Heritage often focuses on ruins, conserved and interpreted for visitors. Heritage signs themselves often become historical components of these ruins themselves, as previously discussed, for example, for Kidwelly Castle and various megalithic tombs on Anglesey such as Ty Newydd.
Therefore it is doubly tragic to see the ruination of heritage boards themselves. Investment in such features upon heritage trails ebbs and flows, but more commonly ebbs… The decay of these signs reveals the neglect of our heritage assets, not only in musuems, government and education, but also out in the British landscape.
I recently encountered examples at Ruabon.
This is particularly disappointing since this post-industrial landscape harbours some nationally and internationally important ancient monuments: namely Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke: early medieval frontier works of the early medieval kingdom of Mercia dating to the late 8th and early 9th centuries respectively. Moreover, the Y Garden hillfort is particularly significant as a small, badly damaged hillfort of presumed Iron Age date, but located immediately west of, and overlooking Offa’s Dyke and the later church and town of Ruabon.
The Offa’s Dyke sign was dirty, faded, and in a rather incongruous location because I only spotted it at the end of my walk. Upon it is dense bilingual text and a map showing the walks one might take to the hillfort, dyke and town.
The Y Garden hillfort sign matched the other and so I presume it once had text upon it. It is now completely blank.
These signs clearly form part of a same heritage trail around Ruabon, I presume dating to the late ’90s or thereabouts. I’ve talked about the now out-of-date Wat’s Dyke sign board on the other side of Ruabon, as discussed here, and they are clearly all part of the same slow death of Ruabon’s heritage.
Sadly i think it may reflect our “Celebrity” culture . the Heritage equivalent is that “people” tend to only see the big historic, palaces and castles or sites with filmic associations like Amphitheatres a being heritage. Heritage that is smaller and browner ( think peacock vs sparrow) is less valued .
I’m sure that’s a dimension, but it the case that Offa’s Dyke and Wat’s Dyke are Britain’s largest monuments, made unquestionably by the order of early medieval kings…
As a former student of yours I find these blogs very interesting to read. I went on to work in archaeology and have done for the past 12 years. I think the problem is that the majority of people arent interested, especially when talking about something that happened so long ago, as they dont relate to it which is a shame.
I act as admistrator on a number of social media groups (c. 15000 members) theres no real nterest in the distant past. The interest is more with the later history of their community where they can identify the heritage. Ive posted archaeology related photos of local work and recieve a few ‘likes’. Post one of a local ‘character’ and your looking at 100+ ‘likes’