TROUBLED LEGACY A PROPOSAL FOR THE FUTURE OF NI’S CONFLICT HERITAGES Design Thesis M.Phil in Architecture & Urban Design
Christopher Hamill
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TROUBLED LEGACY: A PROPOSAL FOR THE FUTURE OF NORTHERN IRELAND’S CONFLICT HERITAGES Design Thesis A design thesis submitted in par tial fulfilment of the requirements for the M.Phil in Architecture & Urban Design 2016-8
Christopher Mar tin Hamill Christ’s College 14921 words With thanks to: Barbara Campbell-Lange Ingrid Schröder Aram Mooradian Neil Galway Andrew McClelland Cahal McLaughlin
This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except where specifically indicated in the text.
Front Cover: Armagh, 1975. Loyalist protest opposing the repatriation of Mariam & Dolours Price to HMP Armagh from HMP Durham. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission.
“Bear in mind these dead: I can find no plainer words. I dare not risk using that loaded word, Remember, for your memory is a cruel web threaded from thorn to thorn across a hedge of dead bramble, heavy with pathetic atomies. I cannot urge or beg you to pray for anyone or anything, for prayer in this green island is tarnished with stale breath, worn smooth and characterless as an old flagstone, trafficked with journeys no longer credible to lost destinations.” John Hewitt1 Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto
1 Hewitt, J. ‘Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto’, Collected Poems, (ed.) Frank Ormsby (Belfast: Blackstaff, 1991) 188-90
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Ethics: The author is originally from Northern Ireland. Due to the sensitive nature of the site, and the fact that it is currently subject to a live project with vested and commercial interests, much of the information provided through informal interviews was given on condition of anonymity for the relevant parties. As such, generic titles have been used within the text to protect identities, and where material with a very limited circulation has been provided, its inclusion within this paper was conditional on attaining multiple sources, so that its disclosure cannot implicate any individual source by proxy. The two workshops carried out at one of Armagh’s FE College referenced in the text were carried out in line with data protection regulations and guidelines for working with young people provided by the author’s host university during fieldwork; Queen’s University Belfast.2 No names, addresses or other identifying data points were collected from the participants and all proposed data to be collected was cleared with staff in advance. At all times during the workshops and the informal interviews which followed, the author was accompanied by a member of staff. It is relevant to declare that the author was formerly an employee of two conservation-accredited architectural offices currently practicing in Northern Ireland. The involvement of one of these practices, Hall Black Douglas Architects, in a previous proposal for the Armagh Gaol site is referenced in the text. This project significantly predates the author’s association with the practice and this association has in no way coloured the nature of the information disclosed. All materials related to this scheme were freely and reputably attained from other archival sources including Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council Local Planning Office. Finally, it is acknowledged that the use of Protestant and Catholic as terms to describe Northern Ireland’s sectarian divisions is sub-optimal, both in terms of limited accuracy (using religious affiliation as a proxy for political ideals is problematic, to say nothing of degrees of devoutness) and also in that it risks entrenching the damaging and inaccurate stereotype that opinions are homogeneous within religious groups. Nonetheless, this thesis has adopted this nomenclature as a convenient shorthand, and has done so following the precedent of the Institute for Conflict Research, whose reports have likewise adopted this terminology.
2 https://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/HumanResources/RewardandEmployeeRelations/LegalServices/ SafeguardingChildrenandVulnerableAdults/
Fig. 1: Nationalist protesters outside Armagh Gaol campaigning for the release of Pauline McLauglin to hospital care on medical grounds.
c.1980
Limitations of this study: This thesis limits itself to an exploration of the impacts Northern Ireland’s built heritage has had upon community cohesion and reconciliatory efforts. These parameters are defined within the text. However, due to the relatively broad range of topics covered in this investigation, inevitably some connected issues, while acknowledged, have had to be set aside. For example, while Chapter 2.4 engages with writings on ‘intangible heritage’ it deliberately avoids the broader debate as to whether a focus on material heritage is misguided, as advocated by Graham & Howard.3 Furthermore, the lack of recognition of women’s roles within the Troubles and its impacts upon them is a question raised in relation to the chosen site, Armagh Gaol, having being NI’s primary women’s prison from 1921-1986. This is used in Chapter 1.4 as an example of heritage dissonance, but the broader literature on female voices from the Troubles, as championed by authors such as Dowler4 and Aretxaga,5 is not a primary research area. Finally, The United Kingdom’s referendum on leaving the EU on 26th June 2016 followed by the triggering of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty makes a change in the status of the Northern Ireland / Republic of Ireland border a realistic possibility by 2019. Given the location of Armagh in proximity to the border (fig. 2), its historic associations with Irish Nationalism and republicanism, and the author’s proposal that the Gaol may find new use as an ‘allisland’ centre for traditional construction skills training, any change in the status of the border would clearly impact upon the suggested scheme. However, at time of writing, no concrete proposals regarding the international frontier have been agreed by UK or EU negotiators. Therefore, definitive proposals for mitigating any potential negative impacts upon the author’s scheme have not been suggested.
3 Graham, B., and P. Howard. (eds.) “Introduction: Heritage and Identity.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008) 4 Dowler, L. “’And They Think I’m Just a Nice Old Lady’ Women and War in Belfast, Northern Ireland.” Gender, Place & Culture 5, no. 2 (1998): 159-76. 5 Aretxaga, B. Shattering Silence:Women, Nationalism and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997)
Fig. 2: Map of Ireland showing the position of Armagh in relation to the UK / RoI border.
Fig. 3: Aftermath of the killing of prison officer Agnes Fraser (40) outside Armagh Gaol. Thursday April 19 1979 The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission.
On the morning of April 19th 1979, Agnes Wallace (40) was murdered outside of her place of work by republican paramilitaries. Three colleagues were also injured in the attack. This tragic episode is made even more poignant by its depressingly generic place amongst many others. Between 1968 and 1999, over 3500 people lost their lives in Northern Ireland during a period of sectarian violence which came to be known as ‘the Troubles’.6 Many of those killed were, like Wallace, in transit between the relative safeties afforded by the home and the office.
6 McKittrick, D., & McVea, D. Making Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict (London: Penguin Books, 2012)
Wallace however, was deliberately targeted precisely because of that place of work; she was a prison guard working at Her Majesty’s Prison Armagh. Inside the gaol, upon hearing the explosion, colleagues still recall prisoners cheering.7 The building itself, prominent in the local newspaper photographer’s capture of the aftermath (fig. 3) has borne witness to, and participated in, some of the most difficult aspects of Northern Ireland’s recent past; issues with which contemporary society continues to wrestle. It now lies derelict, with recent proposals to transform the site into a boutique hotel and spa seemingly having stalled.
7 Prisons Memory Archive & Scroggie, D. Armagh Stories:Voices from the Gaol. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. (Belfast: QUB Film School, 2015) 35m:30s
Contents:
Contents:
Introduction
16.
Chapter 1: A Troubled Legacy 1.1 Definitions
21.
1.2 HM Prison Armagh
25.
1.3 Prisons: An Inherently Difficult Heritage
28.
1.4 Heritage Dissonance: The Women’s Voices
30.
1.5 Armagh Gaol as a Symbol of Contestation
33.
1.6 AHD in the Evolution of Strategies for Dealing with Troubles-era Sites
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1.6.1 Forgetting - The Military Apparatus
34.
1.6.2 ‘Moving On’ - The Maze / Long Kesh and Authorised Heritage Discourse
38.
1.6.3 ‘ Dark’ Tourism - Crumlin Road & Armagh Gaols
41.
Chapter 2: Divided Territory
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Chapter 2: Divided Territory
2.1 Spatialising Memory / Memorialising Space - The Prisons Memory Archive
45.
2.2 A Divided Land for a Divided People
50.
2.3 The Glass Curtain in Armagh
55.
2.4 Commemorative Landscapes: Ritual & Legitimacy
62.
2.5 Contested Heritages as Spaces of Exception
67.
Chapter 3: Growing Up, Apart 3.1 The Lingering Impacts of the Troubles
69.
3.2 Inter-Generational Heritage
70.
3.3 Decommissioning Mindsets: De-Segregating Education?
73.
3.4 Vocational Education as a Space for Interaction
76.
3.5 Young People’s Heritage Values - Some Indications
80.
3.6 Recognising Apathy
82.
Chapter 4: Agonic Heritages 4.1 Agonism and Contact Zones
86.
4.2 Sites of Conscience
87.
4.3 Design for Agonic Heritages
89.
4.4 Initital Responses - A Critique
91.
4.5 Moving Forward
92.
Concluding Remarks
94.
Rubric List of Interviews
96.
Glossary
98.
List of Figures
102.
Bibliography
104.
Appendix i
112.
Appendix ii
116.
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Fig. 4: Thesis Plan Base drawing: ‘Plan showing improvements to be made at Armagh County Jail’ William Murray 1852 via the Irish Architectural Archive
Introduction This thesis is an exploration of the architect’s role in dealing with the contested heritage of so-called ‘post-ceasefire’ societies. The ending of violent civil strife often heralds a new era, in which contesting an opponent’s right to the past becomes a key weapon in the battle over divided heritages.8 Examining Northern Ireland’s heritage landscape as it has developed since the Good Friday Agreement, this work will attempt to build an argument for why attempts to deal with contentious sites have evolved in the way that they have. This will help to frame an understanding of the broader impacts of these places upon society, both in terms of how they define sectarian territories, and how memories of the conflict, through these architectural fragments, are amenable to transmission from generation to generation. The exploration of these issues will hopefully suggest novel approaches to the seemingly intractable problems of segregation and sectarianism in contemporary NI. These will be further explored and tested in the ongoing design work which accompanies and follows this thesis. The contribution of the architect to such wide-ranging social issues may admittedly be limited, but when issues of legacy are presented in the form of built heritage, it is both important that the architect understand as far as possible the context upon which their work will impact, and to be ambitious as to the potential difference their particular contributions can make. To this end, the thesis builds itself around three primary research questions:
Northern Ireland’s Contested Heritages Certain sites and physical fragments from the Troubles possess a remarkable ability to both cause and focus disputes in the present. The sheer political presence of architecture renders these sites particularly visible reminders of past traumas, and as such they are often incorporated into a variety of narratives about the recent past. Given the nature of that past, the fact that these narratives are often mutually exclusive, and therefore fraught, is not surprising. What is perhaps less widely considered are those groups often left out of the well-known narrative which depicts Northern Ireland as the habitual site of conflict between two monolithic and homogenous religious/political groups. How these dissonant voices complicate, and have therefore been buried by, official attempts at defining a shared narrative of the conflict - what Smith refers to as an Authorised Heritage Discourse9 - for the purposes of ‘moving on’ is of particular interest. Similarly, three separate but interrelated trends have been identified in past strategies for dealing with NI’s contested heritages, and these will be investigated and critiqued as evidencing common tendencies towards ‘historical ecumenicism’ which ultimately limited their success.
Landscapes of Commemoration Understanding the connection between physical fragments and traumatic memories of the Troubles is key to dealing effectively with contested heritages and the disputes they can engender. In drawing this connection, questions as to the scalability of the link between memory and place demand investigation. How do memories of the past continue to influence the patterns of where people choose to reside and how they use their local environments? By understanding how cognitive geographies feature in the establishment and perpetuation of segregation, and how they integrate landmarks, symbols and their associated memories, it is intended that this work will be able consider, from the perspective of contested heritage, why Northern Ireland’s small towns and rural areas exhibit very different (and relatively under-studied) manifestations of division to those visible in cities like Belfast.
8 Graham, B. & McDowell, S. “Meaning in the Maze: the heritage of Long Kesh” Cultural Geographies, 2007 14(3): 350 9 Smith, L. Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006), 29.
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Young People’s ‘Heritages’ How young people interpret the recent past is of particular interest, as not only does it illustrate the method by which heritage narratives are transmitted across generations, it also offers the potential for future reconciliation based on mutual respect of the memories and traditions of others. What young people give value in terms of their built environment, and to what degree this aligns with official heritage designations is a primary research topic. Noting that Northern Ireland’s formal education system remains mostly segregated on religious lines, and that there is little agreement as to the effectiveness of proposed alternatives, the thesis turns instead to the little-studied vocational sector as a primary source. These institutions are an existing example of bi-communal education and offer interesting potential to engage with the emerging literature on the benefits of vocational education in societies moving out of conflict, especially if it can be incorporated with the upkeep and future modification of contested sites. ———————— Each of these research topics forms the basis for a chapter within this thesis. Chapter 4 then offers some suggestion as to how these issues might be addressed collectively through architectural means, with the intention being to illustrate an exemplar design for Sternfeld’s concept of a ‘contact/conflict zone,’10 located within the former gaol in Armagh, with a design for a bi-communal construction skills college. This exploration concludes with an review of issues for further examination within the ongoing design work. Method Statement This thesis makes use of both quantitative and qualitative information on which to base its analyses. Key sources of primary information were a series of interviews (p. 94) carried out both before and during the 6 month fieldwork period in Northern Ireland between June and December 2017. The fieldwork period also allowed for extensive site surveys of both Armagh town and the former Gaol, as well as two workshops at a local vocational college. Quantitative data on the demographic situation was made available from NISRA, and data on Armagh’s experiences of violence was attained by FoI request to the PSNI. Archival review, conversations with colleagues, conferences11 and an extensive review of the relevant literature were also instrumental in building this thesis into its current form. Furthermore, as a design thesis, the main hypotheses and their possible implementation have also been tested through an ongoing series of architectural interventions proposed for the former HM Prison Armagh. The particular strands of knowledge examined have, to varying degrees, been the subject of study by others, although it should be acknowledged that some areas are relatively nascent. This thesis is therefore an attempt to link together several seemingly disparate disciplines and to combine them for consideration through the lens of heritage. It is hoped that by teasing out the connections between these topics, the work will be able to make a useful and novel contribution to the academic discourse, and demonstrate the ability (and necessity) of architecture to take a holistic approach in dealing with the entire observed context. For this reason, the thesis does not contain a separate literature review, but addresses relevant existing research continually throughout the text.
10 Sternfeld, N. Memorial Sites as Contact Zones: Cultures of Memory in a Shared/Divided Present [online resource]. (Trans.) Aileen Derieg. (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics. 2011.) 11 For full conference attendances see attached logbook.
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Fig. 5: Armagh Gaol as it exists today
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CHAPTER 1: A TROUBLED LEGACY
This chapter will investigate how sites connected with the Troubles have come to represent oppositional political ideologies and are incorporated into attempts at defining hegemonic versions of cultural legitimacy. This will be examined through a chronological series of case studies, with particular reference to the former prison complex in Armagh, charting what the author posits is the evolution of Northern Ireland’s attempts to deal with the physical legacy of its civil conflict over the past two decades. To begin, a series of interrelated terms must be defined.
1.1 Definitions This thesis will build its definition of ‘heritage’ on what Smith describes as a ‘cultural practice, involved in the construction and regulation of a range of values and understandings,’12 which is generally accepted to be preoccupied with the editing of history and memory for some contemporary purpose, be it cultural, political, economic or otherwise.13 Such a definition is not synonymous with ‘the past’ (what happened), nor with ‘history’ (what historians say happened),14 but is rather ‘a product of the present, purposefully developed in response to current needs…and shaped by those requirements…The present selects an inheritance from an imagined past for current use and decides what should be passed on to imagined future.’15 For Smith, heritage is a key means by which communities create and sustain a sense of identity, by connecting to an imagined past through physical remnants, in order to legitimise and validate identity construction.16 In this resource-based view of heritage, architecture is one of the most obvious physical sources to be exploited for ‘heritage value.’ Aside from their symbolic potential, buildings also posses a documented ability17 to anchor and elicit memories which can contribute to the fabrication of personal and communal heritages.
12 Smith, L. Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006), 11. 13 Graham, B., Ashworth, G. J. & Tunbridge, J. E. A Geography of Heritage: Power, Culture & Economy. (London: Arnold, 2000), 2 14 Tunbridge, J. E. and Ashworth, G. J. Dissonant Heritage:The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict. (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), 6 15 Tunbridge & Ashworth, Uses of Heritage, 6. 16 Smith, Uses of Heritage, 48-50 17 Aguiar, L., “Back to those walls: The women’s memory of the Maze and Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland,” Memory Studies 2015, Vol. 8(2): 231
Fig. 6: Burnt out car after failed loyalist bombing attempt, 12th November, 1972. Lower Irish Street, Armagh. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. .21
The observed tendency for heritage sites to become sources of dispute prompted Tunbridge and Ashworth to coin the phrase ‘heritage dissonance’ to describe the fact that, due to it being a edited and contemporary social construct, ‘all heritage is someone’s heritage and therefore logically, not someone else’s’18. Dissonant heritage is therefore an awareness that some groups’ interpretations will inevitably be ignored or minimised in order to create an appealing and easily-digestible narrative, though this does not necessarily mean that such selective prioritisation is malicious, or even intentional. More recently, the study of actively ‘contested heritage’ as a subset of dissonance has become distinct in the literature.19 20 Often arising from the aftermath of civil strife, contestation deals with cases of irreconcilable heritage narratives which possess a critical mass of adherents who are able to prevent these views from being dismissed outright.21 Rose argues that, for a variety of reasons, recent civil conflicts have precluded unambiguous victories for one side or another, therefore subsequent peace agreements, including the GFA (1998), have been mere ceasefires, leaving combatants entrenched and transferring the pursuit of victory from violence to other political and cultural methods.22 In the quest for legitimacy which emerges, disputing the opposition’s ‘right to the past’,23 represented by key heritage sites, becomes a potent method of continuing the ‘conflict by other means.’24 Heritage therefore becomes a ‘key resource [in] these identity politics and the legitimation and validation of spatialities that depend on separate development or parallel existences.’25 Finally, the term Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD), coined by Smith,26 refers to the regulation and legitimisation of narratives of the past with the intention of validating one particular understanding of heritage. This term is typically used to refer to the apparent privileging of expert views as opposed to those of communities27 which often have their own, very different narratives.28 However, as this thesis will demonstrate, AHD in contemporary Northern Ireland can also be said to apply to an apparent official attempt to build a ‘shared’ narrative of the Troubles, which is open to all and, by extension, elides the sectarian ‘burdens’ of the past.29 This chapter will explore how particular sites come to feature in these exclusionary narratives, and how past attempts at dealing with the disputes arising over their reuse have been hampered by attempts at imposing an ‘authorised discourse.’
18 Tunbridge & Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage, 21 19 This is not to suggest the study of contestation is itself a new one. Silverman notes that, “Although “contested cultural heritage” has not always been specified in these words, the concept has been cogently present for at least 25 years in anthropology, archaeology, history, geography, architecture, urbanism, and tourism.” (2011: 1) 20 Silverman, H. (ed.), Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure, and Exclusion in a GlobalWorld. (New York: Springer, 2010) 21 MacKenzie, R. & Stone, P. (eds.) The excluded past. Archaeology in education (London: Unwin Hyman, 1994) 1. 22 Rose, G. HowWars End:Why we always fight the last battle (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012) 23 Morell, V. “Who owns the past?.” Science 268, no. 5216 (1995) 24 Graham, B. & Whelan,Y. “The legacies of the dead: commemorating the Troubles in Northern Ireland” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (25) (2007): 480 25 Graham, B. & McDowell, S. “Meaning in the Maze: the heritage of Long Kesh” Cultural Geographies, 2007 14(3): 345 26 Smith, Uses of Heritage, 29. 27 Schofield, J. Who Needs Experts? Counter-mapping Cultural Heritage. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) 2. 28 Smith, L. “Intangible Heritage: A challenge to the authorised heritage discourse?” Revista D’etnologia De Catalunya, no. 40 (2015): 133. 29 Graham & Whelan. “The legacies of the dead” 493.
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Fig. 7: Aerial photograph of Armagh Gaol (Right Background), Armagh Courthouse (Left Foreground) and the Mall (Midground).
Fig. 8: Aerial photograph of Armagh Gaol taken shortly after closure in 1988. Note Cell-Block ‘C’ highlighted. This block was demolished in the early 2000s as seen in Fig. 5. .23
Timeline of Armagh Gaol 1780 1780 - Three bays of Front Block of Armagh Gaol built to designs of Architect Thomas Cooley 1819 - Two additional bays in identical style to the existing Front Block are built on its southern end generating the 5 part facade seen today. Francis Johnston possibly architect. 1845-52 - The Great Fammine ‘an Gorta Mór’ leads to widespread starvation, disease and emigration intensified by evictions and debt defaults caused by crop failure. Massive increase in itinerant population. 1846 - 3-storey Cell Block ‘A’ is completed. William Murray is architect.
1819
1847 - 33 inmates reportedly died in Armagh Gaol in this year. 1852 - Additional 2-storey Cell Block ‘B’ is built on comission from the Armagh Grand Jury
1846 1852
The Great Fammine
1866 - The last public execution in Armagh - that of ‘a man named Barry’ was carried out in front of the gaol.
1837
1904 - Dec 22 - Joseph Fee is the last person executed at Armagh Gaol 1920 - Armagh Gaol becomes a women’s prison 1921 - Partition of Ireland. New state of Northern Ireland created within the UK c.1968-1998 - ‘The Troubles’ 1973-75 - 33 republican women are interned without trial in HM Prison Armagh during this period.
1866
1976 (onwards) - Prisoners begin ‘no-work’ protest refusing to carry out prison labour. c.1976 - Cell Block ‘C’ is constructed, reportedly to contain the Price sisters, Marian & Dolours for their accommodation in Armagh after transferral from HM Prison Durham. 1979 - April 19 - Prison Warden Agnes Wallace (40) is murdered in an INLA gun and grenade attack outside the prison. The attack also injures 3 colleagues. (see front cover image) 1980 - February 7th - Prisoners at Armagh begin the ‘no-wash’ or ‘dirty’ protests, refusing sanitary facilities and daubing their cells with excreta and menstrual blood. NB that prisoners claim this action was forced upon them by guards who refused them access to lavatory facilities.
1904
1980 - 3 ‘ArmaghWomen’ (Mairéad Farrell, Mary Doyle and Mairéad Nugent)take part in the 1980 hunger strike in solidarity with male hunger strikers at Maze/Long Kesh prison.
1920
1981 - Nell McCafferty publishes ‘The Armagh Women’ drawing widespread attention to perceived abuses of prisoners by guards, included forced strip and cavity searches. 1986 - HM Prison Armagh is decommissioned. BA takes over site. All remaining prisoners transferred to the newly opened HM Prison Maghaberry. 1988 - HM Prison Armagh closes. Site sold for development. 1997 - Armagh City and District Council reacquire Armagh Gaol. 1998 - ‘Hard Time: Armagh Gaol 1971-1986’ is published by the former R.C. Chaplain to the gaol, Msnr. Raymond Murray.
1979 1988
‘The Troubles’
1968
1999 - 15 Jun - Hall Black Douglas and Alistair Coey Architects submit a planning and listed building consent application (O/1999/0500/1) for converting Armagh Gaol into office space and conference centre. Permission is also requested to demolish the Troubles-era buildings on site including Cell-Block ‘C’. 2000 - August - Above planning and listed building consents granted. Demolition of Cell-Block ‘C’ subsequently carried out.
1998
2004 - September 06 - HRH Prince Charles writes to Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy expressing his support for the redevelopment of Armagh Gaol
2006
2012 - Apr 27 - Prince Charles visits Armagh Gaol
2012
2012 - Aug 03 - Planning permission application lodged for the Armagh Gaol hotel project by Kriterion Conservation Architects on behalf of the TOPG. (ref. O/2012/0349/F)
2017
2017 - Aug 07 - Listed Building Consent Application lodged by Kriterion for the TOPG. Decision Pending.
1.2 HM Prison Armagh It is worth noting that a particular heritage site can be both dissonant and contested at various times and depending on the particular groups consulted. One of these multiply dissonant and contested sites is the former County Gaol in the border city30 of Armagh. Dating from 178031, the Pentonville-type prison sits centrally within the city and forms the southern boundary of a formal Georgian promenade and park known as the Mall (fig. 7). At the opposite end of the Mall sits the County Courthouse, with the axial connection formed between these two judicial institutions reminiscent of Bender’s comment that the historic prison lay, ‘deep in the syntactic structure articulating the space of the city…at the generative axis of the city as the enclosed seat of authority.’32 Whilst known as a women’s prison since 1921, Armagh Gaol is most infamous for its role the Troubles (fig. 8).33 In some ways, it is perhaps clearer to see why Armagh might be a contested site, given the commonly held (though untrue) belief that it incarcerated only republican political prisoners. In such a reading, the links between the different memories of the place, its divergent symbolism and the conflicting narratives of the Troubles are relatively easy to imagine. What is perhaps less immediately obvious is how the site also represents heritage dissonance in multiple ways. How historic prisons represent a methodology of punishment many now consider to be unjust; and how female voices34 have been largely lost in contemporary retellings of the conflict, challenges the false dichotomy35 which depicts two communities - Protestant and Catholic - homogeneously structured and perpetually at war. In their exploration, the level of plural, divergent and often contradictory memories of the Troubles becomes apparent, and so too does the difficulty in trying to establish a unified ‘official’ narrative of the conflict.
30 Armagh, despite its relatively low population of approx. 14,000 inhabitants is classed as a city since 1994. 31 McKinstry, R. The Buildings of Armagh, (Belfast: UAHS, 1992) 141. 32 Bender, J. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of the Mind in Eighteen Century England. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) 57. 33 National Council for Civil Liberties, An Inquiry into the strip searching of women remand prisoners at Armagh Prison between 1982 and 1985. (London: NCCL, 1986), 5. 34 Both of prisoners, guards and ordinary civilians. 35 Carr, G. “Land and Power: Making a New Map of Ireland’s Border.” Cartographica:The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 52, no. 3 (2017): 252.
