More Than Just a Field
The state of Britain’s historic battlefields often compares poorly with that of other countries. Things are changing, says Julian Humphrys.
The assistant in the tourist information centre seemed surprised that I wanted to visit his local battlefield. ‘There’s nothing to see, it’s just a field’, he said. It was hardly a promising start to my career as development officer of the Battlefields Trust, the UK charity dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Britain’s battlefields. Fortunately, in the three years since, I have found that while this view persists in some quarters there does now seem to be a greater recognition that the nation’s sites of conflict are much more than ‘just fields’. Take Historic Scotland’s introduction to its new inventory of battlefields: