Archaeology
Uncovering stories from the past to transform the railway for the future HS2’s lead archaeologist Mike Court takes us below the surface on the UK’s biggest ever excavation
M
ore than 1,000 archaeologists have been exploring 10,000 years of British history across more than 60 separate sites in a once-in-a-generation opportunity. The results as part of HS2’s enabling works haven’t been a disappointment, with prehistoric remnants, Roman settlements, undiscovered battlefields and Victorian artefacts among just some of the discoveries. “It’s been amazing. There has been a lot of excitement that we have been finding all of this incredible archaeology and with it, stories that until now have been lost to history,” said HS2’s lead archaeologist Mike Court. “When you are a field archaeologist out on site you will be lucky if you get to cover all periods of history and prehistory in your entire career. Working on High Speed 2 we have something from every period of history and pre-history. So, when you go out on site everyone has been really into it and that feeds into the positive feeling we all have about working in it. “We are bringing history back to life and are able to tell all these communities about it, and then on top of that, our work is playing its part in helping to build this new railway.” Looking into the past Mike, who has been involved in the project for eight years, is part of a large multi-disciplinary team responsible for the largest programme of historic environment investigations in UK history on the nation’s biggest infrastructure project. He is overseeing the delivery of a vast number of archaeological and heritage investigations between London and Birmingham. “What I’ve really enjoyed has been the fact you have a lot of specialists doing a lot of different things – so you’ve got the archaeologists and historic buildings specialists; but we sit with the ecologists, hydrologists, the geotechnical specialistsand the railway engineers,” said Mike. “When I was a field archaeologist digging holes up in the middle of the countryside, you don’t really meet anybody, so working on a project like this, with all these amazing people, is really good. 26 | April 2021
“There is also a singular focus that I’ve not really experienced before on a project or any other job, where everybody is trying to get to the end goal of a new railway irrespective of what your expertise is.
That moment of discovery when you find something and you are digging it up is very exciting “It is a really good inspiring work environment to be in, and because there is so much archaeology as well from my own geeky perspective, it is everything I could hope for really. We have found more than we thought we were going to, especially as our survey work has built on the predictions set out in the environmental statement.”
Medieval graffiti, a possible murder victim from the Iron Age and the remains of Captain Matthew Flinders – the Royal Navy explorer who led the first circumnavigation of Australia and is credited with giving the country its name – are just some of the discoveries which have come as a surprise. “That moment of discovery when you find something and you are digging it up is very exciting,” said Mike. “But a lot of the discoveries actually happen later on when we are doing the interpretation work and are working out what the things we have found mean. That is when you get a product we can take back to communities and we can tell them the story of what was happening down the road in the ancient past. “For me personally, I find the the archaeology of the Mesolithic and late upper Palaeolithic really interesting, when we were hunter gatherers. HS2 crosses the Colne Valley and that gives us the opportunity to explore those periods in more detail. “To the untrained eye, the archaeology from these periods can be hard to imagine as it is mostly made up of flint tools and things railbusinessdaily.com