Land North of St George’s Hospital, Morpeth

AB Heritage conducted a suite of archaeological investigations at a greenfield site to the north of St George’s Hospital in Morpeth.

Recent discovery of past habitation on site.

AB Heritage opened consultation with Northumberland County Council to agree the most effective way to proceed – this resulted in an Archaeological Desk Based Assessment being carried out to put the site in an archaeological context. The site lay within an extensive archaeological landscape, dating from the later prehistoric period which had only been discovered within the previous decade. There was evidence that the site had been later utilised during the construction of the new hospital in the early 2000s, and that archaeology may have been damaged as a result.

Rapid fieldwork was required to meet our Client’s schedule, so a Geophysical Survey of the site was done to check the underlying deposits, to test whether archaeological features were present, or if construction of the hospital had caused disturbance. The results showed that the site had been disturbed, but that there were areas of undisturbed ground.

During negotiations for the archaeological investigations on the site, AB Heritage ensured that a rapid scheme of fieldwork was conducted. We pulled out all the stops to produce the necessary reports so that our client could meet their deadline. We demonstrated that the site had been deeply buried with material extracted from the hospital site. No archaeological remains were at risk from further development.

AB Heritage provided all the necessary consultation, fieldwork and reports within a single month, which provided our client the opportunity to submit their planning application in time and with confidence that archaeological issues had been fully closed out.

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