Public Inquiry Into the Demolition of Smithfield’s Western Market Buildings Closes

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.13038

News from English Heritage

Public Inquiry into proposals by developers Thornfield and the Corporation of London to demolish and redevelop the General Market Building in London’s Smithfield Conservation Area will close tomorrow (25 January), after hearing seven weeks of evidence. English Heritage delivered its closing statement today.

In his closing submissions to the Inquiry, English Heritage’s barrister Robert McCracken QC said: “These applications are an attempt by the applicant and the City to drive a bulldozer, preceded by a ball and chain, through national and local heritage policies.”

“This decision will be a test of the Government’s commitment to its heritage policies and a development plan led system of planning. It will also be a test of its commitment to participatory decision making. It will also be a test of its vision. It raises the question of whether the City is in effect, in the belief of which it appears to have acted, a plan free office zone. It is a decision which will be closely watched by landowners and developers. They will not view consents as unique but as a precedent.”

English Heritage Visualisation of Smithfield “If a well funded landowner with a substantial local estate such as the City of London can, with impunity, flagrantly flout national and local policies then local authorities throughout the kingdom, most of whom are subject to far greater financial pressure, will seek to do the same. Developers will seek to make secret agreements of this kind. Landowners will neglect historic buildings in the hope of enjoying similar benefits.”

“There is a great opportunity for regeneration of the kind successfully undertaken in Covent Garden, Spitalfields, Greenwich and Camden Lock. The promoters wish to throw away both our heritage and that opportunity.”  

“If the sought consents and permissions were granted respect for the planning system would be diminished. Economic vitality would be eroded. Quality of life would be damaged.”

“There are times when firm decisions must be made. This is one of them.”

Paddy Pugh, Director of London Region at English Heritage, added: “A great deal of that evidence has focussed on the financial viability of the proposed redevelopment and English Heritage’s demands that the General Market Building be retained and refurbished for new uses. It has now emerged that Thornfield bought the basement car park beneath the General Market Building for £12 million towards the end of last year.”
 
“These are important matters. The additional £12 million of costs mean that Thornfield’s proposals are not viable. They also make retention and repair of the existing building more financially attractive.  English Heritage is surprised and disappointed that Thornfield and the City Corporation have tried to withhold this information from the Inquiry and Secretary of State.”
 
“Smithfield is one of London’s most important and characterful Conservation Areas.  It would be a tragedy if Thornfield were allowed to demolish the General Market Building and then leave a vacant site in the heart of the area for the foreseeable future.  Such an attitude to London’s historic environment would be irresponsible, unsustainable and completely unacceptable.”

For more press information, please contact Anya Matthews, English Heritage Corporate Communications, on 020 7973 3372 or anya.matthews@english-heritage.org.uk

For more information about Smithfield generally, please see our dedicated section at http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/smithfield

One Ton Rat

Now for those of you who knew/know me as Rat, I have to confess a love for all things rodent.  Over the years some of my bet friends have been rats..  bless!    However, this news report did make me re-access if I would have been so happy at sharing my life with one of these monsters!  Though on teh other hand, it would be better than a Rottweiler!    Meet my friend GodzilRat….     I first thought that One Ton Rat was a type of chinese soup…  but after reading this I realised my mistake…   Enjoy!

Fossil hunters have unearthed the skull of a giant prehistoric rat that roamed South America four million years ago.

The fossilised skull of the largest rodent ever recorded has been described by scientists for the first time. The remains of the one-tonne beast, found in Uruguay, indicate that it would have been as big as a bull. It is thought that the three-metre-long herbivore would have roamed estuaries and forests 2-4 million years ago. The mammal, which is more than 15 times heavier than the largest living rodent, is described in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

 The authors say the animal would have lived alongside carnivorous “terror birds” and sabre-toothed cats. “If you are a rodent you cannot run so well so you would have had to fight with these predators,” said Dr Rudemar Ernesto Blanco of the Institute of Physics in Montevideo, Uruguay, one of the authors of the paper. “It might have reached this size to protect itself.” Fighting giants: The half-metre-long fossil skull was discovered by an amateur palaeontologist in a boulder on the Rio de La Plata coast in the south of the country.

