Archeological Study: Following on from the post of the 10th September.
Thanks to those of you who responded with information about the fact that trenches are being dug in other fields.
We’ve also had the following initial response from Nottinghamshire County Council:
Many thanks for your email. My colleague Emily is the case officer for this site and is on leave at the moment, but I’ll attempt to provide some detail in her absence.
As a general point, archaeological remains are often well preserved below the plough soil, although in most cases some loss has occurred from ploughing. In Britain the oldest archaeological remains date to around 900,000 (during the Palaeolithic period) years ago (Happisburgh, Nortfolk), but we tend to find much more recent remains dating from around 11,600 years ago after the last glacial period (Mesolithic period) and until the middle of the 20th century and everything in between. These are usually in the form of finds or cultural material (flint tools, pottery, bones, metalwork, bricks etc) and cut features or earthworks relating to previous use of the land such as enclosure/drainage ditches, pits, structures and many more.
While we know where some historic activity has taken place, thanks in large part to people reporting finds etc to the Nottinghamshire Historic Environment Record (NHER), many of these sites are unknown until discovered through assessment work before development. Since 1990, archaeology has been a material consideration in Planning and many applications are required to undertake an archaeological assessment of the land they propose to develop.
Where archaeological remains are identified within a site, the developer is required to ‘mitigate’ the damage to those remains by undertaking further work to record the remains before they build on/disturb them and make the results publicly available. That said, we often try to ensure that remains are preserved as far as possible without digging them up or removing them, but this is often not possible.
In the case of the site at Stapleford Lane, the developer undertook some non-intrusive survey work (geophysics) which identified anomalies consistent with buried archaeological remains (some potential ditches I believe). These are currently being investigated through a limited programme of trial trenching which will aim to characterise the features present and inform the necessity for any further mitigation work. The report on this work will be submitted to the NHER once completed and will be publicly available for you and everyone to read.
I would also like to draw your attention to the online map of the NHER which provides information on the historic data we hold for Nottinghamshire and can be viewed here. This is a limited data set for a variety of reasons, but the full NHER can be accessed for free by the public and details of how to do so can be found here.
My colleagues and I do often input into local plans and will normally recommend there is a section on heritage and development. I note the Toton and Chilwell Neighbourhood Plan does have a Policy on heritage (Policy LHC02) which does not support harm to non-designated heritage assets (which includes archaeology) and requires the recording of heritage assets which will be lost. This fits well with our approach to planning advice and I welcome its inclusion in the Plan.
I hope this is helpful and please let us know if you have any queries.
Greenbelt Framework Review Response:
We sent this response to the Greenbelt Framework Review.
As usual any comments/information contact us.
