To clandon or not to clandon?

This post prompted by the recent disastrous fire at the good ship NTS Clandon, which caught the eye because of our recent visit (reference 1). Not exactly a ship of the line, up there with the Giant's Causeway with half a million visitors a year or Polesden Lacey with 300,000; perhaps a lowly brig with a mere 50,000. Maybe even a transport.

NT should not announce a rebuild while standing in the smoking ruins. I do not think that there should be a settled policy of rebuild, rather that time should be taken for consideration. There should be a committee. There might well be policy guidelines to simplify the work of the committee, but those guidelines should be a bit more nuanced than rebuild at all costs.

Seen from the perspective of the UK as a whole, the decision should not depend on whether or not the building was insured. If rebuilding is not a good use of scarce money, that fact is not changed all that much by it being someone else's money (the insurer's money) rather than it being the Trust's money. But if the rule is that the insurers will only pay if you rebuild, no dosh for walking away, one might well get a bad outcome. The NT should not be buying insurance policies which are written like that.

On the other hand, from the point of view again of the insurers, they want the right incentives in place. They don't want owners to see disasters as a nifty way of cashing in on their treasures. Or, less obviously villainous, owners being a bit careless about, say, fire precautions in the sure and certain knowledge that the insurers would cough up.

After the second world war, some countries chose to rebuild replicas of national treasures which had been destroyed, rebuilding which was an understandable assertion of renewal and rebirth in difficult circumstances. We rebuilt chunks of some of our churches which were destroyed by bombs - for example a chapel in Exeter cathedral. First point, that is not where we are at with Clandon. There was no terrible war, just a fire. Second point, I am unsure of the value of building a replica, say, of a church first built a 1,000 years ago. Built as a church at a time when there was faith. If we no longer have that faith, is it right to be spending treasure on building expensive souvenirs of our past? Do we not have something better to do with our treasure? There might be educational and inspirational value in building a replica, say, of Stonehenge at some stage or other of its active life, but one only needs the one of them.

And then there is the movable art rather than the built art. Suppose a lot of valuable art was destroyed; carpets, pictures, sculptures, porcelain and pottery. Does one make replicas of that too? What about stuff which really is unique, like the actual pub menu on which Schubert actually wrote 'Auf dem Wasser zu singen' or the fourteenth nail from the true cross? Does one attempt to buy equivalents? Should the NT, a secular organisation, be into the business of relics at all?

I think the decision to mend Castle Drogo, another NT treasure, was wrong. See reference 2.

PS: the Barbara Bonney and Geoffrey Parsons recording of 'Auf dem Wasser zu singen' on YouTube is well worth the visit. Very impressive, certainly to someone like me who had not heard it before.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/parasites.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/drogo-4.html.