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The paper analyses conflicts associated with policies to protect the built heritage. Such conflicts relate to a host of tensions between private and public concerns and specifically between pro-development and pro-conservation approaches. To examine these cleavages, the paper operationalises private and public concerns over heritage by asking if there is a recognisable set of justifications that policy-makers use for supporting a pro-conservation or alternatively a pro-development approach? To do this, the paper looks at appeals decided by Her Majesty’s Planning Inspectors in London. The findings show that although they are not dichotomous, public and private interests in heritage development can be factually recognised in the setting of appeals. Moreover, the paper finds that Planning Inspectors often channel conflicts through the prism of certain public interests, namely, protecting architectural and physical attributes of the building and its surroundings. Although inspectors are instructed to actively weigh in other (potentially overriding) considerations in heritage appeals, such as socio-economic and proprietary issues, these considerations do not appear to have the same standing within the decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

User-generated reviews of visitor attractions, on publicly available websites, such as Tripadvisor, are frequently used in tourism research but feature less often in published cultural heritage research. In this paper, we describe a qualitative analysis of the text from user-generated reviews of three peatland heritage landscapes in the United Kingdom – Ilkley Moor, Thorne and Hatfield Moors, and Shapwick Heath – to better understand the role tangible and intangible cultural heritage play in visitor perceptions and narratives of these sites. Our analysis indicates that visitors tend to emphasise natural over cultural heritage of peatland landscapes and hold plural, highly contextual and sometimes dissonant perceptions; there is no single story of peatlands. This presents both challenges and opportunities for building public appreciation of peatland cultural heritage. User-generated reviews offer, as-yet under-explored, potential data for use by heritage researchers and managers who seek to explore how visitors understand and use sites, and may also contribute to the emerging intangible heritage of heritage landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a well-known twentieth-century monument to examine contradictions in the material record and how they might be accommodated in protection and interpretative schemes at this and similar sites where contested space is represented. The archaeology of the later twentieth century at, and immediately outside, Greenham Common Airbase (Berkshire, England) is described as unconventional and atypical in its associations, mysterious and disquieting in its later Cold War context, as well as outlandish and unorthodox in what it can hope to achieve in terms of public perception and interpretation. Protest is the stuff of everyday life, yet it is rarely and barely recognised in heritage interpretation, particularly where opposition was directly aimed at the establishment view or government policy. This paper explores these related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of Acts of Parliament enable the Secretary of State for Culture to designate a wide variety of historic sites in England, as advised by Historic England. Although focused on the protection and management of sites, an emphasis is also placed on celebrating the sites’ history and their place in our national cultural narrative. Drawing on a range of recent casework undertaken by Historic England, this paper explores the place of statutory heritage regimes in post-Brexit England, especially the place that such sites play in the national consciousness and construction of identities by different communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers the exploration of, and performance on, a single street in Exeter, UK, as guided by an idea of 'mythogeography' and a determination to address a place as a multiplicity of meanings, objects, accretions, rhythms and exceptions. It explores the virtues of and obstacles facing a performance made 'on the hoof' in both senses - ambulatory and improvisatory. It draws on the idea of 'mythogeography' originated in the work of Wrights & Sites, sprung from a growing awareness of how the multiple meanings of certain sites, particularly those designated as 'heritage' or 'touristic', are 'closed down' and an aspiration to represent multiple and diverse meanings resistant to such a monocular politics of place. Contrasted with previously 'exemplary' work, enacting only the possibilities that a mythogeographical approach to place and space might offer, the paper explores how far a performative 'mis-guided tour' (titled in publicity A Tour of Sardine Street) was able to generate a work of 'realised' geography applicable to the street and the city as an analysis as well as an aesthetic provocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reinvention of deindustrial cities requires a long-term commitment to reconfiguring physical space, altering perceptions and transforming the functions of space. The contraction of the manufacturing sector asked a series of questions of the existing industrial environment which once stood as a testament to Britain's position as the first industrial nation but was increasingly falling into a state of disrepair. How these redundant spaces and buildings were continually subjected to re-evaluation and a reconceptualisation of the type of role they could play in contributing to the urban renaissance remains the central theme of the paper. Contained within this is an examination of the complex matrix of agencies from the voluntary, public and private sectors working on a local, regional, national and European scale. Their perception of the potential of the historic landscape was conditioned by their remit, position within the institutional framework, the emerging urban agenda and political changes as well as an emerging cultural switch to embrace urban heritage. This paper will elucidate how the historic urban environment was reconceptualised in Castlefield, Manchester and how the various desires of the voluntary, public and private sector were realised through the conscious manipulation and reconceptualisation of historic space since 1960. