Shoppers in a historic high street setting.
Shoppers enjoying Lincoln's Historic High Street. © Historic England Archive. Photographer credit: Patricia Payne. Image reference DP247838.
Shoppers enjoying Lincoln's Historic High Street. © Historic England Archive. Photographer credit: Patricia Payne. Image reference DP247838.

Wellbeing and Place

Projects about the links between wellbeing and historic places.

Sunderland wellbeing study

A pioneering new study has been launched in Sunderland to discover whether improving local heritage has a positive effect on the wellbeing of people that live in the area.

Find out more

Research collaboration with University of Glasgow

We have formed a research collaboration with the University of Glasgow’s MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit to investigate how spatial data may help us look at the health impacts of both heritage environments and changes to them. The Glasgow team specialises in looking at environment and health and has carried out past work on natural environments and health, and health inequalities. You can find more information on their work on the unit's pages.

In this collaborative study, researchers investigated whether geographic availability of heritage varied across neighbourhoods with differing levels of income deprivation, in England, and whether greater heritage availability was associated with a higher likelihood of visiting a heritage site and associated with better mental health. Study findings showed that the availability of heritage varied by area income deprivation; the most deprived areas had fewer sites per population than the least deprived. The research also found that the combination of having heritage present in the neighbourhood and visiting heritage, was associated with better mental health.

For more information:

You can also contact Laura Macdonald at: [email protected]