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The Heritage Action Megameet has had a patchy history in recent years. This has been due to several factors; the geographic spread of our members, the inability to agree on a suitable date for everyone, family and health issues, and more. However, with the recent loss of our previous chairman Nigel Swift, it has been decided that we should all make an extra effort to get together in his honour and hold a mega-Megameet!
Following discussions and a poll in the Megameet Facebook group, a date has now been agreed upon, and it is our hope that many ‘modern antiquarians’ will gather in Avebury stone circle in Nigel’s memory on August 17th this year.
As with previous meets, the plan is to assemble in the NE quadrant near the Cove for a shared picnic in the hour or so before midday. Expect lots of friendly chat about ‘big old rocks’, landscape ‘lumps and bumps’ and associated topics, as well as many stories and memories of Nigel and the origins of Heritage Action and the Heritage Journal. There will also be the traditional ‘book swap’ as part of the day, so bring along any heritage/archaeology books you may no longer require.
If the weather is inclement, we shall assemble instead in the Red Lion – although I expect we’ll end up in there for a toast to Nigel at some point regardless of the weather!!
All readers of the Heritage Journal are cordially invited, and we hope to see as many of you as possible there on the day.
The recently issued January/February 2024 edition of the Cornwall Heritage Trust’s newsletter contained the news that the Trust has now assumed the management of the Duloe Stone Circle on behalf of the Duchy of Cornwall.
The Duchy owns numerous historic and ancient sites and some, notably the profit-making castles, have been placed under the less than satisfactory management of English Heritage.
However, it is encouraging that an increasing number of sites are now owned or under the faultless and careful management of the Cornwall Heritage Trust whose annual acquisitions have now raised the total number of sites the body administers to 16 following an impressive five gained in the past 18 months.
Those 16 monuments in the care of the Trust represent a wide span of historic periods from the Prehistoric, through the Mediaeval era and into Victorian industrial times.
Duloe is a village between Liskeard and Looe in Cornwall and just to the South of the settlement, a small oval stone circle is located, comprising eight white quartz monoliths of which seven continue to stand.
The circle has a varying diameter measuring just over 38 feet by 33 feet 6 inches thus making it the smallest of Cornwall’s circles.
The circle dates from the Bronze Age (2500BCE to 801BCE) and the use of white quartz for all the stones makes it unique amongst stone circles in Cornwall.
The stones are of various heights ranging from three feet three inches to seven feet ten inches and the four largest stones which stand at the cardinal points of the compass have been estimated to weigh up to nine tons each.
A field hedge bisected the circle until 1858 when it was removed and in 1863, three of the stones were re-erected during which a Bronze Age urn containing cremated human bones was recovered.
This find resulted in the Cornish antiquarian William Copeland Borlase FSA (b.1848 d.1899) suggesting in his ‘Nænia Cornubiæ’ published in 1872 that the circle originally retained a low barrow and thereafter the site became known as ‘The Druids Circle’.
However, the late Cornish historian and archaeologist Craig Weatherhill (b.1950 d.2020) thought the stone circle appeared too large to have retained such a barrow.
With tourism, housing and roadbuilding development virtually out of control in Cornwall resulting in damage and even loss of some ancient sites, and with Duloe having been at risk from tourism-related development as noted in the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Heritage Environment Record, its management by the Cornwall Heritage Trust cannot have come too soon.
This is not the first instance of the Trust having saved historic sites and coupled with its impressive public and educational schools outreach programme, increasing membership and popular campaigns, it continues to grow in stature in Cornwall, and is far more principled than other heritage bodies which place profit and the ‘Disneyfication’ of Cornwall’s unique heritage over and above care for the monuments.
A link to the Cornwall Heritage Trust website can be found here: https://www.cornwallheritagetrust.org
Reference:
- Cornovia: Ancient Sites Of Cornwall & Scilly – Craig Weatherhill, Halsgrove, 2011
Image:
- Duloe Stone Circle – Philip Halling – Creative Commons – geograph.org.uk
Regular readers will be aware that our long-standing chairman, Nigel Swift sadly passed away last month.