The remains had lain in the Museum of Natural History in Montevideo for three years before being studied and identified as a new species, Josephoartigasia monesi. The pakarana is the creature’s closest living relative It was recognised as a new creature by examining and comparing its teeth with other known species of Josephoartigasia. “Its incisors are extraordinarily large - much larger than any other rodent,” said Dr Blanco. The researchers have speculated that the creature may have used the teeth to cut wood in a similar way to a modern day beaver.

“The other possibility is that they used them for fighting.” The team spent nearly one year estimating the body mass by comparing the skull with other living South American rodents. Most weigh less than 1kg. However, there are exceptions such as the 60kg capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris), and the closest living relative of the newly discovered creature: the pakarana (Dinomys branickii).

Burns museum to miss 250th anniversary

A new museum celebrating the life and works of Robert Burns will not be ready in time for the 250th anniversary of the poet’s birth.From Scotland on Sunday - 13th January

By JEREMY WATSON

THE cups of kindness are running low at the birthplace of Scotland’s national poet. A prestigious £7m project to save Robert Burns’ cottage and museum and turn them into a world-class tourist attraction has collapsed.
The trustees of the Burns National Heritage Park in Alloway, Ayrshire, asked architects to draw up detailed plans last year to prevent the 18th-century cottage where the Bard was born, and its linked museum, from further deterioration and protect priceless original manuscripts and other Burns documents. The architects were also asked to design a state-of-the-art visitor centre.

But although the plans were drawn up and the trust thought it had found partners to finance the scheme, Scotland on Sunday can reveal that it has been abandoned.

The collapse will be a bitter blow for the Scottish Executive, which wants Burns’ cottage to become an internationally acclaimed visitor attraction in the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the Bard’s birth in 2009.

The Executive feels the crisis is so serious it has asked the National Trust for Scotland to consider taking over the management of the park next year.

Architects and designers who worked on the project are furious that they will not be paid the thousands of pounds they could have expected if the project had gone ahead.

Some trustees of the heritage park also claim the local council’s decision to privatise the Tam O’ Shanter Experience, the park’s biggest income earner, left the new museum without enough funds to provide future running costs.

As a result, an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund for more than £3m for the project was officially withdrawn this month. It had also become clear that matching money from a European Union fund was also not going to be available.

Laurie Black, interim manager of the Burns National Heritage Park, said: “This project is now gone, finished. It is very frustrating for everyone involved. The brief was to produce a really stunning world-class centre for Burns, and the indication was that funds would be available in the region [of £7m].

“But it became clear in October that the money required for such an ambitious project was not going to be there. The problem was not just the capital costs but the running costs, because there was no long-term commitment from either local or national bodies to assist with those.”

Burns’ cottage was built by his father, William, shortly before the poet was born in 1759, and he lived there for his first six years.

It has been a place of pilgrimage almost from the time the first Burns Supper was held there by fans in 1814.

The museum was purpose-built around 1900 to house the growing collection of Burns manuscripts and memorabilia. Despite Burns’ popularity in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora, the joint attraction has barely broken even over the ensuing years.

As a result of lack of money for maintenance, the bible belonging to Burns’ father was damaged after a roof leak, and other valuable manuscripts, including that of ‘Auld Lang Syne’, the Bard’s most famous song, and ‘Scots Wha’ Hae’, have been moved to other museums for safe keeping. Lack of proper heating, lighting and humidity controls were causing the old paper to curl.

The park was set up in 1995 to link the buildings connected most closely to the poet - the cottage, the museum and Tam O’ Shanter Experience - a visitor centre and cafe inspired by the Bard’s famous poem.

Then in 2002, the joint board which runs the park, which includes the trustees, South Ayrshire Council and Scottish enterprise Ayrshire, came up with a £2m plan to restore the cottage and museum and add the visitor centre.

