Getting your kit off in a Nottinghamshire church: why attitudes have to change

So a couple of weeks ago the local mums of East Markham got their kit off. The ladies of the village were to be found hanging around in the fields, wandering through local orchards, and even propping up the bar in the local pub - all in what can best be described as 'a state of undress'. And why were the good ladies of this Nottinghamshire village getting all 'cheeky' in the church? Is this a normal activity for the locals? The answer is that they were putting together a charity naked calendar.

You've all seen the sort of thing, made famous by the blockbuster film 'Calendar Girls'. Where local ladies come together to produce a photographic calendar, largely featuring them and little else (particularly noticeable is the lack of clothing), to raise money for a good cause. It is to be praised. It is to be considered most commendable. A local community coming together to raise money to help good causes. However, what makes this particular calendar so different is that it is designed to raise money for a cause that didn't even exist a month ago.

On the night of October 5th the church of St John the Baptist in East Markham was only one of the latest churches to be targeted by criminals intent on stripping the lead from the roof. Over four tons of lead was stolen that night, netting the thieves approximately £3500 in scrap value - at best. However, their crime has had a far higher cost for the parish itself, with repairs estimated at upwards of £50,000.

Damage to East Markham church roof. Image copyright: Tom Freemantle

Sadly, the villagers of East Markham aren't alone in having suffered at the hands of these vile little shits. This year has been a slightly busier year than average for metal theft from churches. Not massively so, but slightly busier. A quick trawl of the news feeds produced stories about lead theft at the following churches:-

Gamlingay,Houghton ConquestLindsayWilloughby WaterleysSudbury (Derbs)WilsfordSwarbyKelbySt James, BristolSt George Colegate, NorwichBarton upon HumberPewseyMeltonTwyfordTilton on the hillWhitwell (Leic)GlastonBorough on the hillEmpinghamEdith Weston

This isn't a comprehensive list, just what turned up on a quick Google search - it also only covers the LAST SIX MONTHS. The damage has been estimated in the millions of pounds in last six months - and yet the criminal gangs have likely only netted a tiny fraction of that value illegally selling on the lead as scrap. Approximately 5% - 10% of the costs of the damage they cause. Not exactly the most cost effective of criminal enterprises. Let's face it, they'd make far more cash repairing church roofs than stealing the lead from them.

However, it isn't all about the money. Believe it or not, church roofs tend to be fairly fragile objects. They may have elaborately carved angels supporting massive timbers and hemmer-beams, but above that is nothing more than a few thin boards and a sheet of lead. Once the lead is removed the boards, and all the time opened gaps between them, are exposed to the elements - as is everything within the church below. One good downpour can cause further tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage. More importantly, some of the damage can be beyond something that you can put an actual price on. Medieval wall paintings can be literally washed from the walls. Pigments that have survived in the parish church for centuries, with bright images of saints glaring down upon generations of the congregation, can be lost forever in a few good rain storms. Angels weeping real tears as their colours pool on the floor beneath them. And that is not even to mention the early graffiti often to be found on this lead - some of which can date back to the seventeenth century. This is not a victimless crime.

There are ways to protect churches from this crime - or at least limit the likelihood of it taking place. Roof alarms are seen as an effective method. However, even they rely upon someone being able, and willing, to turn out in the middle of the night to answer an alarm, with the potential for meeting a gang of metal thieves at the church. Something of an alarming prospect in itself for many of our more elderly churchwardens. In addition, it isn't much use having an alarm if the nearest company operative charged with answering any alarm call is actually several hours away from the site. And the thieves are getting wise to the alarms these days. A number of alarmed churches have had their rood lead stolen, with the alarm sensors carefully removed before the lead was stripped.

Other methods tend to be only seen as a deterrent that becomes effective only AFTER the lead has been stolen. Things such as CCTV recording, or marking the lead with 'smart water', may both help eventually convict the culprits and recover the stolen lead (which largely cannot be re-used), but they don't stop the crime happening in the first place. All a very sad state of affairs.

You cannot help but feel sorry for these communities, and the massive financial challenges that they suddenly find themselves facing, but to a certain extent many of these crimes are simply ones that should never have taken place.

The current advice being given out by heritage organisations such as Historic England is that if a church suffers a lead theft then the lead roof must be repaired 'like for like'. Where lead was taken, lead must be used to replace the missing roof. To some extent there is a good conservation argument behind this advice. Lead is hard wearing, has a long lifespan, and has been used as a church roofing material for many, many centuries. Conservation principles advise that all replacements should be as close to the original material as possible.

