Objects
People have been fascinated by placenames for centuries. Although they tend to start out as meaningful (Newtown, anyone?), they often change more slowly than languages and preserve old-fashioned forms whose meaning is lost. Who could guess that York comes from a Celtic original, Eburacon? And that it refers to a yew tree (eburos)? Or, for that matter, that the present name of #Baldock comes from the medieval French name for Baghdad, Baudac?
The scientific study of placenames began only about 1900. Before this, people often made wild guesses that involved just about any language (Hebrew and Phoenician were popular) rather than those known to have been used in a particular area. There are five that we know to have been spoken in Britain from prehistory to the present day: a dialect of Celtic known as Brittonic (the ancestor of modern Welsh and Cornish), Latin, Old English (the basis for the English spoken today), Old East Norse (the language of the Vikings, and ancestor of modern Danish and Swedish) and Old French. All these languages have left traces in our English placenames.
When it comes to researching placenames from Roman times, we depend on a limited number of documents and a few inscriptions. The documents include the Γεωγραφικὴ Ύφήγησις (‘World-drawing Guide’, generally referred to as the Geography) by Klaudios Ptolemaios (usually Latinised as Claudius Ptolemaeus and Anglicised as Ptolemy), the Itinerarium prouinciarum Antonini Augusti, better known in English as the Antonine Itinerary, a map known as the Peutinger Table, an anonymous Cosmographia produced in Ravenna around 700 (hence known as the Ravenna Cosmography), and an untitled late Roman administrative text known as the Notitia Dignitatum (‘List of Offical Posts’).
Ptolemy lists a people whom he calls Κατυευχλανοὶ (Catyeuchlani, a misspelling of Catuu̯ellauni), the people of Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire), and names two of their towns. They are Σαλῖναι (Salinae, literally ‘salt-works’, so probably somewhere near the Wash) and Οὐρολάνιον (U̯rolani̯um, a misspelling of U̯erolami̯um), St Albans. Several of the routes in the Antonine Itinerary also name U̯erolami̯um and a place twelve Roman miles to the north, Durocobriu̯is, which can be identified with Dunstable. The Ravenna Cosmography gives the spelling Virolanium for St Albans.
Literary works from the Classical world rarely mention placenames (other than the name of Britain). The historian Tacitus mentions how Boudica sacked U̯erulami̯um and Gildas, a British writer who lived about AD 500, describes St Alban as uerolamiensem, ‘from St Albans’. There is a famous but broken inscription from the Roman forum at St Albans, published in The Roman Inscriptions of Britain volume 3 as 3123. Two alternative readings of the two-letter fragment VE could be CATV]VE[LLAVNORVM (‘of the Catuu̯ellauni’) or …]VE[ROLAMIVM (‘St Albans’). A wooden writing-tablet from London refers to uerolamio, while a drinking vessel from a burial at Dunstable was donated by DINDROFORVM VE(rolamiensium) (‘the St Albans carpenters’). In terms of Hertfordshire, that is the total as currently recognised.
However, there is another piece of evidence that has hitherto been overlooked. It was published in The Roman Inscriptions of Britain volume 2 as numbers 2411.261 to 2411.263. It consists of three identical lead sealings, stamped on two faces using the same die, reading C·VIC on one face and SPVS on the other. The dot, better called a medial point or interpunct, was a typical word separator used until the second century. All three were found at Clothall Common in Baldock, two of them in the same pit. They have a hole running through the length and another from one face to the other, perhaps for string or twine used to tie documents into a bundle or to keep wood-and-wax writing tablets closed.
The reverse of one of the lead seals, reading SPVS
The publication suggests that meaning of the seals is obscure, although the C might stand for Latin cohors, a military unit. Given the lack of Roman military activity in Baldock (as in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire generally), this is a very unlikely explanation. The American Society of Greek and Latin Epigraphy lists over 250 words that C can represent! VIC has ‘only’ twenty-nine possible expansions, while SPVS seems to be meaningless. This is not going to be an easy riddle to solve.
