Why preserve our past?

[Goose01]

Hi

I'm a third year student studying Restoration and Decorative studies and for my dissertation I'm looking into the reasons for why we should preserve our heritage. For most of us it just seems the obvious thing to do, that to let our historic buildings disappear would be wrong- but I wanted to try and get to grips with some hard and fast reasons for why we think this way. I was hoping I would be able to get some opinions from those who own or are interested in period property. So- why do you guys think our historic buildings are important enough to spend so much time, money and effort on?

 

[grays85]

HI. I hope you are going to plaigerisze?? our responses?

For my part I had the opportunity to re purchase a family home, and with all its building regs and hassles etc I expect to have a fine home with its sturdy walls, a bit of draugh here and there and to sit of a evening looking at something that people arent allowed to build anymore by hand.

You can't lift more than 25kg on your own. high viz jackets ..safety boots 7 hour days
Have you felt the weight of cast iron bath and the lead plumbing...

Those guys (and maybe gals) earned their crust building these buildings and its up to us to show others how hard they worked to produce the beautiful homes that they did

 

[ian]

From my point of view, even if you are living in a building site while getting things straight, the houses are much nicer to live in. The modern house with 10 ft square rooms, deliniated by a stud wall of two sheets of plasterboard and a sheet of jublite, hemetically sealed, amongst streets of near identical buildings, does not appeal. We nned to preserve "proper buildings" so I have somewhere to move to when I choose to move, or that is still standing in 20 years time if I don't move.
Ian

 

[inwood]

Leaving aside the purist view of restoring old buildings one fairly sound reason has to do with reducing carbon footprints. I think I'm right in saying that our housebuilding industry has the biggest carbon footprint in the UK. Restoring an old house surely must make better sense (from an environmental point of view) than knocking it down, taking it to a landfill and then building anew.

Also from an aesthetic point of view I've seen far too many villages/towns destroyed by the removal of what is effectively the character of a town by the demolition of old houses and their replacement by new houses with little thought about their visual impact.

 

[chuckey]

I think you should re-phrase "historic" to "old". Historic has overtones of an historic event happening in them. Most buildings are just old, mainly because their inhabitants did not have enough money to replace them. Having said that, providing the amount of upkeep is affordable, some of them (like my Victorian semi) offer more space, better soundproofing and larger gardens then "modern " houses. Others like my limestone cottage are rubbish, but are in a nice part of the country and are subject to stringent planning laws, so they cannot be replaced or modified to any great extent.
I have only lived in old houses but have visited new houses, in my opinion, because the cost of labour and sites have risen faster then the basic building materials, modern houses are "packed" in to maximise the number of houses on given site and the labour content has gone down so houses now are purely utilatarian without having any features that are easy on the eye, even if the cost is minimal. An example would be the total lack of different coloured courses of bricks, even if the cost of a different coloured brick is the same as the rest.
Its such a shame, because people will think that a modern house is what a house should look like. The only saving grace will be that, a lot of them won't survive beyond 50 years because their poor workmanship and poor choice of materials will mean that they will deteriate rapidly.
Frank

 

[MdB]

Goose, first off, please post again. A couple of people have come in the past and posted once never to be seen again.

Chuckey makes a good point in that "old" is just as important as "historic". My house old (160 years ish in places) but isn't historic though it does have a history. Only around 40% of the original house remains with the rest being 1970s junk. It is also in the process of costing us £30k to get it back to the condition we thought it was in when we bought it. The thing is, despite all the problems it has caused us, we absolutely love it. Your question raises the issue of why we love it so and I have difficulty answering. I guess its little things like finding out it was a miners cottage rather than a farm hands cottage, finding burn marks in the beams and charcoal under the floor and working out that there must have been a major fire at some stage or finding the head off an old toy soldier. All these things show the history that the place has and I like the idea that I'm adding to this and looking after the place for the future.

I'm rambling a bit, but I guess looking after old places just seems right.

