"Botany Bay", South Worcestershire, 1 May 2011
Showing posts with label Local Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Local Studies. Show all posts
Monday, May 02, 2011
Saturday, April 02, 2011
From the Worcester Standard newspaper 1 April 2011 Archbishop dedicates eco-friendly church
The Archbishop of Canterbury paid a visit to the County to dedicate a new eco-friendly church at Mucknell Abbey. Dr Rowan Williams dedicated the church, which has been built from locally-sourced sustainable materials, on Friday (25 March) at the Abbey near Stoulton....
Abbot Stuart said: " We have a lovely new building. Now we are setting about developing the 40 acres of land in a way which will model that loving care for the world. Already we have planted an orchard and several thousand trees as part of the restoration of Feckenham Forest*, and we have begun work on our own large kitchen garden".
*Also known as the Forest of Worcester - please see my subsequent post @ http://woodwose.wordpress.com/
The Archbishop of Canterbury paid a visit to the County to dedicate a new eco-friendly church at Mucknell Abbey. Dr Rowan Williams dedicated the church, which has been built from locally-sourced sustainable materials, on Friday (25 March) at the Abbey near Stoulton....
Abbot Stuart said: " We have a lovely new building. Now we are setting about developing the 40 acres of land in a way which will model that loving care for the world. Already we have planted an orchard and several thousand trees as part of the restoration of Feckenham Forest*, and we have begun work on our own large kitchen garden".
*Also known as the Forest of Worcester - please see my subsequent post @ http://woodwose.wordpress.com/
Monday, November 01, 2010
The numinous landscape of South Worcestershire, shown here in the Malvern Hills, has long been the inspiration for music, of which Elgar's is the outstanding example, and poetry, including the less well-known Poly-Olbion - please see my other post for today @ http://woodwose.wordpress.com/
However, the wider landscape context created by the Malverns, the Severn Valley and Bredon Hill, an outlier of the Cotswolds, has perhaps not received the cultural attention it merits. I have, therefore, resumed a longstanding personal project focused on Crookbarrow Hill, at the edge of Worcester, as the starting point for an exploration of this cultural landscape.
Incidentally, the slow progress of this project is largely due to my involvement in various spatial planning sagas - see
www.crookbarrow.com/
http://crookbarrow.wordpress.com/
http://smartlimits2growth.wordpress.com/
In case the slow pace continues I've decided to publish the introduction :
MESSAGES FROM THE MOUND
A Cultural Study of Crookbarrow Hill
Introduction
For some years now I have intended to write a history of Crookbarrow Hill, but the time has never been right. Today, 30 October 2010, I resumed “The Green Man Project” blog with a post (see below) on “The Story of Silbury Hill”, a book recently published by English Heritage which suggests that Europe’s largest man-made mound may have been developed over many centuries as part of an even more extensive landscape project in what is now the Avebury World Heritage site in Wiltshire. My own intuition is that the man-moulded mound known variously as Crookbarrow Hill, Brockhill and the Whittington Tump, next to Junction 7 of the M5 Motorway in Worcestershire is also part of a much larger ancient landscape discourse, I shall call it: a “big conversation” extending back into prehistory circumscribed to the west by the Malvern Hills, to the east by Bredon Hill, and with the Severn River providing the north-south axis.
Having at last set the scene for “A Cultural Study of Crookbarrow Hill”, I shall explain why I have chosen this intellectual form of inquiry rather than a more straightforward historical account, or the cultural history which I also considered. The reasons for this in part reflect my academic education in both English literary and urban and regional planning studies, and the fact that I am neither a historian nor an archaeologist. I also have a strong interest in depth psychology, particularly Jungian, in contemporary green spirituality, in the historical relationship between the Christian religion and Britain’s pagan legacy, and in what are widely known as “earth mysteries”, including ley lines. More mundanely, I am concerned with how modern society, and more specifically government agencies, value and protect the historic environment in different parts of the British Isles, especially in England and Wales. “A Cultural Study”, therefore, seems to lend itself best to the diversity of my interests and, indeed, to the intellectual plurality of perspectives inspired by the visual panorama from Crookbarrow Hill itself.
