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Salon: Issue 305
30 September 2013

Next issue: 14 October 2013


The Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter (Salon) is a fortnightly digest of news from the heritage sector. It focuses on the activities of the Society and the contribution that the Society's Fellows make to public life. Like the intellectual salons of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, it aims to amuse and to stimulate debate as well as to inform. A copy of Salon’s editorial policy can be found on the Society’s website. News and feedback for publication in Salon should be addressed to the Editor, Christopher Catling.
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Inside this issue

Forthcoming meetings

Tea is served from 4.15pm, and meetings start at 5pm (except for the York meeting on 10 October)

3 October 2013: ‘Thomas Spratt, FSA: travels in Crete’, by Dudley Moore, FSA
Thomas Spratt (1811—88) was a Royal Naval hydrographical officer who travelled to Crete to survey the Mediterranean waters around the island but who also studied the Cretan archaeology in an attempt to identify the legendary ‘labyrinth’ of Theseus and the Minotaur. This lecture looks at some of Spratt’s discoveries on the island well before Sir Arthur Evans’s groundbreaking discoveries of the Minoan civilisation.

10 October 2013: ‘The crop-mark landscapes of the Magnesian Limestone in south and west Yorkshire’, by Ian Roberts, FSA

This meeting will be held in King’s Manor, York, starting with tea, coffee and biscuits at 5.15pm in the Refectory, followed by the meeting, which will start at 6pm, in the Philip Rahtz Lecture Theatre. Sherry will be served after the lecture at 7pm in the King’s Manor Refectory.

Reservations are not required, but confirmation of your attendance would be appreciated for catering purposes: please send an email to the Society’s Communications Officer, Renée LaDue by 3 October 2013. You should also let Renée know if you would like to be admitted at this meeting.


Ian Roberts's paper will show the results of a comprehensive survey of the crop-mark landscapes of the Magnesian Limestone belt and its margins in south and west Yorkshire that was carried out as an English Heritage ALSF project between 2005 and 2010 (and published in 2010 as Understanding the Cropmark Landscapes of the Magnesian Limestone). The crop-mark data were combined with geophysical survey and excavation data, gathered mainly since 1990, using GIS so that the distributions of identified types and classifications of enclosures and field systems could be considered with respect to geology, topography and supposed territorial boundaries. One of the principal aims of the project was to obtain a spatial overview of the incidence of the ‘brickwork fields’, well documented on the sandstones of south Yorkshire, as compared to the more irregular field systems found on the limestone in west Yorkshire. The data also facilitated a comprehensive review of the rural archaeology of the later prehistoric and Roman periods.

17 October 2013: ‘5,000 years of Machair settlement: Iain Crawford and the legendary Udal, North Uist, Scotland’, by Beverley Ballin Smith, FSA
Beginning fifty years ago, Iain Crawford worked for more than forty years on the Udal peninsula in North Uist in the Western Isles, employing new and innovatory techniques and accumulating a remarkable collection of finds and site records covering a sequence of occupation from the Neolithic to the present day. His excavations have acquired mythical status because Crawford only publicised the most spectacular elements, he discouraged the visits of other academics, gave little information away, deterred researchers’ enquiries and then found the task of writing up too daunting. Since 2010, with the blessing of the Crawford family and the help of Historic Scotland and the Western Isles Council, a small team has assessed both the documentary archive and the collections. Next year we aim to embark on writing up the results and publishing the individual sites. Iain Crawford remains an enigma, and the story of the Udal is as much about him as what was discovered on site.

24 October 2013: ‘The copy of the 1215 Magna Carta in the Society of Antiquaries’ Black Book of Peterborough and new light on the negotiations at Runnymede’, by David Carpenter
The copy of the 1215 Magna Carta found in a late thirteenth-century cartulary of Peterborough Abbey, known as the Black Book of Peterborough, now in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, has always been accepted as a straightforward copy of the authorised version of the 1215 Charter. This paper will demonstrate that it is not a copy and that it has variant readings in several places, some of which it shares with a copy of the Charter in the Huntington Library in California. The paper will also show that the Peterborough Black Book and the Huntington Library copies are part of a family of copies of the Charter with distinct differences from the authorised version, and it will explore the possibility that these copies preserve elements of drafts made at Runnymede, and thus throw new light on the course of the negotiations that took place there.

31 October 2013: Death in Paradise: archaeology and the transatlantic slave trade’, by Andrew Pierson, FSA
The tiny, remote island of St Helena was described as nothing less than an ‘earthly paradise’ when it was discovered in 1502. In the centuries that followed it became a vital way-station between Europe and the East Indies, where sailors recuperated and their ships were replenished. Between 1840 and 1872, however, the island took on a new role as a reception ‘depot’ for Africans rescued by Royal Navy patrols from illegal slave ships. But, whilst St Helena had long been the saving of European mariners, the same did not hold true for the freed slaves, who died in their thousands in a bleak camp in Rupert’s Valley. A recent archaeological project has investigated the ‘liberated African’ graveyards that grew up near the depot, now lost amidst a landscape of semi-desert scrub. This project’s findings provide a unique insight into the cruelties of the Middle Passage and into the lives and deaths of its victims.

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Re-Dating Early England: archaeological chronologies for the fifth to eighth centuries


At this one-day seminar to be held on 8 November 2013 (sponsored by our Society and English Heritage), Fellows Christopher Scull, Catherine Hills, John Hines and Sam Lucy will present the results of two key studies that have major implications for the dating of the period from the fifth to the eighth centuries AD, when England was transformed from a Roman province to a series of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

The first of these studies is an analysis of the cremation cemetery at Spong Hill, Norfolk (C Hills and S Lucy 2013: The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elmham, Vol 9: chronology and synthesis, McDonald Institute, Cambridge), which provides a new site-specific chronology for cremation pottery and associated grave goods of the fifth century that is widely applicable across eastern England.

The second is a wider study of a national sample of burials (A Bayliss, J Hines, K Høilund Nielsen, G McCormac and C Scull 2013: Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the Sixth and Seventh Centuries AD: a chronological framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33, Leeds), which establishes for the first time a statistically robust sequence and secure calendrical date-ranges for inhumation grave goods of the sixth and seventh centuries across England.

