Latest Blog entries

We encourage everyone involved in the CITiZAN project to contribute to our blog. Whether you're on site monitoring, in a library researching, or conducting oral history projects, we want to hear from you! To submit an article please email your regional CITiZAN Community Archaeologist with your text and up to five images.

Building floating history at Appledore

28/02/2024   |   Andy Sherman

Boats have been built on the Torridge River at Appledore and Bideford for hundreds of years. In the 1960's and 70's some of those boats looked distinctly out of place, being replicas of historic sailing ships last built in England when sailing was the fastest way to get anywhere. Today we take a whistlestop tour of some of that boat building history.

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A stormy start to the year

12/02/2024   |   Lianne Havell

2024 has started with howling winds and driving rain but it hasn't stopped our volunteers in Lincolnshire being on the beach to record the archaeology uncovered by the storms. Read all about what Lianne and Jordan have been finding on the beach in the first six weeks of the year.

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Coasts in Mind update: exploring archives

08/12/2023   |   Rebecca Tyson

The Coasts in Mind team has been out and about exploring the changing shorelines with coastal communities across England. This blog finds them in Devon and Dorset, sharing the magic of maritime archives with groups of young people.

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Saving lives were the Taw and Torridge meet

07/09/2023   |   Andy Sherman

The mouth to the the Taw and Torridge Estuary is a dangerous place, with capricious winds, shifting sands and heavy traffic. That's why by the middle of the 19th century three lifeboat stations were doted around the mouth of these rivers. From Braunton Sands to Bad Step this is their story.

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Fast as a dolphin - The schooner MA James

21/08/2023   |   Andy Sherman

A dozen or more ships have been abandoned on the banks of the River Torridge in the last century. Hulked when they were no longer wanted by their owners and now slowly sinking into the mud of the river. Maybe the most famous of these old boats is the MA James, built in North Wales at the turn of the century and abandoned to the ravages of time and tide after the Second World War.

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