November 2020
We make no apologies for such a full newsletter this month! We appear to have been working our proverbial socks off and as a result, have quite a lot to tell you!
Without further ado, we hope you enjoy your Newsletter!
The WallCAP Team
|
|
|
We Miss You!
And we are sick of being apart (!), so we are going to start running monthly 'Tea Break' drop-in sessions so that we can have a chat and a catch up with whoever wants to join us! Kerry and Marianne will be present for anyone who wants to drop in and say hello. Just bring yourself and a cuppa. First session will be on Wednesday 14th December, 10-11am. Zoom joining details will be sent the day before via email. No need to sign up, just drop-in!
Volunteer Satisfaction Questionnaire 2020
Thank you to the hoards of you who have already completed this! We have extended the deadline until Friday 4th December. Please be as honest as you like, we are thick skinned (!) and only want to improve your experience with the project.
|
|
|
Next Stage of the GIS at Home Research Project
During Lockdown 1, volunteers got involved researching the Turrets, Milecastles and Forts along the Wall for our GIS At-Home Research Project. That was extremely helpful and the information you provided has now been entered into the new Hadrian's Wall database!
To follow up with the success of that we are asking for your help again, this time researching the linear features of Hadrian’s Wall – the Curtain Wall, the Vallum and the northern Wall Ditch. You will be assigned 1 or more Wall miles to research, looking at digitally available resources and sources that you might have at home, to provide information about the condition, previous investigations, and general information about the features in each section. This information will then be entered into the WallCAP database by project staff and used to populate the Wall GIS. Once you have been allocated your Wall mile(s) and started your research, we will set up a GIS Surgery with Kathryn, our Project Support Officer (Wall fanatic and tech specialist!) via Zoom whereby you can ask her questions, raise any queries or gain clarification. Chances are, if you were involved in the GIS project last time, then you will be allocated the same/similar section to research this time (this will hopefully make your life easier and further your knowledge of particular sections!) but only if you want to! If you’re interested in participating in this work, please let us know by clicking below:
|
|
|
Volunteer Portal Revamp
Hopefully, in the next week or so, you will see that the Volunteer Portal has had a face-lift. This is to make it more user-friendly and easier to use. We will send an email around once it is live, then you can log in and have a look at the changes! In the meantime, we will communicate directly via email for things like training sessions, as the transition over to the new version takes place.
Launching the WallCAP YouTube Channel
We have recently expanded our digital presence with the launch of the WallCAP YouTube channel! At the moment, we have a playlist with videos from the Walltown Crags excavations (with transcripts in the video descriptions for when the wind cuts out the sound!). In the future, we will be adding more videos from fieldwork and from some of our online training that we will be running this winter. The videos can be accessed here, check them out! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpxGZqM3MTWt5Ux_fPADEFDVW-8Azt4o2
WallCAP Book Club
The Book Club is available for anyone to join at any time, so please let us know if you'd like to join in. The next title we will be reading is Fair Helen, by Andrew Greig, with a discussion meeting planned for early January.
|
|
|
WallCAP Screen Club
Due to the success of the Book Club, we wondered if you might be interested in a Screen Club; where Hadrian's Wall is portrayed in films, tv series and perhaps even documentaries. Don't be put off if you think you don't know enough about the Wall to participate. This is a general interest club to keep you engaged in the Wall from the comfort of your own home and a chance to discuss with like-minded people about how our fabulous World Heritage Site is presented on screen. If you think you might be interested in joining or just trying it out, then please let us know by clicking the button below.
|
|
|
Heritage at Risk (HAR) Activity
|
|
|
|
Good News for Steel Rigg!
Heritage Consolidation (contractors) have completed the repair works at Peel Gap and Cat Stairs, east of the Steel Rigg carpark. This would of course have been a project involving volunteers but, in the circumstances, we just had to go ahead for the Wall’s sake. Gary and his team reshaped and secured particular stretches to dissuade Wall-top walkers and raised the height of the dry-stone field wall facing the road up to the carpark, to shield the end of the Wall behind. This was clearly a favourite spot for passing visitors to hop up and take that iconic shot.
