Sheriton Holmes, Treasurer, in Account with the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Dividends and Balance, December, 1893, as per Pass Book Audited and certified. J. A. DIXON. 23rd January, 1894. R. W. SISSON. £ s. d. 42 18 5 2 19 10 £45 18 3 SUNDRIES Cheque Book Gibson, J. P., for Excavations at Mucklebank Turret Do. Income Tax Surtees do. do. Reid, for General Printing Nicholson, FIRST REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO MAKE EXCAVATIONS PER LINEAM VALLI, MADE TO THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF NEWCASTLE ON THE 31ST DAY OF JANUARY, 1894. The members of the Committee of the Northumberland Excavation Fund, in presenting the report of their first year's working, are not able to boast of any great discoveries, but they hope that their slender band of subscribers will feel that their scanty funds have been judiciously expended. The chief object pressed upon their attention by their correspondents at Oxford and elsewhere was the determination of the character and composition of the vallum which so mysteriously accompanies the Roman murus. In this earthwork two series of cuttings have been made, one about a quarter of a mile east of Heddon-on-the-Wall, and the other at Down Hill, a little to the east of Hunnum. By the former cuttings, owing to the fortunate presence of a seam of fire-clay (through which the fosse of the vallum was cut, and some portions of which were found both in the northern agger and the southern), it has been possible to determine satisfactorily the manner of disposing of the earth which was dug out of the trench, and to show that the ditch and its northern and southern mounds were made at the same time. There were also found in the northern mounds at this place, near the ancient level of the surface, two objects of considerable interest, one a bronze axe-head, socketed and looped, and the other a flint scraper. These curious relics have suggested a question whether it is possible that the vallum can after all be a work of the pre-Roman period. The cuttings at Down Hill were made at the point where the vallum makes its remarkable curve of divergence from the line of the murus. The interesting feature in connection with these excavations has been the discovery of traces of a road running east and west seventeen feet wide and parallel with the Wall. Is this road of Roman origin? It has a clay foundation and consists of a sandstone pitching, similar to the bottom pitching of a modern macadamised road, but without any hard metal on the top. It has been traced from the Carr Hill farm westward along the 1 See P. 338. |