Saving Historic Buildings - by direct action - TrustNews Sept 11
We are proud of having done it ourselves perhaps 2 or 3 times since 1957, but the Romsey & District Buildings Preservation Trust of which this year’s Trust AGM speaker, Professor Peter Shoolingin-Jordan, is the chairman, has the enviable record of saving some 40 historic buildings since it was founded (about one per year!) and, in the process, altered the culture of the town.
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, the building fabric of Romsey was systematically being destroyed by disorderly attempts at “modernisation” due, in part, to the noncoherent policies of the local council and unsympathetic developers driven only by profit. In the mid-1970s several prominent Romsonians founded the Romsey & District Society as an antidote and, from a sub-committee of the original Society, the Buildings Preservation Trust was born.
55-63 Chervile Street , Romsey before being saved
At our AGM on 26th September Peter will present for us the exciting story of how they achieved their reputation as one of the country’s leading preservation trusts. He will illustrate his talk with pictures of the buildings before and after renovation, and describe some of the battles and rewards experienced by his Trust in the process.
Maybe, apart from being entertained, we shall learn from what he has to tell us.