A former Durham student has returned to head up the city’s World Heritage Site. In her first interview in the job, Jane Gibson speaks to Mark Tallentire

JANE Gibson’s office may be a small hideaway up a narrow staircase; but her personality more than fills the room.

“If I can get people through the door, I feel I can get them turned on to heritage and excited by it,” she enthuses.

The door she’s talking about, unless she was using metaphor, is that into Durham’s £1.25m World Heritage Site (WHS) visitor centre, off the cobbled Owengate that climbs up to Palace Green – the open space around which stand Durham Cathedral, Castle, Palace Green Library and more.

Jane’s job is to lead Durham’s WHS, ensuring the right blend of preservation and development. “Durham is a partnership of the cathedral, the university, Durham County Council, St John’s College and other advisory partners,” she says.

“They’re all very busy organisations with very busy day jobs. Part of my role is to maintain the WHS in a sustainable way. It’s not about putting a glass dome over it.

“It’s about finding how we can combine 21st century life with preserving and developing the WHS. Durham’s is a living WHS. It’s not frozen in a moment of time, like Stonehenge. We’ve got the fantastic heritage of the castle and cathedral but added to that we’ve got the intangible heritage – the stories of the people who’ve lived and worked here over the centuries. It’s been continuously working and people have come here to learn right from the monks carrying St Cuthbert’s body to the present day students.

“Part of my excitement is to balance those interests of a heritage site that’s both a conservation area and a place where 21st century people work and study.”

It was partly that attraction that drew Jane back to Durham, more than 30 years after she finished an archaeology degree in the city, studying under the renowned expert Dame Rosemary Cramp.

“I thought: ‘If I’m going to study archaeology, I want to be surrounded by it’. And that’s still part of what makes the WHS beautiful – those views.”

In the meantime, she has spent 30 years in the heritage sector, including at national museums, Beamish and a Cumbrian museums group.

She succeeded Seif El-Rashidi, the first person to hold the job, as Durham’s WHS co-ordinator in September, the Egyptian having left to lead Salisbury Cathedral’s Magna Carta 800th anniversary celebrations.

One of her first tasks has been to update Durham’s WHS management plan – last reviewed in 2006.

Although at the moment she can say little about the detail, as a draft is currently being considered by the key players, it will seek to protect views of the WHS and blend preservation and development.

It will also carry forward an earlier aspiration to review the boundaries of the WHS, possibly leading to a second extension – Palace Green having been added in 2008 to better tell the story of Durham’s powerful Prince Bishops and the growth of the medieval city.

“World Heritage has developed over the past 30 years,” Jane says. “Durham was part of the first UK tranche of six in 1986 (along with the Giant’s Causeway, Ironbridge Gorge, Fountains Abbey, Stonehenge and Gwynedd Castle).

“Then it was just about bricks and mortar – the cathedral’s early flying buttresses and Gothic architecture. But over the last 30 years World Heritage has evolved to realise not just the stones and buildings but the stories they carry with them.”

The new plan will be subject to public consultation from late summer, with copies available online and in print and Jane visiting various groups to explain the strategy.

For more information, visit durhamworldheritagesite.com