Issue 89

July/August 2006

Contents

news

Sensational new discoveries at Bryn Celli Ddu

Missing royal table discovered in Westminster Hall

Unprecedented divide over Stonehenge

DNA surprise: Romani in England 400 years too early

Drama of Shrewsbury's lost medieval bridge

In Brief

features

Balloon over Stonehenge
Martyn Barber considers a photo taken 100 years ago.

Discovering Scotland
Dave Cowley looks back on 30 years of air photography.

Forgotten hero
Miles Russell finds Nero in England.

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ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

features

Palaeolithic contrivance over Stonehenge

The first known air photos of a British archaeological site were taken 100 years ago this September, initiating a key technique of record and discovery. Martyn Barber explores the mind of the early balloonist.

In autumn 1906 Stonehenge was photographed from the basket of a Royal Engineers' balloon by 2nd Lt Philip Henry Sharpe, re. Prints were exhibited by his commanding officer, Colonel John Edward Capper, RE at the Society of Antiquaries in London that December 6, and two of the photographs appeared the following year in the Society's journal Archaeologia – with less information than appears in this paragraph.

The world's first aerial photos of an archaeological site showed excavations within the Forum in Rome in 1899. Sharpe's are said to be the first aerial photos of a British archaeological monument, but rarely have they been regarded as possessing any further significance. Noticing the approaching centenary, we – the aerial survey team at English Heritage – recognised that not only did it present an excellent opportunity to celebrate the outstanding importance of aerial photography to archaeology; it also required us to revisit those 1906 photos and try to answer a number of key questions about them.

This was partly a concern with establishing their significance in history. The analysis of aerial photos new and old results in the recognition of thousands of "new" archaeological sites every year, but by and large today's techniques originated in the wake of the first world war, in particular with the realisation that cropmarks were more than an occasional freak of nature. It is difficult to make a direct link between Sharpe's photos and the increasingly systematic reconnaissance and analysis that began in the 1920s. Indeed, ogsCrawford himself argued that archaeological air photography began in 1922, thereby both ignoring Sharpe's Stonehenge photos and, probably intentionally, nominating himself (correctly) as chief instigator.

Flags and megaphone

There were also some fairly basic but unasked questions. When and why were Sharpe's photos taken? What were the Royal Engineers doing with balloons and cameras, and what else might they have photographed? Who else, apart from the military, were taking aerial photos at the time, and what were they recording? And, of course, were Sharpe's genuinely the first photos of Stonehenge from the air or, indeed, of any archaeological site in Britain?

As a Royal Engineers balloonist, Sharpe was usually based in Hampshire, at Aldershot, but from September 15 1906 until the following February he was at Bulford Camp on Salisbury Plain, just 6km from Stonehenge. Bulford would seem to be the most likely base for his ballooning on the plain, but unfortunately no records appear to survive of individual balloon flights during this period. When Capper displayed the photographs at Burlington House, he merely noted that they had been taken "recently"; the Society of Antiquaries knew of their existence by November 22. Consequently we can get no closer than this two month period, although the parching evident in the photos suggests a date earlier rather than later – perhaps late September.

Why the photographs were taken is a more complex question and requires a little background detail on military ballooning. Airborne reconnaissance from tethered (or "captive") balloons had first been tried with some success in post-revolution France, but the British Army did not take its tentative first steps towards adopting balloons until the 1860s, following positive eyewitness accounts of their use in the American civil war. Even then, it was not until 1878 that work began on the first army balloon.

Royal Engineer balloonists were mostly confined to practice and manoeuvres within Britain, although they did see some foreign service in occasional conflicts during the 1880s and 1890s. Their most notable contribution came during the Boer war, but despite the clear value of airborne reconnaissance to the military campaigns, a degree of resistance existed within the armed forces. For example, there was some belief across all ranks that their use (against a white enemy at least) was unfair – a breach of the spirit of the "rules" of warfare, a belief that was to resurface when reconnaissance aircraft began to be used during the first world war.

As far as the military balloonists were concerned, reconnaissance primarily involved the use of the eyes, aided when necessary by a telescope. Annotated maps and handwritten notes could be passed up and down the ropes – reconnaissance balloons were always tethered, for obvious reasons – while for more immediate communication, signal flags and a megaphone were usually provided. Photography had been considered since the 1860s, but before 1905 there appears to have been little official support for experiments with cameras, partly because the results were less immediate than the other methods. Even by the 1890s it still took at least half an hour to get a plate satisfactorily developed and enlarged. In the field and under fire, pencil and paper continued to offer far more rapid returns.

Experiments with photography depended largely upon the initiative, and often the private funds, of particular individuals. The most notable of these wasHenry Elsdale, who served with the balloonists from 1880 to 1887 and was for a while their commanding officer. As early as 1880 he had begun experimenting with unmanned balloons, and had designed his own automatic camera, capable of taking a series of exposures at pre-set intervals. In 1881 he made his first attempt at persuading the Ordnance Survey, in which he had previously served, of the undoubted benefits of producing maps with the aid of vertical air photos. The idea was rejected as both impractical and unnecessary – air photos would never replace ground survey.

When Elsdale left the balloon section in 1887, experimenting with cameras appears to have declined. However, there is one interesting postscript to his work.

Elsdale was briefly succeeded as commanding officer of the balloon section by Charles Close who, in the early 1890s, was transferred to India. While there, he sent for one of Elsdale's unmanned balloons with automatic camera, his plan being to photograph and map archaeological sites. However, red tape restricted him to taking a few poor quality images of Calcutta, before he moved on to another posting. In 1911 Close became director-general of the Ordnance Survey. While there he proved distinctly lukewarm at best on the idea of aerial photography, citing reasons similar to those given decades earlier to Elsdale. However, in 1921 he did appoint OGS Crawford as that organisation's first archaeological officer.

