The Clifton Antiquarian Club is an archaeological society founded in 1884 in Bristol to investigate antiquities in the surrounding areas of western England and southern Wales.

The 28 years of research undertaken by the members and associates of the original society fill the first seven volumes of the Proceedings of the Clifton Antiquarian Club.

The impetus for its formation was a letter that had circulated among archaeologists and others in the Clifton area of Bristol suggesting that an antiquarian club be formed.

[1] The club's mission was the investigation of antiquities in the surrounding area, which included not only western England, but also southern Wales.

[1] The first president, William Joseph Hugh Clifford (1823–1893), was ordained as a priest in August 1850 by Archbishop Errington in Clifton.

[2][3] After the bishop's death, a new president was not chosen until the following year, when one of the club's founding members, James Roger Bramble (1841–1908), succeeded in the role.

[4] Former Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Gloucester Royal Engineer Volunteers, Bramble was elected president on 10 January 1894 at the 10th annual meeting,[5] and served until 1899.

[12][13] At the 19th annual meeting of the club, held on 21 January 1903, Conwy Lloyd Morgan (1852–1936) was elected president to succeed the Bishop of Bristol.

The secretary of the club, Alfred Edmund Hudd of Pembroke Road in Clifton, retained that position during all twenty-eight years of the original society.

[21][22] Alfred Hudd and Thomas Ashby, Junior, both members of the executive committee of the Fund, supervised the excavations.

Later, the club ventured to churches and houses in Somerset, including Barrow Gurney, Stanton Drew, Chew Magna, and Dundry.

The excursion is described in editor Alfred Edmund Hudd's postscript to the 1888 paper authored by the Reverend William Oakeley, "The Chambered Tumulus at Heston Brake, Monmouthshire", found in Volume 2 of the Proceedings of the Clifton Antiquarian Club.

[36] On that day, the tumulus at the site Heston Brake in Portskewett was opened and examined under the direction of the members of the two associations.

Her illustration (pictured), which accompanies her husband's paper, is entitled, "Plan of Chambered Tumulus at Heston Brake, nr Portskewett, Mon.

[17] In June 2006, an excursion to the Heston Brake chambered tumulus site in Portskewett led to mention of the original Clifton Antiquarian Club.

Heston Brake, the site of the August 1888 excursion, proved to be the inspiration for the resurrection of the Clifton Antiquarian Club as it exists today.

[17] During the September 2010 excursion to the Gower Peninsula, Dr George Nash of the University of Bristol and other members of the club discovered a carving of a reindeer in one of the caves.

The thirteen chapter book includes contributions from members of the Clifton Antiquarian Club, as well as non-member scholars from Britain, Australia, Italy, Norway, and the United States.

The subject of the latter book is early medieval Britain and it features eighteen papers that relate to British history in the period AD 410 to 1066.

The tenth volume of the Proceedings was published in December 2014 and exclusively contained members current archaeological work together with details of all the club's recent activities.

In 2014 the club undertook excavations at two sites separated by just 50 metres on the west coast beach at Baie de Port Grat, St Sampson, where the remains of a new Neolithic chambered tomb had been discovered.

Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age pottery was discovered together with flint tools and fragments of stone axes, in an area of considerable human activity.

In 2017 the club undertook an excavation at the Neolithic monument of Le Trépied, situated on the western edge of Guernsey.

In 2018–19 fieldwork began to establish the precise nature of a number of round earthworks on L'Ancresse Common, north Guernsey.

Originally, they had expected to uncover prehistoric archaeology but several key finds enabled the team to narrow down the date range of use to the first decade of the 19th century.