Characterization in an Urban Setting: The Experience of the Black Country

Abstract

English Heritage's programme of Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) has only recently been applied to the major urban centres in the Midlands and the North of England. The HLC project in the Black Country is an early example of an undertaking to record and characterize the historic environment in one of these large industrial conurbations. In the absence of a national review of HLC methodology which might take into account the recent experience in English towns and cities, there are outstanding questions about how well an approach which was pioneered in a rural setting can adequately analyse the fabric of a fast-changing urban built environment. Five years since the start of the project, this article outlines the particular challenges faced by the application of HLC in the Black Country, as well as the solutions adopted — including modifications to the methodology used elsewhere. The legacy of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century industrial activity which defined the Black Country (its name and landscape) is rapidly disappearing. In the context of new plans to regenerate the area, this article argues that critical to the success of HLC, as well as to other approaches to characterization of the historic environment, will be the abi lity to go beyond the existing processes of designation to give meaning and evidential support to the ideas of local character and distinctiveness.