‘Rasta’ files) could be Fowkes (our Chairman) and John Laker viewed and how data (generally ‘Vector’ joined 17 other interested people to learn files) could be added to maps. more about GIS (Geographic Information System) in a four hour session. The initial map we used was one showing the topography of Chilterns and then we This free course was run by the Beacons of overlaid the Chilterns Area of Outstanding the Past Project. Ed Peveler (see photo Natural Beauty (AONB) onto this map. We above), took the course, which was held in then added some Vector data to show the one of the buildings in Bucks New University Hillforts on the maps. Later we were able to in High Wycombe. insert on the maps specific artefacts from various periods of history, which had been Ed explained that GIS is used by archaeolo- found in the Chilterns (coins, arrow heads, gists and others to overlay data on maps, armour, etc.). graphics, or diagrams. Most people will have seen a map of the UK being overlain with Although Ed needed to dispense a huge blue, red and other colours during general amount of information in a short time, he elections. This is putting data (election re- did this with good humour and answered a sults) on to a map (of the UK). Weather flood of enquiries during the course. Every- maps are a good example of GIS in use, one seemed to have enjoyed this introduc- where weather fronts, clouds, temperatures tion to what is a vast subject. and wind speed are laid over a UK map. No doubt Martin and I will try to put the the- All the course participants were allocated a ory into practice! computer and the GIS programme QGIS 2.18 was then copied onto each machine. We all John Laker ‘unzipped’ the programme and Ed explained 5 Little Wittenham Clumps

Little Wittenham Clumps are two hills, Castle Members might remember receiving an Hill and Round Hill. They are situated a few email from CBA South Midlands advertising miles west of Wallingford. Dig Ventures’s excavation, near Little Wit- tenham Clumps, in October. AIM member, Castle Hill boasts a Bronze Age Hill Fort and Ann Pitwell, contacted Dig Ventures and ar- in 2003, Oxford Archaeology excavated a ranged to join a tour of the excavation site. strip from the top of the Hill to the bottom. So, on Sunday the 28th of October, Ann, and Two AIM members, Dave Greenwood and John Laker visited the venue. John Laker helped with this excavation (see photo). In addition to this excavation, a dig After a brief introduction from Sophie, Indie was carried out near the Clumps car park. guided us around the site, showing the This was prior to the construction of a new group (see photo) the half sectioned grain building for the Earth Trust. storage pits, later possibly used as rubbish pits, the post holes (for structures protecting The Earth Trust is about to construct another building, but beforehand an archaeological investigation is being carried out by DigVen- tures (see digventures.com for more infor- mation on them).

The Earth Trust looks after 500 hectares of land, which include the two Hills and sur- rounding agricultural land and woodlands (see www.earthtrust.org.uk for more de- tails).

6 Little Wittenham Clumps (cont) the grain pits) and parts of various trenches. The site dates from the Middle Iron Age (400 This was an excellent (free) tour in a very at- to 300BC). tractive part of Oxfordshire. The Clumps are only 30 minutes away from Marlow and the Johanna then took us inside the Trust’s Fison adjacent car park is always open. You can barn, where artefacts were being washed also visit the Earth Trust Centre on weekdays and cleaned. Johanna also showed us a between 9am and 5pm. Bronze Age cremation urn, plus three skele- tons, displayed in a case, one of which was You can view the archaeological ‘dig records’ Roman and the other two (a 19 year old man at digventures.com/earth-trust and very young child) were Iron Age (see photo, below). John Laker

Saddle Safari CYCLE SALES & SERVICE 9 Dean Street, Marlow, Bucks, SL7 3AA. Tel. 01628 477020 www.saddlesafari.co.uk

7 Goings on in Institute Road!

During early October, one of our members contacted us and put us in touch with a lady who lives in Station Road. The lady informed us of excavation work, being done at the rear of the car park in Institute Road, Mar- low, that was unearthing broken pieces of crockery and glass. The lady’s garden backs on to the site.

Wycombe District Council had contracted a company to demolish a failing wall and make the area safe. Removing the wall revealed various bits of rubbish thrown away in Geor- gian, or Victorian times; possibly from Mar- low Place (an imposing building further up Station Road, once frequented by the Prince Regent).

I quickly visited the area and spoke with the Site Manager and, as he had no request to retain any artefacts that his team unearthed, I gave him a plastic box and he kindly depos- ited into it items they had found. Latterly he check, you don’t know! passed these on to the lady in Station Road and, when the work had finished, I collected We kept Wycombe District Council in touch these finds from her. I have subsequently with our findings. Having seen our photo- washed and cleaned these items and photo- graph, they are happy for the ‘finds’ to be graphed them. discarded (again).

None of the items are of any particular ar- John Laker chaeological significance, but if you don’t

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Dean Street Car Park, Marlow

 A small friendly market offering large quantities of English and Foreign fruits and vegetables, along with fresh eggs, with discounts for bulk orders. Every Wednesday, 8.00am - 3.00pm  Fresh fish from . Every Wednesday, 8.00am - 12.00 noon  The best kebabs, burgers and chicken in the UK. Every evening, 5pm - 12 midnight (2 am Fridays and Saturdays)

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8 October’s Quiz Question and Answer

The decaying ‘Gout Road’ Obelisk, at the top of Marlow High Street, has been reno- vated and recut.

1. In Toll Road times, what was the nearest town listed on the distance post? 2. What was the longest one-way route listed on this route?

Answer: The post was erected, near its present site, in September 1822 by the Trustees of the Reading and Hatfield Road. The aim of the route was to avoid going into London.