Funding was secured from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Heritage Lottery Fund, the body that disburses National Lottery cash to good causes.

Had the board gone ahead with this relatively simple, inexpensive plan, it is almost certain the buildings and artefacts would now be protected.

But in 2003, the joint board decided to commission a much more ambitious project using a £50,000 HLF development grant.

The new £7m project was unveiled in September 2003 and included creating a modern building to house safely the cottage museum’s unmatched Burns Collection.

The development would have had a state-of-the-art conservation unit, temporary exhibition area and permanent galleries, as well as a dedicated education centre.

High-profile architecture firms such as Sutherland Hussey, from Edinburgh, and design companies such as Glasgow’s Graven Images, were brought in and an application for funds was made to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

But late this summer it emerged ERDF funds would not be available in anything like the £3m-plus required. Major concerns also emerged over the new museum’s projected running costs.

South Ayrshire Council decided to lease out the Tam O’ Shanter Experience to a private sector operator in an effort to reduce its overheads. However, the decision removed around 80% of the park’s income.

On October 29, the board pulled the plug on the project and the application to the Heritage Lottery Fund was withdrawn. John Skilling, a trustee, said: “The proposed £7m project had to be dropped because the council decided to withdraw from the park. They offered some money in running costs but nowhere near enough to run a £7m facility.

“The promise of ERDF money also collapsed and that left us several million pounds short of what was required. There are many people quite incensed about it, but we felt we just couldn’t go ahead with so many things unresolved.”

Charlie Hussey, a partner at the award-winning Sutherland Hussey practice, said his overwhelming emotion was “really just disappointment”.

“We put a lot of time and effort into this and we have to now just take the sting, but we are also sad because we were emotionally involved in the project.

“The main problem is that Burns’ birthplace, which should be a major national asset, is still deteriorating and nothing now is going ahead.

“Do we want all these things from the very important Burns Collection to be dispersed around the country to other museums, or do we want them to stay where they rightfully belong in Alloway? Unfortunately we seem to be forfeiting that latter option.”

The Heritage Lottery Fund confirmed the application for funds had been withdrawn and said it hoped the Burns Cottage Museum would find a way forward that reflected Burns’ importance. “Burns is an icon of Scotland and his works are renowned worldwide,” said HLF’s Scottish manager, Colin McLean.

Adam Ingram, the Scottish National Party MSP for the south of Scotland, insisted the Burns Cottage project should not be allowed to drift on and urged the Executive to come up with a permanent solution.

A spokesman for the new culture and tourism minister, Patricia Ferguson, said the Executive was working with the trustees of the cottage and other interested parties, including the National Trust for Scotland, “to secure the long-term viability of the Burns Cottage and Museum”.

He added: “We wish to ensure it is a centrepiece for the Executive’s plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns in 2009 as the Year of Homecoming.”

The chief executive of the National Trust for Scotland, Robin Pellew, said the trust was investigating taking over management of the park. “Our concern is making sure that these national treasures are cared for in the proper way.”

Emperor Hadrian Exhibition at the British Museum

The British Museum announced a new major exhibition on Roman Emperor Hadrian and iconic bronze head of Hadrian to tour Britain this Summer. 24th July - 26th October 2008

HADRIAN _ EMPIRE and CONFLICT

This special exhibition will explore the life, love and legacy of Rome’s most enigmatic emperor, Hadrian (reigned AD 117–138).

Ruling an empire that comprised much of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East, Hadrian was a capable and, at times, ruthless military leader. He realigned borders and quashed revolt, stabilising a territory critically overstretched by his predecessor, Trajan.

Hadrian had a great passion for architecture and Greek culture. His extensive building programme included the Pantheon in Rome, his villa in Tivoli and the city of Antinoopolis, which he founded and named after his male lover Antinous.

This unprecedented exhibition will provide fresh insight into the sharp contradictions of Hadrian’s character and challenges faced during his reign.

