4.0 Archaeological activities undertaken by English Heritage

4.12 Archaeological building recording

Recording and analysis should be an integral part of a programme of repair or alteration to an historic building, and the costs of such work should be born either by the applicant in the case of listed building consent, or be included as part of any grant aid. English Heritage, however, does have a small separate budget available for building recording, specifically for those cases where the works are not normally grant eligible or where the work should not be the responsibility of the applicant. The budget might be used where work is not grant-aided, but where there are exceptional circumstances that justify assistance with recording, where recording might be funded as an exemplar, where a generic survey of a particular type of structure or group of buildings might help with their management, or where there might be a need to publish work that has already been funded by grant-aid. The budget has also been used to fund national research projects that improve our understanding and management of particular building types, and to fund strategic documents. Where possible, we try to use the budget to work in partnership with other organisations.

Churchyards and memorials

Kensal Green Cemetery: tomb of William Mulready (d 1863) by Godfrey Sykes
Kensal Green cemetery: tomb of William Mulready

Our Historical Analysis and Research Team has particular expertise in churchyards and memorials, and this year provided advice on a range of subjects, including West Hallam War Memorial in Derbyshire. We have been completing a detailed survey of funerary monuments and structures in London's earliest and finest public cemetery at Kensal Green and also in Brockley Cemetery in London. Extensive archival research into this little-studied area is providing a new appreciation of the importance of such features and will inform our future management strategies.

This work will be drawn together into a strategic long term project on London Burial Grounds, which will culminate in detailed guidance for the maintenance and repair of such monuments, as well as forming the basis for recommendations for listing.

Building type surveys

Previous research into specific sites has led to wider research initiatives, which it is hoped can be pursued in the coming year. Work on the King's Cross gasholder site has led to a London-wide survey of this building type, a survey intended to lead to recommendations for listing. A report on the Round Church at Cambridge (Archaeology Review 1996-97) resulted in a survey of nineteenth-century church furnishing schemes in East Anglia, and a broader-based review is planned for the coming year. A survey of Thames crossings in Greater London is forming the basis of still more recommendations for listing.

London vernacular housing

Staircase detail from an eighteenth-century house in Deptford Broadway, Lewisham (photo: RCHME, Crown copyright)
18th century staircase detail (Deptford)
We are working closely with the RCHME on a survey of modest London houses from the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This began with an analysis of selected buildings in Deptford High Street (Lewisham), which were unlisted, and is now being extended to a handful of properties in Peckham (Southwark) and soon to other collections of this now very rare type. These structures are extremely modest, most having two stories and, originally, one room on each floor. Some are past the point where they can be listed, but are nevertheless, by virtue of their scale and silhouette, still redolent of the modest strip developments that once lined the major highways coming into the capital. It is hoped that this survey will lead to some listings, a fuller understanding of what makes this vulnerable building type special, and the designation or extension of Conservation Areas.

St Ethelburga, Bishopsgate, City of London

The Museum of London has now completed their report on the debris from the church damaged by a bomb in November 1994. This research, part funded by English Heritage in conjunction with the City Corporation and the Diocese of London, has provided details of the west window, door, tower arch, and timber belfry, all of which date from c 1400, and these now form the basis of the current proposal to restore the church and adapt it as a centre for those suffering as a result of terrorist activities.