Category Archives: Heritage

WW2 wreck of fighter plane off Welsh coast gets protected status

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Ghostly remains of ‘Maid of Harlech’ occasionally visible in the sand

The skeletal remains of an American fighter plane that crashed during the second world war off the Welsh coast, and occasionally emerge ghost-like from the seabed, have been given protected status.

Welsh government officials say the resting place of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, nicknamed the Maid of Harlech, is the first military aircraft crash site in the UK to be protected for its historic and archaeological interest.

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British Museum is world’s largest receiver of stolen goods, says QC

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Geoffrey Robertson says it should ‘wash its hands of blood and return Elgin’s loot’

The British Museum has been accused of exhibiting “pilfered cultural property”, by a leading human rights lawyer who is calling for European and US institutions to return treasures taken from “subjugated peoples” by “conquerors or colonial masters”.

Geoffrey Robertson QC said: “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

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Calypso calamity! Hunt for the lost tapes of 100-year-old Walter Ferguson

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The songwriting storyteller recorded thousands of cassettes for visitors to Cahuita, his paradise town in Costa Rica. Now the race is on to rediscover them

‘Welcome to Cahuita town, welcome one and all,” Walter Ferguson sings on the song Cahuita Is a Beautiful Place, offering an invitation to drink some rum and listen to calypso in this corner of Limón, Costa Rica. Its charming lyrical bounce and layered guitar sounds like the work of more than one man, although it is his work alone – and a song that might never have been heard if not for a project aimed at locating the thousands of one-of-a-kind cassettes that Ferguson recorded at home for friends and visitors wanting to take home a piece of this “beautiful place”.

In the run up to Ferguson’s 100th birthday in May, his son Peck (the 10th of Ferguson’s 11 children) and Swiss calypso fan Niels Werdenberg have spent two years on a labour of love: the Walter Gavitt Ferguson Tape Hunt. Their goal is to track down these lost gems, digitising songs that, in 2018, the Costa Rican government designated part of the country’s cultural heritage.

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Restored 19th-century ships’ figureheads to go on display in Plymouth

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The 14 carvings will hang from the ceiling in arts venue The Box, due to open in the spring

A collection of 19th-century wooden figureheads from British naval warships has been lovingly restored from the ravages of years at sea and will form a striking display at a new heritage and arts complex in Plymouth.

The 14 figureheads, some of which were so badly water-damaged that their insides had turned into a soggy mulch, are to be suspended from the ceiling of The Box gallery and museum, which is due to open in the spring.

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‘Future relics’: the painter capturing the beauty of council houses

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Frank Laws’s Hopperesque watercolours depict the individual character of east London’s most impressive – and everyday – buildings, as gentrification threatens their very existence

From Mike Leigh’s film Meantime to the TV show Top Boy, the social housing estates of east London have provided rich subject matter for writers and artists exploring the human stories intertwining in their communities. In the paintings of east Londoner Frank Laws, however, there isn’t a person in sight. The only signs of life are curtains flapping at open windows and the luminescent glow emanating from inside a home. Blocks of flats that teem with life in, say, Plan B’s film and album Ill Manors, stand eerily quiet and vacant in Laws’s images.

Laws was born in a village in Norfolk but hated the rural quiet. “I was always scared of the dark in the countryside,” says the 37-year-old. “I’m still scared of it.” It’s this fear, and Laws’ love of film noir, that informs the dramatic, Edward Hopperesque lighting in Laws’ meticulously detailed watercolour and acrylic paintings.

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‘Manhattan of the desert’: civil war puts Yemen’s ancient skyscrapers at risk

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In addition to the conflict’s huge human cost, Yemen’s rich cultural heritage has been ravaged, from the Queen of Sheba’s reputed throne room to the mudbrick high-rises of Shibam

On the edge of the vast Empty Quarter desert that dominates the Arabian peninsula, white and brown towers rise together out of the valley floor like tall sandcastles. Once they welcomed weary caravans traversing the Silk Roads: now they stand as testimony to the ingenuity of a lost civilisation.

