10 C O N T E X T 1 2 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 3 Burges designed 1,260 individual sculptures for the exterior of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Cork. This prompts Moss Jenkins, senior technical officer at Historic Scotland, to outline the best current techniques for the repair of statuary. The latest issue of C20, the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society (No 3, 2012) contains much of interest. The opening article, by Judy Ovens, Suzanna Prizeman and Lucy Lavers, describes a community arts project built around the remarkable bus garage at Stockwell, south London, listed Grade II* in 1987. The project demonstrated what imaginative local community engagement with heritage can achieve. The architect Geoffrey Salmon reflects on his career with the AustinSmith practice, including a body of work for Slough Estates in the 1970s and 80s, which has not been treated with much sympathy by the designation system. Alan Powers highlights notable (and varied) facades in London’s Piccadilly, following on from the author’s autumn Royal Academy exhibition Eros to the Ritz. David Hills and Tim Murphy cast some light on Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, architects of the Firestone factory of 1928 (infamously demolished) and the Hoover building of 1932–5 (now a Tesco), and other art deco gems in west London. Half a century on, Joshua Mardell reviews the architecture of the York University campus, one of the seven new or ‘plate-glass’ universities of the 1960s. (The others were East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Lancaster, Sussex and Warwick – most of them visited by ACO/IHBC annual schools over the years.) Your reviewer had secretly hoped that, with the demise of the masthead Cornerstone, the SPAB might revert to SPAB News, first used in January 1980 (I still have every copy). But prosaically SPAB Magazine is now what it is. In addition to the usual items on statutory casework and so on, the Winter 2012 issue carries an article by the director, Matthew Slocombe, on the history of the society’s headquarters, to help kickstart its 2013 fund-raising campaign for essential repairs. Also worth reading are Timothy Easton’s article on archaic symbolic markings of ancient buildings against fire, something the author has been investigating and recording for over 20 years; and Roger Turner’s on a remarkable Grade I listed Shell Grotto in Margate, dating from before 1835, the repair of which facilitated its removal from the English Heritage Buildings at Risk Register. It is also worth drawing attention to Alan Chandler’s description of the application of SPAB’s philosophy of repair and incorporation of undisguised new work, in the rebuilding of the derelict Astley Castle to create a dwelling for the Landmark Trust. Readers will find the illustrations instructive. The project was approached on the basis that a conventional repair strategy was unworkable. It was necessary to reconcile two potentially antithetical positions: conservation and inhabitation. The ruin’s stabilisation was achieved in brick and concrete, but the alterations to permit inhabitation were completed through an infill of carpentry and joinery. The work has been carried out with extraordinary care and attention to detail. Junctions between old and new work, and the particularity of each junction of new brick with ancient stone, required more than 100 drawings for the brickwork alone. Your reviewer customarily but intermittently reports from the Newsletter of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (issue 35, December 2012) about research awards likely to lead to publications of interest to conservation professionals. Awards recently made to authors include those to Anne Bordeleau for Charles Robert Cockerell: architect in time – ornaments in the age of historicism and to Astrid Swenson for The Rise of Heritage: preserving the past in France, Germany and England 1789–1914. Awards to publishers include those to Ashgate (Robert Proctor) for Church in Concrete: Roman Catholic church architecture in Britain 1955–1975; Bard Graduate Centre, NewYork (Susan Weber, [editor]) for William Kent, 1686–1748: designing Georgian Britain; English Heritage Publishing (Elizabeth McKeller and Julian Holder) for Re-Appraising the Neo-Georgian, 1880–1970; the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association (Darcy White, Elizabeth Norman and David Ball) for The Public Sculpture of Sheffield and SouthYorkshire; Spire Books (Michael Hill) for East Dorset Country Houses; the Twentieth Century Society (Alan Powers and Elain Harwood) for Oxford and Cambridge: 20th-century architecture; and finally to Yale University Press (David WWalker and Matthew Woodworth) for The Buildings of Scotland: Aberdeenshire and Moray. Bob Kindred MBE WINTER 2012 THE SOCIETY FORTHE PROTECTION OFANCIENT BUILDINGS SOMETHING APPEALING The SPAB’s HQ in Spital Square needs your help. Inside, the Society’s Director Matthew Slocombe unlocks our own ‘ancient’ buildng’s past MAGAZINE
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