Nigel’s wish was for no formal funeral. However, his family and close friends are attending an informal celebration of his life at 1pm today. Although many will be unable to attend in person, anyone who knew him, or had any dealings with him over the years is invited to raise a glass to a life exceptionally well lived, wherever they may be.
This will be an opportunity to smile and share fond stories of Nigel, and importantly, to remember him. Wear whatever you like, Nigel would not have noticed or cared, and any colour is appropriate!
He would have sneered at cards or flowers (best left as trees or in the ground where they belong). But we’re sure that the family would appreciate any small donations in his name to St Richards Hospice where he spent his final days.
So, whatever your tipple, be it tea, coffee, fruit juice, beer, wine or something a little stronger, please feel free to take a moment to join in the celebration, and always remember him.
It is with intense sadness, and a deep sense of loss that we have to report that Nigel Swift, Chairman of Heritage Action (HA) for 20 years, passed away on Monday evening. He had been living with prostate cancer for over 20 years, but had discovered during a recent stay in hospital that the cancer had spread. Despite this, his final weeks were full of laughter, surrounded by his family, and his final days at a wonderful hospice passed in tranquility and painlessness.
Nigel Swift graduated in Economics and Politics (University of London) and was a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. He has published articles and lectured at various universities on surveying-related topics. Following his early retirement in 2001, he expanded a keen interest in archaeological conservation issues. He was a co-founder and Chairman of UK and Ireland group Heritage Action which is dedicated to voicing the concerns of many ordinary members of the lay public on various matters relating to heritage conservation.
Nigel was a keen participant on the Head Heritage forums, and was known for his strong views against metal detectorists. Indeed, over the years he made few friends in that area and endured many extreme reactions to his views, including threats of violence, but as he once said – ‘What are they going to do to me? There is nothing they can do to me.’
Knowing that the end was near, Nigel requested that we post the following poem on his behalf:
Relative Ron
This is the story of Relative Ron,
Admittedly dead, but not really gone.
He explained what he meant as he breathed out his last
(He didn’t have long so he talked very fast):“They say that the universe is without limit,
So clearly I’ll always be someplace within it.
And although it might seem that my time has now passed,
This can hardly be true in arrangements so vast:
For boffins contend that space-time is bent
And reverses on reaching an horizon-event.
So don’t look so gloomy, for clearly it’s plain
Right now in the future we’ll all meet again.”
Below are some of the early reactions to the news of Nigel’s passing, showing how well respected and loved he was among the amateur antiquarian community.
- I’m so, so sorry to hear this! Absolutely gutted. I really loved that bloke. I’ll miss the daft old sod.
- We ADORED Nigel. His refusenik righteousness, his fire, his intelligence, his curiosity, kindness and humanity. If you knew him you were lucky. And weren’t we so lucky?
- The quintessential troublemaker, you’ll be missed Nigel. The twenty-plus years of your life hammering against heritage theft, unfettered metal detecting, vandals etc etc are testament to your spirit. The humour and passion you did it with came for free. My favourite memory is telling me to be calm when approaching people climbing stones at Avebury in one minute then angrily yelling “oi, you can’t climb that” two minutes later. Never shy in coming forward. Rock on mate.
- He once told me he was working as a chartered accountant somewhere, and when he was taken ill and got a “six-months-to-live” diagnosis – his firm told him he need not come in and they’d give him full pay until he died… in the end, and this was some years later, they (as he put it) sued him for not dying [I am sure the legal term is probably different].
- Devastated. Even though we knew it was coming. I shall miss his phone calls, his quips, his laugh. I am not even sure of his age but first met him in person in 2000. We met in a pub on Salisbury Plain and conceived what eventually became Heritage Action, albeit I then refused to join. Nigel then came up with the meeting which took place at the ‘orse (the Uffington White Horse, which led to the formation of HA ).
There is so much more that could be said. Fare well on the other side Nigel. The world is a worse place without you…
Today Save Stonehenge World Heritage Site (SSWHS) learnt that its judicial review of the Government’s decision to approve a highly damaging, £2.5bn road scheme through Stonehenge World Heritage Site, for a second time, had been unsuccessful. Mr Justice Holgate in handing down his judgement today dismissed the application. SSWHS have said that they intend to appeal the decision.
