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In common (I suspect) with many readers, Sherds first encountered the term ‘access’ in 1995 when the Disability Discrimination Act was passed, requiring wheelchair access, and toilets for wheelchair users, in all public buildings. Much hand-wringing then followed, as heritage professionals worried about the impact of ramps and handrails on the architectural significance of listed buildings.
Since then, ‘enhanced access’ has become a phrase -that is never far from the lips of every fundraiser and -grant-seeker – the rationale for every ‘case for support’. Much that is done in the name of access is admirable: once exclusive institutions, such as the Society of Antiquaries, have now thrown open their doors; lectures are now broadcast to the world; collections can be searched online; journals and academic papers can be read free of charge.
It can, though, be over-used. The Ziran Education Foundation, which recently purchased Reading Gaol -from the Ministry of Justice for £7 million, announced -their intention to open a museum outlining the history -of the prison ‘and an exhibition space accessible to the public’. It would be an odd sort of exhibition space that wasn’t accessible.
Sherds likes to point out that many ‘modern’ ideas are actually much older. Manchester’s Portico Library has recently secured a National Lottery grant for an ambitious redevelopment plan. The Library was founded in 1806 by local worthies seeking to ‘democratise knowledge’ – a grandiloquent phrase that means much the same as ‘enabling access’.
Perhaps the main difference between then and now is that access once depended on the payment of a membership fee. It was to be another half century or so before institutes began to open up in several industrial towns along the lines of Swindon’s Mechanics’ Institute (Grade II*, built in 1855) to provide educational and recreational facilities for workers and their families. Typically, they were funded by the dominant local employer, and incorporated libraries and newspaper -reading rooms, as well as theatres that were used for lectures, film shows, concerts, and dances.
Navigating nature
‘Access’ is not by any means a neutral term. Tempers flare and many polemical column inches are written when it is used to justify changes in Oxbridge entrance requirements, civil-service recruitment procedures, or the presentation style and choice of music broadcast on Radio 3. A very recent example is the storm that has broken around -the report by Wildlife and Countryside Link stating that people from ethnic minority groups experience ‘structural, experiential, and cultural’ barriers to accessing green spaces, and that the Government should create a ‘legally binding target for access to nature’ by ensuring that everyone has a green space within a 15-minute walk of their home.
Wildlife and Countryside Link is an umbrella body that speaks on behalf of scores of member organisations – it provides the ‘one voice’ in speaking to Government about natural heritage that the cultural heritage sector is often accused of lacking. When Sherds was appointed the first Director of the Heritage Alliance in 2002, Wildlife and Countryside Link was my model and inspiration: I admire greatly what they do, but they have got it wrong on this occasion because the stark truth is that everyone faces barriers to accessing green spaces, no matter what their cultural or ethnic background.
There are, of course, some very well-trodden footpaths around the UK, but if you want to escape the crowds climbing Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) or following the former railway track along the Peak District’s Monsal Trail, you can always try plotting your own walk using the public footpaths shown on Ordnance Survey maps. Except -that, if you do, you are almost certain to meet structural barriers (blocked or ploughed-up paths) and cultural ones (aggressive notices prohibiting access and claiming that there is no right of way, dogs set loose to menace walkers, cows and calves illegally kept in fields crossed by paths without adequate fencing, landowners on sheep-chasers escorting you off ‘their land’ and, on occasions, carrying shotguns for added emphasis). Wildlife and Countryside Link is right that there are access problems, but they are problems encountered by every walker, not just those of ethnic minority origin.
Hope for hobbyists?
Faced with a hostile countryside, perhaps it is safest to stay at home and indulge in a harmless hobby. An arts organisation called Artangel, which specialises in ‘extraordinary art in unexpected places’ (they once mounted an exhibition in Oscar Wilde’s cell in Reading Gaol) is working with 12 museums around the UK on a series of exhibitions celebrating ‘our quiet pastimes and favourite hobbies’ – especially those that involve the creation of an object, from carnival costumes to origami -or brass rubbings. Artangel is calling for volunteers to take part – perhaps CA readers should offer their ever-inventive edible archaeology creations!
Could such an exhibition lead to a revival in traditional hobbies that are said to be in decline? One of these is the building of model railways. The age of sublimating one’s desire to be an engine driver by operating your own bedroom version is over, according to media reports citing the closure of Hattons Model Railways (the Widnes-based retailer established in 1946), and the suspension ‘for the foreseeable future’ of the Warley National Model Railway Exhibition after 30 years at the Birmingham NEC.
A plaintive message on the exhibition’s website -explains that ‘the tick of the demographic time bomb -is getting more prominent, as the next generation of younger enthusiasts required to take over the staffing -and running of such prestigious events does not seem -to be materialising’. As well as an aging demographic – many modellers are now aged 60-plus – the other reasons given for the hobby’s decline include the costs of parts -and rolling stock, which can run to hundreds of pounds, and the lack of space in smaller homes to devote to -railway modelling.
Among those rich enough to have the necessary space -and wealth are Jools Holland, Roger Daltrey, Elton John, -Neil Young, Eddie Izzard, and Rod Stewart. The last of these told The Guardian that he is ‘proud to be called a nerd’ and that his model railway, based on 1940s Manhattan and Chicago, ‘took me 23 years to build and is bigger than most people’s houses’. Rod is also proud to have been made an honorary member of the Market Deeping Model Railway Club, in Lincolnshire, after he donated £10,000 to help the club rebuild its displays following their destruction by vandals in 2019.
Such obsessive pastimes can be decried. Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Psychopathology at Cambridge University, described them as typical of the ‘obsessive completist’ tendency in the male mind. But equally it could be argued that hobbies help to build friendships, relieve anxiety, stretch the mind, and provide a sense of purpose.
Merit in the mundane
In addition, as a leader in The Guardian suggested recently, the value of archaeology is not only to be found in the extravagant displays of power and riches represented by jewellery, gold, and sumptuous palaces, but in the seemingly mundane. It cites as evidence the Vindolanda tablets that are on display at the British Museum as part of the current exhibition, Legion: life in the Roman army (see p.18). The tablets connect us with the everyday human story of the wife of the fort commander inviting a friend to her birthday party and the soldier far from home hoping for warm socks and underpants to help him bear life on a cold Northumberland frontier.
Responding to The Guardian editorial, museum consultant Vicky Dawson wrote a letter about an exhibition called Smashed in the Cellar, currently showing at Wells & Mendip Museum. This explores the lives of people who lived in the museum building (on Cathedral Green, in Wells, Somerset) through the collection of broken pottery excavated in the back garden of the house in the 1990s.
The collection includes 13th-century wine jugs, -Chinese export ceramics, a rare 1790s flushing toilet, and -a children’s tea set. It remained largely unseen until (with seed funding from Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund) the museum volunteers instigated a programme of research into who made the vessels, how they got to Wells, who used them, and who threw them away.
Vicky argues that it is ‘the nuances of life, past and present, that foster understanding and compassion’. She goes on to make the larger point that everyone is the poorer ‘if small, largely volunteer-funded museums such as Wells, as well as our larger public institutions, are starved of the support received from local and national government’ – -an all-too-real threat at the moment.
