Introduction - Trust Annual Report 1974
The preservation of historic towns might appear to be a matter for strong popular support at the present time. As tourists make whirlwind visits to European art centres, noting in their diaries the important features glimpsed through the viewfinders of expensive cameras, you would have thought there would be an overwhelming pressure for the preservation of our heritage.
Not so: but pressure is building up. Try asking tourists homeward bound at Heathrow if they have seen Winchester.
"Did we see Winchester honey?" the faithful recording wife is asked, and after consulting the inseparable diary, she replies;
"Why sure, we liked it."
"What did we see there?"
"It says here there was a Cathedral, a Guildhall, a Castle and a round table."
"We'll recall them O.K. when we get our films back home."
While Winchester will strike the high speed tourist as a restful oasis, in contrast to the rush of chrome plated motor and air travel, what more it may be asked does the resident see ? And very often the answer can only be "Not much." Frequently we see too little in what is familiar and easily accessible. All this is curious to observe because it reveals a menacing situation, what an American critic has called the de-aesthetising of art, while architectural standards seem to fall in inverse proportion to the catastrophically rising volume of new building.
The public and even the informed elite avert their eyes from the present, and try to forget, by living in the past in self preservation. Inevitably many architects feel powerless, since they cannot act on such an environment with any real effect. Is the growing public regard for historic cities, and works of art from the past (as against indifference to what is happening In the present) symptomatic perhaps of a break in our social fabric ? One reason surely, why the past is preferred to the present, could be because the influence of the craftsman's hand is still perceived, while this quality which strikes a sympathetic chord in the beholder, is missing from the anonymous mass produced components, from which buildings are now manufactured.
The answer is that the visual sensibility of the citizens must be aroused, and a critical appraisal of the environment awakened. The past as revealed in Winchester, is a portion of arrested happening. It is a graph of activity, now stilled ; but a graph made visible like an astronomical body, by a light which originated the activity. It is thus that the fascination of the past lies before us, and connects us directly with it, and gives the object a new dimension.
But it is plain to see the beginnings of popular reaction against the managerial turn our society has taken, and against modern ways of building, causing communities everywhere to reappraise what is left of their stock of old buildings. The way of life these enshrine may not be very wonderful, the buildings themselves may not be high art, but both seem much to be preferred to the buildings our masters are likely to put in their place. This affords motive enough for reviewing very carefully all proposals to sweep away old quarters to make room for centralised facilities.