C O N T E X T 1 7 3 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 2 9 required. It was closed while repair, conservation and reinterpretation supported by National Heritage Lottery Fund were undertaken. The basis of that extensive research, redecoration and re-presentation is now complete, with the building once again open for visitors. Elsewhere Lucie Clarke relates the story of the electrification of Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, and the experiments by Lord Salisbury converting an old sawmill as a hydroelectric power station, with two abortive attempts at power generation before success in 1881; and Elgan Jones of Donald Insall Associates describes the recent revival of the iconic Victorian pier at Colwyn Bay. The pier, built in 1890, extended 1903, and devastated by fires in 1922 and 1933, was ignominiously closed following severe dilapidation in 2008 and subsequent storm damage. The magnificent restoration of its cast-ironwork is a triumphant reinstatement of a fine piece of Victorian metal-casting and seaside engineering. C20 C20, the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society (Issue 2022/1) concentrates on the architectural legacy of the recently departed Richard Rogers. Catherine Croft’s editorial calls for better protection of his buildings noting, for example, that Channel 4’s proposed privatisation makes the campaign by the society to list its current Horseferry Road, London, HQ all the more urgent. It is surprising how little of Rogers’ work has been fully assessed. Croft refers to Rogers’ transformative work on historic buildings such as Billingsgate Market and his own home, a radical Georgian conversion in Chelsea. She makes a telling point that the Chelsea facade has long been listed Grade II but Rogers’ dramatic transformative interior behind does not get a mention. In similar vein the society has recently drawn attention to the need for greater investment in listing research as identified in the Saunders report. Liverpool Street Station is a listed building highlighted by Saunders which (like the two Rogers examples) has 20th-century additions that have been totally overlooked. As the society has recently learnt that major redevelopment plans are afoot for the station (made on the assumption that the 1980s reworking is of no heritage value), this is seen as a clearly demonstrating the danger of out-of-date list descriptions. Returning to Rogers, the society notes that while Creek Vean, Cornwall (1963–5) was listed as long ago as 1998, and the Lloyds Building (1978–84) was listed in 2011, Inmos Microprocessing in Newport (1983), the Millennium Dome (1996–1999) and the Senedd Cymru, Cardiff (1999–2005) all should be listed (some requiring some flexibility, or a threat, to fall within the 30-year rule); and that excellent buildings like Rogers’ Reliance Controls, Swindon (1967) was lost in 1991 to make way for a banal ‘retail park’. Construction History Construction History (Vol 37, No 1, 2022) presents its usual international outlook. Several papers may be of particular interest to Context readers.The first concerns Francis Harris and the early enthusiasm of the CooperativeWholesale Society (CWS) Architects’ Department for reinforced concrete.The CWS was to play a pivotal role in the early adoption of reinforced concrete in the UK, acting as a progressive client for a significant proportion of new warehouses, banking offices, mills and granaries for the society for this new material in the period before the first world war. Edwin AR Trout of the Concrete Society explains the use of the material on a number of a historically significant buildings in north-east England, including the huge CWS warehouse on Newcastle Quayside (1899–1900), listed Grade II, and other work between 1900 and 1903. Other work at the turn of the century included important buildings in Manchester between 1904–1907. The author explains how the architects’ department was organised, and how Elkins and the Newcastle office functioned between 1907 and 1916. A number of splendid buildings are illustrated, not all of which survive, but which were all ‘influenced by progressive “modern” interests’. The author concludes that the CWS was matched only by the railway and dock companies in its practical embrace of reinforced concrete, coming as it did at a time of much building activity and the expansion into dockside milling and soap manufacture. The architects’ department undoubtedly helped advance the use of reinforced concrete in its infancy, both in volume of construction and development of design. Nicholas Bill’s paper on ‘Developments inTimber Engineering by British Military Engineers, 1815–1900’ includes
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