CONTEXT 183 : MARCH 2025 31 WELLBEING and HERITAGE building of Tedworth [sic] House is now the Army Recovery Centre, having been a focal point for Help for Heroes. Within the grounds a rather splendid mausoleum was demolished in the 1950s. This gave the participants in the house the opportunity to excavate this site as part of their courses during their stay. There are plans for them to create a display of results in the house. Elsewhere, three ancient roundhouses have been dug: Roman examples in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds and on the Otterburn Ranges, and a late Bronze Age site on Salisbury Plain. The latter gave the team the chance to reconstruct an experimental replica at Butser Ancient Farm over many months in 2021, using authentic tools and heritage craft skills such as thatching and cob walling. Not all the archaeological work is digging. Searches for ancient fingerprints in pottery have worked well, as did a laser-scan survey of prehistoric rock carvings. These techniques could be widened to record such elements as graffiti on historic buildings, or perhaps even the buildings themselves. Operation Nightingale also supports the Historic Building Team (HBT). In 2019 a programme of building recording was undertaken to record a series of disused first world war buildings on Salisbury Plain. Working with the HBT, the project was led by historic building consultant, Mike Heaton, with a team of seven veterans. The collection of buildings, designed as simple, functional and temporary accommodation, is part of a former military camp. Unlike the Easy Company structures mentioned above, these still stand. The now redundant huts evidence an important time in military training and contribute to our understanding of the requirements of war. The buildings are now in a small compound, and nature has begun to reclaim the site. With the help and support of Heaton and the HBT, the veterans carefully photographed the site, measurements were taken to record the building exteriors and interiors and the various fixtures and fittings were noted. The veterans carried out historic map regression to analyse and understand the site’s evolution. This valuable work, providing an insight into the history and former use of the buildings, has created an important historic record of the site. The HBT is actively looking for other Operation Nightingale projects. The work is constantly assessed using both qualitative and quantitative scales, focusing frequently on levels of anxiety and depression with the methodologies used by the NHS. A former Operation Nightingale participant, former Royal Marine Dickie Bennett, leads this work for our projects. In 2020 he was the co-author of ‘Dig in: an evaluation of the role of archaeological fieldwork for the improved wellbeing of military veterans’ (Antiquity, Vol 94, Issue 373). From a purely anecdotal perspective, among the various benefits, the component which people value most seems to be friendship. Heritage offers the opportunity to engage with one’s past and with people, often in wonderful locations. If the endeavours also help the fabric of our historic estate, everyone wins. Digging on the site of the hut camps at Aldbourne, used by the famous American unit of Easy Company, the so-called Band of Brothers Richard Osgood is senior archaeologist with the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, part of the Ministry of Defence. He would like to thank Chris Daniell, Kathryn Sayner and Jack Haw of the DIO historic buildings team for their help in drafting this article. Bibliography Andrews, P., Last J., Osgood, R. and Stoodley, N. (2019) A Prehistoric Burial Mound and AngloSaxon Cemetery at Barrow Clump, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire: English Heritage and Operation Nightingale Excavations 2003–14, Wessex, Old Sarum. A synopsis of the first decade of Operation Nightingale projects is available in Broken Pots, Mending Lives by Richard Osgood (Oxbow Books, 2023).
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