Tuesday, 27 May 2014
WARBIRDS INTO WOKS: THE STORY BEHIND THE BURMA SPITFIRES
Monday, 17 June 2013
DDA NEWS
PRINTING THE LEGEND- THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF THE BURMA SPITFIRES
Since we last blogged about Digging Dad's Army members of the Team have been involved in a number of Projects in Britain and abroad.
In January 2013 Andy Brockman and Rod Scott went to Myanmar/Burma as part of the Burma Spitfires Project, sponsored by the international online wargaming company Wargaming.net, with Andy as Lead Archaeologist and Rod as Field Archaeologist and Historic Ammunition Specialist.
In a story which attracted worldwide attention the team, which also included Principal Field Archaeologist Martin Brown of the Plugstreet Project and Geophysicists, Dr Roger Clarke and Andy Merritt of Leeds University and Dr Adam Booth of Imperial College, were able to use field archaeology on former RAF Mingaladon, now Yangon International Airport, to corroborate their conclusions based on detailed work in the archives, that the story that up to 36 Spitfire aircraft were buried in Burma [now Myanmar] at the end of World War Two is nothing more than a captivating urban myth.
Andy Merritt and Dr Adam Booth at Yangon International Airport
[Copyright: Andy Brockman]
This expedition was the first time where the common myth of buried iconic objects, such as the Spitfires, has been examined scientifically.
If you want to hear the story from the team themselves there is a free presentation at the RAF Museum Hendon on Wednesday 19 June at 7.30pm
Sign up for tickets for the Hendon Presentation here
http://spitfiresinburma.eventbrite.co.uk/
The presentation will also be made available on line the next day for people who cannot get to Hendon on the night.
SARRE KENT
Andy and Rod have also been working with Dr Paul Cuming of Kent County Council Heritage Group and Sian Edwards of Sussex University on a community history project centered on the village of Sarre in East Kent.
The village was identified of being of major importance by the Defence of Britain Project and Sian was given funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to undertake a pilot study to look at the feasibility of undertaking a wider project in the Sarre area.
One immediate benefit of the programme is a self guide leaflet enabling visitors to explore for themselves the defences of Sarre starting and ending at the village pub! The leaflet is being launched in September.
We also spent a very enjoyable afternoon with Years 5 and 6 at Monkton Primary School where we talked about how World War Two would have impacted on the lives of their predecessors and they shared with us the work they have already done on Monkton in WOrld War Two, including showing us a Police report regarding an air raid on Manston Airfield on 14 August 1940 which killed two residents of Sarre and damaged the school.
The report was not available anywhere else and the school had a copy thanks to its place as a focus for local families over many years as it was donated by the family of the Police Sergeant who wrote it and who were connected to the school. Yet more proof, as if it were needed, of the importance of looking not just in the formal documentary and media archives, but in those priceless archives which exist in the community.
The team are now making plans to take the work on and undertake a more detailed study.
POW CAMP 1020 SHOOTERS HILL
Thanks to the discovery of a Foreign Office document in the National Archive at Kew by our friends at SE9 Magazine DDA are able to undertake a detailed community based study of the Prisoner of War Camp, Working Camp 1020 which took over the site of the disused ZAA Rocket Battery on Shooters Hill Golf Course in 1946.
In addition to details about "Denazification" the document give the names and places of origin of a number of the leading prisoners in the camp and, thanks to this, it is hoped that we will be able to look at the lives and attitudes of some of the former prisoners alongside the study of the place of the camp and its guards and prisoners in the lives of the community of Shooters Hill and Welling.
The project is being undertaken in collaboration with post GCSE Students at Colfe's School in Lewisham and runs through the Summer.
PRINTING THE LEGEND- THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF THE BURMA SPITFIRES
Since we last blogged about Digging Dad's Army members of the Team have been involved in a number of Projects in Britain and abroad.
In January 2013 Andy Brockman and Rod Scott went to Myanmar/Burma as part of the Burma Spitfires Project, sponsored by the international online wargaming company Wargaming.net, with Andy as Lead Archaeologist and Rod as Field Archaeologist and Historic Ammunition Specialist.
Defended Barracks on the main road into Yangon [Rangoon]
[Copyright: Andy Brockman]
Andy Merritt and Dr Adam Booth at Yangon International Airport
[Copyright: Andy Brockman]
This expedition was the first time where the common myth of buried iconic objects, such as the Spitfires, has been examined scientifically.
