by Tony Gregory
In January, York’s archaeology hit the headlines with the discovery of what might be the site of a Roman imperial palace on the Queens Hotel site; unknown to the world at large, the Museum of London’s Department of Urban Archaeology was simultaneously uncovering a site just as spectacular and potentially more controversial — the “Roman Baths” on Huggin Hill. The Queens Hotel affair raised questions of the relationship between archaeology and development, particularly about the excavation of sites. Huggin Hill takes us on to the next stage — when something spectacular turns up, what next? And what price preservation?
The protected site
Unlike most of the sites that are developed, Huggin Hill is a scheduled ancient monument, protected under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979. The ostensible purpose of scheduling is to preserve the cream of archaeological sites, and to prevent their development and destruction. It is not, according to the official line of English Heritage, designed to ensure that sites are excavated and that the developer pays. Nevertheless, there are cases where the Department of the Environment has given permission (scheduled monument consent or SMC) for development on a scheduled ancient monument with attached conditions which result in the site being archaeologically excavated and the developer paying the bill.
This is what happened at Huggin Hill. Observations in the distant past (1964 and 1969) revealed the remains of a very substantial Roman building, with massive stone walls and an underfloor central heating system (hypocaust). The whole thing was on such a gigantic scale (at least 230 ft x 50 ft) that the site was identified as a major Roman civic building, possibly the great public baths of the capital city. As a result the site was scheduled.
In 1988 when Hammerson were involved in negotiations for the redevelopment of Dominant House, the western part of the area looked at in 1964, an evaluation of the new area, including small-scale excavations, was commissioned from the Museum of London’s Department of Urban Archaeology. Acting on information from the museum, English Heritage advised the DOE and Hammerson that there were substantial remains of the building under Dominant House.
The result was that Hammerson were given consent to proceed with their development provided that provision was made for the Museum of London to excavate and record the remains for a period of up to six months. The conditions attached to the consent did not require Hammerson to fund the excavations, but we are all aware that, in practice, such provision can be made only if the developer does provide the funds. In the end Hammerson put up almost £500,000; the Museum of London undertook to be off the site by the end of May 1989, taking five months for excavations, rather than the six allowed for in the scheduled monument consent. At the end of May demolition and construction contractors would take over, and the result would be a major building with basements, removing any archaeological remains that the museum had left — a perfectly fair arrangement, involving generous support from Hammerson, and the Museum of London’s standard policy of excavating the site and then leaving it to the developer.
A plethora of palaces?
This was where things started to take on a different complexion. As the excavation proceeded it became obvious that the remains were more substantial and had suffered less from Victorian and 1960s damage than had first been thought. It would be an understatement to say that they were spectacular. Walls stood to heights of 6 ft to 8 ft high, with one giant wall, retaining the hillside on the north side of the site, more than 13 ft thick. Within the walls stood the pilae, the pillars of stacked tiles which had originally supported the raised floor of the building. Under the pilae was a solid floor of opus signinum, a concrete, coloured and made waterproof with crushed brick. In several places the walls were pierced by arched flues which allowed the hot air in from external furnaces, so that it could circulate around the pilae to heat the floor above. Around the outside of the building was a timberlined drain, its planks still preserved after more than 1800 years, and a system of clay water-pipes allowed the ground water, trapped by the building, to be drained off into the Thames.
All it lacked were the mosaic floors, the roof and the Romano-British patrons. But a building as well preserved as this one, unusual in any Roman town in Britain, is spectacular enough without. It may have been part of a bath-house; it may equally have been a sumptuous centrally heated reception room. Whether it was used for bathing or for engagements, it was clearly part of a building of very high status. It might have been part of the public baths, but now another possibility comes up — that it was part of the governor’s palace. Has Estates Gazette ever figured so many palaces in so little time?
The one in York seems to have been imperial — built for the Emperor Septimius Severus. The palace under Dominant House would have been different, the headquarters of the Roman government of Britain in the first and second centuries AD. From here the governor’s staff and civil service would have run the province. It would have been into rooms like this that deputations from all corners of the province would have come to plead with the governor for remission of VAT and for funds to allow the preservation of recently discovered ancient monuments.
On April 13 the discovery hit the newspapers; from The Times to the Daily Mirror, Dominant House has put in regular appearances ever since — and not just as a thing to wonder at, but as a question — is this site going to be destroyed? The Independent’s archaeological correspondent, David Keys, has played a prominent part in the reporting, and it was the Independent that began pressing for the building’s preservation. The case has been taken up politically too, with two Early Day motions in the House of Commons and a 30-minute debate on the issue.
To preserve or not?
