Sandhills Project, Alderley Edge, Cheshire
Eleanor Conlin Casella, 2009. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000108. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Dr Eleanor Conlin Casella unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
Dr
Eleanor Conlin
Casella
School of Art History and Archaeology
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester
M13 9PL
UK
Tel: 0161 2753331
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 957
- ALSF Project Number: 3334
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000108
- How to cite using this DOI
Overview
Background
The Site: topography and history
Alderley Edge lies some 15 miles south of Manchester: according to legend a king with his knights sleep beneath the Edge. Its exceptional geology led to parts of the site being classified as a SSSI in 1993, and also as a RIGS: copper, lead and cobalt have been mined from c.1750 BC to AD 1920. The coming of the railway in 1842 created an interesting and well-documented social history. In 2001 parts of the site were given Scheduled Ancient Monument status.
In the 1850s the mining company developed an acid-leaching process to extract copper from the ore, from which the waste sand steeped in hydrochloric acid was dumped north of the entrance to West Mine in such quantity that the area became known locally as the Sandhills (SJ 854774). The sand was re-used in the 1930s as an aggregate for road-building in Manchester and again in the 1960s for building the first section of the M6 and the runway at Manchester Airport.
Alderley Edge was opened to modern industrial mining from the mid-18th century. Parish records indicate that by the 1760s two detached cottages had been constructed for the families of foremen who worked at West Mine and Wood Mine. Local oral tradition confirms that the cottages were continuously occupied until the early 1940s. The site thus provides the temporal depth necessary for a diachronic study of changes in working-class consumer behaviour over the post-medieval period. Photographs supplied by Mrs Edna Younger and Mr Roy Barber, the two last surviving erstwhile residents of the cottages, depict brick two-storey structures that had been internally divided to accommodate four separate households, and associated outbuildings, domestic gardens, and the adjoining sandhills. Existing topographic features and vegetation growth patterns suggest the survival of intact subsurface archaeological features, including building foundations, exterior pathways, privies, wells, and possible underfloor deposits. The site ultimately offers new archaeological perspectives on the domestic arena of industrialisation, an understudied aspect of British industrial archaeology. By the early 1950s the cottages had been demolished and the site abandoned, although the sandhills themselves continued to serve as a recreation site for the children of Alderley residents. Although the bulk of the sand matrix was removed as aggregate in two separate periods of road construction, enough contaminated sand remains to inhibit plant growth, which generally does not proceed beyond the stage of an algal crust. AELP's natural historians had identified the area as being of outstanding botanical interest (see below).
Site Conditions & Preservation.
While the Sandhills themselves only support limited plant growth, the site of the adjoining Sandhills cottages was overgrown with nettles, brambles and other vegetation. Apart from a well marked on the 1872 OS map, all other possible topographic features and structural remains were obscured by the dense growth, which was cleared before archaeological work could commence. This was preceded by an in-depth phytosociological vegetation survey detailing the situation and recording indicator and sensitive species. Where vegetation permitted, surface scatters of 19th-century ceramics and glass were located within the site.
Previous Work.
1. The Alderley Edge Landscape Project (AELP)
This project benefits from extensive previous historical research in the locality. From 1996 the Edge was the focus of the Alderley Edge Landscape Project (AELP), a joint multidisciplinary research programme of The Manchester Museum and the National Trust to study all aspects of its natural and human history. This research, funded principally by the Leverhulme Trust, is now being prepared for publication. A substantial archive of photographic, oral history, cartographic and documentary materials was compiled by the AELP, and in addition some surveys of flora and fauna were carried out by students. Curated through The Manchester Museum, this invaluable interdisciplinary archive was extensively consulted during preparation of the Sandhills project.
2. AELP - Heritage and Education Resources (AELPHER)
The AELP programme spawned a number of further schemes, among them the Alderley Edge Landscape Project - Heritage and Education Resources (AELPHER), an innovative web-based education and public access project involving local schools and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and other bodies, drawing on the archive built up by AELP. Extensive local community networks fostered through AELPHER will provide the basis for the community outreach schemes incorporated throughout the Sandhills project.
3. AELP - Test Excavations on Mine Workings
Finally, recent archaeological test1 excavations undertaken as part of AELP confirmed Bronze Age and Roman mining at Engine Vein Mine, and also investigated parts of the 19th-century ore processing at Wood Mine.
Alderley Sandhills Project
As outlined above, this project originated from the Alderley Edge Landscape Project (AELP). During this extensive multi-disciplinary project the site of the Hagg cottages was identified as an area where more detailed archaeological research could be conducted in order to gain a deeper understanding of the local community's connection to the landscape of Alderley Edge.
The sandhills area where the Hagg cottages are situated was notified as a SSSI by English Nature in 1993 and was granted Scheduled Ancient Monument status by English Heritage in 2001.
Site Location
The Alderley Sandhills Site is located just south of the National Trust land on an area controlled by a private landowner. The site lies approximately 100 metres East of the end of Whitebarn Road. The site itself contains the subsurface remains of the two Hagg cottages, as well as their associated outbuildings, privies, gardens and rubbish middens. The site is heavily wooded and overgrown which obscures the majority of the archaeological remains.
ALSF Funding Background
In 2002 the School of Art History & Archaeology collaborated with the Manchester Museum, which was already conducting the Alderley Edge Landscape Project, to apply for project funding through the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund as a means to finance the more extensive research of the Hagg cottages site. The research proposal was accepted by English Heritage in late 2002 and the project received the first phase of funds from the ALSF in March 2003.
