Modelling Urban Renewal and Growth in Britain and North-West Europe, AD 800-1300: The Wallingford Burh to Borough Project
Wallingford is a highly important yet vastly understudied historic small town, sited alongside the Thames and offering strong topographic survivals of early and full medieval date. By analysing the rich archaeological and documentary data (actual, visible and buried) for Wallingford between c. AD 800 and 1300, the project has scope to provide fresh and vital evidence for (i) middle and later Saxon burh foundations, clarifying their site selection, design, content and defensibility; (ii) Norman impositions and urban remodelling; (iii) medieval development and redevelopment of town and landscape, and (iv) the material impacts of late medieval urban economic decline. Regular web-updates, blogs, accessible archives are programmed. Pilot project work (2002-4) undertook geophysics and topographic survey in all key areas of the town and its immediate environs to chart buried and remnant archaeologies and to assess potential for more detailed analysis. This major funded three year project involves full geophysical assessment, systematic analysis and mapping of the town and castle defences, targeted excavation in all key sectors of the townscape to yield structural, economic and chronological data, church and bridge fabric analysis, GIS modelling, archive collation and re-interpretation (Museum, archive, keyhole trenches, etc.). Core to the whole project is also close collaboration with the local community through museum and society, and through poster displays, public sessions, open days, tours, local conferences and talks.
Project
arts-humanities.net
INTERIMS and RESEARCH PAPERS:
N. Christie, O. Creighton, D. O’Sullivan, A. Butler, J. Browning & H. Hamerow, ‘The Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project: 2003 interim report’, South Midlands Archaeology, 34, 2004, 94-103.
N. Christie, O.H. Creighton & M. Edgeworth, ‘Wallingford: place, space and defence’, in A. Reynolds & S. Brookes (eds.) Viking Age Defence, Brill, forthcoming.
Ian P. Wilkinson, Alison Tasker, Anthony Gouldwell, Mark Williams, Matt Edgeworth, Jan Zalasiewicz, N. Christie, ‘Micropalaeontology reveals the source of building materials for a defensive earthwork (English Civil War?) at Wallingford Castle, Oxfordshire’, Journal of Micropalaeontology, 29, 2010, pp.87-92.
O. Creighton, N. Christie, M. Edgeworth & H. Hamerow, ‘New directions in tracing the origins and development of Wallingford: targets and results of the Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project’, in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan & D.R. Roffe (eds.), The Origins of the Borough of Wallingford. Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (BAR British Series 494), Archaeopress: Oxford, 2009, 68-76.
H. Hamerow, ‘The early Anglo-saxon cemetery at wallingford’, in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan & D.R. Roffe (eds.), The Origins of the Borough of Wallingford. Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (BAR British Series 494), Archaeopress: Oxford, 2009, 13-16.
M. Edgeworth, 'Comparing burhs: a Wallingford - Bedford case study', in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan & D.R. Roffe (eds.), The Origins of the Borough of Wallingford. Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (BAR British Series 494), Archaeopress: Oxford, 2009, 77-85.
N. Christie, O. Creighton, M. Edgeworth & M. Fradley, ‘Have you found anything interesting?’ Exploring Early Medieval and Medieval Urbanism at Wallingford: Sources, Routes and Questions’, for Oxoniensia, 2011.
M. Edgeworth & N. Christie, 'An arcaheology of crossing-places: the bridge and ford at Wallingford on the river Thames', in: The Archaeology of Bridges, Regensburg, forthcoming.
SHORT NOTES:
‘Wallingford’ (note in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 2002), Medieval Archaeology, 2003, xlvii, 278.
‘The Wallingford ‘Burh to Borough Research Project’, Landscape Society Newsletter, Autumn/Winter 2003, 7.
N. Christie, O. Creighton, D. O’Sullivan & H. Hamerow, ‘The Wallingford ‘Burh to Borough Research Project’, Medieval Settlement Research Group Report, 17, 2002, 43-46.
‘Wallingford, South Oxfordshire’ (section in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 2003), Medieval Archaeology, 2004, xlviii, 284-286.
N. Christie, O. Creighton, D. O’Sullivan & H. Hamerow, ‘The Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project 2003’, Medieval Settlement Research Group Report, 18, 2003, 9-13.
‘Wallingford, South Oxfordshire’ (section in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 2004), Medieval Archaeology, 2005, 49, 402-405.
N. christie, O. Creighton, D. O’Sullivan & H. Hamerow, ‘The Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project: Report on the East Bank Survey, 2004’, Medieval Settlement Research Group Report, 19, 2004, 18-19.
N. Christie, M. Edgeworth, O. Creighton, H. Hamerow, and with A. Hyam & G. Speed, ‘Wallingford: charting early medieval and medieval expansion and contraction’, in Medieval Settlement Research, 23, 2008 (publ. 2009), 53-57.
N. Christie, M. Edgeworth, D. O’Sullivan, J. Taylor, A. Hyam, G. Speed, O. Creighton, M. Fradley, H. Hamerow), ‘The Wallingford Burh to Borough Research Project: 2008 Interim Report’, South Midlands Archaeology, 39, 2009, 63-66.
N. Christie, G. Speed, O. Creighton, M. Edgeworth, ‘Charting Saxon and medieval urban growth and decay at Wallingford’, (section in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 2008), Medieval Archaeology, 53, 2009, 355-363.
N. Christie, O. Creighton, M. Edgeworth & H. Hamerow, ‘Wallingford’, British Archaeology, May-June 2009, No.106, 36-41.
N. Christie, M. Edgeworth, G. Latham & J. Dewey, ‘Gardens, pits and people: expanding the search for medieval Wallingford’, in Society for Medieval Archaeology Newsletter, Issue 43, April 2010, pp.12-14.
N. Christie, M. Edgeworth et al., ‘Mapping Wallingford castle’ (section in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 2009), Medieval Archaeology, 54, 2010, forthcoming.