owners
in the 19th and early 20th centuries from the censuses and street
directories. Rate books or land tax returns may extend this back into
the late 18th century. Newcomers to the subject may find their
researches grinding to a halt at this sort of date.
Alcock’s Documenting the History of Houses (Annex
3 Book 27) will give researchers a great deal of helpful advice and
Iredale & Barrett’s Discovering Your Old House (Annex 3
Book 28) also has much to offer them.
Even so, documentary research is hard work. Even an 18th
century lease may prove difficult to decipher and a decaying medieval
deed in Latin or Norman-French will be worse (though the handwriting may
be better).
12. THE MEASURED SURVEY
For many purposes an historical assessment, with
photographs and sketch plans, will be quite sufficient. To go a stage
further and carry out a measured survey involves a great deal of work.
The aim will be to produce plans and elevations (or cross-sections),
possibly with some perspective or other type of three dimensional
projections. A team of two researchers is probably enough. Three is
better, but one of them is always likely to wander off.
Completed drawings ought not have errors which are visible
at the drawing scale, or at least the publication scale. Thus a 1:20
scale drawing requires measurements at least to the nearest centimetre.
Measuring a whole building to such accuracy is painstaking and slow
going and in practice may not be achieved. For a 1:100 scale drawing
measurements should be to the nearest 5 cm, though it is hard to depict
much detail at this scale.
Taking accurate measurements is difficult enough, but often the real
problem is that the lines to the points to be measured are obstructed or
the points are covered by plaster, timber or other materials. The
archaeologist can literally cut his cross sections through his
excavation, but in a building compromises must be made. The survey team
may have to crawl through dirty narrow spaces, losing their way and
dislodging their datum lines and levels.
We suggest that researchers read Chapter 7 of Morris’s The
Archaeology of Buildings (Annexe 3 Book 26), which is the best of
present guides (and of course the whole book is well worth reading). A
different, simpler approach is taken in Hutton’s Recording Standing
Buildings (Annexe 3 Book 24).
13. SURVEY SCALES
It has been standard practice for many years that
archaeological plans are drawn at a scale of 1:20, with cross sections
at 1:10. This is often a surprise to recorders of houses, who expect
their work to fit on an A4 page and may consequently work at 1:100 scale
for both plans and cross sections and perhaps at even smaller scales for
larger buildings. So for example, an early 19th century house which is
demolished to make way for a new car park, could be lovingly recorded by
local building heritage enthusiasts at 1:100 scale, before the shadowy
trenches, pits and post-holes of its medieval predecessor are recorded
by a contract archaeologist at 1:20 scale, ie with five times the degree
of detail. Perhaps 1:50 is an acceptable compromise in most instances?
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