SUMMER 2002 NEWSLETTER

Editor: Peter Pickering, Assistant Secretary of SCOLA
3 Westbury Road London N12 7NY
020-8445 2807. e-mail: pe.pickering@virgin.net

The annual SCOLA Newsletter is intended to keep members in touch with what we are doing and the problems we are addressing. The Committee is very grateful for members' continuing support; and we want more members — individuals, local societies and London boroughs. Do what you can to win them.

This is a bumper newsletter, in two parts. So much of interest and importance was said at the conference 'Learning from Ten Years of PPG16' on 20th March that we thought all members ought to have a fairly full summary of the papers, and they are to be found in a separate section. This first section covers the rest of our activities, and includes three reports on particular sites.

SCOLA CONSTITUTION

Following the decision, reported to the last Annual General Meeting, not to proceed for the present with the idea of transforming SCOLA into a CBA Regional Group, the Committee has been looking at the constitution. Among the changes we are considering are adding a reference in our aims to the 'historic environment' (ie widening our scope from pure archaeology to historic buildings etc); inviting the Essex and Kent county societies to have a status like that of the Surrey and London and Middlesex societies, thus recognising that some of the Greater London boroughs are within their purviews; and moving the AGM to March from January (an AGM so soon after the end of the year causes difficulties in getting the accounts properly prepared, and indeed we have hitherto been formally approving accounts from the year before, which is clearly unsatisfactory, and is disliked by the Charity Commissioners).

If all goes according to plan, the next AGM will be asked to approve an amended constitution.

THE LONDON ARCHAEOLOGICAL FORUM

by Pat Wilkinson

The inaugural meeting of the London Archaeological Forum (LAF) was held on 7th February at the London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC) at Mortimer Wheeler House. Happily, the formal opening of the LAARC had taken place that morning. Forty-nine members attended the LAF and twenty-three sent their apologies. Hedley Swain, Head of Early London History at the Museum of London, took the Chair and welcomed members to the new body.

The Hon. Secretary of SCOLA reported on our work to provide a medium through which all individuals and organisations can address issues of concern to archaeology in London. This new body has been established after wide consultation with those previously involved in the seven area-based liaison groups, which had suffered limited attendances at meetings, two groups having failed to hold any meetings in recent years. The LAF will meet three times a year at varying venues.

Hedley Swain reported on the formal opening of the LAARC. The Centre holds the archaeological archives (finds and records of excavations) for the majority of excavations undertaken in Greater London in the last 100 years. Its aim is to make these invaluable resources accessible to the public.

A report on the work of the Greater London Archaeology Advisory Service (English Heritage), the London Borough of Southwark and the City of London Archaeological Planning Advisers was tabled and some current and forthcoming projects were mentioned, including the first Martello tower found in London at Woolwich Arsenal. A possible raised timber trackway was found near the A13 in Newham, associated with Bronze Age pottery.

Barry Taylor, Manager of the Greater London Sites and Monuments Record, reported that the computerised database holds some 72,000 records. The upgraded system should be online by the summer. He hopes to have a website with a link to the LAARC. Enhancement Projects will include environmental data. He will, in due course, be visiting local groups by request to discuss their records. At the meeting on 19th June, we were pleased to meet Vanessa Bunton in the new post of English Heritage Liaison Officer for Local Societies. This English Heritage initiative will provide support and guidance for local groups.

General discussion on the future of the LAF resulted in the decision to hold three meetings annually at about 6pm in different venues. In future the archaeological reports will be circulated in advance so that members can ask questions regarding specific projects. Future meetings could be themed and political and policy issues should be discussed. The possibility of a website, regularly updated, would greatly assist dissemination of information. The LAARC could host this facility.

The next meeting will be held on 8th October at the Museum of London.

