The story of how the Museum of London put the recordings online began in 2008 when St Neots Museum offered us a Columbia Home Grand Graphophone phonograph dated around 1900 and 26 wax cylinders which David Brown, Cromwell Wall’s grandson and a local resident, had donated to it.

On each cylinder’s cardboard box was a carefully handwritten description of its contents, the date on which it was recorded, and the location where it was recorded. The many references to Friern Barnet and New Southgate led the St Neots Museum staff to believe they should return to London. (This incidentally is how local and social history museums – including the Museum of London – work. We tell the stories of our local areas and people, and will often pass enquiries about donations on to other museums if they may be a better match.)

The group was – even without access to the recorded sounds the cylinders held – a powerful link to another time and past lives. The objects were also beautiful to look at – the phonograph in its ornate, turned wooden case and the cylinder boxes with their curled hand-lettered descriptions. Two of the boxes were particularly pretty, printed with delicate roses and detailed instructions on how to handle the fragile cylinders inside. With David Brown’s kind agreement, we were delighted to accept St Neots Museum’s offer.

Next we wanted to find out whether any of the recordings on the wax cylinders had survived, and if they had, to transfer them into digital format so they could be preserved for the future. With its experience and expertise in this area, the British Library Sound Archive was the natural choice to do this for us.

Four years – and several Museum of London exhibitions – later, in spring 2012, we took the cylinders to the British Library in St Pancras.

There, Nigel Bewley, British Library Sound Archive Operations Manager, skilfully transferred the recordings for us. He successfully transferred clear sound recordings from 24 of the 26 cylinders (one of the cylinders was blank; the recording on another could barely be heard.)

Back at the Museum of London Bill Lowry, our Digital Collections (Preservation) Manager, worked on the digitised recordings, further enhancing them ready to go online.

One of the most enjoyable parts of researching the recordings was meeting Cromwell Wall’s descendants. In autumn 2012 with the oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein I met David Brown and his family, and David’s sister Daphne Brown and cousin Alan White – both also of course Cromwell’s grandchildren.

From left to right David and Joyce Brown, their grandson Zac Jordan, granddaughter Layla Jordan, daughter Marina Jordan-Rugg and son-in-law Terry Rugg

Alan captured the family’s thoughts and feelings on hearing their grandfather’s, aunts’ and uncles’, great-grandfather’s and even great-great-grandfather’s voices.

The family’s generosity and enthusiasm in sharing their family’s history, their memories of their grandfather Cromwell, and showing us family photographs and documents (which you can see on this blog) have enriched the recordings in a very unique and personal way.

I was struck by how faith, and making music together, both so central to Cromwell’s and his family’s lives, remain important to David and Daphne and the younger members of the family. When we visited, Cromwell’s great-great-grandchildren Layla and Zac sang ‘Minstrel Boy’ accompanied on the harp and piano by their mother Marina (David’s daughter) and grandmother Joyce. This was the same song that Cromwell had recorded his seven year old son Leslie (Layla’s and Zac’s great-great uncle) singing almost a hundred and ten years ago in 1904.

From left to right, Joyce, Zac, Marina and Layla

In December I had the pleasure of meeting more of Cromwell’s descendants when Pallab Ghosh, Science Correspondent for BBC News, visited the Museum of London to interview the family . Cromwell’s grandsons Edward Pumfrey, Brian Wall and Oliver Wall and great-grandson Philip Wall joined David, Daphne, Alan and Marina to listen to the recordings and chat about what they mean to them.

From left to right, standing Edward Pumfrey, Marina Jordan-Rugg, Terry Rugg, David Brown, Brian Wall, Philip Wall, Alan White; seated, Sally Wall, Daphne Brown and Oliver Wall

There have also been some very unexpected and special outcomes of putting Cromwell’s recordings online. Other family members have contacted us and we’ve been able to put them in contact with David, Daphne, Alan, Brian, Oliver and Edward. One gentleman recognised in the face of Hampden Wall (aged about 19, standing on the left in the Wall family photograph taken in 1916), a colleague whose surname was Wall who had served with him in Malaysia in the 1960s. We forwarded his email to the family and he has now made contact with his colleague from 50 years ago (who is indeed a Wall descendant!) who now lives in New Zealand!

We’ve also been told that Cromwell’s recordings of the bells of Christ Church, Southgate, may be the earliest recordings of English church bell ringing.

And finally, since we put the recordings online we have only heard about one earlier Christmas home recording, a phonograph recording held in the National Library of Norway from Christmas Eve 1901.

If you know of any earlier home recordings, we would love to hear from you.

Blog by Julia Hoffbrand, curator of social and working history.

By 1913 an escalation of Suffragette militancy including bombings and arson was causing huge chaos. Constantly outwitting the police, Suffragette protestors were popping up at all sorts of high profile events and iconic landmarks. Covert, undercover tactics ensured the authorities were always taken by surprise. And so it occurred that at 10 o’clock on this very day in 1913, two Suffragettes managed to slip unnoticed into the Monument, trap the attendants in their office and climb the 311 steps to the top of the column commemorating the Great Fire of 1666.

Emerging onto the balcony the women unfurled the purple, white and green flag of the Women’s Social and Political Union and tied a banner reading ‘Death or Victory’ to the railings. They then released hundreds of propaganda flyers onto the street below.

Crowds gathered to witness the capture of the Monument by two suffragettes, Miss Spark and Mrs Shaw.

This press image shows that the crowd drawn to the spectacle of ‘women behaving badly’ were primarily working men including a number of Billingsgate Market fish porters identified by their tarred leather hats. There can be no doubt the crowd would have been heckling and mocking both the police and the Suffragettes as the shambles unfolded, neither group being particularly loved or respected by the working man.

Finally order was restored and London’s working day returned to normal. As for the Suffragettes – Gertrude Shaw and Ethel Spark – they were released without charge, job done. Not only had their protest successfully caused the desired disruption and achieved maximum publicity for the campaign it also, according to the Votes for Women newspaper, added one more success ‘to the lists of triumphs of female ingenuity’.

By Beverley Cook, Curator, Social & Working History

Our Unearthing Bromley project is revisiting the archaeology that was dug up in Keston and bringing it back to its borough. We started our roadshow with a pop-up stand at The Glades shopping centre and had a fantastic weekend chatting to shoppers.

“I had no idea there was this much stuff in Bromley”

The excavations revealed a history going back to the early Iron Age running right through to the Saxons with three centuries of Roman occupation in between. Whilst the dig itself uncovered the history of the site, our events at the Glades uncovered the connections to the past that people still have today

“I remember this. I remember when the first dig was going on in the 60s. I took my girlfriend down there to see what was going on!”

“I live right near Jackass Lane (where the excavations took place). And you’re telling me that all these things are Roman? Really? That’s fantastic.”

Our team of Archaeological Ambassadors chatted to over 2000 people, sharing the history of the area and encouraging shoppers to touch the past.

