In September 1925, Mr. Thomas Jenkins, a carpenter of Llangorse, Breconshire, recovered a dug-out canoe of oak from Llangorse Lake. This lake is situated six miles to the east-ward of the county town. It is about 500 ft. above sea-level, in the valley and near the source of the stream known as Afon Llynfi, which flows northward (into the Wye) along the western escarpment of the Black Mountains. The lake is a mile in length and in greatest breadth, and is of glacial origin.

When Birtsmorton Church, Worcestershire, was rebuilt in the fourteenth century, a number of its windows were filled with painted glass of the period. The only portions now in situ are the arms of the Ruyhales, the lords of the manor, in the tracery lights of some of the windows in the nave, and of one in the north transept. What remained of the contents of the main lights, together with various fragments in the style of the fifteenth century, had been collected, perhaps early in the last century, in the east window of the chancel, where facsimile drawings, partly coloured, were made of them for Dr. Prattinton, whose Worcestershire collections are in our library. When the church was restored in 1877, the east window was rebuilt on a new pattern, but the glass was not replaced in it, and ultimately found its way into the adjoining ‘Birtsmorton Court’, where the present owner Mr. F. B. Bradley-Birt discovered it lying loose, and had the fragments releaded so as to form two panels. When I first saw the latter, I recognized that they contained the principal elements of the drawings in the Prattinton collection with which I had recently made acquaintance.

The knife-handle to be considered here is said to have been found fifty or sixty years ago at Brinkhill, Lincolnshire. It is 4·6 in. in length, pierced longitudinally, and carved on all sides with a representation in high relief of the Tree of Jesse.

Jesse is shown seated on a chair with upright back and the side ornamented with linen panelling, his right arm on the arm of the chair, his head resting on his hand. His left arm encloses the trunk of the tree, which issues from his breast, the branches extending scrollwise to receive the other figures, which are thirteen in number culminating in the crowned Virgin seated with the Child.

After the late Lord Curzon had bought Tattershall Castle as an empty shell, he had it roofed, the windows were glazed, and floors were inserted, so that the interior has regained something of its original use and appearance, and, in particular, it is now possible to examine in comfort the famous chimney-pieces which were rescued and replaced by Lord Curzon. As is well known, these are decorated with all the heraldry belonging to the builder of the castle, Ralph Lord Cromwell (1394–1456), including the badge of a purse to show that he was Lord Treasurer under Henry VI from 1433 to 1443. When I saw these for the first time in 1924 I noticed that on the chimney-piece of the ground-floor chamber the panels with the badge, alternating with those which contain the coats of arms, show the purse wreathed or framed by two branches or sprays of naturalistic foliage (pl. XXVI); and the same feature appears in the chimney-piece on the first floor; while on the third floor the same plant is associated with the purse in the spandrels of the fireplace arch. It is not represented on the fourth chimney-piece. The contrast between this natural leafage and the conventional carved foliage on the other parts of the chimney-pieces is very marked, and it is obviously intended to represent a real plant having a tall stem with narrow, pointed leaves. I felt sure that it must have a meaning, and this idea was confirmed when afterwards I went into the church, which was also built by Lord Cromwell, and saw, among the remains of the original painted glass, now collected in the east window, the Treasurer's purse again wreathed by similar sprays, treated rather more formally.

In January 1925, Mr. J. E. Ainsworth, of the Braye Road, Alderney, reported that an exceptionally high tide, accompanied by a heavy gale, had undermined a portion of the cliff-face at Longy Bay near the Nunnery, on the south-east coast of Alderney, and had exposed a number of small stone cists in the second, or lower, band of black soil some 10 ft. below the upper surface of the cliff-face, and about 4 ft. above mean high spring-tide level.

So many of the local specimens in the Museum collections have been figured recently by our Fellow Dr. Cyril Fox in his book, The Archaeology of the Cambridge Region, that it is unnecessary in most cases to republish them; but a few have been received by the Museum since his book was published, and there are also in the collections a considerable number of specimens from districts outside East Anglia.