The judgement comes after a 3 day hearing in the High Court in December. UNESCO, five planning inspectors and over 236,000 people were all opposed to National Highways’ highly damaging plans. Save Stonehenge WHS’s legal action had been the only thing stopping the giant earthmovers from entering this 5,000-year-old landscape.
John Adams, chair of the Stonehenge Alliance and one of the 3 directors of SSWHS, said:
“In the face of Government indifference to the harm this road will cause the World Heritage Site, we had no choice but to bring this legal action. While this judgement is a huge blow and exposes the site to National Highway’s state sponsored vandalism, we will continue the fight. In the dying days of this Conservative Government, which has inflicted so much damage on the country, we cannot let it destroy our heritage as well.”
Tom Holland, historian and president of the Stonehenge Alliance, said:
“This is a devastating loss, not just for everyone who has campaigned against the Government’s pig-headed plans for the Stonehenge landscape, but for Britain, for the world, and for subsequent generations.”
SSWHS successfully raised over £80,000 to bring this action. SSWHS will now have to raise a further £15,000 in order to apply for permission to appeal at the Court of Appeal. If a hearing is granted, a further £40,000 could be required.
The CrowdJustice page has a new interim target of £100,000. This is to raise the additional funds needed to make an application for permission to appeal (at the Court of Appeal). If a hearing is granted, the CrowdJustice target is likely to need to rise to around £140,000.
Cornwall Heritage Trust – Trest Ertach Kernow – has announced their acquisition of the historic Tregonning Hill at Balwest near Helston in Cornwall, following its recent sale on the open market
With spectacular views of Mount’s Bay from its summit, the hilltop has the remains of a hillfort – Castle Pencair, two barrows, two prehistoric enclosed rounds, a mediaeval field system and later important sites of industrial heritage, Cornwall Heritage Trust have run an impressive fundraising campaign which has drawn substantial financial donations from concerned individuals.
The hilltop is crowned by a granite cross which serves as a memorial to the residents of Germoe Parish who gave their lives during both World Wars.
cc-by-sa/2.0 – © Rod Allday
Many will now heave a collective sigh of relief that the 70-acre site has a secure future with Cornwall Heritage Trust thus guaranteeing proper management and public access.
Cornwall Heritage Trust describes itself as a ‘small independent charity’ but with its possession of no less than 15 of Cornwall’s most important historic sites, it continues to grow in stature with an ongoing fundraising campaign and growing membership base.
Given the virtually out-of-control ‘development’ occurring in Cornwall where the integrity of several sites of historic note has been cast aside, this is indeed encouraging news.
Read the announcement on the Cornwall Heritage Trust website.
A statement released by Amesbury Police yesterday:
Three males are currently in Swindon custody on suspicion of nighthawking and going equipped to steal.
During the early hours of this morning (21/10/2023), officers from CPT Team 2 and CPT Team 3, were tasked to an incident where nighthawking had been seen along Countess Road in Amesbury. Three males ran away from Police upon sight, and a short while later were detained and arrested along the A303 near to Countess service station.
A number of items were located with the males including suspected historical artifacts, metal detectors and metal detecting equipment, all of which has been seized.
Nighthawking is the illegal search for, and removal of antiquities from the ground using metal detectors, without the permission of the landowners, or on prohibited land such as Scheduled Monuments. Nighthawking is therefore theft and a rural crime in which Wiltshire Police are committed to bringing those who commit this crime, to justice.
Facebook.com
What’s next, a detecting festival along the Great Cursus? These people have no shame!
By Myghal Map Serpren
Sir Philip Rutnam, who was the Civil Service Permanent Secretary at the Home Office until 2020, currently serves as Chair of the National Churches Trust, which works to keep Britain’s church buildings open and in use by awarding grants, promoting churches as community hubs and places to visit and by advocacy and lobbying.
Churches not only constitute the largest collection of listed buildings in Britain, but are also home to countless historic artefacts and priceless art.
Writing recently, Sir Phillip launched a five-point plan for keeping these historic buildings open and accessible. In his wide-ranging article, he pointed out that there are 39,000 buildings used for Christian worship across the country of which almost 20,000 have been listed.