“To get my hands on something almost 2000 years old… Wow…”

However, this was more than just your standard piece of outreach. Our guys were actively encouraging people to join in with the kind of collections care work that usually only takes place behind the scenes, back at the archive. Shoppers suddenly became absorbed in repacking pieces of Roman pottery. It’s a simple process transferring a sherd of pottery from an old to a new bag and writing out a museum label.  Yet, this simple method is an important and effective way of preserving the past.

“There you go. We’ve become part of the Museum of London” (Mum to daughter after packing bags of pottery)

This type of event is known as Public Archaeology and it pretty much does what it says; sharing archaeology with members of the public, getting people involved with their local heritage. Some visitors knew lots about the area already, some none. Our oldest visitor remembered the site being dug up, our youngest couldn’t even speak yet.

Ultimately though, it’s about giving people some enjoyment out of the past. And judging by one girl’s response below, we like to think we nailed this. Over to Grace:

“On 8\3\13 my mum and I stayed at the Museum of London stand in the Glades, Bromley for 2 hours as we were so fascinated by the wonderful artefacts that had been found in Keston. I was lucky enough to hold and pack real Roman pottery! My favourite piece was part of a handle which was quite rough and lumpy because it had been made with crushed oyster shells! I cannot wait to go to the Archives of the Museum of London and see more pieces of history”

#UnearthingBromley continues on Wednesdays at the Bromley Museum and Fridays at Tesco Extra, Orpington, throughout March, culminating with a celebration of local history at the Bromley Museum on Saturday 6 April : www.museumoflondon.org.uk/bromley

We set off from Fenchurch Street station in the City, a station that looks all the world like it has been plucked from a Victorian child’s toy box, and set down amongst the glittering steel and glass towers of 21st century London. Our objective was to traverse the north bank of the Thames into Essex, and to then walk over one mile out into the waters of the estuary along Southend Pier, the longest pleasure pier in the world.

We were advised by station staff to board a train to Shoeburyness, even though curiously it did not show Southend as a destination on the departure board, and we set off. First Limehouse then West Ham, then Barking, and so eastwards. It was a bitterly cold day and snow lay patchily over the marshlands of Rainham,and the Chafford Hundred as we breached the M25 motorway that rings London. Our guide for the day mentioned that we were following in the footsteps of Daniel Defoe, who had taken a similar tour almost 300 years ago, and I later found this quotation:

I set out, the 3d of April, 1722, going first eastward, and took what I think, I may very honestly call a circuit in the very letter of it; for I went down by the coast of the Thames thro’ the marshes or hundreds, on the south-side… passing Bow-Bridge, where the county of Essex begins…

As the industrial river buildings of Tilbury became more sporadic so the hulk of a derelict factory appeared through our carriage window. This together with a statue is all that remains of the Bata shoe factory at East Tilbury. Built in the modernist style in 1932, this ‘Bataville’ was one of many model company towns complete with housing and entertainments for factory workers that were created by the Czech industrialist, Tomas Bat’a, who encouraged Czech workers to relocate to this part of the estuary. In its heyday 4,000 workers lived, worked and played in Bataville, before it finally closed its doors in 2005.

Gradually the industrialised landscape gave way to wide expanses of mud flats that stretched beyond sight into an evanescent haze of mist and weak sunshine. Leigh-on-Sea hove into view, its little railway station framed by cockle sheds and fishing smacks resting on the mudbanks, the estuary waters, now at low tide, a world away. The paintings of Michael Andrews came to mind, the wash and swirl of muddy brown and shaded blue evoking the expanses of the open estuary. How different a landscape from London was now before us! The mists would prevent us seeing the spookily-named Shivering Sands Maunsell Fort – a series of towers built out into the waters of the estuary in 1943 as an early warning system against invasion and now derelict watch keepers. Stephen Turner’s ‘artistic exploration in isolation’ led him to live in one of the towers for six weeks and the resultant work will be part of Estuary.

And finally we reached Southend Central. After a short walk to the seafront we stood above and in front of the pier, which stretched out before us into the sea. The stiff onshore breeze numbed the face and hands as we gazed down onto an amusement park hibernating for the winter. This was exactly the prospect that Simon Roberts captured in his photograph of Southend Pier from his series Pierdom, his ongoing survey of the pleasure piers of England. Roberts extraordinary image however makes Southend look more Miami than the Thames estuary.

It is a long walk to the end of Southend Pier. We were alone and from time to time paused to look back at the receding shoreline. It was not difficult to imagine how the estuary has been an inspiration for artists as varied as Joseph Turner and Charles Dickens, and how it continues to fascinate artists today.

We completed the journey by returning ‘the Essex way’ – that is on the narrow gauge railway that runs the length of the pier, but not before paying a visit to the new cultural centre that opened in 2012 at the end of the pier. Designed by the Swedish firm White arkitekter, the Centre is a splendid new addition that enables artists and performers to take their work, literally, into the estuary.

I imagine that this place we call estuary, an area that defies the drawing of boundaries but nevertheless is held together by the contra movements of the river and sea, will always escape the grasp of London – and yet be perpetually yoked to it. This vagueness perhaps, is what makes it an appealing muse for artists and a fit subject for the Museum’s exhibition.

Right now, as this blog is being written, the skull of a roman dog is sitting in a display case at the Glades Shopping Centre in Bromley. Yet, this is no ordinary dog. It’s one whose history and circumstances of death are surrounded in mystery.

In 1984 as archaeologists uncovered remains of  a Roman villa in Keston, they came across a large circular feature; larger than your average pit, as they removed layers of soil, extraordinary discoveries began to be revealed. Having already dug a depth of around two metres, the archaeologists suddenly found the shaft’s first animal bones; sheep, dog, ox and piglet. The bones weren’t your usual food waste, but instead were almost complete skeletons, albeit jumbled up. Beneath these, the actual first complete skeleton was found; that of a pig.

The archaeologists dug further. More bones appeared. Dog, dog, sheep, another dog, more pigs, dog, dog, dog. All complete skeletons. All seemingly placed in position, rather than being thrown in or naturally dying.

The archaeologists continued. More dog bones surfaced. What was this pit? It size and scale like no other on this four acre site. This shaft almost four metres in diameter and now reaching a depth of around four and a half metres. How deep would it go? What could they possibly find next?

Horse.

And not just the one. Two complete horses, deliberately laid around the edge of the shaft along with the complete skeleton of an ox. Down further still and more skeletons; dogs, oxen, sheep, pigs. When they finally reached the bottom, in the centre of the pit surrounded by the skeletal remains was a single, broken, iron spearhead.

So what was going on?

Well, in times of puzzlement like this, the archaeologist tends to reach for their safety word and cry ‘ritual!’ Truth be told, archaeology sometimes can’t provide us with a definitive answer. However, there are some interesting points to note which, with a little bit of logical imagination, perhaps help us understand the practices of these Keston inhabitants.

