You are viewing the archive of our old site, which may be out of date. See here for our homepage

Dear all,

As some of you may be aware the National Young Archaeologists’ Club runs a competition every year called the Young Archaeologist of the Year Award (YAYA). This is open to all national YAC members as well as inviting entries from local branches like ours. The Worcestershire Young Archaeologists Club has never entered before but we thought it would be a good idea for us to have a go this year, and maybe try and bring home that title of ‘Young Archaeologists of the Year’ for our branch!

The Challenge

This year a challenge has been issued to create a monument and memorial trail for a visitor to the area who is interested in history and archaeology. This would involve branch members creating a trail of at least five monuments and memorials, taking a picture, or drawing each one, and then doing some research to see why each monument might be important, whether there are any interesting stories associated with it and when the monument was built or put up. The team will have to produce a map of the route that the trail will take and write a bit of a history on each of the monuments. You could also suggest what sorts of fieldwork you might like to undertake to find out more on the history of the sites along the route, such as excavation, geophysics, environmental work or fieldwalking. The group is then asked to come up with an idea for a memorial that might be missing from the area of the trail and produce a design for what a new memorial might look like.

Get involved

We have come across a really fascinating area in north Worcester, the history and archaeology of which have been all but forgotten, and think that this would be a great place to do our research on! A trail in this area might include a forgotten early medieval Bishop’s Palace, an island where Vikings camped out and where the people of Worcester tried to hide from the Black plague, a river crossing where Prince Edward I crossed on his way to the Battle of Evesham, a possible castle site and a post-medieval brickworks. There are all sorts of uninterpreted monuments and mystery lumps and bumps in fields that need further research, and this is where WYAC could really get involved!

So… if this sounds like something you would like to be involved with, we are looking for members that would be prepared to commit to around 3-4 project sessions starting from around the end of March; we hope that once we have completed our trail designs that we will also be able to secure HLF funding to take our research further, working with the local community to produce real display boards for future visitors to the area as well as undertaking field surveys and maybe even some digging! But first of all, volunteers for the Young Archaeologist of the Year Awards please!

See you soon

Sheena

More details here.