This is the ancient walled city of Shibam, nicknamed the “Manhattan of the desert” by the British explorer Freya Stark in the 1930s, in modern-day Yemen, a country also home to an untold number of other archeological treasures. The kingdom of Saba, ruled by the legendary Queen of Sheba, and many other dynasties of the ancient world rose and fell here, their fortunes linked to Yemen’s position at the crossroads of early frankincense and spice trades between Africa and Asia.

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‘Several lives lost’: note reveals early details of Peterloo massacre

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Magistrate’s message released to mark 200th anniversary may be first account of bloodshed

It was a defining moment in British political history, paving the way in the long struggle for democratic representation of the disenfranchised working classes.

Now, 200 years on from the Peterloo massacre in which peaceful protesters were cut down by sabre-wielding cavalry, a hastily scribbled note has been unearthed to reveal what could be the first account of the bloodshed.

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Rebuilding Aleppo: ‘We cannot preserve the place but we can save our memories’

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Thousands of Aleppians are using a Facebook group to share their way of life before the Syrian war

Going to the hammam was once a beloved ritual for Aleppo resident Atef Shikhouni and his friends. Recalling the boisterous, joyful experience, the 55-year-old wrote: “Here is a man shouting, ‘Where is the soap?’ while another one is asking for the shampoo and a third wants someone to rub his back. It becomes very noisy. After spending some time in the sauna, it is time for the ‘rubbing man’. He uses a rough loofah to rub my body mercilessly and I pray it will end without any damage.”

But that was before the outbreak of war in Syria. “Today, the bath is cold and has no soul,” the sports teacher wrote in February 2017, shortly after the worst of the fighting in Aleppo had ended. “Cruel are our days, exactly like our bath today.”

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Country diary: a house of God open to heaven and house martins

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Segenhoe, Bedfordshire: The birds are stacked in the air above a shallow trench, taking turns to skim insects from it

A flying congregation had assembled by the church gate. We approached on foot, coming on the coffin route, a straight path through fields along which pall bearers had once carried the dead from the nearby village of Ridgmont.

Mourners might have walked through this meadow after the hay had been cut, as we did, and looked down at the grass laid out in strips to dry where it fell. Did a passage from the Bible come to mind? “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall.”

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David Chipperfield’s Berlin temple: ‘Like ascending to the realm of the gods’

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James Simon Gallery, Berlin
Twenty years in the making, this dazzling synthesis of the classical and modern takes Museum Island to new heights

Friedrich Wilhelm IV described his vision for Berlin’s Museum Island as a “cultural acropolis”; a sacred sanctuary for the arts and sciences that would cement the Prussian capital as the Athens of the north. Almost two centuries later, the kaiser’s classical aspirations have been fulfilled by British architect David Chipperfield, in the form of a dazzling white temple. Opening this weekend, after 20 years of planning, the James Simon Gallery stands as a €134m (£120m) Parthenon-on-Spree, forming a handsome new entrance to one of the world’s most important repositories of cultural treasures.

“We were quite nervous,” says Chipperfield, standing in the lofty new ticketing lobby, where stripes of sunlight flood in between the row of slender white columns outside. “The challenge was how to create something that was of its context and also of our time, in this incredibly sensitive location.”

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Stonehenge £2bn road tunnel project funding uncertain, MPs warn

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Public accounts committee says plan at mercy of spending review delayed by Brexit

A £2bn project to open a road tunnel beneath the Stonehenge world heritage site in 2026 is being put at risk by uncertainty over how it will be financed, MPs have warned.

Ministers have claimed the scheme is affordable, deliverable and will improve Stonehenge by taking the sight and sound of lorries and cars away from the ancient monument and reducing traffic congestion.

