What is cultural heritage?

Cultural heritage can be divided into three main areas:

• Tangible culture: This includes buildings, monuments, landscapes, books, works of art and artefacts – things you can see and touch.
• Intangible culture: For example, folklore, traditions, language and knowledge – less concrete things that you can’t touch but which nevertheless, exist in other forms. 
• Natural heritage: This refers to culturally significant landscapes and biodiversity. 

AND Museum & Heritage Service focuses on the first of these two areas. We work closely with the Historic Environment Division (HED) and other Council departments, along with local heritage groups and historical societies to identify, interpret and care for a range of built heritage sites across the borough.

Built Heritage 

Within our cultural heritage work, we deal with the borough’s variety of built heritage, which refers to physical sites and monuments. These include:

• Archaeological sites
• Listed buildings
• Industrial heritage
• Defence heritage 
• Parks and gardens  

NB Built Heritage is subject to statutory regulations, scheduling and listing as regulated by the HED, Department for Communities. It is protected under the planning regulation PPS 6 and therefore subject to development control.