Archaeological retrospect 3

Abstract

My father’s forebears were ironmasters in Birmingham. Yet neither he (born 1877) nor my uncle (born 1870), let alone five aunts, knew more than the name of their firm, The Eagle Iron Foundry. When their mother died and the family moved to Beckenham, all were children. A remote cousin Arthur, Borough Librarian of Wigan, genealogist, and thence FSA, wrote when I became that (1932) to tell me that Hawkeses were Warwickshire under Charles I1 already, when a branch went to Ireland. But he said nothing of William Hawkes, who in 1824 (June), with a young Mr M. H. Bloxam of Rugby, went to Oldbury, in the country near Atherstone, and opened a barrow. Bloxam stated, naming him and the firm, that he was leader of the dig, when publishing it in Charles Roach Smith’s Col1ectanea Antiqua, vol. I part 3 (issued 1843, then in whole vol. of 1848), 33, with Pl. xiv, engraving of the finds. (My knowing this is entirely due to Sonia Hawkes’s finding it, in her luckily-obtained Collectanea a few years ago.) His publication cited in VCH Warwickshire and in Gerloff, 1975 (172 and Pl. 27 no. 332) was thus his second, and the first needs adding to the barrow’s bibliography.