Grey Matters More

Grey Matters More: English Heritage

• Roy • Season 1 • Episode 3

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0:00 | 26:52
Derm Tanner

Hello, welcome to another episode of Greymatters, the brand new podcast series which aims to give you some ideas to fill all that time you now have on your hands. Whether you've just retired, you're looking to retire soon or just wanting to do something more with your day, maybe, just maybe, we can help. We've talked to many organizations, clubs, and charities around Yorkshire and further afield because we wanted to find out what it's like to volunteer and learn new skills. Hopefully, over the coming episodes, Grey Matters will spark some interest for you. Because when it comes to retirement, there's so much more than just ensuring you have enough money to live on, and this episode, we are outdoors. I can perhaps show an interest in the fact that I am an English Heritage member, and it's brilliant as well. But we been out chatting and talking about history, and Roy, you were with me as well, and it was another beautiful day, wasn't it?

Roy Player

Oh gosh, we've been so lucky. Mind you, Derm, we did actually plan to do most of these recordings during the summer so that we were outside and it came off, yes, and we decided to edit and then do these little bits as the rain fell outside, Chris. and it got darker and darker and darker, and we're sat inside here drinking a nice cup of coffee. But English Heritage was fantastic. I don't know, Chris, whether you've been to English Heritage sites and taken those in.

Chris Wiltshire

I have indeed, yeah. Often with my daughter and her husband and the grandkids now,

Roy Player

and the dog,

Chris Wiltshire

the dog, yeah. They are fantastic places, but they don't half rely on volunteers, don't they?

Roy Player

Again, it was that thing Derm, wasn't it? It was, I mean, we we went to a particular location where you kind of there was there weren't ruins or anything, it was just basically a field, wasn't it, with three lumps? and you're kind of going, well, this does this nearly need any attention? But we discovered there and across the whole board of all those areas, those all those sites that English Heritage have, they are dependent upon volunteers.

Fiona Syme

Hello, I'm Fiona Syme. I am the volunteer and community engagement manager for the Northeast and Hadrian's Wall.

Roy Player

So, first of all, then Fiona, where are we at the moment? It's a beautiful setting here, and we're very lucky, we're blessed with the weather, and our dog has joined us as well. He was kind of joining in with the conversation, obviously. But a great place for people to walk, great place for people to visit, but maybe like myself, I hadn't knew nothing about it. So, where are we?

Fiona Syme

We are in the centre of the Northern Henge at Thornborough Henges, so that is one of three henges, massive, beautiful green spaces in Thornborough in North Yorkshire. So the central and southern henge are kind of grassland, and the northern henge is a beautiful woodland area.

Roy Player

What was it here? Because I mean the other thing as well with English Heritage is kind of you come somewhat like this, and you imagine there's going to be a pile of old stones and a maybe sort of you know a bit of a sort of religious thing, an abbey, castle. There's none of that here, it is just open fields and little bits of sort of well, I don't know, sort of mounds of earth. So what was it here and how come English Heritage were involved in a project like this?

Fiona Syme

So you say it's not a religious site, but in a way it is. It's a Neolithic religious site. So the three henges all represent kind of a religious area for pagans to kind of engage with their spirituality and with nature. We do have Beltane every year, which is celebrated in the central henge, so we do still carry on our pagan links to the sites. It's a really interesting area because it is a sense of nature and a sense of serene and spirit spirituality, and it's not yeah, just trekking around castles and stuff like that, it's a really different way for people to engage with English heritage and with their kind of local sites and communities.

Roy Player

I suppose that's the thing as well, isn't it? That sort of people, if they're wanting to get actively involved with English Heritage, people sort of tend to think about old buildings and being able to take take people on a guided tour and all those kinds of things. Here is slightly different because it is open land and is a, as you say, a spiritual place, a pagan place of worship as well. So can people get involved as volunteers with places like this as well as old buildings?

