Blog 5 22nd July 2011
After over seven months of active planning (itself following almost two decades of dreaming about getting to grips with the Quebec) we finally made it out onto site today. I did so with a mixture of emotions ranging from the excitement one always feels at the start of a field project, to trepidation over whether all the disparate parts of the event would pull together, and if people would actually enjoy the end result. I needn’t have worried, though doing so had me awake long before the alarm clock went off (which was already set early for the first task – putting out the road signs for the re-enactors to follow in the evening).
It was great to walk onto the site and find it so well prepared by the team at Fountains. One of the Quebec’s abiding characteristics is it inaccessibility, due to the dense tree and shrub growth around it (which the guidebooks tell us it’s had for over two centuries), and the crop of waist high weeds within. The landscape team have worked very hard to bring all that to heel, revealing one of the project’s first surprises – the sheer scale of the area we’re looking at. It took me a little by surprise when I saw it emerging first at a pre-start meeting. The same reaction was shared and commented on again and again today by visitors who know the property well and the volunteer guides, many of whom have known the estate for 30 years or more. So too was the feeling that this was “sacred turf” on which they were not expecting to “intrude” - and it was rather exciting to do so. Even somewhere that they know so well can still produce new surprises.
After setting up the “spare” surveying equipment for visitors to try out, and the plethora of posters, leaflet dispensers and the like, the first “customers” arrived in the shape of the estate Staff Briefing for around 30 staff and volunteers. I couldn’t have had a better warm-up – an audience who share the same passion for Studley Royal, and are knowledgeable enough to really test the quality of what I was saying about Quebec and its setting. Some excellent questions emerged, especially relating to where the Quebec was supposed to be visible from, questions I hadn’t even thought to ask which we can now explore as the project unfolds.
There was also a lot of interest in the “springhead” feature, which we’ve always assumed was part of the C20 concrete pond around the monument pillar. Now its fully exposed again, its clearer that it is built from good quality materials, rather in contrast to the other known works of the Vyner family or the West Riding County Council elsewhere on the estate (both of whom were working with restricted budgets). It isn’t marked on any of the historic maps, but could it be a surviving feature of the Georgian design? Another interesting question to consider.
Justin and Cicely from Field Archaeology Specialists started work on the new topographical survey, which will be fundamental to interpreting the suite of historic map depictions. They kindly agreed to be part of the event’s exhibits, and had their day punctuated by answering questions from visitors (inspired by our “Warning – Live Archaeologists” notices encouraging them to do so).
The afternoon “Digging in the Garden” tour looked at the Quebec project in the broader context of the other archaeological projects that have (or might yet) take place in the gardens at Studley. This was a good reminder of the scope of what’s been learnt over the past two decades, and also how much more there is to learn. It was also a reminder of how relatively little effort we’ve previously put in making the projects accessible previously, and how much there is to be gained from putting that right this time round. Great to meet a really charming group of people who came for the tour and it was probably a good sign that it lasted almost an hour longer than planned. I hope that that meant that they enjoyed themselves, and not just that they were all too polite to say otherwise!
Finally, after a long and busy day, the salve of having beautiful, serene, Fountains (almost) to myself in the early evening, waiting for the Lace Wars re-enactors to arrive – which they do, just when they said they would get here. Hurrah!
So that’s day 1 done, exactly to plan.
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