The study is intended to cover the following issues and themes:
- Description of Crookbarrow Hill at the present time
- The numinous landscapes of South Worcestershire
- Seasonal festivals, religious events and local folklore
- Wider interpretations of the role of hill barrows etc
- Depth psychology and Earth Mysteries movement
- Future management of Crookbarrow and environs*
* These are presently used for horse pasture: see my recent post @ http://horsework.wordpress.com/ In short, there is no management of Crookbarrow Hill and environs by the relevant agencies, in sad contrast to the attention given to ancient sites elsewhere. Perhaps the main reason for this is that Crookbarrow Hill falls within an area identified for urban development at the present time.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
THE STORY OF SILBURY HILL is a new publication by English Heritage which explores the development of the largest prehistoric mound in Europe. Latest research suggests that construction of Silbury Hill may have taken place over many centuries as part of the unfoldment of an "unconscious collective" master plan for the wider landscape of Avebury. As such, "The Avebury Project" might be interpreted as the co-operative work of prehistoric society's "Collective Unconscious"*, and a message in a mound for modern man.
* A term coined by Carl Jung
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
WHY I'VE LATELY BEEN BOUND FOR BOTANY BAY
The sea shanty "Botany Bay" is one of my favourite traditional folk songs, and, for anyone unfamiliar with it, here is the first verse :
"Come all ye young men of learning,
And a warning take from me,
I would have you quit night walking,
And shun bad company,
I would have you quit night walking,
Or else you'll rue the day,
You'll rue your transportation, lads,
When you're bound for Botany Bay".
Now let me reassure readers that I'm not due for "transportation" downunder, even if some of my blogs are critical of the powers that be.
No, I've lately been bound for Botany Bay in South Worcestershire, and the purpose of my journeys has been to pick sloes to make sloe gin.
Some may be aware that sloes are in very short supply this year, so my discovery of a bush with sloes on it the other day, naturally led to further journeys.
As it happens, Botany Bay is one of my favourite spots and you're probably wondering, as I did, how the place came by it's name.
According to "The Place Names of Worcestershire" (Cambridge University Press 1922), the name "Botany Bay" is derived from "Botenaysse" or Bota's Ashtree.
However, the authors of the above also note that : "The modern form of the name is doubtless due to the fact that that it (Botany Bay) is in a remote corner of the parish".
In fact, Worcestershire's Botany Bay lies nearby the famous Spetchley Park and Gardens, and I like to think the name derives from its rich flora, as does that of Botany Bay in Australia.
Nevertheless, it seems that the label "Botany Bay" was in common use at one time, and the place which is now home to Worcester College in Oxford also went by this name.
Interesting stuff, and I'm looking forward to enjoying a drop of sloe gin later in the year, and maybe a bit of "bad company" and "night walking" too !
The sea shanty "Botany Bay" is one of my favourite traditional folk songs, and, for anyone unfamiliar with it, here is the first verse :
"Come all ye young men of learning,
And a warning take from me,
I would have you quit night walking,
And shun bad company,
I would have you quit night walking,
Or else you'll rue the day,
You'll rue your transportation, lads,
When you're bound for Botany Bay".
Now let me reassure readers that I'm not due for "transportation" downunder, even if some of my blogs are critical of the powers that be.
No, I've lately been bound for Botany Bay in South Worcestershire, and the purpose of my journeys has been to pick sloes to make sloe gin.
Some may be aware that sloes are in very short supply this year, so my discovery of a bush with sloes on it the other day, naturally led to further journeys.
As it happens, Botany Bay is one of my favourite spots and you're probably wondering, as I did, how the place came by it's name.