Fiona Syme

Yeah, so the really fun thing with English Heritage is that you have both pay to enter and free to enter sites. Your pay to enter is kind of your standard visitor experience where you have the pay barrier, and the free-to-enter means that you are able to kind of come and go as free as you can. So we've got a number of sites, we've got 112 sites in the north, and they range from steel furnaces to obviously these beautiful hinges, and you've got your classic priories and castles as well. So we're really lucky to have a real variety of heritage, and we're lucky to that English heritages are able to look after and care for these sites, and it's amazing that volunteers can get involved in a number of ways, and because all of these sites are so unique and so different, the way that we volunteer is going to be different as well because you can't always fit that kookie cutter. We're gonna have our standard guided tour, you're gonna walk around for 45 minutes and then you're gone, sort of thing. There's loads of different ways, and just being here at the moment, sitting, listening to the birds, just being present in nature, it really just makes me think that we've got some really fantastic ways to engage with the sites. We've got maintenance volunteering where we maintain the site, we use local and materials to kind of build pathways. We've got monitor volunteers who look after our sites by feeding back to us if there's anything that's wrong, especially after things like storms. We've got seven languages at the moment that our information off the sites are being translated into. We've got photography volunteers who take photographs on the site, and that's used in our websites and social media. We have admin volunteers and social media volunteers who look after our websites and pages and stuff as well. So there's a real vast majority of roles that are available and that does kind of step out of that standard role.

Roy Player

A lot of people will have great interest in history, but like myself, I haven't necessarily got a great deal of knowledge about some of the old buildings that you have, and so couldn't be a guide, and also, I I have to be honest, my fingers aren't too green either, as far as sort of helping out a beautiful site like this and and working in the gardens of some of the locations as well. So, can I go and do anything for you? Can I help? I mean, one thing I was quite good at with my previous job was organizing things. Are there any things that I can get involved in with English Heritage if I'm a good organiser?

Fiona Syme

Absolutely, yeah. We've got a real wide range of volunteer roles that are specifically to hone to your skills. It's such a mutual kind of benefit that we gather our skills and information from you, and we can also provide to the volunteers as well. So we've got loads of different roles. We've got advance volunteers when we have our big events like jousts and night tournaments, we need volunteers to help out there. We've also got our education volunteers as well. So when we do school visits and tours, we have volunteers that are able to kind of support the schools and the teams as well there. So there's loads of different roles and that are available, and if you're unsure, just reach out to English Heritage as well and just say, Here are my base skills, what can I do, and we'll be able to help and support you.

Roy Player

What do you get out of the volunteers? But also, can I ask you, what do the volunteers get from English Heritage?

Fiona Syme

Yeah, that's a really good question. So I think when people retire, there can sometimes be a feeling of where do I go from here? we've got all of this skill that I've learned throughout my entire career, and now it's kind of stopped, and what do I do? And we've really found that with a lot of our volunteers, and it's been a really fantastic experience to gather volunteers who that have really essential skills that they've gained through years and years of direct experience, and so they're able to kind of put their skills into the roles and we really benefit from that. But it is a as I says, it is a two-way street. We also get a lot of feedback from volunteers where it's a social thing and it really really people really benefit from seeing other people, and it's also a getting outside as well and being at one with nature. Although we do have a lot of old buildings and we have a lot of ruins, the surrounding area is very natural as well, and we do have really natural sites. Also, it's sometimes just part of a routine, knowing that you're going to be able to get up and you do your your role at volunteering and then you go home, you feel like it's a sense of achievement.

Roy Player

Can I ask how do you go about making people feel valued as a volunteer?

Fiona Syme

Sometimes just a simple thank you. It really goes a long way, but we also have volunteers week where we do things. We've got parties that we have at the start and the end of seasons. We have get-togethers, we have catch-ups, barbecues, we also send out little thank you cards. We also have the Absolute Star Award as well, which is fantastic, where we just say, you know what, you've actually just gone above and beyond. Thank you so much, and they get a certificate and a little present as well, which is really really nice, and it just makes people feel like, yeah, actually I'm being acknowledged and I'm being appreciated, and that's just really important at the end of the day with volunteering.

Roy Player

Finally, really. I mean, how many volunteers do actually contribute to the English Heritage and the day-to-day running of English Heritage?

Fiona Syme

So at the moment, we have over 3,000 volunteers in the whole organisation of English Heritage. We've got in our free-to-enter sites team in the north, we have got 600, and they are so key as I said to our team. We're kind of, although I says we're a team of four staff, we're actually kind of a team of 604, Because they are just such an imperative part of the running of the sites and all of the skills that they use, it it's all little cogs in the big working of how the team function.