If you want to hear the story from the team themselves there is a free presentation at the RAF Museum Hendon on Wednesday 19 June at 7.30pm
Sign up for tickets for the Hendon Presentation here
http://spitfiresinburma.eventbrite.co.uk/
The presentation will also be made available on line the next day for people who cannot get to Hendon on the night.
SARRE KENT
A surviving Pill Box at Sarre
[Copyright: Andy Brockman]
The village was identified of being of major importance by the Defence of Britain Project and Sian was given funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to undertake a pilot study to look at the feasibility of undertaking a wider project in the Sarre area.
One immediate benefit of the programme is a self guide leaflet enabling visitors to explore for themselves the defences of Sarre starting and ending at the village pub! The leaflet is being launched in September.
We also spent a very enjoyable afternoon with Years 5 and 6 at Monkton Primary School where we talked about how World War Two would have impacted on the lives of their predecessors and they shared with us the work they have already done on Monkton in WOrld War Two, including showing us a Police report regarding an air raid on Manston Airfield on 14 August 1940 which killed two residents of Sarre and damaged the school.
The report was not available anywhere else and the school had a copy thanks to its place as a focus for local families over many years as it was donated by the family of the Police Sergeant who wrote it and who were connected to the school. Yet more proof, as if it were needed, of the importance of looking not just in the formal documentary and media archives, but in those priceless archives which exist in the community.
The team are now making plans to take the work on and undertake a more detailed study.
POW CAMP 1020 SHOOTERS HILL
Thanks to the discovery of a Foreign Office document in the National Archive at Kew by our friends at SE9 Magazine DDA are able to undertake a detailed community based study of the Prisoner of War Camp, Working Camp 1020 which took over the site of the disused ZAA Rocket Battery on Shooters Hill Golf Course in 1946.
In addition to details about "Denazification" the document give the names and places of origin of a number of the leading prisoners in the camp and, thanks to this, it is hoped that we will be able to look at the lives and attitudes of some of the former prisoners alongside the study of the place of the camp and its guards and prisoners in the lives of the community of Shooters Hill and Welling.
The project is being undertaken in collaboration with post GCSE Students at Colfe's School in Lewisham and runs through the Summer.
Friday, 25 May 2012
DDA MAY 2012
FAREWELL DAVID CROFT
Since we last Blogged about Digging Dad's Army we have seen the passing of David Croft- co-creator with Jimmy Perry of the iconic TV series which gave us our name.
Aside from noting the passing of someone who helped create a piece of TV History and in so doing rescued for the public and future generations a strand of important Social History; we also note that inevitably the number of people in our communities who have a first hand experience of the conflicts, the archaeology of which we try to record, is becoming smaller.
That should be a spur to us to hold and record those conversations and introduce those people whose generation experienced conflict in all its forms to the young people who will carry the memory of thier experience forward into their own sense of identity and history.
As a footnote to the death of Mr Croft, last Spring [2011] Andy Brockman of DDA was delighted to be able to help in the research for the episode of the BBC's "Reel History of Britain" about the Home Guard and as always for the public the starting point of the programme was the perception of the Home Guard created by "Dad's Army."
OPERATION NIGHTINGALE
A number of Conflict Archaeologists, including members of the DDA Team, have been involved in supporting Operation Nightingale. A brilliantly simple new project developed by archaeologist [and Medical Sgt] Diarmaid Walshe of 1 Rifles and Richard Osgood and Martin Brown at the Historic Environment Advisory Team at the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and designed to use archaeology as a tool to help rehabilitate servicepeople with mental or physical injuries.
Since the first pilot excavation at East Chisenbury Midden on Salisbury Plain last September the project has taken off in a way no-one could have predicted, with one TV documentary in the can and another in the offing and with excavations and fieldwork taking place in Sussex, on Portland Bill, with the Town Unearthed Project at the Folkestone Villa and at Caerwent on an incredible Roman building first excavated by Antiquarians whose finds and notes have since been lost.
The project has seen servicemen and women working in archaeology, often for the first time, alongside professional archaeologists and students delivering new data which would not have been obtained in any other way- especially at East Chisenbury, but also pioneering new approaches to the excavation of air crash sites- and most importantly making life better for people who have often experienced life changing events.
The project has been supported by Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Wessex Archaeology and the University of Leicester and has seen effects ranging from soldiers who are now about to start degrees in archaeology having never considered it before last September and, perhaps most important of all, soldiers who have said the experience of doing archaeology was so positive they have had their first good nights sleep since returning from Theatre.
The success of Op Nightingale probaly also offers lessons in how archaeology can offer far more than just new knowledge about the past.