First, these animals were almost certainly placed in position, rather than falling into the shaft. Second, the people here were agricultural farmers, meaning that they were both relying on a good crop for survival and would have had access to several kinds of animals. Third, Romans are known to make sacrifices to their gods.

Sacrificing sheep and oxen were part of the ritual practice in the worship of the goddess Magna Mater –  the Earth Mother. In Autumn, to mark the end of agricultural and military campaigning seasons, horses were sacrificed to the God Mars. Finally, in April, there was the Robigalia, where dog sacrifices were carried out to protect fields of grain from disease.

Although no solid evidence that these animals were sacrificed to these deities for these purposes, I find it curious that these connections can be made. Perhaps we’ll never know for certain why these animals died, but almost 2000 years later, their story lives on.

Certain remains will be on display at the Bromley Museum on Saturday 6 April as part of the Unearthing Bromley project.

The Roman Forum. The centre of public life. The nucleus of commercial affairs. Whether you lived in ancient Rome, ancient Lugdunum (modern Lyon to you and me) or our very own Londinium, the Forum was the place to meet your mates, find out about all the latest trends, fashions and social news and of course, shop.

So what would be today’s equivalent of a Forum? I’d like to put forward, the Shopping Mall.

Like the Roman Forum it has shops and market stalls, it has places to meet your friends, it has places to find out the latest trends/fashion and (at least in the commercial sense) news. And soon one shopping centre will also have Roman archaeology.

.

What better place to take artefacts from Keston Roman villa than to Bromley’s Glades Shopping Centre.

What did residents in Bromley eat 2000 years ago? Why did a dish made in France end up in Roman Bromley? And why were dead dogs important?

You can find the answers to these questions and more from Sat 2nd March at The Glades, in the heart of Bromley’s town centre.

But why stop there? This is Public Archaeology and we want you to get up close and take a unique look at Bromley’s history; to touch the pots that were made and used in the area two millennia ago; to sniff them should you wish (we draw a line at tasting). These artefacts are London’s history, London’s heritage and whilst the Museum of London looks after them, they are yours to enjoy.

So come see them – Friday 8th, Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th March at Bromley’s ‘Modern Forum’. Meet our archaeology ambassadors and ask them how you can get involved in preserving Bromley’s ancient past.

]]> http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/a-modern-roman-forum/feed/ 0 http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/a-modern-roman-forum/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MuseumOfLondon/~3/z-oW2zGgD_g/ http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/letters-from-the-great-fire-of-london/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:20:36 +0000 Meriel Jeater http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/?p=11740

The Great Fire of London, 1666 © Museum of London

Letter from Thomas Smith © Museum of London

Letter from Henry Griffith © Museum of London

In 43AD the Roman army crossed the Channel and began their conquest of Britain. Within a decade the area around the Thames had transformed into a city which would grow, be attacked, be fortified, be burnt, be rebuilt, expand and evolve. However, this isn’t the story I’m here to tell (that’s what we have the Roman Gallery for). This blog is interested in the lives beyond the city.

The outer boroughs of London have some amazing archaeological remains that shed light on what was going on in Roman Britain whilst London was developing. Roads led out in all directions such as the Westward one we’re hoping to find this summer in Hounslow (want to get involved? Find out more here: Excavate Syon). As you get further away from the city, you start to come across impressive temples (like the one in Greenwich) pottery production centres (such as Haringey’s Highgate pottery) and in the South-East, villa complexes. Our previous volunteer projects have looked at the finds from the roman villa at Beddington in Sutton but our current focus is a bit further East, exploring the London borough of Bromley.

Bromley is London’s largest borough. In 1967 excavations began at a site in Keston at an area know as Lower Warbank, where archaeologists from the Kent Archaeological Rescue Unit discovered the remains of a Romano-British farmstead. It was one of the largest excavations to take place in the South East, and involved over 500 volunteers.

Their findings were incredible: Iron Age settlers had been living in the area since around 600BC and gradually evolved the site into a small farmstead. As Londinium became an established city, the site embraced roman influences and slowly transformed into a villa complex with three large wooden buildings surrounding a rectangular courtyard, later to be replaced by a masonry building of about 10 rooms. The estate seems to have lasted until about AD 400, with farming and industry providing grain and pottery that was traded with Londinium and the wider empire. Following the Romans, Saxon settlers set up home, the last to occupy the site up until around AD 550.

There were some pretty special artefacts discovered such as ceramic wheels used to decorate pottery, jewellery that would have adorned those that lived here and complete animal skeletons seemingly buried as part of a religious custom. All these objects and more are stored at the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive, however, since they were found over 40 years ago our methods of storage have advanced and these objects are in need of some attention. So that’s just what we’re going to do and we’re doing it in two ways.

First, we’re aiming to get your attention fixed on these objects. Throughout March, we’re taking  2000 year old pottery back to Bromley and will be sharing these items with today’s residents. You can get up close and touch the clay that was shaped into a roman cooking pot. You can run your fingers over 2000 year old fingerprints left behind on a special mixing bowl. If you really want to you can sniff the objects too (lots of people like doing this – I’m not sure why.)

Second, you can help us out and join our team of volunteers as they show you how together we can transform the way these objects are stored and make sure they’re preserved for years to come.

Come along and find out more at the Glades Shopping Centre from Friday 8th – Sunday 10th March; Tesco Extra, Orpington on Friday 15th & Friday 22nd March; and every Wednesday at the Bromley Museum, 6th, 13th, 20th & 27th March.

"Ere CUPID wore the nimble wheel, Which supersedes the glittering steel, Yet scarcely proves so safe a keel, And went a-RINKING He launched a dart and wounded me, My sweet, the bolt was tipped with thee, And so I met it lovingly, Without once SHRINKING"

By the late nineteenth century, when this card was made, roller skating was a big craze in London. ‘Rinkomania’ struck the capital, and roller rinks opened around London. Skates were advertised for children and adults, and the roller rinks were a new opportunity for men and women to socialize. One observer described how “In the use of these wheeled skates some of the men have gained great proficiency, but I saw no fancy skating amongst the ladies” (from The Graphic, April 1875, source) – it certainly can’t have been easy performing tricks in skates and dresses. Despite the difficulties, The Graphic’s reporter also wrote that ‘no-one was so ill-bred as to tumble.’ Perhaps this card was for someone who did not tumble, but fell in love at the rink instead.

