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London suburbs
Blue Plaques
Buildings at Risk
Major Projects
Burial Grounds & Cemeteries
Conservation Projects
Dendrochronology Conservation Plans

The Historical Analysis & Research Team is a multi-disciplinary group with skills centred around architectural history and building analysis. The aim of the team is to work alongside those colleagues involved in front-line conservation, establishing a context for the site and ensuring that we have the best possible understanding of fabric and importance. The main strength of the team lies in the ability of its members to work together on individual buildings, bringing archaeology and architectural history closer together. Moreover, the team sets out to provide casework staff with support and assistance in a variety of ways. The team undertakes research and analysis directly, and it assists with the commissioning of freelance consultants by writing briefs and monitoring projects.

In terms of what is often an uneasy relationship between archaeology and history, 1998–99 was an especially interesting year, with the organisational move of HART to Archaeology Division, headed by Geoff Wainwright. Although this move should improve opportunities to integrate architectural history and the understanding of buildings into traditional archaeological programmes, at the same time it could perhaps have had a damaging impact on the important architectural and art-history components of its work. In fact, the change gave the team the chance to make a considerable input into the emerging Research Agenda for Archaeology. This is a great step forward, as the agenda, and its associated implementation plan will begin to reflect the huge potential for English Heritage to address the rich opportunities for research into the built heritage. Equally, the Corporate Archaeology Strategy explicitly addresses the built heritage, creating further excellent opportunities to co-ordinate better our research with the requirements of front-line staff. Taken together, the Research Agenda and the Corporate Archaeology Strategy will enable other professionals in English Heritage - architects, historic buildings inspectors, and conservation area advisers - to make better use of the resources available to the organisation.

In its day to day work, the HART was able to maintain a balance between casework, carrying out more strategic projects, and contributing to wider policy initiatives. The merger with colleagues at RCHME will further strengthen the position of architectural history within the new Archaeology and Survey Department, creating a strong alliance which might herald the true integration of archaeology, architectural history, and art history. This will be one of Geoff Wainwright’s lasting achievements at English Heritage.

London suburbs

One of the highlights of the year was the completion of the text for our major new book on London suburbs. Its publication in May 1999 was a timely celebration of those areas of London increasingly vulnerable to unsympathetic change.

Approximately two-thirds of all Londoners live in the outer boroughs, yet most histories of the capital ignore the places where these people dwell and from where they commute daily into the heart of the town. Originally, of course, the suburbs were the satellite villages surrounding the early city, now long-since subsumed by planned or piecemeal developments. Love them or loathe them, we can no longer ignore the suburbs and their transformation at the end of the twentieth century. London Suburbs, written by historians connected with the Historical Analysis & Research Team, assesses the social, architectural, and historical significance of these important places. The fully illustrated collection of essays charts the spread of the metropolis from the mid-eighteenth century until recent times, analysing the characteristics of the suburb, and charting options to preserve their best qualities.

Blue Plaques

The underlying research and management of London’s celebrated Blue Plaques scheme continues to be undertaken by the team. As a result of a stepped-up campaign to reduce the waiting list in London, and of the launch of the new national plaques scheme announced by the Chairman in Liverpool in May 1998, more work than ever has been carried out in this area. Well over 150 preliminary reports have been written and edited for the newly renamed Plaques Panel, and more LAC reports were produced last year than ever before. Plaques continue to have a high public and organisational profile.

The launch of the national register of Buildings at Risk (1998) focussed attention on those grade I and grade II* structures most in danger. Like the Monuments at Risk Survey, the initiative helps English Heritage to direct its efforts towards the most vulnerable aspects of the resource. London Region has pioneered such a register for a number of years, and HART has been working with the staff of London Region to provide rapid assessments of such buildings. These assessments identify the most significant aspects of any particular structure and can be used to help guide future treatment and restoration.

The two buildings at 54-6 Romford Road, Newham are recognsed for their quality and rarity within the borough and are listed grade II. They are part of a former terrace of four dwelling houses, constructed c1730, and which appears to have survived largely intact until the late nineteenth century. Left vacant for a number of years, and passing through a succession of owners, the houses were in a very poor state of repair and appeared in the register of Buildings at Risk (1998) for Greater London, and repair notices were served on the owners by English Heritage.

Following a listed building consent application to alter and refurbish the buildings for use as housing association flats, the London Region team asked HART to provide an assessment of the surviving historic fabric of this pair of early eighteenth-century buildings. The brief also included a request to provide guidance on the appropriate style and design of features proposed in restoration, including ground-floor windows, doors, front porches, and boundary railings. Areas to be affected by the proposals, which included the original floors, roof structure, internal panelling and fittings, together with the nineteenth-century shop fronts (which were to be completely demolished), were all examined in some detail.

