Managing change on UK wreck sites through community-based recording: The London recording project

Summary

"This morning is brought to me to the office the sad news of the London, in which Sir J Lawsons men were all bringing her from Chatham to the Hope…but a little a-this-side the buoy of the Nower, she suddenly blew up."

So wrote the great diarist and naval administrator Samuel Pepys about the tragic loss of Charles II’s warship London. The wreck site in the fiercely tidal Thames Estuary is now one of the most vulnerable and yet important in the United Kingdom, yielding evidence as diverse as the role of women in 17th century naval society and the early history of naval armament.

This paper examines the results of an innovative English Heritage funded project intended to develop, through work on the London, a practical community-based model for recording ‘at risk’ wreck sites whose environmental and other conditions challenge standard approaches based on excavation or stabilisation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Protected Wreck Sites: 40 Years of Protection   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 420