The East Anglian coast Orford Ness: a landscape in conflict Great Yarmouth’s cultural heritage Britten and Pears at the Red House No 175 March 2023 Institute of Historic Building Conservation
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The East Anglian coast Orford Ness: a landscape in conflict Great Yarmouth’s cultural heritage Britten and Pears at the Red House No 175 March 2023 Institute of Historic Building Conservation CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 1 www.ihbc.org.uk @IHBCtweet Registered as a charity in England and Wales number 1061593 and in Scotland number SC041945. Company Limited by Guarantee. Registered in England number 3333780. Registered Office: Jubilee House, High Street, Tisbury, Wiltshire SP3 6HA Officers President Mike Brown, president@ihbc.org.uk Chair David McDonald, chair@ihbc.org.uk Vice Chair Lone Le Vay, vchair@ihbc.org.uk Secretary Jo Evans, ihbcsecretary@ihbc.org.uk Treasurer Jill Kerry, treasurer@ihbc.org.uk National Office Director Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk Operations Director Fiona Newton, operations@ihbc.org.uk Consultations Coordinator consultations@ihbc.org.uk Administration Officer Lydia Porter, admin@ihbc.org.uk Professional Services Officer Michael Netter, services@ihbc.org.uk Membership Services Officer Carmen Moran, membershipservices@ihbc.org.uk Education,Training and Application Support Officer Anna Hart, training@ihbc.org.uk Committee Chairs Policy Roy Lewis, policy@ihbc.org.uk Membership & Ethics Andrew Shepherd, membership@ihbc.org.uk Education Chris Wood, education@ihbc.org.uk Communications & Outreach Dave Chetwyn, communications@ihbc.org.uk Branch Contacts North north@ihbc.org.uk North West northwest@ihbc.org.uk Yorkshire yorkshire@ihbc.org.uk West Midlands westmids@ihbc.org.uk East Midlands eastmids@ihbc.org.uk South south@ihbc.org.uk South West southwest@ihbc.org.uk East Anglia eastanglia@ihbc.org.uk South East southeast@ihbc.org.uk London london@ihbc.org.uk Scotland scotland@ihbc.org.uk Wales wales@ihbc.org.uk Northern Ireland northernireland@ihbc.org.uk Republic of Ireland republicofireland@ihbc.org.uk Rest of theWorld overseas@ihbc.org.uk Cover: The Pagodas at Orford Ness National Nature Reserve, Suffolk, were testing labs for secret work on the development of the atomic bomb from 1953 to 1966. (Photo: National Trust Photo Library/Alamy Stock Photo) See page 19. 2 Briefing 4 Opinion 5 Out of Context 6 Periodically 9 The writer’s voice 11 Editorial 12 Conserving GreatYarmouth’s cultural heritage Darren Barker 15 Preserving the intangible at the Red House Christopher Hilton 19 Orford Ness: resolving a landscape in conflict Angus Wainwright 22 Supporting Norfolk’s churches and their communities John Maddison 25 Southend-on-Sea: from seaside village to city Sally Humphries 28 Lowestoft’s heritage action zones Rebecca Styles 30 Boston, a town with water at its heart Matt Bentley 32 Boston’s Inns on the Edge Mark Knighton 35 Conservation skills training in a Norwich church Jane Kennedy 38 Stalemate at Jaywick Sands Sean O’Dell 43 Piercefield has a story to tell Victoria Perry 46 Notes from the chair 47 New members 48 Director’s cut 50 Vox pop 52 New member profile 53 Book reviews 56 Inter alia 57 Products and services 60 Specialist suppliers index
Editor Rob Cowan Editorial Coordinator Michael Taylor, ihbceditorialboard@gmail.com Editorial Board Tom Copp Nigel Crowe Aimée Felton Peter de Figueiredo (book reviews) Rebecca Madgin Andrew McClelland Fiona Newton Gordon Sorensen Jonathan Taylor Michael Taylor (chair) Cartoons by Rob Cowan Context is distributed to all members of the Institute of Historic Building Conservation. © Institute of Historic Building Conservation 2022 ISSN 0958-2746 Publisher Cathedral Communications Limited, High Street, Tisbury, Wiltshire, England SP3 6HA 01747 871717 context@cathcomm.co.uk www.buildingconservation.com Non-member subscriptions to Context Context is available to corporate bodies at an annual subscription rate, including postage, of: United Kingdom £60.00 Elsewhere £90.00 Context on-line archive Past issues of Context can be viewed on the IHBC website. The archive provides a searchable database and reference for key articles. See www.ihbc.org.uk/page55/ context_archive. The views expressed in Context are not necessarily held by the IHBC or the publisher. Neither the publisher nor the IHBC shall be under any liability whatsoever in respect of contributed articles. We gratefully acknowledge the support of firms whose advertisements appear throughout this publication. While every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this issue of Context is current and correct, neither the IHBC nor the publisher can be held responsible for any errors or omissions which may occur. Context themes and copy deadlines Context is published four times a year in March, June, September and December. The next three themes and copy deadlines are: World heritage sites, June, issue 176 (7 April) Glass, September, issue 177 (7 July) Rural buildings, December, issue 178 (6 October) Please contact Michael Taylor at ihbceditorialboard@gmail.com to discuss any editorial submissions or for information about the Context editorial board. 2 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 Briefing Great Yarmouth’s Iron Duke The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded £2 million funding for a restoration of the Iron Duke, a Grade II listed, art-deco pub on Great Yarmouth’s seafront, in conjunction with the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust and Norfolk American diner chain Zak’s. The building, which will be reused as a bar and restaurant, was designed by Arthur W Ecclestone in the late 1930s and completed in 1948, work having been halted due to the outbreak of the second world war. Despite being incomplete, it was granted a licence in 1940 to serve the soldiers manning nearby anti-aircraft guns. Building work was completed in 1948. The pub’s counters are made from teak from Admiral Jellicoe’s Dreadnought Battleship, HMS Iron Duke (1912). This was the flagship that led the British fleet in the Battle of Jutland, and from which the pub takes its name. In 2020 Great Yarmouth Borough Council agreed a loan enabling Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust to buy the building, which has been vacant since 2008.
CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 3 Marple’s kilns saved Repairs and restoration work have been completed at the 225-year-old Oldknow’s Lime Kilns in Marple, Greater Manchester, after the kilns had been on Historic England’s heritage-at-risk register for nearly 10 years. The project was funded by a grant of more than £90,000 from Historic England, and match funding from Stockport Council and the Association for Industrial Archaeology. Damaging vegetation has been removed, weaker areas of stone repointed and structural support built inside the kilns. The lime kilns are named after the local industrialist Samuel Oldknow (1756–1828). They featured decorative gothic tracery, creating the appearance of a romantic ruin. Unusually, the structure also contained housing for workers. Brighton Hippodrome The decorative plaster ceiling at the Grade II listed Brighton Hippodrome Theatre is being restored as part of the renovation of the building that had stood empty for 16 years. Artisan Plastercraft is restoring a barrel ceiling section that in its workshop, and will use it to mould new fibrous plaster casts to restore the circular auditorium ceiling. The Theatres Trust has described the Hippodrome, sited in the Old Town Conservation Area, as Oldknow’s Lime Kilns in Marple (Photo: Dave Dunford, Wikimedia) Blind tracery being carved for the restoration of the Palace of Westminster’s Elizabeth Tower, home to Big Ben. DBR (London) was the conservation contractor and Purcell the conservation architect. 800 repairs The restoration of the Palace of Westminster’s Elizabeth Tower has been completed. The work included repairing the cast-iron roof, clock faces and other highlevel metalwork, water-proofing the belfry tower, external stonework conservation, installing a lift and upgrading the building’s services. The stonework has been repaired in about 800 locations, covering nearly ten per cent of the tower’s surface area. The tower, formally the St Stephen’s Tower, was renamed Elizabeth Tower at Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. Originally it also functioned as a ventilation system for the Palace of Westminster: the ventilation shaft has been converted into a lift. A section of broken plaster from the auditorium of Brighton Hippodrome (Photo: Artisan Plastercraft) ‘the UK’s most architecturally significant circus theatre: the finest surviving example of its type in the country’. It was built in 1897 as an ice rink, with a large, glazed domed roof, made up of concentric rings with 16 steel raker beams sloping from the top and held in place by an outer ring. The building was converted in 1901 to a circus by architect Frank Matcham and later redesigned as a theatre by Bertie Crewe. It closed in 1964, reopened as a bingo hall three years later and closed again in 2006. The new owners plan to reopen the venue in November 2024 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of its closure as a performance venue.
