Aims:

Improve access to the Historic Environment Record for the public, school children and scholars of all kinds

Objectives:

Drawing together the various strands of the Record into themes and period topics, removing technical language and jargon to make the descriptions more comprehensible, adaptation of existing and additional data for Intranet and Internet access, piloting work packages with schools across Tyne and Wear, creating an interactive CD-ROM for educational purposes.

Project Details and Outcomes:

As the most up to date and detailed record of the known and potential heritage resource, the Historic Environment Record is an essential source of information for planning, conservation, countryside management and academic research. However until recently it remained under-used by the wider public, being relatively inaccessible and rather difficult to use by the layperson.

Lottery funding was granted to increase access to this information by making it much easier to use and making it available over the internet. The project was undertaken by a consortium comprising of Tyne and Wear Specialist Conservation Team (who manage the HER), Newcastle City Council’s Planning and Transportation Division, Tyne and Wear Museums and the University of Newcastle Museum of Antiquities with the help and assistance of the city and district councils of Tyne and Wear.

January 2005 saw the launch of the Sitelines project. The main part of the two year programme to make the large amounts of information held on the Historic Environment Record available to the widest audience, was focussed on making the data available over the web. This can be approached through a simple word search, by place, date or type and will reveal information about the sites and monuments, give a map of the site as it is today, and also as it looked on the mid nineteenth century First Edition Ordnance Survey Map. The sites are supplemented with additional linking information such as simple village histories and themes that might be used in the National Curriculum.

A further development was the creation of the CD-ROM based on a tour of historic Newcastle “The Trail of the Medieval Knight”. This was piloted by pupils of Wellfield Middle School, and proved very popular. The CD-ROM provides full teachers notes and supporting information, like maps of the routes and information on the places visited, all linked to themes relevant to Key Stages in the National Curriculum.  

It was the inclusion of these curriculum based projects incorporating the Historic Environment Record database into pupils’ learning, which made Sitelines different from many other Lottery-funded HER schemes.

You can log onto the Sitelines website to see the following learning resources:

• “The Trail of the Newcastle Knight” – using Sitelines, research Newcastle’s medieval history and follow a trail to see many surviving medieval sites in the city centre (Key Stage 3)
• “Hadrian’s Wall Challenge” – have a go at working out where this world famous monument runs through Tyneside. Through geographical investigation try to find the Wall’s route across the Ouseburn Valley. Archaeologists have yet to find it… can you? (Key Stage 2 & 3)
• “Washing-Line Challenge” provides an interesting and fun way to investigate the history of the area surrounding your school (Key Stage 2)
• “Using Co-ordinates” allows pupils to develop geographical skills through the understanding of co-ordinates by using historical sites in Tyne and Wear (Key Stage 2)

To find out more about these projects and others locate the “Teaching Resources” page at:

 http://museums.ncl.ac.uk/sitelines