Heritage Action Forums

I have had a shufty at the 1:50,000 maps for HS2 published today and can't see any OS marked prehistoric scheduled monuments being too affected. There is one barrow which it looks like the route will pass about 150metres from just South of Madeley on this section at 776429. I can't find a archaeological survey or similar.

https://www.gov.uk/hs2-phase-two-initia ... ofile-maps

The tumulus near Manor Farm? Trouble is we'll get little sympathy for any prehistoric stuff when so many actual houses are being affected.

Yeah thats the one. And indeed, I had a look through to make sure they hadn't routed through a hillfort, stone circle, barrow cemetery, causewayed enclosure etc. A barrow 150 metres away isn't really anything that could be complained about. If you follow the east section up it seems to affect a lot more medieval archaeology tbh.

The problems with any HS train route is that it needs to be as straight as possible to achieve its aim i.e higher speeds. For HS trains to take even relatively gentle curves means they may have to slow down quite considerable along their route. This means that should anybody manage to get the route changed around a structure or similar, by only a small amount would mean that many miles of the track before and after the structure would also need to change with the possibility that our barrow that was 150m away is now in the way.
I haven't looked at the route myself but I think if this is the worst of it then we have been lucky.
It is of course a legal requirement for rail companies to carry out archaeological surveys and assessments when changing existing p-way let alone creating new ones, so I would expect see some reports coming as we move closure to the final solution. It may be worth highlighting the barrow's existence at this stage to make sure if the route does change it is not 'overlooked'.

I was going to suggest we at least feature it but then I came across this
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... clnk&gl=uk

ha, I was gonna give it more prominence until I read the following in the article I linked to:

"“The henge could be anything from a grave mound to a Roman fortification."

The relentless march of civilisation sadly and as has been pointed out, Heritage and History pale into insignificance when people are having their homes bullzdozed and communities disrupted. Will there be an archaeological survey of the route i wonder?

If there are any historical landmarks that will be bulldozed then it is about time something was done to draw attention to the matter. I was living in Newbury at the time of the bypass construction and people, myself included, took to the trees to protest. It didn't stop the road but boy did it get coverage of what was happening. About time something similar was done to raise heritage awareness.