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Layers of London: Mapping the City’s Heritage

Layers of London is a ground-breaking interactive online mapping project led by the Institute of Historical Research’s Centre for Metropolitan History, part of the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Virtual visitors to London can peel back layers of the city’s history to discover information about the landmarks, events memories and stories of London’s diverse people and places, going as far back as Roman times. Contributions so far range from conscientious objector historical accounts from Haringey, to Windrush stories from Lewisham.

Using expertise honed through two previous mapping projects with the Institute of Historical Research - Locating London’s Past and Mapping London - our geomaticians have georectified and digitised a framework sequence of significant historic maps of London from the late 17th-century onwards, so that contributions can be placed in their context.

The process has involved pulling the maps around in a Geographic Information System (GIS), and anchoring them to hundreds of known calibration points like old churches and street junctions, so that they can be layered on top of an Ordnance Survey map. The team has also recorded historic roads, places, ward boundaries and parish boundaries in GIS datasets, and built complex ArcGIS models to allow huge volumes of data to be processed quickly.

The resulting maps and searchable, downloadable GIS datasets will be invaluable resources for historians and archaeologists wishing to explore London’s development for years to come.

Other contributors to the Layers of London project include a wide range of individuals and groups, ranging from members of the public engaged through social media, online tools, workshops and training events, to bodies such as The British Library, Historic England, London Metropolitan Archives, The National Archives, and Birkbeck, University of London. 

The project is generously supported by National Lottery players through the Heritage Lottery Fund, and by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, the Ford Britain Trust, and the IHR Trust.

St Alphage Tower 3D archaeological survey

MOLA’s Geomatics team laser-scanned St Alphage Tower in the City of London ahead of a development by Brookfield. The monument comprises the remains of a medieval priory and later church. Using a Leica ScanStation C10 the team laser-scanned the entire monument. The creation of models from laser-scan data allowed for high levels of detail to be presented enabling us to understand the site in ways not previously possible.

The level of detail the 3D scanner captured has enabled us to understand the tower as never before.

The scanner works by using a spinning laser beam, able to measure up to 50 thousand points per second. Scanning from several locations allowed us to quickly record the building’s surface. The scanner also records photographic data which was applied to the point cloud to generate photo-rendered 3D models.

The laser-scan data collected was merged to create a single 3D point-cloud* model of the structure, enabling us to create various products to help interpret the monument’s complex history. The locations were then tied into the Ordnance Survey National Grid using Total Station and GPS (Global Positioning Systems), to precisely locate the model. Using specialist programmes we created an accurate 3D mesh-surface model of the monument, as well as detailed 2D CAD plans and elevations.

These models can be used by historic building specialists in the future to analyse building materials, building phases and construction techniques. The mesh-models can also be used for conservation or disaster management planning; as a tool for monitoring the condition of a structure or for re-building. The data could even inform a virtual 3D reconstruction.  

*A group of points, each with an XYZ co-ordinate, which represents the external surface of an object, and that light intensity values or photographic RGB values can be applied to.
 

Archaeology and Public Benefit UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship

‘Measuring, maximising and transforming public benefit from UK Government infrastructure investment in archaeology’ is a four year UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship led by MOLA archaeologist Dr Sadie Watson. The project focuses on ensuring that public spending on archaeology for infrastructure projects leads to meaningful and relevant research and genuine community participation.

Currently there is no established way to assess the social impact derived from the many millions of pounds invested in archaeology programmes for publicly-funded infrastructure projects. The outcomes of the Fellowship will include best-practice guidance and a tool-kit that will be used to inform future policy and practice.

Research will take place within the framework of professional archaeology, with project partners including HS2 Ltd,  Historic England, the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists and the Europae Archaeologiae Consilium.

Sign up to receive email updates from the project team here.

Archaeology Sessions in Schools

Thanks to generous funding from COLAT, MOLA provided hands-on archaeological sessions for 12 primary schools in the boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark. The sessions were designed to develop skills outlined in the National Curriculum, for Key Stage 1-2 pupils, aged 5-11.

Sessions were available for groups of up to 30 children and lasted 45 minutes each, allowing for a maximum of six sessions per school. 

Led by our Community Archaeologists, children were able to get their hands dirty, uncovering real archaeological objects from dig boxes, using child-friendly sand. The students then drew and recorded the objects using archaeological tools.

Digitised Diseases osteoarchaeology project

Warning: this page contains images and discussion of human remains

Digitised Diseases www.digitiseddiseases.org  is a unique online resource that brings together 1,600 specimens of diseased human bone. The collection offers trainee medics, clinicians and medical historians the chance to study the effects of chronic diseases on the skeleton.

"This will be a unique resource both for archaeologists and medical historians to identify diseases in ancient specimens, but also for clinicians who can see extreme forms of chronic diseases which they would never see nowadays in their consulting rooms. " Dr Andrew Wilson, University of Bradford

The online resource contains 3D models of bones affected by over 90 chronic pathological conditions, ranging from common complaints such as osteoarthritis to rare bone cancers and conditions that are often considered to be diseases of poverty, such as tuberculosis.

