Crossrail

Clients: Cross London Rail Links Ltd

Author: George Dennis

Site supervisor: Nick Elsden

MoLAS is the specialist archaeological consultant to Cross-London Rail Links Ltd for the environmental impact assessment (EIA) for Crossrail, a major new railway project linking Maidenhead (Berkshire) and Heathrow in the west, through central London, to Shenfield and Abbey Wood. The EIA studies support the Crossrail Bill, submitted to Parliament in February 2005.

The project has been running for three years and involves detailed study of c 75 miles of proposed routes, including impact assessments of the changing technical designs for over 100 sites. The archaeological study is one of the largest undertaken in Britain and provides the opportunity to compare settlement and land use across a variety of landscapes. This allows key themes to be identified ranging from the Old Stone Age, c 25,000 years ago (sites where elephants were killed and butchered) to the 19th century (the routes incorporate several of London's first railways, including Brunel's Great Western, proposed for World Heritage status). As part of a large museum, MoLAS is able to offer the client a 'one stop shop' where virtually all specialisms required can be sourced in-house.

Work in 2005 has focused on the public consultation phase of the Bill (including liaison with statutory bodies such as English Heritage and County Councils) and on defining options for any particularly sensitive historic resources that have been identified (such as a group of Brunel period railway bridges). MoLAS has also been working closely with the Crossrail design engineers, to create outline archaeological mitigation strategies and programmes for key sites at the subsequent construction stage. Crossrail works at major station interchanges (such as Paddington, Bond Street, Farringdon and Liverpool Street) and at the large tunnel portals (such as the Isle of Dogs and Stratford) will be highly complex engineering projects. The required archaeological investigations have to be carefully designed and programmed to meet the technical challenges of each site and thus avoid disrupting critical construction activities.

This site report is extracted from MoLAS 2005: annual review