Castle Hill: A site from my childhood and its development as an idea about the nature of heritage.
Sunday, 1 Apr 2018, 20:50
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Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 1 Apr 2018, 20:56
Castle Hill: A site from my childhood and its development as an idea about the nature of heritage.
Submitted on April 1, 2018
Prompt
Think
about something which is connected to you, which you can describe or
call your personal heritage. Write down what you have in mind, and why
in about 250 words. Connect your selection to this week's discussed
topics: show that you understand it's contents.
Heritage under Threat
by Universiteit Leiden & Centre for Global Heritage and Development Week 1 assignment by Steve Bamlett
This site is ‘heritage’ for several reasons explored in Harrison (2010) that are shared with numerous other people. However, because of my participation and engagement with it as a child, it represents something I see as part of a heritage that may have taken on a personal meaning for me.
As a geological phenomenon it dominates the landscape vistas of the area that lie between the areas in which I lived as a child and, even more so those to which I moved during my secondary Schooling. It formed part of a canonical heritage (ibid:14), sanctioned institutionally and in the official narratives received at school as a centre of importance in pre-Roman invasion history. Although the evidence does not add to certainty, in primary school it was described as a Brigantine hill fortress, whose dykes and earthworks represented defences against Roman invasion. Yet to us, as children that history often merged with the presence of a Victorian folly (the Victoria Tower) placed to commemorate Victoria’s jubilee and opened in 1899.
To us, the latter structure was the castle of ‘Castle Hill’, despite the officially sanctioned story of its older importance. In both forms, it too mythic importance as a symbolic of national, perhaps even nationalistic heritage, which seemed less connected the British spirit before Romanisation up to the Victorian Empire.
Yet this site had meaning in other canons and political-cultural traditions than these. For instances, it is part of the pre-industrial mining history of the city and county (not a mining but a textile area) Even as a sixth-former, I mistook some of the pre-Roman defensive earthworks with the open-cast and adit (entrance to a small mine) excavations. In a real sense this was part of an economic heritage of major importance to the area, probably supplementary to agriculture.
However, in another sense the association of the site with resistance to powerful authority, by Brigantines or others, was used by Chartists in the 1840s to organise a few open-air meetings political assemblies. This ‘Victorian’ political heritage became very important to me through my own political development, which increasingly became alienated from the grammar school I attended, and which nestled in the valley below Castle Hill.
The association with revolt may have been emphasised by the fact that Castle Hill was the frequent focus of compulsory cross-country runs from that school.
As I recall that period, I remember too that on top of the hill in the ‘outer Bailey’ was a large public house.
This was a favoured venue for early alcohol drinkers, since it seemed so remote from parental (or even police) surveillance. Even in this then the place became part of an anti-state (at least from a naïve adolescent perspective) rebellion.
This suggests that a site can have contesting interpretations to the persons who variously interpret it depending upon the canon into which it is inserted and through which it gains meaning. Thus Harrison’s (2010:15) statement that ‘canons … represent ideological tools that circulate the values on which particular visions of nationhood are established’ is not necessarily a statement about the coherence of the meaning, or meanings attached to it. Nor should these notions of ‘nationhood’ be necessarily reactionary.
Revolutionary Chartists promoted a sense of nationhood, for instance prognosticated on the value of ‘change’ rather than stasis.
Whether Castle Hill will ever make West Yorkshire or Huddersfield more attractive to tourists and hence raise its economic status. If it does, one can only hope that the tourist is not invited to admire only certain meanings sanctioned in its potential (ibid:17) such as the virtue of the defensive military state but also as monument in which the values of subaltern classes, such as miners, and alternative political traditions are also celebrated.
Of course for me, it remains a place of opposing emotions because it was place I walked to in order to reflect on my developing feelings and to accept them but it also was a place where I learned about cultures where I could not share the fruit of that self-reflection – all ‘heterosexual’ male drinking excursions ‘on the pull’ and competitive cross-country running icon.
All the best
Steve
References:
Harrison, R. (2010) ‘What is heritage?’ in Harrison, R. (ed.) Understanding the Politics of Heritage Manchester / Milton Keynes, Manchester University Press, The Open University, 5 – 42.
Castle Hill: A site from my childhood and its development as an idea about the nature of heritage.
