The National Heritage Council: Another Beginning

Irish Arts Review

The National Heritage Council: Another BeginningAuthor(s): Anne KellySource: Irish Arts Review Yearbook, (1990/1991), pp. 197-201Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20492645 .

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW

THE NATIONAL HERITAGE COUNCIL: ANOTHER BEGINNING

Ehe birth of the National Heritage Council in 1988 meant that Ireland

took some important steps in the direct ion of a heritage policy. Parturition has been slow and legislation a long time coming in this important area. At a time when other countries, for better or worse, are developing heritage as an industry, the

Heritage Council has been established "to formulate policies and priorities for the preservation and enhancement of Ireland's heritage-" The Council's brief is a wide one, including the co-ordination of all activities in the heritage field, and the allocation of funds for heritage pur poses from the National Lottery. It is a non-statutory body with responsibilities ranging over archaeology and architec ture, flora and fauna, landscape, heritage gardens and some inland waterways.

At first glance the Heritage Council seems to be a product of previous legisla tion. The National Heritage Bill, 1982,

was introduced by the Fianna Fail Government and reached a Second Stage reading in the Seanad in July 1982.

However, the Heritage Council, as we know it, reflects a fundamental policy change and an intended departure from the Council provided for in the Heritage

Bill. The Bill proposed to enact legislat ion to establish a semi-state Heritage

Council, similar to the Arts Council, to administer the National Museum, nat ional monuments and some national gardens and parks.2 This was not to be, and to provide a context for the Heritage Council's brief, it is necessary to look at existing provision in archaeology, archi tecture and the natural environment.

The need to rationalise the present administrative structure in relation to the Office of Public Works (National Parks and Monuments) and the National

Museum has long been recognised, and the 1982 Bill and subsequent Seanad debates reflect this.3 A Report commis sioned by the Minister for Finance in 1989 recommended that OPW responsi bility for national monuments, national parks, heritage and conservation should be re-allocated elsewhere in the public service.4 Attempts to safeguard the arch aeological inheritance, and to maintain and develop it, have been piecemeal and inadequate, and there is a need for a single authority to link archaeological activities with those of the National Museum. Nationally-recognised cultural monu ments are protected by the legislation of

The parentage and birth pains of the Heritage Council are

described by Anne Keily, with an assessment of its first months'

growth, and recommendations for its future health.

the National Monuments Act 1930, which was revised in 1954 and 1987. The latest revision indicated a move away from the policies expressed in the 1982 Bill,

which proposed to transfer the functions under the National Monuments Acts to the Heritage Council, and to dissolve the

National Monuments Advisory Commit tee. The Policy change meant that this

Committee remains, with the new name of the Historic Monuments Council.

Only about one percent of the estimat ed stock of national monuments are pro tected by the State. About three thousand

monuments created before 1700 AD are preserved.5 Denmark by comparison, which is about half the territorial size of Ireland, preserves twenty-five thousand prehistoric monuments. Ireland's protec tive structures are based on British legis lation of 1882, which used the Office of

Works with its regional office in Dublin, the National Monuments Act being a lineal descendant of this 1882 legislation

which was itself based on the medieval King's Works, the body with respons ibility for the construction of Royal Palaces. While other countries, in cluding Britain, have modernised their archaeological structures, Ireland con tinues to rely on a piecemeal approach.

Considerable destruction of national monuments has taken place, along with deterioration due to the lack of adequate maintenance. Illegal digs have resulted in finds not reaching the National Museum, and the threats posed by the use of metal detectors and the destruction of sites are unlikely to be solved in the absence of a single responsible Authority. Although the new National Monuments Act under takes to maintain a register of historic

monuments, only a very small number of monuments has been registered.

The National Heritage Council is not to be equipped to deal with such pro blems, and it is difficult to understand the departure from the initial Bill, the background of which goes back to 1978. In his presidential address to the Royal Irish Academy, Professor Frank Mitchell asked for legislation "with effective

teeth" to provide security for our monu ments.6 In a speech at the National Museum in 1980, Mr. Haughey acknow ledged the points made in Professor

Mitchell's address and pledged that the Government was ready to discuss them with the archaeological profession, so that progress could be made. In 1981 the Taoiseach further announced that a National Heritage Council would be set up and would assume responsibility for functions exercised by the Department of Education, the National Museum and the Office of Public Works. This compre hensive approach formed the basis of the 1982 Bill and seemed to predict an end to fragmentation in the heritage area. How ever, a change of government occurred in 1982, and the Coalition Government of Fine Gael and Labour appointed a Junior

Minister for Culture and the Arts who did not proceed with the Bill.

