By Anthony Coulls, with contributions from Colin Divall and Robert Lee, 1999

Full Text in one PDF File

Railways – an historical introduction

The possibility of designating industrial places as World Heritage Sites has always been implicit in the World Heritage Convention but it is only recently that systematic attention has been given to the task of identifying worthy locations. Any such site must, of course, meet the fundamental criteria specified in the Convention. Yet the particular and peculiar characteristics of industrial sites mean that these criteria need to be developed and refined before they can be of practical use to the World Heritage Committee in the exercise of its powers. This study develops such criteria and illustrates their applicability with regard to just one kind of industrial site, the railway.

What is a railway? According to Dr Michael J T Lewis, the eminent scholar of early railways, it is ‘a prepared track which so guides the wheels of the vehicles running on it that they cannot leave the track’ (Lewis 1974). This definition has the merit of technical simplicity and thus embraces many kinds of transport systems apart from those conventionally known as railways; wheels need not be a feature. But for our purposes the real advantage of the definition is that in referring to aprepared track it draws attention to the fact that railways are built with a specific purpose in mind. That purpose may vary from system to system, but the principle remains the same – a railway is a linear transport feature, the rest is detail.

By the standards of most modern industries railways have unusually deep historical roots. Railways that fit Lewis’s definition existed as far back as the 6th century BC; the Greek Diolkos was a railway with a track made from stone, 6km in length across the Peloponnese, used for transporting ships until the 9th century AD – an extraordinarily long period. Works such as Agricola’s De Re Metallica date the extensive use of railways with wooden rails and vehicles to around the 15th century. Although of great technical interest, individual systems had short lives and were of no significance as anything other than adjuncts to the mining industries. By the 18th century, however, wooden railways began to be used for larger loads and more diverse purposes. Railways developed from mine tracks where people pushed four-wheel trucks of coal, stone, or ore into longer and more complex lines with large wagons and horse haulage. Late in the same century, the change was made in many places to iron rails and wheels. Wooden and stone railways did not immediately disappear, however; indeed, in Britain, the Hay Tor Tramroad was built with stone ‘rails’ at the late date of 1820.

Leaving aside these very early lines, we can date the mechanically worked railway to the first two decades of 19th century England and Wales. These short isolated routes, just a few miles (or kilometres) long, were still usually conceived, financed, built, and operated with the needs of a small number of extractive and primary industries in mind. They shared little beyond a very basic technical similarity with today’s railways. However, they rapidly developed in length, volume of traffic, technical sophistication, and financial and managerial requirements. Most historians agree that with the opening in 1830 of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in the north-west of England, the prototype of the ‘modern railway’ had arrived: a combination of specialized track, the accommodation of public traffic, the conveyance of passengers as well as freight, mechanical traction, and some measure of public control (Robbins 1998). Conceived principally as a competitor to the carriage of goods by canal, the line tapped a hitherto unsuspected demand for passenger travel. Profits were very considerable and in the generally vibrant economic conditions of the world’s first industrial nation, the railway swept all before it as a means of inland transport over distances of any length. By 1850, Britain enjoyed the benefits of a national network linking most of the centres of population and industry. British engineers rapidly gained employment across Europe, building many of the continent’s earliest and most important railways (Gourvish 1996; Channon 1996; Ambler 1999). By 1907 there were about 200,000 miles (320,000km) of railways in Europe (Robbins 1998).

The British monopoly on railways was to be short-lived. Even as the Liverpool & Manchester was being built, entrepreneurs in the United States were planning the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, an enterprise on quite a different scale (Stover 1997; Vance 1995; Dilts 1993). Nearly 400 miles (640km) long, the line was promoted by mercantile interests as a way of maintaining the Maryland port’s trade with the mid west, a particular instance of a more general motivation that was to drive much of the early railroad development on the eastern seaboard of the USA. Mercantile rivalries produced a ‘system’ that was far from perfect; breaks of gauge, deliberately engineered to prevent through-running from the lines of one port on to those of another, survived until at least 1900. By 1907, however, there were about 237,000 miles (379,000km) of route in the USA, making it by far the largest single network of railways in the world (Robbins 1998).

The place of the railway in the history of industrialization is assured. Economic historians might disagree over the precise contribution that railways made to economic growth in the industrializing nations of the 19th century, but all recognize the steam railways’ critical role as the dominant form of inland transport for any but the shortest of journeys (eg Szostak 1991; Ville 1990). Railways rapidly developed as the largest and most complex examples of socio-technical systems that the world had known: the political, financial, business, and managerial structures that developed to meet their novel requirements later influenced the growth of large-scale corporate business, particularly – but by no means exclusively – in the USA (Dobbin 1994; Chandler 1990) The railways’ advantages of speed, capacity, and economy made them more than mere instruments of industrial and business development, however. Culturally their impact was huge. In particular the sensibilities of societies that had never known travel at speeds above that of a galloping horse were irrevocably changed by the coming of steam locomotion. In Europe and the USA, the railway came rapidly to stand at the very focus of that mixed feeling of awe, wonderment and apprehension that historians have called the ‘technological sublime’ (Nye 1994; Wosk 1992; Danley & Marx 1990; Schivelbusch 1986).

The railways’ influence was not only felt in those countries that industrialized first. By the 1850s the cutting edge had spread well beyond Europe and even the USA. Railway construction began in the colonies of the European powers and the South American republics, with the first lines opening in Brazil and Chile (1852), Argentina (1857), India (1853), Java (1864), and Australia (1854). The Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, started in 1852 and intended to link the Atlantic seaboard with the Great Lakes, was at the time the longest railway planned in the world. Its promoters combined politics and economics in their reckoning: the line was built with the combined intention of binding the eastern Canadian provinces together economically and of reducing the influence of the USA (Lee 1998; Legget 1973). The construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway at the end of the 19th century provided a similar national link for Russia. By 1907, there were 168,000 miles (268,800km) of railway outside Europe and the USA, built at a cost of nearly GB£1.5 billion (Robbins 1998).

All of these railways were part of a wider, and much larger and more complex phenomenon, namely the spread, prior to World War I, of European imperialism around much of the world. Railways were not the only technology to further the process of imperialism: the steamship, the telegraph, and new medicines such as quinine were also important. However, railway building and imperialism were, quite simply, interdependent. Railways often transformed the way in which an imperial power exploited the resources of a colony – for instance, by opening up a hinterland – and even, according to some historians, permitted the development of a new kind of ‘informal’ or ‘railway’ imperialism in which the struggle for explicit political control was relinquished in favour of more subtle kinds of influence (Davis and Wilburn 1991). Even those countries which escaped direct rule from Europe – Latin America, the Ottoman Empire, China, Japan, and Thailand – fell in varying degrees under the economic and political domination of the occidental powers. The projection of the trans-Siberian railway to the Pacific, for instance, combined with that of the Berlin-Constantinople line to Baghdad, led the European powers to partition the Chinese and Ottoman empires in terms of exclusive railways rights. Imperial strategy in Asia was directly connected with the military, political, and economic balance of power in Europe (Lee 1998).

Imperial penetration had always begun from ports, but until the coming of the railway the influence of the European powers rarely extended far inland. The railway permitted comparatively easy access to the hinterland; imperialists used railways to integrate and annex territory, and to exploit the resources of the regions surrounding the ports they controlled. The obstacles that had to be overcome were varied and often considerable. They might be political – the resistance of traditional élites or the populace, or that of another rival European power, such as the chimerical French threat to British control over the Suez route to the East that led to the construction of the Uganda Railway. Once these challenges had been met, geography often forced civil engineers to scale ever greater heights, both metaphorically and – sometimes – literally. Their engineering feats became all the more impressive as physical and political boundaries were pushed farther back. Tunnels, bridges, viaducts, cuttings, and embankments, all were developed to take the railway into places which previously had been inaccessible to any but the most determined. Whatever the difficulties, or for that matter the degree of success, the aim remained more or less constant: from Manchuria to Argentinian pampas, from the Great Lakes to the African veldt, from Yunnan to the Australian bush, the creation of a hinterland was the chief motivation (Lee 1998).

Colonial railways were thus an essential part of the spread around the world of the economic processes, ideas, and institutions of the European powers: the production of new foodstuffs and raw materials to feed the industries and peoples of the West, new populations to produce them, new patterns of land ownership, and new legal codes to make the conquered lands safe for investment and exploitation. In European-settled parts of the world, most communities desired the coming of railways as the key to prosperity, while every government wanted them for national development. However, railways were expensive, and the direct financial returns in most parts of the world uncertain, even in the longer term. Typically, railways outside Europe and the USA were joint ventures between European private investors and the governments of the host countries which guaranteed a fixed rate of interest on the borrowed capital. Thus many states fell into financial dependence on the European banks and stock exchanges, mortgaging lands and taxes to pay for railways that were costly both to build and to operate. Nor did contemporaries often draw attention to the social and environmental downside of the technological triumph of the world-wide spread of railways: the exploitation of humans and resources to an unprecedented degree. More commonplace was an almost missionary fervour, emphasizing the role of the railway and (European) engineers as harbingers of ‘civilization’ (Lee 1998). Whatever the social and economic benefits that later accrued – and we should not forget those that were difficult, if not impossible, to reckon within the conventional accountancy of the day, such as the provision of the infrastructure of public utilities – the initial cost in human life and misery was all too often appalling high (eg Kerr 1995).

The ‘great’ or ‘golden’ age of railways – in the sense that they virtually monopolized inland transport – was over in most countries by World War I. Certainly by the middle of the 20th century most of the world’s railway network was in place and on the whole the story since then has been one of slow decline, at least in terms of route mileage. Development continues on existing routes, however, and new lines are still built. Perhaps the most notable of these in the last forty years is the Japanese Tokaido line, opened in 1964 for the high-speed Shinkansen. This led the way for other countries to develop fast main lines solely or mainly for the use of express passenger traffic; the French Lignes à Grande Vitesse are excellent examples of this. Not all new construction is of this kind, however: in some parts of the world (China is a good example) it is still considered worthwhile to build conventional railways of a very considerable length in the pursuit of economic development and social change. Virtually all these new systems run on standard gauge (4ft8½in/1435mm) track, and although the materials, traction, and principles of management employed almost invariably differ from those of the pioneering railways, the same basic technical principles look set to take the mechanically worked railway into its third century.

 

 

Railways as World Heritage sites – some theoretical and practical considerations

What makes a railway potentially a World Heritage site? Since all heritage is intimately bound up with the creation of collective identities, be these at the local, the regional, the national, or the global level, it is clearly impossible to expect a single, straightforward answer (Lowenthal 1997). In many countries the railways’ past enjoys a high public profile, reflecting the part that they have come to play in the formation of communal identities over the last 200 years. Indeed, in some parts of the world – Britain is arguably the most extreme example, although the USA is probably not far behind – the level of lay interest in railways is such that the volume of research emanating from this quarter far outweighs that from academic sources. This brings both advantages and disadvantages. Some lay work achieves academic standards of scholarship, and more generally there is an enthusiastic commitment to search out the kind of detail which can prove useful in developing a more rounded appreciation of particular railways or sites. Less positively, lay enthusiasms are sometimes so passionate that it can be very difficult to reconcile conflicting points of view over the merits of locations that might be thought worthy of designation as World Heritage sites.

Nevertheless, the fundamental criteria set out in the World Heritage Convention must provide the basic tools for any study that hopes to achieve consensus. The intention here is to demonstrate that these basic criteria can be developed in ways that will enable the World Heritage Committee to come to a reasoned judgement on those railways and related sites nominated for designation by the national parties to the Convention. We also offer some illustrative examples of the relevance and applicability of our proposed criteria.

Our fundamental assumption – and it is one that is shared by virtually all those who have commented on our proposals – is also one common to all modern historiography of large-scale technologies: that railways are above all socio-technical systems in which it is ultimately impossible to separate out the ‘social’ and ‘technical’ aspects. While it may prove desirable, or indeed necessary, to do so for analytical purposes, a proper appreciation of the historical significance of any particular railway will only be gained by seeing it in the round; as both the product of, and an influence on, wider social circumstances.

This perspective stands in sharp contrast to that of many railway enthusiasts or ‘railfans,’ who too often sees locomotion as being all important – much being made of steam operation in particular – while the specialist infrastructure, the social organization, and the wider historical context of railways’ development are given less weight than they deserve. There is also the practical difficulty that in several countries locomotives and rolling stock have been designated as national monuments. The designation of such items as World Heritage sites is probably inappropriate, not least because of the likelihood of an exceedingly large number of nominations. Permitting such classes of objects for designation would also raise many further issues, not least those of ownership and access, which it is impossible to address in this study. The criteria developed here are intended partly to correct such ‘lococentrism,’ facilitating the undertaking of more detailed studies that will comprehend individual railways as fully contextualized sites.

The history of railways has long been the subject of comparatively disinterested academic enquiry, resulting in a body of knowledge which comprehends the rich diversity of railway development around the world. It is by reference to this stock of work – incomplete or inadequate though it might be with regard to certain periods, subjects, or geographical areas – that there is the best opportunity of building consensus around a set of criteria for World Heritage listing. Such criteria must enable the universal elements of the world-wide evolution of railways to be identified. Once agreed, these criteria may be used by the World Heritage Committee to establish the ground rules for the preparation of the detailed studies of individual sites that the nominating parties must submit. We hope, too, that the criteria will assist the Committee in coming to its own views on the merits of particular locations.

____________________________

This study is concerned with the development of criteria for World Heritage status that can be applied to surviving routes (whether or not they are still operating as railways) and other features on the ground that can either be followed or visited, at least in part. Some overlap with other industrial sites and transport systems will be inevitable. The routes of railways, canals and roads were often physically linked. Railway companies frequently came to own canals, while the transfer of technologies between the different modes occurred regularly, especially during the construction phase: railway lines were built by teams of men known in Britain and elsewhere as ‘navvies’ – derived from the name ‘navigator’ that groups of labourers acquired while building inland waterways. Railway workshops benefited from advances in other industries, and in turn were able to influence other transport technologies through the development of the machines and rolling stock they produced. Similarly, railway technologies were transferred across the world. The first steam locomotive in the USA was built in Stourbridge in Britain in 1829. The Americans then adapted the technology to their own circumstances. This process was repeated between various countries over the next century or so, and has now come full circle, with Japan leading the development of high-speed trains (the Shinkansen) and Europeans following suit in the last thirty years.

The remains of early railways – that is to say, those which date from before about 1830 – will require particular consideration by the Committee. They deserve recognition as precursors of the later, more influential systems, but there is a real danger that important sites will be missed as our understanding of the international significance of these lines and their remnants is not, with one or two exceptions, as deep as it might be. They should also be taken as special cases because their remains are often quite different from those of railways of more recent construction, tending to have more in common with sites of considerable antiquity. This is true of some of the very early mine railways and associated equipment, some of which is now preserved in museums; unfortunately, having been taken out of place and context this cannot now qualify for World Heritage status. But even if they do not score particularly highly according to the general criteria proposed here, some early railway sites are surely worthy of consideration on other grounds. For example, civil engineering from the classical period helped the builders of the Causey Arch on the Tanfield Waggonway in County Durham (England). No span as large as this had ever been constructed in 1727, so the builders drew on examples from the ancient world to see how it might be done. One could argue that the resulting structure, demonstrating as it did the practicality of large-scale masonry arches, was as significant for the subsequent course of the history of inland transport in general (canals and roads as well as railways) as was, say, Coalbrookdale and the Ironbridge Gorge for industrial history.

There are other issues, particularly those of authenticity and conservation, which clearly must be addressed by the World Heritage Committee but which we do not attempt to deal with in any depth here, chiefly because they do not raise questions that are fundamentally different from those involved in any number of other areas of heritage (Burman 1997). No operating railway can be wholly authentic from a strictly historical point of view; items wear out and are replaced, methods of organization and operating are adapted to changing circumstances. However, arguably continuity through change is part of what makes a railway landscape or location: railways are by their very nature evolving socio-technical systems. Indeed, the drive to modernize and become more efficient appears to be an imperative of modern railway management world-wide. The key challenge is to identify just what it is about a railway location that makes it worthy of World Heritage status. A focus on the purely physical aspects of structures or technologies arguably makes it more likely that a site will be deemed ‘inauthentic’ as modernization proceeds than if equal (or greater) weight is given to the historical continuity of a railway’s socio-economic functions. This is not an argument for any weakening of the imperative of good management of those historic features which do remain. Co-operation between railway operators and conservation bodies can make sensitive development possible and ensure that the integrity of sites is maintained, as the example of the British network over the last two decades shows (Burman & Stratton 1997). It is, we suggest, preferable to have a viable and useful railway rather than one which faces an uncertain future.

 

 

The proposed criteria for
internationally significant railways

The following criteria essay a means of identifying the universal aspects of the very diverse development of railways around the globe. They are derived from four principal sources:

1. the consensus emerging among parties interested in the wider issues of the designation of industrial sites and locations, particularly as recorded in the earlier studies on canals and bridges undertaken for the World Heritage Committee;
2. the views of those attending an international conference held in March 1998 at the National Railway Museum, York (UK);
3. the opinions of those correspondents who were unable to attend in person (lists of those within the second and third categories are given in the Appendix);
4. our own, imperfect understanding of the current state of knowledge of railway history internationally.

The proposals are not listed in any particular order of merit: indeed, it will be apparent from our earlier comments that no such ranking would be appropriate

CRITERION 1: A creative work indicative of genius

Something like this criterion has long been applied in the informal ranking of railways around the world. It fits well with the long-standing approach to history that seeks to identify ‘Great Men’; railways are technical systems designed and built by engineers, therefore it should be possible to identify the world’s great railways with the great engineers.

Understood in this way the criterion is most easily applied to railways whose chief engineers were highly innovative in their approach and treatment of difficulties; the Great Western Railway under the Englishman Isambard Kingdom Brunel, for example, or the spectacular Semmering Railway through the high Alps, built by the Austrian Karl Ritter von Ghega.

Modern scholarship suggests that the criterion should be interpreted more widely, however. Biographers’ and historians’ perceptions of the great engineers have shifted quite markedly in recent years: the kind of heroic perspective favoured, for example, by the 19th century English writer Samuel Smiles is no longer regarded as adequate. While not wishing to deny the great skills and abilities of individual engineers such as Brunel or the Stephensons, scholars tend to stress the co-operative nature of railway building (Jarvis 1994). Perhaps, then, sites should be taken as memorials not only to the engineers ultimately responsible for their design and construction but also all those others – many of whom will never be known – with a hand in bringing them to completion. Moreover, with a highly complex socio-technical system like a railway, many skills and abilities in addition to those of the engineer were required. Should we not, for instance, look for genius in the financing and managerial organization of railways? In this way sites could come to symbolize the wider societies and cultures that gave them birth.

CRITERION 2: The influence of, and on, innovative technology

The primary purpose of a railway is to provide a transport service for goods or passengers. But technology serves a critical role in all of this, and thus it is proper that the role of innovative technologies should be acknowledged in any set of criteria for World Heritage status.

The technology of the railway includes its course – the trackbed, embankments and cuttings, engineering and architectural structures, and the constructional methods employed. The transfer of technologies from and to other industries and transport modes should also be borne in mind, particularly the imaginative application of new materials and constructional techniques, such as those associated with the move from iron to steel from the 1860s, and experimentation with structural concrete towards the end of the 19th century. Likewise, while early railways were built largely by hand, mechanization was rapidly introduced, particularly in those countries such as the USA where labour was in short supply. The mechanical technologies of locomotives and rolling stock (passenger coaches and goods vehicles) are just as relevant, although less easily acknowledged in any study that focuses on fixed sites and locations. Nevertheless, places relating to the construction and maintenance of vehicles may be considered. Fixed motive power in the form of winding engines or water balances may also be relevant: for example, that important English railway, the Stockton & Darlington, originally used stationary haulage engines where the gradient was thought too steep for locomotives.

The criterion of innovative technology may apply to different types and periods of railway development. International transfers of ideas took place very early in the history of the mechanically worked railway. Early Blenkinsop and Murray locomotives from Britain were exported and used in Germany in the 1810s. Similarly, the Festiniog Railway in Wales pioneered the use of steam power on narrow (less than 4ft8½in or 1435mm) gauge in the 1860s. The use of a gauge of 2ft (600mm) meant that it was possible to construct a railway more cheaply and in more inhospitable terrain than might otherwise have been the case. Many engineers from overseas were inspired by what they saw and took ideas and principles away with them to use in their own countries: the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway in India tackled mountainous country in much the same way as the Festiniog did. International transfers were a feature of much later periods as well. In this century, for instance, the fundamental principles of the Japanese Shinkansen have been applied to European high-speed operations.

Technical matters always need to be taken in context. Modern historiography of technology typically requires an interdisciplinary approach: social, economic, environmental, and political factors among others influenced technical change and development on the railways (eg Rosenberg & Vincenti 1978). To exclude history from technology (or for that matter technology from history) is to miss a vital part of the story: technical change has both informed, and been informed by, social and economic change around the globe.

CRITERION 3: Outstanding or typical example

There is a place for the designation of sites either because they have always been outstanding in some regard or because, although once commonplace or typical, they have become special simply by virtue of their survival. Particular historical events and associations will help with the identification of outstanding locations: originality and authenticity might be factors justifying the designation of railways on the grounds of typicality.

There is a case, for instance, for designating an example of a secondary main line which, although not outstanding according to any of the other criteria, would be of international importance because of its historical integrity – still fulfilling its transport purpose while having an excellent heritage content. The Newcastle & Carlisle Railway in England might fall into this category. Opened in 1836 and still in use, its role as secondary route has helped to ensure the survival of many structures illustrating the line’s development from its earliest days. Similarly, one mountain railway might be selected as typical from among the many in, say, Switzerland and Austria.

Particular structures or locales may also be seen as typical. Something such as a steam-locomotive servicing depot which remains complete with all its infrastructure (water tower, shed, turntable, and fuelling facilities) may be worth designating as a symbol both of the technology of the railway and as a place of work. As such places become much rarer, the precise location of survivors becomes of less importance than the power of what remains on the ground to stand as symbols for what was once commonplace around the world.

Passenger stations are a particularly attractive kind of structure from both perspectives. Yet they are also difficult to assess. There are internationally many fine stations in terms of architecture and historical significance, and it would be very easy to designate a great number (Richards & MacKenzie 1986). Perhaps the best option would be to include large termini and through stations in a separate category of World Heritage sites embracing urban structures in the context of townscapes. Smaller stations, on the other hand, could be considered, where appropriate, as part of the case for a complete railway.

CRITERION 4: Illustrative of economic or social developments

Despite our strictures to the contrary, a case could be made for saying that this is the principal criterion by which sites should be judged. After all, railways were built to perform a transport function, and this basic function has served many political, social, economic, and cultural purposes in addition to fulfilling people’s desires to travel and trade. However, this very diversity brings its own challenges. As we indicated in the introduction to this study, the railways’ influence on social and economic life has not been the same around the world, presenting us with the challenge of identifying just what it is about a particular site that represents a universal experience. The problem is made even more complex by the fact that opinions over the normative value of what the railways enabled could – and still do – differ considerably.

Even if one leaves the problem of these conflicting evaluations to one side, there is the added difficulty that most historians agree that it is extremely difficult to isolate the wider effects of railway development on the complex societies of Europe and North America. Claims that the railways were single-handedly responsible for the take-off of industrialization, for example, simply do not stand up to the rigour of modern scholarship. This does not mean, of course, that railways were irrelevant or unimportant, but it does imply that any claims for the designation of particular sites on the basis of this criterion need to be justified by means of careful studies rather than mere assertion.

