CONTEXT 185 : SEPTEMBER 2025 57 What is your favourite building? Potentially the Anglo-Saxon church tower of All Saints in Earls Barton, as that was what I had as my local landmark for most of my childhood. I even had a birthday cake with it represented in icing on top, and a birthday party where we stood on top of it (my dad was the vicar and soft-play centres were less of a thing then). Everything is interesting about it, from its age to its form, from its topography to its setting, yet it sits in a large village in the Midlands with fairly minimal tourism. Your favourite place? I did not know anything about it before moving to Leicestershire, but Bradgate Park is very special. It is like having a whole national park in microcosm and attracts an impressively diverse range of people. Wander for five minutes off the main promenade and you can have it largely to yourself. On a larger scale, Scotland has lots of places that trigger that abstract sense of place (wellbeing and wanting to go back). Your favourite book? Neither Here nor There: travels in Europe by Bill Bryson; working in local government, Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 has resonance; Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets by Charles Mynors and Nigel Hewitson is incredibly useful. What do you do in your spare time? After the misery of the pandemic lockdown, I help to run various activities for local children out of the local church hall so that there are more opportunities for them to experience fun communal stuff. Being unqualified, it is interesting to see what works and what does not. Beyond that, I enjoy playing or watching football, going to the odd indie or electronica gig and walking up the odd hill, ideally with a good pub on it. Periodically exploring random bits of eastern Europe is a less frequent pleasure these days. What organisations are you a member of? The IHBC, Royal Town Planning Institute, Urban Design Group, Woodland Trust, Church of England, Design Midlands (where I do the odd design review panel) and the University of Leicester (where I take a module on its MA Urban Conservation). Which one issue would you particularly like the IHBC to campaign on? The classic ones are generally already focused on, such as lack of dedicated conservation or design staff in local authorities. Without at least one person in the building to champion the historic environment, even the most simple opportunities for better management are missed. VAT is an issue, of course, and improving the environmental performance of buildings in a sensitive manner. However, the one that grates, especially in a city like Leicester, is diversity. An average heritage event has very limited ethnic diversity and we are missing a trick by not benefiting more from the talents of all those extra people. The elephant in the room with heritage at risk is churches, so more focus on creative approaches for making them work, especially for people of all faiths or none. Justin Webber is historic environment team leader at Leicester City Council. The Anglo-Saxon tower of All Saints Church, Earls Barton Bradgate Park: a national park in microcosm
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