Politics and Preservation

A policy history of the built heritage 1882-1996

John Delafons, J. Delafons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780419224006
• eBook ISBN: 9781135813062
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book traces the policy history of urban conservation and its relationship to the town planning process and both are set in their political context. Part One deals with the origins of conservation and its cultural background. Part Two deals with the post-war legislation and the increasing scope of conservation. Part Three deals with churches and their separate control system, and Part Four brings the story up to the present time. New issues such as sustainable conservation and the latest government policy are addressed in the conclusion. This book will aid current practice and help to inform future directions.

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INTRODUCTION

THE HERITAGE

The word ‘heritage’ has become a very capacious portmanteau. The Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882 listed twenty-nine monuments in England and Wales (plus twenty-one in Scotland and eighteen in Ireland).¹ It was the first such statutory list. Today there are some 15,000 scheduled monuments in England, over 500,000 listed buildings, and over 9,000 conservation areas. English Heritage estimates that there are about 600,000 archaeological sites, and a new inventory is being compiled. The statutory lists include, along with buildings of architectural distinction or historic significance, such items as dog kennels, lamp posts, bollards, stiles, pillar boxes, telephone kiosks, railings, fences and grave watchers’ huts. English Heritage is also compiling lists of listable post-World War II buildings, historic gardens and battlegrounds. In recent years the popular concept of ‘the heritage’ has been extended to cover an enormous variety of buildings and artefacts that bear little or no relationship to the traditional statutory term ‘buildings of special architectural or historic interest’.

How did we arrive at this position? At first conservation was not an issue adopted with enthusiasm by government and they were reluctant to get involved. But in time the heritage was found to be a source of political capital. The values that motivated the pioneers became obscured by other interests. What began as an antiquarian and scholarly pursuit, and became an elitist cause, has developed into a populist movement. As attitudes changed, so did government policy. Such developments in policy usually reflect wider social or cultural influences. They do not originate solely within government. Now some questions are being asked about the scope and purpose of conservation and its demand on resources. The conflict between the desire to preserve and the need to change generates political tensions.

This study traces the policy history of urban conservation and sets it in its political context. The main theme is to show how governments have responded to the growing interest in the heritage. It focuses on the legislative and administrative aspects of the subject. This may seem a narrow vein to work in the deep mine that is conservation. But conservation cannot be pursued solely by private initiative. It requires intervention by the State. Those concerned for the heritage and students of conservation need to know how the present system evolved and how the legislative process works. My hope is that those involved with, or concerned for, conservation will find this account both interesting and useful.

PLANNING AND CONSERVATION

Conservation predates town and country planning in its legislative form, but became assimilated into the planning system and in some respects came to dominate it. In the first twenty years or so after the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 conservation was an integral but relatively minor part of the planning system.² In the subsequent twenty years it became increasingly prominent and acquired a life of its own. Indeed ‘planning’ and ‘conservation’ are sometimes portrayed as antagonists. It has become important to reassert that conservation is part of planning and that planning must incorporate conservation objectives. But, just as planning is wider in scope than conservation, so conservation goes wider than planning. It is the relationship between the two that needs unravelling, and the historical approach can help to do this.

There can be no mistaking the triumphalist tone of conservationists today. Michael Ross, the former head of Listing Branch in the Department of the Environment, proclaims in the opening chapter of his book Planning and the Heritage, ‘Politicians have ignored conservation at their peril…the idea of conservation, the presumption that the old must survive— and on occasion adapt—has triumphed… The philosophy of conservation…is accepted by the majority; architects, developers, planners and politicians cannot ignore this fact.’³ If one has reservations about the conservationist cause it is not because one ignores ‘this fact’ but because it is a more complex issue than is often assumed. This too will become apparent as the story unfolds.

