Wednesday, May 19 – Meeting with Colin Grant, Town Manager in Richmond

Today we met with Mr. Colin Grant, Town Manager in Richmond (not OF Richmond, a distinction we made soon after the meeting began). He actually works for the Richmond Swale Valley Community Initiative. While I am still not sure what a Town Manager does (his function within the organization or in relation to the community or town council of Richmond), I do know that he was a local farmer until the Hoof and Mouth epidemic in 2001. We have speculated that he lost his herd and thus turned to city life, completely shunning his former agricultural past.

After a brief PowerPoint on what the Initiative has accomplished, he began to take us around Richmond. As you can see below, Richmond City Center was formerly the Inner Bailey of Richmond Castle. As Richmond Castle was built in the 1200s, some of the building foundations should date from this period. However, they (I will continue to use the term “they” loosely, as I am not really sure who is making any of these decisions) decided on Georgian architecture. Here is an example:

Notice the coining (white brick on the corners of some of the buildings), a classic Georgian feature.

However, the shop fronts by their very nature are VICTORIAN. When asked about this, Mr. Grant simply said that while they are a Victorian invention and may have some Victorian features, they are “sympathetic” to the history of the building.

?????

Also, when asked about what he considers a “historical asset”, he claimed that it meant anything before around, oh 1800-1850.

?????

So while Mr. Grant is definitely neither an historian or a preservationist, he does care about Richmond, and they have done a lot of good work to revitalize it. Several of the features used regularly by tourists were proposed and built by his organization, with the help of grant funding.

After lunch, I spent a couple of hours wandering through the town. I began to notice the overwhelming amount of historical markers and signage. For example, there are 12 benches surrounding Trinity Church, meant to represent the 12 centuries of Richmond (however, with the first one starting in 1077 (I believe), I am not sure how they made this numerically possible).

Here is a photo of the bench from 1258.

Marker found on the ground in front of the bench above, describing the founding of the Friary in Richmond.

These kinds of markers seem to be everywhere in Richmond, on every stone wall and every old building, and even this curious one:

Marker found on Frenchgate.

At what point do commemorate markers and plaques begin to detract and overwhelm the events and places they are designed to commemorate? My first blog post on our class blog will discuss this further.