The Colchester Excavations Appeal, 1938
In 1938, the Colchester Excavation Committee sought funds to support the ninth year (and eighth of active digging) of its investigations into life in Camulodunum on the eve of the Roman occupation of 43 AD. An urgent appeal was issued for funds. The document seems worth preserving as a record of a notable project.
The mysterious Belgae This Note focuses on the work of the Colchester Excavation Committee.[1] As I have no training in Archaeology, my brief outline of the period that it studied must be regarded as very general, with some statements subject to debate among specialists. From about 125 BC (all dates are approximate) much of south-eastern Britain came under the control of a warrior caste who are assumed to have been incomers from nearby Europe, known as the Belgae.[2] It is not clear whether there were large-scale incursions that totally replaced the existing population, but the region certainly fell under the sway of a ruling elite that had connections to the continent. With more advanced technology, the Belgae created a new material culture, especially in the form of pottery. Closer links with the Roman world were accelerated by Julius Caesar's conquest of Gael in the middle of the first century BC: one expression of this influence was the beginning, towards the end of the first century BC, of the issue of local coinage, which not only helps in the dating process (although it can also produce conflicting interpretations) but identifies some of the chieftains who produced them.[3] By late Iron Age standards, the Belgae lived comfortable lives, but there were phases of instability. These stemmed from two main causes. The first was tribal rivalry between the Catuvellauni, who were centred in Hertfordshire, and the Trinovantes, whose territory covered Essex and part of Suffolk.[4] Conflict between them gave Julius Caesar the pretext for military intervention in 55 and 54 BC. (Ironically, there would be an echo of these tensions in the nineteen-thirties, with an indication of rivalry within the archaeological community between the digs at Colchester and St Albans.) The second destabilising factor was conflict within elites, especially over the succession to power: it was such a struggle that triggered the Roman conquest that began in 43 AD.
As part of the imposition of their power, around 49 AD, the Romans established a colonia, or military settlement, on a ridge overlooking the River Colne. Despite the setback of being burned to the ground by Boudicca in 61 AD,[5] the colonia evolved into what can be claimed to have been the first real town in Britain, with a lattice-work of streets, public buildings and elementary services. However, it took shape beside an existing conglomeration, perhaps best defined as a loosely urban entity, which functioned as a capital for the Trinovantes. Here, the story is unusually firm for late Iron Age Britain. Around 7 AD, Cunobelin emerged as ruler of both tribes and began an impressive reign that lasted for a third of a century: he would be remembered, not least by Shakespeare, as Cymbeline, Britain's first folk hero.[6] Choosing Camulodunum as his capital, he elaborated its existing defences to make its scattered settlements into a fortified headquarters. Presumably he aimed to benefit from its overseas trade, and probably hoped to use its strategic location as a base for dominating East Anglia.[7] There are also indications that Cunobelin brought Kent under his control. Naturally, we should expect that so powerful a leader would create an appropriately impressive capital, but here we slide into our own retrospective incomprehension. Some scholars described his creation as a cité, using an old French term from which we derive the English word 'citadel'. But Cunobelin planned on a large scale, enclosing 12.5 square miles (32.5 square kms) within a series of earth ramparts, which were intended to impede chariot attacks. The location, in effect a cantonment (to borrow a term from the British occupation of India), was an inland promontory, protected on three sides by the River Colne and one of its (probably marshy) tributaries. The defensive dykes blocked the fourth side.[8] It was probably to add a dimension of psychological intimidation that this defensive complex had already been named after the Celtic war god, Camulos. As with Delhi / New Delhi, the imperial capital built in India by the British nineteen centuries later, the name 'Camulodunum' transferred to the Roman colonia. Yet Cunobelin's headquarters was definitely not a town in the sense that we use the word. In fact, it was hardly urban at all in any modern sense. Nowadays, a 12.5 square-mile built-up area would be home to many thousands of people, but the population was sparse. Essentially, Camulodunum was a collection of well-protected farms, probably with little in the way of public or government buildings – other than a mint. Archaeologists often refer to it as an oppidum, confusingly borrowing the Latin word for a town to indicate that it was not a town at all. Cunobelin's capital was "urban in the commercial sense that merchandise was concentrated here to be bought and sold" but it was "not a city in the organic sense of a concentrated habitation-area, peopled by a compactly dwelling body of citizens".[9]
For archaeologists, the sheer size of Camulodunum presented considerable challenges, all the more so because promising sites were scattered, apparently at random. The dykes and ditches of its fortifications made the settlement of particular interest, but they also added to the problem, since the Trinovantes did not share the Roman passion for right-angles. Uncover a section of Roman wall, and you could be reasonably sure that it would continue in a straight line, but no such assumption could be applied to Cunobelin's defensive works. Worse still, there were gaps in them, perhaps explained by stretches of marshland or impenetrable woodland, or alternatively by subsequent demolition and in-fill. Only close examination could solve such questions. If the area to be covered was daunting, the time available to dig was necessarily limited, since excavation was essentially summer work – and the problem of money continually hovered over the project.
Colchester archaeology 1842-1930: a brief overview Of course, there had been archaeology in Colchester before 1930, and plenty of it, for at least two hundred years. Two general points may be made about earlier explorations. First, they concentrated almost entirely on the colonia, understandably so because Colchester was not only Britain's oldest Roman town but also seemed an inexhaustible cornucopia of fascinating finds. With so much so readily available, little interest was shown in the surrounding area. Second, the work was entirely carried out by amateurs, necessarily so since scientific archaeology in the modern sense only evolved during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Although such enthusiasts sometimes did great damage to the sites they investigated, Colchester seems generally to have been well served by its pioneers. Formal excavations date from 1842, but in Victorian times major digs happened only very intermittently. Most archaeological activity involved the preservation of accidental discoveries by enthusiasts. In 1852, one such private collection was left to the town to form the nucleus of a permanent display. This windfall encouraged the formation, during the winter of 1852-3, of what became the Essex Archaeological Society – initially very much a Colchester-focused organisation. A Museum took shape in the years that followed, notably more slowly than the conditions of the bequest had stipulated. Originally housed in the Undercroft of Colchester Castle, the Museum gradually took over the whole Norman fortress, expanding in 1929 into the adjoining mansion of Hollytrees. Colchester's Roman heritage steadily became an element in civic pride, even if municipal bounty was slow to follow.[10] The Museum Committee became a force in the campaign to understand the town's distant past, particularly through the participation of local worthies like W.G. Benham, the editor and proprietor of the Essex County Standard. Eventually knighted for his services to Colchester, Sir Gurney Benham served from 1892 until shortly before his death in 1944. He tended to view History as a colourful pageant, but his commitment was total and, so great was his influence, no local project could function without him.[11] The Museum's ability to function as a proactive force was considerably enhanced by the appointment as Curator in 1926 of M.R. Hull, one of the new breed of trained archaeologists.[12]
By the close of the nineteenth century, Colchester had not grown much beyond the limits of the Roman colonia, where the wealth of finds and the romance associated with them naturally dominated collection strategies. However, in 1924, Philip Laver, an active amateur archaeologist, undertook the excavation of a tumulus at Lexden, two miles (3 kms) west of the town centre, which local tradition regarded as a royal burial chamber packed with golden ornaments. Although the grave had been robbed, Laver found "a marvellous treasure" which dated to pre-Roman times.[13] The finds directed interest towards the story of Camulodunum before 43 AD. Laver was an attractive and popular figure, appreciated as a local medic and admired for his service to the community as one of the town's aldermen. As President of the Essex Archaeological Society, he would form part of the inner group that steered the Colchester Excavation Committee.[14]
The Lexden discoveries coincided with the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt, producing spectacular treasures which briefly raised archaeology to super-stardom. Not surprisingly, it was suggested that the Lexden tumulus was the tomb of another ancient ruler, Cunobelin himself. Laver himself was cautious in asserting any such definite identification, and subsequent examination of his finds has concluded that the burial dated from late in the first century BC, a generation earlier. Speculation about the identity of the potentate buried in the Lexden tumulus encouraged hopes of the discovery of Cunobelin's palace, and this will-o'-the-wisp would play a vital role in fund-raising in the years ahead.[15] Interest began to focus on Sheepen, a hillside in the north-east corner of the cantonment. For over a century, Roman finds had been known at Sheepen, which seemed to have functioned as a light-industrial area for the Roman colonia, about half a mile away. Hull had become interested in the area during a visit in his student days, and the construction of a water-main in 1926 further suggested that there were finds a-plenty waiting to be unearthed. Hull became convinced of its importance in 1928, when a gravel pit turned up further extensive material.[16] Anyone assessing the trajectory of Colchester archaeology at the end of the nineteen-twenties would have had little difficulty in predicting that the following decade would see an increased emphasis on the search for Camulodunum. Unfortunately, as the 'twenties came to a close, the Wall Street crash ushered in a period of economic uncertainty, which accelerated into full-scale world depression in 1931. It would not prove a promising era for the financing of a project to explore a world of two millennia earlier.
