Journal of Historic Buildings and Places

The Journal of Historic Buildings and Places is the first to appear under the guise of that eponymous organisation, replacing the Ancient Monuments Society and its series of Transactions (the last having been Volume 65). Under the stewardship of the editor, John Bold, the scholarship remains undiminished and there is much of diverse interest within its 166 pages.

Gary Winter and Alan Brody write about England’s heritage from the air and the value of photographs from the Aerofilms Collection, providing a unique archive of Britain from 1919 onwards. The well-illustrated essay explores the types of images in the collection, which range from ancient monuments, historic landscapes and ruined abbeys to industrial heritage, funfairs and football matches. The earliest part of the collection, dating between 1919 and 1953, has been scanned and is available online at the Britain from Above website.

A fascinating essay by Amy Bettinson discusses infill housing in post-war London, concentrating on Kensington and Chelsea. Nestled in London streets there is an untold story of post-war modernism in boroughs where lighter bomb damage left gaps in terraced housing. These might appear to be isolated incidents in the street-scene, but examples of this particular housing form of development can be found across the capital, often as high-density modernist blocks of flats inserted into the gaps in stuccoed, 19th-century terraces. These projects were controversial in their time (and remain so today), as architects considered how modernist buildings could fit into historic settings, seizing the opportunity to experiment in their design.

The discussion around post-war housing is heavily focused on large-scale schemes, and smaller-scale, high-density blocks of flats have generally been overlooked. These are not localised, isolated incidents in the townscape, but examples of a particular type of development found across the city but never previously properly documented as a group. The author considers that their relatively unobtrusive nature has left them extremely vulnerable, and few are listed. She suggests that a further study across the whole of London would be invaluable, as would examination of other cities where bombing was light and infill was scattered, so as to compare strategies. It is hoped that they are all documented properly soon, so that this chapter of English modernism is not left without protection or lost without trace.

While there are professional, academic and scholarly sources of information that may be usefully applied in heritage management, those within popular culture should not be overlooked. In an essay entitled ‘London on Stage’, Horatio Blood examines views of the capital depicted in popular prints, particularly the rich seam of imagery contained in the ‘penny plain, twopence coloured’ engravings of 19th-century toy theatres that reproduced in miniature the scenes presented in the real theatres of London. The well-illustrated essay casts an eye on some of those images and the publishing world from which it sprung.

Also well worth seeking out is the essay by Victoria Watson about the extremely sensitive issues around the restoration and expansion of the Museum of Modern Art (the NNG: New National Gallery) in Berlin, one of the iconic modern masterpieces of Mies van der Rohe. The building expresses unexampled clarity and virtuosity, and inevitably invites discussions about the appropriateness of changing the fabric and setting of the original building of 1968. The repairs undertaken by David Chipperfield Architects resulted in the building been closed to the public for five years until August 2021. Chipperfield was already familiar with Berlin museum culture through his rebuilding of the Neues Museum, completed in 2021. His approach was considered novel because he did not attempt to reproduce the past historic form of the war-damaged Neues Museum, preferring to work with what remains of the building materials in a new form. In the case of the Neues Museum, only part of the old building remained, necessitating the introduction of new features to complete it. This raises interesting issues of authenticity, intactness and interpretation of past, although only partial, architectural forms.