For those of you who are not aware Time Team was a very successful archaeological programme in the UK for over 20 years that has just finished its final run. During that time it has introduced the wonders of archaeology to the masses, myself included. One of the first things that they always do when arriving on sight is to under take a geo physical (geo phys) survey, the idea of this is to try and identify anomalies under the surface that would guide the diggers to where would be the best place to dig. Some times it didn’t work but most of the time it produced spectacular result – a must for good TV. One the things that geo phys is good at identifying are old foundations which enables them to plot out where a building may be.

So imagine my amazement when I came these ariel shots when using Google Earth the other day to look at Saltby Heath Farm. Here before your eyes are the foundations of a series of buildings clearly showing up as crop marks. One of the great things about Google Earth is that you usually can get two or three images spread over the last 14 years. This allows you to see if the image is just an aberration of that year’s farming or something more significant. Clearly this is more significant.

It turns out that these crop marks are the remains of a monastic grange, a farm owned by an abbey, whose produce and profits go back to the abbey. There are numerous examples dotted around the countryside and tend to be some of the most interesting industrial/archaeological sites in medieval world. You see the monks were keen on maximising the returns from their lands so ensured that their granges had the latest equipment.

It really is amazing what you can find on Google Earth when you start to look…perhaps giving all my search information to Google does have some benefits after all…perhaps.

Simon Marchini
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk