26th July 2005, 11:43 AM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by eggbasket
My own experience has been massively varied, ranging from the extremely helpful and enthusiastic cooperation of the church through to the outright obstructive and hostile.
This would largely equate to my experiences also. Almost all of the finances for individual Church works are raised on a local level - hence the roof appeals - and there are significant differences from parish to parish, with some being very good, and others quite the opposite. As a national body, The C of E aren't bad at considering the importance of their historic properties and the implications that alterations and development works may have, and making the appropriate provisions within their guidance papers. Unfortunately this concern doesn't filter down very effectively to some individual parishes, where recommendations for archaeological work can be met with disdain, horror, or in the case of a recent site I had to deal with, attempted intimidation and downright abuse.
I feel there's an interesting conflict within this discussion (not really relevant to this thread I suppose) between the heritage profession as a whole, which thinks churches and churchyards are old, therefore important, and sometimes require large schemes of recording work during alterations, and the church, which thinks it is a constantly evolving, vibrant, modern organisation, responding to the needs of its parishoners and is having to change its buildings and sites accordingly. The church has a very long history of disregarding the past with regard to its properties (almost any cathedral will bear the results of a series of alterations carried out in numerous periods and styles), and personally I don't really mind if this culture continues, but on a local level, the realisation that there may be more people with a vested interest and valid say in these matters now than in the past, and that these people often have very good reasons to object to or modify the various proposals they put forward, is taking a while to be accepted.
They're still nowhere near as bad as some of the people who run Golf Clubs though...