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Our Sacred Landscapes programme

On Wednesday 23 April 2008, ICOMOS-UK launched the inaugural event of Conversations 2008. ‘Our Sacred Landscapes’ was also the UK contribution to the International Day for Monuments and Sites whose special theme this year was religious heritage and sacred sites. This event took place at Birmingham City University’s School of Jewellery and was kindly sponsored by Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter Regeneration Partnership and Boilerhouse.

Birmingham was a very appropriate place to host this event. In few other cities have the results of growing religious diversity left such a tangible mark on the urban fabric. The School of Jewellery is tucked down a quiet side-street in the middle of Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter (Vittoria Street). The original 1890s façade hides the traditional workshops providing state-of-the-art facilities for the design and production of jewellery and silverware.

The Jewellery Quarter itself still produces over one-third of British-made jewellery and at one time also produced funerary fitments and jewellery. The area also encompasses many places of worship including a Greek Orthodox Cathedral at Arthur Place, St Chad’s Roman Catholic cathedral (with Pugin carvings) on St Chad’s Queensway and the Ramgarhia Sikh Temple on Graham Street.

The evening began with our audience being greeted with fine wine, refreshing drinks and tasty snacks served in the bright and airy atrium of the School of Jewellery. ICOMOS-UK was a new organisation to many of the people who came along and indeed many of the audience were new to us. As one of the aims of Conversations is to increase awareness of what ICOMOS-UK stands for, this was a very auspicious start to the series. Andy Munro, Director of the Jewellery Quarter Regeneration Partnership, introduced the Conversation by describing with infectious enthusiasm the deep historical fabric of the Quarter and the intention to use heritage-led regeneration to sensitively restore and interpret the area while also boosting its economic activities.

The chairman, Joe Tibbetts of Boilerhouse, and also ICOMOS-UK Executive Committee member, introduced the speakers and reminded the audience of the appropriateness of Birmingham as a venue for an evening devoted to heritage, religion and cultural diversity. Susan Denyer, Secretary of ICOMOS-UK, introducing the organisation to members of the audience who were new to it, emphasised that ICOMOS’s focus on monuments and sites did not just mean they were interested in form and fabric.

The care of our ancient and more recent historic environment is just as much to do with ‘value, identity and well-being in those places and buildings’.

The speakers were asked to address the following questions:

• How do sacred acts and religious beliefs impact on our built heritage?
• Where can we find the buildings and landscapes, big and small, of Britain’s diverse religious cultures?

The Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail

Harbinder Singh, founding Director of the Maharajah Duleep Singh Centenary Trust – Britain’s first Sikh heritage based organisation, and speaking on the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail, began proceedings by talking of his passion for Anglo-Sikh history. Sikh history has been defined by the British rule in, and of, India with much of this story leaving traces in Britain, including monuments, gurdwaras (Sikh temples), museum and archive collections, commemoration.

Sikh history is fundamental to also understanding modern British heritage: it is a shared heritage.

The Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail has at its heart a mission to reconcile the Sikh community with its past and thereby opening the paths to learning about where both the tangible and intangible aspects of this heritage can be found.

A Dark Trail at the Coffin Works

Elizabeth Perkins, Director of Birmingham Conservation Trust, spoke of a major restoration and interpretation project on the Victorian Coffin Works, also based in the Jewellery Quarter. The Coffin Works is a time capsule. It had been left untouched on the last day of its working life. Stories were waiting to be told. The buildings and the objects still contained in them now needed to be connected with the experiences and the memories of those that worked there. The ‘Dark Trail’ will be one way of bringing the restoration, site and stories together.

The Coffin Works is a site where past human activity has directly changed the landscape. ‘Catacombs’ can be found underneath the Works where sand extraction used in the manufacture of metalwork of funerary jewellery and fitments has left eerie underground passages.

Death is still a taboo and perhaps especially so in the context of our recent past. The response, especially from young people, pleasantly surprised Elizabeth’s team.

There was a fascination for the idea of death and how it works.

Introducing the site to other faith groups showed that the Coffin Works held interest to those from many different faith groups, not just Anglican Christians.

Religious Landscapes of Birmingham

Dr Richard Gale is a social geographer and Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He spoke on the formation of the religious landscape of Birmingham, with particular reference to the development of mosques for the Muslim community. He emphasised the importance of the planning process, past and present, in shaping how a community’s needs are met in space, especially against the context of a town-planning process which tended towards maintaining the aesthetic features of the existing surroundings.

Birmingham’s first mosque was originally planned in 1956 as part of post-war development of the Highgate area of the city. Finally complete in 1975, there followed seven years later (1982) an application for permission to broadcast the adhan (call to prayer) from the minaret. It became a national test-case. In spite of heavy opposition nationally, the application was approved in 1986. The argument for a trial followed the precedence of the peeling of church bells.

There was then a realisation after the trial that the adhan was not as intrusive as first perceived.

This mosque is now one of Birmingham’s key landmarks and the example shows how the visible and invisible are closely intertwined when it comes to religious buildings, showing how form follows function. This was also demonstrated with other examples such as the St Philip’s Anglican and St Chad’s Catholic Cathedrals and Singers Hill Synagogue (Blucher Street, City Centre).

Conversation

A selection of points raised in the discussion:

• Sacred spaces mean different things to different people: diversity is inherent
• What is a heritage trail? Are we commercialising our past?

• HS responded with an example: when second generation Sikhs visit Punjab in India, they visit as tourists. The Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail allows diaspora Sikhs to understand their heritage in their own homeland: a cultural pilgrimage. The trail brings value to Sikhs outside England and India too, especially those from North America, and therefore the trail also encourages cultural tourism to the UK more generally.
• Terminology: sacred spaces change their meaning over time and place
• Many of the examples demonstrated “Birminghamness” and its emergence as an international industrial centre
• While some religious buildings may be a sacred space to some, to others they are a landmark, a community centre, a meeting place: multiple functions
• Changing urban contexts: size, infrastructure – faith develops in tandem
• Conflicts of meaning and understanding: there are layers, communities and planners pushing in many directions – how do we remember people from the past? Who speaks up for them? Who decides how we are to remember?
• The replacement of sacred sites over time by different faiths, e.g. church being built on top of a mosque, Gurdwara occupying a defunct church.
• Faith-based agendas in nominating World Heritage sites – how to preserve the intangible heritage of place and belief especially where religion has been an area of conflict and contest: e.g. Mostar Bridge was inscribed on the World Heritage List for its intangible qualities symbolising the resolution of conflict.

But how do we decide what the tangible and intangible qualities are? And who should decide? Planning laws are a crude instrument and should not be used to make complex decisions like these

• Local communities need to be brought together to decide what history is important to them – a heritage born from place even if you don’t live in your ‘original community’
• Where the spirit goes – sometimes we have to let a building change or move on
• Creating different senses of place: consecrating and deconsecrating
• Unity in faith and spirituality: the Sisters of Mercy convent in Handsworth welcomes people from many different religions and cultural groups to come to their visitor centre.

Sacred heritage sites

English Heritage ‘Inspired’
Religion and Place – the Building Explortory