Stephenson’s Roundhouse in Context: Excavations at the Stratford Locomotive and Carriage Works,London Borough of Newham

This article explores the findings of a developer-funded archaeological investigation undertaken by Pre-Construct Archaeology at the Eastern Counties Railway’s Stratford Works, Angel Lane, London Borough of Newham. The investigations revealed truncated walls and in situ floor surfaces of terraced housing, as well as an early engine house and associated structures, constructed in accord with a design of Robert Stephenson’s. With a construction date of 1840, it represents an early example of a railway roundhouse, the first in London. In Britain, developer-funded archaeological projects have resulted in the preservation by record of several comparable sites prior to their adaptive reuse or demolition in recent years. As well as contextualising the results of the excavation more generally, this article therefore aims to improve the understanding of the evolution and life-history of the Stratford roundhouse and its environs, as well as British railway roundhouses more generally, via a comparative approach, the ultimate aim being to demonstrate that developments within the excavated sections of the Stratford site fit within a broader architectural, archaeological, and historical narrative.     

The Royal Palace at Tilleda,Kr. Sangerhausen,D.D.R.: Excavations from 1935–1966

THE REMAINS of Caergwrle castle in E. Clwyd stand on a hill dominating the modern village of Caergwrle, which lies immediately to the N. (Fig. 1). The castle is situated about half-way between Mold and Wrexham in NE. Clwyd at SJ.306572 (Fig. 2; Pl. VIIl). The castle is very much a border fortification; it stands at an altitude of 135 m OD just to the E. of Hope Mountain. Any defender on the wail-walk of the castle's E. curtain enjoyed extensive views NE. towards Chester, S. to Wrexham and beyond, and N. to Halkyn Mountain.     

Writing on the edge: the poet,the printer,and the colonial frontier in Ercilla’s La Araucana (1569–1590)

It took Alonso de Ercilla (1533–1594) thirty years to finish La Araucana, a first-person narrative epic poem about the brutal war of Arauco, in southern Chile, and one of the most canonical texts of colonial Latin America. By focusing on a crucial episode of Ercilla's eyewitness account, this essay revisits a number of scholarly discussions that have been central for our understanding of the text. First, it takes into consideration previous scholarship overlooked by specialists, as well as hitherto unstudied copies of the poem, in order to offer a thorough reevaluation of the textual and editorial history of the poem. Moreover, it explores the frontier as a chronotope and as a locus of enunciation for colonial epic, a space that is also crucial for Ercilla's carefully crafted authorial persona. Finally, it interrogates the ways in which the discursive representations of colonial frontier spaces were mediated by the material practices of early modern book production, arguing for a more fruitful relation between ecdotics and poetics, between material bibliography and theories of authorship and textuality in our approaches to colonial texts.     

The Dwarf,the Goetzen and C. S. Forester’s African Queen: A Reassessment of Naval Operations in First World War Africa

Public awareness of the African theatre in the Great War stems largely from C. S. Forester’s 1935 novel The African Queen, and its subsequent 1951 film adaptation. Long thought to have been inspired by British activities on Lake Tanganyika, Forester’s novel more closely resembles events in Cameroon where German missionary Alphons Hermann attempted to sink HMS Dwarf using homemade torpedoes.