LEARNED SOCIETIES, Etc.
THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF ANCIENT BUILDINGS
IN the recent Housing Supplement issued by the Times the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings has expressed its views on the housing problem in connection with old cottages. There are in this article two main points worth noting. The first is that until a subsidy is made, proportionate to the value of the work of repair, old cottages will not be readapted, but allowed to fall into ruins. The failure to award this subsidy tends to shift the responsibility, in regard to the upkeep of such property, from the owner to the State, for whilst the State encourages and partially finances new building, old cottages, though in theory valued by the Ministry of Health, in practice will hardly receive the attention they deserve. The second point is this: that the Society shows clearly it is no lover of mere decay, or old and mouldering walls, features we are apt to associate with the sketches of an early nineteenth century schoolgirl.
It lends no countenance to the habitual carping at all things new. It is as eager that the architecture of to-day should be as clean and decent—the natural expression of the life of to-day—as it is anxious to preserve, and where possible render habitable, those buildings of the past embodying the spirit of their time.
But since "words will build no walls," if our fine old cottages are to be preserved, it will need something more than mere discussions or eulogiums on their value as relics of the nation's past. By all who are interested more practical help must be given, and it is for this that the Society now makes a special appeal.
THE ROYAL NUMISMATIC SOCIETY
The monthly meeting of the Royal Numismatic Society was held on December 18th, Sir Henry Howorth, Vice-President, presiding. Mr. G. F. Hill read a paper entitled "The Mint of Crosraguel Abbey," written by Dr. George Macdonald, who was unable to be present. Recent excavations at Crosraguel ("Crossregal") Abbey, a Cluniac foundation in Ayrshire, founded in 1244, and endowed by the Scottish kings with extraordinary privileges, resulted in the discovery in a latrine-drain of a large number of small objects, some of a miscellaneous nature, others evidently the remains of a local mint: large quantities of small tags of brass, needles, portions of thin sheets, etc., as well as objects and pieces of copper and lead, together with 197 coins of billon, bronze, or copper and brass. The coins are (a) contemporary imitations of pennies of James III. and IV., and farthings of James IV., including twenty which are a combination of the obverse of one type with the reverse of another; (b) fifty-one pennies bearing a cross on one side and a regal orb on the other, and the inscriptions Jacobus Dei Gra. Rex and Crux pellit omne crimen variously abbreviated; (c) eighty-eight copper or brass farthings, of types not hitherto known, inscribed Moneta Pauperum. The imitations of class (a) are the "black money" known from records. The pennies of class (b) are almost exclusively found in Scotland, though they have hitherto been attributed to one or other James of Aragon. They were clearly minted at Crosraguel, the types having a punning significance. They and the farthings are the only known instance in Great Britain of an Abbey coinage, such as is very frequent on the Continent, e.g., at Cluny. The inscription Moneta pauperum shows that the coins were intended to provide small change for the especial benefit of the poor like the seventeenth century tokens. The mint was probably suppressed by James IV.
At the meeting of the Society on January 20th, Rev. E. A. Sydenham gave the results of his study of the "Coinage of Augustus."