Preserving the Rose

PRESERVING THE ROSE Stephen Lovejoy

PRESERVING THE ROSE Regulated Remembrance within English Attitudes Towards Ruins and the Preservation of Architecture

MArch Dissertation Stephen Lovejoy 13157134

This dissertation is an exploration into the relationship that England has with its imperial and industrial past and how this is reflected within attitudes regarding the historic built environment. Calling upon theorists across a range of fields, the dissertation will analyse prevailing attitudes towards memory, architecture and the past in England. The dissertation will seek to understand the establishment of ‘heritage’ and the reasons behind the preservation of historic architecture. The formation of heritage institutions will be placed in its wider historic context and the relationships between heritage, history and national identity will be explored. The dissertation will assess the effects of the heritagisation of architecture and compare these effects with the potentials offered by other alternatives.

No portion of the work referred to in this dissertation has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.

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Contents p6 - Introduction p8 - Preserving England’s ‘Heritage’ This chapter will charter the establishment in England of institutions dedicated to preventing certain buildings falling into ruination or being alerted physically in any way. The chapter will explore potential reasons that led to the creation of these institutions and examine the principles on which the institutions operate. p17 - Heritage Tourism: The Packaging of ‘Englishness’ This chapter will examine the buildings that are chosen by heritage institutions for preservation and the means by which they are conserved. The chapter will critique the methods of heritage tourism, and examine the use of heritage buildings to reinforce particular interpretations of English history in order to strengthen a national consumable identity. The chapter will assess the way that architecture is displayed and presented when used as a heritage site. p31 - Nostalgic Recall: The Imperfection of Remembrance This chapter will examine attitudes towards memory and time within England as a Western Christian culture, and the implications this has on the perception of ruination. The chapter will analyse the presence and opinion of nostalgia within England, assess the relationship between the physical realm and recollection and explore Western philosophies of remembrance. p40 - Ruins: Use and Re-Use The final chapter will analyse prevailing attitudes towards ruins within England.

The chapter will explore the potentials offered by ruins and compare the process of remembrance within ruins to that of heritage sites. The chapter will classify various approaches to ruins and explore the implications of each approach. p52 - Conclusion p54 - Image References p56 - Bibliography p62 - Appendix Transcript of interview with Dr. Tim Edensor

Introduction In some strange way to be English is, often, to be a member of the cult of the dead, or, at the very least, a member of a cult of ruin Ian Baucom, Out of Place: Englishness, Empire, and the Locations of Identity (1987: 43) In 1982, the writer Anthony Sampson attributed the post-war economic decline of Britain to a tendency for nostalgic reflection on the former might of the British Empire and the bravery and heroism of the Second World War. England has never returned to the economic strength or global influence that it had attained during its imperial days. The sun has long since set on the empire that once circumvented the globe. Though the birthplace of the industrial revolution and once titled ‘the workshop of the world’ the country is now commonly considered post-industrial.

This fall in political, economic and industrial power could be perceived as providing England with a complicated relationship to its past, one tinged with nostalgia and a sense of loss and longing. Romantic accounts of former versions of England can be seen from literature to televised period dramas. But a return to the past is impossible, ‘we are condemned to live perpetually in the present’(Hewinson, 1987: 43).

This raises the debate of how we should treat the grand architecture of our former imperial and industrial dominion? The architectural design of these structures is born of social conditions that have long since passed. Do we preserve them as trophies of former English might? English Heritage assert that the celebration of our historic heritage and the preservation of the architecture we have inherited is essential for developing a consciousness of the past, as well as making a ‘vital contribution to quality of life’ (2011: 3) and providing essential revenue through the tourism trade. But Hewinson (1987) and Walsh (1992) argue that such behaviour only enhances our romanticised vision of the past, resulting in a loss of esteem and reducing our ability to act in the present.

Perhaps then we should allow them to fall into ruin? Hell and Schonle (2010)

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highlight the inherent ambiguity involved in established at what point a work of architecture becomes a ruin. They question if a building could be considered a ruin the moment its social or practical function is lost. In this regard, all architecture of the imperial and industrial past would be seen as ruins. Discussing ruination with Dr Tim Edensor (see appendix 1, 2014), geographer and author of Industrial Ruins, he stated that ‘every single building in the world, is on its way to becoming a ruin.

And what stops it becoming a ruin is endless maintenance and upkeep and care and intervention’. As soon as that maintenance stops, the process of ruination begins.

Boym (2001) describes how the romantic nostalgics viewed ruins as expressive of loss. Despite this, they did not seek reconciliation with the objects of their longing. Instead, gazing on ruins allowed for the potential of reflecting on longing itself and the chance of a heightened self-awareness.

For Edensor (2005), the potential of ruins lies in the lack of regulation within the spaces. In contrast to heritage sites, where visitors are provided with historical information, ruins allow individuals to craft their own version of the past, fusing the historic traces with individual experiences and memories. This allows for a more intimate encounter with the past, where the visitor is a participant in the unfolding history rather than an observer toward a lost and irredeemable past.

Our relationship to the past has long been a highly discussed topic. This dissertation will call upon research and theories in the fields of philosophy, psychology, sociology, historiography and geography, as well as the charters and theories developed by the architects, historians and archaeologists involved in heritage preservation, to develop an understanding of how English attitudes towards preservation and ruination affect our perception of the past.

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Preserving England’s ‘Heritage’ We like to think of our great cultural institutions as somehow neutral, mere facilities for the presentation of individual acts of creation, yet they profoundly affect our perception of what is judged to be history or art.

– Robert Hewinson, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (1987: 9) It is important to note the difference between preservation and conservation. Conservation takes into account the wider social context of a building or site, whilst preservation is exclusively interested in the maintenance of the physical form. Preservationism has existed in various forms since the middle-ages, but the type of heritage preservation that we are familiar with today started in the 19th century, before truly taking off in the 20th century (Walsh,1992: 70). Walsh (ibid: 75) highlighted in 1992 that of the preservation-related groups that existed in England at that time, nearly half were established after 1970.

England during the 20th century was a place of great social change. The dissolution of the empire at the end of the Second World War had led to a greatly weakened economic position and the foundation of the welfare state. Priority was put on satisfying physical needs, resulting in a large amount of social housing. The prevailing attitude was that of ‘building more and more houses for less and less money’ (Stirling, 1986, cited in Hewinson, 1987: 37). High taxation and the loss of aristocratic heirs lead to the dissolution of many country estates, with the proud manors at the heart of these estates sold off and often demolished. Within the cities, new planning principles of zoning led to the segregation of urban space based on function, with industry pushed to the edges of the city for reasons of health and sanitation. The economic focus moved from one of industrial production to service provision, leaving many empty industrial buildings in the heart of English cities.

Change can be perceived in multiple ways, but it is particularly apparent ‘in the built environment, where gradual alteration to the physical patterns of everyday life

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register the consequences of social change’ (Hewinson, 1987: 35). The demolishing of Country Houses and abandoning of industrial structures could be considered to represent the economic downturn in the eyes of many English citizens.

Across the channel came the growing influence of the modernists, with their machinic style inspired by the industrial methods of production. The modernists believed in progress and the possibility of achieving utopia through technological advancement. They abhorred attempts to recreate past styles and forms of architecture, and instead promoted a rational machinic aesthetic inspired by the industrial methods of production (Walsh, 1992: 7-10). ‘Important was improvement on the future, not reflection of [the] past’ (Boym, 2001: 9).

Large swathes of the city were demolished and replaced with modernist urban developments. The rational aesthetic of these schemes led to a sense of loss of identity ‘as architectural and scenic differences were ironed out under the weight of mediocrity and uniformity’ (Hewinson, 1987: 39). The reaction to these changes and the accompanying upheavals and loss of familiarity was not that of a shift towards a collective focus on the future, as desired by the modernists, but instead one of widespread chronophobia. There was a growing belief that ‘the forward gallop of modernity’ (Eshel, 2010: 135) and the changes it had brought about in the physical fabric of the city would cause the past to be forgotten. This led to a heighted interest in the past, resulting in a greater interest of the architecture of the past and ruins, and the perceived historic value of buildings, which in turn led to Preservationism.

Somewhat ironically, the modernists that were in part responsible for the upheavals that induced this heightened focus on the past also played a large hand within the development of preservation practice. In 1933 at the Fourth Assembly of the International Congress on Modern Architecture, prominent architect Le Corbusier drafted the Athens Charter, which was later published in 1943. A chapter was dedicated to the conservation of the ‘historic heritage of cities’, with Le Corbusier emphasising the importance of historic buildings: ‘They form a part of the human heritage and whoever owns them or is entrusted with their protection has the responsibility and the obligation to do

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Fig 1.1 Maitland Robinson Library, Cambridge by Quinlan Terry - the modernists were opposed to the repetition of past styles of architecture as found in such movements as New Classicism

Fig 1.2 Unite D’Habitation, Berlin by Le Corbusier - the rationalist functional design is based on Le Corbusier’s vision for the future of city living

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whatever he legitimately can to hand this noble heritage down intact to the centuries to come’ (Corbusier, 1943: 86).

Le Corbusier concluded that a distinction should be made between the architecture ‘worthy’ of preservation and that which should be demolished.

Despite acknowledging the importance of passing on the ‘noble heritage’ within historic structures, the Athens Charter emphasised the importance of not preserving architecture at the cost of current living conditions. Concerned with a ‘narrow-minded cult of the past’ bringing about disregard for social justice, the report particularly highlighted the importance of preventing ‘the preservation of certain picturesque old districts’ in which the inhabitants endured substandard living conditions, claiming such behaviour as ‘unmindful of the poverty, promiscuity and diseases that these districts harbor’ (Corbusier, 1943: 86). The charter also touched on acceptable methods with which to preserve historic value, advising against the restoration of historic architecture, seen as a mingling of the ‘false’ with the ‘genuine’ and ‘artificial reconstruction capable only of discrediting the authentic testimonies that we were most moved to preserve’ (ibid: 89).

These attitudes of ensuring the passing on of ‘noble heritage’ were reflected within England with the introduction of the practice of listing buildings in 1947 (Hewinson, 1987: 24). If a building is deemed to be containing architectural or historic merit ‘considered to be of national importance’(English Heritage, 2013a) by the incumbent Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport it is added to the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. Once a building is on the list no changes can be made without receiving Listed Building Consent from the local authority. The list is currently managed by English Heritage, an executive non-departmental body of the British government, who must approve any applications for the addition, removal or alteration of entries.

The principles behind the conservation of historic architecture were further ratified at the second International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments, held in Venice in 1964, and the resultant International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, more commonly known as the Venice Charter. In order to preserve the historical value of a building, it was

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proposed to preserve the physical material of the building, to crystallise it in a stasis of whatever form of degradation it was currently to be found (International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, 1964). Any attempts to recreate the past were to be approached with the utmost care and restraint to prevent any future degradation or erosion to the sites. The charter strongly asserted the importance of retaining the historical value that is present within the urban fabric. But despite extensive coverage of the correct approaches with which to retain the historical value of a building, the Venice Charter made little mention of how to decide which architecture contains ‘historical value’ and to what extent varying degrees of value should be preserved.

