Context 165 - August 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 45 PHILIP DAVIES Saving the Commonwealth’s heritage In March this year the Commonwealth Heritage Forum was launched at Australia House in London to help countries and communities fighting to save Commonwealth heritage at risk. The Commonwealth embraces a third of man- kind across 54 countries, with a unique shared history and built heritage. Until now there has been no focus for celebrating or promoting this, or for passing on an understanding of its remark- able shared legacy to future generations.Yet over 60 per cent of its peoples are under the age of 30. All over the Commonwealth, and more widely, from Asia to Africa and from Australasia to the Americas, and even down into the Antarctic, lies some of the most important historic architecture and engineering of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries: public buildings, ports, warehouses, railway stations, bridges, churches, houses, offic- es, farms, industrial structures, burial grounds, botanic gardens, monuments and memorials – united only in its sheer diversity.These represent a unique global heritage of immense significance, yet it is little researched, little understood, and all too often disregarded. Although designed by army engineers, local builders, surveyors and architects, they were translated into bricks and mortar by the skills of local people on the ground – not only free artisans, but also the indentured and the enslaved, who introduced their own motifs and artistic traditions. It is a shared heritage built by diverse local peoples across the world over many generations. Cultural traditions This rich intermingling of cultural traditions was an early phase of globalisation, but it was not at all one-way traffic. It was multi-lateral and hugely influential. India gave the world the bungalow, derived from the bangala, the original vernacular structures of Bengal. The Indo-Saracenic styles of Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai) influenced the design of pub- lic buildings further east in Kuala Lumpur, for example. On the other side of the world, the plan form and design of residences in the Carolinas were derived from the early houses of Barbados. Masons from Malta took their skills to Corfu and the Ionian islands, a British protectorate until 1864, where they constructed the Palace of St Michael and St George, one of the great palaces of Europe, and a series of fine classical buildings crafted from imported Maltese stone. These cross-cultural currents also embraced and absorbed wider influences, such as the min- gling of Ottoman, Omani and European styles around the Red Sea, the middle east, east Africa and Zanzibar. Across the world, new materials like cast and corrugated iron were deployed in inventive new ways to create innovative architec- tural forms and structures. This was a heritage forged in both peace and in war. Consider the beautiful cemeteries of The Old Dispensary, Zanzibar. The seafront building was built by Indian craftsmen for Sir Tharia Topan in 1897. Restored by the Aga Khan Trust in 1996, it is now the Stone Town Cultural Centre.