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Fig. 9: Plan of Armagh Gaol as existing 21.07.17. Areas hatched in grey are currently inaccesible due to structural instability. All levels above and below ground floor are likewise inaccessible.
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1.3 Prisons: An Inherently Difficult Heritage Foucault stated that prison is, ‘…dangerous when it is not useless…It is the detestable solution.’36 The ethics of the application of state power over the body, mind and liberty of the individual is a matter of serious consideration for any society and the manner in which these issues have been resolved historically is often a cause of disagreement or even shame in the present.37 Thus, historic prisons can convincingly be described using Logan and Reeves’ terminology as ‘places of pain and shame.’38 There is perhaps no clearer example of this than the issue of capital punishment, with the last execution at Armagh Gaol taking place in 1904.39 40 However, the everyday running of historic prisons can itself often be in breach of a contemporary understanding of human rights. The architect is uniquely challenged by this legacy in their particular ability to read these troubling intentions in the functional form of the Victorian Pentonville-style prison41 - what Welch refers to as ‘architecture parlante’, or ‘architecture which speaks.’42 Spaces designed to restrict movement, to allow continual surveillance, and centred around a model of solitary confinement43 speak of difficult questions regarding the responsibility of the designer and their commitment ‘not to do harm.’44 These moral questions are further compounded by the sheer difficultly in retrofitting such a derived form as a historic prison to a new use without unacceptable damage to the existing fabric of the buildings.45 Accusations of violence and unethical behaviour in Armagh Gaol are plentiful. In particular, the degrading treatment of women forced to undergo strip and cavity searches continues to haunt. The Prisons Memory Archive contains the account of former prisoner Patricia Moore who recalls: ‘what mostly stands out in my mind…is the strip searching…when it was actually happening to you, there were times when you would have loved to have just hit the screw [prison officer] to get the frustration out of you…you were taken down and you were stripped naked…you were told to lift your arms and spread out your legs and open your mouth…there were times when I was left standing with the [menstrual] blood running down the inside of my leg, and formed a puddle, and one of the screws actually said to me one day, “Look at the mess that you’re making.”’46
36 Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. (London: Harmondsworth, 1979), 232. 37 Calverio, P. “Spatialities of Exception” in Schindel, E. & Colombo, P. (eds.), Space and the Memories ofViolence: Landscapes of erasure, disappearance and exception.’ (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) 217. 38 Logan, W. & Reeves, K. Places of Pain and Shame : Dealing with ‘difficult Heritage’ (Oxon: Routledge, 2009) 39 Belfast Evening Telegraph, ““Fee Hanged. Execution of the Clones Murderer. Culprit’s Last Moments. Scenes and Incidents at Armagh Jail” Belfast Evening Telegraph, 22 December 1904 40 In accordance with the law of the time, many prisoners were buried in unmarked, unconsecrated graves within the prison enclosure. These remain, presumably undisturbed under the site to this day, although these remains are scheduled for exhumation and removal as part of the hotel development plans. (NI DoE 2013) 41 Armagh Gaol, while originally a Georgian building was significantly expanded in the style of a Pentonville prison between 1846-52 42 Welch, M. Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 259. 43 Although rarely practiced due to overcrowding. (Prisons Memory Archive & Scroggie, D. Armagh Stories: Voices from the Gaol. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. (Belfast: QUB Film School, 2015) 21m:52s 44 RIBA Building Futures, Practice Futures: Risk, Entrepreneurialism, Practice and the Professional Institute (London: RIBA, 2010) 12. 45 Holborow, W. “The creative re-use of historic prisons.” IHBC Context (150) (2017): 33. 46 Prisons Memory Archive & Moore, P. Armagh Stories:Voices from the Gaol. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. (Belfast: QUB Film School, 2015) 49m:05s
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Official statements were made to address the necessity of strip-searching for security purposes.47 48 Certainly, communications between the IRA’s command structure and inmates were smuggled into the prison.49 The NCCL’s 1986 report determined that the practice, while justifiable in some circumstances was open to abuse as then enacted.50 However, Moore (along with many Nationalists) categorically rejects these justifications.51 It must also be noted that prison officers often saw themselves on the frontline during the conflict. The Northern Ireland Prison Services counts 29 officers on its roll of honour,52 including Officer Agnes Wallace, assassinated outside Armagh Gaol in 1979. Additionally, incidences of mental health problems and suicides among prison wardens were (and remain) alarmingly high.53 54 The fact that both guards and prisoners suffered trauma during these years certainly feeds into the difficulty of dealing with legacy issues, as exclusionary claims to victimhood predominate, with neither side able to accept the legitimacy of the other’s suffering.
47 Roche, D. Strip searches at Her Majesty’s Prison forWomen, Armagh, Northern Ireland (Gondregnies, Belgium: Irish Information Partnership, 1985) 48 London Armagh Group, Strip searches in Armagh Jail. (London: London Armagh Group, 1984) 49 O’Connor, E. Women & Prison Protest:The ArmaghYears Event, Belfast, 12.11.17 50 NCCL, Strip Searching, 1986, 28-30. 51 Prisons Memory Archive & Moore, P. Armagh Stories:Voices from the Gaol. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. (Belfast: QUB Film School, 2015) 49m:15s 52 The Memorial Plaque for the NI Prison Service personnel killed in the line of duty was formerly housed in the Maze/Long Kesh, but was removed by the Prison Service in protest against the planned International Centre for Conflict Transformation, which it viewed as a legitimation of the aims of the former prisoners and fundamentally disrespectful to their colleagues who had been targeted, killed and injured. (Graham & Whelan, The legacies of the dead, 2007: 491) 53 Northern Ireland. Criminal Justice Inspectorate. Not a Marginal Issue : Mental Health and the Criminal Justice System in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland, 2010) 54 Kinman, G., Clements, A. J. & Hart, J. “Job demands, resources and mental health in UK prison officers” Occupational Medicine 2017;67: 459
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1.4 Heritage Dissonance: The Women’s Voices The degradation of ‘the Armagh Women’ also calls attention to another primary source of heritage dissonance from the Troubles; the often overlooked role of women. Dowler notes that prisons generally ‘have been unrealistically masculinized in ways that have re-entrenched the feminization of the home.’55 In the stereotype which regards the prison as, ’part of the ‘façade of [republican] hypermasculinity’,56 the existence of a female prison57 disrupts the conventional narrative.58 While writings about the women’s experience of the Troubles do exist they are notably under-represented.59 60 61 The ‘gendering’ of spaces associated with conflict follows from an assumption that the roles of fighting and suffering are exclusively masculine pursuits, relegating their female counterparts to caring and pastoral roles.62 War is regarded as the domain of men and women are left to support.63 For this reason, women participants in war - as the former prisoners in Armagh view themselves - feel that their contribution was, and is, under-appreciated in most retellings of the conflict. In interview, Eilis O’Connor recalled an encounter with a fellow republican who asked “you in Armagh you had it alright didn’t you? I mean you didn’t really have to do the protests or anything like the men in the Kesh?” revealing the lack of awareness of the women’s role, even among their ‘own’ community. O’Connor has also previously called attention to the fact that much of the degrading treatment in Armagh Gaol was carried out by female prison officers, and this aspect must also further complicate the ‘official’ narrative.64 Furthermore, the degree to which the voices of prisoners dominate the limited discourse is itself subject to controversy. The broader impacts of the conflict on Northern Irish women, and civilians in particular is relatively unexplored in the literature.65 66 The apparent privileging of the voices of exprisoner groups such as Coiste67 proved to be controversial within the Maze/Long Kesh redevelopment proposals,68 and given the later unraveling of those proposals, this problem is not one to be dismissed.
55 Dowler “‘And They Think I’m Just a Nice Old Lady’ Women and War in Belfast, Northern Ireland” 1998 Gender, Place & Culture, 5(2),: 160. 56 Dowler, L. ’Till death do us part: masculinity, friendship and nationalism in Belfast, Northern Ireland’, “Environment and planning D: society and space” 19 (2001): 62. 57 Which was predominantly but not exclusively republican. 58 For example men were held in Armagh under remand, and boys were also detained there under the Borstal system - thus the prison cannot solely be described as a women’s prison. 59 Murrary, R. Hard Time: Armagh Gaol 1971-1986 (Cork: Mercier Press, 1998) 60 McCafferty, N. The ArmaghWomen (London: Co-op Books, 1981) 61 Corcoran, M. Out of Order:The political imprisonment of women in Northern Ireland 1972-1998 (Milton: Willan, 2006) 62 Shirlow, P. & Dowler, L. “‘Wee women no more’: female partners of republican political prisoners in Belfast.” Environment & Planning A, 2010, 42(2): 389 63 Adie, K. Corsets to Camouflage:Women andWar. (London: Cornet Books, 2003) 251. 64 O’Connor, E. Interviewed by Chris Hamill 12.11.17 (Interview 29) 65 Dowler “‘And They Think I’m Just a Nice Old Lady’, 169. 66 Aretxaga, B. Shattering Silence:Women, Nationalism and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) 67 Coiste is a republican prisoner support group, who also operate a variety of tours through contemporary Belfast, with ex-prisoners acting as guides. 68 Flynn, M. K. “Decision-making and Contested Heritage in Northern Ireland: The Former Maze Prison/Long Kesh”, Irish Political Studies, 2011, 26(3): 396-7.
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Fig. 10:
c.1980-1. Mairéad Farrell, IRA Officer Commanding at Armagh during the ‘no-wash’ protests. Note that the scene is lit by camera flash only as windows had been blocked by guards to prevent the discharge of waste (Interview 29).
Fig. 11:
Orla Brady playing the character, ‘Eileen’ based on Mairéad Farrell, in Maeve Murphy’s 2001 film, ‘Silent Grace.’ A notable difference obscured by the solely black & white photography available of the actual dirty protests is absense of menstural blood upon the cell walls. Coomasaru notes that the film retreats from depicting this aspect, despite it being emblematic of the Armagh protests, and criticises the film for establishing it’s own form of heritage dissonance despite being one of the few media portrayals of the women’s prison. Coomasaru, M. ‘Handmaidens to Feminist Fists: Unruly Arms and Maeve Murphy’s Silent Grace (2001)’ Paper presented at the Irish Prisons Conference, Belfast 26.10.17
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Fig. 12: Armagh Gaol during the marching season. Photo taken 07.07.17 Note the prevalence of Union flags and bunting, usually absent from central Armagh. Gaol Square marks part of the city’s 12th July parade as is decorated accordingly - albeit temporarily.
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1.5 Armagh Gaol as a Symbol of Contestation ‘In Ireland…the interpretation of the past has always been at the heart of national conflict.…[P]erhaps more than in other cultures, collective groups have expressed their values and assumptions through their representations of the past.’69 The Troubles reside well within living memory for many, these memories still influence, detrimentally in many cases, the present realities of life in Northern Ireland. ‘Memories of war tend to become weapons in a war over memory.’70 Symbols and objects which recall unhealed wounds and unaddressed grievances often act as triggers for renewed conflict.71 This ‘triggering’ is understood by Dawson by applying the psychological concept of ‘trauma’72 to Northern Irish society at large: ‘[C]ollective trauma involves a relation of memory whereby the suffering of the past is remembered, often incompletely, by community, in forms of cultural representation and commemoration; or, alternatively, is forgotten, rendered invisible or unspeakable by a process of cultural (as well as individual) amnesia.’73 This offers at least part of an explanation as to why architectural fragments often become the focus of dispute after the end of violent conflict. Contested sites such as Armagh Gaol act as a physical link to the past and therefore, their continued existence into the present is an inescapable reminder of past grief for many. They stand in opposition to the desire to forget and are therefore a source of friction and discomfort. The broader symbolisms architecture can possess should also not be understated. Particularly the prison, which for some represents the just punishment rendered by the state upon those who would use violence for political advancement, and therefore, an important symbol of protection for law-abiding citizens. No less firmly held are views from the nationalist community which cannot overlook the injustices which took place in prisons such as Armagh, fitting them into a narrative of overreach on the part of an illegitimate and oppressive state. Symbolism is then perhaps the most obvious manner in which the ‘resource-based’ view of heritage previously defined can be seen in Northern Ireland. Predictably, these differing attitudes towards contested sites manifests in opinions towards contemporary reuse proposals. Many of these sites have been decommissioned and abandoned since 1998 and are currently, or have recently been, subject to a variety of redevelopment strategies. The following section will explore the evolution of these strategies through several key case studies. It is contended that the focus of these proposals has changed over the past two decades in a manner which, rather than evidencing positive evolution of social and political attitudes towards legacy issues, illustrates a variety of strategies which aim fundamentally towards the same goal. That is, an attempt to write a unified, ‘shared’ version of the conflict in order to allow Northern Ireland to ‘move on’ and selectively forget the past’s traumas.
69 McBride, I. “Memory & National Identity” in History & Memory in Modern Ireland (ed.) Ian McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 3. 70 Dawson, G. Making Peace with the Past? Memory, trauma and the Irish Troubles (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007) 15. 71 Bryan, D. “Parades, Flags, Carnivals and Riots: Public Space, Contestation and Transformation in Northern Ireland” Peace & Conflict 21, no. 4 (2015): 565 72 ‘Trauma (noun) 1. Pathology. A wound, or external bodily injury in general; also the condition caused by this. 2. Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry. A psychic injury, esp. one caused by emotional shock the memory of which is repressed and remains unhealed; an internal injury, esp. to the brain, which may result in a behavioural disorder of organic origin. Also, the state or condition so caused.’ (Oxford English Dictionary) 73 Dawson, Making Peace with the Past, 62.
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1.6 AHD in the Evolution of Strategies for Dealing with Troubles-era Sites 1.6.1 Forgetting - the military apparatus. The watchers of Operation Banner74 were built to protect security forces and surveil a hostile local population, rapidly becoming ‘a visual shorthand for the Troubles.’75 Aside from Belfast and (London)Derry, the southern portion of County Armagh (laconically nicknamed ‘Bandit Country’76) saw the highest incidence of fatalities, particularly among security personnel.77 (fig. 13) Republican paramilitaries drew widespread support in this region and eventually, attacks would render airlift the only secure method of transport between remote and defensible hilltop bases.78 These ‘sangars’79 gave many South Armagh Nationalists the feeling of living in an ‘open air prison,’80 a vast panopticon facilitated by the powers of modern surveillance technology. However, for outnumbered border Protestants, the obvious presence of the military was a source of comfort, allaying their fears that they were subject to processes of ‘ethnic cleansing’ by their Catholic neighbours.81 Today, the photographs of Wylie82 and others83 (fig. 14) represent the last remnants of this architecture, as following the end of Operation Banner in 2007, the defences, no longer needed, were demolished. Carr however detects more than pragmatism in the Army’s zealous and resource intensive removal of the watchtowers: ‘Ruins on Ireland’s border are…the loose ends of an unfinished history, still too meaningful to settle into the background. Knowing this, the army decided to erase the sangars completely; leaving them here might have fuelled resentments for another century.’84 Demolition of troublesome sites was certainly widespread in the decade following the GFA. Cell Block C at Armagh Gaol, built specifically to hold the ‘Old Bailey Bombers’, Mariam and Dolours Price, was demolished in the early 2000s after being deemed to have ‘no architectural merit’,85 (fig. 8)
74 Operation Banner (1969-2007) was the longest continual operational deployment in the history of the British Army, which saw British soldiers acting in concert with the Northern Irish police force (RUC) in the provision of security services. 75 Purbrick, L. DonovanWylie: BritishWatchtowers (Steidl: Göttingen, 2007), p. 59 76 Carr, G. ”The Map of Watchful Architecture.” EchoGéo, 01 December 2011. 1. 77 Gregory, I. N. et al. Troubled Geographies: A Spatial History of Religion and Society in Ireland (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013) 10. 78 Edwards, A. The Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Banner 1969-2007 (Oxford: Osprey, 2011) 45. 79 Sangar is an Pashto word for defensive walls adopted by the British Army during the period of the Victorian Anglo-Afghan wars. (Source: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sangar) 80 Carr, G. The Rule of the Land:Walking Ireland’s Border. (London: Faber and Faber, 2017) 47. 81 Dawson, Making Peace with the Past, 217. 82 Purbrick, DonovanWylie: BritishWatchtowers 83 Olley, J. Castles of Ulster (Belfast: Factotum, 2007) 84 Carr, The Rule of the Land, 50-51. 85 Armagh City and District Council with Hall Black Douglas and Alistair Coey Architects. Armagh Gaol: A New Future - A Planning Statement. 1999. (Retrieved from the Archives: Armagh County Museum, Armagh) 5. ‘It is considered that the 1970s cell block is not of architectural merit and should be demolished. All the other extraneous structures and buildings would [will] be removed from the site’ (Correction in original). Note that this justification statement makes no mention of the historic significance of the building.
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Fig. 13: Demographics of County Armagh Former positions of British Armagh watchtowers marked. .35
while at the Maze, the majority of the site86 was not merely demolished, but ‘…[d]ue to the politically sensitive past use…relatively small amounts of recovered material [was] sent off site, which received processing to destroy any recognisable characteristics of items that could be associated with the site.’87 (figs. 15 & 16) This deliberate obliteration of the physical remnants of the conflict can be seen as an enforced amnesia,88 and implies that the material culture of the Troubles was not viewed worthy of the designation, ‘heritage’ in the official narrative. ‘In every society emerging from a traumatic past there are efforts to suppress memory in an effort to “move on” or “put the past behind us.”’89 On the level of the individual, this is considered as a form of ‘self defence’90 whereby trauma prevents the revisiting of the past in order to preserve the stability of the present. For whole communities however, the desire to use a heavily censored version of the past creates an edited heritage narrative which is dissonant to those who are ignored in its construction.91 This is compounded by the power imbalance needed for one group to demolish those places significant to another, which is also an obvious source of contestation.92 As Leerssen notes, the fear of erasure one’s heritage is powerful; ’[t] he admonition…to remember is, primarily, inspired by the apprehension that one might forget.’93 Demolition is also symbolic evidence of a desire to ‘move on.’ In the immediate aftermath of the conflict, republican groups were particularly attuned to this symbolism,94 and rejected it, for example MLA Davy Hyland who objected to the removal of a sangar in his district. ‘He intuited that he was about to lose some powerful propaganda; a tower isolated on a high hill was the perfect symbol of a rule that was unjust and artificially maintained. But few people agreed with him and the towers are gone.’95
86 Aside from a small portion which had been listed in 2005 87 Waste and Resources Action Programme (2008) in Flynn, Meaning in the Maze, 392. 88 Foote, K. Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes ofViolence and Tragedy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997) 89 Barsalou, J. & Baxter, V. The Urge to Remember:The Role of Memorials in Social Reconstruction and Transitional Justice (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2007) .4 90 Kavanagh, G, Dream spaces, memory and the museum, (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 2000), 16. 91 Brearton, F. “Poetry and Forgetting: On Hewitt’s ‘Neither and Elegy nor a Manifesto’.” The Poetry Ireland Review, no. 104 (2011): 81. 92 Bevan, R. The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War, 2nd ed. (London: Reakton Books, 2016) 89. 93 Leerssen, J. “Monument and trauma: varieties of remembrance” in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, 209. 94 Graham & Whelan, “The legacies of the dead” 492. 95 Carr, The Rule of the Land, 51.
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Fig. 14: Sangar Golf 40, Forkhill. South Armagh DonovanWylie 2005 (Since Demolished)
Fig. 15: The former Maze/Long Kesh Prison Friday 01 January 2010. Note the distinctive foundations of the ‘H-Blocks’ remain after demolition.
Fig. 16: The former Maze/Long Kesh Prison Tuesday 16 August 2016. Note even the H-Block foundations have been removed, despite other parts of the same site (right, red outline) being listed. .37
1.6.2 ‘Moving On’ - The Maze/Long Kesh & Authorised Heritage Discourse Following the GFA, the former HM Prison Maze, was subject to multiple strategies for dealing with its contentious history including the (in)famous, failed masterplan96 for the site which envisioned the construction of an ‘International Centre for Conflict Transformation (ICCT) incorporating some of the remaining buildings on the site,97 and a new national stadium for football, rugby (both traditionally seen as ‘Protestant’) and Gaelic games (Catholic). The ICCT was to provide a primarily pedagogical function, and was intended to be a means of passing on Northern Ireland’s hard-won experience on peace negotiations to other parties to conflict abroad.98 It’s naming was also a deliberate attempt to differentiate the facility from a museum, which was unacceptable to Unionists as it appeared to legitimise the republican hunger strikers who died in the Maze. These proposals place great emphasis on creating ‘shared spaces’ for Catholics and Protestants to interact, places which are outside of the ‘zero-sum’99 view of territory which predominates in Northern Ireland. This strategy has, at its core, an attempt to agree a common narrative of the conflict as the basis for enhanced future communication and reconciliation. Blaming contemporary sectarianism on a ‘hypertrophy of historical awareness’,100 the logical extension of this view is that Northern Ireland must disinherit itself of exclusionary identities entrenched during the bloodshed101 in order to allow for a truly inclusive future to be constructed. Thus in many ways, the Maze masterplan can be considered through Smith’s terminology of an Authorised Heritage Discourse as an official attempt to build (as much as to symbolise) through architectural means, a new and tolerant society.102 Supporters of a shared interpretation of the conflict such as Longley, argue that a consesus-based strategy offers the best hope of ‘moving on’ from the divisions of the past. She finds that narratives which focus on one particular community’s perspective, and are therefore dissonant, fall far short of an ideal form of remembering.103 Whilst arguably a laudable goal, such a top-down approach could with some validity be construed as ‘elite’ or ‘sanctimonious.’104 105 Additionally, by aiming for an objective version of past events, it seems to contradict the observation that all heritage is intrinsically ‘dissonant’106 and must inevitably exclude some people and viewpoints. Michael Ignattieff notes, ’The past continues to torment because it is not past’: it is not ‘over’,‘finished’,‘completed’, but permeates the social and psychic realities of everyday life in the present.’107
96 Maze Consultation Panel, Maze/Long Kesh Masterplan and Implementation Strategy, 2006 97 Including, most problematically, the prison hospital where 10 republican hunger strikers died in 1982 98 McDowell, S. “Negotiating places of pain in post-conflict Northern Ireland” in Logan, W. & Reeves, K. (eds.) Places of Pain and Shame, 226. 99 Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010) 48. 100 Leerssen in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, 218. 101 Landzelius, M. “Commemorative dis(re)membering: erasing heritage, spatializing disinheritance” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 21, (2003): 208 102 Wing, L. “Dealing with the Past: Shared and Contested Narratives in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland.” Museum International 62, no. 1-2 (2010): 32. 103 Longley, E. “Northern Ireland: commemoration, elegy, forgetting” in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, 224. 104 Leerssen in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, 218. 105 McDowell, Places of Pain and Shame, 225. 106 Tunbridge & Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage, 21 107 Ignattieff, M. “Articles of Faith” in Index on Censorship, Vol: 25 issue: 5, (1996):119-21
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Harrison further criticises the desire to ignore heritage dissonance and weight all narratives equally as risking broadening the definition of heritage to the point where it is ‘ineffective and worthless’.108 This thesis argues that this so-called ‘historical ecumenism’109 derives at least in part from the ‘constructive ambiguity’110 contained within the wording of the GFA, which lacks any ‘mechanism for dealing with past abuses or “truth telling.”’111 112 However, the consensus building approach prioritised in the GFA often fails to overcome the ‘politics of suffering’113 which predominate. ‘For Northern Ireland, models that depend on `rational consensus’ are deficient and the consociational basis of the Belfast Agreement is deeply flawed. The past is the present, and republican, loyalist, and even state commemorative landscapes… reflect the irreconcilable dissonances that still exist…’114 115 This is where a consensus-based approach struggles, as it ‘denies agency to survivors who find healing an unavailable (and unacceptable) option.’116 Indeed, the definition of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ (as evidenced by the Armagh Women) remains fraught. As McDowell et al. note, ‘With no agreed or shared understanding of the origins of conflict and the emergence of competing claims to hegemonic victimhood, representations of the past became vehicles through which to legitimise violence and attribute blame.’117 Ultimately, it was the dissenting voices of the Troubles’ victims, and the fear of legitimising a republican ‘hagiography’118 which doomed the Maze masterplan. Eventually compromises could no longer be found, and the First Minister, Peter Robinson placed the project on permanent hold in a letter to DUP colleagues. He concluded with a dilemma for designers of public spaces in ‘post-ceasefire’ societies: ‘the Maze site must be developed as a shared space. If people will not share a street or road it is self-evident that more work is needed to ensure equality in the way that the concept of shared space is taken forward.’119 Indeed, Longley herself acknowledges this critique; ‘Historical ecumenism, inclusive commemoration… have a long way to go before they can really compete with older habits. Indeed, it might be argued that the peace process…has pressed the Northern Irish antagonism back into its ritual cultural forms rather than begun its cultural resolution.’120
108 Harrison, R. “Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget: late modern heritage practices, sustainability and the ‘crisis’ of accumulation of the past”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19:6, (2013): 580 109 Wing, “Dealing with the Past,” 35. 110 Graham & McDowell, Meaning in the Maze, 356. 111 Bell, C ‘Dealing with the past in Northern Ireland’. 1144 in Graham & McDowell, Meaning in the Maze, 345. 112 Leerssen in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, .215 113 Dawson, Making Peace with the Past, 58. 114 Graham & Whelan, “The legacies of the dead” 492. 115 It should also be noted that this divide is voluntary: ‘we must recognize that a majority of the electorate has voted to live apart, supporting political ideologies that entwine citizenship, civil rights, and cultural identity within micronationalist `what we have, we hold’ territories that deny self-reflexivity or the recourse to apology.’ (Graham & Whelan, “The Legacies of the Dead”, 479.) 116 Longley “Northern Ireland: commemoration, elegy, forgetting” in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, 235. 117 McDowell, S., Braniff, M. & Murphy, J. “Zero-sum politics in contested spaces: The unintended consequences of legislative peacebuilding in Northern Ireland” Political Geography, 61 (2017): 198. 118 Hagiography (n): the writing of the lives of saints. Note the religious and particularly Catholic connotations of the word, also apparent in the objection by some Unionists that the ICCT would consecrate the Maze as ‘a shrine to terrorism.’ (McDowell in Logan & Reeves Places of Pain and Shame, 225.) 119 Belfast Telegraph, “Maze peace centre: Peter Robinson’s letter to DUP members” August 15 2013 120 Longley in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, 230.
