Britain's Heritage Suffers in Recession
Crumbling Cathedrals Symbolise Urgent Need for Investment
Oct 8, 2009
The news could affect the visiting plans of tourists fascinated by Britain’s historic religious buildings as sections are expected to be “off-limits” for safety reasons.
Parts of Canterbury Cathedral, the church at the heart of the worldwide Anglican church, some of the fabric of which dates back to the 11th and 12th centuries, are said to be so dangerous that whole areas of the building have already been marked “off-limits” to visitors and worshippers alike.
Elsewhere among the star attractions, Lincoln Cathedral, which mostly dates back to the 13th century or earlier, is also in need of urgent repair work. Much younger Anglican cathedrals, together with the Roman Catholic cathedrals which are almost all from the 20th century, are less affected.
Cathedrals Hit by Grant Withdrawal
But British conservation body English Heritage has announced it is to withdraw the £3m conservation grant it gives to historic cathedrals at the end of this year. English Heritage claims its own funding from central government had been cut as building costs had risen and that cuts had to be made somewhere.
The news came as the Church of England’s Cathedrals Fabric Commission, set up in 1990 to promote the care and conservation of the CofE’s cathedral churches, is expected to recommend that almost £200m is needed during the next decade to carry out essential repairs to its own cathedrals.
In the 19 years of its existence the Cathedral Grants Scheme run by English Heritage, most recently in partnership with the Wolfson Foundation, has given just over £52m to English cathedrals for on-going repair works. English Heritage has tried to reassure hard-pressed cathedral chapters – the official name for the organisations that run each cathedral – that one-off grants are still available for repair work.
English Heritage made a survey of the fabric of English cathedrals both in 1991 and again in 2001 as part of its funding scheme. Another survey is being organised now and is due to report at the end of the year. After that English Heritage will focus its support on the cathedrals that need the most work.
Cathedrals’ Fragile Fabric
People working on and in cathedrals say an alarming number of them are crumbling. Masonry is regularly falling from walls, often from considerable height, water leaks through roofs during rainstorms and in some cases pillars are being held together with duct tape.
Fight for Cathedrals
The end of English Heritage’s grant has not come without a fight. There has been vigorous lobbying by government ministers on all sides of the political divides and church leaders. They were worried that along with many other regular heritage funding needs the cathedrals would be the victims of funding cuts both from the recession and from the rising demands on central government funding of the London 2012 Olympics.
Last year, out of a total spending of more than £180m, English Heritage gave £29.3m to historic buildings of which £1.3m went to cathedrals and £7.7m to parish churches. A small amount of the EH grant goes to the more modern Roman Catholic cathedrals, most goes to the Anglican/Church of England buildings.
Those older buildings will suffer most, say campaigners. Lincoln Cathedral, which English art critic John Ruskin called out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles", receives about a quarter of its income for conservation work from English Heritage and is currently in the middle of major conservation work.
Why is a Cathedral Called a Cathedral?
There are two kinds of cathedrals in Britain, Roman Catholic and Anglican. The oldest are most of the Anglican cathedrals, dating back to medieval times or earlier and which until the Reformation were Roman Catholic. Only a handful of Anglican cathedrals are comparatively modern buildings. Most of the Roman Catholic buildings are also comparatively recent, most from the 20th Century.
There are 70 cathedral buildings in the UK of which most, 43, are Church of England/Anglican cathedrals which include the great medieval cathedrals that feature on so many tourist itineraries and where Christian worship has continued for centuries. The remaining cathedrals are run by the Roman Catholic church.
The word cathedral derives from the word cathedra, which itself derives from both Latin and Greek origins and means “seat of the bishop” and cathedrals are the main churches of a bishop’s administrative area, or diocese. Some of England’s cathedrals, like Canterbury, were built as cathedrals from the word go while others, like Peterborough, were converted to cathedrals from monastic abbeys at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries when Henry VIII closed all England’s 600 monasteries down.
Sources: English Heritage, the Church of England, Telegraph, Times and BBC news websites, The Cathedrals of England (Alec Clifton-Taylor), Press office/chapter office at Canterbury Cathedral, Lincoln Cathedral, Peterborough Cathedral, personal/family contacts at Peterborough Cathedral.
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