A major archaeological project at the Manor House and Roman Fort in Ilkley got underway this week.
The project involving the Trustees of the Manor House, All Saints’ Church and the School of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford aims to attempt to shed new light on the Roman, Early Medieval and Medieval history of the town centre and in particular in the area around the Roman Fort, Church and Manor House.
Phase one of the project is to provide a detailed survey of the Manor House itself using state of the art laser-scanning technology. It is hoped that this will help identify various building phases identifiable in both the external and internal fabric of the house thus shedding more light on the history and development of the building. Laser-scanning involves detailed survey using reflected light to measure distances and angles. It is much quicker than conventional survey methods as several thousand readings can be taken per second. This will create a detailed model of the house over which photographs can be ‘draped’ to produce a coloured 3D survey.
Work started last week with Prof Chris Gaffney and PhD student Joe Moore laser-scanning both the exterior and interior of the building with some 1700 photographs on the interior being taken by local resident and archaeologist Dr Alex Gibson.
Phase two of the project will involve a geophysical survey over the area of the Roman Fort once permission has been obtained from Historic England.
Up-dates on the progress of the project will be available on the Manor House website and it is hoped that later in the year an exhibition will be put on to share this work with the community.
‘We are very excited that this project will help to shed new light on the history of the Manor House and we are looking forward to the next phases of the work’ says Roger Tilbrook, Trustee.