News and events
News
Coronavirus update: Car parks closed at Caistor Roman Town and Burgh Castle Fort
In line with government and police advice to stay local and observe social distancing, the car park at Caistor Roman Town will be closed from today (Wednesday 1 April), until further notice. The car park at Burgh Castle Fort has already been closed. Please check our...
Coronavirus update: Burgh Castle Fort car park closure
In the light of local concerns about the high number of visitors continuing to drive to Burgh Castle Fort, NAT will regretfully be closing the car park there from this evening (Friday 27 March 2020), until further notice, to discourage travel. This is in line with...
Coronavirus update: guided tours and school visits cancelled
In light of the current coronavirus crisis Norfolk Archaeological Trust has taken the decision to cancel our volunteer-led guided tours and schools activities which were programmed to start at Burgh Castle Fort, Caistor Roman Town and St Benet’s Abbey at Easter. This...
New book on Burnham Norton Friary
A new book Burnham Norton Friary: Perspectives on the Carmelites in Norfolk, to be published in December 2019, draws together recent research on the Friary, covering aspects of archaeology, landscape, history, geography, architectural history and medieval history. The...
Conservation repairs at Burgh Castle Roman Fort starting November 2019
Later this month English Heritage will be carrying out repairs to conserve some of the steep banks that surround the Roman walls of the monument at Burgh Castle Fort. Although NAT owns the Roman Fort site, the upstanding walls are in the guardianship of English...
Images of St Benet’s Abbey – an exhibition
2019 marks 1,000 years since the establishment of St Benet's Abbey. Situated between the Rivers Ant and Bure, this icon of the Norfolk Broads is a magical site, and one that has attracted artists for many centuries. Come and find out more about the history of the site...
Seahenge: A Journey
Most of human history is, in fact, prehistoric. That is, before the Romans, our ancestors lived in societies that did not write things down. To find these ancestors we have to look across our landscapes, gather data, and use our imaginations. Sky widens, and the chain...
Back to the Anglo-Saxons
As NAT members will know, as part of the Heritage Lottery funded Imagined Land project last year, people living near Burnham Norton friary came together and dug test-pits, which produced all sorts of material, from medieval pottery through to pennies from the 1980s!...
St Benet’s Abbey: 1000 years!
2019 is the 1000th year since the foundation of St Benet’s Abbey – quite an amazing thought, and well worth celebrating. The Friends of St Benet’s Abbey (TFoSBA) are taking forward an ambitious Heritage Lottery-funded project this year which will explore the long...
Onwards and Upwards Project 2018-2020
Onwards & Upwards National Lottery funded project to create a sustainable future for monuments in NAT's care. In 2018 Norfolk Archaeological Trust received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant. Made possible by National Lottery players, the grant of £178,500...
The bigger (and better) picture
One of the most enjoyable parts of my work is inspecting our sites, which Natasha and I do on a regular basis. On these visits we look out for any health and safety issues which might affect our visitors – such as eye-level branches and twigs across paths (I always...
Burgh Castle Boardwalk improves access for all at the Roman Fort
The new boardwalk - officially opened this week by Mark Cocker, locally-based author and naturalist - is an impressive 600metres long and runs alongside the reedbeds adjacent to the River Waveney at Burgh Castle Roman Fort. Previously, a wheelchair audit for Norfolk...
Events
Coronavirus update: guided tours and school visits cancelled
In light of the current coronavirus crisis Norfolk Archaeological Trust has taken the decision to cancel our volunteer-led guided tours and schools activities which were programmed to start at Burgh Castle Fort, Caistor Roman Town and St Benet’s Abbey at Easter. This...
Burgh Castle Almanac Project at the Waveney Valley Sculpture Trail
The Burgh Castle Almanac group has created an installation which will be on display at the Waveney Valley Sculpture Trail opening on Friday August 2. Burgh Castle Almanac is an archaeology and mental health project where a group of local people walk with intent at...
St Benet’s Abbey 1000 years! events in August
Celebrations of 1000 years of St Benet’s Abbey continue during August with a free exhibition at St Catherine’s Church Ludham. After your visit to the exhibition, don’t miss a visit to the Abbey where you can see larger-than-life willow sculptures of monks hurrying...
Tide Jetty – Theatre at Burgh Castle
Eastern Angles Bring Theatre to Burgh Castle Fort 22nd – 25th May After a successful tour across the East of England, Eastern Angles Theatre Company are bringing their production of The Tide Jetty by Tony Ramsay to Burgh Castle Fort this May. The show is a love story...
Caistor Roman Town tours
Guided tours 2019 Free guided tours take place at Caistor Roman Town at 14:30 on Sundays from 28 April – 29 September. Additional tours on Wednesday afternoons (14.30) during August. Meet at the shelter in the Car Park. The tours are free but donations are welcome –...
Burgh Castle Tours
Free tours are led by NAT volunteers throughout June, July August and September, 14.30 pm on Sundays, weather permitting. No need to book: meet your volunteer guide at the interpretation shelter next to the main car park. Tours are free but donations are welcome -...
Norfolk Archaeological Trust blog
Something ageless in difficult times
I thought this month a poem might be the best solution to the problem of what to write in these difficult and disrupted times. Here's a poem by Thomas Hardy that touches on the ancient and the personal, through a memory of the Roman road of his childhood landscape....
Time to get involved?
Now that spring is definitely on its way – the blackthorn blossoming, the ewes appearing at some of our sites – we are starting to gear up for the coming season of school visits and guided tours. These activities at Burgh Castle Fort, St Benet’s Abbey and Caistor...
Hedges for wildlife
It's the time of year when hedges and trees are surveyed and maintained at our sites. Hedgerows are key semi-natural habitats for wildlife and so it’s important that we manage them well. Last week I and a NAT trustee attended a special hedgerow walk organised by FWAG...
Search and Rescue
At this time of year, we're likely to hear about search and rescue teams helping walkers and climbers lost or injured in the mountainous regions such as the Cairngorms or caught in winter storms off the coast. The relatively flat and cultivated countryside of Norfolk...
Burgh Castle Almanac – a view from the ground
This month’s blog is written by John Durrant who is taking part in the Burgh Castle Almanac, a project focused on historic landscapes and mental wellbeing. More about this project can be found at the almanac website: https://burghcastlealmanac.org/ Hello everyone, I...
Monuments and Climate – exploring change
‘Some day it looks as if the priory is rising out of the ground!’ At a recent meeting at Binham Priory, a member of the Local History and Archaeology group commented that when they walked across the fields to the priory, it seemed like the remains of the old...
Excavations at Caistor Temple Field 2019
A few hundred meters to the northeast of Venta Icenorum - Caistor Roman Town - lie the remains of an extraordinary ‘Romano-Celtic’ temple site. In 2018, the Caistor Roman Project (CRP) community group undertook their initial investigation of the site, opening up three...
From brass key to short story award in Burnham’s Imagined Land
This time last year the community around Burnham Norton Friary and Burnham Market school was preparing itself for an intense week of rehearsal for the Imagined Land pageant performance. This was the culmination of NAT’s project - led by Simon Floyd and funded by the...