Since 1930, the SPAB’s Lethaby Scholarship has offered an unrivalled training opportunity to architects, surveyors and engineers in the early stages of their career. It allows the successful applicants to travel the country together, learning on site from specialist craftspeople, architects, surveyors, engineers and the like working in building conservation. Many Scholars are now among the leading conservation experts in the UK and overseas, looking after a wide range of historic buildings and sites in a variety of roles.

If you'd like to chat to someone who's lived the experience we can put you in touch with a past Scholar.

Three or four Scholarships are awarded each year, depending on funding. There is no course fee and Scholars receive a bursary in the region of £9,400 to cover basic travel and living costs. However, supplementary personal finance in the region of £2,000 is usually required. Running between March and December, the nine-month full-time programme is highly rewarding but intensive (including some working weekends away). It is not possible to combine it with work or undertaking other forms of study. 

The majority of the programme is undertaken through site visits, guided by experts, with support from a mentor (a past Scholar).

There are no formal lectures or essay submissions, though Scholars are required to keep a sketchbook and make periodic verbal reports, and to submit a selection from their sketchbook at the end of the programme. The first six months of the Scholarship follows a schedule arranged by the SPAB where the focus is on learning and observing how to repair historic buildings and starting to understand and form a philosophy of repair. The final three months (known as the Plunket Scholarship) provides Scholars with the chance to widen their own interest in the allied arts by choosing their own subject and theme of study, and pursuing that through individual focused visits to country houses (usually each one or two weeks long).

The Scholarship is about observing, experiencing and debating traditional techniques and sympathetic repair in situ through visits to sites, buildings and structures across broad range of age, size and styles, guided by building conservation specialists. Scholars are required to keep detailed and graphic record of all work under study in a notebook. Understanding and respecting the role played by craft skills is a fundamental aspect of the SPAB approach. The hands-on element of the Scholarship gives Scholars the chance to try for themselves a wide range of craft skills such as timber framing, blacksmithing, stone masonry and thatching. Scholars will also spend some time traveling with the SPAB Fellows (craftspeople). 

Read more about our Scholars and Fellows on our blog.