C O N T E X T 9 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 6 37 DAVID BAXTER Conservation training at Banffy Castle The Built Heritage Conservation Training Centre in Transylvania developed from Romania’s desperate need for craftspeople skilled in traditional building techniques. The Built Heritage Conservation Training Centre has been based at Banffy Castle, Bontida, since 2001. Regular readers of Context will have seen several reports on the development of the centre and the related restoration of the castle.This year we are proud to announce that the centre now has a royal patron in Her Royal Highness Princess Margareta of Romania. The princess has been a keen supporter of our work for some time and we are very honoured that this has now been publicly acknowledged through her new role. Through her own foundation (Fundatia Principesa Margareta a Romaniei) she is well known in Romania for her charitable work.We now look forward to a close cooperation as the role of the BHCT Centre expands. The centre’s purpose is to promote excellence in the conservation of the historic environment and specifically to teach traditional building craft skills which can be used in the repair and maintenance of historic buildings. The centre has been developed in recognition of a need to address the lack of craftsmen capable of implementing traditional building techniques using traditional materials in the repair of historic buildings. This need was originally identified by the Romanian Ministry of Culture and the British Council in 1998/99, following the loss of traditional skills in Romania during the communist years. The Transylvania Trust (one of the leading nongovernmental organisations in Romania dealing with protection of the historic environment) and the IHBC were invited to design a project to tackle this problem. This led to the development of the BHCT Centre at Banffy Castle, which is now jointly run by the Transylvania Trust and the IHBC. The centre promotes a policy of minimal intervention indealingwith the repair of historic buildings,combined with a strategy of compatibility in techniques and materials, and the use of local resources. It promotes a philosophy of analysing, understanding and recording historic buildings before and during intervention. The centre provides teaching modules, each two weeks long, which offer a theoretical and practical understanding of the care of the historic environment. Its principal emphasis is to offer direct hands-on learning experience to its students. This is achieved through practical workshops in the crafts of rendering, masonry consolidation, carpentry and stonemasonry, Banffy Castle from the Parkland Enjoying the Bontida Cultural Days in front of the partially restored Miklos Building
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