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Fig. 17: ‘Jail of Horror’ Halloween Event at Crumlin Road Gaol Photo Taken 26.10.17.
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1.6.3 ‘Dark’Tourism - Crumlin Road and Armagh Gaols A general acceptance of this concession by Longley is certainly implied by recent moves towards the commercialisation of contested sites to make them marketable as tourist destinations. So-called ‘dark tourism’121 describes the ability of sites of atrocity to draw visitors in large numbers. Such commercial ventures are said to ‘tread a narrow line between solemn pilgrimage and exploitative voyeurism,’122 in that they are an attempt to normalise post-violence societies and rectify the negative economic impacts of conflict;123 but at the same time, risk entrenching divisions in order to preserve the draw for tourists and commodify very real, and recent, pain and suffering.124 One example is found at the former Crumlin Road Gaol, which has been transformed into a tourist attraction and conference facility.125 (fig. 17) The tourist offering126 consists of a guided tour of the Victorian-era prison, focusing in large part on the operation of the historic gaol, with the Troubles receiving only a relatively cursory exploration (despite the fact that the guide on the author’s tour was employed as a prison guard during the conflict).127 A major part of the experience centres around the former execution chamber. “You are now walking in the final footsteps of seventeen men,”128 the guide intones as the tour group passes into the hanging room. Perhaps more-so than its connection with the recent conflict, the tour’s focus on the site as a place of execution raises questions over the appropriateness of this type of reuse strategy. Given that the last execution at ‘the Crum’ occurred as recently as 1961 this remains an open question.129 Of course, arguments against the commercialisation of former prisons must account for claims that the Crum is now a vital resource for education about the Troubles. Cochrane describes another guide saying, ‘A lot of people would look on the Troubles tourism as being a very dark thing to do. But it is a vital part of our history…I really think it would be more of a crime to brush it under the carpet.’130 In the case of Belfast’s former gaol, this becomes a balance to be struck through the curation of the site as a museum.131 However, proposals for Armagh Gaol to become a boutique hotel and spa would seem to be less amenable to an educational role.132 These fears are compounded by the scheme’s public consultation processes,133 which was indicative of a consensus steering approach134 intended to pose as
121 Lennon, J. J., & Foley, M. “Editorial: Heart of Darkness”. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2(1) (1996).: 198 122 Cochrane, F. “The Paradox of Conflict Tourism: The Commodification of War or Conflict Transformation” in Practice, 22 Brown J. World Aff. 51, 70 (2015): 52 123 Anson, C “Planning for Peace: The Role of Tourism in the Aftermath of Violence” in Journal of Travel Research, Vol: 38 issue:1 (1999) 124 Murtagh, B., Boland, P & Shirlow, P “Contested heritages and cultural tourism”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23:6 (2017): 509 125 Unrealised proposals for the site included provision for placing the archives of the Public Records Office for Northern Ireland (PRONI) within its historic cells, a suggestion which perhaps echoes the ‘authorised’ approach of the Maze masterplan. 126 Tour taken 26.10.17 127 This fact was not offered by the tour guide until directly asked by a member of the tour group. 128 Tour Guide [Anonymous] 26.10.17 129 What is in little doubt however, is the popularity of this tour, with the attraction reporting over 168,000 visitors in 2014, making it one of Belfast’s most popular sites for visitors. (Cochrane, “The Paradox of Conflict Tourism”, 2015) 130 Cochrane, “The Paradox of Conflict Tourism”, 2015. 65. 131 Importantly, the operators of Crumlin Road Gaol Visitor Attraction avoid using the word ‘museum’ to describe the facility. This is in many ways similar to the dispute over the naming of the ICCT at the MLK; arising from an apprehension that a museum confers unwarranted legitimacy on those once imprisoned within the site. 132 Note the relatively small area on the proposals dedicated to an ‘interpretation centre’ (fig. 18) 133 The Prince’s Regeneration Trust, Armagh Gaol Public Open Evening: Feedback Report. July 2009, (PRT 2009) 134 Hamill, C. Project Implementation Strategy (Unpublished, 2017)
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few problems to the development team as possible.135 It seems therefore that the contentious heritage of the site, rather than helping to improve community cohesion through dialogue over the past, is seen as an obstacle to be overcome through the design and choice of programme for the scheme - something, in other words, to be ‘brushed under the carpet’. (figs. 18 & 19) In some ways this is not unexpected, given recent criticism of how NI deals with its built heritage. Harkin notes that policy towards historic sites is indicative of a culture which ‘priorities short-term profit over long-term sustainable regeneration’136 in order to grant the province a veneer of respectability and stability to potential investors.137 This is also a means by which conflicts over sensitive sites can be avoided by government. Of course, this comes at a price, with detractors such as McDowell fearing that dark tourism: ’…constitutes the simplification and, arguably, the vulgarisation of remembering the Troubles and all those who lost their lives. On sale are people’s sufferings and injustices, the places in which lives were taken.This skewed representation of narratives on offer to tourists presents a challenge to peacetime Northern Ireland, where the realities of a sectarian conflict have become even more difficult to define.’ 138 Furthermore, when sites deemed too sensitive for central authorities to redevelop fail to attract developer interest, the lack of investment in built heritage in general139 often sees these places fall rapidly into dereliction, and results in their de-facto demolition by the elements. Armagh Gaol, which has lain derelict for the best part of 3 decades has deteriorated markedly in recent years due to lack of maintenance (fig. 9). While now at the point of ruination, the site is unlikely to disappear completely, given the resilience of its massive load-bearing masonry construction.140 This persistence therefore renders redevelopment proposals for the site an imperative. Just as demilitarisation symbolically drew a line under the conflict, and the optimism of subsequent redevelopment plans evidenced an attempt to establish ‘historical ecumenism,’ it is contended that recent moves towards commercialisation may also be viewed as an attempt to drive an authorised discourse, at least insofar as the curators of these sites appear unwilling to embrace the dissonant nature of the recent past and choose instead to elide problematic aspects141 for fear they may impact the smooth running of these facilities.142 The aim of this thesis and the parallel design project, will therefore be to propose a possible fourth stage in this strategic evolution which offers a more socially responsible alternative to the imposition of an authorised, ‘ecumenical’ narrative by embracing heritage dissonance, and using it as a basis to design truly shared spaces for productive debate.
135 Pløger, J. “Strife: Urban Planning and Agonism.” Planning Theory 3, no. 1 (2004): 78-9 136 Harkin, R. “Architectural destruction in Northern Ireland after ‘the Troubles’” in Architecture and Armed Conflict, (eds.) J.M. Mancini & Keith Bresnahan (New York: Routledge, 2015) 147. 137 Harkin, R. Interviewed by Chris Hamill 07.09.17 (Interview 24) 138 McDowell, S. “Selling Conflict Heritage through Tourism in Peacetime Northern Ireland: Transforming Conflict or Exacerbating Difference?”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 14:5, (2008): 419 139 Campbell, C. “£500,000 fund for Northern Ireland’s historic buildings” The Detail, 15 September, 2016. http://www.thedetail.tv/ articles/500-000-fund- for-northern-ireland-s-historic-buildings 140 Galford, G. & Gould Peek, G. (2015) “Locked up in lockdown: historic prisons and asylums as alternative housing with adaptive re-use challenges”, Housing and Society 2015, 42(1): 95 141 Murtagh, et al “Contested heritages and cultural tourism,” 508. 142 Welch, Escape to Prison, xi.
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Fig. 18: TOPG proposals for Armagh Gaol Hotel Note the extensive demolitions in red
Fig. 19: TOPG Proposals for Armagh Gaol Hotel Model .43
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CHAPTER 2: DIVIDED TERRITORY
The previous chapter explored the challenges architects and planners have faced in dealing with contested sites, and the resulting critique of previous approaches will form the basis of the author’s proposals in Chapter 4. This chapter will examine the hypothesis that the connection between space and memory can generate territories which help to support the continued spatial segregation of ethnic and religious groups, especially in cases lacking a visible architecture of separation.
2.1 Spatialising Memory / Memorialising Space - the Prisons Memory Archive Oral history projects143 have become a key strategy for dealing with the memories of the conflict.144 145 Of particular interest to this thesis is the work on the Prisons Memory Archive, a videographic collection of interviews with those connected to Northern Ireland’s prisons during the Troubles.146 Key to the the work of the PMA is the decision to record the interviews in the physical locations where the events originally occurred. This was informed147 by the writings of Charles Fernyhough:148 ‘... the cues that are around at the moment of encoding are stored along with [the] remembered material. Consequently, the reappearance of those cues can make the memory bloom into consciousness again.149 Nora argues for an understanding of memory based on its ‘archival’ nature150, given that it is evidently triggered by material fragments which those involved associate with past events. These memories, and the stories they produce, ‘about what happened or happens ‘here’, play important part in shaping a living sense of local identity’.151
143 McHugh, M. “Stormont in crisis: Issues polarising the DUP and Sinn Féin” The Irish News 16 January, 2017 144 Leerssen, J. “Monument and Trauma”, in History & Memory in Modern Ireland (ed.) Ian McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 3. 145 Dybris McQuaid, S. “Passive archives or storages for action? Storytelling projects in Northern Ireland.” Irish Political Studies, 31(1) (2016): 63. 146 Including former prisoners, wardens, Open University lecturers, clergy and medical staff. 147 McLaughlin, C. Email Correspondence, 17.11.2017 148 McLaughlin, C. Interviewed by Chris Hamill, 30.10.17 (Interview 32) 149 Fernyhough, C. Pieces of Light:The New Science of Memory. (London: Profile Books, 2012) 106. 150 Nora, P. Between memory and history: Les lieux de memoire. Representations, 13. cited in Drozdzewski, D., De Nardi, S. & Waterton, E. “Geographies of Memory, Place and Identity: Intersections in Remembering War and Conflict.” Geography Compass. Vol. 10: Issue 11 (2016, November) 449. 151 Dawson, Making Peace with the Past? 12.
Fig. 20: Anti-internment demonstration 1973. Ring Road, Armagh. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. .45
In order to convey an understanding of the ties that bind space, place, memory and community, it is useful to introduce Nora’s terminology of the ‘lieu(x) de mémoire’ (site of memory). This is defined as being ‘any significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community’.152 When paired with Massey’s supposition that that the differentiation of space and place lies in the political - i.e. ‘the (ever contested) question of being together,’153 this would seem to suggest that the memory of past events is one of the key means in which ‘place’ is given meaning and subsequently divided along political lines.154 It is observed that physical objects, and in particular, built heritages, possess a demonstrable ability elicit memory,155 and also to focus disputes over commemorative practices, especially when they enter into and require attention from the public sphere.156 157 158 In one particular PMA recording, former prisoner, Josie Dowds leads the camera around an abandoned B-Wing. Dowds’ recollection focuses on describing the spaces she encounters as they were, with particular emphasis on furniture and other physical artefacts (fig. 21).159 This follows Quinlan’s suggestion that, ‘[t]he women’s loudest…most articulate responses…are embedded in the manner in which each woman occupies her own personal prison space.’160 McAtackeny in turn points out the overarching significance of architecture to material culture such as this, as the context of the building (in this case Armagh Gaol) is key to understanding the assemblage of artefacts contained within.161 Despite her status as a prisoner and young mother, Dowds remembers her time in the gaol, and companionship with fellow prisoners with some fondness: ‘Memories of the girls…there are definitely memories of the girls…’162 Conversely, the memories of another former prisoner, Jacqui Upton portray an unkind and isolated experience for her as a loyalist. For Upton, the space and the memories it holds, is defined by the actions of others - the republican inmates who outnumbered her on the wing: ‘I chose not to come out of my cell. I was 23, it was very intimidating. You couldn’t walk down the wing… the feet was up [blocking the gangway], you know, you couldn’t get past, you know?…’163
152 Nora, P. « Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, (ed.) Lawrence D. Kritzman. (trans.) Arthur Goldhammer. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) xvii. 153 Massey, D. B. For Space. (London: SAGE, 2005) 142. citing Donald, J. Imagining the Modern City (London: Athlone Press, 1999) 154 Smith, L. Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006) 80. 155 Till, K. E. The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005) 156 McDowell, S. “Negotiating places of pain in post-conflict Northern Ireland” in Logan, W. & Reeves, K. (eds.) Places of Pain and Shame, 227. 157 McAtackney, L. An Archaeology of the Troubles:The Dark Heritage of Long Kesh/Maze Prison. First ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 181. 158 Welch, M. “Political Imprisonment and the Sanctity of Death: Performing Heritage in ‘Troubled’ Ireland” International Journal of Heritage Studies. Vol. 22: Issue 9 (2016) .5 159 For example at 9m:30s ‘…and this was my first cell. There used to be a cupboard along here, and you had your bed and there was another cupboard here.’ (PMA Armagh Stories) and at 2m:10s; ‘and the wee tub where you’d sit down and write your letters…and my bed might have run across the top of the radiator and Kevin’s cot would have come down this way.’ (Prisons Memory Archive & Dowds, J. Available at http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/ armagh-stories/) 160 Quinlan, C. Inside: Ireland’sWomen’s Prisons, past and Present. (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2011) 218. 161 McAtackney, An Archaeology of the Troubles, 135 162 PMA, 4m:25s Available at http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/armagh-stories/ 163 Prisons Memory Archive & Upton, J. Armagh Stories:Voices from the Gaol. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. (Belfast: QUB Film School, 2015) 11m:32s
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Once again, for Upton as well as Dowds, the material fabric of the prison promotes recollection, but also challenges existing memory. Upton is surprised when seeing the actual size of her cell: ‘…my God, it’s small…I thought it was bigger than that…I remember this, that window opened a wee bit; it tilted. We used to set yogurts out in it to keep them cool…but this is small!’164 Indeed, McLaughlin notes that many interviewees had the chronology, structure and details of their memories challenged by revisiting the site.165 This echoes the definition in Chapter 1 of the reciprocity of heritage construction; sites of memory can anchor recollection to a particular place and time, but memories themselves can be altered by their association with a particular location.166 While this means that it is difficult to establish a ‘true’ or ‘objective’ historic retelling of place; heritage is, as previously demonstrated, not primarily interested in the ‘facts’ of what happened, focusing instead on resources for legitimisation politics and identity construction.167 Much of Upton’s recollection focuses around her use of the space rather than the objects within, such as how she used the anti-suicide boarding across the first floor atrium as a shortcut to the bathrooms.168 The ‘acting out’ of memory Upton engages in calls to mind Samuel’s ‘theatres of memory’169 which suggests that performance is a key means of recall. What is evident from the interactions between participant and place in both of the above cases is that the site of memory is not merely a backdrop to the recollection of the event but is interacted with in a manner which facilitates recollection.170 This is significant for the architectural conservator, with Aguiar noting that,‘Buildings can have a communicative role as their ‘architectural essence tells us about the conditions under which the building come into existence as well as about the people who built and changed it’’.171 The potential loss of this physical link to the past is central to this thesis’ proposals in Chapter 4 concerning how best to reuse sites such as Armagh Gaol. As McLaughlin writes, ‘…the materiality of the place, its layout, its architecture and its spatial relationships trigger recognition and memory in a way that might not occur if the participant was in another setting.’172
164 PMA, Armagh Stories, 9m:00s 165 McLaughlin, C. Recording Memories from Political Conflict: A Film-maker’s Journey. (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2010) 97. 166 Verdu, G. “Remembering through Place” Estonian Journal of Archaeology, 19, 1 (2015): 32 167 Pullan, W, & Gwiazda, M. “Jerusalem’s ‘City of David’: The Politicisation of Urban Heritage” Divided Cities/Contested StatesWorking Paper No. 6, (2008): 17 168 PMA, Armagh Stories, 9m:30s 169 Samuel, R. Theatres of Memory. (London: Verso, 1994) 170 Schramm, K. “Landscapes of Violence: Memory and Sacred Space,” History and Memory, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2011): 6. 171 Schofield, J., Klausmeler, A. & Purbrick, L. (eds.) Re-Mapping the Field: New Approaches in Conflict Archaeology. (Berlin: Werlag, 2006) 7. 172 McLaughlin, Recording Memories from Political Conflict, 97.
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Fig. 21: The Cell The memories preserved through the PMA often focus on the space and the objects within it. Using these recordings it is possible to reconstruct and furnish the cell similar to how it would have been while the prison was in operation.
...This interpretation of the site through recording allowed it to be peopled again, to come ‘alive’ again. The cells become occupied; the corridors hear footsteps; and the gates clang open... McLaughlin, 2010, 97.
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However, the impacts of this sort of spatialised memory on wider society in Northern Ireland remains unexamined. The PMA focuses on individual accounts, and does not consider the impacts of the conflict on the population at large. McLaughlin contends however that the primary function of the PMA is to act as a repository of oral histories of the Troubles, preserved to be a constant reminder of the plurality of narratives which exist, and thus, a thorn in the side of any attempt at writing a singular history.173 174 The PMA’s focus on primary sources is however, unable to explain the communal aspect of heritage practice. When Longley suggests that Northern Ireland has reached a , ‘toxic point’ whereby, ‘cultural insecurities, maximised by political actors, turn a whole society into a lieux de mémoire’,175 she refers to a much larger population than those directly impacted by the violence. It is perhaps obvious to state that those who occupied Armagh Gaol between 1968 and 1986 will have divergent and incompatible memories. What is less clear, and what this Chapter seeks to explore, is how heritage narratives, commemorative rituals and vicarious remembering work at larger scales, to the extent that a ‘whole society’ can become a lieux de mémoire. What this looks like, how it operates and how it is perpetuated, will be explored through an examination of the entrenched, but mostly invisible nature of segregation in Northern Ireland’s hinterlands.
173 McLaughlin, C. Interviewed by Chris Hamill. 30.10.17 (Interview 32) 174 Mairs Dyer, J. “‘Unseen Women: Stories from Armagh Gaol’: Exhibiting Contrasting Memories of a Contested Space” in Kidd et al. (eds.) Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives, (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014) 167. 175 Longley, E. “Northern Ireland: commemoration, elegy, forgetting” in History & Memory in Modern Ireland (ed.) Ian McBride (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 224.
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2.2 A Divided Land for a Divided People The rights to territory have often been at the heart of conflict in Ireland.176 Even two decades since the GFA, segregation of services, education and living space are still clearly evident. While recent reports have noticed some increase in the ease of communities co-existing since 1998, the continued division of territory is noted as being of particular concern.177 As McDowell et al. describe, ethic conflict often revolves around territory, primarily because of the central position notions of ‘place’ have in identity construction.178 However, the establishment of an ‘us’ grouping, implies the definition of a ‘them,’179 which, in spatial terms leads to a ‘zero-sum’ conception of territorial ownership,180 summarised by Graham and Whelan as a possessive, ‘what we have, we hold’ attitude towards territory.181 This distinction, while not necessarily leading to conflict does, according to Dunn, suggest that there will be a desire to physically separate space according to the groups who reside there.182 Pasai further notes that the possession of land and its physical resources is also a key political concern, and one which often leads to friction between competing groups.183 The risk of disputes arising between spatially segregated groups is also heightened because the exclusive use of a given area by one side precludes the existence of shared spaces where meaningful dialogue184 and negotiation can occur.185 Exclusive territorial ownership also creates venues for these conflicts to be played out through the formation of borders and boundaries. ‘Boundaries, by definition, constitute lines of separation or contact.’186 The existence of clearly bounded and demarcated space is an inevitable consequence of ownership, being the threshold condition between one group’s land and another’s. The bounding of space is therefore inexorably linked to the ‘acutely territorial’187 nature of identity in Northern Ireland. As Newman and Pasai write, ‘...Boundaries both create identities and are created through identity.’188 This echoes the reciprocity between heritage and identity as defined in Chapter 1.1,189 and begins to indicate how
176 Murtagh, B. Community and Conflict in Rural Ulster, (Coleraine: Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster, 1999) 45. 177 For instance, Hamilton et al. note that; ‘sectarian beliefs and attitudes are still commonly expected to be more prominent in segregated areas or segregated social sectors of life, and segregation is expected to match and to reinforce sectarianism.’ (Hamilton et al. Segregated Lives: Social Division, Sectarianism and Everyday Life in Northern Ireland (Belfast: ICR, 2008) 6-7. 178 Murphy, J. et al., “Managing contested spaces: Public managers, obscured mechanisms and the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland” in Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 0(0) 1–17 (2017): 194 179 Newman, D. and Paasi, A., “Fences and neighbours in the postmodern world: boundary narratives in political geography” in Progress in Human Geography 22,2 (1998): 191. 180 Nagle, J. “Sites of Social Centrality and Segregation: Lefebvre in Belfast, a “Divided City”.” Antipode 41, no. 2 (2009): 329. 181 Graham, B. & Whelan,Y. “The legacies of the dead: commemorating the Troubles in Northern Ireland” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (25) (2007): 479 182 Dunn, S. Facets of the Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1995): 4 183 Paasi, A. “The social construction of territorial identities”, Geography research forum 18 (1999): 5-18 184 Bollens, S. City and Soul in Divided Societies (Abington, UK: Routledge, 2012) 61. 185 MacNair, D. “Social and Spatial Segregation: Ethno-National Separation and Mixing in Belfast” (2006): 14. in Hamilton et al. Segregated Lives, 21 186 Newman & Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours”, 191. 187 McDowell, S., Braniff, M. & Murphy, J. “Spacing Commemorative-related Violence in Northern Ireland: Assessing the Implications for a Society in Transition.” Space and Polity, (2015): 4. 188 Newman & Paasi, “Fences and Neighbours”, 194. (also citing Barth, F. Ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organization of culture difference, (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969) 189 “The present selects an inheritance from an imagined past for current use and decides what should be passed on to imagined future.” (Tunbridge & Ashworth, Uses of Heritage, 6.)
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heritage might indirectly define territory, given that both are linked by a shared ability to influence identity construction and social capital (and vice-versa) (fig. 22).
Fig. 22: How the creation of identity links both heritage and territory. Therefore, these must exist in conversation. .
When boundaries are unclear or are not mutually agreed between neighbours, the possibility for conflicts which are intractable without territorial exchange arises.190 In Northern Ireland, such areas are referred to as ‘interfaces’, a term usually ascribed to the borders between Catholic and Protestant majority estates in Belfast.191 Often these borders are marked by tall security barriers, known euphemistically as ‘Peace Walls’. A worrying trend since the GFA has seen the number of Peace Walls in Northern Ireland actually rise,192 193 and although the full removal of barriers is slated to be completed by 2023,194 implementation of this strategy has been limited.195 Even without physical barriers, territory is often appropriated for one side or another through the symbolic use of significant buildings, flags, painted kerbs, graffiti and political posters.196 However, as has been noted elsewhere, the focus on territorial separation and segregation in contemporary Northern Ireland tends to be on urban environments, with Hamilton et al. noting that: ‘…it is perhaps too easy to regard the highly contested and volatile segregated interface areas of parts of Belfast as the norm.’197
190 Hassner, R. E. ““To Halve and to Hold”: Conflicts over Sacred Space and the Problem of Indivisibility.” Security Studies 12, no. 4 (2003): 24. 191 Byrne, J. InterfaceViolence in East Belfast during 2002:The impact on residents of Short Strand and Inner East Belfast (Belfast: ICR, 2005) 2. 192 Jarman, N. Working at the Interface: Good Practice in Reducing Tension andViolence. (Belfast: ICR and BIP 2006) 5. 193 Shuttleworth, I., & Lloyd, C. Mapping Segregation on Belfast NIHE Estates. (Belfast: Northern Ireland Housing Executive, 2007) 194 Northern Ireland Executive Office, Together: Building a United Community Strategy (Belfast: NIEO, 2013) 195 Campbell, C. “Flaws exposed in plan to remove Northern Ireland’s peace walls” The Detail, 22 May 2017 196 Bryan, D. “Parades, Flags, Carnivals and Riots: Public Space, Contestation and Transformation in Northern Ireland” in Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 4, 11. (2015): 565-573. 197 Hamilton et al. Segregated Lives, 11.
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Fig. 23: Armagh & Hinterlands Map of distribution of religion brought up in by Small Area division for Armagh and its surrounding areas. Note the broad trends of a Catholic west and Protestant east with relatively mixed areas between.
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Fig. 24: Armagh City Map of distribution of religion brought up in by Small Area division for Armagh. Note the same trends present as were visible in fig. 23. Catholic areas generally display greater segregation and isolation than their Protestant counterparts (appendix i.)
