Government advice in PPG-16 confirms the need to preserve in situ nationally important archaeological remains and stresses the role of archaeological assessment procedures both in establishing the significance of archaeological remains and in determining the impact of development proposals on those remains. A recent assessment carried out in advance of development at Peninsula Barracks in Winchester illustrates that archaeologically sensitive sites can be successfully developed and underlines the importance of field evaluation procedures in designing and enabling that development. The work has also demonstrated that a programme of non-destructive evaluation can yield academically significant information.
Peninsula Barracks occupies the site of Winchester castle (of which the city's Great Hall is the only substantial above-ground survival), now a scheduled monument. The castle, originally constructed in 1067, was one of the greatest strongholds of Medieval England and, for a century after the conquest, served as the seat of Anglo-Norman government. Following demolition after the Civil War, the site was acquired by Charles II for construction of the King's House, a palace designed by Sir Christopher Wren and inspired by Versailles. The King's House, abandoned by James II, was never used as a palace and from 1796 to 1894 it found alternative use as a barracks. Following its eventual destruction by fire, new barracks were built as a series of elegant blocks (one incorporating the central colonnade of Wren's palace) surrounding an extensive parade ground.
Peninsula Barracks was vacated by the army in the 1980's, and made available for redevelopment. The current proposals involve the sensitive conversion of buildings, the removal of less architecturally accomplished army structures, and the construction of new buildings, all informed by the need to preserve the archaeological remains of the castle and its underlying Roman and Saxon deposits. Development proposals have been preceded by a full archaeological assessment including detailed historical research and a comprehensive programme of minimally destructive field evaluation designed by the developer's consultant, in consultation with EH and executed by the Winchester City Archaeological Unit. The evaluation (validated by subsequent archaeological observation during construction) has demonstrated that in areas of the Lower Barracks, outside the castle, preservation of archaeological remains is poor, permitting reuse of the area for housing. In contrast, preservation in the Upper Barracks is good and the 2 proposed new buildings here have been repositioned and substantially redesigned in order to avoid damage to the buried fabric of the castle. In addition, the severe landscaping constraint posed by the survival of complex archaeological deposits immediately below the surface of the parade ground is to be overcome by the creation of a slightly raised formal garden with trees contained in elevated planters bounded by geo-textile membranes to limit root growth.
Assumptions that preservation in the area of the castle's royal apartments would be poor (due to large-scale levelling in the 17th century and successive military developments in the 19th and 20th centuries) were confounded when the evaluation revealed medieval ashlar walls surviving to nearly 2m in height and similar preservation of the Roman city wall. The evaluation of this area departed from the normal sample-trench approach. Instead it involved the extensive removal of a slab foundation and modern deposits to reveal the upper surface of Roman and Medieval features. It is instructive to note that earlier proposals to evaluate this area by sample trenching, abandoned due to practical difficulties, would not have been successful in predicting the degree of preservation and it is unlikely that the importance of the surviving remains would have been recognised. As a result of the evaluation, it is currently proposed to construct a dramatic curving block of apartments located over the archaeologically insignificant backfill of the city ditch, which will respect the carefully recovered remains of the royal apartments. As well as informing the planning and scheduled monument consent procedures, the field evaluation at Peninsula Barracks has also dramatically improved our understanding of the layout of the principal features of the castle and will form the basis for an improved reconstruction of this lost fortress.
