@ National Railway Museum/SSFL

could not be avoided have been subjected to a systematic programme of survey and excavation. Construction is

I now well underway through the Garden of England, an area rich in archaeological heritage.

. Some facts and figures

The CTRL is a high speed line running for 109 km (68 miles) between St Pancras and the Channel Tunnel. It is being constructed in two sections. Section 1 runs from the Channel Tunnel to Fawkham junction near Gravesend, where the CTRL will join the existing Railtrack network. This work should be complete and operational in 2003.

Section 2 is expected to start around 2001 and brings the new line beneath the River Thames and through east London to St Pancras. Section 2 also includes two new stations at Ebbsfleet in north Kent and Stratford in east London.

THECHANNEL

. The project set-up

Such a massive project naturally has a complex organisational structure, including an in-house team of four archaeologists working in the Environment Department of

TUNNEL

Rail Link Engineering (RLE). RLE is the project management consortium tasked to design, procure and manage construction of the railway on behalf of its client body Union Railways (South) Limited (URS) who fund all the works. There has been close liaison at all times with English Heritage and Kent

County Council's archaeologists who have a 'cura torial' role under the terms for the

RAILLINK

construction of the railway. Indeed liaison and co-operation between all parties has been a major success of the works.

. Building up the data bank

The detailed fieldwork set out in the

106 Tottenham Court

Road, London W1P 9HF

The Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL),

Britain's first major new railway for over a century, has resulted in the largest archaeo-

logical project to date in this country. It has taken almost ten years to develop in tandem with the engineering design, and archaeolo-

gists have been employed at every step of the way, ensuring that archaeological issues were fully considered throughout. Effects on many known areas of interest were avoided at an early stage by alterations to the hori-

zontal and vertical alignment of the route and those archaeological remains which following pages did not just happen. Work by the Oxford Archaeological Unit over ten years ago drew together known sources of information in an extensive desktop investi-

gation, utilising aerial photographs, historic maps, published and unpublished records. Th~y also carried out extensive non-intrusive survey work in the form of walkovers, surface artefact collection and geophysical survey. Geo-technical and other ground investigations were monitored in the field and boreholes logs were analysed. The Environmental Assessment produced was a model for its time and helped take forward

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