2009 Beatrice de Cardi Lecture Recognises 50 Years of Industrial Archaeology

You can download the full text of the lecture and the presentation here.

Marilyn Palmer, Emeritus Professor at the University of Leicester, gave the annual Beatrice de Cardi lecture at the CBA Weekend Event in Shrewsbury this weekend. In an address entitled, ‘Fifty Years of Industrial Archaeology’, Marilyn stated that the importance of the UK’s industrial heritage should be better-represented in university teaching. Though the discipline has grown in recognition through the work of volunteers, national agencies and contracting units, resulting in a number of industrial sites being on the UK’s list of World Heritage Sites, there are still very few undergraduate or postgraduate courses which take industrial archaeology into account. The lecture also recognised the pivotal role played by the Council for British Archaeology in establishing the discipline of industrial archaeology in 1959, and the work the organisation carried out throughout the 1960s in establishing a network of volunteers to record many hundreds of buildings under threat.

The annual Beatrice de Cardi Lecture takes place at the CBA Weekend Event, and covers a subject of significance to UK archaeology. It is named after Beatrice de Cardi OBE, the first Secretary of the Council for British Archaeology, from 1949 to 1973.

The CBA Weekend Event takes place each year, coinciding with the CBA Annual General Meeting. The 2009 event was based in Shrewsbury and involved tours of the town, lectures and tours of Ironbridge and Wroxeter by Roger White and Paul Belford, and a tour of recent work at Attingham Park by National Trust archaeologist Jeremy Miln. Further details and pictures will be available in the next CBA Newsletter.

Download Marilyn Palmer’s lecture text (PDF 118KB) and slide presentation (PPT 2.15MB, colour).

The CBA and the Association for Industrial Archaeology is currently running a series of dayschools on industrial buildings, further details of which can be found here. The CBA is currently in the process of publishing a Practical Handbook on Industrial Archaeology.

Professor Marilyn Palmer is one of the CBA’s Vice-Presidents. She read history at Oxford, but came across industrial archaeology there at the same time that the CBA recognised the discipline and set up the Industrial Monuments Survey in the 1960s. Having taught industrial archaeology in adult education, she was eventually able to pursue it at university level and has worked hard to ensure its academic acceptance and to define a methodological framework for the study of industrial structures and landscapes within an archaeological context. Europe’s first Professor of Industrial Archaeology, she was Head of the School of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Leicester from 2000 to 2006, teaching post-medieval and industrial archaeology and the archaeology of standing buildings. Recently retired, she is now a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow, researching the social impact of technological innovation on country house estates.