The problem with this approach, reiterated again by Historic England earlier this year, is that you simply make the church a further target for the lead thieves. Not only do you put valuable material back on the roof, but you do so for thieves that are actually experienced in stripping lead from that particular church. You may as well just leave the cash in the church porch. Indeed, it might even be cheaper in the long run. Harpley church in Norfolk, was attacked three times in four years. Icklingham in Suffolk - twice in four years. Dunton Bassett in Leicestershire - three times in five years. The list goes on and on.

The thing is that there are other materials that can be used to cover church roofs - ranging from various types of polymer coating, to cheaper metal alternatives - all of which have about zero scrap value to any potential thieves, and look pretty much like the lead roof that they are replacing. If used to replace a stolen lead roof they simply don't make further attacks worthwhile. There is no cash in it for the scumbag lead thieves. The question has to be, do such alternatives actually deter further theft? The answer is an unequivocal yes. Cowlinge church in Suffolk was attacked by thieves a few years ago, who managed to strip much of the lead from the south aisle roof. After a long debate with the authorities the church managed to secure agreement that the replacement roof would be lead-free, and tens of thousands of pounds was eventually spent repairing the damaged roof. Earlier this year thieves returned once again to this remote church, and again targeted the south aisle roof. They began to remove the roofing material from one corner, but upon discovering it wasn't actually lead, they fled the scene. Admittedly the aisle roof was damaged, but this time only to the tune of a few thousand pounds, rather than the tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage that had been caused previously. Lead-free roofs work.

Medieval Latin text graffiti from Cowlinge church, Suffolk

The problem is that the heritage organisations really don't like these roof coverings being used. Despite looking like a lead roof, they aren't the real thing, and their use reduces the historic aesthetic and significance of the building. A number of organisations and diocese are coming around to realising that the use of lead-free roofing materials does actually provide a long term solution for many churches. However, Historic England are less convinced. Whilst they 'recognise that in certain circumstances following theft like-for-like replacement would not be prudent', they still argue that lead should be retained wherever it is deemed practical.

Well times change, and everyone who spends a good deal of time in churches knows that they too are buildings of change and evolution. They have to be. As most heritage professionals and church archaeologists already accept, these buildings may be a fantastic resource for studying the past, but they also need a future. That future can only really be secured by the communities to which they belong. People like the naked mums of East Markham. And to do that these buildings need people inside their walls, they need facilities to make those people welcome, and most of all, they need a bloody roof.

If you would like to support the East Markham appeal, or buy a calendar of the East Markham mums in the nip, more details can be found here

Dead Saxons on your doorstep: the archaeology of the personal...

There is the moment. The few seconds that drag out to last a thousand years, and in which time piles up against the gates of reality. Held there. It is 'the' moment. The moment you are standing in a muddy field, up to your knees in brown slime, with the incessant drip, drip, drip of the rain sneaking down the back of your neck, and with a biting January wind emasculating you far more effectively that a butcher's cleaver - that you realise that it has all gone wrong. That everything has gone, not to put too fine a point on it, completely and utterly tits up. That the straightforward has suddenly become immensely complex, and that the future now looks anything other than clear. Whatever that future is, it will invariably involve mud; mud in magnificently, crevise-findingly, impressive proportions. And paperwork. Lots of paperwork. This is field archaeology in Norfolk in January...

In front of you the JCB driver can be seen through the glass of his cab, slowly easing back the throttles, as he leans back in his seat, reaches for his baccy tin, and grins out at you in the rain. He knows we aren't going any deeper. From his birds-eye view, and with decades of experience on sites just like this, he knows he's going to be doing a lot of sitting around for the next few weeks. Sitting around in a warm cab, idly making rollies, content in the knowledge that he'll still be getting paid his two-fifty a day - and all the sport that archaeological mud wrestling has to offer.

You glance to your left, at Jim, the site supervisor, who is reaching the exact same conclusions in his head as you are. You can see the deadpan expression begin to diffuse his young face. This wasn't meant to happen. This wasn't meant to be here. We are both, quite literally, up to our knees in the shitty mud, have just watched the mother of all archaeological headaches unroll before us, and both know that the JCB driver (now reaching for his flask and newspaper) is actually getting paid far more for this than we are. In the warm, with the radio on... Indiana Jones it certainly isn't.