LONDON HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT FORUM

by Mike Hammerson

The draft Plan for London makes little mention of London's historic environment and its value to Londoners, beyond its place in tourism. Our Mayor has made clear his view that such issues as conservation and history should not stand in the way of London's being a "world city" — whatever that really means. There is little mention of Greater London as a collection of historic towns and villages with regional cultural value, not to mention its capacity for spreading the economic benefits of tourism beyond the centre of London to our decaying suburbs. Recent Government announcements about airport policy suggests that the entire historic village of Harmondsworth, with its nationally important tithe barn, may be swept away. The Government's Planning Green Paper — which drew 18,000 responses and a tidal wave of criticism — left the future of conservation-related issues very uncertain. Local authorities are cutting back on conservation staff, dropping Conservation Area Advisory Committees, and cutting back on local museums. Internationally-known architects try to present "façadism" as some sort of crime. Even the redoubtable Commons Select Committee on the Environment appears to have dropped its proposed inquiry into the Role of Historic Buildings and Public Spaces in Regeneration, and reports of people's ignorance of our history appear in the press with alarming regularity. A Conference at University College London in September, on "London's Environment and Future", with a capacity of 500 attendees, has no item on the historic environment other than Taryn Nixon (the Museum of London's Forum representative), who has been asked only to "set the scene" on the past environment. In the face of all this, the Government's statement in "The Historic Environment: A Force For Our Future" that "the historic environment can improve the quality of life for all of us through the regeneration of our towns, cities and countryside, and by encouraging a greater sense of community and prosperity" rings somewhat hollow.

Against this background, it is encouraging to report that English Heritage, under its new Chief Executive Simon Thurley, intends to launch a counter-offensive against the devaluation and denigration of our historic environment now so fashionable in higher circles, and has formed a series of Historic Environment Forums across the country to co-ordinate efforts. SCOLA is delighted to have been asked to sit on the London group, alongside the Museum of London, the London Forum of Amenity Societies, the Historic Royal Palaces, Royal Parks Agency, Association of London Government, the National Trust, London Tourist Board, the Greater London Authority, and the Historic Gardens Trust. Disappointingly, the Commission for Arts and the Built Environment declined to join, considering the Forum as beyond their remit. Meetings are chaired by Philip Davies, Director of English Heritage's London Division.

The group's draft terms of reference (currently being refined) were to:

• promote understanding and appreciation of London's historic environment;
• integrate the way in which our organisations present it;
• review and develop policies relating to it;
• act as a consultative group on historic environment issues, issue co-ordinated responses to proposals when necessary, and collaborate on initiatives to achieve this;
• promote best practice in managing the historic environment.

A major aim will be to focus the interest and support of Londoners, and increase information, education and awareness of the historic environment at a popular level, giving Londoners more of a sense of ownership; few people, for example, seem to know what a Conservation Area is. Support at grass roots level is vital if local and national policy is to be influenced. There is a need to counter the anti-conservation arguments currently so fashionable among those trying to promote the "modern" agenda, and to combat the false image being too successfully propagated of us as reactive, nimbyish and against new development. As just one instance, English Heritage's explanation of the nature of their stance against redevelopment of Bishopsgate Goods Yard differs substantially from that being propagated by those anxious to develop. The voluntary sector, represented by SCOLA and the London Forum, are regarded by English Heritage as particularly useful in putting over this message because of their large grass-roots constituency.

Those for whom the economic aspect is all must also be addressed, if necessary in their own language. In this connection, the National Trust representative gave the group a valuable talk on their publication "Valuing the Environment", produced in 2001 in the wake of the Foot and Mouth epidemic to demonstrate the actual economic value of the historic and rural landscape. Oriented specifically towards the North-East, it demonstrated a critical link between the quality of the environment and the economic sustainability of rural communities, and the dependence of the rural economy on visitors, residents and businesses attracted by a high quality environment. Tourism provides 40% of employment there, and investment in sustaining the environment will foster more diverse communities and economies. It was agreed that the lesson was equally applicable to London - the threat to the historic environment, London's distinctiveness, and London's Strategic Plan and Cultural Strategy. The London Tourist Board representative agreed that there was no research on the subject as far as London was concerned; the London Development Agency, he said, was in "listening mode", and it is necessary to alter the perception of tourism as being rural and coastal.

