Newcastle, Urban Strategy

The Newcastle upon Tyne urban strategy project

This exciting new project captures an unprecedented amount of information on the archaeology of Newcastle. Part-funded by English Heritage, the Newcastle City Planning Division, and Tyne and Wear Development Corporation, the project has produced a valuable planning tool, forms the basis upon which a new synthesis of Newcastle's historical evolution is being written, and will result in an integrated planning strategy for the management and investigation of the city's archaeological resources. The project - also known as the Urban Archaeological Database (UAD) - links archaeological information to a computerised Geographical Information System which is being used to answer planning queries in the city centre. It will also provide a formidable research tool to answer both public and academic enquiries.

Newcastle Urban Archaeology Database:
the excavations are in light blue

When a planning query reaches the City Archaeology Unit, the plot proposed for development is located on one of 12 digitised Ordnance Survey 1:1250 maps which cover the historic walled town and the first suburban spread. The individual computerised plot is then interrogated as a key link through which six databases may be searched. There are six categories of information stored in these databases: archaeological deposits, borehole logs, finds, documentary sources, buildings, and monuments. If there have been any excavations on or near the site, they will be immediately obvious as a graphic layer of trench locations and major archaeological findings on the map. The published or archive results of these excavations can be read as entries detailing salient dated features and deposits to explain the graphical display. The height and depth of discrete deposits are also given with regard to Ordnance Datum. These height data, supplemented with borehole logs, have been used to generate a three-dimensional terrain model across the overall study area. It will therefore be possible to provide a visual indication of the contoured depth of deposits in the vicinity of specified plots.

Newcastle Urban Strategy: a related database entry

Two of the most useful historic maps of Newcastle - Oliver 1830 and Hutton 1771 - have been digitised and can be overlaid as transparent layers onto the existing townscape. A short programme has been written which can scale these maps to the modern map, using two or more reference points. This locates the present planning proposal to an older street pattern and historic buildings or precincts which may underlie it. The identification of buildings or activities may be precipitated by looking at the documentation linked to the plot, the street on which it stands, or the area within which it lies. The major antiquarian accounts of the city have been entered into a database, broken down into descriptions of individual buildings or topographical location.

Newcastle Urban Strategy: map overlaid by Oliver's map of 1830

Similarly, over 700 primary sources recording property transactions (for example medieval leases and sales) have been logged and linked to the modern map as far as possible. All artefacts found in the vicinity, but outside the control of archaeological excavation, will appear in the finds database. Finally if, for example, the proposed development was situated within an area known to have been formerly enclosed within the precinct of one of the medieval religious houses, all information tagged with the monument number of the particular monastery or priory can also be searched as a cross-check.

These combined searches can all be performed easily in a matter of minutes and the relevant database entries printed out. Armed with this information, the archaeologist can make informed interpretations of the nature and depth of surviving archaeological deposits. The UAD, therefore, increases the speed and efficiency with which appropriate responses, controls, and recommendations can then be made and contains a wealth of information which makes it possible to undertake a new, critical synthesis of the nature and location of archaeological deposits.

Newcastle Urban Strategy: finds database

This assessment also provides the opportunity to indicate the limitations of the available data, to draw attention to lacunae in our understanding, and to highlight issues which, given the opportunity, could be explored in future. The UAD will, consequently, form the catalyst for research proposals which, it is hoped, can be pursued in conjunction with academic institutions as well as through the archaeological interventions necessitated by development. The final stage of the project is to formulate a longer-term strategy for the proactive curation and management of Newcastle's archaeological heritage; the UAD provides a firm foundation from which current archaeological and planning procedures and policies can be revised with confidence.