Issue no 38, October 1998

Few of us think much about petrol stations, but their impact has been enormous. Helen Jones reports

Petrol stations are such a mundane feature of modern life that it is easy to overlook the impact they have made on the British landscape this century. There are now nearly 15,000 petrol stations in Britain, but in common with the other two building forms developed specifically for the car - multi-story carparks and drive-in establishments - petrol stations have largely been ignored by architectural historians, and the processes by which they have come to look as they do today are poorly understood.

This neglect is all the more unfortunate because petrol stations are constantly changing. The major petrol companies, which own the bulk of stations, tend to overhaul their networks every seven to ten years, and as a result there are very few survivors in Britain of forms of petrol station that were common only ten or 20 years ago. Moreover, within a few months of a re-imaging excercise it is difficult to remember how the stations looked before.

Most petrol stations nowadays are architecturally undistinguished and similar in structural form. They tend to be assembled from a mass-produced kit of parts that pays no respect to the varieties of our architectural surroundings. Yet it is this very banality that makes petrol stations such a remarkable feature of our historic environment.

As buildings, petrol stations elevate branding above architecture. They are designed as packaging for petrol, and use the built environment in the same way as a manufacturer of soap powder might use a coloured box. It was not always so. The petrol-fuelled car was invented at the end of the 19th century by Benz and Daimler, and entered the American mass market in 1908, with the foundation of General Motors and the production of Henry Ford's Model T. In Britain it was not until 1931, when Morris produced the first £100 car, that motoring began to extend beyond the privilage of the wealthy. Growth in car ownership was further fuelled by the development of roads and subsequently of motorways. The ability to undertake longer journeys inevitably created demand for fuel supplies on the road.

At first, petrol was sold in cans from businesses such as chemists, hardware stores or bicycle shops, but during the first decades of the 20th century, the roadside petrol pump appeared, cased in metal or wood. The first filling station in England was built by the Automobile Association (AA) at Aldermaston in 1920, but it no longer survives. The AA built ten of these hut-like stations to serve its members. The earliest petrol stations in this country were, therefore, private rather than public.

For the next few decades increasing numbers of motorists used their cars to explore the countryside. They were actively encouraged to do so by advertising campaigns arranged by the oil companies. For example, during the 1930s the now highly collectible Shell posters by artists such as Paul Nash, Edward McKnight Kauffer and Duncan Grant illustrated an English rural idyll, whilst ironically avoiding the depiction of petrol stations.

Before the Second World War, most filling stations were simple sheds, often made of corrugated iron. They were privately owned and sold several brands of petrol. The resulting profusion of enamelled brand signs led the Council for the Protection of Rural England and the Design and Industries Association to complain about their appearance, commenting that `to very many people the petrol pump is the symbol of ugliness' (The Village Pump - A Guide to Better Garages, DIA, 1930).

During the 1930s, however, a Modernist approach to petrol station design was gradually adopted. Small sheds gave way to white-painted purpose-built structures that utilised new building materials, notably reinforced concrete, and pre-fabricated building techniques.

For the next 40 years petrol sales in Britain were dominated by a joint marketing venture by Shell-Mex and BP set up in 1932. The joint venture led to a new station livery. As most stations were still individually owned, the petrol company's image was distributed through illustrations and manuals, and dealers were expected to revamp their stations accordingly. A typical site would have four or more branded pumps selling various petrols of the Shell-Mex and BP Group (including National Benzole). From the outset the combined resources of these two companies supplied 42 per cent of retail sites in the UK, a figure almost constantly maintained until 1972 when the companies returned to separate retail operations.

During the Second World War, the Government restricted the sale of petrol, all of which was sold under the name `Pool' - a name which did not identify any single manufacturer. Business did not immediately return to normal after the war. In 1953, however, when the 11 years of restriction ended, the oil majors quickly reasserted themselves in the renewed free market. `Pool' pumps were replaced with branded glass globes, new types of fuel were promoted, and petrol stations which only sold a single brand of fuel became the norm.

Shell claim to have opened the first `self-fill' petrol station in England in 1963, but the idea did not become popular until the late 60s and it was only after the oil shortage in the early 70s that self-service - a cost-saving device - became pre-eminent. As drivers had to get out of their cars, the now ubiquitous canopy roof structure was placed over the forecourt. For the first half of the 20th century, when petrol attendants sold fuel, such protection from the elements was not deemed necessary.

