Bob Kindred’s ‘Periodically’, in IHBC’s newest Context issue, No. 185, offers ‘bite sized’ summaries from the best of current conservation and heritage periodicals and handbooks.
Bob Kindred writes:
SPAB Magazine
The Summer 2025 edition of the SPAB Magazine celebrates imaginative and respectful contemporary approaches to new designs for old buildings with three well-illustrated examples: additions to Darwin College and St John’s College, Cambridge, and the integration of new design with a ruinous single-storey stone agricultural building in North Ayrshire, with the design approach behind each case explained. It should hardly need stating that the encouragement of good contemporary contextual architecture is an important argument against easy reversion to pastiche.
It is also a timely reminder that the advice in the first version of the National Planning Policy Framework (very regrettably not replicated in subsequent iterations) was that ‘planning policies and decisions should not attempt to impose architectural styles or particular tastes and they should not stifle innovation, originality or initiative through unsubstantiated requirements to conform to certain development forms or styles’.
Periodic exhortations to create excellence in architecture in historic settings seem to be cyclical without necessarily much evidence of a general improvement. Some readers can trace these pleas in the modern era at least to the ill-fated Building in Context publication in 2001 (jointly by English Heritage and CABE). Excellence is seemingly always reliant on enlightened, well-funded clients and an absence of value-engineering.
C20
We can thank the Scottish Heritage protection system for the 30-year rule regarding eligibility of modern buildings for listing, eventually adopted in England. The latest issue of C20, the magazine of the Twentieth Century Society (No 1, 2025) notes that while we are yet to see any 21st century buildings listed anywhere in the UK, Historic Environment Scotland (HES) has added an extraordinary site significantly over that threshold to its inventory of gardens and designed landscapes. This is Crawick Multiverse in Dumfries and Galloway, designated in April 2024, just seven years after its completion.
Designed by Charles Jencks, it was constructed between 2011 and 2017 across 22.5 hectares. Protection, enthusiastically supported by the society, has arisen out of a pioneering and continuing project examining designed landscapes of the recent past….
The Georgian
The Georgian, the magazine of the Georgian Group (Issue 1, 2025) continues to highlight the important issue of what should constitute an appropriate approach to the repairs following the disastrous fire that swept through the National Trust’s country house Clandon Park in 2015, and whether (at the time of writing) the secretary of state will call in the controversial scheme for a public inquiry. The Georgians considered the initial approach to reinstatement and repair to be flawed, and they continue to maintain that the scheme is both harmful and intrusive. They illustrate the coverage of the issue in national media. An inquiry would be invaluable, not least in exploring the wider issues of the underpinning philosophy of repair.
Each issue devotes an impressive amount of space to statutory casework (19 pages in this issue) demonstrating the importance of authoritative expert advice to local planning authorities set out in paragraphs 207 and 208 of the NPPF, and the importance of the statutory casework grant in the light of the government’s review of the statutory consultee system. Also of interest is an article by Nigel Hankin on ‘Turban Domes and Lofty Pinnacles’. Hankin addresses the Indian influences on late-Georgian buildings beyond the most obvious example of the Royal Pavilion, Brighton….
Georgian Group Journal
Membership of the Georgian Group brings with it the excellent annual Georgian Group Journal (Vol XXXIII, 2025), devoted in its entirety to Sir Christopher Wren. The nine papers over 130 pages are by authors with a particular specialism or interest in late-17th- and 18th-century architecture and culture….
Historic Environment Policy and Practice
The latest 190-page bumper edition of the Historic Environment Policy and Practice (Vol 16, No 1, 2025) concentrates particularly on the relationship between heritage, ecology and the natural environment…
Heritage Now
As a statutory amenity society, Historic Buildings and Places campaigns on behalf of historic buildings of all ages. The latest issue of Heritage Now (No 12, Summer 2025) has a feature on gasholders in celebration of largely unsung landmarks. Gasholders date back as far as the second decade of the 19th century, when gas was manufacturing from coal at local works and stored in tanks before being distributed. Gasholders in cities, towns and rural villages became a common sight.
Paul Holden looks at a new book by Russell Thomas and Timur Tatlioglu, published by Liverpool University Press, that celebrates these much-overlooked and rapidly disappearing structures. We have good records of their existence as many of them they were photographed before they disappeared. In a further article, Martine Hamilton Knight, a professional architectural photographer and a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, explains some of the principles behind architectural photography. She offers advice on how to take spectacular images, some of which are beautifully illustrated in the magazine.
There is a valuable article by Martin Cherry about the final volume of a 10-part series that examines places of worship in Britain and Ireland from 300 CE to 2021. The final volume covers the period after 1989. The books, published by Shaun Tyas between 2015 and 2024, are all still in print. The series set out to understand how the use of places of worship changed over time in such a way as to better serve human aspirations and spiritual need, and to capture the numinous or the vitality of the living church community. This is particularly important at a time when many of those churches are under threat of closure, or worse. The holistic, organic approach taken by the books will surely help inform the debate about the future of these places of worship and hopefully engage a wider public.
War Memorials Trust Bulletin
In my March 2025 (Context 183) column, I referred to the excellent work of the War Memorials Trust in attempting to identify photos of such memorials in unknown locations as part of its public- engagement programme. The latest issue of the War Memorials Trust Bulletin (No 105, July 2025) continues to illustrate obscure examples posted on the website War Memorials Online. Appeals for information continue to meet with success and it would be invaluable to the trust if readers could add more local knowledge.
Bob Kindred MBE
Context 185: CONTENTS
Themed Articles
- Editorial
- Understanding pitched roofs, Madeleine Clark
- A code of practice for slate and stone roofing, Chris Wood
- Reslating an ancient water mill, Terry Hughes
- A carbon case for indigenous slate, Soki Rhee-Duverne and Jim Hart
- Successful solar generation in the historic environment, Morwenna Slade
- Sourcing Scottish slate in the 21st century, Imogen Shaw and Graham Briggs
- The roofscape of Hampstead Garden Suburb, Joe Mathieson
Feature Articles
- Conserving the postmodern legacy of the Sainsbury Wing, Alasdair Travers and Jon Wright
- The sad story of Derby Hippodrome, Derek Latham, Peter Steer and Ashley Waterhouse
Regular & Occasional features & updates
- Briefing
- Out of Context
- Periodically
- The writer’s voice
- Letter
- Law and policy
- Vox pop
- Reviews
IHBC Updates
- IHBC celebrates World Heritage UK’s anniversary, Rebecca Thompson
- Notes from the chair
- Director’s cut
- Inter alia
- New member profile
- New members
Commercial
- Products and services
- Specialist suppliers index
Reading Context helps IHBC members develop their skills across all of the IHBC’s Areas of Competence, and so serves as a critical baseline in addressing priorities in Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
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