My Historic Environment

Abstract

For many of us, a life-long engagement with the historic environment is nurtured in childhood and has a near-spiritual dimension which transcends working life. As a child growing up in Newport in South Wales, long before the term ‘historic environment’ was in use, within an hour’s walk there were Iron Age hillforts, a Roman Legionary fortress, early Welsh religious sites, medieval castles and churches, and industrial monuments. A Ministry of Works season ticket (then 2/6d — the equivalent of 25p — for a child) enabled me to extend my horizons to the castles of North Wales, both Edwardian and Welsh. I felt the sense of landscape. Upland Wales contrasted dramatically with adjacent England, which helped to explain why the Romans struggled initially with the Silures, the scarcity of Saxon and English settlement names, and why the conquest of Wales took 200 years. History seemed alive. I knew that the Chartists had marched past the end of our road from the industrial valleys of South Wales to the riot in Newport in 1839. In the town, the development of streets and houses could be traced from the medieval period, through massive expansion generated by the industries of iron, steel, and coal, to the local authority estates of the 1950s. To a child, all evidence from the past seemed part of a common narrative. Later, when I started working with the historic environment, I found that archaeology and historic buildings were distinct in terms of management, documentation, and discipline. Archaeologists did not always interact with art or architectural history. Many buildings historians did not use aerial photographs or geographical information systems regularly, often reflecting a focus on individual buildings and structures. It has taken longer than a generation for the more holistic concept of the historic environment to be adopted, partly fuelled by multi-disciplinary programmes and projects looking at broader contexts which target evidence from all sources. This was difficult in the early days of information systems seemingly designed more for the inputting of data than for its use, beyond a priestly few. More sophisticated and interactive technologies and networks which engage specialist and general audiences help to demonstrate the power of more integrated access. 1 When we define the elements of the historic environment which require protection and management, we must include resources such as local historic environment records and the national collections of information and archives. These are often