An important area of the Heritage Council's brief, and one for which vir tually no legislative provision exists other than the Planning Acts, is that of architecture. Here the heritage is of inter national importance, representing the work of Irish and other architects of major significance. In this heritage area, losses are well documented, particularly in recent times, and the main benefit has come from tax concessions to owners.7 The best way to preserve historic proper ties in times of economic stringency is to enable owners themselves to maintain them, and the taxation system ought to reflect this by providing incentives. In 1982 an Irish Historical Properties Com

mission was established to examine the possibility of developing a new property owning trust, rather like the National Trust in Britain. It published a report which recommended setting up a Heri tage Commission with State funding, to support historic properties by grant or loan.8 'Heritage properties' were defined as the great houses and gardens, as well as vernacular buildings like farmhouses, mills and cottages, the maintenance of which has considerable tourist potential as well as intrinsic worth. A non governmental property-owning trust, like the National Trust, has recently been seen as the best way forward.9 In 1987, the Coalition Government established a

Heritage Advisory Committee to advise on the conservation of Ireland's architec tural heritage, and to disburse funds from the National Lottery towards the main

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tenance of privately-held historic build ings. This Committee was disbanded by the Fianna Fail Government which came into office in 1987, and it is the Heritage

Council which now has the task of devel oping policy in the architectural area.

The 1982 Heritage Bill made provision for national parks but not for another area of the physical environment-flora and fauna-for which the Heritage Council now has responsibility. The Wildlife Act of 1976 is the main legislation covering nature conservation; the Planning Acts are also important. However, conservat ion of the physical environment, our

natural heritage, is an area also marked by "fragmentation of effort and lack of effec tive leadership from central govern

ment."' 0 Threats to nature come from many sources, including urbanisation and industrialisation. Ireland's entry to the EC led to an intensification of agriculture and an increase in the use of fertilisers. EC funds to aid drainage have had effects on fishing and wildlife. Our temperate climate attracts wild fowl but "the reduction in wetlands concentrates wild fowl into increasingly fewer areas where they come under pressure from hunters and shortage of food." 11 Two energy crises have led to the exploitation of bogs, whose over-development can have dramatic ecological effects. The ecological balance has also been affected by some forestry developments. A careful balance has to be kept between conserva tion and development, and the World

Conservation Strategy'2 emphasises that both can go hand in hand, with develop ment becoming a major means of achiev ing conservation rather than being an obstruction to it.

It is difficult to see how the Heritage Council, as constituted at present, can deal with problems like these. It has been suggested that the major aspects of nature conservation must become part of the responsibilities of a single govern

ment department and that "the Cabinet Minister responsible for that Department should not be responsible for any function

which involves a serious actual or poten tial conflict of interest with nature con servation, such as agriculture, afforestat ion, energy resources or urban develop

ment.'3 There would also seem to be a potential conflict between the role of the Heritage Council and the proposed En vironmental Protection Agency, with the power firmly poised in one way.

Fernhill Gardens, Sandyford, Co. Dublin, which is included in the ICOMOS

(International Council on Monuments and Sites) List for Ireland of Gardens and Parks of National and International Importance.

It attracts 10,000 visitors annually. Photograph Bord Failte.

In spite of the difficulties regarding fragmentation and conflict of interest in the heritage area, present Government policy was exemplified by the establish ment of the National Heritage Council on 5th September 1988. The Chairman of the Council is Lord Killanin and there are thirteen members, most of whom have a professional background in the different areas for which the Council is respons ible. As well as having a policy-making role, the Council is empowered to distribute National Lottery funds to heritage projects "subject to the approval of the Taoiseach." In its first year of exist ence, this was the Council's main role for which it used the balance of the ?1

million allocation to heritage. ?500,000 remained available for distribution when the Council was established, and about two hundred applications for grant aid

were received during 1988/89. The total value of these requests amounted to ?9.8 million.'4 Thirty-five projects have been sanctioned to date, and the Council has also initiated a Heritage Education Survey to review, during 1990, heritage education in Ireland. The grants given range from ?1,000 towards the cost of repairing a footbridge over the Royal

Canal in Co. Meath, to ?120,000 for post excavation research associated with the

Waterford City Viking Excavations. The Heritage Council meets in full ses

sion on average once a month, and has set up sub-committees for the different areas of interest; these also have monthly meetings. Meetings have taken place with organisations such as Bord Failte, the Royal Irish Academy and An Taisce, and the Council has received about eighty submissions from a considerable variety of interest groups. It also has a lob bying role, and has made contact with a number of state agencies on specific heritage issues.

