The Causewayed Enclosure at Orsett, Essex, was trial trenched in 1975 to determine the state of site preservation and confirm its postulated Neolithic date and site sequence. The enclosure consisted of three incomplete circuits of discontinuous ditch with an associated timber palisade slot lying inside and concentric to the middle ditch. Within the interior was an oval post hole structure of a contemporary date. Quantities of Mildenhall style pottery and flint artifacts of the mid third millennium b.c. were recovered from the primary ditch silts and other features. A small quantity of Late Neolithicf Early Bronze Age wares came from the secondary ditch silts and the interior. Later phases on the site were represented by unenclosed Early Iron Age occupation, a Middle Iron Age sub-rectangular enclosure and Saxon ring-ditch burials.

T HE recognition by R. E. M. Wheeler in 1920 that the massive Norman keep at Colchester encapsulated the podium of the Temple of Claudius stimulated Dr P. G. Laver, his collaborator in an earlier study of the colonia, 1 to excavate in and around the keep during the 1920's and 30's. Some of the results were published by the late Rex Hull in Roman Colchester (1958). At the time of Hulj's death in 1976, the writer was preparing the drawings to accompany a paper 2 which included a summary report by Hull on the excavations undertaken within and south of the keep by Laver, assisted by E. J. Rudsdale, in 1931-3. Subsequently much additional information about these excavations came to light in Colchester Museum. This raised a number of important questions, which led in 1977 to one of Laver's trenches in the sub-crypt being reopened and extended, and the cutting of a trench in front of the keep. Mrs B. R. K. Niblett (nee Dunnett) also made available the results of her excavations on the west side of the Temple precinct in 1964 and 1969. The evidence from these sources relevant to the history of the site in the Roman period is presented here; and in conjunction with previously published material has been used as the basis of a re-appraisal of its development, summarized in TABLE I. A similar study of the post-Roman history of the site has recently appeared. 3 Much of the discussion is necessarily speculative, being intended primarily to advance hypotheses which may be tested in future excavations and by further analysis of the surviving structures. *My thanks are due to David Clarke, curator of Colchester and Essex Museum, and his staff, for their assistance in making available the records and finds in their charge, for arranging the excavations in 1977, and for their forebearance over the inconvenience which stemmed from them; to the Inspectorate of Ancient Monuments, Department of the Environment, for permission to excavate in the Castle Park, which is a scheduled Ancient Monument, and for their willingness to fund those parts of this report which relate to grant-aided rescue excavations; to Justine Bayley of the Ancient Monuments Laboratory and John Evans of the NorthEast London Polytechnic for their work on various aspects of ancient technology which arose from the project, and for their reports included here; to the other contributors of specific studies whose names appear at the head of this paper, and also to Dr R. M. Luff, R. Reece and H. Toller; Dr and Mrs W. J. Rodwell, for their help with the 1977 excavation and their comments on a draft of this paper; to John Callaghan, our draughtsman, then employed under a STEP scheme to assist in the publication of backlog excavations; and last but not least, to Philip Crummy, Director of the Colchester Archaeological Trust, for his assistance in making available his own observations on the temple and castle, and his help in general to one who is a mere interloper in the archaeology of Colchester. 1 'Roman Colchester', JRS ix (1919), 139-69. 2 'Colchester Castle: some unpubl...

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun,The history of Audley End can be divided into three principal phases: the Tudor house, a conversion of the buildings of Walden Abbey, c.I538-I605; the Jacobean house, built by Thomas, ist Earl of Suffolk, in two stages after c. i605 and held by successive Earls until I745, save for the period 1667-1701 when it was a Royal Palace; and the rehabilitation and later expansion of the surviving core of the Jacobean house from 1752 onwards, by Elizabeth, Countess of Portsmouth, and her successors. The aim of this paper is to give a preliminary account of some of the results of research in progress for the Department of the Environment into the first two of these phases.The study began as the investigation by an archaeologist of the evidence for the site and form of Walden Abbey, but later essentially archaeological techniques of investigation were applied to the surviving building as a whole. Structural details visible in floor and roof voids have been recorded, and correlated with records made during maintainance work undertaken over the past thirty years. The use of particular materials and techniques can now frequently be seen as diagnostic of a single period of work, making it possible to correlate one observed sequence with another. Such periods can be broadly dated by reference to associated architectural and decorative details, and more precisely dated if they can be related to, or seen to be 'stratified' between, the documented alterations. There are still major areas of uncertainty, but these should steadily diminish, since the principle has now been established that all structural features exposed or replaced during maintainance and other building work will be recorded, whether or not they appear to be significant at the time. Orthodox excavation has so far been undertaken only at the east end of the south wing, in connection with the reconstruction of the decayed ground floor. The results were almost entirely related to the post-I745 phase, and will be reported elsewhere in due course. Particular attention has been paid to the dating of the modelled plaster ceilings and their associated friezes. In addition to 'archaeological' investigation of their relationships to other structural elements, a preliminary programme of scientific analysis of samples has been undertaken by Mr J Evans of the North-East London Polytechnic, for the Ancient Monuments Laboratory. The results show that classification according to the characteristics of the sand and other constituents is possible, at least at Audley End. Two principal groups emerged, representing Jacobean and eighteenth-nineteenthcentury work respectively. The preliminary results are...

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