Notes on the Manufacture of Porcelain at Chelsea

A furnace built in 1618 by Abraham Bigo and Sir William Clavell for the manufacture of window glass was excavated at Kimmeridge, Purbeck, Dorset (SY 909788) in 1980–81. Local oil-shale was used as a fuel in the furnace, whose central fire was fed with air by means of two passages below ground level, as found at other seventeenth-century furnaces and indicated in contemporary sources. The above-ground structure comprised sieges and wings whose plan resembled those of sixteenth-century forest-glass furnaces. Vessel glass was produced at Kimmeridge in traditional forms for sale in the south-western counties, by agreement with Sir Robert Mansell, patentee of the monopoly for glass manufacture. Trade beyond the designated area led to legal action which resulted in the demolition of the furnace in 1623. The excavation showed that the product of the furnace was green vessel glass of good durability, melted in crucibles made from high-quality refractory clay derived from Purbeck sources.     

Berkshire Antiquities

Cellars and sunken rooms are rare on Romano-British sites and their presence marks a deliberate and unusual architectural preference. This paper attempts to demonstrate that a series of common characteristics in cellar location and design make it probable that they shared a common inspiration, and that the likeliest such inspiration was cult practice. Consideration is also given to the water and fertility cults which might account for the archaeological evidence.     

The Connection of Scotland with the Pilgrims of Grace

The largest and finest products of the Tournai school of brass engravers in the fourteenth century commemorate ecclesiastics and are to be found in northern Germany, to where it seems likely they were transported by the merchants of the important Hanse port of Lübeck. One of these, perhaps the finest brass ever produced by the school, commemorated two bishops of that city and lies in the cathedral. Two others, each to two bishops with the name of Bülow, are in the not very distant cathedral of Schwerin. We know of at least two others, formerly in cathedral churches at Schleswig and at Roskilde in Denmark.

The greatest use of these memorials was undoubtedly made however by the richer members of the merchant class themselves, made possible by their trade with Flanders through the major Kontor at Bruges. Although the number of these brasses surviving in the Baltic ports is disappointingly few there is record that considerable numbers were once there.     

Restoration considered as a Destructive Art

A disparity exists between the numbers of males and females buried in Romano-British cemeteries, as compared with those of the late pre-Roman Iron Age: this is interpreted as reflecting the influence of Romanisation and the practice of female infanticide. In the late fourth and early fifth centuries A.D. the practice was in the process of being curtailed with the expansion of Christianity in Britain. The balance between the sexes was restored after the end of the Roman occupation.