C O N T E X T 1 0 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 1 Context Cover: Bramshill House, HartleyWintney, Hampshire, now a police training college, was included in one of the Annual School tours. (Photo: RobertWalker) Is the IHBC’s mission totally misconceived? Editorial Places – or, rather, the importance to places of managing the spaces between buildings – were the subject of this year’s IHBC Annual School. So it is relevant to note the recently published survey by the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester announcing the happiest and least happy places in the UK. The survey, using data from the British Household Panel Survey, claimed to shed light on what makes people happy or unhappy. Apparently, being unemployed does not make you unhappy, as long as your neighbour is unemployed. Presumably the theory is that you will be pleased to see your neighbour suffer. So on balance you will be reasonably content. Which place did the survey find to be the unhappiest? Edinburgh. Ask a different question: which city in the UK represents the greatest achievement in urban design? Which has the richest heritage? There is a strong case for answering: Edinburgh. The fact that the UK’s best historic city is also the unhappiest place to live surely torpedoes everything that the IHBC stands for. But we should be cautious about accepting that result. For one thing, we know that Edinburgh has never come top in the Crap Towns survey (and the occasion when it came high in the list was the result of an organised campaign of voting by the people of its traditional rival Glasgow). So its status as an unhappy place must be in doubt. More extraordinarily, the team from the universities of Sheffield and Manchester declared that the variations they uncovered between different places in Britain were not statistically significant. In other words, these academics had published results of absolutely no value. This leads us to suspect that there may be a relationship between happiness and the quality of places after all; that the IHBC’s mission is well founded; and that the participants’ time at the annual school in Guildford was well spent. Now read on. The Institute of historic building conservation www.ihbc.org.uk Registered as a Charity Number 1061593. Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England Number 3333780. Registered Office: 3 Stafford Road,TunbridgeWells, Kent TN2 4QZ. IHBC Officers President tbc email president@ihbc.org.uk Chairman Dave Chetwyn email chair@ihbc.org.uk Vice Chair Sheila Stones email vchair@ihbc.org.uk Secretary Richard Morrice email secretary@ihbc.org.uk Treasurer Michael Knights email treasurer@ihbc.org.uk Membership Secretary Jo Evans email membership@ihbc.org.uk Education Secretary John Preston email education@ihbc.org.uk Publicity Secretary Doug Black email publicity@ihbc.org.uk Law & Practice Coordinator vacant email law@ihbc.org.uk Director Seán O’Reilly email director@ihbc.org.uk Projects Officer Fiona Newton email projects@ihbc.org.uk Consultant Consultations Coordinator James Caird email consultations@ihbc.org.uk Membership Services Officer Devon DeCelles email membershipservices@ihbc.org.uk Administration Officer Lydia Porter email admin@ihbc.org.uk IHBC Committee Chairs Policy Mike Brown email policy@ihbc.org.uk Membership & Ethics Jo Evans email membership@ihbc.org.uk Finance & Resources Richard Morrice email resources@ihbc.org.uk Education John Preston email education@ihbc.org.uk Communications & Outreach vacant email communications@ihbc.org.uk Branch Officers North Geoff Underwood Tel 0191 433 3435 NorthWest Graham Arnold Tel 0151 606 2157 Yorkshire Keith Knight Tel 01904 658482 West Midlands Charles Shapcott Tel 020 7973 3660 East Midlands Roy Lewis tel 01332 591175 South Julia Foster Tel 01296 585888 SouthWest Ian Lund Tel 01380 724911 East Anglia Pippa Colchester Tel 01245 437337 South East David Kincaid Tel 01227 862185 London David McDonald Tel 020 8881 6724 Scotland Charles Strang Tel 01835 822560 Wales Nathan Blanchard Tel 01285 642428 Northern Ireland Sharon BrownTel 028 9754 3087 Republic of Ireland Cormac O’Sullivan Tel 00353 5677 62907 Business Office Jubilee House, High Street, Tisbury, Wiltshire SP3 6HA England Tel 01747 873133 Fax 01747 871718 email admin@ihbc.org.uk Institute ofHistoricBuildingConservation No106 September 2008 IHBC Annual School in Guildford Briefing 2 Astley Student Award 3 Ecclesiastical exemption 4 TheWriter’s Voice 4 Out of Context 4 Letters 5 Periodically 6 EAUH conference report Dennis Rodwell 9 Newcastle Castle Keep Jim Croft 11 Supporting Columns Brian Morton 14 IHBC Annual School 2008 Managing the spaces in between OverviewDavid Kincaid 18 Keynote speech Baroness Andrews 20 Day school Elements of constructive conservation Steve Bee 21 Landscape urbanism Graham Marshall 21 Tools in placemaking Rob Cowan 22 Challenges in spatial management Rhynd Smith 22 Area evaluations John Cattell 23 Building in Context toolbook Nigel Barker 24 Planning trends and placemaking Ben Linscott 25 Seminars and tours Understanding lime 25 Community-led regeneration 25 Restoring historic traditional buildings 27 TheWatts Gallery and Cemetery Chapel 27 IHBC Fringe School 28 Religion and place in Tower Hamlets Lucy O’Reilly 35 Scotland’s architects online Yvonne Hillyard 38 Falling in love with Apafi Manor Jessica Douglas-Home 40 The City Palace Complex, Udaipur Prabha Prabhakar Bhardwaj 46 Notes from the chair 49 Director’s cut 48 Vox pop 50 Book reviews 50 Products and services 53 Advertisers index 56
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