 

[Raylea]

I had never lived in a period property until 7 months ago, always 1950 ex council, for me to say the least I felt very daunted at first by the fact that I now owned a property dating back 1740, extended in 1860 and more recently 2006. I look at particarly the front of my house 1860 double bay and all the glorious trimming to go with and think wow, craftman ship not spared at any point and all done with out a power tool of modern ages, (I don't know as much as many but I am certainly learning and loving it) this house and so many were built to last and will do so with the right amonut of love and attention (certainly outlive our new extension buit by previous owner that was chucked up with ply wood or whatever)

So for me someone created this home with blood, sweat, tears and lots of hard work and I am damn sure I will try my up most to preserve it even if it means painting my gorgeous bay sash windows every year, because if thats what it takes then so be it.

Raylea

 

[biffvernon]

That's a great question and the answer is quite hard. I do hope, Goose, that you post a summary of your dissertation here in due course.

 

[Lime]

I would put the question, what do people like about new houses?

Answer that and many who post here will be enlightened.

 

[Nemesis]

Architectural Conservation should be accorded the same consideration which is already being shown to the conservation of other resources for the same reasons. Buildings represent energy, labour and materials, which either cannot be replaced or can only be replaced at enormous cost. The fight to save particular buildings or groups of buildings is not the fancy of some impractical antiquarian. It is part of the battle for the sane use of all our resources. The visible link with the past that old buildings give us is important both as a fascinating insight into history and as an expression of the relative permanence of civilised society. Conservation to the architect and public alike is not a fad, fetter or curse: it is a necessity which should also be seem as a stimulating challenge.

THE FIRST SAVE REPORT
The Architect's Journal 17/24 December 1975

 

[Pford75]

I would also suggest you consider in your paper the boundaries of what can be considered 'old'. There is a tremendous amount of 'snobbery' about what is worth saving.

A 1950's council house is an 'antique'....who is to say that the avocado 70's bathroom suite is somehow less important than the Georgian rectory. Either we are genuinely interested in preserving our history or it's just some form of guardianista campaign to impose taste censorship on housing stock.

Also, a point which has been discussed at length on here....one of the things I find intriguing about my house (and others feel the same) is the various changes and additions which have occurred over time...the Victorian fireplace, the Edwardian kitchen etc.....I do worry that in some cases, we do not allow changes from this era. I agree that we need to preserve some unaltered examples and it's probably desireable to exercise some control over modern additions....but to my mind...a well-designed/architected modern addition in contemporary materials...expertly constructed is every bit as valid an addition as the Victorian changes to my Georgian property.

 

[Nemesis]

And as long as you can justify that it may be allowed.

Last week I visited here:

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-llanerchaeron/


The Nash house was altered over time, and those alterations remain, so the Nash cornices and classical proportions are accompanied by late 19th century and early 20th changes to fireplaces, Lincrusta dados, fitted wardrobes, and in one room a fifties tiled fireplace of the type you would have found in any urban semi.

 

[alice]

The reason old houses (or old anything, including me!) are worth preserving is because we learn from the past and we don't always know what we're going to learn or when we're going to learn it. Life is always throwing new, unanticipated problems at us and when we're confronted with a new riddle, we first try to make sense of it by looking at past solutions. Housing problems caused by population and climate that might arise in the future will cause people to look to the past to see what our ancestors did and what worked and what didn't. For instance, there is talk now of a revival of terrace house to solve housing pressures. We can look at older terrace houses to see what methods and arrangements worked the best, and at what didn't work out so well.

By preserving older buildings we can also learn of what works and what doesn't over time. For instance, we won't know if a Victorian DPC or a 1950's experimental building method will last 200 years until 200 years have passed.

Older buildings are also examples of the visual poetry of architecture and interiors and allow us to learn what works visually and spatially. Today's architects learn by walking around and living in older buildings how people interact with them and how people react to them. While you can look at the proportions of the windows of a three story Georgian house in a book, you really don't understand how lovely they are until you stand outside and look at one, and you really don't understand how those windows work on a human scale until you are in the rooms and looking out. Some things can't be taught in a book, but must be felt in person and architecture and design is one of those things.

alice

 

[Juju]

In terms of your dissertation, is this an acceptable methodology? Are you gathering other data too? Are you using other posts on this forum for data too?*

You've got some good responses here already because people here are very helpful and like to talk about these issues, and also some suggestions on how to rephrase the question/issues. You might want to think about re-posting a short set of open-ended questions (that people can post to via a link). I'd happily complete that and maybe others will - depends on how much time they've got!