The projects which have been funded cover a wide spectrum of the Council's brief, and their relatively small number reflects the meagre funds available and a degree of uncertainty about future allo cations. The increasing reliance on Lot tery funding for the arts in general, and the uncertainty thereby involved, means that planning and policy-making are in creasingly difficult. The Heritage Coun cil, with a small administrative staff of three, does not want to build up a client base, and is conscious of the need to set criteria to ensure the most effective allocation of funds.

Grants towards restoration work are paid in arrears, and projects are assessed on the basis of their intrinsic merit, the Council meeting about half the total project costs. One allocation of parti cular interest was that of ?7,000 made to Fernhill Gardens in Sandyford, Co. Dublin, towards the cost of replanting areas of the gardens which suffered major storm damage on two occasions over the last few years. The gardens, consisting of about fifty acres, date from 1850 but many of its trees date from much earlier. The Darley family built the house and began developing the gardens, work being con tinued by three generations of Walkers.

The Darleys' main contribution to the or namental garden was a broadwalk-a flat terraced walk "extremely wide, so that a group of three ladies in their wide skirts could walk side by side, conversing while they took the afternoon air."" This feature, along with the box-hedged kit chen garden and the typically Irish laurel lawn are reminders of a more formal era, in what is now a Robinsonian garden.

William Robinson (1838-1935) began a crusade against the architectural garden in favour of more natural forms of garden

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ing. He argued that "in nature, trees, shrubs, perennials, and bulbs grow hap pily side by side, and so they should in a garden."'6 Robinson was Irish and his in fluence, particularly after the publication of The Wild Garden in 1870, can be seen in Kerry gardens including Garinish Island. Assistance for heritage gardens such as Fernhill is some recognition of their importance and potential. There is growing awareness also of the heritage value of gardens designed or influenced by Sir Edward Lutyens and Miss Gertrude Jeykll, some of which are now the subject of restoration projects."7

The tourist potential of gardens is now also recognised, and Bord Failte has, con sequently, taken an interest in the area and plans to take stands at the Chelsea Flower Show and at a major New York garden fair this year. Many heritage gardens surround great houses, and ar chitectural restoration is an area of con siderable concern for the Heritage

Council which is assisting several pro jects. Na Piobairi Uileann, The Society of Irish Pipers, took over a derelict house at 15 Henrietta Street, Dublin, in 1980. A FAS scheme helped with early stages of restoration, and the Heritage Council has provided ?4,500 of the ?9,000 cost of restoring two ceilings on the first floor.

The balance is being made up by donat ions from members, and by a fund-raising drive. The dereliction of Henrietta Street is a sad reminder of the need for a strong

Heritage Council. The street is built on land formerly part of the old Cistercian

Abbey of St. Mary, suppressed by Henry VIII in 1537, and acquired in 1721 by Luke Gardiner, M.P., Vice Treasurer of Ireland. It was here that the great Georg ian building period of eighteenth century

Dublin was initiated. Numbers 15 and 16, originally one house, were built by Gar diner in 1740 and occupied by Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, a man whose wife enjoyed a party.

"Lady Kingsborough gave a superb rout, ball and supper at her house in Henrietta Street, to a very numerous party of the nobility and gentry. The entertainment was perfectly magnificent, taste being in it united with expense. At this splendid party the Countess of Westmoreland appeared in an entire dress of Brussels lace laid over a pink Irish satin, the estimated expense of which exceeded ?500.' '18

The house was sold and divided in the nineteenth century, and the houses

N'

7,~~~~~~~~

Ceiling of 15 Henrietta Street, Dublin 1, before restoration by Dorothy Alpha (nee Hatton).

Photograph Irish Architectural Archive.

became tenements with much of the interior decoration being either removed or destroyed. The restoration of the ceil ings is therefore an important contribut ion to the architectural heritage; it is being carried out by Dorothy Alpha (nee Hatton). Because of lack of restoration work, Dorothy is emigrating to the USA and this is her last job in Ireland. She is an expert Ireland cannot afford to lose, being one of the few trained replica makers and restoration specialists, having gained post-graduate experience at the Romisch-Germanisches Central Mus eum at Mainz. When the work is com pleted, No. 15 Henrietta Street will be furnished and fitted out as a pipe and pip ing museum to complement present trad itional music activities in the house. This

may be a far cry from Lady Kingsborough's rout but the house will live again in music and dance in the most elegant sur roundings.