Both projects apply seriation by correspondence analysis to large bodies of data, and the wider dating project is methodologically innovative in the integration of this approach with high-precision radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling. Both have major implications for archaeological interpretation and future research agendas, and for research and fieldwork practice and curatorial decision-making. They also raise some unresolved questions about the integration of scientific and material culture chronologies, in particular a disagreement between scientific dating models and current numismatic chronologies for the later seventh century. These issues will be presented, set in their European context and opened to discussion.

Early booking is strongly advised, as space is limited. Registration costs £15 per person and includes lunch and refreshments. To book, please email Executive Assistant Jola Zdunek or tel: 0207 479 7080.

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Antiquity in a World of Change: celebrating the 500th anniversary of the birth of Sir Thomas Smith (1513—77)


The speakers at this study day, to be held on 6 December 2013 (sponsored by our Society and the Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and organised by Fellow Richard Simpson) will investigate the exceptional range of Sir Thomas Smith’s scholarly studies and his practical activities, helping us to understand how the analysis of antiquity in the sixteenth century provoked not only a desire for the recovery of the past, but also a critical and creative questioning of the present.

An early proponent of the recovery of Greek language at Cambridge, Smith’s readings in Greek philosophy and medicine informed a view of the natural world that stimulated practical undertakings in medical chemistry and alchemy. His early reading in Roman law suggests the beginnings of an engagement with Roman building, realised in his house at Hill Hall, witness to a rich complexity of cultural ambition and technical innovation (P Drury with R Simpson 2009: Hill Hall: a singular house devised by a Tudor intellectual, Society of Antiquaries, London).

One of the earliest English collectors of antique coins, Smith’s work on Roman, Greek and early English money directly informed his critical analysis of the economic and social distress that he witnessed in mid-sixteenth-century England. Wider questions of good governance — informed by his ambassadorial work in France and the Low Countries, as well as his study of ancient history — stimulated his examination of English monarchy, parliament and magistracy, resulting in his great work on the English constitution, De republica Anglorum (1583).

The study day speakers will explore just how far his influence spread, looking at the ‘singularity’ of his architectural achievement, and its contribution to the reception in England of the French Renaissance style in the later sixteenth century, and the way that his intellectual and practical investigations can be tracked in the rich diversity that informed late Elizabethan thinking on subjects as diverse as poetry and colonisation.

Early booking is strongly advised, as space is limited. Registration costs £15 per person and includes lunch and refreshments. To book, please email Executive Assistant Jola Zdunek or tel: 0207 479 7080.

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Public lectures


The Society’s public lecture series begins again in the autumn, starting on 22 October with a talk by our Fellow Sam Mullins, Director of the London Transport Museum, based on his recently published book: Underground: how the Tube shaped London. This will be followed on 3 December by a talk by Fellow Martin Brown called ‘Spitfires and Pagodas: conflict archaeology in Burma 2013’, about the search for the Spitfires said to have been buried in Burma at the end of World War II.

Looking further ahead, the following lectures are forthcoming in 2014: ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know: the medical history of King Henry VIII’, by Fellow Robert Hutchinson on 28 January; ‘Medieval graffiti: the hidden history of the parish church’, by Matthew Champion, on 7 February; ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti in Hastings’, by Fellow Peter Marsden and Judy Ridd on 3 March; and ‘Historical Dress: a project inspired by Janet Arnold’, by Nancy Hills, a Janet Arnold Award recipient, on 27 May 2014.

The hour-long lectures start at 1pm, and tickets may be booked using the Society’s EventBrite page.

Heritage Past, Present and Future


For two days, on 16 and 17 September 2013, Burlington House played host to a large gathering of heritage sector advocates, activists, practitioners and academics to mark the centenary of the 1913 Ancient Monuments Act in a conference jointly sponsored by our Society, English Heritage, the National Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The first day of the conference explored the history of heritage protection over the last one hundred years; the second was devoted to the future, a theme that Fellow Loyd Grossman addressed with characteristic verve in his keynote speech at the start of the day. Loyd argued that Government had jumped upon the heritage bandwagon very late in the day and was, one hundred years later, about to jump off again, reducing still further its financial support for the sector and encouraging English Heritage to become a self-funding charity. Quoting Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz’, Loyd underscored his point by saying ‘we're not in Kansas anymore; we are entering a whole new geography, and a period of tremendous instability’.

To survive this withdrawal of support, we need to position heritage in a much more positive way. At present, we are an opposition movement, and oppositional rhetoric is part of our DNA. That is not surprising, because we have to go out every day and fight against the weather, time, decay, greed, ignorance, funding cuts, development pressures, Government policy. As a sector, we are full of fighting spirit — we are the Wonderwomen and Supermen (illustrated with an appropriate slide of comic book heroes) battling to stop bad things happening to the heritage. But this position is inherently weak and reactive and crucially we haven’t been able to get the message across to the larger public.

It is true the National Trust has a large membership, but that should be taken with a pinch of salt: most have joined to obtain free admission, and they are not actively engaged with the heritage. Heritage consumption and tourism do, however, point the way to our future, though it is somewhat ironic to observe that visits to historic attractions in this country have continued to rise steeply in the last decade, in inverse proportion to the amount of Government funding for heritage. We are in danger of becoming the Treasury’s darlings: for the less money they give us and the less Government is involved, the more we deliver, the better the heritage seems to thrive!

That is because, as a sector, we do too good a job: like the ‘little engine that could’, we always deliver, we always get through, despite every obstacle. But this cannot continue in the face of continued under-investment, and the double blow of reduced Government funding and the removal of fiscal incentives, such as VAT relief on historic building restoration. If we are to secure a reversal, we need a mass movement and that means that we need credible champions: we need the private sector speaking for us, not against us, and influential people speaking up for the heritage.

Why should they not? Heritage is very big business in this country: hundreds of heritage-based festivals and events take place throughout the summer in the UK, generating millions for the local host economies, and millions in tax for the Treasury. We have here a real competitive advantage: our distinctive history and our remarkable historic environment are huge national assets: they cannot be created and they cannot be reproduced. The heritage has an enormous appeal, and the challenge for us all is to redefine our relationship with the public, stop thinking of people as audiences and turn them into participants working on our behalf.

