When TimeTeam came to Nork

I AM LUCKY enough to wear several hats for several local organizations. While most of you know me as one of your three borough councillors for Nork Ward on Reigate & Banstead Borough Council, two of the other roles I have through which I am particularly honoured to serve the local community are those of being a Banstead Commons Conservator (helping to manage 550 hectares of open countryside in Banstead) and being the “Heritage Champion” for Reigate and Banstead Borough Council. Often, I can combine these two roles, such as for the guided walks we carry out each year on Banstead Downs, Park Downs, Burgh Heath and Banstead Heath.

The purpose of the Reigate & Banstead Heritage Champion is to act as a liaison between local heritage groups (usually either history or archaeology), the borough council and its Conservation Officer, and the archaeologists and archivists at Surrey County Council who answer to the County Principal Archaeologist. Luckily, this is something I have been essentially doing for over 30 years as for several years I was chairman of the committee that oversaw all professional and volunteer archaeology in Surrey and the south London boroughs. I have also been secretary of the local history society here (now called Banstead History, formerly Banstead History Research Group), secretary of the local archaeological society (Plateau Group) and have worked preparing reports on archaeology for borough & county councils and bodies such as English Heritage, for many years. This has often involved directing or project managing large excavations and surveys, such as a team of 40 archaeologists for the county council on Banstead and Walton Heaths, a team of 60 in Lower Kingswood including a post-graduate unit from the University of Oxford, a rescue excavation at a royal palace, and an excavation in Nork which involved personnel from both the Museum of London and the British Museum. Currently we are engaged on a fieldwork project, “The Banstead TestPitting Programme”, which aims to excavate a hundred test-pits in gardens in Banstead, primarily to determine which fields were being ploughed and which were meadow in the Middle Ages.

If you see me wearing my hard hat, then the likelihood is that I am doing the archaeology for a building development, as sometimes if we suspect there is archaeology on a site under development, we can either condition or request the developer to allow archaeologists access. There is a surprising amount of archaeology locally, usually prehistoric in date. As I get older, I am finding more of my time is given over to presenting lectures either at academic symposia such as hosted by the British Museum or Museum of London, or to volunteer groups such as the Surrey Archaeological Society, London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, Croydon Natural History & Scientific Society, or local U3A groups. The subjects requested seem to be diversifying too. I tend to think of myself as a jobbing field archaeologist ready for anything though specialising in the Lower Palaeolithic (on which I contributed to English Heritage’s guidance to professional archaeologists).

However, I have been called to lecture on everything from the LincombianRanisian-Jerzmanowician Upper Palaeolithic technoculture of central Europe, the archaeology of the occult, the impact of periglacial loess deposition on identification of Palaeolithic implements, the hydrogeology of karstic dolines on the North Downs, or more recently, Roman Walton-on-the-Hill, Second World War defences in Banstead, and the historical context of the current RussoUkraine war. Recently I was explaining to the council’s Planning Committee the former requirement for a license to crenellate (create battlements) being issued by the monarch during a planning application. I count myself lucky as having known many brilliant archaeologists who have excavated locally and are now, themselves, part of the archaeological record, such as Brian Hope-Taylor, Phil Jones, David Williams, Dennis Turner, Steve Dyer et al.

Tumble Beacon (August 1996)

In Nork, apart from excavating the Tumble Beacon (the largest Bronze Age burial mound in Surrey & Scheduled Ancient Monument) under license from the Secretary of State, the most interesting excavation I directed was in the Tattenham Way allotments. Several of the allotments had previously been abandoned due to horsetail weed infestation which had been brought in from a local garden by an allotment holder, so the council let us excavate them, which produced evidence from all periods, including a Lower Palaeolithic handaxe, a Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) pit-dwelling, Neolithic axes, an early Bronze Age (Beaker Folk) settlement and burial, a Romano-British farmstead, and onwards. This continual use was largely due to the geology and topography of the site. The excavation attracted the attention of TimeTeam, who I knew through the international Lithics Studies Society based at the British Museum and a passing friendship with Phil Harding, who were very keen on excavating the site after visiting it as throughout all their television series they never excavated on allotments, and this could have good televisual public engagement. We were two weeks away from filming the episode, having worked out we could land the helicopter on Tattenham Rec and use the cricket pavilion for finds processing, when it all went pear-shaped as the (then) allotment steward (nearly 25 years ago) was opposed to any excavation. In their eagerness, council officers might have misread the PR implications as they told TimeTeam not to worry about the allotmenteers as the council could just temporarily evict them! TimeTeam decided that it wasn’t going to work, so I’m afraid all we got was a passing reference in one of TimeTeam’s books that they had “nearly” filmed an episode on allotments, something they never managed to achieve.

Cllr. PETER HARP REIGATE & BANSTEAD BOROUGH COUNCIL HERITAGE CHAMPION