C O N T E X T 9 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 7 Periodically… Items in the latest issue of TheVictorian (No 24, March 2007) express alarm about the fate of Victorian schools. This reviewer recalled the excellent SAVE report focusing on the plight of urban schools in England and Wales. It contained essays from leading figures and over 100 illustrated pages emphasising those either under threat or converted to new use. It is sobering to recall that this report, Beacons of Learning, appeared over a decade ago. The crisis over the retention of Victorian and Edwardian schools is therefore not new, but the edition of the magazine is devoted to the impact of the government’s recently initiated modernisation of state schools, with secondary education facilities as a priority. Despite helpful English Heritage policy advice and a conference last November in London entitled ‘Learning from the Past: the future of historic school buildings’, the Victorian Society believes that some cases that have come to their attention bear the hallmarks of hasty and poor decisionmaking in relation to the heritage value. A helpful and nicely illustrated article by Joe Holyoak deals with the challenges presented by the government’s current programme. It is not difficult to see that sympathy for this building type in government and among education authorities is often based on perceptions of and prejudices against the past concepts of an inadequate education system, embodied in architecture of a long vanished era. Understanding the interest and diversity of the resource can inform decisions about the value of school. A photo-essay of Manchester board schools (prompted by the 1870 Education Act) shows excellent examples surveyed by Samantha Barnes under a research scholarship made under the Alan Baxter Foundation. The editorial highlights a case being fought by SAVE over a fine Grade II listed school building and local landmark facing demolition at Easington, County Durham. Sold by the county council for £1, it has passed through a succession of developers. Each in turn has inflated its hope value, standing now at £250,000. Unloved by the locals for its associations with the local pit, this is not situated in an area where it might be snapped up for a smart or trendy residential conversion. This suggests that is as necessary to have realistic expectations of the property market as it is to understand the community and cultural benefits. This issue of TheVictorian has a twopage guide to accessing information on the web about the retention and reinstatement of historic windows. The most recent issue of the Journal of Architectural Conservation (Vol 13, No 1) concerns itself very much with practicalities. Especially notable are two articles which deal the resolution of structural problems. Simon Bennett explains how unsympathetic interventions to correct a loss of stiffness in a 12m floor span at the Grade I Somerset House in London were overcome. In the past, hangers had been hidden in later partitioning walls of an (originally) large single room. Below is located the Seaman’s Hall, the main reception space for the whole of Somerset House. Highly interventionist solutions to stiffen up the floor while allowing the hangers to be removed were clearly inappropriate. The solution involved careful understanding of the original structural action of the floor, and reversing original flaws evident quite early after the building’s completion at the end of the 18th century. Bennett describes providing ‘a helping hand’ allowing the restoration of the original configuration and removal of the hangers. The structural analysis and solutions are shown by some informative illustrations. Equally informative is an article by Paul Begg about the more prosaic but no less important and far more common phenomenon of historic timber cantilever staircases.While discussions of stone examples appear occasionally, the author correctly asserts that timber examples appear to have been all but ignored.Yet, they are often remarkably refined, the designs being exceptionally elegant and structurally efficient but still easy to construct. Begg has used the detailed examination of one example from around 1800 to show how the design had developed to an integrated, minimal structural form, where all the components contribute to the structural integrity. He shows how important it is to understand this when the repair or reinstatement of elements may affect the overall structural stability. It is a valuable addition to the literature. Understanding materials is the theme of an article (the first of two) by David Hughes, Simon Swann and Alan Gardner about the origins and properties of Roman cement. Despite
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