Historic Cornwall Advisory Group
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Historic Cornwall Advisory Group - Bagas Kusulya Kernow Istorek Report covering the period April to June 2012 Date: July 2012 Contents Report of the Historic Environment Introduction 3 Historic Environment Policy and Information Team 3 Historic Environment Projects Team 12 Historic Environment Advice Team 16 Report of the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site Background 25 PR and Marketing Activity 25 Learning and Outreach 27 Preservation and Conservation initiatives 29 Monitoring reports 29 Partners’ projects 31 Report of the Culture Team Museum Support Contract 33 Museum Development Officers 34 Report of the Archive Services Manager Introduction 35 New Centre Update 35 Interim Storage Planning 36 Documentation and Cataloguing at the Cornish 37 Studies Library New Ways of Promoting the Service 37 Historic Cornwall Advisory Group - Bagas Kusulya Kernow Istorek Report covering the period April to June 2012 2 REPORT of the HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT For the period April to June 2012 1. INTRODUCTION This report covers the first quarter of the 2012-13 financial year. 1.1 Update on targets set down in the Historic Environment Service Plan Please see section 10 of the attached Historic Environment Team Plan . The Objectives and targets set down here will form the basis of future updates to HCAG. 1.2 Principal Historic Environment Officer report - Alyson Cooper The last quarter has been extremely busy. I have attached copies of the Historic Environment Team Plan which has now been signed off together with the revised draft of the Historic Environment White Paper which was discussed by the Historic Cornwall Advisory Group at the May meeting. Many thanks to all those who contributed. Work has been continuing on a Service Level Agreement with the Planning Service of Cornwall Council. This will enable the core advice and information team to better prioritise their work. At the end of June we were especially pleased to host the English Heritage HELM training event on the new National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). It was good to see members from HCAG attending and we are keen to see similar events in the future. 1.3 Outreach The Service has given eleven Walks and six Talks in the last quarter to a total audience of 541. This has included Walks at Treovis Farm and Notter Tor for Duchy College students, at South Caradon Mine and Minions for students from the College of St Mark and St John and a “Walk through the world of tin” for The Miracle Theatre Company. A Talk on the Project Team’s Crane Castle Excavations was given to local school children. One member of the Projects Team was interviewed for an ITV series “Lost Industries” and another for a Radio 4 programme on Cliff Gardens in West Cornwall. Much of this could not have happened without the goodwill and enthusiasm of staff giving up their evenings and weekends. This is much appreciated. 2. HISTORIC ENVIRONMENT POLICY AND INFORMATION TEAM 2.1 Policy and Guidance We have provided detailed comments and responses on a number of documents including Cornwall Council’s Core Strategy (now referred to as a Local Plan) and Cornwall Design Guide, as well as engaging with an area Historic Cornwall Advisory Group - Bagas Kusulya Kernow Istorek Report covering the period April to June 2012 3 that will be of increasing interest to us all, that of Localism; there is an increasing involvement in, and obvious need for, guidance and input into Local Development Orders and Neighbourhood Development Orders (such as that proposed at Penzance) and locally-accessible toolkits for assessing historic environment sites, character, sensitivity, monitoring risk etc. Part of this engagement process is the burgeoning liaison with local amenity and archaeological groups, discussed, for instance, in 2.5 and 2.6 below, but also with other statutory partners - in particular English Heritage. We have been much involved in bringing forward a chapels guidance and policy document for Cornwall to be published by English Heritage in July 2012, and have been working up proposals for several other schemes, which we hope to carry out in partnership with EH, and hopefully with some external funding – including similar guidance on farmsteads and engine houses, and in-depth studies of historic environment sensitivity around key towns likely to be most affected by future expansion. These are in early stages, but we are confident that they will come into fruition later in the year. 2.2 Historic Environment Record (HER) Strategy and Development Bryn Tapper - Historic Environment Information, Senior Archaeologist (GIS) Implementation of the Historic Environment Record (HER) Audit & Action plan progresses well. A Revised HER Charging Policy has been accepted and approved. This brings Cornwall’s HER charges in line with the national average levied by HERs across England and clarifies the position regarding charges for the