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Palace Plain by the NAU in 1981 and described in an excellent article in CASO: it was still standing head high, and is now preserved beneath the Magistrate's Courts. Another was found still standing, concealed in the core of the Music House on King Street (described in the article on King Street). Another eighteen 12th or 13th century houses are known from documents, though this figure includes both the examples from the Millennium site. The excavated building from St Martin-at-Palace Plain and the Music House both illustrate how these stone houses were built - walls of flint rubble with Caen or Barnack limestone quoins founded on rammed gravel footings. Were the ground floors used for shops or storage with accom- modation on the first and possibly second floor? A surprise discovery was a limekiln, set in the middle of the block, 50m south of Bethel Street. This may be connected with the construction of the stone houses, though we cannot be sure as it is only roughly dated to between the late 12th and 14th century. This is the earliest limekiln to have been discovered in Norwich, as all the other examples from Norfolk are post-medieval at the earliest. It is also of a very different construction, consisting of a pit filled with interleaved chalk, oxidised lime and charcoal. Originally it probably also possessed an above ground component, some kind of airtight hood with inlets and outlets. The high Middle Ages saw the heyday of the French Borough, when it became the wealthiest area of the city. However the Millennium site was curiously detached from this story, and little development seems to have taken place on the Bethel Street frontage during the 13th and 14th centuries. The south and west of the site was walled off by a flint and mortar wall, and probably became part of the property of the Hospital of St Mary in the Fields, established in 1248 and which had became a secular college for clergy by the turn of the 14th century. The main buildings stood Above left. A gilded late 74th or early 75th century brooch, found within a malting oven. Above right. A medieval lime-kiln - the only medieval lime-kiln known from Norwich. further to the south (and are in part incorpo- rated into the 18th century Assembly House) but the area excavated appears to have been turned over to some kind of gardening activity - possibly an orchard. The 15th and 16th centuries saw a renewal of intensive activity at the site, mainly surviving in the form of well and pit digging. Much of the evidence for structures from this period had been removed in the demolition of the area in 1961; because the later Medieval and Post-Medieval buildings were largely timber framed they rested on relatively insubstantial foundations, easily removed in the levelling of the area. After the dissolution and the demise of the Hospital of St Mary, vigorous pit digging also took place in the southern part of the site, mainly for quarrying of sands and gravels. Very significant amounts of Late medieval and Post-medieval pottery were recovered from the excavations of the various pit and well infills. Norwich generally, and this parish in particular, became home to immigrants from the Low Countries during the Reformation; they were locally known as the Strangers. Many of these people were employed in the cloth trade and evidence for this was recov- ered in the form of stone and timber lined pits used as tanks and from a cellar floor containing the macrofossil remains of plants used in the dying process. In summary, the project was the first major site to be excavated in the French Borough. The evidence for Anglo- Viking activity was unexpected, and the establishment of a French Borough on virgin ground in the middle of the 11th century has shown that the postconquest urban growth was rather more complex than is readily apparent from cartographic and documentary sources. 68 ffiru~~~@~@@V170
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Aileen Fox At the age of 93, Lady Aileen Fox has just published her autobiography- Aileen- A Pioneering Archaeologist (not I suspect her choice of title) which proves to be a very good read (published by Gracewing, 2 Southern Avenue, Leominster HR6 OQF, price £12.99) Aileen Henderson - as she was originally - came from a well-off, middle class background. Her father was a successful solicitor but the money came from her mother's family, who had invented those wire contraptions which used to send invoices whizzing back and forth in department stores. She had a happy childhood, growing up in Kensington, and eventually being presented at court. But she had a struggle to do what she really wanted to do, which was to go to university which girls simply did not do in those days. But she was insistent and eventu- ally she went up to Cambridge to read English, in the days when the English department was at its most stimulating. But what should she do when she graduated? Should she become a librarian? Or how about going on an excavation? She consulted a young classics don, Jocelyn Toynbee who sent her off to dig at Richborough. Archaeology rapidly ensnared her - she had found her career. Money was no problem, as she had her own allowance, but one cannot help thinking that the training that she devised for herself was rather broader than that of a modern PhD student. To the British School of Rome for 6 months where she did what I have always wanted to do, that is to 'do' Rome, century by century - though by the end of her time, she had only got as far as Hadrian in the 2nd century AD. On her return, she continued work at Richborough, digging in the summer, writing up reports in the winter in the Antiquaries, helped by the learned young Ralegh Radford - and visiting the opera and ballet in the evenings. She decided she needed to learn German, so she went to Wiesbaden for 6 months She also began to acquire boyfriends - something which in those days one only did after one came down from Cambridge. She fell for Christopher Hawkes, as all the girls did in the 1920s - but he had already fallen for Jacquetta. Her Father took her on a Hellenic cruise organised by Sir Henry Lunn (the origins of Swans Hellenic Cruises) where she found herself going around sites with an older man, Sir Cyril Fox, the director of the National Museum of Wales. The following summer her life changed dramatically. Cyril Fox's wife, Olive, died tragically in a swimming accident, leaving him with two teenage daughters. She wrote a cautious letter of condolences, he replied, and within a year they were married. He was 50, she was 25, and she found she had stepdaughters of 14 and 10. It proved to be an idyllically happy marriage. Cyril Fox was at the height of his powers. He had already written his great book, The Personality of Britain - the beginning of landscape archaeology, and she threw herself into the archaeology of South Wales while at the same time bearing him three sons. In 1946, Cyril Fox retired. Aileen however was still not yet 40 and was invited by lan Richmond to undertake the task of attempting to rescue what she could of Roman Exeter from the debris of the German bombing. She was shortly afterwards offered a post at the University in the expanding History Department and she and Cyril, by now Sir Cyril so she was Lady Fox, moved with their large family to Exeter. Her career at Exeter was sometimes stormy. She wanted to establish a free- standing department of archaeology, but Frank Barlow, the Professor of History whom she describes as 'tyran- nical', would have nothing of it. She continued her teaching, specialising in the Iron Age, excavating Bronze Age huts on Dartmoor and writing her very successful book, on South West England. In 1967 Cyril eventually died and five years later it was time for Aileen to retire, at the age of 65. When one retires it is often a good idea to get away from one's place of work and Aileen did this in style: she went to New Zealand. In New Zealand the Maoris had built hillforts known as 'paa', which bear a striking resemblance to our own Iron Age hill forts and Aileen threw herself into the study of the paa, eventually writing a standard textbook on the subject. For five years she had a part time job at the university museum and then she went back for five more years as a volunteer, publishing a number of unpublished excavations till eventually in 1983 she returned to Exeter and wrote this book which has been waiting for a publisher ever since. It is now updated to bring the story down to her 93rd year. The book is a very good read. There is a nice balance between the story of a happy family life and the public life of an archaeologist, and though it may appear on the surface to be polite and refined, in fact it is full of percipient judgements and juicy titbits of gossip. There will be those who will find it not to their taste, but the rest of us will find it fascinating, while it provides, inciden- tally, an insight into the history of archaeology in the 20th century. Buy it now, and pack it away to read after Christmas pudding. ~t~~~~~@~@@V170 ,-", , 69

