The Adam Room of the Lloyds of London building in the heart of the
City was a well chosen venue for Dr Simon Thurley, chief executive of
English Heritage, to announce his plans for the celebrations to mark
the 100th anniversary of the Ancient Monuments Act – the legislation
that has led to the birth of heritage protection and heritage tourism
in this country; and why Cameron was able to spend £27 million on his
‘Britain is Great’ global campaign to promote heritage across the
world as a main driver of British tourism – bringing in over £20
billion to the economy. Tourism is the fifth biggest sector of the UK
economy – larger than than car manufacturing, film, advertising and
certainly publishing.
In his address to the leading honchos of the heritage
sector and Maria MIller, Secretary of State at the DCMS, on 30th
January, Thurley began by asking a question. ‘What do MacDonalds
burgers, baseball caps, and Cameron Diaz have in common with the 1913
Ancient Monuments Act?’
Dr Thurley pointed out that it was the architectural pillaging habits
of Americans- such as California English castle owner William Hearst –
that led to the need for legislation that would prevent our great
stately homes, and their fireplaces, and great halls, staircases and
and bricks, being shipped over to the US, where they were
re-assembled. After years of shipping out crates of ‘old England’,
including panelled state rooms, even whole buildings, across the
Atlantic, an American tycoon decided he wanted to ship the better
parts of Tattershall Castle across the Atlantic. But before the fine
fifteenth century fireplaces were lost to America, Lord
Curzon stepped in.
As viceroy of India, Lord Curzon had been a champion of protecting
‘the great heritage of the subcontinent’ and found it remarkable that
while, the British Empire could prevent the plunder of the Punjab, it
was powerless to prevent the architectural rape of England’s own
heritage. Then Dr Thurley showed a slide of the exquisite fireplaces –
shrouded in Union Jacks like the returning war dead – being returned
to Tattershall on the back of huge horse drawn carts.
One of the ironies of this story, of course, is that the very room on
the 11th floor of the hi-tech futuristic building in which Dr Thurley
addressed the audience, now known as the Committee Room, was
originally the 18th century dining-room designed for the 2nd Earl of
Shelburne by Robert Adam in 1763. Architect Richard Rogers had the
room transferred piece-by-piece from the previous (1958) Lloyd’s
building. But at least the Adam architecture only crossed the road –
not the Atlantic.
The 1913 system involved creating a list of ‘scheduled’ monuments of
national importance – including Stonehenge (which will this year – as
the highlight of the anniversary – have the road that runs by the
‘heel stone’ through it finally closed down and diverted so as to
allow the ancient site to stand alone in its natural glory unfettered
by the noise and crawl of modern traffic). Responsibility for
governance of heritage protection the system was given to various
heritage geeks and mandarin eccentrics who worked at the ancient
monuments department of the Office of Works – the modern ‘direct
ancestors’ of those that now work for English Heritage. A new BBC 4
series telling the story of these heritage fanatics will be broadcast
from March.
The 1913 bill was very forward looking. The idea was to tell the story
of Britain through its historic buildings and sites – stone by stone.
By 1938, the ministry had collected over 300 sites, open to the
public, with more than 3 million visitors a year. This, Dr Thurley
reminded the audience, was before ‘our friends and colleagues at the
National Trust’ acquired their first country house. Today, English
Heritage has over 400 historic sites and monuments in its care – all
enjoyed by the public. Add to this the 1500 or so privately owned
historic houses open to the public (represented by the Historic Houses
Association) and the 500 or so managed by the National Trust and you
have an overview of the ‘national heritage collection’ that makes
Britain the envy of the world.
Following Thurley’s speech, the Culture minister Maria Miller stressed
the importance of heritage protection but made it clear that it needed
to modernise in line with other government priorities – such as
‘growth’ (ie building and transport infrastructure). ‘Preserving,
promoting and protecting our heritage has never been a backward
looking function…It matters that our heritage protection system also
continues to evolve, because we need to make sure that it is fit for
the 21st century. Changes in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform
Bill, which is currently before Parliament, will make the heritage
protection system work more efficiently. They will provide greater
certainty to owners and developers, and reduce the numbers of
unnecessary consent applications. Most importantly, they’ll do so
without diminishing essential protection for important heritage sites
and buildings’.
We have, of course, heard this rhetoric before. And it has proved to
be largely hollow. The new phase 2 – Northern link from Birmingham to
Leeds – of HS2 was announced just a few days before the Minister gave
these re-assurances. Take the Grade-II* manor house of Pooley Hall, on
the edge of Polesworth – the new line will cuts to within a hundred
metres. The first ‘significant’ country house to be affected will be
Grade-II* Langley Priory, near Diseworth, with the line slashing
through the 500-acre parkland, some 200-metres to the west of the
main house. A bit further on, the HS2 line slices through the western
parkland at Thrumpton Hall, which has close links to the Gunpowder
Plot and is the family home of the writer Miranda Seymour.
I could go on as the list of Grade 1 or Grade 2 * historic houses
that will be ‘sacrificed’ in the name of progress and jobs is pretty
long is pretty long. A notable exception that appears to have been
deliberately avoided is famous Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire owned by
the National Trust. Perhaps the planners have learnt their lessons
from picking fights with the Trust, whose PR and petition resources
are exhaustive – and with around 4 million members, a body with more
members than all the political parties combined.
I can only hope that the often stated government promises of heritage
protection override the priorities of ‘growth’ and development.
Unfortunately, my historic house at Upton Cressett is under siege
again. First it was a threat from wind farms, now it is an American
style mega intensive industrial pig farm by another local farmer –
just 500 metres from the gardens and grounds of Upton Cressett; and
less than 450 metres from the church of St Michael where we hosted a
beautiful carol service just before Christmas with no power, a lonely
Calor gas heater and no lights – other than hundreds of hand lit
candles in the winter darkness.
So long, that is, as the visitor experience at Upton Cressett
remains unspoilt by super-industrial and intensive farming.
Regrettably, traditional family farming in so many parts of rural
England is now being supplanted by American and Polish style of
factory farming where pigs, for example, never even smell any grass or
see any sky – let alone a field. The proposed pig factory (backed by a
UK supermarket chain) is a very long way from the breeding style of
The Empress Blandings of Lord Emsworth.
Ever since we heard about the proposed intensive swine farm from
a neighbour – who only found out by accident since the planning notice
was posted out of sight from public view – it has been very ‘Blot on
the Landscape’ here at Upton Cressett. Only it is funny when you are
reading about warfare in the country in a Tom Sharpe novel. This application is not.
The only other similar application for a factory pig farm so close to a historic house in the
country was for a factory farm a few hundred metres from HM Forston
prison – a closed prison for 160 murderers and rapists. We have three
Grade 1 buildings and three Scheduled Ancient Monuments, exactly the
sort of sites that the original 1913 Act was introduced to protect.
There is a strong argument that for those houses or buildings of
‘exceptional merit’ (as Grade 1 buildings are described) which are
open to the public, and which directly contribute to the heritage
economy by way of employment, education and cultural heritage, there
should be a statutory defence against development in the immediate
vicinity.
Next year will see the 40th anniversary of the famous 1974 V & A
exhibition on ‘The Destruction of the English Country House’, which
was widely credited with raising public awareness of the cultural
vandalism that was being done to the country house and their great
estates, described by Evelyn Waugh as perhaps the nation’s greatest
art form and greatest contribution to western civilization.
Let’s hope there is not a UK planning history exhibition 100 years
from now entitled The Destruction of Arcadia.