Archaeology and Local History

There may be several different reasons for submitting records to the recorder/s

Examples could be your knowledge of recent excavations or casual finds, a current event or person making significant contribution to life in the area. You may have come across something in the landscape or in a book or document that interests you and want to find out more information about it. 

If the object that you have discovered or unearthed on your property, or is a casual find elsewhere, is of significant value or age, it may be treasure and fall under the Treasure Act 1996. The Finds Liaison Officer (FLO) must be notified to determine if it is treasure, and to record or to supervise excavation of the find. The County or North Moor York National Park archaeologists should also be notified as they can provide information. In the unlikely event that someone finds bones and thinks they might be human remains, we advise that they tell the Police as they must check that the bones are human and archaeological rather than more recent. If they are human and archaeological they cannot be removed without a Ministry of Justice Licence by law so they would need to commission an archaeologist to apply for permission before they can be removed. So, checking if they are human and historical/archaeological first is important and the Police need to be notified to check that first. 

See links below.  

Site: specific location, address or feature and your location when observing it, esp. when taking photographs, e.g. standing 10 meters SW, feature running N to S

Grid Ref: if possible, or description of location

Observer: surname, first name

Date: day, month, year

Photographs: 1. close-up, 2. wider landscape, 3. different angles of feature, 4. name of photographer

Size: e.g. 10cm feature in a building or a 30-meter boundary wall/hedge

The observation you are making, may have been made on a previous occasion and it becomes important to compare the condition or the surroundings in the intervening years. Therefore, before submitting this information, check the Nats Library, esp., the annual reports, or with online records, if you can. (N.B. the older Nats’ annual reports are indexed under place in the Lit &Phil’s library card catalogue.)

Here are some useful online websites:

The link is to the Historic Environment Record (HER) map; zoom into the area of the find or of interest and see what is recorded. There is a small pop-up box with more information but further information is available by contacting the HER officer.

Sources: oral history – whose history and when recorded; book, original document – which one(s) [author, title, publisher, year]

Dates: date of source and date when information collected

Location: site to which the item refers, Grid Ref. if very specific

Observer: surname, first name

The information and photographs submitted become the joint copyright of the author and the Whitby Naturalist Club for the purposes of publishing on the website, in the Club’s Annual Report, or submitting to appropriate organisations such as Historic England Listed Buildings, the North York Moors National Park Historic Environment Record, or North Yorkshire County Council Historic Environment Record. 

rev/CK 9/1/2025