Since that time petrol stations have become increasingly standardised. During the late 70s and 80s, stations all over the country were bought by the petrol companies, and as a result they were rebuilt. The varieties of buildings across company networks were demolished and replaced with a uniform canopy structure, the ultimate `Modern' building in its pared-down functionality and its desire to appear to be of its time. Often buildings of greater architectural merit were demolished in favour of the standard structure, favoured as a device on which to hang the company's branding. Now, when petrol stations are redesigned, the basic canopy structure tends to be retained but it is rehung with updated graphics.

In this country there are few operational exceptions to the heavily-branded standardised petrol station. Rare examples of diversity and survival include an independently-owned 1928 station in Colyford, Devon, built in the style of a Devon cottage; a 1926 station in Store Street, London W1, supplied by City Diesel; and a few surviving Mobil structures - one example is in Luton - which have distinctive circular canopies built in the 1960s, but which are now hung with BP livery following a company take-over. In remoter parts of the country, petrol pumps can still be found operated out of village shops, and all over rural Britain disused roadside pumps survive as forlorn reminders of an earlier age.

The situation in America is different, perhaps as a result of their romanticised love affair with the car and the open road. In his book Fill 'er Up (1979), Dan Vieyra recorded the diverse appearance of American gas stations, including `fantastic' stations which, for example, had pumps housed under aeroplane wings, in mock `colonial temples', beside teapots, windmills and reproduction English cottages.

In Britain few `fantastic' stations were built. Park Langley Garage in Beckenham, Kent, however, is a surviving example. It is, I believe, the only petrol station included in Nikolaus Pevsner's Buildings of England, and thanks to its Grade II listed status - unique among petrol stations - it survives, and is as exotic today as it must have been when built in 1929. The garage is a fusion of the eastern with the local, the result being a pagoda-like form, with Japanese lanterns, oriental garden, and mock tudor detailing reflecting the surrounding houses.

Pevsner singled out Park Langley Garage as an exceptional station, but ignored `normal' petrol stations which represent such an important part of our landscape. Fortunately, there is now growing interest in roadside architecture and in industrial archaeology. The National Motor Museum at Beaulieu has recreated a period 1938 garage, and petrol stations are now being considered for listing by English Heritage as part of the post-war buildings listing programme.

Helen Jones is a design historian who recently completed an MA thesis on petrol station design at the Royal College of Art

Human sacrifice in Iron Age Europe

Ritual murder was a special event, but not an unusual one, writes Miranda Aldhouse Green

Human sacrifice has long been out of fashion for archaeologists seeking to interpret suspicious deaths in European prehistory. But the evidence as a whole strongly suggests that ritual murder did take place in Britain and Europe during the 1st millennium BC and perhaps beyond.

There is strong evidence that communities in North Africa and Mesopotamia practised ritual murder, typically the sacrifice of retainers, in the first two millennia BC, and there is no reason to suppose that such activity was regarded as especially repugnant in ancient Europe. Highly stratified, slave-owning societies are unlikely to have considered human life too valuable to sacrifice. The practice was not outlawed in `civilized' Rome until 97BC.

The accounts of human sacrifice in Gallo-British society by Graeco-Roman writers are well-known. Caesar, Strabo, Lucan, Tacitus and others speak of drowning, burning, hanging, stabbing, shooting with arrows, throat-cutting and tearing victims to pieces. According to these chroniclers, candidates were women, men, prisoners, children, even priests. Many historians now regard these reports with some scepticism. Ancient writers, after all, were prey to the same temptations experienced by some modern journalists - to stereotype, exaggerate, embroider and sensationalize; even perhaps invent a good story. Moreover, they were writing about a restricted phase of the Gallo-British Iron Age - the first centuries BC and AD.

There is plenty of archaeological evidence, however, that seems to back up their reports. Taken individually, no archaeological evidence for the deposition of human remains points unequivocally to sacrificial activity. Where death was apparently unnatural or special, other possible intepretations include execution or postmortem ritual.

But certain recurrent practices do suggest human sacrifice. They span the entire period of the Iron Age from the 7th century BC to the 1st century AD, and, in Britain at any rate, the practice may not have entirely died out after Roman annexation.

One recurrent practice is pair-burial or multiple-burial. The early Iron Age Hallstatt D royal tomb at Hohmichele on the Upper Danube included two large burial-chambers each of which had contained two bodies of high-ranking people, both pairs suggesting that one had been killed to accompany the other in death, in a form of suttee. Moreover, the presence of low-status secondary graves within the mound might be interpreted as evidence of retainer sacrifice, where the dependents of a noble were dispatched to continue serving him or her in the next world.

