Berwick upon Tweed House
Ian Kille and his partner Diana Harris moved up to Berwick about 18 months ago. Since arriving in this historic town they have become absorbed by the history of their house in a street called Ravensdown which appears to consist of a Georgian-style property which has been added onto the an older, small house. They wanted to find out what age the house is and also work out why the soil in their garden is so much more fertile than that of neighbouring properties.
Making History consulted Adam Menuge of English heritage and local historian Francis Cowe.
Adam Menuge confirmed that the house is actually two properties in one. The smaller, cottage-style building at the back is early to mid-eighteenth century, the larger, more grand Georgian style property in front is early nineteenth century.
Francis Cowe suggests that the fertility of the soil is down to centuries of municipal waste management. Rubbish was deposited and burnt. This would have attracted birds such as Ravens and he thinks that the local street name confirms that Ian and Diana’s house is on the site of one of these ‘middens’.
Further Information
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Star Carr
Richard Daniel went to the Vale of Pickering to meet up with archaeologist Nicky Milner to find out more about environmental damage to one of Europe’s finest Mesolithic sites.
Discovered by chance in 1947, excavations revealed hunting artefacts that had been preserved in the water-logged peat for 10,000 years. But, in recent years, the finds from excavations have been less well preserved. The fear is that modern water management, including the demands of agriculture, have lowered the water table and allowed precious archaeological material to dry out.
Further Information
Further Reading
British Archaeology September/October 2007 (Council for British Archaeology)
Clark, J.G.D. 1954. Excavations at Star Carr, Cambridge.
Chatterton, R. 2003. Star Carr reanalysed. In J. Moore and L. Bevan (eds.) Peopling the Mesolithic in a northern environment, Oxford: Archaeopress, British Archaeological Reports International Series 1157, 69-80.
Conneller, C.J. 2003. Star Carr recontextualised, in J. Moore and L. Bevan (eds.), Peopling the Mesolithic in a northern environment, Oxford: Archaeopress, British Archaeological Reports International Series 955, 81-86.
Conneller, C. 2004. Becoming Deer: corporeal transformations at Star Carr. Archaeological Dialogues 11.1, 37-56.
Conneller, C. and T. Schadla-Hall, 2003. Beyond Star Carr: the Vale of Pickering in the tenth millennium BP, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 69, 85-105.
Lane, P.J. and Schadla-Hall, R.T. 2004. The many ages of Star Carr: do `cites' make `sites'? In A. Barnard (ed.) Hunter-gatherers in History, Archaeology and Anthropology, Oxford, 145-62.
Mellars, P. and Dark, P., 1998: Star Carr in context, Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs.
Milner, N. 2006. Subsistence. In C. Conneller and G. Warren (eds.) Mesolithic Britain and Ireland. New approaches. Tempus
Pollard, C.J., 2000. Ancestral places in the Mesolithic landscape, in C. Conneller (ed.). New approaches to the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, Archaeological Review from Cambridge 17.1, 123-138.
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Vanessa has presentedscience and current affairs programmes for tv, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for tv Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.