Constructed of brick, the buildings are of four storeys with basements. Each is two bays (windows) in width, and the roofs are M-shaped. No 56 retains its original staircase, along with some very rich contemporary Rococo panelling and fine chimney pieces on the principal first-floor rooms. The assessment identified early sash window boxes, surviving shutters buried under later work at the front, original plaster in the ground-floor areas, and a contemporary cess-pit to the rear. All of these were previously unknown.

Further guidance and a brief were provided for the complicated assessment of the Rococo panelling after it was severely damaged during works to structurally stabilise the two buildings following the demolition of adjacent premises. A brief was also provided for the recording of the historic fabric to be lost during necessary demolition, and the demolition process itself was closely monitored.

HART provided advice on the historical interest of Brockley Hall Farm and monitored an English Heritage funded building analysis and recording project being undertaken by an external contractor. The standing buildings on the site comprise a farmhouse and stables range. The farmhouse is listed grade II, and appears in the Building at Risk (1998) register. It is currently subject to an English Heritage grant-aided repair programme; it is timber-framed with a hall and cross wing plan and probably dates from the late-sixteenth century. The stable range is also timber-framed and has an L-shaped plan; the building has been much altered but probably dates from the eighteenth century. The team was asked to clarify the structural development of the stable range and assess its historical significance, and to advise on the partial dismantling and recording of its timber frame. The building was in a very derelict and dangerous condition and subject to negotiations to determine its future use. The house and barn are all that survive of what was, until relatively recently, a fully-functioning farm. The farmstead in its final form (to judge from early photographs of the site) comprised a square farmyard enclosed on all four sides, with the farmhouse to the east, the existing stable range to the south, a substantial, timber-framed barn to the north (dismantled in the early 1980s and moved to a different site), and a range of single-storey farm buildings to the west. The precise origins of the farm are unknown, however its proximity to the line of the Roman Watling Street, and the discovery of Roman pottery in the area, suggests the area may have been settled and farmed from the earliest times.

Major Projects

HART has always worked closely with Major Projects, providing historical and archaeological Information which will help to inform decisions at any stage in the project management process. The level of service provided during 1998-99, included, for example, a rapid reconstruction drawing of Shurland House, as well as ongoing support for the Danson House project.

Danson House

During 1998-99, the restoration of Danson’s exterior shell and of its principal floor interiors was virtually completed and negotiations were conducted to bring the entire project to a successful conclusion, including work on fitting out the upper and lower floors. Meanwhile, research into the historic development of the building resulted in the synthesis of the historical research and fabric analysis. In particular, the paint analysis undertaken by the paint conservation studio has been tied to the development of the entire house, throughout all of its phases. Further recording will take place in advance of, and during, subsequent phases of works, scheduled for completion by the end of 2000. The results of the underlying research - all of which has informed the conservation project - will eventually be published as a monograph.

Down House

Although the main restoration project at Down is complete, work continued in the gardens. Further recording of the greenhouse was undertaken, along with an exercise in map regression to determine Darwin’s garden layout. In addition, the research into the historical development of the house has been finished with the close integration of the paint analysis with the fabric history of the site. The consultants, Keystone, also completed their contribution to the work at Down with a set of three-dimensional CAD reconstruction drawings which illustrate the seven major phases in the development of the house.

Shurland Hall, Isle of Sheppey

This sixteenth century courtier’s residence on the Isle of Sheppey on the north coast of Kent, is virtually unique in that it has undergone only minor evolution since that period. The standing remains include the ruins of the main hall and the shell of the brick gatehouse range, both listed at grade II*, while the entire site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. English Heritage is exploring ways in which the future of the gatehouse structure can be secured.The Central Archaeological Service and HART have advised on the potential for building recording and analysis, and collaborated to produce a brief and guidance for the recording of the structure in advance of proposals to reroof it and make it habitable.

The work of the HART covers almost every aspect of the built heritage, and within this general framework particular specialisms evolve. One of these is funerary architecture. Burial grounds have long been regarded as a growing conservation problem, and one member of the team is involved in applied research in what remains a neglected topicbb. Numerous articles and lectures have resulted, but much work remains to be done. The results of work to date have informed English Heritage’s listing programme, and will ultimately affect our attitude to cemetery conservation across the country.

