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When archaeologists are pitched against developers, it may be the buyer who pays, writes Max Davidson. From The Daily Telegraph, 27th February 1999.
Watch out, there's an archaeologist about! He may look harmless, but give him half a chance and he will hit you where it hurts -- in the pocket.
That, in crude terms, is the experience of property developer Keith Hawtree. Property developers have such an unappealing image compared with archaeologists that it would be futile to try to enlist sympathy on hawtree's behalf. But his experiences at Fringford in Oxfordshire are symptomatic of the changing face of property development -- and could have implications for people wanting to buy new homes.
When Brandon Gate Homes, Hawtree's company, bought a one and a half acre site from a local landowner in 1997, they knew that an archaeological investigation would be needed before development could take place as the are around Fringford has a rich archaeological history. Permission to develop the plot was originally refused and only granted on aplication to the Department of the Environment.
What took Hawtree -- and everyone else -- by surprise was the scale of the archaeological investigation. The work was carried out by the Oxford Archaeological Unit under the direction of Paul Blinkhorn. Given the history of the village, the archaeologists thought they might find material from the Roman period. When they came across the remains of a medieval village, they got very excited.
Nothing similar had been found in the are and, although the remains were not substantal, they afforded clues to the life of the village in the 13th and 14th centuries. One house excavated appears to have been the home of the farrier -- a fact commemorated when the site of the new development was called Farriers Close.
How important are the finds? Opinions differ. Blinkhorn, naturally, is enthusiastic. Information about daily life in England during this period is sketchy, so the fragnebts unearthed at Fringford were like pieces of a continually evolving jigsaw.
Hawtree, equally naturally, is sceptical. "I would not have minded if they found had found the tomb of Tutankhamen," he told me. "But who cares that a farrier lived here 600 years ago?"
The two men never came to blows: indeed Blinkhorn spoke warml of how cooperative the developer had been. But they were clearly, as the saying goes, coming from very different directions. How long before we read of the first case of archaeology rage -- a spade-wielding academic being mowed down by a developer in a bulldozer?
What is undisputed is the cost of the work--fifty thousand pounds. Archaeologists have to earn their crust like everyone else and, with up to 20 people employed on the site, costs escalted during a three month period. Under a special contractual arrangement, the bill was shared between Brandon Gate Homes and the original owner of the land. But as Keith Hawtree points out, most of it was ultimately borne by the purchasers of the four new homes which were built on the site -- at prices ranging from 275,000 pounds to 385,000 pounds.
The new owners could obviously afford the surcharge or they would not have bought their properties. But the prospect of running up such a huge bill on a relatively small site is enough to give property developers, not to mention those who sell land for development, food for thought.
"It is a sign of the times," says Jason Hill of FDS Savills in Oxford. "With the Government curtailing development on green field sites, more and more development is going to take place in and around towns. Those are also the sites most likely to contain features of archaeological interest." He cites another recent case, in Brackley, where a site adjoining old alms-houses was sold for development. Again, it was quite a small site, housing 14 cottages, but the cost of the archaeological investigation, even though nothing significant was found, rose to 8000 pounds. On this occasion, the owner of the land had the work done, and paid for it, before selling it to developers.
All is quiet now in Fringford. The archaeologists have left. The medievalvillage has been built over. Four spanking new homes await occupation. And if Brandon Gate Homes are about to go bankrupt, there is no sign of it. Another of their houses is going up in the next field and the company hoardings which little the area bear the legend "More land required". Perhaps Hawtree's hard-luck story does not merit a tear after all.
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