Historical Classification of Cold War Sites
From a general project recording defence disposal sites of all dates a more focused and comprehensive study of England's Cold War sites was developed.This considered sites on the Ministry of Defence's disposals list,ones that had been closed in the preceding decades,and also some sites that remained in military use.
This work was published in 2003 and was also used to inform the Monuments Protection Programme study of Cold War sites that identified candidates for possible legal protection(Cocroft,2001;Cocroft and Thomas,2003).This programme,which ran from the late 1980s to about 2004,was designed to assess and improve the protection of archaeological sites across England from prehistoric to modern times.At the time the presumption was that significant sites identified by this programme would be assessed for protection as scheduled monuments.This form of protection is generally applied to where the historical significance of a site is best managed by minimal future interventions to its physical fabric.On the other hand,historically significant structures where some form of continuing use or reuse would be beneficial are generally protected through listed buildings legislation.However,with many recent military and industrial sites it is not always immediately obvious which form of protection should be applied and each case will be assessed on its merits.
The Monuments Protection Programme used a standardised documentation methodology of scoping reports,which provided an outline historical assessment of each monument type(English Heritage,2000).The reports also quantified and identified the best preserved sites for possible protection.The approach was archaeological and relied on producing type series,broken down into Categories,Groups and Classes.This classification system has recently been revised into one which might be used as a global classification system for Cold War defence sites.In total,11 main Categories may be defined with 36 main Groups of sites(Schofield,Cocroft and Dobronovskaya,forthcoming).In Table 1 the classification for the Category Air Defence for the United Kingdom is illustrated.This is further broken down into six Groups,all of which except for Antiballistic Missile Defence systems might be found in most countries.At the lowest Class level,the classification will often be unique to an individual country and is often determined by the superpower block it was aligned to.Also at this level the form of the sites will often be defined not only by technology,but also their date,for example when air defence missiles systems have been modernised and the layout of sites altered to accommodate new technologies.The form of sites might also be influenced by a country's relationship with its main defence equipment supplier,its indigenous production,or modifications to meet local circumstances.In some cases it may not be possible to identify air defence airfields from their physical form alone,where,for example,aircraft might fulfil a range of roles,or where at different periods airfields might change their main purpose.
TABLE 1 CLASSIFICATION OF AIR DEFENCE SITES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM(https://www.daowen.com)
Many Classes of sites were built to a standardised form with an identical range of components and buildings.To assess these types of sites tables were produced listing all their components against which their survival was logged.Using this method,it was possible to identify objectively the best preserved sites that might be considered for legal protection.
TABLE 2 ASSESSMENT OF THESURVIVAL OF LATE 1950s THOR MISSILE MAIN BASE
