Derby-England - Adrian Farnsworth

Fact File Name Adrian Farnsworth Product Vue d'Esprit

Adrian Farnsworth developed this technique in order to look at archaeological features on aerial photographs in their landscape settings. His model consists
of a computer terrain generated from information on a local contour map, overlayed with an aerial photograph of the region he lives in, Derby-England.

Creating Archeological Landscapes with Vue d'Esprit!

For the last couple of years I have been using Vue D'esprit to build models of the local landscape. These are overlayed with aerial photographs. I use these models in my search for unknown archaeological features. Vertical aerials are invaluable in landscape archaeology, but adding the third dimension, with the ability to view the images from any angle, greatly enhances my ability to spot features.

Some months ago I was asked to create a Vue image of the junction of several Roman roads in a park in Derby, overlaid on the modern landscape, for a local museum. This led to many hours in the park studying the ground, to work out the fine detail of the junction. One morning, on one of these rambles, my dad mentioned that it had been proposed that a road may lead directly north from this junction, but that no evidence for it had ever been found, and so it was just speculation. The area to the north of the park is now heavily built on, and before that the fields had all been enclosed in the mid eighteenth century, destroying the old field patterns.

That evening, I was back in the park, sitting on a bank which could have been the beginnings of this hypothetical road, just before it all vanished under housing. It was a nice evening, and I sat there for some time thinking about where such a road might go. I realised, quite suddenly, that in my bag was an image, a piece of data, that no-one had ever had access to before. It was a Vue image of the valley to the north of the park, overlaid with a field plan from 1737. I didn't expect to see anything, but I took it out the bag and had a look just to see. I was astounded to see a line of field boundaries marching north from the park, right to the edge of the image. This line is marked by the three yellow and green dots on the attached picture.
This was evidence, but only slight, so I headed home. I wanted to look at the existing fields to the north of my picture. Expecting nothing, I started up the computer and had a look. I nearly fell off my chair. There was the line, marching across the landscape to Duffield, some miles north of Derby.
I have spent the last few months surveying this route and examining old documents. Many many pieces of evidence have turned up, a great deal of information has been gathered, and this is still ongoing. A report will be published in the near future, when a few other leads have been checked. However, it is virtually certain that the road exists, as we have found it. My son and myself spent time walking the route and examining every bit of ground. Except for one field. Just one field. On every trip, we were just too tired when we got to this field, and never checked it. So, a couple of weeks ago, I went out to look in this last field. Once again, life was being life. In this last field, the very last field, it was there, clear as day, the Roman road actually survived in the ground. Standing in this field it can be seen clearly. It only remained to put a trench to finally confirm this road.

Here's a picture of the actual road: It runs directly away from the camera, the cyclist is in the centre of the camber. If you look, you can see the ditches on either side.

Anyway, thanks e-on software, if not for that picture in my bag that evening, I would never have found this. It turns out that the very field containing the clear remains of the road had been surveyed by archaeologist some years ago, and the road was missed - because they were looking for medieval fields, not Roman roads.
This is one of four important sites found by browsing Vue models.



The aerial image overlayed on this Vue landscape is an extract from The Millennium Mapä which is © getmapping.com plc. UK phone 01530 518562, Getmapping plc, The Old Toy Factory, 10 The Business Park, Jackson Street, Coalville, Leicestershire, LE67 3NR, UK.' http://www.getmapping.com
Pictures can be purchased from Getmapping.
In addition, whole English counties from the same survey can be brought at a good resolution for only twenty pounds uk each from: http://www.highinthesky.com uk phone 01256 700067 (Koch Publishing).