Finding people in the heritage of bankside, southwark

Heritage is a very loaded word. It covers all manner of things, which is why there is a common distinction between natural and cultural heritage, and between tangible and intangible heritage. These categories reflect legal international definitions of heritage. UNESCO defines tangible cultural heritage as monuments, groups of buildings or sites that are valued for historical, artistic, scientific, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological reasons (UNESCO 1972). Heritage is also a category of cultural asset, subject in the United Kingdom to a process of creation and curation by various organisations. In England, archaeological heritage is treated by government at one remove through the agency of English Heritage. Heritage objects such as monuments, buildings or sites are designated or listed according to set criteria. Scheduled monuments in England should be of national importance and may be a rare or representative example of their type, vulnerable to destruction or erosion, or have the potential to contribute to future knowledge (Department for Culture Media and Sport 2010a). English listed buildings should be rare, of aesthetic merit, distinctive or significant (Department for Culture Media and Sport 2010b).