News

Forester’s Forest – training of volunteers

  • 18th December 2015

We’ve been very excited to be part of the Foresters’ Forest Landscape Partnership, a HLF project in the Forest of Dean. One of the many strands is the investigation of possible archaeological features, which we we are providing training for.

35 volunteers have now been trained during four training session led by some of our archaeologists Andy, Justin and Rob. These full day training sessions explained about the project, Lidar (aerial photography that removes the trees), what to look for and how to record features. We then went out for a couple of hours to put it into practice and have a go. The latest workshop was this week, and fortunately we had good weather, making the practical session an enjoyable walk in the woods. One of the previous ones though had to change plans for the afternoon when the heaven’s opened!

The volunteers will now be going out and about across four target areas checking 1700 possible features out in the field. With most of these being in the Forest they are hard to pick up, and woodland archaeology is always difficult. Identifying potential features and then checking them out should help develop our understanding of the Forest’s past. We’ll provide updates on the blog as to how the project goes.

For more details about Lidar please see a previous blog here. You can find out more about the Foresters’ Forest project at www.forestersforest.uk

One response to “Forester’s Forest – training of volunteers”

  1. -- says:

    good to see people getting stuck in 🙂

Related news


  • 19th March 2025
Butchers, Bakers and Naval Officers

We continue our series on how members of staff have used the recently released 1921 census to further their own research. Anthony hoped to learn of the fate of his great-grandfather’s brothers after the First World War having discovered his great grandfather George Henry Roach using the 1939 Register. Using the 1921 Census, I hoped...

  • 14th March 2025
Milestone Ground Broadway- Dig Diaries 2

Welcome back to the Broadway Dig Diaries! In celebration of Women’s History Month, we’re excited to highlight the life and work of the archaeologist Catherine Nancy Sherwood Smith who led the first works on the area adjacent to our site at Broadway. Though we know a little bit about her work on the site, much...