It's easy to look with justifiable anger at the recent removal of Burnham-on-Sea's boating pool from the beach. A gift from the Braithwaite family to give thanks for their sons' safe return from the First World War, generations of visitors to the town have played in it's murky depths. I have my own memories of digging miniature canals in the silted up pool, and of finding decaying eels floating in the water. Mostly though, its part of the landscape - it's origins largely unknown until the recent Sedgemoor District Council decision to remove the pool. And while it is dangerous to use an internet forum to take the temperature of a local debate - and especially one as given to dyfunctional babbling and pyrexic rages as burnham-on-sea.com, the reactions to these recent events have given me cause to consider how the 'heritage' game works around here.

The final straw for those who are claiming the demolition of the pool is 'desecration' appears to be the suggestion that a chunk of the concrete edifice will be retained to bear a plaque featuring words chosen by the Braithwaite's descendants. This appears from the reactions to be adding a gross insult to a grave injury - but why is it any worse than sending this last piece to the crusher along with all the others? I think it's all about the removal of context, and the simple fact that we lazily expect our heritage to come prepackaged for easy consumption these days. Consider the embarassment of riches from the Roman era available in Britain today. I've been dragged around many a windy hillside to see these - forlorn, but evocative. Suggestive of a flow of time, but not necessarily sparking an instant vision of our history. Until of course suitable context is provided in the form of a 'visitor center' or 'experience'. In this model of heritage, the consumer signs-up for a package deal of context-setting multimedia and the artefact or location is relegated to second place. The thing itself can never match the reconstructed environment - not even the thrill of touching two thousand-year old stone walls can compete with the carefully paced walk-through designed to deliver just the right number of visitors through the site.

The situation with the boating pool is a little different, but still relates to this disconnection between relic and context. Here, the context is absolutely gone - bulldozed already and crushed into dust finer than the sand which surrounded it. The relic, a rather odd looking and insignificant corner of the concrete pool, is useless in itself and has none of the qualities of the original memorial. It's no accident that religious terms like 'sacrilege' are employed - in the strictest sense this relic has indeed been robbed of it's truth and meaning. Of course, the replacement for this lost context - a suitable plaque linking then to now - will never quite deliver the reverent and solemn 'experience' required. In a new war nearly a hundred years later, and with a deepening gulf between the personal and political in society this act of destruction signals all that is bad at the core of politics. An administration has failed to listen and understand, and seems to have deeply misjudged the heritage gamble.

How does this relate to Highbridge? Well, our own heritage here is taking hit after hit and we are in danger of losing the context too. However, the context here is an authentic market town which can't offer an 'experience' to the visitor in any positive sense as things stand. What it can offer is a view of forsaken heritage - entering from the south, the charred skin of the Highbridge Hotel, shored by an exoskeleton of scaffolding, rears at the casual traveller. Descending towards town, and just feet away the town clock too is under threat of demolition due to a lack of repair. The historic shopping and industrial areas are slowly but inexorably transformed into residential developments of the most depressingly predictable kind. Our own war memorial crumbles and leans at a busy road junction. However, the same intemperate locals who rage against the demolition of the pool can barely raise an eyebrow at the widespread destruction in Highbridge. The best response seems to be a recognition at the fact that Highbridge stands as a embarrassing gateway to it's sister town of Burnham - and that fixing it is a similar window-dressing exercise to watering the flower beds on the distributor road. The worst though, is a cynical sneer at the town and it's inhabitants. It is worryingly commonplace to find the latter view nowadays among locals - and often, perplexingly, it is those who are shouting loudest about the boating pool or poor planning decisions in Burnham who are least concerned and most scornful of Highbridge. It is of course folly to believe that the events here will respect parish boundaries, and perhaps it's time for Burnham's champions to look long and hard at Highbridge and to recognise the trend.

So perhaps the heritage game really is a lottery, and no relic is worth more than the value placed on it's immediate surroundings? This certainly seemed to be the situation for Sutton House in Hackney until the National Trust finally intervened, and it seems true for Highbridge too. As for the boating pool, I'm truly sorry that a part of my own memory of Burnham has disappeared, but politics and history are never the most comfortable companions.

