Urban Archaeology Session 3 Churches: Recording a Church Worksheet

Recording a Church
Building recording is often one of the major activities for an archaeologist working with standing buildings. The programme of work on a building/complex and the setting of that building/complex can include: Character History Dating Form Development

The outputs of a building survey should take the form of a set of drawings, an archive and a report. Introduction to Standards and Guidance in Archaeological Practice (ISGAP) has good advice on what form a building survey should take. ISGAP: http://www.isgap.org.uk/docs/8

Submitting a record to a HER

How does the HER work? Gilman and Newmans site Informing the Future of the Past has guidelines for people who work with HERs and is very useful as a general manual. Informing the Future of the Past: http://www.ifp-plus.info/ Is there already a record? To find out what is already on the HER, visit the Heritage Gateway as this links to all of the HERs in England. Heritage Gateway: http://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/gateway/ Is the HER the right place to submit my data? English Heritage has selection guides, which will help to identify whether the site that you have collected information on is suitable for the HER. English Heritage Selection Guides: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/listing/criteria-forprotection/selection-guidelines/ You can submit to the HER directly via the local authority under which the monument/building falls, or you can submit to OASIS. OASIS is a project that aims to be the primary means for reporting archaeological fieldwork. The OASIS feeds information to the HERs, the NMR Excavation Index, and to the AIP, which is a project that is reviewing the kinds of archaeological fieldwork that has taken place in England. OASIS also collects Grey Literature (which is literature such as archaeological

reports that are not easily searchable on the internet) for archaeological fieldwork, and this is available through the ADSs Unpublished Fieldwork Reports pages. There is also the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), which has a database of portable antiquities. You can submit objects that you have recorded to this site, as long as they are over 300 years old and are not from an archaeological investigation on a site. OASIS: http://www.oasis.ac.uk/ NMR Excavation Index: http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/collections/blurbs/304.cfm AIP: http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/aip/ ADS Unpublished Fieldwork Reports: http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/greylit/ Portable Antiquities Scheme: http://finds.org.uk/guide

Filling in the HER

What should I include in the description? Most local authorities will have a standard form to fill in for an admission to the HER they manage. These are the core fields recommended by Informing the Future of the Past (IFP) for a monument record:

HER number: a number which uniquely identifies the monument record in the HER Other identifiers: reference numbers for the monument in external records, for example Scheduled Monument (SM) number Monument name: a descriptive name by which the monument can be identified Monument type: an index to the type or character of the monument represented on the site Evidence: physical or documentary evidence for the existence of the monument Period/date: the maximum and minimum dates/periods of the monument being described Grid reference: an OS grid co-ordinate locating the monument Administrative unit: the administrative area in which the monument falls, for example county/district/parish Description: a text description about the monument Monument status: a reference to any protection status that the monument has, for example II* Listed Event number: monuments should be linked to relevant event records Source number: all monuments should have at least one link to a source record.

Lancashire County Council has a very comprehensive guide to how to fill in a HER record. They recommend that you need to find out the following information: Where the site is What the site looks like What you think it might be What its date may be Who recorded it and when

Lancashire County Council HER Guidance: http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/corporate/web/view.asp?siteid=4398&pageid=20334&e=e Where the site is Provide a National Grid Reference (NGR) for the site. There are lots of different ways to find a NGR, most maps will give you guidance at the bottom of how to do this. If you know other information about the site, such as the postcode, or the latitude and longitude (which can be found by putting a pin into Google Maps), then you can use the Grid Reference Finder to create the NGR for you. Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/ Grid Reference Finder: http://gridreferencefinder.com/ Say what the site is called, with an address. Be as specific as possible. Do not say near to Burley, but do say 200m north of the Ringwood Road junction with Pound Lane and The Cross. Give a brief summary of the site. A large stone, possibly a boundary marker. The name and the summary is what most people will read, so these combined should tell someone what the site is. What the site looks like Give a description of the site. This should be descriptive, but not give information about interpretation yet. Be as brief as possible, but it is better to give a description than to make an assumption about the function of something. So large piece of flint is better than boundary stone. Lancashire CC suggests asking these questions for this section: Is the site part of a wider landscape or complex of features (such as a bell pit in a coal mining area)? Is it in good condition or ruined? Is there any active erosion or other threat? Think about what evidence you have for this site. Did you find it on a map, or did you find it when out walking? This will affect how you describe it. Find location or Documentary Evidence. If it is documentary evidence, then say here what the document was. What you think it might be This is your opportunity to give an interpretation of the site. If you give an interpretation, try to also say how you came to this conclusion. Try to use the standardised vocabulary from the thesauri for your description. Here is the example from the Lancashire CC page:

The stone is situated between the Aardvark Fell estate and that of Beeswax Fold. It has no hinge

holes or other indications that it may have been used as a gate post, nor is it tall enough for this. It seems most probable that it represents a former boundary stone. The Beeswax estate was established about 1825 (Smith, A, 2001 History of Anglezarke p.23) so the stone must post-date this. What its date may be This may be a single date, a range of dates, or a description. i.e. 1932, 1914-18, Bronze Age. You may find for this part that the HER record form that you are filling in has standardised fields which comply with the local authoritys HER database. This is where the standardised vocabularies from the thesauri described later in this resource sheet come in useful. Usual fields are Type, Period and Date. To find out additional information about a site, such as whether it is listed or not, a good place to start is often the online GIS for a local authority. In the instance of Southampton City Council, there is an online GIS map, where you will find bomb crater maps, listed buildings, conservation areas, areas of archaeological significance, etc. Southampton City Council online map: http://map.southampton.gov.uk/gis/Default.asp The National Heritage List for England has all buildings that are listed in England, so check here for listed information. National Heritage List for England: http://list.english-heritage.org.uk/ Who recorded it and when Tell the local authority who you are, and when this site was recorded. The information does not go into the HER normally. Photos It is also very useful if you can provide some photographs of the site to accompany the record.