The perception of historical value present within architecture was developed into the notion of ‘cultural significance’. This development was made in 1979 in Australia by ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, with the foundation of the Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance.

The most recent revision defines cultural significance as ‘the aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations’ and asserts that ‘cultural significance is embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and related objects’ (Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter, 2013). The charter proved very popular in the UK upon its founding, principally due to its recommendations on systematically coding the conservation process (Pendlebury, 2008). The recommended process involves defining a particular geographical area as the place to be conserved, within which thorough analysis of the place must be undertaken, leading to the formation of written statements of policy which should be incorporated into the management plan for the place. It is not clear within the charter exactly who or what determines the cultural significance of a place. The participation article of the charter is defined as such: ‘Conservation, interpretation and management of a place should provide for the participation of people for whom the place has significant associations and meanings, or who have social, spiritual or other cultural responsibilities for the place’ (Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter, 2013).

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The charter gives no guidance as to determining the significance of associations and meanings that people pertain to a particular site, nor does it outline how or to what extent they should be allowed to influence the conservation process.

Shortly after the establishment of the Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance the British government passed the National Heritage Act, which established the National Heritage Memorial Fund as a ‘fund of last resort to save items of outstanding importance to the nation’s heritage that are either at risk or possess a marked memorial character’ (National Heritage Memorial Fund, 2014).

This was followed by the 1983 National Heritage Act which created the Heritage Buildings and Monuments Commission, known more commonly as English Heritage, a non-parliamentary public body set out ‘to secure the preservation of ancient monuments and historic buildings situated in England’, ‘to promote the preservation and enhancement of the character’ of these sites and ‘to promote the public’s enjoyment of, and advance their knowledge of, ancient monuments and historic buildings situated in England and their preservation’ (National Heritage Act, 1983).

Another significant institution responsible for preserving historic sites and architecture is the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest of Natural Beauty, usually referred to as the National Trust, a UK conservation charity founded in 1895 with the initial aim of preventing open spaces from being built upon. It is now the largest conservation organisation in Europe, and protects over three hundred historic buildings, with the aim of preserving them ‘for ever, for everyone’(National Trust, 2013).

Despite the large number of institutions dedicated to the preservation of the nation’s ‘heritage’, the term itself is quite poorly defined. English Heritage defines it as ‘all inherited resources which people value for reasons beyond mere utility’ (Drury and McPherson, 2008: 71). ICOMOS concedes that ‘heritage is a broad concept’ and limits itself to expanding on the areas where it may be found and reasserting the importance of maintaining it, emphasising that ‘the particular heritage and collective memory of each locality or community is irreplaceable and an important foundation for development, both now and into the future’ (Managing Tourism at Places of Heritage Significance, 1999: 1). Discussing the definition of ‘heritage’ by

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the organisations undertaking its preservation, Hewinson highlights that the first annual report of the National Heritage Memorial Fund published in 1980 began by stating that heritage could no more be defined than beauty or art, before going on to list a series of artworks and architecture such as ‘paintings by Turner or Constable’, ‘sculptures by Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth’ and ‘buildings such as Chatsworth or Edinburgh Castle’ that were undoubtedly considered ‘heritage’ (1987: 136-7). Despite the lack of a formal definition, the institutions assert that heritage is definitely ‘under threat’ (ibid).

Statements such as these highlight the truly subjective nature of ‘heritage’ conservation. But as history is re-packaged as heritage, it is branded with an official stamp and a claim of objectivity. Walsh highlights that ‘the myth of objectivity is necessary to such an organisation’s continued survival. The organisation must purport to be representing the past as it was’ (1992: 129). By claiming objectivity, individuals aren’t given the option of contesting the definitions of ‘heritage’ presented by these organisations.

By assigning certain buildings as ‘heritage’ and discounting others, the heritage institutions are making decisions that affect which architecture is perceived by the public as historically significant. ‘Those who decide what is worthy of preservation and how it should be preserved, are basically deciding what is worth remembering’ (Walsh, 1992:80). But the decisions about what should be preserved are made by an unelected committee. English Heritage (2011) asserts that ‘each society has always appointed certain people as special guardians of these [collective] memories’ and that, in the case of contemporary England, English Heritage are the body ‘in whom that trust reposes’. However, the governing board is made up of a commission of individuals appointed by the Secretary of State for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport rather than by members of wider society. These individuals then appoint the executive board, which lead the operational management. The board is free to make decisions regarding the designation of heritage without input or discussion from the public. The board may approach experts during the preservation process, but they are free to choose which experts they consult and whether or not to follow the advice given. The code of practice for English Heritage (2013b) asserts

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Fig 1.3 Reclining Figure by Henry Moore - ‘undoubtedly heritage’

Fig 1.4 Chatsworth House - ‘undoubtedly heritage’

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the importance of the body and its commissioners maintaining ‘impartiality, integrity and objectivity’ in its management and operations. Though as these institutions are assigned with making value judgements about the cultural significance of architecture and sites, we might question their very ability to maintain impartiality, particularly due to the lack of any concrete definition of what constitutes ‘heritage’.

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Heritage Tourism: The Packaging of ‘Englishness’

To forget - and I would venture say - to get one’s history wrong, are essential factors in the making of a nation Ernest Renan, What is a Nation? (1995: 145)

English Heritage asserts that historic heritage is vital for ‘linking us together’ and creating a sense of national pride and identity, arguing that the memories and stories embodied within heritage architecture ‘are the foundation of a people’s world-picture and the root of many of its passions, preoccupations and beliefs’ (2011: 2-3). But in order to establish a common identity that residents are keen to identify with and non-natives keen to visit, we might question the selectiveness with which these memories and stories are chosen.

Having designated certain buildings as ‘heritage’ the establishments, such as English Heritage, that constitute the heritage industry are faced with the problem of conserving these buildings economically in order to support the preservation of their physical forms. Often these buildings have fallen out of use due to their inappropriateness for current social and economic activity. Such as the Country House that was born in an era of greater disparity in the distribution of wealth, or the industrial factory built for a now-outdated method of production. The most common way of sustaining these structures economically is by incorporating them into the tourist industry. In order to promote them as touristic sites, they must be presented and expressed as both places that are important historically and places desirable for individuals to visit. English Heritage argue that ‘tourism now represents one of England’s fastest-growing and most important industries’ and proceed to emphasise the importance of the role of preservation in tourism as ‘most visitors come here, at least in part, because of our history as embodied in visible remains’(2011: 3).

The historian Pierre Nora defines history as ‘how our hopelessly forgetful modern societies, propelled by change, organize the past’(1989: 8). Through history

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we gather up and organize ‘traces of the past to secure an over-arching ideology on which to establish a common identity’ (Shotton, 2013: 1). The establishment of a common identity is important for the continuation of a nation. The recent discussions of independence of Scotland could be seen as a result of a stronger more localised Scottish identity competing with an overarching British identity.

As it forms the foundation of collective identities, it could be considered important to stay faithful to history. But as argued by historiographer Keith Jenkins in his polemical book Re-Thinking History (1991), because history is no more than an interpretation it is impossible for it to be empirical or unbiased. History is developed through accounts of the past, but we can never visit the past to compare, we can only compare accounts to each other. Furthermore, history is constantly reinterpreted and rewritten on the basis of the values and needs of the present. ‘The present cannot be moulded to such desires, for we share it with others; the past is malleable because its inhabitants are no longer here to contest our manipulations’ (Lowenthal, 1985: 356).

The establishment of a nations ‘heritage’ could be interpreted as requiring a reinterpretation of history in a positive light, in order to create a strong national identity that citizens are keen to identify with. ‘Heritage is something that suffuses us with pride rather than with shame’ (Kammen, 1991: 688). In their corporate plan English Heritage emphasise that ‘the buildings, sites and collections’ that they protect and preserve ‘should be a source of local pride and wider enjoyment’ (2011: 12). But the danger of this is that only ‘safe and selected images’ of past England will be preserved in order to establish a strong and desirable common identity, therefore developing a superficial non-critical version of history (Walsh, 1992: 139).

English identity is often considered inexorably tied up with British identity.

It could be questioned as whether such a thing as a British identity exists, with Great Britain constituted of components ‘each with very much its own identity’(Huygen, 1989: 11). In 1981 the Welsh leader Gwynfor Evans claimed that Britishness is actually just ‘another word for Englishness’ (in Pittock, 1999), referencing the commonly held view that British culture appears to be dictated by the English.

Past attempts to define ‘Britishness’ or ‘Englishness’ have often resulted in

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the conjuring up of a nostalgic rural or suburban simulacra, such as the speech given by John Major on the eve of St George’s Day in 1993: ‘Fifty years from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pool fillers and – as George Orwell said – “old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist”’ (Major, 1993) In The English: A Portrait of a People (1999), journalist, broadcaster and author Jeremy Paxman cites popular literature and poetry, patriotic songs and politicians as responsible for creating a picture of England as a lost pastoral idyll. ‘It is not the country in which the English actually live, but the place they imagine they are living in’ (ibid: 144). The Conservative MP Michael Heseltine could be considered to express this view when he stated his belief that there exists ‘an England as she was: changeless in our fast-changing world’(1990: 78).

This leads to the question of where this English idyll is predominately located. An analysis of the 2012/13 expenditure report of English Heritage (2013) shows a distinct bias towards the south of England, with 62% of their budget spent on London and the South and just 34% spent on the Midlands and the North.

Furthermore there could be perceived to be a bias in the type of architecture considered as ‘heritage’. Ian Baucom cites the example of a 1988 television appearance of Prince Charles sharing his ‘Vision of Britain’; Prince Charles condemned the modernist architecture of the fifties and sixties and venerated the ‘noble architecture’ of the English past that had managed to survive, which Baucom considers expressive of ‘a recoiling before the wounded surface of postwar England’s architectural page and a yearning for the nobly-built but crumbling spaces of the island kingdom’s past’(1996: 259).

There exists to this day a prominence in the portfolio of the various heritage institutions of Country Houses and Stately Homes. Edensor describes the heritage industry as an ‘uncritical celebration of the stately home’ which is held up as the ‘icon of Englishness’(2005: 137). The Country House has long been romanticised in English literature and popular culture, from novels such as Brideshead Revisted to the contemporary television programme Downton Abbey. As written in a National

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Trust publication of 1985, these former homes of Lords and Earls ‘look back to periods of apparent stability and order’ that some may find ‘preferable to the chaos of the present’ (Aslet and Powers, 1985:4). This past stability was founded upon a hierarchical class order imbued with notions of privilege, deference and respect.