The Colchester bypass and the search for Camulodunum In 1929, a Labour government took office, with a pledge to pump cash into road-building, which offered a sticking-plaster solution to the endemic problem of unemployment. The rapid increase in motor traffic in the previous twenty years made new highways necessary, especially to eliminate bottlenecks in ancient towns. Colchester Council was quick to press for a bypass that would solve the problem of "[t]he present inconvenient congestion of the principal streets of the borough in the summer and autumn months, and particularly at weekends and on Bank holidays". The town was on the direct route to Clacton and the north-east Essex coastal resorts, and its street plan, a medieval adaptation of a Roman grid, was certainly not designed to handle tourist traffic. For once, officialdom moved fast: the Colchester scheme was approved and preliminary work began in April 1930. The road was to be about three and a half miles (5.6 kms) long, and would run through a corridor eighty feet (24.4 metres) wide. This created an urgent need for 'rescue archaeology' (the concept was not formally coined for another thirty years) on a very large scale. Yet, equally, it would be difficult to assess the significance of finds unearthed within a long, narrow strip without a more general investigation of a much wider area. Thus for the local archaeological community, the bypass project represented both an immediate challenge and a longer-term opportunity. Immediate arrangements were made for "archaeological research … in two or three areas of much historical interest". But somewhere in the vicinity "the city of Cunobeline" might be found.[17] Could the project be widened so that more might be achieved?
M.R. Hull, the energetic Museum Curator, and Philip Laver, prominent citizen and amateur archaeologist, turned to J.P. Bushe-Fox of the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate. Jointly, they persuaded the Society of Antiquaries of London to front a campaign to search for Camulodunum.[18] Based at Burlington House in Piccadilly, the Society of Antiquaries was a venerable learned body capable of clothing the project with an appropriate aura of seriousness, even though its financial contribution – £100 – represented little more than pump-priming. The link with the Society of Antiquaries explains why its President, C.R. Peers (Sir Charles from 1931) became Chairman and later President of the Colchester Excavation Committee: as Britain's Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments, his support was valuable, but he was primarily an architectural conservationist interested in cathedral restoration and the shoring up of abbey ruins.[19]
At the time of the 1938 Appeal for funds, there were thirty members of the Colchester Excavation Committee. We may begin by noticing that it did not contain one female. Ninety years later, and especially recalling the impact upon Roman Colchester of a Queen of the Iceni, this seems an odd omission. At the establishment of the Committee eight years earlier, it had included a notable public figure, Annie, Viscountess Cowdray, who held the honorary office of High Steward of Colchester. Yet even this recognition of the new political equality of the sexes was qualified by the fact that she had been elected on the death of her husband, who had served as MP for Colchester for fifteen years before his elevation to the House of Lords. The couple had been notable beneficiaries to the town. After Lady Cowdray's death in 1932, there was nobody to speak for Boudicca.[20]
The overwhelmingly male composition of the Committee is explained partly by the need to impress potential donors by assembling an array of the great and the good and partly by the need to ensure the institutional representation of organisations that could be counted upon to subscribe towards the costs of the project. In the nineteen-thirties, the great and the good were predominantly men, while – generally speaking – institutions, learned bodies and universities had yet to catch up with the existence of a second gender. The eleven organisations represented in 1938 included the British Museum, the Prehistoric Society, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, the Essex Archaeological Society, as well as various Oxford and Cambridge bodies and Colchester Corporation.[21] Local worthies were well represented among the individual members: the Suffragan Bishop of Colchester, the town's MP, the Lord Lieutenant of Essex, along with Hull and Laver as working members.[22] From the wider intellectual world came E.T. Leeds, Keeper of Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, and E.L. Minns, Disney Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge.[23]
Two names stood out as intellectual superstars. Sir Cyril Fox was the first major practitioner to achieve a doctorate, for the PhD was a new degree at Cambridge at the time of its award to him in 1922. His dissertation was soon published as The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, a ground-breaking local study. Fox pursued the idea of landscape archaeology, which he extended in his influential work of 1932, The Personality of Britain, to embody the explanatory concept of an island divided into Lowland and Highland Zones.[24] R.G. Collingwood was an Oxford polymath, philosopher, historian and an enthusiastic archaeologist too, who wrote about Roman Britain for the Oxford History of England series.[25] They were invaluable 'big names' but it is unlikely that either made much direct contribution to the project, simply because the focus of their interests lay far away. Fox was Director of the National Museum of Wales, while Collingwood was an archaeologist only during the vacations – and his holiday home was in the Lake District.
A third notable name was perhaps a less positive asset to the project. The apparently unassuming final name in the Committee list, R.E.M. Wheeler, cloaked a rising star in the new profession of archaeology, a forceful personality who was by no means shy about promoting his own interests. Mortimer Wheeler had become interested in archaeology while studying Classics at London University shortly before the First World War (in which he served with distinction, winning the Military Cross). A Yorkshire Scot, he was employed by the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments to survey Roman remains in Essex. By chance, in 1917 he was briefly stationed at Colchester, where he learned that a local antiquary had dug around the Balkerne Gate, one of the town's most prominent Roman survivals, but had died without publishing his work. Wheeler, who had a poor opinion of amateurs, secured the permission of the Corporation to undertake "the tasks of clearing up the mess and producing some sort of a report". Encouraging a local rumour that he was constructing an air-raid shelter, Wheeler used soldiers (volunteers, so he claimed) from his unit to crawl around tunnels dug under the taproom of an adjoining and very lively public house. The exploration – it could hardly be called an excavation – "was conducted largely on our backs by candlelight and was anything but a model of scientific method". Nonetheless, it produced a detailed plan of the Balkerne Gate and its surroundings, which prompted Colchester Corporation to pass a resolution of thanks which was formally transmitted to him, sealed and embossed. In 1919, he returned for what he described as "some slight exploration". In fact, he produced a useful first attempt at mapping the Roman street plan, but presumably he played down the exercise because he did not wish to acknowledge that he had worked with Philip Laver, a despised amateur although a sensitive and committed student of Colchester's past.[26] It is hard to avoid the impression that Wheeler sought to incorporate Colchester and Essex into his curriculum vitae, and then move on to greater things. His rise in the increasingly professionalised world of Archaeology was indeed spectacular, if not always admired by his contemporaries.[27] Wheeler's name was obviously useful to the Colchester project but, since it was not his 'show', it had no claim upon his loyalty. In 1930, he began a major excavation at St Albans which incidentally reignited the rivalry between the two Belgic capitals. Wheeler was well aware that fund-raising needed the popular touch: at Caerleon in south Wales in the mid-twenties, he had boldly named a Roman amphitheatre 'King Arthur's Round Table', ignoring suspicions that the legendary leader of British resistance to the Saxons was a wholly mythical figure. Throughout 1930, the Colchester project carried out an effective media offensive, especially through the columns of The Times, and St Albans could claim no mighty personality to match Cunobelin. Wheeler hit back with a learned article, which also appeared in The Times, stressing the importance of his work at Verulamium: "No other single site in Great Britain is of greater potential historical value".[28] The ambitions of Mortimer Wheeler are a reminder that membership of the Colchester Excavation Committee did not necessary imply close identification with the project.