According to "The Place Names of Worcestershire" (Cambridge University Press 1922), the name "Botany Bay" is derived from "Botenaysse" or Bota's Ashtree.
However, the authors of the above also note that : "The modern form of the name is doubtless due to the fact that that it (Botany Bay) is in a remote corner of the parish".
In fact, Worcestershire's Botany Bay lies nearby the famous Spetchley Park and Gardens, and I like to think the name derives from its rich flora, as does that of Botany Bay in Australia.
Nevertheless, it seems that the label "Botany Bay" was in common use at one time, and the place which is now home to Worcester College in Oxford also went by this name.
Interesting stuff, and I'm looking forward to enjoying a drop of sloe gin later in the year, and maybe a bit of "bad company" and "night walking" too !
Friday, January 25, 2008
The Urban Rural Fringe
The followings abstract refers to "Prospects for the Rural-Urban Fringe in Australia : Observations from a Brief History of the Landscapes around Sydney and Adelaide" by
Raymond Bunker and Peter Houston, published by Blackwells in 2003 :
Despite being a major site of recent population growth and, arguably, a key arena for sustainability concerns, the rural-urban fringe has received relatively little attention in the literature concerning Australian cities and urban policy. To address this shortcoming the authors review post-World War II efforts to plan the rural-urban fringes of Sydney and Adelaide and find a number of issues for contemporary policy-makers. First, the fringe is becoming increasingly complex due to multi-faceted demographic change, a broadening economic base and demands for better environmental management, all within the context of an evolving understanding of sustainability. Second, water resource management, partly under the auspices of integrated natural resource management, is assuming a much higher priority than in early fringe planning endeavours, which emphasised urban containment, agricultural land protection and landscape conservation. Third, and partly as a consequence of this shift of priorities, there is also evidence of changes to the nature and focus of policy tools used in the fringe, with land management concerns now cutting across traditional land use planning. Finally, and fundamentally, these observations raise questions about how future governance of the fringe should be organised. Together these four themes pose an enthralling series of challenges for policy-makers for which much more research and discussion are needed.
The followings abstract refers to "Prospects for the Rural-Urban Fringe in Australia : Observations from a Brief History of the Landscapes around Sydney and Adelaide" by
Raymond Bunker and Peter Houston, published by Blackwells in 2003 :
Despite being a major site of recent population growth and, arguably, a key arena for sustainability concerns, the rural-urban fringe has received relatively little attention in the literature concerning Australian cities and urban policy. To address this shortcoming the authors review post-World War II efforts to plan the rural-urban fringes of Sydney and Adelaide and find a number of issues for contemporary policy-makers. First, the fringe is becoming increasingly complex due to multi-faceted demographic change, a broadening economic base and demands for better environmental management, all within the context of an evolving understanding of sustainability. Second, water resource management, partly under the auspices of integrated natural resource management, is assuming a much higher priority than in early fringe planning endeavours, which emphasised urban containment, agricultural land protection and landscape conservation. Third, and partly as a consequence of this shift of priorities, there is also evidence of changes to the nature and focus of policy tools used in the fringe, with land management concerns now cutting across traditional land use planning. Finally, and fundamentally, these observations raise questions about how future governance of the fringe should be organised. Together these four themes pose an enthralling series of challenges for policy-makers for which much more research and discussion are needed.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
The Proper Scope and Role of Local Studies
"Local Studies" is usually taken to mean "Local History". However, this definition is too narrow, in my view, and, I would argue, has hindered development of a more broadly based and dynamic approach to the study of localities which can be practically applied to different situations and requirements eg interventions in the planning system. As consequence, the take up of "Local Studies" in some places - but by no means all - tends to be limited to those with a professional or amateur interest in historical research either for publication or, perhaps, a family or community archive. Whilst these are worthy enough ends, I would propose that a much greater opportunity exists to develop "Local Studies" in both the academic and non-academic contexts and to significantly broaden participation in what can be a professionally, personally and collectively an immensely worthwhile and fulfilling intellectual and practical pursuit for diverse people and communities.