Responses


Loyd Grossman’s challenge evoked a variety of responses. Salon’s editor said that Loyd had provided an object lesson in how to make heritage more appealing, by combining a punchy message with an entertaining delivery, and that this combination of education and entertainment was crucial if the public is to be energised and engaged on our behalf. Plans by the National Trust to build a new conservation centre at Knole in Kent, with Heritage Lottery Funding, was one example of how this could be done: in future, visitors will be able to talk to conservators and learn about their work and why it matters. This human contact was likely to be far more effective than guidebooks, presentation boards and audio-visuals in making a lasting impression on visitors. Loyd agreed and said that anyone who thinks there is a difference between education and entertainment does not know much about either.

Fellow Chris Scull was less happy with such a suggestion, saying that much heritage entertainment was inept and driven by commercial imperatives; a more sophisticated dialogue with the public was possible, but only if senior management in heritage organisations had the will and the steel to make scholarship more central to the commercial side of the business and to build on professional expertise.

Judy Cligman, of the Heritage Lottery Fund, and Fellow Carenza Lewis both spoke up for the recent HLF-funded project, ‘All Our Stories’, in which people were invited to bid for funds to hire professional historians and archaeologists as facilitators to help them pursue the heritage projects that mattered most to them. The HLF had been inundated, and had had to put in three times as much funding as originally planned: research showed that 91 per cent of participants in such projects felt empowered and wanted to do more to make a difference to the heritage. Loyd responded by pointing out that heritage needs income as much as capital, and that is something that the HLF does not do. Fellow Pete Hinton spoke up to say that we should not forget the income that comes to the heritage from developers — about £178m a year; in this light, it was sad that local authorities were reducing their archaeological staff, since each local government archaeological officer generated something like fifty times their salary in funds for the heritage.
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The role of the expert


Fellow Steve Trow continued the debate in his presentation, arguing the case for the much-derided ‘expert’. The reason why experts had come to be seen as problematic had to do with the fact that experts had, in the past, been elitist and authoritarian: public accountability was an unknown concept, and the expert view was seen as being paramount. The best way to get the public to value professionals and their expertise is to turn from being a gatekeeper to being an enabler: scholarship should be used to explain, not to perpetuate mystique (by coincidence, the Sunday Times reported five days later that Professor Vernon Bogdanor had written to David Cameron to make the same point: speaking in Oxford, the Prime Minister said that ‘he wrote me a letter saying that democracy is “government by explanation”; he thought I needed to do more work in this area’).

Fellow Marcus Binney said that for him a major issue was the fact that the legal framework for protecting the heritage that had been created by the Government was largely ignored by civil service departments and local authorities; some were culpably ignorant of their legal responsibilities but worse still was the widespread attitude that it was some sort of perverse vice to spend money on the heritage: virtue lay in scrapping historic buildings in favour of new buildings. He also pointed out that the national and local governments and departments were the worst culprits in neglecting their own historic estates, again in defiance of Government policy.

Fellow Chris Miele injected a contrarian note into the proceedings, speaking as devil’s advocate for the developers whose voice, he said, was lacking from the debate. Heritage values, he said, reflect the values of the people who set up and run the system, art and architectural historians stuck with the Romantic and Picturesque ideals of the eighteenth century. Designation was based on outmoded and sentimental judgements about a building’s appearance; we ignored modernist values to do with function and fitness for purpose, commodity and performance. He warned that the threat of listing was a serious disincentive to architectural quality, because developers did not want buildings that might end up being listed, constraining what they could do with them at some future date.

Fellow Bob Bewley, of the Heritage Lottery Fund, said that we were in danger of thinking that the value of heritage should simply be measured in economic terms; the HLF was one of the few institutions with a four-nations remit, and from that perspective he saw heritage performing a powerful role in Northern Ireland as a force for regeneration, community cohesion and tourist income, while in Scotland, heritage was much higher up the political agenda than it was in England and was seen as central to the idea of Scottish nationhood. He pointed out that the Government was about to embark on a consultation about the future of English Heritage, and that we should seize this as an opportunity to influence policy; he hoped that people would be radical in their responses: ‘don’t just think about what you know, but go back to first principles: what do we want heritage to look like 100 years hence and what is the state’s role in achieving this?’


RIBA debate




Above: Robert Hewison (cultural historian) in full flow at the debate on the Future Care of Our Nation's Heritage, with Fellows Simon Thurley (English Heritage Chief Executive) and Sir Simon Jenkins (journalist and Chair of the National Trust) to his right and Stephen Bayley (author and cultural critic) to his left.


Which happened to be the theme of the discussion that took place on the previous evening, where our President Maurice Howard chaired a debate at the RIBA on the motion: ‘This house believes that future care for our heritage requires the Government as our champion’.

The panellists found themselves in surprising unanimity: none of them had a good word to say about the Government. In different ways, each speaker characterised Government as unreliable, and politicians as self-seeking and mendacious. At best, Government was a curmudgeonly and reluctant ally of the heritage: more often politicians seemed to be anti-heritage and on the side of the get-rich-quick developer. Simon Jenkins was especially eloquent on this point, incensed by the fact that the Government was now talking about relaxing planning controls in national parks, despite emphatic assurances given at the time of the National Planning Framework debate that designated heritage assets, such as the national parks, were safe. ‘We must fight them on this’, he concluded.

Simon Thurley said that the job of the state was to create a benign environment in which people who felt passionately about the heritage could flourish and it should act as a social security system for the nation’s heritage, caring for those assets that could not be sustained by other means. Therefore, though Government was a bad and unreliable partner, we had to keep up the effort and the lobbying to ensure that the framework and environment for the heritage was positive. Crucially, he said, we need some sort of regulation that forces people to treat heritage in a way that makes better places for people.

Robert Hewison sought to escape from the word ‘heritage’ and said that what was really at stake was the quality of the public realm, and that this was a matter of concern to all citizens, whether or not they were conscious of something called heritage. The Government’s job was to be the guarantor of the quality of the public realm, to represent the citizen, to protect the public realm from the depredations of greedy corporations and to ensure that public interest over-rode the ‘rights’ of private ownership. Sounding like a latter-day Thomas Arnold or a Thomas Carlyle, he said that Government should support organisations that have the public interest at heart, and should ‘wield the sword of cultural protection on behalf of the public’.