Before me, on the dining room table, lay a preselected stack of London photographs from the 1960s and 1970s – all handprinted by Dorothy herself, and the majority vintage. Some of her very best photographs from this era feature in institutions around the world from Musee Carnavalet, Paris to Tate Britain. So, I felt very excited to have the opportunity to select down to 20 that would best suit our own collection. How do you go about choosing great photographs from such a strong pool? Or rather, as so often is the case, outwardly reject photographs under the nose of the person who made them and who genuinely has a very clear attachment to each and every one? The selection process is complex, running beyond just picking out favourites (although they inevitably made it). Bearing in mind our existing collection and with thoughts to what would complement and strengthen it, I homed in on the most striking. After much grappling I had my edit of 20. Dorothy had graciously left me to it but, rightly so, cast her eye over the eventual selection to approve or disapprove. You could visibly see her swift, visual mind running over all the images she knows so well, recognising, with sometimes subtle reasoning, why a particular photograph made the cut. She acknowledged the broad array of place and subject that they covered, smiled and exclaimed that she was ‘very happy’. I tried to ignore the pile to the left of discarded ones, knowing there were some gems amongst them. You can’t have it all.

Copyright Dorothy Bohm/Museum of London

Graphically styled photographs of London’s iconic landmarks such as the Monument or Piccadilly sit with less iconic, but more representative of the everyday, Cannon Street Station or Cheapside. Candid shots of Londoners going about their business, such as the Beefeater shown here or the visually impaired men in Oxford Street leap out as strong characterful shots alongside cheeky school boys and market traders.

Copyright Dorothy Bohm/Museum of London

Dorothy’s humanist eye has empowered her to make photographs that really captivate the viewer. The familiarities of London life they touch upon make these photographs a very welcome addition to the Collection and will act as legacy long beyond the exhibition’s life.

Anna Sparham, Curator, Photographs

To do this, we roped in the skills of the talented and wonderfully fizzy artist, Edori Fertig. Not only is Edori an artist in her own right but she also knows Dorothy. They met through her daughter, curator Monica Bohm-Ducen when Edori displayed her work in an exhibition about Jewish female identity called the Rubies and Rebels. So, a good person to introduce us to Dorothy. And also someone it’s great to be around. Edori is part of a collective called the Skip Sisters, so named because they make art from things they collect from skips. It’s so much fun. One thing she makes is oyster card wallets, and it was these we made ourselves on Tuesday.

Layered and layered by participant Cesearea

Edori took us around the exhibition, and showed us that there are some key principals in all of Dorothy’s work. We were encouraged to find these in the work on show in Women in Focus. Firstly, the colour red.

Secondly, the voyeur, or onlooker. This is either a person, or something more subtle like a face on a poster, or within another image. In the photograph below the onlooker is almost hidden. Can you see her?

And finally, layers.

Can you see how these were interpreted and deconstructed in the response work below? That’s the high brow bit. The less high brow bit is how much fun we had making oyster card holders!

London re-envisaged

Making links to when women were fighting to be in focus

The above wallet uses material from our collection relating to the suffragette campaign. Making links to when women were fighting to be in focus, it reads (from right side to left):

Special Note!!

The bearer of this ticket is called a Suffragette
Who tries her best the sexes to reverse
She claims to have a grievance
Which she’s nursing hard, you bet,
What a pity she has NOTHING ELSE to NURSE.

IT ALSO ENTITLES HER TO PASS OUT of her own house and neglect her domestic duties, leaving them to the tender mercies of anyone, while she is trying to get the management of the country INTO HER “CAPABLE HANDS” ? WHEN, HEAVEN HELP US!!

IT ALSO ENTITLES HER, at any moment, to ventilate her grievances, and to turn on HER GAS, but she must not SUFFER-A-JET to escape for more than six hours at a time for fear of asphyxiating her audience.

THIS SEASON TICKET ALSO ENTITLES HER to seize-on every opportunity to NURSE her grievances.

Playing with edges

Made by Sergei

This little badge (no. 8737) was catalogued in 1908 as a pilgrim badge of St Blaise with the following entry: ‘Blaise, Saint; a comb, with double row of teeth, divided by a foliated bar in the centre; 13th-14th century’. It was found at Dowgate Hill near the River Thames in the City of London.

These comb badges were thought to relate to St Blaise as he had been martyred in the 4th century by being pulled apart by iron combs (before being beheaded). Some of the relics of St Blaise were kept at Canterbury Cathedral in a shrine by the high altar so it was thought that comb badges may have been brought by pilgrims visiting Canterbury.

While I was cataloguing this badge I double-checked its old record card, which had a better picture than the one in the 1908 catalogue. I noticed something rather odd about the decoration in the centre. What had been described as a ‘foliated bar’ (i.e. a band of foliage such as leaves) seemed to be a line of four phalluses joined by a wavy line. This was very intriguing. As I wasn’t sure whether to trust the photograph I went to the store to look at the object itself. When I peered at the object I realised the photo was correct – there were no leaves on the object, just phalluses.

So what did this mean? Clearly this badge could not have been a saintly souvenir. I knew that we had a couple of so-called ‘sexual’ or ‘erotic’ badges in our collection (one depicting a penis inside a purse for example). Many bawdy badges have been found on the Continent in places like the Netherlands and France showing all kinds of ‘sexual’ imagery but this type of thing is rare in London. In a catalogue of medieval Dutch badges I discovered a comb badge decorated with a copulating couple so obviously the link between combs and sex was not unknown in the medieval period. It was exciting to think that I had re-identified a badge from our collections.

I consulted with a colleague to see what he thought of the discovery. He suggested that it would be worth investigating whether the word for ‘comb’ in the medieval period had a naughty double-meaning. He thought that it might work as a pun in medieval French. Luckily I have a contact who is an expert on medieval French and passed the idea by him. He confirmed that the word ‘penil’ in Anglo-Norman (the type of medieval French introduced into England by the Normans in 1066) meant both ‘little comb’ and ‘penis’, ‘pubes’ or ‘groin’. There is an Anglo-Norman dictionary online where you can check this. He thought it very likely that the pun would still have been in use in medieval London in the 14th and 15th century. However, we don’t know for sure that our comb badge represents this double meaning – at the moment it is just an interesting possibility.

So why would someone wear a badge like this? It may be a smutty version of the beautiful ivory combs given as love tokens in aristocratic circles – perhaps the badge is satirising courtly love. There’s also a theory that badges with bawdy or lewd symbols were worn to distract the Evil Eye away from their wearers and could therefore have protected people against the Black Death. Other scholars have suggested that these badges might have been worn by sex workers to advertise their availability or by young men as a sign of their virility.

There’s still a lot of work to do on this and I’m only at the beginning of my research. However, it looks like the comb badges of ‘St Blaise’ are certainly sexual in nature and not connected to the saint or a holy shrine. I look forward to finding out more in the future.

Over the last year I have been cataloguing the Museum of London’s amazing collection of over 700 pilgrim badges and souvenirs (that’s just the badges in the museum’s reserve collection – we have even more in our Archaeological Archive!). This has been a labour of love for me as they are my favourite objects in the Museum’s collection. I’m just going to reveal the story behind one of the pilgrim badges from the Museum’s collection but if you want to find out more about the badges, who wore them and why they were made, visit Collections Online. Of all the badges of saints I have examined over the last few months, I am particularly fond of those depicting John Schorn, an unofficial saint from Buckinghamshire.

