SummaryFour seasons of excavation and structural study in St. Peter's Church have revealed a complex sequence, beginning with domestic occupation of the Pagan Saxon period, followed by a Middle Saxon settlement enclosure with adjacent cemetery of Christian character. In the later tenth century a three-celled turriform church was built in the cemetery, after the exhumation of graves covering its intended site. Related features in the cemetery include the foundation of a large free-standing cross, a group of wells and an oven, probably for baking bread, all grouped to the east of the chancel. Some of the pre-Conquest graves yielded evidence of probable barkwood coffins built with clenches and roves, while some twenty further graves contained rectangular timber coffins in varying states of preservation. Several were in near-perfect condition and have yielded exceptionally good evidence for techniques and tools employed by Anglo-Saxon carpenters.The extant Saxon and medieval fabric of the church has been recorded in considerable detail, providing an insight into building and scaffolding methods, particularly of the tenth century. Excavation has revealed the complex development of the medieval church and its internal layout; and 1,326 graves, spanning a millennium, have been investigated.

The Antonine Itinerary has long been used by scholars as the principal source of place-names for Roman Britain. Most of the names it contains have been satisfactorily attributed to known archaeological sites with the aid of epigraphic evidence or the inter-settlement distances recorded in the itinera, or by the survival of the name in a recognisable form. It has generally been recognised that distances between any two given places are not always found to be consistent between the various itinera, and they frequently only approximate to the actual distance on the ground. Consequently, the Antonine Itinerary has never been used as a precision document, until Professor A. L. F. Rivet performed a valuable and long-needed service when he undertook the first detailed examination of the British section. Two side-issues of particular interest emerged from his study. First, that it is possible to recognise and correct at least some of the post-Roman scribal errors, greatly improving the accuracy and hence the usefulness of the Itinerary as a whole. Secondly, it was shown that there is an unexplained, but consistent shortfall (or ‘minus error’) in the majority of the distances quoted between any two adjacent places, and that in many instances the total for the iter falls seriously short of the total mileage for the journey in question, Since it is impossible to believe that the Roman mile was of differing length in different provinces, it must be concluded that measurements between towns, forts and even small settlements, were not taken from centre to centre, but from some point beyond the main area of occupation. Furthermore, the Itinerary shortfalls seem to vary in proportion to the size of town being approached.

Excavation within the Gothic nave of Lichfield Cathedral in 2003 revealed three phases of masonry building ante-dating the Norman period. These are likely to relate to the church of St Peter, which Bede described in 731 as housing the timber shrine to St Chad, fifth bishop of Mercia (d 672). A rectangular, timber-lined pit found on the central axis of the building might represent a crypt or burial chamber beneath the shrine. Buried in a small pit alongside this were three fragments of a bas-relief panel of Ancaster limestone, carved with the figure of an angel. They comprise half of the left-hand end of a hollow, box-like structure that had a low-coped lid. This is interpreted as a shrine chest associated with the cult of St Chad. The sculpture, which was broken and buried in, or before, the tenth century, is in remarkably fresh condition, allowing for an in-depth analysis of its original painted embellishment and for an assessment of the monument in terms of its iconography and stylistic affinities, and thus the possible conditions of its production. It is argued that the surviving portion of the panel represents the archangel Gabriel, and that it is one half of an Annunciation scene.

SummaryTotal excavation of the nave, crossing, and transepts of Hadstock church in 1974, together with a detailed examination of parts of the upstanding fabric, revealed that this well-known Anglo-Saxon building is not a single-period structure, as has long been assumed. Three periods of Anglo-Saxon work are now known, the earliest of which probably belongs to the pre-Danish era: it comprised a large, five-cell cruciform church which, it is suggested, may be part of the seventh-century monastery founded by St. Botolph, at Icanho. Rebuilding on a monumental scale took place in the early eleventh century and the possibility is discussed that this was Canute's minster, dedicated in 1020. The church was extensively repaired in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, following the collapse of the central tower. Subsequently the decline in the size and importance of Hadstock as a village saved the church from further extensive alteration.

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