- nordmann wrote:
- It is a question frequently presented in historical excavations for which there is no one good answer. The nearest one can get to a rule-of-thumb guideline is to concentrate not on the comparative historical value of either artefact (in this case the floor versus the statues) but on as accurate a recording of context as is possible while retrieving the maximum amount of data.
All archaeological excavation is, by definition, a disturbance of the natural historical process through which the subject matter was lost to view. All artefacts once removed have been separated from their historical context. Where part of that context must be destroyed in order to attain as much data as possible then the sad truth is that the best that can be done in the circumstances is to record it as best one can before it is lost.
What to do with ruins and archaeological remains often raises all kinds of paradoxes. It must be a thankless and sometimes soul-destroying task to be a civil engineer working on a project to construct a road or railway or bridge or tunnel and to have already agreed to report any archaeological finds and give due breathing space to allow archaeologists to assess, record and, if necessary, remove any portable finds, to then still be depicted as cultural vandals for wanting to go ahead and complete the original project. The archaeological remains were, by definition, lost to history. Nobody knew that they were there, and moreover, nobody really cared. Yet they very people who unearthed them, then find themselves vilified.
With regard to ruins which lie visible above the ground, then the idea of preserving such ruins just for the sake of it can also seem paradoxical. A derelict or ruined building, whether it be Roman, Saxon, Norman, Romanesque, Gothic, Tudor, Baroque, Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian, Bauhaus, Art Deco, Brutalist, High-tech or Contemporary etc is still just a derelict building or a ruin. It serves no practical purpose. It has 5 likely fates which are either restoration or renovation or repurposing or preservation or demolition. Restoration would entail restoring the building to its original condition. Renovation would mean restoring it to its original use but with significant modifications. Repurposing would be mean restoring and renovating the building but for a use other than originally intended. Preservation would entail maintaining the ruins in their ruined state as a monument. Demolition would entail taking down the remains of the building entirely.
This calls to mind the varying controversies over the centuries regarding the fate of the monasteries dissolved in the 16th century. Let’s imagine, say, that someone who owned the ruins of a mediaeval abbey today sold the property on and it was bought by a monastic order. And imagine that the monks then intended to restore all the buildings to the condition in which they were in the 1530s and then use them as a working monastery. The first question which might spring to mind is just how realistic such a proposal would be. A faithful restoration would require the buildings to be an exact replica of what existed in the 1530s with corresponding implications regarding heating and sanitation etc. In other words, the addition of any modern conveniences such as gas-fired central-heating, electric-lighting, hot and cold running water or flushing toilets etc would move the project on from one of restoration to one of renovation. These changes alone would be likely to raise the opposition of some. And imagine further if that part of the building complex which in the 1530s was used, say, as a buttery, was earmarked to be used by the 21st Century monks as a pharmaceutical laboratory. This would move the project on again from being one of renovation to one of repurposing, which might further offend opponents.
A proposal to restore the buildings with minor renovation and selective repurposing would seem to be eminently reasonable. Yet there are those for whom any such works would be anathema. For them, the ruins themselves possess a poetic beauty and should be preserved as such in perpetuity. It’s a point of view not without merit. Seeing such a place, say, on a frosty morning in February or at sunset on a warm September evening can be a moving or even spiritual experience. There are, however, very many such ruins and not just the great and famous ruined abbeys and priories of Britain such as Fountains, Tintern, Rievaulx, Melrose, Roche, Mount Grace, Whitby and Lindisfarne but also myriad castles, manor houses, towers, barns, bridges and warehouses etc.
(The ruins of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire)
Many abbeys, however, were repurposed almost immediately following dissolution. Buckland Abbey in Devon, for instance, wasn’t demolished but was converted into a private home with the church forming the kernel of the new residence. Cleeve Abbey in Somerset spent centuries repurposed as a lay farm. In the case of Cleeve (as with most other abbeys) its church was demolished but (unlike with most others) the rest of the original buildings were spared and have survived in good condition even with roofs upkept to this day. Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire was gifted by King Henry VIII to Sir John Byron who converted it into a private house but with the ruins of the abbey church still in evidence today. Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, on the other hand, was given to John Russell, Duke of Bedford who demolished the original buildings entirely and then used the stone to build a new home. This is turn was rebuilt in the 18th Century. At the beginning of the 19th Century when Jane Austen wrote her novel
Northanger Abbey it would have been widely assumed by the readers that this referred to a great country house as nearly every county in England had at least one such property which included either the word ‘abbey’ or ‘priory’ in its name.
Around 100 former monastic abbeys, priories and friaries continue to be used as churches and chapels normally by the local parish. Over 700, however, were abandoned after dissolution and remained in ruins. This was until the 1880s when Buckfast Abbey on Dartmoor (not to be confused with neighbouring Buckland) was rebuilt by Benedictine monks after their monastery in France had been dissolved by the Third Republic. It was a sort of role reversal of the situation 350 years earlier when some monastic communities from England had relocated to France. And as recently as the 1940s, the spectacular ruins of the former Cistercian monastery Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire were also the subject of an advanced plan for them to be purchased by the Benedictine order and rebuilt as a 20th century monastery. That plan, however, was shelved with the ‘aesthetic ruin’ argument winning out in this case. And Fountains Abbey is a case in point. Currently it is owned by the National Trust and is preserved as a ruin. This status is reinforced by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization whose Convention Concerning the Protection of the World's Cultural and Natural Heritage was applied to the building’s ruins in 1986. The grounds, however, are fair game and, as with many National Trust properties, the upkeep and promotion of the gardens forms a central part of their activity. Any future plan for repurposing the buildings, however, would now have some very heavy-duty red tape to cut through indeed.
(Buckfast Abbey in Devon. Note the mix of architectural styles as evidence that its renovation was not intended to be a restoration.)
Away from monasteries, the repurposing of secular ruins has also raised interest and controversy in recent decades. The 14th century Hellifield Peel Castle in Yorkshire, for instance, fell into ruin in the 1950s but was successfully renovated and repurposed in the 2000s as a private home and bed and breakfast. That example has inspired others to consider the renovation and repurposing of other ruins which previously might have been overlooked or dismissed as being out of the question in the widely-held but mistaken belief that all ancient ruins are the subject of preservation orders.
Home 
