Digging up the past

2:50pm Friday 4th April 2008

THIS year marks the Golden Jubilee of the West Essex Archaeological Group (WEAG) with the amateur society keen to show it is still very much active.

WEAG held its inaugural meeting on April 22, 1958 at the Passmore Edwards Museum, in Stratford, which is now the Stratford campus of the University of East London.

A large number and variety of people were attracted to the group's opening session with records showing it was attended by a mixture of local students, teachers, bank managers, engineers, librarians, civil servants, and housewives.

Matters up for discussion on the day included the excavation and recording of domestic buildings, urgent rescue operations and field surveys of Roman roads.

Curator at the Passmore Edwards Museum Kenneth Marshall was elected as the first chairman of WEAG with Ernest Rudge, then principal of West Ham College, chosen as honorary secretary Mr Rudge proved a key benefactor to the group and each May the free Rudge Memorial Lecture is held in his honour.

By 1960 the group was in full flow and had begun excavating a prehistoric site in Epping Forest, a Bronze Age barrow at Billericay, an Iron Age camp at Wallbury and a Roman road in Fryering.

One of the most important excavations made by the group came about in 1966 when WEAG began digging in Temple Fields, Harlow, on the site of a Roman-British temple.

Other excavations have included a Roman villa and bath complex at Abridge, a Roman settlement at Havering and sites along the proposed routes of the M11 and M25.

For several seasons the group has excavated at Epping's Copped Hall Estate where the foundations of part of an Elizabethan manor house, demolished in the mid-18th century, were discovered.

Together with the Copped Hall Trust Archaeological Project, WEAG has organised several training courses at the site for people with little or no previous archaeological experience.

More recently WEAG has been actively involved with the Wanstead Parklands Community Project on a local heritage initiative aimed at raising awareness of the park and its history among local people.

Wanstead Park Revealed has seen the group using techniques including magnetometry and resistivity testing in an attempt to locate the remains of a Roman villa.

Fifty years from its birth WEAG currently has around 140 members and is now a flourishing group still dedicated to its original ethos of bringing archaeology to the masses.

This year's programme of events includes a series of illustrated lectures on subjects as diverse as Made in Africa - Human Origins, and Egypt and Canaan.

This year's Rudge Memorial Lecture will take place on May 12 on the subject of The Archaeology of the Olympics Site.

In the summer the group will recommence digging at Copped Hall and in August is due to organise a Field School there.

Around the site