Heritage Action - The Heritage Journal

The town of Penzance lies at the far south-western edge of Cornwall, overlooking the beautiful and unique Mount's Bay, where the last vestiges of the English Channel melds with the wild Atlantic Ocean. The town's name means holy headland or sacred head, and is traced from the Cornish language Pen Sans. One of the oldest parts of Penzance lies at the sandy beach adjacent to Battery Rocks. It was along this shore on the holy headland where Dark Age Celtic hermits and settlers arrived from Brittany and Ireland. St Buriana, St Gulval, St Paul Aurelian and St Madern are all localised Celtic saints, and it is easy to imagine them landing at this beach in the 5th and 6th centuries.

Gradually a fishing community was established and the site of an 11th century chapel was discovered where St Anthony's gardens lie, just a few yards from the beach. It was here that the remains of a Celtic cross of late antiquity was discovered. This can now be seen in nearby St Mary's churchyard, at the top of the ancient low-lying cliffs of this holy headland. St Mary's is an 1830's Victorian rebuild, built on the site of a medieval Church. From St Mary's church, the oldest street in the town leads away from the headland towards the modern shopping centre. Chapel Street takes its name from the ancient Celtic chapel by the beach, neither from the Victorian St Mary's nor the neo-classical Wesleyan Chapel, both of which now sit along this old road of beginnings.

It is difficult to understand then, why this ancient sacred heart of the town is about to be completely destroyed. The Isles of Scilly Steamship Company in association with Halcrow Group Limited and Cornwall County Council are developing a project to build over the beach and battery rocks, completely destroying what remains of the ancient sacred headland where Penzance was born. This is one of the towns last pieces of wild shoreline, most of which has been destroyed over the last couple of hundred years of "development". Dolphins and Seals are regularly seen here, and the rock-pools are full of life, with anemones, fish and crabs. The view from this small beach is unsurpassable! St Michael's Mount with the Lizard peninsular stretching out behind is a wildlife paradise. It is difficult to believe that this project is even being considered, as back in the 1950s over half of the existing harbour was filled in to make a car park. This car park remains as a constant reminder of idiotic planning!

The plan now is to build a combined passenger and freight ferry terminal to service the Isles of Scilly, along with another car park and numerous buildings and warehouses. The present Lighthouse pier will be extended, and the beach and rocky headland will be obliterated in the name of so-called "modern progress". So in the 1950s one side of the historic port was ruined, and now in 2008, the proposal is to completely obliterate the other side of the historic harbour and docks at Penzance.

The road leading to and from this historic area to the immediate west of the present docks is totally inadequate for any increase in traffic, and this project will bring increased freight traffic, which in turn will cause many problems on the narrow roads in the Barbican and harbour areas of the town. The existing Isles of Scilly freight and ferry service is more than adequate, and given the lack of space available to add any kind of development at this historic and much loved Cornish port, I believe the plans should be scrapped.

The Route Partnership Proposal Isles of Scilly Link has come up with the worst possible option for Penzance in spite of hundreds of thousands of pounds being given to Hyder Consulting (UK) and others. The council tax paying residents of Penzance and Cornwall are expected to pay millions of pounds to guarantee the funding from the Department for Transport for this project. It does not remove traffic congestion from Penzance, in fact it will only increase it! They propose a development that is detrimental to Penzance sea front and will destroy the valuable and irreplaceable beach and Battery Rocks. It will ruin the setting of many listed buildings - the Lighthouse Pier, Jubilee Pool, and the Promenade. The war memorial, which sits between the beach and the art deco splendour of Jubilee Pool, will be lost amongst the new buildings, not very respectful to those who lost their lives during two world wars!

So what about the archaeology of the site? As mentioned the remains of a dark age cross was found at this site. If this project goes ahead, any remaining archaeological discoveries will be lost forever. Penzance thrives on the tourist industry, and the people who visit, do so because they are interested in the unique history of the place. If we allow part of the towns history to be destroyed, what will that tell future visitors about us? It is also worth remembering that this beach falls on the so-called St Michael/Beltane Line, a loose alignment of ancient sacred sites spanning the entire length of Southern Britain.