John Schorn was the miracle-working rector of North Marston from around 1282 until his death in 1315. He was most famous as an exorcist who trapped the Devil in a boot. Schorn was never an official saint but his shrine was a popular pilgrimage destination in the 15th and early 16th centuries.

Head fragment from a John Schorn Badge

Badges of John Schorn often show him holding a long boot with a little bat-like Devil’s head sticking out of the top, in reference to his miracle. The Museum of London has 14 John Schorn badges, bought by pilgrims visiting his shrine. Whilst cataloguing, a particular fragment of a badge caught my eye. It was a saint’s head, shown by the halo around it, connected to something that looked a little bit like holly. The badge had been added to the computer catalogue in 1981 with the description ‘head of saint and foliage? With pin’. When I inspected the badge a bit closer, I realised that the so-called ‘foliage’ was actually a winged Devil’s head that had been bent upwards. It could only mean it was part of a John Schorn badge. After a moment of excitement, I started to wonder what might have happened to John Schorn’s body.

I knew we had several Schorn badges in the collection without heads so decided to do some digging. Whilst investigating one of the headless badges a bit further I discovered that when it was catalogued by the Guildhall Museum in 1908 it actually had a head. What had happened to it?

Headless John Schorn badge

John Schorn badge depicted in the Guildhall catalogue, 1908

I went down to the store and looked at the head fragment and the headless badge and, just for the hell of it, held them together to see if they fitted …and they did! Obviously at some point between 1908 and 1981 the head had snapped off the badge and the two parts had been separated. After doing a little ‘dance of joy’ I took the pieces to our Archaeological Conservation Department to ask if the pieces could be fixed back together.

Back of the devil's head fragment seen through a microscope

My conservation colleague Carmen Vida worked painstakingly to reunite the delicate pieces. Here’s what she said about her work:

‘When I started work on this badge, my objective was to reunite the pieces. This was a challenge, given the small size of the badge. It meant I had to work under the microscope to focus on very small areas, stick tiny surfaces together and introduce reinforcements. Whilst looking at the pieces under the microscope, I noticed two bits of lead folded over onto the back of the devil’s head and wing (see image above). The 1908 photograph of this badge showed the devil had one surviving horn, which seemed to have been lost over the years, but… was I looking at the other horn? I got so excited as I started the delicate operation of unfolding the tiny bits back, and even more so when I saw they indeed were one of the devil’s horns and part of the wing!  Putting the badge back together was an incredible improvement to the object but, for me, finding the horn and a bit of the wing was what really gave it back its character, as the devil looks much more like one now. It’s another way in which conservation contributes to the history of an object, and it was very rewarding seeing the object coming back to life in that way.’

Complete John Schorn badge

And here is the badge, complete again after years of separation. I’m so delighted that John Schorn has got his head back. You can see the record for the badge on Collections Online.

© Henry Grant

Digital curator Ellie Miles judged the entries. The winning caption is:

“I say, get the dreadfully awful gun out of my face. I have a truncheon here you know; and I am not afraid to use it”

Well done to Dave! Look out for the next caption competition this Friday.

Well, actually more like two minutes of fame but anyway, here’s how it happened. Recently I had the great pleasure and excitement of taking a Roman gold necklace, strung with emerald beads, to be filmed as part of a Royal Institution of Great Britain Christmas lecture. The necklace is from the Museum of London collection and is normally on display in our Roman gallery. The RI wanted an example of an ancient gold object that would demonstrate the amazing properties of gold – that it doesn’t tarnish or rust and can come out of the ground after thousands of years looking as fresh as the day it was buried. We offered them a selection of gold items from our collection and they chose this beautiful necklace fragment.

A necklace composed of seven hexagonal Egyptian emerald (beryl) beads on a gold chain. The links are flat, figure-of-eight shape, attached to the beads by straight pieces of gold wire threaded through beads and then twisted through main link.

Where was it found?

This necklace was found by archaeologists excavating on the site of 48-50 Cannon Street in the City of London in 1975. It probably dates to between 100 AD and 300AD.

Why is it an interesting piece?

Fine jewellery like this is very rare in Britain. This was the first necklace of its kind to be found on an excavation in Britain so it is an incredibly important piece. Delicate, flexible gold necklaces with emeralds like this were fashionable across the Roman Empire and several examples have been found in places like Pompeii in Italy. This necklace shows that people in Britain were following fashions current across the empire, even though they were living right on the edge of the Roman world.

Where did the necklace come from?

It’s made from gold, which could have come from a number of places in the Roman Empire. The main source of gold in Britain was Wales but there were also sources in Scotland and Cornwall. The only known Roman gold mine in Britain was in Carmarthenshire in Wales. It isn’t possible to tell where the gold is from but from analysis we know that it is very pure – it contains around 95% gold and up to 5% copper. Roman gold jewellery is commonly much purer than ours is today (a modern 9 carat gold ring can contain as little as 37.5% gold).

Analysis has shown that the emeralds are from Egypt. Emeralds were highly prized in the Roman world for their colour. Colour was very important in Roman jewellery. Today we are more concerned with our gems being clear and sparkly, whereas in Roman times people didn’t mind that gems were cloudy, they just wanted them to have a vivid colour. We don’t know if the necklace was made here with the emeralds shipped in from Egypt or whether it arrived already made.

It’s important to remember that this object is the result of many people’s back-breaking labour. Roman mines for gems and metals like gold were manned by slaves and condemned criminals. The conditions were appalling and very dangerous. The workers were often chained and kept down in the mine under constant guard and beaten regularly to keep them working. People may have died so that this necklace could be made and worn. If the gold came from Britain it could have been mined by native British people pressed into service in the mines. Just like with many of our modern products, the poorest and most deprived people in Roman society would have worked to produce something worn by the most privileged.

Who might have owned this necklace?

We can’t be sure who owned this necklace and how they came to lose it. It has almost certainly been lost otherwise it would have been melted down and turned into something else and we would never have found it. We don’t know whether it was lost by a jeweller working in Londinium or whether it belonged to a rich Roman lady. In 1994 a nearby archaeological site uncovered evidence of gold working in this area with the discovery of three crucibles containing traces of gold. This shows that gold melting and refining was happening here.

If it did belong to a lady, she would have been wealthy, possibly the wife or daughter of a rich landowner or merchant. We know from excavations around Cannon Street that there were high status houses here with mosaic floors, central heating and beautifully painted walls. Perhaps the lady owner lived close by and was walking through the streets of London on the way to visit the baths one morning or to see friends and her necklace broke. From burial evidence in London we know that some women were able to afford silk clothing with gold embroidery – she may have been one of these elite ladies able to afford the finer things in life. Whoever the owner was (we could let our imaginations run for days coming up with ideas around this) they must have been very upset to lose such a lovely object. I’m certainly very glad that we have it in our collection and that I was able to take it to the Royal Institution for an amazing day of science.

