Museum of London Archaeology Service

Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA), formerly the Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS), is an archaeological organisation registered with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), providing a wide range of professional archaeological services to clients in London, throughout Southeast England, and elsewhere. Until 1 November 2011, MOLA was a self-financed division of the Museum of London Group. As of 1 November 2011, MOLA became an independent limited charitable company, with company registration number 07751831 and charity registration number 1143574.

Despite operating largely within Greater London, MOLA is one of the top five archaeological service providers in the UK by project value and number of employees. In 2011, MOLA launched a regional subsidiary, MetroMOLA, with offices in Birmingham, Portsmouth, and Manchester. In January 2013, MOLA withdrew from the regional market and ceased trading through MetroMOLA.

Based at 46 Eagle Wharf Road, just to the north of the City of London, MOLA employs approximately 150 staff offering expertise and advice at all stages of development from pre-planning onwards. Staff provide management and consultancy advice and carry out impact assessment work, excavation, and mitigation (urban, rural, infrastructure, and other schemes), standing building recording, surveying and geomatics, geoarchaeology, finds and environmental services, post-excavation and publication, graphics and photography, editing, and archiving. Despite its independent status, MOLA continues to have a partnership arrangement with the Museum of London which gives it the capability to provide commercial services whilst also offering clients valuable links to already-established programmes in community outreach and public education. As of 2012, MOLA is hosting the Thames Discovery Programme (TDP), a community archaeology programme.

MOLA was formed in 1991 through the amalgamation of the Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA) and the Department of Greater London Archaeology (DGLA), both departments within the Museum of London. The DUA, whose jurisdiction covered the City of London, had been created in the early 1970s in reaction to the increasing destruction of buried archaeological remains during deep-basement office redevelopment. Prior to this there was no professional archaeological unit responsible for recording remains prior to destruction, though several individuals and volunteers did carry out important work.

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