Some of the papers held in the building were rescued by local volunteers, although The Guardian reported that this amounted to a tiny proportion of the total collection that the library had originally held, with much now lost. The BBC’s Cairo correspondent Sara Hashash reported on 14th January on the work being undertaken in a small dingy ground-floor
room at Egypt’s National Archives, led by Mona Mohammed Abdo, the head of book restoration there, to salvage as much as possible. A vast rescue operation is being mounted as restorers work long hours to try to save some of the ancient books and manuscripts. Continuing protests have hampered rescue efforts and the building itself is said to
be in danger of collapsing, the top floor has already caved in.

The BBC reported that the collection is estimated to be worth some £11–18m and holds over 250 years of social and industrial history, from presidential ceramics to anti-slavery pieces. Many of the items had been donated by the Wedgwood family over a 200-year period. A local Staffordshire billionaire, John Caudwell, recently came forward following the Court’s decision stating his intention to buy the collection if required to ensure it stays together and in its present location in Stoke-On-Trent.

Many could face closure entirely, such as Wellingborough Museum in Northamptonshire, where the local council originally wanted to impose a 62% cut in funding. If this had been carried through, then one paid member staff would have lost their job and the 70 volunteers and 30,000 yearly visitors would have lost their access and opportunities for engagement with their local heritage. Fortunately the museum has managed to negotiate just under a 25% cut for the next financial year and will make up any shortfall using other sources of funds.

The news from around the country is similarly grim, with Helston Museum in Cornwallgetting a 50% cut, two museums in
Carmarthenshire, Wales, threatened with closure to save money, South Shields Museum and Art Gallery forced to close over the whole Christmas holiday and a local history society in Leicestershire considering stepping in to manage Harborough Museum to protect it from further cuts. Leicestershire County Council seems to view museums as one of its targets in reducing its budget. The BBC reported in December that the authority had withdrawn their application for a £4m Heritage Lottery Funding bid for the Snibston Discovery Museum. The funding bid had been for a £5m project called Mining Lives, which would have improved the condition of the colliery buildings and increased public access to the site. The County Council was unwilling to agree to the Lottery grant conditions which would have limited the County Council’s ability to cut or close this hugely popular museum.

This all comes at a time when all the evidence shows increasing public participation with heritage sites and museums. A recent survey by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport showed that 72% of UK adults visit a heritage site each year, with 47% of people taking in a visit to a museum or gallery at least once a year. The number of visitors to the English national museums has doubled in a decade to nearly 18 million a year, with even those that have always been free (such as the British Museum) seeing 22% increase over these ten years. Perhaps most importantly there has been a 36% rise in the number of children visiting state museums; 8.3 million of them last year for example. Such is the importance of the sector that VisitBritain has estimated that such national heritage sites alone bring in £4.5bn in tourist money, creating 100,000 jobs spread across the country, all of which suggests museums have real value in both economic and cultural terms. It can only be hoped that is acknowledged by politicians, both local and national, before the current round of harsh and unbalanced cuts destroy a thriving and much loved cultural resource.

Adam Turner

Is your local museum or gallery under threat? Please report it to our cuts map. Information about fighting these cuts can be found in our publication Fighting Back.

These plans do not have universal approval and there are other interested parties wishing to see the turbine hall turned into an exhibition space and offices, but after the repeated failures to deliver a scheme to secure the future of the power station any solution to the current dereliction of the site is worth serious evaluation.

In October 2011 the Avon and Somerset Police, following a joint investigation with English Heritage, announced that they had arrested a 72 year-old man on suspicion of criminal damage and causing damage to a scheduled monument. The man had been released on bail on October 31 last year and was due to report to police again in early January 2012; however his bail has been extended while investigations continue. The maximum fine for damaging a Scheduled Ancient Monument is £20,000.

We recommended the site for scheduling as it is of the first order of importance, and scheduling will support the on-going investigations being led by Dr Nicky Milner of the University of York. The site is at risk: ground conditions are demonstrably deteriorating, and  damaging the uniquely rich assemblage of organic deposits. High significance plus a proven risk: this sensitive equation leads to a clear outcome; the importance of getting protection in place. This approach forms the heart of English Heritage’s emerging approach to designation. In RN114 (Sandy Gerrard, Neglect of Archaeological Designation) pointed out the recent paucity of scheduling activity. In short, our response lies in the National Heritage Protection Plan (NHPP).

Before exploring the future, let us recap on the past. One of the young English Heritage’s earliest major initiatives was the Monuments Protection Programme (MPP). Opened in 1986, with a projected 10-year project life, the MPP sought to understand, classify, assess and select for designation a representative sample of the identified archaeological resource. Scheduling was a prominent, but not the only, outcome of this programme. The overall target for schedulings was initially 60,000; about 10% of the so-far-identified number of sites (and a tally which modern investigative techniques
could certainly considerably enlarge). This was later lowered to 50,000; 25 years on we have yet to breast the 20,000 mark. What happened?

[see RN 115 for full article]

Roger Bowdler
Designation Director,
English Heritage

This decision flies in the face of damage to the setting of the WHS on its western boundaries that would arise from the associated new visitor-centre and road improvement works. It is symptomatic of the lack of Government’s understanding of what the WHS is, that Roads Minister Mike Penning commented ‘This is an important contribution to improve the setting of the monument and ensure its protection as an iconic World Heritage Site.”

He is presumably unaware that the WHS comprises not only the henge but the extensive, archaeologically sensitive tract of landscape that surrounds it.

Kate Fielding, Stonehenge Alliance

The Inspectors considered the plans submitted by Peel Holdings for the £5.5bn Liverpool Waters. The planed site for offices, shops and restaurants includes much of the city’s famous waterfront, including the Three Graces; the Royal Liver Building, the Cunard Building and the Port of Liverpool Building, as well as the Pier Head, the Albert Dock and the Stanley Dock Conservation Area.

Following excavation the temple was removed from its original location on Queen Victoria Street and rebuilt using the recovered Roman material some 90 metres distant from its former site and at a level 9 metres higher than the Roman ground surface. As part of its redevelopment plans Bloomberg LP is meeting the costs of a more faithful reconstruction.   This will require carefully extraction of the original Roman stone and tile from the 1960s cement mortar and the temple
will be carefully restored at a site closer to its original Roman location within a purpose-built and publicly accessible interpretation space.

Following a request for information from Labour MP Mr Clive Efford, Junior Defence Minister Gerald Howarth, stated that these three ships had been sold to a German salvage company in 1954 and there was therefore little the Government was able to do about the situation. Private Eye went on to mention that the UK government has a commercially pragmatic view of salvage operations, especially where there is money to be made, having recently allowed US treasure hunting firm Odyssey Marine Exploration to work on two Second World War wrecks the SS Gairsoppa and SS Mantola with silver bullion on board; both were sunk by German U-boats.