But there is the magic too. The other moment. To watch as, inch by inch, the dark, loam and silt rich topsoil is stripped away. Each dark inch revealing nothing out of the ordinary. And then, as the digger inches one tiny level further down, the curtain of black earth is drawn back. The last topsoil slides away to reveal the perfectly planned archaeology. It doesn't happen often. A few times in a lifetime. But when it does there is a feeling of watching a small miracle take place before you. One moment there is nothing. The next, a ground-plan that no drawing or drone image will ever fully do justice to. And the feeling that you are the very first to see this. The one that the dark earth has revealed her secrets to. The miracle of archaeology in wet ground.

The scene shifts. A few days pass and the site become home to a high-viz convention of hard-hats and archaeological endeavour. The news is out, and eager troops of senior archaeologists converge on this pile of mud and history, all eager to establish their own credentials; their own place in the pecking order that will evolve. Each trying to hide the excitement, remain utterly professional, and objective. Mostly they fail. Above our heads drones do flypasts that wouldn't be out of place along the Mall, whilst tablets, computers and high tech cameras jostle beneath them. All trying to capture the moment of discovery. The moment that a 'nationally significant' site has appeared, out of the blue, beneath our very noses. Things that nobody has ever seen before. Fully intact plank-lined burials dating back over 1200 years, the outline of timber structures preserved in the wet sand and mud, and over eighty burials. Anglo-Saxons from the old kingdom of East Anglia, buried with reverence, at the very time the Venerable Bede was recording the seismic shifts in old England. Each one a clearly Christian burial, with no gold and silver placed in the graves to see them through the afterlife - leaving this world as poor and naked as the day they arrived in it. No treasures of coins and jewellery, but instead the treasure of knowledge; an insight into the possible beginnings of Christianity in England. A snapshot of a community at one of the most fundamental turning points in this nations past. The children and grandchildren of economic migrants who embraced a new god and built a nation.

All there before us. The mud oozes, the whine of the drones increases, and the JCB driver, content at the spectacle, rolls another fag...

What happens now is the science bit. The bit that really separates modern archaeology from the treasure hunters of yesteryear. Each burial is painstakingly excavated, photographed and planned. Multiple environmental samples are taken from each grave, which will later tell us details we hope of the flora that once grew here. Each timber is sampled for tree-ring dating, which will tell us the exact year the tree was felled and, if we are really lucky, perhaps even the season. And once the bodies are in the lab then the real miracles of modern science begin. DNA will be looked at, telling us perhaps whether some of these are family groups, and isotope analysis can tell us even where they grew up. Where they 'locals', born and raised in this river valley, or were they perhaps first generation immigrants from across the North Sea? And yet, as each individual is meticulously uncovered and removed from the site by dedicated professionals from Museum of London Archaeology, I cannot but help feel some disquiet.

You see, the thing is, this is 'my' village.  This chance discovery has come to light a bare few hundred meters from where I live, in the very heart of my own community. It isn't just some fascinating and distant piece of archaeological science, but rather something close and very real. These people from a lost past knew this valley that I stand in today. They walked by this same slow river, worked these same fields, and looked up at the ridge-line to view the very same ancient barrows silhouetted against the sky. In fact, this Norfolk village with a Saxon name simply wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for them. They chose this place, and settled here by the river crossing, between the dark woods and the road that leads to the sea. They knew this place, and like my own family, called it home. And that changes things.

The science has to go ahead of course. There's simply too much that we can potentially learn from these people. Details from a time still referred to as the 'dark ages', that is now showing itself to be anything other than dark. But it was most certainly a time of change, a time of transition - when a new wave of immigrants adopted a new religion. A religion whose very early years in this country we really know very little about. Perhaps these quiet people from the dark silt and sands hold the key to understanding that process of transition? Perhaps they witnessed it first-hand, or were instrumental in it taking root? Without further study we will lose that information forever. However, what then? What happens once the scientists have completed their tests, and we have learnt all that we can learn? What happens then to these people of my shadow village by the river?

In some cases such remains simply end up stored away from view for many years to come. Catalogued and concealed in museum archive boxes. Held in trust for future scientists and future techniques which may tell us even more than the science of today. However, with the people of this village, the village on the river crossing, between the dark woods and the roads to the sea, there is only one option. Only one option that the modern village wants; and that is to bring them back here for reburial. To bring them home to the river valley, and the landscape that they'd undoubtedly still recognise as their own, and commit their remains once more to the earth.

Dedicated to Jim Fairclough - a truly dedicated archaeologist - generally muddy, but dedicated.

The Death of Heritage: playing in the ashes of the past...