The difficulty of assessing the direct social and economic contribution made by railways can be alleviated in the case of one, admittedly somewhat unusual class of settlement, the railway town or locale. These were places that the coming of the railway called directly into being, either for its own purposes such as the development of workshops or by allowing the exploitation of resources that previously had been hampered by poor communications. Places such as Crewe or Swindon in the United Kingdom, or the Eveleigh district of Sydney, New South Wales (Australia), are good examples of the former kind and could be found almost anywhere there were railways. Detailed studies often reveal that railway companies adopted all kinds of policies designed to secure social cohesion among their workers, perhaps by the paternalistic building of housing and other amenities for their workers (eg Drummond 1995). Settlements of the latter type, by contrast, were far more common in North America or those parts of the world that fell under the influence of the imperial powers than they were in Europe.

This criterion has the advantage of admitting for consideration several important types of railway that would rarely qualify on other grounds. Suburban, street (tramways), and underground railways affected the growth and social development of many urban places. The role of railways as lines of communication along which suburban settlement spread is illustrated very well, in Britain at least, by London’s ‘Metroland’ – the developments of the 1920s and 1930s spurred by the Metropolitan Railway. This pattern had earlier been found in many large towns and cities across the world, from the Paris Métro to the overhead urban railways (‘El’s’) of New York, Chicago and elsewhere. Street railways or tramways played a critical role in the development of many major cities, some of which, like Los Angeles, are now almost completely dominated by road transport; perhaps consideration should be given to designating one of the surviving great urban tramways. Even where railways were not critical for the movement of people and goods inside the town or city, the siting of passenger and goods terminals usually had significant and long term consequences for the urban morphology (Bond & Divall 1999).

________________________

None of these criteria can be allowed to stand apart from the others. Since railways are socio-technical systems, all the criteria must be applied to each site that is nominated for World Heritage status. Of course, particular railways will be deemed more significant on certain grounds rather than others. One location might be of great technical significance, another of considerable social or economic value. How then can one weigh the two in the balance? Unfortunately there can be no neat formula: there is – perhaps fortunately – no heritage equivalent of the quantitative approach of, say, cost-benefit analysis. By choosing one railway site as a World Heritage site over another we also choose, in some small way, to make ourselves.

 

The criteria in practice – some railways of note

The railway sites analysed here serve to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed criteria and to show, in outline, the kinds of factor that the World Heritage Committee might consider asking States Parties to the Convention to bear in mind when making their nominations.

Although we have tried to demonstrate the relevance of the proposed criteria to a range of sites, both in terms of geographical spread and type of railway, these brief studies are only illustrative. In particular, the inclusion of any location does not imply that in our opinion it should – or should not – be considered as a World Heritage site. The same applies, of course, to the many potential sites that are not mentioned here. It follows that these studies are listed in no particular rank.

 

Case 1: The Moscow Underground

Urban railways, including tramways or street railways, rank among the least regarded but most significant of locations from a social and economic perspective. This system, described as the ‘Showpiece of the Revolution,’ is the most heavily used underground railway in the world. Planned as a unified whole, unlike those in most other cities, it carries about nine million passengers a day over nearly 200km (125 miles) of track. The first line opened in 1935, and others have followed, all part of a plan to provide an efficient means of moving the people of the vast city of Moscow. Reflecting the political ideology of the time, the Underground was built on a grand scale, so as to be a prestige feature as well as a practical solution to a transport problem. The earlier stations show that no expense was spared on fine design and ornamentation. One writer has described the system as ‘the most beautiful underground railway in the world’ (Nock 1973: 182).

As an outstanding mass transit railway, the Moscow Underground exemplifies the social and economic criterion for World Heritage status. It is also a masterpiece indicative of genius. Here, however, one encounters a problem commonly found with outstanding achievements of modern industrial society: there is no single name which can be picked out as responsible engineer. This need not matter, however, if one accepts that a site or location may reflect the wider cultural context within which it was built. The Moscow Underground is significant partly because it was an elegant solution to a pressing transport problem, relieving the surface transport systems of bus and tram of much of the commuter pressure which had built up as the city expanded. It is also remarkable as a symbol of the modernization of Russia under the Soviet regime (under Tsarist control, plans for an underground had been abandoned in 1900).

The many kilometres of railway follow the historic development of the city, with ten lines radiating out in all directions from the centre and connected on the periphery of the city by a circular route. Although the plan for the system was drawn up as one, the building of the routes took place in stages, each line reflecting the political and ideological development of the Soviet Union. Some have even suggested that the Moscow Underground is the former USSR in microcosm.

Construction involved the use of several unusual and pioneering techniques to overcome a number of geological difficulties. These included such practices as chemically solidifying the earth around the tunnel profile and freezing the ground in order to permit excavation, then lining the tunnel walls with concrete (itself a difficult process as concrete requires a certain amount of warmth to set). Even the removal of the spoil from construction caused problems, and it is no wonder that the first line’s building alone occupied 30,000 men.

The stations are quite unparalleled anywhere in the world. The main objective was to provide friendly and convenient spaces for the public which avoided any suggestion of being ‘underground’ (considering the tyrannical nature of the Stalinist regime there is, to say the least, a considerable historical irony here). No attempt was made to standardize designs, and some highly individual and striking buildings resulted from the ideas of leading Soviet architects. The stations were designed to impress, and they do impress. An air of opulence characterizes the majority of stations, which are far removed from anything which one might find as an underground station elsewhere in the world. With many stations having walls of marble in various hues, glass ceilings, wide platforms, and soft diffused lighting, the Moscow Underground is truly an outstanding example of its type. Compared with other underground systems, it is sui generis, yet for all its grandeur, it is extremely practical and functions well. In addition, partly owing to the Russian practice of shift working, overcrowding is minimal and the vast stations always give the impression of effortlessly absorbing traffic even at the busiest of times. Cleanliness and efficiency continues to be of paramount importance, achieved partly by lavish staffing.

A more beautiful and inspired array of media (architecture, sculpture, painting, and decorative arts) as a vision of functional public space would be hard to find. The Moscow Underground as a whole exemplifies many of the criteria for World Heritage status. The first line, built from 1932 to 1935, is perhaps the single best example. As a high point of the Soviet avant-garde, its combination of modernism and practicality continues to serve the Russian city of Moscow today.

 

 

Case 2: The Semmering Pass, Austria

It was in Europe that railways first began to penetrate really mountainous country. The pioneer mountain railway was, in many respects, the Austrian line over the Semmering Pass built between 1848 and 1854. It also reasonably can be described as the first ‘imperial’ railway, linking as it did the capital of Vienna with Austria’s Italian possessions to the south. Admittedly, though, its function was not to extend the economic and political reach of new and dynamic empires, as the colonial railways built later in the century were, but to prop up a moribund and decaying one.

The Semmering line, engineered by Karl Ritter von Ghega, runs from Gloggnitz to Murzzuschlag, crosses the high Alps in a 42km (26 mile) long section known as the Semmering Pass. It still forms part of the railway from Vienna in Austria to Italy and Slovenia. The Adriatic port of Trieste had special importance as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: since it was the only access the state had to the sea, an efficient railway connection was of the utmost importance. An Imperial Edict for a line over the Semmering was passed in 1844, but the original plans were shelved after doubts over tunnelling. The revolution of 1848 in Vienna changed the political climate and increased pressure for the line’s construction. Designed for locomotive operation throughout, the railway became a prototype for mountainous railways and led the way for others to cross the Alps by rail.

Its civil engineering neatly demonstrates the relevance of the technical criterion for World Heritage status. For example, new techniques had to be developed to cope with the difficult mountainous circumstances when little or no mechanical assistance was available; viaducts had to be constructed on both curves and gradients together, for instance. Surveying was all done from the ground, through crags, ravines, and heavily wooded slopes. How von Ghega managed to engineer a line through this on a steady gradient is little short of marvellous. Yet in other ways the railway was conservatively engineered. As far as materials were concerned, von Ghega rejected the use of iron and steel as a matter of principle; the result was sixteen brick and stone viaducts. Nevertheless, construction was an organizational as well as a technical achievement. At the peak of building, some 20,000 men were employed. The building of the Semmering Railway was very much a ground-breaking exercise, after which nothing seemed impossible: it was claimed that there was nowhere that a railway could not be built after this. The line was quickly recognized as an outstanding example of engineering; once it had been fully opened, sightseers came in large numbers to view the railway and the landscape through which it passed.

The line also exemplifies the way in railways must be treated as technical systems. The line was planned by von Ghega to operate with steam locomotives. A competition was held in 1851 to find the most suitable type of engine, an approach similar to that adopted by the directors of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway at Rainhill in 1829. The result was that mechanical engineers were spurred to design engines that met the arduous requirements of the Semmering Pass and the railway was run by locomotives in its entirety. Steam worked for a century, but electrification took place between 1956 and 1959. This was by no means an early use of the power, but was significant for the amount of extra traffic which was accommodated.

Apart from this and the construction of a new, second Semmering tunnel from 1949 to 1952, today’s railway is still substantially that designed by von Ghega. The continued operation of the line is a sound testimony to his engineering genius.

 

 

Case 3: Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, United States of America

This was the first railroad of any length in the USA, being chartered in 1827. Inspired by the British example of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, its opening was virtually contemporaneous with that of the Liverpool & Manchester. Described as ‘America’s pioneering railroad’ (although it was neither the first railroad in the continent nor the earliest steam-powered line), it was the USA’s most ambitious early transport project and its most successful. The B&O is an excellent example of the inspirational transfer of technology from one country to another (Harwood 1994: 48).

Given the huge differences in social, political, economic, and geographical circumstances between Britain and the USA, the English examples finally proved to be of limited practical relevance to the story of the B&O and indeed that of the wider railway system of North America (Robbins 1998: 115-121). Nevertheless, the international dimension was crucial in the early days. The B&O was the railway on which, in 1830, steam locomotion was first applied in the USA with any measure of success; the engineers involved in the project had visited Britain to gain ideas, several having attended the Rainhill Trials. Similarly, the extensive use of brick and stone in the line’s structures shows how ideas were taken from the British model. The B&O’s bridges were strongly built from the outset to carry heavy traffic and steam locomotives, and many are still in use today, including the Thomas viaduct of 1834 which, at the time of its construction, was highly unusual in being built on a curve. This structure closely resembled the Liverpool & Manchester Railway’s Sankey Brook viaduct and is a good example of the ‘design and build’ policy adopted by the railway’s promoters. The structure was designed and constructed by Benjamin Latrobe, one of several engineers responsible for the B&O. Many of the railway’s civil engineers went on to form the core of the railway engineering profession in the USA, the line itself being described as a ‘lecture room to thousands’ (Dilts 1993: 2).

The railroad also confirms the significance of social and economic criteria for judging a site’s standing as a World Heritage site. By the time it reached the Ohio river in 1857 the B&O ran for 380 miles (600km) and it was a key factor in the development of the USA. Planning and engineering overcame natural obstacles in the form of mountain wildernesses, and the successful opening of the line in stages provided the impetus for further progress, not least the development and extension of the Western frontier. The entrepreneurs promoting the railway were simultaneously guarding their own interests while expanding the young nation’s physical and economic horizons. The building of the railway revitalized Baltimore as a port, spurred its industrial development and contributed to the reshaping of its urban geography, as well as its financial, educational, and cultural institutions. By allowing faster and cheaper distribution of goods, the line contributed to Maryland’s economic expansion, particularly aiding the growth of the state’s iron and coal industries. However, the line was not just of regional importance. Even at the time of its construction, the railway was considered a national endeavour. It became the first leg of the US railroad system, with Baltimore its base - ‘the birthplace of American railroading.’

 

 

Case 4: The Great Zig Zag, Australia

As the 19th century progressed the focus of railway construction shifted beyond Europe and the United States as the age of new imperialism established itself in some of the more far flung parts of the world. Australia’s first railway opened in 1854, the Zig Zag following in 1868.

The Great Zig Zag brought the main western line of the New South Wales Railways over the Great Dividing Range of the Blue Mountains into the Lithgow Valley, some 94 miles (150km) west of Sydney. It was the means chosen by the railway’s engineer, John Whitton (1819-1898), to overcome the greatest natural obstacle on this, the first railway to penetrate into the interior of Australia. Whitton would have preferred to use a long tunnel, but, as his immediate superior, John Rae, the Under-Secretary for Public Works, reported, ‘the low state of the country’s finances compelled him to adopt zigzags, instead of tunnels, or abandon the works entirely (Rae 1873: 2-3).

Whitton is the only 19th century Australian engineer whose work F A Talbot discussed in his 1911 account of the ‘railway conquest of the world’ (Talbot 1911:177-80). Moreover, Whitton’s greatest work was completed earlier than Talbot describes. When Whitton ‘conquered,’ to use Talbot’s terminology, the Great Dividing Range and thereby opened up the interior of the Australian continent for intensive exploitation, the technology which allowed the railway to spread across the world did not yet exist. Whitton’s transmontane lines were built in the 1860s, by hand, from iron rails, and with bridges of stone or wrought iron. Dynamite and steel were not as yet being used in railway applications. Whitton had to use the expensive and relatively cumbersome technology of the pioneer English railway builders, but in a colony which was remote and impecunious and across terrain far more inhospitable than anything in England, if not quite as forbidding as that confronting later railway builders in Africa and Asia. At the time, only in India and Canada were railway builders attempting anything quite as ambitious, and in those places greater population and imperial political imperatives meant that resources were available on a far more lavish scale than Whitton could ever command.

Whitton’s English training meant that he felt obliged to build his railways solidly: every one of his three cast-iron plate bridges and his numerous sandstone arched viaducts of the 1860s still stands, some still carrying heavy rail traffic. Whitton’s two great compromises were to use grades far steeper than were the norm on English main lines of the 1860s, 1 in 30 in the down direction, 1 in 42 on the up, which carried the bulk of the heavy export traffic, and to resort to zigzags where the topography was particularly poor. There were two on the western line, one of which (at Lithgow) is particularly spectacular and survives intact.

The Great Zig Zag involved the construction of three elegant sandstone viaducts, one of five and two of nine arches; cuttings up to nearly 80ft (24m) deep; and two tunnels, one of which was opened out into a cutting before completion. The work was difficult and expensive. The 15 mile (24km) contract which included the Great Zig Zag cost £328,284 or £21,886 per mile, very expensive indeed for a single-track railway whose land costs were zero. The precipitous nature of the slope down which the zigzag was built combined with the unpredictable, often savagely cold and windy climate of the valley, made the task a hazardous one. The line descended from its summit of 3658ft (1114m) at the portal of the Clarence tunnel into the valley.

Railway operations began over the Great Zig Zag on 18 October 1868, effectively opening the interior of New South Wales to intensified European settlement, transforming it from a gigantic sheep walk into a rich agricultural country. The subsequent history of the line is as interesting as its construction. In short, it rapidly became a casualty of its own success. New industries were spawned by the railway, notably the cultivation of wheat and coal mining. These were far heavier commodities than the wool and gold which had dominated the economy of the interior of Australia before the coming of the railway. Traffic soon grew to the extent that the zigzag was a bottleneck. Its bottom road was duplicated in 1880 and a series of crossing loops installed. The Great Zig Zag also did much to stimulate tourist traffic to the region, an early and unusual instance of a railway creating its own traffic. As John Rae succinctly observed, ‘zigzags, though not so convenient for traffic as tunnels, are more picturesque in appearance’(Rae 1898:11). A tourist platform was built at Bottom Points and as early as 1881 a public reserve of 550 acres (223ha) was proclaimed around the Great Zig Zag, ensuring the preservation of the wild grandeur of the site.

In 1893 the decision was taken to eliminate the zigzag, but work did not begin until 1908. Construction of the zigzag deviation took a little over two years and involved the boring of ten tunnels with a total length of nearly 3km. The deviation, opened on 16 October 1910, continued to use the zigzag’s bottom road, with its 1 in 42 grade and 8 chain (160m) radius curve, the sharpest on any main line in New South Wales. Electrified in 1957, the bottom road continues to carry a huge traffic, including coal trains loaded up to 4100 tonnes and frequent passenger trains. Until 1975 the viaducts and tunnel of the middle and upper road were cared for by the Zig Zag Trust, but in that year a 3ft6in (1067mm) gauge line, on which former Queensland and South Australian Railways equipment operates, was laid on the middle road. In 1988 the line was relaid on the top road and through the Clarence tunnel, and passenger services on the revived railway began operating on 364 days per year, even if on a different gauge from the original line.

Thus the Great Zig Zag has remained partially in use (along its bottom road) and fully intact throughout its history. The revived operations on the middle and top roads are not authentic, inasmuch as they are on a different gauge and use rolling stock built after 1910 (passenger cars from the 1920s, steam locomotives from the 1950s, and diesel railcars from the 1960s). Nonetheless, the operators have taken great care to build authentic line-side structures, including a magnificent timber signal box at Bottom Points, and this important site is not just very well maintained, but extensively visited and enjoyed by about 250,000 people each year. Most are ignorant of just how significant in world terms the site is, given the early date of its construction and its unique combination of solid British civil engineering, typical of the world’s earliest railways, with a structure as unconventional and more usually associated with much lighter railways as a zigzag. Apart from the reversing station on the Bhore Ghat section of the Bombay-Poona line of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, the two zigzags on this line were the first such structures in the world. It is undoubtedly the outstanding railway site in Australia and one of the finest in the world.

 

 

Case 5: The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, India

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is an outstanding line on several counts, but it is particularly significant with regard to social, economic, and political effects and the route’s relationship with the landscape.

Darjeeling, sited at an elevation of over 2000m in the eastern Himalaya, was the first hill station of British India and also the first to be served by rail. The origins of Darjeeling and its railway are part of the expansion of British India during the last decades of East India Company rule. By the early 19th century the Company was the dominant power in northern India and frequently intervened in disputes between Indian princes. Such intervention on behalf of the Raja of Sikkim in 1829 resulted in East India Company officers exploring the then almost uninhabited Darjeeling area. They were impressed, both with its military significance, commanding a pass into Nepal, and with its potential as a cool-climate sanatorium which was not too far from Calcutta, then capital of both the Bengal Presidency and British India as a whole. The Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, was an enthusiastic westernizer, and so he opened negotiations with the Raja of Sikkim with a view to its acquisition. The Raja ceded the district to the Company in 1833, and in return was granted an annual allowance. Subsequent annexations in the early 1850s made Darjeeling, previously an East India Company enclave in Sikkim, contiguous with the Company’s Bengal Presidency.

Darjeeling grew rapidly under British rule. The population was only about 100 in 1839 but reached 10,000 a decade later. The Hill Cart Road, so named because it was graded so that a bullock cart could climb it, was built from Siliguri on the plains. The cultivation of tea, for which Darjeeling has become famous, began in the early 1840s. At that time, China had close to a monopoly on Europe’s tea supplies, so seeds were brought to Darjeeling to begin the industry. Despite the Hill Cart Road, however, transport remained the district’s great problem. Railway construction on the plains between 1858 and 1878, partly by the broad-gauge Eastern Bengal Railway (EBR) and partly by the metre-gauge state-owned Northern Bengal Railway (NBR), connected Calcutta with Siliguri, at the foot of the Himalaya. This made travel easier for Europeans, who could afford the fares, but did little to encourage further growth in Darjeeling. In the late 1870s, rice, the population’s staple, was sold in Siliguri for 98 rupees per ton, but for 240 rupees in Darjeeling.

Neither the EBR nor the NBR could see how they could extend their lines to Darjeeling, although it was the putative destination of both. Franklin Prestage, the local agent of the EBR, worked out the scheme for the building a narrow-gauge (2ft or 600mm) light railway to Darjeeling. In 1878, the year of the opening of the NBR line to Siliguri, he wrote a persuasive proposal to build the line. There would be a Bengal Government guarantee, which would ensure security for investors, but in return the railway company would be obliged to pay the Government for maintenance of the Hill Cart Road out of its profits. The contract was signed on 8 April 1879 and less than a year later the first train ran from Siliguri to Tindharia. The line was opened in stages, reaching the summit at Ghoom (7402ft/2256m) on 4 April 1881 and the terminus exactly three months later.

The technological inspiration for the line was not any Indian precedent – the 2ft gauge Baroda Railways were worked by bullocks and laid across flat terrain – but the Festiniog Railway in Wales. It had been converted successfully from horse to steam operation in 1868. The big difference was that the Festiniog’s freight traffic was nearly all downhill. The commodity, slate, was also very heavy in relation to its volume, so considerable tonnages could be conveyed in small wagons. The DHR would be carting rice and other supplies up the hill and teas down it. Moreover, there would be a sizeable passenger and mail traffic. The railway did have one big advantage over the Festiniog. This was a far more generous loading gauge, permitting larger locomotives and other rolling stock, but it also had much steeper grades - up to 1 in 20 compared with the Festiniog’s 1 in 50. The average grade over the 64km between Sukna, where the DHR leaves the plains, and the summit at Ghoom is 1 in 30.5.

The DHR does not feature any grand structures. In fact, the whole point of the line’s engineering was precisely to avoid the expense of such features. The remarkable features of the DHR are its steep grades and cheap but effective expedients its engineers adopted to enable it to climb so much in so short a distance. These included, at the time of its opening, four loops, where the line climbed in a circle above itself, and four zigzags. A new loop, the famous Batasia double loop, was built in 1919 to eliminate the 1 in 20 section between Ghoom and Darjeeling, and in 1943 one of the lower loops was replaced by a zigzag, of which there are now five. Curvature is very severe, with the sharpest having a radius of just 59ft (18m). Some of the more alarmingly located sites have been graced with names like Agony Point and Sensation Corner, although the smallest of the Indian hill railways, the Matheran line near Bombay, probably has the most entertainingly named engineering feature – One Kiss Tunnel. For most of its route the DHR follows the Hill Cart Road, which it crosses 132 times.

The DHR was estimated to cost 1,400,000 rupees: Prestage completed it for 1,700,000 rupees which, considering the untried nature of the enterprise, was a good result. It was a profitable line from the start and, until nationalization in 1948, never needed to call on the government guarantee. Revenue and traffic both grew rapidly, along with the Darjeeling district’s economy as a whole. Darjeeling’s cool climate assured a steady stream of mostly European first-class passengers, while the necessity to ship rice into the district and the growth of tea planting meant that there was plenty of freight flowing in both directions. Motor traffic began to eat into the passenger traffic during the 1920s, but freight traffic and then wartime demands kept the railway’s finances buoyant. However, the railway has never really recovered from the effects of Partition in 1947, which led to its railway connections with the rest of India being severed for a period. Even as traffic to Darjeeling revived, most of it began to go by road, as trucks and buses improved. For the DHR, for all its charms, was and remains a slow railway. Today freight traffic has been lost and passenger figures are down to around 100,000 per annum (Sarkar 1980: 8-10, 14-7; Bandhari 1984: 1-36).

Despite its small size, this is a very significant railway in any terms. It has helped make Darjeeling synonymous with quality tea, by breaking the transport bottleneck which inhibited the district’s growth in the late 19th century. It was the first hill railway of its type, and so was the precedent for the later Nilgiri, Simla, and Matheran lines in India, as well as for railways such as the Dalat line in Vietnam and the Maymyo line in Burma. It demonstrated, even more startlingly than the conversion of the Festiniog to steam operation had done, what could be done with a very narrow-gauge railway in terms of the traffic that could be conveyed, the economy of construction, and the terrain that could be overcome.

From its inception, the DHR was widely recognized as a remarkable railway. In heritage terms, the railway is well preserved, and the changes have not damaged its value. The station at Darjeeling is a mid 20th century Art Déco folly, but most of the larger intermediate stations remain much as they were at the line’s opening. The locomotives working the line to this day are all to a design thought out by Prestage. Thirty-two of these class B 0-4-0 saddle tank locomotives were delivered between 1887 and 1927, and about twenty are still working on the line. This continuity in motive power adds to the railway’s heritage value.

