Interview with Will Palin of SAVE Britain’s Heritage

Almost the last thing that you would expect from an organisation called SAVE Britain’s Heritage is that it would commission an architect to design contemporary extensions to housing. Yet as part of its campaign against the government’s Pathfinder regeneration projects, the charity asked Mark Hines to design a series of modular extensions and additions that could enlarge and improve existing terraced houses.

Originally designed to show how 500 houses in east Manchester could be saved from demolition, the proposals have been extended and form the basis of a report that SAVE will publish in May.

SAVE secretary William Palin says: “We are very strong on re-use or bringing life back to historic buildings that are empty or under threat,’’ he says. “We like to see ourselves as a free agent that gets involved with the cases that would otherwise fall through the gaps between the amenity societies.”

SAVE grew out of an exhibition that writer and architectural historian Marcus Binney mounted at the Victoria & Albert Museum with the then curator of the RIBA’s drawings collection, John Harris, called The Destruction of the Country House. Relying entirely on membership fees and donations, it has consistently mounted legal challenges to demolitions, rapidly broadening its interest to encompass railway buildings, churches and mills. SAVE, for example, led the campaign in 1981 to save Battersea power station from destruction, at the same time coming up with a proposal to turn Bankside Power Station into an art gallery — fulfilled two decades later with the opening of Tate Modern.

More recent campaigns include the successful blocking of the redevelopment of Smithfield General Market, and the current fight against Pathfinder, which is classic SAVE territory. It is not that the northern terraced buildings that, in many areas, Pathfinder is looking to demolish, are special pieces of architecture, but, says Palin: “They have sustained communities and generations of people.”

The work with Hines is aimed at showing just how flexible those buildings can be. Palin acknowledges that terrace housing has a bad reputation in the north but believes: “There are fantastic opportunities for eco refurbishment.” But he adds: “There is too much money, too much developer interest, and too much social engineering. Pathfinder is sinister. It is not learning from the mistakes of the past.”

In Lancaster, SAVE was instrumental in halting a shopping centre scheme that would have destroyed 30 buildings in a conservation area. It achieved spot listing for the Mitchell’s Brewery building, three days after it was damaged in an arson attack. It took the development to a public inquiry, where it fell, despite the council’s initial approval.

Another SAVE project that will “be a big battle” is Tottenham High Road, says Palin. Tottenham Hotspur wants to demolish 15 buildings to create a piazza. SAVE employed architect Huw Thomas to come up with an alternative scheme that would save the buildings.

Palin says: “I think architects can have fun — too many look at existing buildings as a problem.” With tightening budgets and concerns about embodied energy, this may well be a view whose time has come.