Objects from 31 museums worldwide and finds from recent excavations will be shown together for the first time to reassess his legacy, which remains strikingly relevant today.

£12, concessions available

Tickets on sale from 6 February 2008

Roman Road Gets Virtual - Via Flaminia

From the Associated Press.. 

By ARIEL DAVID - 1 day ago

ROME (AP) - All roads lead to Rome, even virtual ones.

A museum on Tuesday unveiled a virtual reconstruction of one of the bustling arteries that led into ancient Rome, allowing visitors to wander through rebuilt monuments and interact with the city’s political elite.

Using a concept similar to that of online virtual worlds, the project creates characters, or avatars, that roam the ancient Via Flaminia, exploring funerary monuments that lined the road, bridges and arches. They can also roam through the villa belonging to Livia, wife of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus.

The avatars also can switch between the splendor of ancient Rome and a virtual tour of the monuments as they look today: fragile ruins on the outskirts of the Italian capital.

In this way, the project gives access to sites that are off the beaten track for tourists, difficult to visit or surrounded by the traffic of the modern-day Via Flaminia, which often overlaps the ancient Roman road, experts said.

“It’s a voyage through the past and the present,” said Maurizio Forte, who led a team of 20 archaeologists, architects and computer experts working on the project for Italy’s National Research Council.

Over two years, the experts used laser scans, satellite imagery and ancient texts to reconstruct frescoed halls, vegetation and roads as they might have looked to a traveler in the first century A.D., Forte said.

The Via Flaminia was built in the third century B.C. to connect Rome to Ariminum, today’s Rimini, on the Adriatic sea. Over time, the rich and powerful built villas and funerary monuments for themselves along this and other main arteries that formed the lifeline of the Roman Empire.

The Virtual Museum of the Ancient Via Flaminia reconstructed the initial part of the road, digitalizing 4.45 million acres of terrain. Major stops include Livia’s palace, the Milvian Bridge on the Tiber River and a triumphal arch built by the Emperor Constantine.

The virtual reconstruction, which cost more than $1.1 million, is hosted in downtown Rome at the Museum of the Diocletian Baths.

In a darkened room of the museum, four visitors control their avatars using joysticks and computer screens, while an audience wearing 3D glasses follows their progress on a movie screen.

While exploring Livia’s palace, the avatars receive explanations from characters - including the empress and the emperor - as well as a gardener who shares the secrets of the decorative plantings of ancient Rome.

For now, the characters only speak Italian but the museum hopes to have the program available in English, too.

In addition to its educational and entertainment value, scientists can access the reconstruction and the data to study the area and its monuments, experts said.

“Besides what you see on the movie screen, which is of interest to the public, we have reams of data, scans and maps that are of help to archaeologists and historians,” said Augusto Palombini, an archaeologist who worked on the project.

Forte said the scientific data would be added over the next few months to the project’s Web site, which already hosts a presentation of the reconstruction.

A section of Livia’s villa will also be uploaded in the coming weeks on the Internet-based virtual reality community called Second Life, he said.

Link

Check out the website http://www.vhlab.itabc.cnr.it/flaminia/

King Alfred’s arm severed and other Horror stories

What was the point of that!  This News from the BBC :

A statue of King Alfred which stands in the centre of an Oxfordshire town has had its right arm - which brandished a battle axe - cut off and smashed.

Only a pile of rubble was left after the attack in Wantage.

Police said CCTV footage showed a group of boys climbing on the statue shortly after midnight on Monday.

Pc Lewis Boyce said it appeared a couple saw what happened and confronted the youths about the damaged statue. She appealed for them to get in touch.

The town’s mayor, Lorraine Todd, called the vandalism of the statue, which has stood in the centre of the town since 1877, a “wanton attack” on residents.

She personally added £300 to the town council’s £200 reward for information.

Pc Lewis Boyce, of Thames Valley Police, said: “The statue is a significant piece of the town’s heritage and has been in place since 1877, so it is important to get it restored as soon as possible.