Despite its small scale, the engineering, social, political, and economic impact of the DHR are significant enough to justify its place on any list of important railways. However, what really makes the DHR outstanding is its relationship to the landscape through which it passes. The railway begins on the plains of West Bengal and soon begins climbing through a remnant of lowland jungle, including stands of teak. As the railway climbs, so the flora changes, and its upper sections are dominated by enormous Himalayan pines, which in misty weather give a surreal quality to the landscape. It frequently hugs the edge of hillsides with drops, often of thousands of feet, to the plains and valleys below. Towering over the entire scene is the perennially snow-covered bulk of Kanchenjunga, at 28,146ft (8579m) the third highest mountain in the world. From Kurseong (31 miles or 49km from Siliguri at an elevation of 4846ft or 1524m) the railway offers frequent views of this stupendous mountain, which by Ghoom dominates the entire landscape. Thus, from the tiny train, the passenger can look down on the stifling tropical plains of Bengal or up into the eternal snows of the highest peaks of the Himalaya. No railway anywhere else offers such a sight.

 

 

Case 6: The Liverpool & Manchester Railway, United Kingdom

The world’s first main line constructed for both passenger and freight business, dating from 1830, is an excellent example of a railway where much of the route is still in use. The two original termini, at Liverpool Road, Manchester, and Edge Hill, Liverpool, were soon superseded (although both still survive in part), but the rest of the railway is still heavily used, demonstrating its sound economic and technical basis.

The Liverpool & Manchester’s role as the international prototype for the Stephensonian mechanically worked railway – engineered to a high but, for European nations, not impossibly expensive standard – makes it an excellent illustration of the criterion of technology transfer. Earlier mechanically worked railways had tended to be of the ‘hybrid’ variety, utilizing both fixed and locomotive haulage; the Liverpool & Manchester was, with the exception of one short, steep stretch at the Liverpool end, the first to be built and completed solely for locomotive operation (Donaghy 1972). It therefore constituted a new kind of railway – the main line, built to link large centres of population and carry goods and passengers in both directions, a precedent which then spread world-wide. The famous Rainhill locomotive trials of October 1829 took place on a section of the Liverpool & Manchester to determine the type of engine which would be adopted. The winner, Robert Stephenson’s Rocket, set a course for nearly 150 years of steam locomotive development. The massive contribution to the Liverpool & Manchester of Robert Stephenson and his father George, the railway’s chief engineer, suggests that particular sites may indeed be seen as works illustrative of creative genius even though in this, as in so many other cases, modern scholarship reveals that success was dependent upon the contributions of a great number of individuals (Smith 1994; Rolt 1960) .

The Liverpool & Manchester is also illustrative of the intimate relationship between railway development and social and economic factors. The promotion of the line was a direct consequence of attempts to break the virtual monopoly held by the proprietors of the Bridgewater Canal on transport between two of England’s most rapidly industrializing cities. Once built, the railway itself contributed to the rapid quickening of the pace of industrialization in north-west England. These effects were partly the result of the railway’s high technical standards: it provided quick, reliable and comparatively cheap transport along its direct, gently curved, and easily graded route. Such engineering required large and extensive earthworks and other, often innovative, technical features. The deep cutting through rock at Olive Mount, Liverpool, and the method used by George Stephenson to cross Chat Moss, a notorious area of bog, are particular features of note. So too, for rather different reasons, is the memorial to the Member of Parliament, William Huskisson, run down on the railway’s opening day by Rocket. The improved lines of communications across the country heralded by the Liverpool & Manchester played an important, if imperfectly understood, part in the political and social evolution of Britain throughout the 19th century (Simmons 1986).

The Liverpool & Manchester also demonstrates the kind of conflicts that inevitably occur on a working railway between historical authenticity and originality on the one hand and renewals on the other. Yet this very continuity of operation demonstrates that the railway has remained true to something like its original purpose for nearly 170 years. Many original features survive apart from the route itself. Liverpool Road station is now part of the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, and as an early goods handling complex is very complete. As well as the original passenger station, the site incorporates a brick curved viaduct past the 1830 warehouse, quite an engineering feat at the time although it is hidden by the buildings on both sides (Fitzgerald 1980). At the other end of the line, Edge Hill passenger station is listed nationally as being of historic importance, and Chatsworth Street cutting, where the stationary haulage engines gave way to locomotives, has been excavated and is partially in use as a head-shunt for a marshalling yard. The fact that many of the original features on the rest of the railway remain in use says much about the quality of the engineering that went into their construction. Several original skew bridges (a technology transferred from canals) survive, features that the original company took great pride in. At Sankey Brook is the first railway viaduct in the world of any length; this now carries much longer and heavier trains than it was ever designed to carry. The viaduct is also of note in that it carries the railway over the first commercial canal in Britain. At St Helens is the site of the first bridging of one railway over another, where the St Helens & Runcorn Gap Railway passed over the Liverpool & Manchester.

As the railway which set the precedent for what was to come, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway is a remarkable survival of a transport corridor that demonstrates the relevance of many of the proposed criteria for World Heritage status.

 

 

Case 7: The Great Western Railway, United Kingdom

It has been remarked that the Great Western Railway was built by gentlemen for gentlemen. The original main line, constructed from 1838 to 1841, runs from Paddington in west London (though the present splendid station dates only from 1854) to Bristol Temple Meads (where much of the original survives, adapted for reuse). In conception and execution the railway was a grand affair, although as with most lines in Britain considerations of commerce and profit were always as much, if not more, in the minds of the original promoters than those of civic and class identity (Gren 1998). It is still the principal route to the west of England, carrying fast expresses now as it was always intended to do.

Above all the GWR is as an excellent demonstration of how the criterion of works illustrative of genius may be applied in many ways. The railway was dominated, more than any other in Britain, by the vision of just one man, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. This very dominance serves to illustrate the need to be sensitive to the many different kinds of skills and resources needed to build a railway. Brunel came to pre-eminence partly because of the particular pattern of financing the line, which meant that shareholders were divided amongst themselves and unable to exercise the usual measure of control over their employee (Gren 1998). However, whatever the reason, the Great Western was shaped by Brunel’s arguably flawed genius for strategic thinking (Vaughan 1991). Along the route are constant reminders that this railway was once built to the broad gauge of 7ft (2135mm), while many surviving structures bear the mark of his innovative civil engineering. Significant Brunellian features include the Wharncliffe Viaduct, the Sonning Cutting, and the bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead with its two long, flat arches, a triumph of civil engineering which cynics said would collapse when the scaffolding was removed. The 2 mile long Box Tunnel in Wiltshire, with its ornate portals, and a handful of surviving stations show the engineer’s wide-ranging influence in their architectural styling (Pugsley 1976). Brunel’s hold over the GWR was almost total, gaining the railway a reputation at the time of being ‘The Finest Work in England’ (Rolt 1960: 141).

Economic considerations were very much part of the planning of the GWR. These, too, were developed in the grand style. Brunel intended that the railway would not only join London and Bristol but would also form part of a link between London and New York, employing iron steamships from Bristol. Transatlantic trade would be encouraged by the new link. This was socio-technical system building of the highest order, and Brunel’s vision goes part way to explain the willingness of the GWR’s backers to put forward the very large financial sums needed for the line’s construction: their livelihoods would benefit from the new railway. The social relevance of railways is also borne out by the GWR. The route passes through the early railway town of Swindon, a settlement that owed its very existence to Brunel’s decision to site the railway’s principal workshops there. The town still bears many signs of its origins, although the workshops are no longer in use and have been partially cleared (Cattell & Falconer 1995).

As with the Liverpool & Manchester and other operating railways, the Great Western is likely in the future to produce many dilemmas as modern requirements come to be reconciled with the desire to ensure the survival of original features. These challenges are made less pressing than usual by the very fact that Brunel constructed an extremely well (perhaps over-) engineered railway with such a thorough attention to detail that much of it remains suitable for high-speed use today. As a complete and still operating entity, ‘Brunel's Billiard Table’ with gentle curves and lack of sharp gradients is a fine tribute to the man who designed and the men who built it.

 

 

Case 8: The Shinkansen, Japan

The Japanese Shinkansen has been to modern high-speed railways what the Liverpool & Manchester line was to rail travel in the 1830s in terms of technical innovation.

After World War II, the population and industrial expansion which took place on the coastal belt of Japan between Tokyo and Osaka forced the Japanese National Railways (JNR) to find ways to expand its carrying capacity. It appeared futile to try to find extra capacity on the already overstretched 3ft6in (1067mm) gauge Tokaido main line. In any case, operations were severely hampered by frequent level crossings – as many as a thousand – and the route was lined by buildings, preventing the construction of additional lines of track. Since it was passenger traffic which was expanding at the greatest rate, it was decided to build an entirely new standard-gauge railway from Tokyo to Osaka which would serve only the most important intermediate settlements. The choice of the standard gauge also meant that a higher speed would be possible. The narrow-gauge line could then concentrate on handling goods and local passenger traffic.

The new railway was to be something quite unprecedented world-wide. Having only one purpose, it could be engineered solely for one type of train, a train where speed and comfort were of the essence. The power was electricity, and from the start a very frequent service was run throughout the day. Trains were of a standard type, running at very high speeds on a double-track line, all supervised from a central control centre in Tokyo. Through the use of modern technology to communicate with the trains, this New Tokaido line was able to dispense with track-side signalling, the first ever main line to do so. The route was entirely new, although roughly parallel to the original narrow-gauge line for much of the distance. Connecting only the principal towns, the total number of stations on the line is twelve, including the two termini.

One could argue that the Shinkansen illustrates the continued relevance in the 20th century of the criterion of genius, a genius which changed the concept of travel by train into a new efficient system which continues to spread its influence throughout the world in the quest for speed and efficiency, drawing boundaries ever closer. The head of the Shinkansen design team was Hideo Shima, who worked on the track and trains to create something completely different. The line was built on a raised concrete base with the express intention of avoiding steep gradients and curves: this was a breakthrough in passenger train technology similar to the conversion of the airline industry to jet propulsion. From Osaka to Tokyo, the route has 3000 bridges and 67 tunnels to make it as level as possible, the result being that on average trains arrive within 40 seconds of their scheduled time. The individual cars of the train have their own electric motors, and each train set is air-conditioned and employs air suspension. Safety standards are exemplary. Seismometers installed along the track automatically trigger equipment to halt the trains if any tremors occur in this area of tectonic activity; since opening, no passenger has ever been killed in an accident. Hideo Shima also designed the aerodynamic front of the train, which gave rise to the name ‘Bullet Train.’ Eventually he was given the Japanese Order of Cultural Merit for his work, and he was also the first non-Westerner to receive the prestigious James Watt award for mechanical engineering.

The Shinkansen also illustrates the applicability of the criterion of significant social and economic effects to railways of the 20th century. The line was opened for limited traffic in 1964, and began full operations in 1966. It was an immediate success, both financially and operationally. Despite high construction and operating costs, the new line was able to deliver a healthy surplus of revenue over and above the capital charges and running costs, even though social and economic considerations on the part of the Japanese government kept fares at a comparatively low level. Further lines and extensions on essentially the same model were planned and built as a result: speed was what passengers customers wanted, and they were willing to pay a premium over the usual fare to get it. Politicians pushed to have lines built to their areas as a symbol of economic prowess, while the trains were also agents of social change in that young people in the countryside were able to have quick access to urban areas.

The Shinkansen exemplifies the criterion of international technology transfer in the modern period. Engineers in Europe watched the success of the Japanese high-speed line with envy, but it was to be a decade before anything like it would be emulated outside Japan. Now, thirty years on, it is possible to see the fundamental concept of the Shinkansen in the new high-speed trains such as the French TGV, the German ICE, and Franco-British-Belgian Eurostar which run on purpose-built railways across Europe. On a national scale the original Shinkansen had symbolized Japan’s final movement out of the shadows of war-time defeat and industrial dependency. Now in the late 20th century the line stands additionally as a symbol of international leadership in the technology of high-speed land transport (Whitelegg et al 1993).

 

 

Conclusion

Railways are among the most important of industrial locations worthy of designation as World Heritage Sites. The designation of a carefully selected number of outstanding sites would bring to greater prominence the many ways in which railways have contributed – and in many cases continue to contribute – to the social, economic, political, cultural, and technical evolution of almost every country around the globe.

This survey does not pretend to identify those railway locations that are worthy of designation. It seeks only to provide a little of the general background that is needed to appreciate the true historical significance of railways, and to demonstrate the applicability of the usual criteria for World Heritage Sites to the particular case of railways.

Not all railways worthy of World Heritage status need be designated in their own right. Railways have always been built as a means to some other end, and it would be fitting if this fact were reflected by the inclusion of railways as integral parts of locations designated as World Heritage sites partly or chiefly for other reasons. This has, of course, already happened in one or two instances: for example, the routes of several early railways fall within the Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site. Again, complexes of important warehouses and other goods facilities at points along a route might be included within other kinds of designated sites, where appropriate, in order to demonstrate the railways’ interaction with industry and other modes of transport.

Nevertheless, railways enjoy a distinctive enough identity as a kind of socio-technical system for them to be worthy of designation in their own right. Their long history has produced a rich heritage fully the equal of any other aspect of modern society. Continued usage is surely the most fitting recognition that the present generation can accord the achievements of the railways’ past. Yet the continued relevance of railways to contemporary society in many parts of the world means that certain aspects of their heritage is at risk from unsympathetic modernization and renewal. The designation of outstanding railway locations as World Heritage Sites can help to ensure a future whereby the achievements of the past are recognised and appreciated as an integral part of the continuing evolution of railways into the next century.

 

 

 

Acknowledgements

This survey would not have been possible without the generous financial assistance of ICOMOS from funds provided by the Austrian Government, and of the UK’s National Museum of Science and Industry (National Railway Museum). It was compiled with the assistance of Professor Colin Divall of the Institute of Railway Studies, York. The considerable input of some 70 experts, both in person and through correspondence, is also gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks are due to Dr Robert Lee of the University of Western Sydney, MacArthur, New South Wales, Australia (who contributed the studies on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway and the Great Zig-Zag); Mme Marie-Nöelle Polino of AHICF, Paris; Herr Günter Dinhobl of the Austrian Alliance for Nature; and the guiding hand of Professor Henry Cleere, World Heritage Coordinator, ICOMOS, Paris. The help and encouragement of colleagues in the Institute of Railway Studies and the National Railway Museum is also warmly appreciated.

Much of the study is based on the proceedings of the World Railway Heritage Conference, held at the National Railway Museum, York, on 16 March 1998, and on subsequent discussions. The photographs used are from the collections of the National Railway Museum and individual correspondents.

 

 

Select Bibliography

Ambler, ed (1999), The History and Practice of Britain’s Railways: A New Research Agenda. Aldershot: Scolar Press

Bandhari, R R (1984), Exotic Indian Hill Railways. New Delhi: Ministry of Railways

Biddle, G, & O S Nock (1983), The Railway Heritage of Britain. London: Michael Joseph

Bond, W, & C Divall, eds (forthcoming, 1999), Suburbanising the Masses: Public Transport and Urban Development in Historical Perspective. Aldershot: Scolar Press

Burman, Peter (1997), ‘Philosophies for conserving the railway heritage’, in Burman & Stratton, eds, 18-33

Burman, Peter, & Stratton, Michael, eds (1997), Conserving the Railway Heritage. London: E & F N Spon

Burton, Anthony (1994), The Railway Empire. London: John Murray

Cattell, J, & Falconer, K (1995), Swindon: The Legacy of a Railway Town. London: HMSO

Chandler, Alfred D, jr (1990), Scale and Scope. Cambridge (MA) and London, Harvard University Press

Channon, G, ed. (1996), Railways Volume 2 - Studies in Transport History. Aldershot: Scolar Press

Cossons, Neil (1997), ‘An agenda for the railway heritage’, in Burman and Stratton, eds (1997), 3-17

Danley, S, and L Marx, eds (1990), The Railroad in American Art: Representations of Technology and Change, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press

Davis, Clarence B, and Kenneth E Wilburn jr (with R Robinson), eds (1991), Railway Imperialism. New York: Greenwood Press

Dilts, James D (1993), The Great Road - The Building of the Baltimore & Ohio, the Nation’s First Railroad, 1823-1853. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press

Dinhobl, G. & C Schuhböck (1998), Semmering Railway. Vienna: Alliance for Nature

Divall, Colin (forthcoming, 1999), ‘Technical change and railway systems’, in Ambler, ed. (1999)

Dobbin, Frank (1994), Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain and France in the Railway Age. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press

Donaghy, Thomas P (1972), Liverpool & Manchester Railway Operations 1831-1845. Newton Abbot: David & Charles

Drummond, D (1995), Crewe: Railway Town, Company and People, 1840-1914. Aldershot: Scolar Press

Fitzgerald, R S (1980), Liverpool Road Station, Manchester: An Historical and Architectural Survey. Manchester: Manchester University Press

Gourvish, Terry, ed (1996), Railways Volume 1 - Studies in Transport History. Aldershot: Scolar Press

Greene, J Patrick (1994), ‘The archaeology of the world’s oldest railway station building’, in Shorland-Ball, ed. (1994), 126-34

Gren, André (1998), The Financing of Railway Promotion in the 1830s, IRS Working Paper No. 4. York: Institute of Railway Studies

Harwood, Herbert H, jr (1994), ‘The early Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and its physical remains, in Shorland-Ball, ed, 48-62

Hawes, H C P (1966), Underground Railways of the World. London: Temple Press

Hughes, M. (1988), Rail 300 - The World High Speed Train Race. Newton Abbot: David & Charles

Hughes, Stephen (1996), The International Canal Monuments List. Paris: ICOMOS

Jerczynski, M, R Kola, K Soida, & J Weso?owski, (1998), Railway World Heritage Sites - Proposals from Poland. Warsaw: Polish Association of Railway Enthusiasts

Kellett, J R (1969), Railways and Victorian Cities. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Kerr, Ian (1997), Building the Railways of the Raj 1850-1900. Calcutta, Chennai and Mumbai: Oxford University Press

Kusumsiri, Kodituwakku (1998), Railway Heritage in Sri Lanka. Sigiriya: Central Cultural Fund

Lee, Robert (1998), Railways in Asia and the Pacific, IRS Working Paper No. 5. York: Institute of Railway Studies

Legget, Robert F (1993), Railroads of Canada. Vancouver: Douglas, David & Charles,

Lewis, M J T (1974), Early Wooden Railways. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Lowenthal, David (1997), The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. London: Viking

Meeks, C V S (1957), The Railway Station: An Architectural History. London: Architectural Press

Nock, O S (1973), Underground Railways of the World. London: A & C Black

Nock, O. S. (1978), World Atlas of Railways. London: Artists House

Nye, David (1994), The American Technological Sublime. London and Cambridge (MA): MIT Press

Pugsley, A (1976), The Works of Isambard Kingdom Brunel: An Engineering Appreciation. London: Institution of Civil Engineers

Rae, John (1873), Report of the Commissioner of Railways, Sydney: New South Wales Legislative Assembly

Rae, John (1898), Thirty-five years on the New South Wales Railways, the Work of the Late Mr John Whitton, C.E., Engineer-in-Chief of the New South Wales Railways. Sydney: privately published

Raistrick, Arthur (1973), Industrial Archaeology. St Albans: Granada

Ransom, P J G (1981), The Archaeology of Railways. Tadworth: World’s Work

Richards, J, and J M MacKenzie. (1986), The Railway Station: A Social History, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Robbins, Michael (3rd ed, 1998), The Railway Age. Manchester: Mandolin

Rolt, L T C (1957), Isambard Kingdom Brunel. London: Longmans, Green & Co.

Rolt, L T C (1960), George and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution. London: Longman

Rosenberg, Nathan, and Walter Vincenti (1978), The Britannia Bridge: The Generation and Diffusion of Technical Knowledge. London and Cambridge (MA): MIT Press

Sarkar, R L (1980), Eastern Himalayas, a Panoramic Overview. Darjeeling: Indian Institute of Hill Economy

Schivelbusch, W (1986), The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Space and Time in the 19th Century. Leamington Spa: Berg

Shorland-Ball, ed. (1994), Common Roots - Separate Branches: Railway History and Preservation. York: National Railway Museum

Simmons, Jack (1986), The Railway in Town and Country: 1830-1914. Newton Abbot: David & Charles

Smith, Denis, ed (1994), Perceptions of Great Engineers - Fact and Fantasy. London: Science Museum

Stover, John F (rev ed, 1997) American Railroads. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press

Szostak, R (1991), The Role of Transportation in the Industrial Revolution: A Comparison of England and France. Montreal: McGill University Press

Talbot, Frederick A (1911), The Railway Conquest of the World. London: William Heinemann

Talbot, Frederick A. (1913), Railway Wonders of the World. London: Cassell & Co.

Thomson, Ian (1998), La Casa Máquinas de Ferrocarriles. Santiago de Chile: CCMFA

Trinder, Barrie S (1982), The Making of the Industrial Landscape. London: J M Dent

Trinder, Barrie S, ed (1992), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Industrial Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell

Vance, James E, jr (1995), The North American Railroad: Its Origin, Evolution and Geography. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press

Vaughan, A (1991), Isambard Kingdom Brunel - Engineering Knight-Errant. London: John Murray

Ville, Simon P (1990), Transport and the Development of the European Economy, 1750-1918. London: Macmillan

Watts, J (1998), Obituary of Hideo Shima, Guardian, London, 21 March

Wheatley, G (1997), World Heritage Sites. London: English Heritage

White, John H, jr (1994), ‘Old debts and new visions: the interchange of ideas in railway engineering,’ in Shorland-Ball, ed (1994), 65-87

Whitelegg, J, S Hultén, and T Flink (1993), High Speed Trains: Fast Tracks to the Future. Hawes: Leading Edge

Wosk, Julie (1992), Breaking the Frame: Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century. New Brunswick (NJ): Rutgers University Press

 

 

Appendix - Members of the Advisory Committee and Correspondents

Advisory Committee

Professor Henry Cleere, World Heritage Co-ordinator, ICOMOS, Paris, France, and

Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK.

Sir Neil Cossons, Director, National Museum of Science and Industry, London, UK

Professor Colin Divall, Head, Institute of Railway Studies, York, UK

Stephen Hughes, Royal Commission of Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales,

UK

Dr Robert Lee, University of Western Sydney, MacArthur, New South Wales, Australia

Ashwani Lohani, Director, National Rail Museum, India

Marie-Noëlle Polino, AHICF, Paris, France

Andrew Scott, Head, National Railway Museum, York, UK

Dr Michael Stratton, University of York, UK

Dr Barrie Trinder, Nene College, Northampton, UK

Participants in the International Conference, York, 16 March 1998

In addition to members of the Advisory Committee:

Michael Bailey, Institute of Railway Studies, York, UK

Gordon Biddle, independent scholar, UK

Winstan Bond, National Tramway Museum, Crich, UK

Tadej Brate, Ministry of Culture, Slovenia

Phillip Butterworth, University of New South Wales, Australia

Mike Clarke, Milepost Research, Accrington, UK

Jim Cornell, Railway Heritage Trust, UK

Anthony Coulls, Institute of Railway Studies, York, UK (Conference co-ordinator)

 

Günter Dinhobl, Alliance for Nature, Austria

Clive Ellam, Vice-President, Newcomen Society, UK

Helen Gomersall, West Yorkshire Archaeological Service, Wakefield, UK

Victoria Haworth, Robert Stephenson Trust, Newcastle, UK

Dr Tony Heywood, Bradford University, UK

Dieter Hopkin, National Railway Museum, York, UK

Sinikka Joutsalmi, Department of Antiquities, Finland

J Mitchell & J Fleming, Heritage Engineering, Glasgow, UK

Jill Murdoch, Institute of Railway Studies, York, UK

Peter Northover, University of Oxford

David Percival, Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments in Wales,

Aberystwyth, UK

Martin Robertson, English Heritage consultant, Bath, UK

Bob Scarlett, independent scholar, Sunderland, UK

Christian Schuhböck, Alliance for Nature, Austria

Peter Semmens, independent scholar, York, UK

Denis Smith, President, Newcomen Society, UK

D P Tripathi, Indian State Railways, India

Audrey Trotti, University of York, UK

Jacek Weso?owski, Politechnika ?odz, Poland

John Wilcock, Staffordshire University, UK

John Wonnacott, Institute of Railway Studies, York, UK

Correspondents

Lars Olov Karlsson, Curator, Banmuseet, Sweden

Jurgen Franzke, Director, DB Museum, Nuremberg, Germany

Tatsuhiko Suga, Executive Director, East Japan Railway Culture Foundation, Japan

Dr Anthony Streeten, English Heritage, London, UK

David Mitchell, Hertfordshire, UK

Dr Paul Waters, British Overseas Railway Historical Trust, Surrey, UK

Rabbi Walter Rothschild, Berlin, Germany

Ian Thomson, Chile

Professor Senake Bandaranayake, Sri Lanka

Professor V V Alexeyev, Ekaterinburg, Russia

Dr Eugene Rukosuyev, Institute of History and Archaeology, Ekaterinburg, Russia

C Weevers, Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg, The Netherlands

Professor Georges Calteux, Luxembourg

Andris Biedrins, Latvia

Christopher Andreae, Historica Research Ltd, Canada

Guido Vanderhulst, La Fonderie, Belgium

Professor Jorge O Gazaneo, Argentina

Dr M J T Lewis, University of Hull, UK

Thomas Kappel, Denmark

Hossam Mahdy, Architectural Conservation Consultant, Egypt

Charles Alban, USA

Greg Hallam, Historical Researcher, Australia

Bela Banerjee, Ministry of Railways, India

B Z Manyangadze, Mutare Museum, Zimbabwe

Nick Sbarounis, Association of the Friends of the Railway, Greece

Omar Gil Soja, FADARTE, Uruguay

Billiard Lishiko, Curator, South West Region Railway Museum, Zimbabwe

Angel Ferrer, Rosario, Argentina

Jorge Waddell, Fundación Museo Ferroviario, Argentina

Kodituwakku A Kusumsiri, Research Officer, Sigiriya Project, Sri Lanka

Lou Rae, Tasmania

Robert C Post, President, Society for the History of Technology, USA

Andreas Dreier, Director, Norwegian Railway Museum, Norway

William L Withuhn, Curator of Transportation, Smithsonian Institution, USA

Our apologies to anyone who has been accidentally omitted.

