Hello, I’m Otis Gilbert, I am a Council Member & Community Engagement Award Judge, having previously chaired the AIA’s former Young Members Board, which merged into the main council. I also act as Liaison between TICCH UK & the AIA, and sit as an expert on the new ICOMOS UK Industrial Heritage Committee in an AIA capacity. My interests in Industrial Archaeology relate principally to the preservation & excavation of buried or ruined industrial remains, and the regulation and governance thereof. 

I grew up in Northumberland, regularly visiting sites such as Beamish & even doing my work experience at Woodhorn Archives. I now live in Sheffield, home of the steel industry. My career began when as a fresh graduate in (largely Greco-Roman) Archaeology from the late University of Sheffield Archaeology department, I joined Wessex Archaeology Sheffield as a field archaeologist. This led to many interesting excavations from the Roman I was ready for, to the Industrial, which I was not.

However, over the years, I found that the industrial sites became my firm favourite, and I assisted with excavations on several cementation & crucible furnaces in my hometown of Sheffield, as well as other excavations nationally, including the spectacular remains of Marshall’s Mills A + B in Holbeck, Leeds. The tragic story of these mills, which burned down in 1791 & 1795, likely led Marshall to his greatest work: the world’s first iron-framed fire-resistant building the following year, now known as Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings and open to the public.

Since leaving commercial archaeology, I now work with Historic England as Heritage At Risk Project Officer, covering all Scheduled Monuments (from the earliest prehistory right up to the Cold War) in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire & Greater London, as well as supporting the Heritage At Risk Process for Industrial Listed Buildings in Greater London. I use the HAR Process, the legal requirements related to scheduled & listed monuments, & funding through Countryside Stewardship and Historic England to deliver improved management & long-term preservation of these sites. Work takes me from the earliest industrial production, such as the early Wealden iron industry, right through to modern telecommunications in the form of the recently Scheduled Transatlantic Cable Winder at Greenwich.

Outside the AIA & work, I volunteer with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA) with both their Registered Organisation Scheme & their Professional Standards Advisory Panel. I also volunteer on the South Yorkshire Local Heritage List as a very frequent nominator and sometimes assessor of entries.  It’s my feeling that the long-term preservation of industrial archaeology requires robust statutory & local designation of the widest range of Heritage assets possible, and frameworks such as CIfA’s Standards & Guidance to ensure that those sites not preserved in situ are preserved by record.