Caring for your Heritage
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TAS has conducted a photographic record and survey of the Tower (see old and new Towers in our Photo Gallery). As a result of this, four survey stations have been installed to monitor the degree of lean to the tower.
In the past the area has been industrialised by mining and quarrying as well as farming. A row of miners cottages in Higher Hartshead, last inhabited in the early 1900's, have recently been excavated by TAS. Two of these cottages have been surveyed, excavated and recorded. One of them was used as a 'Card Tack Factory' manufacturing a process in the cotton industry (see Photo Gallery). A significant find in this excavation was a flint (thumbnail scraper) from the Bronze Age. Only two such finds have been recorded in the Hartshead area.
A third cottage is undergoing survey and excavation. In this area we have already found a piece of possible medieval pottery. We are currently conducting further surveys of the Hartshead area including a Smallpox Hospital and a Mortuary.
This site has been utilsed for the last 5 years for a public event to allow everyone interested to try some of the activites undertaken by the society. TAS is most grateful from the support of the landowners.
Coke Ovens are enclosed ovens in which coal is coverted into coke and tar and in which other by-products are sometimes retrieved. They are particularly associated with blast furnaces.
These ovens seem to be unique in their construction and from the remains do not fall into the recognised classes of coke ovens. As excavation progresses the mystery deepens as to how these ovens worked.
Onformation from our excavtions was included in published work by UMUA. Further detailed piblication is presently in preration (2008)
During the winter months TAS updates existing Sites and Monuments Records (SMR's) and submits other sites that need to be included.This on behalf of the University of Manchester Archaeology Unit (UMAU) Sites and Monuments Officer.
Due to the rapid decline of Engineering and Cotton Mills, a photographic record needs to be completed. During their spare time, TAS members have photographed and maintain a vigil on future developments.
Society members are assisting to record industrial sites as some are converted or demolished. If any one of the public comes across potential sites, please contact us.
We undertook geophysical and contour survey work in 2004. Following an interim report further work in 2005 will include an excavation to verify structure and hopefully some dating evidence.
In 2005 work continued on the earthwork with an evaluation trench from which a report and further recommendations are expected in 2006. Further evaluation excavations in 2007 are at present being prepared for a report.
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2004 -2005 The high land is being evaluated through survey of possible land features and excavations on private land. Work so far is currently being evaluated and reports being prepared for possible further work in 2006.
Sites we have completed
We were introduced to a lady from Suffolk who had lived at Gorse Old Hall during World War Two as an evacuee. She described how Gorse Old Hall had been divided into two cottages. One was able to picture the interior because of her drawings of the furnishings, as she remembered them.
Research wasn't easy because any mention of Gorse Hall would remind local people of Gorse New Hall and the unsolved murder of George Harry Storrs on the 1 November 1909. This has been widely reported since 1909, and appeared in Edward Woodward's 'In Suspicious Circumstances' on TV some time ago. Little more than a year after the murder Gorse New Hall was demolished. Local people had 'robbed' the stone and left it in an unsafe condition. All that can be seen of Gorse New Hall are humps in the ground, which are probably the foundations.
The archaeological work was completed and it was handed back to Tameside in April, 2000. Tameside gave it to The Groundwork Trust (an ecological organisation) to cap the walls and preserve the standing remains.
The Living Village Trust Shropshire
The Six Bells Trust at Bishop's Castle had asked TAS to undertake an archaeological survey on land where they wanted to build an ecological village. TAS spent four days in October 1998 successfully investigating this site. A detailed report was sent to the Living Village Trust.
Audenshaw Lodge Farm
It took many months for TAS to gain permission from Denton Golf Club to survey and examine the barn at Audenshaw farm. However, work began in May 1998 and continued until September 1998. This is a seventeenth-century threshing barn and is one of the earliest buildings in Tameside. We have been invited to carry out further work which has started again in 2006. A report is at present being prepared (2008).
Daniel Well Mottram-in-Longendale
This excavation began in April 1997 until August 1997 and was the first training 'dig' for TAS and it's members.
For about a month in the summer we assist the Mellor Trust at a site on the outskirts of the village of Mellor in Derbyshire. Finds have indicated a spectrum of periods from mesolithic through to the Nineteenth century. Every year new finds and features. Always a great event for both the volunteers and the public at the Annual September Open weekend. (Usually first weekend in September). Further assistance in 2007 with a resistivty survey for the Mellor trust.
Fairbottom Bobs at Park Bridge
'Fairbottom Bobs' was a beam engine to pump out water from three coal mines. GMAU were investigating the site from limited photographic and documentry evidence. We found the engine beds and the surviving brickwork for the boiler and condensor and associated brickwork. Fairbottom was the area, Bob was the engine (it 'bobbed' up and down). Henry Ford provided a bridge across the river in exchange for the beam engine, it went to a museum in America in the 1920s.
Buckton Castle Stalybridge and
Werneth Low Hyde
Both of these sites are scheduled for future investigation.
'Geophysical survey work was undertaken in 2004, to assess possible remaining underground structures.
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