My name is Beth Werrett and I am a conservator for the Wiltshire Conservation Service. I recently treated an extremely unusual table, which was inlaid with fossils; the object was so popular in our building it seemed like an excellent candidate for discussion on our blog.

 
Condition of the table before any conservation work was carried out

Background

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As you may know, Wiltshire is one of the richest counties for archaeological monuments. There are over 2,000 monuments in the county which are scheduled, or considered to be of national importance.  As part of our work the Archaeology Service of Wiltshire Council works in partnership with English Heritage to implement a monument management programme. Every year we target a small number of scheduled monuments in need of a little “TLC”. Over the six years the programme has been running we have carried out work on over twenty sites including, scrub clearance on Neolithic long barrows and Iron Age hillforts, masonry conservation at a Roman bath house and a medieval castle keep.

The Archaeology team on a site visit to Oldbury Castle Hillfort at Cherhill

Our programme for this past year has focused on three sites in particular. At a Roman bath house near North Wraxall, 2,000 year old walls had been exposed a few years ago and were suffering damaged caused by the extremely cold winter last year. We employed a specialist masonry conservator to re-point and consolidate the walls prior to their backfilling. At the Iron Age hillfort at Fosbury we completed a three year programme of work involving scrub clearance on the ramparts by the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV). We also completed a five year programme of work on a Bronze Age barrow cemetery near Beckhampton which focussed on trying to exclude badgers from the burial mounds with the insertion of badger-proof fencing and artificial badger setts. 
If you spot any monuments in need of our help, please let us know!
[Additional images available, please 'read more'].

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