 

Par Louis Bergeron, Président d'Honneur, TICCIH, 2001 (The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage)

Les villages ouvriers : sens et limites d'une politique
LES VILLAGES OUVRIERS ont constitué aux XIXe et XXe siècles - et parfois bien antérieurement, dès la fin du XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle - l'une des expressions les plus achevées de l'impact exercé par l'industrialisation sur l'organisation sociale en général, et sur la vie des hommes, des femmes et des enfants (au travail et hors du travail) en particulier.

Leur apparition, d'une part, traduit de façon immédiate les nécessités du recrutement et de la gestion de la main d'oeuvre de la part de toute entreprise ayant besoin de stabiliser et de fixer d'importantes concentrations de salariés. Problème lancinant pour les entrepreneurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays, qui nous rappelle à quel point les facteurs humains ont toujours été primordiaux pour la bonne marche d'une entreprise. On prendra pour exemple significatif au point d'en devenir schématique, l'histoire des mines de fer et de la sidérurgie lorraine au cours de sa fulgurante mais brève période de développement, entre la fin du XIXe siècle et les années postérieures au milieu du XXe. Jusque dans les années 1930, la pénurie d'effectifs fut, dans ce secteur et cette région, une hantise permanente, liée tant à l'accroissement rapide des besoins des entreprises qu'à l'extrême instabilité des ouvriers. La pratique d'une politique sociale paternaliste apparut donc comme une condition sine qua non de la croissance et, tout simplement, de l'existence de l'activité économique. Dès avant 1914, un chroniqueur économique n'hésitait pas à écrire : « Bâtir se présente comme le complément de toute industrie ». Produire deux fois plus de minerai de fer, déclare en 1923 l'ingénieur des mines du bassin de Briey, requiert la construction de 5000 logements. Créer une cité ouvrière de qualité réduit considérablement le turnover de la main d'oeuvre. Il en résultait des investissements parfois considérables, qui s'ajoutaient à l'immobilisation de capitaux exigée par l'ouverture d'un puits de mine, par exemple - mais les compagnies amortissaient la dépense grâce à la pratique de loyers suffisants pour rentabiliser l'investissement. On a beaucoup écrit sur la volonté d'instaurer, sur la base de cette politique du logement, un véritable contrôle social, un « système social d'entreprise » faisant de la cité ouvrière un « espace d'ordre ». Un tel projet, très évident dans le cas des De Wendel, par exemple, qui ajoutèrent au logement tout un arsenal de moyens « para-salariaux » de fidéliser ses ouvriers, est pourtant beaucoup moins explicite au niveau des réalisations de bien d'autres patrons, qui se contentèrent de juxtaposer des logements à la mine ou à l'usine, puis d'y entasser la main d'oeuvre.

Mais, d'autre part, dans de nombreux cas le village ouvrier a concrétisé, inscrit au sol et dans le paysage, une pensée patronale plus systématique, pensée d'inspiration morale, philosophique ou franchement religieuse selon les cas. Elle a soutenu les patronats de différents pays et de différentes branches d'activité dans le plus important effort de l'ère industrielle pour inventer des modalités pratiques d'accommodement entre classes antagonistes, dans une volonté tout à la fois d'encadrement, de contrôle, de reproduction, d'intérêt bien compris en somme - mais aussi dans une perspective à moyen terme de promotion matérielle et morale dépassant les limites de l'entreprise, pour apporter une contribution à la reconstruction d'une société « fracturée ». L'un des problèmes les plus délicats est du reste d'apprécier, tant au niveau des intentions qu'à celui de l'acceptation ou du rejet, le degré de succès ou d'échec et la pérennité variable de telles réalisations. Cette dernière a été d'autant plus grande que, dans un contexte industriel donné, le mouvement ouvrier a été plus lent à se structurer, la syndicalisation restant alors minoritaire (en France, souvent après 1936 ).

Bien qu'ils ne représentent, on l'a dit, que l'une des formes de l'intervention patronale dans le fonctionnement de micro-sociétés, les villages ouvriers s'imposent donc sans nul doute à l'attention des défenseurs du patrimoine mondial, non seulement en raison de leurs apparences particulièrement formalisées, mais parce qu'ils portent témoignage sur un genre de vie et sur un style de relations sociales liés à certaines phases, formes ou localisations de l'industrialisation. Il y a là de quoi attirer l'intérêt, tout à la fois, des historiens de la société industrielle, mais aussi de l'urbanisation, de l'architecture, ainsi que des spécialistes de l'anthropologie historique, dès lors qu'ils seraient à la recherche de sites témoignant fortement d'une étape de l'histoire de l'organisation sociale liée à l'émergence des formes concentrées de l'activité industrielle. Quels problèmes spécifiques la sélection de tels témoignages pose-t-elle ?

Critères de définition

IL CONVIENT D'ABORD de délimiter avec assez de précision la catégorie dite des « villages ouvriers ». On en exclut ici les formes d'habitat ouvrier qui se sont développées au sein de ou en continuité avec des agglomérations préexistantes. Une telle exclusion peut aussi bien concerner - pour nous limiter à des exemples français - les courées du Nord, fruit de spéculations foncières et immobilières à l'origine desquelles ont pu se trouver des personnes tout autres que des entrepreneurs d'industrie ; ou aussi bien la fameuse cité industrielle de Mulhouse, ou la ville du Creusot (que les ouvriers eux-mêmes, vers 1880, proposèrent pourtant de rebaptiser Schneiderville) - puisque, dans le premier cas, l'initiative eut une origine patronale collective (sous l'impulsion de la « Société Industrielle de Mulhouse ») et aboutit à une opération d'urbanisme articulée sur la ville), tandis que dans le second cas la croissance et l'organisation de la ville n'ont été que partiellement et assez tardivement maîtrisées par la dynastie des Schneider, quelle que soit la force de l'empreinte qu'elle a laissée sur Le Creusot.

On réservera l'appellation à tout ensemble à usage d'habitation créé à l'initiative d'un patron en symbiose directe avec les lieux du travail. Cet ensemble peut être plus ou moins étendu et plus ou moins structuré, depuis le petit groupe de maisons quasi rurales apparues en contiguïté avec une grosse forge seigneuriale d'ancien type, jusqu'à une véritable petite ville incorporant toutes les catégories de services et présentant un véritable projet urbanistique (on pense à Carbonia, en Sardaigne méridionale, créée à l'époque fasciste sur l'une des dernières mines de charbon à avoir été mises en exploitation sur le continent européen).

Une caractéristique commune à tous ces sites est la séparation physique d'avec les communautés voisines, soit du fait d'un éloignement imposé par des conditions géographiques et techniques (dépendance à l'égard d'une source d'énergie, d'un gisement), soit du fait d'une volonté délibérée d'isolement, de rejet des contacts de la part de l'entreprise. Dans le premier cas, on songe aux villages miniers du Limbourg belge, où le gisement charbonnier a été ouvert aux premières années du XXe siècle dans un environnement quasi désertique, ou encore au site d'Argentiera (Sardaigne septentrionale) localisé en bord de mer dans une sorte de nowhere. Dans le second cas on peut renvoyer à l'histoire d'établissements tels que la manufacture de Villeneuvette (France, Hérault) ou la Colonia Sedo (Catalogne), clairement coupés des communes toutes proches de Clermont-l'Hérault ou d'Esparraguera, ou encore le village de Crespi d'Adda (Italie, province de Milan) demeure parfaitement distinct jusqu'à nos jours de la commune de Capriate San Gervasio.

Problèmes de sélection

DANS LA PERSPECTIVE d'une réflexion et d'une stratégie impliquant soit la multiplication, soit à l'inverse le contingentement des sites à inscrire sur la World Heritage List, le problème de la sélection des recommandations à formuler de la part de TICCIH est en tout état de cause fondamental.

1. Peut-on imaginer de ne retenir qu'un très petit nombre de sites - un ou deux, par exemple - à l'échelle de l'ensemble des pays occidentaux ayant connu, fût-ce avec des décalages chronologiques, des modalités d'industrialisation analogues et comparables au cours des XIX-XXe siècles ? Dans une telle hypothèse, la poignée de sites retenus devrait exprimer d'une façon synthétique et diachronique l'ensemble des caractères considérés comme essentiels d'une certaine relation patronat-salariat sur une période de longue durée et dans une aire de civilisation très vaste. Or l'hypothèse ne résiste pas à l'examen. Elle est de toutes façons parfaitement a-historique. Au-delà de ressemblances qui tiennent, inévitablement, à l'existence de modèles qui ont connu une réelle diffusion, ainsi qu'à l'identité des problèmes généraux qui se sont posés à un grand nombre d'entrepreneurs et d'une façon quasi permanente, la réalité est en fait très variée d'une phase à une autre de l'industrialisation, d'une aire géographique ou nationale à une autre, d'une culture patronale à une autre...
2. Par suite, la règle à adopter ne peut être que celle d'une analyse attentive d'un grand nombre de cas particuliers, analyse qui tiendra compte de la chronologie, des espaces culturels, des contraintes propres à chaque type d'industrie. Mais aussi, d'une analyse qui distingue le banal de l'exceptionnel - car on voit mal que les critères de sélection définis par l'UNESCO puissent s'accommoder d'une distinction à accorder à ce qui peut s'énumérer de façon répétitive à travers un grand nombre de pays. Où chercher, dès lors, l'exceptionnel, l'unique, bref ce qui dénonce une réussite humaine digne d'être internationalement valorisée ?

Critères de qualité

On propose ici de valoriser, notamment, les villages ouvriers qui ont exprimé une volonté particulière du patronat de mettre à la disposition de leurs habitants des logements de qualité. Cette qualité peut se reconnaître :

• dans les dimensions retenues pour les pièces d'habitation, dans le nombre de celles-ci, dans les éléments de confort qu'elles comportent, dans l'organisation urbanistique ou paysagère du village, bref dans une qualité de vie destinée à retenir plus sûrement la main d'oeuvre, certes, mais aussi à la respecter en tant qu'elle n'est pas qu'une marchandise entrant dans des calculs de rentabilité ;
• dans la qualité des matériaux utilisés, dans un recours à un style architectural se rattachant à une identité locale ou régionale, dans l'utilisation de motifs décoratifs, et même à la limite dans le renoncement à un modèle unique de construction au bénéfice d'une individualisation du logement.

Retenir de tels critères conduit à envisager de retenir un ou plusieurs sites appartenant aux générations les plus récentes des villages ouvriers - celles postérieures à la diffusion du modèle de la cité-jardin, par exemple, celles construites depuis l'entre-deux-guerres, celles dont la réalisation a été confiée à des architectes en renom, celles qui ont le mieux vieilli ou qui suscitent plus nettement le désir de rachat de la part de leurs occupants quand vient le moment de la liquidation de leur stock immobilier par les compagnies, etc.

On pourra alors voir apparaître des oppositions caractéristiques entre pays - ainsi, en France, les politiques immobilières patronales ont-elles engendré dans l'ensemble un habitat ouvrier de qualité médiocre, tandis qu'en Italie on sera frappé par la recherche d'une véritable qualité architecturale : oppositions, aussi, entre époques, l'essor des bassins miniers et sidérurgiques d'Europe occidentale au cours du dernier siècle de l'industrialisation ayant été aux mains de puissantes compagnies qui ont pu se doter des moyens d'une politique cohérente du logement : tandis que le XIXe siècle restera celui de l'édification des « cités idéales » et des entrepreneurs « idéologues ».

Critères conceptuels

D'un autre côté, il apparaît indispensable de faire bénéficier d'une distinction tous les sites de villages ouvriers qui ont formulé concrètement une pensée sociale originale, voire des conceptions utopistes de la part de leurs promoteurs - l'utopie étant le réservoir indispensable dans lequel les créateurs puisent de génération en génération pour passer à la réalité. Chaque pays a produit ses propres penseurs sociaux dont les concepts ne sont pas totalement réductibles les uns aux autres, et dont les inspirations ont varié sensiblement d'un âge à un autre. Il n'y aurait aucun motif défendable de privilégier un seul d'entre eux.

Suggestions

DEUX DOSSIERS de villages ouvriers qui ont été récemment inscrits sur la Liste du Patrimoine Mondial ou sont actuellement à l'étude devant le World Heritage Committee se trouvent illustrer parfaitement les deux types de références que l'on vient d'évoquer. Dans le cas de New Lanark (proposé 2001), l'adéquation des réalisations à une pensée morale et sociale cohérente et promise à une longue postérité est aussi remarquable que le sont les conditions de conservation et de valorisation qui se sont créées depuis un certain nombre d'années. Site porteur de sens et d'un large rayonnement, il paraît devoir remporter une adhésion unanime. Une telle appréciation n'implique pas pour autant que l'on doive restreindre à ce seul site l'attention portée par la Direction du Patrimoine Mondial à ce type de patrimoine, ni dans une perspective globale ni, tout autant, dans une perspective purement britannique. New Lanark est une réalisation très datée. Le reste du XIXe siècle et le XXe ont vu s'épanouir une série d'autres créations urbaines liées à de grands entrepreneurs qui méritent absolument d'être prises en considération - Saltaire, Port Sunlight, etc. - dans un pays qui fut par ailleurs la patrie d'Ebenezer Howard...

Dans le cas de Crespi d'Adda (inscrit 1995), on se trouve en présence d'un cadre d'interprétation tout différent : celui d'une Italie septentrionale où l'industrialisation en grand de l'industrie textile démarre seulement dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle ; celui d'un patronat qui a regardé certes vers les exemples de politiques paternalistes offerts par l'Europe du Nord- Ouest, mais qui n'en appartient pas moins à un contexte idéologique tout différent, imprégné de pensée catholique et où l'exemple d'Alessandro Rossi a été très influent ; celui d'une culture de l'architecture et de la ville qui ont inspiré une conception urbanistique et artistique du village ouvrier qui constitue un trait absolument original imputable à l'environnement italien ; celui d'un homme ou plutôt d'une dynastie dont la conduite est restée pourtant dictée par un pragmatisme éloigné d'une pensée sociale originale. Le résultat, en tout cas, distingue fortement le site de Crespi d'Adda parmi toutes les autres réalisations analogues, contemporaines ou postérieures dans l'ensemble de la péninsule ; en outre, le choix de l'emplacement par la famille Crespi a inséré l'usine et le village dans un paysage industriel historique d'une très haute valeur - celui du cours moyen de l'Adda au Sud du lac de Côme, très fortement marqué par l'histoire de l'utilisation de l'eau comme moyen de transport et comme source d'énergie ; tout un passé technologique auquel Crespi d'Adda se rattache directement par sa centrale hydroélectrique et par sa proximité de plusieurs autres landmarks à propos desquels doit du reste être prononcé le nom de Leonardo da Vinci. Mais encore une fois, le cas de l'aire méditerranéenne ou de l'Europe méridionale, comme on voudra, ne sera pas réglé une fois pour toutes avec Crespi d'Adda en ce qui concerne ce type de patrimoine lié à l'habitat ouvrier en villages. En Italie même, devra être pris un jour prochain en compte le cas de la manufacture royale de San Leucio (Caserta) et de son quartier d'habitations : impressionnant témoignage d'une politique industrielle et sociale d'un souverain bourbonien à l'époque des Lumières. En Catalogne, devra être analysé le type, largement représenté dans les vallées du Llobregat et du Ter, de la colonia industrielle, village- ville typique de la fin du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle, qui a servi de berceau à une expérience de gestion de la main d'oeuvre dans un cadre extra-métropolitain (i.e., hors de Barcelone) dont l'inspiration et l'expression ne sont pas réductibles au cas italien. Ici encore, le recours à l'architecte le plus en vue de l'époque - Gaudí - devrait faire l'objet d'une attention particulière dans le cas de la Colonia Güell.

Et le reste de l'Europe industrielle de l'Ouest et du Nord ? Ses réalisations en matière de villages ouvriers méritent évidemment un traitement particulier, car elles n'entrent pas dans les cadres fournis par les exemples précédents. En Belgique, les sites du Grand Hornu, de Bois du Luc et des mines (fermées) du Limbourg belge proposent un éventail de situations dont les dates, les conceptions ou les réponses à un besoin économique précis empêchent de les assimiler l'une à l'autre, tout en constituant des repères patrimoniaux d'un intérêt largement international. On en dira autant des (relativement) récentes Siedlungen de la Ruhr ou des cités des mines de potasse d'Alsace (sous régime tour à tour allemand et français), qui renvoient à de véritables politiques patronales ou administratives qui ont marqué un tournant dans la conception des relations humaines dans l'entreprise. Quant au cas français, il renforce encore l'argumentation selon laquelle l'inscription sur la Liste du Patrimoine Mondial d'un ou deux sites appelés à « parler » pour toute une catégorie patrimoniale exprime une stratégie culturelle indéfendable. Le Familistère de Guise, un bon quart de siècle après New Lanark, témoigne d'un projet de Jean-Baptiste Godin dont l'ampleur conceptuelle et le retentissement (cf. les transferts d'idées et de pratiques entre Guise et la cité Menier de Noisiel) le placent à un rang d'importance comparable à celui d'Owen, sous une enveloppe architecturale radicalement différente. Que dire de la manufacture de Villeneuvette (Hérault), culturellement à l'abandon aujourd'hui alors qu'elle constitue le dernier et unique témoignage d'une politique royale qui s'est développée entre le dernier tiers du XVIIe et le premier tiers du XVIIIe siècle, véritable cité du travail enclose de murs en pleine campagne ?

Conclusion

LES RÉFÉRENCES et les formes sont multiples : l'interprétation globale et généralisante est impossible. La multiplication typologique des sites à valoriser serait-elle un signe de faiblesse, ou de manque de maîtrise de son sujet, de la part de l'UNESCO ? J'y verrais plutôt un signe de respect à l'égard de la fertilité de l'esprit humain (fût-ce l'esprit des entrepreneurs, dont il fut un temps de bon ton de nier l'existence ) ainsi que de la mémoire des collectivités laborieuses qui ont vécu dans différents cadres des expériences originales, sur fond commun de travail, bien sûr.

Existe-t-il un argument financier qu'on puisse opposer à une certaine dispersion des landmark honorés d'un label mondial ? Je ne le crois pas. Des élus locaux qui appartiennent à des villes de quelques milliers d'habitants, souvent, et qui conçoivent des projets pour leur patrimoine industriel - et des projets d'une réelle densité, souvent - ne s'attendent pas à recevoir un million de dollars pour les réaliser. Ils attendent d'une très haute autorité culturelle une reconnaissance de principe qui leur permette de mobiliser dans leur propre département, province, région ou Etat les ressources nécessaire. Faire un détour (sic) par l'UNESCO relève pour eux d'une stratégie de contournement des administrations et ministères de leur propre pays qui, trop souvent, s'avèrent incapables de les écouter et, surtout, d'être à l'écoute du patrimoine qu'ils devraient contribuer à sauver. La procédure employée me paraît hautement démocratique : elle renvoie à la vigueur de l'initiative citoyenne.

Louis BERGERON

Paris, 18 octobre 1995

Par Jean Clottes, Ancien Président du Comité International d'Art Rupestre (ICOMOS)

version PDF (9570K)

 L'Art Rupestre : Une étude thématique et critères d'évaluation

I.         INTRODUCTION

LE TERME d'art rupestre qualifie les manifestations artistiques sur support rocheux. C'est la seule manifestation culturelle de l'humanité qui se soit poursuivie sans interruption pendant plus de trente millénaires pour parvenir jusqu'à nous sous ses formes multiples, inchangées depuis les origines. Les débuts de la création artistique ne sont pas le fruit d'une culture ou d'une ethnie particulière mais une composante essentielle de l'Homo sapiens sapiens : dès que celui-ci se répand dans le monde, les manifestations d'art rupestre apparaissent partout, de l'extrême nord de la Scandinavie à l'extrême sud de l'Afrique, de l'Espagne et du Portugal à la Sibérie, couvrant toute l'Asie et les Amériques, et répandu dans toute l'Océanie, particulièrement en Australie, mais jusqu'à l'Ile de Pâques.

Dans l'art rupestre, on constate une grande diversité et une extraordinaire complexité. Les études ethnologiques nous éclairent sur la signification des motifs et des symboles. Par exemple, dans le monde entier, cet art a été choisi comme vecteur des mythes sur la Création du Monde. L'art préhistorique et tribal, le plus souvent, est un art de pouvoir, dont les symboles sont conçus pour faciliter la vie, chercher de l'aide auprès de puissances extérieures, avoir une meilleure prise sur le réel comme sur le monde des esprits auquel il est inextricablement mêlé.

Il constitue donc un patrimoine unique et particulièrement précieux. D'abord, par son antiquité, puisqu'il représente une chaîne ininterrompue de plus de 35 000 ans. Par ses chef-d'oeuvres aussi, qu'il s'agisse des peintures des Magdaléniens dans les cavernes franco-cantabriques, des oeuvres des Aborigènes d'Australie ou de celles des Bushmen d'Afrique australe. Il témoigne de pratiques religieuses qui plongent dans la nuit des temps et en constitue la seule manifestation tangible. Il apporte des renseignements multiples sur les modes de vie, les vêtements, les armes et les outils, les cérémonies et sur tout ce qui constituait le monde matériel et spirituel de civilisations disparues.

II.         UN ART EN DANGER

SI NOMBREUX que soient les sites d'art rupestre, ils ne constituent qu'une infime partie de ce qui a existé. En effet, qu'il se trouve en grottes, sous abris ou sur des roches en plein air, l'art rupestre est soumis à des agressions de toutes sortes, de la part de la nature et des hommes. Chaque site est comparable à un musée qui se trouverait exposé aux éléments et aux actes de vandalisme. Du monde entier parviennent des échos alarmants sur sa dégradation, dont l'accélération est due à des causes multiples.

