A Catalogue of Misplay

FROM our initial archaeological report of 2021, which dismantled a substantial amount of Victorian misunderstanding, we cited a ‘catalogue of misplay’ had corrupted the understanding of the archaeology interred beneath, and contained within the church of Holywood, and so in turn, had contributed to an errant conservation plan and planning approvals.

This corruption of understanding was not the result of an absence of available information, but the failure of historians, property owners, and heritage professionals to prudently and competently consider all the accessible evidence. Negligence, in the form of lazy superficial supposition and reference to a single Victorian narrative, based on nothing more than ill-considered theory, not research, replaced comprehensive, critical and intelligent consideration. Negligence, in the form of an unsympathetic owner (Church of Scotland) failing to openly address or declare the destructive environmental issues affecting the church, and the last developer’s archaeological and architectural agents’ lack lustre ‘professional’ performance in identifying key issues that would impair any proposed dwelling conversion.

However, mistakes made prior to 2019 were nothing compared to the catalogue entries that followed, as agencies doubled down on the mistakes of the past, and unable to offer justification, chose to ignore them instead, offering not incompetence, but intentioned deceit and misrepresentation.

The following article presents an abridged version of the ‘catalogue of misplay’, collected from existing documentation, research, and interaction with the establishment. What was perhaps forgivable, in consideration of the original constraints of outmoded Victorian comprehension—the foundation of academic traditional knowledge, develops into an unforgiveable chronicle of incompetence, into deliberate distortion, maladministration, malfeasance and malevolence—it is a sorry read.

[Full article to follow]