SOUTH MIDLANDS ARCHAEOLOGY The Newsletter of the Cotmcil for British Archaeology Regional Group 9 (Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire) NUMBER 20, 1990 CONTENTS Page Making and Moving: The Region's Industrial Past Bedfordshire County Planning Department 2 Luton Museum Service 12 Kennett D H - The destruction of country houses: 18th century 13 Bedfordshire reconsidered Buckinghamshire County Museum 17 Milton Keynes Archaeology Unit 18 Cauvain S & P - Post-Medieval pottery lcilns at Emmanuel Church, 29 Chesham Cauvain S & P - Medieval site in Priory Road, High Wycombe 31 Northamptonshire Archaeology Unit 33 Stanwick Redland Farm (Oxford Arch Unit) 55 Oxfordshire Oxfordshire County Museum 1988 Report 57 Oxfordshire County Museum 1989 Report 72 Oxford Archaeological Unit 73 Graham Kerr A W J Pillboxes in Oxfordshire 89 Abingdon area Archaeological & Historical Society 90 - Abingdon: Winsmore Lane EDITOR: Andrew Pike CHAIRMAN: Tim Allen Bucks County Museum Oxfordshire Archaeological Unit Technical Centre, Tring Road, 46 Hythe Bridge Street Halton, Aylesbury, 111:122 5PJ Oxford, 0X1 2EP HON SEC: Stephen Coleman TREASURER: Barry Home County Planning Dept, 'Beaumont'. Bedfordshire County Council Church End, County Hall, Edlesborough, Bedford. Dunstable, Beds. MIC42 9AP LU6 2EP Typeset by Barry Home Printed by Central Printing Section, Bucks County Council ISSN 0960-7552 EDITORIAL Last year's issue of SOUTH MIDLANDS ARCHAEOLOGY with its "new look" seems to have been well received. Inevitably there were one or two teething problems and we hope that we have eliminated most of them this time. Once again grateful thanks to Barry Home for his hard work with the computer and also to Tim Allen for his advice and suggestions. The Committee is hoping to relaunch a Group 9 Newsheet, to appear twice a year or so. The Newsheet would seek to keep members informed of events of local societies, so if you have any items of news, short articles, or the programme of your society's talks and meetings, please send them to Mrs Joan Taylor, Myrtle Cottage, Missenden Road, Great Kingshill, High Wycombe, Bucks, as soon as possible. I should be grateful to receive contributions for the twenty-first issue of SOUTH MIDLANDS ARCHAEOLOGY by 1 February 1991 (preferably. on 3 1/2" or 5 1/4" disk; IBM ascii). As always , articles from our smaller societies would be particularly welcome. Andrew Pike August 1990 CBA IX CHAIRMAN'S REPORT This year has been a stirring one for CBA both nationally and regionally, as the British Academy's review of its grant to CBA national has resulted in proposals for a new integrated structure for CBA as a whole. If it is approved, ail CBA members will belong to national CBA, and then be assigned to a relevant regional group, rather than belonging solely to the region as at present. The regional group will then be responsible to national CBA for their members. CBA IX has been active in helping to shape the new structure, both through its committee and at the regional groups liaison meeting held annually in the summer. All groups agreed that more communication and contact was needed between national CBA officers and regional groups and we hope to see CBA having a higher public profile in the future. This year CBA IX is for the first time to host the Beatrice de Cardi lecture, which Derek Riley will deliver on Aerial Archaeology at the Annual General Meeting on November 17th 1990. His lecture will be at 3.30 pm in the newly-opened John Dony Field Centre at Luton. Member societies have been asked to put on displays of recent work, and the response has been excellent. After the lecture there will be an informal reception. The day promises to be very exciting, and ail members are encouraged to attend. Improvements continue to be made to South Midlands Archaeology. Last year saw the introduction of double-column typesetting from computer, this year the series has obtained an ISSN number, and the Committee has decided to produce a cumulative Index to mark the appearance of Volume No 20. This should be comPleted by the New Year; and will greatly enhance the usefulness of SMA to local researchers. The Committee intends to index each future volume as it appears, with another cumulative index in 10 or 20 years. We are very grateful both to our Editor, Andrew Pike, and to Barry Horne, who prepares the journal on disc, for the time and effort they devote towards its publication. This is my final year as Chairman of CBA IX and I would like to take the opportunity of thanking all those, particularly the members of the Committee, whose help and advice has made my time as Chainnan both rewarding and enjoyable. Tim Allen Chainnan. MAKING AND MOVING: THE REGION'S Two of the speakers dealt with activities which continued INDUSTRIAL PAST vigorously into the 20th century, and for which the evidence CBA 9 Spring Conference, 5th May 1990. is both historical and archaeological: hat making and