We cannot protect historic buildings without protecting the skills to care for them

Recently I attended the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) repair of old buildings course. I am slowly working my way towards RIBA Conservation Architect accreditation, and this week offered me an opportunity to learn about materials and techniques I’m not working with in my day-to-day projects.

It was a week filled with that (for me) unparalleled luxury of learning something interesting from a passionate expert, without having to be actively responsible for immediately doing something with that information.

We visited sites at Canterbury Cathedral, St Bart’s Hospital, Temple Church, the Canterbury Old Butter Market and Canterbury Old Priest’s Hospital. In every instance, painstaking and intricate work was underway, staffed by craftsmen and women with, what seemed to me to be, infinite patience.

The methodologies they spoke to us about and demonstrated vary significantly from those I see on new-build construction sites. I saw a respect, almost a reverence, for materials – and an insatiable curiosity about the stories the buildings could tell them about the craftspeople who came before them.

I see passion on building sites all the time, but this intellectual curiosity and painstaking rigour was new to me. However, this level of craftsmanship does not seem to be significantly valued above any other construction work (other than perhaps by those in the know).

As a result, I kept coming back to one thought over the course of the week: our national philosophy around heritage conservation.

The SPAB approach to conservation is very clear. Historic fabric should be conserved, buildings should be fully understood and well maintained, and repairs should be honest and distinguishable from the original fabric. One should not attempt to ‘restore’ a building to its original, or imagined original, form.

Their approach was groundbreaking, coming, as it did, as a reaction to the overzealous restoration philosophy of the late nineteenth century. Their thinking was influential in the underpinning of much UK heritage legislation, and in the framing of the 1964 Venice Charter that set international guidelines for conserving and restoring ancient buildings, and the groundwork for the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS).

We have a seemingly robust listing system for significant buildings, and we therefore assume we are protecting our heritage

However, as the world has become more interconnected, other conservation approaches have become increasingly influential, and the discussion more nuanced. A 2003 ICOMOS charter on Conservation and Structural Alteration of Architectural Heritage states, for example, that a building’s “physical heritage [should] be considered within the cultural context to which it belongs”.

I have also read arguments that for more recently constructed listed buildings (twentieth and twenty-first century), the significance of the fabric is not of primary concern for conservation, as many of the construction technologies are still in everyday use. In these cases, so goes the argument, the intention of the design is what must be guarded.

As with everything relating to building conservation, I believe this is best considered on a building-by-building basis. Chronological snobbery may not end up serving future generations well if we over-sanitise the built legacy of our recent past.

I am a relative beginner in this subject, so will not try to create a complex international argument about building conservation. Within the UK, however, I do wonder if our own heritage is as respected and treasured as we believe to be the case.

We have a seemingly robust listing system for significant buildings, and we therefore assume we are protecting our heritage. However, there is no specific set of building regulations or conservation professionals that the owners of one of these treasured buildings are obliged to consult.

There is no mandatory minimum condition the building must be kept in, which has led to the HE ‘Heritage at Risk’ list – standing at 4,891 entries in 2024. Listing only notes that it is of interest and that additional permissions must be sought for work. It does not mandate a standard of workmanship on the buildings, or a level of maintenance.

The process itself is also easy to circumnavigate. Anecdotally, I heard recently of an owner of a significant twentieth-century home using the listing report from Historic England to strategically demolish the aspects of their (original) interiors that were of interest, so as to ensure the home was unlistable.

An isolated case perhaps, but no law was broken here. Despite the building being considered special enough to be considered for listing, there is no temporary protection pending the outcome of the listing process.

There are other arguments to consider conservation more seriously besides respect for great design, or care for our history. In 2022, UNESCO estimated that globally, the national public and private combined expenditure on cultural heritage for 2020-21 was $89.10 per capita.

It is not a small amount. In the UK specifically, Historic England estimated that the heritage sector in 2022 contributed £44.9 billion in Gross Value Added to the UK economy, and supported the employment of over half a million people. This is a greater direct contribution to UK GDP than the security, defence or aerospace industries.

Until the UK decides it wants to care more deeply for these buildings, there is a role for architects

The question we should ask ourselves is how seriously we take the care of our historic buildings. They are clearly not of marginal importance, either culturally or economically, and yet we have not closed the loopholes in the frameworks put in place to protect them. Nor have we sought to protect the knowledge and skills required to care for them.

Should we perhaps be considering something like Japan’s ‘living national treasures’ subsidy – where a strictly limited number of master craftspeople are awarded a stipend by Japan’s government in recognition that they are safeguarding cultural craft knowledge of national importance?

Should we perhaps mandate a minimum level of repair to which listed buildings should be maintained? Or a register of professionals and craftspeople qualified to work on them that should be consulted?

Should we fund more training for conservation officers so that they are better placed to make decisions as Listed Building Applications come across their desks?

Until the UK decides it wants to care more deeply for these buildings, there is a role for architects. We all see old buildings – listed and unlisted – in our daily practice. We have some influence over the decisions made for their future.

As retrofit and refurb become ever more commonplace, we can educate ourselves to be advocates for these buildings and the stories they tell, and hope that one day legislation catches up.