Historic England's Science Facility Reopens After Major Refit
The Fort Cumberland Laboratories in Portsmouth have reopened after a year-long major refurbishment to create a state-of-the-art facility for the study of the historic environment through time.
The specialist work of Historic England's science facility at Fort Cumberland plays a vital role in telling the stories of England’s past.
Over the last 75 years, its archaeologists and heritage scientists have made a significant contribution to understanding our past
Projects have included the re-excavation of Silbury Hill, conserving artefacts from the 18th-century Dutch warship the Rooswijk, and the analysis of human remains at Birdoswald Roman Fort Cemetery at Hadrian;s Wall.
Housing nationally important reference collections and advanced analytical instrumentation, Fort Cumberland is managed by a team of heritage scientists who provide bespoke advice and services to the heritage sector, as well as producing globally recognised best practice guidance.
The amazing work of our archaeologists and heritage scientists is helping to uncover the hidden stories that connect us to our distant past. This new investment in Fort Cumberland's laboratories will enhance our research and conservation work and improve access to our expertise, equipment and collections, helping more people to enjoy and care for their heritage.
In addition to Historic England-funded building renovations which involved reconfiguring the lab spaces, new flooring, heating and cooling systems, new equipment has been purchased and additional posts created thanks to grants awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) as part of the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme.
New equipment includes a scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectrometry system (SEM-EDS) for analysing historic materials to better understand how they are made, assessing their condition and how to preserve them for longer.
The upgraded SEM-EDS allows imaging of very small features (for example, nanocrystals) as well as mapping the chemical composition of a wide range of materials.
Expected uses include identifying dental wear in archaeological remains; causes of bone discolouration or butchering marks; wood and fibre species; insect remains; plant remains; and historic building materials.
The system is especially powerful for looking at thin layers of objects to understand their construction and degradation; for example, understanding why the painted surfaces of the Crystal Palace Park Dinosaurs were deteriorating.
It will also be used to analyse how coatings respond to environmental changes and help develop more sustainable materials by informing treatment strategies for a wide range of artefacts and building materials, particularly in collaboration with our partners, English Heritage Trust, to protect the National Collection for longer.
The new system will be accessible remotely, allowing wider access and more efficient regional (and potentially international) collaboration, and forming a key part of the UK heritage science infrastructure.
Remote access will also reduce the need for researchers to travel to use the equipment, thereby contributing to Net Zero actions.
New storage and curatorial facilities will improve access to our biocultural collections, from providing industry placements for PhD students working on the From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals project to identifying unusual plant remains, such as a burnt Roman fig from Dublin.
This national resource offers unparalleled analytical and conservation expertise in marine and terrestrial archaeology, historic sites, buildings, landscapes, and cultural artefacts.
This project is partnered with the Ark of the North in Scotland and SHEFF BIOARCH in Sheffield. This collaboration ensures that heritage science equipment, expertise, and resources are accessible throughout the UK.
The adoption of new technology and practice is critical to ensuring that we preserve and learn from our extraordinarily rich heritage.
That's the ethos behind the RICHeS programme and I’m excited to see the work that will be done by the team at Fort Cumberland as a result of this funding.
Top 10 iconic projects at Fort Cumberland
Historic England’s specialist teams at Fort Cumberland have identified their top 10 projects that capture the wide range of conservation, archaeology and geophysics work carried out there over the past 75 years:
Silbury Hill within the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage site, is the largest prehistoric mound in Europe and was built around 2300 BC. In May 2000, a hole opened on the summit of the hill. Investigation work showed this was caused by partially unfilled shafts and tunnels dug by antiquarians and archaeologists in the preceding centuries. One of the original tunnels into the centre of the mound dug in the late 1960s was re-excavated in 2007/08 and the voids backfilled to prevent further damage.
The excavations transformed our understanding of this enigmatic monument, showing its construction was piecemeal and organic, rather than carried out in major stages. The environmental conditions within the centre of the mound preserve delicate biological remains which show that the chalk grassland around the site was managed by people in the Later Neolithic period.