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Lewis chessmen piece bought for £5 in 1964 could sell for £1m

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Missing walrus tusk warrior was purchased in Edinburgh and stored in a drawer

A small walrus tusk warrior figure bought for £5 in 1964 – which, for years, was stored in a household drawer – is a missing piece from one of the true wonders of the medieval world, it has been revealed.

The Lewis chessmen were found in 1831 in the Outer Hebrides and became beloved museum collections in London and Edinburgh. They have also become well known in popular culture from Noggin the Nog to Harry Potter.

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Italy’s new ruins: heritage sites being lost to neglect and looting

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Overgrown and weathered, many historical monuments are disappearing as public funds for culture fail to match modern Italy’s inheritance

Legend has it that the grotto hidden among the craggy cliffs on San Marco hill in Sutera in the heart of Sicily holds a treasure chest full of gold coins. In order to find it, three men must dream simultaneously about the precise place to dig.

Treasure or no treasure, the grotto itself is an archaeological gem, its walls adorned with a multi-coloured Byzantine-esque 16th-century fresco depicting Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saints Paulinus, Luke, Mark and Matthew.

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‘A little miracle’: Dutch statesman’s diary found 200 years after it was lost

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Johan van Oldenbarnevelt chronicled final months before he was beheaded on 13 May 1619

Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is arguably the greatest Dutch statesman, as one of the founding fathers who helped liberate the Netherlands from Spanish rule, but for 200 years the whereabouts of a diary chronicling his final months before he was beheaded has been a mystery.

The prose – written over an eight-month period between 1618 and 1619 – was last seen in 1825 when a pastor, the Rev Adrian Stolker, studied the manuscript and made a copy by hand to be published for wider dissemination.

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On Loch Lomond’s banks, anger grows at £30m resort plan

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Locals and naturalists oppose a proposed hotel development on ‘beautiful and historic’ wooded national park land

A storm is brewing on the banks of Loch Lomond. One of Scotland’s most serene beauty sites has been rocked by a planning and environmental row that swamps anything the elements can throw at it.

Last week, updated plans for a £30m leisure facility near the small town of Balloch at the southern end of the loch were presented to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park. The project has the backing of Scottish Enterprise, the government agency tasked with stimulating economic development and investment.

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Diary of explorer David Livingstone’s African attendant published

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Jacob Wainwright’s diary is only handwritten witness account of missionary’s death

The diary of an African attendant on the Scottish explorer David Livingstone’s final journey into the continent has been published online, containing the only handwritten witness account of the the Victorian missionary’s death in 1873.

The manuscript was written by Jacob Wainwright, a member of the Yao ethnic group from east Africa and the only African pallbearer at the explorer’s funeral in Westminster Abbey in 1874.

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France announces architecture contest to rebuild Notre Dame spire

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PM says rebuilt cathedral should reflect ‘techniques and challenges of our times’

The French prime minister, Edouard Philippe, has announced an international architecture competition to rebuild the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral.

The 93-metre spire collapsed on Monday in a fire that began at its base and spread through the cathedral’s ribbed roof, made up of hundreds of oak beams, some dating back to the 13th century.

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Notre Dame was ‘15 to 30 minutes’ away from complete destruction

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Firefighters risked their lives to stop the raging fire spreading to the two belfry towers

Notre Dame Cathedral was within “15 to 30 minutes” of complete destruction as firefighters battled to stop flames reaching its gothic bell towers, French authorities have revealed.

A greater disaster was averted by members of the Paris fire brigade who risked their lives to remain inside the burning monument to create a wall of water between the raging fire and two towers on the west facade.

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Historic lost garden in Kent to be opened to the public

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Walmer Castle’s overgrown glen, dating from the 19th century, has been revived

An abandoned chalk pit, which has been an impenetrably dense jungle of bramble, gorse and fallen trees for more than a century will this month be revealed as an extraordinary lost garden created by two former prime ministers.

The lost garden of Walmer Castle in Kent was laid out in the early 19th century by William Pitt the Younger and completed by Lord Liverpool.

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