3rd March 2009, 11:45 AM
Peat Moors Visitor Centre was a development of a small information centre that the John Coles had set up as part of the Somerset Levels Project. To mark the centenary of the discovery of the Glastonbury Lake Village, arguable THE most important Iron Age site in Britain (because of the survival of waterlogged material that geve an insght into the richness of the material culture that is normally missing from dry sites) a small team reconstructed and furnished two roundhouses and a couple of other structures for a forge and pole lathe, based on the excavation reports, replica sections of various ages of timber trackway were built in a peat cutting trench, the original site hut was rescued from a field and refurbished ih a display on the excavations on the site nd the Times reported on the opening, 100 years after they reported the original site being found.
It was built on a shoestring budget - I was the designer and architect of the reconstructions on site and e had vlunteers and slaves (from the local bail hotel) toiling for months cutting and hauling timber and putting the site together. I also invested a great deal emotionally in the sie as while we were building I had a son who was then diagnosed as suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy and who died in the October of 1992, aged seven and a half months.
Like so many visitor centres and heritage centres it is an "easy hit" for coucillors when they are looking at saving money from the budget, but once gone its unlikely to be replaced.
so sign the petition.
Peter
It was built on a shoestring budget - I was the designer and architect of the reconstructions on site and e had vlunteers and slaves (from the local bail hotel) toiling for months cutting and hauling timber and putting the site together. I also invested a great deal emotionally in the sie as while we were building I had a son who was then diagnosed as suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy and who died in the October of 1992, aged seven and a half months.
Like so many visitor centres and heritage centres it is an "easy hit" for coucillors when they are looking at saving money from the budget, but once gone its unlikely to be replaced.
so sign the petition.
Peter