DDA PROJECTS FOR 2012
In addition to preparing reports, we are currently preparing two weekend projects under the DDA Banner for 2012, one for the Festival of British Archaeology in July and another for the Heritage Open Days in September.
Both are community based and focus on community responses to the threat and reality of Air Raids.
Details soon on this Blog.
Since we last Blogged about Digging Dad's Army we have seen the passing of David Croft- co-creator with Jimmy Perry of the iconic TV series which gave us our name.
Aside from noting the passing of someone who helped create a piece of TV History and in so doing rescued for the public and future generations a strand of important Social History; we also note that inevitably the number of people in our communities who have a first hand experience of the conflicts, the archaeology of which we try to record, is becoming smaller.
That should be a spur to us to hold and record those conversations and introduce those people whose generation experienced conflict in all its forms to the young people who will carry the memory of thier experience forward into their own sense of identity and history.
As a footnote to the death of Mr Croft, last Spring [2011] Andy Brockman of DDA was delighted to be able to help in the research for the episode of the BBC's "Reel History of Britain" about the Home Guard and as always for the public the starting point of the programme was the perception of the Home Guard created by "Dad's Army."
OPERATION NIGHTINGALE
A number of Conflict Archaeologists, including members of the DDA Team, have been involved in supporting Operation Nightingale. A brilliantly simple new project developed by archaeologist [and Medical Sgt] Diarmaid Walshe of 1 Rifles and Richard Osgood and Martin Brown at the Historic Environment Advisory Team at the Defence Infrastructure Organisation and designed to use archaeology as a tool to help rehabilitate servicepeople with mental or physical injuries.
Since the first pilot excavation at East Chisenbury Midden on Salisbury Plain last September the project has taken off in a way no-one could have predicted, with one TV documentary in the can and another in the offing and with excavations and fieldwork taking place in Sussex, on Portland Bill, with the Town Unearthed Project at the Folkestone Villa and at Caerwent on an incredible Roman building first excavated by Antiquarians whose finds and notes have since been lost.
The project has seen servicemen and women working in archaeology, often for the first time, alongside professional archaeologists and students delivering new data which would not have been obtained in any other way- especially at East Chisenbury, but also pioneering new approaches to the excavation of air crash sites- and most importantly making life better for people who have often experienced life changing events.
The project has been supported by Canterbury Archaeological Trust, Wessex Archaeology and the University of Leicester and has seen effects ranging from soldiers who are now about to start degrees in archaeology having never considered it before last September and, perhaps most important of all, soldiers who have said the experience of doing archaeology was so positive they have had their first good nights sleep since returning from Theatre.
The success of Op Nightingale probaly also offers lessons in how archaeology can offer far more than just new knowledge about the past.
DDA PROJECTS FOR 2012
In addition to preparing reports, we are currently preparing two weekend projects under the DDA Banner for 2012, one for the Festival of British Archaeology in July and another for the Heritage Open Days in September.
Both are community based and focus on community responses to the threat and reality of Air Raids.
Details soon on this Blog.
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Discovering Churchill's underground army
Join archaeologists and other volunteers as they search for evidence of the headquarters
and training grounds of Churchill's secret Auxiliary Units at Coleshill House in Wiltshire.
An earlier evaluation weekend has already located the remains of previously unknown
structures in the woodlands where the men would have trained, along with various finds
including a very well preserved bayonet. Come and be part of our first season and reveal
even more of the lives of the men who trained here.
For further information visit www.coleshillhouse.com/coleshilluncovered/get-involved.php
To book a place contact Richard Alexander at churchills_underground_war@yahoo.co.uk
Minimum attendance for this first season of the Coleshill Uncovered project is 3 days, with
the induction day of Sunday 3rd July a must for all volunteers.
Dates: 3-7 July 2011
Cost: £75 flat fee. Day rate = £20 per day
Coleshill House, Wiltshire
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Aside - an essential tool..
... and some stop line/standing building references.
Anyone want to buy a hat?
;-)
Rog
Thursday, 21 October 2010
DDA After Action Report: Summer 2010
Eaglesfield Park EFP09
In June we were back at Eaglesfield Park to complete the evaluation of the World War One anti aircraft gun position.
The objective this year was to obtain the full dimensions of the gun platform and assess its state of preservation with a view to possibly getting it put on display, or at least getting it interpreted for the public at some point in the future.
We had a smaller student team than last year, perhaps that is down to the recession, which meant we were restricted to working on the gun platform itself, but the results were still impressive and useful.
