Heritage Data Projects

A number of projects are undertaken by staff in the area. Below is a sample of some of the varied work that is carried out both internally by Heritage Data and in conjunction with external partners.

A 'Heritage Gateway' to England

Heritage Gateway is a website which provides a single point of access to records and images of buildings, sites and monuments held by English Heritage and some of England’s Local Authorities. Development of the website is being undertaken as a five year project between English Heritage (EH), the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers (ALGAO) and the Institute for Historic Building Conservation (IHBC).
Over the next few years, Heritage Gateway will be enhanced to provide access to the new Heritage Protection Reform (HPR) Register of Historic Sites and Buildings of England (RHSBE).
Visit the website and start searching!  www.heritagegateway.org.uk

Defence of Britain Concordance Project

Between 2005 and 2007, English Heritage concorded some 20,000 records from the Council for British Archaeology’s Defence of Britain (DoB) database with the National Monuments Record, (NMR). The majority are Second World War sites, but First World War and Cold War sites have also been included. The wide range of military records include WW1 airship stations, pillboxes, prisoner of war camps; WW2 pillboxes, rocket projector batteries, barrage balloon sites, coastal batteries, army camps; and Cold War sites such as Royal Observer Corps posts, rocket test facilities, hospitals and regional government headquarters, etc. These records are publicly accessible via PastScape at www.pastscape.org.uk.

Seaside Heritage

A desk-based project is underway to produce and enhance database records for a range of seaside monuments including pleasure piers, seaside pavilions, winter gardens, hotels and bandstands. These have been linked to historic images and recent survey photographs on ViewFinder and Images of England, and are accessible to the public via PastScape. Notable records include: New Brighton; a once huge but now forgotten seaside resort which boasted a taller tower than that of Blackpool, Clevedon Pier; the nation’s only remaining intact Grade I listed pleasure pier and the Midland Hotel in Morecambe, a stunning 1930’s Art Deco building currently under restoration.

Industrial Monuments

A large amount of detailed survey information was collected on industrial monuments by English Heritage under the Monuments Protection Programme (MPP), which began in mid 1990s. The MPP industrial site reports are now being assimilated into the NMR database for the first time. These will offer national coverage in England of over 2,200 industrial sites in the following industries: alum, brass arsenic, coal, copper electricity, glass, gunpowder, tin, iron mining, iron and steel working, lead, lime cement and plaster, minor metals, quarrying, water and sewage, zinc.

The records which will be publicly accessible via PastScape provide an interesting insight into England’s rich industrial past. Many monuments are listed buildings and/or scheduled monuments and deemed of international significance.
 

 

FISH Interoperability Toolkit

 The FISH Interoperability Toolkit was developed by members of FISH, including staff from Heritage Data, as an open-source solution to the issues surrounding data exchange in the heritage sector.  Many different formats are used throughout the community, and this can make the sharing of data very complex.  The Toolkit provides a neutral intermediate format, structured using Extensible Markup Language or XML to support the movement of information between systems.

For more details on the projects we have carried out please see our Projects Quick Guide.