Movebook Entry

By the time I got into work today, a little later than usual, the clouds of smoke had all but dissipated and there was almost nothing left of Weston's Grand Pier. It was interesting to watch reactions to a fire which affected the community in a similar - perhaps more dramatic - way to our own conflagration at the Highbridge Hotel. Early on, the conspiracy theories started - the pier had recently been taken over by new owners who'd had to do lots of improvement work, perhaps they'd bitten off more than they could chew? An insurance job, after all the cash they'd spent, surely not? And so it rolled on, with claims both plausible and outlandish aired in the absence of hard fact.

The simple truth is we've lost another key piece of our heritage, and Weston has suffered a bigger blow. The town is in a kind of binary state just now, flip-flopping between family seaside holiday destination and a town built around stag- and hen-night debauchery. This fire may just have tipped the balance. Not today of course, as trainloads of day-trippers arrived to watch the fire or it's smoky aftermath. Roads closed and traffic chaos as rubberneckers attempted to get a glimpse. Was the west tower still standing? Isn't that where the deep fat fryers were? Are they saying that's what started it? A colleague pointed out that the tide would soon be washing away any evidence that had fallen through the superstructure. We decided not go and look today, it didn't seem right.

But there are key differences to Highbridge's situation. Within hours the owners of the site had said that despite this monumental setback, they would rebuild the pier. Local councillors were offering 'moral support' straight away (no cash, naturally) and people seemed to be getting behind the unlucky owners and supporting their local heritage. Suddenly it seemed OK to express a sense of loss, of childhood memories burned. Having lived in Weston for a few less than happy years, I was amazed at this sudden outburst of community spirit, in what has been a centre-less, disjointed and divided town for years.

Perhaps we could never have excited the local population here about a pub, particularly one which was declining in popularity and had seen better days in many senses. However, our tiny group of supporters remain committed to finding out what happened, and more importantly to doing all we can to secure a future for the Highbridge Hotel. We simply can't afford to lose any more of our heritage, our links with a quite recent past which seems impossibly distant to those who live in the town in 2008. As the people of Weston will discover tomorrow and beyond, once the strange gut-twisting thrill and disbelief of seeing flames leaping from a building has gone, a strange sense of loss sets in.

Movebook Entry

In an effort to support the Friends of the Highbridge campaign which has started on burnham-on-sea.com, I've taken a few pictures of the current state of the Highbridge Hotel. It's frankly not pretty, and with a week of fairly inclement weather the building is beginning to suffer from neglect and remains easily accessible by vandals. The pictures are here.

Movebook Entry

Passing the Highbridge Hotel earlier in the week, I was struck by it's haunted and forlorn aspect. After much debate about how to manage it's precarious condition, the powers that be seemed to do nothing, and a little fencing to stop the public straying into it's immediate environs are all that is preventing further disaster. As you approach from the south, it's windows gape - black and empty. The very part of the building which is listed - which should inspire us with it's endurance - looks like some house of horror caricature of a building. It doesn't feel nice to walk past - and strangely, even though the pavement is open on both sides of the road, and I'm sure the onlooker could get a better view into the blackened rooms from the other footpath, at night we are all walking on the eastern side of Huntspill Road.

So, with all this still fresh in my mind I found myself agitated and distracted by tonight's meeting. I attended the Annual Town Council meeting last night and heard the Police say how they'd been unable to attend to a variety of crimes in the area last weekend because their resources were committed at the Hotel, guarding the private property which had become a public nuisance. Tonight, Derek Mead - the developer himself was the main act. Defiant and bluff, he affected a warm openness at the start of the meeting which soon collapsed, as from a room of sixty or so souls - some of them not young by any means - a collective spirit of Highbridge's own defiance rose. Again and again, the developer pressed the blame back on the community - our young people couldn't be trusted. Finally, and in a dignified and heartfelt speech, Janet Keen spoke of the people of Highbridge being good, respectful and decent in the majority and applause filled the room. A turning point, and from here on in, Mr Mead was less tactful, more combative. Perhaps now we were talking his language?

