Constructive Conservation in Practice
Foreword
We all have a relationship with historic places. They are part of our evolving cultural heritage and they reflect the nature and history of the communities that created them. They add distinctiveness, meaning and quality to the places in which we live, providing a sense of continuity and a source of identity. Historic places are also social and economic assets. Knowing accurately and objectively where their historic significance lies helps us determine how they can be adapted without losing what makes them special.
English Heritage has developed excellent methods of doing this and is sharing these with conservation, planning and development professionals. Our aim is to help everyone identify the heritage values of historic places early in the development process, and be specific about how they might accommodate the changes that will keep them in use, and so secure their future.
Historic places have to be understood as assets if the benefits that can be gained through new investment are to be realised. Our Conservation Principles provide a robust framework in which to understand and value a site. When combined with English Heritage collaboration with local authorities and developers at the very earliest stages of a project, this understanding becomes the starting point for successful conservation-led development of historic places.
A few years ago we published the first volume of this series, Shared Interest (2006). It championed successful schemes that involved developers working with heritage professionals to exploit the commercial potential of historic places. Since then there have been even more successes. Our constructive approach to conservation is being increasingly adopted by other public agencies and in particular by local planning authorities, who are usually, and rightly, the first point of contact for developers seeking to make changes to historic places.
This second volume of exemplary conservation-led projects is offered to stimulate greater awareness of constructive conservation and to increase confidence in the use of historic places to support regeneration, place-making and community development. The cases chosen demonstrate the essential role of enlightened local authorities, with the necessary skills and confidence among both staff and Members, in bringing the ideas of talented architects and insightful developers to a successful conclusion. I am sure that everyone will be inspired by the case studies we present here. The combination of confidence and knowledge they display will help us all to capture the investment necessary to continue the story of precious places like these.
Steven Bee
Director of Planning and Development
English Heritage
Constructive Conservation
Constructive Conservation is the broad term adopted by English Heritage for a positive and collaborative approach to conservation that focuses on actively managing change. The aim is to recognise and reinforce the historic significance of places, while accommodating the changes necessary to ensure their continued use and enjoyment.
Conservation Principles
At the heart of this, indeed at the heart of all that English Heritage does, are the Conservation Principles, policies and guidance for the sustainable management of the historic environment, published and formally adopted in 2008. These are not new to English Heritage but are a codification of our best practice. The Principles ensure consistency across our professional conservation advice and enable all others to see the basis on which we make judgements
The Principles acknowledge that we all engage with the historic places in which we live and work, and that we also share a responsibility for them. The Principles also underline the importance of a systematic and consistent approach to conservation. In order to provide this consistency, we are guided by a values-based approach to assessing heritage significance. This is our starting point for managing change to historic places.
Our all-embracing set of heritage values are grouped into four main categories: historic, aesthetic, communal and evidential. These can be used by anyone as a checklist to ensure that they have identified all aspects of the heritage value that might be ascribed to a place. Using these categories allows a precise recognition of a site’s varying levels of significance and offers an objective way of assessing the scope for new intervention. Parts which have lesser heritage significance might in some cases be adapted or replaced to encourage new or continued use. This can trigger the investment that will secure and sustain the future of those parts that are of high significance.
Local Authority support
English Heritage will continue to offer guidance and training for all involved in making changes to historic places, and through our HELM (Historic Environment Local Management) website and events programme, we will help increase local capacity and capability in constructive conservation.
Confidence is a really important element of constructive conservation, as is evident in the examples that follow: the confidence to enhance as well as to protect; to see the essence of a scheme; to distinguish the relative values embodied by a historic place; and to find creative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. We hope that these examples will inspire those local authorities that have not yet embraced the constructive conservation approach to search out the opportunities for it that lie within their own communities, and release the potential that may be locked up in historic places.
A good start in the hunt for such opportunities should be the Heritage at Risk Register, also launched by English Heritage in 2008. This is has become a national register of historically significant places that are in danger of being lost unless we all take a constructive approach to their future. Several case studies in this volume present models for ways forward.