At the other end of the Iron Age, a multiple burial of late La Tène date, at Hoppstädten-Weiersbach near Trier, appears to represent the interment of an entire family group, again perhaps reflective of either sacrifice or grief-suicide. A similar pattern of human body-disposal in the Irish Iron Age cemetery at Carrowjames, Co Mayo, may also reflect suttee, in the recurrent presence of children (not babies) buried with adults. It is interesting that Caesar (de Bello Gallico VI, 19) refers to such a custom having become obsolete in Gaul shortly before his sojourn there in the mid-1st century BC.

Another interesting pattern is the placing of bodies in disused grain storage pits at places like Danebury. There, the most likely ritual victims are those whose bodies were interred whole in cleared silos, alone or in small groups. Such deposits appear to have spanned the entire period of the pit-tradition from the 7th-1st centuries BC, and to have occurred on average once every six years. Certain features of these burials strongly suggest ceremonial practice, maybe even sacrifice: limbs had sometimes been bound together; some bodies were weighted down with large flint or chalk blocks; others had been deliberately smashed to pieces.

The Danebury bodies do not constitute unambiguous evidence for human sacrifice, but other Iron Age deaths lend weight to such interpretation. At Curragh, Co Kildare, the craning neck of a woman's skeleton suggests she was buried alive. Similar treatment was apparently meted out to a man and a pregnant woman buried together, pinned down alive by a wooden stake driven through their arms at Garton Slack in East Yorkshire. The foetus between the woman's legs suggests a miscarriage as she died.

Certain bodies of putative or certain Iron Age date from aquatic contexts, notably from Britain, Ireland and northern Europe, appear to share features present at Danebury, including extreme violence and being weighted down. The preservative qualities of watery conditions means that both cause of death and details about the individuals can sometimes be determined.

Human bodies, for example, from La Tène and Cornaux in Switzerland suffered an unusual death by being weighted down with heavy timbers in the shallows of a lake. Several Danish and North German bog-bodies dispatched around the 1st century BC had similarly been restrained. A 50-year-old woman found in the Juthe Fen bog, for instance, had a wooden stake driven through her knee-joint while she was alive. She had been placed on the site of a natural spring. An adolescent girl drowned blindfold in a marsh at Windeby in Schleswig Holstein was pinned down with stones and hurdles. Half her head had been shaven.

These bog-victims died by drowning, strangulation, hanging or from loss of blood. Lindow II, a young man arguably of some rank to judge by his manicured fingernails and neatly trimmed moustache, who was deposited in a Cheshire marsh in the 1st century AD, was killed by repeated blows to the head, garotting and having his throat cut, evidence of `overkill' violence also found in several of the Danish victims. Lindow III, dispatched about a hundred years later, was decapitated, either as a cause of death, or after death.

Ceremonial aspects to many of these bog-deaths include their naked interment and the ingestion of special food just prior to their deaths. A curious feature common to many bog-bodies is the presence of hazel. A victim from Gallagh in Co Galway had a band of hazel wands around his throat, similar to the hazel collar worn by a male victim from Windeby; the last meal of Lindow III consisted of hazelnuts; and a Danish victim from the Undelev bog was interred with three hazel rods. If hazel did play some symbolic role in human sacrificial water-ritual, it may be significant that the Romano-British lead curse-tablet from Brandon in East Anglia, inscribed in 4th century AD cursive script, threatens punishment to a malefactor in the form of sacrifice to Neptune (a water-god) with hazel.

If human sacrifice was going on in the European Iron Age, can we offer suggestions as to why, or to the significance of different methods of killing? It is clear that, if ritual murder did occur, it was special and occasional - as, indeed, the classical authors had maintained. This implies that it was performed at critical times: for example, to avert famine, epidemic, the death of a leader or defeat in battle, to propitiate the supernatural forces for a plentiful harvest, victory, the negotiation of an alliance or to give especial thanks.

What of the selection of victims? Some may have been deviant or marginal to society, whether by virtue of behaviour, appearance or other circumstance. Lindow III, for example, had a vestigial extra thumb, a peculiarity that may have marked him out as victim. Liminality may also have been a factor: adolescents at the threshold of adulthood, menopausal women, and the sexually ambivalent, who may have represented particular symbolic power or danger.

Prisoners may have been chosen - it is possible, for example, that Lindow II was a high-status hostage. High status itself may have condemned some victims, as reflected in the story of Iphigenia, King Agamemnon's daughter, slain as the Greek fleet departed for Troy. Alternatively, some victims may have been chosen at random or by lot.

The binding of victims might indicate criminality or anti-social behaviour, and classical authors do state that malefactors were sometimes chosen. Weighting down bodies could relate to the need to restrain wayward spirits. Excessive violence has been interpreted as a possible offering of force itself to the gods.

