If someone says heritage and monuments what do you think of?
Museums, statues and big old
buildings probably but in reality it actually encompasses much more and to make
people aware of this this year's World Heritage Day has the theme of rural
landscapes.
World Heritage Day was established in 1982 as the
International Day for Monuments and Sites and approved by UESCO the following
year, it's a day to celebrate and promote cultural heritage, to raise awareness
of its diversity, relevance and vulnerability.
By focusing on rural landscapes the organisers are aiming to raise
awareness of landscapes in general and specifically the challenges faced in
their conservation and ongoing management.
National Park World Heritage Sites
As Discover National Parks Fortnight hasn't finished yet
we're going to highlight the UNESCO World Heritage sites in National Parks or
in the case of the Lake District pretty much the whole Park itself!
The English Lake District (to give it its
UNESCO title) was designated in 2017 for both the marvellous agro-pastoral
land-use system and the cultural significance of the landscape and buildings by
artists over the years. UNESO describes
it as: "Located in northwest England, the English Lake District is a
mountainous area, whose valleys have been modelled by glaciers in the Ice Age
and subsequently shaped by an agro-pastoral land-use system characterized by
fields enclosed by walls. The combined work of nature and human activity has
produced a harmonious landscape in which the mountains are mirrored in the
lakes. Grand houses, gardens and parks have been purposely created to enhance
the landscape’s beauty. This landscape was greatly appreciated from the
18th century onwards by the Picturesque and later Romantic movements,
which celebrated it in paintings, drawings and words. It also inspired an
awareness of the importance of beautiful landscapes and triggered early efforts
to preserve them." (Description is available under license CC-BY-SA IGO 3.0 ).
Useful links:
Hadrian's Wall
North east from the Lakes you'll find Northumberland
National Park home to the magnificent feat of engineering that is Hadrian's
Wall one three sections of Frontiers of the Roman Empire, the other two being
the Antonine Wall running across central Scotland from the River Forth to the
River Clyde and The Upper German-Raetian Limes in Germany. They have been
designated because they exhibit an important interchange of human and cultural
values at the apogee of the Roman Empire but with the Rural Landscape them this
year Hadrian's Wall comes into particular focus with about four fifths of the
line runs through open country. You can
walk the route of the wall, all 84 miles from coast to coast along the
Hadrian's Wall Path national trail, more here: https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/hadrians-wall-path.
Useful links:
- Northumberland National Park
- Frontiers of the Roman Empire UNESCO designation.
- English Heritage sites on Hadrian's Wall
Our final pick for today is one closer to CJS's home.
Studley Royal
Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey located in Ripon on the edge of the
Yorkshire Dales National Park. It was one of the first sites in the UK to
become a World Heritage Site in 1986 because the landscape is of exceptional
merit and beauty represents over 800 years of human ambition, design and
achievement. It's a huge responsibility to own and manage such important sites
and the National Trust who own this one (and sites along Hadrian's Wall too!) explain
some of the complexities of managing such sites and outline their management
plans in a series of downloadable documents.
Useful links:
Britain has 31 designated sites ranging from the Giant's
Causeway to the City of Bath, see them all here.