THE LONDON BOROUGH OF ENFIELD Enfield Heritage Strategy ‘A Living Landscape’ September 2008 2 Preface This document aims to demonstrate how and why heritage is important to the London Borough of Enfield. It presents a bold and imaginative approach that reflects the borough’s existing commitment to heritage, its progressive place-shaping agenda working across all council services, policy and planning, and the role of heritage as an important part of a shared future. The Strategy will form a vital part of the evidence base for the Council’s Local Development Framework documents, which will collectively shape the future of the borough over the next twenty years. The literal and metaphorical theme of ‘a living landscape’ encapsulates a progressive vision for Enfield’s heritage: the London Borough of Enfield is a living landscape of people and places. This Strategy provides both a frame of reference and planning mechanism through which this landscape can be better understood, valued, cared for and enjoyed by existing and future residents of Enfield and by visitors to the borough. The Heritage Strategy must contribute directly to local needs as expressed in Enfield’s Future: A Sustainable Community Strategy (2007-2017). In the Community Strategy local needs are grouped together under the following five themes which are also at the heart of this Heritage Strategy: • Children and Young People • Safer and Stronger Communities • Healthier Communities • Older People • Economic Development and Enterprise The partners delivering the Community Strategy have the ambition to ensure that Enfield has ‘a healthy, prosperous, cohesive community living in a borough that is safe, clean and green’. The Heritage Strategy is committed to help deliver this vision. 3 Contents Introduction: Then and Now 5 1. Why the Need for a Heritage Strategy? 6 1.1 Place Matters 1.2 Meeting the Challenge of Change 2. Defining Enfield’s Heritage 7 2.1 What is Heritage? 2.2 What is Enfield’s Heritage? 3. The Strategic Context 8 3.1 The National Context 3.2 The Regional Context 3.3 The Enfield Context 4. A New Vision for Enfield’s Heritage 14 4.1 The Vision 4.2 Our Mission 4.3 Our Aims 4.4 Key Outcomes 5. Issues and Opportunities 15 5.1 The Natural Environment 5.2 The Historic Environment 5.3 Material Culture 5.4 Intangible Heritage 5.5 Community-based Heritage 6. Priorities and Aims 31 1. Site Specific Priorities 2. Conservation areas 3. Collecting Enfield 4. Mapping the Intangible 5. Enfield as a Learning Resource 6. Partnerships and Promotion 7. Monitoring and Evaluation: Next Steps 34 8. Conclusion 34 Appendix: Definitions 35 4 Introduction: Then and Now The London Borough of Enfield as understood today is a palimpsest 1 of topography and past lives. The borough has been shaped over centuries by people, by their needs and aspirations. Enfield’s heritage is found where the values and traditions of people and places intersect. Enfield and its neighbourhoods exist as much in the mind as they do in the streets, buildings and landscape. Heritage is not only about the distant or even recent past, it is also about the present, the now. Conceptions of heritage can unite older more established communities and newer arrivals. Enfield’s heritage has its roots in the natural topography of river valleys and clay uplands that prehistoric settlers began to utilise and manage as an agricultural landscape. Enfield’s heritage is the routes of movement and communication used from the earliest times, by the Romans along Ermine Street, and continued in underground and overland road and public transportation systems; it’s the 191 bus to Brimsdown, the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters and the Great Cambridge Road. Enfield’s heritage is industrial achievement and decline, urban regeneration and ambition. Enfield’s heritage is the relationship between centre and periphery, between the City of London and the County of Middlesex, between the urban and the rural. It has the potential to explain the significance of a place and its peoples. Understanding a place aids the growth of people’s connectivity to that place and supports and strengthens sustainable communities. Enfield’s heritage is a creative resource. It is not to be dismissed as a passive backdrop to daily life. It is an active ingredient of change. 1 Palimpsest - ‘Writing-material, manuscript, the original writing on which has been effaced (rubbed out) to make room for a second”. Oxford Dictionary 5 1. Why the Need for a Heritage Strategy? 