Planned Events

Meetings Programme 2019-20

All meetings are in the Lowndes Room, Chesham Town Hall, Chesham on the third Friday of the month. They begin at 8.00 pm, and are open to both members and non-members. For speaker events, members pay £2 and visitors £4. The Open Evening includes refreshments and is £4 to all attendees.

Friday, 18th October 2019

The Monks Graveyard excavation: Finding a Lost Abbot at the Abbey Church and Cathedral of St Albans.       Ross Lane of Canterbury Archaeological Trust 

Ross will talk to us about the Trust’s work and key findings in 2017-18 at the Abbey Church and Cathedral of St Alban ahead of the construction of a new visitor, education and welcome centre.

Friday 15th November 2019

LIDAR – The New illuminating the Past.         Andy McGrandle, Director of Big Anomaly, and Lidar Expert

The topography of the UK landscape was traditionally been measured by teams of Ordnance Survey surveyors, but is now defined in great detail by a countrywide program of LIDAR laser scanning. Andy’s talk shows how LIDAR data is acquired and what it can show us, by reference to a small village in north Buckinghamshire. Here, this high-resolution data is being used to reveal long-forgotten features seen on maps of the area from the late 1700s.

Friday 17^th January 2020

A Very Secret War: Latimer House and Bugging the Nazis.         Helen Fry, Historian and Author.

Latimer House was once described as ‘a very secret place’. It was here in WW2 that British Intelligence bugged the conversations of German prisoners-of-war. Helen will describe how this secret operation against Nazi Germany gathered masses of intelligence that helped to win the war.

Friday 21^st February 2020

Archaeology and HS2.      Jay Carver Lead Archaeologist, Fusion, working on behalf of HS2.

The largest archaeology programme ever undertaken in the UK is now underway along the line of the HS2 route. More than 1,000 archaeologists, specialists, scientists and conservators will be exploring and recording over 60 archaeological sites for the project, revealing 10,000 years of British history. Jay will describe the scope of the project and what has been discovered so far.

Friday 20^th March 2020.

Open Evening.

Society members will talk about our activities and discoveries during the past year. Refreshments (wine, soft drinks and snacks) will be provided.

Friday 17th April

AGM and President’s Talk.

Archaeology Field Group Programme 2019

In 2018 we had a successful dig at the Frith Hill medieval site, as described in Latest News. We have applied to do more work at Frith Hill in 2019, but are unlikely to have feedback from Historic England until later in the year, owing to staff shortages and changes at that organisation. Other locations are being explored which will provide us with further projects during 2019, including investigation of some unusual landscape features near Little Missenden, and further work at the Romano-British site at Latimer. Details will be provided, when known, to interested CVAHS members.

Participants in all digs must be CVAHS members. If you are interested, but not yet a member, please contact CVAHS via this web site to confirm details of how to participate.

On our digs, we welcome people with experience and also novices - training in survey, excavation and recording techniques is given. For those who find digging difficult, there is valuable work to do on post-excavation cleaning, analysis and recording of finds.