Save The Huts: "Once lost, they are gone forever."

The Antarctic Heritage Trust uses the word ‘authenticity’ in a rather perplexing way. For them an historic hut only had ‘historical authenticity’ at a precise date in past time - which is incoherent - and leads them to the mistaken belief that the huts should be restored to the condition of time x - which is impossible.

It is a fact that all of the Heroic Age huts in the Antarctic exist in historic time, are mediated by historical processes and are perfectly genuine and well documented - the current condition of the huts is therefore historically authentic - whether rusted, ruined or moved about. The huts have been naturally mediated from their origins; that is history. However, the historic importance of the Antarctic Heroic Age huts is that they are relatively little mediated from their origins - and that is why they are considered to be important time capsules worthy of conserving.

This is not to say that there has been no degradation, both human and material, but it has been slow. As such, to visit an historic hut is a moving experience opening, as it does, a sublime connection into the heart of some of the most powerful epics in the catalogue of human endeavour.

It is their raw authenticity which opens this sublime connection. However rusted or degraded it has become, Captain Scott placed that item there; Ernest Shackleton may well have been the last person to touch that item there; Otto Nordenskjold’s men moved those stones to build their raw shelter. There has been no mediation between the historic hut and the visitor, save the minimal interventions of time.

What is utterly critical is who put the huts and their relics 'there'. This is why these buildings are unique - there are few other buildings in the world where 'who put them there' is the single most important component of their importance as historic sites. This is the only reason that they are worth conserving.

It is also for this reason that a ruin is as authentic as a standing structure, for it opens the door to the sublime experience of the historical presence just as readily. Ruined and degraded it may be but Shackleton himself put it there - and no-one has touched it since.

So, for example, the historic hut on Paulet Island in which Nordenskjold’s party from the shipwrecked Antarctic over-wintered in 1903 is an authentic hut. It is a ruin - but hugely evocative.

The historic hut at Hope Bay, at which 3 members of the same expedition over-wintered, has been rebuilt as a replica - all be it on the ruined foundations of the original. However good the replica, it has been stripped of its historic connections, no longer has authenticity and is to all intents and purposes no longer an historic hut from the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. Nordenskjold’s Hope Bay party did not put ‘that’ hut ‘there’.

Ironically, perhaps, it is the very attempts to conserve the heroic age sites through replication, reinterpretation and rebuilding that are destroying their authenticity and with it the only significant reason for their conservation.