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Trench Floor at Auchonvillers, Somme 1998
Trench boards at Serre, Somme 2003
The British Line, St Yvon 2009
No Man's Land: The International Group for Great War Archaeology, specialise in the study of the First World War though archaeological excavations, historical research, map work and aerial photography. Working with academic departments, local and international partners, cutting edge techniques are being employed to gain a greater understanding of life in the trenches and the effect of the war on the local population.No Man's Land have been excavating the old Western Front in France and Belgium for about 20 years. We have also looked at a number of training facilities in Great Britain, in particular Cocken Hall training camp, the Silloans trenches on the Otterburn Training Area, the Messines Ridge model on Cannock Chase and the Bustard trenches on Salisbury Plain.
The last of these were used by 3rd Australian Division before they went to France in late 1916 and formed part of our "Plugstreet Project" which has looked at both the Salisbury Plain trenches and those around Ultimo Crater, the site of one of the mines blown on the morning of 7th June 1917 at the start of the Battle of Messines in southern Belgium. Training was realistic and appropriate to the task, which was to seize and hold a mine crater. The battalion under examination, 33rd Battalion, Australian Imperial Force carried out a difficult mission of both advancing eastwards as well as forming a flank to the south to prevent the Germans rolling up the entire advance from that direction.
In 2008 the team discovered the remains of a soldier from 33 AIF who has since been identified as Private Alan Mather of D Company. Mather was killed by shellfire about 10.30 in the morning of 7th June 1917 and his body was lost. He now rests in Prowse Point Cemetery nearby. Since the project began in 2007 the investigations have expanded outwards from the initial site to look at the landscape of the whole area around Ploegsteert.
Ultimo Crater consolidation trench, St Yvon 2009
NML Finds Lab, Messines 2011
The Tactical Model of Messines, Cannock Chase 2013
No Man's Land Projects.
- The Plugstreet Blog
- Marton Hall Graffiti
- Cocken Hall WW1 Training Camp
- Messines model at Cannock Chase
- Report on Plugstreet 2007
- Interim report on Brockton Camp, Cannock Chase
- Training trenches at Silloans, Otterburn
- Training trenches on Salisbury Plain
- Hohenzollern Redoubt
- Excavation near Newfoundland Park
- Bayerngraben and Heidenkopf, Serre
- British observation post near La Signy farm, Serre
- Theipval Wood
- Meet the Ancestors
- Auchonvillers
Publications include:
- Lieutenant Burleigh's last flight, in Odd Vols, Summer 2001. Alastair Fraser
- Trench Team's Auchonvillers project, in Battlefields Review, December 2003. Alastair Fraser
- Finding Jakob, in Battlefields Annual Review, 2005. Alastair Fraser
- The Ocean Villas Project: Archaeology in the service of remembrance, in Saunders, N., (ed) Matters of Conflict: Material culture, memory and the First World War, 2004. Jon Price
- Orphan Heritage: Issues in managing the heritage of the Great War in northern France and Belgium, in Journal of Conflict Archaeology (1) 2006. Jon Price
- Cultural landscape of sacrifice, the problem of the sacred ground of the Great War 1914-1918, in Proceedings of the 2005 UNESCO Forum/WAC intercongress on Cultural Landscape in the 21st Century. 2006. Jon Price
- Journey Back to Hell: Excavations at Serre on the Somme, Current World Archaeology, 10, 2005, 25-33. Martin Brown
- Digging Trenches: Archaeological Excavations at Silloans, Otterburn, Estatement, 50, 2005, 19 (Estatement is the in-house journal of Defence Estates). Martin Brown
- Great War, Great Story: A personal view of media and Great War archaeology, in Brittain, M., and Clack, T., Archaeology and the Media. 2007. Jon Price
- Digging Up Plugstreet Martin Brown & Richard Osgood
- The Devonshires Held this Trench, They Hold it Still: Sacred landscapes of the Great War, in Gazin-Schwartz, A., and Smith, A.P., 2008. Jon Price
Bibliography & Sources for this website
- At the War. Lord Norcliffe (1916)
- Australian War Memorial
- Comines-Warneton Historical Society
- Digging up Plugstreet Martin Brown and Richard Osgood (2009)
- A Guide to WW1 Battlefields and History of the First World Wa
- Imperial Germany Army 1914-18: Organisation, Structure, Orders of Battle Herrmann Cron and Duncan Rogers (1937)
- Messines Ridge: Ypres (Battleground Europe) Peter Oldham (1998)
- Military operations, France and Belgium, 1914. James E. Edmonds (1937)
- Never A Backward Step. John Edwards (1996)
- Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 Charles Bean (1941)
- The Aerodrome - Aces and Aircraft of World War I
- Pillars of Fire: The Battle of Messines Ridge, June 1917 Ian Passingham (1998)
- The Wartime Memories Project
The compelling story of the Australian soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division who journeyed to England in 1914, and who fought and died on the Western Front during the First World War. Using archaeology as the vehicle for their story, Martin Brown and Richard Osgood follow in the footsteps of the 'Aussies', from their training on windswept Salisbury Plain to the cheerless trenches of Belgium, where they 'dug-in' north-east of Ploegsteert to face the Germans. It presents a unique window into the world of the men who marched away to fight the so-called 'war to end wars
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