Creswell Crags on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire borders is one of the most important archaeological sites in Europe and is currently working towards ‘World Heritage’ Status – a label that would see it ranked alongside historical luminaries such as Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

A Limestone Gorge, Cave System, Country Park, Wildlife Reserve, Museum and Visitor Attraction; Creswell Crags, it’s object collections, research, exhibitions and website are supported (most notably) by the British Museum, who’s curator of pre-history; Jill Cook had a large hand in conceiving and planning. In the early nineties I’d worked on the team that put the original site and its award winning content together. Now, more than ten years later – we’d get to improve upon the design, enhance the content and introduce some new ideas of our own.

Take something great, and make it better.

Some excellent re-branding work had been produced by Sumo in Newcastle, along with some suggestions for what the site may eventually look like. We took those early concept visuals and built on the thinking, applying our expertise and beginning to firm up the specification that much to the clients surprise; had a much richer feature set than they’d ever imagined considering their modest budget.

Using Teleriks Sitefinity CMS we delivered a fully managed website that included full ‘in-page’ content management. News and Events sections. Community message boards and polls; and a blog for the Creswell Team to talk about life at the Crags. Integration with Google maps provides a ‘rich media layer’ to head up the site – supporting local businesses by providing relevant ‘places to eat, drink and stay’ information to users wishing to visit the Museum and get a wider view of the surrounding countryside.

Still to come

The feather in the cap, is the integration with the Museums offline object database. Containing hundreds of thousands of objects, scattered far and wide across the country in various public and private collections; the Creswell object database is a goldmine of archaeological information and an incredibly important data set for education and historical research.

Using the Microsoft .NET development framework, we’ve set about creating a connection between desktop and internet that will bring the entire collection of objects to the world wide web. Keep your eyes peeled on the site for updates, but in the meantime you can search the Creswell Object Database as it stands so far: Human Skulls, Bison, Bear, Wolves and Hyena bones all found in rural Derbyshire… Crikey!