Let our decaying heritage sites go gracefully, says professor

SOME of the country’s most cherished heritage sites should be “let go” and allowed to decay “gracefully”, an academic has said.

Professor Caitlin Desilvey has suggested that despite people’s “strong feelings”, perishing landmarks should be allowed to crumble because of climate change and falling budgets.

The country’s historic monuments faced a setback in 2013 when the Department for Culture, Media and Sport devolved English Heritage from government and cut its resource funding by 10 per cent.

The National Trust, however, is currently spending £300million as part of a 10-year project to clear a backlog of maintenance jobs.

“There is room to explore more creative approaches in how we care for heritage,” said Prof Desilvey, associate professor of cultural geography at the University of Exeter.

“What happens if we choose not to intervene? What possibilities emerge when change is embraced rather than resisted? What if we allow things to become ruins?

“Processes of decay and disintegration can be culturally – as well as ecologically – productive, but we also need to recognise that people have very strong feelings about these places, and those need to be considered as well.”

In 2015-16, the National Trust gave £466,918 for works on St Michael’s Mount, the Cornish island which is home to a medieval church and castle, and £183,350 on the Grade I listed Croughton Court in Warwickshire.

It spent £72million on property projects in 2015-16 – more than 10 per cent of the year’s £541million expenditure.

Prof Desilvey also cites the former atomic weapons testing facility at Orford Ness in Suffolk as a flagship example. The shingle spit, which was a secret military base for the Ministry of Defence during the Second World War and the Cold War but is now a nature reserve, is managed by the Trust through “continued ruination”.

“Orford Ness is an interesting case because it shows that we don’t always have to associate ruination with failure and neglect,” she said. “Where physical decay is going on and nature is moving in, we can try to see this in a positive light and ask what we can learn.”

The National Trust spends around £1,500 each week on maintaining and protecting Mullion Harbour in Cornwall from powerful winter storms.

“One way to think about places like Mullion is to consider how we could mark the ‘afterlife’ of the harbour by re-using its materials in other structures and remembering its passing in that way,” she said. “It’s hard to let go and I am asking how we can do this gracefully and attentively.”

Professor Desilvey’s book Curated Decay was published in February.