There is now an online petition courtesy of the Save the Holy Headland group. The petition is to the Secretary of State for the Environment and is requesting the rejection of a proposal put forward by the Route Partnership to build a passenger terminal and warehouses over Sandy Cove! The whole beach and rock pools would be buried under metres of concrete and obliterated forever. This proposal was rejected in 2004 by local people but since then plans have been going through without the townsfolk direct involvement. I know that this project will not affect people outside of Penzance but it is a stand against private companies who believe that their money can buy anything! We cannot simply stand by and do nothing to protect our ancient shoreline. A shoreline littered with the ghosts of dark-age Celtic hermits and the founding souls of this ancient settlement; a place where the sacred landscape and diverse wildlife of the sea meet and merge!

If you feel you could support this cause then please click on the link below and sign the petition.

Andrew George MP, Trewella, 18 Mennaye Rd, Penzance TR18 4NG. Tel: 01736 360020 Fax: 01736 332866 www.andrewgeorge.org.uk

Secretary of State for the Environment. The Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, Nobel House, 17 Smith Square, London SW1P 3JR

If you are local, visit the beach, take photos of the wildlife and protest, tell people and keep in touch.

STOP PRESS
It was reported in last weeks Cornishman newspaper (20/11/08 ) that due to massive public opposition, the plans have been put on hold whilst further consultation is held with the public!

Let's keep up the pressure by continuing to protest and lets hope for a sensible outcome.

Comments by the parliamentary Culture Media and Sport committee on the draft Heritage Protection Bill were posted on line at the end of July 2008. They are basically adverse, a lot of issues in the bill concern them. When they looked at the bill, it was not complete, this was just one of their concerns. It is probably because no-one has yet worked out how to combine listed buildings, scheduled monuments, conservation areas, veteran trees and other historic features into a unified system - the aim of the bill.

The committee took evidence from about 50 archaeological establishment bodies. Their concerns were, fairly predictably, a lack of money to implement the changes. The DCMS have calculated that the cost of implementing the bill will be £1.72m. Can they be serious? Do they know what they have taken on? This paltry sum is to be divided between 350 local authorities and, furthermore, not ring fenced. The Country Land and Business Association put the cost at £100m a year, a more realistic sum and yet it wont be there, so what will happen.

One of the many committee concerns was the 37,000 listed buildings that are currently on the 'at risk' register. At the moment the onus is on the Local Authority to step in order the buildings are repaired, which they rarely do. The committee felt the onus should be reversed to fall on the owner, but this would have political implications that the government might not want to take on. They had a host of other concerns, running from lack of opportunity for voluntary bodies to comment, through to abolition of Archaeological Areas of Importance to (critically), statutory designations e.g. 'national importance', special archaeological importance'.

My main concern with the bill however is acknowledged only in passing by the Committee. It is that heritage protection will be handed over almost exclusively to Local Authorities. At the moment Scheduled Ancient Monuments are administered by English Heritage on behalf of the government. The legislation has protected these most important monuments well for over one hundred years. Once this 'gold standard' is removed, and their curation is given to Local Authorities, vested interests and local politics are bound to have an effect, and whittle away these monuments. It would be better to further distance Local Authorities from heritage protection, not bring them in closer. L.A.s are always strapped for cash, they are always balancing development against conservation, and will listen to the loudest voice or the most politically expedient voice, rather than protect these precious monuments that have lasted literally thousands of years.

With every year that passes ancient monuments are more vulnerable due to growing pressure on our landscape, combined with advanced machinery and locating devices. Because of the pressure on the landscape monuments will be more important than ever to future generations. Local Authorities strapped for cash, keen to develop their patch, wanting to respond to the business community, will not see it this way. Some might, even most might, but not all of them and not all of the time. Having the protection one step away, under the auspices of government, has protected monuments well up to now (with some exceptions). Why change it.

