London’s English Heritage Inspector of Ancient Monuments was making her third visit to RAS. Her jurisdiction is within the M25 and there are 158 scheduled monuments to care for: she had tried to pick sites to talk about which can be visited. Some of her key responsibilities are: Presumption against change; Protection from damage; The need to curate the monuments; To try to improve them. Scheduled monuments at risk are placed on the Heritage at Risk Register, so if anything is going to happen to a monument the public tends to be more aware of it. Jane brought us up to date with a number of sites in turn:

Billingsgate Bathhouse, which members of RAS visited in 2014, has a new walkway improving access.
Rose Theatre: Planning permission had come through for plans put forward in the latest Lottery bid.
Roman Wall: The received wisdom is that this was built around 180AD (although Harvey Sheldon has doubts about this date) but no-one is entirely sure WHY it was built – it could not really have been defensive. Perhaps to emphasise London’s status or just an Army exercise. Much of it has been damaged or destroyed by development, with some incorporated into later buildings. But surprising amounts survive, like the section at Tower Hill where it is possible to see the stringing courses in the wall; the area around it is being landscaped. North of the Tower, a whole new stretch turned up some years ago. Held up for several years, work on this site has now restarted and the wall will be open to a courtyard and café - the nearby hotel has paid for conservation. What is visible is medieval; some of the fabric is very fragile, especially that built in Reigate stone. At Crutched Friars there is a section of the wall still with the red sandstone plinth which was added to the outside footing, and there is also a piece of a bastion added in the late third century – these tend to include re-used bits of Roman monumental masonry. This section has been buried within a 1980s office block, but this is coming down and in future the wall will be visible and accessible, part of the Wall Walk; again there will be a café, and display cases of finds. There is another project at Bastion 12 – once incorporated into warehouses but revealed again after the Blitz - near the Museum of London, within the Barbican Estate. This part is broadly medieval with interesting phases of building.

There are also accessible sections in St Alphage Garden and Salters Hall garden. The Roman and medieval masonry is 8 metres high here, with Wars of the Roses period crenellation on top of one stretch. This will have some conservation. At the old Barber-Surgeons Hall, now in ruins, foliage-covered Tudor masonry has been cleared and is visible from the modern Hall, beside the Museum of London.

Royal Naval College: A World Heritage site with conservation and recording in progress. Buried underneath it is the former Greenwich Palace. The present buildings are late 17th and early 18th century. Climate change is causing big storms every August and a lot of water is coming onto the buildings; some of the stone is dissolving so there has to be a lot of conservation. Building recording in the Chapel has shown that softwood in the roof is beginning to fail. Painted Hall conservation project: The ceiling has already been conserved and Jane was soon to hear whether they have Lottery funding for the next phase.
The Greenwich Foreshore: There is an active FROG (Foreshore Recording and Observation Group) who visit once a month for monitoring. This foreshore is eroding fast, perhaps partly due to the presence of a Thames clipper jetty nearby. Timber piles, part of the shuttering for the river wall, are falling away – it is possible to put one’s hand under the wall: work must start there soon. In front of the wall is a strange structure made of Tudor brick. Timbers which are part of two jetties on the foreshore are becoming dislodged and floating away.
Tower of London: There is a 4 metre long crack in the river wall.
Winchester Palace: Someone suggested turning the Great Hall space below the Rose Window into a garden in the hope that this will make people stop and look. The Bankside Open Spaces Trust have taken this on and Southwark Council are paying for it. Shade-loving plants will be placed in boxes to prevent any damage to possible archaeology. .

Yvonne Masson