Stopping the bus

English Heritage are starting a free school bus scheme. They’ll provide up to £4 per pupil towards travel to many of their properties. It’s a great idea. However, from our point of view there’s one drawback – the list of eligible sites includes only about half a dozen prehistoric ones. Sadly, that’s consistent with how things are on the National curriculum and exactly nine years ago our colleague Tombo made a compelling plea for change in his article Reclaiming Prehistory.

He pointed out that at least three million years of ‘prehistory’ is skimmed over in only a handful of pages at the beginning of our history books and the space on any school timetable devoted to the study of pre-literate times is as nothing when compared to that spent teaching the written history of the Common Era. As Tristram Hunt has just asked in the Guardian – “How much information about Anne Boleyn can modern Britain really cope with?”

Here’s a small suggestion. Maybe EH could still help with travel costs to medieval priories and stately homes but make the subsidy conditional upon brief stops at one or two little-known prehistoric sites on the way?

Coldrum Long Barrow, Kent  © Alan S, Heritage Action.  Worth a brief stop en route to Anne Boleyn’s early home at Hever Castle?

Government speaks out at last!

The Government of Belize has condemned the deliberate bulldozing of a 2,300 year old monument as “ignorant and unforgivable” and says that such cultural landmarks should be protected at all costs and that the “disdain for our laws and policies is incomprehensible.”

The millionaire culprit will offer to finance research into what is no longer there and be given a £4,000 fine and a slapped wrist. Oh no, sorry, that last bit applies to the bulldozing of a Priddy Henge, a monument in southern England that’s twice as old!