C O N T E X T 1 2 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 1 35 Archaeological view Building recording: what’s the point? Michael Heaton writes: This is a plea for greater cooperation between the two classes of local authority officers charged with stewardship of the historic environment – archaeologists and conservation officers – specifically with regard to the analysis and recording of historic buildings.While confidence in the application of recording conditions and so on under PPG15 has grown since Shane Gould’s analysis (see Context 84, May 2004), many conservation officers – as the class of officer most likely to request ‘building recording’ – appear reluctant to engage with the wider academic objectives of building recording and the mechanisms developed by archaeologists to pursue them. Building ‘recording’ – as it is sometimes known – is not the purpose of PPG15 or PPS5, but it is one of the tools available to curators for the ‘conservation and control of works to historic buildings’, as the Association of Local Government Archaeological Officers’ excellent Green Guide to PPG15 put it in 1997. The Institute for (formerly ‘of Field’) Archaeologists (IfA) published its Standard and Guidance for what it calls ‘Archaeological Building Investigation and Recording’ in 1996, with minor revisions in 1999 and 2008. Methodological analyses have been published by the Buildings Special Interest Group of the IfA, English Heritage, the Vernacular Buildings Group, the Council for British Archaeology and the author. Several fascinating case studies have been published by the Construction History Society and its European sister organisations in the proceedings of its three international congresses. Conservation officers increasingly ask for building recording in the early stages of a project, sometimes as a condition of consent. The reports will describe the building or structure in words and pictures, probably presenting a hypothetical phase plan of its development, if it is large enough to have developed at all. Follow-up work, such as more detailed investigations during building work, will be suggested for some of the more complex or less common building types. Archaeologists undertake this work to assist with decision-making and contribute to the common pool of knowledge about historic structures, landscapes and places. Unfortunately the reports we produce are often ignored and then disposed of. In as much as a great deal of building ‘recording’ is being done, apparently satisfactorily, that does not matter. Our professional lives would undoubtedly be less stressful if conservation officers and buildings archaeologists could use the same terminology and some form of common specification, but stress seems to be inherent to the planning system. At another level it does matter. Conservation officers and other nonarchaeological professionals tend to view ‘building recording’ or ‘building analysis’ in a procedural manner. It is a box to be ticked, but it has little or no influence on the outcome of the application or the management of the resulting project. Conservation officers also appear to have a different understanding of its application and potential to that of archaeologists. It provides either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer, usually at the start of a project, rarely as a recurrent intellectual enquiry during the life of a project, despite the most important details of an historic building usually being exposed during refurbishment or demolition works. This attitude manifests itself as, for instance, allowing demolition of a unique and historically important building on the basis of a superficial assessment survey, without requiring more detailed investigation and recording; the undertaking of the ‘buildings archaeology’ by the conservation officer or the client’s architect or surveyor without recourse to any form of permanent archiveoriented records or reporting; or conservation officers losing the reports submitted by buildings archaeologists and other types of surveyors. Local government archaeological officers view it slightly differently. Buildings are complex archaeological entities as well as aesthetic ones, and their conservation requires the same staged approach of assessment, evaluation and mitigation that is applied to archaeological sites. Preserving the appearance or character of the building is only half their job: the hidden elements of the structure and the interpretation of them have a wider intellectual potential, which can be fulfilled only if archaeological strategies are applied. That potential is both practical and academic. Practically, it drives the virtuous cycle of ‘what, why, how’ that informs our developing conservation philosophy and technology, especially as much of the received wisdom and the few standard texts on historic fabric, on which most conservation officers base their decisions, are misleading. Academically, it is the subject of wide-ranging study into the technological, societal, economic and historical aspects of buildings that is a virtuous end in itself. Admittedly, much of that study is conducted abroad, ironically using British casestudies, especially by Americans and Australians, but that should only shame us to catch up. Similarly, European application of ‘buildings archaeology’ to the practical and philosophical challenges facing building conservation is generations ahead of Britain’s, with
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