Participating in the Past: National Projects
4.10 National Projects
Nationally-generated projects provide excellent opportunities to awaken interest in previously neglected subject areas, systematically acquire new information, promote local interest and develop individual skills. Although the investment for the promoting body may be considerable, the returns can also be exceptional. This is an area which has a long history in the UK, perhaps first seen in archaeology when the Congress of Archaeological Societies, the precursor to the CBA, in union with the Society of Antiquaries of London, established in 1903 an ‘Earthworks Committee’ which had the aim of gathering local reports on such features, and produced a classificatory handbook. The CBA in its early history, produced its own recording cards for local use, for instance to record Industrial Monuments.
This is an area where there may also be grant funding opportunities. Respondents mentioned specifically the CBA’s Defence of Britain project, a major project lasting eight years which received input from over 650 volunteers, and Shorewatch, a recently-started scheme coordinated by the Scottish Coastal Archaeology and Palaeo-Environmental Trust (SCAPE) to record Scotland’s eroding shoreline heritage.
Other volunteer-orientated national projects include English Heritage’s ‘Images of England’; the Portable Antiquities Recording Scheme which gathers object-information from detectorists and others; The Church Monuments Society’s proposed Ledgerstone Project and the UK National Inventory of War Memorials (English Heritage and the Imperial War Museum).
Such schemes are particularly valuable when they are set up from the outset with data-exchange with National and local Sites and Monuments Records in mind and there is great scope for the development of other nationally focused recording schemes.
