Barrow Offshore Windfarm, Middleton Sands, Heysham, Lancashire. Walkover Survey and Environmental Sampling.

Abstract

Following an environmental assessment (Wessex Archaeology 2002), Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) was commissioned by RSK ENSR Environment Limited to undertake a programme of archaeological fieldwork along the overland route of an electric cable (NGR 3435 4610 – 3405 4575) associated with the proposed Barrow Offshore Windfarm, 21.8 kilometres off the western coast of Lancaster. Electricity cabling between the windfarm and a substation at Heysham passes under the sea and onto Middleton Sands, Morecambe Bay. The archaeological fieldwork was undertaken from 9th to 11th February 2005 to take advantage of a period of extreme low tides and comprised two stages: firstly, a total of eleven palaeoenvironmental sampling cores, up to 1.5m deep, were taken at roughly 100m intervals along the cable route on the intertidal foreshore, which was also the subject of a rapid walkover; secondly, a 100m wide corridor either side of the adjoining dry-land cable route, c3km in length, was subjected to a level 1 walkover survey. Previous archaeological work in the area indicated the presence of features dated from the early prehistoric period through to the modern period (Wessex Archaeology 2002), but only a limited number of features were observed during the dry-land walkover survey. This is likely to be a consequence of present day land-use and former landscaping, which has served to obliterate or conceal any archaeological remains within the dry-land walkover area. As a result of the coring and the intertidal walkover, no alluvial clay/peat deposits or palaeochannels were evident on the route of the cable; therefore, no further palaeoenvironmental investigations are recommended.