Long Hot Summer

The sun is continuing to shine at Armour Heritage HQ, and with it we’re pleased to report a significant increase in project work across the sectors in 2018. Fieldwork has been busy, with many of our clients taking advantage of the long hot summer days to clear conditions relating to excavations and watching briefs on their developments. There has been plenty of predetermination work underway too, with trenching and geophysical surveys being completed across a variety of developments, happily including a few new solar PV sites too. As ever, the archaeology has been a bit hit and miss, with a number of very interesting sites alongside some very dull ones too!

Heritage statements and desk based assessments continue to be our mainstay, with a marked increase in our workload across the southwest, southeast and midlands areas. We have a well-travelled path now from West Cornwall to Kent and increasingly have been venturing north of the M5 up to Leicestershire and beyond, with numerous places in between. The schemes are varied, but we continue to provide professional, independent advice through bespoke NPPF compliant heritage reports to our valued regular and new clients alike.

Not surprisingly, some of the work has been noticeably regional with an increase in proposals to convert agricultural buildings conspicuous in the southwest and new builds and regeneration schemes more common in the southeast. Providing advice and recommendations on Listed Buildings and works in Conservation Areas spans the regions and has been on the increase with schemes ranging from demolition to conversion of Listed Buildings to new builds potentially impacting on the setting of heritage assets.

Whilst the work streams continue to flow, we were also delighted to welcome the CIfA, our chartered professional body, to our offices for an inspection earlier in the summer. It was a very positive day although we await the official committee report, so we’re keen not to jinx anything before then!

The summer holidays may be here, but we’re still happily busy making hay (or more accurately heritage statements) while the sun shines!

The AH Tour of Britain

The Tour of Britain cycling event finishes in the World Heritage Site city of Bath later today, and as well as a guaranteed early finish for Team AH (big cycling fans that we are!), we’re also reminded of our own excursions around the UK over the last few months.

Although we’ve not made it into Scotland just yet, work continues apace across the much of the rest of the UK. Regionally, Greater London and Cornwall seem to top the bill although we still can’t put our finger on why, when you get one project in a certain area, another seems to quickly follow. Chaos theory perhaps…

One thing we find continually is the learning curve working nationally engenders. Our recent work in Greater London for example has been across a number of the suburbs – Greenwich, Charlton, Lewisham, Catford and Brockley, as well as more centrally with a site in historic Southwark. Each site came with its own specific set of challenges, due in part to their varied locations and in part to the variety of works proposed, which offered Conservation Area & Listed Building issues as well as some insights into some exceptional archaeological potential – particularly true in Southwark with our site adjacent to the former major Roman road of Watling Street. We’d recommend an excellent monograph produced by the Museum of London Archaeology Service (now MOLA) which reports on excavations on Great Dover Street, very close to our site, available here http://www.mola.org.uk/publications/romano-british-cemetery-watling-street-excavations-165-great-dover-street-southwark.

Amongst the subject matter we’ve been sifting through, the exponential expansion of the London Suburbs in the later 19th century has become clear, reflecting the desire of the wealthier to move away from the centre of the city and out into the leafier areas of Lewisham and other parts of what was then still Kent. Of interest also has been the changing face of the streetscape, both in the centre of the city with some iconic buildings being constructed in recent years (the Gherkin, the Shard etc), and the changes in the Georgian and Victorian terraces of the suburbs, often the result of bomb damage during the Blitz – Bombsight.org offers a good insight into this, particularly in conjunction with comparisons between pre-War and 1950s OS maps.

From the very beginnings of each new project at AH, and the journey it takes us on, we increasingly recognise the wealth of knowledge out there and the importance of maintaining all of our heritage resources, and good easy access to them.  They, like the whole of the heritage industry, rely on the support of both professionals and the public at large.

An upturn in housing development?

“Small builders will benefit from a £100 million cash boost to recognise and support their important role in keeping the country building”, Housing Minister Brandon Lewis said on 6th July this year.

The Housing Growth Partnership will act as a dedicated initiative that will invest alongside smaller builders in new developments, providing money to support their businesses, helping get workers onto sites and increasing housing supply.

At AH we’re hoping this projected boom in house building will correspond with an increase in heritage work, both pre-application and further down the planning and post-planning road. It may be that we are already seeing the beginnings of this with, last week, the news that Armour Heritage has won the first of a number of multi-site pre-planning contracts for a single developer which will keep us busy, initially with archaeological desk based assessments and heritage statements, for some considerable time! Unusually for us recently, these sites are all relatively local to our Somerset offices, all of the first batch are located in Wiltshire, so less need for arduous summer travel on holiday-clogged roads; the A303 at Stonehenge, the obvious exception of course!

Of course, from pre-planning work comes further fieldwork, be it pre-determination geophysical survey, earthwork survey or trial trenching, all of which are services provided by Armour Heritage.

Hopefully then, with an already very bright start to 2015, our success will continue in the year’s second two quarters.