Drone surveys and geophysics will search Stanmer Park for Roman, wartime and unrecorded remains. Findings go on a public StoryMap in three updates.

Researchers have started a heritage study of Stanmer Park, looking for traces of Roman occupation, wartime activity and archaeology nobody has recorded before. Brighton & Hove City Council announced the project on Monday 26 October.

The work is being done by the consultancy Stantec in partnership with the council. It follows years of joint work between the council and Historic England, and a successful bid for money from the government’s Countryside Stewardship programme (council announcement, 26 October 2026).

The council says the team will use:

  • desk-based historical research
  • walkovers across the site
  • drone surveys
  • geophysical investigations, which map what lies under the ground without digging

The aim is to build a picture of how people have lived and worked on the estate over thousands of years. The council says the results will also guide how the park is conserved and help protect important remains.

What is already known

Stanmer Park sits inside the South Downs National Park and is the city’s largest public space. According to the council, its history already includes:

  • evidence of a Saxon settlement
  • 18th century farm buildings and a walled garden
  • a manor house begun in the 1720s
  • a landscape laid out in the style of Capability Brown
  • billets and firing ranges for a Canadian regiment in the Second World War, whose soldiers went on to the Dieppe Raid and the D-Day landings

Stanmer House itself is Grade I listed. Its official list description dates the main building to 1722 to 1727 and names the architect as Nicholas Dubois, who worked for the Pelham family (list entry 1380958, via British Listed Buildings).

Councillor Alan Robins, the council’s cabinet member for sport, recreation and libraries, said: “Much of Stanmer Park’s history has been well documented, but there is still so much more for us to discover and learn.”

What it means for you

You will be able to follow the study as it goes. The council plans three public updates:

  1. an introduction to the project and why it is being done
  2. emerging discoveries while the fieldwork is under way
  3. the final findings, launched with an interactive online StoryMap of the estate’s history, archaeology and landscape

The council has not given dates for the fieldwork or said whether the public can join in. It has not said whether any part of the park will be fenced off during the surveys. We will add those details when they are published.

The park stays open as normal. Stanmer Park flew a Green Flag award again this year, which the council announced in July.