4 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 OPINION: CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE John Preston writes: The AllParty Parliamentary Group’s Report The Value of Heritage (circulated with Context 174, December 2022) has a welcome discussion of environmental value, including embodied carbon, and recommends a presumption against demolition. The report could have gone further in promoting repairs as the essential precursor to any retrofit, and its recommendation of energy efficiency amnesty for the most significant historic buildings seems seriously misconceived. Surely all buildings should contribute to energy efficiency as far as their fabric and character allow, as per Part L? Worryingly, the report does not mention the step-change in industry training that is needed. In response to my question at the launch, the panel was complacent, saying it was a generational issue. But this can not wait a generation, given the scale and urgency of the challenges. Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement allocated an additional £2 billion a year for energy efficiency improvements to buildings for three years from 2025. A further £1 billion has been allocated for a scheme for the least-efficient homes over three years from this spring (2023). There will be a new focus on owner-occupied homes, and a new Energy Efficiency Taskforce (members yet to be announced). The Construction Leadership Council said that around 450,000 skilled tradespeople would be needed over 20 years, at a time when the industry is already facing a major skills shortage. But the government’s new target means that most of this work will have to be done over seven years. Where will they get the skilled people? In December the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced the winners of its £9.2 million Home Decarbonisation Skills Training Competition. Most of the 18 training packages being funded relate to heat pumps, and just one of the bodies provides the Level 3 Energy Efficiency for Older and Traditional Buildings, while up to £1 million has been awarded to the Retrofit Academy for its courses. Quick and easy After a government about-turn, there is now an £18 million campaign to provide public advice, first evident in the Help for Households energy savings advice (https://helpforhouseholds. campaign.gov.uk/energy-savingadvice), which includes ‘quick and easy no-cost actions’, ‘low-cost home improvements’ and ‘spendto-save home improvements’. Help for Households does not cover wall insulation, but it has links to the Energy Saving Trust (EST). The EST’s advice has significant inadequacies, for example: ‘If you live in Conversation (sic) Area, or World Heritage Area (sic) there are likely to be restrictions on modifications to the external appearance of the property.’ The EST says that ‘you should check with your installer that the installation is covered by an appropriate 25-year guarantee’, but most products and works suitable for traditional buildings do not have 25-year guarantees (the Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance [STBA] is working with industry bodies to tackle this issue). The continuing common theme throughout all this (passim ad nauseam, as Private Eye would say) is government and industry failures to recognise that traditional buildings are a significant part of the building stock which have to be treated differently. A new National Retrofit Hub is under discussion, but will it have a clear voice for traditional buildings? Traditional buildings are not even mentioned in the just-published (at the time of writing) Mission Zero, the Skidmore Report (the government’s independent review of net zero, which calls for relaxing of planning controls on solar power). Nor are they mentioned in the Environmental Audit Committee’s report Accelerating the transition from fossil fuels and securing energy supplies. This notes that while over 13 million (over 59 per cent) of homes in England are below EPC C, fewer than 100,000 energy-efficiency upgrades were installed in 2021, compared with 2.3 million in 2012. The committee is calling for at least 1 million energy-efficiency installations a year by 2025. By the time you read this, the report of the DCMS/BEIS/ DLUHC roundtables should be out. The current consultation on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill: reforms to national planning policy includes a proposed new paragraph 161 of the National Planning Policy Framework, and asks for evidence on ways of deploying a broad carbon assessment, but not on how to deal with the carbon costs of retrofit, or on how to balance potential savings in operational carbon against the relatively short life of retrofit measures and their impacts on the low embodied carbon of existing buildings. Nor does the consultation recognise the carbon arguments for retention over demolition. A new consultation on energy performance certificates (EPCs) is also due. Hopefully the heritage and traditional buildings sector, individually and collectively, will be able to engage with these, and more widely, much more effectively than previously, so as to influence the accelerating energy-efficiency juggernaut. More immediately, the STBA is working on a proposal for draft guidance to help planners and conservation officers on the front line of these challenges. John Preston, heritage chair, Sustainable Traditional Buildings Alliance
CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 5 ‘THE SENIOR conservation officer (SCO) is employed by the council for her professional conservation expertise, and the purpose of the consultation was to draw upon her expertise, to assist the council in discharging its duties… Thus, that advice ought to have been available to members when they were deciding the application… ‘The planning officer was, of course, entitled to differ from the SCO’s views, and advise members accordingly, but he should not have withheld the SCO’s advice from them, as the members were the ultimate decision-makers, not the planning officer.’ From the judge’s verdict on a case in Lewisham in which failure to reflect opinions of a conservation officer in a planning report led to grant of planning permission being quashed at judicial review. ‘LESS THAN a third of architects in the UK are women. We’re proud to have a balanced gender ratio.’ Donald Insall Associates on Twitter @InsallArch ‘WITH OUR students, we always try and work on real sites with real buildings and real materials, which means it is much easier to deal with the specific and understand that materials are finite and real and can drive design decisions all the way through a project. ‘When materials and projects are abstract, it can be difficult to develop really integrated proposals that look carefully at resources. Slightly wider, it is dangerous to talk of building design as “solving” the environmental crisis as it appeals to the self-aggrandising nature of architecture and architects‘ desire to be the hero. ‘Integrated approaches where architecture engages with the world have never been more important, hence my nervousness with paper projects which don’t have the tussle of the decisions that are based in, and challenged, by the contingencies of the world in terms of clients, cost and resources.’ Architect Piers Taylor responding in the Architects’ Journal to a survey of more than 400 UK-based students that revealed significant gaps in teaching about the circular economy and how to reuse existing buildings. ‘WE VISITED on Saturday and took friends with us, who were visiting from Yorkshire. It cost £14 per person. My husband and I got a measly £1 discount as we live nearby. It was so very disappointing. I had to fight back the urge to say “Is this it?” as I didn’t want to make a fuss in front of our visitors. ‘To add insult to injury, we paid another £5 per person for a tour of Mortimer’s Hole that was over within 15 minutes. Guess there’s no point in complaining now.’ Local resident Maria Pia Beal responding to the decision to close council-owned Nottingham Castle, which had opened less than two years ago, after a £30 million restoration. ‘SHE’S making our building look like a circus clown. There are elements of tragedy – circus clowns are made up to look happy, but they’re not. This is a circus clown wearing a tutu.’ Denise Scott Brown, one of the architects of the National Gallery Sainsbury Wing, criticising Annabelle Selldorf’s proposed alterations to it, which have now received planning permission. ‘GRADE III status would apply automatically to every building and it would come with just one rule: the property may only be demolished if it is structurally unsafe, or is given special dispensation by the local planning authority… ‘To avoid overburdening SMEs, its initial introduction may only apply to major properties… and would still allow us to alter layouts, strengthen foundations, add new floors and upgrade facades. ‘Such alterations are of course vital if we want to keep doing the most social good for our country. But the restriction on demolition would at last enable us to make rapid inroads towards slashing construction’s huge carbon footprint.’ Will Arnold, head of climate action at the Institution of Structural Engineers, calling in the Architects’ Journal for a new Grade III listing.
