6 C O N T E X T 1 1 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 0 Periodically The axe-wielding barbarians are at the gates! The thunderous pounding of their advance has been ringing in our ears for some time. By the time you read this, the extent of the intended plunder will be clearer. This mood is captured by John Innerdale’s cartoon in Cornerstone, the newsletter of the SPAB (Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings), Vol 31, No 3 2010, which depicts ‘Charlie Coalition’ struggling with a huge in-tray (the heritage brief) with the caption ‘Whitehall embraces change in the heritage sector – merge, unify, combine, streamline, bin’. Is the heritage sector about to be laid waste? If decimation or dismemberment is not to be our fate, is dissembling? Philip Venning, secretary of the SPAB, detects a worrying revival of ‘Restoration’ – not the TV series, and not the word most people use to mean any kind of work to an old building, but the pejorative term invoked by the damaging Victorian re-invention of the past, and what the society was founded to oppose. The object of this ire, surprisingly, is the National Trust chairman, Simon Jenkins, who declares that he is all for restoration when it comes to ruins. Jenkins considers himself to be Victorian in his approach, seeing little point in ruins other than as a work or art or piece of archaeology. What worries Venning is the implication that ‘the longstanding philosophy of the SPAB and, broadly, of English Heritage is too austere, too elitist. That only by turning historic buildings into versions of how they might possibly have been at some random date can one explain the past to the general public and fire their enthusiasm for it. Maybe not as undiluted Disneyland, but as more academically accurate versions’. Venning is also concerned with what lies behind English Heritage’s recent Conservation Principles, and in particular what he refers to as ‘that restorer’s charter, the test of “significance”. Had this weasel word remained part of an internal English Heritage document, it would have been less serious’. Now ‘significance’ has found its way into PPS5.While this was only supposed to clarify and simplify procedures for listed building and other heritage consents, SPAB found at a recent public inquiry at which it gave evidence that the opposite side claimed that PPS5 permitted a degree of restoration, and that this was now more acceptable. Fortunately for the society, in that particular case the inspector took SPAB’s view, but it was felt that at a future inquiry PPS5 might prove a dangerous weapon in the hands of a shrewd and determined restorer. Not everyone seems unhappy with the new government’s relationship with heritage. Catherine Croft, director of the Twentieth Century Society, comments in C20, the society’s magazine (Autumn 2010), that the new set of ministers responsible for historic buildings (both are Conservatives) so far seem to be good news as far as the buildings of that era are concerned. The first listing decision to be announced under the new regime was the Chamberlain Powell and Bon buildings at Leeds University, a very large complex of brutalist buildings that the society had campaigned to be protected. All were listed (one element at Grade ll*), although it transpired that the decision had never reached the minister, having been signed off by a junior civil servant. The minister, John Penrose, subsequently used his blog to describe the case as ‘straightforward’ and some of the buildings involved as ‘rather beautiful, modern and – as far as I could see – entirely uncontroversial’. Croft remarks that ‘this was a fantastic rejection of the knee-jerk tabloid sensibility that still tries unfailingly to link the word “concrete” with “monstrosity” and a calm acceptance of the evident quality of a great bit of architecture’. Subsequent listings have also included the much-delayed case of Milton Keynes Shopping Centre. Among the quango abolitions and amalgamations, the Theatres Trust observes in its magazine (No 25, Autumn 2010) that it has not been immune from the government’s commitment to reduce public spending. The DCMS is making sweeping changes to its arms-length bodies, including the trust. The DCMS rightly identifies the trust as a valued advisory statutory body. Its continued existence is important to protecting the future of theatres, but to reduce its administrative costs the secretary of state is proposing to declassify them. What this seems to mean in practice is that they will become independent of the department, but they are
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