Breathing Life into Heritage: Uncovering the Stories and Structures of Our Past

Understanding the Dual Nature of Heritage

Q: How do architectural assessment and social history complement each other in heritage work?

Dianna Fletcher: Understanding a building's history is fundamental to understanding what's important about it. Most professionals working with historic buildings get this from an architectural perspective. But what's becoming increasingly clear is that it is valuable to look at this topic much more widely, particularly when it comes to design consultation and determining future use. It sometimes grieves me that people are often far more interested in the history of the occupants than the actual building itself – but that human connection is incredibly powerful, and we need to embrace that.

James Hooper: Historic Productions Ltd grew out of my experience working with World Heritage Sites. I ran the UK branch of a heritage conservancy called the Global Heritage Fund, and during that time I noticed we weren't very effectively engaging with commercial organisations around these sites – hotels, real estate developers, and the like. Initially, we thought their lack of interest was because they were "wicked capitalists," but the reality was we weren't focusing on their needs as organizations and as creators of cultural heritage in their own right. They're stewards of both physical heritage, if it's a historical building, and cultural heritage as scenes of social interaction.

The thing is, if you're looking only at the physical condition of a building and not its social life, it's like examining a human body without considering its mental health. You're not seeing and evaluating the entire ecosystem the building operates in.

Q: How has this understanding evolved into practical applications?

James: We've found that spending time at the beginning of a project, focusing the specialist social and cultural historian's eye on a building to elucidate new forms of significance and value is a worthy project in itself. This information can then flow through the multiple stages of the project following it, assisting in planning, design, branding, communication and staff engagement. Not simply dismissing social and cultural history because it isn't 'blue plaque worthy' is part of the matrix of value that we believe should be considered.

Dianna: Historic England identifies four types of significance, and one of those is providing evidence of the past and how people lived. Traditionally, this tends to focus on much older properties, with an assumption that we understand how people lived in the more recent past. But what we're discovering is that a deep dive into who lived in a particular building, how they lived, and who was associated with it can add an extra layer of richness to our understanding of that building. This doesn't just impact the significance assessment – it flows through to influence design decisions and how we approach changes to the building.

The Impact on Project Development

Q: How does this comprehensive approach benefit real projects?

James: What we've discovered is that deep social and cultural research has value far beyond what we initially expected. Take our work with Corinthia Rome, for example. We explored not only the building’s exceptional economic history but also the atelier and neighbourhood life in the immediate vicinity, including how it related to the Chigi family who originally built the building – it was their stables, actually. This research ends up being incredibly influential in the decisions made about the property's future direction.  It’s worth adding that getting a best-in-class historian to research and write your history is like getting a properly qualified plumber to do your plumbing – don’t leave it to non-experts!

Dianna: Yes, and this approach can be valuable even for more recent buildings. I worked on a 1950s University of Westminster building where we needed to create distinct identities for different floors. Being on Marylebone Road, we looked at somewhat obvious references to Madame Tussauds and Sherlock Holmes. Looking back, commissioning proper social history research could have led to something much more meaningful and connected to the building's actual story.

Q: How early should this research begin in the development process?

Dianna: From my perspective, the earlier the better. With building history, if you come in too late in the process, it's much more difficult to influence a design positively. Or if you can influence it positively and change things, there's a risk of abortive design work because you're changing what the design team has already proposed. The same principle applies to social history research – it needs to be part of the foundation of the project, not an afterthought.

James: Absolutely. We're finding that commissioning this kind of research early in the process shows a real commitment to understanding and preserving a building's complete heritage. The process of gathering in that information is part of your reputation and credibility as a steward, if you are a developer coming in.

Community Engagement and Planning

Q: How does this approach enhance the planning and consultation process?

Dianna: During planning consultations, particularly for projects that impact the public realm, engaging local communities can be really challenging. I worked on a project at the former Military School of Music, which had been a very closed-off MOD site before being bought by a school group. We had several consultation meetings with the public to show them our proposals and get their feedback. Having that social history element could have really helped bridge the gap between the building's past and its future use.

James: The process of gathering this information itself becomes part of building trust with the community. Looking at our current work with Camden Town Hall – we're working with local history societies and gathering information from various sources to produce a social and cultural history that is themed and organised for the building's future purposes. This process naturally engages people who consider themselves to be connected to that site, quite rightfully so.
The output is one way of indicating that there will be something which will be shared with the public, and also that we will be open to communicating with people within the community because that's what we do.