“They provide a sense of identity and place in troubled times”
Bede’s World has been saved. A few stops down the Tyne and Wear metro from Newcastle, the museum has been going since 1993, housing a Saxon village with farm animals as well as a display of the archaeological finds from the monastery founded in the last quarter of the seventh century. One of the foundational places of English, British and European history, it is a popular attraction for tourists and school visits, and was only recently the subject of a World Heritage bid. Out of the blue in February it was announced that the museum was closing for lack of funds. Then, just as we were going to press, the South Tyneside and Newcastle Groundwork charity stepped in to save the day.
But not all museums have been so lucky. In Bradford, the former National Museum of Photography (latterly the unfortunately renamed National Media Museum) is to lose one of its major assets, the Royal Photographic Society collection, which is to be moved to London. Across the UK, well over 40 museums have gone since 2010, with more facing imminent closure.
Some (including Melvyn Bragg) have seen these decisions as a kick in the teeth to the north, and to the regions in general, while millions are still ploughed into cultural projects in London and the south. As Bragg put it, museums are places where one generation learns what made us who we are – and why history matters.
And Bede’s World certainly matters. Here at Jarrow, in the seventh and eighth centuries, the former barbarians of Northumbria created a pathway for post-Roman Europe. Assimilating elements of Irish civilisation, making links with the Scots and Picts and with Europe and Rome, they helped lay the foundations of England, and of the continental renaissance under Charlemagne, which is the true beginning of modern Europe.
There were many key figures – abbesses, abbots, monks and scholars – but the greatest of them all was surely Beda (Bede). He was one of the first historians of the English and the man who in a sense defined what England would – or could – be.
A Sunderland man, Bede spent his life at Jarrow. With its sister house nearby at Monkwearmouth, Jarrow became one of the greatest centres of culture in the west, small scale but of incalculable influence. Here wealth was ploughed into art and learning by willing royal families and by an aristocracy who revelled in the links with Europe and Rome, in the beautiful productions of its scriptorium, in its architecture, sculpture and glass, and its music, painting and words. They bought into the transforming power of Christian civilisation, which in violent times enabled Germanic kingship to reinvent itself, and to remake English society in the process
That’s why Jarrow matters so much. After so many visits over the years since I was a student, I still get a thrill alighting at the station at this former ship-building and colliery town, which is inextricably connected with great moments in our story from Bede to the Jarrow March of 1936.
The statistics tell us history is among the biggest leisure participation activities in the UK. The closures of museums over the past five years actually coincide with record numbers of visitors. Public participation has increased hugely since records began: last year 52 per cent of us visited museums, up from 42 per cent a decade ago. Public attitudes surveys show that we have great attachment to our local museums: they are places that fire the imagination, especially in the young. They also contribute to the economy. Every pound invested in culture yields two.
And there’s something else less definable. History gives value and meaning to the present, and the public opinion surveys show that museums are trusted places where we want to learn to understand our history. Museums are of and for their communities, a key educational resource providing a sense of identity and place in troubled times.
Jarrow was, and is, all this. There are few more resonant places in our story. From Bede to the tale of modern industrial Britain, the existence of Bede’s World on that windy promontory looking over Jarrow Slake gives us something more than a museum: in a community that has gone through unbelievable ups and downs, it says: “This is part of us – and we are part of it.”