Roy Player

You talk about free sites, but is that the same as well when you go into some of the locations which you have to pay to go in? Is that also volunteers assist there as well?

Fiona Syme

Absolutely, yeah, and we're really breaking out in all different sites with pay sites as well, out of that standard tour guide role, and we're getting some fantastic different ways. We've got gardening volunteers at Linda's Farm Priory, we've got a lot of community engagement happening at loads of different sites as well, and which include volunteers. So we're really kind of striving forward and breaking out of that mould, and I'm really excited to see how the next few years develop and what we can kind of what skills we can bring together to kind of enhance our heritage for for the future.

Roy Player

Fiona, that sounds very exciting, not only for the present, but also as you say, for the future. Fiona, thank you so so much for joining us, putting such a great amount of information out there for people and hopefully people will be able to get in touch with you. How do they find out about volunteering? We're going to put loads of information on our website, but obviously, there at the moment, how do people get in touch with English Heritage and find out about volunteering?

Fiona Syme

So the best way is the English Heritage website. There is a dedicated tab to volunteering where all of the roles that are currently being recruited for are up and available for you to see, and then there is also a contact tab as well if you want to contact the team directly.

Derm Tanner

So that is the theory as to why English Heritage has taken on and are in charge of and custodians of Thornborough Henges. I am walking through the northern henge, which is the best preserved, and it would need a great feat of imagination to try and imagine what this would have been like 2500-3000 BC when it would have been at its height, because now essentially we're in a forest, and I'm with two volunteers who spend their time guiding us ignorant folk through through this because it's these are not well known. Christine and Tony, can I come to you first, Christine? and firstly, a little bit about about here. People don't know about this, do they?

Christine

No, they don't, and one of the reasons that they may not know is that the great archaeologist William Stukeley when he came here, he was told that there were Roman, and he thought, no, of no interest, I'll walk on. So people assumed they were Roman because there's no way that Neolithic people with just antlers and shoulder blades, animal shoulder blades as shovels, could even, you know, could create such a wonderful thing, and it was all it's only been much later on that people have actually realised well, actually, this is something unique and stunning in the UK and in the world, actually. There's nothing like this anywhere else.

Derm Tanner

So these were large ceremonial mounds, all in a line, three of them in a line, which, which line up with the sun for solstice, etc. which it again is extraordinary. Yes. That that that that they're able to do that. We perhaps rather arrogantly think that we're rather sophisticated, and to think that that man was that sophisticated 2500 BC, and people came here ceremonies for 2,000 years, which again I can't get my head around. So talk to me about volunteering because clearly you know your stuff, and I'm sure Tony knows his stuff. Why, why do you volunteer? What got you into English Heritage?

Christine

Well, mine was it was a bit of a roundabout route, because I actually volunteer for another charity over in Gisborough and we're responsible for the English Heritage Gisborough Priory. The lady, Kate, who was our manager, was sort of talking about the possibility of gaining Thornborough many, many, many years ago and I said, Oh, well, I've done some work around Thornborough, I know Thornborough well and I've written stuff. I said, So let me know if there's anything going, and so she when the the sale and everything was going through, the deal was all going through, then she contacted me and said, How do you fancy being lead volunteer? and I said, Bring it on.

Derm Tanner

But how did you start in the first place, Christine? What what how did you get into volunteering? What made you want to volunteer?

Christine

Back then I'd actually just moved into a new area and Gisborough Priory Project were looking for volunteers, they had this new project going, and I thought I know no one, all my children are grown up, so I'm not going to meet anyone through the kids. I thought, oh well, I'll go and, and have a look and see, you know, see what's going on, and it was really a way of meeting people at that time, at that time I was working. Then as I got older, because this was over 20 years ago, as I got older, then obviously I was retiring and thinking, I could do more of this now. So you're pre-planning, really. Oh yes, yes, you can

Derm Tanner

set the wheels in motion.

Christine

Oh, definitely, definitely, yes. That was very important.