Mostly all of these are parish churches and chapels and those churches and chapels include nearly half of Britain’s most important historic buildings being Grade I listed or equivalent.
It is true to say that church buildings are an important base for voluntary and community activities and continue to reduce social isolation and build community spirit.
At this time and perhaps a comment on the times in which we find ourselves, earlier are now more food banks than branches of MacDonalds and a great number of these charitable resources are found in church buildings.
In ‘The House of Good’, a recent independent evaluation for the National Churches Trust using the same methodology for appraising projects as that found in the Treasury’s so-called ‘Green Book’, it has been conservatively estimated that the economic and social value of the activity in church buildings amounts to around £55bn a year.
However, there is a real crisis facing church heritage.
Wales
In Wales, at least two-thirds of the chapels that were once open have now closed.
In the last two decades, the Church in Wales has closed 15 per cent of its churches and expects the rate of closure to increase in coming years.
At the time of writing, nine can be found for sale on the Church in Wales website, from Monmouthshire to the Menai Strait.
Scotland
The Church of Scotland, guardian of many of the country’s most important buildings, is bracing for the closure of perhaps 30 to 40 per cent of its churches.
Some have already appeared on its website for sale, including Old High Kirk, the oldest church in Inverness.
Others are still going through the process of closure such as Saint Monans in Fife, endowed in the 14th century by David II, King of Scots, which served as a Dominican oratory by the sea and stands as one of Scotland’s most important mediaeval buildings.
England
Across England, the current model of maintaining these buildings is under obvious strain, above all in places that are poor, isolated, or both.
The Church of England says its backlog for repairs is at least £1bn, and one estimate says it is growing at £75m a year.
The causes of this crisis are many; falling congregations, a fall in the volunteering ethos, impoverished communities burdened with building maintenance amongst them.
Compared with most other European countries, funding for churches and chapels in Britain is rather different.
As Sir Philip points out, although the church and state are closely and constitutionally linked, church buildings receive no regular public funding.
Elsewhere
In France, a more secular state, cathedrals are maintained by the national government and churches by local authorities. As an example, President Macron appointed a former chief of the French defence staff to oversee the reconstruction of Notre Dame.
In other countries, the most common form of financial support is by way of a church tax covering anyone who is a member of the church, whether or not they attend.
Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and most of Scandinavia operate systems like this, and in each case ‘membership’ is somewhere between common and near-universal.
Italy, Spain and Portugal offer more choice but still have millions of people voluntarily paying to support churches.
Italy has the ‘otto per mille’ system which allows taxpayers to choose where 0.8 per cent of their income tax is spent among a list of causes resulting in more than 80 per cent selecting churches.
Compare all this with the arrangement in Britain where the burden of keeping up these buildings rests almost entirely on the congregation, the people who actually attend services.
A community which is modest in numbers or income can find itself facing an enormous repair bill for a significant building.
Five ideas
So what can be done to address Britain’s greatest heritage challenge?
No single actor can fix this: action is needed by churches locally, denominations nationally, and by the government itself.
Sir Philip lists five ideas:
- First, the government needs to recognise that these buildings are a public good for both heritage and community, and that it is not realistic for the whole burden to rest on local shoulders. In fact, successive governments used to recognise this: from the 1970s until 2017 there was dedicated grant funding for listed places of worship, running at up to £40m a year. This ringfenced pot was abolished by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and since then the Lottery funding for churches and chapels has fallen from £46m in 2018–2019 to £11m in 2022–2023. The Fund is now changing tack in a way that is welcome, but the scale and urgency of the problem demand further action by both government and the Fund.
- Second, the national denominations need to provide much more practical support to congregations, not least offering more specialist advice on building maintenance and widening the range of uses, as well as collecting much better information on the condition of their assets. The Roman Catholic Church has done excellent work on this in recent years. Churches themselves should be more strongly encouraged to be open and accessible.
- Third, we should do more to realise the unexploited potential of these buildings for visitors and tourism, including for pilgrimage. In Northern France and Belgium, 56 belfries are grouped together as one World Heritage Site. Why not promote the wool churches of Norfolk and Suffolk as something similar? Or the towers of Somerset, or the Christian conversion sites of Wales and northern Britain, associated with the Irish saints who arrived in the 5th–7th centuries?
