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PREVIOUS DISCOVERIES AT ADEL.

BY P. W. DODD.

At the request of the writer of the above report (at present absent in Italy), I append a brief summary of previous contributions to the knowledge of Roman Adel.

I. THORESBY'S REFERENCES. In the Ducatus Loidensis, in his published diaries, and in various papers contributed to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans., 282, 320), Thoresby is responsible for the earliest references to the site.

In the Diaries (Aug. 13, 1702), he records the accidental discovery of the considerable remains of a Roman town on Adel Moor. At the same time he refers to the Camp. "I viewed a Roman camp, which is yet very entire. There is another somewhat less on the said moor, and a third upon Bramhope moor." The measurement of the sides he variously gives as "about 5 chains on each of the 4 sides" (Diary, Nov. 5), and as 4 chains broad and 5 long" (Ducatus). "The agger is yet 22 feet high" (Diary). This last measurement is remarkable in view of the results of excavation. The two inscriptions, numbered 205 and 206 in CI.L., vii, are definitely stated to have come from the town and not from the Camp.

2. There is an interesting casual reference to the Camp in the Monthly Magazine for September, 1809. "At Addle, a village about five miles north of Leeds, is a Roman camp, until lately very entire, being surrounded with a single ditch. The present occupier, wishing to turn the ground to some profitable use, has begun to level it up with the neighbouring fields, and has already turned up a considerable number of millstones, about half a yard in diameter, which, from their size, must have been used for grinding corn by hand." Here is definite evidence of interference with the site, the extent of which it is impossible to conjecture.

3. WHITAKER. In his Loidis and Elmete (1816, p. 175), this writer records further discoveries on the town site, notably the other two inscriptions (c.I.L., 203, 204). His only reference to the Camp is in the following terms: "A camp, from its form and dimensions apparently Roman, had always been conspicuous on the slope of the hill north of Adel."

4. In 1865 some excavation was done on the hill to the east of the Camp, which was evidently the site of Thoresby's town. I am not aware of any published report, but it is said by

eye-witnesses that foundations of buildings were unearthed, apparently lining on a street, and that a quantity of Samian and other pottery was found.

I do not know of any other first-hand authorities. It is of interest to note that the absence of literary evidence for finds in the Camp area (with the exception of the mill-stones noted above) is corroborated by tradition, which associates discoveries with the site on the east of the road, where considerable remains may still exist under the soil.

Motes.

[The Council has decided to reserve a small space in each Number for notices of Finds and other discoveries; and it is hoped that Members will assist in making this a record of all matters of archæological interest which from time to time may be brought to light in this large county.]

VII.

ON A FIGURE OF ST. MARGARET.

In my account of representations of St. Margaret in the current volume of the Journal, p. 49, I forgot to mention a much earlier example than any that are there referred to, namely, one on the Norman font at Cowlam, in the East Riding, in which St. Margaret is shown with her heels disappearing down the throat of the dragon, and her head and shoulders bursting through the creature's back. St. Margaret has a pigtail," as have female figures on other fonts of the second half of the twelfth century. (See Bond's Fonts and Font Covers. 1908, p. 173.)

J. T. F.

VIII.

STONE CIRCLES AT BLUBBERHOUSES.

Referring to the note at page 240, in which attention is called to this subject, Mr. Thomas Sheppard, F.G.S., writes that the site in question has not indeed escaped the vigilance of Yorkshire antiquaries; but that a modern enthusiast (well meaning perhaps but mistaken) has recently "put back" these vestiges into what he conceived to have been their original or typical form. He did not even stop short of using a handwindlass to assist him in his "restoration." For this reason, Mr. Sheppard says any scientific examination of the remains

has now been rendered impossible. Other members of our Society who have visited the spot express the opinion that whether prehistoric in their origin or not, the circles show evidence of having received attention at the hands of the iron smelters in very late mediæval times. The question, however, was one which was well worth ventilating; and it is just possible that further investigation may yet cast light upon the subject.

IX.

RUTHWELL AND BEWCASTLE CROSSES.

"The Date of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses," by Albert S. Cook, Professor of the English Language and Literature in Yale University (Trans. Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dec., 1912).

This long-expected essay has the great advantage of excellent illustrations by Mr. Tassell, of Carlisle, and the late Mr. J. P. Gibson, F.S.A., of Hexham. It contains also a collection of previous notices, and a minute description of the two famous monuments in Dumfriesshire and Cumberland, much more complete than in any other work. In the second part of the essay, Prof. Cook starts from certain difficulties, phonological and grammatical, in the runic inscriptions, and infers a late date for their language. He then compares the figure-sculpture with twelfth century examples on the Continent, and follows Rivoira in disallowing an earlier period to this class of work in England. The scrolls he dismisses as not characteristic of any given age, but the interlacings he thinks unknown in England before the development of Celtic art in the eleventh century. The chequers and sundial of Bewcastle Cross he believes impossible before Norman times, and goes on to suggest that both these "obelisks "-for he doubts that they were crosses—were erected about 1150 under David I by monks, indicating Rievaulx as likely to have exerted influence upon Ruthwell, which he connects by the similarity of the names, Ryvale being an old spelling of Ruthwell.

If this conclusion be accepted, it would be interesting to have further explanation of the reason why no decorative carving in a similar style has been found at Rievaulx, or in any twelfth century abbey or priory which was not on the site of a preConquest foundation; and why such stones have been found, as at St. Bees and Carlisle, built into Norman masonry with

their carving defaced. Indeed, there is less discussion than the subject requires of the archæology of the series of "Anglian " crosses and allied objects. For example, Mr. Thurlow, of Leeds, has shown, by the application of modern archæological methods, that the Ormside cup was patched, after the wear and tear of a considerable period, in the late ninth or early tenth century (Annals of Archæology and Anthropology, Liverpool, 1911). Comparing the base of the cup with the Northallerton cross, and its birds with the Croft stone, an eighth century date becomes at least probable for these monuments, and consequently for the series allied to them. But Prof. Cook does not admit comparison with that series into his discussion, nor any evidence tending to show the possibility of seventh and eighth century dates for such forms of art. He allows that the Sta. Sabina doors were carved c. 450, and does not deny that St. Cuthbert's coffin was made in 698, but fails to see any analogy in these to the figures on crosses. He omits mention of the Achmim finds of the fourth and fifth centuries, which include crosses as gravestones, figures, scrolls, and plaits, in a style which antedates the Anglian period. Nor does he seem aware of the development of interlaced and zoomorphic design by the AngloSaxons in their pre-Christian fibulæ (see Archæologia, vol. lxiii, art. 8). These sources of early inspiration ought to be taken into account, for they show that all the elements of "Anglian " art were available long before the twelfth century.

In criticising the inscriptions, Prof. Cook notes (pp. 250-252) that after is not found in Anglo-Saxon literature as meaning "in memory of," and argues that the word must have been learnt from the Norse eptir, which is used in this sense on eleventh and twelfth century stones. But a lapidary form need not occur in literature, and, indeed, it would be difficult to find eptir used for "in memory of" in early Icelandic or Norse literature. The doubt he throws on the existence of runes in England before the tenth century (pp. 242-244) seems strange in the presence of the Franks casket, but Prof. Cook admits. that he has not made a study of the history of runes. That he has drawn attention to the subject gives a hope that these relics may be more widely known and more thoroughly investigated; but much remains to be done before the series of Anglian monuments has been adequately classified, and the place of these two most celebrated but most difficult examples determined.

W G C.

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ROBERT CONSTABLE, ESQ., CHANCELLOR OF DURHAM, 1454.

BOSSALL, NORTH RIDING.

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