The Council's grants in the architect ural area also include one of ?8,500 to the Architectural Archive for the purchase of an important and unusual collection of architectural drawings, namely the Ashlin and Coleman collection of two thousand five hundred drawings of Irish

nineteenth-century churches. George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921) was a Cork-born architect who, at the age of twenty-three, became a partner of E. W. Pugin. Their most famous building was St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh, for which Pugin provided the earliest designs in 1867. Pugin's grandfather was Augustus Pugin, pioneer of the Gothic revival, who built, in Ireland, Killarney and Enniscor thy Cathedrals. The Pugin and Ashlin partnership was synonymous with church building in Ireland, and Ashlin's love of French Gothic set the style for much of the Gothic revival in Irish ecclesiastical architecture in the second half of the nineteenth century. Ashlin designed the Church of Saints Augustin and John, Thomas Street, Dublin, Donnybrook, Dundrum and Rathfarnham Churches, Dublin, as well as many convents, schools and parochial houses. Other work includ ed Clery's in Dublin and the Munster and Leinster Bank, Midleton, Co. Cork. St. Colman's, Cobh, was constructed over a period of fifty years and through the reigns of three bishops, from 1868 to 1919 with a gap between 1883 and 1889 because of lack of funds.19 It cost ?235,000 to build, much of the money coming from Irish emigrants to America, Cobh being the last sight of Ireland for many of them. The collection contains five hundred and eighty-six drawings for

Cobh Cathedral, made up of contract drawings, sketches and working drawings. Ashlin's partnership with Pugin was dissolved in 1870, and, in 1902, he form ed a partnership with his former pupil T.A. Coleman (1865-1950) under the style of 'Ashlin and Coleman'. Coleman

was a brillant draughtsman and many of his sketches were reproduced in The Irish Builder in 1902 and 1904, and are now part of the collection. Both men lived to a ripe old age and are buried in adjoining plots in Glasnevin Cemetery.

The Heritage Council is, naturally, aware of its responsibilities in all the areas of its brief, and natural heritage projects have also been assisted. These in clude a grant of ?10,000 to the Dublin Bay Environmental Group to develop a pro ject involving local groups in protecting coastal areas of importance, and ?6,000 to

Crann for a nationwide tree-planting day on St. Patrick's day, 1990. The Council also provided ?10,000 for the Irish

Wildbird Conservancy, to meet the cost of employing a full-time warden and assis

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tant at Rockabill Island, Co. Dublin, in order to protect the colony of roseate terns, from April to August 1989. The roseate tern has become one of the rarest and most vulnerable seabirds breeding in North-West Europe, and numbers have declined drastically in the last twenty years.20 An EC directive requires mem ber states to take special measures to con serve the species and its habitat. Rockabill is the most important breeding site, with sixty percent of the total North

West European total breeding there in 1988. The success in breeding is partly at tributed to the island's lighthouse keepers, who protected the terns and their habitat. The lighthouse, however, became automated in 1989, and the Irish

Wildbird Conservancy and the Irish Wildlife Service took on the task of con

tinuous summer warding of the site as well as carrying out research studies on the terns. The project was most successful.

The mating birds were protected, and valuable information on them was col lected.

There is no doubt that the Heritage Council, in its first year of office, has discharged its functions well. A great deal of time has been given to its activities by the Chairman and the various individual

members, and the budget has been spent on worthy projects. However, the Coun cil's most important role may well lie in the advice given to Government on legislation to establish a statutory

Heritage Council. Providing grants to heritage bodies, although laudable and necessary, is a case of applying sticking plaster when heart surgery is required. At the structural level, problems of public and private ownership, conflict of interest and fragmentation remain, and will re

main, unless the Heritage Council is recognised as the single authority in the heritage area, and unless legislation reflects this. However, present Govern

ment policy is moving away from the set ting up of semi-state bodies-policy

making, and in some cases policy im plementation, is centred in the admini strative system. Outside bodies are regarded as time-consuming, and a pragmatic approach is favoured, which seems to allow senior civil servants to

make the policy decisions formerly made by professionals in a semi-state situation. If this is the case, then it may well be that heritage affairs should be located where the power lies-within a government de

4~~~~~~~~~4k

- . - - '

4

St. Colman's Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork from the Ashlin and Coleman collection at the Architectural Archive. Drawing by A.l. McLoughlin after restoration by Maighread McParland, March 1979. Photograph

Courtesy Irish Architectural Archive.

