Heritage Now No 9 Summer 2024

Regular readers of IHBC’s Context will be aware that Historic Building and Places (and its predecessor the Ancient Monuments Society) is celebrating its centenary in 2024, having recently separated from the Friends of Friendless Churches. The director of the latter, Rachel Morley, explains in the latest issue of Heritage Now (No 9, Summer 2024) a brief history of that charity since its foundation in 1957, and its current role and activity.

Elsewhere, Luke Nagle of Donald Insall Associates looks at changing attitudes towards conservation in the context of the continuing function of the Lord Leycester Hospital in Warwick, founded in 1571 and now serving as a home for service veterans. Amber Patrick reviews the society’s role in industrial casework.

Matthew Saunders, the former secretary of the AMS, continues the story of the society in the second 50-year period of its centenary. He identifies eight crucial factors at play in that recent era: the diminution in the powers of local government (and the lack of conservation officers); the collapse of the car lobby, and with it the damage done by inner relief and ring roads; the discredited use of dangerous structures notices by borough surveyors to justify demolition of listed buildings unnecessarily; the gradual recognition by developers of the value of conservation; smart use of enabling development; conversion versus redevelopment, with more pressure for the former than the latter; the spinoff effect of the green revolution (lovely plastic windows anybody?); and the generally beneficial application of the ecclesiastical exemption to places of worship.

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

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