Leaving aside this particular case for a while, what are the possibilities for preserving archaeology within a development? It is not something which arises often, although it is a constant worry to developers. To begin, let us put Huggin Hill into perspective. In the last 17 years the Museum of London’s Department of Urban Archaeology has excavated more than 400 sites in the Square Mile, and only five times before this had the issue come up seriously.
Part of the medieval chapel of Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, was found, in an almost miraculous state of preservation, at a stage in the development too late to alter the design. So the developers, Speyhawk, had the whole thing lifted out of the way in a single piece, and later incorporated into the modern building.
Speyhawk’s financing and the expertise of the contractors, Pynfords, made this possible. Similarly the undercroft of a 15th-century building on the Kumagai Gumi development of the World building, was lifted out of the way and has recently been replaced.
Other important pieces of archaeology have been preserved in situ: the spectacular discovery of part of the Roman amphitheatre south of the Guildhall made headlines in 1988. Its preservation has now been agreed. The Clothworkers’ Company have preserved a Roman cellar found at 25-26 Lime Street.
The discovery of the wall of the medieval Leadenhall Market, standing more than 20 ft high, had a less happy ending. The developers were unable to incorporate it into the design, and it was clearly too large a structure for the Pynfords treatment. English Heritage were unable or unwilling to purchase the monument.
Outside the City preservation has also been proved to be a viable option. In Kingston upon Thames excavations by the Museum of London’s other digging unit, the Department of Greater London Archaeology, laid bare the remains of the approach to the medieval Kingston bridge, and the undercroft or basement of a medieval house nearby. Through an agreement between the local council and developers John Lewis, the Pynfords treatment was applied and the remains are to be incorporated into the development.
The Rose Theatre
Coincidence is rife in archaeology (despite proponents of conspiracy theories), and it really is coincidence that, at precisely the same moment that the Department of Urban Archaeology were making their discoveries at Dominant House, the Department of Greater London Archaeology were working on a site south of the Thames which was being developed by Imry. It was known from historical sources that somewhere in the vicinity was the site of the 16th-century Rose Theatre, associated with Shakespeare, Marlowe and all the great names of Elizabethan drama. But it was not thought likely that any substantial remains would survive.
The site had not been scheduled, and the very detailed evaluation exercise which had taken place at Huggin Hill before scheduled monument consent was granted was not applied here — not Imry’s fault, because they did not acquire the site until quite late in the scheme’s progress. The discovery of the walls of the theatre, far better preserved than anyone could have imagined, prompted a mixture of delight and embarrassment.
The theatrical community and the conservation lobbies reacted immediately, and pressure for its preservation grew. Here are the finest surviving remains of an Elizabethan theatre; the site appeals to archaeologists, architects, historians, actors and all sections of the theatrical community.
Its appeal could be wider than that of the Huggin Hill building, but its fate is less dramatic. The original design does not call for it to be destroyed; piles will go through it and cause some damage to the structure, but this can be minimised by a careful review of the design; the rest of the remains can be backfilled and will still be there for re-excavation in the future. It would be wonderful, all agree in theory, to be able to leave the theatre exposed and open it to the public, but has the discovery been made at too late a stage for this to be feasible?
Not just London
Despite its illustrious history, the City of London can boast little of its Roman and medieval past on show for visitors to see. The record for the preservation of upstanding remains is rather better in the rest of the country. Cities like York and Colchester were no more important than London in Roman and medieval times, but their past is much more obvious. The reasons are fairly simple — London’s Fire and Blitz have destroyed most of what remained above ground, and the spiral of property prices and building costs in the last few decades has ensured that most of what was discovered below the ground has either been destroyed or covered up.
Outside the City of London these factors have had less effect, particularly with regard to excavated remains that might be worth preserving. Lincoln made its best contribution to preserving the past as long ago as 1971: an office block was to be built at the Park, astride the Roman city wall. It was a speculative development, long before the days of large-scale developer-funded archaeology, which was eventually taken over by Lincoln City Council. Excavations were funded by the DOE to allow the Roman defences to be investigated and recorded before the office block was constructed.
The results of the excavation carried out by the Lincoln Archaeological Research Committee were surprising: the Roman city wall still stood more than 5 ft high. Through it ran a gateway, previously unsuspected, with the remains of gate towers on either side. The preservation was outstandingly good, and the stonework included elaborately decorated stone blocks reused from an earlier Roman building. Preservation proved possible because of the design of the office building — T-shaped, with the cross of the T parallel to the line of the wall which ran across the upright just below the cross. The gateway was a few metres away from the proposed location of the building, in the area intended for a car park.
