O. G. S. Crawford

Antiquity ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 50 (200) ◽  
pp. 185-186
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Generation Gap ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Evening News ◽  
First Time

In June 1926 my father, a master at the school in Hampshire in which I was an idle and unedifying pupil, received a letter from the Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, asking for details of a new Romano-British site at West Harting, on the downs just across the county boundary in Sussex. Crawford was collecting material for the second edition of the 0s Roman Britain map: my proud discovery of sherds in moleheaps and rabbit-scrapes had found its way into the parish magazine and thence to the Portsmouth Evening News where it had been spotted by OGSC, and so the letter was really for me. Correspondence followed; the next year, in Southampton with my parents en route for a holiday in France, I was able to meet him for the first time. The Generation Gap had not then been invented, and we liked one another from the start, and from then on OGS (as we were all later to call him) took upon himself to be my archaeological godfather.

O. G. S. Crawford

Antiquity ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 50 (199-200) ◽  
pp. 185-186
Author(s):  
Stuart Piggott
Keyword(s):  
Generation Gap ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Evening News ◽  
First Time

In June 1926 my father, a master at the school in Hampshire in which I was an idle and unedifying pupil, received a letter from the Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey in Southampton, asking for details of a new Romano-British site at West Harting, on the downs just across the county boundary in Sussex. Crawford was collecting material for the second edition of the OS Roman Britain map: my proud discovery of sherds in moleheaps and rabbit-scrapes had found its way into the parish magazine and thence to the Portsmouth Evening News where it had been spotted by OGSC, and so the letter was really for me. Correspondence followed; the next year, in Southampton with my parents en route for a holiday in France, I was able to meet him for the first time. The Generation Gap had not then been invented, and we liked one another from the start, and from then on OGS (as we were all later to call him) took upon himself to be my archaeological godfather.

Air Reconnaissance of Roman Scotland

Antiquity ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 13 (51) ◽  
pp. 280-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. G. S. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Field Work ◽  
General Character ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
The Way

On 6 June I started from Southampton to carry out an investigation of the Roman roads and sites in Scotland from the air. For several years, as part of my official duties, I have been examining these on foot, in pursuance of a plan to publish a third edition of the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain. It is intended to prepare the way for this map (which may be published on a slightly larger scale—10 miles instead of 16 miles to the inch) by the publication of maps of special regions on the scale of 4 miles to the inch. The drawing of the first two of these (Scotland, Sheet 3 [Forth and Tay], and Sheet I [The Border]) had been finished; but many doubtful points remained even after intensive field-work, and it seemed probable that a short air reconnaissance under favourable conditions would solve some of them. This opinion was amply justified by results. About a dozen new Roman sites (including as ‘ sites ’ new stretches of Roman road) were discovered; about 50 new sites in all, including many native forts, were placed on the map; and valuable results of a general character were obtained.

Villages in Roman Britain: Some Evidence

1964 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. J. Hallam
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Roman Countryside ◽  
The One

‘Villages’ of ‘up to a hundred little huts’ and even ‘pit dwellings' passed from history to mythology after Bersu's Little Woodbury excavations, and Professor Hawkes's consequent reinterpretation of the Cranborne Chase ‘village’ of Woodcuts as superimposed successive farmsteads. The ‘villages’ of the old Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain have no place in the scheme of things exemplified in the 1956 edition. But the new orthodoxy of the ‘single farm’ as the dominant, or indeed the exclusive, settlement form in the Roman and immediately pre-Roman countryside has itself been thrown open to doubt as scholars have, on the one hand, accumulated more evidence of the actual abundant variety of Iron Age to Roman settlement types and, on the other, questioned themselves and each other more closely on the origins of the pattern of English settlement, and the probability that it was not imprinted on a countryside devoid of all trace of previous land-use and organization.

A Roman Fortified Villa at Norton Disney, Lincs.

1937 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Oswald
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
The Road ◽  
Right Hand ◽  
The Military

Villas are so uniform in character that they arouse comparatively little interest compared with the military problems of Roman Britain. But a villa surrounded by ditches, whether for defensive purposes or not, can be immediately classed as a rarity. A list of such examples of domestic fortification in the Roman period includes the houses at Castle Dykes, near Ripon, at Cwmbrwyn in Carmarthenshire, at Bartlow in Cambridgeshire, at Langton in Yorkshire, and at Ely near Cardiff. Of these only the two last have been scientifically excavated, and only the house at Ely has fortifications which conform to the building. In these circumstances the discovery of a villa surrounded by five ditches and occupied, through five periods of construction and reconstruction, from the latter half of the first to the middle of the fourth century is of particular interest.The villa in question is situated some 200 yards east of the Fosseway, at a point 9 miles south of Lincoln and a mile and a half north of Brough (Crococolana). The site is marked on the Ordnance Survey and known locally as Potter Hill. It comprises a long ridge of land some hundred feet higher than the plain in which Crococolana is placed. Stukeley in his Itinerary says, ‘and journeying to the space of about 12 Roman miles, I found Collingham on my right hand: there is a high barrow or tumulus called Potters Hill, where they say was a Roman pottery: it stands upon an eminence commanding a prospect both ways upon the road. Half a mile further is Brough.’Nevertheless the presence of a Roman building was not suspected until the discovery in 1933 by the farmer, Mr. E. Taylor, of a mosaic pavement.

The Present State of the Tabula Imperii Romani

1984 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 200-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. L. F. Rivet
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Development ◽  
Present State ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Ordnance Survey ◽  
Uniform Scale ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Half ◽  
Made In

The decision to produce maps covering the whole of the Roman Empire at a uniform scale of 1/1,000,000 was first made at a meeting of the International Geographical Union at Cambridge in July 1928. The proponent of the idea was O. G. S. Crawford, then Archaeology Officer of the Ordnance Survey, and since he was also mainly responsible for its early development, the model adopted was that of the second edition of the O.S. Map of Roman Britain, but the physical base chosen was that of the International Map of the World, which was then in production. Considerable progress was made in the 1930s—it was in 1934 that the title Tabula Imperii Romani was adopted—but wars interrupted matters and it was not until 1957 that the work was formally taken over by the Union Académique Internationale. Professor G. Lugli became the first President of the Permanent Committee of the TIR, to be succeeded in 1968 by Professor J. B. Ward-Perkins; on his death in 1981 the Presidency was assumed by Professor E. Condurachi, with Professor G. Carettoni as Vice-President taking over most responsibility for the western half of the Empire.

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