Diseases in London osteoarchaeology project

Warning: this page contains images and discussion of human remains

Diseases in London is a fully illustrated reference text detailing the effects of disease  on the human skeleton. Focussing on  skeletal remains found on archaeological excavations in London, the specimens date from the Roman period to the 19th century. Human health affects all aspects of everyday life and skeletal remains represent direct evidence of the experiences of people in the past.

The diseases we observe in the archaeological record provide material evidence for the most serious conditions that are not commonly seen or understood in modern medicine. Diseases in London collates this invaluable information.

The Diseases in London book is designed to appeal to students and practitioners of osteology and palaeopathology, medical historians and forensic archaeologists. Author Don Walker, MOLA senior human osteologist and one of the foremost experts in the health of London’s past populations, collated information from the extensive collections of MOLA and the Museum of London to bring together more than 400 photographic and radiographic images of disease and traumatic injury.

This archaeological material provides evidence of conditions which are now rarely encountered and with the most severe expressions of disease in a pre-antibiotic era. The research provides a unique opportunity to explore the lives of past communities.

A Type-Series of Medieval Pottery archaeological services

English Heritage funded a research project to create a dated type-series of London’s medieval ceramics. The output was an extensive corpus of medieval pottery, the fifth part of which focussed on Shelly-Sandy ware and the Greyware Industries, carried out by MOLA specialists Jacqui Pearce and Lyn Blackmore.

This corpus is based on years' of archaeological investigation and provides a solid foundation for dating medieval sites in London.

Based on well-dated ceramic material from development-led archaeological sites in London, and in particular kiln waste and production evidence, the research encompassed material from the 12th to 14th centuries. The principal aim was to characterise the fabric of the pottery through thin-section and chemical analysis (Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectrometry). The wider context of the industries was also considered, including stylistic influences, technological developments and patterns of distribution. From this a broader picture and greater understanding of the role and function of these industries in London’s ceramic history emerged.

All of the research and scientific analysis was presented in a fully illustrated monograph A Dated Type-series of London Medieval Pottery Part 5: Shelly-Sandy ware and the Greyware Industries. The type-series is an invaluable archaeological resource and has been extensively applied as a tool for dating archaeological sites and contexts in the London area.

Transforming data re-use in archaeology (TETRARCHs)

Running from October 2022 to September 2025, Transforming Data Reuse in Archaeology (TETRARCHs) is a 3-year, CHANSE-funded international collaboration between MOLA, the University of York, Research Centre for the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Lund University, University of Antwerp, Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, University of Ghent, and Vilnius University.

The project’s Lead and Investigators include:

• Sara Perry, Project Leader (MOLA)
• Holly Wright, Co-I (University of York)
• Rimvydas Laužikas, PI (Vilnius University)
• Edisa Lozić, PI (Znanstvenoraziskovalni center Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti)
• Nicoló Dell'Unto PI (Lund University)
• Helene Verreyke, PI (University of Antwerp)
• Christophe Verbruggen (Ghent University)

Today many organisations collect and manage archaeological data to document and preserve our cultural landscapes, sites, and objects. Unfortunately, our current methods can make it difficult to re-use the data to tell stories and share findings in ways that are democratic, engaging and just. In fact, although a lot of work has been done to make archaeology Findable, Accessible and Interoperable (according to the FAIR Principles), little is understood about whether our data is Reusable – and who is using it.

The TETRARCHs project will experiment with approaches to collecting archaeological data and using that data for storytelling in ways that are meaningful for diverse audiences. Our experiments will help both those who preserve our heritage and the huge range of citizens across Europe who value it.

To do so, we will create new workflows for collecting and managing archaeology and heritage data. Here we’ll examine how the archaeological process in the field, the lab and the archive can be changed to support storytelling with the data. We’ll develop these workflows by partnering with an interdisciplinary team of archaeological specialists, data scientists and museum practitioners alongside three key audiences – domain experts, creative practitioners, and memory institutions.

Our project includes archaeology data collection at three different scales – from whole landscapes, to single sites, to individual objects. We’ll explore these using four increasingly common technologies for data capture: airborne LiDAR, 3D scanning, digital field drawing and photography.

Once the workflows are complete, we’ll test them by supporting people who work in creative fields from across Europe to develop new stories and other imaginative works using archaeology data.

In the end, through TETRARCHs, we will produce:

• new workflows for field, laboratory, and archival practice in archaeology
• the world’s first controlled vocabulary for cultural heritage storytelling
• the first assessments of how effectively data is reused, following ISO Standard 25022: Measurement of Quality in Use
• the first best practice recommendations for trusted digital repositories to optimise their archaeological data for re-use in storytelling

You can learn more about our work on the dedicated TETRARCH website.

TETRARCHs is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK (AH/X006980/1), alongside multiple European funding bodies under CHANSE ERA-NET Co-fund programme, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement no 101004509.

The London Evolution Animation

A digital animation showing the development of London from its Roman beginnings, in 43AD, to the present day was created using MOLA data. The London Evolution Animation uses the latest technology to bring nearly 2000 years' of  development in London to life and featured within the English Heritage “Almost Lost” exhibition.

“The animation was designed to help inform discussions regarding plans for the future of London and its historic fabric.”

Polly Hudson, Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis