TEP’s Heritage Team like to teach their Graduates through practical training days. One of the ways they do this is by using Historic England’s “Enrich the List” initiative.
Historic England has a list of over 400,000 historic places scattered throughout the country from cathedrals to rollercoasters and is encouraging us to help “Enrich the List”. This initiative invites us to share our knowledge and photographs of these listed places, so they can record important facts, and even unlock the secrets behind them.
To provide some historic building recording experience, the latest training day involved recording a medieval Grade II listed bridge in Northamptonshire. The team was able to practice measured surveying by producing a plan of the bridge using tapes, as well as practicing their photography skills. As a result of carrying out the recording, several examples of historic shoe graffiti and one heart were documented. The use of a shoe motif is surprising in this location as these are more commonly found on church roofs dating from the late medieval period onwards. The road, though only a minor route now, was formerly an important cattle drovers route connecting to Wales and the bridge is located to the immediate north of the site of the Battle of Edgcote, 1469.
Large areas of stones from the bridge have already been lost due to weathering or traffic but by helping to enrich the list, the heritage team was able to make a record of their findings before all this knowledge was lost.
To read their full report for the bridge click here: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1190263
To contribute your knowledge about one of the many precious facets of our history visit: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/enrich-the-list/
To read more articles from our Heritage Team click here: https://www.tep.uk.com/category/heritage/
