Restoration work at the Priory House in Dunstable – a Grade II-listed building that was originally part of the grounds of Dunstable Priory, founded by Henry I in 1132 – is carefully unpicking its evolution over the decades. The project,…
Rising high above the floor of the Taff Valley, north of Cardiff, the conical towers of Castell Coch are a familiar sight to travellers driving along the A470. The Victorian architect William Burges designed the castle for the 3rd Marquess of Bute between 1875 and 1881, resulting in a masterpiece of High Victorian romanticism.
Last month’s column explored prehistoric mines, and this month I will follow up on the topic by visiting medieval and modern examples that have been examined in past issues of CA. The range is wide: from Welsh slate to English coal, and from salt in the Midlands to tin in the south-west.
Neolithic long cairn granted protected status The Dudderhouse Hill long cairn, located within the Yorkshire Dales National Park, has been granted protected status as a Scheduled Monument by the Government. The scheduling was recommended by Historic England after a number…
The system whereby coal was heated and the resulting gases purified, stored, and distributed to factories, street lamps, public buildings, and, in due course, to every home was developed in the UK in the first decade of the 19th century and exported around the world. Today the 600 remaining gasholders, once familiar industrial structures in every city and town, are being recorded by Historic England prior to being dismantled or converted to other uses, as Chris Catling reports.
World’s oldest waterworks? Chris Catling, in his excellent piece on those temples of engineering, the waterworks (CA 421), refers to a Boulton and Watt beam engine at Kew dated 1820 as being the oldest working beam engine in the world.…
A delectable drink from Derby Derby’s profusion of malthouses (CA 420) included an early 18th-century example which had the distinction of being converted, in 1773 (by the architect Joseph Pickford for the Irish impresario James Whiteley), into Derby’s Theatre Royal,…
With Marc DeSantis
Historic England continues to explore working-class heritage Historic England has announced the funding of 30 new projects through its Everyday Heritage grants programme, which will explore rural and coastal communities and celebrate working-class histories from across the country. The projects…
REVIEW BY MARK BRENNAND The North Pennines is a bleak old place. I absolutely mean no offence, but its barren, windswept moors, studded with disused mines, are not an easy place to make a living. And yet there is rich…
In CA 419, Chris Catling reported on the history and development of kilns and oast houses used for drying the hops that help to preserve and give flavour to beer. This month, he reports on the buildings associated with the production of the malted grain used primarily in making beer and whisky, but also as an ingredient in a range of foods, from bagels to biscuits, and from vinegar to Ovaltine.
The latest on acquisitions, exhibitions, and key decisions.
The websites of upmarket estate agents will typically feature a dozen or more properties for sale in Sussex or Kent converted from 19th-century oast houses. These desirable residences once served a humbler purpose, drying the resinous hop flowers that are an essential ingredient in the nation’s beer. Patrick Grattan recorded the last of these buildings in use for that purpose in the 1960s, and his knowledge has fermented into a detailed history of the oast, as Chris Catling now reports.
There were nine sailmakers in West Coker at the start of the 19th century, and the bleaching fields around the Somerset village were white with canvas sheets laid out in the sun. ‘Coker canvas’ became the generic name for the…
A recent excavation by Wessex Archaeology for Sheffield City Council has uncovered long-buried traces of Sheffield Castle, as well as glimpses of the city’s influential industrial past. Carly Hilts spoke to Ashley Tuck on site to learn more.
The people of Cornwall are so proud of their great engineer, Richard Trevithick, that when the Cornish Engines Preservation Committee and the Cornish Waterwheel Preservation Society decided to merge in 1971, they named the new organisation the Trevithick Society (Kowethas…
The Pole Society is the delightful invention of a group of satirists who have taken to the internet to poke fun at Tripadvisor by championing the merits of a new tourist attraction in Gloucestershire’s Forest of Dean: the ‘Cinderford Rusty…
Your thoughts on issues raised by CA.
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
The Cornish Buildings Group recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Dedicated to preserving and improving Cornwall’s built heritage, the Group has marked its half-century by publishing a short history of its achievements and a volume of conference proceedings that address the question: what defines Cornish buildings? Among the factors that contribute to Cornwall’s architectural distinctiveness are the county’s geology and building stones, as well as particular building types and the designs of architects who devoted much of their career to the county, as Chris Catling reports.
Eleusis – modern Elefsina – is in the spotlight as European Capital of Culture. Dalu Jones visits its ancient remains to enter the realm of the Eleusinian Mysteries, secret rites honouring the renewal of life.
This was the first evidence for the cult of Mithras in Scotland, and it changed our view of Roman religion on the northern frontier.
the programme dramatised one of the essential differences between detectorists and archaeologists: the first are interested in objects (preferably ones that are worth a bob or two), the latter in knowledge.
Every month, when we open the pages of Current Archaeology or any of its sister publications, we are presented with wonderful photographs as well as compelling stories about our heritage. It is evident that there are many skilled photographers working…
Historic England recently published its Heritage at Risk Register for 2022.
The London Gasketeers (the name alludes, one assumes, to the swashbuckling heroes of the Alexander Dumas novel) are a newly created group set up to campaign for Britain’s historic gas lamps. Founded in January 2022, the Gasketeers operate by using…
What is it about Ministry of Works signage that motivates so many people to share images via social media? Partly it is just the fact of their survival, as reminders of a simpler age of heritage tourism before the era…
Alderley Edge’s rich mineral resources have attracted the attention of miners as far back as the Bronze Age. Now, though, recent investigations have revealed traces of rather more modern activity, as Carly Hilts reports.
Two recent discoveries in very different sites in England are offering close connections to unknown workers of the 19th and 20th centuries. In Sir John Soane’s Museum, in London, restoration work is underway in the architect’s drawing office. While working…
The festival welcomed some 4.3 million visitors over 152 days, and featured themed gardens, performances, a replica Roman bathhouse, and the much-loved ‘Coca-Cola’ roller coaster.
Woodchester Mansion is considered to be one of the UK’s most haunted buildings, and people pay large sums to spend the night in the freezing cold mansion with their ghost-detecting cameras and radar equipment.
Review by Robin Hughes. Ruins, Remains and Relics: Sussex is a miscellany, organised into the three titular groups, of various historical curiosities from across the historic county of Sussex. Horlock explicitly emphasises the ‘unusual, offbeat, and decidedly quirky’, and the…
Inventive Vents has a clever way of engaging younger people with scatological anecdotes, in the style of Horrible Histories. Thus we are told that the innocuously named Carting Lane was known colloquially as ‘Farting Lane’ because of the smell of sewer gas.
There is a growing realisation that the solution to the climate emergency is to retrofit existing buildings, with all their embodied carbon and energy, rather than to build new ‘environmentally sustainable’ structures in place of old.
Today, the Co-op group has 65,000 employees, £11bn in revenues, and thousands of shops around the country. Yes, there have been some high-profile hiccups in recent decades – but the movement which spawned it has come a long way since 21 December 1844, when a group of Rochdale textile workers pooled their savings to open a store selling basic commodities at fair prices.
A round-up of some of the latest archaeological stories in the UK.