THE 1980s A RETROSPECT Matthew Saunders reviews a decade in which ACO progressed from infancy to maturity. Retrospects over a given decade tend to be artificial, and yet the ten years since the foundation of the ACO enjoy a coherence which makes an interim assessment feasible. For a start it is a calendar decade - the 1980s - and, far more important, it was the period which enjoyed three governments under the same Prime Minister, a lady who knew where she was going most of the time and whose language was antithetical to local government and state planning. The ACO and planners in general have thus enjoyed an occasional bumpy ride and the decade has come to an end with promises of yet further reform that will change the employers of Conservation Officers to unitary authorities, whether these be at District or County level. And yet, as so often, the rhetoric of free enterprise and laissez-faire has not been translated into action. Planning laws are now tougher than they were in 1980. The number of listed buildings has more than doubled to about 450,000, and there are some 7100 conservation areas. The listing criteria have been liberalised to cover more building types than ever before and co embrace the work of not just living but practising architects such as (Sir) Norman Foster, who must feel a certain ambiguity over the listing of Willis Faber & Dumas in Ipswich. Recent additions to the list have included the anti-aircraft gunsite of 1935-39 in Whalebone Lane, Havering; the scythe forge of c. 1840 at Springbrook House, Blakedown in Worcestershire; the former railway navvy living quarters at Dent Railway Station in Cumbria; the rabbit warren walls of 18th century or earlier south of Court Barton at Lanreath in Cornwall; the unusually large and complete clay lump barn of the early 19th century at Maltings Farm, Rougham in Suffolk; the farmhouse in Gwynedd that was the home of the Eisteddfod poet, Hedd Win, which still contains five of his bardic chairs; the circular latrine at Blaen Nant-yr-Hebog, Rheola in West Glamorgan, built in the style of circular pigsties with a corbelled stone slab roof; and the structure known as Scotch Fald at Pelenna in West Glamorgan, apparently designed to gather sheep for shearing. Indeed so comprehensive was the Heseltine resurvey of the mainly rural CONTEXT 31 areas in the middle years of the decade that its importance for scholarship has yet to be assessed. It has in effect been a Domesday Book inventory of the country, carried out within five years, a speed that must seem positively breathtaking to the more gentlemanly but snail-like pace of the Royal Commission. And the same Tories who so dramatically increased the number of listed buildings have also initiated such apparently un-Tory policies as introducing and increasing planning application fees and in the first months of the 1990s,agreeing to bring in further controls over the demolition of houses that are neither listed nor fall within conservation areas, and considerably tougher control over new and existing farm buildings where, again, these are neither listed nor fall within conservation areas. The power of the state, at both local, national (and now at European) level continues to expand apace. The conservation messageis the stronger because of the well rehearsed collapse of faith in the Modern Movement. I see buildings coming down in the City of London that I saw being put up barely twenty years ago. 'Future Shock' is here. Even some of the flagships of the 1960s face oblivion. Permission has been given for the World Trade Centre at St. Katherine's Dock near the Tower of London to be redeveloped (by Richard Rogers), whilst there is open talk of Who would have thought ten years ago that a 15 year old building would be listed? Willis Faber & Dumas, Ipswich (Grade I). ending the days of the ex1sung Stock Exchange. One of the ugliest buildings in the City, Dominant House in Queen Victoria Street, has gone as have 1960s shopping centres in towns as far afield as Ipswich and Oldham. Even elegant symbols of the 1960s, like Centre Point at Tottenham Court Road, face redressing, in this case by a new external lift shaft and the remodelling of its distinctive podium. Erno Goldfinger at The Elephant & Castle is to suffer a fate worse than death (altogether I don't speak as a lover of the building) by being publicly flayed and then given a new Post Modern flesh that he would have excoriated in its flashy facadism. 1960s attitudes have died too, none perhaps more poignant than the decision of February 1989 by the Ministry of Agriculture to introduce grants for the repair of 'traditional farm buildings' (at 35%), replacing a post-war regime which only encouraged the modern, the functional and the ugly. Sir Peter Parker was the chief engine behind the reform of BR that has led that organisation not only to be proud, for the most part, of its 600 or so listed structures but also co spawn the Railway Heritage Trust, a child which at one remove ploughs back the father's money to meet the family's architectural debts. The Church of England, notoriously reluctant to accept state money in case its freedom were limited, embraced Church grants at the beginning of the decade and Cathedral grants at the end. The 9% fall in church attendances between 1979 and 1989 has meant that beggars cannot be choosers. It was a decade too of the Conservation magazine - Period Home, Traditional Home, Landscape and now the Old House Journal - all of them appealing with varying degrees of success to the growing market of the houseproud owners of historic buildings. They have displayed a professionalism that has rubbed off onto Context, that I count as the very best of the house magazines among conservation organisations. The most frustrating thing about them is that they tend to be read by the converted. The visually disastrous explosion in DIY 13
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