Jusqu'à la fin du XIXème siècle dans certaines régions de l'Afrique et des Amériques, ou même la première moitié de ce siècle en Australie, l'art rupestre se renouvelait, grâce à des traditions religieuses toujours vivantes pratiquées par des sociétés traditionnelles dont les modes de vie avaient peu varié. Cet état de choses n'existe plus, sauf à l'état de relique pour des groupes de plus en plus réduits. Dans son immense majorité, l'art rupestre est devenu un art fossile. Il faut donc protéger ce qui existe dans la forme où les oeuvres nous sont parvenues.

Cet art non renouvelable se dégrade vite et disparaît sous l'effet de phénomènes naturels. La nature de la roche joue un rôle crucial : certains grès, par exemple, se desquament régulièrement, de sorte que les peintures de la couche superficielle sont détruites. Les animaux concourent également aux détériorations : dans les abris, des nids d'oiseaux ou d'insectes recouvrent les peintures et les font disparaître peu à peu ; de grands mammifères se frottent aux parois ornées. Tous ces phénomènes, selon les lieux, provoquent une érosion progressive de l'art rupestre.

Les effets dévastateurs de l'action humaine sont plus nocifs encore. Ils prennent des formes diverses. Dans le nord de l'Europe, ce sont les pluies acides, dues aux pollutions industrielles de cette seconde moitié du XXème siècle, qui menacent d'une entière destruction une grande partie de l'art rupestre scandinave. Partout, dans le monde, le vandalisme sous ses multiples aspects intervient, dégrade et fait disparaître des sites entiers.

L'art rupestre, dans son contexte culturel d'origine, était protégé par le respect qui l'entourait, de même que l'environnement naturel où il s'inscrivait. Actuellement, des forces opposées le menacent. Dans la conscience du grand public, la vénération des anciens graphismes n'existe plus. De sorte que les travaux d'urbanisation, les carrières, l'ouverture de routes, la construction de barrages détruisent chaque année des milliers de représentations. Devant les nécessités du développement économique, les investissements et les emplois mis en jeu, la préservation de l'art rupestre passe trop souvent au second plan, qu'il s'agisse de pays industrialisés ou non.

Cet art ne présente pas le caractère monumental des constructions architecturales. Il est beaucoup plus vulnérable, car il peut disparaître avec la roche elle-même, dans le cas de grands travaux, mais également si la pellicule superficielle est attaquée d'une façon quelconque. À l'heure actuelle, sans noircir le tableau, il est certain qu'une grande partie de l'art rupestre mondial sera détruite au cours des prochaines décennies. Il s'agit donc d'un patrimoine en très grave péril.

La situation est très différente selon les pays, en fonction du nombre des sites et de leur isolement, du degré d'intérêt pour la culture, de la densité de la population et de bien d'autres paramètres. Parfois, des sites sont classés parmi les monuments d'intérêt historique et/ou culturel et bénéficient ainsi d'une protection légale. Dans leur très grande majorité, ils ne le sont pas. Rappelons que seuls treize ensembles de sites d'art rupestre figurent à ce titre sur la Liste du Patrimoine Mondial de l'Unesco : ils se trouvent en Algérie, en Australie, en Libye, au Brésil, au Mexique, en Argentine, en France, en Italie, au Portugal, en Espagne, en Suède et en Norvège. Aucun n'a été mis sur la Liste en Asie, en Afrique sud-saharienne, aux Etats-Unis ou au Canada.

La protection de l'art rupestre ne fera des progrès significatifs que dans la mesure où elle sera perçue comme une nécessité absolue, et non pas comme marginale et secondaire par rapport à des objectifs économiques ou touristiques. C'est un problème d'éducation et de promotion culturelle au sens le plus large.

III.         CRITÈRES DE SÉLECTION

LES SITES d'art rupestre se comptent dans le monde par dizaines, voire centaines, de milliers. Il faut donc faire des choix, bien que tous soient signifiants et précieux à tel ou tel titre. La liste provisoire et préliminaire ci-après ne peut qu'être indicative. L'intérêt relativement récent pour l'art rupestre dans certains pays et le manque de moyens fait que des ensembles ornés se découvrent tous les jours et certains sont de toute première importance. L'absence d'un site ou d'en ensemble de sites sur cette liste ne devrait donc pas empêcher, dans l'avenir, qu'une demande de mise sur la Liste du Patrimoine mondial soit examinée selon ses mérites propres. Tout ce que l'on peut dire à ce stade, c'est que tous les sites mentionnés ci-après méritent amplement de figurer sur la Liste, mais que leur inventaire reste ouvert.

Ils ont été pré- sélectionnés en fonction des critères suivants, après enquête auprès de plusieurs de nos représentants régionaux :

• leur caractère exceptionnel sur le plan esthétique ;
• sur le plan ethnologique ;
• sur le plan archéologique et chronologique ;
• sur le plan environnemental ;
• le nombre des représentations sur une superficie bien délimitée (lieux sacrés) ;
• la protection dont ils sont l'objet.

Les étoiles (*) marquent l'évaluation d'une importance qui ne peut être que subjective.

 

III.1	Afrique (actuellement 3 sites sur la Liste : Afrique du Sud (uKhahlamba/Drakensberg), Algérie (Tassili n'Ajjer) et Libye (Acacus). En Afrique, le nombre des sites d'art rupestre dépasse les 150 000. C'est pourquoi, la plupart des sites retenus - à l'image de ceux qui figurent déjà sur la liste pour ce continent -, sont en fait desensembles de sites, couvrant de vastes régions. Des sites très importants existent aussi au Maroc, au Malawi, au Lesotho, au Botswana, en Zambie. III.1.1         Afrique saharienne  -  Libye   +*** Messak (milliers de sites avec des gravures splendides)   +** Mathendous (une dizaine d'oueds avec de nombreux sites prestigieux)  -  Tchad   +** Ennedi (très nombreux sites gravés et peints)   +** Tibesti (très nombreux sites gravés et peints)   III.1.2         Afrique subsaharienne  *  -  Afrique du Sud   +* Cedarberg (concentration d'abris peints)  -  Namibie   +*** Brandberg (plus de mille sites peints dans un massif isolé)   +* Twyfelfontein (plusieurs milliers de gravures en un même lieu ; parc)  -  Tanzanie   +** ensembles de Kondoa-Singida (près de 350 sites ornés de gravures et de peintures)  -  Zimbabwe   +*** Matopos Hills (très important ensemble d'abris ornés) * L'étude Southern African rock-art sites, rédigée par Janette Deacon en collaboration avec les membres du Southern African Rock Art Project (SARAP), a été éditée par l'ICOMOS en 2002.
III.2	Amériques III.2.1         Amérique Centrale et Amérique du Sud (actuellement 3 sites sur la Liste : Bolivie (Samaipata), Brésil (Serra da Capivara) et Argentine (Cueva de las Manos). Les travaux - et les découvertes - se multiplient sur ce continent, dont l'art rupestre est encore mal connu.  -  Argentine   + Guachipas, Salta (une trentaine de grottes et abris ornés avec peintures et gravures)  -  Brésil   +** Rio Peruaçu, Minas Gerais (plusieurs grands abris avec peintures dans un environnement exceptionnel)  -  Chili   + Tarapacà, Arica (géoglyphes)   + Sierra de Arica (peintures)   + Taira (peintures)   + El Médano (peintures)  -  Guatemala   + Naj Tunich (grotte avec peintures et gravures Maya)  -  Mexique   + Chalcazingo, Morelos (gravures Olmèques)   + Juxlahuaca, Oxtotitlan (grottes à peintures Olmèques polychromes)   + Loltun et autres grottes de Oxkutzcab, Puuc, Yucatan  -  Pérou   +** Toro Muerto, Arequipa (ensemble de plusieurs milliers de blocs gravés)  -  Venezuela   + Rio Orinoco (une cinquantaine d'abris et grottes ornés) III.2.2         Amérique du Nord (actuellement 1 seul site sur la Liste : Mexique (Baja California)) Les sites d'Amérique du Nord sont largement ignorés du public. On en compte cependant des milliers, qui sont encore parfois l'objet de pratiques cultuelles.  -  Canada   +** Writing-on-Stone, Alberta (gravures)   + Petersborough, Ontario gravures)  -  Etats-Unis   +*** Great Gallery (plusieurs grands abris peints dans un environnement exceptionel)   +*** Coso Range, Californie (milliers de gravures rupestres sur roches à l'air libre, en plusieurs canyons)   + Pleito Creek, Californie (plusieurs grottes avec peintures)   +** Sites Dinwoody/Bighorn Basin, Wyoming (gravures)   +** Sites de la Lower Pecos River, Texas (abris peints)
III.3	Asie (actuellement aucun site sur la Liste) Des dizaines de milliers de sites existent en Asie. Ils sont très peu connus.  -  Chine   +** Helanshan, dans le nord (gravures)   +** Huashan, dans le sud (peintures)  -  Inde   +*** nombreuses grottes peintes du Bhimbetka, Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh)  -  Indonésie   +** Grottes ornées du Kalimantan, à Bornéo  -  Russie   +* Tamgaly, Kazakhastan (gravures de plein air)   +** plusieurs ensembles de milliers de gravures dans les vallées de la Lena, du Ienissei, de l'Angara, de la Tomsk
III.4	Europe (actuellement 7 sites sur la Liste : Portugal (Foz Côa), France (sites de la Vallée de la Vézère), Espagne (Altamira et sites du Levant), Italie (Valcamonica), Suède (Tanum) et Norvège (Alta). Les grottes et ensembles cités ci-après sont en majorité du Paléolithique et uniques au monde de ce point de vue.  -  Espagne   +** Grottes ornées de la Corniche Cantabrique (Asturias, Cantabria, Pays-Basque) (plusieurs dizaines de grottes ornées paléolithiques)  -  France   +*** Grotte Chauvet, Vallon-Pont-d'Arc (splendide caverne ornée, avec les dates les plus anciennes du monde)   +** Grottes paléolithiques pyrénéennes (Ariège, Haute-Garonne : 13 grottes ornées parmi les plus prestigieuses connues)   +*** Mont Bego, Alpes-Maritimes (environ 40 000 gravures rupestres chalcolithiques ; Parc du Mercantour)
III.5	Océanie (actuellement 1 site sur la Liste : le Parc de Kakadu en Australie). L'Australie doit compter entre 80 000 et 100 000 sites. Les traditions sont souvent conservées. Bien d'autres ensembles seraient également dignes de figurer sur la Liste.  -  Australie   +*** Région de Laura (Cape York)(plusieurs centaines d'abris peints ; gravures ; près de 30 000 ans de tradition d'art rupestre)   +*** Kimberley (Bradshaw sites ; des centaines d'abris peints avec une forme d'art très originale)   +** Pilbarra (gravures)

By Janette Deacon, 2002 in collaboration with members of the Southern African Rock Art Project (SARAP)

I. INTRODUCTION

ROCK ART by hunter-gatherers, herders, and/or later farming communities occurs in almost all countries in Africa. There is, however, a distinctive set of Southern African traditions, with regional and temporal variation, in Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, and Lesotho. In essence, Southern African rock-art traditions record experiences related to the belief systems and rituals of the indigenous people of the region. Sites representative of these traditions are worthy of consideration for inclusion on the World Heritage List for the following reasons:

• Many individual sites and images - both paintings and engravings - are masterpieces of human creative genius that illustrate a combination of sophisticated ideas and beliefs, exquisite and unusual detail, extraordinary imagination, and artistic mastery of the chosen media;
• Collectively, over a period of nearly thirty millennia in the subcontinent, the artists recorded significant interchanges of human values - particularly with respect to religious and ritual practices - that cannot be recovered from stone artefacts and other inanimate remains;
• There is excellent ethnographic information available from indigenous people in certain key areas that has assisted in the understanding and authentic interpretation of the meaning and motivation of the art - a feature that is missing in many other regions of the world;
• Paintings and engravings of successive traditions have been done at selected places and areas over a long time period and the integrity of this relationship is still intact, incrementally adding to the tangible and intangible significance and power of these places and the landscape; and
• The shamanistic inspiration for much of the art demonstrates the time depth and nature of the human quest for supernatural power in this part of the world.

Recognizing the importance of their rock art, cultural heritage conservation authorities in Southern African countries, coordinated informally through the Southern African Rock Art Project (SARAP), have collaborated since 1996 in identifying and nominating a representative sample of rock art in the region for the World Heritage List. As part of this co-operative programme, training courses and workshops have been held to assist the responsible heritage institutions to draft nominations, draw up management plans, and train the staff responsible for management of the sites.

This report is the result of consultation at SARAP meetings in South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe with representatives from most of the Southern African countries. Of the countries that attended the meetings, Lesotho has not yet signed the World Heritage Convention. Swaziland was invited but did not send a delegate, and is in any case not yet a signatory to the Convention. Angola attended only one meeting, in 1998, and although invitations were sent to attend subsequent meetings, no reply was received.

There are sufficient contrasts between areas of high concentration of rock art to warrant the nomination of a series of sites for World Heritage listing. Initially it was hoped to present all the sites together as a single serial nomination to the World Heritage Committee. Practical problems have developed, however, and each State Party is responsible for submitting their nomination(s) when they are ready to do so. At the time of writing, the rock art of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park (South Africa) and of Tsodilo (Botswana) have been inscribed, and nominations by Malawi (Dedza-Chongoni), Tanzania (Kondoa- Irangi), Zimbabwe (the Matopos), Zambia (Kasama), and Namibia (Twyfelfontein) are in various stages of preparation.

Ultimately, the selected rock-art sites will represent the range of variation in the region and symbolically re- connect the artistic heritage of Southern Africans for the first time since the colonial era. We present here an overview of the rock art in the region and propose criteria for the evaluation of nominations of Southern African rock- art sites for the World Heritage List.

II. OVERVIEW

II.1 Distribution

A SUMMARY OF ROCK ART databases in Southern African countries indicates that there are at least 14 000 sites on record, but that many more exist than have been formally recorded (Deacon 1997). There are probably well in excess of 50,000 sites in the region as a whole, with a conservative estimate of more than two million individual images. With the exception of the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park in South Africa, Tsodilo in Botswana, and the Brandberg in Namibia, few areas have been thoroughly searched and recorded. The densest known concentrations of rock art occur in parts of Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe The lowest numbers of recorded sites are in Angola, Malawi, and Mozambique.

The region has both rock engravings (petroglyphs) and rock paintings (pictographs). There are no reliable records to indicate the relative percentage of paintings to engravings, but painting sites are probably in the majority. In general, both paintings and engravings have similar themes and images, but the engravings tend to include less detail and fewer human figures.

The distribution of the two techniques is largely governed by geology. Engravings occur out in the open and are usually, but not exclusively, associated with igneous rocks such as dolerite. Such rock formations tend not to form shelters or caves. Rock paintings, on the other hand, are most common in areas where there are caves or rock shelters in outcrops of granite and in sedimentary rocks formations of limestone, sandstone and quartzite. It is rare, but not unknown, to find both rock paintings and engravings together at the same site.

II.2 Traditions and styles

IN BROAD TERMS, there are three rock-art traditions in the region with distinctive styles and content that are largely the result of differences in the cosmology and beliefs of Stone Age hunter-gatherers, of Stone Age herders, and of Iron Age agriculturists. Within these traditions, and often cross-cutting them, there are further differences in the techniques used to paint and engrave (for a general overview see Lewis-Williams 1983; Coulson & Campbell 2001).

II.2.i Paintings
As elsewhere in the world, the most common pigment used for rock paintings is red ochre, with some paintings in maroon, yellow, black, and white. There is some ethnographic evidence that the pigment was mixed with a variety of binders such as blood, egg, fat and plant juices, but the exact recipes are not known (Lewis-Williams 1983). The techniques applied in the majority of paintings can be summarized as follows:

1. Fine-line paintings, almost exclusively the work of hunter-gatherers, in red or yellow ochre, white clay, or black charcoal or manganese oxide, done with a brush or other fine instrument, using techniques such as the following:
   • Outline of the image with a single line (rare everywhere);
   • Outline of the image with the interior filled with lines of the same colour (characteristic of Tanzania (Anati 1986), with some examples elsewhere);
   • Monochrome image with the colour blocked in (most common almost everywhere);
   • Outline in one colour with the image filled in with another slightly different colour;
   • Bichrome, in which two blocks of colour are used in the same image;
   • Polychrome in which three or more colours are used in the same image (most common in Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Lesotho);
   • Shaded polychrome in which several colours blend into each other to create depth and shading (most common in Lesotho and the Drakensberg region of South Africa);
   • Handprints and finger-dots
2. Paintings done with a finger or very broad brush or applicator, most often by herders and agriculturists, often bold and highly stylized designs that include domesticated animals, in:
   • Monochrome red, white, or black (yellow rare);
   • Bichrome (rare);
   • Handprints, both plain and decorated.

II.2.ii Engravings
Rock engravings in all traditions were made most commonly by removing the weathered outer surface of rocks such as dolerite to create a colour contrast with the underlying unweathered rock (Dowson 1992). This could be achieved by using another harder rock such as quartz or chalcedony. The weathered surface was either scraped away over the whole area of the image, or the image was outlined in a single line, or the weathered rock was pecked out in a chopping motion. Some engravings show extraordinary artistic skill with careful details of skin folds, eyes and posture delicately portrayed. Engravings are also found on rocks where there is little or no colour contrast but where a large flat expanse is exposed, for example on ancient glacial pavements in the Northern Cape Province in South Africa.

So-called cupules and grooves, sometimes in regular patterns, have been made in relatively soft rock types where the colour contrast between the surface and underlying rock has been less important than the granularity of the rock. Many of these were probably not 'art', although they may have had a ritual use.

II.3 Dating

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT that inspired the engravings and paintings on the rocks of Southern Africa dates back at least 27,500 years and persisted in some areas until the 20th century AD. The oldest date is the average calculated from fifteen radiocarbon dates on charcoal from an occupation layer in Apollo 11 cave in southern Namibia. Seven small painted slabs, on rock that was not derived from the cave wall or floor, were recovered during two excavations in 1969 and 1972 (Wendt 1976). The next oldest date is from the Matopos in Zimbabwe, where a spall that had flaked off the painted wall in the Cave of Bees was found incorporated in the deposit in the floor. Charcoal from the relevant layer was dated to about 10,500 BP, giving a minimum age for the original painting (Thackeray 1983).

The oldest dated rock engravings in the region come from Wonderwerk Cave in the Northern Cape, South Africa. Five small slabs with clearly identifiable fine-line rock engravings of animals and non-representational geometric patterns, and another six with lines that may have been part of engravings, were found in different layers. Associated charcoal dated the oldest to about 10,200 BP and the youngest to about 2000 BP (Thackeray 1983). Cation ratio dates on rock engravings from open sites in South Africa also gave preliminary results of between 10,000 and 2000 years (Whitley & Annegarn 1994). Relative dating of the weathered crust on engraved surfaces on a small sample of South African rock engravings suggests that the fine- line style is the oldest, and that the pecked and scraped engravings were done more recently.

Geometric zigzag patterns, combined to make diamond shapes and engraved on two small pieces of hard ochre, have been found in a cave at Blombos on the southern coast of South Africa; associated with Middle Stone Age artefacts. A layer of dune sand overlying the deposit has been dated at 77,000 years ago by optical luminescence. Although the find is claimed by some to be the earliest art (Whitfield 2002) the archaeologists who excavated the site argue only that people at that time were capable of abstract thought and design (Henshilwood et al 2001). Similar designs are found on bone artefacts and ostrich eggshell dating within the last 18 000 years (Deacon & Deacon 1999), but are not common in either rock paintings or rock engravings.

Most of the art was done by hunter-gatherers whose traditions persisted in south-eastern South Africa until the 19th century AD (Lewis-Williams 1990). In some countries, such as Tanzania (Anati 1986), Malawi, and Mozambique, where there are no reports of hunter-gatherer style paintings that include domesticated animals or images of the colonial era, the hunter-gatherer art is estimated to be older than AD 1000 (Smith 1997).

Within the last 2000 years, herders and Iron Age agriculturist people entered the region from the north and added to the corpus of rock art with different styles and content. The oldest art in these traditions is generally thought to be less than 1500 years old and the most recent paintings and engravings were done in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In some areas in South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi, agriculturist art was still being practised for initiation rituals in the late twentieth century (Smith 1995).

II.4 Ethnography

THERE IS A WEALTH of ethnographic information from the 19th and 20th centuries that can and has been used successfully to interpret many of the metaphors and symbols in hunter- gatherer and later agriculturist art dating back hundreds and even thousands of years. This information gives an unparalleled insight into the meaning and context of rock art. An understanding of altered states of consciousness, and its role in shamanism and rock art as developed by researchers David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson (Lewis- Williams 1990; Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1989), has in turn helped to identify the source of some of the metaphors found in the Palaeolithic rock art in western Europe (Clottes & Lewis-Williams 1996). With the exception of Australia and North America, very few rock-art regions elsewhere have such detailed sources for interpretation.

The ethnographic records provide considerable evidence in Southern Africa that hunter-gatherer rock paintings and rock engravings were part of religious practices for rain- making, healing, and other shamanistic activities such as out-of-body travel and the control of game animals. These practices involved altered states of consciousness that enabled medicine people or shamans to access supernatural power through certain animals or through ancestral spirits. The wide distribution of this rock-art tradition, from South Africa to Tanzania, provides evidence for a broad high-level similarity in the cosmology of Southern African hunter-gatherer peoples. There are nevertheless important regional differences in the way that shamanistic experiences were perceived and used and in the metaphors that were transferred to the art.

For example, the beliefs of the /Xam San that were recorded in the 1870s (Bleek & Lloyd 1911; Vinnicombe 1976; Lewis- Williams 1981, 1990) led to an understanding in the 1970s of the reason why the eland was the animal most commonly depicted in the rock art in the south-eastern region in South Africa. The work of anthropologists and psychologists amongst 20th century San in Botswana and Namibia enabled some of the /Xam records to be interpreted and better understood (Marshall 1976; Katz 1982; Lee 1984; Guenther 1986; Biesele 1993). By combining the information from these diverse sources, Vinnicombe (1976) concluded that the eland was the pivot around which the social organization and beliefs of the Drakensberg San revolved. Lewis-Williams (1981) described how the eland played a key role in boys' and girls' initiation, and its role in healing and rainmaking because it was believed that associating with the eland could bring the medicine-person or shaman closer to god and supernatural power. Shamans in trance would feel as though they were transformed into eland, as is clear in many paintings of therianthropes with human and eland body parts that are combined in one image. In other areas such as Zimbabwe and Namibia, however, the eland is less common than animals such as the kudu and the giraffe. This suggests regional variation in the ritual significance of particular animals.

There is relatively little ethnography that has been applicable to herder rock art, and indeed there is only circumstantial evidence that the schematic and highly stylized art with a wider range of geometric patterns, best represented at Tsodilo (Botswana), was done by early herders. This art is attributed to herders because it includes domesticated animals, and because in places where it occurs with the earlier tradition it tends to be superimposed on what is clearly hunter-gatherer art (Coulson & Campbell 2001). Herder art is also found above and below hunter-gatherer art. A good example is the Limpopo Valley, where there was a brief period of interaction between the two groups in the 1st millennium AD (Hall & Smith 2000).

Agriculturist rock-art displays some general similarities within the region and is quite distinct from the hunter-gatherer art in several respects. It tends to be bolder, less detailed, more schematic, and with a smaller range of colours and subject matter. In some areas the paintings are called 'late whites' because where superimposition occurs they are always on top and they are done in white paint with a finger rather than a brush. Local traditions and ethnographic records in Zambia and Malawi (Smith 1995, 1997) indicate some of this art was part of secret male and female initiation practices and of rituals such as rainmaking. The meaning of the designs is known only to the initiated.

II.5 Content

THE CONTENT of the rock art varies within the region, but there are several themes that are sufficiently widespread to indicate broad, high-level geographical and temporal continuity within the Southern African hunter-gatherer, herder, and agriculturist belief systems over the period in which rock paintings and rock engravings were done. 
The most significant similarities are the persistent occurrence of illustrations of and metaphors for altered states of consciousness or trance experience, particularly in the art of the hunter-gatherers. These experiences are evident in the postures in which people are illustrated, the consistent selection of certain animals in preference to others, and in the presence and incorporation of geometric patterns that depict entoptic phenomena 'seen' during trance (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1989).