The celebration of the architecture of former nobility by the heritage institutions could be considered as a capitalisation of this romanticised view of a stable and noble England in order to increase heritage tourism and national pride. But by doing so they could also be considered as reinforcing this idyll.

Furthermore, by capitalising on this vision of an idyllic pastoral England, the heritage bodies could be seen to be limiting their ability to preserve structures.

Urban structures, particularly industrial, are difficult to reconcile with the nostalgic portrayal of rural England. The hymn Jerusalem, based on a poem by William Blake and backed in 2012 by UK Prime Minister David Cameron as a potential English National Anthem (Hennessy, 2012), describes the architecture of the industrial revolution as ‘dark satanic mills’ (Blake, 1966). The popularity of such a view could be considered as continuing to the present day. Edensor states that ‘the negative notions of industrial ruination infer aesthetic judgements which widely diverge from the tradition of compiling celebratory accounts of non-industrial ruins’ (2005: 10). He explains this as due to the unsuitability of industrial ruins for romantic themes. They are often referred to as ‘shell-ridden terrain’ and believed to evoke ‘a sense of loss and vitality’ (ibid: 15). This negative view of industrial ruins could be considered an association of the change and sense of loss that occurred in the past, both during the industrial revolution and post-war period, and also of the economic failure of the industries themselves.

Despite this negative view, an interest in the cultivation of an industrial heritage has emerged, with the recent adoption of a joint charter in 2011 between ICOMOS and The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (ICCIH) outlining principles for the preservation of industrial heritage (Joint ICOMOS – TICCIH Principles for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage Sites, Structures, Areas and Landscapes, 2011). ‘Many relics of the industrial past have undergone a gradual transformation’ and have succeeded in losing their negative status

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Fig 2.1 Highclere Castle - the Jacobethean country house serves as the main filming location for the television period drama Downton Abbey

Fig 2.2 Stubbs Cotton Mill, Manchester - an abandoned former cotton mill in the Ancoats area of Manchester, formerly a prominent industrial district during the industrial revolution

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Fig 2.3 The engine house and stack at East Wheal Rose, Cornwall - part of the Cornish Mining UNESCO World Heritage Site

Fig 2.4 West Wycombe Park from the Terrace by William Hannan

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as reminders of economic failure and been incorporated into the tourist industry as ‘restored memorials to past industrial prowess’(DeSilvey and Edensor, 2012:4723). In 2006 the mining sites of Cornwall and West Devon were assigned the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, on the basis that ‘the areas enclosed within the property satisfactorily reflect the way prosperity derived from mining transformed the landscape both in urban and rural areas’(UNESCO, 2014). However, when industrial sites are classified as ‘heritage’, there is the risk that the conservation and promotion focuses on the industrial might and achievement present within the structures. This may lead to the possibility that while the physical material is preserved, the ‘history of the people working within them is being progressively lost’(Walsh, 1992:83). Whilst the difficulties of the lives of the miners working in Cornwall and West Devon is acknowledged in the promotion of the UNESCO site, it is emphasised that ‘the Cornish took an intense pride in their work and carried the technology and achievements of their industry throughout the world’. The main focus is on these technologies and achievements, with equal coverage on the Cornish Mining World Heritage website given to the Great Houses and Gardens built with the capital gained through mining as to the lives of the people working in the mine (The Cornish Mining World Heritage Site Office, 2014).

This process of venerating technological process and achievements without emphasising the accompanying social conditions could be interpreted as the enacting of a historical amnesia in order to compound a positive view of history as ‘heritage’ and reinforce an idealised version of past England.

This historical amnesia can be seen within the more celebrated Stately Homes as well. Baucom quotes Williams when he discusses the celebration of Country Houses for their expression of order, stability and rule: ‘They were chosen also, you now see, for the other effect, from the outside looking in: a visible stamping of power, of displayed wealth and command: a social disproportion which was meant to impress and overawe . . . a mutually competitive but still uniform exposition, at every turn, of an established and commanding class power’ (Williams, 1973: 105-6, cited in Baucom, 1996: 265-6).

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Baucom proceeds to highlight the capital exploitation necessary to construct these proud structures, both within England itself and across the British Empire that existed during their construction.

Whilst the grandness of the architecture and grounds are revered, the inequalities that allowed for their creation are rarely acknowledged. Wycombe Park is a Grade I listed property owned by the National Trust, who describe it as the ‘elegant Palladian home of the Dashwood family’(West Wycombe Park, Village and Hill: Visitor Information, 2014). It has been used during the production of the aforementioned Downton Abbey as well as screen adaptations of 19th Century novels such as Cranford. The property is set in 45 acres of parkland, with an adjacent village and visitors are invited to explore the house and grounds before making their way ‘up West Wycombe Hill for breathtaking [sic] views over the surrounding Chilterns countryside and designed landscape of West Wycombe Park and village’(ibid). In 2013, it was reported that the grand Country House was originally built using money received as compensation to slave owners from the British government, following the abolition of the slave trade (Manning, 2013). Unsurprisingly, this interpretation of Wycombe Park’s history is not included in the description from the National Trust.

Furthermore, Hewinson argues that the preservation of these structures doesn’t just preserve the characteristics of the past, but ‘reinforce[s] these values in the present’ (1987: 53). These values can be seen within the architecture, from the layout of floor plans to the varying internal decorations. There were often separate spaces for men and women, reinforcing the notion of gender segregation.

The quarters for the servants employed upon these estates were often hidden and placed on lower levels. A good example of this is the Grade II* listed Clouds House, designed by architect Philip Webb: ‘The butler’s suite was under the main block and the other service rooms were at the same low level but separated from the main block by a courtyard.

In this way, Webb was able to keep the service wing particularly inconspicuous, but at the price of giving the servants long distances to walk and an enormous number of stairs to climb’ (Franklin, 1981: 147).

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Fig 2.5 Clouds House by Phillip Webb

Fig 2.6 Clouds House Principal Floor Plan - reaching the servant quarters requires descending four flights of stairs and traversing a long corridor

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Fig 2.7 The Saloon, Kedleston Hall

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Placing the service quarters on a lower level could be considered as reinforcing the social hierarchy in place within the architecture, and affirming the perception of the serving staff as in possession of a lower social status.

Kedleston Hall is a Grade I listed building owned by the National Trust. It was designed by architect Robert Adams as ‘a showpiece palace’ for Sir Nathaniel Curzon (National Trust - Kedleston Hall, 2013) and was used as the backdrop for the 2007 film The Duchess. Visitors are invited to ‘tread in the steps of historical figures’ (ibid) as they are shown around the lavish interiors by a costumed housekeeper in the same way that influential visitors to the house would have been in the 18th century when the owners were absent. Such an experience encourages the visitors to relive the experience of the ruling class present of the house and admire the expensively decorated interiors in which they spent their time. However, there is no reference to the daily experiences of the large amount of serving staff that were necessary to sustain the home. In a similar style to the aforementioned Clouds House, the servant quarters were separate to the main body of the house, and when developing the property into a tourist attraction the National Trust converted the quarters into a tea room and gift shop (Ponsonby,2007:176).

When sites and buildings are adopted by heritage bodies and turned into ‘heritage sites’ they often become heavily policed museums where it is ensured that: ‘buildings conform to specifications about which kinds of structures, building materials, colours and ornamentation are allowed, so that the “tone” of a place may be maintained, often fixing place with a scrubbed-up version of a particular historical area’ (Edensor, 2005: 75).

This behaviour could be consider as reinforcing the creation of a polished version of history that ‘has been reselected and rewritten’(Hewinson, 1987:137).

We can conclude that the preservation of specific architecture as ‘heritage’ encourages the cultivation of a nostalgic-driven, improved version of the past. When our appointed ‘guardians of memory’ are keen to suffuse us with English pride and increase the touristic draw of the nation, the past is reinterpreted in as positive light as possible. Country Homes become grand palaces that extoll the taste and virtue

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Fig 2.8 Cut-through of Kedleston Hall - annotated with comments from the Duchess of Northumberland’s Diary. The only mention of the servants is a description of the corridor that leads to their quarters.

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of our noble predecessors and industrial sites become testimonies to our industrial might and technological advancement. The injustices and suppression that accompanied these times are rarely acknowledged, and if so brushed off with an assumed air of necessary sacrifice. Not only could this positive reinterpretation of the past be seen to result in a social amnesia, we run the risk of being absorbed in a nostalgic longing for the glories of English past.

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Nostalgic Recall: The Imperfection of Remembrance To memory is tied an ambition, a claim - that of being faithful to the past Paul Ricouer, Memory, History, Forgetting (2004: 21).

Philosopher Paul Ricouer infers that the act of remembrance is not viewed to be an interpretation insomuch as the rediscovery of a past truth. It is thus considered important that the remembrance is genuine, in Ricouer’s words: ‘faithful to the past’.

A reason for this may be prevailing Western attitudes to the establishment of individual and collective identity, where identity is founded upon history. An attitude that Hewinson (1987: 47) describes as believing that ‘without knowing where we have been, it is difficult to know where we’re going’. This could be considered as born of an insecurity in identity, a notion explored by the writer Milan Kundera, who defines it as the ‘unbearable lightness of being’, where ‘everything passes so quickly that we are not sure it even happened’(Barthel, 1996: 151).

This insecurity in identity and remembrance may have developed from the perception of time within Western Judeo-Christian societies. The Mayans are the earliest known race to have a deep obsession with time, but their conception of time was cyclical, expecting history to repeat itself in cycles of 260 years (Whitrow, 1972: 9). It was the monotheistic Judeo-Christian religions that introduced a linear concept of time, founded upon ‘unique’ events in time ‘not subject to repetition’ such as the crucifixion of Christ (ibid: 14). Perceptions of cyclical time still existed strongly within rural English societies due to the seasonal foundation of agrarian lifestyles. During the industrial revolution many people made the transition to cities, with life orientated around the production line and ruled over by the mechanical clock, concreting a linear perception of time. When time is viewed as linear, each moment that passes does so just once and is forever irredeemable, highlighting to us a greater sense of loss.

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This sense of loss was explored by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who claimed that ‘man is the only being by whom a destruction can be accomplished’ (1989: 8).

Sartre used the examples of a storm, expressing that the result of the storm is not destruction but instead a change in state. ‘There is no less after the storm than before.

There is something else’ (ibid). It is only as a result of our regulative ideas, what Sarte calls ‘négatités’ (ibid: 21), of nature and existence as being ends-driven that causes us to view the natural processes of change as ‘destruction’. This perception extends to human creation, and could be considered responsible for the negative attitudes towards ruination. The natural processes of decay that occur when a building is no longer maintained and preserved are perceived as loss. ‘Ruins evoke not only the building from which they hail but also a transhistorical iconography of decay and catastrophe, a vast visual archive of ruination’ (Hell and Schonle, 2010: 1).