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, based on our collective project Mapping Faith and Place in Leicester, we offer some discussion of ways in which archaeologists can engage with ideas of the sacred, through an exploration of a contemporary landscape of belief in an urban context. Moving beyond traditional archaeological and architectural descriptions of buildings, the relationship between faith and place is investigated using the concept of translation as a way of engaging with changes and developments in the realization of belief. We argue that this new approach is a very helpful way of understanding the material outcomes of religious faith. The study has considerable implications for the ways in which religious beliefs are now approached by many archaeologists. It is argued that we need to engage more carefully with classificatory architectural paradigms and recognize the importance of religious faith in the construction of the everyday. The inadequacies of ‘classic’ archaeological approaches to religion via monuments are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Staffordshire Hoard is the largest Anglo-Saxon gold hoard ever found. On display from soon after its discovery in 2009 during fundraising to secure it for the region, the Hoard has become a source of local pride in Staffordshire, receiving over a million visitors. This article explores the Hoard as a marker of identity, both in the past and in the present, and evaluates how the ‘treasure process’, museums, and museum volunteers are shaping public identification with the Anglo-Saxon past of the Mercian kingdom. Drawing on focus-group data, we argue that aspects of the naming and display of the Hoard have encouraged its inclusion in existing narratives of belonging and ‘authenticity’ in Staffordshire. Such archaeological discoveries have the potential to provide points of continuity between the post-industrial present and the distant past, and stimulate a reconsideration of the present status of the region in contemporary cultural and political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A sample of 1356 members of the Friends associations of six English cathedrals (775 women and 581 men) completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales. Compared with psychological type profiles published for the Church of England laity, both male and female Friends showed greater preferences for introversion over extraversion, for sensing over intuition, and for judging over perceiving. Female Friends showed less preference for feeling over thinking than other female Anglican churchgoers or women in the general population. Overall, the most frequent psychological profile was the Epimethean (SJ) temperament, which was significantly more frequent than among Anglicans generally in the Church of England. This is a profile expected from people who have a strong desire to maintain tradition and heritage and who have been called “guardians” of the church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from the Performance, Learning and Heritage project at the University of Manchester 2005-2008. Using evidence from four case studies, it provides insight into the ways visitors to museums and heritage sites utilise their understandings of 'the authentic' in making sense of their encounters with performances of the past. Although authenticity is a contested and controversial concept, it remains a significant measure against which our respondents analyse and critique their encounters with 'the past'. Beyond superficial analyses, however, it is noted that many respondents demonstrate more sensitive and nuanced reflections on the museum as a site of authenticity and authority, reflections aided by the very fictionality of the mode of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay examines the Baltic Exchange building, an English building which has been transferred to Tallinn, Estonia and its significance as a historical monument. A history of the building leading up to its removal to Estonia is given. The heritage debates that occurred in London, England over whether to rebuild, remove or replace the damaged building after being destroyed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1992 are also highlighted.

This essay goes to the heart of many of the accepted notions that inform heritage practice and theory: of the permanence of monuments; their legitimisation by age; their preservation from change; and their representation of a social consensus. By contrast, modern ‘intrusions’ to lived space are designed to be impermanent, are obviously new, represent change and often result from conflict. Twyford Down (Hampshire) is an example—a concrete expression—of this discordance: it has legal protection, but was compromised by the construction of the M3 motorway extension in the late 1980s. Yet, with archaeologists increasingly willing to explore the contemporary past, can sites like Twyford Down not be interpreted in a very different way, by recognising the landscape as dynamic not static, and by understanding that the process of change is as relevant today as it was in the past? In this essay such a post-modern interpretation of landscape and heritage-management practice is suggested, placing Twyford Down’s later 20th-century components alongside those of an earlier date. It is difficult to give such contemporary places the official recognition they deserve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]