It is now clear that the whole footprint of the gun platform remains in situ. It looks as if attempts were made to remove it as the top of the slab has been broken up on the north east side, but it seems this was rapidly given up as a bad job and the site was abandoned.
In terms of phasing it still looks as if we probably have two WW1 phases with the second hold fast cut into the original platform. There is currently no documentary evidence for the change, but there is a suspicion that the weapon fit was changed when responsibility for the Anti Aircraft Defences in London switched from the Navy to the Army under Field Marshall Lord French, in early 1916.
We also picked up telephone cables hinting at the command and control system in place at Eaglesfield and possibly also hinting where the Battery Office/Command Post might have been situated. We still don't have the location of any of the ancillery elements of the site which actually enabled it to function, the CP, ready use ammunition storage location and the accomodition [and probably the Latrines] for the duty crew.
We will be carrying out more research and producing the archive report of the excavation so far, this Autumn.
Thanks to the regular DDA team and particularly to our students and volunteers, Rachel, Naomi, William and Richard. Also to our friends in the local community, particularly the Eaglesfield Neighbourhood Watch, the Friends of Eaglesfield Park and the Shooters Hill Safer Neighbourhood Team.
OSTERLEY PARK OSP10 Osterley Park wasn't strictly a DDA Project, the idea to mount a project at Osterley was around before DDA existed and Osterley is in west London rather than in DDA's more regular patch in south east London. However I am including it here because, first and foremost it is a fascinating site, but also because it reflects my ideal way of working and a way of working which I hope DDA can develop. That is working in a collegiate way with not just fellow archaeologists, but also groups interested in interpretation and education and being innovative in bringing the story to the public and giving it a future life. So, when we are normally dealing with concrete and slit trenches, why were we at a Stately Home with Adam interiors and a wonderful Tudor Stable Block?
Home Guard School Number One at Osterley Park is one of those stories you couldn't make up. Where else would your average patriotic middle class Briton, gather for a weekend course in guerrilla warfare taught by the former commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigades, "Basque Bombers," a Russian Spy, a Surrealist Painter who used images of his partner to demonstrate camouflage and the Boy Scout Movement's Head of Fieldcraft.
But not only is Osterley a fantastic story and one of the most remarkable to come out of that remarkable Summer of 1940. It is right there at the heart of the debate about how to employ the Home Guard and how to counter the new mechanised warfare of Blitzkrieg. However, perhaps surprisingly the site of the school, while an iconic one to researchers looking at the Home Guard and often appearing in documentaries, most recently Andrew Marr's "History of Modern Britain," has not been looked at archaeologically before. We set out to change that with a crack digging team drawn from both DDA and our colleagues from "No Man's Land," specialists in Great War archaeology who have vast experience in digging training areas and front line trenches in the UK, France and Belgium including Rob Jannaway of the University of Bradford and a leading forensic finds conservator.
Because it is DDA Policy not to excavate on a known military site where ammunition and explosives might be present we also included No Mans Land and DDA Archaeologist and EOD Operator Rod Scott, as our Safety cover.
That would have made for a rewarding weekend in its own right. However what made Osterley so special was the fact we were able to tie the archaeology to real time Living History in a partnership which dates back to the origins of the Project.
For me the Osterley Park 70th Anniversary Project began life back in 2006 when I interviewed a Home Guard veteran, the late Geoff Pendergast, who recorded that his father had attended the Home Guard School at Osterley Park and had been taught explosives by a "Spaniard."
Geoff recalled his father saying "The Spaniard is a good explosives man but one day he will make a mistake." Because of this, and because I was also researching the involvement of people from Greenwich and Woolwich with the Aid Spain Movement and Basque refugee children in the period of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, I had also begun working with "La Columna," an excellent Living History group who specialise in impressions of the Spanish Civil War and the Aid Spain Movement. Veterans of the Spanish Civil War were intimately associated with Osterley Park making developing a project there something of a a "no brainer."
La Columna have taken part in, and latterly organised, a living history event at Osterley Park every year on the anniversary of the opening of the Home Guard School Number One and this year, the 70th Anniversary fell on Saturday 10 July, the actual anniversary to the day of the first intake of students, so La Columna and the National Trust who own the site, planned a special anniversary re-creation of what went on at Osterley during that momentous Summer of 1940.
This represented a opportunity to tie commemoration of the HG School to the anniversary of the founding of the Home Guard and to look at something which had never been looked at before archaeologically. We submitted a project design to the National Trust for an evaluation of the surviving archaeology of the Home Guard School and several drafts and site meetings later we were granted a licence and so the archaeology team gathered on site on Friday 9 July.
