The principal, Mrs Carmen López Sanchidrian welcomed us. We put across the main purposes of the CHT2 project and she gave us the keys to find out proper information about the study area (Alcázar gate and its surroundings) in the Archive. She also explained some crucial aspects about property rights. Since our interests were specially focussed on graphic information, her advice was helpful. After a comprehensive review of different collections of paintings, engravings and photographs a suitable selection was done. Moreover, we contact with IPCE (National Heritage Institute) to query high quality copies of some documents not available in Ávila.

Professor Tapia is a local historian, author of several papers and books that deal with Ávila Walls. He has a deep knowledge on both history and historical sources. He introduced us to the evolution of the Alcázar gate throughout the history and showed us its main changes as well as the main damage suffered because of wars and time deterioration. It was a good start since professor Tapia had located a lot of graphic information in his previous works that was scattered in different archives and private collections.

Members of the CHT2 UK team today met with representatives of English Heritage and Historic England at Newcastle University. The purpose of the meeting was to establish collaboration between Newcastle University and Historic England/English Heritage, to avoid duplication of existing work, to share the data and maximise benefits to all parties from the project. Three sites affected by erosion have been identified as potential areas of interest: Birdoswald, Corbridge and Beckfoot, and it was agreed to make these the focal points of the study. It was also agreed that the first step would be to explore the archives of English Heritage and to find out what datasets are available for each of the sites. English Heritage kindly agreed to provide digital copies of any data required from the archives to the project at their own cost.