Wednesday 28 January 2015

1460 Battlefield Site Bulldozed in Northampton


More cultural problems in Northampton ('Battle of Northampton site needs more council protection' BBC 27 January 2015)
 A conservation group has criticised a golf club for contaminating a site of historical interest in Northampton. The Battlefield Trust has written to Northampton Borough Council to seek more protection for the 1460 site of the Battle of Northampton at Delapre. The Delapre Golf Centre that rents council land at the site had cleared soil on its site for building work. The borough council said it had told the golf club to stop the work and was awaiting an explanation. Northampton Battlefield Society chair Mike Ingram, said the soil clearance would have destroyed surviving battlefield archaeology. "Knowing where artefacts were found is vitally important for understanding how a battle was fought and is part of the archaeological record," he said. "By stripping the top soil and heaping it up, the golf club has caused that to be lost."
So taking stuff from ploughsoil on a non-scheduled site DOES matter. As Natasha Ferguson wrote about detecting on battlefield sites .... "A clear solution to this problem is to give Registered Battlefield Sites the same legal protection as Scheduled Monuments and only permit metal detecting on them under licence. Until the law is changed in that way, sadly such disasters could recur."

part of the bulldozed area (photo Mike Ingrams)
Related Stories

Patrick Byrne, Campaign for survey of Northampton Roses battlefield 19 Sept 2012  

Roses battlefield: Tenders put out for conservation plan 04 Dec 2012

No comments:

 
Creative Commons License
Ten utwór jest dostępny na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa-Bez utworów zależnych 3.0 Unported.