Britain's hidden heritage which leaves thousands of artefacts unable to view |
Antiquities in private hands that we can’t view or visit. Britain is, in the most part, proud of its heritage.
By that I mean it’s art and antiquities, yet barely a week goes by without a foreign nation requesting the return of an artefact on display in a British museum, gallery or collection.
However, it’s the art and antiquities, including thousands of scheduled ancient monuments that the public doesn’t have access to, that seems such a shame.
Greater access to and a fuller understanding of these national treasures will benefit us all.
In Scotland, of the 8,000 or so scheduled monuments, roughly 80% are located on private, often agricultural, land, which means they are not automatically accessible to the public.
Scheduling a monument clearly earmarks it as something to be proud of, something of a national treasure, but that doesn’t create a public right of access to it.
In England, just one example is Corton Longbarrow, a Neolithic national treasure located next to the Wessex Ridgeway, on private land.
Corton Longbarrow, Wiltshire, is part of our Neolithic landscape, but we can only look at it through the trees (Image: Andrew Blackall)
In other words, you can see it from the footpath, but you can’t touch it! These elongated tombs served as communal burial chambers, and there are not far off 700 across Britain.
Corton Longbarrow is just one scheduled national Monument amongst somewhere in the region of........