English Heritage is failing in its duty if it can't keep sites open in winter

Yahoo

05-02-2025

Seventy miles down the coast from Scotland, in the middle of the Furness Peninsula, sits Furness Abbey. Over 900 years old, it is said to have been the wealthiest Cistercian abbey in the north-west of England, rivalled only by Fountains Abbey over to the east, in Ripon, North Yorkshire.
It was torn down, of course, by Henry VIII's directive. What remains is just an echo of what would have been: hints of cloisters, gothic arches, steps up to floors that are no longer there, foundations that would have supported towers, and glass that would have rendered the weary traveller awestruck.
Such is its imposing power, even after its stone and riches were carried away by builders and looters, it continued to draw pilgrims. In 1805 William Wordsworth described in his poem 'At Furness Abbey', railway workers arriving to 'walk among the ruins', feel the 'thrills of the old sepulchral earth' then 'look up, and with fixed eyes admire that wide spanned arch, wondering how it was raised to keep, so high in air, it's strength and grace.'
Today, it's a place for families to come on a warm summer's day, with a picnic and the dog to run around the old stone walls, play hide and seek and pootle around the small museum housing some of the Abbey's remaining treasures. In the height of the season, tourists often make the day trip down from the Lake District and nearby Blackpool. However, when the winter comes, barrelling unforgiving wind and rain up from Morecambe Bay and across from the Irish Sea, the great Furness Abbey can see fewer than 10 visitors cross its threshold. And now the organisation has announced that hard decisions have to be made.
'English Heritage was never likely to survive as a charity,' says archaeologist Dr Susan Greaney, following reports that the organisation plans to cut 189 jobs from a workforce of 2,535 (around 7 per cent of its total) and limit access to 21 historic sites – including Furness Abbey, Totnes Castle in Devon and Lullingstone Roman Villa in Kent. She believes the coalition government, led by David Cameron, made a mistake when it dropped longstanding government funding from the 400 plus sites managed by English Heritage 'and started to expect the organisation to wash its own face' back in 2015.
Now a lecturer at the University of Exeter, Greaney worked for English Heritage from 2005 to 2022, as a properties historian with oversight of Stonehenge and major projects at Avebury, Grimes Graves, Thornborough Henges, Tintagel and Chysauster Ancient Village.
'Unlike the kind of stately homes managed by the National Trust,' she explains, 'many of the sites managed by English Heritage are ruins. They're outdoor sites. They don't come with stable blocks you can turn into cafes and shops. They're not easy to convert into commercial sites. But they're incredibly important places.'
Originally formed in 1983, English Heritage was originally the operating name of an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government (officially titled the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) charged with running the nation's heritage protection. But as part of the 'bonfire of the quangos' (which also saw the struggling Canal & River Trust cut adrift to become a charity in 2011), the organisation was split in two in 2015.
Historic England inherited the statutory and protection functions of the old organisation (advising the Government on the listing of sites and giving advice to owners and planning authorities) while English Heritage Trust became a charity managing the properties (still owned by the state) including the site of the 1066 Battle of Hastings, the best-preserved parts of Hadrian's Wall and Dover Castle.
To help English Heritage establish itself as an independent trust, the government handed over a lump sum of £80 million. 'That felt like a lot of money at the time, and for a while it looked as though the new model was going to work,' says Greaney.
She points to some of the 'really great, innovative work' that English Heritagedid with that money – including the £5 million slate-surfaced footbridge out to 13th-century Tintagel Castle (commissioned in 2015 and opened in 2019) as an example. Inhabited since Roman times and long linked to Arthurian legend, Tintagel has seen visitor numbers increase by 116 per cent (up to 334,000 in 2023) from the time the bridge opened.
'But English Heritage properties cost loads of money to keep safe, secure and not falling down,' continues Greaney.
The pandemic hit the heritage sector hard. Visitor numbers and income plummeted, with English Heritage kept afloat by a £12.9 million Arts Council rescue grant while members donated £500,000 to an emergency appeal. Greaney says there was a boom in domestic tourism after the lockdowns but it took time for international visitors to return to Britain's historic sites. Poor weather over the last two Easter and summer breaks didn't help matters and now the charity is battling inflationary costs. In 2023, the charity launched a fundraising appeal to help support its commitment to free school visits – the cost of which had risen by 63 per cent since Covid.
'The cost of materials, conservation and staff keeps rising,' says Greaney. 'Especially with the National Insurance increase that has just come through.'
Although a spokesperson for English Heritage says the charity is not 'targeting' its curators, Greaney says the threat of job losses is 'weighing on the property historians – the team of researchers, historians and archaeologists we can rely on to present authentic and accurate history'. She stresses that once you lose that expertise, then 'it's not being passed on to new members of staff being trained up within those teams.'
Greaney also has concerns over the winter closure of some sites. 'That means the sites are vulnerable because they're not secure,' she says. 'Without the staff presence, you get vandalism or other issues. When staffed sites become free sites that can cause conservation costs to go up because ruins become places where teenagers like to hang out.' She says some of these issues have occurred at the ruins of the 1680s-built Wolvesey Old Bishop's Palace in Winchester.
And the threat of winter closure is now also facing Furness Abbey – currently open every weekend from 10am-4pm.
When details of the proposed closures were published on the North West Evening Mail's Facebook page, local history enthusiast (and former Fountains Abbey employee) Simon Brook took to the comments section to vent: 'It is crazy that the most important abbey in the northeast receives almost half a million visitors a year but the most important in the northwest seems almost forgotten. The Cistercian monks shaped the landscape right across the north of England and those networks spread out from Barrow [-in-Furness] and Fountains and that should be what is the central theme in deciding the resources/promotion and funding that it receives, not down to some customer algorithm that is self-fulfilling when resources aren't spent on Barrow.'
An English Heritage spokesman told The Telegraph that a new wooden 'night staircase' (in place of the stone steps which medieval monks would descend at 2am to sing Matins) had been built at Furness (thanks to a Landfill Communities Fund grant) in 2024. But on some days, visitor numbers drop to single figures in the colder months.
Ron Creer – vice chair of Furness Abbey Fellowship, a small charity of volunteers set up in 2012 to assist English Heritage in increasing visitor numbers – says that his members are 'very dismayed' by the proposed winter closures at Furness Abbey and by the reduction of opening hours at nearby Stott Park Bobbin Mill. 'We are further concerned at the prospective job losses from the front line and within curatorial staff. We believe the curatorial staff are at the heart of English Heritage, and the front line staff are its face.'
While Creer acknowledges the economic challenges facing English Heritage, he says Fellowship members feel that 'to justify winter closure by using one particular day's numbers (eight) is somewhat disingenuous because many people come to the gift shop and museum and make purchases but are not counted as visitors. We feel therefore this does not reflect a true picture. We continue to support English Heritage but feel this is ill-judged and if they were to funnel some of the larger site's funds into marketing, these two important sites could continue to open throughout the year.'
Greaney is more surprised to hear that Ranger's House in Greenwich – the Georgian mansion featured as the home of the fictional Bridgerton family in the Netflix drama – is on the list of properties likely to see further restrictions to opening hours. The House contains the eclectic Wernher Collection of art including works by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Pieter de Hooch. As an indoor attraction, which has to be kept at a steady temperature for conservation purposes, the only cost saved by limiting visitor hours there will be staff.
'I suspect the organisation is trying to be prudent and weather the current storm,' says Greaney. But while she 'can see the government has many other calls on resources' she suspects the only way English Heritage can stay afloat is with further government investment.
But until more money is forthcoming, from whatever source, some of Britain's most ancient sites are facing up to a long period of enforced hibernation.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.