From Philip Le Brocq, vice-chairman, Jersey Heritage.
I WAS delighted and heartened to see the spokesmen of the three leading environmental and cultural organisations of the Island photographed together at Hamptonne last Friday.

As owners and guardians of that unique country life museum their combined voices command our attention.

As the president points out in his letter, published on the same day, the Société Jersiaise invested £1.6 million of money raised by selling most of the late Eric Young’s Chinese snuff bottle collection.

The site was bought with the help of the States and the National Trust, and the Société Jersiaise agreed to finance the refurbishment. I was on the Société executive at the time, when we voted that the value of the collection needed to be realised and then used for the betterment of our Island.

It was a controversial decision at the time, but with hindsight, proved to have helped preserve a unique part of Jersey’s farming history. Jersey Heritage has since managed the site and made it the superb living experience it is today.

The latest plans to help make the site more self-supporting – it runs at a loss at present, subsidised by more popular and more easily accessible sites – are welcome, but they need capital investment. This is where Education Sport and Culture, in the first instance, and indeed, every Member of the States who cares for the Island, needs to convert warm feelings about the environment into practical action. We love it or we lose it, and this sort of charity begins at home.

As Vicky Toole explained in her excellent letter (JEP, 8 July) a country’s culture defines its character. She wrote: ‘I would urge those States Members, who wish to rise above the chattering and hooting of their peers, to heed the words of the poet Matthew Arnold when he said, “Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit” and to go and acquaint themselves with the spirit of the men and women who made Jersey’s maritime and agricultural history – they don’t have much time left.’

The Maritime Museum records our debt to our exploring forebears on the seas; the Tapestry Museum records our courage under the Occupation; Hamptonne celebrates our historical roots in our land.

Jersey Heritage raises 42% of its running funds itself – 58% is provided by a States grant. It was not set up as a business but as a means of maintaining, developing and sharing Jersey’s heritage. Its remit is: ‘Jersey Heritage protects and promotes the Island’s rich heritage and cultural environment. We aim to inspire people to nurture their heritage in order to safeguard it for the benefit and enjoyment of everyone.’

To fulfil this function it needs proper funding. The present funding is woefully inadequate – a fraction of that provided by the government of the Isle of Man.

We must join the JEP, with its banner line ‘At the heart of Island life’, to make sure that that heart is heard and beats strongly. Each of us who cares needs to lobby those who hold the Island’s purse strings to loosen them for this ‘rainy day’ situation.

The voices of the people who have voted in the recent survey to profess that they deem the environment (86%) and historic buildings (82%) as very high in their priorities, need to raise those voices on local radio, in letters to your paper, in letters to their elected representatives and in discussions with their parish Constable – fathers of the parish who would want to know and represent how they feel.

In this way, many quiet, sensible voices can, when combined, become a roar of acclamation for the life of Jersey’s past and present and future.