Contribution
I certainly welcome that, and I also welcome the number of Cambridgeshire MPs who are here to celebrate our county’s rich bronze-age heritage.
Too often, young people are denied the chance to learn about their history because of the lack of public transport linked to places such as Flag Fen, and because of the pressures on school budgets restricting opportunities for visits and learning. We are beginning to turn that around, and I am proud of our record in Government so far, but there is more to do. A rich world on our doorstep is something that all students should be able to learn from, regardless of background or wealth.
Flag Fen’s story began with its discovery in 1971, when excavations ahead of the construction of Peterborough new town revealed an almost intact bronze-age landscape running along the edge of the drained fen. Then, in November 1982, archaeologists surveying the depths of the basin came across the timbers of what proved to be an internationally important site, Flag Fen. The rich archaeological collection and remains there are important in understanding the wider prehistoric landscape of the Flag Fen basin, and what was happening in Britain during the bronze age.
Almost since Flag Fen’s discovery, the management strategy has been to protect these remarkable remains by leaving them buried in the ground that has protected them for nearly 3,500 years. However, even then we knew that the land would not protect the archaeology forever, but that one day the precious vanished world would succumb to climate change and fen drainage, leaving nothing but dust. That goes to the heart of one of the challenges now: new evidence suggests that we have reached the point where, without intervention, we will move from protection to abandonment. We need a new approach to capture the value of places such as Flag Fen, and retain their special place in our community for the benefit of generations to come—a new mission, we might say, to create access on all levels through new interpretations and historical knowledge.
Cambridgeshire is also home to Must Farm; I am delighted that this week Peterborough Museum has been awarded a £250,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to support a two-year initiative centred on the internationally significant bronze-age archaeology at Must Farm in Whittlesey. The discovery in 2015 of the Must Farm settlement, dubbed the “Pompeii of the fens”, provided an extraordinary glimpse into everyday life in the bronze age due to the exceptional preservation of its artefacts. This newly funded project, entitled “My Must Farm”, will encourage communities to bring those discoveries alive in imaginative and exciting ways for visitors from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and hopefully beyond.
I thank the Government for their commitment to heritage in Peterborough and more widely, but I want to highlight a few threats facing our heritage sector. I have already mentioned accessibility and the rural nature of the sites that I have referred to, but there are also socioeconomic barriers. Deprivation is a huge issue for many places, including Peterborough; families who are worse off could be barred from accessing the heritage right on their doorstep. Improved access will help to develop a stronger pride in place and open opportunities that can seem unattainable to some families nowadays.
The numbers of bronze-age wetland archaeology specialists are in decline, which puts future high-quality management of bronze-age discoveries in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere at risk. That speaks to career paths and pay for archaeologists. Increasingly, those entering the field are forced to make tough decisions about whether they can afford to be archaeologists or need to pursue other paths with better pay.
Finally, there is the issue of heritage crime. Flag Fen has suffered two catastrophic arson events in the last five years. The first destroyed a building used as an education room for visiting schoolchildren, and the second, in July this year, destroyed a replica iron-age roundhouse. The effect of both fires was to remove spaces that are used by schools for learning and “outside the classroom” programmes.
Heritage is our shared inheritance, and it is a privilege to represent a community in a county that has a rich bronze-age heritage.