The meeting took a circular path - much was said about youth facilities, policing and the much misunderstood Section 106 process. The prospective Liberal Democrat candidate managed to make a fairly blatant election broadcast, whilst our local councillor - one of her own party - struck a much more dignified and communitarian tone. There were arguments, a face-off between Mead and a local simply wanting to tell him about metal security shutters, an older lady who asked the simply truthful question "was the hotel in your way?" menaced. As the meeting found its feet and began to challenge, Mead fell back on foul language and counter-accusation. It was the Police - they didn't guard the property, or it was the Council. Hamstrung by Mr Meads' constant references to another authority - my employer - I stayed as calm as I could and found myself frustrated and feeling worthless. The bellicose atmosphere fuelled by Mead's increasingly surly tone and repeated refusal to acknowledge that the building's security lay at his mercy. To claim indeed, that there was no electricity on the premises is absurd. The lights have been on for weeks, and someone has been at home.

So Highbridge found a voice, but naturally it's been hard for people to report how the meeting felt, and the soundbites are as carefully shored-up as the hotel with legally couched promises and pledges. A few of us chatted after, revealing our web-forum identities to each other, comparing notes on what we knew but couldn't say. Interestingly, it is the internet which has fanned the flames of this debate from the start - and Mr Mead let it been known that he hates the internet. Probably because it can't be controlled, bullied or jostled into order. It's hard to know quite where things will head next, but there are storms ahead I suspect.

Movebook Entry

A public meeting is to be held on Thursday 1st May at 5:30pm to discuss the future of the former Highbridge Hotel. The developer of the site, local MP and councillors and the Police have been invited to attend. The meeting will take place at the Community Hall on Market Street.

It's hard to know how this particular site can be rescued from the mess it's become. However, the truly encouraging thing is that the future of Highbridge is now a subject for serious discussion and not idle assumptions about what the town is, or has been in the past. I hope the meeting is well-supported, and that the invited local officials do take the opportunity to come along.

Movebook Entry

The debate about the regeneration of Highbridge turned ugly tonight. Over the weekend, a series of small fires have occurred around the town, most notably including a minor incident in the abandoned and boarded-up Highbridge Hotel. The same hotel which is Grade II listed in part, and currently owned by Mead Realisations - a group of businesses that specialise in redeveloping 'difficult' sites. Since the pub closed in early 2008, security on the site has been poor, and this once proud building, parts of which have survived since the 18th century, has slipped quickly into decline.

Tonight, after lazily listening to more fire appliances screaming by and sparked by a message from my sister, I looked out of the window to see smoke and flames in the sky. A quick look at the internet indicated that a fire had taken hold of the hotel. Like many others I was drawn out of my house to watch the building disintegrate before our eyes. I thought it would be crass to take my camera - but plenty didn't. My 'phone had to suffice to document events.

There was a strange, almost dangerous and semi-criminal taint to the atmosphere. Much of the town seemed to be lining the fence, groups of children playing chicken with the Police Officer put on crowd control duty - sprinting across the former market grounds to the line of tape and back as she lunged for them. Next to me a young boy said quite simply "this is the most exciting day ever!". Older folk reminisced about the pub, and about its decline - both before and after closure. Someone called the former landlord "Its OK, your 'book early for Christmas sign' isn't burning!". With the railway bridge closed again and the police turning cars back at the roundabout, the road began to fill with cars - mostly those of locals down to get a picture or watch the action.

Strangely, the Market was the centre of Highbridge once again tonight. People passed the time, bemoaning 'kids' or adding to the conspiracy theory about planning consent, listing and conditions. Only a full hour after the drama began did someone - a kindly soul - say "I hope there was no-one in there". Names of potential pyromaniacs were tendered. People reminisced about Jewson's burning many years ago. It was like the Carnival had finally come to Highbridge. I took a brief and very poor quality video, and again cursed my sensitivity at not bringing a better camera. It's curious to note the general level of excitement and banter among the watchers.

Whilst the conspiracy theories may well be unfounded, there are questions for the developer to answer about the security of the site and protection of the public. Since the Police were keeping us away, its hard to know if a salvagable facade remains. I left as the fire had died to embers, but it continued to retain the power to regenerate in a way the Town has never managed - springing up, bright and hot again in some new corner. The roof, collapsing under the jets of water, no longer containing the flames. The firemen trying to break skylights by throwing bricks and cheering each other's efforts on!

Whatever happens, one of the oldest buildings and perhaps part of the very core of the town is gone, and both the fabric and genus loci of Highbridge has changed again forever. Strangely though, the fire seems to have stirred some sense of belonging and place once again, and the reaction is threatening to turn against the 'developer'. Perhaps another chapter is already beginning?

Movebook Entry