 

The immediate aims will be:

1. to produce a short, popular document, by the end of September, on English Heritage's 'vision' of the value of the historic environment and what it can do for Londoners. It will also counter the perception of English Heritage as a body which "likes to say no."
2. To host a major conference, in Autumn 2003, aimed at those hostile to the historic environment, with speakers from the Forum, a leading overseas representative and, if possible, the Mayor too.
3. to commission reports, under the headings of economy, culture and community.
4. To ensure responses both from the group and from its individual members to the draft Greater London Plan, currently out for consultation.

MORI's poll on what the historic environment means to the public, commissioned in 2000 by English Heritage, showed unequivocally that the overwhelming majority of people do believe it to be important to them and their children; English Heritage will be building on that. Baroness Hamwee's opening address at our March conference on PPG16 was delivered with a real passion and enthusiasm for the past and for ensuring that the historic heritage was a part of sustainable development. Our own experience in archaeology has shown that public ignorance on the subject is down to the fact that the educational system neglects it, and the politicians belittle it; if you simply trouble to explain it to the average member of the public, a high proportion of whom have after all heard of Time Team, you are left in little doubt that ordinary people value it.

For too long the Heritage lobby has, like Achilles, sat in its tent sulking while the assault on our historic environment continued. Let us hope that, like Achilles, it is now being stung into resolute action by the impending destruction of yet more of what little remains to us.

THE GREATER LONDON AUTHORITY

The Mayor's Draft London Plan appeared in June, and is open for consultation until the end of September. The policies most relevant to us are 4B.10, 11 and 12 They read:-

Policy 4B.10 Historic conservation
The Mayor will and boroughs should work to protect and to enhance London's historic environment and archaeological inheritance and ensure that:
. the special character of historic and archaeological assets is recognised and understood and that this forms the basis for their protection and the identification of opportunities for their enhancement
. inclusive solutions to providing access for all to and within the historic environment are implemented
. the protection and enhancement of historic assets in London forms part of the wider design and urban improvement agenda
. the strategic London context and setting for historic assets is taken into account.
The Mayor will work in partnership with English Heritage,boroughs and other key stakeholders to facilitate the protection and enhancement of London's historic environment for the benefit of London as a whole.

Policy 4B.11 Historic conservation-led regeneration
The Mayor will and boroughs should support schemes that make use of historic assets to stimulate environmental,economic and community regeneration where they:
. bring under--used buildings and spaces into appropriate use
. help to improve local economies and community cohesion
. fit in with wider regeneration objectives
. promote inclusiveness in their design.

Policy 4B.12 Views in London
The Mayor will designate,in association with boroughs, English Heritage and other relevant organisations, a selected set of strategically important views of the following types:
. panoramas across a substantial part of London from elevated public spaces
. broad prospects from the River Thames
. views from urban spaces, including urban parks.
A list of strategic views proposed by the Mayor is contained in the Views in London Annex.
The Mayor will,in collaboration with boroughs, English Heritage and others, prepare management plans for these views in Supplementary Planning Guidance. Management of views will:
. reflect the benefits of the view,help promote an appreciation of London at the strategic level and identify landmark buildings
. seek to enhance the view through improving the viewing place and/or the quality of the fore,middle or background of the view
. prevent undue damage to the view either by blocking, or unacceptably imposing on, a landmark or creating an intrusive element in the view's fore or middle ground
. protect backdrops that give a context to landmarks.
Boroughs should base the designation and management of local views in their UDPs on these policies and those included in the Views in London Annex.

These policies are re-iterated with a distinctly stronger reference to archaeology in the Annex to the Draft Plan which contains policies for what is called the "Blue Ribbon Corridor" — the Thames and other waterways in Greater London:-

Policy BR12 Historic environment
The Mayor will and boroughs should give careful consideration to the relationship between new development and the historic environment, including listed buildings and archaeological areas. Important structures, such as cranes,associated with the history of the waterways, should also be taken into account.