Stephen Bayley questioned how far that was a practical ambition, reminding the audience of John Cage’s maxim, that history ‘has to be invented’. The danger inherent in the involvement of the state and bureaucratic heritage organisations was that you either get fossilisation or fantasy, à la Prosper Mérimée or Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Too often, he said, English Heritage and the National Trust present historic properties at an isolated moment in the past, frozen like Sleeping Beauty’s castle at a perfect moment in time. Nothing could be worse than Venice or Florence, the museumified and fossilised corpses of once-great cities. London by contrast is a dynamic place, full of fear and challenge: if the heritage sector has a future it has to embrace change, and recognise that buildings are alive: to quote Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Sicilian nobleman and hero of Lampedusa’s The Leopard, ‘if you want things to stay the same, they must change’. To achieve this apparent paradox, we need Government to support a coherent planning system, to encourage developers to build good things with thought and care and we need an educated and engaged public.



Find out more


These four complementary points of view evoked a lively discussion in the hall, on Twitter and long into the night. You can watch the debate again on the AHRC website, while videos of the entire conference proceedings can be seen on the Society’s YouTube Channel.

On the subject of the lecture archive, maintenance work being carried out over the next three weeks means that some of the 2012—13 videos will not be available on the Society’s website, but they will be back again soon and access to videos of forthcoming meetings at the Society is not going to be affected.



Last Word


The latest issue of SPAB’s membership magazine has a report on the fiftieth anniversary Europe Nostra Congress, held in Athens in June, at which our Fellow Martin Drury was presented with his richly deserved Award for Dedicated Service, in a ceremony held at dusk in the atmospheric Odeon of Herodes Atticus. Fellow Michael Snodin was also there to receive the Grand Prix in the conservation category for the restoration of Strawberry Hill. The evening was stolen, however, by an impassioned speech by Costa Carras, the businessman founder of Elliniki Etaaira (the Society for Natural and Cultural Heritage: note the lack of separation between the two — isn’t it about time we made common cause in the UK as well?) who said much that is pertinent to the ‘future of heritage’ debate, including the following.

‘In 1974, the Acropolis monuments lay in neglect. Today that unfavourable image of Greece has been gradually transformed into a general acknowledgement of conservation achievement. Doubtless, if we can obtain similar changes in other areas of national life, the country’s prestige will enjoy a general recovery. Achieving this goal requires commitment to the primordial Greek pursuit of excellence. This in turn implies disdain for that short-sighted expansionist greed which, as has already occurred in so many cities, villages and particularly islands, under the pretext of upgrading or developing, has in fact degraded elements of Greek nature and culture.

‘In this respect the two most recent generations of Greeks have proven themselves inferior both to our ancestral traditions and the challenges ahead, let alone the uniqueness of Greece’s cultural heritage and natural environment. Our attitude, an attitude of aggressive exploitation, represents a sin in relation to God and a failure in relation to humankind. We have ignored the fact that, in the unsparing battle for economic survival, the beauties of our nature together with the depth of our cultural heritage represent our chief comparative advantages.

‘May tonight’s recognition by Europe as a whole of a great national accomplishment at the Acropolis help us realise the need to continue on the path of virtue and sustainability in the future. This is the way to achieve a positive economic outcome in the long term. This is the way to rescue the best from the worst in our own nature. This is the way to regain our self-awareness, self-confidence and self-respect, through academic excellence, dedication to art and effective care for our cities and villages, for the mountains, the seas and the islands of Greece, elements indispensable if we wish to secure a future worthy of our past.’

As the late Brian Redhead would have said: ‘discuss’.



Pickles calls in contentious developments, while Preston bus station is saved


Many of those who attended the heritage debate at the RIBA concluded that there was not too much wrong with the current statutory framework for heritage protection provided that it was operated correctly. It was therefore something of a pleasant surprise, and contrary to all expectations, to learn later in the week that the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, has decided to ‘call in’, for central Government scrutiny, several contentious planning decisions: namely, the proposals to redevelop Smithfield general market, the Shell Centre, on London's South Bank, and the so-called ‘Welsh Streets’ in Liverpool, including the birthplace of Beatles’ drummer, Ringo Starr. SAVE Britain’s Heritage has campaigned doggedly over all three, arguing that the existing buildings, as well as being better buildings than those that will replace them, are eminently re-usable and that to demolish them is contrary to any rational definition of sustainable development. Eric Pickles said he had decided to call them in because they concern matters ‘that are of substantial regional and national controversy’; he said his department would be looking at ‘how the schemes conformed with policies in the National Planning Policy Framework on design and conserving and enhancing the historic environment’.



Further cause for muted celebration came with the announcement also made this week that Preston Bus Station (shown above) has been designated as a Grade-II listed building, making it more difficult for Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council to demolish the building and replace it with a smaller bus station. The listing bid was led by English Heritage who has described the building as ‘an excellent example of brutalist architecture’; the decision is all the more surprising because two previous attempts to have the building listed failed. The news was greeted in characteristic fashion by the Daily Mail with a headline that described the building as ‘monstrous’ and an ‘eyesore’. In fact, it is a very popular and much-loved building that has been the focus of a hard-fought community campaign opposed to its demolition. One of those campaigners — Michael Moulding — said that ‘the majority of Prestonians cherish this building for its clear and distinctive architectural merit’.

By contrast, Peter Rankin, leader of Preston City Council, said that this ‘was not the outcome we were hoping for. We’ve always said the bus station is too big, provides relatively poor facilities for bus passengers and costs Preston taxpayers over £300,000 a year to maintain. We will have to take some time now to consider the listing decision and the options for moving forward. In particular, we need to look at costs and the impact on budgets and how it affects Preston taxpayers.’



Brutal and Beautiful



Preston Bus Station was not the only post-war structure to enter the national heritage list this week: no doubt to the consternation of Daily Mail journalists, Capel Manor House, in Horsmonden, Kent, has been listed Grade II*: despite its reassuringly historic name, this is a steel-framed glass-fronted box designed by Michael Manser in 1971, set within the remains of the winter garden of an earlier Italian Gothic house of 1859—62 by T H Wyatt (pictured above). Also listed at Grade II* is the Spectrum Building, in Swindon, originally designed by Sir Norman Foster in 1980 as a distribution centre for the Renault car company. Listed at Grade II are an electricity substation on Moore Street in central Sheffield (pictured below), and the Civil Defence Bunker, Gravesend, Kent, built in 1954 as a command centre in the event of a nuclear attack. A gallery of pictures of all four properties can be seen on the BBC website.

