Heritage

(from 2014)

Like many a tourist I do like history and enjoy visiting historical sites. Back in June when I made my first visit to America, one thing I noted was that as a (relatively speaking) young country nearly everything was quite modern – certainly when compared with the UK. Now that is not a criticism, it is just the way it is – you see an old barn (ten a penny in rural England) and in America it turns out to be an ancient monument.

I will say though, that in my limited experience in America, the places I visited had made efforts to preserve what history they had. I spent several days in Pittsburgh. I liked Pittsburgh a lot. It is quite a small city, a little smaller than Cardiff in South Wales. It is a city built on steel. There are numerous folk songs about steel-men that originate in the area and have travelled since. One evening in Pittsburgh I was standing with my hosts looking down from what is now known as Mount Washington.

The area had originally been populated by poor German immigrants. They lived on top of what was then called Coal Hill and had to work down in the valley alongside the Monongahela River. The river was so polluted, in the depths of winter it never froze, and met the Allegheny River downstream – which did freeze. To get to and from work they built a number of incline railways – based on the funiculars as found back in the old country.

Only two of the incline railways are preserved, but they are preserved well. Of course, the hill top area has now become extremely expensive – the views, coupled with the absence of the steel industry, make it so.

Along the river valley, there are various pieces of machinery from the steelworks, now preserved. They are painted up, often in bright colors, with labels showing what they did, and the waterfront area is a nice place to walk and eat and drink. It was full of families – and history. They have done well.

Looking across the vista from Mount Washington you could see modern Pittsburgh with its tall buildings – which may be practical but do not appeal – aesthetically I found New York the pits for that reason, although I acknowledge that some British cities are going the same way. And you could also see old Allegheny. Allegheny has been much redeveloped, and they haven’t done a bad job – except that about 40-50 years ago they knocked down rather a lot of the history that I had specifically come to Pittsburgh to see. I actually knew in advance that it had gone, and there was a plaque to say it had gone but that it had once been the stomping ground of the person I was researching – but retrospectively, it was a shame. My main sources of research that remained untouched were the many graveyards. Unlike Britain, where it is quite possible that your ancient relatives may get concreted over in the interests of a new multi-storey car park, graveyards in America seem to be heritage sites, and therefore protected and well-tended. Well, at least the ones I visited anyway.

If only we knew what would be viable historical sites for the future. Where I live, in South Wales, there is a World Heritage Site called Blaenavon. Now I knew Blaenavon when it was just Blaenavon. I used to visit people there and visit the spit and sawdust cinema, where films ended up after the major circuits had finished with them and trashed half the sprocket holes. It was a rowdy but friendly audience – you could expect full interactive audience participation for every movie.

Blaenavon had been a huge site for the coal, iron and steel industries. As these industries contracted and died, things were just left to rot. And rot they did. No slum clearance, no gentrification – nobody from outside wanted to live there, and those stuck there didn’t have a lot of choice. But when heritage became big business, suddenly there were sufficient viable ruins to be restored on which they could set to work. So there is the Big Pit – you can go down in the cage and turn your light off and just be very glad you didn’t work there in the old days. There’s the Blaenavon Ironworks, a section of the Pontypool and Blaenavon railway, and other bits and pieces.

Sadly, next door, is a town that had far more history, Merthyr Tydfil. Two hundred years ago this was the largest place in Wales. Much larger than Cardiff. Merthyr had history, it had unrest, in addition to the martyr Tydfil (Merthyr means martyr in Welsh by the way) it had its own more recent martyr, Dic Penderyn. Dic was hanged in 1831 after a soldier was stabbed in the coalminers’ revolt that came to be known as the Merthyr Rising. Years later, someone else confessed on their deathbed that they had been responsible – but the establishment needed a scapegoat at the time. There was so much history in Merthyr, but when it all fell apart and grinding poverty hit the area after the First World War, well-meaning people tried to improve the area. They pulled down historical remains – they put up high rise flats (well, high rise for Britain of the day, small fry by American standards) and they did their best. They ultimately created new slums, and grappled with huge social problems, but they did their best. But they trashed most of their heritage along the way. It is a nice little town to visit today, with a college and river walk and new bridges and little tiny bits of history – mainly chapels from “the great awakening” no longer used for worship – other than that of mammon – but it is a huge opportunity lost. But of course, they didn’t know that at the time. Life in Merthyr might have been a bit better than Blaenavon for a few years, but it is Blaenavon that now has the heritage status.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing – but in the circumstances, a pretty useless thing. I remember reading Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, where at one point he mused over the hideous presents people were giving each other – and wondered if these would be rare antiques of the future? You watch antique programs and – yes – they are. If only we had saved them and hoarded and then could sell them. Trouble is – you would have to wait until you were long dead and gone to get anything back – and it could be just as true that they were worthless. It is like old books. Some people think that old books are valuable because they are old. I remember visiting a shop on the Isle of Wight and asking if they had any old books (I was looking for weird Bible Translations at the time). Oh yes, they had old books – they must be rare because well, they were old, and they were real old books – you know, they had old covers (now detached) and they had old pages... It was not a productive conversation.

But I like it when old things are preserved, valuable or not. So, I like heritage. I like it when town planners insist that old facades still be kept on modern buildings. I like it when the skyline isn’t completely blighted by buildings that shut out the light. And for all its warts and all, Britain does have a lot of this sort of stuff overall. So give me your tired and your huddled masses – do come on your tourist visas and please do spend your dollars here.