What are we then to make of these seals? The first thing to note is that a lead seal, made using the same die in all three instances, was probably an official issue of some sort. We have already ruled out the military explanation, so in what circumstances would a government department or similar entity put out a document needing to be sealed? How we might explain them depends on how we choose to expand the abbreviation C·VIC.
Some years ago, I suggested in print (always a hostage to fortune!) that it might stand for C[uria] Vic[…], ‘the assembly of Vic…’, with Vic… as the lost name of Roman Baldock. Alternatively, we might expand C… Vic[anorum], ‘of the townspeople of C…’, where C… is the town’s name. Both these solutions leave SPVS unexplained. For this reason, I have given up on that explanation.
Might it be that SPVS contains the ancient name of Baldock? Although this seems plausible at first sight, we need to think of what language that name would have first been coined in. The answer has to be Brittonic, as the settlement was founded in the decades around 100 BC, when the locals spoke that branch of the Celtic language group. In that case we have a problem. Although the Proto-Indo-European language had words beginning sp-, it developed into f– in Brittonic. No words beginning in sp– exist in any of the ancient Celtic dialects, so SPVS cannot be an abbreviation for the Brittonic name of Baldock.
The clue came quite serendipitously, in realising that the modern name Hitchin is not Germanic, and thus not from old English. Place-name experts have been puzzling over its meaning for centuries. The Swedish scholar Eilert Ekwall suggested almost a century ago that the name of the River Hiz is the clue. He compared it with the Modern Welsh sych, which means ‘dry’, and suggested that the town was named from the river, pointing out that some Celtic words beginning with s– now begin with h-. Unfortunately for his argument, sych (from Brittonic *siccos) is not one of them. If the river really had derived from this word, the town would now be called Sitchin. We also know that the name, first recorded in the seventh century as the name of a people, not a town or a river.
In Brittonic, there was a special grade of s that did develop over time into h. Thus the ancient name of the River Severn, Sabrina, became Hafren in Welsh. So to explain Hitchin, we need to find a word that originally had initial s– that became h-, and which also had –cc– in the middle. There is indeed such a word, *succos in Brittonic, hwch in Welsh. It means ‘pig’. While this doesn’t sound like a name that people would want, we need to look at how other Iron Age peoples in the British Isles gave themselves names.
Thus we find that the people of the Lleyn Peninsula in Gwynedd, the Cancani, were the ‘pony people’ and the Caireni of Sutherland were the ‘sheep people’. These people perhaps prided themselves on their breeds of these animals, so why not the people of the Hitchin area? The archaeology of Baldock bears this out. In most places in southern Britain, the emphasis on animal husbandry was on cattle, but in northern Hertfordshire, it was on pigs. Far from being an insult, being known as the Succi̯i, ‘the pig people’ or ‘the pig-breeders’, was an expression of local pride.
In this roundabout way, it becomes possible to understand what SPVS means. We can divide it S(ucci̯orum) Pus(…), ‘Pus… of the Succi̯i’. There are records of several Celtic names beginning Pus…, and many Brittonic placenames incorporate personal names. Names such as Pusa, Pusilla, Pusinna, Pusintulus and Pusio (not all necessarily Celtic, as some could be Latin in origin) could underly the ancient name of Baldock. We could be looking at something like *Pusinni̯on, *Pusi̯onacon or something like that. While we haven’t got the full name, it’s almost within reach.
What the seals tell us is that the Curia Vicanorum Succi̯orum Pus…ensis, ‘the council of the townspeople of Pus… of the Succi̯i’, issued the documents that these seals attached to. They show that the vicus – the lowest grade of self-governing settlement – had its own curia – a citizen assembly – representing the local people – the Succi̯i – based in their principal market town. They fell within the larger unit of the Catuu̯ellauni, based at U̯erolami̯um, but maintained their self-identity past the collapse of Roman rule in the fifth century and into the early medieval period as the Hicce. In a way, that identity remains with the fiercely proud ‘Hitchinites’ of today.
When people think about museums, most people think ‘Old’. People picture photographs of dour looking Victorians or broken pieces of pottery from the Roman era. Museums did not stop collecting in Victorian times and we continue to chart the history of our towns and villages into the modern era. We recently acquired this concert ticket for the appearance of the band The Damned, who played at the Regal in Hitchin on Wednesday 6 October 1982.
This ticket tells us about local history in ‘modern times’ as well as the emergence of punk and later goth subcultures.
The Regal was a cinema which opened on the site of what is now the Regal Chambers GP Surgery in 1939. Up and down the country the cinema industry boomed with 1.64 billion admissions seen in the year 1946. From the 1950s onwards the popularity of cinemas declined as televisions became cheaper and towns, often home to a few cinemas each, saw the mass disappearance of cinemas from the high street. As part of this slump The Regal closed as a cinema in 1977. The cinema industry saw its worst year in 1984. At that stage, the musical second life of The Regal was almost at an end as well. The Regal had reopened as a concert hall and recording studio in 1980, perhaps hoping the reinvention would allow them to tap into the exciting music market and appeal to new and younger audiences. Despite the change The Regal closed once again, for the final time, in 1985.
The Regal
The Damned were the first punk band to release a single, New Rose, beating the Sex Pistols release of Anarchy in the UK by five weeks in 1976. In December 1976, The Damned were set to be an opener for the Sex Pistols on their Anarchy in the UK tour. The tour marked a fascinating moment in music history. Only seven of the scheduled twenty gigs took place as many were cancelled by local authorities or concert venues out of a ‘moral panic’, largely based on the fact that the Sex Pistols had sworn on live television, goaded by the presenter to ‘say something outrageous’. University heads, venue controllers and council leaders feared violence and vandalism and more, should they have let the tour reach their town. A scheduled appearance of the tour in Caerphilly in Wales was protested against by a Christian group who sang carols and prayed for the very souls of those involved. A year later The Damned supported Marc Bolan (of T-Rex fame) on tour. The Damned also appeared on Bolan’s ITV television show Marc in 1977. Bolan was looking to revive his career and draw the attention of younger audiences unfamiliar with the height of his popularity, five years previously, but died tragically in a car crash that September.
In 1982, the year of their appearance in Hitchin, The Damned began to change. Captain Sensible, the main songwriter, scored a solo number one hit with Happy Talk, leading to a solo career. He drifted away from The Damned in the mid 1980s, playing a last concert in 1984. Meanwhile, the band adapted to the emerging Goth scene, with singer Dave Vanian’s already Dracula-like stage persona fitting in well with the new subculture.
Captain Sensible with trademark red beret and glasses, pictured in 2006
Following the departure of Captain Sensible, lead singer Dave Vanian, who was born in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire took the band in the direction of gothic rock. Influencing the style of the goth subgroup. In 1976 the music magazine NME stated that Vanian “resembles a runaway from the Addams Family”. Vanian, a name derived from ‘Transylvanian’, adopted an on and off-stage fashion style that some compared to a vampire from classic horror films. You can see the obvious comparisons on the pictures below. It Is amazing to think that on an October Wednesday in 1982, in some of its final days, The Regal played host to a band that in its own way shaped music history. Hitchin caught a glimpse of the emergence of Punk and Goth and the beginnings of their music and fashions that continue to endure worldwide.