The listings coincide with an exhibition mounted by English Heritage in the Quadriga Gallery in Wellington Arch. Brutal and Beautiful: saving the twentieth century is on until 3 November 2013 and is an examination of our attitudes to recent architecture as heritage, from the Barbican to Coventry Cathedral, the National Theatre to the Trellick Tower.



Astley Castle wins RIBA Stirling prize; National Trust is RIBA Client of the Year




The Landmark Trust has no fear of new buildings: it is already the owner of Grade II* Anderton House (pictured above), designed by Peter Aldington in 1969 as a modern interpretation of a traditional Devon long-house, and one of the buildings featured in the English Heritage exhibition. It is also celebrating the fact that another of its properties, Astley Castle, has been awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize for 2013, the first time that a conservation project has won this prestigious award for the best building of the year.



Astley Castle (above) was acquired in a derelict state by the Landmark Trust in 2012 after the Grade II fortified manor house in Warwickshire had been gutted by fire in 1978. The architects Witherford Watson Mann (WWM) came up with a scheme blending old and new that the judges described as ‘an exceptional example of how modern architecture can revive an ancient monument’. To read more on this, including the architects’ comments on the thinking behind the design, see the Landmark Trust’s website.

In yet another boost for conservation architecture, the National Trust was named 2013 RIBA Client of the Year at the same awards ceremony. Presenting the award to our Fellow Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, Philip Gumuchdjian, acting Chair of the RIBA Awards Group, said: ‘Good patronage is the single most important influence on the quality of our built heritage. The National Trust have won the 2013 Client of the Year Award because of the way they create the heritage of the future while protecting the heritage of the past, making special places even more special. They commission talented, innovative, and often young practices to develop practical and beautiful projects that respond and add to the quality, enjoyment and appreciation of our stock of cultural and environmental wealth. It takes a great and courageous client to deliver a great building and the Trust have proven their worth time and again.’

The RIBA cited the new Chedworth Roman Villa cover buildings and visitor centre (by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios), the Giant’s Causeway visitor centre (by heneghan peng architects) and Stowe Visitor Centre (by Cowper Griffith Architects) as examples of the National Trust working with talented architects to create outstanding buildings.


Big Brother House gets the National Trust treatment


During the RIBA debate last week on Government and heritage, Salon’s editor observed that many of today’s heritage activists became involved in the 1960s and 1970s as a reaction against the awfulness of the buildings of the era: gimcrack schools and hospitals, ticky-tacky boxes for housing estates. Historic buildings were far more appealing. This is no longer true: the quality of many of today’s buildings means that young people no longer feel this way: modern is exciting, the old no longer has such an appeal, antiques no longer sell unless they are mid-century Italian or Scandinavian and Ikea is cool. All of this means that we are going to have to work a great deal harder to persuade future generations to become engaged with the heritage in the way that Loyd Grossman argues is essential to our future.

Seen in that context, perhaps the National Trust’s latest publicity stunt is not quite the ‘puerile and irrelevant project’ (to quote Daniel Kawczynski, Conservative MP for Shrewsbury) that it seems. For two days only, the ‘Big Brother’ house at Elstree Studios, in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, is opening to the public (or at least to those 600 people who have managed to book tickets) under the ‘curatorship’ of the National Trust, complete with acorn symbols, guidebook and volunteer room stewards.

Ivo Dawnay, the National Trust’s London director, is claiming credit for the idea and says that he is simply ‘trying to engage with younger audiences, particularly in urban areas. It’s about time the Trust was a bit funnier’, he told the Independent newspaper. He went on to say that: ‘culture and heritage if you are 15—25, or even 25—40, is something very different than if you are aged between 60 and 80 [what about the fifty-something-year-olds? Ed]. We don’t just want to talk to people who like stately homes and cream teas. We want to talk to the whole nation.’

It says much about our very different heritage values that a Guardian poll saw the nation split down the middle by the issue. Asked ‘Is the Big Brother house a worthy National Trust property?’, exactly 50 per cent of those who voted said ‘Yes: like it or loathe it, it’s an important piece of our national heritage and will help bring in new and younger audiences’ and 50 per cent said ‘No: this is a publicity stunt that devalues heritage attractions that actually need our support’.

In a statement posted on its website, the National Trust says that ‘our tongues are not a million miles from our cheeks — unusual for an organisation not most famous for its sense of humour. We hope that by opening the Big Brother House we are paving the way to an altogether wittier future’. Is there a hint here that Simon Jenkins’s successor as Chairman of the National Trust in 2014 might be somebody noted for their sense of humour? Alan Bennett or Ian Hislop might provide the necessary injection of acidic satire; on the other hand, perhaps we are all wrong about Boris Johnson’s aspirations to be prime minister: could it be that in reality he has been honing his wit all this time in preparation for leading the National Trust into this new comedic future?



King’s Cross transformation completed




Boris was in action on Thursday 26 September 2013, at the official opening of the new square in front of King’s Cross station, marking the completion of this stage of the King’s Cross regeneration scheme. Gone at last is all the clutter that has for so long blighted the area and prevented a full appreciation of Lewis Cubitt’s 1852 design, one that seems almost contemporary in the way that the station’s form so gracefully reflects its function and construction.

On the other hand, and at risk of labouring several of the points already aired in this issue of Salon, it is fascinating to note that the opening of the new square was celebrated over the weekend with a festival of Victorian heritage that featured clairvoyants, beadles, musicians and magicians, chimney sweeps and penny farthings, horse-and-cart rides and the crowning of the new St Pancras Pearly King. Alcoholic refreshments were provided courtesy of the Gilbert Scott Gin Garden. As Mister Spock might have said, ‘It’s heritage, Jim, but not as we know it’.



Political Policies and Archaeology


A further opportunity to debate the role of Government in relation to the heritage occurs on 7 October, at Burlington House, when our Society plays host to an event organised by the Archaeology Forum at which representatives of some of the political parties hoping that we will vote for them in 2015 will set out their policies on archaeology. The Rt Hon Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, will speak on behalf of the Conservative party, Fellow Lord Redesdale for the Liberal Democrats, Jenny Jones for the Green Party, Lord Stevenson for the Labour Party and a speaker yet to be announced for the Scottish National Party. The event starts at 2.15pm and ends around 5pm, and a few tickets remain; these can be booked by contacting the Society’s Executive Assistant, Jola Zdunek.

