Notices of New Publications

Abstract

This paper reviews an article by Francis Woodman confirming his conclusion that it was originally intended to extend the retrochoir one bay further west and to demolish the Norman apse but questioning whether this intention was carried out before the rebuilding of the presbytery in the fourteenth century. Some errors of fact and misleading indications in Woodman's diagrams are also corrected and his argument that the central vault of the retrochoir was rebuilt in the fifteenth century is refuted.     

Notices of New publications

This paper records the excavation of a ploughed-out round barrow (ring-ditch) at Ravenstone, Buckinghamshire (SP 8535 4895). The circular ditch (12.0 m diameter) was broken by four narrow causeways. Two graves were located at the centre of the monument. The primary grave was apparently a cenotaph, for although a coffin, an antler spatula and a flint fabricator were discovered, no skeletal material was found. The secondary grave contained the crouched inhumation of a woman, accompanied by grave goods. Finds from both graves suggest leather-working. A four-post structure (3.60 m square) may have existed on the site prior to the barrow's construction. A substantial quantity of worked flint came from the excavated area, and small pits contained flints of late Neolithic and pottery of Iron Age date. The excavation records are housed at the Buckinghamshire County Museum, as CAS 2555 in the Sites and Monuments Record, and the finds as L.301.