Before exploring an expanded concept of "Local Studies", I would like to compare and contrast my experience of resources for the study of localities and associated local projects in different places. My own professional background is in area regeneration, and I would propose that some of the most successful regeneration initiatives are closely associated with local studies "communities", such as those with an interest in conservation of the built and natural environment. In London, my experience suggests that, in the recent past anyway, opportunities for linking conservation and "development" have been good, although most recent contact suggests that conservation is losing out to development again. Elsewhere, opportunities for a more holistic and applied approach to local studies seem, with some notable exceptions, to be more limited. Worcester/shire has excellent archive and library resources, but their user communities seem fragmented, and there appears to be a lack of appreciation of the value of conservation to sustainable regeneration, notwithstanding the good work of English Heritage.
Moving on the scope of "Local Studies", Worcester's "History Centre and Library" and the "Local Studies" section in the City's Main Library (Art Gallery and Museum) have a fine and wideranging collection of publications. Indeed, these excellent collections probably circumscribe the proper scope and role of "Local Studies", ranging as they do from miscellaneous local history publications, to historical (as well as more recent) plans and associated documents for Worcestershire and the West Midlands Region. The latter cover subjects from economic and transport planning, and housing development, to conservation of the natural and built environments. In addition, there is a wealth of cultural material linked to both locality and wider region, all contributing to a veritable treasure trove of knowledge and recollection. Nevertheless, the focus of "Local Studies" remains rather narrowly defined in the naming of the "History Centre and Library", and, although this facility, and the City Library, both provide an excellent service, the full extent of their collections goes unappreciated, in my opinion, by the
wider community, and their "collective wisdom" is mostly unapplied in the present day context.
A proposal by the University of Worcester, the City Council and Worcestershire County Council to co-locate existing " Local Studies" resouces in a new "Mega-Library", attached to the University, on the site of the former Royal Infirmary may go some way to tackling the concerns which I have raised. In principle, the co-location of local studies resources with the County Council's archaeology service seems a good idea. On the other hand, I have some reservations about the value of mega-projects, having been involved in quite a few. These can consume large amounts of resouces, not least money, without creating a better service for user communities.
However, I will give the Worcester proposal the benefit of my doubt for the time being. Instead, I would suggest the organisations involved with project consider the possibility of developing a broad "Local Studies" curriculum, which might be adapted to the requirements of different stakeholders, such as schools, higher and further education students, the voluntary sector, researchers etc. This curriculum should be linked to a range of accreditations and qualifications, as well as encouraging those who wish to engage in informal study and research.
The "World Heritage Sites" division of UNESCO (United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organisation) sponsors two Masters degree programmes in "World Heritage Site Management". The syllabus for the course in Dublin (for links see the UNESCO website), could actually be adapted for a more local context, possibly in conjunction with an organisation such as English Heritage. The University of Worcester might offer a Masters programme with a "Local Studies/Heritage Management" focus at some point : now would seem to be a good time to be thinking about this. The UNESCO experience of managing World Heritage Sites is certainly relevant to Worcester. Development pressures continually threaten conservation. Indeed, had conservation played a stronger role in the post-war development of Worcester, it is possible that the city might have been eligible for "world heritage" status itself. The 1940s "Civic Survey for the Planning of Worcester", copies of which are available from Worcester City Libary and in the History Centre, emphasises the fine City's fine architectural and landscape heritage. Much of this - alas ! - has now been developed and even more is currently under threat.
To be continued....
