Value transitions between heritage and nature

If the act of preservation may sometimes be futile, why are we resisting so hard the inevitable future shift instead of embracing the change and the value this may bring?

Bedlam Furnaces with their canopy that, once installed, helped remove them from the Heritage at Risk Register. The car park surrounding the base of the monument could be argued to have more of an impact on the setting of this heritage asset than the canopy that now protects it. (Photo: Imogen Wood, National Trust).

‘Adaptive release’ is a term that developed during a piece of research undertaken by Exeter University, the National Trust and Historic England, published with full explanation in The Historic Environment: policy and practice [1]. The idea centres around the concept of some heritage values transitioning to other values, retaining significance but perhaps bringing other benefits to a place or asset, as opposed to being lost, destroyed or overly preserved. The conversation around this idea needs to be brought across to the building conservation space as so many sites are at risk from transition and loss, and the options surrounding these circumstances are sometimes very limited, with potential for value transition usually not considered.

Stepping back to look at the big picture: first, we are all doomed (climate change, meteorite, sun going supernova, and so on). We know that, but in the short term, some places and assets are more doomed than others. While the proportion of heritage assets affected by (for example) coastal erosion is small compared to those affected by heat and pluvial flooding in the future, the rapidity of change is something that will impact many assets and places simultaneously, to the point where archaeology and finances may preclude the saving/moving/ rebuilding of absolutely everything threatened in this short-term manner. Climate hazards, geological stability, isostatic and eustatic movement affecting coastal sites: these are a few reasons why the act of preservation may sometimes be futile. Why then, in some cases, are we resisting so hard the assimilation of things into their inevitable future shift? Why don’t we embrace the change and recognise the value this may bring?

The climate has always changed. We are not working towards a fixed point in the future where we can dust our hands off and say that we have satisfactorily adapted to climate change: it is an ongoing process. It is the rapidity of change and climate impacts on systems that cannot adapt in short timeframes. Since around the time of the industrial revolution that caused the issues, mostly for nature, but also for our ability as a species and culture to cope with hazards and impacts.

Health and safety may be raised as one issue: we cannot just let things weather and degrade, and fall on people. Sometimes, though, it is that we all as conservation practitioners are trying to stymie change to some extent, and indeed may even hate change if it is considerable and particularly where we might feel something has been lost. For the National Trust, our own Act (1907) specifically states that we should preserve our heritage assets (‘as far as practicable’). Well, that minor phrase in parentheses is quite an important one, and as climate hazards increase and as we begin to find that some things just cannot adapt, and on such a large scale, what are the alternatives?

What if we begin to recognise the values that might be brought about from certain types of change? What values are there? Value to people? To access? To nature and ecosystems? To art and beauty? To archaeologists of the future (we have to leave them something to find)? How do we begin to deal with shorter-term changes associated with loss and with what might be termed adaptive release, as in that journal article?

We can start by looking at where it has already happened, perhaps. In order to write this article, I visited the Ironbridge Gorge – a geological force of nature that industrial archaeology in situ cannot possibly hope to contend with over the long term. The Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust runs a fantastic suite of museums in this landscape, amid a steep-sided, tourist-filled honeypot site that is absolutely jam-packed with archaeology. The upstanding material across the landscape is vast, with everything from landscape planting associated with the Derby Houses to lovely limekilns and infrastructure: industrial archaeology associated with this well-known industrial melting pot.

Where these threats are becoming overwhelming to the heritage values associated with evidential and aesthetic values in particular, what should be done? If capital injection or remedies involve quite severe interventions, do we transpose these structures to another location less affected by the geomorphological changes? That is, after all, what Blists Hill Victorian Town (one of the most popular museums) is – a collection of saved buildings mostly rebuilt into an existing appropriate setting. Is that realistic? Is it possible over the longer term to move an extensive incline plane or a tar tunnel? Would that be appropriate, given the interrelation of such assets to the river or the canal infrastructure they were built to serve? Possibly not – and why would you want to? It would certainly harm the world heritage status of the site.

What might not harm it, if the option were to be considered, would be the transition of an individual asset, or a collection of associated assets, in terms of their respective values from purely typical heritage values to ones with more value to people, access, or perhaps nature, and they may also reflect the wider majesty of the context; the geological immaturity of the setting and the reminder that it is still being born and remade as landslips continue and movement crushes the rigidity of such features, bending them to its will. It is beautiful, but do we see this as something that needs capital injection to be preserved, or can we embrace that transition and recognise it for beauty above and beyond historical, architectural and archaeological interest?

The Bedlam Furnaces, so significant to the story of Ironbridge as the birthplace of industry, have been protected by a large purpose-built canopy to help them dry out and prevent further extensive weathering. If the concept of adaptive release had been used at the time on these, would they still have been covered? Perhaps their historical and evidential values are too considerable to allow nature to take over these structures. What would they have looked like in the future if their deterioration had continued?

Can we feel compensated with the heritage loss by the gain for nature/access/beauty? Would the picturesque movement have developed artistically in the way that it did (going on to inspire a whole new movement in landscape design, for example) if industrial landscapes, buildings and structures had not been subjected to some form of adaptive release? There are a lot of questions here, and not many answers, but we need to start asking a few more questions as such problems arise, however different the responses may be, especially in the face of climate and other pressures on sites.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Simon Robertshaw for contributions to this article, following his involvement in the original research.

References

[1] DeSilvey, C, Fredheim, H, Fluck, H, Hails, R, Harrison, R, Samuels, I and Blundell, A (2021) ‘When Loss is More: from managed decline to adaptive release’, The Historic Environment: policy and practice 12 (3–4).

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 180, published in June 2024. It was written by Imogen Wood, the senior national consultant for heritage and climate at the National Trust, and chair of the IHBC West Midlands Branch.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation