46 CONTEXT 176 : JUNE 2023 Context goes out to members four times a year and the IHBC Yearbook is sent to members plus 3,000 other key conservation industry contacts annually. Contact Cathedral Communications to get your message out to the right people this year. 01747 871717 ihbc@cathcomm.co.uk buildingconservation.com The home of the conservation professional INSTITUTE OF HISTORIC BUILDING CONSERVATION YEARBOOK The River Severn The Severn navigation Powis Castle: a great survivor Repairing the Iron Bridge No 170 December 2021 Institute of Historic Building Conservation From chrysalis to butterfly: the IHBC at 25 A short history of good ideas Taking care of drawings Conservation in the Southern Ocean No 174 December 2022 Institute of Historic Building Conservation Diversity and inclusion Multiple perspectives on heritage Women who shaped modernism Troublesome statues LGBTQ+ histories No 173 September 2022 Institute of Historic Building Conservation in cold preservationist rigidity. Yet in Liverpool, unlike London, preservation appeared to be Unesco’s ethos. What would you like to be doing in five years’ time? I hope I will be finishing a book on how the British created rock music and sold it to the world. And that the preparations for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway bicentenary in 2030 will be steaming ahead. Railways are a gift to the world and it all started here. What is your favourite building? The Baronial Hall at Chethams Hospital School (as it then was) in Manchester, where as a boy I ate my lunch, served from the buttery behind the medieval screen, sitting at a long refectory table. Your favourite place? Peckforton Hill in Cheshire. Your favourite book? Simon Jenkins’ England’s Best 1,000 Churches. For years we used it to take us to wonderful historic buildings, often in the most hidden, remote and quiet places. It has been a long, unfinished, spiritual odyssey. What do you do in your spare time? I am in two big bands, and a jazzy R&B outfit. It is amazing to be surrounded by people with music degrees who can not improvise. How do you do that, Ian? The difference between reading music and improvising is the difference between reading a book and having a conversation. You have to listen, respond and react, rather than accepting the tyranny of the dots. What organisations are you a member of? Out of the Blue Jazz Orchestra, Merseyside Civic Society, UK2070 Commission, World Heritage UK, Town and Country Planning Association and National Trust. Which one issue would you particularly like the IHBC to campaign on? Planning and conservation are at a low ebb in Britain, worn down by underfunding, and the proponents of American-style private affluence and public squalor. I would like to see the IHBC and all the other built environment professional bodies campaigning vigorously to showcase the many examples of successful plans, including Winchelsea, the Fairfield Moravian Settlement, Birkenhead Park, Milton Keynes, the motorways and HS1. At its best, town planning is the greatest of the civilised arts. We need to demonstrate its achievements if we want to begin the fight back against its detractors. Ian Wray, former chief planner with Northwest Development Agency, is an honorary professor at Liverpool University’s Heseltine Institute, and a steering group member for the UK2070 Commission, an independent inquiry into regional inequalities. He chairs the Birkenhead Park World Heritage Site bid and the Liverpool Waters Conservation Board, and he has just stood down as vice chair of World Heritage UK. He is a member of the interim steering group for the bicentenary of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
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