London's heritage is becoming elitist

Earlier this year, walking down one of the many interminable tunnels found in every Tube station, I noticed a poster on the wall. I don’t normally pay much attention to these ads, whether they be for kitsch West End musical revivals or photographs of Her Majesty in front of Windsor Castle (perhaps visitors who don’t see Queenie should sue The Royal Collections Trust for false advertising?) But this one was lucky enough to be scrutinised by me. There wasn’t anything extraordinary about it: a clumsy collage of Westminster Abbey mobbed by a crowd of dead celebrities, including Charlotte Bronte, King James I, etc. Though my interest was piqued, this had nothing to do with the who’s-who of dead Britons. I’d been to Poets Corner of course but had no intention of returning. Not because I disliked the Abbey but because I refused to pay the princely sum of £20 to enter, £22 if bought at the door. So looking at this trite poster I felt outraged that despite feebly protesting maintenance costs, the Abbey was still able to splash out on a London Underground advertising campaign. Not long after seeing this poster another ad for the Abbey popped up on my internet browser. This was evidently a multi-pronged strategy.

Westminster Abbey advertisement

London’s exhibitions are expensive enough. Tate Modern’s Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power will set you back £15. The Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition costs £14, and even with an Artfund card you only get a one pound reduction. But it seems that the nation’s most iconic buildings are being barred to all but the wealthiest. Admission fees to museums and other public institutions has long been a contentious issue, and the allocation of state funding subject to the whims of successive governments. Labour has generally been in favour of universal admission while the Conservatives have opposed it. Under Thatcher many national museums were pressured into introducing fees, around half caving in while others, including the British Museum and National Gallery resisted. Those that did introduce fees however suffered declines in visitor numbers, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. After it started charging entry in 1997 its visitor numbers had halved by the following year. But in 2009 Art Fund discovered that the V&A, which had then scrapped admission fees by 2001, saw its visitor numbers more than double over the following years. Sheer numbers can be a problem too though, in which case charging for admission can reduce pressure. One of the reasons Westminster Abbey introduced fees in the late 1990’s was in response to the swelling numbers of visitors. Back then it was referred to as ‘the Westminster Waiting Room’ due to its popularity with continental touring groups, who would meet there before returning to Waterloo Station. But on the other hand, can this policy be too successful? Ten years ago St. Pauls admitted that fees had risen by 25% to compensate for falling visitor numbers. Understandable as 85% of the cathedral’s income comes from tourism, but wouldn’t further increasing prices only further reduce tourist numbers? Perhaps they should try reducing prices. Speaking personally, I would visit more if a ticket didn’t cost the equivalent of an easyJet flight.

But unlike national museums historic places of worship receive minimal government funding, despite the Church of England alone being responsible for almost half of the country’s Grade I listed buildings, three of which are designated World Heritage Sites (Durham Cathedral, York Minster and Westminster Abbey for the curious amongst you). But it does seem a strange coincidence that those religious sites which do charge are also the highest on a tourist agenda. St. Albans, less than twenty minutes by train from St. Pancras, boasts an ancient abbey church after which it was named. Well, the saint to whom the church was dedicated but I’m being pedantic. The abbey church, now the city’s cathedral, is an astonishing testament to a lost England of the Middle Ages. On the piers lining the nave, hidden by whitewash for centuries as in so many other English churches, are depictions of the saints. Before the Reformation pilgrims would make their devotions before these sacred images, gradually passing deeper into the abbey’s heart and approaching the relics within. Behind the presbytery the tombs of Saints Alban and Amphibalus have been reconstructed, quite literally relics of a distant era. Like a time machine this extraordinary place takes you back to a very different England, a land which still revered the saints and practised pilgrimage. So how much do you have to pay to enter this portal to the Middle Ages? Nothing, not a penny.

  

St. Albans Cathedral

Even closer to the tourist bastions of St Pauls and Westminster Abbey is Southwark Cathedral. The present building was largely constructed between the 13^th and 15^th centuries, though with inevitable Victorian alterations. It is associated with many of Shakespeare’s contemporaries such as the dramatist John Fletcher, who was buried inside. And yet despite this illustrious history and its prime real estate location the cathedral continues to allow free access to visitors (St. Pauls likes to make a virtue out of allowing worshippers in for free, the same way our charitable government generously permits us to breathe its air gratis). Southwark cathedral is not high on the criteria of most tourists so if it did start charging £20 for access then it would become a place of literally undisturbed tranquillity. And yet surely it’s still subject to the same maintenance costs as its more celebrated sister across the Thames.

Southwark Cathedral

Just last weekend, anxiously tapping my feet as the escalator at Euston squeaked upwards, anxious not to miss my train to Liverpool but weighed down with luggage, I noticed another ad on the walls. Every one of the thirty screens lined above the handrail featured a shot of the Imperial State Crown, before panning out to a child gawping at it idiotically. To see the Crown Jewels though will set you back £24.80 (£21.50 if bought online prior), more than three times the minimum wage for those aged 25 and older. Perhaps the Tower of London wouldn’t need to advertise if it didn’t insist on bankrupting the very people hoping to get in. Just a thought.