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Fig. 25: Armagh’s Demographics by Discreet Values It is important to recall Korzybski’s remark that ‘the map is not the territory’ as false conclusions can easily be drawn depending on where statistical boundaries are drawn. Percentage value mapping by geographic area is open to Carr’s critique that it creates maps which support the illusion of Northern Ireland as a mosaic of homogenous estates with hard, clearly defined borders. This is an attempt at a more informative view of demographic distribution which depicts absolute numbers of residents from both main religions in a given area groups around residential clusters.
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2.3 The Glass Curtain in Armagh Outside of major cities, where the majority of Northern Ireland’s population resides,198 boundaries are much less clearly demarcated,199 although no less rigid or important to the lives of local residents. Carlo Gébler defines these invisible barriers as ‘the Glass Curtain’ and recalls a description of the phenomenon by a local: “You can’t see it...[and] you don’t find out about it until you walk into it - bang! - and break your nose.”200 The nature of rural divisions is a relatively nascent subset of the literature on Northern Irish segregation.201 One of the first in-depth investigations of the issue was the CRC’s 2010 ‘Beyond Belfast’ report.202 The primary conclusions of the report were that spatial divisions are more a cognitive creation than a physical one. These result from a strong sense community belonging, with the territorial origins of such groups perhaps stretching back centuries.203 Subsequent patterns of spatial use, ‘working, shopping, using services and socialising… internalise and reproduce these boundaries subconsciously.’204 As Shirlow205 and Sibley206 note, residents develop so called ‘mental maps’ to help navigate these emergent territories, primarily out of a desire to keep themselves safe. Thus, divisions outside of urban environments are seemingly generated by the praxis of individual residents, and critically, can be learned and transferred between generations.207 This in turn restricts residents’ mobilty208 due to the determination that certain territories are ‘out of bounds’, and requires in extreme cases an expensive duplication of services, placing additional strain on the resources of a society coming out of violent conflict. Whilst mental maps can be learned, they are notoriously difficult for outsiders to discern. This lack of understanding of what goes on ‘over there’ clearly offers the potential to reproduce the ‘othering’ which in turn reinforces territorial segregation to emerge in the first place.209 However, studies to date have limited their scope primarily to settlements of 4,500 inhabitants or fewer.210 Armagh, with a population of around 14,000 is therefore at a somewhat ambiguous intersection between the conditions of urban and rural segregation and warrants particular scrutiny.
198 Roulston, S. et al. “If you are not one of them you feel out of place: understanding divisions in a Northern Irish town”, Children’s Geographies, (2016): 453 199 Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010) 4. 200 Gébler, C. The Glass Curtain: Inside an Ulster Community, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1991) 54. 201 Parkinson, A. Scott, M. & Redmond, D. “Competing discourses of built heritage: lay values in Irish conservation planning”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 22:3, (2016): 263 202 Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010) 203 Kirk, T. (1993) The Polarisation of Protestants and Roman Catholics in Rural Northern Ireland: A Case Study of GlenravelWard. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Belfast: Queens University. in Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010) 19, 204 Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010) 18. 205 Shirlow P. “The geography of fear in Belfast”, Peace Review, Vol. 43 (2001): 12–28. 206 Sibley, D. Geographies of exclusion. Society and difference in theWest. (Routledge, London, 1995) 207 Halseth, G. & Doddridge, J. “Children’s Cognitive Mapping: A Potential Tool for Neighbourhood Planning.” Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 27, no. 4 (2000): 567. 208 Pullan, W. “Contested Mobilities and Spatial Topography: Jerusalem” in Louise Purbrick, Jum Aulich and Graham Dawson (eds.) Conested Spaces: Sites, Representations and Histories of Conflict (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) 65. 209 Edward Said, Orientalism, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.) 54. 210 Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010) 12.
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Armagh is one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in Ireland and has, since its mythical founding by St Patrick, been an ecclesiastical centre, growing to its present-day status as the seat of both the Roman Catholic and Anglican Church of Ireland.211 This not only symbolically places it at the centre of a conflict in which religious affiliation has come to be a visible proxy for political views, it is also borne out by the demographic makeup and distribution of the town which exhibits significant degrees of segregation.’212 (appendix i). Bell et al. define eight manifestations of rural segregation (figs. 26-33). Being significantly larger, Armagh exhibits several of these which coexist simultaneously within the town. In particular, the demographics of Armagh, with a predominantly Catholic west, and majority Protestant estates to the east of the city centre, aligns with the broader religious split in the city’s rural hinterland where townlands west of the River Callan tend to be more Catholic and those to the east, are mainly Protestant (fig. 23). This suggests that the city’s eastern and western halves act as ‘neighbouring villages’ (fig. 27) oriented to outlying areas of a similar religious makeup, and existing in parallel to one another. This east/west divide in the town is borne out by the experiences of residents. Former Councillor, Will Glendinning recounts of leaving the city council chambers in the central ‘mixed’ zone: ‘one day I accidentally turned left [west] when leaving the office. I knew I was in no real danger but back in the day, that would have been a very risky thing to do.”213 It is evident that memories of the Troubles still inform how locals use the town and certainly, Armagh suffered more than most towns of equivalent size (fig. 34). The town centre appears to be a more evenly mixed transitional space between the more homogenous enclaves found to either side (figs. 24 & 28). While this would seem to suggest that the centre of Armagh is itself analogous to an ‘interface’ as defined above, Bell et al. note that, for an interface to be formed, ’it is not enough to have two communities juxtaposed with one another physically, there needs to be some form of contestation over this physical ‘space’.’214 Evidently this is absent in the centre of Armagh, as a 2016 report into community cohesion suggests that, ‘Almost two thirds (63%) of people think that Protestants and Catholics don’t tend to go to different local shops or use different GP surgeries and other services in their area.’215 Interestingly, when it came to more significant pieces of urban infrastructure such as shopping malls and leisure centres, the percentage of residents who viewed these sites as open to all communities rose to 86% and over.216 This difference may be accounted for by the requirement for pragmatism in the sharing of larger, expensive resources, which cannot reasonably be expected to be duplicated for each community. Nevertheless, caution must be taken in reading these figures too optimistically, as Roulston et al. note that while some spaces are ‘apparently open to both communities, they are in fact often used by both but at separate times. Alternatively, both communities can use it simultaneously, but without ‘sharing’ taking place.’217
211 McCullough, C. & Crawford, W. H. Irish Historic Towns Atlas No. 18: Armagh (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2007) 212 Poole, M. and Doherty, P. Ethnic Residential Segregation in Northern Ireland. (Coleraine: University of Ulster. 1996) 240-1 Table 9.1 213 Will Glendinning. Interview by the author 15.06.17. (Note that Glendinning’s is a more extreme case than most as he is a former member of the auxiliary UDR, and thus a security service target for dissident groups.) 214 Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010). 14 215 ABC Council, Communities Baseline Report (Craigavon: ABC Council, 2016) 26. 216 Ibid. 27. 217 Roulston et al. “If you are not one of them you feel out of place” 453.
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Fig. 26: Centre Hinterland
Centre is populated primarily by one community while the surrounding areas are see a majority of the other community. Concentration of services in centre, rendered inaccessible to ‘hinterland’ community. .Armagh’s east and west zones act as separate centres for their respective hinterlands.
Fig. 27: Neighbouring Villages
Two neighbouring settlements with very different demographic make-ups. Extreme patterns of avoidance also common. Armagh’s east and west zones could be said to fit this model.
Fig. 28: Contested Centre
Highly polarised communities lead to potential disputes over central services such as shopping centres. Armagh’s centre fits with this model.
Fig. 29: Divided Village
A village or town which is relatively mixed but in which members of both communities opt to live in segregated enclaves. Armagh is an example.
Fig. 30: Neighbouring Estates
Areas of majority Catholic and Protestant populations which abut, but which do not contain defensive structures such as walls between.
Fig. 31: Protected Territories
Similar to Neighbouring Estates, but with defensive barriers seperating communities to prevent violence. Closest Peace Lines to Armagh are found in Portadown.
Fig. 32: Thoroughfare
A relatively homogenous area which becomes contested on a temporary basis due to members of the other community using it as a route. See fig. 35.
Source: Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast (Belfast: CRC, 2010)
Fig. 33: The Border
The status of the border region may change and become a source of increased tension due to Brexit and Northern Ireland’s referendum result showing a Unionist/Nationalist split. Armagh is 12km from the border.
Fig. 34: Armagh during the Troubles Armagh suffered more than most towns of equivalent size during the Troubles due to its proximity to the Irish border and strong republican support in the surrounding area. Most incidents occurred within the town centre, which continues to exhibit the scars of these memories. Bombing and arson attacks in Armagh were focused around the main shopping area at the intersection of Scotch and English Streets. This was evidence of the IRA’s campaign of damaging the region’s economy in order to end British governance by rendering the region unviable financially (Rogers, 2000). As such, many of these incidents resulted in no fatalities, but massive damage to property and the local economy. Hastily repaired and rebuilt buildings can be found throughout Armagh, in infill sites between much older structures, and bear testament to the scale of trauma inflicted on what was (and remains) a provincial border town.
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The extent to which the design of public spaces can resist this type of ‘co-use’ and instead help foster meaningful interactions will be a key research question in Chapter 4. Today Armagh appears outwardly quite different to divided cities such as Belfast, with the abundance of listed Georgian buildings in the city centre seemingly preventing the prevalence of flags and other appropriating symbols used elsewhere in the Province (including in similar sized settlements). In fact, an examination of such markers in Armagh revealed that they were subject to a particular annual rhythm and appeared in noticeable numbers during the marching season in July (fig. 12.). Furthermore, the location of Union flags closely followed the route of the city’s Orange March, beginning outside of the Orange Hall and being restricted to one side of the road. As fig. 35 demonstrates, the proposed route in 2017 was amended by the Parades Commission before the event was permitted,218 because the intended route would take it within view of the city’s Catholic Cathedral and this was deemed too inflammatory to allow. Interestingly, Glendinning notes that this is a regular occurrence, stating in interview: “every year they ask for permission to turn down and continue on English Street, and every year, the Commission tells them they can’t…but they always ask. Every year without fail.”219 The marching season is a time when the Glass Curtain is rendered visible to the outsider.220 Therefore it can be surmised that these ritual elements, and their foundation in perceptions of the past, clearly exist in conversation with the division of territory along ethno-sectarian lines.
218 Northern Ireland Parades Commission, Determination Made in Relation to the Armagh District LOL No. 5 Parade Notified to take Place in Armagh onWednesday 12 July 2017 (Belfast: NIPC, 2017) 5. 219 Will Glendinning. Interview by the author 15.06.17. 220 Hamilton et al. Segregated Lives, 21
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Fig. 35: The Twelfth July in Armagh The marching season is one of the few times of year Armagh exhibits markers of segregation such as flag flying and bunting prevalent elsewhere in NI. The patterns of these closely follow ritual markers such as the route of the Orange Parade and the site of the town’s bonfire. .61
2.4 Commemorative Landscapes: Ritual & Legitimacy A large part of the contestation which arises over Twelfth July marches involves (disputed) claims that it is intended as a means of appropriating territory221 not otherwise occupied by the Unionist community.222 Such transgression is often met with an associated flare up of contestation. Ritual is seen as a key means of how memory is ‘performed’223 224 and traumas transmitted to a wider audience. Indeed, Smith describes this as key to the formation of ‘heritage.’225 Although the temporary acting out of the ritual itself may place claims on territory which result in friction and contestation, perhaps the more significant implication for this thesis is that ritual practices are a vital source of ‘second hand’ remembering.226 Given that, ‘the past and its negotiation in the present through the practices and processes of commemoration which are manifested in physical and public spaces is…a key feature of establishing control and reproducing division within specific communities and the places they reside in’227 then ritual events can be seen as affecting space much in a much more enduring fashion than their temporary nature might otherwise suggest.228 That memories of loss continue to be enacted through ritual must at least recall the definition of trauma which entails ‘the endless repetition of a violent experience’.229 Commemorative acts allow social groupings and individuals a way of ensuring that their their memories of loss are preserved and given due deference denied in the official discourse.230 231 If it is accepted that traumatic memories form especially where loss was, ‘initially unacknowledged, [and] lacked proper ‘official’ recognition’232 then the drive for community-led memorials could be viewed as being what Winter calls ‘an act of citizenship.’233 However, when these stem from unresolved grievances, the results are unlikely to engender improved cross-community cohesion. Graham and Whelan cite Kong in arguing that so-called ‘landscapes of memory,’ generated from place-making ritual events, ‘are important identity resources for political ideologies in that they can be used to legitimize and/or challenge social and political control.’’234 This in turn frames the question over commemorative disputes in terms of competing loyalties to local, even parochial memories rather
221 Sutton, J. “Beyond memory again: Risk, teamwork, vicarious remembering” in Memory Studies 2017, Vol. 10(4): 381 222 Bryan “Parades, Flags, Carnivals and Riots” 10. 223 Welch “Political Imprisonment and the Sanctity of Death” 5. 224 Boyle, D. “Trauma, memory, documentary: re-enactment in two films by Rithy Panh (Cambodia) and Garin Nugroho (Indonesia)” In: Sarkar, B. and Walker, J. (eds.) Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering. (New York: Routledge, 2010), 160. 225 Smith, L. Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006), 67. 226 Schindel, E. & Colombo, P. Introduction to Space and the Memories ofViolence: Landscapes of erasure, disappearance and exception.’ (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) , 9. 227 McDowell, et al. “Spacing Commemorative-related Violence in Northern Ireland” 5. 228 Long, D. Ghost-haunted land: Contemporary art and post-Troubles Northern Ireland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007) 229 Schramm,“Landscapes of Violence” 9. 230 Graham, B. & Whelan,Y. “The legacies of the dead: commemorating the Troubles in Northern Ireland” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (25) (2007): 480 231 Boyce, D. G. “No Lack of Ghosts’: Memory, commemoration, and the state in Ireland.” Ian McBride (ed.) History and Memory in Modern Ireland, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001), 270. 232 Leerssen, J. “Monument and Trauma”, in History & Memory in Modern Ireland (ed.) Ian McBride. 221. 233 Winter, J., Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning:The GreatWar in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 80. 234 Kong L, “Ideological hegemony and the political symbolism of religious buildings in Singapore” in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 11 (1993): 24
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Fig. 36: Orange March Carlisle Circus; Belfast, 2016 .63
than an overarching, national235 retelling such as is demanded in the Authorised Discourse,236 and the resulting offence given by heritage dissonance like this to the groups ‘written out’ of the narrative.237 This is exacerbated by recent moves for communities to replace more ephemeral commemorations with physical monuments to their imagined pasts.238 This may be attributed to the traditional, valorising symbolism of the monument,239 however Young offers a different perspective, suggesting that monuments offer a sort of compartmentalisation, allowing painful memories to be relegated to a particular and clearly bounded time and space. As she notes; ‘we encourage monuments to do our memory-work for us, [and] we become that much more forgetful.’240 However, this form of commemorative ‘parcelling’ may also fit with the generally observed trend that in contemporary Northern Ireland, from central government to community groups, a meaningful interrogation of the past is often simply avoided.241 Yet, as Sutton notes, ‘the phenomena of memory do not stay compartmentalised.They circulate, they crop up elsewhere, they fuel other personal, collaborative, and collective practices.’242 The transmission of memory is key in the establishment and maintenance of a concentric series of identities, ranging from the personal to the national.243 While it has been noted that memory-work holds the capacity to help bring about healing and transitional justice in the present,244 where the identities created diverge in the aftermath of violent conflict, they feed into an ‘ethnicising’ narrative245 of two-communities perpetually at odds,246 resulting in Northern Ireland becoming what Crooke describes as ‘a place where history has more potential to antagonise than to gratify.’247. This antagonism is clearly evident in attacks and vandalism directed towards sites of memory important to other groups. As seen in Chapter 1.4, the symbolism of buildings such Orange Halls, churches and war memorials, is significant, and can often be read as an attempt by one group to appropriate disputed territory. Thus, the implicit symbolism of attacks on such places is also clear. However it can be argued that these memorial spaces also become flashpoints for violence because they represent a contradictory claim to legitimacy by the ‘other side’ which must undermine that of the attackers’ own community. The deliberate targeting of these places must also indicate that there is a broad (if possibly unconscious) recognition of their importance.248 249
235 Herborn, P. J. & Hutchinson, F. P. “Landscapes of remembrance’ and sites of conscience: exploring ways of learning beyond militarising ‘maps’ of the future,” Journal of Peace Education, 11:2, (2014): 131-149 236 Drozdzewski, D., De Nardi, S. & Waterton, E. “Geographies of memory, place and identity: Intersections in remembering war and conflict” in Geography Compass 10/11 (2016): 449 237 McDowell, et al. “Spacing Commemorative-related Violence in Northern Ireland” 8. 238 Graham, B. & Shirlow, P. “The Battle of the Somme in Ulster memory and identity” Political Geography 21 (2002) 891. 239 Leerssen, J. “Monument and Trauma”, in History & Memory in Modern Ireland (ed.) Ian McBride. 222. 240 Young, J. E. Texture of memory: Holocaust memorials and meaning. (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1993) 5. 241 Crooke, E. “Confronting a troubled history: which past in Northern Ireland’s Museums?”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7(2) (2001): 120. 242 Sutton, “Beyond memory again”, 382. 243 Drozdzewski et al., “Geographies of memory, place and identity”, 447. 244 McDowell, et al. “Spacing Commemorative-related Violence in Northern Ireland” 3. 245 Huysenn, A. Present pasts: urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003) cited in Harrison, R. “Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget: late modern heritage practices, sustainability and the ‘crisis’ of accumulation of the past”, International Journal of Heritage Studies (2013): 587. 246 Braniff, M., McDowell, S. & Byrne, J. “Violence, space and memory in the new Northern Ireland” in openDemocracy 2012 .1 247 Crooke, “Confronting a troubled history”, 120. 248 Sheldrake, P. Spaces for the Sacred : Place, Memory, and Identity. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001) 158. 249 These are not isolated incidents, Vincent accounts for 900 attacks on Places of Worship, Orange Halls and GAA clubs between 1994 and 2006 (2009: 2.) and a Freedom of Information request to the PSNI showed that 41 such incidents were recorded in the area around Armagh between 1990 and 2000.]
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Fig. 37: Enniskillen Bomb, 8 November 1987 The IRA bombing of a Remembrance Sunday service in the Co. Fermanagh town killed 12. Widespread shock at the incident was attributed, in particular, to its profaning of a ‘sacred space’ during a religious ceremony.
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Fig. 38: Enniskillen Cenotaph and Bombing Memorial The Cenotaph which become symbolic of the 1987 bombing was modified as a memorial to those killed on the Remembrance Sunday. This was however controversial for some relatives who felt it inappropriate to change the existing war memorial, and also objected to their relatives being depicted as animals - doves. (Dawson, 294.) .66
2.5 Contested Heritages as Spaces of Exception? This would seem to demonstrate that there is a clear connection between traumatic memories performed as ritual practices, and the production exclusive patterns of territory and spatial use visible in Northern Ireland.250 This is further amplified and concretised by the consecration of certain physical sites as containers of particularly poignant memories, and their subsequent use in community ritual and remembering. Such a connection raises two interesting observations over heritage sites whose narratives are contested between the two largest communities. Firstly, in a ‘zero-sum’ conception of territory, they are rare instances of unclaimed space. While this has typically lead to contestation, sites such as Armagh Gaol are not interfaces between communities with a disputed periphery, but are rather, to Kindynis’ and Garrett’s examination, heterotopias; spaces which, through a layering of multiple, often contradictory, narratives, ‘disrupt, undermine or challenge existing spatial orderings.’251 Foucault notes that the heterotopia is also by definition, a space of exception,252 literally ‘outside of all places.’253 Armagh Gaol, represented as a ‘blank space’ on all maps produced during the conflict (fig. 34) has historically been a place only a select few individuals have ever seen from the inside.254 It therefore remains territorially unclaimed by one side or another, even though these groups have widely divergent narratives of the place. This offers the possibility to reimagine the site as a truly shared space, where the assumptions of traditionally opposed groups can come into view and be examined and critiqued. It is this possibility which this thesis and design project will explore in Chapter 4. Certainly, there are risks associated with such potential,255 but the potential for meaningful exchange in (and prompted by) carefully curated contested sites, is an exciting and to-date, relatively unexplored possibility.
250 Schramm,“Landscapes of Violence” 6. 251 Kindynis, T. & Garrett, B. L. “Entering the Maze: Space, time and exclusion in an abandoned Northern Ireland prison” Crime Media Culture 2015, Vol. 11(1): 11 252 Perera, S. “Torturous dialogues: Geographies of trauma and spaces of exception” Continuum, 24:1: 31 253 Foucault, M., “Of other spaces”, in Diacritics 16(1) (1986): 4 254 McAtackney, An Archaeology of the Troubles, 195. 255 McDowell, S., Braniff, M & Murphy, J. “Zero-sum politics in contested spaces: The unintended consequences of legislative peacebuilding in Northern Ireland” in Political Geography 61 (2017)
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CHAPTER 3: GROWING UP, APART
‘The construction of boundaries at all scales and dimensions takes place through narrativity…These narratives are mediated through a large number of social and political institutions which experience perpetual development and transformation. The pedagogy of space focuses on the role of education and…helps us to understand the construction of institutionalized forms of `we’ and the `Other’, which are produced and perpetually reproduced.’256
3.1 The Lingering Impacts of the Troubles Northern Ireland’s conflict affected young people disproportionately, with 26% of fatalities being among those 21 or younger.257 Growing up in a state of quasi-civil war had deep and lasting impacts on the attitudes of young people (and especially young men)258 from different backgrounds towards one another, as well as upon their spatial geographies.259 260 261 Now, two decades since the GFA, the processes of memory transmission explored in Chapter 2 are key to understanding why a young person who has never themselves experienced violence might be affected by sectarian views, and this chapter will explore these issues through their impact on the post-Troubles generation. This will build upon the investigation of the ‘Glass Curtain,’ exploring patterns of isolation particular to a rural upbringing, and the inter-generational transmission of ‘mental maps.’
256 Newman, D. and Paasi, A., “Fences and neighbours in the postmodern world: boundary narratives in political geography” in Progress in Human Geography 22,2 (1998): 195. 257 Fay, M., Morrissey, M., Smyth, M. & Wong, T. The Cost of the Troubles Study. Report on the Northern Ireland Survey: the experience and impact of the Troubles. ([London]Derry: INCORE 1999). 258 Hansson, U. TroubledYouth?:Young People,Violence and Disorder in Northern Ireland (Belfast: ICR, 2005) 259 Hanson notes that it is estimated that 32% of young people aged 14-18 had directly witnessed someone being killed or seriously injured during the 30 years of the conflict. (Ibid. 5.) 260 Magill, C., Smith, A. & Hamber, B. The Role of Education in Reconciliation (Belfast: Ulster University, 2009) 1. 261 McAlister, S. Scraton, P. & Haydon, D. “Childhood in transition: growing up in ‘post-conflict’ Northern Ireland”, Children’s Geographies, 12:3, (2014): 299
Fig. 39: Protesters at makeshift barricade, Ogle Street, Armagh. 1972 The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. .69
The impact of tight-knit communities262 and the importance of building social capital with ‘one’s own’263 continues to hinder cross-boundary reconciliation among young people.264 Smyth et al. note that peer pressure from friends and relations of the same religious background also plays a role in ‘coercing’ young people to engage in anti-social activities or to express sectarian views.265 While young people generally are seen as being more open to communication and social gatherings across religious and political lines266 there remains a worrying trend towards continued division of space, especially in areas designated as ‘shared’ - or equally open to members of all communities. In rural communities, especially those such as Armagh’s hinterlands, which exhibit significant degrees of segregation,267 the isolation of young people compounds the impact of separate lives, as occasions and locations for organic mixing to occur are extremely limited.268 269
3.2 Inter-Generational Heritage If stories about the past (real or imagined) are critical to the formation and perpetuation of community identity, as well as being the critical factor in the construction of place, then the means by which historic narratives are told becomes key. Bell et al. found that in a survey of almost 1000 young people, the key sources of knowledge about the past were ‘their parents (52%), school (47%) and relatives (25%).’270 Young people acknowledged that these sources were likely to be biased,271 and yet, awareness of the partial nature of information received does not seem to have translated into a more shared sense of history, with the report’s authors concluding, ‘understanding of the past is…loaded towards their own community’s sense of history and the events that their community most values.’272 Lacking first-hand experiences of the Troubles (1969-98), young people in contemporary Northern Ireland are much more sensitive to secondary retellings of the conflict, both from their communities and family structures, but also from media portrayals of the conflict.273 To some extent, each of these sources edit the information disclosed, and while young people are reportedly keen to understand narratives of the conflict other than their ‘own’, Barton and McCully note a disturbing tendency for young people to, ‘resist school accounts or to reinterpret texts and events so that they more closely conform to prior
262 Radley, A., (“Artefacts, memory and a sense of the past”, in D. Middleton and D. Edwards (eds), Collective Remembering (London: Sage Publications, 1990) 57. 263 McGrellis, S. “In transition: young people in Northern Ireland: Growing up in, and out of, divided communities”, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33:5 (2010): 766 264 Trew, K.“Children and Socio-Cultural Divisions in Northern Ireland.” in Journal of Social Issues 60 (3) (2004): 507. 265 Smyth, M. The Impact of Political Conflict on Children in Northern Ireland (Belfast: ICR, 2004) 30. 266 Leonard, M. ‘‘‘It’s better to stick to your own kind’’: teenagers’ views on cross-community marriages in Northern Ireland’”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 35, no. 1 (2009): 97-113 267 Appendix i 268 Northern Ireland. Department of Agriculture Rural Development. Children andYoung People’s Action Plan. (Belfast: DARD, 2011). 269 McGrellis, S., Henderson, S., Holland, J., Sharpe, S. & Thomson, R. Through the Moral Maze: A Quantitative Study ofYoung People’sValues, (London: The Tufnell Press, 2000) 270 Bell, J. Hansson, U. & McCaffery, N. The Troubles Aren’t HistoryYet:Young People’s Understanding of the Past (Belfast: CRC, 2010) 7. 271 Ibid. 8. 272 Ibid. 10 273 Smith, The Impact of Political Conflict on Children, 20.