The viewing of time as linear not only influences our perception of change, but also that of remembrance. In The Art of Forgetting, anthropologist Susan Kuchler (1999: 59) makes a comparison between eschatological and animatorical remembering. Whilst animatorical remembering ‘initiates a momentary collapse of past and present by forcing past and present, distance and proximity into a single point that is exploded out of a linear and narrative time construction’, eschatological remembering, the mode best known to Western culture, is passive and the act of remembering involves ‘bridging across a lost present to a desired future that is envisioned in the image of the past’ (ibid). The individual plays no role in the transferral of the flow of value from past to future other than as a vessel for the time to pass through. They are not able to interpret or interfere with the past, merely transport it.

When considering ourselves as vessels for the transportation of time, we become wary of any individual influence on the recall of the past. This can be seen within the distinction made between nostalgia and memory. Bonnett and Alexander state that ‘the separation of the two often relies on the claim that, in contrast to memory, nostalgia is irrational, inaccurate and incapable of drawing lessons from the past to apply to the present’ (2012: 392). This view is expressed by Hewinson who asserts that nostalgic memory is not ‘true recall’ due to the fact that ‘nostalgia filters out unpleasant aspects of the past… creating a self-esteem that helps us to rise

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above the anxieties of the present’ (1987: 46).

The Swiss doctor who first coined the phrase in his medical dissertation, Johannes Hofer, believed nostalgia to express a love for freedom and for one’s homeland (Boym, 2001: 6). But the perception changed and nostalgia began to be viewed with suspicion. Theodore Calhoun, a military doctor during the American Civil War, considered it a shameful condition and associated it with an unprogressive outlook and a lack of manliness (ibid). Many recent English accounts of nostalgia share a similar condemnation; the opening line of a paper published by University of London lecturers in 2010 read: ‘Nostalgia is always suspect. To give ourselves up to longing for a different time or place, no matter how admirable its qualities, is always to run the risk of constricting our ability to act in the present’ (Atia and Davies, 2010).

Bonnett and Alexander hold the view that ‘nostalgia and memory are often overlapping phenomena’ and that instead ‘the attempt to valorise the latter as more accurate and useful tells us more about the problematic status of feelings of loss and yearning in a rapidly changing society than it does about nature and memory’ (2012: 392). It would be interesting to discover the extent to which proponents of the rural English idyll admit to its state as an object of nostalgic longing.

The romanticists of the 18th century viewed ruins as expressive of their nostalgic longing. After a visit to a ruin in the south of Wales, the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth wrote Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey where he reflects on his youth and the processes of nature (Wordsworth, 1888).

The romanticists perceived ruins as expressing a perfect union between history and nature (Beaseley-Murray, 2010: 214). But they also believed them to evoke a sense of loss. In the poem Wordsworth wrote after his visit to Tintern, of his youth he writes: ‘—That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures—’ (Wordsworth, 1888) However, Wordsworth proceeds to reflect on the man he has become, and despite

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Fig 3.1 Tintern Abbey by Carl Gustav Carus

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expressing nostalgia for his youth, he does not voice a desire to return (ibid). The professor and playwright Svetlana Boym describes how the romantic nostalgia did not seek to be reconciled with the object of their longing, instead preferring to keep it at a ‘safe distance’ (2001: 13). Boym continues this enquiry into nostalgia without a desire for reconciliation to carve a distinction between two possible nostalgic manifestations, which she describes as reflective nostalgia and restorative nostalgia. For the reflective nostalgic it is the very act of longing that is of importance, more so than the longed-for object itself. Boym describes them as aware that the act of reconciliation may not ease their nostalgic longing, instead ruin-gazing allows for contemplation of the passing of time, and an increased awareness of the ‘irrevocability of the past and human finitude’ (ibid: 49).

In contrast, the restorative nostalgic conforms to the négatité of ruination as loss and seeks to recover that which has been lost, perceiving the past to be ‘not a duration but a perfect snapshot’ (Boym, 2001: 49). The restoration and preservation of historic architecture by the Heritage industry could be comprehended as an act of restorative nostalgia, in order to realise and sustain this ‘perfect snapshot’ of Heseltine’s unchanging mighty and glorious ‘England as she was’ (1990: 78).

The historian Pierre Nora (1989) describes this behaviour in terms of the creation of ‘lieux de memoire’ or ‘sites of memory’. These are places where memory has been fixed and enshrined, in order to allow for the concrete promotion of an intellectually interpreted past. Barthel (1996: 154) describes these sites as serving for anchors of the collective memory.

A similar description was made by Aldo Rossi in his seminal work The Architecture of the City (1984), where he described the city as the ‘locus of collective memory’. At the time of publication of Rossi’s work the notion that the physical fabric of the city contained the collective memories of its inhabitants was widely accepted.

This view of objects as containers for memory can be traced back to Aristotle and his text On Memory and Reminiscence (in The Basic Works of Aristotle, 1941), where all objects that can be perceived are seen as ‘objects of memory’. The train of thought leads to the conclusion that ‘if objects are made to stand for memory, their decay or destruction is taken to imply forgetting’ (Forty and Kuchler, 1999: 4).

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This view is echoed in the Venice Charter, still used to this day as the primary charter of ICOMOS. The first line of the charter reads: ‘Imbued with a message from the past, the historic monuments of generations of people remain to the present day as living witnesses of their age-old traditions’ (International Charter for the Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites, 1964) There is reason to doubt this assertion of objects as witnesses to the past. Attempts to fix memory in objects could be considered problematic if we regard memory as an enacted process, where memory is not contained within objects but instead enacted by the individual as they engage with their environment. Freud asserted this with his statement that ‘the finding of an object is always a refinding of it’ (2000: 88). It is not from the object itself that we receive memories, instead an object has an ability to stir up the recall within us.

‘Thus, it is not within the form itself that memories lie suspended, rather the mnemonic potential of architectural form – that is the ability to sponsor recall of ideas, feelings or experiences – lies in the eye and mind of the observer, the depth of which is facilitated by the endurance of the form’ (Shotton, 2013: 4).

Philosopher Henri Bergson (1988) explored the enacted process of remembering and the relationship between recollection and perception. He made a distinction between ‘pure memory’, ‘memory-image’ and ‘perception’, three processes that he described as never occurring apart (ibid: 133). He asserted that our brains do not act as ‘a reservoir of images’ (ibid: 237) from which we retrieve memories, instead the act of recollection requires the entering of a virtual state before proceeding through multiple planes of consciousness to arrive at our present active state. The moment we return to our present active state in order to actualization the recollection ‘it ceases to be a recollection and becomes once more a perception’ (ibid: 240).

A phenomenon that reinforces Bergson’s argument is that of false recognition or deja vu, the sense that we’ve already experienced what we’re currently engaged in.

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We engage in two simultaneous perceptions, one that we acknowledge as belonging to the past and one that we acknowledge as belonging to the present. We know that the engagement is happening in the present, yet we perceive it to also have happened before. The existence of this phenomenon enforces the idea of a blurred distinction between perception and recollection.

We can therefore infer that it is impossible to realise any of the recollections contained within ‘pure memory’ without them being influenced by our current state of being, and thus any attempt of pure recollection is not possible. As asserted

by Bergson: ‘To picture is not to remember’ (1988: 135). If we accept perception and recollection as intertwined it raises questions as to whether architecture can contain memories and if the city can truly be a ‘locus for collective memory’. The individualistic enacted nature of remembrance inferred by this binding of perception and recollection could be considered to question the very possibility of a collective memory at all. This view is affirmed by philosopher Paul Ricoeur who asserts that ‘my memories are not yours. The memories of one person cannot be transferred into the memory of another’ (2004: 96). Curator, professor and researcher Henri Lustiger-Thaler commented in an interview with New Cultural Frontiers that he had ‘yet to encounter what can critically be called a “collective memory”’ (2012: 27). This questions the ability for a collective memory of England to be transmitted through heritage buildings.

Maurice Halbwachs was a philosopher and sociologist credited it with the development of the concept of collective memories. His argument was based on the notion that ‘memory depends on the social environment’(1992: 37). Despite remembrance being an individual act influenced by perception, because it is enacted within a social environment it is influenced by the prevailing views and thoughts held in that society. He stated his belief ‘that the mind reconstructs its memories under the pressure of society’(ibid: 51), often requiring the touching up and altering of recollection to fit in with the perceptions of society. Lustiger-Thaler asserts ‘the act of “writing history and memory” issues forth from practices, techniques and cultural negotiations around dominant and less dominant scripts about the past’ (ibid). These scripts are then able to influence individual identity and behaviour,

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Fig 3.2 - The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment by Ilya Kabakov - the description of the piece reads: ‘The person who lived here flew into space from his room... He always, as far as he remembered, felt that he was not quite an inhabitant of this earth, and constantly felt the desire to leave it, to escape beyond its boundaries...’

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described by Connerton as ‘historically tutored memory’(1970:16).

This could be considered to enable the preservation of heritage buildings in order to reinforce cultural ideas about the past. Through the extolling of the virtues of heritage sites, present perceptions of England are influenced within society to coincide with these views. This is turn influences how individuals remember.

However ‘cultural memories associated with objects are fickle, and will mutate and fray until they are unrecognizable’(Shotton, 2013:3). This could be considered the reason that heritage sites are classified and guided through, with clear signs and information plaques, to ensure that the interpretation of visitors is synchronous with the officially ‘accepted’ historic interpretations.

As an enacted process, memory can never be wholly faithful to the past.

Instead, it will always be influenced by the present. Boym describes how ‘Benjamin thought of Past, Present and Future as superimposing times… In his view, every epoch dreams the next one and in doing so revises the one before it’ (2001: 27). An artist who emphasises the selectivity of memory is Ilya Kabakov. He creates installations of fragments and gaps, utilising the power of nostalgia and emphasising the individual quality of memory: ‘Through the combination of empathy and estrangement, ironic nostalgia invites us to reflect on the ethics of remembering… [this] reveals two contradictory human impulses: to transcend the everyday in some kind of collective fairy tale, and to inhabit the most uninhabitable ruins - to survive and preserve memories’ (Boym, 2010: 79).

The preservation of the architecture of ‘heritage’ could be seen as adhering to a desire to transcend to the ‘collective fairytale’ of the English idyll. But in the pursuit of the strong national identity founded on these values, we run the risk of forgetting those aspects of our past that are not so easy to remember and also deny people the ability to form their own interpretation of the past.

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Ruins: Use and Re-Use There remains also the truth that every end in history necessarily contains a new beginning; this beginning is the promise, the only “message” which the end can ever produce.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1958: 478)

The maintenance of a building relies on current use and the care of the owners. It is when this maintenance stops that the buildings begins to show symptoms of the processes of natural transformation and gradual degradation that were previously kept in check. Benjamin described how in the ruin ‘history does not assume the form of the process of an eternal life so much as that of irresistible decay’ (1998: 177-8). This ‘irresistible decay’ could be interpreted as referring to the decaying form of the ruin, but it could also be considered to express the decay of history itself.

