Mapping archaeological remains in your parish

 

Archaeological remains can date to all periods and is found in excavation, on aerial photographs or by surveying.

 

To find out what the main periods of archaeoligical remains have been found in your parish go to the Advanced Search on Buckinghamshire’s Heritage Portal. Choose your parish from the pull-down list and click Search. Click on Map at the top of the results list to display your on a map. You can change the map layer to an historic map or vertical aerial photograph.

Perhaps you have a Saxon site, like Taplow barrow

If you have a small number of archaeological sites on your map, print it off but keep the map up on the website. You can use the mouse to hover over each archaeological site and write down next to the findspots on your printed map what date and function each one has.

 

To make things clearer you can trace the map (without the dots marking archaeological sites) and photocopy your tracing several times. Then you can draw on all the Roman sites on one map, the Saxon on another and so on. You will end up with a map for each period. This makes it easier to see areas of settlement and other activity in each period.

Maybe you have a Roman site, like this Roman kiln excavated in Biddlesden

You may have so many archaeological sites that they overlap each other. In this case run the search again adding a time period from the pull-down lists.

 

You may have to do a few searches like this to get each period displayed on a map. However, you will end up with a map for each period without having to trace the original map and draw on each findspot yourself.

 

 

 

 

Either way you will end up with a few maps. Use them to try and answer these questions: Or maybe you have some medieval sites, like this hollow-way in Weston Turville

  1. Was there any prehistoric archaeology in your parish? What kind?
  2. If your parish has a Roman road, what was it’s route? What other Roman activity is there?
  3. Was your village or town around in Saxon times?
  4. Can you work out where the medieval manor house stood?
  5. Were there more or bigger settlements in your parish in the medieval period? Where were they?
  6. What did the medieval fields look like?
  7. Where were the post-medieval windmills? How far did people have to go to get their grain ground?
  8. There were probably a few eighteenth and nineteenth century quarry pits in your parish. Where were they and what were the quarrymen digging for?
  9. If your parish has any burials what date are they and where were they found? 

Write up your answers into a report and create a display or booklet with your maps. Look at these examples from Waddesdon for an idea of what your finished product might look like. In Waddesdon there were two main periods of archaeological activity so look at Waddesdon in the Roman period and Waddesdon in the medieval period.

 

Go back for more Archaeology in local history.