Policy BR 14 Archaeology
Boroughs in conjunction with English Heritage and the Museum of London should identify and protect archaeological remains and where these cannot be protected in situ consider how best to allow for their excavation and recording.

The SCOLA committee will be considering how we should comment. Almost certainly we shall ask for the Policy BR14 to be generalised and incorporated in the plan for London as a whole and not just for the Blue Ribbon corridor. We shall also seek explicit reference to the need for proper staffing in borough planning departments for their conservation responsibilities.

The long awaited draft of the cultural strategy has not yet appeared. Baroness Hamwee did say some encouraging words about it in her opening address to the PPG16 conference. But we shall study it very carefully as soon as it appears, and press for full recognition of the importance of the historic environment, including archaeology, as part of the cultural experience of Londoners, and not just as part of tourism.

THE ALL-PARTY PARLIAMENTARY ARCHAEOLOGY GROUP

The All-Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group (APPAG) was set up in July 2001 to act as a focus for Parliamentary interest in all matters relating to archaeology in the UK. It plans to produce a report on the current state of archaeology in the UK, with recommended actions. It sought brief submissions from interested individuals and organisations; held a series of public sessions in June and July, and will hold an open meeting at the Society of Antiquaries in the autumn.

In the SCOLA submission we said that the five matters which have most concerned us recently were:-

1. Standards. PPG16 has given archaeology a place in the planning process, and has funded much excavation that would not otherwise have been done. But SCOLA has been concerned at the absence of any guarantee of standards in the current system. It depends far too much on trust, on the assumption that all those involved know what the right thing to do is, and then do it.

2. Information. The results of interventions are often not disseminated well or speedily, particularly to local people and archaeological societies.

3. The preference for 'preservation in situ' may hinder the growth of knowledge, and may actually destroy evidence, as it may mean 'deterioration in situ'.

4. PPG16 has marginalised amateurs, perhaps especially in London, since there are few opportunities for excavations not related to development; and there are fears that the Valletta convention will make matters worse.

5. Local and national politicians often do not appreciate the real significance of archaeology, or the serious interest shown by many people. The Government's recently-published and lengthy 'Statement on the Historic Environment' devotes remarkably little space to archaeology. When there is pressure on funding, local authority staff dealing with conservation and the like are under particular threat. Politicians often see the 'heritage' as a branch of tourism, and put widening access and increasing the number of visitors to museums above scholarship.

SCOLA was not among the bodies invited to give evidence, though our recent chairman, Dennis Turner, was invited in a personal capacity.
We are sure that the report when it appears will be well-informed and well-reasoned; we hope that it will be influential.

MERTON PRIORY — PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT OF THE SITE by Dennis Turner

Merton Priory was founded in the 12th century as an Augustinian house and suppressed by Henry VIII. Most of the monastic buildings were immediately quarried to provide material for Nonsuch Palace and gradually the remainder disappeared. The adjacent River Wandle powered a range of industrial activities down to the time of William Morris and, in the 20th century, Arthur Liberty. The site, only part of which is scheduled as an Ancient Monument, has been extensively excavated and a major excavation report by MoLAS is said to be close to completion.

Today, a major road, Merantun Way, splits the one-time location of the monastic buildings into two. The road was constructed on an embankment in order to preserve the fragmentary remains of the Chapter House in an accessible, if distinctly unprepossessing, vault but there is little else from the medieval period to be seen. North of Merantun Way, the monastic site is covered by Savacentre and its car park. South of the road, a handful of one-time industrial buildings are protected by listing and being within a Conservation Area: these are currently in low-rental leisure and craft use. The remainder of the southern portion, including the refectory and infirmary sites and the location of medieval and post-medieval mills, is an area of wind-swept dereliction used for car-parking. Over the years, this has been the subject of several development proposals and the planning history has been complex.

