The recent launch by English Heritage of a major report entitled Heritage in Danger has thrown a spotlight on the UK’s many historic monuments and sites that are threatened by neglect, poor planning, or vandalism. It has also in consequence raised the profile of heritage issues in public conversation. The preservation of national – or international for that matter – heritage is not merely a topic of interest to historians and industry professionals. Or, at least, it shouldn’t be. People who perhaps wouldn’t fret over the loss of a medieval castle or a stately home are oftentimes the first on the barricades when a football stadium, an old cinema, or an historic pub is at risk of being sold off or demolished. Or witness the general (and thoroughly justified) collective anguish a few days ago when the Grand Pier at Weston-Super-Mare was half destroyed by fire.

Nothing wrong with any of that, I stress: maintaining a viable and interesting national heritage is not just a matter of preserving the physical fabric of long past centuries. It also involves looking after and opening up whatever is culturally significant from more recent accretions to civic life – piers, pubs, sports stadia, and all.

So I was very pleased when recently the Open2 unit asked me to update our innovative web interactive called ‘High Street History’. You may have seen the original: but if not you can access it by following the link at bottom of this blog. What we tried to do was to show the ways in which the past is embedded in the urban landscape, and how that has grown to be so familiar to us that it’s become almost invisible. We chose a number of generic features that are characteristic of practically every town and then sought to explain how we could view them afresh, to glean clues about the tangible way in which the past was lived. Okay, so churches and statues are obvious indicators of history – and we used those too – but you might not expect brickwork, street signs, or public buildings to yield up a similarly rich vein of material. We tried to illustrate these eclectic sources and show what they can reveal to the passer-by with a series of concrete examples. This wasn’t altogether straightforward. I had thought I had a reasonable understanding of urban and architectural history, but it quickly became clear that I barely knew my cornice from my portico.

Rectifying my weak spots required quite a lot of street tramping to take pictures: a task that fell not only to me but also to Rissa, Open2's creative force behind all the neat web stuff that I utterly failed to understand. There ensued a seemingly everlasting phase of filleting our considerable findings - by which I mean tons of photos - to identify the best possible instances of the townscape features which we wanted to explore. The photos I’ve included here are two that, unfortunately, narrowly missed the final cut.

Factory bell, c.1800s.

The first shows what remains of a factory bell pull: but there’s no trace of any such building, even under new usage, nearby. This is the sort of tantalising puzzle that can get the local historian digging around to discover what happened in the vicinity. And, indeed, I discovered – by rooting through the local Victoria County History – that there had been a factory making lead goods built there in the late eighteenth century. It appeared to have been demolished to make way for a playground in the early 1980s.

The second is completely different. It's a cinema built before the First World War, but which you could easily mistake for a 1930s creation because of the radical overhaul to its frontage just before World War II. Such phenomena are revealing about past shifts in public and artistic tastes and we made sure that we delved a little deeper into them in the interactive.

Phoenix cinema, 1930s façade.

Whilst I think that the original interactive did a good job and fulfilled its brief, it did nonetheless lack a little regional variation. For some reason, the project budget didn’t stretch to me undertaking a national tour to find good photographs, so rather a lot originated from a two mile radius around my home. Another slight limitation was that I didn’t perhaps make as much of heritage issues – what’s of value? what deserves saving? – as I should have done.

The new, expanded interactive, which we’re preparing for an autumn launch, overcomes these shortfalls with a much wider geographical remit and some ideas on critical topics such as the public commemoration of war. I hope that it represents a solid attempt to show the history that’s ubiquitous around us and to engage more crisply – albeit in a prècised way – with the sort of heritage debates that frequently emerge into the public eye. Do by all means have a look at the interactive now, but also remember to check back (the link will be the same) to see how it’s altered. 

Taking it further

If this blog has interested you, the following resources from the Open University should also appeal:

High Street History
Explore the hidden corners of your high street and see how history is buried in the everyday environment with our interactive high street history feature.

Heritage, whose heritage?
Who decides what should be preserved from the past as our heritage? Who is this heritage for and how should it be presented and explained? How can I engage actively with my heritage and have an impact on it? This course endeavours to answer these questions and to engage with current debates on the preservation of the past.

