Historic Churches 2021

BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 28 TH ANNUAL EDITION 3 CONTESTED HERITAGE GUIDANCE by an angry crowd in June 2020; several prominent references to Colston in the stained glass windows of Bristol Cathedral and St Mary Redcliffe which were removed a week later; and the music venue Colston Hall which was renamed Bristol Beacon the following September. Historic England's guidance on contested heritage focuses on keeping and reinterpreting any memorial which is protected. “Our stance on historic statues and sites which have become contested is to retain and explain them; to provide thoughtful, long lasting and powerful reinterpretation that responds to their contested history and tells the full story. New responses can involve re-interpretation, added layers and installations, new artworks, displays and counter-memorials, as well as intangible interventions, such as education programmes.” (From Checklist to Help Local Authorities Deal with Contested Heritage Decisions , Historic England, October 2021.) Excellent guidance issued by the Church Buildings Council and the Cathedrals Fabric Commission for England takes a more nuanced approach, focussing on the need for making everyone feel welcome and included. Contested Heritage in Cathedrals and Churches (http://bc-url.com/ cbc-contested) explores the issues to be considered and the justifications A monument by the neoclassical sculptor John Flaxman (1755–1826) in the parish church of Ledbury, Herefordshire to William Miles (1728–1803). According to the UCL Legacies of British Slavery data, Miles ‘was a major slave-factor in Jamaica and then guarantor in Bristol of the slave-trade in the 1790s’. (Photo: JMC4 Church Explorer, flickr.com/photos/52219527 @N00/48128292157) Many of our oldest cathedrals and parish churches are packed with the most magnificent memorials from different periods. As objects of art and architecture, these are often of great importance locally and even nationally, having been carved by the finest artists and sculptors of their period, and monuments inside the church are often of the finest marble or alabaster. However, these memorials draw their significance and value on several levels, not solely from their importance as works of art. It is the events and lives they commemorate that can be contentious. If the presence of a memorial is seen to imply some level of endorsement for the person by the church, this may be distressing for both the visitor and the community. Contested heritage is where the historical narrative represented by a memorial or artefact is considered by sections of the community to be inappropriate for commemoration and offensive. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, the focus has been on prominent memorials to people who profited from racial injustice and the slave trade in particular, but contested heritage includes memorials associated with all forms of oppression, whether on grounds of race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. For many, the continued existence of these memorials in the UK’s most important civic and religious spaces symbolises the old order, and the continued institutionalisation of past injustices. In Bristol for example, prominent memorials to the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston included the statue that was toppled and thrown into the harbour required before changing or removing a memorial which has ‘a demonstrably negative impact on the mission and ministry of the church or cathedral’. “The effects of enslavement continue to impact the lives of many UK ethnic minority communities to whom, at best, these objects may be reminders of an ‘overcome’ past, a horror from which we celebrate our extrication; at worst, for these objects to remain in place with no discussion or interpretation could be taken to imply that the oppression and disenfranchisement they evoke for many in affected communities is socially and theologically acceptable to the Church.” The Church of England is encouraging all its churches and cathedrals to take a proactive approach to researching their monuments, and not to wait for others to reveal their secrets. A database of British slave ownership has been developed by UCL’s Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery (http://bc-url.com/ ucl-lbs) which was initially based on the detailed records of compensation paid by Britain following the abolition of slavery in 1833. With details of their country houses, monuments and other ‘physical legacies’, it provides a reminder of the wealth created by slavery in Britain and Ireland by the early 19th centuries, and it is an excellent resource for those needing to explore how the slave trade impacted the heritage assets in their guardianship.