Heritage Now

HERITAGE NOW (01/2021) AUTUMN 2021   5 WELCOME By the time members receive copies of their new- look magazine, the Ancient Monuments Society will have become Historic Buildings & Places. Trustees decided soon after the separation with the Friends of Friendless Churches was announced in September 2020 that they needed to address the problem of the society’s name, something which had been tentatively looked at around 15 years ago when the strapline ‘Defending Build- ings of all Types and All Ages’ was created. After nine intense months of planning, discussions, meetings and workshops, trustees resolved on 5 July 2021 that the society’s new name should be Historic Buildings & Places. As the society enters a new chapter in its history, it seems important to look back on its past, to explain why the decision was made and to say something about how it is more fitting for the contemporary situation and our current activities. The Ancient Monuments Society was founded on 2 June 1924 by architect John Swarbrick (1879-1964) at a meeting at John Rylands Library in Man- chester. It is the second oldest National Amenity Society after the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), which was founded almost 50 years earlier, in 1877. Much had changed during that half-century: 1924 was the year of the first successful round the world flight, the first radio play and the first radio time signal broadcast from the Royal Greenwich Observatory. It was also the year in which the newly-founded Royal Fine Art Commission adopted Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s design for the K2 telephone kiosk, and the timber prototype (now listed Grade II*) can still be found in its original position under the entrance portal of Burlington House in London. These were the ‘Roaring Twenties’ and the age of new technologies, but Britain was still recovering from the devastating effects of the first world war, in which almost a million lives were lost. Com- munities and organisations were still erecting war memorials and no fewer than 15, which were unveiled in 1924, are now listed Grade II* and Grade I, notably Sir Robert Lorimer’s Chatham, Plymouth and Portsmouth naval memorials and the Manchester Cenotaph designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, which was unveiled by the Earl of Derby not very long after the AMS was founded. In Paris the Surrealist Manifesto was published and in New York George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue had its premiere, while in the United Kingdom the Empire Stadium (later Wembley Stadium) was built as part of the British Empire Exhibition. The exhibition was formally declared open by King George V in the first ever radio broadcast by a British monarch on 23 April, St George’s Day. Lutyens, who worked extensively in India and became associated with the architecture of the Empire, also designed the only Grade I listed building of 1924, the Midland Bank in the City of London. When the AMS was founded in 1924 it had the most relevant and up-to-date name that any or- ganisation trying to defend historic buildings and places could have had. Not only did it reference the main heritage protection legislation in place at the time, the Ancient Monuments Act, it also closely aligned itself with the main government body in charge of caring for and protecting the historic environment – the Ancient Monuments Board. The first meeting of the AMS was chaired by Sir Henry A Miers, then Vice-Chancellor of Man- chester University, and the address was given by Professor Thomas Frederick Tout (1855-1906), a medievalist and founder member of the His- torical Association. Tout’s address, reported in full in volume 20 of the Transactions (1973) in an article written by L M Butterworth, notes that the breadth of the society’s remit was clear from the start− Tout concluded his speech with the rallying cry: Whether the ancient monument is a Roman camp, a Queen Anne house, or a neo-classical building of the early 19th century, they have all had their part in the history of this country, and, preserved, they all tend to diversify the monot- ony of modern life, and ought at all costs to be saved. It is clear that already by 1924 ‘ancient monu- ments’ was seen to encompass a lot more than archaeological remains or public monuments. But it was only in the 1940s that the concept of ‘listed buildings’ was introduced. It was enemy action during the second world war and the threat of destruction which led to the creation of the first LEFT: The splendid interior of John Rylands Library, where the Ancient Monuments Society was founded in 1924 © Ross Anthony RIGHT: Our founder John Swarbrick