Discovery of practice battlefield launches call up to volunteers: Help find forgotten history of the First World War

©Crown Copyright 2014

Remains of an entire practice battlefield, the size of nearly 17 football pitches, with two sets of opposing trench systems and a No Man’s Land between, used for training troops before they were sent to the Front in the First World War, has been discovered on heathland in Gosport, Hampshire. The find marks the start of Home Front Legacy 1914-18, a project on which  English  Heritage  and  the Council  for  British  Archaeology  (CBA)  are  working together to record the physical remains of the war on home territory. Overgrown and forgotten, this century-old site was lost to history until a few months ago when Rob Harper, Conservation Officer at Gosport Council, spotted what he recognised as trench systems on a 1950s aerial photograph and went to investigate. Now, as part of the Home Front Legacy campaign, volunteers from the Armed Forces are working with the CBA and English Heritage to map and record the practice battlefield for posterity. (Some of these Servicemen and women have recently completed their own pre- deployment training for modern operations overseas.)

Rob Harper said: “I found myself walking along a ditch and realised it was part of an elaborate trench system, hidden for all these years by bracken and gorse. I looked around and there were trenches everywhere! It’s Ministry of Defence land but open to the public.

Local people picnic here and are aware of the lumps and bumps but their origin has been a mystery until now.

“Gosport was a departure point for thousands of soldiers setting off to the trenches of Europe many of whom may well have practised here. But we haven’t yet found any records of who they were, what they did or what happened to them afterwards.”

Speaking from the battlefield  today  (Thursday  6th   March)  Dan  Snow,  President  of  the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), called for more volunteers to join up for the Home Front Legacy campaign. He said: “Our aim is to record and preserve vulnerable sites, buildings and structures – camps, drill halls, factories and observation posts for example, before they and the stories they bear witness to are lost forever. Our volunteers will be scouring the nation’s towns, villages, countryside and beaches to track down local First World War places that are just not in the records. They’ll upload observations on what they find to a specially designed app and their finds will appear on an online map to open up the impact of the war on our landscape for everyone.”

Wayne Cocroft, English Heritage’s First World War expert, said: “English Heritage is exploring old documents and aerial photographs, many of which haven’t seen the light of day since put away after the war. We’re identifying former drill halls, requisitioned factories and farm buildings, pill boxes, secret listening stations, acoustic mirrors, prisoner-of-war camps and gun emplacements – places that deserve to have the part they played in history made known.

“Buildings from Tudor, Georgian, Victorian times…these are all well documented. But the built history of the First World War in England is virtually a blank chapter. The Home Front Legacy 1914-18 campaign is about bringing together our national expertise and people’s local knowledge to fill in the gaps and for the first time properly record the remains of the war that are still all around us today.”

Maria Miller, Culture Secretary and the Government’s lead on the First World War Centenary programme said: “The Home Front Legacy 1914-18 is a really good and worthwhile  project.   The   First   World   War,   and   the   part   that   Britain   and   the