A RALLYING call has gone out to Vale drone owners to take advantage of the summer heatwave in a bid discover the secrets of Evesham’s Abbey and surrounding areas.
The foundations of historic sites across the UK have become exposed in scorched grasses as fields and gardens dry up.
Outlines of a first century town, a ‘ghost garden’ from the 1850s and an undiscovered Roman site are all appearing across the British countryside.
Elsewhere in Northern Ireland the hot weather has caused the water level in a local reservoir to drop, revealing a road usually submerged.
As Britain basks in the longest heatwave since 1976, the nation’s normally luscious green landscape has given up some hidden gems and led to calls for drone owners to send their machines into the Vale skies to potentially discover more about the town’s heritage.
Two acres of land in Abbey Gardens will be transformed into public gardens in the shape of the town’s former abbey to show visitors the size and scale of the demolished monastery and create a major tourism destination in the heart of Evesham as part of a £1million project revealed earlier this year.
Patterns have already appeared in the parched grass on Crown Meadow and local resident Rosalie Daubney felt the Abbey project could be boosted by any discoveries made by drones examining the landscape.
“All over the country they are finding ancient archeological sites appearing in the dried out ground, so who knows what the outcome might be?,” she said.
“I am sure there are many who might be interested and sincerely hope that someone will come up with a drone.”
Ian Barnes, head of archaeology for the National Trust, said: “Parch marks are a result of vegetation growing in thin soil over buried archaeological features, such as stone walls, becoming stressed in times of drought as there is less depth of soil to retain moisture.
“This results in the vegetation being a lighter colour than the more healthy plants on the surrounding deeper soil.
“This differential health of the vegetation when seen from above reflects the pattern of near surface archaeological features and allows the outlines of long-gone buildings and other features to be mapped,” he added.