Prompt
Think about something which is connected to you, which you can describe or call your personal heritage. Write down what you have in mind, and why in about 250 words. Connect your selection to this week's discussed topics: show that you understand it's contents.
Heritage under Threat by Universiteit Leiden & Centre for Global Heritage and Development Week 1 assignment by Steve Bamlett
Chosen site: Castle Hill, Almondbury. Huddersfield. Photo: Castle Hill and the Victoria Tower viewed from Farnley Tyas Richard Harvey - Own work. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Hill,_Huddersfield#/media/File:Castle_Hill_2003-11-12_14-04-25_P1210664.jpg (Accessed 1/04/18)
Used in Wikipedia (England): Item available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Hill,_Huddersfield (Accessed 1/04/18)
Steve’s assignment:
This site is ‘heritage’ for several reasons explored in Harrison (2010) that are shared with numerous other people. However, because of my participation and engagement with it as a child, it represents something I see as part of a heritage that may have taken on a personal meaning for me.
As a geological phenomenon it dominates the landscape vistas of the area that lie between the areas in which I lived as a child and, even more so those to which I moved during my secondary Schooling. It formed part of a canonical heritage (ibid:14), sanctioned institutionally and in the official narratives received at school as a centre of importance in pre-Roman invasion history. Although the evidence does not add to certainty, in primary school it was described as a Brigantine hill fortress, whose dykes and earthworks represented defences against Roman invasion. Yet to us, as children that history often merged with the presence of a Victorian folly (the Victoria Tower) placed to commemorate Victoria’s jubilee and opened in 1899.
To us, the latter structure was the castle of ‘Castle Hill’, despite the officially sanctioned story of its older importance. In both forms, it too mythic importance as a symbolic of national, perhaps even nationalistic heritage, which seemed less connected the British spirit before Romanisation up to the Victorian Empire.
Yet this site had meaning in other canons and political-cultural traditions than these. For instances, it is part of the pre-industrial mining history of the city and county (not a mining but a textile area) Even as a sixth-former, I mistook some of the pre-Roman defensive earthworks with the open-cast and adit (entrance to a small mine) excavations. In a real sense this was part of an economic heritage of major importance to the area, probably supplementary to agriculture.
However, in another sense the association of the site with resistance to powerful authority, by Brigantines or others, was used by Chartists in the 1840s to organise a few open-air meetings political assemblies. This ‘Victorian’ political heritage became very important to me through my own political development, which increasingly became alienated from the grammar school I attended, and which nestled in the valley below Castle Hill.
The association with revolt may have been emphasised by the fact that Castle Hill was the frequent focus of compulsory cross-country runs from that school. As I recall that period, I remember too that on top of the hill in the ‘outer Bailey’ was a large public house.
This was a favoured venue for early alcohol drinkers, since it seemed so remote from parental (or even police) surveillance. Even in this then the place became part of an anti-state (at least from a naïve adolescent perspective) rebellion.
This suggests that a site can have contesting interpretations to the persons who variously interpret it depending upon the canon into which it is inserted and through which it gains meaning. Thus Harrison’s (2010:15) statement that ‘canons … represent ideological tools that circulate the values on which particular visions of nationhood are established’ is not necessarily a statement about the coherence of the meaning, or meanings attached to it. Nor should these notions of ‘nationhood’ be necessarily reactionary.
Revolutionary Chartists promoted a sense of nationhood, for instance prognosticated on the value of ‘change’ rather than stasis. Whether Castle Hill will ever make West Yorkshire or Huddersfield more attractive to tourists and hence raise its economic status. If it does, one can only hope that the tourist is not invited to admire only certain meanings sanctioned in its potential (ibid:17) such as the virtue of the defensive military state but also as monument in which the values of subaltern classes, such as miners, and alternative political traditions are also celebrated.
Of course for me, it remains a place of opposing emotions because it was place I walked to in order to reflect on my developing feelings and to accept them but it also was a place where I learned about cultures where I could not share the fruit of that self-reflection – all ‘heterosexual’ male drinking excursions ‘on the pull’ and competitive cross-country running icon.
All the best
Steve
References:
Harrison, R. (2010) ‘What is heritage?’ in Harrison, R. (ed.) Understanding the Politics of Heritage Manchester / Milton Keynes, Manchester University Press, The Open University, 5 – 42.