Following further extensive evaluation excavations (which will be the subject of separate publication), outline planning permission for development of housing, hotel, restaurants etc., has been granted to Countryside Properties by the Merton Borough Council. The concomitant reduction in week-end parking spaces threatens the viability of the current usage of the listed buildings but the council has declared a rather grand aim 'to make the site and its story accessible to the widest possible audience', which has hints of tourism generation. It has commissioned Vision Works to assess the viability of a new heritage or visitor centre on the site as a way of achieving this aim. Vision Works is based in York and is described as 'one of the UK's leading Leisure and Tourism Consultancies' and is part of Continuum Group. Vision Works has undertaken a large number of studies of similar sites and its sister company, Heritage Projects, is involved in the Jorvik Viking Centre.

Vision Works is currently involved in a consultation exercise concerning the proposed heritage centre. Various on-site constraints, the outline planning permissions and limited Section 106 agreements do not allow much room for manoeuvre. The developers have agreed to provide only modest finance and Merton Council seems unwilling to add materially to this. Additional resources, including lottery funding, are problematic. There seem little grounds for optimism.

EXCAVATIONS AT TOLWORTH COURT FARM, 2002

Julie Wileman (Archaeology Subject Leader, ACE University of Surrey) the Assistant Site Director has provided this interim account of an excavation being undertaken by the Kingston-on-Thames Archaeological Society and the University of Surrey Extra-Mural Department. Some 40 to 50 people a day, including children, took part during the training excavation which occupied the first three weeks and some 15 a day during the research excavation that has followed it.

The second season of excavations at this moated site on the edge of the London boundary in Tolworth is designed to establish the degree of survival of archaeology on the site, and to investigate further a number of ephemeral features noted during the first season in 2000 and during fieldwalking and surveying both previous to that and during 2001. The site is probably that of a Domesday Manor, and was recorded in a 1327 Inquisition post mortem following the execution of the holder, Hugh Despencer.

Much of the current season's work has been slowed up by the combination of intensely hot weather and then downpours of monsoon dimensions, which, on a clay moated site, have created some of the most difficult digging conditions possible. Two trenches, intended to elucidate the features related to a possibly stone-lined pond and a number of buried leats, have been flooded out and work on these has been temporarily halted. Two further trenches, one in an area of no earthworks and one related to a further leat and rubble deposit have only yielded negative evidence. A trench on the moated island has revealed that this area seems to have been completely levelled, perhaps in the 19th century, leaving no surviving medieval features, although some chalk rubble foundation material may have originated on site at this period. The trench did produce a 19th century farm building, possibly a slaughter-house, which seems to have been built using 18th and 17th century bricks and tiles. This feature is, of itself, rather interesting, as an example of an agricultural structure of the period.

The final trench, a large open area, has just been commenced; this trench is designed to seek evidence both for traces of medieval buildings and to try to understand the spread of Romano-British material, ditches and post-holes noted in 2002. In this trench have been found Iron Age/Romano-British pottery of the first century AD and chaff-tempered Saxon ware that may be associated with some post holes.

BIRKBECK TRAINING EXCAVATION by Harvey Sheldon

The 2002 Birkbeck Training Excavation took place on a multi-period gravel site near to Upminster and Rainham. The site is being developed to form an agricultural reservoir, and the gravel is to be extracted.

The work was undertaken in co-operation with English Heritage and with considerable practical assistance from the Hertfordshire Archaeological Trust.The training excavation lasted for five weeks with between 25 and 28 students participating each week

Stripping of the site had revealed a dense landscape of features and excavation by the Hertfordshire Archaeological Trust earlier in the summer produced evidence of activity on the site from the later prehistoric through to the pagan Saxon period, including a number of sunken-featured buildings (grubenhäuser).

Because of the limited funds available it was clear that only a proportion of the site, more than two hectares in extent, could be examined. English Heritage suggested that more could be done if the training excavation took place on the site. Consequently an area of about half a hectare was investigated during the training excavation, which ran from 17th June to 19th July.

Amongst the features investigated during the training excavation were two circular ditched features, one of which was probably a round house, parts of a substantial enclosure ditch likely to have originated in the late Iron Age, a rectangular Saxon hall-type building and a number of complicated ditch and pit features which were probably of Saxon date.