In hunter-gatherer art people are shown in postures such as bending from the waist, lying down horizontally, or with contorted limbs. Additional details such as bleeding from the nose or a red line that sometimes has white dots emanating from the back of the neck or the feet may be seen, as well as the transformation of people into animals and animals into people. Processions of dancing people or groups of clapping women record the dances that helped shamans go into trance. Healers, shown touching sick people to draw out the arrows of sickness, may be associated with arrows, they may have animal heads, or may be sweating or bleeding from the nose. Rainmakers may be shown in close contact with large rain animals such as elephant, hippo, or eland, or with huge animals that are not identifiable to species. People in deep trance may be shown collapsing as if dead, or swimming underwater with fish or fish tails, or flying, with or without wings.

Images of transformed medicine-people with animal heads and other features (therianthropes) are especially detailed in paintings in the Drakensberg (South Africa and Lesotho), in Zimbabwe, and in the Brandberg (Namibia). Animals may also be shown with human hind legs. Therianthropes occur in parts of Angola, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania, but are not as common as they are in the other Southern African countries.

Differences in the content of the art can be seen in the posture and dress of the people who are illustrated. For example, paintings of people in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania have dramatic hairstyles that are not seen so often in the art further south. In contrast, there are many more paintings in the south of people wearing cloaks, some of which are elaborately decorated.

As noted above, there are variations in the frequency of certain animals depicted in the rock paintings and engravings of the region. These variations are not a mirror of the distribution of fauna, but an indication of the animals that the artists and their society regarded as significant in their religious and ritual practices. The eland predominates in the south-east, the eland and elephant in the south-west, the rhino is prominent in some areas, while in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Tanzania the kudu and giraffe reign supreme (Garlake 1987).

In some parts of South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi the rock art is dominated by agriculturist paintings depicting symbols significant during initiation ceremonies and ritual practices. A stylized image of the crocodile or lizard is most common in some areas where it is a symbol of power, while in others domesticated cattle are more prevalent. Agriculturist art also records activities associated with colonial times such as trains, motor vehicles, aircraft, wagons, horses, camels, and other forms of transport.

Schematic designs illustrating entoptic phenomena with dots, zigzags, grids, wavy lines, nested u-shapes, concentric circles, sunbursts, and vortices are widespread and occur in all rock-art traditions, not only in Southern Africa but elsewhere in the world as well. In Southern Africa they are more common in rock engravings than in paintings, but are nevertheless seen in paintings throughout the region. In the hunter-gatherer tradition they are subtly integrated into the fine-line paintings and engravings; in the herder art they are often more common than images of people or animals; and in the agriculturist art they may be combined with other stylized designs. The presence of these entoptic patterns in all three traditions emphasises their connection with altered states of consciousness and, therefore, the link between the art and trance experience that persisted in various forms over a long period of time and through major changes in economy and beliefs.

II.6 Landscape setting

IN SEVERAL CASES in hunter-gatherer, herder, and agriculturist traditions, there is ethnographic evidence that rock art has been used to enhance the power and significance of particular places in the landscape. The paintings or engravings were placed there because it was a rainmaking or initiation site, adding intangible value to the place. In a few cases, such as Kasama (Zambia) and the /Xam heartland in South Africa, there are ethnographic records that explain the significance of the place. Some of the rock-art site nominations to the World Heritage list will be proposed as cultural landscapes or as mixed cultural and natural sites so as to emphasize this relationship between culture and nature that has not been affected unduly by economic or agricultural development. The integrity of the art within the natural landscape has therefore been retained. Good examples are Tsodilo (Botswana), the Matopos (Zimbabwe), the Brandberg (Namibia), and the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park and the /Xam Heartland (South Africa) (see Coulson & Campbell 2001 for illustrations).

III. PROPOSED CRITERIA FOR EVALUATION OF SOUTHERN AFRICAN ROCK ART

III.1 General World Heritage criteria

This document does not wish to pre-empt the criteria as set out in paragraph 24.a of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 1999) that may be cited by individual Southern African countries in support of their nominations of rock-art sites for World Heritage listing. However, the following could be addressed.

Criterion i           Creative genius

This criterion should apply not only to the work of individual artists represented at the site, but also to the collective genius of the society that developed the sophisticated symbolism, metaphors, and multiple meanings displayed in the art. The site should display outstanding examples of the art of the tradition, as well as exceptional talent in the execution of the paintings and/or engravings. Sites using this criterion should have a variety of exceptionally well preserved rock art in which details of content and technique can be clearly seen.

Criterion ii           Important interchange of human values

This criterion would apply if more than one rock-art tradition is represented at the site. The historical process that contributed to the technological and artistic development at the site should be described. Dating and other details of the succession from hunter- gatherer to herder and/or agriculturist presence in the area should be supplied from archaeological research, ethnography, written records and/or oral history. Significance does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with 'the oldest' or 'the most recent' or 'the largest number' or 'highest density' of sites.

Criterion iii           Unique or exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition

In applying this criterion, well documented ethnographic or historical evidence would be required to interpret the rock art in relation to the cosmology and beliefs of the society that created it. The art should not be seen as the only testimony to the cultural tradition. It formed an integral part of the social fabric at the time it was created and some evidence of the activities that inspired the art should therefore be presented to place the art in its historical and social context. Few sites in the region have direct ethnographic evidence of this context, but sufficient research has been done, and could still be done, to make valid comparisons and connections between living traditions and those that have disappeared over the last century in areas within the region. For example, the presence of entoptic patterns and trance postures in the art is a clear indication that the artists experienced altered states of consciousness and that this had a close connection with their artistic tradition. To make this testimony unique or exceptional, however, there would have to be unusual techniques used in depicting these experiences, unusual features in the content of the art, and/or outstanding or site-specific ethnographic or historical evidence that connects the art with the cultural tradition of a particular people.

Criterion iv           Outstanding example of a landscape which illustrates a significant stage in human history

This criterion could be used in cases where the integrity of the rock art within the landscape has been retained and no developments or agricultural activities interfere with the original setting. Ideally, this should be combined with oral history or ethnographic records that add intangible values associated with the rock art and that particular landscape (ie an associative cultural landscape as described in paragraph 44(b)(iv) of the Operational Guidelines).

Criterion v           Outstanding example of a traditional human settlement or land-use representative of a culture vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change

As there are no known traditional hunter-gatherer or herder communities in Southern Africa who practise rock art, this criterion would apply primarily to agriculturists. It would be very important to inscribe such an example as it could represent the only living tradition of rock art in the region. The nomination would have to include ethnographic and anthropological evidence from the community that rock art is still an integral part of their cosmology and beliefs that are associated with their traditional human settlement or land-use pattern.

Criterion vi           Direct or tangible association with beliefs and artistic works of outstanding universal significance

This criterion can be used in conjunction with others to emphasize the universal significance of Southern African hunter-gatherer rock art and related ethnography that has contributed to an understanding of the relationship between rock art and altered states of consciousness, including entoptic phenomena.

Paragraph 24.b of the Operational Guidelines also sets out other requirements relating to nominated sites and monuments. The first of these is the test of authenticity in design, material, workmanship and setting. In the case of rock-art sites, survey by a rock-art specialist of all sites within the area to be nominated must verify the authenticity in design, material, and workmanship. It is important to ensure that the setting remains largely intact and has not been altered significantly since the art was done, since the setting is likely to have contributed to the original meaning of the site. The setting can be destroyed by the inappropriate placement of protective measures and information boards and facilities, as well as by insensitive local development not directly connected to the rock art.

The second requirement relates to adequate protection and management. Some form of management plan is obligatory for all nominated properties. The management plan must include a full inventory of all sites within the area proposed for World Heritage listing. The inventory must at least have a description and photographs of the art at each site, directions for locating the place, and distribution maps. Ideally, it should also include a condition report by a rock-art conservation specialist for each site.

In assessing the appropriateness and effectiveness of protective measures and management mechanisms at rock-art sites, it is important to ensure that at least one trained rock-art conservation specialist is on the permanent staff of the organization responsible for management of the site. As several sites to be nominated are within nature reserves or parks, the management personnel are trained only in nature conservation. This training is inadequate for the long-term monitoring, conservation, and management of rock art.

Interpretive displays and publications explaining the meaning and significance of the rock art and how to behave at the site must be available if the site is open to the public.

The nomination must confirm that descendant communities of the original artists have been consulted regarding the meaning and motivation behind the art. If such communities have been identified, they must be included in decision- making for, and management of, the site.

III.2 Specific criteria for Southern African rock-art sites

IN EVALUATING NOMINATIONS of rock-art sites in Southern Africa for World Heritage listing, the following criteria could be applied.

III.2.i Representivity
The site may:

 

• be representative of a defined or definable tradition of rock paintings or rock engravings in the Southern African region, in that it includes many of the characteristics of that tradition;
• have outstanding examples of a painting or engraving style, technique, or method; and/or
• have the only (or some of the few) examples known of a rare tradition, style, technique, or method.

III.2.ii Quality of rock art
The rock art may:

• include images of outstanding technical quality;
• have superb examples of artistic skill and detail;
• have excellent examples of graphic design and composition;
• be exceptionally well preserved; and/or
• have several panels of paintings or engravings that clearly depict unusual themes or images.

III.2.iii Setting, size of area, and density of rock-art sites
The area that is nominated should:

• be large enough to display outstanding examples of rock art in an environmental setting that is as close as possible to that which existed at the time the paintings or engravings were done;
• retain much of its original ambience;
• be definable in terms of its outstanding environmental or cultural characteristics; and/or
• include at least 50 rock-art sites, OR, if only a few sites are nominated, should include well over 100 individual images.

III.2.iv Association between rock art, ethnography, oral history, and/or ritual practices
A concerted effort should have been made to:

• document interpretations of the rock art by conducting oral history surveys amongst indigenous local communities and/or ancestral communities and undertaking a thorough search of relevant ethnographic and anthropological sources;
• identify recurrent images in the rock art and establish their significance in current, recent or ancient practices; and
• liaise with local communities when developing the conservation management and tourist management plans.

III.2.v Quality of research and documentation
The nomination dossier must show that:

• a purposeful survey of the rock art in the area in order to find and record as many sites as possible has been undertaken, preferably within the last ten years;
• there is a record form for each site with location details, a description of the images, a condition report, as well as tracings and/or photographs;
• a map (at least 1:50,000 and preferably 1:10,000) records the location of each site;
• the records are kept in a safe place and copies have been made for use during monitoring; and
• copies of publications and reports on rock art and related research in the area are kept in the institution responsible for site management.

III.2.vi Dating
Statements about the dating of the rock art must be substantiated by good corroborating evidence. Age alone should not be the main criterion for nomination.

III.2.vii Management plans for conservation and tourism
It is essential that:

• every nomination be accompanied by an up-to-date conservation management plan that is aimed specifically at retaining the significance of the rock art and its setting;
• there is a written commitment to, and budget for, the training of personnel responsible for the day-to-day management of the site;
• a visitor management plan is included; and
• regular monitoring of the rock art by trained personnel is a stated priority.

IV SUMMARY

A representative sample of excellent rock art sites has been identified by representatives of official heritage organizations in Southern Africa for nomination to the World Heritage List. More may be added later, but for the time being they serve to highlight the artistic quality, technical range, sophisticated cosmology and beliefs, detailed ethnography, landscape setting, and universal significance of the rock art of the region.

Criteria for the evaluation of Southern African rock-art sites that may be nominated for the World Heritage List have been suggested, based on the exceptional qualities of the art in the region.

From north to south, the rock-art sites identified by SARAP members as suitable for nomination to the World Heritage list are summarized in Table 1. Angola, Swaziland, and Lesotho have yet to select sites. As far as we are aware, all those in the Table have been placed on the tentative lists by the countries concerned. The list includes both rock engravings and paintings in the hunter-gatherer, herder, and agriculturist traditions, with a variety of techniques, content, and settings.

---

Table 1: Summary of rock-art sites in Southern Africa for possible nomination to the World Heritage List

Country	Site	Tradition	Regional Significance	Status (March 2002)
Tanzania	Kondoa-Irangi District	Hunter-gatherer	Paintings with unusual technique and content	Survey and management plan in preparation
Malawi	Dedza-Chongoni District	Agriculturist	Paintings with good ethnographic detail	Nomination in preparation
Mozambique	Manica Province	Hunter-gatherer	Well preserved paintings	Awaiting detailed survey
Zambia	Kasama District	Hunter-gatherer and agriculturist	Well preserved paintings with good ethnographic detail	Awaiting detailed survey and management plan
Zimbabwe	Matopos National Park	Hunter-gatherer	High quality, well preserved, detailed paintings in natural landscape	Management plan and nomination in preparation
Botswana	Tsodilo	Herder	Large number of well preserved paintings in natural landscape	Nomination submitted June 2000, inscribed December 2001
Namibia	Brandberg	Hunter-gatherer	Large number of high quality well preserved rock paintings in natural landscape	Excellent and detailed survey completed; management plan required
	Twyfelfontein	Hunter-gatherer	Large number of high-quality well preserved rock engravings in natural landscape	Partial survey; management plan required
South Africa	uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park	Hunter-gatherer	Large number of high quality, detailed and well preserved rock paintings in natural landscape	Nomination submitted June 1999; inscribed 2001
	/Xam Heartland	Hunter-gatherer	Cultural landscape with excellent ethnographic records and high quality rock engravings	Detailed survey and management plan required

 

---

REFERENCES

Anati, E 1986 The rock art of Tanzania and the East African sequence. BCSP 23: 15-68.

Biesele, M 1993 Women like meat: the folklore and foraging ideology of the Kalahari-Ju/'hoan. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Bleek, W H I, 1911 Specimens of Bushman folklore. London: George Allen. & Lloyd, L C

Clottes, J, & Lewis-Williams, J D 1998 The Shamans of Prehistory: trance and magic in the painted caves. New York: Abrams.

Coulson, D, & Campbell, A 2001 African rock art. New York: Abrams.

Deacon, H J & Deacon, J 1999 Human beginnings in South Africa. Cape Town. David Philip.

Deacon, J 1997 A regional management strategy for rock art in Southern Africa. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 2: 29-32.

Dowson, T A 1992 Rock engravings of Southern Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

Dowson, T A. & Lewis-Williams, J D (eds) 1994 Contested images: diversity in Southern African rock art research: Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

Garlake, P 1987 The painted caves - an introduction to the prehistoric art of Zimbabwe. Harare: Modus.

Guenther, M 1986 The Nharo Bushmen of Botswana: tradition and change. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.

Hall, S, & Smith, B 2000 Empowering places: rock shelters and ritual control in farmer-forager interactions in the Northern Province. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 8: 30-46.

Henshilwood, C S, et al. 2001 Emergence of modern human behaviour: Middle Stone Age engravings from South Africa. Science. (details not known at time of writing)

Katz, R 1982 Boiling energy: community healing among the Kalahari !Kung. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Lee, R B 1984 The Dobe !Kung. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Lewis-Williams, J D 1981. Believing and seeing. London: Academic Press.

Lewis-Williams, J D 1983 The rock art of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lewis-Williams, J D 1990 Discovering Southern African rock art. Cape Town: David Philip.

Lewis-Williams, J D, & Dowson, T A 1989 Images of power: understanding Bushman rock art. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers.

Marshall, L 1976 The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Smith, B W 1995 Rock art in south-central Africa: a study based on the pictographs of Dedza District, Malawi and Kasama District, Zambia. Unpublished PhD thesis: University of Cambridge.

Smith, B W 1997 Zambia's ancient rock art: the paintings of Kasama. Livingstone: National Heritage Conservation Commission of Zambia.

Thackeray, A I 1983 Dating the rock art of Southern Africa. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 4: 21-26.

UNESCO 1999 Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention.

Vinnicombe, P 1976 People of the Eland. Pietermaritzburg: Natal University Press.

Wendt, W E 1976. 'Art mobilier' from the Apollo 11 cave, South West Africa: Africa's oldest dated works of art. South African Archaeological Bulletin 31: 5-11.

Whitfield, J 2002 Engraved stones from South Africa could be the oldest works of art. Science Update, 11 January.

Whitley, D S, & Annegarn, H J, 1994 Cation-ratio dating of rock engravings from Klipfontein, Northern Cape. In: Dowson. & Lewis-Williams, 1994: 189-97.

 

A Joint publication with TICCIH

By Stephen Hughes
(Head of Survey, Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Wales - RCAHMW)

Contents

Introduction The definition of a colliery Possible categories of World Heritage colliery General introduction to coal-mining history Evaluation criteria for the study  Areas and values of significance within the colliery heritage criteria

Definition of the functional elements of a colliery and their evolution Technical transfer or indigenous development The criteria applied to major sites and monuments The originators of the International Collieries List Notes and references PDF version of Report

I.     INTRODUCTION

THIS IS THE MOST recent in a series of industry studies prepared for the World Heritage Secretariat of ICOMOS on behalf of TICCIH as part of the Global Strategy for the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention, examining areas of the international heritage considered to be under-represented on the World Heritage List. It is not a list of the international collieries deemed to be most worthy of inscription on the World Heritage List: such examples are chosen by national governments that are States Party to the Convention and approved for inscription by the World Heritage Committee. Its primary aim is to define criteria of especial relevance for the selection of colliery monuments for nomination to the List and to provide international examples to which the criteria could be applied. These examples have not been confined to Europe, where so many historically significant collieries with fine buildings continue to exist, but include an internationally diverse range of examples.

The study originated with Stephen Hughes, Head of Survey at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales at Aberystwyth, and Professor Dr. Rainer Slotta, Director of the German Mining Museum, Bochum. Both were involved in the preparation of nomination documents for the inscription of collieries on the World Heritage List and with published studies of the context of each. Big Pit Colliery at Blaenavon (United Kingdom) and Zollverein XII Colliery at Essen (Germany) were inscribed on the World Heritage List in December 2000 and December 2001, respectively at the meetings of the World Heritage Committee in Cairns (Australia) and Helsinki (Finland).

The draft structure of the study was discussed at the intermediate TICCIH conference on the Industrial Heritage of Mining and Iron Metallurgy held in Miskolc (Hungary) on 26 September 1999. The draft study document was discussed at a meeting of the Collieries Special Interest Group of TICCIH at Cardiff (United Kingdom) on 4 September 2000 with representatives of nine nationalities present. In October 2000 the study was also posted on a mining history discussion group (mining-history@jiscmail>), with over 360 international members from twenty countries, for further comment. The completed study was approved by the TICCIH Board in the autumn of 2001 and forwarded to the World Heritage Secretariat of ICOMOS.

The evaluation criteria devised for the study are based on criteria i-iv in paragraph 24 of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, WHC/2/Revised July 2002: UNESCO). They could equally be used for any forthcoming study of non-ferrous metals mines for the Global Strategy. They classify mines for inscription on the World Heritage List as: a unique achievement; a masterpiece of the creative genius; to have exerted great influence on developments of technological importance; an outstanding example of a type of structure or feature which illustrates a significant stage of history or directly associated with economic or social developments of outstanding universal significance. Areas of significance within these criteria include technology, economy, social factors, landscapes, and documentation. The renewal of parts of functional structures over a period of time is accepted as part of the evolution of a working monument and does not exclude the monument from consideration for inscription on grounds of authenticity.

Stephen Hughes

---

2.     THE DEFINITION OF A COLLIERY

A COLLIERY ¹ is a human-engineered mine for the extraction of coal. It may be of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history or technology, either intrinsically or as an exceptional example representative of this category of cultural property. It may be a monumental, or an integral component of a complex cultural landscape.

3.     POSSIBLE CATEGORIES OF WORLD HERITAGE COLLIERY

INTERNATIONALLY SIGNIFICANT collieries might be considered for World Heritage Status by conforming to one of four types:

• Individual or groups of significant structures or monuments on colliery sites and adjoining colliery settlements;
• Large colliery complexes and adjoining coal-miners' settlements;
• Integrated industrial areas, either manufacturing or extractive, which contain collieries as an essential part of the industrial landscape. The existing World Heritage sites of the Ironbridge Gorge and Blaenavon, both in the United Kingdom, fall into this category.
• Colliery landscapes, some with associated by-product processing and colliery housing and worker settlement institutions.

4.     GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO COAL-MINING HISTORY

COAL WAS WORKED in the Roman period but to what extent is a matter for further study. Many major European coalfields were in small-scale use again by the 13th and 14th centuries. Until the mid-16th century most manufacturing processes still used charcoal as a fuel and the demand for coal working remained on a modest scale.

By 1700 the world's first Industrial Revolution was gaining momentum in Great Britain, using coal as a basic fuel. Coal production there may have been the largest globally by 1550, when 200,000 tonnes were produced annually, and this had risen to about 3 million tonnes by 1700.² As the effects of the Industrial Revolution spread to the European continental homeland between 1785 and 1850 there was a great expansion in the coalfields of Saint-Etienne (France), Silesia (Prussia: now Poland), Wallonia (Belgium), and the Saarland and Ruhrgebiet (both in Germany). Despite this spread Britain remained the international centre of coal mining until c 1900: by 1850 Britain was producing over 50 million tonnes annually, the USA 8 million, Germany 6 million, and France 5 million.

In 1900 93% of total global energy consumption was supplied by coal and international production had reached some 740 million tonnes. By the early 20th century there was a fundamental re- adjustment in comparative national and regional outputs. From 1900 the United States of America overtook Britain consistently as the world's largest producer of coal, so that by 1912 it was producing some 485 million tonnes of coal annually; this was almost twice the production of Britain, which was producing some 264 million tonnes. Germany was catching up with British output and producing 172 million tonnes annually, while France was fourth with 39 million tonnes. Not far behind came Russia with 26 million tonnes and Belgium with 26 million tonnes. Asia was beginning to emerge as a significant producer in the 20th century, with Japanese coal production reaching 17 million tonnes in 1912.

In terms of the global influence of the coal trade Britain remained the key player in the early 20th century. It exported by sea no less than 68 million tonnes of coal, compared to the much lesser total of 28 million tonnes of sea-borne coal produced by the rest of the world. The balance of production between coalfields in Britain was also changing. The Great Northern Coalfield of the north-east of England had been the largest in Britain from before 1700 until 1912, sustained by the great demand for sea-borne coal from the empire metropolis of London. However, by 1913 British coal production had peaked; the vast demand for coal from the hugely increasing steamship fleets of the world and the rapidly industrializing Mediterranean area resulted in South Wales becoming the largest coalfield in Britain between 1913 and 1926 and the world's largest coal-exporting coalfield.

The World Energy Conference survey of energy resources (1974) showed that in the pre-1925 period three nations - the United States of America, Germany, and the United Kingdom - accounted for 80% of all coal and lignite (soft brown coal) mined up to that date.³ In that year those three countries accounted for 76% of world production and were the only countries producing over 100 million tonnes of coal a year. An additional fourteen countries, half of them outside Europe, were producing more than 10 million tonnes a year.

By the later 20th century the situation had changed completely. An additional four countries were producing over 100 million tonnes of coal a year by 1971. In 1976 the Soviet Union was the largest producer in the world, producing over 630 million tonnes annually, China had an output of 415 million tonnes, Poland 185 million tonnes, and Czechoslovakia 113 million tonnes.

In the last quarter of the 20th century Australia, South Africa, and India have become major producers.

In simplistic terms representative sites and landscapes of the most important international coal-mining industries might be expected to be found in Britain between 1700 and the early 20th century and in the USA, Germany, and Russia within the first half of the 20th century. However, the survival of coal monuments and landscapes of international importance is obviously partly dependent on the vagaries of permanence of initial building, the chance factors of survival, and the possible re-use of structures.

5.     EVALUATION CRITERIA FOR THE STUDY

IT IS PROPOSED that a colliery site should be considered to be of outstanding international importance in relation to the following criteria (slightly adapted from criteria i-iv in paragraph 24 of the Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention, WHC/2/Revised July 2002: UNESCO).