ARCHAEOLOGY

This study of urban conservation does not deal fully with the parallel history of British archaeology. It is a curious fact that, although the legislative history begins with ancient monuments, in subsequent years ancient monuments and town and country planning follow separate paths, and the relationship between them has never been fully resolved, although Planning Policy Guidance Note No. 16 seeks to clarify it.⁴ Archaeology has developed a much more scholarly bias than planning, which in its origins was concerned chiefly with new development and, as this study shows, has only slowly been adapted to the needs of conservation. Archaeology developed its own culture and methods quite distinct from planning, and this has been reflected in legislation. For many years some departmental rivalry existed between those concerned with ancient monuments and those responsible for listed buildings. While those functions were brought together in 1970 in the new Department of the Environment, they were never fully integrated; and since the formation of the Department of National Heritage in 1992 new problems of coordination have been generated. This element of Departmental rivalry adds a certain spice to the story.

PREVIOUS STUDIES

I have not found that any previous writer on conservation has approached the subject in the way that I propose. Most concentrate either on promoting the conservationist cause or on the technical and legal aspects of conservation. Some authors include a brief account of its origins and an outline of previous legislation, notably Wayland Kennet in Preservation⁵ and Alan Dobby in Conservation and Planning⁶— two of the best books on the subject, that take the story up to the 1970s. But none deals with the legislative and policy history in detail, or takes as the principal theme the government response to changing attitudes towards historic buildings and their conservation. One of the most interesting books on the subject is The Future of the Past edited by Jane Fawcett.⁷ This was published in 1976 under the auspices of the Victorian Society and derived in part from an exhibition sponsored by the Society at the Central School of Art and Design in London in 1971 (and subsequently acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum). But, despite its subtitle ‘Attitudes to Conservation 1174– 1974’, it does not attempt to provide a continuous or comprehensive account of the history of conservation but comprises a collection of brilliant essays by authors as diverse as Nikolaus Pevsner and Mark Girouard on the one hand, and John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster on the other. The introductory chapter by Nikolaus Boulting, however, provides a short summary of the progress of conservation in Britain from the earliest days to the Act of 1968 and I have drawn on this for two or three early examples.

The weightiest study of architectural conservation that I have come across is the unpublished PhD thesis by Jukha Ilmari Jokilehto, completed in 1986 for the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies at the University of York. Its full title indicates its scope and purpose: The Contribution of English, French, German and Italian Thought towards an International Approach to the Conservation of Cultural Property. Although it extends much wider than my own study, it includes much fascinating material on the course of conservation in England during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is a most remarkable piece of work but it does not deal with the policy and legislative history of conservation which is the subject of the present study. Mr Jokilehto later became European Director of the International Council for the Conservation of Monuments and Sites.

There is an enormously rich literature, of course, on architectural history and, in the past thirty years or so, a rapidly diversifying stream of studies dealing with conservation from the aesthetic, psychological, sociological and anthropological perspectives.⁸ But my main sources have been the Official reports of Debates in Parliament (Hansard), Parliamentary papers, official publications and Departmental Bill Papers at the Public Records Office (the last far less informative than might be thought). There is an excellent bibliography which takes the subject up to 1976 —A Critical Bibliography of Building Conservation by J.F.Smith,⁹ but this does not deal with the legislative history or policy development. It is interesting to note that Smith, having surveyed the literature in great detail, remarks that conservation is ‘now generally recognised as an element in every aspect of architectural and urban design’, whereas ‘two decades ago conservation was regarded as a minority interest.’ I have not attempted to extend Smith’s bibliography but I have recorded in the notes to each chapter and in the Select Bibliography the books that I have found most useful or interesting, and these will serve as suggestions for further reading.

It has not been possible to take account of Preserving the Past: The Rise of Heritage in Modern Britain edited by Michael Hunter¹⁰ which appeared too late for this study. The book comprises essays by nine contributors on aspects of conservation history and includes new material, notably on the early days of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, the evolution of the ancient monuments regime and the early days of listing, together with an up-to-date bibliographical essay by the editor. It does not deal in detail with the political and policy aspects of the subject, which are the main concern of the present study.

