Sandhills Project, Alderley Edge, Cheshire

English Heritage ALSF summaries. 2002/2003

EH Project Number:	3334REC
Funded Unit:	The Victoria University of Manchester

Project Co-Directors

Dr A.J.N.W. Prag, The Manchester Museum, and Dr. E. C. Casella, School of Art History and Archaeology.

The Site: topography and history

Alderley Edge lies some 15 miles south of Manchester: according to legend a king with his knights sleep beneath the Edge. Its exceptional geology led to parts of the site being classified as a SSSI in 1993, and also as a RIGS: copper, lead and cobalt have been mined from c.1750 BC to AD 1920. The coming of the railway in 1842 created an interesting and well-documented social history. In 2001 parts of the site were given Scheduled Ancient Monument status.

In the 1850s the mining company developed an acid-leaching process to extract copper from the ore, from which the waste sand steeped in hydrochloric acid was dumped north of the entrance to West Mine in such quantity that the area became known locally as the Sandhills (SJ 854774). The sand was re-used in the 1930s as an aggregate for road-building in Manchester and again in the 1960s for building the first section of the M6 and the runway at Manchester Airport.

Alderley Edge was opened to modern industrial mining from the mid-18th century. This project seeks to study archaeologically the subsurface remains of domestic structures associated with this post-medieval period of industrial activity. Parish records indicate that by the 1760s two detached cottages had been constructed for the families of foremen who worked at West Mine and Wood Mine. Local oral tradition confirms that the cottages were continuously occupied until the early 1940s. The site thus provides the temporal depth necessary for a diachronic study of changes in working-class consumer behaviour over the post-medieval period. Photographs supplied by Mrs Edna Younger and Mr Roy Barber, the two last surviving erstwhile residents of the cottages, depict brick two-storey structures that had been internally divided to accommodate four separate households, and associated outbuildings, domestic gardens, and the adjoining sandhills. Existing topographic features and vegetation growth patterns suggest the survival of intact subsurface archaeological features, including building foundations, exterior pathways, privies, wells, and possible underfloor deposits. The site ultimately offers new archaeological perspectives on the domestic arena of industrialisation, an understudied aspect of British industrial archaeology. By the early 1950s the cottages had been demolished and the site abandoned, although the sandhills themselves continued to serve as a recreation site for the children of Alderley residents. Although the bulk of the sand matrix was removed as aggregate in two separate periods of road construction, enough contaminated sand remains to inhibit plant growth, which generally does not proceed beyond the stage of an algal crust. AELP's natural historians had identified the area as being of outstanding botanical interest (see below).

Site Conditions & Preservation.

While the Sandhills themselves only support limited plant growth, the site of the adjoining Sandhills cottages was overgrown with nettles, brambles and other vegetation. Apart from a well marked on the 1872 OS map, all other possible topographic features and structural remains were obscured by the dense growth, which was cleared before archaeological work could commence. This was preceded by an in-depth phytosociological vegetation survey detailing the situation and recording indicator and sensitive species. Where vegetation permitted, surface scatters of 19th-century ceramics and glass were located within the site.

Previous Work.

1. The Alderley Edge Landscape Project (AELP).

This project benefits from extensive previous historical research in the locality. From 1996 the Edge was the focus of the Alderley Edge Landscape Project (AELP), a joint multidisciplinary research programme of The Manchester Museum and the National Trust to study all aspects of its natural and human history. This research, funded principally by the Leverhulme Trust, is now being prepared for publication. A substantial archive of photographic, oral history, cartographic and documentary materials was compiled by the AELP, and in addition some surveys of flora and fauna were carried out by students. Curated through The Manchester Museum, this invaluable interdisciplinary archive was extensively consulted during preparation of the Sandhills project

2. AELP - Heritage and Education Resources (AELPHER).

The AELP programme spawned a number of further schemes, among them the Alderley Edge Landscape Project - Heritage and Education Resources (AELPHER), an innovative web-based education and public access project involving local schools and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and other bodies, drawing on the archive built up by AELP. Extensive local community networks fostered through AELPHER will provide the basis for the community outreach schemes incorporated throughout the Sandhills project. The website forming the principal outcome of the AELPHER project went live on 31st July 2003 (www.alderleyedge.man.ac.uk).