It is universally accepted that the many thousands of monuments which lie within more than two hundred churchyards and one hundred cemeteries throughout London represent a major conservation problem; they are under-listed and poorly recorded. This survey, commenced in 1993, continues with a programme of site visits, research, and contextual study. Interim results have been disseminated through numerous lectures. The availability of Heritage Lottery Fund money has increased the number of conservation schemes being carried out, and many reports have been written in response to this. Research can be proactive, encouraging a better appreciation of a site on the part of its guardians and urging conservation work to be put in hand. Numerous suggestions for listing have also emerged from the survey.

The survey of monuments (Archaeology Review 1997-98) has been completed, and the revision of the relevant List is now under discussion. This should result in Kensal Green having a greater concentration of individually listed memorials than any other cemetery in the country. Opened in 1833, Kensal was the first - and greatest - of all London’s private cemeteries. The subject matter as a whole is very much under-studied, and many discoveries relating to the emergence of Victorian funerary design have been made in this one programme of work. Because of their exposed setting, many tombs at Kensal are suffering badly from decay and vandalism. A select recording survey is underway with colleagues in the Architectural Survey Team.

HART was originally established to provide support for staff in the former Conservation Division. Regionalisation has meant changes to the team’s traditional client base, which has now expanded to include those colleagues concerned with the conservation and management of Historic Properties. Nevertheless, the priority remains support for statutory casework and grants work.

This programme, a joint venture with the Berlin Landesdenkmalampt and the French Inventaire Generale, will result in a travelling exhibition, a series of international workshops, and a tri-lingual publication on the three sites. The aim is to further understanding and appreciation of Europe’s aviation heritage as we near the close of the ‘Century of Flight’. Funding was obtained via a successful application to the European Community’s RAPHAEL programme, an early success in seeking European support for English Heritage’s work, and which relied heavily on the research and communication skills within HART. One member of the team carried out detailed research into Speke Airport, the outstanding example of an inter-war municipal airport which currently forms the centre of a massive regeneration scheme.

Considerable documentary work has been undertaken (and is still underway) on two outstanding houses in Rochester High Street as part of the ongoing work in the Conservation Area. Later facades conceal interiors of outstanding interest, such as a panelled room at No. 375 featuring landscape scenes of about 1770. Research has revealed this to be part of Sir John Hawkins’s Hospital, with some sections of the building dating from the mid-sixteenth century. The High Street cases have highlighted the potential discoveries that result from documentary research - of the sort carried out by HART - on an area of enormous historical interest.

In the light of our experiences with the King’s Cross gasholders, a survey of London gasholders has been commissioned to inform our understanding of the significance of this class of structure. Undertaken on behalf of HART and Listing Branch, the survey will look at both the history and technology of gasholders, resulting in a comparative report and listing recommendations.

The programme of research and building recording undertaken on behalf of English Heritage by the architects, Julian Harrap, has resulted in a report which details the development of the building fabric and discusses the workings of the machinery at this site. The study has since been augmented by the recording of the collection of wooden dies for the casting of mill machinery which were preserved on site. Further investigation of this collection should assist in the restoration of the mill’s workings.

The archaeological recording of a group of engineering trial holes around the south side of Buckingham Palace in advance of improvements to the Queen’s Gallery extension has provided evidence for the physical nature and build-up of archaeological stratigraphy across the site. The interpretation of the findings involved some map and plan regression, in conjunction with a study of the historic views of the site. It is hoped that the resulting report will inform planning for the archaeological programme to be undertaken during the works.

Alterations to the crypt at the west end of the St Paul’s Cathedral have resulted in a small excavation and building recording under the direction of the cathedral archaeologist, John Schofield. The work, funded by London Region’s recording budget and monitored by HART, has resulted in an assessment report on the excavations and a study of the earlier worked-stone fragments reused in Wren’s building. The stone fragments derive from the Romanesque cathedral, the so-called new work of the fourteenth century, and especially from Inigo Jones’s recasing of the church and his portico added to the west end of the medieval building. The fragments provide key evidence for the physical nature of the cathedral lost during the Great Fire of 1666.

HART was instrumental in identifying the interest of the surviving eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses in and around Deptford High Street in south-east London. The team commissioned a programme of fieldwork and research from the RCHME. The project found the area to be a lively and disorderly combination of bone fide ‘vernacular’ urban survivals and a scruffy, but characterful and vibrant, disintegrated and unplanned, multi-ethnic shopping centre, and highlighted a perplexing conservation dilemma common to many historic urban communities today. The project has helped identify the sense of community and local distinctiveness that characterised Deptford in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a place close to, but quite separate from, London. Above all, it has shown that Deptford, and places like it, in and around the capital, are important as typifying ‘Another Georgian London’, a progressive, working class community of skilled artisans and tradesmen, its development shaped as much by the traditions of the medieval town as by anything else.

