‘Would I were in an alehouse in London!’: a finds assemblage sealed by the Great Fire from Rood Lane,City of London

During the development project at 20 Fenchurch Street in the City of London, archaeological excavations were undertaken adjacent to Rood Lane. This uncovered part of a 16th- to mid 17th-century brick built cellar which had collapsed sealing in situ pottery, glass, clay tobacco pipes and a stove tile, an event interpreted as the result of the Great Fire of London in 1666. The composition of this artefact assemblage suggests it was derived from a property used to providing large-scale entertainment, with a high proportion of the material associated with drinking. This article situates this group within the context of other similarly dated victualling establishments from the City of London.     

Saynes Mill: excavation of a tide mill on the River Lea,London

Excavations at 150 Stratford High Street, London E15, found evidence for Saynes Mill, a tide powered grain mill of medieval origin, converted in 1745–62 into a pumping station for the West Ham Water Company with an engine installed by John Smeaton. The large-scale reconstruction meant that there was limited survival of earlier buildings, but many later structures survived almost intact and stretches of the quays that flanked the Waterworks River were also recorded. The excavated remains of both the buildings and revetments spanned the period from the late 15th to the late 19th centuries.     

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: NEW RECORDINGS OF MEGALITHIC ART IN NORTH‐WEST IRELAND

In this paper new and previously known passage tomb art in north‐west Ireland is recorded using an innovative recording technique. The use of this method, which involves vector drawing from digital photographs taken with oblique lighting (VeDPOL), has clarified and increased the instances of megalithic carving in the north‐west of Ireland. At two monuments – Listoghil and Heapstown Cairn – the new recordings have allowed us to contextualize the art within the broader corpus of passage tomb motifs. Additionally, it is proposed that one of the carvings from Listoghil is of later prehistoric origin and not Neolithic as previously believed. Finally, and most importantly, this paper highlights a group of motifs recently found at Cairn B in the Carrowkeel‐Keashcorran complex. This discovery demonstrates for the first time that megalithic art was a feature of all four major passage tomb complexes in Ireland.