Today saw the launch of the new look English Heritage and Historic England, born from the forced severance of the old English Heritage organisation. Until now the historic environment in England has been largely the legal responsibility of one organisation; English Heritage. Established in 1983, it was the natural successor to the old Department of Works, responsible for the care of over 420 historic properties in public hands. However, it has been an uneven and, in the view of many, a restrictive role that saw the one organisation have two very distinct and separate hydra like heads. On the one hand English Heritage were responsible for the maintenance and care of the many hundreds of historic buildings that litter our towns and countryside like so much historic confetti; everything from medieval monasteries and castles to iconic World Heritage Sites such as Stonehenge and large parts of Hadrian's Wall. They were responsible for the visitor experience, the retail outlets and the overflow car park on busy bank holiday weekends. However, on the other hand the same organisation was also responsible for implementing and enforcing current planning legislation in respect of the historic environment; offering advice and comment on everything from Scheduled Ancient Monuments to how the erection of an illuminated shop sign might impact upon the setting of a Listed Building. The two heads of the hydra were not seen by many as entirely obvious, or comfortable, bedfellows.

Well, the uneven marriage has finally ended in divorce. From the 1st of April (no irony apparently intended) English Heritage is to be split into two. The care of the historic properties will now be run by a charitable trust, still to be known as English Heritage, into which the government will invest about £80 million  for immediate repairs and consolidation. This is the new body that will be responsible for the historic houses and castles we visit, the interpretation of our heritage on the frontline and, of course, the gift-shops full of pencils, rubbers and shiny branded notebooks so beloved of visiting school parties. The rest of the responsibilities held by the old organisation, including most aspects of planning, advice and heritage protection are to be vested in a new body to be known as Historic England. This new body, according to Culture Secretary Sajid Javid speaking at the official launch of the organisation, will remain part of the government's responsibility and they intend to keep  "its functions close at hand."

So it appears that all is glowing and rosy in the world of heritage protection. However, looks can be deceiving. Is this, as Sajid Javid insists, simply the adapting of an old organisation "to suit the age in which we now live", or is it one of the final stages in something more fundamental; the systematic dismantling of all forms of environmental and heritage protection that has taken place over the last five years? Given the evidence it is difficult to conclude that it is anything other than the latter.

When the Tory party came to power five years ago one of their key ambitions, much promoted within business communities and elsewhere, was the doing away with 'red tape'. They were going to be a friend to business, remove the perceived 'brakes on development' and allow us to build our way out of recession. However, it soon became clear that their perception of what constituted red tape was anything that might slow down or hamper development. Anything that caused delay or expense to developers was their enemy and it had to go - and go it did.

The first to go was planning legislation. Seen as complex and restrictive, over 1500 pages of planning law was reduced to a single document of a little over 50 pages in length. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) was to give a clean slate to the planning process and a green light to developers. Guidelines and well crafted legislation, that often left little or no room for ambiguity, and had been developed over a period of more than half a century, was thrown out of the window in favour of a document that contained more gray areas, ambiguities and contradictions in its fifty odd pages than the average Dr Who script.

The next 'brake on development' targeted by the government were those bodies who actually had their legal responsibilities for ensuring the protection of our heritage and environment. These included the Environment Agency, Natural England and English Heritage, all of whom suffered swingeing cuts to their funding and resulted in job losses. In the case of the Environment Agency the government went even further, appointing Sir Phillip Dilley, a noted planning and development specialist, as the new chairman. The cuts had the intended effect, leaving the agencies stretched and able to undertake only the barest minimum of their legal duties. There were reported cases of agency officers being unable to undertake site visits for even major developments due to budget constraints, preferring to rely upon viewing the site on Google Earth.

In the case of protection for the historic environment cuts within English Heritage caused a pervasive culture of fear. Individual officers relate stories of being told by their superiors not to intervene in planning issues that had already become 'live' (plans that had essentially already been approved by local authorities) for fear that they would be seen as further stifling development and bringing further cuts in their direction. This change in attitudes was soon picked up upon by planning officers within local authorities. When dealing with applications that might be considered controversial, it became a matter of policy rather than oversight within certain 'rogue' councils not to consult with English Heritage until after the application had been initially passed by their own development committees; thereby effectively ruling out possible interference from English Heritage until such point as their hands were already tied.

The final levels of heritage protection beneath English Heritage, the county based 'Historic Environment Services' (HES) who are directly responsible for offering archaeological advice upon planning applications, was actually even easier for the government to undermine. General cuts to local authority budgets has led to the need for cost savings on a massive scale, and sadly it has been the county Historic Environment Services that have found themselves in the front line. Services have been reduced, posts have been lost and workloads increased. In recent weeks one county council (West Sussex) has stated that it is actually completely ceasing to offer archaeological planning advice to most of the local authority planning departments in their area, leaving them to make their own arrangements with external contractors, whilst another (Northamptonshire) has stated that it aims to outsource 95% of all of its services - with no indication whatsoever of who, if anyone, will be offering archaeological advice to planners.