Arthur Lasenby Liberty (1843–1917) opened his shop at 218a Regent Street in 1875, calling it East India House and selling oriental goods of all kinds, including Japanese objects, and coloured Indian silks. Soon the firm were selling a wide range of handprinted fabrics produced at their workshops in Merton. Early customers included artists such as Rossetti and Burne-Jones, and Gilbert and Sullivan used Liberty fabrics for the costumes in the 1881 production of Patience. By 1888 Arthur Liberty was an active member of the Arts and Crafts Society, and the range of products sold in the shop was extended to include a wide range of furniture, silver, pewter, jewellery, wallpapers, carpets, and soft furnishings.

Growth of the business by the early 1920s prompted rebuilding of the premises. The first block to be built in Great Marlborough Street was the ‘Tudor’ building, 1922–24; the new East India House on Regent Street was completed by 1925. A bridge over Kingly Street linked the two buildings and bore an elaborate clock. Both buildings were designed by Edwin Thomas Hall and his son and partner, Edwin Stanley Hall. The Tudor building, tucked away from the Regent Street frontage escaped the rigid controls on the style of the building by the Crown Estate (anything as long as it was Classical), and plumped for a jolly mock Tudor. But the style is not just skin deep: the timbers, taken from two huge sailing ships, were properly morticed, tenoned, and pegged. A model of the Mayflower surmounts the roof, nestling among the twisted brick chimneys. The interior is particularly rich for a London department store, with light wells open to pitched hammerbeam roofs, and chunky Arts and Crafts fireplaces on each floor, all of different design. The skilled craftsmen employed on the building were so proud of their work that they brought their families to view the building before it was officially opened. The building represents a late flowering of the Arts and Crafts principles that the founder of Liberty’s held dear. A report from the Historical Analysis & Research Team will assist in a new evaluation of the quality of the building and, in the long term, help to retain the significant parts of the interior when alterations are planned.

Richard Lea (HART and John Schofield (Museum of London) are joint principal authors of a forthcoming monograph on this major medieval London religious house. Founded in 1107–08, Holy Trinity was one of a number of early houses of Augustinian canons with significant royal connections. Apart from the results of excavations undertaken in 1977–90, the study draws on archaeological observations which extend back to the early years of the century. The information has been interpreted in the context of antiquarian prints, drawings, and documentary records, historical research, map regression, and architectural analogy. To a large extent, our ability to understand the medieval site and its transformation at the dissolution is largely dependent on the extraordinary survival of a pair of detailed survey drawings of the site carried out about 1590. The drawings, by John Symonds, show the former priory at both ground- and first-floor levels. The resulting publication of the pictorial evidence, combined with the recent archaeology, finds evidence, and reconstructions, should go some way to establishing the true significance of this comparatively little known foundation.

HART works closely with the Ancient Monuments Laboratory and continues to provide specialist advice on the recording and interpretation of historic buildings and the application of dendrochronology to building analysis projects. Over the course of the year, the team has initiated a number of small-scale tree-ring dating projects in support of local buildings studies, and has used dendrochronology regularly in the course of its own building analysis and historical research casework.

Combined dendrochronology and building analysis projects carried out in the year include that at Isaac Lord’s in Ipswich, a multi-period riverside warehouse and maltings complex dating from the late fifteenth century, and Abbey Farm Barn, at Snape in Suffolk, a much-altered timber-framed structure included in the register of Buildings at Risk (1998). Major projects carried out during 1998–99 were:

At Little Braxted Hall, a medieval moated site near Witham in Essex, the team was asked to assess the historical significance of a disused timber-framed dovecot, a small, square, well-built structure with decorative mouldings and smoke-stained roof timbers, which previous research had indicated was built as a detached kitchen serving the former medieval manor house. Tree-ring analysis indicated that the building was constructed between AD 1397 and AD 1419, significantly earlier than was previously supposed. Fabric analysis and historical research was able to demonstrate more clearly the form of the original kitchen building and its later conversion to a dovecot, confirming it as a rare example of a once common but now all but forgotten medieval building type. Whether the building is a truly unique survival is impossible to say with any certainty, since there may be other examples yet to be discovered. The team intends to carry out a wider study of Essex dovecots over the course of the coming year.

