Context 164 - May 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 4 : M A Y 2 0 2 0 7 in stabilising and repairing the limestone cladding on the iconic 1939 streamline moderne style Saban (May Company) department store in Hollywood, as part of its conversion to the shortly-to-be-opened Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Fidler helpfully describes the nature of the deterioration and properties of the stone, and the survey and assessment, and he sets out how helical dry-fix friction anchors were used. This highly informative paper is part of a set of transactions well worth seeking out. Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society The annual Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 2020 has reached Volume 64, runs to 166 pages and contains eight excellent papers. This alone is worth the cost of the annual membership subscription. The society has a wide remit, defending buildings of all periods, and this is reflected in the wide-ranging and stimulating contents. The latest issue opens with a timely look by Richard Hill at the recent adaptive re-use of a number of individual buildings in Liverpool, in the context of some of the well-documented social and economic problems the city faces. The author reminds us of the good fortune that Albert Dock survived destruction to become a centrepiece of regeneration of the waterfront by the Mersey Development Corporation in 1984. He notes the £1 million a year that the city council earns from the events hosted at the iconic St George’s Hall, and describes many other less obvious varieties of adaptation of historic buildings and areas in the city about which readers might have mixed views. The author draws attention to the low architectural quality of housing stemming from the ill- judged Housing Market Renewal Programme and the homesteading initiatives that have superseded its abandonment. He is highly critical of the likely architectural future, which he considers ‘bleak’ on the back of poor new housing design, the lack of political and corporate support for regeneration, and a weak commercial sector. He concludes by asking whether Liverpool can apply adaptive re-use to the scale of the whole city; if it can re-imagine itself; and if new uses will emerge. In the under-regarded north, in a post- industrial age and outside the EU, these questions have a wider resonance and lessons for heritage seemingly on the fringes. Hill’s analysis is worth seeking out. The other papers are more specific in scope. Michael Heaton examines the remains of the 12th-century Bradenstoke Priory inWiltshire, plundered byWilliam Randolf Hearst in the 1920s and shipped toWales and California. It survives now as a solitary ruined tower. The resulting outcry resulted in retrospect to a fundamental change to a redrafting of the Ancient Monuments Act 1931. The author argues that if the true significance of the site had been recognised early enough, Hearst might not have bought it and, even if he had, we might have paid more attention to its post-medieval fabric. Maxwell Craven discusses Romeley House at Clowne in Derbyshire, now also a ruin but once architecturally very distinctive, and looks at links with a small number of late- 17th or early-18th century gentry houses, mainly in south Yorkshire, such as Grimethorpe Hall, with facades exhibiting similar design characteristics. Paul Holden speculates on two Cornish houses, Trewarthenick and Enys, and the contribution to their construction of architect Henry Harrison (c1785–c1865) once under way, and difficulties encountered with indecisive and economising patrons, inattentive builders and capricious craftsmen. James Bettley looks at the convoluted tale of the protracted construction and subsequent fate of the picturesque parsonage house at Tring, Hertfordshire, of 1825–36. The incumbent acted as his own architect but subsequently employed local architect EW Garbett, who went bankrupt (along with the builder) amid accusations of sharp practice. It is something of salty tale, which the author brings up to date with an overview of Tring vicarages in the 20th century and later. Another amateur architect clergyman was the Rev John Parker, who devoted much of his life in the first half of the 19th century to the study, preservation and promotion of gothic buildings. Edward Parry highlights Parker’s gifts as an artist and engraver (several examples of which are reproduced) and particularly as a building designer in transforming two of his churches. He provided Llanyblodwel with a remarkable group of gothic buildings. Following devastating fires to the Glasgow School of Art and Notre-Dame, to give just two recent examples, Tanis Hinchcliffe describes the visit in 1871 to Paris by English architects Robert Edis and Richard Phené Spiers after the conflagration started by the Commune. Damage was very extensive. The author examines the reactions of the visitors, and what this reveals for us about the complexity of opinion after big fires. Finally, in keeping with the wide remit of the AMS , James Sims (the inaugural winner of the AMS Stephen Croad Essay Prize) reviews John Outram’s strikingly original 1976–8 warehousing on