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Not as Ugly as Stonehenge: Architecture and History in the First Lists of Historic Buildings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Frank Kelsall
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Extract

Four years ago Peter Draper, as your recently retired president, described his lecture as valedictory and therefore self-indulgent in its choice of topic. What a useful precedent. I hope I am not over self-indulgent to the extent of being too autobiographical, but the subject does relate to my personal experience of the practice of architectural history in the conservation of historic buildings. The history of building conservation is now developing its own quite substantial literature to which this is a small contribution. To some extent this lecture is as much about bureaucracy as about architecture, for much of my life has been spent as an official in the public service. But, so that the lecture is properly historical, most of what I will talk about happened before I was involved.

One major difference between the British and American Societies of Architectural Historians is that the American Society has always involved itself in building preservation issues, whereas the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain does not. This recognizes the different circumstances in each country. In Great Britain we have many amenity societies directed to conservation matters; most of us will belong to one or more of them and they are centres of quite extraordinary expertise. But in view of what I will say later, it is notable that in an account of a meeting in March 1941 in Washington, reported in the first volume of the American Society’s journal, Henry-Russell Hitchcock commented on the merits of the Historic American Buildings Survey, but added that selections by local groups often lacked historical perspective and ignored anything later than the Greek Revival; that there was excessive preservation of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses in New England without regard to architectural merit; and that primary monuments of modern architectural history were wantonly destroyed. As concerns the latter, he cited, among others, Richardson’s Marshall Field Warehouse, and a threat to Wright’s Robie House. The representative of the National Parks Service said that 1870 was about the date limit for a building to be regarded as of interest, though the Vanderbilt House of 1895 had recently been acquired, and that attention was also being paid to groups of buildings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 52 , 2009 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2009

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References

Notes

1 ‘Summary of Round Table Discussion on the Preservation of Historic Architectural Monuments’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 1. 2 (1941), pp. 21-24.

2 Beattie, Susan, ‘New Scotland Yard’, Architectural History, 15 (1972), pp. 68–81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Powers, Alan, ‘Conservation: the Heroic Period’, Twentieth Century Architecture, 7 (2004), pp. 7–18 Google Scholar.

4 Preservation Policy Group, Report to the Minister of Housing and Local Government (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

5 Andrew Saint, ‘How Listing Happened’, in Preserving the Past: the Rise of Heritage in Modern Britain, ed. Hunter, Michael (Stroud, 1996), pp. 115–33 Google Scholar.

6 The Parish of St Anne Soho, ed. Sheppard, F. H. W., Survey of London, 33 (London, 1966), pp. 223–25;Google Scholar the staircase from the house was re-erected in the Art Institute of Chicago but de-accessioned in 1997 ( Harris, John, Moving Rooms (New Haven and London, 2007), pp. 177–80)Google Scholar.

7 Ministry of Health, Annual Report (1937).

8 Kennet, Wayland, Preservation (London, 1972), p. 40 Google Scholar; The Times, 26 July 1939. I am grateful to Julian Holder for drawing my attention to the Foord Almshouses.

9 [Gowers Committee], Houses of Outstanding Historic or Architectural Interest (London, 1950).

10 TNA/CAB/134/308.

11 Minute of 49th meeting of the ministerial advisory committee, 8 February 1954; I used the copy in Lord Holford’s papers at Liverpool University Library.

12 The use of the words ‘wrong department’ is, of course, my own polemic.

13 TNA/WORK/14/2318.

14 Wagner, Anthony, A Herald’s World (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

15 First report of Maclagan Committee in TNA/HLG/103/48.

16 Wagner, , Herald’s World; Harvey, John, ‘Listing as I Knew it in 1949’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 38 (1994), pp. 97–104 Google Scholar; Sherborn, Derek, An Inspector Recalls: Saving our Heritage (Lewes, 2003)Google Scholar.

17 TNA/HLG/103/42 contains a pristine copy of the Instructions. Sections have subsequently been printed in Earl, John, Building Conservation Philosophy (Reading, 1996)Google Scholar, and Delafons, John, Politics and Preservation (London, 1997).Google Scholar

18 Northern Kensington, ed. Sheppard, F. H. W., Survey of London, 37 (London, 1973), pp. 185–87 Google Scholar; cf. letter to The Times, 1 December 1922, signed by The Earl of Crawford and Balcarres and nine others, including W. R. Lethaby, Halsey Ricardo and Sir Aston Webb.

19 TNA/HLG/103/42.

20 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, Annual Report, 1943-47. The St Albans Report is dated 1 June 1945; there is a copy surviving in the SPAB archive and another with St Albans City Council. I am grateful to Jayne West for drawing my attention to this latter copy.

21 London Metropolitan Archives, GLC/AR/HB/01/0614; cf. Frank Kelsall. ‘Listing and the LCC’, Transactions of the Association for Studies in the Conservation of Historic Buildings, 10 (1985), pp. 48-49.

22 Saint,’How Listing Happened’.

23 TNA/HLG/103/48.

24 The list of buildings 1918-39 is in TNA/HLG/103/46; the report of the decision not to list the works of living architects in TNA/HLG/103/43.

25 TNA/HLG/103/43.

26 Watkin, David, The Rise of Architectural History (London, 1980), p. 173 Google Scholar.

27 Letter from Peter Ferriday to Frank Kelsall, 12 July 1999.

28 I am grateful to the late Sir Howard Colvin for giving me this reference.

29 Rosso, Michela, ‘An Open Space at the Constricted Centre of the City: Summerson and the Artificial Inflation of Victorian Values’, in Summerson and Hitchcock, Centenary Essays on Architectural Historiography, ed. Salmon, Frank (New Haven and London, 2006), pp. 155–69 Google Scholar.

30 TNA/HLG/103/43.

31 TNA/HLG/103/43.

32 TNA/HLG/103/43.

33 RIBA, Goodhart-Rendel MSS, H/13/2.

34 TNA/HLG/103/43. The list of twenty-five architects had been drawn up by 1982 at the latest, when it was included in Guidance for Field Workers issued to listing inspectors.

35 Included in Wagner’s Paper LB1 in RIBA, Goodhart-Rendel MSS H/12/3.

36 Cherry, Bridget, ‘The Pevsner 50: Nikolaus Pevsner and the Listing of Modern Buildings’, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 46 (2002), pp. 97–110 Google Scholar.

37 TNA/HLG/103/43.

38 TNA/HLG/103/43.

39 Saint, ‘How Listing Happened’; TNA/HLG/103/46.

40 TNA/HLG/103/42 has the correspondence with E. T. Long.

41 Information on Peter Fleetwood-Hesketh in John Vaughan, ‘Origins and Founders — The First Chairman of the Liverpool Group’, Newsletter of the Liverpool Group of the Victorian Society (January 1999), pp. 3-5.

42 Information on Honeyman from the online Dictionary of Scottish Architects, www.scottisharchitects.org.uk. I am grateful to Grace McCombie and Neil Moat for their help on St Luke Wallsend.

43 Correspondence with Betjeman (not included in his published letters) and David Verey’s response is in TNA/HLG/103/54; cf. RIBA, Goodhart-Rendel MSS 14/1.

44 Saint, ‘How Listing Happened’; as late as 1966 Richard Crossman, as minister, congratulated himself on getting the time between survey and issue of a list down from ten years to three; Crossman, R. H. S., Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, Vol 1: Minister of Housing and Local Government (London, 1966), p. 192 Google Scholar.

45 Minutes of 59th meeting of ministerial advisory committee, 19 July 1955; I used the copy in Lord Holford’s papers in Liverpool University Library.

46 l’Hopital, Winifred de, Westminster Cathedral and its Architect, 2 vols (London, 1919)Google Scholar; Lethaby, W. R., Philip Webb and his Work (London, 1935)Google Scholar; Blomfield, Reginald, R N Shaw RA, Architect, 1831-1912 (London, 1940)Google Scholar.

47 Minutes of 89th meeting of the ministerial advisory committee, 14 April 1959; I used the copy in Lord Holford’s papers at Liverpool University Library.

48 Goodhart-Rendel, H. S., ‘Victorian Conservanda’, Journal of the London Society, 334 (November 1958), pp. 38–52 Google Scholar; for a development of the idea that the Victorian Society in its early days increased its credibility by not being too preservationist, see Dungavell, Ian, ‘London as it Might Have Been: Saving Too Little or Saving Too Much’, Journal of the London Society, 457 (Summer 2009), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar.

49 Goodhart-Rendel, H. S., ‘What Architecture Can Give to the Layman’, Vitruvian Nights (London, 1932), pp. 36–59 Google Scholar.

50 Goodhart-Rendel, H. S., ‘Victorian Conservanda’Google Scholar.