Research unlocking secrets of North Pennines

English Heritage's Research Department is working with the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership to scour 300 square kilometres of Alston Moor in Northumberland and Cumbria. The aim is to build up a comprehensive picture of how the landscape evolved and identify future conservation priorities.

Today the North Pennines are celebrated for their geology and wild, natural beauty, but it has also been one of the most intensively mined landscapes in Britain.

Lead, silver and coal have been exploited with early miners also doubling as farmers.

As well as careful observation and mapping on the ground, new methods of discovery and analysis are being used, including radar imagery captured by specially equipped aircraft.

The landscape around Alston has been three-dimensionally radar-mapped, and sites of particular potential interest will now be subjected to detailed ground survey.

The project manager is Stewart Ainsworth, pictured, from English Heritage's Research Department, who is also a regular member of TV's Time Team.

He said: "The radar gives a three-dimensional picture of everything on the ground, down to quite small features.

"We want to build up a picture of how the landscape has evolved over the last 2,000 years or so and how man-made changes have interacted with the natural environment.

"Because this area is off the beaten track, it has been very under-researched and this will be an English heritage flagship project.

"The moors and fields of this area are littered with abandoned structures, humps and hollows which provide ghostly reminders of the industrial past."

He said that studying the way water was extensively managed by the miners and how this had changed natural systems would also help in climate change policies to preserve peatland areas.

The findings will also feed into management plans by the North Pennines AONB Partnership and Natural England.

From next April, opportunities will be available for local people to take an active part in the project.

North Pennines AONB historic environment officer Paul Frodsham said: "Traditionally, the public have been consumers of a heritage researched and presented by 'experts'.

But from now on we want local people to play an active role in the archaeology of the North Pennines, helping to research and celebrate what is after all their heritage."

Full training in a range of archaeological techniques will be on offer. Anyone interested in helping with the Alston Moor project or projects elsewhere in the North Pennines, can contact Paul Frodsham on 01388 528801 or email him on pfrodsham@northpeninesaonb.org.uk

CASTLE'S REMAINS SHOW HOW LIFE WAS FOR ROMANS IN BRITAIN

The Roman fort of Whitley Castle has been surveyed in detail as part of the project.

The 500-garrison fort, between Alston and Slaggyford, is on the Maiden Way which linked the Carvoran base on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland with Kirby Thore fort in Cumbria.

Whitley Castle's defensive remains are the best preserved in the Roman Empire and it's believed the base was set up to protect the Romans' lead mining industry. The fort, known as Epiacum, was built in an unusual lozenge pattern and has seven layers of defences in the form of ditches and banks - one of only three sites in the country to have such a complex system.

There are the visible remains of the fort bath house, civilian settlement and headquarters building. Already the project has turned up three new prehistoric settlements near the fort. There is also evidence of an adjacent civilian settlement and systems of fields and trackways.

"It means it was a very settled landscape before the Romans arrived and during the occupation," said Stewart. One mystery is why work on the fort's defences in the Fourth Century was left unfinished.

"It looks like they just packed up and walked away," said Stewart.

TIME EXPERT

Stewart Ainsworth will be a familiar face to followers of TV's Time Team after more than a decade with the Channel 4 programme.

He is also a senior archaeological investigator with English Heritage, based at York.

He started with the Ordnance Survey's archaeology division and began his career working on sites in the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland.

For 10 years he lived in Blyth.