6 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 Periodically As I sat down to write this Periodically column, I realised that I started it in 2002. The positive feedback over those 21 years has been a source of encouragement. When readers face significant time pressures and need to bring themselves quickly up to date, magazines and journals often provide useful primers for subjects that can be followed up in greater depth. I hope the occasionally eclectic personal selection of articles remains of interest and may contribute in a small way to informing the IHBC’s professional competencies and meeting its CPD requirements. Most but not all of these publications originate in the UK. Some, although published here, are aimed at an international audience. Nevertheless, I hope that there is always something of interest to be found to expand or deepen professional understanding and practice. The Victorian With regard to heritage protection, The Victorian (No 71, November 2022) has a timely reminder about the state of play on listing reform. Readers will recall that from 2019 Matthew Saunders produced a report for Historic England on the state of the current statutory list (HE Research Report 27/2021) and made 42 recommendations for further enhancement. One of the overarching findings was that Victorian and Edwardian buildings were still under-represented and under-described in the statutory lists, despite notable advances in Historic England’s understanding and appreciation of the architecture of these periods. Saunders received over 60 initial submissions and a great deal of valuable insight resulted, but for many day-to-day practitioners the conclusions appeared subsequently to drop from view, so this is a timely reprise. Saunders notes that the reaction to his report from Historic England was positive and work is ongoing. One issue being addressed is the Local to Statutory programme, to serve as a vehicle for entries on a nonstatutory local list to be elevated to full statutory protection. Saunders also re-emphasises the validity judgement that the inadequacy of most existing ‘legacy’ statutory list descriptions is an impediment to effective every-day heritage management. This is followed by a view from Joe Holyoak of the Victorian Society about one of three pilot listing projects, looking into how such buildings are selected and documented. He concentrates on the work undertaken by the Birmingham and West Midlands Group project, noting that others were undertaken by the University of Plymouth and Merseyside Civic Society. Elsewhere Victoria Thomson, Historic England’s head of national strategy, provides a two-page overview of the recent changes being proposed to the planning system, and their potential effect on heritage protection; and James Stevens Curl looks back on six decades of writing on Victorian architecture in relation to the publication of a new edition of his English Victorian Churches: architecture, faith and revival. The article will hopefully illuminate for readers the scope of publications that have better developed our understanding of church building over this period. C20 The coverage of C20, the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society (No 2, 2022), is wide-ranging. Catherine Croft kicks off by identifying the positive aspects of the restoration of Battersea Power Station, the excellent techniques to reverse the pattern of long neglect while maintaining the desired patina of age and industry. But she laments the results of years of commercial speculation that upped the site value and the need to maximise profits, causing neglect and repair costs to soar. She has a sense of a better future that might have been, and that the lesson for the future must be to seek socially and environmentally sustainable solutions for the restoration of outstanding buildings; to act fast to minimise decay; and to maximise the options for positive conservation.
CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 7 Ian McInnes, the society’s chairman, suggests that an appropriate way to mark the death of the queen would be to finally recognise the architectural value of the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank by listing it. Perhaps surprisingly, the Festival Hall and National Theatre are listed at Grades I and II* respectively, but the collection of exhibition and performance venues that provides a coherent visual link between the two has repeatedly come under threat. It has been the subject of four applications for listing since 1992, all rejected despite strong endorsement from the society and Historic England. Currently the building has a certificate of immunity from listing in place until 2025. This issue also demonstrates the valuable role of the national amenity societies in focusing on and campaigning on behalf of specific building types. Up-todate reports on the threat to both traditional city centre department stores (a flagship campaign) and power station cooling towers demonstrate this. When the government was committed to decommissioning all coal-fired power stations by 2024, certificates of immunity from listing were issued by DCMS, clearing the pathway to future demolition. However, notwithstanding the focus on greener future predicated on renewable energy, the society believes that the loss of these structures should be lamented. The towers of West Burton A are a highlight of the society’s recent at-risk list as being most in danger. Towers that have been recently abolished and those that have so far escaped, standing in isolation decades after power station decommissioning, are also noted. It might be argued that if cooling towers are somewhat unloved, the same might be said in some quarters about British brutalist architecture. Nearly 70 years have passed since the term ‘new brutalism’ was coined by its pioneers, Alison and Peter Smithson in a 1953 article in Architectural Design. Elain Harwood pens an ode to these buildings, and lays out the seven key tenets behind this often maligned and misunderstood movement. The issue also revisits some of the notable architectural components of the post-war new towns, including Stevenage, Cwmbran and East Kilbride. The Georgian The Autumn 2022 issue of The Georgian focuses on the Georgian Group annual architectural awards. These included categories for the rescue of a Georgian building; the restoration of Georgian country house; the best reuse of a Georgian building; the restoration of a Georgian building in an urban setting; and the Giles Worsley Award for new buildings in the spirit of the Georgian era. The winners and commended schemes are illustrated and explained. They provide an excellent opportunity to see the full range and quality of