An aerial photograph of a circular enclosure on a hilltop seen as earthworks.
A late prehistoric enclosure surviving as an earthwork on Castle Hill above Leck in the North Pennines, and photographed in winter 2012, taking advantage of the long shadows. You can find out more about this and other historic places through our new Aerial Mapping tools. © © Historic England 11/12/2012, image reference 28364_001
A late prehistoric enclosure surviving as an earthwork on Castle Hill above Leck in the North Pennines, and photographed in winter 2012, taking advantage of the long shadows. You can find out more about this and other historic places through our new Aerial Mapping tools. © © Historic England 11/12/2012, image reference 28364_001

Introduction to Issue 21

John Cattell, our National Head of Research, introduces this issue focusing on resources for researchers.

Welcome to the Spring Issue of our magazine. This issue brings you a mixed set of research highlights. However, the golden thread that connects them all is the research resources we offer, whether people are looking for information on a specific historic place, a whole area, theme or for methods applied to heritage.

In ‘Historic England’s New Mapping Resources’, Simon Crutchley and Damian Grady take a look at two recent -and already enormously popular - tools to help a broad range of researchers explore our aerial archaeology mapping and aerial photographs more generally through interactive maps.

Gary Winter from our Archive then reveals how we are working towards ‘Celebrating the Harold Wingham Collection Through Active Participation’: by which we mean how we are working on enhancing understanding of a collection of one of aerial archaeology’s ‘unsung heroes’ together with his colleagues and friends.

In ‘The Historic England Research Reports Database: introducing an important resource for researchers’ Kirsty Stonell Walker ‘lifts the lid’ on thousands of reports compiled over the decades by Historic England and its predecessors that you can now easily access directly through our main website.

These resources are digital, however there continues to be an appetite among the research community and beyond for traditional publications, which are the subject of Alison Welsby’s contribution ‘Historic England and Liverpool University Press: A Publishing Partnership’.

Finally, ‘Daylight Harvesting and Historic Buildings’ by Geraldine O’Farrell is an example of the type of research that will aid those looking for case studies of climate change adaptation methods. It is part of a wide range of research we are taking forward to underpin our Climate Change strategy and the drive to achieve net zero.

About the author
Name and role
Name
John Cattell
Title and organisation
National Head of Research at Historic England
Details
Description
John has worked for Historic England and its predecessors since 1989 in a variety of roles including Chief Buildings Historian and Research Director. He is now responsible ​for developing and leading the organisation's national research work. John is also responsible for Historic England's relationships with the Research Councils and leading on Independent Research Organisation engagement.

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