New Heritage at Risk Register released
Last month Historic England released its annual Heritage at Risk Register. This year saw the addition of 159 new sites to the list, while 203 sites were saved and subsequently removed from the register. Sites added to the list included Holbeche House in the West Midlands, where the Gunpowder Plot unravelled, and the Great White Horse Hotel in Suffolk, which served as the inspiration for Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. Sites saved this year included Bourn Mill in Cambridgeshire (below), which is one of the oldest windmills in England, and a rare Victorian electricity substation in Wimbledon.
Award for Scotland’s oldest purpose-built library
The Leighton Library in Dunblane, Scotland’s oldest purpose-built library, was recently awarded a grant from Historic Environment Scotland (HES). This will be used to help restore the building, including repairs to the walls, stonework, chimneys, and roof to help ensure the library’s book collection can remain housed in its original building.
The library, a Category A-listed building, was commissioned and built in the 17th century through a bequest in the will of Robert Leighton, a former Principal of Edinburgh University, Bishop of Dunblane, and Archbishop of Glasgow. It is home to a large collection of rare and antique books with the oldest of them dating to 1504.
Oxford Archaeology launches new platform
Last month Oxford Archaeology (OA) launched a new platform, the Knowledge Hub (https://knowledge.oxfordarchaeology.com), which allows people more easily to access information on OA’s excavations and publications over the past 50 years through an online search engine.
Commenting on the new hub, Ken Welsh, OA’s chief executive, said: ‘Over its 50 years, Oxford Archaeology has produced an extraordinary range of knowledge about the past which we want to share with everyone, from schoolchildren to academics, colleagues, and archaeology enthusiasts. The Knowledge Hub will help us to do this, and we are excited to look at new ways and tools to share our work with the public.’
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