On 24th April 2017 the RACP team started work on the Ramsey Abbey site. Permission was given by the Fairhaven Trustees, Abbey College leadership team, Abbey College trustees and an S42 licence issued to carry out a geophysical survey by Historic England.

With the resistivity geophysical equipment borrowed from Jigsaw Cambridgeshire, two of the college’s sports fields and the scheduled monument were surveyed. A total of 7.5 hectares was completed over a ten week period.

Later in the year some test pits were dug in the garden of a house on Hollow Lane. This produced some interesting results that, although, thought not part of any abbey building did indicate medieval settlement.

The wall between the church and Abbey House was also surveyed. The survey showed a considerable amount of dressed stone had been used in the construction and reconstruction over the years.

October saw Cobham Aerospace Connectivity very kindly loaning RACP Ground Penetrating Radar equipment and people to help work the machine and to analyse the results. The Abbey Green and the area of the scheduled monument (Area 4 on our map) was surveyed over the next 6 months.