June 2020
We hope you are all continuing to stay fit and well since the last newsletter.
With the pending relaxation of social distancing rules and the ever changing guidelines, we are excited to start planning our activity for the coming months and as such, are in the process of preparing Risk Assessments and Safety Guidelines (subject to change) for when we are able to invite you to get more physically involved again. We are ensuring that we are working with colleagues and partner organisations along the Wall to make sure that our messaging for all our volunteers is complimentary and co-ordinated, especially as some of you volunteer with multiple organisations!
We hope you enjoy this month's newsletter,
The WallCAP Team
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Social Media - We Certainly Brought the 'Outdoors In'!
How has it been 3 months already since we launched our social media campaign to bring the 'Outdoors Indoors'?! Thank you to all of you who contributed by sharing your photos and thoughts in response to the weekly themes we posted. It was so lovely to see your photographs and to share in your happy memories of the Wall.
If you don't yet follow us but would like to, our social media channels are:
Twitter: @WallCAP
Instagram: wall_cap
Facebook: 'Hadrian's Wall Community'
You may remember, that to celebrate National Volunteer's Week 2020 (1-7 June), we encouraged you to get creative with us under the theme of 'WallCraft'. We invited you to represent something from Hadrian's Wall (be it a view, a site, a Roman soldier or an interesting Roman find) in a craft or creative skill.
Marianne (WallCAP's Volunteer Support Officer) got crafty with this cracking Heritage at Risk inspired cake! (below). It was even based on an actual location along the Wall. Can you guess where? Amazing work Marianne!
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Moving WallCAP Training and Events Online
In the absence of being able to meet in groups face-to-face, we would like to trial the running of some online training and events (for the next few months). We would really appreciate it if you could click the button below to take our poll as we want to co-design the delivery of the training and events with you. If you are not interested in moving your involvement online, please still take the poll and say so. If everyone says 'no' then we won't do it (obviously!), but we need to know who's keen and who's not before we can make any decisions.
Please cast your votes by Friday 10th July. Thank you!
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WallCAP Book Club
Do you love reading and Hadrian's Wall? Well, we have a proposition......would you be interested in joining a WallCAP Book Club?
If there is sufficient interest, we would provide a short list of books (mostly fiction, and maybe a non-fiction to spice it up!) vaguely connected to the Wall that you could vote on. The winning book would then be the focus of our Book Club for a few weeks (we estimate 4-6 weeks), and we'd have an online meeting every two weeks to discuss the book as a friendly group. No pressure, no quizzes, just social chatting.
Unfortunately, we cannot provide the refreshments or a copy of the book - you'd have to supply those yourself, but we promise not to suggest a book which is in limited print or is an academic hardback that requires the selling of a kidney to buy! You can even suggest your own title for people to vote on if you have a particular book in mind.
Please click the button below and cast your vote by Friday 10th July. The poll will take approximately 10 seconds to complete!
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Heritage at Risk (HAR) Activity
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Recruitment of the new WallCAP Community Archaeologist
Despite working remotely from campus, we have recently interviewed (over Zoom) and appointed a new Community Archaeologist who will be joining us over the next few months. We will introduce them very soon once they have taken up the post. We hope you'll join us in giving them a very warm welcome to the project when the time and situation allows!
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Stone Sourcing and Dispersal (SSD)
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Home-based SSD Project
Following the home-based GIS research project which so many of you seemed to enjoy (thank you to those of you who participated in the feedback exercise with our external Evaluation Team, Wavehill), we promised another project to get involved with from home, this time with the geology/stones of the Wall in mind. After looking at your feedback from your experience of the GIS project it has become apparent that it would work best if we scaled back the number of volunteers involved during the initial stages and rolled it out in 2 phases:
Phase 1 (July-Sept) - those of you attended the SSD training sessions at either Buddle Street, Black Carts, Hare Hill or Thirlwall Castle and made sketches of Wall stone, will be invited to get involved through completing a database entry for your sketch information (if you want to!).
Phase 2 (Sept+) - depending on the success of Phase 1, we will look to invite more of you to undertake online training, make sketches and input information into the database.
We are currently testing the database which Alex (our fabulously talented Digital Heritage Officer or 'WallCAP Wizard' as he's more affectionately known!) has built, then we will be in touch!
Blog O'Clock
Another blog, written by Ian our Geologist is now available on the WallCAP wesbite called 'Balls and Bands'...and why ice cream goes crunchy over time'......
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Mystery Rock Competition!
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Answer from last month: "This is a nice example of diagenesis (from the Greek, across generations), the process that happens after sediments are laid down where water circulating through the sand precipitates minerals onto the sand grains. This not only turns the loose sand into rock by cementing them together but also, as in this case where iron is being precipitated, produces some beautiful patterns. This particular rock can be found on the beach immediately below the entrance to North Tynemouth pier (which is 900m long) under the priory. These Carboniferous sandstones are just underneath the unconformity with the Permian Yellow Sands Formation which can be seen in the cliff face. As such they would have been close to the surface in Permian times, which was subjected to intense desert heat with occasional flooding; many of the Carboniferous sandstones near to the unconformity are iron-reddened in consequence." Ian
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The image to the left shows an example of diagenetic banding on a stone at Thirlwall Castle, Greenhead. A feature we know to have been built using Wall stone.
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Mystery Rock Number 4!
Clue: Ebb and flow
Stop, pucker up and make a tune - set on fire.
Answer next month!
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In this section we usually take the opportunity to get to know each other a bit better! If you would like to nominate another volunteer or feature in this section yourself, then please email: kerry.shaw@newcastle.ac.uk |
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Ann Hetherington - WallCAP Volunteer
"I had been lurking in the background of WallCAP whilst my husband, John Pearson, had been doing exciting things with the project. Having left teaching, however, I wasn’t sure that I could join in all the activities, nor would I enjoy them. I was convinced that everyone who is part of WallCAP would be a super fit outdoorsy type or an incredibly well informed academic!
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Everything that I have been involved in has been fun. In December 2019, I helped clear gorse at Portgate, near Corbridge: Okay, I’ll admit that it was prickly work and flipping freezing but enjoyable and I laughed for most of the day that we helped out. January 24th was Hadrian’s birthday and we celebrated by attending the annual WallCAP Volunteer Social Event at The Sill, National Landscape Discovery Centre and then walking on a route near the Wall. That was a great afternoon. Great company, cake and mud! What’s not to like?
When lockdown came, I thought that was the end of my volunteering, but the GIS data collection project saved my sanity! Can’t wait to get further involved!" Ann
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Thank you for your heartfelt account Ann! Really pleased you have enjoyed your time so far with WallCAP. We're not as scary as we look huh?!
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Virtual Tour and Sandstone Formation
Our friend of the project, Ian Jackson (Geologist, volunteer and Guide along Hadrian's Wall) has made another YouTube video about the geology in the region (including the Wall corridor), in particular, exploring sandstone formations. This time titled, 'Simonside - Build it up, wear it down', his video explores the geology of the Simonside Hills, Northumberland via a virtual tour. Thanks Ian for making and sharing!
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That's all for this month, so please stay safe and stay connected.
The WallCAP Team
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