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Palace Plain by the NAU in 1981 and described in an excellent article in CASO: it was still standing head high, and is now preserved beneath the Magistrate's Courts.

Another was found still standing, concealed in the core of the Music House on King Street

(described in the article on King Street).

Another eighteen 12th or 13th century houses are known from documents,

though this figure includes both the examples from the

Millennium site. The excavated building from St Martin-at-Palace Plain and the Music

House both illustrate how these stone houses were built - walls of flint rubble with Caen or

Barnack limestone quoins founded on rammed gravel footings. Were the ground floors used for shops or storage with accom-

modation on the first and possibly second floor?

A surprise discovery was a limekiln, set in the middle of the block, 50m south of Bethel

Street. This may be connected with the construction of the stone houses, though we cannot be sure as it is only roughly dated to between the late 12th and 14th century. This is the earliest limekiln to have been discovered in Norwich, as all the other examples from

Norfolk are post-medieval at the earliest. It is also of a very different construction,

consisting of a pit filled with interleaved chalk, oxidised lime and charcoal. Originally it probably also possessed an above ground component, some kind of airtight hood with inlets and outlets.

The high Middle Ages saw the heyday of the French Borough, when it became the wealthiest area of the city. However the

Millennium site was curiously detached from this story, and little development seems to have taken place on the Bethel Street frontage during the 13th and 14th centuries. The south and west of the site was walled off by a flint and mortar wall, and probably became part of the property of the Hospital of St Mary in the Fields, established in 1248 and which had became a secular college for clergy by the turn of the 14th century. The main buildings stood

Above left. A gilded late 74th or early 75th century brooch, found within a malting oven.

Above right. A medieval lime-kiln -

the only medieval lime-kiln known from

Norwich.

further to the south (and are in part incorpo-

rated into the 18th century Assembly House) but the area excavated appears to have been turned over to some kind of gardening activity - possibly an orchard.

The 15th and 16th centuries saw a renewal of intensive activity at the site, mainly surviving in the form of well and pit digging. Much of the evidence for structures from this period had been removed in the demolition of the area in 1961; because the later Medieval and Post-Medieval buildings were largely timber framed they rested on relatively insubstantial foundations, easily removed in the levelling of the area. After the dissolution and the demise of the Hospital of St Mary, vigorous pit digging also took place in the southern part of the site, mainly for quarrying of sands and gravels. Very significant amounts of Late medieval and Post-medieval pottery were recovered from the excavations of the various pit and well infills.

Norwich generally, and this parish in particular, became home to immigrants from the Low Countries during the Reformation; they were locally known as the Strangers. Many of these people were employed in the cloth trade and evidence for this was recov-

ered in the form of stone and timber lined pits used as tanks and from a cellar floor containing the macrofossil remains of plants used in the dying process.

In summary, the project was the first major site to be excavated in the French Borough. The evidence for Anglo- Viking activity was unexpected, and the establishment of a French

Borough on virgin ground in the middle of the 11th century has shown that the postconquest urban growth was rather more complex than is readily apparent from cartographic and documentary sources.

68

ffiru~~~@~@@V170

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