The Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund

The Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF) was introduced as a two-year pilot scheme in 2002 to provide funds to help address the environmental costs of aggregate extraction. English Heritage, along with English Nature and the Countryside Agency, is a major distributor of the Fund on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Amongst the projects funded in 2002 were three in the Romney Marsh area, where the complex interplay between natural processes and human endeavour that influences landscape evolution are being explored. A total of around £272,000 was allocated:

• Medieval Adaptation, Settlement and Economy at Coastal Wetland: the evidence from around Lydd. University College, London, will synthesise the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence of medieval settlement, land use and modification of the landscape, using the considerable body of data produced by developer-funded archaeological work that has been conducted in the area.
• The Evolution of the Port of Rye: undertaken by the University of Durham, aims to develop a model for the evolution of Rye over the last 3000 years, showing the shifting balance between natural and human processes as agents of landscape change.
• The Evolution and Landscape History of Dungeness Foreland: also by the University of Durham, seeks to assess the age and depositional history of the gravel beaches. The project has assessed a transect of boreholes drilled through the gravel deposits and a dating programme using OSL (optical stimulated luminescence) has been undertaken to determine the minimum age for deposition of the most recent gravels. Deposits overlying the gravels are being examined for plant and animal microfossils and dating evidence obtained to provide details of how the environments that developed after gravel deposition changed through time.
• Also funded in Kent was the Listening Devices at Denge project, where Wright Consulting Engineers Ltd received just over £90,000 to help save these three scheduled ancient monuments. Built for the acoustic detection of enemy aircraft, their reinforced concrete parabolic mirrors were redundant by the outbreak of the Second World War due to the introduction of radar. The first mirror was built in 1928 and was 20 foot tall, followed by a more advanced 30 foot mirror with listening room and finally a 200 foot acoustic wall by 1930. Gravel extraction progressively encroached upon the structures and left them all but isolated as an island within lakes formed by quarrying. The structural stability of two of the devices has been seriously affected and undercutting by wave action has undermined one end of the wall.

The project has two phases, the ALSF having provided funding for the first phase which will stabilise the lake edge around the structures and carry out essential repairs to their concrete. Access to them will be controlled for health and safety reasons, to minimise vandalism and to avoid disturbance to resident birds (the site is also a national Nature Reserve, Special Landscape Area and SSSI amongst other designations). This will be achieved by cutting the access causeways in two places, one of the cuts having a lockable swing bridge for use in future maintenance and repairs and to allow organized visits to continue. Phase 2 will see on-site interpretation, signage and footpath works, with EC Interreg funds secured towards this.

Information taken from the ALSF Annual Report 2002-2003. For further details of the ALSF Scheme: www.english-heritage.org.uk or contact Archaeology Commissions, English Heritage, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET.

The Listening Ears - the acoustic detection devices at Denge.