Letters to the Editor

Sir,

FOR “ARCHAEOLOGY” READ “HERITAGE” …

I was very interested to read your interview with Alan Ridgers, KCC’s recently-appointed ‘Archaeology Champion’, in the Winter 2019 KAS Newsletter.

This, it is to be hoped, is a sign of increasing awareness on the part of the County Council of the importance of the care and preservation of Kent’s irreplaceable heritage, be it archaeological, historical, industrial, social, environmental or artistic – since all are to a greater or lesser extent interwoven. So is this ‘archaeology’ remit broad enough and is what we really need a Heritage Champion?

In the archaeological and historical field alone a mass of evidential material exists, whether it be the artefacts and written records of excavations (with storage problems going back decades), photographs, documents, local history books and a range of other historical material.

Most of this is dispersed amongst a range of different owners and organisations spread across the county, particularly in museums, record offices and libraries, as well as with groups such as the KAS and local history societies. Many counties enjoy the benefit of a county museum which acts as a guardian of local heritage such as this and can have an oversight of and advise on material in the ownership of other local bodies. A golden opportunity for this to have happened in Kent was offered at the time of local government reorganisation in 1974, but, sadly, loosely worded legislation coupled with local politics denied us such an asset. The result was that the de facto ‘County Museum’ in Maidstone remained with the district council and KCC set up its own museum service, which it later disbanded.

It would be naïve to think that a publicly-funded and over-arching county museum service could be set up in Kent any time soon. Nationally, the move is for heritage organisations to be managed and operated by trusts, which removes them (to an extent) from local politics and enables them to pursue funding from a wider range of sources. So perhaps we should aim for a Kent Heritage Trust to, in the first instance, unite a nucleus of existing organisations under one umbrella, with, hopefully, more and more to come on board with the passage of time. At the very least it could encourage participants to catalogue and store their information in common formats which could be accessed on-line via a common portal – photographic collections might be a good place to start.

So come on KCC, give us a Heritage Champion to drive this forward – the longer the delay the greater the risk that more of our common heritage will be lost!

Yours faithfully,

Henry Middleton