The Status of heritage towns - TrustNews December 14
English Heritage, having become concerned about the threat to the character of ‘heritage towns‘, commissioned a report called The Sustainable Growth of Cathedral Cities and Historic Towns, which has just been published. It is a long document which we have not yet had time to study but will report on in due course. In the meantime we think it might be useful to re-print our own paper on the subject. First issued in 2004 and last updated in 2013, it was the subject of a special meeting we held in 2007, chaired by our President and attended by an invited audience of some 75 of the ‘good and the great’ of Winchester. Our PowerPoint presentation gave rise to much discussion and encouragement. Unfortunately our efforts to interest the Civic Trust were fruitless and with so many urgent issues to attend to since then we have made little progress. Maybe the time has come to try again.
HERITAGE TOWN STATUS: time for a further step in conservation legislation?
Introduction -
Like many other civic societies in the South East the City of Winchester Trust is much engaged with the continuing government pressure for concentrated growth in the SE. As the policy is applied, little is done to achieve the design or sustainability standards which they always stress as necessary if growth is to be environmentally acceptable, let alone desirable, and this is particularly important for historic settlements and their settings. The danger is greatest for areas without Conservation Area or Countryside protection. Most forms of protection have only been achieved as a result of pressure from amenity organisations like the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Georgian Group and the Victorian Society, and especially in the case of Conservation Areas by the Civic Trust backed by local civic societies.
A very brief history -
Conservation legislation was first introduced in 1882 when, after decades of opposition from landowners, a Bill was passed permitting the State to purchase and care for uninhabited historic monuments - if the owner agreed! Eventually in 1913 a further Bill introduced the first element of compulsion. The Town and Country Planning Act of 1932 included the listing of some inhabited buildings, and extensive wartime damage finally prompted the comprehensive listing of historic buildings of all kinds. Not until 1966, however, following the enthusiastic post-war destruction of many city centres, the introduction of Conservation Area legislation extended protection from isolated individual buildings to heritage areas.
From this over-simplified summary, it can be seen that after a very protracted struggle to get the process started, major steps forward in conservation legislation seem to have been taken every two or three decades. It is also clear that for the most part these steps have been prompted by events that had shown the need for further protective measures; it is indeed very regrettable that the measures were generally not taken until after much loss and damage had occurred. There has, of course, been major planning legislation since the end of the sixties but not, we suggest, any of comparable importance for conservation compared with those of the preceding decades. This is probably because the creation of Conservation Areas and a growing awareness of the value of our heritage and countryside, have served to prevent damage on the scale of previous years.
New threats -
However, there are increasing threats of very serious damage. Just as it was realised that heritage areas needed careful handling, we now believe that small heritage towns need similar care during the implementation of government policies for growth. Just as well-intentioned policies, crudely applied in the 50s and 60s, resulted in widespread damage to nationally important inner-city areas, crude implementation of government housing growth policies coupled with associated infrastructure pressures are now beginning to cause further damage to small but nationally important towns.
Increases in density and the construction of new areas of housing are not intrinsically the problem. The problem is almost entirely to do with the implementation of policies at local level. Government must, however, accept responsibility for the outcome of what it hands down without sufficient forethought. Demanding housing requirements mean that under-resourced local planning authorities have neither the time nor the skills to properly manage the consequences.
The results tend to be unpopular everywhere, but the built heritage is reasonably well protected in inner-city areas by their Conservation Area status. It is in the leafy suburbs and around the fringes of our small heritage towns, many with vitally important country settings (where still free of the rings of dross that have grown around so many towns), that the damage is being done, and will be done on an increasing scale and at an increasing rate until, as in the 60s, we look back at the destruction of this unique heritage and say, “how did we let it happen?" Unless supplemented by design guidance the policies to be introduced under the National Planning Policy Framework are likely to make matters worse.
Proposal-
The example provided by the wording of the Conservation Area legislation and its subsequent success show the means of legislating for the protection (without fossilisation) of these special towns. Conservation Area designation was not meant to, nor has it prevented change, and it is not our wish to prevent Winchester or other comparable small towns and villages from continuing to evolve as they always have done in the past. The object would be to ensure that change must be handled in such a way as to “maintain and enhance their historic and architectural character and settings”. As before, a vital part of the process would be the careful study and definition of this character.