Living Heritage
Mike Corbishley explains how English Heritage, custodian of much of the best of England’s built historical environment, makes the past accessible to young minds
Colchester primary school. Pupils and staff worked with English Heritage Education and the Colchester Archaeological Trust to discover their local Roman heritage. Through the enthusiasm of an individual archaeologist who brought real Roman pottery into school, members of this class were able to take themselves back to the past.
But it is not always possible to have someone or something interact with a child on a one-to-one level. Usually there is physical barrier that stands between us and the evidence for the past. Visitors are rarely able to touch actual objects from the past. A barrier often exists simply because we rarely see a complete object or site. Visitors to ancient sites, more often than not, are presented with only a small part of what was once there - the east wall of a priory church or the foundations of a Roman villa, for example. Visitors want to know the whole of what was once there and, increasingly, want to know how we know what we claim to know about the past.
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