The fate of the Russian Academy of Sciences


By now, many Salon readers will know the outcome of the planned ‘re-organisation’ of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN), foreshadowed in Salon 303. Our Russia Correspondent, Heinrich Härke, reports the sad news. ‘I have just returned from Moscow where the Russian parliament (the Duma), held the third reading of the bill concerning the “re-organisation” of the RAN on 18 September 2013. The reading had been postponed by 24 hours in order to take account of some 12,000 objections from scholars and scientists. Apparently, this short delay was intended to show how seriously the government takes objections, and how strictly it observes parliamentary process. The bill was then swiftly accepted and passed into law.

'As an immediate result, RAN has lost control of its budget and of all its properties; both will now be under the control of government agencies. Only the Far Eastern, Siberian and Ural branches of RAN are exempt from the “re-organisation” — cynics point out that none of these branches owns attractive metropolitan properties that can be seized.

‘There is now much uncertainty and confusion about the immediate and long-term future of jobs, research institutions and scholarship as a whole — not the conditions under which research can thrive. My friends working in the RAN’s archaeological institutions do not know whether or not they have a job any more, and rumours are rife about sackings, part-time contracts and institute moves and mergers. Only the small inner circle of full Academy members is protected: the government, knowing how to create collaborators, intends to increase their salaries substantially, but without providing more money overall: you can work out the consequences for yourselves.’



Castle Studies Trust: grants available


Founded in July 2012 with the aim of increasing the understanding of castles both in the UK and abroad, the Castle Studies Trust is now in a position to offer grants of up to £5,000 to fund new pieces of research on castle sites. Suitable projects might include site-based survey work (eg geophysical, architectural, topographical, LiDAR), scientific tests on objects/materials from a castle site (eg radiocarbon dating), research based on historical sources (eg as part of a wider project) and works such as reconstruction drawings that would help the public understanding of a castle site. The closing date for applications is Friday 13 December 2013. For further information and an application form, please visit the Castle Studies Trust website.



Management for the Heritage Sector: new flexible heritage-sector degree


University Campus Suffolk has launched a new degree for the heritage sector that focuses on ‘developing the unique business and management skills required for practitioners in the industry’. The course has been designed in study blocks so that it can be followed by those in employment or with other commitments, through a combination of taught sessions and online tutorial support. The modules on offer include: ‘Business Environment for the Heritage Sector’, ‘Management of Heritage Visitor Attractions’, ‘Heritage Management in Practice’ and ‘Personal and Professional Development for the Heritage Sector’. Further details are on the UCS website.



Invitation to attend a conference in Iraq, 8 to 10 October 2013


Fellow Jane Moon writes to say that the Ministry of Culture in Iraq is holding a conference in Baghdad on ‘Culture and Civil Society’ on 8 to 10 October 2013. Jane herself is giving a paper on her excavation project at Tell Khaiber, near Ur, and ‘how it is helping to re-engage people with a past that belongs to ALL Iraqis, regardless of sect, etc’. The Ministry is looking for more people to attend, especially those who have something to say about cultural heritage and civil society, with an example from the UK or elsewhere. All expenses will be met and delegates will undoubtedly enjoy typically warm Iraq hospitality. If anyone would like to go, they should email Jane for further details, but Salon’s editor has already established that flights out and back will be on 7 and 11 October, with the option to extend your visit, and that delegates will be accommodated in an international-standard hotel in Baghdad.



Events


9 October 2013: ‘Art, Animals and Politics: Knowsley and the earls of Derby’, a study day at Knowsley Hall with keynote speakers including our Fellows Sir David Attenborough (on ‘Edward Lear’s natural history watercolours and prints for the 13th earl’) and David Starkey (on ‘The political and cultural significance of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby’). Fellow Stephen Lloyd, who is organising the conference, says that the event sold out a few months ago, virtually by word of mouth, but there have been a few returns, so if any Fellow is interested in attending, they should contact Stephen directly. For the full programme details, see the Knowsley website.

11 October 2013 (but registration closes today, 30 September 2013): the Later Prehistoric Finds Group’s 1st Annual Meeting, British Museum, to include tours of the British Museum Collections and conference sessions on ‘Current Research on Prehistoric Artefacts’. For booking and more information please contact Anna Lewis and visit the group’s website.

9 November 2013: The Crosby Garrett helmet: the local and international contexts, a one-day conference to be held at Tullie House Lecture Theatre, Castle Street, Carlisle CA3 8TP, from 10am to 5pm; to be chaired by Fellow David Breeze with papers on the discovery and restoration of the helmet, a geophysical and landscape survey and archaeological evaluation of the find spot, the helmet’s functional context, and equestrian skills and display rituals in the archaeological record. Further information from the Lancaster University website.

15 November 2013: ‘Time’s Ruin: the reconstruction of Alan Sorrell’, Swedenborg Hall, 20—21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH, 9.30am—5.30pm. Coinciding with the exhibition Alan Sorrell: A Life Reconstructed, which opens on 25 October at Sir John Soane’s Museum, this conference will review Alan Sorrell’s artistic work and achievements and includes papers from a number of Fellows, including Alan Powers, on ‘“The Blanket of the Dark”: history and pessimism in twentieth-century British art and literature’, Mike Pitts, on ‘The man who saw ancient Britain’, and John Goodall, on ‘Sorrell and the Castle’. For further information and booking details see the EventBrite website.

6 December 2013: ‘Anthony Powell and Sculpture’, by our Fellow Alastair Laing, the 2013 Anthony Powell Lecture, held in collaboration with the Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN, at 6.30pm; tickets costing £14 (which includes a glass of wine following the lecture) may be purchased via the Anthony Powell Society’s online shop.

Art historian Alastair Laing recently retired as Curator of Pictures and Sculpture at the National Trust, having for almost twenty-seven years looked after the many works of art in the Trust’s care.  He was responsible for organising the 1995 centenary exhibition In Trust for the Nation at the National Gallery. His particular interest is François Boucher, exhibitions of whose work he helped mount in America and France. He is currently preparing a catalogue raisonné of Boucher’s drawings. In his lecture he will take stock of Anthony Powell’s interest in sculpture as revealed in the pages of A Dance to the Music of Time, in his memoirs and in his writings on the visual arts.

