20 CONTEXT 184 : JUNE 2025 EVE BLAIN SAVE at 50: celebrating half a century of campaigning At a time of housing and climate crisis, much of SAVE’s work shows property owners, developers and local authorities that historic buildings can be restored and reused. In the first eleven weeks of 1975 – European Architectural Heritage Year – local planning authorities received almost 500 applications to demolish historic buildings, 334 of which were statutorily listed. This statistic was produced by an organisation called SAVE Britain’s Heritage, then in its infancy. A coalition of journalists, architectural historians and planners, SAVE decided to fight back against this tide of demolition and dereliction. Now in its fiftieth year, it is hard not to invoke David and Goliath when describing SAVE and its campaigns. SAVE takes on buildings great and small, refusing to discriminate based on designation. The small, fiercely independent charity has taken on its fair share of seemingly unassailable cases using the powerful combination of tactical press, legal action and alternative schemes, which contribute to SAVE’s unique campaigning style. Early days SAVE was founded following the success of the 1974 Destruction of the Country House exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, commissioned by the museum’s then director Roy Strong and curated by SAVE’s founding chairman Marcus Binney, architectural historian John Harris and curator Peter Thornton. The exhibition generated strong support for conservation, with visitors invited to enter the Hall of Destruction, plastered with images of country houses lost to demolition. SAVE led by example, buying Barlaston Hall for £1 in 1981. Derelict and in structural peril, the palladian country house stood diagonally across a geological fault line. SAVE set up an independent trust to complete the structural works at Barlaston, and by 1992 buyers were secured who would complete the refurbishment. At this time, SAVE began to work alongside architectural designer and property developer Kit Martin, who transformed Hazells Hall into 12 separate dwellings after SAVE and the Ancient Monuments Society halted its demolition at public inquiry. SAVE’s early work looked forward just as it looked back, ensuring that these buildings were brought back into meaningful use. Campaigns to save country houses were followed in quick succession by those to save train stations, hospitals and mills. These buildings A visit to Barlaston Hall before restoration (Photo: Marcus Binney) Barlaston Hall restored (Photo: Peter I Vardy, Wikimedia) did not, in Binney’s words, have to be pensioners on the state, but ought to be brought back to life, serving the communities of which they were once an integral part. In April 1986, SAVE declared a Crisis at Saltaire following the closure of Salt’s Mill and Marcus Binney, SAVE’s founding chairman (Drawing by Rob Cowan)
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