The key participants Four archaeologists stand out as the collective driving force behind the Colchester excavations of the nineteen-thirties: J.P. Bushe-Fox, J.N.L. Myres, Christopher Hawkes and M.R. Hull. Of these, Hawkes and Hull carried the principal burden through the longest involvement.
The Director of Excavations throughout the project was J.P. Bushe-Fox: his parents had chosen to call him Jocelyn Plunket, which probably explains why he liked his friends to address him as "JP". He was born in County Longford in 1880, into a family that suffered the common Irish Protestant problem of a disparity between genteel pretensions and financial resources, a problem made worse by the death of his father when he was fourteen. Bushe-Fox's mother brought the family to London, where he attended St Paul's School. However, there would be no automatic path on to university. Rather, he began work in a bank to earn money to support his siblings. In his late twenties, he became seriously ill: reports are coy, but it seems clear that he had contracted tuberculosis, an affliction that was generally fatal before the discovery of penicillin. One of the few counter-measures open to sufferers – often adopted in desperation – was to fight the disease by moving to a warm climate. Bushe-Fox spent the winter of 1909-10 in Egypt, which was then under British occupation. There he encountered Flinders Petrie, one of the founders of modern archaeology, who was investigating the Pyramids. Bushe-Fox worked on the project, learning on the job the methods that Petrie had largely pioneered, such as dating pottery through stratigraphy. Egypt proved to be a double life-changing experience: he shook off tuberculosis and he became an archaeologist. Back in Britain, he joined the excavations at Corbridge in Northumberland, where he developed an enthusiasm for Roman pottery and a knowledge of Hadrian's Wall. In 1920, he was appointed to the Ancient Monuments Inspectorate, succeeding Peers as Chief Inspector thirteen years later.
Although Bushe-Fox was well qualified to oversee the project as a whole, unfortunately tuberculosis had permanently affected his health. Matters were made worse in September 1931, when he was seriously injured in an accident at the excavations. As was normal excavation practice, a trench twelve feet (3.7 metres) deep had been shored up with timber supports, but these had been removed on one side in order to photograph the strata. Bushe-Fox and Hawkes were examining the layers when the unstable sandy soil suddenly collapsed, burying them both. Workmen hired for the project were on hand and quickly dug them out. Hawkes seems to have survived the ordeal unscathed, but Bushe-Fox had been thrown against the timbers on the protected side, and was taken to hospital with injuries to his right shoulder and his back. Probably more damaging was the effect of the brief entombment on the lungs of a man who bore the scars of TB.[29] The accident "was to alter the whole tempo of his life" and his health never fully recovered. He remained in overall control, with the 1947 excavation report tactfully noting that he "planned and guided the initial stages of the work, and has throughout advised and assisted the conduct of operations in the field". However, as an obituary remarked, "sickness impaired his former activity though his natural acumen was as strong as ever" – but the heavy lifting, both physical and metaphorical, increasingly fell upon Hawkes and Hull.[30]
During the first summer, Oxford University's Archaeological Society undertook responsibility for part of the dig, led by J.N.L. Myres. Born in 1902 and the son of a professor who had held the Chair of Ancient History, and the product of Winchester and New College, one of the most privileged routes into the University, Myres was Oxford through and through. In 1928, he was appointed a Tutor at Christ Church, Oxford's richest college, which made him its Librarian ten years later. A decade after that, he became head of the Bodleian, Oxford's university library. His active participation in the work at Colchester was brief since, in 1931, he was commissioned to write about the early Anglo-Saxons for the Oxford History of England. This shifted the focus of his work from the prelude to Roman Britain to the postscript, but he continued to represent the Oxford archaeologists on the Excavation Committee.[31]
Like Myres, Christopher Hawkes was a product of Winchester and New College. A First Class Honours degree in Classics in 1928 was followed by appointment as an Assistant Keeper at the British Museum, where he specialised in prehistoric and Roman antiquities. This made him the Museum's obvious nominee for Colchester, which became his first major career opportunity. As Secretary to the Committee, Hawkes had a particular responsibility for the publication of findings, displaying skills of communication and an instinct for publicity that were capable of emphasising the popular element in a minutely detailed academic project. In 1946, he returned to Oxford, as the first holder of the newly created Chair of European Archaeology. His contribution to the subject extended beyond excavation and narrative to include a thought-provoking methodological discussion of the "ladder of inference". Archaeologists were tempted to draw very large conclusions from the unspeaking objects that they unearthed, using them to theorise about the societies and even belief systems of the people who had made them: it would become something of a joke that any puzzling find was classified as "ritual". Hawkes argued that it was relatively easy to use artefacts to infer the techniques of their manufacture and the economic circumstances of the people who used them. It was harder to reconstruct the social and political structures of the society in which those people lived, and extremely difficult to generalise about the spiritual values that the objects might have embodied. All of this rested upon the foundation of his pre-war work at Colchester, where he continued to excavate into the nineteen-fifties, with a particular emphasis upon Camulodunum's defensive dykes.[32]
The dogged and detailed Mark Reginald ("Rex") Hull proved an excellent partner to the more extrovert Hawkes. Born in 1897, he was a Northumberland man, the son of a learned country parson, and he grew up in a landscape of ancient monuments. After serving as an officer during the First World War (he was an officer in the Northumberland Fusiliers), Hull became a mature student at the University of Durham, where he immersed himself in Roman archaeology, taking a leading part in a major excavation at Hadrian's Wall in 1925. This experience led to his appointment the following year as Curator of the Colchester Museum, where his achievements over the next four decades would be superhuman. He persuaded the Office of Works to reroof the gaunt ruin of the Castle, thus making it possible for the Museum to emerge from the Undercroft. The acquisition of nearby Hollytrees made possible a reorganisation that split off the display of exhibits from more recent times and also provided space for much needed laboratory and office space. Hull succeeded Arthur Wright, who had held the Curatorship for twenty-five years. Wright, "a most delightful character" as the Museum's historian E.J. Rudsdale called him, was respected for the support he gave to archaeologists, and showed his affection for the Museum by calling for news "almost daily" during his too-short retirement – which must have added to the pressures on his successor. However, he had undertaken little research or publication, while the recent decision to merge the Museum's collections with those of the Essex Archaeological Society had created a huge task in cataloguing. The challenge was increased in 1928 when, in a gesture of approval for the new regime, Philip Laver gifted his personal collection, which included hundreds of Roman coins.
