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THE CHURCH OF ST MARY, Prittlewell is now superficially a late medieval building, but it has long been recognised that the N wall of the chancel contains fragments of Anglo-Saxon work, while the nave retains early Romanesque fabric. It is demonstrated here that these early structures represent two discrete axially aligned churches. The Anglo-Saxon church at Prittlewell has been assumed to date from the 7th century, but comparison with similar church buildings points instead to a 10th-century date, suggestive of an absence of continuity between the 7th-century ‘princely’ burial discovered nearby and the foundation of the church. There is no documentation of the church before the Domesday survey, but it is tentatively suggested that a church at Prittlewell was founded in the 10th century as a successor to the nearby minster at Wakering, whose fortunes were then in decline. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historic Building Investigations and selective excavations carried out during recent conservation works have shed new light on St Mary's Guildhall, Boston (Lincolnshire), built by an internationally significant religious fraternity in one of the most important ports of medieval England. Dendrochronological dating of the guildhall indicates a construction date of c 1390. This is significantly earlier than had previously been supposed and suggests a close link between the construction of the guildhall and the grant of a royal licence of incorporation to the guild in 1392. It makes the guildhall one of the earliest securely dated brick buildings in Lincolnshire and is important evidence of investment during a period when Boston was experiencing severe economic decline. Multidisciplinary analysis of the archaeology of the building and some of the guild's surviving documentary records enables a reconstruction of the original form and function of the guildhall and its now-lost material culture. Comparative analysis of Boston with other surviving provincial guildhalls begins to shed light on the emergence of a distinctive type of public architecture in pre-modern England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses medieval archaeological projects and discoveries in Great Britain and Ireland that took place during 2007. Several groups present reports on their activities for the year. The Castle Studies Group held an Annual Conference in April 2007, took part in a conference commemorating the 700th anniversary of the death of King Edward I of England, and studied châteaux forts in the Languedoc region of France. The Finds Research Group held a meeting in May 2007 and discussed finds from Wharram Percy and Whitbey Abbey at a meeting in October 2007. The Medieval Pottery Research Group held a conference and annual general meeting (AGM) in June 2007 in which the movement of pottery across medieval Europe was discussed.

A SURVEY of archaeological ceramic thin sections held by institutions and individuals in the United Kingdom was undertaken in the early 1990s by the City of Lincoln Archaeology Unit and funded by English Heritage. Over 6,000 thin sections of Anglo-Saxon or medieval date (or reports on their analysis) were located. For the Middle to Late Anglo-Saxon and the post-Conquest Periods, these studies have confirmed that pottery production was carried out in a limited number of centres and that most pottery, including handmade coarsewares, was therefore produced for trade. The distances over which pottery was carried vary from period to period but were actually as high or higher in the Middle to Late Anglo-Saxon Period as in the 13th to 14h centuries. However, for the Early Anglo-Saxon Period (and the Middle Anglo-Saxon Period outside of eastern England) the evidence of ceramic petrology is equivocal and requires more study. These 6,000–odd thin sections represent a resource which could be used for various future studies, some of which are discussed here, and as an aid to their further use a database containing information on the sampled ceramics, their location and publications of their analyses will be published online through Internet Archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]