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FEATURE
RAILSTAFF SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
THE ARCHAEOLOGY
OF HS2
TO DISCOVER THE PAST, ARCHAEOLOGISTS OFTEN DIG A TRENCH ACROSS A HISTORICAL SITE. HOWEVER, HS2 IS DIGGING A TRENCH FROM LONDON TO BIRMINGHAM!
J
oin Kirsten Whitehouse as she journeys through time. Encounter long-lost heroes, find treasure, discover murder victims and unravel mysteries along the way. Sounds a bit like something from days gone by, a happy return to childhood books and tv programmes, doesn’t it? And yet, this is the most modern journey of all. Much has been written about the construction of HS2, both sides of the argument for and against have been voiced aplenty, and yet a major part of the project has gone largely unnoticed. Welcome to your journey through the archaeology of High Speed Two, Europe’s biggest excavation programme and the largest ever undertaken in the UK. Ranging from the Prehistoric and Roman Britain to the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods, and the Industrial Revolution and World War 2, HS2’s archaeology has a potential for discoveries on an unprecedented level. RailStaff was given the opportunity to chat with Mike Court, historic environment lead at High Speed Two, and project archaeologist Dr Rachel Wood about some of the finds they have already unearthed along the initial route, and the years of careful planning that have gone into this project. Phase 1 of the high-speed rail link will connect London with Birmingham, Phase 2a will go on to Crewe and Phase 2b will, at a later stage, link to Leeds and Manchester. In essence, the team around Mike and Rachel – a staggering number of over 1,000 archaeologists, specialists, scientists and conservators – is digging a 155-mile trench right up the country and is uncovering 10,000 years’ worth of history, which might never have seen the light of day were it not for this major railway project. A little-known fact is that the government doesn’t usually allocate funds to archaeology works – most historic finds are made by pure chance, during private development. “This means, they are often an inconvenience, and removed in the quickest possible way,” Mike Court explained. “This is where we are so lucky, because the High Speed Two project specifically required us to carefully consider the possible archaeology along the route.”
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Dr Rachel Wood.
Mike Court.