I don't think anyone knows how this bill will work in practice. While it might seem logical to merge listed buildings with conservation areas, with scheduled ancient monuments, actually these distinctions are there for good reasons. They have developed over the years and mostly work well. The one reservation is that English Heritage have almost stopped scheduling new monuments, I am not sure why.

Let's hope the credit crunch puts paid to this bill, it is a can of worms, best leave things as they are.

While we welcome contributions on heritage-related subjects to the Heritage Action Journal, the opinions expressed therein and the accuracy of the reporting lie solely with the originators of the report.

"For a mile before we came to Keswick, on an eminence in the middle of a great concavity of those rude hills, and not far from the banks of the river Greata, I observed another Celtic work, very intire: it is 100 foot in diameter, and consists of forty stones, some very large. At the east end of it is a grave, made of such other stones, in number about ten: this is placed in the very east point of the circle, and within it: there is not a stone wanting, though some are removed a little out of their first station: they call it the Carsles, and, corruptly I suppose, Castle-rig." William Stukeley

The above quotation is the earliest written record of the beautiful Castlerigg stone circle in Cumbria, which was also to become one of the first monuments to be scheduled under the Ancient Monuments Act in 1882, submitted to Parliament by Lord Lubbock in that year, this act was to become the corner stone of what we today see as the protection of Scheduled Monuments. Over subsequent years it has been redrafted several times, and from its early small beginnings of 26 monuments in England, 22 in Scotland, 18 in Ireland and 3 in Wales, it has grown to the massive size we see today under the guardianship of English Heritage. Perhaps the most important major redrafting was in 1979 when the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act of 1979 was implemented.

But the original act of 1882 only covered prehistoric structures such as dolmens, stone circles, barrows and standing stones, nineteen century antiquarianism had fostered a love of these old 'druidical stones' and we should be grateful to them for recognizing the value of our prehistoric past.

But what of today's protection for such stones, we may have come a long way from when Stukeley lamented the burning and destruction of the stones of Avebury but the remit of English Heritage has grown large, and include a diverse group of buildings, monuments and archaeological sites. Our most important sites such as Stonehenge and Avebury are under increasing pressure from roads and tourists alike, and there is always the constant battle to protect them. This battle is often taken on by a diverse group of non-governmental bodies and action groups.

There is also another tranche/layer of protection that has developed over the last two decades and this is UNESCO's protection of World Heritage Sites, Stonehenge and Avebury coming under this umbrella, as does the Georgian city of Bath, Does this help or hinder our national monuments?

In the case of Bath a delegation is visiting the city to see whether or not World Heritage Site status should be removed; it is interesting to see in this article in the Independent, the argument as to whether the city becomes 'pickled in aspic' by the 'heritage police,' a phrase used by the developers, or developed, thereby spoiling the rather perfect Georgian ambience that is so much part of Bath's fame.

To return to Castlerigg and its rather jewel like setting amongst high peaks, it has suffered little damage due to its remoteness but this cannot be said of Stonehenge or Avebury. Action has to be taken to at least give back to Stonehenge and its landscape some dignity by the removal of the visitors centre and the closure of the A344. It has already suffered from a public exercise costing many millions on whether a tunnel should be built, a waste of public expenditure. Avebury presents its own problems, heavy footfall of tourists, and a busy road which winds through the circle causing great concern to pedestrians crossing at gated entrances.

From its early inception the Ancient Monuments Act has come a long way, and today's problems are very different to those experienced in the 19th century, but what does stand out is that guardianship, both by Government bodies and local groups are still as important and vital if we are to preserve our heritage.

Readers may know that our campaigns and Heritage Journal articles are generally about threats to prehistoric sites in the hope they can be avoided or minimized. Not this one. It's a pure moan.