Find out more: Metal working in Roman London

Over the last 12 months I have been unravelling stories around a selection of archaeological artefacts that occupy our Archaeological Archive’s some 10 kilometres of shelving. Staying true to my word these have not been the “shiniest” nor have they been “well known” but they have allowed us to explore the history of the city in novel ways.

My final object comes from an archaeological excavation close to the home of the Archive at Mortimer Wheeler House – the Shoreditch Park Community excavation of 2005 (NNR05). Sponsored by the Big Lottery fund, this excavation involved a range of archaeologists, including those from the Archive, in a dig that was later televised as a Time Team special episode: Buried by the Blitz.

The impetus for the excavation was the anniversary of the end of the Second World War.  The project sought to explore evidence of bomb damage from the blitz and later from V1 and V2 rockets to the 1830s houses, involving the local community directly in this archaeological exploration.

Alongside evidence of bomb damage to the buildings through study of their surviving foundations, an interesting material assemblage was discovered, especially relating to the C20^th.  I could have selected an object pertinent to wartime such as a military cap badge, or perhaps something more evocative of the residents of the area such as a toy aeroplane. However, instead I’ve chosen something far more prosaic and that which you may even question as being ‘archaeological’.

Object 10

Modern (C20th) Plastic BC Light Fitting 

This light fitting is a small piece of evidence for the fabric of the many standing structures which were finally demolished, to make way for the area now known as Shoreditch Park, in the 1980s.

This artefact is made of composite materials, but predominantly plastic. Ironically it is this material that makes our 80 year old light fitting harder to conserve, and indeed preserve, than all the other objects in my top ten including our 40,000 year old Palaeolithic flint blade. This is all due to the inability of being able to stabilise the object which is most probably Bakelite, an early form of plastic and one of the first to be entirely synthetic. When I opened the box of plastic objects from the Shoreditch Park archive a distinct smell arose – a clear sign of chemical change, and one that is incredibly difficult to prevent.

Our light fitting is still worthy of being labelled an artefact. It was dug up under controlled conditions that accord to modern scientific archaeological practice and, despite its modernity, like all other artefacts it provides insight into the historical past, although this may at first be unclear.

Changing British Standards mean the wiring attached to our fitting will be out of date, as new colour coding systems have come into effect. Likewise the mechanism itself, although common, may also soon become redundant as new legislation for energy-saving light blubs are further developed, with a corresponding design change. Like all good artefacts we could even develop a typology (categorisation by its ‘type’) based on its morphology (the way it looks) for our light fitting.

Our tenth object is an historical electrical relic but more importantly it is part of a contemporary archaeological context. Although it may appear inconsequential on its own, when considered as part of an assemblage it adds to our interpretation of the Shoreditch site.

Although this blog may be the culmination of an archaeological ‘top ten’, it certainly isn’t the end of archaeology in London, as the city is forever being redeveloped. As such we may have to expand to a ‘top eleven’ in the near future or indeed rewrite the entire series as ‘new’ archaeology is unearthed and questions what we take for granted as ‘history’…

Bassano Studio

Digital Curator Ellie Miles judged the entries. The winning caption is:

‘Dorothy was putting a brave face on things, despite her swimming costume having noticeably shrunk in the wash’

Well done @All-a-Mort. Look out for this week’s caption competition winner after New Year.

Whilst working on the theatrical portraits for collections online, I kept finding the same characters appearing. In the left hand side of this print you can see Harlequin, wearing a mask. To Harlequin’s right, in blue, is the character ‘Pierrot’. Beatrice blogged about Pierrot costumes a couple of years ago. She wrote about Gertie Millar’s Pierrot costume, which Millar wore in 1909, but this print is from 1802, when Pierrot was just one the characters in the Harlequinade.

I started to read about the history of Harlequin and Pierrot. Harlequin was the star of the ‘Harlequinade’, a conventional part of pantomime. Although London had two official theatres with royal patents, it also boasted a range of illegitimate theatrical enterprises. The Harlequinade became popular in London’s illegitimate theatres, where exiled Parisian actors and Italian commedia dell’arte performers delivered comic mimes. Because these performances were mimed they were not considered serious theatre, so they were beyond the jurisdiction of the theatrical patent system.

Pierrot began life as one of the principal characters of the Harlequinade, alongside Harlequin, Columbine (Harlequin’s love interest) and Pantaloon (Columbine’s father.) The four characters delivered comic scenes, often making use of the commedia dell’arte’s batacchio, commonly known as the ‘slapstick’, which you can see Harlequin holding above. These conventional characters would have been immediately recognisable to the audience, and although their exact adventures varied, each had established characteristics. Pierrot was usually Pantaloon’s servant, and in London versions of the harlequinade, was performed as a naïve buffoon.

Pierrot was a simple character in London pantomimes, without the romantic complexity of his continental counterparts. Joseph Grimaldi was the London-born son of an Italian actor, and he revolutionised the role. Grimaldi performed this character as a clown, bringing influences from English comedy to the Pierrot role. It was so successful that it was not long before Pierrot was replaced by Grimaldi’s invention of the role of clown. Even Harlequin was eventually displaced by the popularity of Grimaldi’s clown, which became the central character. The Museum of London has several objects connected with Grimaldi, including some of his costume:

Grimaldi’s creative performances mean he is credited with introducing the modern clown. He was a specialist in physical comedy; particularly tumbling and falling, although this took a toll on his health as he aged. Many of Grimaldi’s innovations outlasted the Harlequinade, and shaped pantomime for years to come: he introduced the first pantomime dame and the tradition of audience participation.

Grimaldi’s clown replaced the Pierrot character in London’s pantomimes, but did not supersede Pierrot’s popularity elsewhere in Europe. Just as Grimaldi’s clown outlived the Harlequinade, so too did Pierrot, whose naivete became a sympathetic quality. By 1909, when Millar wore the costume and Beatrice takes up the story, Pierrot was not just a character in the harlequinade, but appeared in plays, ballets, poetry, fiction, music and even early films. Pierrot became symbolic of the sad clown, living on alongside Grimaldi’s rambunctious comic archetype.

© Henry Grant

‘Can you toss something in under the bridge? That crowd are going to be really disappointed that I’ve found nothing’

Well done @JamesAtkinson81. Look out for last week’s caption competition winner over the next few days.

Last time it was a burnt brick that I used to define the Stuart period and its major event, the Great Fire of 1666. We’ve now moved on a few hundred years to the Victorian period (or have we?) and instead or dealing with the iconic I now want to focus on the banal.

As we’ve been slowly approaching the present, I keep making a point of questioning the relevance of archaeology considering how our historical documents become more and more prolific and varied. ‘Historical archaeology’ is one method that engages exactly with this concept head-on, aiming to contextualise and reassess our historical conceptions with oodles of evidence. A great example of this approach is the ‘Living in Victorian London’ collaborative project between MOLA and Queen Mary University of London. In order to better understand everyday life in Victorian London, researchers combined a study of archaeological evidence from households across London with relevant documentary historical records.  This provided new insight into the economic, social and cultural history of Dickensian London.