As discussed in the previous chapters, when architecture is seen as embodying memories of the past, decay is inferred as forgetting. But ruins could be considered in possession of further negative connotations due to the economic forces present within architecture. Edensor states that with capitalism, the prevailing view is that all space possesses the potential for investment and capital gain; This leads to the ‘notion that the city must put forward a seamless, smoothed-over appearance to signify prosperity, to attract tourists, new middle-class inhabitants, investors and shoppers’ (2005: 58-9). This notion is not purely present within the minds of planners and politicians but also ‘shapes articulations of the public good’ (ibid).

Because ruins occur in greater amounts during times and in areas of economic downturn, they are often mentally associated as such. The existence of a ruin could be seen to embody an economic failure and its persistence could express unwillingness for anyone to invest in the area.

In spite of these negative connotations, ruins continue to exert a great contemporary fascination, and are commonly used as a backdrop in the production of films, fashion shoots and music videos as well as receiving popular attention as

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Fig 4.1 - Packard Motor Car Company Plant, Detroit

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Fig 4.2 - Handmade Shelter in a former Engine Works

Fig 4.3 Former Mark Twain Branch of Detroit Public Library

Fig 4.4 Ballroom, Lee Plaza Hotel

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subjects of interest in their own right. Such celebration of ruins is often criticised by those who view them as icons of economic failure. Recent debates have been raised in Detroit, where high-profile photographers have turned the visualisation of ruination into spectacle and have been accused ‘of creating a depopulated “ruin porn” that privileges the aesthetic charge of ruination, thereby ignoring the contextual economic and social devastation’ (DeSilvey and Edensor, 2012: 470).

Vacant decaying buildings and sites are often labelled as spaces of criminality and neglect. A Civic Trust report on urban wasteland described vacant sites as ‘associated with dereliction, danger and decay’ and a ‘blight’ to the surrounding area ‘destroying the attraction and confidence of whole communities’ (1988: 39).

Edensor counters the polemic account of the report, stating that vacant sites have social value as places where: ‘forms of alternative public life may occur, activities characterised by an active and improvisational creativity, a casting off of self-consciousness conditioned by the prying gaze of CCTV cameras and fellow citizens’ (Edensor, 2005: 21).

In a discussion with Edensor on the draw and appeal of ruins, he emphasised the existence of strong traces of the past: ‘The elements within it, like the old posters that you see, the old clothes the old tools and so forth. They suddenly and immediately belong to the past’ (see appendix 1, 2014).

But what Edensor considers key is the lack of regulation regarding how visitors interpret these traces of the past. The mysteries of the traces are retained, allowing the visitor to cast their own imaginings to fill the ambiguity of past meaning within the objects. This imagining allows for the conjuring of individual memories, often involuntarily. Edensor described how visiting industrial ruins recalled his own experience of working in factories. These individual memories are able to mix with the traces of the past within the ruins allowing for a ‘deeper and more meaningful encounter with the past’ (ibid).

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Drawing upon Walter Benjamin’s comparison that ‘allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things’ (1998: 178), Beasley-Murray reinforces this idea that ‘ruins are not themselves immediately legible: they have to be spoken for’ (2010: 215). This ventriloquisation of ruins could be considered to allow for the enacted process of remembrance as established by Bergson. We are able to create our own individual associations and interpretations that are deeper and more meaningful.

‘They allow us to imagine a moment in which the ruin as a material face of human destruction will be replaced by a new human creation. They haunt us not only because of their past but also because they allow us to project onto them our wishes, desires, and hopes for the future: to see them as a space that is still in becoming rather than a site that merely marks what was’ (Eshel, 2010: 137).

In contrast, within heritage sites tourists are taken around on guided tours or directed through signage and information boards. There are implicit and explicit behavioural conventions for visitors to follow that prevent any interpretations that deviate from the official narrative. This ‘fixes’ history and denies the multiplicity of interpretations of the past available. Vanore urges us to remember that ‘the landscape of ruins does not reproduce completely any past and it alludes intellectually to a multitude of pasts’ (2010: 16). Such official interpretation decreases the mystery and sensuality of the forms and objects that the visitor might encounter creating a less sensory and individualistic recall, potentially restricting the emotional response of the visitor to a merely intellectual one (Edensor, see appendix 1, 2014).

Walsh argues that ‘key to developing a sense of place is to allow people to develop their own understandings of place, rather than to impose institutionalized meanings onto space’ (1992: 129). By reducing the available interpretation of a site’s past to the official history, as displayed on information boards and in brochures or as dictated by a tour guide, the interpretive and performative scope of the visitor is limited (Edensor, 2005: 233). The visitor feels limited to merely observing and appreciating the site, rather than being able to actively engage with it.

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Fig 4.5 - Librarian’s office, former Mark Twain Branch of the Detroit Public Library

Fig 4.6 - English Heritage Information Board, St. George in the East, London

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Fig 4.7 - Lloyds Building by Richard Rogers - registered as a Grade I listed building in 2011, the youngest building to achieve this status

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In an article in the New Socialist, Wright argued that heritage associations are incapable of thinking ‘positively of history as transformation, discontinuity or change’: ‘The nation is not seen as a heterogeneous society that makes its own history as it moves forward, however chaotically, in the future. Instead, it is portrayed as an already achieved and timeless historical identity which demands only appropriate reverence and protection in the present’ (Wright, 1986: 34, cited in Hewinson, 1987: 139).

The idea of history as a completed identity could be seen to encourage the notion that there is nothing left for the present to do but reflect on the past. In the case of England, the focus would lie on celebrating the achievements of the past, rather than bringing about future achievements. Hewinson quotes an interview with Stuart Smith, the former-director of Ironbridge Gorge Museum, who warns against giving in to nostalgic longing for past England, emphasising that ‘the past did produce some wonderful things, but their main contribution to society was actually changing society’ (1987: 143). Restoring architectural structures and preserving them in fixed versions of a particular past could be considered to deny the notion of the past as being in constant creation.

‘If the only new thing we have to offer is an improved version of the past, then today can only be inferior to yesterday. Hypnotised by images of the past, we risk losing all capacity for cultural change’ (Hewinson, 1987: 10).

Because the past is constantly in creation the number of properties and sites considered key to the nation’s heritage is constantly growing. In 2011, the Lloyd’s Building by Richard Rogers became the youngest Grade I listed building, less than three decades after its construction (English Heritage, 2014). These younger heritage sites are not considered to replace the older buildings, instead they are added to them. With this ever increasing number of buildings to preserve and respect we run the risk of being trapped beneath what Barthel describes as the ‘weight of the past’ (1996: 29). Hewinson believes this to ‘present a picture of a country obsessed with

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its past, and unable to face its future’ (1987: 9).

Having recognised the downsides associated with the restoration and preservation of architecture that has been abandoned to the process of decay, we are led onto exploring the alternative treatments for such structures.

An alternative to preservation often employed by the heritage industry is preserving structures that have already partly decayed. This was born early on within the preservation industry out of the belief held by architects such as John Ruskin that a true restoration was impossible. In Ruskin’s words ‘it is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture’ (1849: 161). Torn between a wish to avoid an unfaithful recreation of the past and the fear of losing further historic traces, many partly decayed structures are crystallised and preserved in stasis. Occasionally ruins are also preserved on the virtue of the beauty of their semi-decayed form, though this latter reason raises the question of finding beauty in decay. ‘If the process of ruination should have produced such a valuable result, why would further ruination not increase the value?’ (Scott, 2008: 58). Preserving architecture in a state of half-decay could be interpreted as a contradictory simultaneous celebration and denial of the aging process. Attempts to fix the form in partial ruination runs counter to the processes of time as described by Bergson, who describes existence as a ‘moving continuity’ in which ‘everything changes and yet remains’ (1988: 197). Furthermore due to the enacted process of remembrance we could question the effectiveness of preserving the form as an attempt to preserve the qualities of the past.

An alternative to abandoned buildings that could be considered the most popular outside of the heritage industry is that of demolishing the structure, in order to allow for a new creation. This could be considered to result from the aforementioned capitalisation of space, where all sites are considered in terms of potential capital gain. Andreas Huyssen asserts that buildings are seen as commodities highlighting: ‘Commodities in general do not age well. They become obsolete and are thrown out or recycled. Buildings are torn down or restored’ (2010: 19). Whilst the demolition of a ruined structure allows for a new creation, if it occurs to a high degree there is the possibility that we become unable to create any form of dis-

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course with the past. Rather than being wholly obsessed with the past, we might exist in a state of ‘over-presentness’. During a visit in 2002 to the Topography of Terror, a museum built in Berlin on the site of the former Gestapo and SS headquarters, Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘emphasized that the notion of community is lost if modern society remains completely stranded in presentness - that is to say, solely focused on the instantaneous and consumption’(Eshel, 2010:143).

A counter option to this is to allow the structures to continue to decay. This could be perceived as an acceptance of the inexorable passage of time and ‘the transitoriness of all greatness and power… and the remembrance of nature in all culture’ (Huyssen,2010: 21). Edensor also argues that there is value in allowing decay to continue, as the gradual wearing away of the structure exposes ‘the magic of construction’ (2005: 109). However it would be hard to reconcile such a suggestion with the prevailing view of architecture as a functional entity, despite the recognition of ruins housing alternative social practices. The erosion of the physical form decreases the stability of the structure, potentially raising concerns regarding its safety.

A final option is to undertake a form of intervention to the ruins, altering its form. This could be done in order to open critical and reflective discourse with the ruins. The artist Gordon Matta-Clark completed a series of works that involved the cutting and intervening of structures that had been registered for demolition. One of the early examples he completed was Splitting which involved cutting a house in two and raising the halves on jacks to reveal the split, transforming a previously ordinary building into a sculptural piece that revealed ‘the nature of the building’(Scott, 2008:127). His work could be considered as expressing a meta-commentary of ruination into the building.

Ruin intervention could also be achieved by constructing on top of the existing ruins. Rather than attempting to restore the ruins of Astley Castle in Warwickshire, architecture firm Witherford Watson Mann removed parts of the ruined structure and constructed new walls to enable it to accommodate new use as holiday accommodation. The building won the 2013 Stirling Prize for its combination of contemporary construction and preservation, described by RIBA President Stephen Hodder as an example of ‘how modern architecture can revive an ancient monument’

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Fig 4.8 - Splitting by Gordon Matta-Clark - after receiving a two-story wood frame house that was chartered for demolition, Matta-Clark cut the building in half and used jacks to lift it up, creating a visible split through the house.

Fig 4.9 - Astley Castle by Witherford Watson Mann Architects - winner of the RIBA 2013 Stirling Prize

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(BBC, 2013).