You may recall how we strongly supported those who fought so hard against Hereford Council's unstoppable agenda to drive a highway over a world-unique structure known as the Rotherwas Ribbon, in the face of the government saying the road wasn't needed.

They were aided - nay, entirely enabled - by English Heritage's refusal to save the Ribbon by refusing to protect it by scheduling it straight away and saying instead that any decision to do so would take them a long time (long enough to enable the road to be built over it, as indeed it now has been! )

We did suggest that the evidence indicated that the Ribbon might be part of a much wider complex and therefore part of something extremely significant (the County Archaeologist suggested at an early stage it had an importance that made it comparable to Stonehenge) and we argued that at least the building of the road should be delayed until investigations were carried out so that everyone would know what was going to be lost. Sadly however, Hereford Council opted instead for indecent haste, the road was built and someone got very rich as a consequence.

That's all. Another case of money winning, the rest of us losing and our taxpayer-funded heritage guardians letting it happen despite having full powers to prevent it. End of story.

Except for this:
Last Friday, 11 November, an Archaeology Symposium was held in Hereford at which the results of the investigations so far were presented. And in the words of an attendee -

"Trial trenching ahead of further work in the area has revealed site after site from the Neolithic and early Bronze Age. The River Lugg a tributary of the Wye within which this site sits has also recently started yielding Neolithic and early Bronze Age sites. These include Henges, barrows, pit alignments, burnt hollows and more fire cracked stone surfaces to name but a few. The sheer number of sites coming up is tremendous..."

In other words, the Ribbon wasn't all that they damaged. As suspected, it looks as if it was a central feature of an incredibly rich, extensive and unique prehistoric ritual landscape.

Vandals have burnt down an Iron Age reconstruction roundhouse at Barbury Castle earlier this week. Senseless acts of bravado and in this case destruction are quite common, but perhaps what is not understood is the hard work and joint effort by many people to create a marvellous example of our past history.

The roundhouse was designed and constructed by Acorn Education who with the help of local people built it. Local materials were also used, and artwork depicting the prehistory of the Iron Age hillfort was beautifully illustrated in the hut, as were the wood carvings on the beams and posts. This is what is so sad, the lost artwork, the roundhouse in all its glory, a teaching example to adults and children alike of what life would have been like in the past.

Barbury Castle replica Iron Age roundhouse before the vandals got to it. Photo credit: Littlestone

The damage has been attributed to boy bikers, who in the evening use the Barbury Castle car park to joyride in. If there are gates to the car park, these should be shut in the evening thereby restricting access to the site, whether this is feasible though is another problem. What should be clear, is that such acts of mindless vandalism must be stopped, and that perhaps sometime in the future a new roundhouse can be built. All we have left now are photos of the building and artwork.

It should be noted that the Roundhouse lies within the Barbury Castle Country Park, managed by the Swindon Services Ranger Team, part of Swindon Borough Council, therefore responsibility for shutting gates or installing CCTV to protect the site must rest with them. It is also worth mentioning that as £28,000 has been spent on building the roundhouse, no thought was given by the council to adding doors to protect the wall paintings from bad weather; the paintings, subsequently have suffered serious degradation since the roundhouse was first built. There is a charge of negligence to be brought here, or at least carelessness in not protecting a unique and very valuable site.

It seems that Mr John Browning is unlucky enough to own land that was once a Roman settlement, a fact that has come to the knowledge of thieves. "Nighthawk" metal detectorists have raided it three times in the past five days, the latest in a long list of incidents - "At least 50 people have been caught and penalised over the years and Mr Browning believes more than 100 incidents have gone unpunished."

