National Forest NMP

The National Forest cuts across a number of different geographical regions and landscape types including the cores of two ancient forests, low-lying rural landscapes and part of the Midland Coalfield.

The National Forest NMP Project was undertaken in 1993 to provide a high quality, reliable and accurate archaeological database for the area of the newly proposed National Forest. It was planned as the first stage of a full evaluation to be followed up with fieldwork. The project was carried out with the cooperation of the Countryside Commission's National Forest Development Team and the three county Sites and Monuments Records (SMRs) affected by the Forest.

Like other early National Mapping Programme projects, the air photograph interpretation and mapping were produced as inked overlays to 1:10,000 maps. All archaeological features visible as earthworks or cropmarks, with the exception of plough-levelled ridge and furrow and areas of indiscriminate extraction, were recorded to a terminal date of 1945. The analysis of 2700 oblique photographs and more than 5000 vertical photographs allowed the identification of features of all dates from prehistory to the twentieth century including many industrial sites.

A total of 1336 archaeological records were created through this project, and 300 existing records were enhanced. Summary versions of these records are available online via the Heritage Gateway.

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 NMR English Heritage's public archive.

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.