Boudicea

So I thought about turning Helen and Amy (the two TBM's) around and having them dig towards Battersea. Also thought about renaming them so I could make some remark about barbarians advancing on Londinium.

But I'm willing to go with history. The main things I have to change is to delay the work at the actual Battersea Power Station -- which is very close to but not contiguous with the Battersea Power Station Station (according to sources TfL is already making roundels which read merely "station," but I know some wag is going to stick a superscript "2" on the ones they can reach.)

And of course the original Nine Elms station is being rehabbed to serve a new line...which is probably lower and may be even across the railways or something.

And since I've got so much detail on Kennington Green, now, I'm using the real thing and because of the delays on the Northern Line Extension, I might even be able to use it as it was historically. To the best of my ability to narrow it down, the current (as of today) Google "satellite" image is within a month or two of when my story is technically set! The street view varies, with some of it being before the Acoustic Shed was taken down.

The main difference here is not only is the real Kennington Green very small, the archaeology was completed in June of 2015 and there was nothing of archaeological significance found. Basically, it was Kennington Common, along with the somewhat more fruitful Kennington Park. The only "structure" recorded is a pond, with a ditch running to Vauxhall Creek, and the residents filled it in sometime after 1790.

I'm thinking strongly of giving them some dead space inside the hoarding but outside the acoustical shed, where they can find damn-all but at least train on methods. I presume the Field School had a better idea, but whatever plans they may have made change when they get a chance to work at the old Nine Elms platform.

I still might slow down Amy and Helen, though. In our world they broke through in 19 Nov 2017, but it would give the story an extra kick if I delayed them by exactly one year.

***

In any case Kennington really works for me. I was going to explore part of the neighborhood anyhow because returning character Graham lives there and is going to put Penny up for a week or two. The neighborhood is a crazy-quilt mix of gangs and violence and cricket players and retirees and some extremely expensive housing and it is a gay mecca. So pretty much everything. All sorts of odd history, too.

And oh yeah. Within a year of the story, the police chased down a guy who was carrying what they called a "notched machete" (the picture looks like something from the stupid part of the Museum Replicas catalog) and someone fired a crossbow bolt at the pitch of the Oval during a match.

But besides being colorful, it is experiencing the same forces...a kind of gentrification, really...that is hitting along the entire Northern Line extension. The same forces that are gutting the Battersea Power Station and ripping down the New Covent Garden Flower Market in order to put up million-dollar condos with a mere piffle of low-income housing added to the mix (guaranteed 6.5% but they've changed it at least once already. Pray we do not change it further).

What any of this has to do with archaeology I'm damned if I know. But it is pretty much a success of once again throwing my would-be archaeologist into a situation where historical preservation is just one chip in an ongoing struggle.