Edited by Steve Bamlett, Sunday, 15 Apr 2018, 08:22
My contribution is based on a heritage that is already lost in some
important ways, because of changes dictated by the policy of the owners
of the objects, spaces and buildings that made up the heritage. In
short, this heritage is that of coal-mining practices in County Durham
where I now live. County Durham was in the last century seen as a tragic
case of over-specialization in one dominant industry, coal-mining, but also its allied industry, such as iron & steel.
Ownership is surely only one relation of a heritage to groups with a stake or interest in it. In 1947 nationalization
took many of the remaining coal - pit sites into public ownership, but
the degree to which that changed the stake in the organization and
future of the site by local miners was minimal, in practice, although
NCB publicity and training films often promoted the notion that
committees with miner involvement represented that voice.
What followed is a long story but it involved vast changes in the siting of coal-mining (from the interior of the county to the
coastal seaboard). From exposesd coalfield drift mines and low shafted
mines to deep seams that extended off coast under the sea (Vane Tempest
and Easington). Gradually West Durham pits closed, new towns were built
and populations migrated (internally) to new modern mechanized pits. The
end of the Miners Strike in 1987 strook the death knell of even these
pits and they were gone by the early 1990s. NCB as owners had a policy
of destroying all pit buildings central to the site, re-landscaping the
sites and reducing their visibility as memorials of a past truly to be
consigned to the less visible parts of history - like the underground
engineering architecture of the mines themselves.
If miners and
their continuing families are stakeholders in this heritage, then
policies determined by ownership (even public ownership) did much to
remove nearly everything that could be its memorial, apart from small
sculptural reliefs - which often sentimentalized miners, ponies and pit-lamps.
Here
is a heritage under threat. Its memorials now are often version of
intangibles translated into other media and discourses - mining art
galleries, show pits (none in Durham) and photographic and textual archives.
Durham Coal Mine Ownership and threatened heritage: Leiden MOOC Week 3
My contribution is based on a heritage that is already lost in some important ways, because of changes dictated by the policy of the owners of the objects, spaces and buildings that made up the heritage. In short, this heritage is that of coal-mining practices in County Durham where I now live. County Durham was in the last century seen as a tragic case of over-specialization in one dominant industry, coal-mining, but also its allied industry, such as iron & steel.
Ownership is surely only one relation of a heritage to groups with a stake or interest in it. In 1947 nationalization took many of the remaining coal - pit sites into public ownership, but the degree to which that changed the stake in the organization and future of the site by local miners was minimal, in practice, although NCB publicity and training films often promoted the notion that committees with miner involvement represented that voice.
What followed is a long story but it involved vast changes in the siting of coal-mining (from the interior of the county to the coastal seaboard). From exposesd coalfield drift mines and low shafted mines to deep seams that extended off coast under the sea (Vane Tempest and Easington). Gradually West Durham pits closed, new towns were built and populations migrated (internally) to new modern mechanized pits. The end of the Miners Strike in 1987 strook the death knell of even these pits and they were gone by the early 1990s. NCB as owners had a policy of destroying all pit buildings central to the site, re-landscaping the sites and reducing their visibility as memorials of a past truly to be consigned to the less visible parts of history - like the underground engineering architecture of the mines themselves.
If miners and their continuing families are stakeholders in this heritage, then policies determined by ownership (even public ownership) did much to remove nearly everything that could be its memorial, apart from small sculptural reliefs - which often sentimentalized miners, ponies and pit-lamps.
Here is a heritage under threat. Its memorials now are often version of intangibles translated into other media and discourses - mining art galleries, show pits (none in Durham) and photographic and textual archives.
This need work as a theme.
All the best
Steve