| 1 | 1 | | Among the curiosities film director Sue C1ayton unearthed while making a |
| 2 | | programme about theme parks1) in Britain was a catalogue of more than 80 'authentic |
| 3 | | smells' on offer. She is now given to reading from this list - 'old shed £59.50 a kilo, sea |
| 4 | | breeze £62, washday £48' - until she is overtaken by hilarity. 'This is the stuff they put |
| 5 | | on oil burners and waft over you in these places. I had to have four showers when I got |
| 6 | | back from the Yorvik Viking Centre. I felt I smelled of theme park.' |
| 2 | 7 | | For many that smell is entirely the sweet one of success: it is estimated that a new |
| 8 | | attraction opens every two weeks somewhere in this country. Consultants who can offer a |
| 9 | | package deal say there is no place without potential, and proponents claim such |
| 10 | | developments preserve and illuminate the past, create jobs for the present and ensure a |
| 11 | | vitality for the future in areas where prospects would otherwise be bleak. |
| 3 | 12 | | There is, however, a growing band of dissenters who fear that Britain is being |
| 13 | | turned into one gigantic curiosity shop. As Geraint Jenkins, curator of the Welsh Folk |
| 14 | | Museum, puts it in Clayton's programme - Theme Park Briton, Channel 4, next |
| 15 | | Wednesday at 9.15 p.m. -, 'You will soon be able to hang up a sign at Heathrow or |
| 16 | | Dover saying "this island is now open to the public". There is a great danger that the Brit |
| 17 | | is being put in a glass case for people to gawp at.' |
| 4 | 18 | | Clayton already had a personal interest in the issue: she comes from Beamish in |
| 19 | | County Durham, the site of a major 'olden days' attraction complete with coal mine, |
| 20 | | trams and workers' cottages. But Beamish was too close for comfort so she turned to |
| 21 | | various other sites in England. She also looked at Wales, where heritage centres have |
| 22 | | reached epidemic proportions - slate quarries, mills, mines and countless farm museums |
| 23 | | - and at Clegg Hall village near Rochdale in Lancashire. |
| 5 | 24 | | This village is the idyllic setting for what has become a crystallisation of the |
| 25 | | heritage conflict. The council and the consultants want to restore the ruined village hall |
| 26 | | and make it the focal point of an industrial history theme park. The residents, however, |
| 27 | | faced at one point with compulsory purchase orders or dressing up in clogs and shawls, |
| 28 | | have dug in their heels. An angry local, Adele Lancashire, told Clayton: 'People walk |
| 29 | | through here to get away from theme parks. It's natural and beautiful and precious.' |
| 6 | 30 | | Clayton's documentary is full of such eloquence from ordinary men and women. |
| 31 | | She was, she says, helped enormously by the fact that 'the subject really fires people up', |
| 32 | | and her own passions emerge quickly in conversation. She feels that history is too |
| 33 | | important to be left to 'heritage experts'. 'There is a case for remembering the past; we |
| 34 | | are its guardians and it is important to remember, especially at a time of rapid change |
| 35 | | when so much is being swept away. If it's done properly it can be very good, but there's |
| 36 | | such a narrow line between something that inspires and that sort of dreadful, cosy |
| 37 | | cuteness.’ |
| 7 | 38 | | She is concerned about what she sees as an economic con-trick being played on |
| 39 | | councils and communities desperate for regeneration. One mine, for example, employed |
| 40 | | 1,200 at peak production; now as a museum it employs 50. 'Very few real jobs ever come |
| 41 | | out of these things. The labour is often part-time, casual, Youth Training Scheme.' |
| 8 | 42 | | 'However, I don't share the view,' continues Clayton, 'that we must not have any |
| 43 | | theme parks because they’re all terribly vulgar and sentimental. I'm pretty sentimental |
| 44 | | about my past and proud of it. But nostalgia is a thing most easily abused. There are too |
| 45 | | many cases of people moving in on what is essentially a personal or local feeling. Just as |
| 46 | | lifestyle has replaced life, heritage is replacing history. We have a real responsibility to |
| 47 | | get things right.' |
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noot 1: theme park: amusement park devoted to a particular subject (e.g. space travel)