3. AELP - Test Excavations on Mine Workings.

Finally, recent archaeological test1 excavations undertaken as part of AELP confirmed Bronze Age and Roman mining at Engine Vein Mine, and also investigated parts of the 19th-century ore processing at Wood Mine.

Aims and Objectives

This project aims to combine a number of multidisciplinary research specialisms to gain new cultural and natural perspectives on the landscape of Alderley Edge, combining the resources available within the University of Manchester with those of outside specialists. Investigations will focus on two interrelated themes:

1. Transformations of domestic life and consumer culture over the Industrial Era.

2. Transformations in the natural and cultural landscape of Alderley Edge brought about by local intensification of mineral extraction industries from 1750 AD.

A central aim of the programme is the integration of a multidisciplinary range of research into the interlinked ecology of the SSSI. Cultural and natural dimensions of the local landscape will be studied through the recovery of environmental data during excavations. By establishing the nature of the past natural environment of the Sandhills region, this research programme will consider the degree of pollution and transformation brought about through subsequent periods of industrial and domestic activity .

The programme is envisaged as a platform for further international comparative research into the effects of industrial extractive industries on cultural and natural landscapes. Possible comparative post-medieval mining landscapes from the USA, Continental Europe, and other regions of Britain will be considered for future research directions.

Experimental Work

Two forms of experimental work will be undertaken:

1. Use of ethnographic sources in archaeological research.

Two people who spent their childhood in the cottages are still alive, one still living locally, the other in Scotland. They have supplied photographs and given interviews, and have both expressed interest in continued involvement with the recording and interpretation of their childhood neighbourhood. This project will collect their ethnographic perspectives on household activities, site layout, and depositional patterns to juxtapose with scholarly interpretations of the archaeological evidence. While such ethno-archaeological methods are commonly practised in archaeological studies of indigenous cultures (most notably in Africa, Australia, and the Americas) this project would explore the value of ethnographic evidence in a western European archaeological context.

2. Relationship between coarse-sieving and field recovery rates.

Standard field recovery methods in the Americas require coarse-sieving of 100% of stratified soil contexts. Such a field method is not typically practised in Europe, and heated trans-Atlantic debate has resulted from this divergence. This project proposes explicitly to problematise the relationship between recovery rates and coarse-sieving of stratified soils. Cultural materials and environmental data will be recovered in situ during hand excavation, both as "special finds" (with provenance recorded to specific 3-dimensional location) and as "lot finds" (with provenance recorded only to stratigraphic context). However, all "spoil" excavated from stratified contexts will subsequently be coarse-sieved. Dry sieving will generally be undertaken, although wet coarse-sieving will be used if waterlogged clay matrix is encountered. In accordance with American field methods, 4mm and 2mm (window screen) mesh screens will be used. Artefacts and ecofacts recovered from sieves will be added to "lot finds" recovered in situ. During the final analysis stages of the Alderley Sandhills Project, recovery rates for various size-classes of artefacts and ecofacts can be then compared with recovery rates from similar Industrial Era sites in Britain.

The Value of the Project can be summarised as follows:

Substantial involvement of the local community and interested public throughout field and laboratory stages of data collection.
Enthusiastic endorsement, support and publicity through existing community outreach networks (via the AELP working party).
Student participation and training incorporated through local schools, the University of Manchester, with involvement from the universities of Leicester and Boston.
On-going public delivery of results through museum displays, visitor pamphlets, and on-site signage and a regularly updated web-diary (www.alderleysandhillsproject.co.uk).
Publication of final results through both a popular booklet and a scholarly volume (with Manchester University Press).
Methodological experimentation undertaken on the relationship between field recovery rates and the coarse-sieving of excavated soils.
Archaeological results directly comparable with similar industrial-era sites in North-America, Ireland and the Commonwealth.
Excavation began on 16th July, and will continue until 10th September 2003. Visitors are welcome: because of the importance of local community involvement and the high visitor numbers which Alderley suffers on fine week-ends, the team work a six-day week including the week-ends, with a free day on Tuesdays.

This page was published 30/07/03