the work currently being undertaken, and set a benchmark for the exemplary standard work it is to be hoped will be carried out in the future. There are also three articles of significant interest. The first deals with Chinese export wallpaper at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. This is informative because details of the wallpaper trade are limited, and frustratingly little is known of the workshops in which they were produced. The article goes on to explain about the value assigned to these wallpapers in the 18th century, and it is fortunate that the Royal Pavilion archives hold good examples of them. Furthermore, as a result of two grants from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, it has been possible to digitise, catalogue and rehouse these and, perhaps more important to readers, make the images available online. This may be of particular interest to heritage professionals studying relevant historic interiors of the period. The second article, by Peregrine Bryant, raises the question of the future of Clandon, the National Trust country house that suffered a catastrophic fire in 2015 with almost total loss of the internal fabric. Although more than seven years have passed since the fire, little has been achieved on the ground beyond scaffolding protection and some trials for the conservation of the external fabric. In the meantime, inflation has eroded the funding. The Georgian Group has been a consultee on the proposals. There has been detailed discussion of the trust’s intended approach in relation to catastrophic damage informed by a 2003 report by the former English Heritage on Recent Practice Following Catastrophic Damage at Historic Places. This has led to some useful definitions of the difference between restoration, The Magazine of The Georgian Group | Issue 2 | 2022 The Georgian Georgian Group Architectural Awards
8 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 reconstruction, recreation and replication, based on the 2000 Riga Charter on Authenticity and a discussion on what the options for the National Trust’s approach might be. The article sets out the group’s views, which will be particularly valuable for anyone thinking through the procedures for dealing with catastrophic damage after fire. In recent issues of this column I have praised the coverage of specific architectural features drawn from the Brooking Museum of Architectural Detail, and how this might inform professionals regarding construction techniques and dating evidence of architectural features. The latest issue discusses the form and construction of Georgian fanlights. It is well illustrated and will be a useful primer for those needing to date these delicate, characterful and fascinating architectural features with greater accuracy. Heritage Now As readers should know by now, Historic Buildings & Places campaigns for buildings of all types and periods. The latest issue of its magazine, Heritage Now (03/2022) exhibits these wide-ranging interests and includes a feature on the architectural practice of the late John Sealy and Paul Padget. For nearly 50 years their aim was to marry, in their words, an ‘appreciation for the past’ with an ‘enthusiasm for the present’. This lasted until around 1970, when the practice ceased. The forthcoming centenary of their practice offers an opportunity by Peter Forsaith of Oxford Brookes University to provide an insightful appreciation of their work, particularly the churches designed in the 1950s. Elsewhere, Laurence Greenall describes the ingenuity of the vicar of Waltham Abbey Church in saving it from collapse in the 1960s. The comment column poses the pertinent question: whatever happened to heritage champions? This was worthy concept developed in the early 2000s but has since been allowed to wither away. Are such appointments worth reviving? SPAB Magazine The understanding of appropriate crafts skill and the intricacies of sensitive repair and adaptation feature prominently in the SPAB Magazine (Winter 2022). Although not necessarily defined as case studies, the approach to sound techniques repays close attention to inform good practice among heritage professionals. Whether or not it is appropriately applied, SPAB’s philosophy of repair is, or should be, well understood. How this is implemented in practice on a range of building types, styles and materials is always informative. Readers will find the case examples in the magazine instructive in coming to views about how works should be properly undertaken. This is reflected, for example, in an article by Lawrence Kelly and Michael O’Reilly, explaining the intricate processes of decisionmaking and recent repair to the gable end of the Old Post Office, a thatched Grade II cottage in South Oxfordshire. It can also be seen where Matthew Slocombe discusses the vital role that the SPAB played in securing the future of Shute Barton, a Plantagenet manor house in the 1950s, when needing significant repairs and new ownership. This overall philosophy of approach is also evident in the society’s response to statutory casework and descriptions of repair work undertaken by its practical working parties in this issue. Construction History Those with an interest in the history of construction, or aiming to understand the relative significance of historic building components, may be interested in a paper by David Yeomans in the latest issue of Construction History, the International Journal of the Construction History Society (Vol 37, No 2, 2022). Entitled ‘Who designed the king HERITAGE NOW The Magazine of Historic Buildings & Places | www.hbap.org.uk (03/2022) AUTUMN 2022
CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 9 post truss?’, the paper stems from a keynote lecture given at the society’s ninth annual conference in April 2022, and takes the study further by analysing recent literature on Italian and French roof trusses. As is well-known, Inigo Jones imported the king post roof in the 17th century from Italy to England. King posts in tension were known during the Tudor period and the author discusses French roof structures as models. The range of subjects in the journal, always widely drawn, also includes a discussion of early glue-laminated timber production in Switzerland, commencing at the start of the 20th century; the unique symbiotic relationship between architects and builders in the Spanish Caribbean, particularly between 1905 and 1925; and vacuum concrete in the construction of houses and industrial buildings in Columbia. These are particularly the legacy of architect Alvaro Ortega (1950–1955). The authors use intriguing historic photographs and written documentation to provide a detailed analysis of this innovative yet risky