We are not conventional archaeologists - indeed our qualifications, in Industrial Archaeology and Landscape Archaeology, mean we offer an unusual and unconventional insight into archaeological and historic sites.
Particular interests include historic water-power sites - in terms of landscape and water engineering as well as their evolution, often through many differing industries, on particular sites through time.
Other interests include historic uses of plants in industry, an area much bigger than just milling grain. Plants, and processing of particular plants, were the mainstay of industry before man-made fibres and chemicals became predominant. Our work has included projects on plants in tanning, ink-making and the use of plants for particular industrial processes (e.g teasels in cloth manufacture).
We are often involved in voluntary archaeological work, previously at a national level with the AIA and currently with local groups including GADARG.
An area of interest since the mid 1970s, when Jonathan Briggs undertook original research on historic uses of water-power in northern parts of Worcestershire, especially the Spadesbourne, Belne and Salwarpe Brooks.
Other projects have include the peculiar mill at Benthall in the Ironbridge Gorge, the lost mills flooded forever in reservoir schmes and the mills of the Orkney Islands.
Research interests here are varied - ranging from the historic association of milling sites with alien plants, sieved out from imported corn (a special interest only for botanically-inclined industrial archaeologists!) to the 18th and 19th century development of imported vegetable tanning materials, gradually replacing traditional oak-bark as the primary tannin source.
Ongoing research includes the use of teasels in cloth manufacture, and the botanical anomaly of the common wild teasel being called Dipsacus fullonum whereas it is Fullers Teasel Dipsacus sativus that was used in fulling cloth.
We are often involved in archaeological and historical research projects run by other organisations.
This picture is of geophysical surveying near Gloucester with GADARG, investigating a possible Roman villa site.
We are not conventional archaeologists - indeed our qualifications, in Industrial Archaeology and Landscape Archaeology, mean we offer an unusual and unconventional insight into archaeological and historic sites.