25 January 2014: the fourth ‘New Insights into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century British Architecture’ conference will be held at the Society of Antiquaries. The programme includes papers by Fellows Jenny Alexander, Gordon Higgott, Paul Drury and David Adshead, as well as four other scholars in the field. The cost of the conference is £47.50, to include coffee, lunch and tea. For more information, contact Fellows Claire Gapper or Paula Henderson. Early booking is recommended.



Book review: Tessa Verney Wheeler: women and archaeology before World War Two


Fellow Martin Biddle has been reading a book that he thinks would be of interest to Fellows.

‘This is the story of a marriage — not untroubled — and a professional partnership that in the 1920s and 1930s changed the face of archaeological investigation in Wales and England, and ultimately across much of the late British Empire. Tessa Verney married Rik Wheeler at the age of twenty-one; she died suddenly of a botched medical procedure at the age of forty-three. Her husband Rik, knighted in 1952 and as Sir Mortimer Wheeler voted BBC TV Personality of the Year in 1954 for his bravura contributions to ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?’, lived on for another forty years, dying at the age of eighty-five in 1976. The chronology and his career goes far to explain why Tessa Verney Wheeler’s contribution to their joint work “has vanished into the footnotes of archaeological history”, obscured by the achievements of her dynamic, forceful husband, whose historical corner-cutting and dashing moustache led him to be known in some quarters as “Flash Harry”.

‘Tessa was born in 1893 in South Africa of somewhat uncertain parentage. This sensitive book sets out her academic record, so ordinary in today’s climate, but far less so in the context of the stifling educational climate of middle-class girls in the years before the First World War. The daughter of a chemist, she was brought up in south-east London and entered University College on the London County Council’s new scholarship scheme in 1911, where she met Rik. She left before her final exams and married him in May 1914, on his appointment as a junior investigator with the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England.

‘War followed, and Rik won an MC for gallantry in 1918. The forging of their joint achievement began in 1921 and was carried through in a series of archaeological excavations over the next fifteen years. They began in Wales (where Rik became Keeper of the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff) at the Roman forts of Segontium at Caernarvon and the Brecon Gaer in the Brecon Beacons, and at the amphitheatre of the legionary fortress at Caerleon. Moving to London on Rik’s appointment as Keeper of the semi-defunct London Museum, they worked first at the Roman temple at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire, then at the Roman city of Verulamium (St Albans), and finally for two years, from 1934 to 1935, at the great Iron Age hill-fort of Maiden Castle in Dorset, its huge earthworks so memorably described by Hardy in 1885 as “an enormous many-limbed organism of an antediluvian time — partaking of the cephalopod in shape — lying lifeless, and covered with a thin green cloth”.

‘The technical problem that the Wheelers faced in relating datable objects to the stratigraphy and the structural sequence of a site built in several phases was based on techniques pioneered by Lt-Gen Augustus Pitt Rivers during the 1880s, but largely overlooked until the Wheelers developed his ideas from 1921 onwards and, over their successive digs, defined the approach to the recording of archaeological excavations now used worldwide. On their first efforts in Wales and at Lydney the Wheelers worked with unemployed labourers, overseen by very few people — Rik himself, more frequently Tessa, and a small number of students from Oxford, none of whom was reading archaeology (which was not then a subject at the university).

‘Reports on the excavations at Caerleon and Lydney were written jointly by Rik and Tessa, but Tessa increasingly took the lead on site while Rik ran his museums. First at St Albans, which they again published together, and then most especially at the great hill-fort of Maiden Castle they presented their results in beautiful plans and sections, influenced by the Arts and Crafts teaching of Rik’s early years at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal Commission, which have never been surpassed. Maiden Castle was not yet finished when Tessa died suddenly and unexpectedly in April 1936, leaving Rik as the sole author of the publication that appeared in 1943. He dedicated the book to Tessa, and Maiden Castle remains, for all its faults of dramatic synthesis and historicist interpretation, both the most beautiful and the finest report yet produced on the archaeology of an English site.

‘Despite Tessa’s remarkable career, it was her fate to be eclipsed by her husband. In 1928 she became only the second woman — and the first female archaeologist — to be elected to the Society of Antiquaries. Previously she had not been allowed to address Fellows: Rik had to read her papers for her! In 1935 she was appointed a member of the Society’s then powerful Research Committee. She was an exceptional teacher and was closely involved with Rik in founding the Institute of Archaeology in London, their abiding memorial — though her memorial tablet has now been removed from the Gordon Square entrance. Likewise, Tessa’s reputation has, in Lydia Carr’s words, “since vanished into the footnotes of archaeological history”. The reason must be in part that she died early while he lived, writing, working, and codifying their work in his magisterial Archaeology from the Earth, published by OUP in 1954. But there are less obvious reasons. From 1981 to 1982 two male authors, re-examining Rik and Tessa’s joint work at Lydney fifty years earlier, failed at any point to acknowledge her work, crediting it to him alone.

‘I know this attitude only too well. My late wife, Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle, and I worked together for over forty years and wrote about all our sites — Winchester, Repton, St Albans, Nubia and Jerusalem — together. Yet at conferences and after our lectures, colleagues would come up to us and address themselves to me alone. And some of the worst offenders were women. Herein lies much of the reason for Tessa Verney Wheeler’s eclipse. A conference dedicated to her in 1993 and Lydia Carr’s timely and perceptive book are doing much welcome work to correct the balance.’

Tessa Verney Wheeler: women and archaeology before World War Two, by Lydia C Carr; ISBN 9780199640225; Oxford University Press, 2012



Books by Fellows: The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire


Mark Steel, the comedian whose BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Mark Steel’s in Town’, makes fun of the history of the places he visits, would have a whale of a time with Northamptonshire. ‘To most people it is a complete blank’, he might say: ‘no coast, no hills, no beauty spots, no cathedral, no big city; it is known, if at all, for Kettering races and endless roundabouts, the Corby Trouser Press and (now defunct) steel making.’

Well, the latest 'Buildings of England' volume proves how wrong that image is: Fellow Bruce Bailey has revised and greatly expanded Pevsner’s slender first edition of 1961, and our Fellow Bridget Cherry’s extensively revised second edition of 1973 to give us a 750-page account of the county of squires and spires. Of the latter, the author says in his introduction that he has tried to keep Pevsner’s words intact, especially with regard to parish churches, as ‘he had an acute eye for medieval architecture and I have found few instances where it has been necessary to challenge his views or adjust his comments’. As for the squires and their abodes, the author has been able to draw on the pioneering work of the late lamented Royal Commission, one of whose last acts was to bring out a study of fifty Country Houses of Northamptonshire, by John Heward and Robert Taylor (now selling for very high prices indeed, if you can find a copy).

