Museum of London Archaeology

MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology)

Company type	Archaeology and built heritage practice and independent charitable organisation
Predecessor	Department of Urban Archaeology (DUA), Department of Greater London Archaeology (DGLA), L - P : Archaeology, Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS), Northamptonshire Archaeology
Founded	1973
Headquarters	London, Northampton, Basingstoke, Stansted, Bristol, Chester , United Kingdom
Key people	Guy Hunt (Chief Executive)
Revenue	17,694,524 pound sterling (2021)
Number of employees	450 (2023)
Website	www.mola.org.uk

MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) is an archaeology and built heritage practice and independent charitable company registered with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), providing a wide range of professional archaeological services to clients in London and across the country. It is one of the largest archaeological service providers in the UK, and is the only one with IRO (Independent Research Organisation) status.^[1]

MOLA’s operations were historically focused within Greater London but are increasingly nationwide. It employs over 300 staff across 4 locations: the central London headquarters, and further offices in Northampton, Basingstoke, and Birmingham.

MOLA is a registered charity (since 2011^[2]) with its own academic research strategy and extensive community engagement and education programmes including the Thames Discovery Programme, CITiZAN^[3] and the Time Truck.^[4]

Commercial services offered include expertise and advice at all stages of development from pre-planning onwards: management and consultancy advice, impact assessments, excavation, 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.^[5]

Since 2017 MOLA has been part of a consortium with Headland Archaeology – MOLA Headland Infrastructure – to enable the delivery of archaeological and heritage services to large-scale infrastructure projects.^[6]