The British Engineerium (Hove)

This most important museum and its collection has been saved , and will reopen, The new owner, Mr Holland, , bought the £2 million British Engineerium building and its unrivalled collection of steam engines and engineering artefacts, valued by Bonhams at about £1.2 million.
Mr Holland plans to spend £500,000 on revamping the musuem, which will then open up to the public as usual.

National Ice Age Network.

National Ice age Network.

The national Ice Network is universities based research group, and seeks the participation of all who are interested in exploring our Ice Age heritage. This includes those in the quarry industry as well as academics and the general public.
Much of our knowledge about the Ice age Britain has arisen from commercial sand and gravel quarrying.
Quarry excavations have revealed geological sequences, plant and animal fossil remains, and the stone tools of out earliest ancestors-the raw materials needed to reconstruct the Ice Age World.

The benefits of the aggregates quarrying to reconstruction our Ice Age heritage cannot be realised unless these finds are recorded, recovered and researched.
Such work is an essential component of environmentally sustainable quarrying, and for this reason the National Ice Age Network is supported by the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF)

This initiative aims not only to help ensure, through collaboration with the aggregates industry, the recording of Ice Age remains and finds but also to promote interest in a period that shaped the English Landscape.
Ice Age Facts

600,000 years ago early humans were hunting and butchering large animals in Suffolk.

450,000 years ago during the Anglian glaciation, an ice sheet 1km high reached the outskirts of London.

125,000 years ago hippos, lions and elephants would have been a common sight in Central London.

80,000 years ago the Earth entered into the most recent glacial period known in Britain as the Devensian.

20,000 years ago the Devensian reached its peak with an ice sheet covering much of Scotland and England as far south as Birmingham.

11,500 years ago the last glacial period ended and the interglacial we are living in today began

To find out more about our Ice Age heritage, become a member of the National Ice Age Network, log onto www.iceage.org.uk

Field unit, update.

On Saturday the 6th May members of the field unit enjoyed a walk around the Slindon Estate, the purpose of the walk was to introduce new and old members to areas of the Estate that are not normally visited as a part of our field days there.
There was a good attendance despite intermittent rain, which did not dampen sprits; the walk covered a distance of some 7 to 8 miles.

Buildings Archaeology.

While some members were on the walk, others were engaged in the recording of the Victorian/Edwardian conservatory which is a part of the Slindon House complex, and a part of our on going recording work on the standing buildings on the Estate.
The grandeur of the conservatory has long been lost, once the grand glasshouse would have been a home to oranges and peach trees, and many other exotic plants, and a place to take afternoon tea.
The photo taken in 1908 shows that it was very grand, a lost era.