My day-job brings archaeological story to the headlines and inspires comedy!

Forgive me a little aside here, but I’m feeling a little proud about this.

I first started working with the Vyne, a National Trust property in Hampshire, about 18 months ago. On my first visit, one of the objects that most interested me (apart from the truncheons stored in the ante-chapel to impose the will of the aristocracy on the peasants) was a fourth century gold ring, said to have been one of Tolkien’s inspirations for the ring that features in his famous books. At the time, this ring was tucked away in the corner of a tiny display cabinet with a hand-written note that asserted but didn’t explain the Tolkien connection. The new property manager there, Dave Green, and I agreed that this was a story that deserved a bit more attention and explanation.

Since then Dave and his team, with the help of the Tolkien Society, have worked hard to give the ring the space it deserves. After a soft opening over the last month, the exhibition officially launched on Tuesday.

A new Adventurer's Map of the Vyne's formal gardens, taking inspiration from Tolkien's maps,

A new Adventurer’s Map of the Vyne’s formal gardens, taking inspiration from Tolkien’s maps,

I was chuffed to see that Dave had managed to get it onto the front page of the Guardian.But in the last couple of days, the story seems to have gone viral, with write-ups on news sites across the web. Its amazing to see what power the Tolkien name has in getting a story about a piece of archaeological detective work out into the public consciousness.

But today I was blown away when I discovered that Yahoo News has even seen fit to film a comedic report on the story. One which, though light-hearted and irreverent, takes the time to unpack and tell the archeological story and ends with a shout out to Sir Mortimer Wheeler.


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I came to cultural heritage via five years working at Midland Bank when I left school. In my free time, I volunteered as a costumed interpreter at Kentwell Hall and, with re-enactment societies, at various medieval sites around the UK and France. When, one evening, a few of us said “we could make a business out of this” I left my job at the bank to go to college, first to get an Art Foundation and then to Manchester Polytechnic to join an innovative course called Design for Communications Media. I specialised in Educational Media Design, with the intention of applying what I was learning to cultural heritage. During my vacations and upon graduation I worked for the nascent company my friends had started, Past Pleasures, creating immersive living history festivals at Lancaster and Tunbridge Wells, as well as projects including: an exhibition for the centenary of the Commonwealth Institute; a design for a metafictional Sherlock Holmes exhibition in Croydon; and, a game that combined real-time investment advice from 300 year-old characters at the Bank of England Museum with a digital simulation, tracking the players’ investment portfolio from the founding of the bank to its tercentenary. In 1996 I helped found JMD&Co, and for two years I also lectured on Heritage Tourism and Visitor Management and Interpretation modules for a Portsmouth University validated HND/degree course at Farnborough Technical College. Subsequently, I enrolled in the new Distance Learning delivered Masters’ degree in Museum Studies at Leicester University, where I became interested in the social use of space, particularly Bill Hillier’s “space syntax,” and the increasing futility of cultural heritage sites trying to tell doggedly linear stories in three-dimensional spaces. Although my dissertation explored models for mapping interpretation, and particularly learning styles, onto spaces, a satisfactory reconciliation of linear story and three-dimensional space eluded me. After graduation, I decided my time in the “small business” end of cultural heritage was over for a while, and I left JMD&Co to join a cultural institution, the National Trust, as a Regional Community, Learning and Volunteering Manager. I brought the first National Trust iPad into use at Batemans, where, combined with a wax cylinder record player, and the help of renowned folk singer, Jon Boden, we’ve returned Rudyard Kipling’s voice back into his old home. However, one of the innovations which I am most proud of is the National Trust’s virtual tours. Working with a small company, and a range of disabled stakeholders, we created a touch-screen based human computer interface that could also, if required, be controlled with other input devices, and allowed visitors with a variety of disabilities to fully enjoy the virtual tour. The teams’ achievement was recognised with a Jodi Award for Excellence in accessible digital media in 2008.

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