The historic environment is an irreplaceable resource that should be treated responsibly. Conservation is intrinsically sustainable.

Background

Nottinghamshire’s historic environment is rich in quality, quantity and diversity. We have always interacted with this complex historic environment, adapting it, shaping landscapes and leaving behind a wealth of buildings, structures, and archaeological remains. Much of this environment is in a fragile condition, unprotected, poorly recorded and vulnerable to unsympathetic management and development proposals.

Today we have an unprecedented capacity to change and destroy what was created in the past. Sustainable principles suggest that we should achieve an acceptable quality of life and pass on this inheritance to our children and grandchildren in the best possible condition. Old buildings, even of modest architectural quality represent a past investment of energy and materials. Retaining and adapting them, rather than replacing them, is a sensible way of safeguarding past investment of energy. It often requires expert input at the design stage.

Many traditionally constructed buildings have served a series of uses over a long period of time and are associated with traditional skills and practices. Appropriately maintained and sensitively occupied, many of them are capable of further long and useful lives. Nottinghamshire has a particularly rich heritage of industrial Victorian buildings. Those which have survived and been adapted have become desirable residential, commercial or institutional properties and have sparked the regeneration of whole areas (e.g. Nottingham’s Canalside).

Both historic buildings and archaeological remains contain irreplaceable information about the past. While historic buildings can normally be sensitively modernised or re-used, archaeology is a non-renewable resource that requires careful management if it is to survive to benefit future generations.

The majority of the historic environment is unprotected, poorly recorded and vulnerable to unsympathetic development proposals.

Forces for change

• Increasing awareness that the conservation of historic buildings is a sustainability issue, in recognition of the substantial ‘embodied’ energy they represent.
• Greater appreciation of the positive impact of the built heritage on the quality of modern life.
• Government’s more extensive policy attention to the historic environment as a whole.
• Greater knowledge about the environmental, health and thermal insulation qualities of traditional building materials.