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Know Your Place project puts three more counties on the map

Announcing the launch of Know Your Place in Wiltshire, Bath & NE Somerset and Gloucestershire

www.kypwest.org.uk

For the first time, historic maps and heritage data of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and Bath and North East Somerset are now freely available online in one place, thanks to the latest expansion of Know Your Place West of England.

From Stonehenge to Swindon, Keynsham to the Cotswolds, Salisbury plain to the spa towns of Bath and Cheltenham – you can now discover how these places have transformed over time.

What this means for the West

Now covering more than 4360 square miles, Know Your Place allows you to explore some of the most famous landmarks from the region’s history, from the World Heritage sites at Bath and Avebury, to Wiltshire’s White Horses and the unique landscapes of the Forest of Dean and Severn Estuary that are the focus of other Heritage Lottery Funded projects.

You will also be able to upload and share your own information about the area straight onto Know Your Place helping to build a rich and diverse community map of local heritage for everyone; from school children to family historians, planners to enthusiasts of community heritage.

Don’t just take our word for it

Here is what some of our users in Bristol and South Gloucestershire have said about Know Your Place:

“Be like Doctor Who and travel back in time.”
“If you’re interested in local history you can’t beat this site.”
“I like the thousands of little windows it provides into the past; all based on specific identified places on the map. It is a wonderful tool for local history research.”
“I love the layers of maps; it demonstrates so well how the area has grown and developed.”
“It’s free and infectious once you’re in you become absorbed; brilliant!”
There’s still lots more to do…

But there’s a lot more work to do to publish additional Know Your Place data for these three new counties so watch this space. We are pleased to be collaborating with the following groups:

More than 50 project volunteers are working hard to prepare further historic tithe, enclosure and town maps, which we will add onto Know Your Place over the coming months.

We are also working closely with Historic Environment Record officers to to publish Historic Environment Record (HER) data for Gloucestershire, refine the HER data already available for Wiltshire and B&NES and to share HER data for North Somerset and Somerset in future.

Museums and archives across the region are identifying items from their collections that will begin to be mapped onto Know Your Place once their county is online.

You can now find the following counties on Know Your Place: Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath & NE Somerset, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. As more people use and contribute to Know Your Place, the website will continue to grow, so do keep coming back to watch it evolve.

Exhibition coming soon!

We are also designing an upcoming touring exhibition that will visit 12 venues across the West of England starting in late October 2016, celebrating our rich heritage and helping to raise awareness of the fabulous new resource of Know Your Place.

Ready to explore?

Simply go to the map and click on the county you want to visit. Please note that the areas mapped contain a large amount of data, so loading data may require a little extra time when you first visit.

Chippenham Museum and Heritage Centre, 10 Market Place SN15 3HF, are currently showing a special display on Lanhill Long Barrow, which will run until March 2017.

The display tells the story of the barrow and the many people who have helped shape our understanding of it. The display includes finds, photographs, plus a detailed plan showing the hidden chambers and the extent of quarrying damage.

Chippenham Museum and Heritage Centre is free to explore and opens Monday to Saturday from 10am to 4pm.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-37699357

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-37584360

theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/07/archaelogists-evidence-earliest-known-journey-uk-history-stonehenge-wilsthire-mesolithic-man-dog

David Jacques and his team have found a dog’s tooth at Blick Mead. It dates from 7000 years ago. So people had dogs at the site all that time ago, it’s a nice thought. But more interestingly, they found that the isotopes in its enamel match those in the water in the Vale of York. Suggesting that dog and owner had walked all that way.

Which, one might suggest, wouldn’t be unreasonable if you were a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer roaming around Britain? And maybe that if you were in Wiltshire that year you might pop in. But Jacques suggests Yorkshire’s too far away for that and they must have deliberately been drawn in from a long way away, as were others, especially for whatever exciting and famous stuff was going on at Amesbury at that time.

The article also includes a nice bit of anti-tunnel sentiment.

3,000-year-old complete pressed flower is among the “absolutely jaw-dropping” late bronze age finds unearthed in Lancashire.

The thistle flower appears to have been deliberately placed inside the hollow end of an axe handle and buried with other weapons, jewellery and ornaments, many in virtually pristine condition. Other axe handles in the hoard had been filled with hazelnuts, as part of a ritual offering.

Dr Ben Roberts, a lecturer at Durham University and the British Museum’s former curator of European bronze age collections, described the pressed flower as unique for a votive offering of its time.

theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/30/pristine-pressed-flower-among-jaw-dropping-bronze-age-finds

theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/03/skipsea-castle-yorkshire-built-on-iron-age-mound

Jim Leary spoke more about this on the Today programme at 6.55
( bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wn3rq ). His team took a core down through the mound to ascertain its age, as part of the ‘Round Mounds’ project. They’ve been looking at others and he’s got others in mind for the future...
more details at
roundmoundsproject.wordpress.com/

A 6,000-YEAR-OLD PREHISTORIC BURIAL MONUMENT HAS BEEN UNCOVERED NORTHEAST OF CIRENCESTER IN THE COTSWOLDS BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY.

Believed to be around 1,000 years older than Stonehenge, the massive mound 60m long by 15m wide, was carefully built of soil and stone by the first farmers living in the area around 4000 BC. It provided a resting place for the dead and a symbol of identity for the living.