The response from John Roberts Associates, the architects, was simple and effective. The whole building was shifted a few metres in one direction, and the junction of the cross and the upright raised to sail over the wall. The rest of the wall and the gateway were landscaped into the car park and interpretation panels installed. The costs were largely absorbed into the construction budget, and Finnegans, the main contractors, added their own contribution of £500. The wall and the gateway are still there today — even the stone gatestop, rounded by thousands of Roman and modern shoes. The remains were saved from destruction by building, but not saved altogether. Every year rain and frost take their toll of the part that stands in the car park, and the stonework will need regular consolidation to ensure its safety.
Ten years later a similar problem turned up in Norwich, and was solved in a different way: the Norfolk Archaeological Unit were excavating a site between the cathedral and the River Wensum which was destined to be occupied by the new magistrates’ courts. The excavation had started almost from cold, with little information available as to what was likely to be found in most of the site. What transpired was one of the biggest surprises in the archaeology of Norwich, the lower storey of a Norman stone building, complete with window embrasures, the bases of the pillars that supported the vaulted ceiling, and a latrine turret letting out into the river. The walls survived to a height of 2.5m, preserved because the ground had been terraced, thus burying the building.
It was a spectacular discovery on any account, but made more so by the extreme rarity of medieval stone buildings, other than churches, in Norfolk. Everyone concerned recognised its importance. The developers, Norfolk County Council, and the Norfolk Archaeological Unit put together a package to preserve it within the design of the court building. The piling plan was redesigned over a small area to ensure that the building’s wall was missed, a new basement added to enclose the building, a staircase added to give access, and the drainage system slightly modified, all at a cost of £65,000. The money was provided largely by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, Norfolk County Council and Norwich City Council, with smaller contributions from the DOE and the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society. One of the architects remarked that the administrative disruption, and the process of taking the decisions on how to preserve the building, were a far greater problem than raising the money and redesigning the development.
Let us agree then that it is possible to adapt designs to accommodate substantial archaeological remains and to allow them to remain visible. Both the examples above might be regarded as special cases, because the developers were local authorities who had rather more freedom of action than commercial developers. But the most imaginative preservation project of all was purely private enterprise: the excavation of the great Viking site at Coppergate in York needs little description.
But the Viking remains were not part of the original design brief. The construction of the Jorvik Viking Centre in the basement of the new building, incorporating the actual discoveries of the excavation, came about because York’s archaeologists launched the Viking Centre as a commercial venture, forming the company Cultural Resource Management to do the job.
A moral?
It is part of the great cosmic order of things that tales like these have morals. It would be inconceivable that the tales of Dominant House and the Rose Theatre should not. The most important one has already been drawn, by David Fahie of Imry at a conference on April 24 1989 organised by the British Property Federation and the Standing Committee of Archaeological Unit Managers. He said very clearly that developers should take the lead in the predevelopment archaeology and the site analysis.
The implications of this are far-reaching — before a final agreement is drawn up between the developer and the archaeologists to satisfy planning conditions, SMC, consciences or whatever there should already have been a full site evaluation. This includes trial excavations by archaeologists, remote sensing, bore holes and documentary research so that the final archaeological agreement is based on adequate knowledge of what is likely to exist below the surface. No developer would go ahead without ground investigations to allow a proper engineering brief to be drawn up — so on a site with archaeological potential, the same is surely true of the archaeology.
It is attractive to surmise that the events on the Rose Theatre site contributed to Mr Fahie’s statement. If there had been a detailed archaeological evaluation by Imry and the Museum of London at an early stage in the project, it should have become obvious that there were remains of the Rose Theatre under the site, and that it had not been irretrievably damaged by Victorian cellars.
Evaluations cost money, but developers are no strangers to spending large sums on pre-development work. Perhaps they also need better advice from completely independent archaeological sources. And archaeology as a whole still has some way to go in coming to terms with the new world — archaeologists are providing a service to developers as well as exploring and discovering.
But what of Dominant House? Here there was an evaluation exercise. Museum of London archaeologists spent eight weeks in trial excavations before the main excavation started, carrying out precisely that sort of exercise. So why was scheduled monument consent given? Surely the evaluation made it clear that the remains were spectacular? It is at this point that the story becomes a little vague. English Heritage says that it received professional advice that the remains were not sufficiently well preserved to justify withholding SMC. The Museum of London would argue that the results of their evaluation highlighted the importance of the site.
But we must not forget the nature of archaeology: no one can really know what is down there until it is exposed. So evaluations are necessary, yes, and they will take us most of the way, but there will always be an element of uncertainty. Trial excavations might look at 1% of a site, and give the impression that the site is of no more than ordinary importance. But a large-scale excavation can change the picture entirely. This is no comfort to a developer who makes every effort to do the right thing and then finds that the unexpected happens, with the media baying for preservation. We must admit that there will always be some surprises, and find a way of dealing with them, without penalising the developer.