Ultimately, creativity could be considered reliant on issuing a challenge to the current model. It is through the breaking down of the assumed order that new possibilities are able to to emerge: ‘…a heritage is something we have possession of after the death of its original owners, and we are free to use as we choose. The fine Victorian mahogany commode, designed as a useful receptacle for excrement, now comes in handy as a cocktail cabinet; and so history-as-heritage simply offers a challenge to the ingenuity of its new owner’ (Raban, 1989: 24, cited in Walsh,1992: 68) We have inherited the architecture of our past, both the past that we are keen to remember and that we would rather forget. It is up to the English of the present to choose how they are used. Preserving them and turning them into museums of past English glory only serves to heighten our nostalgia for the past and make us feel removed from its creation. Vanore (2012) argues that we should look into creatively reinterpreting these structures, thus preserving them whilst simultaneously transforming them. This would turn the city into a palimpsest, where the urban fabric would act as a ‘collage of time’ resulting in ‘the accumulation of overlapping traces from successive periods, each trace modifying and being modified by the new additions’ (Lynch,1972: 171).

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Conclusion We are condemned to live perpetually in the present.

What matters is not the past, but our relationship with it.

Robert Hewinson, Between History and Memory(1987:43) The preservation of English architecture as ‘heritage’ is executed in order to ensure the legacies of the past are kept, primarily in order to strengthen national identity and secure the very notion of ‘Englishness’. This is due to a desire to stay true to the past.

However, as highlighted by Renan, history is rewritten. We cannot ever be wholly true to the past, for our perception of the past is always clouded by our experiences in the present. National heritage is wholly subjective. By defining certain aspects of history as ‘heritage’ we cultivate a collective memory, but one that is crafted selectively from aspects of the past that are easier to remember. This invariably leads to a nostalgic celebration of the past of England – one that emphasises colonial glory, wealth and social stability, but often glosses over the injustice, oppression and marginalisation with which these aspects of society were achieved.

The Country House is emblematic of this. Though the vision of social stability and English gentility it also simultaneously expresses large disparity in wealth and implicitly acknowledges the oppression present within the colonisation executed

by England. It is of little surprise that the Country House increases in emblematic power during times of recession and greater social dissatisfaction, as can be seen in the recent resurge in period dramas. The industrial ruin, evocative of failed industry and economy and often reminiscent of oppression and tough working conditions is far less easy to be preserved than the Country House, and is often turned into a monument to industrial might and technological advancement without acknowledging the suppressive lives of those who worked there.

These kind of architectural styles are preserved and to allow for this crystallisation of their architectural form, they are absorbed into the tourist industry. This

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serves the dual role of supporting these institutions economically as well as further promoting the official notions of English heritage that are used to reinforce national identity. To maximise the appeal of the touristic commodity and to support these notions of heritage, the architectural sites are policed and regulated. The histories contained within are reduced to singular narratives to enable easy consumption.

However not only does this preservation deny the multiplicity of historical narratives, the nostalgic English idyll it promotes is out of touch with the present reality. By perceiving the past as a perfect snapshot, rather than something that is continually created, we do not see ourselves as participating in its creation. Instead, all there is left for us to do is stand back and admire the achievements of those before us.

Through an examination of architecture that has not been maintained and has thus begun to fall into ruin, the powerful semantics of embracing ambiguity and the aging process has been revealed. It allows architecture to be seen as not an object fixed in time with a single story to tell, but something that is changing and evolving.

People are able to make their own interpretations about the past, and become more personally involved with the architecture. Just as a good author does not write a novel in explicit detail, but allows enough of a gap for the reader to fill with their own imagination, so too should historic architecture allow for these gaps. This inspires creativity and ultimately allows people to think positively about the future and feel empowered to change their city.

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Image References Front Cover (illustration belongs to author) Preserving England’s ‘Heritage’ Fig 1.1 - Maitland Robinson Library, Cambridge, Quinlan Terry (by txllxt [2011] on photoramio http://www.panoramio.com/photo/46574537) Fig 1.2 - Unite D’Habitation, Berlin, Le Corbusier (by Manfred Buckels [2010]) Fig 1.3 - Reclining Figure, Henry Moore (by Andrew Dunn [2004]) Fig 1.4 - Chatsworth House (by Rob Bendall [2002]) Heritage Tourism: The Packaging of ‘Englishness’ Fig 2.1 - Highclere Castle (by Vic Sanborn [2012]) Fig 2.2 - Stubbs Cotton Mill, Manchester (photograph belongs to author) Fig 2.3 - The engine house and stack at East Wheal Rose, Cornwall (by Darren Shilson [2009]) Fig 2.4 - West Wycombe Park from the Terrace, William Hannan (oil on canvas, date unknown, - source: National Trust, collection Inventory Number 1508193) Fig 2.5 - Clouds House, Philip Webb (by Derrickpetr [2007] on wikicommons http:// upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b0/Clouds_House.JPG) Fig 2.6 - Clouds House Principal Floor Plan (from The Gentleman’s Country House and its Plan 1835 - 1914 by Franklin J. [1981] Routledge & Kegan Paul) Fig 2.7 - The Saloon, Kedleston Hall (from Kendleston Hall by National Trust[1999]) Fig 2.8 - Cut-through of Kedleston Hall (ibid) Nostalgic Recall: The Imperfection of Remembrance Fig 3.1 - Tintern Abbey, Carl Gustav Carus (oil on canvas, date unknown - source: Christies, Lotfinder: 5175993)

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Fig 3.2 - The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment, Ilya Kabakov (by Noy Spiegelman [2010]) Ruins: Use and Re-Use Fig 4.1 - Packard Motor Car Company Plant, Detroit (by Andrew Moore [2009] from Detroit Dissambled [2010] by Barbara Tannenbaum [ed.] Akron Art Museum & Damiana Editore) Fig 4.2 - Handmade Shelter in a former Engine Works (ibid) Fig 4.3 - Former Mark Twain Branch of Detroit Public Library (ibid) Fig 4.4 - Ballroom, Lee Plaza Hotel (ibid) Fig 4.5 - Librarian’s office, former Mark Twain Branch of the Detroit Public Library (ibid) Fig 4.6 - English Heritage Information Board, St. George in the East, London (by ‘The Anonymous Widower’ [2011] on http://anonw.wordpress.com/2011/ page/121/) Fig 4.7 - Lloyds Building, Richard Rogers (by Aurelien Guichard [2009]) Fig 4.8 - Splitting, Gordon Matta-Clark (from Gordon Matta-Clark by Crow, T., Russi, J. & Diserens C. [2006] Phaidon Press Ltd.) Fig 4.9 - Astley Castle, Witherford Watson Mann Architects (from 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize Shortlist by Ozler L. [2013] http://www.dexigner.com/news/26814)

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Appendix Interview with Dr Tim Edensor, Principal Lecturer, Division of Geography & Environmental Management, Manchester Metropolitan University & Author of Industrial Ruins: Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality Interview conducted by Stephen Lovejoy at 2pm on Thursday 3rd April, in Dr Tim Edensor’s office in the John Dalton Building, All Saints Campus, Manchester Metropolitan University L=Interviewer E=Interviewee

(Start of interview) L: One thing that has come up a lot with the various readings I’ve been doing is, actually, almost the ambiguousness of this very term ‘ruin’. I’d be keen to know how you personally define it, what you think the definition of a ruin is.

E: It’s changing, actually. It’s changed. So what I would say is that everywhere, every single building in the world, is on its way to becoming a ruin. And what stops it becoming a ruin is endless maintenance and upkeep and care and intervention, so restoration and so forth. So certain old buildings need much more mediation. So they might need the stone replacing and so forth. So it’s really—it’s just about that.

And I suppose a ruin starts, or really starts, to resemble a ruin when maintenance stops. So it can be an empty building, but as long as it’s maintained. So there’s, for instance, the fire station in Manchester. It’s been empty for thirty years, I think; the big beautiful building at the top of Piccadilly. But it’s maintained. So it’s not a ruin.

Nobody would call it a ruin. But, if that maintenance stops—.

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L: Okay. And at the other end, I mean, would you say rubble still counts as a ruin?

E: Yeah, well that’s really interesting isn’t it? Where does a ruin stop? So I mean— what’s quite interesting about some of these empty spaces. Places that have been cleared of industrial buildings. Is that sometimes they still nevertheless contain little traces. I guess they are kind of traces of a ruin, so I mean— I wouldn’t say that they are ruins themselves. But there are traces of the ruin that was there. So it’s kind of an interesting thing, yeah. So rubble, I think, because it does sort of— it is the kind of— the material evidence for what was there. Rather than there being no material evidence. So I mean— I just think the whole process of ruination is much more widespread and more interesting actually the more I think about it. This is what I’ll be talking about.

L: Yes, there is this kind of ongoing—.

E: It’s called, the paper, is called Ruins are Everywhere.

L: That sounds like a good paper E: [laughs] Well, I’ve got to write it.

L: Yeah. One thing that’s interesting is that some people argue that ruins actually evoke a greater sense of nostalgia than buildings that haven’t— that are still maintained. I mean, if so— I mean, do you agree with this?

E: Well, I think what it is; it’s not necessarily a question of what’s being— what’s maintained. It’s the fact that most space, most of the time, that’s not ruined, is continuously regulated. So it’s very difficult to see traces of the past. Of course, all sites have their traces of the past. You can see them now. But suddenly, when a building is evacuated, when there’s nobody there any more, then it’s clearly of the past. It’s not the kind of ongoing present. Do you see what I mean? So there might be examples of the past, but it’s still in some ways, that past still relates to the present.

They might be replaced, they might be referred to, they might be kind of part of the present. Whereas once a building is evacuated, then the elements within it, like the old posters that you see, the old clothes the old tools and so forth. They suddenly

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and immediately belong to the past. And I think in some ways that kind of past can evoke— those kinds of traces of the past can evoke history much more powerfully than other things. Although, I mean, other things can as well. There are other ways of doing it. So I wouldn’t want to just say that ruins can just do this. So, my favourite museum is called ‘The Land of Lost Content’ or ‘The Land of Lost Content’, depending on how you want to pronounce it. And it’s in a small town called Craven Arms in Shropshire. And it’s really, it’s a museum that’s been created by people who are in the house-clearing trade, and then decided to create a museum. And it simply is— what it is, it’s the sort of everyday material culture of the twentieth century. So its things like food packets and tools and sweets and stuff like that and what they do is they kind of clutter it all together. So there’s no labelling, nothings labelled. You just look into a big room where there lie the tools or the packets, the food packets, of the twentieth century. And what happens is you alight on the things that you know, but that are no longer in existence. So you’ll see sweets from your childhood that don’t exist anymore. But it’s something to do with the fact that it’s not regulated. It’s not organised. It’s hard to remember. It’s hard to employ memory, or for memory to be sensual, let’s put it that way, if everything’s coded for you. Because then, that coding, the way things are kind of explained to you or displayed to you, the way I always like to put it, eclipses the mystery of a thing, and also the sensation or the sensual quality of a thing. Because memory’s not some sort of thing that you can kind of pin down. It’s a fluid, sensual thing. When you try to grasp it, it’s gone. But, this is the problem about, kind of, heritage sites. Is that they label, or explain, or you go on guided tours and people tell you what happened there. And as soon as that happens it changes your relationship to the past. So there’s a particular way in which your relationship to the past is conjured up in ruins, I think. And it’s because you don’t know what you’re going to find and the things that you find suddenly leap out at you and announce themselves and you confront them in a kind of way that you wouldn’t confront them if you went to a heritage centre, where you know how to behave and you follow particular conventions of behaviour and consumption.

