celebrity writers

Britain's Next World Heritage Sites

Plans for Adding More of the UK’s Heritage to the Global List

Aug 23, 2008

Part of the Cornwall and E Devon Mining site, Paul Lightfoot

Already well represented in UNESCO's worldwide list of heritage sites, Britain is planning a new round of proposals.

Which is more worthy of being declared a World Heritage Site, Shakespeare’s Stratford or the Cairngorm Mountains? The Lake District or the Forth Rail bridge? Chatham naval dockyard or the home of Charles Darwin?

These are some of the choices that face Britain’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as it considers its next nomination to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Global List of World Heritage Sites

The global list of 878 World Heritage Sites includes 299 in Europe and 27 in the UK and its overseas territories. Within the UK list are well-established national icons like Stonehenge and Canterbury Cathedral, but also some less well-known sites such as the Derwent Valley Mills, inscribed in 2001, the Maritime Mercantile City of Liverpool (2004), the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscapes, (2006) and the most recent addition, the Antonine Wall, inscribed as part of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire site in 2008.

New nominations must be selected from an official Tentative List of 16 sites that has already been submitted to UNESCO. Britain’s present Tentative List includes the six sites mentioned above and another ten ranging from the defences of Gibraltar, a UK overseas territory at the southern tip of Spain, to Northern Ireland’s Mount Stewart Gardens.

UNESCO’s Global Strategy for World Heritage Sites

In order to qualify under UNESCO’s procedures a nominated site must be considered to have outstanding, universal value, based on one or any combination of ten cultural and natural criteria. But as a global strategy UNESCO aims to address some imbalances in the worldwide list.

It would like more proposals for natural sites that at present account for only about 20 percent of the global total. Britain’s Dorset and East Devon Coast, inscribed in 2001, fitted that strategy well. In view of a perceived European dominance of the list, UNESCO would also like to see more nominations for sites in less developed parts of the world.

Consultations on Britain’s Heritage

The Cairngorms, the Flow Country peatlands of Caithness and Sutherland in Scotland, and the Wash and North Norfolk Coast have all been included in the Tentative List as natural rather than cultural sites; and the Lake District and the New Forest are proposed for their mixed natural and cultural significance. The Tentative List also includes Fountains Cavern, an archeologically significant limestone cavern in the Caribbean island of Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory.

But under present plans it will be some time before any of these are nominated to UNESCO. For a decision in 2009 the DCMS has already nominated the Pont-Cysyllte Aqueduct on the Ellesmere Canal in Denbighshire, Wales; and says it will re-submit the initially unsuccessful proposal for Darwin’s home in January 2009 and propose the Twin Monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow a year later.

Or perhaps not. In 2008 the DCMS launched a public consultation prior to reviewing its next round of nominations for World Heritage Sites. The result could be a new set of priorities and some new ideas about what it means for a place to have outstanding, universal value.

The copyright of the article Britain's Next World Heritage Sites in British/UK Affairs is owned by Paul Lightfoot. Permission to republish Britain's Next World Heritage Sites in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.