A project at Little Wymondley barn in Hertfordshire (a nine-bay timber-framed aisled structure standing on the site of the former medieval Augustinian priory of Little Wymondley), combined tree-ring dating and historical research, and resulted in an unexpected and important discovery that places the building in a new historical light. The barn itself is an imposing and highly accomplished piece of work, a superb example of the medieval carpenter’s craft. The roof is of double tenoned purlin construction, with two tiers of windbraces repeating the pattern of arcade bracing extending along each side of the building. The design and execution of the carpentry throughout is very assured and features, for example, an innovative type of scarf joint (used to join together the ends of the horizontal timber plates) not previously recognized in English vernacular timber-framing. The tree-ring analysis produced what at first appeared a surprisingly late construction date of AD 1540-41. As subsequent research was to prove, the date is highly significant since it identifies the barn as the work of James Nedeham, Master of the London Carpenters’ Company and - as principal surveyor to Henry VIII - active in and around London on numerous royal building projects in the 1530s and 1540s. Nedeham settled in Hertfordshire in 1536, and in 1537 he obtained a lease on the dissolved priory of Little Wymondley for twenty-one years. He later acquired the freehold on the property which descended in his family to the latter part of the seventeenth century.

Conservation Plans

In March 1998,HART joined the IFA Buildings Special Interest Group in organising the first major conference on conservation plans in the UK. The conference brought together archaeologists, architects, surveyors, museum professionals, countryside managers, and others, to discuss the application of conservations plans to the care of the historic environment. The National Trust generously provided sponsorship to bring James Semple Kerr - author of The Conservation Plan - over from Australia to address the conference.

The conference coincided with the launch of Conservation Plans for Historic Places, a guidance noted drafted for the Heritage Lottery Fund. In all, the day provoked a lively debate, polarising between those who saw conservation plans as a new opportunity, and those who felt they offered little new. Since the conference, conservation plans have remained highly topical, and there has been a strong demand for information and advice from the team.

A conservation plan is simply a document which sets out the context for the importance of a site, and the way such importance or significance will be retained in any future use, alteration, or development. The important thing for archaeologists is that the conservation plan process begins with understanding the site, and it is thus an excellent way of tying research and analysis to the conservation process. The approach has the value of ensuring that we are clear about just what it is that we are trying to conserve and why. Conservation plans can also be used to integrate the disparate approaches to a site generated by different conservation specialisms. A building and its collection can, therefore, be considered in the context of the landscape in which it is set, rather than separating these elements into, for example, a landscape restoration plan, a collections manual, together with some building recording.

English Heritage has now formally adopted the use conservation plans at its own monuments. And plans have already been prepared for a number of English Heritage’s properties, including Whitby Headland, Scarborough Castle, Bolsover Castle, Belsay, and Fortress Falmouth. If used properly, such plans can prove an effective tool in managing these sites, both now and in the future. Conservation plans have also been written for a wide range of other projects and sites, including the SS Great Britain, the Royal Academy, the British Museum, and Croome Park, demonstrating the adaptability of the approach.

In the wake of the conference, and as a result of further interest, over twenty-five presentations have been given to organisations and groups including the Heritage Lottery Fund, cathedral architects, landscape specialists, conservation officers, and archaeologists. HART has also served as a focal point for information and advice on conservation plans, as well as providing direct assistance with the writing of plans.

English Heritage was asked to provide help in drafting a conservation plan as part of a wider package of support for the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle (County Durham). The museum was created by John and Josephine Bowes, wealthy art patrons, who modelled it on the idea of a French art museum. Jules Pelluchet, a French architect, was employed to design the building and lay out the associated gardens, specifically for the collection amassed by the Bowes. As ever, the money was exhausted before the project was completed, and it has always been difficult to support this important cultural facility. The conservation plan included an extensive survey of the landscape, and an assessment of the building, identifying how much of the work was by Pelluchet, and how much is the product of later alterations. The plan was drawn together by HART in conjunction with staff from the North West & Mersyside Region, using work commissioned from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. The team worked closely with the museum staff and a facilitator to finalise the plan. The exercise was particularly significant in demonstrating how important consultation, participation, and indeed facilitation, all are to the conservation planning process.

English Heritage has also been providing direct support to another important initiative through its participation in the conservation plan process for Cobham Park and its associated structures. English Heritage is a partner in the Cobham-Ashenbank Management scheme to oversee the conservation of the site. The scheme itself was set up in the wake of Channel Tunnel Rail Link compensation funds being made available. Part of our contribution has been to research the historical development of the site and to inform ongoing conservation decisions at an early stage. A particularly large quantity of archival material survives from this former seat of the earls of Darnley. The historical elements of the conservation plan are being completed, and documentary material assembled for eventual publication. HART is playing an intermediary role here between the relevant historic buildings inspector, colleagues in Historic Properties, outside experts, the local authority, and the owners. Very considerable sums of public money have already been spent on Cobham in earlier decades, and a better appreciation of the house and grounds through detailed historical research will enable a proper policy for their conservation, maintenance and presentation in the future.