Greater Thames Estuary Essex Zone Monitoring Survey: Interim Report 1

In summer 1999 proposals for further survey and monitoring of known sites along the Essex coast were submitted to the Greater Thames Estuary Regional Research Framework Steering Committee and English Heritage. The proposals were well received but some amendments were necessary, largely to the technical aspects of the monitoring survey. It was decided to separate the proposal into two parts. A project design for the new survey work was approved by English Heritage in December 1999, and fieldwork carried out in 2000 (Heppell and Brown 2001).

This report relates to the second set of proposals, the monitoring of known sites which had been located by the Hullbridge Survey in the 1980s (Wilkinson and Murphy 1995). The project design for this was submitted to English Heritage in November 2000, and after amendment approved in February 2001. The project is to run for three years, this is the first interim report and presents the initial results of the first year's work (2001). The project is funded by English Heritage and the first stage formed part of Planarch, an Intereg IIc project. A summary of the results of the 2001 survey has also been submitted for publication in Essex Archaeology and History.