ABSTRACT This paper addresses the relation of architectural heritage and history. The two terms are linked in discourse. The paper teases out the connection and proposes separation. Through a specific interrogation of a specific site and its development, the paper develops a proposition: that new histories cannot recover absented or annihilated existence. It then proposes an alternative practice related to the heritage futures discourse, but with more immediate and synchronic frames. The specific case enabling a circuitous written composition is Milton Hall, Launceston, lutruwita (Tasmania). The building was constructed to house the Independent congregation that assembled around Reverend John West. While the architecture’s provenance is nebulous, the well-profiled figure of West and his History of Tasmania (1852) offers material to critique the history of the architecture on that site, and spoil grounds for equitable relation. The deconstructions of the history of Milton Hall leave the standing facts of matter as potential bases for sharing. Sections that closely read and describe representational constructions of the current physical presence are offered as examples of practice that can be communal: media through which readers in the continuing present can become meaningfully entangled, with each other and the building, inspiring shared witness, interpretation, and action.