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frameworks’.274 In other words, the community narrative is the most trusted source for many young people, and it is not easily amenable to conflicting information.275 276 As Popov and Déak note, the induction of young people into their communities’ historic narratives ‘extends well beyond the understanding of the past represented by formal historical knowledge.’277 Thus, just as in Graham et al.’s definition of heritage, the facts of what happened are less important than their interpretation. Young people are not ‘passive vessels into which political ideas are poured,’278 and no narrative survives transmission unaltered. Importantly, the desire to seek out and integrate new knowledge can coexist with the observed tendency to rewrite sources to better fit presupposed information, thus young people are vulnerable to developing the same exclusionary heritages as previous generations, without experiencing the inciting events personally or even contemporaneously. As the first-hand memory of the conflict recedes, this trend becomes clearer, and while it is not in itself a source of harmful, segregated mindsets (indeed the observed curiosity to find out about the ‘other side’s’ stories is a source of optimism), when coupled with the continued segregation of Northern Ireland’s schools and residential districts, the opportunity for interaction remains limited. This also impacts on the construction of young people’s cognitive geographies, which remain polarised on religious groups, even in rural environments lacking physical barriers.279
274 Barton, K.C., & McCully, A.W. Secondary Students’ Perspectives on Community History in Northern Ireland. (Coleraine: University of Ulster, 2006) 6. 275 Popov, A. & Déak, D. “Making sense of the ‘difficult’ past: transmission of political heritage and memory-work among young people across Europe” The Sociological Review, 63 (2015): 39 276 Furthermore, while the joint education syllabus for history teaching mandates that all Northern Irish children must learn the same core facts about their local histories, Bell et al. note that history education is compulsory only until the age of 14, and it is after this point where the majority of discussion of the recent past enters the syllabus. In lessons before this date, the availability of information on other interpretations of the Troubles is in some doubt, given the continued segregation of schooling in Northern Ireland. (McCully, A. “History teaching, conflict and the legacy of the past” in Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 7(2) (2012): 148) (Bell et al. The Troubles Aren’t HistoryYet, 24.) 277 Popov and Déak, ““Making sense of the ‘difficult’ past” 36. 278 Gallagher, T. “After the War Comes Peace? An Examination of the Impact of the Northern Ireland Conflict on Young People.” Journal of Social Issues 60, no. 3 (2004): 634. 279 Roulston, S. & Young, O. “GPS Tracking of Some Northern Ireland Students – Patterns of Shared and Separated Space: Divided We Stand?” International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 22, no. 3 (2013): 241-58.
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Fig. 40: StrĂźle Campus Masterplan, Omagh Architects drawings show the prevalence of courtyard typologies for the individual schools which will collectively make up the shared educational campus. This clearly defines school boundaries and encloses a central space, implying that the connections between buildings will have to be carefully designed to ensure that the buildings to not become inwardly focused. It remains to be seen whether this will be achieved.
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3.3 Decommissioning Mindsets: De-Segregating Education? Formal, compulsory education in Northern Ireland is broadly split between Catholic ‘maintained’ schools and state ‘controlled’ schools, which are de-facto Protestant in the majority of cases.280 Since 1981,281 a movement towards formally integrating education whereby schools are non-selective on both religious and academic grounds has attempted to find support with politicians and parents in order to improve community cohesion.282 However, integrated school enrolment has thus far failed to rise above 6.8% of pupils,283 leading to claims that, despite their laudable aims, they remain unattractive to parents and must be seen as a failed project.284 285 In recent years, focus has shifted towards a more limited sharing of facilities and resources between schools, both as an economic necessity, but also out of a desire to provide at least some contact between Protestant and Catholic pupils, while also preserving individual school identities. Despite criticisms that such infrequent contact is merely ‘token’ and that real and meaningful reconciliation requires regular and co-ordinated opportunities for interaction,286 ‘shared’ education has been well funded,287 allowing for the construction of a new educational campus on the river Strüle outside the town of Omagh,288 on the site of a former army barracks (fig. 40). Unlike the author’s proposed scheme, the Strüle project makes no use of its site’s heritage potential,289 and all existing buildings on site have been levelled.290 Nevertheless, the project’s backers hope that it will prove a model291 for how young people can be introduced to those from different backgrounds to their own.292 293 Certainly, the lack of contact between young people of different religious backgrounds is an significant problem. As the maps produced by Roulston and Young294 from the GPS tracking of Protestant and
280 87% of students from a Roman Catholic background and 79% of those from a Protestant background attend a school where their community dominates. (www.thedetail.tv) 281 Hayes, B. C., Mcallister, I. & Dowds, L. “Integrated Education, Intergroup Relations, and Political Identities in Northern Ireland.” Social Problems 54, no. 4 (2007): 458. 282 Pickett, L. “Integrated Schools in Northern Ireland: Education for Peace and Reconciliation”, Childhood Education, 84:6, (2008) 351-356 283 Borooah, V. K. & Knox, C. “The contribution of ‘shared education’ to Catholic–Protestant reconciliation in Northern Ireland: a third way?” in British Educational Research Journal Vol. 39, No. 5, (October 2013): 931. 284 Allan McCully (Interview 4), a founding parent of an integrated primary school revealed that he had sent his own children to religiously selective secondary schools on the basis of improved educational attainment at such schools, despite his personal convictions. 285 Gallagher, T. “Shared education in Northern Ireland: school collaboration in divided societies”, Oxford Review of Education (2016): 3. 286 Hewstone, M., Cairns, E. Voci, A. Hamberger, J. & Niens, U. “Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness, and Experience of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland.” Journal of Social Issues 62, no. 1 (2006): 99-120. 287 Doyle, S. “Omagh shared education school campus to cost £60m extra” in The Irish News, 05 December, 2016 288 The town of Omagh is infamous for the bombing which occurred on 15 August 1998, in which 29 people were killed by a republican splinter group, mere months before the provisions of the GFA came into force. 289 Planning ref: LA10/2016/0711/RM Drawings available at: http://epicpublic.planningni.gov.uk/publicaccess/ 290 Weir, P. Oral Answers to Questions — Education – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:45 pm on 12th September 2016. https://www. theyworkforyou.com/ni/?id=2016-09-12.8.2 [accessed 08.03.18] 291 While there is no specific departmental design guidance for campuses, the masterplan for the site is of interest in that it considers each individual school as courtyard building and clusters Catholic and State schools at opposite ends of the site, with the shared resource facilities in the middle. fig. 40. 292 The site contains 6 separate schools: 2 Catholic grammar schools (male and female) 1 State grammar, 1 State and one Catholic comprehensive and one special needs school. 293 Keith Major - Project Architect - Email Correspondence 29.08.17 294 Roulston, S. & Young, O. “GPS tracking of some Northern Ireland students – patterns of shared and separated space: divided we stand?”, International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, 22:3, 2013 pp. 241-25
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SITE
Fig. 41: GPS Track of Students in Armagh Data from Roulston et al. As seen, territory in Armagh is divided but the barriers are invisible and cognative. Understanding how young people construct and navigate within these mental maps is key to any proposal which attempts to create shared space in a town like this. The observed ability for spaces to be inhabited concurrently by opposing groups with a minimum of interaction poses very real design challenges.
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Catholic students in Armagh show, there is limited overlap between the patterns of spatial occupation of these two groups.295 One observation of the maps produced (fig. 41) is that some of the apparently ‘shared’ spaces are the town’s arterial roads, but to paraphrase MLA Gregory Campbell,296 limited sharing is possible between people in separate cars travelling in different directions. Even when shared buses are used,297 there is evidence to suggest that minimal mixing occurs, with segregation of seating patterns becoming normalised and entrenched.298 Therefore, in isolated rural environments, where the primary opportunities for social interaction are at school, it is clear that travelling in segregated vehicles to a religiously selective school, there to be taught by teachers trained at separate PGCE colleges299 offers little opportunity for interaction between community groups, whether violent or reconciliatory. The psychologist Gordon Allport notes that contact is the critical prerequisite for reconciliation to occur.300 301 In this regard, shared campuses disproportionately benefit to rural communities by creating venues of organic or semi-controlled interactions to occur, whereas in cities, this role is already filled by social clubs, community groups etc. However, as was noted in Chapter 2, mere proximity between divided groups does not ensure positive exchange or even conversation.302 Perhaps then it may be more productive to conclude that proximity between different sects in Northern Ireland has at best a basal relationship with opportunities for dialogue and that, while it is an important prerequisite, more organised efforts are needed to persuade the various communities to engage. Rural segregation in particular shows that division is predominately a cognitive construct, therefore any place can become polarised, regardless of whether it is labelled ‘shared’ or not.
295 This is perhaps to be expected, given the limitations of the study’s timeframe and the dominant impact geographically and religiously separate schools will inevitably have on how pupils use the town between Monday and Friday. This should not however suggest that the paper’s findings are unimportant, given the dominance of the scholastic timetable over the daily routines of most under-16s. 296 ‘I always found it a bit difficult to understand how an example of a shared future could be envisaged by different sports being played in the same stadium on different occasions. (Northern Ireland Assembly, 2009)’ said of the proposed national stadium within the Maze/Long Kesh Masterplan in Flynn, “Decision-making and Contested Heritage in Northern Ireland”, 393. 297 49% of NI students travel to school by bus, with a much greater proportion in rural areas. (Department for Infrastructure, ‘Publication of method of travel to/from school by pupils in Northern Ireland 2015/2016’ (2017) [accessed online from: www.infrastructure-ni.gov.uk]) 298 Hamilton et al. Segregated Lives, 54. 299 St Mary’s (Catholic) and Stranmillis College (Protestant) in Belfast are Northern Ireland’s only teacher training facilities. 300 Allport, G. The Nature of Prejudice; Introduction by Kenneth Clark ; Foreword by Thomas Pettigrew. 25th Anniversary ed. (Reading, Mass.: Perseus, 1992) 41. 301 Hewstone et al. “Intergroup Contact, Forgiveness, and Experience of “The Troubles”” 302 Sam Fitzsimmons, Head of Communications, Integrated Education Fund. Interviewed by Chris Hamill on 09.05.17 (Interview 7)
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3.4 Vocational Education as Space for Interaction One of the commonly held tropes about the Northern Irish education system is that for many young people, the first ‘shared space’ they encounter is at university.303 This, if true, suggests that for a large number who do not enter higher education, valuable opportunities for contact are lost, and must also be factored into a reading of the conflict which sees segregated patterns of living and sectarian mindsets as being more prevalent in lower-income, traditionally working class communities, as these groups also see much lower levels of university attainment.304 Such a reading must however ignore the presence of some of the largest providers of integrated education in the province - the Further Educational Colleges. As Northern Ireland’s primary technical and vocational education (TVET) facilities, the FE Colleges cater primarily for students aged 16-18. These colleges are non-selective on religious grounds, and as such constitute a de-facto integrated branch of the province’s education system. Despite this, the impacts of the FE Colleges on cross-community attitudes have not been subject to examination in the literature, even though they are accessible to all students two years earlier than Higher Education facilities begin to offer the same potential for mixing.305 Evidence from overseas suggests that TVET may offer significant potential for reconciliation in ‘post-conflict’ societies. In aiding former combatants and victims of violence return to ‘normal’ patterns of living, UNESCO has long accepted that training and learning in ‘practical skills’ is of vital importance.306 Maebuta advocates for TVET as ‘a form of peace education…largely based on learning by doing which incorporates a number of peace activities.’307 Aside from potentially alleviating unemployment and addressing the economic disparities which often fuel the perpetuation of civil conflict,308 309 the act of working together, of building or co-operating in joint projects itself can be an effective means of ensuring that fears over shared institutions being merely ‘co-used’310 do not come to pass.311 The FE Colleges also possess a symbolic potency in Northern Ireland. Accompanying the divisive Twelfth July marches discussed previously, the 11th Night sees the mass burning of bonfires across Northern Ireland312 - with most towns with a significant Protestant population hosting at least one
303 McGrellis, S. Pushing the Boundaries in Northern Ireland:Young People,Violence and Sectarianism (London: London South Bank University, 2004) 21. 304 Leonard, M. “Building, Bolstering and Bridging Boundaries: Teenagers’ Negotiations of Interface Areas in Belfast,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34:3, (2008): 484. 305 It should be noted that TVET is not a panacea for social mixing, especially given the high levels of gender division in many occupations and courses offered. This is particularly important to recognise, given the previous discussion of the dissonance created from the eliding of female voices in Chapter 1. 306 Veal, K. “Once were warriors: Reintegrating ex-combatants” in Supplement to UNESCO-UNEVOC Bulletin April 2008 / No. 14 307 Maebuta, J. “Technical and vocational education and training in peace education: Solomon Islands”, Journal of Peace Education, 8:2, (2011): 157. 308 UNESCO, Education for Livelihoods and Civic Participation in Post-Conflict Countries: Conceptualizing a Holistic Approach to TVET Planning and Programming in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bonn: UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2007) 309 Young people in deprived areas of Northern Ireland with limited employment opportunities are often claimed to be participants in ‘recreational rioting’ and other anti-social behaviours out of frustration and boredom. (Cummings, E. et al. Growing Up On an Interface : Findings and Implications for the Social Needs, Mental Health and Lifetime Opportunities of BelfastYouth. 2016. 22) 310 Roulston, S. et al. “If you are not one of them you feel out of place: understanding divisions in a Northern Irish town”, Children’s Geographies, (2016): 453 311 Johnson D., Kane L. “Overview: Vocational Education, Social Participation and Livelihoods in Post-Conflict Countries”. In: Maclean R., Wilson D. (eds) International Handbook of Education for the ChangingWorld ofWork. (Dordrecht, Springer, 2009) pp 767-774 312 O’Neill, D. “On the trail of Orangefest” The Architectural Review, September 2011.
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Fig. 42: Stockpiling Bonfire Materials, Armagh Photo taken 07.12.17 .77
Fig. 43: Bonfire, Belfast Young men are often involved in the collection of materials for and subsequent building of the 11th July Bonfires. .78
such conflagration. Built in the weeks leading up to the marching season out of shipping palettes and tires, these structures can reach impressive heights and are significant collaborative efforts for the communities involved. The bonfires are almost invariably set alight covered in the symbols of the Nationalist community. Such iconoclasm often leads to increased community tensions amidst calls of disrespect and intimidation from nearby Nationalist enclaves. Despite this, within loyalist communities, the yearly collecting of firewood and construction of the ‘boney’ (typically carried out by adolescent males under the supervision of an older cadre of ‘site managers’ (fig. 43))313 is an important tradition and the associated teamwork builds community cohesion and grants respect and social capital to those involved. Additionally, the act of building is paramount, as demonstrated when Belfast City Council, in an effort to ease community tensions, offered loyalist communities pre-made braziers to burn instead of their traditional bonfires. Few took up the offer.314 It could be argued that the FE colleges offer similar opportunities for team-building, but instead of aggravating sectarian tensions, their (admittedly unintentional) efforts are much more likely to engender trust and mutual respect between Catholic and Protestant youths.
313 McCartney, J. “It’s time for the DUP to rise above sectarianism” The Spectator, 8 July 2017 314 Schalliol, D. “Bonfires of Belfast.” Contexts 15, no. 3 (2016): 50.
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3.5 Young People’s Heritage Values - Some Indications In order to begin to test the degree to which young people were cognisant of built heritage, two workshops were carried out in November 2017 with 13 male students315 from one FE college in Armagh. These workshops were intended to investigate young people’s attitudes to their local space in order to see whether there was any evidence that particular heritage sites impacted upon their patterns of spatial use. This made use of qualitative methods, including observation, survey questionnaires, group interviews and mapping exercises. The first portion of the workshops used the principles of photo elicitation as defined by Tweed et al.316 in order to provoke conversation with the participants over what places they viewed as significant in terms of ‘official’ designation.317 A series of twelve sites were identified and photos of each presented to the participants in small groups of 2 or 3 individuals. These sites were selected due to their prominence within the town and presence on the official register of listed buildings (or in some deliberate cases their absence) (appendix ii). The participants were asked in groups to rank the twelve photos in terms of relative age, from oldest building to most recent. Subsequently, they were asked to shuffle the photos and again rank the sites, in terms of what they thought might be the most significant in ‘official’ terms. With a few exceptions,318 there was a strong correlation seen between what the participants thought to be the oldest sites and those officially designated as significant. Thus, it appears that their perception of ‘official heritage’ was largely informed by the age of the sites in question. The participants were then asked to identify on a map the sites which they used most or ascribed personal significance. Generally, these differed greatly from those sites which appeared on the official heritage register and included the local pet shop where one participant worked and the place where another had lost his bank card (fig. 44). Critically, there did not appear to be any significant disparity between the places local Protestants and Catholics found important. When this observation was pointed out to one group in the post-workshop informal interview, a participant responded, ‘that sort of stuff might be important to the older ones but it doesn’t really matter to us.’319 Despite this, there did appear to be an awareness of the contentious nature of some sites in Armagh, with over half of responses to the question ‘Which (if any) of the places mentioned do you think would be the most difficult to redevelop?’ identifying the former Gaol. While this study with its limited participant base is by no means conclusive, this pattern is indicative of a trend identified by McClelland et al.320 in terms of a misalignment between local place value and ‘official’ heritage, which further illustrates the problems of attempts to impose any shared historic narrative in Northern Ireland. This also suggests that even when the official discourse seeks to elide contested sites such as Armagh Gaol, these places may still remain significant in local ‘mental maps’.
315 The groups interviewed consisted of 13 male students enrolled in joinery and carpentry courses aged between 16-22. The group was 46% from a Catholic background, 30% Protestant and 23% from other religious backgrounds or none. Summary of results in appendix ii. 316 Tweed, C., Sutherland, M., & Teller, J. “Identifying the Relations between Historical Areas and Perceived Values: Introduction to Issues and Indicators.” SUIT Project Report on Task 2.1a (2002) 317 Parkinson, A. Scott, M. & Redmond, D. “Defining “Official” Built Heritage Discourses within the Irish Planning Framework: Insights from Conservation Planning as Social Practice”, European Planning Studies, 24:2, (2016): 279 318 For example, the students were unaware that landscape areas could be listed as well as buildings, and thus the Mall was deemed unlinked to be listed. It is in fact listed as B+. 319 Group Interview 30 [Participants Anonymous] - Interviewed by Chris Hamill 14th November 2017 320 McClelland, A., Peel, D., Hayes, C-M. & Montgomery, I. “A Values-based Approach to Heritage Planning: Raising Awareness of the Dark Side of Destruction and Conservation.” The Town Planning Review 84, no. 5 (2013): 583-603.
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Fig. 44: Young people’s significant places Map produced from the output of the workshops at Armagh FE College, 14.11.17. .81
3.6 Recognising Apathy When proposing the engagement of young people as a means on fostering increased reconciliation in Northern Ireland, it becomes necessary to address the potential problem posed by apathy. Lack of willingness to engage in potentially divisive issues for fear of causing offence or risking trouble has been noted on the part of both teachers321 and students,322 even in formally integrated schools. It might even be argued that it is unfair to expect young people to take the lead in tackling issues of contested heritage and reconciliation. As with all groups in Northern Ireland, young people are not monolithic in their views. The design proposal will ultimately need to accommodate young people seeking space apart, even on a temporary basis. It is also entirely possible that some young people may not wish to engage with ‘the other’ side due to personal, familial or particularly poignant community traumas. Chapter 4 will engage with Mouffe’s writings on ‘conflictual consensus’ as a possible solution to these segregated mindsets, but ultimately there must be some mechanism for young people to optout if they feel particularly strongly. A key hypothesis in the design aspect of this thesis, borne out of the research presented in Chapter 2, is that, by siting the proposals within a contested site of memory, the omnipresence of historic fabric will make conversations over that difficult past harder to avoid. Nonetheless, processes of engagement must be voluntary and born out of a strong desire for contact and dialogue. Even so, there are encouraging signs, such as young people expressing interest in the history of the other community323 and in answer to workshop Q.11 ‘Which (if any) of the sites identified would you be most likely to visit if they changed their current use or level of public access?’ over half of respondents identified the design project’s site of the disused Gaol as a place of particular curiosity (appendix ii). Ultimately young people shouldn’t be expected to bear the entire burden, but arguably, just as Ricoeur contends that contentious sites have a ‘duty to tell,’324 young people have a societal ‘duty to learn’ regarding the importance of local and ‘national’ history325 in order to play a part in alleviating some of the lingering traumas and divisions - even though this is only part of a much wider-reaching solution.
321 Donnelly, C, “What price harmony? Teachers’ methods of delivering an ethos of tolerance and respect for diversity in an integrated school in Northern Ireland”, Educational Research, 46:1 (2004): 3. 322 Loader, R. & Hughes, J. “Joining together or pushing apart? Building relationships and exploring difference through shared education in Northern Ireland”, Cambridge Journal of Education, 47:1, (2017): 125. 323 Magill et al. The Role of Education in Reconciliation. 91. 324 Ricoeur, P. “Memory and forgetting”, in Questioning Ethics: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy (eds.) R Kearney, M Dooley (Routledge: London, 1999) 1-11. 325 Jones, C. “Frames of Meaning:Young people, historical consciousness and challenging history at museums and historic sites” in Jenny Kidd, Sam Cairns, Alex Drago, Amy Ryall & Miranda Stearn (eds.) Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014) 232.
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CHAPTER 4: AGONIC HERITAGES?
‘[W]hat we value as a society is the democratic process that shaped our history, and what we hope for the future is the active participation of everyone who has a stake in the future— including those people who have been on the margins of the democratic process in the past.’326 In Chapter 1, it was observed that past approaches to Northern Ireland’s contested heritage sites were connected by the prevalence of an ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse,’ stemming from an ‘official’ attempt at writing a shared history.327 Despite its laudable ambitions, approaches based on rational consensus between groups with such bitter and recent memories were hampered by their inability to deal with heritage dissonance. Furthermore, these approaches treat conflict, even in a non-violent form, as an unmitigated negative and even a signal that a given strategy is failing when disputes inevitably arise.328 This chapter will build upon recent political thinking which suggests that not only is conflict inescapable in human society, but that it may also prove beneficial if carefully managed. These theories will form the basis for a suggested exemplar scheme which proposes to re-use the former HM Prison Armagh as the site of a school for construction skills training. This chapter will investigate the particular design challenges raised, and through a critique of earlier responses (including the author’s own) will conclude with a series of issues for consideration as the project develops.
326 Sevcenko, L. & Russell-Ciardi, M. “Sites of Conscience: Opening Historic Sites for Civic Dialogue - Foreword.” Public Historian 30, no. 1 (2008): 11. 327 Graham, B. & Whelan,Y. “The legacies of the dead: commemorating the Troubles in Northern Ireland” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (25) (2007): 492. 328 Pløger, J. “Strife: Urban Planning and Agonism.” Planning Theory 3, no. 1 (2004): 74.
Fig. 45 Peace March. Saturday 9th October 1976. Market Street, Armagh. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. .85
4.1 Agonsim and Contact Zones Political theorist Chantal Mouffe challenges the presumed desirability of ‘shared consensus’.329 Citing Canetti, she demonstrates that such a utopian vision is in fact far from the reality of all political systems: ‘The member of an outvoted party accepts the majority decision, not because he has ceased to believe in his own case, but simply because he admits defeat.’330 Mouffe goes on the introduce her concept of ‘agonism,’ a form of ‘conflictual consensus,’ as a political goal to strive for. Rather than attempting to neutralise strife and seek a compromise solution acceptable to all parties, the concept of agonism argues instead that conflict is fundamental to our societal structure, and therefore must be incorporated into any successful procedures operating within it. It is seen as misdirected to look for equitable compromise on issues which are deeply locked in strife, and have become, to use Mouffe’s terminology ‘antagonistic,’ meaning that they are defined by a ‘friend versus enemy’ enemy distinction. Instead, an agonistic conflict would consider the ‘we/them’331 dynamic to be one between adversaries, who in contrast to enemies, accept the legitimacy of their opponents right to hold opposing views, even as they challenge them and accept that perfect compromise solutions are unlikely.332 Art theorist Nora Sternfeld, uses Mouffe’s theory as the foundation for a revised understanding of dealing with particularly difficult sites. Sternfeld hypothesises that traditional forms of teaching the Holocaust at memorial sites must be revised in the face of increasingly plural societies breaking down the accepted norms of young people descending unambiguously from either perpetrators or victims.333 In the more nuanced form of remembering which has been seen developing in recent years, Sternfeld remarks on the importance of young people being ‘permitted to resist’ the prevailing narrative, to accept trauma and, most critically for this thesis’ proposals, for learning environments to provide what she calls ‘conflict/contact zones’.334 Based on the post-colonial theories of James Clifford,335 the contact zone is theorised as a space where different viewpoints can gain exposure with groups who are not historically or socially predisposed to have any prior understanding of them. Sternfeld deliberately concedes that such spaces must also allow for (or even embrace) conflicts arising and be prepared for this eventuality. She argues that this allows, ‘…different histories, references and power relations can come into view, but without having to assume or construct cultural differentness at the same time.’336 Despite this, and even with the concept’s grounding in specific sites, the conflict zone remains a primarily theoretical construct and it remains to be seen how it can be implemented both in educational and museum curriculae337 338 and how the architect might incorporate the concept into designs for these contested sites.