Derm Tanner

That's a very smart move. So you didn't have this drop-off then when you stopped working and had

Christine

No, but on the other hand, you see, in my professional life, I was a counsellor and I listened to a lot of people who came to the end of their working life and suddenly there was nothing, there were there was no meaning, there were nobody, there was no reason to get out of bed, and so I was well aware of what might happen, so I was prepared to do something, so it didn't.

Derm Tanner

Well, well done. Don't go away because I'm coming back to you. Tony, how how did you start? Lovely to meet you, and and what is a fabulous so peaceful here, isn't it? It's magnificent.

Tony

Yep, yep, it's an amazing, an awesome place, really. Yeah. So I got into volunteering. Really, I'd always been a member of English Heritage. I'd been doing dragging the kids and, and, and my my parents-in-law dragging people round English Heritage sites for forever, and when it came to retiring, I was looking at things to do. I volunteer here as a maintenance worker, laying paths, clearing ditches.

Derm Tanner

What a good job you're doing as well. I mean, did you put all these wonderful you know, bits of wood along his, you know, in order to create a path for us to walk.

Tony

Right. So the contractors obviously cut down the trees and chipped the thing, chipped the, the branches and everything, and we've just laid them out as paths. Two circular paths and one path that goes across the across the causeway, across the plateau. I also volunteer at Mount Grace Priory as a room guide there. So volunteering with English Heritage is really rewarding. You meet people from every walk in life, you meet visitors, but there's also the gang of other volunteers that come along, and we've had about three maintenance days where we've been here. There's a sort of hardcore of about six of us who were the maintenance volunteers, but also there were people who came in from the outside companies that got an opportunity to do something useful on an annual basis, and four of them came and we had them doing all the heavy work, dragging tree trunks.

Derm Tanner

They're kind of ground force days, aren't they? Yeah, okay.

Tony

Yeah, and that was superb. So no, it's been a really rewarding experience.

Derm Tanner

So you've done everything, you've done working on your own cataloguing and the forensic work in you know, sort of very detailed, and now you're front of house chatting to people and pushing logs around and doing everything.

Tony

Clearing things up, yep. I mean, one of my greatest joys at Helmsley was they'd have they'd found a frieze, a stone frieze, at Corbridge. And it had been face down and you and the back surface had been used as a pavement, and then it was going to go on display when they revamped the Corbridge Museum. But somebody in the past had been painting the walls of the mu of the previous museum and it got splattered with Dulux white paint. So my joy was to pick bits of paint off this off this frieze and restore it to a sort of a Roman condition.

Derm Tanner

Your a patient man.

Tony

It may have been painted in Roman times, but it certainly wasn't with white Dulux paint. The other thing was that the the jet there was either Castor or Pollux was one of the characters on the frieze, and for good luck, his genitals had been stroked for centuries and they they'd turned black. I got an opportunity to sort of gently steam clean his genitals.

Derm Tanner

So what's on your CV now?

Tony

It is now I'm the I'm the guy who I'm the guy who who cleaned Pollux's bollocks, brought them back to pristine condition.

Derm Tanner

What a story, what a story. Coming back to you, Christine. I mean, and you have clearly got so much knowledge of the hinges.

Christine

Yeah.

Derm Tanner

It's one thing to have knowledge, it's another thing to impart that successfully to people, isn't it?

Christine

It is, yes, and you really need to know your audience. And you know, you get some very, very knowledgeable people come along and you can engage them in wonderful conversations, and one of the things about Thornborough that that's wonderful is we just don't know. Do you see? There's so much we don't know. So you can have these intellectual discussions about what might be here and what might have happened, and everybody's right. And then at the other end, you've got people who've never been here, they've never heard they don't know what they're looking at, and then that's a different conversation that's trying to explain you, you know, just how things were because the site goes back over 6,000 years ago, although the henges are are much more recent at we go back. We can't no.

Derm Tanner

I mean that's a ridiculous amount of time, isn't it?

Christine

It, it, is, and sort of trying to take people back there and, and because we don't know what it was like. We know some of the things, we know some of the tools they might have used and how they might have used them.

Derm Tanner

So, what kind of reaction do you get from people for the first time they come in here and and you try and paint a picture where you've got to strip away all the wood of the trees that shouldn't have been here and the w well weren't here. No, they weren't. But you do have the undulations that you talk about.

