As part of the National Trust’s project to conserve and restore Knole in Kent, MOLA’s Geomatics team has been undertaking a measured survey of the showrooms and several new spaces. Catherine Drew, who has been working on the survey, explains what they have been up to…
Before the survey team started work in the house we created a ‘control network’ around the outside of the building. This was done by establishing a series of ‘fixed points’ by drilling survey nails into solid garden features and then using a total station and a set of prisms to measure angles and distances between them, a process called traversing. Using a differential GNSS kit, which locates positions using satellites in a similar way to navigational GPS equipment used in cars, we took readings over several of the points.
We combined all this data to create an accurate network of points, each with 3D coordinates on the Ordnance Survey British National Grid. We then extended the network into the house, so that all the survey work in the rooms could be related to the OS grid.
