Excavations at Oldbury Camp are part of a much bigger project exploring the natural and cultural heritage of the low-lying land beside the River Severn.
A Forgotten Landscape is a large-scale natural and cultural heritage project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund Landscape Partnership Scheme. It aims to conserve and enhance the Lower Severn Vale Levels, while improving community access to and engagement with the area’s unique natural and cultural heritage.
The Lower Severn Vale Levels is an area of low-lying floodplain along the shore of the Severn Estuary. The landscape boasts big skies; a sense of light and vast open space with two colossal white bridges spanning the silt-laden tides of the Severn Estuary. It is a landscape full of dynamic, dramatic beauty and panorama; and hidden within this is the human story of interaction with the land that has shaped the distinctive landscape we see today. Habitats include river estuary, saltmarsh, orchard and grassland alongside highly industrial areas and suburbs on the edge of Bristol – in them all lie a wealth of wildlife, geology, history and archaeology just waiting to be discovered.
And that’s where DigVentures comes in. As archaeologists who specialise in publicly-funded digs that anyone can join in with, we’ll be leading the excavation at Oldbury Camp.
The dig team brings together DigVentures’ own professional archaeologists, members of the DigVentures community, and people who live in the surrounding area who want to try archaeology, and help uncover the story of Oldbury Camp.
