A new £40,000 Manx National Heritage website went live this week.

It provides access all in one place for the first time to information and records on the Isle of Man’s historic environment, familiarly known as the ’Historic Environment Record’.

Historic Environment Records are information services that provide access to resources relating to the archaeology and old buildings of a defined geographic area.

They contain details on archaeological sites and finds, historic buildings and historic landscapes and are frequently updated.

Information on the island’s historic places, archaeological sites, landscapes and historic buildings can be found on the site.

The site, isleofmanher.im, is a research tool for the public, commercial operations and academics, allowing users to carry out searches in different ways.

Iit also now forms the management database for the Isle of Man’s official Historic Environment Record, enabling the team at Manx National Heritage to better safeguard, expand and share what it knows about the island’s built, archaeological and underwater historic environment.

It took four years to build the site.

Andrew Johnson, HER officer for Manx National Heritage, said: ’Although some information about the Isle of Man’s historic environment was already available to the public through individual resources and archives such as the library and archives at the Manx Museum, there has never been a single database that pulled together all of the information in one place.

’The new website does just that, showcasing the diversity of historic sites, finds and archaeological features, historic buildings and unique characteristics of our landscape.

’It is packed full of information and will be regularly updated with new material, providing an up to date research source.

’This is very much back to our roots as an organisation as we started life in the 1880s as the Ancient Monuments Trustees, researching and recording antiquities in the landscape of the island.’

During 2021 and over the next two years more resources will be added onto the website, including information about the underwater historic environment.

MNH hopes to attract not only more people to use the site but to enable specialists to work with it to gather and contribute reliable information to it.

The site joins more than 85 HERs in the British Isles, which are maintained and managed by local authorities as the core of historic environment services.

The website was built using Arches, an open-source data-management platform created to inventory cultural heritage places.

Developed by the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Funds, it employs international standards for cultural heritage information.

The software is freely available to cultural heritage organisations worldwide to implement however they wish.

Jude Dicken, collections information manager for Manx National Heritage, who helped to create the site, said: ’We extend our thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project from Historic England to the Getty Conservation Institute, Arches users around the world, Isle of Man Government technology services and our software support provider Knowledge Integration.

’We’d also like to thank the Isle of Man Preservation of War Memorials Committee who compiled and continue to add to the war memorials resources.’

Find our more at https://isleofmanher.im/