CONTEXT 178 : DECEMBER 2023 13 BUILDINGS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE JONATHAN THOMPSON Rural buildings at risk The problem of rural buildings at risk demands a focus on prevention; encouraging sensitive re-use; and preventing the small minority of malign owners from profiting. Perhaps half a million traditional farm buildings (half the total) have been lost since 1919, around 15 buildings each day. Most of those that remain are important as heritage, and to rural landscapes. But agricultural and legislative change mean that very few have a genuine economic use: they cannot generate (directly or indirectly) enough income to cover their maintenance costs. The same is true of the surprisingly large legacy of rural industrial buildings: if we mine slate or copper, it is not with 19th-century infrastructure. Although some heritage owners do cross-subsidise crumbling buildings from other income, very few can afford their long-term costs – perhaps £50,000 or more than £150,000 to put them into repair, and another £3,000 or £10,000 a year to maintain them thereafter. For some buildings, decades of persuasion by the Heritage Alliance, Historic England, the CLA and others has secured some agri-environment funding, but relentless pressures on taxpayer funding – the NHS and pensions, for example – means that it can support only a small proportion. It is primarily up to us in the heritage sector, not governments, to save buildings at risk. The usual solution is a new use which generates funding to cover their costs. Most can, with appropriate design, be re-used very successfully. The Landmark Trust, for example, rescues buildings by converting them to holiday use, which crucially funds their maintenance thereafter, and so persuades funders to cover the upfront costs. Other building preservation trusts and (on a greater scale, but usually unpublicised) private and commercial owners re-use buildings too. There are, however, major hurdles. One is that where the end value of the building is less than the costs of repair and conversion (a conservation deficit) there is a problem. There is no magic solution, though it is surprising how, if economics is the only issue, funding may be found from somewhere. Usually, however, economics is not the only issue: there are several other, more soluble, problems. If we in the heritage sector overcame these, we could substantially reduce the problem of buildings at risk. Under wraps in East Sussex A thatched barn in Somerset
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