Example Monument Report Provided by the Lancashire CC. Site Number Name Summary NGR Description 100m east of Winkley Barn, Aardvark Fell, Anglezarke Moor Large stone, possibly a boundary marker SD 6379718218 (GPS) Large grey stone, c.1m high and 30cm square, standing alone on the edge of a field 100m south east of Winkley Barn. The west face has the initials AF carved deeply near the top, and the east face has the initials BF. Site seen during walk. The stone is situated between the Aardvark Fell estate and that of Beeswax Fold. It has no hinge holes or other indications that it may have been used as a gate post, nor is it tall enough for this. It seems most probable that it represents a former boundary stone. The Beeswax estate was established about 1825 (Smith, A, 2001 History of Anglezarke p.23) so the stone must post-date this. Type Period Date Evidence Recorder & Date Boundary Stone Post Medieval Post 1825 Structure A A Aardvark, 99 Marsupial Street, Accrington, AC1 2XY T. 0123 456789 E. AnnieAardvark@Dirigible.co.au Recorded 3 July 2004 Photos OLY8765.jpg, OLY7654.jpg 1

Monument Report Exercise

Try to complete your own HER record for Highfield Church. Begin at the Highfield Church website: http://www.highfieldchurch.org.uk/ HER number: a number which uniquely identifies the site record in the HER
This will be given to the record once it has been added to the HER.

Monument name: a descriptive name by which the site can be identified

Monument summary: a description of the site

Grid reference: an OS grid co-ordinate locating the site

Description: a text description about the site. Try to use as much standardised vocabulary as you can.

Monument type: an index to the type or character of the monument represented on the site

Evidence: physical or documentary evidence for the existence of the site

Period and/or date: the maximum and minimum dates/periods of the site being described

Administrative unit: the administrative area in which the site falls, for example county/district/parish

Monument status: a reference to any protection status that the site has, for example II* Listed

Data Standards and Glossaries for HERs

English Heritage has an index of thesauri for National Monuments Record, which you should use to create a record of a building. English Heritage National Monuments Record Thesauri: http://thesaurus.englishheritage.org.uk/frequentuser.htm The thesauri that you are likely to find most useful are the Monument Types list, the Building Materials list, the mdas Archaeological Objects list, and FISH. FISH is the Forum on Information Standards in Heritage, and is a vocabulary managed by the Council for British Archaeology (CBA). It has two major standards MIDAS and INSCRIPTION. MIDAS is a INSCRIPTION is a collection of lists of words that are for the standardisation of inventory databases. If you are creating a database for an archaeological project, you will find it very useful. FISH: http://www.fish-forum.info/ MIDAS: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/publications/midas-heritage/ MIDAS has words like Condition Date The date when an assessment of the condition of a Heritage Asset was made. And Production Method - The primary means used to manufacture an artefact. INSCRIPTION: http://www.fish-forum.info/i_lists.htm INSCRIPTION includes lots of different types of wordlists: Simple wordlists which are useful to classify a site. Such as Good all or nearly all features of interest are well preserved for the period they represent. No sign of active damage. Hierarchical which are organised into a hierarchy, such as excavation open area excavation trial trench. Complex which are list with lots of components, such as post medieval default minimum date: 1540 and default maximum date: 1900. Thesauri which support different types of relationship so that terms can be hierarchical and related to other terms, such as barrow being a broad term for round barrow, or football ground and football pitch being related terms.

Each thesaurus has a slightly different configuration and convention. All of the thesauri through the EH NMR Thesauri site use the following abbreviations: Use UF SN CL BT NT RT Preferred Term Use For Scope Note Class name Broad Term Narrow Term Related Term

These make a lot more sense when you see them next to the record itself. For example, the thesaurus class for RELIGIOUS RITUAL AND FUNERARY terms has the following record for a Font:

FONT
UF Submersion Font SN A vessel, usually made of stone, which contains the consecrated water for baptism. Use a broader monument type if possible. CL RELIGIOUS RITUAL AND FUNERARY RT BAPTISTERY In the Font example, a Subversion Font should also be referred to with the term Font. The Scope Note gives us more information, telling us that the Font is a vessel made of stone, containing water for baptism. The Class Name is RELIGIOUS RITUAL AND FUNERARY, so that we remember which class the term falls under. The Related Term is BAPTISTERY. Informing the Future of the Past also has a very good index of online data standards. Informing the Future of the Past Data Standards: http://www.ifp-plus.info/Websites.htm