Archaeological evidence alone cannot firmly identify linkages between the means of death and particular types of sacrifice. However, some modes of killing might relate to divine recipients. A sacrifice placed in a grain-silo, for example, might involve propitiation of underground spirits who protected the seed-corn. Hanging, strangulation, burial alive and drowning may have had significance with respect to particular demands of cult practice. The ritual killing of children may have had especial potency associated with their value. After all, killing the young meant quite literally sacrificing the future.

Dr Miranda Aldhouse Green, a specialist in the European Iron Age, is Director of the Centre for the Study of Culture, Archaeology, Religion and Bio-Geography (SCARAB) at the University of Wales College, Newport

In two edited extracts from his new book on the Salisbury Hoard, Ian Stead describes the arrest of the nighthawks, and the importance of the hoard

In July 1988, the British Museum was offered a collection of miniature shields and other items, origins unknown, by Lord McAlpine, the antiquities dealer and former Conservative Party chairman. The evident importance of the shields led Ian Stead, then in charge of Iron Age antiquities at the British Museum, on a painstaking hunt for more information about their origins.

It emerged that the shields were part of a massive Bronze Age/Iron Age hoard found by detectorists near Salisbury a few years earlier, and that some of the hoard was still in the finders' possession. Eventually Stead made contact with `John' (Jim Garriock), one of the detectorists, who admitted that the hoard was looted. Having contacted the police, a sting operation was set up in October 1993 to arrest `John' in a pub in Salisbury.

`John' phoned as arranged on the Tuesday evening. The Friday meeting was fine, but he wanted it slightly later, say 2.30. I agreed. He still insisted that he wanted £10,000 for his antiquities and photographs, and said that if we agreed the price we could take the antiquities away with us. I thought his price was too high, and in any case I could not bring him £10,000 in notes. He suggested that he would give us the antiquities and we could send the money subsequently, then he would send the photographs. Of course I should have asked him to bring the negatives along for us to see, but I didn't, and I was kicking myself for the lost opportunity.

On the Friday morning (22 October) Stuart Needham [of the British Museum] and I had to meet the police at the Museum at 7.30 - DCI Jack Woods, with DS Alan Wilson as the driver. We drove down to Salisbury and went to the Police Station, where we met the rest of the team - two cars had come down from Holborn; there were two officers from the Antiques Squad (including Tony Russell); and two from Wiltshire CID.

In the middle of the morning four of us went into town to locate the Red Lion. I walked in and had a quick look into the two bars, just in case `John' was around. Then I went back and collected Jack Woods, who gave it the once over and checked all the exits. We went back to the Police Station, where Jack Woods briefed everyone on the story so far, and outlined his plan.

Soon after 1 o'clock the detectives left to take up positions in the town. Stuart and I waited at the Police Station, where we had ordered a taxi for 2.10 to take us to the Red Lion. Originally we had thought of walking into town from the Railway Station, as if we had just arrived from London, but the road in was from the direction of `John's' home, and it was just possible that we might meet him en route. Then there would be little point in walking all the way down to the Red Lion. So we fixed the taxi for a time that would coincide with the arrival of a train fromLondon, and went from the Police Station direct to the Red Lion.

We paid off the taxi and went in. Looking into the coffee bar on the left I noted a DS, Rick Player, reading his newspaper. To the right, in the small licensed bar, Tony Russell was sitting at a table facing me. Neither of them gave a hint of recognition. `John' arrived, and he spotted us as soon as he walked through the door. He smiled, he was confident and trusting, and my heart sank, but there was no going back now.

I introduced Stuart, and `John' asked if we wanted a beer or a coffee. We were happy with whatever he wanted. He chose the coffee bar, perhaps because there was more space there, and led us right in to the room, selecting a windowed alcove that was behind Rick's back. From our point of view he couldn't have chosen a worse position. With some nifty footwork Stuart tried to retrieve the situation by going in first, along the bench into the corner. I stood back to let `John' follow him, and then I sat in a chair facing them, and as far out into the room as I could reasonably put it. Rick could just about see me.

`John' produced his photographs, which he had brought in a white plastic carrierbag. Stuart had never seen them, and despite knowing the numbers of artefacts involved he was obviously stunned by this display. We had no difficulty in enthusing, and asking questions. Stuart eventually put the key question: it was so important, we just had to know where it had come from, surely `John' could tell us? No, he was adamant, but perhaps when the dust settled, say in a year's time, he might be able to reveal the site.

Then he referred to an artefact that I had queried on a previous occasion. I had been worried that it was not on any of his photographs. `John' had checked his negatives and had realised that one of them had not been printed, and this artefact was on the unprinted negative. He had all the negatives with him. I couldn't believe my luck. He brought them out (I could see the socks full of artefacts also in the bag), selected the relevant negative and passed it to me. I held it up to the light, but said that I couldn't see a thing because my spectacles were filthy, so I handed it across to Stuart, and started to polish my spectacles.

