We maintain the North Somerset Historic Environment
Record (HER) which is a record of known sites, monuments,
buildings, findspots and landscapes of historic value. With
over 8000 records, it’s a good starting point for anyone interested
in researching North Somerset’s historic environment.
Our HER is now available to view
online, on an interactive map base.
We get information for the HER database from a wide range of
sources including oblique and vertical aerial photographs from 1946
to the present day, approximately 400 archaeological excavation and
survey reports from 1990-2004 and old maps.
Our HER is also linked to a computerised mapping system which
holds information about a site or find as well as a historic
landscape characterisation for the former County of Avon and
scheduled ancient monuments. The records hold information such
as:
- location
- description
- date
- type
- source
We assess planning applications against the HER to find their
likely impact on the historic environment as part of the planning
process, but the database can be used by anyone. It’s a
useful research tool for students, local history and archaeology
societies, members of the public and other researchers.
For details of costs visit our
fees and charges page.
If you need information from neighbouring areas you can contact
our neighbouring archaeology teams at:
For more information or to consult the HER contact our
Archaeological
Services team. If you want to view the HER, you should
give us as much information as possible such as a map showing the
area you are interested in, or an OS grid reference number.
If you are giving us a grid reference number, you should also tell
us how wide you need the search to be, we usually perform 500m or
1km radius searches.