Answer 1 - Wycombe and Maidenhead (Thicket) are both 5 miles distant Answer 2 - The longest journey on the Toll Road was from Hatfield to Reading via Henley; a distance of 51 miles. The journey to fashionable Bath was a further 65 miles. n.b. The two routes from Marlow to Reading were weather and condition dependant. The shorter route via Henley was often impassable in the winter. It became treacher- ously boggy, muddy, rutted and waterlogged, west of ; more so when the River was in flood. The alternative drier way crossed the Marlow bridge to Bisham, then went uphill to the heathlands of Maidenhead Thicket and there joined the Bath Road, a notorious hunting ground for Highwaymen.

No member gave the correct answers to these October questions

December’s Quiz Question

How many people are known to have represented the borough of Marlow between Edward I’s Model Parliament of 1301 and 1624 when James I was King?

Prize for the AIM member with the first correct answers: Two tickets to any AIM talk. Email or phone your answer to Ann Pitwell (see back page for contact details).

9 Warren Wood Update

We finally had some decent weather in October and managed to finish excavating Trench 13. The final layer of the trench didn’t produce much in the way of finds, although one piece of prehistoric pottery was found, similar to the pieces previously found in Trench 11. More photogenic was a large fungus by the enclosure en- trance.

Although we’ve now finished excavating all the trenches for our WW14 project, there is still work to be done. We are now planning the post excavation activities of finds analysis and report-writing. At the time of writing we are discussing these activities with Phil Andrews, our profes- sional adviser from Wessex Archaeology.

Last winter we did some field-walking in the surrounding woodland and we still have a bit to fin- ish in Horton Wood. This will probably take place in February or March next year and dates will be announced nearer the time.

Many thanks to all who of those who helped this year – especially those pictured who com- pleted the arduous task of backfilling just in time on our last visit of the year.

Martin Fowkes (Field Work Co-ordinator)

10 Other Organisations’ Other Events of interestEvents and Resources

Other Events of interest This is the information available to us at the time of publication, but we advise you to check as this may have changed since then.

Henley Archaeological and Historical Group Tuesday 8 January 2019 7.45pm Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society ‘Wilts and Berks Canal - Past, Present and Saturday 19 January 2019 2.30pm Future’ A talk by Martin Buckland ‘Artist gardeners between the wars: Clare Town Hall, Market Place, Henley on Thames Leighton and John Nash in Buckinghamshire’ RG9 2AQ A talk by Sarah Gray £4 non members Bucks County Museum, Church Street, Ayles- http://www.henley-on- bury, HP20 2QP thamesarchaeologicalandhistorical- http://www.bucksas.org.uk/lectures.html group.org.uk/ SOAG (South Oxfordshire Archaeological Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society - Ac- Group) tive Archaeology Group Thursday 24 January 7.30pm 2019 Tuesday 15 January 2019 7.30pm ‘An introduction to Dendrochronology’ (Tree- ‘Archaeology north of the Cairngorms’ A talk Ring Dating)’ Lecture by Martin Bridge (UCL by Doug Stuckey Institute of Archaeology) Summer volunteering on an archaeological site Goring Heath Parish Hall, Whitchurch Hill, RG8 in Scotland. 7NY Free, donations accepted. Bucks County Museum, Church Street, [email protected] Aylesbury, HP20 2QP http://www.bucksas.org.uk/aag.html Marlow Museum [email protected] Nov – Feb Sundays 2 – 4pm Current Exhibition ‘Travellers Tales’ with Chess Valley Archaeological and Historical So- Marlow connections ciety (CVAHS) There are 4 'Travellers' in the exhibition: The Friday 18th January 2019 8pm Spotted Boy, Kate Marsden, Sir Robert Hart Risborough - Origins of our Settlement and King Zog, and 22 travellers featured in the A DVD presentation by Paul Green, Risbor- exhibition booklet, which is available for sale ough Archaeology at the museum. Illustrating the archaeological discoveries that Sundays 2, 9, 16, 23, 30 December 2-4pm reveal the story of 4000 years of occupation of Minced Pies, and Mulled Wine and sweeties , from the Neolithic to the for the children. Come and join in the fun. end of the Roman period. Peacock Room, Court Garden Leisure Centre Lowndes Room, Chesham Town Hall, Chesham Higginson Park, Pound Lane, Marlow SL7 2AE Visitors £4 www.cvahs.org.uk Free entry, donations welcome www.marlowmuseum.org 11 AiM ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP RATES  £10.00 Individual (over 18)  £12.00 Household Membership (one adult and any children under 18 living at the same address)  £15.00 Household Membership (two adults and any children under 18 living at the same address)  £6.00 Student (over 16 in full time education, or pre-university gap year) Corporate Membership is available on application

AiM Committee Meetings Future AiM Committee Meetings 7.30pm Thursday the 17th of January 2019 at 3 Penington Rd, Beaconsfield, HP9 1ET 7.30pm Thursday the 28th of February 2019 at 9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT

All members are welcome to attend all AiM meetings. Please telephone a committee member in advance to confirm date and venue.

AiM Committee Members

Chairman Martin Fowkes 88 Blind Lane, Bourne End, SL8 5LD 01628 530832 - [email protected]

Treasurer Ann Pitwell 9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT 01628 481792 - [email protected] Vice-Chairman John Laker 9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT 01628 481792 - [email protected]

Membership Secretary Nicky Pendered c/o 9 Spinfield Lane, Marlow, SL7 2JT Newsletter Compiler Jessica Small Skeletal Biology Research Centre, University of Kent CT2 7NR [email protected]

Field Work Co-ordinator Martin Fowkes

Committee Members 01494 675195 - [email protected] Tony Birkett 01494 533669 - [email protected] Howard

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