The Archaeology Group Bulletin gave its readers an opportunity to publish interesting historical structures or objects observed on country walks, and then to receive informed comment about them. I cannot think of an obvious forum for such interactions today. That is not to say there is not still considerable interest in local history. There is a Bradford Historical & Antiquarian Society which, in more normal times, holds regular meetings at the Bradford Club. Some of its members undertake research of real value which is published in an excellent journal, The Bradford Antiquary, copies of which can be found in the Local Studies Library. Bradford U3A has groups devoted to Archaeology and Old Buildings, and there are area historical societies in several parts of the city. But where would you present an interesting farm building that you had just seen? In March 1965 a gentleman from Allerton sent Sidney Jackson some photographs of a barn he had examined at High Bradley, near Skipton. SJ redrew an illustration for the Bulletin, which seemingly couldn’t cope with photographic images. The building was identified as an ‘aisled barn’ and attention was drawn to the roof truss and supporting wooden pillars. The basic design consisting of a central ‘nave’ and two supporting aisles, a pattern that echoes the Roman basilica and was widely used for church design.

If you would like to examine an almost identical building I can strongly recommend the Grade 1 listed, seventeenth century, Great Barn at East Riddlesden Hall: I have included a recent photograph.

The barn is 120 feet long, 40 feet wide, and consists of eight bays. The external stone walls, pierced for lights especially at the gable ends, are load-bearing so this is not a timber-framed structure, although many wooden members are incorporated. The oak upright timbers support the roof trusses. They stand on stone bases since wooden posts buried in the soil inevitably rot within a century or so. The oak roof trusses are of the ‘king post’ type. The supporting timbers running lengthways along the roof are called purlins. The purlins engage on the ‘principle rafters’: the other roof members are ‘common rafters’. The rafters support stone slates which keep the barn weather-proof and mean that the pitch of the roof is kept relatively low, unlike a steeply pitched thatched roof. There is a solid stone and brick floor and two pairs of doorways with arched porches. Doors placed opposite one another in a barn indicate that it was once used for threshing. The through draught helping the separation of grains from the chaff. The stone surface was the threshing floor which needed to be kept clean. The aisles are fitted with cattle stalls so, like many northern barns, it was used both for crop storage and stock. In his original article Sidney Jackson rightly pointed out the value of such barns to those who appreciate fine carpentry.

If you had been lucky enough to accompany SJ on a country walk you would not have progressed very far without the topic of carved stone heads being raised. They form regular entries in the Archaeology Group Bulletin. There is no doubt that he recognised, and brought to prominence, a huge number of these objects (in Yorkshire particularly) found in walls, as garden ornaments, and on the gables of houses or barns. His card index of heads listed 650 from all over the country, but particularly West Yorkshire (378), and was eventually given to the Yorkshire Archaeological Society. He considered that the heads were originally free-standing and distinguished them from gargoyles and corbels. He speculated that they might have been associated with springs and wells, or had an apotropaic function, being intended to ward off evil influences. He believed that the finding of heads indicated continuity of farming sites from prehistoric times until the 17th century.

SJ concluded that the heads were Romano-British or ‘Celtic’ in origin and were linked to a series of similar heads, described by his friend Dr Anne Ross in Scotland. To the best of my knowledge all the Yorkshire heads were surface finds none having been located in context at excavation. This represents an important difference with the celebrated and enigmatic Pictish stone carvings from Scotland. Some Pictish carved stones have been on the surface since they were executed about 1500 years ago, or have been incorporated into more modern buildings. But others have been found buried at excavation, for example a bear carving discovered at Old Scatness Broch by the Bradford University archaeology department. Not so with the Jackson heads.

So I, and indeed some of his contemporaries, couldn’t except the strange heads as having an Iron Age origin. In a stone quarrying area, where chisels and stone carving tools must have been common, there are surely more plausible explanations. SJ produced only two publications: ‘Nature Rambles in mid-Airedale’ (1952) and ‘Celtic Carved Heads’ (1973), which he wrote after his retirement. Despite a forward from his friend Dr Anne Ross, his last book (when it finally appeared) proved controversial. Critics felt that few of the heads had provenance and any link with the ‘Celts’ was tenuous. I think SJ would have been profoundly saddened by this response but there had been considerable public interest in his collection which appeared on television and was given exhibitions in the 1960s and early 70s. Surprisingly, as late as 1967, he admitted to not having a television although he and his carved heads appeared on BBC TV during the same year in ‘Blue Peter’ and ‘Chronicle’. The illustration is a Bradford head found in a wall at Heaton Woods by Carol & Christine Lister (1965). I don’t have an exact findspot but if either of the discoverers were to read this account I should be very interested to have additional details.

It is hard not to feel a certain nostalgia for SJ’s world. Modern archaeology, with its greater reliance on theory and science, does in the end offer a more fruitful approach but perhaps it has lost some romance in the exchange.