Crafty help for heritage

Jul 12 2008 by Liz Hands, The Journal

ASHOWCASE of traditional skills is being staged at a historic estate this weekend in a bid to tackle a major threat to the North East’s heritage buildings and structures.

The region has the most Grade I and Grade II-star listed buildings at risk in the country but also the lowest number of skilled craftspeople to carry out the necessary repair and restoration work.

Yesterday school parties visited the North East Heritage Skills Fair at the National Trust’s Gibside estate near Rowlands Gill.

The aim was to give youngsters a taste of the range of traditional skills and to consider them as a future career.

The finals were held of a regional competition in which schools had put forward a team to set up its own company, chose a local heritage building, and carried out public consultation on ideas for its conversion and reuse.

The teams then had to come up with plans and a model which showed a new life for the building.

The winners were High Tunstall College of Science in Hartlepool, with their scheme for the empty Tunstall Court, the listed local mansion of industrialist Sir William Grey.

Finalists were Thomas Hepburn School in Gateshead, with Wrekenton Community Centre, Walbottle Campus in Newcastle with Benwell Towers, and South Moor School in Sunderland with Ryhope Pumping Station.

The fair continues today and tomorrow and visitors can see and sample crafts like blacksmithing, lime plastering, dry stone walling and masonry. Other crafts include making oak riven fencing, leadwork, pottery, coracle making, brewing, traditional sweet making, beekeeping, roofing, marbling, sash window joinery, ship’s rigging, coppicing, horse logging, weaving, lacemaking, stained glass, Durham quilting, proggy mat making, and wool spinning. The North East Heritage Skills Initiative was set up after a study spotlighted the shortfall in traditional skills in the region and the lack of training opportunities.

It led to the appointment of Andie Harris as regional heritage skills co-ordinator. She said yesterday that the region was losing out on repair grants because there were not enough skilled people to carry out work.

“Yet heritage is a major tourism pull in the North East,” she said. The North East has two world heritage sites, over 1,400 scheduled ancient monuments, 280 conservation areas, 12,150 listed buildings, and 51 historic parks and gardens.