G 5 · Townscapes and designed landscapes sites
The British landscape is a palimpsest of thousands of years of development, addition, reorganisation and rebuilding. It is the most complex continuum in the world. Buildings, fields, boundaries and roads have evolved over a long period. No historic building - in fact no building – exists in isolation from its evolving surroundings. Surroundings explain buildings, from the newly emparked Georgian mansion with the remains of a deserted village and a nearby model village, to the nineteenth century workers’ terraced housing marching across what was then open rural landscape.
The changes wrought in our landscape result in outbursts of concern. Even today government is worried about the loss of hedgerows and boundaries that often date back to the seventeenth century, just as William Cobbett worried about the enclosure of the vast open fields at the end of the eighteenth century.
The historic landscape has always held significance, and has great potential for teaching us about the built heritage in terms of buildings because it is as much the product of human activity and construction as buildings themselves.
In the last half century we have become progressively less connected with the rural landscape. This is best illustrated by the fact that whereas over 10% of the population were employed in agriculturally-related activity in the 1950s, the figure is now close to 2%. Although we continue to use and live in the countryside the old intimate relationship with our surroundings has been eroded, along with our understanding of it. In schools we explain the countryside far less effectively than in the past: the number of field trips made to the countryside has been reduced, as has the teaching of subjects involving a study of landscape, notably geology and geography. This disengagement with the landscape needs to be addressed, and should be linked with other issues that often loom larger in education today, such as global warming, sustainable development, and above all a sense of place. This large and rich field essentially lies outside the scope of this report but it needs to be considered as part of wider educational issues.
The inter-action between sites and structures, and their relationship with the historic environment, are part of the dynamics of landscape as an evolving set of relationships over time. This applies to townscapes as much as to the rural environment.
All land has a history and so, for example, all school sites have a historic record, beginning in geological time. Man’s activities leave a traceable pattern on the school’s site, while land form and soil structure have influenced its natural history. Every school can develop a unique record about its site and locality, adding to it as more information becomes available. This record can enhance subject areas across the curriculum. Many schools have been added to through time as structures. The evolution of buildings from, say, the late nineteenth century to the present day will show changes in style and building materials that can be analysed and understood by students.
Almost all schools have heritage assets and settings of interest, though they may need to be identified. Inner city schools, short on natural history except perhaps in their local park or green space, will have different opportunities to those in the suburbs, the urban fringe or rural areas, but all school sites and their localities provide opportunities for learning about the historic built environment.
On the other hand, however revealing the local setting may be, it naturally seems very familiar. Opening the eyes of young people to the significance of their high street or their school buildings should not preclude opportunities to explore less immediately accessible sites, historic or contemporary. For the young, the local environment is not everything: a course involving a trip to Paris or Berlin has a good deal of attraction. As one educationalist put it, for the A-level student, Nazi Germany seems a lot sexier than the local quarry.
Current projects
A number of important current projects reflect growing interest in a holistic view of historic towns and landscape. For example, the Townscape Heritage Initiative, launched by the HLF, gives some £18 million a year for the revival of historic towns throughout the United Kingdom. Successful initiatives in this area have not only restored the character of towns, but contributed to their social and economic regeneration. The programme has been very active, for example, in Northern Ireland, where work has been carried out on a number of historic towns.
In terms of research and recording, the work of the Victoria County Histories is notable. This organisation’s new style of research, based on archives and on material gathered within the local community, interprets the fabric of a city or village in terms of past or very recent activity, in order to create a rounded narrative. Places currently being studied include Darlington in County Durham and Codford in Wiltshire. The Local Heritage Initiative (in partnership with the HLF, the Countryside Agency and the Nationwide Building Society) has a comparable approach. Set up in 2000 it makes grants of £3,000 to £25,000 to a wide range of activities throughout England (with pilot schemes in operation for Wales and Scotland). To date 775 projects have been awarded a total of over £10 million: an average grant is £15,000. 41% of the projects are in designated areas of deprivation, including coalfields. The aim is to unearth local heritage in real and practical ways, and to date over 250,000 people in towns and villages have been involved. The results have been outstanding: significant contributions by local communities, some very remote, create a sense of purpose and cohesion.
Pioneering work in simulating historic towns is being carried out at Queen’s University Belfast where GIS geographical software, integrated with historic information, is used to reconstructed town plans; and at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture at Bath. These initiatives have great potential for the future. In Bath, Bath and North East Somerset Council (BANES) published a Management Plan in 2004, which outlines a strategy on education based on the concept of learning for all within the contest of a World Heritage Site. It is hoped to create links with other World Heritage Sites around the world, and to develop the use of the city for FE students in conservation, heritage management and sustainable tourism. For BANES, enabling people to understand and celebrate the city is integral to ensuring the best care for it by the people who live there and visit.
The Whitefriars site, Canterbury
The Canterbury Archaeological Trust is working closely on the Whitefriars site with the commercial site developers, Land Securities PLC (who have funded the archaeological fieldwork) and the City Council. The Trust began a programme of urban fieldwork of unprecedented scale and potential for yielding evidence of the city’s past. Working closely with English Heritage, a group of local schools have been involved in recording the work that has been carried out at different stages, and at Year 6 they have had the opportunity of talking to the City Council and hearing the whole history of the development. The aim is to involve young people in the past history of their town and in plans for its future.
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