- Fourth, public bodies need to stop being afraid of engaging with faith groups, Christian or otherwise. A wealth of evidence shows the positive social impacts and the reach that they can have. There are some good tools available, not least the Faith Covenant produced by the Faith and Society All-Party Parliamentary Group, which takes the form of a set of principles to promote practical collaboration between religious groups and local authorities.
- Finally, we do need to start exploring new models of keeping some of our most rural and isolated buildings alive, while recognising that this is a long-term task and no substitute for fixing the roof and supporting heroic volunteers.
The National Churches Trust has an impressive record assisting to keep up to 2,000 churches and chapels open and available to their communities, making grants which have removed 14 buildings from the heritage at risk register during 2021 alone and paying out in excess of £5 million to needy church structures during 2021.
As Sir Philip points out, “Britain’s churches are a huge national asset, available for all to visit, use and benefit from. It’s time to ensure that as many as possible are properly supported so that these wonderful historic buildings can thrive today and tomorrow.”
Links:
By Myghal Map Serpren
Archaeologists from the University of Exeter have used laser scans collected as part of the Environment Agency’s National LiDAR Programme to assist in identifying new sections of Roman roads in what was then Dumnonia, the Brythonic Kingdom in South West Britain.
Using data collected between 2016 and 2022 during the Agency’s Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) Programme, a team led by Dr. Christopher Smart and Dr. Joao Fonte, specialists at the University’s Department of Archaeology and History, and Dr. Cesar Parcero Oubina from the Institute of Heritage Sciences, Spanish National Research Council in Spain, geographical modelling revealed that it was North Tawton situated on the River Taw in West Devon rather than Exeter which was the main centre of the road network with connections from earlier to tidal estuaries North and South of Dartmoor and Bodmin.
Following the identification of over 62 miles of additional roads, Dr. Smart said, “Despite more than 70 years of scholarship, published maps of the Roman road network in southern Britain have remained largely unchanged and all are consistent in showing that west of Exeter, Roman Isca, there was little solid evidence for a system of long-distance roads, but the recent availability of seamless LiDAR coverage for Britain has provided the means to transform our understanding of the Roman road network that developed within the province, and nowhere more so than in the far southwestern counties, in the territory of the Dumnonii.”
A link to the findings published in the Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology can be found here: https://journal.caa-international.org/articles/10.5334/jcaa.109
By Myghal Map Serpren
In a recent release, Cornwall Heritage Trust (Trest Ertach Kernow) have announced the launch of a Historic Sites Fund as part of their ongoing mission to rescue Cornwall’s heritage sites.
The Trust are playing an increasingly significant role in acquiring and protecting a wide range of sites across the Duchy and building an increasing membership base along the way.
Under its mission banner ‘gwytha ha crefhe’ (‘preserve and strengthen’), the Trust which was founded in 1985, now has ownership and management of 14 heritage assets across Cornwall ranging from hillforts and Iron Age villages to Holy Wells, standing stones and even industrial heritage in the shape of Treffry Viaduct.
It also sponsors an increasing number of educational projects aimed at younger people and adults alike and individual membership of the Trust allows free access to those historic sites owned by the Duchy of Cornwall but managed by the quasi-charity English Heritage in Cornwall, which include Tintagel Castle and the Henrician castles at Pendennis and Saint Mawes.
With its head office based in Cornwall, the Cornwall Heritage Trust has recently announced its bold intention to bid for the purchase of Tregonning Hill near Helston, a site of immense importance with numerous monuments dating to the Bronze Age and certainly the birthplace of the global china clay industry.
Following the shock announcement that the hill was to be put up for sale and bearing in mind the out-of-control so-called ‘development’ which is blighting Cornwall, the announcement by the Trust of its intentions to attempt to purchase and save the hill has received widespread approval.
An appeal fund has been launched and more information about this can be read here.
Personal membership of the Cornwall Heritage Trust is £15 a year and remains a very affordable way to invest in the efforts to save, protect and make available Cornwall’s unique heritage and history, and more details of how to join and of the benefits enjoyed by members can be found here.
The Heritage Journal 
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