Newsletters

Welcome to Reclaim Rewind! This quarterly newsletter will keep you up to date with everything that we’ve been up to over the past few months.

Click here to subscribe to our newsletter!

Reclaim Rewind: Spring 2026

The dig at Windy Ridge, survey at Grantham, and keeping busy in the office…

This spring has been busy for us and we’ve managed to move with the weather, enjoying excavations in the sunshine and getting stuck into reports and other projects when it’s been a bit less pleasant outside…

The fieldwork season is just starting to ramp up, and we’ve got plenty of exciting projects lined up this summer!

Whaddon’s War: The Dig at Windy Ridge

Our biggest event from the spring was the community excavation at Windy Ridge in the small village of Whaddon, just outside Milton Keynes. This was funded by the charity NSIST, a relatively new charity who work to preserve civilian and military signals intelligence heritage. We were joined by volunteers from the charity, locals from the village, and a few students who all got stuck in and helped us uncover the secrets of this former WW2 radio station.

The base at Windy Ridge was an important link in the chain in the transmission of deciphered enemy intelligence during WW2. Its proximity to Bletchley Park and its elevation above the surrounding area made it the perfect spot to relay messages to commanders in the field.

   The excavation formed part of a wider scheme of investigation that began in March with a targeted GPR survey in the centre of the site. The placement of trenches was determined by these survey results and helped to ground truth the anomalies the GPR revealed. Combining the geophysical survey with targeted excavation and aerial photography from just after the war, we were able to increase our understanding of what the site looked like during WW2. During the dig, we undertook further surveys with GPR and a CAT and Genny to trace the cables and other services across the landscape, building a picture of a larger complex with numerous buildings connected to the village and further afield.

Despite the searing heat at the start of the second week, our volunteers were unphased and we were able to gather more evidence to help us understand how the site fits into the wider intelligence story of WW2. We held an open weekend at the site on the May bank holiday weekend, where members of the public were able to come and see how the dig was progressing. A crew of radio reenactors came for the weekend, alongside a group of metal detectorists from Digging History UK. One of these detectorists came across a pin depicting the Three Monkeys, a symbol of the Royal Signals – a direct link with the servicemen and women who worked at Windy Ridge!

  Windy Ridge is just one part of Whaddon’s role in this story, and we hope to be back in the village before too long. Keep an eye on our social media pages and on the NSIST website for more information about what we found at Windy Ridge and dates for any future digs!

Survey in Grantham

Earlier in spring, we were out in Grantham completing a GPR survey on a green space in the centre of the town called St Peter’s Hill. Funded by the Grantham Civic Society, the survey aimed to identify a number of archaeological features, including the old chapel of St Peter and potentially the base of an Eleanor Cross. We spoke to members of the public about the work, the technology, and what we hoped to find. Read more about the survey here.

   Lincoln Cathedral

When the British weather kept us in the office, we’ve been kept busy writing up reports from earlier work, including the report for the interior GPR survey at Lincoln Cathedral. We’ve also been working on digitising sections of the exterior of the cathedral, using photogrammetry, laser scans, and CAD software.

Upcoming from Reclaim Heritage

  • We’ll be up at Selby Abbey in mid-June completing an exterior GPR survey on some of the green space around the building.
  • We’ve got some other GPR and magnetometry surveys lined up over the summer in some exciting locations!

Interesting events you should know about:

Lincolnshire
  • Thursday 11th June, 7:30pm, Welton Village Hall – ‘The People of Welton-le-Wold and King John‘- by Christopher North – run by North Thoresby History Society – admission £3
  • Wednesday 17th June, 6:30pm, Waterstones, High Street, Lincoln – ‘Devils in the Details – An Evening of Lincolnshire Folklore’ – Rory Waterman discusses his new book on the folklore of the county –ticket only £5, book & ticket £16
  • Wednesday 1st July, 10:30am, St Mary’s Church, Broughton – ‘Treasures of North Lincolnshire’, a tour of three remarkable North Lincolnshire churches with Dr Kevin Leahy and other local guides – run by SLHA – tickets £20, £16 for members.
  • Saturday 15th August, 10am, Welton Village Hall – ‘Catherine’s Conference‘, a full-day event to celebrate the life of Catherine Wilson OBE, features talks on her contributions to museums and heritage, and speakers on Lincolnshire farm buildings, windmills, and natural history – run by SLHA – admission (with lunch) £34, £26 for members.
  • Thursday 3rd September, 2:00pm, Lincoln Central Library – ‘The History of Royal Air Force Digby‘, Charles Parker – run by SLHA, – admission £4. 
Online

Reclaim Rewind: Winter 2025

Lincoln Cathedral survey, talks in the local area, and helping church communities…

This winter has been packed with survey projects, taking us around Lincoln and the wider county.

You probably saw us on BBC Look North in January, talking about the exciting interior ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey in Lincoln Cathedral that we started in December last year. Here’s their article in case you missed it.

We finished off areas in the cloister this year that were previously inaccessible due to the works on the Wren Library, meaning that most of the interior of the Cathedral has now been surveyed. This is the largest interior GPR survey ever done in the UK. We hope to uncover evidence of the previous Romanesque church and perhaps structures from even earlier…

Alongside this, we continued our surveying efforts on the green spaces around the Cathedral. The paved and cobbled area in front of the cathedral was completely surveyed, with Chris answering the many questions from the public on the busy Saturday that the survey took place (mostly asking what the hell he was doing with that lawnmower). These surveys combine with that of the South Green of the Cathedral from May 2025.

You can see the results of the South Green survey here, which shows curious arrangement of burials, and hints of potential Roman structures. This work also shows the applicability of our GPR techniques in cemetery contexts, which we are already using to benefit local communities.

Outside of Lincoln itself, we’ve also been working with local church communities, putting GPR equipment to use to help uncover their histories, and for more practical reasons too. In January, we went out to All Saints’ Church in Nocton, to the south-east of Lincoln. We surveyed about a third of the interior of the beautiful 19th-Century church to help confirm the existence of an underground tomb that is causing structural issues in the church.

Upcoming from Reclaim Heritage

  • Keep an eye out for the results from the Cathedral interior survey early this year…
  • In May, we’re running a small excavation on a WW2 site in Whaddon near Milton Keynes with the charity NSIST.
  • We’ll be out and about in Lincoln, continuing to survey the green spaces around the Cathedral, and elsewhere, tackling issues for local communities.

Interesting events you should know about:

Lincolnshire
Online