C O N T E X T 1 1 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 1 5 Reinventing the wheel From John Fidler, Los Angeles Congratulations on yet another wellproduced, interesting issue (Context 118, March 2011). Nothing in the USA comes close to your production values, and the content is always thought provoking and newsworthy. Two points prompted by writing. First, I always enjoy uncle Bob Kindred’s reviews of the conservation literature and was glad to see that he picked up on the special issue of the Association for Preservation Technology’s Bulletin (Vol 41, No 4, 2010) on building documentation.With so much to read and review, he may have missed, and your readers may be interested to learn, that both the symposium and the publication were put together by three Englishmen, at least one of them an IHBC member. The documentation symposium preceded the annual conference of APT in Los Angeles. Chris Gray (now running GBG-US and formerly with the metric survey team at English Heritage) and I were on the local organising committee.We and David Woodcock (retiring director of historic preservation at Texas A&M University school of architecture) devised and managed the symposium, chaired the sessions and edited the publication. Second, Rob Pickard’s article (‘Funding sources and strategies’) in that issue reminded me how often we reinvent the wheel in our business. The body of knowledge does not seem to get passed on from one generation to another. Or if it does, developments do not seem to get very far. For example, the UK conservation industry has known about Monumentenwacht since the 1970s when the late Derek Linstrum first brought over the pioneers to talk about their work at the then Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies at York University.What Pickard’s paper did not say was that the maintenance inspection and minor repair programme is subsidised by the Dutch government in lieu of having any major capital works grants programme in the Netherlands Letters (though, as in Germany, there is a local income tax to repair churches). Sterling efforts were later made by Maintain Our Heritage from 1998 onwards to emulate the Dutch scheme, but the pilot schemes have not taken off because the commercial drivers failed to materialise. In the USA, the tax incentive programme introduced in 1976 continues and every so often somebody in the UK takes an interest. Indeed, I did too for part of my masters degree at Manchester University school of architecture under Ron Brunskill. Tony Pass (now of Manx Heritage but then conservation officer for Greater Manchester Council) was my external thesis examiner, read about the tax measure and promptly reported my findings to a government inquiry, where it was eventually cited in the Montagu Report Britain’s Historic Buildings: a policy for their future use (BTA, 1980). In that document, another oral witness from CIPFA (the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy) dismissed the US tax idea in seven words. Mike Pearce followed up with me on pushing the US tax idea for Conservation: a credit account (SAVE, 1988), but again there was no traction with HMTreasury. John Fidler Sign of the times From Allan Morrison, Derbyshire You might be amused, or horrified, by the photos I took in Buxton this week. I thought perhaps it was a hoax. Then I thought it might reflect the present government’s ambivalent attitude to conservation. Perhaps the contractor thinks heritage demolition is acceptable if they claim to be recycling? Sadly the building (Haddon Hotel on London Road, Buxton), fire damaged about a year ago, is allegedly beyond economic repair, and not in the conservation area. Allan Morrison
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