Cities and Technology: From Babylon to Singapore
This very wide-ranging course uncovers the interactions between technological development and the growth of urban living from the ancient world through to the present day. It scrutinises in detail the applications of major technologies – in particular building construction, transport systems, energy sources, and communications. It is designed to develop critical skills such as comparative analysis and the use of historical models of urban development.

Commemoration and history
Go to Open Learn, our selection of free-to-use educational material online. This link offers you a chance to explore debates over the public commemoration of war.

History in decay
A previous blog examines the issue of history’s presence in the physical fabric of urban life from a somewhat different perspective.

About the author

Dr Stuart Mitchell has spent seventeen years teaching history in higher education - the last fifteen of which have been with the Open University, amongst other institutions. Currently, he is working on the new history MA, and tutors on Exploring History: Medieval to Modern (A200) and Total War and Social Change (AA312). He also serves as the university's academic consultant on the BBC television programme, Timewatch. His first book, The Brief and Turbulent Life of Modernising Conservatism, was published in 2006.

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Summer holidays abroad often provide – amongst other things - an opportunity to encounter religious and cultural traditions different from one’s own. This is the Orthodox monastery at Voroneþ, one of a number of Romanian monasteries that I’ve been able to visit in recent days.

Vorovet monastery
[image by Melanie J Wright © copyright Melanie J Wright]

The richly painted frescoes have received international recognition in the form of UNESCO World Heritage Site status. To travelers from England, they are particularly striking: the typical parish church here is much plainer, reflecting a Protestant (especially Puritan) Christian criticism of images and ornaments as obstacles to true spirituality. Voroneþ is a visible reminder of the quite different attitudes towards visual culture that characterize Orthodox Christianity. For Orthodox Christians, there is a strong and positive relationship between the spiritual and material realms: the beauty of these frescoes enhances, rather than detracts from, their ability to instruct and elevate. Jesus, Mary, and the Saints are depicted gazing out from the picture, inviting us into a prayerful relationship.

An icon corner.
[image by Melanie J Wright © copyright Melanie J Wright]

Orthodox Christians don’t worship images themselves, but rather the subjects they depict. This is why frescoes and other religious images or icons are two-dimensional - the flatness serves as a reminder that it is a representation, minimizing the potential for idolatrous worship of the image itself. This is also one reason for the many other rules and conventions that govern the painting of frescoes and, to an even greater extent, the painting of icons, like the ones in this Icon Corner in a Romanian Orthodox home.

Detail of the icon.
[image by Melanie J Wright © copyright Melanie J Wright]

From a religious studies perspective, visual culture like this provides an important avenue into understanding a particular kind of religiosity. No study of Orthodox Christian devotion can ignore its iconographical tradition. Images also offer - despite the seemingly ‘timeless’ quality of some religious art - important keys to the political and other factors that influence religious expression. Tradition has it that this monastery was built in 1488 by the Moldavian Prince Stephen the Great, who had defeated the Ottoman Turks after taking advice from a Voronet monk, Daniel the Hermit. Amidst the frescoes, the earthly triumph of the Christian Prince is recapitulated on the visual-spiritual plane. In this image-detail from the west wall, Moses preaches to Turks and Jews, who are shown amongst the ranks of sinners awaiting their fate at the Last Judgement.

Taking it further

Orthodox Christianity, and the material and visual culture dimensions of a range of religious traditions, are explored in the Open University course Introducing Religions

Discover more on religion from Open2

On Saturday 5 July the UK will celebrate the establishment of the NHS, arguably one of the greatest British achievements of the post-war years. Politicians, the media, and of course, the health services are celebrating this landmark achievement, reflecting on the history of the NHS and also looking forward to the challenges facing this very British institution.

The NHS was the brain child of Aneurin Bevan and drew upon his experience of the medical aid scheme offered in Tredegar in South Wales by the major employer in the town, the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company. Bevan became minister for healthcare and housing under Clement Attlee’s post-war government and used this opportunity to radically restructure medical care, ensuring that it was free at the point of delivery for all citizens, irrespective of their ability to pay. It has become one of the hallmarks of British identity, summoning up what the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown referred to on January 14, 2006 in his speech to the Fabian Society as 'one of the great British institutions – what 90 per cent of British people think portrays a positive symbol of the real Britain – founded on the core value of fairness that all should have access to health care founded on need not ability to pay.’