1.1 Place Matters Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person’s life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen. Lucy Lippard 2 It is increasingly being recognised that locality and place matter in a rapidly globalising, urbanising world. Place, and the quality of place, matters to us more than ever before. Within the context of this Heritage Strategy, place and places emerge as key features and characteristics of Enfield’s living landscape. Place and places are given value, and are valued, by people. This Heritage Strategy acknowledges that whilst perceptions of place and places do not necessarily adhere to artificial administrative boundaries, Enfield has a responsibility to understand and care for the distinctiveness of its valued places whilst recognising that the borough is open and connected to the world locally and globally. 1.2 Meeting the Challenge of Change Change appears to be an elemental characteristic of the whole universe. But when change destroys those qualities of our places that are anchors, reference points for our memories and hence our being, I worry about the effects on human lives, present and future. Change defines existence. Robert Archibald 3 At some point in 2007, the human species became urban; over 50% of the world’s population now lives in towns and cities – a figure that continues to grow. London is always changing, and with change comes opportunities and challenges. Enfield too is changing: socially, economically, culturally, and physically. What does this mean for local communities living on the edge of a world city, where urban and rural environments meet? This Heritage Strategy is founded on the idea that a better understanding and appreciation of heritage can inform change, help to direct and manage change, and also help to ensure that communities are more involved in and engaged with the processes of change at a local level. It is these broad themes that will inform the Council’s Place Shaping agenda; while the Heritage Strategy will be a key part of the evidence base for the LDF, our statutory plan and the Parks and Open Spaces Strategy. Together, these mechanisms will help to ensure that Enfield makes the most of our heritage and manages change in the most beneficial way for the people of Enfield. 2 The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentred Society (1997) 3 The New Town Square: Museums and Communities in Transition (2004) 6 2. Defining Enfield’s Heritage Heritage is everywhere mixed. David Lowenthal 4 2.1 What is Heritage? Despite wide-spread public support for the heritage, the view persists within a vocal minority that it is negative, nostalgic and re-active. This Heritage Strategy aims to combat these prejudices and approaches the definition and value of heritage positively as engaged, open and pro-active. In many ways defining ‘heritage’ is as difficult a task as defining ‘culture’ or ‘nature’. To address this, we have adopted and adapted a ‘family’ of related definitions produced by English Heritage and UNESCO (see Appendix 1 for these definitions in full). In doing this we are taking a ‘whole landscape approach’ that weaves together the cultural and natural, material and intangible. The following open definition of heritage is broadly applied throughout the Heritage Strategy: All inherited resources which people value for reasons beyond mere utility. 2.2 What is Enfield’s Heritage? Five inter-connected areas of Enfield’s heritage are identified. These areas help to organise key issues and opportunities as priorities for action. 1. The Natural Environment: the natural environments and wildlife habitats of the borough, including but not limited to the Green Belt, parks and open spaces and designated Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). 2. The Historic Environment : including, but not limited to, the officially designated parts of the borough including scheduled monuments, listed buildings (both statutory and local), registered landscapes, conservation areas and archaeological sites. 3. Material Culture: a sub-set of Cultural Heritage focusing on movable items in museum and archival collections, both those owned by the borough and those owned by other groups, organisations and individuals. 4. Intangible Heritage : languages, the visual and performing arts, social practices, rituals and festive events that provide communities with a sense of identity and continuity. 5. Community-Based Heritage : local faith groups and special interest groups associated with the cultural, natural and intangible heritage of people and place. 4 ‘Natural and Cultural Heritage’, International Journal of Heritage Studies , 11.1 (2005), 81-92 7 3. The Strategic Context Heritage can no longer be considered a minority interest, existing in isolation from everyday reality. Increasingly, heritage is recognised as something which permeates daily life, bringing a sense of meaning and identity to an increasingly dislocated world. (English Heritage 5) 3.1 The National Context The Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) is the lead government department on matters concerning the historic environment, museums and galleries, tourism, architecture and the built environment. The Department of Communities and Local Government also has responsibilities towards the built heritage through planning laws and regulations.