CIfA's Buildings Archaeology Group evening lecture - Lime finishes – what’s the point?

Delivered by CIfA's Buildings Archaeology Group, this evening lecture was recorded in November 2025.

This session focusses on 'Lime finishes – what’s the point: An archaeological and scientific approach to understanding the cultural and physical importance of lime coats within the context of a changing climate' with Dr Timothy Meek.

As a discipline archaeology seeks to understand the human experience in all its detail, however in this paper, my aim is to demonstrate that in the pursuit of archaeological data we have dismissed a significant part of the archaeological record – lime finishes. We have made this error as a direct result of eighteenth-century Romanticism and nineteenth-century religious and philosophical dogma and there is a price to pay for not recognising the importance of lime coats – the loss of the very fabric we value and a view of the past without nuance. Moreover, as our climate changes and the energy crisis deepens, we are unable to significantly improve building performance and thereby retain the buildings we value.

Using novel survey methodologies and an experiment that examines the impact of external/internal pressure differences in storm conditions, I demonstrate that lime finishes were near universal in the period prior to the long eighteenth century and that they offer an evidence-based approach to enhanced building performance, thermal comfort and the retention of archaeological fabric that is infinite. But I also argue that we don’t need to see those archaeological remains daily and that archaeology is a process not a finish.