As the major summer season of excavation opened, one of the sites on which work was begun last year (The Ebor Brewery, Aldwark) has reached its concluding phases, another (Bishophill) is to continue over the coming months, while a third (Museum Chambers) has just been started.

From the Ebor Brewery site John Magilton (the Site Supervisor) reports that the a ‘lost’ church of St Helen-on-the-Walls (INTERIM vol 1 no 3 & INTERIM Issue 1-4) has now disappeared for ever, with the completion of excavations on the medieval levels and the consequent removal of the church wall-footings. A further three hundred and fifty burials have been uncovered since the last report in INTERIM and more work may yet be done in the graveyard. But the area once occupied by the church is, after nearly a year’s work, finally down to Roman layers throughout.

Undoubtedly the most exciting feature revealed in the past few months is the mosaic pavement, glimpsed in the bottom of modern sewer trenches and other disturbances as long ago as last August. Unfortunately, medieval graces had destroyed nearly half of the central panel, although sufficient remained to make a fairly accurate reconstruction possible. The panel contains, in the centre, a human head, probably female, encircled by a simple cable pattern technically known as a single guilloche, surrounded by geometric motifs filling the gaps between the central roundel and the square border. It is not known who is represented here but it may be one of the four seasons, often portrayed as women, or Medusa, the snake- haired goddess found at the threshold of buildings to protect their occupants from unwelcome visitors. Suggestions that the lady might be St Helen herself are not taken too seriously, but it is well known that the medieval English population was quite capable of confusing pagan portraits with Christian figures.

The mosaic panel seems to have been part of a carridor of coarse tesserae in a simple chequer pattern about 2m wide and over 9m long, although very few patches of the pattern survive. It is almost certainly of 4^th century date, and had considerable usage. Two coarse tesserae from the corridor had been employed to replace several smaller cubes in the geometric surround to the rounded, and the face had been patched with fragments of coal and a small shard of Samian pottery. The pavement was still in use after many of the smaller cubes had come away from their mortar bedding, and fires had been lit on the floor; a single shard of grass-tempered pottery might perhaps suggest a 5^th century date for this vandalism.

The remains were successfully lifted early in May by Jim Spriggs and Janet Boothby, the Trust's conservators, with help and advice from Terry Suthers of Hull Museum. Nylon gauze was glued on top of the tesserae, which were then chipped away from the mortar bedding, and slid as entire portions on to a sheet of hard- board ready for transportation to the laboratory. This is the first mosaic to be uncovered in York for over 50 years, and, despite its poor condition, must rank as one of the Trust's most important discoveries.

The rest of the church site is by comparison much less spectacular, and disturbance by medieval grave- diggers makes a confusing picture. An area of sandstone tiles and collapsed painted wall plaster has been uncovered under the east end of the church and is at present thought to represent the destruction level of the latest Roman building. An area of opus signinum, a Roman form of concrete flooring incorporating crushed tile fragments and gravel, has been found preserved under the S wall of the church, but probably belongs to a much earlier period than the mosaic. A ditch, about lm wide and a half metre deep has recently been exposed damning parallel to and of the mosaic corridor and turning a corner at the N end of the site to encompass the area of collapsed roofing stone and plaster. At first glance it seems to have been only partially spited up when it was deliberately filled with redeposited natural clay used for the construction of the medieval rampart.

Work is still continuing in a narrow trench linking the church area and brewery cellars to the SW, to test the relationship between the high Roman layers underlying the church, and the 10^th or 11^th century layers, considerably lower, beneath the cellar floors. There are two possibilities - either the church and Roman building are on a small hill, or the early medieval layers are part of the bottom fill of a ditch. If the latter turns out to be the case, as it seems to be, there may be a new explanation of the street-name ‘Aldwark’, formerly thought to refer to the old Roman defences, and of the early description of St Helen’s as being on the ‘Werkdyke’. The existence of an internal ditch here has long been suspected from casual references in medieval documents, in particular from a lease of 1415 to the Merchant Taylors of a 100yd stretch of ‘mote’. Excavation will continue until all the Roman layers within the church area are fully explored.

Rutgers University from the US have undertaken to excavate the central area of the brewery yard where are located the late 17^th century remains of Aldwark House, a mansion of similar size to the surviving Sheldon House in Aldwark, with a view to gaining excavation experience in this country, and to gather comparative material for the excavation of early townhouses and mansions in the US.

York excavation group are continuing in their trench against the E wall of the brewery yard as part of a training excavation led by Peter Addyman. The tail of a clay bank possibly of pre-conquest date has been known there for some time and it is hoped to complete a section through the whole of it. Waterlogged conditions favourable to the preservation of organic materials have so far led to the recovery of a complete wooden bowl associated with some 13^th century pottery, and further finds of this sort may be expected.

From Bishophill Sara Bishop reports that the site matches the Bishophill Car Park excavation in the extraordinary complexity of pits which have been revealed. Since the last report in INTERIM (INTERIM Issue 1-4) several early 13^th century occupation levels have been excavated consisting in one case of a burnt mortar floor, succeeded by a sequence of clay floors which had all sagged spectacularly into a series of underlying pits. As a variation of floor construction, one appeared to be of wood, above which was a compressed layer of heather and wood fragments representing the floor covering that had been trampled down during use. These pits, the medieval alternative to our modern dustbins, honeycombed the S end of the site and the richness of their fill, especially in organic remains, provided ideal material for biological sampling.