Fifty caught and one hundred incidents unpunished, 150 in total. That's 1.5% of the official estimate of the number of metal detectorists in Britain. On just one farm! How can this be reconciled with the claim by metal detectorists that nighthawks make up only a tiny minority of their numbers? An isolated statistical blip, not part of a wider phenomenon (we hear it claimed, or will soon! ) Unfortunately though, loads of neighbouring farms have been targeted and in the published words of a detectorist local to the farm: "Trouble is, it is not just Mr. Brownings farm there that has the problem. Neighbouring land, land all around that area is regularly targeted, it is not far from West Stow, Mildenhall, etc. Hawkers go all over there. It is just that Mr. Browning is on a mission with them, and is constantly trying to catch them with all sorts of equipment etc. Good on him, but that is why you hear about more convictions with him and his land."

In other words, when it comes to estimating how many nighthawks are out there, the more you look the more you find! We hope the authors of the imminent Nighthawking Survey bear this simple algorithm in mind. They're hard to see on account of the lack of light! Getting people's vague impressions of what goes on in the dark is one thing. Seeing it, for sure, is another. Perhaps there should be a second survey, "A Nighthawking Survey not based upon vague impressions but on Nightvision Surveillance"! Would the figures be higher? Ask Mr Browning who has seen it happen on his land 150 times, a figure no doubt comparable to the national total of confirmed sightings by people not using night vision equipment.

Mr Browning has certainly tried very hard:
"Earlier this year three men were fined for visiting the site equipped to steal. They were spotted on the site by Mr Browning who was using a special nightscope. Ricky McCabe, 34, David Miller, 38, and Alan Chapman, 37, all from Chadwell St Mary, each admitted going to a field equipped to steal. All three were ordered to pay £250 in costs, McCabe and Miller fined £250 and Chapman fined £500 when they appeared before a judge at Ipswich Crown Court in March."

Were the fines high enough? Hardly, in a week in which someone has been jailed for a year for stealing a few medals from his local museum. (When will Britain start treating crooks with finds pouches as harshly as crooks with swag bags? ) And not in comparison with the oodles the bronze heads and statuettes they were after would have fetched on Ebay once "laundered by description" (I dug 'em up in me back garden, honest mate, so it's legal innit? ). And we know some importers over the Atlantic that would gobble the goods up for their Collector clients. (All together guys: "We're ethical, we are, and our respectable Limey suppliers whose confidence we must respect told us the goods were legit, honest Bud, so it's legal ain't it?"

And so it goes. Assorted lootings from the four corners of the world end up academically labelled in polished walnut (or sometimes rosewood) cabinets in Ohio and everyone's blameless. And in the case of Britain the route leads from the criminal chapter and the much larger unethical and conservation-blind chapters of a hobby for heroes straight to American collecting zeroes, day after week after year after decade. A plague on them all. Look left if you want to see what erosion of the British artefactual resource partly fuelled by this process means. Look again in a few minutes, it will have worsened and someone in Ohio will be a little bit more proud.

Detectorists, predictably, are expressing outrage even though very many of them say there are known nighthawks in their local clubs (30% was estimated in one case.) Would you stay part of a part-criminal club dear reader? And say nothing? And then publicly rage about how awful criminals are? One detectorist has just posted this telling remark: "They'll be back out tonight on another site to get the goods to pay the fine."

Mr Browning said he often carries out night patrols but doesn't know what more he could do to protect the site as he couldn't do it every night. A metal detectorist has just offered him a solution: "Give permission for detectorists to go on during the day, maybe a club, they can record finds and treasure split 50/50 with farmer, will make it not worth hawking if done properly" Spiffing idea! Got a burglary problem? Invite a load of strangers with no testimonials but a known predeliction for valuables such as yours, some of them with Ebay accounts, to come into your house, clear half of them out permanently to their houses or auction them and maybe get a huge financial reward as well! And what's that sign on their bulging finds pouches? "Only in it for love of history, definitely not money"? So what does 50/50 refer to? In the circumstances we'd hope they'd also offer to tarmac the drive while they were there.