That was the signal. `John', oblivious, was beginning to show the antiquities to Stuart. It seemed to take quite a long time, and I could not be sure that Rick had seen me; afterwards Jack Woods expressed his amazement - `He was still polishing those bloody glasses when we all walked in'. He pushed past me, and put his hand on `John's' shoulder. Only then did `John' realise that something was amiss. `I'm sorry, John, but I am arresting you for being in possession of stolen property.'

We were surrounded by detectives, the handcuffs went on. `John' said `Oh, no, not the handcuffs.' I couldn't look at him. They all went out, leaving Stuart and me. The Red Lion was functioning as normal, no-one seemed to have turned a hair, perhaps this was an everyday occurrence.

Afterwards we learnt that they had taken `John' off and searched his car, parked some distance away. Then they took him off to the Police Station, but he had nothing to say other than that he was a dealer and the antiquities were his. The police then went round to arrest [`John's' accomplice, Terry] Rossiter, who was in bed.

Shortly afterwards Tony Russell appeared at the Red Lion, and said `Well, Ian, do you want to see the site?' Rossiter had been very happy to talk: it was hard to appreciate our luck.

After the arrests and trial of Garriock and Rossiter, both of whom received nine months' suspended prison sentences, and a formal excavation by Ian Stead at the findspot, much of the hoard was tracked down by the police through the antiquities trade. It included axes, spearheads, knives, tools, razors and pins, and miniature shields and cauldrons. Now, the bulk of the hoard has been offered again - this time by its rightful owner - to the British Museum.

The Salisbury Hoard is important because of its size. Almost 600 bronze artefacts buried together in a pit. It was deposited in the Iron Age, and it included more artefacts than any other Iron Age hoard found in Britain. But most of those artefacts were made in the Bronze Age, and numerically they are surpassed by only one other British Bronze Age hoard found at Isleham, Cambridgeshire, in 1959 [containing some 6,500 pieces]. But a simple numerical comparison is misleading, because much of the Isleham hoard was scrap bronze. It had been buried about 1000BC.

More important is the chronology of the artefacts from the Salisbury Hoard. The earliest piece was made about 2400BC and the latest no earlier than 200BC. Between those two dates there is scarcely a century that is not represented. An extensive hoard with a date range of 2,200 years is quite without parallel. Isleham is much more typical, covering no more than a hundred years. Indeed the chronology of prehistory is based on the assumption that associated artefacts are more or less contemporary in date, and only rarely does a metalwork hoard include an occasional much earlier piece.

The latest artefacts in the hoard provide a clue to its date (not before 200BC, and probably not much later) and the reason for its assemblage. The latest artefacts are the miniature shields, perhaps also the miniature cauldrons, and their function was religious. It may be that whoever collected the bronzes was motivated by religious beliefs, and Netherhampton [the findspot] was the centre of a religious cult. But there is no reason to suppose that any of the artefacts from the 2nd millennium BC [utilitarian weapons and tools] were manufactured purely for religious reasons.

A much more likely explanation is that members of the Iron Age community, in the course of their daily work, chanced to find several hoards of Bronze Age artefacts. The Iron Age farmers were continually disturbing the earth: ploughing the fields, erecting boundaries, digging drainage ditches and storage pits. There's no knowing the extent of the territory over which the hoards were discovered, nor the number of years involved in their discovery; and, of course, there must have been more Bronze Age hoards awaiting discovery in 200BC than in 1985.

If an Iron Age farmer found a hoard of Bronze Age bronzes, why did he not melt it down and recycle it? Perhaps most of them did. But perhaps someone who discovered a Bronze Age hoard in the vicinity of Salisbury was puzzled by it. He would have realised that he was handling axes, spearheads and knives that were quite different from those used in his own community. Conceivably he might have related them to his ancestors, or perhaps more likely he or the elders of his tribe would have regarded them as a signal from the gods. Such a hoard could have been treasured, and subsequent similar discoveries kept with it.

There is an intriguing reference in Suetonius' Life of Galba: `lightning struck a lake of Cantabria and 12 axes were found there, an unmistakable token of supreme power'. Perhaps that is an account of the discovery of an ancient hoard. The Bronze Age hoards found by Iron Age farmers near Salisbury could have been kept for superstitious or religious reasons, and eventually buried for reasons unknown.

From The Salisbury Hoard, I M Stead, Tempus, £17.99 (ISBN 07524-1404-6)