Grimes Grave set for virtual reality

14 September 2004 06:30

Visitors to a Neolithic site near Thetford will soon be able to go on the world's first virtual tour of a prehistoric mine.

The Grimes Graves site on heathland in Thetford Forest contains hundreds of flint mines dug more than 5000 years ago. Now one of the most important mines has been mapped by laser to allow visitors to "fly" in virtual reality over the surface and along the shafts and galleries.

Pete Topping, head of archaeological investigation for English Heritage, said: "You will be able to fly over the lumps and bumps on the surface and then go underground."

The laser scanning has already been done and work on the images is being finished over the next week or two. By next year it could be in place as part of an overhaul of the visitor centre.

Mr Topping said: "We are hoping it will be going in the visitor centre and will radically improve the visitor experience. Critically, it is being done in a mine that is not open to the public so it will enable people to see a mine that they cannot enter themselves. It will allow disabled people and those who cannot go down the shaft we have open to see it."

The pit that has been scanned, Greenwell's Pit, is historically important because it was the first opened by Canon Greenwell in 1868. He was able to prove, from a stone axe he found in there, that it was a prehistoric mine from the Neolithic period.

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