Last-minute preservation
In the case of scheduled sites like Dominant House, there is already a mechanism: under the 1979 Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act the Secretary of State can revoke his consent, at which point compensation would be payable to the developer in respect of loss or damage sustained. That compensation would have to be paid by English Heritage, and in this case could easily wipe out that body’s entire annual budget. That part of the legislation has so far not been applied at all, and English Heritage seem unlikely to start doing so here.
At the Rose Theatre, not a scheduled site, there is no such mechanism, but there are alternatives. At a press conference on May 4, called by three MPs to launch their campaign to “save” the remains, Sam Wanamaker announced his own scheme to link the preservation of the Rose Theatre with the Bear Gardens Museum which is part of his Globe Theatre Project. I understand that Imry are examining the proposal sympathetically. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for the Rose Theatre, but what of Dominant House, and what of the other sites where there is no friendly benefactor? Do they all have to disappear?
It is not fashionable these days to call for national initiatives and government support, but surely there is a case for such here. Central government support for archaeology and for national monuments is not large, yet the present affairs show how much interest can be stirred in sites like these, important, but rare exceptions when compared with the vast majority of routine archaeological excavations. A pool of government money, administered by the National Heritage Memorial Fund, available to provide realistic compensation to developers who, willingly or otherwise, alter their designs to allow the preservation of the few worthy discoveries, would supply the needs of both scheduled and unscheduled sites. This is a cause that archaeologists and developers could fight for together; the British Archaeologists and Developers Liaison Group would do well to take it on. The Corporation of London could well support such a fund; its wealth, the rates from the office buildings that are steadily removing the City’s archaeology, is legendary. Is now the time for the Corporation to start contributing to saving a few small fragments?
A change in the wind?
It is always gratifying, and advisable, to end an article on an upbeat, optimistic note, but it is not always justified: sometimes the future is more threatening. It will not have escaped notice that the Dominant House affair blew up only a few weeks after Brian Hobley, chief urban archaeologist at the Department of Urban Archaeology, left the Museum of London. Over the past 17 years he was largely responsible for the museum’s developer-friendly policy. He has not been without his critics in the archaeological world: some think that he has been putting too high a value on good relations with developers, rather than confronting them over preservation. Others point to the enormous strides taken in developer-funded archaeology over that period, much of which is owed to him.
There is probably no direct connection between his leaving and the public comment on Dominant House. But it remains to be seen whether the Museum of London continue the same policies in the next few years. At the same time there is undoubtedly a groundswell of opinion in the archaeological profession that developer-funded rescue excavation needs to be tempered with a more active conservation policy. Within a few years most of the archaeological deposits within the City of London will have disappeared; will the same happen in other cities and towns?
There is a particularly strong feeling among many archaeologists that English Heritage should review its attitude to scheduled monuments: in 1987-88 the vast majority, more than 95%, of applications for scheduled monument consent were granted, judging from English Heritage’s published figures. Granted that conditions were applied to these consents, nevertheless the common perception of the status of scheduled ancient monuments is that it is more likely to be used to ensure recording before destruction than for preservation.
In the editorial of British Archaeological News, the quarterly journal of the Council for British Archaeology, for January 1989, a flickering of this opinion appeared:
As the 1980s draw to a close redevelopment has regained its momentum and many historic towns are contemplating ambitious schemes. One such is the High Cross development in Chester, which envisages the building of a large shopping and office complex that will take up much of the south-west quadrant of the historic town within the Roman walls ….
Is it socially acceptable for archaeologists to stand aside from the wider amenity issues involved in developments of this kind? The opportunities for learning more about the past of the town must be weighed carefully against the loss of existing townscape values. Archaeologists must surely acknowledge a responsibility towards the present and future as well as the past.
I predict that sentiments of this sort will be heard more often and, for better or for worse, archaeologists in the digging units and trusts will find themselves more involved in pressing for preservation, not for excavation.
In the days after this article was completed things moved very quickly. A spectacular theatrical campaign led to Imry’s development at the Rose Theatre being delayed for a four-week holding period. The DOE and English Heritage have agreed to provide up to £1m to cover the costs of the delay to the company. Meanwhile, Imry are redesigning the development to allow for the preservation and display of the remains. This will inevitably lead to further costs.
At Dominant House, Hammerson have decided to preserve at their own expense, to the tune about £3m. The piling plan will be redesigned to ensure that no parts of the Roman building are destroyed; the site will be backfilled with clean sand, with a layer of Terram between the remains and the fill. The site will thus be preserved but not displayed.
Archaeologists are delighted, and both Hammerson and Imry must be deriving a great deal of satisfaction from their public-spirited action.