"Local Studies" is usually taken to mean "Local History". However, this definition is too narrow, in my view, and, I would argue, has hindered development of a more broadly based and dynamic approach to the study of localities which can be practically applied to different situations and requirements eg interventions in the planning system. As consequence, the take up of "Local Studies" in some places - but by no means all - tends to be limited to those with a professional or amateur interest in historical research either for publication or, perhaps, a family or community archive. Whilst these are worthy enough ends, I would propose that a much greater opportunity exists to develop "Local Studies" in both the academic and non-academic contexts and to significantly broaden participation in what can be a professionally, personally and collectively an immensely worthwhile and fulfilling intellectual and practical pursuit for diverse people and communities.
Before exploring an expanded concept of "Local Studies", I would like to compare and contrast my experience of resources for the study of localities and associated local projects in different places. My own professional background is in area regeneration, and I would propose that some of the most successful regeneration initiatives are closely associated with local studies "communities", such as those with an interest in conservation of the built and natural environment. In London, my experience suggests that, in the recent past anyway, opportunities for linking conservation and "development" have been good, although most recent contact suggests that conservation is losing out to development again. Elsewhere, opportunities for a more holistic and applied approach to local studies seem, with some notable exceptions, to be more limited. Worcester/shire has excellent archive and library resources, but their user communities seem fragmented, and there appears to be a lack of appreciation of the value of conservation to sustainable regeneration, notwithstanding the good work of English Heritage.
Moving on the scope of "Local Studies", Worcester's "History Centre and Library" and the "Local Studies" section in the City's Main Library (Art Gallery and Museum) have a fine and wideranging collection of publications. Indeed, these excellent collections probably circumscribe the proper scope and role of "Local Studies", ranging as they do from miscellaneous local history publications, to historical (as well as more recent) plans and associated documents for Worcestershire and the West Midlands Region. The latter cover subjects from economic and transport planning, and housing development, to conservation of the natural and built environments. In addition, there is a wealth of cultural material linked to both locality and wider region, all contributing to a veritable treasure trove of knowledge and recollection. Nevertheless, the focus of "Local Studies" remains rather narrowly defined in the naming of the "History Centre and Library", and, although this facility, and the City Library, both provide an excellent service, the full extent of their collections goes unappreciated, in my opinion, by the
wider community, and their "collective wisdom" is mostly unapplied in the present day context.
A proposal by the University of Worcester, the City Council and Worcestershire County Council to co-locate existing " Local Studies" resouces in a new "Mega-Library", attached to the University, on the site of the former Royal Infirmary may go some way to tackling the concerns which I have raised. In principle, the co-location of local studies resources with the County Council's archaeology service seems a good idea. On the other hand, I have some reservations about the value of mega-projects, having been involved in quite a few. These can consume large amounts of resouces, not least money, without creating a better service for user communities.
However, I will give the Worcester proposal the benefit of my doubt for the time being. Instead, I would suggest the organisations involved with project consider the possibility of developing a broad "Local Studies" curriculum, which might be adapted to the requirements of different stakeholders, such as schools, higher and further education students, the voluntary sector, researchers etc. This curriculum should be linked to a range of accreditations and qualifications, as well as encouraging those who wish to engage in informal study and research.
The "World Heritage Sites" division of UNESCO (United Nations Education Science and Cultural Organisation) sponsors two Masters degree programmes in "World Heritage Site Management". The syllabus for the course in Dublin (for links see the UNESCO website), could actually be adapted for a more local context, possibly in conjunction with an organisation such as English Heritage. The University of Worcester might offer a Masters programme with a "Local Studies/Heritage Management" focus at some point : now would seem to be a good time to be thinking about this. The UNESCO experience of managing World Heritage Sites is certainly relevant to Worcester. Development pressures continually threaten conservation. Indeed, had conservation played a stronger role in the post-war development of Worcester, it is possible that the city might have been eligible for "world heritage" status itself. The 1940s "Civic Survey for the Planning of Worcester", copies of which are available from Worcester City Libary and in the History Centre, emphasises the fine City's fine architectural and landscape heritage. Much of this - alas ! - has now been developed and even more is currently under threat.
To be continued....
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