This February’s really pleasant Spring-like weather has been a great help in enabling the finishing of the geophysics survey in Janet Pryke’s member’s project in Royal Victoria Park, south of the Weston Road, this week.
This was the final area of four over this part of the Park to been surveyed. a project which has continued since 2016. These results will be put into a short interim report and then the results from all areas of the park investigated will be put together into a single report.
Dozens of BACAS volunteers have helped with the geophysics in the Park over this time and it has been a major activity over this wide area for which Janet is very grateful. She is also very grateful for the kind permission from the Bath and North-East Somerset Parks department to allow us to do this work. We have been meeting with the public and have talked to many passers-by about the interest in archaeology in this area and about BACAS.
It is hoped that by looking at all these results together they will add to our interpretation of the history of the area. The results appear to indicate different usages of adjacent large scale areas in the Park over time and there are no significant results from the geophysics to indicate areas of habitation. We know the area has been used for many different types of public events over its more recent history from fairs to flower shows, and it came to us as “never to be built on” common land. All of this background has to be taken into account too. Further consideration and consultation will hopefully tell us more as the results are put together.