canal J P Schneider transport. Marian Nichols explained how the area north of the Chilterns concerned in straw plaiting and hat making in Rectory Cottages, Bletchley, made a pleasant setting for the 17th and 18th centuries can be defined by the places this year's conference. The interestingly varied talks petitioning Parliament for aid against foreign competition. covered aspects of industry and transport from the Neolithic Despite the death of local straw-plaiting in the late 19th to the present day. century, hat manufacture in Luton today is worth £80 -£100 million a year. Robin Holgate outlined current knowledge on the origin and distribution of Neolithic tools. Recent study of trace The canal network, described by Bruce Harding, no longer elements in the stone makes it possible to identify the place carries commercial cargo traffic, though into the 1930s it of origin of some flint tools. The early Sussex sites produced was stW extremely busy. Imports were transported by fleets axes with a wide distribution. Late sites, such as Grimes of boats along the Grand Union canal from London to Graves, were making not axes but discoidal knives. The Birmingham, and the record lime, through 152 locks, was flint mines at Peppard (Oxon.) belong to this late group. 40 hours. Today it is leisure craft which make the maintenance of the network worthwhile. Bedfordshire Archaeological Unit have been excavating in what Mike Dawson described as the "large village" of In the mid 19th century a bed of phosphatic nodules was Roman Sandy. There was a good deal of evidence for located running parallel to the Chilterns through iron-working in smithing hearths and also for flax retting. A Cambridgeshire, Beds. and Bucks., and their value as very interesting fmd was a bronze nail-cleaner bearing the manure led to their excavation on a large scale. Bernard Christian chi-rho symbol, one of its earliest occurrences in O'Connor told how the fertiliser was exported as far as Britain. Australia_ Again, most of the evidence is documentary, in the contracts made with landowners prior to extraction. Our recorded history begins with the Romans, and Orner Surprisingly little remains to be seen on the sites of the Roucoux outlined the documentary aackground to our excavations, and archaeologists in the coprolite areas should knowledge of Watling Street and other Roman roads, not overlook the possibility that the fields may have been beginning with the Antonine Itinerary, the Ravenna thoroughly dug over in the 19th century. Cosmography and the Peutinger Table. A day of interesting talks was rounded off with a tour of At West Cotton in Northants a sequence of Saxon and Rectory Cottages led by Ted Legge. Some of the timbers Medieval waternrills has been meticulously excavated and have been dated to the late 15th century and the recorded, and Andy Chapman explained their development. crudely-carved heads on the hammer beams are very It was surprising to learn that a horizontally rotating wheel unusual. The buildings were saved from threatened was installed at a later date than vertical ones, which are destruction in the 1960s and now, set in an attractive green, usually considered more efficient. eam their keep through the hiring out of rooms. They are looked after by the dedicated members of the Rectory Cottages Trust. 1 BEDFORDSHIRE MOATS AND MPP Put forward for scheduling Part surviving but not of schedulable standard Wholly or largely destroyed (As at April 1989) Fig. 1. Moats and MPP. BEDFORDSHIRE has been resumed and nearly completed, following the break in activity caused by the bankruptcy of a previous The Work of the Bedfordshire County Council contractor. Planning Department's Archaeology Service in 1989 An exhibition on the work at the Sutton packhorse bridge was prepared, following the project's commendation by the Civic Trust in their 1988 Awards Scheme. GENERAL David Baker The pressures of work and growing interest in the historic Monuments Protection Programme (SRC) environment reported in 1988 have continued unabated into 1989, which has been the most active year for fieldwork Work continues as part of the national programme by since the service was created in 1972. A basic reason is English Heritage to enhance the schedule of ancient particular development pressures applying to Bedfordshire, monuments. Evaluation work based on a scoring system and and especially to the Bedford area and for mineral financed by English Heritage has been completed for the extraction; other significant elements include the largely majority of a wide range of prehistoric and medieval successful integration of the archaeological factor within the monuments in Bedfordshire. After evaluation a list is planning process and the development of a core staff, albeit produced for each monument type ranking the monuments largely project-funded, for excavation and post-excavation in order of importance within the county; examples have work.