8 CONTEXT 185 : SEPTEMBER 2025 Heritage Now As a statutory amenity society, Historic Buildings and Places campaigns on behalf of historic buildings of all ages. The latest issue of Heritage Now (No 12, Summer 2025) has a feature on gasholders in celebration of largely unsung landmarks. Gasholders date back as far as the second decade of the 19th century, when gas was manufacturing from coal at local works and stored in tanks before being distributed. Gasholders in cities, towns and rural villages became a common sight. Paul Holden looks at a new book by Russell Thomas and Timur Tatlioglu, published by Liverpool University Press, that celebrates these much-overlooked and rapidly disappearing structures. We have good records of their existence as many of them they were photographed before they disappeared. In a further article, Martine Hamilton Knight, a professional architectural photographer and a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, explains some of the principles behind architectural photography. She offers advice on how to take spectacular images, some of which are beautifully illustrated in the magazine. There is a valuable article by Martin Cherry about the final volume of a 10-part series that examines places of worship in Britain and Ireland from 300 CE to 2021. The final volume covers the period after 1989. The books, published by Shaun Tyas between 2015 and 2024, are all still in print. The series set out to understand how the use of places of worship changed over time in such a way as to better serve human aspirations and spiritual need, and to capture the numinous or the vitality of the living church community. This is particularly important at a time when many of those churches are under threat of closure, or worse. The holistic, organic approach taken by the books will surely help inform the debate about the future of these places of worship and hopefully engage a wider public. War Memorials Trust Bulletin In my March 2025 (Context 183) column, I referred to the excellent work of the War Memorials Trust in attempting to identify photos of such memorials in unknown locations as part of its publicengagement programme. The latest issue of the War Memorials Trust Bulletin (No 105, July 2025) continues to illustrate obscure examples posted on the website War Memorials Online. Appeals for information continue to meet with success and it would be invaluable to the trust if readers could add more local knowledge. Bob Kindred MBE Gasholders in Kensal Green, London, in 2016, illustrated in Heritage Now (Photo: Historic England Archive DP183491)
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