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Roger Connell and his son, Paul, of Frozen In Time

They are the men who "froze" the Mary Rose.

Now Roger Connell, managing director of Frozen In Time and his son, Paul, a design engineer, are getting ready to make their icy mark on another great historical find.

This time they have assembled a four ton machine as shiny as a rocket nosecone in their factory on the York Road Industrial Estate in Sheriff Hutton. Its mission: To freeze-dry Seahenge.

That is the strange 4,000-year-old group of 55 timber posts encircling a platform which in January, 1998, suddenly emerged from the tide on the North Norfolk coast.

While there are theories about how ancient peoples used this ritual formation with its central upturned oak, it remains as mysterious and as old as Stonehenge, its inland counterpart - only that much more delicate.

After millennia of being preserved in peat layers, then completely immersed in the North Sea, Seahenge's posts were waterlogged.

But you can't simply dry them out in front of a fire. That would cause collapse of the wood's cell structures, shrinkage and terrible damage.

Firstly, experts from the Mary Rose Trust will pickle the posts in a water soluble wax solution to prevent them from disintegrating.

Seahenge, which suddenly emerged from the tide on the North Norfolk coast in 1999

Then the Connell's machine, commissioned by the Mary Rose Trust which took charge of the preservation of the central stump and posts, will do its stuff.

The machine's complicated innards, consisting of half a mile of copper tubing for its refrigeration system, will freeze the posts, then cause all the ice to come away as vapour rather than melting, through a process known as sublimation.

This is achieved using an extreme vacuum and eventually will leave the posts totally dry, with their cell structure intact.

If Dr Glen McConnachie, of the Foundation, is confident about the efficiency of the Connell contraption, it is because a much bigger version partly built by them has been helping to preserve the Mary Rose ship recovered in 1982 after 500 years preserved in the mud at the bottom of the Channel.

He says there was so much yet to preserve - some 8,000 artefacts, including gun barrels, carriages and chests hauled up from the deep - plus commercial preservation contracts - that it was clear that the Connells help was needed.

The £100,000 freeze-dryer will be quickly put to work. "Both will be fully used to clear our conservation contracts, " says Dr McConnachie.

The Connells have confirmed their reputation for literally freezing time with many other projects, including a freeze-dryer for the National Museum of Ireland in 2006, to preserve 4,000 year old log boats; one for treating Viking artefacts at the National Museum of Iceland; and, closer to home, one was built for the York Archaeological Trust to freeze-dry ancient timbers found at Coppergate in York.

Roger says: "We have even sent two of our machines to the Food Research Institute in order to freeze dry faeces for analysis. It's nice to be useful!"

Customers are as diverse as pharmaceutical companies, research institutions and freeze driers of herbs and flowers. The duo's machines have been exported to the Middle East, South America and the Philippines.

AMAZINGLY, Roger Connell was more businessman than engineer when he founded Frozen In Time back in 1993.

Before that he owned Connell Leather Products on the Pocklington Industrial Estate, a successful manufacturing venture which he sold. "I suppose that investing the money in property would have been the more prudent course of action.

"Instead I had this idea that I could use freeze-drying technically for down-to-earth products like archaeological artefacts, leather and water damaged books and documents at a fraction of the cost of existing machines.

"I had been fascinated by cryogenics for years and, it sounds crazy, but I built my first machines by trial and error. I've always made things ands respect others who make things."

Freeze-drying was a fascinating process which was used by astronauts for their dried food supplies on their way to the moon.

"It was expensive and tended to be used for high-value products like pharmaceuticals, but I was convinced that I could build a simple type of freeze dryer which was far less costly."

Soon, their machines were being used by Pfeizer pharmaceuticals to aid with research and development and by organisations such as Rothamstead Research, the leading horticultural research establishment in the country; as well as the British Library.

Some of the machines he builds cost as much as £100,000 "We can assemble small ones for a few thousand pounds, but as it requires part of the machine getting down to as low as minus 55 deg C and extreme vacuums, it is a costly process."

The future? That lies in funerals - and the type of fastfreeze body disposal known as "promession" a process which technicians are giving a lot of thought.

That is, freeze bodies to minus 196 deg C, the point at which it can shatter to powder on vibration. The powder is then placed in a vacuum chamber where clean water evaporates, then is passed through electric currents to extract any metals which exist for recycling.

The remainder, about one third of original body weight is placed in a small bio-degradable coffin.

"Nice idea, " says Roger, "But the process is still theory.

There is a lot to be done to perfect it in practice. When it is, we will be in a good position to benefit."

12:10pm Tuesday 6th May 2008

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