Two stretches of the Wall needed more fundamental repair, where several courses of facing stone had collapsed. On a beautiful day, the collapse was dismantled, a sound base for building established and then the courses re-laid using the original stones. Jane was on hand to record any discoveries. The Cat Stairs collapse was of a stretch of the Clayton Wall that itself had already been repaired fairly recently, so no undisturbed Roman courses were found (just a 2012 one penny piece!). However, once the collapsed and displaced stones were removed, the stretch in Peel Gap revealed undisturbed Roman foundations and some of the contemporary mortar. We’ve taken a small sample of that mortar for analysis and recorded the course unaffected by Clayton’s work and the collapse. The only other find was a toad – safely relocated.
|
|
|
Stone Sourcing and Dispersal (SSD)
|
|
|
|
Blog O'Clock
This month our Community Geologist, Dr Ian Kille gives us an insight into Mystery Rock 8 from the last newsletter by delving into rock pools and exploring what fossil corals can tell us about the past and also the future of our planet.
|
|
|
Mystery Rock Competition!
Last month's clue (8) Clue: What is this creature and why is there no barrier to its lifestyle?
|
|
|
The answer: This is an oblique section through a solitary coral that lived in the Carboniferous period. The delicate lines which you can see are the internal structure (septa and theca) of the animal's skeleton which when whole would have made a small cone-shape on top of which the animal lived. These corals, also known as horn corals, are one of several different solitary corals which belong to the Rugose
|
|
|
|
family (now extinct). Other corals of the Carboniferous were more communal building large bracket shaped communities - these would have been more instrumental in forming reef communities albeit not on the scale of modern barrier reefs.
|
|
|
Mystery Rock Number 9!
Clue: Saintly spot not mainland. It works like champagne.
Answer next month!
|
|
|
Finally, we are able to send you the first of our online winter training sessions with a few more to follow before the holidays are upon us. We will email the dates out once they are finalised.
Tuesday 8th December 2020
7-8.30pm
‘Whose World Heritage Site is it?’
by John Scott, Hadrian's Wall Management Plan Co-ordinator - live with QnA.
If you'd like to join in, please sign up here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/whose-world-heritage-site-is-it-tickets-130776852085
Joining details for Zoom will be sent out via email the day before the event.
Save the Date
Annual WallCAP Volunteer Get Together
Planned for Friday 22nd January 10am -12noon via Zoom.
More information to follow in the December Newsletter.
|
|
|
In this section, we take the opportunity to get to know each other a bit better!
This month we're delighted to introduce Jane Brantom, WallCAP Volunteer and Book Club Bookworm Extraordinaire!
|
|
|
Joining WallCAP is full circle for me. Hooked on Hadrian’s Wall from the first ‘wow’ moment on a school trip from Bedfordshire, I finally worked on it for ten years from the mid 1990’s in those early days of WHS Management Plans and joined up working; great times and people. Now, delighted to be able to volunteer, learn yet more about the 'nitty gritty' of archaeology and hopefully help in a small way from the sidelines.
|
|
|
|
Choosing to join this year wasn’t the best timing but I’ve loved the Book Club. It’s highly recommended if you haven’t tried it yet. It’s introduced me to books I wouldn’t normally read, given new insights into Roman and Wall history and introduced me to new people. I also enjoyed watching the Walltown excavation from a Covid-safe distance. Hopefully that will be behind us now, looking forward to doing more with you all in 2021. Jane
|
|
|
Annual Hadrian's Wall Networking Day 2021
A highlight of our calendar and a chance to get a lot of people in one room to share, debate and celebrate the fantastic World Heritage Site we all love so much!
It is difficult to plan for this event given the current climate but one thing we do know is that, it is highly unlikely that up to 150 people will be able to gather in one space in February!
So, we are going to move the event online...it's taking some organising but we are 'hardy' here at WallCAP so we will find a creative solution to make the event as engaging, fun and informative as possible! The launch is likely to be a Saturday in late February 2021. We plan to then run the 'event' over a week so that people can tune in for the launch on the Saturday then dip in and out for the workshops, presentations and discussions for the rest of the week. Community groups will be invited as normal but this time to join a 'virtual marketplace'.
December 2020 Newsletter
We will be sending out our final Newsletter of 2020 in the week before Christmas.
|
|
|
|