1	A unique achievement; a masterpiece of the creative genius There are certain colliery complexes which are magnificent ensembles of buildings and machinery. Some collieries are outstanding examples of functional architecture and design.
2	To have exerted great influence on developments of technological importance The first time a new technology is applied to civil engineering, mechanical engineering, or architecture is of particular significance to the history of mankind, depending upon how widely applicable and useful that particular innovation is. Collieries have historically been very important as the means of providing a basic fuel, allowing the evolution of developed societies with a high degree of economic and commercial interchange. The application of existing, or new, technologies to the evolution in sophistication of collieries' infrastructure is particularly significant in that process. Also significant is the process of technology transfer between countries and continents, particularly with regard to the ways in which this has significantly progressed the economic well-being of mankind and facilitated the development of sophisticated societies. Such arguments can be applied equally to individual colliery structures, to whole collieries, to large coal-mining landscapes with mining settlements and their institutions; and to integrated industrial areas such as the mining fields of metal-smelting works. However, the present condition of sites, structures, and buildings are obvious weighting factors in assessing the significance of such types of structure. It may well be that the present condition of the most significant sites as built does not warrant their designation as sites of world importance whereas sites nearby, or even at a distance, now represent more adequately an important stage in the evolution of world collieries.
3	An outstanding example of a type of a type of structure or feature which illustrates a significant stage of history This can include colliery structures or complexes representative of the world's first Industrial Revolution as it spread from Britain to Belgium and the rest of the European continent at the end of the 18th and during the 19th century. Coal mines and their workers' settlements illustrating the spread of ideas and technology across the rest of the world are also significant: they illustrate how earlier concepts and engineering were adapted to suit local conditions and cultures.
4	Directly associated with economic or social developments of outstanding universal significance The economic developments associated with the Industrial Revolution have already been discussed. Industrial communities, among which those associated with coal mining were prominent, led to many innovatory ideas in social engineering and evolution. Better housing, social clubs and institutions, and wider educational provision were all fostered in these new concentrations of population and led to the foundation of modern society.
5	Authenticity in functional structures Like many other types of industrial archaeological feature, collieries are important because of their functional use. However, this functional use itself will mean that parts of a mechanism or infrastructure have to be maintained, modified, or renewed in order to maintain the primary function of an operational colliery. That this concept of renewal will not result in the automatic rejection of a site as being of world importance has already been accepted by the World Heritage Committee at its meeting on authenticity in Nara (Japan). It was also recognised in the 1994 and 1996 International Canal Heritage study that a significant element of the heritage of an industrial monument is its evolution over the course of time.
6	The level of existing legal protection and management Mechanisms are not considered of great importance in this advisory study as States Parties can introduce such mechanisms prior to any formal intended application for World Heritage status. It is, moreover, explicitly stated in the Operational Guidelinesthat 'Nominations of immovable property which are likely to become movable will not be considered' (paragraph 25).

6.     AREAS AND VALUES OF SIGNIFICANCE 
        WITHIN THE COLLIERY HERITAGE CRITERIA

6.1 Technology

The following are the areas of technology which may be of significance:

• The engineering structures of the colliery with reference to comparative structural features in other areas of architecture and technology;
• The development of the sophistication of constructional methods;
• The transfer of technologies.

6.2 Economy

The production of coal as a basic fuel has been fundamental to global economic development. Collieries are of continuing economic use despite the growing importance of alternative fuels such as oil, gas, nuclear power, and solar, wind, and water power. The following factors are important:

• Nation building;
• Industrial development;
• Generation of wealth;
• Development of engineering skills applied to other areas and industries.

6.3 Social factors

The building of collieries had social consequences:

• The redistribution of wealth with social and cultural results;
• The movement of people and the interaction of cultural groups.

6.4 Landscapes

Such large-scale works had an impact on the natural landscape. There was also the generation of new industrial settlement patterns from rural dispersed populations to the creation of urban nuclei.

Note: There are potentially some additional areas of significance associated with classifications of historic towns and natural criteria.

6.5 Documentation

The understanding of a monument's significance can often only come from an adequately preserved corpus of contemporary documentation. This includes design drawings, plans, and photographs as well as documentary textual references.

Modern documentation enhancing the value of the monument, complex, or landscape can arise from modern survey and archaeological and architectural analysis. Oral history can help to foster the understanding of the social architecture and institutions of worker communities.

7.     DEFINITION OF THE FUNCTIONAL ELEMENTS OF A COLLIERY AND THEIR EVOLUTION

7.1 The planning and design of collieries

TO AN EXTENT the form and scope for design was determined by the number of constituent parts of a colliery in any one period. With time collieries became larger, with more sophisticated and diverse constituent parts. It was inevitable that long-established collieries should assume a rather random plan as they became somewhat disparate assemblages of structures from a range of different periods.

Already in 18th century Britain collieries were beginning to be fairly large and were producing coal either for export or for use in the growing manufacturing and smelting sectors. The prime function of a colliery was to produce coal in the cheapest and most efficient manner. Those colliery proprietors who were landowners or metal-works proprietors had sufficient capital to run collieries but were most concerned to fund their considerable functional infrastructure. However, newly built collieries could be designed and arranged symmetrically. Thus one British colliery erected in 1767 by a copper-smelting concern had a circular walled horse-engine walk interrupted at equidistant intervals by attached stores ('a warehouse'), a colliers' lodge, and stables. To the north of it in 1768 were designed a formal layout of five houses for 'head colliers.'

As already discussed, the emergence of steam and subsequently of electrical power gave first permanency and then a new common focus to the planning of collieries on a much larger scale than hitherto.

 

7.2 Collieries underground

Underground mining was the predominant type of coal production until the huge mechanical and capital resources of the later 20th century made it feasible to lift deep areas of overburden and to work coal by opencast methods on a very extensive scale which in many regions is supplanting underground mining.

An actual underground mine is the extractive part of any colliery, and obviously the surface installations only exist to aid the production and processing of the mineral produced.

Recent excavation of early mine sites has shown the extent of their sophistication. In the 15th century in the English Midlands mines had developed gallery systems and rudimentary systems of ventilation. By the early 19th century the largest coal-mines had many miles of galleries.

Substantial lined shafts and galleries existed in all mines and increased in scale and complexity with period. Vaulted shaft- bottom galleries led into an ever-expanding network of main haulage ways equipped with haulage engines.

There are, of course, much greater difficulties of preservation with underground remains and with water-pumping unless gravity drainage is possible.

7.3 Winding coal

Horse- and waterwheel-powered winding apparatus was pioneered in non-ferrous mines, particularly the large developed installations in German-speaking central Europe. Waterwheel winding spread to the Great Northern Coalfield of Britain in the 17th century and horse engines of varying sophistication were common by the 18th century. The abundance of water in upland Wales also encouraged the use of water-balance apparatus. The spread of steam and then electric winding is discussed elsewhere in this document.

7.4 Colliery shafthead frames and towers

The growing scale of these features, so much a popular icon of coal mining, is largely due to the depth of the shaft and the type and form of motive-power employed.

First of all manual power was used for winding on well-head type windlasses, and such two-man windlasses were in common use by the 18th century

More sophisticated apparatus had to be elevated to a higher level and kept clear of the shafthead. Some of the types of high supports for winding pulleys are discussed in the relevant sections.

7.5 Water pumping

Water- and steam-powered pumps and their housing have already been mentioned.

7.6 Mine ventilation

Coal and oil-shale workings require even more ventilation than mines for other ores or minerals because inflammable gases such as methane are often present. In shallow mines carbon dioxide occurs naturally and can cause an oxygen deficiency. The largest coal production in the 17th century was in British mines and effective ways of circulating the air were developed here. Two air paths were essential for each working place: one for air entry and one for it to leave. Two shafts were often used, and to aid the process buckets containing fire were often suspended in one of the shafts.

In the 19th century fire buckets were often replaced by permanent furnaces. On the surface these took the form of distinctive chimneys, and some continued in use until about 1950.

In the 19th century Britain was still the largest coal producer in the world, and in the early part of the century mechanical wind pumps were developed by engineers such as John Buddle. From the 1830s large-diameter steam-driven fans with distinctive housings were adopted in the larger mines.

By 1900 the USA had overtaken Britain as the largest coal producer, and Germany and France were also becoming large-scale producers. New types of smaller-diameter electrically driven centrifugal and axial-flow fans were developed.

7.7 The use of compressed air

There were problems in using steam underground and so compressed air was developed as an alternative. It was first used successfully in France in 1845 when it was transmitted a distance of 228.45m (750ft) in a coal mine. Its use internationally was rapid and in 1849 the pneumatic rock-drill was invented in the USA.

7.8 Preparation of coal for sale

Prior to the early 19th century little surface treatment was necessary as quality was maintained by selective working by hand in the mine itself. Simple timber-built screens were built on the surface and hand-picking was practised.

After c 1880 more elaborate and mechanized jigging screens and picking belts were introduced and coal washers were constructed to clean coal. Coal washeries were introduced at about the same time to clean coal. To facilitate the most effective flow of materials, screens and washing facilities were usually built on stilts so that railway wagons or road vehicles could be loaded below.

Rather different in form and purpose were the huge coal breakers developed in the United States for the processing of hard anthracite coal. These were developed in the period of the late 19th century as that country became the largest coal producer in the world. They somewhat resembled non-ferrous mines processing floors but were much higher and extended from the tops of headframes down to discharge points over railroad tracks. The cladding of these huge buildings tended to be of timber.

Figure A     Early architecturally sophisticated centralized colliery workshops at Le Grand-Hornu (1820-52) in Wallonia (Belgium)

7.9 Workshops and stores

Stores and workshops would have been required from the days of the earliest collieries, and certainly by the 18th century storehouses are shown on colliery plans. By the early 19th century even quite small collieries had one or two smithies with a carpenter's shop. As the size and sophistication of collieries increased in the 19th and 20th centuries so did the number of functional buildings designed to serve specialist purposes (see Figure A). Subsidiary buildings often included stables, fitting shops, sawmills, electricians' shops, lamp rooms, explosives' magazines, and locomotive sheds.

7.10 Colliery offices

By the early 19th century colliery managers had offices, often in their on-site houses. As 19th century collieries became larger so did their administrative organization, and by the early 20th century substantial office blocks were being built on colliery sites. For a sizeable workforce of 3000 there might at least be a general manager, an engineer, and a surveyor assisted by draughtsmen and clerks.⁴

7.11 Pithead baths

Some pithead baths were available to miners in Germany, France, and Belgium from 1880 and were in common use there from the beginning of the 20th century, when legislation in Germany ensured their use. Legislation in Britain followed in 1911. Early British baths were copied from mainland European practice, and from the 1930s bath buildings in the modernist style were based on the work of the Dutch architect W M Dudok. Other welfare buildings such as medical facilities and canteens were based in bath buildings.

8.     TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OR INDIGENOUS DEVELOPMENT

THE IDEA OF A STRUCTURE having an international, or indeed global, influence is obviously central to it being viewed as of relevance to the heritage of a large part of mankind. However, initially, and before the end of the 18th century, such a process of diffusion of knowledge is difficult to document. A single very large coal industry was confined to one country in that period (the United Kingdom) and many fundamental innovations in the industry were made there. Archaeological excavation has now revealed the existence of developed mines with galleries in 15th century England, but how widespread such features were internationally in this period is unknown.⁵ By the end of the 18th century British collieries often had many miles of underground galleries.

Large-scale water-powered non-ferrous mining technology with long watercourses and reversible waterwheels had been developed by German-speaking miners in central Europe by the 16th century and widely publicized internationally by the publication of Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica.⁶ The precise metamorphosis of the examples of the machinery illustrated there into the numerous 'coal mills' found on the 17th century Great Northern Coalfield of (north-eastern) England or in the many 18th century waterwheels used in other British coalfields is impossible to establish. The lighter duty of winding on the extensive central European non-ferrous mines was carried out by elaborate horse-powered winding apparatus with roofed circular horse-walks. Edward I of England had imported German mining expertise to Wales in the 13th century, and from the 16th century German-speaking miners were brought in in large numbers to many non-ferrous mines. There must have been some transfer of skills into the rather different practices of coal mining in Britain but these are difficult to quantify. Rather interestingly, horse- engine ('horse-gin') construction in Britain was generally less elaborate than in Germany and the machinery and their human and animal operatives were not given the shelter of a roof. This emphasis on the functionality of British practice without elaboration of architecture, later followed in North American practice, seems to be a key difference from German mining cultural practice right into the 20th century.

Figure B     One of the large early collieries in the Great Northern Coalfield of England, c 1839. Church Pit, Wallsend, Newcastle (United Kingdom)

New steam-powered water-pumping technology was evolved at the end of the 17th century and in the early 18th century, to be followed by steam-powered winding technology at the end of the 18th century. Pumping engines were integral with their large masonry housing and pivoted on a thick wall, but others of the growing number of elements in a colliery could be executed in much more temporary materials. Colliery surface layouts up to the mid 19th century in Britain, even on the biggest mines of the Great Northern Coalfield (see Figure B), were dominated by simply designed tall masonry beam-engine houses with elevated winding gear on spindly timber supports leading to irregularly profiled timber-clad shaftheads. The layouts were completed by timber-framed and clad screen buildings elevated over colliery railways and stone ventilation chimneys capped by timber wind-vanes.⁷ Smaller stone-built sheds huddled around these might include boiler houses, offices, workshops, and, often in larger collieries, coking ovens.⁸ Once again the prime design motive was effective production enhancement in any one period and not aesthetic considerations. In the later 19th century many individual colliery buildings and some colliery layouts were given a more permanent form in both in Britain and on mainland Europe. In Britain and in the United States of America this still often meant the simple and functional 'industrial vernacular style' with round-headed windows and rock-faced masonry in stone- building areas. In continental Europe a long cultural tradition of the ornamentation of large buildings that transferred to the industrial sector was much in evidence in elaborate buildings and layouts using Classical and Gothic Revival styles.

Figure C    Formal layout including twin Malakoff towers at Zollverein I/II Colliery (1847-50), Essen, Ruhrgebiet (Germany)

The most striking example of a great expansion in elaborate colliery architecture was in the sinking of the many deep coal mines between c 1855 and c 1880 in the Ruhrgebiet area of Germany, leading to its becoming Europe's largest and most intensively developed industrial. area. The pulley wheels (sheaves) over the shaft were not supported by timber or iron headframes but by high brickwork Malakoff Towers (see Figure C) which lent themselves to elaboration better than their flimsier predecessors and the high costs of construction of which were met by banking capital from the wealthy bankers of Cologne.⁹ The Malakoff Tower became associated with the innovative Koepe winding system which was developed by the Krupp Company in the surviving Malakoff Tower at the Hannover Pit in Bochum. This used continuous winding-cables held by narrow pulleys positioned at the top of the tower and foot of the shaft, dispensing with the wide twin-cable drums that had characterized earlier practice. The use of both Malakoff Towers and of Koepe winding spread widely in mainland Europe.

In some of the British coalfields, such as the South Wales coalfield (then serving the needs of the largest copper- and iron-smelting works in the world), there was a separate and earlier development of masonry shafthead towers, but these were smaller and constructed of unadorned rubble masonry.¹⁰ Later 19th-century stone and brick shafthead towers were built at No 3 shaft at Seaham Colliery (Great Northern Coalfield) and at the Winstanley Shaft (extant) at Chatterley Whitfield Colliery in Midlands England. Both were exceptionally plain but the latter is seen as being of 'German' type; it is, however, much plainer and has obliquely sloping side-buttresses of a type not seen on the much more elaborate Malakoff Towers in Germany. The Koepe winding with narrow friction pulleys was hardly used in Britain before nationalization in 1947, when it was widely adopted: the surviving Koepe winder of 1923, set on top of a plain tapering concrete tower, at the former Murton Colliery, was only the second built in the Great Northern Coalfield.¹¹

Colliery surface layouts had originally been given substantial permanence by the need to give steam engines considerable holding structures. In the 19th century there was a growth in the number of ancillary structures, but it was the switch from steam to electrical technology that provided a spur for the reorganization and regularization of new colliery planning. In Britain most large collieries had been established for a very long time and were being continually modernized and altered as the need arose. By 1900 the dominant area in the growth of the coal industry in Europe was the Ruhr, and it was here that a new concept in the surface planning of a mine was evolved.

Figure D     Early 20th century engine halls at Waltrop 1/2 Colliery in the Ruhrgebiet (Germany)

Construction of the colliery yard of Zollern 2-4 at Dortmund began in 1900-2 using a regular layout on a new site and employing Historicist architecture. By 1902 it had been decided to build the first common engine hall, or machine house (see Figure D), into which all the generators, compressors, and winders were inserted by completion of the housing in 1904 (its 1904 electric winder is the oldest in the world).¹² It was also one of the first colliery buildings to be elaborately ornamented in a new style of architecture (in this case Art Nouveau) rather than being finished in decoration derived from Classical or Gothic Revival sources. Its design concepts seem to have been influential internationally almost immediately.

Figure E     Cross-section of the Penallta Colliery Engine-hall (1906-09), South Wales (United-Kingdom)

At this time there was a great boom in the South Wales coalfield, prompted by the large increase in demand for coal for steamships, which made the coalfield Britain's largest in 1913 (the year of maximum production for British coal). The coalfield also became the largest coal-exporting area in the world. Completely new colliery layouts were being laid out to meet this boom. Only two years after the completion of the engine hall at Dortmund one was being built by the colliery engineer and architect George Hann at Penallta (1906-9) in South Wales (Hann may have been of German extraction).¹³ However, one difference between the two sites was that Hann considered the relative merits of steam and electrical power and decided to adopt the former: the very long Penallta engine hall (see Figure E) included steam engines, winders, compressors, and a ventilating fan. In 1910-14 the new Britannia Colliery nearby was given a similar engine hall and was all-electric, with much of the electricity generated by waste gases from the engines at Penallta. Other engine halls of the same type followed in quick succession in this fast-expanding coalfield. Most are in very utilitarian style in local rubble- stone with some Classical Revival detailing.

The same steam-coal boom in Wales produced a noteworthy attempt at systematic colliery planning in a colliery grouped on two hillside terraces with matching twin engine houses flanking twin headframes and culminating in a tall central chimney. This Crumlin Navigation Colliery (1907-11) now unfortunately lacks its headframes but retains buildings designed in a basic Classical style executed in rich polychrome brickwork. The design concept of a colliery vista terminated by a tall chimney was one taken up in the design of the Zollverein XII shafthead at Essen in the Ruhr.

Figure F     Interior of former compressor house built in the International Modernist style at the Zollverein XII Colliery (1928-32) at Essen in the Ruhrgebiet (Germany). A turbo-compressor has been retained as part of an adaptive re-use scheme for the building

Zollverein XII (1928-32) is remarkable for the quality of its buildings designed in strict International Modernist style (see Figure F) set amongst lawns and laid out on a grid with two axes, one culminating in a giant A-frame headframe straddling a shafthead tower and the second axis culminating in the boiler-house tower with its central chimney. Functionally it was designed to rationalize the infrastructure of the existing Zollverein Colliery, which already had eleven dispersed shafts, and to concentrate coal winding at this new central installation. The colliery was built as Germany became the largest coal producer in Europe and was greatly influential in terms of design and operation. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2001.

The influence of Zollverein XII is clear in the large mining complex at Faulquemont (near St Avold) in France which was constructed in a similar Modernist style between 1933 and 1935. Neat square blocks were set amongst lawns flanked a central avenue aligned on the power-house chimney (the complex has mostly been demolished). Somewhat diluted versions of the symmetrically planned mine, but spaced out and lacking visual foci, were built in England at about the same time at Coventry (demolished) and Houghton Main Collieries.¹⁴ Nationalization in Britain later freed resources for combined mine rationalization projects such as Zollverein. One of the first built in Britain (1948-53) was Maerdy (Mardy) Colliery in the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, which was laid out in closely grouped functional blocks on a grid-plan but lacking the visual focus planned at Zollverein. Rather similar were the new mines of the 1950s built on the South Wales anthracite coalfield at Abernant and Cynheidre.

What is more difficult to establish is any connection in planning through to the American coal industry, which was the world's largest by 1900. German and other European miners did emigrate there but the nearest European precedents to the giant anthracite breakers of north-eastern Pennsylvania are probably non-ferrous mine processing floors.

Some aspects of the design of colliers' housing can also be seen to have an international spread. The 'cluster house' was a group of four houses set in each corner of a single block, of approximately square plan and set in a spacious garden. Such houses were usually provided for supervisory or skilled workers within a textile factory. The type originated in the England of the 1790s, with surviving examples in the Derwent Valley of Derbyshire at Belper and Darley Abbey (both inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2001). It was later used in the Cité Ouvrière in Mulhouse (France) in the 1850s and from there spread to the Ruhrgebiet. Examples can be seen in the housing estates surrounding the Zollverein Colliery.¹⁵

9.     THE CRITERIA APPLIED TO MAJOR SITES AND MONUMENTS

9.1 Individually significant structures or monuments on colliery sites

Case 1: Worsley Canal Mines, United Kingdom

With the contiguous Bridgewater Canal this was considered by contemporaries to be (and indeed is) a founding monument of the world's first Industrial Revolution. The mines supplied the affordable coal that allowed the steam-powered textile mills of Manchester to make it the cotton-spinning capital of the world, using cotton from North America, Egypt, and the rest of the world.

The building of James Brindley's economically very successful Bridgewater Canal in 1759-61 had a profound influence on nine decades of canal building in Europe and North America. The 11.7km (7.27 miles) long canal was merely an extension of what were eventually 67.5km (42 miles) of navigable coal-mining tunnels on four different levels. This use of mine drainage to provide a means of underground and surface transport was widely copied in both Britain and in mainland Europe, where the published work of 'industrial spies' describing their visits underground made the Worsley Mines world famous.

Figure G     Entrance to the main canalized colliery tunnels (1759) at Worsley, Manchester, England (United Kingdom)

The earliest mention of coal mining at Worsley was in 1376, and in the mid 17th century construction was begun of the first of three fairly shallow colliery-drainage tunnels that were between 1000 and 1700 yards (915-1554m) long.¹⁶ The much deeper twin navigable (still watered) entrances to the coal mines of 1759-61 (see Figure G) are set in the base of a high quarried sandstone cliff with a conserved canal basin at the entrance. Nearby are several rows of 18th century brick-built workers houses which surround the former workshops of the colliery and canal complex.

The tunnels continued to be maintained for mine drainage purposes until 1968; the entrance is designated an Ancient Monument and has been conserved. One of the most striking monuments inside is the inclined plane of 1795-96, which links canals at two levels and was drawn by a French 'industrial spy' soon after construction. The main mining level canal ran parallel to a fault and the many coal seams it intersected were each served by two branch waterways following the seam outcrop at that level. The main level had an elliptical arched top and half its depth was flooded as a canal. Spoil from the colliery helped to build the embankments on the Bridgwater Canal and was also taken by a special canal branch to start the reclamation of the nearby bog of Chat Moss. The beginning of complicated junctions, many vaulted in brick, was started in 1771 when a second parallel entrance tunnel was built that converges with the first some 500 yards (460m) inside. An upper canal was created from 1773 by widening the old 'Massey Sough' drainage tunnel that had been begun in 1729 and which was eventually 2.8km (1? miles) long.

Case 2: Le Grand-Hornu, Belgium

Le Grand-Hornu is important for retaining an early planned layout of the elements of a colliery complex. It is situated in the Borinage area of Wallonia, Belgium, the first area of the European mainland to be industrialized as the Industrial Revolution spread across the globe from Britain. Coal from the area was widely used in northern France as well as Belgium. The French coal merchant Henri de Gorge married into the rich wholesale merchant family of Eugénie Legrand of Lille.¹⁷ He acquired Hornu Colliery in 1810 and combined with the socially idealistic architect Bruno Renard in planning a complete coal- mining township between 1816 and 1835.¹⁸ By 1870-1921 there were some 2300 workers and 250,000t of coal were produced annually.