“This is an example of thoughtless and disrespectful vandalism.

“There were lots of people who were celebrating New Year’s Eve in the market place and expressed disappointment that the statue was damaged.”

 What is makes me wonder is the lack of respect..  Why would people do that…?  A traffic cone on the head is one thing…  it is easy to remove, and not harmful   - in fact the statue to the Duke of Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, is not supposed to have a traffic cone.

Wellington stands imposingly outside the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow and some years ago, a cone appeared overnight, presumably the result of a youthful prank. Although it was removed, it kept magically re-appearing and eventually the authorities gave up.

It has become such a landmark that the statue and its cone have featured in tourist guidebooks. A few years ago, when Greater Glasgow & Clyde Valley Tourist Board wanted photographs to launch their new Web site, they removed the cone. Immediately, the Lord Provost, Alex Mosson, expressed disappointment, saying that it highlighted the Glaswegian sense of humour. His predecessor, ex-Provost Pat Lally joined in and also agreed it should stay. The end result is that Wellington (and sometimes his horse too) can be seen sporting traffic cones! Not that anyone is suggesting that the Provost and ex-Provost were personally involved….

But often it is just louts…  mindless louts who destroy becuase they don’t have anything to add to the world.   Wilfull damage of public property…this is damaging to tourism, and so to the local’s income…    like the Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen..  a very sorry tale… 

The oft-attacked 5.5-foot-high statue was toppled from its stone base at the entrance of the Copenhagen harbor early Thursday. Police learned what happened at about 3 a.m.

“Explosive or tools might have been used to knock her over,” police superintendent Henning Schou Kofoed said. “She was fastened with four strong bolts that all were bent.”

Police said several witnesses heard an explosion shortly before 2 a.m. No arrests have been made.

Vandals have often targeted the 90-year-old statue. She has been beheaded twice. Once, her arm was amputated. Hooligans have doused her in paint six times, most recently in May.

Each time, city officials fix and clean the statue, which draws at least 1 million visitors a year.

The Little Mermaid will need several repairs this time. She had a 2.8-inch wide hole in the knee and a smaller hole in the wrist, possibly from explosives, as well as scratches on her face.

 Explosives!    Good Grief!  But then, lets not forget the Buddhas of Bamyan, destroyed in 2001 in a massive act of cultrural vandalism.  Actually, this is getting depressing…  I better stop!

Here is a video about rebuilding the Buddha

Links:

King Alfred (his story)

Rampant Scotland (the text and photo of Wellington)

Gallery of Modern Art (Glasgow)

Little Mermaid Statue

Buddhas of Bamyan

Graffiti Archaeology

http://www.otherthings.com/grafarc/

Graffiti Archaeology is a project devoted to the study of graffiti-covered walls as they change over time. The core of the project is a timelapse collage, made of photos of graffiti taken at the same location by many different photographers over a span of several years. The photos were taken in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles and other cities, over a timespan from the late 1990’s to the present.

 

Find it quite interesting…  have collected a few bits of graffiti myself from Medieval, through Civil War, Jacobite, and even more recent…  like at Ossians Hall in Scotland, where the graffiti represents 19th century tourists, 20th century Nazis (in a camp nearby) and Polish fighters…  some of who return to carve their names again…

 Graffiti from Roma to Slough…  is it important to record it?  we find it important later but current graffiti is seen as offensive…    makes you think…   plus…  what a lovely way to record a temporal stratigraphical sequence

Remote Control Plane - Aerial Images

Remote Control Plane with Camera Capturing Real-time Images

Tell me this is not potentially useful to us?

The company Pict’Earth, has released these videos on their web site. The guy can view the images in real-time with VR goggles. Later, the images can be shown in Google Earth. This has got to be one of the cooler things I’ve seen done with Google Earth! And, there are some real practical uses of this technology. Google should take note. This technology could be a much less expensive way to acquire very-high-res data for certain situations - particularly for sites.