The slope of site down to the river and the fact that terracing cannot be discounted, have provided one of the major problems in the ‘phasing’, of the excavation, the attempt to relate structures and features to each other stratigraphically and thus chronologically. The N end of the site illustrated this problem only too well, where the construction of Victorian cellars had obliterated all traces of upper levels, revealing medieval structures immediately below, in the form of a rectangular burnt clay floor outlined by robbed-out walls, of which only the cobble packed foundations remained. However, this building has yet to be related to other structures.

This area yielded a fascinating sequence of discoveries during the removal of a cess pit. Among the stones forming declining to the sides of the cess pit, a well-finished mortar was found and also a medieval lamp in the form of a cube-shaped limestone with five circular depressions cut into its upper surface, each of which would have held oil and a wick for illumination. The digging of the cess pit had cut through a well-built wall of coursed limestone blocks, at the base of which horizontally laid timbers were revealed; the first to be found in any quantity on the site. It appeared that they formed part of the footings or foundations for the wall and had had cobble stones packed around them for extra stability. The general dampness of the soil in this area had preserved the wood in an excellent state. It is hoped that the extension of work will reveal further timberwork, possibly of Anglo-Scandinavian date, a period for which there is so far a scarcity of archaeological evidence both on the site and indeed in the whole of York. This cess pit had itself been cut by a second one built alongside it, evidence that over 600 years ago the problem of sewage disposal was ever recurrent. Both these cess pits had been preceded by an earlier stone building of which only one corner was traced, represented by two robbed-out walls at right angles. This, as with the other buildings so far excavated, was aligned closely to the property boundary numbing N - S dove to the river.

Other interesting features excavated in this area included a 13^th century burnt clay hearth with a cobbled surround. Immediately above this, two more hearths of similar date were excavated, but in this case of a different character, being constructed of tiles-on-edge. This method of construction was again paralleled at the base of a pit.

Although the use to which the buildings were put - whether purely domestic or industrial - still remains uncertain, a number of objects found during the past months easily stimulates the imagination. These include several atone spindle whorls, a fish hook, a bronze buckle and pennanular bracelet, bone pins and knife handles and two silver rings. One of these, a man’s, ring, was in such a good state of preservation, with no hint of metal corrosion and with its transparent blue stone still intact, that it might have been lost only yesterday. The other, with a delicately wrought interlace pattern around its circumference, was smaller and presumably a lady's ring. The fact that Roman pottery and even coins occur quite frequently in the early medieval deposits need cause no surprise, especially in the presence of so many deep refuse pits, for many of these would have cut into and disturbed the top of Roman destruction levels. But before these levels and their underlying structures can be revealed, our medieval complex must first be patiently unraveled. Work continues accordingly.

Back on the N side of the river Tony Sumpter and his team have started work on the site of the recently demolished Museum Chambers, where Newham Properties Ltd have kindly granted excavation permission.

This important area, at the corner of present-day Lendal and Museum Street and straddling the SW defences of the Roman fortress, has already been subjected to a good deal of investigation. Earlier excavations, conducted by Mr Peter Wenham in 1960, revealed a massive interval tower (one of six on the SW wall) with a six-sided front projecting beyond the wall. The base of this tower has already been laid bare again with the aid of a mechanical excavation, which was also able to expose the innermost clambers, sealed for a century and a half understanding buildings until their recent demolition. Further excavation of the site for the Trust by Steve Coll in 1972 (INTERIM vol 1 no l) and by Tony Sumpter in 1973 (INTERIM vol l no 2) produced details of the defensive ditch system and the location of a presumed barrack block, respectively.

The present operation aims to coordinate and extend the picture we already have of the area and to improve our knowledge of its chronology. In particular, any new evidence pertaining to the less well-known early defences will be welcomed.

An unexpected bonus of more recent date was the discovery, on the first day of digging, of the Festival Concert Rooms’ foundation stone, laid in 1824. The Concert Rooms, one of Yorker cultural centres in the 19^th century, featured many famous literary and musical figures of the day including Dickens, Thackeray and Jenny Lind. Newspaper accounts of the foundation ceremony traced by David Palliser, the Trust historian, record the deposition by the Lord Mayor of a shilling, a half crown and a sovereign. All three coins were found, their original lustre still preserved, sealed beneath a bronze plaque on the face of the stone. Excavation proceeds.

Alongside its systematic excavation programme the Trust maintains a watchful eye on trenches dug for building and drainage operations throughout the city. It has been rewarded in the past few months with free glimpses into Late Saxon and Early medieval York at three sites: a builder’s trench in Cumberland Street produced a lava quern (probably an import from the Rhineland in the Saxon period when they were the subject of a flourishing trade) and a series of timbers whose annual growth rings are being studied now by Miss Ruth Jones. Nearby, in the pit excavated for a new lift shaft in Harding’s on Coppergate, were found more articles of approximately this same date including shoes, textiles and pottery; while two small holes dug behind Lloyd’s Bank in Lendal exposed a whole series of human burial, almost certainly identifying, for the first time, the location of the burial ground of the Austin Friars, a very worthwhile reward for the vigilance of those Trust members who just can't pass by a hole in the ground without casting a critical glance over the edged!

A.G. MacGregor