Rising to the Challenge: The Building Preservation Trust Movement in Scotland

Abstract

I n N o v e m b e r 1 9 8 2 the Scottish Georgian Society (the predecessor of the ahss) organised a conference on the subject of Building Preservation Trusts (bpts). Speakers and delegates alike expressed the view that Scotland had fallen well behind England in the formation of such Trusts and was thereby losing out on the opportunity to conserve some of the country’s most important buildings at risk. The National Committee of the Society considered what initiative might be taken to kick start a new generation of Building Preservation Trusts. It was agreed that the preparation of a practical guide to the establishment of a Trust would be the way forward. Three National Committee members, George McNeill, John Gerrard and David Reith took on the role of putting together the guide which was eventually published in February 1984 under the title of ‘Building Preservation Trusts – A Challenge for Scotland’. In his forward to the Guide the Chairman, William Beaton, remarked that the Society believed that ‘the establishment of a healthy Building Preservation Trust movement is a challenge which must be answered and that such a movement could give new impetus to conservation work in this country’. The Guide noted that the Architectural Heritage Fund (ahf) had been created in May 1976 as a result of one of the specific aims of the uk Campaign for European Architectural Heritage Year 1975. The Fund was established to make available low interest loans to Building Preservation Trusts, but by 1984 only one Trust in Scotland, the Cockburn Conservation Trust, itself founded in 1978, had availed itself of this borrowing facility. The Guide contained practical advice on the establishment of a Trust and provided a draft Memorandum and Articles of Association for a Trust set up as a charitable company limited by guarantee. This has become the norm for the constitution of most bpts. The Guide was issued to all Civic Societies, Local Authorities and others interested in architectural conservation. The three authors followed up with meetings in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Inverness and Glasgow as a direct result of which the Lothian, North East Scotland, Highland and Strathclyde bpts were formed. Along with other Society members the three authors founded the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust in 1985. In 1988, Hilary Weir, at that time the Secretary of the Architectural Heritage Fund, proposed the setting up of an Association of bpts and the uk Association of Preservation Trusts was formed in 1989. The Scottish Area Committee was formed at the same time,