commercial re-use and licence of HER information. The revised policy can be found on the HER webpages on the Cornwall Council website: http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=29975 . A formal agreement has been reached with the Portable Antiquities Scheme’s Finds Liaison Officer for Cornwall. New artefact records (including treasure records) will now be sent to the HER team who will update the HBSMR database. This will ensure concordance between the PAS and the HER in future. A process for the submission of HER Monument ‘candidate terms’ to English Heritage has been produced. Candidate terms are used in the HER database to identify sites, monuments and buildings locally distinctive to Cornwall and which have no equivalent terminology in the current national MIDAS Monument Type thesaurus. Terms submitted for inclusion in the national thesaurus include industrial sites associated with china clay production e.g. Mica Lagoon, Mica Drag, Finger Dump, Air Drying Pan and sites associated with domestic agriculture e.g. Sheep Creep, Goosehole, Crow etc. The review of statutory protected heritage assets has enabled the HER team to agree a process of update and correction with English Heritage. EH are currently examining the mapped Listed Building information the HER holds for Cornwall and Scilly and undertaking a concordance exercise against their own data. This, for the first time, will enable a single mapped version to be Historic Cornwall Advisory Group - Bagas Kusulya Kernow Istorek Report covering the period April to June 2012 4 agreed nationally and locally and consolidates the previous work undertaken by the HER during the unitary process in 2009-10. The correction and update of Scheduled Monuments is also being pursued via the new EH online ‘Amending an entry on The National Heritage List for England’ webpage: (http://www.english- heritage.org.uk/professional/protection/process/amending-an-entry/ ). 2.3 HBSMR and GIS Hardware and Software updates and developments English Heritage has provided the HER with a small grant to implement the new ‘Map Search’ element of the recently improved Heritage Gateway website (www.heritage-gateway.org.uk ). This important development will enable the record for Cornwall & Scilly to be searched spatially on map bases and will make retrieving information about Cornwall’s historic environment far easier in future. The mapping function is due to go live in late summer 2012. 2.4 HBSMR Enhancements, Verification and Validation Ongoing enhancement of the Historic Building, Sites & Monuments Record (HBSMR) has involved the HER team adding, correcting and validating new and existing records (this may also involve removing some records). The table below shows the number of HER records that have been added and amended during the period January-March 2012. Record Type New Enhanced Total Verified Events Records 27 1121 3595 206 (OASIS) Monument 168 1067 56300 31655 Records (56.2%) Source/Archive 52 1249 25032 n/a Records Finds Records 17 6 7801 n/a Konstanze Rahn continues to archive old and new project files and to enter internal and external Events onto the HBSMR database (there are now 3595 entries). The low number of reports has meant that KR has continued to update and add descriptions to the existing Events database entries where they are missing. Bryn continues to monitor HER record creation and overall progress, ensuring standards and the quality of content and coverage are maintained; 56.2% of the HBSMR record has now been verified as meeting the established standard. Bryn also continues to validate OASIS (http://www.oasis.ac.uk/ ) records submitted to the HER by contractors as part of their WSI archive commitments. There are currently 335 OASIS records for Cornwall & Scilly, of which 231 have been signed off and 104 are waiting for the contractor to complete. 163 HES reports, and at least 246 for Cornwall overall, are now available on the Archaeology Data Service’s Unpublished Fieldwork Reports (Grey Literature Library) (http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/greylit/index.cfm ). Historic Cornwall Advisory Group - Bagas Kusulya Kernow Istorek Report covering the period April to June 2012 5 The HER continues to host a volunteer, George Scott. George has been helping us to update our records for the prehistoric settlements and field systems on Garrow, Bodmin Moor. He has been transcribing the detailed field survey records produced by CAU in 1984/5 and creating HBSMR records for a variety of monument types including hut circles, cairns, field banks and enclosures. This is an important piece of work as it completes a gap in our record and provides useful information ahead of scrub clearance projects also being undertaken in the area. A forthcoming field visit will also provide the opportunity to check the records and monitor each monument’s condition and survival. 2.5 Conservation and Planning Listed Buildings In the past three months English Heritage has Listed 6 structures including 4 milestones and 2 war memorials.