Campaign launched to save Britain's crumbling colonial heritage across Commonwealth

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016...hocking-pictu/

Britain's crumbling colonial heritage laid bare in shocking pictures

Leading heritage expert is heading a new campaign to conserve and restore the imperial palaces and monuments around the world

Government House at Barrackpore was once the summer residence of Governors-General and its elegant riverside grounds were long regarded as a pearl of Empire. Today the house is derelict, abandoned since its last use as police hospital, and the park is a near-impenetrable jungle.

From former colonial splendours of the Raj to whaling stations in the South Atlantic, they are far-flung and fast crumbling outposts of Britain’s centuries-old overseas heritage.

The dilapidated and decaying legacies range from mansions and parks that were the pride of imperial India and Burma to churches, cemeteries and plantations fading away from neglect on tropical islands in the Andaman and Caribbean seas.

But a leading British conservation and heritage expert has now made the economic case for Government support to help save colonial and industrial treasures to promote Britain abroad as well as to bolster local regeneration.

“At a time when so much public debate is focussed on Britain’s role in Europe, I think we often forget that we built much of the modern world,” Philip Davies, a former director of English Heritage, told The Telegraph.

“Heritage-led regeneration works. It pays real economic dividends. Historic buildings and neighbourhoods are a huge economic and cultural asset.”

Government House in Barrackpore, photographed in the 1860s by Samuel Borne

He launched his proposal as the Government conducts a review of the arts and heritage sectors – and how cultural institutions can promote and enhance Britain abroad - with its new Culture White Paper.

Mr Davies, an author whose previous books include the best-seller ‘Lost London’ and works on British influence in India, has travelled the world researching and recording Britain’s overseas heritage for an illustrated history of the architecture and monuments of the Empire and Commonwealth.

Several of the sites on the target list for his preservation mission are in and around Calcutta, the erstwhile capital of the British Raj.

The once splendid teak portals of the late 19th century Pegu Club now lie derelict and decaying

North of the city, Government House at Barrackpore was once the summer residence of Governors-General and its elegant riverside grounds were long regarded as a pearl of Empire. But today the house is derelict, abandoned since its last use as police hospital, and the park is a near-impenetrable jungle.

In Calcutta’s terribly neglected former Royal Botanic Gardens, the ruins of Roxburgh House are a far cry from the glories captured in an 1826 watercolour painting.

They are the oldest such gardens in Asia, a site of world importance where the introduction of tea to India from China was pioneered, but are now blighted by decades of mismanagement and in desperate need of conservation.

“Much of the historic fabric of Calcutta is in a shocking condition and requires urgent intervention, and conservation strategy,” said Mr Davies.

“The UK experience in urban regeneration could help to safeguard this unique shared heritage generating jobs, skills and prosperity for the city, and opportunities for British cultural exports.”

Rangoon's stunning Secretariat Building in the heart of the former British Empire

In neighbouring Burma, the elegant red-brick expanse of Rangoon’s Secretariat building, the administrative seat of British rule and the site of the assassination of Aung San Suu Kyi’s father in 1947, stands empty and abandoned.

The derelict remains of part of the British Secretariat in Rangoon pictued above. Built between 1889-1905. it is the size of the V&A Museum in London and the most important colonial era building in Burma.

Away from the major hubs of Empire, on Ross Island in the Andaman Sea, a former British penal settlement as well as administrative centre before an earthquake struck in 1941, the old Anglican church, residences and cemetery are being engulfed in jungle.

The island may have the air of romantic decay that attracts some adventurous tourists now, but Mr Davies argues that without a conservation strategy, those ruins will soon be lost forever thanks to the combination of neglect and climate.

On islands with very different climate, in the windswept depths of the South Atlantic, he recently visited sites that bear testament to the hardy spirit of commerce and exploration that also drove the Empire.

These examples of at-risk industrial archaeology include the ruined machinery of an abandoned whaling station and the snowbound whalers’ cemetery where Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried on South Georgia and the ruins of an abandoned polar research station on Deception island in the South Shetlands.

Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands

The sites are currently maintained as much as possible by charitable heritage trusts and volunteers, but desperately need long-term support for survival.

In his report submitted to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, Mr Davies has proposed that an initial £2 million be made available from 2017 for a new pilot fund.

The initial goal would be to conduct feasibility studies and draw up conservation and development strategies rather than plunging into the costs of individual building projects.

From London to Cape Town and Penang to Hobart, he cited examples where “dynamic conservation” has generated cultural and economic benefits and pointed to the success of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in preserving and restoring remote sites.

He also noted that a time when there had been widespread criticism of the merits of some overseas aid projects, support for British heritage would have a direct and clear benefit for the UK in terms of its economy and reputation.

“People’s perceptions of a country and its culture are coloured by the way in which its global heritage is recognised, supported and celebrated,” he said.

“Prominent public buildings and monuments, which symbolise Britain’s shared history with a host country and which are dilapidated and decaying, portray a nation unconcerned about its global culture and influence - a country in decline.”

His proposals have earned backing from Amit Chaudhuri, the Anglo-Indian author and academic who is a passionate campaigner to save Calcutta’s heritage.