venture, which ultimately resulted in the bankruptcy of Ortega’s company. Finally, a paper discusses the evolution of the plumbing trade in 19th century Brussels, shedding light on the city’s often-overlooked, smallscale, artisan businesses and selfemployed craftsmen. The Construction Historian In the sister publication The Construction Historian (Issue 11, Winter 2022) of greatest interest is a well-illustrated article by Edwin AR Trout, offering a typology for the architectural forms of filling stations as they emerged as a distinct building type, particularly in relation to the evolving nature of concrete canopies. A number of excellent examples are illustrated, including the utterly distinctive and memorable hyperbolic paraboloid shells developed in the 1960s, such as that at Markham Moor on the A1 at Retford, Nottinghamshire, listed Grade II in 2010. From the introduction by Morris Hicky Morgan to his 1914 translation of Vitruvius’ The Ten Books on Architecture Vitruvius was not a great literary personage, ambitious as he was to appear in that character. He has all the marks of one unused to composition, to whom writing is a painful task. In his hand the measuring-rod was a far mightier implement than the pen. His turgid and pompous rhetoric displays itself in the introductions to the different books, where his exaggerated effort to introduce some semblance of style into his commonplace lectures on the noble principles which should govern the conduct of the architect, or into the prosaic lists of architects and writers on architecture, is everywhere apparent. Even in the more technical portions of his work, a like conscious effort may be detected and, at the same time, a lack of confidence in his ability to express himself in unmistakable language. He avoids periodic sentences, uses only the simpler subjunctive constructions, repeats the antecedent in relative clauses and, not infrequently, adopts a formal language closely akin to that of specifications and contracts, the style with which he was, naturally, most familiar. He ends each book with a brief summary, almost a formula, somewhat like a sigh of relief, in which the reader unconsciously shares. At times his meaning is ambiguous, not because of grammatical faults, which are comparatively few and unimportant, but because, when he does attempt a periodic sentence, he becomes involved, and finds it difficult to extricate himself. The article also illustrates umbrella shells, wavy-shells, barrel-vaulted canopies and single-cantilever structures, which contribute an under-regarded degree of local distinctiveness where they survive. Perhaps the most remarkable of these was Zidpark, Southwark Bridge, London, a single-cantilever example with a leaf-shaped structure and a dish-shaped canopy, designed by C Edmund Wilford and Sons. Several of the photographed examples are no longer extant but this is a quite remarkable record of diversity preceding the present era of corporate anodyne ubiquity. The issue contains an illustrated article by about five English brickwork museums – in Hampshire, Shropshire, West Sussex (two) and Worcestershire – aiming to encourage those interested in traditional craft methods to visit. On the subject of non-traditional materials, RJ Barwick discusses no-fines concrete, an open, textured lightweight porous cellular material obtained by eliminating fines (sand) from a normal concrete mix. He explains its role in the rise and fall of system-built housing by George Wimpey and Co in the 1960s, and the growth of nontraditional housing systems. Might good, unaltered examples perhaps be listable? Bob Kindred MBE
CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 11 THE EAST ANGLIAN COAST Opposite: East Anglia and the places discussed in articles in this issue (Map: Rob Cowan) Editorial Where East Anglia meets the North Sea East Anglia has always had a strange relationship with the sea. Locals tell the story of the Wild Man of Orford: a naked, hairy man-like creature that fishermen found in their nets off the Suffolk coast. Taken to Orford Castle, it was questioned, only grunted in reply, and was fed with raw fish. The Wild Man was kept at the castle for a while and taken for supervised swims in the sea, until one day it swam off and was never seen again. Such stories, like the tales of hearing church bells from the sunken town of Dunwich, live on in the minds of dwellers on this coast. Everyone recognises East Anglia as that bulge on the east of England, with Lowestoft as the UK’s most easterly settlement. Depending on who is defining it, East Anglia comprises the historic counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and, possibly, Cambridgeshire and Essex. Norfolk and Suffolk, the old Kingdom of East Anglia, used to be the North Folk and the South Folk. Those hostile folk had sailed over from what is now northern Germany to fill the vacuum after the Romans had left. At least, that is what we were taught at school. The noted historian Susan Ooshuizen has cast doubt on that Anglo-Saxon origin story in her 2019 book The Emergence of the English. She finds no reliable evidence for anything amounting to invasion, settlement or conquest of Britain from north-west Europe in the 5th century. Instead, she suggests, after the Romans left there was sufficient social, economic and political stability to allow Roman administrative and military structures to continue to evolve and adapt for at least two centuries. By analogy, Ooshuizen asks us to imagine what archaeologists of the future might deduce from, for example, the remains of IKEA stores in England. ‘Let us imagine that in (say) two thousand years’ time all documentary evidence from the 21st century had disappeared and that only archaeological evidence for the stores survived, together with distributions of their goods that diminished in volume with distance from the store,’ she writes. ‘Archaeologists… might interpret the evidence as that of the colonisation of Britain by Sweden during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and the stores as central places designed to state and preserve the immigrants’ Swedish identity. We, however, know that the distribution of the stores is evidence of trade rather than colonisation, and that the distribution of their goods reflects the popularity of Swedish design in British homes. There is no link to Swedish ethnicity in Britain.’ Influence rather than invasion, then. It seems that the story of East Anglia is one of continuity: the continuous development of its people, who have long kept a wary eye on the continuous erosion of much of its coast. In this issue of Context we find what happens today at some of those East Anglian places where land meets sea.
12 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 DARREN BARKER Conserving Great Yarmouth’s cultural heritage Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust owns and manages a portfolio of historic properties, bringing them back into use, and building skills and employment opportunities. Great Yarmouth grew from the North Sea on a shingle spit, and over the centuries has developed a multi-layered relationship and dependency on the sea. This unique interaction manifested itself through the fishing industry, ship building, navigation, international trade, the navy, immigration and as a vibrant seaside resort. Maritime heritage resonates in our buildings, dialect, songs, stories, dance, and cuisine. In the townscape one can still appreciate thatYarmouth is an ancient town, with a medieval core enclosed by two miles of town wall, defensive towers and hundreds of narrow alleyways called rows. An enduring connection with the sea has shaped our identity and created a special sense of place. Many traditional industries have disappeared, leaving tourism as Yarmouth’s single biggest business sector, representing 29 per cent of the district’s employment. More recently, the development of renewable energy sources, especially offshore wind power, has created future opportunities and opened new chapters in the town’s relationship with the sea. Founded in 1979, GreatYarmouth Preservation Trust exists to preserve, safeguard and promote the cultural heritage of the borough. The trust owns and manages a portfolio of historic properties, bringing them back into use in ways that meet the needs of today’s residents, businesses and visitors, building skills and employment opportunities locally, and ensuring that historic buildings and spaces are maintained for the long term. Using mortgages from Great Yarmouth Borough Council, the trust acquires at-risk assets and undertakes comprehensive repair, creating viable and sustainable end uses. The council requires robust business plans demonstrating a viable end use for each property, with sufficient income generated to service the loans. This approach has led to the creation of a gallery with artists’ studios attached, a community hub, a cafe, holiday lets in medieval towers, hairdressers, office spaces and high-quality, affordable housing. Since 2010, projects have generated £11.3 million for the local economy, removed 12 buildings from the buildings-at-risk register, created 25 residential units, delivered over 40,000 training hours, recruited 644 volunteers and led to 12 complementary projects. The trust manages the homes it delivers directly, and holds a lengthy waiting list for its residential property. In Great Yarmouth educational attainment is below the regional and national average, so Learning building skills at a workshop run by the Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust in the village of Karpachevo, Bulgaria.
CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 13 EAST ANGLIA COAST many people who live in the town lack the skills to access the highest-paid jobs in the energy sector, and many households rely on low paid and seasonal employment. Great Yarmouth’s unemployment rates were among the highest in the country prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. Skills levels, particularly in the heritage sector, are extremely low, resulting in poorly repaired and maintained heritage assets and general building stock. That contributes to deterioration and the town’s erosion. In response to this, each trust project is developed around training and engagement. A strategy has evolved whereby entire projects are undertaken by volunteers and trainees under the close supervision of experts, from survey through to practical completion. There are many risks, but every step is painstakingly scrutinised, limitations are realised and accepted, and an extensive range of experts, professionals and craftspeople monitor, advise and mentor the process. The benefits of this model are significant. They include a broad engagement, civic pride, a highly skilled and passionate workforce, and a repaired, preserved and properly maintained historic environment, all important parts of the trust’s strategy for reviving deteriorated and neglected areas of the town. By involving local people and providing meaningful opportunities in the preservation of the town’s heritage, an overlapping legacy is developed. Rooted in the local community, the trust’s work not only improves the built environment in Great Yarmouth, but also develops the skills and employability of residents. A substantial outcome to this approach was for the trust to create a means to employ people trained on projects, who would then be able to use the skills they have acquired to continue maintaining Great Yarmouth’s heritage. In 2014 a trading company Norfolk Conservation Ltd was established, with a social enterprise remit and with the trust as the only shareholder, with any profits going to continue its charitable aims. Before the pandemic the enterprise employed seven people, all of whom have worked as trainees on trust projects for at least four years. The creation of this company has helped to fill a vacuum, and demonstrates the benefits of effective and targeted training and engagement with mainly under-represented communities. Projects have included stone repair and consolidation, flint work, church monuments, and the ongoing repair and consolidation of Great Yarmouth’s medieval town wall. Importantly they provide a pool of conservation skills to local contractors. Before placing training as a priority, Great Yarmouth lacked the basic skills needed to maintain historic buildings, such as working with lime mortar, window repairs, or traditional roofing techniques. There is still a long way to go, but much progress has been made in a relatively A restored building in Kings Street, now Skippings Gallery
