30 C O N T E X T 1 3 0 : J U LY 2 0 1 3 de heritage seaside tage Our seaside heritag Our seaside heritage Ou easide heritage Our itage Our seaside heritage seaside heritage Our seaside herita ANTONY FIRTH Heritage at sea The marine historic environment is no longer just a handful of old wrecks: it is one of our greatest assets, and we now have the opportunity to make something of it. The sea has played an immense role in the history of the UK and continues to be vital for transport, communication, minerals, energy, food and recreation. The traces of our maritime past shape the character of many of our coastal towns and cities.Yet the traces of the seaborne activity that gave rise to this heritage are much less apparent. Important changes to how today’s society deals with the sea over the last few years promise much greater recognition of that part of our past which is situated under water. There is an opportunity to re-establish the links between onshore elements of the historic environment and the material remains of our heritage at sea. The UK’s marine historic environment, as it has come to be known, has a different history of investigation and conservation to the historic environment on land. Underwater archaeology really started in the UK only in the late 1960s. Its management was preoccupied with wrecks, diving, salvage law and the rights of finders. Specific legislation was introduced for maritime heritage in the Protection ofWrecks Act 1973.This was used to restrict access to a relatively small number of predominantly 16th- to 18th-century wrecks, and to control their investigation. Because of the relationship to maritime law relating to ownership and salvage, it was the precursors of the Department for Transport that were responsible for marine archaeology. Hence it remained largely cut-off from the development of heritage management on land until 1992. At this point responsibility switched to the heritage agencies of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, but not England; responsibility was transferred to the Department of National Heritage (later DCMS) but only to English Heritage in 2002. One of the key changes in 1992 was that the national inventories of each country started to add maritime records to their databases, building on the pioneering work of the Isle ofWight County Sites and Monuments Record in the late 1980s. This offered the first largescale integration of heritage on land and at sea, and provided an important basis for the first examples of development-led archaeology in the marine environment from the mid-1990s onwards.As on land, development is, directly or indirectly, the major driver for archaeological investigations: ports, marine aggregates and offshore renewables standing out in particular. Integration has gathered pace since the early 2000s, boosted by an (albeit temporary) influx of resources from marine elements of the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund. The way in which the UK manages its seas has undergone a radical overhaul as a result of the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and associated changes, including the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010. Of great importance is the introduction for the first time of a system of area-based planning for the sea, and of a comprehensive system for consenting marine development, known as marine licensing. Previously a variety of consents applied, sometimes in duplicate, to different activities – characterised as sectoral consents. Provision The ship building slip at Pembroke Dock
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