L: And it’s all explained to you. Okay. And what was it that drew your interest to industrial ruins in particular? And why do you think they’re less celebrated than

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non-industrial?

E: Well, the thing is— I mean, I say in the book. The first chapter is— I used to always go round ruins when I was a kid. In this case, it was an old house, an old mansion and its old estate. So I always loved them, right. But then, actually, I started going round industrial ruins when I was on the dole, when I was young. I was kind of your age. I was on the dole in the 1980s. I couldn’t find a job. I lived in Stoke and I lived in Edinburgh, Newcastle. And it was the height of Thatcherism and there was this massive de-industrialism going on. She kind of closed down, smashed the unions and, kind of, destroyed British industrial infrastructure. And so, in the kind of big northern, especially in the northern industrial cities, there were giant swathes of derelict industrial space. Mills, steelworks; I mean, just huge. And I used to go round these places and take photos. Some of the photos from the book are from that time.

Most of them aren’t. So I just used to spend days walking round, taking pictures and just hanging out in these places. And then I continued to do it. Though there were fewer when I started the project. I kind of suddenly realised this resonated with academic questions about the past, about materiality, aesthetics, ghosts, ordering and so forth. And so it just all came together like that. And then I suppose the thing about industrial ruins is really, and British industrial ruins, is that that was a way of confining the project. I mean, if I’d started to think about ruined houses or shops that would have been too unencompassable. I had to restrict what I looked at. That’s really the reason.

L: And why do you think people are so less keen to celebrate—.

E: Well I don’t think they are now. I mean, I think they were. And I think actually this sort of old romantic representation of ruins became rather tired. And I think those places, they don’t seethe with life. I mean, I think they will have done at one point. I mean there’s a very interesting chapter in Christopher Woodward’s book on ruins, where he talks about going to—about— he looks at these historical descriptions of visiting Rome’s coliseum in the early 19th century. And there’s all these, it’s just great, there’s all these animals and birds in there and there’s vegetation. There’s people living there, and doing all sorts of things. And then, of course, it gets turned

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into a heritage site. And that’s interesting, I think. And so those old ruins were— also weren’t only ever just looked at in a romantic sense. But the thing about industrial ruins, I suppose, is that nobody preserves them. I mean, unless they get turned into heritage. Which of course does happen. So I think they are celebrated now.

I think you can see this in the kind of way that all these coffee-table books about Detroit, which are industrial ruins. So, in a way, since my book came out there has been a huge aestheticization of industrial space. So I mean— I think, yes, at once, at one point they weren’t celebrated. But I think they really are celebrated now. And they’ve become a kind of an alternative kind of romantic site; for some sort of sublime. It’s not kind of how I experience them. But there is that aesthetic.

L: And um— It’s kind of interesting that you talk about the arbitrary relationships that almost happen in these ruins. I mean— where do you really see the value of that?

E: Oh, I just love it. I kind of just, that was probably one of the things that I loved most about going into ruins; is what happens in them. What happens in the everyday world is we always tidy everything up. I mean, I do it in my house. You do it in your house. The whole world is kind of about putting things back in its place. But in doing that we mean that odd things, things that don’t have any relationship to each other, or fall out of place, don’t come together. And so what will happen in ruins is that you get these extraordinary arrangements of things. And it was really just to do with things falling out of place. Or people not tidying things away. So you will get kind of crazy, surreal, juxtapositions of different elements that made absolutely no sense. And that would never be seen like that ever again. They would be like one-off juxtapositions. You know, you wouldn’t see that again. Because the conditions for things falling apart doesn’t usually persist. So I think that gives it, kind of, real aesthetic charge. It just— I mean, you’re just like that: “Ooh!” It’s surprising. Whereas we might think then, what it kind of made me think is that actually the everyday material world is too tightly regulated. It actually stops surprising things happening. And that’s sad. You know, we need—we want—we need to have that. Too tight regulations can curb imagination and creativity, you know. Wonder and surprise. I

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mean, that’s—I don’t know whether you agree with me?

L: I completely agree with you actually. It’s interesting that you mention that, because my design project this year is very much about that amount of regulation.

But anyway, I’ll stick to the point. One thing you talk about a lot is the individual interpretation, or the ability for an individual to interpret. Why do you really feel that this is important?

E: Well, no, I think that the point that I’m trying to make there is, I don’t want— actually, there’s this kind of very famous phrase: ‘it’s the powerful who tell history’. The winners tell history, right? So what happens then, some of the winners are kind of commercial people who are involved in the heritage industry. So the heritage industry codifies everything. It comes up with these narratives that I’ve just mentioned and that stops your individual access to memories that might be based on all sorts of thing. I mean, when I’d be going around a ruin, first of all there’s different kinds of things, right? There’s the kind of ghosts that announce themselves. There’s the sort— you can kind of imagine. If you— you can put on somebody’s glove and you can feel what it felt like, to be in the factory, somehow. You know, it’s very hard to put that into words. You can feel what it felt like to, kind of, walk amidst the machines and so forth. So there’s a kind of sensual memory. Then there are these kinds of traces of people. Which are kind of obscure. You can’t quite see them. They’re almost there but you just can’t grasp it. Then there are the things—the sort of—the language of industrial culture. The labelling of parts that make no sense, they’re just these words that you don’t talk about. Different models of ceramics or machine parts that make no sense. There’s the kind of pictures that you come across, you can kind—you can almost kind of get there. But then also what there is—what there is as well— is there is your own memories. So, those memories might be mediatised so it might be a film you saw years ago that kind of conjures up a factory scene. In my case it was my own work because again, when I was your age, when I wasn’t on the dole I worked in factories, and it kind of brought all that back. It brought it back to me, my own work in factories. And then there was your grandparents talking about working in factories. So there are those kind of— it was kind of very thick, there were all

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these different swarming range of memories that kind of moved in and out and they weren’t restricted by the— by the story— by the official story. So these individual—now— I’m not saying those individual things are purely individual, I mean they would intersect— with other— with those of other people. But they were— they in some way—they were a much more intimate encounter with the past. And a richer and I think, I actually would say a kind of deeper and more meaningful encounter with the past than a story, a narrative.

L: Yeah. So do you feel that that ties into the more, kind of, collective memory that the heritage tries to impose?

E: Yeah, well I think there is a collective memory there as well in what I experienced, going around; in the individual, but it’s not only in the individual, but that’s also kind of part of the collective memory. But it’s not an official collective memory; it’s not a memory that’s organised to be consumed collectively. It’s a collective memory that’s kind of sensual and about kind of shared experience. And reference points and so forth, even though these are multiple. It’s like a big matrix rather than a sheet of paper that tells you. It’s like this whole series of swarming associations. Does that make sense?

L: It does, yeah. Do you think there can ever be a kind of harmony between these completely unregulated sites and these over-regulated tourist sites? Do you ever think there can be a—.

E: I don’t think there can. I think you have to see them as different things. So, I mean, what I wouldn’t want to do is entirely slag off all kinds of heritage sites. I mean they do really good jobs. I mean certain things, it’s just really fascinating. And they do tell a kind of interesting story. So, for instance, if you go to a mining museum it’s really important that you learn about what the communities were like, what— the labour struggles against Thatcher and so forth and eventual closure of the pits, the culture and the kind of sports that they used to be engaged with. That’s really important that you know that. Those forms of information are valuable. But if it’s only that— it’s— the question is if it’s only that, then that’s just one side of the story. You can’t

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encounter it really. You can’t— you can read about how it might have been like and you can maybe get some sort of sense of what the community was like. But other things will conjure what the feel of living in a place would be like, if it was a ruin, for instance. So I don’t really want to— I think some heritage is just unimaginative and kind of boring and didactic. And it’s always of course, always, invariable as you say it’s always told from a particular perspective. So it’s never objective. It cannot be objective. There’s no such thing as objectivity, really, in that regard. But it’s, what the question is, when there’s only that – that’s when it’s personally quite dangerous, I think.

L: Yeah. But do you think the existence of those regulated narratives cancel out the possibility of these—.

E: No, I don’t think they do cancel them out. But I think they tend to dominate. So I think what we need is a critical approach to them. I think, we can’t say there should be no sort of official regulated narrative otherwise you wouldn’t have schools. I mean, just think about. You’d be living in some sort of disordered world. We don’t like disorder if it’s only— if that’s all we have. It’s about having a balance between order and disorder. We need some disorder. We can’t just have order. If we only have order, things are just stifled and stultifying. But if we only have disorder things are just disturbing endlessly. So— but— my view to the kind of relationship between order and disorder is its out of kilter. So certain places are just far too ordered. So it’s not really an either/or. Really, it’s just that we need to encounter. There needs to be more— there needs to be less regulation sometimes. It’s about spatial regulation, really, is what it’s about.

L: And achieving a balance?

E: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

L: Okay, it was interesting that you mentioned the museum The Land of Lost Content. Because the next thing I was going to ask is whether you think it’s possible to achieve the same kind of effects you were discussing through purposeful design?

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E: Yeah, well, there’s the example. There’s the example. I just absolutely love it, it’s sensational. And I really think it’s worth going to. I mean, some people would go there and they would just say “There’s no order here, what’s this? It’s just a big jumble of stuff ”. But I kind of have—I mean, I went there with my partner and we were just— we were in there for about four hours. We were just absorbed. “Do you remember that? Bloody hell!” You know, she’d see some doll or something that she had from the 1960s when she was three. And she’d be like, “Bloody hell!” And I’d see some record that I’d had. It’s just that sort of thing. We were just entranced by it, whereas other people wouldn’t like it. There are other interesting things as well. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this museum called— I’m trying to think what it’s called— it’s called The Museum of Jurassic Technology. Which makes no sense, right? The Museum of Jurassic Technology. It’s in Los Angeles. And this is just a fantastic museum, because it’s a spoof museum. Everything in it is a fake. It is presented— it uses the sort of modes of disseminating scholarly information and display cases to tell particular kinds of stories and showcase objects that are really entirely fictitious. It’s just hilarious. But it’s really cleverly done. So I like that. Because it undercuts what museums do. I mean, there’s this things now, isn’t there, that museums are much more—what’s the word? Interactive. But I always think that that kind of interactiveness is highly conditional. Maybe they should be more interactive in more— less kind of regimented ways. But maybe that sort of interactivity can actually produce certain kinds of ‘a sense’— ‘a sensing’ of the past.

