From ephemeral and mysterious prehistoric earthworks to post-industrial landscapes, the Staffordshire Trent Valley holds some of our most enigmatic heritage assets.  Trent Valley Past and Present will investigate these, providing opportunities for groups and individuals to engage with their shared cultural heritage and seek ways in which these can be cared for and preserved for the future. Our landscapes hold a varied range of cultural heritage sites and a diverse historic landscape which will inform and influence our project delivery.  By working in innovative ways, we will develop new and unique approaches to landscape projects that will protect and enhance both the natural and historic environments.  We will work alongside landowners and managers to conserve these interlinked landscapes for future generations.

Trent Valley Past and Present has been awarded funding from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and we acknowledge the strong support that has enabled our project, and thank the National Lottery players for making this possible.

To return to the Trent Valley Cultural Heritage landing page, click here.

Investigating historic graffiti

Working together with the Staffordshire Archaeological and Historical Association (SAHS), we have engaged over 60 volunteers in pilot training to accurately identify and record historic graffiti in some of our oldest remaining buildings.  Although we have not limited ourselves to churches specifically, in practice, the majority of accessible historic buildings are our churches and our discoveries during the pilot project have been fascinating.  From crosses carved on doorways to apotropaic (magical protection) symbols inside and outside of buildings, we have found a wide array of different ways in which our ancestors interacted with sacred buildings.

Daisy-wheel pattern incised into the stonework at King’s Bromley church. Photo credit Mark Knight 2025

This image is of an inscribed ‘daisy wheel’ pattern, made with a compass or similar instrument, and is a six-petalled flower design which falls into the endless knot series of patterns found on church buildings across Europe.  These patterns are thought to have been used to entrap demons or evil spirits within the fabric of the church building itself, thus averting evil.  The one shown here was found on the outside of the church at King’s Bromley.  Many churches were modernised during the Victorian period, however, and the stone may have originally been inside the building, and as good stone, reused elsewhere during refurbishment.

In conjunction with SAHS, we will expand our investigation into our churches in the project area, and where available, other historic buildings.  For further information about our study into historic graffiti, follow this link.

Digitising our past

The late 11th or early 12th century font at the Church of St John the Baptist, Armitage.

Alongside both our specialist volunteers and working with dedicated consultants, we will use a variety of methods to investigate and record elements of our historic landscapes along with our cultural artefacts, including (but not limited to) burial mounds, buildings and other physical remains as planned or opportunities arise.  This will include scanning these features and representing them as they are now, and in some cases recreating them digitally as they might have appeared in the past.  Accurate digital models can be used as a baseline for assessing the current condition of our heritage assets so that management plans can be made for their protection and allow measurement of the efficacy of those plans.  That way we can conduct future surveys and compare them with the baseline to understand their condition.

We will also create pastscapes, interpreting some of our enigmatic lost heritage and creating exciting visualisations of heritage assets that are otherwise invisible to the eye.  These landscape features are often only visible as crop marks in aerial photography, or as vague undulations on the ground.  Virtual representations and interpretations will enable us to grasp their significance more fully.

Geophysics for archaeology

One of our expert geophysicists demonstrating the use of electrical resistivity equipment to our volunteers on a Roman marching camp site. Photo credit: Mark Knight 2022

Using geophysics, conducting electrical resistivity surveys on below-ground archaeological features was a valuable and enjoyable part of the Transforming the Trent Valley scheme.  We were able to ascertain the location and survival of a number of heritage assets, including a Roman marching camp, a Bronze Age burial mound, a possible Neolithic henge that was later used as a burial mound in the Bronze Age and a Roman road.  We worked with Historic England and the National Memorial Arboretum as well as local land managers and farmers to produce some excellent evidence of survival rates.  The results of these surveys provided vital information in the protection of these monuments and informed management strategies for their future.

Our volunteers were at the forefront of this work, and our specialists provided opportunities which included people from local communities that otherwise might never have the chance to engage this kind of archaeological investigation or with their own cultural heritage in these ways.

We plan to continue with this exciting work and will involve groups and individuals in getting to grips with this valuable method of understanding our unseen heritage.

For more information on our previous work, follow the links from the main cultural heritage page.

Folklore, mythology, and intangible cultural heritage

In a world of seemingly ever increasing homogeneity, finding ways to remind ourselves of our uniqueness in the world are invaluable to our sense of place and our individual identities.  One of these ways is through investigating our intangible cultural heritage.  Intangible cultural heritage includes our local folklore and mythology, our songs or our dialect, the stories that we tell of ourselves that create our local distinctiveness, that make our places – and us – unique.

Trisentona river goddess sculpture at Croxall Lakes. Photo credit: Mark Knight 2024

We will engage with local groups and individuals to research their own past and share some of those results here.  These histories are not always old; stories are created and morph into new versions with each generation.  Others are truly ancient and are barely remembered or passed on orally.  Part of our task will be to work with local communities and individuals to record these and to find ways to interpret these stories for future generations.

These interpretations might be oral recordings, or new works of art in the landscape, finding ways to create a sense of place that reflects those ephemeral histories and shared identities.

Staffordshire tithe maps

An example of a tithe map from the 1840s. Copyright Staffordshire Past Track

A tithe map study will be led by the Institute of Names Studies (INS) at the University of Nottingham. Working with the INS we will train volunteers in the harvesting and data collection techniques required to be able to interpret and use the place and field name information from the Staffordshire Trent Valley tithe maps. Staffordshire Wildlife Trust is working to improve green spaces and brownfield sites within rural and urban environments, and to reconnect watercourses to their floodplains in order to help with flood risk management and habitat creation. We have seen how names can provide evidence, for example, for historic water-meadows, and that they can alert us to the possibility of archaeological remains. This can both guide the choice of sites for restoration, and also allow for the protection of the historic environment during work to improve the natural environment.

Landowner liaison

COSMIC+ investigation conducted during TTTV. Photo credit: Mark Knight 2023

We will work collaboratively with landowners and custodians to explore opportunities for halting or reversing the damage to heritage. This will involve research and a detailed understanding of the issues to establish a broad approach to conserving heritage at risk. Using the learning from our citizen science programme and other research conducted under TTTV and other projects, we can establish a discipline that can be used to protect sites in the future. This could include Conservation Covenants to encourage different land management, seeking alternative uses for assets, or establishing a set of principles for natural heritage projects to follow. We will utilise the passion and skills of local communities and support them to become part of the solution.