329 Mouffe, C. On the Political.Thinking in Action. (London ; New York: Routledge, 2005.) 330 Canetti, E. Crowds and Power, (London, Penguin, 1960) 220. 331 Graham, B. & Nash, C. “A shared future: Territoriality, pluralism and public policy in Northern Ireland.” Political Geography, 25(3), (2006): 255. 332 Mouffe, C. “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism”, Social Research, 66(3). (1999): 757. 333 Rothberg, M. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009) 334 Sternfeld, N. Memorial Sites as Contact Zones: Cultures of Memory in a Shared/Divided Present [online resource]. (Trans.) Aileen Derieg. (European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics. 2011.) 335 Clifford, C. Routes,Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (London: Harvard University Press 1997) 204. 336 Sternfeld, Memorial Sites as Contact Zones 337 Landkammer, N. Interviewed by Chris Hamill 18.08.17 (Interview 22) 338 Askins, K., & Pain, R. “Contact Zones: Participation, Materiality, and the Messiness of Interaction.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 5 (2011): 803-21.
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4.2 Sites of Conscience An indication of how the contact zone may operate in practice may be found in the recent movement to restructure certain museums and memorial places as ‘sites of conscience.’ Sites of conscience are a collective attempt by museum curators to foster public dialogue on contemporary issues by reflecting on difficult pasts in the places where these histories were first enacted.339 Critiquing a traditional form of museology which seeks to compartmentalise the past340 and present a coherent consensus341 the movement appears to implement Mouffe’s concepts of productive conflict and agonism through curation and dialogue.342 Project director Liz Ševcenko states, ‘if…contestation about the past is viewed instead as an opportunity to facilitate critically needed dialogue on contemporary issues, we could open up new possibilities for heritage sites in civic life.’343 Nonetheless, one potentially insurmountable problem for the movement in the Northern Irish context is the requirement for a site of conscience to also be a museum.344 As was seen in Chapter 1 with the ICCT at the Maze, to consecrate one of Northern Ireland’s conflict heritages as a museum is, in the minds of a significant portion of the population, to valorise and legitimise the criminal activities of those involved in the Troubles, and is therefore unacceptable. Primarily for this reason, there is no current ‘Museum of the Troubles’345 and the Victim’s Commissioner’s 1998 suggestion that, ‘at the appropriate time, consideration should be given to a Northern Ireland Memorial in the form of a beautiful and useful building within a peaceful and harmonious garden’346 has not yet come to pass. Thus, it seems necessary for the proposed design response to be something other than a museum, albeit with a similar focus on fostering dialogue and preserving the past. This cannot, like with the ICCT, merely be a case of finding an acceptable alternative nomenclature, but instead looks to the research highlighted in Chapter 3 in order to propose a brief capable of using contested sites to introduce young people in particular to the nuances of the various dissonant narratives of the Troubles - especially those of which they might not already be aware.
339 Ševcenko, L. “Sites of Conscience: Reimagining Reparations” in Change Over Time 1, no. 1 (2011): 7. 340 Ševcenko & Russell-Ciardi, “Sites of Conscience”, 11. 341 Crooke, E. “Dealing with the past: Museums and heritage in Northern Ireland and Cape Town, South Africa”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 11:2, (2005): 134 342 Božic Marojevic, M. “Sites of Conscience as Guardians of the Collective Memory.” Kultura (Skopje) 4, no. 5 (2014): 105-14. 343 Ševcenko, L. “Sites of Conscience: A New Approach to Memory Conflicts.” Museum International 62, no. 1-2 (2010): 21. 344 This may also be the reason a why the only local example of a site of conscience contributor, ‘Healing through Remembering’ is a primarily community based organisation, and focuses mainly on fostering dialogue through cross-community events and an exhibition of mundane, ‘placeless’ items transformed by the conflict. 345 Crooke, E. “Confronting a Troubled History: which past in Northern Ireland?s museums?”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7:2, (2001): 136. 346 Bloomfield, K. We will remember them, (Belfast: Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner,1998) .51.
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Fig. 46: GMIT Letterfrack New build furniture workshops alongside existing and nototious former Industrial School.
Fig. 47: GMIT Letterfrack - Axo Juxtaposition of new-build and existing allows for greater retention of fabric while still allowing the site to take on a new, positive function. .88
4.3 Design for Agonistic Heritages One example which might provide some insight into how contentious sites can re-engage productively with communities is O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Furniture College at Letterfrack. The design incorporates the former St Joseph’s Industrial School, infamously featured in the Ryan Report into institutionalised child abuse in Ireland.347 The site was subject, in the designer’s words to ‘a kind of architectural exorcism’348 which saw the abandoned school buildings reused as the administration centre for a new school of furniture manufacture and woodwork. Much as with Armagh Gaol, the industrial school was illustrative of institutional and penal ‘architecture which speaks’349 of a desire to impose the will of authority upon its occupants through confinement and surveillance. At Letterfrack, the architects worked on the peripheries of the site to break institutional austerity by proposing a redesigned, offcentre approach and the lowering of window cills so that they we useable by the young adults who were the building’s primary occupants (figs. 46 & 47).350 Tschumi argues that an architecture which embodies agonism should be fundamentally additive in nature, with the inscribed power-relations of existing sites challenged and modified by the building of ‘follies’ around their edges, drawing activity from the centre and allowing the building’s occupants to define their own spatial boundaries, rather than have them imposed by the walls of the existing building.351 This aligns with the concept of ‘thick walls’ articulated by Pullan, who argues that carefully designed, suggestive boundaries in divided cities can in fact, ‘structure differences and transitions, thereby embodying and fostering a certain richness of meaning.’352 This has led to the design aspect of this project focusing on particular on carefully designed boundaries and threshold conditions.353 Despite similarities to the author’s proposed construction school, caution must however be taken when proposing Letterfrack as a direct precedent Firstly, although the ‘savage history’354 of the former industrial school certainly qualifies it as a place of pain and shame, this is more or less universally accepted and thus the site is not subject to the same contestation observable at Armagh Gaol. Furthermore, as Hatton notes, ‘even where a building or place is architect-designed, it is also produced by agents such as clients, building- codes, and market forces… A school building may be designed by an architect, but the school itself – its curriculum, regime, etc. – are not.’ At Letterfrack, the potential debate over the site’s difficult history is somewhat elided by management, as evidenced in interview, when one teacher suggested that ‘the kids shouldn’t be forced to think about that [history] all of the time…it’s not their history.’355 This demonstrates that architectural prescriptiveness is limited - ultimately those using re-appropriated, contested sites will occupy, activate and even divide them according to their own needs, and create new mental maps incorporating the territory in ways which the architect cannot envisage, and therefore, a flexibility of functions is key.356
347 Chapter 8: Letterfrack Industrial School (‘Letterfrack’), 1885–1974 in Department of Health and Children. Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009 Implementation Plan. (Dublin: The Stationery Office. 2009) 348 International Architectural Exhibition. Transformation of an Institution:The Furniture College, Letterfrack, (Dublin: O’Donnell Tuomey Architects, 2004) 40. 349 Welch, M. Escape to Prison: Penal Tourism and the Pull of Punishment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 259. 350 Ultimately, these alterations did not come to fruition due to funding problems. (Interview 31) 351 Tschumi, B. Architecture and Disjunction, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994) 352 Pullan, W. “A One-sided Wall.” Index on Censorship 33, no. 3 (2004): 80. 353 Bollens, S. A. “Intervening in Politically Turbulent Cities: Spaces, Buildings, and Boundaries”, Journal of Urban Technology, 16:2-3, (2009)” 101. 354 International Architectural Exhibition. Transformation of an Institution, 40. 355 Hatton, Brian. “Travails with an Agonism Aunt: ‘How Is Architecture Political?’ with Chantal Mouffe, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Reinhold Martin, Ines Wiezman and Sarah Whiting.” 19, no. 1 (2015): 14. 356 Perhaps this is why, to date, most attempts at fostering agonism in contested sites have been relegated to artistic pursuits, with their minimal impacts on the site and their ability to invite and solicit interest from many sides. See - Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts as part of the EU’s Vision2020 project [http://www.traces.polimi.it/]
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Fig. 48. Proposed market at entrance creating a ‘thick wall’ for an entrance threshold.
Fig. 49. Proposed debating chamber at centre of Gaol complex. NB that central hinge block currently ruinous therefore architectural intervention in this area can be more robust.
Fig. 50. Large amounts of proposed demolitions in the cell blocks to provide more open spaces is now deemed to be an unacceptable loss of historic fabric. More will need to be made of existing cellular structure of the historic prison in the forthcoming designs. .90
This is not to say that an architectural response is impossible, merely that it has not been addressed or formalised at present, and must be aware of limitations to its scope. Some prescient observations can however be drawn, such as Ševcenko’s suggestion of ‘supporting phased preservation plans with ongoing debates among diverse constituencies, both on immediate preservation questions and on the larger issues at stake within them’357 in order to both maximise the length of time the resources of the site are useful, but also to help preserve these places into the future where the may become less contentious and very different conversations can be had over their potential reuse.
4.4 Initial Responses - A critique Noting these limitations, a critique of the initial response to the particular situation at Armagh Gaol, as articulated through the pilot project and thesis, is warranted.358 The primary hypothesis tested through the initial design work - that by embedding a bi-communal school within a contentious site such as Armagh Gaol, the omnipresence of historic fabric might address the previously identified concerns over apathy, by making difficult conversations harder to avoid - does appear to be supported in the literature, 359 360 361 as well as by the primary research done with young people in Armagh. However, as a first attempt at an architectural response, the pilot project does, in retrospect, appear to have overstepped in some areas. For example, in an effort to resist concerns over the ‘museumification’ of the site, it was determined that the architectural alterations had to be of a radical scale, resulting in significant changes to the gaol’s historic fabric (fig. 50). Noting the findings of Chapter 2 on the ability of space and objects, even the seemingly banal or illegitimate, to act as containers of memory and therefore, significant educational resources in the face of attempts at imposing an ‘official’ narrative, the degree of demolitions proposed is now seen as being excessive.362
357 Sevcenko “Sites of Conscience” 31. 358 Hamill, C. Pilot Thesis, (Unpublished, 2017) 359 Loader, R. & Hughes, J. “Joining together or pushing apart? Building relationships and exploring difference through shared education in Northern Ireland”, Cambridge Journal of Education, 47:1, (2017): 125. 360 Baiesi, N., Gigli, M. Monicelli, E. & Pellizzoli, R.. “Places of Memory as a Tool for Education: The “Peace in Four Voices Summer Camps” at Monte Sole.” The Public Historian 30, no. 1 (2008): 27-37. 361 Jones, C. “Frames of Meaning:Young people, historical consciousness and challenging history at museums and historic sites” in Jenny Kidd, Sam Cairns, Alex Drago, Amy Ryall & Miranda Stearn (eds.) Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014) 223-234. 362 This is also one of the primary critiques of the TOPG’s proposed hotel scheme at Armagh Gaol. (Hamill, C. Project Implementation Strategy - Unpublised, 2017). fig. 18
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4.5 Moving Forward ‘Territories that have experienced suffering…can not be considered apart from the violence staged on them. . . .What should a democratic society do with such territories? Build a wall and make them inaccessible? Confine them into a museum? . . . I believe that only a laborious program of decontamination can restore these places to humanity.’363 The ongoing design project, to which this written thesis is both foundation and companion, represents an opportunity to test and refine potential responses to the challenges posed in this text. The particulars of that response are still a work in progress, nevertheless, it is worth concluding with some observations, informed by the research noted in this thesis, which will be key to the project’s overall effectiveness. The proposed brief for a construction skills training centre engages with Ahonen’s statement that, ‘a post-conflict generation needs the school as an arena to deal with the burden of the past and connect the achieved understanding to aspirations for the future.’364 Observing that Northern Ireland’s mainstream, segregated educational system seems particularly resistant to integration, the previously identified benefits of vocational education for societies coming out of violent conflict offer an intriguing possibility of making a real difference in this field; aided in some ways by the fact the technical education is often overlooked and therefore may allow a space for agonism to develop, avoiding conforming to an imposed ‘shared’ narrative. In addition, this also addresses several practical issues, such as the fact that economic disparity and lack of opportunities are seen as key drivers of a sectarian ‘blame game’;365 the skills shortage for traditional trade skills in Ireland (both North and South);366and the use of a live project of repair and conservation works on a historic building as a valuable training opportunity for students.367 This last aspect, combined with Ševcenko’s suggestion that contentious projects should be carefully phased, offers the possibility of using the scheme as an interim use of sorts to preserve the Gaol into the future where its contested legacy may no longer be so raw, while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of its built fabric for future generations. The evolving scheme will have to preserve this integrity through minimal demolition,368 while also managing to substantially change the use of the gaol itself. ‘Adaptive reuse’, as identified by Postiglione et al.369 which encourages active and wide-reaching participation between architects and local communities, both with the contentious site itself and also within the processes of design, is seen as a viable design methodology in this context.370
363 Ovadia, M. “Un luogo contaminato,” Introduzione al testo di Renato Sarti, I me cia- mava per nome 44,787, Risiera di San Sabba (Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 2001). in Baiesi, N., Gigli, M. Monicelli, E. & Pellizzoli, R.. “Places of Memory as a Tool for Education: The “Peace in Four Voices Summer Camps” at Monte Sole.” The Public Historian 30, no. 1 (2008): 35. 364 Ahonen, S. “History Education in Post-conflict Societies.” Historical Encounters: A Journal of Historical Consciousness 1, no. 1 (2014): 86. 365 Gallagher, T. “After the War Comes Peace? An Examination of the Impact of the Northern Ireland Conflict on Young People” Journal of Social Issues, 60 (2004): 633. 366 Stelfox, D. “Conservation in Practice .” In A Future for Northern Ireland’s Built Heritage, (eds.) Sue Christie for the Northern Ireland Environment Link (NIEL), 2009, 10. 367 Fisher, K. Linking Pedagogy and Space (Victoria, AU: Department of Education and Training, 2005) 368 It is accepted that some limited demolitions of existing fabric will be necessary in order to attain necessary levels of accessibility and fire safety etc. This will be carried out in line with SPAB principles on best practice: (SPAB, The Purpose of the SPAB: An explanation of the SPAB conservation approach, 2013) 369 Bassanelli, M. Gravano, V. Grechi, G. Postiglione, G. (eds.) BEYOND Memorialisation Design for Conflict Heritage (Milan: Politecnico di Milano, 2014) 370 Lupo, E. & Postiglione, G. “Temporary Active - Actions as Urban re-appropriation strategies” Proceedings of the Conference held at the nd th University of Brighton 2 to 4 July 2009
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This also allows for the building itself to be a participant in conversations and debates over the contentious history it represents and played a part in shaping.371 The existing gaol, built around clearly demarcated boundaries and a spatial ordering intended to control the movements of occupants, poses interesting challenges in terms of how these principles can be adapted to prompt groups to engage with each other. Given the aforementioned limits to the architect’s influence on a building’s programme when in use, careful consideration of circulation and the design of spaces for interaction is warranted so as to prevent the site from merely becoming co-used between communities, but without unduly forcing or coercing its occupants in the manner of a historic prison. As previously argued, contested sites such as Armagh Gaol may well be considered ‘spaces of exception’ outside of the usual ordering and division of territory which continues to be a concern in Northern Ireland. The idea of the gaol being a place set apart - but one which links to the broader cityscape beyond - offers an intriguing possibility of creating a truly shared space.372 Often ‘shared space’ is criticised as being a mere label,373 with the name having little impact on how the place is used or to what extent it offer venues for mixing between communities. Mouffe’s suggestion that conflict, at a low intensity, should be embraced suggests that sites such as Armagh Gaol,374 which are both politically divisive and contain painful, sectarian memories may, somewhat counterintuitively, be the ideal foundation for new thresholds between divided communities, with their loaded histories an ever-present prompt to debate,375 if not necessarily agree, Northern Ireland’s troubled legacy.
371 Bassanelli, M. & Postiglione, G. “Re-appropriation: Museography for Traumatic Memories: Strategies for Re-enacting the Past” in ‘The intervention in archaeological areas for activities related to museums and cultural communication’; and the Research Project ‘MeLa - European Museums and Libraries in/of the Age of Migration’ funded within the European FP7 2010. 372 Mouffe, C. “Which Kind of Public Space for a Democratic Habitus?” in Jean Hilier & Emma Rooksby (eds.) Habitus: A sense of place (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002) 99. 373 Murray, F. Interview by Chris Hamill 11.08.17 (Interview 19) 374 Gunder, M. “Passionate Planning for the Others’ Desire: An Agonistic Response to the Dark Side of Planning.” Progress in Planning 60 (3) (2003): 235–319. 375 Murtagh, B. Boland, P. & Shirlow, P. “Contested heritages and cultural tourism,” International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23:6, (2017): 519
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Concluding Remarks This attempt to examine Northern Ireland’s efforts to build a more peaceful society through the impacts of built heritage upon communities and the places where they live is perhaps open to criticism that one of the main reasons Northern Ireland cannot ‘move on’ is its continuing obsession with the past. The novelist, Dermot Bolger encapsulates this point of view, saying that the Irish, ‘are so bizarrely entangled with history that we must go back three centuries to explain any fight outside a chip shop.’376 The desire to ignore conflicts and dissonant points of view is certainly understandable in a society only relatively recently emerging from bloodshed. The optimism that a line could be drawn under the disputes of the past with the the Good Friday Agreement was laudable, but perhaps somewhat naïve. The imposition of a shared, reconciliatory narrative is not malicious, but it is ill-judged, as it ignores dissenting voices and drives them back into their ‘ritual forms of remembrance’;377 ultimately entrenching the divisions it attempts to resolve. Perhaps this explains why so few of the examples identified in Chapter 1 as being indicative of this approach were successful. The building of peace it seems, cannot be mandated. Accepting conflict as unavoidable certainly has associated risks, but given the divided nature of Northern Ireland’s narratives of the past, it seems the only workable solution available. The challenge then is how to manage these conflicts in order to deliver the greatest possible benefit and establish mutual respect between historic adversaries. This is a conversation where architects and heritage professionals must have a voice - albeit one where the risks of forming a new authorised discourse open only to experts are acknowledged and avoided. Ultimately, the time necessary for meaningful reconciliation is unknown. It is almost certainly longer than local policy makers care to admit. As the UN itself recognises: ‘There is no quick-fix to reconciliation. It takes time. And it takes its own time: its pace cannot be dictated.’378 In a similar manner, this thesis represents a point in a continuing body of work, and while it suggests potential alternatives to past strategies, this should not be mistaken as an attempt by the architect to impose definitive solutions upon complex and wide-ranging problems. Rather, by proposing a brief which can envisage the indefinite retention of one of Northern Ireland’s most contentious sites, it is hoped that this project can suggest possible means by which difficult heritages can be safeguarded and turned to productive use, with the ultimate aim of seeing them repurposed as places for frank dialogue, reconciliation and reflection.
376 Bolger, D. in Dawson, Making Peace with the Past, 8. 377 Longley in McBride (ed.), History and Memory in Modern Ireland, 230. 378 United Nations. Reconciliation afterViolent Conflict: A Handbook (Stockholm: UN, 2013) 14.
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“But the architecture of this building, and this place, it would be sad if it was lost, even if it probably holds some gruesome memories for people.”379 William Smith (former prisoner; HMP Armagh)
379 Prisons Memory Archive & Smith, W. Armagh Stories:Voices from the Gaol. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. (Belfast: QUB Film School, 2015) 56m:08s
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List of Interviews 1. Dr. Garrett Carr - 15.12.16 Lecturer; The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice 2. Prof. Phillip Sheldrake - 24.01.17 Senior Research Fellow; Westcott House, University of Cambridge 3. Dr. Stephen Roulston - 24.01.17 Lecturer; School of Education, Ulster University, Coleraine 4. Dr. Allan McCully - 23.02.17 Honorary Research Fellow; Ulster University 5. Prof. Cahal McLaughlin - 13.04.17 Professor; The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice Director; The Prisons Memory Archive 6. Cormac Campbell - 05.05.17 Reporter; the Detail 7. Sam Fitzsimmons - 09.05.17 Head of Communications; Integrated Education Fund 8. Dr. Neil Jarman - 09.05.17 Research Fellow; QUB Director; Institute for Conflict Research (ICR) 9. John Savage - 05.06.17 Associate; Consarc Design Group - Stone Conservation Services 10. Interview 10 - 05.06.17 Individual connected to the 1999 planning application 11. Dr. Ian Shuttleworth - 06.06.17 Senior Lecturer; School of Natural and Built Environment, QUB 12. Collin Maxwell - 13.06.17 Associate Strategic Adviser; Strategic Investment Board 13. Dr. Jamie McRoberts - 14.06.17 Lecturer; School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University Belfast Contributor; Prisons Memory Archive 14. Will Glendinning - 07.07.17 Former Councillor; Alliance Party, ABC Council Former Soldier; Ulster Defence Regiment 15. Interview 15 - 21.07.17 ABC Council Employee 16. Karen Latimer OBE [Services to Architectural Heritage] - 28.07.17 Former Chairman; Hearth Housing Association & Revolving Fund Honorary Member; Royal Society of Ulster Architects
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17. Interview 17 - 28.07.17 Individual connected to the 2012-3 planning application 18. Prof. Tony Gallagher - 04.08.17 Professor; School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, Queen’s University, Belfast 19 Fearghal Murray - 11.08.17 Architect; MMAS 20 Dorothy Hoskins - 11.08.17 Technical Outreach and Education Manager; The Engine Shed, Historic Environment Scotland 21. Dr. Andrew McClelland - 18.08.17 Chairman; Institute of Historic Buildings Conservation (NI) 22. Dr. Nora Landkammer - 18.08.17 Lecturer; University of the Arts, Zurich Researcher; TRACES CP01 23. Anne Menary - 05.09.17 Senior Area Architect; Historic Environment Division, Department for Communities 24. Rita Harkin - 07.09.17 Northern Ireland Support Officer; Architectural Heritage Fund 25. Sean Barden - 21.09.17 Head Curator; Armagh County Museum 26. Primrose Wilson CBE - 27.09.17 President; Ulster Architectural Heritage Society Vice-Chair; IGF Chair; Association of Preservation Trusts (NI); Chair; Follies Trust; Board member; Hearth 27. Prof. Catherine Side - 26.10.17 Professor; Department of Gender Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland 28. Kevin Toner - 08.11.17 Architect & Surveyor [retired]; Armagh 29. Eilis O’Connor - 12.11.17 Former Prisoner [republican]; HM Prison Armagh 30. Anonymous Participants 14.11.17 Workshop Interview; FE College, Armagh 31. Dermot O’Donovan - 16.11.17 Head of Department; GMIT Letterfrack 32. Prof. Cahal McLaughlin - 30.11.17 Professor; The Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice Director; The Prisons Memory Archive
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Glossary ABC Council: Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council (from 2015). Formed from the former Armagh City and District Council, Banbridge District Council and Craigavon Borough Councils as part of a NI-wide local authority rearrangement and merger in 2015. ABC Council currently owns the Armagh Gaol site and leases it to the TOPG. ACD Council: Armagh City and District Council (until 2015). The former local authority for the Armagh Area. This council was responsible for the purchase of the Gaol site in 1997 and for the appointment of the TOPG as Preferred Bidder for the recent proposal to turn the Gaol into a boutique hotel. Agonism (also: agon): A political theory which highlights the potential advantages of conflict and a non-violent level (Mouffe, 2005) AHD: Authorised Heritage Discourse. Coined by Smith (2006), this term refers to the filtering of ‘value factors’ through the perceptions of importance from heritage professionals. It is typically used to highlight the lack of public influence over discussions on heritage value. This thesis argues that the term is also applicable to instances of enforced peacemaking and ‘ecumenical historicism’ of the type identified in previous attempts at dealing with contentious sites from the Troubles-era. Alliance Party (of Northern Ireland): A non-unionist, non-nationalist party within the Northern Ireland Assembly emphasising the importance of non- sectarian party politics. To this end, the party disputes the division of executive powers between the two largest parties mandated by the Good Friday Agreement as entrenching division. ‘Architecture Parlante’: Architecture which speaks. Term used by Welch (2015: 259) to refer to the ability of architectural and societal intent to be clearly read through the design and building of spaces. The defensive and legible architecture of the historic Pentonville prison is a good example. BA: British Army. The British Army were brought into Northern Ireland as a peacekeeping and auxiliary police force under Operation Banner, lasting from 1969 to 2007, making it the longest continuous deployment in its history. Initially welcomed by the nationalist community as a neutral force, relationships with the force rapidly deteriorated after incidents such as the implementation of internment without trial in 1971 and Bloody Sunday 1972. 297 deaths are attributed to the BA, and 502 of its personnel are known to have died during the Troubles. BHARNI: Built Heritage at Risk Northern Ireland [Register]. The BHARNI register is funded by the Department for Communities and maintained by the UAHS and is intended to catalogue and raise awareness for the nearly 500 buildings in Northern Ireland deemed at imminent risk of collapse and dereliction if urgent works are not undertaken. The register was formerly held on the Department of the Environment’s website, but was removed for over a year before reporting from the Detail newspaper prompted the department to restore it for public viewing. Armagh Gaol remains on the register despite the grant of planning permission for a reuse scheme in 2013. Brexit: Contraction of ‘British Exit’. Refers to the process of the UK leaving the EU following the 2016 referendum and subsequent passing of Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty by the UK Parliament in 2017. Coiste: A support agency for former republican prisoners. Now also offering walking tour of Belfast led by former prisoners. (see also: Dark Tourism) Contestation (also: contested heritage): Subset of ‘heritage dissonance’ whereby certain heritage narratives are disputed and become sources of friction between groups too numerous to have their narratives completely dismissed and which both claim particular sites or events to the exclusion of all others (Silverman, 2010). Controlled School: School ‘controlled’ directly by the Northern Irish state. Typically majority Protestant-background in terms of student body. Cumann na mBan: Irish ‘The Irishwomen's Council’. The primary woman’s republican organisation active during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was subsumed into the PIRA in 1976. Cumann na mBan denounced the move by Sinn Féin to engage with parliamentary tactics and members have aligned themselves with dissident groups. Several members of the group were imprisoned in HM Prison Armagh during the Troubles, including the Sinn Féin vice- president, Máire Drumm, later assassinated in the Mater Hospital, Belfast. Dark Tourism: ‘A phenomenon which encompasses the presentation and consumption of real and commodified death and disaster sites.’ (Foley & Lennon, 1996, 198). Dissident: Term used to distinguish splinter groups from the main Republican paramilitary organisations who reject the Good Friday Agreement and who continue to pose a threat to security forces in the present day. Dissonance (also: dissonant heritage): An awareness that some groups’ interpretations will inevitably be ignored in the most prominent heritage narratives (Tunbridge & Ashworth, 1996, 6). DfC: Department for Communities. (Northern Ireland). Founded in 2016, the DfC represents a merging of several functions from the former Departments of Social Development (DSD); Environment (DoE); Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL); and Employment and Learning (DEL). The historic environment, listed buildings and buildings at risk functions of the former DoE have been subsumed into the new department’s remit. DfE: Department for the Economy. (Northern Ireland). The Department with responsibility for Further and Higher Education within Northern Ireland, including the Regional colleges and the SRC. The DfE would therefore be a key source of funding for the author’s scheme is a partnership arrangement for provision of construction training courses could be arranged with the SRC. DoE: Department of the Environment (until 2016) (Northern Ireland). The former department responsible for advising on Listed Building Consents (via the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA)) and maintaining the BHARNI register. These functions are now undertaken by the DfC since 2016.