So how would Bruce Bailey himself characterise Northamptonshire? It is, he says, still very rural, a county of relatively small towns, with many attractive and unforgettable stone villages. He congratulates the county’s planners on keeping most of the villages compact: ‘there is hardly any ribbon development in Northamptonshire’, he boldly states, adding that ‘in the houses and the churches there is perpetual surprise and there are, for the architectural historian, perpetual puzzles’. He singles out Moulton, Raunds, Rothwell, Tansor and Woodford as tests for budding future Pevsner authors: only you mustn’t cheat by looking to see what Bruce Bailey makes of them until you have come to your own understanding of these archaeologically complex churches. You are, though, allowed to use the book to see what other delights lie along your route from one enigmatic church to another, seeking out such delights as Brixworth church, the delightful village of Geddington with its Eleanor Cross, Fotheringay and Oundle, Canon’s Ashby, Kirby Hall and Apethorpe, and Ninian Comper’s glorious church of St Mary, Wellingborough.

The Buildings of England: Northamptonshire, by Bruce Bailey, Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry; ISBN 9780300185072; Yale University Press, 2013



Books by Fellows: The Romano-British Peasant


One view of Roman Britain that became firmly rooted in the 1970s was that nothing changed for the mass of society after AD 43: most people went on living in round huts, scratching a living from the soil, enjoying none of the benefits of Romanisation, such as togas, hot baths, central heating, fish sauce and rectilinear architecture. Several decades of developer-funded archaeology is said to have borne this out: hundreds of small rural settlements that are Romano-British in date, but difficult to tell apart from their Iron Age predecessors, have now been excavated and mapped, it is frequently asserted. If so, there is precious little published evidence of this, and precious little synthesis, partly because archaeologists continue to work in period silos (you are either a Romanist or a prehistorian and rarely do they meet) and partly because books still tend to be written about the material culture of the wealthy end of the Romano-British social spectrum, not the peasant’s hovel.

Hooray then for Fellow Mike McCarthy’s book, which assesses what we know about what New Labour politicians used to refer to as ‘hard-working families’, the ordinary people of Roman Britain, struggling to survive and sustain their families, hovering just above subsistence level by working as labourers, ditch diggers, smallholders and shopkeepers, the people who turned wool into cloth, mined ores, quarried stone or salt or, as the author says in his introduction, ‘got their hands dirty in the fields and at the potter’s wheel’.

Necessarily, much of this book is concerned with the macroscopic view: not many individual peasants emerge into focus, but the author begins by drawing together what we know or can deduce about population size, the number and type of settlements, regional economies and the way they are influenced by soil type and geology and how (accepting that the idea of ‘tribes’ is probably a Roman invention) how the different clans, families, groups or polities of late Iron Age Britain map on to this. The evidence from human and animal bones studies is examined for conclusions about diet, health and work-related injuries. And excavated houses are used to show that in fact most of the population of Roman Britain does seem to have lived in rectilinear homes, not unlike medieval long houses, and that they appear first in places such as Silchester in the first century BC (ie before the invasion) and have spread to most parts of southern Britain by the mid-2nd century AD.

Two lengthy central chapters look at what we know about agricultural and non-agricultural employment, and the more one reads the more one begins to feel that the ‘nothing changed’ model cannot be sustained, not least because Roman technology in many different fields of industrial production created all sorts of new employment opportunities. In fact, there seems to been a watershed, neither sharply marked nor universal, but gradual and regional, before which there is continuity with the pre-Roman period, and after which one begins to see the start of ideas and practices that we might call medieval. In his summing up, Mike McCarthy makes this theme more explicit and says that what archaeology needs, on order to go forward, is a greater understanding not of steady states but of transitional processes.

The Romano-British Peasant: towards a study of people, landscapes and work during the Roman occupation of Britain, by Mike McCarthy; ISBN 9781905119479; Windgather Press, 2013



Vacancies


Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford: Director
Closing date: 3 October 2013

The University of Oxford intends to make an appointment to the Directorship of the Ashmolean Museum, in succession to Christopher Brown who will retire in September 2014. Central to the Museum’s mission is the work to make its collections of art and archaeology accessible to the widest possible audiences and it welcomes 1 million visitors each year, making it England’s most visited museum outside London. Working closely with departments, faculties and colleges, the Director will sustain the collections at the centre of the University’s teaching and research as well as maintaining and developing the museum’s commitment to public access and education. The successful candidate will have operational leadership experience in a major museum and, ideally, an international reputation for intellectual leadership in their chosen field. Experience of fundraising, collections management, and education/outreach activities is essential.

Further details from the website of Saxton Bampfylde Ltd.

The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford: Bodley’s Librarian
Closing Date: 3 October 2013

The University of Oxford intends to make an appointment to the post of Bodley’s Librarian in succession to Sarah Thomas. The Bodleian Libraries contain the largest and most diverse collections for the support of teaching and research in any institution of higher education in the United Kingdom. With an annual budget of more than £30 million and employing more than 500 full-time staff, the Bodleian Libraries is the largest unitary department in the University. As the Executive Head of the Bodleian Libraries, this role is recognised as one of the most senior appointments internationally in the library profession. Applicants will have had experience at an equivalent senior level in major academic libraries, museums, galleries, or other comparable institutions.

Further details from the website of Saxton Bampfylde Ltd.

Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site: Independent Chair of Partnership Panel
Three-year voluntary position based in Wiltshire, at least two days per month; deadline 31 October 2013

Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site (WHS) is seeking an exceptional individual to undertake the prestigious role of independent Chair of Partnership Panel, a new body that has been established following a recent governance review to provide greater co-ordination between Stonehenge and Avebury and represent the WHS as a whole. The Chair will act as champion for the WHS, and consequently need to understand and appreciate the site and heritage issues at all levels. He or she will need to be comfortable in the spotlight, used to operating at a high level and have the skills and experience to chair a committee of often-diverse views. Excellent communication and influencing skills are essential. There is further information on the Wiltshire County Careers website.



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