Conservation charities have called for a co-ordinated approach to protect and highlight St George’s as a Unesco World Heritage Site.

Charlotte Andrews, the head of cultural heritage at the Bermuda National Trust, said there was a need for high level leadership and management to safeguard the site, not only for visitors but for the island.

She said: “We are unique. We can show the world and Unesco as an oversight body how we can make a quantum leap in management of the site but we cannot waste time.

“We are 25 years in and it is time to get the infrastructure, the management plan, the co-ordinator, the co-ordinating capacity, the funding. It is time to get all of that in place.”

Alison Outerbridge, the St George’s Foundation manager, added: “We are looking for leadership, collaborative leadership.

“For those of us within the Unesco World Heritage Site, it is important to us.

“It doesn’t matter if you work at the post office or a museum or you have a shop down here or whether you just live in the town. We really are a community here.

“We always have been, historically, different. We have a desire for this as St Georgians and we would love for the Government to put in place what they essentially started.”

Unesco formerly declared the Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications a World Heritage Site in November 2000 after a campaign by local advocates.

The organisation said the town was an “outstanding example of the earliest English urban settlement in the New World” and the fortifications surrounding it illustrated the development of English military engineering from the seventeenth to the 20th century.

In 2024, a delegation from Unesco was invited to the island for an “advisory meeting” and released a report that stated the site urgently needed “a responsible management body and a comprehensive management plan to guide its actions”.

Ms Outerbridge said: “This report is a wonderful document and it gives us the road map but we would like to know where everybody stands and where we fit into this.”

She and Dr Andrews said they had not heard anything in the past year about plans to form a management body.

Dr Andrews noted: “Looking back at 25 years, there has been a tremendous amount achieved whether by Government or by non-profits, from individuals in the St George’s and St David’s community.

“What we haven’t had in the last 25 years is a co-ordinated approach and that is what is needed.

“There is a sense of fragmentation and, while there is pride for what has been done so far, without the political will from Government and all the partners coming together, we are simply not achieving what we could.”

She said a broader framework could also include a site-wide interpretative plan to ensure that the museums and other historical sites better tell the story of St George’s and the Bermudian people from a variety of perspectives.

Dr Andrews said: “There has been tremendous work done on exhibits and tours but that overview that everybody can feed into, but is also co-ordinated, is critical.

“The BTA mural in King’s Square is a great example of a new interpretive idea that has brought some vibrancy. It has brought in a different storytelling element.”

Ms Outerbridge pointed out that the entire town was a historical site, noting that the area’s roads were built on the original walkways used by settlers in the 1600s.

She said: “We are not just talking about buildings. We are not just talking about bricks and mortar. What we are talking about is what is part of our identity, part of our cultural heritage.

“This isn’t just about British troops managing these forts. Bermudians were involved in all aspects of all the history. Pulling their histories out of these structures is essentially what we do, in particular for students.”

She cited tours of the historical sites being offered to students, giving them a glimpse of what life was like for their ancestors in Bermuda.

Dr Andrews added: “Because this is a colonial site and our entire history is, of course, bound up with colonialism and inequity, it can feel like it is biased but what we are seeing through historical research, those gaps are being filled to ensure that we can see that this relates to everybody, especially all Bermudians.

“Why are we focused on preserving the tangible things? Because they are the catalyst.

“We think of these things as heritage themselves but they are a catalyst for all different uses, whether it be education and having our students visit or cultural tourism and visitors from across the world or the island.

“These are catalysts and when they are lost they are irreparably lost.”

She said there had been a great deal of work from stakeholders in St George’s but a management plan for the site could make a huge difference for the town, developing a co-ordinated approach to allow it to truly leverage its Unesco status.

Dr Andrews added: “It comes back to how you run it. Are you running it like a World Heritage Site, a living one?”

She added that Bermuda could also be missing out on the opportunity to apply for international world heritage grants to help bolster the site.

Ms Outerbridge said that the SGF had a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Parks to allow it to work at forts on government land.

However, she said they had faced challenges in finding the right person to speak to.

She explained: “We have great contacts within the Department of Parks. The staff that work at Fort St Catherine, however, they change over. Since March there have been three people we have communicated with.

“It’s difficult to get any kind of traction going because we don’t know who we should be speaking with. We haven’t found the right person.”

Ms Outerbridge said that those they had communicated with, including the area MPs and the Corporation of St George, had been very supportive but without a management plan organisations were working in silos.

Dr Andrews added: “I would like our work at Tucker’s House to align with an interpretive plan but it’s cart before the horse because there is no interpretive plan.

“We have to guess. We shouldn’t be guessing.

“We should be slotting in wherever we need to and working hand-in-hand in a way that mirrors the close-knit community that has always been down here in St George’s.”