40 C O N T E X T 1 2 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 I suggested they look at the Prince of Wales’s planned village at Poundbury. To my amazement they were willing to take up this challenge and even engaged an architect who had worked on Poundbury. It turned out to be a particularly good idea as, I must add, long after leaving the local authority, I ended up buying one of these houses. What would you like to have been if you had not become a conservationist? An architect (not that that precludes being a conservationist). I was told I could not study architecture because I did not have physics O level. I have long since realised that this was bad advice and that I could have chosen that career.Whether I would have been any good at it is quite another matter. How do you reply when at a party someone asks what you do? I usually start by saying I work for a charity that finds new uses for important historic buildings that are at risk. The nice thing about answering this question socially is it usually leads into a very positive conversation and people even saying things like ‘I want your job’. Conversely, when I was a local authority conservation manager this question was more often followed by tales of difficulty in getting listed building consent. That could be quite a dampener on the party atmosphere. Once, when I was at Cadw, I was at a party where someone was telling me how outraged they were to come home from a long holiday to discover their house had been listed. They had no idea that I was the person who had inspected their house in their absence and had got it listed. I made my excuses and moved on before I was faced with having to answer the question ‘what do you do’. What is the biggest frustration in your job? Apart from not having enough time at my desk, it is the struggle to persuade people that conservation is not about stopping things happening, nor even necessarily making things more expensive. I try to persuade them that conservation is a professional discipline as much needed in projects involving historic places as are the other professional skills. It can be frustrating when conservation professionals’ attention to detail is interpreted as narrow-mindedness and not seeing the bigger picture. But I believe that the authenticity of the historic place, and ultimately its success as an exemplar project, relies heavily on getting the detail right. What would you like to be doing in five years time? I would like to be doing more in the way of caring for historic collections and more heritage interpretation work. What is your favourite building? Lethaby’s All Saint’s, Brockhampton, Herefordshire, fairly near to where I live. It appeals to my long-held interest in church buildings and the arts-andcrafts movement. Its tranquillity is very special. I usually have it all to myself, apart from the last time I was there when I was with two coach loads from the Society of Architectural Historians. Your favourite place? Probably Venice and its associated islands. This may seem odd having said how much I value the peace and quiet of Brockhampton, but if you know Venice as well as I do, and you go in the shoulder months, there are still some relatively peaceful areas. It is a magical place that holds particular memories for me as I spent quite a long time there as a student. A close second would be the Llyn peninsula, where I did some of my most fulfilling National Trust work. Its beautiful coastline, views, archaeology, churches and vernacular buildings have a special significance for me. Your favourite book? Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. I know it is not classic literature, but the characters and the setting bring back happy memories of visiting Savannah and Charleston a couple of years ago on holiday in the southern USA. What do you do in your spare time? I like walking in the Brecon Beacons and Black Mountains, and sampling the wealth of gastronomic opportunities in this area, culminating in the Abergavenny Food Festival. I play the cello in the City of Cardiff Symphony Orchestra and I help to run the Village Alive Trust. I have been trying to write a novel for ages. Having just been on a course, I feel inspired to try harder to make enough time to put pen to paper. I do such a lot of travelling for work, throughout the UK, that spare time at home is much valued. What organisations are you a member of? The Ancient Monuments Society, the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the National Trust, theWelsh Historic Gardens Trust, theWelsh Stone Forum, Emmaus and the IHBC, of course. Which one issue would you particularly like the IHBC to campaign on? The issue that first comes to mind is, I fear, one that it is not fair to ask the IHBC to campaign on as it is would probably not be politically expedient to try. I am thinking of OJEU tenders. I can understand why if, say, a motorway or similar multibillion pound project is being tendered we should make it possible for any appropriate civil engineering business in the EU to be considered for the job. But with relatively smaller-scale specialist conservation projects we should be allowed simply to invite tenders from the people we believe to be best placed to do this work. The cost in money and time to charities and other small organisations, such as the local building preservation trusts that the Prince’s Regeneration Trust supports, in having to go through the complex OJEU tendering process can be substantial and frustrating. In this assessment process you are not allowed to take into account the home location of the company tendering. It surely can not be best value or environmentally best practice to create a situation where people would always have to travel by plane to get to the project. It would be interesting to know what conservation professionals in countries such as France or Italy do.
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