Christine

Yes. I think for when people come to the north, because it's so well preserved, even though the trees are around and it's difficult to get a feel of how it would be, that you can show them the ditch, and the moment that you show them the ditch, which is about three and a half meters deep and and I'm not quite sure how wide it is, but it it is very wide and say People back in the day used an antler pick and a shoulder blade shovel to clear this, then it's oh my gosh. Really?

Derm Tanner

Yeah.

Christine

Then when you actually say and look, this is the bank, and it's like, What?, What? Yeah, and how did they do that then? Well, it's the same, yeah, you know, and and then suddenly then you know it's it is about painting a picture and taking people back, and they're absolutely amazed.

Derm Tanner

Well you're brilliant at this because you've taken me with you straight away. What would you say, both of you, first first to you to Christine, what would you say, what would your advice be to someone listening to this podcast now who's coming up to that age and maybe has already retired or is a bit bored or is thinking about retirement? What would you say about volunteering?

Christine

It's really horses for carters. So what are you interested in? What do you like doing? What makes you tick? When you worked, what give you the most enjoyment? and start thinking about what would you like to do? If somebody moved a magic wand, what would your life be like?, and then it's like thinking, right, so how do I do it? This is how I want my life to be. I want to be outside, I want to meet people, I want to be indoors, I want to do this, I want to do that, and that is a great way of actually formulating the type of thing. My opportunities, I love the henges, and I love being outdoors, and I love being talking to people, as you can probably guess. But other people are not like that. Yeah, exactly and so you know, we have all sorts of indoor things, and the there's a lady, I don't know which country she lives in, but she does our newsletter, and I only found out she lived in a different country when I emailed her and said, Can I talk to you on the phone? She says I'm in a different time zone, it'll be difficult. So, so you

Derm Tanner

So Lancashire then.

Christine

So you know that there are all, all sorts of opportunities. It isn't just about being on old sites, it it is about admin, it's about support, it's about i i whatever you're interested in, there'll be something for you.

Tony

I mean, as Christine said, go on the website. The English Heritage website has a whole zone for volunteering and they go through all the various sites, some of them manned, some of them unmanned. All the sites in, in by area, and you have the chance to volunteer there. I've done archiving and cataloguing, I've done ditch clearing, I've done path laying.

Derm Tanner

Well, Christine Tony, thank you so much for guiding me through this. I mean, thank you so much indeed for everything. Thank you.

unknown

Thank you.

Derm Tanner

Well, I don't know about you, Roy, but I mean, walking amongst prehistoric ruins and knowing that people thousands and thousands of years before us were amongst those the same places where we were treading. Okay, it was a bit it was a bit muddy in places and the cattle had been there, but so it needed a little bit of imagination, but I was fired up on that, especially in the wood, because the wood was very different because they'd left all the mounds, and you could really get an idea of what it must have looked like once you try and get rid of all the trees.

Roy Player

I think you may have just noticed as well there was a tiny little bit of moaning from my dog in the background because she was desperate to go and roll in one of those cowpats that were there because very, very tasty for her as well.

Derm Tanner

Yeah, I, I was dog minded, yes, dog walker j

Roy Player

Just to keep her quiet.

Derm Tanner

She was very happy to be away from that.

Roy Player

But again, but you know, you can take you can take dogs on the lead, walking around there, you know, picnic and everything. It was it was a great sign. But to think, as you say, that funerals ceremonies have gone on there 2,500 years before. I mean, extraordinary, and what is also extraordinary Derm and Chris, can you imagine, can you guess how many volunteers English Heritage has? Give us a shout.

Derm Tanner

Hundreds, I would have thought

Chris Wiltshire

2,000.

Roy Player

5,000 volunteers. 5,000 volunteers across the country. So plenty of opportunities in in so many different areas, so many different areas. So, you know, whatever your interest around English heritage, around historic monuments, around those kind of things. Have a look on the website, Chris.

Chris Wiltshire

I think we're very blessed to live in a magnificent country with extraordinary history. So why not go and have a look at it?

Derm Tanner

You've been listening to the Grey Matters podcast, produced by Roy Player, Chris Wiltshire, and Derm Tanner.

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