Click here for the Welsh translationCultural Heritage
UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention defines cultural heritage as:
- MONUMENTS: architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science
- GROUPS OF BUILDINGS: groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art or science
- SITES: works of man or the combined works of nature and of man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological points of view.
Another term used in the UK is The Historic Environment. It includes archaeological sites from the earliest human activity through to recent times; hamlets, villages and towns; historic landscapes such as battlefields, designed landscapes, such as parks; buildings and farmsteads; green lanes; footpaths and bridleways; quarries and woodlands; and the widespread field patterns that are evidence of human exploitation of the landscape from the prehistoric and Saxon periods, through to the Parliamentary Enclosures of the 18th and 19th centuries. More than this is the fact that cultural heritage is a legacy left by people who have gone before us – our own predecessors both recent and from long ago.
So what?
Find out more by following the following links:
- Why is it Important?
- About designations
- More about Scheduled Monuments
- Consents
- Outdoor activities with their own heritage
- Discoveries
If you want to see examples of good practice in resolving conflict between cultural heritage and outdoor recreation, click here to go to the Best of Both Worlds Case Studies page and click here to go to the Further Information page
