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Earlier in the year Patrick and Neil reported on a workshop they had attended on this subject, run by the Lancs Wildlife Trust. A huge area stretching from Warrington and Chat Moss to Westhoughton and Bolton, and including the whole of the Wigan Borough, has been designated a Nature Improvement Area. A grant of £2.2m is being applied for to improve the landscapes in these areas, which have suffered badly over the years from the effect of industrialization. The project's aim is to restore and improve access to these areas and also increase awareness of their cultural heritage. The purpose of the workshop was to get ideas form various interested groups on how the grant could be spent. From a heritage point of view, Patrick and Neil's suggestion of geophysics (e.g ground penetrating radar or magnetometer) equipment was well received and it was suggested that we work up a proposal for the application. Since then Neil has put together a proposal and a couple of weeks ago we met with Cheryl Knott at the Trust's office to discuss it. Cheryl was quite impressed and has agreed to progress the application for funding.
Ground Penetrating Radar
As it happen we have been approached by a company, based in Westhoughton, who provide this equipment to civil engineers. Peter Ashcroft, who works in their Wigan office, says that they are keen to allow their equipment to be used for heritage projects in the area for free. His company, Sigma Solutions, use the latest technology i.e. Mala which is used by Time Team. They are also offer training and so this Monday 5 members of our field team are planned to go on their training course. This will include data collection in the field. Fortunately we have been able to arrange permission from the council to do the training in the grounds of Haigh Hall. The area specified is directly behind the Hall on the terrace (in front of the children's playground). This area was earmarked by GMAAS in a desk-based assessment for their Dig Greater Manchester project, as having potential archaeology. As our visit will be a training exercise, we won't get a full picture but the results will be very interesting and I'm sure we will be able to return to do a full survey.
Kirkless Update
A good turnout last months (including 3 students, 2 from Winstanley College) enabled us to make some good progress on the chimney base, and also the southwest wall of the main factory building. We were able to open up more of the central area of the chimney to see if we can identify the 'eye' (where the smoke entered it). This proved unsuccessful as there was no sign of a telltale arch structure, but we did discover that the pattern of bricklaying altered a few courses down which may have indicated a change of design during construction. Our searches for either end of the southwest wall also proved frustrating. At the northwest end, we thought we had a termination when we uncovered a steel stanchion, but it turned out not to be the case as the wall seems to continue beyond it. At the southeast end the wall disappears under a layer of concrete which probably formed the floor of the factory in this area. Nevertheless we had a great day; I'm sure the new students were able to get a lot out of it. We did, unfortunately however, suffer from a display of anti-social behaviour towards the end of the day from a group of 4 youths who were determined to cause bother for us. This is a shame as the majority of the people from the district have shown great interest in our work. Hopefully this was just an isolated incident and won't deter us from future visits; we will, however, be trying to have the local community officer at hand next time just in case.
Christmas Meal
There is still time to book your place for the meal at our December meeting. Or, if you don't want the meal, you can aways come later for the quiz.
Next Meeting
Wednesday 4th November - in the Standish Suite at the Brocket Arms (7.30pm as usual). Back to our usual day and this month we have Kerry Beeston who runs Finds Processing workshops at the Manchester Museum. She will be bringing along some of her choice finds for us to look at and I will bring some of ours for her to cast a professional eye over. It should be a very interesting talk- hope to see you there, BA.
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