Cornwall NMP

Cornwall County Council Historic Environment Service interpreted and mapped the archaeology of the whole county, including the Isles of Scilly, from aerial photographs. The project transformed the amount of information known and the way it can be accessed by archaeologists and the general public. Historic and prehistoric sites and landscapes can be viewed interactively on the Cornwall Historic Environment Record Geographical Information System (GIS) and an overview is given on a special website.

The origins of Cornish mining lie deep in the past. Long before the invention of powerful steam engines that enabled deep rock mining, tin and copper were being excavated from shallow workings such as these at Wheal Bal near Cornwall’s south west tip. Photo: 17-FEB-1998. CAU ACS-5159 © Cornwall County Council.

A rich and varied heritage

Cornwall has a rich and varied archaeological heritage reflected in the wide range of sites mapped during the NMP project. A striking aspect of Cornwall’s historic landscape is the extraordinary legacy of its tin and copper mining industries. The value of NMP interpretation and mapping of early workings is that many of these features do not appear on any other maps. This data was a key source of information leading to the inscription of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape as a World Heritage Site in 2006.

Archaeologists in Cornwall are fortunate that in the uplands, the surviving remains are easily seen. On Bodmin Moor, for example, there are prehistoric settlements as well as abandoned medieval hamlets.
 
Away from the moors, in the farming heartland, many archaeological features have been levelled by ploughing. In some cases below-ground remains do survive and in certain dry summers these remains can be seen from the air as cropmarks.

At Coswarth in central Cornwall, an oval enclosure can be seen as a dark green mark in a field containing a paler green crop. Excavation of similar enclosures has shown that this site is likely to be a settlement of late Iron Age or Romano-British date. In Cornwall they are traditionally called rounds and are the predominant settlement type from this period in lowland areas. Rounds usually have entrances with gates, and contain several round houses although in this particular example all that can be seen is the enclosing ditch. The house in the foreground provides a pointer to the size of the round (CAU-ACS-3504). © Cornwall County Council.

The defence of Cornwall

Leaping forward in time, many of Cornwall’s wartime defences are visible on RAF aerial photographs taken during the 1940s. By mapping individual features, such as pill boxes, anti-tank ditches and anti-aircraft batteries, a picture can be built up of the complete defensive networks protecting the county’s key strategic locations.

For example Carkeel Anti-Aircraft battery is a fine example of a heavy anti-aircraft battery near the River Tamar which forms the county border with Devon. Ironically, although it is sited in Cornwall, this battery formed part of the defensive ring around Plymouth. Batteries like this worked to put up a barrage of fire to force bombers to fly higher, thereby reducing their accuracy.

The downside of this, of course, is that wayward bombs often fell onto residential areas. During the Plymouth blitz in the spring of 1941, the Cornish towns of Torpoint and Saltash, a few miles south of this battery, sustained severe damage.

Carkeel Anti-Aircraft battery photographed has two phases of construction: the four gun emplacements seen here were built towards the end of the war, traces of four earlier emplacements, dating from 1940, can be seen towards the top of the enlarged image (MAL 71 005/055). © National Remote Sensing Centre.

The images used on this page are copyright English Heritage unless specified otherwise. For further details of any photographs or other images and for copies of these, or the plans and reports related to the project please contact the English Heritage Archive.

For further information on a project or any other aspect of the work of the Aerial Survey team please contact us via email using the link above.