The Newark Project 2019-2022
5th April 2019. ORCA, the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology, have received
£202,000 funding from Historic Environment Scotland for further work on the site.
What we could have done with that - or any - money! And so the Newark Project was
born. October 2019 update.
In 2018 a group from Scottish Coastal Heritage At Risk visited the site, and the
protective sandbagging noticed in 2017 was extended. Historic Environment
Scotland have since been providing more sandbags to be filled locally for more
shoring up sessions. HES also want to have the academic work arising from the
excavations of 50 years ago pulled together and this has resulted in the Newark
Project; over a three year period there will be further research involving mainly
professionals from ORCA at Orkney College along with the Orkney Museum and a
host of volunteers, including “old” diggers. Using the latest technology Deerness
will be able to meet some of the ancestors at last and piece together a lot of its lost
history. This is planned to culminate in 2022 with an exhibition in the Orkney
Museum at Tankerness House in Kirkwall, pulling together all the strands -
archaeological, historical and social - of this complex site. We always knew it was
important!
Don Brothwell, without whom none of this would
have been possible, died in September 2016. You can
also read his entry in Wikipedia.
If you have any documentation, photos or other
memorabilia you wish to share please email me, Sue
Hopkins, at the following address, replacing the word
(at) with @ please: sue(at)hopkinsweb.org.uk
“Fragile” Newark in the news - February/March 2020
Following a savage winter with three named storms, and a constant battering from
tides, rain, and wind - gusts of over 100mph were recorded in the islands - our site
has suffered further erosion. ORCA wrote a blog entry on it and even The Scotsman
picked up the story, closely followed by STV and an American archaeology periodical.
Summer 2022 update
Photos from the Newark Project exhibition and from Newark Bay can be found
here.
February 2022
The Newark Project
This is the title of this summer's exhibition in the Kirkwall Museum in Tankerness
House, which will open on the 14th of May and run through to October. It will
focus on our dig but also look more broadly at the history of the Newark - the
house and its owners - and of Deerness generally.
January 2022 - a recently acquired photo
This is from 1969 and the diggers are obviously on a trip somewhere looking
earnestly at some ancient remains; while definitely not Newark, I wonder where
this is? And do you recognise people in the photo? I can put a name to most of
them, but who is the central figure in the blue jacket and brown trousers?
February 2021
Geoff Bowles has very kindly written a summary of the Newark excavations 1969-
1972 and allowed me to publish it here. His accompanying diagram helps clarify
the relationship between the house, chapel and burials, and the souterrains.
Lockdown #3 - January 2021
Next summer, 2022, is still the end date for the Newark Project’s exhibition in
Tankerness House Museum …
20 November 2020
Our Newark Project gets a mention in this article from The Orcadian: Historic
Environment Scotland funding for Orkney projects
When in lockdown … May 2020
It’s an opportunity to go through old files, and here is a photo of the 1973 diggers
in Mossquoy looking suitably glum. Just noticed the cat! Credit: Trevor James.
Greetings ...
... to any Yorkneyites (Yorcadians?) visiting these
pages dedicated to documenting the York
University dig at Newark Bay, Deerness, Orkney,
carried out between 1968 and 1973. It all began
in 1967 when Sam Berry was at Newark, probably
searching for Orkney voles, and spotted some
bones in the cliff face that he thought his friend
Don Brothwell might be interested in …
1968 saw a group of students from the University
of York begin digging up the chicken run at Mr
Delday's farm at Newark Bay in Deerness in
Orkney; so perhaps it’s about time to see what
was achieved over the six years of the dig, and
what, if any, lasting results were achieved.
… and an apology …
We were a group of undergraduates, mainly
studying English literature, with no previous
knowledge of archaeology, who came to Newark
primarily to find some medieval skeletons to go
to the British Museum under the stewardship of
Don Brothwell, who was at that time head of the
sub-department of Anthropology. In our search
the walls, flagstone floors, graves and their
occupants were all photographed and drawn. We
noticed the shells that appeared to have been
placed around the skeletons, and we guessed
there was a cultural significance. Some of the
graves were outlined with slabs which were
photographed and then discarded; one of these
may have been the Pictish grave slab recently
discovered apparently in some trench backfill.
3D view of Pictish Cross Slab, Deerness, Orkney,
by Dr Hugo Anderson-Whymark.
What evidence from the tunnel and “earth house”
as to their possible use did we overlook and lose?
There was probably a lot that we weren’t trained
to see. So our site is now considered to have
important early religious significance, and
Historic Environment Scotland along with UHI are
considering how best to treat the constantly
eroding cliff face. I have to say that current
archaeologists have so many more resources in
the form of scientific research techniques (and
proper education - and funding apparently)
available to them than we did in the
archaeological dark ages of the 60s.
THE YORKNEY FILES & THE NEWARK PROJECT
The map shown on the header is from the Balfour
Estate archive and shows Newark “old ruins” as a
courtyard house and not z-plan. Map reproduced
with permission of Orkney Library and Archive.