Field survey by RCHME and English Heritage of Scheduled Ancient Monuments for the 'National SAMs Survey Pilot Project', Essex, 1999 - EEX53778

NRHE data transfer: This project was the result of negotiation between RCHME Survey and English Heritage Inspectorate. It was set up as a six month pilot to run over the first two quarters of 1999 with the principal objective of recording a selection of Scheduled Ancient Monuments at least to RCHME Level 2. These would be surveyed at the same scale as Ordnance Survey Basic Scale Mapping (generally 1:2500).Five main aims were identified within the pilot:1 To assess the methodology and the viability of proposed procedures and to help refine them.2 To assess the effectiveness of the survey products in meeting both primary (site management) and ancillary (archive) requirements.3 To contribute towards the recognition of casework need for surveys to aid management, especially in the wake of the greatly enlarged number of SAMs resulting from the progress of the Monument Protection Programme.4 To contribute to the move towards digital graphical products and to clarifying the flowlines for their delivery.5 To log and quantify actual resource use to allow any similar programmes in the future to be more securely planned, and to allow alternative methods of organising and resourcing work to be explored. For the purposes of the trial, surveys were conducted by two teams based in Cambridge and York. A list of target sites was initially drawn up by English Heritage Field Monument Wardens in 1998 and from this a total of 20-30 sites were chosen for inclusion in the pilot. It was anticipated that each individual survey would generate a product with four distinct end-users:1 To English Heritage for casework needs: Survey at OS Basic Scale and updated Monarch record.2 To the National Monuments Record: All archivable products resulting from the pilot.3 To HSIS: Digital graphical product.4 To Ordnance Survey: Digital graphical product. At the conclusion of the project a report is to be compiled to evaluate the methodology and results. ‘National Recording Project' applied to Associated Event Addresses to aid retrieval 2018.