How is heritage identified?
Items and places of heritage significance are identified through comprehensive studies of an area’s environmental heritage. The studies and recommendations are guided by:
- The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance, 2013 (Burra Charter) and
- The Australian Natural Heritage Charter, 2002 (Australian Natural Heritage Charter)
- Assessing Heritage Significance (Heritage Office, 2001)
- NSW Heritage Manual (Heritage Office, 1996)
The preparation of a heritage study involves:
- Review of background resources
- Identification of potential heritage items and conservation areas
- Community consultation
- Fieldwork and site surveys
- Detailed assessment of heritage significance provided on a heritage inventory sheet
- Recommendations for inclusion or exclusion as a heritage item or conservation area with the Local Environmental Plan.
Council’s first comprehensive heritage study, the Hornsby Shire Heritage Study, was compiled by Perumal Murphy Wu in 1993. This was followed by completion of the Hornsby Shire Aboriginal Heritage Study in 1996. The 1993 Heritage Study established Council’s first list of heritage items and Heritage Conservation Areas.
Since the early 1990s, five staged studies and reviews of Hornsby Shire’s heritage items and heritage conservation areas were undertaken to re-examine the heritage significance, integrity and condition of existing heritage items or conservation areas and assess new potential items of heritage items and conservations nominated for heritage listing.
In 2020 Council embarked on a new Comprehensive Heritage Study to respond to the changing development context, demography and community expectations regarding the identification, policy and protection of Hornsby Shire’s Heritage.
For further information on heritage principles and guidelines for NSW, refer to Heritage NSW.