| 發表文章 | 發起投票 |
【衛報】起英國發掘到一戰時期既戰壕網絡
2017-08-05 00:00:00[/size=2]
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/05/miles-of-forgotten-trenches-dug-in-england-during-first-world-war-unearthed-again[/size=2][/center]
V[/size=6]ast extent of the fortifications surprises archaeologists who used new technology and the knowledge of local historians
The full extent of the networks of trenches and defensive fortifications built in England during the first world war has been revealed in the first major survey of its kind.
Detailing how resources were concentrated along England’s eastern and southern coasts – where the main thrust by an invading German army was expected to come – the study draws on existing periodicals and local history as well as LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data gleaned from the use of lasers by the Environment Agency to plot the bumps and dips of British topography.
“We are all very aware of the defence of Britain in the second world war, but people don’t tend to think that the same threat was there during the first world war,” said Martin Brown, an archaeologist who led the research for government body Historic England.
“Every now and again you will find zigzags and deeps and hollows running across fields, for example,” added Brown, who is principal archaeologist at WYG, an environmental planning consultancy.
“There are parts of the country where you find them by falling down them, because they may be buried under some scrub, and you would not make much of them if you didn’t realise what they were.
“In places like Kent and elsewhere, they have been erased not just physically from the terrain but also, in a way, from the memory.”
In addition to established gun batteries around the coast, the survey counts 26 defended ports and naval bases with permanent fortifications, such as Newhaven Fort in East Sussex, Fort Paull in East Yorkshire and Shoeburyness in Essex. The strategic importance of the Humber estuary, with its proximity to the North Sea and potential vulnerability, as demonstrated by the German naval raids on the north-east coast in 1914, was recognised by the construction of batteries at Spurn and Kilnsea in East Yorkshire.
Supporting ports and bases, other parts of the home defence network included trenches identified north of Browndown camp, a Hampshire coastal fort. As the study notes – referring to its continuing use by the army for amphibious assault training – the beach there is “gently shelving shingle and perfect for landings, as demonstrated by continued 21st century exercises”.
Defences from the 1914-18 war at that spot were reused in the 1940s, as was Little London in Norfolk, where a pillbox and entrenchments form part of a stop line.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An excavated dugout at Larkhill. Photograph: © WYG/Wessex Archaeology
Other first world war lines included the Maidstone-Swale line in Kent and the London defence ring across Essex, Kent and Surrey.
More extensive trench networks in Kent joined existing defences around Chatham and connected them to so-called mobilisation centres along a line from Halling to Knockholt. These centres formed the basis of the London defence scheme, which had its origins in the 19th century. The strategy depended on a chain of 13 fortified centres acting as strong points on the North Downs, between Farningham in Kent and Guildford in Surrey, and from Epping to Basildon in Essex.
The major revelation from the survey has been the sheer extent of the network, according to Brown, who said that new finds had been discovered on sites suck as Cannock Chase in the West Midlands and Larkhill in Wiltshire.
The existence of an anti-invasion network on this scale is unlikely to have surprised many Britons in the years leading up to the first world war, however. An entire genre of fiction – sometimes referred to as “invasion literature” – was already being compiled. The earliest example is The Battle of Dorking, a fictional account of a Germanic (albeit Prussian) invasion of Britain, but later examples include Erskine Childers’s 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands and John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, published in 1915 but written just prior to the outbreak of the war.
“The threat in the second world war was much more significant and plausible because the European toe-hold was lost, for example, and there was a lot more building in the face of an imminent threat, which obscures what happened in 1914,” Brown said.
“But we can fail to appreciate the threat as people in 1914 saw it. There’s a sort of comedy element today when we might think of Zeppelin raids for example, but my grandmother and great-grandmother were in Hull when it was bombed and they were genuinely terrified.”
The study, First World War Fieldworks in England, forms part of Historic England’s contribution to the national Centenary Partnership programme about the conflict. It is being published this weekend to promote protection through discovery and the identification of the most significant remains, as well as helping towards local listing and the protection of previously unrecognised remains.