In this blog series I’ve tried to steer clear of those objects that would perhaps be obvious in compiling London’s historical ‘top ten’.  However, for our ninth object I’ve opted for something quite unusual, to emphasise the importance of archaeology in an historically saturated period. I’ve also tried to touch upon a major theme of the Victorian period – the concept of ‘childhood’.

Object 9 

Victorian (C19th) Georgian (C18th) Wooden Dolls

These two wooden dolls were found during excavation in 1993 at Limehouse, Tower Hamlets (LHC93) and are unique to London’s archaeological record. They formed part of a Victorian assemblage of artefacts and were later studied as part of the ‘Living in Victorian London’ project. Our dolls are made of alder wood and have survived remarkably well, no doubt due to being sealed in a cesspit (aka a Victorian privy). 

Although the collection of finds – the assemblage – from the cesspit were of Victorian date these toys were indentified as ‘Queen Anne’ dolls by finds specialists, immediately dating them to the early C18^th (as opposed to the C19^th). Originally the dolls would have been dressed in elaborate costume but this has long since decayed. The only especial detail that survives are the dolls’ oval pewter eyes. 

Like the ‘Living in Victorian London’ project, I also took a collaborative approach in trying to explore the history of these dolls further. My first stop was the Museum of London’s collections, which revealed one entry (from almost 700) for a doll with a particularly interesting physical description: “Two mortise grooves at base and a flat back indicate that the doll was attached to something at these two points”.

Our Senior Curator of Fashion & Decorative Arts (and a well-known blogger to these pages) not only located this doll in our Costume store for me, but also discovered another doll which puts our privy-worn archeological examples into much better context: 

Suddenly the somewhat enigmatic mortises were revealed as the hinges for legs!

It had been suggested by archaeologists that these dolls might have been made for adults rather than children, which puts an interesting spin on the concept of Victorian childhood. The ‘material culture’ interpreted from this site was both diverse and rich, which is at odds with the census and local rate books. These suggest that households in the Limehouse area at the time were typical of the East End’s poorer districts. Although obvious questions arise over ‘who owned these objects’ and ‘why did they throw them away’, in the case of our dolls we may also question ‘why were they kept for so long’?

Once again, ambiguous archaeology always raises more questions that it can answer, but these dolls hopefully emphasise the potential that ‘modern’ archaeology has for questioning what our historical documents may purport as fact. They also draw attention to the curation of objects within a lifetime and the importance of archaeological context in providing robust dating, as our dolls are archaeological red-herrings in this respect.

It’s been a busy few months. 18 new volunteers joined us with various backgrounds, life experiences and indeed archaeological knowledge. We threw them altogether, united them via collections care work and 10 weeks later the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre has vastly improved archives, nicely packed and accessible material, lots of extra shelf space due to the effective reboxing and best of all, a new team of friends whose passion for the history of the London is stronger than ever.

Job Done.

Although of course, our job is never done. The archive is big – officially the largest archaeological archive in the world – so there will always be more collections work that needs doing, more space that needs creating, more artefacts that will be rediscovered and more enjoyment to be had sharing our work with as many people that are interested.

Our plans for 2013 are to continue the work modeled by this year’s fabulous University of the 3rd Age. The 7 strong team, having learnt the necessary skills in their weeks based at the archive, went on to share their knowledge and experience with visitors to the Museum of London. The response was brilliant, with many visitors learning themselves how to pack and preserve archaeology as well as discover new information about the artefacts they were able to hold in their hands.

We want to take this model, combining archaeology, public participation &  learning experiences and start to pop up in various locations across Greater London, to share London’s heritage.  Because London is great, its people are great and its history is great. Who knows what we’ll discover and learn from each other. Exciting times.

Whatever happens you can bet we’ll come across amazing objects, like the four finalists in the Object of VIP11 competition:

There was a record amount of votes and a huge thanks to everyone who participated. And your winner was…

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THE SAXON COMB FROM PUDDING LANE!!!

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to making our 10th anniversary year fantastic. And it’s not over yet. My colleague Glynn still has a couple of posts left in his excellent History of London in 10 Archaeological Objects. Share with the world people, it’s well worth a read.

“2012 was a pivotal moment. 2012 was an opportunity to change the way people felt, and the way people looked at the Paralympics. And the wider implications that it would have for people with disabilities all over the UK and all over the world for years to come.” Ade Adapitan

For most people, the excitement surrounding the success of the London 2012 Games might have finished with the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games. For me, it was just beginning. As part of the Museum of London’s Collecting Strategy for the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, I was involved in collecting material culture, costume, objects and new oral histories for inclusion in the Museum’s Oral History archive.

My interviews took me to new places including the Home Office, the House of Lords (which was a bit like being in a film set!) and the Olympic Village a rare opportunity to see the location where the athletes stayed during the Games – and I spoke to a wide range of people involved in many different aspects of the Games.

In addition to the 12 or so interviews which I carried out, I was also able to interview two former Paralympic medal winners, Dame Tanni Grey Thompson and Ade Adepitan who headed Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage with presenter Clare Balding.

Hearing the personal accounts of interviewees’ unique experiences of working on the Games was a fascinating insight into the organisation behind the scenes. Like most people who attended the Games or visited the Olympic Park, I had been impressed and captivated by the performance and dedication of the sportsmen and women and the spectacle of the Games. However, what I also came to appreciate though carrying out these interviews, was the intense planning, preparation, expertise and management which went into delivering the Games.

Many of the interviewees spoke about memorable sporting moments in the Olympics. However what also came through strongly during the interviews were responses to the Paralympic Games and the elite athletes who took part. Interviewees frequently spoke with great enthusiasm about watching Paralympic sport and about the impact that this had had on their perceptions of disability, and in many cases this was an unexpected response.

“It has been a rollercoaster of emotions, every single day, of every single event, challenging your perceptions, not of disabled people, but to what is possible as a human being. What is possible with a pure determination. It was fantastic, moving, inspiration and humbling.” Melba Palhazy

Some interviewees felt that the impact of the Paralympic Games would challenge the way we see disabled people, and they hoped this would have a lasting impact for future generations.

“We are not talking about people who are ill here, but people who’ve got phenomenal potential, who can contribute to society. The fact that they haven’t got a leg, or they sit in a wheelchair, or they are blind, does not mean that they are any less capable of contributing in their way to society. And that’s the power of the Paralympics”. Tony Sainsbury

Tim Jones describes the reaction of school children to meeting Paralympic athlete Richard Whitehead who has prosthetic legs. “It gave us a taste for how the public was going to react to the Paralympics and in particular how the younger generation was going to react to it, and they were going ‘Wow! We want to watch this!’”