82,000 year old shell beads - A sign of self-awareness and identity.

Archaeologists from Oxford have discovered what are thought to be the oldest examples of human decorations in the world.

The international team of archaeologists, led by Oxford University’s Institute of Archaeology, have found shell beads believed to be 82,000 years old from a limestone cave in Morocco.

Institute director Prof Nick Barton said: “Bead-making in Africa was a widespread practice at the time, which was spread between cultures with different stone technology by exchange or by long-distance social networks.

“A major question in evolutionary studies today is ‘how early did humans begin to think and behave in ways we would see as fundamentally modern?’ “The appearance of ornaments such as these may be linked to a growing sense of self-awareness and identity among humans and cultural innovations must have played a large role in human development.”

The handmade beads were found at the Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt, in Eastern Morocco during a four to five year excavation in the region.

Prof Barton said the finds suggest that humans were making purely symbolic objects 40,000 years before they did it in Europe.

The beads themselves comprise 12 Nassarius shells - Nassarius are molluscs found in warm seas and coral reefs in America, Asia and the Pacific - which had holes in them and appeared to have been suspended or hung. They were covered in red ochre.

Similar beads have been found at sites in Algeria, Israel and South Africa which are thought to date back to around the same time or slightly after the finds from Taforalt.

Morocco, France and Germany as well as the UK, believe that similar shells are present in other sites in Morocco.

Dating results from the shells are still awaited, but the team believe some may be even older than those found in Taforalt.

The team has recently secured funding for a further four to five years of research in the area from the Natural Environment Research Council. Further research will look at early humans in Africa and how they spread around the world.

A paper on the team’s findings is featured in this month’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published today.

Video of site and surrounding area:

Inclusive, Accessible Archaeology - a real present!

Following on from my post about  Discrimination

A leaflet dropped on my desk today.  Entitled Inclusive, Accessible Archaeology which aims to address the dual issues of disability and transferable skills in the teaching of archaeological fieldwork.

The emphasis of the development is a self-evaluation tool kit for physical and psychological abilities in fieldwork. The tool increases students’ awareness of their acquisition of transferable skills and promotes careers management skills.

The project involved archaeologists working closely with specialists in Inclusive Environments to characterise the skills needed in archaeological fieldwork.

In addition to engaging with teachers of undergraduate archaeology nationally, the project actively involved the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), the Institute of Field Archaeologists (IFA), English Heritage and Oxford Archaeology.

The project has the potential to widen participation by challenging the stereotype of archaeology as a field discipline that may exclude disabled participants. It aims to effect a change of emphasis from ‘disability’ to ability: rather than excluding or categorising individuals, students will be engaged actively in assessing their own skills.

 BAJR has been involved quietly and privately on this too, so its good to see the big groups have come up with a real plan of action that bears scrutiny.

Not only are these grand words, but they are perfectly sensible words.  I have been contacted in the past by wheelchair users, dyslexics, and others who have disabilities ranging from ME to amputees.  The same advice I give to them all, is there is and should be a place for everyone, and don’t just accept a pot washing job, as its too easy to allow that to become the stock reply to a disabled persons quesry about working in archaeology.  It is quite possible for work to adapt where possible.  A dyslexic I talked to only needed the context record sheets printed on green paper - and then a supervisor to check her work, for example - this seemed to do the trick, a person with ME needed flexible time management.   I am very heartened to see this document, I will be even more happy to see it in action.  

Lets keep an eye on this.   Remember that disability is not just people in wheelchairs, it ranges so wide, that I would suspect most of us at one time or another could be classified as disabled in some way.  Inclusivity does not have to mean lowering expectations, it means heigthening our awareness of others…  and becoming a truly accessible profession.

Read about it all here, download the documents, use them and report back. 

http://www.hca.heacademy.ac.uk/access-archaeology/IAA/index.php  

Another interesting and relevant website is here

National Disability Arts Forum UK

http://ndaf.org/main.php