31st August 2006, 12:03 PM
Hullo. I was on site at Windsor for the duration monitoring the work for EH, standing in for the Inspector. Yes, most of the script for the show was buttock-clenchingly cringe-worthy, or at least the bits that I heard were. One of the benefits of being on site without access to a telly was that I didn't have to watch the shows.
However, I have to say that the archaeology was professionally and competently done, and that the archaeologists (from Oxford, Cambrian and other units) did a very good job. Treating this as an evaluation of little-understood areas (having worked at Windsor on two major projects over 8 years, I can confirm that we knew very little about the archaeology of either of these parts of the castle), I have to say that the results were very useful, and will allow us to make much better-informed curatorial decisions in future. It helped that we made them do the geophysical survey months in advance of fieldwork so that we had time to consider the trench positions in light of processed survey data.
Despite what was said by the presenters, I only had one small additional trench to approve (which found the real Great Hall foundation, apparently not shown on telly), and everything else was achieved by digging less of both areas than they had SMC for.
As for H&S, all I can say about that is that the archaeologists (myself included) did what we were supposed to, but I did not envy the supervisors who had their work cut out keeping the presenters, experts and swarms of other telly people out of harm's way.
Brian
However, I have to say that the archaeology was professionally and competently done, and that the archaeologists (from Oxford, Cambrian and other units) did a very good job. Treating this as an evaluation of little-understood areas (having worked at Windsor on two major projects over 8 years, I can confirm that we knew very little about the archaeology of either of these parts of the castle), I have to say that the results were very useful, and will allow us to make much better-informed curatorial decisions in future. It helped that we made them do the geophysical survey months in advance of fieldwork so that we had time to consider the trench positions in light of processed survey data.
Despite what was said by the presenters, I only had one small additional trench to approve (which found the real Great Hall foundation, apparently not shown on telly), and everything else was achieved by digging less of both areas than they had SMC for.
As for H&S, all I can say about that is that the archaeologists (myself included) did what we were supposed to, but I did not envy the supervisors who had their work cut out keeping the presenters, experts and swarms of other telly people out of harm's way.
Brian