Bermondsey Abbey: Ten Years of Excavation
| Alistair Douglas, Pre-Construct Archaeology | Recent Lecture |
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Alistair Douglas described his project at Bermondsey Abbey as a rather unusual project, in that someone wanted to build on top of a scheduled monument! Fortunately the legal protection in these cases is extremely tight, and the only construction method allowed is to support any floor clear of the archaeological layers by resting it on piles. Then the only damage to the archaeology is the holes for the piles, and the job of his firm 'Pre-Construct' archaeology was to investigate the intended position for these holes to record what was there and if necessary suggest that the pile should be put somewhere else. In practice the archaeology had often been so good that the developer had sometimes been near despair as to whether there was in fact anywhere to put the piles. However, the development was now finished, and the archaeologists were working on the post-excavation report. | The site (originally an eyot) had in fact probably been occupied during most periods from the Bronze age to modern times, but the scheduled monument status arose from the fact that in 1086 Cluniac monks established Bermondsey Abbey. In 1399 this was transferred to the Benedictines, and finally closed in the 1540s. The 'Court of Augementations' was responsible for dissolving the monasteries and the head of this court, Sir Thomas Pope, then built a fine house on the site. From the 17C this house seems to have no longer been used as one house, but sub-divided for a variety of purposes. Final demolition only really came in the early 19C with comprehensive redevelopment of the area which included the construction of a new 'Abbey Street'. (fortunately an antiquarian left some drawing at this stage). |
The area was heavily bombed in WWII, but digs in the 1950s and 1980s established details of the site and lead to its being scheduled monument.
This rich history lead to a particularly interesting talk on a highly complex piece of multi-layer urban archaeology, made even more difficult by the fact that even with 166 trenches the archaeologists were not supposed to be touching any more of a scheduled monument than was necessary. Even the Abbey was not just a simple building constructed in 1086; there had been possibly three or more later stages of redevelopment using local stone rather than the original Caen stone. Particularly interesting was the strong possibility that even before 1086 the Saxons may have built a minister on the site – in fact there seemed to be pottery from just about every Saxon period. The post-excavation might well yield some very interesting results. Peter Brown |