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HISTORICAL ASSESSMENT AND SURVEY OF OLD BUILDINGS   Page 10
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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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