Having dismantled the mechanisms and agencies whose role was to protect the historic environment the government continues to attack all forms of heritage protection. More local governments cuts are being put forward, the Portable Antiquities scheme is once again under threat and Judicial Review, the last line of defence against bad and ill informed planning decisions, is to be made much harder and more expensive to undertake. Whilst each exercise in 'cutting red tape' seen in isolation may be regarded as simply removing the occasional brick from the wall of heritage and environmental protection, the cumulative result has been that the wall now has more holes than bricks.

The question must be whether, putting aside the destruction of heritage and environmental protection, the government has actually succeeded in what they set out to achieve? Have they managed to do away with what they regarded as the greatest enemy of development, developers and big business? Have they actually reduced the dreaded 'red tape'? Today the term 'red tape' is seen in almost wholly negative light, with connotations of overly heavy handed bureaucracy and top-down policy implementation for the sake of implementation; a political and media short-hand for restrictive practices and over regulation. However, it's worth remembering that every piece of this red tape legislation has been put in place by a former government, many of them Tory, for what was considered the protection of heritage and the environment. The development of the Green Belt, over a thousand pages of planning legislation and the Scheduling of Ancient Monuments were not simply pieces of political whimsy pulled from the air on after a brief discussion in the House of Commons bar. They were the result of a perceived and recognised need, extended periods of practical engagement with the subject and a wish to preserve irreplaceable heritage and environment assets for generations, rather than just the term of the next parliament. As any planning officer of whatever political persuasion will now tell you, the reduction of planning legislation to a little over fifty pages of the NPPF has not simplified the planning process. It has simply done away with areas of certainty that did exist in the old legislation, created a mass of grey areas and directly resulted in the publishing of multiple 'guidelines', designed to run alongside the NPPF, that are now almost as long as the original legislation it sought to replace. Planning by legislation and consent is largely being replaced by planning by litigation; where those who can afford the bigger barristers carry the day. There is, it would appear, sometimes a need for red tape.

There are those who believe that we are fiddling whilst Rome burns; watching generations of heritage protection being dismantled around us with no coordinated opposition, or potential for the future reversal of some of the most damaging measures. However, the view from the frontline of heritage and archaeology in England is that, when we look back on this period in a decade or two, we will realise that we weren't watching Rome burn at all - we were already simply playing in the ashes. Heritage protection has been, and continues to be, dismantled at every turn and with each week and month that passes. Today, however, the great and the good gathered together in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey to celebrate the launch of two new organisations that, in the words of Sajid Javid, "will be free to explore new ways of engaging with communities. New ways of protecting and promoting our heritage." Let us all hope that there is some real truth in Javid's words, and that today's celebration doesn't turn out to be an expensive wake for a long lost past.

NOTE: Since originally writing this post it has caused some controversy. It has been stated that it is a purely political piece of propaganda. That was never the intention. Whatever my personal political views I do not believe that there is an major party that, at the present time, takes heritage and environmental matters seriously. I would also add that every statement made in the blog above can be backed up with facts and figures. For instance, the Natural England case referred to was that for the development of a 7 acre lorry park (classed as a 'major development' by the planning authority) on designated environmentally sensitive land in the Wensum valley, Norfolk. Natural England did not make a site visit, citing budget constraints, and are on record in the minutes of the Development Committee meeting as saying they relied instead on viewing the site from Google Earth. Local opposition groups offered to pay for either their bus fare or a taxi to visit the site. The offer was not taken up.

In addition, since the publication of this piece the government has issued its formal response to the Commons Select Committees investigation into the first two years running of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). The Commons Select Committee was tasked with examining how the NPPF had been operating in practice and what could be done to improve it. The Committee, after much study and deliberation, put forward a list of recommendations, most of which were aimed at clarifying areas of the NPPF that were considered ambiguous and addressing "the growing number of concerns about unsustainable development". The Committee considered that many of these concerns were "significant and need to be tackled". 

On the 27th February 2015 the government issued its response to the Committees recommendations - the vast majority of which were completely rejected. The Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee, Clive Betts M.P., responded by stating that he was "very disappointed by the Government’s response to my Committee’s recent report... Sadly, the Government’s response shows it is burying its head in the sand about these important public concerns."