[#e876c8][right]This post is generated by auto-bot.[/right][/size=2][/#e876c8]
The Guardian
V[/size=6]ast extent of the fortifications surprises archaeologists who used new technology and the knowledge of local historians
The full extent of the networks of trenches and defensive fortifications built in England during the first world war has been revealed in the first major survey of its kind.
Detailing how resources were concentrated along England’s eastern and southern coasts – where the main thrust by an invading German army was expected to come – the study draws on existing periodicals and local history as well as LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data gleaned from the use of lasers by the Environment Agency to plot the bumps and dips of British topography.
“We are all very aware of the defence of Britain in the second world war, but people don’t tend to think that the same threat was there during the first world war,” said Martin Brown, an archaeologist who led the research for government body Historic England.
“Every now and again you will find zigzags and deeps and hollows running across fields, for example,” added Brown, who is principal archaeologist at WYG, an environmental planning consultancy.
“There are parts of the country where you find them by falling down them, because they may be buried under some scrub, and you would not make much of them if you didn’t realise what they were.
“In places like Kent and elsewhere, they have been erased not just physically from the terrain but also, in a way, from the memory.”
In addition to established gun batteries around the coast, the survey counts 26 defended ports and naval bases with permanent fortifications, such as Newhaven Fort in East Sussex, Fort Paull in East Yorkshire and Shoeburyness in Essex. The strategic importance of the Humber estuary, with its proximity to the North Sea and potential vulnerability, as demonstrated by the German naval raids on the north-east coast in 1914, was recognised by the construction of batteries at Spurn and Kilnsea in East Yorkshire.
Supporting ports and bases, other parts of the home defence network included trenches identified north of Browndown camp, a Hampshire coastal fort. As the study notes – referring to its continuing use by the army for amphibious assault training – the beach there is “gently shelving shingle and perfect for landings, as demonstrated by continued 21st century exercises”.
Defences from the 1914-18 war at that spot were reused in the 1940s, as was Little London in Norfolk, where a pillbox and entrenchments form part of a stop line.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest An excavated dugout at Larkhill. Photograph: © WYG/Wessex Archaeology
Other first world war lines included the Maidstone-Swale line in Kent and the London defence ring across Essex, Kent and Surrey.
More extensive trench networks in Kent joined existing defences around Chatham and connected them to so-called mobilisation centres along a line from Halling to Knockholt. These centres formed the basis of the London defence scheme, which had its origins in the 19th century. The strategy depended on a chain of 13 fortified centres acting as strong points on the North Downs, between Farningham in Kent and Guildford in Surrey, and from Epping to Basildon in Essex.
The major revelation from the survey has been the sheer extent of the network, according to Brown, who said that new finds had been discovered on sites suck as Cannock Chase in the West Midlands and Larkhill in Wiltshire.
The existence of an anti-invasion network on this scale is unlikely to have surprised many Britons in the years leading up to the first world war, however. An entire genre of fiction – sometimes referred to as “invasion literature” – was already being compiled. The earliest example is The Battle of Dorking, a fictional account of a Germanic (albeit Prussian) invasion of Britain, but later examples include Erskine Childers’s 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands and John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, published in 1915 but written just prior to the outbreak of the war.
“The threat in the second world war was much more significant and plausible because the European toe-hold was lost, for example, and there was a lot more building in the face of an imminent threat, which obscures what happened in 1914,” Brown said.
“But we can fail to appreciate the threat as people in 1914 saw it. There’s a sort of comedy element today when we might think of Zeppelin raids for example, but my grandmother and great-grandmother were in Hull when it was bombed and they were genuinely terrified.”
The study, First World War Fieldworks in England, forms part of Historic England’s contribution to the national Centenary Partnership programme about the conflict. It is being published this weekend to promote protection through discovery and the identification of the most significant remains, as well as helping towards local listing and the protection of previously unrecognised remains.
[#e876c8][right]This post is generated by auto-bot.[/right][/size=2][/#e876c8]
0
0本貼文共有 0 個回覆
此貼文已鎖，將不接受回覆
| 發表文章 | 發起投票 |