C O N T E X T 9 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 7 ‘FOR THE first time branch membership has risen above 100. This is a great achievement and worthy of celebration. However, behind our rising overall membership hides a decline in support among local authority conservation officers, traditionally the core of our membership. ‘Looking at the attendance lists at recent conservation officers groups makes depressing reading. For example, Cheshire Conservation Officers Forum in December was attended by eight officers of whom only four were IHBC members. Merseyside Conservation Officers Group in the same month was attended by nine officers, of whom only five were IHBC members. ‘Worst of all, Lancashire Conservation Officers Group in November was attended by 10 officers of whom a mere two were IHBC members. Membership among English Heritage staff in Manchester is pathetic. Incredibly, there are only two IHBC members currently employed at Canada House. ‘This probably says a lot about employers’ attitudes to trained conservation staff and the said officers’ commitment to ongoing professional training. One recent Conservation Officers Group was memorable for a non-IHBC conservation officer (employed for at least two years within a design and conservation team of other non-IHBC members) asking if anyone could advise which Pevsner covered her authority.’ From an editorial by Peter Hoey in IHBC NorthWest, the newsletter of the North West Branch of the IHBC ‘the mayor of Moscow for the last 15 years,Yuri Luzhkov, wants Moscow architecture of all periods to grace his city…The Luzhkov style of romantic historicism is derided by western critics. To The Times’ Marcus Binney it wavers from “ersatz replica to bloated post-modernism”. To the New York Times it is pastiche “theme park Russia”. The guidebooks refer to kitsch and Disneyland.Yet they do not deride the reproduction Palladian mansions of the tsarist suburb of Arbatz, let alone the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, almost all of them in whole or part 19th century. Are the post-Reformation north and west fronts of Westminster Abbey “pastiches”? ‘Some of this criticism is valid. Luzhkov’s activities are about to be damned in a devastating report by the valiant Moscow Architectural Preservation Society, cataloguing the loss not just of major monuments under his regime but of hundreds of courtyards, terraces and quaysides. The mayor is said to have staged nothing less than “an assault on the dense and delicate fabric” of Moscow, a far more interesting city architecturally that St Petersburg. ‘Less worthy of criticism is the Moscow that Luzhkov has struggled to create. He at least cares, and thank goodness he is a man in a hurry, given what may follow him. The pressure to mimic Ken Livingstone in London and seek a pastiche Manhattan to enrich the oligarchs must have been strong. The result would have been the “edifice egotism” that is now pepperpotting the London skyline, and turned postreunification Berlin into a joyless architectural gallery.’ Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian Richard Holder, 1956–2007 Richard Holder was educated at Bedales and then attended Reading University, where he gained a BA (Hons) in the History of Art and Architecture. He was awarded a PhD from the same university in the 1980s for his work on Victorian and Edwardian town halls in England. He had inherited his early interest in Victorian architecture from his father. Following a period as a fieldworker for listing buildings in the Accelerated Resurvey of historic buildings established by Michael Heseltine in the 1980s, when he worked in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, Richard went back to his first love, Victorian architecture. He joined the Victorian Society as casework officer, eventually becoming senior architectural advisor. He was a vigorous champion of Victorian buildings on behalf of the society for much of the late 1980s and 1990s and was also a very effective advocate on their behalf, speaking at conferences, and organising study tours and visits for their members. He left the society after about 15 years of service to concentrate on restoring the family home, a listed 15th-century hall house, which was completed shortly before his death from colon cancer at Easter. An early member of the IHBC, Richard contributed to branch conferences and attended a number of annual schools, where he could usually be relied upon to attempt at least a couple of dances at the traditional Saturday night party. He will be missed. Nigel Barker In memory of…
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