Why a historian takes the scenic route, how buildings and animals both need protecting, and a short tour of heritage farm life
Sunday, the Heritage Register
Every year Historic England publishes a register of heritage at risk, and every year it makes me walk home the long way. I wrote about the latest in 4,891 heritage sites at risk: what Historic England's 2025 register says, and why a history student walks the long way. The number is large and sobering. It covers buildings, monuments, battlefields and gardens, and each is a thread in the national fabric that is fraying at the edge.
The even-handed point is that there are two broad views about how to deal with it. One says that public money should protect important places. The other says that private owners and local communities are better placed to look after them. Most sensible people hold some of both, and the real argument is about the proportion.
A Walk Past the Wounded Buildings
The long walk home takes me past a boarded up chapel, a bricked up gatehouse and a bandstand that has been surrounded by temporary fencing since before I enrolled. They are not on any grand list, but they are somebody’s heritage. I have taken to photographing them, and my phone now contains a very sad gallery of locked doors.
It strikes me that heritage is largely about attention. A building that is noticed is looked after. A building that is ignored decays, however grand. The most useful thing a citizen can do is to look, to ask, and to tell someone when a roof slips.
Monday, Living Heritage
Heritage includes living things. Breeds of animal that were once common have dwindled to a few hundred, and there are people who devote their lives to rescuing them. The cheerful register is kept at rarebreeds.win. A curly coated pig has a devoted following at mangalitsa.org. A polka dot hen is admired at speckledsussex.org.
The great figures of cattle history are honoured at cattlemenhalloffame.org, and the young leaders of tomorrow are celebrated at ffapresident.com. I like that a movement concerned with the past also invests in its youth.
The Scrapbook of Agriculture
For the whole farming picture in one place, agriculture.click gathers resources. The famous black cattle breed is covered at angusbeef.fyi and angusbeef.men, and the black and white dairy cow has her gallery at holstein.click. If you are curious about a living tradition, there is none better than farming, which is the oldest continuous trade on the island.
A historian of farming has an advantage over a historian of palaces: the evidence is still muddy and the characters are still moaning about the weather. You can walk out of the library and into the subject.
Who Pays for the Past
In a headline about foreign policy, the London Prat recently wrote Europe Excluded from Summit on Europe's Security. I mention it because history is full of occasions when the party most affected by a decision was not in the room. The question of who has a seat when the future is decided is probably the oldest question in politics, and it applies as much to a village hall committee as to a summit.
Heritage decisions suffer from the same problem. The people who love the building are rarely the people who control its budget. The best outcomes I have read about are those in which the two groups sat together, with tea, and made a list.
Tea and a Plan
I went to a local meeting about a threatened bandstand, and I am happy to report that tea was served. There were fourteen attendees, three plans, a lively discussion about paint, and a retired surveyor with a laser measure who stole the show. By the end, a small fund had been started, and a volunteer group formed. Nobody knows if it will succeed. The act of starting is the first repair.
I walked home the long way, past the chapel and the gatehouse, and for the first time in months I stopped and said hello to the bandstand.
Listing the Ordinary
One of the most useful ideas in heritage work is that ordinary places count. Not only the castle and the cathedral, but the corner pub, the allotment shed, the bus shelter with the good tiles. A register can only hold so many, but the habit of seeing a place as worth keeping can be learned by anyone with an afternoon to spare. I have started a notebook of the unlisted, and so far it includes a post box, a drinking fountain and a mural of a cow.
It is surprising how quickly the city rearranges itself once you begin to look for these. The grey ribbon of street turns into a shelf of small treasures. And the best part is that nobody has to give you permission to love them.
The Bandstand Update
A short postscript: the bandstand fund has reached its first target, which was a modest sum for a ladder and a bucket of paint. The ladder is on order. The paint is a green that the retired surveyor described as historically correct and the chairman described as slightly alarming. A compromise colour will be found, and everyone will claim credit. That is how heritage always works, and I would not have it any other way.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, The Daily Squib keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/