Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Written Evidence


Memorandum submitted by the Mausolea and Monuments Trust

  The Mausolea and Monuments Trust (MMT) exists to celebrate and protect funerary structures.

  The MMT is only starting to uncover the true scale of the crisis in our burial grounds, with the threats of exposure to the elements, of vandalism, and of over-zealous health and safety officials.

  Mausolea and monuments are one of many areas of our built heritage too seldom taken into account by the major conservation bodies, in spite of their importance both architecturally and as social documents, reflecting the values of the society of those who built them (and consequently have a story to tell), as well as reflecting architectural fashions and funerary practices.

  Mausolea and monuments are in theory the responsibility of heirs at law. Parish councils, local authorities and cemetery companies have the duty to ensure that they do not become dangerous but upkeep is left to descendants. A few families have taken such responsibilities seriously. Most have not. Consequently, many are desperately in need of long overdue maintenance or more serious repair.

  Unlike most buildings at risk, they rarely have any practicable economic use, so that there is no incentive to keep them in good repair other than altruism and local pride.

  Private individuals may not apply to the Heritage Lottery Fund for grants towards the repair of their mausolea. The MMT, however, may apply for such grants if the building is in its guardianship. Consequently, the MMT has carried out urgent works to a number of fine mausolea, ensuring their future.

  The MMT would like the Committee to consider what special measures are required for the preservation of mausolea and monuments. The MMT suggests:

    1.  Alteration of grant conditions to allow third parties to act to repair and ensure continued maintenance of mausolea where it is not possible to trace ownership.

    2.  Availability of higher percentage of grant aid towards the repair of monuments and mausolea.

    3.  The establishment of a fund for the regular maintenance of monuments, mausolea and churchyards.

    4.  The establishment of a UK wide database of monuments and mausolea as a baseline record (The MMT is in the process of putting its Gazetteer of mausolea in England online).

    5.  The production of national guidance on dealing with monuments and mausolea.

  Within the vast sweep of the UK's architectural history it is all too easy for the small, but often beautiful and moving aspects of the built environment to be forgotten and left behind by the major conservation organisations.

  We are seriously concerned at the potential of the Olympics to take already scarce resources from the sector, particularly as it is the smaller aspects of the heritage, such as mausolea and monuments, that are most likely to lose out in competition to more glamorous large scale projects requiring major funding.

20 January 2006





 
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