A NEWSLETTER OF HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH Inside this issue... Introduction ...............................2 RESEARCH NEW DISCOVERIES AND INTERPRETATIONS NEWS Cooling Radio Station, Kent ...3 The churches of Mendip: their landscape setting and built fabric ........................4 Defending Scilly ........................8 A zooarchaeological study Peter Williams, © English Heritage Williams, Peter of a Romano-British well assemblage .............................12 Later Silbury Evaluation, 2010 ...................15 Putting the prehistory of the North Pennines on the map ...................................18 Flying, pigs and Stonehenge ..22 Castle-an-Dinas, St Columb Major, Cornwall: field survey on an EPPIC scale .................26 DEVELOPING METHODOLOGIES 53 King Street, Blackburn ..29 The Atlas of Rural Settlement in England GIS .......................32 Conservation of the Bedford Lemere photograph collection at the NMR ............................36 RESEARCH DEPARTMENT REPORTS LIST .......................39 The aisle-less Norman nave at Christon church, Mendip – see story page 4 NEW PUBLICATIONS .........40 NUMBER 16 SUMMER 2011 ISSN 1750-2446 In my foreword to the last issue of Research News I highlighted the likely impact of the National Heritage Protection Plan on English Heritage’s applied historic environment research programmes. The Plan was launched on 23 May 2011 and is now live; for more information please visit http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/protection/national-heritage- protection-plan/. Covering the period 2011-2015, the Plan aims to provide better protection for the most threatened and most significant aspects of our heritage. In order to do that, we need, through investigation, analysis and research, to identify important buildings, sites and landscapes, and to say what is important and why. But we recognise that we can’t do it alone and our aspiration is to work with other organisations and local communities to ensure the Plan develops into something that is truly ‘national’. To that end we have set up an external Advisory Board to help us on the further development of the Plan and to build partnerships. The research highlighted in this issue contributes to the measures making up the Plan or to the underpinning actions that support it. Olivia Horsfall Turner and Elaine Jamieson explain how an architectural and landscape study of the churches of the Mendip Hills contributes to a wider understanding of this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Another multi- disciplinary landscape-scale survey within an AONB, on Alston Moor in the North Pennines, is revealing a rich and hitherto largely unrecognised prehistoric landscape through aerial interpretation and archaeological survey among other approaches. Our understanding of rural landscape character in England is further advanced by making Roberts and Wrathmell’s maps of settlement patterns available via GIS. Martyn Barber describes how historic aerial photographs and other documentary sources can be utilised to shed new light on changes to the landscape in the 20th century, in this case in relation to a short-lived First World War-era aerodrome close to Stonehenge. Our archaeological scientists are researching the reasons for the decay of another category of archive material, the NMR’s important collection of Bedford Lemere glass plate negatives. Geophysics and targeted excavation have been used to elucidate the site of a Romano- British settlement on the other side of the A4 from Silbury Hill, while a recent title in the Informed Conservation series reveals the important military heritage of the Isles of Scilly and the physical threats to the fortifications. The work of our recent cadre of EPPIC placements is showcased by articles covering subjects as diverse as the 20th-century Cooling Radio Station on the Hoo Peninsula, to a zoological assessment of bones recovered from a Romano-British well, to a topographical survey of an Iron-Age hillfort in Cornwall. Lastly, a piece by Adam Menuge emphasises the critical importance of high-quality building research and investigation to the decision-making process in the planning sphere. Training opportunities in this combination of documentary and field-based skills in relation to the built environment are limited, which is why English Heritage has been working with the University of Cambridge to establish a Master of Studies in Building History degree from this autumn. I hope you enjoy this wide-ranging round-up of some of our latest research. John Cattell Heritage Protection Department If you would like this Research News appears twice per year. document in a different Published August 2011 © English Heritage 2011. 