A replica Iron Age roundhouse is to be built in Chester, England, to teach local people about how people lived over two thousand years ago. Cities all over the country hold fascinating Iron Age secrets – watch our Ancient World in London video below to learn about pre-Roman London.
The project, to be completed in August this year, will be housed in the grounds of Burwardsley Outdoor Education Centre, near Beeston Castle and Maiden Castle.
The sheme, commissioned by Habitats and Hillforts, is part of a three-year landscape partnership between Cheshire West and Cheshire Council (CWaC), Chester Renaissance and the Heritage Lottery Fund. A CWaC spokeman tells the Ellesmere Port Standard the project will help bring archaeology to life in the region: “This is just one project of many that the Habitats and Hillforts project is undertaking. Over a three-year period, Habitats and Hillforts aim to conserve and enhance the string of six important Iron Age hillforts along the sandstone ridge and their associated habitats.
HK: Congratulations on raising the 200,000 sum you needed, how do you feel?
PC: We feel quite overwhelmed by it all, the response from the public has been fantastic, much better than we expected when we started and we’ve had all sorts of letters of support and donations that have made us think that what we’re doing is something people really want.
HK: And you’ve raised 200,000 so far, but I understand that there’s still a way to go.
PC: Well the 200,000 is roughly about a quarter of what we need to raise. That’s to pay for the public elements of the project. We have to raise around three times as much again. That’s a mixture of private money from investors to pay for other parts of the building and a mortgage for ourselves, the Archaeological Trust, to relocate into another part of the building – that will be about 230,000. We estimate there is another 150,000 worth of repairs required for the Sergeant’s mess building. Then we have two private investors to buy what space’s left in the building and bring in another 350,000 and that gets us pretty close to the total amount. So that’s how we’ll do it. The 200,000 pays for the public part of the project.
I think one of the reasons why it’s been as successful as it has been is because people, and I think it’s not just true of Colchester, feel that not enough is done with the heritage of the place. Colchester’s a very old city – it’s the oldest Roman town in the country and yet you could walk around the town centre and not get any sort of feeling about its Roman history.
HK: What time-frame do you have in mind to complete the repairs and get the circus excavated and the reconstructions completed?
PC: We hope within this year to be ready to move in to the building and then to submit an application, which will take a good year, to the Heritage Lottery Fund, to raise the money to do the displays to kit out the interpretation centre to a high standard because that particular stage of the operation wasn’t included in the current fund-raising. So I guess to get to the end of the process will perhaps take to the end 2011 but if we can get into the building before that we will mount an interim display for the public to visit while all that’s going on – that could be in the autumn of this year.
HK: And how much archaeological work is there to do?
Well the archaeological remains are about a quarter of a mile long and they’re all underground. You can’t see anything at all, the remains are lying about a foot under the modern ground surface, so what we want to do, we want to bring that to the surface by using mounds along the places where the seats were, having the garden where the actual starting gates were, uncovering a small part of the remains and trying to do a three-dimensional reconstruction to show what the original gates looked like.
HK:Have you been to any other sites which would provide a good model for what you’re trying to do?
Well, around what was the Roman Empire you can find around ten circuses where what’s left is substantially exposed, or different parts of them are exposed. All of those are exposed because they’ve got huge chunks of stonework and masonry which, because of the climates in those parts of the world, can withstand exposure. Our climate gives us a different sort of problem and if we exposed the remains they would very quickly disintegrate. So that’s why we’re not proposing to actually attempt to expose the remains for any kind of length of time because they would decay. So what we’re going to do is use in part three-dimensional artwork and in part reconstructions.
If you walk around the footprint of the circus, which is a quarter of a mile long, it’s strange because you might think that there’s not much to go on but if someone explained to you what it all was and just put across the scale of the thing, and the positioning of it on the ground, it’s worth coming to see. But we want to go beyond that and give a three dimensional representation of the starting gates themselves. It’s the job of the interpretation centre to bring the whole thing to life and we’re actually working on a computerised visualisation for that.
HK: What you’ve achieved should really give hope to the next group of people trying to save a heritage project.
I think one of the reasons why it’s been as successful as it has been is because people, and I think it’s not just true of Colchester, feel that not enough is done with the heritage of the place. Colchester’s a very old city – it’s the oldest Roman town in the country and yet you could walk around the town centre and not get any sort of feeling about its Roman history. I think we got this response partly because we found this extraordinary old building but partly I think there’s a sense of frustration that more should be done about it. I think that, because of this appeal, over the next one or two years councillors will start to pay a bit more attention to that aspect and put it a bit higher up on their agenda.
Visit Roman Colchester
Colchester, ne Camulodunon (a Celtic name meaning ‘fortress of the war god Camulos’), was near the summit of our Ancient World in London video hitlist, being just 55 miles from London in Essex. And thankfully we had the perfect guide: Howard Brooks, of the Colchester Archaeological Trust. The trust have been discovering and preserving the city’s history for decades. And it’s clear that Howard has lost none of his passion for archaeology.
HK: Do you feel the council gave you enough help? I understand they donated 30,000.
Well we didn’t actually officially ask them for money – they made it clear there wasn’t any. What we’ve actually agreed to do is to gift to the council the garden around the starting gates, because what actually started this whole thing up was that the area around the starting gates, under the current planning permission, were going to be part of a private garden. We feel very strongly that this isn’t right. Something as important as that should be in the public ownership.
HK: How financially sustainable is the interpretation centre and display going to be?
Well we’re in talks with a major tea room company about leasing them part of the building. That will hopefully provide enough money to pay the running costs of the interpretation centre which actually won’t be very great. If we can get to that stage we feel there’s a really solid long-term business plan there that will allow us to do what we want to do. It’s about 10-15 minutes outside the town centre but the council have this idea that they’re going to develop to create a ‘heritage arc’, which will start at the museum, go up to St. Botolph’s Priory, which is not very far away, up to St John’s Abbey gate and then to the circus. It will tie the circus to the town centre and to the castle.
HK: What does your success tell us about the British public and their interest in heritage?
It tells us what we already know: that many, many people feel the past is of some value, of interest and that it adds to the character of where they live. People feel heritage counts, it’s a part of life, it’s a part of history and that it’s something we need to nurture and look after and I think the success of the appeal just reinforces that.
The oldest museum in the world reopens its doors tomorrow, after a mammoth five-year revamp. Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum has enjoyed a 61million cash injection into its ageing building, recasting all but its Victorian Cockerell building facade. Rick Mather’s new creation allows the museum’s myriad treasures much more space, adding 39 galleries and 10,000sq metres of exhibition space.
The museum, founded in 1683, has been closed to the public since December last year, as the final pieces have been put in place. Funding has come from a number of high-profile sources, including the Heritage Lottery Fund, Linbury Trust (Lord Sainsbury’s charity) and Oxford Thinking; a campaign for the University of Oxford. Fans can have their name inscribed on the museum’s ‘Benefactor Bridge’ for 50 each, and some galleries have already been sponsored: Saudi Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud is patron of the Islamic Arts collection.
“Rick Mather made very good use of space,” says museum director Dr Christopher Brown. “Such a large undertaking meant that we could think anew about how to display the collection.”
Three thousand object mounts have been created, lit by 1,370 new spotlights. The museum’s curators hope its cutting-edge design will allow visitors to see its many wonderful objects in the context of the culture to which they belonged. The Ashmolean strives to show the progression through human history. Visitors can walk through Greece and Rome through to the Near East and India. The museum’s ancient highlights include Egyptian mummy portraits, a 9,000 year-old skull from Jericho and the Anglo-Saxon Alfred Jewel. The museum has endured some
The Ashmolean was founded 326 years ago by revered antiquary Elias Ashmole, after its first five-year construction. It is the world’s oldest public museum, beating Florence’s Uffizi (built in 1581 but not then publicly open) by 82 years. Its last development came in 1845, when its much-loved main building was commissioned by Charles Cockerell. Much of the museum’s celebrated Minoan and Greek collection came from the expeditions of archaeologistArthur Evans, famous for his discovery of Crete’s Palace of Knossos. The Ashmolean houses some of the world’s greatest ancient treasures. Only time can tell if its latest chapter proves as successful as its past.
Look out for an interview with Ashmolean curator Dr Jack Green on Heritage Key – coming soon!
A replica Iron Age roundhouse is to be built in Chester, England, to teach local people about how people lived over two thousand years ago. Cities all over the country hold fascinating Iron Age secrets – watch our Ancient World in London video below to learn about pre-Roman London.
This week a group of archaeologists and volunteers from 