In his 1927 Annual Report, Hull pointed out that it was "impossible for your Curator, working unaided, to carry on the normal work of the Museum and do all the cleaning, repairing and restoration required, and also to publish suitably the contents of the Museum so as to make them as well-known and accessible as they ought to be". Support came slowly. In 1928, E.J. Rudsdale, then a keen teenager, was appointed as "Pupil Assistant", to be trained on the job. The following year, Hull gained an Assistant Curator, H.W. Poulter, who took charge of the modern collection in Hollytrees. Harold Poulter was skilled in the repair of shattered ceramics – he would restore five hundred pieces from Sheepen – and was also an accomplished on-site photographer.[33] Eric Rudsdale was used for outreach projects.[34] Hull tried to ensure that every building site in the Borough received a visit from his staff.[35]
The Museum's agenda was at the mercy of unpredictable external factors, and two episodes give something of the flavour and the urgency of the unforeseen. Since the doughty stone walls of the Castle had stood for 850 years, even defying the assaults of an eighteenth-century vandal who had hoped to redevelop the site, it was assumed that they would last for ever. Hence it was something of a shock when a section suddenly became unstable in 1933. The huge problem had a happy ending, since the stabilisation efforts of the Office of Works included the re-roofing of the courtyard, and hence the expansion of available display space.[36] On a smaller scale was the unmissable opportunity created in 1939 by the demolition of the Waggon and Horses, a venerable North Hill inn. The hostelry had extensive cellars, a hotline into Roman Colchester, but the owners were keen to erect a modern pub on the site. Managing the Sheepen excavations and analysing its finds while responding to such challenges placed a strain on Hull's very limited resources. The routine work of the Museum should not be forgotten. By the early 'thirties, there were over 50,000 visitors a year. Admission was free, and the Castle was a popular destination for excursions from the seaside towns during the summer months. Numbers fell sharply later in the decade, as the Depression ravaged the holiday trade, but opening hours and the need for surveillance and security remained unchanged. One-off events added to the burdens. In 1937, the British Archaeological Association held its annual congress in Colchester, giving the Museum an unrivalled opportunity to showcase its work. Conferences require an enormous amount of detailed preparation: Rudsdale, now in his mid-twenties, carried the burden of local organisation.[37] There was a royal visit by Queen Mary in 1938. The Museum also encouraged school parties, visits that required preparation and supervision.
Rex Hull was a controlled personality, usually quiet and patient, who took refuge in a wry sense of humour. His reticent manner could give way to occasional explosions of rage if he felt that associates had fallen short of his high standards. Hawkes tactfully observed that "such moments of indignation were rare", although another obituary referred to his "sometimes blistering tongue". Had he led a numerous and well-funded team of experts, Hull's record would have been impressive. As it was, working with just two assistants and struggling with limited budgets, his achievement was outstanding.[38]
Digging and funding Excavations at Sheepen began in June 1930, with twenty-five workmen employed in three teams, those led by Hawkes and Myres along the line of the bypass, with Hull exploring further to the south. Very quickly, they struck metaphorical gold, fragments of a glass drinking vessel which vividly depicted gladiators in combat.[39] In September 1932, between thirty and forty labourers were employed, assisted by around twenty student volunteers, mostly from Oxford but with a sprinkling of Cambridge undergraduates,[40] one of whom Hawkes married. Intensive work continued each summer throughout the first half of the decade. Thereafter the emphasis was upon recording and evaluation: there was no digging at all in 1937. In scientific terms, the Sheepen finds were interesting and important. The project mapped the dykes that protected the Belgic oppidum, with Myres uncovering one that had later been filled in and forgotten. Metal-working moulds discovered pointed to the manufacture of coins, although the actual mint was not identified. It was also proved that Samian ware, a popular form of pottery previously assumed to have been imported, had in fact been produced locally. Burned layers pointed to destruction of subsequent Roman buildings by Boudicca. Cunobelin's coins were everywhere. Above all, massive amounts of pottery were uncovered: finding himself charged with the evaluation of forty tons of it, with his characteristic ingenuity Hull rented an empty factory as storage.[41]
This map of the Sheepen site was published by The Times, 12 April 1935. Excavations had moved away from the original focus on the bypass to follow the line of the newly discovered Sheepen Dyke. A sizeable area towards the Roman colonia remained to be explored.
Unfortunately, while the results of the Colchester excavations were intellectually important, few of the discoveries could be described as sexy.[42] "The excavations this autumn at Colchester have not produced any very sensational finds," commented the Essex Review in 1934,[43] a verdict that could have been passed on most years of the dig. This had implications for the financing of the project. In that era, there was no government money for archaeological research, Colchester Corporation was supportive, earmarking £200 for the 1938 campaign, but elected representatives were guardians of the pockets of their ratepayer who, after all, already paid for a local Museum that was in reality a national asset. Institutions and learned societies generally limited their financial support to £100 a year, once again a reasonable restriction, since other projects clamoured for their largesse. These substantial subscriptions were vital but – as the 1947 excavations report noted – they were never sufficient. "The whole balance of the very considerable moneys required for the work was subscribed by the general public."[44] In 1938, the Committee sought £1,500 and – as in previous years – operations on that scale required an appeal to the public. The fact that Sheepen yielded little that was comparable to the cornucopia of the Lexden tumulus added to the challenge of fund-raising. Indeed, the Colchester team was fortunate that the spectacular Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo, in nearby Suffolk, only came to light at the close of the decade, on the very eve of the outbreak of War and as their own activities were drawing to a close.
The Colchester Excavation Committee relied upon three themes in particular to encourage well-wishers to open their chequebooks. The first was to emphasise the urgency of their work, which was initially dramatised by the need to respond to the bypass project.[45] As the 1930 digging season came to a close, there were hopes that enough funding would be in place to complete work on the route of the new road in 1931.[46] However, from the outset, the organisers predicted that "further work will be necessary as houses are erected along the new frontages provided".[47] In the event, this did not happen, as the Corporation accepted a proposal to plant trees along the bypass, which was imaginatively designated as a war memorial.[48] The root systems of the trees would, of course, eventually impede any attempts to follow up excavations along the roadside margins, but the evident reluctance of local planners to facilitate the construction of access roads and wayside estates was encouraging. Indeed, it was Essex County Council, which was responsible for provision of schools, which seemed most interested in developing Sheepen. The excavation teams of 1930 were given access to ten acres (four hectares) of land that had been purchased for future use as playing fields: building the projected secondary schools and a technical college only became priorities later in the decade. Nonetheless, the need "to follow up the investigation before the commercial development of the area precludes further excavation" remained a theme of fund-raising throughout the decade.[49] The concern was plausible: the population of Colchester grew by ten thousand during the interwar period, and over three thousand new homes were built – a reminder of the burden of site inspection that Hull imposed upon Museum staff.[50] However, suburban development mainly spread to the south of the existing town. Nonetheless, the concern formed an excusable element in fund-raising, not least because donors would have been aware that house-building was an element in Britain's economic recovery, although the 1938 claim that public support "had enabled excavation to keep ahead of the builder" was something of an exaggeration. However, the situation did seem serious that year, since a developer, Fairhazel Estates, had acquired much of Sheepen. Admitting that it had "from the start foreseen that the site was doomed", the Colchester Excavation Committee expressed its appreciation to the builder for agreeing to delay the start of construction, and urgently sought public support for a final summer – an "eleventh hour" – of excavations. In the event, the houses were not built, and the site of the 1938 dig was used for educational purposes, becoming the site of what is today Colchester Institute.