This year sees the culmination of research carried out by Historic England working with English Heritage Trust at the Birdoswald Roman Fort Cemetery on the Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage Site. Research at Fort Cumberland has involved analysis of human remains, scientific dating and analysis of charcoal and charred plant remains. Two burials discovered close together, a 5-year-old child and a young woman, are particularly poignant. Both burials shared similar non-local isotopic signatures, which suggests they were possibly a mother and child who died within a few years of each other after coming to live at Birdoswald.
Over the past 15 years, Historic England, working with English Heritage Trust, has been carrying out research to understand the gardens, park and landscape surrounding the 19th century house at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. This work has included aerial survey, geophysics, ground-based survey, excavation and dendrochronology. It has led to a greater understanding of the 300-year history of this Designed Landscape, revealing the presence of past garden layouts, including pathways and planting beds to inform the restoration of the park and garden.
The Rooswijk is an 18th-century Dutch East India Company (VOC) ship which sank on the treacherous Goodwin Sands off the Kent coast in January 1740. A 2-year excavation project began in 2016, led by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands in collaboration with Historic England and MSDS Marine, recovering over 2,500 objects. A team of specialists at Fort Cumberland continue to research, X-ray and conserve artefacts recovered from the wreck site, which remains at high risk of deterioration.
The Grade I listed Crystal Palace Park Dinosaurs are the focus of ongoing conservation work, including photogrammetry. First viewed by the public in 1854 when the park opened, the sculptures, set within a reconstructed landscape, have been re-painted many times. By studying samples taken from the surfaces using a variety of analytical equipment, Historic England's material scientists have worked out how these applications are affecting the surface of the sculptures.
The Hoo Peninsula Historic Landscape Project in Kent highlighted how the Hoo Peninsula's historical development has contributed to its character, as well as helping to manage future change, including threats from rising sea levels. The project involved historic and seascape characterisation, archival research, aerial and ground-based survey, rapid architectural assessments and paleoenvironmental assessment. Findings revealed a complex history of land reclamation and industrial use, and documented the key role played by the Peninsula in the 'defence of the realm'.
HS2's archaeological programme at St James's Gardens, guided by Historic England, uncovered one of Britain's largest post-medieval burial sites. In 2021, Historic England advised HS2 on selecting 569 individuals from nine sites to be sampled for DNA analyses as part of the Crick Institute 1,000 Ancient Genomes project. Of these, 95 individuals from St James' Gardens have been selected by scientists at Fort Cumberland to investigate migration and ancestry patterns in late-18th to mid-19th-century London.
Historic England worked in partnership with the Hampshire Cultural Trust to provide X-rays of shoes from their historic collections as part of an exhibition in October 2023 called 'Shoes: Inside out'. The X-rays revealed information about the construction and condition of the shoes and were used alongside high quality images in the display. They were produced in Historic England's industrial X-radiography facility, a key imaging tool to examine archaeological remains.
In 1998, a circular oak timber structure, comprising posts surrounding an up-turned tree trunk, was revealed in eroding peat within the intertidal zone at Holme-next-the-Sea. This circle, known as 'Seahenge', was at serious risk of being destroyed by tidal erosion. The excavation and preliminary scientific dating was undertaken in 1999. Subsequent dendrochronological analysis on samples from a further 50 timbers revealed that all the timbers, including the tree trunk, were derived from a relatively small number of trees felled during spring or early summer of 2049 BC from a single area of woodland.
Fort Cumberland in Portsmouth is one of the finest examples of 18th century, pentagonal-shaped bastion forts in England. It is a scheduled monument and incorporates Grade II and II* listed buildings. It is home to the Fort Cumberland Laboratories and is the operational base for Historic England's Archaeological Investigation team. The site also holds nationally important reference and research collections cared for by the Archaeological Archives Team.
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