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IRISH ARTS REVIEW


partment with ministerial responsibility and accountability for the heritage area. Either solution, whether the creation of an autonomous heritage council, or the centralisation of heritage initiatives within a government department, re quires commitment to structural change and adequate funding. It has been estimated that nature conservation alone will require expenditure of ?9 million per annum to implement.2' With the EC giv ing increasing priority to this area it should be possible to attract funds on a

matching basis. The EC is devising policy for the preservation of Europe's cultural heritage, and has also pledged support for pilot conservation projects in the ar chitectural area."2 This is a recognition

of the social, cultural and economic im portance of the architectural heritage. A recent EC communication concerns the free movement of cultural property after 1992, and expresses the longer-term aim "to develop the idea of a common Euro pean heritage.'23 In Ireland we seem a long way from such an ideal, and getting our own house in order must take urgent priority. The worst of all possible out comes, and a strange and impotent beast, would be an advisory Heritage Council with a limited and unpredictable grant aid function allowing it virtually no policy-making role. This outcome the Council must resist, even to the extent of recommending its own abolition. A

Heritage Council without the necessary

power and funds to implement policy decisions will be yet another "Irish solut ion", and one for which future generations

will rightly hold us accountable.

Anne Kelly

Anne Kelly is Director of the Arts Administration Studies Unit at University College Dublin. She is involved in cultural policy issues in both an Irish and European context. She is a member of the Cultural Training Group of the Committee of Cultural Consultants to the European Commission. She writes and lectures on matters of cultural interest and has recently published a monograph on Cultural Policy in Ireland which is part of the UNESCO series "Studies and Documents on Cultural Policies She is a member of the Board of Visitors to the National Museum.

NOTES

1. Information from National Heritage Council,

Department of the Taoiseach.

2. National Heritage Bill, 1982.

3. Seanad debates 30th June, 1st July and 14th

July 1982.

4. Report by Price Waterhouse of enquiry into

operations of the OPW reported in The Irish

Times, 26th January, 1990.

5. George Eogan, "A Forgotten Century" in

Taisce Journal, Spring 1982, Vol. 6, No. 1,

p. 16.

6. Presidential address by Professor Frank

Mitchell to the Royal Irish Academy 9th

October 1978, and interview in Archaeology Ireland, Vol. 3, No. 3, Autumn 1989.

7. See, for example, Heritage at Risk, An Taisce

Report 1977, eds. Edward McParland and

Nicholas Robinson. Safeguarding Historic

Houses, Report of the Irish Historic

Properties Committee, eds. Kevin B. Nowlan

and Lewis Clohessy, 1985. "Wasting Assets"

by Nicholas Robinson in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland, The Knight of Glin, David

J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, Architectural Archive and Irish Georgian

Society, 1988.

8. Report of the Irish Historical Properties Committee, opxit.

9. Nicholas Robinson, "Wasting Assets", op.cit. 10. Our National Heritage, A Policy for Nature

Conservation in Ireland, Union of Professional

and Technical Civil Servants 1987, p.26. 11. Frank Convery, "The Physical Environment"

in Frank Litton ed. Unequal Achievement, The

Irish Experience 1957-82, IPA., 1982. See

also, The State of the Environment, ed. David

Cabot, An Foras Forbartha, 1985.

12. Our National Heritage, op.cit., p. 4. 13. Ibid., p. 26.

14. Information from National Heritage Council. 15. Michael George, Patrick Bowe, The Gardens

of Ireland, Hutchinson, 1986, p. 70. 16. Ibid., p. 72.

17. David Ottewill, The Edwardian Garden, Yale

University Press, 1989. This contains

information on the Gardens of Lambay Castle, Co. Dublin, p. 82, and Hey wood,

Ballinakill, Co. Laois, p. 84. See also

reference No. 49, p. 209, on the restoration of

Heywood by Anco programme, and Lutyens National War memorial gardens,

Islandbridge, Dublin.

18. Walker's Hibernian Magazine, April 1790,

quoted in "An Appeal from na Piobairi

Uileann," The Society of Irish Pipers Brochure.

19. Catalogue of Drawings, St. Colman's

Cathedral, Cobh, Co. Cork. Compiled by Donal Smith, Nov. 1983, Architectural

Archive.

20. Irish Wildbird Conservancy, Rockabill, Roseate Terns on Rockabill, Co. Dublin 1989.

Final Report to the National Heritage Council.

21. Our National Heritage, op. cit., p. 29.

22. Commission of the EC. A Fresh Boost for Culture in the European Community, COM(87) 603 Final/2, 14 Dec. 1987, and "Support of

pilot projects to conserve and promote the

Communities Architectural heritage", Official

Journal of the European Communities No. C

308/3, 3 Dec. 1988.

23. Commission of the EC, Communication from the Commission to the Council on the Protection

of National Treasures possessing artistic, historic or archaeological value: needs arising from the

abolition of frontiers in 1992, COM(89) 594

final, 22 Nov. 1989.

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