8 CONTEXT 187 : MARCH 2026 Heritage Now The latest issue of Heritage Now, the newsletter of Historic Buildings and Places (No 13,Winter 2025), carries an article by Michael Sheppard, executive director of the Cathedrals Workshop Fellowship (CWF), and Lucy Newlyn, a foundation degree student at Gloucester Cathedral. They explain the aims behind the launch of the Benefact Trust Scholars Programme.This is a major milestone in the national effort to protect and sustain traditional heritage craft skills, supported by a transformational £2.1 million grant from the Benefact Trust. It will provide over 30 scholarships between 2025 and 2030 to support the highquality, practice-based training of craftspeople in stone masonry, joinery, leadwork and plastering where there is an acute skills shortage. The CWF, a partnership between 14 Anglican cathedrals, has established itself as a national leader in heritage skills education. The new programme represents an important extension of the CWF’s work by expanding access to accredited training, enabling more craft professionals to achieve recognised qualifications, and allowing cathedral workshops to invest in the next generation of heritage craft specialists. Bob Kindred MBE It seems unlikely that any person meeting James Stevens Curl, who died in his home city, Belfast, on 5 November 2025, for any more than an hour or so, will ever have forgotten their encounter. The confidence of his opinions on architecture, architectural history and the commemoration of death were profound and sincerely held. I must confess to surprise when, with his passing, I learned he was born as late as 1937.The experience of meeting him was much closer to an encounter with an eminent Edwardian than any other person I have ever met. The youthful Curl trained as an architect and he commenced his long career in the Oxford of the late 1950s. A born scholar, he soon veered toward publications and academia, and I was among the first cohort of conservation students to encounter him at Leicester Polytechnic, shortly to become De Montfort University. I, for one, will never forget his intense lectures on architectural history, or his deep and sincere disdain for architectural modernism. I arrived in conservation through an unconventional academic route and found much of his message entirely understandable. Others of my cohort, arriving through a more conventional architectural path, found his approach a greater challenge, though few, I think, would ever doubt his cogency or obvious sincerity. His strong opinions on architectural collapse in the 20th century would eventually find full voice in his late book Making Dystopia: the strange rise and survival of architectural barbarism. James Stevens Curl was never a man to mince his words and the book is quite a read. Obituary James Stevens Curl at Biddulph Grange in 1987 or 1988 (Photo: Isabel Churcher) James Stevens Curl, architectural historian and architect His intense interest in funerary monuments and cemeteries was frequently evident in his many published works, and he maintained connections with many specific locations. He was patron of the society supporting the wonderful, if grossly neglected, early Victorian cemetery on Southampton Common until his demise. Curl had a very deep connection with Hampshire and it is fitting that his final destination is the churchyard at Soberton in the Meon Valley, Hampshire. It is hard to imagine a more peaceful resting place for a man so combative in the causes in which he deeply believed, almost to his final day. He is survived by his second wife, Dorota, and his daughters, Astrid and Ingrid. Michael Scammell
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