The weather over the anniversary weekend was baking hot, which was wonderful for the visitors, but less so for the diggers, particularly as one of our trenches turned out to be on top of a wasp nest, but even so we managed to stay in one piece, un-stung and to produce some archaeology.
With only a limited evaluation possible an area which was believed to contain practice trenches was selected and our colleagues from the Bexley Archaeology Group attempted an indicative resistivity survey to augment a close study of the topography and its relationship with 1940 photographs and newsreel and air photographs from 1942-1944.
However, in spite of heroic efforts in a limited space and on uneven ground, the resistivity survey failed to identify more than a possible area of disturbance. When we put in the two evaluation trenches we found out why.
Having hacked through at least 30cm of hardcore probably left over from the construction of the M4 [Note to the Project Manager- next time book a mini digger] we did come down on what may be the 1940 ground surface, and a possible 1940 cut feature in the second of our evaluation trenches.
The archaeology from such a short lived period in the site's history was always going to be ephemeral, but careful excavation by Cat', Martin, Bev and Brian suggests we may have picked up at least the base of one of Tom Wintringhams practice trenches and we have certainly identified the main practice area of HG School number one.
Like Eaglesfield there was little in the way of small finds although there were some fragments of brass, possibly shell case and Roger identified a possible artifact scatter in an area of interest for next time.
We are committed to producing the Desk Top Study and Report by Christmas and there will also be a video so watch this space. It is also becoming clear that, HG School No 1 apart, Osterley Park has a significant amount of additional surviving Conflict Archaeology and had a significant life in both World Wars encompassing the Army Service Corps, POW Camps and Army and Home Guard Training as well as the odd Luftwaffe bomb and anti invasion defences areas which will be addressed in the desktop study and which can hopefully could be developed as a long term study.
Thanks to Bev Bailey, Ali Baldry [who turned out on her birthday and above and beyond the call of duty on the morning after too!], Martin Brown, Cat Edwards, Mark Khan, Brian Powell, Rod Scott [mention in dispatches for being on site on a week after major back surgery], and Roger Ward on the dig team; Rob Jannaway on finds; Pip, Martin, Clare and the Bexley Archaeology Group for attempting Geophysics under very difficult conditions; Martin, Anne and the team from Archaeopysica Ltd and Angie Jobson and Derek Smith on the video; and not least all to the staff and volunteer team from the National Trust who let us come and play at such a remarkable site. We could not have been made more welcome.
For the NT the whole thing was coordinated by Emily Toecher, Karina Swann of the Osterley Park management team and, on the archaeology side, by Gary Marshall of the Trust's regional archaeology team and the National Trust press office co-ordinated a number of TV and Radio spots which meant we were able to bring the weekend to a wider audience, including the viewers of British Forces TV, where ever in the world they are stationed.
4.43pm September 7 2010
September 7th was the 70th anniversary of "Black Saturday" the first day of the Blitz on London, an event which would leave a permanent mark on the City and by the time the last V2 fell in March 1945 would kill over 20,000 Londoners.
All Summer we have been running a partnership called "Digging The Blitz" with our colleagues at Firepower- the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich Arsenal combining our archaeology, shown in a video diary, with the collections of Firepower and Greenwich Heritage Centre. As part of DTB we decided that it was important to mark the anniversary as close to the time and place it started and in a way which allowed people of all ages to simply remember and reflect in the way they chose.
We decided that simplicity was the most appropriate way to approach the event and so we invited anyone who wanted to take part to join us for two minutes silence at 4.43pm, seventy years to the minute since the sirens sounded for that first deliberate raid on targets in London.
The afternoon was full of resonances.
The silence was begun by Steve Hookins of Firepower who sounded an original hand cranked air raid siren wearing his grandfathers ARP Overall and whistle and it was ended by members of the Royal Artillery recently returned from Afghanistan, firing a salute to all the victims of the Blitz where ever they were, from a WW2 vintage 25 pounder field gun from the Firepower collection.
The gathering included the deputy Mayor of Greenwich, Cllr Jim Gillman, himself a wartime evacuee from the Isle of Dogs and three generations of one family, the oldest an eye witness to the events of that Saturday afternoon whose mother had been a worker under the bombs at Woolwich Arsenal and the youngest who was studying the war and evacuees in Primary School.
You could not really have a better illustration of why the Archaeology of Modern Conflict and communicating it to the wider public, is so important.
