It's amazing what you can do in a small space. In Fire Over Fylingdales: Revelation, Regeneration, Inspiration, Whitby Museum has pulled off nothing short of a miniature tour de force. It's not the glossiest exposition of the latest display techniques and it doesn't knock your socks off with flashy curatorial erudition, but it does show that however modest the resources, it is possible for small museums, in addressing the ostensibly local, to successfully raise awareness of the really big debates about access to and ownership of shared and sometimes contested heritage.
At first sight, this is an exhibition about an event - something that it is notoriously difficult to pull off successfully. In September 2003, a major fire on the North York Moors kept northern viewers glued to their televisions for six days as it devastated more than 2.5 sq kms of heather moorland.
The principal concern was for the loss of wildlife and habitat. The heather cover was completely destroyed and the underlying peat either burned off or was left exposed to rapid erosion: regeneration would clearly be a slow process, with no guarantee that habitats could successfully be reinstated. But if ever there was a cloud with a silver lining, the Fylingdales fire turned out to be one.
As the ground cooled sufficiently to allow access, it rapidly became clear that the heather had been concealing and protecting a landscape of outstanding archaeological richness.
Over the past two centuries or so, amateur and professional archaeologists have recorded evidence of 5,000 or more years of human engagement with Fylingdales Moor. From the clergyman-antiquarian who boasted of having had his men 'thoroughly dig out three [Bronze Age] mounds today' to the rather more systematic recording of exposed examples of prehistoric rock art in the 1960s and 1980s, the area has long been of interest to archaeologists and historians. But no one was really prepared for the results of the English Heritage-commissioned field walking, which was designed to capture evidence before it succumbed to the inevitable erosion of the fragile surfaces. The prefire total of about 150 known archaeological features and sites increased dramatically in the space of a few short weeks to more than 2,000.
From the public's point of view, the early celebrities of this archaeological revelation were probably the 200 or so examples of rocks and stones with cup, cup-and-ring and other designs. Most were cut into outcrops of bedrock or large boulders, but among the comparatively few portable stones, the real star was a regionally anomalous geometrically-incised and evidently recycled Neolithic stone found in a Bronze Age cairn. For a short time this stone became the focus of debate in the letters pages of the local press and is now the centrepiece of the Whitby exhibition.
Local opinion was divided: should the stone be recorded and left in situ, with the result of concealment by the encroaching heather? Could best conservation and access only be ensured by its removal to a museum? And, if so, which museum? Does the stone belong to the locality, the region or the nation?
For other local people, the stones were of less interest than the evidence of more recent human activity. Some could remember the moor's use as a military training site and engaged nostalgically with discarded cartridge cases and revealed tank tracks. The imagination of others was caught by earlier marks; of Bronze Age ploughs, of 19th-century game carts, of the alum industry that flourished here between the 17th-19th centuries or of the routes of the pack ponies that crisscrossed the moors from the Middle Ages until the coming of the railways.
It is to the credit of this modest exhibition that it manages to engage with this considerable diversity of interests and concerns; to offer, in the very best sense, something accessible to everyone while simultaneously engaging with some pretty thorny issues of speculative interpretation and contested usage.
The entrance section shows clips of newsreel footage that introduce the drama of the fire, but the exhibition is dominated by the responses of local photographers, artists and writers on the event. Via a combination of conventional showcases, tableaux, open and low-tech interactive displays (including potted-up moorland plants), facsimiles and text panels, we follow the story of the moor from its geological origins 190 million years ago. This includes its exploitation by Bronze Age farmers, the monks of Whitby Abbey, generations of local commoners, wealthy landowners, industrialists and military tacticians, and on to the urgent need for habitat restoration.
There is commendably little text, although unfortunate panel layout sometimes makes even this a little difficult to read. At the physical and symbolic centre is the mysterious rock art: 'No one today can know what is the true interpretation; but if you have an idea, write it in the comments book.'
Fire over Fylingdales is much more than an exhibition. Impressive local and national partnerships have resulted in an oral history project, a survey publication, writing workshops and public lectures, sculpture in the park outside the museum and an archaeological trail and leaflet. The exhibition itself will be available for use by other museums after its Whitby run. And all this in a museum that is still operated on a shoestring by the unpaid members of Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society.