THE SCOPE OF CONSERVATION

The fact that conservation has a long legislative history does not mean that its objectives have remained unchanged. The scope of conservation has widened enormously over the past hundred years and diverse influences have shaped its development. The history of conservation over that period will reveal that those early conservationists who started it all have been joined by a great many other participants. What was once the concern of antiquarians and scholars is now only part, and perhaps only a rather esoteric part, of a much wider and more complex aspect of modern life that involves questions of national identity and personal psychology.¹¹ These are deep waters.

It is not the intention of this study to provide a detailed guide to the legal aspects of conservation. The late Roger Suddards’s admirable textbook on the subject Listed Buildings lists over sixty relevant Acts, and there has been further legislation since his book first appeared in 1988 (published in its third edition in 1996).¹² I record the main legislative landmarks but my purpose is to examine how the policy behind the legislation has evolved and how the concept of safeguarding such buildings has changed from restoration to preservation, and from protection to conservation, and how it may now be changing again. The significance of these linguistic distinctions will become apparent but they have not been used consistently in the past and they overlap to a considerable extent. In brief, however, restoration implies significant work on the fabric, which may extend to substantial rebuilding; preservation implies retention with minimal alteration; protection implies safeguards against demolition or ill-advised improvement but does not exclude possible adaptations or alterations; finally conservation goes much wider than the protection of individual buildings and can extend to whole areas and to features other than buildings. It also implies a different policy approach, reflecting a broader range of public interest. Those distinctions are sufficient for our present purpose and already indicate that there is a diversity of motives or objectives involved. Conservation, being broadest in scope, provides a convenient inclusive term for the whole business. I have used ‘preservation’ in my title solely in the interests of alliteration.

THE PROCESS OF RENEWAL

The need to renew and rebuild has obviously been a fact of life since man first began to build. It is often problematical to distinguish historically between the need to rebuild for purely practical reasons and the desire to rebuild for the greater glory of God or for the greater glory of the proprietor. Clearly religious motives played a part for the former and secular motives for the latter. Perhaps the answer is that, when the practical need or opportunity to rebuild presented itself, then aesthetic considerations also took effect.

John Harvey in Conservation of Buildings gives a detailed account of how works of restoration were carried out to important buildings from mediaeval to Tudor times.¹³ These were not motivated simply by the need for repairs but often reflected reverence and respect for buildings that had survived for centuries. It is hardly necessary to adduce evidence of the historic process of renewal, since it is apparent in almost all buildings that survive from earlier than the nineteenth century and not only among ecclesiastical buildings. At royal palaces, aristocratic mansions, country gentlemen’s homes, merchants’ town houses and countless other buildings, the work of rebuilding, additions and enhancement continued over the centuries. Considerations of practical necessity, aesthetic interests and personal vanity provided the driving force. In all of this there seems to have been a sense of progress and innovation, whether in the wealthy plutocrat abandoning the ancestral home of his Tudor forbears and building himself a Palladian mansion, or in the successful merchant cladding his half-timbered house with a new brick facade. At some point, however, the process of rebuilding turned into restoration, which led in turn to the demand for preservation.

It is difficult to identify that precise turning point. Sir Christopher Wren encountered much criticism when he produced his plans for restoring old St. Paul’s, which included taking down the tower and adjoining bays in the nave, choir and transepts, and remodelling the whole of the central area to support a huge dome.¹⁴ But the dispute was based on liturgical rather than antiquarian grounds. That dispute persisted when Wren proposed an entirely new design after the Great Fire but he eventually prevailed. He might not have done so today, if the response to the fire at Windsor Castle in 1992 reflects current attitudes to conservation (see chapter 23).

Outline

The approach that I have adopted is mainly and deliberately chronological. Part 1 deals with the origins of conservation and its cultural background, leading to the early legislation of 1882 and forward to the end of the 1930s. Part 2 deals with ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1: Introduction
• Part 1: 1882–1940
• Part 2: 1940–1975
• Part 3: Churches
• Part 4: 1976–1995
• Appendix A: Chronology
• Appendix B: Instructions to Investigators
• Appendix C: Listing Criteria
• Appendix D: Statistics
• Select Bibliography