 |
During 1996-97, work has been carried out on the Chiswick Cascade and Witley Court parterre, and geophysical survey has also been undertaken on the avenue and parterre at Hill Hall. An EH/ICOMOS joint international conference on garden-archaeology was held at Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, in June 1995, chaired by Lorna McRobie, Director of Gardens and Landscape. The aims of the conference were to promote the exchange of information, and to assist in setting out guide-lines for good practice based on a concept of the proper role of archaeology in garden restoration, the scope for non-destructive techniques, and the standards to be adopted in the interpretation and presentation of the data. Subjects covered included the practice and results from excavation, recent advances in non-destructive fieldwork, the state of geophysical prospecting in British gardens, environmental archaeology on either side of the Atlantic, and techniques and appropriate use of low-cost data recovery; the restoration of landscape gardens and issues of curatorship were also discussed. The conference was intended to be useful to garden restoration experts, public officials, owners, academics, and garden archaeologists and its proceedings were published in Jacques, D, ed, 1977 "The techniques and uses of garden archaeology, J Garden Hist 17.1". The first issue of an annual garden archaeology newsletter, to disseminate current work in the field was distributed in January 1997; a register of site investigations is held in an associated database.