No, we think Mr Browning deserves no such kind offers of visits, just huge thanks from the rest of us for unselfishly making such an effort to save artefacts for the community rather than spending endless hours beep-beeping after them purely to claim them for himself as every single metal detectorist does, whether nighthawk or not. In fact maybe he could get public funding for what he does (paid direct from the Portable Antiquities Scheme budget perhaps), or a reward. A million pounds would be about right since that is the level of reward some metal detectorists have received under the Treasure Act.

And while we're at it, how about a government minister publicly announcing that Mr John Browning is an unsung heritage hero, like the previous Minister of Culture said about metal detectorists? Seems fair.

The Office of the Prime Minister, Number10.gov.uk hosts online petitions from members of the public. Recently Heritage Action member Cursuswalker submitted a petition which has proved to be of interest to many who are concerned with the welfare of ancient sites.

It was a response to the apparently endless succession of cases of "brandalism" (putting giant messages alongside or even on important sites such as hill figures to promote commercial or political messages) or using them in a less than careful or appropriate fashion for television programmes. Pro-hunting organisations, car sales companies, Channel Four's Big Brother and ITV's Trinny & Susannah (currently marketing "Magic Knickers - iron out those bumps and lumps with the Bum Lifter") are some of the recent culprits (sometimes in conjunction with official guardians that allowed them to do so in exchange for payment).

Part of the petition says "In addition to actual damage, such desecration causes insult and distress to many people of diverse belief paths" - to which we could add "or none". It is not just those who have spiritual beliefs that feel offended by these stunts, in fact anyone who isn't primarily interested in furthering the interests of fox hunters, Big Brother and Trinny & Susannah is likely to feel these places deserve to be treated with respect. Yet the government response has been both dismissive and mealy-mouthed.

To be sure it uses the magic word "respect" - "scheduled ancient monuments should be treated with respect and are protected by law because of their significance." But this is political trickyspeak supreme. The government says it considers the sites should be "treated with respect" and the government "protects them by law". The truth is though, the law protects them from damage but so far as we are aware contains no provisions for protecting them from disrespect - something which we have long felt is wrong and, in our own words, "We urgently call for this vitally important concept to be incorporated into the planning and protection systems."

In addition, the trickiness in the government's response extends to this: "When English Heritage receives reports of damage it considers all the available evidence and takes appropriate action on a case-by-case basis." Yes, but what isn't made clear is that, (apart from the fact they can't act against disrespect, only damage) if the damage is not actually on the scheduled site but merely adjacent to it, English Heritage has no power to do anything about it. The lack of statutory protection for the surroundings of scheduled sites is the one factor that has enabled Tarmac to legally gobble up much of the landscape of the Thornborough Henges and for metal detectorists to repeatedly stage mass grabfests of hundreds of artefacts on that important landscape and others while the authorities stood by, furious but powerless.

This lack of protection against either disrespect or damage to the surroundings of scheduled sites is contrary to the recommendations of UNESCO and various international conventions yet the British situation actually seems set to be made even more dire with the English Heritage Board recently opining "if the policy for the core area was strong enough, there would be no need for a buffer zone." See our recent Journal article "Settings to be thrown to the wolves?" http://www.heritageaction.org/?page=theheritagejournal&id=204

So there we have it. Thanks to the clever words of a Number 10 civil servant or those of whoever the drafting of the response was delegated to, the legitimate concerns of those who care for these sites have been totally ignored and the government has given the impression it gives a damn.

We learn with concern that the National Trust is running a local consultation about whether a solstice campsite should be provided at Avebury and one of the options is a site near to the West Kennet Avenue.

We feel that option is most unsuitable and should not have been offered. A small tented village next to the Avenue stones can hardly be considered appropriate on any level, whether spiritual, aesthetic or practical. Many people travel from far and wide to see the monuments and it is hardly fair that they should be confronted by such an intrusive arrangement, even for one day.

The question of where and whether a temporary campsite is provided is clearly a matter to be settled between the National Trust, pagan groups and the villagers. But please, be sensible, the monuments are for everyone not just those three stakeholders so not next to the West Kennet Avenue thanks!

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