The second theme used to appeal for cash from the public was the prospect of unearthing Cunobelin's palace. This combined two assertions, one that insisted 'it must be here somewhere' and the other that 'one more push' would surely locate it. Hawkes reported to the Essex Archaeological Society that Sheepen Hill had been investigated in 1932, to see "whether its flat and inviting summit was indeed crowned by the native citadel which was so exciting – and so easy to imagine there". The answer was negative, but the Excavation Committee's appeal for 1933 was in circulation and "it should be the pride of this Society above all to contribute to the honourable maintenance of its labours".[51] The scientific journal Nature echoed the call in 1935. "It would appear as if still more important discoveries have yet to be made. Nothing that appeals as adequate to the dignity of this centre of the Belgic settlers has as yet been discovered. … The appeal of the Colchester Excavation Committee for further funds deserves, and should receive, generous support."[52] The 1938 Appeal gambled even more desperately on an unknown future, predicting that the unexplored site to be targeted could make the latest phase in the search "the greatest of all, for here, if anywhere in Inner Camulodunum, may have been the residence and court of King Cunobelin himself". It may seem a harsh thing to say, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the archaeologists were not being entirely frank with their public: by the early 'thirties, it was reasonably clear that even the most powerful Iron Age ruler did not occupy a palatial residence.[53]
The third theme occasionally invoked in fund-raising seems to have been a bizarre invention personal to Hawkes. In 1932, a substantial bronze pot was discovered at Sheepen: he referred to it as "cauldron". Dating from several centuries before the time of Cunobelin, it obviously required a specific narrative to supply it with a role in the story. Very much in defiance of his own ladder of inference, Hawkes whimsically chose to identify it with Old King Cole, who was hailed in a nursery rhyme as "a merry old soul" who "called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl / And he called for his fiddlers three." It was reasonable to guess that the bronze cauldron was a cooking pot, and its size conjured up visions of feasting. Could this, perhaps, be the bowl that Old King Cole had demanded? It hardly needs to be said that there were problems with this interpretation. Nobody knew whether Old King Cole had existed, let alone whether he was associated with Colchester. True, as early as the sixteenth century he had been claimed in local tradition, but this had unhelpfully reported him as the grandfather of the Emperor Constantine, which associated the jovial monarch with 200 AD rather than 200 BC. Hawkes, of course, was not entirely serious, certainly not when he lectured at Burlington House in March 1940 to review the decade-long project. There he postulated a connection between the cauldron and the merry monarch, before gravely adding that no sign had been found of the fiddlers three.[54] The rodomontade was so obviously a spoof that it did no harm, but its use by a respected Keeper of the British Museum was a measure of the project's need to capture headlines and draw upon public support.
The 1938 excavations Unfortunately, the Appeal document circulated by the Colchester Excavation Committee seeking funds in 1938 was not precisely dated. However, it seems reasonable to conclude that it was issued relatively late in the summer, probably in August. This is supported both by the timetable of the dig, and by the reference in the Appeal document to "the present time of stress": after absorbing Austria in March, Hitler put pressure on Czechoslovakia in the months that followed. By August, it was obvious that a crisis was at hand, and the British and French sacrifice of the Czechs at Munich at the end of September was generally seen as merely a device to buy time before Europe degenerated into war.
Rex Hull and the Museum community seem to have learned of the developer's plans early in the summer. The area at stake – twenty acres (8.1 hectares) – was daunting, given that the combined excavations between 1930 and 1936 had covered about sixty acres (24.3 hectares). Then an unexpected complication intruded, a hitch that delayed the legal acquisition of the land by the builder. Fairhazel Estates had agreed to pause their scheme to allow an emergency dig, but the company could not grant access to a site that it did not formally own. Hull, Hawkes and Bushe-Fox had an experienced team of excavators at the ready: unemployment was still a problem, and presumably most of the labourers were veterans keen to take even short-term work in hard times. But they were unable to start until the middle of August, and were given only until October.[55]
The enforced timetable also exacerbated the funding problem. With eleven institutions and scholarly societies represented on the Committee, there was good reason to hope that much of the projected £1,500 cost would be met by stitching together the standard £100 subscriptions, leaving support from the public to fill in the shortfall. Unfortunately, these venerable bodies went into institutional abeyance during the summer months. It was very likely that the worthies who constituted their councils and governing bodies would have nodded through supporting grants without debate, but the sad fact was they did not meet in July and August. As a result, the Excavation Committee put spades into the ground with only £400 in guaranteed funding. (Remarkably, in the depths of Oxford's Long Vacation, the Haverfield Bequest, the University's archaeology research fund, had promised £100. The Society of Antiquaries had disgorged the same amount, while Colchester Corporation promised £200.) In 1932, Hawkes had described the financial challenge faced by the Committee: "To keep its workers year by year in the field is inevitably, in these times, a struggle, and it is absolutely dependent upon voluntary financial support."[56] The urgency of the 1938 dig meant that it would be unusually dependent upon the generosity of the public.
The Appeal leaflet listed the members of the Committee to indicate that the excavation of Sheepen was a heavyweight project. It outlined what had been achieved throughout the decade, and emphasised the importance of this final push. Essentially, its argument implied a 'one from ten leaves zero' equation: if the final twenty acres could not be adequately explored, the whole effort since 1930 would be wasted. The four-page document was accompanied by a donation form and a pre-addressed (but almost certainly unstamped) envelope. Circulation almost concentrated on previous subscribers. Above all, its tone was urgent. "We earnestly appeal to you to help us now, before it is too late. … The financial stringency of 1931 and the following years did not lead to any failure in our support, and even in the present time of stress we trust to be enabled to hold our own to the last. This year's opportunity will never come again."
Since there are no subsequent reports of a financial crisis, it may be assumed that the 1938 dig somehow covered its costs. Once again, the finds were of more interest to archaeologists than to the general public. The excavations turned up the sites of huts, a dagger and some coins. A small iron box, four inches by one and half (10 by 3.8 cms), was found to contain a red pigment, and was assumed to have been used to paint ceramics. Among the usual massive amounts of pottery, one curious item was discovered. A shallow bowl, about eleven inches in diameter and two-and-a-half inches deep (28 by 6.3 cms), it was divided into five segments, one at the centre and the remaining four each occupying a quarter of the circle. The responsible archaeological verdict had to be that the find was probably a fruit bowl, but an attempt was made to claim that it was intended to contain "what we now term hors-d'oeuvres".[57] This was a clever attempt at public relations, but the hoped-for major publicity coup continued to elude the diggers. As a local journalist reported, "the principal object is to locate the actual position of King Cunobelin's palace". The Essex Review announced another failure. "It was hoped that some remains of a palace or dwelling of Cunobelinus would be discovered, but up to September 30 no identifiable remains of pre-Roman habitations have been brought to light." Hawkes remained faithful to the mirage, heavily hinting that the royal residence was under the technical college's tennis courts. It was a safe prediction, since some space was too sacred to be violated by the excavator's spade.[58]
Colchester Town Hall, 9 September 1939. The piling of sandbags was intended to protect windows from bomb blasts. For security purposes, publication of the photograph was accompanied by a statement that the process was not complete. The Museum Curator, M.R. Hull, served half-time with the Royal Observer Corps throughout the War, but his priority through the rest of each week was to complete the analysis and recording of a decade's work at Sheepen. It was published in 1947.
