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At Dover Castle, work on conserving the inner bailey walls is nearing completion and attention is shifting to Henry II's great keep where the exterior is due to be repointed and to have limited masonry repairs. Prior to this conservation work, which will last for a year, a careful survey of the building is being undertaken. It is expected that this will reveal much new evidence for the construction history and subsequent alterations to this most famous of royal keeps. Here too a new guidebook to the castle will shortly be published. At Walmer Castle a new garden, dedicated to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, has been created south of the castle. An archaeological evaluation of the site showed that in the twentieth century this area had been a vegetable garden, the site of a tennis court, and latterly an area of lawns and rose beds. An archaeological watching brief was undertaken during excavations for the formal pond which forms the centre-piece of the garden, but nothing of historic significance was found. The protracted programme of conservation work to the Roman and medieval walls of Pevensey Castle was completed in early 1997 and for the first time in many years, the castle is free of scaffolding. At Battle Abbey, conservation work to the exterior of the west claustral range is almost complete; this followed a programme of careful recording of the upstanding fabric. At Fort Cumberland, ISDN, Portsmouth work continues on the conservation of the brick firing step walls which form part of the outer defences beyond the main moat. A start has also been made on the former garrison hospital on the parade ground, but much remains to be done to this remarkable fortress, now the home on our CAS.
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St Augustine's Abbey World Heritage Site: during this year much attention has been focused on the construction and fitting out of the new museum ar St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (see also 4.14 and 4.15). This was officially opened on 25 May by the Archbishop of Canterbury as part of the celebrations to mark the 1,400th anniversary of the arrival of Augustine and his small band of missionaries. The museum contains many of the more notable artefacts excavated from the site over the last 150 years and tells the story of the reintroduction of Roman Christianity into pagan Britain and the subsequent history of the abbey. A new guidebook to the site, along with new descriptive panels, has greatly increased visitors' understanding and enjoyment of this World Heritage Site.
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The construction of the new museum required the excavation of two small evaluation trenches in early 1996, by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, to establish the depth of archaeologically sensitive deposits (established at 670mm below the modern ground surface). Raft foundations for the new building (designed by Van Heyningen Haward). were carefully constructed to have a minimum impact on the intact archaeological deposits. All services enter the site through a pre-existing deeper excavation trench, and the main structural weight of the building is carried on the medieval precinct wall which survives as substantial foundations below ground level. A watching brief was carried out by the Oxford Archaeological Unit during the site clearance for the concrete slab, and any features discovered at a higher level were recorded before being removed. This included the excavation of a number of burials located towards the north east corner of the site, an area which previously had been outside the control EH. All the skeletons were oriented east-west, and were extended inhumations. Most had originally been buried in wooden coffins. A small amount of pottery gives a date range between the eleventh and the fifteenth century and is consistent with use of the lay cemetery which was located in this part of the site.