“The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Calcutta was a time not only of Empire, but of the city's modernity, which expressed itself through the Bengali language, paintings, music, cinema - and buildings,” he told The Telegraph.

And Loyd Grossman, the American-British television presenter who is also chairman of the Heritage Alliance in the UK, has written to the culture department in support of the project.

“The architectural legacy of Britain's global role is increasingly endangered,” he said. “Britain's heritage abroad doesn't have many local champions as it is sometimes seem as an uncomfortable legacy of Empire. But whatever our politics or ideology we neglect history at our peril.”

Let us hope the campaign achieves something with the policy review.

Aside from wanting to visit India most of all to visit the amazing imperial palaces in New Dehli, Burma is second on my list because of the high number of untouched colonial architecture it retains in Rangoon. It is so sad to see pictures like those above: the preservation of these monuments and buildings is as important as preserving Roman, ancient Greek and Ottoman architecture. Not just for the history of the world but for Britain itself.

Use the foreign aid budget for it. Or better still, we could always use some of the EU budget if we leave. It'd be a good gesture before trade talks.

Thoughts?

[AgnesIO]

Use the foreign aid budget for it.

Use the foreign aid budget to spruce up a building that has little use to anyone, apart from to look nice?

Don't disagree with maintaining the buildings, but foreign aid simply to keep our own buildings looking pretty?

[-:Undertaker:-]

Use the foreign aid budget to spruce up a building that has little use to anyone, apart from to look nice?

Don't disagree with maintaining the buildings, but foreign aid simply to keep our own buildings looking pretty?

Yes absolutely.

Not only a benefit for our own historical legacy but a benefit for those countries in terms of tourism & skills.

[AgnesIO]

Yes absolutely.

Not only a benefit for our own historical legacy but a benefit for those countries in terms of tourism & skills.

I'm afraid you're in a minority of people who visit these countries specifically for British architecture.

India: Taj Mahal
Myanmar: Bagan, Buddhist features

The British buildings are wonderful; but I doubt many fly to a country just to see them.

[-:Undertaker:-]

I'm afraid you're in a minority of people who visit these countries specifically for British architecture.

India: Taj Mahal
Myanmar: Bagan, Buddhist features

The British buildings are wonderful; but I doubt many fly to a country just to see them.

Indeed they are wonderful as are the native buildings you mentioned.

But some of the restored British buildings are already on a par with the Taj Mahal. Who visits New Delhi for example without seeing the famous India Gate and the Imperial complex that Luytens designed with the Viceroy's Palace, Parliament buildings and surroundings that dominate the design of the entire city? Who visits Calcutta without sighting the Victoria Memorial? Or the Victoria Terminus? Bombay for the iconic Gateway to India? Shanghai for the famous Bund. As I said, the paid for restoration of those that are decaying away (especially to poorer countries) would be a welcome gesture to the Commonwealth post-Brexit.

Have to say, I am so blessed to live in Liverpool where many of these great architects also made a mark. The Luytens Crypt under the RC Cathedral :HeartEyes:

[AgnesIO]

Indeed they are wonderful as are the native buildings you mentioned.

But some of the restored British buildings are already on a par with the Taj Mahal. Who visits New Delhi for example without seeing the famous India Gate and the Imperial complex that Luytens designed with the Viceroy's Palace, Parliament buildings and surroundings that dominate the design of the entire city? Who visits Calcutta without sighting the Victoria Memorial? Or the Victoria Terminus? Bombay for the iconic Gateway to India? Shanghai for the famous Bund. As I said, the paid for restoration of those that are decaying away (especially to poorer countries) would be a welcome gesture to the Commonwealth post-Brexit.

Have to say, I am so blessed to live in Liverpool where many of these great architects also made a mark. The Luytens Crypt under the RC Cathedral :HeartEyes:

You are right in that they are all wonderful buildings and landmarks, and I am lucky enough to have seen some of them on multiple occasions (and all at least once). However, I do not believe many go to those countries specifically to see them, and so from a tourist income generation sense, they are probably not all that important.

I would definitely love for them to be restored; but spending the Foreign Aid budget on them? No thank you.

[dbgtz]

It's weird as someone who advocates free market and such that you're suggesting spending public money in a foreign country on a building that has no real function or benefit to taxpayers.

[FlyingJesus]

Sell them off to private renovation companies who actually care enough to do it properly without having all the government red tape, that way we aren't spending loads on stuff that no-one would actually miss unless you told them about it and yet it still gets done for the 5 people who do want to go there

[-:Undertaker:-]

It's weird as someone who advocates free market and such that you're suggesting spending public money in a foreign country on a building that has no real function or benefit to taxpayers.

I'm just suggesting better things to spend the foreign aid budget on. If we are to have a foreign aid budget then why not spend it on projects like this which have a benefit that cuts both ways for us and the Commonwealth. In an ideal world I would abolish the entire foreign aid department and cut taxes with it.

All that said though I have never completely said I am against government spending money. There's buildings including colonial ones which are important enough to warrant public expenditure on because they are priceless in terms of heritage to the nation. I doubt any of us would decline saving Westminster Palace, Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Hadrian's Wall and the Tower of London just because private companies were unwilling to do so and they do not make a 'profit'. Just because a collection of buildings are overseas doesn't make them any less important to the history and culture of this country, surely?