Aftermath In September 1938, trenches were being dug across Colchester – and throughout Britain – to provide primitive refuges from the saturation bombing that was feared would follow the outbreak of war with Germany.[59] The partition of Czechoslovakia in the Munich agreement merely postponed the conflict. The following August, the shovels were out again, this time to fill sandbags which were piled high to protect buildings against bomb blast. The Colchester Museum mobilised for the declaration of war that came on 3 September 1939. The Undercroft was cleared for use as a public air-raid shelter. Precious objects, such as the tombstones of Roman centurions, were removed to storage. In effect, the small staff took on a double load. Rex Hull served with the Royal Observer Corps, a civil defence unit less well known than the Home Guard, which used binoculars and sound detectors to identify incoming aircraft as friend or foe. It remained important even after the development of radar and, in 1944-5, played a valuable role in tracking V1 flying bombs as they crossed the coast. Necessarily, much of its work involved night-watching. Eric Rudsdale was rejected for military service, after scoring a spectacularly unimpressive rating in an Army medical: as a helpful clerk put it, "you can't go much lower without being dead".[60] However, his administrative skills were harnessed as secretary to the local War Agricultural Committee, which was charged with increasing domestic food production.[61] Rudsdale also took turns in fire-watching at the Castle. He slept in the cell where the Quaker martyr James Parnell had died on hunger-strike in 1656, a location that at least protected him from the terrors of this world.[62] Harold Poulter, an older man, seems to have carried a lighter load, particularly after 1943 when he survived throat cancer. He remained in charge at the Hollytrees section of the Museum.
Despite these extra burdens, Hull's small team not only kept the Museum functioning but even managed to extend its activities. In June 1940, with the garrison town full of soldiers plucked from the beaches of Dunkirk, they agreed to add Sunday afternoon opening, with no extra pay. In October, the Australians arrived, marching down the High Street moonlit night behind a band playing Waltzing Matilda, a welcome reminder that Britain did not stand totally alone against Hitler. Soldiers from Canada soon followed, and – from 1942 – large numbers of Americans, especially at the aerodromes that sprang up near the town. Of course, there was friction. As the Australians prepared to move on at the end of December 1940, hundreds invaded the town centre "mad drunk". When Rudsdale mildly commented on the impact of the bulldozers on the landscape of a new aerodrome, an American officer snapped at him: "wouldn't you rather have us here than the Germans?"[63] It was important to make Allied personnel feel welcome at the Museum, all the more so because it embodied the heritage that they had come to defend, and which Americans and Commonwealth troops could claim to share. And the men and women in uniform visited in huge numbers, far exceeding the influx of pre-war holiday trippers. In addition, Museum space was also used to display exhibitions aimed at boosting civilian morale. In 1944, there were over 130,000 visitors, two-and-a-half times the record set in the early 'thirties.
This kind of double-jobbing was by no means unusual on the Home Front during the Second World War. The demands were exhausting, the more so since night duty and the constant threat of air raids disrupted sleep: Colchester experienced one thousand alerts in the six years of conflict. All this makes the more remarkable Hull's single-minded definition of his personal aims in September 1939. These he described in the 1944 Annual Report, in fact the first such review of the Museum's activities in six years. "Expectation of heavy and indiscriminate bombing gave first priority to the immediate removal of our most valuable exhibits to safe storage," he wrote, before proceeding to refer to himself with third-person formality. "A task of no less importance was the necessity for the Curator, who might be called away for service, or who might become a casualty, to make complete written records of all his knowledge of the many excavations which he had conducted since 1926, the many sites visited and observations made throughout the Borough, and especially of the ten years' work of the Colchester Excavation Committee on the Sheepen site."[64] In fact, in his early forties, he was exempt from military service, and able to focus on the major task of writing up the work of the Colchester Excavation Committee. It is noticeable that Hull is almost invisible in Rudsdale's wartime diary. The two did not always enjoy an easy relationship, but the Curator's commitment to the Royal Observer Corps reduced his Museum work to two-and-a-half days a week, and much of that was spent off-site, recording the decade-long work of the Colchester Excavation Committee. "Hull has not been seen and there is no news of him," Rudsdale noted in February 1943.[65] A year later, the elusive Curator claimed that the account of the excavations was "at present in the press", although the five-hundred page research report, Camulodunum, under the joint authorship of Hawkes and Hull, was not published until 1947.[66] Its findings have been debated and sometimes modified, but it has been rightly described as "a key work of reference in British archaeology".[67] As noted, Hawkes continued to excavate at Colchester after the War. Hull published the equally comprehensive Roman Colchester in 1958, before editing the Victoria County History volume on Roman Essex five years later. It is hard to avoid the feeling that he merited more recognition. The flamboyant Mortimer Wheeler received a knighthood; Christopher Hawkes was awarded the CBE (an honour also bestowed upon Bushe-Fox) and a Chair at Oxford. In the last year of his life, Rex Hull was granted a civil list pension.
In retrospect, the 1938 excavations may seem to constitute a disappointing tailpiece to a decade of activity at Sheepen. This is particularly true in terms of the project's own trumpeted aims, which consistently hinted at the imminent discovery of a British Knossos. As in the initial year of activity, action was forced upon the archaeologists by the announcement of a construction project. However, in 1930 a consortium of scholarly bodies had backed a substantial investigation by three separate teams. Eight years later, Hull scrambled to put together funding for a short digging season at equally short notice. Fortunately, the emergency generated an Appeal document that commemorated the membership of the Colchester Excavation Committee, outlined its achievements and gave some flavour of its methods and its hopes.[68]
ENDNOTES I thank Andrew Jones and Jonathan Tompkins for helpful comments.
[1] The authoritative report of the work carried out under the auspices of the Colchester Excavation Committee was published as C.F.C. Hawkes and M. R. Hull, Camulodunum: First Report on the Excavations at Colchester: 1930-1939 (Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London, xiv, 1947), [cited as Camulodunum].
[2] I rely here on R. Dunnett, The Trinovantes … (London, 1975), 7-30 [cited as Dunnett] and the summaries in M.R. Hull, ed., Victoria County History of Essex, iii: Roman Essex (1963) cited as VCH, iii], with comments by P. Salway, Roman Britain (Oxford, 1981), 7-16. After forty years studying the Belgae, Professor Christopher Hawkes expressed doubts about many of the accepted generalisations, such as the assumption of close connections with tribes in Gaul and 'Belgium' / 'Belgica', warning against too-ready acceptance of statements in the self-promoting war memoirs of Julius Caesar. C. Hawkes, "New Thoughts on the Belgae", Antiquity, xlii (1968), 6-16. There are useful summaries of changing interpretations by P. Crummy in J. Cooper, ed., Victoria County History of Essex, ix, The Borough of Colchester (1994), 2-7 [cited as VCH, ix] and in J. Kemble, Prehistoric & Roman Essex (Stroud, Gloucs, 2001), 77-84. I repeat that I have not attempted to follow more recent work.
[3] In 1981, Salway (Roman Britain, v-vi) noted "the lack of consensus among prehistorians…. The closer one approaches the Roman period, the greater the area of disagreement".
[4] With the exception of Cunobelin, I use the Latinised names of tribes and places. The pre-Roman name for Verulamium (St Albans) is reported to have been 'Verlamion', which would suggest that the Latin versions were close to the originals. It has been suggested that the name 'Trinovantes' (also 'Trinobantes') may mean 'Vigorous People' (https://www.roman-britain.co.uk/tribes/trinovantes/) An unreferenced statement in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinovantes (consulted 1 April 2025) indicates that the second syllable may mean 'new' (related to the Latin 'novus'), indicating that the tribe were recent invaders. The story of the discovery of Camulodunum is usefully outlined in P. Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past (Colchester, 1984), 3-18 (http://pixel.essex.ac.uk/cat/reports/MISCAT-report-0001.pdf).
[5] There is some doubt about the precise year of the Boudiccan revolt.
[6] VCH, ix, 2 (Crummy, 1994) states that Cunobelin was based at Camulodunum and absorbed the Catuvellaunian territory, including Verulamium. Earlier interpretations had suggested that the process happened in the opposite direction, although (as Mortimer Wheeler remarked in 1923), "history throws little light on the transfer of the seat of the Government from St Albans to Colchester". Royal Commission on Historical Monuments: Essex, iv, xxvi.
