English Cathedrals

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Andrews]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord and to congratulate him on securing the debate. He has been an amazingly effective champion for aspects of our heritage. I very much welcome what he said today and am grateful for the generous remarks he made both about English Heritage and my stewardship of it. I very much endorse what he asked the Minister for; it is not easy for us to ask in our own name for additional funding. To make such a case is commendable because English Heritage is known to have world-class expertise and judgment in these affairs. If the House will allow me, I will talk a little about our work in respect of cathedrals. Of course, I declare my interest as chair.

It is significant that the idea of the cathedral has a much wider currency than the notion of a building or even of one faith. When we say that something is cathedral-like we mean that it is of extraordinary scale and splendour. It makes us wonder in awe at how it was constructed and by whom. When we see the traces of those early and brilliant builders, designers and engineers, we understand that both faith and genius transcend time. These places are indeed held in trust for ever and for everyone, so they obviously occupy the pinnacle of our work at English Heritage in many different ways. It is a privilege for me, as chair of English Heritage, to have the opportunity to visit so many, and to do so in the company of the people who love, cherish and know more about them: the deans, the conservation architects, the craftspeople, and indeed people from English Heritage itself, who are very fine historians. When I visit them I also get a sense of the challenges that they face, and the ambitions that they hold for the future. In his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, displayed a wonderful balance between celebration and concern about the sorts of issues that cathedrals now face, and the choices before them; choices that include opening the doors ever wider to more diverse, more challenged communities, and the responsibility for those communities that cathedrals have held over the centuries.

In my excursions I go to some very high places, to see for myself the work that is being done on the exteriors of cathedrals. The other day I was clinging on to the Norman ironwork on the great Norman windows of Canterbury Cathedral. When I managed to get down from the scaffolding I went down to the workshops to see how the glass is being conserved, and saw the extraordinary delicacy of the work being done. I also recently crawled over the roof over the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey and saw how the Victorian engineers had tried very hard to improve on what their medieval predecessors had done, and how they had found that the engineering genius of the medieval craftsmen was in some ways so much superior to their own. It is wonderful that we maintain those traditions of celebrating in stone the work of the craftsman. On the Chapter House finial you will now find the faces of the modern stonemasons who did the work—including a Sikh, who led the team—looking very sternly up Whitehall.

The work of restoration and repair—conservation of brick, glass, wood, paintings, silver and so much else—is endless and expensive. The good news is that our cathedrals, due to the loving care and craftsmanship of which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has spoken, have never been in better shape. That makes the scale of the challenge for the future rather immense. The story spans two decades, from the first fabric survey that English Heritage did in 1991, which revealed that £164 million needed to be spent on repair and rescue over the next decade, to our updating survey in 2009, which was repeated in partnership with the Association of English Cathedrals and the Catholic Church’s Patrimony Committee. In 1991, when we did the work, it was perfectly clear that many cathedrals, as measured against our buildings at risk register, were classified as being at risk of loss of their historic fabric—in short, they were buildings at risk. In 2009, the survey revealed that the overall state of repair had improved dramatically.

How had this been done? Well, of course it has taken a great deal of money, and I will give your Lordships some figures. However, it has also required a great deal of partnership and focus to address what needed doing after the alarming diagnosis in 1991. Funding was then made available from the Government, with which English Heritage constructed a dedicated grant scheme, and that ran until the last offers were made in 2009-10. Grants worth £48.6 million were made available to 518 cathedrals. Indeed, five cathedrals, which presented the greatest challenges—Salisbury, Lincoln, Ely, Worcester and Liverpool—received almost £20 million. The partners in this massive effort were the Wolfson Foundation, which helped us toward the end of the scheme, and of course, the Heritage Lottery Fund, which gave £45 million to over 100 cathedrals.

We are, therefore, genuinely all in this together. I pay tribute to the Cathedrals and Church Buildings Division of the Church of England—and in particular to Janet Gough—for the partnerships that it has brokered with partners such as the Wolfson Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and others in order to finance the Cathedral Fabric Repair Fund.

We have done different things. We at English Heritage address the urgent repairs: the high level stonework, the roofing and rainwater goods. It is not glamorous work, but my word, it is very important, because without that, nothing else can be achieved. Many of the Heritage Lottery Fund projects have supported not only conservation, but wider public access, and the enjoyment and understanding of our cathedrals. For example, £10.5 million went to the York Minster Revealed project, which is not only securing the great east window, but is showing every visitor who is interested how glass is conserved, £2 million went to restore Birmingham’s cathedral graveyard to its 18th century design and Durham cathedral has received a first stage pass to celebrate the Venerable Bede and the arrival of the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Where are we now? The 2009 survey revealed that there had been dramatic improvements, but that another £110 million was necessary over the new decade for ongoing care and maintenance. For example, £63 million was necessary for just five cathedrals: Canterbury, Chichester, Lincoln, Salisbury and York. English Heritage continues to be engaged with Lincoln because of the scale of the challenge. We have recently given £750,000. However, that grant has finished and we have turned our focus to areas of equal concern to the Anglican church and other faiths—parish churches and churches in the community—and the enormous challenge there, and I am pleased to say that Lincoln is now the only cathedral on the risk register.

So much has depended upon the skill and craftsmanship of the people at work. I have the pleasure of seeing it regularly. For example, in Hereford, in a lean-to shed, three apprentices—apprentices are often female these days, and often young—working just as the medieval stone masons did, carve and do the facing work in front of all the visitors who cross the precinct. It is indeed a medieval scene. These skills are being inspired and nurtured by our cathedrals, and I am delighted to say that there are increasing numbers of schemes for training and recognising these crafts because historic building skills do not belong in the past. They have as much potential for growth and are as much of an assistance to our economy and to the creation of jobs as many of our other building crafts. That is where cathedrals fit in to the national economic challenge. They are places of prayer and watchfulness, but they are also places capable of generating huge prosperity. In 2004, it was estimated that their economic impact was about £150 million.

Facing these future challenges is the way in which English Heritage wants to engage with cathedrals. Our immediate responsibility is for the protection of the fabric, hence our concern about metal theft and the guidance we have produced for cathedrals and places of worship on how to tackle it, our concern about the impact of VAT, which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, described very concisely and well, and our continuing concern with VAT. This is not a problem that is going to go away, particularly in relation to charities that are looking after listed buildings with very little support and scope and even to owners of historic homes.

We also work with cathedrals to help them realise their highest ambitions for the future. For example, our work Creativity and Care celebrated Michael Hopkin’s magnificent extension to Norwich Cathedral, but it also points out that the mundane can be made beautiful: for example, the new fire doors at Winchester Cathedral. The challenge to every cathedral today is to remake itself as the heart and spirit of the community and to provide the cafes, lavatories, bookshops and educational spaces that enable people to feel that they belong there and understand the place and to become what Frank Field called,

“wise and willing midwives to future glories”.

We celebrated that in Creativity and Care. I remember the magnificent Tom Denny windows in Hereford Cathedral and the magnificent new font in Salisbury Cathedral. Our funding may not be what it was, but our spirit is as buoyant and passionate as ever about pursuing the partnership that cathedrals want from English Heritage, and we are happy and proud to provide it.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the timing is tight on speeches in this debate, so I would be very grateful if noble Lords will restrict their comments to 10 minutes.