Dear All,
We have a definite plan for 2019 which I thought I’d share with you now.
Firstly, we are in the process of producing our 2 Community books as part of our mainly HLF funded project, “Warriors Through The Landscape”. Mercian (our archaeological providers) will also be delivering their reports as well.
All will then be available via BOHIS and Mercian websites.
BOHIS also need to do an Evaluation Survey (to ask people for their opinions on the project) which will be a mix of paper & web based surveys – which I hope to distribute to schools and other participants by Friday 15th February. Ideally we’d like to give about 4 weeks for all to complete the surveys.
All of the above needs to be complete by 30th April 2019.
The Norton and Carburton POW Camps book is hopefully being signed off today. This means that I should be able to contact and visit the printers this week, with a view to getting the 300 copies produced in the next 2 or 3 weeks.
The 2nd (general) Community book, with our umbrella concept of, “Explain The Terrain” will cover :
A Search for the adulterine Castle
Uncovering Cuckney Water meadows
Explaining Cuckney in the wider local landscape
Utilising … LIDAR and aerial photography
Various articles are required for this book by different contributors. Some articles are already finished and everyone knows what they have to do and by when (our final deadline for this book is 31st March 2019).
Battle of Hatfield related objectives
We will then be able to concentrate on generating a new Faculty Request hopefully supported by the Parochial Church Council (“P.C.C.”) and then submitted to the Diocese of Southwell re. the examination of skeletons found at St. Mary’s Cuckney in 1950/1.
Of course, this subject is what we were set up to resolve in February 2013 (virtually 6 years ago) and we must not forget our obvious primary objective, although it was always worth undertaking this HLF project even though it didn’t specifically consider the Battle of Hatfield.
This is because, for example, in Castle related excavations (during 2018) we could have unearthed a military item from the 7th century – but unfortunately we did not !
That’s not to say that exciting pottery wasn’t found from possibly the mid to late Saxon period (ie. Post 7th century) – which indicates settlement well before it is first documented in the Domesday Book (1086).
All the details will be available in the Mercian reports and acknowledged and commented upon in the 2 BOHIS Community books.
We need to ascertain whether there is any method of making Battle related progress through the normal channels and indeed this must be the preferred approach.
However, we took the opportunity to formally consult an Ecclesiastical Lawyer on the 28th September 2018 and this is an avenue that we must consider and pertinently, how we may fund this venture if required.
Therefore, I have been asked to put together a Battle related dossier by the lawyer concerned in order that he can ascertain his fee.
We will then know how much we need to raise.
This amount is likely to have to be raised from private donations and will certainly run into many thousands of pounds – so we might start taking pledges (at least) in May 2019 or just after !
Ideally we’d like to have a Faculty granted by the end of 2019.
We realise that this is very ambitious but we’ve all got other things that we’d like to get on with – it’s not our only life subject !
We don’t need to time venerate a subject by wasting years upon it, yet we realise that there cannot be a compromise between time and the quality of any project outputs.
Whilst not strictly a benefit, if we discover by close 2019 that we can’t take the Battle of Hatfield any further forward at all then we can all move on !!
Hope not !!
Regards,
Paul