Salisbury Plain Training Area NMP

The Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) Mapping Project was an internal project forming part of English Heritage’s (previously The Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England) National Mapping Programme (NMP). It grew out of earlier work since the Commission has been active on the Plain since the creation of Archaeological Site Groups (ASG's) under the auspices of the Salisbury Plain Working Party in 1986. Previously work was very largely field based and had covered small areas at a large scale, although a few areas were plotted using the Digicart stereo photogrammetric plotter. Following the standard practice of NMP all archaeological features surviving as either upstanding earthworks or visible only as cropmarks were recorded. The 1:10,000 transcriptions are available from the National Monuments Record Centre archive. Data relating to the transcriptions is currently available in the form of MORPH2 records, but the data will be available through AMIE in the future. Further detailed descriptions of methodology and more in depth interpretations can be found in an internal report available from the NMRC Salisbury Plain Training Area: A report for the National Mapping Programme (Crutchley 2000). The findings of this project have also been incorporated in a forthcoming publication The Field Archaeology of the Salisbury Plain Training Area (McOmish, Field and Brown 2001).

The project covers 27 separate 1:10,000 quarter sheets, defined by the Salisbury Plain Training Area, a total area of some 675 km2 (A) covering Wiltshire and a small part of Hampshire. The Plain is predominantly chalk grassland that rises to a height of 230m.

Why SPTA?

In the 1930s OGS Crawford, the founding father of aerial archaeology, noted that Salisbury Plain had been so damaged by military activity that archaeological interest should be concentrated on the Marlborough Downs, with a view to designation as a National Park. Unfortunately his advice was ignored and the archaeology of the Marlborough Downs was systematically destroyed by ploughing (See Avebury World Heritage Site Mapping Project and Lambourn Downs Mapping Project). The presence of the military, destructive though it has been in specific areas, has helped to protect the Plain from plough damage. As a result it is now probably the best preserved area of upland in southern Britain, with earthwork remains of field systems, settlements and funerary monuments of various periods, as can be seen in these images. Taken 70 years apart they show that little has changed on the Plain in that time compared with much of the rest of southern England.

The key results from the project can be found below.

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.