With this years Disability History Month in mind, I returned to the Museum’s collections. It was challenging to find positive representations of disability without reinforcing negative perceptions, connected to the history of the freak-show, or viewing disability in coldly medical terms. Many objects or images collected were connected to war injury, asylum history, or viewed disability through the prism of philanthropy. Selected objects from the Museum’s collections relating to disability can be seen on the Reassessing what we collect website.

More work is needed in museums to develop new ways of representing the lives and experiences of disabled people. However through the new collecting which has taken place as part of the London 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games project, we have, in a small way, been able to redress the balance. The objects, images, costume, ephemera and oral histories collected during the Games reflect the subject of disability more positively. These capture a snapshot of opinion informed and influenced by elite sport performance. The Olympics and Paralympics have created an opportunity to explore other ways of looking at difference, allowing us to ask difficult and searching questions, and perhaps to challenge forms of prejudice.

All this week, the 16 most interesting artefacts that we’ve come across during our current Volunteer Inclusion Programme have been competing for your votes. We’ve had objects spanning London’s history from Bronze Age hammerheads to Victorian plaster mouldings. The cream of the crop now get to battle it out, in what’s looking to be a very Grand Final indeed:

Monday’s winner was the Decorative Plaster from Alderman’s House, EC2. Audited by Friday volunteer James during week 6, this moulding of a horse’s head forms part of an assemblage of decorative plaster found in a post-medieval rubbish pit. Although quite the find, there is little mention of the objects in the site’s archive records. One sentence describes the plaster as “not nearly so interesting as originally thought”! We didn’t think this fair and clearly you didn’t think so too.

Tuesday’s winner was the Clay Tobacco Pipe from Brentford High Street, TW8. Repacked by Tuesday volunteer Alice during week 5, this early 20^th Century pipe depicts ‘mon petit quinquin’ or ‘little child’, the protagonist of a popular lullaby written in Picard language. The small child is pulling quite a strained face, perhaps because he is having difficulty atop his potty? An 18^th Century pipe kiln was discovered on the site along with hundreds of contemporary pipes. However, this one is unique amongst the assemblage as it is both an import (a few other Dutch pipes were also unearthed) and clearly much later in date, as is obvious from its style. A separate stem would have been inserted into the pipe bowl and as such this pipe would not have been as disposable as its earlier counterparts. How and why it ended up in the early stratigraphy of this site remains a mystery.

Wednesday’s winner was the Roman Slide Key that was audited by Tuesday volunteer Aris during week 3.  It was discovered in 1981 at Pudding Lane, EC3 and is evidence of security conscious Roman Londoners. It would have fitted into a complicated lock mechanism, probably for doors or heavy duty furniture such as chests – although few examples of actual locks survive. Complicated slide keys had different shaped teeth, although the one here seems to be of a more simple design (a ‘Slide’ Type 1). The key would also have been attachable to a belt via the hole in the handle. A wide variety of keys have been unearthed from Roman London of which slide keys are one of the most common types.

And yesterday’s winner….

Was the Antler Comb from Pudding Lane, EC3 that was packed during week 2 by Tuesday volunteer Kim. An unusually long example, it dates to the Late Saxon period (C10^th). Single-sided and composite (riveted), it originally had 92 teeth. Standard decoration has been applied to the connecting plates in the form of a saltire – a heraldic symbol: the form of a diagonal cross. Horizontal lines worn across the teeth may be due to contact with a comb-case. In the later medieval period horn is replaced by wood as a more common material for combs, although ivory is also popular throughout.

So now all that’s left to do is decide which of these should be crowned THE OBJECT OF LAARC VIP11. To choose your winner, click on the word VOTE below:

VOTE

VOTING HAS NOW CLOSED

Voting will remain open until noon Wed 12th Dec, with the winner announced on these pages on Thursday 13th December.

If you’ve enjoyed voting for your favourite objects, please share this page with others and feel free to leave a comment telling us why the object you went for got your vote.

Penguins at London Zoo © Henry Grant

We had so many fantastic entries and it was a tough task for our Digital Curator, Ellie Miles to pick a winner. In the end, the winning tickets will be sent to @mindthepuddle for this brilliant caption:

“…apparently they’re called giraffes”

Look out for this week’s caption competition tomorrow…

We’ve had a record amount of votes over the competition so far and I hope you’ve all been enjoying selecting your favourite objects from our daily contests. Our finalists so far are the Plaster Horse Head from Monday, the Clay Tobacco Pipe from Tuesday and yesterday’s winner:

There’s some amazing objects to choose from today, but which will get enough votes to become the final finalist. It’s time for Round 4:

To start, one of the oldest objects in this competition, an Antler Mattock from Beddington Sewage Farm. Audited by Thursday volunteers Josephine & Emily during week 9, this prehistoric objects dates to the Early Bronze Age (c.3500 BC). To the specialists out there that study such things it is known as a base-axe type 1. Antler was a common (and easily acquired) material used to make tools by Prehistoric peoples. Most well-known are those used as ‘soft’ hammers in flint knapping, to produce a range of sharpened tools – the most common surviving material from prehistory. Our antler mattock was found in a ditch, (was it originally used to excavate it?) and accounts for the interpretation of this early London landscape as a managed field system.

Second today is a Roman Probe, also from Beddington, though an earlier excavation. Its either a scoop-probe (cyathiscomele) or spatula-probe (spathomele) and functioned as both a medical and cosmetic instrument. One end is missing – the potential spoon or scoop – used to extract cosmetics from containers, whilst the probe on the opposite end would have been used to apply them. Alternatively it could also act as a small cautery. Although these objects are reasonably common across Britain, it raises interesting questions about identity and ‘Romanisation’ at this outer Londinium villa site. The object was audited by Friday volunteer Zey, during week 8.

The next object was packed during week 2 by Tuesday volunteer Kim. This Antler Comb from Pudding Lane, EC3.  is an unusually long example dating to the Late Saxon period (C10^th). Single-sided and composite (riveted), it originally had 92 teeth. Standard decoration has been applied to the connecting plates in the form of a saltire – a heraldic symbol: the form of a diagonal cross. Horizontal lines worn across the teeth may be due to contact with a comb-case. In the later medieval period horn is replaced by wood as a more common material for combs, although ivory is also popular throughout.

The last object was audited by Tuesday volunteers Sunny & Sue during week 7. From High Street Brentford, this ‘Griffin’ Bottle Seal is a decorative piece of glass with the seal (or ‘prunt’) dating it as a post-medieval (1650-1850) wine bottle. Seals are fairly common – the pad of glass was imprinted with a device when hot, and reveals the owner of a tavern through initials or tavern sign. This one has been interpreted as a griffin – perhaps the Griffin pub was a ‘local’ in Brentford, or maybe the wine came from further afield. Unfortunately no encyclopaedic catalogue exits for London bottle seals, so no comparative example has been discovered.

And that’s your lot. Which would you like to see return tomorrow to compete in the Grand Final? Click on the word VOTE below to make your selection:

VOTE

Voting has now closed. Click here to vote in the Grand Final.

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