Fall In, Ghosts’ - Investigations of a First World War Training Camp, Cooden
Details
Fall In, Ghosts’ - Archaeological Investigations at the site of a First World War Training Camp, Cooden, East Sussex’
Speaker: Simon Stevens (Senior Archaeologist at Archaeology South-East, UCL)
Opened in September 1914, Cooden Camp was used throughout the First World War, originally housing men who would form the 11th,12th and 13th Battalions of the Royal Sussex Regiment. The Sussex men who trained there were involved in The Battle of the Boar’s Head at Richebourg-I’Avoué in France on 30 June 1916, when the three battalions would suffer some 1,100 casualties.
The camp was also used as the temporary home of men in training from as far afield as South Africa and Australia, later becoming the site of a Princess Patricia’s Canadian Red Cross Hospital in 1918, before closing the following year.
Following a convoluted planning process, permission was granted for a housing development on part of the former camp. Geophysical survey and trial trench evaluations of the site were conducted between 2018 and 2021 and identified a range of buried remains. Full-scale archaeological excavation and recording was undertaken between September 2024 and January 2025 and revealed a variety of archaeological deposits and artefacts relating to day-to-day life at Cooden Camp.
All welcome. Entry: BHAS members free, non-members £5 (Cash only please)