Carvings to chip away at college repair bill

Published on Tuesday 27 October 2009 08:46

A PAIR of ancient stone carvings believed to be 2,500 years old could be sold off by a college to help fund repairs and upgrades costing nearly £6 million.

Newbattle Abbey College Trust has applied to Midlothian Council for permission to remove the carvings of Assyrian Kings from the A-listed Newbattle Abbey.

The college intends to sell the Assyrian reliefs in a bid to raise the money needed for the urgent upgrades and replace the original carvings with replicas.

Newbattle Abbey argues that selling the reliefs – which have "high intrinsic cultural significance" – plays an "essential" role in securing the money needed.

The college needs to find 900,000 for repairs deemed urgent, more than 3.6m for works classified as "necessary" and the remaining 1.4m for "desirable" repairs.

Repairs within Newbattle – Scotland's only adult education residential college – which requires immediate action include rewiring and electrical works, ceiling maintenance and clearing gutters and rainwater pipes.

Work deemed "urgent" includes a new heating system, commissioning an asbestos survey and fixing loose floorboards.

In a report prepared by the college principal Ann Southwood on the condition of the building, she said the college does not benefit from support from the Scottish Funding Council for estates and facilities repair and maintenance requirements.

She added: "The raising of additional capital for the Trust through the sale of the Assyrian Reliefs is therefore essential to enable urgent and necessary repairs to our exceptional and unique building so that the college can continue to carry out its core business and achieve its mission."

Newbattle Abbey College was a 12th-century Cistercian Abbey.

In the 125-acre grounds are the remains of a prehistoric settlement, ancient woodland and a bridge believed to be Roman.

While Anderson Strathern, the solicitors working on behalf of the Trust, accepts the importance of the reliefs, it claims "their significance as part of the architecture or decoration of the interior of Newbattle Abbey is considered to be relatively minor".

In a letter to Midlothian Council the solicitors added: "Public access to view the reliefs is extremely limited and interpretation is not only almost non-existent but is at present misleading.

The placing of replicas in the college offers a range of possible benefits in terms of public access and interpretation."

A spokeswoman for the Newbattle Abbey College Trustees, the owners of Newbattle Abbey College, said: "The trustees have lodged an application with Midlothian Council seeking listed building consent for the permanent removal of two Assyrian reliefs from the Abbey.

"The reason for the application is to provide an opportunity for the sale of the reliefs to raise funds for urgently required repairs to and conservation of Newbattle Abbey College."

ART OF ANCIENT CIVILISATIONS

ASSYRIAN reliefs are the art of the ancient civilisations that grew up in the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, now in Iraq.

The art was largely used to glorify powerful dynasties, and often reflected the belief that kingship and the divine were closely interlocked.

In the absence of a written language, these earliest images were a way of recording religious practices and philosophical ideas.

The Assyrians had access to large quantities of stone, and their many carved reliefs have survived well. They were used to decorate palaces, for example, the Palace of Ashurbanipal (7th century BC). The finely-carved reliefs include dramatic scenes of a lion hunt, now in the British Museum, London.