Nichola Johnson is the director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich
Project data
Cost: £56,000 (whole project); Main funder: Heritage Lottery Fund £40,000; Exhibition design: in-house (Roger Dalladay); Reconstruction drawings: Heron Recreations; Replica stones: National Conservation Centre, Liverpool; Exhibition ends: 30 September
At first sight, this is an exhibition about an event - something that it is notoriously difficult to pull off successfully. In September 2003, a major fire on the North York Moors kept northern viewers glued to their televisions for six days as it devastated more than 2.5 sq kms of heather moorland.
The principal concern was for the loss of wildlife and habitat. The heather cover was completely destroyed and the underlying peat either burned off or was left exposed to rapid erosion: regeneration would clearly be a slow process, with no guarantee that habitats could successfully be reinstated. But if ever there was a cloud with a silver lining, the Fylingdales fire turned out to be one.
As the ground cooled sufficiently to allow access, it rapidly became clear that the heather had been concealing and protecting a landscape of outstanding archaeological richness.
Over the past two centuries or so, amateur and professional archaeologists have recorded evidence of 5,000 or more years of human engagement with Fylingdales Moor. From the clergyman-antiquarian who boasted of having had his men 'thoroughly dig out three [Bronze Age] mounds today' to the rather more systematic recording of exposed examples of prehistoric rock art in the 1960s and 1980s, the area has long been of interest to archaeologists and historians. But no one was really prepared for the results of the English Heritage-commissioned field walking, which was designed to capture evidence before it succumbed to the inevitable erosion of the fragile surfaces. The prefire total of about 150 known archaeological features and sites increased dramatically in the space of a few short weeks to more than 2,000.
From the public's point of view, the early celebrities of this archaeological revelation were probably the 200 or so examples of rocks and stones with cup, cup-and-ring and other designs. Most were cut into outcrops of bedrock or large boulders, but among the comparatively few portable stones, the real star was a regionally anomalous geometrically-incised and evidently recycled Neolithic stone found in a Bronze Age cairn. For a short time this stone became the focus of debate in the letters pages of the local press and is now the centrepiece of the Whitby exhibition.
Local opinion was divided: should the stone be recorded and left in situ, with the result of concealment by the encroaching heather? Could best conservation and access only be ensured by its removal to a museum? And, if so, which museum? Does the stone belong to the locality, the region or the nation?
For other local people, the stones were of less interest than the evidence of more recent human activity. Some could remember the moor's use as a military training site and engaged nostalgically with discarded cartridge cases and revealed tank tracks. The imagination of others was caught by earlier marks; of Bronze Age ploughs, of 19th-century game carts, of the alum industry that flourished here between the 17th-19th centuries or of the routes of the pack ponies that crisscrossed the moors from the Middle Ages until the coming of the railways.
It is to the credit of this modest exhibition that it manages to engage with this considerable diversity of interests and concerns; to offer, in the very best sense, something accessible to everyone while simultaneously engaging with some pretty thorny issues of speculative interpretation and contested usage.
The entrance section shows clips of newsreel footage that introduce the drama of the fire, but the exhibition is dominated by the responses of local photographers, artists and writers on the event. Via a combination of conventional showcases, tableaux, open and low-tech interactive displays (including potted-up moorland plants), facsimiles and text panels, we follow the story of the moor from its geological origins 190 million years ago. This includes its exploitation by Bronze Age farmers, the monks of Whitby Abbey, generations of local commoners, wealthy landowners, industrialists and military tacticians, and on to the urgent need for habitat restoration.
There is commendably little text, although unfortunate panel layout sometimes makes even this a little difficult to read. At the physical and symbolic centre is the mysterious rock art: 'No one today can know what is the true interpretation; but if you have an idea, write it in the comments book.'
Fire over Fylingdales is much more than an exhibition. Impressive local and national partnerships have resulted in an oral history project, a survey publication, writing workshops and public lectures, sculpture in the park outside the museum and an archaeological trail and leaflet. The exhibition itself will be available for use by other museums after its Whitby run. And all this in a museum that is still operated on a shoestring by the unpaid members of Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society.
Nichola Johnson is the director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norwich
Project data
Cost: £56,000 (whole project); Main funder: Heritage Lottery Fund £40,000; Exhibition design: in-house (Roger Dalladay); Reconstruction drawings: Heron Recreations; Replica stones: National Conservation Centre, Liverpool; Exhibition ends: 30 September
