A retrospective on 2001, the Jurassic Coast, and William Smith's map. Media Monitor, February 2002
"I had come back largely on the advice of a man I had met in the village of Chideock, where I was staying. He was called Denys Brunsden, and he…turned out to be an internationally renowned expert in the physics of landslips….When I told him the subject of my interest he dashed out to his study and returned with his most recent award: it came from the Geological Society of London…the millennial medal for contributions to geology, no less than the… William Smith Award…" Simon Winchester – The Map that Changed the World, p174
As Media Monitor sits in a freezing Burlington House on 27 December looking back over 2001 and trying to be positive, the one thing that emerges is how high-profile the UK’s geological heritage has become in 12 short months.
Picture: Denys Brunsden receives the Glossop Medal from Sheila Glossop. Ted Nield
The quote, from Simon Winchester’s blockbuster on William Smith, is partly a reminder that since its publication, Burlington House has received a steady stream of visitors from all over the world, anxious to see Smith’s great 1815 map – the most recent being Mr and Mrs Don Woollen from New Zealand (six days ago at time of writing). Don, who is Director of Tendering and Contracting for the Office of the Controller and Auditor General in Wellington, described the Smith map as "number one on our list". That Map is now firmly on the trail.
But it is also a reminder of a different, though not unrelated, event that catapulted geological heritage into the public consciousness last year. The passage comes from where Winchester describes how he retraced Smith’s UK travels, and recalls a chance meeting in Lyme Regis, the starting point for Smith’s 15-year mapping project. Denys Brunsden (who has since added the Engineering Group’s Glossop Award to his Smith Medal (Geoscientist 13, 1, p19)) is also Chairman of the Dorset Coast Forum. This organisation combined forces with Dorset and Devon County Councils in a bid to get 95 miles of coastline designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The coast from Old Harry Rocks in Dorset to Orcombe Point in Devon is well known to geologists from all over the world (and especially those who did their undergraduate study in the UK). It provides a time travelling experience through 185 million years of Earth history – and through the "heroic age" of the subject itself. The bid was finally successful on December 14 2001 when the 17-strong UNESCO World Heritage Committee announced its decision in Helsinki, and marked a major first for the UK and for geology. For one, it was the first "natural" Heritage site to be designated in mainland UK (the other two being Giant’s Causeway, Co. Antrim and St Kilda). Moreover, the bid was primarily based on the coastline’s importance to science and its history, as well as its more obvious scenic marvels.
The UK has many World Heritage cultural (as opposed to natural) sites. Relating mostly to the UK’s 19th Century industrial history, the media coverage these receive upon designation tends to compare them unfavourably with other World Heritage Sites – usually carrying pictures of grimy mills or pitheads alongside others of the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids. As usual in England, where nothing clears a public space more effectively than poetry, the Anglo Saxon reaction to "culture" is not dissimilar to that reported by the late and unlamented Field Marshall Goering.
The media presentation of the "Jurassic Coast" bid (predictably, this catchy term for the middle portion was often inaccurately extended to refer to the whole stretch) was quite different. Joining a UNESCO list naturally invites comparison with its strongest members (Grand Canyon, Galapagos Islands, Great Barrier Reef…). But Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove, Golden Cap and Old Harry Rocks do not, somehow, disgrace themselves as much as the grimy mills when seen alongside their glamorous counterparts. Journalists tended to write rather chuffed pieces in "now we have our own Grand Canyon" mode. Happily, the Anglo Saxon attitude to nature (ass opposed to culture) granted MM’s colleagues on the papers permission to be proud for once.
Coverage began early, when the UNESCO list of candidate sites was published in early December. Sites clearing this hurdle do not generally get turned down – though spokespersons were keen not to suggest that the Helsinki gathering was a rubber-stamping exercise, for fear of jinxing their bids.
In the end they need not have feared. On December 14, the Jurassic Coast Web Site (see below) triumphantly announced "We’ve got it!", and a second wave of coverage began. Even BBC TV’s Political Editor Andrew Marr (writing in the Daily Telegraph) drew attention to the link between Winchester’s book (which he had lately finished reading) and the bid.
Most gratifying of all - and bearing comparison with the amazing extent to which Winchester’s book was reviewed by the popular end of the press - was the fact that this event was as much a subject for the tabloid papers as the broadsheets. The tabs are never to be outdone when it comes to celebrating emblems of national pride. Long-in-tooth readers of this column may remember that when last year’s Sir Peter Kent Lecturer Professor John Burland addressed the British Association 2000 on his tower-straightening work ( Geoscientist 10, 11, p8) the tabloids all led on how he had monitored Big Ben during the excavation of the new Westminster tube station. The broadsheets, by contrast, splashed on the Leaning Tower of Pisa and hardly mentioned the most famous clock tower in Britain.)
So, although MM received many calls from journalists over World Heritage bid, the most rewarding by far was from Daily Mail Science Commentator Mike Hanlon – who, incidentally, did his geology in Dundee. Mike was eager to use the occasion of the Heritage bid to achieve what I guess was a career first - a double page spread on stratigraphic palaeontology. This project was triumphantly realised two days after the bid was confirmed, complete with a detail from the Society’s portrait of Mary Anning and graphics not only featuring dinosaurs, but the odd invertebrate too.
So - another milestone; and living proof that geology has plenty of friends out there. Maybe 2001 wasn’t all that bad after all?
[Daily Telegraph 4.12.01, p13; Telegraph Comment, Andrew Marr 26.11.01; Daily Mail 6.12.01pp26,27; The Times 4.12.01, p8; Daily Telegraph 14.12.01, p19; Financial Times 14.12.01, p3; Guardian 14.12.01, p0]