About This Event
In 1978, eight years before Ironbridge, Wieliczka Salt Mines in Poland became the first industrial World Heritage Site. There have been many more since then, notably in the UK where the 1999 Tentative List began the process of ensuring that the UK’s globally significant industrial heritage was adequately represented on the World stage. The UK now has many industrial World Heritage sites including Ironbridge Gorge, Derwent Valley Mills, Blaenavon Industrial Landscape and The Forth Bridge, and most recently the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales.
Industrial Heritage brings with it unique challenges which can include intimidating scale, toxic environmental legacies and difficult, contested histories. At the same time, it can be awe-inspiring and deeply motivating, and through education has the potential to engage with audiences that are often marginalised and isolated from conventional cultural activity. Equally, there is a strong and hugely important relationship between tangible and intangible heritage that sits at the heart of industrial heritage, further enhancing its relevance and value, especially in the context of UNESCO’s core principles of education, science and culture.
This lecture will explore a range of industrial World Heritage Sites in the UK and across the world, covering early inscriptions and more recent additions to UNESCO’s List. Some of these sites were incredibly ambitious nominations, and there are lessons to be learned from their achievements and the management regimes that have ensued.
Speaker: Dr Miles Oglethorpe
This ICOMOS World Heritage Day lecture will be delivered by Dr Miles Oglethorpe, former Head of Industrial Heritage at Historic Environment Scotland and President of TICCIH (The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage) since 2018.
A graduate of Durham University, Dr Oglethorpe completed his PhD at the University of Glasgow, subsequently moving to Strathclyde University’s Scottish Industrial Archaeology Survey Unit in 1983. In 1985 he joined the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland in Edinburgh, from where he moved to Historic Scotland (later Historic Environment Scotland) in 2007.
He continues to work with international partners on industrial heritage, notably in Norway, Poland, Czechia, the Middle East, Japan, and Southeast Asia, and with Mark Watson, led the team responsible for preparing the successful World Heritage nomination for the Forth Bridge (inscribed in 2015). He also continues to support ICOMOS’s World Heritage Bureau in relation to World Heritage assessments.
Throughout his career he has edited, authored and co-authored books and papers relating to industrial heritage, and energy in particular. His book 'Scottish Collieries: An Inventory of the Scottish Coal Industry in the Nationalised Era' (2006) contains the fruits of many years’ work on Scotland’s coal industry. He also helped set up 'Capturing the Energy', an initiative established by the University of Aberdeen, Oil & Gas UK, TOTAL and other partners which aims to ensure the achievements of the UK’s offshore oil and gas industries are properly recorded and understood.
The event will be Chaired by Ian George, Chair of the ICOMOS-UK Industrial Heritage Working Group and Historic Places Manager at Lincolnshire County Council.
Join us for this lecture that will explore international Industrial Heritage to celebrate World Heritage Day!