In June we were back at Eaglesfield Park to complete the evaluation of the World War One anti aircraft gun position.
The objective this year was to obtain the full dimensions of the gun platform and assess its state of preservation with a view to possibly getting it put on display, or at least getting it interpreted for the public at some point in the future.
We had a smaller student team than last year, perhaps that is down to the recession, which meant we were restricted to working on the gun platform itself, but the results were still impressive and useful.
It is now clear that the whole footprint of the gun platform remains in situ. It looks as if attempts were made to remove it as the top of the slab has been broken up on the north east side, but it seems this was rapidly given up as a bad job and the site was abandoned.
In terms of phasing it still looks as if we probably have two WW1 phases with the second hold fast cut into the original platform. There is currently no documentary evidence for the change, but there is a suspicion that the weapon fit was changed when responsibility for the Anti Aircraft Defences in London switched from the Navy to the Army under Field Marshall Lord French, in early 1916.
We also picked up telephone cables hinting at the command and control system in place at Eaglesfield and possibly also hinting where the Battery Office/Command Post might have been situated. We still don't have the location of any of the ancillery elements of the site which actually enabled it to function, the CP, ready use ammunition storage location and the accomodition [and probably the Latrines] for the duty crew.
Eaglesfield AA Gun Site
We will be carrying out more research and producing the archive report of the excavation so far, this Autumn.
Thanks to the regular DDA team and particularly to our students and volunteers, Rachel, Naomi, William and Richard. Also to our friends in the local community, particularly the Eaglesfield Neighbourhood Watch, the Friends of Eaglesfield Park and the Shooters Hill Safer Neighbourhood Team.
OSTERLEY PARK OSP10 Osterley Park wasn't strictly a DDA Project, the idea to mount a project at Osterley was around before DDA existed and Osterley is in west London rather than in DDA's more regular patch in south east London. However I am including it here because, first and foremost it is a fascinating site, but also because it reflects my ideal way of working and a way of working which I hope DDA can develop. That is working in a collegiate way with not just fellow archaeologists, but also groups interested in interpretation and education and being innovative in bringing the story to the public and giving it a future life. So, when we are normally dealing with concrete and slit trenches, why were we at a Stately Home with Adam interiors and a wonderful Tudor Stable Block?
Home Guard School Number One at Osterley Park is one of those stories you couldn't make up. Where else would your average patriotic middle class Briton, gather for a weekend course in guerrilla warfare taught by the former commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigades, "Basque Bombers," a Russian Spy, a Surrealist Painter who used images of his partner to demonstrate camouflage and the Boy Scout Movement's Head of Fieldcraft.
But not only is Osterley a fantastic story and one of the most remarkable to come out of that remarkable Summer of 1940. It is right there at the heart of the debate about how to employ the Home Guard and how to counter the new mechanised warfare of Blitzkrieg. However, perhaps surprisingly the site of the school, while an iconic one to researchers looking at the Home Guard and often appearing in documentaries, most recently Andrew Marr's "History of Modern Britain," has not been looked at archaeologically before. We set out to change that with a crack digging team drawn from both DDA and our colleagues from "No Man's Land," specialists in Great War archaeology who have vast experience in digging training areas and front line trenches in the UK, France and Belgium including Rob Jannaway of the University of Bradford and a leading forensic finds conservator.
Because it is DDA Policy not to excavate on a known military site where ammunition and explosives might be present we also included No Mans Land and DDA Archaeologist and EOD Operator Rod Scott, as our Safety cover.
That would have made for a rewarding weekend in its own right. However what made Osterley so special was the fact we were able to tie the archaeology to real time Living History in a partnership which dates back to the origins of the Project.
For me the Osterley Park 70th Anniversary Project began life back in 2006 when I interviewed a Home Guard veteran, the late Geoff Pendergast, who recorded that his father had attended the Home Guard School at Osterley Park and had been taught explosives by a "Spaniard."
Geoff recalled his father saying "The Spaniard is a good explosives man but one day he will make a mistake." Because of this, and because I was also researching the involvement of people from Greenwich and Woolwich with the Aid Spain Movement and Basque refugee children in the period of the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, I had also begun working with "La Columna," an excellent Living History group who specialise in impressions of the Spanish Civil War and the Aid Spain Movement. Veterans of the Spanish Civil War were intimately associated with Osterley Park making developing a project there something of a a "no brainer."
La Columna have taken part in, and latterly organised, a living history event at Osterley Park every year on the anniversary of the opening of the Home Guard School Number One and this year, the 70th Anniversary fell on Saturday 10 July, the actual anniversary to the day of the first intake of students, so La Columna and the National Trust who own the site, planned a special anniversary re-creation of what went on at Osterley during that momentous Summer of 1940.
This represented a opportunity to tie commemoration of the HG School to the anniversary of the founding of the Home Guard and to look at something which had never been looked at before archaeologically. We submitted a project design to the National Trust for an evaluation of the surviving archaeology of the Home Guard School and several drafts and site meetings later we were granted a licence and so the archaeology team gathered on site on Friday 9 July.
The weather over the anniversary weekend was baking hot, which was wonderful for the visitors, but less so for the diggers, particularly as one of our trenches turned out to be on top of a wasp nest, but even so we managed to stay in one piece, un-stung and to produce some archaeology.
With only a limited evaluation possible an area which was believed to contain practice trenches was selected and our colleagues from the Bexley Archaeology Group attempted an indicative resistivity survey to augment a close study of the topography and its relationship with 1940 photographs and newsreel and air photographs from 1942-1944.
However, in spite of heroic efforts in a limited space and on uneven ground, the resistivity survey failed to identify more than a possible area of disturbance. When we put in the two evaluation trenches we found out why.
Having hacked through at least 30cm of hardcore probably left over from the construction of the M4 [Note to the Project Manager- next time book a mini digger] we did come down on what may be the 1940 ground surface, and a possible 1940 cut feature in the second of our evaluation trenches.
The archaeology from such a short lived period in the site's history was always going to be ephemeral, but careful excavation by Cat', Martin, Bev and Brian suggests we may have picked up at least the base of one of Tom Wintringhams practice trenches and we have certainly identified the main practice area of HG School number one.
Like Eaglesfield there was little in the way of small finds although there were some fragments of brass, possibly shell case and Roger identified a possible artifact scatter in an area of interest for next time.
We are committed to producing the Desk Top Study and Report by Christmas and there will also be a video so watch this space. It is also becoming clear that, HG School No 1 apart, Osterley Park has a significant amount of additional surviving Conflict Archaeology and had a significant life in both World Wars encompassing the Army Service Corps, POW Camps and Army and Home Guard Training as well as the odd Luftwaffe bomb and anti invasion defences areas which will be addressed in the desktop study and which can hopefully could be developed as a long term study.
Thanks to Bev Bailey, Ali Baldry [who turned out on her birthday and above and beyond the call of duty on the morning after too!], Martin Brown, Cat Edwards, Mark Khan, Brian Powell, Rod Scott [mention in dispatches for being on site on a week after major back surgery], and Roger Ward on the dig team; Rob Jannaway on finds; Pip, Martin, Clare and the Bexley Archaeology Group for attempting Geophysics under very difficult conditions; Martin, Anne and the team from Archaeopysica Ltd and Angie Jobson and Derek Smith on the video; and not least all to the staff and volunteer team from the National Trust who let us come and play at such a remarkable site. We could not have been made more welcome.
ALLIED FORCES BEV AND BRIAN AT WORK AT OSTERLEY PARK 10 June 2010
For the NT the whole thing was coordinated by Emily Toecher, Karina Swann of the Osterley Park management team and, on the archaeology side, by Gary Marshall of the Trust's regional archaeology team and the National Trust press office co-ordinated a number of TV and Radio spots which meant we were able to bring the weekend to a wider audience, including the viewers of British Forces TV, where ever in the world they are stationed.
4.43pm September 7 2010
September 7th was the 70th anniversary of "Black Saturday" the first day of the Blitz on London, an event which would leave a permanent mark on the City and by the time the last V2 fell in March 1945 would kill over 20,000 Londoners.
All Summer we have been running a partnership called "Digging The Blitz" with our colleagues at Firepower- the Royal Artillery Museum in Woolwich Arsenal combining our archaeology, shown in a video diary, with the collections of Firepower and Greenwich Heritage Centre. As part of DTB we decided that it was important to mark the anniversary as close to the time and place it started and in a way which allowed people of all ages to simply remember and reflect in the way they chose.
We decided that simplicity was the most appropriate way to approach the event and so we invited anyone who wanted to take part to join us for two minutes silence at 4.43pm, seventy years to the minute since the sirens sounded for that first deliberate raid on targets in London.
The afternoon was full of resonances.
The silence was begun by Steve Hookins of Firepower who sounded an original hand cranked air raid siren wearing his grandfathers ARP Overall and whistle and it was ended by members of the Royal Artillery recently returned from Afghanistan, firing a salute to all the victims of the Blitz where ever they were, from a WW2 vintage 25 pounder field gun from the Firepower collection.
