Hertfordshire
This month’s column examines Current Archaeology’s reporting of fieldwork in Hertfordshire and, despite my best efforts, it is entirely devoted to the Roman era. This is not meant as a criticism, merely as an observation: there are thousands of sites known in the county, dating from prehistory to the Cold War (the county’s Historic Environment Record is clear on this point), but for one reason or another, CA has largely focused on the county’s admittedly stunning Roman remains. Just about the only non-Roman reporting comes from visits to the medieval and later abbey of St Albans – see especially CA 56, CA 101, and CA 300 (May 1976, August 1986, and March 2015). So let me begin with a request: if you are an archaeologist working in Hertfordshire on a non-Roman site, then please drop the editor an email and cc me in. We’d love to share your news.
When in Welwyn
While I was putting this column together, by good chance my old friend and former colleague Kris Lockyear, long involved in fieldwork in the county, dropped me a line asking about reports on Welwyn over the years, linked to his own research. I cover more on Welwyn below, but in return I asked Kris if there was anything going on in the county that I ought to mention here, and his reply was a wonderful insight into a thriving network of societies hard at work. There is, for starters, an exhibition on the history of the Welwyn Archaeological Society (WAS) running at Mill Green Museum in Hatfield until mid-May, and later in the year, on 22 October, the WAS and the St Albans & Hertfordshire Architectural & Archaeological Society (the ‘Arc and Arc’) are running the fourth ‘Archaeology in Hertfordshire: Recent Research’ conference (see www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archaeology-in-hertfordshire-recent-research-tickets-275943784287 for more details). Meanwhile, there is a regular series of online lectures organised by the Combined Hertfordshire Archaeological Societies (CHAS; see https://welwynarchaeologicalsociety.wordpress.com/chas), which can be attended via Zoom.
On then to CA’s coverage of Hertfordshire over the years. The easiest place to begin is at the beginning, with CA 1 (March 1967), which featured Gadebridge villa in Hemel Hempstead as the magazine’s first ever cover-story. The site began life as a simple farmstead in the 1st century AD and transformed over the centuries into quite a grandiose stone structure, with a swimming pool and bath complex, by the mid-2nd century AD. Sadly, the site isn’t open to the public (although it survives under grass within Gadebridge Park), but the Dacorum Heritage Trust undertakes excellent work to promote its history (see www.dacorumheritage.org.uk/article/the-gadebridge-roman-villa), and it went on to be featured twice more in the magazine, in issues 18 and 51 (January 1970 and July 1975).
