Norfolk Vanguard and Boreas Offshore Windfarm

Complex projects have complex management structures, usually with a multitude of stakeholders to liaise with and ensure are satisfied by project outcomes. Headland Archaeology is coming to the end of a seven-year project delivering a comprehensive archaeological support package to RWE, the developers of the Norfolk Vanguard and Boreas offshore windfarms located off the east coast of Norfolk. This work has included geophysical surveys, trial trenching and mitigation excavations across the 60 km onshore cable corridor running from Happisburgh, to the location of the new sub-station at Necton. By maintaining a close working relationship with the client and ensuring that all the project stakeholders were suitably informed of progress throughout, we successfully worked through problems as they arose.

Project Details: The route of an onshore cable associated with the Norfolk Vanguard and Norfolk Boreas Offshore Windfarm projects is being developed by Vattenfall Wind Power. The corridor spans 60km from Happisburgh South on the Norfolk coast, running south-west inland to Necton. The initial geophysical survey work on the cable corridor was carried out in 2018/19. This work covered 750 hectares of the route and identified a variety of industrial, burial and settlement sites, and wide landscapes of agricultural field systems, enclosures and trackways. In 2020, 555 trial trenches were excavated across 255 fields to test the results of these geophysical surveys and confirm which areas would require further investigation through mitigation excavation. In conjunction with the trial trenching, historic building recording and earthwork surveys were undertaken on Second World War airfield hangars, a coastal pillbox, a historic Estate wall, upstanding parish boundary banks and ditches, and ancient trackways. Metal-detecting and fieldwalking surveys were also completed in certain land parcels across the corridor. These surveys recovered coins from the Roman to medieval periods, a fragment of a Bronze Age dagger, a decorative Roman tripod foot in the shape of a lion, Saxon dress accessories, lead shot, prehistoric pottery and worked flint. This enabled us to provide the client with a comprehensive overview of the archaeological potential across the corridor. Headland’s success in servicing projects of this scale and complexity lies in our extremely wide-ranging in-house services. By having these all to hand, our client could be confident that the various types of work required were well integrated and all were completed to the same high specification.

Excavation work began in 2021 and completed in 2024. In total, 47 mitigation excavation areas were completed between the spring and autumn months over the four sessions. The excavations identified a wide range of sites, including two Bronze Age burial monuments, a Roman temple, multiple medieval roadside settlements and two seventeenth-century brick tile kilns. The most spectacular site was a Roman villa complex which included a winged villa building, ancillary buildings, a bathhouse and part of a Roman road, all built and occupied between the first and fourth centuries AD. One of the most interesting finds was a probable vessel handle, nicknamed by our finds specialists “the Norfolk Nessie”.

A short video compiled by our Community Archaeologist during excavations was made, aimed at primary school children to explain our work and discoveries. It was shown to the local primary school alongside a “meet the archaeologist” Q&A session and was later uploaded to the Inspiring Norfolk website as a schools’ resource for the whole county.

Monitoring work during construction was on-going in 2025, with an Archaeological Clerk of Works present across the Scheme to oversee construction in sensitive areas. Our post-excavation works are now in full swing, with a variety of publications planned over the next five years. A community exhibition was held in 2026 alongside our client RWE to disseminate our work to the communities across Norfolk.