ABSTRACT
This chapter develops directly from Chapter 2 in its consideration of the rise of conservationism as a movement. Beginning in élite social concerns, during the twentieth century there has been a significant rise in the numbers and membership of local amenity societies, particularly following the foundation of Britain’s Civic Trust in 1957. This closely parallels the rise of local historical societies in the nineteenth century. Interest in revival architectural styles and in conservation in general is now being shown actively by a large proportion of the population: this is shown, for example, by the numbers of housebuilders specialising in ‘Heritage Cottages’ and ‘Medieval Oak Homes’, and advertisements for these relatively new specialisms are common in the fashionable coffee-table magazines catering for old houses and interior design (Figure 3.1). Although some of these magazines ceased publication in the recession of the late 1980s, in the mid1990s they are beginning to be replaced with, for example, Perspectives on Architecture, a populist built environment magazine linked to the new Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture. Heritage issues generated their own BBC series, ‘One Foot in the Past’, in 1993.