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DE: Department of Education (Northern Ireland). The Department responsible for primary, post-primary and special education in Northern Ireland as of 2016. DUP: Democratic Unionist Party. Currently the largest party in the NI Assembly and the largest unionist party in Ireland, the DUP, led by its founder Ian Paisley opposed the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and campaigned against its passage. Following the 2006 St Andrews Agreement, the party agreed to enter into a power sharing executive in the Assembly. Currently, the DUP are also involved in supporting the minority Conservative Westminster government and therefore have a considerable influence on the ongoing Brexit negotiations. Eleventh Night: On the night before the Twelfth, large bonfires are lit in majority Protestant areas all over Northern Ireland. Often cause of safety concern due to height and proximity to nearby residential buildings, the bonfires are also a source of contestation as they are often set alight covered in Nationalist symbols and paraphernalia. (see also: Twelfth July) EU: European Union. Trading and extra-national political bloc comprising 28 member states. The UK and RoI acceded to the then European Communities in 1973. The EU is a key guarantor of the post-Good Friday Agreement peace settlement in NI and is a major funder of community reconciliation and infrastructural programmes in the region. Following the decision of the UK to leave the EU in 2016-7, the 303 mile border between NI and the RoI will form the only land border between the EU and the UK. Debates around the status of this border and potential special status for Northern Ireland are unresolved and ongoing and time of writing. FE Colleges: Further Education Colleges. The 6 regional further education colleges in NI provide full and part-time vocational and skills training as well as a variety of higher education courses. Many students join one of the colleges after leaving post-primary education around age 16, and they are, unlike the majority of primary and post-primary schools in the region, fully non-selective on religious grounds. ‘Glass Curtain’: Term used to describe the fact the although Northern Ireland’s rural areas are largely divided along ethno-sectarian lines, they do not manifest these divisions in obvious visible ways (Gébler, 1991) Also referred to as, ‘fuzzy frontiers’ (Donnan, 2006) and ‘rural interfaces’ (Osborne, 2009). Hall Black Douglas: Belfast-based conservation-accredited architecture practice. Former project architects to Armagh Gaol for the 1999 planning application and subsequently special advisor to ACD Council for the TOPG scheme. HED: Historic Environment Division [of the Department for Communities]. HED is a subsidiary body of the DfC and is a statutory consultee for all projects involving works carried out to listed buildings. HED also helps fund traditional building skills training in NI and currently carries some limited skills development at its Moira depot. Heritage: ‘that part of the past which we select in the present for contemporary purposes.’ (Graham et al., 2000, 17) ICCT: International Centre for Conflict Transformation. A key part of the proposed Maze/Long Kesh Masterplan, the ICCT was to become a skills training and educational facility with attached conference centre, and was (controversially) to incorporate in some way the remaining structures left on the Maze site. After an initial proposal was developed for the scheme by a local practice, architect Daniel Libeskind was appointed as Principal Designer in 2012. The project was however abandoned in 2013. IHBC: Institute of Historic Building Conservation. The IHBC is a Registered Charity and the recognised professional institute for conservation-accredited building professionals in the UK and Ireland. Its primary duties include contributing to research in the field, facilitating dialogue between conservation professionals and advancing the professions it covers through public outreach programmes. The current chair of the IHBC in Ireland is Dr Andrew McClelland of Maynooth University. INLA: Irish National Liberation Army (proscribed). The INLA is the paramilitary wing of the Irish Republican Socialist Party and is typically distinguished from other Republican groups by its Marxist/Socialist ideology. On 19 April 1979, and INLA bomb and grenade attack outside HM Prison Armagh killed prison guard Agnes Wallace (40) and injured three colleagues. The INLA declared its ceasefire in 1998 and began to decommission weapons in 2009. 113 deaths are ascribed to INLA activity. Intangible Heritage: ‘The practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage.’ (UNESCO, 2003) Integrated School: Since 1981 with the establishment of Lagan College, the integrated education movement has attempt to persuade governments and parents to support the joint, mixed education of Catholic and Protestant pupils together. IRA: Irish Republican Army (proscribed). For the time period under discussion in this essay, the term can be taken to mean the Provisional IRA. The PIRA were the largest and most active paramilitary organisation for the republican cause during the Troubles. Emerging in 1969 after a split from the Official IRA, the group waged a bombing and shooting campaign resulting in the deaths of 1705 soldiers, civilians and security personnel before a final ceasefire in 1997 and ultimate decommissioning of all weapons in 2005. In 1976, the woman’s Republican wing, Cumann na mBan, was formally integrated into the organisation. Lieu(x) de Mémoire: (Place of Memory) ’[A]ny significant entity, whether material or non-material in nature, which by dint of human will or the work of time has become a symbolic element of the memorial heritage of any community.’ (Nora, 1998, xvii). Listed Building: Typically a building, structure or group of buildings protected by statute due to its outstanding architectural or historical significance. In NI the Department for Communities is responsible for adding and removing buildings from the official listing. For further information on listing classifications see Appendix i. Armagh Gaol was listed in 1975. Loyalist: Term applied to those who seek the preservation of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. In common parlance, ‘loyalist’ is used distinctly from ‘unionist’ to mean those who are prepared to use and support violent means of achieving this goal. Maintained School: School ‘maintained’ by the Catholic church and thereby selective on religious grounds. Typically majority Catholicbackground in terms of student body. Marching Season: Generally April to August. Period where historic societies in Northern Ireland (both Unionist and Nationalist) organise marches and other cultural events. Usually associated with increased community tensions primary focused around the routes certain marches take through contested areas. (see also: Twelfth July)
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MLA: Member of the Legislative Assembly. A elected representative and member of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont. MLK: Maze/Long Kesh. Her Majesty’s Prison Maze was formed in 1976 on the site of the Long Kesh Detention Centre. The prison was the scene of two hunger strikes, in 1980 and 1981, the second of which resulted in the deaths by starvation of 10 republican prisoners. One of those who died was the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone Bobby Sands. These hunger strikes were in protest at the ending of Special Category Status (SCS) by the UK government. The prison was emptied following the amnesty negotiated within the Good Friday Agreement and was closed in 2000. The prison subsequently became the largest redevelopment site in OFMDFM ownership and proposals to transform the site into an International Centre for Conflict Resolution and a National Stadium for football, rugby and gaelic games were brought forward before ultimately collapsing amidst political infighting due to the contested history of the site. The joint name, ‘Maze/Long Kesh’ represents the preference within nationalist communities to refer to the prison as Long Kesh which is more closely associated with internment without trial; whereas unionist communities prefer to call the site Maze as it was following the ending of SCS. Nationalist: Term applied to those who seek unification between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In common parlance, ‘nationalist’ is used distinctly from ‘republican’ to mean those who seek this goal through democratic means and reject violence as a legitimate method. NCCL: (now: Liberty). National Council for Civil Liberties. Advocacy group for civil liberties and human rights. NI: Northern Ireland NIEO: Northern Ireland Executive Office. (see also. OFMDFM)NIO: Northern Ireland Office. The NIO is a ministerial office within the UK government responsible for managing the relationship between the central Westminster government and the devolved NI administration as well as NI affairs on behalf of the wider UK. NISRA: Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Body responsible for the administration and distribution of census data in NI. Northern Ireland Assembly: The devolved government of Northern Ireland put into place following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and restored in 2007 following the 2006 St Andrews Agreement. Due to the collapse of the Assembly and Executive Office in January 2017, the legislature is currently vacant. OFMDFM: Office of First and Deputy First Minister [for Northern Ireland] (renamed Executive Office in 2016). The executive branch of the devolved Northern Irish Government consisting of the First and Deputy First Ministers, who have broadly equal powers and are drawn from the two largest parties in the NI assembly as a tacit guarantee that one each of the positions will be filled by a Nationalist and a Unionist politician. The executive also consists of a cabinet of ministers drawn from all of the major parties in NI. At time of writing the Executive Office is currently vacant as part of the ongoing impasse between Sinn Féin and the DUP regarding the restoration of the NI Assembly. Paramilitary: A non-state armed force, which bases itself on the military structure of national armies, but is not the primary defence force for sovereign countries. PMA: Prisons Memory Archive. A collection of videographic interviews with former prisoners, guards, medical personnel, Open University staff and others recorded within the abandoned Maze and Armagh Prisons. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. PRT: Prince’s Regeneration Trust. The PRT is an advocacy group presided over by the Prince of Wales which seeks to ensure the preservation and conservation of historic buildings in economically deprived areas throughout the UK. The PRT were engaged as partners with the TOPG in their proposals to turn Armagh Gaol into a boutique hotel and were responsible for the organisation of a series of public consultation events in 2009. PSNI: Police Service of Northern Ireland. The successor organisation to the RUC, reformed in 2001 on the recommendation of the Patten report in part to build trust and support in the police within the nationalist community following the Good Friday Agreement. As of the 2007 St Andrews Agreement, the PSNI is accepted as the legitimate policing authority in Northern Ireland by all major parties including Sinn Féin. Republican: Term applied to those who seek unification between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. In common parlance, ‘republican’ is used distinctly from ‘nationalist’ to mean those who are prepared to use and support violent means of achieving this goal. RIBA: Royal Institute of British Architects. The professional body for architects in the UK. The Institute is also responsible for regulating architectural education in the UK and accrediting conservation architects. RIBA also publishes widely on a range of professional, contractual and business-related topics, including the 2013 Plan of Work for project structure and management. RoI: Republic of Ireland RUC: Royal Ulster Constabulary (Reorganised as the PSNI in 2001). The police service active in Northern Ireland during the Troubles until its reformation into the PSNI in 2001. 319 officers and former officers were killed during the violence. 55 deaths are attributed to the RUC, with further rumours and findings of collusion between officers and Loyalist paramilitaries leading to widespread distrust of the organisation from the Nationalist community, who were significantly underrepresented in its ranks. Sangar: Pashto word for defensive walls adopted by the British Army during the period of the Victorian Anglo-Afghan wars. SDLP: Social Democratic and Labour Party. A major nationalist party in Northern Ireland, and the most popular during the Troubles. The SDLP seeks Irish unification and rejects violent means of doing so. The SDLP has lost electoral ground to Sinn Féin following the Good Friday Agreement, and currently does not have any representation in the Westminster parliament. The SDLP has links with the British and Irish Labour Parties. Shared School: A recent attempt to address the lack of uptake in formally integrated schools by proposing increased sharing of lessons, facilities and extra-curricular activities between maintained and controlled schools, which would nevertheless retain their individual identities and religious ethos in an attempt to make the proposal more palatable to parents. SIB: Strategic Investment Board. A public advisory body responsible for the implementation of the executive’s investment strategy and for the delivery of major programmes of public works such as the re-use of Armagh Gaol.
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Sinn Féin: Irish ‘We Ourselves.’ Currently the largest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin draws its historic roots from prior to the 1916 Easter Rising and its refusal to sit in the UK parliament following its gain of 73 of 105 Irish seats in the 1919 UK General Election (A policy the current day party maintains). The modern party is known as being the political arm of the IRA during the Troubles, but has since rejected violence and is currently the second largest party in the NI Assembly after the DUP. SRC: Southern Regional College. The further education college serving the ABC Council region. The SRC’s Armagh Campus is located at the opposite end of the Mall from the former Gaol. Stakeholder: Defined as ‘groups and individuals ‘who can affect and are affected by the achievement of an organisation’s purpose’’ (Freeman 2010, 54; in Flynn 2011, 393). The Good Friday / Belfast Agreement (GFA): The 1998 agreement which is usually seen as the end of the Troubles through the establishment of a devolved Northern Irish government and the stipulation that the province may be unified with the Republic of Ireland in the future if there is majority support for such an action, combined with the retraction of the RoI government’s claim of sovereignty over the whole of Ireland until such times as a border poll is successful. ‘The Province’: Term used to refer to Northern Ireland via its commonly used proxy ‘Ulster’. Ulster is one of the four historic provinces of Ireland. ‘The Troubles’: A period of ethno-nationalist, sectarian violence which occurred in Northern Ireland in the later half of the 20th Century, as well as spilling over on occasion to the rest of the UK, RoI and Europe. Commonly defined as lasting between the period 1968-1998, the conflict claimed over 3500 lives, the majority of whom were civilians. The conflict was fought ostensibly over the constitutional status of NI as part of either the UK or the RoI, although many instances of ‘score settling’ and non-political murders were committed by members of the paramilitary organisations fighting. The violence of the Troubles largely abated following the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the subsequent decommissioning of paramilitary weapons in the first decade of the 2000s, although disaffected splinter groups remain an active, albeit muchreduced threat. TOPG: Trevor Osborne Property Group. Property Developer based in England, awarded preferred bidder status on the Armagh Gaol project in 2008 by ACD Council following their successful refurbishment of the former Oxford Castle and Gaol as a mixed retail and hospitality scheme. The TOPG were awarded planning permission in 2013 for a similar proposal to transform Armagh Gaol into a boutique hotel with additional commercial and residential new build on the site. Progress on this project seems to have stalled as of 2017, however, the submission of an application for Listed Building Consent for the site in August of this year suggests that the project may be again moving forwards. Section 5 of the main essay discusses strategies for repossessing the site from the TOPG in order to facilitate the author’s proposals. TVET: Technical and Vocational Education and Training. Branch of education dedicated to a specific occupation or select range of occupations. In Northern Ireland, the main supplier of vocational courses are the regional Further Education Colleges. Twelfth July: Ulster Protestant celebration to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne (1690). Typically accompanied by bonfires lit the previous evening and by marches by members of the Loyal Orange Order (LOL) and various loyalist marching bands. Often a cause of concern and hostility from nearby nationalist areas, occasionally leading to riots and street violence. UAHS: Ulster Architectural Heritage Society. The primary architectural heritage advocacy group in NI, also responsible for maintaining the BHARNI Register on behalf of the DfC. The UAHS would be a group of particular interest to the author’s proposals due to the publicity and relevant skills they could bring to the project. UDA: Ulster Defence Association (proscribed). The largest loyalist paramilitary group active throughout the Troubles with the primary aim of combating Republicanism in Northern Ireland. Founded in 1971, the group and its subsidiary wind the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) were responsible for 260 deaths during the Troubles. UDR: Ulster Defence Regiment. Former regiment within the British Army founded in 1970 and recruiting exclusively from Northern Ireland, with a significant part-time element. Used as an auxiliary force to the main British Army presence in Northern Ireland, the regiment was excused some of the policing type roles of their comrades due to the risk of inflaming sectarian tensions. 8 known deaths are attributed to the UDR and, like the RUC, rumours of collusion give it a continued divisive legacy within the Nationalist community. The regiment suffered 196 deaths among its ranks before the regiment was amalgamated in 1992. UK: United Kingdom [of Great Britain and Northern Ireland] Ulster: One of the four historic provinces of Ireland. Commonly used as a synonym for Northern Ireland, despite the presence of three of its constituent counties (Cavan, Donegal & Monaghan) in the Republic of Ireland. UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organi[s]ation Unionist: Term applied to those who seek the preservation of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. In common parlance, ‘unionist’ is used distinctly from ‘loyalist’ to mean those who seek this goal through democratic means and reject violence as a legitimate method. UUP: Ulster Unionist Party. The second largest unionist party in the NI Assembly, and the most prominent in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles. Much like the SDLP, the UUP lost parliamentary and assembly seats following the Good Friday Agreement, in this case to the DUP. UVF: Ulster Volunteer Force (proscribed). A loyalist paramilitary group active throughout the Troubles with the primary aim of combating republicanism in Northern Ireland. Emerging in 1966, the group was responsible for 428 deaths before ceasefire in 1994. ‘Zero-Sum’: (Graham & Nash, 2006) Term used to describe the observation that all territory in Northern Ireland is seemingly appropriated by either Catholic or Protestant-majority communities. This typically leads to friction when claims are contested.
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List of Figures:
Front Cover: The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. Fig. 1: Nationalist Protest Outside Armagh Gaol. Women Protest for Political Status in Armagh Gaol. Report byWomen Against Imperialism Fig. 2: Map of Ireland. Author’s Own. Data from Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) Ulster University & Cunningham, G. I. et al. 2013 Fig. 3: Aftermath of killing of Officer Agnes Wallace 1979. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. Fig. 4: Thesis Plan. Base drawing:‘Plan showing improvements to be made at Armagh County Jail’ William Murray 1852 via the Irish Architectural Archive Fig. 5: Armagh Gaol, Aerial. http://www.armaghgaoltours.com/gallery.html [Accessed 08.10.17]
Fig. 6: Burnt out car, 1972. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. Fig. 7: Aerial photograph of Armagh. Patrick Hughes Fig. 8: Aerial photograph of Armagh Gaol c.1994. From Interviewee 17. Fig. 9: Plan of gaol and site photography. Author’s Own [inc. site photography.] Fig. 10: Mairéad Farrell. http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/26514 [accessed 14.03.18] Fig. 11: Orla Brady in Silent Grance. http://www.prisonmovies.net/silent-grace-2001-ireland [accessed 14.03.18] Fig. 12: Armagh Gaol with flags. Author’s Own Fig. 13: Co. Armagh Map. Data from: NISRA & Carr, 2017. Fig. 14: Sangar Golf 40. https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/politics/donovan-wylie-irish-border-before-afterbrexit/[accessed 14.03.18] Fig. 15: Google Earth v7.1.8. 2016. Maze/Long Kesh Prison, 16.08.2016, 54°29’03.42”N 6°06’08.41”E, 36m. [accessed 02.04.17]. Fig. 16: Google Earth v7.1.8. 2016. Maze/Long Kesh Prison, 16.08.2016, 54°29’03.42”N 6°06’08.41”E, 36m. [accessed 02.04.17]. Fig. 17: Jail of Horror. Author’s Own Fig. 18: TOPG Armagh Gaol Proposals Plan Kriterion Conservation Architects. Accessed from: http://epicpublic. planningni.gov.uk/publicaccess/ [Accessed 08.10.17] Fig. 19: TOPG Armagh Gaol Proposals Model Photo Author’s Own
Fig. 20: Anti-Internment demo 1973. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. Fig. 21: Cell at Armagh Gaol - reconstruction. Data from: Prisons Memory Archive et al. Fig. 22: Heritage Diagram. Author’s Own Fig. 23: Armagh & Hinterlands Map. Data from NISRA Fig. 24: Armagh City Map. Data from NISRA Fig. 25: Armagh City Map - Point Matrix. Data from NISRA Fig. 26: Contestation Diagram 1. Data from Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast. Belfast: CRC, 2010. Fig. 27: Contestation Diagram 2. Ibid
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Fig. 28: Contestation Diagram 3. Ibid Fig. 29: Contestation Diagram 4. Ibid Fig. 30: Contestation Diagram 5. Ibid Fig. 31: Contestation Diagram 6. Ibid Fig. 32: Contestation Diagram 7. Ibid Fig. 33: Contestation Diagram 8. Ibid Fig. 34: Map of the Troubles in Armagh. Data from: Interview 27 & Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN) Ulster University Fig. 35: Map of the 12th July in Armagh. Author’s Own Fig. 36: Orange March. https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/twelfth-photos-orange-order-march-belfast-bonfires-around-northernireland-1570267 [accessed 14.03.18] Fig. 37: Enniskillen Bomb. http://www.irishnews.com/news/northernirelandnews/2015/12/31/news/poppy-dayenniskillen-bomb-prompted-special-summit-367152/ [accessed 14.03.18] Fig. 38: Enniskillen Cenotaph. http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/victims/memorials/static/photos/1308.html [accessed 14.03.18]
Fig. 39: Protesters, Ogle St. 1972. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. Fig. 40: Strule Masterplan - Site Plan. Accessed from: http://epicpublic.planningni.gov.uk/publicaccess/ [Accessed 14.03.18] Fig. 41: GPS Map of Armagh Students. Data from Roulston, S. &Young, O.“GPS Tracking of Some Northern Ireland Students – Patterns of Shared and Separated Space: DividedWe Stand?” International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 22, no. 3 (2013): 241-258. Fig. 42: Armagh Bonfire Materials. Author’s Own Fig. 43: Bonfire Belfast. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-40567967 [accessed: 14.03.18] Fig. 44:Young People’s Significant Places Map. Author’s Own
Fig. 45: Peace March, 1976. The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission. Fig. 46: GMIT Letterfrack. http://odonnell-tuomey.ie/portfolio-item/furniture-college/ [accessed 14.03.18] Fig. 47: GMIT Letterfrack Axo. Author’s Own Fig. 48: Initial Proposal - Drawing 1. Author’s Own Fig. 49: Initial Proposal - Drawing 2. Author’s Own Fig. 50: Initial Proposal - Drawing 3. Author’s Own
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Bibliography As mentioned previously, this thesis, due to its broad focus on a range of topics viewed through the lens of contested heritage does not contain a standalone literature review. This bibliography is therefore subdivided by chapter in order to provide an overview of texts consulted and referenced in the work. Where texts have been referenced in multiple chapters, the first instance is used for categorisation, unless that text is also critical to the understanding of a subsequent chapter.
Preamble & Introduction Aretxaga, B. Shattering Silence:Women, Nationalism and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Dowler, L. “’And They Think I’m Just a Nice Old Lady’ Women and War in Belfast, Northern Ireland.” Gender, Place & Culture 5, no. 2 (1998): 159-176. Graham, B. & McDowell, S. “Meaning in the Maze: the heritage of Long Kesh.” Cultural Geographies, 14(3) (2007): 343-368. Graham, B., and P. Howard. (eds.) “Introduction: Heritage and Identity.” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritageand Identity, 1-16. Farnham: Ashgate, 2008. Hewitt, J. ‘Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto.’ In Collected Poems, (ed.) Frank Ormsby. Belfast: Blackstaff, 1991. McKittrick, D., & McVea, D. Making Sense of the Troubles: A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict. London: Penguin Books, 2012. Smith, L. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge, 2006. Sternfeld, N. Memorial Sites as Contact Zones: Cultures of Memory in a Shared/Divided Present [online resource]. (Trans.) Aileen Derieg. European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics. 2011.
