Georgian Group Journal 2024

Most of the articles in the Georgian Group Journal (2024) relate to research, discoveries and insights relating to specific buildings. But one in particular deserves to be highlighted, as it may lead to wider reflection on the genesis of the conservation movement. This is Tom Goodwin’s reflection on conservation as reflected in the architectural culture of early-18thcentury England. He reflects that the members of the newly created SPAB in 1877 were themselves in no doubt that ‘within the last 50 years a new interest almost like any other sense, had risen in the ancient monuments of art.’

Goodwin notes that the half century of radicalisation and regret which culminated in the SPAB’s foundation was not without precedent, as 150 years before St Alban’s Abbey became the SPAB’s cause celebre, the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor, already fearing that it was being ‘Martyr’d by ye Neglect of a Slouthfull generation’, was producing an engraving of the abbey to fund its restoration. Such evidence, drawn from a rich vein of conservationist action and theory in the architectural culture of the early 18th century, is largely occluded in recent histories of the subject.

This valuable article is pertinent to considerations of the evolution of heritage principles and practice by examining how existing buildings were understood and valued by architects of that era. It is particularly good to see this 18-page paper in print as a condensed version of Goodwin’s much longer, justifiably winning submission for the 2024 Gus Astley Student Awards for post-graduate dissertations.

This article originally appeared in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 181, published in September 2024.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation