Context 162 - November 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9 41 [WAAS]) shortly before Freddie’s death in 2002. In 2018 Historic England funded a partnership project between WAAS and Worcester City’s Historic Environment Record (HER) to elec- tronically catalogue the collection held byWAAS and then digitise a selection of images from what was considered to be the most important and informative material. The low-resolution images are now available and linked to building records in theWorcester City andWorcestershire County HERs. The more than 1,000 high-resolution images are available online via the Archaeology Data Service (ADS). The archive has immense value for the indi- vidual buildings documented, as it includes detailed surveys and photographic records. The comprehensive records of restoration and con- servation already undertaken will inform the future management and care of these buildings, around two thirds of which are listed. The archive also tracks the development of the his- toric building conservation profession, including Freddie’s pioneering, and often controversial, approach to conserving, renovating and restor- ing timber-framed buildings. Freddie’s most important legacy to architec- tural conservation was the requirement for any building conservator to understand the form and structure of the building within its historical and archaeological context. This is clear from the various drawings and plans featured in the archive. The archive also demonstrates just how much is hidden in buildings. Time and again surveys revealed older and more impres- sive structures concealed within modest-looking buildings. Freddie’s approach ensured that a building was properly understood before any decisions were made regarding its future. He also saw well beyond the overall plan and form of a building, looking at the analysis of joint types, structural principles, the form of and nature of individual timbers, and details such as historic carpenters’ tool usage. He drew heav- ily upon a detailed knowledge of these historic features to inform his conservation practice. As someone who closely studied timber buildings, he was aware of the timber resources origi- nally used. He saw it as important to understand which type and part of the tree was used in the construction in order to ensure a proper repair. A common theme behind his techniques was to take a building back to a single building phase, usually that with the most complete survival at the time of the restoration, whatever period that happened to be. This principle is clearly demonstrated in the archive of Strand House in Bromsgrove (now demolished), where Freddie noticed that although originally medi- eval, more of the later 17th-century alteration and construction survived, so it made more historical and architectural sense to reconstruct the building exactly as it had stood in the 17th century. It was this principle that often made his restorations controversial, because it involved the removal of historic fabric of later periods that many considered an important part of a building’s history. The restoration of the Commandery in Worcester is perhaps the best example in the archive of Freddie’s techniques. The story A photograph and sketch of a possible medieval central roof truss from Strand House, Bromsgrove (Image: Worcestershire County Council, Charles Archive Collection)