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We haven’t had a Quote of the Week for ages, but something in the Yorkshire Times prompted us to start it again.
It’s from an article that poses the question “Are there too many wind farms in East Yorkshire?”. If you’re worried about global warming, you’d probably say no. If you’re a windfarm developer you’d probably say no. If you’re a farmer wanting to make oodles you’d probably say no. And if you are a local who wants cheap local electricity and increased employment opportunities you’d probably say no.
But what if, actually, you think some (though not all) heritage sites and their settings need preserving or treating with respect so that some (but not all) can be passed to the future unscathed, what then? What if you think the pendulum has swung a bit too far in favour of people who want to make gazillions and against those who want to preserve some (but not all) such heritage assets? What if you feel that since East Yorkshire has the highest density of wind turbines in England (226 turbines over 50 metres high have been built, approved or are pending a decision), enough is now enough?
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Dr Peter Halkon, an archaeologist and a lecturer at the University of Hull, has spoken for them:
“The landscape of East Yorkshire is varied and subtle. It possesses a beauty of its own. There are very few parts of our region which have not been shaped by human activity since the first farmers some 6,000 years ago. Most of these changes however were in keeping with a landscape created by centuries of settlement and agriculture. Despite intensive use many monuments still survive making this one of the most important archaeological regions in the UK, a heritage which includes the Rudston monolith, Britain’s tallest standing stone, great prehistoric burial grounds and the network of massive linear earthworks.”
He said one of the most important archaeological landscapes in the region is between Market Weighton and Sancton, containing long barrows built five and a half thousand years ago and now home to one of the area’s largest windfarms.
“The views down valleys like this are very important. Now all one sees looking down them towards the Humber are the massive blades of wind turbines. No amount of predevelopment archaeological prospection or excavation can make up for the loss of the visual and symbolic connection between the wider landscape and these significant monuments to past human activities.”
He said he has no objection to small scale, carefully sited single turbines on farms, but said any more large developments “will wreck this beautiful historic landscape”.
“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope”.
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Happy New Year to all our supporters and readers.
“Summer Solstice Sunrise from West Kennet” © Jim Mitchell, Heritage Action
From the Wairarapa Daily Times, New Zealand, 9 November 1915 :
“It appears that it was a local landowner, Mr C H E Chubb of Bemerton Lodge, Salisbury, who purchased Stonehenge for £6,600…..After the sale Mr Chubb said that when he went into the saleroom he had no intention whatsoever of buying the monument. “While I was there,” he added “I thought a Salisbury man ought to buy it, and that is how it was done”.
Asked if he had any plans for the future of Stonehenge Mr Chubb said that while he intended to preserve the monument, he would do nothing for some little time, as he had to consider the position.”
[Whether Mr Chubb had in mind that it was necessary to “consider the position” for almost a century is not recorded.]
“English Heritage should appoint a local society as its point of liaison for all the monuments in its care. There are constantly minor works that need to be done, such as new pathways, the foundation for a new seat, or a need for an extension to the toilets or plumbing. Such minor works could perfectly well be investigated by the local society. Major works will need to be done professionally, but the local people should be consulted and made to feel that the local monument belongs to them – not to English Heritage in London.”
Andrew Selkirk, Editor-in-Chief, Current Archaeology.
More (some of which we agree with rather less!) here.
“As in any hobby or organization you have a small rouge (sic) element this includes detector users, archeologists, and no doubt some Heritage Action employees”
We were amused by the above slip of a detectorist’s pen in a Comment to our piece on detecting on ridge and furrow (we haven’t published it there as the discussion seems to be sterile). But perhaps we’re entitled to react to the much cited claim by detectorists that there are rogue elements everywhere.
For the avoidance of doubt it should be clearly understood that neither archaeologists nor Heritage Action members have a nighthawking wing. Nor do they favour grabbing things for themselves. Nor not reporting them. Nor selling them.
Since all detectorists are guilty of between 1 and 4 of those things (and most of them are guilty of at least 2 according to PAS), attempting to say there’s a comparison between the behaviour of detectorists and that of archaeologists and Heritage Action members is a bit silly.
The difference is clear. Detectorists exploit and remove for their personal benefit. All of them. Very very very few other people involved with heritage matters do that. Only one group that is interested in heritage needs to blush, and it’s not archaeologists or Heritage Action members.
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More Heritage Action views on metal detecting and artefact collecting
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Across the UK and Ireland, excavation funding is falling; archaeologists are losing their jobs. But the unrecorded past is still there, and building, farming, roadworks and many other forces relentlessly wipe the record. Only now, after decades of astonishingly productive work, do we realise how much must have been lost before, We are losing things now. And in the present state of the economy it is no surprise to hear calls to relax protection legislation… [British Archaeology http://www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ ]
Powerful words. And there is great significance in what he adds:
We feature six typical sites that are being or may soon be destroyed. They range from traces of 8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers to a world war two bomb shelter, and none can be saved by professional archaeologists on their own.
“STONEHENGE, the grandest prehistoric monument in the British Isles, is at last in sight of the end of its troubles.
“Preservation was assured some years ago, but its essential setting, the vast solitude of Salisbury Plain, was lost during the war and has never been recovered. First the war, then tourists, broke in upon the silence and spacious emptiness of Salisbury Plain, but plans for protection are afoot.”
The New York Times, October 16, 1927.
“You are an archaeologist, I am a naturalist…Go thy way to Abury…thou man of stone, of bronze, of iron. I, being of flesh and blood, with warm heart and warm sympathies, seek my companions amid the living and the beautiful, and not among the dead.”
John Tyndall, the physicist, writing to his friend John Lubbock in 1863.
The Heritage Journal 
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