The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

In this edition of Cornerstone

Secretary’s Notes 

English Heritage is to be congratulated on its new Heritage

at Risk Register, but what safeguards are there to make this more than a sad read?

News Briefing The latest on the SPAB’s involvement in the debate around the Government’s proposed heritage law revamp; new airport threat; ‘guerrilla repair’ comes to King’s Lynn, reports Simon Barber; water firms to flood religious buildings with higher bills, says Catherine Cullis; traditional pub signs fade away – an old SPAB concern revisited by Tim Minogue; 300 years on, a Tonge rages over Tonge Hall; yobbery costs heritage bodies a fortune, writes Patrick Sawer; and Naomi Marks might have some good news on the market value of old buildings.

SPAB AGM A superb summer afternoon in a fine saved church as old as the Society, with guest speaker Bill Bryson providing the icing on the cake.

 

Casework Landmark solution in offing forWarwickshire’s Astley Castle; historic building consultants hired to do battle with the SPAB over an ancient house in Gloucestershire; a Devon chapel yields its secrets to the Society’s Scholars; a protected plane tree and a listed wall – not the best of neighbours; Heritage Lottery money helps Llanelli House; rural buildings abounding.

 

Let us spray Historic fountains are often overlooked, but, as Peter M Brown reports, they are some of our greatest architectural assets – and should be saved.

 

Everything covered A fine practical guide to the understanding and repair of historic houses is about to be published. Better still, it has SPAB ideas close to its heart. Roger Hunt introduces the Old House Handbook.

 

COVER STORY Local authority conservation officers will be even more in the front line of protecting old buildings if the Government’s heritage Bill becomes law. But they are already under pressure as never before. How can this law work? In a special focus, we look at the issues, hear from officers as well as from the head of their professional body, while the very first officer looks back to the early 1970s. 

 

Site Seen: Recent repairs Pisa’s tower has been stabilised – for a few centuries longer. Professor John Burland explains how it was done; Sylvia Smith reports on a rare example of conservation in the Gulf; and Ayaka Takaki tells of the meticulous, sensitive repair of a tiled floor at Greenwich Naval College Chapel.

 

Technical advice Douglas Kent takes to the highest room.

 

Bokhara beauty A medieval tomb in Uzbekistan fascinates Sir John Tusa.

Fine and dandy Osbert Lancaster placed historic architecture in the public mind, and kept it there for decades. As a major retrospective opens, James Knox looks back over the life and work of one of the greatest cartoonists, wits, satirists – and lovers of traditional buildings – that Britain has ever produced.

 

New books St Paul’s – the mechanics of the rebuilding seen in detail, contracts and all; wall paintings in England andWales, among our unsung artistic glories – two new books; damp proof courses, the shocking truth; stone in focus.

 

Letters What is a good, honest stained glass repair?; a new planning law loophole allows unsightly advertising to deface even grade I listed buildings in World Heritage Sites; SPAB founderWilliam Holman Hunt memorial in Jerusalem.

 

Architecture in Art Rubens’s scaled-down sketch for Britain’s greatest site-specific painting, for the ceiling at the Banqueting House, is for sale for £6m.

 

For advertising in Cornerstone please contact: