First opened in 1886, Chester’s Grosvenor Museum has been telling the story of the historic city for more than a century. Lucia Marchini tours the archaeological collections. The Romans who founded a legionary fortress, Deva Victrix, at Chester in the AD 70s left their mark on the city. More than half of the line […]

One of Europe’s largest infrastructure projects brought with it one of the most extensive archaeological programmes ever undertaken. Lucia Marchini takes a trip through London’s buried past at the Museum of London Docklands’ exhibition of highlights from the Crossrail excavations. Tens of thousands of artefacts were unearthed at 40 construction sites dotted across London between […]

The museum at Norton Priory, an extensively excavated monastic site in Cheshire, reopened last summer after a major programme of redevelopment and expansion. Lucia Marchini pays a visit. Excavation of the Augustinian priory founded at Norton in 1134 began under Patrick Greene (CA 31). In 1971, a team of local volunteers and prisoners set to […]

What can the glittering weapon fittings from the Staffordshire Hoard tell us about the Anglo-Saxon warrior elite? Lucia Marchini went along to the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery’s latest exhibition to find out. It is a story familiar to many, and a find that has often graced the pages of this magazine (see CA 236, […]

The latest exhibition at the British Museum offers an overview of South African art from manuports to Mandela and beyond. Lucia Marchini finds out more. Between 1948 and 1994, when the ruling National Party was enforcing apartheid legislation, the official version of South African history portrayed the country as a terra nullius before European settlement […]

A selection of the most luxurious of English embroideries, much desired by the rich and powerful of medieval Europe, have been brought together for a new exhibition at the V&A. Lucia Marchini takes a look. The Latin term opus anglicanum has been used in English to describe grand embroideries since the 13th century, and it gives much […]

The Mary Rose museum at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard was reopened 471 years to the day since the sinking of Henry VIII’s flagship – for the first time giving the public a clear view of her hull. Lucia Marchini went along to find out what else is new. When the new Mary Rose museum first opened […]

Today (Friday 9 September) is MOLA’s Time Truck’s last day at Bishops Square. Surrounded by tall commercial buildings, behind the high-end cosmetics shops of Old Spitalfields Market, the pop-up exhibition offers a chance to explore everyday life in east London in the 17th-19th centuries. With staff from MOLA on hand to explain the selection of […]

Nestled in the green, wooded hills of the North York Moors lie the ruins of Rievaulx Abbey. English Heritage has recently opened a new museum on the site, more than doubling the number of artefacts on show. Lucia Marchini discovered how the state-of-the-art displays explore over 400 years of Cistercian abbey life. Founded in 1132 […]

The new Wessex Gallery of Archaeology showcases Salisbury Museum’s spectacular collection of artefacts from Stonehenge and the surrounding area. The area around Salisbury boasts an almost incredible wealth of archaeological sites, from immediately recognisable monuments such as Stonehenge, to spots like the Blick Mead Mesolithic homebase (CA 293), where ongoing research is still revealing their exciting potential. […]