Ideal subject

But back to Sharpe. After the Boer war it became apparent to many, particularly Capper who was now in charge of the balloonists, that photography needed to be taken more seriously. Rather than rely on a couple of corporals who happened to own cameras, in 1905 the newly-arrived 2nd Lt Sharpe was placed in charge of all matters relating to photography, and some broad aims were laid down. These included making the whole process from the taking of a photo to its development and enlargement as rapid and efficient as possible.

Two types of photo were needed: oblique shots taken from a distance with a view to establishing the level of detail that could be seen on both the initial image and any subsequent enlargement; and overhead, vertical images of particular targets that could be compared with existing measured surveys, to evaluate the potential of using such photos for accurate mapping.

Stonehenge would appear to be an ideal subject for such aims, and of course was a far more interesting subject that anything else on the plain. In any case, as flights for photographic purposes – like reconnaissance flights generally – were almost always captive, the only reason for Sharpe tethering a balloon a short distance south-west of Stonehenge would seem to be to take photos of Stonehenge itself. This may, of course, have been the sole aim of the flight – there may never have been any intention to use these particular photos to test the military potential of aerial photography.

Whatever, the fact that a series of clear, airborne views of Stonehenge had been taken allowed Capper, as commanding officer, to spend an evening in London displaying them to the fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, almost certainly without Sharpe. Capper himself was hardly unknown outside the army at the time, and may well have been as much of an attraction as anything else presented to the fellows that evening.

For example, in September 1906, while Sharpe was ballooning around Bulford, Capper was participating in the highly prestigious first annual Gordon Bennett balloon race, an event that attracted considerable and worldwide press coverage. Capper assisted Charles Rolls, the co-founder of Rolls-Royce, and the pair finished third.

As yet, no other photograph taken from a Royal Engineers' balloon featuring an archaeological monument as its subject has been found. In fact, few of their photos survive at all, with just a handful showing the hazy outline of a hillfort on the horizon (usually Caesar'sCamp, just west of Aldershot). But of course, aerial photography was not an exclusively military practice. Indeed, by 1906, readers of the numerous illustrated magazines available would have been exposed to a seemingly endless supply of articles illustrated with aerial photos, with many of the photographers themselves being well-known names (though not always for their photography).

The first ever aerial photos had been taken from a balloon over the outskirts of Paris in 1858, with the first British photos, now lost, shot over London in 1863 by Henri Negretti. However, until the late 1880s, despite numerous attempts, the success rate was poor for a variety of reasons. The availability from 1888 of the first Kodak and its subsequent imitators simplified the whole process, and made the taking of successful pictures a more frequent occurrence. Moreover, nearsimultaneous developments in printing meant that during the 1890s it became much easier to reproduce photos in books and magazines.

Explosive charges

However, in Britain at least there appear to be no photos of archaeological sites at all taken from balloons, military or civilian, before 1906. The unpredictable nature of balloon flights did not help – altitude and, in particular, direction were, of course, largely dependent on the weather. Equally, few if any balloonists are likely to have been familiar with archaeological earthworks and consequently will have seen little purpose in photographing them. The sole exception concerns the one attempt prior to 1906 to photograph Stonehenge from the air.

The Rev John Mackenzie Bacon had come to ballooning relatively late in life, his first flight occurring in 1888 when he was 42. Like many gents of his time, he saw the balloon as the ideal platform for scientific experiments (few if any, it must be said, of lasting value). However, from his first flight onwards he never left the ground without his camera, and between 1888 and his death in 1904, he must have taken hundreds of aerial photos, and on at least one occasion he shot some cine film. The whereabouts of his prints and negatives, if they survive, are sadly unknown. Fortunately, he often turned to journalism to supplement his income, as did his daughter Gertrude: a sizeable number of their photos survive within the pages of their publications.

Bacon came to Salisbury Plain in September 1900. Following events in the Boer war, he had decided to experiment with using balloons to communicate with troops on the ground, and vice-versa. His methods need not detain us here – suffice it to say that they involved drifting over military camps on the plain and alerting unwitting soldiers below to his presence by letting off explosive charges. Sadly, or perhaps fortunately, he was unable to decipher their response.

After completing this experiment, to his satisfaction at least, he found that the balloon was drifting towards Stonehenge. As was his habit, he had taken several snapshots since taking off, including some views of the park at Highclere. However, this time he was to be disappointed – nearly a mile high, and with the early evening sun hidden behind a cloud, "The camera refused to distinguish [the monument] at all... the stones were practically invisible against the short dry grass". There is a little ambiguity here – was he disappointed with the view through the camera, or with a resulting print? With the whereabouts of his photos unknown, we cannot be absolutely sure.

As for Sharpe's photos, their influence on the development of aerial archaeology seems minor, but they did demonstrate the clarity with which even slight earthworks could be picked out from above and more easily understood, and it was this aspect of aerial photography that Crawford claims to have discussed with others before 1914. Perhaps then it was Sharpe that set the ball rolling.

A book detailing the history of aerial photography, Mata Hari's Glass Eye & Other Tales, will be published by English Heritage in August. An illustrated exhibition will be at Stonehenge Aug 1–7, before travelling to many other venues. See Aerial Survey pages on the English Heritage website for further details (www.english-heritage.org.uk). Martyn Barber is on the English Heritage aerial survey team (Swindon).

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