A 2 · Changing approaches to heritage and its interpretation
Definitions of the historic environment developed dramatically in the twentieth century. For most of this period, historic buildings were subject to an official academic assessment. Until 1946 they were officially defined for listing purposes (placing buildings on lists of ‘special architectural or historic interest’), as structures built before 1714. The remit has gradually expanded, to include firstly eighteenth century buildings, then Victorian ones. The types of building included within listing criteria have also increased, to embrace industrial buildings and railway stations. Since 1987 buildings erected within the past thirty years have been listed if they are deemed ‘of outstanding quality and under threat’.
The National Trust for England, Wales and Northern Ireland is an indicator of developing attitudes. Until the 1970s the Trust was generally resistant to acquiring buildings later than 1837, the symbolic close of the ‘long eighteenth century’. The main exception to this rule were ‘shrines’, buildings associated with famous individuals such as Bernard Shaw or Lawrence of Arabia, where historic criteria were waived. From the 1970s the Trust expanded its portfolio chronologically, to embrace buildings which earlier would have been considered inappropriate possessions: firstly Victorian buildings such as Cragside, then twentieth century Modernist buildings including Erno Goldfinger’s house in Hampstead. More recently the remit has been extended in terms of building types and social class, to include two of the Beatles’ houses in Liverpool, the Workhouse at Southwell and back-to-back housing in Birmingham.
By contrast, Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England series included contemporary buildings, assessed without the antimodernist prejudices current at the time, from its beginnings in 1951.
The presentation of National Trust properties over the past twenty years has reflected changing ideas of heritage. The Trust has developed beyond its 1940s belief that the only interesting aspects in its country house properties lay in the state rooms (and gardens). These rooms were initially seen primarily as architectural ensembles, and as settings for works of art. In the 1970s a new approach emerged, under the influence of Mark Girouard’s Life in the English Country House (1978) and the acquisition and presentation of Erddig, where for the first time the servants’ quarters and service areas were thought to be of crucial importance. The Trust has now created a more generous agenda, in which the lives led by the people who worked in these houses, and the conditions below stairs, as well as the functioning of estates, have become important elements within the presentation.
The historic landscape, ancient or more recent, is just as revealing and interesting as individual structures. The historic environment is not just about individual buildings: it is about the landscape, or the townscape, that lies between them. Buildings mean much more if they are seen in the context of their surroundings.
Expanded interpretation of the physical heritage can help to break down the prejudice that the historic environment is only for the few: that it relates only to castles and cathedrals and is removed from everyday experience. Almost every town or village contains buildings or streets which are of interest, whether architectural, historic or social. Some of the most successful learning initiatives provide an alternative to the idea that ‘heritage’ is reserved for those who can travel and who have special access, intellectual or physical or financial, to historic sites. For schools, the historic environment is part of the locality of nearly every school building: there is almost always something within walking distance.
Immigrant communities have brought their own heritage over many years, creating an extraordinary multiplicity of ideas and traditions.
Potentially, heritage is about and for everybody.
|
section start
'Our emphasis has
to change from
viewing a building
as an object only.
Its past life must
be illustrated and
explained. Selfdiscovery,
and
taught discovery,
are vital.'
Bryan Ayers
|
