In aid of World Monuments Fund Britain

[BAJR Host]

World Monuments Fund Britain
15 years of Time Team with Tony Robinson.

This event will be at St George's Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Way,London WC1A 2HR Two minutes walk from the British Museum. 7pm

This event is in aid of the

World Monuments Fund - Britain

Special Guest Speaker: TONY ROBINSON

See one of London's finest interiors, the recently completed ?9.2 m restoration of Nicholas Hawksmoor's masterpiece

A Brief annual review of WMF's global projects

Refreshments and wine on the portico

Tickets ?15/?10 (WMF members) from 020 7730 5344

otherwise
?30 Front and Gallery
?25 Middle Seating
?20 Rear Seating
from 020 7730 5344

Definately worth a look!! and anyway... the WMF is well worth supporting!

http://www.wmf.org.uk/


How about making a donation to this appeal? (you can even donate)
St Mary?s Stow in Lincolnshire
originally founded in 678 AD and rebuilt in the eleventh century
http://www.wmf.org.uk/projects/appeals/


"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[Unitof1]

I was wondering if anybody had any thoughts on how an archaeologist should regard monuments. I often go to monuments trowel in hand at night hoping that there will be evidence for potential archaeology and find that they are already trashed and feel cheated that I got suckered in by all the scheduled heritage world monument speak.

My inclination is that there should be designated archaeological monuments which are sites, parts of sites, that archaeologists would like to excavate and that once they have been excavated and recorded that they cease to be an archaeological monument and the land can be retrieved from those who want to stand and stare. In effect they are only being preserved for us archaeologists to dig. I think that we should make this very clear to the public.

[Unitof1]

in other words a monument is not for ever -keep it out of the fascists hands

[Sofabed]

I am from Stow and can totally reccommend donating money to the church. It's a fantastic buillding which if anyone is in the vicinity, they should visit (although if you are anywhere near Stow you are probably lost).
They have started work on the roof but recently all the new lead got pinched so it's probably a bit behind already.

I shall let the Stow 'Fun' Raisers know about the Monument Fund, if they don't know already. They raise money for the church through village events- it's proper local yokel. Think Vicar of Dibley meetings, with Lincolnshire accents. Aww, village life, it's ace.

[BAJR Host]

Brilliant to hear from you... and great to hear about the real place...

More details

Emergency appeals

St Mary?s Stow in Lincolnshire

We are urgently seeking ?35,000 to cover the cost of unforeseen repairs at one of the oldest churches in the country. In May 2007 we started works to the roof at St Mary?s Stow during the course of which it became clear a number of roof beams were rotting and some of the masonry was in a worse condition than previously thought. We need to find funds to cover this extra work while the scaffolding is still in place. St Mary?s, despite being the ?finest Norman church in Lincolnshire? according to Sir John Betjeman, is relatively isolated and typifies problems faced by many parish churches.


These include small congregations facing rising costs of repair. WMF have already made a ?50,000 grant from the Robert W. Wilson Challenge To Conserve Our Heritage, but we need your help to raise the remaining funds

There is a button to donate... though it did "annoy" me that I could not just press a button and donate via PayPal.. however.. it was a fairly painless process and it was easy enough to donate...

Come on folks...

keep us informed of whats happening





"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[Unitof1]

I think that its timely that theres the barton-on-humber debacle rumbling along side stow. It started out as yet another ever so important church losing its congregation, needing repair and now theres 2800+ bodies having to be stuffed in a box with an Anglo-Saxon deceitful pretence ceremony which presumably will come to represent another uformisum for why did we dig all of these up with how much money. I wonder when the next round of fund raising will start for the church roof(is it still a church?).

What I was thinking is that the only concern an archaeologist should have with these sites is imaging that one day stow will have to be dug and preserved by record and we may as well point out to everybody that thats what archaeologists do and start setting up the site rather than being drawn into the doesnt it look pretty conservation mob. I suggest that they collect their monies to construct a giant geodesic dome with museum standard tinted glass and air conditioning to await or delay our arrival. They could also start researching the reburial chants although until we can give them a time frame, some spot dates, it might all be a bit previous

[Dirty Dave Lincoln]

I take it Uo1 that you don't believe ancient Church sites should be maintained,why not?these are all part of our rich heritage and should be preserved-apart from the fact that Stow is still a living Church with people worshiping there,it is a fantastic building to visit.

[BAJR Host]

Uo1's take on archaeology in general is... shall we say... unusual..

though digging sites before they become archaeology... it is a concept!

Remember that buildings are jsut archaeology that sticks out the ground!

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[drpeterwardle]

A few facts:

There are 15500 listed churches in England alone. Over half are grade 1 listed. This equates to about 3% of listed buildings.

The state gives very little towards the upkeep of the building and the vast majority of the funding comes from collections and coffee mornings. There is about a ?17,000,000 annual shortfall.

Churches are made redundant when they are no longer needed for worship. There are a variety of reasons for this.

There is a policy of not excavating human remains as far as is possible.

Peter

[Unitof1]

I will not appologise my first language was Nigerian pigeon. (tweet tweet)

I am surrounded by lots of redundant churches, not so slowly rotting away. The church in my parish was pulled down in the late 70s. from my minimal perusal of the records for the last two hundred years (http://www.churchplansonline.org/ and search STOW BY GAINSBOROUGH,) they have all needed a massive injection of cash every fifty years or so to no great avail- you can go back to the million fund (for new churches) we are watching the tail end of churching and its up to us to find some meat in it - stow has been funded in the past because of its apparent celebrity as it is now(big sinister international fund to the rescue) but its taking our eyes of the underlying resource of all the churches and getting us involved in lead prices

Unusual hosty remember trowel fodder is under the buildings

I see it as a natural continuation of William Stukeley Itinerarium Curiosum cross pollinated with the apparent underlying building cost effectiveness of the gothic revival which is all about inevitable decay and a small reading of the Church Building Act 1818 (thank the Austrians for fighting for napoleon) and also amendments to build rectories etc and watching lotto grants.-basically none of these buildings were built on foundations which would pass building regs or have any certificates about their foundations so although it is often manifested as the roof need repair is mostly that the whole building is falling to pieces and so every time a new engineer goes at it they have to cover their behinds with pouring loads of concrete having been patched together for the last 200 years often by people who had read stukeley and thought that putting norman things nicked from other english things would give pevsner something to wax misguidedly about so you can go to stow looking to find a magnificent example of imaginative jolly foreigner doesnt do it this way restoration and a find a few possible old stones at the base of a tower but still wonder what might be buried there. More importantly they are restoring it to stop the spread of alternative religions and modern political views. I am surprised that the HSE when they started pushing gravestones over didnt do the same to the churches. The only reason that churches dont kill more people is that theres no one there. And everywhen they patch it they trash another bit of the good underlying archaeology the church (pills must be working as I havent mentioned all the good that these church people do in the world) are even giving guidance?s out about how to ignore archaeology No barton on humber is a step in the right direction I thought that by criticising it and my ability to unit the whole of archaeology behind me we might get to dig a lot more but I suspect that barton is as shadowy as the cosmic report. Are they burying these bodies before the report is out? It must be bad.

pound for pound you cant beat a geodesic dome. one in every parish lots of work for archaeologists