Celebrate Merseyside’s heritage at Lunt Meadows Nature Reserve this July
This July, Lancashire Wildlife Trust are joining organisations and community groups across the country to take part in the Festival of Archaeology, by hosting a series of free public events at Lunt Meadows Nature Reserve in Sefton, at the end of the M57.
The UK’s annual Festival of Archaeology runs from 16th July – 31st July 2022. This year’s theme is ‘Journeys’ and visitors are invited to spend time on the nature reserve, journeying through time to discover Sefton’s Stone Age heritage, while also exploring the wildlife of a nature reserve in the present.
Lunt Meadows is a haven for wildlife and doubles as a flood storage reservoir. It is owned by the Environment Agency and managed by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust. In 2012, archaeologists from National Museums Liverpool began excavating the site and discovered evidence of several Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) settlements in the nature reserve, giving a glimpse into the lives of our hunter-gatherer ancestors from 9000 years ago.
Ten years on, over 8000 artefacts have been unearthed in the excavations, with still more to discover. These discoveries have inspired a National Lottery Heritage Fund project at Lunt. The Mesolithic Modern Life Project aims to enrich the visitor experience at Lunt Meadows while also improving the site for wildlife. It is a partnership project between LWT, National Museums Liverpool, Soroptimist International Crosby and the University of Chester, Department of History and Archaeology.
Over the course of the 16th – 31st July, the Lunt team are holding a mixture of Stone Age, wellbeing, and wildlife-themed events. The festival kicks off with a drop-in day on Stone Age Skills at Lunt Meadows on Saturday 16th and Tuesday 19th July.
Archaeologists from the University of Chester will be giving talks on life at Lunt in the Mesolithic period, and volunteers will be on hand to show people how to make everyday Mesolithic items such as fishing nets and nettle string. For those interested in wildlife, Lunt Meadows will be running guided walks, with a focus on medicinal plants and their folklore on Friday 22nd July and a general wildlife walk on Monday 25th July. These walks are a great opportunity to learn about how the nature reserve operates, while picking up facts and stories about the wildlife it attracts.
People who wish to try something different to a walk are encouraged to attend Tai Chi for beginners’ classes on Thursday 21st and Thursday 28th July. Tai Chi is a gentle martial art that has many links to improved physical and mental health and that takes inspiration from the natural world, so it is fitting to practise this exercise in the setting of a nature reserve.
The festival will finish with the public being invited to get involved in the search for more artefacts at Lunt, by helping to pan bags of excavated Stone Age soil collected from the settlements on Wednesday 27th and Sunday 31st July. Under the expert guidance of the Museum of Liverpool’s Curator of Prehistoric Archaeology and trained volunteers, people can drop by and find small stone tools and burnt material that has lain undiscovered in this soil for over 9000 years.
Cheryl Ashton, Project Manager at Lunt Meadows says, “Lunt Meadows is a real asset to the local area. It’s a place where people can relax, exercise, and watch wildlife, and it is also an ideal place to learn about our natural and prehistoric heritage. There are many themes woven together at Lunt Meadows, and these varied events go to show all the different ways people can engage with the nature reserve.
“This will be the third time we’ve got the public involved in searching for artefacts from the stone age dig, and the first time since before the pandemic that we have been able to invite people to learn to make items the way our prehistoric ancestors did. It is a very humbling feeling to know that you are learning a skill that is thousands of years old. It connects you with the past and the people from that time in a unique way.”
Tickets and times to all these events and more can be booked through the Lancashire Wildlife Trust website, www.lancswt.org.uk/events.
For more information about Lunt Meadows, including access and car park opening times, visit: www.lancswt.org.uk/nature-reserves/lunt-meadows.