14 CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 short time. Knowledge, understanding and an appreciation of traditional skills and appropriate repair techniques have created much-needed employment and ensured the preservation of the town’s heritage. The backdrop to the trust’s work is familiar to many coastal towns. Great Yarmouth, like others, suffers a range of persistent social and economic issues. These have been compounded with the decline of high streets, the impact of the financial crash from 2007, the pandemic and, most recently, the cost-of-living crisis. As an example, in 2012 70 per cent of the retail space in the lower end of Kings Street was vacant, with the large number of neglected, boarded-up buildings contributing to a sense of decline in the town centre. The trust’s focused and ongoing work on Kings Street has directly restored key buildings and acted as a catalyst for the owners of other King Street properties. The investment resulted in the opening of small shops such as barbers, news agents and grocers to service the growing community now living around the street. Many buildings on Kings Street are still in need of repair, but before the pandemic this part of Great Yarmouth’s town centre was widely felt to have turned a corner. Supported by this early work and approach from the trust, in December 2020 Great Yarmouth Borough Council secured a £13.7 million investment from the government’s Future High Streets Fund to underpin further action to improve the town centre around the Market Place area. The trust also contributed to the council’s successful bid for £21 million of government investment through a Town Deal, acting as a partner to deliver a series of building repairs and training. As a trading port on the edge of the east coast, the town’s rich heritage, culture and traditions have been firmly influenced by international connections, helping to shape a character that is truly distinctive. That character continues to evolve as communities shift and new influences arrive. GreatYarmouth Preservation Trust puts significant emphasis on the value of sharing skills and exchanging knowledge, both between different parts of the local community, and between Great Yarmouth and other places that are working to maintain and improve their local environments in challenging conditions. Building on Great Yarmouth’s heritage as an important port for trade, the trust has fostered connections around historic trading links and partners on projects across Europe and Asia. The approach enables a broad community to collaborate locally and on an international level. Activities such as research projects, exchange visits, cross-border training and engagement through international partnerships have fostered greater learning and built transferable skills. The process enables partnerships to be established with organisations, NGOs, universities, charities and groups. Partners share similar issues with Great Yarmouth, including low skill levels, or are connected by communities or by historic trade links. The driving motivation of all the partners is cooperation to share knowledge and provide meaningful opportunities for people to develop skills which can be used for the preservation of heritage. Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust has benefited from a range of third-sector funding programmes, including Historic England, Headley Trust (part of Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts), Pilgrim Trust and National Lottery programmes such as the Heritage Fund. The trust has received significant support from Architectural Heritage Fund, both through grant funding and sharing advice and expertise, and as a heritage development trust. A range of project partners has provided in-kind support for the trust’s projects. Beyond grants, the trust is working to build resilience and self-sufficiency by growing its portfolio and a diversification of activities to generate revenue. It is working through a fiveyear strategy to build organisational sustainability, which will reduce dependency on funding bodies. Darren Barker is managing director of Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust and leads several international conservation training programmes in Europe and Asia. Community training at the 13th-century ruined church of St Margaret, Hopton, which has undergone a programme of repair and consolidation
CONTEXT 175 : MARCH 2023 15 EAST ANGLIA COAST CHRISTOPHER HILTON Preserving the intangible at the Red House Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears stated explicitly that they did not want their home, the Red House in Aldeburgh, to be a museum after their deaths. What did they mean? The Red House, the historic home of the composer Benjamin Britten and his partner the tenor Peter Pears, is in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, about a mile inland from the town’s shingle beach. Britten and Pears, their relationship already nearly 20 years old at this time, moved here in 1957, and spent the rest of their lives here: Britten died in 1976 and Pears 10 years later. It is now run as a heritage site by Britten Pears Arts, a charity descended from those that the two men founded. When they died, the arrangements set up by their wills saw the house used as a base for their charity, and as accommodation for staff, performers and members of their circle. Unusually, there was no clear-out after the two men died: the house is still full of domestic possessions that survived because they were still being used. This means that we can present the house in ways that are a little different from the normal heritage house: almost as an immersive experience, as if the two men still live here and had just popped out to the shops, as one visitor commented recently. Paradoxically, they stated explicitly that they did not want the house to be a museum after their deaths. We justify our apparent departure from those wishes by balancing those against the need to inspire participants: if their work in music is to be carried on as they grow more distant, people need to know who they were and why their objectives still matter; and allowing them to visit the house as a heritage attraction is a key first step in this. We also need to think about what it was that they were actually saying – when they said they did not want a museum, what did they mean? What they had in mind, we think, was the oldfashioned caricature of a museum: a place where things are presented in cases and labelled, where All photos by Philip Vile, copyright Britten Pears Arts The Archive building at the Red House is home to Britten and Pears’ music manuscripts, papers, rare books and art collection.
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