The barrow was first noticed about ten years ago and has since been studied through a wide range of geophysical surveys and evaluations that confirmed its identification. In the summer of 2016 proper excavations began with a team of around 80 students, graduates and archaeologists from across the world working to explore the stonework of the mound and define possible chambers inside the structure that might contain burials. Traditionally, up to 50 men, women and children were buried in such monuments over a period of several centuries, long before the discovery of metal working....

heritagedaily.com/2016/09/bu-archaeologists-uncover-6000-year-old-long-barrow-in-the-cotswolds/112792

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-37481840

From the best newspaper.

thenational.scot/news/broch-in-a-loch-could-be-missing-link-in-story-of-iron-age-building.22927

Good news :-)

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-37474218

From The Guardian...

“An amateur archaeologist has tracked down hundreds of prehistoric rock engravings in Scotland in what has been described as a “phenomenal” contribution to the understanding of Britain’s earliest artworks.

Walking in all weathers once or twice a week, George Currie, 66, a musician by trade, has located more than 670 Neolithic and Bronze Age carvings over the past 15 years. He told the Observer: “It was ridiculous … I got tired of recording the stuff. I’ve never come across quite so much.”

There are many more to be found, he believes. Describing the thrill of uncovering ancient artworks that no one has seen for thousands of years, he said: “It’s quite a privilege.”

Currie’s discoveries will be included in the biggest research project into British prehistoric rock art, a five-year, £1m study starting next year. The project will be hosted by Historic Environment Scotland (HES) under the leadership of Dr Tertia Barnett, an honorary fellow of the University of Edinburgh. Rock art is “relatively undervalued and little known”, she said. “This project is very exciting.”

More here...

theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/17/rock-art-amateur-archaeologist-scotland?CMP=share_btn_fb

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-37416773

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-37366363

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-37340378

Intriguing find under footie pitch.

liveleak.com/view?i=8e3_1473699545

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-37360701

A prehistoric stone panel said to be the “most important in Europe” is being unearthed for the first time in 50 years – next to a housing estate in Clydebank. The Cochno Stone, which dates to 3000BC and is described as one of the best examples of Neolithic or Bronze Age cup and ring markings in Europe, is being fully excavated for the first time since being buried in 1965 to protect it from vandalism. The stone lies on land next to a housing estate near Faifley in West Dunbartonshire.

Read more information.

CLOSED September 26th indefinitely owing to traffic concerns

A huge outer earthwork, stretching across 1.2 kilometres of the beautiful hilltop of Belle Tout on top of the Seven Sisters cliff, was probably part of an early Bronze Age settlement. Archaeologists are about to get to work on a coastal site they describe as a mystery in their field, with their plans including laser scans, environmental scanning and analysis of microscopic snails which can only exist in certain habitats.

They don’t know when the hilltop enclosure was built, and their previous discoveries in the area have ranged from prehistoric flintwork to early Bronze Age Beaker pottery. “We don’t know for sure how much we’ve lost over the last 6,000 years due to coastal erosion,” says Tom Dommett, the National Trust Archaeologist and key man on the Seven Sisters Archaeology Project, underlining the urgency of the latest work....

culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art561281-seven-sisters-birling-gap-bronze-age

further information.... nationaltrust.org.uk/birling-gap-and-the-seven-sisters/features/amazing-archaeology-at-birling-gap

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-37194266

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-37154410

It was a centre of Gaelic monasticism for four centuries and the home of St Columba. But now the site of what is believed to be a prehistoric village has been found on the island of Iona. The “exciting” discovery is close to the site of the isle’s primary school.
Pottery, flints and other prehistoric materials found during the archaeological dig could take its history back more than 2,500 years.
The items unearthed, and believed to be five times older than the settlement of St Columba’s time in 563 AD, were made during excavation works for the building of an extension to the island’s primary school.
The island is best known for its monastery founded by the monk Columba, also known as Colm Cille, who had been exiled from his native Ireland as a result of his involvement in the Battle of Cul Dreimhne. But now a new find on the holy island has excited archaeologists from across Scotland and throughout the world.
An archaeological team have discovered two different periods of building on top of the original village mound of more than 1,000 years, and a previously unknown extension to the medieval vallum, or wall, has all been found in a shallow ditch next to the school.
The extent of the wall may rewrite experts’ understanding of the way in which the community on the island in 600 and 700 AD worked together.
The archaeological work has been carried out by Dr Clare Ellis of Argyll Archaeology Ltd.
She said: ‘It seems very likely that the turf bank and ditch are early medieval in date, perhaps 7th or 8th century, and may represent the remains of an unknown monastic boundary, while the underlying soils appear likely to date from the late Bronze Age or Iron Age.
‘What is most exciting to me is that the lines of the property that exist now are very similar to the property lines that existed more than 2,000 years ago.”

pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands/1002459/prehistoric-village-found-on-iona/

Remarkable new archaeological discoveries are beginning to suggest that Stonehenge was built at a time of particularly intense religious and political rivalry.

Just two miles north-east of the World Heritage site, at an important archaeological complex known as Durrington Walls, archaeologists have just discovered what appears to have been a vast 500-metre diameter circle of giant timber posts. The find is of international significance.

continued....

independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/revealed-remarkable-ancient-structure-found-just-two-miles-from-stonehenge-a7190476.html

Our shortlisted entry for the awards was based on excavations carried out by AOC Archaeology in 2015, and again in June 2016, which unearthed a unique discovery in Galloway that promises to revolutionise our understanding of the Scottish South Western Iron Age.

Last year, archaeologists began excavating one of numerous roundhouses sited on a boggy island at this unique Iron Age settlement near Whithorn, uncovering a massive hearth mound which had been built and rebuilt and flooring which still preserved leaf litter and woven panels of hazel wattle, all preserved thanks to the waterlogged conditions.

cont.......

culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/archaeology/art560037-thumbpots-and-roundhouses-unravelling-the-mysteries-of-the-scottish-iron-age-with-the-Whithorn-Trust