FIVE ISSUES ENGLAND’S HISTORIC SITES FACE IN PANDEMIC

English Heritage, the charity that manages more than 400 historic monuments, buildings and places, is heavily reliant on tourism — which has, of course, dropped off a cliff. Here

are some issues it faces:

1

IT TAKES A VILLAGE Without tourists at its sites, such as Dover Castle, Tintagel Castle, Stonehenge and parts

of Hadrian’s Wall, Britain’s heritage sector cannot employ its normal level of 464,000

people. Nonetheless, the charity’s sites have to be proactively maintained, repaired, conserved, cleaned, temperature-controlled and more.

2

DON’T TRY MAGIC ERASERS This, of course, costs money. If that work becomes unaffordable, things will deteriorate and become less likely to survive. Heritage interiors often hold fragile fabrics and delicate plasterwork. As a result, they aren’t well suited to the kind of deep clean you might give to an

office at the end of the day.

3

COME BACK, JOB; WE STILL

LOVE YOU!

The heritage sector relies on many skilled professionals for that preventive work — stonemasons, glaziers, architects, surveyors — who will drift away to other jobs if their livelihoods dry up. If that happens, ancient

skills will be lost.

4

ROAD TRIPS FOR LOCALS To make up a deficit of this year’s magnitude, domestic tourism would have to increase to levels that aren’t credible. People will only return if they feel safe. So pre-booked, timed ticketing, enhanced cleaning regimes, two-metre distancing in queues, and smartphone apps that feature both visitor guides and methods to pay for parking and food will be the norm. Operational managers are planning one-way routes through homes — but that can be fiendishly difficult in old mansions and warren-like castles with narrow passageways and dead-ends.

5

HELLO? ANYBODY HOME? “At the beginning, it was beautiful,” says Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire, scion of the grand 126-room 17th-century Chatsworth House. “It was completely empty, like a series of Christmas Day mornings. Everything

was suspended, almost like being underwater.” But the lack of people — including private staff (“Like everybody else, we’ve done everything ourselves”) — soon started feeling “spooky.” Chatsworth usually welcomes over 600,000 paying visitors annually — and because of the work deficit, the Duke is “not sure yet if we will open the house again this year.”