From top, the ruins of Hampton Gay manor, Oxfordshire - a 16th and 17th century house that was destroyed by fire in 1887. The ruins were the subject of a recent application to build a new house within the walls. The application was withdrawn, and the house remains a popular site for walkers
The remains of old St Paul’s Cathedral, sketched by Thomas Wyck circa 1673. Can preservation prevent greater new work?
Witley Court, Worcestershire, a fine old house burnt out in 1937. What harm if it is rebuilt?
scholarship and postwar bureaucracy circa 1950. There are obviously national icons whose
character derives from their ruined state, such as Fountains Abbey, Tintern and Chepstow. But most castles could be treated as theVictorians treated Arundel, Belvoir and Alnwick, by reinstating their interiors for modern use.We do not leave disused railway stations or barracks or dockyards to ruination.We do not refuse to repair churches so as to create new ruins.What is so special with castles that we leave Stokesay, Cowdray and Portchester gaunt and empty? I cannot see what ideological hang-up there is
in not rebuilding England’s greatest ruined mansion,Witley Court in Worcestershire, gutted by fire in 1937 and “stabilised” as a ruin in 1972. We restored Uppark, gutted likewise in 1989. If Athens can rebuild the Stoa of Attalus under the Acropolis, we can surely rebuild Housesteads Fort on Hadrian’sWall, or Lullingstone Roman villa in Kent, currently buried inside what looks like a municipal swimming pool. The cult of the ruin is a strange concoction of
the Georgian imagination, sanctified by amix of HoraceWalpole, JMWTurner and BramStoker’s Dracula. Yet the Romantics were celebrating not static humps of stone but active decay, the return of old buildings to the soil from which they sprung. They even built new ruins to evoke respect for the passing follies of mankind. Today this warped romanticismhas become
modernist nonsense, that anything old must be left untouched, and anything new may not refer to it or it will be “pastiche”. It is a deathly liturgy of scholarly infallibility.We have ruins and to spare. We would give them more meaning andmore presence in the landscape by bringing themto life as useful buildings.
Simon Jenkins is a leading commentator, writer, journalist and authority on historic buildings. He is a former Editor of the Times and served as Deputy Chairman of English Heritage. In 2008 he was appointed Chairman of the National Trust.
Reproduced courtesy the Guardian newspaper, Simon Jenkins/Guardian News & Media Ltd 2011
Cornerstone, Vol 32, No 2 2011 75
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