2 Secretary’s Notes Notes The Conservatives say there are huge savings to be made by merging some functions of English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. But at what cost? Meanwhile, the need for real money for old buildings grows and grows.
3-10 News Briefing A ‘charter for people who want to knock buildings down’ – the Government’s Planning Policy Statement 15, that is. After an outcry, Whitehall is rethinking its guidance covering historic buildings; compulsory purchase looms at Harmondsworth Barn; replacement window firms push for taxpayer cash to subsidise ripping out traditional sashes; Tonge Hall faces another roofless winter.
8-9 Profile David Heath, the new SPAB Chairman, talks to Kate Griffin about the 1960s, William Morris and tough choices during his time at English Heritage.
7, 10 & 11 In&Around The Dance Scholarship Trust marked its 20th year with a packed AGM, dinner, music – and a fundraising walk. Kirstie Robinson reports; pargeting gets a DVD; peg tiles – SPAB’s new booklet; Dame Jenny Abramsky is guest of honour as William Morris Craft Fellows are honoured. Carbon Corner and James Innerdale’s cartoon – Harry Lime is back! – page 10.
12 Casework 144 High Street Maldon. Why Building Preservation Trust work is not always welcome; stocks – is a collapse inevitable?; one of Soho’s genteel survivors is in dire trouble; Lostwithiel’s medieval palace comes out of the shadows.
25 Back to the Battle Twenty years ago a fire reduced magnificent Uppark House to a shell. Philip Venning looks back at events following the disaster.
INTERVIEW 28-31 Time, Tories and the Treasury What would a Conservative government mean for the nation’s heritage and its cultural wellbeing? No more real money, for one thing, than Labour would spend. Yet the party promises change. Jeremy Hunt, tipped to be Culture Secretary after the General Election, takes to his medieval redoubt in Surrey, and parleys with Robin Stummer.
34 For the Record ‘Discovered’ is a word often used inaccurately with historic buildings in England, yet ‘Cornerstone’ photographer Andy Marshall has made a real find, a decaying, ornate Jacobean marvel on the outskirts of Manchester – Hopwood Hall. Byron completed ‘Childe Harold’ there, and now the building might be saved; Simon Barber, also a ‘Cornerstone’ photographer, made his own find, in Norfolk, where a thatched church was receiving a new roof using reed grown a stone’s throw away; and – COVER STORY – Advent in an ancient York church, without heat or electric light, a building which Morris helped save from demolition.
INTERVIEW 42-45 High hopes, empty purses“Don’t blame us,” English Heritage’s new Chair, Baroness Andrews, tells ‘Cornerstone’. “Blame government underfunding.” She explains to Patrick Sawer why people should be realistic, yet optimistic, about the future of the official guardian of England’s built past.
48 No peace, now showpiece Berlin’s Neues Museum, once part ruin, has been imaginatively brought back into use. Julian Harrap tells how it was done.
50 To topple a tower Clem Cecil and Yelena Minchyonok report on the extraordinary wave of public protest in Russia against the defacement of the skyline of historic St Petersburg by a planned skyscraper.
54 Maths lesson For building designers, geometry texts and hi-tech equipment were de rigueur in the late Renaissance. Philippa Stockley sizes up a new study.
57 Site Seen Nicola Westbury on repairing a SPAB-owned forge in Surrey; Devereux Tower, Tower of London, now fit for future visitors; Mary Novakovich visits SPAB members in Essex who have helped bring a medieval chapel to life.
67 Technical Q&A Wooden roofs. Douglas Kent's low-down.
72 Books A fascinating archive of London photographs revealed; Elizabethan age magnificently reappraised, says Lucy Worsley; Pevsner in Wales and Yorkshire.
80 Architecture in Art Architecture in Art Sir Paul Pindar House frontage, at the V&A’s new gallery.
