Lucianna Cartwright and Yidan Xu completed a micro-internship with the Oxford University Heritage Network and the London Charterhouse in Michaelmas term 2024. They were tasked with researching design and buildings for communities of older people.
The Charterhouse – an almshouse and heritage site now in the centre of London – has been providing housing to people aged 60 and over with financial or social need for an impressive near five hundred years. Among the many plaques lining the walls to commemorate the numerous important individuals who were once ‘Brothers’ (residents of the almshouse community) there are signs that read rather differently: ‘Take Care. Uneven Path’. The combination of the country’s ageing population, a population that is now living in multimorbidity for longer, and the complex historic fabric of a site that has endured and been added to over several centuries, has presented a conundrum for the Charterhouse: how can the site be adapted to suit the modern-day needs of its residents while also preserving its historical, heritage fabric and character? For our micro-internship, Yidan and I were tasked with an investigation into the design of buildings for communities of older people, to support the Charterhouse as they continue to achieve that balance.
We established early on in our micro-internship that there was a unique relationship between the Charterhouse residents and ourselves, the interns from the University of Oxford: we shared the experience of living in a heritage site. To develop an understanding of how – and how not – to adapt a heritage site for residents with alternative needs, I began by reflecting on the experiences of disabled students that had been recounted to me, I had read about, or had undergone myself. A 2021 article from The ISIS, written by student Sara Hashmi, alerted me to a detrimental consequence of one of the most common means used to improve a college’s accessibility, which is to construct new, purpose-built buildings at a distance from the original site.[1] This, however, as Hashmi argues, creates a feeling of isolation as the community of residents is broken up and those with alternative needs are segregated into modern properties, excluding them from the novelty of living within a heritage site. The point made by Hashmi in relation to Oxford colleges is pertinent to the Charterhouse too as two of the greatest benefits the Charterhouse offers its residents are opportunities for community (the resident ‘Brothers’ eat communally in a historic great hall each day) and to live among, and as part of, its history.
With both improved accessibility and the site’s conservation being of clear importance to the residents’ wellbeing and physical health comes the challenge of adapting yet maintaining a site’s heritage significance and integrity. In a guide to improving physical access to historic landscapes, Historic England stress the elements of the conservation process beyond maintaining a location’s original features; importantly, conservation also includes ‘recognising opportunities to reveal or reinforce [a site’s] qualities’[2], such as how it was ‘originally intended to be used and enjoyed’.[3] For a living heritage site such as the Charterhouse, maintaining its purposes may entail making alterations to the site as the residents’ needs differ from those in the past. Alterations need not be intrusive either; the considered, regular placement of chairs for rest[4] and support[5], for example, does not require invasive construction work and can even involve repurposing the site’s existing moveable heritage features. It is important to also keep in mind that our present is the future’s history; making appropriate adjustments to a site to ensure its continued use and enjoyment should account for these adjustments becoming historical features of the site in their own right.
Lucianna Cartwright is a third year English Language and Literature undergraduate student at St Anne’s college. She enjoys researching the medical humanities, particularly mental health and neurodiversity, and Early Modern Britain.
Yidan Xu is currently studying for a Mst in History of Art and Visual Culture. She is interested in medieval and early modern religious art and architecture, particularly their social roles in shaping people’s everyday experiences. She is also interested in maps, cross-cultural interactions in art, and the living history of objects and architecture.
[1] Sara Hashmi, ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Oxford’s Accessible Accommodation Problem’, The ISIS, May 3 2021
[2] Historic England, ‘Easy Access to Historic Landscapes’, 2015, https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/easy-access-historic-landscapes/ p. 6
[3] Ibid, p. 5
[4] Alina Zajadacz, ‘Development of a Catalogue of Criteria for Assessing the Accessibility of Cultural Heritage Sites’, Studia Periegetica, 2019, vol. 26, no. 2, p. 96
[5] Renaut, Sylvie, Jim Ogg, Segolene Petite, Alice Chamahian, ‘Home Environments and Adaptations in the Context of Ageing’, Ageing and Society, 2015, vol. 35, no. 6, p. 1292-3