If you need to build your awareness of the English Lake District World Heritage Site - what WH is, how WHSs are selected, why the Lake District is a WH, and how it's managed, these slides give you a quick introduction.
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This script accompanies the presentation providing a short and easy to follow introduction to the English Lake District World Heritage Site. The slides and the script have been developed to be read or delivered together.
Slide 1: Introduction to World Heritage
• World Heritage is a celebration of the planet’s cultural and natural treasures
• WH was established by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) as a means of bring countries together and to foster international peace and cooperation
Slide 2: Types of World Heritage Sites
• There are nearly 1100 WHSs at present (up to 2018); they fall into 4 categories:
o Natural – eg Great Barrier Reef, Grand Canyon, Amazon rainforest, Giant’s Causeway
o Cultural – eg the Pyramids, Venice, Taj Mahal, Hadrian’s Wall
o Mixed – has both Natural and Cultural treasures; eg Machu Picchu (Inca city and important mountain rainforest)
o Cultural Landscape – demonstrate the changing relationship between people and place eg the English Lake District, Blaenavon
Slide 3: Why is the Lake District a World Heritage Site?
• A WHS needs to have Outstanding Universal Value (OUV), or those attributes/reasons why it is so special and significant, that it belongs to the people of the world rather than just its homeland, now and for future generations
• The Lake District’s OUV comprises 3 attributes or themes:
o Identity
o Inspiration
o Conservation
Slide 4: Identity – how people shaped the landscape
• 1000 years of traditional upland Lakeland farming, unique in Northern Europe
• Field structures – in-byes, intakes, common lands
• Typical and characteristic structures – white farms buildings, vernacular buildings like packhorse bridges
• Intangible traditions – hefting, sports days, shepherds’ meets, rural skills, local dialect
• Other industries shaped the Lake District landscapes
• Mining and quarrying – extracting the underground mineral and stone riches
• Woodland – coppicing, pollarding, charcoal making, fuel for smelters
Slide 5: Inspiration – how the landscape shaped people
• ~250 years ago, early tourists sought self-development through the Grand Tour in Europe
• War and revolution forced them to travel to the north of England
• They couldn’t comprehend/understand the Lakes’ landscapes
• Needed a new ‘language’ to appreciate what they saw = Picturesque Movement
• Wordsworth’s Romanticism went further, promoting the emotional relationship with landscapes
• Wordsworth advocated landscapes were for the people, regardless of ownership = ‘national property’
• Beloved landscapes led to valued landscapes, led to…
Slide 6: Conservation – how the Lake District is the birthplace of global landscape conservation
• Valued landscapes need looking after
• Over 250 years, the Lakes have played the role of ‘contested landscape’ and the debate how land should be used – for commercial gain (development) or public benefit (conservation)
• Thinking, debate, discussion, lobbying, action, negotiation…by the likes of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Ruskin, Beatrix Potter and more, led to…
• Two models of landscape protection having their roots here:
o Legislation – the founding fathers of national parks were inspired by the Lakes’ early conservationists to develop the national parks model of landscape protection
o Ownership – Canon Rawnsley inspired by the Lakes, helped to establish the creation of the National Trust
o Both models have spread and been adopted across the world; there are over 3000 NPs and 75+ National Trusts
Slide 7: Managing the World Heritage Site
• Managed by a partnership, has a defined governance structure, single management plan