[7] "For the domination of East Anglia, which had been the immediate aim of Cunobelinus, Camulodunum occupied a remarkable position. The promontory upon which it sits … offered a fine plateau, not without springs and large enough to hold the sprawling settlement of houses, farms, fields, and paddocks which constituted a royal residence as understood by the Celtic world." Hull, VCH, iii, 1. It is one the curious aspects of the history of Colchester that it never did succeed in dominating nearby Suffolk, presumably because Ipswich became a rival (and, to some extent, a superior) port. Although the River Colne was tidal as far upstream as Colchester, it is likely that Fingringhoe was used as the main centre for overseas trade. Kemble, Prehistoric & Roman Essex, 68.
[8] Dunnett, 21, and VCH, ix, 4 for plans of the Camulodunum dykes, which were also extensively illustrated in Camulodunum. One of the earliest achievements of the 1930s project was the discovery of a previously unknown defensive dyke at Sheepen. Much of the 1930s project was devoted to sorting out the confusing arrangement of the earthworks complex. Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 19-20.
[9] Camulodunum, 51.
[10] E.J. Rudsdale's history of the Museum was posthumously published in Souvenir of the Centenary of the Colchester and Essex Museum (1960): https://www.esah1852.org.uk/library/files/C0960974.pdf.
[11] Camulodunum, vi, called Benham "always our indefatigable friend".
[12] Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 8-9; A.F.J. Brown, Colchester 1815-1914 (Chelmsford, 1980), 45. One of the Victorian enthusiasts for Colchester's Roman past was William Wire, a former Chartist who later worked as a postman – an indication that interest was not confined to the local elite. His diary gives some flavour of the haphazard process of the discovery and preservation of artefacts: A.F.J. Brown (ed.), Essex People … (Chelmsford, 1992), 162-85.
[13] The phrase and the tale of the golden burial chamber comes from N. Pevsner (ed. E. Radcliffe), The Buildings of England: Essex (rev. ed., 1965), 147.
[14] https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MEX34083&resourceID=1001 for the Lexden excavation, which is illustrated and discussed in Dunnett, 16-19. Laver died in 1941. "He always extended to students a sincere welcome, and to many it is sad to be no longer able to seek the help always so freely given by 'the Doctor'", an obituary notice recorded. Eric Rudsdale, Assistant Curator at the Castle Museum, and not always a charitable observer, wrote an affectionate tribute to Laver, saying that "Essex archaeology will be greatly the poorer by his loss". In his history of the Museum, Rudsdale wrote that Philp Laver "was an unforgettable character, his charm and kindness alternating with devastating rages and blistering invective against proposed vandalism or stupidity which would mar the antiquities of the town, or hinder the work of the Museum. His knowledge of the history and antiquities of Essex was so widespread that one became accustomed to receive a concise accurate answer to the most obscure problems which one might present to him." https://britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital%20BNJ/pdfs/1942_BNJ_24_9.pdf; C. Pearson, ed., E.J. Rudsdale's Diaries of Wartime Colchester (Stroud, Gloucs, 2010), 59 [cited as Rudsdale]. See also: https://catuk.org/the-house-of-philip-laver/.
[15] We may ask: why has the tomb of Cunobelin not been found, since we must assume that he was likely to have been buried in a monument as imposing as the Lexden tumulus? Four possible answers occur to me. [1] His tomb was destroyed by the Romans, either as a sign of conquest after 43 AD, or later, in revenge for the Boudiccan revolt, and to remove any possible political symbol of Trinovantian identity. [2] His tomb had not been completed when the Romans took over in 43 AD, and that he had been temporarily interred elsewhere. Some accounts suggest that he died as late as 42 AD, and an ornate burial chamber would take time to create. [3] His tomb was destroyed unwittingly or otherwise, by amateur attempts at excavation, perhaps in the eighteenth century. [4] Cunobelin's tomb still awaits discovery. Given the intensity of archaeological activity in Camulodunum over the past century, including the use of aerial surveys to pinpoint likely sites, this seems unlikely. In 1994, P. Crummy suggested that Cunobelin had been buried within a temple enclosure at Gosbecks, in the south-west of the Camulodunum cantonment, where the native population maintained a temple during the Roman occupation. (VCH, ix, 7). This may have been a riposte to a 1992 claim that a major burial discovered at St Albans was that of Cunobelin, whose body had been for some reason brought to his kingdom's second city. There is an aerial view of the Gosbecks temple enclosure at Dunnett, 115 and a plan at VCH, iii, 121.
[16] Camulodunum, 21-3; Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 15-16. William Wire had examined the Sheepen site in 1843, and pottery kilns had been discovered there in the late 19th century: Brown (ed.), Essex People, 167; Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 11. The long 'e' in the name was the result of a process known as popular etymology, which had interpreted the area as a sheep pen. In fact, 'Sheepen, derived from the Old English 'scipen', meaning a cattle shed. Wire referred to it as 'Sheppen". P.H. Reaney, The Place-Names of Essex (Cambridge, 1935), 379.
[17] The Times, 10 September 1929, 8, 15 April 1930. The planned carriageway of the bypass would be 30 feet (9.1 metres) wide, with broad margins reserved for subsequent widening. Only about 400 yards (365 metres) of proposed road ran through the Sheepen target area.
[18] Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 16.
[19] On behalf of the excavation team, Christopher Hawkes in 1930 referred to "the invaluable goodwill of the Society of Antiquaries, whose President is chairman of the Committee's Executive": Antiquaries Journal, xi (1931), 273. For his part, Peers in 1935 praised the town for its endeavours: "Colchester had become famous all over the British Isles as a town which took its antiquities seriously." The Museum's annual reports are digitised on https://www.esah1852.org.uk/research/colchester-museum-reports, and information from them is not separately referenced.
[20] Lady Cowdray was the first President of the Committee, Peers initially acting as Chairman. She and her husband had presented Colchester Castle to the Corporation in 1920. Rosalind Dunnett was appointed Director of Excavations in charge of a later Colchester project in 1964. Dunnett also published on Sheepen (and, later, on Verulamium) as Rosalind Niblett.
[21] Peers represented the Trustees of the British Museum as well as the Society of Antiquaries.
[22] The Treasurer was Major (later Lt-Colonel) John Oxley Parker, a Colchester resident who was the heir to Faulkbourne Hall, the 15th-century mansion near Witham. He was active in the Anglican Church and in the local branch of the League of Nations Union, where he also served as Treasurer. In 1947, Oxley Parker presented a family collection of Roman ornaments to the Colchester Museum.
[23] The Colchester Excavation Committee was very much a London- and Oxford-supported project. (Several Oxford colleges donated to the project.) The low-key Cambridge involvement is curious, since the University had operated a programme of Extension lectures in the town from 1889 until the First World War, which included a teacher-training programme. Brown, Colchester 1815-1914, 67-8, 70. Professor Ellis Minns was mainly interested in eastern Europe. E.A.B. Barnard, who represented the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, was a historian and archivist with an enthusiasm for Worcestershire.
[24] https://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/files/media/the_personality_and_legacy_of_fox_exhibition_catalogue.pdf.
[25] Collingwood's interpretation of Roman Britain was published in 1936, but Oxford University Press rather meanly combined it with the work of J.N.L. Myres (discussed below) on the early Anglo-Saxon settlements: 'Collingwood and Myres' broke new ground in historical overview, but they were not co-authors in the conventional sense.
[26] M. Wheeler, Still Digging… (London, 1955), 64-5, 71; Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 12-13. The deceased antiquary was E.N. Mason. J. McIntosh, "Wheeler, Sir (Robert Eric) Mortimer (1890–1976)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [cited as ODNB] does not mention his Colchester experience.