L: Yeah. Okay. And, regarding ruins again, do you think of any— do you reckon it’s possible to make any changes or interventions that could be made that wouldn’t result in a loss of that kind of semantic potential— the kind of potential of impermanence and all that kind of link to the past?

E: Yeah, I mean, it’s tricky isn’t it? The thing is— the whole thing about a ruin is— I mean a ruin, because I would sometimes go to ruins more than once. And then you’d go there one day and then you’d go there maybe six months later and it was different.

And that difference was part of the thing that I really liked. People had come there and done stuff. They might have done— they might have smashed things. Or they

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might have done other things that I just couldn’t understand why they’d done them.

It just didn’t make any sense. There might have been other changes. You know, more plants might be there. So— I mean it’s really hard to argue for a kind of politics of managing ruins. It’s kind of— I mean, you could, I suppose, put sort of boardwalks through, make them safe. But then you would have to start tampering with the infrastructure to make sure things didn’t fall on your head. It’s difficult to do, I think.

You would have to make lots of comprises, if you did that. But if you acknowledge the compromise then maybe that’s cool, maybe that’s okay. I wouldn’t want to rule it out. I don’t want to be purist about this. You know, say it’s only the ruin. Because then that kind of makes a sort of mystique around the thing. It’s not very productive.

L: What are your thoughts on works of artists like Gordon Matta-Clarke?

E: Oh I love all those. I like any— but well that’s really inventive, isn’t it? That’s just really interesting. I mean— there are— the best sort of artwork that I’ve seen is— some of the most recent interesting artwork is Chinese stuff. There are some fantastic Chinese artists who are doing amazing things in really modern ruins. And there’s people making films of the ghost estates in Ireland and so forth. I mean, I think there’s quite a lot of interesting artistic endeavour going on. There’s actually quite a lot the more I start thinking about it. And I like that, that’s kind of engaging with it in a different way. Laura Oldfield-Ford. Really interesting— there’s something really exciting about that. There’s some punky— It’s I don’t know— it’s just really— and there’s lots of things. There’s a great artist, I can’t remember— she goes into old asylums, which are also a genre of ruins and exploration that people got very excited about. So there are these—yeah— and she does really lovely paintings that include found objects and scraps of paper. But I also— what I also think’s important is that I think I like the kind of vernacular creativities that take place there. So going back to the mental hospitals, if you go on Flickr, you look up photos of mental institutions there are all these stupid things, there are all these daft things like— [laughs]. People go in there and they find straight-jackets and they put them on and then they get their mate to stab them. You know, they create all these melodramatic things. And I love all that. I just think that’s funny. They’re just having fun. People think its bad

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representation of mental hospitals to see them as these lurid melodramatic places.

But I quite like that. So you know, I think people go in there and do all sorts of interesting things. I write a little bit about that in the book. But there’s that thing that I really— one of the best things I saw was that thing where these guys— I think that’s in the book— and they have a big metal pole and there’s a huge oil tank. And they puncture the oil tank.

L: Yeah, I think I do remember that.

E: Does that make— do you remember that? And they take ages to do it.

L: It was kids that were doing it?

E: Yeah, it was this rusty oil tank. And then they manage to puncture it and they just stand there and the oil oozes out slowly and forms this lake. And it’s like a perfect lake, its perfect oil. And it’s just absolutely— it was just beautiful, in a kind of ruinous way. It was just a gorgeous spectacle. And they thought it was. They were mesmerized by it, which is great. So I like that. I don’t just talk— in other words— all I’m saying is, I think the art is really important, I think, lots of really innovative and interesting things that artists do, but also I think there’s lots of vernacular forms of creativity that are perpetrated in ruins.

L: Yeah, okay. One last thing I wanted to talk about is, one of the other authors, do you know George Steinmetz? Have you read any of his?

E: What does he write about?

L: He writes a lot about colonial melancholy. But anyway, in one of the articles of his that I read, he gave six different options of dealing with the ruins.

E: Oh, I don’t know that.

L: It’s quite interesting. I’ll go through them and it’d be great if you could think of any good examples to look into. He looks into: demolishing and removing all trace, allowing the ruin to continue to decay as they are, building meta-commentaries of ruination into the ruins— that’s kind of what Gordon Matta-Clarke and the like

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do—sustain the ruins in their half-decayed state, building on top of the old structure or restoring them to their imagined original condition, which is of course what happens with heritage.

E: That sounds really interesting, that paper. So, I was just thinking—.

L: It was in Ruins of Modernity. It was one of the essays in there.

E: That’s really interesting. No, I was just— something came to mind then, I can’t think of what—just flitted into my head— now what the hell was it? What was the first one that you said?

L: Demolishing and removing all trace.

E: And the second was leaving things as they are.

L: Allowing them to continue to decay.

E: And the other one was?

L: Building the meta-commentaries, sustaining them in their half-decayed state or building on top of the old structures or complete restoration.

E: I was just going to say something really interesting there, or I think it was interesting. But it’s completely gone from my head. So yeah, I think all those things are potentially possible and there are all— they do all eventuate. I mean, I— obviously the one that I like and the one that I’ve gained the most from was the second one.

But I don’t want to advocate that as some sort of policy, that just seems a bit insane.

So people can— people do come up with quite creative things in them. Arresting them is the one that I find the least— I’m least happy with. The third one, is it?

Where you just—.

L: You kind of sustain them in that—.

E: Yeah, I can’t—No, that just makes no sense to me at all. I can’t understand that.

What I— it’s a bit really like— like the Peak District has been arrested in about 1870.

Because you can’t build buildings out of other material, it’s got to be in a particular

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architectural style. But the Peak District before that was always a place that was evolving. You kind of freeze history, it’s just nuts. Of course you can’t. It just seems a weird thing to do. So I really hate that one. The others, I think, you can erase it if you want and that’s alright. Then build something else, that’s fine. Otherwise nothing could ever happen, right. I like the leaving, as I’ve said. I think things can happen.

What was the fourth one?

L: The fourth one was the sustaining. There was the meta-commentaries of ruination.

E: Yeah, well that’s interesting, because that’s intervention. That’s creative so I would obviously like that. That’s— I hate the fourth one. Senseless. The fifth one is building on top; that can be really creative; there can be really interesting things there. You have— if you— I mean you can’t— going back to the fourth one, I think you could preserve it, but you’d have to do something that made it odd. So, for instance, I’m thinking of this ruin in Norway, a place called ‘Hamar’, which is an old cathedral, I think.

L: How do you spell that?

E: H-a-m-a-r. But what they’ve done is they’ve built a great big glass greenhouse over it and that makes it odd then. Then it’s odd. So it’s okay if you make things odd.

That’s okay. Or if you intervene with them in creative ways. If you simply preserve it, it doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.

L: I don’t suppose you know of any good examples, around North England of any of the other ones I mentioned? Or ones that would be good to visit?

E: I mean— the thing is— the trouble is, when I was— like I said— in the mid80s there were massive ruins everywhere. But then also, from sort of 2000 – 2005 when I was writing, there were still loads of ruins. I drove round Britain and they were just everywhere. But now they’re really hard to find. That’s not many ruins you can find. Now, it could be in the current age of austerity they’ll start to come again. But the point is that in the 80s, but then also in the other wave of the 200s, is

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a lot of the things that were ruins were kind of old Victorian factories. Once they’ve gone, now— if new factories— factories that are assembled more recently, they’re just made out of things that can be simply dissembled. So it’s kind of hard to find ruins now. I mean, there was this era of ruination. And I think that, those ruins aren’t going to be found anymore. Or there’ll be far fewer of them. So, I mean, I think it’s quite difficult. Now, where would be—Where— There was something, there was the thing, the something that won the architectural award, RIBA award, this year which was a conversion of a castle. Which I thought was pretty cool. So it honoured the shape of the castle, but had modern stuff in there too, which was kind of quite cool.

L: I think I know the one you mean E: So I’m all in favour of that sort of thing. There must be things; I just can’t kind of come up with any off the top of my head. I wish I could remember what I was going to say to you, it was related to that. It might come back to me, and if so I’ll email you.

L: Okay. What do you think— you made mention of ruins disappearing. Do you think that’ll have any kind of effect on how people view buildings and how people view the history?

E: I think if there are no ruins, then we live in— it’s a bit like a lot of American cities.

They just lack any kind of place— sense of place. So it is quite important if a place has had a long history, to see traces of that history, at least to have some sort of sense—and it’s kind of really interesting actually. I was just thinking about this the other day. So, this is really interesting, I want to think about this more. So I went to Estonia, right? I went to this place called Tartu. Which— Tallinn is the big centre, the big medieval city. But Tartu is in the interior of the country. And when you’re in Tartu there was— Estonia, in the Second World War was invaded by the Russians and then the Germans moved in and bombed it and then the Russian moved back and bombed it again, in chasing the Nazis out, and destroyed stuff. And when you go there you can feel it, you can see dereliction from the Second World War. You can see bomb crags. You can feel the Second World War all around you. And if you think about Britain, the whole of the country was utterly militarized. So everywhere— not

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even— not just in cities, but everywhere there would have been military camps, displaced person camps, prisoner of war camps, training centres, Dad’s Army, Home Guard things. Bloody loads of places were requisitioned, stately homes and stuff to billet soldiers and for training and stuff. The whole country, there were fortifications everywhere. Tank traps. The whole country looked completely different and there are hardly any traces of that. It’s just been erased. I mean, there are, but not many.

You see pillboxes every now and then. But not— what was kind of really weird about being in Tartu, is that you kind of feel the Second World War, you feel it. Just like: “Ah, the Second World War! God!” You can in Berlin even a bit, some derelict bits of berlin that were bombed. And when that all gets effaced there’s a bit of a loss there, I think. And it can’t be— you can’t save it by turning it into heritage. That makes something else. That makes it a museum. That detaches you from the past somehow.

L: Yeah, it’s interesting that you mention that, that was going to be my next question.

Do you agree with the notion that this heritagization, this museumization, gives this impression that history is finished, almost?

E: Exactly yes, that’s what I’m trying to say. It’s removed from you then. You have no encounter with it. You only have a cognitive encounter with it, if you like, rather than a sensual encounter; it’s something that impresses itself upon your body, where your imagination can take off. You’re imagination gets somewhat stifled in those sorts of ways, I think.

L: Yeah. Great. I completely agree with you there. Cool, well thank you very much.

E: That’s quite alright.

(End of interview)

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