Chapter 1 Adie, K. Corsets to Camouflage:Women andWar. London: Cornet Books, 2003. Aguiar, L. “Back to those walls: The women’s memory of the Maze and Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland,” Memory Studies 2015, Vol. 8(2): 227-241. Anson, C. “Planning for Peace: The Role of Tourism in the Aftermath of Violence” in Journal of Travel Research, Vol: 38 issue:1 (1999): 57-61. Aretxaga, B. Shattering Silence:Women, Nationalism and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Armagh City and District Council with Hall Black Douglas and Alistair Coey Architects. Armagh Gaol: A New Future - A Planning Statement. Armagh: ACD Council, 1999. Barsalou, J. & Baxter, V. The Urge to Remember:The Role of Memorials in Social Reconstruction and Transitional Justice. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2007. Bell, J., Jarman, N. & Harvey, B. Beyond Belfast. Belfast: CRC, 2010. Bender, J. Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the Architecture of the Mind in Eighteen Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Bevan, R. The Destruction of Memory: Architecture atWar, 2nd ed. London: Reakton Books, 2016. Brearton, F. “Poetry and Forgetting: On Hewitt’s ‘Neither and Elegy nor a Manifesto’.” The Poetry Ireland Review, no. 104 (2011): 81-87. Bryan, D. “Parades, Flags, Carnivals and Riots: Public Space, Contestation and Transformation in Northern Ireland” in Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 4, 11. (2015): 565-573. Calverio, P. “Spatialities of Exception.” In Space and the Memories ofViolence: Landscapes of erasure, disappearance and exception.’ Schindel, E. & Colombo, P. (eds.), 205-218. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Carr, G. “Land and Power: Making a New Map of Ireland’s Border.” Cartographica:The International Journal for Geographic Information and Geovisualization 52, no. 3 (2017): 251-262. Carr, G. ”The Map of Watchful Architecture.” EchoGéo, 01 December 2011. Carr, G. The Rule of the Land:Walking Ireland’s Border. London: Faber and Faber, 2017. Cochrane, F. “The Paradox of Conflict Tourism: The Commodification of War or Conflict Transformation” in Practice, 22 Brown Journal ofWorld Affairs. 51, 70 (2015): 51-69. Coomasaru, M. Handmaidens to Feminist Fists: Unruly Arms and Maeve Murphy’s Silent Grace (2001)Paper presented at the Irish Prisons Conference, Belfast 26.10.17. Corcoran, M. Out of Order:The political imprisonment of women in Northern Ireland 1972-1998. Milton: Willan, 2006. D’Arcy, M. Tell Them Everything A Sojourn in the Prison of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Ard Macha (Armagh). London: Pluto, 1981. Dawson, G. Making Peace with the Past? Memory, trauma and the Irish Troubles. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007. Dowler, L. ’Till death do us part: masculinity, friendship and nationalism in Belfast, Northern Ireland’, “Environment and planning D: society and space” 19 (2001): 53-71.
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Dowler, L. “’And They Think I’m Just a Nice Old Lady’ Women and War in Belfast, Northern Ireland.” Gender, Place & Culture 5, no. 2 (1998): 159-176. Edwards, A. The Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Banner 1969-2007. Oxford: Osprey, 2011. Faul, D. Black February, Armagh Prison: BeatingWomen in Prison. Northern Ireland: 1980. Flynn, M. K. “Decision-making and Contested Heritage in Northern Ireland: The Former Maze Prison/Long Kesh”, Irish Political Studies, 2011, 26(3): 383-401. Foote, K. Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes ofViolence and Tragedy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish. London: Harmondsworth, 1979. Galford, G. & Gould Peek, G. “Locked up in lockdown: historic prisons and asylums as alternative housing with adaptive re-use challenges”, “Housing and Society” 2015, 42(1) (2015): 1-13. Graham, B. & McDowell, S. “Meaning in the Maze: the heritage of Long Kesh” Cultural Geographies, 2007 14(3): 343-368. 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Pickett, L. “Integrated Schools in Northern Ireland: Education for Peace and Reconciliation”, Childhood Education, 84:6, (2008) 351-356. Popov, A. & Déak, D. “Making sense of the ‘difficult’ past: transmission of political heritage and memory-work among young people across Europe” The Sociological Review, 63 (2015): 36-52. Roulston, S. & Young, O. “GPS Tracking of Some Northern Ireland Students – Patterns of Shared and Separated Space: Divided We Stand?” International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education 22, no. 3 (2013): 241-258. Schalliol, D. “Bonfires of Belfast.” Contexts 15, no. 3 (2016): 50-59. Smyth, M. The Impact of Political Conflict on Children in Northern Ireland. Belfast: ICR, 2004. Sutton, M. Bear in Mind These Dead - : An Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland, 1969-1993. Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1994. Trew, K. “Children and Socio-Cultural Divisions in Northern Ireland.” in Journal of Social Issues 60 (3) (2004): 507-522. Tweed, C. Sutherland, M., & Teller, J. “Identifying the Relations between Historical Areas and Perceived Values: Introduction to Issues and Indicators.” SUIT Project Report on Task 2.1a (2002). UNESCO Education for Livelihoods and Civic Participation in Post-Conflict Countries: Conceptualizing a Holistic Approach to TVET Planning and Programming in Sub-Saharan Africa. Bonn: UNESCO-UNEVOC, 2007. Veal, K. “Once were warriors: Reintegrating ex-combatants” in Supplement to UNESCO-UNEVOC Bulletin April 2008 / No. 14.
Chapter 4 Ahonen, S. “History Education in Post-conflict Societies.” Historical Encounters: A Journal of Historical Consciousness 1, no. 1 (2014): 75-87. Askins, K. & Pain, R. “Contact Zones: Participation, Materiality, and the Messiness of Interaction.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29, no. 5 (2011): 803-21. Baiesi, N., Gigli, M. Monicelli, E. & Pellizzoli, R. “Places of Memory as a Tool for Education: The “Peace in Four Voices Summer Camps” at Monte Sole.” The Public Historian 30, no. 1 (2008): 27-37. Bassanelli, M. Gravano, V. Grechi, G. Postiglione, G. (eds.) BEYOND Memorialisation Design for Conflict Heritage. Milan: Politecnico di Milano, 2014. Bloomfield, K. We will remember them. Belfast: Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner, 1998. Bollens, S. A. “Intervening in Politically Turbulent Cities: Spaces, Buildings, and Boundaries”, Journal of Urban Technology, 16:2-3, (2009): 79107. Božic Marojevic, M. “Sites of Conscience as Guardians of the Collective Memory.” Kultura (Skopje) 4, no. 5 (2014): 105-14. Canetti, E. Crowds and Power. London, Penguin, 1960. Clifford, C. Routes,Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. London: Harvard University Press, 1997. Crooke, E. “Dealing with the past: Museums and heritage in Northern Ireland and Cape Town, South Africa”, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 11:2, (2005): 131-142. Department of Health and Children. Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, 2009 Implementation Plan. Dublin: The Stationery Office. 2009. Donnan, H. Fuzzy Frontiers:The Rural Interface in South Armagh. Mapping Frontiers, Plotting Pathways Working Paper No.26. 2006. Fisher, K. Linking Pedagogy and Space. Victoria, AU: Department of Education and Training, 2005. Graham, B. & Nash, C. “A shared future: Territoriality, pluralism and public policy in Northern Ireland.” Political Geography, 25(3), (2006): 343-368. Gunder, M. “Passionate Planning for the Others’ Desire: An Agonistic Response to the Dark Side of Planning.” Progress in Planning 60 (3) (2003): 235–319. Hamill, C. Pilot Thesis. Unpublished, 2017. Hamill, C. Project Implementation Strategy. Unpublished, 2017. Hatton, B. “Travails with an Agonism Aunt: ‘How Is Architecture Political?’ with Chantal Mouffe, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Reinhold Martin, Ines Wiezman and Sarah Whiting.” Architectural Research Quarterly, Vol.19(1), (2015): 3-17 International Architectural Exhibition. Transformation of an Institution:The Furniture College, Letterfrack. Dublin: O’Donnell Tuomey Architects, 2004. Jones, C. “Frames of Meaning:Young people, historical consciousness and challenging history at museums and historic sites.” In Challenging History in the Museum: International Perspectives. Jenny Kidd, Sam Cairns, Alex Drago, Amy Ryall & Miranda Stearn (eds.) 223-232. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014. Lupo, E. & Postiglione, G. “Temporary Active - Actions as Urban re-appropriation strategies” Proceedings of the Conference held at the nd th University of Brighton 2 to 4 July 2009. Mouffe, C. “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism”, Social Research, 66(3). (1999): 745-758. Mouffe, C. “Which Kind of Public Space for a Democratic Habitus?” In Habitus: A sense of place. Jean Hilier & Emma Rooksby (eds.) 93-100. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002. Mouffe, C. On the Political.Thinking in Action. London: New York: Routledge, 2005.
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Osborne, P. Interfaces in Rural Areas: A Scoping Paper for the Community Relations Council and Rural Community Network. Belfast: Rubicon Consulting, 2009. Pløger, J. “Strife: Urban Planning and Agonism.” Planning Theory 3, no. 1 (2004): 71–92. Pullan, W. “A One-sided Wall.” Index on Censorship 33, no. 3 (2004) 78-82. Rothberg, M. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Ševcenko, L. “Sites of Conscience: A New Approach to Memory Conflicts.” Museum International 62, no. 1-2 (2010): 21-27. Ševcenko, L. “Sites of Conscience: Reimagining Reparations” in Change Over Time 1, no. 1 (2011): 6-33. Ševcenko, L. & Russell-Ciardi, M. “Sites of Conscience: Opening Historic Sites for Civic Dialogue - Foreword.” Public Historian 30, no. 1 (2008): 9-15. Stelfox, D. “Conservation in Practice .” In A Future for Northern Ireland’s Built Heritage, (eds.) Sue Christie. Belfast: Northern Ireland Environment Link (NIEL), 2009. Sternfeld, N. Memorial Sites as Contact Zones: Cultures of Memory in a Shared/Divided Present [online resource]. (Trans.) Aileen Derieg. European Institute for Progressive Cultural Politics. 2011. Tschumi, B. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. United Nations. Reconciliation afterViolent Conflict: A Handbook. Stockholm: UN, 2013.
News Articles Belfast Evening Telegraph. “Fee Hanged. Execution of the Clones Murderer. Culprit’s Last Moments. Scenes and Incidents at Armagh Jail.” December 22 1904. Belfast Telegraph. “Maze peace centre: Peter Robinson’s letter to DUP members.” August 15 2013. Campbell, C. “£500,000 fund for Northern Ireland’s historic buildings.” The Detail. September 15 2016. http://www.thedetail.tv/ articles/500-000-fund-for-northern-ireland-s-historic-buildingsC ampbell, C. “Flaws exposed in plan to remove Northern Ireland’s peace walls.” The Detail. May 22 2017.Doyle, S. “Omagh shared education school campus to cost £60m extra.” The Irish News December 05 2016. McCartney, J. “It’s time for the DUP to rise above sectarianism.” The Spectator. July 08 2017. McHugh, M. “Stormont in crisis: Issues polarising the DUP and Sinn Féin.” The Irish News. 16 January, 2017.
Websites Weir, P. Oral Answers to Questions — Education – in the Northern Ireland Assembly at 2:45 pm on 12th September 2016. https://www. theyworkforyou.com/ni/?id=2016-09-12.8.2 [accessed 08.03.18] Prisons Memory Archive et al. http://prisonsmemoryarchive.com/armagh-stories/ [accessed 16.12.17]
Films Murphy, M. Silent Grace. Directed by Maeve Murphy. Ireland: Follower Productions, 2001. Prisons Memory Archive et al. Armagh Stories:Voices from the Gaol. Directed by Cahal McLaughlin. (Belfast: QUB Film School, 2015)
.110
.111
Appendix i: Measures of Segregation in Armagh
Fig. i: Ranking of Small Area groupings in Armagh by disparity between Catholic and Protestant daytime population (see Table i.). Note that 9 out of 10 of the most segregated SAs are majority Catholic and grouped towards the west of the city centre.
Index of Dissimilarity (D)
D=
Small Area (SA)
n
1∑ 2 i=1
Total daytime population
(
ci pi CT - PT
Religion or religion brought up in: Catholic
Where:
)
n = number of Small Areas (SA) ci = number of Catholics in SA i CT = total number of Catholics in Armagh Pi = number of Protestants in SA i PT = total number of Protestants in Armagh
Religion or religion % Catholic brought up in: Protestant and Other Christian
% Protestant
Diff. %C - %P Absol. Value
Ci/CT
((Ci/CT) - (Pi/PT))
Pi/PT
Absol. Value
N00000445 (Observatory ward)
435
195
195
45
45
0
0.02
0.03
0.01
N00000374 (Demesne ward)
226
109
107
48
47
1
0.01
0.02
0.01
N00000379 (Demesne ward)
175
82
86
47
49
2
0.01
0.01
0.01
N00000444 (Observatory ward)
3019
1374
1483
46
49
4
0.11
0.21
0.10
N00000446 (Observatory ward)
132
68
60
52
45
6
0.01
0.01
0.00
N00000375 (Demesne ward)
761
332
400
44
53
9
0.03
0.06
0.03
N00000470 (The Mall ward)
146
61
75
42
51
10
0.00
0.01
0.01
N00000376 (Demesne ward)
177
79
96
45
54
10
0.01
0.01
0.01
N00000443 (Observatory ward)
185
74
102
40
55
15
0.01
0.01
0.01
N00000472 (The Mall ward) N00000359 (Callan Bridge ward)
129
46
74
36
57
22
0.00
0.01
0.01
1879
1102
692
59
37
22
0.09
0.10
0.01
N00000377 (Demesne ward)
148
56
89
38
60
22
0.00
0.01
0.01
N00000409 (Killeen ward)
797
289
471
36
59
23
0.02
0.07
0.04
N00000378 (Demesne ward)
181
110
67
61
37
24
0.01
0.01
0.00
N00000373 (Demesne ward)
201
123
67
61
33
28
0.01
0.01
0.00
N00000447 (Observatory ward)
202
67
130
33
64
31
0.01
0.02
0.01
N00000372 (Demesne ward)
176
110
55
63
31
31
0.01
0.01
0.00
N00000448 (Observatory ward)
303
196
90
65
30
35
0.02
0.01
0.00
N00000474 (The Mall ward)
1680
473
1108
28
66
38
0.04
0.16
0.12
N00000344 (Abbey Park ward)
1466
1063
372
73
25
47
0.08
0.05
0.03
N00000387 (Downs ward)
744
543
183
73
25
48
0.04
0.03
0.02
N00000348 (Abbey Park ward)
319
250
67
78
21
57
0.02
0.01
0.01
N00000475 (The Mall ward)
149
29
117
19
79
59
0.00
0.02
0.01
N00000473 (The Mall ward)
124
20
99
16
80
64
0.00
0.01
0.01
N00000471 (The Mall ward)
201
23
167
11
83
72
0.00
0.02
0.02
N00000349 (Abbey Park ward)
194
164
17
85
9
76
0.01
0.00
0.01
N00000386 (Downs ward)
223
191
21
86
9
76
0.01
0.00
0.01
N00000388 (Downs ward)
1453
1293
120
89
8
81
0.10
0.02
0.08
N00000347 (Abbey Park ward)
1076
961
89
89
8
81
0.08
0.01
0.06
N00000345 (Abbey Park ward)
283
256
24
90
8
82
0.02
0.00
0.02
N00000346 (Abbey Park ward)
322
290
25
90
8
82
0.02
0.00
0.02
N00000357 (Callan Bridge ward)
2275
2044
164
90
7
83
0.16
0.02
0.14
N00000476 (The Mall ward)
132
8
120
6
91
85
0.00
0.02
0.02
N00000358 (Callan Bridge ward)
250
228
13
91
5
86
0.02
0.00
0.02
N00000389 (Downs ward)
231
215
12
93
5
88
0.02
0.00
0.02
N00000356 (Callan Bridge ward)
224
210
6
94
3
91
0.02
0.00
0.02
20618
12734
7063
62
34
Total
0.90 x 0.5 D=
Table i: Index of Dissimilarity Calculations
0.45
D = 0.45 (45)
This means that, in Armagh, 45% of Protestants or Catholics would need to relocate in order to achieve an even population distribution. Poole & Doherty (1996: 240) calculated this percentage based on 1981 data as being greater than 66.6% and thus there appears to have been some improvement in the situation in the intervening years. Nonetheless, the value of the index is significant and cause for concern.
1
Bc =
∑
( )( ) ( )( ) nic NC
nip ni
Index of Isolation (B) for majority grouping
BP =
∑
nip NP
nic ni
Index of Isolation (B) for minority grouping
Where: nic = number of Catholics in SA nip = number of Protestants in SA NC = total number of Catholics in Armagh NP = number of Protestants in SA i ni = total number of SA
.114
Index of Isolation (B) A measure of the probability that a member of one group will meet or interact with a member of another
Small Area (SA)
Total daytime population
Religion or religion brought up in: Catholic
Religion or religion nic / Nc brought up in: Protestant and Other Christian
nip / ni
(nic / Nc)*(nip / ni)
nip / Np
nic / ni
(nip / Np)*(nic / ni)
N00000445 (Observatory ward)
435
195
195
0.02
0.45
0.007
0.03
0.45
0.012
N00000374 (Demesne ward)
226
109
107
0.01
0.47
0.004
0.02
0.48
0.007
N00000379 (Demesne ward)
175
82
86
0.01
0.49
0.003
0.01
0.47
0.006
N00000444 (Observatory ward)
3019
1374
1483
0.11
0.49
0.053
0.21
0.46
0.096
N00000446 (Observatory ward)
132
68
60
0.01
0.45
0.002
0.01
0.52
0.004
N00000375 (Demesne ward)
761
332
400
0.03
0.53
0.014
0.06
0.44
0.025
N00000470 (The Mall ward)
146
61
75
0.00
0.51
0.002
0.01
0.42
0.004
N00000376 (Demesne ward)
177
79
96
0.01
0.54
0.003
0.01
0.45
0.006
N00000443 (Observatory ward)
185
74
102
0.01
0.55
0.003
0.01
0.40
0.006
N00000472 (The Mall ward)
129
46
74
0.00
0.57
0.002
0.01
0.36
0.004
1879
1102
692
0.09
0.37
0.032
0.10
0.59
0.057
N00000377 (Demesne ward)
148
56
89
0.00
0.60
0.003
0.01
0.38
0.005
N00000409 (Killeen ward)
797
289
471
0.02
0.59
0.013
0.07
0.36
0.024
N00000378 (Demesne ward)
181
110
67
0.01
0.37
0.003
0.01
0.61
0.006
N00000373 (Demesne ward)
201
123
67
0.01
0.33
0.003
0.01
0.61
0.006
N00000447 (Observatory ward)
202
67
130
0.01
0.64
0.003
0.02
0.33
0.006
N00000372 (Demesne ward)
176
110
55
0.01
0.31
0.003
0.01
0.63
0.005
N00000448 (Observatory ward)
303
196
90
0.02
0.30
0.005
0.01
0.65
0.008
N00000474 (The Mall ward)
1680
473
1108
0.04
0.66
0.024
0.16
0.28
0.044
N00000344 (Abbey Park ward)
1466
1063
372
0.08
0.25
0.021
0.05
0.73
0.038
N00000387 (Downs ward)
744
543
183
0.04
0.25
0.010
0.03
0.73
0.019
N00000348 (Abbey Park ward)
319
250
67
0.02
0.21
0.004
0.01
0.78
0.007
N00000475 (The Mall ward)
149
29
117
0.00
0.79
0.002
0.02
0.19
0.003
N00000473 (The Mall ward)
124
20
99
0.00
0.80
0.001
0.01
0.16
0.002
N00000471 (The Mall ward)
201
23
167
0.00
0.83
0.002
0.02
0.11
0.003
N00000349 (Abbey Park ward)
194
164
17
0.01
0.09
0.001
0.00
0.85
0.002
N00000359 (Callan Bridge ward)
N00000386 (Downs ward)
223
191
21
0.01
0.09
0.001
0.00
0.86
0.003
N00000388 (Downs ward)
1453
1293
120
0.10
0.08
0.008
0.02
0.89
0.015
N00000347 (Abbey Park ward)
1076
961
89
0.08
0.08
0.006
0.01
0.89
0.011
N00000345 (Abbey Park ward)
283
256
24
0.02
0.08
0.002
0.00
0.90
0.003
N00000346 (Abbey Park ward)
322
290
25
0.02
0.08
0.002
0.00
0.90
0.003
N00000357 (Callan Bridge ward)
2275
2044
164
0.16
0.07
0.012
0.02
0.90
0.021
N00000476 (The Mall ward)
132
8
120
0.00
0.91
0.001
0.02
0.06
0.001
N00000358 (Callan Bridge ward)
250
228
13
0.02
0.05
0.001
0.00
0.91
0.002
N00000389 (Downs ward)
231
215
12
0.02
0.05
0.001
0.00
0.93
0.002
N00000356 (Callan Bridge ward)
224
210
6
0.02
0.03
0.000
0.00
0.94
0.001
20618
12734
7063
Bc
0.259
BP
0.467
Total
Table ii: Index of Isolation Calculations
BP = 0.26
BP = 0.47
Therefore, it can be said that, in Armagh, in a random encounter, a Catholic has a 26% chance of the other person being a Protestant, whereas for a Protestant, there is a 47% chance that someone met in a random encounter will be Catholic.
1 .115
Appendix ii: ArmaghWorkshop 14.10.17
Catholic
18
Protestant
19
4
Other / None20
3
3 1
None
21 Armagh Local? 22
1 11
Yes No Brought Up Religion In
2
Part 1: Breakdown of Participants
Catholic Transport to FE College Protestant
6
(driver) OtherCar / None
3
1. Age:
4 3
3
BusLocal? Armagh Walk
Yes
6
4
Car (passenger)
3
11
No
2
4
Free time spent in Armagh Transport to FE All College
1
Most Car (driver)
3
2
Some Car (passenger)
4
6
Bus Little
3
3
Walk None
3
1
2. Religion Brought Up in:
2
0
Free time spent in Armagh Religion Brought Up In
Catholic
All
1
Most
2
Some
6
Little
3
Protestant
1
None
18
Car15% (driver)
Transport to FE College
23%
6
16 17 Armagh Local?
Other / None
19 Yes Age of Participant
Car (passenger)
Religion Brought Up In
20 No
Bus
Catholic
21
22
Walk Protestant
Other / None
46%
6
3 . Armagh Local?: 4 Religion31% Brought Up In
Catholic
Protestant
23% Armagh Local? 23% 85%
Other / None
22
No
4
23% 6
2
Religion Brought Up In
Protestant 46% Other / None
Catholic
23%
2
31% 15%
23%
31%
4
0
16
17
18
46% 20
19
6
21
22
Age of Participant
0
23%
31%
21
Yes
4. Method2 of Transport to College:
85%
22
46%
4 Transport to FE College
Car (driver)
Car (passenger)
Bus
Walk
31% 0
16
17
18
19
20
21
6
22
Age of Participant
2 Walk
23%
6 0
23%
4
5. Free time spent in Armagh:
Transport All to FE CollegeMost Car (driver) Some Car (passenger) Little
Walk None 6
23%
4
Bus
31%
23%
23%
4
2
0
23% All
Most
31% Some
2
0
All
Most
Some
Little
None
2 Little
None
N.B. That all participants were male and that the potential problem of lack of female presence in TVET is a key consideration for the ongoing design project.
0
All
Most
Some
Little
None
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Armagh Gaol
Gough Barracks
St Patrick’s Cathedral (RC)
Armagh County Courthouse
Archbishop’s Palace
Armagh Planetarium
Marketplace Theatre
St Patrick’s Cathedral (CoI)
Armagh County Museum
Armagh Observatory
The Mall
Armagh City Hotel
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 4 4 4 4 4 4 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 4 1
1
Actual Age of Sites - Ranked:
6
3
1 1 1 1 1 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3
2
2 2 2 2 2
1
1 1 1 1 1
8
Listed Status:
183 4
8 8 8 8 8 8
180 9
4
c.1 803
178 9
c.1 780
177 0
c.1 268
1
1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1
1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 1
A
1
9 9 9 9 9 9
9
1
2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1
1
1 1 1 1 1
i. Average Age Ranking by Group Response 2
B2
Not Listed
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
1 1 11
B+
200 6
3
200 2
3
196 5
3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 6 6 6 6 6 6
3
187 4
7
183 8
Part 2: Photo Elicitation
7 7 7 7 7 7
11 11 11 11 11
ii. Average Estimate of ‘Official Significance’ 7
7 7 7 7 7 7
1
1 1 1 1 1 1
1
1 1 1 1 1 1
iii. Q.Which of these places do you think would be most difficult to redevelop?
1 11 3
2
1
1
3
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Q6.Which of these places do you visit regularly?
2
2
3
3
3
3
5
1
1
4
1
1
4
3
1
1
Q7.Which of these places have you visited in the past 12 months?
1
6
Q8.Which of these places have you never visited?
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
Q9.Which of those places mentioned in Q8 are you most curious to see inside?
1
2
1
1
Q11.Which (if any) of the places mentioned in Q8 would you be more likely to visit if they changed their current levels of public access?
7
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1
1
Part 3: Young People’s Heritages
Map of Respondants’ Significant Places Produced 17.10.17
Part 1 - About you: 1.) Age: ______________________________ 2.) Do you come from: a) b) c)
A Catholic religious background? A Protestant religious background? Other? (please specify)_______________________________________
3.) Are you a resident of Armagh town or its surrounding area? Yes / No ( circle as appropriate) 4.) What method do you use to travel to college? Car (drive) / Car (passenger) / Bus / Walk / Cycle / Other (please specify)_______________________________________ 5.) How much of your social time outside of education or work would you typically spend in Armagh Town? All / Most / Some / Little / None (circle as appropriate)
We would like to carry out an audio recording of this workshop to aid the notetaking process. Do you consent to this recording taking place? N.B. Audio only will be recorded and no photography or video taken. All responses and participants will remain anonymous. Yes
Addendum: Sample Questionnaire
No
Part 2 - Your heritage Please tick the coloured boxes related to the cards in front of you as appropriate 6.) Which (if any) of the places in front of you do you visit regularly?
7.) Which of the places in front of you have you visited in the last 12 months?
8.) Which of the places in front of you have you never visited?
9.) Which of the places you mentioned in Q.8 are you most curious to see inside?
10.) Can you explain your answer to Q.9? ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ 11.) Which (if any) of the places you mentioned in Q.8 would you be more likely to visit if they changed their current use or level of public access?
12.) Can you suggest a possible re-use option for your answers to Q.11? ___________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________
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Photo Credit:The Armagh Guardian via Paul Dickinson. Used with permission.