Aneurin Bevan.
[image © copyright BBC]

Since the inception of the National Health Service, migrant doctors have been seen as an integral but devalued part of the health workforce. These doctors were necessary for its operation, providing a mobile army of labour in the lower rungs of a pyramidal medical hierarchy, ensuring that UK doctors at the apex did not have to compete too much for pickings from the much diminished private sector. Overseas qualified doctors were provided training in the health service in return for meeting the health service requirements of the population. They were, however, systematically disadvantaged in terms of access to jobs, career mobility, the places where they found employment and the specialties they could occupy. They have come to be called ‘sepoys’ and ‘indentured labour’ pinpointing the situations of trained migrant doctors and the organization employing them. Disproportionately represented in training posts and in non-career grade posts they have, however, been a backbone for the development of this very British institution. Thus, in 2003, only 17 per cent of South-Asian doctors were consultants compared with 42 per cent of white doctors, which provides some evidence that migrant doctors from South-Asia continued into the present century to find their careers limited by the hierarchical nature of the NHS.

But one of the specialties where they have found a home and established a niche is geriatric medicine, a specialty that too was born in 1948. Marjory Warren, often considered the “mother of geriatrics” established the first geriatric unit in the UK, where older patients were admitted, rehabilitated and sent home. This was an innovation in elderly care at that time. Before the establishment of the NHS doctors had provided free medical service to support the charity hospitals but had earned substantial incomes, on the whole, through private practice. After the establishment of the NHS and the amalgamation of most existing hospitals, including the workhouses, into the national provision, doctors’ salaries were paid for out of the national taxation system and there was some resistance to taking over the regular care of elderly frail people. Geriatrics became associated with the wider disdain given to its clientele, older people. As such it became a ‘Cinderella specialty’, a disregarded area of healthcare serving the needs of one of the least regarded groups of patients. However, the work of a few pioneers such as Marjory Warren, slowly changed the nature of healthcare for old people with the development of acute care for older people and its own subspecialisms. It began to offer a career trajectory and eventually became what it is today, the second largest specialty with just under 900 consultants in hospitals. As we enter an ageing society, this development of geriatrics within the NHS is set to continue.

Silhouette of elderly man in wheelchair.
[image © copyright BBC]

In part responding to the dire medical neglect of older people within the NHS hospital system and in part to government and management pressure to improve bed occupancy figures, geriatric medicine grew rapidly, to large extent depending on recruits from overseas for its expansion. But this 'Cinderella specialty' status also gave room for overseas trained doctors who found their own opportunities for career growth to find a home. They too became pioneers in this discipline, shaping the nature of geriatric care today. It came to be a field where South Asians could find jobs so that 22 per cent of all geriatric consultants appointed between 1964 and 2001 were non-white and had trained outside the UK, compared to 14.1 per cent of all consultants in the NHS.

These doctors felt drawn to the UK, rather than the USA, because in South Asia they were already part of a socio-cognitive community for whom markers of participation in the UK labour market were central to notions of career progression. Migration to the UK for the purpose of training, gaining membership of prestigious UK Royal Colleges (MRCP etc) has long been embedded in South Asian doctors’ professional cultures.

For many doctors, their lecturers in medical school had undergone some form of training in the UK and that upgrading and validating skills through training at one of the UK royal colleges was seen as crucial to being recognized as a good doctor. Thus, the doctors’ mobility was already embedded in a network of professional development which valued temporary movement to the UK. Moreover, at least in medicine, the power of empire continued to be forceful as medical practice and qualifications were very much influenced by regulating bodies and by professional organizations, located in the metropolis. Doctors were thus already in some ways part of a professional community where migration to the UK was seen as part of career progression.

As the country is poised to celebrate, and rightly, the establishment of one of the most remarkable institutions of twentieth century UK, it is also worth remembering and commemorating the twists of history that led to the development of geriatrics and the role of overseas qualified doctors therein.

For details of a project exploring the experiences of South Asian geriatricians, visit Overeseas-trained doctors and the development of geriatric medicine.

Take it further

Read more about the birth of the Welfare State

Explore the NHS with Open2

The NHS governance project

About the author

Parvati Raghuram is Lecturer in Geography at the Open University. Her research interests focus on the ways in which the mobility, of individuals, goods and of ideas is reshaping the world.

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