75% format, please contact Edited by Tony Wilmott. Designed by Vincent Griffin. our Customer Services Printed by Alderson Brothers department: Product code 51702 Tel: 0870 333 1181 Fax: 01793 414926 Comment should be sent to Tony Wilmott at: English Heritage, Textphone: 01793 414878 Fort Cumberland, Fort Cumberland Road, Eastney, Portsmouth, PO4 9LD. Email: customers@english- Telephone: 023 9285 6700. Fax: 023 9285 6701. Cert no. SGS-COC-003231 heritage.org.uk Email: [email protected] 2 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INTERPRETATIONS Cooling Radio Station, Kent Research into 20th-century transatlantic communications. Between August and December 2010, the near Holmdel, New Jersey, and one other full Archaeological Survey and Investigation team array at Manahawkin, New Jersey. (Cambridge) undertook topographical survey, building recording, and aerial photographic During the last stage of short-wave transcription of the remains of Cooling Radio transatlantic communication, prior to the Station, Medway, Kent. The investigation was rise of satellites, an experimental short-wave carried out as part of English Heritage’s ongoing receiving system was constructed at Cooling. ‘Hoo Peninsula Historic Landscape Project’, The ‘Multiple Direction Universally Steerable an integrated multi-disciplinary study which Aerial System’ (MEDUSA) had the potential aims to increase our knowledge of the historic to be the next major development in global development of the Hoo Peninsula in order to short-wave communication. Unlike the MUSA, ensure that the historic environment makes a the MEDUSA was capable of being steered in positive contribution to future development elevation and azimuth and was not restricted and growth in this part of the Thames Estuary. to a single channel. The experimental The survey was undertaken to provide an MEDUSA at Cooling comprised two improved understanding of the history and identically arranged groups of 48 conical the surviving remains of the radio station shaped aerials separated by 600m. which will underpin future management decisions and support the plans of the site’s The MUSA system at Cooling Radio Station owners, the RSPB, to reuse the building as was unique in the United Kingdom and was an educational resource centre. probably one of the most complex radio receivers ever built. The radio station closed The investigation has led to a better in 1965 and was reused for testing antennae understanding of 20th-century transatlantic in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming communications and the role that the part of the RSPB reserve at Northward Hill. technologically advanced receiving station at Cooling played. Cooling Radio Station was The results of the survey will be available shortly constructed in 1938 to house the ‘Multiple both as hard copy and as a PDF download from Unit Steerable Antenna’ (MUSA) system the English Heritage website: Gregory, D and developed by Friis and Feldman in the 1930s. Newsome, S 2011 Cooling Radio Station, Hoo The MUSA comprised of 16 rhombic aerials Peninsula, Kent: An Archaeological Investigation of stretched out over 2 miles orientated towards a Short-Wave Receiving Station English Heritage the transmitter in the USA. Each rhombic Research Department Report Series 110/2010. antenna was connected to the receiving The remains of apparatus by an individual coaxial cable. Derwin Gregory Cooling Radio Station Although the antennae remained mechanically fixed, it was possible to adjust the apparatus so that the vertical angle of reception could be aimed at a particular component of the incoming short-wave transmissions. © English Heritage The MUSA array was the last major technological development in the short-wave communication era and represented the ultimate short-wave receiving system. This aerial array was used on the transatlantic radiotelephone circuit to the USA until the 1960s. It is believed that only two other stations using the MUSA system were built in the world: the experimental array constructed 3 NEW DISCOVERIES AND INTERPRETATIONS The churches of Mendip: their landscape setting and built fabric This holistic study demonstrates how places of worship reveal the historical development of the communities they served. The Mendip Hills Area of Outstanding to assess the medieval churches within the Natural Beauty (AONB) lies to the south of project area examining both their built fabric Bristol and is dominated by the Mendip Hills and landscape setting. The architecture of these range, a gently undulating Carboniferous buildings, and how it developed through time, Limestone plateau. This nationally important may be viewed as a reflection of a community’s protected landscape has been the focus wealth and piety, as well as a key indicator of of an English Heritage multi-disciplinary wider economic, social and cultural change.