[27] McIntosh, ODNB, notes that Wheeler's reports were criticised "for their lack of depth, absence of consideration of social and economic aspects, and precipitate elevation of hypothesis into firm interpretation, and at times for their over-dramatization".
[28] Times, 8 November 1930. Knighted in 1952, Sir Mortimer Wheeler was one of the first academics to develop an alternative career on television. (Until the novelty wore off, they were known as "tellydons".) His military bearing, handle-bar moustache and self-confidence made him an impressive performer and presenter on-screen.
[29] Chelmsford Chronicle, 18 September 1931; Times, 22 September 1931.
[30] Times, 22 September 1931, 19 October 1954; Antiquaries Journal, xxxv (1955), 283; Camulodunum, vi; M.S. Drower, "Petrie, Sir (William Matthew) Flinders (1853-1942)", ODNB.
[31] A. Taylor et al., "Myres, (John) Nowell Linton (1902–1989)", ODNB.
[32] T.C. Champion, "Hawkes, (Charles Francis) Christopher (1905–1992)", ODNB; M. Diaz-Andreu et al., "Christopher Hawkes ...", Antiquaries Journal, lxxxix (2009), 1-21. At the Colchester dig, Hawkes met a Cambridge undergraduate, Jacquetta Hopkins, who worked as a student volunteer. They married in 1933, and (as Jacquetta Hawkes), she not merely established an academic reputation as an archaeologist but also became prominent as a populariser. The marriage ended in divorce and, in 1953, she married J.B. Priestley, whom she joined in various public campaigns.
[33] Camulodunum, vi.
[34] Rudsdale's health was not strong. He was ill for much of 1934. Poor health may explain large gaps in his pre-war diaries, which are preserved in the Essex Record Office and calendared at https://www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk/.
[35] The Museum's Annual Report for 1932 stated: "The Museum staff visited practically every building site or road excavation in the Borough, with the result that much valuable information was obtained." (https://www.esah1852.org.uk/research/colchester-museum-reports).
[36] Essex Review, xliv (1935), 89.
[37] Essex Review, xlvi (1937), 173.
[38] The Times, 1 December 1976. The obituary was by Hawkes, and see https://caguk.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Bulletin-20.pdf. There is an example of Hull's anger in Rudsdale, 143.
[39] The Times, 4, 9 August 1930. The first year's campaign was described in C. Hawkes, "The Excavations at Colchester", Antiquaries Journal, xi (1931), 273-7.
[40] The Times, 23 September 1932; Camulodunum, vi. In 1930 there were also volunteers from UCL.
[41] Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 15-16. Camulodunum, 23-7 outlined the excavations from 1930 to 1938.
[42] The Museum's Annual Report for 1931 described the first year's activities: "The results were most satisfactory. The sites of numerous huts of the British inhabitants were identified and examined, and a vast quantity of pottery, glass, coins and ornaments recovered, which shed considerable light on a period (20 B.C.- A.D. 43) of which little was previously known in this country." (Italics added.)
[43] Essex Review, xliii (1934), 237.
[44] Camulodunum, vi-vii.
[45] Interest was not confined to Britain. The Melbourne Age, 27 September 1930, carried a report on the importance of the work. (From the National Library of Australia's Trove online newspaper archive.) The Newcastle (NSW) Sun published a very long feature about the excavations on 14 June 1935.
[46] The Times, 23 October 1930.
[47] The Times, 24 May, 3 June 1930.
[48] The Corporation responded to a proposal made in October 1930. The Times, 22 October 1930.
[49] Nature, 20 April 1935: https://www.nature.com/articles/135612a0. In 1930, Hawkes had described the target area as "immediately on the outskirts of a town where expansion is sooner or later inevitable": Antiquaries Journal, xi (1931), 273.
[50] Between 1921 and 1938, 3,260 houses were built in Colchester, one-third of them by the local authority. VCH, ix, 204.
[51] Essex Archaeological Society Transactions, xxxi (1932, published 1937), 33.
[52] Nature, 20 April 1935: https://www.nature.com/articles/135612a0.
[53] As early as 1932, the anonymous (and usually sympathetic) correspondent of The Times realised that the hutted settlement of Camulodunum resembled an African village, in which a royal residence would be larger but not necessarily grander than its neighbours. "The palace of Cymbeline remains elusive, and it now appears clear that pre-Roman Colchester was not a town in the ordinary sense but a series of primitive 'kraals' spread over several hills and valleys." Times, 23 September 1932. Yet the assumption that Cunobelin had lived in a 'palace' ran deep, and became crucial in fund-raising. Dunnett (24-6) drew attention to a large hut on the Sheepen site which appeared to have been associated with a luxury lifestyle. Evidence suggested that it had been deliberately destroyed after the Roman invasion. A possible implication was that this had been the home of Cunobelin, and that it had been obliterated as an act of revenge. Notably, the 1947 excavation report – written for archaeologists – made only passing allusion to the subject, postulating that Cunobelin probably had "a residence, and if a residence, then no doubt a place of judgement and of assembly" at Sheepen. The term 'palace' was not used in addressing fellow specialists. Camulodunum, 51.
[54] The Times, 12 April 1935; Essex Review, xlix (1940), 115-16. Now dated to 1100 BC, the cauldron is illustrated at https://cim-web.adlibhosting.com/ais6/Details/collect/163938.
[55] The Times, 19 August; Chelmsford Chronicle, 26 August 1938; Essex Review, xlvii (1938), 221.
[56] Essex Archaeological Society Transactions, xxxi (1932, published 1937), 33.
[57] Essex Review, xlvii (1938), 159.
[58] Chelmsford Chronicle, 30 September 1938; Essex Review, xlvii (1938), 221-2; Essex Newsman, 16 March 1940.
[59] H. Benham, ed., Essex at War (Colchester, 1945), 16. The trenches quickly filled with stagnant water.
[60] Rudsdale, 160.
[61] Rudsdale's diary deals extensively with the "War Ag." and its problems. Essex farming had suffered during the Depression, with much of the area south of Colchester had become derelict. Forceful intervention was required to reclaim the land for crops. In 1943, a brief local protest movement accused the Essex War Agricultural Committee of "high-handed injustices, dictatorial methods, and wasteful farming". Benham, ed., Essex at War, 53, 123-5.
[62] After a year, in October 1941, Rudsdale noted that "at times, the silence at night has a bad effect on my nerves". Rudsdale, 76. A bomb fell near the Castle in 1943 but did not explode.
[63] Benham, ed., Essex at War, 33-4, drawing upon Rudsdale's diary; Rudsdale, 46, 52, 130.
[64] The statement is on page 3 of the 1944 Report: https://www.esah1852.org.uk/library/files/C0938954.pdf.
[65] Rudsdale, 23 (22 April 1940), 123 (14 February 1943).
[66] Its preface, usually the last step in the authorial process, was dated June 1945.
[67] Crummy, In Search of Colchester's Past, 17. Salway, Roman Britain, 771 noted that Colchester was "well-served" by major publications, of which this was one.
[68] Some years ago, I purchased a set of the county magazine, the Essex Review, from the estate of the late W.R. Powell, the former editor of the Essex volumes of the Victoria County History. Folded in the back cover of the 1939 Essex Review, I found the 4-page Appeal for funds in support of the 1938 Sheepen excavations. I not only respected the work but particularly honoured the memory of Ray Powell, who had encouraged my own teenage interest in local history half a century earlier. I reasoned that, if he thought the document worth preserving, it merited a place in the Martinalia section of my website. I hope this supporting Note bears out that assumption.