Special Projects

The term special project refers to those sites and landscapes for which detailed investigations and mapping are done as part of wider research programmes or where there is a specific management need. Requests for this type of project can be generated within English Heritage or by partner organisations and other external customers. We often work closely with our field survey colleagues in the Archaeological Investigation team. All available photography is examined and the mapping is usually at a scale of 1:2500 or larger. Internal reports are produced and some projects lead to publication (e.g. H. Winton. 2002. A Possible Small Roman Town at Sansom's Platt, Tackley, Oxon. Britannia XXXII. 304-9, Plate XII.)

Examples of recent work

Cawthorn Camps

Cawthorn Camps is currently undergoing a new study to inform the production of a revised management plan for the site under the joint auspices of English Heritage and the North York Moors National Park. This composite image, based on a 1925 photograph of Sir Ian Richmond's excavations, shows fort ‘A' and illustrates how air photo rectification and interpretation can be combined with the results of recent field survey.
Flint Farm, Danebury

An aerial photographic survey was undertaken in conjunction with excavations by Professor Barry Cunliffe of Oxford University on the sites of two presumed Iron Age/Romano-British settlement enclosures (Rowbury Farm and Flint Farm) lying 3.5km to the northeast of Danebury, Hampshire as part of the Danebury Environs Programme. The survey was designed to set these excavations and preparatory geophysical prospection of the enclosure sites into a broader landscape context.
Fylingdales Moor

The wild fire that raged across Fylingdales Moor, North Yorkshire, between the 17th and 21st of September 2003 devasted the vegetation and fragile peat soils of 2.4km2 of heather moorland, but in the process uncovered an archaeological landscape largely hidden by the heather for decades.
Hungerford Common

The Hungerford Common project involved the interpretation, transcription and recording of all archaeological features visible on aerial photographs for two areas of common land in Hungerford - Hungerford Common and Freeman’s Marsh.
Knowlton Circles

The archaeological features around the Knowlton Circles henge complex were mapped from aerial photographs. A multi-period landscape was recorded, including Neolithic ceremonial and funerary monuments, Bronze Age round barrows, Iron Age or Roman boundaries and field systems and the ruins of a Medieval church.
Richborough Environs Project

The Richborough Environs Project is part of a multi-disciplinary research project initiated by the English Heritage Centre for Archaeology at Portsmouth under Tony Wilmott.
Scotland Lodge

Just west of Winterbourne Stoke, in the small area of ground between the village of Winterbourne Stoke and the SSSI and Nature reserve of Parsonage Down, is a large enclosure of uncertain date. The site was investigated first by the aerial survey team of English Heritage and then Wessex Archaeology.
Tarrant Launceston

Aerial photographs taken in 2006 prompted a re-evaluation of the oval enclosure known as Tarrant Launceston 15 and its surrounding landscape. The photographs showed a number of breaks, or causeways, in the ditch that defines the monument, perhaps indicating that the site is actually a Neolithic causewayed enclosure and considerably older than had previously been thought. A survey of existing air photographs of the area around Tarrant Launceston 15 took place in the summer of 2008 and illustrates that a significant amount of new information is locked in existing archives. The analysis and project report is in progress.
Toddington Manor

Toddington Manor is located about 5 km to the north of Winchcombe, on the northern foothills of the Cotswolds, above the Vale of Evesham. The estate, founded before the Norman Conquest, remained in the hands of the Tracy family until the early 20th century. Today the core of the estate survives as a landscape park of 195 hectares, with a magnificent Gothic Revival mansion at its heart. Recent aerial photographic interpretation and mapping by the National Mapping Programme has recorded not only features associated with the Victorian development, but also traces of both earlier and later periods of Toddington’s history.

For further information on a project or any other aspect of the work of the Aerial Survey team please contact us at: AerialSurvey@english-heritage.org.uk.

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