I've examined lots of dissertations over the years and despaired of what students think are acceptable research methods and data analysis.

Juju (Grumpy old university lecturer)

*remember to put in full referencing/acknowledgements to this site!

 

[stickybeak]

.

 

[Becka]

it's a very emotive answer, but I think life and the landscape would be so much poorer with out them.. Theres something wonderful about being able to feel the life that's been there, I live in a cottage which in parts dates back to the 17th century and it frequently surprises me (pargetting behind the external brick walls, old lime plaster hidden behind plasterboard panels and best of all a nearly complete wonky elm C17th floor under a raised bathroom floor) and whenever I find these things I feel a connection to the people to created them, it's fascinating and wonderful to be able to touch something that was created so long ago and admire it in all it's wonky, wobbly beauty. Basically if I could hug my house I would I now find it almost inexplicable that people could live somewhere that doesn;t make them feel like that, I've lived in a new build and a 70's flat before this but I could never do so again, or for that matter in a 'renovated' property, some of the pictures for this one (a street away from me that I used to fantasise about owning sometime) http://www.savills.co.uk/residentialSearch/292732fa-c3a4-4931-a9fe-463c5f33436e-6-3-3-clickThumbnailSubmit/residentialSearch/propertyDetail.aspx?AlchemyID=2454324&pID=177668
make me so depressed, a house like that is supposed to be slopy and wobbly and they've straightened it out

 

[Nemesis]

In fact, you live in a historic building!

 

[Becka]

yep I guess so :O) tho not a posh one by any stretch of the imagination, was slum housing for over a century and it's highly unlikely that anyone who ever lived there has made any particular historical mark but I felt moved to try and explain the feel that an old building, even a humble one, has, in fact maybe especially a humble one where people were born and got on with the daily business of life and families that would be lost if you just pulled then down and built newer, more efficient buildings in their place or for that matter gutted them making a new build in an old shell.. I get a bit almost spiritual when I get on this subject, very unlike me with my day job in science...

 

[Nemesis]

Yup. think of the lives lived there... I feel like that, and the more research I do the more I feel an affinity. I am part of a line of folk who have lived here, and their lives make history just as much as battles and 'great' events.

This is about Pathfinder demolitions - but it could apply elsewhere:



Mourning Coat

When they come for me,
when they come,
I shall be ready then to be taken,
taken from this room, this room
which has breathed in my life,
our lives, so many lives.
It could exhale histories
from every corner.

I shall be ready, oh yes,
ready, wearing the coat
bought for your funeral;
the thick, black coat
which has stood the chill
of many a burial since.
I am the resurrection, and the life.
Words, fine words -
they butter few parsnips.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
that’s what they seek
for our homes, for our streets,
and the bonds, not shackles,
which hold us,
have held us, together.

What could I say to them
when they come, when they come,
which they would understand?
The cruel, the stupid,
who mouth of a future,
what can they understand?

So I shall wear it, this coat,
with its stale whiff of mothballs,
eloquent with dignity,
when they come for me.

When they come, when they come,
I shall be gone.

 

[Becka]

that's the other big point, old houses are part of old communities, I lived in a 1970's flat with neighbours all around me and didn't know most of them in 4 years (I didn't even bump into the neighbour opposite me for the last 2 tho I occassionally heard him coming and going), by the time I'd lived in my house a couple of weeks I knew more neighbours than I'd met in the 4 years previously.. partly because they made an effort to meet me (a new person in our little community of 6 cottages that face into a square definatly causes interest) and partly because due to the vagueries of how the square had developed over the years we have to walk past each others front doors and through each others gardens to get to our houses so you meet and chat. you wouldn't plan something like that nowadays I'm sure (for privacy issues mostly) and some people would hate it because it really is like an old fashioned street where everyone knows each others comings and goings and looks out for each other.