Martin Hesp talks to Baroness Andrews about the challenges facing English Heritage
As the leading guardian of the nation’s past, Baroness Andrews is deadly serious when she calls for people in the West Country to become more vigilant in helping to preserve the region’s rich history.
And the chairman of English Heritage warns new planning laws will mean it is even more vital individuals keep an eye on their area in a bid to preserve the common birthrights and legacies that give a place distinction.
“One of the major things people know about this country is its history – and they are fascinated by it,” she says.
“They come to see what we’ve made of it and how it stands up. And it is a source of enormous wealth to us.”
Asked if there could be moves against spending money on the past during a period of current and perhaps future economic restraint, Baroness Andrews argued: “Someone might say ‘why don’t you just knock down that old building?’ But that old building is extremely precious to a lot of people.
“And it is not just nostalgia – it’s actually about what makes places look different, feel different – be a pleasure to live in and take pride in.
“If the tourists come to see our conservation areas for what they represent, so much the better. But English Heritage is not just about buildings – we are about places, and what makes this country such a brilliant place to live in.
“It means keeping an eye on the planning department and the sort of development proposals coming forward – especially now, when the planning system is changing a lot and the intention is to give local people more power.
“But we don’t want the neurosis and the Nimbys – we want people to take a pride in their communities. Make sure what you‘ve got is well known. It’s partly about marketing.”
Baroness Andrews was on a four-day tour of the region and her diary was filled with numerous briefings with local councillors as well as visits to English Heritage sites including places of worship and other sites of interest.
As well as monitoring the condition of all the region’s listed buildings, the organisation also manages sites such as Stonehenge and Old Sarum in Wiltshire, Muchelney Abbey and Nunney Castle in Somerset, several Roman sites in Gloucestershire and medieval castles in Dorset.
The Baroness’ visit was a timely one for several reasons, one being that, by English Heritage’s own reckoning, no fewer than one in seven of the nation’s officially designated conservation areas are deemed to be “at risk”.
Another was the launch of a major new initiative called the National Heritage Protection Plan (NHPP).
This sets out how English Heritage, with help from various partner organisations, will prioritise and deliver heritage protection for the next four years (2011-2015).
Its aim is to make best use of the organisation’s resources so that England’s vulnerable historic environment is “safeguarded in the most cost-effective way at a time of massive social, environmental, economic and technological change”.
The all-embracing programme is divided into eight themes sub-divided into a series of more than 400 projects which address specific areas of work – for example, places of worship, historic ports, strategic designation.
“The plan has only been developed in the past couple of years and is just being put into practice,” Baroness Andrews says.
“It was precisely to bring aid to where there’s been huge pressure to conserve, often driven by local interests and yet with limited resources, both from our part and from the community itself. The NHPP will give us, across every form of landscape, a list of what is most important and it will also match that with a capacity to do something.
“So we have a notion of urgency and now we have a notion of how we can respond and also a notion of what other partners we’ve got in the field.
“You may ask why we’ve never done this before but, in fact, the whole evolution of heritage protection has been just that, an evolutionary system.
“We’ve listed things as they’ve come to us – or we’ve decided we should list that building, or this particular type of building. Now it’s all much more strategic.”
I put it to the baroness that talk of national strategies and might sound grand and impressive – but what did it all actually mean to people on the ground.
“When you are talking about areas at risk you are usually talking about buildings,” she said.
“English Heritage puts a lot of resource into saving heritage at risk – our work has taken a lot of buildings and places out of the risk in recent years. But we are in a situation where there are fewer resources and we are going to have to be even more watchful. It’s a constant battle.”
I also put it to the Baroness that sometimes organisations like hers were guilty of over-interpreting the past and their massive information boards, and so on, could become intrusive in more natural environments.
One example of this which has sparked raised eyebrows is the National Trust’s ‘talking benches’, launched earlier this month.
One of them carried the voice of Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox, from Bolton in Lancashire, telling visitors of the delights of Stourhead in Wiltshire.
“It’s a very fine line between giving people enough information to make sense of what they can see, and overdoing it. But I take the point. You can just alert people,” she said.
“You can use different technologies. You can have discreet information rather than large boards.
“For example – at Stonehenge we had a major problem over how to interpret it.
“And I take your point that sometimes you can do more harm than good by forcing people into a mass of detail which can be too much.
“What people want is an experience – because a lot of time nowadays people are getting things off a screen – getting information that is second-hand, fifteenth-hand.
“What we’ve got to do is treat our visitors in a very special way if we want to take them along this quite complex piece of history. It must be an experience.”
We finished by talking specifically about the West, one of the richest in all of English Heritage regions when it comes to number of sites and breadth of history.
“I certainly have got to know the area since I’ve become chair because we’ve got such wonderful properties here and some very significant ones.
“I’m beginning to know the challenges of the South West and the role we play in the prospects of the region and I am aware how much we contribute to its wealth at the moment.
“It is a rich area and that is partly why so many people come here. Heritage adds this extraordinary dimension but it is part of what makes a place worth going to. And the point about this country is that it does have the most spectacular heritage. We underestimate it at our peril.”
