How to save historic buildings in the real world

I have been fortunate in my career to have been able to give new life to many old buildings, and to witness how they have become the focus for the regeneration of run-down inner-urban areas. But their physical transformation, however striking, is less spectacular than the social transformation they can bring for the benefit of the public.

The sustained emotive power of old buildings has been most powerfully expressed by Ruskin, who wrote of old buildings that, “They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them and partly to all the generations of mankind who are to follow us.” We may not agree with Ruskin’s ideas of the sanctity of heritage, but we can all agree how the buildings that form our local environment shape our sense of place and our sense of identity. However, such feelings remain hidden, or latent, until there is a threat to their future or to their survival.

I witnessed this at Sutton House in Hackney when an extraordinary committed group of local people came together from the local community to save the house from conversion by the National Trust to private apartments, convinced that the house could serve a far richer social purpose. The house has been converted to include a café, a barn for performance and functions, and a gallery for temporary exhibitions.

These activities produce a modest income, but the wing of the house provides a more stable income from lettable offices. Nevertheless, the house still requires significant revenue subsidy from the National Trust in order to open the house to visitors and to run the schools and adult education programme. The various bodies set up to campaign for buildings under threat depend on the strength of local community feeling, as the success of Save Britain’s Heritage, the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT) and many building preservation trusts bears witness.

Saving buildings is not enough. They have to fulfil a social purpose and to find a new economic role if their conservation is not to prove pyrrhic.

The last 25 years have seen a remarkable transformation of the fortunes of some of our most important buildings in public ownership, conserved and restored to serve a wider social purpose, thanks largely to the foundation of the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF).

Projects that we have carried out include the restoration of the derelict Clissold House in Stoke Newington as a public café, community and function venue at the centre of one of London’s most beautiful and popular parks, throbbing with life on a sunny weekend. The café produces a helpful income from public use, the functions produce a more significant income from private, or rather semi-public, events, and the joint income goes a significant way to aiding the financial sustainability of the house and park. I prefer the term semi-public use in relation to functions and wedding parties, as they bring a new audience to the house and park who would not otherwise visit and enjoy this beautiful survivor of the heritage of Stoke Newington.

We have transformed the social value of a number of churches by making them accessible, and introducing kitchens, toilets, heating and lighting to allow them to fulfil an extended range of uses, as at St Nicholas Kings Lynn, St Alfege Greenwich and elsewhere.

I was also involved as a trustee of the CCT in its magnificent transformation of St Paul’s Bristol, then derelict, into a circus training school and café for the local community. These examples of extended public uses have been supplemented in other churches by the introduction of separate income-generating uses in the vestries, aisles or galleries.

We have recently completed the restoration and extension of Toynbee Hall, founded in 1885, to extend its original function providing social service to the poorest inhabitants of the East End, and as a conference venue specialising in social welfare. The historic continuity of the building and of its service to the community lends a particular aura to the events that take place there. Income from conference use and lettings forms a vital source of revenue funding for their social activities.

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All of these projects have been carefully designed both to restore the buildings and to provide them with a viable future, socially, environmentally and economically. Indeed economic sustainability is the key to their long-term survival in times of diminishing or non-existent state and local authority subsidy, and a viable business plan is an increasingly important aspect of any successful application to the NLHF. This, in turn, is nearly always an indispensable requirement for providing the majority of the capital cost, since a mortgage could never be repaid out of income, and the capital cost can rarely be found from other sources.

This is a source of increasing worry, since the NLHF funds are increasingly tightly stretched, English Heritage and local authority grants are almost non-existent, and central government is actively militating against the reuse of old buildings by the continued imposition of VAT on repairs and alterations. This is a monstrous disincentive to the reuse and recycling of old buildings, and a severe impediment to their ability to provide new social, environmental and economic value, to the benefit of people and to the benefit of the planet.