More than 1,000 visitors attended Viking Link’s interactive archaeology events in Lincolnshire

More than 1,000 visitors have attended a series of Lincolnshire events to find out more about the area’s hidden past.

 

The three interactive drop-in events were held in Boston, Spilsby and Lincoln to showcase a series of Roman and Anglo-Saxon objects found during work to build National Grid’s Viking Link Interconnector.

 

The events took place over a three-day period and gave visitors the opportunity to handle objects including pottery and jewellery and talk to experts about the items discovered beneath Lincolnshire soil.

 

They were held in conjunction with the Council for British Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology. This is an annual UK-wide festival, during which events take place across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Attendees including councillors, residents and visitors to the area were able to get a glimpse of life in Anglo-Saxon times by using virtual reality headsets to explore the inside of a Saxon house.

 

As part of Viking Link’s construction, the project team worked with archaeology experts who carried out a number of detailed surveys along the planned cable route and converter site location.

 

The team from Viking Link along with experts from both Wessex Archaeology and Headland Archaeology were at the event to explain the findings.

 

Artefacts found during the works were carefully recovered.  These include Roman and Anglo-Saxon items found at Bicker Fen, the village where the cable now joins the UK’s National Transmission System.

 

Experts also uncovered an Anglo-Saxon burial site and the remains of 16 adults, four teenagers and two children were excavated. Scientific analyses to take place in the future will include radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis.  A short film inspired by the site including the elements of the excavation process has been made and clips of this will be shown on National Grid’s social media accounts.

 

Archaeologists also found evidence of Roman occupation at the site with surveys showing a system of wide deep ditches defining fields and activity areas and animal bone assemblage showing that people at the time kept animals onsite including cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, and chickens.

 

 A wealth of Roman pottery was recovered from the area and using this to date the features shows that the site was primarily in use from the mid-2nd century AD onwards extending into the 4th century.

 

Archaeologists also found evidence of an Anglo-Saxon agricultural landscape at Bicker Fen with sweeping curved ditches that enclosed areas of land. Although these areas look very different from the Roman archaeology, they also reinforce the area’s historic link to farming.

 

Peter Bryant from Viking Link said: “The events have been a huge success and it has been fantastic to welcome so many people keen to find out more about the area’s hidden past.”

 

Construction of Viking Link electricity interconnector started in 2019 and during the work, engineers have laid over 40 miles of land cable through Lincolnshire stretching from Sutton-on-Sea to the project’s converter site at Bicker Fen.

 

The cable runs for 475 miles under land and sea to join Bicker Fen with the Danish village of Revsing. Once complete, it will enable the countries to share enough green energy to power up to 1.4 million UK homes. National Grid also has five other interconnectors linking the UK with France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. To find out more about Viking Link visit www.viking-link.com