The Neo-Classical central complex comprises two grand courtyards which have now been mostly conserved. The pedimented triple-arched portal leads through the 100m long entrance façade with its hipped-roof corner pavilions into the entrance court, which housed stables, vehicle sheds, and hay and straw stores. A second gateway led through to a large arcaded elliptical central court which has high-vaulted engineering workshops for constructing steam engines (1831) facing a pedimented office block with cupola. The cathedral-like three-aisled seven-bay workshops included a foundry and an assembly shop. The two semicircular ends of this great enclosure are terminated by continuous curved arcades that once fronted other small workshops, for garaging a fire-engine, and iron, oil, and pattern stores.¹⁹

Figure H     Part of the large colliers' town at Le Grand-Hornu (1820-52) in Wallonia (Belgium)

Surrounding these former workshops and offices are some 425 workers' houses, providing homes for some 2500 people (see Figure H) which were exceptionally comfortable for the period and were set in a rectilinear layout of paved roads flanked by pavements. Each collier's house had a communal room, a kitchen, and a bedroom on the ground floor with three bedrooms upstairs. In the rear garden were a shed and toilet. A well and oven were provided communally for every ten houses. The settlement is ornamented by two squares: the Place Verte, which formerly had a bandstand where the town band gave concerts twice a year in the summer, and the Place Saint-Henri facing the original de Gorge family residence. A school, library, baths, a ballroom, and eventually a hospital (the latter now demolished) were also added to this colliery settlement, which had been created on enlightened social lines.

The Grand-Hornu Colliery itself closed in 1954 and most of the functional surface elements of the shaftheads have been demolished. However, the workshops, stables, and offices together with the workers' settlement still form a complex of international importance.

Case 3: Ruhr Malakoff Towers, Germany

Thirteen tall masonry shafthead Malakoff towers, built to contain colliery winding gear in the second half of the 19th century, survive in the Ruhr and were influential internationally both as types of structures and as housings for the innovative Koepe system of winding. They formed the central elements of the well planned large complexes of substantial well designed buildings that were the vehicle for the rapid rise of the Ruhr as one of the most productive deep mining coalfields in the world. These impressive towers are up to 30m (100ft) in height with wall thicknesses up to 2.5m (8ft). Adjacent buildings contained winding and pumping engines at right-angles to or in line with the towers. The heights of the towers increased as coal pits became deeper and their appearance became more decorative, with the application of castellated architecture. Corner towers with separate staircases were added as fire escapes and steel headframes were often erected in, or on top of, Malakoff Towers. The towers were built in some numbers in the Saarland (where none remain) and in Upper Silesia.²⁰

The oldest of the Malakoff Towers is that at the Carl Pit in Essen-Altenessen of 1856-61. The influential Koepe system of winding with a continuous cable was developed at the Hannover Pit in Bochum, where the tower over Shaft 1 is preserved with a steam winding-engine of 1893 still preserved in the engine-house alongside.²¹

9.2 Large colliery complexes

Case 4: Chatterley-Whitfield Colliery, United Kingdom

This colliery is important for being the only large 19th century colliery surface layout to remain intact in England and as a representative of the collieries that were the world's largest at that time. It achieved fame as one of the first mines to produce over 1 million tonnes annually. The multi-shaft layout and the incremental growth of the surface buildings and buildings are characteristic of 19th century collieries in Britain.

The Platt Shaft, the first of an eventual six, was sunk in 1843. Latterly electrical power was used in the colliery, but the horizontal twin-cylinder steam winding-engine of 1914 at the Hesketh Shaft remains intact with 914.4mm (36in) diameter cylinders and a 6.096m (20ft) diameter winding-drum in a large engine house.²² Elsewhere on the site are the Institute, Middle, Engine, and Winstanley shafts: the steel headframes over the Hesketh, Institute, and Platt shafts are the standard type of British headframe evolved in the late 19th century.²³

By contrast, the headgear of the Winstanley Pit is carried on a tall masonry tower which has been described as of German type: it is seen as a plainer version of the elaborate Malakoff Towers but without Koepe continuous winding-gear.

Case 5: Zollern 2-4 Colliery, Germany

This complex at Dortmund in Germany is particularly important for representing a complete rethink in the planning and rationalization of collieries. In a deliberate act Emil Kirdorf, the then director-general of Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks AG, created a model colliery layout merging the disparate engine houses into one common engine hall. That process was facilitated by the new energy source of electricity that was provided to replace the earlier universal use of coal.

The original machinery installed in the Dortmund engine hall has mostly survived: most importantly the world's oldest electric winding-engine dating from 1904 remains in situ, as do the generators, compressor, and converters. This concentration of a colliery's machines in one engine hall (or machine house) was of international importance and can be demonstrated to have been copied internationally.

The engine hall is of some architectural importance as an outstanding example of the new international Art Nouveau (known as Jugendstil in Germany) architecture. The buildings in the colliery yard area were built by the architect Paul Knobbe between 1900 and 1904 in the Historicist architecture that had been traditional in grander colliery layouts up to that period. The industrialist Paul Knobbe had seen the pavilions built by the structural engineer Reinhold Krohn and the architect Bruno Möhring at the Düsseldorf Exhibition in 1902 and subsequently commissioned them to build an engine hall with a steel framework incorporating glass and brick. Möhring designed the main portal in the form of a shell on the outside and on the inside as a vine arbour. Panes of glass in violet, green, and blue light interior idiosyncratic features such as those in the electrical control centre. A brass clock hangs from the ceiling while the fittings themselves were inset into the marble walls between Egyptian-style Art Nouveau portals and pilasters. Möhring took his inspiration for the bright green external paintwork used on the steel framework of the machine house from the entrances to the Paris Métro designed by the French architect Hector Guimard.²⁴

The original headframes to the two shafts were to the north and south of the engine hall and were demolished following closure, but they have been replaced by contemporary headframes brought in from Gelsenkirchen and Herne Collieries. The demolished shafthead building from the winding shaft has been replaced by a replica. The washery and neighbouring coke works have also been demolished.

All the buildings were laid out on a regular grid. The approach road from the attached colliery workers' settlement was flanked by trees. The colliery entrance was flanked by two brick buildings of 1902: the gatehouse and first-aid station. To the north are the carpenter's shop, blacksmiths' forge, fitting shop, stables, outbuildings, sheds, coachman's rooms, and the fire- fighting equipment. To the south are the former wages room, the workers' baths, magazines, the lamp room, and rooms for the caretaker, shift foreman, and the young miners in one large building.

9.3 Colliery landscapes

Case 6: Zeche Zollverein (Colliery), Germany

This large colliery at Essen in the Ruhr mining district of Germany eventually comprised twelve shafts on five main sites: four shafts and a coke works remain on immediately adjacent sites by Zollverein XII. It is remarkable for the quality of the buildings and the layout of the shafthead of Zollverein XII, which was designed as the central shaft of the complex in 1928-32 at a time when German coal production was becoming the largest in Europe.²⁵

The importance of the complex is enhanced by the survival of parts of the earlier pits of the colliery and by the extensive colliery workers' housing which surrounds the cluster of shaftheads. Zollverein XII is a fine piece of International Modernist functional architecture designed by the specialist colliery and industrial architects Martin Kremmer and Fritz Schupp. The adjacent coke works, which had been intended as part of the original scheme, was completed by Fritz Schupp in 1958-61.

The layout of the Zollverein XII pithead is a grid with the road access based on two axes flanked by buildings and lawns (the 'Westphalian Style') and terminated by two impressive and centrally aligned engineering features. One is the great winding- frame (supported by four symmetrical inclined struts) with Koepe winding over the tall brown-brick tower of the shafthead and the other is the central tower and tall chimney of the boiler house. Most of the machinery of the colliery has been conserved intact among a successful programme of re-use. All surface buildings have been retained including the washery.

The Zollverein complex was producing over 1,000,000t by 1890 and about 2,300,000t by 1890 and the workforce rose from 2000 to 6526 people. By 1914 architects were involved in the design of 543 workers' houses.

In 1926 the Zollverein Pits became part of Europe's largest mining complex as part of the new steel/coal combine Vereinigte Stahlwerke AG. This large group instituted a rationalization programme based on the construction of a small number of pits with high outputs. Zollverein XII was one of these. In 1932 and 1934-49 the production of the Zollverein Colliery was the largest in the Ruhr and in 1937 production peaked at a maximum output of 3,588,000t. In the 1950s there was a change to skip winding at Zollverein XII and in 1957 and 1972 the shaft was deepened to an eventual 1005m. In 1986 the whole of the Zollverein Colliery closed except for pumping at Zeche (Shaft) XII. The coke works closed in 1993.

The re-use of the Zeche XII buildings has retained much of the plant intact, including a low-pressure compressor, a turbo compressor, a boiler, and the washery.

Figure I     Early 20th century miners' housing at Zollverein Colliery, Essen (Germany)

The industrial cultural landscape of the Zollverein Colliery was nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage site, comprising everything within the boundary of the whole Zollverein colliery as it operated from 1847 to 1986. This included the several estates of extensive colliery housing that were constructed from 1847 onwards, including interesting social experiments such the 'Pestalozzi Villages' built from 1953 for young miners living with married couples who acted as surrogate parents (see Figure I). The predominant housing type on the other extensive estates were buildings subdivided into four, each apartment provided with a generous plot of about 640m² so that vegetables could be grown.²⁶ In the event only the industrial installations of Zollverein were inscribed on the List, but the surrounding estates were included in the buffer zone within which there are constraints on construction activities that might have an adverse impact on the World Heritage site.

Two of the four earlier shafthead complexes of the Zollverein Mine (two to three shafts each) retain a more eclectic mix of structures and machinery, including some earlier structures.

The shafthead complex of Zollverein shafts I, II, and VIII are sited immediately next to the shafthead of Zollverein XII and the Zollverein coking plant . When Zollverein XII was built it was used solely for winding coal, the miners entering and leaving via shafts I and II. Zollverein I, sunk in 1847, has a brick winding- engine house of 1903 (designed by the architect Fuller) capped by a barrel-shaped roof and was re-equipped with a 2860kW electric winding-engine in 1957. The adjoining Zollverein II of 1847, deepened to 1005m, is surmounted by a tertiary enclosed steelwork tower capped by a 2000kW Koepe winding engine of 1950. The tower was designed in 1950 by the colliery architect Fritz Schupp and was moved from a colliery at Bochum to replace a 1923 headframe over shaft II in 1964-65. The common engine hall of 1903, with its twin barrel-shaped roofs and round-headed windows, is part of the same layout as the shaft I winding-house and originally contained a steam-turbine generator and a compressor and fan. A separate fan-house of 1917 was re-equipped with an axial electric fan in 1964 and was designed by the architect Stolze, as were the engine shed (1921), the stores (1922), and the colliery baths (1906) with its barrel-shaped roof. The oldest building on the site was designed in the same Classical Revival style as the original Malakoff Towers (demolished): it was the two-storey hipped-roof colliery offices of 1878 which were converted to office workers' housing when New Neo-Baroque offices were built by Stolze in 1906. Adjacent to the original offices is a colliery manager's house built in matching style.

Zollverein III/VII were sunk in 1881 but were reduced in importance and partly demolished after the new central winding- shaft at Zollverein XII was opened in 1932. Remaining is the headframe of Zollverein X, which was added in 1913. The adjoining twin winding-engine houses and converter were built as a three- aisled structure in 1913-20. A 741kW electric winder of 1920 and contemporary converter remain in situ. An engine hall of 1913-17, partly demolished in 1952, contains a crane of 1918 and a turbo compressor of 1952.

Case 7: The Scranton Anthracite Mining Landscape

The emergence of the United States of America as the world's largest producer of coal at the end of the 19th century was achieved with strictly functional colliery layouts, often of timber, that have not largely survived in an intact state. However, in the important coal-mining state of Pennsylvania, the Scranton Anthracite Museum administers the two sites. Pioneer Coal Mine Tunnel is 427m (1400ft) long and retains working areas on a steeply pitched seam. The tunnel is accessible by a mine railway for the public and outside a steam locomotive is used to carry visitors along an old coal-mines railway to view old strip (ie opencast) mines. The Eckley Anthracite Village was built as a coal company township in 1854-61 with 54 buildings: four were added later.²⁷

Case 8: The Sorachi Coal-mining Landscape, Hokkaido, Japan

By 1910 Japan was the biggest coal producer in Asia.²⁸ The industry's production had grown almost fourfold by 1940, when national production was 56,313,000t. A second peak was achieved in the 1960s, but after 1966 national production fell below 50,000,000t and has been in continual decline ever since. There are considerable colliery buildings and settlements remaining in the largest Japanese coalfield in the Sorachi District of the northern island of Hokkaido; they show a mix of the adaptation of UK, German, and American coal-mining technology and the indigenous development of housing and settlement types.²⁹ In the 1930s coal production at the Hokkaido coal mines attained 22% of the Japanese national total and in the 1950s it represented 37- 60%. In 1998 the Sorachi Regional Government started a project to document the considerable heritage of the colliery settlements and associated mines and to found a large eco-museum.

Particular local conditions determined the particular characteristics of the Hokkaido industry. The very inclined, deep (more than 600m) and thin (less than 1m) coal seams led to the use of relatively few large shafts with considerable washeries. The large amounts of rock waste led to the characteristic landscape of waste tips over 150m in height. Very cold winter conditions compelled most Hokkaido coal-mines to have large steam-driven electrical generation stations. The high levels of methane in the mines encouraged the use of high-pressure water cutting at the coalface, as in the Kami-Sunagawa, Sumitomo- Akabira, and Haboro-Chikubetu Coalmines.

Figure J     Types of mining and coal processing used at the Hokkaido Coalmines (Japan) in the later 20th century

Yubari Tanko (1890-1977), with an annual production of 2,000,000t, was the largest colliery in Japan (see Figure J) and its workers settlement of Yubari City housed a population of 110,000. The biggest shafthead at Yubari Seisaku Sho and its washery are preserved monuments. Many colliery tunnel portals survive, such as those at Chitose and Kitakami. In the attached settlement is the biggest of the coal-mining company's clubs - the Hokutan Shikanotani Kurabu (now conserved) - and the four distinctive miners' townships of Fukuzumi, Shakou, Sumizome, and Takamatu.

A shafthead such as that at the extant Sumitomo Ponbetu (1960-71) shows the influence of imported technology. The A- frame headgear, similar to the earlier example at Zollverein XII in Germany, was constructed by the Japanese Mitsubishi Zousen Company. There are four pulley wheels (sheaves) on the frame, supporting double cages and using the German Koepe continuous winding system. The combination of man and machinery winding was the first dual-use system in Japan. The horizon mining-system combining work on the Ponbetu and Yayoi coal seams used technology from the GHH Coalmining Company in Germany. The mine achieved a production of 1,420,000t in 1970, but in 1971 its underground workings were combined with those of the neighbouring Akabira Coalmine and the Sumitomo Ponbetu shafthead ceased active production. The shafthead is the most significant and comprehensive collection of colliery structures and machinery of its period in Japan.³⁰

The Sorachi Industrial Heritage Landscape includes 115 distinct structures, complexes, and areas. These include coal-mine shaftheads, mining tunnel portals, coal washeries, coal-miners' settlements, coal offices, social clubs, and coal- waste heaps. There are four mining machinery collections and 24 social institutional landmarks, including schools, public baths, cinemas, a photo studio, and a barber's shop. Also included are 27 structures and features from the dense railway system that serviced the coalfield. Eighteen features have also been defined from the cultural heritage of the area. There are ten archives, museums, and research institutes covering the mining field.

The existing World Heritage industrial cultural landscapes of the Ironbridge Gorge and Blaenavon in the United Kingdom also both contain significant coal-mining elements.

10.     THE ORIGINATORS OF THE INTERNATIONAL COLLIERIES LIST

Stephen Hughes	Head of Survey, Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, United Kingdom
Professor Dr. Rainer Slotta	Director of the German Mining Museum, Bochum, Germany

The research carried out for three publications has served as the foundation for this work:

M Ganzelewski & R Slotta	Die Denkmal-Landschaft "Zeche Zollverein" (Bochum, 1999): also available as an English-language CD The "Zeche Zollverein" Landscape of Monuments(Bochum, 2000);
S Hughes, B Malaws, M Parry, and P Wakelin	Collieries of Wales: Engineering & Architecture (Aberystwyth, 1995);
S Hughes	Copperopolis: Landscapes of the early Industrial Period in Swansea (Aberystwyth, 2000).

The draft structure and consultation network of this study were presented and discussed at the intermediate TICCIH Conference on the Industrial Heritage of Mining and Iron Metallurgy held in Miskolc, Hungary, 26 September 1999

The participants at the Meeting of the Collieries Special Interest Group of TICCIH, held in Cardiff, United Kingdom, 4 September 2000 were:

Professor Eiichi Aoki (Japan)
Mr Dag Avango (Sweden)
Ms Maria Bjorkroth (Sweden)
Dr Erik Blakeley (UK)
Dr Federica Cortese (Italy)
Dr Eva Dahlström (Sweden)
Mr Martin Gantenberg (Germany)
Mr Jan Geijerstam (Sweden) 
Dr David Gwyn (UK)
Dr Friedhelm Henseler (Germany)
Mr Stephen Hughes (UK)
Dr Hans Kania (Germany)
Mr David Leighton (UK)
Dr Michael Mende (Germany)
Dr Per Oestensen (Norway)
Dr Akira Oita (Japan)
Mr Fred Torgerson (USA)
Dr Louise Trottier (Canada)
Professore Augusto Vitale (Italy)
Dr Peter Wakelin (UK)
Mr Peter White (UK)
Mr Richard Wittasek (Austria)
Mr Hirotaka Yamada (Japan)
Mr John Yates (UK)
Dr Peter Wakelin (UK)

Internet Consultation: In October 2000 the draft list was made available to the 280 international members of the mining history discussion group at mining-history@jiscmail andfurther comments were received.

Other consultees were:

Mr Eric DeLony (Chief, Historic American Engineering Record, USA)
Mr Michael Workman (Ihtia, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA) 
Mr David Worth (freelance industrial archaeologist, Fish Hoek, South Africa)

11.     NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. The definition of an industrial monument is based on the Information Document on Heritage Canals produced for presentation to the World Heritage Committee by the expert meeting under the auspices of Canadian Heritage in 1994 (hereafter referred to as the 1994 'Heritage Canals Document').
2. I J Brown, 'Coal Mining' in B Trinder (ed), The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Industrial Archaeology (Oxford & Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1992), 161-64.
3. R Vielvoye, 'The Significance of Coal as a World Energy Resource' in Coal: Technology for Britain's Future (London, 1976), 8-28, 13-16.
4. S Hughes, B Malaws, M Parry & P Wakelin, Collieries of Wales: Engineering & Architecture (Aberystwyth, 1996), 137.
5. Excavations on the modern opencast coal-mining site at Coleorton, Leicestershire, in the East Midlands have demonstrated this sophistication of early mines which have been dated dendrochronologically to 1450 and 1463 (R York & S Warburton, 'Digging deep in mining history',Bulletin of the Association of Industrial Archaeology (Vol 18, No 4), 1-2.
6. Examples of such non-ferrous mining landscapes in central Europe are already World Heritage sites: eg Rammelsberg in the Harz Mountains of Saxony (Germany) and Banská ?tiavnica (Slovakia).
7. Many of the largest collieries in the world at the time were situated in the Great Northern Coalfield of England and were illustrated by Thomas Hair in 1844 in a book on the Northern Coalfield. Most of these were subsequently republished in W Fordyce, A History of Coal, Coke and Coal Fields and the Manufacture of Iron in the North of England (Newcastle, 1960).
8. S Gould & D Cranstone, Monuments Protection Programme: the Coal Industry (London, unpublished report for English Heritage, 1992), 10.
9. A Föhl, 'Ruhrgebiet' in B Trinder (ed.), op. cit., 650-54.
10. Crimea Pit is an example surviving from 1854: see S Hughes & P Reynolds, A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of the Swansea Region (Aberystwyth & Ironbridge, 1988).
11. S Gould & I Ayris, Colliery Landscapes: An aerial survey of the deep-mined coal industry in England (London, 1995), 52.
12. M Ganzelewski & R Slotta, The "Zeche Zollverein" Landscape of Monuments - A Coal Mine as Part of the World Cultural Heritage?! (Bochum, 1999), 77-79.
13. The buildings at Penallta have been retained and are to be re-used. For details of the site see S Hughes, B Malaws, M Parry, & P Wakelin, op. cit., 14-16 & 170.
14. Ganzelewski & Slotta, op. cit., 154-55.
15. B Trinder, 'Transfer of technology' & 'Cluster house' in B Trinder (ed), op. cit., 771-73 & 160.
16. G Atkinson, The Canal Duke's Collieries: Worsley 1760-1900 (Manchester, c1980), 5-7.
17. K Hudson, World industrial archaeology (Cambridge, 1979), 58-62.
18. J Liebin, 'Les charbonnages' in L-F Genicot & J-P Hendrickx (eds) Wallonie-Bruxelles: Berceau de l'Industrie sur le Continent Européen (Louvain-La-Neuve, 1990), 43-56, 46.
19. 'Le Grand-Hornu', Patrimoine de l'industrie (3, 2000), 108-09.
20. A Föhl, 'Malakoff tower' & 'Ruhrgebiet' in B Trinder (ed.) op. cit., 440-41 & 650-654.
21. Ganzelewski & Slotta, op. cit., 75.
22. R Sherlock, Industrial Archaeology of Staffordshire (Newton Abbot, 1976), 92, 192.
23. F Brook, The Industrial Archaeology of the British Isles: 1 The West Midlands (London, 1977), 136-37.
24. Ganzelewski & Slotta, op. cit., 77-79.
25. Ibid, 1-46.
26. Ibid, 244-49.
27. I J Brown, 'International Guide to Museums' in 'Guide to the Coalfields' in The Colliery Guardian (1995), 25-27.
28. The Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory 1940 (London, 1940), 668.
29. H Yamada, The Industrial Heritage of Coalmining in Hokkaido and its Preservation as an Eco-Museum (Written paper given at TICCIH 2000, London & at the TICCIH Collieries Special Interest Group), 1-2.
30. Ibid. 

 

Prof. Dr Todor Krestev, Université d'Architecture, de Génie civil et de Géodésie, Sofia Prof. Dr Elka Bakalova, Nouvelle Université Bulgare, Sofia

Table des matières

I	Introduction - définitions
II	Histoire des monastères orthodoxes dans les Balkans II.1     Période Paléochrétienne et période Protobyzantine (jusqu'au Xe siècle) II.2 Période Méso-byzantine (Xe-XIIe siècle) II.3 Basse période byzantine (XIIIe-XVe siècle) II.4 Période Post-byzantine (XVe-XVIIe siècle) II.5 Période XVIIIe-XIXe siècle
III	Typologie des monastères orthodoxes dans les Balkans III.1     En fonction de la place représentative du monastère au cours des différentes étapes de l'évolution historique III.2 En fonction du site III.3 En fonction de la structure spatiale et fonctionnelle III.4 En fonction de la stratification historique III.5 En fonction de la forme de l'organisation territoriale III.6 En fonction de l'attitude à l'égard de la nature III.7 En fonction de la typologie du catholicon
IV	Critères proposés pour le classement des monastères orthodoxes dans les Balkans
V	Bibliographie générale

Annexe

Itinéraires culturels du Sud-Est Européen - monastères et centres religieux dans la région. Projet multinational dans le cadre de la Campagne du Conseil de l'Europe « Europe, un patrimoine commun » ; PRIX JEP 2000, Grand prix 2002 de la Délégation de l'Union Européenne en Bulgarie ; Promoteur et coordinateur du projet : ICOMOS/Bulgarie ; Sponsors : La Fondation Roi Baudouin, Programme PHARE BG 9606, La Fondation Société Ouverte.

Version PDF du rapport