Dave Vanian
1930s Dracula film star Bela Lugosi
In October 2014, Phil Kirk was metal detecting on a field in the hills south-west of Royston, when he encountered a strong signal. Digging down about 15 inches, he found the top of something bronze. Thinking initially that it might only be a modern filter from a car, it turned out to be a complete Roman jug, missing its handle. On lifting it, he spotted the handle and bowl of a bronze patera (a dish for pouring libations). Next to this lay the battered bottom half of a large jug and last of all a third jug in four or five pieces, apparently crushed by a large flint, with a trefoil mouth. All four vessels came out from a hole no more than 50 cm across. Quite by chance, the broken base of the third vessel matched a bronze object found a few months earlier and about ten metres away, which had been discarded under a nearby hedge as probably twentieth century but which was the top half of the jug.
Excavating the objects
It was clear that this was something important, so Phil contacted Julian Watters, Finds Liaison Officer for Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. Julian then contacted Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews, then Archaeology Officer for North Hertfordshire District Council, who agreed that it would be a good idea to conduct a small excavation around the hole. So, on a cold morning in late October, we went up to the site, accompanied by another detectorist, and expanded the original hole to a one metre square.
During the course of the digging, the missing jug handle turned up but it proved impossible to find an edge to the hole that the bronze vessels had originally been buried in. The vessels also appeared to have been covered with massive flint nodules. It was clear that a larger excavation would be needed to find out the context of these objects. Owing to other commitments, it impossible to return before the second week of November, not a good time to be excavating on an exposed hilltop.
Iron lamp holder
This time, the farmer scraped off the shallow topsoil over an area around 3 m square and the team set to work removing the last traces of topsoil. Soon, the rim of a glass bottle became visible, then more shards of glass. Cleaning quickly revealed a group of glass bottles towards the south-western corner of the grave. Next, an iron lamp with a crescent decoration on the suspension bar and wall mounting bracket was exposed towards the centre of the pit. It had evidently been in one piece when it was placed in the ground, but the weight of the flint nodules above it had broken it into three parts.
To the east of where the bronze vessels had been found were two layers of hobnails, from a pair of shoes placed one on top of the other. There was also a figure-of-eight shaped buckle with each shoe, probably a means of fastening the straps. Next, a bronze corner binding from a wooden tray became visible; the wood had decayed, although some was preserved around the binding, which will allow us to find out what sort of wood was used to make it. The patera had stood above another corner of the tray and some of the fragments of metalwork recovered in October that we thought were part of the patera probably came from the binding in this corner.
The millefiori dishes
On top of the tray stood a shattered but otherwise complete shallow dish, about the size of a saucer. At first, it appeared to be iridescent from decay, but it quickly became obvious that it was composed of coloured glass in a millefiori or mosaic style. Individual rods of dark purple, white, yellow, blue and red glass had been fused into diamond patterns before blowing, creating a spectacular if rather psychedelic effect. A second mosaic glass dish sat next to it. Underneath them and on top of the second were traces of something organic and decayed that was not the wood of the box, which mimicked the pattern of the glass. Perhaps it was the remains of a cloth used to wrap these unusual dishes.
Inside the box were the shattered fragments of two clear glass cups and a pair of blue glass handles, which were perhaps part of one of the cups. There were also fragments of a lava object in very poor condition, which crumbled into fragments when it was lifted. It was too small to be a complete quernstone and does not seem to have been a decorative object, so it is unclear what it was or why it was in the box. Underneath it, at the bottom of the box, was a silver denarius of Trajan (98-117).
Next to the box was a collection of glass bottles. The largest was hexagonal, measuring 23 cm across, with a mouth 10 cm in diameter. It contained cremated bone, which we assumed to be human. Remarkably, there was a worn bronze coin sitting on top of the bone: it is an issue of Marcus Aurelius and appears to date from 174-5, although we will only be able to confirm this after it has been cleaned and conserved. The bottle was wrapped and lifted with the contents still inside it, which were excavated in the museum. It contained large fragments of cremated bone, from an adult, and two more bronze coins.
Next to the hexagonal bottle stood an unusual octagonal bottle, a form only rarely found in Britain. South of this were two square bottles, one with the letters IΛƧ (IAS) on its base and with very clear traces of a whitish residue inside it, and a rectangular bottle. The bottle with the lettered base is exactly paralleled by an example from an early third-century ditch at Cramond, near Edinburgh. The glass of the bottles was the typical Romano-British greenish glass, variable in thickness but with few air bubbles, and all of mid to late second century styles. All the glassware was completely shattered by pressure from above.
A pile made from some of the flints
The reason for the shattering was a layer of large flint nodules. At first, we thought that they were part of the grave packing, placed between the different objects, but around the edges of the pit, we found that they had been laid carefully and were interlocking. It looks as if they had formed a low mound or cairn over the top of the grave. As the contents settled, so did the flints, crushing the glassware. A number of large nails found at the corners of the area defined by the nodules look as if they were part of a large box or frame placed inside the grave, holding all its contents.
Most of the finds from the grave date from the second half of the second century: the glass bottles are all of this period and the iron lamp is of a similar date. The mosaic glass dishes are more unusual. Although the manufacturing technique appears to be Alexandrian, there seem to be no exact parallels for these two vessels, which form a pair. The colours may indicate a date around 200.
Hexagonal bottles are less common than square or cylindrical types but the larger forms are sometimes found reused as containers for cremated bone, like this one. The base is decorated with a raised ring containing a hexagon with indented sides. The square bottle with the stamped base had only a single handle, while the rectangular bottle seems to have had two. We will only find out about the others after they have been reconstructed, as they are so badly shattered.
The best preserved of the bronze jugs
The bronze vessels also seem to be mainly second century types and some were perhaps Italian imports. They are all of very high quality and at least one of them appears to have been silvered. Their handles are decorated in a variety of ways. The tall bottle-shaped vessel has a handle with an agricultural or industrial scene at the base, with a figure wearing a brimmed hat similar to that worn by Mercury. Higher up is a seated figure beneath a vine from which a basket is hanging. The top depicts vine leaves and branches, which grasp the rim of the jug. The broken vessel with the trefoil opening has a handle with a head wearing a Phrygian cap at the bottom, while the top end has a deer’s head, its antlers shown in relief on the handle and its forelegs reaching forward to grasp the rim.
The patera, which is in poor condition, is plain with a raised boss (umbo) in its centre. The handle has become detached, is ribbed along its length and the terminal has a woman’s head facing up. Paterae are thought to have been used in religious ceremonies, for pouring libations onto an altar. Their handles often ended in a ram’s or, less commonly, wolf’s head, so this type with a face is unusual. There is an identical handle from Rocester in Staffordshire and another from the Netherlands; the face is thought to be a Bacchic Medusa. This type of patera was probably made in Italy.
Curiously, there were no ceramics in the grave other than a few small sherds. These seem to have come originally from an infilled ditch that the grave had cut across and were more than a century older than the grave contents. Much of the grave pit, which measured 1.9 by 1.6 m appeared “empty”. This suggests that there were organic objects in this part of the grave that have since decayed.
Because one of the jugs had inlaid silver eyes and there was a silver coin, the items were declared Treasure and valued at the British Museum. North Hertfordshire Museum was successful in applying for nearly £60,000 of grant funding from The Art Fund, V&A Arts Council Purchase Fund, The Headley Trust and the Hertfordshire Heritage Fund. There was also a gift of £1000 from a private donor.
So who was the person buried here? Had they lived nearby? Is the burial part of a much larger cemetery? These are the sorts of questions that archaeologists will want to try to answer that go beyond the sorts of information we can get from using a metal detector. The person buried in this unusual grave—whoever they were—was wealthy, cosmopolitan and a member of a family that wanted to make a mark. After 1800 years, the contents of their grave still impress us with their workmanship (even if the mosaic dishes are not to 21st-century tastes). Thanks to the cooperation between metal detectorists, field archaeologists, finds liaison officers and geophysicists, we can find out so much more about the community to which they belonged than we would have done if the initial find had gone unreported. This must count as a real success story for the Portable Antiquities Scheme.