Goodbye England - does anybody out there care?
At the invitation of Stamford Civic Society, Simon Thurley now Chief Executive of English Heritage and the Government’s Chief Advisor on the built heritage, gave a lecture in the Arts Centre to a full house as part of a series of lectures marking the 40th Anniversary of the designation of Stamford as the first Urban Conservation Area in England.
He reminded the audience that, in the 1960s, there was great concern at the rate of demolition in historic town centres which led to the formation at national level of such organisations as the Civic Trust and the Victorian Society and at the local level Civic or Amenity Societies. He then outlined what he saw as an equally grave threat to the built environment of England and the potential loss of buildings which we would regard as truly characteristic of Englishness.
He outlined the decline in church attendance and the immense problem of maintaining historic churches of all denominations but particularly the Church of England with its many medieval churches. Public buildings are at risk as no longer required for the purpose for which they were built e.g., Town Halls or Magistrates Courts as services are rationalised. The changes in the national economy has led to former mills, warehouses, mines, factories, railway stations no longer required with the country having the finest stock of industrial archaeological buildings in the world – many the first of their kind anywhere.
Housing is also under going great changes – the proposed demolition of terraced housing in former northern industrial areas, the suburbs losing their attractiveness as property is inappropriately altered or front gardens concreted over. The current definition of “brownfield” sites in leading to the loss of gardens and trees in urban areas. Changes in lifestyle means pubs are closing on a regular basis and many of these are what we first think of as the “traditional English pubs.”
Retail is everywhere undergoing massive changes in the high street, corner shop and villages alike. Coastal resorts, as the popularity of holidays in sunnier climes continues to grow, are left with piers, amusement arcades and other features of their pre-First World War popularity, unwanted. In the countryside, he pointed out, there are 15,000 barns standing empty due to changes in farming, many of these barns are of great antiquity. In all of this a grave danger that England could lose its distinctiveness – those features that make Norfolk or the Lake District, for example, distinctive from anywhere else. The scale of this change is unprecedented, the maintenance cost of our finest listed buildings massive and the task of finding new uses for redundant buildings, challenging.
He was reminded that market towns such as Stamford are not immune from these changes in economic and social life. In short, the country faces a massive problem of retaining and reusing buildings which programmes like the BBC’s Restoration show are loved and cherished but how to do so and what role the state should play in this are unresolved issues facing the country today.
This was a talk that was both salutary and challenging.
John Plumb
Chairman: Stamford Civic Society 2007
He reminded the audience that, in the 1960s, there was great concern at the rate of demolition in historic town centres which led to the formation at national level of such organisations as the Civic Trust and the Victorian Society and at the local level Civic or Amenity Societies. He then outlined what he saw as an equally grave threat to the built environment of England and the potential loss of buildings which we would regard as truly characteristic of Englishness.
He outlined the decline in church attendance and the immense problem of maintaining historic churches of all denominations but particularly the Church of England with its many medieval churches. Public buildings are at risk as no longer required for the purpose for which they were built e.g., Town Halls or Magistrates Courts as services are rationalised. The changes in the national economy has led to former mills, warehouses, mines, factories, railway stations no longer required with the country having the finest stock of industrial archaeological buildings in the world – many the first of their kind anywhere.
Housing is also under going great changes – the proposed demolition of terraced housing in former northern industrial areas, the suburbs losing their attractiveness as property is inappropriately altered or front gardens concreted over. The current definition of “brownfield” sites in leading to the loss of gardens and trees in urban areas. Changes in lifestyle means pubs are closing on a regular basis and many of these are what we first think of as the “traditional English pubs.”
Retail is everywhere undergoing massive changes in the high street, corner shop and villages alike. Coastal resorts, as the popularity of holidays in sunnier climes continues to grow, are left with piers, amusement arcades and other features of their pre-First World War popularity, unwanted. In the countryside, he pointed out, there are 15,000 barns standing empty due to changes in farming, many of these barns are of great antiquity. In all of this a grave danger that England could lose its distinctiveness – those features that make Norfolk or the Lake District, for example, distinctive from anywhere else. The scale of this change is unprecedented, the maintenance cost of our finest listed buildings massive and the task of finding new uses for redundant buildings, challenging.
He was reminded that market towns such as Stamford are not immune from these changes in economic and social life. In short, the country faces a massive problem of retaining and reusing buildings which programmes like the BBC’s Restoration show are loved and cherished but how to do so and what role the state should play in this are unresolved issues facing the country today.
This was a talk that was both salutary and challenging.
John Plumb
Chairman: Stamford Civic Society 2007
