It isn’t just the countryside and its residents that are suffering due to HS2 (‘It’s been beyond difficult’: earthworks of HS2 take toll on Chilterns residents, 2 October). The high-speed rail contractor has recently done considerable damage to potential archaeology on the nationally important registered battlefield at Edgcote, a Wars of the Roses battle fought in 1469.
HS2 stripped 30cm of soil from an area equivalent to around 16 football pitches to allow storage of hundreds of thousands of tons of earth dug out along the route of the new railway. The archaeology of battle sits in the topsoil and understanding its distribution is key. HS2’s contractor undertook a geophysical survey prior to work beginning. But this method is not designed to find the types of small artefacts typically found on a medieval battlefield. If it had used a systematic metal-detecting survey instead, such material would not have been lost.