The gathering included the deputy Mayor of Greenwich, Cllr Jim Gillman, himself a wartime evacuee from the Isle of Dogs and three generations of one family, the oldest an eye witness to the events of that Saturday afternoon whose mother had been a worker under the bombs at Woolwich Arsenal and the youngest who was studying the war and evacuees in Primary School.
You could not really have a better illustration of why the Archaeology of Modern Conflict and communicating it to the wider public, is so important.
"There was tremendous camaraderie, but it really was Hell and absolutely horrible."
DDA Sitrep
One of the best things about being involved in a Project like Digging Dad's Army is the possibility of making connections and letting the research take off in directions led by the evidence we are discovering and the enthusiasm of colleagues.
Aside from our first published reports we are currently looking forward to hearing about Stuart Dickson's research at Teddington and Richard and Theresa Emmett's work in the borough archive at Greenwich Heritage Center and I hope there will be more to come.
Of course research is useless if it is not published and made accessible. That means publishing and this Autumn we have another avenue for publication in the new magazine MILITARY TIMES, edited by our own Dr Neil Faulkner.
"Military Times" is a joint venture between Current Publishing of "Current Archaeology" and "Current World Archaeology" and Chelsea Magazine Company who specialise in consumer magazines. The new title is available in the high street [I picked up my copy in W H Smiths and another colleague found his in Sainsbury's] and by subscription with a not inconsiderable 35% saving at www.military-times.co.uk/NX10.
And on that note, David Cameron has just used the formula "Your Country Needs You!" in his speech to the Tory Party Conference. Having already come a cropper over his less than accurate allusions to the Anglo US relationship in World War Two perhaps someone should have reminded him of what happened to the Kitchener volunteers who answered that call the first time it was made. On 1 July 1916 they took part in a certain action in the Somme, the most disasterous day in the history of the British Army.
INTELLIGENCE CELL
English Heritage is appealing for the return of a torpedo hatch stolen from the protected wreck HMS Holland V six miles off the Sussex coast.
You can find more details about the theft at...
http://www.divernet.com/home_
...but here is an extract which gets to the core of why catching the thief and returning the torpedo hatch is important.
"Diver Jamie Smith, who holds a visit licence for the site, said that he was “saddened and shocked” at the removal by “the few that tend to spoil it for the many”.
“This is not a diving trophy from the deep but a historic piece of protected wreck,” he said. “Please return it.”
He added: “If you wish to dive the wreck you can apply for a visitor’s permit; this is not too complicated. You can then dive her and take your memories home with you.”
English Heritage is appealing to the “diving community for help in locating this important piece of theHolland 5”.
Those who think that they may have useful information are asked to contact Sussex Police or Crime Stoppers on 0800 555111."
www.divernet.com
MOVEMENT ORDERS DDA members and blog readers might be interested in these forthcoming events.
La Columna at Firepower- The Royal Artillery Museum
Britons in the Spanish Civil War
Saturday and Sunday 23-24 October- 10.30-17.00
Nearest public transport: 53 Bus to Woolwich from Central London, Woolwich Arsenal overground from Charing Cross and Cannon Street, via London Bridge and Woolwich Arsenal DLR
Free entry to the fully licenced cafe
Museum entry charges may apply
La Columna is one of the UK's most experienced living history groups. They set out to celebrate and commemorate one of the most important, but little known stories of 20th century Europe, the Spanish Civil War and the thousands of volunteers who went to Spain to help the Spainish people confront Fascism between 1936 and 1939.
This weekends impression of the life of the volunteers will be set in 1938 around the time of the Battle of the Ebro and La Columna will demonstrate the clothing and equipment of the British Battalion of the International Brigades as well as the activities of the many thousands of ordinary Britons made financial or material donations as part of the Aid Spain movement.
Digger of La Columna explains how to deny your enemy the
use of a bridge on a previous visit to Firepower in 2008
This weekend is part of the Firepower "Nine Days in History" programme- see the Firepower Website www.firepower.org.uk for details
Monday, 13 September 2010
Modern Conflcit Archaeology Conference
The programme for the Modern Conflict Archaeology Conference to be held at Bristol University on October 23rd has just been published and can be seen by clicking HERE
There is a link at the top of Blog page to enable you to sign up for receiving further details.
John Winterburn
There is a link at the top of Blog page to enable you to sign up for receiving further details.
John Winterburn
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