A Stony Situation

With a very busy summer coming to an end, you might expect life at the Roman Baths to quieten down a little - but things couldn’t be further from the truth! The Archway Project is in full swing, with some preliminary excavations in the vault beneath York Street in central Bath already unearthing some exciting surprises.

Archaeologists at work in the York Street vault

When the Archway building works under York Street are completed and the new Investigation Zone is opened to the public, it will be filled with Roman stones from the site as part of the interpretation and display. The Collections team and our volunteers have undertaken the laborious task of recording hundreds of stones, some previously unidentified and many untouched since their discovery by the Victorians.

Identifying stones at our offsite store 

With all hands on deck and a crack team from Cliveden Conservation, who lifted, weighed and sometimes turned each stone individually, we recorded 202 stones with weights going up to 620kg in just 10 days!

Cliveden Conservation lifting and weighing a stone from the Roman Baths

In that time, Cotswold Archaeology joined us for three days to create a 3D photogrammetric record of 15 specific stones. This involved taking hundreds of photographs of each stone from every angle possible in order to create a digital 3D model that can be examined in minute detail, rotated and moved around with ease on a screen. The chosen stones will be used in an app for schoolchildren to identify specific types of Roman building blocks and manipulate them on screen, learning more about Roman building and how the Roman Baths may once have looked.

Photogrammetry in action!

The results of this work will also be incredibly helpful as a conservation record for our collection, showing the stones in a way that allows us to easily examine, compare and move them around without having to physically lift these huge blocks again! Our plan is to produce a 3D model of every stone that we have been examining, and with this technology at our fingertips continue to learn more about our incredible site for years to come!

A sea of stones, recorded, weighed and identified

For more information about the Archway Project go to our website and keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates as they happen!


Zofia
Collections Assistant